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11099	----	MORE SEEDS OF KNOWLEDGE; OR, ANOTHER PEEP AT CHARLES. BEING, AN ACCOUNT OF CHARLES'S PROGRESS IN LEARNING. ABOUT BLACK SLAVES; A CONVERSATION ON HISTORY; AND MISSIONARIES. BY MISS JULIA CORNER. EMBELLISHED WITH SEVEN ELEGANT COLOURED ENGRAVINGS. LONDON: [Illustration: THE INCA'S SURPRISE AT SEEING A WATCH.] MORE SEEDS OF KNOWLEDGE; OR, ANOTHER PEEP AT CHARLES. CHAP. I. CHARLES'S PROGRESS IN LEARNING. You have heard a great deal about Charles in the Seeds of Useful Knowledge; perhaps you would like to hear a little more about him; for, as he was never tired of learning good things, I might fill many books, if I were to speak of every thing that his papa and mamma taught him. But I dare say all the boys and girls who read this, have kind parents or friends who teach them, as well as Charles's papa and mamma taught him; so I will only mention such things as they may not perhaps yet have heard. But first of all, I must tell you what Charles has been doing, since you heard of him last. He was now a year older than he was then, and he was also wiser, for he could write pretty well, and read without spelling the long words; he knew the multiplication table, and the pence table too; and could do sums in multiplication without a mistake, when he took pains; but sometimes, when he was careless, or in a hurry, the sums were wrong: however, I am happy to say that did not happen very often. Besides all these things, Charles learned grammar, and geography, and could decline many Latin nouns; which was very well for a little boy not quite seven years old. But of all his lessons he liked geography best, he liked to find out places in the maps, and to know whereabouts the different countries were that he heard people talk of; and then his papa was often kind to tell him amusing stories about the inhabitants of those countries, and he also told him what things are brought from them: for instance, Charles knew that tea grows in China, which is in Asia; and sugar in the West-Indies; that the rose-wood that his mamma's chairs and card tables were made of, grew in a country called Brazil in South America; and that the raisins in the plum-pudding on Christmas day, were dried grapes, and came from Spain. "Papa," said Charles one night, when he was, as usual, telling his papa what he had done in the course of the day,--"I wish I might learn more geography, instead of any grammar; I like it so much better: I like geography very much, but I do not like grammar at all." "What is your objection to grammar, Charles?" said his papa. "Oh, why--there is nothing amusing in it." "And do you not think there is some other reason for learning, besides being amused?" "Yes; I think we learn that we may grow wise; but I don't want to leave off learning, papa; I only want to learn something else, instead of grammar?" Mr. Barber laughed, and told Charles, that no other kind of knowledge would be of much use to him without grammar, since nothing else would teach him to speak or write like a gentleman. "Don't I speak like a gentleman now, papa?" "You speak pretty well for a little boy, my dear; but you often make mistakes, which we think nothing of now, because we know that when you have learnt a little more grammar, you will know better; but if you were to make such mistakes when you are a man, you would be thought an ignorant person, and not be treated with respect." "Can you tell me of any mistakes I make now papa?" [Illustration: LITTLE CHARLES LEARNING GEOGRAPHY.] "Oh yes, I think I could very soon tell you of a great many. Just now, when you were standing at the window, I heard you say,--'There goes two white horses!' now that was a very great blunder, Charles." "Was it, papa;--why?" "Because it showed that you did not know the difference between singular and plural." "But I do know the difference--singular means one thing, and plural means more than one." "Exactly, so now try to find out the blunder." Charles repeated the words two or three times, "there goes two white horses;" but he could not find out what was wrong, and after puzzling for a long while, he was obliged to give it up, and his papa said,--"Suppose you had been talking about those horses before you saw them go by, should you have said, 'there they goes?'" "No," said Charles. "I should have said--'there they go.'" "And why should you have said so?" "Because it is not right to say--'there they goes'; nobody says so, but very ignorant people indeed; I heard the butcher's boy say so one day; but then, you know, he is a poor ignorant boy and I dare say has never learnt any thing." "How did you know that he was an ignorant boy, Charles?" "I knew it by his speaking wrong, papa." "Then you see it was true what I told you that if you speak wrong, people will directly think you are an ignorant person, as you thought the butcher's boy." "But I should never say, 'there they goes,'" said Charles, "I know better than that." "Ah, Charles," said his papa, "you must learn a little more grammar, and then you will know that you made exactly the same blunder as the butcher's boy, when you said, 'there _goes_ two white horses,' you should have said, 'there _go_ two white horses.'" "Should I? I did not know that," said Charles. "Which shews how necessary it is, that you should learn grammar, my boy, and then you will know that go is plural, and goes is singular, so that if you are speaking of more than one horse, it is proper to say go, because we say, 'they go;' but if you are speaking of only one, it is proper to say goes, because we should say, 'he goes.'" "Thank you, papa, I think I shall remember that, and I will not wish to leave off grammar, for I see that geography would not teach me to speak properly; and I should not like to be thought an ignorant man when I grow up." "I hope not, my dear, and I also hope there is no danger of such a misfortune, for you have a great many years to learn in; and if you make good use of them, you will know a great deal by the time you are twenty." "So I shall," said Charles, "I will learn as much as I can every day." "A very good resolution," said his papa; "education is one of the best things in the world. I will tell you an entertaining story on this very subject." "Do, papa, I should like to hear it very much; I am so fond of stories." "But this is a true one, Charles, which makes it all the better. You have seen in your map of America, a country called Peru?" "Yes," answered Charles; "I saw it this morning, when I was saying my geography lesson to mamma; I had to say all the countries in South America, and Peru was one of them." "Well, this country was once governed by a king who was called an Inca, and his name was Atabalipa; but although he was a king, he knew neither how to read nor write, for reading and writing were arts that were not known in America at that time." "What are arts, papa?" "Arts are those things which men have taught themselves to do by their own skill and invention; making tables and chairs, is an art; Printing is an art, and a very clever art it is; building is an art; and reading and writing are arts; but at the time I am speaking of, there were very few arts known in America, for it was mostly inhabited by savages; and even in Peru, where they were not savages, they were quite ignorant; they had no books, and would not have known how to read them if they had, and they thought they were the only people in the world besides the savages." "Then, I dare say, they thought themselves very clever fellows," said Charles, "for all they could not read or write; for you know, papa, if they thought there was nobody in the world but them and the savages, they would not know there were any people cleverer than themselves." "No, I have no doubt they were quite satisfied with themselves, my dear, and not without reason, for they had taught themselves many useful things; but at last they found out that there were people in the world who were cleverer than they were as you shall hear. There was a Spanish soldier, named Pizarro, who happened to hear that there was a great deal of gold and silver to be found in Peru; so he thought he would go there, and try if he could not make himself rich. Pizarro was a fierce, cruel man, but he had been brought up in total ignorance; for his mother was a very poor woman, and could not afford to send him to school, therefore he had never learned to read or write. However he could fight, and so he took a number of other soldiers with him, and went to Peru, where the people were so surprised at the sight of him and his men, who were not like any men they had seen before, that they were afraid; therefore the Spaniards very easily conquered them, and robbed them of their gold, and at last took the Inca prisoner, and kept him confined in a small room, where he would have been very unhappy; but that he was very much amused, by observing how many things the Spaniards knew that he had never before heard of. "He was astonished to see that they could tell the hour of the day by their watches, and thought the Europeans must be very wonderful people indeed, to make such clever things; but what pleased him more than all, was the art of writing. He could not imagine how one person could know what another meant by looking at a few black marks, and he thought that men who could do this, must be far superior to the Peruvians, and therefore felt a respect even for the common soldiers who guarded him; for he saw that they had more knowledge than he had, although a king. "Now Pizarro was the general of the soldiers, and of course the greatest man among them; and he had also become very rich by conquering the Peruvians, and plundering their towns, that is, taking away all the gold and silver he found: and Atabalipa supposed that, as he was the chief of the Spaniards, he must be the cleverest of them too; but one day he happened to find out by accident, that Pizarro could neither read nor write, and this discovery made him think so meanly of his conqueror, that from that moment he treated him with great contempt, saying that Pizarro, though a general, could not be a person of any consequence in his own country; since his common soldiers were better taught than himself." "Thank you, papa," said Charles, "that is just such a story as I like, and I see that it is of no use to be rich and great, if we are not wise also." [Illustration: THE AFRICAN TORN FROM HIS HOME BY WHITE-MAN.] CHAP. II. BLACK SLAVES. Charles used to go every fine day after his lessons were finished, to play in the square gardens; and as all the other boys whose parents lived in the square went there too, he had several friends, and amongst them one a little older than himself, named Peter Ross, whom he liked better than any of the rest. Peter was not an English boy, he was a West-Indian: his father and mother lived in Jamaica, but they had sent him to England to be educated, so he lived with his uncle in Euston-square, and went every day to the London University school. Charles was very fond of talking to Peter, because Peter told about the slaves that worked on his father's plantations, for his father was a sugar planter, and had a large estate in Jamaica, so he was obliged to keep a great many negro slaves, for all the plantations in the West-Indies, are cultivated by negroes. "I wish I had a slave," said Charles to his papa one evening, after he had been playing with Peter. "Do you know, papa, when Peter was at home in the West-Indies, he had a slave of his own, a black boy, to wait upon him, and do every thing he wanted; and Peter was his master, and he was not older, then, than I am. What a nice thing it must be to have a slave of one's own; I should get him to carry my kite, and my hoop and stick, when I don't want to bowl it, and mend my toys when I break them, and do a great many things for me. He could move my rocking horse, and that great wooden box where I keep my bats and balls, for it is too heavy for me to lift myself, and I often want it moved: really a slave would be very useful to me, papa." Mr. Barker could not help laughing at Charles's idea of the usefulness of a slave, and asked him if he knew exactly what slaves were. "Yes," replied Charles; "they are black people." "A great many slaves are black, certainly," said his papa, "but is not being black, that makes a man a slave, and there have been many unfortunate white people sold for slaves, as well as the poor blacks." "Sold!" said Charles, "what, do they sell people, I never heard of that before." "Then I will tell you now, my dear, and I think you will never again wish to have a slave. When America was first discovered, which is about three hundred and fifty years ago, there were many gold mines found in the West-Indies, all the mountains contained a vast quantity of gold, but it was very hard work to dig for it, and the natives of the country, who were savages, were not strong, and had never been used to work; so that the Spaniards who had discovered the country, could not get as much gold as they wished, although they were cruel enough to force the poor savages to work in the mines, and chained them together; that they might not run away; poor creatures! they were much to be pitied, and numbers of them died every day, for they had not strength to bear such hard labour. So when the Spaniards found that the Indians could not do as much work as they wanted done, they employed sailors to go to Africa and bring them a number of black men from that country; for they knew the Africans were strong, and that they could make them work as hard as they pleased." "But why did the Africans go, papa?" said Charles, whose eyes were full of tears at this sad tale. "Why did they not send the sailors away again, and say they would not go with them?" "They most likely would have done so," replied his papa; "if they had known how they would be treated; but the sailors said they would take them to a fine country, where they would get plenty of food without any trouble, and live much better than they did in their own country; so the simple negroes believed them, and went on board their ships; but they soon found out how wrong they had been to trust these wicked men; for when they came to the place where they expected to be so happy, they were all sold as if they had been beasts, instead of men, and sent to work in the mines; where they led a very miserable life indeed, for the cruel masters who had bought them, did not care what they suffered, so long as they got plenty of gold. "This was the beginning of what is called the slave trade, and a dreadful trade it has been ever since; for when the captains of ships found how much money the Spaniards would give for negroes, they went again to Africa; and when the black men refused to go with them, they took them by force, and carried them on board the ships, where they tied them together, so that it was impossible for them to escape. You would think it a very hard case, Charles, if you were walking by the sea shore, and two or three men were to come and carry you away by force to a distant land, and sell you to somebody who would make you work hard for him all the rest of your life, and consider you as much his property, as if he had bought a horse or a dog." "But they would have no right to sell me," said Charles, "I do not belong to them." "Neither do those poor Africans belong to the men who sell them; they have as much right to be free and happy, as you or I have." "Then how is it, papa, that Peter's father has slaves? he is an Englishman." "Yes, Charles, I am sorry to say, that Englishmen, as well as Spaniards, have traded in slaves, for when some of the West-India islands came into the possession of the English, they found the negroes so useful, and made so much money by their labour, that they forgot how unjust it was to keep them in slavery. However, I am happy to say, that a law is now in operation which will soon set all the slaves free. In a very short time, the negroes will be at liberty like other working men; and the masters, instead of buying them, must hire them like servants, and pay them wages; and they will be able to leave their master if he does not treat them well, and get another place, as our servants do." "Ah, how glad I am," said Charles, "that will be a good thing for the poor blacks. I do not wish to have a slave now, papa; I would not have one for the world. But Peter's father's slaves do not work in the gold mines, they make sugar: why is that?" "Because there are no gold mines now in the West-Indies worth working," said Mr. Barker; "the Spaniards took care to get all the gold there was, but people still make large fortunes there, by growing sugar; and there are still gold mines in other parts of America, where negro slaves work." "How does sugar grow?" enquired Charles. "It is made from the juice of reeds, called sugar canes," said his papa.--"A plantation of sugar canes is very pretty, they grow very high, and are of a beautiful gold colour, streaked with red; and at the top of this yellow cane are long green leaves, which hang down round it: but this is not all, for out of the midst of these leaves, there grows a long stem, like a thin silver wand; and at the top of it, is something that looks like a plume of white feathers, edged with lilac." "Oh, how beautiful!" exclaimed Charles:--"I should like to go to the West-Indies, if it was only to see a sugar plantation; but how do they get the sugar, papa?" "When the canes are ripe, Charles, the negroes cut them down, and tie them up in bundles, and carry them to a mill, where the juice is pressed out. "This juice is boiled several times in large coppers, and the coarse parts separated from the fine, which at last dries into sugar. It is all brown at first, or what you call moist sugar; but by mixing different things with it, and boiling it again in a particular manner, they can make lump sugar, and sugar candy; and this is done by the black slaves, who have been dragged away from their own country to be sold to the planters: so you see Charles, that even so simple a thing as a lump of sugar, is the cause of a vast deal of cruelty and injustice." [Illustration: Man (Drawing).] CHAP. III. A VISIT TO THE THEATRE. Charles had never seen a play; but his papa and mamma had always promised him that when he was seven years old, they would take him to Covent-Garden Theatre, and as that time had now nearly come, he did not forget to remind them of their promise. His birth-day was the fifteenth of January, which was lucky, because they always perform pantomimes in the Christmas holidays, and he was very desirous of seeing harlequin and columbine, and the clown, as he had heard a great deal about them from his young friends in the square, who had been to see them. As the day approached, Charles could think of nothing but the play, and said he thought it would be the happiest day of his life; but his mamma told him she hoped he would have much greater cause to be happy many days of his life, than going to a theatre; however Charles did not think there could be any greater cause for happiness, and his mamma said, it was as well for him to think so: The night before his birth-day, he went to bed in high spirits, saying he was sure he should not be able to sleep all night; but that was a mistake, for he went to sleep almost directly; and did not wake till the morning. [Illustration: LITTLE CHARLES SEEING A CHRISTMAS PANTOMIME.] As soon as he was dressed, he ran down stairs to breakfast, with a smiling face. "Here is the day come at last!" he said, "I am so glad mamma, I wish it was night; I am seven years old to-day." "Yes, my dear," said his mamma, "and I wish you many happy returns of the day." "Thank you, mamma, but I have a great favour to ask you." "What is it? Charles." "I am afraid you will not do it." "If it is any thing very unreasonable, perhaps I shall not," said his mamma; "but if it is not very unreasonable, I think, as it is your birth-day, I may venture to promise that I will do it." "Then this is it," said Charles; "Peter has never been to the play in his life, and he said yesterday, he should like to go with me; so I wish you would take him with us; he would be so pleased." "Well then, we will take him with us," said Mrs. Barker; "and I am glad to find that you think of other people's pleasure, as well as your own; it shows that you are not selfish." A message was then sent to Peter's uncle, who readily gave his consent, which made Charles happier than he was before. At six o'clock Peter came; and very much delighted he looked, as well he might, for he had not expected so great a pleasure; and then both the boys watched at the window for Mr. Barker, who had not yet come home; but he soon came, when they all got into a coach, and away they drove. The play was to be Macbeth, which Charles said was very fortunate, because he had read about him in 'Tales of a Grandfather,' but Peter had never read 'Tales of Grandfather,' nor any history of Scotland, so he did not know who Macbeth was, therefore Mr. Barker was kind enough to tell him the whole story as they went along; that he might be able to understand what he was going to see. Perhaps some other little boys would like to hear it too, so I will tell it. "There was once a king of Scotland, named Duncan, who was a good man, and much beloved by his subjects. This king had a cousin named Macbeth, who being the bravest general in Scotland, was employed by Duncan to fight all his battles for him, when he was too old to fight them himself; but Macbeth, although a brave man, was not a good man, and besides that, he had a very wicked wife, who wanted to be a queen, and therefore she tried to persuade her husband to kill Duncan, that he might be made king in his stead. "At this time the Danes, who came from Denmark, invaded Scotland; that is, they came there to fight the Scots, and try to conquer the country: but they were disappointed, for Macbeth went with a large army to the place where they had landed, and having killed a great number of them in a battle, he forced the rest to return to Denmark. "When Duncan heard that Macbeth had gained this victory, and driven his enemies out of Scotland, he was so much pleased, that he went, with his two sons, to pay him a visit at his castle; but he little thought, poor old man, what was going to happen, for in the middle of the night, when he was fast asleep, Macbeth went softly into his room, and killed him with a dagger. So in the morning, when it became known that the king was murdered, Macbeth pretended to be very much surprised and grieved at it, and although the people all thought he had done it himself, they were afraid to say so; and he was made king of Scotland. But wickedness is sure to be punished, as you shall hear; for the two young Princes, Malcolm and Donald Bane, as soon as they heard their father was dead, escaped from the castle, fearing that if they staid they might be killed too. "Now happened that at that very time there was in England a very good king, called Edward the Confessor, who was an enemy to all bad men; therefore the Scottish princes determined to go to his court, and tell him what Macbeth had done; for they did not doubt that when he heard of it, he would render them some assistance; and they were not mistaken. The English king declared that he would revenge the death of Duncan, and place Malcolm on the throne; so he sent a large army into Scotland, to fight for the young prince, and Macbeth was killed in a battle, which gave great joy to the people, who were very glad to have Malcolm for their king. All this happened nearly eight hundred years ago, and Malcolm, who is called in the history of Scotland, Malcolm Canmore, was one of the best kings that ever reigned over that country." By the time Mr. Barker had finished this story they had arrived at the theatre, and were just seated in the front row of a box, as the curtain drew up. The two boys liked the play very much, although it made them rather dull; but they were merry enough when the pantomime began, for it was full of fun, from beginning to end, and Charles could not help exclaiming every now and then, "Oh, what capital fun!" He was very much astonished at the wonderful tricks performed by harlequin with his magic sword, for to those who have never seen a pantomime before, it must be rather surprising to see a wheelbarrow turned into a steam carriage, and an umbrella into an arm chair. But what amused Charles and Peter more than all the rest, was a large pie which was brought in and placed on a table, where the king and queen, with several lords and ladies were sitting at dinner, all seemingly very anxious to taste of this pie. But the moment it was cut, a whistling noise was heard, and a number of little birds hopped out of the pie, and flew away, leaving the dish quite empty, to the great amusement of all the boys and girls in the theatre, who laughed very loud indeed. But pleasure cannot last for ever. The pantomime was soon over, and as Charles went home, he said he should like to go to the play every night, all the rest of his life--"Ah, Charles,"--said his papa, "we are all apt to like what is new to us, but you will find out, my boy, that people get tired even of pleasure, if they have too much of it." CHAP. IV. CONVERSATION ON HISTORY. On the morning after the play, Charles was thinking about the king of Scotland, and he asked his mamma why there was no king of Scotland now, as there used to be, and she told him that England and Scotland were now considered only as one kingdom, and called Great Britain. "Yes," said Charles, "I know that the queen of England is queen of Scotland too; but I want to know how it came to be so; because you see, mamma, that when Duncan was king of Scotland, there was a king of England as well." "Yes, my dear," and for five hundred years after Duncan was murdered, there were kings of Scotland and England also; but when Queen Elizabeth died, her nearest relation happened to be the king of Scotland, James the sixth; he was her cousin, and as she left neither brothers nor sisters, nor children, James became king of England as well as of his own country; and since that time there has been but one king to govern both kingdoms." "Thank you, mamma," said Charles, "I could not think how it was before; but do you think it is best to have one king or two?" "I think it is best to have but one, because, if you look at your map, you will see that England and Scotland together make one large island; and while they were separate kingdoms, they were frequently at war with each other." "What did they go to war for, mamma?" "I believe, Charles, the true cause generally was, that the English king thought he should like to have the whole island for himself; but what made the matter worse was, that as the people who were fighting against each other, all lived in the same island, it was almost as bad as a civil war." "What is a civil war, mamma?" "It is when the people of any country cannot agree among themselves, and so make war upon each other: there have been civil wars in all countries at different times; they are the most dreadful of all wars, because relations and friends are often fighting in battle against each other." "Oh, what a shocking thing!" said Charles; "But why do they do it mamma? I cannot think why people should fight battles with one another." "I will try to explain it, my dear: There is at present a civil war in Spain, because when the last king died, some of the people said that his daughter should be queen, and others said his brother should be king; so the daughter was placed on the throne and crowned; but the brother, whose name is Don Carlos, is very angry at this, because he thinks he has the greatest right to the crown; so he has persuaded all who are on his side, to go to war with all who are in favour of the queen, therefore the Spaniards are now fighting against each other." "Which do you think will win?" said Charles. "I cannot possibly say, my dear. But I wish to show you, Charles, the terrible consequences of a civil war. It may happen that fathers and sons are of different opinions, and that one fights for the queen, and the other for the king; and then it is possible that in battle the son may kill his father, or the father his son." "Oh, that would be shocking!" said Charles. "And yet it has sometimes happened," said his mamma; "there have been brothers too, who have fought against each other, and many persons who were friends before, have become the bitterest enemies." "Was there ever a civil war in England, mamma?" "Yes, my dear, more than once. The last was because many people thought they should like to have no king at all; I am going to buy you a little history of England, and then you will read about it." "I shall like to read about it," said Charles, "but what did the people do when they thought they should like to have no king?" "They said the king had done a great many things that were wrong, and so they put him in prison, and at last had his head cut off; do you know, Charles, which king it was who was beheaded?" "Yes, mamma; it was Charles the first." "Well, after Charles the first was beheaded, some of the people declared that his son should be king, and others said they would have no king at all, but that they would have somebody instead to manage the affairs of the country." "And I know who that was, mamma," said Charles, "it was Oliver Cromwell, I know he was not a king, but I did not understand how it was before." "And I suppose you also understand now, why this caused a civil war?" said his mamma. "Of course I do," replied Charles; "some people fought for the king, and some for Oliver Cromwell." "Yes," replied Mrs. Barker, "and for a long time the country was in a very unhappy state. The king was obliged to hide himself, for if he had been caught he would perhaps have been beheaded, as his poor father was. But at last he got away in a ship, and went to Holland, where he lived for some years; but at last his party was victorious, and he came back to England." "Then there was a king again," said Charles. [Illustration: CONVERSATIONS ON HISTORY: CHARLES IInd.] "Yes, then there was a king again, he was Charles the second; and now every year on the day that he returned, the bells ring, and the guns are fired, it is the 29th of May, and is called king Charles's restoration. When May comes, if you listen on that day, you will hear the bells ringing very merrily, and then you will know what it is for." "So I shall," said Charles, "I am glad of that, I like to know things, I wish I knew the history of every country in the world." "It is a very good thing to know a great deal of history," said his mamma; "and the best way of gaining this knowledge, is to read with attention the books that have been written on purpose to teach little boys history; they are the best for you to read now; then, when you are older, you will be able to understand the large books that are in your papa's book-case, and you may become acquainted with the history of the whole world, if you like." CHAP. V. MISSIONARIES. "Papa," said Charles, "I should like to know what a missionary is." "Your desire can very easily be gratified," replied his papa; "but what has made you think of missionaries just now?" "Because I read in the newspaper, this morning, that the day before yesterday there was a great crowd at St. Katharine's docks to take leave of a missionary who was going to one of the South Sea islands; and it said that a great deal of money had been given to him, and that when the ship began to sail, all the people waved their hats, and wished him success. Now I want to know what he was going for, and why every body was so glad?" [Illustration: THE GOOD MISSIONARY GOING ABROAD.] "Then I will tell you, Charles. Missionaries are good and religious men, who go out to different parts of the world, on purpose to benefit those poor ignorant creatures whom we call savages, by teaching them religion, and also such arts as they are capable of learning." "That is very kind of them," said Charles; "for it cannot be very pleasant to live among savages." "No, my dear; but these good men do not consider what is pleasant, they only consider what is right; and that is the proper way to think, is it not?" "Oh yes, papa, I know that we ought all to do what is right, whether it is pleasant or not." "Certainly, Charles, and in the end it is sure to be the most pleasant, because it is a great pleasure to know that we have done what is right. But we were talking of missionaries. For several hundred years the people of England and Germany, and other Christian countries, have considered it a part of their duty to teach the Christian religion in all parts of the world; for in many nations, Charles, they are so ignorant that instead of praying to God, they worship images, which they make themselves." "They are very wicked, then?" said Charles. "No, they are not wicked," replied his papa, "because they know no better; they do what they believe to be right; and as long as we do what we think is right, we cannot be wicked, although we may be mistaken." "Then the missionaries go to teach them better, I suppose?" said Charles. "Yes, my dear, these good men are so anxious to do good to their fellow creatures, that they do not mind the difficulties and dangers they meet with; and it is no easy matter I assure you Charles, for many of them have been cruelly murdered by the barbarians they were trying to instruct." "Poor men," said Charles, "how sorry I am for them; but why do any more of them go, papa, if they are so badly treated?" "Because though some have been unfortunate, others have done a great deal of good; for instance, the missionary you read about this morning, went out a great many years ago to some of the South Sea islands, which he found inhabited by savages who knew nothing, and lived more like wild beasts than men; but he contrived to make friends of them, and has taught them to build houses, cultivate the earth, build ships, and make many useful articles of furniture, and tools to dig and plant the ground; and although all these things are of a very rough kind, it is better than not knowing how to make them at all, you know." "To be sure it is," replied Charles; "besides, perhaps they will go on making them better and better, till at last they will make very good things indeed." [Illustration: THE GOOD MISSIONARY TEACHING THE SAVAGES TO BUILD.] "Yes, my boy, that is the right way, not only with the savages, but with ourselves: When once we know the manner of doing a thing, we may then improve upon it as much as we can, the same as with your writing, each copy ought to be done better than the last." "But now you have not told me why they have given money to the missionary, papa." "Because he has come to England to buy clothes, tools, seeds, and other things for the use and improvement of the South Sea Islanders. The English people are always ready to assist in any good work; and so numbers of persons have given money, till it has amounted to several hundred pounds, which has enabled the good missionary to take back with him a large store of useful articles." "Well, that is an excellent plan," said Charles, "I should not wonder if these poor savages in time become very clever fellows, and make their island a capital place, and all through this good missionary." "Yes, Charles, so we see how much may be done by one person alone, if he will take the pains. But there is one thing that the missionary has taught the savages, which is better than all the rest; he has taught them to know that there is a God, who made the world, and all that is in it, and that those who love him, and keep his commandments, will be rewarded in the world to come." 
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10103	----	Proofreaders BINDING Vol. VIII The binding of this volume is a facsimile of the original in the British Museum, and is considered the most artistic mosaic binding design in existence. It was executed about 1710, by Antoine Michel Padeloup, Royal Binder of both France and Portugal. He presented it to Francoise Marie de Bourbon, daughter of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan, on the anniversary of her marriage to Philippe, Duke of Orleans, who afterward became Regent of France. During the Reign of Terror this volume found its way to England, where it was sold at a handsome price. It was bequeathed to the British Museum by Felix Slade, Esq. THE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS A COMPREHENSIVE AND READABLE ACCOUNT OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY, EMPHASIZING THE MORE IMPORTANT EVENTS, AND PRESENTING THESE AS COMPLETE NARRATIVES IN THE MASTER-WORDS OF THE MOST EMINENT HISTORIANS NON-SECTARIAN NON-PARTISAN NON-SECTIONAL ON THE PLAN EVOLVED FROM A CONSENSUS OF OPINIONS GATHERED FROM THE MOST DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARS OF AMERICA AND EUROPE, INCLUDING BRIEF INTRODUCTIONS BY SPECIALISTS TO CONNECT AND EXPLAIN THE CELEBRATED NARRATIVES, ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY, WITH THOROUGH INDICES, BIBLIOGRAPHIES, CHRONOLOGIES, AND COURSES OF READING EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ROSSITER JOHNSON, LL.D. ASSOCIATE EDITORS CHARLES F. HORNE, Ph.D. JOHN RUDD, LL.D. _With a staff of specialists VOLUME VIII The National Alumni_ 1905 CONTENTS VOLUME VIII _An Outline Narrative of the Great Events_ CHARLES F. HORNE _Origin and Progress of Printing (A.D. 1438)_ HENRY GEORGE BOHN _John Hunyady Repulses the Turks (A.D. 1440-1456)_ ARMINIUS VAMBERY _Rebuilding of Rome by Nicholas V, the "Builder-pope_" _(A.D. 1447-1455)_ MRS. MARGARET OLIPHANT _Mahomet II Takes Constantinople (A.D. 1453)_ _End of the Eastern Empire_ GEORGE FINLAY _Wars of the Roses (A.D. 1455-1485)_ _Death of Richard III at Bosworth_ DAVID HUME _Ivan the Great Unites Russia and Breaks the Tartar_ _Yoke (A.D. 1462-1505)_ ROBERT BELL _Culmination of the Power of Burgundy_ _Treaty of Péronne (A.D. 1468)_ P.F. WILLERT _Lorenzo de'Medici Rules in Florence_ _Zenith of Florentine Glory (A.D. 1469)_ OLIPHANT SMEATON _Death of Charles the Bold (A.D. 1477) Louis XI Unites Burgundy with the Crown of France_ PHILIPPE DE COMINES _Inquisition Established in Spain (A.D.1480),_ WILLIAM H. RULE JAMES BALMES _Murder of the Princes in the Tower (A.D.1483)_ JAMES GAIRDNER _Conquest of Granada_ (A.D.1490) WASHINGTON IRVING _Columbus Discovers America_ (A.D.1492) CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS FERDINAND COLUMBUS _Conspiracy, Rebellion, and Execution of Perkin Warbeck_ (A.D.1492) FRANCIS BACON _Savonarola's Reforms and Death_ The French Invade Italy_ (A.D.1494) PASQUALE VILLARI JEAN C. L. SISMONDI _Discovery of the Mainland of North America by the Cabots_ (A.D.1497) SAMUEL EDWARD DAWSO _The Sea Route to India Vasco da Gama Sails around Africa_ (A.D.1498) GASPAR CORREA _Columbus Discovers South America (A.D.1498)_ CLEMENTS ROBERT MARKHAM _Establishment of Swiss Independence (A.D.1499)_ HEINRICH ZSCHOKKE _Amerigo Vespucci in America (A.D.1499)_ AMERIGO VESPUCCI _Rise and Fall of the Borgias (A.D.1502)_ NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI _Painting of the Sistine Chapel (A.D.1508)_ _The Splendor of Renaissance Art under Michelangelo_ CHARLES CLEMENT _Balboa Discovers the Pacific (A.D.1513)_ MANUEL JOSE QUINTANA _Universal Chronology (A.D.1438-1516)_ JOHN RUDD ILLUSTRATIONS VOLUME VIII _Murder of the princes, sons of King Edward IV, in _the Tower of London (page 194)1_ Painting by Otto Seitz. _Facsimile of a page from Caxton's_ Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye--_the first book printed in the English language_ _Louis XI at his devotions in the castle of Péronne while held a prisoner by Charles the Bold_ Painting by Hermann Kaulbach. _Pope Sixties V and the Grand Inquisitor_ Painting by Jean Paul Laurens. AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, CONNECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE GREAT EVENTS (THE LATER RENAISSANCE: FROM GUTENBERG TO THE REFORMATION) CHARLES F. HORNE The Renaissance marks the separation of the mediaeval from the modern world. The wide difference between the two epochs of Teutonic history arises, we are apt somewhat glibly to say, from the fact that our ancestors worshipped and were ruled by brute force, whereas we follow the broad light of intellect. Perhaps both statements require modification; yet in a general way they do suggest the change which by a thousand different agencies has, in the course of the last four centuries, been forced upon the world. Mediaeval Europe was a land not of equals, but of lords and slaves. The powerful nobles regarded themselves as of wholly different clay from the hapless peasants whom they trampled under foot, serfs so ignorant, so brutalized by want, that they were often little better than the beasts with which they herded. Gradually the tradesmen, the middle classes, forced their way to practical equality with the nobles. Then came the turn of the masses to do the same. The beginnings of the merchants' movement we have already traced in the preceding volumes; the end of the peasants' effort is perhaps even to-day scarce yet accomplished. In dealing with modern history, therefore, every writer is apt to begin with a different date. Some go back as far as Petrarch, who reintroduced the study of ancient art and learning; that is, they regard our world as a direct continuation of the Roman, with the thousand years of the Middle Ages gaping between like an earthquake gulf of barbarism, that was bridged at last. Some take the invention of printing as a starting-point, feeling that the chief element of our progress has been the gathering of information by the poorer classes. Some, looking to political changes, turn to the reign of Louis XI of France, noting him as the first modern king, or to the downfall of Charles the Bold, the last great feudal noble. Others name later starting-points such as the establishment of modern art by Michelangelo and Raphael at Rome, the discovery of America, with its opening of vast new lands for the pent-up population of narrow Europe, or the Reformation, which has been called man's revolt against superstition, the establishment of the independence of thought. All of these epochs fall within the limits of the Renaissance, and all, except that of Petrarch, within the later Renaissance which we are now considering. The period is therefore worth careful study. INTELLECTUAL SUPREMACY OF ITALY Gutenberg's invention had no immediate effect upon his world.[1] Indeed, so little enthusiasm did it arouse that while the inventor's plans were probably evolved as early as 1438, it was not until 1454 or thereabouts that the first completed book was issued from his press. His business partner, Faust, sold his wares in wealthy Paris without explaining that these were different from earlier hand-written books; and when their cheapness, as well as their exact similarity, was discovered, the merchant was suspected of having sold himself to the devil. Hence probably originated the Faust legend. Superstition, it is evident, had still an extended course to run. It is worth noting that to sell his books Faust left Germany for Paris, and that while printing-presses multiplied but slowly in the land of their origin, the new art was instantly seized upon in Italy, was there made widest use of and pushed to its perfection. In fact, through all the Middle Ages the Romance or semi-Teutonic peoples of Italy, France, and Spain were intellectually in advance of the more wholly Teutonic races of the North. Many of their descendants believe half contemptuously that the difference has not even yet been overcome. Italy at this time held clearly the intellectual supremacy of the western world, and Florence under the Medici, Cosmo and then Lorenzo, held the supremacy of Italy.[2] Not only in thought, but in art, was there an outburst brilliant beyond all earlier times. A friend and pupil of Cosmo de' Medici was made pope at Rome, and under the name of Nicholas V originated vast schemes for the rebuilding and beautifying of his city of ruins.[3] Modern Rome with all its beautiful churches and wonders of art rose from the hands of Nicholas and his immediate successors. It was their idea that the city should no longer be remembered by its heathen greatness, but by its Christian splendor; that the sight of it should impress upon pilgrims not the decay of the world, but the glory and majesty of the Church. Nicholas also continued the work of Petrarch, gathering vast stores of ancient manuscripts, refounding and practically beginning the enormous Vatican Library. He established that alliance of the Church with the new culture of the age which for a century continued to be an honor and distinguishment to both. In his pontificate occurred the fall of Constantinople, bringing with it the definite establishment of the Turks in Europe and the final extinction of that Roman Empire of the East which had originated with Constantine. For this reason the date of its fall (1453) is also employed as marking the beginning of modern Europe. It was at least the closing of the older volume, the final not undramatic exit of the last remnant of the ancient world, with its long decaying arts and arrogance, its wealth, its literature, and its law.[4] Greek scholars fleeing from the sack of their city brought many marvellous old manuscripts to Western Europe and were eagerly welcomed by Pope Nicholas and all of Italy. Nicholas even preached a crusade against the terrible Turks, and tried once more to rouse Europe to ancient enthusiasms. But he failed, and died, they say, heartbroken at his helplessness. THE CLASH OF RACES IN THE EAST The Turks had recovered from their defeat by the Tartars of Timur, and became once more an active menace. With Constantinople in their power, they attacked the Venetians and compelled those wealthy traders to pay them tribute. Venice by sea and Hungary on land remained for a century the bulwarks of Christendom, and were forced, almost unaided, to withstand all the assaults of the East. They wellnigh perished in the effort. In Hungary this was the period of the great hero, Hunyady, a man of unknown birth and no official rank, who roused his countrymen to repeated effort and led them to repeated victories and defeats against the vastly more numerous invaders.[5] Hunyady died, worn out with ceaseless warfare, and his son, Matthias, was elected by acclamation to be monarch of the land the father had preserved. This was the proudest era in the history of the Hunnish race. Under Matthias they even resumed their German warfare of five centuries before, and won from a Hapsburg emperor his city of Vienna, ancient capital of Austria, the eastmark or borderland which had been erected by Otto the Great to hold the Huns in check. For a few years Matthias placed his kingdom amid the foremost states of Europe; but with his death came renewed disunion and disorder to his lawless people, and the fierce, fanatic Turks returned again to their assaults. Further north the yellow races were less successful. Along the shifting borderlands of Asia which mark the line of demarcation between the two mightier families of man, the tide turned ever more steadily in the Aryans' favor. The Russians, under their chief, Ivan III, threw off the galling Tartar yoke which they had borne for over two hundred years. Ivan concentrated in his own hands the power of all the little Russian duchies, overthrew the celebrated Russian republic of Novgorod the Great, and defied the Tartars. Equally noteworthy to modern eyes was his wedding with Sophia, heiress of the last of the emperors of the East. When that outworn empire perished with the fall of Constantinople, Ivan succeeded nominally at least to its heirship. Hence it is that his successors have assumed the title of caesar or kaiser or czar and have grown to look upon themselves as inheritors of the ancient supremacy of Rome.[6] The fifteenth century was thus a time of many changes in Eastern Europe. Not only did the Eastern Empire disappear at last, not only did Hungary rise to the brief zenith of her glory, there was a sort of general movement, sometimes spoken of as the "Slavonic reaction," against the hitherto successful Teutons. The Slavic Bohemians in their "Hussite" wars repelled all the religious fighting strength of Europe. The Poles began to win back territory from the German empire, and especially from their hereditary foes the "Teutonic Knights" of Prussia. And Russia, greatest of all the Slav countries, grew into a strong kingdom. She and Turkey, rising as twin menaces to the West, assumed at almost the same period that threatening aspect which Turkey has only lately lost, and Russia, to some statesmen's eyes, still holds. POLITICAL CHANGES IN WESTERN EUROPE Turn now to the affairs of Western Europe. The feebleness of the German empire continued. For over half a century it was nominally ruled by Frederick III (1440-1493), the lazy and feeble emperor who let Matthias of Hungary expel him from Vienna, and never made any vigorous effort to recover his capital. He was succeeded by his son Maximilian, a man of far other temper, full of courage, energy, and hardihood. Maximilian has been called "the last of the knights," and indeed his whole career may well exemplify the changing times. The one achievement of his life was the recovery of Vienna from the Hungarians, and in that he was successful only because the heirs of Matthias were being overwhelmed by the Turks. The remainder of his career was spent in learning bitterly how little real power he had as emperor. He attempted to bring the Swiss once more under the imperial dominion, but the little armies he could scrape together against them were repeatedly defeated.[7] He was always declaring war against this kingdom or that, and summoning his great lords to aid him in upholding the glory of the empire. They persistently declined; and he was helpless. At one time having pledged his alliance to the English king, Henry VII, against France, he preserved his knightly word by going alone and serving as a volunteer in Henry's army, whither his people would not follow him. Instead they stayed at home and demanded from him constitutions and courts of law and other internal reforms, uninteresting matters about which the gallant soul of Maximilian cared not a straw and which he gave his subjects under protest. To the westward of him a far subtler monarch, by far subtler means, was strengthening the power of France and making smooth her way toward that supremacy over European affairs which she was later to assert. Louis XI (1461-1483) is called the first modern king, though it is little flattery to modern statecraft to compare its methods with his, and perhaps our recent governments have truly outgrown them. Louis was no warrior, although under compulsion he showed possibilities of becoming an able general. He preferred to send others who should do his fighting for him, to embroil his opponents one with another, and then reap the fruit of their mutual exhaustion. He was passed master of all falsity and craft; and by his shrewdness he brought to his country peace and prosperity. Typically does he represent his age in which intellectual ability, though sometimes wholly divorced from nobleness of soul, began to dominate brute force. Charles the Bold stands as the representative of this brute force. He was the mightiest of the French nobles. His ancestors, a younger branch of the royal family, had been made dukes of Burgundy, and by skilful alliances and rapid changes of side through the long Hundred Years' War, they had steadily added to their possessions and their powers. The father of Charles found himself stronger than his king, possessor not only of Burgundy, but of many other fiefs from Germany as well as France, and lord of the Netherlands as well.[8] Charles was thus the last of those great, overgrown vassals so characteristic of feudal times. Like Hugh Capet in France, like William the Conqueror in England, he hoped to establish himself as an independent king. He opened negotiations for this purpose with the Emperor Frederick, Maximilian's father. He made himself practically independent of France. He wielded a military power greater than that of any other prince of the moment, and he knew it and charged like a mad bull at whoever seemed to interpose in his designs. Over such a man Louis XI's cunning had full play. He involved Charles in fights with every neighbor. Finally he lured him into conflict with the Swiss, and those hardy mountaineers won the repute of being the best soldiers of Europe by defeating Charles again and again till they left him slain on the field of Nancy (1477).[9] Louis promptly seized most of his dead vassal's domains. Maximilian, having wedded Charles' daughter, inherited the remainder; and the old Burgundian kingdom, so nearly revived to stretch as a permanent dividing land between France and Germany, disappeared forever. What Louis had done with Burgundy he attempted with his other semi-independent duchies. The Hundred Years' War had almost destroyed central government in France. Louis, by means as secret and varied as his cunning could suggest, gradually reestablished an undisputed leadership above his lords. Fortunately for France, perhaps, England was prevented by a long series of civil wars from interfering in her neighbor's affairs. These wars, though they originated before Louis' time, were constantly fomented and kept alive by him, and England thus paid dearly for having become a source of danger to France. The Wars of the Roses,[10] as they are called, caused deep-seated changes in England's life and society. They mark for her the transition from the mediaeval to the modern era which was everywhere taking place. Beginning as a contest between two rival branches of the Plantagenets for the kingship, these wars remained aristocratic throughout. That is to say, the common people took little interest in them, while the nobles, espousing sides, fought savagely and murderously, giving one another no quarter, sparing the lesser folk, but executing as traitors their prisoners of rank. When one side seemed hopelessly overcome, Louis would lend them arms and money wherewith to seek revenge once more. Thus almost all the old nobility of England perished; and both lines of kings became extinct, Richard III, their last representative, being accused of murdering all his relatives or possible rivals.[11] At last, Richard too was slain, and a new family of rulers, only remotely connected with the old, was inaugurated by Henry Tudor, grandson of a private gentleman of Wales. This new king, Henry VII (1485-1509), found no powerful lords to oppose his will. One or two impostors were raised against him,[12] France making anxious efforts to prolong the troubles of her dangerous neighbor; but the attempts failed through the utter completeness of the aristocracy's exhaustion. Thus in England as in France, though by widely differing chances, the kingly power had triumphed over feudalism. Monarchs began to come into direct contact, not always pleasant, with the entire mass of their subjects, the "third estate," the common people. RISE OF SPANISH POWER Spain also was to pass through a similar experience. Indeed, one of the most striking facts of this age of the Renaissance is the swift and spectacular rise of Spain from a land of feebleness and internal strife into the most powerful kingdom of Europe. We have seen the Spanish peninsula in previous ages the seat of endless strife between Saracens and Christians. Gradually the Moors had been driven back, and the little independent Christian states had been united by the fortunes of war and marriage into three--Portugal on the Atlantic coast, Castile occupying the larger part of the mainland, and Aragon, a maritime kingdom, less extensive in Spain, but extending its sovereignty over many of the Mediterranean isles, over Sicily and southern Italy. In 1469 Isabella, heiress of Castile, and Ferdinand, heir of Aragon, were wedded; and soon afterward their countries were united under their joint rule. The combined strength of both was then devoted to a long religious war against the Moors. Granada, the last and most famous of the Moorish capitals and strongholds, was finally captured in 1492.[13] The followers of Mahomet were driven out of Western Europe during the same period that, under Turkish leadership, they had at last won Constantinople in the East. The whole Spanish peninsula with the exception of Portugal was thus united under Ferdinand and Isabella, greatest of the sovereigns of Spain. The ages of battle with the Moors had bred a nation of cavaliers, intensely loyal, passionately religious. They were splendid fighters, but stern, hard-hearted, merciless men. Isabella, "the Saint," most holy and pure-souled of women, herself introduced into her country the terrible Inquisition.[14] Jews and Moors were given little peace in life unless they turned Christian. Heretics and relapsed converts from the other faiths were burned to death. The Queen declared she would approve all possible torture to men's bodies, when necessary in order to save their souls. If such were the women of Spain, what was to be expected of the men? How could even Ferdinand, "the Wise," keep them employed now that there were no longer Moors to fight against? Uprisings, rebellions, began to threaten Spain with such desolation as England had endured. But a higher Providence solved for Ferdinand his impossible problem: the age of maritime discovery began.[15] THE ERA OF DISCOVERY The Portuguese from their Atlantic seaboard had already begun to explore southward along the African coast. In 1402 they had settled the Canary Isles. In 1443 they reached southward beyond the sands of the Sahara and saw Cape Verd, discovered that Africa was not all burning desert, that heat would not forever increase as they went southward. In 1487 Bartholomew Diaz, after almost a year of sailing, reached the Cape of Good Hope, the southern point of the vast African continent; and in 1497 Vasco da Gama rounded the cape and sailed on to India[16]. He had found a way of bringing Indian spices, silks, and jewels to Europe, bringing them in quantities and without paying tribute to the Turks, without crossing the deadly deserts of Arabia. He had made his little country wealthy. Meanwhile, stimulated by Portuguese success, the mariners of other nations began to brave the giant storms of the Atlantic. The Turks had made trade with the far East wellnigh impossible. Portugal was not the only land to seek a sea-route to India. Venice and Genoa saw before them the threat of ruin to their most profitable commerce. So we may even say that it was the Turks who set the Genoese captain Columbus to planning his great voyage; it was the conquest of the Moors that set Isabella free to listen to him, and offer her crown jewels for the expedition which should convert other heathen, establish other inquisitions; and it was the downfall of the Moors which left the Spanish warriors so eager to throng to adventure and warfare in the West, once Columbus had shown the way. For a time the theatre of great events shifts to the new continent. The Portuguese explorers had doubled the size of the known world. The Spaniards doubled it again. But the credit must not be given wholly to Spain. Though it was the liberality of her monarchs which had made discovery possible, and though it was the daring of her warriors that laughed at danger and made conquest sure, yet the Spaniards were not sailors. It was to Italy, the home of commerce, that they turned for their captains and their pilots. Columbus, the Genoese, had discovered the islands along the coast. England, wishing to have a share in this world of wonders, sent a Venetian mariner, John Cabot; and he and his son sailed along our northern mainland in English ships.[17] Columbus touched the coast of South America in 1498.[18] A Florentine, Amerigo Vespucci, was the first to cruise far along this southern coast, probably in 1499, and it was his name which Europe gave to the new lands.[19] Following the discovery came settlement, warfare with the unhappy Indians, a fierce and frantic search for gold. It was while engaged in this work that Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama, saw the vast waters of the Pacific, and riding out into them upon his warhorse took possession, in the name of Spain, of the largest ocean of the globe.[20] Men recognized at last that these were not the Asiatic shores, but a wholly new continent which they had found. RELIGIOUS CHANGES Let us pause to recapitulate the wonders which this age of the Renaissance had seen--a new world of Africa discovered in the South, a new world of America in the West, the rise of Spain, the conquest of the last of the western Saracens at Granada and the rise of the Turks in the East, the rise of Russia, the downfall of the last vestige of the ancient empire of Rome, the last expiring effort of feudalism in Charles the Bold, and of errant knighthood in Maximilian; the beginning of modern statecraft in Louis XI of France, Henry VII of England, and Ferdinand the Wise of Spain; the spread of printing and with it the spread of thought and knowledge among the masses; and, sometimes accounted greatest of all, came the wonderful awakening of art in Italy. We have traced the early part of this under the Medici and Pope Nicholas. Lorenzo de'Medici was the centre of its later development.[21] From his court went forth that galaxy of artists which the world of art unites in calling the unequalled masters of all ages--Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, and a host of others.[22] Unfortunately in Italy at least the great movement in art and literature took an antireligious, sometimes an antipatriotic, tone. Lorenzo was openly defiant and scornful of the teachings of the Church, and after his death a French king, Charles VIII, was able to enter Italy and march from end to end of it without opposition. Religion seemed dying there, and love of country dead. Florence underwent an extravagant though brief religious revival. The monk Savonarola preached against wickedness in high places, and thundered at the Florentines for their presumption and vanity. The impressionable people wept, they appointed a "day of vanities" and laid all their rich robes and jewels at Savonarola's feet. They made him ruler of the city. But, alas! they soon tired of his severities, sighed for their vanities back again, and at last burned the reformer at the stake.[23] In Rome itself there arose popes, Lorenzo's followers, who preferred art to Christianity, or others like the terrible Alexander Borgia, who adopted the maxims of the new statecraft. Alexander, a worthy disciple of Louis XI, admired falsehood before truth, and sought to win his aims by poisoning his enemies. The career of his nephew Caesar Borgia has supplied history with its most awful picture of successful crime, and the book written in his praise by Macchiavelli has given us a new word for Satanic subtlety and treachery. We call it Macchiavellian. The rest of Europe shrank from Italy in fear, and named it "poisoning Italy."[24] Against the spiritual dominance of such a land the world was surely ready for revolt. The mind of man, so long and slowly awakening, and at last so intensely roused, seeing great discoveries on every hand, was no longer to be controlled by authority. The time was ripe for the Reformation. [FOR THE NEXT SECTION OF THIS GENERAL SURVEY SEE VOLUME IX] [Footnote 1: See _Origin and Progress of Printing_, page 5.] [Footnote 2: See _Beginning and Progress of the Renaissance_, vol. ix, p. 110.] [Footnote 3: See _Rebuilding of Rome by Nicholas V_, page 46.] [Footnote 4: See _Mahomet II Takes Constantinople_, page 55.] [Footnote 5: See _John Hunyady Repulses the Turks_, page 30.] [Footnote 6: See _Ivan the Great Unites Russia_, page 109.] [Footnote 7: See _Establishment of Swiss Independence_, page 336.] [Footnote 8: See _Culmination of the Power of Burgundy_, page 125.] [Footnote 9: See _Death of Charles the Bold_, page 155.] [Footnote 10: See _Wars of the Roses_, page 72.] [Footnote 11: See _Murder of the Princes in the Tower_, page 192,] [Footnote 12: See _Conspiracy, Rebellion, and Execution of Perkin Warbeck_, page 250.] [Footnote 13: See _Conquest of Granada_, page 202.] [Footnote 14: See _Inquisition Established in Spain_, page 166.] [Footnote 15: See _Columbus Discovers America_, page 224.] [Footnote 16: See _The Sea Route to India_, page 299.] [Footnote 17: See _Discovery of the Mainland of North America by the Cabots_, page 282.] [Footnote 18: See _Columbus Discovers South America_, page 323.] [Footnote 19: See _Amerigo Vespucci in America_, page 346.] [Footnote 20: See _Balboa Discovers the Pacific_, page 381.] [Footnote 21: See _Lorenzo de'Medici Rules in Florence_, page 134.] [Footnote 22: See _Painting of the Sistine Chapel_, page 369.] [Footnote 23: See _Savonarola's Reforms and Death_, page 265.] [Footnote 24: See _Rise and Fall of the Borgias_, page 360.] ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF PRINTING A.D. 1438 HENRY GEORGE BOHN It was perhaps not altogether fortuitous that the invention of printing came concurrently with the Revival of Learning. Men's minds were turned toward practical experiment in that art by the very influences made active through the labors of those scholars who ushered in the Renaissance. "The art preservative of all other arts" has also preserved the records of its own beginnings and development, although of its earlier sources our knowledge is very obscure, and even the modern achievement, which antiquity in various ways foreshadowed, is itself a subject of uncertainty and dispute. Bohn, in his admirable survey of the origin and progress of modern printing, gives us a full and accurate account, from the earliest evidences and conjectures relating to antiquity to the latter part of the nineteenth century, confining himself, however, to European developments. But before the middle of the sixteenth century printing was introduced into Spanish America. Existing books show that in Mexico there was a press as early as 1540; but it is impossible to name positively the first book printed on this continent. North of Mexico the first press was used, 1639, by an English Non-conformist clergyman named Glover. In 1660 a printer with press and types was sent from England by the corporation for propagating the gospel among the Indians of New England in the Indian language. This press was taken to a printing-house already established at Cambridge, Mass. It was not until several years later that the use of a press in Boston was permitted by the colonial government, and until near the end of the seventeenth century no presses were set up in the colonies outside of Massachusetts. In 1685 printing began in Pennsylvania, a few years later in New York, and in Connecticut in 1709. From 1685 to 1693 William Bradford, an English Quaker, conducted a press in Philadelphia, and in the latter year he removed his plant to New York. He was the first notable American printer, and became official printer for Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Maryland. His first book was an almanac for 1686. In 1725 he founded the _New York Gazette_, the first newspaper in New York. But the first newspaper published in the English colonies was the _Boston News-Letter_, founded in 1704 by John Campbell, a bookseller and postmaster in Boston. Only four American periodicals had been established when, in 1729, Benjamin Franklin, who was already printer to the Pennsylvania Assembly, became proprietor and editor of the _Pennsylvania Gazette_. Until the last quarter of the eighteenth century the progress of printing in America was slow. But in 1784 the first daily newspaper, the _American Daily Advertiser_, was issued in Philadelphia, and from this time periodical publications multiplied and the printing of books increased, until the agency and influence of the press became as marked in the United States as in the leading countries of Europe. Even since the time when Bohn wrote, the progress made in various branches of the printer's art has been such as might have astonished that famous publisher of so many standard works. Recent improvements for increasing the capacity of the press, and often the quality of its productions, are quite comparable to those which our own time has seen in other departments of industry, as in the applications of electricity and the like. In addition to the further development of stereotyping, there has been marvellous improvement in nearly all the machinery and processes of printing. This is especially marked in rapid color-printing, and in the successors of inadequate typesetting-machines--in the linotype, the monotype, the typograph, etc. Most wonderful of all, perhaps, is the improved printing-press itself, in various classes, each adapted to its special purpose. The sum of all improvements in this department of mechanical invention is seen in the great cylinder-presses now in general use, especially the one known as the web perfecting press. This is a machine of great size and intricate construction, which yet does its complex work with an accuracy that almost seems to denote conscious intelligence. It prints from an immense roll of paper, making the impression from curved stereotype plates, runs at high speed, prints both sides of the paper at one run, and folds, pastes, and performs other processes as provided for. By doubling and quadrupling the parts, the ordinary speed of about twenty-four thousand impressions an hour may be increased to one hundred thousand an hour. The multicolor web perfecting press prints four or more colors at one revolution of the impression cylinder. To meet the demands of such an enormous consumption of paper as the modern press requires, it was necessary to invent other processes and to utilize more abundant and cheaper material for paper-making than those formerly employed. This requirement has been supplied in recent years mainly through the extensive manufacture of paper from wood-pulp. This method, together with improved processes in the use of other materials, has removed all fear of a paper famine such as has sometimes threatened the printing industry in the past. "Nature does not advance by leaps," says an old proverb; neither does her offspring, Art. All the great boons vouchsafed to man by a munificent providence are of gradual development; and though some may appear to have come upon us suddenly, reflection and inquiry will always show that they have had their previous stages. Indeed, nothing in this great world which concerns the well-being of man takes place by accident, but is brought forward by divine will, precisely at the moment most suitable to our condition. So it was with astronomy, the mariner's compass, the steam-engine, gas, the electric telegraph, and many other of those blessings which have progressed with civilization. The elements were there and known, but the time had not arrived for their fructification. And so it is with printing: although its invention is placed in the middle of the fifteenth century, and almost the very year fixed, this can only be regarded as a matured stage of it. To illustrate this, I propose to begin with a cursory view of its primitive elements, of which the very first were no doubt initiative marks and numerals. The use of numerals has been denominated "the foundation of all the arts of life"; and we know with certainty that several nations, and among them the Mexicans, had numerals before they were acquainted with letters. The first method of reckoning was with the fingers, but small stones were also used--hence the words "calculate" and "calculation," which are derived from _calculus_, the Latin for a pebble-stone. The Chinese counted for many years with notched sticks; and even in England, in comparatively modern times, accounts were kept by tallies, in which notches were cut alike in two parallel pieces of wood. Shakespeare alludes to "the score and the tally" in his _Henry VI_; and this mode of keeping accounts is still adopted by some of the bakers and dyers in Warwickshire and Cheshire. And tallies are occasionally produced in the small-debt courts, where they are admitted as authentic proofs of debt. Hence the origin and name of the "tally court of the exchequer." The Peruvians, at the time they were conquered by Pizarro, counted with knotted strings. After numerals, came picture-writing, hieroglyphics, and symbolic characters, such are were used by the Egyptians, the Chinese, and the Mexicans; which, however unconnected they may be with each other, are of the same general character. Indeed, the Chinese have never advanced beyond symbolic characters, of which it is said they have more than one hundred thousand combinations or varieties. Rude as these conditions of humanity may seem, they are matched in modern England, even at a very recent date, if we may credit a well-known story: A rustic shopkeeper in a remote district, being unable to read or write, contrived to keep his accounts by picture-writing, and charged his customer, the miller, with a cheese instead of a grindstone, from having omitted to mark a hole in the centre. After picture and symbolic writings would follow phonetic characters, or marks for sounds; that is, the alphabet. Even the alphabet, which in civilized countries has now existed for more than three thousand years, was perfected by degrees; for it has been clearly ascertained that the earliest known did not comprise more than one-half or, at most, two-thirds of the letters which eventually formed its complement. Thus, the Pelasgian alphabet, which is derived from the Phoenician, and is the parent of the Greek and Roman, consisted originally of only twelve or thirteen letters. The invention of the alphabet, which, in a small number of elementary characters, is capable of six hundred and twenty sextillions of combinations, and of exhibiting to the sight the countless conceptions of the mind which have no corporeal forms, is so wonderful that great men of all ages have shrunk from accounting for it otherwise than as a boon of divine origin. This feeling is strengthened by the singular circumstance that so many alphabets bear a strong similarity to each other, however widely separated the countries in which they arose. In Egypt the invention of the alphabet is by some ascribed to Syphoas, nearly two thousand years before the Christian era, but more commonly to Athotes, Thoth, or Toth, a deity always figured with the head of the ibis, and very familiar in Egyptian antiquities. Cadmus is accredited with having introduced it from Egypt into Greece about five centuries later. From the alphabet the gradation is natural to compounds of letters and written language, and, though speech is one of the greatest gifts to man, it is writing which distinguishes him from the uncivilized savage. The practice of writing is of such remote antiquity that neither sacred nor profane authors can satisfactorily trace its origin. The philosopher may exclaim with the poet: "Whence did the wondrous mystic art arise. Of painting speech and speaking to the eyes? That we, by tracing magic lines, are taught How both to color and embody thought?" The earliest writing would probably have been with chalk, charcoal, slate, or perhaps sand, as children from time immemorial have been taught to read and write in India. The Romans used white walls for writing inscriptions on, in red chalk--answering the purpose of our posting-bills--of which several instances were found on the walls of Pompeii. Plutarch informs us that tradesmen wrote in some such manner over their doors, and that auction bills ran thus: "Julius Proculus will this day have an auction of his superfluous goods, to pay his debts." Next seems to have followed writing or engraving on stone, wood, ivory, and metals, of which we have many early evidences. The Decalogue, or the Ten Commandments, given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai, was originally, we are told in the Bible, written upon two tables of stone; the pillars of Seth were of brick and stone; the laws of the Greeks were graven on tables of brass, which were called _cyrbes_. Herodotus mentions a letter written with a style on stone slabs, which Themistocles, the Athenian general, sent to the Romans about B.C. 500; and we have another evidence of the same period still existing--the so-called Borgian inscription, which is a passport graven in bronze, entitling the holder to hospitable reception wherever he demanded it. Upward of three thousand of such engraved tablets, including the famous Roman laws of the Twelve Tables, were consumed in the great fire which destroyed the Capitol in the time of Vespasian. I could cite a great many other evidences of early writing on stone or brass, but will merely recommend you to see the Rosetta[25] inscription, which is conspicuously placed in the British Museum. It is this very interesting stone which, being partly Greek and partly Egyptian, has enabled us to decipher so many Egyptian monuments. Pliny informs us that table-books of wood--generally made of box or citron wood--were in use before the time of Homer, that is, nearly three thousand years ago; and in the Bible we read of table-books in the time of Solomon. These table-books were called by the Romans _pugillares_, which may be translated "hand-books"; the wood was cut into thin slices, finely planed and polished, and written upon with an iron instrument called a _stylus_. At a later period, tables, or slices of wood, were usually covered with a thin layer of hard wax, so that any matter written upon them might be effaced at pleasure, and the tables used again. Such practice continued as late as A.D. 1395. In an account roll of Winchester College of that year we find that a table covered with green wax was kept in the chapel for noting down with a style the daily or weekly duties assigned to the officers of the choir. Ivory also was used in the same way. Wooden table-books, as we learn from Chaucer, were used in England as late as the fifteenth century. When epistles were written upon tables of wood they were usually tied together with cord, the seal being put upon the knot. Some of the table-books must have been large and heavy, for in Plautus a schoolboy seven years old is represented as breaking his master's head with his table-book. Writing seems also to have been common, at a very early period, on palm and olive leaves, and especially on the bark of trees--a material used even in the present time in some parts of Asia. The bark is generally cut into thin flat pieces, from nine to fifteen inches long and two to four inches wide, and written on with a sharp instrument. Indeed, the tree, whether in planks, bark, or leaves, seems in ancient times to have afforded the principal materials for writing on. Hence the word _codex_, originally signifying the "trunk or stem of a tree," now means a manuscript volume. _Tabula_, which properly means a "plank" or "board," now also signifies the plate of a book, and was so used by Addison, who calls his plates "tables." _Folium_ ("a leaf") has given us the word "folio"; and the word _liber_, originally meaning the "inner bark of a tree," was afterward used by the Romans to signify a book; whence we derive our words, "library," "librarian," etc. One more such etymology, the most interesting of all, is the Greek name for the bark of a tree, _biblos_, whence is derived the name of our sacred volume. Before I leave this stage of the subject, I will mention the way in which the Roman youth were taught writing. Quintilian tells us that they were made to write through perforated tablets, so as to draw the stylus through a kind of furrow; and we learn from Procopius that a similar contrivance was used by the emperor Justinian for signing his name. Such a tablet would now be called a stencil-plate, and is what to the present day is found the most rapid and convenient mode of marking goods, only that a brush is used instead of an iron pen or style. Writing and materials have so much to do with the invention of printing that I feel obliged to tarry a little longer at this preliminary stage. The most important of all the ancient materials for writing upon were papyrus, parchment, and vellum; and on these substances nearly all our most valuable manuscripts were written. Papyrus, or paper-rush, is a large fibrous plant which abounds in the marshes of Egypt, especially near the borders of the Nile. It was manufactured into a thick sort of paper at a very early period, Pliny says three centuries before the reign of Alexander the Great; and Cassiodorus, who lived in the sixth century, states that it then covered all the desks of the world. Indeed, it had become so essential to the Greeks and Romans that the occasional scarcity of it is recorded to have produced riots. Every man of rank and education kept _librarii_, or book-writers, in his house; and many _servi_, or slaves, were trained to this service, so that they were a numerous class. Papyrus is a very durable substance, made of the innermost pellicles of the stalk, glued together transversely, with the glutinous water of the Nile. It was for many centuries the great staple of Egypt, and was exported in large quantities to almost every part of Europe and Asia, but never, it would appear, to England or Germany. After the seventh century its use was gradually superseded by the introduction of parchment; and before the end of the twelfth century it had gone generally out of use. From "papyrus" the name of "paper," which, with slight variations, is common to many languages, is no doubt derived. Parchment and vellum--which are made from the skin of animals, the former from sheep or goat, the latter from calf, both prepared with lime--were in use at a very early period, long before their accredited introduction. It has been by some supposed that Eumenes, King of Pergamus, who lived about B.C. 190, was the inventor of parchment; but it was known much earlier, as may be seen by several references to it in the Bible (Isaiah, viii. i; Jeremiah, xxxvi. 2; Ezekiel, xi. 9). It is, however, very probable that it may have been brought to perfection at Pergamus, as it was one of the principal articles of commerce of that kingdom. Parchment, in early times, was not only expensive, but often very difficult to procure; whence arose the practice of erasing old writing from it, and engrossing it a second time. Such manuscripts are called "palimpsests." Modern art has found the means of discharging the more recent ink, and thus restoring the original writing, by which means we have recovered many valuable pieces, particularly Cicero's lost book, _de Republica_ and some fragments of his _Orations_. The most ancient manuscripts, both on papyrus and parchment, were kept in rolls, called in Latin _volumina_, whence our English word "volume." Chinese paper, made from the bark of the bamboo, the mulberry, or the khu-ku tree, and so extremely thin that it can only be used on one side, is supposed to have been invented fifty years before the Christian era or earlier. Chinese rice-paper is made from the stems of the bread-fruit tree, cut into slices and pressed. The skins of all kinds of animals are used--among them the African skin, of a brown color, upon which the Hebrew Pentateuch and service-books used in the Jewish synagogues were formerly written. Silk-paper was prepared for the most part in Spain and its colonies, but was never brought to much perfection. Asbestos, a fibrous mineral, was made into paper, tolerably light and pliant, which, being incombustible, was denominated "eternal paper." Herodotus tells us that cloth was made of asbestos by the Egyptians; and Pliny mentions napkins made of it in A.D. 74. We know by tradition that the intestines of a serpent served for Homer's _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_; and that the _Koran_ was written in part on shoulder-bones of mutton, kept in a domestic chest by one of Mahomet's wives. We now come to the great period of writing-papers made from cotton and linen rags, as used at the present day, and which from the first were so perfect that they have since undergone no material improvement. Cotton-paper was an Eastern invention, probably introduced in the ninth century, although not generally used in Europe till about the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Greek manuscripts are found upon it of the earlier period, and Italian manuscripts of the later. It seems to have prevailed at particular periods, in particular countries, according to the facilities for procuring it, as it now does almost exclusively in America. Linen paper, the most valuable and important of all the bases available for writing or printing, is likewise supposed to have been introduced into Europe from the East, early in the thirteenth century, although not in general use till the fourteenth. Before the end of the fourteenth century, paper-mills had been established in many parts of Europe, first in Spain, and then successively in Italy, Germany, Holland, and France. They seem to have come late into England, for Caxton printed all his books on paper imported from the Low Countries; and it was not till Winkin de Worde succeeded him, in 1495, that paper was manufactured in England. The Chinese are supposed to have used it for centuries before, and appear to have the best title to be considered the inventors of both cotton and linen paper. Paper may be made of many other materials, such as hay, straw, nettles, flax, grasses, parsnips, turnips, colewort leaves, wood-shavings, indeed of anything fibrous; but as the invention of printing is not concerned in them, I see no occasion to consider their merits. Before I pass from paper, it may not be irrelevant to say a word or two on the names by which we distinguish the sorts and sizes. The term "post-paper" is derived from the ancient water-mark, which was a post-horn, and not from its suitableness to transport by post, as many suppose. The original watermark of a fool's cap gave the name to that paper, which it still retains, although the fool's cap was afterward changed to a cap of liberty, and has since undergone other changes. The smaller size, called "pot-paper," took its name from having at first been marked with a flagon or pot. Demy-paper, on which octavo books are usually printed, is so called from being originally a "demi" or half-sized paper; the term is now, however, equally applied to hard or writing papers. Hand-cap, which is a coarse paper used for packing, bore the water-mark of an open hand. I will now say a few words about pens and ink, for without them we could neither have had printing nor books. Pens are of great antiquity, and are frequently alluded to in the Bible. Pens of iron, which may mean styles, are mentioned by Job and Jeremiah. Reed pens are known to have been in common use by the ancients, and some were discovered at Pompeii. Pens of gold and silver are alluded to by the classical writers, and there is evidence of the use of quills in the seventh century. Of whatever material the pen was made, it was called a _calamus_, whence our familiar saying, "_currente calamo_" ("with a flowing pen"). The use of styles, or iron pens, must have been very prevalent in ancient days, as Suetonius tells us that the emperor Caligula incited the people to massacre a Roman senator with their styles; and, previous to that, Caesar had wounded Cassius with his style. The next, and not the least important, ingredient in writing and printing is ink. Staining and coloring matters were well known to the ancients at a very early period, witness the lustrous pigments on Etruscan vases more than two thousand years ago; and inks are often mentioned in the Bible. Gold, silver, red, blue, and green inks were thoroughly understood in the Middle Ages, and perhaps earlier; and the black writing-ink of the seventh down to the tenth century, as seen in our manuscripts, was in such perfection that it has retained its lustre better than some of later ages. Printing-ink, by the time it began to be currently used for book-printing in the fifteenth century, had attained a perfection which has never been surpassed, and indeed scarcely equalled. Paper and ink being at their highest point, we will now consider the advances which had in the mean time been made in engraving and type or letter cutting. It will be seen that the material elements of printing were by degrees converging to a culminating point. The evidences of engraving, both in relief and intaglio, are of very ancient date. I need hardly remind you of the exquisite workmanship on coins, cameos, and seals, many centuries before the Christian era, to illustrate the high state of cultivation at which the arts must then have arrived. The art of casting and chasing in bronze was extensively practised in the twelfth century, and I have seen a specimen with letters so cut in relief that they might be separated to form movable type. The goldsmiths were certainly among the greatest artists of the early ages, and were competent to execute forms or moulds of any kind to perfection. In the British Museum is a brass signet stamp, more than two thousand years old, on which two lines of letters are very neatly engraved in relief, in the reversed order necessary for printing; and as the interstices are cut away very deeply and roughly, there is little doubt but that this stamp was used with ink on papyrus, parchment, or linen, for paper was not then known. Indeed, the experiment of taking impressions from it in printing-ink has been tried, and found to answer perfectly. A large surface so engraved would at once have given to the world an equivalent to what is now regarded as the most advanced state of the art of printing; that is, a stereotype plate. Vergil mentions brands for marking cattle with their owner's name; probably this kind of brass stamp, but larger. I could cite many more examples of ancient engraving which would yield impressions on paper, either by pressure or friction. But our business is with printing rather than engraving; I will, therefore, go back to the subject, and cite a very early and interesting example of stamping engraved letters on clay. I mean the Babylonian bricks, supposed to be four thousand years old, mostly sun-baked, but some apparently kiln-burnt almost to vitrification. Of these there are now many examples in England, added to our stores by the indefatigable researches of Layard, Rawlinson, and others. These bricks, which are about a foot square and three inches thick, are on one side covered with hieroglyphics, evidently impressed with a stamp, just as letters are now stamped on official papers. Another evidence of the same kind, and of about the same age, is the famous Babylonian cylinder found in the ruins of Persepolis, and now preserved in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. It is about seven inches high, barrel-shaped, and covered with inscriptions in the cuneiform character, disposed in vertical lines, and affording a positive example of an indented surface produced by mechanical impression. Such cylinders are supposed to have been memorials of matters of national or family importance, and were in early ages, as we know by tradition, very numerous. Stamped or printed blocks of lead, bearing the names of Roman authorities, are to be found in the British Museum. Printing on leather was practised by the Egyptians, as we discover from their mummies, which have bandages of leather round their heads, with the name of the deceased printed on them. And in Pompeii a loaf was found on which the name of the baker and its quality were printed. Among ancient testimonies, one of the most interesting is that afforded by Cicero in his _de Natura Deorum_. He orders types to be made of metal, and calls them _forma literarum_--the very words used by our first printers; and in another place he gives a hint of separate cut letters when he speaks of the impossibility of the most ingenious man throwing the twenty-four letters of the alphabet together by chance, and thus producing the famous _Annals_ of Ennius. He makes that observation in opposition to the atheistical argument of the creation of the world by chance. We have besides, in what is generally classed as a manuscript, a reasonable although disputed evidence of an elementary stage of printing; I mean the _Codex Argenteus_ (or _Silver Book_) of Upsala, which contains a portion of the gospels in Mesogothic, supposed to be of the fourth or fifth century, the work of Ulfilas. In this codex the first lines of each gospel and of the Lord's Prayer are in large gold letters, apparently printed by a stamp, in the manner of a bookbinder, as there are indentations on the back of the vellum. The small letters are written in silver. The whole is on a light purple or violet colored vellum. Having said enough, I think, of the ancients' knowledge of type-forms and printing materials, I pass on to the recognized establishments of the art in the fifteenth century; for, whatever knowledge the ancients had of printing, it would appear to have yielded no immediate fruits to posterity. But before I proceed to modern times, I am bound to note that the Chinese, who seem to have been many centuries in advance of Europe in most of the industral arts, are supposed to have practised block-printing, just as they do now, more than a thousand years ago. Nor does the complicated nature of their written language, which consists of more than one hundred thousand word-signs, admit of any readier mode. But they print, or rather rub off, impressions with such speed--seven hundred sheets per hour--that, until the introduction of steam, they far outstripped Europeans. Gibbon, it will be remembered, regrets that the emperor Justinian, who lived in the sixth century, did not introduce the art of printing from the Chinese, instead of their silk manufacture. Block-printing ushered in the great epoch; and the first dawn of it in Europe seems to have been single prints of saints and scriptural subjects, with a line or two of description engraved on the same wooden plate. These are for the most part lost; but there is one in existence, large and exceedingly fine, of St. Christopher, with two lines of inscription, dated 1423, believed to have been printed with the ordinary printing-press. It was found in the library of a monastery near Augsburg, and is therefore presumed to be of German execution. Till lately this was the earliest-dated evidence of block-printing known; but there has since been discovered at Malines, and deposited at Brussels, a wood-cut of similar character, but assumed to be Dutch or Flemish, dated "MCCCCXVIII"; and though there seems no reason to doubt the genuineness of the cut, it is asserted that the date bears evidence of having been tampered with. There is a vague tradition, depending entirely on the assertion of a writer named Papillon, not a very reliable authority, which would give the invention of wood-cut-printing to Venice, and at a very early period. He asserts that he once saw a set of eight prints, depicting the deeds of Alexander the Great, each described in verse, which were engraved in relief, and printed by a brother and sister named Cunio, at Ravenna, in 1285. But though the assertion is accredited by Mr. Ottley, it is generally disbelieved. There is reason to suppose that playing-cards, from wooden blocks, were produced at Venice long before the block-books, even as early as 1250; but there is no positive evidence that they were printed; and some insist that they were produced either by friction or stencil-plates. It seems, however, by no means unlikely that cards, which were in most extensive use in the Middle Ages, should, for the sake of cheapness, have been printed quite as early, if not earlier, than even figures of saints; and the same artists are presumed to have produced both. From single prints, with letter-press inscriptions, the next stage, that of a series of prints accompanied by letter-press, was obvious. Such are our first recognized block-books, among which are the Apocalypse, and the _Biblia Pauperum_ (or _Poor Man's Bible_), supposed to have been printed at Haarlem by Laurence Koster, between 1420 and 1430; I say supposed, because we have no positive evidence either of the person, place, or date; and Erasmus, who was born at Rotterdam in 1467, and always ready to advance the honor of his country, is silent on the subject. We rely chiefly upon the testimony of Ulric Zell, an eminent printer of Cologne, who is quoted in the _Cologne Chronicle_ of 1499, and Hadrian Junius, a Dutch historian of repute, who wrote in the next century. Both agree in ascribing the invention of book-printing from wooden blocks, as well as the first germ of movable wood and metallic type printing, to Haarlem; and Junius adds the name of Laurence Koster. His surname of Koster is derived from his office, which was that of custodian, sexton, or warden of the Cathedral Church of Haarlem. The story told of the accident by which the discovery was made is as follows: Koster, as he was one day walking in a wood adjoining the city, about the year 1420, cut some letters on the bark of a beech tree, from which he took impressions on paper for the amusement of his brother-in-law's children. The idea then struck him of enlarging their application; and, being a man of an ingenious turn, he invented a thicker and more tenacious ink than was in common use, which blotted, and began to print figures from wooden tablets or blocks, to which he added several lines of letters, first solid, and then separate or movable. These wooden types are said to have been fastened together with string. One thing seems pretty clear, which is, that, whether or not Koster was the printer, the first block-books were produced somewhere in Holland, as several are in Dutch, a language seldom, if ever, printed out of its own country. They were generally printed in light-brown ink, like a sepia drawing, which, I think, was adopted with a view to their being colored--a condition in which we find the greater part of them. When these prints were colored they presented very much the appearance of the Low Country stained-glass windows. Block-books continued to be printed and reprinted, first in Holland and afterward in Germany, with considerable activity, for twenty or thirty years, during which period we had several editions of the _Biblia Pauperum_, the _Ars Moriendi_ (or _Art of Dying),_ the _Speculum Humanae Salvationis_, and many others, chiefly devoted to the promulgation of scripture history. The earliest ones are printed, or rather transferred by friction--and therefore on one side only of the paper--entirely from solid blocks; later on, some portions were printed with movable types of wood; and at last the letter-press was entirely of movable metal types. Junius says that Koster by degrees exchanged his wooden types for leaden ones, and these for pewter; and I will add that it is not unlikely they may have been cast in lead or pewter plates from the wooden blocks, as metal-casting was well understood at the time. The pretensions of Haarlem and Koster have for more than a century been a matter of fierce controversy; and there have been upward of one hundred and fifty volumes written for or against, without any approach to a satisfactory decision. This one thing is certain, that, whether or not we owe the first idea of movable type to Laurence Koster or to Haarlem, we do not owe to the period any very marked use of it; that was reserved for a later day. There is a story current, dependent on the authority of Junius, that Koster's principal workman, assumed to be Hans or John Faust--and some, to reconcile improbabilities, even say John Gutenberg--who had been sworn to secrecy, decamped one Christmas Eve, after the death of Koster, while the family were at church, taking with him types and printing apparatus and, after short sojourns at Amsterdam and Cologne, got to Mainz or Mayence with them, and there introduced printing. He is said by Junius to have printed, about the year 1442--that is, two years after Koster's death--the _Doctrinale_ of Alexander Gallus and the _Tracts_ of Peter of Spain, with the very types which Koster made use of in Haarlem; but as no volume of this kind has ever been discovered, nor any trace of one, the entire story is generally regarded as apocryphal. Laurence Koster died in 1440, at the age of seventy; therefore any printing attributed to him must be within that period. What has hitherto been advanced proves only that mankind had walked for many centuries on the borders of the two great inventions, chalcography and typography, without having fully and practically discovered either of them. We now come to the great epoch of printing--I mean the complete introduction, if not actually the first invention, of movable metal or fusile types. This took place at Mainz, in or before 1450, and the general consent of Europe assigns the credit of it to Gutenberg. Of a man who has conferred such vast obligations on all succeeding ages, it may be desirable to say a few words. John Gutenberg was born at Mainz in 1397, of a patrician and rather wealthy family. He left his native city, it is said, because implicated in an insurrection of the citizens against the nobility, and settled at Strasburg, where, in 1427, we find him an established merchant, and sustaining a suit of breach of promise brought against him by a lady named Ann of the Iron Door, whom he afterward married. While resident here, and before 1439, his attention appears to have been actively directed to the art of printing, as we learn by a legal document of the time, found of late years in the archives of Strasburg. He is there stated to have entered into an engagement with three persons, named Dreizehn, Riffe, and Heilmann, to reveal to them "a secret art of printing which he had lately discovered," and to take them into partnership for five years, upon the payment of certain sums. The death of Dreizehn before he had paid up all his instalments led to a suit on the part of his relations, which ended in Gutenberg's favor. In the course of the evidence one of the witnesses, a goldsmith, deposed to having received from Gutenberg three or four years previously--that is, about 1435--upward of three hundred florins for materials used in printing. Other witnesses proved the anxiety that Gutenberg had shown to have four pages of type distributed which appear to have been screwed up in chase, and lying on a press on the deceased's premises. This would be evidence that Gutenberg had arrived at a knowledge of movable types, either of wood or metal, and probably of both, before 1440; and, had it not been for the rupture of the partnership before anything had been printed by the new process, Strasburg might have claimed the honor which is now given to Mainz. Soon after this--it is supposed in 1444--Gutenberg returned to his native city, by leave of the town council, which he was obliged to ask, bringing with him all his materials. In 1446 he entered into a partnership with John Faust--a wealthy and skilful goldsmith and engraver--who engaged, upon being taught the secrets of the art and admitted into a participation of the profits, to advance the necessary funds, which he did to the extent of two thousand two hundred florins. Goldsmiths, it should be borne in mind, were then the great artists in all kinds of metal work, and extremely skilful in modelling, engraving, and casting, which were exactly the arts required for type-founding. The new partnership immediately commenced operations, hired a house called Zumjungen, and took into their employ Peter Schoeffer, who had been Faust's apprentice, as their assistant. Faust is supposed to have employed himself in cutting the type, which is an extremely slow process, till Peter Schoeffer, afterward his son-in-law, suggested an improved mode of casting it in copper matrices struck by steel punches, pretty much in the same manner as was till recently practised throughout Europe. The firm had for some time previously adopted a method of casting type in moulds of plaster, which was a tedious process, as every letter required a new mould. Although to Gutenberg are undoubtedly due all the main features of metal-type printing, yet we owe, perhaps, to the practical skill of Faust, and the taste of Schoeffer, who was an accomplished penman, the exquisite finish and perfection with which their first joint effort came forth to the world. This was a Latin Vulgate, printed in a large cut metal type, and commonly called the Mazarin Bible, because the first copy known to bibliographers was found in the library of Cardinal Mazarin. It consists of six hundred and forty-one leaves, forming two, sometimes four, large volumes in folio; some copies on paper of beautiful texture, some on vellum. It was without date or names of the printers, as it was evidently intended to present the appearance of a manuscript; but it is supposed, on good evidence, to have been printed between 1450 and 1455, and it is not improbable the volumes were all that time, that is, five years, and some say more, at press; for we know, by certain technicalities, that every page was printed off singly. These precious volumes, as splendid as they are wonderful, have excited the admiration of all beholders. The sharpness and elegant uniformity of the type, the lustre of the ink, and the purity of the paper leave that first great monument of the typographic art unsurpassed by any subsequent effort; nor could it be exceeded with all the appliances of the present day. "It is a striking circumstance," says Mr. Hallam, "that the high-minded inventors of this great art tried, at the very outset, so bold a flight as the printing of an entire Bible, and executed it with astonishing success. It was Minerva leaping on earth in her divine strength and radiant armor, ready, at the moment of her nativity, to subdue and destroy her enemies." There is a curious story current about this Bible, which, as it is connected with a popular fiction, I will venture to repeat. It is that Faust went to Paris with some of his Bibles for sale, one of which, printed on vellum and richly illuminated, he sold to the King for seven hundred and fifty crowns, and another to the Archbishop of Paris for three hundred crowns, and to the poorer clergy and the laity copies on paper as low as fifty crowns, and even less. Faust does not appear to have disclosed the secret of how they were produced, and probably let it be supposed that they were manuscript; for the aim of the first printers was to make their books equal in beauty to the finest manuscripts, and as far as possible undistinguishable from them, to which end the large capitals and decorations were filled in by hand. The Archbishop, proud of his purchase, showed it to the King, who, comparing it with his own, found with surprise that they tallied so exactly in every respect, excepting the illuminated ornaments, as convinced them that they were produced by some other art than transcription; and on further inquiry they found that Faust had sold a considerable number exactly similar. Orders, therefore, were given without delay to apprehend and prosecute him as a practitioner of the black art in multiplying Holy Writ by aid of the devil. Hence arose the popular fiction of the Devil and Dr. Faustus, which, under different phases, has found its way into every country in Europe, and probably gave rise to Goethe's celebrated drama. In 1455, as we find by a notarial document, dated November 6th of that year, Faust separated from Gutenberg, and successfully instituted proceedings against him for money advanced. Gutenberg, who had exhausted all his means in bringing his invention to maturity, was obliged to mortgage and in the end surrender all his materials, and, it should seem, his printed stock. His impoverishment may easily be accounted for when we are told, as a received fact, that before the first four sheets of his Bible were completed he had already expended four thousand crowns upon it--a large sum in those days. Of this his then wealthier partner reaped all the subsequent advantage. After this period, Faust, and his son-in-law, Peter Schoeffer, in possession of the materials, printed on their own account, and, within eighteen months of their separation from Gutenberg, produced the celebrated Latin Psalter of 1457, the first book in any country which bears a complete imprint--that is, the name of the printer, place, and date. This magnificent volume, of which the whole edition was printed on vellum, is now even rarer than the Mazarin Bible, and of extraordinary value; the letters are very large and bold, cast in metal type, and the ornamental initials are beautifully cut in wood. Two years later, that is, in 1459, Faust and Schoeffer produced an almost fac-simile reprint of the Psalter, and in the same year _Durandi Rationale Divinorum Officiorum_, the latter with an entirely new font of metal type--the first cast from Schoeffer's punches--which some, in the erroneous belief that the Psalter was printed from wooden types, have asserted to be the first dated book printed with metal type. Then followed, in 1460, the _Constitutiones Clementis V_, a handsome folio, and in 1462 their famous Latin Bible, the first one with a date. In the mean time, Gutenberg, undaunted by the loss of all that had cost him so many years of unremitted application and his whole fortune, began afresh; and this time, it should seem, with better success, as we find him, in 1459, undertaking to present, for certain considerations, all the books he had then printed, or might thereafter print, to a convent where his sister was a nun. No book, however, has yet been discovered bearing the name of Gutenberg; and we can only guess what came from his press by a peculiarity of type, of which, after the first Bible, the most marked is the famous _Catholicon_, dated 1460--a kind of universal dictionary, the germ of all future cyclopaedias, and which became so popular that more than forty editions were printed of it in as many years. In 1465 Gutenberg retired from printing, being appointed to a lucrative office at the court of the Archbishop of Mainz, and in 1467 he died. And here we take leave of Gutenberg, with admiration for his patience, his perseverance, and his self-sacrifice in a cause which has produced such glorious fruits. He was one of those noble spirits who are endowed with a perception of what is good, and pursue it independent of worldly considerations. Posterity has done him tardy justice in erecting a marble monument to his memory and establishing a jubilee, which gave rise to one of the most touching of Mendelssohn's compositions. By this time the secret had transpired to the neighboring states, and Mentelin, of Strasburg, and Pfister, or Bamberg, were, before the beginning of 1462, in full activity. Indeed, Pfister is, by some, thought to have printed before 1460; and his finely executed Latin Bible, in cast type, was for many years regarded as the first. At this critical period, when the art was reaching its zenith, the operations of the Mainz printers were suddenly brought to a standstill by the siege and capture of the city in 1462. The occasion of this was a fierce dispute between the Pope and the people as to who had the right of appointment to the archbishopric, lately become vacant. The original hive of workmen dispersed to other states, and by degrees the mysteries of the art became spread over the civilized world. Such, indeed, was the fame printing had acquired, and its manifest importance, that every crowned head sought to introduce it into his kingdom, and welcomed the fugitives. Within a few years of this period the art had been carried by the scattered German workmen into Italy, France, Spain, and Switzerland; and before the close of the fifteenth century it was practised in more than two hundred twenty different places. Before entering upon the history of printing in England, I will take leave to call your attention to a few prominent facts connected with its progress abroad, as well as to some points of its early condition which could not be conveniently introduced in chronological order. All the books printed previously to 1465 are in the Gothic, or black letter, which still remained the favorite in Germany and the Low Countries long after the Italians introduced their beautiful Roman letter. The first books in which any Greek type occurs are Cicero's _Offices_, printed by Faust and Schoeffer in 1465, directly after the resumption of their establishment; and _Lactantius_, printed the same year by Sweynheim and Pannartz, in the monastery of Soubiaco at Rome. The first book printed entirely in Greek was Constantine Lascar's _Greek Grammar_, Milan, 1476. One of the earliest of the Italian books, and, to use the words of Dr. Dibdin, perhaps the most notorious volume in existence, was the celebrated Boccaccio, printed at Venice by Valdarfer in 1471. This book deserves particular mention, because of an extraordinary contest which once took place for its possession between two wealthy bibliomaniacs. It was a small black-letter folio, in faded yellow morocco, and supposed to be unique. Its history is this: In the early part of the eighteenth century it had come accidentally into the possession of a London bookseller, who successively offered it to Harley, Earl of Oxford, and to Lord Sunderland; then the two principal collectors, for one hundred guineas; but both were staggered at the price and higgled about the purchase. An ancestor of the late Duke of Roxburghe, whom nobody dreamed of as a collector, hearing of the book, secured it, and then invited the two noblemen to dinner, with the view of parading his trophy. In due course he led the conversation to the book, and, after letting them expatiate on its rarity, told them he thought he had a copy in his bookcase, which they emphatically declared to be impossible, and challenged him to produce it. On producing the book, about the purchase of which they had only been temporizing, they were not a little chagrined. This same copy made its appearance again, half a century later, at the Duke of Roxburghe's sale in 1812, a time when bibliomania was at its height. Loud notes of preparation foretold that it would sell for a considerable sum; five hundred and even one thousand guineas were guessed, as it was known that Lord Spencer, the Duke of Devonshire, and the Marquis of Blandford were all bent on its possession, but nobody anticipated the extravagant sum it was to realize. After a very spirited competition, it was knocked down to the Marquis of Blandford for two thousand sixty pounds. This book was resold at the Marquis of Blandford's sale, in 1819, for eight hundred seventy-five guineas, and passed to Lord Spencer, in whose extraordinary library it now reposes. Before the commencement of the sixteenth century, that is, within forty or fifty years of the invention of printing with movable type, upward of twenty thousand volumes had issued from at least a thousand different presses. All the principal Latin classics, many of the Greek, and upward of two hundred fifty editions of the Bible, or parts of the Bible, had appeared. One of the most active and enterprising of the early printers was Anthony Koburger of Nuremberg, an accomplished scholar, who began there in 1472, and before the year 1500 had printed thirteen large editions of the Bible in folio, and a prodigious number of other books. He kept twenty-four presses at work, employing one hundred workmen, and had sixteen shops for the sale of books in the principal cities of Germany, besides factors and agents all over Europe. He printed, in 1493, that grand volume, the _Nuremberg Chronicle_, which is illustrated with upward of one thousand woodcuts by Michael Wohlgemuth, the master of Albert Dürer, and is curious as being one of the first books in which cross-hatchings occur in wood-engraving. The sixteenth century opened with another invention in type, the Italic, which was beautifully exemplified in a pocket edition of Vergil, the first of a portable series of classical works commenced in 1501 at Venice by the celebrated Aldus Manutius, who, after some years of preparation, had entered actively on his career as a printer in 1494, and deservedly ranks as one of the best scholars of any age. Then came the Giunti, the learned family of the Stephenses, of whom Robert is accredited as the author of the present divisions of our New Testament into chapters, and Henry, author of the great Greek _Thesaurus_, the most valuable Greek lexicon ever published. To the opprobrium of the age, he died in an almshouse. Among many others immortalized by their successful contributions to the great cause we must not forget the Plantins, whose memories are still so cherished at Antwerp that their printing establishment remains to this day untouched, just as it was left two centuries ago, with all the freshness of a chamber in Pompeii, the type and chases of their famous Polyglot lying about, as if the workmen had but just left the office. The accordance of the art of printing with the spirit of the times which gave it birth must be regarded as singularly providential. The Protestant Reformation in Germany was brought about by Luther's accidentally meeting, in a monastic library, with one of Gutenberg's printed Latin Bibles, when at the age of twenty. "A mighty change," says Luther, "then came over me," and all his subsequent efforts are to be attributed to that event. His recognition of the importance of printing is given in these words: "Printing is the best and highest gift, the _summum et postremum donum_ by which God advanceth the Gospel. Thanks be to God that it hath come at last. Holy fathers now at rest would rejoice to see this day of the revealed Gospel." William Caxton, by common consent, is the introducer of the art of printing into England. He was born about 1422, in Kent, and received what was then thought a liberal education. His father must have been in respectable circumstances, as there was at that time a law in full force prohibiting any youth from being apprenticed to trade whose parent was not possessed of a certain rental in land. In his eighteenth year Caxton was apprenticed to Robert Large, an eminent London mercer, who in 1430 was sheriff and in 1439 Lord Mayor of London. At his death, in 1441, he bequeathed Caxton a legacy of twenty marks--a large sum in those days--and an honorable testimony to his fidelity and integrity. Soon after this the Mercers' Company appointed him their agent in the Low Countries, in which employment he spent twenty-three years. In 1464 he was one of two commissioners officially employed by Edward IV to negotiate a commercial treaty with Philip of Burgundy; and in 1468, when the King's sister, Margaret of York, married Charles of Burgundy, called "the Bold," he attached himself to their household, probably in some literary capacity, as in the next year we find him busied in translating at her request. During the greater part of this long period he was residing or travelling in the midst of the countries where the new art of printing was the great subject of interest, and would naturally take some measures to acquaint himself with it. Indeed, it has been said that he had a secret commission from Edward IV to learn the art, and to bribe some of the foreign workmen into England. Be this as it may, we know that Caxton acquired a complete knowledge of it while abroad, for he tells us so, and that he had printed at Cologne the _Recueil des Histoires de Troye_ (or _Romance History of Troy_), in 1465, and in 1472 an English edition of the same, translated by himself. These two early productions are remarkable as being the first books printed in either the French or English language[26]. The English edition was sold at the Duke of Roxburghe's sale for one thousand sixty pounds, and is now in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire. Caxton returned to England about 1474, bringing with him presses and types, and established himself in one of the chapels of Westminster Abbey, called the Eleemosynary, Almondry, or Arm'ry, supposed to have been on the site of Henry VII's chapel. A printer would naturally resort to the abbey for patronage, as in those days it was the head-quarters of learning as well as of religion. Before the foundation of grammar schools, there was usually a _scholasticus_ attached to the abbeys and cathedral churches, who directed and superintended the education of the neighboring nobility and gentry. He was, besides, one of the members of the _scriptorium_, a large establishment within the abbey, where school and other books used to be written. The first book Caxton printed, after he returned to England and established himself at the Almonry, is supposed to be _The Game and Play of Chesse_, dated 1474. But some have raised doubts whether this was printed in England, as there is no actual evidence of it. One of the arguments is that the type is exactly the same as what he had previously used at Cologne; but this is no evidence at all, as both the type and paper used in England for many years came from Cologne, and there is no doubt that Caxton brought some with him. A second edition of the book of chess, with woodcuts, was printed two or three years later, and this is generally admitted to have been printed in England. The first book with an unmistakable imprint was his _Dictes and Sayings of Philosophers_, which had been translated for him by the gallant but unfortunate Lord Rivers, who was murdered in Pomfret castle by order of Richard III. The colophon of this states that it was printed in the Abbey of Westminster in 1477. He appears to have printed but one single volume upon vellum, which is _The Doctrynal of Sapience_, 1489, of which a copy, formerly in the King's Library at Windsor, is now in the British Museum. This is a very interesting work as connected with Caxton, being entirely translated by himself into English verse. It is an allegorical fiction, in which the whole system of literature and science comes under consideration. Caxton died in 1491, after having produced, within twenty years of his active career, more than fifty volumes of mark, including Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, and his own _Chronicle_ of England. Before Caxton's time the youths of England were supplied with their school-books and their reading, which was necessarily very limited, by the Company of Stationers, or text-writers, who wrote and sold, by an exclusive royal privilege, the school-books then in use. These were chiefly the A B Cs, (called _Absies_), the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and the address to the Virgin Mary, called _Ave Maria_. The location of these stationers was in the neighborhood of St. Paul's Cathedral, whence arose the names Paternoster Row, Creed Lane, Amen Corner, and Ave Maria Lane. Manuscripts of a higher order, that is, in the form of books, were mostly supplied by the monks, and were scarcely accessible to any but the wealthy, from their extreme cost. Thus, a Chaucer, which may now be bought for a few shillings, then cost more than a hundred pounds; and we read of two hundred sheep and ten quarters of wheat being given for a volume of homilies. Minstrels, instead of books, were in early times the principal medium of communication between authors and the public; they wandered up and down the country, chanting, singing, or reciting, according to the taste of their customers, and had certain privileges of entertainment in the halls of the nobility. It may be wondered that Caxton, like many of the foreign printers, did not begin with, or at least some time during his career print, the Scriptures, especially as Wycliffe's translation had already been made. But there were good reasons. Religious persecution ran high, and the clergy were extremely jealous of the propagation of the Scriptures among the people. Knighton had denounced the reading of the Bible, lamenting lest this jewel of the Church, hitherto the exclusive property of the clergy and divines, should be made common to the laity; and Archbishop Arundel had issued an enactment that no part of the Scriptures in English should be read, either in public or private, or be thereafter translated, under pain of the greater excommunication. The Star Chamber, too, was big with terrors. A little later, Erasmus' edition of the New Testament was forbidden at Cambridge; and in the county of Surrey the Vicar of Croydon said from the pulpit, "We must root out printing, or printing will root out us." Winkin de Worde, who had come in his youth with Caxton to England and continued with him in the superintendence of his office to the day of his death, succeeded to the business, and conducted it with great spirit for the next forty years. He began by entirely remodelling his fonts of Gothic type, and introduced both Roman and Italic; became his own founder, instead of importing type from the Low Countries; promoted the manufacture of paper in this country; and such was his activity that he printed the extraordinary number of four hundred eight different works. He deserves, perhaps, more praise than he has ever received for the important part he played in establishing and advancing the art in England. But no one of our early printers deserves more grateful remembrance than Richard Grafton, who, in 1537, was the first publisher of the Bible in England. I say in England, because the first Bible, known as Coverdale's, and several editions of the Testament, translated by Tyndale, had been previously printed abroad in secrecy. Grafton's first edition of the Bible was a reprint of Coverdale and Tyndale's translation, with slight alterations, by one who assumed the name of Thomas Matthew, but whose real name was John Rogers, then Prebendary of St. Paul's, and afterward burned as a heretic in Smithfield. Even this was printed secretly abroad, nobody yet knows where, and did not have Grafton's name attached to it till the King had granted him a license under the privy seal. Though this year, 1537, has by the annalists of the Bible been called the first year of triumph, on account of the King's license, yet Bibles were still apt to be dangerous things to all concerned; and what was permitted one day was not unlikely, by a change in religion or policy, to be interdicted the next with severe visitations. Although Henry VIII had recently completed his breach with Rome and been excommunicated, he alternately punished the religious movements of Protestants and Catholics, according to his caprice; and it was but a few years previously that the reading of the Bible had been prohibited by act of parliament, that men had been burned at the stake for having even fragments of it in their possession, and that Tyndale's translation of the new Testament had been bought up and publicly burned (1534) by order of Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of London; and even as late as May, 1536, the reading of the sacred volume had been strictly forbidden. Grafton, therefore, must have been a bold man to face the danger. Thus, in 1538, when a new edition of the Bible, commonly called the "Great Bible," afterward published in 1539, was secretly printing in Paris at the instance of Lord Cromwell, under the superintendence of Grafton, Whitchurch, and Coverdale, the French inquisitors of the faith interfered, charging them with heresy, and they were fortunate in making their escape to England. Shortly after the death of Caxton's patron, Lord Cromwell, Grafton was imprisoned for the double offence of printing Matthew's Bible and the Great Bible, notwithstanding the King's license; and though after a while released, he was again imprisoned in the reign of Philip and Mary on account of his Protestant principles; and, after all his services to religion and literature, died in poverty in 1572. Printing was now spreading all over England. It had already begun at Oxford in 1478--some say earlier--at Cambridge soon after, although the first dated work is 1521; at St. Albans in 1480; York in 1509; and other places by degrees. Printing did not reach Scotland till 1507, and then but imperfectly, and Ireland not till 1551, owing, it is said, to the jealousy with which it was regarded by the priesthood. We will now take a rapid survey of the vast strides printing has made of late years in England, and therewith close. The principal movements have been in stereotyping, electrotyping, the improvement of presses, and the application of steam power. Stereotyping is the transfer of pages of movable type into solid metal plates, by the medium of moulds formed of plaster of Paris, _papier-mâché,_ gutta-percha, or other substances. This art is supposed to have been invented, in or about 1725, by William Ged, a goldsmith of Edinburgh. A small capitalist, who had engaged to embark with him, withdrawing from the speculation in alarm, he accepted overtures from a Mr. William Fenner, and in 1729 came to London. Here he obtained three partners, in conjunction with whom he entered into a contract with the University of Cambridge for stereotyping Bibles and prayer-books. But the workmen, fearing that stereotyping would eventually ruin their trade, purposely made errors, and, when their masters were absent, battered the type, so that the only two prayer-books completed were suppressed by authority, and the plates destroyed. Upon this the art got into disrepute, and Ged, after much ill-treatment, returned to Edinburgh, impoverished and disheartened. Here his friends, desirous that a memorial of his art should be published, entered into a subscription to defray the expense; and a Sallust, printed in 1736, and composed and cast in the night-time to avoid the jealous opposition of the workmen, is now the principal evidence of his claim to the invention. But the time had not come; for without a very large demand, such as could not exist in those days, stereotyping would be of no advantage. Books which sell by hundreds of thousands, and are constantly reprinting, such as Bibles, prayer-books, school-books, Shakespeares, Bunyans, Robinson Crusoes, Uncle Toms, and very popular authors and editions, will pay for stereotyping; but for small numbers it is a loss. After the invention had been neglected long enough to be forgotten, Earl Stanhope, who had for several years devoted himself earnestly to the subject, and made many experiments, resuscitated it, in a very perfect manner, in 1803; and his printer, Mr. Wilson, sold the secret to both universities and to most of the leading printers. To the art of stereotyping the public is mainly indebted for cheap literature, for when the plates are once produced the chief expense is disposed of. Something akin to stereotyping is another method of printing, called logography, invented by John Walter of the London _Times_, in 1783, and for which he took out a patent. This means a system of printing from type cast in words instead of single letters, which it was thought would save time and corrections when applied to newspapers, but it was not found to answer. A joke of the time was a supposed order to the type-founder for some words of frequent occurrence, which ran thus: "Please send me a hundredweight, sorted, of murder, fire, dreadful robbery, atrocious outrage, fearful calamity, alarming explosion, melancholy accident; an assortment of honourable member, whig, tory, hot, cold, wet, dry; half a hundred weight, made up in pounds, of butter, cheese, beef, mutton, tripe, mustard, soap, rain, etc., and a few devils, angels, women, groans, hisses, etc." This method of printing did not succeed; for if twenty-four letters will give six hundred sextillions of combinations, no printing-office could keep a sufficient assortment of even popular words. [Footnote 1: See Vol 1, 8] [Footnote 2: See accompanying fac-simile of a page of the English edition--a reproduction as faithful as possible in text, color, texture of paper, etc.] JOHN HUNYADY REPULSES THE TURKS[1] A.D. 1440-1456 ARMINIUS VAMBÉRY From the time (1354) when the Turks took Gallipoli and secured their first dominion in Europe, the Ottoman power on that side of the Hellespont was gradually increased. In 1360 Amurath I crossed from Asia Minor, ravaged an extensive district, and took Adrianople, which he made the first seat of his royalty and the first shrine of Mahometanism in Europe. He next turned toward Bulgaria and Servia, where in the warlike Slavonic tribes he found far stronger foes than the Greek victims of earlier Turkish conquests. Pope Urban V preached a crusade against the Turks; and Servia, Hungary, Bosnia, and Wallachia leagued themselves to drive the Ottomans out of Europe. Amurath defeated them and added new territory to his previous acquisitions. A peace was made in 1376, but a new though fruitless attempt of the Slavonic peoples against him gave Amurath a pretext for further assault upon southeastern Europe. In 1389 he conquered and annexed Bulgaria and subjugated the Servians. In the same year Amurath was assassinated. Bajazet I, the son and successor of Amurath, still further extended the Turkish conquests. Under Bajazet's son, Mahomet I (1413-1421), comparative peace prevailed; but his son, Amurath II, rekindled the flames of war. A strong combination, including, with other peoples, the Hungarians and Poles, was made against him. In the struggle that followed, and which for a time promised the complete expulsion of the Turks from Europe, the great leader was the Hungarian, John Hunyady, born in 1388. According to some writers, he was a Wallach and the son of a common soldier. Creasy calls him "the illegitimate son of Sigismund, King of Hungary, and the fair Elizabeth Morsiney." With him appeared a new spirit, such as the Ottomans up to that time could not have expected to encounter in that part of Europe. In Vambéry's narrative we have the authority of Hungary's greatest historian for the leading events in the life of her greatest hero. In Europe a new power pulsating with youthful life had arrived from somewhere in the interior of Asia with the intention of conquering the world. This power was the Turk--not merely a single nation, but a whole group of peoples clustered round a nation, inspired by one single idea which urged them ever forward--"There is no god but God, and Mahomet is the apostle of God." The Mahometan flood already beat upon the bounds of Catholic Christendom, in the forefront of which stood Hungary. Hungary's King, Sigismund, was able for a moment in 1396 to unite the nations of Europe against the common danger, but the proud array of mail-clad knights were swept away like chaff before the steady ranks of the janizaries. And herewith began the long series of desolating inroads into Hungary, for the Turks were wont to suck the blood of the nation they had marked down as their prey. They took the country by surprise, secretly, suddenly, like a summer storm, appearing in overwhelming numbers, burning, murdering, robbing, especially men in the hopes of a rich ransom, or children whom they might bring up as Mahometans and janizaries. This body, the flower of the Turkish armies, owed its origin for the most part to the Christian children thus stolen from their parents and their country. This infantry of the janizaries was the first standing army in Europe. Living constantly together under a common discipline, like the inmates of a cloister, they rushed blindly forward to the cry of "God and his Prophet!" like some splendid, powerful wild beast eager for prey. The Turkish sultans published the proud order: "Forward! Let us conquer the whole world; wheresoever we tie up our horses' heads, that land is our own." To resist such a nation, that would not listen to negotiation, but only thirsted for war and conquest, seemed already an impossibility. Europe trembled with fear at the reports of the formidable attacks designed against her, and listened anxiously for news from distant Hungary, which lay, so to say, in the lion's very mouth. Against such an enemy a soldier of the modern type was useless, one who slays only in defence of his own life and at the word of command, whose force consists in the high development of the military art and the murderous instruments of modern technical science. What was wanted was a heroic soul, inspired by a burning faith like to that which impelled the Mahometan soldier. This heroic soul, this burning faith, united to the tenacious energy of youth, were all found united in John Hunyady, accompanied withal by a singular talent for leadership in war. He could not rely for support upon the haughty magnates who could trace their descent back for centuries and despised the parvenu with a shorter pedigree and a smaller estate. He was consequently obliged to cast in his lot with the mass of the lesser nobility, individually weaker, it is true, but not deficient in spirit and a consciousness of their own worth. Of this class he soon became the idolized leader. Around him gathered the hitherto latent forces of Hungarian society, especially from Transylvania and South Hungary and the Great Hungarian Plain, which suffered most from the incursions of the Turks, and were therefore most impressed with the necessity of organizing a system of defence. It was these who were the first to be inspired by Hurvyady's heroic spirit. Before commencing his career as independent commander he, following his father's example, attached himself to the court of Sigismund, the Emperor-king, in whose train he visited the countries of Western Europe, Germany, England, and Italy, till he at length returned home, his mind enriched by experience but with the fervor of his first faith unchilled. When over fifty years old, he repaired at his sovereign's command to the south of Hungary to organize the resistance to the Turks. At first he was appointed ban of Severin, and as such had the chief command of the fortified places built by the Hungarians for the defence of the Lower Danube. After that he became waywode of Transylvania, the civil and military governor of the southeastern corner of the Hungarian kingdom. Before, however, he had reached these dignities he had fought a succession of battles and skirmishes with such success that for the fanatical Turkish soldiery his form, nay, his very name, was an object of terror. It was Hunyady alone whom they sought to slay on the field of battle, well persuaded that, he once slain, they would easily deal with the rest of Hungary. Thus in 1442 a Turkish leader, named Mezid Bey, burst into Transylvania at the head of eighty thousand men in pursuance of the Sultan's commands, with no other aim than to take Hunyady dead or alive. Nor, indeed, did Hunyady keep them waiting for him. He hurried at the head of his troops to attack the Turkish leader, who was laying siege to Hermannstadt. Upon this, Mezid Bey, calling his bravest soldiers around him, described to them once more Hunyady's appearance, his arms, his dress, his stature, and his horse, that they might certainly recognize him. "Slay him only," he exclaimed, "and we shall easily deal with the rest of them; we shall drive them like a flock of sheep into the presence of our august master." On that occasion was seen with what self-sacrificing enthusiasm his soldiers loved their heroic leader. When they learned from their spies the purpose of the Turks, they took all possible measures to secure his precious life. One of their number, Simon Kemeny, who bore a striking resemblance to Hunyady, determined to sacrifice himself for his leader. He announced that he would put on Hunyady's clothes and armor. The Turks would then attack him under the belief that he was the celebrated chief, and while they were thus engaged the real Hunyady would fall upon them unexpectedly and put them to flight. At first Hunyady would by no means consent to this plan, as he did not wish to expose Kemeny to such mortal danger; but at last, seeing the great military advantages likely to accrue from it, he consented. And so, indeed, it fell out. As soon as the battle began, the Turks, perceiving Simon Kemeny in the garb of Hunyady, directed all their force against him. Kemeny, after a stout defence, fell, together with a great number of his followers, and the Turks, seeing him fall, set up a general cry of triumph and exultation. Just at this critical moment they were hotly attacked in the flank by the genuine Hunyady. Thus attacked in the very moment when they imagined that they had already gained the day, the Turks were thrown into confusion and took wildly to flight. Twenty thousand corpses were left on the battlefield; among them lay Mezid Bey himself, together with his sons. Fearful was the rage of the Turkish Sultan when he heard of the defeat and death of Mezid Bey, and he at once despatched another army against Hunyady, which like the first numbered eighty thousand men. This time, however, Hunyady did not let them enter Transylvania, but waited for them at the pass known as the Iron Gate, among the high mountains on the southern boundary of Hungary. The Hungarian army was not more than fifteen thousand men, so that the Turks were at least five times as strong. But the military genius of Hunyady made up for the small number of his followers. He posted them in a strong position in the rough pass, and attacked the enemy in places where it was impossible for him to make use of his strength. Thus more than half the Turkish army perished miserably in the battle. Again their commander-in-chief fell on the field, together with six subordinate commanders, while two hundred horse-tail standards fell into Hunyady's hands as trophies of his victory. These two splendid victories filled all Europe with joy and admiration. Christendom again breathed freely; for she felt that a champion sent by a special providence had appeared, who had both the courage and the ability to meet and to repel the haughty and formidable foe. But Hunyady was not content with doing so much. He thought that by this time he might carry the war into the enemy's country. The plan of operations was exceptionally daring, yet Hunyady had not resolved on it without careful consideration. In the mean time, through Hunyady's exertions, Wladislaw III, the young King of Poland, had been elected king of Hungary. Hunyady gained the new King over to his plans, and by this means secured the coöperation of the higher aristocracy and the armed bands which they were bound to lead into the field at the King's summons. Hunyady counted besides on the assistance of Europe; in the first place on the popes, who were zealous advocates of the war against the Mahometans; next on Venice, which, as the first commercial city and state at that time, had suffered severe losses owing to the spread of Turkish dominions; on the gallant Poles, whose King now wore the Hungarian crown; and lastly upon the peoples of Christendom in general, whose enthusiasm for a war against the infidels had been quickened by the report of Hunyady's victories. And, indeed, at his request the Pope sent some small sums of money, the Poles furnished an auxiliary force, while numerous volunteers from the rest of Europe flocked to serve under his banner. Although the assistance thus furnished was comparatively unimportant, it nevertheless served to increase his zeal for the daring undertaking. He and his heroic companions were not only proud of defending their own native country, but felt that they were the champions of all Christendom against Ottoman aggression, and their religious enthusiasm kept pace with their patriotism. If they did not get regiments sent to their aid, they felt that the eyes of all Europe were upon them, ready to grieve at their possible ill-success, while their victories would be celebrated with the _Te Deum_ in the cathedrals of every capital in Europe. The aggressive campaign was commenced without delay; Hunyady's resolves were at once translated into fact; he would not allow the beaten foe time to recover breath. His plan was to cross the Danube, and penetrate through the passes of the Balkan to Philippopolis, at that time the capital of the Sultan's dominions, where he kept the main body of his army. About Christmas, a season in which the Turk does not like to fight, amid heavy snow and severe cold, the Hungarian army of about thirty thousand men pressed forward. Hunyady marched in advance with the vanguard of twelve thousand picked men; after him the King and the Pope's legate, with the rest of the army. The Sultan, however, with a large body of men had occupied the passes of the Balkans and prevented their further advance. This impediment, coupled with the cold and severe weather, depressed the spirits of the troops, worn out with fatigue. Hunyady, however, raised their spirits by gaining a victory; lighting one night upon a body of the enemy, twenty thousand in number, he attacked them at once and after a few hours' struggle succeeded in dispersing them. Later on he took two large towns with their citadels, and in three engagements triumphed over three separate divisions of the enemy. Learning that a still larger body of Turks was attempting to cut off his communications with the King's army, he attacked that also and put it to flight. After that he joined his corps with the main army under the King, and, indeed, none too soon. Sultan Amurath suddenly arrived with the main body of his forces, which he strongly intrenched in the narrowest passes of the Balkans. Hunyady saw that these intrenchments could not be forced, and did all he could to entice his enemy down into the plain. This he succeeded in doing. In the battle that ensued the King, too, played a conspicuous part and received a wound. In the end, however, the Hungarians gained the victory, and the younger brother of the Grand Vizier was taken prisoner. So much success was sufficient for Hunyady for the time, especially as the natural obstacles had proved insurmountable. The Hungarian army returned home in good order, and the young King made a triumphal entry into his capital, preceded by a crowd of Turkish prisoners and captured Turkish ensigns. These last trophies of victory were deposited in the Coronation Church in the fortress of Buda. And now something happened which had hitherto been deemed incredible: the Sultan sued for peace--a true believer and a sovereign, from an "unbelieving giaour." The peace was concluded, and Hungary again became possessed of those dependent (South Slavonic) provinces which lay between the territories of the Sultan and the kingdom of Hungary in the narrower sense of the word. In three short years Hunyady had undone the work of years on the part of the Turks. The Sultan, however, soon repented of what he had done, and continually delayed the fulfilment of his promise to evacuate certain frontier fortresses. For this cause the young King, especially incited thereto by the Pope, determined to renew the war. Hunyady at first opposed the King's resolution, and wished to wait; later on he was gained over to the King's view, and took up the matter with his whole soul. The opportunity was inviting, for the Sultan with his main army was engaged somewhere in Asia, and the Venetians promised to prevent with their fleet his return to Europe across the narrow seas in the neighborhood of Constantinople. The Hungarian army, indeed, set out (1444) on its expedition, and, continually expecting the arrival of the troops of their allies--the Emperor of Constantinople and the princes of Albania--penetrated ever farther and farther into the hostile territory. They were to be joined by their allies at the town of Varna on the shores of the Black Sea. When, however, the Hungarians had arrived at that town, they found no trace of their expected allies, but on the contrary learned with certainty that the Sultan had succeeded in eluding the vigilance of the Venetians, had brought his army in small boats over into Europe, and was now following fast on their track. Thus all hope of aid from allies was at an end; the brave general and his small Hungarian force had to rely on their own resources, separated as they were by some weeks' journey from their own country, while the enemy would be soon upon them in numbers five times their own. Yet, even so, Hunyady's faith and courage did not desert him. The proverb says, "If thy sword be short, lengthen it by a step forward." And Hunyady boldly, but yet with the caution that behooved a careful general, took up his position before the Sultan's army. Both he and his Hungarians fought with dauntless courage, availing themselves of every advantage and beating back every assault. Already victory seemed to be assured. A few hours after the battle had begun both the Turkish wings had been broken, and even the Sultan and the brave janizaries were thinking of flight, when the young King, the Pole Wladislaw, whom Hunyady had adjured by God to remain in a place of safety until the combat should be decided, was persuaded by his Polish suite to fling himself, with the small band in immediate attendance upon him, right on the centre of the janizaries, so that he too might have a share in the victory and not leave it all to Hunyady. The janizaries wavered for a moment under this new and unexpected attack, but, soon perceiving that they had to do with the King of Hungary, they closed round his band, which had penetrated far into their ranks. The King's horse was first hamstrung, and, as it fell, the King's head was severed from his body, stuck upon the point of a spear, and exposed to the view of both armies. The Hungarians, shocked at the unexpected sight, wavered, and, feeling themselves lost, began to fly. All the entreaties and exhortations of Hunyady were in vain. Such was the confusion that he could be neither seen nor heard, and in a few minutes the whole Hungarian army was in headlong flight. Hunyady, left to himself, had also to seek safety in flight. Alone, deserted by all, he had to make his way from one place of concealment to another, till after some weeks' wandering he arrived in Hungary. The bad news had preceded him, and in consequence everything was in confusion. Again arose that difficult question: Who should be the new king under such difficult circumstances? The Sultan's army had, however, suffered so much in the battle of Varna that for the time he left the Hungarians unmolested. The nation was disposed to choose for its king the child Ladislaus, son of King Albert, the predecessor of Wladislaw. The child, however, was in the power of the neighboring Prince, Frederick, the Archduke of Austria, who was not disposed to let him go out of his hands without a heavy ransom. In these circumstances the more powerful nobles in Hungary took advantage of the confusion to strengthen each his own position at the expense of the nation. At first the government of the country was intrusted to a number of captains, but this proved so evidently disastrous that the better sort of people succeeded in having them abolished and Hunyady established as sole governor. For all that, however, Hunyady had a good deal of trouble with the chief aristocrats, Garay, Czillei, Ujlaki, who, envying the parvenu his sudden promotion and despising his obscure origin, took up arms to resist his authority. Thus Hunyady, instead of blunting the edge of his sword upon foreign foes, had to bridle the insubordination of his own countrymen. Luckily it did not take long to force the discontented to own the weight of his arm and his superiority as a military leader. Order being thus to some extent reestablished at home, Hunyady was again able to turn his attention to the Turks. He felt that he had in fact gained the battle of Varna, which was only lost through the jealous humor of a youthful king; that it behooved him not to stop half way; that it was his duty to continue offensive operations. But in so doing he had to rely upon his own proper forces. It is true that he was governor of the country, but for the purpose of offensive warfare beyond the frontier he could not gain the consent of the great nobles. Luckily his private property had enormously increased by this time. The Hungarian constitution required the King to bestow the estates of such noblemen as died without male heirs, or had been condemned for any offence, on such noblemen as had approved themselves valiant defenders of the country. Now where could be found a more worthy recipient of such estates than Hunyady, to whom the public treasury was besides a debtor on account of the sums he disbursed for the constant warfare he maintained against the Turks? Especially in the south of Hungary a whole series of lordly estates, many of them belonging to the crown, had come into Hunyady's hands, either as pledges for the repayment of the money he had paid his soldiers, or as his own private property. The yearly revenue arising from these vast estates was employed by Hunyady, not in personal expenditure, but in the defence of his country. He himself lived as simply as any of his soldiers, and recognized no other use of money than as a weapon for the defence of Christendom against Islam. In the early morning, while all his suite slept, he passed hours in prayer before the altar in the dimly lighted church, imploring the help of the Almighty for the attainment of his sole object in life--the destruction of the Turkish power. At last, 1448, he set out against the Sultan with an army of twenty-four thousand of his most trusty soldiers. This time it was on the frontier of Servia, on the "Field of Blackbirds," that Hunyady encountered Sultan Amurath, who had an army of one hundred and fifty thousand men--again more than five times the number of the Christians. Hunyady at first withdrew himself into his intrenched camp, but in a few days felt himself strong enough to engage with the enemy on the open field. The battle lasted without interruption for two days and a night. Hunyady himself was several times in deadly peril. Once his horse was shot under him. He was to be found wherever assistance, support, encouragement, were needed. At last, on the morning of the third day, as the Turks, who had received reinforcements, were about to renew the attack, the Waywode of Wallachia passed over to the side of the Turks. The Waywode belonged to the Orthodox Eastern Church. He had joined Hunyady on the way, and his desertion transferred six thousand men from one side to the other, and decided the battle in favor of the Turks. The Hungarians, worn out by fatigue, fell into a discouragement, while Hunyady had no fresh troops to bring up to their support. The battle came to a sudden end. Seventeen thousand Hungarian corpses strewed the field, but the loss of the Turks was more than thirty thousand men. Hunyady, again left to himself, had again to make his escape. At first he only dismissed his military suite; afterward he separated from his faithful servant in the hope that separately they might more easily baffle their pursuers. Next he had to turn his horse adrift, as the poor animal was incapable of continuing his journey. Thus he made his way alone and on foot toward the frontiers of his native land. After a while, looking down from the top of a piece of elevated ground, he perceived a large body of Turks, from whom he hid himself in a neighboring lake. He thus escaped this danger, but only to encounter another. At a turn of the road he came so suddenly upon a party of Turkish plunderers as to be unable to escape from them, and thus became their prisoner. But the Turks did not recognize him, and, leaving him in the hands of two of their number, the rest went on in search of more prey. His two guards soon came to blows with one another about a heavy gold cross which they had found on the person of their captive, and, while they were thus quarrelling, Hunyady suddenly wrenched a sword out of the hand of one of the two Turks and cut off his head, upon which the other took to flight, and Hunyady was again free. In the mean time, however, George, the Prince of Servia, who took part with the aristocratic malcontents, and who, although a Christian, out of pure hatred to Hunyady had gone over to the side of the Turks, had given strict orders that all Hungarian stragglers were to be apprehended and brought before him. In this way Hunyady fell into the hands of some Servian peasants, who delivered him to their Prince. Nor did he regain his liberty without the payment of a heavy ransom, leaving his son Ladislaus as hostage in his stead. He thus returned home amid a thousand perils, and with the painful experience that Europe left him to his own resources to fight as best he could against the ever-advancing Turks. The dependencies of the Hungarian crown, Servia and Wallachia--on whose recovery he had spent so much blood and treasure--instead of supporting him, as might be expected of Christian countries, threw themselves in a suicidal manner into the arms of the Turks. They hoped by their ready submission to find favor in the eyes of the irresistible conquerors, by whom, however, they were a little later devoured. After these events Hunyady continued to act as governor or regent of Hungary for five years more, by which time the young Ladislaus, son of King Albert, attained his majority. In 1453 Hunyady finally laid down his dignity as governor, and gave over the power into the hands of the young King, Ladislaus V, whom Hunyady had first to liberate by force of arms from his uncle, Frederick of Austria, before he could set him on the throne of Hungary. The young King, of German origin, had hardly become emancipated from his guardian when he fell under the influence of his other uncle, Ulric Czillei. This Czillei was a great nobleman of Styria, but was withal possessed of large estates in Hungary. As a foreigner and as a relative of King Sigismund, he had long viewed with an evil eye Hunyady's elevation. On one occasion Hunyady had to inflict punishment on him. He consequently now did everything he could to induce the young King, his nephew, to hate the great captain as he himself did. He sought to infuse jealousy into his mind and to lead him to believe that Hunyady aimed at the crown. His slanders found the readier credence in the mind of the youthful sovereign as he was completely stupefied by an uninterrupted course of debauchery. At last the King was brought to agree to a plan for ensnaring the great man who so often jeoparded his life and his substance in the defence of his country and religion. They summoned him in the King's name to Vienna, where Ladislaus, as an Austrian prince, was then staying, with the intention of waylaying and murdering him. But Hunyady got wind of the whole plot, and when he arrived at the place of ambush it was at the head of two thousand picked Hungarian warriors. Thus it was Czillei who fell into the snare. "Wretched creature!" exclaimed Hunyady; "thou hast fallen into the pit thou diggedst for me; were it not that I regard the dignity of the King and my own humanity, thou shouldst suffer a punishment proportioned to thy crime. As it is, I let thee off this time, but come no more into my sight, or thou shalt pay for it with thy life." Such magnanimity, however, did not disarm the hostility of those who surrounded the King. On the pretence of treason against the King, Hunyady was deprived of all his offices and all his estates. The document is still to be seen in the Hungarian state archives, in which the King, led astray by the jealousies that prevailed among his councillors, represents every virtue of the hero as a crime, and condemns him to exile. Fortunately Czillei himself soon fell into disfavor; the Germans themselves overthrew him; and the King, now better informed, replaced Hunyady in the post of captain-general of the kingdom. Hunyady, who meanwhile had been living retired in one of his castles, now complied with the King's wish without difficulty or hesitation, and again assumed the highest military command. Instead of seeking how to revenge himself after the manner of ordinary men, he only thought of the great enemy of his country, the Turk. And indeed, as it was, threatening clouds hung over the horizon in the southeast. A new sultan had come to the throne, Mahomet II, one of the greatest sovereigns of the house of Othman. He began his reign with the occupation of Constantinople, 1453, and thus destroyed the last refuge of the Byzantine empire. At the news of this event all Europe burst into a chorus of lamentation. The whole importance of the Eastern question at once presented itself before the nations of Christendom. It was at once understood that the new conqueror would not remain idle within the crumbling walls of Constantinople. And, indeed, in no long time was published the proud _mot d'ordre_, "As there is but one God in heaven, so there shall be but one master upon earth." Hunyady looked toward Constantinople with heavy heart. He foresaw the outburst of the storm which would in the first place fall upon his own country, threatening it with utter ruin. Hunyady, so it seemed, was again left alone in the defence of Christendom. The approaching danger was delayed for a few years, but in 1456 Mahomet, having finally established himself in Constantinople, set out with the intention of striking a fatal blow against Hungary. On the borders of that country, on the bank of the Danube, on what was, properly speaking, Servian territory, stood the fortress of Belgrad. When the danger from the Turks became imminent, the kings of Hungary purchased the place from the despots of Servia, giving them in exchange several extensive estates in Hungary, and had at great expense turned it into a vast fortress, at that time supposed to be impregnable. Mahomet determined to take the place, and to this end made the most extensive preparations. He led to the walls of Belgrad an army of not less than one hundred and fifty thousand men. The approach of this immense host so terrified the young King that he left Hungary and took refuge in Vienna along with his uncle and counsellor, Czillei. Hunyady alone remained at his post, resolute like a lion attacked. The energy of the old leader--he was now nearly sixty-eight--was only steeled by the greatness of the danger; his forethought and his mental resources were but increased. As he saw that it would be impossible to do anything with a small army, he sent his friend, John Capistran, an Italian Franciscan, a man animated by a burning zeal akin to his own, to preach a crusade against the enemies of Christendom through the towns and villages of the Great Hungarian Plain. This the friar did to such effect that in a few weeks he had collected sixty thousand men, ready to fight in defence of the cross. This army of crusaders--the last in the history of the nations--had for its gathering cry the bells of the churches; for its arms, scythes and axes; Christ for its leader, and John Hunyady and John Capistran for his lieutenants. The two greatest leaders in war of that day contended for the possession of Belgrad. The same army now surrounded that fortress which a few years before had stormed Constantinople, reputed impregnable. The same hero defended it who had so often in the course of a single decade defeated the Turkish foe in an offensive war, and who now, regardless of danger, with a small but faithful band of followers, was prepared to do all that courage, resolution, and prudence might effect. Many hundred large cannon began to break down the stone ramparts; many hundred boats forming a river flotilla covered the Danube, so as to cut off all communication between the fortress and Hungary. During this time Hunyady's son Ladislaus and his brother-in-law Michael Szilagyi were in command in the fortress. Hunyady's first daring plan was to force his way through the blockading flotilla, and enter Belgrad before the eyes of the whole Turkish army, taking with him his own soldiers and Capistran's crusaders. The plan completely succeeded. With his own flotilla of boats he broke through that of the Turks and made his entrance into the fortress in triumph. After this the struggle was continued with equal resolution and ability on both sides; such advantage as the Christians derived from the protection afforded by the fortifications being fully compensated by the enormous superiority in numbers both of men and cannon on the part of the Turks. Without example in the history of the storming of fortresses was the stratagem practised by Hunyady when he permitted the picked troops of the enemy, the janizaries, to penetrate within the fortification, and there destroyed them in the place they thought they had taken. Ten thousand janizaries had already swarmed into the town, and were preparing to attack the bridges and gates of the citadel, when Hunyady ordered lighted fagots, soaked in pitch and sulphur and other combustibles, to be flung from the ramparts into the midst of the crowded ranks of the janizaries. The fire seized on their loose garments, and in a short time the whole body was a sea of fire. Everyone sought to fly. Then it was that Hunyady sallied out with his picked band, while Capistran, with a tall cross in his hand and the cry of "Jesus" on his lips, followed with his crowd of fanatics, the cannon of the fortress played upon the Turkish camp, the Sultan himself was wounded and swept along by the stream of fugitives. Forty thousand Turks were left dead upon the field, four thousand were taken prisoners, and three thousand cannon were captured. According to the opinion of Hunyady himself, the Turks had never suffered such a severe defeat. Its value as far as the Hungarians were concerned was heightened by the fact that the ambitious Sultan was personally humiliated. There was now great joy in Europe. At the news of the brilliant victory the _Te Deum_ was sung in all the more important cities throughout Europe, and the Pope wished to compliment Hunyady with a crown. A crown of another character awaited him--that of his Redeemer, in whose name he lived, fought, and fell. The exhalations from the vast number of unburied or imperfectly buried bodies, festering in the heat of summer, gave rise to an epidemic in the Christian camp, and to this the great leader fell a victim. Hunyady died August 11, 1456, in the sixty-eighth year of his age. He died amid the intoxication of his greatest victory, idolized by his followers, having once more preserved his country from imminent ruin. Could he have desired a more glorious death? He went to his last rest with the consciousness that he had fulfilled his mission, having designed great things and having accomplished them. And the result of his lifelong efforts survived him. His great enemy, the Turk, for the next half-century could only harass the frontier of his native land; and his country, a few years after his death, placed on the royal throne his son Matthias. [Footnote 1: By permission of Selmar Hess.] REBUILDING OF ROME BY NICHOLAS V, THE "BUILDER-POPE" A.D. 1447-1455 MRS. MARGARET OLIPHANT Of those pontiffs who are called the pride of modern Rome--through whom the city "rose most gloriously from her ashes"--Nicholas V (Tommaso Parentucelli) was the first. He was born at Sarzana, in the republic of Genoa, about 1398, was ordained priest at the age of twenty-five, became Archbishop of Bologna, and in 1447 was elevated to the papal chair. His election was largely due to the influential part he had taken at the councils of Basel, 1431-1449, and Ferrara-Florence, 1438-1445. In 1449, by prevailing upon the Antipope, Felix V, to abdicate, he restored the peace of the Church. He endeavored, but in vain, to arouse Europe to its duty of succoring the Greek empire. Although the coming Reformation was already casting its shadow before, Nicholas stood calm in face of the inevitable event, devoting himself to the spiritual welfare of the Church and to the interests of learning and the arts. But he is chiefly remembered as the first pope to conceive a systematic plan for the reconstruction and permanent restoration of Rome. He died before that purpose could be executed in accordance with his great designs; but others, entering into his labors, carried his work to a fuller accomplishment. It was to the centre of ecclesiastical Rome, the shrine of the apostles, the chief church of Christendom and its adjacent buildings, that the care of the Builder-pope was first directed. The Leonine City of Borgo, as it is more familiarly called, is that portion of Rome which lies on the right side of the Tiber, and which extends from the castle of St. Angelo to the boundary of the Vatican gardens--enclosing the Church of St. Peter, the Vatican palace with all its wealth, and the great Hospital of Santo Spirito, surrounded and intersected by many little streets, and joining to the other portions of the city by the bridge of St. Angelo. Behind the mass of picture-galleries, museums, and collections of all kinds, which now fill up the endless halls and corridors of the papal palace, comes a sweep of noble gardens full of shade and shelter from the Roman sun, such a resort for the "learnèd leisure Which in trim gardens takes its pleasure" as it would be difficult to surpass. In this fine extent of wood and verdure the Pope's villa or casino, now the only summer palace which the existing Pontiff chooses to permit himself, stands as in a domain, small yet perfect. Almost everything within these walls has been built or completely transformed since the days of Nicholas. But, then as now, here was the heart and centre of Christendom, the supreme shrine of the Catholic faith, the home of the spiritual ruler whose sway reaches over the whole earth. When Nicholas began his reign, the old Church of St. Peter was the church of the Western world, then, as now, classical in form, a stately basilica without the picturesqueness and romantic variety, and also, as we think, without the majesty and grandeur, of a Gothic cathedral, yet more picturesque if less stupendous in size and construction, than the present great edifice, so majestic in its own grave and splendid way, with which, through all the agitations of the recent centuries, the name of St. Peter has been identified. The earlier church was full of riches and of great associations, to which the wonderful St. Peter's we all know can lay claim only as its successor and supplanter. With its flight of broad steps, its portico and colonnaded façade crowned with a great tower, it dominated the square, open and glowing in the sun, without the shelter of the great existing colonnades or the sparkle of the fountains. Behind was the little palace begun by Innocent III, to afford a shelter for the popes in dangerous times, or on occasion to receive the foreign guests whose object was to visit the shrine of the apostles. Almost all the buildings then standing have been replaced by greater, yet the position is the same, the shrine unchanged, though everything else then existing has faded away, except some portion of the old wall which enclosed this sacred place in a special sanctity and security, which was not, however, always respected. The Borgo was the holiest portion of all the sacred city. It was there that the blood of the martyrs had been shed, and where from the earliest age of Christianity their memory and tradition had been preserved. It was not necessary for us to enter into the question whether St. Peter ever was in Rome, which many writers have laboriously contested. So far as the record of the Acts of the Apostles is concerned, there is no evidence at all for or against, but tradition is all on the side of those who assert it. The position taken by Signor Lanciani on this point seems to us a very sensible one. "I write about the monuments of ancient Rome," he says, "from a strictly archaeological point of view, avoiding questions which pertain, or are supposed to pertain, to religious controversy. "For the archaeologist the presence and execution of SS. Peter and Paul in Rome are facts established beyond a shadow of doubt by purely monumental evidence. There was a time when persons belonging to different creeds made it almost a case of conscience to affirm or deny _a priori_ those facts, according to their acceptance or rejection of the tradition of any particular church. This state of feeling is a matter of the past, at least for those who have followed the progress of recent discoveries and of critical literature. There is no event of the Imperial age and of Imperial Rome which is attested by so many noble structures, all of which point to the same conclusion--the presence and execution of the apostles in the capital of the Empire. When Constantine raised the monumental basilicas over their tombs on the Via Cornelia and the Via Ostiensis; when Eudoxia built the Church ad Vincula; when Damascus put a memorial tablet in the Platonia and Catacombos; when the houses of Pudens and Aquila and Prisca were turned into oratories; when the name of Nymphae Sancti Petri was given to the springs in the catacombs of the Via Nomentana; when the 29th of June was accepted as the anniversary of St. Peter's execution; when sculptors, painters, medallists, goldsmiths, workers in glass and enamel, and engravers of precious stones all began to reproduce in Rome the likeness of the apostle at the beginning of the second century, and continued to do so till the fall of the Empire--must we consider them as laboring under a delusion, or conspiring in the commission of a gigantic fraud? Why were such proceedings accepted without protest from whatever city, whatever community--if there were any other--which claimed to own the genuine tombs of SS. Peter and Paul? These arguments gain more value from the fact that the evidence on the other side is purely negative." This is one of those practical arguments which are always more interesting than those which depend upon theories and opinions. However, there are many books on both sides of the question which may be consulted. We are content to follow Signor Lanciani. The special sanctity and importance of Il Borgo originated in this belief. The shrine of the apostle was its centre and glory. It was this that brought pilgrims from the far corners of the earth before there was any masterpiece of art to visit, or any of those priceless collections which now form the glory of the Vatican. The spot of the apostles' execution was indicated "by immemorial tradition" as between the two goals (_inter duas metas_) of Nero's Circus, which spot Signor Lanciani tells us is exactly the site of the obelisk now standing in the piazza of St. Peter. A little chapel, called the Chapel of the Crucifixion, stood there in the early ages, before any great basilica or splendid shrine was possible. This sacred spot, and the church built to commemorate it, were naturally the centre of all those religious traditions which separate Rome from every other city. It was to preserve them from assault, "in order that it should be less easy for the enemy to make depredations and burn the Church of St. Peter, as they have heretofore done," that Leo IV, the first pope whom we find engaged in any real work of construction, built a wall round the mound of the Vatican, and Colle Vaticano--"little hill," not so high as the seven hills of Rome--where against the strong wall of Nero's Circus Constantine had built his great basilica. At that period--in the middle of the ninth century--there was nothing but the church and shrine--no palace and no hospital. The existing houses were given to the Corsi, a family which had been driven out of their island, according to Platina, by the Saracens, who shortly before had made an incursion up to the very walls of Rome, whither the peoples of the coast (_luoghi maritimi del Mar Terreno_) from Naples northward had apparently pursued the corsairs, and helped the Romans to beat them back. One other humble building of some sort, "called Burgus Saxonum, Vicus Saxonum, Schola Saxonum, and simply Saxia or Sassia," it is interesting to know, existed close to the sacred centre of the place, a lodging built for himself by Ina, King of Wessex, in 727. Thus the English have a national association of their own with the central shrine of Christianity. There was also a Schola Francorum in the Borgo. The pilgrims must have built their huts and set up some sort of little oratory--favored, as was the case even in Pope Nicholas' day, by the excellent quarry of the Circus close at hand--as near as possible to the great shrine and basilica which they had come so far to say their prayers in, and attracted, too, no doubt, by the freedom of the lonely suburb between the green hill and the flowing river. Leo IV built his wall round this little city, and fortified it by towers. "In every part he put sculptors of marble and wrote a prayer," says Platina. One of these gates led to St. Pellegrino, another was close to the castle of St. Angelo, and was "the gate by which one goes forth to the open country." The third led to the School of the Saxons; and over each was a prayer inscribed. These three prayers were all to the same effect--"that God would defend this new city which the Pope had enclosed with walls and called by his own name, the Leonine City, from all assaults of the enemy, either by fraud or by force." The greatest, however, of all the conceptions of Pope Nicholas, the very centre of his great plan, was the library of the Vatican, which he began to build and to which he left all the collections of his life. Vespasian gives us a list of the principal among these five thousand volumes, the things which he prized most, which the Pope bequeathed to the Church and to Rome. These cherished rolls of parchment, many of them translations made under his own eyes, were enclosed in elaborate bindings ornamented with gold and silver. We are not, however, informed whether any of the great treasures of the Vatican library came from his hands--the good Vespasian taking more interest in the work of his scribes than in codexes. He tells us of five hundred scudi given to Lorenzo Valle with a pretty speech that the price was below his merits, but that eventually he should have more liberal pay; of fifteen hundred scudi given to Guerroni for a translation of the _Iliad_, and so forth. It is like a bookseller of the present day vaunting his new editions to a collector in search of the earliest known. But Pope Nicholas, like most other patrons of his time, knew no Greek, nor probably ever expected that it would become a usual subject of study, so that his translations were precious to him, the chief way of making his treasures of any practical use. The greater part, alas! of all his splendor has passed away. One pure and perfect glory, the little Chapel of San Lorenzo, painted by the tender hand of Fra Angelico, remains unharmed, the only work of that grand painter to be found in Rome. If one could have chosen a monument for the good Pope, the patron and friend of art in every form, there could not have been a better than this. Fra Angelico seems to have been brought to Rome by Pope Eugenius, but it was under Nicholas, in two or three years of gentle labor, that the work was done. It is, however, impossible to enumerate all the undertakings of Pope Nicholas. He did something to reestablish or decorate almost all the great basilicas. It is feared--but here our later historians speak with bated breath, not liking to bring such an accusation against the kind Pope, who loved men of letters--that the destruction of St. Peter's, afterward ruthlessly carried out by succeeding popes, was in his plan, on the pretext, so constantly employed, and possibly believed in, of the instability of the ancient building. But there is no absolute certainty of evidence, and at all events he might have repented, for he certainly did not do that deed. He began the tribune, however, in the ancient church, which may have been a preparation for the entire renewal of the edifice; and he did much toward the decoration of another round church, that of the Madonna delle Febbre, an ill-omened name, attached to the Vatican. He also built the Belvedere in the gardens, and surrounded the whole with strong walls and towers (round), one of which, according to Nibby, still remained fifty years ago, which very little of Nicholas' building has done. His great sin was one which he shared with all his brother-popes, that he boldly treated the antique ruins of the city as quarries for his new buildings, not without protest and remonstrance from many, yet with the calm of a mind preoccupied and seeing nothing so great and important as the work upon which his own heart was set. This excellent Pope died in 1455, soon after having received the news of the downfall of Constantinople, which is said to have broken his heart. He had many ailments, and was always a small and spare man of little strength of constitution; "but nothing transfixed his heart so much as to hear that the Turks had taken Constantinople and killed the Europeans, with many thousands of Christians, among them that same 'Imperadore de Gostantinopli' whom he had seen seated in state at the Council of Ferrara, listening to his own and other arguments, only a few years before--as well as the greater part, no doubt, of his own clerical opponents there. When he was dying, 'being not the less of a strong spirit,' he called the cardinals round his bed, and many prelates with them, and made them a last address. His pontificate had lasted a little more than eight years, and to have carried out so little of his great plan must have been heavy on his heart; but his dying words are those of one to whom the holiness and unity of the Church came before all. No doubt the fear that the victorious Turks might spread ruin over the whole of Christendom was first in his mind at that solemn hour. "'Knowing, my dearest brethren, that I am approaching the hour of my death, I would, for the great dignity and authority of the apostolic see, make a serious and important testimony before you, not committed to the memory of letters, not written, neither on a tablet nor on parchment, but given by my living voice, that it may have more authority. Listen, I pray you, while your little Pope Nicholas, in the very instant of dying, makes his last will before you. In the first place I render thanks to the Highest God for the measureless benefits which, beginning from the day of my birth until the present day, I have received of his infinite mercy. And now I recommend to you this beautiful Spouse of Christ, whom, so far as I was able, I have exalted and magnified, as each of you is well aware; knowing this to be the honor of God, for the great dignity that is in her, and the great privileges that she possesses, and so worthy, and formed by so worthy an Author, who is the Creator of the universe. Being of sane mind and intellect, and having done that which every Christian is called to do, and specially the Pastor of the Church, I have received the most sacred body of Christ with penitence, taking it from his table with my two hands, and praying the Omnipotent God that he would pardon my sins. Having had these sacraments I have also received the extreme unction, which is the last sacrament for the redeeming of my soul. Again I recommend to you, as long as I am able, the Roman Church, notwithstanding that I have already done so; for this is the most important duty you have to fufil in the sight of God and men. This is the true Spouse of Christ which he bought with his blood. This is the robe without seam, which the impious Jews would have torn, but could not. This is that ship of St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles, agitated and tossed by varied fortunes of the winds, but sustained by the Omnipotent God, so that she could never be submerged or shipwrecked. With all the strength of your souls sustain her and rule her: she has need of your good works, and you should show a good example by your lives. If you with all your strength care for her and love her, God will reward you, both in this present life and in the future with life eternal; and to do this with all the strength we have, we pray you, do it diligently, dearest brethren.' "Having said this he raised his hands to heaven and said: 'Omnipotent God, grant to the holy Church, and to these fathers, a pastor who will preserve her and increase her; give to them a good pastor who will rule and govern thy flock the most maturely that one can rule and govern. And I pray for you and comfort you as much as I know and can. Pray for me to God in your prayers.' When he had ended these words he raised his right arm and, with a generous soul, gave the benediction,' _Benedict vos Deus, Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus_'--speaking with a raised voice and solemnly, _in modo pontificate_" These tremulous words, broken and confused by the weakness of his last hours, were taken down by the favorite scribe, Giannozzo Manetti, in the chamber of the dying Pope; with much more of the most serious matter to the Church and to Rome. His eager desire to soften all possible controversies and produce in the minds of the conclave about his bed, so full of ambition and the force of life, the softened heart which would dispose them to a peaceful and conscientious election of his successor, is very touching, coming out of the fogs and mists of approaching death. In the very age that produced the Borgias, and himself the head of that band of elegant scholars and connoisseurs, everything but Christian, to whom Rome owes so much of her external beauty and splendor, it is pathetic to stand by this kind and gentle spirit as he pauses on the threshold of a higher life, subduing the astute and worldly minded churchmen around him with the tender appeal of the dying father, their _Papa Niccolato_, familiar and persuasive--beseeching them to be of one accord without so much as saying it, turning his own weakness to account to touch their hearts, for the honor of the Church and the welfare of the flock. MAHOMET II TAKES CONSTANTINOPLE. END OF THE EASTERN EMPIRE A.D. 1453 GEORGE FINLAY By the greater number of historians the fall of Constantinople under the Moslem power is considered as the decisive event which separates the modern from the mediaeval period. From the same event dates the final establishment of the Ottoman empire both in Asia Minor and in Europe. At that moment, when the Moorish power in Spain had been almost destroyed, Christian Europe was threatened for the second time with Mahometan conquest. From 1354, when Suleiman crossed the Hellespont and captured Gallipoli, the Turks from Asia Minor had kept their foothold on European soil. Under Amurath I (1359-1389), Bajazet I (1389-1403), Mahomet I and Amurath II (1404-1451)--the last of whom, in 1422, unsuccessfully besieged Constantinople--the Ottoman dominions in Europe were much extended. When Mahomet II, son of Amurath II, became Sultan (1451), the Turks were so strongly established, and the Eastern Empire was so much weakened, that he was prepared to finish the work of his predecessors and make the Ottoman power in Europe what it has ever since been. Mahomet "the Conqueror"--such was his surname--had for his adversary Constantine XIII, the last of the Greek emperors, who was proclaimed in 1448, with the consent of Amurath II, whose power is thus attested. The Empire was torn by the quarrels of political factions and by theological dissensions. When Mahomet succeeded to the sultanate he was but twenty-one years old, but had already given proof of great talents, learning, and ambition, all guided by a judgment of remarkable maturity. The first object of Mahomet's ambition was the conquest of Constantinople, the natural capital of his dominions. As long as it was held by Eastern Christians the Ottoman empire was open to invasion by those of the West. The first threatening act of Mahomet was the construction of a fortress on Constantine's territory, at the narrowest part of the Bosporus, and within five miles of Constantinople. Constantine was too weak to resent the menace with vigor, and Mahomet treated his mild protest with contempt, denying the right of a vassal of the Porte to dispute the Sultan's will. A feeble resistance by some of the Greeks only gave Mahomet pretexts for further aggression, soon followed by his formal declaration of war. Both parties began to prepare for the mortal contest. The siege of Constantinople was to be the great event of the coming year. The Sultan, in order to prevent the Emperor's brothers in the Peloponnesus from sending any succors to the capital, ordered Turakhan, the Pacha of Thessaly, to invade the peninsula. He himself took up his residence at Adrianople, to collect warlike stores and siege artillery. Constantine, on his part, made every preparation in his power for a vigorous defence. He formed large magazines of provisions, collected military stores, and enrolled all the soldiers he could muster among the Greek population of Constantinople. But the inhabitants of that city were either unable or unwilling to furnish recruits in proportion to their numbers. Bred up in peaceful occupation, they probably possessed neither the activity nor the habitual exercise which was required to move with ease under the weight of armor then in use. So few were found disposed to fight for their country that not more than six thousand Greek troops appeared under arms during the whole siege. The numerical weakness of the Greek army rendered it incapable of defending so large a city as Constantinople, even with all the advantage to be derived from strong fortifications. The Emperor was therefore anxious to obtain the assistance of the warlike citizens of the Italian republics, where good officers and experienced troops were then numerous. As he had no money to engage mercenaries, he could only hope to succeed by papal influence. An embassy was sent to Pope Nicholas V, begging immediate aid, and declaring the Emperor's readiness to complete the union of the churches in any way the Pope should direct. Nicholas despatched Cardinal Isidore, the Metropolitan of Kiev, who had joined the Latin Church, as his legate. Isidore had represented the Russian Church at the Council of Florence; but on his return to Russia he was imprisoned as an apostate, and with difficulty escaped to Italy. He was by birth a Greek; and being a man of learning and conciliatory manners, it was expected that he would be favorably received at Constantinople. The Cardinal arrived at Constantinople in November, 1452. He was accompanied by a small body of chosen troops, and brought some pecuniary aid, which he employed in repairing the most dilapidated part of the fortifications. Both the Emperor and the Cardinal deceived themselves in supposing that the dangers to which the Greek nation and the Christian Church were exposed would induce the orthodox to yield something of their ecclesiastical forms and phrases. It was evident that foreign aid could alone save Constantinople, and it was absurd to imagine that the Latins would fight for those who treated them as heretics and who would not fight for themselves. The crisis therefore compelled the Greeks to choose between union with the Church of Rome or submission to the Ottoman power. They had to decide whether the preservation of the Greek empire was worth the ecclesiastical sacrifices they were called upon to make in order to preserve their national independence. In the mean time the emperor Constantine celebrated his union with the papal Church, in the Cathedral of St. Sophia, on December 12, 1452. The court and the great body of the dignified clergy ratified the act by their presence; but the monks and the people repudiated the connection. In their opinion, the Church of St. Sophia was polluted by the ceremony, and from that day it was deserted by the orthodox. The historian Ducas declares that they looked upon it as a haunt of demons, and no better than a pagan shrine. The monks, the nuns, and the populace publicly proclaimed their detestation of the union; and their opposition was inflamed by the bigotry of an ambitious pedant, who, under the name of Georgius Scholarius, acted as a warm partisan of the union at the Council of Florence, and under the ecclesiastical name of Gennadius is known in history as the subservient patriarch of Sultan Mahomet II. On returning from Italy, he made a great parade of his repentance for complying with the unionists at Florence. He shut himself up in the monastery of Pantokrator, where he assumed the monastic habit and the name of Gennadius, under which he consummated the union between the Greek Church and the Ottoman administration. At the present crisis he stepped forward as the leader of the most bigoted party, and excited his followers to the most furious opposition to measures which he had once advocated as salutary for the Church, and indispensable to the preservation of the State. The unionists were now accused of sacrificing true religion to the delusion of human policy, of insulting God to serve the Pope, and of preferring the interests of their bodies to the care of their souls. In place of exhorting their countrymen to aid the Emperor, who was straining every nerve to defend their country--in place of infusing into their minds the spirit of patriotism and religion, these teachers of the people were incessantly inveighing against the wickedness of the unionists and the apostasy of the Emperor. So completely did their bigotry extinguish every feeling of patriotism that the grand duke Notaras declared he would rather see Constantinople subjected to the turban of the Sultan than to the tiara of the Pope. His wish was gratified; but, in dying, he must have felt how fearfully he had erred in comparing the effects of papal arrogance with the cruelty of Mahometan tyranny. The Emperor Constantine, who felt the importance of the approaching contest, showed great prudence and moderation in his difficult position. The spirit of Christian charity calmed his temper, and his determination not to survive the empire gave a deliberate coolness to his military conduct. Though his Greek subjects often raised seditions, and reviled him in the streets, the Emperor took no notice of their behavior. To induce the orthodox to fight for their country, by having a leader of their own party, he left the grand duke Notaras in office; yet he well knew that this bigot would never act cordially with the Latin auxiliaries, who were the best troops in the city; and the Emperor had some reason to distrust the patriotism of Notaras, seeing that he hoarded his immense wealth, instead of expending a portion of it for his country. The fortifications were not found to be in a good state of repair. Two monks who had been intrusted with a large sum for the purpose of repairing them had executed their duty in an insufficient and it was generally said in a fraudulent manner. The extreme dishonesty that prevailed among the Greek officials explains the selection of monks as treasurers for military objects; and it must lessen our surprise at finding men of their religious professions sharing in the general avarice, or tolerating the habitual peculations of others. Cannon were beginning to be used in sieges, but stone balls were used in the larger pieces of artillery; and the larger the gun, the greater was the effect it was expected to produce. Even in Constantinople there was some artillery too large to be of much use, as the land wall had not been constructed to admit of their recoil, and the ramparts were so weak as to be shaken by their concussion. Constantine had also only a moderate supply of gunpowder. The machines of a past epoch in military science, but to the use of which the Greeks adhered with their conservative prejudices, were brought from the storehouses, and planted on the walls beside the modern artillery. Johann Grant, a German officer, was the most experienced artilleryman and military engineer in the place. A considerable number of Italians hastened to Constantinople as soon as they heard of its danger, eager to defend so important a depot of Eastern commerce. The spirit of enterprise and the love of military renown had become as much a characteristic of the merchant nobles of the commercial republics as they had been, in a preceding age, distinctions of the barons in feudal monarchies. All the nations who then traded with Constantinople furnished contingents to defend its walls. A short time before the siege commenced, John Justiniani arrived with two Genoese galleys and three hundred chosen troops, and the Emperor valued his services so highly that he was appointed general of the guard. The resident bailo of the Venetians furnished three large galeases and a body of troops for the defence of the port. The consul of Catalans, with his countrymen and the Aragonese, undertook the defence of the great palace of Bukoleon and the port of Kontoskalion. Cardinal Isidore, with the papal troops, defended the Kynegesion, and the angle of the city at the head of the port down to St. Demetrius. The importance of the aid which was afforded by the Latins is proved by the fact that of twelve military divisions, into which Constantine divided the fortifications, the commands of only two were intrusted to the exclusive direction of Greek officers. In the others, Greeks shared the command with foreigners, or aliens alone conducted the defence. When all Constantine's preparations for defence were completed, he found himself obliged to man a line of wall on the land side of about five miles in length, every point of which was exposed to a direct attack. The remainder of the wall toward the port and the Propontis exceeded nine miles in extent, and his whole garrison hardly amounted to nine thousand men. His fleet consisted of only twenty galleys and three Venetian galeases, but the entry of the port was closed by a chain, the end of which, on the side of Galata, was secured in a strong fort of which the Greeks kept possession. During the winter the Emperor sent out his fleet to ravage the coast of the Propontis as far as Cyzicus, and the spirit of the Greeks was roused by the booty they made in these expeditions. Mahomet II spent the winter at Adrianople, preparing everything necessary for commencing the siege with vigor. His whole mind was absorbed by the glory of conquering the Roman Empire and gaining possession of Constantinople, which for more than eleven hundred fifty years had been the capital of the East. While the fever of ambition inflamed his soul, his cooler judgment also warned him that the Ottoman power rested on a perilous basis as long as Constantinople, the true capital of his empire, remained in the hands of others. Mahomet could easily assemble a sufficient number of troops for his enterprise, but it required all his activity and power to collect the requisite supplies of provisions and stores for the immense military and naval force he had ordered to assemble, and to prepare the artillery and ammunition necessary to insure success. Early and late, in his court and in his cabinet, the young Sultan could talk of nothing but the approaching siege. With the writing-reed and a scroll of paper in his hand he was often seen tracing plans of the fortifications of Constantinople, and marking out positions for his own batteries. Every question relating to the extent and locality of the various magazines to be constructed in order to maintain the troops was discussed in his presence; he himself distributed the troops in their respective divisions and regulated the order of their march; he issued the orders relating to the equipment of the fleet, and discussed the various methods proposed for breaching, mining, and scaling the walls. His enthusiasm was the impulse of a hero, but the immense superiority of his force would have secured him the victory with any ordinary degree of perseverance. The Ottomans were already familiar with the use of cannon. Amurath II had employed them when he besieged Constantinople in 1422; but Mahomet now resolved on forming a more powerful battering-train than had previously existed. Neither the Greeks nor Turks possessed the art of casting large guns. Both were obliged to employ foreigners. An experienced artilleryman and founder named Urban, by birth a Wallachian, carried into execution the Sultan's wishes. He had passed some time in the Greek service; but, even the moderate pay he was allowed by the Emperor having fallen in arrear, he resigned his place and transferred his services to the Sultan, who knew better how to value warlike knowledge. He now gave Mahomet proof of his skill by casting the largest cannon which had ever been fabricated. He had already placed one of extraordinary size in the new castle of the Bosporus, which carried across the straits. The gun destined for the siege of Constantinople far exceeded in size this monster, and the diameter of its mouth must have been nearly two feet and a half. Other cannon of great size, whose balls of stone weighed one hundred fifty pounds, were also cast, as well as many guns of smaller calibre. All these, together with a number of ballistae and other ancient engines still employed in sieges, were mounted on carriages in order to transport them to Constantinople. The conveyance of this formidable train of artillery, and of the immense quantity of ammunition required for its service, was by no means a trifling operation. The first division of the Ottoman army moved from Adrianople in February, 1453. In the mean time a numerous corps of pioneers worked constantly at the road, in order to prepare it for the passage of the long train of artillery and baggage wagons. Temporary bridges, capable of being taken to pieces, were erected by the engineers over every ravine and water-course, and the materials for every siege advanced steadily, though slowly, to their destination. The extreme difficulty of moving the monster cannon with its immense balls retarded the Sultan's progress, and it was the beginning of April before the whole battering-train reached Constantinople, though the distance from Adrianople is barely a hundred miles. The division of the army under Karadja Pacha had already reduced Mesembria and the castle of St. Stephanus. Selymbria alone defended itself, and the fortifications were so strong that Mahomet ordered it to be closely blockaded, and left its fate to be determined by that of the capital. On April 6th Sultan Mahomet II encamped on the slope of the hill facing the quarter of Blachern, a little beyond the ground occupied by the crusaders in 1203, and immediately ordered the construction of lines extending from the head of the port to the shore of the Propontis. These lines were formed of a mound of earth, and they served both to restrain the sorties of the besieged and to cover the troops from the fire of the enemy's artillery and missiles. The batteries were then formed; the principal were erected against the gate of Charsias, in the quarter of Blachern, and against the gate of St. Romanus, near the centre of the city wall. It was against this last gate that the fire of the monster gun was directed and the chief attack was made. The land forces of the Turks probably amounted to about seventy thousand men of all arms and qualities; but the real strength of the army lay in the corps of janizaries, then the best infantry in Europe, and their number did not exceed twelve thousand. At the same time, twenty thousand cavalry, mounted on the finest horses of the Turkoman breed, and hardened by long service, were ready to fight either on horseback or on foot, under the eye of their young Sultan. The fleet which had been collected along the Asiatic coast, from the ports of the Black Sea to those of the Aegean, brought additional supplies of men, provisions, and military stores. It consisted of three hundred twenty vessels of various sizes and forms. The greater part were only half-decked coasters, and even the largest were far inferior in size to the galleys and galeases of the Greeks and Italians. The fortifications of Constantinople toward the land side vary so little from a straight line that they afford great facilities for attack. The defences had been originally constructed on a magnificent scale and with great skill, according to the ancient art of war. Even though they were partly ruined by time and weakened by careless reparations, they still offered a formidable obstacle to the imperfect science of the engineers in Mahomet's army. Two lines of wall, each flanked with its own towers, rose one above the other, overlooking a broad and deep ditch. The interval between these walls enabled the defenders to form in perfect security, and facilitated their operations in clearing the ditch and retarding the preparation for assault. The actual appearance of the low walls of Constantinople, with the ditch more than half filled up, gives only an incorrect picture of their former state. Mahomet had made his preparations for the siege with so much skill that his preliminary works advanced with unexpected rapidity. The numerical superiority of his army, and the precautions he had adopted for strengthening his lines, rendered the sorties of the garrison useless. The ultimate success of the defence depended on the arrival of assistance from abroad; but the numbers of the Ottoman fleet seemed to render even this hope almost desperate. An incident occurred that showed the immense advantage conferred by skill, when united with courage, over an apparently irresistible superiority of force in naval warfare. Four large ships, laden with grain and stores, one of which bore the Greek and the other the Genoese flag, had remained for some time wind-bound at Chios, and were anxiously expected at Constantinople. At daybreak these ships were perceived by the Turkish watchmen steering for Constantinople, with a strong breeze in their favor. The war-galleys of the Sultan immediately got under way to capture them. The Sultan himself rode down to the point of Tophane to witness a triumph which he considered certain and which he thought would reduce his enemy to despair. The Greeks crowded the walls of the city, offering up prayers for their friends and trembling for their safety in the desperate struggle that awaited them. The Christians had several advantages which their nautical experience enabled them to turn to good account. The good size of their ships, the strength of their construction, their weight, and their high bulwarks were all powerful means of defence when aided by a stiff breeze blowing directly in the teeth of their opponents. The Turks were compelled to row their galleys against this wind and the heavy sea it raised. In vain they attacked the Christians with reckless valor, fighting under the eye of their fiery sovereign. The skill of their enemy rendered all their attacks abortive. In vain one squadron attempted to impede the progress of the Christians, while another endeavored to run alongside and carry them by boarding. Every Turkish galley that opposed their progress was crushed under the weight of their heavy hulls, while those that endeavored to board had their oars shivered in the shock, and drifted helpless far astern. The few that succeeded for a moment in retaining their place alongside were either sunk by immense angular blocks of stone that were dropped on their frail timbers, or were filled with flames and smoke by the Greek fire that was poured upon them. The rapidity with which the best galleys were sunk or disabled appalled the bravest; and at last the Turks shrank from close combat on an element where they saw that valor without experience was of no avail. The Christian ships, in the mean time, held steadily on their course, under all the canvas their masts could carry, until they rounded the point of St. Demetrius and entered the port, where the chain was joyfully lowered to admit them. The young Sultan, on seeing the defeat of his galleys, lost all command over his temper. He could hardly be restrained from urging his horse into the sea, and in his frantic passion heaped every term of abuse and insult on his naval officers. He even talked of ordering his admiral, Baltaoghlu, to be impaled on the spot; but the janizaries present compelled even Mahomet to restrain his vengeance. This check revealed to Mahomet the extent of the danger to which his naval force was exposed should either the Genoese or Venetians send a powerful fleet to the assistance of the emperor Constantine. This naval discomfiture was also attended by some disasters on shore. The monster cannon burst before it had produced any serious impression on the walls. Its loss, however, was soon replaced; but the Ottoman army was repulsed in a general attack. An immense tower of timber, mounted on many wheels, and constructed on the model used in sieges from the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans, was dragged up to the edge of the ditch. Under its cover, workmen were incessantly employed throwing materials into the ditch to enable the tower itself to approach the walls, while the fire of several guns and the operations of a corps of miners ruined the opposite tower of the city. The progress of the besiegers induced them to risk an assault, in which they were repulsed, after a hard-fought struggle: and during the following night John Justiniani made a great sortie, during which his workmen cleared the ditch, and his soldiers filled the tower with combustible materials and burned it to the ground. Its exterior, having been protected by a triple covering of buffalo-hides, was found to be impervious even to Greek fire. In order to counteract the effect of these defeats, which had depressed the courage of the Ottomans and raised the spirits of the Greeks, the Sultan resolved to adopt measures for placing his fleet in security, and facilitating the communication between the army before Constantinople and the naval camp on the Bosporus. The Venetians had recently transported a number of their galleys from the river Adige overland to the lake of Garda. This exploit, which had been loudly celebrated at the time, suggested to the Sultan the idea of transporting a number of vessels from the Bosporus into the port of Constantinople, where the smooth water and the command of the shore would secure to his ships the mastery of the upper half of that extensive harbor. The distance over which it was necessary to transport the galleys was only five miles, but a steep hill presented a formidable obstacle to the undertaking. Mahomet, nevertheless, having witnessed the transport of his monster cannon over rivers and hills, was persuaded that his engineers would find no difficulty in moving his ships overland. A road was accordingly made, and laid with strong planks and wooden rails, which were plastered over with tallow. It extended from the station occupied by the fleet at Dolma Baktshe to the summit of the ridge near the Cemetery of Pera. On this inclined plane, with the assistance of windlasses and numerous yokes of oxen, the vessels were hauled up one after the other to the summit of the hill, from whence they descended with difficulty to the point beyond the present arsenal, where they were launched into the port under the protection of batteries prepared for their defence. Historians, wishing to give a dramatic character to their pages, have attributed marvellous difficulties to this daring exploit. It was a well-conceived and well-executed undertaking, for a division of the Ottoman fleet was conveyed into the port in a single night, where the Greeks, at the dawn of day, were amazed at beholding the hostile ships safe under the protection of inexpugnable batteries. To establish an easy and rapid communication between the naval camp on the Bosporus and the army before Constantinople, Mahomet ordered a floating bridge to be constructed across the port, from the point near the old foundry, on the side of Galata, to that near the angle of the city walls, near Haivan Serai, the ancient amphitheatre. The roadway of this bridge was supported on the enormous jars used for storing oil and wine, numbers of which were easily collected in the suburbs of Galata. These jars, when bound together with their mouth inverted in the water, formed admirable pontoons. Artillery was mounted on this bridge and the galleys were brought up to the city walls, which were now assailed from a quarter hitherto safe from attack. The Genoese under Justiniani on one occasion, and the Venetians on another, were defeated in their attempts to burn the Turkish fleet and destroy the bridge. The fire of the artillery rendered the attacks of the Italians abortive, and their failure afforded a decisive proof that the defence of the city was becoming desperate. To avoid the admission of their inferiority in force, the defeated parties threw the blame on one another, and their dissensions became so violent that the Emperor could hardly appease the quarrel. During all the labors of the besiegers in other quarters, the approaches were pushed vigorously forward against the land wall. Though the activity in other and more novel operations might attract greater attention, the industry of those engaged in filling up the ditch, and the fire of the breaching batteries, never relaxed. Though all attempts to cross the ditch at the gate of St. Romanus were long baffled by the Greeks, and the mining operations at Blachern were discovered and defeated by Johann Grant, still the superior number and indefatigable perseverance of the Ottomans at last filled up the ditch, and the fire of their guns ruined the walls. A visible change in the state of the fortifications encouraged the assailants, and showed the besieged that the enemy was gradually gaining a decided advantage. At the commencement of the siege, the Ottoman engineers had displayed so little knowledge of the mode of using artillery to effect a breach that a Hungarian envoy from John Hunyady,[1] who visited Mahomet's camp, ridiculed the idea of their producing any effect on the walls of Constantinople. This stranger was said to have taught the Turks to fire in volleys, and to cut the wall in rectangular sections, in order to produce a practicable breach. The batteries at length effected a practicable breach at the gate of St. Romanus. Before issuing his final orders for the assault, Mahomet II summoned the Emperor to surrender the city, and offered him a considerable appanage as a vassal of the Porte elsewhere. Constantine rejected the insulting offer, and the Sultan prepared to take Constantinople by storm. Four days were employed in the Ottoman camp making all the arrangements necessary for a simultaneous attack by land and sea along the whole line of the fortifications, from the modern quarter of Phanar to the Golden Gate. The Greeks and Latins within the walls were not less active in their exertions to meet the crisis. The Latins were sustained by their habits of military discipline, and their experiences of the chances of war; the Greeks placed great confidence in some popular prophecies which foretold the ultimate defeat of the Turks. They felt a pious conviction that the imperial and orthodox city would never fall into the hands of infidels. But the emperor Constantine was deceived by no vain hopes. He knew that human prudence and valor could do no more than had been done to retard the progress of the besiegers. Time had been gained, but the Greeks showed no disposition to fight for a heretical emperor, and no succors arrived from the Pope and the western princes. Constantine could now only hope to prolong the defence for a few hours, and, when the city fell, to bring his own life to a glorious termination by dying on the breach. On the night before the assault, the Emperor rode round to all the posts occupied by the garrison, and encouraged the troops to expect victory by his cheerful demeanor. He then visited the Church of St. Sophia, already deserted by the orthodox, where with his attendants he partook of the holy sacrament according to the Latin form. He returned for a short time to the imperial palace, and, on quitting it to take his station at the great breach, he was so overcome by the certainty that he should never again behold those present that he turned to the members of his household, many of whom had been the companions of his youth, and solemnly asked them to pardon every offence he had ever given them. Tears burst from all present as Constantine mounted his horse and rode slowly forward to meet his fate. The contrast between the city of the Christians and the camp of the Mahometans was not encouraging. Within the walls an emperor in the decline of life commanded a small and disunited force, with twenty leaders under his orders, each at the head of an almost independent band of Greek, Genoese, Venetian, or Catalan soldiers. So slight was the tie which bound these various chiefs together that, even when they were preparing for the final assault, the Emperor was obliged to use all his authority and personal influence to prevent Justiniani and the grand duke Notaras from coming to blows. Justiniani demanded to be supplied with some additional guns for the defence of the great breach, but Notaras, who had the official control over the artillery, peremptorily refused the demand. In the Turkish camp, on the other hand, perfect unity prevailed, and a young, ardent, and able sovereign concentrated in his hands the most despotic authority over a numerous and well-disciplined army. To excite the energy of that army to the highest pitch of enthusiasm, the Sultan proclaimed to his troops that he granted them the whole plunder of Constantinople, reserving to himself only the public buildings. The day of the battle was regarded as a religious festival in the Ottoman camp, and on the previous night lamps were hung out before every tent, and fires were kindled on every eminence in or near the lines. Thousands of lanterns were suspended from the flagstaffs of the batteries and from the masts and yards of the ships, and were reflected in the waters of the Propontis, the Golden Horn, and the Bosporus. The whole Ottoman encampment was resplendent with the blaze of this illumination. Yet a deep silence prevailed during the whole night, except when the musical cadence of the solemn chant of the call to prayers showed the Greeks the immense numbers and the strict discipline of the host. Before the dawn of day, on the morning of May 29, 1453, the signal was given for the attack. Column after column marched forward, and took up its ground before the portion of the wall it was ordered to assail. The galleys, fitted with towers and scaling-platforms, advanced against the fortifications of the port protected by the guns on the bridge. But the principal attack was directed against the breach at the gate of St. Romanus, where two flanking towers had fallen into the ditch and opened a passage into the interior of the city. The gate of Charsias and the quarter of Blachern were also assailed by chosen regiments of janizaries in overwhelming numbers. The attack was made with daring courage, but for more than two hours every point was successfully defended. In the port, the Italian and Greek ships opposed the Turkish galleys so effectually that the final result appeared to favor the besieged. But on the land side, one column of troops followed the other in an incessant stream. The moment a division fell back from the assault, new battalions occupied its place. The valor of the besieged was for some time successful, but they were at last fatigued by their exertions, and their scanty numbers were weakened by wounds and death. Unfortunately, Justiniani, the protostrator or marshal of the army, and the ablest officer in the place, received a wound which induced him to retire on board his ship to have it dressed. Until that moment he and the Emperor had defended the great breach with advantage; but after his retreat Sagan Pacha, observing that the energy of the defenders was relaxed, excited the bravest of the janizaries to mount to the assault. A chosen company led by Hasan of Ulubad, a man of gigantic frame, first crossed the ruins of the wall, and their leader gained the summit of the dilapidated tower which flanked the breach. The defenders, headed by the emperor Constantine, made a desperate resistance. Hasan and many of his followers were slain, but the janizaries had secured the vantage-ground, and, fresh troops pouring in to their aid, they surrounded the defenders of the breach. The Emperor fell amid a heap of slain, and a column of janizaries rushed into Constantinople over his lifeless body. About the same time another corps of the Ottomans forced an entrance into the city at the gate of the Circus, which had been left almost without defence, for the besieged were not sufficiently numerous to guard the whole line of the fortifications, and their best troops were drawn to the points where the attacks were fiercest. The corps that forced the gate of the Circus took the defenders of the gate of Charsias in the rear, and overpowered all resistance in the quarter of Blachern. Several gates were now thrown open, and the army entered Constantinople at several points. The cry that the enemy had stormed the walls preceded their march. Senators, priests, monks, and nuns, men, women, and children, all rushed to seek safety in St. Sophia's. A prediction current among the Greeks flattered them with the vain hope that an angel would descend from heaven and destroy the Mahometans, in order to reveal the extent of God's love for the orthodox. St. Sophia's, which for some time they had forsaken as a spot profaned by the Emperor's attempt at a union of the Christian world, was again revered as the sanctuary of orthodoxy, and was crowded with the flower of the Greek nation, confident of a miraculous interposition in favor of their national pride and ecclesiastical prejudices. The besiegers, when they first entered the city, fearing lest they might encounter serious resistance in the narrow streets, put every soul they encountered to the sword. But as soon as they were fully aware of the small number of the garrison, and the impossibility of any further opposition, they began to make prisoners. At length they reached St. Sophia's, and, rushing into that magnificent temple, which could with ease contain twenty thousand persons, they performed deeds of plunder and violence not unlike the scenes which the crusaders had enacted in the same spot in 1204. The men, women, and children who had sought safety in the building were divided among the soldiers as slaves, without any reference to their rank or respect for their ties of blood, and hurried off to the camp, or placed under the guard of comrades, who formed a joint alliance for the security of their plunder. The ecclesiastical ornaments and church plate were poor indeed when compared with the immense riches of the Byzantine cathedral in the time of the crusaders; but whatever was movable was immediately divided among the soldiers with such celerity that the mighty temple soon presented few traces of having been a Christian church. While one division of the victorious army was engaged in plundering the southern side of the city, from the gate of St. Romanus to the Church of St. Sophia, another, turning to the port, made itself master of the warehouses that were filled with merchandise, and surrounded the Greek troops under the grand duke Notaras. The Greeks were easily subdued, and Notaras surrendered himself a prisoner. About midday the Turks were in possession of the whole city, and Mahomet II entered his new capital at the gate of St. Romanus, riding triumphantly past the body of the emperor Constantine, which lay concealed among the slain in the breach he had defended. The Sultan rode straight to the Church of St. Sophia, where he gave the necessary orders for the preservation of all the public buildings. Even during the license of the sack, the severe education and grave character of the Ottomans exerted a powerful influence on their conduct, and on this occasion there was no example of the wanton destruction and wilful conflagrations that had signalized the Latin conquest. To convince the Greeks that their orthodox empire was extinct, Mahomet ordered a mollah to ascend the bema and address a sermon to the Mussulmans, announcing that St. Sophia was now a mosque set apart for the prayers of the true believers. To put an end to all doubts concerning the death of the Emperor, he ordered Constantine's head to be brought and exposed to the people of the capital, from whence it was afterward sent as a trophy to be seen by the Greeks of the principal cities in the Ottoman empire. [Footnote 1: The great Hungarian leader, who long fought against the Turks, and signally defeated them at Belgrad in 1456.--ED.] WARS OF THE ROSES DEATH OF RICHARD III AT BOSWORTH A.D. 1455-1485 DAVID HUME Historians themselves declare that no part of English history since the Norman Conquest is so obscure and uncertain as that of the Wars of the Roses. "All we can distinguish with certainty through the deep cloud which covers that period is a scene of horror and bloodshed, savage manners, arbitrary executions and treacheries, dishonorable conduct in all parties." These brutal aspects of that horrid drama of history, running through more than the course of a full generation, are depicted for the mimic stage by Shakespeare, in _Henry VI and Richard III_, with a vividness that brings before us the ghastly realities of the historic theatre itself, and with such realization of the rude forces at work as calls for all the poet's refining art to make their representation tolerable to modern spectators. But the historians, while consciously failing to discover the hidden motives of intrigue and treachery which throughout actuated the parties to this fearful struggle of Englishmen with Englishmen, have nevertheless recorded for us its main outlines and leading episodes with sufficient clearness. We are enabled to see England as she was in that great transition of her "making"--in the throes of civil strife, again to be endured two centuries later--through which she must pass before she could become a "land of settled government." During the weak reign of Henry VI, France was delivered from English rule, mainly through the heroism of Jeanne d'Arc. In 1450 the commons rose against King Henry and the house of Lancaster, to which he belonged, and declared in favor of the house of York--these houses having already come into serious rivalry for the supreme power. The disasters in France strengthened the Yorkists, and brought their representative, Richard, Duke of York, to the front, with armed forces to support his claims. In 1452 he marched upon London, demanding the removal of the Duke of Somerset, Henry's chief minister, but a conflict was temporarily averted. When, in 1454, King Henry became insane, the Duke of York was made protector by parliament. He might now have seized the crown, but his forbearance was taken advantage of by the rival party, and "proved the source of all those furious wars which ensued"--the Wars of the Roses, beginning with the first battle of St. Albans, in 1455, and ending with the death of Richard III at Bosworth Field, in 1485. The wars were signalized by twelve pitched battles; they cost the lives of about eighty princes of the blood; and during their ravages the ancient nobility of England was almost annihilated. Yet in these fierce wars comparatively little damage was done to the general population or to industry and trade. The wars derived their name from the fact that the partisans of the house of Lancaster took the red rose as their badge, and those of York chose the white rose. The enemies of the Duke of York soon found it in their power to make advantage of his excessive caution. Henry being so far recovered from his distemper as to carry the appearance of exercising the royal power, they moved him to resume his authority, to annul the protectorship of the Duke, and to commit the administration into the hands of Somerset (1455). Richard, sensible of the dangers which might attend his former acceptance of the parliamentary commission should he submit to the annulling of it, levied an army, but still without advancing any pretensions to the crown. He complained only of the King's ministers, and demanded a reformation of the government. A battle was fought at St. Albans, in which the Yorkists were superior, and, without suffering any material loss, slew about five thousand of their enemies, among whom were the Duke of Somerset, the Earl of Northumberland, the Earl of Stafford, eldest son of the Duke of Buckingham, Lord Clifford, and many other persons of distinction. The King himself fell into the hands of the Duke of York, who treated him with great respect and tenderness; he was only obliged--which he regarded as no hardship--to commit the whole authority of the crown into the hands of his rival. Affairs did not immediately proceed to the last extremities; the nation was kept some time in suspense; the vigor and spirit of Queen Margaret,[1] supporting her small power, still proved a balance to the great authority of Richard, which was checked by his irresolute temper. A parliament, which was soon after assembled, plainly discovered, by the contrariety of their proceedings, the contrariety of the motives by which they were actuated. They granted the Yorkists a general indemnity; and they restored the protectorship to the Duke, but at the same time they renewed their oaths of fealty to Henry, and fixed the continuance of the protectorship to the majority of his son Edward. It was not found difficult to wrest power from hands so little tenacious as those of the Duke of York. Margaret, availing herself of that Prince's absence, produced her husband before the House of Lords; and as his state of health permitted him at that time to act his part with some tolerable decency, he declared his intentions of resuming the government, and of putting an end to Richard's authority. The House of Lords assented to Henry's proposal, and the King was declared to be reinstated. Even the Duke of York acquiesced in this irregular act of the peers, and no disturbance ensued. But that Prince's claim to the crown was too well known, and the steps which he had taken to promote it were too evident ever to allow sincere trust and confidence to have place between the parties. The court retired to Coventry, and invited the Duke of York and the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick to attend the King's person. When they were on the road, they received intelligence that designs were formed against their liberties and lives. They immediately separated themselves; Richard withdrew to his castle of Wigmore; Salisbury to Middleham, in Yorkshire; and Warwick to his government of Calais, which had been committed to him after the battle of St. Albans, and which, as it gave him the command of the only regular military force maintained by England, was of the utmost importance in the present juncture. Still, men of peaceable dispositions, and among the rest Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury, thought it not too late to interpose with their good offices in order to prevent that effusion of blood with which the kingdom was threatened; and the awe in which each party stood of the other rendered the mediation for some time successful. It was agreed that all the great leaders on both sides should meet in London and be solemnly reconciled. The Duke of York and his partisans came thither with numerous retinues, and took up their quarters near each other for mutual security. The leaders of the Lancastrian party used the same precaution. The mayor, at the head of five thousand men, kept a strict watch night and day, and was extremely vigilant in maintaining peace between them. Terms were adjusted, which removed not the ground of difference. An outward reconciliation only was procured; and in order to notify this accord to the whole people, a solemn procession to St. Paul's was appointed, where the Duke of York led Queen Margaret, and a leader of one party marched hand in hand with a leader of the opposite. The less real cordiality prevailed, the more were the exterior demonstrations of amity redoubled. But it was evident that a contest for a crown could not thus be peaceably accommodated, that each party watched only for an opportunity of subverting the other, and that much blood must yet be spilt ere the nation could be restored to perfect tranquillity or enjoy a settled and established government. Even the smallest accident, without any formed design, was sufficient, in the present disposition of men's minds, to dissolve the seeming harmony between the parties; and, had the intentions of the leaders been ever so amicable, they would have found it difficult to restrain the animosity of their followers. One of the King's retinue insulted one of the Earl of Warwick's; their companions on both sides took part in the quarrel; a fierce combat ensued; the Earl apprehended his life to be aimed at; he fled to his government of Calais; and both parties, in every county of England, openly made preparations for deciding the contest by war and arms. The Earl of Salisbury, marching to join the Duke of York, was overtaken at Blore Heath, on the borders of Staffordshire, by Lord Audley, who commanded much superior forces; and a small rivulet with steep banks ran between the armies. Salisbury here supplied his defect in numbers by stratagem a refinement of which there occur few instances in the English civil wars, where a headlong courage, more than military conduct, is commonly to be remarked. He feigned a retreat, and allured Audley to follow him with precipitation; but when the van of the royal army had passed the brook, Salisbury suddenly turned upon them, and partly by the surprise, partly by the division of the enemy's forces, put this body to rout; the example of flight was followed by the rest of the army; and Salisbury, obtaining a complete victory, reached the general rendezvous of the Yorkists at Ludlow. The Earl of Warwick brought over to this rendezvous a choice body of veterans from Calais, on whom, it was thought, the fortune of the war would much depend; but this reënforcement occasioned, in the issue, the immediate ruin of the Duke of York's party. When the royal army approached, and a general action was every hour expected, Sir Andrew Trollop, who commanded the veterans, deserted to the King in the night-time; and the Yorkists were so dismayed at this instance of treachery, which made every man suspicious of his fellow, that they separated next day without striking a blow; the Duke fled to Ireland; the Earl of Warwick, attended by many of the other leaders, escaped to Calais, where his great popularity among all orders of men, particularly among the military, soon drew to him partisans, and rendered his power very formidable. The friends of the house of York in England kept themselves everywhere in readiness to rise on the first summons from their leaders. After meeting with some successes at sea, Warwick landed in Kent, with the Earl of Salisbury and the Earl of March, eldest son of the Duke of York; and being met by the Primate, by Lord Cobham, and other persons of distinction, he marched, amid the acclamations of the people, to London. The city immediately opened its gates to him; and, his troops increasing on every day's march, he soon found himself in a condition to face the royal army, which hastened from Coventry to attack him. The battle was fought at Northampton, and was soon decided against the royalists by the infidelity of Lord Grey of Ruthin, who, commanding Henry's van, deserted to the enemy during the heat of action, and spread a consternation through the troops. The Duke of Buckingham, the Earl of Shrewsbury, the Lords Beaumont and Egremont, and Sir William Lucie were killed in the action or pursuit; the slaughter fell chiefly on the gentry and nobility; the common people were spared by orders of the Earls of Warwick and March. Henry himself, that empty shadow of a king, was again taken prisoner; and as the innocence and simplicity of his manners, which bore the appearance of sanctity, had procured him the tender regard of the people, the Earl of Warwick and the other leaders took care to distinguish themselves by their respectful demeanor toward him. A parliament was summoned in the King's name, and met at Westminster, where the Duke soon after appeared from Ireland. This Prince had never hitherto advanced openly any claim to the crown. He advanced toward the throne; and being met by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who asked him whether he had yet paid his respects to the King, he replied that he knew of none to whom he owed that title. He then stood near the throne, and, addressing himself to the House of Peers, he gave them a deduction of his title by descent, and pleaded his cause before them. The lords remained in suspense, and no one ventured to utter a word. Richard was much disappointed at their silence; but, desiring them to reflect on what he had proposed to them, he departed the house. The peers, after deliberating, declared the title of the duke of York to be certain and indefeasible; but in consideration that Henry had enjoyed the crown, without dispute or controversy, during the course of thirty-eight years, they determined that he should continue to possess the title and dignity during the remainder of his life; that the administration of the government, meanwhile, should remain with Richard; that he should be acknowledged the true and lawful heir of the monarchy; that everyone should swear to maintain his succession, and it should be treason to attempt his life. The act thus passed with the unanimous consent of the whole legislative body. The Duke, apprehending his chief danger to arise from Queen Margaret, sought a pretence for banishing her the kingdom; he sent her in the King's name a summons to come immediately to London, intending, in case of her disobedience, to proceed to extremities against her. But the Queen needed not this menace to excite her activity in defending the rights of her family. After the defeat of Northampton she had fled with her infant son to Durham, thence to Scotland; but soon returning she applied to the northern barons, and employed every motive to procure their assistance. Her affability, insinuation, and address--qualities in which she excelled--her caresses, her promises, wrought a powerful effect on everyone who approached her; the admiration of her great qualities was succeeded by compassion toward her helpless condition; the nobility of that quarter, who regarded themselves as the most warlike in the kingdom, were moved by indignation to find the southern barons pretend to dispose of the crown and settle the government. And, that they might allure the people to their standard, they promised them the spoils of all the provinces on the other side of the Trent. By these means the Queen had collected an army twenty thousand strong, with a celerity which was neither expected by her friends nor apprehended by her enemies. The Duke of York, informed of her appearance in the north, hastened thither with a body of five thousand men, to suppress, as he imagined, the beginnings of an insurrection; when, on his arrival at Wakefield, he found himself so much outnumbered by the enemy. He threw himself into Sandal castle, which was situated in the neighborhood; and he was advised by the Earl of Salisbury and other prudent counsellors to remain in that fortress till his son, the Earl of March, who was levying forces in the borders of Wales, could advance to his assistance. But the Duke, though deficient in political courage, possessed personal bravery in an eminent degree; and notwithstanding his wisdom and experience, he thought that he should be forever disgraced if, by taking shelter behind walls, he should for a moment resign the victory to a woman. He descended into the plain and offered battle to the enemy, which was instantly accepted. The great inequality of numbers was sufficient alone to decide the victory; but the Queen, by sending a detachment, who fell on the back of the Duke's army, rendered her advantage still more certain and undisputed. The Duke himself was killed in the action; and as his body was found among the slain, the head was cut off by Margaret's orders and fixed on the gates of York, with a paper crown upon it, in derision of his pretended title. The Queen, after this important victory, divided her army. She sent the smaller division, under Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, half brother to the King, against Edward the new Duke of York. She herself marched with the larger division toward London, where the Earl of Warwick had been left with the command of the Yorkists. Pembroke was defeated by Edward at Mortimer's Cross, in Herefordshire, his army was dispersed, and he himself escaped by flight. Margaret compensated this defeat by a victory which she obtained over the Earl of Warwick. That nobleman, on the approach of the Lancastrians, led out his army, reënforced by a strong body of the Londoners, who were affectionate to his cause; and he gave battle to the Queen at St. Albans. While the armies were warmly engaged, Lovelace, who commanded a considerable body of the Yorkists, withdrew from the combat; and this treacherous conduct decided the victory in favor of the Queen. The person of the King fell again into the hands of his own party. Lord Bonville, to whose care he had been intrusted by the Yorkists, remained with him after the defeat, on assurances of pardon given him by Henry; but Margaret, regardless of her husband's promise, immediately ordered the head of that nobleman to be struck off by the executioner. Sir Thomas Kiriel, a brave warrior, who had signalized himself in the French wars, was treated in the same manner. The Queen made no great advantage of this victory. Young Edward advanced upon her from the other side, and, collecting the remains of Warwick's army, was soon in a condition of giving her battle with superior forces. She found it necessary to retreat to the north. Edward entered the capital amid the acclamations of the citizens, and immediately opened a new scene to his party. This Prince, in the bloom of youth, remarkable for the beauty of his person, for his bravery, his activity, his affability, and every popular quality, found himself so much possessed of public favor that, elated with the spirit natural to his age, he resolved no longer to confine himself within those narrow limits which his father had prescribed to himself, and which had been found by experience so prejudicial to his cause. He determined to assume the name and dignity of king, to insist openly on his claim, and thenceforth to treat the opposite party as traitors and rebels to his lawful authority. His army was ordered to assemble in St. John's Fields, and great numbers of people surrounded them. They were asked whether they would have Henry of Lancaster for king. They unanimously exclaimed against the proposal It was then demanded whether they would accept of Edward, eldest son of the late Duke of York. They expressed their assent by loud and joyful acclamations. A great number of bishops, lords, magistrates, and other persons of distinction were next assembled at Baynard's castle, who ratified the popular election; and the new king was on the subsequent day proclaimed in London by the title of Edward IV. In this manner ended the reign of Henry VI, a monarch who while in his cradle had been proclaimed king both of France and England, and who began his life with the most splendid prospects that any prince in Europe had ever enjoyed. Young Edward, now in his twentieth year, was bold, active, and enterprising. The very commencement of his reign gave symptoms of his sanguinary disposition. The scaffold, as well as the field, incessantly streamed with the noblest blood of England. Queen Margaret had prudently retired northward among her own partisans, and she was able in a few days to assemble an army sixty thousand strong in Yorkshire. The King and the Earl of Warwick hastened, with an army of forty thousand men, to check her progress; and when they reached Pomfret they despatched a body of troops, under the command of Lord Fitzwalter, to secure the passage of Ferrybridge over the river Are, which lay between them and the enemy. Fitzwalter took possession of the post assigned him, but was not able to maintain it against Lord Clifford, who attacked him with superior numbers. The Yorkists were chased back with great slaughter, and Lord Fitzwalter himself was slain in the action. The Earl of Warwick, dreading the consequences of this disaster, at a time when a decisive action was every hour expected, immediately ordered his horse to be brought him, which he stabbed before the whole army, and, kissing the hilt of his sword, swore that he was determined to share the fate of the meanest soldier. A proclamation was at the same time issued, giving to everyone full liberty to retire, but menacing the severest punishment to those who should discover any symptoms of cowardice in the ensuing battle. Lord Falconberg was sent to recover the post which had been lost. He passed the river some miles above Ferrybridge, and, falling unexpectedly on Lord Clifford, revenged the former disaster by the defeat of the party and the death of their leader. The hostile armies met at Touton, and a fierce and bloody battle ensued. While the Yorkists were advancing to the charge, there happened a great fall of snow, which, driving full in the faces of their enemies, blinded them; and this advantage was improved by a stratagem of Lord Falconberg's. That nobleman ordered some infantry to advance before the line, and, after having sent a volley of flight arrows (as they were called) amid the enemy, immediately to retire. The Lancastrians, imagining that they were gotten within reach of the opposite army, discharged all their arrows, which thus fell short of the Yorkists. After the quivers of the enemy were emptied, Edward advanced his line and did execution with impunity on the dismayed Lancastrians. The bow, however, was soon laid aside, and the sword decided the combat, which ended in a total victory on the side of the Yorkists. Edward issued orders to give no quarter. The routed army was pursued to Tadcaster with great bloodshed and confusion, and above thirty-six thousand men are computed to have fallen in the battle and pursuit. Henry and Margaret had remained at York during the action; but, learning the defeat of their army, they fled into Scotland. Scotland had never exerted itself to take advantage either of the wars which England carried on with France or of the civil commotions between the contending families. James I avoided all hostilities with foreign nations. After the murder of that excellent Prince, the minority of his son and successor, James II, and the distractions incident to it, retained the Scots in the same state of neutrality. But when the quarrel commenced between the houses of York and Lancaster, and became absolutely incurable but by the total extinction of one party, James, who had now risen to man's estate, was tempted to seize the opportunity, and he endeavored to recover those places which the English had formerly conquered from his ancestors. He laid siege to the castle of Roxburghe in 1460, and had provided himself with a small train of artillery for that enterprise; but his cannon was so ill-framed that one of them burst as he was firing it, and put an end to his life in the flower of his age. His son and successor, James III, was also a minor on his accession; the usual distractions ensued in the government: the Queen Dowager, Anne of Gueldres, aspired to the regency; the family of Douglas opposed her pretensions; and Queen Margaret, when she fled into Scotland, found there a people little less divided by faction than those by whom she had been expelled. Though she pleaded the connections between the royal family of Scotland and the house of Lancaster, she could engage the Scottish council to go no further than to express their good wishes in her favor; but on her offer to deliver to them immediately the important fortress of Berwick, and to contract her son in marriage with a sister of King James, she found a better reception; and the Scots promised the assistance of their arms to reinstate her family upon the throne. But Edward did not pursue the fugitive King and Queen into their retreat; he returned to London, where a parliament was summoned for settling the government. On the meeting of this assembly, Edward found the good effects of his vigorous measure in assuming the crown, as well as of his victory at Touton, by which he had secured it. The parliament no longer hesitated between the two families, or proposed any of those ambiguous decisions which could only serve to perpetuate and to inflame the animosities of party. They recognized the title of Edward, by hereditary descent, through the family of Mortimer, and declared that he was king by right, from the death of his father, who had also the same lawful title; and that he was in possession of the crown from the day that he assumed the government, tendered to him by the acclamations of the people. They reinstated the King in all the possessions which had belonged to the crown at the pretended deposition of Richard II. But the new establishment seemed precarious and uncertain, not only from the domestic discontents of the people, but from the efforts of foreign powers. Louis, the eleventh of the name, had succeeded to his father, Charles, in 1460, and was led from the obvious motives of national interest to feed the flames of civil discord among such dangerous neighbors by giving support to the weaker party. But the intriguing and politic genius of this Prince was here checked by itself: having attempted to subdue the independent spirit of his own vassals, he had excited such an opposition at home as prevented him from making all the advantage, which the opportunity afforded, of the dissensions among the English. He sent, however, a small body to Henry's assistance under Varenne, seneschal of Normandy, 1462, who landed in Northumberland and got possession of the castle of Alnwick; but as the indefatigable Margaret went in person to France, where she solicited larger supplies, and promised Louis to deliver up Calais if her family should by his means be restored to the throne of England, he was induced to send along with her a body of two thousand men-at-arms, which enabled her to take the field and to make an inroad into England, 1464. Though reënforced by a numerous train of adventurers from Scotland, and by many partisans of the family of Lancaster, she received a check at Hedgeley Moor from Lord Montacute, or Montagu, brother to the Earl of Warwick and warden of the east marches between Scotland and England. Montagu was so encouraged with this success that, while a numerous reinforcement was on its march to join him by orders from Edward, he yet ventured, with his own troops alone, to attack the Lancastrians at Hexham; and he obtained a complete victory over them. The Duke of Somerset, the Lords Roos and Hungerford, were taken in the pursuit, and immediately beheaded by martial law at Hexham. Summary justice was in like manner executed at Newcastle on Sir Humphrey Nevil, and several other gentlemen. All those who were spared in the field suffered on the scaffold, and the utter extermination of their adversaries was now become the plain object of the York party; a conduct which received but too plausible an apology from the preceding practice of the Lancastrians. The fate of the unfortunate royal family, after this defeat, was singular. Margaret, flying with her son into a forest, where she endeavored to conceal herself, was beset, during the darkness of the night, by robbers, who, either ignorant or regardless of her quality, despoiled her of her rings and jewels, and treated her with the utmost indignity. The partition of this rich booty raised a quarrel among them; and, while their attention was thus engaged, she took the opportunity of making her escape with her son into the thickest of the forest, where she wandered for some time, overspent with hunger and fatigue and sunk with terror and affliction. While in this wretched condition, she saw a robber approach with his naked sword; and, finding that she had no means of escape, she suddenly embraced the resolution of trusting entirely for protection to his faith and generosity. She advanced toward him, and, presenting to him the young Prince, called out to him, "Here my friend, I commit to your care the safety of your King's son." The man, whose humanity and generous spirit had been obscured, not entirely lost, by his vicious course of life, was struck with the singularity of the event, was charmed with the confidence reposed in him, and vowed not only to abstain from all injury against the Princess, but to devote himself entirely to her service. By his means she dwelt some time concealed in the forest, and was at last conducted to the sea-coast, whence she made her escape into Flanders. She passed thence into her father's court, where she lived several years in privacy and retirement. Her husband was not so fortunate or so dexterous in finding the means of escape. Some of his friends took him under their protection and conveyed him into Lancashire, where he remained concealed during a twelvemonth; but he was at last detected, delivered up to Edward, and thrown into the Tower. The safety of his person was owing less to the generosity of his enemies than to the contempt which they had entertained of his courage and his understanding. The imprisonment of Henry, the expulsion of Margaret, the execution and confiscation of all the most eminent Lancastrians, seemed to give full security to Edward's government. But his amorous temper led him into a snare, which proved fatal to his repose and to the stability of his throne. Jaqueline of Luxemburg, Duchess of Bedford, had, after her husband's death, so far sacrificed her ambition to love that she espoused in second marriage Sir Richard Woodeville, a private gentleman, to whom she bore several children, and among the rest Elizabeth, who was remarkable for the grace and beauty of her person, as well as for other amiable accomplishments. This young lady had married Sir John Gray of Groby, by whom she had children; and her husband being slain in the second battle of St. Albans, fighting on the side of Lancaster, and his estate being for that reason confiscated, his widow retired to live with her father, at his seat of Grafton, in Northamptonshire. The King came accidentally to the house after a hunting party, in order to pay a visit to the Duchess of Bedford, and, as the occasion seemed favorable for obtaining some grace from this gallant monarch, the young widow flung herself at his feet, and with many tears entreated him to take pity on her impoverished and distressed children. The sight of so much beauty in affliction strongly affected the amorous Edward, love stole sensibly into his heart under the guise of compassion; and her sorrow, so becoming a virtuous matron, made his esteem and regard quickly correspond to his affection. He raised her from the ground with assurances of favor; he found his passion increase every moment by the conversation of the amiable object; and he was soon reduced, in his turn, to the posture and style of a supplicant at the feet of Elizabeth. But the lady, either averse to dishonorable love from a sense of duty, or perceiving that the impression which she had made was so deep as to give her hopes of obtaining the highest elevation, obstinately refused to gratify his passion; and all the endearments, caresses, and importunities of the young and amiable Edward proved fruitless against her rigid and inflexible virtue. His passion, irritated by opposition and increased by his veneration for such honorable sentiments, carried him at last beyond all bounds of reason, and he offered to share his throne, as well as his heart, with the woman whose beauty of person and dignity of character seemed so well to entitle her to both. The marriage was privately celebrated at Grafton; the secret was carefully kept for some time; no one suspected that so libertine a prince could sacrifice so much to a romantic passion; and there were, in particular, strong reasons which at that time rendered this step, to the highest degree, dangerous and imprudent. The King, desirous to secure his throne, as well by the prospect of issue as by foreign alliances, had, a little before, determined to make application to some neighboring princess; and he had cast his eye on Bona of Savoy, sister to the Queen of France, who, he hoped, would by her marriage insure him the friendship of that power which was alone both able and inclined to give support and assistance to his rival. To render the negotiation more successful, the Earl of Warwick had been despatched to Paris, where the Princess then resided; he had demanded Bona in marriage for the King; his proposals had been accepted; the treaty was fully concluded; and nothing remained but the ratification of the terms agreed on, and the bringing over the Princess to England. But when the secret of Edward's marriage broke out, the haughty Earl, deeming himself affronted, both by being employed in this fruitless negotiation and by being kept a stranger to the King's intentions, who had owed everything to his friendship, immediately returned to England, inflamed with rage and indignation. The influence of passion over so young a man as Edward might have served as an excuse for his imprudent conduct had he deigned to acknowledge his error or had pleaded his weakness as an apology; but his faulty shame or pride prevented him from so much as mentioning the matter to Warwick; and that nobleman was allowed to depart the court, full of the same ill-humor and discontent which he had brought to it. Every incident now tended to widen the breach between the King and this powerful subject. The Queen, who lost not her influence by marriage, was equally solicitous to draw every grace and favor to her own friends and kindred and to exclude those of the Earl, whom she regarded as her mortal enemy. The Earl of Warwick could not suffer with patience the least diminution of that credit which he had long enjoyed, and which he thought he had merited by such important services. Edward also, jealous of that power which had supported him, was well pleased to raise up rivals to the Earl of Warwick; and he justified, by this political view, his extreme partiality to the Queen's kindred. But the nobility of England, envying the sudden growth of the Woodevilles, was more inclined to take part with Warwick's discontent. An extensive and dangerous combination was insensibly formed against Edward and his ministry. While this cloud was gathering at home, Edward endeavored to secure himself against his factious nobility by entering into foreign alliances. But whatever ambitious schemes the King might have built on these alliances, they were soon frustrated by intestine commotions, which engrossed all his attention. These disorders probably arose not immediately from the intrigues of the Earl of Warwick, but from accident, aided by the turbulent spirit of the age, by the general humor of discontent which that popular nobleman had instilled into the nation, and perhaps by some remains of attachment to the house of Lancaster. The hospital of St. Leonard's, near York, had received, from an ancient grant of King Athelstane, a right of levying a thrave of corn upon every ploughland in the county. The country people complained that the revenue of the hospital was no longer expended for the relief of the poor, but was secreted by the managers, and employed to their private purposes. After long repining at the contribution, they refused payment; ecclesiastical and civil censures were issued against them; their goods were distrained, and their persons thrown into jail; till, as their ill-humor daily increased, they rose in arms, fell upon the officers of the hospital, whom they put to the sword, and proceeded in a body, fifteen thousand strong, to the gates of York. Lord Montagu, who commanded in those parts, opposed himself to their progress; and having been so fortunate in a skirmish as to seize Robert Hulderne, their leader, he ordered him immediately to be led to execution, according to the practice of the times. The rebels, however, still continued in arms; and being soon headed by men of greater distinction--Sir Henry Nevil, son of Lord Latimer, and Sir John Coniers--they advanced southward, and began to appear formidable to the Government. Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, was ordered by Edward to march against them at the head of a body of Welshmen; and he was joined by five thousand archers, under the command of Stafford, Earl of Devonshire. But a trivial difference about quarters having begotten an animosity between these two noblemen, the Earl of Devonshire retired with his archers, and left Pembroke alone to encounter the rebels. The two armies approached each other near Banbury, 1469, and Pembroke, having prevailed in a skirmish, and having taken Sir John Nevil prisoner, ordered him immediately to be put to death, without any form of process. This execution enraged without terrifying the rebels; they attacked the Welsh army, routed them, put them to the sword without mercy; and, having seized Pembroke, they took immediate revenge upon him for the death of their leader. The King, imputing this misfortune to the Earl of Devonshire, who had deserted Pembroke, ordered him to be executed in a like summary manner. Soon after there broke out another rebellion. It arose in Lincolnshire, and was headed by Sir Robert Welles. The army of the rebels amounted to thirty thousand men. The King fought a battle with the rebels, defeated them, took Sir Robert Welles and Sir Thomas Launde prisoners, and ordered them immediately to be beheaded. Edward during these transactions had entertained so little jealousy of the Earl of Warwick or the Duke of Clarence that he sent them with commissions of array to levy forces against the rebels; but these malecontents, as soon as they left the court, raised troops in their own name, issued declarations against the Government, and complained of grievances, oppressions, and bad ministers. The unexpected defeat of Welles disconcerted all their measures; and they retired northward into Lancashire, where they expected to be joined by Lord Stanley, who had married the Earl of Warwick's sister. But as that nobleman refused all concurrence with them, and as Lord Montagu also remained quiet in Yorkshire, they were obliged to disband their army and to fly into Devonshire, where they embarked and made sail toward Calais. The King of France received Warwick with the greatest demonstrations of regard, and hoped to make him his instrument in overturning the government of England and reestablishing the house of Lancaster. No animosity was ever greater than that which had long prevailed between that house and the Earl of Warwick. But his present distresses and the entreaties of Louis made him hearken to terms of accommodation; and Margaret being sent for from Angers, where she then resided, an agreement was soon concluded between them. It was stipulated that Warwick should espouse the cause of Henry and endeavor to restore him to liberty and to reestablish him on the throne; that the administration of the government during the minority of young Edward, Henry's son, should be intrusted conjointly to the Earl of Warwick and the Duke of Clarence; that Prince Edward should marry the Lady Anne, second daughter of that nobleman; and that the crown, in case of the failure of male issue in that Prince, should descend to the Duke of Clarence, to the entire exclusion of King Edward and his posterity. The marriage of Prince Edward with the Lady Anne was immediately celebrated in France. Edward foresaw that it would be easy to dissolve an alliance composed of such discordant parts. For this purpose he sent over a lady of great sagacity and address, who belonged to the train of the Duchess of Clarence, and who, under color of attending her mistress, was empowered to negotiate with the Duke, and to renew the connections of that Prince with his own family. She represented to Clarence that he had unwarily, to his own ruin, become the instrument of Warwick's vengeance, and had thrown himself entirely in the power of his most inveterate enemies; that the mortal injuries which the one royal family had suffered from the other were now past all forgiveness, and no imaginary union of interests could ever suffice to obliterate them; that, even if the leaders were willing to forget past offences, the animosity of their adherents would prevent a sincere coalition of parties, and would, in spite of all temporary and verbal agreements, preserve an eternal opposition of measures between them; and that a prince who deserted his own kindred, and joined the murderers of his father, left himself single, without friends, without protection, and would not, when misfortunes inevitably fell upon him, be so much as entitled to any pity or regard from the rest of mankind. Clarence was only one-and-twenty years of age, and seems to have possessed but a slender capacity; yet could he easily see the force of these reasons; and, upon the promise of forgiveness from his brother, he secretly engaged, on a favorable opportunity, to desert the Earl of Warwick and abandon the Lancastrian party. During this negotiation Warwick was secretly carrying on a correspondence of the same nature with his brother, the Marquis of Montagu, who was, entirely trusted by Edward; and like motives produced a like resolution in that nobleman. The Marquis, also, that he might render the projected blow the more deadly and incurable, resolved on his side to watch a favorable opportunity for committing his perfidy, and still to maintain the appearance of being a zealous adherent to the house of York. After these mutual snares were thus carefully laid, the decision of the quarrel advanced apace. Louis prepared a fleet to escort the Earl of Warwick, and granted him a supply of men and money. The Duke of Burgundy, on the other hand, anxious to support the reigning family in England, fitted out a larger fleet, with which he guarded the Channel. Edward was not sensible of his danger; he made no suitable preparations against the Earl of Warwick; he even said that the Duke might spare himself the trouble of guarding the seas, and that he wished for nothing more than to see Warwick set foot on English ground. The event soon happened of which Edward seemed so desirous. A storm dispersed the Duke of Burgundy's navy, and left the sea open to Warwick. That nobleman seized the opportunity, and, setting sail, quickly landed at Dartmouth with the Duke of Clarence, the earls of Oxford and Pembroke, and a small body of troops, while the King was in the North, engaged in suppressing an insurrection which had been raised by Lord Fitz-Hugh, brother-in-law to Warwick. The scene which ensues resembles more the fiction of a poem or romance than an event in true history. The prodigious popularity of Warwick, the zeal of the Lancastrian party, the spirit of discontent with which many were infected, and the general instability of the English nation occasioned by the late frequent revolutions drew such multitudes to his standard that in a very few days his army amounted to sixty thousand men and was continually increasing. Edward hastened southward to encounter him; and the two armies approached each other near Nottingham, where a decisive action was every hour expected. The rapidity of Warwick's progress had incapacitated the Duke of Clarence from executing his plan of treachery; and the Marquis of Montagu had here the opportunity of striking the first blow. He communicated the design to his adherents, who promised him their concurrence; they took to arms in the night-time, and hastened with loud acclamations to Edward's quarters; the King was alarmed at the noise, and, starting from bed, heard the cry of war usually employed by the Lancastrian party. Lord Hastings, his chamberlain, informed him of the danger, and urged him to make his escape by speedy flight from an army where he had so many concealed enemies and where few seemed zealously attached to his service. He had just time to get on horseback and to hurry with a small retinue to Lynne, in Norfolk, where he luckily found some ships ready, on board of which he instantly embarked. The Earl of Warwick, in eleven days after his first landing, was left entire master of the kingdom. But Edward's danger did not end with his embarkation. The Easterlings or Hanse Towns were then at war both with France and England; and some ships of these people, hovering on the English coast, espied the King's vessels and gave chase to them; nor was it without extreme difficulty that he made his escape into the port of Alkmaar in Holland. Immediately after Edward's flight had left the kingdom at Warwick's disposal, that nobleman hastened to London; and taking Henry from his confinement in the Tower, into which he himself had been the chief cause of throwing him, he proclaimed him King with great solemnity. A parliament was summoned, in the name of that Prince, to meet at Westminster. The treaty with Margaret was here fully executed; Henry was recognized as lawful king; but, his incapacity for government being avowed, the regency was intrusted to Warwick and Clarence till the majority of Prince Edward; and in default of that Prince's issue, Clarence was declared successor to the crown. The ruling party were more sparing in their executions than was usual after any revolution during those violent times. The only victim of distinction was John Tibetot, Earl of Worcester. All the other considerable Yorkists either fled beyond sea or took shelter in sanctuaries, where the ecclesiastical privileges afforded them protection. In London alone it is computed that no less than two thousand persons saved themselves in this manner, and among the rest Edward's Queen, who was there delivered of a son, called by his father's name. Queen Margaret had not yet appeared in England, but, on receiving intelligence of Warwick's success, was preparing with Prince Edward for her journey. All the banished Lancastrians flocked to her, and, among the rest, the Duke of Somerset, son of the Duke beheaded after the battle of Hexham. This nobleman, who had long been regarded as the head of the party, had fled into the Low Countries on the discomfiture of his friends; and as he concealed his name and quality, he had there languished in extreme indigence. But both Somerset and Margaret were detained by contrary winds from reaching England, till a new revolution in that kingdom, no less sudden and surprising than the former, threw them into greater misery than that from which they had just emerged. The Duke of Burgundy equipped four large vessels, in the name of some private merchants, at Terveer, in Zealand; and, causing fourteen ships to be secretly hired from the Easterlings, he delivered this small squadron to Edward, who, receiving also a sum of money from the Duke, immediately set sail for England, 1471. Edward, impatient to take revenge on his enemies and to recover his lost authority, made an attempt to land with his forces, which exceeded not two thousand men, on the coast of Norfolk; but being there repulsed, he sailed northward and disembarked at Ravenspur, in Yorkshire. Finding that the new magistrates, who had been appointed by the Earl of Warwick, kept the people everywhere from joining him, he pretended, and even made oath, that he came, not to challenge the crown, but only the inheritance of the house of York, which of right belonged to him, and that he did not intend to disturb the peace of the kingdom. His partisans every moment flocked to his standard; he was admitted into the city of York; and he was soon in such a situation as gave him hopes of succeeding in all his claims and pretensions. Warwick assembled an army at Leicester, with an intention of meeting and of giving battle to the enemy, but Edward, by taking another road, passed him unmolested and presented himself before the gates of London. Edward's entrance into London made him master not only of that rich and powerful city, but also of the person of Henry, who, destined to be the perpetual sport of fortune, thus fell again into the hands of his enemies. It does not appear that Warwick, during his short administration, which had continued only six months, had been guilty of any unpopular act, or had anywise deserved to lose that general favor with which he had so lately overwhelmed Edward. But this Prince, who was formerly on the defensive, was now the aggressor. Everyone who had been disappointed in the hopes which he had entertained from Warwick's elevation either became a cool friend or an open enemy to that nobleman; and each malecontent, from whatever cause, proved an accession to Edward's army. The King, therefore, found himself in a condition to face the Earl of Warwick, who, being reënforced by his son-in-law the Duke of Clarence, and his brother the Marquis of Montagu, took post at Barnet, in the neighborhood of London. Warwick was now too far advanced to retreat, and, as he rejected with disdain all terms of peace offered him by Edward and Clarence, he was obliged to hazard a general engagement. The battle was fought with obstinacy on both sides. The two armies, in imitation of their leaders, displayed uncommon valor; and the victory remained long undecided between them. But an accident threw the balance to the side of the Yorkists. Edward's cognizance was a sun; that of Warwick a star with rays; and the mistiness of the morning rendering it difficult to distinguish them, the Earl of Oxford, who fought on the side of the Lancastrians, was by mistake attacked by his friends and chased off the field of battle. Warwick, contrary to his more usual practice, engaged that day on foot, resolving to show his army that he meant to share every fortune with them, and he was slain in the thickest of the engagement; and as Edward had issued orders not to give any quarter, a great and undistinguished slaughter was made in the pursuit. There fell about one thousand five hundred on the side of the victors. The same day on which this decisive battle was fought, Queen Margaret and her son, now about eighteen years of age and a young prince of great hopes, landed at Weymouth, supported by a small body of French forces. When this Princess received intelligence of her husband's captivity, and of the defeat and death of the Earl of Warwick, her courage, which had supported her under so many disastrous events, here quite left her; and she immediately foresaw all the dismal consequences of this calamity. At first she took sanctuary in the Abbey of Beaulieu; but being encouraged by men of rank, who exhorted her still to hope for success, she resumed her former spirit and determined to defend to the utmost the ruins of her fallen fortunes. She advanced through the counties of Devon, Somerset, and Gloucester, increasing her army on each day's march, but was at last overtaken by the rapid and expeditious Edward at Tewkesbury, on the banks of the Severn. The Lancastrians were here totally defeated; the Earl of Devonshire and Lord Wenlock were killed in the field; the Duke of Somerset and about twenty other persons of distinction, having taken shelter in a church, were surrounded, dragged out, and immediately beheaded; about three thousand of their side fell in battle; and the army was entirely dispersed. Queen Margaret and her son were taken prisoners and brought to the King, who asked the Prince, after an insulting manner, how he dared to invade his dominions. The young Prince, more mindful of his high birth than of his present fortune, replied that he came thither to claim his just inheritance. The ungenerous Edward, insensible to pity, struck him on the face with his gauntlet; and the Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester, Lord Hastings, and Sir Thomas Gray, taking the blow as a signal for further violence, hurried the Prince into the next apartment and there despatched him with their daggers. Margaret was thrown into the Tower; King Henry expired in that confinement a few days after the battle of Tewkesbury; but whether he died a natural or violent death is uncertain. It is pretended, and was generally believed, that the Duke of Gloucester killed him with his own hands; but the universal odium which that Prince had incurred, perhaps inclined the nation to aggravate his crimes without any sufficient authority. All the hopes of the house of Lancaster seemed now to be utterly extinguished. Every legitimate prince of that family was dead; almost every great leader of the party had perished in battle or on the scaffold; the Earl of Pembroke, who was levying forces in Wales, disbanded his army when he received intelligence of the battle of Tewkesbury, and he fled into Brittany with his nephew, the young Earl of Richmond. The bastard of Falconberg, who had levied some forces, and had advanced to London during Edward's absence, was repulsed; his men deserted him; he was taken prisoner and immediately executed; and peace being now fully restored to the nation, a parliament was summoned, which ratified, as usual, all the acts of the victor, and recognized his legal authority. This Prince, who had been so firm and active and intrepid during the course of adversity, was still unable to resist the allurements of a prosperous fortune; and he devoted himself, as before, to pleasure and amusement, after he became entirely master of his kingdom. But while he was thus indulging himself in pleasure, he was roused from his lethargy by a prospect of foreign conquests. He passed over to Calais, 1475, with an army of one thousand five hundred men-at-arms and fifteen thousand archers, attended by all the chief nobility of England, who, prognosticating future successes from the past, were eager to appear on this great theatre of honor. But all their sanguine hopes were damped when they found, on entering the French territories, that neither did the constable open his gates to them nor the Duke of Burgundy bring them the smallest assistance. That Prince, transported by his ardent temper, had carried all his armies to a great distance, and had employed them in wars on the frontiers of Germany and against the Duke of Lorraine; and though he came in person to Edward, and endeavored to apologize for this breach of treaty, there was no prospect that they would be able this campaign to make a conjunction with the English. This circumstance gave great disgust to the King, and inclined him to hearken to those advances which Louis continually made him for an accommodation. Louis was sensible that the warlike genius of the people would soon render them excellent soldiers, and, far from despising them for their present want of experience, he employed all his art to detach them from the alliance of Burgundy. When Edward sent him a herald to claim the crown of France, and to carry him a defiance in case of refusal, so far from answering to this bravado in like haughty terms, he replied with great temper, and even made the herald a considerable present. He took afterward an opportunity of sending a herald to the English camp, and having given him directions to apply to Lords Stanley and Howard, who, he heard, were friends to peace, he desired the good offices of these noblemen in promoting an accommodation with their master. As Edward was now fallen into like dispositions, a truce was soon concluded on terms more advantageous than honorable to Louis. He stipulated to pay Edward immediately seventy-five thousand crowns, on condition that he should withdraw his army from France, and promised to pay him fifty thousand crowns a year during their joint lives. In order to ratify this treaty, the two monarchs agreed to have a personal interview. Edward and Louis conferred privately together; and having confirmed their friendship, and interchanged many mutual civilities, they soon after parted. As the two armies, after the conclusion of the truce, remained some time in the neighborhood of each other, the English were not only admitted freely into Amiens, where Louis resided, but had also their charges defrayed, and had wine and victuals furnished them in every inn without any payment being demanded. This treaty did very little honor to either of these monarchs. It discovered the imprudence of Edward, who had taken his measures so ill with his allies as to be obliged, after such an expensive armament, to return without making any acquisitions adequate to it. It showed the want of dignity in Louis, who, rather than run the hazard of a battle, agreed to subject his kingdom to a tribunal, and thus acknowledge the superiority of a neighboring prince possessed of less power and territory than himself. But Louis thought that all the advantages of the treaty were on his side, and that he had overreached Edward by sending him out of France on such easy terms. The most honorable part of Louis' treaty with Edward was the stipulation for the liberty of Queen Margaret, who, though after the death of her husband and son she could no longer be formidable to Government, was still detained in custody by Edward. Louis paid fifty thousand crowns for her ransom; and that Princess, who had been so active on the stage of the world, and who had experienced such a variety of fortune, passed the remainder of her days in tranquillity and privacy till the year 1482, when she died; an admirable princess, but more illustrious by her undaunted spirit in adversity than by her moderation in prosperity. She seems neither to have enjoyed the virtues nor been subject to the weaknesses of her sex, and was as much tainted with the ferocity as endowed with the courage of that barbarous age in which she lived. The Duke of Clarence, by all his services in deserting Warwick, had never been able to regain the King's friendship, which he had forfeited by his former confederacy with that nobleman. He was still regarded at court as a man of a dangerous and a fickle character; and the imprudent openness and violence of his temper, though they rendered him much less dangerous, tended extremely to multiply his enemies and to incense them against him. Among others, he had had the misfortune to give displeasure to the Queen herself, as well as to his brother, the Duke of Gloucester, a prince of the deepest policy, of the most unrelenting ambition, and the least scrupulous in the means which he employed for the attainment of his ends. A combination between these potent adversaries being secretly formed against Clarence, it was determined to begin by attacking his friends. He was alarmed when he found acts of tyranny exercised on all around him; but, instead of securing his own life against the present danger by silence and reserve, he was open and loud in justifying the innocence of his friends and in exclaiming against the iniquity of their prosecutors. The King, highly offended with his freedom, or using that pretence against him, committed him to the Tower, 1478, summoned a parliament, and tried him for his life. Clarence was pronounced guilty by the peers. The House of Commons was no less slavish and unjust; they both petitioned for the execution of the Duke and afterward passed a bill of attainder against him. The only favor which the King granted him after his condemnation was to leave him the choice of his death; and he was privately drowned in a butt of malmsey in the Tower--a whimsical choice, which implies that he had an extraordinary passion for that liquor. The Duke left two children by the elder daughter of the Earl of Warwick: a son, created an earl by his grandfather's title, and a daughter, afterward Countess of Salisbury. Both this Prince and Princess were also unfortunate in their end, and died violent deaths--a fate which, for many years, attended almost all the descendants of the royal blood of England. There prevails a report that a chief source of the violent prosecution of the Duke of Clarence, whose name was George, was a current prophecy that the King's son should be murdered by one the initial letter of whose name was G. It is not impossible but, in those ignorant times, such a silly reason might have some influence; but it is more probable that the whole story is the invention of a subsequent period, and founded on the murder of these children by the Duke of Gloucester. All the glories of Edward's reign terminated with the civil wars, where his laurels, too, were extremely sullied with blood, violence, and cruelty. His spirit seems afterward to have been sunk in indolence and pleasure, or his measures were frustrated by imprudence and the want of foresight. While he was making preparations for a French war he was seized with a distemper, of which he expired, 1483, in the forty-second year of his age and the twenty-third of his reign. During the latter years of Edward IV the nation, having in a great measure forgotten the bloody feuds between the two roses, and peaceably acquiescing in the established government, was agitated only by some court intrigues, which, being restrained by the authority of the King, seemed nowise to endanger the public tranquillity. But Edward knew that, though he himself had been able to overawe rival factions, many disorders might arise from their contests during the minority of his son; and he therefore took care, in his last illness, to summon together several of the leaders on both sides, and, by composing their ancient quarrels, to provide as far as possible for the future tranquillity of the government. After expressing his intentions that his brother, the Duke of Gloucester, then absent in the North, should be intrusted with the regency, he recommended to them peace and unanimity during the tender years of his son, and engaged them to embrace each other with all the appearance of the most cordial reconciliation. But this temporary or feigned agreement lasted no longer than the King's life; he had no sooner expired than the jealousies of the parties broke out afresh; and each of them applied, by separate messages, to the Duke of Gloucester, and endeavored to acquire his favor and friendship. This Prince, during his brother's reign, had endeavored to live on good terms with both parties, and his high birth, his extensive abilities, and his great services had enabled him to support himself without falling into a dependence on either. But the new situation of affairs, when the supreme power was devolved upon him, immediately changed his measures, and he secretly determined to preserve no longer that neutrality which he had hitherto maintained. His exorbitant ambition, unrestrained by any principle either of justice or humanity, made him carry his views to the possession of the crown itself, and, as this object could not be attained without the ruin of the Queen and her family, he fell, without hesitation, into concert with the opposite party. But, being sensible that the most profound dissimulation was requisite for effecting his criminal purposes, he redoubled his professions of zeal and attachment to that Princess; and he gained such credit with her as to influence her conduct in a point which, as it was of the utmost importance, was violently disputed between the opposite factions. The young King, at the time of his father's death, resided in the castle of Ludlow, on the borders of Wales, whither he had been sent, that the influence of his presence might overawe the Welsh and restore the tranquillity of that country, which had been disturbed by some late commotions. The Duke of Gloucester, being the nearest male of the royal family capable of exercising the government, seemed entitled, by the customs of the realm, to the office of protector; and the council, not waiting for the consent of parliament, made no scruple of investing him with that high dignity. The general prejudice entertained by the nobility against the Queen and her kindred occasioned this precipitation and irregularity; and no one foresaw any danger to the succession, much less to the lives of the young princes, from a measure so obvious and so natural. Besides that the Duke had hitherto been able to cover, by the most profound dissimulation, his fierce and savage nature, the numerous issue of Edward, together with the two children of Clarence, seemed to be an eternal obstacle to his ambition; and it appeared equally impracticable for him to destroy so many persons possessed of a preferable title and imprudent to exclude them. But a man who had abandoned all principles of honor and humanity was soon carried by his predominant passion beyond the reach of fear or precaution; and Gloucester, having so far succeeded in his views, no longer hesitated in removing the other obstructions which lay between him and the throne. The death of the Earl of Rivers[2], and of other prisoners detained in Pomfret, was first determined; and he easily obtained the consent of the Duke of Buckingham, as well as of Lord Hastings, to this violent and sanguinary measure. Orders were accordingly issued to Sir Richard Ratcliffe, a proper instrument in the hands of this tyrant, to cut off the heads of the prisoners. The Protector then assailed the fidelity of Buckingham by all the arguments capable of swaying a vicious mind, and he easily obtained from him a promise of supporting him in all his enterprises. The Duke of Gloucester, knowing the importance of gaining Lord Hastings, sounded at a distance his sentiments, but found him impregnable in his allegiance and fidelity to the children of Edward, who had ever honored him with his friendship. He saw, therefore, that there were no longer any measures to be kept with him; and he determined to ruin utterly the man whom he despaired of engaging to concur in his usurpation. On the very day when Rivers, Gray, and Vaughan were executed, or rather murdered, at Pomfret, by the advice of Hastings, the Protector summoned a council in the Tower, whither that nobleman, suspecting no design against him, repaired without hesitation. The Duke of Gloucester was capable of committing the most bloody and treacherous murders with the utmost coolness and indifference. On taking his place at the council table he appeared in the easiest and most jovial humor imaginable. He seemed to indulge himself in familiar conversation with the councillors before they should enter on business, and having paid some compliments to Morton, Bishop of Ely, on the good and early strawberries which he raised in his garden at Holborn, he begged the favor of having a dish of them, which that prelate immediately despatched a servant to bring to him. The Protector left the council, as if called away by some other business, but, soon after returning with an angry and inflamed countenance, he asked them what punishment those deserved that had plotted against _his_ life, who was so nearly related to the King, and was intrusted with the administration of government. Hastings replied that they merited the punishment of traitors. "These traitors," cried the Protector, "are the sorceress, my brother's wife, and Jane Shore, his mistress, with others their associates; see to what a condition they have reduced me by their incantations and witchcraft!" Upon which he laid bare his arm, all shrivelled and decayed; but the councillors, who knew that this infirmity had attended him from his birth, looked on each other with amazement; and, above all, Lord Hastings, who, as he had since Edward's death engaged in an intrigue with Jane Shore, was naturally anxious concerning the issue of these extraordinary proceedings. "Certainly, my lord," said he, "if they be guilty of these crimes, they deserve the severest punishment." "And do you reply to me," exclaimed the Protector, "with your _ifs_ and your _ands_? You are the chief abettor of that witch, Shore; you are yourself a traitor; and I swear by St. Paul that I will not dine before your head be brought me." He struck the table with his hand; armed men rushed in at the signal; the councillors were thrown into the utmost consternation; and one of the guards, as if by accident or mistake, aimed a blow with a pole-axe at Lord Stanley, who, aware of the danger, slunk under the table; and though he saved his life, he received a severe wound in the Protector's presence. Hastings was seized, and instantly beheaded on a timber-log which lay in the court of the Tower. Lord Stanley, the Archbishop of York, the Bishop of Ely, and other councillors were committed prisoners in different chambers of the Tower. These acts of violence, exercised against the nearest connections of the late King, prognosticated the severest fate to his defenceless children; and after the murder of Hastings, the Protector no longer made a secret of his intentions to usurp the crown. The licentious life of Edward afforded a pretence for declaring his marriage with the Queen invalid and all his posterity illegitimate. It was also maintained that the act of attainder passed against the Duke of Clarence had virtually incapacitated his children from succeeding to the crown; and, these two families being set aside, the Protector remained the only true and legitimate heir of the house of York. The Protector resolved to make use of another plea, still more shameful and scandalous. His partisans were taught to maintain that both Edward IV and the Duke of Clarence were illegitimate, and that the Duke of Gloucester alone appeared to be the true offspring of the Duke of York. In a few days the Duke of Buckingham went to Baynard's castle, where the Protector then resided, to make him a tender of the crown. Richard refused to appear, and pretended to be apprehensive for his personal safety; a circumstance taken notice of by Buckingham, who observed "that the Prince was ignorant of the whole design." At last he was persuaded to step forth, but he still kept at some distance; and he asked the meaning of the intrusion and importunity. Buckingham told him that the nation was resolved to have him for King. The Protector declared his purpose of maintaining his loyalty to the present sovereign. He was told that the people had determined to have another prince; and if he rejected their unanimous voice, they must look out for one who would be more compliant. This argument was too powerful to be resisted; he was prevailed on to accept of the crown; and he thenceforth acted as legitimate and rightful sovereign. This ridiculous farce was soon after followed by a scene truly tragical--the murder of the two young princes. Richard gave orders to Sir Robert Brakenbury, constable of the Tower, to put his nephews to death, but this gentleman, who had sentiments of honor, refused to have any hand in the infamous office. The tyrant then sent for Sir James Tyrrel, who promised obedience; and he ordered Brakenbury to resign to this gentleman the keys and government of the Tower for one night. Tyrrel, choosing three associates, Slater, Dighton, and Forest, came in the night-time to the door of the chamber where the princes were lodged, and, sending in the assassins, he bade them execute their commission, while he himself stayed without. They found the young princes in bed and fallen into a profound sleep. After suffocating them with the bolster and pillows, they showed their naked bodies to Tyrrel, who ordered them to be buried at the foot of the stairs, deep in the ground, under a heap of stones, 1483. These circumstances were all confessed by the actors in the following reign; they were never punished for the crime, probably because Henry, whose maxims of government were extremely arbitrary, desired to establish it as a principle that the commands of the reigning sovereign ought to justify every enormity in those who paid obedience to them. But there is one circumstance not so easy to be accounted for: it is pretended that Richard, displeased with the indecent manner of burying his nephews, whom he had murdered, gave his chaplain orders to dig up the bodies, and to inter them in consecrated ground; and as the man died soon after, the place of their burial remained unknown, and the bodies could never be found by any search which Henry could make for them. Yet in the reign of Charles II, when there was occasion to remove some stones and to dig in the very spot which was mentioned as the place of their first interment, the bones of two persons were there found, which by their size exactly corresponded to the age of Edward and his brother. They were concluded with certainty to be the remains of those princes, and were interred under a marble monument by orders of King Charles. The first acts of Richard's administration were to bestow rewards on those who had assisted him in usurping the crown, and to gain by favors those who, he thought, were best able to support his future government. But the person who, both from the greatness of his services and the power and splendor of his family, was best entitled to favors under the new government, was the Duke of Buckingham, and Richard seemed determined to spare no pains or bounty in securing him to his interests. But it was impossible that friendship could long remain inviolate between two men of such corrupt minds as Richard and the Duke of Buckingham. The Duke, soon after Richard's accession, began to form a conspiracy against the government, and attempted to overthrow that usurpation which he himself had so zealously contributed to establish. Never was there in any country a usurpation more flagrant than that of Richard, or more repugnant to every principle of justice and public interest. To endure such a bloody usurper seemed to draw disgrace upon the nation, and to be attended with immediate danger to every individual who was distinguished by birth, merit, or services. Such was become the general voice of the people; all parties were united in the same sentiments; and the Lancastrians, so long oppressed, and of late so much discredited, felt their blasted hopes again revive, and anxiously expected the consequences of these extraordinary events. The Duke of Buckingham, whose family had been devoted to that interest, and who, by his mother, a daughter of Edmund, Duke of Somerset, was allied to the house of Lancaster, was easily induced to espouse the cause of this party, and to endeavor the restoring of it to its ancient superiority. Morton, Bishop of Ely, a zealous Lancastrian, whom the King had imprisoned, and had afterward committed to the custody of Buckingham, encouraged these sentiments; and by his exhortations the Duke cast his eye toward the young Earl of Richmond as the only person who could free the nation from the tyranny of the present usurper. Henry, Earl of Richmond, was at this time detained in a kind of honorable custody by the Duke of Brittany, and his descent, which seemed to give him some pretensions to the crown, had been a great object of jealousy both in the late and in the present reign. Symptoms of continued jealousy in the reigning family of England seemed to give some authority to Henry's pretensions, and made him the object of general favor and compassion, on account of dangers and persecutions to which he was exposed. The universal detestation of Richard's conduct turned still more the attention of the nation toward Henry; and as all the descendants of the house of York were either women or minors, he seemed to be the only person from whom the nation could expect the expulsion of the odious and bloody tyrant. But notwithstanding these circumstances, which were so favorable to him, Buckingham and the Bishop of Ely well knew that there would still lie many obstacles in his way to the throne. It was therefore suggested by Morton, and readily assented to by the Duke, that the only means of overturning the present usurpation was to unite the opposite factions by contracting a marriage between the Earl of Richmond and the princess Elizabeth, eldest daughter of King Edward, and thereby blending together the opposite pretensions of their families. The plan being laid upon the solid foundations of good sense and sound policy, it was secretly communicated to the principal persons of both parties in all the counties of England, and a wonderful alacrity appeared in every order of men to forward its success and completion. But it was impossible that so extensive a conspiracy could be conducted in so secret a manner as entirely to escape the jealous and vigilant eye of Richard; and he soon received intelligence that his enemies, headed by the Duke of Buckingham, were forming some design against his authority. He immediately put himself in a posture of defence by levying troops in the North; and he summoned the Duke to appear at court, in such terms as seemed to promise him a renewal of their former amity. But that nobleman, well acquainted with the barbarity and treachery of Richard, replied only by taking arms in Wales, and giving the signal to his accomplices for a general insurrection in all parts of England. But at that very time there happened to fall such heavy rains, so incessant and continued, as exceeded any known in the memory of man; and the Severn, with the other rivers in that neighborhood, swelled to a height which rendered them impassable and prevented Buckingham from marching into the heart of England to join his associates. The Welshmen, partly moved by superstition at this extraordinary event, partly distressed by famine in their camp, fell off from him; and Buckingham, finding himself deserted by his followers, put on a disguise and took shelter in the house of Banister, an old servant of his family. But being detected in his retreat, he was brought to the King at Salisbury, and was instantly executed, according to the summary method practised in that age. The other conspirators, who took arms in four different places, at Exeter, at Salisbury, at Newbury, and at Maidstone, hearing of the Duke of Buckingham's misfortunes, despaired of success and immediately dispersed themselves. The King, everywhere triumphant and fortified by this unsuccessful attempt to dethrone him, ventured at last to summon a parliament--a measure which his crimes and flagrant usurpation had induced him hitherto to decline. His enemies being now at his feet, the parliament had no choice left but to recognize his authority and acknowledge his right to the crown. His only son, Edward, then a youth of twelve years of age, was created prince of Wales. Sensible that the only circumstance which could give him security was to gain the confidence of the Yorkists, Richard paid court to the Queen Dowager with such art and address, made such earnest protestations of his sincere good-will and friendship, that this Princess ventured to put herself and her daughters into the hands of the tyrant. He now thought it in his power to remove the chief perils which threatened his government. The Earl of Richmond, he knew, could never be formidable but from his projected marriage with the princess Elizabeth, the true heir of the crown; and he therefore intended to espouse, himself, this Princess, and thus to unite in his own family their contending titles. He flattered himself that the English nation, seeing all danger removed of a disputed succession, would then acquiesce under the dominion of a prince who was of mature years, of great abilities, and of a genius qualified for government, and that they would forgive him all the crimes which he had committed in paving his way to the throne. But the crimes of Richard were so horrid, and so shocking to humanity, that every person of probity and honor was earnest to prevent the sceptre from being any longer polluted by that bloody and faithless hand which held it. All the exiles flocked to the Earl of Richmond in Brittany, and exhorted him to hasten his attempt for a new invasion, and to prevent the marriage of the princess Elizabeth, which must prove fatal to all his hopes. The Earl set sail from Harfleur, in Normandy, with a small army of about two thousand men; and after a navigation of six days he arrived at Milford Haven, in Wales, where he landed without opposition. He directed his course to that part of the kingdom, in hopes that the Welsh, who regarded him as their countryman, and who had been already prepossessed in favor of his cause by means of the Duke of Buckingham, would join his standard, and enable him to make head against the established government. Richard, who knew not in what quarter he might expect the invader, had taken post at Nottingham, in the centre of the kingdom; and having given commissions to different persons in the several counties, whom he empowered to oppose his enemy, he purposed in person to fly, on the first alarm, to the place exposed to danger. Henry, advancing toward Shrewsbury, received every day some reënforcement from his partisans. The two rivals at last approached each other at Bosworth, near Leicester, Henry at the head of six thousand men, Richard with an army of above double the number; and a decisive action was every hour expected between them. Stanley, who commanded above seven thousand men, took care to post himself at Atherstone, not far from the hostile camps; and he made such a disposition as enabled him on occasion to join either party. The van of Richmond's army, consisting of archers, was commanded by the Earl of Oxford; Sir Gilbert Talbot led the right wing; Sir John Savage the left; the Earl himself, accompanied by his uncle the Earl of Pembroke, placed himself in the main body. Richard also took post in _his_ main body, and intrusted the command of his van to the Duke of Norfolk; as his wings were never engaged, we have not learned the names of the several commanders. Soon after the battle began, Lord Stanley, whose conduct in this whole affair discovers great precaution and abilities, appeared in the field, and declared for the Earl of Richmond. This measure, which was unexpected to the men, though not to their leaders, had a proportional effect on both armies: it inspired unusual courage into Henry's soldiers; it threw Richard's into dismay and confusion. The intrepid tyrant, sensible of his desperate situation, cast his eye around the field, and, descrying his rival at no great distance, he drove against him with fury, in hopes that either Henry's death or his own would decide the victory between them. He killed with his own hand Sir William Brandon, standard-bearer to the Earl; he dismounted Sir John Cheyney. He was now within reach of Richmond himself, who declined not the combat, when Sir William Stanley,[3] breaking in with his troops, surrounded Richard, who, fighting bravely to the last moment, was overwhelmed by numbers, and perished by a fate too mild and honorable for his multiplied and detestable enormities. His men everywhere sought safety by flight. There fell in this battle about four thousand of the vanquished. The loss was inconsiderable on the side of the victors. Sir William Catesby, a great instrument of Richard's crimes, was taken, and soon after beheaded, with some others, at Leicester. The body of Richard was found in the field, covered with dead enemies, and all besmeared with blood. It was thrown carelessly across a horse, was carried to Leicester amid the shouts of the insulting spectators, and was interred in the Gray Friars' Church of that place. The historians who favor Richard--for even this tyrant has met with partisans among the later writers--maintain that he was well qualified for government had he legally obtained it, and that he committed no crimes but such as were necessary to procure him possession of the crown; but this is a poor apology when it is confessed that he was ready to commit the most horrid crimes which appeared necessary for that purpose; and it is certain that all his courage and capacity--qualities in which he really seems not to have been deficient--would never have made compensation to the people for the danger of the precedent and for the contagious example of vice and murder exalted upon the throne. This Prince was of a small stature, hump-backed, and had a harsh, disagreeable countenance; so that his body was in every particular no less deformed than his mind. [Footnote 1: Wife of Henry VI.] [Footnote 2: The Queen's brother.] [Footnote 3: Brother of Lord Stanley, _above_.] IVAN THE GREAT UNITES RUSSIA AND BREAKS THE TARTAR YOKE A.D. 1462-1505 Robert Bell At the birth of Ivan III (1440) Russia was all but stifled between the great Lithuanian empire of the Poles and the vast possessions of the Mongols. In vain had a succession of Muscovite princes endeavored to give unity to the little Russian state. Between the grand princes of Moscow and those of Lithuania stood Novgorod and Pskof, the two chief Russian republics, hesitating to declare their allegiance. By the creation of new appanages the Russian princes continually destroyed the very unity for which they labored. Moreover, at a time when the great nations of the West were organizing, Muscovy or Russia had no settled relations with their civilization. The opening of the Renaissance, the progress of discovery, the invention of printing--by these the best spirits in Russia were stirred to fresh aspirations for national organization and participation in the great European movement. According to the tradition, her deliverer had been foretold and was expected. His triumphs were predicted at his birth. The man through whom, or at least in whose name, Russia was to be restored to herself, to be freed from the Mongol yoke, and brought into living connection with Western Europe, was Ivan, son and heir of Vasili the Blind, Grand Prince of Moscow. This child became Ivan III, surnamed the "Great," because during his reign, 1462-1505, the expectations of his country were largely realized. He was the first who could call himself "Ruler of all the Russias," and he is regarded as the original founder of the Russian empire. Already, at his accession, the Muscovite principalities were beginning to draw together, and circumstances were favorable to the prosecution of the task upon which he was called to enter--the completing of their union and the securing of their national independence. Ivan was a man of great cunning and prudence, and was remarkable for indomitable perseverance, which carried him triumphantly to the conclusions of his designs in a spirit of utter indifference to the ruin or bad faith that tracked his progress. Such a man alone, who was prepared to sacrifice the scruples of honor and the demands of justice, was fit to meet the difficulties by which the grand princedom of Moscow was surrounded. He saw them all clearly, resolved upon the course he should take; and throughout a long reign, in which the paramount ambition of rendering Russia independent and the throne supreme was the leading feature of his policy, he pursued his plans with undeviating consistency. But that policy was not to be accomplished by open and responsible acts. The whole character of Ivan was tinged with the duplicity of the churchmen who held a high place in his councils. His proceedings were neither direct nor at first apparently conducive to the interests of the empire, but the great cause was secretly advancing against all impediments. While he forbore to risk his advantages, he left an opportunity for disunion among his enemies, by which he was certain to gain in the end. He never committed himself to a position of the security of which he was not sure; and he carried this spirit of caution to such an extremity that many of the early years of his reign present a succession of timid and vacillating movements, that more nearly resemble the subterfuges of a coward than the crafty artifices of a despot. The objects, of which he never lost sight, were to free himself from enemies abroad and to convert the princedom at home into an autocracy. So extensive a design could not have been effected by mere force of arms, for he had so many domestic and foreign foes to meet at once, and so many points of attack and defence to cover, that it was impossible to conduct so grand a project by military means alone. That which he could not effect, therefore, by the sword, he endeavored to perform by diplomatic intrigue; and thus, between the occasional victories of his armies and the still more powerful influence of his subtle policy, he reduced his foes and raised himself to an eminence to which none of his most ambitious predecessors had aspired. The powers against whom he had to wage this double war of arms and diplomacy were the Tartars and Lithuanians, beyond the frontier; and the independent republics of Novgorod, Vyatka, and Pskof, and the princes of the yet unsettled appanages within. The means he had at his command were fully sufficient to have enabled him to subdue those princes of the blood who exhibited faint signs of discontent in their appanages, and who could have been easily reached through the widely diffused agency of the boyars; but the obstinate republics of the North were more difficult of access. They stood boldly upon their independence, and every attempt to reduce them was followed by as fierce a resistance, and by such a lavish outlay of the wealth which their commercial advantages had enabled them to amass that the task was one of extraordinary difficulty. Kazan, the first and greatest of the Tartar cities, too, claimed a sovereignty over the republics, which Ivan was afraid to contest, lest that which was but a vague and empty claim might end in confirmed authority. It was better to permit the insolent republicans to maintain their entire freedom than to hazard, by indiscretion, their transferrence to the hands of those Tartars who were loosened from the parent stock. His first act, therefore, was to acknowledge, directly or indirectly, according to the nature of their different tenures, the rights of all his foes within and without. He appeared to admit the justice of things as he found them; betrayed his foreign enemies into a confidential reliance upon his acquiescence in their exactions; and even yielded, without a murmur, to an abuse of those pretensions to which he affected to submit, but which he was secretly resolved to annihilate. This plausible conformity procured him time to prepare and mature his designs; and so insidiously did he pursue his purpose that he extended that time by a servility which nearly forfeited the attachment of the people. The immediate object of consideration was obviously the Golden Horde, because all the princes and republics, and even the Poles and Lithuanians, were interested in any movement that was calculated to embarrass the common enemy. Ivan's policy was to unite as many of his enemies as he could against a single one, and, finally, to subdue them all by the aid of each other. Had he ventured upon any less certain course, he must have risked a similar combination against himself. He began by withholding the ordinary tribute from the Khan, but without exhibiting any symptoms of inallegiance. He merely evaded the tax, while he acknowledged the right; and his dissimulation succeeded in blinding the Tartar, who still believed that he held the Grand Prince as a tributary, although he did not receive his tribute. The Khan, completely deceived, not only permitted this recusancy to escape with impunity, but was further prevailed upon to withdraw the Tartar residents and their retinues, and the Tartar merchants who dwelt in Moscow and who infested, with the haughty bearing of masters, even the avenues of the Kremlin. This latter concession was purchased by bribery, for Ivan condescended to buy the interference of a Tartar princess. So slavish and degrading was his outward seeming that his wife, a noble and spirited lady, the daughter of the Emperor of Byzantium, could with difficulty prevail upon him to forego the humiliating usages which had hitherto attended the reception of the Mongol envoys. It had been customary on the part of the grand princes to go forward to meet the Tartar minister, to spread a carpet of fur under his horse's feet, to hear the Khan's letter read upon their knees, to present to the envoy a cup of koumiss, and to lick from the mane of the horse the drops which had fallen from the lips of the negotiator: and these disagreeable customs Ivan would have complied with but for the successful remonstrances of the Princess. Kazan presented the most alluring point of actual attack. The horde that had established that city subsisted by predatory excursions, and even the other bands of the barbarians were not unwilling to witness the descent of the Russians upon one of their own tribes that had acquired so much power. The project was favored by so many circumstances that, although his policy was evidently at this period to preserve peace as long as he could, he was tempted to make a general levy, and to assemble the whole flower of the population for the purpose of driving out of his dominions the bold invaders who had intrenched themselves within the walls of a fortified town. This was about 1468. At that very time the army of the Golden Horde, inspired by some sudden impulse, was advancing into Russia. It appears, however, that the multitudes assembled by Ivan were so numerous that the Khan's troops retired upon the mere rumor of their approach; so that the display of his resources had all the effect he desired, and he won a signal victory without striking a blow. The old Russian annalist dwells, with some pomp of words, upon this bloodless triumph, and, in the true vein of hyperbole, says that the Russian army shone like the waves of the sea illuminated by the sunbeams. We take the expression for all it is worth, when we estimate the force as having been more numerous than that of the Tartars. It does not appear that Ivan was yet prepared, even with this great armament, to risk his future objects by any hostile collision, so long as such an extremity could be averted by intrigue; for in the following year, when the anticipated march against Kazan was at last commenced, he suddenly paused in the midst of his course, although the result was almost certain. Were it of much consequence, it would not be easy to decide the cause of this strange and abrupt proceeding; but it was evident that the soldiery were resolved not to return home without spoils. They rushed onward to the city; and even the general, who was instructed by Ivan to countermand the attack, in vain attempted to restrain them. With a leader of their own choosing, they fell upon Kazan, and utterly routed the inhabitants. The Grand Prince, perceiving that the enemy was powerless, now no longer hesitated; but, engaging all the princes in his service, and throwing his own guards into the ranks, he despatched his colossal forces to reduce the already dismembered hold of the Tartars of Kazan. The event was a complete victory, but Ivan remained safe at Moscow, to watch the issue of an undertaking which he could not reasonably have feared. The subjugation of Kazan left the field clear for his designs upon the three domestic republics. Vyatka, insolent in its own strength, declared itself neutral between Moscow and Kazan; and on the fall of the latter city, Novgorod, apprehensive that Ivan would turn his arms immediately against her, called upon the people of Pskof for aid, expressing her determination to march at once against the Grand Prince, in order to anticipate and avert his intentions. The Novgorodians were the more determined upon this bold measure by the personal pusillanimity which Ivan betrayed in a war where the advantages lay entirely at his own side. They calculated upon the terror they should inspire; and judged that if they could not succeed in vanquishing the Grand Prince, they should, at all events, be enabled to secure their own terms. Marpha, a rich and influential woman, the widow of a _posadnik_, and who was enamoured of a Lithuanian chief, conceiving the romantic design of bestowing her country as a marriage dower upon her lover, exerted all her power to kindle the enthusiasm and assist the project of the citizens. Her hospitality was unbounded. She threw open her palace to the people; lavished her wealth among them in sumptuous entertainments and exhibitions, and caused the _vetchooi kolokol_ ("assembling-bell"), which summoned the popular meetings to the market-place, to be rung as the signal of these orgies of licentiousness. The great bell in Novgorod was the type of the republican independence of the citizens, and represented the excesses into which they were not unwilling to plunge whenever it was necessary to testify their sense of that wild liberty which they had established among themselves. It was tolled on all occasions of a public nature, and the people gathered in multitudes at the well-known call. If any individual were accused of a crime against the republic or of any offence against the laws, the judges appeared at the sound of the bell to hold a summary court of justice, and the citizens surrounded the trial-seat, prepared to execute the sentence. Every citizen, with his sons, attended, carrying each two stones under his arms; and, if the accused were found guilty, lapidation instantly followed. The house of the culprit was also immediately plundered, cast down, confiscated, and sold for the benefit of the corporation. Except in China, where a law still more sanguinary and destructive prevails in cases of murder, there is hardly a similar instance of deliberate legal severity to be found among nations elevated above barbarism. Inspired by the revelries of the ambitious Marpha, and the patriotic associations she awakened, the Novgorodians expelled the officer of the Grand Prince; possessed themselves of some land that belonged to him in right of his fief; and, to confirm their revolt against his authority, submitted themselves, by treaty, to Casimir, Prince of Lithuania. In this position of affairs, Ivan wisely resolved to leave Vyatka to its own course, confining his attention solely to Novgorod, and seeking to win over Pskof and its twelve tributary cities, so that he might combine them against the turbulent republic. The fall of Novgorod accomplished, the conquest of the other obstinate cities was easily effected. The polite, cool, and persevering means he brought into operation against the refractory republic were admirably seconded by the machinery of communication which had been previously established in the persons of the boyars, whose local influence was of the first consequence on this occasion. As the tide of these numerous negotiations changed, Ivan assumed the humility or the pride, the generosity or the severity, adapted to the immediate purpose; and, working upon the characters of the individuals as well as their interests, he succeeded in gaining a great moral lever before he unsheathed a sword. He made allies of all the classes and princes that lay in his way to the heart of the independent corporation. He represented to the nobles the anomalous nature and usurpation of the democratic institutions of Novgorod, and he roused their pride into resentment. He gained over the few princes who still held trembling appanages by painting to them in strong colors the enormous opulence and commercial monopolies of the republic; and he filled the whole population with revenge against the fated city, by exaggerated accounts of its treasonable designs against the internal security of the empire. Thus, by artful insinuations of the personal advantages and general benefits that were to spring from the overthrow of Novgorod, he succeeded in neutralizing all the opposition he had any reason to apprehend, and in exciting increased enthusiasm on the part of the people. Having made these subtle preparations to facilitate his proceedings, he sent an ambassador to the citizens calling upon them to acknowledge his authority; and only awaited their decisive refusal, which he anticipated, as an excuse for immediate hostilities. The Novgorodians returned an answer couched in terms of scorn and defiance. His reply was carried by three formidable armies, which, breaking in on the Novgorodian territory on three different sides, prostrated the hopes of the citizens by overwhelming masses, against which their gallant resistance was of no avail. In this brief and desperate struggle, Ivan possessed extraordinary superiority by the recent acquisition of firearms and cannon, the use of which he had learned from Aristotle of Bologna, an Italian, whom he had taken into his service as an architect, mintmaster, and founder. The triumph of the arms of the Grand Prince was rapidly followed by the incursions of swarms of the peasantry, who, secretly urged forward by Ivan, rushed upon the routed enemy, and completed the work of devastation. This licentious exhibition of popular feeling Ivan affected to repress, and, availing himself of the opportunity it afforded to assume toward the Novgorodians a moderation he did not feel, he pretended to protect them against any greater violence than was merely necessary to establish his right to the recovery of the domains of which they had despoiled him, and the payment of the ransom that was customary under such circumstances. Here his deep and crafty genius had room for appropriate display. He did not consider it prudent to seize upon the republic at once, as, in that event, he was bound to partition it among his kinsmen, by whose aid, extended upon special promises, he had overthrown it; so he contented himself with a rich ransom, having already beggared it by suffering lawless followers to plunder it uninterruptedly before he interfered, and by demanding an act of submission. But in this act he contrived to insert some words of ambiguous tendency, under the shelter of which he might, when his own time arrived, leap upon his prey with impunity. The confusion into which the Novgorodians were thrown and the great reduction of strength which they suffered in the contest enabled Ivan to deprive them of some of their tributaries, under the pretence of rendering them a service, so that their exhaustion was seized upon as a fresh source of injustice. The Permians having offered some indignity to the republic, Ivan interfered, and transferred the commerce of that people with Germany to Moscow; and, on another occasion, when the Livoman knights attempted an aggression, Ivan sent his ambassadors and troops to force a negotiation in his own name; thus actually depriving both Novgorod and Pskof, they being mutually concerned, of the right of making peace and war in their own behalf. By insidious measures like these he continued to oppress and absorb the once independent city that claimed and kept so towering an ascendency. But not satisfied with such means of accumulating the supreme power, he sowed dissensions between the rich classes and the poor, and after fomenting fictitious grievances, terminating in open quarrel, he succeeded in having all complaints laid before him for decision. Then, going among them, he impoverished the wealthy by the lavish presents his visits demanded, and captivated the imagination of the multitude by the dazzling splendor of his retinues and the flexible quality of his justice. The time was now approaching for a more explicit declaration of his views. On pretence of these disagreements he loaded some of the principal citizens, the oligarchs of the republic, with chains and sent them to Moscow. It was so arranged that these nobles were denounced by the mob; and Ivan, in acceding to their demand for vengeance, secured the allegiance of the great bulk of the population. The stratagem succeeded; and with each new violation of justice he gained an accession of popular favor. The progress of the scheme against the liberties of Novgorod was slow, but inevitable. The inhabitants gradually referred all their disputes to the Grand Prince; and he, profiting by the growing desire to erect him into the sole judge of their domestic grievances, at length summoned the citizens to appear before him at Moscow. The demand was as unexpected as it was extraordinary. Never before had the Novgorodians gone out from their own walls to sue or receive judgment; but so seductive and treacherous were the professions of Ivan that, unsuspicious of his designs, they consented to appear before his throne. Throughout the whole of these encroachments on the ancient usages in which the rights of the people resided, he appeared to be lifted above all personal or tyrannical views. Marpha, the ambitious widow, who had stirred up the revolt and sought to attach Novgorod to Lithuania, had never been molested; and even the principal persons who were most conspicuous in resisting his authority at the outset were suffered to remain unharmed. These instances of magnanimity, as they were believed to be, lulled the distrust of the citizens, and seduced them by degrees to abandon their old customs one by one at his bidding. For seven years he continued with unwearied perseverance to wean them from all those distinctive habits that marked their original character and separated them from the rest of the empire; and at last, when he thought that he had succeeded in obliterating their attachment to the republican form of government, he advanced his claim to the absolute sovereignty, which was now sanctioned by numberless acts of submission, and by traitorous voices of assent within the council of the citizens. At an audience to which he admitted an envoy, that officer, either wilfully or by accident, addressed him by the name of sovereign; and Ivan, instantly seizing upon the inadvertency, claimed all the privileges of an absolute master. He required that the republic should surrender its expiring rights into his hands, and take a solemn oath of allegiance; that his boyars should be received within its gates, with full authority to exercise their almost irresponsible control over the city; that the palace of Yaroslaff, the temple of Novgorodian liberty, should be given up to his viceroy; that the forum should be abolished; and that the popular assemblies, and all the corresponding immunities of the people, should be abrogated forever. The veil was dropped too suddenly. The citizens were not prepared for so abrupt and uncompromising an assertion of authority. Hitherto they had admitted the innovations of the Grand Prince, but it was of their own free will. They did not expect that he would ground any right of sovereignty upon their voluntary acquiescence in his character of arbitrator and ally; and the news of his despotic claim filled them with despair and indignation. The great bell, which had formerly been the emblem of their citizenship, now tolled for the last time. They assembled in the market-place in tumultuous crowds, and summoning the treacherous or imprudent envoy before them, they tried him by a clamorous and summary process, and, before the sentence was completed, tore him limb from limb. Believing that some of the nobles were accessory to the surrender of their freedom, they fell upon those they suspected, and murdered them in the streets, thus hastening, and confirming by their intemperance, the final alienation of the wealthy classes from their cause; and having by these acts of unbridled desperation given the last demonstrations of their independence, they once more threw themselves into the arms of Lithuania, which were open to receive them. But Ivan was prepared for this demonstration of passion. His measures were too deeply taken to suffer surprise by any course which the Novgorodians, in their righteous hatred of oppression, might think fit to adopt. When he learned the reception they gave to his mandate, he affected the most painful astonishment. He declared that he alone was the party aggrieved, that he alone was deceived; that they had laid snares for his counsel and countenance; and that even when, yielding to their universal requisition, he had consented to take upon him the toils of government, they had the audacity to confront him with an imposition in the face of Russia, to shed the blood of their fellow-men, and to insult heaven and the empire by calling into the sacred limits the soldiers of an adverse religion and a foreign power. These ingenious remonstrances were addressed to the priests, the nobles, and the people, and had the desired effect. The bishops embarked zealously in the crusade, and the people entered willingly into the delusion. The dependent republic of Pskof and the principality of Twer, paralyzed in the convulsion, appeared to waver; but Ivan, resolved to deprive Novgorod of any help they might ultimately be tempted to offer, drew out their military strength, under the form of a contingency, and left them powerless. Yet, although strongly reënforced on all sides, he still avoided a contest. With a mingled exhibition of revenge and attachment, he threatened and propitiated in the same breath. "I will reign supreme at Novgorod," he exclaimed; "as I do at Moscow. You must surrender all to me; your posadnik, and the bell that calls your national council together;" and at the same time he professed his determination to respect those very liberties which by these demands were to be sacrificed forever. The Novgorodians, terrified by the immense force Ivan had collected, which it seemed he only used to menace, and not to destroy, attempted to capitulate; but he was insensible to all their representations, and, even while he promised them their freedom, he refused to grant it. The armament, mighty as it was, which he had prepared, was kept aloof to threaten and not to strike. He acted as if he feared to risk the issue of a contest with any of his enemies, or as if he were unwilling to suffer the loss consequent even upon victory. He wanted to overbear by terror rather than by arms, so that the fearful agency of his name might do the work of conquest more powerfully and at less cost than his armies, which must have been thinned by battles, and might have been subdued by fortune. So long as he could preserve his terrible ascendency by the force of the fear which he inspired, he was secure; but the single defeat, or the doubtful issue of a solitary struggle, might reduce the potent charm of his unvanquished power. In this way he drew the chain tighter; and in the agonies of the protracted and narrowing pressure, Novgorod, unable to resist, died in agonies of despair. The surrender of the liberties of the republic was complete. On taking possession of the city, Ivan seized upon the person of the popular Marpha, and sent her and seven of the principal citizens as prisoners to Moscow, confiscating their properties in the name of the state. The national assemblies and municipal privileges ceased January 15, 1478, on which day the people took the oath of servitude; and on the 18th, the boyars and their immediate followers, and the wealthy and the influential classes of the inhabitants, voluntarily came forward and entered into the service of the Grand Prince. The revenues of the clergy, which were by the act of submission transferred to the treasury of Ivan, were immediately devoted by him to the service of three hundred thousand followers of boyars, through whose intermediate agency he intended to assert and maintain his unlimited and supreme authority over the fallen city. But not alone did he possess himself of the private property of some of the principal persons who had rendered themselves prominent in the recent declaration of independence, but he demanded a surrender of a great part of the territories that belonged by charter to the public. He also further enriched himself, and impoverished the Novgorodians, by seizing upon all the gold and valuables to which he could, with any show of propriety, lay claim. He is said to have conveyed to Moscow no less than three hundred cart-loads of gold, silver, and precious stones, besides furs, cloths, and merchandise to a considerable amount. The settlement of his power in Novgorod had scarcely been concluded when intelligence was received that the Tartars of the Golden Horde were preparing for a third invasion. The enormous physical force that was at Ivan's disposal, the late accession of strength and increase of domain, by which his means were not only improved, but the number and means of his opponents were reduced, and the general state of the country, which was, in all respects, favorable to the objects of his ambition, deprived such a movement of its wonted terrors. Ivan had nothing to fear from the approach of the enemy. He was surrounded by the princes of the blood, who had warmly embarked in the common cause; he had an immense army at his command, panting for new fields of spoil and glory; he had broken up his domestic enemies in the North, and dismembered or attached the insurgent republics. He had left Lithuania to the rapacious guardianship of the Khan of the Crimea, who was sufficiently formidable to neutralize the incursions of the duchy upon the frontier; and on every side he found an ardent population impatient to expel the invader. Yet, encouraging as these circumstances were, and although they seemed to present the fortunate opportunity for carrying into execution his cherished plan of autocracy, Ivan held back. He alone of all Russia was intimidated. His project of empire was so lofty and comprehensive that he appeared to shrink from any collision that could even remotely peril its ultimate success. He was so dismayed that he forced the Princess to fly from Moscow and seek a temporary shelter in the North. Terror-struck and unmanned, he deserted the army, and shut himself up in the capital for security; and when the armed population, pouring forth from all quarters, and animated by one spirit of resistance, had advanced as far as the Oka to meet the Tartars, he recalled his son to the capital, as if he apprehended the consummation of some evil either in his own person or that of his heir. But the voice of the general indignation reached him in his retreat, and even his son refused to leave his post in the army. The murmurs of a disappointed people rose into clamors which he could not affect to misunderstand. They reproached him with having burdened them with taxes, without having paid the Khan his tribute; and that, now the Tartars had come into Russia to demand restitution, he fled from vindication of his own acts, and left the people to extricate themselves from a dilemma into which he had brought them. In this difficulty Ivan had no choice left but to submit to the will of the country. He accordingly convoked a meeting of the bishops and boyars for the purpose of asking their advice; but their counsel was even still more conclusive; and the reluctant Prince was compelled to rejoin the army. The fear by which he was moved, however, could not be concealed, and it gradually infected the ranks of the soldiery. He had no sooner taken his station at the head of the army than he became spellbound. A river, the Lugra, divided him from the enemy; he could not summon courage to attempt it, but stood gazing in disastrous terror upon the foe, with whom he opened negotiations to beg for terms. In the mean time the news of his indecision spread, and the people at Moscow grew turbulent. The Primate, perceiving the disaffection that was springing up, addressed the Prince in the language of despair. He represented to him the state of the public mind, and the inglorious procedure of suing for a peace where he could insure a victory and dictate his own terms. "Would you," exclaimed the Primate, "give up Russia to fire and sword, and the churches to plunder? Whither would you fly? Can you soar upward like the eagle? Can you make your nest amid the stars? The Lord will cast you down from even that asylum. No! you will not desert us. You would blush at the name of fugitive and traitor to your country!" Ivan was surrounded by two hundred thousand soldiers; reënforcements were thronging constantly to his side; the enemy was cut off from all assistance from his ally of Lithuania; and one word of encouragement would have set all these advantages into action. The troops only awaited the signal to rush upon the invaders; but Ivan, amid these flattering and animated circumstances, was dispirited. Even the voice of the Church addressed him in vain. He was utterly paralyzed; and cowardice had so completely taken possession of his mind that when the early winter had set in and frozen the river, so as to obliterate the obstacle that separated him from the troops of the Khan, he was seized with consternation, and fled in the wildest disorder from his position. He was so alarmed that he could not even preserve any regularity on the retreat, and all was confusion and panic. So disgraceful an abandonment of his duty, which in other times must have cost him his throne, if not his life, was not visited with that rigor by the Russians which so glaring a defection deserved. The sovereign Prince was removed to too great a distance from the people to be judged of with precision or promptitude. The motives of his acts were not accessible to the multitude, who, accustomed to despotism, had not yet learned to question the wisdom of their rulers. The rapid advances that had been made toward the concentration of the governing power in the autocratical form, limited still more the means of popular observation and the vigor of the popular check upon the supreme authority. The Grand Prince stood so much aloof from his subjects, surrounded by special advisers and court favorites, that even the language of remonstrance, which sometimes reached his ears, was so softened in its progress that its harshness was that of subservient admonition; and he was as little shaken by the smothered discontent of the people as they were roused by an open sacrifice of their interests. But not alone was this reverence for the autocracy so great as to protect the autocrat from violent reprisals on the part of his subjects; but the national veneration for the descendant of St. Vladimir and the stock of Rurik was sufficient to absorb all the indignation which the weakness or the wickedness of the Prince might have aroused. Ivan, however, independently of those acts of prejudice and ignorance which preserved him from the wrath which he had so wantonly provoked, was destined to find all the unfavorable circumstances of his position changed into the most extraordinary and unexpected advantages. In the crisis of his despair the fortunes of the day turned to his favor. While he hung behind the Lugra, seeking a base and humiliating compromise at the hands of the enemy, his lieutenant of Svenigorod, and his ally the Khan of the Crimea, advanced upon the Golden Horde, and pushed their victorious arms into the very den of the Tartars, at the time that the Tartar forces were drawn off in the invasion of Russia. Speedy intelligence of this disaster having reached the enemy, he made a precipitate retreat, in the hope of reaching his fastnesses on the frontier in time to avert the destruction that threatened him; but the Russians had been too rapid in their movements; and the work of devastation, begun by them, was completed by a band of marauding Tartars, who entered soon after they retired, and, carrying away the women and the remnant of the treasures left behind, reduced the city of the Golden Horde to ashes before the distant army could accomplish its retrograde march. Nor was this all the triumph that Ivan was called upon to share, without any participation in the danger. The return of the Tartars was arrested midway by a hetman of the Cossacks and the mirza of the Nogais, who, falling upon the confused and disorderly ranks, on their ill-conducted flight homeward, cut them in pieces, and left scarcely a living vestige on the field of the ancient and implacable enemies of the country. The extinction of the Tartars was final. The Golden Horde was annihilated, and the scourge of Russia and her princes was no more. In a better educated state of society, these events, so sudden and so important, must have been attributed to proximate and obvious causes--the combinations of operations over which Ivan had no control, and the dismay into which the Tartars were surprised, followed up quickly by overwhelming masses who possessed the superiority in numbers and in plan. Ivan, who could lay no claim to the honors of the enterprise, would not have been associated in its results had the people been instructed in the respect which was due to themselves. But the Russians, profoundly venerating the person of the Grand Prince, and accustomed to consider him as the depository of a wisdom refined above the sphere of ordinary mortality, did not hesitate to ascribe this transcendent exploit to the genius of the reluctant autocrat. They looked back upon his pusillanimity with awe, and extracted from his apparent fears the subtle elements of a second providence. He was no longer the coward and the waverer. He had seen the body of the future, before its extreme shadows had darkened other men's vision; and the whole course of his timid bearing, even including his flight from the Lugra, was interpreted into a prudent and prophetic policy, wonderful in its progress and sublime in its consequences. Without risking a life, or spilling a drop of blood, and merely by an evasive diversion of his means, he had vanquished the Asiatic spoiler; and at the very moment that the people were disposed to doubt his skill and his courage, he had actually destroyed the giant by turning the arms of his own nation against him. Such was the unanimous feeling of Russia. Transferring the glory of their signal deliverance from those who had achieved it to him who had evaded the responsibility of the attempt, they worshipped, in the Grand Prince, the incarnation of the new-born liberty. CULMINATION OF THE POWER OF BURGUNDY TREATY OF PÉRONNE A.D. 1468 P. F. WILLERT From the planting of the Burgundian branch of the house of Valois, in 1364, arose a formidable rival of the royal power in France. During the next hundred years the dukes of Burgundy played prominent parts in French history, and then appeared one of the line who advanced his house to its loftiest eminence. This was Charles, surnamed the "Bold," son of Philip, misnamed the "Good." Charles was born in 1433, and became Duke of Burgundy in 1467. He "held the rank of one of the first princes in Europe without being a king, and without possessing an inch of ground for which he did not owe service to some superior lord." Some of his territories were held of the Holy Roman Empire, and some of the French crown, and he was at once a vassal of France and of the Emperor. His dominions contained many prosperous and wealthy cities. But the possessions of Charles lacked unity alike in territorial compactness, political distinction, and local rule, and in national characteristics, language, and laws. His peculiar position exposed him to the jealous rivalry of Louis XI of France. The King's object was the consolidation of his monarchy, while Charles aimed to extend his duchy at the expense of Louis' territories. Thus the two rivals became deadly enemies. Charles conceived the design of restoring the old kingdom of Burgundy. In 1467, having secured alliances with Brittany and England, he prepared for a campaign of conquest. But Louis offered him advantageous terms of peace and invited him to a conference. While Charles hesitated, Louis stirred to revolt the Duke's subjects in Liege, with whom Burgundy had lately been at war. The negotiations between Louis and Charles, and the events which followed, form the subject of Willert's narrative. Many messengers came and went, yet Charles hesitated to accept peace even on terms so greatly to his advantage. The King, if he could but see the Duke, felt sure he might end this uncertainty, perhaps even obtain more favorable concessions. When once the idea of a personal interview had possessed him he was deaf to the warnings and entreaties of his more prudent or honest advisers. Charles did not seem anxious to meet the King, and when at length he yielded to the representations of the King's envoy, he sent a safe-conduct in the most explicit terms: "Sir, if it be your pleasure to visit this town of Péronne to confer with us, I swear to you and promise by my faith and on my honor that you may come, stay, and return at your good pleasure, without let or harm, notwithstanding any cause that may now be or hereafter may arise." After receiving this assurance, Louis might fairly suppose that he had nothing to fear. He had before trusted himself safely to Charles' honor. Nor had he himself abused the chance which once delivered his rival into his hands unprotected by promise or oath. He therefore set out at once for Péronne, accompanied only by some eighty archers of his Scotch guard and by his personal attendants. He was met at the frontier by a Burgundian escort under Philip de Crèvecoeur, and he found Charles himself waiting to receive him at the banks of a little river not far from Péronne. The princes greeted each other with respect on the one side, and with hearty affection on the other. They entered the town side by side, the King's arm resting on his kinsman's shoulder. The castle of Péronne was small and inconvenient; the King was therefore lodged in the house of one of the richest citizens. He had scarcely reached his quarters when the Marshal of Burgundy joined Charles' army with the forces he commanded. With him came Philip of Savoy and two of his brothers, Antony de Châteauneuf, and other men who had shared largely in the King's favor, but who had fled from his resentment after betraying his confidence. These his enemies might consider the occasion favorable for a bold stroke. If they acted without the connivance of Charles he might be grateful to those who satisfied his enmity without irretrievably compromising his honor. Louis therefore asked to be allowed to move into the castle, where his archers could at any rate defend him against a surprise. On the next day the conference began; all that he could demand was offered to Charles if only he would abandon the alliance of Brittany and England. But he was determined not to give way, and was insensible to the blandishments of his guest, who may have been tormented by painful misgivings as he looked from his prison-like rooms at a gloomy tower in which Charles the Simple had been confined, and, it was said, murdered by a rebellious vassal. At the first suggestion of the interview with the King, Charles had objected that he could scarcely believe in his sincere desire for peace while his envoys were encouraging rebels. Cardinal Balue replied that when the people of Liège learned that the King and Duke had met, they would not venture upon any hostile movement. But the French agents were not informed of their master's intended visit to Péronne, and did not attempt to discourage a premature attack. It is indeed doubtful whether they could in any case have changed the course of events. The first rumors of what had happened in a popular outbreak at Liège reached Péronne on the night of October 10th. As was natural, they were greatly exaggerated. Tongres had been sacked, the garrison put to the sword; Humbercourt, the Burgundian Governor, and the Bishop murdered; the King's envoys had been seen leading and encouraging the assailants. Charles broke into cries of rage: "The traitor King! So he is only come to cheat me by a false pretence of peace! By St. George, he and those villains of Liège shall pay dearly for this!" He did not pause to consider whether it was likely that Louis had been simple enough to provoke a catastrophe fatal to his hopes and dangerous to his safety. If Comines, the Duke's chamberlain, and another favorite attendant, who were with their master at the time, had not done their best to soothe him it is probable that the donjon of Péronne would once more have closed upon a captive king. Charles was at little pains to conceal his rage; and when Louis was told that the gates of town and castle were guarded to prevent the escape of a thief who had stolen a casket of jewels, he knew that he was a prisoner. Yet, however bitter his self-reproach, however gloomy his forebodings, he did not lose his presence of mind. His attendants were allowed free access to the castle; he had brought with him fifteen thousand gold crowns, and these he anxiously employed to secure the good offices of Charles' advisers. For three nights the angry agitation and perplexity of Charles were so great that he did not undress. He would throw himself on his bed for a time and then start up and pace about his room, uttering threats and invectives against the King. Nothing was done or decided on the first day, October 11, 1468. On the second a council was held which sat late into the night. A minority of the council, the enemies of Louis, or those who were only anxious to flatter the passions of their master, advised him to use to the full the opportunity which chance and the foolhardiness and duplicity of his adversary had placed in his hands. They urged him to keep the King in secure confinement after providing for the virtual partition of the kingdom among the great feudatories. The majority, those who had some regard for the honor of the house of Burgundy, the lawyers, who respected the letter, if not the spirit, of an agreement, perhaps also the more far-sighted politicians, were of a different opinion. The fame of the Duke would suffer irreparable injury by so flagrant a violation of his plighted word. The advantages, moreover, to be gained by the captivity, the deposition, perhaps the death of the King, were uncertain. The heir to the throne was entirely in the hands of the Bretons, and was not likely to be eager to advance the interests of Burgundy. A large and well-disciplined army, commanded by experienced captains, was assembled on the frontiers. If they could not rescue their master, they would at least endeavor to avenge him, while the new King could acquire an easy popularity by execrating a crime of which he and Francis of Brittany would reap all the advantage. It was a wiser course to accept the terms which the King in his alarm proffered--the settlement in favor of Burgundy of all the disputed questions which had arisen out of the treaties of Arras and Conflans--and it might be possible to humiliate and disgrace Louis by compelling him to take part in the punishment of his allies, the citizens of Liège, who by their trust in him had been lured to destruction. Charles left the council apparently undecided, and passed the night in as great a storm of passion as the two preceding. The conflict within him doubtless fanned his wrath. Comines, who shared his room, endeavored to calm him, and to persuade him to embrace the course most consistent with his interests and the King's safety; for so great a prince, if once a captive, might scarcely hope to leave his prison alive. Toward morning Charles determined to content himself with insisting that Louis should sign a peace on such terms as he should dictate, and accompany him against Liege. The King, says Comines, had a friend who informed him that he would be safe if he agreed to these conditions, but that otherwise his peril would be extreme. This friend was Comines himself, and Louis never forgot so timely a service. The two days during which his fate was being decided had been passed by him in the greatest agony of mind. Though he had been allowed to communicate freely with the French nobles and his own attendants, he had been ominously neglected by the Burgundian courtiers. As soon as the Duke had determined what conditions he intended to impose, he hastened to the castle to visit his captive. The memorable interview is described by two eye-witnesses--Comines and Olivier de la Marche. Charles entered the King's presence with a lowly obeisance; but his gestures and his unsteady voice betrayed his suppressed passion. The King could not conceal his fear. "My brother," he asked, "am I not safe in your dominions?" "Yes, sire, so safe that if I saw a cross-bow pointed at you I would throw myself before you to shield you from the bolt." He then asked the King to swear a peace on the proposed basis: (i) The faithful execution of the treaty of Conflans; (2) the abolition of the jurisdiction of the Parliament of Paris over Flanders; (3) the surrender of all regalian rights in Picardy; (4) the release of the Duke from all fealty to the King if the treaty was in any way infringed or imperfectly executed. Louis agreed, and Charles requested his assistance in punishing the rebellion of Liège. The King expressed his perfect readiness. The princes then signed a draft of the treaty and swore to execute it faithfully on the cross of St. Laud. Charles had insisted that Louis should swear on the relic, a fragment of the true Cross once kept in the Church of St. Laud at Angers, which the King always carried with him, esteeming it highly, because he believed that whoever forswore himself on it would surely die within the year. The Duke at the same time promised to do homage for the fiefs he held of the crown of France, but the execution of this promise was evaded. On the 15th the Duke, with an army of forty thousand men, and the King with his slender escort, and some three hundred men-at-arms who joined him by the way, began their march on Liège. Louis was not less anxious than his companion that Dammartin should not attempt a forcible rescue. Victory or defeat would have been alike dangerous to his safety. Twice at Charles' request orders were sent to disband, or at least remove, the French army from the frontier. The King's letters were delivered by his messenger in the persistent presence of a Burgundian who prevented the possibility of any private communication. Louis' crafty old soldier, Dammartin, paid little attention to such orders. He sent word to the Duke that, unless his master soon returned, all France would come to fetch him. The first divisions of the Burgundian army reached Liège October 22d. The citizens, whose walls had been destroyed and artillery confiscated, were in no position to resist an army which might have conquered an emperor. At the suggestion of the legate they released their bishop, begging him to intercede on their behalf, and offered to surrender their goods to the Duke's discretion if only he would spare their lives. Charles would not listen to their overtures; he swore that he would have town and inhabitants at his discretion or that he and his army should perish in the attempt. The townsmen, with the boldness of despair, sallied forth to meet the advance guard of their enemies; they were driven back with great loss. Four days later, the 26th, the Duke and main body of the army had not come up. The troops, who had repulsed the sally on the 22d, had as yet met with little resistance, and thought themselves strong enough to occupy an open town defended only by ill-armed traders and mechanics. The weather was cold and rainy, the temptation of securing comfortable quarters and the undivided profits of the sack irresistible. The assailants occupied one of the suburbs, but their advance was checked by some hastily constructed defences. At nightfall the citizens came out through the breaches of their walls; they were enabled, by their knowledge of the rough and precipitous ground, to fall unobserved upon the rear of the enemy; eight hundred Burgundians were killed, and the rout would have been complete had not the Duke with the main body of his army pushed forward to the assistance of a division which was still holding its ground. On the next day the King arrived, and soon after took up his quarters close to those of the Duke. He showed himself to the men, who had placed their trust in him, wearing the St. Andrew's cross, the badge of Burgundy, and replying "_Vive Bourgogne!_" to their cries of "_Vive France!_" That night there was a great and sudden alarm. The Duke of Burgundy, though brave, was sometimes wanting in presence of mind, and on this occasion appeared more troubled in the King's presence than pleased his friends. Louis took the command, giving his orders with great coolness and prudence. Even as a general he gained by comparison with his rival. He was indeed not less anxious than Charles that the Burgundian army should suffer no reverse. He feared everything that might arouse the ready suspicion and ungovernable temper of the Duke. On the evening of the 29th a few hundred men, colliers and miners from the mountainous district of Franchemont, led by the owners of the house in which the King and Duke were sleeping, made a desperate attempt to surprise the princes in their beds. They would have succeeded had they not delayed to attack a barn in which three hundred Burgundian men-at-arms were posted. Only a few followed their guides straight to the quarters of the sovereigns. They were unable, therefore, to overcome the resistance of the guard before the noise of the conflict had aroused the camp. The assailants were overwhelmed by numbers, and fell fighting to the last. The assault had been ordered for the next day, but this bold and unexpected attack so surprised and disconcerted the Burgundians that the King thought he might be able to persuade the Duke to agree to a capitulation, or at least to postpone the assault. He only obtained a contemptuous request that he should consult his own safety by retiring to Namur. This reflection on his courage stimulated him to greater ostentation of zeal. He could scarcely be restrained from leading the assault. The citizens were worn out by guarding an open town against a powerful army for more than a week; they imagined that as it was a Sunday they would not be attacked till the morrow. The assailants entered the town with little or no resistance. Yet the fury and license of the soldiery could not have been greater had their passions been excited by an obstinate and bloody struggle. The horrors of the sack of Dinant[1] were surpassed, although many of the citizens were able to escape across the Meuse. The deliberate vengeance of the Duke was more searching and not less cruel than the lust and rapine of his army; all prisoners who would not pay a heavy ransom were drowned. Although the cold was so intense that wine froze, and that his men lost fingers and toes from frost-bites, Charles did not shrink from the labor of hunting down those who had fled to the mountains, and burning the villages in which they had sought a refuge. He had previously taken leave of the King. Four or five days after the occupation of Liège, Louis had expressed a wish to depart. If he could be of any further use, his brother might command his services; but he was anxious to see that their treaty was registered by the Parliament of Paris, without which it could not be valid. The Duke seemed unwilling to let his prey escape, but could find no pretence for his detention. Next year, said the King, he would come again and spend a month pleasantly with his dear brother in festivities and good cheer. The treaty, now drawn up in its final shape by the Burgundian lawyers, was read over to Louis, in order that he might object to any article of which he disapproved. But he readily ratified all that he had promised at Pèronne. It had seemed useless to require him to bestow Normandy on Charles of France; nor is the question of his appanage mentioned in the treaty itself. But the King was compelled to promise to invest his brother with Champagne and Brie. These provinces, lying between Burgundy and the Low Countries, would, in the hands of an ally, serve to consolidate the Duke's dominions, and could be easily defended in case the King attempted to resume his concessions. Just before the princes departed, Louis said, as if the thought had suddenly occurred: "What do you wish me to do if my brother is not content with the appanage I offer him for your sake?" Charles answered carelessly: "If he will not take it, I leave the matter to you two to settle; only let him be satisfied." The King considered the thoughtless admission into which he had tricked his rival most important, since he fancied that it released him, so far as his brother's appanage was concerned, from the fearful obligation of his oath. But notwithstanding this last advantage, we cannot doubt that Louis felt bitterly disappointed and ashamed. Although all songs, caricatures, and writings reflecting on the perfidy of the Duke of Burgundy, and by implication on the folly of the King, were forbidden under severe penalties, and even all manner of talking birds which might be taught the hateful word "Peronne" had been seized by the royal officers, he had not the heart to visit Paris. The parliament was summoned to meet him at Senlis. He ordered it to register the treaty without comment, and hastened southward to hide his mortification in his favorite castles of Touraine. [Footnote 1: By Burgundians in 1466.] LORENZO DE' MEDICI RULES IN FLORENCE ZENITH OF FLORENTINE GLORY A.D. 1469 OLIPHANT SMEATON During the twelfth century several of the Italian cities--especially Florence and Venice--rose to great wealth and power. Venice, through her favorable situation, became preeminent in commerce, while Florence was coming to be the most important industrial centre of Europe. In the thirteenth century Florence was the scene of continual strife between the Guelfs and Ghibellines, but she not only continued to develop in material prosperity, but also attained to intellectual activities whereby in the next century she gained a higher distinction. She took the foremost part in the Renaissance, and was the birthplace or the home of Dante, Boccaccio, and other leaders of the modern movement. In the fifteenth century Florence reached a still loftier eminence under the Medici, a family celebrated for the statesmen which it produced and for its patronage of letters and art. Its most illustrious members were Cosmo (1389-1464) and his grandson Lorenzo, surnamed the "Magnificent." Lorenzo was born January 1, 1449, when the second great period of the Renaissance was nearing its close. That was the "period of arrangement and translation; the epoch of the formation of the great Italian libraries; the age when, in Florence around his grandfather Cosmo, in Rome around Pope Nicholas V, and in Naples around Alfonso the Magnanimous, coteries of the leading humanists were gathered, engaged in labors which have made posterity eternally their debtors." Conjointly with his younger brother Giuliano, Lorenzo, on the death of his father Piero, in 1469, succeeded to the vast wealth and political power of the family. In 1478 the death of Giuliano left Lorenzo sole ruler of Florence. To few men has either the power or the opportunity been given to influence their epoch, intellectually and politically, to a degree so marked as was the lot of Lorenzo de' Medici. One of the most marvellously many-sided of the many-sided men who adorned the Italy of the fifteenth century, he did more to place Florence in the forefront of the world's culture than any other citizen who claimed Val d'Arno[1] as his birthplace. His influence was great because he was in sympathy so catholic with all the varied life of his age and circle. While during the one hour he would be found learnedly discussing the rival claims of the Platonic and Aristotelian philosophers with Ficino and Landino, the next might witness him the foremost reveller in the Florentine carnival, crowned with flowers and with the winecup in his hand, gayly carolling the _ballate_ he had composed for the occasion; while the third might behold him surrounded by the leading painters and sculptors of Tuscany, discoursing profoundly on the aims and mission of art. Truly a unique personality, at one and the same time the glorious creation and the splendid epitome of the spirit of the Renaissance! When Lorenzo de' Medici consented to assume the "position" occupied by his father Piero and his grandfather Cosmo, he was not the raw youth his immature years would lead one to suppose. Although intellectual maturity is reached at an earlier age in the sunny South than in the fog-haunted lands of Northern Europe, Lorenzo had enjoyed a long apprenticeship before being called to undertake the duties devolving on him as the uncrowned king of Florence. From his thirteenth year he had been the companion and shared the counsels, first of his grandfather and father, and subsequently of his father alone. From the former especially he learned many important lessons in statecraft. The matter is open to question, however, if any advice had more far-reaching results or was laid more carefully to heart than this which is contained in more than one of Cosmo's letters: "Never stint your favors to the cause of learning, and cultivate sedulously the friendship of scholars and humanists." Toward such a course Lorenzo's inclinations, as well as his interests, pointed, and during his life Florence was the Athens not only of Italy but of Europe as a whole. Here, among many others, were to be found such "epoch-makers" as Poliziano, Ficino, and Landino, Pico della Mirandola, Leo Battista Alberti, Michelangelo, Luigi Pulci--men who glorified their age by crowning it with the nimbus of their genius. The literary and artistic greatness of Florence was not due, however, to the comparative intellectual poverty of the other states in Italy. Florence was only _primus inter pares_--greatest among many that were great. When the fact is recalled that such contemporaries as Pomponius Laetus, Bartolommeo Sacchi, Molza, Alessandro Farnese (Paul III), Platina, Sabellicus at Rome; Pontanus, Sannazaro, and Porcello in Naples; and Pomponasso and Boiardo at Ferrara, were then at or nearing their prime, the position of Florence as the acknowledged centre of European culture was conceded by sense of right alone. Than this nothing proves more emphatically the strides learning had been making. It was no longer the prerogative of the few, but the privilege of the many. From the first, Lorenzo recognized what a strong card he held in the affection and respect of the Italian as well as of the Florentine humanists. The great secret of Lorenzo's preëminence in European and Italian, as well as in Tuscan, politics lies in the fact that he was able to unite the sources of administrative, legislative, and judicial power in himself. All the public offices in Florence were held by his dependents, and so entirely was the state machinery controlled by him that we find such men as Louis XI and the emperor Maximilian, Alfonso of Naples, and Pope Innocent VIII recognizing his authority and appealing to him personally, in place of to the seigniory, to effect the ends they desired. Such power enabled him to avoid the risks his grandfather Cosmo had been compelled to run to maintain his authority. The Medicean faction was better in hand than in his grandfather's days, and Lorenzo, therefore, in playing the _rôle_ of the peacemaker of Italy, at the time when he held the "balance of power" through his treaties with Milan, Naples, and Ferrara, could speak with a decision that carried weight when he found it necessary to threaten a restless "despot" with a political combination that might depose him. Lorenzo's services to learning were inspired by feelings infinitely more noble than those actuating his political plans. A patriotism as lofty as it was beneficent led him to desire that his country should be in the van of Italian progress in Renaissance studies. His sagacious prevision enabled him to proportion the nature and extent of the benefit he conferred to the need it was intended to supply. Many statesmen do more harm than good by failing to appreciate this law of supply and demand. They grant more than is required, and that which should have been a boon becomes a burden. Charles V, at the time of the Reformation, on more than one occasion committed this error, as also did Wolsey and Mazarin. Lorenzo, like Richelieu, recognized the value of moderation in giving, and caused every favor to be regarded as a possible earnest of others to come. The earlier years of his power were associated with many stirring events which exercised no inconsiderable influence on the state of learning. For example, his skilful playing off of Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza of Milan against Ferrante, King of Naples, led to greater attention being directed by the Florentines to Neapolitan and Milanese affairs, with the result that humanists and artists from both these places paid frequent visits to Florence, where they were welcomed by Lorenzo as his guests. Then when the revolt of the small city of Volterra from Florentine rule was suppressed by Lorenzo's agents, with a rigorous severity that cast a stain on their master's name, owing to many unoffending scholars having suffered to the extent of losing their all, Lorenzo made noble amends. Not only did he generously assist the inhabitants to repair their losses, not only did he make grants to the local scholars and send them copies of many of the codices in his own library to supply the loss of their books which had been burned by the soldiery, but he purchased large estates in the neighborhood, that the citizens might benefit by his residence among them. In this way, too, he brought the Volterran scholars into more intimate relations with the Florentine humanists, and thus contributed to the further diffusion of the benefits of the Renaissance. All was not plain sailing, however, as regards the progress of the "New Learning." Despite his efforts, Lorenzo could not prevent its development being checked during the papal-Neapolitan quarrel with Florence. That war originated in a dispute with Pope Sixtus IV, who kept Italy in a ferment during the whole duration of his pontificate, 1471-1484. Were no other proof forthcoming of Lorenzo's marvellous diplomatic genius than this one fact, that he checkmated the political schemes of Sixtus, and finally so neutralized his influence as to render him wellnigh impotent for evil-doing, such an achievement was sufficient to stamp him one of the greatest masters of statecraft Europe has known. In any estimate of his ability we must take into account the unsatisfactory character of many of the instruments wherewith he had to achieve his purposes, and also the fact that he had neither a great army at his back with which to enforce the fulfilment of treaty obligations--for Florence never was a city of soldiers--nor had he the prestige of an official position to lend weight to his words. To all intents and purposes he was a private citizen of the Florentine republic. Yet such was the dynamic power of the man's marvellous personality, and the reputation he had earned, even in his early years, for supreme prescience and far-reaching diplomatic subtlety, that far and wide he was regarded as the greatest force in Italian politics. Sixtus sallied forth to crush; he returned to the Vatican a crushed and a discredited man, to die of sheer chagrin over his defeat by Lorenzo in his designs upon Ferrara. Then followed the memorable dispute, in 1472-1473, over the bishopric of Pisa, when the Pope's nominee, Francesco Salviati, was refused possession of his see, Pisa being one of the Tuscan towns under the control of Florence. To this Sixtus retaliated by seeking the friendship of Ferrante of Naples, a move Lorenzo anticipated by forming the league between Florence, Milan, and Venice. This league thoroughly alarmed both the Pope and Ferrante, and on the latter visiting Rome in 1475 a papal-Neapolitan alliance was formed. Even then hostilities might not have broken out had the young Duke of Milan not been assassinated in 1476, leaving an infant heir. This entailed a long minority, with all its dangers, and the apprehensions regarding these were not fanciful, inasmuch as Lodovico Sforza, uncle of the baby Duke, usurped the position under pretext of acting as regent. These crimes were plainly responsible for the Pazzi conspiracy in 1478 against the Medici themselves, a conspiracy which resulted in Giuliano, the younger brother of Lorenzo, being murdered in the cathedral, during mass, on the Sunday before Ascension, while Lorenzo himself was slightly wounded. That Sixtus and his nephew were accessories before the fact is now regarded as unquestionable. The vengeance taken by the enraged Florentines on the conspirators, their relatives, friends, and property, was terrible; the innocent, alas! being sacrificed indiscriminately with the guilty. The Archbishop of Pisa, Francesco Salviati, had entered eagerly into the scheme, and, although his sacred office prevented him from actually assisting in the deed, he was present in the cathedral until the signal was given for the perpetration of the deed, when he left the building to secure the Palazzo Publico. He was therefore summarily hanged with the others from the windows of the civic buildings. Sixtus made the execution, or the "murder" as he called it, of Salviati, his pretext for calling on his allies to make war on Florence. When he saw, however, that this action was only throwing the city more completely than ever into the arms of the Medici, he changed his tactics and said he had no quarrel with "his well-beloved children of Florence," but only with "that son of iniquity and child of perdition, Lorenzo de' Medici," and those who had aided and abetted him, among whom the humanists were expressly mentioned. Against Lorenzo and his associates a brief of excommunication was launched, and the city was urged to regain the papal favor by surrendering the offenders. The result might have been predicted. The "brief" only tended to knit the bonds of association closer between Lorenzo and the "City of the Flower," while the humanists to a man rallied round their patron. Even the choleric Filelfo, now a very old man, who had been on anything but friendly terms with the Medici, addressed two bitter satires to Sixtus, in which the Pope was styled the real aggressor, while the great humanist offered to write a history of the whole transaction, that posterity might know the true facts. The only power which gave its adhesion to Sixtus was Naples, while Venice, Ferrara, and Milan declared for Florence. Thus commenced that tedious war which not only ruined so many Florentine merchants, but retarded the cause of learning so materially. When the people were groaning under heavy taxes, when all coin which Lorenzo could scrape together had to be poured out to pay the _condottieri_, or soldiers of fortune, by whom the battles of Florence were fought, there was of course but short commons for the humanists who had made Florence their home. Many of those adapted themselves to circumstances, but others, to whom money was their god, left the banks of the Arno for those southern cities where the pinch of scarcity did not prevail. In this campaign the Florentines gained but little prestige. The larger share of the cost was quietly suffered by their allies to fall on the city of bankers. The Milanese were occupied with their own affairs, owing to the _coup d'état_ accomplished by Lodovico Sforza. The Duke of Ferrara withdrew owing to some disagreement with the condottieri engaged by Lorenzo. The Venetians only despatched a small contingent under Carlo Montone and Diefebo d'Anguillari; accordingly, in the end, the whole burden of the struggle fell on Florence. The Magnifico's position gradually became precarious, inasmuch as many persons declared the war to be in reality a personal quarrel between Pope Sixtus and the Medici. Complaints began to be heard that the public treasury was exhausted and the commerce of the city ruined, while the citizens were burdened with oppressive taxes. Lorenzo had the mortification of being told that sufficient blood had been shed, and that it would be expedient for him rather to devise some means of effecting a peace than of making further preparations for the war. In these circumstances, and confronted by one of the most dangerous crises of his whole life, Lorenzo rose to the occasion and effected a solution of the difficulty by daring to perform what was undoubtedly one of the bravest acts ever achieved by a diplomatist. By some statesmen it might be condemned as foolhardy, by others as quixotic. Its very foolhardiness and quixotry fascinated the man it was intended to influence, the blood-thirsty, cruel, and pitiless Ferrante of Naples, who was restrained from crime by the fear neither of God nor man, and who had actually slain the condottiere Piccinino when he visited him under a safe-conduct from the monarch's best ally. But the Renaissance annals are filled with the records of men and women whose natures are marvellous studies of contrasted and contradictory traits. Such was the Neapolitan tyrant. While a monster in much, he had his vulnerable points. He was ambitious to pose as a friend of the "New Learning," and he knew that Lorenzo was not only the most munificent patron, but also one of the most illustrious exponents, of the Renaissance principles. Although his enemy, Ferrante received Lorenzo with every demonstration of respect and satisfaction. He lost sight of the hostile diplomatist in the great humanist. Two Neapolitan galleys were sent to conduct him to Naples, and he was welcomed on landing with much pomp. Never did Lorenzo's supreme diplomatic genius, never did his versatile powers as a statesman, as a scholar, as a patron of letters, and as a brilliant man of the world, blaze forth in more splendid effulgence than during his three-months' stay in Naples. Though opposed by all the papal authority and resources; though Sixtus by turns threatened, cajoled, entreated, promised, in order to prevent Lorenzo having any success, the successor of St. Peter was beaten all along the line, and the Magnifico carried away with him a treaty, signed and sealed, which practically meant that henceforth Naples and the papacy would be in antagonistic camps. It was the Renaissance card which won the trick. With startling boldness, yet with consummate art, Lorenzo played the game of flattering Ferrante. No ordinary adulation, however, would have had success with the Neapolitan Phaleris. He was too strong-minded a man for anything of that kind. But to be hailed by the great Renaissance patron of the period, by one also who was himself one of the leading humanists, as a brother-humanist and a fellow-patron of learning, was a delicate incense to his vanity which he could not resist. He liked to be consulted on matters of literary moment, and, when he blundered, Lorenzo was too shrewd a student of human nature to correct him. Another fact in Lorenzo's favor was that he had the warm support not only of the beautiful Ippolyta Maria, daughter of Cosmo's friend, Francesco Sforza of Milan, and now wife of Alfonso, Duke of Calabria, King Ferrante's heir, as well as of Don Federigo, the monarch's younger son, who, along with Ippolyta, was a friend to the "New Learning," but he also had the whole body of Neapolitan humanists on his side, scarce one of whom but had experienced in some form or another the Medicean bounty. Such powerful advocacy was not without its influence in bringing about the result; while Ferrante more and more realized that if the Florentine Medici were crushed he would have no ally to whom to look for help when the inevitable shuffle of the political cards took place on the death of Sixtus. In February, 1480, therefore, Lorenzo returned in triumph to Florence, to be received with rapture by his fellow-citizens. Had he delayed a few months longer, his visit and his _ad-miseri-cordiam_ appeals would not have been needed. In August of that year Keduk Achmed, one of the Turkish Sultan's (Mahomet II) ablest generals, besieged and took the city of Otranto. In face of the common danger to all Italy, Sixtus was compelled to accept the treaty made by Ferrante with Lorenzo, and a general peace ensued. The decade accordingly closed with an absolution for all offences granted by the Pope to Florence, conditional on the Tuscan republic contributing its share to the expenses of the military preparations to resist the invasion of the Turk. Notwithstanding the war, the progress of the Renaissance during the first decade of Lorenzo's rule was very marked. To the rapid diffusion of printing this was largely due. Lorenzo had not imbibed the prejudices against the new art entertained by Cosmo and Federigo of Montefeltro. He looked at the practical, not the sentimental, side of the question as regards the new invention. Having seen that the press could throw off, in a few days, scores of copies of any work, of which it took an amanuensis months to produce one; also that the scholars of all Italy could be furnished almost immediately, and at a low price, with the texts of any manuscript they desired, while they had to wait months for a limited number of copies whose cost was wellnigh prohibitive, he supported the new invention from the outset. Having resolved to further his father's efforts to establish printing in Florence, he stimulated the local goldsmith, Bernardo Cennini, to turn his attention to type-casting in metal, and even agreed to pay him an annual grant from the year 1471 until he had fairly settled himself in business. Nor did he confine his favors to him. John of Mainz and Nicholas of Breslau, who arrived in Florence, the former in 1472 and the latter in 1477, also participated in his open-hearted liberality. Printing struck its roots deep into the Tuscan community and flourished excellently. Though the Florentine craft never attained the reputation of the Venetian Aldi and Asolani, the Giunti of Rome, the Soncini of Fano, the Stephani of Paris, and Froben of Basel, it had the name, for a time at least, of being one of the most accurate of all presses. To Lorenzo it owed this celebrity. At an early date he perceived that the new art would be of little value if there were not careful press readers. He was therefore among the first to induce scholars of distinction to engage in this task. For example, he enlisted the aid of Cristoforo Landino, who in his _Disputationes Camaldunenses_ had really inaugurated the science of textual criticism by urging that a careful comparison of the various codices should constitute the preliminary step in any reproduction of the classics. Landino's work on Vergil and Horace merits the warmest praise. Lorenzo also impressed Poliziano into the work, whose labors in marking the various readings, in adding _scholia_ and "notes" illustrative of the text of Catullus, Propertius, Ovid, etc., were of the utmost value. To Lorenzo and to his younger brother Giuliano, another great humanist, Giorgio Merula of Milan, dedicated his _Plautus_, published in Venice in 1472, showing at how early an age the Magnifico had taken his place among the recognized patrons of the Italian Renaissance. We ought not, moreover, to omit mention of another achievement of Lorenzo, though performed in a sphere of effort lying outside of the strict limits of our Renaissance survey. Seeing it was the "Revival of Letters," however, which induced the revival of the cultivation of the vernacular Italian literature, surely it is not out of place to refer to it here. Early in life Lorenzo became imbued with the conviction that his native tongue was unsurpassed as a medium for "the expression of noble thoughts in noble numbers." Not only did he encourage others to study Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, but by following out his own precepts he became one of the great Italian poets. His _Selve d'Amore,_ his _Corinto_, his _Ambra_, his _La Nencia da Barberino_, his _Laude_, his _Sonetti_, his _Cansoni_, etc., are all poems that live in the Italian literature of to-day. Not as a man ashamed of the vernacular, and forced to use it because he can command no better, does Lorenzo write. "He is sure of the justice of his cause, and determined by precept and example and by the prestige of his princely rank to bring the literature he loves into repute again." But of these poems we cannot here take further note. By the scholars of the Renaissance such work was looked askance at. If they did produce any of these "trifles," as they were called, they almost blushed to own them, and were ashamed to communicate them to each other. That he dared to be natural says much for Lorenzo, and it was largely due to his encouragement that Cristoforo Landino undertook his great work on "Dante," to which we owe so much to-day. In conjunction with his patronage of printing, there was no line of effort in which Lorenzo did more real good than in collecting manuscripts and antiquities, and in making them practically public property. On this account he is styled, by Niccolo Leonicino, "Lorenzo de' Medici, the great patron of learning in this age, whose messengers are dispersed through every part of the earth for the purpose of collecting books on every science, and who has spared no expense in procuring for your use, and that of others who may devote themselves to similar studies, the materials necessary for your purpose." The agents he employed travelled through Italy, Greece, Europe, and the East--Hieronymo Donato, Ermolao Barbaro, and Paolo Cortesi being the names of some of his most trusted "commissioners." But the coadjutor whose aid he principally relied on, to whom he committed the care and arrangement of his vast museum and great library, was Poliziano, who himself made frequent excursions throughout Europe, Asia, and Northern Africa to discover and purchase such remains of antiquity as suited the purposes of his patron. Another successful agent, though at a later date, was Giovanni Lascaris, who twice journeyed into the East in search of manuscripts and curios. In the second of these he brought back upward of two hundred copies of valuable codices from the monasteries on Mount Athos. To still another service rendered by Lorenzo to the cause of the Renaissance attention must be called--the founding of the Florentine Academy for the study of Greek. This institution, distinct, be it remembered, from the _Uffiziali dello Studio_ (or high-school), exercised a marvellous influence on the progress of the "New Learning." Accordingly, as Roscoe says, succeeding scholars have been profuse in their acknowledgments to Lorenzo, who first formed the establishment from which, to use their own classical figure, as from the Trojan horse, so many illustrious champions have sprung, and by means of which the knowledge of the Greek tongue was extended not only throughout Italy, but throughout Europe as well, from all the countries of which numerous pupils flocked to Florence--pupils who afterward carried the learning they had received to their native lands. Of this institution the first public professor was Joannes Argyropoulos, who, having enjoyed the patronage of Cosmo and Piero, and directed the education of Lorenzo, was selected by the latter as the fittest person to be the earliest occupant of the chair. During his tenure of it he sent out such pupils as Poliziano, Donato Acciaiuoli, Janus Pannonius, and the famous German humanist Reuchlin. Argyropoulos did not hold the appointment long. His death took place at Rome in 1471, and he was succeeded first by Theodore of Gaza, and then by Chalcondylas. Poliziano certainly discharged the duties of the office frequently, but at first only as _locum tenens_. He was then almost incessantly engaged in travelling for his patron in Greece and Asia Minor, and was too valuable a coadjutor to be tied down to the routine of teaching until he had completed his work. During the next decade he became the "professor," and discharged the duties with a genius and an adaptability to circumstances that won for him the admiration and love of all his students. This decade was also remarkable for the commencement of the devotion to the cultivation of literary style, a pursuit yet to reach its culmination in Poliziano in Florence and in Bembo and Sadoleto in Rome. Originality gradually gave place to conventionality, until men actually came to prefer the absurdities of Ciceronianism, and a cold, colorless adherence to hard-and-fast rules of composition, to a work throbbing with the pulsation of virile life. Humanism was beginning to take flight from Italy, to find a home and a welcome beyond the Alps. The final decade of Lorenzo's life constituted the midsummer bloom of the Tuscan renaissance, the meridian of the intellectual and artistic supremacy of Florence. In Lorenzo it found its fullest expression. He was typical of its spiritual as well as of its moral meaning; typical, too, of that mental unrest which sought escape from the pressing problems of an enigmatic present by reverting to the study of a classic past whose ethical, social, and political difficulties were rarely of a complex character, but concerned themselves principally with what may be termed the elementary verities of man's relations to the Deity and to his fellows. Lorenzo's amazing versatility has been pronounced a fault by some who believed they detected in him the potential capacity of rivalling Dante, Petrarch, and Ariosto on their own ground, had he only conserved his energies. This is a foolish supposition. Lorenzo's many-sidedness was but the reflection in himself, as the most accurate mirror of the time, of all that wondrous susceptibility to beauty, that eager craving after the realization of the [greek: to kalon] ("the Good") so characteristic of the best Hellenic genius, whether we study it in the dramas of Sophocles or the _Republic_ of Plato or in the statesmanship of Pericles. If Lorenzo had resembled his grandfather and concentrated his energies upon finance and politics, there might have been a line of reigning Medicean princes in Florence half a century earlier than actually was the case, but Europe would have been distinctly the loser by the absence of the greatest personal force making for culture which characterized the Renaissance. This last decade of Lorenzo's life--from his thirty-first to his forty-second year--was memorable in many respects. In the year 1481 he was again exposed to the danger of assassination. Battista Frescobaldi and two assistants in the Church of the Carmeli, and again on Ascension Day, made an attempt to stab him, but were frustrated by the vigilance of Lorenzo's friends. There is no doubt that this second attempt was also instigated by Girolamo Riario, the nephew of Sixtus IV. Thereafter Lorenzo never moved out without a strong bodyguard of friends and adherents--a precaution rendered necessary by the repeated plots that were being hatched against him by his enemies. No sooner had the presence of the Turks at Otranto, in the extreme southeast of Italy, been rendered a thing of the past by the surrender of the Moslem garrison to the Duke of Calabria in September, 1481, than the peninsula was again ranged in opposing camps by the attempt of the Venetians, assisted by Sixtus and his nephew, to dispossess Ercole d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, of his dominions. The Duke had married the daughter of Ferdinand, King of Naples, an alliance which, by strengthening him, gave on that account great offence to the Venetians. They therefore sought to provoke him by insisting on their monopoly of the manufacture of salt in North Italy, and by building a fortress on a part of the Ferrarese territory which they pretended was within the limits of their own. When he remonstrated, they declined to remove it. In vain he appealed to Sixtus. The latter was one of the wolves waiting to devour him. He then turned to Lorenzo. To the inexpressible chagrin of Venice and of Sixtus, the Magnifico promptly espoused his cause, formed an alliance with Ferdinand and other states, and, before the Pope and the Venetians were aware he had moved, they found themselves confronted by Naples, Florence, Milan, Bologna, Mantua, and Faenza. The allies were commanded by Federigo of Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, while the Venetian-papal troops were placed under Ruberto Malatesta of Rimini. In this campaign, however, Lorenzo was really the master-spirit. Although successes were won on both sides, a more than usually tragic complexion was given to the war by the death of the two commanders of the opposing forces. They had been friends from youth, and such a trifle as the fact that they were hired to fight against each other never disturbed the tenor of their mutual regard. Armstrong says no more than the truth when he remarks: "It was a pathetic coincidence. The two rival generals had bequeathed to each other the care of their children and estates, a characteristic illustration of the easy good-fellowship in this game of Italian war." The war dragged on with varying results until Lorenzo played his reserve card. He induced the Slavic Archbishop of Carniola, who, visiting Rome as the emperor Frederick's envoy, had been shocked by the shameless immorality of the Pope's life, to begin an agitation for a general council. In this he was supported by several of the rulers in Northern Italy and Eastern Europe. The move was so far successful. The Pope became alarmed, and hurriedly broke off his alliance with Venice, on the plea that the prevention of fresh schism in the Church must take precedence of every other consideration. The real fact of the matter was he dreaded the fate of Pope John XXIII, for he knew the actions of his nephew Girolamo Riario would not stand conciliar examination. Moreover, his other nephew, Giuliano della Rovere, afterward Pope Julius II, a bitter enemy to Girolamo, and Lorenzo's warm friend, had, during the disgrace of his cousin, gained the Pope's ear and told him some plain but wholesome truths regarding the unpleasant consequences of a permanent rupture with Lorenzo. All these considerations induced Sixtus to yield and leave Venice to prosecute the war alone. This it did against a quadruple alliance, for the Pope, when the haughty republic of the lagoons refused to disgorge its Ferrarese prey at his orders, promptly changed sides, and was as keen against the aggressor as he had previously been favorable to it. The Venetians sustained two severe defeats, while their fleet was almost shattered by a storm. The pecuniary strain was beyond their resources longer to maintain. They therefore resorted to the customary project of inducing some other power to intervene. In this case they took the step of inviting the Duke of Orleans to lay claim to the dukedom of Milan, and the Duke of Lorraine to the throne of Naples. The move was successful as regards Ludovico of Milan; he withdrew from the alliance, and much against the wish of the other allies the peace of Bagnolo was concluded in August, 1484. To Sixtus the news came as the knell of his dearest hopes. He gave way to one wild outburst of passion, in which he cursed all who had been engaged in making peace, then apoplexy supervened, and within a few hours he was a corpse. He was succeeded by Cardinal Cybo, a warm friend toward the Medici, and one who had such a profound admiration for the genius of Lorenzo in statecraft that he seldom took any step without consulting him, though unfortunately he did not always follow the Magnifico's advice. If no one else reaped honor and glory from this Ferrarese war, Lorenzo undoubtedly did so. By both sides the fact was admitted that he had acted throughout as a far-seeing, sagacious diplomatist, who, while giving preeminence, as was natural, to the welfare of his own state, had sought to conserve the cause of letters, even amid the turmoil incident upon the collision of political interests. He had proved the friend even of the enemies of his own country, when once they had passed from the scene of conflict, as, for example, when he dared Girolamo Riario to raise a finger in the direction of dispossessing the son of the Pope's general, Ruberto Malatesta, of his Rimini estates. He was the friend of the oppressed everywhere, and in more cases than one his powerful protection saved the children of his friends from being robbed by powerful relatives. This connection between Florence, Naples, Milan, Rome, and Ferrara tended to the promotion of intellectual intercourse between them. As printing was now being briskly prosecuted all over Northern and Central Italy, the interchange of literature went on ceaselessly among them. This, however, was Lorenzo's last great war. True, he was implicated in the prolonged quarrel between the papacy and King Ferrante of Naples, yet it was more as a mediator between the two antagonists than as the ally of the last-named that he took part in it; although, as Armstrong points out, he paid for the services of Trivulsio and four hundred cross-bowmen, that by enabling the Neapolitans to check San Severino, the leader of the papal-Venetian troops, he might induce Innocent VIII to lose heart and retire from the struggle. Lorenzo, during the last six years of his life, or, to speak more definitely, after the peace of Bagnolo, had become in Italian, as he was rapidly becoming in European, politics the master-spirit that inspired the moves on the diplomatic chess-board. In the mind of the historical student whose attention is directed to this period, admiration and wonder go hand-in-hand as we contemplate the marvellous sagacity and prevision of the man, together with the skill wherewith he made Florence--the weakest from a military point of view of the five greater Italian powers--the one which exercised the most preponderating influence upon the affairs of the peninsula. His supreme genius conceived and consummated the great scheme for ensuring the peace of Italy by a triple alliance of the three larger states--Florence, Milan, and Naples--against the other two, Venice and the papacy. As showing how entirely it was dependent upon him, the alliance was operative only so long as he was alive to bind the antagonistic forces of Naples and Milan together by the link of his own personal influence. He, in a word, was the subtle acid holding in chemical combination many mutually repellent substances. When his influence was withdrawn by death, within a few months they had all fallen apart, the triple alliance was forgotten and Italy was doomed. Even by those with whom he was nominally at war he was resorted to for advice. He it was that kept Innocent VIII from taking up a position that would have rendered the papacy ridiculous in the eyes of Europe, when he sought to threaten Naples with consequences he was powerless to inflict. Many writers have accused Lorenzo of cowardice, of pusillanimity, of want of political resolution on account of this very course of action, namely, that he assisted the enemies of Florence to extricate themselves from their dilemmas. Such criticism fails entirely to understand both the aim and the scope of his policy. He desired to keep Italy for the Italians. His clear-sighted sagacity saw nothing but danger in the plans of Ludovico of Milan to invite the French King into Italy, or in those of Venice to encourage the Duke of Lorraine to press his claims upon Milan. The intervention of either France or Spain in Italy was, in his idea, fraught only with dire disaster. Fain would he have patched up the quarrel between Naples and the papacy by mutual concessions, because he foresaw what would happen if the colossal northern powers had their cupidity aroused regarding Italy, and learned how defenceless she really was. Because he foresaw so clearly the horrors of the invasion of 1494 and 1527, he acted as he did, even toward those who were enemies of Florence. His alarm appears in the letter, dated July, 1489, which he addressed to his ambassador in Rome: "I dislike these Ultramontanes and barbarians beginning to interfere in Italy. We are so disunited and so deceitful that I believe that nothing but shame and loss would be our lot; recent experience may serve to foretell the future." How true a prophet he was, the subsequent course of Italian history revealed! Anxious though the situation was, crucial though many of the problems he had to solve undoubtedly were, yet the statement may be accepted as approximately true that the last three or four years of Lorenzo's life were spent amid profound peace--at least as far as Florence was concerned. Roscoe's picture is highly colored, but not overcolored: "At this period the city of Florence was at its highest degree of prosperity. The vigilance of Lorenzo had secured it from all apprehensions of external attack; and his acknowledged disinterestedness and moderation had almost extinguished that spirit of dissension for which it had been so long remarkable. The Florentines gloried in their illustrious citizen, and were gratified by numbering in their body a man who wielded in his hand the fate of nations and attracted the respect and admiration of all Europe; the administration of justice engaged his constant attention, and he carefully avoided giving rise to an idea that he was himself above the control of the law." And Guicciardini adds: "This season of tranquillity was prosperous beyond any that Italy had experienced during the long course of a thousand years. Abounding in men eminent in the administration of public affairs, skilled in every honorable science and every useful art, it stood high in the estimation of foreign nations; which extraordinary felicity, acquired at many different opportunities, several circumstances contributed to preserve, but among the rest no small share of it was by general consent ascribed to the industry and the virtue of Lorenzo de' Medici, a citizen who rose so far above the mediocrity of a private station that he regulated by his counsels the affairs of Florence, then more important by its situation, by the genius of its inhabitants, and the promptitude of its resources than by the extent of its dominions, and who, having obtained the implicit confidence of the Roman pontiff Innocent VIII, rendered his name great and his authority important in the affairs of Italy." Though he had never allowed the demands of civic affairs to interfere with his interest in the progress of the Renaissance, war-time, as we have said, is not favorable to the cultivation of letters. While the connection between the states during the course of hostilities undoubtedly promoted the increase of mutual interest in each other's intellectual development, the fact that the Magnifico had to disburse enormous sums for the prosecution of the campaigns necessarily limited his ability to extend the same princely patronage to the cause of learning. But with the conclusion of peace he resumed the original scale of his benefactions, and the last four years of his life were, perhaps, the most fruitful of all in sterling good achieved in the fostering of the Renaissance. He encouraged the printers to double their output; he munificently assisted such undertakings as the first edition of Homer, edited by the famous scholars Demetrius Chalcondyles and Demetrius Cretensis, as well as other editions of the classics prepared by Poliziano, Marullus, and others. In the final estimate of his influence upon his age we hope to show that his aim was as pure as the prosecution of its realization was determined. He encouraged foreigners to come to Florence to study Greek, and, when their funds failed them, in many cases he generously entertained them at his own expense. Grocyn and Linacre, as well as Reuchlin, testify to the wise generosity of the great Magnifico, and all three declare that to him, more than to any other man, the Renaissance owed not only its development, but even the character it assumed in Italy in the second last decade of the fifteenth century. The end came when he was literally in his prime. Only forty-two years of age, he might reasonably have looked forward to many years of active work and the enjoyment of his honors! But Lorenzo, although not a vicious, was a pleasure-loving man, and he had drained the cup of enjoyment to the very lees. His constitution was undermined by worry and late vigils, by the very intensity of interest wherewith he had devoted himself to the pleasures of the moment. Accordingly, late in 1491 he began to feel the gout, from which he had suffered for some years, becoming so troublesome that he was unable for the duties devolving on him. He had lost his wife, Clarice Orsini, in July, 1487, at a time when he was absent at the sulphur baths of Filetta, striving to obtain relief from pain; therefore his last years were lonely indeed. Life had lost its relish to the dying Magnifico. The only thing over which he showed a flash of the old interest was in March, 1492, when his son Giovanni (afterward Leo X), on being made a cardinal by Innocent VIII, was invested with the _insignia_ in the Abbey Church of Fiesole. Although then within a month of his end, although, moreover, so weak that he was unable to attend the investiture mass or to head his table at the banquet which followed, he caused himself to be carried in a litter into the hall, where he publicly paid reverence to his son as a prince of the Church. He then embraced him as a father and gave him his paternal blessing. That done, and after addressing a few words of welcome to his guests collectively, he was slowly borne back to his chamber to die. Nevermore was he seen in public. His ruling passion was, however, strong in death. In place of surrounding himself with clergy, his last hours were spent with the humanists and scholars he had loved so well. To his beautiful villa of Careggi, and to that room facing the south which he called his own, he retired, and summoned Ficino, Poliziano, and Pico della Mirandola to bear him company until he dipped his feet in the River of Death. They discussed many things, but principally the consolations afforded by philosophy. Then they reverted to the subject of the classics, and to the valuable codices which Lascaris was bringing back from Greece. But hope at last burned low, and the physicians had to confess that the case was beyond their skill. How rudimentary as regards medical science that skill was may be judged from the fact that the staple remedy prescribed by the great Milanese doctor, Lazaro da Ficino, who had been called in to consult with Lorenzo's own medical man, Pier Leoni of Spoleto, was a potion compounded of crushed pearls and jewels. As might have been expected, such a treatment accelerated rather than retarded the disease. The last hours of Lorenzo, and particularly his historic interview with Savonarola, have often been described and are to this day the subject of debate. There are two sides to every story, and this one of the last visit of the haughty prior of San Marco's to the dying Magnifico is no exception. Poliziano relates the incident in one form, the followers of Savonarola in another; but neither report is absolutely authentic. Suffice it for us that Benedetto, writing a week after the Magnifico's death, says of the matter: "Our dear friend and master died so nobly, with all the patience, the reverence, the recognition of God which the best of holy men and a soul divine could show, with words upon his lips so kind, that he seemed a new St. Jerome." Perhaps the most reasonable attitude to assume toward the problem is that Lorenzo died as he lived, feeling that strange, restless curiosity as to what was summed up in the idea of a "future life" which he had manifested all his days: "If I believe aught implicitly," he is reported to have said in earlier years to Alberti, "I believe in Plato's doctrine of immortality in the _Phaedo,_ for religion is too much a matter of temperament for us to lay down hard-and-fast rules about it." Lorenzo outwardly conformed in his dying hours to the rites of the Catholic Church. He received the _viaticum_ kneeling, he repeated the responses in an earnest and fervent tone, and then, when he felt that the grains in the hour-glass of life were running out, he pressed a crucifix to his lips and so passed within the veil. As a humanist he had been reared, as a humanist he had lived and labored, as a humanist he died, maintaining to the very last his interest in those studies which it had been his life's passion to pursue. The sun of the Florentine renaissance had set forever! [Footnote 1: By permission of Selmar Hess.] DEATH OF CHARLES THE BOLD LOUIS XI UNITES BURGUNDY WITH THE CROWN OF FRANCE A.D. 1477 PHILIPPE DE COMINES During the greater part of his rule as duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold was at war with Louis XI of France, notwithstanding the treaty of Péronne, 1468, which the French monarch accepted under duress. Meanwhile it was the constant aim of Charles to enlarge his dukedom, and when, in 1475, he had made another peace with Louis, the Duke turned anew to his scheme of conquest. Charles soon made himself master of Lorraine, which he had long coveted, and then, 1476, invaded Switzerland. "It was reserved for a small people, already celebrated for their heroic valor and their love of liberty, to beat this powerful man." Crossing the Jura, Charles besieged the little town of Granson, and after its capitulation he hanged or drowned all the defenders. When the news of this barbarity had spread through Switzerland the eight cantons arose, and almost under the walls of Granson the Swiss inflicted upon Charles a crushing defeat. In June, 1476, the Duke saw his second army destroyed by the Swiss and the Lorrainers, whom Comines calls Germans. In the following winter Charles assembled a third army and marched against Nancy, the capital of Lorraine, which was then held by the same allies. They were commanded by the Duke of Lorraine, who went to the relief of the garrison at Nancy from St. Nicholas, six miles away. Comines, whose account is given below, was a French statesman and historian, who, after being for a time in the service of Charles the Bold, went over to Louis and became his personal counsellor. He was therefore intimately versed in the history of these times. The Duke of Lorraine and his army of Germans broke up from St. Nicholas, and advanced toward the Duke of Burgundy, with a resolution to give him battle. The Count of Campobasso joined them that very day, and carried off with him about eightscore men-at-arms; and it grieved him much that he could do his master no greater mischief. The garrison of Nancy had intelligence of his design, which in some measure encouraged them to hold out; besides, another person had got over the works, and assured them of relief, otherwise they were just upon surrendering, and would have capitulated in a little time, had it not been for the treachery of this Count; but God had determined to finish this mystery. The Duke of Burgundy, having intelligence of the approach of the Duke of Lorraine's army, called a kind of council, contrary to his custom, for generally he followed his own will. It was the opinion of most of his officers that his best way would be to retire to Pont-à-Mousson, which was not far off, and dispose his army in the towns about Nancy; affirming that, as soon as the Germans had thrown a supply of men and provisions into Nancy, they would march off again; and the Duke of Lorraine being in great want of money, it would be a great while before he would be able to assemble such an army again; and that their supplies of provisions could not be so great but, before half the winter was over, they would be in the same straits as they were now; and that in the mean time the Duke might raise more forces and recruit himself; for I have been told by those who ought to know best, that the Duke of Burgundy's army did not then consist of full four thousand men, and of that number not above one thousand two hundred were in a condition to fight. Money he did not want; for in the castle of Luxembourg--which was not far off--there were in ready cash four hundred fifty thousand crowns, which would have raised men enough. But God was not so merciful to him as to permit him to take this wise counsel or discern the vast multitude of enemies who on every side surrounded him. Therefore he chose the worst plan, and, like a rash and inconsiderate madman, resolved to try his fortune, and engage the enemy with his weak and shattered army, notwithstanding the Duke of Lorraine had a numerous force of Germans, and the King's army was not far off. As soon as the Count of Campobasso arrived in the Duke of Lorraine's army, the Germans sent him word to leave the camp immediately, for they would not entertain such traitors among them. Upon which message he retired with his party to Condé, a castle and pass not far off, where he fortified himself with carts and other things as well as he could, in hopes that, if the Duke of Burgundy were routed, he might have an opportunity of coming in for a share of the plunder, as he did afterward. Nor was this practice with the Duke of Lorraine the most execrable action that Campobasso was guilty of; but, before he left the army, he conspired with several other officers--finding it was impracticable to attempt anything against the Duke of Burgundy's person--to leave him just as they came to the charge; for at that time he supposed it would put the army into the greatest terror and consternation; and if the Duke fled, he was sure he could not escape alive, for he had ordered thirteen or fourteen sure men, some to run as soon as the Germans came up to charge them, and others to watch the Duke of Burgundy and kill him in the rout; which was well enough contrived, for I myself have seen two or three of those who were thus employed to kill the Duke. Having thus settled his conspiracy at home, he went over to the Duke of Lorraine upon the approach of the German army; but, finding they would not entertain him, he retired to Condé, as I said before. The German army marched forward, and with them a considerable body of French horse, whom the King had given leave to be present in that action. Several parties lay in ambush not far off, that, if the Duke of Burgundy were routed, they might surprise some person of quality or take some considerable booty. By this everyone may see into what a deplorable condition this poor Duke had brought himself by his contempt of good counsel. Both armies being joined, the Duke of Burgundy's forces, which had been twice beaten before, and were weak and ill-provided besides, were quickly broken and entirely defeated. Many saved themselves by flight; the rest were either taken or killed; and among them the Duke of Burgundy himself was killed on the spot. Not having been in the battle myself, I will say nothing of the manner of his death; but I was told by some that they saw him beaten down, but, being prisoners themselves, were not able to assist him; yet, while they were in sight, he was not killed, but a great body of men coming that way afterward, they killed and stripped him in the throng, not knowing who he was. This battle was fought on January 5, 1476, upon the eve of Twelfth-day. The King having established posts in all parts of his kingdom--which before never had been done--it was not long ere he received the news of the Duke of Burgundy's defeat; and he was in hourly expectation of the report, for letters of advice had reached him before, importing that the German army was advancing toward the Duke of Burgundy's, and that a battle was expected between them. Upon which many persons kept their ears open for the news, in order to carry it to the King. For his custom was to reward liberally any person who brought him the first tidings of any news of importance, and to remember the messenger besides. His majesty also took great delight in talking of it before it arrived, and would say, "I will give so much to any man who first brings me such and such news." The Lord du Bouchage and I, being together, happened to receive the first news of the battle of Morat, and we went with it to the King, who gave each of us two hundred marks of silver. The Lord du Lude, who lay without the Plessis, had the first news of the arrival of the courier, with the letters concerning the battle of Nancy; he commanded the courier to deliver him the packet, and as he was a great favorite of the King's he durst not refuse him. By break of day the next morning, the Lord du Lude knocked at the door next to the King's chamber, and, it being opened, he delivered in the packet from the Lord of Craon and other officers. But none of the first letters gave any certainty of the Duke's death; they only stated that he was seen to run away, and that it was supposed he had made his escape. The King was at first so transported with joy at the news he scarce knew how to behave himself; however, his majesty was still in some perplexity. On one hand, he was afraid that if the Duke should be taken prisoner by the Germans, by means of his money, of which he had great store, he would make some composition with them. On the other, he was doubtful, if the Duke had made his escape, though defeated for the third time, whether he should seize upon his towns in Burgundy or not; which he judged not very difficult to do, since most of the brave men of that country had been slain in those three battles. As to this last point, he came to this resolution--which I believe few were acquainted with but myself--that if the Duke were alive and well, he would command the army which lay ready in Champagne and Barrois to march immediately into Burgundy, and seize upon the whole country while it was in that state of terror and consternation; and when he was in possession of it he would inform the Duke that the seizure he had made was only to preserve it for him, and secure it against the Germans, because it was held under the sovereignty of the crown of France, and therefore he was unwilling it should fall into their hands, and whatever he had taken should be faithfully restored; and truly I am of opinion his majesty would have done it, though many people who are ignorant of the motives that guided the King will not easily believe it. But this resolution was altered as soon as he was certain of the Duke of Burgundy's death. Upon the King's receiving the above-mentioned first letter--which gave no account of the Duke's death--he immediately sent to Tours, to summon all his captains and other great personages to attend him. Upon their arrival he communicated his letters to them. They all pretended great joy; but to such as more narrowly observed their behavior, it was easy to be discerned that most of them did but feign it; and, notwithstanding all their outward dissimulation, they had been better pleased if the Duke of Burgundy had been successful. The reason of this might be, because the King was greatly feared, and now, if he should find himself clear and secure from his enemies, they were afraid they would be reduced, or at least their offices and pensions retrenched; for there were several present who had been engaged against him with his brother the Duke of Guienne in the confederacy called the "Public Good." After his majesty had discourse with them for some time, he went to mass, and then ordered dinner to be laid in his chamber, and made them all dine with him; there being with him his chancellor and some other lords of his council. The King's discourse at dinner-time was about this affair, and I well remember that myself and others took particular notice how those who were present dined; but to speak truth--whether for joy or sorrow I cannot tell--there was not one of them that half filled his belly; and certainly it could not have been from modesty or bashfulness before the King, for there was not one among them but had dined with his majesty many times before. As soon as the King rose from table he retired, and distributed to some persons certain lands belonging to the Duke of Burgundy, as though he had been dead. He despatched the Bastard of Bourbon, Admiral of France, and myself into those parts, with full power to receive the homage of all such as were willing to submit and become his subjects. He ordered us to set out immediately, and gave us commission to open all his letters and packets which we might meet by the way, that thereby we might ascertain whether the Duke was dead or alive. We departed with all speed, though it was the coldest weather I ever felt in my life. We had not ridden above half a day's journey when we met a courier, and commanding him to deliver his letters we learned by them that the Duke of Burgundy was slain, and that his body had been found among the dead, and recognized by an Italian page that attended him and by one Monsieur Louppe, a Portuguese, who was his physician, and who assured the Lord of Craon that it was the Duke his master, and the Lord of Craon notified the same at once to the King. Upon receiving this news we rode directly to the suburbs of Abbeville, and were the first that announced the intelligence to the Duke's adherents in those parts. We found the inhabitants of the town in treaty with the Lord of Torcy, for whom they had held a great affection for a long time. The soldiers and officers of the Duke of Burgundy negotiated with us, by means of a messenger whom he had sent to them beforehand; and in confidence of success they dismissed four hundred Flemings who were then quartered in the town. The citizens, laying hold of this opportunity, opened the gates immediately to the Lord of Torcy, to the great prejudice and disadvantage of the captains and officers of the garrison--for there were seven or eight of them to whom, by virtue of the King's authority, we had promised money, and pensions for life; but they never enjoyed the benefit of that promise, because the town was not surrendered by them. Abbeville was one of the towns that Charles VII delivered up by the treaty of Arras in the year 1435, which towns were to return to the crown of France upon default of issue male; so that their admitting us so easily is not so much to be wondered at. From thence we marched to Dourlans, and sent a summons to Arras, the chief town in Artois, and formerly part of the patrimony of the earls of Flanders, which for want of heirs male always descended to the daughters. The Lord of Ravestein and the Lord des Cordes, who were in the town of Arras, offered to enter into a treaty with us at Mount St. Eloy and to bring some of the chief citizens with them. It was concluded that I and some others should meet them in the King's behalf; but the Admiral refused to go himself, because he presumed they would not consent to grant all our demands. I had not been long at the place of appointment when the two above-mentioned lords of Ravestein and Des Cordes arrived, attended by several persons of quality, and by certain commissioners on the part of the city, one of whom was their pensionary, named Monsieur John de la Vaquerie, whom they appointed to be their spokesman, and who since that time has been made first president of the Parliament of Paris. We demanded in the King's name to have the gates immediately opened and to be received into the town, for both the town and the whole country belonged to the King by right of confiscation; and if they refused to obey this summons, they would be in danger of being besieged, and compelled to submit by force, since their Duke was defeated, and his dominions utterly unprovided with means of defence, upon account of their irrecoverable losses in the three late battles. The lords returned answer by their speaker Monsieur John de la Vaquerie that the county of Artois belonged to the lady of Burgundy, daughter of Duke Charles, and descended to her in a right line from Margaret, Countess of Flanders, Artois, Burgundy, Nevers, and Rethel, who was married to Philip I, Duke of Burgundy, son of King John of France, and younger brother to King Charles V; wherefore they humbly entreated the King that he would observe and continue the truce that had existed between him and the late Duke of Burgundy, her father. Our conference was but short, for we expected to receive this answer; but the chief design of my going thither was to have a private conference with some persons that were thereto try if I could bring them over to the King's interest. I made overtures to some of them, who soon afterward did his majesty signal service. We found the whole country in a state of very great consternation, and not without cause; for in eight days' time they would scarce have been able to raise eight men-at-arms, and for other soldiers there were not in the whole country above one thousand five hundred--reckoning horse and foot together--that had escaped from the battle in which the Duke of Burgundy was slain, and they were quartered about Namur and Hainault. Their former haughty language was much altered now, and they spoke with more submission and humility; not that I would upbraid them with excessive arrogance in times past, but, to speak impartially, in my time they thought themselves so powerful that they spoke neither of nor to the King with the same respect as they have done since; and if people were wise, they would always use such moderate language in their days of prosperity that in the time of adversity they would not need to change it. I returned to the Admiral, to give him an account of our conference; and there I was informed that the King was coming toward us, and that upon receiving the news of the Duke's death he immediately set out, having despatched several letters in his own and his officers' names to send after him what forces could presently be assembled, with which he hoped to reduce the provinces I have just mentioned to his obedience. The King was overjoyed to see himself rid of all those whom he hated and who were his chief enemies; on some of them he had been personally revenged, as on the Constable of France, the Duke of Nemours, and several others. His brother, the Duke of Guienne, was dead, and his majesty came to the succession of the duchy. The whole house of Anjou was extinct--René, King of Sicily, John and Nicholas, Dukes of Calabria, and since them their cousin, the Count du Maine, afterward made count of Provence. The Count d'Armagnac had been killed at Lestore, and the King had got the estates and movables of all of them. But the house of Burgundy, being greater and more powerful than the rest, having maintained war with Charles VII, our master's father, for two-and-thirty years together without any cessation, by the assistance of the English, and having their dominions bordering upon the King's and their subjects always inclinable to invade his kingdom, the King had reason to be more than ordinarily pleased at the death of that Duke, and he triumphed more in his ruin than in that of all the rest of his enemies, as he thought that nobody, for the future, either of his own subjects or his neighbors, would be able to oppose him or disturb the tranquillity of his reign. He was at peace with England, and made it his chief business to continue so; yet, though he was freed in this manner from all his apprehensions, God did not permit him to take such courses in the management of his affairs as were most proper to promote his own interests and designs. And certainly, although God Almighty has shown, and does still show, that his determination is to punish the family of Burgundy severely, not only in the person of the Duke, but in its subjects and estates, yet I think the King our master did not take right measures to gain his end. For, if he had acted prudently, instead of pretending to conquer them, he should rather have endeavored to annex all those large territories, to which he had no just title, to the crown of France by some treaty of marriage; or to have gained the hearts and affections of the people, and so have brought them over to his interest, which he might, without any great difficulty, have effected, considering how their late afflictions had impoverished and dejected them. If he had acted after that manner, he would not only have prevented their ruin and destruction, but extended and strengthened his own kingdom, and established them all in a firm and lasting peace. He might by this means have eased, his own country of its intolerable grievances, and particularly of the marches and counter-marches of his troops, which are commanded continually up and down from one end of the kingdom to the other, sometimes upon very slight occasions. In the Duke of Burgundy's lifetime the King often talked with me about this affair, and told me what he would do if he should outlive the Duke, and his discourse at that time was very rational and wise; he told me he would propose a match between his son and the Duke of Burgundy's daughter, and if she would not consent to that, on the ground that the Dauphin was too young, he would then endeavor to marry her to some young prince of his kingdom, by which means he might keep her and her subjects in amity, and obtain without war what he intended to lay claim to for himself; and this was his resolution not more than a week before he heard of the Duke of Burgundy's death; but the very day he received that news his mind began to change, and this wise counsel was laid aside when the Admiral and I were despatched into those provinces. However, the King spoke little of what he intended to do--only to some few that were about him he promised sundry of the Duke's lordships and possessions. As the King was upon the road toward us, he received from all parts the welcome news of the delivering up the castles of Han and Bohain, and that the inhabitants of St. Quentin had secured that town for themselves, and opened their gates to their neighbor, the Lord of Mouy. He was certain of Peronne, which was commanded by Master William Bische, and, by the overtures that we and several other persons had made him, he was in great hopes that the Lord des Cordes would strike in with his interest. To Ghent he sent his barber, Master Oliver, [1] born in a small village not far off; and other agents he sent to other places, with great expectations from all of them; and most of them promised him very fair, but performed nothing. Upon the King's arrival near Peronne, I went to wait on his majesty, and at the same time William Bische and others brought him the surrender of the town of Péronne, with which he was extremely pleased. The King stayed there that day, and I dined with him, according to my usual custom, for it was his humor to have seven or eight always with him at table, and sometimes many more. After dinner he withdrew, and seemed not to be at all pleased with the Admiral's little exploit and mine; he told us he had sent his barber, Master Oliver, to Ghent, and he doubted not but he would persuade that town to submit to him; and Robinet Dodenfort to St. Omer, as he had great interest there; and these his majesty extolled as fit persons to manage such affairs, to receive the keys of great towns, and to put garrisons of his troops into them. He also mentioned others whom he had employed in the same negotiation in other places. While the King was busy in subduing towns and places in the marches of Picardy, his army was in Burgundy, under the command, apparently, of the Prince of Orange, a native and subject of the county of Burgundy, but one who had recently, for the second time, become an enemy of Duke Charles, so that the King made use of him, because he was a powerful noble in both the county and duchy of Burgundy, and was likewise well connected and greatly beloved. But the Lord of Craon was the King's lieutenant, and had the real charge of the army, and was the person in whom the King reposed most confidence; for he was a man of great wisdom, and thoroughly devoted to his master, though somewhat too fond of gain. This Lord of Craon, when he drew near Burgundy, sent forward the Prince of Orange and others to Dijon to use persuasion, and require the people to render obedience to the King; and they managed the matter so adroitly, principally by means of the Prince of Orange, that the city of Dijon and all the other towns in the duchy of Burgundy, together with many in the county, gave their allegiance to the King. [Footnote 1: This personage will be familiar to all who have read Sir Walter Scott's novel of _Quentin Durward_. Oliver le Mauvais was _valet-de-chambre_ and chief barber to Louis XI; in October, 1474, he received letters of nobility from that Prince, authorizing him to change his name of Mauvais to that of Le Dain. On November 19, 1477, the King conferred the estates of the deceased Count of Meulant on Oliver le Dain and his heirs; and to this gift he added the Forest of Senart in October, 1482. On May 21, 1484, Oliver was hanged "for various great crimes, offences, and malefactions."] INQUISITION ESTABLISHED IN SPAIN A.D. 1480 WILLIAM H. RULE JAMES BALMES Prior to the twelfth century the church authorities had been content with defining heresy, while the treatment of heretics was left to secular magistrates. But the spread of heresy at the end of the twelfth century caused the episcopal authorities to look for some occasion for enlarging their prerogatives. In 1204 Pope Innocent III appointed a papal delegate with authority to judge and punish misbelievers. From this germ sprung the Holy Office, commonly known as the Inquisition. This papal act met with some opposition from the bishops, upon whose prerogatives it encroached; and it provoked rebellion among those against whom it was directed, the Albigenses of Southern France, whose doctrines were spreading into Italy. In 1208 Innocent began a crusade against them, which was led by Arnold of Citeaux and Simon de Montfort, and proved a bloody war of extermination, lasting several years. Meanwhile the papacy gradually proceeded in the design of creating a tribunal under its own direct control. Such a tribunal was soon practically instituted. Its leading spirit was St. Dominic, founder of the Dominican order of preaching friars, but the title of Inquisitor was not yet adopted at the time of his death, in 1221. St. Dominic, however, is with good reason regarded as the founder of the Inquisition. After the death of St. Dominic the Inquisition gradually assumed a more definite and avowed character, and its repressive hand, inflicting terrible punishments upon accused heretics, was soon felt throughout Southern Europe, and later in the Netherlands, the order of St. Dominic at first furnishing its principal agents. But later the Inquisition entered upon another stage, under Spanish direction, through a specific organization, practically independent of papal or royal control, though acting under the sanction of both church and state. It became "the most formidable of irresponsible engines in the annals of religious institutions." Two points of view--Protestant and Catholic--are here presented of the Spanish history of the Holy Office. WILLIAM H. RULE "Better and happier luck for Spain"--I translate the words of Mariana--"was the establishment in Castile, which took place about this time, of a new and holy tribunal of severe and grave judges, for the purpose of making inquest and chastising heretical pravity and apostasy, judges other than the bishops, on whose charge and authority this office was anciently incumbent. For this intent the Roman pontiffs gave them authority, and order was given that the princes should help them with their favor and arm. These judges were called 'inquisitors,' because of the office which they exercised of hunting out and making inquest, a custom now very general in Italy, France, Germany, and also in the kingdom of Aragon. Castile, henceforth, would not suffer any nation to go beyond her in the desire which she always had to punish such enormous and wicked excesses. We find mention, before this, of some inquisitors who discharged this function, but not in the manner and force of those who followed them. "The chief author and instrument of this salutary grant was the Cardinal of Spain (Mendoza), who had seen that, in consequence of the great liberty of past years, and from the mingling of Moors and Jews with Christians in all sorts of conversation and trade, many things went out of order in the kingdom. With that liberty it was impossible that some of the Christians should not be infected. Many more, leaving the religion which they had voluntarily embraced as converts from Judaism, again apostatized and returned to their old superstition--an evil which prevailed more in Seville than in any other part. In that city, therefore, secret searches were first made, and they severely punished those whom they found guilty. If their delinquency was considerable after having kept them long time imprisoned, and after having tormented them, they burned them. If it was light, they punished the offenders, with the perpetual dishonor of their family. Of not a few they confiscated the goods, and condemned them to imprisonment for life. On most of them they put a _sambenito_, which is a sort of scapulary of yellow color, with a red St. Andrew's cross, that they might go marked among their neighbors, and bear a signal that should affright and scare by the greatness of the punishment and of the disgrace; a plan which experience has shown to be very salutary, although, at first, it seemed very grievous to the natives." Cardinal Mendoza might have been an instrument of establishing the new tribunal in Spain, but no author was wanted for that work. Pope Gregory IX, fit successor of Innocent III, had completed in Spain, as in the county of Toulouse and kingdom of France, the scheme which his uncle Innocent began. By a bull, dated May 26, 1232, he appointed Dominican friars inquisitors in Aragon, and forthwith proceeded to confer the same benefit on the kingdoms of Navarre, Castile, and Portugal; Granada being in possession of the Moors. Ten years later, in a council at Tarragona, the chief technicalities of the Spanish Inquisition were settled. At the invitation of Peter, Archbishop of Tarragona, Raymund of Peñaforte, the Pope's penitentiary, presided. The definitions of the council are notable for the determination they evidence to conduct the affairs of the tribunal with entire legal precision and formality. The "vocabulary" was now settled, and one has only to turn to the _Acts_ of the Council of Tarragona to find the exact meaning of "heretic, believer, suspected, simple, vehement, most vehement, favorer, concealer, receiver, receptacle, defender, abettor, relapsed." As everyone may well know, no inconsiderable part of the Spanish population consisted of Jews, many of whose ancestors had taken refuge in that country, or had settled there for purposes of commerce, ages before the birth of our Lord, and their number had been increased from time to time, in consequence of imperial edicts which drove them from Italy, or by the attractions of honor and wealth in Spain. They were the most industrious and therefore the most wealthy people in those kingdoms, and had possessed great influence. Their learned men occupied important stations as physicians, agents of government, and even officers of state; while the "New Christians," or Jews professedly converted to Christianity, were intermarried with the highest families in Spain, and all this had taken place in spite of the enmity of the clergy, popular bigotry, and the adverse legislation of _cortes_ or parliaments. But the wealth which procured Jews and New Christians so much worldly influence became the occasion of great suffering. The "Old Christians," being less industrious, and therefore less affluent, were frequently their debtors. And although usury was checked by legislators, who dreaded its pressure on themselves, and debts were often repudiated, the Jews maintained their position of creditors; and, as the _Cartilla_ says, creditors are often unreasonable persons, or, at least, are considered to be such. Christians of pure blood, therefore, finding themselves involved in long reckonings, became increasingly impatient, and, under a cloak of zeal for the Catholic religion, were incessantly embroiling them with the magistracy or stirring up the populace against them. Llorente estimates the number of Jews who perished under the fury of mobs, in the year 1391, at upward of one hundred thousand. To evade persecution, multitudes submitted to be baptized. More than a million had changed name at the end of the fourteenth century. After those tumults controversial preachers, such as San Vicente Ferrer, declaimed for popery against Judaism; and in the first ten years of the fifteenth century a second multitude of forced converts threw themselves into the bosom of the Romish Church, to the discouragement of their brethern and to their own confusion at last. They were set under the keenest vigilance of the inquisitors, without being able even to counterfeit any attachment to the Church, whose most grievous yoke they had put on, but which in heart they hated. Now the Church gloried over the declension of Judaism. In presence of Benedict XIII, antipope, a Spaniard, wandering in Spain, because in Rome they would not own him, a formal disputation was carried on for sixty-nine days between Jerome of Santa Fé and other converts--or, as the Jews not improperly called them, apostates--on the one side, and a company of rabbis on the other. Such a controversy, carried on even in the presence of a half-pope, could only come to the prescribed conclusion; and after seeing all persuasion and corruption exhausted to bring over the Hebrews to his sect, but without much success, Benedict closed the debate, pronounced the Jews vanquished, and gave them notice of severer measures. The richer from interest, the poorer from bigotry, and the priesthood from instinct, poured contempt even on proselytes, whom they classified according to their supposed degrees of heterodoxy. Some were called "converts," to note the newness of their Christianity; others "confessed," to tell that they had confessed the falseness of Judaism. Sometimes they were branded as "maranos," from the words _maran atha_, which the priests, in their ignorance, took to mean "accursed." The whole were spoken of as a generation of maranos, or, worst of all in the imagination of a papist, "Jews." Goaded by the cowardly persecution, the proselytes groaned after deliverance; a few even dared to renounce the profession of a faith they never held, and many resumed the practice of Jewish rites in private. This opened a new field to the zeal of the inquisitors; but the labor of suppressing a revolt so widely spread, so rapidly extending, and even infecting the Romish families with whom the imperfect converts were united, was more than the inquisitors could undertake without a more powerfully organized system of their own. I believe that the fear of the Bible and the hatred of the Jews of Spain, first imprinted in the page of history by the Council of Illiberis in the beginning of the fourth century, was in course of time much aggravated by the earnest love of the Spanish Jews for the original scriptures of the Old Testament. It was not until the eleventh century that rabbinical tradition gained much hold in the Jewish mind in Spain, but, from the first, Christians had cursed Jews in sincere but blind zeal against the descendants, as they thought, of those who crucified our Lord in Jerusalem. Yet the Sephardim in Spain could have had no knowledge of the Crucifixion until some weeks, at soonest, after it had taken place, and perhaps never knew of the hostility of the Jews in Jerusalem against the Saviour. Until the dispersion of the Eastern colleges in the eleventh century, no great rabbis came into Spain with pretension of authority to enforce Talmudical traditions. When zealots of the sort did come, they found a community of Hebrews far superior to the Jews of Palestine. No Assyrian had bribed them to worship the gods of Nineveh. Their neighbors the Carthaginians, so long as Carthage stood, had persisted in worshipping the Baal and the Ashtaroth that recreant Israelites in Samaria and Jews in Jerusalem worshipped for ages; but, while those gods had altars in Sidon and in Carthage, we do not hear of any altars being raised to them in "the captivity of Jerusalem, which was in Sepharad," or Spain (Obadiah, 20); neither do we hear that those Jews betrayed any ambition to make a hedge to protect God's law, instead of taking care to keep it. But the first propagators of traditionism in Spain came from the East, on the breaking up of the great schools of Babylonia by the Persians. Ancient or Karaite synagogues remained in Spain until the expulsion of Jews at the close of the fifteenth century, and yet much later in the provinces that were not annexed to the United Kingdom of Castilla and Leon under Ferdinand and Isabella. Some of the strongest features of biblical learning imparted to the literature of the Reformation in its earlier stages proceeded from the converted Jews of Spain. About the year 1470, when the persecution of both Jews and Mahometans was at its height--except in the kingdom of Granada--and when the testimony quoted from the Old Testament against worship of images must have been extremely galling to the worshippers, the priests thought it necessary to enforce the prohibition of vernacular versions of the Bible. Such versions, we know, were then circulated more freely in France, Spain, and Portugal. In Spain, one of the chief translators was Rabbi Moses of Toledo. To put a stop to Bible-reading, an appeal was made to Pope Paul II, who prohibited the translation of the holy Scriptures "into the languages of the nations." This authority was quoted in the Council of Trent by Cardinal Pacheco, in justification of the practice of the Church of Rome in his day; but another cardinal, Madrucci, arguing against him, replied with cutting calmness that "Paul, of popes the second," or any other pope, might be easily deceived in judging of the fitness or unfitness of a law, but not so Paul the Apostle, who taught that God's word should never depart from the mouth of the faithful. During the persecutions of the fifteenth century, while Ferdinand and Isabella made progress in reconquering the kingdom of Granada from the Moors, and Mahometanism, like Judaism, was declining, the Moriscoes, a middle class, resembling the New Christians, and not less dangerous to Romanism, also challenged the powers of the Inquisition. No other country in popedom was at that time more deeply imbued with disaffection of the doctrines and worship of the Church of Rome. Then in 1477, one Brother Philip de' Barberi, a Sicilian inquisitor, came to the court of Ferdinand and Isabella, who were sovereigns of Sicily, to solicit the confirmation of some privileges recently granted to the Holy Office in that island; and, having observed the peril of the Church within the enlarged and united dominions of "the Catholic kings" under whose rule nearly all Spain was comprehended, advised the creation of one undivided court of inquisition, like that of Sicily, as the only means of defence against the maranos, Moriscoes, Jews, and Mussulmans. The advice was quickly taken. First of all, the Dominicans, and after them the dignitaries of the secular clergy, crowded round the throne to pray for a reformation of the Inquisition after the Sicilian model. They appealed to the greed of King Ferdinand by offering him the proceeds of a confiscation, which might be rapidly effected, in pursuance of laws of the Church to that intent provided. They appealed to the piety of Queen Isabella, and were careful that tales of Jewish murders and Jewish desecrations should be poured incessantly into the royal ear. Ferdinand had no scruple. He sincerely prayed the Pope to sanction such a measure, and, swiftly as couriers could bring it, came the desired bull. Isabella could not blame the zeal of priests and monks; for she, too, was a zealot. She could not gainsay the urgency of the nuncio. She could not quench in her husband's bosom the thirst of gold. But she had brought half the kingdom as her dower; and therefore some deference was due to her conscience and judgment, and both in conscience and judgment she desired gentler measures. During two or three years her orator and confessor wrote books, and preachers were permitted to publish arguments, and disputants to enter into conferences, for the conviction of the Jews. At her majesty's request, Cardinal Mendoza issued a constitution in Seville, in 1478, containing "the form that should be observed with a Christian from the day of his birth, as well in the sacrament of baptism as in all other sacraments which he ought to receive, and of what he should be taught, and ought to do and believe as a faithful Christian, every day, and at all times of his life, until the day of his death. And he ordered this to be published in all the churches of the city, and put in tables in each parish, as a settled constitution. He also published a summary of what curates and clerks should teach their parishioners, and what the parishioners should observe and show to their children." Thus does Hernando del Pulgar, in his _Chronicle of the Catholic Sovereigns_, describe what some too hastily call a catechism. It was merely a standard of things to be believed and done, set forth by authority. The King and Queen also, _not the Cardinal_, commanded "some friars, clerks, and other religious persons to teach the people." But no true Jew would let himself be taught that idolatry is not damnable; and even the less discouraging issues of controversy with the vacillating or the ignorant were not honestly reported. The constitution of Cardinal Mendoza and the harangues of the friars were ineffectual, as well they might be, for the Jews knew that the Christians had a sacred book, said to be written by divine inspiration, as well as the Law of Moses; and if that book was not put into their hands, they could scarcely be expected to believe a religion whose chief written authority was kept out of sight. That it was, indeed, kept out of sight was undeniable; and the notorious Alfonso de Castro, chaplain of Philip II, boasted in his book against heresies that there was "an edict of the most illustrious and Catholic sovereigns of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella, in which, under the severest penalties, they forbade anyone to translate the holy Scriptures into a vulgar language, or to have any such version in his possession. For they were afraid lest any occasion of error should be given to the people over whom God had made them governors." The clergy maintained that conversion to the truth by argument was impossible, and, at their instance, the bull was no longer kept in reserve, but was published in 1480. The Queen's trial of humanity was ended; but a question of policy remained. The King and Queen remembered that they had an interest in Spain as well as the Pope, but they scarcely knew how that interest could be guarded if the inquisitors were allowed absolute power over the persons and property of their subjects. To have proposed lay assessors and open court would have provoked a quarrel with the Pope, then powerful enough to raise Europe in arms against them; therefore they modestly requested no more than that some priests nominated by the King should be associated with some others nominated by the Pope; or that the King should name all, and the Pope confirm his nominations. The "Catholic sovereigns" calculated that nominees of Rome would, of course, prefer the rights of the Church to those of the crown, but they fancied, or they wished to fancy, that priests of their own choice would prefer their interests to those of a stranger. This was an illusion, and therefore Rome made little difficulty; and after due correspondence, and some changes, the Supreme Council of the Spanish Inquisition was constituted thus: Inquisitor-general--Friar Thomas de Torquemada, of whom Llorente says that it was hardly possible that there could have been another man so capable of fulfilling the intentions of King Ferdinand, by multiplying confiscations; those of the court of Rome, by propagating their jurisdictional and pecuniary maxims; and those of the projectors of the Inquisition, by infusing terror into the people by public executions. Two assessors--Juan Gutierrez de Chabes and Tristan de Medina, jurisconsults. Three King's counsellors--Don Alonso Carillo, a bishop-elect, with Sancho Valasquez de Cuellar and Poncio de Valencia, doctors of civil law. In matters relating to royal power they were to have a definite vote; but in affairs of spiritual jurisdiction they could only be suffered to offer an opinion, inasmuch as a spiritual power resided in the chief inquisitor alone. Under the jurisdiction of the supreme council were four subordinate tribunals, and eventually several others were added, while some inquisitors, hitherto holding special powers from the Pope, were stripped of their independence, that the court of Rome might have one uniform action throughout Spain. As the Holy Office advanced in labor and experience, the supreme council was enlarged, and at last it consisted of a president--inquisitor-general for the time being; six counsellors with the title of apostolic; a fiscal; a secretary of the chamber; two secretaries of the council; an alguazil-in-chief, or sheriff; one receiver; two reporters; four apparitors; one solicitor; and as many consulters as circumstances might require. Of course these were all maintained in a style worthy of their office. The Inquisitor-general, or president of the council, exerted an absolute power over every Spanish subject, so that he almost ceased to be himself a subject. He alone consulted with the King concerning the appointment of inquisitors to preside over all the provincial tribunals. Each of those inferior inquisitions was managed by three inquisitors, two secretaries, one under-sheriff, one receiver, and a certain number of triers and consulters. Their functions were considerably restricted, leaving all capital cases and ultimate decisions in the hands of the Madrid "Supreme." But while Ferdinand, Isabella, Torquemada, and the nuncio were concerting their plans and preparing death for heretics, what said Spain to it? Neither was clergy nor laity content. After the bull of Sixtus IV empowering the King to name inquisitors furnished with absolute authority, and to remove them at pleasure, had arrived, but lay unpublished in consequence of the Queen's repugnance, a provincial synod sat at Seville, where the regal court then was, 1478. Had the clergy of Castile desired the Inquisition, the synod would have said so; but so far were they from approving of such a tribunal, to which every bishop would be subject, but where no bishop would any longer have a voice, that they passed over the affair of heresy in silence, not consenting to accept the Inquisition, yet not presuming to remonstrate against it. Then would have been the time for the clergy to add their power to that of the throne for the suppression of false doctrine, believing, as they did believe, that forcible suppression was not only lawful, but meritorious in the sight of God; and so they would probably have done if inquisitor and bishop were to have had coördinate jurisdiction, as in the first inquisition of Toulouse, and in the early Italian inquisition; but they saw, with alarm, that the episcopate was to be despoiled of its authority at a stroke. A few months before the publication of the bull, but long after every person in Spain knew the purport of its contents, and in the certainty that it would be carried into execution, the Cortes of Toledo met; but, instead of avoiding any act that would interfere with the new jurisdiction then to be introduced, they made several provisions for separating Jews and Christians by the enclosure of Jewries in the towns, and for compelling the former to wear a peculiar garb, and abstain from exercising the vocation of surgeon or physician or innkeeper or barber or apothecary among Christians. The parliament plainly ignored the Inquisition in making this enactment on their own authority. And what said the magistracy and the people? Seville represented the general state of feeling at the time. There, when a company of inquisitors presented themselves, conducted into the city by men and horses which had been impressed for the purpose by royal order, the civil authorities refused to help them, notwithstanding the injunctions of the bull, the obligations of canon law, and a mandate from the Crown. The new inquisitors found themselves unable to act for want of help; meanwhile the objects of their mission forsook the city, and found shelter in the neighboring districts; and Ferdinand had to issue specific orders to overpower the hostility of all the classes of the people and to compel the magistrates to assist the new set of officers ecclesiastic. These orders were most reluctantly obeyed. Thus fortified, the inquisitors took up their abode in the Dominican convent of St. Paul, and issued their first mandate January 2, 1481. They said that they were aware of the flight of the New Christians, and commanded the Marquis of Cadiz, the Count of Arcos, and all the dukes, marquises, counts, gentlemen, rich men, and others of the kingdom of Castile to arrest the fugitives and send them to Seville within a fortnight, sequestrating their property. All who failed to do this were excommunicated as abettors of heresy, deposed from their dignities, and deprived of their estates; and their subjects were to be absolved from homage and obedience. Crowds of fugitives were driven back into Seville, bound like felons; the dungeons and apartments of the convent overflowed with prisoners; and the King assigned the castle of Triana, on the opposite bank of the Guadalquiver, to the "New and Holy Tribunal," to be a place of safe custody. There the inquisitors, elate with triumph over the reluctant magistrates and panic-stricken people, shortly afterward erected a tablet with an inscription in memory of the first establishment of the modern Inquisition in Western Europe. The concluding sentences of the inscription were: "God grant that, for the protection and augmentation of the faith, it may abide unto the end of time!--Arise, O Lord, judge thy cause!--Catch ye the foxes!" Their second edict was one of "grace." It summoned all who had apostatized to present themselves before the inquisitors within a term appointed, promising that all who did so, with true contrition and purpose of amendment, should be exempted from confiscation of their property--it was understood that they should be punished in some other way--but threatening that, if they allowed that term to pass over without repentance, they should be dealt with according to the utmost rigor of the law. Many ran to the convent of St. Paul, hoping to merit some small measure of indulgence. But the inquisitors would not absolve them until they had disclosed the names, calling, residence, and given a description of all others whom they had seen, heard, or understood to have apostatized in like manner. After getting this information, they bound the terrified informers to secrecy. This first object being accomplished, they sent out a third monition, requiring all who knew any that had apostatized into the Jewish heresy to inform against them within six days, under the usual penalties. But they had already marked the very men; and those suspected converts suddenly saw the apparitors inside their houses, and were dragged away to the dungeons. New Christians who had preserved any of the familiar usages of their forefathers, such as putting on clean clothes on Saturday, who stripped the fat from beef or mutton, who killed poultry with a sharp knife, covered the blood, and muttered a few Hebrew words, who had eaten flesh in Lent, blessed their children, laying hands on their heads, who observed any peculiarity of diet or distinction of feast or fast, mourned for the dead after their ancient manner, or whose friends had presumed to turn the face toward a wall when in the agony of death, all such being vehemently suspected of apostasy, were to be punished accordingly. Thirty-six elaborate articles were furnished whereby everyone was instructed how to ensnare his neighbor. But what shall we say of a faith that could only hope to be kept alive in the world by the extinction of charity, honor, pity, and humanity? Llorente describes the immediate issue: "Such opportune measures for multiplying victims could not but produce the desired effect. Hence, on January 6, 1481, there were burned six unhappy persons; sixteen on March 26th; many on April 21st; and by November 4th, two hundred ninety-eight in all. Besides these, the inquisitors condemned seventy-nine to perpetual imprisonment. And all this in the city of Seville only; since, as regards the territories of this archbishopric and of the bishopric of Cadiz, Juan de Mariana says that, in the single year of 1481, two thousand Judaizers were burned in person, and very many in effigy, of whom the number is not known, besides seventeen thousand subjected to cruel penance. Among those burned were many principal persons and rich inhabitants, whose property went into the treasury. "As so many persons were to be put to death by fire, the Governor of Seville caused a permanent raised pavement, or platform of masonry, to be constructed outside the city, which has lasted to our time [until the French invasion, if not later], retaining its name of _Quemadero_ ('Burning-place'); and at the four corners four large hollow statues of limestone, within which they used to place the impenitent alive, that they might die by slow heat. I leave my readers to consider whether this punishment of an error of the understanding was consistent or not with the doctrine of the Gospel? "Fear caused an immense multitude of others of the same class of New Christians to emigrate to France, Portugal, and even Africa. But many others, whose effigies had been burned, appealed to Rome, complaining of the injustice of those proceedings; in consequence of which appeals the Pope wrote, on January 29, 1482, to Ferdinand and Isabella, saying that there were innumerable complaints against the inquisitors, Fray Miguel Morillo and Fray Juan de San Martin especially, because they had not confined themselves to canon law, but declared many to be heretics that were not. His holiness said that, but for the royal nomination, he would have deprived them of their office; but that he revoked the power he had given to the sovereign to nominate others, supposing that fit persons would be found among those nominated by the general or the provincial of the Dominicans, to whom the privilege belonged, and in prejudice of whose privilege the former nomination by Ferdinand and Isabella had been allowed." So adroitly did the Pope take the absolute control of the Inquisition into his own hands under pretence of impartial justice, and leave the weaker tyrant to eat the fruit of his doings. But since that time pope and king have been again united in the management of the Holy Office, the latter, however, in abject subservience to the former. Neither in the appeals nor in the brief was there anything that could divert Torquemada from the prosecution of his purposes; and therefore he hastened to bring Aragon under his jurisdiction. Ferdinand convened the cortes of that kingdom in the city of Tarragona, April, 1484; in that assembly appointed a junta to prepare measures for the establishment of another tribunal; and then Torquemada, in pursuance of the latest pontifical decision, created Friar Caspar Inglar, a preacher of the Dominican community, and Pedro Arbues de Epila, a canon of the metropolitan church, inquisitors. The King gave a mandate to the civil authorities--a firman, it might be called--compelling them to lend aid to the new officers; and, on September 13th following, the Grand Justice of Aragon, with his five lieutenants of the long robe and various other magistrates, swore upon the holy Gospels that they would give men and arms to defend and to enforce the authority of the Holy Inquisition. And as they swore thus, the King's chief secretary for Aragon, the prothonotary, the vice-chancellor, the royal treasurer--whose own father and grandfather were Jews, and persecuted by the old inquisitors--together with a multitude of persons of high rank and office, in whose veins flowed Jewish blood, and whose descendants are now among the first families in Spain, looked on with dismay, and sent a deputation to Rome, bearing remonstrance against the newly created Inquisition; and deputed others to present their appeal to the same effect at the court of Ferdinand and Isabella. All these deputies were afterward proceeded against as hinderers of the Holy Office; and meanwhile the inquisitors, in contempt of opposition, set themselves to work without delay. In the months of May and June, 1485, two acts of faith were celebrated in Saragossa, capital of Aragon, and a large number of New Christians burned alive. The public was enraged, certainly, but helpless; yet not so helpless but that many awoke to a conviction that, since the inquisitors had resorted to terror for the conservation of the faith, they ought to be restrained by terror in their turn. In the night of September 14, 1485, one of the inquisitors, Pedro Arbues, covered as usual with a coat of mail under his robes, and wearing a steel skull-cap under his hat--for he was every moment conscious of guilt and apprehensive of retribution--took a lantern in one hand and a bludgeon in the other; and, like a sturdy soldier of his peculiar Church, walked from his house to the cathedral of that same Saragossa, to join in matins. He knelt down by one of the pillars, setting his lantern on the pavement. His right hand held the weapon of defence, yet stealthily half covered with the cloak. The canons, in their places, were chanting hymns. Two men came and knelt down near him. They understood, as most Spaniards do, how most effectually to attack a man, and how to kill him quickest. Therefore one of them suddenly disabled him on one side by a blow on the left arm. The other swung his cudgel at the back of his head, just below the edge of the steel cap, and laid him prone. He never spoke again, but expired in a few hours. This murder, as might be expected, was well made use of by the priests, serving them to plead the necessity of an inquisition to repress violence; and the inhabitants of the city were instantly overawed by a display of high judicial authority which they had no power to resist. Queen Isabella, horrified at the murder of her confessor--for "confessor of the kings" was an honorary dignity conferred on each inquisitor in Spain--erected a monument to his memory at her own expense; and when the murders perpetrated by Arbues himself had somewhat faded out of public memory, he was beatified at Rome, and a chapel was constructed for his veneration in the church where he had fallen. Therein his remains were laid; and over the spot where he received the mortal blow a stone was placed, with the inscription: "_Siste, viator,_" etc. "Stay, traveller! Thou adorest the place (_locum adoras_) where the blessed Pedro de Arbues was laid low by two missiles. Epila gave him birth. This city gave him a canonry. The apostolic see elected him to be the first Father Inquisitor of the Faith. Because of his zeal he became hateful to the Jews; by whom slain, he fell here a martyr in the year 1485. The most serene Ferdinand and Isabella reared a marble mausoleum, where he became famous for miracles. Alexander VII, Pontifex Maximus, wrote him into the number of holy and blessed martyrs on the 17th day of April in the year 1664. The tomb having been opened, the sacred ashes were translated, and placed under the altar of the chapel (built by the chapter, with the material of the tomb, in the space of sixty-five days), with solemn rite and veneration, on the 23d day of September, in the year 1664." The intelligence of that murder threw all Aragon into commotion. The powers, ecclesiastical and royal, panted for vengeance, and the murderers were put to a most painful death. The Jews and New Christians trembled with terror and rage. The inhabitants of many towns, Teruel, Valencia, Lerida, and Barcelona included, compelled the inquisitors to cease from inquest; and it was only by means of military force, after edicts and bulls had failed, that the King and Pope together could quash two years' public resistance. In Saragossa, where the murder had been contrived by a party of chief inhabitants, a consciousness of guilt weakened their hands and they endeavored to save themselves by flight. Thousands of people deserted the city, although they had no participation in the deed and were everywhere treated as rebels; and in that migration incidents occurred which might throw a tinge of horrible romance on our history. Let me briefly mention two. An inhabitant of Saragossa found his way to Tudela, and there begged for shelter and concealment in the house of Don Jaime, Infante of Navarre, legitimate son of the Queen of Navarre and nephew of King Ferdinand himself. The Infante could not refuse asylum and hospitality to an innocent fugitive. He allowed the man to hide himself for a few days and then pass on to France. For this act of humanity Don Jaime was arrested by the inquisitors, thrown into prison as an impeder of the Holy Office, brought thence to Saragossa, a place quite beyond the jurisdiction of Navarre, and there made to do open penance in the cathedral, in presence of a great congregation at high mass. And what penance! The Archbishop of Saragossa presided; but this Archbishop was a boy of seventeen, an illegitimate son of the King; and he it was that commanded two priests to flog his father's lawful nephew, the Infante of Navarre, with rods. They whipped Don Jaime around the church accordingly. The other case was diabolical. Gaspar de Santa Cruz escaped to Toulouse, where he died and was buried after his effigy had been burned in Saragossa. In this city lived a son of his, who, in duty bound, had helped him to make good his retreat. This son was delated as an impeder of the Holy Office, arrested, brought out at an act of faith, made to read a condemnation of his deceased father, and then sent to the inquisitor at Toulouse, who took him to his father's grave, and compelled him to dig up the corpse and burn it with his own hands. Whether the inquisitors were most barbarous or the young man most vile, it may be difficult to say. But it is a most infamous glory of the Inquisition that, for satisfaction of its own requirements, the express laws of God and man and the first instincts of humanity are equally set at naught. The Arch-inquisitor of Spain, shortly after his accession to the office, summoned the subalterns from their stations to meet him at Seville, and framed, with them, a set of instructions for uniform administration. They were published, twenty-eight in number, on October 29, 1484. On January 9, 1485, eleven more were added. The spirit of these instructions pervades the _Directory_ of Eymeric, into which they were incorporated by his commentator. It is only important to mention here that on the present occasion an agent was appointed to represent this Inquisition at Rome, and there to defend the inquisitors on occasion of appeals from the subjects of inquisitorial violence or from their friends or their survivors. And this was in spite of a bull sent into Spain two years before, appointing the Archbishop of Seville sole judge of such appeals. But that bull was a mere feint for conciliation and never acted on at Rome. We must not fail to mark this point in the history, forasmuch as here begins the practically juridical relation between the court of Rome as supreme, and the provinces of the Roman Church as subordinate, in matters concerning inquisition. JAMES BALMES As to the Spanish Inquisition, which was only an extension of that which was established in other countries, we must divide it, with respect to its duration, into three great periods. We omit the time of its existence in the kingdom of Aragon, before its introduction into Castile. The first of these comprehends the time when the Inquisition was principally directed against the relapsed Jews and Moors, from the day of its installation under the Catholic sovereigns till the middle of the reign of Charles V. The second extends from the time when it began to concentrate its efforts to prevent the introduction of Protestantism into Spain until that danger entirely ceased; that is, from the middle of the reign of Charles V till the coming of the Bourbons. The third and last period is that when the Inquisition was limited to repress infamous crimes and exclude the philosophy of Voltaire; this period was continued until its abolition, in the beginning of the nineteenth century. It is clear that, the institution being successively modified according to circumstances at these different epochs--although it always remained fundamentally the same--the commencement and termination of each of these three periods which we have pointed out cannot be precisely marked; nevertheless, these three periods really existed in its history, and present us with very different characters. Everyone knows the peculiar circumstances in which the Inquisition was established in the time of the Catholic sovereigns; yet it is worthy of remark that the bull of establishment was solicited by Queen Isabella; that is, by one of the most distinguished sovereigns in our history--by that Queen who still, after three centuries, preserves the respect and admiration of all Spaniards. Isabella, far from opposing the will of the people in this measure, only realized the national wish. The Inquisition was established chiefly against the Jews. Before the Inquisition published its first edict, dated Seville, in 1481, the Cortes of Toledo, in 1480, had adopted severe measures on the subject. To prevent the injury which the intercourse between Jews and Christians might occasion to the Catholic faith, the cortes had ordered that unbaptized Israelites should be obliged to wear a distinctive mark, dwell in separate quarters, called _juiveries_, and return there before night. Ancient regulations against them were renewed; the professions of doctor, surgeon, shopkeeper, barber, and tavern-keeper were forbidden them. Intolerance was, therefore, popular at that time. If the Inquisition be justified in the eyes of friends to monarchy, by conformity with the will of kings, it has an equal claim to be so in the eyes of lovers of democracy. No doubt the heart is grieved at reading the excessive severities exercised at that time against the Jews; but must there not have been very grave causes to provoke such excesses? The danger which the Spanish monarchy, not yet well established, would have incurred if the Jews, then very powerful on account of their riches and their alliances with the most influential families, had been allowed to act without restraint, has been pointed out as one of the most important of these causes. It was greatly to be feared that they would league with the Moors against the Christians. The respective positions of the three nations rendered this league natural; this is the reason why it was looked upon as necessary to break a power which was capable of compromising anew the independence of the Christians. It is necessary also to observe that at the time when the Inquisition was established the war of eight hundred years against the Moors was not yet finished. The Inquisition was projected before 1474; it was established in 1480, and the conquest of Granada did not take place till 1492. Thus it was founded at the time when the obstinate struggle was about to be decided; it was yet to be known whether the Christians would remain masters of the whole peninsula or whether the Moors should retain possession of one of the most fertile and beautiful provinces; whether these enemies, shut up in Granada, should preserve a position excellent for their communication with Africa, and a means for all the attempts which, at a later period, the Crescent might be disposed to make against us. Now, the power of the Crescent was very great, as was clearly shown by its enterprises against the rest of Europe in the next century. In such emergencies, after ages of fighting, and at the moment which was to decide the victory forever, have combatants ever been known to conduct themselves with moderation and mildness? It cannot be denied that the system of repression pursued in Spain, with respect to the Jews and the Moors, was inspired, in great measure, by the instinct of self-preservation: we can easily believe that the Catholic princes had this motive before them when they decided on asking for the establishment of the Inquisition in their dominions. The danger was not imaginary; it was perfectly real. In order to form an idea of the turn which things might have taken if some precaution had not been adopted, it is enough to recollect the insurrections of the last Moors in later times. Yet it would be wrong, in this affair, to attribute all to the policy of royalty; and it is necessary here to avoid exalting too much the foresight and designs of men; for my part, I am inclined to think that Ferdinand and Isabella naturally followed the generality of the nation, in whose eyes the Jews were odious when they persevered in their creed, and suspected when they embraced the Christian religion. Two causes contributed to this hatred and animadversion: first, the excited state of religious feeling then general in all Europe, and especially in Spain; second, the conduct by which the Jews had drawn upon themselves the public indignation. The necessity of restraining the cupidity of the Jews, for the sake of the independence of the Christians, was of ancient date in Spain: the old assemblies of Toledo had attempted it. In the following centuries the evil reached its height; a great part of the riches of the peninsula had passed into the hands of the Jews, and almost all the Christians found themselves their debtors. Thence the hatred of the people against the Jews; thence the frequent troubles which agitated some towns of the peninsula; thence the tumults which more than once were fatal to the Jews, and in which their blood flowed in abundance. It was difficult for a people accustomed for ages to set themselves free by force of arms to resign themselves peacefully and tranquilly to the lot prepared for them by the artifices and exactions of a strange race, whose name, moreover, bore the recollection of a terrible malediction. In later times an immense number of Jews were converted to the Christian religion; but the hatred of the people was not extinguished thereby, and mistrust followed these converts into their new state. It is very probable that a great number of these conversions were hardly sincere, as they were partly caused by the sad position in which the Jews who continued in Judaism were placed. In default of conjectures founded on reason in this respect, we will regard as a sufficient corroboration of our opinion the multitude of Judaizing Christians who were discovered as soon as care was taken to find out those who had been guilty of apostasy. However this may be, it is certain that the distinction between New and Old Christians was introduced; the latter denomination was a title of honor, and the former a mark of ignominy; the converted Jews were contemptuously called _maranos_ ("impure men," "pigs"). With more or less foundation, they were accused of horrible crimes. In their dark assemblies they committed, it was said, atrocities which could hardly be believed for the honor of humanity. For example, it was said that, to revenge themselves on the Christians and in contempt of religion, they crucified Christian children, taking care to choose for the purpose the greatest day among Christian solemnities. There is the often-repeated history of the knight of the house of Guzman, who, being hidden one night in the house of a Jew whose daughter he loved, saw a child crucified at the time when the Christians celebrated the institution of the sacrifice of the eucharist. Besides infanticide, there were attributed to the Jews sacrileges, poisonings, conspiracies, and other crimes. That these rumors were generally believed by the people is proved by the fact that the Jews were forbidden by law to exercise the professions of doctor, surgeon, barber, and tavern-keeper; this shows what degree of confidence was placed in their morality. It is useless to stay to examine the foundations for these sinister accusations. We are not ignorant how far popular credulity will go, above all when it is under the influence of excited feelings, which makes it view all things in the same light. It is enough for us to know that these rumors circulated everywhere and with credit, to understand what must have been the public indignation against the Jews, and consequently how natural it was that authority, yielding to the impulse of the general mind, should be urged to treat them with excessive rigor. The situation in which the Jews were placed is sufficient to show that they might have attempted to act in concert to resist the Christians; what they did after the death of St. Peter Arbues shows what they were capable of doing on other occasions. The funds necessary for the accomplishment of the murder--the pay of the assassins, and the other expenses required for the plot--were collected by means of voluntary contributions imposed on themselves by all the Jews of Aragon. Does not this show an advanced state of organization, which might have become fatal if it had not been watched? In alluding to the death of St. Peter Arbues, I wish to make an observation on what has been said on this subject as proving the unpopularity of the establishment of the Inquisition in Spain. What more evident proof, we shall be told, can you have than the assassination of the inquisitor? Is it not a sure sign that the indignation of the people was at its height and that they were quite opposed to the Inquisition? Would they otherwise have been hurried into such excesses? If by "the people" you mean the Jews and their descendants, I will not deny that the establishment of the Inquisition was indeed very odious to them, but it was not so with the rest of the nation. The event we are speaking of gave rise to a circumstance which proves just the reverse. When the report of the death of the inquisitor was spread through the town, they went in crowds in pursuit of the New Christians, so that a bloody catastrophe would have ensued had not the young Archbishop of Saragossa, Alphonsus of Aragon, presented himself to the people on horseback, and calmed them by the assurance that all the rigor of the laws should fall on the heads of the guilty. Was the Inquisition as unpopular as it has been represented? and will it be said that its adversaries were the majority of the people? Why, then, could not the tumult of Saragossa have been avoided in spite of all the precautions which were no doubt taken by the conspirators, at that time very powerful by their riches and influence? At the time of the greatest rigor against the Judaizing Christians, there is a fact worthy of attention. Persons accused, or threatened with the pursuit of the Inquisition, took every means to escape the action of that tribunal: they left the soil of Spain and went to Rome. Would those who imagine that Rome has always been the hot-bed of intolerance, the firebrand of persecution, have imagined this? The number of causes commenced by the Inquisition, and summoned from Spain to Rome, is countless, during the first fifty years of the existence of that tribunal; and it must be added that Rome always inclined to the side of indulgence. I do not know that it would be possible to cite one accused person who, by appealing to Rome, did not ameliorate his condition. The history of the Inquisition at that time is full of contests between the kings and popes; and we constantly find, on the part of the holy see, a desire to restrain the Inquisition within the bounds of justice and humanity. The line of conduct prescribed by the court of Rome was not always followed as it ought to have been. Thus we see the popes compelled to receive a multitude of appeals, and mitigate the lot that would have befallen the appellants if their cause had been definitely decided in Spain. We also see the Pope name the judge of appeal, at the solicitation of the Catholic sovereigns, who desired that causes should be finally decided in Spain: the first of these judges was Inigo Manrique, Archbishop of Seville. Nevertheless, at the end of a short time, the same Pope, in a bull of August 2, 1483, said that he had received new appeals, made by a great number of the Spaniards of Seville, who had not dared to address themselves to the judge of appeal for fear of being arrested. Such was then the excitement of the public mind; such was at that time the necessity of preventing injustice or measures of undue severity. The Pope added that some of those who had had recourse to his justice had already received the absolution of the apostolical penitentiary, and that others were about to receive it; he afterward complained that indulgences granted to divers accused persons had not been sufficiently respected at Seville; in fine, after several other admonitions, he observed to Ferdinand and Isabella that mercy toward the guilty was more pleasing to God than the severity which it was desired to use; and he gave the example of the good shepherd following the wandering sheep. He ended by exhorting the sovereigns to treat with mildness those who voluntarily confessed their faults, desiring them to allow them to reside at Seville or in some other place they might choose; and to allow them the enjoyment of their property, as if they had not been guilty of the crime of heresy. Moreover, it is not to be supposed that the appeals admitted at Rome, and by virtue of which the lot of the accused was improved, were founded on errors of form and injustice committed in the application of the law. If the accused had recourse to Rome, it was not always to demand reparation for an injustice, but because they were sure of finding indulgence. We have a proof of this in the considerable number of Spanish refugees convicted at Rome of having fallen into Judaism. Two hundred fifty of them were found at one time, yet there was not one capital execution. Some penances were imposed on them, and, when they were absolved, they were free to return home without the least mark of ignominy. This took place at Rome in 1498. It is a remarkable thing that the Roman Inquisition was never known to pronounce the execution of capital punishment, although the apostolic see was occupied during that time by popes of extreme rigor and severity in all that relates to the civil administration. We find in all parts of Europe scaffolds prepared to punish crimes against religion; scenes which sadden the soul were everywhere witnessed. Rome is an exception to the rule--Rome, which it has been attempted to represent as a monster of intolerance and cruelty. It is true that the popes have not preached, like Protestants, universal toleration; but facts show the difference between popes and Protestants. The popes, armed with a tribunal of intolerance, have not spilled a drop of blood; Protestants and philosophers have shed torrents. What advantage is it to the victim to hear his executioners proclaim toleration? It is adding the bitterness of sarcasm to his punishment. The conduct of Rome in the use which she made of the Inquisition is the best apology of Catholicity against those who attempt to stigmatize her as barbarous and sanguinary. In truth, what is there in common between Catholicity and the excessive severity employed in this place or that, in the extraordinary situation in which many rival races were placed, in the presence of danger which menaced one of them, or in the interest which the kings had in maintaining the tranquillity of their states and securing their conquests from all danger? I will not enter into a detailed examination of the conduct of the Spanish Inquisition with respect to Judaizing Christians; and I am far from thinking that the rigor which it employed against them was preferable to the mildness recommended and displayed by the popes. What I wish to show here is that rigor was the result of extraordinary circumstances--the effect of the national spirit and of the severity of customs in Europe at that time. Catholicity cannot be reproached with excesses committed for these different reasons. Still more, if we pay attention to the spirit which prevails in all the instructions of the popes relating to the Inquisition, if we observe their manifest inclination to range themselves on the side of mildness, and to suppress the marks of ignominy with which the guilty, as well as their families, were stigmatized, we have a right to suppose that, if the popes had not feared to displease the kings too much, and to excite divisions which might have been fatal, their measures would have been carried still further. If we recollect the negotiations which took place with respect to the noisy affair of the claims of the Cortes of Aragon, we shall see to which side the court of Rome leaned. As we are speaking of intolerance with regard to the Judaizers, let us say a few words as to the disposition of Luther toward the Jews. Does it not seem that the pretended reformer, the founder of independence of thought, the furious declaimer against the oppression and tyranny of the popes, should have been animated with the most humane sentiments toward that people? No doubt the eulogists of this chieftain of Protestantism ought to think thus also. I am sorry for them; but history will not allow us to partake of this delusion. According to all appearances, if the apostate monk had found himself in the place of Torquemada, the Judaizers would not have been in a better position. What, then, was the system advised by Luther, according to Seckendorff, one of his apologists? "Their synagogues ought to be destroyed, their houses pulled down, their prayer-books, the _Talmud_, and even the books of the Old Testament to be taken from them; their rabbis ought to be forbidden to teach, and be compelled to gain their livelihood by hard labor." The Inquisition, at least, did not proceed against the Jews, but against the Judaizers; that is, against those who, after being converted to Christianity, relapsed into their errors, and added sacrilege to their apostasy by the external profession of a creed which they detested in secret, and which they profaned by the exercise of their old religion. But Luther extended his severity to the Jews themselves; so that, according to his doctrines, no reproach can be made against the sovereigns who expelled the Jews from their dominions. The Moors and the Moriscoes no less occupied the attention of the Inquisition at that time; and all that has been said on the subject of the Jews may be applied to them with some modifications. They were also an abhorred race--a race which had been contended with for eight centuries. When they retained their religion, the Moors inspired hatred; when they abjured it, mistrust; the popes interested themselves in their favor also in a peculiar manner. We ought to remark a bull issued in 1530, which is expressed in language quite evangelical: it is there said that the ignorance of these nations is one of the principal causes of their faults and errors; the first thing to be done to render their conversion solid and sincere was, according to the recommendation contained in this bull, to endeavor to enlighten their minds with sound doctrine. It will be said that the Pope granted to Charles V the bull which released him from the oath taken in the Cortes of Saragossa in the year 1519, an oath by which he had engaged not to make any change with respect to the Moors; whereby, it is said, the Emperor was enabled to complete their expulsion. But we must observe that the Pope for a long time resisted that concession; and that if he at length complied with the wishes of the Emperor, it was only because he thought that the expulsion of the Moors was indispensable to secure the tranquillity of the kingdom. Whether this was true or not, the Emperor, and not the Pope, was the better judge; the latter, placed at a great distance, could not know the real state of things in detail. Moreover, it was not the Spanish monarch alone who thought so; it is related that Francis I, when a prisoner at Madrid, one day conversing with Charles V, told him that tranquillity would never be established in Spain if the Moors and Moriscoes were not expelled. MURDER OF THE PRINCES IN THE TOWER A.D. 1483 JAMES GAIRDNER The brief reign of Richard III, 1483-1485, left for historians one subject of dispute which even to our own day has not been finally determined--his alleged murder of his nephews, King Edward V and Richard, Duke of York, sons of Edward IV. These princes at the supposed time of their death were about thirteen and nine years of age respectively. Before his usurpation Richard III, last of the Plantagenet line, was known as the Duke of Gloucester. He served in the Wars of the Roses, and on the death of Edward IV, April, 1483, he seized the young Edward V and caused himself to be proclaimed protector. He then caused his parliament to set the two princes aside as illegitimate, and they were imprisoned in the Tower of London. On June 26, 1483, Richard assumed the crown, and soon after the death of the princes was publicly announced. In Gairdner's discussion we have the results of the best historical inquiries concerning this most important question of Richard's career. A great amount of public anxiety prevailed touching the two young princes in the Tower. They were virtually prisoners, and their confinement created great dissatisfaction. A movement in their behalf was gotten up in the South of England while Richard was away. In Kent, Sussex, and Essex, in Hampshire, Wiltshire, and Dorset, even as far west as Devonshire, cabals were formed for their liberation, which all appear to have been parts of one great conspiracy organized in secret by the Duke of Buckingham. By the beginning of October some disturbances had actually taken place, and the following letter was written in consequence by the Duke of Norfolk to one of his dependents in Norfolk: "_To my right well-beloved friend, John Paston, be this delivered in haste_. "Right well-beloved friend, I commend me to you. It is so that the Kentish men be up in the Weald and say that they will come and rob the city, which I shall let [_i. e.,_ prevent] if I may. "Therefore I pray you, that with all diligence you make you ready and come hither, and bring with you six tall fellows in harness; and ye shall not lose your labor, that knoweth God; who have you in his keeping. "Written at London the 10th day of October. "Your friend, "J. NORFOLK." The rumor of the projected movement in behalf of the princes was speedily followed by the report that they were no more. Of course they had been removed by violence. Regarding the time and manner of the deed no news could then be obtained, but the news that the deposed King and his brother had been assassinated was spread with horror and amazement through the land. Among all the inhumanities of the late civil war there had been nothing so unnatural as this. To many the tale seemed too cruel to be true. They believed that the princes must have been sent abroad to defeat the intrigues of their friends. But time passed away and they never appeared again. After many years, indeed, an impostor counterfeited the younger; but even he, to give credit to his pretensions, expressly admitted the murder of his elder brother. Nevertheless, there have been writers in modern days who have shown plausible grounds for doubting that the murder really took place. Two contemporary writers, they say, mention the fact only as a report; a third certainly states it, incorrectly, at least, in point of time; and Sir Thomas More, who is the only one remaining, relates it with certain details which it does seem difficult to accept as credible. More's account, however, must bear some resemblance to the truth. It is mainly founded upon the confession of two of the murderers, and is given by the writer as the most trustworthy report he had met with. If, therefore, the murder be not itself a fiction, and the confession, as has been surmised, a forgery, we should expect the account given by Sir Thomas More to be in the main true, clear, and consistent, though Horace Walpole and others have maintained that it is not so. The substance of the story is as follows: Richard, some time after he had set out on his progress, sent a special messenger and confidant, by name John Green, to Sir Robert Brackenbury, the constable of the Tower, commanding him to put the two princes to death. Brackenbury refused to obey the order, and Green returned to his master at Warwick. The King was bitterly disappointed. "Whom shall a man trust," he said, "when those who I thought would most surely serve me, at my command will do nothing for me?" The words were spoken to a private attendant or page, who told him, in reply, that there was one man lying on a pallet in the outer chamber who would hardly scruple to undertake anything whatever to please him. This was Sir James Tyrell, who is described by More as an ambitious, aspiring man, jealous of the ascendency of Sir Richard Ratcliffe and Sir William Catesby. Richard at once acted upon the hint, and calling Tyrell before him communicated his mind to him and gave him a commission for the execution of his murderous purpose. Tyrell went to London with a warrant authorizing Brackenbury to deliver up to him for one night all the keys of the Tower. Armed with this document he took possession of the place, and proceeded to the work of death by the instrumentality of Miles Forest, one of the four jailers in whose custody the princes were, and John Dighton, his own groom. When the young princes were asleep, these men entered their chamber, and, taking up the pillows, pressed them hard down upon their mouths till they died by suffocation. Then, having caused Sir James to see the bodies, they buried them at the foot of a staircase. But "it was rumored," says More, "that the King disapproved of their being buried in so vile a corner; whereupon they say that a priest of Sir Robert Brackenbury's took up the bodies again, and secretly interred them in such place as, by the occasion of his death, could never come to light." Sir James, having fulfilled his mission, returned to the King, from whom he received great thanks, and who, Sir Thomas informs us, "as some say, there made him a knight." It has been maintained that this story will not bear criticism. What could have induced Richard to time his cruel policy so ill and to arrange it so badly? The order for the destruction of the children could have been much more easily, safely, and secretly executed when he was in London than when he was at Gloucester or Warwick. Fewer messages would have sufficed, and neither warrants nor letters would have been necessary. Was it a sudden idea which occurred to him upon his progress? If so, he might surely have waited for a better opportunity. If not, he might at least have taken care to sift Brackenbury before leaving London, so as to be sure of the two he intended to employ. Is it likely that Richard would have given orders for the commission of a crime, without having good reason to rely upon his intended agent's boldness and depravity? But, having tried Sir Robert's scruples, and found them somewhat stronger than he anticipated, what follows? It might have been expected that Sir Robert's respect for his master, if he had any, would have been diminished; that the favor of his sovereign would have been withdrawn from him; and perhaps that the tyrant, having seen an instance of the untrustworthiness of men in matters criminal and dangerous, would have learned to become a little more circumspect. But the facts are quite otherwise. Sir Robert continued long after in the good graces of his sovereign, always remained faithful to him, even when many others deserted him, and finally fell in battle bravely fighting in his cause. Richard did not become more cautious, but, on the contrary, more imprudent than ever. He complained loudly of his disappointment, even in the presence of a page. This page is nameless in the story, but he serves to introduce to the King not less a person than Sir James Tyrell, who is represented as willing to do anything to obtain favor, and envious of the influence possessed by others. He undertakes and executes the task which Brackenbury had refused, and for this service we are told he was knighted. All this greatly misrepresents Sir James' position and influence, if not his character. He not only was a knight long before this, but had been in the preceding year created by Richard himself a knight banneret for his distinguished services during the Scotch campaign. He had been, during Edward IV's reign, a commissioner for executing the office of lord high constable. He was then master of the King's henchmen, or pages. He was also master of the horse. If his mere position in the world did not make him disdain to be a hired assassin, he at least did not require to be recommended through the medium of that nameless page. Moreover, it appears that the fact of the princes having been murdered was held in great doubt for a long time afterward. Even More himself, writing about thirty years later, is obliged to acknowledge that the thing had "so far come in question that some remained long in doubt whether they were in Richard's days destroyed or no." This is certainly remarkable, when it is considered that it was of the utmost importance for Henry VII to terminate all controversy upon the question. Yet Sir Thomas tells us that these doubts arose not only from the uncertainty men were in whether Perkin Warbeck was the true duke of York, "but for that also that all things were so covertly demeaned, one thing pretended and another meant, that there was nothing so plain and openly proved but that yet, for the common custom of close and covert dealing, men had it ever inwardly suspect." All this, it is urged, may very well suggest that the doubts were reasonable, and that the princes in reality were not destroyed in the days of Richard III. And, indeed, when we consider how many persons, according to More's account, took part in the murder or had some knowledge of it, it does appear not a little strange that there should have been any difficulty in establishing it on the clearest evidence. For besides Tyrell, Dighton, and Forest, the chief actors, there were Brackenbury, Green the page, one Black Will, or Will Slaughter, who guarded the princes, and the priest who buried them, all fully aware of the circumstances of the crime. In Henry VII's time Brackenbury was dead, and so it is said was the priest; Forest, too, had ended his days miserably in a sanctuary. But it does not appear what had become of either Green or the page. Tyrell and Dighton were the only persons said to have been examined; and though we are told that they both confessed, yet there is a circumstance that makes the confession look exceedingly suspicious. Tyrell was detained in prison, and afterward executed, for a totally different offence; while, as Bacon tells us, "John Dighton, _who it seemeth spake best for the King,_ was forthwith set at liberty." Taking Bacon's view of the circumstances of the disclosure as if it were infallible, the sceptics here find matter of very grave suspicion. "In truth," says Walpole, "every step of this pretended discovery, as it stands in Lord Bacon, warns us to give no heed to it. Dighton and Tyrell agreed both in a tale, _as the King gave out_. Their confession, therefore, was not publicly made; and as Sir James Tyrell, too, was suffered to live, but was shut up in the Tower and put to death afterward for we know not what treason, what can we believe but that Dighton was some low mercenary wretch, hired to assume the guilt of a crime he had not committed, and that Sir James Tyrell never did, never would, confess what he had not done, and was therefore put out of the way on a fictitious imputation? It must be observed, too, that no inquiry was made into the murder on the accession of Henry VII--the natural time for it, when the passions of men were heated, and when the Duke of Norfolk, Lord Lovel, Catesby, Ratcliffe, and the real abettors or accomplices of Richard were attainted and executed. No mention of such a murder was made in the very act of parliament that attainted Richard himself and which would have been the most heinous aggravation of his crimes. And no prosecution of the supposed assassins was ever thought of till eleven years afterward, on the appearance of Perkin Warbeck." Such are the striking arguments by which it has been sought to cast a doubt upon the murder, and particularly More's account of it. To all which it may be replied, in the first place, that it is by no means necessary to suppose More's narrative, though it appeared to him the most credible account he had heard, absolutely correct in all its details, especially in those which he mentions as mere reports. His authority was evidently the alleged confession of Tyrell and Dighton, obtained second-hand. This, though true in the main, may not have been absolutely correct, even as it was first delivered, and may have been somewhat less accurate as it was reported to Sir Thomas, who perhaps added from hearsay a few errors of his own, like that about Sir James Tyrell's knighthood. Secondly, the argument with regard to Richard's imprudence, in pursuing the course ascribed to him, goes but little way to discredit the facts, unless it can be shown that caution and foresight were part of his ordinary character. The prevailing notion of Richard III, indeed, is of a cold, deeply politic, scheming, and calculating villain. But I confess I am not satisfied of the justice of such a view. Not only Richard, but all his family, appear to me to have been headstrong and reckless as to consequences. His father lost his life by a chivalrous and quixotic impetuosity; his brother Edward lost his kingdom once by pure carelessness; his brother Clarence fell, no less by lack of wisdom than by lack of honesty; and he himself, at Bosworth, threw away his life by his eagerness to terminate the contest in a personal engagement. Had Richard fully intended to murder his nephews at the time he determined upon dethroning the elder, I have very little doubt that he would have kept his northern forces in London to preserve order in the city till after the deed was done. I for my part do not believe that such was his intention from the first. How much more probable, indeed, that after he had left London the contemplated rising in favor of the princes suggested to him an action which cost him his peace of mind during the whole of his after-life! Thirdly, the doubts of contemporaries do not appear to have been very general. The expression of Sir Thomas More is only "that some remained in doubt"; and More is not a writer who would have glossed over a fact to please the court. As to Perkin Warbeck, who pretended to be the younger of the princes, Henry VII's neglect to confute his pretensions may have arisen from other causes than a suspicion that he was the true duke of York. There is no reason to suppose that his followers in England were numerous. The belief in the murder appears to have been general. It was mentioned as a fact by the Chancellor of France, in addressing the estates-general which met at Tours in the following January. It was acknowledged to be true in part by Warbeck himself, who, it has been shown since Walpole's time, in personating the Duke of York, admitted that his brother Edward had been murdered, though he asserted that he himself had providentially escaped. It is evident that no one dreamed in those days that the story of the murder was altogether a fiction. The utmost that any well-informed person could doubt was whether it had been successfully accomplished as to both the victims. With regard to the confessions of Tyrell and Dighton, Bacon has certainly spoken without warrant in stating that they were examined at the time of Warbeck's appearance. The time when they were examined is stated by Sir Thomas More to have been when Tyrell was confined in the Tower for treason against Henry VII, which was in 1502, three years after Warbeck's execution. Before that date there is no ground for believing that Tyrell's guilt in regard to the murder was generally known. Before that date, indeed, the world seems to have had no conception in what manner the crime was committed, and the common story seems to have been that Richard had put his nephews to the sword; but the confession of Tyrell at once put an end to this surmise, and we hear of it no longer. Henry VII assuredly did not for a long time treat him as a criminal; for not only did he hold under Henry the office of captain of Guisnes, but he was employed by the King in an expedition against Flanders. Nay, even after Warbeck had been taken and confessed his imposture, Tyrell was employed on an important embassy to Maximilian, King of the Romans. It is quite clear, therefore, that he was never questioned about the murder in consequence of Warbeck's pretensions. But being afterward condemned to death on a charge of treason--not an unknown charge, as Walpole imagines, but a charge of having treasonably aided the escape of the Earl of Suffolk--he was then, as More says, examined about it in the Tower, having probably made a voluntary confession of guilt to ease his conscience before his execution. No doubt, after all, the murder rests upon the testimony of only a very few original authorities, but this is simply owing to the scantiness of contemporary historians. It is true, also, that of these there are two who only mention it as a report; but it must be observed that neither of them expresses the smallest doubt of its truth, and one of them more than hints that he believes it as a fact. How, indeed, could there possibly be two opinions about a rumor of this kind, seeing that it was never contradicted by the King himself? Assuredly from this time the conduct both of Richard and his enemies was distinctly governed by the belief that his nephews were no longer alive. Moreover, the truth of the story seems to be corroborated by a discovery which took place in the reign of Charles II. In the process of altering the staircase leading to the chapel in the White Tower, the skeletons of two young lads, whose apparent ages agreed with those of the unfortunate princes, were found buried under a heap of stones. Their place of sepulture corresponded with the situation mentioned in the confession of the murderers, so that the report alluded to by More of the removal of the bodies seems to have been a mistake. The antiquaries of the day had no doubt they were the remains of young Edward V and his brother, and King Charles caused them to be fittingly interred in Henry VII's chapel at Westminster. A Latin inscription marks the spot and tells of the discovery. We have no doubt, therefore, that the dreadful deed was done. It was done, indeed, in profound secrecy; the fact, I suspect, remained some little time unknown; and for years after there was no certainty as to the way it was performed. Years elapsed even before the world suspected the foul blot upon Tyrell's knighthood, and he enjoyed the favor both of Richard and of his successor; but at last the truth came out. As to the other agents in the business, various entries in the Patent Rolls, and in the Docket Book of King Richard's grants, show that they did not pass unrewarded. Before the murder Green had been appointed comptroller of the customs at Boston, and had also been employed to provide horse meat and litter for the King's stables; afterward, if we may trust a note by Strype--but I own I cannot find his authority--he was advanced to be receiver of the Isle of Wight and of the castle and lordship of Portchester. To Dighton was granted the office of bailiff of Ayton in Staffordshire. Forest died soon after, and it appears he was keeper of the wardrobe at Barnard castle, but whether appointed before or after the murder there is no evidence to show. Brackenbury received several important grants, some of which were of lands of the late Lord Rivers. And yet hitherto Richard's life, though not unmarked by violence, had been free from violence to his own flesh and blood. Even his most unjustifiable measures were somewhat in the nature of self-defence; or if in any case he had stained his hands with the blood of persons absolutely innocent, it was not in his own interest, but in that of his brother, Edward IV. The rough and illegal retribution which he dealt out to Rivers, Vaughan, Hawte, Lord Richard Grey, and Lord Hastings was not more severe than perhaps law itself might have authorized. The disorders of civil war had accustomed the nation to see justice sometimes executed without the due formalities; and his neglect of those formalities had not hitherto made him unpopular. But the license of unchecked power is dangerous, no less to those who wield than to those who suffer it; and it was peculiarly so to one of Richard's violent and impatient temper. He had been allowed so far to act upon his own arbitrary judgment or will that expediency was fast becoming his only motive and extinguishing within him both humanity and natural affection. Nevertheless, he was not yet sunk so low as to regard his own unnatural conduct with indifference. Deep and bitter remorse deprived him of all that tranquillity in the possession of power for the attainment of which he had imbrued his hands in blood. "I have heard by credible report," says Sir Thomas More, "of such as were secret with his chamberers, that after this abominable deed done he never had quiet in his mind, he never thought himself sure. Where he went abroad, his eyes whirled about, his body privily fenced, his hand ever on his dagger, his countenance and manner like one always ready to strike again. He took ill rest at nights, lay long waking and musing; sore wearied with care and watch, he rather slumbered than slept. Troubled with fearful dreams, suddenly sometimes started he up, leapt out of his bed and ran about the chamber. So was his restless heart continually tossed and tumbled with the tedious impression and stormy remembrance of his most abominable deed." Such was the awful retribution that overtook this inhuman King during the two short years that he survived his greatest crime, till the battle of Bosworth completed the measure of his punishment. His repentance came too late. CONQUEST OF GRANADA A.D. 1490 WASHINGTON IRVING Although the Moors held Spain for over seven hundred and fifty years, they never had possession of the entire country. In the North, fragments of the Visigothic Christian kingdoms survived, and at length these grew into a strong power destined to drive out the Arabs, who had so long made the Spanish peninsula a seat of Mahometan civilization. The Moorish power reached its height in the tenth century, and gradually declined in the eleventh, when it broke up into petty and short-lived kingdoms. The Almoravides from Africa began their rule in Spain about 1090. This dynasty was overthrown by the Almohades in 1145, and the latter became extinct in Spain in 1257. After the disruption of the realm of the Almohades, the Moorish kingdom of Granada was established, and was held in vassalage to Castile, of which Ferdinand and Isabella, in 1474, became joint sovereigns. The Moors made Granada, their capital, a large and powerful city, and there in the thirteenth century they built their magnificent palace and citadel, the Alhambra, the finest example of Moorish architecture and decorative art. In 1482, having prepared themselves for what proved a final struggle with the Moors, Ferdinand and Isabella began the war against Boabdil, the King of Granada, who the year before had seized the throne from his father, Muley Hasan. After some early reverses and later interruptions--during which the wavering Ferdinand was held to his purpose by the rebukes and encouragement of his stout-hearted Queen--the Christian sovereigns reduced the strongholds of the Moors, until by 1490 the more important half of the kingdom of Granada had been conquered. The city and its small surrounding district alone remained to Boabdil. On April 23, 1491, Ferdinand and Isabella encamped before Granada with fifty thousand foot soldiers and ten thousand horse, and the last contest began. Though Granada was shorn of its glories, and nearly cut off from all external aid, still its mighty castles and massive bulwarks seemed to set all attacks at defiance. Being the last retreat of Moorish power, it had assembled within its walls the remnants of the armies that had contended, step by step, with the invaders, in their gradual conquest of the land. All that remained of high-born and high-bred chivalry was here; all that was loyal and patriotic was roused to activity by the common danger; and Granada, that had so long been lulled into inaction by vain hopes of security, now assumed a formidable aspect in the hour of its despair. Ferdinand saw that any attempt to subdue the city by main force would be perilous and bloody. Cautious in his policy, and fond of conquests gained by art rather than valor, he determined to reduce the place by famine. For this purpose, his armies penetrated into the very heart of the Alpujarras, and ravaged the valleys and sacked and burned the towns upon which the city depended for its supplies. Scouting parties, also, ranged the mountains behind Granada and captured every casual convoy of provisions. The Moors became more daring as their situation became more hopeless. Never had Ferdinand experienced such vigorous sallies and assaults. Musa[1], at the head of his cavalry, harassed the borders of the camp, and even penetrated into the interior, making sudden spoil and ravage, and leaving his course to be traced by the slain and wounded. To protect his camp from these assaults, Ferdinand fortified it with deep trenches and strong bulwarks. It was of a quadrangular form, divided into streets like a city, the troops being quartered in tents, and in booths constructed of bushes and branches of trees. When it was completed, Queen Isabella came in state, with all her court, and the Prince and Princess, to be present at the siege. This was intended to reduce the besieged to despair by showing the determination of the sovereigns to reside in the camp until the city should surrender. Immediately after her arrival, the Queen rode forth to survey the camp and its environs: wherever she went she was attended by a splendid retinue; and all the commanders vied with each other in the pomp and ceremony with which they received her. Nothing was heard, from morning until night, but shouts and acclamations and bursts of martial music; so that it appeared to the Moors as if a continual festival and triumph reigned in the Christian camp. The arrival of the Queen, however, and the menaced obstinacy of the siege had no effect in damping the fire of the Moorish chivalry. Musa inspired the youthful warriors with the most devoted heroism. "We have nothing left to fight for," said he, "but the ground we stand on; when this is lost, we cease to have a country and a name." Finding the Christian King forbore to make an attack, Musa incited his cavaliers to challenge the youthful chivalry of the Christian army to single combat or partial skirmishes. Scarce a day passed without gallant conflicts of the kind, in sight of the city and the camp. The combatants rivalled each other in the splendor of their armor and array, as well as in the prowess of their deeds. Their contests were more like the stately ceremonials of tilts and tournaments than the rude conflicts of the field. Ferdinand soon perceived that they animated the fiery Moors with fresh zeal and courage, while they cost the lives of many of his bravest cavaliers; he again, therefore, forbade the acceptance of any individual challenges, and ordered that all partial encounters should be avoided. The cool and stern policy of the Catholic sovereign bore hard upon the generous spirits of either army, but roused the indignation of the Moors when they found that they were to be subdued in this inglorious manner. "Of what avail," said they, "are chivalry and heroic valor? The crafty monarch of the Christians has no magnanimity in warfare; he seeks to subdue us through the weakness of our bodies, but shuns to encounter the courage of our souls." When the Moorish knights beheld that all courteous challenges were unavailing, they sought various means to provoke the Christian warriors to the field. Sometimes a body of them, fleetly mounted, would gallop up to the skirts of the camp, and try who should hurl his lance farthest within the barriers, having his name inscribed upon it, or a label affixed to it containing some taunting defiance. These bravadoes caused great irritation, but still the Spanish warriors were restrained by the prohibition of the King. Among the Moorish cavaliers was one named Yarfe, renowned for his great strength and daring spirit; but whose courage partook of fierce audacity rather than chivalric heroism. In one of these sallies, when they were skirting the Christian camp, this arrogant Moor outstripped his companions, overleaped the barriers, and, galloping close to the royal quarters, launched his lance so far within that it remained quivering in the earth close by the pavilions of the sovereigns. The royal guards rushed forth in pursuit, but the Moorish horsemen were already beyond the camp, and scouring in a cloud of dust for the city. Upon wresting the lance from the earth, a label was found upon it importing that it was intended for the Queen. Nothing could equal the indignation of the Christian warriors at the insolence of the bravado and the discourteous insult offered to the Queen. Hernando Perez del Pulgar, surnamed "he of the exploits," was present, and resolved not to be outbraved by this daring infidel. "Who will stand by me," said he, "in an enterprise of desperate peril?" The Christian cavaliers well knew the harebrained valor of Hernando del Pulgar, yet not one hesitated to step forward. He chose fifteen companions, all men of powerful arm and dauntless heart. In the dead of the night he led them forth from the camp, and approached the city cautiously, until he arrived at a postern-gate, which opened upon the Darro and was guarded by foot-soldiers. The guards, little thinking of such an unwonted and partial attack, were for the most part asleep. The gate was forced, and a confused and chance-medley skirmish ensued; Hernando del Pulgar stopped not to take part in the affray; putting spurs to his horse, he galloped furiously through the streets, striking fire out of the stones at every bound. Arrived at the principal mosque, he sprang from his horse, and, kneeling at the portal, took possession of the edifice as a Christian chapel, dedicating it to the blessed Virgin. In testimony of the ceremony, he took a tablet which he had brought with him, on which was inscribed in large characters "Ave Marie," and nailed it to the door of the mosque with his dagger. This done, he remounted his steed and galloped back to the gate. The alarm had been given--the city was in an uproar--soldiers were gathering from every direction. They were astonished at seeing a Christian warrior galloping from the interior of the city. Hernando del Pulgar overturned some, cut down others, rejoined his companions, who still maintained possession of the gate by dint of hard fighting, and all made good their retreat to the camp. The Moors were at a loss to imagine the meaning of this wild and apparently fruitless assault; but great was their exasperation, on the following day, when the trophy of hardihood and prowess, the "_Ave Maria_" was discovered thus elevated in bravado in the very centre of the city. The mosque thus boldly sanctified by Hernando del Pulgar was actually consecrated into a cathedral after the capture of Granada. The royal encampment lay at such a distance from Granada that the general aspect of the city only could be seen as it rose gracefully from the vega, covering the sides of the hills with palaces and towers. Queen Isabella had expressed an earnest desire to behold, nearer at hand, a city whose beauty was so renowned throughout the world; and the Marquis of Cadiz, with the accustomed courtesy, prepared a great military escort and guard to protect the Queen and the ladies of the court while they enjoyed this perilous gratification. A magnificent and powerful train issued forth from the Christian camp. The advance guard was composed of legions of cavalry, heavily armed, that looked like moving masses of polished steel. Then came the King and Queen, with the Prince and Princess and the ladies of the court, surrounded by the royal bodyguard, sumptuously arrayed, composed of the sons of the most illustrious houses of Spain; after these was the rearguard, composed of a powerful force of horse and foot; for the flower of the army sallied forth that day. The Moors gazed with fearful admiration at this glorious pageant, wherein the pomp of the court was mingled with the terrors of the camp. It moved along in a radiant line, across the vega, to the melodious thunders of martial music; while banner and plume and silken scarf and rich brocade gave a gay and gorgeous relief to the grim visage of iron war that lurked beneath. The army moved toward the hamlet of Zubia, built on the skirts of the mountain to the left of Granada, and commanding a view of the Alhambra and the most beautiful quarter of the city. As they approached the hamlet the Marquis of Villena, the count Ureña, and Don Alonzo de Aguilar filed off with their battalions, and were soon seen glittering along the side of the mountain above the village. In the mean time the Marquis of Cadiz, the Count de Tendilla, the Count de Cabra, and Don Alonzo Fernandez, Senior of Alcandrete and Montemayor, drew up their forces in battle array on the plain below the hamlet, presenting a living barrier of loyal chivalry between the sovereigns and the city. Thus securely guarded, the royal party alighted, and, entering one of the houses of the hamlet, which had been prepared for their reception, enjoyed a full view of the city from its terraced roof. While grim tranquillity prevailed along the Christian line, there rose a mingled shout and sound of laughter near the gate of the city. A Moorish horseman, armed at all points, issued forth, followed by a rabble, who drew back as he approached the scene of danger. The Moor was more robust and brawny than was common with his countrymen. His visor was closed; he bore a huge buckler and a ponderous lance; his cimeter was of a Damascus blade, and his richly ornamented dagger was wrought by an artificer of Fez. He was Yarfe, the most insolent, yet valiant, of the Moslem warriors. As he rode slowly along in front of the army, his very steed, prancing with fiery eye and distended nostril, seemed to breathe defiance to the Christians. But what were the feelings of the Spanish cavaliers when they beheld, tied to the tail of his steed, and dragged in the dust, the inscription "Ave Maria," which Hernando Perez del Pulgar had affixed to the door of the mosque! A burst of horror and indignation broke forth from the army. Hernando del Pulgar was not at hand, but one of his young companions-in-arms, Garcilasso de la Vega by name, putting spurs to his horse, galloped to the hamlet of Zubia, threw himself on his knees before the King, and besought permission to accept the defiance of this insolent infidel and to revenge the insult offered to our blessed Lady. The request was too pious to be refused; Garcilasso remounted his steed; he closed his helmet, graced by four sable plumes, grasped his buckler of Flemish workmanship and his lance of matchless temper, and defied the haughty Moor in the midst of his career. A combat took place in view of the two armies and of the Castilian court. The Moor was powerful in wielding his weapons and dexterous in managing his steed. He was of larger frame than Garcilasso and more completely armed; and the Christians trembled for their champion. The shock of their encounter was dreadful; their lances were shivered and sent up splinters in the air. Garcilasso was thrown back in the saddle--his horse made a wild career before he could recover, gather up the reins, and return to the conflict. They now encountered each other with swords. The Moor circled round his opponent as hawk circles whereabout to make a swoop; his Arabian steed obeyed his rider with matchless quickness; at every attack of the infidel it seemed as if the Christian knight must sink beneath his flashing cimeter. But if Garcilasso were inferior to him in power, he was superior in agility; many of his blows he parried; others he received upon his Flemish shield, which was proof against the Damascus blade. The blood streamed from numerous wounds received by either warrior. The Moor, seeing his antagonist exhausted, availed himself of his superior force, and, grappling, endeavored to wrest him from his saddle. They both fell to earth; the Moor placed his knee upon the breast of his victim, and, brandishing his dagger, aimed a blow at his throat. A cry of despair was uttered by the Christian warriors, when suddenly they beheld the Moor rolling lifeless in the dust. Garcilasso had shortened his sword, and, as his adversary raised his arm to strike, had pierced him to the heart. The laws of chivalry were observed throughout the combat--no one interfered on either side. Garcilasso now despoiled his adversary; then, rescuing the holy inscription of "Ave Maria" from its degrading situation, he elevated it on the point of his sword, and bore it off as a signal of triumph amid the rapturous shouts of the Christian army. The sun had now reached the meridian, and the hot blood of the Moors was inflamed by its rays and by the sight of the defeat of their champion. Musa ordered two pieces of ordnance to open a fire upon the Christians. A confusion was produced in one part of their ranks. Musa called to the chiefs of the army: "Let us waste no more time in empty challenges; let us charge upon the enemy; he who assaults has always an advantage in the combat." So saying, he rushed forward, followed by a large body of horse and foot, and charged so furiously upon the advance guard of the Christians that he drove it in upon the battalion of the Marquis of Cadiz. The gallant Marquis now gave the signal to attack. "Santiago!" was shouted along the line; and he pressed forward to the encounter, with his battalion of twelve hundred lances. The other cavaliers followed his example, and the battle instantly became general. When the King and Queen beheld the armies thus rushing to the combat, they threw themselves on their knees and implored the holy Virgin to protect her faithful warriors. The Prince and Princess, the ladies of the court, and the prelates and friars who were present did the same; and the effect of the prayers of these illustrious and saintly persons was immediately apparent. The fierceness with which the Moors had rushed to the attack had suddenly cooled; they were bold and adroit for a skirmish, but unequal to the veteran Spaniards in the open field. A panic seized upon the foot-soldiers--they turned and took to flight. Musa and his cavaliers in vain endeavored to rally them. Some took refuge in the mountains; but the greater part fled to the city in such confusion that they overturned and trampled upon each other. The Christians pursued them to the very gates. Upward of two thousand were either killed, wounded, or taken prisoners, and the two pieces of ordnance brought off as trophies of the victory. Not a Christian lance but was bathed that day in the blood of an infidel. Such was the brief but bloody action, which was known among the Christian warriors by the name of the "Queen's skirmish"; for when the Marquis of Cadiz waited upon her majesty he attributed the victory entirely to her presence. The Queen, however, insisted that it was all owing to her troops being led on by so valiant a commander. Her majesty had not yet recovered from her agitation at beholding so terrible a scene of bloodshed; though certain veterans present pronounced it as gay and gentle a skirmish as they had ever witnessed. The ravages of war had as yet spared a little portion of the vega of Granada. A green belt of gardens and orchards still flourished around the city, extending along the banks of the Xenel and the Darro. They had been the solace and delight of the inhabitants in their happier days, and contributed to their sustenance in this time of scarcity. Ferdinand determined to make a final and exterminating ravage to the very walls of the city, so that there should not remain a single green thing for the sustenance of man or beast. As the evening advanced the bustle in the camp subsided. Everyone sought repose, preparatory to the next day's trial. The King retired early, that he might be up with the crowing of the cock to head the destroying army in person. The Queen had retired to the innermost part of her pavilion, where she was performing her orisons before a private altar. While thus at her prayers she was suddenly aroused by a glare of light and wreaths of suffocating smoke. In an instant the whole tent was in a blaze; there was a high gusty wind, which whirled the light flames from tent to tent, and wrapped the whole in one conflagration. Isabella had barely time to save herself by instant flight. Her first thought, on being extricated from her tent, was for the safety of the King. She rushed to his tent, but the vigilant Ferdinand was already at the entrance of it. Starting from bed at the first alarm, and fancying it an assault of the enemy, he had seized his sword and buckler, and sallied forth undressed, with his cuirass upon his arm. The late gorgeous camp was now a scene of wild confusion. The flames kept spreading from one pavilion to another, glaring upon the rich armor and golden and silver vessels, which seemed melting in the fervent heat. The ladies of the court fled, shrieking and half dressed, from their tents. There was an alarm of drum and trumpet, and a distracted hurry about the camp of men half armed. The idea that this was a stratagem of the Moors soon subsided; but it was feared they might take advantage of it to assault the camp. The Marquis of Cadiz, therefore, sallied forth with three thousand horse to check any advance from the city. When they emerged from the camp they found the whole firmament illuminated. The flames whirled up in long light spires, and the air was filled with sparks and cinders. A bright glare was thrown upon the city, revealing every battlement and tower. Turbaned heads were seen gazing from every roof, and armor gleamed along the walls; yet not a single warrior sallied from the gates. The Moors suspected some stratagem on the part of the Christians, and kept quietly within their walls. By degrees the flames expired; the city faded from sight; all again became dark and quiet, and the Marquis of Cadiz returned with his cavalry to the camp. When the day dawned on the Christian camp nothing remained of that beautiful assemblage of stately pavilions but heaps of smouldering rubbish. The fire at first had been attributed to treachery, but on investigation it proved to be entirely accidental. The wary Ferdinand knew the sanguine temperament of the Moors, and hastened to prevent their deriving confidence from the night's disaster. At break of day the drums and trumpets sounded to arms, and the Christian army issued from among the smoking ruins of their camp, in shining squadrons, with flaunting banners and bursts of martial melody, as though the preceding night had been a time of high festivity instead of terror. The Moors had beheld the conflagration with wonder and perplexity. When the day broke and they looked toward the Christian camp, they saw nothing but a dark smoking mass. Their scouts came in with the joyful intelligence that the whole camp was a scene of ruin. Scarce had the tidings spread throughout the city when they beheld the Christian army advancing toward their walls. They considered it a feint to cover their desperate situation and prepare for a retreat. Boabdil had one of his impulses of valor--he determined to take the field in person, and to follow up this signal blow which Allah had inflicted on the enemy. The Christian army approached close to the city, and were laying waste the gardens and orchards, when Boabdil sallied forth, surrounded by all that was left of the flower and chivalry of Granada. There was not so much one battle as a variety of battles; every garden and orchard became a scene of deadly contest; every inch of ground was disputed, with an agony of grief and valor, by the Moors; every inch of ground that the Christians advanced they valiantly maintained; but never did they advance with severer fighting or greater loss of blood. The cavalry of Musa was in every part of the field; wherever it came it gave fresh ardor to the fight. The Moorish soldier, fainting with heat, fatigue, and wounds, was roused to new life at the approach of Musa; and even he who lay gasping in the agonies of death, turned his face toward him, and faintly uttered cheers and blessings as he passed. The Christians had by this time gained possession of various towers near the city, from whence they had been annoyed by cross-bows and arquebuses. The Moors, scattered in various actions, were severely pressed. Boabdil, at the head of the cavaliers of his guard, displayed the utmost valor, mingling in the fight in various parts of the field, and endeavoring to inspirit the foot soldiers in the combat. But the Moorish infantry was never to be depended upon. In the heat of the action a panic seized upon them; they fled, leaving their sovereign exposed with his handful of cavaliers to an overwhelming force. Boabdil was on the point of falling into the hands of the Christians, when, wheeling round, with his followers, they threw the reins on the necks of their fleet steeds and took refuge by dint of hoof within the walls of the city. Musa endeavored to retrieve the fortune of the field. He threw himself before the retreating infantry, calling upon them to turn and fight for their homes, their families, for everything that was sacred and dear to them. It was all in vain--they were totally broken and dismayed, and fled tumultuously for the gates. Slowly and reluctantly Musa retreated to the city, and he vowed nevermore to sally forth with foot soldiers to the field. In the mean time the artillery thundered from the walls and checked all further advances of the Christians. King Ferdinand, therefore, called off his troops, and returned in triumph to the ruins of his camp, leaving the beautiful city of Granada wrapped in the smoke of her fields and gardens and surrounded by the bodies of her slaughtered children. Such was the last sally made by the Moors in defence of their favorite city. They now shut themselves up gloomily within their walls; there were no longer any daring sallies from their gates. For a time they flattered themselves with hopes that the late conflagration of the camp would discourage the besiegers; that, as in former years, their invasion would end with the summer, and that they would again withdraw before the autumnal rains. The measures of Ferdinand and Isabella soon crushed these hopes. They gave orders to build a regular city upon the site of their camp, to convince the Moors that the siege was to endure until the surrender of Granada. Nine of the principal cities of Spain were charged with the stupendous undertaking; and they emulated each other with a zeal worthy of the cause. To this city it was proposed to give the name of Isabella, so dear to the army and the nation; but that pious Princess, calling to mind the holy cause in which it was erected, gave it the name of Santa Fé, or the "City of the Holy Faith," and it remains to this day a monument of the piety and glory of the Catholic sovereigns. In the mean time the besieged city began to suffer the distress of famine. Its supplies were all cut off; a cavalcade of flocks and herds, and mules laden with money, coming to the relief of the city from the mountains of the Alpujarras[2], was taken by the Marquis of Cadiz and led in triumph to the camp, in sight of the suffering Moors. Autumn arrived, but the harvests had been swept from the face of the country; a rigorous winter was approaching, and the city was almost destitute of provisions. The people sank into deep despondency. They called to mind all that had been predicted by astrologers at the birth of their ill-starred sovereign, and all that had been foretold of the fate of Granada at the time of the capture of Zahara. Boabdil was alarmed by the gathering dangers from without and by the clamors of his starving people. He summoned a council, composed of the principal officers of the army, the alcaids of the fortresses, the _xequis_ or sages of the city, and the _alfaquis_ or doctors of the faith. They assembled in the great hall of audience of the Alhambra, and despair was painted in their countenances. Boabdil demanded of them what was to be done in their present extremity; and their answer was, "Surrender." The venerable Abul Kazim Abdalmalek, governor of the city, represented its unhappy state: "Our granaries are nearly exhausted, and no further supplies are to be expected. The provender for the war-horses is required as sustenance for the soldiery; the very horses themselves are killed for food; of seven thousand steeds which once could be sent into the field, three hundred only remain. Our city contains two hundred thousand inhabitants, old and young, with each a mouth that calls piteously for bread." The xequis and principal citizens declared that the people could no longer sustain the labors and sufferings of a defence. "And of what avail is our defence," said they, "when the enemy is determined to persist in the siege?--what alternative remains but to surrender or to die?" The heart of Boabdil was touched by this appeal, and he maintained a gloomy silence. He had cherished some faint hope of relief from the Sultan of Egypt or the Barbary powers, but it was now at an end; even if such assistance were to be sent, he had no longer a seaport where it might debark. The counsellors saw that the resolution of the King was shaken, and they united their voices in urging him to capitulate. The valiant Musa alone arose in opposition: "It is yet too early," said he, "to talk of a surrender. Our means are not exhausted; we have yet one source of strength remaining, terrible in its effects, and which often has achieved the most signal victories--it is our despair. Let us rouse the mass of the people; let us put weapons in their hands; let us fight the enemy to the very utmost, until we rush upon the points of their lances. I am ready to lead the way into the thickest of their squadrons; and much rather would I be numbered among those who fell in the defence of Granada than of those who survived to capitulate for her surrender!" The words of Musa were without effect. Boabdil yielded to the general voice; it was determined to capitulate with the Christian sovereigns; and the venerable Abul Kazim was sent forth to the camp empowered to treat for terms. The old Governor was received with great distinction by Ferdinand and Isabella, who appointed Gonsalvo of Cordova and Fernando de Zafra, secretary to the King, to confer with him. All Granada awaited, in trembling anxiety, the result of his negotiations. After repeated conferences he at length returned with the ultimate terms of the Catholic sovereigns. They agreed to suspend all attack for seventy days, at the end of which time, if no succor should arrive to the Moorish King, the city of Granada was to be surrendered. All Christian captives should be liberated without ransom. Boabdil and his principal cavaliers should take an oath of fealty to the Castilian crown, and certain valuable territories in the Alpujarra mountains should be assigned to the Moorish monarch for his maintenance. The Moors of Granada should become subjects of the Spanish sovereigns, retaining their possessions, their arms and horses, and yielding up nothing but their artillery. They should be protected in the exercise of their religion, and governed by their own laws, administered by cadis of their own faith, under governors appointed by the sovereigns. They should be exempted from tribute for three years, after which term they should pay the same that they had been accustomed to render to their native monarchs. Those who chose to depart for Africa within three years should be provided with a passage for themselves and their effects, free of charge, from whatever port they should prefer. For the fulfilment of these articles four hundred hostages from the principal families were required, previous to the surrender, to be subsequently restored. The son of the King of Granada, and all other hostages in possession of the Castilian sovereigns, were to be restored at the same time. Such were the conditions that the vizier Abul Kazim laid before the council of Granada as the best that could be obtained from the besieging foe. When the members of the council found that the awful moment had arrived when they were to sign and seal the perdition of their empire and blot themselves out as a nation, all firmness deserted them and many gave way to tears. Musa alone retained an unaltered mien. "Leave, seniors," cried he, "this idle lamentation to helpless women and children: we are men--we have hearts, not to shed tender tears, but drops of blood. I see the spirit of the people so cast down that it is impossible to save the kingdom. Yet there still remains an alternative for noble minds--a glorious death! Let us die defending our liberty and avenging the woes of Granada. Our mother Earth will receive her children into her bosom, safe from the chains and oppressions of the conqueror; or, should any fail a sepulchre to hide his remains, he will not want a sky to cover him. Allah forbid it should be said the nobles of Granada feared to die in her defence!" Musa ceased to speak, and a dead silence reigned in the assembly. Boabdil looked anxiously around and scanned every face; but he read in them all the anxiety of careworn men, in whose hearts enthusiasm was dead, and who had grown callous to every chivalrous appeal. "Allah Akbar! God is great!" exclaimed he; "there is no god but God, and Mahomet is his prophet! It is in vain to struggle against the will of heaven. Too surely was it written in the book of fate that I should be unfortunate and the kingdom expire under my rule." "Allah Akbar! God is great!" echoed the viziers and alfaquis; "the will of God be done!" So they all accorded with the King that these evils were preordained; that it was hopeless to contend with them; and that the terms offered by the Castilian monarchs were as favorable as could be expected. When Musa saw that they were about to sign the treaty of surrender, he rose in violent indignation: "Do not deceive yourselves," cried he, "nor think the Christians will be faithful to their promises, or their King as magnanimous in conquest as he has been victorious in war. Death is the least we have to fear. It is the plundering and sacking of our city, the profanation of our mosques, the ruin of our homes, the violation of our wives and daughters--cruel oppression, bigoted intolerance, whips and chains, the dungeon, the fagot, and the stake--such are the miseries and indignities we shall see and suffer; at least, those grovelling souls will see them who now shrink from an honorable death. For my part, by Allah, I will never witness them!" With these words he left the council chamber and strode gloomily through the Court of Lions and the outer halls of the Alhambra, without deigning to speak to the obsequious courtiers who attended in them. He repaired to his dwelling, armed himself at all points, mounted his favorite war-horse, and, issuing forth from the city by the gate of Elvira, was never seen or heard of more.[3] The capitulation for the surrender of Granada was signed on November 25, 1491, and produced a sudden cessation of those hostilities which had raged for so many years. Christian and Moor might now be seen mingling courteously on the banks of the Xenel and the Darro, where to have met a few days previous would have produced a scene of sanguinary contest. Still, as the Moors might be suddenly aroused to defence, if, within the allotted term of seventy days, succors should arrive from abroad, and as they were at all times a rash, inflammable people, the wary Ferdinand maintained a vigilant watch upon the city, and permitted no supplies of any kind to enter. His garrisons in the seaports, and his cruisers in the Straits of Gibraltar, were ordered likewise to guard against any relief from the Grand Sultan of Egypt or the princes of Barbary. There was no need of such precautions. Those powers were either too much engrossed by their own wars or too much daunted by the success of the Spanish arms, to interfere in a desperate cause; and the unfortunate Moors of Granada were abandoned to their fate. The month of December had nearly passed away; the famine became extreme, and there was no hope of any favorable event within the terms specified in the capitulation. Boabdil saw that to hold out to the end of the allotted time would but be to protract the miseries of his people. With the consent of his council, he determined to surrender the city on January 6th. On December 30th he sent his grand vizier Yusef Aben Comixa, with the four hundred hostages, to King Ferdinand, to make known his intention; bearing him, at the same time, a present of a magnificent cimeter, and two Arabian steeds superbly caparisoned. The unfortunate Boabdil was doomed to meet with trouble to the end of his career. The very next day, the santon or dervis Hamet Aben Zarrax, who had uttered prophecies and excited commotions on former occasions, suddenly made his appearance. Whence he came no one knew; it was rumored that he had been in the mountains of the Alpujarras and on the coast of Barbary, endeavoring to rouse the Moslems to the relief of Granada. He was reduced to a skeleton; his eyes glowed like coals in their sockets, and his speech was little better than frantic raving. He harangued the populace in the streets and squares, inveighed against the capitulation, denounced the King and nobles as Moslems only in name, and called upon the people to sally forth against the unbelievers, for that Allah had decreed them a signal victory. Upward of twenty thousand of the populace seized their arms and paraded the streets with shouts and outcries. The shops and houses were shut up; the King himself did not dare to venture forth, but remained a kind of prisoner in the Alhambra. The turbulent multitude continued roaming and shouting and howling about the city during the day and a part of the night. Hunger and a wintry tempest tamed their frenzy; and when morning came the enthusiast who had led them on had disappeared. Whether he had been disposed of by the emissaries of the King or by the leading men of the city is not known; his disappearance remains a mystery. The Moorish King now issued from the Alhambra, attended by his principal nobles, and harangued the populace. He set forth the necessity of complying with the capitulation, from the famine that reigned in the city, the futility of defence, and from the hostages having already been delivered into the hands of the besiegers. The volatile population agreed to adhere to the capitulation, and there was even a faint shout of "Long live Boabdil the unfortunate!" and they all returned to their homes in perfect tranquillity. Boabdil immediately sent missives to King Ferdinand, apprising him of these events, and of his fears lest further delay should produce new tumults. He proposed, therefore, to surrender the city on the following day. The Castilian sovereigns assented, with great satisfaction; and preparations were made in city and camp for this great event, that was to seal the fate of Granada. It was a night of doleful lamentings within the walls of the Alhambra; for the household of Boabdil were preparing to take a last farewell of that delightful abode. All the royal treasures and the most precious effects of the Alhambra were hastily packed upon mules; the beautiful apartments were despoiled, with tears and wailings, by their own inhabitants. Before the dawn of day a mournful cavalcade moved obscurely out of a postern gate of the Alhambra and departed through one of the most retired quarters of the city. It was composed of the family of the unfortunate Boabdil, which he sent off thus privately that they might not be exposed to the eyes of scoffers or the exultation of the enemy. The city was yet buried in sleep as they passed through its silent streets. The guards at the gate shed tears as they opened it for their departure. They paused not, but proceeded along the banks of the Xenel on the road that leads to the Alpujarras, until they arrived at a hamlet at some distance from the city, where they halted and waited until they should be joined by King Boabdil. The sun had scarcely begun to shed his beams upon the summits of the snowy mountains which rise above Granada when the Christian camp was in motion. A detachment of horse and foot, led by distinguished cavaliers, and accompanied by Hernando de Talavera, Bishop of Avila, proceeded to take possession of the Alhambra and the towers. It had been stipulated in the capitulation that the detachment sent for this purpose should not enter by the streets of the city; a road had therefore been opened, outside of the walls, leading by the Puerta de los Milinos (or "Gate of the Mills"), to the summit of the Hill of Martyrs, and across the hill to a postern gate of the Alhambra. When the detachment arrived at the summit of the hill the Moorish King came forth from the gate, attended by a handful of cavaliers, leaving his vizier Yusef Aben Comixa to deliver up the palace. "Go, senior," said he to the commander of the detachment, "go and take possession of those fortresses, which Allah has bestowed upon your powerful sovereigns, in punishment of the sins of the Moors." He said no more, but passed mournfully on along the same road by which the Spanish cavaliers had come, descending to the vega to meet the Catholic sovereigns. The troops entered the Alhambra, the gates of which were wide open, and all its splendid courts and halls silent and deserted. In the mean time the Christian court and army poured out of the city of Santa Fé and advanced across the vega. The King and Queen, with the Prince and Princess, and the dignitaries and ladies of the court, took the lead, accompanied by the different orders of monks and friars, and surrounded by the royal guards splendidly arrayed. The procession moved slowly forward and paused at the village of Armilla, at the distance of half a league from the city. The sovereigns waited here with impatience, their eyes fixed on the lofty tower of the Alhambra, watching for the appointed signal of possession. The time that had elapsed since the departure of the detachment seemed to them more than necessary for the purpose, and the anxious mind of Ferdinand began to entertain doubts of some commotion in the city. At length they saw the silver cross, the great standard of this crusade, elevated on the Torre de la Vala (or "Great Watch-tower") and sparkling in the sunbeams. This was done by Hernando de Talavera, Bishop of Avila. Beside it was planted the pennon of the glorious apostle St. James, and a great shout of "Santiago! Santiago!" rose throughout the army. Lastly was reared the royal standard by the king of arms, with the shout of "Castile! Castile! For King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella!" The words were echoed by the whole army, with acclamations that resounded across the vega. At sight of these signals of possession the sovereigns sank upon their knees, giving thanks to God for this great triumph; the whole assembled host followed their example, and the choristers of the royal chapel broke forth into the solemn anthem of _Te Deum laudamus_. The procession now resumed its march with joyful alacrity, to the sound of triumphant music, until they came to a small mosque, near the banks of the Xenel, and not far from the foot of the Hill of Martyrs, which edifice remains to the present day, consecrated as the hermitage of St. Sebastian. Here the sovereigns were met by the unfortunate Boabdil, accompanied by about fifty cavaliers and domestics. As he drew near he would have dismounted in token of homage, but Ferdinand prevented him. He then proffered to kiss the King's hand, but this sign of vassalage was likewise declined; whereupon, not to be outdone in magnanimity, he leaned forward and kissed the right arm of Ferdinand. Queen Isabella also refused to receive this ceremonial of homage, and, to console him under his adversity, delivered to him his son, who had remained as hostage ever since Boabdil's liberation from captivity. The Moorish monarch pressed his child to his bosom with tender emotion, and they seemed mutually endeared to each other by their misfortunes. He then delivered the keys of the city to King Ferdinand, with an air of mingled melancholy and resignation. "These keys," said he, "are the last relics of the Arabian empire in Spain; thine, O King, are our trophies, our kingdom, and our person. Such is the will of God! Receive them with the clemency thou hast promised, and which we look for at thy hands." King Ferdinand restrained his exultation with an air of serene magnanimity. "Doubt not our promises," replied he, "nor that thou shalt regain from our friendship the prosperity of which the fortune of war has deprived thee." On receiving the keys, King Ferdinand handed them to the Queen; she in her turn presented them to her son Prince Juan, who delivered them to the Count de Tendilla, that brave and loyal cavalier being appointed alcaid of the city and captain-general of the kingdom of Granada. Having surrendered the last symbol of power, the unfortunate Boabdil continued on toward the Alpujarras, that he might not behold the entrance of the Christians into his capital. His devoted band of cavaliers followed him in gloomy silence; but heavy sighs burst from their bosoms as shouts of joy and strains of triumphant music were borne on the breeze from the victorious army. Having rejoined his family, Boabdil set forward with a heavy heart for his allotted residence in the valley of Purchena. At two leagues' distance, the cavalcade, winding into the skirts of the Alpujarras, ascended an eminence commanding the last view of Granada. As they arrived at this spot the Moors paused involuntarily to take a farewell gaze at their beloved city, which a few steps more would shut from their sight forever. The Moorish cavaliers gazed with a silent agony of tenderness and grief upon that delicious abode, the scene of their loves and pleasures. While they yet looked, a light cloud of smoke burst forth from the citadel, and presently a peal of artillery, faintly heard, told that the city was taken possession of, and the throne of the Moslem kings was lost forever. The unhappy Boabdil was not to be consoled; his tears continued to flow. "Allah Akbar!" exclaimed he; "when did misfortunes ever equal mine?" From this circumstance the hill, which is not far from the Padul, took the name of Feg Allah Akbar; but the point of view commanding the last prospect of Granada is known among Spaniards by the name of _El ultimo suspiro del Moro_("The last sigh of the Moor"). The sovereigns did not enter the city on this day of its surrender, but waited until it should be fully occupied by their troops and public tranquillity insured. In a little while every battlement glistened with Christian helms and lances, the standard of the faith and of the realm floated from every tower, and the thundering salvoes of the ordnance told that the subjugation of the city was complete. The grandees and cavaliers now knelt and kissed the hands of the King and Queen and the prince Juan, and congratulated them on the acquisition of so great a kingdom, after which the royal procession returned in state to Santa Fé. It was on January 6th, the day of kings and festival of the Epiphany, that the sovereigns made their triumphal entry. The King and Queen looked on this occasion as more than mortal; the venerable ecclesiastics, to whose advice and zeal this glorious conquest ought in a great measure to be attributed, moved along with hearts swelling with holy exultation, but with chastened and downcast looks of edifying humility; while the hardy warriors, in tossing plumes and shining steel, seemed elevated with a stern joy at finding themselves in possession of this object of so many toils and perils. As the streets resounded with the tramp of steed and swelling peals of music, the Moors buried themselves in the deepest recesses of their dwellings. There they bewailed in secret the fallen glory of their race, but suppressed their groans, lest they should be heard by their enemies and increase their triumph. The royal procession advanced to the principal mosque, which had been consecrated as a cathedral. Here the sovereigns offered up prayers and thanksgivings, and the choir of the royal chapel chanted a triumphant anthem, in which they were joined by all the courtiers and cavaliers. Nothing could exceed the thankfulness to God of the pious King Ferdinand for having enabled him to eradicate from Spain the empire and name of that accursed heathen race, and for the elevation of the cross in that city wherein the impious doctrines of Mahomet had so long been cherished. In the fervor of his spirit he supplicated from heaven a continuance of its grace, and that this glorious triumph might be perpetuated. The prayer of the pious monarch was responded by the people, and even his enemies were for once convinced of his sincerity. It had been a last request of the unfortunate Boabdil, and one which showed how deeply he felt the transition of his fate, that no person might be permitted to enter or depart by the gate of the Alhambra, through which he had sallied forth to surrender his capital. His request was granted; the portal was closed up, and remains so to the present day--a mute memorial of that event. The Spanish sovereigns fixed their throne in the presence chamber of the palace, so long the seat of Moorish royalty. Hither the principal inhabitants of Granada repaired, to pay them homage and kiss their hands in token of vassalage; and their example was followed by deputies from all the towns and fortresses of the Alpujarras which had not hitherto submitted. Thus terminated the war of Granada, after ten years of incessant fighting; equalling the far-famed siege of Troy in duration, and ending, like that, in the capture of the city. Thus ended also the dominion of the Moors in Spain, having endured seven hundred seventy-eight years, from the memorable defeat of Roderick, the last of the Goths, on the banks of the Guadalete. This great triumph of our holy Catholic faith took place in the beginning of January, 1492, being three thousand six hundred fifty-five years from the population of Spain by the patriarch Tubal; three thousand seven hundred ninety-seven from the general deluge; five thousand four hundred fifty-three from the creation of the world, according to Hebrew calculation; and in the month Rabic, in the eight hundred ninety-seventh year of the Hegira, or flight of Mahomet. [Footnote 1: Musa ben Abil Gazan, Boabdil's best cavalier--a fiery soldier, of royal lineage.] [Footnote 2: A mountainous region in the provinces of Granada and Almeria.] [Footnote 3: So say Arabian historians. According to another account, Musa, meeting a party of Andalusian cavaliers, killed several of them, but, being disabled by wounds, threw himself into the Xenel and was drowned.] COLUMBUS DISCOVERS AMERICA A.D. 1492 CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS FERDINAND COLUMBUS The year 1492, in which Columbus discovered America, is adopted by some writers as separating the modern from the mediaeval period in history. It marks the culmination of the wonderful achievements in discovery for which the fifteenth century is so memorable. By 1492 the world had advanced far beyond the ignorance of the period when Marco Polo made and described his famous travels from Europe to the East, 1324, and when Sir John Mandeville's extravagant account of Eastern journeys, 1357-1371, was published. European knowledge of the Orient had been greatly increased by the crusades, and this, together with the spread of commerce, had quickened the desire of Western peoples for still further explorations of the world. During the first half of the fifteenth century the Portuguese were most enterprising in the work of discovery, and before 1500 they had searched the western coast of Africa, passed the equator, and seen the Cape of Good Hope, which Vasco da Gama doubled in 1497, on his way to India. Meanwhile Christopher Columbus, a native of Genoa, a famous maritime city, was planning a route of his own for a voyage to the East Indies--the great object, at that period, of all ambitious navigators. As the Portuguese sought, and at last found, an ocean route by the east around Africa, so Columbus meditated a westward voyage, and was the first to seek India in that direction. After vainly submitting his plan to John II of Portugal, to the Genoese Government, and to Henry VII of England, he appealed--at first without success--to Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile. But at the end of their war with Granada, 1492, he obtained a better hearing, and gained the favor of Isabella, who joined the Pinzons, merchants of Palos, in fitting out for him three small vessels, the Niña, the Santa Maria, and the Pinta. With the concurrence of Ferdinand, she made Columbus, for himself and his heirs, admiral in all the regions that he should discover, and viceroy in any lands acquired by him for Spain. When the bold mariner sailed from Saltes, an island near Palos, a small town in the province of Huelva, Spain, he had complete confidence in his theory of finding new lands to the west. And his unshakable faith in his idea and in his purpose constitutes the most heroic aspect of his first voyage. Of recent years great interest and much historical discussion have been aroused in connection with real or imagined pre-Columbian discoveries of America, especially with the discovery by the Northmen. But all attempts to diminish the glory of Columbus' achievement, by proving that the results of previous discoveries were known to him, have, as Hubert Howe Bancroft declares, signally failed. Columbus was not the first to conceive the possibility of reaching the East by sailing west. Toscanelli, the Italian astronomer, who made the map which Columbus used, and others among his contemporaries entertained the theory; but the Genoese sailor was the first to act upon this belief. Supposing, as he did to his latest day, that he had found the eastern coast of India, and not another continent, Columbus gave the name of Indies to the islands he discovered, whose inhabitants he also called Indians; yet he did not have the honor of giving his own name to the New World which he made known to mankind. In the following pages his own unstudied account of the first voyage and discovery, and the narrative from the biography of Columbus by his son, furnish a very complete history of the enterprise from which so large a part of the world's later development has followed. It should be noted, however, that both of the accounts manifest the not unnatural desire to give full prominence to the part taken by Columbus himself. His able coadjutors, the Pinzons, scarce receive such adequate mention as they are given by more modern narrators. The letter to Gabriel Sanchez appears here in a careful edition, one of the treasured possessions of the New York Public Library--Lenox Library--through the courtesy of whose officers it is presented in this work. It is the first letter of Columbus, giving the earliest information of his discovery, and is here rendered in a new translation, as contained in the little volume published in 1892 by the trustees of the Lenox Library, as a "tribute to the memory of the great discoverer." CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS [Letter of Christopher Columbus, to whom our age owes much, concerning the islands recently discovered in the Indian sea[1], for the search of which, eight months before, he was sent under the auspices and at the cost of the most invincible Ferdinand, King of Spain[2]; addressed to the magnificent lord Raphael Sanxis[3], treasurer of the same most illustrious King, and which the noble and learned man Leander de Cosco has translated from the Spanish language into Latin, on the third of the calends of May[4], 1493, the first year of the pontificate of Alexander VI.] Because my undertakings have attained success, I know that it will be pleasing to you; these I have determined to relate, so that you may be made acquainted with everything done and discovered in this our voyage. On the thirty-third day after I departed from Cadiz,[5] I came to the Indian sea, where I found many islands inhabited by men without number, of all which I took possession for our most fortunate King, with proclaiming heralds and flying standards, no one objecting. To the first of these I gave the name of the blessed Saviour,[6] on whose aid relying I had reached this as well as the other islands. But the Indians call it Guanahani. I also called each one of the others by a new name. For I ordered one island to be called Santa Maria of the Conception,[7] another Fernandina,[8] another Isabella,[9] another Juana,[10] and so on with the rest. As soon as we had arrived at that island which I have just now said was called Juana, I proceeded along its coast toward the west for some distance. I found it so large and without perceptible end, that I believed it to be not an island, but the continental country of Cathay;[11] seeing, however, no towns or cities situated on the sea-coast, but only some villages and rude farms, with whose inhabitants I was unable to converse, because as soon as they saw us they took flight, I proceeded farther, thinking that I would discover some city or large residences. At length, perceiving that we had gone far enough, that nothing new appeared, and that this way was leading us to the north, which I wished to avoid, because it was winter on the land, and it was my intention to go to the south, moreover the winds were becoming violent, I therefore determined that no other plans were practicable, and so, going back, I returned to a certain bay that I had noticed, from which I sent two of our men to the land, that they might find out whether there was a king in this country, or any cities. These men travelled for three days, and they found people and houses without number, but they were small and without any government, therefore they returned. Now in the mean time I had learned from certain Indians, whom I had seized there, that this country was indeed an island, and therefore I proceeded toward the east, keeping all the time near the coast, for three hundred twenty-two miles, to the extreme ends of this island. From this place I saw another island to the east, distant from this Juana fifty-four miles, which I called forthwith Hispana,[12] and I sailed to it; and I steered along the northern coast, as at Juana, toward the east, five hundred sixty-four miles. And the said Juana and the other islands there appear very fertile. This island is surrounded by many very safe and wide harbors, not excelled by any others that I have ever seen. Many great and salubrious rivers flow through it. There are also many very high mountains there. All these islands are very beautiful, and distinguished by various qualities; they are accessible, and full of a great variety of trees stretching up to the stars; the leaves of which I believe are never shed, for I saw them as green and flourishing as they are usually in Spain in the month of May; some of them were blossoming, some were bearing fruit, some were in other conditions; each one was thriving in its own way. The nightingale and various other birds without number were singing in the month of November, when I was exploring them. There are besides in the said island Juana seven or eight kinds of palm-trees, which far excel ours in height and beauty, just as all the other trees, herbs, and fruits do. There are also excellent pine-trees, vast plains and meadows, a variety of birds, a variety of honey, and a variety of metals, excepting iron. In the one which was called Hispana, as we said above, there are great and beautiful mountains, vast fields, groves, fertile plains, very suitable for planting and cultivating, and for the building of houses. The convenience of the harbors in this island, and the remarkable number of rivers contributing to the healthfulness of man, exceed belief, unless one has seen them. The trees, pasturage, and fruits of this island differ greatly from those of Juana. This Hispana, moreover, abounds in different kinds of spices, in gold, and in metals. On this island, indeed, and on all the others which I have seen, and of which I have knowledge, the inhabitants of both sexes go always naked, just as they came into the world, except some of the women, who use a covering of a leaf or some foliage, or a cotton cloth, which they make themselves for that purpose. All these people lack, as I said above, every kind of iron; they are also without weapons, which indeed are unknown; nor are they competent to use them, not on account of deformity of body, for they are well formed, but because they are timid and full of fear. They carry for weapons, however, reeds baked in the sun, on the lower ends of which they fasten some shafts of dried wood rubbed down to a point; and indeed they do not venture to use these always; for it frequently happened, when I sent two or three of my men to some of the villages, that they might speak with the natives, a compact troop of the Indians would march out, and as soon as they saw our men approaching they would quickly take flight, children being pushed aside by their fathers, and fathers by their children. And this was not because any hurt or injury had been inflicted on any one of them, for to everyone whom I visited and with whom I was able to converse I distributed whatever I had, cloth and many other things, no return being made to me; but they are by nature fearful and timid. Yet when they perceive that they are safe, putting aside all fear, they are of simple manners and trustworthy, and very liberal with everything they have, refusing no one who asks for anything they may possess, and even themselves inviting us to ask for things. They show greater love for all others than for themselves; they give valuable things for trifles, being satisfied even with a very small return, or with nothing; however, I forbade that things so small and of no value should be given to them, such as pieces of plates, dishes, and glass, likewise keys and shoe-straps; although, if they were able to obtain these, it seemed to them like getting the most beautiful jewels in the world. It happened, indeed, that a certain sailor obtained in exchange for a shoe-strap as much worth of gold as would equal three golden coins; and likewise other things for articles of very little value, especially for new silver coins, and for some gold coins, to obtain which they gave whatever the seller desired, as for instance an ounce and a half and two ounces of gold, or thirty and forty pounds of cotton, with which they were already acquainted. They also traded cotton and gold for pieces of bows, bottles, jugs and jars, like persons without reason, which I forbade because it was very wrong; and I gave to them many beautiful and pleasing things that I had brought with me, no value being taken in exchange, in order that I might the more easily make them friendly to me, that they might be made worshippers of Christ, and that they might be full of love toward our King, Queen, and Prince, and the whole Spanish nation; also that they might be zealous to search out and collect, and deliver to us, those things of which they had plenty, and which we greatly needed. These people practise no kind of idolatry; on the contrary they firmly believe that all strength and power, and in fact all good things, are in heaven, and that I had come down from thence with these ships and sailors; and in this belief I was received there after they had put aside fear. Nor are they slow or unskilled, but of excellent and acute understanding; and the men who have navigated that sea give an account of everything in an admirable manner; but they never saw people clothed, nor these kind of ships. As soon as I reached that sea, I seized by force several Indians on the first island, in order that they might learn from us, and in like manner tell us about those things in these lands of which they themselves had knowledge; and the plan succeeded, for in a short time we understood them and they us, sometimes by gestures and signs, sometimes by words; and it was a great advantage to us. They are coming with me now, yet always believing that I descended from heaven, although they have been living with us for a long time, and are living with us today. And these men were the first who announced it wherever we landed, continually proclaiming to the others in a loud voice, "Come, come, and you will see the celestial people." Whereupon both women and men, both children and adults, both young men and old men, laying aside the fear caused a little before, visited us eagerly, filling the road with a great crowd, some bringing food and some drink, with great love and extraordinary good-will. On every island there are many canoes of a single piece of wood, and, though narrow, yet in length and shape similar to our row-boats, but swifter in movement. They steer only by oars. Some of these boats are large, some small, some of medium size. Yet they row many of the larger row-boats with eighteen cross-benches, with which they cross to all those islands, which are innumerable, and with these boats they perform their trading, and carry on commerce among them. I saw some of these row-boats or canoes which were carrying seventy and eighty rowers. In all these islands there is no difference in the appearance of the people, nor in the manners and language, but all understand each other mutually; a fact that is very important for the end which I suppose to be earnestly desired by our most illustrious King, that is, their conversion to the holy religion of Christ, to which in truth, as far as I can perceive, they are very ready and favorably inclined. I said before how I proceeded along the island Juana in a straight line from west to east three hundred twenty-two miles, according to which course, and the length of the way, I am able to say that this Juana is larger than England and Scotland together; for, besides the said three hundred twenty-two thousand paces, there are two more provinces in that part which lies toward the west, which I did not visit; one of these the Indians call Anan, whose inhabitants are born with tails. They extend to one hundred eighty miles in length, as I have learned from those Indians I have with me, who are all acquainted with these islands. But the circumference of Hispana is still greater than all Spain from Colonia to Fontarabia[13]. This is easily proved, because its fourth side, which I myself passed along in a straight line from west to east, extends five hundred forty miles. This island is to be desired and is very desirable, and not to be despised; in which, although, as I have said, I solemnly took possession of all the others for our most invincible King, and their government is entirely committed to the said King, yet I especially took possession of a certain large town, in a very convenient location, and adapted to all kinds of gain and commerce, to which we give the name of our Lord of the Nativity. And I commanded a fort to be built there forthwith, which must be completed by this time; in which I left as many men as seemed necessary, with all kinds of arms, and plenty of food for more than a year. Likewise one caravel, and for the construction of others men skilled in this trade and in other professions; and also the extraordinary good-will and friendship of the King of this island toward us. For those people are very amiable and kind, to such a degree that the said King gloried in calling me his brother. And if they should change their minds, and should wish to hurt those who remained in the fort, they would not be able, because they lack weapons, they go naked, and are too cowardly. For that reason those who hold the said fort are at least able to resist easily this whole island, without any imminent danger to themselves, so long as they do not transgress the regulations and command which we gave. In all these islands, as I have understood, each man is content with only one wife, except the princes or kings, who are permitted to have twenty. The women appear to work more than the men. I was not able to find out surely whether they have individual property, for I saw that one man had the duty of distributing to the others, especially refreshments, food, and things of that kind. I found no monstrosities among them, as very many supposed, but men of great reverence, and friendly. Nor are they black like the Ethiopians. They have straight hair, hanging down. They do not remain where the solar rays send out the heat, for the strength of the sun is very great here, because it is distant from the equinoctial line, as it seems, only twenty-six degrees. On the tops of the mountains, too, the cold is severe, but the Indians, however, moderate it, partly by being accustomed to the place, and partly by the help of very hot victuals, of which they eat frequently and immoderately. And so I did not see any monstrosity, nor did I have knowledge of them anywhere, excepting a certain island named Charis,[14] which is the second in passing from Hispana to India. This island is inhabited by a certain people who are considered very warlike by their neighbors. These eat human flesh. The said people have many kinds of row-boats, in which they cross over to all the other Indian islands, and seize and carry away everything that they can. They differ in no way from the others, only that they wear long hair like the women. They use bows and darts made of reeds, with sharpened shafts fastened to the larger end, as we have described. On this account they are considered warlike, wherefore the other Indians are afflicted with continual fear, but I regard them as of no more account than the others. These are the people who visit certain women, who alone inhabit the island Mateunin[15], which is the first in passing from Hispana to India. These women, moreover, perform no kind of work of their sex, for they use bows and darts, like those I have described of their husbands; they protect themselves with sheets of copper, of which there is great abundance among them. They tell me of another island, greater than the aforesaid Hispana, whose inhabitants are without hair, and which abounds in gold above all the others. I am bringing with me men of this island and of the others that I have seen, who give proof of the things that I have described. Finally, that I may compress in few words the brief account of our departure and quick return, and the gain, I promise this, that if I am supported by our most invincible sovereigns with a little of their help, as much gold can be supplied as they will need, indeed as much of spices, of cotton, of chewing-gum (which is only found in Chios), also as much of aloes-wood, and as many slaves for the navy, as their majesties will wish to demand. Likewise rhubarb and other kinds of spices, which I suppose these men whom I left in the said fort have already found, and will continue to find; since I remained in no place longer than the winds forced me, except in the town of the Nativity, while I provided for the building of the fort and for the safety of all. Which things, although they are very great and remarkable, yet they would have been much greater if I had been aided by as many ships as the occasion required. Truly great and wonderful is this, and not corresponding to our merits, but to the holy Christian religion, and to the piety and religion of our sovereigns, because what the human understanding could not attain, that the divine will has granted to human efforts. For God is wont to listen to his servants who love his precepts, even in impossibilities, as has happened to us on the present occasion, who have attained that which hitherto mortal men have never reached. For if anyone has written or said anything about these islands, it was all with obscurities and conjectures; no one claims that he had seen them; from which they seemed like fables. Therefore let the King and Queen, the princes and their most fortunate kingdoms, and all other countries of Christendom, give thanks to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who has bestowed upon us so great a victory and gift. Let religious processions be solemnized; let sacred festivals be given; let the churches be covered with festive garlands. Let Christ rejoice on earth, as he rejoices in heaven, when he foresees coming to salvation so many souls of people hitherto lost. Let us be glad also, as well on account of the exaltation of our faith as on account of the increase of our temporal affairs, of which not only Spain, but universal Christendom, will be partaker. These things that have been done are thus briefly related. Farewell. Lisbon, the day before the ides of March.[16] CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, Admiral of the Ocean Fleet. Epigram of R. L. de Corbaria, Bishop of Monte Peloso "To THE MOST INVINCIBLE KING OF SPAIN "No region now can add to Spain's great deeds: To such men all the world is yet too small. An Orient land, found far beyond the waves, Will add, great Betica, to thy renown. Then to Columbus, the true finder, give Due thanks; but greater still to God on high, Who makes new kingdoms for himself and thee: Both firm and pious let thy conduct be." FERDINAND COLUMBUS All the conditions which the admiral demanded being conceded by their Catholic majesties, he set out from Granada on May 21, 1492, for Palos, where he was to fit out the ships for his intended expedition. That town was bound to serve the crown for three months with two caravels, which were ordered to be given to Columbus; and he fitted out these and a third vessel with all care and diligence. The ship in which he personally embarked was called the Santa Maria; the second vessel, named the Pinta, was commanded by Martin Alonso Pinzon; and the third, named the Nina, which had square sails, was under the command of Vincent Yanez Pinzon, the brother of Alonso, both of whom were inhabitants of Palos. Being furnished with all necessaries, and having ninety men to navigate the three vessels, Columbus set sail from Palos on August 3, 1492, shaping his course directly for the Canaries. During this voyage, and indeed in all the _four_ voyages which he made from Spain to the West Indies, the admiral was very careful to keep an exact journal of every occurrence which took place; always specifying what winds blew, how far he sailed with each particular wind, what currents were found, and everything that was seen by the way, whether birds, fishes, or any other thing. Although to note all these particulars with a minute relation of everything that happened, showing what impressions and effects answered to the course and aspect of the stars, and the differences between the seas which he sailed and those of our countries, might all be useful; yet, as I conceive that the relation of these particulars might now be tiresome to the reader, I shall only give an account of what appears to me necessary and convenient to be known. On Saturday, August 4th, the next day after sailing from Palos, the rudder of the Pinta broke loose. The admiral strongly suspected that it was occasioned by the contrivance of the master on purpose to avoid proceeding on the voyage, which he had endeavored to do before they left Spain, and he therefore ranged up alongside of the disabled vessel to give every assistance in his power, but the wind blew so hard that he was unable to afford any aid. Pinzon, however, being an experienced seaman, soon made a temporary repair by means of ropes, and they proceeded on their voyage. But on the following Tuesday, the weather becoming rough and boisterous, the fastenings gave way, and the squadron was obliged to lay to for some time to renew the repairs. From this misfortune of twice breaking the rudder, a superstitious person might have foreboded the future disobedience of Pinzon to the admiral; as through his malice the Pinta twice separated from the squadron, as shall be afterward related. Having applied the best remedy they could to the disabled state of the rudder, the squadron continued its voyage, and came in sight of the Canaries at daybreak of Thursday, August 9th; but owing to contrary winds, they were unable to come to anchor at Gran Canaria until the 12th. The admiral left Pinzon at Gran Canaria to endeavor to procure another vessel instead of that which was disabled, and went himself with the Niña on the same errand to Gomera. The admiral arrived at Gomera on Sunday, August 12th, and sent a boat on shore to inquire if any vessel could be procured there for his purpose. The boat returned next morning, and brought intelligence that no vessel was then at that island, but that Doña Beatrix de Bobadilla, the proprietrix of the island, was then at Gran Canaria in a hired vessel of forty tons belonging to one Gradeuna of Seville, which would probably suit his purpose and might perhaps be got. He therefore determined to await the arrival of that vessel at Gomera, believing that Pinzon might have secured a vessel for himself at Gran Canaria, if he had not been able to repair his own. After waiting two days, he despatched one of his people in a bark which was bound from Gomera to Gran Canaria, to acquaint Pinzon where he lay, and to assist him in repairing and fixing the rudder. Having waited a considerable time for an answer to his letter, he sailed with the two vessels from Gomera on August 23d for Gran Canaria, and fell in with the bark on the following day, which had been detained all that time on its voyage by contrary winds. He now took his man from the bark, and, sailing in the night past the island of Teneriffe, the people were much astonished at observing flames bursting out of the lofty mountain called El Pico (or the Peak of Teneriffe). On this occasion the admiral was at great pains to explain the nature of this phenomenon to the people by instancing the example of Aetna and several other known volcanoes. Passing by Teneriffe, they arrived at Gran Canaria on Saturday, August 25th, and found that Pinzon had only got in there the day before. From him the admiral was informed that Doña Beatrix had sailed for Gomera on the 20th with the vessel which he was so anxious to obtain. His officers were much troubled at the disappointment; but he, who always endeavored to make the best of every occurrence, observed to them that since it had not pleased God that they should get this vessel it was perhaps better for them, as they might have encountered much opposition in pressing it into the service, and might have lost a great deal of time in shipping and unshipping the goods. Wherefore, lest he might again miss it if he returned to Gomera, he resolved to make a new rudder for the Pinta at Gran Canaria, and ordered the square sails of the Nina to be changed to _round_ ones, like those of the other two vessels, that she might be able to accompany them with less danger and agitation. The vessels being all refitted, the admiral weighed anchor from Gran Canaria on Saturday, September 1st, and arrived next day at Gomera, where four days were employed in completing their stores of provisions and of wood and water. On the morning of Thursday, September 6, 1492, the admiral took his departure from Gomera, and commenced his great undertaking by standing directly westward, but made very slow progress at first on account of calms. On Sunday, September 9th, about daybreak, they were nine leagues west of the island of Ferro. Now, losing sight of land and stretching out into utterly unknown seas, many of the people expressed their anxiety and fear that it might be long before they should see land again; but the admiral used every endeavor to comfort them with the assurance of soon finding the land he was in search of, and raised their hopes of acquiring wealth and honor by the discovery. To lessen the fear which they entertained of the length of way they had to sail, he gave out that they had only proceeded fifteen leagues that day, when the actual distance sailed was eighteen; and, to induce the people to believe that they were not so far from Spain as they really were, he resolved to keep considerably short in his reckoning during the whole voyage, though he carefully recorded the true reckoning every day in private. On Wednesday, September 12th, having got to about one hundred fifty leagues west of Ferro, they discovered a large trunk of a tree, sufficient to have been the mast of a vessel of one hundred twenty tons, and which seemed to have been a long time in the water. At this distance from Ferro, and for somewhat farther on, the current was found to set strongly to the northeast. Next day, when they had run fifty leagues farther westward, the needle was observed to vary half a point to the eastward of north, and next morning the variation was a whole point east. This variation of the compass had never been before observed, and therefore the admiral was much surprised at the phenomenon, and concluded that the needle did not actually point toward the polar star, but to some other fixed point. Three days afterward, when almost one hundred leagues farther west, he was still more astonished at the irregularity of the variation; for, having observed the needle to vary a whole point to the eastward at night, it pointed directly northward in the morning. On the night of Saturday, September isth, being then almost three hundred leagues west of Ferro, they saw a prodigious flash of light, or fire-ball, drop from the sky into the sea, at four or five leagues' distance from the ships, toward the southwest. The weather was then quite fair and serene like April, the sea perfectly calm, the wind favorable from the northeast, and the current setting to the northeast. The people in the Nina told the admiral that they had seen the day before a heron, and another bird which they called _rabo-de-junco._ These were the first birds which had been seen during the voyage, and were considered as indications of approaching land. But they were more agreeably surprised next day, Sunday, September 16th, by seeing great abundance of yellowish green sea-weeds, which appeared as if newly washed away from some rock or island. Next day the seaweed was seen in much greater quantity, and a small live lobster was observed among the weeds; from this circumstance many affirmed that they were certainly near the land. The sea-water was afterward noticed to be only half so salt as before; and great numbers of tunny-fish were seen swimming about, some of which came so near the vessel that one was killed by a bearded iron. Being now three hundred sixty leagues west from Ferro, another of the birds called rabo-de-junco was seen. On Tuesday, September 18th, Martin Alonso Pinzon, who had gone ahead of the admiral, in the Pinta, which was an excellent sailer, lay to for the admiral to come up, and told him that he had seen a great number of birds fly away westward, for which reason he was in great hopes to see land that night; Pinzon even thought that he saw land that night about fifteen leagues distant to the northward, which appeared very black and covered with clouds. All the people would have persuaded the admiral to try for land in that direction; but, being certainly assured that it was not land, and having not yet reached the distance at which he expected to find the land, he would not consent to lose time in altering his course in that direction. But as the wind now freshened, he gave orders to take in the topsails at night, having now sailed eleven days before the wind due westward with all their sails up. All the people in the squadron being utterly unacquainted with the seas they now traversed, fearful of their danger at such unusual distance from any relief, and seeing nothing around but sky and water, began to mutter among themselves, and anxiously observed every appearance. On September 19th a kind of sea-gull called _alcatras_ flew over the admiral's ship, and several others were seen in the afternoon of that day, and, as the admiral conceived that these birds would not fly far from land, he entertained hopes of soon seeing what he was in quest of. He therefore ordered a line of two hundred fathoms to be tried, but without finding any bottom. The current was now found to set to the southwest. On Thursday, September 20th, two alcatrases came near the ship about two hours before noon, and soon afterward a third. On this day likewise they took a bird resembling a heron, of a black color with a white tuft on its head, and having webbed feet like a duck. Abundance of weeds were seen floating in the sea, and one small fish was taken. About evening three land birds settled on the rigging of the ship and began to sing. These flew away at daybreak, which was considered a strong indication of approaching the land, as these little birds could not have come from any far distant country; whereas the other large fowls, being used to water, might much better go far from land. The same day an alcatras was seen. Friday, the 21st, another alcatras and a rabo-de-junco were seen, and vast quantities of weeds as far as the eye could carry toward the north. These appearances were sometimes a comfort to the people, giving them hopes of nearing the wished-for land; while at other times the weeds were so thick as in some measure to impede the progress of the vessels, and to occasion terror lest what is fabulously reported of St. Amaro in the frozen sea might happen to them, that they might be so enveloped in the weeds as to be unable to move backward or forward; wherefore they steered away from those shoals of weeds as much as they could. Next day, being Saturday, September 22d, they saw a whale and several small birds. The wind now veered to the southwest, sometimes more and sometimes less to the westward; and though this was adverse to the direction of their proposed voyage, the admiral, to comfort the people, alleged that this was a favorable circumstance; because, among other causes of fear, they had formerly said they should never have a wind to carry them back to Spain, as it had always blown from the east ever since they left Ferro. They still continued, however, to murmur, alleging that this southwest wind was by no means a settled one, and, as it never blew strong enough to swell the sea, it would not serve to carry them back again through so great an extent of sea as they had now passed over. In spite of every argument used by the admiral, assuring them that the alterations in the wind were occasioned by the vicinity of the land, by which likewise the waves were prevented from rising to any height, they were still dissatisfied and terrified. On Sunday, September 23d, a brisk gale sprung up west-northwest, with a rolling sea, such as the people had wished for. Three hours before noon a turtle-dove was observed to fly over the ship; toward evening an alcatras, a river fowl, and several white birds were seen flying about, and some crabs were observed among the weeds. Next day another alcatras was seen and several small birds which came from the west. Numbers of small fishes were seen swimming about, some of which were struck with harpoons, as they would not bite at the hook. The more that the tokens mentioned above were observed, and found not to be followed by the so anxiously looked-for land, the more the people became fearful of the event and entered into cabals against the admiral, who they said was desirous to make himself a great lord at the expense of their danger. They represented that they had already sufficiently performed their duty in adventuring farther from land and all possibility of succor than had ever been done before, and that they ought not to proceed on the voyage to their manifest destruction. If they did they would soon have reason to repent their temerity, as provisions would soon fall short, the ships were already faulty and would soon fail, and it would be extremely difficult to get back so far as they had already gone. None could condemn them in their own opinion for now turning back, but all must consider them as brave men for having gone upon such an enterprise and venturing so far. That the admiral was a foreigner who had no favor at court; and as so many wise and learned men had already condemned his opinions and enterprise as visionary and impossible, there would be none to favor or defend him, and they were sure to find more credit if they accused him of ignorance and mismanagement than he would do, whatsoever he might now say for himself against them. Some even proceeded so far as to propose, in case the admiral should refuse to acquiesce in their proposals, that they might make a short end of all disputes by throwing him overboard; after which they could give out that he had fallen over while making his observations, and no one would ever think of inquiring into the truth. They thus went on day after day, muttering, complaining, and consulting together; and though the admiral was not fully aware of the extent of their cabals, he was not entirely without apprehensions of their inconstancy in the present trying situation, and of their evil intentions toward him. He therefore exerted himself to the utmost to quiet their apprehensions and to suppress their evil design, sometimes using fair words, and at other times fully resolved to expose his life rather than abandon the enterprise; he put them in mind of the due punishment they would subject themselves to if they obstructed the voyage. To confirm their hopes, he recapitulated all the favorable signs and indications which had been lately observed, assuring them that they might soon expect to see the land. But they, who were ever attentive to these tokens, thought every hour a year in their anxiety to see the wished-for land. On Tuesday, September 25th, near sunset, as the admiral was discoursing with Pinzon, whose ship was then very near, Pinzon suddenly called out, "Land! land, sir! let not my good news miscarry," and pointed out a large mass in the southwest, about twenty-five leagues distant, which seemed very like an island. This was so pleasing to the people that they returned thanks to God for the pleasing discovery; and, although the admiral was by no means satisfied of the truth of Pinzon's observation, yet to please the men, and that they might not obstruct the voyage, he altered his course and stood in that direction a great part of the night. Next morning, the 26th, they had the mortification to find the supposed land was only composed of clouds, which often put on the appearance of distant land; and, to their great dissatisfaction, the stems of the ships were again turned directly westward, as they always were unless when hindered by the wind. Continuing their course, and still attentively watching for signs of land, they saw this day an alcatras, a rabo-de-junco, and other birds as formerly mentioned. On Thursday, September 27th, they saw another alcatras coming from the westward and flying toward the east, and great numbers of fish were seen with gilt backs, one of which they struck with a harpoon. A rabo-de-junco likewise flew past; the currents for some of the last days were not so regular as before but changed with the tide, and the weeds were not nearly so abundant. On Friday, the 28th, all the vessels took some of the fishes with gilt backs; and on Saturday, the 29th, they saw a rabo-de-junco, which, although a sea-fowl, never rests on the waves, but always flies in the air, pursuing the alcatrases. Many of these birds are said to frequent the Cape de Verd Islands. They soon afterward saw two other alcatrases and great numbers of flying-fishes. These last are about a span long, and have two little membranous wings like those of a bat, by means of which they fly about a pike-length high from the water and a musket-shot in length, and sometimes drop upon the ships. In the afternoon of this day they saw abundance of weeds lying in length north and south, and three alcatrases pursued by a rabo-de-junco. On the morning of Sunday, September 30th, four rabo-de-juncos came to the ship; and from so many of them coming together it was thought the land could not be far distant, especially as four alcatrases followed soon afterward. Great quantities of weeds were seen in a line stretching from west-north-west to east-north-east, and a great number of the fishes which are called _emperadores_, which have a very hard skin and are not fit to eat. Though the admiral paid every attention to these indications, he never neglected those in the heavens, and carefully observed the course of the stars. He was now greatly surprised to notice at this time that Charles' Wain, or the Ursa Major constellation, appeared at night in the west, and was north-east in the morning. He thence concluded that their whole night's course was only nine hours, or so many parts in twenty four of a great circle; and this he observed to be the case regularly every night. It was likewise noticed that the compass varied a whole point to the northwest at nightfall, and came due north every morning at daybreak. As this unheard-of circumstance confounded and perplexed the pilots, who apprehended danger in these strange regions and at such unusual distance from home, the admiral endeavored to calm their fears by assigning a cause for this wonderful phenomenon. He alleged that it was occasioned by the polar star making a circuit round the pole, by which they were not a little satisfied. Soon after sunrise on Monday, October 1st, an alcatras came to the ship, and two more about ten in the morning, and long streams of weeds floated from east to west. That morning the pilot of the admiral's ship said that they were now five hundred seventy-eight leagues west from the island of Ferro. In his public account the admiral said they were five hundred eighty-four leagues to the west; but in his private journal he made the real distance seven hundred seven leagues, or one hundred twenty-nine more than was reckoned by the pilot. The other two ships differed much in their computation from each other and from the admiral's pilot. The pilot of the Nina, in the afternoon of the Wednesday following, said they had only sailed five hundred forty leagues, and the pilot of the Pinta reckoned six hundred thirty-four. Thus they were all much short of the truth; but the admiral winked at the gross mistake, that the men, not thinking themselves so far from home, might be the less dejected. The next day, being Tuesday, October 2d, they saw abundance of fish, caught one small tunny, and saw a white bird with many other small birds, and the weeds appeared much withered and almost fallen to powder. Next day, seeing no birds, they suspected that they had passed between some islands on both hands, and had slipped through without seeing them, as they guessed that the many birds which they had seen might have been passing from one island to another. On this account they were very earnest to have the course altered one way or the other, in quest of these imaginary lands. But the admiral, unwilling to lose the advantage of the fair wind which carried him due west, which he accounted his surest course, and afraid to lessen his reputation by deviating from course to course in search of land, which he always affirmed that he well knew where to find, refused his consent to any change. On this the people were again ready to mutiny, and resumed their murmurs and cabals against him. But it pleased God to aid his authority by fresh indications of land. On Thursday, October 4th, in the afternoon, above forty sparrows together and two alcatrases flew so near the ship that a seaman killed one of them with a stone. Several other birds were seen at this time, and many flying-fish fell into the ships. Next day there came a rabo-de-junco and an alcatras from the westward, and many sparrows were seen. About sunrise on Sunday, October 7th, some signs of land appeared to the westward, but being imperfect no person would mention the circumstance. This was owing to fear of losing the reward of thirty crowns yearly for life which had been promised by their Catholic majesties to whoever should first discover land; and to prevent them from calling out "Land, land!" at every turn without just cause, it was made a condition that whoever said he saw land should lose the reward if it were not made out in three days, even if he should afterward actually prove the first discoverer. All on board the admiral's ship, being thus forewarned, were exceedingly careful not to cry out "Land!" on uncertain tokens; but those in the Niña, which sailed better and always kept ahead, believing that they certainly saw land, fired a gun and hung out their colors in token of the discovery; but the farther they sailed, the more the joyful appearance lessened, till at last it vanished away. But they soon afterward derived much comfort by observing great flights of large fowl and others of small birds going from the west toward the southwest. Being now at a vast distance from Spain, and well assured that such small birds would not go far from land, the admiral now altered his course from due west which had been hitherto, and steered to the southwest. He assigned as a reason for now changing his course, although deviating little from his original design, that he followed the example of the Portuguese, who had discovered most of their islands by attending to the flight of birds, and because these they now saw flew almost uniformly in one direction. He said likewise that he had always expected to discover land about the situation in which they now were, having often told them that he must not look to find land until they should get seven hundred fifty leagues to the westward of the Canaries, about which distance he expected to fall in with Hispaniola, which he then called Cipango;[17] and there is no doubt that he would have found this island by his direct course, if it had not been that it was reported to extend from north to south. Owing therefore to his not having inclined more to the south, he had missed that and others of the Caribbee islands, whither those birds were now bending their flight, and which had been for some time upon his larboard hand. It was from being so near the land that they continually saw such great numbers of birds; and on Monday, October 8th, twelve singing birds of various colors came to the ship, and after flying round it for a short time held on their way. Many other birds were seen from the ship flying toward the southwest, and that same night great numbers of large fowl were seen, and flocks of small birds proceeding from the northward, and all going to the southwest. In the morning a jay was seen, with an alcatras, several ducks, and many small birds, all flying the same way with the others, and the air was perceived to be fresh and odoriferous as it is at Seville in the month of April. But the people were now so eager to see land and had been so often disappointed that they ceased to give faith to these continual indications; insomuch that on Wednesday, the 10th, although abundance of birds were continually passing both by day and night, they never ceased to complain. The admiral upbraided their want of resolution, and declared that they must persist in their endeavors to discover the Indies, for which he and they had been sent out by their Catholic majesties. It would have been impossible for the admiral to have much longer withstood the numbers which now opposed him; but it pleased God that, in the afternoon of Thursday, October 11th, such manifest tokens of being near the land appeared that the men took courage and rejoiced at their good-fortune as much as they had been before distressed. From the admiral's ship a green rush was seen to float past, and one of those green fish which never go far from the rocks. The people in the Pinta saw a cane and a staff in the water, and took up another staff very curiously carved, and a small board, and great plenty of weeds were seen which seemed to have been recently torn from the rocks. Those of the Niña, besides similar signs of land, saw a branch of a thorn full of red berries, which seemed to have been newly torn from the tree. From all these indications the admiral was convinced that he now drew near to the land, and after the evening prayers he made a speech to the men, in which he reminded them of the mercy of God in having brought them so long a voyage with such favorable weather, and in comforting them with so many tokens of a successful issue to their enterprise, which were now every day becoming plainer and less equivocal. He besought them to be exceedingly watchful during the night, as they well knew that in the first article of the instructions, which he had given to all the three ships before leaving the Canaries, they were enjoined, when they should have sailed seven hundred leagues west without discovering land, to lay to every night from midnight till daybreak. And, as he had very confident hopes of discovering land that night, he required every one to keep watch at their quarters; and, besides the gratuity of thirty crowns a year for life, which had been graciously promised by their sovereigns to him that first saw the land, he engaged to give the fortunate discoverer a velvet doublet from himself. After this, as the admiral was in his cabin, about ten o'clock at night, he saw a light on shore; but it was so unsteady that he could not certainly affirm that it came from land. He called to one Pedro Gutierrez and desired him to try if he could perceive the same light, who said he did; but one Rodrigo Sanchez of Segovia, on being desired to look the same way, could not see it, because he was not up time enough, as neither the admiral nor Gutierrez could see it again above once or twice for a short space, which made them judge it to proceed from a candle or torch belonging to some fisherman or traveller, who lifted it up occasionally and lowered it again, or perhaps from people going from one house to another, because it appeared and vanished again so suddenly. Being now very much on their guard, they still held on their course until about two in the morning of Friday, October 12th, when the Pinta, which was always far ahead, owing to her superior sailing, made the signal of seeing land, which was first discovered by Rodrigo de Triana at about two leagues from the ship. But the thirty crowns a year were afterward granted to the admiral, who had seen the light in the midst of darkness, a type of the spiritual light which he was the happy means of spreading in these dark regions of error. Being now so near land, all the ships lay to, everyone thinking it long till daylight, that they might enjoy the sight they had so long and anxiously desired. When daylight appeared, the newly discovered land was perceived to consist of a flat island fifteen leagues in length, without any hills, all covered with trees, and having a great lake in the middle. The island was inhabited by great abundance of people, who ran down to the shore filled with wonder and admiration at the sight of the ships, which they conceived to be some unknown animals. The Christians were not less curious to know what kind of people they had fallen in with, and the curiosity on both sides was soon satisfied, as the ships soon came to anchor. The admiral went on shore with his boat well armed, and having the royal standard of Castile and Leon displayed, accompanied by the commanders of the other two vessels, each in his own boat, carrying the particular colors which had been allotted for the enterprise, which were white with a green cross and the letter F on one side, and on the other the names of Ferdinand and Isabella crowned. The whole company kneeled on the shore and kissed the ground for joy, returning God thanks for the great mercy they had experienced during their long voyage through seas hitherto unpassed, and their now happy discovery of an unknown land. The admiral then stood up, and took formal possession in the usual words for their Catholic majesties of this island, to which he gave the name of San Salvador. All the Christians present admitted Columbus to the authority and dignity of admiral and viceroy, pursuant to the commission which he had received to that effect, and all made oath to obey him as the legitimate representative of their Catholic majesties, with such expressions of joy and acknowledgment as became their mighty success; and they all implored his forgiveness of the many affronts he had received from them through their fears and want of confidence. Numbers of the Indians or natives of the island were present at these ceremonies; and, perceiving them to be peaceable, quiet, and simple people, the admiral distributed several presents among them. To some he gave red caps, and to others strings of glass beads, which they hung about their necks, and various other things of small value, which they valued as if they had been jewels of high price. After the ceremonies, the admiral went off in his boat, and the Indians followed him even to the ships, some by swimming and others in their canoes, carrying parrots, clews of spun cotton yarn, javelins, and other such trifling articles, to barter for glass beads, bells, and other things of small value. Like people in the original simplicity of nature, they were all naked, and even a woman who was among them was entirely destitute of clothing. Most of them were young, seemingly not above thirty years of age, of a good stature, with very thick black lank hair, mostly cut short above their ears, though some had it down to their shoulders, tied up with a string about their head like women's tresses. Their countenances were mild and agreeable and their features good; but their foreheads were too high, which gave them rather a wild appearance. They were of a middle stature, plump, and well shaped, but of an olive complexion, like the inhabitants of the Canaries, or sunburnt peasants. Some were painted with black, others with white, and others again with red; in some the whole body was painted, in others only the face, and some only the nose and eyes. They had no weapons like those of Europe, neither had they any knowledge of such; for when our people showed them a naked sword, they ignorantly grasped it by the edge. Neither had they any knowledge of iron, as their javelins were merely constructed of wood, having their points hardened in the fire, and armed with a piece of fish-bone. Some of them had scars of wounds on different parts, and, being asked by signs how these had been got, they answered by signs that people from other islands came to take them away, and that they had been wounded in their own defence. They seemed ingenious and of a voluble tongue, as they readily repeated such words as they once heard. There was no kind of animals among them excepting parrots, which they carried to barter with the Christians among the articles already mentioned, and in this trade they continued on board the ships till night, when they all returned to the shore. In the morning of the next day, being October 13th, many of the natives returned on board the ships in their boats or canoes, which were all of one piece hollowed like a tray from the trunk of a tree; some of these were so large as to contain forty or forty-five men, while others were so small as only to hold one person, with many intermediate sizes between these extremes. These they worked along with paddles formed like a baker's peel or the implement which is used in dressing hemp. These oars or paddles were not fixed by pins to the sides of the canoes like ours, but were dipped into the water and pulled backward as if digging. Their canoes are so light and artfully constructed that if overset they soon turn them right again by swimming; and they empty out the water by throwing them from side to side like a weaver's shuttle, and when half emptied they ladle out the rest with dried calabashes cut in two, which they carry for that purpose. This second day the natives, as said before, brought various articles to barter for such small things as they could procure in exchange. Jewels or metals of any kind were not seen among them, except some small plates of gold which hung from their nostrils; and on being questioned from whence they procured the gold, they answered by signs that they had it from the south, where there was a king who possessed abundance of pieces and vessels of gold; and they made our people to understand that there were many other islands and large countries to the south and southwest. They were very covetous to get possession of anything which belonged to the Christians, and being themselves very poor, with nothing of value to give in exchange, as soon as they got on board, if they could lay hold of anything which struck their fancy, though it were only a piece of a broken glazed earthen dish or porringer, they leaped with it into the sea and swam on shore with their prize. If they brought anything on board they would barter it for anything whatever belonging to our people, even for a piece of broken glass; insomuch that some gave sixteen large clews of well-spun cotton yarn, weighing twenty-five pounds, for three small pieces of Portuguese brass coin not worth a farthing. Their liberality in dealing did not proceed from their putting any great value on the things themselves which they received from our people in return, but because they valued them as belonging to the Christians, whom they believed certainly to have come down from heaven, and they therefore earnestly desired to have something from them as a memorial. In this manner all this day was spent, and the islanders, as before, went all on shore at night. [Footnote 1: In the other editions this part of the sentence reads, "concerning the islands of India beyond the Ganges, recently discovered."] [Footnote 2: The name of Isabella (Helisabet) is also omitted in the title of one of Plannck's editions; it is found in the two other Roman editions.] [Footnote 3: The correct form is Gabriel Sanchez.] [Footnote 4: April 29th.] [Footnote 5: A mistake of the Latin translator. Columbus sailed from Palos, August 3, 1492; on September 8th he left the Canaries, and on October 11th, or thirty-three days later, he reached the Bahamas.] [Footnote 6: In Spanish, San Salvador, one of the Bahama Islands. It has been variously identified with Grand Turk, Cat, Watling, Mariguana, Samana, and Acklin Islands. Watling's Island seems to have much in its favor.] [Footnote 7: Perhaps Crooked Island, or, according to others, North Caico.] [Footnote 8: Identified by some with Long Island, by others with Little Inagua.] [Footnote 9: Identified variously with Fortune Island and Great Inagua.] [Footnote 10: The island of Cuba.] [Footnote 11: China.] [Footnote 12: Hispaniola, or Hayti.] [Footnote:13 From Catalonia by the sea-coast to Fontarabia in Biscay.] [Footnote 14: Identified with Dominica.] [Footnote 15: Supposed to be Martinique.] [Footnote 16: March 14, 1493.] [Footnote 17: The name given by Marco Polo to an island or islands supposed to be the modern Japan, for outlying portions of which Columbus mistook the West Indies.] CONSPIRACY, REBELLION, AND EXECUTION OF PERKIN WARBECK A.D. 1492 FRANCIS BACON Soon after his accession to the throne of England, Henry VII married Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV, uniting the rival houses of York and Lancaster. But notwithstanding this adjustment of the rival interests, the rule of Henry, the Lancastrian, failed to satisfy the Yorkists; and this party, with the aid of Margaret of Burgundy--sister of Edward IV--and James IV of Scotland, set up two impostors, one after the other, to claim the English throne. At the same time there was living a real heir of the house of York--young Edward, Earl of Warwick, son of the Duke of Clarence, brother to Edward IV. Henry had taken the precaution to keep this genuine Yorkist in the Tower. In 1487 a spurious earl of Warwick appeared in Ireland. Receiving powerful support in that country, he was actually crowned in the Cathedral of Dublin. In order to defeat this imposture Henry exhibited the real earl to the people of London. He also vanquished the army of the pretender at Stoke, in June, 1487. This false earl was found to be Lambert Simnel, son of an Oxford joiner. He became a scullion in King Henry's kitchen. The second of these impostors, known as Perkin Warbeck, contrived to make himself a figure of some importance in the history of England. Supposedly born in Flanders, he first appears upon the historic stage in 1492, when he landed at Cork. Going soon after to France, he was recognized by the court as Duke of York, according to his claim. How he was coached for his part, and how the drama in which he played it was acted out, are told by Bacon in what is perhaps the best specimen we have of that great author's style in historical composition. Warbeck was executed in 1499, and, although Bacon gives us no dates, the whole history, covering about seven years, may be said to form a practically continuous series of incidents. The character of this adventurer has been made quite prominent in literature, having been the subject of Ford's tragedy, _The Chronicle History of Perkin Warbeck_ (1634), of a play by Charles Macklin, _King Henry VII, or the Popish Impostor_ (1716), and of Joseph Elderton's drama, _The Pretender_. This youth of whom we are now to speak was such a mercurial as the like hath seldom been known, and could make his own part if at any time he chanced to be out. Wherefore, this being one of the strangest examples of a personation that ever was in elder or later times, it deserveth to be discovered and related at the full--although the King's manner of showing things by pieces and by dark lights hath so muffled it that it hath been left almost as a mystery to this day. The Lady Margaret,[1] whom the King's friends called Juno, because she was to him as Juno was to Aeneas, stirring both heaven and hell to do him mischief, for a foundation of her particular practices against him, did continually, by all means possible, nourish, maintain, and divulge the flying opinion that Richard, Duke of York, second son to Edward IV, was not murdered in the Tower, as was given out, but saved alive. For that those who were employed in that barbarous act, having destroyed the elder brother, were stricken with remorse and compassion toward the younger, and set him privily at liberty to seek his fortune. There was a townsman of Tournai, that had borne office in that town, whose name was John Osbeck, a convert Jew, married to Catherine de Faro, whose business drew him to live for a time with his wife at London, in King Edward's days. During which time he had a son[2] by her, and being known in the court, the King, either out of a religious nobleness because he was a convert, or upon some private acquaintance, did him the honor to be godfather to his child, and named him Peter. But afterward, proving a dainty and effeminate youth, he was commonly called by the diminutive of his name, Peterkin or Perkin. For as for the name of Warbeck, it was given him when they did but guess at it, before examinations had been taken. But yet he had been so much talked of by that name, as it stuck by him after his true name of Osbeck was known. While he was a young child, his parents returned with him to Tournai. There he was placed in the house of a kinsman of his called John Stenbeck, at Antwerp, and so roved up and down between Antwerp and Tournai, and other towns of Flanders, for a good time, living much in English company and having the English tongue perfect. In which time, being grown a comely youth, he was brought by some of the espials of the Lady Margaret into her presence. Who, viewing him well, and seeing that he had a face and personage that would bear a noble fortune, and finding him otherwise of a fine spirit and winning behavior, thought she had now found a curious piece of marble to carve out an image of a Duke of York. She kept him by her a great while, but with extreme secrecy. The while she instructed him by many cabinet conferences. First, in princely behavior and gesture, teaching him how he should keep state, and yet with a modest sense of his misfortunes. Then she informed him of all the circumstances and particulars that concerned the person of Richard, Duke of York, which he was to act, describing unto him the personages, lineaments, and features of the King and Queen, his pretended parents; and of his brother and sisters, and divers others, that were nearest him in his childhood; together with all passages, some secret, some common, that were fit for a child's memory, until the death of King Edward. Then she added the particulars of the time from the King's death, until he and his brother were committed to the Tower, as well during the time he was abroad as while he was in sanctuary. As for the times while he was in the Tower, and the manner of his brother's death, and his own escape, she knew they were things that a very few could control. And therefore she taught him only to tell a smooth and likely tale of those matters, warning him not to vary from it. It was agreed likewise between them what account he should give of his peregrination abroad, intermixing many things which were true, and such as they knew others could testify, for the credit of the rest, but still making them to hang together with the part he was to play. She taught him likewise how to avoid sundry captious and tempting questions which were like to be asked of him. But, this she found him so nimble and shifting as she trusted much to his own wit and readiness, and therefore labored the less in it. Lastly, she raised his thoughts with some present rewards and further promises, setting before him chiefly the glory and fortune of a crown if things went well, and a sure refuge to her court if the worst should fall. After such time as she thought he was perfect in his lesson, she began to cast with herself from what coast this blazing star should first appear, and at what time it must be upon the horizon of Ireland, for there had the like meteor strong influence before. The time of the apparition to be when the King should be engaged in a war with France. But well she knew that whatsoever should come from her would be held suspected. And therefore, if he should go out of Flanders immediately into Ireland, she might be thought to have some hand in it. And besides the time was not yet ripe, for that the two kings were then upon terms of peace. Therefore she wheeled about; and to put all suspicion afar off, and loath to keep him any longer by her, for that she knew secrets are not long-lived, she sent him unknown into Portugal, with the Lady Brampton, an English lady, that embarked for Portugal at that time, with some _privado_ of her own, to have an eye upon him, and there he was to remain, and to expect her further directions. In the mean time she omitted not to prepare things for his better welcome and accepting, not only in the kingdom of Ireland, but in the court of France. He continued in Portugal about a year, and by that time the King of England called his parliament and declared open war against France. Now did the sign reign, and the constellation was come, under which Perkin should appear. And therefore he was straight sent unto by the Duchess to go for Ireland, according to the first designment. In Ireland he did arrive, at the town of Cork. When he was thither come, his own tale was, when he made his confession afterward, that the Irishmen, finding him in some good clothes, came flocking about him, and bare him down that he was the Duke of Clarence that had been there before. And after, that he was the base son of Richard III. And lastly, that he was Richard, Duke of York, second son to Edward IV. But that he, for his part, renounced all these things, and offered to swear upon the holy evangelists that he was no such man; till at last they forced it upon him, and bade him fear nothing, and so forth. But the truth is that immediately upon his coming into Ireland he took upon him the said person of the Duke of York, and drew unto him complices and partakers by all the means he could devise. Insomuch as he wrote his letters unto the Earls of Desmond and Kildare to come in to his aid, and be of his party; the originals of which letters are yet extant. Somewhat before this time, the Duchess had also gained unto her a near servant of King Henry's own, one Stephen Frion, his secretary for the French tongue; an active man, but turbulent and discontented. This Frion had fled over to Charles, the French King, and put himself into his service, at such time as he began to be in open enmity with the King. Now King Charles, when he understood of the person and attempts of Perkin, ready of himself to embrace all advantages against the King of England, instigated by Frion, and formerly prepared by the Lady Margaret, forthwith despatched one Lucas and this Frion, in the nature of ambassadors to Perkin, to advertise him of the King's good inclination to him, and that he was resolved to aid him to recover his right against King Henry, a usurper of England and an enemy of France; and wished him to come over unto him at Paris. Perkin thought himself in heaven now that he was invited by so great a king in so honorable a manner. And imparting unto his friends in Ireland, for their encouragement, how fortune called him, and what great hopes he had, sailed presently into France. When he was come to the court of France, the King received him with great honor; saluted and styled him by the name of the Duke of York; lodged him and accommodated him in great state; and, the better to give him the representation and the countenance of a prince, assigned him a guard for his person, whereof Lord Congresall was captain. The courtiers likewise, though it be ill mocking with the French, applied themselves to their King's bent, seeing there was reason of state for it. At the same time there repaired unto Perkin divers Englishmen of quality--Sir George Neville, Sir John Taylor, and about one hundred more--and among the rest this Stephen Frion, of whom we spake, who followed his fortune both then and for a long time after, and was, indeed, his principal counsellor and instrument in all his proceedings. But all this on the French King's part was but a trick, the better to bow King Henry to peace. And therefore, upon the first grain of incense that was sacrificed upon the altar of peace at Boulogne, Perkin was smoked away. Yet would not the French King deliver him up to King Henry, as he was labored to do, for his honor's sake, but warned him away and dismissed him. And Perkin, on his part, was ready to be gone, doubting he might be caught up underhand. He therefore took his way into Flanders, unto the Duchess of Burgundy, pretending that, having been variously tossed by fortune, he directed his course thither as to a safe harbor, noways taking knowledge that he had ever been there before, but as if that had been his first address. The Duchess, on the other part, made it as new strange to see him, pretending, at the first, that she was taught and made wise, by the example of Lambert Simnel, how she did admit of any counterfeit stuff, though, even in that, she said she was not fully satisfied. She pretended at the first, and that was ever in the presence of others, to pose him and sift him, thereby to try whether he were indeed the very Duke of York or no. But, seeming to receive full satisfaction by his answers, she then feigned herself to be transported with a kind of astonishment, mixed of joy and wonder, at his miraculous deliverance, receiving him as if he were risen from death to life, and inferring that God, who had in such wonderful manner preserved him from death, did likewise reserve him for some great and prosperous fortune. As for his dismission out of France, they interpreted it, not as if he were detected or neglected for a counterfeit deceiver, but, contrariwise, that it did show manifestly unto the world that he was some great matter, for that it was his abandoning that, in effect, made the peace, being no more but the sacrificing of a poor, distressed prince unto the utility and ambition of two mighty monarchs. Neither was Perkin, for his part, wanting to himself, either in gracious or princely behavior, or in ready or apposite answers, or in contenting and caressing those that did apply themselves unto him, or in petty scorn and disdain to those that seemed to doubt of him; but in all things did notably acquit himself, insomuch as it was generally believed, as well among great persons as among the vulgar, that he was indeed Duke Richard. Nay, himself, with long and continued counterfeiting, and with oft telling a lie, was turned by habit almost into the thing he seemed to be, and from a liar to a believer. The Duchess, therefore, as in a case out of doubt, did him all princely honor, calling him always by the name of her nephew, and giving the delicate title of the "White Rose of England," and appointed him a guard of thirty persons, halberdiers, clad in a party-colored livery of murrey and blue, to attend his person. Her court likewise, and generally the Dutch and strangers, in their usage toward him, expressed no less respect. The news hereof came blazing and thundering over into England that the Duke of York was sure alive. As for the name of Perkin Warbeck, it was not at that time come to light, but all the news ran upon the Duke of York; that he had been entertained in Ireland, bought and sold in France, and was now plainly avowed and in great honor in Flanders. These fames took hold of divers; in some upon discontent, in some upon ambition, in some upon levity and desire of change, and in some few upon conscience and belief, but in most upon simplicity, and in divers out of dependence upon some of the better sort, who did in secret favor and nourish these bruits. And it was not long ere these rumors of novelty had begotten others of scandal and murmur against the King and his government, taxing him for a great taxer of his people and discountenancer of his nobility. The loss of Britain and the peace with France were not forgotten. But chiefly they fell upon the wrong that he did his Queen, in that he did not reign in her right. Wherefore they said that God had now brought to light a masculine branch of the house of York, that would not be at his courtesy, howsoever he did depress his poor lady. And yet, as it fareth with things which are current with the multitude and which they affect, these fames grew so general as the authors were lost in the generality of the speakers; they being like running weeds that have no certain root, or like footings up and down, impossible to be traced. But after a while these ill-humors drew to a head, and settled secretly in some eminent persons, which were Sir William Stanley, lord chamberlain of the King's household, the Lord Fitzwater, Sir Simon Montfort, and Sir Thomas Thwaites. These entered into a secret conspiracy to favor Duke Richard's title. Nevertheless, none engaged their fortunes in this business openly but two, Sir Robert Clifford and Master William Barley, who sailed over into Flanders, sent, indeed, from the party of the conspirators here, to understand the truth of those things that passed there, and not without some help of moneys from hence; provisionally to be delivered, if they found and were satisfied that there was truth in these pretences. The person of Sir Robert Clifford, being a gentleman of fame and family, was extremely welcome to the Lady Margaret, who, after she had conference with him, brought him to the sight of Perkin, with whom he had often speech and discourse. So that in the end, won either by the Duchess to affect or by Perkin to believe, he wrote back into England that he knew the person of Richard, Duke of York, as well as he knew his own, and that this young man was undoubtedly he. By this means all things grew prepared to revolt and sedition here, and the conspiracy came to have a correspondence between Flanders and England. The King, on his part, was not asleep, but to arm or levy forces yet, he thought, would but show fear, and do this idol too much worship. Nevertheless, the ports he did shut up, or at least kept a watch on them, that none should pass to or fro that was suspected; but for the rest, he chose to work by counter-mines. His purposes were two--the one to lay open the abuse, the other to break the knot of the conspirators. To detect the abuse there were but two ways--the first, to make it manifest to the world that the Duke of York was indeed murdered; the other to prove that, were he dead or alive, yet Perkin was a counterfeit. For the first, thus it stood. There were but four persons that could speak upon knowledge to the murder of the Duke of York--Sir James Tyrell, the employed man from King Richard; John Dighton and Miles Forest, his servants, the two butchers or tormentors; and the priest of the Tower, that buried them. Of which four, Miles Forest and the priest were dead, and there remained alive only Sir James Tyrell and John Dighton. These two the King caused to be committed to the Tower. and examined touching the manner of the death of the two innocent princes. They agreed both in a tale, as the King gave out, to this effect: That King Richard, having directed his warrant for the putting of them to death to Brackenbury, the lieutenant of the Tower, was by him refused. Whereupon the King directed his warrant to Sir James Tyrell, to receive the key of the Tower from the lieutenant, for the space of a night, for the King's special service. That Sir James Tyrell accordingly repaired to the Tower by night, attended by his two servants aforenamed, whom he had chosen for that purpose. That himself stood at the stair-foot, and sent these two villains to execute the murder. That they smothered them in their beds, and, that done, called up their master to see their naked dead bodies, which they had laid forth. That they were buried under the stairs, and some stones cast upon them. That when the report was made to King Richard that his will was done, he gave Sir James Tyrell great thanks, but took exception to the place of their burial, being too base for them that were king's children. Whereupon another night, by the King's warrant renewed, their bodies were removed by the priest of the Tower, and buried by him in some place which, by means of the priest's death soon after, could not be known. Thus much was then delivered abroad to be the effect of those examinations; but the King, nevertheless, made no use of them in any of his declarations, whereby, as it seems, those examinations left the business somewhat perplexed. And, as for Sir James Tyrell, he was soon after beheaded in the Tower-yard for other matters of treason. But John Dighton, who, it seemeth, spake best for the King, was forthwith set at liberty, and was the principal means of divulging this tradition. Therefore, this kind of proof being left so naked, the King used the more diligence in the latter for the tracing of Perkin. To this purpose he sent abroad into several parts, and especially into Flanders, divers secret and nimble scouts and spies, some feigning themselves to fly over unto Perkin and to adhere to him, and some, under other pretence, to learn, search, and discover all the circumstances and particulars of Perkin's parents, birth, person, travels up and down, and in brief to have a journal, as it were, of his life and doings. Others he employed, in a more special nature and trust, to be his pioneers in the main counter-mine. The King of Scotland--James IV--having espoused the cause of Warbeck, and attended him upon an invasion of England, though he would not formally retract his judgment of Perkin, wherein he had engaged himself so far, yet in his private opinion, upon often speech with the Englishmen, and diverse other advertisements, began to suspect him for a counterfeit. Wherefore in a noble fashion he called him unto him, and recounted the benefits and favors that he had done him in making him his ally, and in provoking a mighty and opulent king, by an offensive war, in his quarrel, for the space of two years together; nay, more, that he had refused an honorable peace, whereof he had a fair offer, if he would have delivered him; and that, to keep his promise with him, he had deeply offended both his nobles and people, whom he might not hold in any long discontent; and therefore required him to think of his own fortunes, and to choose out some fitter place for his exile; telling him withal that he could not say but that the English had forsaken him before the Scottish, for that, upon two several trials, none had declared themselves on his side; but nevertheless he would make good what he said to him at his first receiving, which was that he should not repent him for putting himself into his hands; for that he would not cast him off, but help him with shipping and means to transport him where he should desire. Perkin, not descending at all from his stage-like greatness, answered the King in few words, that he saw his time was not yet come; but, whatsoever his fortunes were, he should both think and speak honor of the King. Taking his leave, he would not think on Flanders, doubting it was but hollow ground for him since the treaty of the Archduke, concluded the year before; but took his lady, and such followers as would not leave him, and sailed over into Ireland. When Perkin heard of the late Cornwall insurrection he began to take heart again, and advised upon it with his council, which were principally three--Herne, a mercer, that fled for debt; Skelton, a tailor; and Astley, a scrivener; for Secretary Frion was gone. These told him that he was mightily overseen, both when he went into Kent and when he went into Scotland--the one being a place so near London and under the King's nose; and the other a nation so distasted with the people of England, that if they had loved him ever so well, yet they could never have taken his part in that company. But if he had been so happy as to have been in Cornwall at the first, when the people began to take arms there, he had been crowned at Westminster before this time; for these kings, as he had now experience, would sell poor princes for shoes. But he must rely wholly upon people; and therefore advised him to sail over with all possible speed into Cornwall; which accordingly he did, having in his company four small barks, with some sixscore or sevenscore fighting men. He arrived in September at Whitsand Bay, and forthwith came to Bodmin, the blacksmith's town, where they assembled unto him to the number of three thousand men of the rude people. There he set forth a new proclamation stroking the people with fair promises, and humoring them with invectives against the King and his government. And as it fareth with smoke, that never loseth itself till it be at the highest, he did now before his end raise his style, entitling himself no more Richard, Duke of York, but Richard IV, King of England. His council advised him by all means to make himself master of some good walled town; as well to make his men find the sweetness of rich spoils, and to allure to him all loose and lost people, by like hopes of booty as to be a sure retreat to his forces in case they should have any ill day or unlucky chance of the field. Wherefore they took heart to them and went on, and besieged the city of Exeter, the principal town for strength and wealth in those parts. Perkin, hearing the thunder of arms, and preparations against him from so many parts, raised his siege, and marched to Taunton, beginning already to squint one eye upon the crown and another upon the sanctuary; though the Cornish men were become, like metal often fired and quenched, churlish, and that would sooner break than bow; swearing and vowing not to leave him till the uttermost drop of their blood were spilt. He was at his rising from Exeter between six and seven thousand strong, many having come unto him after he was set before Exeter, upon fame of so great an enterprise, and to partake of the spoil, though upon the raising of his siege some did slip away. When he was come near Taunton, he dissembled all fear, and seemed all the day to use diligence in preparing all things ready to fight. But about midnight he fled with threescore horses to Bewdley[3], in the New Forest, where he and divers of his company registered themselves sanctuary-men, leaving his Cornish men to the four winds, but yet thereby easing them of their vow, and using his wonted compassion not to be by when his subjects' blood should be spilt. The King, as soon as he heard of Perkin's flight, sent presently five hundred horse to pursue and apprehend him before he should get either to the sea or to that same little island called a sanctuary. But they came too late for the latter of these. Therefore all they could do was to beset the sanctuary, and to maintain a strong watch about it, till the King's pleasure were further known. Perkin, having at length given himself up, was brought into the King's court, but not to the King's presence; though the King, to satisfy his curiosity, saw him sometimes out of a window or in passage. He was in show at liberty, but guarded with all care and watch that were possible, and willed to follow the King to London. But from his first appearance upon the stage in his new person of a sycophant or juggler, instead of his former person of a prince, all men may think how he was exposed to the derision not only of the courtiers, but also of the common people, who flocked about him as he went along, that one might know afar off where the owl was by the flight of birds; some mocking, some wondering, some cursing, some prying and picking matter out of his countenance and gesture to talk of; so that the false honor and respects, which he had so long enjoyed, were plentifully repaid in scorn and contempt. As soon as he was come to London the King gave also the city the solace of this May-game; for he was conveyed leisurely on horseback, but not in any ignominious fashion, through Cheapside and Cornhill, to the Tower, and from thence back again unto Westminster, with the churme of a thousand taunts and reproaches. But to amend the show, there followed a little distance of Perkin an inward counsellor of his, one that had been sergeant farrier to the King. This fellow, when Perkin took sanctuary, chose rather to take a holy habit than a holy place, and clad himself like a hermit, and in that weed wandered about the country till he was discovered and taken. But this man was bound hand and foot upon the horse, and came not back with Perkin, but was left at the Tower, and within few days after executed. Soon after, now that Perkin could tell better what himself was, he was diligently examined; and after his confession taken, an extract was made of such parts of it as were thought fit to be divulged, which was printed and dispersed abroad; wherein the King did himself no right; for as there was a labored tale of particulars of Perkin's father and mother and grandsire and grandmother and uncles and cousins, by names and surnames, and from what places he travelled up and down; so there was little or nothing to purpose of anything concerning his designs or any practices that had been held with him; nor the Duchess of Burgundy herself, that all the world did take knowledge of, as the person that had put life and being into the whole business, so much as named or pointed at. So that men, missing of that they looked for, looked about for they knew not what, and were in more doubt than before; but the King chose rather not to satisfy than to kindle coals. It was not long but Perkin, who was made of quicksilver, which is hard to hold or imprison, began to stir. For, deceiving his keepers, he took him to his heels, and made speed to the sea-coasts. But presently all corners were laid for him, and such diligent pursuit and search made as he was fain to turn back and get him to the house of Bethlehem, called the priory of Sheen (which had the privilege of sanctuary), and put himself into the hands of the prior of that monastery. The prior was thought a holy man and much reverenced in those days. He came to the King, and besought the King for Perkin's life only, leaving him otherwise to the King's discretion. Many about the King were again more hot than ever to have the King take him forth and hang him. But the King, that had a high stomach and could not hate any that he despised, bid, "Take him forth and set the knave in the stocks"; and so, promising the prior his life, he caused him to be brought forth. And within two or three days after, upon a scaffold set up in the palace court at Westminster, he was fettered and set in the stocks for the whole day. And the next day after the like was done by him at the cross in Cheapside, and in both places he read his confession, of which we made mention before; and was from Cheapside conveyed and laid up in the Tower. But it was ordained that this winding-ivy of a Plantagenet should kill the true tree itself. For Perkin, after he had been a while in the Tower, began to insinuate himself into the favor and kindness of his keepers, servants of the lieutenant of the Tower, Sir John Digby, being four in number--Strangeways, Blewet, Astwood, and Long Roger. These varlets, with mountains of promises, he sought to corrupt, to obtain his escape; but knowing well that his own fortunes were made so contemptible as he could feed no man's hopes, and by hopes he must work, for rewards he had none, he had contrived with himself a vast and tragical plot; which was, to draw into his company Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, then prisoner in the Tower, whom the weary life of a long imprisonment, and the often and renewing fears of being put to death, had softened to take any impression of counsel for his liberty. This young Prince he thought these servants would look upon, though not upon himself; and therefore, after that, by some message by one or two of them, he had tasted of the Earl's consent, it was agreed that these four should murder their master, the lieutenant, secretly, in the night, and make their best of such money and portable goods of his as they should find ready at hand, and get the keys of the Tower, and presently let forth Perkin and the Earl. But this conspiracy was revealed in time, before it could be executed. And in this again the opinion of the King's great wisdom did surcharge him with a sinister fame, that Perkin was but his bait to entrap the Earl of Warwick. And in the very instant while this conspiracy was in working, as if that also had been the King's industry, it was fated that there should break forth a counterfeit Earl of Warwick, a cordwainer's son, whose name was Ralph Wilford; a young man taught and set on by an Augustin friar, called Patrick. They both from the parts from Suffolk came forward into Kent, where they did not only privily and underhand give out that this Wilford was the true Earl of Warwick, but also the friar, finding some light credence in the people, took the boldness in the pulpit to declare as much, and to incite the people to come in to his aid. Whereupon they were both presently apprehended, and the young fellow executed, and the friar condemned to perpetual imprisonment. This also happening so opportunely, to represent the danger to the King's estate from the Earl of Warwick, and thereby to color the King's severity that followed; together with the madness of the friar so vainly and desperately to divulge a treason before it had gotten any manner of strength; and the saving of the friar's life, which nevertheless was, indeed, but the privilege of his order; and the pity in the common people, which, if it run in a strong stream, doth ever cast up scandal and envy, made it generally rather talked than believed that all was but the King's device. But howsoever it were, hereupon Perkin, that had offended against grace now the third time, was at last proceeded with, and by commissioners of oyer and determiner, arraigned at Westminster upon divers treasons committed and perpetrated after his coming on land within this kingdom, for so the judges advised, for that he was a foreigner, and condemned, and a few days after executed at Tyburn; where he did again openly read his confession, and take it upon his death to be true. This was the end of this little cockatrice of a king that was able to destroy those that did not espy him first. It was one of the longest plays of that kind that had been in memory, and might perhaps have had another end if he had not met with a king wise, stout, and fortunate. [Footnote 1: Sister to Edward IV, and widow of Charles _le Téméraire_, Duke of Burgundy.] [Footnote 2: Bernard André, the poet laureate of Henry VII, states in his manuscript life of his patron, that Perkin, when a boy, was "_servant_ in England to a Jew named Edward, who was baptized, and adopted as godson by Edward IV, and was on terms of intimacy with the King and his family." Speed, mistranslating André's words, makes Perkin the _son_ of the Jew, instead of the servant; and Bacon amplifies the error, and transforms John Osbeck into the convert Jew, who, having a handsome wife, it might be surmised why the licentious King "should become gossip in so mean a house." Hume adds: "People thence accounted for that resemblance which was afterward remarked between young Perkin and that monarch." The surmise of Bacon, grounded upon the error of Speed, is clinched into the positive assertion of Hume as to a popular belief for which there is not the slightest ground.--_Charles Knight_.] [Footnote:3 The Abbey of Beaulieu, near Southampton.] SAVONAROLA'S REFORMS AND DEATH THE FRENCH INVADE ITALY A.D. 1494 PASQUALE VILLARI JEAN C. L. SISMONDI Girolamo Savonarola, the great moral, political, and religious reformer of Italy, was born in Ferrara, September 21, 1452. He was of noble family, studied medicine, but renounced his intended profession and became a Dominican monk. In 1491 he became prior of St. Mark's, Florence. When he began to preach in the Church of St. Mark on the sins of the time, he applied to Italy the prophetic language of the Apocalypse. He predicted the restoration of the Church in Italy through severe divine viistations. His power in the pulpit was overwhelming, and the fame of his preaching was spread abroad, many regarding him as an inspired prophet. In his denunciations he spared neither wealth nor position, laity nor clergy, and he exhorted the people to order their lives by the simple rules of Scripture. Savonarola refused to pay the customary homage of his office to the ruler of Florence, who at this time was Lorenzo de' Medici. His own office, the preacher declared, was received, not from Lorenzo, but from God. Overlooking the slight, Lorenzo tried by all means to win Savonarola's favor, but the reformer persisted in denouncing him. When a committee asked the preacher to desist from his denunciations and prophetic warnings, he bade them tell Lorenzo to repent of his sins, adding that, if he threatened banishment, the ruler himself would soon depart, while his censor would remain in Florence. In 1492 Lorenzo died and his son Piero succeeded him. But Savonarola now became the most powerful man in the republic, and he exerted himself for reformation of his own monastery, the Church, and the state itself. Soon he prophesied the downfall of the Medici, against whom he arrayed a considerable part of the Florentine people. He predicted that one should come over the Alps and wreak vengeance upon the tyrants of Italy. In 1494 Charles VIII of France invaded Italy, warred against Naples, and advanced on Florence. Piero de' Medici, thoroughly frightened, surrendered his strongholds and agreed to pay Charles two hundred thousand ducats. Of Savonarola's career from this time, and the state of Florence up to the day of his death, the two authors here selected give faithful and vivid narratives. In _Romola_ George Eliot portrays the character and acts of this great reformer with a legitimate intensifying, for artistic purposes, of the certified facts of history. PASQUALE VILLARI The month of November, 1494, began under sinister auspices in Florence. The unexpected, almost incredible news of the surrender of fortresses which had cost the republic prolonged sieges and enormous expense, and formed the key of the whole Tuscan territory, instantly raised a tumult among the people, and the general fury was increased by letters received from the French camp, and the accounts of the returned envoys. For they told with what ease honorable terms might have been wrested from the King; with what a mixture of cowardice and self-assertion Piero de' Medici had placed the whole republic at the mercy of Charles VIII. All gave free vent to their indignation, and the people began to gather in the streets and squares. Some of the crowd were seen to be armed with old weapons which had been hidden away for more than half a century; and from the wool and silk manufactories strong, broad-set, dark-visaged men poured forth. On that day it seemed as though the Florentines had leaped back a century, and that, after patient endurance of sixty years' tyranny, they were now decided to reconquer their liberty by violence and bloodshed. Nevertheless, in the midst of this general excitement, men's minds were daunted by an equally general feeling of uncertainty and distrust. It was true that the Medici had left no soldiers in Florence, and that the people could at any moment make themselves masters of the whole city; but they knew not whom to trust, nor whom to choose as their leader. The old champions of liberty had nearly all perished during the last sixty years, either at the block or in persecution and exile. The few men at all familiar with state affairs were those who had always basked in the favor of the Medici; and the multitude just freed from slavery would inevitably recur to license if left to themselves. This, therefore, was one of those terrible moments when no one could foretell what excesses and what atrocities might not be committed. All day the people streamed aimlessly through the streets, like an impetuous torrent; they cast covetous glances on the houses of the citizens who had amassed wealth by acts of oppression; but they had no one to lead them; only, at the hour of Savonarola's sermon, they all flocked instinctively to the Duomo. Never had so dense a throng been gathered within its walls; all were too closely packed to be able to move; and when at last Savonarola mounted the pulpit he looked down upon a solid and motionless mass of upturned faces. Unusual sternness and excitement were depicted on every countenance, and he could see steel corselets flashing here and there in the cloaked crowd. The friar was now the only man having any influence over the people, who seemed to hang on his words and look for safety to him alone. One hasty word from his mouth would have sufficed to cause all the houses of the principal citizens to be sacked, to revive past scenes of civil warfare, and lead to torrents of blood. For the people had been cruelly trampled on, and were now panting for a cruel revenge. He therefore carefully abstained from all allusion to politics; his heart was overflowing with pity; he bent forward with outstretched arms from the pulpit, and, in tones which echoed throughout the building, proclaimed the law of peace and charity and union. "Behold the sword has come upon you, the prophecies are fulfilled, the scourges begun! Behold! these hosts are led by the Lord! O Florence! the time of singing and dancing is at an end; now is the time to shed floods of tears for thy sins. Thy sins, O Florence! thy sins, O Rome! thy sins, O Italy! They have brought these chastisements upon thee! Repent ye, then; give alms, offer up prayers, be united! O my people! I have long been as thy father; I have labored all the days of my life to teach ye the truths of faith and of godly living, yet have I received naught but tribulation, scorn, and contumely; give me at least the consolation of seeing ye do good deeds! My people, what desire hath ever been mine but to see ye saved, to see ye united? 'Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!' But I have said this so many times, I have cried to ye so many times; I have wept for thee, O Florence! so many times, that it should be enough. To thee I turn, O Lord, to thee, who didst die for love of us and for our sins; forgive, forgive, O Lord, the Florentine people, that would fain be thy people." In this strain he continued to exhort his hearers to charity, faith, and concord with such succeeding earnestness and fervor that he was exhausted and almost ill for several days after. These sermons were less eloquent than some of the others, since he was too deeply moved for reflection or for studied effects; but the tenderness with which he spoke dominated and soothed the people, who, fresh from the tumults without, entered this place of peace to hear the words of the Gospel. So magical was the power of Savonarola's voice in those days that, in all this great stir of public excitement, not a single excess was committed, and the revolution that seemed on the point of being effected by violence on the Piazza was quietly and peacefully accomplished within the walls of the palace. And this miracle, unprecedented in Florentine history, is unanimously attributed by the historians of the time to Savonarola's beneficial ascendency over the minds of the people. On November 4th, the seigniory called a special meeting of the Council of Seventy, in order to decide what course to adopt. All the members were adherents and nominees of the Medici, but were so enraged by the cowardly surrender of the fortresses that they already had the air of a republican assembly. According to the old Florentine law and custom, no one was allowed to speak unless invited to do so by the seigniory, and was then only expected to support the measures which they had proposed. But in moments of public excitement neither this nor any other law was observed in Florence. On this day there was great agitation in the council; the safety of the country was at stake; the seigniory asked everyone for advice, and all wished to speak. Yet so much were men's minds daunted by the long habit of slavery that when Messer Luca Corsini broke through the old rule, and, rising to his feet uninvited, began to remark that things were going badly, the city falling into a state of anarchy, and that some strong remedy was required, everyone felt amazed. Some of his colleagues began to murmur, others to cough; and at last he began to falter and became so confused that he could not go on with his speech. However, the debate was soon reopened by Jacopo di Tanai de' Nerli, a youth of considerable spirit, who warmly seconded Corsini's words; but he too presently began to hesitate, and his father, rising in great confusion, sought to excuse him in the eyes of the assembly by saying that he was young and foolish. Lastly Piero di Gino Capponi rose to his feet. With his finely proportioned form, white hair, fiery glance, and a certain air of buoyant courage like that of a war-horse at sound of trumpet, he attracted universal attention and reduced all to silence. He was known to be a man of few but resolute words and of still more resolute deeds. He now spoke plainly and said: "Piero de' Medici is no longer fit to rule the state; the republic must provide for itself; _the moment has come to shake off this baby government_. Let ambassadors be sent to King Charles, and, should they meet Piero by the way, let them pass him without salutation; and let them explain that he has caused all the evil, and that the city is well disposed to the French. Let honorable men be chosen to give a fitting welcome to the King; but, at the same time, let all the captains and soldiery be summoned in from the country and hidden away in cloisters and other secret places. And besides the soldiery let all men be prepared to fight in case of need, so that when we shall have done our best to act honestly toward this most Christian monarch, and to satisfy with money the avarice of the French, we may be ready to face him and show our teeth if he should try us beyond our patience, either by word or deed. And above all," he said in conclusion, "it must not be forgotten to send Father Girolamo Savonarola as one of the ambassadors, for he has gained the entire love of the people." He might have added: because he has the entire respect of the King; for Charles had conceived an almost religious veneration for the man who had so long foretold his coming, and declared it to be ordained by the Lord. The new ambassadors were elected on November 5th, and consisted of Pandolfo Rocellai, Giovanni Cavalcanti, Piero Capponi, Tanai de' Nerli, and Savonarola. The latter allowed the others to precede him to Lucca, where they hoped to meet the King, while he followed on foot according to his usual custom, accompanied by two of his brethren. But, before starting, he again addressed the people, and preached a sermon ending with these words: "The Lord hath granted thy prayers, and wrought a great revolution by peaceful means. He alone came to rescue the city when it was forsaken of all. Wait and thou shalt see the disasters which will happen elsewhere. Therefore be steadfast in good works, O people of Florence; be steadfast in peace! If thou wouldst have the Lord steadfast in mercy, be thou merciful toward thy brethren, thy friends, and thy enemies; otherwise thou too shalt be smitten by the scourges prepared for the rest of Italy. '_Misericordiam volo_,' crieth the Lord unto ye. Woe to him that obeyeth not his commands!" After delivering this discourse he started for Pisa, where the other ambassadors, and also the King, speedily arrived. Meanwhile disturbances went on increasing, and the populace seemed already intoxicated with license. The dwellings of Giovanni Guidi, notary and chancellor of the Riformagioni, and of Antonio Miniati, manager of the Monte, were put to the sack, for both these men, having been faithful tools of the Medici, and their subtle counsellors in the art of burdening the people with insupportable taxes, were objects of general hatred. The house of Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici was also pillaged, together with the garden by St. Mark's, in which so many treasures of art had been collected by Lorenzo. So far, with the exception of a few dagger-thrusts, no blood had been shed; but many were eager for conflict, and it would have certainly begun had not Savonarola's partisans done their best to keep the peace, and had not the friar been hourly expected from Pisa, whither he had repaired on the 13th day of the month with a second embassy. The seigniory also endeavored to quell the disturbances by means of edicts of the severest kind. But the popular discontent was now heightened by the arrival of other envoys from Pisa with very unsatisfactory tidings. They had informed the King that Florence was friendly to him, and already preparing to welcome him with all the honors due to his royalty; they only asked that, being received as a friend, he should bear himself in that light, and deign to name his terms at once, so that free vent might be given to the public joy. But the only reply Charles condescended to give was that, "Once in the great town, all should be arranged." And it was evident from his majesty's coldness that the solicitations of Piero de' Medici, his earnest prayers, lavish promises of money, and submissive obedience had turned him not in his favor. Consequently the ambassadors had to leave without any definite answer, and could only say that the monarch was by no means well disposed to the republic. But when the foiled envoys had left Pisa, Savonarola repaired to the French camp, and, passing through that great host of armed men, made his way to the King's presence. Charles, who was surrounded by his generals, received him very kindly, and thereupon, without wasting much time in preliminaries, the friar, in sonorous and almost commanding accents, addressed him with a short exhortation beginning as follows: "O most Christian King, thou art an instrument in the hand of the Lord, who sendeth thee to relieve the woes of Italy, as for many years I have foretold; and he sendeth thee to reform the Church, which now lieth prostrate in the dust. But if thou be not just and merciful; if thou shouldst fail to respect the city of Florence, its women, its citizens, and its liberty; if thou shouldst forget the task the Lord hath sent thee to perform, then will he choose another to fulfil it; his hand shall smite thee, and chastise thee with terrible scourges. These things say I unto you in the name of the Lord." The King and his generals seemed much impressed by Savonarola's menacing words, and to have full belief in them. In fact, it was the general feeling of the French that they were divinely guided to fulfil the Lord's work, and Charles felt a strong veneration for the man who had prophesied his coming and foretold the success of his expedition. Consequently the friar's exhortation inspired him with real terror, and also decided him to behave more honorably to the Florentines. Thus, when Savonarola returned to the city shortly after the other ambassadors, he was the bearer of more satisfactory intelligence. As the King's intentions were still unknown, fresh relays of ambassadors were sent out to him. But meanwhile French officers and men passed the gates in little bands of fifteen or so at a time, and were seen roving about the town unarmed, jaunty, and gallant, bearing pieces of chalk in their hands to mark the houses on which their troops were to be billeted. While affecting an air of contemptuous indifference, they were unable to hide their amazement at the sight of so many splendid buildings, and at every turn were confounded by the novel scenes presented to their gaze. But what struck them most of all was the grim severity of the palaces, which appeared to be impregnable strongholds, and the towns still scarred with the marks of fierce and sanguinary faction fights. Then, on November 15th, they witnessed a sight that sent a thrill of fear to their souls. Whether by accident or design, a rumor suddenly spread through the town that Piero de' Medici was nearing the gates. Instantly the bell of the seigniory clanged the alarm; the streets swarmed with a furious mob; armed men sprang, as by magic, from the earth, and rushed toward the Piazza; palace doors were barred; towers bristled with defenders; stockades began to be built across the streets, and on that day the French took their first lesson in the art of barricades. It was soon ascertained that the rumor was false, and the tumult subsided as quickly as it had risen. But the foreign soldiers were forced to acknowledge that their tactics and stout battalions would be almost powerless, hemmed in those streets, against this new and unknown mode of warfare. In fact, the Florentines looked on the Frenchmen with a certain pert assurance, as if they would say, "We shall see!" For, having now regained its liberty, this people thought itself master of the world, and almost believed that there was nothing left for it to fear. Meanwhile splendid preparations were being made in the Medici palace for the reception of King Charles; his officers were to be lodged in the houses of the principal citizens, and the streets through which he was to pass were covered with awnings and draped with hangings and tapestries. On November 17th the seigniory assembled on a platform erected by the San Frediano gate; and numbers of young Florentine nobles went forth to meet the King, who made his state entry at the twenty-first hour of the day. The members of the seigniory then rose and advanced toward him to pay their respects, while Messer Luca Corsini, being deputed to that office, stood forth to read a written address. But just at that moment rain began to fall, the horses grew restless and hustled against one another, and the whole ceremony was thrown into confusion. Only Messer Francesco Gaddi, one of the officers of the palace, had sufficient presence of mind to press his way through the throng and make a short speech suited to the occasion in French, after which the King moved forward under a rich canopy. The monarch's appearance was in strange contrast with that of the numerous and powerful army behind him. He seemed almost a monster, with his enormous head, long nose, wide, gaping mouth, big, white, purblind eyes, very diminutive body, extraordinarily thin legs, and misshapen feet. He was clad in black velvet and a mantle of gold brocade, bestrode a tall and very beautiful charger, and entered the city riding with his lance levelled--a martial attitude then considered as a sign of conquest. All this rendered the meanness of his person the more grotesquely conspicuous. By his side rode the haughty Cardinal of St. Piero in Vincoli, the Cardinal of St. Malo, and a few marshals. At their heels came the royal bodyguard of one hundred bowmen, composed of the finest young men in France, and then two hundred French knights marching on foot with splendid dresses and equipment. These were followed by the Swiss vanguard, resplendent and party-colored, bearing halberds of burnished steel, and with rich waving plumes on their officers' helmets. The faces of these men expressed the mountaineer spirit of daring, and the proud consciousness of being the first infantry in Europe; while the greater part of them had scornfully thrown aside the cuirass, preferring to fight with their chests bared. The centre consisted of Gascon infantry, small, light, agile men, whose numbers seemed to multiply as the army advanced. But the grandest sight was the cavalry, comprising the flower of the French aristocracy, and displaying finely wrought weapons, mantles of gorgeous brocade, velvet banners embroidered with gold, chains of gold, and other precious ornaments. The cuirassiers had a terrible aspect, for their horses seemed like monsters with their cropped tails and ears. The archers were men of extraordinary height, armed with very long wooden bows; they came from Scotland and other northern countries, and, in the words of a contemporary historian, "seemed to be beast-like men" _("parevano uomini bestiali")_. This well-ordered and disciplined army, composed of so many different nationalities, with such varied attire and strange weapons, was as new and amazing a sight to Florence as to almost all Italy, where no standing armies were as yet in existence, and mercenaries the only soldiery known. It is impossible to give the number of the forces accompanying the King to Florence, for his artillery were marching toward Rome by another route; he had left garrisons in many strongholds, and sent on another body of men by Romagna. Gaddi, who witnessed the entrance of the French, says that their numbers amounted to twelve thousand; Rinuccini, who was also present, estimated them at a lower figure; others at a higher. In any case the city and suburbs were crammed with them. The procession marched over the Ponte Vecchio ("Old Bridge"), which was gay with festive decorations and sounds of music, wound across the Piazza amid a crowd of triumphal cars, statues, etc., and, passing the Canto dei Pazzi, made the tour of the Cathedral Square, and halted before the great door of the church. The people shouted the name of France with cries of applause, but the King only smiled inanely and stammered some inappropriate words in Italian. Entering the Duomo, he was met by the seigniory, who, to avoid the pressure of the armed host, had been obliged to come around by the back streets. After joining in prayers with their royal guest, they escorted him to the sumptuous palace of the Medici, and the soldiers dispersed to their quarters. That night and the next the whole city was a blaze of illuminations; the intervening day was devoted to feasting and amusements, and then the terms of the treaty began to be discussed. The terms of the treaty stood as follows: That there should be a good and faithful friendship between the republic and the King; that their subjects should have reciprocal protection; that the King should receive the title of restorer and protector of the liberty of Florence; that he should be paid one hundred twenty thousand florins in three instalments; that he was not to retain the fortresses for more than two years; and if the Neapolitan expedition finished before that date, he was then to give them up without delay; that the Pisans were to receive pardon as soon as they should resume their allegiance to Florence. It was also stipulated that the decree putting a price on the heads of the Medici should be revoked, but that the states of Giuliano and Cardinal Giovanni were to remain confiscated until all Piero's debts had been paid, and that the said Piero was to remain banished to a distance of two hundred miles, and his brothers of one hundred, from the Tuscan border. After the agreement had been drawn up in regular official form, the contracting parties met in the Duomo to swear to the observance of all its clauses, and in the evening there was a general illumination of the city, although the people gave no signs of their previous good-will toward the King. But no sooner was one difficulty disposed of than another arose. When all was concluded Charles relapsed into his normal state of inertia, and showed no disposition to depart. The city was thronged by the French quartered in the houses, and the Italian soldiery hidden on all sides; the shops were shut up and all traffic suspended; everything was in a state of uncertainty and disorder, and the continual quarrels between the natives and the foreigner might at any moment provoke the most serious complications. There were perpetual robberies and murders by night--a most unusual state of things for Florence; and the people seemed to be on the verge of revolt at the least provocation. Thus matters went on from day to day, and consequently all honest citizens vainly did their utmost to hasten the King's departure. And the universal suspense was heightened by the impossibility of finding any way of forcing him to a decision. At last another appeal was made to Savonarola, who was exerting all his influence to keep the people quiet, and whose peaceful admonitions during this period of danger and confusion had been no less efficacious than the heroic defiance of Piero Capponi. The friar's sermons at this time were always directed to the general welfare. He exhorted the citizens "to lay aside their animosities and ambitions; to attend the councils at the palace in a righteous spirit, and with a view, not to their personal interest, but to the general good, and with the firm resolve to promote the unity and concord of their city. Then, indeed, would they be acceptable in the Lord's sight." He addressed himself to every class of the people in turn, proving to all that it would be to their own advantage, both in this life and the next, to labor for the defence of liberty and the establishment of unity and concord. When asked to seek the King and endeavor to persuade him to leave, he cheerfully undertook the task and hastened to the royal abode. The officers and lords in attendance were at first inclined to refuse him admittance, fearing that his visit might defeat their plan of pillaging the treasures of this sumptuous palace. But, remembering the veneration in which the friar was held by the King, they dared not refuse his demand and allowed him to pass. Charles, surrounded by his barons, received him very graciously, and Savonarola went straight to the point by saying: "Most Christian Prince, thy stay here is causing great injury both to our own city and thy enterprise. Thou losest time, forgetful of the duty imposed on thee by Providence, and to the serious hurt of thy spiritual welfare and worldly fame. Hearken now to the voice of God's servant! Pursue thy journey without delay. Seek not to bring ruin on this city, and thereby rouse the anger of the Lord against thee." So at last, on November 28th, at the twenty-second hour of the day, the King departed with his army, leaving the people of Florence very badly disposed toward him. Among their many just causes of complaint was the sack of the splendid palace in which he had been so liberally and trustfully entertained. Nor were common soldiers and inferior officers alone concerned in this robbery; the hands of generals and barons were equally busy, and the King himself carried off objects of the greatest value; among other things a precious intaglio representing a unicorn, estimated by Comines to be worth about seven thousand ducats. With such an example set by their sovereign, it may be easily imagined how the others behaved; and Comines himself tells us that "they shamelessly took possession of everything that tempted their greed." Thus the rich and marvellous collections formed by the Medici were all lost, excepting what had been placed in safety at St. Mark's, for the few things left behind by the French were so much damaged that they had to be sold. Nevertheless, the inhabitants were so rejoiced to be finally rid of their dangerous guests that no one mourned over these thefts. On the contrary, public thanksgivings were offered up in the churches, the people went about the streets with their old gayety and lightheartedness, and the authorities began to take measures to pro vide for the urgent necessities of the new republic. During this interval the aspect of Florentine affairs had entirely changed. The partisans of the Medici had disappeared from the city as if by magic; the popular party ruled over everything, and Savonarola ruled the will of the whole population. He was unanimously declared to have been a prophet of all that had occurred, the only man that had succeeded in controlling the King's conduct on his entry into Florence, the only man who had induced him to depart; accordingly all hung on Savonarola's lips for counsel, aid, and direction as to their future proceedings. And, as though the men of the old state saw the need of effacing themselves to make way for new blood, several prominent representatives and friends of the Medici house died during this period. Angelo Poliziano had passed away this year, on September 24th, "loaded with as much infamy and public opprobrium as a man could well bear." He was accused of numberless vices and unlimited profligacy; but the chief cause of all the hatred lavished on him was the general detestation already felt for Piero de' Medici, the approach of his downfall and that of all his adherents. Nor was the public rancor at all softened by the knowledge that the last utterances of the illustrious poet and learned scholar had been the words of a penitent Christian. He had requested that his body should be clothed in the Dominican habit and interred in the Church of St. Mark, and there his ashes repose beside the remains of Giovanni Picodella Mirandola, who expired on the very day of Charles VIII's entry into Florence. Pico had long entertained a desire to join the fraternity of St. Mark's, but, delaying too long to carry out his intent, was surprised by death at the early age of thirty-two years. On his death-bed he, too, had besought Savonarola to allow him to be buried in the robe he had yearned to wear. The end of these two celebrated Italians recalled to mind the last hours and last confession of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and was by many regarded as a sign that the Medicean adherents had been unwilling to pass away without acknowledging their crimes, without asking pardon from the people whom they had so deeply oppressed, and from the friar, who was, as it were, the people's best representative. It was certainly remarkable that all these men should turn to the convent of St. Mark, whence had issued the first cry of liberty, and the first sign of war against the tyranny of the Medici. JEAN C. L. SISMONDI At the moment that Florence expelled the Medici, the republic was divided among three different parties. The first was that of the enthusiasts, directed by Girolamo Savonarola, who promised the miraculous protection of the Divinity for the reform of the Church and establishment of liberty. These demanded a democratic constitution; they were called the "Piagnoni." The second consisted of men who had shared power with the Medici, but who had separated from them; who wished to possess alone the powers and profits of government, and who endeavored to amuse the people by dissipations and pleasures, in order to establish at their ease an aristocracy. These were called the "Arabbiati." The third party was composed of men who remained faithful to the Medici, but, not daring to declare themselves, lived in retirement; they were called "Bigi." These three parties were so equally balanced in the _balia_ named by the parliament, on December 2, 1494, that it soon became impossible to carry on the government. Girolamo Savonarola took advantage of this state of affairs to urge that the people had never delegated their power to a balia which did not abuse the trust. "The people," he said, "would do much better to reserve this power to themselves, and exercise it by a council, into which all the citizens should be admitted." His proposition was agreed to; more than one thousand eight hundred Florentines furnished proof that either they, their fathers, or their grandfathers had sat in the magistracy; they were consequently acknowledged citizens and admitted to sit in the general council. This council was declared sovereign on July 1, 1495; it was invested with the election of magistrates, hitherto chosen by lot, and a general amnesty was proclaimed, to bury in oblivion all the ancient dissensions of the Florentine republic. So important a modification of the constitution seemed to promise this republic a happier futurity. The friar Savonarola, who had exercised such influence in the council, evinced at the same time an ardent love of mankind, deep respect for the rights of all, great sensibility, and an elevated mind. Though a zealous reformer of the Church, and in this respect a precursor of Luther, who was destined to begin his mission twenty years later, he did not quit the pale of orthodoxy; he did not assume the right of examining doctrine; he limited his efforts to the restoration of discipline, the reformation of the morals of the clergy, and the recall of priests, as well as other citizens, to the practice of the gospel precepts. But his zeal was mixed with enthusiasm; he believed himself under the immediate inspiration of Providence; he took his own impulses for prophetic revelations, by which he directed the politics of his disciples, the Piagnoni. He had predicted to the Florentines the coming of the French into Italy; he had represented to them Charles VIII as an instrument by which the Divinity designed to chastise the crimes of the nation; he had counselled them to remain faithful to their alliance with that King, the instrument of Providence, even though his conduct, especially in reference to the affairs of Pisa, had been highly culpable. This alliance, however, ranged the Florentines among the enemies of Pope Alexander VI, one of the founders of the league which had driven the French out of Italy. He accused them of being traitors to the Church and to their country for their attachment to a foreign prince. Alexander, equally offended by the projects of reform and by the politics of Savonarola, denounced him to the Church as a heretic, and interdicted him from preaching. The monk at first obeyed, and procured the appointment of his friend and disciple the Dominican friar, Buonvicino of Pescia, as his successor in the Church of St. Mark; but on Christmas Day, 1497, he declared from the pulpit that God had revealed to him that he ought not to submit to a corrupt tribunal; he then openly took the sacrament with the monks of St. Mark, and afterward continued to preach. In the course of his sermons he more than once held up to reprobation the scandalous conduct of the Pope, whom the public voice accused of every vice and every crime to be expected in a libertine so depraved--a man so ambitious, perfidious, and cruel--a monarch and a priest intoxicated with absolute power. In the mean time the rivalry encouraged by the court of Rome between the religious orders soon procured the Pope a champion eager to combat Savonarola; he was a Dominican--the general of the Augustines, that Order whence Martin Luther was soon to issue. Friar Mariano di Ghinazzano signalized himself by his zeal in opposing Savonarola. He presented to the Pope Friar Francis of Apulia, of the order of Minor Observantines, who was sent to Florence to preach against the Florentine monks, in the Church of Santa Croce. This preacher declared to his audience that he knew Savonarola pretended to support his doctrine by a miracle. "For me," said he, "I am a sinner; I have not the presumption to perform miracles; nevertheless, let a fire be lighted, and I am ready to enter it with him. I am certain of perishing, but Christian charity teaches me not to withhold my life if in sacrificing it I might precipitate into hell a heresiarch, who has already drawn into it so many souls." This strange proposition was rejected by Savonarola; but his friend and disciple, Friar Dominic Buonvicino, eagerly accepted it. Francis of Apulia declared that he would risk his life against Savonarola only. Meanwhile a crowd of monks, of the Dominican and Franciscan orders, rivalled each other in their offers to prove by the ordeal of fire, on one side the truth, on the other the falsehood, of the new doctrine. Enthusiasm spread beyond the two convents; many priests and seculars, and even women and children, more especially on the side of Savonarola, earnestly requested to be admitted to the proof. The Pope warmly testified his gratitude to the Franciscans for their devotion. The Seigniory of Florence consented that two monks only should devote themselves for their respective orders, and directed the pile to be prepared. The whole population of the town and country, to which a signal miracle was promised, received the announcement with transports of joy. On April 17, 1498, a scaffold, dreadful to look on, was erected in the public square of Florence; two piles of large pieces of wood, mixed with fagots and broom, which should quickly take fire, extended each eighty feet long, four feet thick, and five feet high; they were separated by a narrow space of two feet, to serve as a passage by which the two priests were to enter and pass the whole length of the piles during the fire. Every window was full; every roof was covered with spectators; almost the whole population of the republic was collected round the place. The portico called the Loggia dei Lanzi, divided in two by a partition, was assigned to the two orders of monks. The Dominicans arrived at their station chanting canticles and bearing the holy sacrament. The Franciscans immediately declared that they would not permit the host to be carried amid flames. They insisted that the friar Buonvicino should enter the fire, as their own champion was prepared to do, without this divine safeguard. The Dominicans answered that "they would not separate themselves from their God at the moment when they implored his aid." The dispute upon this point grew warm. Several hours passed away. The multitude, which had waited long and began to feel hunger and thirst, lost patience; a deluge of rain suddenly fell upon the city, and descended in torrents from the roofs of the houses; all present were drenched. The piles were so wet that they could no longer be lighted; and the crowd, disappointed of a miracle so impatiently looked for, separated, with the notion of having been unworthily trifled with. Savonarola lost all his credit; he was henceforth rather looked on as an impostor. Next day his convent was besieged by the Arabbiati, eager to profit by the inconstancy of the multitude; he was arrested with his two friends, Domenico Buonvicino and Silvestro Marruffi, and led to prison. The Piagnoni, his partisans, were exposed to every outrage from the populace; two of them were killed, their rivals and old enemies exciting the general ferment for their destruction. Even in the seigniory the majority was against them, and yielded to the pressing demands of the Pope. The three imprisoned monks were subjected to a criminal prosecution. Alexander VI despatched judges from Rome with orders to condemn the accused to death. Conformably with the laws of the Church, the trial opened with the torture. Savonarola was too weak and nervous to support it; he vowed in his agony all that was imputed to him, and, with his two disciples, was condemned to death. The three monks were burned alive, May 23, 1498, in the same square where, six weeks before, a pile had been raised to prepare them a triumph. DISCOVERY OF THE MAINLAND OF NORTH AMERICA BY THE CABOTS A.D. 1497 SAMUEL EDWARD DAWSON Newfoundland prides herself on being the oldest colony of the English crown. By virtue of John Cabot's discovery, in A.D. 1497, she also claims the honor of being the first portion of the New-World continent to be discovered and made known by Europeans. This was fourteen months before Columbus, on his third expedition, beheld the American mainland. At the close of the fifteenth century, the impelling motive of discovery among the Old-World nations, and their adventurous mariners, was the hope of finding a short western passage to the riches of the East Indies. This was the chief lure of the period, added to the ambition of Old-World monarchs to extend their territorial possessions and bring them within the embrace of their individual flags. Henry VII of England aided the Cabots, father and son, to fit out two expeditions from Bristol to explore the coasts of the New World and extend the search for hitherto unknown countries. The result of these enterprises was the discovery of Newfoundland and Labrador as well as other lands, and England's claim to the possession of the greater portion of the North American continent. Probably no question in the history of this continent has been the subject of so much discussion as the lives and voyages of the two Cabots. Their personal character, their nationality, the number of voyages they made, and the extent and direction of their discoveries have been, and still are, keenly disputed over. The share, moreover, of each in the credit due for the discoveries made is a very battle-ground for historians. Some learned writers attribute everything to John Cabot; others would put him aside and award all the credit to his second son, Sebastian. The dates even of the voyages are disputed; and very learned professors of history in Portugal do not hesitate to declare that the voyages are apocryphal, the discoveries pretended, and the whole question a mystification. Nevertheless, solely upon the discoveries of the Cabots have always rested the original claims of the English race to a foothold upon this continent. In the published annals of England, however, no contemporary records of them exist; nor was there for sixty years in English literature any recognition of their achievements. The English claims rest almost solely upon second-hand evidence from Spanish and Italian authors, upon contemporary reports of Spanish and Italian envoys at the English court, upon records of the two letters-patent issued, and upon two or three entries lately discovered in the accounts of disbursements from the privy purse of King Henry VII. These are our title-deeds to this continent. The evidence is doubtless conclusive, but the whole subject of western discovery was undervalued and neglected by England for so long a period that it is no wonder if Portuguese savants deny the reality of those voyages, seeing that their nation has been supplanted by a race which can show so little original evidence of its claims. It is not my intention to wander over all the debatable ground of the Cabot voyages, where every circumstance bristles with conflicting theories. The original authorities are few and scanty, but mountains of hypotheses have been built upon them, and too often the suppositions of one writer have been the facts of a succeeding one. Step by step the learned students before alluded to have established certain propositions which appear to me to be true, and which I shall accept without further discussion. Among these I count the following: 1. That John Cabot was a Venetian, of Genoese birth, naturalized at Venice on March 28, 1476, after the customary fifteen years of residence, and that he subsequently settled in England with all his family. 2. That Sebastian, his second son, was born in Venice, and when very young was taken by his father to England with the rest of the family. 3. That on petition of John Cabot and his three sons, Lewis, Sebastian, and Sancio, letters-patent of King Henry VII were issued, under date March 5, 1496, empowering them, at their own expense, to discover and take possession for England of new lands not before found by any Christian nation. 4. That John Cabot, accompanied perhaps by his son Sebastian, sailed from Bristol early in May, 1497. He discovered and landed upon some part of America between Cape Cod, in Massachusetts, and Cape Chidley, in Labrador; that he returned to Bristol before the end of July of the same year; that, whatever might have been the number of vessels which started, the discovery was made by John Cabot's own vessel, the Matthew of Bristol, with a crew of eighteen men. 5. That thereupon, and in consideration of this discovery made by John Cabot, King Henry VII granted new letters-patent, drawn solely to John Cabot, authorizing a second expedition on a more extended scale and with fuller royal authority, which letters-patent were dated February 3, 1498; that this expedition sailed in the spring of 1498, and had not returned in October. It consisted of several ships and about three hundred men. That John and Sebastian Cabot sailed on this voyage. When it returned is not known. From the time of sailing of this expedition John Cabot vanishes into the unknowable, and from thenceforth Sebastian alone appears in the historic record. These points are now fully supported by satisfactory evidence, mostly documentary and contemporary. As for John Cabot, Sebastian said he died, which is one of the few undisputed facts in the discussion; but if Sebastian is correctly reported in Ramusio to have said that he died at the time when the news of Columbus' discoveries reached England, then Sebastian Cabot told an untruth, because the letters-patent of 1498 were addressed to John Cabot alone. The son had a gift of reticence concerning others, including his father and brothers, which in these latter days has been the cause of much wearisome research to scholars. To avoid further discussion of the preceding points is, however, a great gain. From among the numerous opinions concerning the landfall of John Cabot three theories emerge which may be seriously entertained, all three being supported by evidence of much weight: 1. That it was in Newfoundland. 2. That it was on the Labrador coast. 3. That it was on the island of Cape Breton. Until a comparatively recent period it was universally held by English writers that Newfoundland was the part of North America first seen by Cabot. The name "Newfoundland" lends itself to this view; for in the letters-patent of 1498 the expression "Londe and iles of late founde," and the wording of the award recorded in the King's privy-purse accounts, August 10, 1497, "To hym that founde the new ile £I0," seem naturally to suggest the island of Newfoundland of our day; and this impression is strengthened by reading the old authors, who spell it, as Richard Whitbourne in 1588, "New-found-land," in three words with connecting hyphens, and often with the definite article, "The Newe-found-land." A cursory reading of the whole literature of American discovery before 1831 would suggest that idea, and some writers of the present day still maintain it. Authors of other nationalities have, however, always disputed it, and have pushed the English discoveries far north to Labrador, and even to Greenland. Champlain, who read and studied everything relating to his profession, concedes to the English the coast of Labrador north of 56° and the regions about Davis Straits; and the maps, which for a long period, with a few notable exceptions, were made only by Spaniards, Portuguese, and Italians, bear out Champlain's remonstrances. It seems, moreover, on a cursory consideration of the maps, probable that a vessel on a westerly course passing south of Ireland should strike somewhere on the coast of Newfoundland about Cape Bonavista, and, Cabot being an Italian, that very place suggests itself by its name as his probable landfall. The English, who for the most part have had their greatness thrust upon them by circumstances, neglected Cabot's discoveries for fifty years, and during that time the French and Portuguese took possession of the whole region and named all the coasts; then, when the troubled reign of Henry VIII was over, the English people began to wake up, and in fact rediscovered Cabot and his voyages. A careful study, however, of the subject will be likely to lead to the rejection of the Newfoundland landfall, plausible as it may at first sight appear. In the year 1831 Richard Biddle, a lawyer of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, published a memoir of Sebastian Cabot which led the way to an almost universal change of opinion. He advanced the theory that Labrador was the Cabot landfall in 1497. His book is one of great research, and, though confused in its arrangement, is written with much vigor and ability. But Biddle lost the historian in the advocate. His book is a passionate brief for Sebastian Cabot; for he strangely conceives the son to have been wronged by the ascription to John Cabot of any portion of the merit of the discovery of America. Not only would he suppress the elder Cabot, but he covers the well-meaning Hakluyt with opprobrium and undermines his character by insinuations, much as a criminal lawyer might be supposed to do to an adverse witness in a jury trial. Valuable as the work is, there is a singular heat pervading it, fatal to the true historic spirit. Hakluyt is the pioneer of the literature of English discovery and adventure--at once the recorder and inspirer of noble effort. He is more than a translator; he spared no pains nor expense to obtain from the lips of seamen their own versions of their voyages, and, if discrepancies are met with in a collection so voluminous, it is not surprising and need not be ascribed to a set purpose; for Hakluyt's sole object in life seems to have been to record all he knew or could ascertain of the maritime achievements of the age. Biddle's book marks an epoch in the controversy. In truth, he seems to be the first who gave minute study to the original authorities and broke away from the tradition of Newfoundland. He fixed the landfall on the coast of Labrador; and Humboldt and Kohl added the weight of their great learning to his theory. Harrisse, who in his _John and Sebastian Cabot_ had written in favor of Cape Breton, has, in his latest book, _The Discovery of America_, gone back to Labrador as his faith in the celebrated map of 1544 gradually waned and his esteem for the character of Sebastian Cabot faded away. Such changes of view, not only in this but in other matters, render Mr. Harrisse's books somewhat confusing, although the student of American history can never be sufficiently thankful for his untiring research. The discovery in Germany by von Martius in 1843 of an engraved _mappemonde_ bearing date of 1544, and purporting to be issued under the authority of Sebastian Cabot, soon caused a general current of opinion in favor of a landfall in Cape Breton. The map is unique and is now in the National Library at Paris. It bears no name of publisher nor place of publication. Around it for forty years controversy has waxed warm. Kohl does not accept the map as authentic; D'Avezac, on the contrary, gives it full credence. The tide of opinion has set of late in favor of it, and in consequence in favor of the Cape Breton landfall, because it bears, plainly inscribed upon that island, the words "_prima tierra vista_," and the legends which are around the map identify beyond question that as the landfall of the first voyage. Dr. Deane, in _Winter's Narrative and Critical History,_ supports this view. Markham, in his introduction to the volume of the Hakluyt Society for 1893, also accepts it; and our own honorary secretary (the late Sir John Bourinot), in his learned and exhaustive monograph on Cape Breton, inclines to the same theory. I do not propose here to discuss the difficult problems of this map. For many years, under the influence of current traditions and cursory reading, I believe the landfall of John Cabot to have been in Newfoundland; but a closer study of the original authorities has led me to concur in the view which places it somewhere on the island of Cape Breton. At the threshold of an inquiry into the "_prima tierra vista_" or landfall of 1497, it is before all things necessary to distinguish sharply, in every recorded detail, between the first and second voyages. I venture to think that, if this had always been done, much confusion and controversy would have been avoided. It was not done by the older writers, and the writers of later years have followed them without sufficiently observing that the authorities they were building upon were referring almost solely to the second voyage. Even when some occasional detail of the first voyage was introduced, the circumstances of the second voyage were interwoven and became dominant in the narrative, so that the impression of one voyage only remains upon the mind. We must therefore always remember the antithesis which exists between them. Thus, the first voyage was made in one small vessel with a crew of eighteen men, the second with five ships and three hundred men. The first voyage was undertaken with John Cabot's own resources, the second with the royal authority to take six ships and their outfit on the same conditions as if for the King's service. The first voyage was a private venture, the second an official expedition. The first voyage extended over three months and was provisioned for that period only; the second was victualled for twelve months and extended over six months at least, for how much longer is not known. The course of the first voyage was south of Ireland, then for a while north and afterward west, with the pole star on the right hand. The course of the second, until land was seen, was north, into northern seas, toward the north pole, in the direction of Iceland, to the cape of Labrador, at 58° north latitude. On the first voyage no ice was reported; on the second the leading features were bergs and floes of ice and long days of arctic summer. On the first voyage Cabot saw no man; on the second he found people clothed with "beastes skynnes." During the whole of the first voyage John Cabot was the commander; on the second voyage he sailed in command, but who brought the expedition home and when it returned are not recorded. It is not known how or when John Cabot died; and, although the letters-patent for the second voyage were addressed to him alone, his son Sebastian during forty-five years took the whole credit in every subsequent mention of the discovery of America, without any allusion to his father. This antithesis may throw light upon the suppression of his father's name in all the statements attributed to or made by Sebastian Cabot. He may always have had the second voyage in his mind. His father may have died on the voyage. He was marvellously reticent about his father. The only mention which occurs is on the map seen by Hakluyt, and on the map of 1544, supposed, somewhat rashly, to be a transcript of it. There the discovery is attributed to John Cabot and to Sebastian his son, and that has reference to the first voyage. From these considerations it would appear that those who place the landfall at Labrador are right; but it is the landfall of the second voyage--the voyage Sebastian was always talking about--not the landfall of John Cabot in 1497. If Sebastian Cabot had not been so much wrapped up in his own vainglory, we might have had a full record of the eventful voyage which revealed to Europe the shores of our Canadian dominion first of all the lands on the continents of the western hemisphere. Fortunately, however, there resided in London at that time a most intelligent Italian, Raimondo di Soncino, envoy of the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, one of those despots of the Renaissance who almost atoned for their treachery and cruelty by their thirst for knowledge and love of arts. Him Soncino kept informed of all matters going on at London, and especially concerning matters of cosmography, to which the Duke was much devoted. From his letters we are enabled to retrace the momentous voyage of the little Matthew of Bristol across the western ocean--not the sunny region of steady trade-winds, by whose favoring influence Columbus was wafted to his destination, but the boisterous reaches of the northern Atlantic--over that "still vexed sea" which shares with one or two others the reputation of being the most storm-tossed region in the world of ocean. That the land discovered was supposed to be a part of Asia appears very clearly from the same letters. It was in the territory of the Grand Cam. The land was good and the climate temperate; and Cabot intended on his next voyage, after occupying that place, to proceed farther westward until he should arrive at the longitude of Japan, which island he evidently thought to be south of his landfall and near the equator. It should be carefully noted that, in all the circumstances on record which are indisputably referable to this first voyage, nothing has been said of ice or of any notable extension of daylight. These are the marks of the second voyage; for if anything unusual had existed in the length of the day it would have been at its maximum on Midsummer's Day, June 24th, the day he made land. Nothing is reported in these letters which indicates a high latitude. Now Labrador is a cold, waste region of rocks, swamps, and mountains. Even inside the Straits of Belle-Isle it is so barren and forbidding as to call forth Cartier's oft-cited remark that "it was like the land God gave to Cain." The coast of Labrador is not the place to invite a second voyage, if it be once seen; but the climate of Cape Breton is very pleasant in early summer and the country is well wooded. From the contemporary documents relating specially to the first voyage, it is beyond question that Cabot saw no human being on the coast, though he brought back evidences of their presence at some previous time. It is beyond doubt, also, on the same authority, that the voyage lasted not longer than three months, and that provisions gave out, so that he had not time to land on the return voyage. It was, in fact, a reconnoitring expedition to prepare the way for a greater effort, and establish confidence in the existence of land across the ocean easily reached from England. The distance sailed is given by Soncino at four hundred leagues; but Pasqualigo, writing to Venice, gives it at seven hundred leagues, equivalent to two thousand two hundred twenty-six miles, which is very nearly the distance between Bristol and Cape Breton as now estimated. All these circumstances concerning the first voyage are derived from John Cabot's own reports, and are extracted from documents dated previous to the return of the second expedition, and therefore are, of necessity, free from admixture with extraneous incidents. Antonio Galvano, an experienced Portuguese sailor and cosmographer, writing in 1563, like the others, knows of one voyage only, which he fixes in 1496. He interweaves, like them, in his narrative many circumstances of the second voyage, but it is important to note that from some independent source is given the landfall at 45°, the latitude very nearly of Cape Breton, on the island of Cape Breton. Another point is also recorded in the letters that, on the return voyage, Cabot passed two islands to the right, which the shortness of his provisions prevented him from examining. This note should not be considered identical with the statement recorded by Soncino in his first letter, for this last writer evidently means to indicate the land which Cabot found and examined; he says that Cabot discovered two large and fertile islands, but the two islands of Pasqualigo were passed without examination. They were probably the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon; but that John Cabot had no idea of a northward voyage at that time in his mind would appear from his intention to sail farther to the east on his next voyage until he reached the longitude of Cipango. Moreover, the reward recorded in the King's privy-purse accounts "to hym that founde the new ile," and the wording, thrice repeated, of the second letters-patent, "the land and isles of late found by the said John," indicate that it was not at that time known whether the mainland of Cathay had been reached, or, as in the discoveries of Columbus, islands upon the coast of Asia. From the preceding narrative, based solely upon documents written within twelve months of the event--which documents are records of statements taken from the lips of John Cabot, the chief actor, at the very time of his return from the first voyage--it will, I trust, appear that in 1497, at a time of year when the ice was not clear from the coasts of Labrador, he discovered a part of America in a temperate climate, and that this was done without the name of Sebastian Cabot once coming to the surface, excepting when it appears in the patent of 1496, together with the names of Lewis and Sancio, his brothers. While the circumstances recorded are incompatible with a landfall at Labrador, they do not exclude the possibility of a landfall on the eastern coast of Newfoundland, which is so varied in its character as to correspond with almost any conditions likely to be found in a landfall on the American coast; but inasmuch as, from other reasons, it will, I think, appear that the landfall was at Cape Breton, it will be a shorter process to prove by a positive argument where it was than to show by a negative argument where it was not. I might here borrow the quaint phrase of Herodotus and say, "Now I have done speaking of" John Cabot. He has, beyond doubt, discovered the eastern coast of this our Canada, and he has organized a second expedition, and he has sailed in command. Forthwith, upon such sailing, he vanishes utterly, and his second son, Sebastian, both of his brothers having in some unknown way also vanished, emerges, and from henceforth becomes the whole Cabot family. It behooves us, therefore, if we wish to grasp the whole subject, to inquire what manner of man he was. Sebastian Cabot was born in Venice, and, when still very young, was taken to England with the rest of his family by his father. He was then, however, old enough to have learned the humanities and the properties of the sphere, and to this latter knowledge he became so addicted that he, early in life, formed fixed ideas. He is probably entitled to the merit of having urged the practical application of the truths that the shortest course from point to point upon the globe lies upon a great circle, and also that the great circle uniting Western Europe with Cathay passes over the north pole. This fixed idea of the younger Cabot pervaded all his life and shows in all his reported conversations. He adhered to it with the pertinacity of a Columbus, and, in his later life after his return to England, his efforts, which in youth were directed to a northwest passage, went out toward a northeast passage to Cathay. John Cabot's genius was more practical, as the second letter of Raimondo di Soncino shows. His intention was to occupy on the second voyage the landfall he had made and then push on to the east (west, as we call it now) and south. The diversion of that expedition to the coast of Labrador would indicate that the death of the elder Cabot and the assumption of command by his son occurred early in the voyage. Sebastian Cabot seems to have been not so much a great sailor as a great nautical theorizer. Gomara says he discovered nothing for Spain; and beyond doubt his expedition to La Plata cannot be considered successful, for it was intended to reach the Moluccas. One fixed idea of his life was the course to Cathay by the north. That idea he monopolized to himself. He overvalued its importance and thought to be the Columbus of a new highway to the east. Hence he may have underrated his father's achievements as he brooded over what he considered to be his own great secret. He theorized on the sphere and he theorized on the variation of the compass, and he theorized on a method of finding longitude by the variation of the needle; so that even Richard Eden, who greatly admired him, wrote as follows: "Sebastian Cabot on his death-bed told me that he had the knowledge thereof (longitude by variation) by divine revelation, yet so that he might not teach any man. But I thinke that the goode olde man in that extreme age somewhat doted, and had not, yet even in the article of death, utterly shaken off all worldlye vaine glorie." These words would seem to contain the solution of most of the mystery of the suppression of John Cabot's name in the narratives of Peter Martyr, Ramusio, Gomara, and all the other writers who derived their information from Sebastian Cabot during his long residence in Spain. And now we may pass on to the consideration of the second voyage; and first among the writers, in order of time as also in order of importance, is Peter Martyr of Anghiera, who published his _Decades of the New World_ in 1516. Sebastian Cabot had then been in Spain for four years, high in office and in royal favor. Peter Martyr was his "familiar friend and comrade," and tells the Pope, to whom these _Decades_ were addressed as letters, that he wrote from information derived from Cabot's own lips. Here, I venture to think, many of the writers on this subject have gone astray; for the whole question changes. Martyr knows of only one voyage, and that was beyond doubt the voyage of 1498; he knows of only one discoverer, and that the man from whose lips he writes the narrative. The landfall is far north, in a region of ice and perpetual daylight. At the very outset the subject is stated to be "those northern seas," and then Peter Martyr goes on to say that Sebastian Cabot furnished two ships at his own charges; and that, with three hundred men, he sailed toward the north pole, where he saw land, and that then he was compelled to turn westward; and after that he coasted to the south until he reached the latitude of Gibraltar; and that he was west of the longitude of Cuba. In other words, he struck land far in the north, and from that point he sailed south along the coast as far as Cape Hatteras. That Labrador was the landfall seems clear; for he met large masses of ice in the month of July. These were not merely the bergs of the western ocean, but masses of field-ice, which compelled him to change his course from north to west, and finally to turn southward. The same writer states that Cabot himself named a portion of the great land he coasted "Baccalaos," because of the quantity of fish, which was so great that they hindered the sailing of his ships, and that these fishes were called baccalaos by the natives. This statement has given rise to much dispute. As to the quantity of fish, all succeeding writers concur that it was immense beyond conception; and probably the swarming of the salmon up the rivers of our Pacific coast may afford a parallel; but that Cabot did not so name the country is abundantly clear. A very exhaustive note on the word will be found at page 131 of Dr. Bourinot's _Cape Breton_. Bearing in mind the preceding considerations, the study of the early maps will become profitable, and I would now direct attention to them to ascertain what light they may throw upon the landfall of John Cabot and the island of St. John opposite to it. It must be remembered that John Cabot took the time to go on shore at his landfall, and planted the banners of England and St. Mark there. At that time of year and in that latitude it was light at half-past three, but it was five when he saw land, and he had to reach it and perform the ceremonies appropriate for such occasions; so the island opposite could not be far away. The island, then, will be useful to identify the landfall if we find it occurring frequently on the succeeding maps. Don Pedro de Ayala, joint Spanish ambassador at London, wrote, on July 25, 1498, to his sovereigns that he had procured and would send a copy of John Cabot's chart of his first voyage. This map of Juan de la Cosa is evidence that Ayala fulfilled his promise. It is a manuscript map made at the end of the year 1500, by the eminent Biscayan pilot, who, if not the equal of Columbus in nautical and cosmographical knowledge, was easily the second to him. Upon it there is a continuous coast line from Labrador to Florida, showing that the claim made by Sebastian Cabot of having coasted from a region of ice and snow to the latitude of Gibraltar was accepted as true by La Cosa, whatever later Spanish writers may have said. Recent writers of authority have arrived at the conclusion that, immediately after Columbus and Cabot had opened the way, many independent adventurers visited the western seas; for there are a number of geographical facts recorded on the earliest charts not easy to account for on any other hypothesis. Dr. Justin Winsor shows that La Cosa, and others of the great sailors of the earliest years of discovery, soon recognized that they had encountered a veritable barrier to Asia, consisting of islands, or an island of continental size, through which they had to find a passage to the golden East. Their views were not, however, generally accepted. That La Cosa based the northern part of his map upon Cabot's discoveries is demonstrated by the English flags marked along the coast and the legend "_Mar descubierto por Ingleses_," because no English but the Cabot expeditions had been there; and what is evidently intended for Cape Race is called "Cavo de Ynglaterra." The English flags mark off the coast from that cape to what may be considered as Cape Hatteras. Cabot, as before stated, confidently expected to reach Cathay. He sailed for that as his objective point, and he was looking for a broad western ocean, so that narrow openings were to him simply bays of greater or less depth. The sailors of those early voyages coasted from headland to headland, as plainly appears from many of the maps upon which the recesses of the sinuosities of the coast are not completed lines, and it must be borne in mind that in sailing between Newfoundland and Cape Breton the bold and peculiar contours of both can be seen at the same time. This is possible in anything like clear weather, but, in the bright weather of Midsummer Day, Cape Ray would necessarily have been seen from St. Paul's, and the opening might well have been taken for a deep indentation of the coast. Between "Cavo descubierto" and "Cavo St. Jorge" such an indentation is shown on the map, but the line is closed, showing that Cabot did not sail through. Cavo descubierto ("the Discovered Cape"), and, close to it, "_Mar descubierto por Ingleses!_" What can be more evident than that the spot where Europeans first touched the American continent is thus indicated? Why otherwise should it especially be called "the Discovered Cape" if not because this cape was first discovered? It is stated elsewhere that on the same day, opposite the land, an island was also discovered; and in fact upon the Madrid fac-simile two small islands are found, one of which is near Cavo descubierto. The name "the Discovered Cape" at the extreme end of a series of names tells its own story. Cabot overran Cape Race and went south of St. Pierre and Miquelon without seeing them, and, continuing on a westerly course, hit Cape Breton at its most easterly point. An apt illustration occurs in a voyage made by the ship Bonaventure in 1591, recorded in Hakluyt. She overshot Cape Race without knowing it and came to the soundings on the bank south of St. Peter's, where they found twenty fathoms, and then the course was set northwest by north for Cape Ray. The course was sharply altered toward a definite and known point, but, if he did not see Cape Race, not knowing what was before him, Cabot would have had no object in abruptly altering his course, but, continuing his westerly course, would strike the east point of Cape Breton. That point, then, and not Cape North, would be "the Discovered Cape"--the _prima vista_--and there, not far off "over against the land," "opposite the land" (_exadverso_), he would find Scatari Island, which would be the island of St. John, so continually attendant on Cape Breton upon the succeeding maps. If this theory be accepted, all becomes clear, and the little Matthew, having achieved success, having demonstrated the existence of Cathay within easy reach of England, returned home, noticing and naming the salient features of the south coast of Newfoundland. She had not too much time to do it, for she was back in Bristol in thirty-four days at most. This theory is further confirmed by the circumstance recorded by Pasqualigo that, as Cabot returned, he saw two islands on the right which he had not time to examine, being short of provisions. These islands would be St. Pierre and Miquelon; for there are two, and only two, important islands possible to be seen at the right on the south coast of Newfoundland on the homeward course. La Cosa, beside the two small islands above noted, has marked on his map three larger islands, I. de la Trinidad, S. Grigor, and I. Verde, but they are not laid down on the map in the places of St. Pierre and Miquelon, nor are there any islands existing in the positions shown. I. de la Trinidad is doubtless the peninsula of Burin, as would appear by its position almost in contact with the land, and its very peculiar shape. In coasting along, it would appear as an island, for the isthmus is very narrow, and St. Pierre and Miquelon would be clearly seen as islands on the right. As for the bearings of the coast, it will appear by a comparison with Champlain's large map that they are compass bearings, for they are the same on both. I have dwelt at length upon the map of La Cosa, because, for our northern coasts, it is in effect John Cabot's map. After the return of the second expedition, the English made a few voyages, but soon fell back into the old rut of their Iceland trade. The expedition was beyond question a commercial failure, and therefore, like the practical people they are, they neglected that new continent which was destined to become the chief theatre for the expansion of their race. Their fishermen were for many years to be found in small numbers only on the coast, and, as before, their supply of codfish was drawn from Iceland, where they could sell goods in exchange. Meantime the Bretons and Normans, and the Basques of France and Spain, and the Portuguese grasped that which England practically abandoned. That landfall which Cabot gave her in 1497 cost much blood and treasure to win back in 1758. The French fishermen were on the coast as early as 1504, and the names on La Cosa's map were displaced by French names still surviving on the south coast and on what is called the "French shore" of Newfoundland. Robert Thorne in 1527--and no doubt others unrecorded--in vain urged upon the English government to vindicate its right. According to the papal bulls and the treaty of Tordesillas, the new lands were Portuguese east of a meridian three hundred seventy leagues west of the Cape de Verd Islands and Spanish to the west of it. Baccalaos and Labrador were considered to be Portuguese; and, upon the maps, when any mention is made of English discoveries they are accordingly relegated to Greenland or the far north of Labrador. The whole claim of England went by abandonment and default. The Portuguese, as the Rev. Dr. Patterson has shown, named all the east coast of Newfoundland, and their traces are even yet found on the coasts of Nova Scotia and of Cape Breton. Therefore it is that the maps we have now to refer to are not so much Spanish as Portuguese. They will tell us nothing of the English, nor of Cabot, but we shall be able to follow his island of St. John--the only one of his names which survived. The outlines of some very early maps are given by Kunstmann, Kretschmer, and Winsor, but until 1505 they have no bearing upon our problem. In that year Reinel's map was made, and, although Newfoundland forms part of _terra firma_, the openings north and south of it are plainly indicated by unclosed lines. Cape Race has received its permanent name, "_Raso_" and, although only the east coast of Newfoundland is named, there is no possibility of mistaking the easternmost point of Cape Breton. Just opposite _(ex adverso_) is laid down and named the island of Sam Joha, in latitude 46°, the precise latitude of Scatari Island. Here, then, in 1505, is in this island of St. John an independent testimony to the landfall of 1497--not off Cape North, which does not yet appear, nor inside the gulf, for it is not even indicated--but in the Atlantic Ocean, at the cape of Cape Breton--the "Cavo descubierto" of La Cosa. I have not considered it necessary to prove that if Cabot's landfall were Cape North he could not have discovered the low lying shore of Prince Edward Island on the same day. I have preferred to show that Prince Edward Island was not known as an island and did not appear on any map for one hundred years after John Cabot's death. If Cabot had possessed a modern map, and had been looking for Prince Edward Island, and had pushed on without landing at the north cape of Cape Breton, and had shaped his course southward, he might have seen it in a long Midsummer Day, but Cabot did not press on. He landed and examined the country, and found close to it St. John's Island, which he also examined. Upon that easternmost point of this Nova Scotian land of our common country John Cabot planted the banner of St. George on June 24, 1497, more than one year before Columbus set foot upon the main continent of America, and now, after four hundred years, despite all the chances and changes of this Western World, that banner is floating there, a witness to our existing union with our distant mother-land across the ocean. THE SEA ROUTE TO INDIA VASCO DA GAMA SAILS AROUND AFRICA A.D. 1498 CASPAR CORREA[1] The same goal which attracted the Spaniards westward drew the Portuguese south, the desire to find a sea route to India, and thus garner the enormous profits of the trade in spices and other Indian wealth. In the early years of the fifteenth century the Portuguese, overshadowed by the Spanish kingdom, which almost enclosed their country, realized that they could extend their territory only by colonizing beyond seas. They began, therefore, to send out expeditions, and in 1410 discovered the island of Madeira. Soon afterward discoveries were undertaken by Prince Henry, called the "Navigator," whose whole life was given to these enterprises. Before his death, 1460, his Portuguese mariners, in successive voyages, had worked their way well down the western coast of Africa. In 1462 an expedition reached Sierra Leone, almost half way down the continent. Nine years later the equator was passed, and in 1486 Bartholomew Dias sailed around the southern point of Africa, which he had been sent to discover. On his return voyage, 1487, he found the Cape of Good Hope, having before doubled it without knowing that he had done so.[2] To Portuguese navigators the way to India by this route was soon made clear. In 1497 Vasco da Gama was placed by King Emanuel I of Portugal in command of an expedition of three small ships sent to discover such a route. He sailed from Lisbon in July of that year, in November doubled the Cape of Good Hope, arrived at Calicut, on the Malabar coast of India, in May, 1498, and in September, 1499, returned to Lisbon. He was accompanied by his brother Paulo, who, with other of the celebrated navigator's companions, appears in the following account of this great achievement. The quaint narrative was written by the chronicler who accompanied the expedition in person. The ships being equipped and ready, one Sunday the King went with Queen Dona Maria to hear mass, which was said pontifically by the bishop Calcadilha, who also made a discourse in praise of the voyage, and holy design of the King in regard to the new discovery which he was commanding to be made; and he called upon the people to pray to the Lord that the voyage might be for his holy service, and for the exalting of his holy faith, and for the increase of the good and honor of the kingdom of Portugal. At the mass the good brothers Da Gama and their associates were present, richly dressed, and the King showed them great honor and favor, as they stood close to the curtain, where also were the principal lords of the realm and gentlemen of the court. Mass being over, the King came out from the curtain and spoke to the captains, who placed themselves on their knees before him; and they spoke to him, saying: "Sire, the honor we are receiving from your highness is so great that with a hundred bodies and lives which we might expend in your service we never could repay the least part of it, since greater honors were never shown by a sovereign to his vassals than you have shown us, as the great prince, king, and lord that you are, with such magnanimity and honor that, if at this very moment we should die, our lineage should remain in the highest degree of honor which is possible, only because your highness has chosen and sent us for this work, while you have so many and such noble vassals to whom to commit it; for which we are already recompensed before rendering this service, and until we end our lives in performing it. For this we beg of the mercy of the Lord, that he direct us, and we may perform such works that he, the Lord, and your highness also, may be served in some measure in this so great favor that has been shown us, as he knows that such is our desire; and should we not be deserving to serve him in this voyage, and so holy undertaking, may the Lord be pleased though we may pay with our lives for our shortcomings in the work. We promise your highness that our lives will be the matters of least moment that we shall adventure in this so great favor that has been shown us, and that we will not return before your highness with our lives in our bodies without bringing some certain information of that which your highness desires." And they all again kissed the hands of the King and of the Queen. Then the King came forth from the cathedral and went to his palace, which then was in the residence of the alcazar in the castle. There went before him the captains, and before them the standard which was carried by their ensign in whom they trusted, and on arriving at the palace the King dismissed them, and they again kissed his and the Queen's hand. Vasco da Gama on a horse, with all the men of the fleet on foot, richly dressed in liveries, and accompanied by all the gentlemen of the court, went down to the wharf on the bank, and embarked in their boats, and the standard went in that of Paulo da Gama. Then, taking leave of the gentlemen, they went to the ships, and on their arrival they fired all their artillery, and the ships were dressed out gayly with standards and flags and many ornaments, and the royal standard was at once placed at the top of the mast of Paulo da Gama; for so Vasco da Gama commanded. Discharging all their artillery, they loosened the sails, and went beating to windward on the river of Lisbon, tacking until they came to anchor at Belen, where they remained three days waiting for a wind to go out. There they made a muster of the crews, and the King was there all the time in the monastery, where all confessed and communicated. The King commanded that they should write down in a book all the men of each ship by name, with the names of their fathers, mothers, and wives of the married men, and the places of which they were native; and the King ordered that this book should be preserved in the House of the Mines, in order that the payments which were due should be made upon their return. The King also ordered that a hundred _crusadoes_ should be paid to each of the married men for them to leave it to their wives, and forty crusadoes to each of the single men, for them to fit themselves out with certain things; for, as to provisions, they had not got to lay them in, for the ships were full of them. To the two brothers was paid a gratification of two thousand crusadoes to each of them, and a thousand to Nicolas Coelho. When it was the day of our Lady of March (the 25, 1497), all heard mass; they then embarked, and loosened the sails, and went forth from the river, the King coming out to accompany them in his boat, and addressing them all with blessings and good wishes. When he took leave of them, his boat lay on its oars until they disappeared, as is shown in the painting of his city of Lisbon. Vasco da Gama went in the ship São Rafael, and Paulo da Gama in the São Gabriel, and Nicolas Coelho in the other ship, São Miguel. In each ship there were as many as eighty men, officers and seamen, and the others of the leader's family, servants and relations, all filled with the desire to undertake the labor that was fitting for each, and with great trust in the favors which they hoped for from the King on their return to Portugal. Paulo da Gama, as he went out with the Lisbon river, hauled down the royal standard from the masthead; but at the great supplications of his brother, who gave him good reasons why it was fitting that he should carry it, he again hoisted it. The two companions, standing out to sea, as I have said, made their way toward Cape Verd, and for that purpose they stood well out to sea to make the coast, which they knew they would find, as it advanced much to seaward, as they learned from the sailors who had been in the caravels of Janinfante. They ran as far as they could to sea in the direction of the wind, to double the land without difficulty; and thus they navigated until they made the coast, and, having reconnoitred it, they tacked and stood out to sea, hauling on the bowline as much as they could, as so they ran for many days. And as it seemed to them that now they could double the land, they again tacked toward the coast, also on the bowline, against the wind, until they again saw the coast, much farther on than where the caravels had reached, which the masters knew from the soundings which they got written down from the voyage of Janinfante, and the days which they found to have less sun by the clocks. Having well ascertained this, they stood out again to sea; thus forcing the ships to windward, they went so far out to the sea toward the south that there was almost not six hours of sunlight in the day; and the wind was very powerful, so that the sea was very fearful to see, without ever being smooth either by day or night, but they always met with storms, so that the crews suffered much hardship. After a month that they had run on this tack, they stood into shore and went as long as they could, all praying to the Lord that they might have doubled beyond the land; but when they again saw it they were very sad, though they found themselves much advanced by the signs of the soundings which the pilots took, and they saw land of another shape which they had not before seen. Seeing that the coast ran out to sea, the masters and pilots were in great confusion, and doubtful of standing out again to sea, saying that the land went across the sea and had no end to it. This being heard of by Vasco da Gama--according, as it was presumed, to the information he had from the Jew Zacuto--he told the pilots that they should not imagine such a thing, and that without doubt they would find the end of that land, and beyond it much sea and lands to run by, and he said to them: "I assure you that the cape is very near, and, with another tack standing out to sea, when you return you will find the cape doubled." This Vasco da Gama said to encourage them, because he saw that they were much disheartened, and with the inclination to wish to put back to Portugal. So he ordered them to put the ships about to sea, which they did, much against their will; for which reason Vasco da Gama determined to stand on this tack so long as to be able to double the end of the land, and besought all not to take account of their labors, since for that purpose they had ventured upon them; and that they should put their trust in the Lord that they would double the cape. Thus he gave them great encouragement, without ever sleeping or taking repose, but always taking part with them in hardship, coming up at the boatswain's pipe as they all did. So they went on standing out to sea till they found it all broken up with the storm, with enormous waves and darkness. As the days were very short, it always seemed night; the masts and shrouds were stayed, because with the fury of the sea the ships seemed every moment to be going to pieces. The crews grew sick with fear and hardship, because also they could not prepare their food, and all clamored for putting back to Portugal, and that they did not choose to die like stupid people who sought death with their own hands; thus they made clamor and lamentation, of which there was much more in other ships. But the captains excused themselves, saying that they would do nothing except what Vasco da Gama did; and he and his companions underwent great labor. As he was a very choleric man, at times with angry words he made them be silent, although he well saw how much reason they had at every moment to despair of their lives; and they had been going for about two months on that tack, and the masters and pilots cried out to him to take another tack; but the captain-major did not choose, though the ships were now letting in much water, by which their labors were doubled, because the days were short and the nights long, which caused them increased fear of death; and at this time they met with such cold rains that the men could not move. All cried out to God for mercy upon their souls, for now they no longer took heed of their lives. It now seemed to Vasco da Gama that the time was come for making another tack, and he comforted himself very angrily, swearing that if they did not double the cape he would stand out to sea again as many times until the cape was doubled, or there should happen whatever should please God. For which reason, from fear of this, the masters took much more trouble to advance as much as they could; and they took more heart on nearing the land, and escaping from the tempest of the sea; and all called upon God for mercy, and to give them guidance, when they saw themselves out of such great dangers. Thus approaching the land, they found their labor less and the seas calmer, so they went on running for a long time, steering so as to make the land and to ease the ships, which they were better able to do at night when the captain slept, which the other ships did also, as they followed the lantern which Vasco da Gama carried; at night the ships showed lights to one another so as not to part company. Seeing how much they had run, and did not find the land, they sailed larger so as to make it; and as they did not find it, and as the sea and wind were moderate, they knew they had doubled the cape; on which great joy fell among them, and they gave great praise to the Lord on seeing themselves delivered from death. The pilots continued to sail more free, spreading all the sails; and, running in this manner, one morning they sighted some mountain peaks which seemed to touch the clouds; at which their pleasure was so great that all wept with joy, and all devoutly on their knees said the _Salve_. After running all day till night, they were not able to reach it, and discovered great mountain ridges; so, as it was night, they ran along the coast, which lay from east to west; and they took in all the sails, only running under large sails, for these were the orders of the captain-major. The next day at dawn they again set all the sails and ran to the land, so that at midday they saw a beach which was all rocky, and, running along it, they saw deep creeks, and such large bays that they could not see the land at the end of them; they also found the mouths of great rivers, from which water came forth to the sea with a powerful current; here also, near the land, they found many fish, which they killed with fish-spears. The watchmen in the tops were always on the lookout to see if there were shoals ahead. The crews grew sick with fever from the fish which they ate, on which account they ate no more. The pilots, on heaving the lead, found no bottom; so they ran on for three days, and at night they kept away from the land and shortened sail. Sailing in this manner, they fell in with the mouth of a large river, and the captain-major ordered a boat to be lowered, and the pilot to sound the entrance of the river; and he said it was superfluous, because if there was a shoal it would be burst through. Then they took in the sails, excepting the great one with which they entered the river, which was very large; and they went up it, the boat going before and sounding, and, approaching land, where they found twelve fathoms, they anchored. There they found very good fish, for the river was of fresh water; but in the whole of the river they found no beach, for there was nothing but rocks and crags. Then Vasco da Gama went to see his brother, and so did Nicolas Coelho, and they all dined with great satisfaction, talking of the hardships they had gone through. When they had finished dining, Vasco da Gama ordered Nicolas Coelho to go in his boat up the river to see if he found any village. He went up more than five leagues, without finding anything besides many streams which came from between the mountains to pour into the river; there were no woods in the country, nothing but stones on both sides of the river; upon which he returned to the captain-major. Then the following day, before the morning, Vasco da Gama again ordered Nicolas Coelho to go in a boat with sails and oars, and with provisions to eat, and told him to go as far as the head of the river, to see if he could find anyone to speak to, to learn what country they were in. He went up the river a distance of more than twenty leagues, and returned without having found anything. Then they decided on going out again, and they took in water and wood of the dry trees, which it seems the river brings down when it comes from the mountain. On that account the captain-major wished himself in person to discover the river up to its head, to see whence could come those trees which they found there dry, but the masters said this would be a labor without profit, and that they ought to go out of the river and make for the country which they wished to seek, and they would find it. This seemed good to the captain-major, and they came out of the river, with much labor, as the wind was contrary and entered the mouth of the river. The strong current of the river, which went out to sea, alone assisted them, and with it they went outside without sails, only towing with the boats which guided them. When the ships returned to sea they ran along the coast with great precaution, and a good lookout not to run upon any shoals, and they entered other great rivers and bays; and they explored everywhere and searched without ever being able to meet with people, nor boats in the seas, for all the country was uninhabited; and in entering and leaving the rivers they endured much fatigue, and were much vexed at not being able to learn in what country they were. With these detentions and delays they wasted much time, and spent all the summer of that country, so they had to run along the coast because winds were favorable for going ahead, for they were westerly. And because they found everything desolate, without people by land or sea, they agreed unanimously not to enter any more rivers, but to run ahead, and thus they did; for by day they ran under full sail, drawing so near to the land as possible to see if they could make out any village or beach, which as yet they had not seen; and by night they stood away to sea and ran under shortened sail. Navigating in this manner, the wind began to moderate, and fell calm altogether, which happened in November, when they had to struggle with another wind, with which they stood out to sea, fearing some contrary storm might arise; then, taking in all sail, they lay waiting for the springing up of another wind, so they went increasing their distance from the land till they lost sight of it; for the wind increased continually, and the sea rose greatly, for then the winter of that country was setting in. The masters, seeing that the weather was freshening, took counsel as to returning to land and putting into some river until meeting with a change of weather. This they did, and, putting about to the land, the wind increased so much that they were afraid of not finding a river in which to shelter, and of being lost. On which account they again stood out to sea, and made ready the ships to meet the storm which they saw rising every moment, so that the water should not come in, with ropes made fast to the masts, and with the shrouds passed over the yards so that the masts should remain more secure; and they took away all the pannels from the tops, and the sails, so as not to hold the wind; the small sails and the lower sails all struck, and with the foresails only they prepared to weather the storm. Seeing the weather in this state, the pilot and master told the captain-major that they had great fear on account of the weather because it was becoming a tempest, and the ships were weak, and that they thought they ought to put in to land and run along the coast and return to seek the great river into which they had first entered, because the wind was blowing that way, and they could enter it for all that there was a storm. But when the captain-major heard of turning backward he answered them that they should not speak such words, because, as he was going out of the bar at Lisbon, he had promised to God in his heart not to turn back a single span's breadth of the way which he had made; that on that account they should not speak in that wise, as he would throw into the sea whomsoever spoke such things. At which the crew, in despair, abandoned themselves to the chances of the sea, which was broken up with the increase of the tempest and rising of the gale, which many times chopped round, and blew from all parts, and at times fell; so that the ships were in great peril from their great laboring in the waves, which ran very high. Then the storm would again break with such fury that the seas rose toward the sky, and fell back in heavy showers which flooded the ships. The storm raging thus violently, the danger was doubled; for suddenly the wind died out, so that the ships lay dead between the waves, lurching so heavily that they took in water on both sides; and the men made themselves fast not to fall from one side to the other; and everything in the ships was breaking up, so that all cried to God for mercy. Before long the sea came in with more violence, which increased their misfortune, with the great difficulty of working the pumps; for they were taking in much water, which entered both above and below; so they had no repose for either soul or body, and the crews began to sicken and die of their great hardships. At this the pilot and masters and all the people poured out cries and lamentations to the captains, urgently requiring them to put back and seek an escape from death, which they were certain of meeting with by their own will if they did not put about. To which the captains gave no other reply than that they would do no such thing unless the captain-major did it. The captain-major, seeing the clamors of his crew, answered them with brave words, saying that he had already told them that backward he would not go, even though he saw a hundred deaths before his eyes; thus he had vowed to God; and let them look to it that it was not reasonable that they should lose all the labors which they had gone through up to this time; that the Lord, who had delivered them until now, would have mercy upon them; they should remember that they had already doubled the Cape of Storms and were in the region which they had come to seek, to discover India, on accomplishing which, and returning to Portugal, they would gain such great honor and recompenses from the King of Portugal for their children; and they should put their trust in God, who is merciful, and who, from one hour to another, would come with his mercy and give them fair weather, and that they should not talk like people who distrusted the mercy of God. But, although the captain-major always spoke to them these and other words of great encouragement, they did not cease from their loud clamor and protestations that he would give an account to God of their deaths of which he would be the cause, and of the leaving desolate their wives and children; all this accompanied by weeping and cries, and calls to God for mercy. While they went on this way with their souls in their mouths, the sea began to go down a little, and the wind also, so that the ships could approach to speak one another, and all clamored with loud cries that they should put about to seek some place where they could refit the ships, as they could not keep them afloat with the pumps. The crews of the other ships spoke with more audacity, saying that the captain-major was but one man, and they were many; and they feared death, while the captains did not fear it, nor took any account of losing their lives. The captain-major chose that the two other ships should know his design, and he said and swore by the life of the King his sovereign that from the spot where he then was he had not to turn back one span's breadth, even though the ships were laden with gold, unless he got information of that which they had come to seek, and that even if he had near there a very good port he would not go ashore, lest some of them should retire to a certain death on shore, allowing themselves to remain there, rather than go on with the ships trusting to the mercy of God, in which they had such small reliance that they made such exclamations from the weakness of their hearts, as if they were not Portuguese; on which account he would undeceive them all, for to Portugal they would not return unless they brought word to the King of that which he had so strongly commended to them, and that he took the same account of death as did any one of them. While they were at this point a sudden wind arose, with so great a concussion of thunder and darkness, and a stronger blast than they had yet experienced, and the sea rose so much that the ships could not see one another, except when they were upheaved by the seas, when they seemed to be among the clouds. They hung out lights so as not to part company, for the anxiety and fear which the captain-major felt was the losing one of the ships from his company, so that the seamen would put back to Portugal by force, as, indeed, they had very much such a desire in their hearts. But the captains took very great care of this, because Vasco da Gama, before going out to Lisbon, when conversing alone with the Jew Zacuto in the monastery, had received from him much information as to what he should do during his voyage, and especially recommendations of great watchfulness never to let the ships part company, because if they separated it would be the certain destruction of all of them. Vasco da Gama took great care of this, personally, and by means of his servants and relations in whom he trusted; and this they attended to with much greater solicitude after they heard the sailors say that they were many, and the captains only a few single men, and in fact they had in their minds such an intention of rising up against the captains, and by force putting back to Portugal, and they thought that, if it became necessary to arrest them for this and bring them before the King, he would have mercy upon them, and, should they not find mercy, they preferred rather to die there where their wives and children and fathers were, and in their native country, and not in the sea to be eat by the fishes. With such thoughts they all spoke to one another secretly, determining to carry it out, and trusting that the King would not hang them all for the good reasons which they would give him; or else to secure their lives they would go to Castile until they were pardoned. This was the greatest insolence they were guilty of; and so they decided upon executing their plan. In taking this decision they did not perceive the danger of death, into which they were going more than ever. In the ship of Nicolas Coelho there was a sailor who had a brother who lived with Nicolas Coelho, and was foster-brother of a son of his; and the sailor brother told this boy of what they had all determined to do. This boy, being very discreet, said to his brother that they should all preserve great secrecy, so as not to be found out, for it was a case of treason, and he warned his brother not to tell anyone that he had mentioned such a thing to him. The boy, on account of the affection which he had for his master Nicolas Coelho, discovered the matter to him in secret, and he at once gave the boy a serious warning to be very discreet in this matter, that they should not perceive that he had told him anything of the kind. With the firm determination which Nicolas Coelho at once formed to die sooner than allow himself to be seized upon, he became very vigilant both by day and night, and warned the boy to try to learn with much dissimulation all that they wanted to do and by what means. The boy told him that they would not do it unless they could first concert with the other ships, so that they all should mutiny; at that Nicolas Coelho remained more at ease, but was always very much on his guard for himself. As the storm did not abate, but rather seemed to increase, and as the cries and clamor of the people were very great, beseeching him to put back, Nicolas Coelho dissembled with them, saying: "Brothers, let us strive to save ourselves from this storm, for I promise you that as soon as I can get speech with the captain-major I will require him to put back, and you will see how I will require it of him." With this they remained satisfied. Some days having passed thus with heavy storms, the Lord was pleased to assuage the tempest a little and the sea grew calm, so that the ships could speak one another; and Nicolas Coelho, coming up to speak, shouted to the captain-major that "it would be well to put about, since every moment they had death before their eyes, and so many men who went in their company were so piteously begging with tears and cries to put back the ships. And if we do not choose to do so, it would be well if the men should kill or arrest us, and then they would put back or go where it was convenient to save their lives; which we also ought to do. If we do not do it, let each one look out for himself, for thus I do for my part, and for my conscience' sake, for I would not have to give an account of it to the Lord." Paulo da Gama, who also had come up within speaking distance, heard all this. When they had heard these words of Nicolas Coelho, who, on ending his speech, at once begun to move away, the captain-major answered him that he would hold a consultation with the pilot and his crew, and that, whatever he determined to do, he would make a signal to him of his resolution. During this time they lay hove to in the smooth water, because the wind never changed from its former point. Vasco da Gama, as he was very quick-witted, at once understood what Nicolas Coelho's words meant, and called together all the crew, and said to them that he was not so valiant as not to have the fear of death like themselves, neither was he so cruel as not to feel grieved at heart at seeing their tears and lamentations, but that he did not wish to have to give account to God for their lives, and for that reason he begged them to labor for their safety, because if the bad weather came again he had determined to put back, but, to disculpate himself with the King, it was incumbent upon him to draw up a document of the reasons for putting back, with their signatures. At this they all raised their hands to heaven, saying that its mercy was already descending upon them, since it was softening the heart of the captain-major and inclining him to put back, and they said they all would sign the great service which he would render to God and to the King by putting back. Then the captain-major said that there was no need of the signatures of all, but only of those who best understood the business of the sea. Then the pilot and master named them, and they were three seamen. Upon this the captain-major retired to his cabin, and told his servants to stand at the door of the cabin, and put inside the clerks to draw up the document, and ordered the three seamen to enter; and, dissembling, he made inquiries as to returning to port, and all was written down and they signed it. He then ordered them to go down below to another cabin which he had beneath his own for a store-cabin, and he ordered the clerk to go down also with them, and he summoned the master and pilot and ordered them below also, telling them to go and sign, as the clerk was there. Then he called up the seamen, one by one, and ordered them to be put in irons by his servants in his cabin, and heavy irons for the master and pilot. All being well ironed and bound, the captain-major turned them out, and called all the men, ordering the master and pilot at once to give up to him all the articles which they had belonging to the art of navigation, or, if not, that he would at once execute them. Being greatly afraid they gave everything up to him. Then Vasco da Gama, holding the instruments all in his hand, flung them into the sea and said: "See here, men, that you have neither master nor pilot, nor anyone to show you the way from henceforward, because these men whom I have arrested will return to Portugal below the deck, if they do not die before that [for he was aware that they had agreed among one another to rise up and return by force to Portugal, and on that account had cast everything into the sea]; and I do not require master nor pilot, nor any man who knows the art of navigation, because God alone is the master and pilot who has to guide and deliver us by his mercy if we deserve it, and, if not, let his will be done. To him you must commend yourselves and beg mercy. Henceforward let no one speak to me of putting back, for know from me for a certainty that, if I do not find information of what I have come to seek, to Portugal I do not return." Seeing and hearing these things, the crew became much more terrified, and with much greater fear of death, which they held as certain, not having either pilot or master, nor anyone who knew how to navigate a ship. Then the prisoners and all the crew on their knees begged him for mercy, with loud cries; the prisoners saying that they, being ignorant men and of faint heart, had come to an understanding to put the ship about and return to the King and offer themselves for death, if he chose to give it them, and they would have taken him a prisoner, that the King might see that he was not to blame for putting back; but this was not to have been done, except with the will of all the people of the other ships; but since God had discovered this to him before they had carried it out, let him show them clemency; for well they saw that they deserved death from him, which was more than the chains which they bore. All the crew frequently called out to him for clemency, and not to put the prisoners below the decks, where they would soon die. Then the captain-major, showing that he only did it at their entreaty, and not for any need which he had of them, ordered them to remain in their cabins in the forecastle, still in irons, and forbade their giving any directions for the navigation of the ship, except only for the trimming of the sails and the work of the ship. Vasco da Gama then ran alongside of the other ships and spoke them, saying that he had put his pilot and master in irons, in which he would bring them back to the kingdom, if God pleased that they should return there; and, that they should not imagine that he had any need of their knowledge, he had flung into the sea all the implements of their art of navigation, because he placed his hopes in God alone, who would direct them and deliver them from the perils among which they were going, and on that account, since he had now made his men secure, let them secure themselves as they pleased; and without waiting for an answer he sheered off. Nicolas Coelho felt great joy in his heart on hearing from the captain-major that he had got his pilot and master thus secured from rising against him, since he had put them in irons; and without much dissimulation he spoke to master and pilot and seamen, saying that he was much grieved at the captain-major's way of treating his ship's officers, whom he stood so much in need of in the labors they were undergoing, but what he had done was because of his being of so strong and thorough a temperament, as they all knew, and he had not chosen to wait for them to make entreaty for the liberty of the prisoners, but that whenever the ships again spoke one another he would do this. This all the crew begged him to do, with loud cries of mercy, since they would follow the flag-ship wherever it went. This Nicolas Coelho promised them, so they remained contented. Paulo da Gama had other conversations with the officers of his ship, with much urbanity, for he was a man of gentle disposition; he also promised them that he would entreat his brother on behalf of the prisoners, and bade all pray God for the saving of their lives, and that all would end well; so that all remained consoled. While these things were happening the wind did not shift its direction, but, the sea being smoother, the ships were more easy, though they let in so much water that they never left off pumping. The captain-major saw this and that the ships had an absolute need of repairs; and also because they had no more water to drink, because, with the tossing about in the storm, many barrels had broken and given way; under such great pressure, he stood in to land under sail, for the weather was moderate and was beginning to be favorable; all were praying to God for mercy, and that he would grant them a haven of safety. Which God was pleased to do in his mercy, for presently he showed them land, at which it seemed that all were resuscitated from the death which they looked upon as certain if the ships were not repaired. After that the wind came free, and they sailed along the land for several days without finding where to put in; this was now in January of the year 1498. Thus they ran close to the land, with a careful lookout, for they did not dare to leave the land, from the great peril in which the ships were from the great leakage. Proceeding in this way, one day they found themselves at dawn in the mouth of a large river, into which the captain-major entered, for he always went first; and all entered, and found within a large bay sheltered from all winds, in which they anchored, and all exclaimed three times, "The mercy of the Lord God!" for which reason they gave this river the name of the River of Mercy. Here they soon caught much good fish, with which the sick improved, as it was fresh food, and the water of the river was very good. Now, at this time, in all the ships there were not more than a hundred fifty men, for all the rest had died. Soon after arriving at this place the captain-major went to see his brother and Nicolas Coelho, and they conversed, relating their hardships; and Nicolas Coelho related the treason which his men were preparing, to take him prisoner and return to Portugal, and they did not do it from the fear they had that the captain-major would follow after them, and if he caught them would have hanged them all; and they only waited for all to agree to mutiny; and he had sought those feigned words which he had spoken, and it had pleased God that Vasco da Gama had understood them, so that by his imprisoning his officers at once all had remained secure. So all gave praise to the Lord for having delivered them from such great perils. Then they settled about refitting the ships, for they had all that was necessary for doing it. Although they had a beach and tides for laying the ships aground, for greater security it was ordered that they should be heeled over while afloat, and thus it was arranged for by all of them. While they were on the quarter deck, Paulo da Gama entreated his brother to set the prisoners at liberty, which he did, setting free the sailors, and the master and pilot, with the condition that, if God should bring them back to Lisbon, when he went before the King he would present them to him in the same manner in chains, not to do them any harm, but only that his difficulties might be credited, and that for this he would give him greater favors; at which all the crews felt much satisfaction. Afterward they spoke with all the officers, and arranged for careening the ships, and went to look at them. They found there was no repairing the ship of Nicolas Coelho, as it had many of the ribs and knees broken. For that reason they at once decided to break it up; and then they cut out its masts, and much timber and planks of the upper works, which, with the yards and spars of the other ships, they lashed together and fastened, and made a great frame, which they put under the side of the ship to raise it more out of the water; for this purpose they then discharged from the captain-major's ship into that of his brother, which was brought alongside, all that they could of the stores and goods; and everything heavy below decks they put on one side of the ship, which caused it to heel over very much, and with the timber under the side, and the tackle fitted to the main-mast, they canted the ship over on one side so much that they laid her keel bare; and on the outer side they put planks, upon which all the crew got to work at the ship, some cleaning the planks from the growth of sea-weed, others extracting the calking, which was quite rotten, from the seams; and the calkers put in fresh oakum and then pitched it over, for they had a stove in a boat where they boiled the pitch. The captains were occupied with their own work day and night, and gave much food and drink to the crews, so that they used such despatch that in one day and one night, by morning they had finished one side of the ship, very well executed, though with great labor in drawing out the water from the ship, which leaked very much lying thus on one side. When she was upright they turned her over on the other side, and did the same work, much better performed because the ship did not leak so much; and when it was completed and the ship upright, it was so sound and water-tight that for two days there was no water in the pump. Then they loaded it again with its stores, and transshipped to it the stores of the other ship, upon which they executed the before-mentioned calking and repairs, so that it became like new. They then fitted them inside with several knees and ribs and inner planking, and all that was requisite, with great perfection, and collected the yards, spars, and all that they had need of belonging to the ship São Miguel; and the captain-major took Nicolas Coelho on board of his ship, entertaining him well. They then took away from the ship much wood for their use and beached the ship, and took away its rudder and undid it, and stowed away its wood and iron-works, in case of its being wanted for the other ships, because they had all been built of the same pattern and size, as a precaution that all might be able to take advantage of any part of them. Then they burned the ship in order to recover the nails, which were in great quantity, and a great advantage for other necessities which they met with later. After they had thus repaired the ships, the captain-major sent Nicolas Coelho with twenty men in a boat to go and discover the river; and he, after ascending it for two leagues, found woods and verdure, and farther on he found some canoes which were fishing, and the men in them were dark, but not very black; they were naked, having only their middles covered with leaves of trees and grass. These men, when they saw the boat, came to it and entered it in a brutish manner, and were in a state of amazement. No one knew how to speak to them, and they did not understand the signs which were made to them. So Nicolas Coelho made them go back to their canoes, and returned to the ships, but of the canoes one followed after the boat, and the others returned to take the news to their villages. These men who came with the boat, at once, without any fear, entered the ship and sat down to rest, as if they were old acquaintance; no one knew how to speak to them. Then they gave them biscuit and cakes and slices of bread with marmalade; this they did not understand until they saw our people eat, then they ate it, and, as they liked the taste, they ate in a great hurry, and would not share with one another. While this was going on they saw many canoes coming, and larger ones, with many of those people also naked, with tangled hair like Kaffirs, without any other arms than some sticks like half lances, hardened in the fire, with sharp points greased over. The captain-major, seeing the other canoes coming, ordered the first come to go to their canoe, which they did unwillingly, and went out and remained to speak with those that were arriving, and went their way. The others arrived, and all wanted to come on board; as they were more than a hundred, the captain-major would not allow them, only ten or twelve, who brought some birds which were something like hens, and some yellow fruit of the size of walnuts, a very well-tasted thing to eat, which our men would not touch, and they, seeing that, ate them for our people to see, who, on tasting them, were much pleased with them; they killed one of the birds, and found it very tender and savory to eat, and all its bones were like those of a fowl. The captain-major ordered biscuit and wine to be given them, which they would not touch till they saw our people drink. He also ordered a looking-glass to be given them; and when they saw it they were much amazed, and looked at one another, and again looked at the mirror, and laughed loudly and made jokes, and spoke to the others who were in the canoe. They went away with the looking-glass, highly delighted, and left six birds and much of the fruit, and all went away; and in the afternoon they came again, but bringing a quantity of those birds, at which our men rejoiced very much, and filled hencoops with them, because they gave them and were satisfied with anything that was given them, especially white stuffs; so that the seamen cut their shirts in pieces, with which they bought so many of these birds that they killed and dried them in the sun, and they kept very well. Here it was observed that in this river there were no flies, for they never saw any all the time they were there, which was twenty days; and they went away because the crew began to fall ill. It seems that it was from that fruit, which was very delicious to eat; and the principal ailment was that their gums swelled and rotted, so that their teeth fell out, and there was such a foul smell from the mouth that no one could endure it. The captain-major provided a remedy for this, for he ordered that each one should wash his mouth with his own water each time he passed it, by doing which in a few days they obtained health. The captain-major made a hole with pickaxes in a stone slab at the entrance of this river, and set up a marble pillar, of which he had brought many for that purpose, which had two escutcheons, one of the arms of Portugal, and another, on the other side, of the sphere, and letters engraved in the stone which said, "Of the Lordship of Portugal, Kingdom of Christians." The captain-major, seeing how much the seamen and masters and pilots worked, especially his own, notwithstanding the imprisonment which he had inflicted upon them, when he was about to quit this River of Mercy, made them all come to his ship, where he addressed them all, beseeching them not to suffer weakness to enter their hearts, which would induce them to wish to commit another such error by harboring thoughts of treason, which is so hideous before God, and always brings a bad end to those who engage in it; he said that he well saw that faint-heartedness was the cause of what had passed, and that he forgave all. And that since the Lord had been pleased to deliver them from so many dangers as they had passed up to that time, by his great mercy, therefore they should put their trust in him, who would conduct them in such manner as to obtain the result which they were going in search of; by which they would gain such great honors and favors as the King would grant them on their return to Portugal; and he would present them to the King, and would relate their great labors and services, and that they ought to bear in remembrance these great advantages, which would be such a cause of rejoicing for all of them. They, with tears of joy, all answered, "Amen, amen, may the Lord so will it of his great mercy." And they weighed anchors and went out of the river with a land-breeze. Sailing with a fair wind, they got sight of land, which the pilots foretold before they saw it; this was a great mountain which is on the coast of India, in the kingdom of Cananor, which the people of the country in their language call the mountain Delielly, and they call it of the rat, and they call it Mount Dely, because in this mountain there were so many rats that they never could make a village there. As it was the custom to give the fees of good news to the pilots when they see the land, they gave to each of the pilots a robe of red cloth and ten testoons; and they went on approaching the land until they saw the beach, and they ran along it and passed within sight of a large town of thatched houses inside a bay, which the pilots said was named Cananor, where many skiffs were going about fishing, and several came near to see the ships and were much surprised and went ashore to relate that these ships had so much rigging and so many sails and white men; which having been told to the King he sent some men of his own to see, but the ships had already gone far, and they did not go. In this country of India they are much addicted to soothsayers and diviners, especially on this coast of India, which is named the country of Malabar, and they call these diviners _canayates_. According to what was known later, there had been in this country of Cananor a diviner so diabolical, in whom they believed so much, that they wrote down all that he said, and preserved it like prophecies which would come to pass. They held a legend from him in which it was said that the whole of India would be taken and ruled over by a very distant king, who had white people, who would do great harm to those who were not their friends; and this was to happen a long time later, and he left signs of when it would be. In consequence of the great disturbance caused by the sight of these ships, the King was very desirous of knowing what they were, and he spoke to his diviners, asking them to tell him what ships were those and whence they came. The diviners conversed with their devils, and told him that the ships belonged to a great king and came from very far; and according to what they found written, these were the people who were to seize India by war and peace, as they had already told him many times, because the period which had been written down was concluded. The King, much moved, asked them whether his kingdom would receive much injury. They replied that our people would do no harm except to those who did it to them. Upon this the King became very thoughtful, and talked of this frequently with his people, who very much contradicted what the diviners said, and they told him not to believe them, for in this they never hit upon the truth, because at the time that our ships arrived more than four hundred years had elapsed since in one year more than eight hundred sail of large and small ships had come to India from the ports of Malacca and China and the Lequeos, with people of many nations, and all laden with merchandise of great value, which they brought for sale; and they had come to Calicut, and had run along the coast and had gone to Cambay; and they were so numerous that they had filled the country, and had settled as dwellers in all the towns of the sea-coast, where they were received and welcomed like merchants, which they were. When those people arrived thus on the coast of Malabar everybody considered that they were the people whom their prophecies mentioned as those who would take India, and they had inquired of the diviners, who, looking at their records, told them not to be afraid, since the time when India was to be taken had not yet arrived. Thus it was; for those people had gone over all India, trading and selling their merchandise during many years, in which many of them married and established their abodes and became naturalized in the country, and mixed up with the inhabitants of the country. Many others returned to their own country, and as no more ever arrived, they went on diminishing in number, until they came to an end; but a numerous progeny remained from them, and because they were people of large property, and numerous in the towns where they resided, they had a quarter set apart, like as in Portugal and Castile in other times there used to be Jewries and Moorish quarters set apart; and they built houses for their idols, sumptuous edifices, which are to be seen at this day; and in the space of a hundred years there did not remain one. All this they had got thus recorded in their legends, and since at that time so many people did not take India, how was it to be taken now by people who came from such a distance, and who would not come in sufficient numbers to be able to conquer it? and they mocked at what the soothsayers said. But the King, who put great trust in them, and whose heart divined what was going to come to pass, spoke to a soothsayer in whom he placed great belief, and told him to look and see upon what grounds he made his assertions; because, if it was as he had been saying, he would labor to establish peace with the Portuguese in such a manner as to make his kingdom secure forever, and in this he would spend part of his treasure. The soothsayer answered: "Sire, I am telling you the truth, that these men will not bring so many people with them to seize upon countries and realms, but those who come, in whatever number they may be, will be able to prevail more with their ships than all as many as go upon the sea, on which account they must be masters of the sea, in which case of necessity the people of the land must obey them; and when they shall have become powerful at sea, what will happen to your kingdom if you have not secured peace with them? I tell you the truth, and you will see it with your eyes; and now follow what counsel you please." The King answered, "My heart tells me that you are speaking the truth, and I will do that which is incumbent upon me." The diviner said to him, "If before five years you do not see that I have told you the truth, order my head to be cut off." Upon which the King remained quite convinced, and determined in his heart to establish with the Portuguese all the peace and friendship that was possible. And because soon after news arrived that our people were at the city of Calicut, which is twelve leagues from Cananor, the King sent men to Calicut who always came to tell him of what happened there to our men. The ships continued running along the coast close to land, for the coast was clear, without banks against which to take precautions; and the pilots gave orders to cast anchor in a place which made a sort of bay, because there commenced the city of Calicut. This town is named Capocate, and on anchoring there a multitude of people flocked to the beach, all dark and naked, only covered with cloths half way down the thigh, with which they concealed their nakedness. All were much amazed at seeing what they had never before seen. When news was taken to the King he also came to look at the ships, for all the wonder was at seeing so many ropes and so many sails, and because the ships arrived when the sun was almost set; and at night they lowered out the boats, and Vasco da Gama went at once for his brother and Nicolas Coelho, and they remained together conversing upon the method of dealing with this King, since here was the principal end which they had come to seek; it seemed to him that it would be best to comport himself as an ambassador, and to make him his present, always saying that they had been separated from another fleet which they came to seek for there, and that the captain-major had come and brought him letters from the King. This they agreed upon together, and that Vasco da Gama should go on shore with that message sent by the captain-major, who carried the standard at the peak; they also talked of the manner in which these things were to be spoken of. When all was well decided upon, Nicolas Coelho returned to the ship, and Vasco da Gama remained with his brother talking with the Moor Taibo (the broker), who told him not to go on shore without hostages; that such was the custom of men who newly arrived at the country; and the Moor said that this King of Calicut was the greatest king of all the coast of India, and on that account was very vain, and he was very rich from the great trade he had in this city. [Footnote 1: Translated from the Portuguese by Henry E. J. Stanley.] [Footnote 2: Herodotus tells us that Phoenicians rounded this cape as early as B.C. 605.] COLUMBUS DISCOVERS SOUTH AMERICA A.D. 1498 CLEMENTS ROBERT MARKHAM On September 25, 1493, Columbus sailed from Palos and began his second voyage of discovery. He had seventeen vessels and about fifteen hundred men. In November he discovered Dominica in the West Indies. Arriving at La Navidad, Española (Haiti), he found that the colony which he had left there on returning from his first visit had been killed by the Indians. At a point farther east he founded Isabella, the first European town in the New World. In April, 1594, he, sailed westward and along the south shore of Cuba, which he mistook for a peninsula of Asia. He next discovered Jamaica, and in September returned to Isabella. The Indians rose in rebellion against the Spaniards, who had ill-used them, and Columbus quelled the insurrection, in a battle on the Vega Real, April 25, 1495. He had before planned for the enslavement of hostile Indians, an act from which his reputation has somewhat suffered. Owing to hardship and discontent, some of the colonists carried complaints to Spain. Bishop Fonseca, who had charge of colonial affairs, upheld the complainants, and in 1495 Juan Aguado was sent as royal commissioner to Española. Aguado prepared a report, fearing the effects of which, Columbus returned to Spain at the same time (1496) with him. A brother of Columbus was left in charge of the government at Española. The Spanish sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella, dismissed the charges against Columbus, and on May 30, 1498, he sailed from San Lucar on his third voyage to the New World. The great navigator was no longer the powerful, enduring man of six years before. Exposure, months of sleepless watching, anxiety, and tropical fevers had at length done their work. The bright intellect, the vivid imagination, the great heart, the generous nature, would be the same until death, but the constitution was shattered. The admiral now suffered from ophthalmia, gout, and a complication of diseases. The last six years of his life were destined to be a time of much and cruel suffering, aggravated by ingratitude, perfidy, and injustice. In fitting out the third expedition every petty annoyance and obstruction that the malice of Bishop Fonseca could invent was used to thwart and delay the admiral. Each subordinate official knew that insolence to the object of the Bishop's envy and dislike, and neglect of his wishes, were the surest ways to the favor of his chief. One creature of Fonseca, named Jimeno de Briviesca, carried his insolence beyond the bounds of the endurance even of the dignified and long-suffering admiral, who very properly took him by the scruff of the neck on one occasion and kicked him off the poop of the flag-ship. The delays of Fonseca and his agents caused incalculable injury to the public service, as will presently appear. The sovereigns had ordered that six million maravedis--about ten thousand dollars--should be granted for the equipment of the expedition, and that eight vessels should be provided. The contractor for provisions was Jonato Berardi, a Florentine merchant settled at Seville; and, owing to his death, the contracting work fell upon his assistant Amerigo Vespucci, who was very actively employed on this service from April, 1497, to May, 1498. In 1492 Vespucci came to Spain as a partner of an Italian trader at Cadiz named Donato Nicolini, and he afterward became the chief clerk or agent of Berardi. It was thus that Columbus first became acquainted with Amerigo Vespucci, when the admiral had reached the ripe age of forty-five. As for his provisions, a good deal of the meat turned bad on the voyage, and the contract was not very satisfactorily carried out. It is strange that this beef and biscuit contractor should have given his name to the New World, but perhaps not more strange than that a bacon contractor should be the patron saint of England and of Genoa. The admiral was most anxious to despatch supplies and re-enforcements to his brother, and he succeeded in sending off two caravels in advance, under the command of Hernandez Coronel, who had been appointed chief magistrate of Espafiola. The other vessels consisted of two naos, or ships of a hundred tons, and four caravels. After months of harassing and unnecessary delay, they dropped down the Guadalquiver from Seville and the admiral sailed. He touched at Porto Santo and Madeira, and reached Gomera on May 19th. Columbus had become aware, through information collected from the natives of the islands, that there was extensive land, probably a continent, to the southward. He had also received a letter from a skilled and learned jeweller named Jaime Ferrer, dated August 5, 1495, in which it was laid down that the most valuable things came from very hot countries, where the natives are black or tawny. These and other considerations led him to determine to cross the Atlantic on a lower parallel than he had ever done before; and he invoked the Holy Trinity for protection, intending to name the first land that was sighted in their honor. But he was impressed with the importance of sending help to the colony without delay. He therefore detached one ship and two caravels from Gomera to make the voyage direct. The ship was commanded by Alonzo Sanchez de Carbajal of Baeza. One caravel was intrusted to Pedro de Arana, brother of Beatriz Enriquez and brother-in-law of the admiral. The other had for her captain a Genoese cousin, Juan Antonio Colombo. It will be remembered that Antonio, the brother of Domenico Colombo and uncle of the admiral, lived at the little coast village of Quinto, near Genoa, and had three sons--Juan Antonio, Mateo, and Amighetto. When these cousins heard of the greatness and renown of Christopher, they thought at least one of them might get some benefit from his prosperity. So the younger ones gave all the little money they could scrape together to enable the eldest to go to Spain. His illustrious kinsman welcomed him with affection, and as he was a sailor he received charge of a caravel, in which trust he proved himself, as Las Casas tells us, to be careful, efficient, and fit for command. The three vessels sailed from Gomera direct for Española on June 21st. Columbus continued his voyage of discovery with one vessel and two caravels. Pero Alonzo Niño, the pilot of the Niña in the first voyage, was with him. Herman Perez Matteos was another pilot, and there were a few other old shipmates in the squadron. The admiral touched at Buena Vista, one of the Cape de Verd Islands, remaining at anchor for a few days, and on July 5th he sailed away into the unknown ocean, for many days on a south-west course. His intention was to go south as far as the latitude of Sierra Leone, 8° 30' N., and then to steer west until he reached land. After ten days the vessels were in regions of calms, and the people began to suffer from the intense heat. The sun melted the tar of the rigging, and the seams of the decks began to open. For days and days the scorching heat continued, but at length there were some refreshing showers, and light breezes sprang up from the west. But their progress was very slow, and their stock of water nearly exhausted. So the admiral ordered the course to be altered to northwest, in hopes of reaching Dominica. It was July 31st, the people were parched with thirst, and yet no land had been seen. In the afternoon of that day the admiral's servant, Alonzo Perez of Huelva, went to the masthead, and reported land in the shape of three separate peaks. Columbus had declared his intention of naming the first land sighted after the Holy Trinity, and the coincidence of its appearing in the form of three peaks made a deep impression on his mind. The island of Trinidad retains its name to this day. The admiral gave heartfelt thanks to God, and all the crews chanted the _Salve Regina_ and other hymns of prayer and praise. Meanwhile the little squadron glided through the water, approaching the newly discovered land, and Columbus named the most eastern point "Cabo de la Galera," by reason of a great rock off it, which at a distance looked like a galley under sail. All along the coast the trees were seen to come down to the sea, the most lovely sight that eyes could rest on; and at last, on August 1st, an anchorage was found, and they were able to fill up with water from delicious streams and fountains. The main continent of South America was seen to the south, appearing like a long island, and it received the name of "Isla Santa." The point near the watering-place was called "Punta de la Playa." The western end of the island was named "Punta del Arenal," and here an extraordinary phenomenon presented itself. A violent current was rushing out through a channel or strait not more than two leagues wide, causing great perturbation of the sea, with such an uproar of rushing water that the crews were filled with alarm for the safety of the vessels. The admiral named the channel "La Boca de la Sierpe." He piloted his little squadron safely through it and reached the Gulf of Paria, named by him "Golfo de la Ballena." The land to the westward, forming the mainland of Paria, received the name of "Isla de Gracia." Standing across to the western side of the Gulf, the admiral was delighted with the beauty of the country and with the view of distant mountains. Near a point named "Aguja" the country was so fruitful and charming that he called it "Jardines," and here he saw many Indians, among them women wearing bracelets of pearls, and when they were asked whence the pearls were obtained they pointed to the westward. As many pearls as could be bartered from the natives were collected for transmission to the sovereigns, for here was a new source of wealth, another precious commodity from the New World. Columbus was astonished at the vast mass of fresh water that was pouring into the Gulf of Paria. He correctly divined the cause, and made the deduction that a river with such a volume of water must come from a great distance. His prescient mind showed him the mighty river Orinoco, the wide savannas, and the lofty range of the Andes; but the trammels of the erroneous measurements of astronomers bound them to Asia, and prevented him from picturing them to himself in the New World he had really discovered. That the land must be continuous appeared to be proved, not only from the deductions of science, but also from the Word of God. For he believed it to be established from the revealed Word (II Esdras vi. 42) that the ocean only covered one-seventh of the globe, and that the other six-sevenths was dry land. Moreover, his splendid intellect was united with a powerful imagination. When he had grasped the facts with masterly intuition, his fancy often raised upon them some strange theory, derived partly from his extensive reading, partly from his own teeming brain. Thinking that a long and rapid course was insufficient to account for the volume of water and the violence of the currents, he conceived the idea that the earth, though round, was not a perfect sphere, and that it rose in one part of the equinoctial line so as to be somewhat of a pear shape. Thus he accounted for the exceptional volume of water by the motion of rivers flowing down from the end of the pear. One step farther in the realms of fancy, and he indulged in a dream that this centre and apex of the earth's surface, with its mighty rivers, could be no other than the terrestrial paradise. Writing as one thought coursed after another in his teeming fancy, we find these passing whims of a vivid imagination embodied in the journal intended for the information of the sovereigns. But time was passing on, and it was important that he should convey the provisions with which his vessels were loaded to his infant colony. He had seen that another narrow channel led from the northern side of the gulf, and had named it "Boca del Dragon." On August 12th he had piloted his vessels to the Punta de Paria, and prepared to pass through the channel. At that critical moment it fell calm, while the two currents flowed violently toward the opening, where they met and formed a broken, confused sea. But the admiral made use of the currents, and by the exercise of consummate seamanship took his three vessels clear of the danger and out into the open sea. The islands of Tobago and Granada were sighted, receiving the names of "Asuncion" and "Concepcion." Then the rocks and islets to the westward came in view, named the "Testigos" and "Guardias," and the island "Margarita." The latter name shows that the admiral had obtained the correct information from the natives of Paria respecting the locality of the pearl-fishery. The admiral now crowded all sail to reach Espanola, intending to make a landfall at the mouth of the river Azuma, where he knew that his brother, the Adelantado (Governor), had founded the new city, and named it Santo Domingo, in memory of their old father, Domenico Colombo. But the current carried him far to the westward, and on August 19th he sighted the coast fifty leagues to leeward of the new capital. On hearing of his arrival on the coast, Bartolome got on board a caravel and joined him; but it was not until the 31st that the two brothers entered San Domingo together, the admiral for the first time. Young Diego, the third and youngest brother, welcomed them on their arrival. The admiral had been absent for two years and a half, during which time the Adelantado had conducted the government of the colony with remarkable vigor and ability. Yet, owing to the mutinous conduct of the worst of the settlers, there was a very disastrous report to make. When the Adelantado assumed the command on the departure of the admiral for Spain in March, 1496, his first step, in compliance with the instructions he had received, was to proceed to the valley on the south side of the island, in which the gold mine of Hayna was situated, and to build a fort, which he named "San Cristoval." He next, having received supplies and reënforcements, together with letters from the admiral, by the caravels under Nino, took steps for the foundation of the new capital. Still following his brother's instructions, he selected a site at the mouth of the river Azuma, where there were good anchorage in the bay and a fertile valley along the banks of the river. On a bank commanding the harbor a fortress was erected, and named "Santo Domingo," while the city was subsequently built on the east bank of the river. It became the capital of the colony. Before long Isabella, on the north coast, was entirely abandoned. Trees soon grew upon the streets and through the roofs of the houses. It presented a scene of wild desolation, and ghosts were believed to wander in crowds through the abandoned city. Ruins of the house of Columbus, of the church, and the fort can still be traced out by those who penetrate into the dense jungle which now covers that part of the coast. The next proceeding of the indefatigable Adelantado was the settlement of the beautiful province of Xaragua, forming the southwestern portion of the island. It was ruled over by a chief named Behechio, with whom dwelt the famous Anacaona, his sister, widow of Caonabo, but, unlike that fierce Carib, a constant friend of the Spaniards. Behechio met the Adelantado in battle array on the banks of the river Neyva, the eastern boundary of his dominions. But as soon as they were informed that the errand of the Spanish Governor was a peaceful one, both Behechio and Anacaona, who was a princess of great ability and of a most amiable disposition, received him with cordial hospitality. When, after a time, he opened the subject of tribute to them, they showed opposition. But Bartolome proved himself to be a masterly diplomatist, and in the end Behechio not only consented to impose a tribute, the details of which were amicably arranged, but undertook to collect and deliver it periodically to the Spanish authorities. These Indians were quite ready to submit to beings who appeared to be superior in power and intelligence to themselves. If the sovereigns of Spain had trusted Columbus and his brothers fully and completely, had established trading-stations and imposed a moderate tribute, and had absolutely prohibited the overrunning of the country by penniless and worthless adventurers, they would have had a rich and prosperous colony. The discontent and rebellion of the natives were solely caused by the misconduct of the Spaniards. An insurrection broke out in the Vega Real, headed by the chief Guarionex, who, after suffering innumerable wrongs from the Spaniards, was at last driven to desperation by an outrage on his wife. He assembled a number of dependent caciques, but the news was promptly communicated to the garrison of Fort Concepcion and forwarded to Santo Domingo. The Adelantado stamped out the rebellion with his accustomed vigor. He came by forced marches to Concepcion, and thence, without stopping, to the camp of the natives, who were completely taken by surprise. Guarionex and the other caciques were captured, and their followers dispersed. Always generous after victory, Bartolome Columbus released Guarionex at the prayer of his people, a measure which was alike magnanimous and politic. But it was impossible to rule over the natives satisfactorily unless the Spanish settlers could be forced to submit to the laws, and the Adelantado was not powerful enough to keep the bad characters in subjection. The loyal and decent men of the colony were in a small minority. The consequence was that the unfortunate Guarionex was again goaded into insurrection. On the approach of the Adelantado he fled into the mountains of Ciguey, on the northeast coast, and took refuge with a dependent cacique named Mayobanex, whose residence was near Cape Cabron, the western extreme of the Samana peninsula. A difficult and arduous mountain campaign followed, which Bartolome conducted with remarkable military skill. It ended in the capture and imprisonment of both the chiefs. Behechio now announced that he had collected the required tribute, consisting of a very large quantity of cotton, and that it was ready for delivery. The Adelantado therefore proceeded to Xaragua, and not only found this great store of cotton, but received an offer from the generous chief to supply him with as much cassava-bread as he needed for the use of the colony. This was a most acceptable present, for the lazy, ill-conditioned settlers had neglected to cultivate their fields, and a famine was imminent. The Adelantado ordered a caravel to be sent round to Xaragua to be freighted with cotton and bread, and returned himself to Isabella after taking a cordial farewell of his native friends. He had shown extraordinary talent in his government of the native population, and his rule had been a complete success. Always moderate in victory, he had suppressed the insurrections without bloodshed, and had conciliated the people by his moderation. He had made long and difficult marches, had subdued opposition by his readiness of resource and energy, and had administered the native affairs with humanity and excellent judgment. Unfortunately his power was insufficient to cope successfully with the insubordinate Spaniards. The ringleader of the mutineers was Francisco Roldan, a man whom Columbus had raised from the dust. He had been a servant; and the admiral, noting his ability, had intrusted him with some judicial functions. When he sailed for Spain he appointed Roldan chief justice of the colony. This ungrateful miscreant fostered discontent and mutiny by every art of persuasion and calumny at his command, and soon had a large band of worthless and idle ruffians ready to follow his lead. His first plan was to murder the Adelantado and seize the government, but he lacked the courage or the opportunity to put it into execution. His next step was to march into the Vega Real with seventy armed mutineers, and attempt to surprise Fort Concepcion. The garrison was commanded by a loyal soldier named Miguel Ballester, who closed the gates and defied the rebels, sending to the Adelantado for help. Bartolome at once hastened to his assistance, and on his arrival at Fort Concepcion he sent a messenger to Roldan, remonstrating with him, and urging him to return to his duty. But Roldan found his force increasing by the adhesion of all the discontented men in the colony, and his insolence increased with his power. All would probably have been lost but for the opportune arrival of Pedro Hernandez Coronel in February, 1498, who had been despatched from San Lucar by the admiral in the end of the previous year with reënforcements. He also brought out the confirmation of Bartolome's rank as Adelantado. The Adelantado was thus enabled to leave Fort Concepcion and establish his head-quarters at Santo Domingo. He sent Coronel as an envoy to Roldan, to endeavor to persuade him to return to his duty; but the mutineer feared to submit, believing that he had gone too far for forgiveness. He marched into the province of Xaragua, where he allowed his dissolute followers to abandon themselves to every kind of excess. The three caravels which had been despatched from Gomera by the admiral unfortunately made a bad landfall, and appeared off Xaragua. Roldan concealed the fact that he was a leader of mutineers, and, receiving the captains in his official capacity, induced them to supply him with stores and provisions, while his followers busily endeavored to seduce the crews, and succeeded to some extent. When Roldan's true character was discovered, the caravels put to sea with the loyal part of their crews, while Alonzo Sanchez de Carbajal, a loyal and thoroughly honest man, who was zealous for the good of the colony, remained behind to endeavor to persuade Roldan to submit to the admiral's authority. He only succeeded in obtaining from him a promise to enter into negotiations with a view to the termination of the deplorable state of affairs he had created, and with this Carbajal proceeded to Santo Domingo. Such was the state of affairs when Columbus arrived at the new seat of his government. His brother had ruled with ability and vigor during his absence, had administered native affairs very successfully, but his power had been insufficient to subdue the band of Spanish miscreants who were still in open mutiny. The admiral was filled with grief and disappointment at the turn affairs had taken. A thoroughly loyal man himself, with no thought or desire but for the good of the colony, he was thwarted by treacherous miscreants, who cared for nothing but the accumulation of riches for themselves, and a life of indulgence and licentious ease. After long consideration he resolved upon a policy of conciliation. The unsettled state of affairs was bringing ruin on the island, and the restoration of peace was an absolute necessity. The magnanimous Genoese was incapable of personal resentment. The men themselves were, indeed, beneath his contempt; but he felt bound to treat with them, and even to make great concessions, if necessary, for the good of the public service. The welfare of the colony was his sole object, and he did not hesitate to sacrifice every personal feeling to his sense of duty. It is with some impatience that one finds the grand schemes of discovery and colonization interrupted by such contemptible means, and the course of the narrative checked by the necessity for recording, however briefly, the paltry dissensions of vile miscreants such as Roldan and his crew. The mutineers were most unwilling to make any agreement. They were leading the sort of lawless and licentious life that exactly suited them, and were disinclined to submit to any authority. The interests of their leaders, however, were not quite the same, and the acceptance of advantageous terms would suit them. Carbajal was employed by the admiral to conduct the negotiations, while the veteran Ballester returned to Spain in November, 1498, with the news of the rebellion, and a request from the admiral that a learned and impartial judge might be sent out to decide all disputes. It was finally agreed that Roldan should return to his duty, still retaining the office of chief justice; that all past offences should be condoned, and that he and his followers should receive grants of land, with the services of the Indians. The admiral consented to these terms most unwillingly, and under the conviction that this was the only way to avoid the greater evil of civil dissension. He resolved, however, that any future outbreak must be firmly and vigorously suppressed by force. Although Roldan had now resumed his position as a legitimate official ready to maintain order, it could hardly be expected that his fatal example would not be followed by other unprincipled men of the same stamp when the opportunity offered. Trouble arose owing to the conduct of a young Castilian named Hernando de Guevara. Roldan was established in Xaragua, when the youthful gallant arrived at the house of his cousin, Adrian de Mujica, one of the ringleaders in Roldan's mutiny, and fell in love with Higueymota, the daughter of Anacaona. Guevara, for some misconduct, had been ordered by the admiral to leave the island, but instead of obeying he had made his way to Xaragua, and caused trouble by this love passage, for he had a rival in Roldan himself, who ordered him to desist from the pursuit of the daughter of Anacaona, and to return to Santo Domingo. Guevara refused to obey, but he was promptly arrested and sent as a prisoner to the capital. When his cousin Mujica, who was then in the Vega Real, received the news, he raised a mutiny, offering rewards to the soldiers if they would follow him in an attempt to rescue Guevara. The admiral, though suffering from illness, showed remarkable energy on this occasion. Marching very rapidly at the head of eighteen chosen men, he surprised the mutineers, captured the ringleader, and carried him off to the fort of Concepcion. Some severity had now become incumbent upon the authorities, and Mujica was condemned to death. The admiral regretted the necessity, but in no other way could a motive be supplied to deter others from keeping the country in a constant state of lawless disorder. Guevara, Riqueline, and other disorderly characters were imprisoned in the fort at Santo Domingo, and by August, 1500, peace was quite established throughout the island. Thus had Columbus restored tranquillity to the colony. By prudent and conciliatory negotiations, during which he had exercised the most wonderful self-abnegation and patience, he had succeeded in averting the serious danger caused by the formidable revolt of Roldan. But as the habit of disorder was threatening to become chronic, he wisely took another way with the sedition of Mujica, maintaining order by a resort to prompt and vigorous action, and making a salutary example which was calculated to be deterrent in its effects. With the restoration of peace, trade revived and prosperity began to return. The receivers of grants of land found that they had a stake in the country, and sought to derive profit from their crops. Similar activity appeared at the mines, and the building at Santo Domingo progressed rapidly. The admiral began to hope that the first troubles incident to an infant colony were over, and that the time had arrived for Spain to feel the advantages of his great achievement. He now looked forward to further and more important discoveries followed by colonization on the main continent. Yet at this very time a blow was about to come from a quarter whence it was least to be expected, which was destined to shatter all the hopes of this long-suffering man, and dissipate all his bright visions of the future[1]. [Footnote:1 On the arrival (August 24, 1500) of Francisco de Boabdilla as royal commissioner, he deposed Columbus and his brothers and sent them in chains to Spain. Although they were immediately released, Columbus was not reinstated in his dignities. His fourth and final voyage (1502-1504) came far short of his anticipations]. ESTABLISHMENT OF SWISS INDEPENDENCE A.D. 1499 HEINRICH ZSCHOKKE The powerful family of the Hapsburgs, still rulers of the Tyrol, or eastern portion of the Alps, long claimed authority over the western part as well. The severity of their rule led to an organized resistance on the part of the mountaineers, and the natural strength of the country secured to its defenders victory after victory. The battles of Morgarten (1315) and of Sempach (1386) were each accepted as final by their own generation; but the house of Hapsburg never formally relinquished its ancient rights, and its heads grew in power. From being dukes of Austria they advanced to be hereditary emperors of all Germany, and at length in 1499 the powerful Emperor Maximilian determined to enforce his double authority as duke and emperor. His projects were encouraged by the discord rife among the little states or cantons which composed the Swiss league. The following account of the war that ensued is from the pen of a well-known Swiss historian, and is perhaps colored by rather more enthusiasm and racial pride than historic accuracy. Yet the struggle was final. Never after did German or Austrian dispute the independence of the Swiss. The unfortunate consequences brought by success upon the natives are not only true, but profoundly worthy of note. Fortunately danger and trouble soon appeared from abroad. This united all the cantons anew, and was therefore salutary. Maximilian I of Austria was Emperor of Germany. He had received from France the country of Lower Burgundy, and, to hold it more securely, incorporated it with the German empire as a single circle. He wished to make Switzerland, also, such a German imperial circle. The Confederates refused, preferring to remain by themselves as they had been until then. In Swabia, the existing states had formed a league among themselves for the suppression of small wars and feuds. This pleased the politic Emperor; by becoming an associate, he placed himself at the head of the league, which he was able to direct for the aggrandizement of his house of Austria. He desired that the Confederates, also, should enter the Swabian League. The Swiss again refused, preferring to remain by themselves as before. The Emperor was irritated at this, and at Innspruck he said to the deputies of the Confederates: "You are refractory members of the empire; some day I shall have to pay you a visit, sword in hand." The deputies answered and said: "We humbly beseech your imperial majesty to dispense with such a visit, for our Swiss are rude men, and do not even respect crowns." The boldness of the Confederates wounded the Swabian League no less. Many provocations and quarrels took place, here and there, between the people on the borders, so that the city of Constance, for her own security, joined the Swabian League. For, one day, a band of valiant men of Thurgau, incited by the bailiff from Uri, had tried to surprise the city, in order to punish her for her bravadoes against the Swiss. Neither were the Austrians good neighbors to the Grisons. The Tyrol and Engadine were constantly discussing and disputing about markets, privileges, and tolls. Once, indeed, in 1476, the Tyrolese had marched armed into the valley of Engadine, but were driven back into their own country, through the narrow Pass of Finstermunz, with bloody heads. Now there was a fresh cause of quarrel. In the division of the Toggenburger inheritance, the rights of Toggenburg in the Ten Jurisdictions had fallen to the counts of Matsch, Sax, and Montfort, and afterward, 1478-1489, by purchase, to the ducal house of Austria. Hence much trouble arose. As the Grisons had equal cause with the Confederates to fear the power and purposes of Emperor Maximilian, the Gray League, 1497, and that of God's House, 1498, made a friendly and defensive alliance with Zurich, Lucerne, Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Zug, and Glarus. The Ten Jurisdictions dared not join them for fear of Austria. Then the Emperor restrained his anger no longer. And, though already burdened with a heavy war in the Netherlands, he sent fresh troops into the Tyrol, and the forces of the Swabian League advanced and hemmed in Switzerland from the Grison Pass, near Luziensteig, between the Rhetian mountains and Germany, along the Lake of Constance and the Rhine, as far as Basel. Then Switzerland and Rhetia were in great danger. But the Grisons rose courageously to defend their freedom, as did all the Confederates. The Sargansers, also, and the Appenzellers hastened to the Schollenberg; the banners of Valais, Basel, and Schaffhausen soon floated in view of the enemy. No man stayed at home. It was in February, 1499, that the strife began. Then eight thousand imperialists entered the Grison territory of Munsterthal and Engadine; Louis of Brandis, the Emperor's general, with several thousand men, surprised and held the Pass of Luziensteig, and, by the treachery of four burghers, the little city of Maienfeld. But the Grisons retook the Luziensteig, and eight hundred Swabians here found their death; the rest fled to Balzers. Then the Confederates passed the Rhine near Azmoos, and, with the Grisons, obtained a great victory near Treisen. The Swabian nobility, with ten thousand soldiers, were posted near St. John's, at Hochst and Hard, between Bregenz and Fussach. Eight thousand Confederates killed nearly half of the enemy's army, ascended as far as the forests of Bregenz, and imposed contributions on the country. Ten thousand other Confederates passed victoriously over the Hegau, and in eight days burned twenty villages, hamlets, and castles. Skirmish followed quickly upon skirmish, battle upon battle. The enemy, indeed, issuing from Constance, succeeded in surprising the Confederate garrison of Ermatingen while asleep, and in murdering in their beds sixty-three defenceless men. But they bloodily expiated this in the wood of Schwaderlochs, whence eighteen thousand of them, vanquished by two thousand Confederates, fled in such haste that the city gates of Constance were too narrow for the fugitives, and the number of their dead exceeded that of the Swiss opposed to them. A body of Confederates on the upper Rhine penetrated into Wallgau, where the enemy were intrenched near Frastenz, and, fourteen thousand strong, feared not the valor of the Swiss. But when Henry Wolleb, the hero of Uri, had passed the Langengasterberg with two thousand brave men, and burned the strong intrenchment, his heroic death was the signal of victory to the Confederates. They rushed under the thunder of artillery into the ranks of Austria and dealt their fearful blows. Three thousand dead bodies covered the battle-field of Frastenz. Such Austrians as were left alive fled in terror through woods and waters. Then each Swiss fought as though victory depended on his single arm; for Switzerland and Swiss glory, each flew joyously to meet danger and death, and counted not the number of the enemy. And wherever a Swiss banner floated, there was more than one like John Wala of Glarus, who, near Gams in Rheinthal, measured himself singly with thirty horsemen. The Grisons, also, fought with no less glory. Witness the Malserhaide in Tyrol, where fifteen thousand men, under Austrian banners, behind strong intrenchments, were attacked by only eight thousand Grisons. The ramparts were turned, the intrenchments stormed. Benedict Fontana was first on the enemy's wall. He had cleared the way. With his left hand holding the wide wound from which his entrails protruded, he fought with his right and cried: "Forward, now, fellow-leaguers! let not my fall stop you! It is but one man the less! To-day you must save your free fatherland and your free leagues. If you are conquered, you leave your children in everlasting slavery." So said Fontana and died. The Malserhaide was full of Austrian dead. Nearly five thousand fell. The Grisons had only two hundred killed and seven hundred wounded. When Emperor Maximilian, in the Netherlands, heard of so many battles lost, he came and reproached his generals, and said to the princes of the German empire: "Send to me auxiliaries against the Swiss, so bold as to have attacked the empire. For these rude peasants, in whom there is neither virtue nor noble blood nor magnanimity, but who are full of coarseness, pride, perfidy, and hatred of the German nation, have drawn into their party many hitherto faithful subjects of the empire." But the princes of the empire delayed to send auxiliaries, and the Emperor then learned, with increasing horror, that his army sent over the Engadine mountains to suppress the Grison League had been destroyed in midsummer by avalanches, famine, and the masses of rock which the Grisons threw down from the mountains; then that on the woody height of Bruderholz, not far from Basel, one thousand Swiss had vanquished more than four thousand of their enemies; that, shortly after, in the same region near Dornach, six thousand Confederates had obtained a brilliant victory over fifteen thousand Austrians, killing three thousand men, with their general, Henry of Furstenberg. Then the Emperor reflected that within eight months the Swiss had been eight times victorious in eight battles. And he decided to end a war in which more than twenty thousand men had already fallen, and nearly two thousand villages, hamlets, castles, and cities been destroyed. Peace was negotiated and concluded on September 22, 1499, in the city of Basel. The Emperor acknowledged the ancient rights and the conquests of the Confederates, and granted to them, moreover, the ordinary jurisdiction over Thurgau, which, with the criminal jurisdiction and other sovereign rights, had, until then, belonged to the city of Constance. Thenceforward the emperors thought no more of dissolving the Confederacy, or of incorporating it with the German empire. In the fields of Frastenz, of Malserhaide, and Dornach were laid the first foundation-stones of Swiss independence of foreign power. The confederated cantons thankfully acknowledged what Basel and Schaffhausen had constantly done in these heroic days for the whole Confederacy, and that warlike Appenzell had never been backward at the call of glory and liberty. Therefore Basel, June 9, 1501, and flourishing Schaffhausen, August 9, 1501, were received into the perpetual Swiss bond, and finally, 1513, Appenzell, already united in perpetual alliance with most of the cantons, was acknowledged as coequal with all the Confederates. Thus, in the two hundred fifth year after the deed of William Tell, the Confederacy of the Thirteen Cantons was completed. But Valais and Grisons were considered as cantons allied to the Confederacy, as were St. Gallen, Muhlhausen, Rothweil in Swabia, and other cities--all free places, subject to no prince--united with the Swiss by a defensive alliance. At that period, the thirteen cantons of the Swiss Confederacy were not yet, as now, equal in virtue of the bond, nor bound together directly by one and the same covenant. They were properly united only with the three cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, as with a common centre, but among themselves by special treaties. Each canton was attentive to its own interests and glory, seldom to those of the others or to the welfare of the whole Confederacy. Fear of the ambition and power of neighboring lords and princes had drawn them together more and more. So long as this fear lasted, their union was strong. As the governments were independent of each other so far as their covenants allowed, and of foreign princes also, they called themselves free Swiss. But within the country districts there was little freedom for the people. Only in the shepherd cantons--Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, also Zug, Glarus, and Appenzell--did the country people possess equal rights, and, in the city cantons, only the burghers of the cities; and often, even among these latter, only a few rich or ancient families. The rest of the people, dependent on the cities, having been either purchased or conquered, were subjects, often indeed serfs, and enjoyed only the limited rights which they had formerly possessed under the counts and princes. Even the shepherd cantons held subjects, whom they, like princes, governed by their bailiffs. And the Confederate cantons and cities would by no means allow their subjects to purchase their freedom, as the old counts and lords had formerly permitted the Confederates themselves to do. But the people cared little for liberty; made rude and savage by continued wars, they loved only quarrels and combats, revels and debauchery, when there was no war in their own country. The young men, greedy of booty, followed foreign drums and fought the battles of princes for hire. There were no good schools in the villages, and the clergy cared little for this. Indeed, the morals of the clergy were often no less depraved than those of the citizens and country people; even in the convents great disorders frequently prevailed with great wealth. Many of the priests were very ignorant; many drank, gambled, and blasphemed; many led shameless lives. In the chief cities of the cantons, debauchery and dissipation were rife. There was much division between citizens and councillors; envy and distrust between the different professions. The lords, when once seated in the great and small councils--legislative and executive--cared more for themselves and their families than for the welfare of the citizens; they endeavored to advance their sons and relatives, and to procure lucrative offices for them. In all the cantons there were certainly some great, patriotic souls who preferred the interests of their country to their own, but no one listened to them. As Switzerland had now no foreign wars to fear, and the neighboring kings and princes were pleased to have in their armies Swiss, for whose life and death they cared much less than for the life and death of their own subjects, the principal families of the city and country cantons took advantage of these circumstances to open fountains of wealth for themselves. The desire of the kings to enlist valiant Swiss favored the avidity of the council lords, as did the wish of the young men to get booty. In spite of the positive prohibition of the magistrates, thousands of young men often enlisted in foreign service, where most of them perished miserably, because no one cared for them. Therefore the governments judged it best to make treaties with the kings for the raising of Swiss regiments, commanded by national officers, subject to their own laws and regularly paid, so that each government could take care of its subjects when abroad. "Confederates! you require a vent for your energies," had Rudolf Reding of Schwyz already said, when, years before, he saw the free life of the young men after the Burgundian war. Now began the letting out of Swiss, Grisons, and Valaisians to foreign military service, by their governments. The first treaty of this nature was made by the King of France, 1479-1480, with the Confederates in Lucerne. Next the house of Austria hired mercenaries, 1499; the princes of Italy did the same, as did others afterward. Even the popes themselves wanted a lifeguard of Swiss; the first, 1503, was Pope Julius II, who was often engaged in war. Switzerland suffered much from this course. Many a field remained untilled, many a plough stood still, because the husbandman had taken mercenary arms. And, if he returned alive, he brought back foreign diseases and vices, and corrupted the innocent by evil example, for he had acquired but little virtue in the wars. Only the sons of the patricians and council lords obtained captaincies, commands, and riches, by which they increased their influence and consideration in the land, and could oppress others. They prided themselves on the titles of nobility and decorations conferred by kings, and imagined these to be of value, and that they themselves were more than other Swiss. When the kings perceived the cupidity and folly of the Swiss, they took advantage of them for their own profit, sent ambassadors into Switzerland, distributed presents, granted gratifications and pensions to their partisans in the councils, and for these the council lords became willing servants of foreign princes. Then one canton was French, another Milanese; one Venetian, another Spanish; but rarely was one Swiss. This redounded greatly to the shame of the Swiss. When the German Emperor and the King of France were, at the same time, canvassing the favor of the cantons and bargaining in competition for troops, so great was the contempt or insolence of the French ambassador at Bern, 1516, that he distributed the royal pensions to the lords by sound of trumpet. At Freiburg he poured out silver crowns upon the ground, and, while he heaped them up with a shovel, said to the bystanders, "Does not this silver jingle better than the Emperor's empty words?" So much had love of money debased the Swiss. The twelve cantons, Appenzell being the only exception, were at one moment allied with Milan against France, at the next with France against Milan. Milan was rightly called the Schwyzer's grave. It was not unusual for Confederates to fight against Confederates on foreign soil, and to kill each other for hire. The ecclesiastical lord, Matthew Schinner, Bishop of Sion in Valais, a very deceitful man, helped greatly to occasion this. According as he was hired, he intrigued in Switzerland, sometimes for the King of France, sometimes against France for the Pope, who, in payment, even made him cardinal and ambassador to the Confederacy. The mercenary wars of the Swiss upon foreign battle-fields were not wars for liberty or for honor; but these hirelings of princes maintained their reputation for valor even there. With the aid of several thousand Confederates, the King of France subjected the whole of Lombardy in the space of twenty days. But the expelled Duke of the country soon returned with five thousand Swiss, whom he had enlisted contrary to the will of the magistracy, to drive out the French. Then the King of France received twenty thousand men from the cantons with whom he was allied; maintained himself in Italy, and gave to the three cantons, Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, 1502-1503, the districts of Palenza, Riviera, and Bellenz. But, as soon as the King thought he could do without the Swiss, he paid them badly and irregularly. Cardinal Schinner, pleased at this, immediately shook a bag of gold, with fifty-three thousand guilders, in favor of the Pope and of Venice. At once, 1512, twenty thousand Swiss and Grisons crossed the high Alps and joined the Venetians against the French. The Grisons took possession of Valtelina, Chiavenna, and Bormio. They asserted that, a century before, an ejected duke of Milan had ceded these valleys to the bishopric of Coire. The Confederates of the twelve cantons subjected Lugano, Locarno, and Valmaggia. The French were driven out of Lombardy, and the young duke Maximilian Sforza, son of him who had been dispossessed by them, was reinstated in his father's inheritance at Milan. Victorious for him, the Confederates beat the French near Novara, June 6, 1513; two thousand Swiss fell, it is true, but ten thousand of the enemy. Still more murderous was the two-days' battle of Melegnano, September 14, 1515, in which barely ten thousand Swiss fought against fifty thousand French. They lost the battle-field, indeed, but not their honor. They sadly retreated to Milan, with their field-pieces on their backs, their wounded in the centre of their army. The enemy lost the flower of their troops, and called this action the "Battle of the Giants." Then the King of France, Francis I, terrified by a victory which resembled a defeat, made, in the next year, a perpetual peace with the Confederates, and, by money and promises, persuaded some to furnish him with troops; the others, that they would allow no enrolling by his enemies. Thus the Confederates once more helped him against the Emperor and Pope and against Milan, and the King concluded a friendly alliance with them in 1521. During many years they shed their blood for him on the battle-fields of Italy, without good result, without advantage, except that the Confederacy stood godmother to his new-born son. Each canton sent to Paris, for the _fête_, a deputy with a baptismal present of fifty ducats. More agreeable to the King than this present was the promptitude with which the Swiss sent sixteen thousand of their troops to his assistance in Italy. However, as they had lost, April 20, 1522, three thousand men near Bicocca; as of nearly fifteen thousand who entered Lombardy, 1524, hardly four thousand came back; as, finally, in the battle near Pajia, February 24, 1525, in which the King himself became prisoner to the Emperor, the Swiss experienced a fresh loss of seven thousand men, they by degrees lost all taste for Italian wars. AMERIGO VESPUCCI IN AMERICA A.D. 1499 AMERIGO VESPUCCI It was the claim of Amerigo Vespucci that he accompanied four expeditions to the New World, and that he wrote a narrative of each voyage. According to Amerigo, the first expedition sailed from Spain in 1497; the second, of which his own account is here given, in 1499; both by order of King Ferdinand. Grave doubt has been thrown upon the first of these expeditions, the sole authority for which is Vespucci himself. The name America was given to two continents in honor of this naval astronomer on the authority of an account of his travels published in 1507, in which he is represented as having reached the mainland in 1497. The justice of this naming has always been and still remains a matter of warm dispute among historical critics. But at the age of almost fifty--he was born in Florence in 1451--Vespucci unquestionably promoted and made a voyage to the New World. In May, 1499, he sailed from Spain with Alonzo de Ojeda, who commanded four vessels. During the summer they explored the coast of Venezuela ("Little Venice"), a name first given by Ojeda to a gulf of the Caribbean Sea, on the shores of which were cabins built on piles over the water, reminding him of Venice in Italy. Ojeda, who was but little acquainted with navigation, entered upon this voyage more as a marauding enterprise than an expedition of discovery, and he gladly availed himself of Amerigo's scientific ability. Vespucci was also able to command the financial support of his wealthy acquaintances. It is said that many of the former sailors of Columbus shipped with this expedition. The following account was written by Amerigo in a letter to Lorenzo Pier Francesco, of the Medici family of Florence, from whom Vespucci had held certain business commissions in Spain. Respecting this letter an Italian critic observes that "it is the most ancient known writing of Amerigo relating to his voyages to the New World, having been composed within a month after his return from his second voyage, and remaining buried in our archives for a long time. It is a precious monument, for without it we should have been left in ignorance of the great additions which he made to astronomical science. The most rigorous examination of this letter cannot bring to light the least circumstance proving anything for or against the accuracy of his first voyage. The diffidence with which he commences the matter is, however, a strong indication that he had previously written an account of his first voyage to the same Lorenzo de' Medici, to whom he addressed this communication." MOST EXCELLENT AND DEAR LORD: It is a long time since I have written to your excellency, and for no other reason than that nothing has occurred to me worthy of being commemorated. This present fetter will inform you that about a month ago I arrived from the Indies, by the way of the great ocean, brought, by the grace of God, safely to this city of Seville. I think your excellency will be gratified to learn the result of my voyage, and the most surprising things which have been presented to my observation. If I am somewhat tedious, let my letter be read in your more idle hours, as fruit is eaten after the cloth is removed from the table. Your excellency will please to note that, commissioned by his highness the King of Spain, I set out with two small ships, on May 18, 1499, on a voyage of discovery to the southwest, by way of the great ocean, and steered my course along the coast of Africa, until I reached the Fortunate Islands, which are now called the Canaries. After having provided ourselves with all things necessary, first offering our prayers to God, we set sail from an island which is called Gomera, and, turning our prows southwardly, sailed twenty-four days with a fresh wind, without seeing any land. At the end of these twenty-four days we came within sight of land, and found that we had sailed about thirteen hundred leagues, and were at that distance from the city of Cadiz, in a southwesterly direction. When we saw the land we gave thanks to God, and then launched our boats, and, with sixteen men, went to the shore, which we found thickly covered with trees, astonishing both on account of their size and their verdure, for they never lose their foliage. The sweet odor which they exhaled--for they are all aromatic--highly delighted us, and we were rejoiced in regaling our nostrils. We rowed along the shore in the boats, to see if we could find any suitable place for landing, but, after toiling from morning till night, we found no way or passage which we could enter and disembark. We were prevented from doing so by the lowness of the land, and by its being so densely covered with trees. We concluded, therefore, to return to the ships, and make an attempt to land in some other spot. We observed one remarkable circumstance in these seas. It was that at fifteen leagues from the land we found the water fresh like that of a river, and we filled all our empty casks with it. Having returned to our ships, we raised anchor and set sail, turning our prows southwardly, as it was my intention to see whether I could sail around a point of land which Ptolemy calls the Cape of Cattegara, which is near the Great Bay. In my opinion it was not far from it, according to the degrees of latitude and longitude, which will be stated hereafter. Sailing in a southerly direction along the coast, we saw two large rivers issuing from the land, one running from west to east, and being four leagues in width, which is sixteen miles; the other ran from south to north, and was three leagues wide. I think that these two rivers, by reason of their magnitude, caused the freshness of the water in the adjoining sea. Seeing that the coast was invariably low, we determined to enter one of these rivers with the boats, and ascend it till we either found a suitable landing-place or an inhabited village. Having prepared our boats, and put in provision for four days, with twenty men well armed, we entered the river, and rowed nearly two days, making a distance of about eighteen leagues. We attempted to land in many places by the way, but found the low land still continuing, and so thickly covered with trees that a bird could scarcely fly through them. While thus navigating the river, we saw very certain indications that the inland parts of the country were inhabited; nevertheless, as our vessels remained in a dangerous place in case an adverse wind should arise, we concluded, at the end of two days, to return. Here we saw an immense number of birds, of various forms and colors; a great number of parrots, and so many varieties of them that it caused us great astonishment. Some were crimson-colored, others of variegated green and lemon, others entirely green, and others, again, that were black and flesh-colored. Oh! the song of other species of birds, also, was so sweet and so melodious, as we heard it among the trees, that we often lingered, listening to their charming music. The trees, too, were so beautiful and smelled so sweetly that we almost imagined ourselves in a terrestrial paradise; yet not one of those trees, or the fruit of them, was similar to the trees or fruit in our part of the world. On our way back we saw many people, of various descriptions, fishing in the river. Having arrived at our ships, we raised anchor and set sail, still continuing in a southerly direction, and standing off to sea about forty leagues. While sailing on this course, we encountered a current which ran from southeast to northwest; so great was it, and ran so furiously, that we were put into great fear, and were exposed to great peril. The current was so strong that the Strait of Gibraltar and that of the Faro of Messina appeared to us like mere stagnant water in comparison with it. We could scarcely make any headway against it, though we had the wind fresh and fair. Seeing that we made no progress, or but very little, and the danger to which we were exposed, we determined to turn our prows to the northwest. As I know, if I remember right, that your excellency understands something of cosmography, I intend to describe to you our progress in our navigation, by the latitude and longitude. We sailed so far to the south that we entered the torrid zone and penetrated the circle of Cancer. You may rest assured that for a few days, while sailing through the torrid zone, we saw four shadows of the sun, as the sun appeared in the zenith to us at midday. I would say that the sun, being in our meridian, gave us no shadow; but this I was enabled many times to demonstrate to all the company, and took their testimony of the fact. This I did on account of the ignorance of the common people, who do not know that the sun moves through its circle of the zodiac. At one time I saw our shadow to the south, at another to the north, at another to the west, and at another to the east, and sometimes, for an hour or two of the day, we had no shadow at all. We sailed so far south in the torrid zone that we found ourselves under the equinoctial line, and had both poles at the edge of the horizon. Having passed the line, and sailed six degrees to the south of it, we lost sight of the north star altogether, and even the stars of Ursa Minor, or, to speak better, the guardians which revolve about the firmament, were scarcely seen. Very desirous of being the author who should designate the other polar star of the firmament, I lost, many a time, my night's sleep while contemplating the movement of the stars around the southern pole, in order to ascertain which had the least motion, and which might be nearest to the firmament; but I was not able to accomplish it with such bad nights as I had, and such instruments as I used, which were the quadrant and astrolabe. I could not distinguish a star which had less than ten degrees of motion around the firmament; so that I was not satisfied within myself to name any particular one for the pole of the meridian, on account of the large revolution which they all made around the firmament. While I was arriving at this conclusion as the result of my investigations, I recollected a verse of our poet Dante, which may be found in the first chapter of his _Purgatory_, where he imagines he is leaving this hemisphere to repair to the other, and, attempting to describe the antarctic pole, says: "I turned to the right hand and fixed my mind On the other pole, and saw four stars Not seen before, since the time of our first parents: Joyous appeared the heavens for their glory. Oh, northern lands are widowed Since deprived of such a sight." It appears to me that the poet wished to describe in these verses, by the four stars, the pole of the other firmament, and I have little doubt, even now, that what he says may be true. I observed four stars in the figure of an almond, which had but little motion, and if God gives me life and health I hope to go again into that hemisphere, and not to return without observing the pole. In conclusion, I would remark that we extended our navigation so far south that our difference of latitude from the city of Cadiz was sixty degrees and a half, because, at that city, the pole is elevated thirty-five degrees and a half, and we had passed six degrees beyond the equinoctial line. Let this suffice as to our latitude. You must observe that this our navigation was in the months of July, August, and September, when, as you know, the sun is longest above the horizon in our hemisphere, and describes the greatest arch in the day and the least in the night. On the contrary, while we were at the equinoctial line, or near it, within four to six degrees, the difference between the day and the night was not perceptible. They were of equal length, or very nearly so. As to the longitude, I would say that I found so much difficulty in discovering it that I had to labor very hard to ascertain the distance I had made by means of longitude. I found nothing better, at last, than to watch the opposition of the planets during the night, and especially that of the moon, with the other planets, because the moon is swifter in her course than any other of the heavenly bodies. I compared my observations with the almanac of Giovanni da Monteregio, which was composed for the meridian of the city of Ferrara, verifying them with the calculations in the tables of King Alfonso, and, afterward, with the many observations I had myself made one night with another. On August 23, 1499--when the moon was in conjunction with Mars, which, according to the almanac, was to take place at midnight, or half an hour after--I found that when the moon rose to the horizon, an hour and a half after the sun had set, the planet had passed in that part of the east. I observed that the moon was about a degree and some minutes farther east than Mars, and at midnight she was five degrees and a half farther east, a little more or less. So that, making the proportion, if twenty-four hours are equal to three hundred and sixty degrees, what are five hours and a half equal to? I found the result to be eighty-two degrees and a half, which was equal to my longitude from the meridian of the city of Cadiz, then giving to every degree sixteen leagues and two-thirds, which is five thousand four hundred sixty-six miles and two-thirds. The reason why I give sixteen leagues to each degree is because, according to Tolomeo and Alfagrano, the earth turns twenty-four thousand miles, which is equal to six thousand leagues, which, being divided by three hundred sixty degrees, gives to each degree sixteen leagues and two-thirds. This calculation I certified many times conjointly with the pilots, and found it true and good. It appears to me, most excellent Lorenzo, that by this voyage most of those philosophers are controverted who say that the torrid zone cannot be inhabited on account of the great heat. I have found the case to be quite the contrary. I have found that the air is fresher and more temperate in that region than beyond it, and that the inhabitants are also more numerous here than they are in the other zones, for reasons which will be given below. Thus it is certain that practice is of more value than theory. Thus far I have related the navigation I accomplished in the south and west. It now remains for me to inform you of the appearance of the country we discovered, the nature of the inhabitants, and their customs, the animals we saw, and of many other things worthy of remembrance which fell under my observation. After we turned our course to the north, the first land we found to be inhabited was an island at ten degrees distant from the equinoctial line. When we arrived at it we saw on the sea-shore a great many people, who stood looking at us with astonishment. We anchored within about a mile of the land, fitted out the boats, and twenty-two men, well armed, made for land. The people, when they saw us landing, and perceived that we were different from themselves--because they have no beard and wear no clothing of any description, being also of a different color, they being brown and we white--began to be afraid of us, and all ran into the woods. With great exertion, by means of signs, we reassured them and negotiated with them. We found that they were of a race called cannibals, the greater part or all of whom live on human flesh. Your excellency may rest assured of this fact. They do not eat one another, but, navigating with certain barks which they call 'canoes,' they bring their prey from the neighboring islands or countries inhabited by those who are enemies or of a different tribe from their own. They never eat any women, unless they consider them outcasts. These things we verified in many places where we found similar people. We often saw the bones and heads of those who had been eaten, and they who had made the repast admitted the fact, and said that their enemies always stood in much greater fear on that account. Still they are a people of gentle disposition and beautiful stature. They go entirely naked, and the arms which they carry are bows and arrows and shields. They are a people of great activity and much courage. They are very excellent marksmen. In fine, we held much intercourse with them, and they took us to one of their villages, about two leagues inland, and gave us our breakfast. They gave whatever was asked of them, though I think more through fear than affection; and after having been with them all one day, we returned to the ships, still remaining on friendly terms with them. We sailed along the coast of this island, and saw by the seashore another large village of the same tribe. We landed in the boats, and found they were waiting for us, all loaded with provisions, and they gave us enough to make a very good breakfast, according to their ideas of dishes. Seeing they were such kind people, and treated us so well, we dared not take anything from them, and made sail till we arrived at a gulf which is called the Gulf of Paria. We anchored opposite the mouth of a great river, which causes the water of this gulf to be fresh, and saw a large village close to the sea. We were surprised at the great number of people who were seen there. They were without arms, and seemed peaceably disposed. We went ashore with the boats, and they received us with great friendship, and took us to their houses, where they had made very good preparations for breakfast. Here they gave us three sorts of wine to drink, not of the juice of the grape, but made of fruits, like beer, and they were excellent. Here, also, we ate many fresh acorns, a most royal fruit. They gave us many other fruits, all different from ours and of very good flavor, the flavor and odor of all being aromatic. They gave us some small pearls and eleven large ones, and they told us by signs that if we would wait some days they would go and fish for them and bring us many of them. We did not wish to be detained, so with many parrots of various colors, and in good friendship, we parted from them. From these people we learned that those of the before-mentioned island were cannibals and ate human flesh. We issued from this gulf and sailed along the coast, seeing continually great numbers of people, and when we were so disposed we treated with them, and they gave us everything we asked of them. They all go as naked as they were born, without being ashamed. If all were to be related concerning the little shame they have, it would be bordering on impropriety; therefore it is better to suppress it. After having sailed about four hundred leagues continually along the coast, we concluded that this land was a continent, which might be bounded by the eastern parts of Asia, this being the commencement of the western part of the continent, because it happened often that we saw divers animals, such as lions, stags, goats, wild hogs, rabbits, and other land animals which are not found in islands, but only on the mainland. Going inland one day with twenty men, we saw a serpent which was about twenty-four feet in length, and as large in girth as myself. We were very much afraid of it, and the sight of it caused us to return immediately to the sea. I oftentimes saw many very ferocious animals and serpents. Thus sailing along the coast, we discovered every day a great number of people, speaking various languages. When we had navigated four hundred leagues along the coast we began to find people who did not wish for our friendship, but stood waiting for us with arms, which were bows and arrows, and with some other arms which they use. When we went to the shore in our boats, they disputed our landing in such a manner that we were obliged to fight with them. At the end of the battle they found that they had the worst of it, for, as they were naked, we always made great slaughter. Many times not more than sixteen of us fought with two thousand of them, and in the end defeated them, killing many and robbing their houses. One day we saw a great many people, all posted in battle array to prevent our landing. We fitted out twenty-six men, well armed, and covered the boats, on account of the arrows which were shot at us, and which always wounded some of us before we landed. After they had hindered us as long as they could, we leaped on shore, and fought a hard battle with them. The reason why they had so much courage and fought with such great exertion against us was that they did not know what kind of a weapon the sword was, or how it cuts. While thus engaged in combat, so great was the multitude of people who charged upon us, throwing at us such a cloud of arrows, that we could not withstand the assault, and, nearly abandoning the hope of life, we turned our backs and ran to the boats. While thus disheartened and flying, one of our sailors, a Portuguese, a man of fifty-five years of age, who had remained to guard the boat, seeing the danger we were in, jumped on shore, and with a loud voice called out to us, "Children! turn your faces to your enemies, and God will give you the victory!" Throwing himself on his knees, he made a prayer, and then rushed furiously upon the Indians, and we all joined with him, wounded as we were. On that, they turned their backs to us and began to flee, and finally we routed them and killed one hundred fifty. We burned their houses also, at least one hundred eighty in number. Then, as we were badly wounded and weary, we returned to the ships, and went into a harbor to recruit, where we stayed twenty days, solely that the physician might cure us. All escaped except one, who was wounded in the left breast. After being cured, we recommenced our navigation, and, through the same cause, we often were obliged to fight with a great many people, and always had the victory over them. Thus continuing our voyage, we came upon an island, fifteen leagues distant from the mainland. As at our arrival we saw no collection of people, the island appearing favorably, we determined to attempt it, and eleven of us landed. We found a path, in which we walked nearly two leagues inland, and came to a village of about twelve houses, in which there were only seven women, who were so large that there was not one among them who was not a span and a half taller than myself. When they saw us, they were very much frightened, and the principal one among them, who was certainly a discreet woman, led us by signs into a house, and had refreshments prepared for us. We saw such large women that were about determining to carry off two young ones, about fifteen years of age, and make a present of them to their king, as they were, without doubt, creatures whose stature was above that of common men. While we were debating this subject, thirty-six men entered the house where we were drinking; they were of such large stature that each one was taller when upon his knees than I when standing erect. In fact, they were of the stature of giants in their size and in the proportion of their bodies, which corresponded well with their height. Each of the women appeared a Pantasilea, and the men Antei. When they came in, some of our own number were so frightened that they did not consider themselves safe. They had bows and arrows, and very large clubs made in the form of swords. Seeing that we were of small stature, they began to converse with us, in order to learn who we were and from what parts we came. We gave them fair words, for the sake of peace, and said that we were going to see the world. Finally, we held it to be our wisest course to part from them without questioning in our turn; so returned by the same path in which we had come, they accompanying us quite to the sea, till we went on board the ships. Nearly half the trees of this island are dye-wood, as good as that of the East. We went from this island to another in the vicinity, at ten leagues' distance, and found a very large village, the houses of which were built over the sea, like Venice, with much ingenuity. While we were struck with admiration at this circumstance, we determined to go and see them; and as we went to their houses, they attempted to prevent our entering. They found out at last the manner in which the sword cuts, and thought it best to let us enter. We found their houses filled with the finest cotton, and the beams of their dwellings were made of dye-wood. We took a quantity of their cotton and some dye-wood and returned to the ships. Your excellency must know that in all parts where we landed we found a great quantity of cotton, and the country filled with cotton-trees, so that all the vessels in the world might be loaded in these parts with cotton and dye-wood. At length we sailed three hundred leagues farther along the coast, constantly finding savage but brave people, and very often fighting with them and vanquishing them. We found seven different languages among them, each of which was not understood by those who spoke the others. It is said there are not more than seventy-seven languages in the world, but I say there are more than a thousand, as there are more than forty which I have heard myself. After having sailed along this coast seven hundred leagues or more, besides visiting numerous islands, our ships became greatly sea-worn and leaked badly, so that we could hardly keep them free with two pumps going. The men also were much fatigued and the provisions growing short. We were then, according to the decision of the pilots, within a hundred twenty leagues of an island called Hispaniola, discovered by the admiral Columbus six years before. We determined to proceed to it, and, as it was inhabited by Christians, to repair our ships there, allow the men a little repose, and recruit our stock of provisions; because from this island to Castile there are three hundred leagues of ocean, without any land intervening. In seven days we arrived at this island, where we stayed two months. Here we refitted our ships and obtained our supply of provisions. We afterward concluded to go to northern parts, where we discovered more than a thousand islands, the greater part of them being inhabited. The people were without clothing, timid, and ignorant, and we did whatever we wished to do with them. This last portion of our discoveries was very dangerous to our navigation, on account of the shoals which we found thereabout. In several instances we came near being lost. We sailed in this sea two hundred leagues directly north, until our people had become worn down with fatigue, through having been already nearly a year at sea. Their allowance was only six ounces of bread for eating, and but three small measures of water for drinking, per diem. And as the ships became dangerous to navigate with much longer, they remonstrated, saying that they wished to return to their homes in Castile, and not to tempt fortune and the sea any more. Whereupon we concluded to take some prisoners as slaves, and, loading the ships with them, to return at once to Spain. Going, therefore, to certain islands, we possessed ourselves by force of two hundred thirty-two, and steered our course for Castile. In sixty-seven days we crossed the ocean and arrived at the islands of the Azores, which belong to the King of Portugal and are three hundred leagues distant from Cadiz. Here, having taken in our refreshments, we sailed for Castile, but the wind was contrary and we were obliged to go to the Canary Islands, from there to the island of Madeira, and thence to Cadiz. We were absent thirteen months on this voyage, exposing ourselves to awful dangers, and discovering a very large country of Asia and a great many islands, the largest part of them inhabited. According to the calculations I have several times made with the compass, we have sailed about five thousand leagues. To conclude, we passed the equinoctial line six and a half degrees to the south, and afterward turned to the north, which we penetrated so far that the north star was at an elevation of thirty-five degrees and a half above our horizon. To the west we sailed eighty-four degrees distant from the meridian of the city and port of Cadiz. We discovered immense regions, saw a vast number of people, all naked and speaking various languages. On the land we saw numerous wild animals, various kinds of birds, and an infinite number of trees, all aromatic. We brought home pearls in their growing state, and gold in the grain; we brought two stones, one of emerald color and the other of amethyst, which was very hard, and at least a half a span long and three fingers thick. The sovereigns esteem them most highly, and have preserved them among their jewels. We brought also a piece of crystal, which some jewellers say is beryl, and, according to what the Indians told us, they had a great quantity of the same; we brought fourteen flesh-colored pearls, with which the Queen was highly delighted; we brought many other stones which appeared beautiful to us, but of all these we did not bring a large quantity, as we were continually busied in our navigation, and did not tarry long in any place. When we arrived at Cadiz we sold many slaves, finding two hundred remaining to us; the others, completing the number of two hundred thirty-two, having died at sea. After deducting the expense of transportation, we gained only about five hundred ducats, which, having to be divided into fifty-five parts, made each share very small. However, we contented ourselves with life, and rendered thanks to God that, during the whole voyage, out of fifty-seven Christian men, which was our number, only two had died, they having been killed by Indians. I have had two quartan agues since my return, but I hope, by the favor of God, to be well soon, and they do not continue long now, and are without chills. I have passed over many things worthy of remembrance, in order not to be more tedious than I can help, all which are reserved for the pen and in the memory. They are fitting out three ships for me here, that I may go on a new voyage of discovery; and I think they will be ready by the middle of September. May it please our Lord to give me health and a good voyage, as I hope again to bring very great news and discover the island of Trapodana, which is between the Indian Ocean and the Sea of Ganges. Afterward I intend to return to my country and seek repose in the days of my old age. I have resolved, most excellent Lorenzo, that, as I have thus given you an account by letter of what has occurred to me, to send you two plans and descriptions of the world, made and arranged by my own hand skill. There will be a map on a plane surface, and the other a view of the world in spherical form, which I intend to send you by sea, in the care of one Francesco Lotti, a Florentine, who is here. I think you will be pleased with them, particularly with the globe, as I made one not long since for these sovereigns, and they esteem it highly. I could have wished to have come with them personally, but my new departure for making other discoveries will not allow me that pleasure. There are not wanting in your city persons who understand the figure of the world, and who may, perhaps, correct something in it. Nevertheless, whatever may be pointed out for me to correct, let them wait till I come, as it may be that I shall defend myself and prove my accuracy. I suppose your excellency has learned the news brought by the fleet which the King of Portugal sent two years ago to make discoveries on the coast of Guinea. I do not call such a voyage as that one of discovery, but only a visit to discovered lands; because, as you will see by the map, their navigation was continually within sight of land, and they sailed round the whole southern part of Africa, which is proceeding by a way spoken of by all cosmographical authors. It is true that the navigation has been very profitable, which is a matter of great consideration in this kingdom, where inordinate covetousness reigns. I understand that they passed from the Red Sea and extended their voyage into the Persian Gulf to a city called Calicut, situated between the Persian Gulf and the river Indus. More lately the King of Portugal has received from sea twelve ships very richly laden, and he has sent them again to those parts, where they will certainly do a profitable business if they arrive safely. May our Lord preserve and increase the exalted state of your noble excellency as I desire. July 18, 1500. Your excellency's humble servant, AMERIGO VESPUCCI. RISE AND FALL OF THE BORGIAS A.D. 1502 NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI The commencement of the sixteenth century found Italy suffering from the foreign interference of France and Spain. The chief Italian states at this period were the kingdom of Naples, the Papal States, the duchy of Milan, and the republics of Venice, Florence, and Genoa. Ferdinand V of Aragon and Louis XII of France, who had hereditary claims through his grandmother Valentina Visconti, had concluded a secret and perfidious treaty for the partition of the kingdom of Naples, the effects of which Frederick II, the King, vainly sought to avert. They conquered Naples in 1501, but disagreed over the division of the spoil, and, the French army being defeated by the Spanish on the Garigliano in 1503, Spanish influence soon after became dominant in Italy. In the march of the French army on Naples in 1501, the French commander had for lieutenant Caesar Borgia, son of Pope Alexander VI, whose career furnishes a vivid illustration of the internal conditions of Italy at this period. Borgia, who had resigned from the cardinalate conferred on him by his father, had been created Duke of Valentinois by the King of France, had married the daughter of the King of Navarre, and was invested with the duchy of Romagna by his father in 1501. By force and treachery he reduced the cities of Romagna, which were ruled by feudatories of the papal see, and, with the assistance of his relations, endeavored to found an independent hereditary power in Central Italy. The contemporaneous account of these events, by the celebrated Niccolo Machiavelli, possesses a fascinating interest, which is greatly enhanced by the fact that Machiavelli himself was a participant in the events of which he writes. A Florentine by birth, Machiavelli was sent by his fellow-citizens, in 1502, on a mission to Borgia, who had just returned from a visit to the King of France in Lombardy. During Borgia's absence, friends and former colleagues, alarmed at his ambition and cruelty, had entered into a league with his enemies, and invited the Florentines to join them. The Florentines refused, but sent Machiavelli to make professions of friendship and offers of assistance to the Duke, and at the same time to watch his movements, to discover his real intentions, and endeavor to obtain something in return for their friendship. Borgia, who had the reputation of being the closest man of his age, had to deal with a negotiator who, though young, was a match for him, and the account of the mission is very curious; there was deep dissimulation on both sides. Machiavelli returned to Florence in January, 1503, after three eventful months passed in the court and camp of Borgia. The treatise _The Prince_ has been described as "a display of cool, judicious, scientific atrocity on the part of Caesar Borgia (Duke Valentino), which seemed rather to belong to a fiend than to the most depraved of men. Principles which the most hardened ruffian would scarcely hint to his most trusted accomplice, or avow without the disguise of some palliating sophism even to his own mind, are professed without the slightest circumlocution, and assumed as the fundamental axioms of all political science." On being reproved for the maxims contained in the work, Machiavelli replied, "If I taught princes how to tyrannize, I also taught the people how to destroy them"; and in these words posterity has vindicated the reputation of the talented Italian statesman and author. Those who from a private station have ascended to the dignity of princes, by the favor of fortune alone, meet with few difficulties in their progress, but encounter many in maintaining themselves on the throne. Obstructed by no impediments during their journey, they soar to a great height, but all the difficulties arise after they are quietly seated. These princes are chiefly such as acquire their dominions by money or by favor. Such were the men whom Darius placed in Greece, in the cities of Ionia and of the Hellespont, whom, for their own security and glory, he raised to the rank of sovereigns. Such were the emperors who from a private station arrived at the empire by corrupting the soldiery. They sustained their elevation only by the pleasure and fortune of those who advanced them, two foundations equally uncertain and insecure. They had neither the experience nor the power necessary to maintain their position. For, unless men possess superior genius or courage, how can they know in what manner to govern others who have themselves always been accustomed to a private station? Deficient in knowledge, they will be equally destitute of power for want of troops on whose attachment and fidelity they can depend. Besides, those states which have suddenly risen, like other things in nature of premature and rapid growth, do not take sufficient root in the minds of men, but they must fall with the first stroke of adversity; unless the princes themselves--so unexpectedly exalted--possess such superior talents that they can discover at once the means of preserving their good-fortune, and afterward maintain it by having recourse to the same measures which others had adopted before them. To adduce instances of supreme power attained by good-fortune and superior talent, I may refer to two examples which have happened in our own time, viz., Francis Sforza and Caesar Borgia. The former, by lawful means and by his great abilities, raised himself from a private station to the dukedom of Milan, and maintained with but little difficulty what had cost him so much trouble to acquire. Caesar Borgia, Duke of Valentinois--commonly called the duke of Valentino--on the other hand, attained a sovereignty by the good-fortune of his father, which he lost soon after his father's decease; though he exerted his utmost endeavors, and employed every means that skill or prudence could suggest, to retain those states which he had acquired by the arms and good-fortune of another. For, though a good foundation may not have been laid before a man arrives at dominion, it may possibly be accomplished afterward by a ruler of superior mind; yet this can only be effected with much difficulty to the architect and danger to the edifice. If therefore we examine the whole conduct of Borgia, we shall see how firm a foundation he had laid for future greatness. This examination will not be superfluous--for I know no better lesson for the instruction of a prince than is afforded by the actions and example of the Duke--for, if the measures he adopted did not succeed, it was not his fault, but rather owing to the extreme perversity of fortune. Pope Alexander VI, wishing to give his son a sovereignty in Italy, had not only present but future difficulties to contend with. In the first place, he saw no means of making him sovereign of any state independent of the Church; and, if he should endeavor to dismember the ecclesiastical state, he knew that the Duke of Milan and the Venetians would never consent to it, because Faenza and Rimini were already under the protection of the latter; and the armies of Italy, from whom he might expect material service, were in the hands of those who had the most reason to apprehend the aggrandizement of the papal power, such as the Orsini, the Colonni, and their partisans. It was consequently necessary to dissolve these connections and to throw the Italian states into confusion in order to secure the sovereignty of a part. This was easy to accomplish. The Venetians, influenced by motives of their own, had determined to invite the French into Italy. The Pope made no opposition to their design; he even favored it by consenting to annul the first marriage of Louis XII, who therefore marched into Italy with the aid of the Venetians and the consent of Alexander. He was no sooner at Milan than the Pope availed himself of his assistance to overrun Romagna, which he acquired by the reputation of his alliance with the King of France. The Duke, having thus acquired Romagna, and weakened the Colonni, wished at the same time to preserve and increase his own principality; but there were two obstacles in his way. The first arose from his own people, upon whom he could not depend, the other from the designs of the French. He feared that the Orsini, of whose aid he had availed himself, might fail at the critical moment, and not only prevent his further acquisitions, but even deprive him of those he had made. And he had reason to apprehend the same conduct on the part of France, and was convinced of the trifling reliance he could place on the Orsini; for after the reduction of Faenza, when he made an attack upon Bologna, they manifested an evident want of activity. As to the King, his intentions were easily discerned; for when he had conquered the duchy of Urbino, and was about to make an irruption into Tuscany, the King obliged him to desist from the enterprise. The Duke determined, therefore, neither to depend on fortune nor on the arms of another prince. He began by weakening the party of the Orsini and the Colonni at Rome, by corrupting all the persons of distinction who adhered to them, either by bribes, appointments, or commands suited to their respective qualities, so that in a few months a complete revolution was effected in their attachment, and they all came over to the Duke. Having thus humbled the Colonni, he only waited an opportunity for destroying the Orsini. It was not long before one offered, of which he did not fail to avail himself. The Orsini, perceiving too late that the power of the Duke and the Church must be established upon their ruin, called a council of their friends at Magione, in Perugia, to concert measures of prevention. The consequence of their deliberations was the revolt of Urbino, the disturbances of Romagna, and the infinite dangers which threatened the Duke on every side, and which he finally surmounted by the aid of the French. His affairs once reestablished, he grew weary of relying on France and other foreign allies, and he resolved for the future to rely alone on artifice and dissimulation--a course in which he so well succeeded that the Orsini were reconciled to him through the intervention of Signor Paolo, whom he had gained over to his interests by all manner of rich presents and friendly offices. And this man, being deceived himself, so far prevailed on the credulity of the rest that they attended the Duke at an interview at Sinigaglia, where they were all put to death. Having thus exterminated the chiefs, and converted their partisans into his friends, the Duke laid the solid foundations of his power. He made himself master of all Romagna and the duchy of Urbino, and gained the affection of the inhabitants--particularly the former--by giving them a prospect of the advantages they might hope to enjoy from his government. As this latter circumstance is remarkable and worthy of imitation, I cannot suffer it to pass unnoticed. After the Duke had possessed himself of Romagna, he found it had been governed by a number of petty princes, more addicted to the spoliation than the government of their subjects, and whose political weakness rather served to create popular disturbances than to secure the blessings of peace. The country was infested with robbers, torn by factions, and a prey to all the horrors of civil commotions. He found that, to establish tranquillity, order, and obedience, a vigorous government was necessary. With this view, he appointed Ramiro d'Orco governor, a cruel but active man, to whom he gave the greatest latitude of power. He very soon appeased the disturbances, united all parties, and acquired the renown of restoring the whole country to peace. The Duke soon deemed it no longer necessary to continue so rigorous and odious a system. He therefore erected in the midst of the province a court of civil judicature, with a worthy and upright magistrate to preside over it, where every city had its respective advocate. He was aware that the severities of Ramiro had excited some hatred against him, and resolved to clear himself from all reproach in the minds of the people, and to gain their affection by showing them that the cruelties which had been committed did not originate with him, but solely in the ferocious disposition of his minister. Taking advantage of the discontent, he caused Ramiro to be massacred one morning in the market-place, and his body exposed upon a gibbet, with a cutlass near it stained with blood. The horror of this spectacle satisfied the resentment of the people and petrified them at once with terror and astonishment. The Duke had now delivered himself in a great measure from present enemies, and taken effectual means to secure himself by employing against them arms of his own, putting it out of the power of his neighbors to annoy him. To secure and increase his acquisitions, he had nothing to fear from anyone but the French. He well knew that the King of France, who had at last perceived his error, would oppose his further aggrandizement. He resolved, in the first place, to form new connections and alliances, and adopted a system of prevarication with France, as plainly appeared when their army was employed in Naples against the Spaniards who had laid siege to Gaeta. His design was to fortify himself against them, and he would certainly have succeeded if Alexander VI had lived a little longer. Such were the methods he took to guard against present dangers. Against those which were more remote--as he had reason to fear that the new pope would be inimical to him and seek to deprive him of what had been bestowed on him by his predecessor--he designed to have made four different provisions: In the first place, by utterly destroying the families of all those nobles whom he had deprived of their states, so that the future pope might not reestablish them; secondly, by attaching to his interests all the gentry of Rome, in order, by their means, to control the power of the Pope; thirdly, by securing a majority in the college of cardinals; fourthly and lastly, by acquiring so much power, during the lifetime of his father, that he might be enabled of himself to resist the first attack of the enemy. Three of these designs he had effected before the death of Alexander, and had made every necessary arrangement for availing himself of the fourth. He had put to death almost all the nobles whom he had despoiled, and had gained over all the Roman gentry; his party was the strongest in the college of cardinals; and, for a further augmentation of his power, he designed to have made himself master of Tuscany. He was already master of Perugia and Piombino, and had taken Pisa under his protection, of which he soon afterward took actual possession. His cautious policy with regard to the French was no longer necessary, as they had been driven from the kingdom of Naples by the Spaniards, and both of these people were under the necessity of courting his friendship. Lucca and Sienna presently submitted to him, either from fear or hatred of the Florentines. The latter were then unable to defend themselves; and, if this had been the case at the time of Alexander's death, the Duke's power and reputation would have been so great that he might have sustained his dignity without any dependence on fortune or the support of others. Alexander VI died five years after he had first unsheathed his sword. He left his son nothing firmly established but the single state of Romagna. All his other conquests were absolutely visionary, as he was not only enclosed between two hostile and powerful armies, but was himself attacked by a mortal disease. The Duke, however, possessed so much ability and courage, was so well acquainted with the arts either of gaining or ruining others as it suited his purpose, and so strong were the foundations he had laid in that short space of time, that if he had either been in health or not distressed by those two hostile armies, he would have surmounted every difficulty. As a proof of the soundness of the foundation he had laid, Romagna continued faithful to him and was firm to his interest for above a month afterward. Although the Baglioni, the Vitelli, and the Ursini all came to Rome at that time, yet--half dead as he was--they feared to attempt anything against him. If he could not elect a pope of his own choice, he was at least able to prevent the election of one unfriendly to his interests. If he had been in health when Alexander died, he would have succeeded in all his designs; for he said, the very day that Julius II was elected, that he had foreseen every obstacle which could arise on the death of his father, and had prepared adequate remedies, but that he could not foresee that at the time of his father's death his own life would be in such imminent hazard.[1] Upon a thorough review of the Duke's conduct and actions, I cannot reproach him with having omitted any precaution; and I feel that he merits being proposed as a model to all who by fortune or foreign arms succeed in acquiring sovereignty. For as he had a great spirit and vast designs, he could not have acted otherwise in his circumstances; and if he miscarried in them, it was solely owing to the sudden death of his father, and the illness with which he was himself attacked. Whoever, therefore, would secure himself in a new principality against the attempts of enemies, and finds it necessary to gain friends; to surmount obstacles by force of cunning; to make himself beloved and feared by the people, respected and obeyed by the soldiery; to destroy all those who can or may oppose his designs; to promulgate new laws in substitution of old ones; to be severe, indulgent, magnanimous, and liberal; to disband an army on which he cannot rely, and raise another in its stead; to preserve the friendship of kings and princes, so that they may be ever prompt to oblige and fearful to offend--such a one, I say, cannot have a better or more recent model for his imitation than is afforded by the conduct of Borgia. One thing blamable in his actions occurred on the election of Julius II to the pontificate. He could not nominate the prelate whom he wished, but he had it in his power to exclude anyone whom he disliked. He ought therefore never to have consented to the election of one of those cardinals whom he had formerly injured, and who might have reason to fear him after his election; for mankind injure others from motives either of hatred or fear. Among others whom he had injured were St. Peter ad Vincula Colonna, St. George, and Ascanius. All the other candidates for the pontificate had cause to fear him except the Cardinal of Rouen and the Spanish cardinals--the latter were united to him by family connections--and the Cardinal d'Amboise, who was too powerfully supported by France to have reason to fear him. The Duke ought by all means to have procured the election of a Spaniard, or, in case of failure, should have consented to the proposal of the Archbishop of Rouen, but on no account to the nomination of St. Peter ad Vincula. It is an error to think that new obligations will extinguish the memory of former injuries in the minds of great men. The Duke therefore in this election committed a fault which proved the occasion of his utter ruin[2]. [Footnote 1: On August 18, 1503, he and his father drank, by mistake, a poison which they had presumably prepared for one of their guests. The father died, and Borgia's life was for a time in extreme danger.] [Footnote:2 Within thirteen months he lost all his sovereignties, and was imprisoned, but escaped to Spain, where he was killed in the attack on Viana in 1507.] PAINTING OF THE SISTINE CHAPEL THE SPLENDOR OF RENAISSANCE ART UNDER MICHELANGELO A.D. 1508 CHARLES CLÉMENT In the history of the Renaissance the revival of art adds a new glory to that of letters, and among the masters of that revival there is none greater than Michelangelo Buonarroti, sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and heroic man. He was descended from an ancient but not distinguished Florentine family, and was born at Caprese, Italy, March 6, 1475. In 1488 he was apprenticed to the painter Ghirlandajo. He studied antique marbles in the garden of San Marco, where he was discovered by Lorenzo de' Medici, who in 1489 took him into his palace. There the young student remained until his patron's death (1492), improving the great opportunities presented to him. The Mask of a Faun was sculptured during this time. Before the expulsion of the Medici he went to Bologna, and there executed several works. Returning to Florence in 1495, he was called next year to Rome, where he lived till 1501, producing works which displayed his extraordinary genius, the most important of them being the Pieta di San Pietro (1498). Again returning to Florence, he carved his first David from an immense block of Carrara marble. In 1505 he was summoned again to Rome, by Pope Julius II, to design his tomb, and this work occupied Michelangelo, from time to time, throughout the remainder of his life. He was forced--probably through the intrigues of Bramante, his rival in architecture--to leave Rome, and once more (1506) returned to Florence. In the intervals between all these dates he produced many of his masterpieces. From this period the historian follows Michelangelo through an important stage of his active career, showing how "the hand that rounded Peter's dome," and created so many other of the greatest works of art, toiled on with patient heroism, in spite of hinderances almost incredible. The painting of the Sistine Chapel, upon which his fame so largely rests, is here described in language that reveals the manhood no less clearly than the artistic genius of Michelangelo. In 1508 Michelangelo returned to Rome and resumed his labors on the mausoleum. He had soon again to abandon them. Bramante had persuaded the Pope that it was unlucky to have his tomb erected, but advised him to employ Michelangelo in painting the chapel built by his uncle Sixtus IV. It was, in effect, in the beginning of this year that he commenced this gigantic decoration, which was destined to be his most splendid work. We shall see the resistance he first opposed to Julius' desire, and the ardor with which he undertook and the rapidity with which he accomplished the work, once he made up his mind to accept it; but first, since, at the period we have come to, most of the statues which now adorn the tomb of Julius II at San Pietro in Vinculo, and those more numerous that belonged to the original project, but which have been dispersed, were blocked out or finished, I wish to give, in order not to return to the subject, a general idea of this monument, to show what, from reduction to reduction, the original design has become, and what annoyances it occasioned its author. The original magnificent design remained unmodified until 1513; but on Julius' death, his testamentary executors, the Cardinals Santiquatro and Aginense and the Duke of Urbino, reduced to six the number of statues that were to form the decoration, and reduced from ten thousand to six thousand ducats the sum to be employed on it. From 1513 to 1521 Leo X, who cared less to complete his predecessor's monument than to endow his native city, Florence, with the works of the great artist, employed Michelangelo almost exclusively in building the façade and sacristy of San Lorenzo. During the short, austere pontificate of Adrian VI, Michelangelo again devoted himself to the sculptures of the monument, but under Clement VII he had again to abandon them in order to execute in Florence the projects of Leo X, which the new Pope had adopted. Toward 1531 the Duke of Urbino at last obtained permission for Michelangelo to suspend the works at San Lorenzo in order to finish the tomb so long since begun. Nevertheless it does not appear that he was allowed much time to devote to it. At last, on the death of Clement VII, he thought he had regained his liberty, and could, after such long involuntary delay, fulfil his engagements; but hardly was Paul III installed than he sent for him, gave him the most cordial reception, and begged him to consecrate his talents to his service. Michelangelo replied that it was impossible; he was bound by treaty to terminate the mausoleum of Julius II Paul flew into a rage and said: "Thirty years have I desired this, and now that I am pope I am not to be allowed to satisfy it! I shall tear up this contract. I mean that you shall obey me." The Duke of Urbino loudly complained, openly accusing Michelangelo of want of good faith. The sculptor, not knowing which way to turn, besought the Pope to allow him to complete the work he was pledged to. He formed the wildest projects in order to escape the amicable compulsion of Paul, among others that of retiring to Carrara, where he had passed some tranquil years among the mountains of marble. The Pontiff, to put an end to all these discussions, issued a brief, dated September 18, 1537, wherein he declared Michelangelo, his heirs and successors, released from all obligations resulting from the different contracts entered into on the subject of the monument. This fashion of terminating things could not satisfy the Duke of Urbino nor relieve Michelangelo. The negotiations were again resumed, and it ended in their agreement that the monument should be raised in the form in which we now see it in the Church of San Pietro in Vinculo, and should be composed of the statue of "Moses" executed entirely by the hand of Michelangelo; of two figures personifying "Active Life" and "Contemplative Life," which were already much advanced, but were to be finished by Rafaello de Monte Lupo; of two other statues by this master--a "Madonna," after a model by Michelangelo, and the figure of "Julius," by Maso del Bosco. Such is the very abridged history of this monument, which was not entirely completed till 1550, after having caused for nearly half a century real torment to Buonarroti. The Duke of Urbino was not satisfied, neither was Michelangelo. The figures, originally intended to form part of a colossal whole under the great roof of St. Peter's, appear too large for the place they now occupy. The importance of the statue of "Moses" misleads the mind, suggesting the idea that the monument itself is raised to the memory of the Hebrew legislator, rather than to that of the warrior-pope. At all events, in this statue is centred the principal, we may say the unique, interest of the tomb. This prodigious work must be in the memory of all. Amid the masterpieces of ancient and modern sculpture the "Moses" remains ever unparalleled, a type, not irreproachable, but the most striking, of a new art. I do not speak of the consummate science which Michelangelo displays in the modelling of this statue; the Greeks were learned in another fashion, but were so equally with him. Whence comes it, nevertheless, that in spite of _bizarreries_ needless to defend or to deny, and although this austere figure is far from attaining or pretending to the serene and tranquil beauty which the ancients regarded as the supreme term of art, whence is it that it produces upon the most prejudiced mind an irresistible impression? It is that it is more than human, that it lifts the soul into a world of feelings and ideas of which the ancients knew less than we do. Their voluptuous art, in deifying the human form, held down thought to earth. The "Moses" of Michelangelo beheld God, heard that voice of thunder, and bears the terrible impress of what he saw and heard on Mount Sinai: his profound eye is scrutinizing the mysteries he vaguely sees in his prophetic dreams. Is it the Moses of the Bible? I cannot say. Is it in this way Praxiteles and Phidias would have represented Lycurgus and Solon? We may deny it boldly. The legislators in their hands would have been the embodiment of law; they would have represented an abstraction in a form whose harmonious beauty nothing could alter. Moses is not merely the legislator of a people. Not thought alone dwells beneath this powerful brow; he feels, he suffers, he lives in a moral world which Jehovah has opened to him, and, although above humanity, is a man. On his return to Rome in 1508, Michelangelo had found Julius II not cooled toward him, but preoccupied by new projects. The Pope made no allusion to his monument, and was absorbed in the reconstruction of St. Peter's, which he had confided to Bramante. Raphael was beginning at the same time the frescoes of the Stanza della Segnatura; and two biographers of Michelangelo, whose testimony, it is true, on this point may be suspected, agree in saying that the architect of St. Peter's, jealous of the superiority of the Florentine sculptor, fearing lest he should discover the mistakes committed in his recent constructions, and the malversations of which perhaps he was not innocent, advised the Pope to confide to him the painting of the ceiling of the chapel built by Sixtus IV, hoping to compromise and ruin him by engaging him in works of which he had no experience. Julius adopted the idea, sent for Michelangelo, and ordered him to begin forthwith. Buonarroti had had no practice in fresco-painting since his student days under Ghirlandajo. He knew that the painting of a ceiling was not an easy matter. He pleaded every excuse, proposed that the commission should be given to Raphael, saying that for his part, being but a sculptor, he could not succeed. The Pope was inflexible, and Michelangelo began the ceiling on May 10, 1508, the most prodigious monument perhaps that ever sprang from the human mind. Julius had ordered Bramante to construct the necessary scaffoldings, but the latter did it in so inefficient a manner that Michelangelo was obliged to dispense with his assistance, and construct the whole machinery himself. He had sent for some of his fellow-students from Florence, not, as Vasari, by some strange aberration, states, because he was ignorant of fresco-painting, since all the artists of the time understood it, and the pupil of Ghirlandajo had himself practised it, but because his fellow-students had had more experience in it, and he wished to be helped in a work of this importance. He was, however, so dissatisfied with their work that he effaced all that they did, and, without any assistance, if we are to believe his biographer, even grinding his own colors, he shut himself up in the chapel, beginning at dawn, quitting at nightfall, often sleeping in his clothes on the scaffolding, allowing himself but a slight repast at the end of the day, and letting no one see the works he had begun. Hardly had he set to work when unforeseen difficulties presented themselves, which were on the point of making him relinquish the whole thing. The colors, while still fresh, were covered with a mist, the cause of which he was unable to discover. Utterly discouraged, he went to the Pope and said: "I forewarned your holiness that painting was not my art; all I have done is lost, and, if you do not believe me, order someone to come and see it." Julius sent San Gallo, who saw that the accident was caused by the quality of the time, and that Michelangelo had made his plaster too wet. Buonarroti, after this, proceeded with the utmost ardor, and in the space of twenty months, without further accident, finished the first half. The mystery with which Michelangelo surrounded himself keenly excited public curiosity. In spite of the painter's objection, Julius frequently visited him in the chapel, and notwithstanding his great age ascended the ladder, Michelangelo extending a hand that he might with safety reach the platform. He grew impatient; he was eager that all Rome should share his admiration. It was in vain that Michelangelo objected that all the machinery would have to be reconstructed, that half the ceiling was not completed; the Pope would listen to nothing, and the chapel was accordingly opened to the public on the morning of November 1, 1509. Julius was the first to arrive before the dust occasioned by the taking down of the scaffolding was laid, and celebrated mass there the same day. The success was immense. Bramante, seeing that his evil intentions, far from succeeding, had only served to add to the glory of Michelangelo, who had come triumphant out of the trap he had laid for him, besought the Pope to permit Raphael to paint the other half of the chapel. Notwithstanding the affection he bore his architect, Julius adhered to his resolution, and Michelangelo resumed, after a brief interruption, the painting of the ceiling; but rumors of these cabals reached him. They troubled him, and he complained to the Pope of Bramante's conduct. It is probable that the coolness which always existed between Raphael and Michelangelo dates from this period. The second part of the ceiling, by much the most considerable, was finished in 1512. It is difficult to explain how Vasari, confusing the dates, and appearing to apply to the whole what referred only to the first part, could have stated that this immense work was completed in the space of twenty months. If anything could astonish, it is that Michelangelo was able in four years to accomplish so gigantic a work. It is needless, for the purpose of exciting our admiration, to endeavor to persuade us that it was done in a space of time materially insufficient. Such was the impatience of Julius that again he nearly quarrelled with Michelangelo. The latter, requiring to go to Florence on business, went to the Pope for money. "When do you mean to finish my chapel?" said the Pope. "As soon as I can," answered Michelangelo. "'As soon as I can! as soon as I can!'" replied the irascible Pontiff; "I'll have you flung off your scaffoldings;" and he touched him with his stick. Michelangelo went home, set his affairs in order, and was on the point of leaving, when the Pope sent him his favorite Accursio with his apology and five hundred ducats. This time, again, Michelangelo was unable to finish his work as completely as he would have wished. He desired to retouch certain portions; but, seeing the inconvenience of reërecting the scaffoldings, he determined to do nothing more, saying that what was wanting to his figures was not of importance. "You should put a little gold on them," said the Pope; "my chapel will look very poor." "The people I have painted there," answered Michelangelo, "were poor." Accordingly nothing was changed. These paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine transcend all description. How give an idea of these countless sublime figures to those who have not trembled and turned pale in this awful temple? The immense superiority of Michelangelo is manifest in this chapel itself, where are paintings of Ghirlandajo, of Signorelli, which pale near those of the Florentine as the light of a lamp does in the light of the sun. Raphael painted about the same time, and under the influence of what he had seen in the Sistine, his admirable "Sibyls of the Pace"; but compare them! He also no doubt attained in some of his works--the "St. Paul" of the cartoon, the "Vision of Ezekiel," the "Virgin" of the Dresden Museum--the summit of sublime art; but that which is the exception with Sanzio is the rule with the great Buonarroti. Michelangelo lived in a superhuman world, and his daring, unexpected conceptions are so beyond and outside the habitual thoughts of men that they repel by their very elevation, and are far from fascinating all minds as do the wonderful and charming creations of the painter of Urbino. It is necessary, however, to combat the widespread opinion that Michelangelo understood only the extreme feelings, and could express these only by violent and exaggerated movements. All agree that his figures possess the highest qualities of art--invention, sublimity of style, breadth and science in the drawing, appropriateness and fitness of color, and this character, so striking in the ceiling of the Sistine that it is not of the painter that the paintings make you think, that looking at it you say to yourself, "This tragic heaven must have come thus all peopled with its gigantic forms"; and it is by an effort of the mind only we are brought to think of the creator of this sublime work. But it is denied that he understood grace, young and innocent beauty, the forms which express the tender and delicate feelings, those which the divine pencil of Raphael so admirably represented. I own that he took little heed of the pleasurable aspect of things; his austere genius was at ease only in grave thoughts; but I do not agree that he was always a stranger to gentle beauty, to feminine beauty in particular. I shall not cite the "Virgin" of the London Academy, nor in another order the admirable "Captive" of the Louvre Museum; but, without quitting the Sistine, could we dream of anything more marvellously beautiful than his "Adam" awaking for the first time to light? or more chaste, more graceful, more touching than his young "Eve" leaning toward her Creator, and breathing in through her half-opened lips the divine breath that is giving her life? What is the meaning of this terrible work? What means this long evolution of human destiny? Why did these two beings that we see beautiful and happy in the beginning, why did they people the earth with this ardent, restless, at once gigantic and powerless race? Ah! Greece would have made this ceiling an Olympus, inhabited by happy and divine men! Michelangelo put there great unhappy beings, and this painful poem of humanity is truer than the wondrous fictions of ancient poetry and art. "Michelangelo," says Condivi, "especially admired Dante. He also devoted himself earnestly to the reading of the Scriptures and the writings of Savonarola, for whom he had always great affection, having preserved in his mind the memory of his powerful voice." Besides, the country of the great Florentine, the glorious Italy of the Renaissance, was in a state of dissolution. Such studies, such reminiscences, such and so sad realities, may explain the visions that passed through the mind of the great artist during the four years of almost complete solitude he passed in the Sistine. The precise meaning of these compositions will probably never be known, but so long as men exist they will, as is the object of art, attract minds toward the dim world of the ideal. The year that followed the opening of the Sistine, and which preceded the death of Julius, appears, as do the first two of Leo X's pontificate, to have been the happiest and calmest of Michelangelo's life. The old Pope loved him, "showing him," says Condivi, "attentions he showed no other of those who approached him." He honored his probity, and even that independence of character of which he himself had more than once had experience; Michelangelo, on his side, forgave him his frequent outbursts of impetuosity, that were ever atoned for by prompt and complete acknowledgment. Michelangelo's sight, greatly enfeebled by this persistent work of four years, compelled him to take almost absolute repose. "The necessity he was under," says Vasari, "during this period of work of keeping his eyes turned upward, had so weakened his sight that for several months after he could not look at a drawing nor read a letter without raising it above his head." He enjoyed an uncontested glory in this interval of semirepose which followed his great effort. It is probable that his thoughts were now concentrated upon the sepulchral monument of his patron, the works for which he had been forced to postpone. But Leo X had other views. He was all-powerful in Florence, where, by the aid of Julius and the League of Cambray, he had reinstated his family in 1512; he now wished to endow his native city with monuments which, by recalling to the vanquished citizens of this glorious republic the magnificence of their early patrons, might help them to forget the institutions they had lost for the second time. The Church of San Lorenzo, built by Brunelleschi, where several members of his family were buried, had not been completed; he now determined to have the façade constructed. Several artists, among others San Gallo, the two Sanzovino, and Raphael, sent in plans for this important work, but Michelangelo's was preferred, and in 1515 he went to Carrara to order the necessary marbles. Leo did not leave him there long in quiet. Being informed that at Serrayezza, in the highest part of the mountains of Pietra Santa on the Florentine territory, there was marble equal in quality to that of Carrara, he ordered Michelangelo to go to Pietra Santa and work these quarries. In vain the latter pointed out the enormous expense of opening them, of cutting roads through the mountains, and making the marshes passable, besides the inferior quality of the marble. Leo would not listen. Michelangelo set out, made the roads, raised the marbles, remained from 1516 to 1521 in this desert, and the four years he passed there, in the full force of his age and genius, resulted in the transport of five columns, four of which remained on the seashore, and the fifth of which lies still useless and buried among the rubbish of the piazza of San Lorenzo. Without meaning to contest the debt which the arts owe Leo X, there are certain reservations that we must make on this score. A man of letters, of amiable manners, astute, somewhat of a mischief-maker, ever fluctuating between France and the Emperor, ever on the watch to provide for his family, and, to redeem these defects, having neither heroism nor the undoubted though mistaken love that Julius II bore to Italy, his political career cannot, I think, be defended. He had the merit of being the patron of Raphael, whose facile, flexible character pleased him, and who, thanks to his protection, marked every instant of his short life by some _chef d'oeuvre._ It must not be forgotten that it was by the most extravagant largesses, by making a traffic of everything, that he encouraged the pleiad of artists who shed such glory upon his name. His obstinacy in employing Michelangelo for so many years, in spite of his reluctance and entreaties, on a work which his own fickleness and the war in Lombardy ought to have made him abandon, has, there can be no doubt, deprived us of some admirable works. But for it Michelangelo would have finished the tomb of Julius II, and we should now possess a gigantic monument that would, no doubt, have rivalled the grandest works of ancient statuary. A few words of Condivi's show the grief and discouragement which the capriciousness of Leo, and the inutility of the work the master was employed on, caused Michelangelo. "On his return to Florence he found Leo's ardor entirely cooled. He continued a long time weighed down by grief, unable to do anything, having hitherto, to his great displeasure, been driven from one project to another." It was, however, about this period (1520) that Leo ordered the tombs of his brother Giuliano and his nephew Lorenzo, for the sacristy of the Church of San Lorenzo, which were not executed till ten years later; also plans for the library for the reception of the valuable manuscripts collected from Cosmo and Lorenzo the Magnificent, and which had been dispersed during the troubles of 1494. He was at Florence when the Academy of Santa Maria Novella, of which he was a member, proposed to have transported from Ravenna to Florence the ashes of Dante, and addressed the noble supplication to the Pope which has been preserved by Gore, signed by the most illustrious names of the time, and among others that of Michelangelo, with this addition: "I, Michelangelo, sculptor, also beseech your holiness, and offer myself to execute a suitable monument for the divine poet in some fitting part of the city." Leo did not receive this project favorably, and it was abandoned. The statue "The Christ on the Cross," that had been ordered by Antonio Matelli, and which is now in the Church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, was, it is probable, executed during Michelangelo's rare visits to Rome under Leo's pontificate. His discouragement had become such that he had it finished and put up, at the end of 1521, by a Florentine sculptor of the name of Federigo Frizzi. The statue of "Christ," one of the most finished, and displaying most knowledge, that issued from the hands of Michelangelo, is far, to my mind, from equalling other works of the great sculptor. Yet it was the rapidly acquired celebrity of the work terminated by Federigo Frizzi that decided Francis I on sending Primaticio to Italy, commissioning him to make a cast of the "Christ" of the Minerva, and to ask Michelangelo to execute a statue for him; also to deliver to him the flattering letter preserved in the valuable collection at Lille. Leo X died on December 1, 1521, a year after Raphael. His successor, the humble and austere Adrian VI, knew nothing about pictures, except those of Van Eyck and Albert Dürer. His simple manners formed a striking contrast to the ostentatious habits of Leo. During his pontificate, all the great works were stopped at Rome and slackened at Florence. While Michelangelo was obscurely working at the library of San Lorenzo, the great age of art was drawing to its close; Raphael and Leonardo were dead, and their pupils were already hurrying on to a rapid decadence. Characters were beginning to decline at the same time that talent did, and Michelangelo, who, as it were, opened this grand era, was destined to survive alone, like those lofty summits that first receive the morning light, and which are still lit up while all around has grown obscure and night is already profound. BALBOA DISCOVERS THE PACIFIC A.D. 1513 MANUEL JOSÉ QUINTANA Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, the Spanish soldier and discoverer of the Pacific Ocean, was born in 1475, and died near Darien, the scene of his principal achievement, probably in 1517. Unfairly charged with conspiracy, after rendering great services to his country, he was beheaded just as he was completing preparations to explore the "South Sea," as he named the ocean which he had discovered. He first went to Darien from Española (Haiti) in 1510, promoted a settlement, and was made its alcalde. In 1512 Pasamonte, king's treasurer at Santo Domingo, commissioned him as governor. Balboa undertook many explorations, and was usually on friendly terms with the Indians, who told him of a great sea lying to the south, and of a country (Peru) rich in gold, far down the coast. He set out from Darien September 1, 1513, to discover the great sea and the country of which he thus heard. He had conquered the Indian king Careta, whose friendship he gained and whose daughter he married. He went by sea to his father-in-law's territory, and taking with him some of the King's Indians he moved into the territory of the cacique Ponca, an enemy of Careta. Quintana, whose account follows, is the favorite historian of this expedition. His _Lives of Celebrated Spaniards_ is regarded as one of the classics of Spanish prose literature. Ponca, not daring to await the coming of the allies, took refuge in the mountains, abandoning his land to the ravage and ruin prepared for it by the Indians and Spaniards. Balboa, however, did not pursue his success further at present; leaving to the future the conquest, or, as he termed it, the "pacification" of the interior, he returned to the coast, where it was more for the advantage, security, and subsistence of the colony to have his friends or his vassals stationed. Careta had for a neighbor a cacique called by some Comogre, by others Panquiaco, chief of about ten thousand Indians, among whom were three thousand warriors. Having heard of the valor and enterprise of the Castilians, this chief desired to enter into treaty and friendship with them; and a principal Indian, a dependent of Careta, having presented himself as the agent in this friendly overture, Vasco Nuñez, anxious to profit by the opportunity of securing such an ally, went with his followers to visit Comogre. No sooner was the cacique apprised of this visit than he sailed forth at the head of his principal vassals, and his seven sons, all still youths and the offspring of different wives, to receive the Spaniards. Great was the courtesy and kindness with which he treated his guests, who were lodged in different houses in the town, and provided with victuals in abundance, and with men and women to serve them. What chiefly attracted their attention was the habitation of Comogre, which, according to the memorials of the time, was an edifice of a hundred and fifty paces in length and fourscore in breadth, built on thick posts, surrounded by a lofty stone wall, and on the roof an attic story, of beautifully and skilfully interwoven wood. It was divided into several compartments, and contained its markets, its shops, and its pantheon for the dead; for it was in the corpses of the cacique's ancestors that the Spaniards first beheld these ghastly remains, dried and arranged as above described. The honors of the hospitality were confided to the eldest son of Comogre, a youth of more sagacity and intelligence than his brothers; he one day presented to Vasco Nuñez and to Colmenares, whom, from their manner and appearance, he recognized as chiefs of the party, sixty slaves, and four thousand pieces of gold of different weight. They immediately melted the gold, and, having separated a fifth for the King, began to divide it among themselves; this division begat a dispute that gave occasion to threats and violence, which being observed by the Indian, he suddenly overthrew the scales in which they were weighing the precious metal, exclaiming: "Why quarrel for such a trifle? If such is your thirst for gold that for its sake you forsake your own country and come to trouble those of strangers, I will show you a province where you may gather by the handful the object of your desire; but to succeed, you ought to be more numerous than you are, as you will have to contend with powerful kings, who will vigorously defend their dominions. You will first find a cacique who is very rich in gold, who resides at the distance of six suns from hence; soon you will behold the sea, which lies to that part," and he pointed toward the south; "there you will meet with people who navigate in barks with sails and oars, not much less than your own, and who are so rich that they eat and drink from vessels made of the metal which ye so much covet." These celebrated words, preserved in all the records of the times, and repeated by all historians, were the first indications the Spaniards had of Peru. They were much excited on hearing them, and endeavored to extract from the youth further information of the country he had mentioned; he insisted on the necessity of having at least a thousand men, to give them a chance of success in its subjugation, offered to serve them himself as their guide, to aid them with his father's men, and to put his life in pledge for the veracity of his words. Balboa was transported by the prospect of glory and fortune which opened before him; he believed himself already at the gates of the East Indies, which was the desired object of the government and the discoverers of that period; he resolved to return in the first place to the Darien to raise the spirits of his companions with these brilliant hopes, and to make all possible preparations for realizing them. He remained, nevertheless, yet a few days with the caciques; and so strict was the friendship he had contracted with them that they and their families were baptized, Careta taking in baptism the name of Fernando, and Comogre that of Carlos. Balboa then returned to the Darien, rich in the spoils of Ponca, rich in the presents of his friends, and still richer in the golden hopes which the future offered him. At this time, and after an absence of six months, arrived the magistrate Valdivia, with a vessel laden with different stores; he brought likewise great promises of abundant aid in provisions and men. The succors, however, which Valdivia brought were speedily consumed; their seed, destroyed in the ground by storms and floods, promised them no resource whatever; and they returned to their usual necessitous state. Balboa then consented to their extending their incursions to more distant lands, as they had already wasted and ruined the immediate environs of Antigua, and he sent Valdivia to Spain to apprise the admiral of the clew he had gained to the South Sea, and the reported wealth of those regions. Valdivia took with him fifteen thousand pieces of gold, which belonged to the King as his fifth, and a charge to petition for the thousand men which were necessary to the expedition, and to prevent the adventurers being compelled to exterminate the tribes and caciques of the Indians, for otherwise, being so few in number, they would be driven, to avoid their own destruction, to the slaughter of all who would not submit themselves. This commission, however, together with the rich presents in gold sent by the chiefs of the Darien to their friends, and Valdivia, with all his crew, were no doubt swallowed by the sea, as no trace of them was ever afterward discovered. To the departure of Valdivia succeeded immediately the expedition to the gulf and the examination of the lands situated at its inner extremity. There lay the dominions of Dabaibe, of whose riches prodigious reports were spread, especially of an idol and a temple represented to be made entirely of gold. There Cemaco, and the Indians who followed him, had taken refuge, and had never lost either the wish or the hope of driving away the invading horde who had usurped their country. Balboa marched against them by land with sixty men, and Colmenares went by water with as many more to take the enemy by surprise. The former did not find Cemaco; but Colmenares was more fortunate, for he surprised the savages in Tichiri. He commanded the general to be shot with arrows in his presence, and sentenced the lords to be hanged. And so terrified were the Indians by this example that they never durst in future elevate their thoughts to independence. It was now deliberated to send new deputies to Spain to acquaint the King with the state of the colony, and on the road to touch at Espanola to entreat for necessary aid in case Valdivia might have perished on the voyage, which event had no doubt taken place. It is said that Balboa required this commission for himself, either ambitious of gaining favor at court or apprehensive that the colony at Darien might inflict upon him punishment due to usurpation; but his companions would not consent to his quitting them, alleging that, in losing him, they should feel deserted and without a guide or governor; he only was respected, and followed willingly by the soldiers; and he only was feared by the Indians. They suspected that, if they permitted of his departure, he would never return to share those labors and troubles which were from time to time accumulating upon them, as had already happened with others. They elected Juan de Caicedo, the inspector, who had belonged to the armament of Nicuesa, and Rodrigo Enriquez de Colmenares, both men of weight and expert in negotiation and held in general esteem. They believed that these would execute their charge satisfactorily, and that both would return, because Caicedo would leave his wife behind him; and Colmenares had realized much property, and a farm in the Darien, pledges of confidence in and adhesion to the country. It being thus impossible for Balboa to proceed to Spain, in protection of his own interests he manoeuvred for gaining at least the good graces of the treasurer, Pasamonte; and probably it was on this occasion that he sent him the rich present of slaves, pieces of gold, and other valuable articles, of which the licentiate Zuazo speaks in his letter to the Senor de Chieves. At the same time the new procurators took with them the fifth which belonged to the King, together with a donative made him by the colony; and, happier than their predecessors, they left the Darien in the end of October, and reached Spain the end of May in the year following. Soon after this departure, a slight disturbance happened, which, though at first it threatened to destroy the authority of Vasco Nuñez, served in fact to strengthen it. Under pretence that Bartolome Hurtado abused the particular favor of the Governor, Alonzo Perez de la Rua, and other unquiet spirits, raised a seditious tumult; their object was to seize ten thousand pieces which yet remained entire, and divide them at their pleasure. After some contests, in which there were many arrests and a great display of animosity, the malcontents plotted to surprise Vasco Nuñez and throw him into prison. He knew it, and quitted the town as if going to the chase, foreseeing that, when these turbulent men had obtained possession of the authority and the gold, they would so abuse the one and the other that all the rational part of the community would be in haste to recall him. And thus it was; masters of the treasure, Rua and his friends showed so little decency in the partition that the principal colonists, ashamed and disgusted, perceiving the immense distance that existed between Vasco Nuñez and these people, seized the heads of the sedition, secured them, and called back Balboa, whose authority and government they were anxious again to recognize. In the interim, two vessels, laden with provisions and carrying two hundred men, one hundred fifty of whom were soldiers commanded by Cristoval Serrano, arrived from Santo Domingo. They were all sent by the admiral, and Balboa received from the treasurer Pasamonte the title of governor of that land; that functionary conceiving himself authorized to confer such a power, and having become as favorable as he had formerly been the reverse. Exulting in his title and his opportune success, and secure of the obedience of his people, Vasco Nuñez liberated his prisoners, and resolved to sally forth into the environs and to occupy his men in expeditions and discoveries; but, while engaged in making his preparations, he received, to embitter his satisfaction, a letter from his friend Zamudio, informing him of the indignation which the charges of Encisco, and the first information of the treasurer, had kindled against him at court. Instead of his services being appreciated, he was accused as a usurper and intruder; he was made responsible for the injuries and prejudices of which his accuser loudly complained; and the founder and pacificator of the Darien was to be prosecuted for the criminal charges brought against him. This alloy, however, instead of subduing his spirit, animated him to new daring and impelled him to higher enterprises. Should he permit another to profit by his toils, to discover the South Sea, and to ravish from him the wealth and glory which were almost within his grasp? He did, indeed, still want the thousand men who were necessary to the projected expedition, but his enterprise, his experience, and his constancy impelled him to undertake it even without them. He would, by so signal a service, blot out the crime of his primary usurpation, and, if death should overtake him in the midst of his exertions, he should die laboring for the prosperity and glory of his country, and free from the persecution which threatened him. Full of these thoughts and resolved on following them, he discoursed with and animated his companions, selected one hundred ninety of the best armed and disposed, and, with a thousand Indians of labor, a few bloodhounds, and sufficient provisions, he set sail in a brigantine with ten canoes. He ascended first to the port and territory of Careta, where he was received with demonstrations of regard and welcome suitable to his relations with that cacique, and, leaving his squadron there, took his way by the sierras toward the dominion of Ponca. That chief had fled, as at the first time, but Vasco Nuñez, who had adopted the policy most convenient to him, desired to bring him to an amicable agreement, and, to that end, despatched after him some Indians of peace, who advised him to return to his capital and to fear nothing from the Spaniards. He was persuaded, and met with a kind reception; he presented some gold, and received in return some glass beads and other toys and trifles. The Spanish captains then solicited guides and men of labor for his journey over the sierras, which the cacique bestowed willingly, adding provisions in great abundance, and they parted friends. His passage into the domain of Quarequa was less pacific; whose chief, Torecha, jealous of this invasion and terrified by the events which had occurred to his neighbors, was disposed and prepared to receive the Castilians with a warlike aspect. A swarm of ferocious Indians, armed in their usual manner, rushed into the road and began a wordy attack upon the strangers, asking them what brought them there, what they sought for, and threatening him with perdition if they advanced. The Spaniards, reckless of their bravadoes, proceeded, nevertheless, and then the chief placed himself in front of his tribe, dressed in a cotton mantle and followed by the principal lords, and, with more intrepidity than fortune, gave the signal for combat. The Indians commenced the assault with loud cries and great impetuosity, but, soon terrified by the explosions of the crossbows and muskets, they were easily destroyed or put to flight by the men and bloodhounds who rushed upon them. The chief and six hundred men were left dead on the spot, and the Spaniards, having smoothed away that obstacle, entered the town, which they spoiled of all the gold and valuables it possessed. Here also they found a brother of the cacique and other Indians, who were dedicated to the abominations before glanced at; fifty of these wretches were torn to pieces by the dogs, and not without the consent and approbation of the Indians. The district was, by these examples, rendered so pacific and so submissive that Balboa left all his sick there, dismissed the guides given him by Ponca, and, taking fresh ones, pursued his road over the heights. The tongue of land which divides the two Americas is not, at its utmost width, above eighteen leagues, and in some parts becomes narrowed a little more than seven. And, although from the port of Careta to the point toward which the course of the Spaniards was directed was only altogether six days' journey, yet they consumed upon it twenty; nor is this extraordinary. The great cordillera of sierras which from north to south crosses the new continent, a bulwark against the impetuous assaults of the Pacific Ocean, crosses also the Isthmus of Darien, or, as may be more properly said, composes it wholly, from the wrecks of the rocky summits which have been detached from the adjacent lands; and the discoverers, therefore, were obliged to open their way through difficulties and dangers, which men of iron alone could have fronted and overcome. Sometimes they had to penetrate through thick entangled woods, sometimes to cross lakes, where men and burdens perished miserably; then a rugged hill presented itself before them; and next, perhaps, a deep and yawning precipice to descend; while, at every step, they were opposed by deep and rapid rivers, passable only by means of frail barks, or slight and trembling bridges; from time to time they had to make their way through opposing Indians, who, though always conquered, were always to be dreaded; and, above all, came the failure of provisions--which formed an aggregate, with toil, anxiety, and danger, such as was sufficient to break down bodily strength and depress the mind. At length the Quarequanos, who served as guides, showed them, at a distance, the height from whose summit the desired sea might be discovered. Balboa immediately commanded his squadron to halt, and proceeded alone to the top of the mountain; on reaching it he cast an anxious glance southward, and the Austral Ocean broke upon his sight[1]. Overcome with joy and wonder, he fell on his knees, extending his arms toward the sea, and with tears of delight offered thanks to heaven for having destined him to this mighty discovery. He immediately made a sign to his companions to ascend, and, pointing to the magnificent spectacle extended before them, again prostrated himself in fervent thanksgiving to God. The rest followed his example, while the astonished Indians were extremely puzzled to understand so sudden and general an effusion of wonder and gladness. Hannibal on the summit of the Alps, pointing out to his soldiers the delicious plains of Italy, did not appear, according to the ingenious comparison of a contemporary writer, either more transported or more arrogant than the Spanish chief when, risen from the ground, he recovered the speech of which sudden joy had deprived him, and thus addressed his Castilians: "You behold before you, friends, the object of all our desires and the reward of all our labors. Before you roll the waves of the sea which has been announced to you, and which no doubt encloses the immense riches we have heard of. You are the first who have reached these shores and these waves; yours are their treasures, yours alone the glory of reducing these immense and unknown regions to the dominion of our King and to the light of the true religion. Follow me, then, faithful as hitherto, and I promise you that the world shall not hold your equals in wealth and glory." All embraced him joyfully and all promised to follow whithersoever he should lead. They quickly cut down a great tree, and, stripping it of its branches, formed a cross from it, which they fixed in a heap of stones found on the spot from whence they first descried the sea. The names of the monarchs of Castile were engraven on the trunks of the trees, and with shouts and acclamations they descended the sierra and entered the plain. They arrived at some bohios, which formed the population of a chief, called Chiapes, who had prepared to defend the pass with arms. The noise of the muskets and the ferocity of the war-dogs dispersed them in a moment, and they fled, leaving many captives; by these and by their Quarequano guides, the Spaniards sent to offer Chiapes secure peace and friendship if he would come to them, or otherwise the ruin and extermination of his town and his fields. Persuaded by them, the cacique came and placed himself in the hands of Balboa, who treated him with much kindness. He brought and distributed gold and received in exchange beads and toys, with which he was so diverted that he no longer thought of anything but contenting and conciliating the strangers. There Vasco Nuñez sent away the Quarequanos, and ordered that the sick, who had been left in their land, should come and join him. In the mean while he sent Francisco Pizarro, Juan de Ezcarag, and Alonzo Martin to reconnoitre the environs and to discover the shortest roads by which the sea might be reached. It was the last of these who arrived first at the coast, and, entering a canoe which chanced to lie there, and pushing it into the waves, let it float a little while, and, after pleasing himself with having been the first Spaniard who entered the South Sea, returned to seek Balboa. Balboa with twenty-six men descended to the sea, and arrived at the coast early in the evening of the 29th of that month; they all seated themselves on the shore and awaited the tide, which was at that time on the ebb. At length it returned in its violence to cover the spot where they were; then Balboa, in complete armor, lifting his sword in one hand, and in the other a banner on which was painted an image of the Virgin Mary with the arms of Castile at her feet, raised it, and began to march into the midst of the waves, which reached above his knees, saying in a loud voice: "Long live the high and mighty sovereigns of Castile! Thus in their names do I take possession of these seas and regions; and if any other prince, whether Christian or infidel, pretends any right to them, I am ready and resolved to oppose him, and to assert the just claims of my sovereigns." The whole band replied with acclamations to the vow of their captain, and expressed themselves determined to defend, even to death, their acquisition against all the potentates in the world; they caused this act to be confirmed in writing, by the notary of the expedition, Andres de Valderrabano; the anchorage in which it was solemnized was called the Gulf of San Miguel, the event happening on that day. [Footnote 1: Balboa had his first view of the Pacific from this "peak in Darien" September 25th.] CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY EMBRACING THE PERIOD COVERED IN THIS VOLUME A.D. 1438-1516 JOHN RUDD, LL.D. A.D. 1438-1516 Events treated at length are here indicated in large type; the numerals following give volume and page. Separate chronologies of the various nations, and of the careers of famous persons, will be found in the INDEX VOLUME, with volume and page references showing where the several events are fully treated. A.D. 1438. Gutenberg commences printing with movable type[1]. See "ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF PRINTING," viii, i. All Europe ravaged by the plague; it is aggravated in England and France by a direful famine. 1439. Death of Albert II; Ladislaus III, King of Poland, ascends the Hungarian throne. Pope Eugenius removes his council from Ferrara to Florence; here is signed a treaty for the ostensible union of the Latin and Greek churches. A standing army voted by the States-General of France. 1440. Frederick III elected Emperor of Germany. "JOHN HUNYADY REPULSES THE TURKS." See viii, 30. 1441. Hadji Kerai separates from the Golden Horde; he establishes the independent khanate of Crim Tartary, or the Crimea. 1442. Alfonso V of Aragon takes the city of Naples; the whole kingdom submits to him; his rival, René of Anjou, returns to Provence. First modern importation of negro slaves into Europe. See "DISCOVERY OF THE CANARY ISLANDS AND THE AFRICAN COAST," viii, 276. 1443. Rising of the Albanians, under Scanderbeg, against the Turks. 1444. Battle of Varna; defeat of the Hungarians by the Turks and death of Ladislaus III, King of Poland and Hungary. John Hunyady assumes the government in Hungary during the minority of Ladislaus Posthumus. On the request of Frederick IV of Germany the Dauphin employs a part of the French army against Switzerland; battle of St. Jacob's; for ten hours 1,600 Swiss resist 30,000 veterans; the Swiss perish; 10,000 of the victors are slain. 1445. Corinth destroyed by the Turks. 1447. Election of Pope Nicholas V, founder of the Vatican Library. See "REBUILDING OF ROME," viii, 46. Grammar-schools founded in London, England. 1448. Amurath II, or Murad, defeats Hunyady at Cassova. 1449. War between France and England renewed; Normandy conquered by the French; Rouen is surrendered. 1450. Rebellion of Jack Cade in England. He was slain and his head stuck on London bridge. Milan surrenders to Francesco Sforza (Stormer, _i. e._, of cities), the natural son of a peasant who became a great _condottiere_. He is proclaimed duke. 1451. Guienne conquered by the French from the English. Ghent revolts against Philip, Duke of Burgundy. 1453. End of the Eastern empire. See "MAHOMET II TAKES CONSTANTINOPLE," viii, 55. Submission of Ghent to the Duke of Burgundy after its forces had been defeated at Gaveren. Battle of Castillon; defeat of the English; loss of all the English conquests in France, except Calais; end of the Hundred Years' War. Emperor Frederick III creates Austria a duchy. 1454. Mental aberration of Henry VI of England; the Duke of York protector. Publication of the first-known printing with movable type. See "ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF PRINTING," viii, i. Venice by a treaty with Turkey secures trade privileges in Greece. 1455. Beginning of the contest for the crown of England. See "WARS OF THE ROSES," viii, 72. 1456. Battle of Belgrade; victory of Hunyady over the Turks. Athens conquered by the Turks. 1457. Church of the Unitas Fratrum organized in Bohemia. Francis Foscaro, being deposed as doge of Venice after a reign of thirty-four years, dies of grief on hearing the bells rung to celebrate the election of his successor. At Mainz is published the Book of Psalms, the earliest work printed with its date. 1458. Pope Pius II acknowledges Ferdinand I as King of Naples, strives to restore peace, and unite all powers in resistance to the Turkish aggressions. Genoa submits to the King of France, Charles VII. Election of Matthias, son of Hunyady, as King of Hungary. George Podibrad, leader of the church-reform party, chosen King of Bohemia. 1459. Silesia submits to Podibrad, King of Bohemia. 1460. James II of Scotland takes up arms against the English; he is killed, by the bursting of a cannon, at the siege of Roxburgh castle; his son, James III, succeeds. Christian I of Denmark inherits Schleswig and Holstein. Discovery of the Cape Verd Islands by the Portuguese; they penetrate to the coast of Guinea. 1461. Death of Charles VII of France; his son, Louis XI, involves himself in a contest with his leading nobles. Prince Henry of Portugal, just prior to his death, sends Peter Covilham and Alfonso Paiva, overland, to explore India. Trebizond, the last Greek capital, surrenders to the Ottoman Turks. 1462. Accession of Ivan III, Grand Prince of Moscow. See "IVAN THE GREAT UNITES RUSSIA AND BREAKS THE TARTAR YOKE," viii, 109. 1463. War between Venetians and Turks in Greece. Conference between the kings of France and Castile; the artful policy of Louis XI prolongs discord in Spain. 1464. Queen Margaret invades England; her adherents are defeated at Hexham. See "WARS OF THE ROSES," viii, 72. Pope Pius II attempts the organization of a crusade against the Turks; he dies at Ancona; Paul II elected. Sforza, Duke of Milan, makes himself master of Milan. 1465. Henry VI of England is imprisoned in the Tower of London. War between the League of the Public Good and Louis XI of France; treaty of Conflans; the King makes many promises, few of which he performs. King Matthias invites learned men from Italy to Hungary; he founds the University and Library of Budapest. Athens captured and pillaged by the Venetians, under Victor Capello. 1466. Worn out by constant warfare the Teutonic Knights, by the treaty of Thorn, cede West Prussia to Casimir IV of Poland; they retain East Prussia as a fief of Poland. 1467. Charles the Bold succeeds to the Duchy of Burgundy. A crusade against George Podibrad, King of Bohemia, proclaimed by Pope Paul II. 1468. Visit of Louis XI to Charles the Bold at Péronne. See "CULMINATION OF THE POWER OF BURGUNDY," viii, 125. Founding of the Library of Venice. Ivan III repels an invasion of the Golden Horde and prepares the independence of Russia. 1469. Marriage of Princess Isabella of Castile to Ferdinand of Aragon. Beginning of the reign of Lorenzo de' Medici in Florence. See "LORENZO DE' MEDICI RULES IN FLORENCE," viii, 134. About this time Peter Covilham (see 1461), his companion having died in India, penetrates into Abyssinia and is there detained. 1470. Restoration of Henry VI, by Earl Warwick, to the throne of England. Siege and capture of Negropont (Euboea) by the Turks; massacre of the inhabitants. Pomponius Laetus collects a society to study the antiquities of Rome; he is imprisoned and persecuted for his unguarded enthusiasm. 1471. Edward IV reënters England; defeat of the Lancastrians at Barnet; Warwick--the King Maker--slain. See "WARS OF THE ROSES," viii, 72. Translation by Caxton of _Recueil des Histoires des Troyes_. See "ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF PRINTING" (also plate), viii, 24. 1472. Normandy ravaged by Charles the Bold. Philippe de Comines, the chronicler, enters into the service of Louis XI. 1473. Resumption of the commotions in France; the Count of Armagnac assassinated; the Duke of Alençon arrested. 1474. Ferdinand and Isabella commence their joint reign in Castile. Caxton publishes his first book, _The Game and Playe of the Chesse_. 1475. Emperor Frederick IV refuses to give Charles, Duke of Burgundy, the title of king; war ensues; Charles conquers Lorraine. 1476. Switzerland unsuccessfully invaded by the Duke of Burgundy. Assassination of Sforza, Duke of Milan; his son Gian Galeazzo Maria succeeds, under the regency of his mother, Bona. Sten Sture, Protector of Sweden, founds the University of Upsal; he checks the nobility and priesthood by summoning deputies of the towns and peasantry to attend the national Diet. 1477. Maximilian, son of Emperor Frederick III, marries Mary of Burgundy. Italy invaded by the Turks; they advance to within sight of Venice. Publication of the first book printed in England, Caxton's _Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophers_. René of Lorraine and his Swiss mercenaries overwhelm Charles the Bold at Nancy; he is slain. Burgundy is seized by Louis XI. See "DEATH OF CHARLES THE BOLD," viii, 155. Grant of the Great Privilege of Holland and Zealand, by Mary, Duchess of Burgundy. The _Groot Privilegie_ was a recapitulation and recognition of ancient rights. Although afterward violated, and indeed abolished, it became the foundation of the republic. 1478. Condemnation and death of the Duke of Clarence. He is said to have chosen to die by being drowned in a butt of Malmsey, a wine of which he had been inordinately fond. Conspiracy of the Pazzi, a powerful family of Florence, against the Medici; most of the conspirators massacred by the people; the others judicially punished. Sultan Mahomet II, of the Ottoman Empire, completes the subjugation of Albania. Novgorod taken by Ivan III, of Russia, who puts an end to its republic. 1479. Battle of Guinegate; Maximilian defeats the French. Ferdinand the Catholic succeeds to the throne in Aragon; union of Castile and Aragon. 1480. Founding of the Holy Office of the Inquisition in Spain, by Cardinal Mendozas. See "INQUISITION ESTABLISHED IN SPAIN," viii, 166. 1481. Maine and Provence united to France. Battle of Bielawesch; the Nogay Tartars crush the Golden Horde and secure the independence of Russia. 1482. Death of Mary of Burgundy; her infant son, Philip, succeeds to the sovereignty of the Netherlands. Ferdinand and Isabella begin a war for the conquest of Granada. 1483. Usurpation of Richard III; murder of the princes. See "MURDER OF THE PRINCES IN THE TOWER," viii, 192. Death of Louis XI; Charles VII, his son, succeeds to the French throne. Renewal of the Union of Kalmar; Sweden and Norway acknowledge John I, but Sweden retains Sten Stur as Protector. Birth of Rabelais and Luther. 1485. Landing of the Earl of Richmond in England; Battle of Bosworth; Richard III is slain; end of the Wars of the Roses and of the Plantagenet dynasty; Henry VII (Richmond) inaugurates the Tudor dynasty. See "WARS OF THE ROSES," viii, 72. Matthias of Hungary captures Vienna; Emperor Frederick III expelled from his hereditary dominions. 1486. Excited to revolt by the severities of the Inquisition, the Aragonese put to death the chief inquisitor, Pedro Arbues. Unconscious doubling of the southern extremity of Africa by Bartholomew Diaz; he gives it the name of Cabo Tormentoso (Cape Stormy), afterward called the Cape of Good Hope. See "THE SEA ROUTE TO INDIA," viii, 299. 1488. Battle of Sauchie Burn; James III of Scotland defeated and slain by his rebellious nobles. Citizens of Bruges capture and imprison, for four months, Maximilian, King of the Romans. 1489. Bartholomew, brother of Christopher Columbus, tries to arouse maritime enterprise in England. 1490. Ferdinand and Isabella conquer Granada. See "CONQUEST OF GRANADA," viii, 202. Death of Matthias Corvinus; Ladislaus II, King of Bohemia, is elected king of the Hungarians. 1491. Charles VIII of France sends back to her father his affianced bride, Margaret; compels Anne of Brittany to break her engagement to Maximilian and marries her himself, thus uniting Brittany and France. 1492. Imposture of Perkin Warbeck in England. See "CONSPIRACY, REBELLION, AND EXECUTION OF PERKIN WARBECK," viii, 250. Expulsion of Jews from the Spanish dominions; this great exodus, hundreds of thousands in all, of a commercial hard-working race caused enormous injury to the land so depopulated. Columbus discovers the Bahamas, Cuba, and Haiti. See "COLUMBUS DISCOVERS AMERICA," viii, 224. 1493. Death of Emperor Frederick IV; his son, Maximilian succeeds, the first to take the title Emperor of Germany without being crowned at Rome. Leaving a garrison in Espanola, Columbus returns to Spain. He starts on his second voyage; discovers Porto Rico. A papal bull grants to Spain the new world discovered by Columbus, and defines the rights of Spain and Portugal. 1494. A treaty, that of Tordesillas, partitions the ocean between Spain and Portugal. Formation of the Christian Commonwealth at Florence. See "SAVONAROLA'S REFORMS AND DEATH," viii, 265. Sir Edward Poynings, Governor of Ireland, induces the parliament of that country to pass the act bearing his name, which gives full power to all the laws of England. 1495. Conquest of Naples by Charles VIII of France; he retreats to France. Ferdinand II is restored to the throne of Naples. Maximilian establishes the Imperial Chamber. Extinction of the right of private warfare in Germany. 1496. Encouraged by the success of Columbus, Henry VII of England sends out John Cabot and his son, Sebastian, on a voyage of discovery. Emanuel of Portugal fits out an expedition under Vasco da Gama to explore the eastern seas. 1497. "DISCOVERY OF THE MAINLAND OF NORTH AMERICA BY THE CABOTS." See viii, 282. Sten Sture offends the Swedish nobility, is defeated and stripped of his protectorate by John II, who enforces the Union of Kalmar; he is crowned at Stockholm. Pinzon and Vespucci discover Central America. 1498. Vasco da Gama rounds the Cape of Good Hope and reaches India. See "THE SEA ROUTE TO INDIA," viii, 299. Columbus makes his third voyage across the Western Ocean; he discovers South America; is arrested and returned to Spain in irons. See "COLUMBUS DISCOVERS SOUTH AMERICA," viii, 323. Arrest and execution of Savonarola at Florence. See "SAVONAROLA'S REFORMS AND DEATH," viii, 265. 1499. Conquest of the duchy of Milan by the French. Unsuccessful war of Maximilian against the Swiss. See "ESTABLISHMENT OF Swiss INDEPENDENCE," viii, 336. Venezuela reached by Ojeda and Vespucci. See "AMERIGO VESPUCCI IN AMERICA," viii, 346. In Persia the Shiah sect of Mahometans gain the ascendency which they have since retained. 1500. Voyage to and exploration of Labrador and Newfoundland by Caspar Cortereal, a Portuguese navigator. Brazil discovered by Pedro Alvarez Cabral, or Cabera; he takes possession of the country for the King of Portugal. 1501. Emperor Maximilian creates the Aulic Council, a court of appeal on decisions by other German courts. Joint conquest and partition of Naples by Ferdinand of Aragon and Louis XII of France. Sten Sture regains ascendency in Sweden. Caesar Borgia makes himself master of Pesaro, Rimini, and Faenza; he is guilty of numerous atrocities. 1502. Columbus on his fourth and last voyage reaches the isthmus of Panama. Caesar Borgia fails in his evil course. See "RISE AND FALL OF THE BORGIAS," viii, 360. Montezuma elected to the military leadership of the Aztecs. In Naples the French and Spanish quarrel and commence hostilities. 1503. Marriage of James IV of Scotland with Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII of England; this brought the Stuarts to the throne of England. Battle of Cerignola and Garigliano; the Spaniards defeat the French and become masters of Naples. Death of Sten Sture; the Swedish people support Svante Sture in opposition to the crown, the nobility, and priesthood. 1504. Death of Isabella, Queen of Spain; the throne of Castile passes to her daughter, Joanna, and the latter's husband, Philip. Jealous of the new Indian trade of the Portuguese, the Venetians incite the mamelukes of Egypt and the sovereign of Calicut to begin hostilities against them. Citizens of Naples resist by violence the introduction of the Inquisition. Suppression of the Lordship of the Isles by James IV of Scotland. 1505. Death of Ivan the Great; he is succeeded on the Russian throne by his son, Basil (Vasili IV). 1506. Expulsion by the Genoese of their nobles and the French. Madagascar discovered by the Portuguese. Building of the Great Harry, the first ship of the royal navy of England. Beginning of the erection of St. Peter's, at Rome, by Bramante d'Urbino; Pope Julius II lays the first stone. 1507. Louis XII goes to crush the revolt in Genoa; he succeeds. 1508. Michelangelo begins the decoration of the Sistine chapel. See "PAINTING OF THE SISTINE CHAPEL," viii, 369. 1509. Death of Henry VII; his son, Henry VIII, succeeds to the English throne; he marries Catherine of Aragon. Campaign of Cardinal Ximenes in Africa; Oran taken by the Spaniards. Diego Columbus, son of the discoverer, made governor of Spanish America, which is first settled this year. Subjugation of Porto Rico by Ponce de Leon; he later becomes governor of that island. 1510. Occupation of Goa by the Portuguese under Albuquerque, Governor of the Indies. 1511. Subjugation of Cuba by the Spaniards under Velasquez. Malacca taken by the Portuguese; it becomes the centre of their trade in the East. 1512. War declared against France by Henry VIII of England. Battle of Ravenna; victory of the French; their general, Gaston de Foix, falls on the field; the revolted cities of Italy submit. Lombardy evacuated by the French; restoration of the Sforza dynasty, and of the Medici in Florence. 1513. From the Isthmus of Panama Balboa discovers the Pacific Ocean. See "BALBOA DISCOVERS THE PACIFIC," viii, 381. Invasion of France by Henry VIII; defeat of the French at Guinegate, "Battle of the Spurs"; Térouanne and Tournai taken by the English. Battle of Flodden Field; the Scots, under James IV, having invaded England, are overwhelmed and their king slain. Expulsion of the French from Italy. Juan Ponce de Leon lands in Florida, in his search for the "Fountain of Eternal Youth." 1514. Peace concluded with France and Scotland by Henry VIII of England. Smolensko renounces its subjection to Poland and becomes part of Russia. Ambassadors from Portugal present to Pope Leo X an elephant, a panther, with other animals and products of their new territories in the East. 1515. Wolsey created cardinal, papal legate, and lord chancellor. Invasion of Italy by Francis I, who this year succeeded Louis XII as King of France; he recovers Genoa and Milan. 1516. Death of Ferdinand the Catholic; Charles, his eldest grandson, succeeds to the throne of Spain. Publication of the Greek Testament, with a Latin translation, by Erasmus. Conclusion of the treaty of "Perpetual Peace" between France and Switzerland. Rise of the piratical power of the Barbarossas in Algiers. [Footnote:1 Date uncertain.] END OF VOLUME VIII 
10341	----	Proofreaders THE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS A COMPREHENSIVE AND READABLE ACCOUNT OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY, EMPHASIZING THE MORE IMPORTANT EVENTS, AND PRESENTING THESE AS COMPLETE NARRATIVES IN THE MASTER-WORDS OF THE MOST EMINENT HISTORIANS NON-SECTARIAN NON-PARTISAN NON-SECTIONAL ON THE PLAN EVOLVED FROM A CONSENSUS OF OPINIONS GATHERED FROM THE MOST DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARS OF AMERICA AND EUROPE, INCLUDING BRIEF INTRODUCTIONS BY SPECIALISTS TO CONNECT AND EXPLAIN THE CELEBRATED NARRATIVES. ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY. WITH THOROUGH INDICES. BIBLIOGRAPHIES, CHRONOLOGIES, AND COURSES OF READING EDITED BY CHARLES F. HORNE, Ph.D. _Aided by a staff of specialists_ CONTENTS VOLUME XXI _An Outline Narrative of the Great Events_ CHARLES F. HORNE _The United States House of Governors_ (_A.D. 1910_) WILLIAM S. JORDAN THE GOVERNORS _Union of South Africa_ (_A.D. 1910_) PROF. STEPHEN LEACOCK _Portugal Becomes a Republic_ (_A.D. 1910_) WILLIAM ARCHER _The Crushing of Finland_ (_A.D. 1910_) JOHN JACKOL BARON SERGIUS WITTE BARON VON PLEHVE J.H. REUTER _Man's Fastest Mile_ (_A.D. 1911_) C.F. CARTER ISAAC MARCOSSON _The Fall of Diaz_ (_A.D. 1911_) MRS. E.A. TWEEDIE DOLORES BUTTERFIELD _Fall of the English House of Lords_ (_A.D. 1911) ARTHUR PONSONBY SYDNEY BROOKS CAPTAIN GEORGE SWINTON _The Turkish-Italian War_ (_A.D. 1911_) WILLIAM T. ELLIS THE WAR CORRESPONDENTS _Woman Suffrage_ (_A.D. 1911_) IDA HUSTED HARPER ISRAEL ZANGWILL JANE ADDAMS DAVID LLOYD-GEORGE ELBERT HUBBARD _Militarism_ (_A.D. 1911_) NORMAN ANGELL SIR MAX WAECHTER _Persia's Loss of Liberty_ (_A.D. 1911_) W. MORGAN SHUSTER _Discovery of the South Pole_ (_A.D. 1911_) ROALD AMUNDSEN _The Chinese Revolution_ (_A.D. 1912_) ROBERT MACHRAY R.F. JOHNSTON TAI-CHI QUO _A Step Toward World Peace_ (_A.D. 1912_) HON. WILLIAM H. TAFT _Tragedy of the "Titanic"_ (_A.D. 1912_) W.A. INGLIS _Our Progressing Knowledge of Life Surgery_ (_A.D. 1912_) GENEVIEVE GRANDCOURT PROFESSOR R. LEGENDRE _Overthrow of Turkey by the Balkan States_ (_A.D. 1912_) J. ELLIS BARKER FREDERICK PALMER PROF. STEPHEN P. DUGGAN _Mexico Plunged Into Anarchy_ (_A.D. 1913_) EDWIN EMERSON WILLIAM CAROL _The New Democracy_ (_A.D. 1913_) PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON _The Income Tax in America_ (_A.D. 1913_) JOSEPH A. HILL _The Second Balkan War_ (_A.D. 1913_) PROF. STEPHEN P. DUGGAN CAPT. A.H. TRAPMANN _Opening of the Panama Canal_ (_A.D. 1914_) COL. GEORGE W. GOETHALS BAMPFYLDE FULLER _Universal Chronology_ (_1910-1914_) AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, CONNECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE GREAT EVENTS THE RECENT DAYS (1910-1914) CHARLES F. HORNE The awful, soul-searing tragedy of Europe's great war of 1914 came to most men unexpectedly. The real progress of the world during the five years preceding the war had been remarkable. All thinkers saw that the course of human civilization was being changed deeply, radically; but the changes were being accomplished so successfully that men hoped that the old brutal ages of military destruction were at an end, and that we were to progress henceforth by the peaceful methods of evolution rather than the hysterical excitements and volcanic upheavals of revolution. Yet even in the peaceful progress of the half-decade just before 1914 there were signs of approaching disaster, symptoms of hysteria. This period displayed the astonishing spectacle of an English parliament, once the high example for dignity and the model for self-control among governing bodies, turned suddenly into a howling, shrieking mob. It beheld the Japanese, supposedly the most extravagantly loyal among devotees of monarchy, unearthing among themselves a conspiracy of anarchists so wide-spread, so dangerous, that the government held their trials in secret and has never dared reveal all that was discovered. It beheld the women of Persia bursting from the secrecy of their harems and with modern revolvers forcing their own democratic leaders to stand firm in patriotic resistance to Russian tyranny. It beheld the English suffragettes. Yet the movement toward universal Democracy which lay behind all these extravagances was upon the whole a movement borne along by calm conviction, not by burning hatreds or ecstatic devotions. A profound sense of the inevitable trend of the world's evolution seemed to have taken possession of the minds of the masses of men. They felt the uselessness of opposition to this universal progress, and they showed themselves ready, sometimes eager, to aid and direct its trend as best they might. If, then, we seek to give a name to this particular five years, let us call it the period of humanitarianism, of man's really awakened kindliness toward his brothers of other nationalities. The universal peace movement, which was a child in 1910, had by 1914 become a far-reaching force to be reckoned with seriously in world politics. Any observer who studied the attitude of the great American people in 1898 on the eve of their war with Spain, and again in 1914 during the trouble with Mexico, must have clearly recognized the change. There was so much deeper sense of the tragedy of war, so much clearer appreciation of the gap between aggressive assault and necessary self-defense, so definite a recognition of the fact that murder remains murder, even though it be misnamed glory and committed by wholesale, and that any one who does not strive to stop it becomes a party to the crime. While the sense of brotherhood was thus being deepened among the people of all the world, the associated cause of Democracy also advanced. The earlier years of the century had seen the awakening of this mighty force in the East; these later years saw its sudden decisive renewal of advance in the West. The center of world-progress once more shifted back from Asia to America and to England. The center of resistance to that progress continued, as it had been before, in eastern Europe. PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA Let us note first the forward movement in the United States. The Conservation of Natural Resources, that striking step in the new patriotism, which had been begun in the preceding decade, was carried forward during these years with increasing knowledge. A new idea developed from it, that of establishing a closer harmony among the States by means of a new piece of governmental machinery, the House of Governors.[1] This was formed in 1910. [Footnote 1: See _The United States House of Governors_, page 1.] To a nation bred as the Americans have been in an almost superstitious reverence for a particular form of government, this change or any change whatever becomes a matter of great moment. It is their final recognition that the present can not be molded to fit the machinery of the past. The nearer a Constitution comes to perfection in fitting the needs of one century, the more wholly it is likely to fail in fitting the needs of the next. The United States Government was not at its beginning a genuine Democracy, though approaching it more nearly than did any other great nation of the day. Putting aside the obvious point that the American Constitution deliberately protected slavery, which is the primal foe of all Democracy, the broader fact remains that the entire trend of the Constitution was intended to keep the educated and aristocratic classes in control and to protect them from the dangers of ignorance and rascally demagoguery. The weapons of self-defense thus reserved by the thoughtful leaders were, in the course of generations, seized upon as the readiest tools of a shrewd plutocracy, which entrenched itself in power. Rebellion against that plutocracy long seemed almost hopeless; but at last, in the year 1912, the fight was carried to a successful issue. In both the great political parties, the progressive spirit dominated. The old party lines were violently disrupted, and President Wilson was elected as the leader of a new era seeking new ideals of universal equality.[2] [Footnote 2: See _The New Democracy_, page 323.] Nor must we give to the President's party alone the credit of having recognized the new spirit of the people. Even before his election, his predecessor, Mr. Taft, had led the Republican party in its effort to make two amendments to the Constitution, one allowing an Income Tax, the other commanding the election of Senators by direct vote of the people. Both of these were assaults upon entrenched "Privilege." The Constitution had not been amended by peaceful means for over a century; yet both of these amendments were now put through easily.[1] This revolt against two of the most undemocratic of the features of the ancient and honored Constitution was almost like a second declaration of American independence. [Footnote 1: See _The Income Tax in America_, page 338.] Perhaps, too, the change in the Senate may prove a help to the cause of universal peace. The governments of both Taft and Wilson were persistent in their efforts to establish arbitration treaties with other nations, and the Senate, jealous of its own treaty-making authority, had been a frequent stumbling-block in their path. Yet, despite the Senate's conservatism, arbitration treaties of ever-increasing importance have been made year after year. A war between the United States and England or France, or indeed almost any self-ruling nation, has become practically impossible.[2] [Footnote 2: See _A Step Toward World Peace_, page 259.] In her dealing with her Spanish-American neighbors, the United States has been less fortunate. She has, indeed, achieved a labor of world-wide value by completing the "big ditch" between the Oceans.[3] Yet her method of acquiring the Panama territory from Colombia had been arbitrary and had made all her southern neighbors jealous of her power and suspicious of her purposes. Into the midst of this era of unfriendliness was injected the Mexican trouble. Diaz, who had ruled Mexico with an iron hand for a generation, was overthrown.[4] President Madero, who conquered him, was supported by the United States; and Spanish America began to suspect the "Western Colossus" of planning a protectorate over Mexico. [Footnote 3: See _Opening of the Panama Canal_, page 374.] [Footnote 4: See _The Fall of Diaz_, page 96.] Then came a counter-revolution. Madero was betrayed and slain, and the savage and bloody Indian general, Huerta, seized the power.[1] The antagonism of the United States Government against Huerta was so marked that at length the anxious South American Powers urged that they be allowed to mediate between the two; and the United States readily accepted this happy method of proving her real devotion to arbitration and of reestablishing the harmony of the Americas. [Footnote 1: See _Mexico Plunged into Anarchy_, page 300.] In itself the entire Mexican movement may be regarded as another great, though confused, step in the world-wide progress of Democracy. The upheaval has been repeatedly compared to the French Revolution. The rule of Diaz was really like that of King Louis XVI in France, a government by a narrow and wealthy aristocracy who had reduced the ignorant Mexican peasants or "peons" to a state of slavery. The bloody battles of all the recent warfare have been fought by these peons in a blind groping for freedom. They have disgraced their cause by excesses as barbarous as those perpetrated by the French peasantry; but they have also fought for their ideal with a heroism unsurpassed by that of any French revolutionist. DEMOCRACY IN THE WORLD Equally notable as forming part of this unceasing march of Democracy was the progress of both Socialism and Woman Suffrage. But with these two movements we must look beyond America; for their advance was not limited to any single country. It became world-wide. When Woman Suffrage was first established in New Zealand and Australia, the fact made little impression upon the rest of the globe; but when northern Europe accepted the idea, and Finland and Norway granted women full suffrage and Sweden and Denmark gave them almost as much, the movement was everywhere recognized as important. In Asia women took an active and heroic part in the struggles for liberty both in Persia and in China. In England the "militant" suffragists have forced Parliament to deal with their problem seriously, amid much embarrassment. In the United States, the movement, regarded rather humorously at first, became a matter of national weight and seriousness when in 1910 the great State of California enfranchised its women, half a million of them. Woman Suffrage now dominates the Western States of America and is slowly moving eastward.[1] [Footnote 1: See _Woman Suffrage_, page 156.] Socialism, also, though some may call it a mistaken and confused dream, is yet a manifestation of Democracy and as such will have its voice along with other forms of the great world-spirit. It has made considerable advance in America, where there have recently been Socialist mayors in some cities, and even Socialist Congressmen. But its main progress has been in Europe. There it can no longer be discussed as an economic theory; it has become a stupendous and unevadable fact. It is the laboring man's protest against the tyranny of that militarism which terrorizes Europe.[2] And since military tyranny is heaviest in Germany, Socialism has there risen to its greatest strength. The increase of the Socialist vote in German elections became perhaps the most impressive political phenomenon of the past twenty years. In 1912 this vote was more than one-third of the total vote of the Empire, and the Socialists were the largest single party in Germany. The Socialists of France are almost equally strong; and so are those in Italy. When war recently threatened Europe over the Morocco dispute, the Socialists in each of these countries made solemn protest to the world, declaring that laboring men were brothers everywhere and had no will to fight over any governmental problem. Many extremists among the brotherhood even went so far as to defy their governments openly, declaring that if forced to take up arms they would turn them against their tyrannous oppressors rather than against their helpless brothers of another nation. Thus the burden of militarism did by its own oppressive weight rouse the opposing force of Socialism to curb it. [Footnote 2: See _Militarism_, page 186.] In Italy the Socialists were growing so powerful politically that it was largely as a political move against them that the government in 1911 suddenly declared war against Turkey. Thus was started the series of outbreaks which recently convulsed southeastern Europe.[1] Seldom has a war been so unjustifiable, so obviously forced upon a weaker nation for the sake of aggrandizement, as that of Italy against the "Young Turks" who were struggling to reform their land. The Italians seized the last of Turkey's African possessions, with scarce a shadow of excuse. This increase of territory appealed to the pride and so-called "patriotism" of the Italian people. The easy victories in Africa gratified their love of display; and many of the ignorant poor who had been childish in their attachment to the romantic ideals of Socialism now turned with equal childishness to applaud and support their "glorious" government. Yet even here Democracy made its gain; for under shelter of this popularity the government granted a demand it had long withheld. Male suffrage, previously very limited in Italy, was made universal. [Footnote 1: See _The Turkish-Italian War_, page 140.] The humiliation of Turkey in this Italian war led to another and far larger contest, and to that practical elimination of Turkey from European affairs which had been anticipated for over a century. The Balkan peoples, half freed from Turkey in 1876, took advantage of her weakness to form a sudden alliance and attack her all together.[2] This, also, was a Democratic movement, a people's war against their oppressors. The Bulgars, most recently freed of the victims of Turkish tyranny, hated their opponents with almost a madman's frenzy. The Servians wished to free their brother Serbs and to strengthen themselves against the persistent encroachments of Austria. The Greeks, defeated by the Turks in 1897, were eager for revenge, hopeful of drawing all their race into a single united State. Never was a war conducted with greater dash and desperation or more complete success. The Turks were swept out of all their European possessions except for Constantinople itself; and they yielded to a peace which left them nothing of Europe except the mere shore line where the continents come together. [Footnote 2: See _The Overthrow of Turkey_, page 282.] But then there followed what most of the watchers had expected, a division among the victorious allies. Most of these were still half savage, victims of centuries of barbarity. In their moment of triumph they turned upon one another, snarling like wild beasts over the spoil. Bulgaria, the largest, fiercest, and most savage of the little States, tried to fight Greece and Servia together. She failed, in a strife quite as bloody as that against Turkey. The neighboring State of Roumania also took part against the Bulgars. So did the Turks, who, seeing the helplessness of their late tigerish opponent, began snatching back the land they had ceded to Bulgaria.[1] The exhausted Bulgars, defeated upon every side, yielded to their many foes. [Footnote 1: See _The Second Balkan War_, page 350.] Thus we face to-day a new Balkan Peninsula, consisting of half a dozen little independent nations, all thoroughly democratic, except Turkey. And even Turkey, we should remember, has made a long stride toward Democracy by substituting for the autocracy of the Sultan the constitutional rule of the "Young Turks," These still retain their political control, though sorely shaken in power by the calamities their country has undergone under their brief régime. From this semi-barbarity of southeastern Europe, let us turn to note the more peaceful progress which seemed promising the West. Little Portugal suddenly declared herself a Republic in 1910.[2] She had been having much anarchistic trouble before, killing of kings and hurling of bombs. Now there was a brief, almost bloodless, uprising; and the young new king fled. Prophets freely predicted that the unpractical and unpractised Republic could not last. But instead of destroying itself in petty quarrels, the new government has seemed to grow more able and assured with each passing year. [Footnote 2: See _Portugal Becomes a Republic_, page 28.] In Spain also, the party favoring a Republic grew so strong that its leaders declared openly that they could overturn the monarchy any time they wished. But they said the time was not ripe, they must wait until the people had become more educated politically, and had learned more about self-government, before they ventured to attempt it. Here, therefore, we have Democracy taking a new and important step. To man's claim of the right of self-government was subjoined the recognition of the fact that until he reaches a certain level of intelligence he is unfit to exercise that right, and with it he is likely to bring himself more harm than happiness. Perhaps even more impressive was the struggle toward Democracy in England. Here, from the year 1905 onward, a "Liberal" government in nominal power was opposed at every turn persistently, desperately, sometimes hysterically, by a "Conservative" opposition. The Liberals, after years of worsted effort, saw that they could make no possible progress unless they broke the power of the always Conservative House of Lords. They accomplished this in 1911 amid the weeping and wailing of all Britain's aristocracy, who are thoroughly committed to the doctrine of the mighty teacher, Carlyle, that men should find out their great leaders and then follow these with reverent obedience. Of course the doctrine has in the minds of the British aristocracy the very natural addendum that _they_ are the great leaders.[1] [Footnote 1: See _Fall of the English House of Lords_, page 133.] With the power of the nobles thus swept aside, the British Liberals went on to that long-demanded extension of Democracy, the granting of Home Rule to Ireland. Here, too, England's Conservatives fought the Liberals desperately. And here there was a subtler issue to give the Conservatives justification. The great majority of Irish are of the Roman Catholic faith, and so would naturally set up a Catholic government; but a part of northern Ireland is Protestant and bitterly opposed to Catholic domination. These Protestants, or "Ulsterites," demanded that if the rest of Ireland got home rule, they must get it also, and be allowed to rule themselves by a separate Parliament of their own. The Conservatives accepted this democratic demand as an ally of their conservative clinging to the "good old laws." They encouraged the Ulsterites even to the point of open rebellion. But despite every obstacle, the Liberals continued their efforts until the Home Rule bill was assured in 1914. Let us look now beyond Europe. England deserves credit for the big forward step taken by her colonies in South Africa. All of these joined in 1910 in a union intended to be as indissoluble as that of the United States. Thus to the mighty English-speaking nations developing in a united Australia and a united Canada, there was now added a third, the nation of South Africa.[1] [Footnote 1: See _Union of South Africa_, page 17.] In Asia, too, there was a most surprising and notable democratic step. China declared itself a Republic. Considerable fighting preceded this change, warfare of a character rather vague and purposeless; for China is so huge that a harmony of understanding among her hundreds of millions is not easily attained. Yet, on the whole, with surprisingly little conflict and confusion the change was made. The oldest nation in the world joined hands with the youngest in adopting this modern form of "government by the people."[2] The world is still watching, however, to see whether the Chinese have passed the level of political wisdom awaited by the Spanish republicans, and can successfully exercise the dangerous right they have assumed. [Footnote 2: See _The Chinese Revolution_, page 238.] Turn back, for a moment, to review all the wonderful advance in popular government these brief five years accomplished: in the United States, a political revolution with changes of the Constitution and of the machinery of government; in Britain, similar changes of government even more radical in the direction of Democracy; two wholly new Republics added to the list, one being China, the oldest and most populous country in the world, the other little Portugal, long accounted the most spiritless and unprogressive nation in Europe; a shift from autocratic British rule toward democratic home rule through all the vast region of South Africa; a similar shift in much-troubled Ireland; Socialism reaching out toward power through all central Europe; Woman Suffrage taking possession of northern Europe and western America and striding on from country to country, from state to state; a bloody and desperate people's revolution in Mexico; and a similar one of the Balkan peoples against Turkey! Individuals may possibly feel that some one or other of these steps was reckless, even perhaps that some may ultimately have to be retraced in the world's progress. But of their general glorious trend no man can doubt. Were there no reactionary movements to warn us of the terrible reassertion of autocratic power so soon to deluge earth with horror? Yes, though there were few democratic defeats to measure against the splendid record of advance. Russia stood, as she has so long stood, the dragon of repression. In the days of danger from her own people which had followed the disastrous Japanese war, Russia had courted her subject nations by granting them every species of favor. Now with her returning strength she recommenced her unyielding purpose of "Russianizing" them. Finland was deprived of the last spark of independence; so that her own chief champions said of her sadly in 1910, "So ends Finland."[1] [Footnote 1: See _The Crushing of Finland_, page 47.] In southern Russia the persecutions of the Jews were recommenced, with charges of "ritual murder" and other incitements of the ignorant peasantry to massacre. In Asia, Russia reached out beyond her actual territory to strangle the new-found voice of liberty in Persia. Russia coveted the Persian territory; Persia had established a constitutional government a few years before; this government, with American help, seemed likely to grow strong and assured in its independence. So Russia, in the old medieval lawlessness of power, reached out and crushed the Persian government.[2] At this open exertion of tyranny the world looked on, disapproving, but not resisting. England, in particular, was almost forced into an attitude of partnership with Russia's crime. But she submitted sooner than precipitate that universal war the menace of which came so grimly close during the strain of the outbreaks around Turkey. The millennium of universal peace and brotherhood was obviously still far away. Not yet could the burden of fleets and armaments be cast aside; though every crisis thus overpassed without the "world war" increased our hopes of ultimately evading its unspeakable horror. [Footnote 2: See _Persia's Loss of Liberty_, page 199.] MAN'S ADVANCE IN KNOWLEDGE Meanwhile, in the calm, enduring realm of scientific knowledge, there was progress, as there is always progress. No matter what man's cruelty to his fellows, he has still his curiosity. Hence he continues forever gathering more and more facts explaining his environment. He continues also molding that environment to his desires. Imagination makes him a magician. Most surprising of his recent steps in this exploration of his surroundings was the attainment of the South Pole in 1911.[1] This came so swiftly upon the conquest of the North Pole, that it caught the world unprepared; it was an unexpected triumph. Yet it marks the closing of an era. Earth's surface has no more secrets concealed from man. For half a century past, the only remaining spaces of complete mystery, of utter blankness on our maps, were the two Poles. And now both have been attained. The gaze of man's insatiable wonderment must hereafter be turned upon the distant stars. [Footnote 1: See _Discovery of the South Pole_, page 218.] But man does not merely explore his environment; he alters it. Most widespread and important of our recent remodelings of our surroundings has been the universal adoption of the automobile. This machine has so increased in popularity and in practical utility that we may well call ours the "Automobile Age." The change is not merely that one form of vehicle is superseding another on our roads and in our streets. We face an impressive theme for meditation in the fact that up to the present generation man was still, as regarded his individual personal transit, in the same position as the Romans of two thousand years ago, dependent upon the horse as his swiftest mode of progress. With the automobile we have suddenly doubled, quadrupled the size of our "neighborhood," the space which a man may cover alone at will for a ramble or a call. As for speed, we seem to have succumbed to an actual mania for ever-increasing motion. The automobile is at present the champion speed-maker, the fastest means of propelling himself man has yet invented. But the aeroplane and the hydroplane are not far behind, and even the electric locomotive has a thrill of promise for the speed maniac.[2] [Footnote 2: See _Man's Fastest Mile_, page 73.] In thus developing his mastery over Nature man sometimes forgets his danger, oversteps the narrow margin of safety he has left between himself and the baffled forces of his ancient tyrants, Fire and Water, Earth and Air. Then indeed, in his moments of weakness, the primordial forces turn upon him and he becomes subject to tragic and terrific punishment. Of such character was the most prominent disaster of these years, the sinking of the ocean steamer _Titanic_. The best talent of England and America had united to produce this monster ship, which was hailed as the last, the biggest, the most perfect thing man could do in shipbuilding. It was pronounced "unsinkable." Its captain was reckless in his confidence; and Nature reached down in menace from the regions of northern ice; and the ship perished.[1] Since then another great ship has sunk, under almost similar conditions, and with almost equal loss of life. [Footnote 1: See _Tragedy of the Titanic_, page 265.] Oddly enough at the very moment when we have thus had reimpressed upon us the uncertainty of our outward mechanical defenses against the elements, we have been making a curious addition to our knowledge of inner means of defense. The science of medicine has taken several impressive strides in recent years, but none more suggestive of future possibilities of prolonging human life than the recent work done in preserving man's internal organs and tissues to a life of their own outside the body.[2] Already it is possible to transfer healthy tissues thus preserved, or even some of the simpler organs, from one body to another. Men begin to talk of the probability of rejuvenating the entire physical form. Thus science may yet bring us to encounter as actual fact the deep philosophic thought of old, the thought that regards man as merely a will and a brain, and the body as but the outward clothing of these, mere drapery, capable of being changed as the spirit wills. There is no visible limit to this wondrous drama in which man's patient mastering of his immediate environment is gradually teaching him to mold to his purpose all the potent forces of the universe. [Footnote 2: See _Our Progressing Knowledge of Life Surgery_, page 273.] In this assurance of ultimate success, let us find such consolation as we may. Though world-war may continue its devastation, though its increasing horrors may shake our civilization to the deepest depths, though its wanton destruction may rob us of the hoarded wealth of generations and the art treasures of all the past, though its beastlike massacres may reduce the number of men fitted to bear onward the torch of progress until of their millions only a mere pitiable handful survive, yet the steps which science has already won cannot be lost. Knowledge survives; and a happier generation than ours standing some day secure against the monster of militarism shall continue to uplift man's understanding till he dwells habitually on heights as yet undreamed. THE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF GOVERNORS A NEW MACHINERY ADDED TO THE FEDERAL FORM OF GOVERNMENT A.D. 1910 WILLIAM G. JORDAN THE GOVERNORS The formal establishment of the "House of Governors," which took place in January of 1910, marked the climax of a definite movement which has swept onward through the entire history of the United States. When in 1775 the thirteen American colonies made their first effort toward united action, they were in truth thirteen different nations, each possessed of differing traditions and a separate history, and each suspicious and jealous of all the others. Their widely diverging interests made concerted action almost impossible during the Revolutionary War. And when necessity ultimately drove them to join in the close bond of the present United States, their constitution was planned less for union than for the protection of each suspicious State against the aggressions of the others. Gradually the spread of intercourse among the States has worn away their more marked differential points of character and purpose. Step by step the course of history has forced our people into closer harmony and union. To-day the forty-eight States look to one another in true brotherhood. And as the final bond of that brotherhood they have established a new organization, the House of Governors. This constitutes the only definite change made in the United States machinery of government since the beginning. The House of Governors sprang first from the suggestion of William George Jordan, who was afterward appropriately selected as its permanent secretary. Hence we give here Mr. Jordan's own account of the movement, as being its clearest possible elucidation. Then we give a series of brief estimates of the importance of the new step from the pens of those Governors who themselves took part in the gathering. In their ringing utterances you hear the voice of North and South, Illinois and Florida, of East and West, Massachusetts and Oregon, and of the great central Mississippi Valley, all announcing the fraternizing influence of the new step. Governor Willson, of Kentucky, chairman of the committee which arranged the gathering, in an earnest speech to its members declared that, "If this conference of Governors had been in existence as an institution in 1860, there would never have been a war between the States. The issues of the day would have been settled by argument, adjustment, and compromise." It would be hard to find stronger words for measuring the possible importance of the new institution. WILLIAM G. JORDAN The conference of the Governors at Washington this month marks the beginning of a new epoch in the political history of the nation. It is the first meeting ever held of the State Executives as a body seeking, by their united influence, to secure uniform laws on vital subjects for the welfare of the entire country. It should not be confused with the Roosevelt conferences of May and December, 1908. It is in no sense a continuation of them. It is essentially different in aim, method, and basis, and is larger, broader, and more far-reaching in its possibilities. The nation to-day is facing a grave crisis in its history. Vital problems affecting the welfare of the whole country, remaining unsolved through the years, have at last reached an acute stage where they _demand_ solution. This solution must come now in some form--either in harmony with the Constitution or in defiance of it. The Federal Government has been and still is absolutely powerless to act because of constitutional limitation; the State governments have the sole power, but heretofore no way has been provided for them to exercise that power. Senator Elihu Root points out fairly, squarely, and relentlessly the two great dangers confronting the Republic: the danger of the National Government breaking down in its effective machinery through the burdens that threaten to be cast upon it; and the danger that the local self-government of the States may, through disuse, become inefficient. The House of Governors plan seems to have in it possibilities of mastering both of these evils at one stroke. There are three basic weaknesses in the American system of government as we know it to-day. There are three insidious evils that are creeping like a blood-poison through the body politic, threatening the very life of the Republic. They are killing the soul of self-government, though perhaps not its form; destroying its essence, though perhaps not its name. These three evils, so intertwined as to be practically one, are: the growing centralization at Washington, the shifting, undignified, uncertain status of State rights, and the lack of uniform laws. It was to propose a possible cure for these three evils that the writer sent in February, 1907, to President Roosevelt and to the Governors of the country a pamphlet on a new idea in American politics. It was the institution of a new House, a new representation of the people and of the States to secure uniform legislation on those questions wherein the Federal Governments could not act because of Constitutional limitation. The plan proposed, so simple that it would require no Constitutional amendment to put it into effect, was the organization of the House of Governors. More than thirty Governors responded in cordial approval of the plan. Eight months later, October, 1907, President Roosevelt invited the State Executives to a conference at Washington in May, 1908. The writer pointed out at that time what seemed an intrinsic weakness of the convention, that it could have little practical result, because it would be, after all, only a conference, where the Federal Government, by its limitations, was powerless to carry the findings of the conference into effect, and the Governors, acting not as a co-operative body, but as individuals, would be equally powerless in effecting uniform legislation. It was a conference of conflicting powers. The Governors were then urged to meet upon their own initiative, as a body of peers, working out by united State action those problems where United States action had for more than a century proved powerless. At the close of the Roosevelt conference the Governors, at an adjourned meeting, appointed a committee to arrange time and place for a session of the Governors in a body of their own, independently of the President. This movement differentiated the proposed meeting absolutely from that with the President in every fundamental. It essentially became more than a conference; it meant a deliberative body of the Governors uniting to initiate, to inspire, and to influence uniform laws. The committee then named, consisting of three members, later increased to five, set the dates January 18, 19, and 20, 1910, for the first session of the Governors as a separate body. WILLIAM G. JORDAN[1] [Footnote 1: Reproduced from _The Craftsman_ of October, 1910, by permission of Gustav Stickley.] When a new idea or a new institution confronts the world it must answer all challenges, show its credentials, specify its claims for usefulness, and prove its promise by its performance. As an idea the House of Governors has won the cordial approval of the American press and public; as an institution it must now justify this confidence. To grasp fully its powers and possibilities requires a clear, definite understanding of its spirit, scope, plan, and purpose, and its attitude toward the Federal Government. The House of Governors is a union of the Governors of all the States, meeting annually in conference as a deliberative body (with no lawmaking power) for initiative, influence, and inspiration toward a better, higher, and more unified Statehood. Its organization will be simple and practical, avoiding red-tape, unnecessary formality, and elaborate rules and regulations. It will adopt the few fundamental expressions of its principles of action and the least number of rules that are absolutely essential to enunciate its plan and scope, to transmute its united wisdom into united action and to guarantee the coherence, continuity, and permanence of the organization despite the frequent changes in its membership due to the short terms of the Executives in many of the States. With the House of Governors rests the power of securing through the cooperative action of the State legislatures uniform laws on vital questions demanded by the whole country almost since the dawn of our history, but heretofore impossible of enactment. The Federal Government is powerless to pass these laws. For many decades, tight held by the cramping bonds of Constitutional limitation, it has strained and struggled, like Samson in the temple, to find some weak spot at which it could free itself, and endangered the very supporting columns of the edifice of the Republic. It was bound in its lawmaking powers to the limitation of eighteen specific phrases, beyond which all power remained with the States and the people. In the matter of enacting uniform laws the States have been equally powerless, for, though their Constitutional right to make them was absolute and unquestioned, no way had been provided by which they could exercise that right. The States as individuals, passing their own laws, without considering their relation or harmony with the laws of other States, brought about a condition of confusion and conflict. Laws that from their very nature should be common to all of the States, in the best interests of all, are now divergent, different, and antagonistic. We have to-day the strange anomaly of forty-six States united in a union as integral parts of a single nation, yet having many laws of fundamental importance as different as though the States were forty-six distinct countries or nationalities. Facing the duality of incapacity--that of the Government because it was not permitted to act and the States because they did not know how to exercise the power they possessed--the Federal Government sought new power for new needs through Constitutional amendments. This effort proved fruitless and despairing, for with more than two thousand attempts made in over a century only three amendments were secured, and these were merely to wind up the Civil War. The whole fifteen amendments taken together have not added the weight of a hair of permanent new power to the Federal Government. The people and the States often sleep serenely on their rights, but they never willingly surrender them, yet the surrender of a right is often the brave recognition of a higher duty, the fine assumption of a higher privilege. In many phases the need grew urgent, something had to be done. By ingeniously tapping the Constitution to find a weak place and hammering it thin by decisions, by interpretations, by liberal readings, by technical evasions and other methods, needed laws were passed in the interests of the people and the States. Many of these laws would not stand the rigid scrutiny of the Supreme Court; to many of them the Government's title may now be valid by a kind of "squatter's sovereignty" in legislation,--merely so many years of undisputed possession. This was not the work of one administration; it ran with intermittent ebb and flow through many administrations. Then the slumbering States, turning restlessly in their complacency, at last awoke and raised a mighty cry of "Centralization." They claimed that the Government was taking away their rights, which may be correct in essence but hardly just in form; they had lost their rights, primarily, not through usurpation but through abrogation; the Government had acted because of the default of the States, it had practically been forced to exercise powers limited to the States because the States lapsed through neglect and inaction. Then the Government discovered the vulnerable spot in our great charter, the Achilles heel of the Constitution. It was just six innocent-looking words in section eight empowering Congress to "regulate commerce between the several States." It was a rubber phrase, capable of infinite stretching. It was drawn out so as to cover antitrust legislation, control and taxation of corporations, water-power, railroad rates, etc., pure-food law, white-slave traffic, and a host of others. But even with the most generous extension of this phrase, which, though it may be necessary, was surely not the original intent of the Constitution, the greatest number of the big problems affecting the welfare of the people are still outside the province of the Government and are up to the States for solution. It was to meet this situation, wherein the Government and the States as individuals could not act, that the simple, self-evident plan of the House of Governors was proposed. It required no Constitutional amendment or a single new law passed in any State to create it or to continue it. It can not make laws; it would be unwise for it to make them even were it possible. Its sole power is as a mighty moral influence, as a focusing point for public opinion and as a body equal to its opportunity of transforming public opinion into public sentiment and inspiring legislatures to crystallize this sentiment into needed laws. It will live only as it represents the people, as it has their sympathy, support, and cooperation, as it seeks to make the will of the people prevail. But this means a longer, stronger, finer life than any mere legal authority could give it. The House of Governors has the dignity of simplicity. It means merely the conference of the State Executives, the highest officers and truest representatives of the States, on problems that are State and Interstate, and concerted action in recommendations to their legislatures. The fullest freedom would prevail at all meetings; no majority vote would control the minority; there would have to be a quorum decided upon as the number requisite for an initial impulse toward uniform legislation. If the number approving fell below the quorum the subject would be shown as not yet ripe for action and be shelved. Members would be absolutely free to accept or reject, to do exactly as they please, so no unwilling legislation could be forced on any State. But if a sufficient number agreed these Governors would recommend the passage of the desired law to their legislatures in their next messages. The united effort would give it a greater importance, a larger dynamic force, and a stronger moral influence with each. It would be backed by the influence of the Governors, the power of public sentiment, the leverage of the press, so that the passage of the law should come easily and naturally. With a few States passing it, others would fall in line; it would be kept a live issue and followed up and in a few years we would have legislation national in scope, but not in genesis. The House of Governors, in its attitude toward the Federal Government, is one of right and dignified non-interference. It will not use its influence with the Government, memorialize Congress, or pass resolutions on national matters. What the Governors do or say individually is, of course, their right and privilege, but as a body it took its stand squarely and positively at its first conference which met in Washington in January of this year as one of "securing greater uniformity of State action and better State Government." Governor Hughes expressed it in these words: "We are here in our own right as State Executives; we are not here to accelerate or to develop opinion with regard to matters which have been committed to Federal power." The States in their relation to the Federal Government have all needed representation in their Senators and Congressmen. The attitude of the Governors in their conferences is one of concentration on State and Interstate problems which are outside of the domain and Constitutional rights of the Federal Government to solve. There can be no interference when each confines itself to its own duties. In keeping the time of the nation the Federal Government represents the hour-hand, the States, united, the minute-hand. There will be correct time only as each hand confines itself strictly to its own business, neither attempting to jog the other, but working in accord with the natural harmony wrapped up in the mechanism. We need to-day to draw the sharpest clear-cut line of demarcation between Federal and State powers. This is in no spirit of antagonism, but in the truest harmony for the best interests of both. It means an illumination which will show that the "twilight zone," so called, does not exist. This dark continent of legislation belongs absolutely to the States and to the people in the unmistakable terms of the Tenth Amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution or prohibited by it to the States are reserved to the States, respectively, and to the people." This buffer territory of legislation, the domain of needed uniform laws, belongs to the States and through the House of Governors they may enter in and possess their own. The Federal Government and the States are parts of one great organization, each having its specific duties, powers, and responsibilities, and between them should be no conflict, no inharmony. Let the Federal Government, through Congress, make laws up to the very maximum of its rights and duties under the Constitution; let the States, taking up their neglected duties and privileges, relieve the Government of those cares and responsibilities forced upon it by the inactivity of the States and which it should never have had to assume. With the burden thus equitably readjusted, with the dignity of the two powers of Government working out their individual problems in the harmony of a fuller understanding, let us face the results. If it then seem, in the light of changed conditions from those of the time of the writing of the Constitution, that certain control now held by the States can not properly be exercised by them, that in final decision of the best wisdom of the people this power should be vested in the Federal Government, let the States not churlishly hold on to the casket of a dead right, but surrender the living body of a responsibility and a duty to the power best able to be its guardian. There are few, if any, of their neglected powers of legislation that the States and the people acting in cooperation, through the House of Governors, will not be able to handle. Some of the subjects upon which free discussion tending toward uniform laws seems desirable are: marriage and divorce, rights of married women, corporations and trusts, insurance, child labor, capital punishment, direct primaries, convict labor and labor in general, prison reforms, automobile regulations, contracts, banking, conveyancing, inheritance tax, income tax, mortgages, initiative, referendum and recall, election reforms, tax adjustment, and similar topics. In great questions, like Conservation, the Federal Government has distinct problems it must carry out alone; there are some problems that must be solved by the States alone, some that may require to be worked out in cooperation. But the greatest part of the needed conservation is that which belongs to the States, and which they can manage better, more thoroughly, more judiciously, with stronger appeal to State pride, upbuilding, and prosperity, with less conflict and clearer recognition of local needs and conditions and harmony with them than can the Federal Government. Four-fifths of the timber standing in the country to-day is owned, not by the States or the Government, but by private interests. The House of Governors will not seek uniformity merely for the sake of uniformity. There are many questions whereon uniform laws would be unnecessary, and others where it would be not only unwise, but inconceivably foolish. Many States have purely individual problems that do not concern the other States and do not come in conflict with them, but even in these the Governors may gain an occasional incidental sidelight of illumination from the informal discussion in a conference that may make thinking clearer and action wiser. The spirit that should inspire the States is the fullest freedom in purely State problems and the largest unity in laws that affect important questions in Interstate relations. While uniform law is an important element in the thought of the Conference it is far from being the only one. The frank, easy interchange of view, opinion, and experience brings the Governors closely together in the fine fellowship of a common purpose and a common ideal. They are broadened, stimulated, and inspired to a keener, clearer vision on a wider outlook. The most significant, vital, and inspiring phases of these conferences, those which really count for most, and are the strongest guaranties of the permanence and power of this movement, must, however, remain intangible. This fact was manifest in every moment of that first Conference last January. The fading of sectional prejudice in the glow of sympathetic understanding was clearly evident. Some of the Western Governors in their speeches said that their people of the West had felt that they were isolated, misrepresented, misunderstood, and misjudged; but now these Governors could go back to their States and their people with messages of good will and tell them of the identity of interest, the communion of purpose, the kinship of common citizenship, and the closer knowledge that bound them more firmly to the East, to the South, and to the North. Other Governors spoke of the facilitating of official business between the States because of these meetings. They would no longer, in correspondence, write to a State Executive as a mere name without personality, but their letters would carry with them the memories of close contact and cordial association with those whom they had learned to know. There was no faintest tinge of State jealousies or rivalry. The Governors talked frankly, freely, earnestly of their States and for them, but it was ever with the honest pride of trusteeship, never the petty vanity of proprietorship. Patriotism seemed to throw down the walls of political party and partizanship and in the three days' session the words Republican or Democrat were never once spoken. The Governors showed themselves an able body of men keenly alive to the importance of their work and with a firm grasp on the essential issues. The meeting added a new dignity to Statehood and furnished a new revelation of the power, prestige, and possibilities of the Governor's office. The atmosphere of the session was that of States' rights, but it was a new States' rights, a purified, finer, higher recognition by the States of their individual right and duty of self-government within their Constitutional limitations. It meant no lessening of interest in the Federal Government or of respect and honor of it. It was as a family of sons growing closer together, strengthened as individuals and working to solve those problems they have in common, and to make their own way rather than to depend in weakness on the father of the household to manage all their affairs and do their thinking for them. To him should be left the watchfulness of the family as a whole, not the dictation of their individual living. President Taft had no part in the Conference, but in an address of welcome to the Governors at the White House showed his realization of the vital possibility of the meeting in these words: "I regard this movement as of the utmost importance. The Federal Constitution has stood the test of more than one hundred years in supplying the powers that have been needed to make the central Government as strong as it ought to be, and with this movement toward uniform legislation and agreement between the States I do not see why the Constitution may not serve our purpose always." AUGUSTUS E. WILLSON[1] Governor of Kentucky [Footnote 1: The following letters are reprinted by permission from a collection of such commentaries from _Cottier's Weekly_.] President Roosevelt held two conferences of Governors, and as a member of a committee chosen to do so, I have invited the Governors of all of the States and Territories to meet at the White House in Washington, January 18th, 19th, and 20th. The conference has no legal authority of any kind. At the previous conferences, the conservation subject was the one chiefly thought of, and it will be brought up in the next conference. The question of what the Governors will recommend on the income-tax constitutional amendment may come up. The matter of handling extradition papers is important. Uniform State laws on matters of universal interest, school laws, road laws, tax laws, commercial paper, warehouse receipts, bills of lading, etc.; the control of corporations, of which taxation is one branch, the action of the States in regard to water-powers within the States; marriage, divorce, wills, schools, roads, are all within the range of this conference, and the agreement of all of the Governors on some of these subjects, and by many of them on any, would be of useful influence. The meeting has further interest and importance in being for two days in touch with the National Civic Federation, which will afford all of the Governors a chance to learn what that association of many of the most prominent men of this country is doing, and get the benefit of its discussions and the pleasure of being acquainted with many leaders of thought and action in the country, who will attend its sessions. I am sure that I speak the sentiment of all of the Governors that they do not wish any legal power or any authority except that of the weight of their opinion as chosen State officers. They only wish the benefit of discussion of important subjects interesting to all of the States, and to establish kindly and mutually helpful relations between the Governors and the Governments of the States. EBEN S. DRAPER Governor of Massachusetts I believe that a meeting of Governors may accomplish much good for every section of the country. They naturally can not legislate, nor should they attempt to. They can discuss and can learn many things which are now controlled by law in different States and which would be improvements to the laws of their own States; and they can recommend to the legislatures of their own States the enactment of laws which will bring about these improvements. These Governors will be the forty-six [now forty-eight] representative units of the States of this great nation. By coming together they will be more than ever convinced that they are integral parts of one nation, and I believe their meeting will tend to remove all notions of sectionalism and will help the patriotism and solidarity of the country. CHARLES S. DENEEN Governor of Illinois The conservation of natural resources often necessitates the cooperation of neighboring States. In such cases, the discussion of proposed conservation work by the representatives of the States concerned is of great importance. It brings to the consideration of these subjects the views and opinions of those most interested and best informed in regard to the questions involved. The same is true in relation to many subjects of State legislation in which uniformity is desirable. This is especially the case with regard to industrial legislation. The great volume of domestic business is interstate, and the industrial legislation of one State frequently affects, and sometimes fixes, industrial conditions elsewhere. An example of the advantage of cooperation of States in the amendment and revision of laws affecting industry is seen in the agreement by the commissions recently appointed by New York, Wisconsin, and Minnesota to investigate the subjects of employers' liability and workmen's compensation to meet for the joint discussion of these matters. The General Assembly of Illinois is now convened in extraordinary session, and has under consideration the appointment of a similar commission in order that it may meet and cooperate with the commissions of the States named. Along these and other similar lines it seems to me that the House of Governors will be of practical advantage in the beneficial influence it will exert in the promotion of joint action where that is necessary to secure desired ends. FRANK W. BENSON Governor of Oregon President Roosevelt rendered the American people a great service when he invited the Governors of the various States to a conference at the White House in 1908. The subject of conservation of our natural resources received such attention from the assembled Governors that the conservation movement has spread to all parts of the country, and has gained such headway that it will be of lasting benefit to our people. This one circumstance alone proves the wisdom of the conference of Governors, and it is my earnest hope that the organization be made permanent, with annual meetings at our national capital. Such meetings can not help but have a broadening effect upon our State Executives, for, by interchanging ideas and by learning how the governments of other States are conducted, our Governors will gain experience which ought to prove of great benefit, not only to themselves, but to the commonwealths which they represent. Matters pertaining to interstate relations, taxation, education, conservation, irrigation, waterways, uniform legislation, and the management of State institutions are among the subjects that the conference of Governors will do well to discuss; and such discussions will prove of inestimable value, not only to the people of our different States, but to our country as a whole. The West is in the front rank of all progressive movements and welcomes the conference of Governors as a step in the right direction. ALBERT W. GILCHRIST Governor of Florida I can only estimate the significance and importance of this conference of Governors by my experience from such a conference in the past. It was my good fortune to be for a week last October on the steamer excursion down the Mississippi River. The Governors held daily conferences. Several elucidated the manner in which some particular governmental problems were solved in their respective States, all of which was more or less interesting. Of the several Federal matters discussed, it was specially interesting to me to hear the various Republican Governors discussing State rights, disputing the right of interference of the General Government on such lines. It "kinder" made me smile. In formal discussions of such matters in public, in Washington, it is probable that such expressions would not be made. The result of this conference made me feel as if I knew the Governors and the people of the various States therein represented far better than I had before. Such discussions, with the attending personal intercourse, naturally tend to give those participating in them a broader nationality. The House of Governors will convene; there will be many pleasant social functions and many pleasant associations will be formed. Some of the Governors will speak; all of them will resolute. They will behold evidences of the greatness of our common country and the evidence of the greatness of our public men, as displayed in the rollicking debates in the House, and the "knot on the log" discussions of the Senate. Everything will be as lovely as a Christmas tree. The House will then adjourn. HERBERT S. HADLEY Governor of Missouri During recent years, the development of the National idea has carried with it a marked tendency on the part of the people to look to the National Government for the correction of all evils and abuses existing in commercial, industrial, and political affairs. The importance of the State Governments in the solution of such questions has been minimized, and, in some cases, entirely overlooked, although Congress has been behind, rather than in advance of, public sentiment upon many questions of national importance. The Congressmen are elected by the people of the different Congressional Districts, and regard their most important duty as looking after the interests of their respective districts. The United States Senators are elected by the legislatures of the several States, and do not feel that sense of responsibility to the people that is incident to an election by the people. The Governors of the various States are elected by all of the people of the State, and they are more directly "tribunes of the people" than any other officials, either in our National or State Governments. These officers will thus give a correct expression of the sentiment of the people of the States upon public questions. While these expressions of opinion will naturally vary according to the sentiments and opinions of the people of the various States represented, yet, on the whole, they will represent more of progress and more of actual contact with present-day problems than could be secured from any similar number of public officials. And the addresses and discussions will also tend to mold the opinions of the people and have a marked influence not only upon State, but also upon National legislation. UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA A.D. 1910 PROF. STEPHEN LEACOCK Few historical events have been so impressive as the sudden and complete union of the South-African States. Seldom have men's minds progressed so rapidly, their life purposes changed so completely. In 1902 England, with the aid of her African colonists in Cape Colony and Natal, was ending a bitter war, almost of extermination, against the Dutch "Boers" of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. In that year the ablest and most dreaded of England's enemies in Africa was the Dutch General, Louis Botha, leader of the fiercest and most irreconcilable Boers, who still waged a hopeless guerrilla warfare against all the might of the British Empire. As one English paper dramatically phrases it: "One used to see pictures of Botha in the illustrated papers in those days, a gaunt, bearded, formidable figure, with rifle and bandoliers--the most dangerous of our foes. To-day he is the chief servant of the King in the Federation, the loyal head of the Administration under the Crown, one of the half-dozen Prime Ministers of the Empire, the responsible representative and virtual ruler of all races, classes, and sects in South Africa, acclaimed by the men he led in the battle and the rout no less than by the men who faced him across the muzzles of the Mausers ten years ago. Was ever so strange a transformation, so swift an oblivion of old enmities and rancors, so rapid a growth of union and concord out of hatred and strife!" Necessity has in a way compelled this harmony. The old issue of Boer independence being dead, new and equally vital issues confronted the South-Africans. The whites there are scarcely more than a million in number, and they dwell amid many times their number of savage blacks. They must unite or perish. Moreover, the folly and expense of maintaining four separate governments for so small a population were obvious. So was the need of uniform tariffs in a land where all sea-coast towns found their prosperity in forwarding supplies to the rich central mining regions of Kimberley and Johannesburg. Hence all earnest men of whatever previous opinion came to see the need of union. And when this union had been accomplished, Lord Gladstone, the British viceroy over South Africa, wisely selected as the fittest man for the land's first Prime Minister, General Botha. Botha has sought to unite all interests in the cabinet which he gathered around him. The clear analysis of the new nation and its situation which follows is reproduced by permission from the _American Political Science Review_, and is from the pen of Professor Stephen Leacock, head of the department of Political Economy of McGill University in Montreal, Canada. A distinguished citizen of one great British federation may well be accepted as the ablest commentator on the foundation of another. On May 31, 1910, the Union of South Africa became an accomplished fact. The four provinces of Cape Colony, Natal, the Orange Free State (which bears again its old-time name), and the Transvaal are henceforth joined, one might almost say amalgamated, under a single government. They will bear to the central government of the British Empire the same relation as the other self-governing colonies--Canada, Newfoundland, Australia, and New Zealand. The Empire will thus assume the appearance of a central nucleus with four outlying parts corresponding to geographical and racial divisions, and forming in all a ground-plan that seems to invite a renewal of the efforts of the Imperial Federationist. To the scientific student of government the Union of South Africa is chiefly of interest for the sharp contrast it offers to the federal structure of the American, Canadian, and other systems of similar historical ground. It represents a reversion from the idea of State rights, and balanced indestructible powers and an attempt at organic union by which the constituent parts are to be more and more merged in the consolidated political unit which they combine to form. But the Union and its making are of great interest also for the general student of politics and history, concerned rather with the development of a nationality than with the niceties of constitutional law. From this point of view the Union comes as the close of a century of strife, as the aftermath of a great war, and indicates the consummation, for the first time in history, of what appears as a solid basis of harmony between the two races in South Africa. In one shape or other union has always been the goal of South-African aspiration. It was "Union" which the "prancing proconsuls" of an earlier time--the Freres, the Shepstones, and the Lanyons--tried to force upon the Dutch. A united Africa was at once the dream of a Rhodes and (perhaps) the ambition of a Kruger. It is necessary to appreciate the strength of this desire for union on the part of both races and the intense South-African patriotism in which it rests in order to understand how the different sections and races of a country so recently locked in the death-struggle of a three years' war could be brought so rapidly into harmonious concert. The point is well illustrated by looking at the composition of the convention, which, in its sessions at Durban, Cape Town, and Bloemfontein, put together the present constitution. South Africa, from its troubled history, has proved itself a land of strong men. But it was reserved for the recent convention to bring together within the compass of a single council-room the surviving leaders of the period of conflict to work together for the making of a united state. In looking over the list of them and reflecting on the part that they played toward one another in the past, one realizes that we have here a grim irony of history. Among them is General Louis Botha, Prime Minister at the moment of the Transvaal, and now the first prime minister of South Africa. Botha, in the days of Generals Buller and the Dugela, was the hardest fighter of the Boer Republic. Beside him in the convention was Dr. Jameson, whom Botha wanted to hang after the raid in 1896. Another member is Sir George Farrar, who was sentenced to death for complicity in the raid, and still another, Sir Percy Fitzpatrick, once the secretary of the Reform League at Johannesburg and well known as the author of the "Transvaal from Within." One may mention in contrast General Jan Smuts, an ex-leader of the Boer forces, and since the war the organizing brain of the Het Volk party. There is also Mr. Merriman, a leader of the British party of opposition to the war in 1899 and since then a bitter enemy of Lord Milner and the new regime. Yet strangely enough after some four months of session the convention accomplished the impossible by framing a constitution that met the approval of the united delegates. Of its proceedings no official journal was kept. The convention met first at Durban, October 12, 1908, where it remained throughout that month; after a fortnight's interval it met again at Capetown, and with a three weeks' interruption at Christmas continued and completed its work at the end of the first week of February. The constitution was then laid before the different colonial parliaments. In the Transvaal its acceptance was a matter of course, as the delegates of both parties had reached an agreement on its terms. The Cape Parliament passed amendments which involved giving up the scheme of proportional representation as adopted by the convention. Similar amendments were offered by the Orange River Colony in which the Dutch leader sympathized with the leader of the Afrikanderbond at the Cape in desiring to swamp out, rather than represent, minorities. In Natal, which as an ultra-British and ultra-loyal colony, was generally supposed to be in fear of union, many amendments were offered. The convention then met again at Bloemfontein, made certain changes in the draft of the constitution, and again submitted the document to the colonies. This time it was accepted. Only in Natal was it thought necessary to take a popular vote, and here, contrary to expectation, the people voted heavily in favor of union. The logic of the situation compelled it. In the history of the movement Natal was cast for the same role as Rhode Island in the making of the Federal Union of the United States of America. The other colonies, once brought together into a single system, with power to adopt arrangements in their own interests in regard to customs duties and transportation rates, sheer economic pressure would have compelled the adhesion of Natal. In the constitution now put in force in South Africa the central point of importance is that it established what is practically a unitary and not a federal government. The underlying reason for this is found in the economic circumstances of the country and in the situation in which the provinces found themselves during the years after the war. Till that event the discord of South Africa was generally thought of rather as a matter of racial rivalry and conflicting sovereignties than of simple questions of economic and material interests. But after the conclusion of the compact of Vereiniging in 1902 it was found that many of the jealousies and difficulties of the respective communities had survived the war, and rested rather upon economic considerations than racial rivalries. To begin with, there was the question of customs relations. The colonies were separate units, each jealous of its own industrial prosperity. Each had the right to make its own tariff, and yet the division of the country, with four different tariff areas, was obviously to its general disadvantage. Since 1903 the provinces had been held together under the Customs Union of South Africa--made by the governments of the Cape and Natal and the Crown Colony governments of the conquered provinces. This was but a makeshift arrangement, with a common tariff made by treaty, and hence rigidly unalterable, and with a pro-rata division of the proceeds. Worse still was the railroad problem, which has been in South Africa a bone of contention ever since the opening of the mines of the Rand offered a rich prize to any port and railway that could capture the transit trade. The essence of the situation is simple. The center of the wealth of South Africa is the Johannesburg mines. This may not be forever the case, but in the present undeveloped state of agriculture and industrial life, Johannesburg is the dominating factor of the country. Now, Johannesburg can not feed and supply itself. It is too busy. Its one export is gold. Its quarter of a million people must be supplied from the outside. But the Transvaal is an inland country dependent on the seaports of other communities. In position Johannesburg is like the hub of a wheel from which the railways radiate as spokes to the seaports along the rim. The line from Cape Town to Johannesburg, a distance of over 700 miles, was the first completed, and until 1894 the Cape enjoyed a monopoly of carrying the whole trade of Johannesburg. But with the completion of the tunnel through the mountains at Laing's Nek the Natal government railway was able to connect with Johannesburg and the port of Durban entered into competition with the Cape Ports of Cape Town and East London over a line only 485 miles long. Finally, the opening of the Delagoa Bay Railway in 1894 supplied Johannesburg with an access to the sea over a line 396 miles long, of which 341 was in the Transvaal itself. This last line, it should be noticed, led to a Portuguese seaport, and at the time of its building traversed nowhere British territory. Hence it came about that in the all-important matter of railroad communication the interests of the Transvaal and of the seaboard colonies were diametrically opposed. To earn as large a revenue as possible it naturally adjusted the rates on its lines so as to penalize the freight from the colonies and favor the Delagoa Bay road. When the colonies tried in 1895 to haul freight by ox-team from their rail-head at the frontier to Johannesburg President Kruger "closed the drifts" and almost precipitated a conflict in arms. Since the war the same situation has persisted, aggravated by the completion of the harbor works and docks at Lorenzo Marques, which favors more than ever the Delagoa route. The Portuguese seaport at present receives some 67 per cent, of the traffic from the Rand, while the Cape ports, which in 1894 had 80 per cent, of the freight, now receive only n per cent. Under Lord Milner's government the unification of the railways of the Transvaal and the Orange River colony with the Central South-African Railways amalgamated the interests of the inland colonies, but left them still opposed to those of the seaboard. The impossibility of harmonizing the situation under existing political conditions has been one of the most potent forces in creating a united government which alone could deal with the question. An equally important factor has been the standing problem of the native races, which forms the background of South-African politics. In no civilized country is this question of such urgency. South Africa, with a white population of only 1,133,000 people, contains nearly 7,000,000 native and colored inhabitants, many of them, such as the Zulus and the Basutos, fierce, warlike tribes scarcely affected by European civilization, and wanting only arms and organization to offer a grave menace to the welfare of the white population. The Zulus, numbering a million, inhabiting a country of swamp and jungle impenetrable to European troops, have not forgotten the prowess of a Cetewayo and the victory of Isandhwana. It may well be that some day they will try the fortune of one more general revolt before accepting the permanent over-lordship of their conquerors. Natal lives in apprehension of such a day. Throughout all South Africa, among both British and Dutch, there is a feeling that Great Britain knows nothing of the native question. The British people see the native through the softly tinted spectacles of Exeter Hall. When they have given him a Bible and a breech-cloth they fondly fancy that he has become one of themselves, and urge that he shall enter upon his political rights. They do not know that to a savage, or a half-civilized black, a ballot-box and a voting-paper are about as comprehensible as a telescope or a pocket camera--it is just a part of the white man's magic, containing some particular kind of devil of its own. The South-Africans think that they understand the native. And the first tenet of their gospel is that he must be kept in his place. They have seen the hideous tortures and mutilations inflicted in every native war. If the native revolts they mean to shoot him into marmalade with machine guns. Such is their simple creed. And in this matter they want nothing of what Mr. Merriman recently called the "damnable interference" of the mother country. But to handle the native question there had to be created a single South-African Government competent to deal with it. The constitution creates for South Africa a union entirely different from that of the provinces of Canada or the States of the American Republic. The government is not federal, but unitary. The provinces become areas of local governments, with local elected councils to administer them, but the South-African Parliament reigns supreme. It is to know nothing of the nice division of jurisdiction set up by the American constitution and by the British North America Act. There are, of course, limits to its power. In the strict sense of legal theory, the omnipotence of the British Parliament, as in the case of Canada, remains unimpaired. Nor can it alter certain things,--for example, the native franchise of the Cape, and the equal status of the two languages,--without a special majority vote. But in all the ordinary conduct of trade, industry, and economic life, its power is unhampered by constitutional limitations. The constitution sets up as the government of South Africa a legislature of two houses--a Senate and a House of Assembly--and with it an executive of ministers on the customary tenure of cabinet government. This government, strangely enough, is to inhabit two capitals: Pretoria as the seat of the Executive Government and Cape Town as the meeting-place of the Parliament. The experiment is a novel one. The case of Simla and Calcutta, in each of which the Indian Government does its business, and on the strength of which Lord Curzon has defended the South-African plan, offers no real parallel. The truth is that in South Africa, as in Australia, it proved impossible to decide between the claims of rival cities. Cape Town is the mother city of South Africa. Pretoria may boast the memories of the fallen republic, and its old-time position as the capital of an independent state. Bloemfontein has the advantage of a central position, and even garish Johannesburg might claim the privilege of the money power. The present arrangement stands as a temporary compromise to be altered later at the will of the parliament. The making of the Senate demanded the gravest thought. It was desired to avoid if possible the drowsy nullity of the Canadian Upper House and the preponderating "bossiness" of the American. Nor did the example of Australia, where the Senate, elected on a "general ticket" over huge provincial areas, becomes thereby a sort of National Labor Convention, give any assistance in a positive direction. The plan adopted is to cause each present provincial parliament, and later each provincial council, to elect eight senators. The plan of election is by proportional representation, into the arithmetical juggle of which it is impossible here to enter. Eight more senators will be appointed by the Governor, making forty in all. Proportional representation was applied also in the first draft of the constitution to the election of the Assembly. It was thought that such a plan would allow for the representation of minorities, so that both Dutch and British delegates would be returned from all parts of the country. Unhappily, the Afrikanderbond--the powerful political organization supporting Mr. Merriman, and holding the bulk of the Dutch vote at the Cape--took fright at the proposal. Even Merriman and his colleagues had to vote it down. Without this they could not have saved the principle of "equal rights," which means the more or less equal (proportionate) representation of town and country. The towns are British and the country Dutch, so the bearing of equal rights is obvious. Proportional representation and equal rights were in the end squared off against one another. South Africa will retain duality of language, both Dutch and British being in official use. There was no other method open. The Dutch language is probably doomed to extinction within three or four generations. It is, in truth, not one linguistic form, but several: the Taal, or kitchen Dutch of daily speech, the "lingua franca" of South Africa; the School Taal, a modified form of it, and the High Dutch of the Scriptural translations brought with the Boers from Holland. Behind this there is no national literature, and the current Dutch of Holland and its books varies some from all of them. English is already the language of commerce and convenience. The only way to keep Dutch alive is to oppose its use. Already the bitterness of the war has had this effect, and language societies are doing their best to uphold and extend the use of the ancestral language. It is with a full knowledge of this that the leaders of the British parties acquiesced in the principle of duality. The native franchise was another difficult question. At present neither natives nor "colored men" (the South-African term for men of mixed blood) can vote in the Transvaal, the Orange River, and Natal. Nor is there the faintest possibility of the suffrage being extended to them, both the Dutch and the British being convinced that such a policy is a mistake. In the Cape natives and colored men, if possessed of the necessary property and able to write their names, are allowed to vote. The name writing is said to be a farce, the native drawing a picture of his name under guidance of his political boss. Some 20,000 natives and colored people thus vote at the Cape, and neither the Progressives nor the Bond party dared to oppose the continuance of the franchise, lest the native vote should be thrown solid against them. As a result each province will retain its own suffrage, at least until the South-African Parliament by a special majority of two-thirds in a joint session shall decide otherwise. The future conformation of parties under the union is difficult to forecast. At present the Dutch parties--they may be called so for lack of a better word--have large majorities everywhere except in Natal. In the Transvaal General Botha's party--Het Volk, the Party of the People--is greatly in the ascendant. But it must be remembered that Het Volk numbers many British adherents. For instance, Mr. Hull, Botha's treasurer in the outgoing Government, is an old Johannesburg "reformer," of the Uitlander days, and fought against the Boers in the war. In the Orange Free State the party called the Unie (or United party) has a large majority, while at the Cape Dr. Jameson's party of progressives can make no stand against Mr. Merriman, Mr. Malan, Mr. Sauer, and the powerful organization of the Afrikanderbond. How the new Government will be formed it is impossible to say. Botha and Merriman will, of course, constitute its leading factors. But whether they will attempt a coalition by taking in with them such men as Sir Percy Fitzpatrick and Dr. Jameson, or will prefer a more united and less universal support is still a matter of conjecture. From the outsider's point of view, a coalition of British and Dutch leaders, working together for the future welfare of a common country, would seem an auspicious opening for the new era. But it must be remembered that General Botha is under no necessity whatever to form such a coalition. If he so wishes he can easily rule the country without it as far as a parliamentary majority goes. Not long since an illustrious South-African, a visitor to Montreal, voiced the opinion that Botha's party will rule South Africa for twenty years undisturbed. But it is impossible to do more than conjecture what will happen. _Ex Africa semper quid novi_. Most important of all is the altered relation in which South Africa will now stand to the British Empire. The Imperial Government may now be said to evacuate South Africa, and to leave it to the control of its own people. It is true that for the time being the Imperial Government will continue to control the native protectorates of Basutoland, Bechuanaland, and Swaziland. But the Constitution provides for the future transfer of these to the administration of a commission appointed by the colonial Government. Provision is also made for the future inclusion of Rhodesia within the Union. South Africa will therefore find itself on practically the same footing as Canada or Australia within the British Empire. What its future fate there will be no man can yet foretell. In South Africa, as in the other Dominions, an intense feeling of local patriotism and "colonial nationalism" will be matched against the historic force and the practical advantages of the Imperial connection. Even in Canada, there is no use in denying it, there are powerful forces which, if unchecked, would carry us to an ultimate independence. Still more is this the case in South Africa. It is a land of bitter memories. The little people that fought for their republics against a world in arms have not so soon forgotten. It is idle for us in the other parts of the Empire to suppose that the bitter memory of the conflict has yet passed, that the Dutch have forgotten the independence for which they fought, the Vier Klur flag that is hidden in their garrets still, and the twenty thousand women and children that lie buried in South Africa as the harvest of the conqueror. If South Africa is to stay in the Empire it will have to be because the Empire will be made such that neither South Africa nor any other of the dominions would wish to leave it. For this, much has already been done. The liberation of the Transvaal and Orange River from the thraldom of their Crown Colony Government, and the frank acceptance of the Union Constitution by the British Government are the first steps in this direction. Meantime that future of South Africa, as of all the Empire, lies behind a veil. PORTUGAL BECOMES A REPUBLIC A.D. 1910 WILLIAM ARCHER The wave of democratic revolt which had swept over Europe during the first decade of the twentieth century was continued in 1910 by the revolution in Portugal. This, as the result of long secret planning, burst forth suddenly before dawn on the morning of October 4th. Before nightfall the revolution was accomplished and the young king, Manuel, was a fugitive from his country. The change had been long foreseen. The selfishness and blindness of the Portuguese monarchs and their supporters had been such as to make rebellion inevitable, and its ultimate success certain. Mr. William Archer, the noted English journalist, who was sent post-haste to watch the progress of the revolution, could not reach the scene before the brief tumult was at an end; but he here gives a picture of the joyous celebration of freedom that followed, and then traces with power and historic accuracy the causes and conduct of the dramatic scene which has added Portugal to the ever-growing list of Republics. When the poet Wordsworth and his friend Jones landed at Calais in 1790 they found "France standing on the top of golden years And human nature seeming born again." Not once, but fifty times, in Portugal these lines came back to my mind. The parallel, it may be said, is an ominous one, in view of subsequent manifestations of the reborn French human nature. But there is a world of difference between Portugal and France, between the House of Braganza and the House of Bourbon. It was nearly one in the morning when my train from Badajoz drew into the Rocio station at Lisbon; yet I had no sooner passed the barrier than I heard a band in the great hall of the station strike up an unfamiliar but not unpleasing air, the rhythm of which plainly announced it to be a national anthem--a conjecture confirmed by a wild burst of cheering at the close. The reason of this midnight demonstration I never ascertained; but, indeed, no one in Lisbon asks for a reason for striking up "A Portugueza," the new patriotic song. Before twenty-four hours had passed I was perfectly familiar with its rather plaintive than martial strains, suited, no doubt, to the sentimental character of the people. An American friend, who arrived a day or two after me, made acquaintance with "A Portugueza" even more immediately than I did. Soon after passing the frontier he fell into conversation with a Portuguese fellow traveler, who, in the course of ten minutes or so, asked him whether he would like to hear the new national anthem, and then and there sang it to him, amid great applause from the other occupants of the compartment. In the cafés and theaters of Lisbon "A Portugueza" may break out at any moment, without any apparent provocation, and you must, of course, stand up and uncover; but there is in some quarters a movement of protest against these observances as savoring of monarchical flunkyism. When I left Lisbon at half-past seven A.M. there was no demonstration such as had greeted my arrival; but at the first halting-place a man stepped out from a little crowd on the platform and shouted "Viva Machado dos Santos! Viva a Republica Portugueza!"--and I found that the compartment adjoining my own was illumined by the presence of the bright particular star of the revolt. At the next station--Torres Vedras of historic fame--the platform was crowded and scores of red and green flags were waving. As the train steamed in, two bands struck up "A Portugueza," and as one had about two minutes' start of the other, the effect was more patriotic than harmonious. The hero had no sooner alighted than he was lifted shoulder-high by the crowd, and carried in triumph from the station, amid the blaring of the bands and the crackling of innumerable little detonators, which here enter freely into the ritual of rejoicing. Next morning I read in the papers a full account of the "Apoteose" of Machado dos Santos, which seems to have kept Torres Vedras busy and happy all day long. One can not but smile at such simple-minded ebullitions of feeling; yet I would by no means be understood to laugh at them. On the contrary, they are so manifestly spontaneous and sincere as to be really touching. Whatever may be the future of the Portuguese Republic, it has given the nation some weeks of unalloyed happiness. And amid all the shouting and waving of flags, all the manifold "homages" to this hero and to that, there was not the slightest trace of rowdyism or of "mafficking." I could not think without some humiliation of the contrast between a Lisbon and a London crowd. It really seemed as though happiness had ennobled the man in the street. I am assured that on the day of the public funeral of Dr. Bombarda and Admiral dos Reis, though the crowd was enormous and the police had retired into private life, there was not the smallest approach to disorder. The police--formerly the sworn enemies of the populace--had been reinstated at the time of my visit, without their swords and pistols; but they seemed to have little to do. That Lisbon had become a strictly virtuous city it would be too much to affirm, but I believe that crime actually diminished after the revolution. It seemed as though the nation had awakened from a nightmare to a sunrise of health and hope. And the nightmare took the form of a poor bewildered boy, guilty only of having been thrust, without a spark of genius, into a situation which only genius could have saved. In that surface aspect of the case there is an almost ludicrous disproportion between cause and effect. But it is not what the young King was that matters--it is what he stood for. Let us look a little below the surface--even, if we can, into the soul of the people. Portugal is a small nation with a great history; and the pride of a small nation which has anything to be proud of is apt to amount to a passion. It is all the more sensitive because it can not swell and harden into arrogance. It is all the more alert because the great nations, in their arrogance, are apt to ignore it. What are the main sources of Portugal's pride? They are two: her national independence and her achievements in discovery and colonization. A small country, with no very clear natural frontier, she has maintained her independence under the very shadow of a far larger and at one time an enormously preponderant Power. Portugal was Portugal long before Spain was Spain. It had its Alfred the Great in Alfonso Henriques (born 1111--a memorable date in two senses), who drove back the Moors as Alfred drove back the Danes. He founded a dynasty of able and energetic kings, which, however, degenerated, as dynasties will, until a vain weakling, Ferdinand the Handsome, did his best to wreck the fortunes of the country. On his death in 1383, Portugal was within an ace of falling into the clutches of Castile, but the Cortes conferred the kingship on a bastard of the royal house, John, Master of the Knights of Aviz; and he, aided by five hundred English archers, inflicted a crushing defeat on the Spaniards at Aljubarrota, the Portuguese Bannockburn. John of Aviz, known as the Great, married Philippa of Lancaster, daughter of John of Gaunt; and from this union sprang a line of princes and kings under whom Portugal became one of the leading nations of Europe. Prince Henry the Navigator, son of John the Great, devoted his life to the furthering of maritime adventure and discovery. Like England's First Lords of the Admiralty, he was a navigator who did not navigate; but it was unquestionably owing to the impulse he gave to Portuguese enterprise that Vasco da Gama discovered the sea route to India and Pedro Alvarez Cabral secured for his country the giant colony of Brazil. Angola, Mozambique, Diu, Goa, Macao--these names mean as much for Portugal as Havana, Cartagena, Mexico, and Lima, for Spain. The sixteenth century was the "heroic" age of Portuguese history, and the "heroes"--notably the Viceroys of Portuguese India--were, in fact, a race of fine soldiers and administrators. No nation, moreover, possesses more conspicuous and splendid memorials of its golden age. It was literally "golden," for Emmanuel the Fortunate, who reaped the harvest sown by Henry the Navigator, was the wealthiest monarch in Europe, and gave his name to the "Emmanueline" style of architecture, a florid Gothic which achieves miracles of ostentation and sometimes of beauty. As the glorious pile of Batalha commemorates the victory of Aljubarrota, so the splendid church and monastery of Belem mark the spot where Vasco da Gama spent the night before he sailed on his epoch-making voyage. But it was not gold that raised the noblest memorial to Portugal's greatness: it was the genius of Luis de Camoens. If Spenser, instead of losing himself in mazes of allegoric romance, had sung of Crécy and Agincourt, of Drake, Frobisher, and Raleigh, he might have given us a national epic in the same sense in which the term applies to _The Lusiads_. With such a history, so written in stone and song, what wonder if pride of race is one of the mainsprings of Portuguese character! But the House of Aviz, like the legitimate line of Affonso Henriques, dwindled into debility. It flickered out in Dom Sebastian, who dragged his country into a mad invasion of Morocco and vanished from human ken on the disastrous battlefield of Alcazar-Khebir. Then, for sixty years, not by conquest, but by intrigue, Portugal passed under the sway of Spain, and lost to the enemies of Spain--that is to say, to England and Holland--a large part of her colonial empire. At last, in 1640, a well-planned and daring revolution expelled the Spanish intruders, and placed on the throne John, Duke of Braganza. As the house of Aviz was an illegitimate branch of the stock of Affonso Henriques, so the Braganzas were an illegitimate branch of the House of Aviz, with none of the Plantagenet blood in them. Only one prince of the line, Pedro II., can be said to have attained anything like greatness. Another, Joseph, had the sense to give a free hand to an able, if despotic, minister, the Marquis of Pombal. But, on the whole, the history of the Braganza rule was one of steady decadence, until the second half of the nineteenth century found the country one of the most backward in Europe. Nor was there any comfort to be found in the economic aspect of the case. A country of glorious fertility and ideal climatic conditions, inhabited by an industrious peasantry, Portugal was nevertheless so poor that much of its remaining strength was year by year being drained away by emigration. The public debt was almost as heavy per head of population as that of England. Taxation was crushing. The barest necessaries of life were subject to heavy imposts. Protection protected, not industries, but monopolies and vested interests. In short, the material condition of the country was as distressing as its spiritual state to any one with the smallest sense of enlightened patriotism. King Charles I.--name of evil omen!--ascended the throne in 1889. His situation was not wholly unlike that of the English Charles I., inasmuch as--though he had not the insight to perceive it--his lot was cast in times when Portugal was outgrowing the traditions and methods of his family. Representative government, as it had shaped itself since 1852, was a fraud and a farce. To every municipality a Government administrator was attached (at an annual cost to the country of something like £70,000), whose business it was to "work" the elections in concert with the local _caciques_ or bosses. Thus, except in the great towns, the Government candidate was always returned. The efficacy of the system may be judged from the fact that in a country which was at heart Republican, as events have amply shown, the Republican party never had more than fourteen representatives in a chamber of about 150. For the rest, the Monarchical parties, "Regeneradores" and "Progresistas," arranged between them a fair partition of the loaves and fishes. This "rotative" system, as it is called, is in effect that which prevails, or has prevailed, in Spain; but it was perfected in Portugal by a device which enabled Ministers, in stepping out of office under the crown, to step into well-paid posts in financial institutions, more or less associated with the State. Anything like real progress was manifestly impossible under so rotten a system; and with this system the Monarchy was identified. Then came the scandal of the _adeantamentos_, or illegal advances made to the King, beyond the sums voted in the civil list. It is only fair to remember that the king of a poor country is nowadays in a very uncomfortable position, more especially if the poor country has once been immensely rich. The expenses of royalty, like those of all other professions, have enormously increased of late years; and a petty king who is to rub shoulders with emperors is very much in the position of a man with £2,000 a year in a club of millionaires. He has always the resource, no doubt, of declining the society of emperors, and even fixing his domestic budget more in accord with present exigencies than with the sumptuous traditions, the palaces and pleasure-houses, of his millionaire predecessors. It is said of Pedro II. that "he had the wisdom and self-restraint not to increase the taxes, preferring to reduce the expenses of his household to the lowest possible amount." But Dom Carlos was not a man of this kidney. Easy-going and self-indulgent, he had no notion of appearing _in forma pauperis_ among the royalties of Europe, or sacrificing his pleasures to the needs of his country. Even his father, Dom Luis, and his uncle, Dom Pedro, had not lived within their income; and expenses had gone up since their times. The king's income, under the civil list, was a "conto of reis" a day, or something over £80,000 a year. Additional allowances to other members of the royal family amounted to about half as much again; and there was, I believe, an allowance for the upkeep of palaces. One would suppose that a reasonably frugal royal family, with no house-rent to pay, could subsist in tolerable comfort on some £2,250 a week; but as a matter of fact, Dom Carlos made large additional drafts on the treasury, which servile ministries honored without protest. He had expensive fantasies, which he was not in the habit of stinting. The total of his "anticipations" I do not know, but it is estimated in millions of pounds. These eccentricities, combined with other abuses of finance and administration, rendered even the _cacique_-chosen Cortes unruly, and our Charles I. looked about for a Strafford who should apply a "thorough" remedy to what he called the parliamentary _gâchis_. He found his man in João Franco. This somewhat enigmatic personage can not as yet be estimated with any impartiality. No one accuses him of personal corruption or of sordidly interested motives. His great private wealth enabled him the other day to find bail, at a moment's notice, to the amount of £40,000. On the other hand, his enemies diagnose him after the manner of Lombroso, and find him to be a degenerate and an epileptic, ungovernably irritable, vain, mendacious, arrogant, sometimes quite irresponsible for his actions. A really strong man he can scarcely be; scarcely a man of true political insight, else he would not have tried to play the despot with no plausible ideal to allege in defense of his usurpation. Be that as it may, he agreed with the King that it was impossible to carry on the work of government with a fractious Cortes in session, and that the only way to keep things going was to try the experiment of a dictatorship. Dom Carlos, in his genial fashion, overcame by help of an anecdote any doubt his minister may have felt. "When the affairs of Frederick the Great were at a low ebb," said the King, "he one day, on the eve of a decisive battle, caught a grenadier in the act of making off from the camp. 'What are you about?' asked Frederick. 'Your Majesty, I am deserting,' stammered the soldier. 'Wait till to-morrow,' replied Frederick calmly, 'and if the battle goes against us, we will desert together.'" Thus lightly was the adventure plotted; and, in fact, the minister did not desert until the King lay dead upon the field of battle. Franco dissolved the Cortes, and on May 10, 1907, published a decree declaring the "administration to be a dictatorship." The Press was strictly gagged, and all the traditional weapons of despotism were polished up. In June, the dictator went to Oporto to defend his policy at a public banquet, and on his return a popular tumult took place in the Rocio, the central square of Lisbon, which was repressed with serious bloodshed. This was made the excuse for still more galling restrictions on personal and intellectual liberty, until it was hard to distinguish between "administrative dictatorship" and autocracy. As regards the _adeantamentos_, Franco's declared policy was to make a clean slate of the past, and, for the future, to augment the civil list. In the autumn of that year, a very able Spanish journalist and deputy, Señor Luis Morote, visited most of the leading men in Portugal, and found among the Republicans an absolute and serene confidence that the Monarchy was in its last ditch and that a Republic was inevitable. Seldom have political prophecies been more completely fulfilled than those which Morote then recorded in the _Heraldo_ of Madrid. Said Bernardino Machado: "The Republic is the fatherland organized for its prosperity.... I believe in the moral forces of Portugal, which are carrying us directly toward the new order of things.... We shall triumph because the right is on our side, and the moral idealism; peacefully if we can, and I think it pretty sure that we can, since no public force can stop a nation on the march." Said Guerra Junqueiro, the leading poet of the day: "Within two years there will be no Braganzas or there will be no Portugal....The revolution, when it comes, will be a question of hours, and it will be almost bloodless." I could cite many other deliverances to the same effect, but one must suffice. Theophilo Braga, the "grand old man" of Portugal, said: "To stimulate the faith, conscience, will, and revolutionary energies of the country, I have imposed on myself a plan of work, and a mandate not to die until I see it accomplished." The Paris _Temps_ of November 14, 1907, published an interview with Dom Carlos which embittered feeling and alienated many of his supporters. "Everything is quiet in Lisbon," declared the King, echoing another historic phase: "Only the politicasters are agitating themselves.... It was necessary that the _gâchis_--there is no other word for it--should one day come to an end.... I required an undaunted will which should be equal to the task of carrying my ideas to a happy conclusion.... I am entirely satisfied with M. Franco. _�a marche_. And it will continue; it must continue for the good of the country.... In no country can you make a revolution without the army. Well, the Portuguese Army is faithful to its King, and I shall always have it at my side.... I have no shadow of doubt of its fidelity." Poor Charles the First! At the end of January, 1908, a revolutionary plot was discovered, and was put down with severity. After signing some decrees to that end, at one of his palaces beyond the Tagus, the King, with his whole family, returned to Lisbon and the party drove in open carriages from the wharf toward the Necessidades Palace. In the crowd at the corner of the great riverside square, the Praça do Comercio, stood two men named Buiça and Costa, with carbines concealed under their cloaks. They shot dead the King and the Crown Prince, and slightly wounded Dom Manuel. Both the assassins were killed on the spot. It is said that there was no plot, and that these men acted entirely on their own initiative and responsibility. At any rate, none of the Republican leaders was in any way implicated in the affair. But on All Saints' day of 1910, Buiça's grave shared to the full in the rain of wreaths poured upon the tombs of the martyrs of the new Republic; and relics of the regicides hold an honored place in the historical museum which commemorates the revolution. Franco vanished into space, and Dom Manuel, aged nineteen, ascended the throne. Had he possessed strong intelligence and character, or had he fallen into the hands of really able advisers, it is possible that the revulsion of feeling following on so grim a tragedy might have indefinitely prolonged the life of the Monarchy. But his mother was a Bourbon, and what more need be said? The opinion in Lisbon, at any rate, was that "under Dom Carlos the Jesuits entered the palace by the back door, under Dom Manuel by the front door." The Republican agitation in public, the revolutionary organization in secret, soon recommenced with renewed vigor; and the discovery of new scandals in connection with the tobacco monopoly and a financial institution, known as the "Credito Predial," added fuel to the fire of indignation. The Government, or rather a succession of Governments, were perfectly aware that the foundations of the Monarchy were undermined; but they seemed to be paralyzed by a sort of fatalistic despair. They persecuted, indeed, just enough to make themselves doubly odious; but they always laid hands on people who, if not quite innocent, were subordinate and uninfluential. Not one of the real leaders of the revolution was arrested. The thoroughness with which the Republican party was organized says much for the practical ability of its leaders. The moving spirits in the central committee were Vice-Admiral Candido dos Reis, Affonso Costa (now Minister of Justice), Joao Chagas, and Dr. Miguel Bombarda. Simoes Raposo spoke in the name of the Freemasons; the Carbonaria Portugueza, a powerful secret society, was represented by Machado dos Santos, an officer in the navy. There was a separate finance committee, and funds were ample. The arms bought were mostly Browning pistols, which were smuggled over the Spanish frontier by Republican railway conductors. Bombs also were prepared in large numbers, not for purposes of assassination, but for use in open warfare, especially against cavalry. Meanwhile an untiring secret propaganda was going on in the army, in the navy, and among the peasantry. Almost every seaman in the navy, and in many regiments almost all the non-commissioned officers and men, were revolutionaries; while commissioned officers by the score were won over. It is marvelous that so wide-spread a propaganda was only vaguely known to the Government, and did not beget a crowd of informers. One man, it is true, who showed a disposition to use his secret knowledge for purposes of blackmail, was found dead in the streets of Cascaes. On the whole, not only secrecy but discipline was marvelously maintained. At last the propitious moment arrived. Three ships of war--the _Dom Carlos_, the _Adamastor_, and the _San Raphael_--were in the Tagus to do honor to the President-elect of Brazil, who was visiting King Manuel; but the Government knew that their presence was dangerous, and would certainly order them off again as soon as possible. The blow must be struck before that occurred. At a meeting of the committee on October 2, 1910, it was agreed that the signal should be given in the early morning of October 4th. All the parts were cast, all the duties were assigned: who should call this and that barrack to arms, who should cut this and that railway line, who should take possession of the central telegraph-office, and so forth. The whole scheme was laid down in detail in a precious paper, in the keeping of Simôes Raposo. "You had better give it to me," said Dr. Bombarda, "for I am less likely than you to be arrested. Even if they should think of searching at Rilhafolles [the asylum of which he was director], I can easily hide it in one of the books of my library." His suggestion was accepted, the paper on which their lives and that of the Republic depended was handed to him, and the meeting broke up. On the morning of Monday, October 3d, all was as quiet in Lisbon as King Carlos himself could have desired. At about eleven o'clock Dr. Bombarda sat in his office at the asylum, when a former patient, a young lieutenant who had suffered from the persecution mania, was announced to see him. Bombarda rose and asked him how he was. Without a word the visitor produced a Browning pistol and fired point blank at the physician, putting three bullets in his body. Bombarda had strength enough to seize his assailant by the wrists and hand him over to the attendants who rushed in. He then walked down-stairs unaided before he realized how serious were his wounds. It soon appeared, however, that he had not many hours to live; and when this became clear to him, he took a paper from his pocketbook and insisted that it should be burned before his eyes. What the paper was I need not say. At about six in the evening he died. Bombarda was a passionate anticlerical, and his murderer was a fanatical Catholic. The citizens, with whom he was very popular, jumped at the conclusion that the priests had inspired the deed. As soon as his death was announced in the transparency outside the office of _O Seculo_, there were demonstrations of anger among the crowd and some conflicts with the police. Meanwhile the Revolutionary Committee, to the number of fifty or thereabouts, were sitting in the Rua da Esperança, discussing the question, "To be or not to be." The military members counseled delay, for the Government had ordered all officers to be at their quarters in the various barracks which are scattered over the city. The intention had been to choose a time when most of the officers were off duty and the men could mutiny at their ease; but this plan had for the moment been frustrated. The military view might have carried the day, but for the determination shown by Candido dos Reis, who pointed out that it would be madness to give the Government time to order the ships out of the Tagus. Finally, he turned to the military group, saying, "If you will not go out, I will go out alone with the sailors. I shall have the honor of getting myself shot by my comrades of the army." His insistence carried all before it, and it was decided that the signal should be given, as previously arranged, at one o'clock in the morning. That evening, at the Palace of Belem, some two miles down the Tagus from the Necessidades Palace, Marshal Hermes da Fonseca, President-elect of Brazil, was entertaining King Manuel at a State dinner. There was an electrical sense of disquiet in the air. Several official guests were absent, and every few minutes there came telephone-calls for this or that minister or general, some of whom reappeared, while some did not. At last the tension got so much on the nerves of the young King that he scribbled on his menu-card a request that the banquet might be shortened; and, in fact, one or two courses were omitted. Then followed the dreary ritual of toasts; and at last, at half-past eleven, Dom Manuel parted from his host and set off in his automobile, escorted by a troop of cavalry. Two bands played the royal anthem. Had he known, poor youth, that he was never to hear it again, there might have been a crumb of consolation in the thought. It would be impossible without a map to make clear the various phases of the Battle of Lisbon. Nor would there be any great interest in so doing. There was no particular strategy in the revolutionary plans, and what strategy there was fell to pieces at an early point. It is not clear that the signal was ever formally given, but about the appointed hour mutinies broke out in several barracks. In some cases the Royalist officers were put under arrest, in one case a colonel and two other officers were shot. A mixed company of soldiers and civilians, with ten or twelve guns, marched, as had been arranged, upon the Necessidades Palace, to demand the abdication of the King; but they were met on the heights behind the palace by a body of the "guardia municipal," and, after a sharp skirmish, were forced to retire, leaving three of their guns disabled behind them. They retreated to the general rallying-point of the Republican forces, the Rotunda, at the upper end of the mile-long Avenida da Liberdade. This avenue stands to the Rocio very much in the relation of Charing Cross Road to Trafalgar Square: there is a curve at their junction which prevents you from seeing--or shooting--from the one into the other. On reaching the Rotunda, the insurgents learned that the Rocio had been occupied by Royalist troops, from the Citadel of St. George and another barrack, with one or two machine guns, but no cannon. There, then, the two forces lay, with a short mile of sloping ground between them, awaiting the dawn. Under cover of darkness, a body of mounted gendarmes attempted to charge the insurgent position, but they were repulsed by bombs. Meanwhile, what had become of the naval cooperation, on which so much reliance had been placed? It had failed, through the tragic weakness of one man. Candido dos Reis is one of the canonized saints of the Republic; but I think it shows a good deal of generosity in the Portuguese character that the Devil's Advocate has not made himself heard in the case. Dos Reis had undertaken the command of the naval side of the revolt; but oddly enough, he seems to have arranged no method of conveyance to his post of duty. He found at the wharf a small steamer, the captain of which agreed to take him off to the ships; but there was some delay in getting up steam. During this pause, some one as yet unidentified, but evidently a friend of Dos Reis, rushed down to the wharf and shouted to him that the revolt was crushed and all was lost. Dos Reis, who had assumed his naval uniform on board the steamer, took it off again, and, in civilian attire, went ashore. He proceeded to his sister's house, where he spent an hour; then he sallied forth again, and was found next morning in a distant quarter of the city with a bullet through his brain. There is no doubt that he committed suicide. The theory of foul play is quite abandoned. As it was he who had vetoed the proposed postponement of the rising, one can understand that the sense of responsibility lay heavy upon him; but that, without inquiry into the alleged disaster, without the smallest attempt to retrieve it, he should have left his comrades in the lurch and taken the easiest way of escape, is surely a proof of almost criminal instability. The Republic lost in him an ardent patriot, but scarcely a great leader. The dawn of Tuesday, October 4th, showed the fortunes of the revolt at rather a low ebb. The land forces were dismayed by the inaction of the ships; the sailors imagined, from the non-appearance of their leader, that some disaster must have occurred on land. It was in these hours of despondency that the true heroes of the revolution showed their mettle. In the bivouac at the Rotunda, as the morning wore on, the Republican officers declared that the game was up, and that there was nothing for it but to disperse and await the consequences. They themselves actually made off; and it was then that Machado dos Santos came to the front, taking command of the insurgent force and reviving their drooping spirits. The position was not really a strong one. For one thing, it is commanded by the heights of the Misericordia; and there was, in fact, some long-range firing between the insurgents and the Guardia Municipal stationed on that eminence. Again, the gentle slope of the Avenida, a hundred yards wide, is clothed by no fewer than ten rows of low trees, acacias, and the like, five rows on each side of the comparatively narrow roadway, which is blocked at the lower end by a massive monument to the liberators of 1640. Thus the insurgents could not see their adversaries even when they ventured out of their sheltered position in the Rocio; and the artillery fire from the Rotunda did much more damage to the hotels that flanked the narrow neck of the Avenida than to the Royalist forces. On the other hand, it would have been comparatively easy for the Royalists, with a little resolution, to have crept up the Avenida under cover of the trees, and driven the insurgents from their position. Fortunately for the revolt, there was a total lack of leadership on the Royalist side, excusable only on the ground that the officers could not rely on their men. While things were at a deadlock on the Avenida, critical events were happening on the Tagus. On all three ships, the officers knew that the men were only awaiting a signal to mutiny; but the signal did not come. At this juncture, and while it seemed that the Republican cause was lost, a piece of heroic bluff on the part of a single officer saved the situation. Lieutenant Tito de Moraes put off in a small boat from the naval barracks at Alcantara, rowed to the _San Raphael_, boarded it, and calmly took possession of it in the name of the Republic! He gave the officers a written guaranty that they had yielded to superior force, and then sent them off under arrest to the naval barracks. He now asked for orders from the Revolutionary Committee; and early in the afternoon the _San Raphael_ weighed anchor and moved down the river in the direction of the Necessidades Palace. In doing so she had to pass the most powerful ship of the squadron, the _Dom Carlos_: would she get past in safety? Yes; the _Dom Carlos_ made no sign. The officers were almost all Royalists, but they knew they could do nothing with the crew. As a matter of fact when the crew ultimately mutinied, the captain and a lieutenant were severely wounded; but I can find no evidence for the picturesque legend of a group of officers making a last heroic stand on the quarter-deck, and ruthlessly mowed down by the insurgents' fire. It is certain, at any rate, that no lives were lost. In the Palace, on its bluff above the river, King Manuel was practically alone. No minister, no general, was at his side. It is said, on what seems to be good authority, that when he saw the _San Raphael_ moving down-stream under the Republican colors, he telephoned to the Prime Minister, Teixeira de Sousa, to ask whether there was not a British destroyer in the river that could be got to sink the mutinous vessel. Even if this scheme had been otherwise feasible, it would have demanded an effort of which the minister was no longer capable. At about two in the afternoon the _San Raphael_, cruising slowly up and down, opened fire upon the Palace, and her second shot brought down the royal standard from its roof. What could the poor boy do? To sit still and be blown to pieces would have been heroic, but useless. Had he had the stuff of a soldier in him, he might have made his way to the Rocio and tried to put some energy into the officers, some spirit into the troops. But he had no one to encourage and support him. Such counselors as he had were all for flight. He stepped into his motor-car, set off for Cintra and Mafra, and is henceforth out of the saga. The flight of Dom Manuel meant the collapse of his cause. It is true that the Royalists were reenforced by certain detachments of troops who came in from the country, and, beaten off by the insurgents at the Rotunda, made their way to the Rocio by a circuitous route. The Guardia Municipal, too, were stanch, and showed fight at several points. It was the total lack of spirited leadership that left the insurgents masters of the field. Having done its work at the Necessidades, the _San Raphael_ moved up stream again, and began dropping shells over the intervening parallelogram of the "Low City" into the crowded Rocio. They caused little loss of life, for they were skilfully timed to explode in air; the object being, not to massacre, but to dismay. There is nothing so trying to soldiers as to remain inactive under fire; and as there had never been much fight in the garrison of the Rocio, the little that was left speedily evaporated. At eleven in the morning of Wednesday, October 5th, the Republic was proclaimed from the balcony of the Town Hall, and before night fell all was once more quiet in Lisbon. The first accounts of the fighting which appeared in the European Press were, as was only natural, greatly exaggerated. A careful enumeration places the number of the killed at sixty-one and of the wounded at 417. Some of the latter, indeed, died of their wounds, but the whole death-roll certainly did not exceed a hundred. The Portuguese Monarchy was dead; and the causes of death, as disclosed by the autopsy, were moral bankruptcy and intellectual inanition. It could not point to a single service that it rendered to the country in return for the burdens it imposed. Some of its defenders professed to see in it a safeguard for the colonies, which would somehow fly off into space in the event of a revolution. As yet there are no signs of this prophecy coming true; but the prophets may cling, if they please, to the hope of its fulfilment. For the rest, it was perfectly clear that the monarchy had done nothing for the material or spiritual advancement of the country, which remained as poverty-stricken and as illiterate as it well could be. Dom Carlos had not even the common prudence to affect, if he did not feel, a sympathy with the nation's pride in its "heroes." The Monarchy could boast neither of good deeds nor of good intentions. Its cynicism was not tempered by intelligence. It drifted toward the abyss without making any reasonable effort to save itself; for the dictatorship was scarcely an effort of reason. "The dictatorship," said Bernardino Machado, the present Foreign Minister, "left us only one liberty--that of hatred." And again, "The monarchy had not even a party--it had only a _clientèle_." That one word explains the disappearance of Royalism. For it has simply disappeared. Even the Royalist Press is almost extinct. Some papers have ceased to appear, some have become Republican, the few who stick to their colors do so rather from clerical than from specifically Royalist conviction. All the leading papers of the country had long been Republican; and excellent papers they are. Both in appearance and in matter, _O Mundo_ and _A Lucta_ ("The Struggle") would do credit to the journalism of any country. In size, in excellence of production, and in the well-considered weight of their articles, they contrast strangely with the flimsy, ill-printed sheets that content the Spanish public. The Provisional Government has been sneered at as a clique of "intellectuals"; but it is scarcely a reproach to the Republic that it should command the adhesion of the whole intelligence of the country. Nor is there any sign of lack of practical sense in the admirable organization which not only insured the success of the revolution (in spite of certain cross accidents) but secured its absolutely peaceful acceptance throughout the country. There are no doubt visionary and fantastic spirits in the Republican ranks, and ridiculous proposals have already been mooted. For instance, it has been gravely suggested that all streets bearing the names of saints--and there are hundreds of them--should be renamed in commemoration of Republican heroes, dates, exploits, etc. But the common sense of the people and Press is already on the alert, and such whimsies are being laughed out of court. Of the Provisional Government I saw only the President and the Foreign Secretary. The President, an illustrious scholar, historian, and poet, is a delightful old man of the simplest, most unassuming manners, and eagerly communicative on the subjects which have been the study of his life. When I asked him to explain to me the difference of national character which made the Portuguese attitude toward the Church so different from the Spanish, he took me right back to the Ligurians--far out of my ethnological depth--and gave me a most interesting sketch of the development of the two nations. But when we came to topics of more immediate importance, he showed, if I may venture to say so, a clear practical sense, quite remote from visionary idealism. The Foreign Minister, Dr. Machado, is of more immediately impressive personality. Younger than the President by at least ten years, yet little short, I should guess, of sixty, he is extremely neat and dapper in person, while his very handsome face has a birdlike keenness and alertness of expression betokening not only great intelligence but high-strung vitality. He is a copious, eloquent, and witty talker, and his remarkable charm of manner accounts, in part at any rate, for his immense popularity. Assuredly no monarchy could have more distinguished representatives than this Republic. The desire of the Republic to "play fair" was manifested in another little trait that interested me a good deal. In the window of every book-shop in Spain a translation from the Portuguese, entitled _Los Escandalos de la Corte de Portugal_, is prominently displayed. It is a ferocious lampoon upon the royal family and upon Franco; but in Lisbon I looked for it in vain. On inquiry I learned that it had been prohibited under the Monarchy, as it could not fail to be; but, had there been any demand for it, no doubt it might have been reprinted since the revolution. There was apparently no demand. The people to whom I spoke of it evidently regarded it as "hitting below the belt." "We do not fight with such weapons," said a leading journalist. In no one, in fact, did I discover the slightest desire or willingness to retail personal gossip with respect to the hated Braganzas. THE CRUSHING OF FINLAND A.D. 1910 JOHN JACKOL BARON VON PLEHVE BARON SERGIUS WITTE J.N. REUTER In the midst of progress comes reaction. The far northern European country of Finland had for a century been progressing in advance of its neighbors. It was a true democracy. It had even established, first of European lands, the full suffrage for women; and numerous women sat in its parliament. But Finland was tributary to Russia; and Russia, as far back as 1898, began a deliberate policy of crushing Finland, "nationalizing" it, was the Russian phrase, by which was meant compelling it to abandon its independence, adopt the Russian language, and become an integral part of the empire under Russian officials and Russian autocracy. Under pressure of this repressive policy, the Finns began leaving their country as early as 1903, emigrating to America in despair of successful resistance to Russia's tyranny. Many of them were exiled or imprisoned by the Czar's Government. Then came the days of the Russian Revolution; and the Czar and his advisers hurried to grant Finland everything she had desired, under fear that her people would swell the tide of revolution. But that danger once passed, the old policy of oppression was soon renewed, and was carried onward until in November of 1909 the Finnish Parliament was dismissed by imperial command. All through 1910 repressive laws were passed, reducing Finland step by step to a mere Russian province, so that before the close of that year the Finlanders themselves surrendered the struggle. One of their leaders wrote, "So ends Finland." We give here first the despairing cry written in 1903 by a well-known Finn who fled to America. Then follows the official Russian statement by the "Minister of the Interior," Von Plehve, who held control of Finland in the early stages of the struggle, and was later slain by Russian revolutionists. Then we give the very different Russian view expressed by the great liberal Prime Minister, Baron Sergius Witte, who rescued Russia from her domestic disaster after the Japanese War. The story is then carried to its close by a well-known Finnish sympathizer. JOHN JACKOL "Russia is the rock against which the sigh for freedom breaks," said Kossuth, the great statesman and patriot of Hungary. Although fifty years have passed, and sigh after sigh has broken against it, the rock still stands like a colossal monument of bygone ages. It is pointing toward the northern star, as if to remind one of the all-enduring fixity. Other stars may go round as they will; there is one fixed in its place, and under that star the shadow of despotism hopes to endure forever. While yet in Finland I used to fancy Russia as a giant devil-fish, whose arms extended from the Baltic to the Pacific, from the Black Sea to the Arctic Ocean. Then I would think of my native land as a beautiful mermaid, about whom the giant's cold, chilly arms were slowly creeping, and I feared that some day those arms would crush her. That day has come. The helpless mermaid lies prostrate in the clutch of the octopus. Not that the constitution of Finland has been annulled, as has been so often erroneously stated, and quite generally believed. The Russian Government has made only a few inroads upon it. The great grievance of the Finns is not with what has been absolutely done in opposition to their ancient rights and privileges, nor in the number of their rights which have in reality been curtailed, but with the fact that they have henceforth no security. The real grievance of the Finns is that the welfare of their country no longer rests upon an inviolable constitution, but upon the caprice of the ministers. In 1898 the reactionists succeeded in getting one of their tools appointed as Governor-General. No sooner had General Bobrikoff taken his high office than he declared that the Finnish right to separate political existence was an illusion; that there was no substantial foundation for it in any of the acts or words of Alexander I. The people were amazed, appalled. But this was not all. Pobiedonostseff, the Procurator of the Holy Synod, and other men as reactionary as he, discovered the fact, or gave birth to the idea, that the fundamental rights of Finland could be interfered with if these fundamental rights interfered with the welfare of the Russian Empire. In other words, they discovered a loophole which they termed legal, on the principle that the parts should suffer for the whole, and that this principle was an integral part of the plan of Russian government. The abrogation of maintenance of Finland's ancient rights would seem by this decision to rest on the arbitrary interpretation on the part of Russia as to whether or not they interfered with the welfare of the empire. It is possible that, according to the individual opinions of Russian autocrats, they might all interfere with the standard of welfare which certain individuals have arbitrarily established to fit the occasion. In justice to the Russian Government it should be stated, however, that the joy of persecution was not the motive which led to the arbitrary acts. During the time that Finland was under Swedish control, the Finns had learned to dislike everything Russian. These anti-Russian tendencies were accentuated, after Finland became an appanage of the Russian crown, by the restrictive and often reactionary policy of the Imperial Government. Such a form of government was repugnant to the Finns, who had learned to be governed by good laws well administered, and by an enlightened public opinion. At the same time, owing to their larger liberties, their higher culture, and their susceptibility to western ideals, the Finns exerted an attractive influence over the peoples of the Baltic provinces, and even of Russia proper. A Finn would very seldom become Russianized, while many Russians became Finnicized. Unlike his Russian brother, the Finn enjoyed the privileges of free conscience, free speech, and free press. To the average Russian such a life was enchanting, and many were so fascinated that they became citizens of Finland. In order to do so, however, they were obliged to go through the formality of changing their nationality and becoming subjects of the Grand Duchy. Doubtless this was distasteful to the Russians, but so many and so great were the advantages accruing from such a change that not a few renounced their nationality. Such a state of affairs seemed unnatural and antagonistic to the propaganda of the Panslavistic party. Instead of Russian ideals pervading the province, provincial ideals, manners, and customs were gradually spreading into the empire. But there seemed to be no honorable way of checking the progress of the rapidly growing Finnish nationality. The Finns maintained that their rights and privileges and their laws rested upon an inviolable constitution, which could be changed only by a vote of the four estates of the Landtag. That body would never yield. It was at this juncture that the Procurator of the Holy Synod conceived the idea that the fundamental rights of the Finns can be curtailed in so far as they interfere with those of the empire. Acting according to this new idea the Imperial Government in 1899 took for its pretext the army service of the Finns. Heretofore, according to a hereditary privilege, the Finns had not been called upon to serve in the Russian Army, and their army service had been only three years to the Russian's five. The officers of the Finnish Army were to be Finns, and this army could not be called upon to serve outside of the Grand Duchy. This was the first fundamental right of the Finns to be attacked by the Russian Government. In some mysterious way the very insignificant army of Finland "interfered with the general welfare of the Russian Empire." Immediately following the Czar's startling proposal for a disarmament conference in 1899 came his call for a special session of the Finnish Landtag to extend the laws of conscription and the time of regular service from three to five years. Furthermore, the new law provided that instead of serving in their own country, the Finnish soldiers were to be scattered among the various troops of the empire. By this means it was hoped to Russianize them. The representatives of the people had no time to consider the measure before the Czar's decree was issued, February 17, 1899, declaring that thenceforth the laws governing the Grand Duchy be made in the same manner as those of the empire. It is not necessary to dwell upon the deep feeling of indignation and grief that pervaded the country. It has found a freer expression outside of the Grand Duchy than within its boundaries. Wherever the human heart is beating in sympathetic harmony with universal progress, the oppressed Finnish people have found moral support. In spite of this, one by one the Finns have been deprived of their hereditary rights and privileges. To the Finns this new order of things seems appalling. It is like the drawing of the veil of the dark ages over their beloved country. They have lost everything that is dear to the human heart: their language, their religion, and their independence. They can do nothing but mourn in silence and mortification, for a strict Russian censorship prevents the expression of their just indignation and grief. The present condition of Finland is apathetic. Last fall the loss of crops was almost complete, and pestilence and famine are devastating the country, which has been drained of its vitality by an excessive migration and military conscription. The young men of Finland are forced to serve five years in the Russian Army, and the country is suffering from a lack of men to till the soil. The credit of the country has been mined, and panic is spreading rapidly. Wholesale migration of the more thrifty has made the already difficult problem of readjustment more complicated. Those who remain behind are literally suffering from physical, intellectual, and moral starvation. There is left nothing to refresh, fertilize, and energize the nation's vitality. The Finns are utterly helpless. In this sad extremity of their people the best men of Finland are exerting their utmost in the endeavor to alleviate suffering and infuse hope and inspiration among the masses. The young Finnish party has become exasperated by the humiliation that has been heaped upon the long-suffering people of their native land, and its leaders have advised active resistance. The old Finnish party has adopted the policy of passive resistance and protest. But the inroads upon the constitution of Finland, in the form of imperial decrees, rules, and regulations by the Governor-General and his subordinates, have been so many and so sweeping in their character that even the most conservative are beginning to lose patience. As long as the unconstitutional acts affected only the political life of the people, many were able to bear it, but when the new rules attacked the time-honored social institutions and customs, indignation could no longer be suppressed. For instance, the order to open private mail caused a general protest. The postal director and his secretary refused to sign the order and resigned. No less obnoxious was the order forbidding public meetings and directing the governors of the different provinces of Finland to appoint only such men to fill municipal rural offices as will be subservient to the Governor-General. The governor of the province of Ulrasborg resigned, while several other provinces were already governed by pliant tools of General Bobrikoff. The long-suppressed anxiety of the people has changed into a heartrending sigh of anguish. These words of a national poet express the general sentiment, "Better far than servitude a death upon the gallows." A vicious circle has been established. The high-handed measures cause indignation, and the Governor-General is determined to suppress its expression. There is no safety in Finland for honest and patriotic men. The judiciary has been made subservient to General Bobrikoff. Latest advices are ominous. April 24, 1903, was a black day in the history of Finland. It witnessed the inauguration of a reign of terror which, by the ordinance of April 2d and the rescript of April 9th, General Bobrikoff had been authorized to establish. Bobrikoff returned to Finland with authority, if necessary, to close hotels, stores, and factories, to forbid general meetings, to dissolve clubs and societies, and to banish without legal process any one whose presence in the country he considered objectionable. For 700 years Finns have been free men; now they have become Russian serfs, and it is well to make closer connections between the Finnish railway system and the trans-Siberian road. Finns are long-suffering and patient, but who could endure all this? While the expression of indignation is suppressed in Finland, outside of the Grand Duchy, especially in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, Russia's relentless tyranny has made the highest officers of state as resentful as the man in the street. Indeed entire Scandinavia is aflame with indignation and apprehension. The leading journals are warning Scandinavians "that the fate of Finland implies other tragedies of similar character, unless Pan-Scandinavia becomes something more than a political dream." VON PLEHVE[1] [Footnote 1: Reprinted by permission from the _American Review of Reviews_.] In criticizing Russian policy in Finland a distinction should be made between its fundamental principles--_i.e.,_ the ends which it is meant to attain, and its outward expression, which depends upon circumstances. The former,--_i.e.,_ the aims and principles, remain _unalterable_; the latter,--_i.e.,_ the way in which this policy finds expression--is of an incidental and temporary character, and does not always depend on the Russian authority alone. This is what should be taken into consideration by Russia's western friends when estimating the value of the information which reaches them from Finland. As to the program of the Russian Government in the Finland question, it is substantially as follows: The fundamental problem of every supreme authority--the happiness and prosperity of the governed--can be solved only by the mutual cooperation of the government and the people. The requirements presented to the partners in this common task are, on the one hand, that the people should recognize the unity of state principle and policy and the binding character of its aims; and, on the other, that the Government should acknowledge the benefit accruing to the state from the public activity, along the lines of individual development, of its component elements. Such are the grounds on which the government and the people should unite in the performance of their common task. The combination of imperial unity with local autonomy, of autocracy with self-government, forms the principle which must be taken into consideration in judging the action of the Russian Government in the Grand Duchy of Finland. The manifesto of February 3-15, 1899, is not a negation of such a peaceful cooperation, but a confirmation of the aforesaid leading principle of our Government in its full development. It decides that the issue of imperial laws, common both to Russia and Finland, must not depend altogether on the consent of the members of the Finland Diet, but is the prerogative of the Imperial Council of State, with the participation on such occasions of members of the Finland Senate. There is nothing in this manifesto to shake the belief of Russia's friends in the compatibility of the principles of autocracy with a large measure of local self-government and civic liberty. The development of the spiritual and material powers of the population by its gradual introduction to participation in the conscious public life of the state, as a healthy, conservative principle of government, has always entered into the plans of the sovereign leaders of the life of Russia as a state. These intentions were announced afresh from the throne by the manifesto of February 26, 1903. In our country this process takes place in accordance with the historical basis of the empire, with the national peculiarities of its population. The result is that in Russia we have the organization of local institutions which give self-government in the narrow sense of the word--_i.e.,_ the right of the people to see to the satisfaction of their local economic needs. In Finland the idea of local autonomy was developed far earlier and in a far wider manner. Its present scope, which has grown and developed under Russian rule, embraces all sides, not only of the economic, but of the civil, life of the land. Russian autocracy has thus given irrefragable proof of its constructive powers in the sphere of civic development. The historian of the future will have to note its ethical importance in a far wider sphere as well: the greatest of social problems have found a peaceable solution in Russia, thanks to the conditions of its political organization. For a full comprehension, however, of the manifesto of 1899, it must be regarded as one of the phases in the development of Finland's relations to Russia. It will then become evident that as a legacy of the past it is the outcome of the natural course of events which sooner or later must have led up to it. The initiation of Finland into the historical destinies of the Russian Empire was bound to lead to the rise of questions calling for a general solution common both to the empire and to Finland. Naturally, in view of the subordinate status of the latter, such questions could be solved only in the order appointed for imperial legislation. At the same time, neither the fundamental laws of the Swedish period of rule in Finland, which were completely incompatible with its new status, nor the Statutes of the Diet, introduced by Alexander II., and determining the order of issue of local laws, touched, or could touch, the question of the issue of general imperial laws. This question arose in the course of the legislative work on the systematization of the fundamental laws of Finland. This task, undertaken by order of the Emperor Alexander II. for the more precise determination of the status of Finland as an indivisible part of our state, was continued during the reign of his august successor, the Emperor Alexander III., and led to the question of determining the order of issue of general imperial laws. The rules drafted for this purpose in 1893 formed the contents of the manifesto of 1899. Thus we see that during six years they remained without application, there being no practical necessity for their publication. When, however, this necessity arose, owing to the lapse of the former military law, the manifesto was issued. It was, therefore, the finishing touch to the labor of many years at the determination of the manner in which the principle of a united empire was to find expression within the limits of Finland, and remained substantially true to the traditions which for a century had reigned in the relations between Russia and Finland. It presented a combination of the principle of autocracy with that of local self-government without any serious limitations of the rights of the latter. Moreover, while preserving the historical principle of Russian empire-building, this law determined the form of the expression of the autocratic power within the limits of the Grand Duchy in a manner so much in accord with the conditions of life in Finland that it did not touch the organization of a single one of the national local institutions of the duchy. This law, in its application to the new conscription regulations, has alleviated the condition of the population of Finland. The military burden laid on the population of the land has been decreased from 2,000 men to 500 per annum, and latterly to 280. As you will see, there is in reality no opposition between the will of the Emperor of Russia as announced to Finland in 1899 and his generous initiative at The Hague Conference. But, you ask me, has not this confirmation of the ancient principles of Russian state policy in Finland been bought at too dear a price? I shall try to answer you. The hostility of public opinion toward us in the West in connection with Finnish matters is much to be regretted, but hopes may be entertained that under the influence of better information on Finnish affairs this hostility may lose its present bitterness. We are accustomed, moreover, to see that the West, while welcoming the progressive development of Russia along the old lines it, Europe, has followed itself, is not always as amicably disposed toward the growth of the political and social self-consciousness of Russia and toward the independent historical process taking place in her in the shape of the concentration of her forces for the fulfilment of her peaceful vocation in the history of the human race. The attitude of the population of Finland toward Russia is not at all so inimical as would appear on reading the articles in the foreign press proceeding from the pen of hostile journalists. To the honor of the best elements of the Finnish population, it must be said that the degree of prosperity attained by Finland during the past century under the egis of the Russian throne is perfectly evident to them; they know that it is the Russian Government which has resuscitated the Finnish race, systematically crushed down as it had been in the days of Swedish power. The more prudent among the Finlanders realize that now, as before, the characteristic local organization of Finland remains unaltered, that the laws which guarantee the provincial autonomy of Finland are still preserved, and that now, as before, the institutions are active which satisfy its social and economic needs on independent lines. They understand, likewise, the real causes of the increasing emigration from Finland. If, along with them, political agitation has also played a certain part, alarming the credulous peasantry with the specter of military service on the distant borders of Russia, yet their emigration was and remains an economic phenomenon. Having originated long before the issue of the manifesto of 1899, it kept increasing under the influence of bad harvests, industrial crises, and the demand for labor in foreign lands. Such is also the case in Norway, where the percentage of emigration is even greater than in Finland. Having elucidated the substantially unalterable aims of Russian policy in Finland, let us proceed to the causes which have led to its present incidental and temporary form of expression. This, undoubtedly, is distinguished by its severity, but such are the requirements of an utilitarian policy. By the bye, the total of these severe measures amounts to twenty-six Finlanders expelled from the country and a few officials dismissed the service without the right to a pension. It was scarcely possible, however, to retain officials in the service of the state once they refused to obey their superiors. Nor was it possible to bear with the existence of a conspiracy which attempted to draw the peaceful and law-abiding population into a conflict with the Government, and that, too, at a moment when the prudent members of the population of the duchy took the side of lawful authority, thereby calling forth against themselves persecution on the part of the secret leaders of the agitation party. The upholders of the necessity for a pacific policy toward Russia were subjected to moral and sometimes physical outrage, and their opponents were not ashamed to institute scandalous legal processes against them for the purpose of damaging their reputations. Very different is the attitude of the great mass of the population, as the following incident shows: The president of the Abo Hofgericht, declining to follow the instructions of the party hostile to Russia, was, on his arrival in Helsingfors, subjected to a variety of insults from the mob gathered at the railway station. On his return to Abo he was, on the contrary, presented with an address from the peasantry and local landowners, in which the following words occur: "We understand very well that you have been led to your patriotic resolve to continue your labors in obedience to the government by deep conviction, and do not require gratitude either from us or from any others; but at the important crisis our people is now experiencing it may be of some relief to you to learn that the preponderating majority of the people, and especially in broader classes, gratefully approve of the course you have taken." It will scarcely be known to any one in the West that when signatures were being gathered for the great mass-address of protest dispatched to St. Petersburg in 1899, those who refused their signatures numbered martyrs among them. There are some who for their courage in refusing their signatures suffered ruin and disgrace and were imprisoned on trumped-up charges. Moreover, the agitators aimed at infecting the lower classes of the population with their intolerance and their hatred of Russians, but, it must be said, with scant success. With regard to the essence of the question, I repeat that in matters of government temporary phenomena should be distinguished from permanent ones. The incidental expression of Russian policy, necessitated by an open mutiny against the Government in Finland, will, undoubtedly, be replaced by the former favor of the sovereign toward his Finnish subjects as soon as peace is finally restored and the current of social life in that country assumes its normal course. Then, certainly, all repressive measures will be repealed. But the realization of the fundamental aim which the Russian Government has set itself in Finland--_i.e._, the confirming in that land of the principle of imperial unity--must continue, and it would be best of all if this end were attained with the trustful cooperation of local workers under the guidance of the sovereign to whom Divine Providence has committed the destinies of Russia and Finland. SERGIUS WITTE When we talk of the means requisite for assimilating Finland we can not help reckoning, first and foremost, with this fact, that by the will of Russian emperors that country has lived its own particular life for nearly a century and governed itself in quite a special manner. Another consideration that should be taken to heart is this: the administration of the conquered country on lines which differed from the organization of other territories forming part of the empire, and which gave to Finland the semblance of a separate state, was shaped by serious causes, and did good service in the political history of the Russian Empire. One is hardly justified, therefore, in blaming this work of Alexander I., as is now so often done.... The annexation of Finland, poor by nature and at that time utterly ruined by protracted wars, was of moment to Russia, not so much from an economic or financial as from a strategical point of view. And what in those days was important was not its Russification, but solely the military position which it afforded. Besides, the incorporation of Finland took place at a calamitous juncture--for Russia. On the political horizon of Europe the clouds were growing denser and blacker, and there was a general foreboding of the coming events of the year 1812. If, at that time, Czar Alexander I. had applied to Finland the methods of administration which are wont to be employed in conquered countries, Finland would have become a millstone round Russia's neck during the critical period of her struggle with Napoleon, which demanded the utmost tension of our national forces. Fear of insurrections and risings would have compelled Russia to maintain a large army there and to spend considerable sums in administering the country. But Alexander I. struck out a different course. His Majesty recognized the necessity of "bestowing upon the people, by means of internal organization, incomparably more advantages than it had had under the sway of Sweden." And the Emperor held that an effective means of achieving this would be to give the nation such a status "that it should be accounted not enthralled by Russia, but attached to her in virtue of its own manifest interests." "This valiant and trusty people," said Czar Alexander I., when winding up the Diet of Borgo, "will bless Providence for establishing the present order of things. And I shall garner in the best fruits of my solicitude when I shall see this people tranquil from without, free within, devoting itself to agriculture and industry under the protection of the laws and their own good conduct, and by its very prosperity rendering justice in my intentions and blessing its destiny." Subsequent history justified the rosiest hopes of the Emperor. The immediate consequence of the policy he adopted toward Finland was that the country quickly became calmed and settled after the fierce war that had been waged there, and that in this way Russia was enabled to concentrate all her forces upon the contest with Napoleon. According to the words of Alexander I. himself, the annexation of Finland "was of the greatest advantage to Russia; without it, in 1812, we might not, perhaps, have won success, because Napoleon had in Bernadotte his steward, who, being within five days' march of our capital, would have been inevitably compelled to join his forces with those of Napoleon. Bernadotte himself told me so several times, and added that he had Napoleon's order to declare war against Russia." And afterward, during almost a century, Finland never occasioned any worries, political or economic, to the Russian Government, and did not require special sacrifices or special solicitude on its part. If we may judge, not by the speeches and articles of particular Separatists, but by overt acts, during that long period of time the Finnish people never failed in their duty as loyal subjects of their monarch or citizens of the common fatherland, Russia. The successors of the conqueror of Finland spoke many times from the height of the throne "of the numerous proofs of unalterable attachment and gratitude which the citizens of this country have given their monarchs." And in effect, neither general insurrections against Russia's dominions, nor political plots, nor the tumults of an ignorant rabble--such as our cholera riots, workmen's outbreaks, Jewish pogroms, and other like disturbances--have ever occurred in Finland; and when disorders of that kind broke out in other parts of the empire or alarming tidings from abroad came in they never evoked the slightest dangerous echo there. It is a most remarkable fact that during the trying time the Russian Government had when the Polish insurrection was going on, and later, in the equally difficult period through which we passed at the close of the seventies, Finland remained perfectly calm; and in the long list of political criminals sprung from the various nationalities of Russia, we do not find a single Finlander. In like manner fear of Finland's aspirations toward independence, of her inordinate demands in the matter of military legislation, of her turning her population into an armed nation; in a word, all the apprehensions felt that Finland may break loose from Russia are, down to the present moment, devoid of foundation in fact. "Finland under the egis of the Russian realm," our present Emperor has said, "and strong in virtue of Russia's protection through the lapse of almost a whole century, has advanced along the way of peaceful progress unswervingly, and in the hearts of the Finnish people lived the consciousness of their attachment to the Russian monarchs and to Russia." In moments of stress and of Russia's danger, the Finnish troops have always come forward as the fellow soldiers of our armies, and Finland has shared with us unhesitatingly our military triumphs and also the irksome consequences and tribulations of war-time. Thus, in the year 1812 and in the Crimean campaign, her armies grew in number considerably; in that eastern war almost her entire mercantile marine was destroyed--a possession which was one of the principal sources of the revenue of the country. During the Polish insurrection and the war for the emancipation of Bulgaria Finnish troops took part in the expeditions, and when in 1885 the Diet was opened, the Emperor Alexander III., in his speech from the throne, bore witness to "the unimpeachable way in which the population of the country had discharged its military obligations," and he gave utterance to his conviction that the Finnish troops would attain the object for which they existed. By way of proving Finland's striving to cut herself apart from Russia, people point to the doctrine disseminated about the Finnish State, to its unwillingness to establish military conscription on the same lines as the empire, and to the speeches of the Deputies of the Diets of 1877-1878 and 1879. But none of these arguments carries conviction. The theory about the independence of Finland, as a separate realm, which was worked out for the purpose of devising "the means of safeguarding its idiosyncrasies," is far from proving that "Finland aims at separation from Russia." Down to the present moment separation has not been in her interests. She was never an independent State; her historical traditions do not move her to play a political part in Europe. Besides, her population is mixed. The Swedish element constitutes only the topmost layer, and is not powerful enough to move toward an independent existence or toward union with the Power which belongs to the same race as that layer, while the mass of Finns, dreading the oppression of the Swedish party, is drawn more to Russia by the simple instinct of self-preservation. That is why the Finnish patriot may well be a true and devoted citizen of the Russian Empire, and being, as Alexander III. termed it, "a good Finlander," can also "bear in mind that he is a member of the Russian family, at the head of which stands the Russian Emperor." The unfavorable attitude of the Finns toward the proposal of the War Ministry for extending to them the general regulations that deal with the obligation to serve in the army is also intelligible. That obligation of military service is exceedingly irksome; and it is not only the Finns who desire to fight shy of it, nor can one discover any specially dangerous symptom in their wish to preserve the privileged position which they have hitherto enjoyed as to the way of discharging their military duties. They seek to perpetuate the privileges conferred upon them in the form of fundamental laws, and they strive to avoid being incorporated in the Russian Army, because service there would be very much more onerous for them than in their own Finnish regiments... If we now turn from the political to the economic aspect of the matter, to the question how far the order of things as at present established in Finland has proved advantageous to Russia from the financial point of view, we shall search in vain for data capable of bearing out the War Minister's opinion that, for the period of a century the Budget of Finland has been sedulously husbanded at the cost of the Russian people. Ever since Finland has had an independent State Budget, she has never required any sacrifices on the part of Russia for her economic development. Ill-used by nature and ruined by wars, the country, by dint of its own efforts, has advanced toward cultural and material prosperity. Without subsidies or guaranties from the Imperial Treasury, the land became furrowed with a network of carriage roads and railways; industries were created; a mercantile fleet was built, and the work of educating the nation was so successfully organized that one can hardly find an illiterate person throughout the length and breadth of the principality. It is also an interesting fact worth recording that, whereas the Russian Government has almost every year to feed a starving population, now in one district of the empire, now in another, and is obliged from time to time to spend enormous sums of money for the purpose, Finland, in spite of its frequent bad harvests, has generally dispensed with such help on the part of the State Treasury... Under these circumstances it is hardly fair to assert that Finland has been living at Russia's expense. On the contrary, Finland is perhaps the only one of our borderlands which has not required for its economic or cultural development funds taken from the population of Russia proper. The Caucasus, the Kingdom of Poland, Turkestan, part of Siberia, and other portions of our border districts--nay, even the northern provinces themselves--are sources of loss to us, or, at any rate, they have cost the Russian Treasury very much, and some of them still continue to cost it much, but the expenses they involve are hidden in the totals of the Imperial Budget. A few data will throw adequate light on this aspect of the situation. It is enough, for instance, to call to mind what vast, what incalculable sacrifices the pacification of the Caucasus required from Russia and what worry and expense it still causes us. No less imposing is the expenditure which the Kingdom of Poland with its two insurrections necessitated in the course of last century.... And if we cast a glance at the youngest of our borderlands--Turkestan--we shall find that here also the outlay occasioned by the political situation of the country has already become sharply outlined.... When we set those figures and data side by side we shall find it hard to speak of "our expenditure on Finland" or of "the vast privileges" we have conferred on the principality. It follows, then, that the system of administration established for Finland by the Emperor Alexander I. has not yet had any harmful political results for Russia, and that it has dispensed the Russian Government from incurring heavy expenditure for the administration and the well-being of the country, and in this way has enabled Russia to concentrate her forces and her care on other parts of the empire and to devote her attention to other State problems. One can not, of course, contend that the system of government adopted in Finland satisfies, in each and all its parts, the requirements and the needs of the present time. On the contrary, it is indubitable that the independent existence of the principality, disconnected as it is from the general interests of the empire, has led to a certain estrangement between the Russian and the Finnish populations. That an estrangement really exists can not be doubted; but the explanation of it is to be found in the difference of the two cultures which have their roots in history. To the protracted sway of Sweden and Finland's continuous relations through her intermediary with Western Europe, the circumstance is to be ascribed that the thinking spirits among the Finns gravitate--in matters of culture--not to Russia but to the West, and in particular to Sweden, with whom Finland is linked by bonds of language--through her highest social class--and of religion, laws, and literature. For that reason the views, ideas, and interests of Western--and in particular of Scandinavian--peoples are more thoroughly familiar and more intelligible to them than ours. That also is why, when working out any kind of reforms and innovations, they seek for models not among us but in Western Europe. It is, doubtless, impossible to look upon that state of things with approval. It is highly desirable that a closer union should take place between the interests, cultural and political, of the principality and those of the empire: that is postulated by the mutual advantages of both countries. As I have already remarked, Russians could not contemplate otherwise than with pleasure the possible union and assimilation--in principle--of the borderland with the other parts of our vast fatherland: they will also be unanimous in wishing this task as successful an issue as is possible..... But what is not feasible is to demolish at one swoop everything that has been created and preserved in the course of a whole century. A change of policy, if it is not to provoke tumults and disorganization, must be carried out gradually and with extreme circumspection. The assimilation of Finland can never be efficacious if achieved by violence and constraint instead of by pacific means. The Finnish people should be left to appreciate the benefits which would accrue to them from union with a powerful empire: for an adequate understanding of their own interests will, in the words of the Imperial rescript of February 28, 1891, "inspire them with a desire to draw more closely the bonds that link Finland with Russia." There is no doubt that even at present a certain tendency is noticeable among the Finns in favor of closer relations with Russia: the knowledge of the Russian tongue is spreading more and more widely among them, and business relations between them and us are growing brisker from year to year. The desirable abolition of the customs cordon between the two countries is bound to give a powerful fillip to the growth of commerce, which is the most trustworthy and most pacific means of bringing about a better understanding and strengthening the ties that bind Finland to Russia. Harsh, drastic expedients may easily loosen the threads that have begun to get tied, foster national hate, arouse mutual distrust and suspicion, and lead to results the reverse of those aimed at. Assimilative measures adopted by the Government, therefore, should be thought out carefully and applied gradually. J.N. REUTER "Might can not dominate right in Russia," said M. Stolypin, Russian Minister of the Interior and President of the Council of Ministers, in the speech which he delivered in the Duma on May 18, 1908, when pressed by the various parties to declare his policy with regard to Finland. This noble sentiment has the familiar ring of Russian officialdom. It may, perhaps, be worth while to consider it in the light of recent history and present-day issues. Alexander I., the first Russian sovereign of Finland, addressed a Rescript to Count Steinheil on his appointment to the post of Governor-General. Therein he wrote: "My object in Finland has been to give the people a political existence so that they shall not regard themselves as subject to Russia, but as attached to her by their own obvious interests." It is not the place here to give an historical account of subsequent events. It may, however, be briefly stated that the political ideal expressed in the words quoted here was at times forgotten, but was again revived, and, in such times, even resulted in the extension of Finland's constitutional rights. Then, again, this ideal was abandoned, and gave way to a totally different one, which found its most acute expression in February, 1899, when the Czar, a year after the issue of his invitations to the first Peace Conference at The Hague, suppressed by an Imperial manifesto the constitutional right of Finland. The arbitrary and corrupt Russian bureaucratic regime little by little forced its way into the country, while Finlanders watched with bitter resentment the suppression, one by one, of their most cherished national institutions. This manifesto was condemned in many European countries at the time, and a protest against it was signed by over a thousand prominent publicists and constitutional lawyers, who presented an international address to the Czar begging him to restore the rights of the Grand Duchy. In 1905, however, it seemed at last that a new era was about to dawn. The change was brought about by the domestic crisis through which Russia herself was then passing. An Imperial manifesto promulgated in October, containing the principles of a constitutional form of government in Russia, was followed as an inevitable sequel by the manifesto of November 4th, which practically restored to Finland its full political rights. In 1906, a new Law of the Diet was enacted. Instead of triennial sessions of the Estates, annual sessions of the Diet were introduced, while an extension of the franchise to every citizen over twenty-four years of age without distinction of sex gave to women active electoral rights. Moreover, the door was opened to new and far-reaching reforms, the fulfilment of which infused fresh life into the democratic spirit of Finnish national institutions. While, however, so much was done to improve the political, social, and economic condition of the country, the promises which were then made have not been fulfilled. The principal reason for this failure to redeem their pledges lies in a change of attitude among Russian officials and their interference in Finnish affairs. It is by consideration of this change and of its effect upon Finland that we may best judge how much truth there is in M. Stolypin's claim that in Russia "might can not dominate right." Ominous signs of a reversal of policy had appeared before, but the first official expression to it was given in the speech of M. Stolypin already referred to. In this speech he claimed for Russia as the sovereign power the right of control over Finnish administration and legislation whenever the interests of the empire were concerned. This claim meant practically the restoration of the old Bobrikoff régime and was based on the same ideas as those underlying the February manifesto of 1899. M. Stolypin attempts to justify his attitude by arguing that the constitutional relations between Russia and Finland are determined only by Clause 4 of the Treaty of Peace between Russia and Sweden, dated September 17,1809. This clause runs as follows: "His Majesty the King of Sweden renounces irrevocably and forever, on behalf of himself as well as on behalf of his successors to the Swedish throne and realm, and in favor of his Majesty the Emperor of Russia and his successors to the Russian throne and empire, all his rights and titles of the governments enumerated hereafter which have been conquered by the arms of his Imperial Majesty from the Swedish Army, to wit: the Provinces of Kymmenegard, etc. "These provinces, with all their inhabitants, towns, ports, forts, villages, and islands, with their appurtenances, privileges, and revenues, shall hereafter under full ownership and sovereignty belong to the Russian Empire and be incorporated with the same." After quoting this clause, M. Stolypin exclaimed, "This is the act, the title, by which Russia possesses Finland, the one and only act which determines the mutual relations between Russia and Finland." Now this clause contains no reference whatever to the autonomy of the Grand Duchy, and if it were the only act by which the mutual relations of Russia and Finland were determined, then Finland would have no constitution. The political autonomy of Finland, which has been recognized for exactly one hundred years, would have been without legal foundation. Even M. Stolypin admits that Finland enjoys autonomy. "There must be no room for the suspicion," he said, "that Russia would violate the rights of autonomy conferred on Finland by the monarch." On what, then, does the claim to Finnish autonomy rest and how was it conferred? Clause 6 of the Treaty of Peace contains the following passage: "His Majesty the Emperor of all the Russias, having already given the most manifest proofs of the clemency and justice with which he has resolved to govern the inhabitants of the provinces which he has acquired, by generosity and by his own spontaneous act assuring to them the free exercise of their religion, rights, property, and privileges, his Swedish Majesty considers himself thereby released from performing the otherwise sacred duty of making reservations in the above respects in favor of his former subjects." This entry in the Treaty of Peace refers to the settlement made at the Borgo Diet a few months earlier, and it is under this settlement, confirmed by deeds of a later date, that Finland claims her right to autonomy. M. Stolypin recognizes the claim of Finland to autonomy, but refuses to recognize the binding force of the acts of the Borgo Diet on which alone it can legally be based. This claim gives Finland no voice in her external relations. All international treaties, including matters relating to the conduct of war (though laws on the liability of Finnish citizens to military service fall under the competency of the Finnish Diet), are matters common to Russia and Finland as one empire, one international unit, and are dealt with by the proper Russian authorities. This is admitted by all Finlanders. But M. Stolypin extended Russian authority by making it paramount in all matters which have a bearing on Russian or Imperial interests. The attempt to curtail Finnish constitutional liberty has taken different forms. Early in 1908 the Russian Council of Ministers, over which M. Stolypin presides, drew up a "Journal," or Protocol, to which the Czar on June 2d gave his sanction. The chief provisions of this Protocol were briefly as follows: All legislative proposals and all administrative matters "of general importance," before being brought to the Sovereign for his sanction, or, as is the case with Bills to be presented to the Diet, for his preliminary approval, as well as all reports drawn up by Finnish authorities for the Czar's inspection, must be communicated to the Russian Council of Ministers. The Council will then decide "which matters concerning the Grand Duchy of Finland also have a bearing on the interests of the empire, and, consequently, call for a fuller examination on the part of the Ministries and Government Boards." If the Council decide that a matter has a bearing on the interests of the empire the Council prepare a report on it, and, should the Council differ from the views taken up by the Finnish authorities, the Finnish Secretary of State, who alone should be the constitutional channel for bringing Finnish matters before the Sovereign's notice, can do so only in the presence of the President of the Council of Ministers or another Russian Minister. But in practise it has frequently happened that the Council send in their report beforehand, and the Czar's decision is practically taken when the Finnish Secretary is permitted an audience. This important measure was brought about by the exclusive recommendation of Russian Ministers. Neither the Finnish Diet nor the Senate nor the Secretary of State for Finland, who resides in St. Petersburg, was consulted or had the slightest idea of what was going on before the Protocol was published in Russia. It has never been promulgated in Finland, and no Finnish authority has been officially advised of it. The whole matter has been treated as a private affair between the Czar and his Russian Ministers. The excuse has been made that the Czar must be permitted to seek counsel with whomsoever he chooses in regard to the government of Finland. But this is not a question of privately consulting one man or the other. The new measure amounts to an official recognition of the Russian Council of Ministers as an organ of government exercising a powerful control over Finnish legislation, administration, and finance. The center of gravity of Finnish administration has, in fact, been shifted from the Senate for Finland, composed of Finnish men, to the Russian Council of Ministers. The Finnish Senate protested to the Czar in three separate memoranda, dated respectively June 19, 1908, December 22, 1908, and February 25,1909. The Finnish Diet adopted on October 13, 1908, a petition to the Czar to reconsider the matter. On the occasion of the opening of the Diet's next session the Speaker, in his reply to the Czar's message, briefly referred to the anxiety prevailing in Finland, with the result that the Diet was immediately punished by an order of dissolution from the Czar. The Senate's memoranda, as well as the Diet's petition, were rejected, the Czar acting on the exclusive recommendation of the Russian Council of Ministers. They were not even brought before him through the constitutional channels, the Finnish Secretary of State having been refused a hearing. As a result all members of the Department of Justice, or half the number of the Senators, resigned. In the same year another but less successful attack was made on the Finnish Constitution. In the autumn of 1908 the Finnish Diet adopted a new Landlord and Tenant Bill, but before it was brought up for the Czar's sanction the Diet was dissolved in the manner just described. The Bill being of a pressing nature, the Council of Ministers was at last prevailed upon to report on it to the Czar. The latter then gave his sanction to it, but, on the recommendation of the Council, added a rider in the preamble. This was to the effect that, though the Bill, having been adopted by a Diet which was dissolved before the expiration of the three years' period for which it was elected, should not have been presented for his consideration at all, the Czar would nevertheless make an exception from the rule and sanction it, prompted by his regard for the welfare of the poorer part of the population. The Senate decided to postpone promulgation of this law in view of the constitutional doctrine involved in the preamble. It was pointed out that this doctrine was entirely foreign to Finnish law. The preamble which, according to custom, should have contained nothing beyond the formal sanction to the law in question, embodied an interpretation of constitutional law. Such an interpretation could only legally be made in the same manner as the enactment of a constitutional law, _i.e.,_ through the concurrent decision of the Sovereign and the Diet. The Senate, therefore, petitioned the Czar to modify the preamble in such a way as to remove from it what could be construed as an interpretation of constitutional law. In reply, the Czar reprimanded the Senate for delaying promulgation, recommended it to do so immediately, but promised later on to take the representations made by the Senate into his consideration. Five of the Senators then voted against, while the Governor-General and five others voted for promulgation of, the law. The minority then tendered their resignations. The inconveniences resulting from this new constitutional doctrine proved, however, of so serious a practical nature that the Czar eventually, in July, 1909, issued a declaration that "the gracious expressions in the preamble to the Landlord and Tenant Law concerning the invalidity of the decisions of a dissolved Diet do not constitute an interpretation of the constitutional law and shall not in the future be binding in law." A third and most important encroachment by the Russian Council of Ministers on the autonomy of Finland was also carried out at the instigation of M. Stolypin. The Finnish Constitution makes no distinction between matters that may have, or may not have, a bearing on the interests of Russia. At the same time Russian interests have never been disregarded in Finnish legislation. It had been the practise, when a legislative proposal was brought forward in Finland, and a Russian interest might be affected by it, to communicate with the Russian Minister whom the matter most closely concerned, in order that he might make his observations. This practise was confirmed by law in 1891. In its memoranda of 1908 and 1909, on the interference of the Russian Council of Ministers in Finnish affairs, the Senate suggested that, in case the procedure under the ordinance of 1891 were not satisfactory, a committee of Russian and Finnish members should be appointed to discuss a _modus procedendi_ of such a nature that the Constitution of Finland should not be violated. On the recommendation of the Council of Ministers, the Czar rejected these suggestions, but the Council of Ministers took the matter in hand and summoned a "Special Conference," consisting of several Russian Ministers, other high Russian functionaries, the Governor-General of Finland, who is also a Russian, with M. Stolypin as President. Their business was to draw up a program for a joint committee to be appointed "for the drafting of proposals for regulations concerning the procedure of issuing laws of general Imperial interest concerning Finland." This conference accordingly drew up a program, approved by the Czar on April 10, 1909, in which it was resolved that the joint committee should suggest a definition of the term "laws of general Imperial interest concerning Finland." These laws, it was proposed, should be totally withdrawn from the competency of the Finnish Diet and should be passed by the legislative bodies of Russia, that is, the Council of State and the Duma. The only safeguard for the interests of Finland suggested in the program is that a representative for Finland should be admitted to these two bodies when Finnish questions were discussed there. It is impossible to say what laws concerning Finland will be defined as being of "general interest." Having regard, however, to the wide interpretation which Russian reactionaries are wont to put on the expression, there is every reason to suppose that the Russian members of the committee will insist on its extension so as to include every important category of law. The Finnish members through their spokesman, Archbishop Johansson, declared that they proceeded to work on the committee on the assumption that in case alterations in the law of Finland should be found necessary, having regard to Imperial interests, such alterations should be made through modifications in the constitutional laws of Finland. The Finlanders are prepared to do their duty by the empire, but, the Archbishop said: "Sacrifices have been demanded from us to which no people can consent. The Finnish people can not forego their Constitution, which is a gift of the Most High, and which, next to the Gospel, is their most cherished possession." M. Deutrich, who spoke on behalf of the Russian members, explained that any law resulting from the labors of the committee would not be submitted to the ratification of the Finnish Diet. So M. Stolypin's way was now clear. The sanction of the people will not be required. The Finlanders have practically no other help than that given by a consciousness of the justice of their cause. They have no appeal. In November of 1909 the Finnish Diet was dissolved by a ukase of the Czar. Since then the Russian Government has been passing decree after decree for Finland, giving the constitutional authorities no voice even of protest. So ends Finland. MAN'S FASTEST MILE THE AUTOMOBILE AGE A.D. 1911 C.F. CARTER ISAAC MARCOSSON On April 23, 1911, an automobile was driven along the hard, smooth sand of a Florida sea beach, covering a mile in 25-2/5 seconds. And it continued for a second mile at the same tremendous speed. These were the fastest two miles ever made by man. They were at the rate of a trifle over 140 miles an hour. As this record was not equaled in the three years that followed, it may be regarded as approaching the maximum speed of which automobiles are capable. And as another automobile, in endeavoring to reach such a speed, dissolved into its separate parts, practically disintegrated, and left an astonished driver floundering by himself upon the sand, we may assume that no noticeably greater speed can be attained except by some wholly different method or new invention. In contrast to this picture of "speed maniacs" darting more swiftly than ever eagle swooped or lightning express-train ran, let us contemplate for a moment that first automobile race held in Chicago in 1894. A twenty-four horse-power Panhard machine showed a speed of thirty miles an hour and was objected to by the newspapers as a "racing monster" likely to cause endless tragedy, menacing death to its owners and to the public. Thus in the brief space of seventeen years did the construction of automobiles improve and the temper of the world toward them change. The present day may almost be called the "automobile age." The progress by which this has come about, and the enormous development of this new industry is here traced by two men who have followed it most closely. The narrative of the "auto's" triumphs by Mr. C.F. Carter appeared first in the _Outing Magazine_. The account of the industry's growth by Mr. Isaac Marcosson appeared in _Munsey's Magazine_, of which he was the editor. Both are given here by the permission of the magazines. C.F. CARTER When the marine architects and engineers catch up with the automobile makers they can build a ship capable of crossing the Atlantic in twenty-three hours; or, if we forget to make allowance for the difference in longitude, capable of making the run from Liverpool to New York in the same apparent time in which the Twentieth Century Limited makes the run from New York to Chicago. That is, the vessel leaving Liverpool at three o'clock in the afternoon would arrive at New York at nine o'clock the following morning, which, allowing for the five hours' difference in time, would make twenty-three hours. When the railroad engineers provide improved tracks and motive power that will enable them to parallel the feats of the automobile men, if they ever do, the running time for the fastest trains between New York and Chicago will be reduced to seven hours, while San Francisco will be but a day's run from the metropolis. And when the airship enthusiasts are able to dart through the air at the speed attained by the automobile, it will be time enough to think of taking seriously the extravagant claims made in behalf of aviation. For the automobile is the swiftest machine ever built by human hands. It is so much swifter than its nearest competitor that those who read these lines to-day are likely to be some years older before its speed is even equaled, to say nothing of being surpassed, by any other kind of vehicle. So far as is known, but one human being ever traveled faster than Robert Burman did in his racing auto on the beach at Daytona, Florida, on April 23, 1911. This solitary exception was a Hindu carrier who chanced to tumble off the brink of a chasm in the Himalayas. His name has not been preserved, he never made any claim to the record, he was not officially timed, and altogether the event has no official standing. Still, as he is the only man who is ever alleged to have covered so great a distance as six thousand feet in an obstructed fall, the matter is not without interest; for, according to the accepted rule for finding the velocity of a body falling freely from rest, he must have been going at the rate of seven miles a second when he reached the bottom. About Burman's record there can be no doubt, for it was made in the presence of many witnesses, and it was duly timed with stop-watches by men skilled in the art. The straightaway mile over the smooth, hard beach was covered from a running start in the almost incredibly short time of 25.40 seconds. The next fastest mile ever traveled by human beings who lived to tell about it was made in an electric-car on the experimental track between Berlin and Zossen, in 1902. As the engineers who achieved this record for the advancement of scientific knowledge of the railroad considered such speed dangerous, it is not at all likely to become standard practise. The fastest time ever made by a steam locomotive of which there is any record, was the run of five miles from Fleming to Jacksonville, Florida, in two and a half minutes by a Plant system locomotive in March, 1901. This was at the rate of 120 miles an hour. As for steamships, the record of 30.53 miles per hour is held by the _Mauretania_. These things, if borne in mind, will serve to throw into stronger relief the things that an automobile can do, and to supply a substantial basis for the premise that, at least in some respects, the automobile is the most marvelous machine the world has yet seen. It can go anywhere at any time, floundering through two feet of snow, ford any stream that isn't deep enough to drown out the magneto, triumph over mud axle deep, jump fences, and cavort over plowed ground at fifteen miles an hour. It has been used with brilliant success in various kinds of hunting, including coyote coursing on the prairies of Colorado, where it can run all around the bronco, formerly in favor, since it never runs any risk of breaking a leg in a prairie-dog hole. Educated automobiles have been trained to shell corn, saw wood, pump water, churn, plow, and, in short, do anything required of them except figure out where the consumer gets off under the new tariff law. But to get back to the subject of speed, as automobile talk always does, the supremacy of the motor-car has been established by so many official records that any attempt to select the most striking only results in bewilderment. The best that can be done is to recite a few representative ones. That was a most interesting illustration, for instance, of the capacity for sustained high speed made by a Stearns car on the mile track at Brighton Beach in 1910. In twenty-four hours the car covered the amazing distance of 1,253 miles, which was at the average speed of 52-1/5 miles per hour. This record is all the more remarkable from the fact the car was not a racer, but a stock car which had been driven for some months by its owner before it was borrowed for the race, and did not have any special preparation. The men who drove it were not notified that their services were wanted until the morning of the race. While this is about the average rate per hour of the fastest train between New York and Chicago, it should be remembered that the trains run on steel rails, that curves are comparatively few, and they are not sharp, while the automobile was spinning around a mile track made of plain dirt, and was obliged to negotiate 2,506 sharp curves. Besides, the locomotives on the fast trains are changed every 120 to 150 miles, while the entire run of 1,253 miles was made by one auto which had already run 7,500 miles in ordinary service before it was entered in the race. Unfortunately for the automobile, it has achieved so many remarkable speed records that its name is suggestive of swiftness. If the English language were not the stereotyped, inelastic vehicle for the communication of thought that it is we should now be speaking of "automobiling" a shady bill through the city council instead of "railroading" it. There are few places where it is permissible to attain record speed, and fewer men who, with safety to others, may be entrusted with the attempt. The true value of the automobile to the average man lies in its ability to keep right on going indefinitely at moderate speed under any and all conditions. One of the innumerable tests in which the staying qualities of the automobile were brought out was the trip from Pittsburg to Philadelphia by way of Gettysburg by S.D. Waldon and four passengers in a Packard car, September 20, 1910. This run of 303 miles over three mountain ranges, with the usual accompaniments of steep grades, rocks, ruts, and thank-you-ma'ms to rack the machinery and bruise the feelings of the riders, was made in 12 hours and 51 minutes. A little run of three or four hundred miles, though, is scarcely worth mentioning by way of showing what an auto can do in a real endurance contest. A much more notable trip was the non-stop run from Jackson, Michigan, to Bangor, Maine, in November, 1909, by E.P. Blake and Dr. Charles Percival. The distance of 1,600 miles was covered in 123 hours, which meant traveling at an average speed of 13 miles an hour in rain and snow and mud over country roads at their worst. In all that time the motor never once stopped. In the Munsey historical tour of 1910 a Brush single-cylinder car covered the 1,550 miles of a schedule designed for big cars and came through with a perfect score. If you know the hill roads of Pennsylvania you'll realize what that means in the way of car performance. Still more remarkable endurance tests are the transcontinental trips which are undertaken so frequently nowadays that they no longer attract attention. One such trip which shows what very little trouble an automobile gives when handled with reasonable care was that made in 1909 by George C. Rew, W.H. Aldrich, Jr., R.A. Luckey, and H.G. Toney. Traveling by daylight only, they made the journey of 2,800 miles from San Francisco to Chicago in nineteen days in a Stearns car. They might have done better if they had not loitered along the way. On one occasion they stopped to haul water a distance of twenty-five miles for some cowboys on a round-up. The motor gave no trouble whatever, while the only trouble with tires was a single puncture caused by a spike when they tried to avoid a bad stretch of road by running on a railroad track. The time record from ocean to ocean was held by L.L. Whitman, who left New York in a Reo four-thirty at 12.01 A.M. on Monday, August 8, 1910, and arrived in San Francisco on the 18th, covering the 3,557 miles in 10 days 15 hours and 13 minutes. This achievement may be more fully appreciated by comparing it with the transcontinental relay race in which a courier carried a message from President Taft to President Chilberg, of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, in September-October, 1909, in 10 days 5 hours, by using thirty-two cars and as many different drivers who knew the roads over which they ran. Those who are fortunate enough to have friends who own cars know that automobiles can climb hills; and that the accepted way to do it is to throw in the extra special high gear, tear the throttle out by the roots, advance the spark twenty minutes, and push hard on the steering wheel. The fact that the car will overlook such treatment and go ahead is a source of never-failing wonder. Indeed, when it comes to hill-climbing the automobile is so far ahead of the locomotive that it seems like wanton cruelty to drag the latter into the discussion at all. The steepest grade on a railroad doing a miscellaneous transportation business climbed by a locomotive relying on adhesion only is on the Leopoldina system in Brazil between Bocca do Monte and Theodoso, where there is a stretch of 8-1/3 per cent. grade with curves of 130 feet radius. There are some logging roads in the United States with grades of 16 per cent. How trifling this seems when compared with the feat of a Thomas car which climbed Fillmore Street, San Francisco, which is alleged to have a gradient of 34 per cent., with twenty-three persons on board. As 25 per cent. is regarded as the maximum safe gradient for an Abt rack railway, since the cog-wheel is liable to climb out of the rack on any steeper grade, it will be seen that the strain upon the credulity of the hearer of this story is almost as great as that upon the car must have been. Enthusiasm may be expected to run high in the presence of such astounding triumphs, and it should, therefore, not be deemed surprising that accounts of hill-climbing contests are generally lacking in definiteness. The name of the car and the driver are always given with scrupulous care, but such incidental details as length of ascent, minimum, maximum, and average gradient, maximum curvature, and so on, are generally left to the imagination. Among the few exceptions to this rule was the hill-climbing contest at Port Jefferson, Long Island, in which Ralph de Palma went up an ascent of two thousand feet with an average gradient of 10 per cent. and a maximum of 15 per cent. in 20.48 seconds in his 190-horse-power Fiat. A little Hupmobile, one of the lightest cars built, reached the top in 1 minute 10 seconds. De Palma climbed the "Giant's Despair" near Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania, an ascent six thousand feet long, with grades varying from 10 to 22 per cent., in his big machine in 1 minute 28-2/5 seconds. A Marmon stock car reached the top in 1 minute 50-1/5 seconds. Pike's Peak, Mount Washington, Ensign Mountain, in Utah, and lesser mountains elsewhere have also been climbed repeatedly by automobiles. As the mere announcement of the fact vividly exhibits the staying powers of the auto in a long, stiff climb, the engineering details may be disregarded. Next to its ability to do the exceptional things when required, the most useful accomplishment of the automobile is its wonderful capacity for standing up to its work day in and day out in fair weather or foul, regardless of the condition of the roads. This is shown every year in the spectacular Glidden tours, otherwise the National Reliability tests, in which a number of cars of various makes cover a scheduled route of two or three thousand miles, in which are included all the different kinds of abominations facetiously termed "roads." Other tests without number are constantly being evolved to demonstrate the already established fact that an automobile can do anything required of it. There was the New York to Paris race, for instance. Starting from New York on February 12, 1908, when traveling was at its worst, and arriving in Paris July 30, the winner floundered in snow, mud, sand, and rocks, over mountain ranges and through swamps, in eighty-eight days' running time for the 12,116 miles of land travel. That was a demonstration of what an automobile can do that has never been surpassed. Yet the Thomas car that did it was restored to its original condition at a cost of only $90 after the trip was ended. Another remarkable demonstration of endurance was that given by a Chalmers-Detroit touring car, which was driven 208 miles every day for a hundred consecutive days over average roads. When the 20,800 miles were finished, just to show that it still felt its oats, the car which had already covered 6,000 miles of roads through Western States before the test began, ran over to Pontiac, Michigan, and hauled the Mayor 26 miles to Detroit. Then it was run into the shops and taken down for examination. Being found to be in perfect condition except for the valves, which required some trifling adjustment to take up the wear on the valve stems, and for the piston rings, which needed setting out, it was reassembled and started on another test. But, after all, the most wonderful thing about an automobile is its almost infinite capacity to endure cruel and inhuman treatment. No matter whether the brutality is inflicted through ignorance or awkwardness, or, rarest of all, through unavoidable accident, the effect on steel and wood and rubber is the same. Yet the auto stands it. In brake tests it has been demonstrated that a car traveling at the rate of eighteen miles an hour can be stopped in a distance of twenty-five feet. The knowledge that this can be done in an emergency is a great comfort, but it should be equally well known that it does not improve the car to make all stops that way. Yet how often are drivers seen tearing up to the curb at twenty miles an hour or more to slam on the brakes at the last instant with a violence that nearly causes the car to turn a somersault, bringing it to a standstill in twenty feet, when there was no earthly reason why they should not have used four times that distance. Or if occasion arises for slowing down in a crowded street, the same kind of driver throws out his clutch and applies the brakes with the throttle wide open so the motor can race unhindered. With the greenhorn the automobile is long-suffering. There was a new owner in Boston, whose name is mercifully suppressed, who took his family out for a first ride. In going down a hill on which the clay was slippery from recent rain it became necessary to turn out for a car coming up. The new driver made the turn so successfully that he turned clear over the edge of the embankment. Having nothing but air to support it, the auto turned completely over without spilling a passenger and landed right side up and on an even keel in a marsh fifteen feet below. It was necessary to get a team to pull the car out of the mud, but once on the solid road the new owner simply cranked 'er up and went on his way rejoicing. Another new owner could not find the key to fasten one rear wheel on the axle when he unloaded his auto from the car in which it had been shipped from the factory. Nevertheless, he started up the motor according to directions and traveled twelve miles with one wheel driving. By this time the outraged motor was red hot. Whereupon the new owner stopped at a farm-house and dashed several buckets of cold water on it. Then he plugged around the country a week or so before he decided to go to the agent to lodge a complaint that his derned car didn't "pull" well. Still another new owner complained that his car did not give satisfactory service. The agent was not at all surprised that it didn't when, upon investigation, he found that the car had been driven five hundred miles without a single drop of oil being applied to transmission gear and rear axle. George Robertson, the racing driver, in tuning up for the Vanderbilt race, went over the embankment at the Massapequa turn on Long Island at the rate of sixty miles an hour. The car turned over twice, but finally stopped right side up. Robertson received a cut on one arm in the fracas, but neither he nor the car was so badly injured but what they could get back to New York, a distance of twenty-five miles, under their own power. There the steering wheel was repaired at a cost of $5, the radiator at a cost of $3, and Robertson's arm at $2. But the prize-winner was the Fiat racing machine which threw a tire while going fifty-five miles an hour on the Brighton Beach track. The flying racer, now utterly uncontrollable, dashed through two fences, one of them pretty substantial, cut down a tree eight inches in diameter, and finally came to a stop right side up. E.H. Parker, the driver, and his mechanician, were somewhat surprised, but otherwise undamaged. They put on a new tire and in twenty minutes were back in the race again. What the automobile can do in the way of cheapness was shown by the cost tests, sanctioned and confirmed by the American Automobile Association, between a Maxwell runabout and a horse and buggy. In seven days, in all kinds of weather and over city and country roads, the horse and buggy traveled 197 miles at a cost per passenger mile of 2-1/2 cents. The runabout made 457 miles in the same time, and the cost per passenger mile was 1.8 cents. This covered operation, maintenance, and depreciation, and, incidentally, all speed laws were observed. The Winton Company, which conducts a sort of private Automobile Humane Society, offers prizes for chauffeurs who can show the greatest mileage on the lowest charge for upkeep. The first prize winner in the contest for the eight months ending June 30, 1909, drove his car 17,003 miles with no expense whatever for up-keep. The second prize winner drove 11,000 miles at an outlay of thirty cents, while the third man drove 10,595 miles without any expense. This makes a total of 38,598 miles by three cars at a cost of thirty cents for repairs. And all the cars were two years old when the contest began. The moral for those who really want to see what an automobile can do is obvious. ISAAC F. MARCOSSON Every automobile that you see is a link in a chain of steel and power which, if stretched out, would reach from New York to St. Louis. What was considered a freak fifteen years ago, and a costly toy within the present decade, is now a necessity in business and pleasure. A mechanical Cinderella, once rejected, despised, and caricatured, has become a princess. Few people realize the extent of her sway. Hers is perhaps the only industry whose statistics of to-day are obsolete to-morrow, so rapid is its growth. In 1895 the value of the few hundred cars produced in the United States was one hundred and fifty thousand dollars; in 1910 the year's output of approximately two hundred thousand machines was worth two hundred and twenty-five millions. Behind them is a stalwart business representing, with parts and accessory makers, an investment of more than a billion and a quarter of dollars. Four hundred thousand men, or more than five times the strength of our standing army, depend upon it for a livelihood, and more than five millions of people are touched or affected by it every day. Through its phenomenal expansion new industries have been created and old ones enriched. It withstood panic and rode down depression; it has destroyed the isolation of the farm and made society more intimate. There is a car for every one hundred and sixty persons in the United States; twenty-five States have factories; the _honk_ of the horn on the American car is heard around the world. Such, in brief, is the miracle of the motor's advance. Its development is a real epic of action and progress. Before going further, it might be well to ask why and how the automobile has achieved such a remarkable development. One reason, perhaps, is that it appeals to vanity and stirs the imagination. A man likes to feel that by a simple pressure of the hand he can control a ton of quivering metal. Besides, we live, work, and have our being in a breathless age, into which rapid transit fits naturally. So universal is the impress of the automobile that there are in reality but two classes of people in the United States to-day--those who own motor-cars and those who do not. It must be kept in mind, too, in analyzing the causes of the automobile's amazing expansion, that it is the first real improvement in individual transportation since the chariot rattled around the Roman arena. The horse had his century-old day, but when the motor came man traded him for a gas-engine. Characteristic of the pace at which the automobile has traveled to success is the somewhat astonishing fact that while it took inventive genius nearly fifty years to develop a locomotive that would run fifty miles an hour on a specially built track, it has taken less than ten years to perfect an automobile that will run the same distance in less time on a common road. Since this business is so invested with human interest, let us go back for a moment to its beginnings. Here you find all the properties, accessories, and environment to fit the launching of a great drama. Toward the close of the precarious nineties, a few men wrestled with the big vision of a horseless age. Down in Ohio and Indiana were Winton and Haynes; Duryea was in Pennsylvania; over in Michigan were Olds, Ford, Maxwell, with the brilliant Brush, dreaming mechanical dreams; in New York Walker kept to the faith of the motor-car. At that time some of the giants of to-day were outside the motor fold. Benjamin Briscoe was making radiators and fenders; W.C. Durant was manufacturing buggies; Walter Flanders was selling machinery on the road; Hugh Chalmers was making a great cash-register factory hum with system; Fred W. Haines was struggling with the problem of developing a successful gasoline engine. Scarcely anybody dreamed that man was on the threshold of a new era in human progress that would revolutionize traffic and set a new mark for American enterprise and achievement. And yet it was little more than ten years ago. Those early years were years of experimentation, packed with mistakes and changes. Few of the cars would run long or fast. It was inevitable that the automobile should take its place in jest and joke. Hence the comic era. With the development of the mechanism came the speed mania, which hardly added to the machine's popularity. You must remember in this connection that the automobile was a new thing with absolutely no precedent. The makers groped in the dark, and every step cost something. New steels had to be welded; new machinery made; a whole new engineering system had to be created. The model of to-day was in the junk heap to-morrow. But just as curious instinct led the hand of man to the silver heart of the Comstock Lode, so did circumstance, destiny, and invention combine to point the way to the commercially successful car. Out of the wreck, the chaos, and the failure of the struggling days came a cheap and serviceable car that did not require a daily renewal of its parts. It proved to be the pathfinder to motor popularity, for with its appearance, early in this decade, the automobile began to find itself. Now began the "shoe-string" period, the most picturesque in the whole dazzling story of the automobile. There could be no god in the car without gold. Here, then, was the situation--on the one hand was the enthusiastic inventor; on the other was the conservative banker. "We will make four thousand machines this year," said the inventor. "Who will buy them?" asked the banker in amazement; he refused to lend the capital that the inventor so sorely needed. The idea of selling four thousand motor-cars in a year seemed incredible. Yet within ten years they were selling fifty times as many, and were unable to supply the demand. No fabulous gold strike ever had more episodes of quick wealth than this business. Here is an incident that will show what was going on: A Detroit engineer, who had served his apprenticeship in an electric-light plant, evolved a car which he believed would sell for a popular price. He tried to interest capitalists in vain. Finally, he fell in with a stove-manufacturer, who agreed to lend him twenty-seven thousand dollars. "But I can't afford to be identified with your project," said the backer, who feared ridicule for his hardihood. That small investment paid a dividend as high as thirteen hundred per cent. in a year. To-day the name of the struggling inventor is known wherever cars are run, and his output is measured by thousands. This, in substance, is the story of Henry Ford. A young machinist worked in one of the first Detroit automobile factories, earning three dollars and fifty cents a day. One day he said to himself: "I can build a better car than we are making here." He did so, and the car succeeded. Then he went to his employers, and said: "I am worth three thousand dollars a year." They did not think so, and he left, to go into business on his own account. A manufacturer staked him at the start. Later, through a friend, some Wall Street capital was interested. Such was the start of J.D. Maxwell, whose interests to-day are merged in a company with a capitalization of sixteen million dollars. A curly haired Vermont machinery salesman, who had sweated at the lathe, became factory manager for a Detroit automobile-maker. His genius for production and organization made him the wonder and the admiration of the automobile world. He was making others rich. "If I can do this for others, why can't I do it for myself?" he reasoned one day. With a stake of ninety-five thousand dollars, supplemented with a hundred thousand dollars which he borrowed from some bankers, he built up a business that in twenty months sold for six millions. This was the feat of Walter E. Flanders. I might cite others. The "shoe-strings" became golden bands that bound men to fortune. All the while the years were speeding on, but not quite so fast as the development of the automobile. The production of ten thousand cars in 1903 had leaped to nearly twenty thousand in 1905. The thirty-thousand mark was passed in 1906. Bankers began to sit up, take notice, and feed finance to this swelling industry, which had emerged from fadhood into the definite, serious proportions of a great national business. The reign of the inventor-producer became menaced, because men of trained and organized efficiency in other activities joined the ranks of the motor-makers. With them there came a vivifying and broadening influence that had much to do with giving assured permanency to the industry. But other things had happened which contributed to the stability of the automobile. One was the fact that automobile-selling, from the start, had been on a strictly cash basis. Yet how many people save those in the business, or who have bought cars, know this interesting fact? No automobile-buyer has credit for a minute, and John D. Rockefeller and the humblest clerk with savings look alike to the seller. It was one constructive result of those early haphazard days. Every car that is shipped has a sight draft attached to the bill of lading, and the consignee can not get his car until he has paid the draft. Why was the cash idea inaugurated? Simply because there was so much risk in a credit transaction. If a man bought a car on thirty days' time, and had a smash-up the day after he received it, there would be little equity left behind the debt. The owner might well reason that it was the car's fault, and refuse to pay. Besides, the early makers needed money badly. In addition to the cash stipulation, they compelled all the agents to make a good-sized deposit, and these deposits on sales gave more than one struggling manufacturer his first working capital. Another reason why the business developed so tremendously was that good machines were produced. They had to be good--first, because of the intense rivalry, and then because the motor-buyer became the best informed buyer in the world. This reveals a striking fact that few people stop to consider. If a man owns a cash-register or an adding-machine, it never occurs to him to wonder how, or of what, it is made. But let him buy an automobile, and ten minutes after it is in his possession he wants to know "what is inside." He is like a boy with his first watch. Hence the automobile-purchaser knows all about his car, and when he buys a second one it is impossible to fool him. Perhaps the first real test of the stability of the automobile business came with the panic of 1907. It resisted the inroads of depression more than any other industry. Most of the big factories kept full working hours, and the only reason why some others stopped was because of their inability to secure currency for the pay-rolls. Still another significant thing has happened--more important, perhaps, than all the rest of the changes that have crowded thick and fast upon this leaping industry. It began to be plain that certain features must be present in every first-class car. Hence came the standardization of the mechanism, which is a big step forward. What is the result to-day? The automobile has become less of a designing proposition and more of a manufacturing proposition; less of an engineering problem and more of a factory problem. The whole, wide throbbing range of the business is bending to one great end--to meet a demand which, up to the present time, has exceeded the supply. You have only to go to Detroit to see this pulsating drama of production in action. Here beats the heart of the motor world; here a mighty army is evolving a vast industrial epic. Its banners are the smoke that trails from a hundred soaring stacks; its music is the clang of a thousand forges and the rattle of a maze of machinery. You feel this quickening life the moment you enter the city, for the tang of its uplift is in the air. There is an automobile for every fifty people in Detroit. The children on the streets know the name, make, and model of nearly all the cars produced. You can stand in front of the Hotel Pontchartrain, in the public square, and see the whole automobile world chug by. Formerly our cities were motor-mad; now, as in the case of Detroit, they are motor-made. Ten years ago the proudest boast of the Michigan metropolis was that she produced more pills, paint, stoves, and freight-cars than any other American city. The volume of the largest of these industries did not exceed eighteen million dollars a year. To-day she leads the world in automobile production. Her twenty-five factories turn out, in a year, more than ninety thousand cars, or more than sixty per cent, of the total output of the United States. These cars alone would stretch from New York to Boston. But these figures do not convey any adequate idea of what the motor-car has done for Detroit. You must go to the spot to feel the galvanic and compelling force that the industry projects. The city is like a mining-camp in the days of a fabulous strike. Instead of new mines, there are new factories every day, and the record of this industrial high tide is being made in brick, stone, and mortar. Energy, resource, and ingenuity are being pushed to the last limit to take advantage of the golden opportunity that the overwhelming demand for the automobile has created. It is a thrilling and distinctively American spectacle, and it makes one feel proud and glad to be part of the people who are achieving it. Some of the new plants have risen almost overnight, and on every hand there are miracles of rapid construction. The business is overshadowing all other activities. A leading merchant of Detroit asked a contractor the other day if he could do some work for him. On receiving a negative reply, he asked the reason, whereupon the man said: "These automobile people keep me so busy that I can't do anything else. I have a year's work ahead now." A visit to any one of the great automobile factories reveals an inspiring picture of cheerful labor. As you wind through the wildernesses of lathes, hearing a swirling industry singing its iron song of swelling progress, you find enthusiasm blending with organized ability in a marvelous attack on work. Plants with a daily capacity of forty cars turn out sixty. You can behold a complete machine produced every three minutes; you can see the evolution from steel billet to finished car in six days. Formerly it took five months. While the development of the automobile business is in itself a wonder story, no less amazing is its effect on all the allied industries. On rubber alone it has wrought a revolution. Ten years ago practically all the rubber that we imported went into boots, shoes, hose, belting, and kindred products, The introduction of rubber tires on horse-drawn vehicles only drew slightly on the supply. To-day more than eighty per cent. of the crude article that reaches our shores goes into automobile tires; and the biggest problem in the whole automobile situation is not a question of steel and output, but a fear that we may not be able to get enough rubber to shoe the expanding host of cars. You have only to look at the change in price to get a hint of the growth of this feature of the business. In 1900 crude rubber sold at sixty-five cents a pound; now it brings about two dollars and fifty cents. The facts about rubber have a peculiar human interest. When you sit back comfortably in your smooth-running car, you may not realize that the rubber in the tire that stands between you and the jolting of the road was carried on the back of a native for a thousand miles out of the Amazon jungle; that for every twenty pounds of the crude juice brought in from the wilds, one human life has been sacrificed. No crop is garnered with so great a hazard; none takes so merciless a toll. The natives who gather rubber in the wilds of Brazil, in the Congo, in Ceylon, and elsewhere must combat disease, insects, war, flood, and a hundred hardships. The harvest is slow and costly. Only the planting of vast new areas in Ceylon has prevented what many believe would have been a famine in rubber, and this would have been a serious check to the development of the whole automobile business, for as yet no man has found a substitute for it. In such a substitute, or in a puncture-proof tire, lies one of the unplucked fortunes of the future. Meanwhile, it has started a speculative mania that almost rivals the tulip excitement in Holland. In London alone hundreds of fortunes have been made by daring plungers in a crude article which only a few years ago was regarded as being absolutely outside the pale of the gambling marketplace. Closely allied with the rubber end of the trade is the growing demand for sea-island cotton, which is used in the tires. A few years ago we used only fifty thousand yards a year; now we absorb ten million yards, worth seven and one-half millions of dollars. Now take machinery, and you find that the automobile business has created a whole new phase of this time-tried industry. In many motor-cars there are three thousand parts. In view of the extraordinary demand for cars, the machinery to produce them must be both swift and accurate. The old standard tools and engine lathes were inadequate to perform the service. The automobile-makers had to have new machinery, and have it in a hurry. This demand came at a heaven-sent moment for the tool-manufacturers. They were staggering under the depression of 1907, and many were tottering toward failure. Here came, almost out of the blue sky, a condition that at once taxed their brains, their resource, and their energy, and at the same time rescued them from bankruptcy. You have only to go to any of the great factories in Detroit, in Cleveland, in Indianapolis, in Buffalo, in Flint, or elsewhere to see the result of this hurry call for tools and machinery. You find automatics cutting the finest gears by the score, while one man operates a whole battery; you see drills doing from fifteen to twenty operations on a piston or a flywheel; you see an almost human machine making seventeen holes at one time without observation or care. Through these machines run rivers of oil. From them streams a steady line of parts. The whole scope of the tool business is broadened. In the old days--which means, in the automobile business, about ten years ago--an order for ten turret-lathes was considered large; now the motor-makers order seventy-five at a time by telegraph, and do not regard it as more than part of the day's work. The whole effect of this revolution in machinery is that time is saved, labor is economized, and it is possible to achieve quantity production. This, in turn, enables the large manufacturer to turn out a good car at a moderate price. So with steel, where likewise wonders have been wrought. Ten years ago the great mass of the steel output in this country was in structural metal and rails. We had to import our fine alloy and carbon steels from Germany and France. But the automobile-makers had to have the lightest and toughest metal, and they did not want to import it. The result was that our mills began to produce the finer quality to meet all motor needs, and it is now one of the biggest items in the business. In half a dozen other allied industries you find the same expansion as you saw in rubber, steel, and machinery. For instance, the automobile-makers buy twenty million dollars' worth of leather a year. So great is the demand that a composition substitute was created, which is used on sixty per cent. of the tops. A new industry in colored leather for upholstery has been evolved. Wood, too, has had the same kind of experience. Whole forest areas in the South have been denuded for hickory for spokes. A few years ago, aluminum was used on ash-trays and exposition souvenirs. Now hundreds of thousands of pounds are employed each year for sheathing and casings on motor-cars. No essential of the automobile, however, is of more importance than gasoline. Here is the life-blood of the car. It is estimated that there are to-day three hundred thousand cars in the United States that travel fifteen miles a day. There are fifteen miles of travel in each gallon of gasoline. This makes the daily consumption three hundred thousand gallons. At an average price of fourteen cents a gallon, here is an expenditure of forty-two thousand dollars for gasoline each day, or more than fifteen million dollars a year. To this must be added the excess used in cars that work longer and harder, and in the host of taxicabs that are in business almost all the time, which will probably swell the annual expenditure for gasoline well beyond twenty millions. As in the case of rubber, there is beginning to be some apprehension about the future supply of high-power gasoline, so great is the demand. Many students of this fuel problem believe that before many years there will be substitutes in the shape of alcohol and kerosene. The efficiency of alcohol has been proved in commercial trucks in New York, but its present price is prohibitive for a general automobile fuel. If denatured alcohol can be produced cheaply and on a large scale, it will help to solve the problem. This brings us to the maker of parts and accessories, who has been termed "the father of the automobile business." Without him, there might be no such industry; for it was he that gave the early makers credit and materials which enabled them to get their machines together. Ten years ago, the parts were all turned out in the ordinary forge and machine-shops; to-day there are six hundred manufacturers of parts and accessories, and their investment, including plants, is more than a billion dollars. They employ a quarter of a million people. No one was more surprised at the growth of the automobile business than the parts-makers themselves. A leading Detroit manufacturer summed it up to me as follows: "Ten years ago I was in the machine-shop business, making gas engines. Along came the demand for automobile parts. I thought it would be a pretty good and profitable specialty for a little while, but I developed my general business so as to have something to fall back on when it ended. To-day my whole plant works night and day to fill automobile orders, and we can't keep up with the demand." What was looked upon as the tail now wags the whole dog, and is the dog. The volume of business is so large, and the interests concerned so wide, that the manufacturers have their own organization, called the Motor and Accessory Manufacturers. It includes one hundred and eighty makers, whose capitalization is three hundred millions, and whose investment is more than half a billion dollars. There still remain to be discussed two phases of the automobile which have tremendous significance for the future of the industry--its commercial adaptability and its relation with the farmer and the farm. Let us consider the former first. No matter in what town you live, something has been delivered at your door by a motor-driven wagon or truck. These vehicles at work to-day are only the forerunners of what many conservative makers believe will be the great body of the business. Here is a field that is as yet practically unscratched. Now that the pleasure-car has practically been standardized, vast energy will be concentrated on the development of the truck. Wherever I went on a recent trip through the automobile-making zone, I found that the manufacturers had been experimenting in this direction, and were laying plans for a big output within the next few years. This year's production will be about five thousand vehicles. The ability and efficiency of the commercial truck for hard city work are undisputed. It has had its test in New York, where traffic is dense and most difficult to handle. Here, of course, are the ideal conditions for the successful use of the motor-truck--which are a full load, a long haul, and a good road. In a city, a horse vehicle can make only about five miles an hour, while a motor-truck makes twelve miles, and carries three times the load. Some idea of motor-truck possibilities in New York may be gained when it is stated that there are nearly three hundred thousand licensed carrying vehicles there. The amount of work to be got out of a motor-truck is astonishing. John Wanamaker, for instance, gets a hundred miles of travel per day out of some of his delivery-wagons. The average five-ton truck, in a ten-hour day, can make eighty miles, and keep constantly at work. On the other hand, a one-horse wagon can scarcely average half that mileage. Already your doctor whirls around in an automobile, and he can make five times more visits than with a horse. So, too, with the contractor and the builder. The drummer carries his samples in a gasoline runabout, and, in addition to seeing twice the number of customers, he can get their goodwill by taking them for a spin. Fire-engines, hose-wagons, and police patrols race to conflagrations propelled by motors, and get there quicker than ever before. Just as practically every great American activity ultimately harks back to the soil and has its real root there, so, in a certain sense, may the farmer be regarded as the backbone of the automobile business. We have six million farms, and more than forty-five millions of our population live on the farm, or in communities of less than four thousand people. To these dwellers in the country the automobile has already proved an agency for uplift, progress, and prosperity. It began as a pleasure-car; now it is a necessity on many farms. In Kansas you can see it hitched up to the alfalfa-stacker; in Illinois and Iowa it is harnessed up to the corn-cutter; in Indiana it runs the dairy machinery. But these are slight compared with the other services it performs for the farmer. For years the curse of farm life was its isolation. Its workers were removed from the shops, the theaters, the libraries, and good schools. More farm women went insane than any other class. The horses worked in the fields all week, and had to rest on Sunday, so that the farmer could not go to church. The automobile provided a vehicle not excessive in cost, and able to provide pleasure for the farmer's whole family. It annihilated the distance between town and country. Contact with his coworkers and proximity to the market made the fanner more efficient and prosperous. More than this, the motor-car has made the whole rural life more attractive, and offers the one inducement that will keep the boy on the farm. A hundred instances could be cited of the automobile's aid to the farm. One will suffice. In times of harvest, when a big gang is at work, the breakdown of a thresher will stop operations for a whole day, if the farmer has to drive to town behind a horse to get needed parts. With an automobile, he can dash in and out in a few hours. No one expects the automobile to replace the horse on the farm. But for work that the horse can not do efficiently--such as the quick transit of milk, butter, and garden products to the markets--the motor-car has a future of wide utility. Incidentally, the farmer may be the first to solve the fuel problem, for by means of cooperative distilling he could produce denatured alcohol for almost nothing. The more you go into the study of the automobile on the farm, the bigger becomes its significance. In the United States, four hundred and twenty-five million acres of land are uncultivated, largely on account of their inaccessibility. The motor-car will make them more accessible. Through the wide use of automobiles by the farmer we shall get, in time, that most valuable agency for prosperity, the good road. One emerges from an investigation of the automobile industry in wonder over its expansion, and with admiration for the men behind it. Clear-cut youth, fresh vigor, compelling action galvanize it. Yet what seems to be a miracle at the end of less than ten years of growth may only be the prelude to a vaster era. Meanwhile, each day records a new chapter of its triumphant progress. THE DOWNFALL OF DIAZ MEXICO PLUNGES INTO REVOLUTION A.D. 1911 MRS. E.A. TWEEDIE DOLORES BUTTERFIELD On May 25, 1911, Porfirio Diaz resigned the Presidency of Mexico, under the compulsion of a revolution headed by Francisco Madero. This act ended an era, the Diaz era, in Mexican history. Diaz had been President for over thirty years. He had found Mexico an impoverished barbarism; he raised it to be a wealthy and at least outwardly civilized state. Some able critics, even among Europeans, had declared that Diaz, "the grand old man," was the greatest leader of the past century. All Mexicans honored him. But unfortunately for his fame he grew too old: he outlived his wisdom and his power. Of the downfall of such a man there must naturally be conflicting views. We give here the story from the pathetic Diaz side by a well-known English writer upon Mexico, Mrs. Tweedie. Then we give the warm picture of Madero's heroic struggle against tyranny, as it appeared to Dolores Butterfield, a young lady brought up in Mexico, but driven thence by the more recent revolution which resulted in Madero's death. MRS. E. A. TWEEDIE Diaz has been hurled from power in his eighty-first year! The rising against him in Mexico has the character of a national revolutionary movement, the aims of which, perhaps, Madero himself has not clearly understood. One thing the nation wanted apparently was the stamping out of what the party considered political immorality, fostered and abetted by the acts of what they called the _grupo cientifico_, or grafters, and by the policy of the Minister of Finance, Limantour, in particular. Therefore, when Madero stood up as the chieftain of the revolution, inscribing on his banner the redress of this grievance, with some Utopias, the people followed him without stopping to measure his capabilities. His promises were enough. It is one of the saddest episodes in the history of great rulers, and at the same time one of the most important in the history of a country. Mexico, which has pushed so brilliantly ahead in finance, industry, and agriculture, has still lagged behind in political development. The man who made a great nation out of half-breeds and chaos was so sure of his own position, his own strength, and I may say his own motives, that he did not encourage antagonism at the polls, and "free voting" remained a name only. A German author has said that all rulers become obsessed with the passion of rule. They lose their balance, clearness of sight, judgment, and only desire to rule, rule, _rule!_ He was able to quote many examples. I thought of him and his theory when following, as closely as one is able to do six thousand miles away, the recent course of events in Mexico. Would he in a new edition add General Diaz to his list? Diaz has reached a great age. On the 15th September, 1910, he celebrated his eightieth birthday. He has ruled Mexico, with one brief interval of four years, since 1876. For thirty-five years, therefore, with one short break, the country has known no other President; and Madero, who has laid him low, was a man more or less put into office by Diaz himself. A new generation of Mexicans has grown up under the rule of Diaz. Time after time he has been reelected with unanimity, no other candidate being nominated--nor even suggested. Is it to be wondered at that, by the time his seventh term expired in 1910, he should have at last come to regard himself as indispensable? That he was so persuaded permits of no doubt. "He would remain in office so long as he thought Mexico required his services," he said in the course of the first abortive negotiations for peace--before the capture of the town of Juarez by the insurrectionists, and the surrender of the Republican troops under General Navarro took the actual settlement out of his hand. It was a fatal mistake, and it has shrouded in deep gloom the close of a career of unexampled brilliancy, both in war and statesmanship. The Spanish-American Republics have produced no man who will compare with Porfirio Diaz. Simon Bolivar for years fought the decaying power of Spain, and to him what are now the Republics of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru owe their liberation. But Diaz has been more than a soldier, and his great achievement in the redemption of modern Mexico from bankruptcy and general decay completely overshadows his successes in the field during the ceaseless struggles of his earlier years. Had he retired in 1910 he would have done so with honor, and every hostile voice in Mexico would have been stilled. All would have been forgotten in remembrance of the immense debt that his country owed him. He would have stood out as the great historic figure of a glorious era in the national annals. It was the first time he had broken his word with the people. Staying too long, he has been driven from office by a movement of ideas, the strength of which it is evident that he never realized until too late, and by a rebellion that in the days of his vigorous autocracy he would have stamped out with his heel. It is a sad picture to look on, especially when I turn to that other one of the simple palace-home in Mexico City, with the fine old warrior, with dilating nostrils like a horse at the covert side, his face aglow, his eyes flashing as he told me of bygone battles, escapes from imprisonment and death, and deeds of wild adventure and romance. These inspiriting recollections he freely gave me for the "authentic biography" which he had given me permission to write. Up to that time he had refused that favor to every one; and in spite of his grateful recognition of the "honesty and veracity" of the volume I had written about his country five years before, he was long in giving his consent. "I have only done what I thought right," he said, "and it is my country and my ministers who have really made Mexico what she is." In the days of his strength, corruption was unknown in his country, and even now no finger can point at him. He retires a poor man, to live on his wife's little fortune. Diaz had the right to be egotistical, but he was modesty itself. Yet he had risen from a barefoot lad of humble birth and little education to the dictatorship of one of the most turbulent states in the world, and this by powers of statesmanship for which, owing to want of opportunity, he had shown no aptitude before he reached middle life. Before that he seemed but a good soldier, true as steel, brave, hardy, resourceful in the field, and nothing more. It was not until he was actually President, when nearing fifty, that his gifts for government asserted themselves. Such late developments are rare, although Cromwell was forty before he made any mark. Chatham, again, was fifty before he was heard outside his own circle, and yet a few years, barely months, later, the world was at his feet. It is rather the cry nowadays that men's best work is done before forty; and even their good work no later than sixty; but among endless exceptions General Diaz must take high rank. His real career began at forty-six. Up to that time he had been an officer in a somewhat disorganized army, and his ambition at the outset never soared beyond a colonelcy. He was nearly fifty when he entered Mexico City at the head of a revolutionary force. Romance and adventure were behind him, although personal peril still dogged his steps. He had to forget that he was a soldier, and to be born again as leader and politician, a maker and not a destroyer. In that capacity he had absolutely no experience of public affairs, but such as he had gained in a smaller way in early years spent in Oaxaca. Yet Diaz became a ruler, and a diplomat, and assumed the courtly manners of a prince. Paradoxical as it may seem, his overthrow is the result of a revolution mainly pacific in its nature, and in substance a revolt of public feeling against abuses that have become stereotyped in the system of government by the too long domination of one masterful will. The military rising was but its head, spitting fire. Behind was an immense body of opinion, in favor of effecting the retirement of the President by peaceful means, and with all honor to one who had served his country well. In 1908 General Diaz had stated frankly, in an interview granted to an American journalist, that he was enjoying his last term of office, and at its expiration would spend his remaining years in private life. There is no reason to doubt that this assurance represented his settled intention. The announcement was extensively published in the Mexican Press, and was never contradicted by the President himself. Then rumors gained currency that Diaz was not unprepared to accept nomination for the Presidency for an eighth term. The statement was at first discredited, then repeated without contradiction in a manner that could hardly have failed to excite alarm. At length came the fatal announcement that the President would stand again. Hardly had the bell of Independence ceased ringing out in joyous clang on September 15, 1910, in celebration of free Mexico's centenary, hardly had the gorgeous _fêtes_ for the President's birthday or the homage paid him by the whole world run their course, when the spark of discontent became a blaze. He had mistaken the respect and regard of his people for an invitation to remain in office. By the time the Presidential election approached, signs of agitation had increased. A political party rose in direct hostility, not so much to General Diaz himself or Limantour, as to the Vice-President, who, as next in the succession, in the event of the demise of the President, would have been able to rivet the autocracy on the country. Corral was the Vice-President. What little I saw of him I liked; but then he had hardly taken up the reins of power. He did not make himself popular; in fact, a large part of the country hated and distrusted him. But for that, probably nothing would have been heard of the troubles which ensued. As the party anxious for the introduction of new blood into the Government increased in vigor, the people showed themselves more and more determined to get rid of Corral. They wanted a younger man than Diaz in the President's chair: they wanted, above all, the prospect of a better successor. But the official group whose interests depended on the maintenance of the Diaz régime was, for the moment, too powerful, and it succeeded in inducing the President to accept reelection. To the general hatred of this group on the part of the nation, Madero owed his success. He was almost unknown, but the malcontents were determined to act, and to act at once, and they could not afford to pick and choose for a leader. As a proof that the country thought less of the democratic principles invoked than of the destruction of the official "cientificos," may be cited the fact that it at first placed all its trust and confidence in General Reyes, who is just as despotic and autocratic as General Diaz, but has at the same time, to them, a redeeming quality--his avowed opposition to the gang. Reyes refused to head the insurrection, and it was then Madero or nobody. In the spring of 1910 Francis I. Madero came to the front. He was a man of education, of fortune, of courage, and a lawyer by profession. He had written a book entitled the _Presidential Succession_, and although without experience in the management of State affairs, he had shown that he had the courage of his convictions. He consented to stand against Diaz in a contest for the Presidency of the Republic. The malcontents had found their leader. Madero not only accepted nomination, but began an active campaign, making speeches against the Diaz administration, denouncing abuses, more especially the retention of office by the Vice-President and the tactics of Limantour, and showing the people that as General Diaz was then eighty years of age, and his new term would not expire until 1916, Corral would almost certainly succeed to the inheritance of the Diaz regime. Energetic, courageous, and outspoken, Madero had full command of the phraseology of the demagog. His only shortcoming in the eyes of his own party was that he had not been persecuted by the Government. The officials, alas, soon supplied this deficiency. A few days before the Presidential election in July, 1910, when making a speech in Monterey, Madero was arrested as a disturber of the peace and thrown into prison, where he was kept until the close of the poll. The election resulted, as usual, in a triumphant majority for General Diaz, though votes were recorded, even in the capital itself, for the anti-reelectionist leader. As soon as opportunity offered, Madero escaped to the United States, and from that vantage-ground kept up a correspondence with his friends and partizans. Though the election had been held in July, the inauguration of the President did not take place until December, 1910. A fortnight before that date, a conspiracy, at which Madero probably connived, was discovered in Puebla. The first victim was the Chief of the Police at Puebla. He was shot dead by a woman who at his knock had opened the door of a house wherein the revolutionists were holding a meeting. The revolution had begun. Risings took place in different parts of the Republic, but were quickly quelled, with the exception of one in the State of Chihuahua, where the rebels had a special grievance against the all-powerful family of the great landowner, General Terrazas. These large landed proprietors are a subject of hatred to the new Socialist party. Trouble followed trouble in the north, which, be it remembered, runs to a distance of over a thousand miles from Mexico City itself. But nothing very serious occurred, until suddenly, in the early weeks of 1911, President Taft mobilized a force of 20,000 American troops to watch the Mexican frontier. From that time events developed rapidly till the end of the Diaz regime in May. One thing became clear, that the revolution was rapidly making its way to victory, and that Diaz, prostrate with an agonizing disease, an abscess of the jaw, was in no condition to rally his disheartened followers in person. He saved his honor, as the phrase goes, by a declaration that he would not retire from office until peace was declared, and he kept his word. He was too ill to leave his simple home in one of the chief streets of the city, where he lived less ostentatiously than many of his fellow citizens, but this did not prevent the mob from firing upon his home. On the afternoon of May 25, 1911, he resigned, and Señor De La Barra, formerly Minister at Washington, became provisional President until the next election, fixed for October. Madero was the hero of the hour. He entered Mexico City in triumphal procession, June 7, 1911. His entrance was preceded by the most severe earthquake the capital had known in years. Many buildings were wrecked and some hundreds of people killed. An arch of the National Palace fell, one beneath which Diaz had often passed. Three days after signing his abdication, General Diaz was well enough to leave Mexico City. In the early hours of the morning three trains drew up filled with his own solders and friends, in the middle one of which the ex-President, his wife, the clever and beautiful Carmelita, Colonel Porfirio Diaz, his son, with his young wife, several children, and their ten-days-old baby, were seated. Along the route the train came upon a force of seven hundred rebels. A sharp encounter ensued. The revolutionists left thirty dead upon the field; the escort, which numbered but three hundred, lost only three men. The old fighting spirit returned to the old lion, and, unarmed, the ex-President descended from his car and took part in the engagement. He entered Mexico City fighting, and he has left her shores with bullets ringing in the air. This was but the second time that Diaz had left the land of his birth. His work is now imperishable. Mexicans, I am sure, will regret the pitiful circumstances under which his fall has come about, and he will live long in the hearts of his countrymen. Nothing can alter the fact that he made modern Mexico. It was no easy task; the Mexicans are a cross-breed of Spaniards and countless Indian tribes. There are still half a million Aztecs. Diaz has given this strange mixed race education, and a high order of education for such a people; he has brought his country to a financial position in which the Government can, or could, borrow all the money it wanted at four per cent. Railways intersect the land in every direction. The largest financial interests are American, the next in importance are British. Except Germany, no other foreign country has much capital invested in Mexico. Thus closes one of the most wild and romantic episodes of the world's history--a peasant boy who became a soldier, a general who became a President--a President who became a great autocrat, who raised a country from obscurity to greatness, and was finally driven from power by the very people he had educated, and to whom he had brought vast blessings. The great Diaz in his eighty-first year has passed from power, the power he used so well. Verily a moving spectacle from first to last. DOLORES BUTTERFIELD[1] [Footnote 1: Reproduced by permission from the _North American Review_.] In contemplating the present situation in Mexico there is a tendency of late to deplore the Madero revolution and the overthrow of Diaz, and to overlook the fact that the Diaz regime itself not only made and forced, by its political abuses, the revolution that overthrew it, but, by its economic abuses, prepared the country for the anarchy now rife in it; and also that it is the very same ring of men who surrounded Diaz and finally rendered his rule unbearable who are now financing and fomenting the present rebellion against a Government not in sympathy with them nor subservient to their interests. Porfirio Diaz attained the presidency of Mexico thirty-five years ago by overthrowing Lerdo de Tejada. He put an end to brigandage, which was at that time wide-spread. Such bandits as he could not buy he exterminated. His political opponents he also bought or exterminated, so that without the slightest disturbance to the national peace he could be unanimously reelected whenever his term expired. Out of bankruptcy he established credit; he put up schools; he invited foreign capital into his country and made it possible for foreign capital to go in; and so he gradually built up a material progress which won him the name of "nation-builder." There were railroads and telegraphs; the cities were graced with beautiful edifices, with theaters and parks, with electricity and asphalt. There was the appearance of a civilization and progress, which, considering the time in which it was compassed, was indeed marvelous. But all this was only a shell and a semblance. The economic condition of the Mexican lower classes was not touched--the process of "nation-building" seemed not to include them. In the shadow of a modern civilization stalked poverty and ignorance worthy of the Middle Ages. And it was notorious that in the capital city itself, under the very eyes of the central Government, was where the very worst conditions and the most glaring extremes of poverty and wealth were to be seen. On the one hand, splendid _paseos_ lined with magnificent palaces, where, in their automobiles, the pleasure-seeking women of the rich displayed their raiment worth thousands of dollars; and, on the other, streets filled with beggars, their clothes literally dropping off them in filthy rags, reeking with the typhus which for years has been endemic in the City of Mexico. Let it be said to Diaz's credit that he did try, in a measure, at first to better those conditions. Hence the public schools which, though inadequate for the scattered rural population, have accomplished much in the cities. He also attempted years ago a division of the lands, but dropped it when he saw that the great landowners were stronger than he and that to persist might cost him the Presidency. It was natural and inevitable that a Government in which there was never any change or movement should stagnate and become corrupt. Porfirio Diaz was not a President, but, in all save the name, an absolute monarch, and inevitably there formed about his throne a cordon of men as unpatriotic and self-interested as he may have been patriotic and disinterested--as to a great extent he undeniably was. These men were the Cientificos. The term is, of course, not their own. It was applied to them by the Anti-reelectionists, meaning that they were scientific grafters and exploiters. The full-fledged Cientifico was at once a tremendous landholder and high government official. To illustrate, the land of the State of Chihuahua is almost entirely owned by the Terrazas family. In the days of Diaz, Don Luis Terrazas was always the governor, being further reenforced by his relative, Enrique C. Creel, high in the Diaz ministry. In Sonora the land was held by Ramon Corral, Luis Torres, and Rafael Izabal. These three gentlemen, who were called "The Trinity," used to rotate in the government of the state until Corral was made vice-president, when Torres and Izabal took turn about until the death of the latter shortly before the Madero revolution. In every state there was either one perpetual governor or a combine of them. Thus in each state a small group of men were the absolute masters politically, economically, and industrially. They made and unmade the laws at their pleasure. For instance, Terrazas imposed a prohibitory tax upon cattle which forced the small owners to dispose of their stock, which he, being the only purchaser, bought at his own price, after which he repealed the law. They adjusted taxation to suit themselves, assessing their own huge estates at figures nothing short of ridiculous, while levying heavily upon the small farmer, and especially upon enterprise and improvements. They practised peonage, though peonage is contrary to the Constitution of the Republic, to the Federal laws, and, in many cases, to the laws of the separate states as well. They drew public salaries for perverting the government to their private benefit and enrichment; and as the dictator grew older and surrendered to his satellites more and more of his once absolute power, the conditions became so intolerable, and the tyranny and greed of the Cientificos so shameless and unbridled (infinitely more so in the southern than in the northern states), that it would have been a reversal of the history of the world if there had been no revolution. In 1910 the aged Diaz declared his intention of resigning. Perhaps he even intended to keep that promise when he made it; but if so, the Cientificos, who knew that his prestige and the love of the nation for him were their only shield, induced him to think better of it. The strongest of the opposing parties was the Anti-reelectionist party. It embodied the best elements and the best ideals of the country and from the first was the one of which the Diaz regime was most afraid. Now by its very name this party was pledged to no reelection, and yet it so far compromised with the regime as to nominate Diaz for President, only repudiating Corral, who was odious to the entire nation. However, the Cientificos saw that this was to be the entering wedge, and they promptly prepared to crush the new political faction. Anti-reelectionists were arrested right and left; their newspapers were suppressed, the presses wrecked, and the editors thrown into prison. But the party's blood was up. It did not dissolve. It did not nominate Corral. Instead it struck Porfirio Diaz's name from its ticket and tendered to Francisco Madero, Jr., not the vice-presidential but the presidential nomination. The bare fact that he accepted it speaks volumes for his courage. Francisco Madero was born October 4, 1873. He was educated from childhood in the United States and Europe; and upon returning to his country, imbued with the advanced ideas of the most broad-minded men of the most enlightened countries in the world, it was perhaps only natural that he should resent the conditions which he saw in his own country. The Madero family owns great tracts of land in Coahuila, besides properties in other states. Madero introduced modern methods and modern machinery in the management of his estates. Already a millionaire, he made more millions, at the same time doing much toward the betterment of conditions for his own immediate dependents among the lower class. Madero first attracted attention by writing _The Presidential Succession in 1910_. The Cientifico clique laughed at him as a visionary. Suddenly they awoke to the fact that his book, with its calm, dispassionate logic and democratic tone, was doing them more harm than a thousand soldiers, and they suppressed its publication. It was the writing of this book that led to Madero's nomination for President by the Anti-reelectionist party when every one else had failed it. Madero took the attitude that he was a presidential candidate in a free republic and began what he called his democratic campaign. He went from city to city, delivering speeches and laying his platform before the people. He was called "the apostle of democracy," and the multitudes followed him like an apostle indeed. But he did not carry out his democratic campaign without sacrifice and risk. When he passed through Hermosillo, Sonora, the hotel-keepers closed their-doors to him. Torres, feudal lord of the state, had given out the necessary hint and Madero, for all his millions, could find no apartments for himself and his wife until a Spaniard--relying upon the fact of being a foreigner-- offered them lodgings, "not wishing to lend himself to so ignoble an intrigue." This was but one city of many. In all places he had the most tremendous difficulty in renting halls for his addresses. Frequently he was reduced to speaking in tumble-down sheds or mule-yards or vacant lots, the local authorities often hiring rowdies to create disturbances at his meetings. He was ridiculed, he was threatened, he was persecuted, but he went on unafraid. Just before and during the elections every known Maderista, from Madero down, was arrested on charges of "sedition." Things came to such a pass that in the city where I lived some sixty prominent Maderistas were arrested at two o'clock one morning without warrants and on no charge, it being noteworthy that the men arrested were almost without exception some of the best and most honorable men in the state. And this happened at the same hour of the same day in every city in Mexico. But in spite of the fact that many votes were lost to Madero through intimidation or actual imprisonment, so strong a vote was registered for the Madero electors that fraud was resorted to to cover his gains. The result of the elections was that Diaz and Corral were _unanimously_ reelected--the former for his eighth term and the latter for his second. The Anti-reelectionists then appealed to Congress and the Senate to annul the elections, alleging fraud and intimidation. Without the slightest pretense of considering or investigating these charges Congress and Senate--long the mouthpieces of Cientificismo--ratified the elections as just and legal. Every peaceful measure to bring about justice in the elections and insure the free expression of the nation's will was now exhausted. The only recourse left to the people by the Cientifico regime was war. Their leader at the polls became their leader in the preparations for that war. In the midst of this riot of tyranny, while the nation yet seethed with indignation at the outrageous electoral farce imposed upon it, the first Centennial of Mexican independence was being celebrated before the foreign diplomats with unprecedented pomp and display. The Anti-reelectionists declared that Liberty was dead and that instead of celebrating they were going to don deep mourning. They were thus a mark for all manner of persecutions from petty annoyances to the most unprovoked armed attacks. Some students were fired upon by troops while they were carrying wreaths to the monument of the boy heroes of Chapultepec; a young lawyer was arrested for making a speech beneath the statue of Juarez; and in Tlaxcala a procession of unarmed working men was fired upon and ridden down by _rurales_, several men and a woman being killed. Consecrating hypocritical hymns to liberty that did not exist and heaping with wreaths the tombs and monuments of the heroes of Mexico, while violating all the ideals for which those heroes died, drunk with the power they had wielded so long, the Cientificos pressed blindly on, following the path that Privilege has taken since the beginning of history and which has only one end. These are some of the causes and circumstances that made the revolution of 1910-11--not all of them, for there must be remembered in addition the Yaqui slave traffic, the contract-labor system of the great southern haciendas, and a dozen other iniquities, greater and lesser, which also contributed to precipitating the revolt. It was fortunate that that revolt was captained by a man of Francisco Madero's _type_--a man who knew how to win the world's sympathy for his cause and how to make his subordinates merit that sympathy by their observance of the rules of civilized warfare. The actual armed contention of the Madero revolution was singularly brief, culminating in the capture of Ciudad Juarez, which was followed by the resignation of Diaz and Corral. There can be no doubt that the dictatorship could have held together for a considerable time longer and that Diaz surrendered before he actually had to. But he could probably see by this time that it was inevitable in any case, and he was willing to sacrifice his personal pride and ambition sooner than necessary to avoid bloodshed in Mexico if he could. And also he had it upon his conscience, and it was brought home to him by the mobs outside his palace, that he was not the constitutional President of Mexico, but the tool of the betrayers of her Constitution. That he had been shamelessly deceived and played upon by the impassable cordon of Cientificos about him is easy to judge. His message of resignation was one to touch any heart, combining pathos with absolute dignity. The resignation of Diaz and Corral was taken by many to signify the complete surrender of the old régime and the triumph of the revolution. Indeed, for the moment it so appeared. But although the Cientificos were ousted from direct political control, their wealth and power and the tremendous machinery of their domination were still to be contended with before the revolution could follow up its political success with the economic reforms which were its real object. Madero had pledged himself primarily to the division of the lands. He realized that only by the abolition of the landed aristocracy, and an equitable distribution among moderate holders for active development of the huge estates, held idle in great part or worked by peons, could the progress and prosperity of the nation be put upon a solid basis. He knew exactly what the remedy was and, though a landed aristocrat himself by birth and inheritance, was not afraid of it. As soon as he was elected to the presidency he set a committee of competent, accredited engineers to work appraising property values in the different states, and great tracts of hundreds of thousands and millions of acres, previously assessed at half as many thousands as they were worth millions, were revalued and reassessed at their true inherent value. The _haciendados_ raised a frightful cry. They tried threats, intrigue, and bribery. It was useless; the revaluation went on. The new administration reclaimed as national property all that it could of the _terrenos baldios_, or public lands, which under Diaz had been rapidly merging into the great estates. It established a government bank for the purpose of making loans on easy terms, and thus assisting the poor to take up and work these public lands in small parcels. Even before becoming President, Madero had advised the working men to organize and demand a living wage, which they did. He attacked the lotteries, the bull-fights, the terrible pulque trust, the unbridled traffic of which, more than any other one factor, has contributed to the degradation of the lower classes. He began to extend the public-school system. From the first the Cientificos hampered and impeded him. To foment a counter-revolution they took advantage of the fact that in various parts of the country there were disorderly bands of armed men committing numerous depredations. These men had risen up in the shadow of the Maderista revolution, and at its close, instead of laying down their arms, they devoted themselves to the looting of ranches and ungarrisoned isolated towns. Of these brigands--for they were neither more nor less, whatever they may have called themselves then or may call themselves now--the most formidable was Emiliano Zapata. His alleged reason for continuing in arms after the surrender of the dictatorship was that his men had not been paid for their services. President De la Barra paid them, but their brigandage continued. And at the most critical moment Pascual Orozco, Jr., Madero's trusted lieutenant, in command of the military forces of Chihuahua, issued--on the heels of reiterated promises of fealty to the Government--a _pronunciamiento_ in favor of the revolution and delivered the state which had been entrusted to his keeping to the revolutionists, at whose head he now placed himself. The new malcontents declared that Madero had betrayed the revolution, and that they were going to overthrow him and themselves carry out the promises he had made. This sounds heroic, noble, and patriotic, but will not bear close inspection. In the first place, many of the revolutionists with whom the new faction allied itself had been in arms since before Madero was even elected--a trivial circumstance, however, which did not seem to shake their logic. Moreover, as any honest, fair-minded person must have recognized, the promises of Madero were not such as he could fulfil with a wave of his hand or a stroke of his pen. They were big promises and they required time and careful study for their successful undertaking and the cooperation of the people at large against the public enemies, whereas Madero was not given time nor favorable circumstances nor the intelligent cooperation of any but a small proportion of the population. As a matter of fact, Madero himself, far from overstating the benefits of the revolution led by him or making unwise promises of a Utopia impossible of realization, addressed these words to the Mexican people at the close of that conflict: "You have won your political freedom, but do not therefore suppose that your _economic_ and social liberty can be won so suddenly. This can only be attained by an earnest and sustained effort on the part of all classes of society." It is to be feared that for long years to come Mexico must stand judged in the eyes of the world by the disgraceful and uncivilized conduct of the various rebels, or so-called rebels, and simon-pure bandits who are contributing to the revolt and running riot over the country; but there is, nevertheless, in Mexico a class of people as educated, as refined, as honorable as those existing anywhere. And these people--the _obreros_ (skilled working men) and the professional middle class, as well as the better elements of the laboring classes, are supporting Madero--not all in the spirit of his personal adherents, but because they realize the tremendous peril to Mexico of continued revolution. In 1911 the revolution was necessary--the peril had to be incurred, because nothing but arms could move the existing despotism; but none of the pretended principles of the revolution can now justify that peril when the man attacked is the legal, constitutional, duly elected President, overwhelmingly chosen by the people, and venomously turned upon immediately following his election without being given even an approach to a fair chance to prove himself. All the better elements of the country realize that Madero no longer represents an individual or even a political administration. He represents the civilization of Mexico struggling against the unreined savagery of a population which has known no law but abject fear, and having lost that fear and the restraint which it imposed upon it, threatens to deliver Mexico to such a reign of anarchy, rapine, and terror as would be without a parallel in modern history. He represents the dignity and integrity of Mexico before the world. Whatever the outcome, whether it triumphs or fails, the new administration, assailed on every side by an enemy as treacherous and unscrupulous as it is powerful, and making a last stand--perhaps a vain one--for Mexico's economic liberty and political independence, merits the support and comprehension of all the progressive elements of the world. FALL OF THE ENGLISH HOUSE OF LORDS GREAT BRITAIN CHANGES HER CONSTITUTION BY RESTRICTING THE POWER OF THE LORDS A.D. 1911 ARTHUR PONSONBY SYDNEY BROOKS CAPTAIN GEORGE SWINTON On August 10, 1911, the ancient British House of Lords gathered in somber and resentful session and solemnly voted for the "Parliament Bill," a measure which reduced their own importance in the government to a mere shadow. This vote came as the climax of a five-year struggle. The Lords have for generations been a Conservative body, holding back every Liberal measure of importance in England. Of late years the Liberal party has protested with ever-increasing vehemence against the unfairness of this unbalanced system, by means of which the Conservatives when elected to power by the people could legislate as they pleased, whereas the Liberals, though they might carry elections overwhelmingly, were yet blocked in all their chief purposes of legislation. When the Liberals found themselves elected to power by a vast majority in 1905, they were still seeking to get on peaceably with the Lords, but this soon proved impossible. In January of 1910 the Liberals deliberately adjourned Parliament and appealed to the people in a new election. They were again returned to power, though by a reduced majority; yet the Lords continued to oppose them. Again they appealed to the people in December of 1910, this time with the distinct announcement that if re-elected to authority they would pass the "Parliament Bill" destroying the power of the Lords. In this third election they were still upheld by the people. Hence when the Lords resisted the Parliament Bill, King George stood ready to create as many new Peers from the Liberal party as might be necessary to pass the offensive bill through the House of Lords. It was in face of this threat that the Lords yielded at last, and voted most unwillingly for their own loss of power. Of this great step in the democratizing of England, we give three characteristic British views--first, that of a well-known Liberal member of Parliament, who naturally approves of it; secondly, that of a fair-minded though despondent Conservative; and thirdly, that of a rabid Conservative who can see nothing but shame, ruin, and the extreme of wickedness in the change. He speaks in the tone of the "Die-hards," the Peers who refused all surrender and held out to the last, raving at their opponents, assailing them with curses and even with fists, and in general aiding the rest of the world to realize that the manners of some portion of the British Peerage needed reform quite as much as their governmental privileges. ARTHUR PONSONBY, M.P. A great and memorable struggle has ended with the passage of the Parliament Bill into law. In the calm atmosphere of retrospect we may now look back on the various stages of this prolonged conflict, from its inception to its completion, and further, with the whole scene before us, we may reflect on the wider meaning and real significance of the victory which has been gained on behalf of democracy, freedom, and popular self-government. In the progressive cause there can be no finality, no termination to the combat, no truce, no rest. But we may fairly regard the conclusion of this particular struggle as the achievement of a notable step in advance and as the acquisition of territory that can not well be recaptured. The admission of the Parliament Bill to the statute-book marks an epoch and fills the hearts of those who are pursuing high ideals in politics and sociology with great hopes for the future. The long sequence of the events which have led up to this achievement has not been smooth or without incident. There have been moments of failure, of rebuff, and even of disaster. It would almost seem as if the motive power which has carried the party of progress through the storm and stress, and landed it in security, had been outside the control of any one man or any set of men. Although distinguished men have led and there have been many valiant workers in the field, a movement that has extended over nearly a hundred years must have its origin and energy deeper down than in any mere party policy. It is the inevitable outcome of the steady but inexorable evolution of free institutions among a liberty-loving people. In order, first of all, to trace the course of the actual controversy as it has been carried on in the House of Commons and in the country, it is not necessary to go further back than 1883. In that year the Lords had rejected the Franchise Bill, and it was then that Mr. Bright, in a speech at Leeds dealing with the deadlocks between the two Houses, sketched a plan which was really the essence and origin of the principle adopted in the Parliament Act that has just become law. The Lords had rejected many Liberal measures before then; attempts had been made to get round or overcome their opposition; but not till then was any practical method formulated for dealing with the serious and permanent obstruction to progressive legislation. Mr. Bright himself had condemned the peers and declared that "their arrogance and class selfishness had long been at war with the highest interests of the nation," and now he advocated a specific remedy, which he declared would be obtained by "limiting the veto which the House of Lords exercises over the proceedings of the House of Commons." The actual plan was that a Bill rejected by the Lords should be sent up to them again, "but when the Bill came down to the House of Commons in the second session, and the Commons would not agree to the amendments of the Lords, then the Lords should be bound to accept the Bill." This method of procedure, it will be seen, was more expeditious and drastic than the scheme in the Parliament Act. Mr. Chamberlain joined vigorously in the campaign against the Peers. Telling passages from his speeches are quoted to this day, such as when he declared that "the House of Lords had never contributed one iota to popular liberty and popular freedom, or done anything to advance the common weal," but "had protected every abuse and sheltered every privilege." No further mention of the Bright scheme was made for some time. Six years of Conservative rule (1886-1892) diverted the attention of Liberals as a party in opposition to other matters, and the Lords subsided, as they always have done in such periods, into an entirely innocuous, negligible, and utterly useless adjunct of the Conservative Government. In the brief period between 1892-1895, the animus against the House of Lords was kindled afresh. Several Liberal Bills were mutilated or lost, and the rejection of the second Home Rule Bill served to fan the flames into a dangerous blaze. The Bright plan was recalled by Lord Morley. "I think," he said (at Newcastle on May 21, 1894), "there will have to be some definite attempt to carry out what Mr. Bright at the Leeds Conference of 1883 suggested, by which the power of the House of Lords--this non-elected, this non-representative, this hereditary, this packed Tory Chamber--by which the veto of that body shall be strictly limited." Mr. Gladstone, too, in his last speech in the House of Commons on the wrecking amendments which the Lords had made on the Parish Councils Bill, dwelt on the fundamental differences between the two Houses, and said that "a state of things had been created which could not continue," and declared it to be "a controversy which once raised must go forward to an issue." But by far the most formidable, the most vigorous, the most animated, and, at the time, apparently sincere attack was contained in a series of speeches delivered in 1894 by Lord Rosebery, who was then in a position of responsibility as leader of the Liberal party. If, as subsequent events have shown, he was unmoved by the underlying principle and cause for which his eloquent pleading stood, anyhow we must believe he was deeply impressed by the prospect of his personal ambition as the leader of a party being thwarted by the contemptuous action of an irresponsible body. His words, however, stand, and have been quoted again and again as the most effective attack against the partizan nature of the Second Chamber:--"What I complain of in the House of Lords is that during the tenure of one Government it is a Second Chamber of an inexorable kind, but while another Government is in, it is no Second Chamber at all... Therefore the result, the effect of the House of Lords as it at present stands, is this, that in one case it acts as a Court of Appeal, and a packed Court of Appeal, against the Liberal party, while in the other case, the case of the Conservative Government, it acts not as a Second Chamber at all. In the one case we have the two Chambers under a Liberal Government, under a Conservative Government we have a single Chamber. Therefore, I say, we are face to face with a great difficulty, a great danger, a great peril to the State." So vehement and repeated were Lord Rosebery's denunciations that grave anxiety is said to have been caused in the highest quarters. But for the next ten years (1895-1905) the Conservatives were in office, and again it was impossible to bring the matter to a head, though the past was not forgotten. When the Liberals were returned in 1906 with their colossal majority, every Liberal was well aware that before long the same trouble would inevitably arise, and that a settlement of the question could not be long delayed. The record of the House of Lords' activities during the last five years has been so indelibly impressed on the public mind that only a very brief recapitulation of events is necessary. At the outset their action was tentative. This was shown by the conferences and negotiations to arrive at a settlement on the Education Bill, which was the first Liberal measure in 1906. But these broke down, and defiance was found to be completely successful. Mr. Balfour, the leader of the Conservative party, realized that although he was in a small minority in the House of Commons, yet he could still control legislation, and when he saw how effectively the destructive weapon of the veto could be used he became bolder, and, as with all vicious habits, increased indulgence encouraged appetite. Had Mr. Balfour played his trump-card--the Lords' veto--with greater foresight and restraint, it may safely be said that the House of Lords might have continued for another generation, or, at any rate, for another decade, with its authority unimpaired, though sooner or later it was bound to abuse its power; but the temptation was too great, and Mr. Balfour became reckless. The three crucial mistakes on the part of the Opposition from the point of view of pure tactics were: First, the destruction of the Education Bill of 1906. In view of the historic attitude of the Lords to all questions of religious freedom and general enlightenment, it was not surprising that they should stand in the way of a greater equality of opportunity for all denominations in matters of education. Six times between 1838 and 1857 they rejected Bills for removing Jewish disabilities; three times between 1858 and 1869 they vetoed the abolition of Church Rates. For thirty-six years (1835-1871) the admission of Nonconformists to the universities by the abolition of tests was delayed by them. It was only to be expected, therefore, that they would be deaf to the popular outcry that had been caused by the Balfour Education Bill of 1902. But in the very first session of the Parliament in which the Government had been returned to power by the immense majority of 354, that they should immediately show their teeth and claws was, from their own point of view, as events proved, a vital error. Their second mistake was the rejection in 1908 by a body of Peers at Lansdowne House of the Licensing Bill, which had occupied many weeks of the time of the House of Commons. This was rightly regarded as a gratuitous insult to the House of elected representatives. Finally, their culminating act of folly was the rejection of the Budget in 1909. It was an outrageous breach of acknowledged constitutional practise, which alienated from them a large body of moderate opinion. In addition to these three notable measures there were, of course, a number of other Bills on land, electoral, and social reform that were either mutilated or thrown out during this period. How could any politician in his senses suppose that a party who possessed any degree of confidence in the country would tamely submit to treatment such as this? While the Lords proceeded light-heartedly with their wrecking tactics, the Liberal Government slowly and cautiously, but with great deliberation, took action step by step. A provocative move on the part of the Lords was met each time by a counter-move, and thus gradually the final and decisive phase of the dispute was reached. After the loss of the Education Bill of 1906, the first note of warning was sounded by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. "The resources of the House of Commons," he declared, "are not exhausted, and I say with conviction that a way must be found, and a way will be found, by which the will of the people expressed through their elected representatives in this House will be made to prevail." The first mention of the subject in a King's Speech occurred in March, 1907, when this significant phrase was used: "Serious questions affecting the working of our party system have arisen from unfortunate differences between the two Houses. My Ministers have this important subject under consideration with a view to the solution of the difficulty." On June 24, 1907, the matter was first definitely brought before the House. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman moved that "in order to give effect to the will of the people as expressed by their elected representatives, it is necessary that the power of the other House to alter or reject Bills passed by this House should be so restricted by law as to secure that within the limits of a single Parliament the final decision of the Commons shall prevail." To the evident surprize of the Opposition he sketched a definite plan for curtailing the veto of the House of Lords. This was followed in July by the introduction of resolutions laying down in full detail the exact procedure. In his statement Sir Henry made it very clear that the issue was confined to the relations between the two Houses:--"Let me point out that the plan which I have sketched to the House does not in the least preclude or prejudice any proposals which may be made for the reform of the House of Lords. The constitution and composition of the House of Lords is a question entirely independent of my subject. My resolution has nothing to do with the relations of the two Houses to the Crown, but only with the relations of the two Houses to each other." In 1908, Mr. Asquith became Prime Minister, but no further action was taken. On the rejection of the Licensing Bill, however, he showed that the Government were fully aware of the extreme gravity of the question, but intended to choose their own time to deal with it. Speaking at the National Liberal Club in December, he said: "The question I want to put to you and to my fellow Liberals outside is this: Is this state of things to continue? We say that it must be brought to an end, and I invite the Liberal party to-night to treat the veto of the House of Lords as the dominating issue in politics--the dominant issue, because in the long run it overshadows and absorbs every other." When pressed on the Address at the beginning of the following session by his supporters, who were impatient for action, he explained the position of the Government: "I repeat we have no intention to shirk or postpone the issue we have raised.... I can give complete assurance that at the earliest possible moment consistent with the discharge by this Parliament of the obligations I have indicated, the issue will be presented and submitted to the country." The rejection of the Budget in 1909 led to a general election, in which the Government's method of dealing with the Lords was the main issue. The Liberals were returned again, but when the King's Speech was read some confusion was caused by the distinct question of the relations between the two Houses being coupled with a suggested reform of the Second Chamber. This was a departure from the very clear and wise policy of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, and had it been persisted in it might have broken up the ranks of the Liberal party--very varied and different opinions being held as to the constitution of a Second Chamber. But the stronger course was adopted, and the resolutions subsequently introduced and passed in the House of Commons dealt only with the veto and were to form the preliminary to the introduction of the Bill itself. Just as matters seemed about to result in a final settlement, King Edward died, and a conference between the leaders of both parties was set up to tide over the awkward interval. The conference was an experiment doomed to failure, as the Liberals had nothing to give away and compromise could only mean a sacrifice of principle. The House met in November to wind up the business, and the Prime Minister announced that an appeal would be made to the country on the single issue of the Lords' veto, the specific proposals of the Government being placed before the electorate. A Liberal Government was returned to power for the third time in December, 1910, with practically the same majority as in January. The Parliament Bill was introduced and passed in all its stages through the House of Commons with large majorities. Meanwhile, the Conservatives made no attempt to defend either the action or composition of the House of Lords, but adopted an apologetic attitude. They agreed that the Second Chamber must be reformed, and during the second general election in 1910 some of them declared for the Referendum as a solution of the difficulty of deadlocks between the two Houses. But there was an entire absence of sincerity about their proposals, which were not thought out, but obviously only superficial expedients hurriedly grasped at by a party in distress. Their reform scheme, introduced by Lord Lansdowne, was revolutionary, and, at the same time, fanciful and confused. It was ridiculed by their opponents, and received with frigid disapproval by their supporters. Still, they acted as if they were confident that in the long run they could ward off the final blow. They were persuaded that the Liberal Government would neither have the courage nor the power to accomplish their purpose. "Why waste time over abstract resolutions?" asked Mr. Balfour. "The Liberal party," he said, "has a perfect passion for abstract resolutions"--and again, "it is quite obvious they do not mean business." Even when the Bill itself was introduced, they still did not believe that its passage through the House of Lords could be forced. The opposition to the Bill was not so much due to hatred of the actual provisions as fear of its consequences. The prospect of a Liberal Government being able to pass measures which for long have been part of their program, such as Home Rule, Welsh Disestablishment, or Electoral Reform, exasperated the party who had hitherto been secured against the passage of measures of capital importance introduced by their opponents. The anti-Home Rule cry and the supposed dictatorship of the Irish Nationalist leader were utilized to the full, and were useful when constitutional and reasoned argument failed. At the same time as much as possible was made of the composite character of the majority supporting the Government. Throughout the latter part of the controversy there is little doubt that the Conservatives would have been in a far stronger position had they acted as a united party with a definite policy and a strong leader ready at a moment's notice to form an alternative Government. But they were deplorably led, they could agree on no policy, and their warmest supporters in the Press and in the country were the first to admit that the formation of an alternative Conservative Administration was unthinkable. Nevertheless, there could be no rival for the leadership. Mr. Balfour, aloof, indifferent, without enthusiasm, and without convictions, although discredited in the country and harassed in his attempts to save his party from Protection, remains in ability, Parliamentary knowledge, experience and skill, head and shoulders above his very mediocre band of colleagues in the House of Commons. The Bill went up to the House of Lords, where Lord Morley, with the tact and skill of an experienced statesman and the unflinching firmness of a lifelong Liberal, conducted it through a very rough career. The Lords' amendments were destructive of the principle, and therefore equivalent to rejection. But even a few days before those amendments were returned to the Commons the Conservatives refused to believe that the passage of the Bill in its original form was guaranteed. When at last it was brought home to them that, if necessary, the King would be advised to create a sufficient number of Peers to insure the passage of the Bill into law, a howl of indignation went up. Scenes of confusion and unmannerly exhibitions of temper took place in the House of Commons. A party of revolt was formed among the Peers, and the Prime Minister was branded as a traitor who was guilty of treason and whose advice to the King in the words of the vote of censure was "a gross violation of constitutional liberty." As a matter of fact, Mr. Asquith was adhering very strictly to the letter and spirit of the Constitution. Lord Grey, who was confronted with a similar problem in 1832, very truly said: "If a majority of this House (House of Lords) is to have the power whenever they please of opposing the declared and decided wishes both of the Crown and the people without any means of modifying that power, then this country is placed entirely under the influence of an uncontrollable oligarchy. I say that if a majority of this House should have the power of acting adversely to the Crown and the Commons, and was determined to exercise that power without being liable to check or control, the Constitution is completely altered, and the Government of the country is not a limited monarchy; it is no longer, my Lords, the Crown, the Lords and Commons, but a House of Lords--a separate oligarchy--governing absolutely the others." Had the Prime Minister submitted to the Lords' dictation after two general elections, in the second of which the verdict of the country was taken admittedly and exclusively on the actual terms of the Parliament Bill, he would have basely betrayed the Constitution in acknowledging by his submission that the Peers were the supreme rulers over the Crown and over the Commons, and could without check overrule the declared expression of the people's will. The Lord Chancellor pointed out the danger in one sentence. "This House alone in the Constitution is to be free of all control." No doubt the creation of ten Peers would not have caused such a commotion as the creation of 400, but the principle is precisely the same, and it was only the magnitude of partizan bias in the Second Chamber that made the creation of a large number necessary in the event of there being determined opposition. It was a most necessary and salutary lesson for the Lords that they should be shown, in as clear and pronounced a way as possible, that the Constitution provided a check against their attempt at despotism, just as the marked disapproval of the electorate, as shown, for instance, in the remarkable series of by-elections in 1903-1905, or by a reverse at a general election, is the check provided against the arbitrary or unpopular action of any Government. The Peers were split up into two parties, those who accepted Lord Lansdowne's pronouncement that, as they were no longer "free agents," there was nothing left for them but to submit to the inevitable, and those who desired to oppose the Bill to the last and force the creation of Peers. The view of the latter section, led by Lord Halsbury, was an expression of the wide-spread impatience and annoyance with Mr. Balfour's weak and vacillating leadership. All the counting of heads and the guesses as to how each Peer would behave afforded much material for sensational press paragraphs and rather frivolous speculation and intrigue. The action of any Peer in any circumstance is always supposed to be of national importance. The vision of large numbers of active Peers was a perfect feast for the public mind, at least so the newspapers thought. But in reality the final outcry, the violent speeches, the sectional meetings, the vituperation and passion were quite unreal and of very little consequence. One way or the other, the passage of the Bill was secure. The Vote of Censure brought against the Government afforded the Prime Minister a convenient opportunity of frankly taking the House into his confidence. With the King's consent, he disclosed all the communications, hitherto kept secret, which had passed between the Sovereign and his Ministers. He rightly claimed that all the transactions had been "correct, considerate, and constitutional." Mr. Asquith's brilliant and sagacious leadership impressed even his bitterest opponents. It only remained for the Lords not to insist on their amendments. Unparalleled excitement attended their final decision. The uncompromising opponents among the Unionist Peers, rather than yield at the last moment, threw over Lord Lansdowne's leadership. They were bent on forcing a creation of Peers, although Lord Morley warned them of the consequences. "If we are beaten on this Bill to-night," he declared, "then his Majesty will consent to such a creation of Peers as will safeguard the measure against all possible combinations in this House, and the creation will be prompt." In numbers the "Die-hards," as they were called, were known to exceed a hundred, and it was extremely doubtful right up to the actual moment when the division was taken if the Government would receive the support of a sufficient number of cross-bench Peers, Unionist Peers, and Bishops to carry the Bill. After a heated debate, chiefly taken up by violent recriminations between the two sections of the Opposition, the Lords decided by a narrow majority of seventeen not to insist on their amendments, and the Bill was passed and received the Royal assent. Now that the smoke has cleared off the field of battle, let us state in a few sentences what the Parliament Bill which has caused all this uproar really is. It is by no means unnecessary to do this, as those who take a close interest in political events are, perhaps, unaware of the incredible ignorance which exists as to the cause and essence of the whole controversy, especially among that class of society who read head-lines but not articles, who never attend political meetings, but whose strong prejudices make them active and influential. The Parliament Bill, or rather the Act, does not even place a Liberal Government on an equal footing with a Unionist Government. It insures that Liberal measures, if persisted in, may become law in the course of two years in spite of the opposition of the Second Chamber. It lays down once and for all that finance or money Bills can not be vetoed or amended by the House of Lords--which, after all, is only an indorsement of what was accepted till 1909 as the constitutional practise--and it limits the duration of Parliament to five years. The preamble of the Bill, which is regarded with a good deal of suspicion by advanced Radicals, indicates that the reform of the Second Chamber is to be undertaken subsequently. This is the bare record of the sequence of events in the Parliamentary struggle between the two Houses, each supported by one of the two great political parties. In the course of the controversy the real significance of the conflict was liable to be hidden under the mass of detail connected with constitutional law, constitutional and political history, and Parliamentary procedure, which had to be quoted in speeches on every platform and referred to repeatedly in debate. The serious deadlock between the Lords and Commons was not a mere inconvenience in the conduct of legislation, nor was it purely a technical constitutional problem. The issue was not between the 670 members of the House of Commons and the 620 members of the House of Lords, nor between the Liberal Government and the Tory Opposition. The full purport of the contest is broader and far more vital; it must be sought deeper down in the wider sphere of our social and national life. In a word, the rising tide of democracy has broken down another barrier, and the privileges and presumptions of the aristocracy have received a shattering blow. This aspect of the case is worth studying. There could be no conflict of any importance between the two Houses so long as the Commons were practically nominees of the Lords. At the end of the eighteenth century no fewer than 306 members of the House of Commons were virtually returned by the influence of 160 persons, landowners and boroughmongers, most of whom were members of the other House. Things could work smoothly enough in these circumstances, as the two Houses represented the same interests and the same class, and the territorial aristocracy dominated without effort over a silent and subservient people. The Reform Bill of 1832 was the real beginning of the change. By its provisions not only was the franchise extended, but fifty-six rotten boroughs, represented by 143 members, were swept away. There was something more in this than electoral reform. It was the first step toward alienation between the two Houses. There was a bitter fight at the time because the Lords foresaw that if they once lost their hold over the Commons the eventual results might be serious for them. It was far more convenient to have a subordinate House of nominees than an independent House of possible antagonists. The enfranchisement and emancipation of the people once inaugurated, however, were destined to proceed further. The introduction of free education served more than anything, and is still serving, to create a self-conscious democracy fully alive to its great responsibilities, for knowledge means courage and strength. Changes in the industrial life of the country led to organization among the workers and the formation of trade-unions. The extension of local government brought to the front men of ability from all classes of society, and the franchise became further extended at intervals. The House of Commons, now completely free and independent, kept in close touch with the real national awakening and reflected in its membership the changes in social development. But the House of Lords, unlike any other institution in the country, remained unchanged and quite unaffected by outside circumstances. Its stagnation and immobility naturally made it increasingly hostile to democratic advance. The number of Liberal Peers or Peers who could remain Liberal under social pressure gradually diminished. Friction caused by diversity of aim and interest became consequently more and more frequent. There were times of reaction, times of stagnation, times when the national attention was diverted by wars, but the main trend taken by the course of events was unalterable. The aristocracy, finding that it was losing ground, made attempts to reenforce itself with commercial and American wealth, thereby sacrificing the last traces of its old distinction. Money might give power of a sort--a dangerous power in its way--but not-power to recover the loss of political domination. The South African War and the attempt to obliterate the resentment it caused in the country by instituting a campaign for the revival of Protection brought about the downfall of the Tory party. The electoral _débâcle_ of 1906 was the consequence and served as a signal of alarm in the easy-going Conservative world. Till then many who were accustomed to hold the reins of government in their hands, as if by right, had not fully realized that the control was slipping from them. The cry went up that socialism and revolution were imminent. _The Times_ quoted _The Clarion_. Old fogies shook their heads and declared the country would be ruined and that a catastrophe was at hand. But it was soon found, on the contrary, that the government of the country was in the hands of men of great ability, enlightenment, and imagination; trade prospered, social needs were more closely attended to, and, most important of all, peace was maintained. The House of Commons had opened its doors to men of moderate means, and the Labor party, consisting of working men, miners, and those with first-hand knowledge of industrial conditions, came into existence as an organized political force. The last six years have shown the desperate attempts of the ancient order to strain every nerve against the inevitable, and to thwart and destroy the projects and ambitions of those who represented the new thought and the new life of the nation. Though apparently successful at first, the rash action of the Chamber which still represented the interest, privileges, and prejudices of the wealthier class and of vested interests, only helped in the long run to hasten the day when they were to be deprived of their most formidable weapon. They still retain considerable power: their interests are guarded by one of the political parties, and socially they hold undisputed sway. In an amazing defense of the past action of the House of Lords, Lord Lansdowne in 1906 said: "It is constantly assumed that the House of Lords has always shown itself obstructive, reluctant, an opponent to all useful measures for the amelioration of the condition of the people of this island. Nothing is further from the truth. You will find that in the past with which we are concerned the House of Lords has shown itself not only tolerant of such measures but anxious to promote them and to make them effectual to the best of its ability. _And that, I believe, has been, and I am glad to think it, from time immemorial, the attitude of what I suppose I may call the aristocracy toward the people of this country_" The last sentence is a fair statement of their case. The aristocracy are _not_ the people. They are by nature a superior class which Providence or some unseen power has mercifully provided to govern, to rule, and to dominate. They are kind, charitable, and patronizing, and expect gratitude and subservience in return. As a mid-Victorian writer puts it: "What one wants to see is a kind and cordial condescension on the one side, and an equally cordial but still respectful devotedness on the other." But these are voices from a time that has passed. Democracy has many a fight before it. False ideals and faulty educational systems may handicap its progress as much as the forces that are avowedly arrayed against it. Its achievements may be arrested by the discord of factions breaking up its ranks. Conceivably it may have to face a severe conflict with a middle-class plutocracy. But whatever trials democracy has to undergo it can no longer be subjected to constant defeat at the hands of a constitutionally organized force of hostile aristocratic opinion. At least, it may now secure expression in legislation for its noblest ideals and its most cherished ambitions. A check on progressive legislation is harmful to the national welfare, especially when there is no check on the real danger of reaction. To devise a Second Chamber which will be a check on reaction as well as on so-called revolution is a problem for the future. For the time being, therefore, the best security for the country against the perils of a reactionary regime is to allow freer play to the forces of progress, which only tend to become revolutionary when they are resisted and suppressed. The curtailment of the veto of the Second Chamber fulfils this purpose. Whatever further adjustment of the Constitution may be effected in time to come, the door can no longer be closed persistently against the wishes of the people when they entrust the work of legislation to a Liberal Government. SYDNEY BROOKS The first but by no means the last or most crucial stage of our twentieth-century Revolution has now been completed; the old Constitution, which was perhaps the most adaptable and convenient system of government that the world has ever known, is definitely at an end; the powers of an ancient Assembly have been truncated with a violence that in any other land would have spelled barricades and bloodshed long ago; and the road has been cleared, or partially cleared, for developments that must profoundly affect, and that in all probability will absolutely transform, the whole scheme of the British State. Thus far, with their usual effective, good-humored, shortsighted common sense, with few pauses for inquiry, and with a characteristically indifferent grasp on the ultimate trend of things, have our politicians brought us. Our politicians, I say, and not our people, because one of the distinctive features of the Revolution so far is that it has been a political rather than a popular movement. It did not originate in the constituencies, but in the Cabinet; it was not forced upon the caucus by an aroused and indignant country, but by the caucus upon the country; nine-tenths of its momentum has been derived from above and not from below; the true centers of excitement throughout its polite and orderly progress have been the lobbies of the House and the correspondence columns of _The Times;_ it was only at the last that the urbanities of the struggle between the "Die-hards" and their fellow Unionists furnished the public as a whole with material for a mild sporting interest. When Roundheads and Cavaliers were lining up for the battle of Edgehill a Warwickshire squire was observed between the opposing forces placidly drawing the coverts for a fox. The British people during the past twenty months have seemed more than once to resemble that historic huntsman. They have answered the screaming exhortations of the politicians with whispers of more than Delphic ambiguity; they have gone unconcernedly about their pleasures and their business, to all appearances unvexed by the din of Revolution in their ears; they have presented the spectacle, more common in France than in England, of a tranquil nation with agitated legislators. The Ministerial explanation of this lethargy and indifference is that the people had no occasion to grow excited; their "mandate" was being fulfilled, they were getting what they wanted, demonstrations were superfluous. But no one who has read the history of the Reform Bill of 1832 or of the Chartist movement or who remembers the passions stirred up by the Franchise agitation and the Home Rule struggle of the eighties will swallow that explanation without mentally choking. The truth probably is, first, that the multiplication of cheap distractions and enjoyments and of cheaper newspapers has not only weakened the popular interest in politics, but has impaired that faculty of concentrated and continuous thought which used to invest affairs of State with an attractiveness not so greatly inferior to that of football; secondly, that for the great masses of the democracy the politics of bread and butter have completely ousted the politics of ideas and abstractions; and thirdly, that the Constitutional issue was precisely the kind of issue in which our people had had no previous training, either actual or theoretical, and which found them therefore without any intellectual preparation for its advent. Up till the end of 1909 we had always taken the Constitution for granted, and were for the most part comfortably unaware that it even existed. We had never as a nation, or never rather within living memory, troubled ourselves about "theories of State," or whetted our minds on the fundamentals of government. There is nothing in our educational curriculum that corresponds with the _instruction civique_ of the French schools, nor have we the privilege which the Americans enjoy of carrying a copy of our organic Act of Government in our pockets, of reading it through in twenty minutes, and of hearing it incessantly expounded in the class-room and the Press, debated in the national legislature, and interpreted by the highest judicial tribunal in the land. When, therefore, we were suddenly called upon to decide the infinitely delicate problems of the place, powers, and composition of a Second Chamber in our governing system, the task proved as bewildering as it was unappetizing. Any nation which regarded its Constitution as a vital and familiar instrument would have heavily resented so gross an infraction of it as the Lords perpetrated in rejecting the 1909 Budget. But our own electorate, so far from punishing the party responsible for the outrage, sent them back to the House over a hundred stronger, a result impossible in a country with any vivid sense, or any sense at all, of Constitutional realities, and only possible in Great Britain because the people adjudged the importance of the various issues submitted to them by standards of their own, and placed the Constitutional problem at the bottom, or near the bottom, of the list. In no single constituency that I have ever heard of was the House of Lords question the supreme and decisive factor at the election of January, 1910. It deeply stirred the impartial intelligence of the country, but it failed to move the average voter even in the towns, while in the rural parts it fell unmistakably flat. Even at the election of December, 1910, when all other issues were admittedly subordinate to the Constitutional issue, it was exceedingly difficult to determine how far the stedfastness of the electorate to the Liberal cause was due to a specific appreciation and approval of the Parliament Bill and of all it involved, and how far it was an expression of general distrust of the Unionists, of irritation with the Lords, and of sympathy with the social and fiscal policies pursued by the Coalition. That the Liberals were justified, by all the rules of the party game, in treating the result of that election as, for all political and Parliamentary purposes, a direct indorsement of their proposals, may be freely granted. It was as near an approach to an _ad hoc_ Referendum as we are ever likely to get under our present system. Party exigencies, or at any rate party tactics, it is true, hurried on the election before the country was prepared for it, before it had recovered from the somnolence induced by the Conference, and before the Opposition had time or opportunity to do more than sketch in their alternative plan. But though the issue was incompletely presented, it was undoubtedly the paramount issue put before the electorate, and the Liberals were fairly entitled to claim that their policy in regard to it had the backing of the majority of the voters of the United Kingdom. Whether, however, this backing represented a reasoned view of the Constitutional points involved and of the position, prerogatives, and organization of a Second Chamber in the framework of British Government, whether it implied that our people were really interested in and had deeply pondered the relative merits of the Single and Double Chamber systems, is much more doubtful. "When he was told," said the Duke of Northumberland on August 10th, "that the people of England were very anxious to abolish the House of Lords, his reply was that they did not understand the question, and did not care two brass farthings about it." That perhaps is putting it somewhat too strongly. The country within the last two years has unquestionably felt more vividly than ever before the anomaly of an hereditary Upper Chamber embedded in democratic institutions. It has been stirred by Mr. Lloyd-George's rhetoric to a mood of vague exasperation with the House of Lords and of ridicule of the order of the Peerage. It has accepted too readily the Liberal version of the central issue as a case of Peers _versus_ People. But while it was satisfied that something ought to be done, I do not believe it realizes precisely what has been accomplished in its name or the consequences that must follow from the passing of the Parliament Bill. There are no signs that it regards the abridgment of the powers of the Upper House as a great democratic victory. There are, on the contrary, manifold signs that it has been bored and bewildered by the whole struggle, and that the extraordinary lassitude with which it watched the debates was a true reflex of its real attitude. CAPTAIN GEORGE SWINTON, L.C.C. It has been more like a bull-fight than anything else, or perhaps the bull-baiting, almost to the death, which went on in England in days of old. For the Peerage is not quite dead, but sore stricken, robbed of its high functions, propped up and left standing to flatter the fools and the snobs, a kind of painted screen, or a cardboard fortification, armed with cannon which can not be discharged for fear they bring it down about the defenders' ears. And in the end it was all effected so simply, so easily could the bull be induced to charge. A rag was waved, first here, then there, and the dogs barked. That was all. It is not difficult to be wise after the event. Everybody knows now that with the motley groups of growing strength arrayed against them it behooved the Peers to walk warily, to look askance at the cloaks trailed before them, to realize the danger of accepting challenges, however righteous the cause might be. But no amount of prudence could have postponed the catastrophe for any length of time, for indeed the House of Lords had become an anachronism. Everything had changed since the days when it had its origin, when its members were Peers of the King, not only in name but almost in power, princes of principalities, earls of earldoms, barons of baronies. Then they were in a way enthroned, representing all the people of the territories they dominated, the people they led in war and ruled in peace. They came together as magnates of the land, sitting in an Upper House as Lords of the shire, even as the Knights of the shire sat in the Commons. And this continued long after the feudal system had passed away, carried on not only by the force of tradition, but by a sentiment of respect and real affection; for these feelings were common enough until designing men laid themselves out to destroy them. Many things combined to make the last phase pass quickly. It was impossible that the Peerage could long survive the Reform Bill, for it took from the great families their pocket boroughs, and so much of their influence. And there followed hard upon it the educational effect of new facilities for exchange of ideas, the railway trains, the penny post, and the halfpenny paper, together with the centralization of general opinion and all government which has resulted therefrom. But above all reasons were the loss of the qualifying ancestral lands, a link with the soil; and the ennobling of landless men. Once divorced from its influence over some countryside a peerage resting on heredity was doomed; for no one can defend a system whereby men of no exceptional ability, representative of nothing, are legislators by inheritance. Should we summon to a conclave of the nations a king who had no kingdom? But the pity of it! Not only the break with eight centuries of history--nay, more, for when had not every king his council of notables?--not only the loss of picturesqueness and sentiment and lofty mien, but the certainty, the appalling certainty, that, when an aristocracy of birth falls, it is not an aristocracy of character or intellect, but an aristocracy--save the mark--of money, which is bound to take its place. Five short years and four rejected measures. Glance back over it all. The wild blood on both sides, and the cunning on one. The foolish comfortable words spoken in every drawing-room throughout the United Kingdom. "Yes, they are terrible: what a lot of harm they would do if they could. Thank God we have a House of Lords." Think now that this was commonplace conversation only three short years ago. And all the time the ears of the masses were being poisoned. Week after week and month after month some laughed but others toiled. The laughers, like the French nobles before the Revolution, said contemptuously, "They will not dare." Why should they not? There were men among them for whom the Ark of the Covenant had no sanctity. And then, when the combinations were complete, when those who stood out had been kicked--there can be no other word--into compliance, the blows fell quickly. A Budget was ingeniously prepared for rejection, and, the Lords falling into the trap, the storm broke, with its hurricane of abuse and misrepresentation. We had one election which was inconclusive. Then befell the death of King Edward. There was a second election, carefully engineered and prepared for, rushed upon a nation which had been denied the opportunity of hearing the other side. The Government had out-maneuvered the Opposition and muzzled them to the last moment in a Conference sworn to secrecy. It was remarkably clever and incredibly unscrupulous. They won again. They had not increased their numbers, but they had maintained their position, and this time their victory, however achieved, could not be gainsaid. For a moment there was a lull, only some vague talk of "guaranties," asserted, scoffed at and denied, for the ordinary business of the country was in arrears, and the Coronation, with all its pomp of circumstance and power, all its medieval splendor and appeal to history and sentiment, turned people's thoughts elsewhere. And then, on the day the pageantry closed, Mr. Asquith launched his Thunderbolt. Few men living will ever learn the true story of the guaranties, suffice it that somehow he had secured them. Whatever the resistance of the Second Chamber might be, it could be overcome. At his dictation the Constitution was to fall. There was no escape; the Bill must surely pass. It rested with the Lords themselves whether they should bow their heads to the inevitable, humbly or proudly, contemptuously or savagely--characterize it as you will--or whether there should be red trouble first. Surely never in our time has there been a situation of higher psychological interest, for never before have we seen a body of some six hundred exceptional men called on to take each his individual line upon a subject which touched him to the core. I say "individual line" and "exceptional men." Does either adjective require defending? The Peers are not a regiment, they are still independent entities, with all the faults and virtues which this implies; free gentlemen subject to no discipline, responsible to God and their own consciences alone. At times they may combine on questions which appeal to their sense of right, their sentiment, perhaps some may say their self-interest; but this was no case for combination. Here was a sword pointed at each man's breast. What, under the circumstances, was to be his individual line of conduct? And who will deny the word "exceptional"? To a seventh of them it must perforce be applicable, for they have been specially selected to serve in an Upper House. And to the rest, those who sit by inheritance, does it not apply even more? It is not what they have done in life. This was no question of capacity or achievement. By the accident of birth alone they had been put in a position different from other men. How shall each in his wisdom or his folly interpret that well-worn motto which still has virtue both to quicken and control, "Noblesse oblige"? Very curious indeed was the result. It is useless to consider the preliminaries, the pronouncements, the meetings, the campaign which raged for a fortnight in the Press both by letter and leading article. It is even useless to try and discover who, if anybody, was in favor of the Bill which was the original bone of contention. Its merits and defects were hardly debated. On that fateful 10th of August the House of Lords split into three groups on quite a different point. The King's Government had seized on the King's Prerogative and uttered threats. Should they or should they not be constrained to make good their threats, and use it? The first group said: "Yes. They have betrayed the Constitution and disgraced their position. Let their crime be brought home to them and to the world. All is lost for us except honor. Shall we lose that also? To the last gasp we will insist on our amendments." The second group said: "No. They have indeed betrayed the Constitution and disgraced their position, but why add to this disaster the destruction of what remains to safeguard the Empire? We protest and withdraw, washing our hands of the whole business for the moment. But our time will come." The third group said: "No. We do not desire the King's Prerogative to be used. We will prevent any need for its exercise. The Bill shall go through without it." And, the second group abstaining, by seventeen votes the last prevailed against the first. But whether ever before a victory was won by so divided a host, or ever a measure carried by men who so profoundly disapproved of it, let those judge who read the scathing Protest, inscribed in due form in the journals of the House of Lords by one who went into that lobby, Lord Rosebery, the only living Peer who has been Prime Minister of England. It is unnecessary to print here more than the tenth and last paragraph of this tremendous indictment. It runs--"Because the whole transaction tends to bring discredit on our country and its institutions." How under these extraordinary circumstances did the Peerage take sides, old blood and new blood, the governing families and the so-called "backwoodsmen," they who were carving their own names, and they who relied upon the inheritance of names carved by others? The first group, the "No-Surrender Peers," mustered 114 in the division. Two Bishops were among them, Bangor and Worcester, and a distinguished list of peers, first of their line, including Earl Roberts and Viscount Milner. When the story of our times is written it will be seen that there are few walks of life in which some one of these has not borne an honorable part. Then at a bound we are transported to the Middle Ages. At the Coronation, when the Abbey Church of Westminster rang to the shouts, "God Save King George!" five Lords of Parliament knelt on the steps of the throne, kissed the King's cheek, and did homage, each as the chief of his rank and representing every noble of it. They are all here:-- The Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal and premier Peer of England, head of the great house of Howard, a name that for five centuries has held its own with highest honor. The Marquis of Winchester, head of the Paulets, representative of the man who for three long years held Basing House for the King against all the forces which Cromwell could muster, but descended also from that earlier Marquis of Tudor creation, who, when he was asked how in those troublous times he succeeded in retaining the post of Lord High Treasurer, replied, "By being a willow and not an oak." To-day the boot is on the other leg. The Earl of Shrewsbury, head of the Talbots, a race far famed alike in camp and field from the days of the Plantagenets. The Viscount Falkland, representative of that noble Cavalier who fell at Newbury. The Baron Mowbray and Segrave and Stourton, titles which carry us back almost to the days of the Great Charter. Nor does the feudal train end there. We see also a St. Maur, Duke of Somerset, whose family has aged since in the time of Henry VIII. men scoffed at it as new; a Clinton, Duke of Newcastle; a Percy, Duke and heir of Northumberland, that name of high romance; a De Burgh, Marquis of Clanricarde; a Lindsay, Earl of Crawford, twenty-sixth Earl, and head of a house which for eight centuries has stood on the steps of thrones; a Courtenay, Earl of Devon; an Erskine, Earl of Mar, an earldom whose origin is lost in the mists of antiquity, and many another. And if we come to later days we have the Duke of Bedford, head of the great Whig house of Russell; the Dukes of Marlborough and Westminster, heirs of capacity and good fortune; Lords Bute and Salisbury, descendants of Prime Ministers; and not only Lord Selborne, but Lords Bathurst and Coventry, Hardwicke and Rosslyn, representatives of past Lord Chancellors. These, and others such as they, inheritors of traditions bred in their very bones, spurning the suggestion that they should purchase the uncontamination of the Peerage by the forfeiture of their principles, fought the question to the end. If they asked for a motto, surely theirs would have been, "Fais ce que dois, advienne que pourra." And so we pass to the group who abstained, the great mass of the Peerage, too proud to wrangle where they could not win, too wise to knock their heads uselessly against a wall, too loyal not to do their utmost to spare their King. More than three hundred followed Lord Lansdowne's lead, taking for their motto, perhaps, the "Cavendo tutus" of his son-in-law. And still there was fiery blood among them, and strong men swelling with righteous indignation. There were Gay Gordons, as well as a cautious Cavendish, an Irish Beresford to quicken a Dutch Bentinck, and a Graham of Montrose as well as a Campbell of Argyll. Three Earls, Pembroke, Powis, and Carnarvon, represented the cultured family of Herbert, and, as a counterpoise to the Duke of Northumberland, we see six Peers of the doughty Douglas blood. Lord Curzon found by his side three other Curzons, and the Duke of Atholl three Murrays from the slopes of the Grampians. There were many-acred potentates, such as the Dukes of Beaufort and Hamilton and Rutland, Lord Bath, Lord Leicester, and Lord Lonsdale, and names redolent of history, a Butler, Marquis of Ormonde, a Cecil, Marquis of Exeter, the representative of Queen Elizabeth's Lord Burleigh, and a Stanley, Earl of Derby, a name which to this day stirs Lancashire blood. If it were a question of tactics, then Earl Nelson agreed with the Duke of Wellington, and they were backed by seven others whose peerages had been won in battle on land or sea in the course of the last century; while if the Law should be considered, there were nine descendants of Lord Chancellors. Coming to more recent times, there was the son of John Lawrence of the Punjab, and of Alfred Tennyson the poet, Lord St. Aldwyn and Lord Balfour of Burleigh and Lord Lister, and Lords Rothschild, Aldenham, and Revelstoke. What need to mention more?--for there were men representative of every interest in every quarter; but if we wish to close this list with two names which might seem to link together the Constitutional history of these islands, let us note that there was agreement as to action between Viscount Peel, the sole surviving ex-Speaker of the House of Commons, and Lord Wrottesley, the head of the only family which can claim as of its name and blood one of the original Knights of the Garter. What more is there to say? As, nearly two years ago, we stood round the telegraph-boards watching the election results coming in, many of us saw that the Peerage was falling. The end has come quicker than we expected. The Empire may repent, a new Constitution may spring into being, and there may be raised again a Second Chamber destined to be far stronger than that which has passed, but it will never be the proud House of Peers far-famed in English history. THE TURKISH-ITALIAN WAR EUROPE SEIZES THE LAST OF NORTHERN AFRICA A.D. 1911 WILLIAM T. ELLIS THE WAR CORRESPONDENTS Italy, by her sudden action in seizing possession of Tripoli in September of 1911, established the authority and suzerainty of western Europe over the last unclaimed strip of territory along the African shore of the Mediterranean. For over a thousand years the Mohammedans, as represented by either Arabs or Turks, held control of this southern half of the classic Mediterranean Sea. During the past century France, England, and Spain have been snatching this land from the helpless Turks, and Europeanizing it. Only the barren, desert stretch between Egypt and Tunis remained. It seemed almost too worthless for occupation. But a few Italian colonists had settled there, and Italy resolved to annex the land. Few wars have ever been so obviously forced by a determined marauder upon a helpless victim. Italy wanted to show her strength, both to her own people and to assembled Europe. Hence she prepared her armies and then delivered to Turkey, the nominal suzerain of Tripoli, a sudden ultimatum. The Turks must do exactly what Italy demanded, and immediately, or Italy would seize Tripoli. The "Young Turks" offered every possible concession; but Italy, hurriedly rejecting every proposition, made the seizure she had planned. The strife that followed had its _opéra-bouffe_ aspect in the utter helplessness of far-off Turkey, incapable of reaching the seat of war; but it had also its tragic scandal in the accusation of cruelty made against the Italian troops. It had also, in the Balkan wars and other changes which sprang more or less directly from it, a permanent effect upon the political affairs of Europe as well as upon those of Africa. WILLIAM T. ELLIS[1] [Footnote 1: Reprinted by permission from _Lippincott's Magazine_.] There are conversational compensations for life in the Orient. Talk does not grow stale when there are always the latest phases of "the great game" of international politics to gossip about. Men do not discuss baseball performances in the cafés of Constantinople; but the latest story of how Von Bieberstein, the German Ambassador, bulldozed Haaki Pasha, the Grand Vizier, and sent the latter whining among his friends for sympathy, is far more piquant. The older residents among the ladies of the diplomatic corps, whose visiting list extends "beyond the curtain," have their own well-spiced tales to tell of "the great game" as it is played behind the latticed windows of the harem. It is not only in London and Berlin and Washington and Paris that wives and daughters of diplomats boost the business of their men-folk. In this mysterious, women's world of Turkey there are curious complications; as when a Young Turk, with a Paris veneer, has taken as second or third wife a European woman. One wonders which of these heavily veiled figures on the Galata Bridge, clad in hideous _ezars_, is an Englishwoman or a Frenchwoman or a Jewess. Night and day, year in and year out, with all kinds of chessmen, and with an infinite variety of byplays, "the great game" is played in Constantinople. The fortunes of the players vary, and there are occasional--very occasional--open rumpuses; but the players and the stakes remain the same. Nobody can read the newspaper telegrams from Tripoli and Constantinople intelligently who has not some understanding of the real game that is being carried on; and in which an occasional war is only a move. The bespectacled professor of ancient history is best qualified to trace the beginning of this game; for there is no other frontier on the face of the globe over which there has been so much fighting as over that strip of water which divides Europe from Asia, called, in its four separate parts, the Bosporus, the Sea of Marmora, the Dardanelles, and the Aegean Sea. Centuries before men began to date their calendars "A.D.," the city on the Bosporus was a prize for which nations struggled. All the old-world dominions--Greek, Macedonian, Persian, Roman--fought here; and for hundreds of years Byzantium was the capital of the Roman and Christian world. The Crusaders and the Saracens did a choice lot of fighting over this battle-ground; and it was here that the doughty warrior, Paul of Tarsus, broke into Europe, as first invader in the greatest of conquests. Along this narrow line of beautiful blue water the East menacingly confronts the West. Turkey's capital, as a sort of Mr.-Facing-Both-Ways, bestrides the water; for Scutari, in Asia, is essentially a part of Greater Constantinople. That simple geographical fact really pictures Turkey's present condition: it is rent by the struggle of the East with the West, Asia with Europe, in its own body. "The great game" of to-day, rather than of any hoary and romantic yesterday, holds the interest of the modern man. Player Number One, even though he sits patiently in the background in seeming stolidity, is big-boned, brawny, hairy, thirsty Russia. Russia wants water, both here and in the far East. His whole being cries from parched depths for the taste of the salt waters of the Mediterranean and the China Sea. At present his ships may not pass through the Dardanelles: the jealous Powers have said so. But Russia is the most patient nation on earth; his "manifest destiny" is to sit in the ancient seat of dominion on the Bosporus. Calmly, amid all the turbulence of international politics, he awaits the prize that is assuredly his; but while he waits he plots and mines and prepares for ultimate success. A past master of secret spying, wholesale bribery, and oriental intrigue, is the nation which calls its ruler the "Little Father" on earth, second only to the Great Father in heaven. If one is curious and careful, one may learn which of the Turkish statesmen are in Russian pay. Looming larger--apparently--than Russia amid the minarets upon the lovely Constantinople horizon is Germany, the Marooned Nation. Restless William shrewdly saw that Turkey offered him the likeliest open door for German expansion and for territorial emancipation. So he played courtier to his "good friend, Abdul Hamid," and to the Prophet Mohammed (they still preserve at Damascus the faded remains of the wreath he laid upon Saladin's tomb the day he made the speech which betrayed Europe and Christendom), and in return had his vanity enormously ministered to. His visit to Jerusalem is probably the most notable incident in the history of the Holy City since the Crusades. Moreover, he carried away the Bagdad Railway concession in his carpet-bag. By this he expects to acquire the cotton and grain fields of Mesopotamia, which he so sorely needs in his business, and also to land at the front door of India, in case he should ever have occasion to pay a call, social or otherwise, upon his dear English cousins. True, the advent of the Turkish constitution saw Germany thrown crop and heels out of his snug place at Turkey's capital, while that comfortable old suitor, Great Britain, which had been biting his finger-nails on the doorstep, was welcomed smiling once more into the parlor. Great was the rejoicing in London when Abdul Hamid's "down-and-out" performance carried his trusted friend William along. The glee changed to grief when, within a year--so quickly does the appearance of the chess-board change in "the great game"--Great Britain was once more on the doorstep, and fickle Germany was snuggling close to Young Turkey on the divan in the dimly lighted parlor. Virtuous old Britain professed to be shocked and horrified; he occupied himself with talking scandal about young Germany, when he should have been busy trying to supplant him. Few chapters in modern diplomatic history are more surprising than the sudden downfall and restoration of Germany in Turkish favor. With reason does the Kaiser give Ambassador von Bieberstein, "the ablest diplomat in Europe," constant access to the imperial ear, regardless of foreign-office red tape. During the heyday of the Young Turk party's power, this astute old player of the game was the dominant personality in Turkey. The disgruntled and disappointed Britons have comforted themselves with prophecy--how often have I heard them at it in the cosmopolitan cafes of Constantinople!--the burden of their melancholy lay being that some day Turkey would learn who is her real friend. That is the British way. They believe in their divine right to the earth and the high places thereof. They are annoyed and rather bewildered when they see Germany cutting in ahead of them, especially in the commerce of the Orient; any Englishman "east of Suez" can give a dozen good reasons why Germany is an incompetent upstart; but however satisfactory and soothing to the English soul this line of philosophy may be, it drives no German merchantmen from the sea and no German drummers from the land. The supineness of the British in the face of the German inroads into their ancient preserves is amazing to an American, who, as one of their own poets has said, Turns a keen, untroubled face Home to the instant need of things. In this case, however, the proverbial luck of the British has been with them. The steady decline of their historic prestige in the near East was suddenly arrested by Italy's declaration of war. For more than a generation Turkey has been the pampered _enfant terrible_ of international politics, violating the conventions and proprieties with impunity; feeling safe amid the jealousies of the players of "the great game." Every important nation has a bill of grievances to settle with Turkey; America's claim, for instance, includes the death of two native-born American citizens, Rogers and Maurer, slain in the Adana massacre, under the constitution. Nobody has been punished for this crime, because, forsooth, it happened in Turkey. Italy made a pretext of a cluster of these grievances, and startled the world by her claims upon Tripoli, accompanied by an ultimatum. Turkey tried to temporize. Pressed, she turned to Germany with a "Now earn your wages. Get me out of this scrape, and call off your ally." And Germany could not. With the taste of Morocco dirt still on his tongue, the Kaiser had to take another unpalatable mouthful in Constantinople. His boasted power, upon which the Turks had banked so heavily, and for the sake of which they had borne so much humiliation, proved unequal to the demand. He could not help his friend the Sultan. Italy would have none of his mediation; for reasons that will hereinafter appear. Then came Britain's vindication. The Turks turned to this historic and preeminent friend for succor. The Turkish cabinet cabled frantically to Great Britain to intercede for them; the people in mass-meeting in ancient St. Sophia's echoed the same appeal. For grim humor, the spectacle has scarcely an equal in modern history. Besought and entreated, the British, who no doubt approved of Italy's move from the first, declined to pull Turco-German chestnuts out of the fire. "Ask Cousin William to help you," was the ironical implication of their attitude. Well did Britain know that if the situation were saved, the Germans would somehow manage to get the credit of it. And if the worst should come, Great Britain could probably meet it with Christian fortitude! For in that eventuality the Bagdad Railway concession would be nullified, and Britain would undoubtedly take over all of the Arabian Peninsula, which is logically hers, in the light of her Persian Gulf and Red Sea claims. The break-up of Turkey would settle the Egyptian question, make easy the British acquisition of southern Persia, and put all the holy places of Islam under the strong hand of the British power, where they would be no longer powder-magazines to worry the dreams of Christendom. Far-sighted moves are necessary in "the great game." Small wonder that Germany became furious; and that the Berlin newspapers burst out in denunciations of Italy's wicked and piratical land-grabbing--a morsel of rhetoric following so hard upon the heels of the Morocco episode that it gave joy to all who delight in hearing the pot rail at the kettle. "The great game" is not without its humors. But the sardonic joke of the business lies deeper than all this. The Kaiser had openly coquetted with the Sultan upon the policy of substituting Turkey for Italy in the Triple Alliance. Turkey has a potentially great army: the one thing the Turk can do well is to fight. With a suspicious eye upon Neighbor Russia, the Kaiser figured it out that Turkey would be more useful to him than Italy, especially since the Abyssinian episode had so seriously discredited the latter. Then, of a sudden, with a poetic justice that is delicious, Italy turns around and humiliates the nation that was to take its place The whole comic situation resembles nothing more nearly than a supposedly defunct spouse rising from his death-bed to thrash the expectant second husband of his wife. Here "the great game" digresses in another direction, that takes no account of Turkey. Of course, it was more than a self-respecting desire to avenge affronts that led Italy to declare war against Turkey; and also more than a hunger for the territory of Tripoli. Italy needed to solidify her national sentiment at home, in the face of growing socialism and clever clericalism. Even more did she need to show the world that she is still a first-class power. There has been a disposition of late years to leave her out of the international reckoning. Now, at one skilful jump, she is back in the game--and on better terms than ever with the Vatican, for she will look well to all the numerous Latin missions in the Turkish Empire, and especially in Palestine. These once were France's special care, and are yet, to a degree; but France is out of favor with the Church, and steadily declining from her former place in the Levant, although French continues to be the "_lingua franca"_ of merchandising, of polite society, and of diplomacy, in the Near East. Let nobody think that this is lugging religion by the ears into "the great game." Religion, even more than national or racial consciousness, is one of the principal players. In America politicians try to steer clear of religion; although even here a cherry cocktail mixed with Methodism has been known to cost a man the possible nomination for the Presidency. In the Levant, however, religion _is_ politics. The ambitions and policies of Germany, Russia, and Britain are less potent factors in the ultimate and inevitable dissolution of Turkey than the deep-seated resolution of some tens of millions of people to see the cross once more planted upon St. Sophia's. Ask anybody in Greece or the Balkans or European Russia what "the great idea" is, and you will get for an answer, "The return of the cross to St. Sophia's." Backward and even benighted Christians these Eastern churchmen may be, but they hold a few fundamental ideas pretty fast, and are readier to fight for them than their occidental brethren. The world may as well accept, as the principal issue of "the great game" that centers about Constantinople, the fact that the war begun twelve hundred years ago by the dusky Arabian camel-driver is still on. This Turco-Italian scrape is only one little skirmish in it. * * * * * The outbreak of war between Italy and Turkey came as a surprize to the great majority of the European public, and even in Italy until the last moment few believed that the crisis would come to a head so soon. Those who had closely followed the course of political opinion in the country during the past year, however, saw that a change had come over the public spirit of Italy, and that a new attitude toward questions of foreign policy was being adopted. It may be of interest in the present circumstances to examine the causes and the course of this development. Since the completion of Italian unity with the fall of the Temporal Power in 1870, the Italian people had devoted all its energies to internal affairs, for everything had to be created--roads, railways, ports, improved agriculture, industry, schools, scientific institutions, the public services, were either totally lacking or quite inadequate to the needs of a great modern nation. Above all, the finances of the State, shattered by the wars of independence and by bad administration, had to be placed on a sound footing. Consequently, foreign affairs attracted but slight public interest. Such a state of things was at that time inevitable owing to the precarious situation at home, but it proved a most unfortunate necessity, as it was during this very period that the great no-man's-lands of Asia and Africa were being partitioned among the other nations, and vast uncultivated, undeveloped, and thinly populated territories annexed by various European Powers, and converted into important colonial empires offering splendid outlets for trade and emigration. Italy had appeared last in this field, when nearly all the best lands had been annexed and when conquests could not be attempted, even in the still available regions, without large, well-organized armed forces and a determined, intelligent, and well-informed public opinion to back them up. In Italy neither was to be found. The country was too poor to launch forth into colonial and foreign politics with any chance of success, and the people were too untraveled and too little acquainted with the development of other countries to pay much attention to events outside Italy, or, at all events, outside Europe. In the meanwhile, considerable progress in the economic and social conditions of the Italian people had been achieved, and by grinding economy and incredible sacrifices the finances were being restored. There came a moment, however, when the need for colonial expansion began to be felt. As a sop to public opinion, which had been exasperated by the French occupation of Tunis, the Italian Government decided in 1885 to occupy Massowah and the surrounding territories on the Red Sea coast. But that country was not suited to Italian colonization, and Italy was not yet ready to develop a purely trading colony at so great a distance from the homeland. A long series of errors were committed, relieved at times by the heroism and devotion of the army fighting against huge odds in an inhospitable and unknown land, culminating in the disaster of Adowa in 1896. What wrought the greatest injury to Italian prestige was not so much the defeat in itself as the fact that it was allowed to remain unavenged. There was a fresh Italian army on the scene under an admirable leader, General Baldissera, who enjoyed the full confidence of his men, and it was clear that the Abyssinian forces could not hold together much longer. The Premier, however, Signor Crispi, a man of unquestioned ability, but who lived in advance of his time, before the nation was ready to follow him in his Imperial policy, was overwhelmed by a storm of indignation, and his successor, Marchese di Rudini, terrified by the riots promoted by unscrupulous Socialist and Anarchist agitators as a protest against the African campaign, concluded a disastrous peace with the enemy. In the meanwhile, Italian Socialism, which had found a suitable field for action in the unsatisfactory condition of the working class, had evolved a theory of government which, although common to some extent to the Socialists of other countries, was nowhere carried to such lengths as in Italy. Socialism in theory has everywhere adopted an attitude of hostility to militarism, imperialism, and patriotism, and professes to be internationalist and pacificist, and regards class hatred and civil disorders as the only moral and praiseworthy forms of warfare. But in countries where the masses have reached a certain degree of political education such views, if carried to their logical conclusion, are sure to be rejected by the majority, and even the Socialist leaders realize that Nationalism is a vital force which has to be reckoned with, and that a sane Imperialism and efficient military policy are as necessary in the interests of the masses as in those of the classes. In Italy, on the other hand, where even the bourgeoisie took but a lukewarm interest in the wider questions of world policy, the Socialist leaders conducted an avowedly anti-patriotic propaganda against every form of national sentiment, against the very existence of Italy as a nation, and they achieved considerable success. By representing patriotism and the army as the causes of low wages, and war and colonial Imperialism as the result of purely capitalist intrigues because it is only the capitalists who profit by such adventures, they met with wide-spread acceptance among a large part of the working classes. Thus a general feeling got possession of the Italian people that war was played out, and that even if it were to occur Italy was sure to be defeated by any other Power, that nothing must be done to provoke the resentment of the foreigner, that the only form of expansion to be encouraged was emigration to foreign lands, and even the export trade which was growing so rapidly was looked upon askance by the Socialists as a mere capitalist instrument. This attitude, which was certainly not conducive to a healthy public spirit, was reflected in the conduct of the Government, which felt that it would not be backed by the nation if it gave signs of energy. The result was that Italy found her interests blocked at every turn by other nations which were not imbued with such "humanitarian" theories, and that she was subjected to countless humiliations on the part of Governments who were convinced that under no provocation would Italy show resentment. Gradually and imperceptibly a change came over public feeling, and the necessity for a sane and vigorous patriotism began to be dimly realized. One of the earliest symptoms of this new attitude was the publication, in 1903, of Federigo Garlanda's _La terza Italia_; the book professed to be written by a friendly American observer and critic of Italian affairs, and the author regards the absence of militant patriotism as the chief cause of Italy's weakness in comparison with other nations. Mario Morasso, in his volume, _L'Imperialismo nel Secolo XX,_ published in 1905, opened fire on the still predominant Socialistic internationalism and sentimental humanitarianism, and extolled the policy of conquest and expansion adopted by Great Britain, Germany, France, and the United States as a means of strengthening the fiber of the national character. In December, 1910, a congress of Italian Nationalists was held in Florence, and at that gathering, which was attended by several hundred persons, including numerous well-known names, many aspects of Italian national life were examined and discussed. The various speakers impressed on their hearers the importance of Nationalism as the basis for all political thought and action. The weakness of the country, the contempt which other nations felt for Italy, the unsatisfactory state both of home and foreign politics, and the poverty of a large part of the population, were all traced to the absence of a sane and vigorous patriotism. The strengthening of the army and navy, the development of a military spirit among the people, a radical change of direction in the conduct of the nation's foreign policy, and the ending of the present attitude of subservience to all other Powers, great or small, were regarded as the first _desiderata_ of the country. The Turks, too, who since the revolution of 1908 had become particularly truculent toward the Italians, especially in Tripoli, also came in for rough treatment, and various speakers demanded that the Government should secure adequate protection for Italian citizens and trade in the Ottoman Empire, and that a watch should be kept on Tripoli lest others seized it before the moment for Italian occupation arrived. Signor Corradini insisted that there were worse things for a nation than war, and that the occasional necessity for resort to the "dread arbitrament" must be boldly faced by any nation worthy of the name. The congress proved a success, and the ideas expressed in it which had been "in the air" for some time were accepted by a considerable number of people. The Nationalist Association was founded then and there and soon gathered numerous adherents; a new weekly paper, _L'Idea Nazionale_, commenced publication on March 1, 1911 (the anniversary of Adowa), and rapidly became an important organ of public opinion, while several dailies and reviews adopted Nationalist principles or viewed them with sympathy. Italian Nationalism has no resemblance to the parties of the same name in France, Ireland, or elsewhere; indeed, it is not really a party at all, for it gathers in Liberals, Conservatives, Radicals, Clericals, Socialists even, provided they accept the patriotic idea and are anxious to see their country raised to a higher place in the congress of nations even at the cost of some sacrifice. Italy, according to Professor Sighele _(Il Nazionalismo ed i Partiti politici_ p. 80 sq.), must be Imperialist in order to prevent the closing up of all the openings whence the nation receives its oxygen, and to prevent the Adriatic from becoming more and more an Austrian lake, to prevent even the Mediterranean from being closed around us like a camp guarded by hostile sentinels, and to provide a field of activity for our emigrants wherein they will enjoy that protection which they now lack, and which only a bold foreign policy, a thorough preparation for war, and a clear Imperialist attitude on the part of the rulers of the State can give them. For some time the Government continued to appear impervious to the Nationalist spirit and professed to regard the movement as a schoolboy's game. But it could not long remain indifferent to so wide-spread a feeling. Italy's relations with Turkey were rapidly approaching a crisis. The new Ottoman régime, while it was proving no better than the old in the matter of corruption, inefficiency, and persecution of the subject-races, had one new feature--an outburst of rabid chauvinism and of hatred for all foreigners, but especially for Italians, whom the Young Turks regarded as the weakest of nations. Never had Italian prestige fallen so low in the Levant as at this period, and the Italian Government did nothing to retrieve the situation. In Tripoli, above all, where Italy's reversionary interest had been sanctioned by agreements with England and France, the position of Italian citizens and firms was rendered well-nigh intolerable. Turkish persecution reached such a point that two Italians, the monk, Father Giustino, and the merchant, Gastone Terreni, were assassinated at the instigation and with the complicity of the authorities, without any redress being obtained. The Nationalists since the beginning of their propaganda had agitated for a firmer attitude toward Turkey, insisting on the opening up of Tripoli to Italian enterprise. Italy was being hemmed in on all sides by France in Algeria and Tunisia, and by England in Egypt; Tripolitaine alone remained as a possible outlet for her eventual expansion. The Turkish Government did nothing for the development of that province, but it was determined that no one else should do anything for it, and thwarted the efforts of every Italian enterprise, the Banco di Roma alone succeeding by ceaseless activity and untiring patience in creating important undertakings in the African vilayet. Had events pursued their normal course Italy would probably have been content to develop her commercial interests in Tripolitaine to the advantage of its inhabitants as well as of her own, waiting for the time when in due course the country should fall to her share. But the persistent hostility of the Turkish authorities was bringing matters to a head, and while the Italian Government apparently refused to regard the state of affairs as serious, the Nationalists continued to demand the assertion of Italy's interests in Tripoli. The Press gradually adopted their point of view, the _Idea Nazionale_ published Corradini's vivid letters from Tripoli, and even Ministerial organs like the _Tribuna_ of Rome and the _Stampa_ of Turin, following the lead of their correspondents who visited Tripolitaine during the past spring and summer and wrote of its resources and possibilities with enthusiasm, were soon converted. If any nation has a right to colonies it is Italy with her rapidly increasing population, her small territory, and her streams of emigrants. Still the Government, from fear of international complications and of alienating its Socialist supporters, who, of course, opposed all idea of territorial expansion, refused to do anything. Then the Franco-German Morocco bombshell burst, and Agadir made the Italian people realize that the question of Tripoli called for immediate solution. The whole of the rest of Mediterranean Africa was about to be partitioned among the Powers, and Tripoli would certainly not be left untouched if Italy failed to make good her claims; Germany, it is believed, had cast her eyes on it, and already her commercial agents and prospectors were on the spot. The demands for an occupation by Italy were insistent; all classes were calling on the Government to act, and in Genoa there were even angry mutterings of revolt. The nation realized that it was a case of now or never, and every one felt that the folly of Tunis must not be repeated. At the same time the Turks, convinced that Italy would never fight, continued in their overbearing attitude, and placed increasing obstacles in the way of Italian enterprise in all parts of the Empire while ostentatiously favoring other foreign undertakings. Incidents such as the abduction of an Italian girl and her forcible conversion to Islam and marriage to a Turk, and the attacks on Italian vessels in the Red Sea, added fuel to the flame, and public opinion became more and more excited. The Premier at last saw that the country was practically unanimous on the question of Tripoli, and although personally averse to all adventures in the field of foreign affairs which interfered with his political action at home, he realized that unless he faced the situation boldly his prestige was gone. On the 20th of September the expedition to Tripoli was decided. Hastily and secretly military preparations were made, and the Note concerning the sending of Turkish reinforcements or arms to Tripoli was issued. Then followed the ultimatum, and finally the declaration of war. The Socialist leaders, who saw in this awakening of a national conscience and of a militant Imperialist spirit a serious menace to their own predominance, were in a state of frenzy, and they attempted to organize a general strike as a protest against the Government. But the movement fizzled out miserably, and only an insignificant number of workmen struck. On the other hand, the declaration of war was greeted by an outburst of popular enthusiasm such as no one believed possible in the Italy of to-day. The departure or passage of the troops on their way to Tripoli gave occasion for scenes of the most intense patriotic excitement, and the sight of some two hundred thousand people in the streets of Rome at one A.M. on October 7th, cheering the march past of the 82d infantry regiment, is one not easily forgotten. The heart of the whole nation was in the enterprise. Even many prominent Socialists, casting the shackles of party fealty to the winds, declared themselves in favor of the Government's African policy and accepted the occupation of Tripoli as a necessity for the country, while the Clericals were even more enthusiastic. But there was hardly a trace of anti-Turkish feeling; it was simply that the people, rejoiced at having awakened from the long nightmare of political apathy and international servility, had thrown off the grinding and degrading yoke of Socialist tyranny, and risen to a dawn of higher ideals of national dignity. Italy had at last asserted herself. The extraordinary efficiency, speed, and secrecy with which the expedition was organized, shipped across the Mediterranean, and landed in Africa, the discipline, _moral_, and gallantry which both soldiers and sailors displayed, were a revelation to everybody and gave the Italians new confidence in their military forces, and made them feel that they could hold up their heads before all the world unashamed. A new Italy was born--the Italy of the Italian nation. In the words of Mameli's immortal hymn, which has been revived as the war-song of the Nationalists, "Fratelli d'Italia, l'Italia s'è desta, Dell' elmo di Scipio s'è cinta la testa." The actual operations of the war were too one-sided to be interesting from the military viewpoint. Turkey had no navy which could compete for a moment with that of Italy. Hence the Turks could dispatch no troops whatever to Tripoli, and its defense devolved solely upon the native Arab inhabitants. These wild tribes were brave and warlike and fanatically Mohammedan in their opposition to the Christian invaders. But they were wholly without training in modern modes of warfare and without modern weapons. Their frenzied rushes and antiquated guns were helpless in the face of quick-firing artillery. The Italians demonstrated their ability to handle their own forces, to transport troops, land them and provision them with speed and skill. That was about all the struggle established. On October 3d the city of Tripoli, the only important Tripolitan harbor, was bombarded. Two days later the soldiers landed and took possession of it. For a month following, there were minor engagements with the Arabs of the neighborhood, night attacks upon the Italians, rumors that they lost their heads and shot down scores of unarmed and unresisting natives. Then on November 5th Italy proclaimed that she had conquered and annexed Tripoli. The only remaining difficulty was to get the Turkish Government to give its formal assent to this new regime, which it had been unable to resist. Here, however, the Italians encountered a difficulty. They had promised the rest of Europe that they would not complicate the European Turkish problem by attacking Turkey anywhere except in Africa. In Africa they had now done their worst, and so the Turkish Government, with true Mohammedan serenity, defied them to do more. Turkey absolutely refused to acknowledge the Italian claim to Tripolitan suzerainty. True, she could not fight, but neither would she utter any words of surrender. Let the Italians do what they pleased in Tripoli. Turkey still continued in her addresses to her own people to call herself its lord. This course satisfied the ignorant Mohammedans of Constantinople, who knew little of what was really happening; and so it enabled the Young Turk party to retain control of the political situation at home. The dissatisfaction of Italy, however, increased, until she withdrew her earlier pledge to Europe and set her navy to the task of seizing one after another the Turkish islands lying in the eastern Mediterranean, After some months of this leisurely appropriation of helpless territories, the Turks yielded the point at issue. In October of 1912 they signed a treaty of peace with Italy granting her entire possession of Tripoli. By this time the Turks had become involved in their far more deadly struggle with the united Balkan States; and the Government was able to offer this new strife to its subjects as its excuse for yielding to the Italians. Turkey, though she still holds a nominal authority over Egypt, ceased to have any real power over any part of Africa. She retained only a European and Asiatic empire. WOMAN SUFFRAGE THE MOVEMENT COMES TO THE FRONT BY ITS TRIUMPH IN CALIFORNIA A.D. 1911 IDA HUSTED HARPER JANE ADDAMS DAVID LLOYD-GEORGE ISRAEL ZANGWILL ELBERT HUBBARD When future generations look for an exact event to mark the triumphal turning-point in the progress of the woman-suffrage movement, they will probably select the election which took place in the great American State of California in October, 1911. Other States had given women votes before, but they were smaller communities, where the movement could still be regarded as an eccentricity, a mere whimsicality. When, however, California in 1911 granted full suffrage to her women, almost half a million in number, the movement became obviously important. The vote of California might well turn the scale in a Presidential election. Moreover, other States followed California's example. Woman suffrage soon dominated the West, and began its progress eastward. The shrewd Lincoln said that no government could continue to exist half slave and half free; and the axiom is equally true of a divided suffrage. There can be little question that woman suffrage will ultimately be adopted throughout the Eastern States, not because of force, but through the ever-increasing pressure of political expediency. Hence we give here an account of the progress of the woman-suffrage cause up to the California election as it appeared to the prominent suffragist writer, Ida Husted Harper, and to the honored suffragist leader, Jane Addams. The peculiarities of the movement in England seem to necessitate separate treatment, so we present the view of its antagonists as temperately expressed by Britain's celebrated Minister of the Treasury, David Lloyd-George, and the defense of the "militants" by the noted novelist, Israel Zangwill. Then comes a summary of the entire theme by that widely known "friend of humanity," Elbert Hubbard. For permission to quote some of these authoritative utterances which had been previously printed, we owe cordial thanks to the publishers or authors. Mrs. Harper's summary appeared originally in the _American Review of Reviews_, and Miss Addams's comments in _The Survey_ of June, 1912. Both Elbert Hubbard's words and those of Lloyd-George are reprinted from _Hearst's Magazine_ of August, 1912, and August, 1913. IDA HUSTED HARPER A few years ago no changes in the governments of the world would have seemed more improbable than a constitution for China, a republic in Portugal, and a House of Lords in Great Britain without the power of veto, and yet all these momentous changes have taken place in less than two years. The underlying cause is unquestionably the strong spirit of unrest among the people of all nations having any degree of civilization, caused by their increasing freedom of speech and press, their larger intercourse through modern methods of travel, and the sending of the youth to be educated in the most progressive countries. It would be impossible for women not to be affected by this spirit of unrest, especially as they have made greater advance during the last few decades than any other class or body. There is none whose status has been so revolutionized in every respect during the last half-century. As with men everywhere, this discontent has manifested itself in political upheaval, so it is inevitable that it should be expressed by women in a demand for a voice in the government through which laws are made and administered. In 1888, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, the leaders of this movement in the United States, where it began, attempted to cooperate with other countries, they found that in only one--Great Britain--had it taken organized shape. By 1902, however, it was possible to form an International Committee, in Washington, D.C., with representatives from five countries. Two years later, in Berlin, the International Woman Suffrage Alliance was formed with accredited delegates from organizations in nine countries. This Alliance held a congress in Stockholm during the summer of 1911 with delegates from national associations in twenty-four countries where the movement for the enfranchisement of women has taken definite, organized form. THE UNITED STATES At the November election, 1910, the men of Washington, by a vote of three to one, enfranchised the women of that State. Eleven months later, in October, 1911, a majority of the voters conferred the suffrage on the 400,000 women of California. These two elections doubtless marked the turning-point in this country. In 1890 Wyoming came into the Union with suffrage for women in its constitution after they had been voting in the Territory for twenty-one years. In 1893 the voters of Colorado, by a majority of 6,347, gave full suffrage to women. In 1895 the men of Utah, where as a Territory women had voted seventeen years, by a vote of 28,618 ayes to 2,687 noes, gave them this right in its constitution for Statehood. In 1896 Idaho, by a majority of 5,844, fully enfranchised its women. It was believed then that woman suffrage would soon be carried in all the Western States, but at this time there began a period of complete domination of politics by the commercial interests of the country, through whose influence the power of the party "machines" became absolute. Temperance, tariff reform, control of monopolies, all moral issues were relegated to the background and woman suffrage went with the rest. To the vast wave of "insurgency" against these conditions is due its victory in Washington and California. As many women are already fully enfranchised in this country as would be made voters by the suffrage bill now under consideration in Great Britain, so that American women taken as a whole can not be put into a secondary position as regards political rights. While women householders in Great Britain and Ireland have the municipal franchise, a much larger number in this country have a partial suffrage--a vote on questions of special taxation, bonds, etc., in Louisiana, Iowa, Montana, Michigan, and in the villages and many third-class cities in New York, and school suffrage in over half of the States. GREAT BRITAIN The situation in Great Britain is now at its most acute stage. There the question never goes to the voters, but is decided by Parliament. Seven times a woman-suffrage bill has passed its second reading in the House of Commons by a large majority, only to be refused a third and final reading by the Premier, who represents the Ministry, technically known as the Government. In 1910 the bill received a majority of 110, larger than was secured even for the budget, the Government's chief measure. In 1911 the majority was 167, and again the last reading was refused. The vote was wholly non-partizan--145 Liberals, 53 Unionists, 31 Nationalists (Irish), 26 Labor members. Ninety town and county councils, including those of Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dublin, and those of all the large cities sent petitions to Parliament to grant the final vote. The Lord Mayor of Dublin in his robes of state appeared before the House of Commons with the same plea, but the Liberal Government was unmoved. In the passing years petitions aggregating over four million signatures have been sent in. Just before the recent election the Conservative National Association presented one signed by 300,000 voters. In their processions and Hyde Park gatherings the women have made the largest political demonstrations in history. There have been more meetings held, more money raised, and more workers enlisted than to obtain suffrage for the men of the entire world. From the beginning the various associations have asked for the franchise on the same terms as granted to men, not all of whom can vote. For political reasons it seemed impossible to obtain this, and meanwhile the so-called "militant" movement was inaugurated by women outraged at the way the measure had been put aside for nearly forty years. The treatment of these women by the Government forms one of the blackest pages in English history, and the situation finally became so alarming that the Parliament was obliged to take action. A Conciliation Committee was formed of sixty members from all parties, who prepared a bill that would enfranchise only women householders, those who already had possessed the municipal franchise since 1869. This does not mean property-owners, but includes women who may pay rent for only one room. The associations accepted it partly because it recognized the principle that sex should not disqualify, but principally because it was unquestionably all that they could get at present. This is the bill which was denied a third reading for two years on the ground that it was not democratic enough! A careful canvass has shown that in the different parts of the United Kingdom from 80 to 90 per cent, of those whom it would enfranchise are wage- or salary-earning women, and not one Labor member of Parliament voted against it. Women in England have been eligible for School Boards since 1870; have had the county franchise since 1888; have been eligible for parish and district councils and for various boards and commissions since 1894, and hundreds have served in the above offices. In 1907, as recommended in the address of King Edward, women were made eligible as mayors and county and city councilors, or aldermen. Three or four have been elected mayors, and women are now sitting on the councils of London, Manchester, and other cities. The municipal franchise was conferred on the women of Scotland in 1882, and of Ireland in 1898. The Irishwomen's Franchise League demands that the proposed Home Rule bill shall give to the women of Ireland the same political rights as it gives to men. This demand is strongly supported by many of the Nationalist members of Parliament and some of the cabinet, and it is not impossible that after all these years of oppression the women of Ireland may be fully enfranchised before those of England, Scotland, and Wales. In the Isle of Man women property-owners have had the full suffrage since 1881, and women rate- or rent-payers, since 1892. ENGLISH COLONIES The Parliament of New Zealand gave school suffrage to women in 1877, municipal in 1886, and Parliamentary in 1893. It was the first country in the world to grant the complete universal franchise to women. The six States of Australia had municipal suffrage for women from the early days of their self-government. South Australia gave them the right to vote for its State Parliament, or legislature, in 1894, and West Australia took similar action in 1899. The States federated in a Commonwealth in 1902 and almost the first act of its national Parliament was to give the suffrage for its members to all women and make them eligible to membership. New South Wales immediately conferred State suffrage on women, and was soon followed by Tasmania and Queensland. Victoria yielded in 1909. Women of Australia have now exactly the same franchise rights as men. In all the provinces of Canada for the last twenty years widows and spinsters who are rate-payers or property-owners have had the school or municipal suffrage, in some instances both, and in a few this right is given to married women. There has been some effort to have this extended to State and Federal suffrage, but with little force except in Toronto, where in 1909 a thousand women stormed the House of Parliament, with a petition signed by 100,000 names. When the South African Union was formed its constitution took away from women tax-payers the fragmentary vote they possessed. Petitions to give them the complete suffrage, signed by 4,000 men and women, were ignored. Franchise Leagues are working in Cape Colony, Natal, and the Transvaal, and their efforts are supported by General Botha, the premier; General Smuts, Minister of the Interior; Mr. Cronwright, husband of Olive Schreiner, and other members of Parliament, but the great preponderance of Boer women over English will prevent this English-controlled body from enfranchising women in the near future. There are cities in India where women property-owners have a vote in municipal affairs. SCANDINAVIA The Parliament of Norway in 1901 granted municipal suffrage to all women who in the country districts pay taxes on an income of 300 crowns (about $75), and in the cities on one of 400 crowns; and they were made eligible to serve on councils and grand and petit juries. After strenuous effort on the part of women the Parliament of 1907, by a vote of 96 to 23, conferred the complete franchise on all who possessed the municipal. This included about 300,000 of the half-million women. They were made eligible for Parliament, and at the first election in 1909 one was elected as alternate or deputy, and took her seat with a most enthusiastic welcome from the other members. In 1910, by a vote of 71 to 10, the taxpaying qualification for the municipal vote was removed. In 1911, a bill to abolish it for the full suffrage was carried by a large majority in Parliament, but lacked five votes of the necessary two-thirds. More than twice as many women as voted in 1907 went to the polls in 1910 at the municipal elections. Last year 178 women were elected to city councils, nine to that of Christiania. This year 210 were elected and 379 alternates to fill vacancies that may occur. Sweden gave municipal suffrage to tax-paying widows and spinsters in 1862. At that time and for many years afterward not one-tenth of the men had a vote. Then came the rise of the Liberal party and the Social Democracy, and by 1909 the new Franchise law had been enacted, which immensely increased the number of men voters, extended the municipal suffrage to wives, greatly reduced the tax qualification, and made women eligible to all offices for which they could vote. At the last election 37 were elected to the councils of 34 towns, 11 in the five largest. The Woman Suffrage Association is said to be the best organized body in the country, its branches extending beyond the arctic circle. It has over 12,000 paid members and has held 1,550 meetings within a year. In 1909 a bill to extend the full suffrage to women passed the Second Chamber of the Parliament unanimously, but was defeated by four to one in the First Chamber, representing the aristocracy. This year the Suffrage Association made a strong campaign for the Liberal and Social Democratic parties, and a large majority of their candidates were elected. The Conservative cabinet was deposed and the King has called for a new election of the First Chamber. As its members are chosen by the Provincial Councils and those of the five largest cities, and women have a vote for these bodies and are members of them, they will greatly reduce the number of Conservative members of the Upper House. On the final passage of a suffrage bill the two chambers must vote jointly and it seems assured of a majority. Denmark's Parliament in 1908 gave the municipal suffrage to women on the same terms as exercised by men--that is, to all over 25 years of age who pay any taxes. Property owned by husband or wife or in common entitles each to a vote. At the first election 68 per cent. of all the enfranchised women in the country, and 70 per cent. in Copenhagen, voted. Seven were elected to the city council of 42 members and one was afterward appointed to fill a vacancy, and 127 were elected in other places. Women serve on all committees and are chairmen of important ones; two are city treasurers. There are two Suffrage Associations whose combined membership makes the organization of that country in proportion to population the largest of the kind in the world. They have 314 local branches and one of the associations has held 1,100 meetings during the past year. The Lower House of Parliament has passed a bill to give women the complete franchise, which has not been acted on by the Upper House, composed mainly of the aristocracy. The Prime Minister and the Speakers of both houses are outspoken in advocacy of enfranchising women, but political considerations are holding it back. All say, however, that it will come in the near future. Iceland, a dependency of Denmark, with its own Parliament, gave municipal suffrage in 1882 to all widows and spinsters who were householders or maintained a family, or were self-supporting. In 1902 it made these voters eligible to all municipal offices, and since then a fourth of the council members of Reykjavik, the capital, have been women. In 1909 this franchise was extended to all those who pay taxes. A petition signed by a large majority of all the women in Iceland asked for the complete suffrage, and during the present year the Parliament voted to give this to all women over 25 years old. It must be acted upon by a second Parliament, but its passage is assured, and Icelandic women will vote on the same terms as men in 1913. OTHER COUNTRIES First place must be given to the Grand Duchy of Finland, far more advanced than any other part of the empire. In 1905, by permission of the Czar, after a wonderful uprising of the people, they reorganized their Government and combined the four antiquated chambers of their Diet into one body. The next year, on demand of thousands of women, expressed by petitions and public meetings, this new Parliament, almost without a dissenting voice, conferred the full suffrage on all women. Since that time from 16 to 25 have been elected to the different Parliaments by all the political parties. In Russia women as well as men are struggling for political freedom. In many of the villages wives cast the votes for their husbands when the latter are away; women have some suffrage for the zemstvos, local governing bodies; the Duma has tried to enlarge their franchise rights, but at present these are submerged in the general chaos. In Poland an active League for Woman's Rights is cooperating with the Democratic party of men. A very strong movement for woman suffrage is proceeding against great difficulties in the seventeen provinces of Austria, where almost as many languages are spoken and the bitterest racial feuds exist. Women are not allowed to form political associations or hold public meetings, but 4,000 have paraded the streets of Vienna demanding the suffrage. In Bohemia since 1864 women have had a vote for members of the Diet and are eligible to sit in it. In all the municipalities outside of Prague and Liberic, women taxpayers and those of the learned professions may vote by proxy. Women belong to all the political parties except the Conservative and constitute 40 per cent, of the Agrarian party. They are well organized to secure the full suffrage and are holding hundreds of meetings and distributing thousands of pamphlets. In Bosnia and Herzegovina women property-owners vote by proxy. In Hungary the National Woman Suffrage Association includes many societies having other aims also, and it has branches in 87 towns and cities, combining all classes of women from the aristocracy to the peasants. Men are in a turmoil there to secure universal suffrage for themselves and women are with them in the thick of the fight. Bulgaria has a Woman Suffrage Association composed of 37 auxiliaries and it held 456 meetings during the past year. In Servia women have a fragmentary local vote and are now organizing to claim the parliamentary franchise. In Germany it was not until 1908 that the law was changed which forbade women to take part in political meetings, and since then the Woman Suffrage Societies, which existed only in the Free Cities, have multiplied rapidly. Most of them are concentrating on the municipal franchise, which those of Prussia claim already belongs to them by an ancient law. In a number of the States women landowners have a proxy vote in communal matters, but have seldom availed themselves of it. In Silesia this year, to the amazement of everybody, 2,000 exercised this privilege. The powerful Social Democratic party stands solidly for enfranchising women. A few years ago when the Liberal party in Holland was in power it prepared to revise the constitution and make woman suffrage one of its provisions. In 1907 the Conservatives carried the election and blocked all further progress. Two active Suffrage Associations approximate a membership of 8,000, with nearly 200 branches, and are building up public sentiment. Belgium in 1910 gave women a vote for members of the Board of Trade, an important tribunal, and made them eligible to serve on it. A Woman Suffrage Society is making considerable progress. Switzerland has had a Woman Suffrage Association only a few years. Geneva and Zurich in 1911 made women eligible to their boards of trade with a vote for its members, and Geneva gave them a vote in all matters connected with the State Church. Italy has a well-supported movement for woman suffrage, and a discussion in Parliament showed a strong sentiment in favor. Mayor Nathan, of Rome, is an outspoken advocate. In 1910 all women in trade were made voters for boards of trade. The woman-suffrage movement in France differs from that of most other countries in the number of prominent men in politics connected with it. President Fallieres loses no opportunity to speak in favor and leading members of the ministry and the Parliament approve it. Committees have several times reported a bill, and that of M. Dussaussoy giving all women a vote for Municipal, District, and General Councils was reported with full parliamentary suffrage added. In 1910, 163 members asked to have the bill taken up. Finally it was decided to have a committee investigate the practical working of woman suffrage in the countries where it existed. Its extensive and very favorable report has just been published, and the Woman Suffrage Association states that it expects early action by Parliament. More than one-third of the wage-earners of France are women, and these may vote for tribunes and chambers of commerce and boards of trade. They may be members of the last named and serve as judges. The constitution of the new Republic of Portugal gave "universal" suffrage, and Dr. Beatrice Angelo applied for registration, which was refused. She carried her case to the courts, her demand was sustained, and she cast her vote. It was too late for other women to register, but an organization of 1,000 women was at once formed to secure definite action of Parliament, with the approval of President Braga and several members of his cabinet. The Spanish Chamber has proposed to give women heads of families in the villages a vote for mayor and council. A bill to give suffrage to women was recently introduced in the Parliament of Persia, but was ruled out of order by the president because the Koran says women have no souls. Siam has lately adopted a constitution which gives women a municipal vote. The leaders of the revolution in China have promised suffrage for women if it is successful. Several women voted in place of their husbands at the recent election in Mexico. Belize, the capital of British Honduras, has just given the right to women to vote for town council. Throughout the entire world is an unmistakable tendency to accord woman a voice in the government, and, strange to say, this is stronger in monarchies than in republics. In Europe the republics of France and Switzerland give almost no suffrage to women. Norway and Finland, where they have the complete franchise; Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, and Great Britain, where they have all but the parliamentary, and that close at hand, are monarchies. New Zealand and Australia, where women are fully enfranchised, are dependencies of a monarchical government. JANE ADDAMS The comfortable citizen possessing a vote won for him in a previous generation, who is so often profoundly disturbed by the cry of "Votes for Women," seldom connects the present attempt to extend the franchise with those former efforts, as the results of which he himself became a member of the enfranchised class. Still less does the average voter reflect that in order to make self-government a great instrument in the hands of those who crave social justice, it must ever be built up anew in relation to changing experiences, and that unless this readjustment constantly takes place self-government itself is placed in jeopardy. Yet the adherents of representative government, with its foundations laid in diversified human experiences, must concede that the value of such government bears a definite relation to the area of its base and that the history of its development is merely a record of new human interests which have become the subjects of governmental action, and the incorporation into the government itself of those classes who represented the new interests. As the governing classes have been increased by the enfranchisement of one body of men after another, the art of government has been enriched in human interests, and at the same time as government has become thus humanized by new interests it has inevitably become further democratized through the accession of new classes. The two propositions are complementary. For centuries the middle classes in every country in Europe struggled to wrest governmental power from the nobles because they insisted that government must consider the problems of a rising commerce; on the other hand, the merchants claimed direct representation because government had already begun to concern itself with commercial affairs. When the working men of the nineteenth century, the Chartists in England and the "men of '48" in Germany vigorously demanded the franchise, national parliaments had already begun to regulate the condition of mines and the labor of little children. The working men insisted that they themselves could best represent their own interests, but at the same time their very entrance into government increased the volume and pressure of those interests. Much of the new demand for political enfranchisement arises from a desire to remedy the unsatisfactory and degrading social conditions which are responsible for so much wrongdoing and wretchedness. The fate of all the unfortunate, the suffering, the criminal, is daily forced upon public attention in painful and intimate ways. But because of the tendency to nationalize all industrial and commercial questions, to make the state responsible for the care of the helpless, to safeguard by law the food we eat and the liquid we drink, to subordinate the claim of the individual family to the health and well-being of the community, contemporary women who are without the franchise are much more outside the real life of the world than any set of disenfranchised men could possibly have been in all history, unless it were the men slaves of ancient Greece, because never before has so large an area of life found civic expression, never has Hegel's definition of the state been so accurate, that it is the "realization of the moral ideal." Certain it is that the phenomenal entrance of women into governmental responsibility in the dawn of the twentieth century is coincident with the consideration by governmental bodies of the basic human interests with which women have been traditionally concerned. A most advanced German statesman recently declared in the Reichstag that it was a reproach to the Imperial Government itself that out of two million children born annually in Germany, 400,000 died during the first twelve months of their existence. He proceeded to catalog various reforms which might remedy this, such as better housing, the increase of park areas, the erection of municipal hospitals, the provision for an adequate milk supply, and many another, but he did not make the very obvious suggestion that women might be of service in a situation involving the care of children less than a year old. Nevertheless, in spite of this lack of perception, women all over the world are claiming and receiving a place in representative government because they insist that they will not cease to perform their traditional duties, simply because these duties have been taken over by existing governments. The contemporaneous "Votes for Women" movement is often amorphous and sporadic, but always spontaneous. It not only appears simultaneously in various countries, but manifests itself in widely separated groups in the same country; in every city it embraces the "smart set" and the hard-driven working women; sometimes it is sectarian and dogmatic, at others philosophic and grandiloquent, but it is always vital and constantly becoming more widespread. In certain aspects it differs from former efforts to extend the franchise. We recall that the final entrance of the middle class into government was characterized by two dramatic revolutions, one in America and one in France, neither of them without bloodshed, and that although the final efforts of the working men were more peaceful, even in restrained England the Chartists burned hayricks and destroyed town property. This world-wide entrance into government on the part of women is happily a bloodless one. Although some glass has been broken in England it is noteworthy that the movement as a whole has been without even a semblance of violence. The creed of the movement, however, is similar to that promulgated by the doctrinaires of the eighteenth century: that if increasing the size of the governing body automatically increases the variety and significance of government, then only when all the people become the governing class can the collective resources and organizations of the community be consistently utilized for the common weal. DAVID LLOYD-GEORGE I have long been a convinced advocate of woman suffrage and am now firmer than ever in supporting it. It seems to me a necessary and desirable consequence of the vast extension of the functions of Government which the past century and a half has witnessed. The state, nowadays, enters the homes of the people and insists on having a voice in questions that individual men and women, acting together, taking counsel together, used to settle for themselves in their own way. Education and the training and feeding of children, the housing and sanitation problems, provision against old age and sickness, the prevention of disease--all these are questions that formerly were dealt with, of course, in a very isolated and inadequate way, by cooperation and discussion between the heads of each household. What reason is there why the same cooperation should not continue now that these matters have been raised to the sphere of legislative enactments and official administration? Laws to-day affect the interests of women just as deeply as they do the interests of men. Some laws--many laws--affect them more gravely and intimately; and I do not believe you can trust the welfare of a class or a sex entirely to another class or sex. It is not that their interests are not identical, but that their point of view is different. Take the housing problem. A working man leaves home in the morning within half an hour after he wakes. He is not there all day. He turns up in the evening and does not always remain there. If the house is a poor, uncomfortable, dismal one, he very often seeks consolation in the glare and warmth of the nearest public-house, but he takes very good care that the wife shall not do as he does. She has got to stay at home all day, however wretched her surroundings. Who can say that her experience, her point of view, is not much better worth consulting than her husband's on the housing problem? Up to the present the only and the whole share of women in the housing question has been suffering. Slums are often the punishment of the man. They are almost always the martyrdom of the woman. Give women the vote, give them an effective part in the framing and administration of the laws which touch not merely their own lives but the lives of their children, and they will soon, I believe, cleanse the land of these foul dens. All sorts of women's interests were affected by the National Insurance Act, and all sorts of questions sprang up in connection with it on which women alone could speak with real authority. But, being voteless, there was no way in which their views could be authoritatively set forth. Four million women workers and seven million married women have come under the operation of the Act, yet not one of them was given the opportunity of making their opinions known and felt through a representative in the House of Commons. It was the experience of every friendly society official I consulted that had it not been for the women and their splendid self-sacrifice, the subscriptions of the men would have lapsed long ago. Yet these women who had thus kept the societies going were not considered worth consulting as to their status under the Act. The House of Commons itself insisted on there being at least one woman Commissioner. But if a woman is fit to be a Commissioner--a very heavy and difficult position involving enormous responsibilities and demanding great skill and judgment and experience--how can she be said to be unfit to have a vote? What is the meaning of democracy? It is that the citizens who are expected to obey the law are those who make the law. But that is not true of Great Britain. At least half the adult citizens whose lives are deeply affected by every law that is carried on the statute-books have absolutely no voice in making that law. They have no more influence in the matter than the horses that drag their lords and masters to the polling-booth. The drunken loafer who has not earned a living for years is consulted by the Constitution on questions like the training and upbringing of children, the national settlement of religion in Wales and elsewhere, and as to the best method of dealing with the licensing problem. But the wife whose industry keeps him and his household from beggary, who pays the rent and taxes which constitute him a voter, who is therefore really responsible for his qualification to vote, is not taken into account in the slightest degree. I came in contact not long ago with a great girls' school in the south of England. It was founded by women, and it is administered by women. It is one of the most marvelous organizations in the whole country, and yet, when we had, in the year 1906, to give a national verdict on the question of education, the man who split the firewood in that school was asked for his opinion about it, while those ladies were deemed to be absolutely unfit to pass any judgment on it at all. That is a preposterous and barbarous anachronism, and so long as it lasts our democracy is one-sided and incomplete. But it will not last long. No franchise bill can ever again be brought forward in this country without raising the whole problem of whether you are going to exclude more than half the citizens of the land. Women have entered pretty nearly every sphere of commerce and industry and professional activity and public employment; and there never was a time when the nation stood more in need of the special experience, instincts, and sympathy of womanhood in the management of its affairs. When women get the vote the horizon of the home will be both brightened and expanded, and their influence on moral and social and educational questions, especially on the temperance question, and possibly on the peace of nations, will be constant and humanizing. Those are a few of the reasons why I favor woman suffrage. But because I favor it I do not therefore hold myself bound to either speak or vote for any and every suffrage bill that may be introduced into Parliament. I voted against the so-called Conciliation Bill which proposed to give the vote to every woman of property if she chose to take the trouble to get it, and at the same time enfranchise only about one-tenth or one-fifteenth of the working women of the country. That was simply a roundabout way of doubling the plural voters and no democrat could possibly support it, so long as there remained a single alternative. The solution that most appeals to me is the one embodied in the Dickinson Bill, that is to say, a measure conferring the vote on women householders and on the wives of married electors; and I believe that it is in that form that woman suffrage will eventually come in this country. How soon it will come depends very largely on how soon the militants come to their senses. I say, unhesitatingly, that the main obstacle to women getting the vote is militancy and nothing else. Its practitioners really seem to think that they can terrorize and pinprick Parliament into giving it to them; and until they learn something of the people they are dealing with, their whole agitation, so far as the House of Commons is concerned, is simply and utterly damned. It is perfectly astonishing to recall with what diabolical ingenuity they have contrived to infuriate all their opponents, to alienate all their sympathizers, and to stir up against themselves every prejudice in the average man's breast. A few years ago they found three-fourths of the Liberal M.P.'s on their side. They at once proceeded to cudgel their brains as to how they could possibly drive them into the enemy's camp. They rightly decided that this could not be done more effectually than by insulting and assaulting the Prime Minister, the chief of the Party, and a leader for whom all his colleagues and followers feel an unbounded admiration, regard, and affection. When they had thus successfully estranged the majority of Liberals they began to study the political situation a little more closely. They saw that the Irish Nationalists were very powerful factors in the Ministerial Coalition. The next problem, therefore, was how to destroy the last chance that the Irish Nationalists would support their cause. They achieved this triumphantly first by making trouble in Belfast where the only Nationalist member is or was a strong Suffragist, and secondly by going to Dublin when all Nationalist Ireland had assembled to welcome Mr. Asquith, throwing a hatchet at Mr. Redmond, and trying to burn down a theater. That finished Ireland, but still they were dissatisfied. There was a dangerous movement of sympathy with their agitation in Wales, and they felt that at any cost it had to be checked. They not only checked, but demolished, it with the greatest ease by breaking in upon the proceedings at an Eisteddfod. Now the Eisteddfod is not only the great national festival of Welsh poetry and music and eloquence, it is also an oasis of peace amid the sharp contentions of Welsh life. To bring into it any note of politics or sectarianism or public controversy, even when these things are rousing the most passionate emotions outside, seems to a Welshman like the desecration of an altar. That is just what the militants did, and Welsh interest in their cause fell dead on the spot. But even then they were not happy. They were still encumbered by the good-will of perhaps a hundred Tory M.P.'s. But they proved entirely equal to the task of antagonizing them. They began smashing windows, burning country mansions, firing race-stands, damaging golf-greens, striking as hard as they could at the Tory idol of Property. There is really nothing more left for them to do; they have alienated every friend they ever had; their work is complete beyond their wildest hopes. Well, one can not dignify such tactics and antics by the title of "political propaganda." The proper name for them is sheer organized lunacy. The militants have erected militancy into a principle. I am beginning to think that a good many of them are more concerned with the success of their method than with the success of their cause. They would rather not have the vote than fail to win it by the particular brand of agitation they have pinned their faith to. They don't really want the vote to be given them; they want to get it and to get it by force; and they are quite unable to see that the more force they use the stronger becomes the resolve both of Parliament and of the country to send them away empty-handed. If they had accepted Mr. Asquith's pledge of two years ago and thanked him for it and helped him redeem it, woman suffrage by now would be an accomplished fact. But they preferred their own ways, and what is the result? The result is that working for their cause in the House of Commons to-day is like swimming not merely against a tide but against a cataract. The real reason why the attempts to carry woman suffrage through the House of Commons during the past two years have failed is not merely the difficulty of trying to combine a non-party measure with the party system; it is, above all, the impossibility of using Parliament to pass a bill that the opinion of the country has been fomented to condemn. The fact that in both the principal parties there is a clean division of opinion on this issue and that no Government, or none that is at present conceivable, can bring forward a measure for the enfranchisement of women as a Government, is a great, but not necessarily an insuperable obstacle. The one barrier, there is no surmounting and no getting round, is the decided and increasing hostility of public sentiment; and for that the militants have only themselves to thank. Personally I always try to remember, first, that militancy is the work of only a very small fraction of the women who want the vote and ought to have it, and, secondly, that there have been crazy men just as there are crazy women. Militancy has not affected my own individual attitude toward the main question and never will. But I recognize that it has killed the immediate Parliamentary prospects of any and every Suffrage Bill, and that so long as militancy continues the House of Commons will do nothing. Only a new movement altogether can now bring women to the goal of political emancipation; and it will have to be a sane, hard-headed, practical movement, as full of liveliness as you please, but absolutely divorced from stones and bombs and torches. When it arises the friends of the Women's cause will begin to take heart again. ISRAEL ZANGWILL THE AWKWARD AGE OF THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT "And what did she get by it?" said my Uncle Toby. "What does any woman get by it?" said my father. "_Martyrdom_" replied the young Benedictine. TRISTRAM SHANDY. The present situation of woman suffrage in England recalls the old puzzle: What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable body? The irresistible force is the religious passion of myriads of women, the fury of self-sacrifice, the righteous zeal that shrinks not even from crime; the immovable body may be summed up as Mr. Asquith. Almost as gross an incarnation of Tory prejudice as Squire Western, who laid it down that women should come in with the first dish and go out with the first glass, Mr. Asquith is all that stands between the sex and the suffrage. The answer to the old puzzle, I suppose, would be that though the immovable body does not move, yet the impact of the irresistible force generates heat, which, as we know from Tyndall, is a mode of motion. At any rate, heat is the only mode in which the progress of woman suffrage can be registered to-day. The movement has come to what Mr. Henry James might call "the awkward age": an age which has passed beyond argument without arriving at achievement; an age for which words are too small and blows too big. And because impatience has been the salvation of the movement, and because the suffragette will not believe that the fiery charger which has carried her so far can not really climb the last ridge of the mountain, but must be replaced by a mule--that miserable compromise between a steed and an anti-suffragist--the awkward age is also the dangerous age. When the Cabinet of Clement's Inn, perceiving that if a woman suffrage Bill did not pass this session, the last chance--under the Parliament Act--was gone for this Parliament, resolved to rouse public opinion by breaking tradesmen's windows, it overlooked that the English are a nation of shopkeepers, and that the public opinion thus roused would be for the first time almost unreservedly on the side of the Government. And when the Cabinet of Downing Street, moved to responsive recklessness, raided the quarters of the Women's Social and Political Union and indicted the leaders for criminal conspiracy, it equally overlooked an essential factor of the situation. The Cabinet of the conspiracy was at least as much a restraint to suffragettes as an incentive. It held in order the more violent members, the souls naturally daring or maddened by forcible feeding. By its imposition of minor forms of lawlessness, it checked the suggestion of major forms. Crime was controlled by a curriculum and temper studied by a time-table. The interruptions at meetings were distributed among the supposed neuropaths like parts at a play, and we to the maenad who missed her cue. With the police, too, the suffragettes lived for the most part on terms of cordial cooperation, each side recognizing that the other must do its duty. When the suffragettes planned a raid upon Downing Street or the House of Commons, they gave notice of time and place, and were provided with a sufficient force of police to prevent it. Were the day inconvenient for the police, owing to the pressure of social engagements, another day was fixed, politics permitting. The _entente cordiale_ extended even in some instances to the jailers and the bench, and, as in those early days of the Quaker persecution of which Milton's friend, Ellwood, has left record, prisoners sometimes left their cells for a night to attend to imperative affairs, or good-naturedly shortened or canceled their sentences at the pressing solicitation of perturbed magistrates. Prison was purified by all these gentle presences, and women criminals profited by the removal of the abuses they challenged. Holloway became a home from home, in which beaming wardresses welcomed old offenders, and to which husbands conducted erring wives in taxicabs, much as Ellwood and his brethren marched of themselves from Newgate to Bridewell, explaining to the astonished citizens of London that their word was their keeper. A suffragette's word stood higher than consols, and the war-game was played cards on table. True, there were brutal interludes when Home Secretaries lost their heads, or hysterical magistrates their sense of justice, or when the chivalrous constabulary of Westminster was replaced by Whitechapel police, dense to the courtesies of the situation; but even these tragedies were transfused by its humors, by the subtle duel of woman's wit and man's lumbering legalism. The hunger-strike itself, with all its grim horrors and heroisms, was like the plot of a Gilbertian opera. It placed the Government on the horns of an Irish bull. Either the law must kill or torture prisoners condemned for mild offenses, or it must permit them to dictate their own terms of durance. The criminal code, whose dignity generations of male rebels could not impair, the whole array of warders, lawyers, judges, juries, and policemen, which all the scorn of a Tolstoy could not shrivel, shrank into a laughing-stock. And the comedy of the situation was complicated and enhanced by the fact that the Home Office, so far from being an Inquisition, was more or less tenanted by sympathizers with Female Suffrage, and that a Home Secretary who secretly admired the quixotry of the hunger-strikers was forced to feed them forcibly. He must either be denounced by the suffragettes as a Torquemada or by the public as an incapable. Bayard himself could not have coped with the position. There was no place like the Home Office, and its administrators, like the Governors of the Gold Coast, had to be relieved at frequent intervals. As for the police, their one aim in life became to avoid arresting suffragettes. Such was the situation which the Governmental _coup_ transformed to tragedy unrelieved, giving us in the place of ordered lawlessness and responsible leadership a guerrilla warfare against society by irresponsive individuals, more or less unbalanced. That the heroic incendiary Mrs. Leigh, who deserved penal servitude and a statue, had been driven wild by forcible feeding was a fact that had given considerable uneasiness to headquarters, but she had been kept in comparative discipline. Now that discipline has been destroyed, it is possible that other free-lances will catch the contagion of crime; nay, there are signs that the leaders themselves are being infected through the difficulty of disavowing their martyrs. The wisest course for the Government would be to pardon Miss Pankhurst, of Paris, and officially invite her to resume control of her followers before they have quite controlled her. But even without such a crowning confession of the failure of its _coup_, the humiliation of the Government has been sufficiently complete. Forced to put Mrs. Pankhurst and the Pethick Lawrences into the luxurious category of political prisoners, next to release them altogether, and finally to liberate their humblest followers, their hunger-strike on behalf of whose equal treatment set a new standard of military chivalry, the Government succeeded only in investing the vanished Christabel with a new glamour. The Women's Social and Political Union has again baffled the Government, and come triumphantly even through the window-breaking episode. For if that episode was followed by the rejection of the second reading of the woman suffrage Bill, second readings, like the oaths of the profane, had come to be absolutely without significance, and the blocking of the Bill beyond this stage has been assured long before by the tactics of Mr. Redmond, whose passion for justice, like Mr. Asquith's passion for popular government, is so curiously monosexual. The only discount from the Union's winnings is that it gave mendacious M.P.'s, anxious to back out of woman suffrage, a soft bed to lie on. One should perhaps also add to the debit side of the account a considerable loss of popularity on the part of the suffragettes, a loss which would become complete were window-breaking to pass into graver crimes, and which would entirely paralyze the effect of their tactics. For the tactics of the prison and the hunger-strike depend for their value upon the innocency of the prisoners. Their offense must be merely nominal or technical. The suffragettes had rediscovered the Quaker truth that the spirit is stronger than all the forces of Government, and that things may really come by fasting and prayer. Even the window-breaking, though a perilous approach to the methods of the Pagan male, was only a damage to insensitive material for which the window-breakers were prepared to pay in conscious suffering. But once the injury was done to flesh and blood, the injurer would only be paying tooth for tooth and eye for eye; and all the sympathy would go, not to the assailant, but to the victim. Mrs. Pankhurst says the Government must either give votes to women or "prepare to send large numbers of women to penal servitude." That would be indeed awkward for the Government if penal servitude were easily procurable. Unfortunately, the women must first qualify for it, and their crimes would disembarrass the Government. Mrs. Leigh could have been safely left to starve had her attempted arson of that theater really come off, especially with loss of life. Thus violence may be "militant," but it is not "tactics." And violence against society at large is peculiarly tactless. George Fox would hardly occupy so exalted a niche in history if he had used his hammer to make not shoes but corpses. The suffragettes who run amuck have, in fact, become the victims of their own vocabulary. Their Union was "militant," but a church militant, not an army militant. The Salvation Army might as well suddenly take to shooting the heathen. It was only by mob misunderstanding that the suffragettes were conceived as viragoes, just as it was only by mob misunderstanding that the members of the Society of Friends were conceived as desperadoes. If it can not be said that their proceedings were as quintessentially peaceful as some of those absolutely mute Quaker meetings which the police of Charles II. humorously enough broke up as "riots," yet they had a thousand propaganda meetings (ignored by the Press) to one militant action (recorded and magnified). Even in battle nothing could be more decorous or constitutional than the overwhelming majority of their "pin-pricks." I remember a beautiful young lady, faultlessly dressed, who in soft, musical accents interrupted Mr. Birrell at the Mansion House. Stewards hurled themselves at her, policemen hastened from every point of the compass; but unruffled as at the dinner-table, without turning a hair of her exquisite _chévelure_, she continued gently explaining the wishes of womankind till she disappeared in a whirlwind of hysteric masculinity. But in gradually succumbing to the vulgar misunderstanding, playing up to the caricature, and finally assimilating to the crude and obsolescent methods of men, the suffragettes have been throwing away their own peculiar glory, their characteristic contribution to history and politics. Rosalind in search of a vote has supplied humanity with a new type who snatched from her testifyings a grace beyond the reach of Arden. But Rosalind with a revolver would be merely a reactionary. Hawthorne's Zenobia, who, for all her emancipation, drowned herself in a fit of amorous jealousy, was no greater backslider from the true path of woman's advancement. It is some relief to find that Mrs. Pankhurst's latest program disavows attacks on human life, limiting itself to destruction of property, and that the Pethick Lawrences have grown still saner. There might, indeed, be--for force is not always brute--some excuse and even admiration for the Terrorist, did the triumph of her cause appear indefinitely remote, were even that triumph to be brought perceptibly nearer by forcibly feeding us with horrors. But the contrary is the case: even the epidemic of crime foreshadowed by Mrs. Pankhurst could not appreciably delay woman suffrage. It is coming as fast as human nature and the nature of the Parliamentary machine will allow. To try to terrorize Mr. Asquith into bringing in a Government measure is to credit him with a wisdom and a nobility almost divine. No man is great enough to put himself in the right by admitting he was wrong. And even if he were great enough to admit it under argument, he would have to be godlike to admit it under menace. Rather than admit it, Mr. Asquith has let himself be driven into a position more ludicrous than perhaps any Prime Minister has occupied. For though he declares woman suffrage to be "a political disaster of the gravest kind," he is ready to push it through if the House of Commons wishes, relying for its rejection upon the House of Lords, which he has denounced and eviscerated. He is even not unwilling it shall pass if only the disaster to the country is maximized by Adult Suffrage. It is not that he loves woman more, but the Tory party less. All things considered, I am afraid the Suffrage Movement will have to make up its mind to wait for another Parliament. There is more hope for the premature collapse of this Parliament than for its passing of a Suffrage Bill or clause. And at the general election, whenever it comes, Votes for Women will be put on the program of both parties. The Conservatives will offer a mild dose, the Liberals a democratic. Whichever fails at the polls, the principle of woman suffrage will be safe. This prognostic, it will be seen, involves the removal of the immovable Asquith. But he must either consent to follow a plebiscite of his party or retire, like his doorkeeper, from Downing Street, under the intolerable burden of the suffragette. Much as his party honors and admires him, it can not continue to repudiate the essential principles of Liberalism, nor find refuge in his sophism that Liberalism removes artificial barriers, but can not remove natural barriers. What natural barrier prevents a woman from accepting or rejecting a man who proposes to represent her in Parliament? No; after his historic innings Mr. Asquith will sacrifice himself and retire, covered with laurels and contradictions. Pending which event, the suffragettes, while doing their best to precipitate it through the downfall of the Government, may very reasonably continue their policy of pin-pricks to keep politicians from going to sleep, but serious violence would be worse than a crime; it would be a blunder. No general dares throw away his men when nothing is to be gained, and our analysis shows that the interval between women and the vote can only be shortened by bringing on a general election. There are, indeed, skeptics who fear that even at the next general election both parties may find a way of circumventing woman suffrage by secretly agreeing to keep it off both programs; but the country itself is too sick of the question to endure this, even if the Women's Liberal Federation and the corresponding Conservative body permitted it. That the parties would go so far as to pair off their women workers against each other is unlikely. At any rate, now, when other forms of agitation are more or less futile, is the moment for these and cognate bodies to take up the running. But even if these women workers fail in backbone, and allow themselves, as so often before, to be lulled and gulled by their male politicians, there yet remains an ardent body to push forward their cause. Mrs. Humphry Ward and the Anti-Suffragists may be trusted to continue tireless and ever-inventive. Mrs. Ward's League to promote the return of women as town and county councilors is her latest device to prove the unfitness of women for public affairs, and since the Vegetarian League for combating the carnivorous instincts of the tigress by feeding her on blood, there has been no quite so happy adaptation of means to end. If anything could add to the educative efficiency of the new League, it is Mrs. Ward's scrupulousness in limiting it exclusively to Anti-Suffragists. ELBERT HUBBARD There was a time in England when all the laws were made and executed by the King. Later he appointed certain favorites who acted for him, and these were paid honors and emoluments accordingly. Still later, all soldiers were allowed to express their political preferences. And that is where we got the idea about not allowing folks to vote who could not fight. It was once the law in England that no Catholic should be allowed to vote. It was also once the law in England that no Jew could hold real estate, could vote at elections, could hold a public office, or serve on a jury. Full rights of citizenship were not given to the Jews in Great Britain until the year 1858. Deists, Theists, Quakers, and "Dissenters" were not allowed to testify in courts, and their right to vote was challenged in England up to 1885. For centuries, Jews occupied the position of minors, mental defectives, or men with criminal records. Women now in England occupy the same position politically that the Jews did a hundred years ago. Until very recent times all lawmakers disputed the fact that women have rights. Women have privileges and duties--mostly duties. All the laws are made by men, and for the most part the rights only of male citizens are considered. If the rights of women or children are taken into consideration, it is only from a secondary point of view, or because the attention of lawmakers is especially called to the natural rights of women, children, and dumb animals. Provisions, however, have always been made in England as well as all other civilized countries for punishing Catholics, Jews, Quakers, and women. In old New England there was once a pleasing invention called a "ducking stool," that was for "women only." For the most part, the punishment for these individuals who were not citizens was very much more severe than it was for the people who made and devised the punishment for them. Women are admitted into the full rights of citizenship in New Zealand and Australia, and in several States in the United States. There will surely come a time when we will look back and regard the withholding of full political rights from women in the same way that we now look back and regard the disfranchisement of Jews and Catholics. There is no argument that can possibly be presented against the right of women to express their political preferences which does not in equal degree apply to the right of male citizens to express theirs. Every possible logical argument has been put forward and answered. The protest in England by certain women who are working for equal suffrage has taken what is called a militant form. These women, in many instances, have been guilty of violence. The particular women who have been foremost in this matter of violence are not criminals in any sense of the word. They are not plotting and planning the overthrow of the government. They are not guilty of treason; and certainly they are not guilty of disorder along any other line than that springing out of their disapproval of the failure of the government to grant the right of political representation to women. "Taxation without representation" was the shibboleth of the men who founded the government of the United States of America. This shibboleth, or slogan, came to them from across the sea and was first uttered in England before the days of Magna Charta. That every adult individual, man or woman, possessed of normal mentality, should be thoroughly interested in the government, and should have the right of expressing his or her political preferences, is beyond dispute, especially under any government that affects to derive its powers from the governed. The right to govern is conferred by the governed, and this is now admitted even in the so-called monarchies. And the governed are not exclusively males; the governed are men and women, for women are responsible before the law. So thoroughly are these facts fixed in the minds of a great many men and women everywhere that a few men are possessed by the righteousness of the cause to a degree that they are willing not only to live for it and fight for it, suffer for it, but also to die for it. Some of these women in London, who have been throwing stones into windows, thus destroying property, have signified as great a willingness to injure themselves as they have to injure the property of their fellow citizens, provided by so doing they can bring to the attention of the men in charge of the government the absolute necessity of recognizing the political rights of women. If certain people in the past had not been willing to stake their all on individual rights, there would to-day be no liberty for any one. The saviors of the world are simply those who have been willing to die that humanity might live. It may be hard for an individual of average purpose to understand or comprehend this mental attitude where the individual is fired with such zeal that he is willing to suffer physical destruction for it. In England, the test has come to an issue of whether these women, intent on bringing about governmental recognition of the rights of women, should be allowed to die for the cause or not. And from all latest reports, John Bull does seem troubled about it. MILITARISM ITS CLIMAX IN THE THREAT OF UNIVERSAL WAR OVER MOROCCO A.D. 1911 NORMAN ANGELL SIR MAX WAECHTER, D.L. Ever since Germany by the completeness of her military preparation won so decisive a victory over France in 1870, Europe has plunged deeper and deeper into Militarism. That is to say, each European state that could possibly afford it has increased its army and its navy, until to-day their military force is many times more powerful than it was half a century ago. The theory on which this is done is that you can secure peace only by showing you are ready to fight; that if one nation is sure that it can thrash another, it will probably plan an opportunity to do so. Such is the theory; but what is the tragic result? Military expenditures have increased at a stupendous rate and all Europe groans under a burden of almost unendurable taxation. Moreover, the possession of such splendid machinery of warfare is a constant temptation to employ it and so vindicate its staggering expense. This was startlingly shown in the case of the Morocco imbroglio. During the early part of 1911 the French government made clear its intent to take complete possession of the semi-independent African state of Morocco. On July 1st, Germany sent a warship to the Moroccan port of Agadir, as a sign that she also had interests in the country, which France must not override. Instantly Europe buzzed like an angry bee-hive. England and France had previously made a secret treaty agreeing that France should be allowed to take Morocco in exchange for keeping hands off Egypt, where England was establishing herself. Hence England now felt compelled to uphold her ally. When Germany seemed inclined to bully the Frenchmen, England insisted that she also must be consulted. Germany growled that this was none of England's business. Everybody began getting out their guns and parading their armies. Germany sought the support of Austria and Italy, her partners in the "Triple Alliance." France and England emphasized the fact that Russia stood with them in an antagonistic "Triple Entente." On November 4th, France and Germany came to a peaceful agreement, France taking Morocco and "compensating" Germany by yielding to her some territory in Eastern Equatorial Africa. Thus the whole excitement passed off in rumblings; there was no war. But it was revealed a few months later that the nations had really approached to the very brink of a Titanic struggle, which would have desolated the whole of Europe. And here is the peculiar tragedy of Militarism. The mere threat of that great "Unfought War" cost Europe billions of dollars. Moreover, as a result of Germany's discontent at what she rather regarded as her defeat in this Morocco affair, she in 1913 enormously increased her army and more than doubled her already heavy military tax upon her people. Then France and Russia felt compelled to meet Germany's move by increasing their armies also, extending, as she had done, the time of compulsory military service inflicted upon their poorer classes. Norman Angell, an English writer, has recently stirred all thinking people by a remarkable book of protest against Militarism. He here discusses the Moroccan imbroglio under the title of "the Mirage of the Map." Sir Max Waechter is an authority of international repute upon the same subject. NORMAN ANGELL The Press of Europe and America is very busy discussing the lessons of the diplomatic conflict which has just ended. And the outstanding impression which one gets from most of these essays in high politics--whether French, Italian, or British--is that we have been and are witnessing part of a great world movement, the setting in motion of Titanic forces "deep-set in primordial needs and impulses." For months those in the secrets of the Chancelleries have spoken with bated breath--as though in the presence of some vision of Armageddon. On the strength of this mere talk of war by the three nations, vast commercial interests have been embarrassed, fortunes have been lost and won on the Bourses, banks have suspended payment, some thousands have been ruined; while the fact that the fourth and fifth nations have actually gone to war has raised all sorts of further possibilities of conflict, not alone in Europe, but in Asia, with remoter danger of religious fanaticism and all its sequelae. International bitterness and suspicion in general have been intensified, and the one certain result of the whole thing is that immense burdens will be added in the shape of further taxation for armaments to the already heavy ones carried by the five or six nations concerned. For two or three hundred millions of people in Europe life, which with all the problems of high prices, labor wars, unsolved social difficulties, is none too easy as it is, will be made harder still. The needs, therefore, that can have provoked a conflict of these dimensions must be "primordial" indeed. In fact, one authority assures us that what we have seen going on is "the struggle for life among men"--that struggle which has its parallel in the whole of sentient existence. Well, I put it to you, as a matter worth just a moment or two of consideration, that this conflict is about nothing of the sort; that it is about a perfectly futile matter, one which the immense majority of the German, English, French, Italian, and Turkish people could afford to treat with the completest indifference. For, to the vast majority of these 250,000,000 people, more or less, it does not matter two straws whether Morocco or some vague, African swamp near the Equator is administered by German, French, Italian, or Turkish officials, so long as it is well administered. Or rather one should go further: if French, German, or Italian colonization of the past is any guide, the nation which wins in the conquest for territory of this sort has added a wealth-draining incubus. This, of course, is preposterous; I am losing sight of the need for making provision for the future expansion of the race, of each party desiring to "find its place in the sun"; and heaven knows what. Well, let us for a moment get away from phrases and examine a few facts usually ignored because they happen to be beneath our nose. France has got a new empire, we are told; she has won a great victory; she is growing and expanding and is richer by something which her rivals are the poorer for not having. Let us assume that she makes the same success of Morocco that she has made of her other possessions, of, say, Tunis, which represents one of the most successful of those operations of colonial expansion which have marked her history during the last forty years. What has been the precise effect on French prosperity? In thirty years, at a cost of many million sterling (it is part of successful colonial administration in France never to let it be known what the colonies really cost) France has founded in Tunis a colony, in which to-day there are, excluding soldiers and officials, about 25,000 genuine French colonists: just the number by which the French population in France--the real France--is diminishing every six months! And the value of Tunis as a market does not even amount to the sum which France spends directly on its occupation and administration, to say nothing of the indirect extension of military burden which its conquest involves; and, of course, the market which it represents would still exist in some form, though England--or even Germany--administered the country. In other words, France loses twice every year in her home population two colonies equivalent to Tunis--if we measure colonies in terms of communities made up of the race which has sprung from the mother country. And yet, if once in a generation her rulers and diplomats can point to 25,000 Frenchmen living artificially and exotically under conditions which must in the long run be inimical to their race, it is pointed to as "expansion" and as evidence that France is maintaining her position as a Great Power. A few years, as history goes, unless there is some complete change of tendencies which at present seem as strong as ever, the French race as we now know it will have ceased to exist, swamped without the firing, may be, of a single shot, by the Germans, Belgians, English, Italians, and Jews. There are to-day in France more Germans than there are Frenchmen in all the colonies that France has acquired in the last half-century, and German trade with France outweighs enormously the trade of France with all French colonies. France is to-day a better colony for the Germans than they could make of any exotic colony which France owns. "They _tell_ me," said a French Deputy recently (in a not quite original _mot_), "that the Germans are at Agadir. I _know_ they are in the Champs-Elysées." Which, of course, is in reality a much more serious matter. And those Frenchmen who regret this disappearance of their race, and declare that the energy and blood and money which is now poured out so lavishly in Africa and in Asia ought to be diverted to its arrest, to the colonization and development of France by better social, industrial, commercial, and political organization, to the resisting of the exploitation of the mother country by inflowing masses of foreigners, are declared to be bad patriots, dead to the sentiment of the flag, dead to the call of the bugle, are silenced in fact by a fustian as senseless and mischievous as that which in some marvelous way the politician, hypnotized by the old formulae, has managed to make pass as "patriotism" in most countries. The French, like their neighbors, are not interested in the Germans of the Champs-Elysées, but only in the Germans at Agadir: and it is for these latter that the diplomats fight, and the war budgets swell. And from that silent and pacific expansion, which means so much both negatively and positively, attention is diverted to the banging of the war drum, and the dancing of the patriotic dervishes. And on the other side we are to assume that Germany has during the period of France's expansion--since the war--not expanded at all. That she has been throttled and cramped--that she has not had her place in the sun: and that is why she must fight for it and endanger the security of her neighbors. Well, I put it to you again that all this in reality is false: that Germany has not been cramped or throttled; that, on the contrary, as we recognize when we get away from the mirage of the map, her expansion has been the wonder of the world. She has added 20,000,000 to her population--one-half the present population of France--during a period in which the French population has actually diminished. Of all the nations in Europe, she has cut the biggest swath in the development of world trade, industry, and influence. Despite the fact that she has not "expanded" in the sense of mere political dominion, a proportion of her population, equivalent to the white population of the whole colonial British Empire, make their living, or the best part of it, from the development and exploitation of territory outside her borders. These facts are not new, they have been made the text of thousands of political sermons preached in England itself during the last few years; but one side of their significance seems to have been missed. We get, then, this: On the one side a nation extending enormously its political dominion and yet diminishing in national force, if by national force we mean the growth of a sturdy, enterprising, vigorous people. (I am not denying that France is both wealthy and comfortable, to a greater degree it may be than her rival; but she has not her colonies to thank for it--quite the contrary.) On the other side, we get immense expansion expressed in terms of those things--a growing and vigorous population and the possibility of feeding them--and yet the political dominion, speaking practically, has hardly been extended at all. Such a condition of things, if the common jargon of high politics means anything, is preposterous. It takes nearly all meaning out of most that we hear about "primordial needs," and the rest of it. As a matter of fact, we touch here one of the vital confusions, which is at the bottom of most of the present political trouble between nations, and shows the power of the old ideas, and the old phraseology. In the days of the sailing ship and the lumbering wagon dragging slowly over all but impassable roads, for one country to derive any considerable profit from another, it had, practically, to administer it politically. But the compound steam engine, the railway, the telegraph, have profoundly modified the elements of the whole problem. In the modern world political dominion is playing a more and more effaced role as a factor in commerce; the non-political factors have in practise made it all but inoperative. It is the case with every modern nation actually that the outside territories which it exploits most successfully are precisely those of which it does not "own" a foot. Even with the most characteristically colonial of all--Great Britain--the greater part of her overseas trade is done with countries which she makes no attempt to "own," control, coerce, or dominate--and incidentally she has ceased to do any of these things with her colonies. Millions of Germans in Prussia and Westphalia derive profit or make their living out of countries to which their political dominion in no way extends. The modern German exploits South America by remaining at home. Where, forsaking this principle, he attempts to work through political power, he approaches futility. German colonies are colonies "pour rire." The Government has to bribe Germans to go to them; her trade with them is microscopic; and if the twenty millions who have been added to Germany's population since the war had had to depend on their country's political conquest they would have had to starve. What feeds them are countries which Germany has never "owned" and never hopes to "own"; Brazil, Argentina, the United States, India, Australia, Canada, Russia, France, and England. (Germany, which never spent a mark on its political conquest, to-day draws more tribute from South America than does Spain, which has poured out mountains of treasure and oceans of blood in its conquest.) These are Germany's real colonies. Yet the immense interests which they represent, of really primordial concern to Germany, without which so many of her people would be actually without food, are for the diplomats and the soldiers quite secondary ones; the immense trade which they represent owes nothing to the diplomat, to Agadir incidents, to Dreadnoughts; it is the unaided work of the merchant and the manufacturer. All this diplomatic and military conflict and rivalry, this waste of wealth, the unspeakable foulness which Tripoli is revealing, are reserved for things which both sides to the quarrel could sacrifice, not merely without loss, but with profit. And Italy, whose statesmen have been faithful to all the old "axioms" (Heaven save the mark!) will discover it rapidly enough. Even her defenders are ceasing now to urge that she can possibly derive any real benefit from this colossal ineptitude. Italy struck at Turkey for "honor," for prestige--for the purpose of impressing Europe. And one may hope that Europe (after reading the reports of Reuter, _The Times_, the _Daily Mirror_, and the New York _World_ as to the methods which Italy is using in vindicating her "honor") is duly impressed, and that Italian patriots are satisfied with these new glories added to Italian history. It is all they will get. Or rather, will they get much more: for Italy, as unhappily for the balance of Europe, the substance will be represented by the increase of very definite every-day difficulties--the high cost of living, the uncertainty of employment, the very deep problems of poverty, education, government, well-being. These remain--worsened. And this--not the spectacular clash of arms, or even the less spectacular killing of unarmed Arab men, women, and children--constitute the real "struggle for life among men." But the dilettanti of "high politics" are not interested. For those who still take their language and habits of thought from the days of the sailing-ship, still talk of "possessing" territory, still assume that tribute in some form is possible, still imply that the limits of commercial and industrial activity are dependent upon the limits of political dominion, the struggle is represented by this futile physical collision of groups, which, however victory may go, leaves the real solution further off than ever. We know what preceded this war: if Europe had any moral conscience left, it would have been shocked as it was never shocked before. Turkey said: "We will submit Italy's grievance to any tribunal that Europe cares to name, and abide by the result." Italy said: "We don't intend to have the case judged, but to take Tripoli. Hand it over--in twenty-four hours." The Turkish Government said: "At least make it possible for us to face our own people. Call it a Protectorate; give us the shadow of sovereignty. Otherwise it is not robbery--to which we should submit--but gratuitous degradation; we should abdicate before the eyes of our own people. We will do anything you like." "In that case," said Italy, "we will rob; and we will go to war." It was not merely robbery that the Italian Government intended, but they meant from the first that it should be war--to "dish the Socialists," to play some sordid intrigue of internal politics. The ultimatum was launched from the center of Christendom--the city which lodges the titular head of the Universal Church--to teach to the Mohammedan world what may be expected from a modern Christian Government with its back to eighteen centuries of Christian teaching. We, Christendom, spend scores of millions--hundreds of millions, it may be--in the propagation of the Christian faith: numberless men and women gave their lives for it, our fathers spent two centuries in unavailing warfare for the capture of some of its symbols. Presumably, therefore, we attach some value to its principles, deeming them of some worth in the defense of human society. Or do we believe nothing of the sort? Is our real opinion that these things at bottom don't matter--or matter so little that for the sake of robbing the squalid belongings of a few Arab tribes, or playing some mean game of party politics, they can be set aside in a whoop of "patriotism"? Our press waxes indignant in this particular case, and that is the end of it. But we do not see that we are to blame, that it is all the outcome of a conception of politics which we are forever ready to do our part to defend, to do daily our part to uphold. And those of us who try in our feeble way to protest against this conception of politics and patriotism, where everything stands on its head; where the large is made to appear the great, and the great is made to appear the small, are derided as sentimentalists, Utopians. As though anything could be more sentimental, more divorced from the sense of reality, than the principles which lead us to a condition of things like these; as though anything could be more wildly, burlesquely Utopian than the idea that efforts of the kind that the Italian people are now making, the energy they are now spending, could ever achieve anything of worth. Is it not time that the man in the street, verily, I believe, less deluded by diplomatic jargon than his betters, less the slave of an obsolete phraseology, insisted that the experts in the high places acquired some sense of the reality of things, of proportion, some sense of figures, a little knowledge of industrial history, of the real processes of human cooperation? At present Europe is quite indifferent to Italy's behavior. The Chancelleries, which will go to enormous trouble and take enormous risks and concoct alliances and counter-alliances when there is territory to be seized, remain cold when crimes of this sort are committed. And they remain cold because they believe that Turkey alone is concerned. They do not see that Italy has attacked not Turkey, but Europe; that we, more than Turkey, will pay the broken pots. And there is a further reason: We still believe in these piracies; we believe they pay and that we may get our turn at some "swag" to-morrow. France is envied for her possession of Morocco; Germany for her increased authority over some pestilential African swamps. But when we realize that in these international burglaries there is no "swag," that the whole thing is an illusion, that there are huge costs but no reward, we shall be on the road to a better tradition, which, while it may not give us international policing, may do better still--render the policing unnecessary. For when we have realized that the game is not worth the candle, when no one desires to commit aggression, the competition in armaments will have become a bad nightmare of the past. SIR MAX WAECHTER It is generally admitted that the present condition of Europe is highly unsatisfactory. To any close observer it must be evident that Europe, as a whole, is gradually losing its position in the world. Other nations which are rapidly coming to the front will, in course of time, displace the European, unless the latter can pull themselves together and abandon the vicious system which now handicaps them In the economic rivalry of nations. The cause of this comparative decline is, in my opinion, to be found in the fact that all the European countries are arming against one another, either for defense, or for aggression, for the attack is frequently the best form of defense. The motive for these excessive armaments can clearly be found in the jealousy and mistrust existing among the nations of Europe. Europe is spending on armaments something like four hundred million pounds sterling per year, and there is a tendency to increase this tremendous expenditure. In order to bring the magnitude of this sacrifice more vividly before the reader, let us assume that a European war is not likely to occur more frequently than about every thirty years. We then find that the incredible sum of twelve thousand million pounds sterling has been spent in peace in preparation for this war, a sum which greatly exceeds the total of all the European state debts. Such stupendous sums can not be raised without imposing crushing taxation, and without neglecting the other duties of the state, such as education, scientific research, and social reform. One serious economic result of this heavy taxation is that European industry is placed at a considerable disadvantage in competing with that of other nations, notably the United States of America. The late Mr. Atkinson, an American authority, declared that, compared with the United States, we were handicapped to the extent of five per cent, in our production. Since then the figures have changed considerably in favor of America. I recently had an opportunity of discussing this point with a great German authority on political economy, and he fixed the advantage in favor of the United States at nearly ten per cent, as regards the cost of production. But this is not all. The European countries withdraw permanently four millions of men, at their best age, from productive work, thus causing a terrible loss and waste. Besides, enterprise in Europe is crippled by fear of war. It may break out at any time, possibly at a few hours' notice. The present system of Europe must inevitably lead, sooner or later, to a European war--a catastrophe which nobody can contemplate without horror, considering the perfected means of destruction. Such a war would leave the vanquished utterly crushed, and the victor in such a state of exhaustion that any foreign Power could easily impose her will upon him. The situation is certainly most alarming, and ought to receive the fullest attention. What, then, can be done to save Europe from these impending dangers? The large number of "Peace Societies" which have been established in different countries have done excellent spade work. Their main object has been to insure that disputes among nations should be referred to arbitration, with a view to making more difficult their resorting to arms. The great success of these societies demonstrates plainly that there is a strong tendency among the peoples in favor of peace. But no attempt has been made to reorganize the whole of Europe on a sound basis. The Emperor of Russia has made a most praiseworthy effort to bring about a different state of affairs, by originating and establishing The Hague Conference, with a view to securing by this means the peace of the world. This conference has done excellent service, and is likely to be of increasing usefulness to mankind in the future; but the second meeting of the conference has amply proved that it can not succeed in its main object, which is the peace of the world. If the idea of bringing the whole world into unison can ever be realized, it is only by stages, of which the union of Europe would be the first. Let us look at the position. Germany has been for centuries the battle-field of other states, and has narrowly escaped national annihilation. She has now at length succeeded in consolidating her strength so far as to be able to withstand attack from any probable combination of two of her powerful neighbors. Can Germany now be approached with a request to reduce her armaments, unless she is given the most solid guaranty against attack? It would be almost an insult to the German intelligence to make such a proposal without an adequate guaranty. With France the case is similar. The third Republic has been eminently peaceful, and Frenchmen have devoted their energies and brilliant qualities principally to science, the fine arts, and social development. Who would dare to ask them to cut down their armaments in the present state of Europe, which makes it compulsory for every country to arm to the fullest extent? All the other states are in a similar position. They need not be discussed individually. The only hope to be found is in such a coalition of the Powers as will make these excessive armaments unnecessary. If this can be effected, the reduction of armaments will take place naturally, and without any external pressure. But then the question arises, how can the permanency of such a coalition be guaranteed? The vital requisite to give stability to any international coalition is community of interests. Such a community of interests exists already, in a larger or smaller degree, among many states, though it is unknown to most people. Besides, it is not strong enough to prevent war in times of excitement. In many countries definite war parties exist, and most extraordinary opinions can be gathered from their representatives. I was assured by some military leaders, and even by a diplomat in a responsible position, that war is a blessing! In disproof of this theory it may be desirable to state some plain facts. Mankind lives and exists on this earth solely and entirely by the exploitation of our planet, and the general average status of the peoples can be improved and raised to a higher level only by a more complete exploitation of the forces of nature. This process requires, in the present state of civilization, capital, intelligence, and manual labor--the handmaid of intelligence. War is bound to destroy an enormous amount of capital, and a great number of the ablest workers. It is evident, therefore, that every war must reduce the general well-being of the peoples who inhabit this planet. Besides, there is the misery inflicted upon millions of people, principally belonging to the poorer classes, who have always to bear the brunt of a war, whether it be started by the personal ambition of one man or by the misguided ambitions of a nation. Some people argue that, from the days of Alexander the Great to those of Napoleon, combinations of states have always been brought about by armed force, and they believe this to be a natural law. I do not admit that the case of Napoleon is a proper illustration of such a law. On the contrary, his career seems to demonstrate clearly that the world is too far advanced to be driven into combination by force. And as to Alexander the Great, has the world really made no progress since his time? Force or war is a relic of a savage age, and will be relegated to the background with the advance of civilization. PERSIA'S LOSS OF LIBERTY A.D. 1911 W. MORGAN SHUSTER[1] [Footnote 1: Reprinted in condensed form from the original narrative in _Hearst's Magazine,_ by permission.] As told in the preceding volume, Persia in the year 1905 began a struggle for freedom from autocratic rule. This she finally achieved in decisive fashion and set up a parliamentary government. Her career of liberty seemed fairly assured. She had against her, however, an irresistible force. England and Russia had long been encroaching upon Persian territory. Russia, in especial, had snatched away province after province in the north. Of course Persia's revival would mean that these territorial seizures would be stopped. Hence Russia almost openly opposed each step in Persia's progress. In 1907, Russia and England entered into an agreement by which each, without consulting Persia, recognized that the other held some sort of rights over a part of Persian territory: a "sphere of Russian influence" was thus established in the north, and of British in the southeast. The climax to this antagonism against Persia came in 1911. The desperate Persians appealed to the United States Government to send them an honest administrator to guide them, and President Taft recommended Mr. Shuster for the task. The work of Mr. Shuster soon won him the enthusiastic confidence and devotion of the Persians themselves. But in proportion as his reforms seemed more and more to strengthen the parliamentary government and bring hope to Persia, he found himself more and more opposed by the Russian officials. Finally Russia made his mere presence in the land an excuse for sending her armies to assault the Persians. Seldom has the murderous attack of a strong country upon a weak one been so open, brazen, and void of all moral justification. Thousands of Persians were slain by the Russian troops, and many more have since been executed for "rebellion" against the Russian authorities. The parliamentary government of Persia was completely destroyed; it finally disappeared in tumult and dismay on December 24, 1911. The country was reduced to helpless submission to the Russian armies. Mr. Shuster's own account of the tragedy follows. He called it "The Strangling of Persia." Of the many changing scenes during the eight months of my recent experiences in Persia, two pictures stand out in such sharp contrast as to deserve special mention. The first is a small party of Americans, of which the writer was one, seated with their families in ancient post-chaises rumbling along the tiresome road from Enzeli, the Persian port on the Caspian Sea, toward Teheran. It was in the early days of May, 1911, and from these medieval vehicles, drawn by four ratlike ponies, in heat and dust, we gained our first physical impressions of the land where we had come to live for some years--to mend the broken finances of the descendants of Cyrus and Darius. We were fired with the ambition to succeed in our work, and, viewed through such eyes, the physical discomforts became unimportant. Hope sang loud in our hearts as the carriages crawled on through two hundred and twenty miles of alternate mountain and desert scenery. The second picture is eight months later, almost to the day. On January 11, 1912, I stood in a circle of gloomy American and Persian friends in front of the Atabak palace where we had been living, about to step into the automobile that was to bear us back over the same road to Enzeli. The mountains behind Teheran were white with snow, the sun shone brightly in a clear blue sky, there was life-tonic in the air, but none in our hearts, for our work in Persia, hardly begun, had come to a sudden end. Between the two dates some things had happened--things that may be written down, but will probably never be undone--and the hopes of a patient, long-exploited people of reclaiming their position in the world had been stamped out ruthlessly and unjustly by the armies of a so-called Christian and civilized nation. Prior to 1906, the masses of the Persians had suffered in comparative silence from the ever-growing tyranny and betrayal of successive despots, the last of whom, Muhammad Ali Shah, a vice-sodden monster of the most perverted type, openly avowed himself the tool of Russia. The people, finally stung to a blind desperation and exhorted by their priests, rose in the summer of 1906, and by purely passive measures--such as taking sanctuary, or _bast_, in large numbers in sacred places and in the grounds of the British Legation at Teheran--succeeded in obtaining from Muzaffarn'd Din Shah, the father of Muhammad Ali, a constitution which he granted some six months before his death. The pledge given in this document his son and successor swore to fulfil and then violated a dozen or more times, until the long-suffering constitutionalists, who called themselves "nationalists," finally compelled him, despite the intrigues and armed resistance of Russian agents and officers, to abdicate in favor of his young son, Sultan Ahmad Shah, the present constitutional monarch. This was in July, 1909. It was this constitutional government, recognized as sovereign by the Powers, that had determined to set its house in order, and in practise to replace absolute monarchy with something approaching democracy. Whence the Persians, a strictly Oriental people, had derived their strange confidence in the potency of a democratic form of government to mitigate or cure their ills, no one can say. We might ask the Hindus of India, or the "Young Turks," or to-day the "Young Chinese" the same question. The fact is that the past ten years have witnessed a truly marvelous transformation in the ideas of Oriental peoples, and the East, in its capacity to assimilate Western theories of government, and in its willingness to fight for them against everything that tradition makes sacred, has of late years shown a phase heretofore almost unknown. Persia has given a most perfect example of this struggle toward democracy, and, considering the odds against the nationalist element, the results accomplished have been little short of amazing. Filled with the desire to perform its task, the Medjlis, or national parliament, had voted in the latter part of 1910 to obtain the services of five American experts to undertake the work of reorganizing Persia's finances. They applied to the American Government, and through the good offices of our State Department, their legation at Washington was placed in communication with men who were considered suitable for the task. The intervention of the State Department went no further than this, and the Persian Government, like the men finally selected, was told that the nomination by the American Government of suitable financial administrators indicated a mere friendly desire to aid and was of no political significance whatsoever. The Persians had already tried Belgian and French functionaries and had seen them rapidly become mere Russian political agents or, at best, seen them lapse into a state of _dolce far niente_. Poor Persia had been sold out so many times in the framing of tariffs and tax laws, in loan transactions and concessions of various kinds that the nationalist government had grown desperate and certainly most distrustful of all foreigners coming from nations within the sphere of European diplomacy. What they sought was a practical administration of their finances in the interest of the Persian people and nation. In this way the writer found himself in Teheran on the 12th of May last year, having agreed to serve as Treasurer-General of the Persian Empire, and to reorganize and conduct its finances. It is difficult to describe the Persian political situation existing at that time without going too deeply into history. It is true that in a moment of temporary weakness after her defeat by Japan, Russia had signed a solemn convention with England whereby she engaged herself, as did England, to respect the independence and integrity of Persia. Later, by the stipulations of 1909, these two Powers solemnly agreed to prevent the ex-Shah, Muhammad Ali, from any political agitation against the constitutional government. But, as the world and Persia have seen, a trifle like a treaty or a convention never balks Russia when she has taken the pulse of her possible adversaries and found it weak. What is more painful to Anglo-Saxons is that the British Government has been no better nor more scrupulous of its pledges. During the first half of July, we began to learn where some of the money was supposed to come from, and we were just beginning to control the government expenditures after a fashion when, on July 18th, late at night, the telegraph brought the news that Muhammad Ali, the ex-Shah, had landed with a small force at Gumesh-Teppeh, a small port on the Caspian, very near the Russian frontier. It was the proverbial bolt from the blue, for while rumors of such a possibility had been rife, most persons believed that Russia would not dare to violate so openly her solemn stipulation signed less than two years before. PERSIA IS TAKEN UNAWARES The Persian cabinet at Teheran was panic-stricken, and for ten days there ensued a period of confusion and terror that beggars description. There was no Persian army except on paper. The gendarmerie and police of the city did not number more than eighteen hundred men inadequately armed. The Russian Turcomans on the northeast frontier were reported to be flocking to the ex-Shah's standard, and it was commonly believed that he would be at the gates of Teheran in a few weeks. This belief was strengthened by the fact that his brother, Prince Salaru'd-Dawla, had entered Persia from the direction of Bagdad and was known to have a large gathering of Kurdish tribesmen ready to march toward Teheran. After a time, however, reason prevailed and steps were taken to create an army to defend the constitutional government against the invaders. At this time, one of the old chiefs of the Bakhtiyari tribesmen, the Samsamu's-Saltana, was the prime minister holding the portfolio of war, and he called to arms several thousands of his fighting men, who promptly started for the capital. Ephraim Khan, at that time chief of police of Teheran, was another defender of the constitution who raised a volunteer force, and twice, acting with the Bakhtiyari forces, he signally defeated the troops of the ex-Shah. By September 5th, Muhammad Ali himself was in full flight through northeastern Persia toward the friendly Russian frontier. Whatever chances he may have formerly had were admitted to be gone. The hound that Russia had unleashed, with his hordes of Turcoman brigands, upon the constitutional government of Persia had been whipped back into his kennel. No one was more surprised than Russia, unless indeed it was the Persians themselves. Russian officials everywhere in Persia had openly predicted an easy victory for Muhammad Ali. They had aided him in a hundred different ways, morally, financially, and by actual armed force. They still hoped, however, that the forces of Prince Salaru'd-Dawla, which were marching from Hamadan toward Teheran, would take the capital. But on September 28th, the news came that Ephraim Khan, and the Bakhtiyaris had routed the Prince and his army, and the last hope from this source was gone. In the mean time, another encounter with Russia had occurred. There was at Teheran an officer of the British-Indian army, Major Stokes, who for four years had been military attache to the British Legation. He knew Persia well; read, wrote, and spoke fluently the language and thoroughly understood the habits, customs, and viewpoint of the Persian people. He was the ideal man to assist in the formation of a tax-collecting force under the Treasury, without which there was no hope of collecting the internal taxes throughout the empire. Not only was Major Stokes the ideal man for this work, but he was the _only_ man possessing the necessary qualifications. I accordingly tendered Major Stokes the post of chief of the future Treasury gendarmerie, his services as military attache having come to an end. After some correspondence with the British Legation, I was informed late in July that the British Foreign Office held that he must resign his commission in the British-Indian army before accepting the post. This Major Stokes did, by cable, on July 31st, and the matter was regarded as settled. What was my surprise, therefore, to learn, on the evening of August 8th, that the British Minister, following instructions from his Government, had that day presented a note to the Persian Foreign Office, warning the Persian Government that any attempt to employ Major Stokes in the "northern sphere" of Persia (which included Teheran, the capital) would probably be followed by _retaliatory action_ (_sic_) by Russia which England would not be in a position to deprecate. Between individuals, such action would clearly be considered bad faith. Sir Edward Grey, British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, shortly thereafter explained that the appointment of Major Stokes would be a violation of what he termed the "spirit" of the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907. Yet just two weeks before, when he consented to Stokes resigning to accept the post, he had never dreamed of such a thing. The truth is that the semiofficial St. Petersburg press, like the _Novoe Vremya_, had begun to bluster about the affair, egged on by the Russian Foreign Office, and Sir Edward Grey was compelled to _invent some pretext_ for his manifest dread of displeasing Britain's "good friend Russia" about anything. Hence the birth of that wondrous and fearsome child, that rubber child which could be stretched to cover any and all things, the "spirit of the convention." It was a wonderful discovery for the gentlemen of the so-called "forward party" of the Russian Government, since they now beheld not only a new means of evading the plain letter of their agreement, but gleefully found a woful lack of spirit in their partner to the convention, Great Britain. The British Foreign Office pretended to believe that they had checked Russia's march to the Gulf; they knew better then, and they know still better now. There is but one thing on earth that will check that march, and that thing England is apparently not in a geographical or a policial position to furnish in sufficient numbers. The British public now know this, and unfortunately the "forward party" in Russia knows it, and that is why bearded faces at St. Petersburg crack open and emit rumbles of genuine merriment every time Sir Edward Grey stands up in the House of Commons and explains to his countrymen that he has most ample and categorical assurances from Russia that her sole purpose in sending two or three armies into Persia is to show her displeasure with an American finance official. For that same reason, doubtless, she has recently massacred some hundreds of Persians in Tabriz, Enzeli, and Resht, and has hanged numbers of Islamic priests, provincial officials, and constitutionalists whom she classifies as the "dregs of revolution." That is why the Russian flag was hoisted over the government buildings at Tabriz, the capital of the richest province of the empire, while a Russian military governor dispensed justice at the bayonet-point and with the noose. But to get back to events. After the crushing defeats of the ex-Shah's two forces and his flight, Russia was still faced by a constitutional regime in Persia--and by a somewhat solidified and more confident government and people at that. Tools and puppets having dismally failed, enter the real thing. Russia now proceeded to intervene directly and to break up the constitutional government in Persia without risk of failure or hindrance. She did not even intend to await a pretext--she manufactured such things as she went along. The first instance is the Shu'a'us-Saltana affair. On October 9th, some twelve days after the last defeat inflicted on the ex-Shah's forces, I was ordered by the cabinet to seize and confiscate the properties of Prince Shu'a'us-Saltana, another brother of the ex-Shah, who had returned to Persia with him and was actively commanding some of his troops. The same order was given as to the estates of Prince Salaru'd-Dawla, the other brother in rebellion. Pursuant to this entirely proper and legal order, the purport of which had been communicated by the Persian Foreign Office to the Russian and British ministers several days previously, no objection having been even hinted, I sent out six small parties, each consisting of a civilian Treasury official and five Treasury gendarmes, to seize the different properties in and about Teheran. As a matter of courtesy, the British and Russian legations had been informed that all rights of foreigners in these properties would be fully safeguarded and respected. The principal property was the Park of Shu'a'us-Saltana, a magnificent place in Teheran, with a palace filled with valuable furniture. When the Treasury officials and five gendarmes arrived there, they found on guard a number of Persian Cossacks of the Cossack Brigade. On seeing the order of confiscation, these men retired. My men then took possession and began making an official inventory. An hour later, two Russian vice-consuls, in full uniform, arrived with twelve Russian Cossacks from the Russian Consulate guard, and with imprecations, abuse, and threats to kill, drove off my men at the point of their rifles. Later in the day, these same vice-consuls actually arrested other small parties of Treasury gendarmes, took them on mules through the streets of Teheran to the Russian Consulate-General, and after insulting and threatening them with death if they ever returned to the confiscated property, allowed them to go. On hearing this, I wrote and telegraphed to my friend, M. Poklewski-Koziell, the Russian minister, calling his attention to the outrageous actions of his Consul-General, M. Pokhitanow, and asking the minister to give orders to prevent any further unpleasantness on the following day, when I would again execute the government's order. The next day I sent a force of one hundred gendarmes in charge of two American Treasury officials, and the order was executed. Two hours after we were in peaceable possession of the property, the same two Russian vice-consuls drove up to the gate and began insulting and abusing the Persian Treasury guards, endeavoring, of course, to provoke the gendarmes into some act against them. In other words, finding that they had lost in the matter of retaining possession of the property, these Russian officials deliberately sought to provoke my gendarmes into something that they could construe as an affront to Russian consular authority. The men, however, had received such strict and repeated instructions that they refused even to answer. They paid no attention to the taunts and abuse of these two dignified Russian officials, who thereupon drove off and perjured themselves to the effect that they had been affronted--in other words, that the incident which they had gone there to provoke actually had occurred. These false statements were reported to St. Petersburg by M. Pokhitanow independently of his minister, who, I have the strongest reason to believe, entirely disavowed the Consul-General's actions. The Russian government thereupon publicly discredited its minister and demanded from the Persian government an immediate apology for something that had never occurred. The apology, after some hesitation, was made on the advice of the British government. It was hoped that this evident self-abasement by Persia would appease even the Russian bureaucracy. But it now seems that a compliance with Russia's demand was exactly what was not desired by her, since it removed all possible pretext for taking more drastic steps against Persia's national existence. Hence, at the very moment when the Persian Foreign Minister, in full uniform, was at the Russian legation complying with this first ultimatum, based, as it was, on absolutely false reports, the St. Petersburg cabinet was formulating new and even more unjust and absurd demands, which, as some of the public know, have resulted in the expulsion of the fifteen American finance officials and in the destruction of the last vestiges of constitutional government in the empire of Cyrus and Darius. Russia called for my immediate dismissal from the post of Treasurer-General; she required that my fourteen American assistants already in Persia should be subject to the approval of the British and Russian legations at Teheran; that all other foreign officials in future employed by Persia be subjected to the approval of those two legations; that a large indemnity should be paid to Russia for the expense of moving her troops into Persia to hasten the acceptance of these two ultimatums; and that all other questions between Russia and Persia should be settled to the satisfaction of the former. The acceptance by Persia of these demands meant, of course, a virtual cession of her sovereignty to Russia and Great Britain. It should be noted, also, that in this Russian ultimatum the name of the British government was freely used, although the British minister took no part in the presentation of the same. Sir Edward Grey was subsequently asked in the British Parliament as to this point, and explained, in effect, that he agreed with the Russian demands, with the possible exception of the indemnity. The Russian minister informed the Persian Government that this ultimatum was based on the following two grounds: First, that I had appointed a certain Mr. Lecoffre, a British subject, to be a tax collector in the Russian sphere of influence; and, second, that I had caused to be printed and circulated in Persia a translation into Persian of my letter to the London _Times_ of October 21, 1911, thereby greatly injuring Russian influence in northern Persia. These grounds might be classified as "unimportant, if true." The truth is, however, that they are both well known to have been utterly unfounded in fact. I did not appoint Mr. Lecoffre, a British subject, to a financial post in northern Persia. I found him in the Finance Department at Teheran (the capital, which is in the so-called Russian sphere) when I arrived there last May, and he had been occupying an important position there for nearly two years, without the slightest objection ever having been raised by the Russian Government. I proposed to transfer him to a somewhat less important position, but one in which I thought he could be of greater service. As to the second ground or pretext, in effect, that I had caused to be printed and circulated a Persian translation of my letter to the _Times_, it was simply false. It was well known to be false--so well known, in fact, that a newspaper in Teheran, the _Tamadun_ (_Civilization_) which did print it and circulate it, publicly admitted the fact the minute they heard that I was charged by Russia with having done so. So these two at best rather puerile pretexts upon which to base an ultimatum from a powerful nation to a weaker one lacked even the merit of truth. This second ultimatum, despite all hypocritical attempts made to justify it, fairly stunned the Persian people. Accustomed as they had become in recent years to the high-handed and cynical actions of the St. Petersburg cabinet, they had not looked for such a foul blow as this. They had been realizing dimly that the peace of Europe was being threatened by the open hostility of Germany and England over the Moroccan incident, and that British foreign policy was apparently leaving Russia absolutely free to work her will in Asia, so long, at least, as Russia pretended to acknowledge the. Anglo-Russian _entente_ of 1907; but the Persian people had too much, far too much, confidence in the sacredness of treaty stipulations and the solemnly pledged words of the great Christian nations of the world to imagine that their own whole national existence and liberty could be jeopardized overnight, and on a pretext so shallow and farcical as to excite world-wide ridicule. Their disillusionment came too late. The trap had been unwittingly set by hands that made unexpected moves on the European chessboard, and the Bear's paw had this time been skilful enough to spring it at the proper moment. The Persian statesmen and chieftains who formed the cabinet at this time, whether because they perceived the gleaming, naked steel behind Russia's threats more clearly than their legislative compatriots of the Parliament or Medjlis, or whether they suffered from that abandon and tired feeling which comes from playing an unequal and always losing game, quickly decided that they would accept this second ultimatum with all its future oppression and cruelty for their people. On December 1st, therefore, shortly before the time limit of forty-eight hours fixed by Russia for the acceptance of the terms had expired, the cabinet filed into the chamber of deputies to secure legislative approval of their intended course. It was an hour before noon, and the Parliament grounds and buildings were filled with eager, excited throngs, while the galleries of the Medjlis chamber were packed with Persian notables of all ranks and with the representatives of many of the foreign legations. At noon the fate of Persia as a nation was to be known. The cabinet, having made up its mind to yield, overlooked no point that would increase their chances of securing the approval of the Medjlis. Believing, evidently, that the ridiculously short time to elapse before the stroke of noon announced the expiration of the forty-eight-hour period would effectually prevent any mature consideration or discussion of their proposals, the premier, Samsamu's-Saltana, caused to be presented to the deputies a resolution authorizing the cabinet to accept Russia's demands. The proposal was read amid a deep silence. At its conclusion, a hush fell upon the gathering. Seventy-six deputies, old men and young, priests, lawyers, doctors, merchants, and princes, sat tense in their seats. A venerable priest of Islam arose. Time was slipping away and at noon the question would be beyond their vote to decide. This servant of God spoke briefly and to the point: "It may be the will of Allah that our liberty and our sovereignty shall be taken from us by force, but let us not sign them away with our own hands!" One gesture of appeal with his trembling hands, and he resumed his seat. Simple words, these, yet winged ones. Easy to utter in academic discussions; hard, bitterly hard, to say under the eye of a cruel and overpowering tyrant whose emissaries watched the speaker from the galleries and mentally marked him down for future imprisonment, torture, exile, or worse. Other deputies followed. In dignified appeals, brief because the time was short, they upheld their country's honor and proclaimed their hard-earned right to live and govern themselves. A few minutes before noon the public vote was taken; one or two faint-hearted members sought a craven's refuge and slunk quietly from the chamber. As each name was called, the deputy rose in his place and gave his vote, there was no secret ballot here. And when the roll-call was ended, every man, priest or layman, youth or octogenarian, had cast his own die of fate, had staked the safety of himself and family, and hurled back into the teeth of the great Bear from the north the unanimous answer of a desperate and downtrodden people who preferred a future of unknown terror to the voluntary sacrifice of their national dignity and of their recently earned right to work out their own salvation. Amid tears and applause from the spectators, the crestfallen and frightened cabinet withdrew, while the deputies dispersed to ponder on the course which lay darkly before their people. By this vote, the cabinet, according to the Persian constitution, ceased to exist as a legal entity. Great crowds of people thronged the "Lalezar," one of the principal streets of Teheran, shouting death to the traitors and calling Allah to witness that they would give up their lives for their country. A few days later, in a secret conference between the deputies of the Medjlis and the members of the deposed cabinet, a similar vote was given to reject the Russian demands. Meanwhile, thousands of Russian troops, with cossacks and artillery, were pouring into northern Persia, from Tiflis and Julfa by land and from Baku across the Caspian, to the Persian port of Enzeli, whence they took up their 220-mile march over the Elburz mountains toward Kasvin and Teheran. In the government at Teheran, conference followed conference. Intrigues against the deputies gave way to threats. Through it all, with the increasing certainty of personal injury, the members of the Medjlis stood firmly by their vote. It is impossible to describe within the limits of this article the days and nights of doubt, suspense, and anxiety that followed one another in the capital during this dark month of December. There was a lurking dread in the very air, and the snow-covered mountains themselves seemed afflicted with the mournful scenes through which the country was passing. A boycott was proclaimed by the priests against Russian and English goods. In a day, the old-fashioned tramway of the city was deserted on the mere suspicion that it was owned in Russia, while an excited Belgian Minister rained protests and petitions on the Persian Foreign Office in an endeavor to show that the tramway was owned by his countrymen. Crowds of youths, students, and women filled the street, dragging absent-minded passengers from the cars, smashing the windows of shops that still displayed Russian goods, seeing that no one drank tea because it came from Russia, although produced in India, and going in processions before the gates of the foreign legations to demand justice of the representatives of the world powers for a people in the extremity of despair. One day, the rumor would come that the chief "mullahs" or priests at Nadjef had proclaimed the "holy war" (_jihad_) against the Russians; on another, that the Russian troops had commenced to shoot up Kasvin on their march to Teheran. At one time, when rumors were thick that the Medjlis would give in under the threats and attempted bribery which well-known Russian proteges were employing on many of its members, three hundred veiled and black-gowned Persian women, a large proportion with pistols concealed under their skirts or in the folds of their sleeves, marched suddenly to the Parliament grounds and demanded admission to the Chamber. The president of the Medjlis consented to receive a deputation from them. Once admitted into his presence, these honor-loving Persian mothers, wives, and daughters exhibited their weapons, and to show the grim seriousness of their words, they tore aside their veils, and threatened that they would kill their own husbands and sons, and end their own lives, if the deputies failed in their duty to uphold the dignity and the sovereignty of their beloved country. When neither threats nor bribes availed against the Medjlis, Russia decreed its destruction by force. In the early afternoon of December 24th, the deposed cabinet, having been themselves duly _persuaded_ to take the step, executed a _coup d'état_ against the Medjlis, and by a demonstration of gendarmes and Bakhtiyari tribesmen, succeeded in expelling all the deputies and employees who were within the Parliament grounds; after which the gates were locked and barred, and a strong detachment of the so-called Royal Regiment left in charge. The deputies were threatened with death if they attempted to return there or to meet in any other spot, and the city of Teheran immediately passed under military control. The self-constituted _directoire_ of seven who accomplished this dubious feat first ascertained that the considerable force of Bakhtiyari tribesmen, some 2,000, who had remained in the capital after the defeat of the ex-Shah's forces in September last, had been duly "fixed" by the same Russian agencies who had so early succeeded in persuading the members of the ex-cabinet that their true interests lay in siding with Russia. It is impossible to say just what proportions of fear and cupidity decided the members of the deposed cabinet to take the aliens' side against their country, but both emotions undoubtedly played a part. The premier was one of the leading chiefs or "khans" of the Bakhtiyaris, and another chief was the self-styled Minister of War. These chieftains have always been a strange and changing mixture of mountain patriot and city intriguer--of loyal soldier and mercenary looter. The mercenary instincts, possibly aided by a sense of their own comparative helplessness against Russian Cossacks and artillery, led them to accept the stranger's gold and fair promises, and they ended their checkered but theretofore relatively honorable careers by selling their country for a small pile of cash and the more alluring promise that the "grand viziership" (_i.e.,_ post of Minister of Finance) should be perpetual in their family or clan. That same afternoon a large number of the "abolished" deputies came to my office. They were men whom I had grown to know well, men of European education, in whose courage, integrity, and patriotism I had the fullest confidence. To them, the unlawful action of their own countrymen was more than a political catastrophe; it was a sacrilege, a profanation, a heinous crime. They came in tears, with broken voices, with murder in their hearts, torn by the doubt as to whether they should kill the members of the _directoire_ and drive out the traitorous tribesmen who had made possible the destruction of the government, or adopt the truly Oriental idea of killing themselves. They asked my advice, and, hesitating somewhat as to whether I should interfere to save the lives of notorious betrayers of their country, I finally persuaded them to do neither the one nor the other. There seemed to be no particular good in assassinating even their treacherous countrymen, as it would only have given color to the pretensions of Russia and England that the Persians were not capable of maintaining order. AN EXHIBITION OF SELF-RESTRAINT When the last representative element of the constitutional government, for which so many thousands had fought, suffered, and died, was wiped out in an hour without a drop of blood being shed, the Persian people gave to the world an exhibition of temperance, of moderation, of stern self-restraint, the like of which no other civilized country could show under similar trying circumstances. The acceptance of Russia's terms by the Cabinet removed the last pretext for keeping in Northern Persia the _15,000_ troops which by that time Russia had assembled there,--at Kasvin, Resht, Enzeli, Tabriz, Khoy, and other points in the so-called Russian sphere. Mons. Poklewski-Koziell, the Russian Minister, had in fact given an equivocal sort of a promise to the effect that "if no fresh incidents arose," the Russian troops would be withdrawn when Persia accepted the conditions of the ultimatum. With this in mind, it is interesting to note the truly thorough precautions which were taken by Russia to prevent any such unfortunate necessity as the withdrawal of her troops from coming to pass. December 24th, late in the evening, a message was received from the Persian Acting Governor at Tabriz in which he declared that the Russian troops, which had been stationed in that city since their entry during the siege in 1909, _had suddenly started to massacre the inhabitants_. Shortly after this the Indo-European telegraph lines stopped working, and all news from Tabriz ceased. It was subsequently stated that the wires had been cut by bullets. _Additional Russian troops_ were immediately started for Tabriz from Julfa, which is some eight miles to the north of the Russian frontier. The exact way in which the fighting began is not yet clear. The Persian government reports show that a number of Russian soldiers, claiming to be stringing a telephone wire, climbed upon the roof of the Persian police headquarters about _ten o'clock at night_ on December 20th. When challenged by native guards, they replied with shots. Reenforcements were called up by both sides, and serious street fighting broke out early the following morning and continued for several days. The Acting Governor stated in his official reports that the Russian troops indulged in their usual atrocities, killing women and children and hundreds of other noncombatants on the streets and in their homes. There were at the time about 4,000 Russian soldiers, with two batteries of artillery, in and around the city. Nearly I,000 of the _fidais_ ("self-devoted") of Tabriz took refuge in an old citadel of stone and mud, called the "Ark." They were without artillery or adequate provisions, and were poorly armed, but it was certain death for one of them to be seen on the streets. The Russians bombarded the "Ark" for a day or more, killing a large proportion of its defenders. The superior numbers and the artillery of the Russians finally conquered, and there followed a reign of terror during which no Persian's life or honor was safe. At one time during this period the Russian Minister at Teheran, at the request of the members of the Persian cabinet, who were horror-stricken and in fear of their lives for having made terms with such a barbaric nation, telegraphed to the Russian general in command of the troops at Tabriz, telling him to cease fighting, and that the _fidais_ would receive orders to do likewise, as matters were being arranged at the capital. The gallant general replied that he took his orders from the Viceroy of the Caucasus at Tiflis, and not from any one at Teheran. The massacre went on. On New Year's day, which was the 10th of _Muharram_, a day of great mourning which is held sacred in the Persian religious calendar, the Russian military governor, who had hoisted Russian flags over the government buildings at Tabriz, hung the Sikutu'l-Islam, who was the chief priest of Tabriz, two other priests, and five others, among them several high officials of the Provincial Government. As one British journalist put it, the effect of this outrage on the Persians was that which would be produced on the English people by the hanging of the Archbishop of Canterbury on Good Friday. From this time on, the Russians at Tabriz continued to hang or shoot any Persian whom they chose to consider guilty of the crime of being a "Constitutionalist." When the fighting there was first reported, a high official of the Foreign Office at St. Petersburg, in an interview to the press, made the statement that Russia would take vengeance into her own hands until the "revolutionary dregs" had been exterminated. One more significant fact: At the same time that the fighting broke out at Tabriz, the Russian troops at Resht and Enzeli, hundreds of miles away, shot down the Persian police and many inhabitants without warning or provocation of any kind. And the date also happened to be just after the Persian cabinet had definitely informed the Russian Legation that all the demands of Russia's ultimatum were accepted--a condition which the British Government had publicly assured the Persians would be followed by the withdrawal of the Russian invading forces, and which the Russian Government had officially confirmed, "_unless fresh incidents should arise_ in the mean time to make the retention of the troops advisable." I would suggest that the Powers--England and Russia--may _think_ that they thus escape all responsibility for what goes on in Persia, but the world has long since grown familiar with such methods. Mere cant, however seriously put forth in official statements, no longer blinds educated public opinion as to the facts in these acts of international brigandage. The truth is that England and Russia are still playing a hand in the game of medieval diplomacy. The puerility of talking of Persia having affronted Russian consular officers or of Persia's Treasurer-General having appointed a British subject to be a tax collector at Tabriz, as the reasons for Russia's aggressive and brutal policy in Persia, is only too apparent. Volumes would not contain the bare record of the acts of aggression, deceit, and cruelty which Russian agents have committed against Persian sovereignty and the constitutional government since the deposition of Muhammad Ali in 1909. DISCOVERY OF THE SOUTH POLE A.D. 1911 ROALD AMUNDSEN On December 16, 1911, a Norwegian exploring party headed by Captain Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole. The discovery thus followed with surprising closeness after Peary's triumph in reaching the North Pole in 1909. Antarctic exploration had never attracted so much attention as that of the far north; partly because an almost impossible ice barrier a hundred feet high was known to extend across the southern ocean at about the parallel of the Antarctic Circle. In 1908, however, an English expedition under Lieutenant Shackleton managed to penetrate beyond this barrier in the region south of New Zealand and reached to within less than two hundred miles of the pole. They established the fact that in contrast to the deep waters which flow above the northern Pole, the southern Pole is raised upon an Antarctic mountain continent many thousand feet in height. Shackleton's success led to several other expeditions, and in 1910 three separate parties made almost simultaneous efforts to reach the Pole, one from Japan and one from England, as well as the Norwegian one. We give here Captain Amundsen's own account of his expedition as first explained by him before the Berlin Geographical Society and published by the New York Geographical Society in their bulletin. The glowing success of Amundsen's expedition throws into sharpest relief the tragedy of the parallel English expedition. Captain Scott, the leader of this party, also reached the Pole after a far more desperate struggle. But he reached it on January 18, 1912, only to find that his Norwegian rival had preceded him, and he and his entire party died of starvation and exhaustion on their return journey toward their camp. The first aim of my expedition was the attainment of the South Pole. I have the honor to report the accomplishment of the plan. I can only mention briefly here the expeditions which have worked in the region which we had selected for our starting-point. As we wished to reach the South Pole our first problem was to go south as far as possible with our ship and there establish our station. Even so, the sled journeys would be long enough. I knew that the English expedition would again choose their old winter quarters in McMurdo Sound, South Victoria Land, as their starting-point. From newspaper report it was known that the Japanese had selected King Edward VII. Land. In order to avoid these two expeditions we had to establish our station on the Great Ice Barrier as far as possible from the starting-points of the two other expeditions. The Great Ice Barrier, also called the Ross Barrier, lies between South Victoria Land and King Edward VII. Land and has an extent of about 515 miles. The first to reach this mighty ice formation was Sir James Clark Ross in 1841. He did not dare approach the great ice wall, 100 feet high, with his two sailing ships, the _Erebus_ and the _Terror_, whose progress southward was impeded by this mighty obstacle. He examined the ice wall from a distance, however, as far as possible. His observations showed that the Barrier is not a continuous, abrupt ice wall, but is interrupted by bays and small channels. On Ross's map a bay of considerable magnitude may be seen. The next expedition was that of the _Southern Cross_ in 1900. It is interesting to note that this party found the bay mentioned above at the same place where Ross had seen it in 1841, nearly sixty years before; that this expedition also was able to land a few miles to the east of the large bay in a small bay, named Balloon Bight, and from there to ascend the Ice Barrier, which heretofore had been considered an insurmountable obstacle to further advance toward the south. In 1901 the _Discovery_ steamed along the Barrier and confirmed in every respect what the _Southern Cross_ had observed. Land was also discovered in the direction indicated by Ross, namely, King Edward VII. Land. Scott, too, landed in Balloon Bight, and, like his predecessors, saw the large bay to the west. In 1908 Shackleton arrived there on the _Nimrod_. He, too, followed along the edge of the Ice Barrier. He came to the conclusion that disturbances had taken place in the Ice Barrier. The shore line of Balloon Bight, he thought, had changed and merged with the large bay to the west. This large bay, which he thought to be of recent origin, he named Bay of Whales. He gave up his original plan of landing there, as the Ice Barrier appeared to him too dangerous for the establishment of winter quarters. It was not difficult to determine that the bay shown on Ross's map and the so-called Bay of Whales are identical; it was only necessary to compare the two maps. Except for a few pieces that had broken off from the Barrier, the bay had remained the same for the last seventy years. It was therefore possible to assume that the bay did not owe its origin to chance and that it must be underlaid by land, either in the form of sand banks or otherwise. This bay we decided upon as our base of operations. It lies 400 miles from the English station in McMurdo Sound and 115 miles from King Edward VII. Land. We could therefore assume that we should be far enough from the English sphere of interest and need not fear crossing the route of the English expedition. The reports concerning the Japanese station on King Edward VII. Land were indefinite: we took it for granted, however, that a distance of 115 miles would suffice. On August 9, 1910, we left Norway on the _Fram_, the ship that had originally been built for Nansen. We had ninety-seven superb Eskimo dogs and provisions for two years. The first harbor we reached was Madeira. There the last preparations were made for our voyage on the Ross Barrier--truly not an insignificant distance which we had to cover, namely, 16,000 nautical miles from Norway to the Bay of Whales. We had estimated that this trip would require five months. The _Fram_, which has justly been called the stanchest polar ship in the world, on this voyage across practically all of the oceans, proved herself to be extremely seaworthy. Thus we traversed without a single mishap the regions of the northeast and of the southeast trades, the stormy seas of the "roaring forties," the fogs of the fifties, the ice-filled sixties, and reached our field of work at the Ice Barrier on January 14, 1911. Everything had gone splendidly. The ice in the Bay of Whales had just broken up, and we were able to advance considerably farther south than any of our predecessors had done. We found a quiet little nook behind a projecting ice cape; from here we could transfer our equipment to the Barrier with comparative safety. Another great advantage was that the Barrier at this place descended very gradually to the sea ice, so that we had the best possible surface for our sleds. Our first undertaking was to ascend the Barrier in order to get a general survey and to determine a suitable place for the erection of the house which we had brought with us. The supposition that this part of the Barrier rests on land seemed to be confirmed immediately by our surroundings. Instead of the smooth, flat surface which the outer wall of the Barrier presents, we here found the surface to be very uneven. We everywhere saw sharp hills, and points between which there were pressure-cracks and depressions filled with large masses of drift. These features were not of recent date. On the contrary, it was easy to see that they were very old and that they must have had their origin at a time which long preceded the period of Ross's visit. Originally we had planned to establish our station several miles from the edge of the Barrier, in order not to subject ourselves to the danger of an unwelcome and involuntary sea trip, which might have occurred had the part of the Barrier on which we erected our house broken off. This precaution, however, was not necessary, as the features which we observed on our first examination of the area offered a sufficient guaranty for the stability of the Barrier at this point. In a small valley, hardly two and a half miles from the ship's anchorage, we therefore selected a place for our winter quarters. It was protected from the wind on all sides. On the next day we began unloading the ship. We had brought with us material for house-building as well as equipment and provisions for nine men for several years. We divided into two groups, the ship's group and the land group. The first was composed of the commander of the ship, Captain Nilsen, and the nine men who were to stay on board to take the _Fram_ out of the ice and to Buenos Aires. The other group consisted of the men who were to occupy the winter quarters and march on to the south. The ship's group had to unload everything from the ship upon the ice. There the land group took charge of the cargo and brought it to the building site. At first we were rather unaccustomed to work, as we had had little exercise on the long sea voyage. But before long we were all "broken in," and then the transfer to the site of our home "Framheim" went on rapidly; the house grew daily. When all the material had been landed our skilled carpenters, Olav Bjaaland and Jorgen Stubberud, began building the house. It was a ready-made house, which we had brought with us; nothing had to be done but to put together the various numbered parts. In order that the house might brave all storms, its bottom rested in an excavation four feet beneath the surface. On January 28th, fourteen days after our arrival, the house was completed, and all provisions had been landed. A gigantic task had been performed; everything seemed to point toward a propitious future. But no time was to be lost; we had to make use of every minute. The land group had in the mean time been divided into two parties, one of which saw to it that the provisions and equipment still lacking were taken out of the ship. The other party was to prepare for an excursion toward the south which had in view the exploration of the immediate environs and the establishment of a depot. On February 10th the latter group marched south. There were four of us with eighteen dogs and three sleds packed with provisions. That morning of our start is still vividly in my memory. The weather was calm, the sky hardly overcast. Before us lay the large, unlimited snow plain, behind us the Bay of Whales with its projecting ice capes and at its entrance our dear ship, the _Fram_. On board the flag was hoisted; it was the last greeting from our comrades of the ship. No one knew whether and when we should see each other again. In all probability our comrades would no longer be there when we returned; a year would probably elapse before we could meet again. One more glance backward, one more parting greeting and then--forward. Our first advance on the Barrier was full of excitement and suspense. So many questions presented themselves: What will be the nature of the region we have to cross? How will the sleds behave? Will our equipment meet the requirements of the situation? Have we the proper hauling power? If we were to accomplish our object, everything had to be of the best. Our equipment was substantially different from that of our English competitors. We placed our whole trust on Eskimo dogs and skis, while the English, as a result of their own experience, had abandoned dogs as well as skis, but, on the other hand, were well equipped with motor-sleds and ponies. We advanced rapidly on the smooth, white snow plain. On February 14th we reached 80° S. We had thus covered ninety-nine miles. We established a depot here mainly of 1,300 pounds of provisions which we intended to use on our main advance to the south in the spring. The return journey occupied two days; on the first we covered forty miles and on the second fifty-seven miles. When we reached our station the _Fram_ had already left. The bay was lonely and deserted; only seals and penguins were in possession of the place. The first excursion to the south, although brief, was of great importance to us. We now knew definitely that our equipment and our pulling power were eminently suited to the demands upon them. In their selection no mistake had been made. It was now for us to make use of everything to the best advantage. Our sojourn at the station was only a short one. On February 22d we were ready again to carry supplies to a more southern depot. We intended to push this depot as far south as possible. On this occasion our expedition consisted of eight men, seven sleds, and forty-two dogs. Only the cook remained at "Framheim." On February 27th, we passed the depot which we had established at 80° S.; we found everything in the best of order. On March 4th we reached the eighty-first parallel and deposited there 1,150 pounds of provisions. Three men returned from here to the station while the five others continued toward the south and reached the eighty-second parallel on March 8th, depositing there 1,375 pounds of provisions. We then returned, and on March 22d were again at home. Before the winter began we made another excursion to the depot in 80° S., and added to our supplies there 2,400 pounds of fresh salt meat and 440 pounds of other provisions. On April 11th we returned from this excursion; this ended all of our work connected with the establishment of depots. Up to that date we had carried out 6,700 pounds of provisions and had distributed these in three repositories. The part of the Barrier over which we had gone heretofore has an average height of 165 feet and looked like a flat plain which continued with slight undulations without any marked features that could have served for orientation. It has heretofore been the opinion that on such an endless plain no provisions can be cached without risking their loss. If we were, however, to have the slightest chance of reaching our goal we had to establish depots, and that to as great an extent as possible. This question was discussed among us, and we decided to establish signs across our route, and not along it, as has been generally done heretofore. We therefore set up a row of signs at right angles to our route, that is, in an east-west direction from our depots. Two of these signs were placed on opposite sides of each of the three depots, at a distance of 5.6 miles (9 kilometers) from them; and between the signs and the depot two flags were erected for every kilometer. In addition, all flags were marked so that we might know the direction and distance of the depot to which it referred. This provision proved entirely trustworthy; we were able to find our depots even in dense fog. Our compasses and pedometers were tested at the station; we knew that we could rely upon them. By our excursions to the depots we had gained a great deal. We had not only carried a large amount of provisions toward the south, but we had also gained valuable experience. That was worth more and was to be of value to us on our final advance to the Pole. The lowest temperature we had observed on these depot excursions was -50° Centigrade. The fact that it was still summer when we recorded this temperature warned us to see that our equipment was in good condition. We also realized that our heavy sleds were too unwieldy and that they could easily be made much lighter. This criticism was equally applicable to the greater part of our equipment. Several days before the disappearance of the sun were devoted to hunting seal. The total weight of the seals killed amounted to 132,000 pounds. We therefore had ample provisions for ourselves as well as for our 115 dogs. Our next problem was to supply a protective roof for our dogs. We had brought with us ten large tents in which sixteen men could easily find room. They were set up on the Ice Barrier; the snow was then dug out to a depth of six and a half feet inside the tents, so that each dog hut was nearly twenty feet high. The diameter of a dog hut on the ground was sixteen feet. We made these huts spacious so that they might be as airy as possible, and thus avert the frost which is so injurious to dogs. Our purpose was entirely attained, for even in the severest weather no dogs were frozen. The tents were always warm and comfortable. Twelve dogs were housed in each, and every man had to take care of his own pack. After we had seen to the wants of the dogs we could then think of ourselves. As early as April the house was entirely covered by snow. In this newly drifted snow, passageways were dug connecting directly with the dog huts. Ample room was thus at our disposal without the need on our part of furnishing building material. We had workshops, a blacksmith shop, a room for sewing, one for packing, a storage room for coal, wood, and oil, a room for regular baths and one for steam baths. The winter might be as cold and stormy as it would; it could do us no harm. On April 21st the sun disappeared and the longest night began which had ever been experienced by man in the Antarctic. We did not need to fear the long night, for we were well equipped with provisions for years and had a comfortable, well-ventilated, well-situated and protected house. In addition we had our splendid bathroom where we could take a bath every week. It really was a veritable sanatorium. After these arrangements had been completed we began preparations for the main advance in the following spring. We had to improve our equipment and make it lighter. We discarded all our sleds, for they were too heavy and unwieldy for the smooth surface of the Ice Barrier. Our sleds weighed 165 pounds each. Bjaaland, our ski and sledmaker, took the sleds in hand, and when spring arrived he had entirely made over our sledge equipment. These sleds weighed only one-third as much as the old ones. In the same way it was possible to reduce the weight of all other items of our equipment. Packing the provisions for the sledge journey was of the greatest importance. Captain Johansen attended to this work during the winter. Each of the 42,000 loaves of hard bread had to be handled separately before it could be assigned to its proper place. In this way the winter passed quickly and agreeably. All of us were occupied all the time. Our house was warm, dry, light and airy, and we all enjoyed the best of health. We had no physician and needed none. Meteorological observations were taken continuously. The results were surprising. We had thought that we should have disagreeable, stormy weather, but this was not the case. During the whole year of our sojourn at the station we experienced only two moderate storms. The rest of the time light breezes prevailed, mainly from an easterly direction. Atmospheric pressure was as a rule very low, but remained constant. The temperature sank considerably, and I deem it probable that the mean annual temperature which we recorded, -26° Centigrade, is the lowest mean temperature which has ever been observed. During five months of the year we recorded temperatures below -50° Centigrade. On August 23d the lowest temperature was recorded, -59°. The _aurora australis_, corresponding to the northern lights of the Arctic, was observed frequently and in all directions and forms. This phenomenon changed very rapidly, but, except in certain cases, was not very intensive. On August 24th the sun reappeared. The winter had ended. Several days earlier we had put everything in the best of order, and when the sun rose over the Barrier we were ready to start. The dogs were in fine condition. From now on we observed the temperature daily with great interest, for as long as the mercury remained below -50° a start was not to be thought of. In the first days of September all signs indicated that the mercury would rise. We therefore resolved to start as soon as possible. On September 8th the temperature was -30°. We started immediately, but this march was to be short. On the next day the temperature began to sink rapidly, and several days later the thermometer registered -55° Centigrade. We human beings could probably have kept on the march for some time under such a temperature, for we were protected against the cold by our clothing; but the dogs could not have long withstood this degree of cold. We were therefore glad when we reached the eightieth parallel. We deposited there our provisions and equipment in the depot which we had previously erected and returned to "Framheim." The weather now became very changeable for a time--the transitional period from winter to summer; we never knew what weather the next day would bring. Frostbites from our last march forced us to wait until we definitely knew that spring had really come. On September 24th we saw at last positive evidence that spring had arrived: the seals began to clamber up on the ice. This sign was hailed with rejoicing--not a whit less the seal meat which Bjaaland brought on the same day. The dogs, too, enjoyed the arrival of spring. They were ravenous for fresh seal meat. On September 29th another unrefutable sign of spring appeared in the arrival of a flock of Antarctic petrels. They flew around our house inquisitively to the joy of all, not only of ourselves, but also of the dogs. The latter were wild with joy and excitement, and ran after the birds in hopes of getting a delicate morsel. Foolish dogs! Their chase ended with a wild fight among themselves. On October 20th the weather had at last become so stable that we could start. We had, meanwhile, changed our original plan, which was that we should all advance southward together. We realized that we could travel with perfect safety in two groups, and thus accomplish much more. We arranged that three men should go to the east to explore King Edward VII. Land; the remaining five men were to carry out the main plan, the advance on the South Pole. October 20th was a beautiful day. Clear, mild weather prevailed. The temperature was 1° Centigrade above zero. Our sleds were light, and we could advance rapidly. We did not need to hurry our dogs, for they were eager enough themselves. We numbered five men and fifty-two dogs with four sleds. Together with the provisions which we had left in the three depots at the eightieth, the eighty-first, and the eighty-second parallels we had sufficient sustenance for 120 days. Two days after our departure we nearly met with a serious accident. Bjaaland's sled fell into one of the numerous crevasses. At the critical moment we were fortunately able to come to Bjaaland's aid; had we been a moment later the sled with its thirteen dogs would have disappeared in the seemingly bottomless pit. On the fourth day we reached our depot at 80° S. We remained there two days and gave our dogs as much seal meat as they would eat. Between the eightieth and the eighty-first parallel the Barrier ice along our route was even, with the exception of a few low undulations; dangerous hidden places were not to be found. The region between the eighty-first and the eighty-second parallel was of a totally different character. During the first nineteen miles we were in a veritable labyrinth of crevasses, very dangerous to cross. At many places yawning abysses were visible because large pieces of the surface had broken off; the surface, therefore, presented a very unsafe appearance. We crossed this region four times in all. On the first three times such a dense fog prevailed that we could only recognize objects a few feet away. Only on the fourth occasion did we have clear weather. Then we were able to see the great difficulties to which we had been exposed. On November 5th we reached the depot at the eighty-second parallel and found everything in order. For the last time our dogs were able to have a good rest and eat their fill; and they did so thoroughly during their two days' rest. Beginning at the eightieth parallel we constructed snow cairns which should serve as sign-posts on our return. In all we erected 150 such sign-posts, each of which required sixty snow blocks. About 9,000 snow blocks had therefore to be cut out for this purpose. These cairns did not disappoint us, for they enabled us to return by exactly the same route we had previously followed. South of the eighty-second parallel the Barrier was, if possible, still more even than farther north; we therefore advanced quite rapidly. At every unit parallel which we crossed on our advance toward the south we established a depot. We thereby doubtlessly exposed ourselves to a certain risk, for there was no time to set up sign-posts around the depots. We therefore had to rely on snow cairns. On the other hand, our sleds became lighter, so that it was never hard for the dogs to pull them. When we reached the eighty-third parallel we saw land in a southwesterly direction. This could only be South Victoria Land, probably a continuation of the mountain range which runs in a southeasterly direction and which is shown on Shackleton's map. From now on the landscape changed more and more from day to day: one mountain after another loomed up, one always higher than the other. Their average elevation was 10,000 to 16,000 feet. Their crest-line was always sharp; the peaks were like needles. I have never seen a more beautiful, wild, and imposing landscape. Here a peak would appear with somber and cold outlines, its head buried in the clouds; there one could see snow fields and glaciers thrown together in hopeless confusion. On November 11th we saw land to the south and could soon determine that a mountain range, whose position is about 86° S. and 163° W., crosses South Victoria Land in an easterly and northeasterly direction. This mountain range is materially lower than the mighty mountains of the rest of South Victoria Land. Peaks of an elevation of 1,800 to 4,000 feet were the highest. We could see this mountain chain as far as the eighty-fourth parallel, where it disappeared below the horizon. On November 17th we reached the place where the Ice Barrier ends and the land begins. We had proceeded directly south from our winter quarters to this point. We were now in 85° 7' S. and 165° W. The place where we left the Barrier for the land offered no special difficulties. A few extended undulating reaches of ice had to be crossed which were interrupted by crevasses here and there. Nothing could impede our advance. It was our plan to go due south from "Framheim" and not to deviate from this direction unless we should be forced to by obstacles which nature might place in our path. If our plan succeeded it would be our privilege to explore completely unknown regions and thereby to accomplish valuable geographic work. The immediate ascent due south into the mountainous region led us between the high peaks of South Victoria Land. To all intents and purposes no great difficulties awaited us here. To be sure, we should probably have found a less steep ascent if we had gone over to the newly discovered mountain range just mentioned. But as we maintained the principle that direct advance due south was the shortest way to our goal, we had to bear the consequences. At this place we established our principal depot and left provisions for thirty days. On our four sleds we took provisions with us for sixty days. And now we began the ascent to the plateau. The first part of the way led us over snow-covered mountain slopes, which at times were quite steep, but not so much so as to prevent any of us from hauling up his own sled. Farther up, we found several glaciers which were not very broad but were very steep. Indeed, they were so steep that we had to harness twenty dogs in front of each sled. Later the glaciers became more frequent, and they lay on slopes so steep that it was very hard to ascend them on our skis. On the first night we camped at a spot which lay 2,100 feet above sea level. On the second day we continued to climb up the mountains, mainly over several small glaciers. Our next camp for the night was at an altitude of 4,100 feet above the sea. On the third day we made the disagreeable discovery that we should have to descend 2,100 feet, as between us and the higher mountains to the south lay a great glacier which crossed our path from east to west. This could not be helped. The expedition therefore descended with the greatest possible speed and in an incredibly short time we were down on the glacier, which was named Axel Heiberg Glacier. Our camp of this night lay at about 3,100 feet above sea level. On the following day the longest ascent began; we were forced to follow Axel Heiberg Glacier. At several places ice blocks were heaped up so that its surface was hummocky and cleft by crevasses. We had therefore to make detours to avoid the wide crevasses which, below, expanded into large basins. These latter, to be sure, were filled with snow; the glacier had evidently long ago ceased to move. The greatest care was necessary in our advance, for we had no inkling as to how thick or how thin the cover of snow might be. Our camp for this night was pitched in an extremely picturesque situation at an elevation of about 5,250 feet above sea level. The glacier was here hemmed in by two mountains which were named "Fridtjof Nansen" and "Don Pedro Christophersen," both 16,000 feet high. Farther down toward the west at the end of the glacier "Ole Engelstad Mountain" rises to an elevation of about 13,000 feet. At this relatively narrow place the glacier was very hummocky and rent by many deep crevasses, so that we often feared that we could not advance farther. On the following day we reached a slightly inclined plateau which we assumed to be the same which Shackleton describes. Our dogs accomplished a feat on this day which is so remarkable that it should be mentioned here. After having already done heavy work on the preceding days, they covered nineteen miles on this day and overcame a difference in altitude of 5,700 feet. On the following night we camped at a place which lay 10,800 feet above sea level. The time had now come when we were forced to kill some of our dogs. Twenty-four of our faithful comrades had to die. The place where this happened was named the "Slaughter House." On account of bad weather we had to stay here for four days. During this stay both we and the dogs had nothing except dog meat to eat. When we could at last start again on November 26th, the meat of ten dogs only remained. This we deposited at our camp; fresh meat would furnish a welcome change on our return. During the following days we had stormy weather and thick snow flurries, so that we could see nothing of the surrounding country. We observed, however, that we were descending rapidly. For a moment, when the weather improved for a short time, we saw high mountains directly to the east. During the heavy snow squall on November 28th we passed two peculiarly shaped mountains lying in a north-south direction; they were the only ones that we could see on our right hand. These "Helland-Hansen Mountains" were entirely covered by snow and had an altitude of 9,200 feet. Later they served as an excellent landmark for us. On the next day the clouds parted and the sun burst forth. It seemed to us as if we had been transferred to a totally new country. In the direction of our advance rose a large glacier, and to the east of it lay a mountain range running from southeast to northwest. Toward the west, impenetrable fog lay over the glacier and obscured even our immediate surroundings. A measurement by hypsometer gave 8,200 feet for the point lying at the foot of this, the "Devil's Glacier." We had therefore descended 2,600 feet since leaving the "Slaughter House." This was not an agreeable discovery, as we, no doubt, would have to ascend as much again, if not more. We left provisions here for six days and continued our march. From the camp of that night we had a superb view of the eastern mountain range. Belonging to it we saw a mountain of more wonderful form than I have ever seen before. The altitude of the mountain was 12,300 feet; its peaks roundabout were covered by a glacier. It looked as if Nature, in a fit of anger, had dropped sharp cornered ice blocks on the mountain. This mountain was christened "Helmer-Hansen Mountain," and became our best point of reference. There we saw also the "Oscar Wisting Mountains," the "Olav Bjaaland Mountains," the "Sverre Hassel Mountains," which, dark and red, glittered in the rays of the midnight sun and reflected a white and blue light. In the distance the mountains seen before loomed up romantically; they looked very high when one saw them through the thick clouds and masses of fog which passed over them from time to time and occasionally allowed us to catch glimpses of their mighty peaks and their broken glaciers. For the first time we saw the "Thorvald Nilsen Mountain," which has a height of 16,400 feet. It took us three days to climb the "Devil's Glacier." On the first of December we had left behind us this glacier with its crevasses and bottomless pits and were now at an elevation of 9,350 feet above sea level. In front of us lay an inclined block-covered ice plateau which, in the fog and snow, had the appearance of a frozen lake. Traveling over this "Devil's Ball Room," as we called the plateau, was not particularly pleasant. Southeasterly storms and snow flurries occurred daily, during which we could see absolutely nothing. The floor on which we were walking was hollow beneath us; it sounded as if we were going over empty barrels. We crossed this disagreeable and uncanny region as quickly as was compatible with the great care we had to exercise, for during the whole time we were thinking of the unwelcome possibility of sinking through. On December 6th we reached our highest point--according to hypsometric measurement 11,024 feet above sea level. From there on the interior plateau remained entirely level and of the same elevation. In 88° 23' S. we had reached the place which corresponded to Shackleton's southernmost advance. We camped in 88° 25' S. and established there our last--the tenth--depot, in which we left 220 pounds of provisions. Our way now gradually led downward. The surface was in excellent condition, entirely level, without a single hill or undulation or other obstacle. Our sleds forged ahead to perfection; the weather was beautiful; we daily covered seventeen miles. Nothing prevented us from increasing our daily distance. But we had time enough and ample provisions; we thought it wiser, also, to spare our dogs and not to work them harder than necessary. Without a mishap we reached the eighty-ninth parallel on December 11th. It seemed as if we had come into a region where good weather constantly prevails. The surest sign of continued calm weather was the absolutely level surface. We could push a tent-pole seven feet deep into the snow without meeting with any resistance. This proved clearly enough that the snow had fallen in equable weather; calm must have prevailed or a slight breeze may have blown at the most. Had the weather been variable--calms alternating with storms--snow strata of different density would have formed, a condition which we would immediately have noticed when driving in our tent-poles. Our dead reckoning had heretofore always given the same results as our astronomical observations. During the last eight days of our march we had continuous sunshine. Every day we stopped at noon in order to measure the meridian altitude and every evening we made an observation for azimuth. On December 13th the meridian altitude gave 89° 37', dead reckoning, 89° 38'. In latitude 88° 25' we had been able to make our last good observation of azimuth. Subsequently this method of observation became valueless. As these last observations gave practically the same result and the difference was almost a constant one, we used the observation made in 88° 25' as a basis. We calculated that we should reach our goal on December 14th. December 14th dawned. It seemed to me as if we slept a shorter time, as if we ate breakfast in greater haste, and as if we started earlier on this morning than on the preceding days. As heretofore, we had clear weather, beautiful sunshine, and only a very light breeze. We advanced well. Not much was said. I think that each one of us was occupied with his own thoughts. Probably only one thought dominated us all, a thought which caused us to look eagerly toward the south and to scan the horizon of this unlimited plateau. Were we the first, or----? The distance calculated was covered. Our goal had been reached. Quietly, in absolute silence, the mighty plateau lay stretched out before us. No man had ever yet seen it, no man had ever yet stood on it. In no direction was a sign to be seen. It was indeed a solemn moment when, each of us grasping the flagpole with one hand, we all hoisted the flag of our country on the geographical South Pole, on "King Haakon VII Plateau." During the night, as our watches showed it to be, three of our men went around the camp in a circle 10 geographical miles (11.6 statute miles) in diameter and erected cairns, while the other two men remained in the tent and made hourly astronomical observations of the sun. These gave 89° 55' S. We might well have been satisfied with this result, but we had time to spare and the weather was fine. Why should we not try to make our observations at the Pole itself? On December 16th, therefore, we transported our tent the remaining 5-3/4 miles to the south and camped there. We arranged everything as comfortably as possible in order to make a round of observations during the twenty-four hours. The altitude was measured every hour by four men with the sextant and artificial horizon. These observations will be worked out at the University of Christiania. This tent camp served as the center of a circle which we drew with a radius of 5-1/6 miles [on the circumference of which] cairns were erected. A small tent, which we had brought with us in order to designate the South Pole, was put up here and the Norwegian flag with the pennant of the _Fram_ was hoisted above it. This Norwegian home received the name of "Polheim." According to the observed weather conditions, this tent may remain there for a long time. In it we left a letter addressed to His Majesty, King Haakon VII, in which we reported what we had done. The next person to come there will take the letter with him and see to its delivery. In addition, we left there several pieces of clothing, a sextant, an artificial horizon, and a hypsometer. On December 17th we were ready to return. On our journey to the Pole we had covered 863 miles, according to the measurements of the odometer; our mean daily marches were therefore 15 miles. When we left the Pole we had three sleds and seventeen dogs. We now experienced the great satisfaction of being able to increase our daily rations, a measure which previous expeditions had not been able to carry out, as they were all forced to reduce their rations, and that at an early date. For the dogs, too, the rations were increased, and from time to time they received one of their comrades as additional food. The fresh meat revived the dogs and undoubtedly contributed to the good results of the expedition. One last glance, one last adieu, we sent back to "Polheim." Then we resumed our journey. We still see the flag; it still waves to us. Gradually it diminishes in size and finally entirely disappears from our sight. A last greeting to the Little Norway lying at the South Pole! We left King Haakon VII Plateau, which lay there bathed in sunshine, as we had found it on our outward journey. The mean temperature during our sojourn there was--13° Centigrade. It seemed, however, as though the weather was much milder. I shall not tire you by a detailed description of our return, but shall limit myself to some of the interesting episodes. The splendid weather with which we were favored on our return displayed to us the panorama of the mighty mountain range which is the continuation of the two ranges which unite in 86° S. The newly discovered range runs in a southeasterly direction and culminates in domes of an elevation of 10,000 to over 16,000 feet. In 88° S. this range disappears in the distance below the horizon. The whole complex of newly discovered mountain ranges, which may extend a distance of over 500 miles, has been named the Queen Maud Ranges. We found all of our ten provision depots again. The provisions, of which we finally had a superabundance, were taken with us to the eightieth parallel and cached there. From the eighty-sixth parallel on we did not need to apportion our rations; every one could eat as much as he desired. After an absence of ninety-nine days we reached our winter quarters, "Framheim," on January 25th. We had, therefore, covered the journey of 864 miles in thirty-nine days, during which we did not allow ourselves any days of rest. Our mean daily march, therefore, amounted to 22.1 miles. At the end of our journey two of our sleds were in good condition and eleven dogs healthy and happy. Not once had we needed to help our dogs and to push the sleds ourselves. Our provisions consisted of pemmican, biscuits, desiccated milk, and chocolate. We therefore did not have very much variety, but it was healthful and robust nourishment which built up the body, and it was, of course, just this that we needed. The best proof of this was that we felt well during the whole time and never had reason to complain of our food, a condition which has occurred so often on long sledge journeys and must be considered a sure indication of improper nourishment. Simultaneously with our work on land, scientific observations were made on board the _Fram_ by Captain Nilsen and his companions which probably stamp this expedition as the most valuable of all. The _Fram_ made a voyage from Buenos Aires to the coast of Africa and back, covering a distance of 8,000 nautical miles, during which a series of oceanographical observations was made at no less than sixty stations. The total length of the _Fram's_ journey equaled twice the circumnavigation of the globe. The _Fram_ has successfully braved dangerous voyages which made high demands upon her crew. The trip out of the ice region in the fall of 1911 was of an especially serious character. Her whole complement then comprised only ten men. Through night and fog, through storm and hurricane, through pack ice and between icebergs the _Fram_ had to find her way. One may well say that this was an achievement that can be realized only by experienced and courageous sailors, a deed that honors the whole nation. In conclusion, you will allow me to say that it was these same ten men, who on February 15, 1911, hoisted the flag of their country, the Norwegian flag, on a more southerly point of the earth than the crew of any other ship whose keel ever cleft the waves. This is a worthy record in our record century. Farthest north, farthest south did our dear old _Fram_ penetrate. THE CHINESE REVOLUTION A.D. 1912 ROBERT MACHRAY R.F. JOHNSTON TAI-CHI QUO The story of "China's Awakening" in 1905 was told in our preceding volume. Most startling and most important of the results of this arousing was the sudden successful revolution by which China became a republic. This Chinese Revolution burst into sudden blaze in October, 1911, and reached a triumphant close on February 12, 1912, when the Royal Edict, given in the following article, was proclaimed at Peking. In this remarkable edict the ancient sovereigns of China deliberately abdicated, and declared the Chinese Republic established. We give here the account of the revolution itself and of its causes, by the well-known English writer on Eastern affairs, Robert Machray. Then comes a discussion of the doubtful wisdom of the movement by a European official who has long dwelt in China, Mr. R.F. Johnston, District Officer of Wei-hai-wei. Then a patriotic Chinaman, educated in one of the colleges of America, gives the enthusiastic view of the revolutionists themselves, their opinion of their victories, and their high hopes for the future. ROBERT MACHRAY With Yuan Shih-kai acknowledged as President by both the north and the south, by Peking and Nanking alike, "The Great Republic of China," as it is called by those who have been mainly instrumental in bringing it into being, appears to have established itself, or at least it enters upon the first definite stage of its existence. Thus opens a fresh volume, of extraordinary interest as of incalculable importance, in the history of the Far East. Even in the days of the great and autocratic Dowager Empress, Tzu Hsi, who had no love for "reform," but knew how to accept and adapt herself to the situation, it was evident that a change, deeply influencing the political life and destinies of China, was in process of development. After her death, in 1908, the force and sweep of this momentous movement were still more apparent--it took on the character of something irresistible and inevitable; the only question was whether the change would be accomplished by way of evolution--gradual, orderly, and conservative--or by revolution, or a series of revolutions, probably violent and sanguinary, and perhaps disastrous to the dynasty and the country. The events of the last few months have supplied the answer--at any rate, to a certain extent. A successful revolution has taken place, in which, it is true, many thousands have been killed, but which on the whole has not been attended by the slaughter and carnage that might have been anticipated considering the vastness of the country and the enormous interests involved. Actual warfare gave way to negotiations conducted in a spirit of moderation and of give-and-take on the part of all concerned. The Manchu dynasty has collapsed, though the "Emperor" still remains as a quasi-sacred, priestly personage, and the princes have been pensioned off. The Great Republic of China has come into being, albeit it is in large measure inchoate and, as it were, on trial. China has long been the land of rebellions and risings, and it is hardly to be expected that the novel republican form of government, however well constructed, intentioned, or conducted, will escape altogether from internal attacks. And nearly everything has yet to be done in organization. General surprise has been expressed at the comparative ease and speed with which the revolutionary movement has attained success in driving the Manchus from power and in founding a republican _régime_. The factor which chiefly contributed to this success was undoubtedly the weakness of the Manchu dynasty and of the Imperial Clan, who, hated by the Chinese and without sufficient resources of their own, were utterly unable to offer any real resistance to the rebellious provinces of the south, the loyalty of their troops being uncertain, and any spirit or gift of leadership among themselves having disappeared with the passing of the great Tzu Hsi in 1908. But it is a mistake to imagine that the idea of a republican form of government in place of the centuries-old, autocratic, semi-divine monarchy, was something that had never been mooted before and was entirely unknown to the Chinese. To the great majority, no doubt, it was, if known at all, something strange and hardly intelligible, as it still is. But in the south, especially on and near the coast, it has been familiar for some time; among the possibilities of the future it was not unknown even to the "Throne." Fourteen years ago, after the _coup d'état_ by which Tzu Hsi smashed the reform movement that had been patronized by the Emperor Kuang Hsu, the then Viceroy of Canton stated in a memorial to her that among some treasonable papers found at the birthplace of Kang Yu-wei, the leading reformer of the time, a document had been discovered which not only spoke of substituting a republic for the monarchy, but actually named as its first president one of the reformers she had caused to be executed. It must be admitted, on the other hand, that the idea has been imported into China comparatively recently; the Chinese language contains no word for republic, but one has been coined by putting together the words for self and government; it must be many years before the masses of the Chinese--the "rubbish people," as Lo Feng-lu, a former minister to England, used to call them--have any genuine understanding of what a republic means. The Manchus were in power for nearly two hundred and seventy years, and during that period there were various risings, some of a formidable character, against them and in favor of descendants of the native Ming dynasty which they had displaced; powerful secret organizations, such as the famous "Triad Society," plotted and conspired to put a Ming prince on the throne; but all was vain. It had come to be generally believed that the race of the Mings had died out, but a recent dispatch from China speaks of there still being a representative in existence, who possibly might give serious trouble to the new republic. In any case, for a long time past the Mings had ceased to give the Manchus any concern; the pressure upon the latter came from outside the empire, but that in its turn reacted profoundly on the internal situation. The wars with France and England had but a slight effect on China; though the foreign devils beat it in war it yet despised them. The effect of the war with Japan, in 1894, was something quite different, beginning the real awakening of China and imparting life and vigor to the new reform movement which had its origin in Canton, the great city of the south, whose highly intelligent people have most quickly felt and most readily and strongly responded to outside influences. Regarded by the Chinese as at least partially civilized, the Japanese were placed in a higher category than the Western barbarians, but as their triumph over China was attributed to their adoption of Western military methods and equipment, the more enlightened Chinese came to the conclusion that, however contemptible the men of the Western world were, the main secret of their success, as of that of Japan, was open enough. They decided that Western learning and modes of government and organization must be studied and copied, as Japan had studied and copied them, if the Celestial Empire was to endure. It was a case on the largest scale of self-preservation, and some part, at least, of the truth was glimpsed by the Throne itself. Something, but not much, was heard of a republic while Tzu Hsi lived; before her death the principle of a constitution, with a national parliament and provincial assemblies, had been accepted by the Throne--with reservations limiting the spheres of these representative bodies, retaining the supreme power in the Throne, and in the case of the national parliament delaying its coming into existence for a term of years. By Tzu Hsi's commands, the Throne passed at her death into the hands of a sort of commission; a child of two years of age, a nephew of Kuang Hsu, called Pu Yi, became Emperor under the dynastic name of Hsuan Tung; his father, Prince Chun, was nominated Regent, but was ordered to consult the new Dowager Empress, Lung Yu, the widow of Kuang Hsu, and to be governed by her decisions in all important matters of State. Prince Chun, amiable in disposition but weak and vacillating in character, and not always on the best of terms with Lung Yu, began well; one of his first acts was to assure President Taft, who had written entreating him to expedite reforms as making for the true interests of China, that he was determined to pursue that policy. Among those who had suggested reforms to Tzu Hsi, often going far beyond her wishes or plans, but who steadily supported her in all she did in that direction, the leading man was Yuan Shih-kai; with the possible exception of Chang Chih-tung, the Viceroy of Hunan and Hupeh, mentioned above, Yuan Shih-kai had become the greatest man in China, and even as he had advised and supported Tzu Hsi, so he advised and supported Prince Chun at the commencement of the Regency. But the prince had received an unfortunate legacy from his brother, the Emperor Kuang Hsu, who, believing that Yuan Shih-kai had betrayed him to Tzu Hsi at the time of the _coup d'état,_ had given instructions to Prince Chun that if he came into power he was to punish Yuan for his treachery. At the beginning of 1909 the Regent dismissed Yuan on an apparently trivial pretext, but every one in China knew the real reason for his fall, and not a few wondered that his life had been spared. It is idle to surmise what might have happened if his services had been retained by the Throne all the time, but who could have imagined that so swift and almost incredible an instance of time's revenges was in store--that within barely three years Yuan Shih-kai would be the acknowledged head of the State, and Prince Chun and all the Manchus in the dust? Representative government of a kind started in 1909 with the establishment of provincial assemblies; elections were held, and assemblies met in most of the provinces. In the following year a senate or imperial assembly was decreed by an imperial edict; its first session was held in Peking in October of that year, and was opened by the Regent; one of the first things the assembly did was to memorialize the Throne for the rapid hastening on of reforms, and in response an edict was issued announcing the formation of a national parliament, consisting of an Upper and a Lower House, within three years. Under further pressure the Throne in May of 1911 abolished the Grand Council and the Grand Secretariat, and created a Cabinet of Ministers, after the Western model. But the agitation continued and went on growing in intensity; still it sought nothing apparently but a development of the constitution, and at least on the surface was neither anti-dynastic nor republican. An anti-dynastic outburst at Changsha, Hunan, in 1910, was easily suppressed, and certainly gave no indication of what was so soon to take place. So late as September of 1911 a rising on a considerable scale in the province of Szechuan was not antidynastic, but was declared by the rebels themselves to be directed against the railway policy of the Government. The best hope for China lies in a wide building of railways; the Chinese do not object to them, but, on the contrary, make use of them to the fullest extent where they are in existence; they do not wish, however, the lines to be constructed with foreign money, holding that such investments of capital from without might be regarded as setting up liens on their lands in favor of outside Powers--how far they can do without outside capital is another matter. Then the whole question of railway-building involved the old quarrel between the provinces and the central government--which is another way of saying that the provinces did not see why all the spoils should go to Peking. A month after the rebellion in Szechuan had broken out, the great revolution began, and met with the most astonishing success from the very outset. Within a few weeks practically the whole of southern China was in the hands of the revolutionaries, and the Throne in hot panic summoned Yuan Shih-kai from his retirement to its assistance; after some hesitation and delay he came--but too late to save the dynasty and the Manchus, though there is no shadow of doubt that he did his best and tried his utmost to save them. With Wuchang, Hankau, and Hanyang--the three form the metropolis, as it may be termed, of mid-China--in the possession of the revolutionaries, and other great centers overtly disaffected or disloyal, the Regent opened the session of the national assembly, and it forthwith proceeded to assert itself and make imperious demands with which the Throne was compelled to comply--this was within a fortnight after the attack on Wuchang that had begun the revolution. On November 1st the Throne appointed Yuan Shih-kai Prime Minister, and a week later the national assembly confirmed him in the office; he arrived in Peking on the thirteenth of the month, was received in semi-regal state, and immediately instituted such measures as were possible for the security of the dynasty and the pacification of the country. But ten days before he reached Peking the Throne had been forced to issue an edict assenting to the principles which the national assembly had set forth in nineteen articles as forming the basis of the Constitution; these articles, while preserving the dynasty and keeping sacrosanct the person of the Emperor, made the monarchy subject to the Constitution and the Government to Parliament, with a responsible Cabinet presided over by a Prime Minister, and gave Parliament full control of the budget. Here, then, was the triumph of the constitutional cause, and Yuan Shih-kai and most of the moderate progressive Chinese would have been well satisfied with it if it had contented the revolutionaries of the south. But from the beginning the southerners had made it plain that they were determined to bring about the abdication of the dynasty, the complete overthrow of the Manchus, and the establishment of a republican form of government, nor would they lay down their arms on any other terms. In a short time Yuan Shih-kai saw that the revolutionaries were powerful enough to compel consideration and at least partial acquiescence in their demands. It can not be thought surprising that the proposed elimination of the hated Manchus from the Government was popular, yet it must seem remarkable that the revolutionary movement was so definitely republican in its aims, and as such achieved so much success. There had been little open agitation in favor of a republic, but the ground had been prepared for it to a certain extent by a secret propaganda. The foreign-drilled troops of the army were disaffected in many cases and were approached with some result; the eager spirits of the party in the south, where practically the whole strength of the movement lay, formed an alliance with certain of the officers of these troops. No sooner was the revolution begun than a military leader appeared in the person of Li Yuan-hung, a brigadier-general, who had commanded a considerable body of these foreign-drilled soldiers, and was supported by large numbers of such men in the fighting in and around Wuchang-Hankau. That the revolutionaries, who were chiefly of the student class, and not of the "solid" people of the country, were able to enlist the active cooperation of these officers and their troops accounts for the quick and astonishing success of the movement. And at the outset, whatever is the case now, many of the solid people--magistrates, gentry, and substantial merchants--also indorsed it. Toward the end of November the revolutionaries captured Nanking, a decisive blow to the imperialists, and this former capital of China became the headquarters of a Provisional Republican Government. Soon afterward, through the good offices of Great Britain, a truce was arranged between the north and the south. Yuan Shih-kai was striving with all his might to retain the dynasty as a limited monarchy, but "coming events cast their shadows before" in the resignation of the Regent early in December. Negotiations went on between Yuan, who was represented at a conference held in Shanghai by Tang Shao-yi, an able and patriotic man and a protégé of his own, and the revolutionaries, but the leaders of the latter made it clear that there could be no peaceful solution of the situation short of the abdication of the dynasty and the institution of some form of republic. At the end of December Dr. Sun Yat-sen, whose striking and romantic story is well known, was appointed Provisional President by Nanking; in January he published a manifesto to the people of China, bitterly attacking the dynasty, promising that the republic would recognize treaty obligations, the foreign loans and concessions, and declaring that it aimed at the general improvement of the country, the remodeling of the laws, and the cultivation of better relations with the Powers. Meanwhile, the Dowager Empress and the Manchu princes had discussed the position of affairs with Yuan Shih-kai, and the question of the abdication of the dynasty was under consideration, but though the situation was desperate there were some counsels of resistance. What finally made opposition impossible was the presentation to the Throne in the last days of January of a memorial, signed by the generals of the northern army, requesting it to abandon any idea of maintaining itself by force. This settled the matter. No other course being practicable, terms were agreed to between Peking and Nanking, and on February 12th imperial edicts, commencing for the last time with the customary formula, were issued from the capital giving Yuan Shih-kai plenary powers to establish a Provisional Republican Government, and to confer with the Provisional Republican Government at Nanking, approving of the arrangements which had been made for the Emperor and the imperial family, and exhorting the people to remain tranquil under the new régime. These edicts will remain among the most remarkable things in history, and it can not be said that the passing of the Manchus was attended by any want of that ceremonious calmness and dignity for which China is famed. Two or three days later Sun Yat-sen in a disinterested spirit resigned, and Yuan Shih-kai was unanimously elected President by the Nanking Assembly; Yuan accepted the office, and thus north and south were united in "The Great Republic of China." At the end of March progress in the settlement of affairs was seen in the formation of a Coalition Cabinet, comprising Ministers of both the Peking and the Nanking Governments, those selected being men with a considerable knowledge of Western life and thought, as, for instance, Lu Cheng-hsiang, the Foreign Minister, who has lived many years in Europe and speaks French as well as English. A further advance took place on April 2d, when the Nanking Assembly agreed by a large majority to transfer the Provisional Government to Peking, which thus resumed its position as the capital of the country and the center of its Administration. Among the causes which contributed to the success of the revolution were the inability of the north to obtain loans from outside, and the pressure, both direct and indirect, exerted upon both parties by foreign Powers. Both of these causes were important, the latter especially so. The action of Russia with respect to Mongolia, and of Japan with regard to Manchuria, alarmed patriotic Chinese, led them to fear that foreign interference might not be confined to these territories, and to dread that the result would be the disintegration of the country. Under the Manchus they had seen the loss of Korea, the Liaotung, Formosa, and, in a sense, of Manchuria itself; they were apprehensive of German designs in Shantung, of Japanese in Fuhkien. The feeling that the country was in danger helped both sides to be of one mind. But the pressure from the outside was not all of this sinister sort; friendly representations from the genuinely well-disposed Powers did a good deal to bring the combatants to a mutual understanding. But throughout the revolution, as in the final result, the great outstanding, commanding figure was Yuan Shih-kai himself. Evidently a man of great gifts, he knew how and when to yield and how and when to be firm; the compromise which solved the situation--at all events, for the time--was mostly his work; statesman and patriot, he saved his country. And it will always redound to his credit that he can not be charged with faithlessness to the Manchus, for he did all that was possible for them, standing by them to the last. By retaining the "Emperor" as the priestly head of the nation, _pater patriae_, according to Chinese ideas, he has left something to the Manchus and at the same time contrived that the republican form of government shall bring as slight a shock to "immemorial China" as can be imagined. What does this "immemorial China"--meaning thereby the great bulk of the Chinese, the un-Westernized Chinese--think of the republic? In other words, is the republic likely to last? What sort of republic will it probably be, viewing the situation as it stands? At one of the early stages of the revolution Yuan Shih-kai stated that only three-tenths of his countrymen were in favor of a republic--in itself, however, a considerable proportion of the population; now that the republic is in existence, will it be accepted tranquilly by the rest? The majority of these people are the inoffensive and industrious peasants of the interior, who have long been accustomed to bad government; as they will scarcely find their lot harder now, they will probably quietly accept the new order, unless some radical change is made affecting their habits of life, which is unlikely. Some of the old conservative gentry are opposed to the republic; but, now the Manchu dynasty is gone, whom or what can they suggest in its place that would be received favorably by the country? The descendant of the Mings? Or the descendant of Confucius? Neither seems a likely candidate in present circumstances. For it may very well be the case that as the revolution has been so largely military, and parts of the army need careful handling, as the recent riots in Peking showed, the Republican Government will assume something of a distinctively military character, and Yuan Shih-kai, as its head, be in a position not very different from that of a military dictator--as Diaz was in Mexico. The republic will, of course, have its troubles, and serious ones enough, to face, but the balance of probabilities certainly suggests its lasting awhile. R.F. JOHNSTON Like political upheavals in other ages and other lands, the Chinese revolution has been the outcome of the hopes and dreams of impetuous and indomitable youth. Herein lies one of its main sources of strength, but herein also lies a very grave danger. Young China to-day looks to Europe and to America for sympathy. Let her have it in full measure. Only let us remind her that the work she has so boldly, and perhaps light-heartedly, undertaken is not only the affair of China, not only the affair of Asia, but that the whole world stands to gain or lose according as the Chinese people prove themselves worthy or unworthy to carry out the stupendous task to which they have set their hands. The grave peril lies, of course, in the tendency of the Chinese "Progressives"--as of all hot-headed reformers, whether in China or in England--to break with the traditions of past ages, and to despise what is old, not because it is bad, but because it is out of harmony with the latest political shibboleth. Those of us who believe in the fundamental soundness of the character of the Chinese people, and are aware of the high dignity and value of a large part of their inherited civilization and culture, are awaiting with deep anxiety an answer to this question: Is the New China about to cast herself adrift from the Old? But surely, many a Western observer may exclaim, the matter is settled already! Surely the abolition of the monarchy is in itself a proof that the Chinese have definitely broken with tradition! Was not the Emperor a sacred being who represented an unbroken political continuity of thousands of years, and who ruled by divine right? Was not loyalty to the sovereign part of the Chinese religion? These questions can not be answered with a simple yes or no. Reverence for tradition has always been a prominent Chinese characteristic in respect of both ethics and politics. We must beware of assuming too hastily that the exhortations of a few frock-coated revolutionaries have been sufficient to expel this reverence for tradition from Chinese hearts and minds; yet we are obliged to admit that the national aspirations are being directed toward a new set of ideals which in some respects are scarcely consistent with the ideals aimed at (if rarely attained) in the past. The Chinese doctrine of loyalty can not be properly understood until we have formed a clear conception of the traditional Chinese theory concerning the nature of Political Sovereignty. The political edifice, no less than the social, is built on the Confucian and pre-Confucian foundation of filial piety. The Emperor is father of his people; the whole population of the empire forms one vast family, of which the Emperor is the head. As a son owes obedience and reverence to his parent, so does the subject owe reverence and obedience to his sovereign. In the four thousand years and more that have elapsed since the days of Yü, over a score of dynasties have in their turn reigned over China. The _Shu Ching_--the Chinese historical classic--gives us full accounts of the events which led to the fall of the successive dynasties of Hsia (1766 B.C.) and Shang (1122 B.C.). In both cases we find that the leader of the successful rebellion lays stress on the fact that the _T'ien-ming_ (Divine right) has been forfeited by the dynasty of the defeated Emperor, and that he, the successful rebel, has been but an instrument in the hands of God. Thus the rebel becomes Emperor by right of the Divine Decree, and it remains with his descendants until by their misdeeds they provoke heaven into bestowing it upon another house. The teachings of the sages of China are in full accordance with the view that the sovereign must rule well or not at all. Confucius (551-479 B.C.) spent the greater part of his life in trying to instruct negligent princes in the art of government, and we know from a well-known anecdote that he regarded a bad government as "worse than a tiger." We are told that when one of his disciples asked Confucius for a definition of good statecraft, he replied that a wise ruler is one who provides his subjects with the means of subsistence, protects the state against its enemies, and strives to deserve the confidence of all his people. And the most important of these three aims, said Confucius, is the last: for without the confidence of the people no government can be maintained. If the prince's commands are just and good, let the people obey them, said Confucius, in reply to a question put by a reigning duke; but if subjects render slavish obedience to the unjust commands of a bad ruler, it is not the ruler only, but his sycophantic subjects themselves, who will be answerable for the consequent ruin of the state. So far from counseling perpetual docility on the part of the governed, Confucius clearly indicates that circumstances may arise which make opposition justifiable. The minister, he says, should not fawn upon the ruler of whose actions he disapproves: let him show his disapproval openly. Mencius, the "Second Sage" of China (372-289 B.C.), is far more outspoken than Confucius in his denunciation of bad rulers. There was no sycophancy in the words which he uttered during an interview with King Hsuan of the State of Ch'i. "When the prince treats his ministers with respect, as though they were his own hands and feet, they in their turn look up to him as the source from which they derive nourishment; when he treats them like his dogs and horses, they regard him as no more worthy of reverence than one of their fellow subjects; when he treats them as though they were dirt to be trodden on, they retaliate by regarding him as a robber and a foe." It is interesting to learn that this passage in Mencius so irritated the first sovereign of the Ming dynasty (1368-1398 A.D.) that he caused the "spirit-tablet" of the sage to be removed from the Confucian Temple, to which it had been elevated about three centuries earlier; but the remonstrances of the scholars of the empire soon compelled the Emperor to revoke his decree, and the tablet of Mencius was restored to its place of honor, from which it was never subsequently degraded. It is no matter for surprize that the people have reverenced the "Second Sage," for he it was who has come nearest in China to the enunciation of the somewhat doubtful principle, _Vox populi vox Dei_. It was unmistakably the view of Mencius that a bad ruler may be put to death by the subjects whom he has misgoverned. King Hsuan was once discussing with him the successful rebellions against the last sovereigns of the Hsia and Shang dynasties, and, with reference to the slaying of the infamous King Chou (1122 B.C.), asked whether it was allowable for a minister to put his sovereign to death. Mencius, in his reply, observed that the man who outrages every principle of virtue and good conduct is rightly treated as a mere robber and villain. "I have heard of the killing of a robber and a villain named Chou; I have not heard about the killing of a king." That is to say, Chou by his rascality had already forfeited all the rights and privileges of kingship before he was actually put to death. On another occasion Mencius was questioned about the duties of ministers and royal relatives. "If the sovereign rules badly," he said, "they should reprove him; if he persists again and again in disregarding their advice, they should dethrone him." The prince for whose edification the philosopher uttered these daring sentiments looked grave. "I pray your Majesty not to take offense," said Mencius. "You asked me for my candid opinion, and I have told you what it is." Several other passages of similar purport might be cited from Mencius, but two more will suffice. "Let us suppose," said the sage, "that a man who is about to proceed on a long journey entrusts the care of his wife and family to a friend. On his return he finds that the faithless friend has allowed his wife and children to suffer from cold and hunger. What should he do with such a friend?" "He should treat him thenceforth as a stranger," replied King Hsuan. "And suppose," continued Mencius, "that your Majesty had a minister who was utterly unable to control his subordinates: how would you deal with such a one?" "I should dismiss him from my service," said the King. "And if throughout all your realm there is no good government, what is to be done then?" The embarrassed King, we are told, "looked this way and that, and changed the subject." The last of Mencius's teachings on kingship to which we shall refer is perhaps the most remarkable of all. "The most important element in a State," he says emphatically, "is the people; next come the altars of the national gods; least in importance is the king." These citations from the revered classics should be sufficient to prove that the people of China are not necessarily cutting themselves adrift from the traditions of ages and the teachings of their philosophers when they rise in their might to overthrow an incompetent dynasty. For it can not be denied that China has known little prosperity under the later rulers of the Manchu line, and when the revolutionary leaders declared that the reigning house had forfeited the _T'ien-ming_ we must admit that they had ample justification for their belief that such was the case. But many Western friends of China, while fully recognizing the right of the people to remove the Manchus, entertain very grave doubts as to the wisdom of abolishing the monarchy altogether and the establishment of a republican government in its stead. The _T'ien-ming_ has always passed from dynasty to dynasty, never from dynasty to people. From the remotest days of which we have record, the Chinese system of government has been monarchic. If the revolutionaries can break tradition to the extent of abolishing the imperial dignity, what guaranty have we that they will not break with tradition in every other respect as well, and so destroy the foundations on which the whole edifice of China's social, political, and religious life has rested through all the centuries of her known history? Whether the Chinese people--as distinct from a few foreign-educated reformers--do, as a matter of fact, honestly believe that a republican government is adapted to the needs of the country, is a very different question. It certainly has not been proved that "the whole nation is now inclined toward a republic"--in spite of the admission to that effect contained in the imperial Edict of abdication. Perhaps it would be nearer the truth to say that the overwhelming majority of the people of China have not the slightest idea what a republic means, and how their lives and fortunes will be affected by its establishment, and therefore hold no strong opinions concerning the advantages or disadvantages of republican government. It can not be denied, however, that the social system under which the Chinese people have lived for untold ages has in some ways made them more fit for self-government than any other people in the world. It would be well if Europeans--and especially Englishmen--would try to rid themselves of the obsolete notion that every Oriental race, as such, is only fit for a despotic form of government. Perhaps only those who have lived in the interior of China and know something of the organization of family and village, township and clan, are able to realize to how great an extent the Chinese have already learned the arts of self-government. It was not without reason that a Western authority (writing before the outbreak of the revolution) described China as "the greatest republic the world has ever seen." The momentous Edict in which the Manchu house signed away its imperial heritage was issued on the twelfth day of February, 1912. It contains many noteworthy features, but the words which are of special interest from the constitutional point of view I translate as follows: "The whole nation is now inclined toward a republican form of government. The southern and central provinces first gave clear evidence of this inclination, and the military leaders of the northern provinces have since promised their support in the same cause. _By observing the nature of the people's aspirations we learn the Will of Heaven (T'ien-ming)._ It is not fitting that We should withstand the desires of the nation merely for the sake of the glorification of Our own House. We recognize the signs of the age, and We have tested the trend of popular opinion; and We now, with the Emperor at Our side, invest the Nation with the Sovereign Power and decree the establishment of a constitutional government on a republican basis. In coming to this decision, We are actuated not only by a hope to bring solace to Our subjects, who long for the cessation of political tumult, but also by a desire to follow the precepts of the Sages of old who taught that political sovereignty rests ultimately with the people." Such was the dignified and yet pathetic swan-song of the dying Manchu dynasty. Whatever our political sympathies may be, we are not obliged to withhold our tribute of compassion for the sudden and startling collapse of a dynasty that has ruled China--not always inefficiently--for the last two hundred and sixty-seven years. The Abdication Edict can not fail to be of interest to students of the science of politics. The Throne itself is converted into a bridge to facilitate the transition from the monarchical to the republican form of government. The Emperor remains absolute to the last, and the very Republican Constitution, which involves his own disappearance from political existence, is created by the fiat of the Emperor in his last official utterance. Theoretically, the Republic is established not by a people in arms acting in opposition to the imperial will, but by the Emperor acting with august benevolence for his people's good. The cynic may smile at the transparency of the attempt to represent the abdication as entirely voluntary, but in this procedure we find something more than a mere "face-saving" device intended for the purpose of effecting a dignified retreat in the hour of disaster. Perhaps the greatest interest of the decree centers in its appeal to the wisdom of the national sages, and its acceptance of their theory as to the ultimate seat of political sovereignty. The heart of the drafter may have quailed when he wrote the words that signified the surrender of the imperial power, but the spirit of Mencius guided his hand. It now remains for us to hope that the teachings of the wise men of old, which have been obeyed to such momentous issues by the last of the Emperors, will not be treated with contempt by his Republican successors. TAI-CHI QUO The entire civilized world, as well as China, is to be heartily congratulated upon the glorious revolution which has been sweeping over that vast ancient empire, and which is now practically assured of success. "Just as conflagrations light up the whole city," says Victor Hugo, "revolutions light up the whole human race." Of no revolution recorded in the world's history can this be said with a greater degree of truth than of the present revolution in China. It spells the overthrow of monarchy, which has existed there for over forty centuries, and the downfall of a dynasty which has been the enemy of human progress for the last two hundred and seventy years. It effects the recognition and establishment of personal liberty, the sovereignty of man over himself, for four hundred and thirty-two million souls, one-third of the world's total population. The Chinese revolution marks, in short, a great, decisive step in the onward march of human progress. It benefits not only China, but the whole world, for just as a given society should measure its prosperity not by the welfare of a group of individuals, but by the welfare of the entire community, so must humanity estimate its progress according to the well-being of the whole human race. Society can not be considered to be in a far advanced stage of civilization if one-third of the globe's inhabitants are suffering under the oppression and tyranny of a one-man rule. Democracy can not be said to exist if a great portion of the people on the earth have not even political freedom. Real democracy exists only when all men are free and equal. Hence, any movement which brings about the recognition and establishment of personal liberty for one-third of the members of the human family, as the Chinese revolution is doing, may well be pronounced to be beneficial to mankind. But is it really true and credible that conservative, slumbering, and "mysterious" China is actually having a revolution, that beautiful and terrible thing, that angel in the garb of a monster? If it is, what is the cause of the revolution? What will be its ultimate outcome? What will follow its success? Will a republic be established and will it work successfully? These and many other questions pertaining to the Chinese situation have been asked, not only by skeptics, but also by persons interested in China and human progress. There can be no doubt that China is in earnest about what she is doing. Even the skeptics who called the revolution a "mob movement," or another "Boxer uprising," at its early stage must now admit the truth of the matter. The admirable order and discipline which have characterized its proceedings conclusively prove that the revolution is a well-organized movement, directed by men of ability, intelligence, and humanitarian principles. Sacredness of life and its rights, for which they are fighting, have generally guided the conduct of the rebels. The mob element has been conspicuous by its absence from their ranks. It is very doubtful whether a revolution involving such an immense territory and so many millions of people as are involved in this one could be effected with less bloodshed than has thus far marked the Chinese revolution. If some allowance be made for exaggeration in the newspaper reports of the loss of lives and of the disorders that have occurred during the struggle, allowance which is always permissible and even wise for one to make, there has been very little unnecessary bloodshed committed by the revolutionists. Although anti-Manchu spirit was a prominent factor in bringing about the uprising, it has been subordinated by the larger idea of humanity. With the exception of a few instances of unnecessary destruction of Manchu lives at the beginning of the outbreak, members of that tribe have been shown great clemency. The rebel leaders have impressed upon the minds of their followers that their first duty is to respect life and property, and have summarily punished those having any inclination to loot or kill. Despite the numerous outrages and acts of brutality by the Manchus and imperial troops, the revolutionaries have been moderate, lenient, and humane in their treatment of their prisoners and enemies. Unnecessary bloodshed has been avoided by them as much as possible. As Dr. Wu Ting-fang has said: "The most glorious page of China's history is being written with a bloodless pen." Regarding the cause of the revolution, it must be noted that the revolt was not a sudden, sporadic movement, nor the result of any single event. It is the outcome of a long series of events, the culmination of the friction and contact with the Western world in the last half-century, especially the last thirty years, and of the importation of Western ideas and methods into China by her foreign-educated students and other agents. During the last decade, especially the last five years, there has been a most wonderful awakening among the people in the empire. One could almost see the growth of national consciousness, so rapidly has it developed. When the people fully realized their shortcomings and their country's deplorable weakness as it has been constantly brought out in her dealings with foreign Powers, they fell into a state of dissatisfaction and profound unrest. Filled with the shame of national disgrace and imbued with democratic ideas, they have been crying for a strong and liberal government, but their pleas and protests have been in most cases ignored and in a few cases responded to with half-hearted superficial reforms which are far from satisfactory to the progressives. The Manchu government has followed its traditional _laissez faire_ policy in the face of foreign aggressions and threatening dangers of the empire's partition, with no thought of the morrow. Until now it has been completely blind to the force of the popular will and has deemed it not worth while to bother with the common people. Long ago patriotic Chinese gave up hope in the Manchu government and realized that China's salvation lay in the taking over of the management of affairs into their own hands. For over a decade Dr. Sun Yat-sen and other Chinese of courage and ability, mostly those with a Western education, have been busily engaged in secretly preaching revolutionary doctrines among their fellow countrymen and preparing for a general outbreak. They collected numerous followers and a large sum of money. The revolutionary propaganda was being spread country-wide, among the gentry and soldiers, and even among enlightened government officials, in spite of governmental persecution and strict vigilance. Revolutionary literature was being widely circulated, notwithstanding the rigid official censorship. Added to all this are the ever important economic causes. Famines and floods in recent years have greatly intensified the already strong feeling of discontent and unrest, and served to pile up more fuel for the general conflagration. In short, the whole nation was like a forest of dry leaves which needed but a single fire spark to make it blaze. Hence, when the revolution broke out on the memorable 10th of October, 1911, at Wu-Chang, it spread like a forest fire. Within the short period of two weeks fourteen of the eighteen provinces of China proper joined in the movement one after another with amazing rapidity. Everywhere people welcomed the advent of the revolutionary army as the drought-stricken would rejoice at the coming rain, or the hungry at the sight of food. The great wave of democratic sentiment which had swept over Europe, America, and the islands of Japan at last reached the Chinese shore, and is now rolling along resistlessly over the immense empire toward its final goal--a world-wide democracy. A STEP TOWARD WORLD PEACE THE UNITED STATES ARBITRATION TREATIES A.D. 1912 HON. WILLIAM H. TAFT Later generations will doubtless note, as one of the main manifestations of our present age, its progress in international arbitration, in the substitution of justice for force as the means of deciding disputes between nations. On March 7, 1912, the United States Senate, after months of argument, finally agreed to ratify two arbitration treaties which President Taft had arranged with England and France. True, the Senate, before thus establishing the treaties, struck out their most far-reaching article, an agreement that every disagreement whatsoever should be referred to a Joint High Commission. Without this clause the treaties still leave a bare possibility of warfare over questions of "national honor" or "national policy"; but practically they put an end to war forever as between the United States and its two great historic rivals. These two treaties were the last and most important of 154 such arbitration treaties arranged since the recent inauguration of the great World Peace movement. They are here described by President Taft himself in an article reprinted with his approval from the _Woman's Home Companion._ His work as a leader in the cause of peace is likely to be remembered as the most important of his administration. In 1913 his purpose was carried forward by William J. Bryan as the United States Secretary of State. Mr. Bryan evolved a general "Plan of Arbitration," which during the first year of its suggestion was adopted by thirty-one of the smaller nations to govern their dealings with the United States. Thus the strong promises international justice to the weak. The development of the doctrine of international arbitration, considered from the standpoint of its ultimate benefits to the human race, is the most vital movement of modern times. In its relation to the well-being of the men and women of this and ensuing generations, it exceeds in importance the proper solution of various economic problems which are constant themes of legislative discussion or enactment. It is engaging the attention of many of the most enlightened minds of the civilized world. It derives impetus from the influence of churches, regardless of denominational differences. Societies of noble-minded women, organizations of worthy men, are giving their moral and material support to governmental agencies in their effort to eliminate, as causes of war, disputes which frequently have led to armed conflicts between nations. The progress already made is a distinct step in the direction of a higher civilization. It gives hope in the distant future of the end of militarism, with its stupendous, crushing burdens upon the working population of the leading countries of the Old World, and foreshadows a decisive check to the tendency toward tremendous expenditures for military purposes in the western hemisphere. It presages at least partial disarmament by governments that have been, and still are, piling up enormous debts for posterity to liquidate, and insures to multitudes of men now involuntarily doing service in armies and navies employment in peaceful, productive pursuits. Perhaps some wars have contributed to the uplift of organized society; more often the benefits were utterly eclipsed by the ruthless waste and slaughter and suffering that followed. The principle of justice to the weak as well as to the strong is prevailing to an extent heretofore unknown to history. Rules of conduct which govern men in their relations to one another are being applied in an ever-increasing degree to nations. The battle-field as a place of settlement of disputes is gradually yielding to arbitral courts of justice. The interests of the great masses are not being sacrificed, as in former times, to the selfishness, ambitions, and aggrandizement of sovereigns, or to the intrigues of statesmen unwilling to surrender their scepter of power. Religious wars happily are specters of a medieval or ancient past, and the Christian Church is laboring valiantly to fulfil its destiny of "Peace on earth." If the United States has a mission, besides developing the principles of the brotherhood of man into a living, palpable force, it seems to me that it is to blaze the way to universal arbitration among the nations, and bring them into more complete amity than ever before existed. It is known to the world that we do not covet the territory of our neighbors, or seek the acquisition of lands on other continents. We are free of such foreign entanglements as frequently conduce to embarrassing complications, and the efforts we make in behalf of international peace can not be regarded with a suspicion of ulterior motives. The spirit of justice governs our relations with other countries, and therefore we are specially qualified to set a pace for the rest of the world. The principle and scope of international arbitration, as exemplified in the treaties recently negotiated by the United States with Great Britain and France, should commend itself to the American people. These treaties go a step beyond any similar instruments which have received the sanction of the United States, or the two foreign Powers specified. They enlarge the field of arbitrable subjects embraced in the treaties ratified by the three governments in 1908. They lift into the realm of discussion and hearing, before some kind of a tribunal, many of the causes of war which have made history such a sickening chronicle of ravage and cruelty, bloodshed and desolation. After years of patient endeavor by men of various nations, and despite many obstacles and discouragements, there has been established at The Hague a Permanent Court of Arbitration, to which contending governments may submit certain classes of controversies for adjudication. This court has already justified its creation and existence by the settlement of contentions which in other days led to disastrous wars, and even in this enlightened age might have precipitated serious ruptures. The United States Government, as represented by the National Administration, is ready to utilize this method of settling international disputes to a greater extent than ever before. That is, we are willing to refer to this tribunal, or a similar one, questions which heretofore have been left entirely to diplomatic negotiation. The treaties go further by providing for the creation of a Joint High Commission, to which shall be referred, for impartial and conscientious investigation, any controversy between this Government, on one hand, and Great Britain or France, on the other hand, before such a controversy has been submitted to an arbitral body from which there is no appeal. And, assuming that governments, like individuals, do not always display, while a dispute is in progress, that calmness of judgment and equipoise which are so consistent with righteous deportment, provision is made for the passion to subside and the blood to cool, by deferring the reference of such controversy to the Joint High Commission for one year. This affords an opportunity for diplomatic adjustment without an appeal to the commission. The plan of submission to a joint high commission, composed of three citizens or subjects of one party and the same number of another, is a concession to the fear of being too tightly bound to an adverse decision made manifest in the objections of the Senate committee, because it may well be supposed that two out of three citizens or subjects of one party would not decide that an issue was arbitrable under the treaty against the contention of their own country unless it were reasonably clear that the issue was justiciable under the first clause of the treaty. Ultimately, I hope, we shall come to submit our quarrels to an international arbitral court that will have power finally to decide upon the limits of its own jurisdiction, and in which the form of procedure by the complaining country shall be fixed, and the obligations of the country complained of, to answer in a form prescribed, shall be recognized and definite, and the judgment shall be either acquiesced in, or enforced. These treaties are a substantial step, but a step only, in that direction, and the feature of the binding character of the decision of the Joint High Commission as to the arbitral character of the question is the most distinctive advance in the right direction. Do not let us give up this feature without using every legitimate effort to retain it. An understanding of the term _justiciable_ may be essential to a full comprehension of the significance and scope of these treaties. Questions involving boundary lines, the rights of fishermen in waters bordering upon countries with contiguous territory, the use of water-power, the erection of structures on frontiers, outrages upon aliens, are examples of justiciable subjects, and these are made susceptible of adjudication and decision under these treaties. It is now proposed to establish a permanent method of disposing of such questions without preliminary quarrels and menaces whose result may never be foreseen. Certain questions of governmental or traditional policy are by their very nature excluded from the consideration of the Joint High Commission, or even the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague. Such specific exemptions it is not necessary to set forth in the treaties. Objection has been made that under the first section of the pending pacts it might be claimed that we would be called upon to submit to arbitration of the Monroe Doctrine, or our right to exclude foreign peoples from our shores, or the question of the validity of southern bonds issued in reconstruction days. The Monroe Doctrine is not a justiciable question, but one of purely governmental policy which we have followed for nearly a century, and in which the countries of Europe have generally acquiesced. With respect to the exclusion of immigrants, it is a principle of international law that every country may admit only those whom it chooses. This is a subject of domestic policy in which no foreign country can interfere unless it is covered by a treaty, and then it may become properly a matter of treaty construction. With reference to the right to involve the United States in a controversy over the obligation of certain Southern States to pay bonds issued during reconstruction, which have been repudiated, it is sufficient to say that the pending treaties affect only cases hereafter arising, and the cases of the Southern bonds all arose years ago. After a time, if our treaties stand the test of experience and prove useful, it is probable that all the greatest Powers on earth will come under obligation to arbitrate their differences with other nations. Naturally, the smaller nations will do likewise, and then universal arbitration will be more of an actuality than an altruistic dream. The evil of war, and what follows in its train, I need not dwell upon. We could not have a higher object than the adoption of any proper and honorable means which would lessen the chance of armed conflicts. Men endure great physical hardships in camp and on the battle-field. In our Civil War the death-roll in the Union Army alone reached the appalling aggregate of 359,000. But the suffering and perils of the men in the field, distressing as they are to contemplate, are slight in comparison with the woes and anguish of the women who are left behind. The hope that husband, brother, father, son may be spared the tragic end which all soldiers risk, when they respond to their country's call, buoys them up in their privations and heart-breaking loneliness. But theirs is the deepest pain, for the most poignant suffering is mental rather than physical. No pension compensates for the loss of husband, son, or father. The glory of death in battle does not feed the orphaned children, nor does the pomp and circumstance of war clothe them. The voice of the women of America should speak for peace. TRAGEDY OF THE "TITANIC" THE SPEED CRAZE AND ITS OUTCOME A.D. 1912 WILLIAM INGLIS No other disaster at sea has ever resulted in such loss of human life as did the sinking of the _Titanic_ on the night of April 15, 1912. Moreover, no other disaster has ever included among its victims so many people of high position and repute and real value to the world. The _Titanic_ was on her first voyage, and this voyage had served to draw together many notables. She was advertised as the largest steamer in the world and as the safest; she was called "unsinkable." The ocean thus struck its blow at no mean victim, but at the ship supposedly the queen of all ships. Through the might of the great tragedy, man was taught two lessons. One was against boastfulness. He has not yet conquered nature; his "unsinkable" masterpiece was torn apart like cardboard and plunged to the bottom. The other and more solemn teaching was against the speed mania, which seems more and more to have possessed mankind. His autos, his railroads, even his fragile flying-machines, have been keyed up for record speed. The _Titanic_ was racing for a record when she perished. Her loss has created almost a revolution in ocean traffic. "Let us go more slowly!" was the cry. Safety became the chief advertisement of the big ship lines; and speed, Speed the adored, shriveled into the dishonored god of a moment's madness. The wreck of the steamship _Titanic_, of the White Star Line, the newest and biggest and presumably the safest ship in the world, is the greatest marine disaster known in the history of ocean traffic. She ran into an iceberg off the Banks of Newfoundland at 11.40 Sunday night, April 14th, and at twenty minutes past two sank in two miles of ocean depth. More than fifteen hundred lives were lost and a few more than seven hundred saved. The _Titanic_ was a marvel of size and luxury. Her length was 882-1/2 feet--far exceeding the height of the tallest buildings in the world--her breadth of beam was 92 feet, and her depth from topmost deck to keel was 94 feet. She was of 45,000 tons register and 66,000 tons displacement. Her structure was the last word in size, speed, and luxury at sea. Her interior was like that of some huge hotel, with wide stairways and heavy balustrades, with elevators running up and down the height of nine decks out of her twelve; with swimming-pools, Turkish baths, saloons, and music-rooms, and a little golf-course on the highest deck. Her master was Capt. E. J. Smith, a veteran of more than thirty years' able and faithful service in the company's ships, whose only mishap had occurred when the giant _Olympic_, under his command, collided with the British cruiser _Hawke_ in the Solent last September. He was exonerated because the great suction exerted by the _Olympic_ in a narrow channel inevitably drew the two vessels together. There were over 2,200 people aboard the _Titanic_ when she left Southampton on Wednesday for her maiden voyage--325 first-cabin passengers, 285 second-cabin, 710 steerage, and a crew of 899. Among that ship's company were many men and women of prominence in the arts, the professions, and in business. Colonel John Jacob Astor and his bride, who was Miss Madeleine Force, were among them; also Major Archibald Butt, military aide to President Taft; Charles M. Hays, president of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railroad, with his family; William T. Stead, of the London _Review of Reviews_; Benjamin Guggenheim, of the celebrated mining family; G. D. Widener, of Philadelphia; F. D. Millet, the noted artist; Mr. and Mrs. Isidor Straus; J. Thayer, vice-president of the Pennsylvania Railroad; J. Bruce Ismay, chairman of the White Star Line's board of directors; Henry B. Harris, theatrical manager; Colonel Washington Roebling, the engineer; Jacques Futrelle, the novelist; and Henry Sleeper Harper, a grandson of Joseph Wesley Harper, one of the founders of the house of Harper & Brothers. As the _Titanic_ was leaving her pier at Southampton there came a sound like the booming of artillery. The passengers thronging to the rail saw the steamship _New York_ slowly drawing near. The movement of the _Titanic's_ gigantic body had sucked the water away from the quay so violently that the seven stout hawsers mooring the _New York_ to her pier snapped like rotten twine, and she bore down on the giant ship stern first and helpless. The _Titanic_ reversed her engines, and tugs plucked the _New York_ away barely in time to avoid a bad smash. If any old sailors regarded this accident as an evil omen, there is little reason to think the thing affected the spirits of the passengers on the great floating hotel. As the ship passed the time of day by wireless with her distant neighbors out of sight beyond the horizon of the ocean lanes, she reported good weather, machinery working smoothly, all going well. For some reason the great fleet of icebergs which drifts south of Cape Race every summer moved down unusually early this year. The _Carmania_, three days in advance of the _Titanic_, ran into the ice-field on Thursday. The ship at reduced speed dodged about, avoiding enormous bergs along her course, while far away on every hand glinted the shining high white sides of many more of the menacing ice mountains. Passengers photographed the brilliant monsters. The steamship _Niagara_, many leagues astern, reported a slight collision, with no great harm done. That was enough. Captain Dow retraced his course to the northeast and, after an hour's steaming, laid a new course for Fire Island buoy. The presence of the great bergs and accompanying masses of field-ice so very early in the season was most unusual. Into this desolate waste of sea came the _Titanic_ on Sunday evening. She encountered fog, for the region is almost continuously swathed in the mists raised by the contact of the Arctic current with the warm waters of the Gulf Stream. Scattered far and wide in every direction were many icebergs, shrouded in gray, invisible to the eyes of the sharpest lookouts, lying in wait for their prey. Not only were the bergs invisible to the keenest eyes, but the sudden drop in the temperature of the ocean which ordinarily is the warning of the nearness of a berg was now of no avail; for there were so many of the bergs and so widely scattered that the temperature of the sea was uniformly cold. Moreover, the submarine bell, which gives warning to navigators of the neighborhood of shoal water, does not signify the approach of icebergs. The newest ocean giant was in deadly peril, though probably few of her passengers guessed it, so reassuring are the huge bulk, the skilful construction, the watertight compartments, the able captain and crew, to the mind of the landsman. Dinner was long past, and many of the passengers doubtless turned to thoughts of supper after hours of talk or music or cards; for there were not many promenading the cold, foggy decks of the onrushing steamship. The _Titanic_ was about eight hundred miles to the southeastward of Halifax, three hundred and fifty miles southeast of treacherous Cape Race, when her great body dashed, glancing, against an enormous berg. The discipline and good order for which British captains and British sailors have long been noted prevailed in this crisis; for it is proven by the fact that the rescued were nearly all women and children. From that rich, rushing, gay, floating world, with its saloons and baths and music-rooms and elevators, now suddenly shattered into darkness, only one utterance came. Phillips, the wireless operator, seized his key and telegraphed in every direction the call "S O S!" Gossiping among telegraphers hundreds of miles apart, messages of business import, all the scores of things that fill the ocean air with tremulous whisperings of etheric waves, began to give over their chattering. Again and again Phillips repeated the letters which spell disaster until the air for a thousand miles around was electrically silent. Then he sent his message: "Have struck an iceberg; badly damaged; rush aid; steamship _Titanic_; 41.46 N., 50.14 W." There was no other ship in sight. Far as the eye could reach no spot of light broke the gray darkness; yet other ships could hear and read the cry for help, and, wheeling in their courses, they drove full speed ahead for the wreck. The _Baltic_, two hundred miles to the eastward, bound for Europe, turned back to the rescue; the _Olympic_, still farther away, hastened to the aid of her sister ship; the _Cincinnati, Prince Adelbert, Amerika,_ the _Prinz Friederich Wilhelm_, and many others, abandoned all else to fly to help those in danger. Nearest of all was the _Carpathia_, bound from New York for Mediterranean ports, only sixty miles away. And as they all, with forced draft and every possible device for adding to speed, dashed through the misty night on their errand of mercy, Phillips, of the _Titanic_, kept wafting from his key the story of disaster. The thing he repeated oftenest was: "Badly damaged. Rush aid." Now and then he gave the ship's position in latitude and longitude as nearly as it could be estimated by her officers as she was carried southward by the current that runs swiftly in this northern sea, so that the rescuers could keep their prows accurately pointed toward the wreck. Soon he began to announce, "We are down by the head and sinking rapidly." About one o'clock in the morning the last words from Phillips rippled through the heavy air, "We are almost gone." The crew were summoned to their stations; the lifeboats and liferafts were swiftly provisioned and furnished with water as well as could be done. Yet this provision could hardly have been very extensive, since it has long been an accepted axiom of the sea that the modern giant ships are indestructible, or at least unsinkable. "Women and children first," the order long enforced among all decent men who use the sea, was the word passed from man to man as the boats were filled, the boatfalls rattled, and the frail little cockleshells were lowered into the calm sea. What farewells there were on those dark and reeking decks between husbands and wives and all other men and women of the same family one can hardly dare think about. Steadily the work of filling the boats and lowering away went on until the last frail craft had been dropped upon the ocean from the sides of the liner and the whole little fleet rose and fell on the sea beside the great black hulk. And when the last crowded boat had come down and there was no possibility of removing one more human being from the wreck, there were still more than fifteen hundred men on her decks. So far had belief in the invulnerability of the modern ship curtailed sane and proper provision for taking care of her people in time of calamity. One can imagine with what frantic but impotent hope, as the sinking decks and menacing plash of waters within told of the imminent last plunge, those thousands of eyes strained at the misty wall of grayish black that enclosed them on every hand. Not one gleam of light in any quarter. The last horrible gurglings within the waterlogged shell of steel that a little while before had been the proudest ship of all the seas told unmistakably that the end was at hand. Down by the head went the giant _Titanic_ at twenty minutes past two o'clock on Monday morning, April 15th. And she took fifteen hundred people with her. Four hours passed before the shivering people in the small boats heard the siren whistle that announced the approach of a steamship from the south. There was a heavy fog and they could not see one hundred fathoms off over the clashing and grinding ice that floated in fields on every side. Soon after seven o'clock in the morning the ship came in sight and presently hove to among the fleet of boats and liferafts--the steamship _Carpathia_, out of New York on April 11th for Mediterranean ports. She began at once to take aboard the survivors, and in a few hours had every boat hoisted aboard. The _Olympic_ and _Baltic_, learning by wireless that the rescues had all been effected, proceeded on their way. The _Virginian_ and the _Parisian_, which arrived at the scene of the disaster a few hours later, could find no sign of any living person afloat, though they cruised for a long time among the wreckage before standing away on their courses. The _Carpathia_ at first was headed for Halifax, but upon learning by wireless that that harbor was ice-bound, Mr. J. Bruce Ismay, chairman of the Board of Directors of the White Star Line, suggested that the ship head for New York. This was done. The _Carpathia_, with nine hundred passengers of her own and the seven hundred survivors, reached New York in safety. The sad international tragedy of the sinking of the _Titanic_ touched men's souls more deeply than any other disaster in many years. To English-speaking races in particular the horror of the occasion pressed close home; for here was the best of British ships bearing many of the most prominent of America's people. To these seasoned voyagers, crossing the Atlantic had become a mere pleasant trifle, seeming no more dangerous than an afternoon's shopping in town. Then suddenly there was thrust upon all of them that ancient, awful knowledge that "in the midst of life we are in death." Both American passengers and English crew lived up to the best traditions of their race. There was no panic, no fighting for places in the boats on the doomed ship. On the contrary, people refused to believe in the imminence of danger. The idea that the ship was unsinkable had been so borne in on them that even when summoned upon deck and ordered to put on life-belts, many of them refused. In the first boats gotten away from the ship, there were not many people. Some refused to climb down through the deep blackness into the tiny craft. They thought the tumult all an empty scare that would soon pass. When the steady, ominous settling of the huge ship's bulk broke through this shallow confidence, there was a solemn change. Grand and tender scenes there were on those sinking decks; of husbands and wives parting with the utterance of a hope, turned suddenly to terror, that they would soon meet again; of other wives who refused to leave their husbands and deliberately stayed to share their fate. Few of the more noted passengers were among those saved. Bruce Ismay, director of the steamship line, was one. The captain went down with his ship, as did most of his officers, though some of the latter saved themselves by clinging to the wreckage which rose after the vessel's plunge. While she was sinking her band still played "Nearer, my God, to thee," and other earnest hymns. Death did not find the old Saxon stock cringing from him with hysteria and frenzy. Sudden as was his coming, wholly unexpected as was his hideous visage, he was met with the calm courage which is the best tradition of the race. And what have been the consequences of this overwhelming tragedy? An investigation was immediately begun in America by the United States Government. Another, slower, dignified and ponderous, was afterward undertaken by the British Government. Both of them in the end attributed the disaster to practically the same cause, the speed mania which has overtaken the nations, the heedlessness of man's over-confidence which takes risks so many times successfully that it grows to forget that risks exist. The _Titanic's_ captain wanted to make a record on her maiden voyage. His directors wanted him to make a record. That would mean increased advertisement and increased traffic for their line. So in the face of danger, knowing there were icebergs all around him, the captain rushed his ship blindly ahead. The chance of his actually hitting an iceberg was scarce one in a hundred. So he took the chance. The probability that if he did strike an iceberg it could do irreparable damage to his stout ship, was scarce one in a hundred. So he took that chance also. He gambled with Death, as a thousand speed-driven captains had gambled before. This time it was Death's turn to win. A gamble even more reprehensible was that of the steamship companies, who had grown so sure their ships would not sink that they no longer provided sufficient means of escape from them. Why load a vessel down with useless life-boats, which only hung the year in and year out, blocking up space? Every foot of that space was valuable. It might make room for an extra passenger, or provide an extra amusement to draw traffic. What voyager ever counted life-boats, or worked out the awful calculation, so obvious now, that there was only rescue space provided for one-third of the number of souls aboard? Was not the ship "unsinkable" after all? The _Titanic_ is gone. Our sorrow for her is becoming but a memory. Our ships carry lifeboats sufficient now; they are compelled to by law. And our sea captains run on safer lines; that, too, the law has made compulsory. But it will be long before man's overweening self-confidence rises from the shock which has been given to his belief in his mechanical ability. Nature is not conquered yet. Ocean has still a strength beyond ours. Ships are not unsinkable; and Death will still take his toll of bold men's lives in the future as he has done in the past. We know that cowardice costs more than courage, but it is not so tragically costly as blind foolhardiness. OUR PROGRESSING KNOWLEDGE OF LIFE SURGERY PERPETUATES THE BODY'S ORGANS A.D. 1912 GENEVIEVE GRANDCOURT Prof. R. LEGENDRE Several years ago a wealthy Swedish manufacturer of dynamite left, by his will, a fund for the providing of a large prize to be conferred each year upon the person who has accomplished most for the peaceful progress of mankind. This annual sum of forty thousand dollars, which is called from its donor the "Nobel prize," was, in October, 1912, conferred upon a surgeon, Dr. Alexis Carrel, for his remarkable work in the study of the life of the tissues and organs which exist in the human body. Even before this public recognition of his work, Dr. Carrel had in the summer of 1912 created a furor among the savants of Paris by the announcement of what he had accomplished. Carrel, though a native-born Frenchman, is an American by education and citizenship, and the French were at first inclined to challenge the value of his work. We therefore present here a "popular" scientific account of what he had achieved, reprinted by permission from the _Scientific American_. Then comes the grudging approval of Professor Legendre, the noted "Preparator of Zoology," head of that section in the National Museum of Paris. Briefly stated, the impressive step which science has here taken, is the preservation of life in the heart and other organs so that these may be taken out of the body and yet kept alive for months. With smaller animals Carrel has even accomplished the actual transferrence of organs from one individual to another. As for the simpler bodily tissues, it now seems possible to preserve these indefinitely outside the body, not only alive but in excellent health and ready to reassume their functions in another body. GENEVIEVE GRANDCOURT THE "IMMORTALITY" OF TISSUES A very evident disadvantage under which medical science has labored has been the impossibility of watching the chemical process set in motion by substances introduced into the body. For this reason various experimenters, from time to time, have attempted to "grow tissues" artificially, in such manner that their development, functions, and decay--under both healthy and diseased conditions--might be studied under the microscope. The only way in which this could be done would be to take a piece of living tissue from the body, and cause its cells to multiply; tissue being made up of an aggregation of cells. Science has failed to produce a single living cell, that is, a cell which will undergo the process of nuclear division (growth) which is the prime condition of its being; and it seemed equally impossible to cause a cell already living to undergo the same process if deprived of the circulation of the blood. Therefore, when in 1910 it was announced that Dr. Alexis Carrel with his assistant, Dr. M. T. Burrows, had succeeded, scientific credulity was taxed. A well-known French savant expressed the opinion before the Society of Biology in Paris, that as others experimenting along these lines, had witnessed only degeneration and survival of cells, this phenomenon was all Carrel's discovery amounted to. In view of past experience, indeed, the chances were in favor of a mistake. In 1897, Leo Loeb said that he had produced this artificial growth both within and without the body. Obviously, such development within the organism where the process of utilizing the body-fluids, etc., follows the same course as in nature, takes on the character of grafting rather than of cultivating in a culture medium. As to causing the external growth, it was ten years later before it seems first to have succeeded. In 1907 Harrison, from Johns Hopkins University, furnished details of his research in such form as to be convincing. But his work had reference to the growth of tissues only of coldblooded animals, he having cultivated artificially, nerve fibers from the central nervous system of the frog. Carrel's work consisted in extending Harrison's method to apply to warm-blooded animals, including, of course, mammals; he having primarily in view at this time a more precise knowledge of the laws governing the restoration of tissues, for example, after serious surgical wounds. He and his assistant worked steadily to this end, and succeeded. The tissues of the higher animals, including man, can now be developed in a culture, and such development can be made to correspond to a rigidly precise technique. The feat is accomplished by putting minute pieces of living tissue into a plasmatic (blood) medium which will coagulate. So complicated is this apparently simple matter in its application that only the most exquisite surgical skill is proof against incalculable modifications in results. Having obtained evidence that tissue can be cultivated in accordance with a formula that may be relied upon to give definite results, the effort was made to grow artificially the various malignant (cancerous) tissues, in turn, of chicken, rat, dog, and human being. Cancerous tissue invariably developed cancer, and so rapidly and extensively that the growth could be observed with the naked eye. It now became evident that, under the right circumstances, the artificial growth of tissues could be utilized in the study of many problems; such as malignant growth of tissue; certain problems in immunity, as, for example, the production of antitoxins of certain organisms; the regulation of the growth of the organism, or of different parts of the organism; rejuvenation and senility; and the character of the internal secretions of the glands, such as the thyroid which plays a role most important in physical and mental development. The difficulty lay in the fact that the artificial growth was so very short-lived. It was found that by passing the growth into a new medium, and repeating the process, the tissues would begin to grow again; but their life even under these circumstances was limited at the most to twenty days. This was manifestly too short a time in which to study the fundamental questions to which the researchers had addressed themselves. Thereupon, study was taken up to determine the question as to _what made these tissues die_. It was found that, apparently as incidental to growth, there was the process of decay, due to an _inability of the tissues to eliminate waste products._ On January 17, 1912, experiments were commenced to determine whether these effects could be overcome. The observations were on the heart and blood-vessels, artificially grown, of the chicken fetus. These growths were put into a salt solution for a few minutes at different periods of their growth, and then placed in a new plasmatic medium. It was found that by following this method, the tissues could be made to live indefinitely. When an animal is in the early stages of its development, the growth of its tissues is necessarily greater as it matures, there being steady diminution after a certain age until the growth altogether ceases, and the size of the animal is determined. But it was found by subjecting these artificial growths to washings in salt solution that the mass was _fifteen times greater at the end of than at the commencement of the third month, showing that they do not grow old at all!_ In the artificial growth the problem of senility and death is solved. It was the announcement of this "permanent life of tissues" that caused such a furor in Paris last summer, and several eminent scientists to demand ocular demonstration, because "the discovery, if true, constituted the greatest scientific advance of a generation." The following summary of this interesting and vitally important and epoch-making work of Carrel is translated from an article published in Paris recently by Professor Pozzi, who witnessed the experiments: "Carrel found that the pulsations of a fragment of heart, which had diminished in number and intensity _or ceased_, could be revived to the normal state by a washing and a passage. In a secondary culture, two fragments of heart, separated by a free space, beat as strongly and regularly. The larger fragment contracted 92 times a minute and the smaller 120 times. For three days, the number and intensity of the pulsations varied slightly. On the fourth day, the pulsations diminished considerably in intensity. The large fragment beat 40 times a minute and the little fragment 90 times. The culture was washed and placed in a new medium. An hour and a half after, the pulsations had become very strong. The large fragment contracted 120 times a minute and the small fragment 160 times. At the same time the fragments grew rapidly. At the end of eight hours they were united and formed a mass of which all the parts beat synchronically." Experiments to date seem to establish that the connective tissue, at any rate, is "immortal." From this research, it is possible to arrive at certain logical conclusions, which, however, it remains for the future to confirm. One, and the most important, is that the normal circulation of the blood does not succeed in freeing all the waste products of the tissues, and that this is the cause of senility and death. Were science to find some way to wash the tissues in the living organism as they have been washed in these cultures, man's life might be indefinitely prolonged. R. LEGENDRE The Nobel prize in medicine for 1912 has just been awarded to Dr. Alexis Carrel, a Frenchman, of Lyon, now employed at the Rockefeller Institute of New York, for his entire work relating to the suture of vessels and the transplantation of organs. The remarkable results obtained in these fields by various experimenters, of whom Carrel is most widely known, and also the wonderful applications made of them by certain surgeons have already been widely published. The journals have frequently spoken lately of "cultures" of tissues detached from the organism to which they belonged; and some of them, exaggerating the results already obtained, have stated that it is now possible to make living tissues grow and increase when so detached. Having given these subjects much study I wish to state here what has already been done and what we may hope to accomplish. As a matter of fact we do not yet know how to construct living cells; the forms obtained with mineral substances by Errera, Stephane Leduc, and others, have only a remote resemblance to those of life; neither do we know how to prevent death; but yet it is interesting to know that it is possible to prolong for some time the life of organs, tissues, and cells after they have been removed from the organism. The idea of preserving the life of greater or lesser parts of an organism occurred at about the same time to a number of persons, and though the ends in view have been quite different, the investigations have led to essentially similar results. The surgeons who for a long time have transplanted various organs and grafted different tissues, bits of skin among others, have sought to prolong the period during which the grafts may be preserved alive from the time they are taken from the parent individual until they are implanted either upon the same subject or upon another. The physiologists have attempted to isolate certain organs and preserve them alive for some time in order to simplify their experiments by suppressing the complex action of the nervous system and of glands which often render difficult a proper interpretation of the experiments. The cytologists have tried to preserve cells alive outside the organism in more simple and well-defined conditions. These various efforts have already given, as we shall see, very excellent results both as regards the theoretical knowledge of vital phenomena and for the practise of surgery. It has been possible to preserve for more or less time many organs in a living condition when detached from the organism. The organ first tried and which has been most frequently and completely investigated is the heart. This is because of its resistance to any arrest of the circulation and also because its survival is easily shown by its contractility. In man the heart has been seen to beat spontaneously and completely 25 minutes after a legal decapitation (Renard and Loye, 1887), and by massage of the organ its beating may be restored after it has been arrested for 40 minutes (Rehn, 1909). By irrigation of the heart and especially of its coronary vessels the period of revival may be much prolonged. The first experiments with artificial circulation in the isolated heart were made in Ludwig's laboratory, but they were limited to the frog and the inferior vertebrates. Since then experiments on the survival of the heart have multiplied and become classic. Artificial circulation has kept the heart of man contracting normally for 20 hours (Kuliabko, 1902), that of the monkey for 54 hours (Hering, 1903), that of the rabbit for 5 days (Kuliabko, 1902), etc. It has also enabled us to study the influence upon the heart of physical factors, such as temperature, isotonia; chemical factors, such as various salts and the different ions; and even complex pharmaceutical products. Kuliabko (1902) was even able to note contractions in the heart of a rabbit that had been kept in cold storage for 18 hours, and in the heart of a cat similarly kept after 24 hours. The other muscular organs have naturally been investigated in a manner analogous to that which has been used for the heart; and for the same reason, because it can be readily seen whether or not they are alive. The striated muscles survive for quite a long time after removal, especially if they are preserved at the temperature of the body and care is taken to prevent their drying. By this method many investigations have been made of muscular contractions in isolated muscles. Landois has noted that the muscles of a man may be made to contract two hours and a half after removal, those of the frog and the tortoise 10 days after. Recently Burrows (1911) has noted a slight increase in the myotomes of the embryo chick after they have been kept for 2 to 6 days in coagulated plasma. Non-muscular organs may also survive a removal from the parent organism, but the proofs of their survival are more difficult to establish because of the absence of movements. Carrel (1906) grafted fragments of vessels that had been in cold storage for several days upon the course of a vessel of a living animal of the same species; in 1907 he grafted upon the abdominal aorta of a cat a segment of the jugular vein of a dog removed 7 days previously, also a segment of the carotid of a dog removed 20 days before; the circulation was reestablished normally; these experiments have, however, been criticized by Fleig, who thinks that the grafted fragments were dead and served merely as supports and directors for the regeneration of the vessels upon which they were set. In 1909 Carrel removed the left kidney from a bitch, kept it out of the body for 50 minutes, and then replaced it; the extirpation of the other kidney did not cause the death of the animal, which remained for more than a year normal and in good health, thus proving the success of the graft. In 1910 Carrel succeeded with similar experiments on the spleen. Taken altogether, these experiments show that the greater part, if not all, of the bodily organs are able to survive for more or less time after removal from the organism when favorable conditions are furnished. There is no doubt but what the observed times of survival may be considerably prolonged when we have a better knowledge of the serums that are most favorable and the physical and chemical conditions that are most advantageous. If we can preserve the organs, we may expect to also keep alive the tissues and cells of which they are composed. Biologists have studied these problems, too, and have also obtained in this department some very interesting results. The cells which live naturally isolated in the organism, such as the corpuscles of the blood and spermatozoa, were the first studied. Since 1910 experiments on the survival of tissues have multiplied and at the same time more knowledge has been obtained concerning the conditions most favorable to survival and the microscopical appearances of the tissues so preserved. In 1910 Harrison, having placed fragments of an embryo frog in a drop of coagulated lymph taken from an adult, saw them continue their development for several weeks, the muscles and the epithelium differentiating, the nervous rudiments sending out into the lymph filaments similar to nerve fibers. Since 1910 with the aid of Dr. Minot, I have succeeded in preserving alive the nerve cells of the spinal ganglia of adult dogs and rabbits by placing them in defibrinated blood of the same animal, through which there bubbled a current of oxygen. At zero and perhaps better at 15°-20°, the structure of the cells and their colorable substance is preserved without notable change for at least four days; moreover, when the temperature is raised again to 39°, certain of the cells give a proof of their survival by forming new prolongations, often of a monstrous character. At 39° some of the ganglion cells which have been preserved rapidly lose their colorability and then their structure breaks up, but a certain number of the others form numerous outgrowths extremely varied in appearance. We have, besides, studied the influence of isotony, of agitation, and of oxygenation, and these experiments have enabled me to ascertain the best physical conditions required for the survival of nervous tissue. In 1910, Burrows, employing the technique of Harrison, obtained results similar to his with fragments of embryonic chickens. Since 1910 Carrel and Burrows applied the same method to what they call the "culture" of the tissues of the adult dog and rabbit; they have thus preserved and even multiplied cells of cartilage, of the thyroid, the kidney, the bone marrow, the spleen, of cancer, etc. Perhaps Carrel and his collaborators may be criticized for calling "culture" that which is merely a survival, but there still remains in their work a great element of real interest. Such are, too briefly summarized, the experiments which have been made up to the present time. We can readily imagine the practical consequences which we may very shortly hope to derive from them, and the wonderful applications of them which will follow in the domain of surgery. Without going so far as the dream of Dr. Moreau depicted by Wells, since grafts do not succeed between animals of different species, we may hope that soon, in many cases, the replacing of organs will be no longer impossible, but even easy, thanks to methods of conservation and survival which will enable us to have always at hand material for exchange. The dream of to-day may be reality to-morrow. There are also other consequences which will follow from these researches. I hope that they will permit us to study the physical and chemical factors of life under much simpler conditions than heretofore, and it is toward this end that I am directing my researches. They will enable us to approach much nearer the solution of the old insoluble problem of life and death. What indeed is the death of an organism all of whose parts may yet survive for some time? These, then, are the researches made in this domain, fecund from every point of view, and the great increase in the number of experts who are taking them up, while it is a proof of their interest, gives hope for their rapid progress. THE OVERTHROW OF TURKEY THE FIRST BALKAN WAR A.D. 1912 J. ELLIS BARKER FREDERICK PALMER Prof. STEPHEN P. DUGGAN Turkey's _opéra-bouffe_ war with Italy in 1911 plunged her into a far more terrible and sanguinary struggle. Seeing her weakness, the little Balkan States seized the opportunity to unite and attack her. Each of the Balkan allies had once been crushed by Turkey and had fought for freedom. Each was jealous and suspicious of all the others. Each people hoped that in the break-up of Turkey their own land would be enlarged. Each saw members of their own race oppressed in the Macedonian region still held by Turkey. In face of their great opportunity, however, all the four States--Bulgaria, Greece, Servia, and Montenegro--hushed their own quarrels and joined in attacking their common enemy. Of the causes of the war, Mr. J. Ellis Barker, the noted English authority on Turkey, here gives a brief account. The tale of the first glorious campaign, with its big battles of Kirk-Kilesseh and Lule-Burgas, is then told by Mr. Frederick Palmer, the foremost of American war correspondents upon the scene. The confused negotiations for peace are then detailed by Prof. Stephen P. Duggan, our American authority upon the Balkan States. J. ELLIS BARKER A short time ago I read an interesting account of Sir Max Waechter's recent journey to the capitals of Turkey and all the other Balkan States. He had visited these towns wit the object of laying before the Sovereigns of the Balkan States and their Ministers proposals for abolishing war by the creation of a European Federation of States. All the Balkan Sovereigns and Ministers whom he had seen had expressed themselves sympathetically and favorably and had agreed to accept the _status quo_. A month later all the Balkan States were at war; Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Italy were arming, and people were anxiously discussing the possibility of a world war. The sudden transition from peace to war appears inexplicable to those unacquainted with the realities of foreign policy. In July, 1908, the Turkish Revolution broke out. It was a great and immediate success. Never in the world's history had there been so successful a revolution or one so bloodless. As by magic, Turkey was changed from a medieval State into a modern democracy. The Turkish masses were rejoicing. Old feuds were forgotten. Mohammedans and Christians fraternized. The words Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Parliamentarism, and Democracy were on all lips. Over night a new Turkey had arisen. Soon the leaders of Young Turkey began to assert the right and claims of the new-born State. We were told that European intervention in the affairs of Turkey would no longer be tolerated, and that those parts of the Turkish Empire which, though nominally subject to the Sultan, were no longer under Turkish control, would have to be handed back. Great Britain was to restore Egypt and Austria-Hungary Bosnia and Herzegovina. Many Englishmen indorsed these claims, and told us that a new era had opened in the East. At that time only a few people ventured to doubt whether the Turkish Revolution would be a lasting success. I think I was the only British publicist who immediately and unhesitatingly foretold that Parliamentary Government in Turkey was bound to be a failure, and that it would inevitably lead to the formation of a Balkan Confederation which would attack Turkey. I said then: "European Turkey has about 6,000,000 inhabitants, of whom only about one-third are Turks. "The Young Turks have the choice of two evils. They must either follow a Liberal or a Conservative policy. If they follow a Liberal policy, if they introduce Parliamentary representation, self-government, and majority rule in Turkey in general, and in Macedonia in particular, the Christians will be the majority, and it seems likely that they will then oust the Turkish minority and convert the ruling race into a ruled race. A Liberal policy will, therefore, bring about the rapid disintegration of the Turkish Empire. "Foreseeing the danger of allowing the alien elements to be further strengthened, many patriotic Turks have demanded that a vigorous Conservative policy should be pursued which will abolish the national differences among the alien races and between the alien races and the Turks. They demand that a Turkish national policy should be initiated, that the aliens should be nationalized in Turkish national schools, that Turkish shall be the language of Turkey, that the Greek, Bulgarian, and other schools shall be closed. Will Bulgaria, Greece, and Servia quietly look on while the work of a generation is being undone? Will the Greeks, Serbs, and Bulgarians residing in Turkey allow themselves to be denationalized more or less forcibly? Besides, can they be denationalized against their will except by destroying the Parliamentary and democratic Government, the Constitution of yesterday, and by reintroducing the ancient absolutism in an aggravated form? Two hundred years ago the Turks could easily have nationalized the alien races by means of the church and the school, but it seems that it is now too late to make an attempt at turning the subject races into Turks. "In endeavoring to settle the conflicts among the alien nationalities and between the aliens and the Turks, the path of the new Turkish Government will scarcely be smooth. _The Balkan States_ are watching events with attention. Although they congratulated the new Turkish Government, they have no interest in Turkey's regeneration, and they are bound to oppose the Ottomanization of their compatriots in Turkey. Therefore, they _may be expected to draw the sword and to face Turkey unitedly if they see their plans of expansion threatened by the nationalization of the alien elements in Turkey_." Unfortunately, my forecast has come true in every particular. The failure of New Turkey was natural. It was unavoidable. Ancient States are ponderous and slow-moving bodies. Their course can be deflected and their character be altered only by gradual evolution, by slow and almost imperceptible changes spread over a long space of time. Democracy, like a tree, is a thing of slow growth, and it requires a congenial soil. It can not be created over night in Turkey, Persia, or China. The attempt to convert an ancient Eastern despotism, firmly established on a theocratic basis, a country in which the Koran and the Multeka are the law of the land, into a Western democracy based on the secular speculations of Rousseau, Montesquieu, Bentham, Mill, and Spencer was ridiculous. The revolution effected only an outward change. It introduced some Western innovations, but altered neither the character of the Government nor that of the people. Turkish Parliamentarism became a sham and a make-believe. The cruel absolutism of Abdul Hamid was speedily followed by the scarcely less cruel absolutism of a secret committee. The new rulers of the country were mostly very young men, who were conspicuous for their enthusiasm and their daring but not for their judgment and experience. They had picked upon the boulevards and in the Quartier Latin of Paris and in Geneva the sonorous phrases of Western democracy and demagogy, and with these they impressed, not only their fellow citizens, but also the onlookers in Europe. Having obtained power, they embarked upon a campaign of nationalization. However, instead of trying to nationalize the non-Turkish millions slowly and gradually by kind and just treatment coupled with a moderate amount of nationalizing pressure, they began ruthlessly to make war upon the language, and to suppress the churches, schools, and other institutions of the non-Turkish citizens, whom they disarmed and deprived of their ancient rights. The complaints and remonstrances of the persecuted were answered with redoubled persecution, with violence, and with massacre, and soon serious revolts broke out in all parts of the Empire. The Young Turks followed faithfully in Abdul Hamid's footsteps. However, Abdul Hamid was clever enough always to play off one nationality or race against the other. In his Balkan policy, for instance, he encouraged Greek Christians to slay Christian Bulgarians and Servians, and allowed Bulgarian bands to make war upon Servians and Greeks, supporting, on principle, one nationality against the other. But the Young Turks persecuted indiscriminately and simultaneously all non-Turkish races, Albanians, Bulgarians, Servians, and Greeks, and thus they brought about the union of the Balkan States against themselves. The outbreak of the war could scarcely have been prevented by the European Powers. It was bound to come. It was as inevitable as was the breakdown of the Young Turkish _régime_. Since the earliest times the Turks have been a race of nomadic warriors. Their policy has always been to conquer nations, to settle among the conquered, and to rule them, keeping them in strict and humiliating subjection. They have always treated the subject peoples harshly and contemptuously. Unlike other conquerors, they have never tried to create among the conquered a great and homogeneous State which would have promised permanence, but, nomad-like, have merely created military settlement among aliens. Therefore, the alien subjects of the Turks have remained aliens in Turkey. They have not become citizens of the Empire. As the Turks did not try to convert the conquered to Islam--the Koran forbids proselytism by force--and to nationalize them, the subjected and ill-treated alien masses never amalgamated with the ruling Turks, but always strove to regain their liberty by rebellion. Owing to the mistakes made in its creation, the Turkish Empire has been for a long time an Empire in the process of disintegration. Its later history consists of a long series of revolts, of which the present outbreak is the latest, but scarcely the last, instance. The failure of the new Turkish _régime_ has increased to the utmost the century-old antagonism between the ruling Turks and their Christian subjects. The accounts of the sufferings of their brothers across the borderline, inflicted upon them by Constitutional Turkey, which had promised such great things, had raised the indignation of the Balkan peoples to fever heat and had made an explosion of popular fury inevitable. The war fever increased when it was discovered that Servians, Bulgarians, and Greeks were at last of one mind, and that Turkey's strength had been undermined by revolts in all parts of the Empire and by the Turkish-Italian war. The Turks, on the other hand, were not unnaturally indignant with the perfidy of the Christian Powers, which, instead of supporting Turkey in her attempts at reform, had snatched valuable territories from her immediately after her revolution. Not unnaturally, they attributed the failure of the new _régime_ and the revolts of their subjects to the machinations of the Christian States, and the Balkan troubles to the hostile policy of the Balkan States. The tension on both sides became intolerable. If the Balkan States had not mobilized, a revolution would have broken out in Sofia and Belgrade, for the people demanded war. If the Turkish Government had given way to the Balkan States, a revolution would have broken out in Constantinople. The instinct of self-preservation forced the Balkan Governments and Turkey into war. The passions of race-hatred had become uncontrollable. FREDERICK PALMER[1] [Footnote 1: Reprinted by permission from an article in _Everybody's Magazine_.] Against any one of his little Christian neighbors the Turk had superior numbers, and had only to concentrate on a single section of his many-sided frontier line. It had never entered his mind that the little neighbors would form an alliance. He had trusted to their jealousies to keep them apart. United, they could strike him on the front and both sides simultaneously. He was due for an attack coming down the main street and from alleys to the right and left. In this situation he must temporarily accept the defensive. Meanwhile, he foresaw the battalions of "chocolate soldiers" beating themselves to pieces against the breastworks of his garrisons, and Greek turning on Serb and Serb on Bulgar after a taste of real war. Against divided counsels would be one mind, which, with reenforcements of the faithful from Asia Minor, would send the remnants of the _opéra bouffe_ invasion flying back over their passes. But the allies fully realized the danger of quarreling among themselves, which would have been much harder to avert if their armies had been acting together as a unit under a single command. Happily, each army was to make a separate campaign under its own generals; each had its own separate task; each was to strike at the force in front of its own borders. Prompt, staggering blows before the Turkish reserves could arrive were essential. The Montenegrins in the northwest, who had the side-show (while Bulgaria, Servia, and Greece had the three rings under the main tent), did their part when they invested the garrison of Scutari. Advancing northward, the Greeks, with strong odds in their favor, easily took care of the Turkish force at Elassona and continued their advance toward Salonika. Advancing southward, the Serbs, one hundred thousand strong (that is, the army of their first line), moved on Kumanova among the hills, where the forty thousand Turks defending the city of Uskub would make their stand as inevitably as a board of army engineers would select Sandy Hook as a site for some of the defenses of New York harbor. Confidently, the Turkish commander staked all on the issue. The Serbs did not depend alone on mass or envelopment by flank. They murderously and swiftly pressed the attack in the front as well as on the sides; and the cost of victory was seven or eight thousand casualties. Two or three fragments of the Turkish army escaped along the road; otherwise, there was complete disintegration. Uskub was now undefended. It was the ancient capital of Servia; and the feelings of the Serbs, as they marched in, approximated what ours would be if our battalions were swinging down Pennsylvania Avenue after a Mexican proconsul had occupied the White House for five hundred years. Meanwhile, at Monastir were forty thousand more Turks. So far as helping their comrades at Kumanova was concerned, they might as well have been in jail in Kamchatka. You can imagine them sitting cross-legged, Turkish fashion, waiting their turn. They broke the precedent of Plevna, which the garrisons of Adrianople and Scutari gloriously kept, by yielding rather easily. There must have been a smile on the golden dome of the tomb of Napoleon, who thrashed the armies of Europe in detail. A Servian division, immediately after Kumanova, started southwest over the mountain passes in the snow and through the valleys in the mud to clinch the great Servian object of the war with the nine points of possession. To young Servia, Durazzo, the port of old Servia, is as water to the gasping fish. It stands for unhampered trade relations with the world; for economic freedom. When that division, ragged and footsore, came at last in sight of the blue Adriatic--well, it may safely be called a historic moment for one little nation. Now we turn from the side lines, where the Serbs and the Greeks were occupied, to the neck of the funnel through which the Turkish reenforcements from Asia Minor were coming. There the Bulgars had undertaken the great, vital task of the war against the main Turkish army. The Bulgarian army was little given to gaiety and laughter, but sang the "Shuma Maritza" on the march. This is the song of big men in boots--big white men with set faces--making the thunder of a torrent as they charge. "Roaring Maritza" is the nearest that you can come to putting it into English. The Maritza is the national river, and the song pictures it swollen and rushing in the winter rains or when the snows on the Balkans melt, on its way past the Bulgarian border into Turkey; and the gray army was now to follow it to the Aegean, in the spirit of its flood, and make the harbor at its mouth Bulgarian. Yes, a gray army, bent on a grim business in a hurry, in gray winter weather and chill mountain mists, with the sun showing through overcast skies--something of the kind of weather that bred the Scotch. Cromwell or Stonewall Jackson would have felt at home, saying his prayers at the double-quick, in such company. As mementos from home, the soldiers wore in their caps and buttonholes withered flowers and sprigs of green which their womenfolk had given in farewell. The women were just as Spartan as the Spartans; perhaps more so. If any soldier lacked innate courage, the spur of public opinion drove him forward in step with his comrades. Naturally, Bulgarian generalship had to adapt its plan of campaign to the obstacles between it and its adversary. For armies are cumbrous affairs. In all times they have been tied down to roads and bridges. The main highway and the main railway line from Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, to Constantinople both ran through Adrianople. Nature meant this city, set in a basin among hills, for defense, and for the center of any army defending Thrace. On the near-by hills is a circle of permanent forts that commands all approaches for guns or infantry. In front of it is the turbulent Maritza, and to the northeast lies the town of Kirk-Kilesseh, partly fortified and naturally strong, which formed the Turkish right. The left rested at Demotika, to the south of Adrianople, in a rough country inaccessible to prompt action by a large force. The Bulgars must turn one wing or the other. Foreign military experts thought that Kirk-Kilesseh could be taken only after a long operation, and then only by a force much larger than the Bulgars could spare for concentration at any one point of the line. Let two weeks pass without a definite victory, and the Turks would have numbers equal to the Bulgars; a month, superior numbers. As it was, the Turks had altogether, including the Adrianople garrison, a hundred and seventy-five thousand men in strong position against the Bulgars' first line of two hundred and eighty thousand. A branch of the Sofia-Constantinople railway line runs northeast to Yamboli, on the Bulgarian frontier. Between Yamboli and Kirk-Kilesseh is a highway--the Turkish kind of highway--and no unfordable streams or other natural obstacles to an army's progress. At Yamboli the Bulgars concentrated their third army corps, under General Demetrief, and a portion of their second. The rest of the second faced Adrianople, while the first corps operated to the south and east. Swinging around on Kirk-Kilesseh, the third army would not take "No!" for an answer. The Bulgarian infantry stormed the redoubts in the moonlight. They knew how to use the bayonet and the Turks did not. Skilfully driven steel slaughtered Mohammedan fanaticism that fought with clubbed guns, hands, and teeth, asking no quarter this side of Paradise. Kirk-Kilesseh fell. The Turkish army, flanked, had to go; Adrianople was isolated. The Bulgarian dead on the field could not complain; the wounded were in the rear; the living had burning eyes on the next goal. "_Na noj!"_ ("Fix bayonets!") had won. "_Na noj!_ Give them the steel!" was the cry of a nation. Soldiers sang it out to one another on the march. Children prattled it at home as if it were a new kind of game: "Give them the steel and they will go! Nothing can stop Bulgaria!" Not more than two Bulgarian soldiers out of twenty ever reached the Turk with a bayonet. The Turk did not wait for them. So the bayonet counted no less in the morale of the eighteen than of the two. Frequently they fixed it at a distance of five or six hundred yards. Their desire to use it made them press close at all points with the grim initiative that will not be gainsaid. When they charged, the spirit of cold steel was in their rush. There was a splendid audacity in General Demetrief's next move after Kirk-Kilesseh. He did not pause to surround Adrianople. To the east was a wide gap in the investing lines. Through this the garrison might have made a sortie with telling effect. But Demetrief knew his enemy. He took it for granted that the garrison was settling itself for a siege. With twelve thousand Turkish reenforcements a day arriving from Asia, even hours counted. As yet, the Turks were not decisively beaten; only the right that fought at Kirk-Kilesseh had been really demoralized. On the line of Bunar Hissar to Lüle Burgas they formed to receive the second shock. They were given scant time to prepare for it. "_Na noj!_" For three days this battle, the Waterloo of the war, raged. The advancing Bulgarian infantry went down like ninepins; but it did not give up, for it knew that "they would go when they saw the steel." Again the turning movement in flank crushed in the end. This time the Turkish main army was shattered. It hardly had the cohesiveness of a large mob. It was many little mobs, hungry, staggering on to the rear, where the ravages of cholera awaited. In two weeks the Bulgars had made their dispositions and fought two battles, each lasting three days. They had advanced seventy-five miles over a rough country where the roads were sloughs. The loss in killed and wounded was sixty thousand; one man out of five was down. When officers and men had snatched any sleep it was on the rain-soaked earth. The bread in their haversacks was wet and moldy. When they lay in the fire zones they were lucky if they had this to eat. By day they had dug their way, trench by trench, up to the enemy's position, crouching in the mud to keep clear of bullets. By night they had charged. They were an army in a state of auto-intoxication, bent on the one object of driving the Turkish army back to the narrow line of the peninsula. This accomplished, all the isolated forces in European Turkey, whether at distant Scutari or near-by Adrianople, were without hope of relief. The neck of the funnel was closed; the war practically won. All the world knows now, and the Bulgarian staff must have known at the time, that for a week after Lüle Burgas the utter demoralization of the Turkish retreat left the way open to Constantinople. Why did not General Demetrief go on? Why did that army which had proceeded thus far with such impetuous and irresistible momentum suddenly turn snail? For the reason that the Marathon winner when he drops across the tape is not good for another mile. The Bulgar was on his stomach in the mud, though he was facing toward the heels of the Turk. Food and ammunition were not up. A fresh force of fifty thousand men following up the victory might easily have made its own terms at the door of Yildiz Palace within three or four days; but there was not even a fresh regiment. It was three weeks after Lüle Burgas before Demetrief was ready to attack; three weeks, in which the cholera scare had abated, the panic in Constantinople had come and gone, reenforcements had arrived and been organized into a kind of order, while they built fortifications. The Turkish cruisers supported both of Nazim Pasha's flanks with the fire of heavier guns than the Bulgars possessed. There was an approachable Turkish front of only about sixteen miles. Without silencing the Turkish batteries, Demetrief sent his infantry against the redoubts. He lost five or six thousand men without gaining a single fort. Against a stubborn and even semi-intelligent foe there is no storming a narrow frontal line of fortifications when you may not turn the ends. Adrianople lay across the straight line of transportation by railroad and highway to the peninsula. All munitions for Demetrief's army had to go around it in the miserable, antiquated ox-carts. It was the rock splitting the flood of the Bulgarian advance. While the world was hearing rumors of the city's fall, the truth was that it was not really invested until a month after Lüle Burgas was fought. For a month the garrison reported to be starving was drawing in supplies from a big section of farming country. When the armistice was signed it still had pasturage within the lines of defense for flocks of sheep and herds of cattle. The problem for the Bulgars first and last was to keep this fact masked and to check the savage sorties and spare all the guns and men they could for the main army. Volunteers from Macedonia still in native dress, clerks still in white collars, old men who had perjured themselves about their age in order to get a rifle, and the young conscripts of twenty years came to take the place of the regular forces on the investing lines, who moved on to re-enforce Demetrief. Fifty thousand Servians, two divisions, were spared after Kumanova, and speeded across Bulgaria on the single-line railway with an amazing rapidity to assist, according to plan, the Bulgars in the investment operations. To the Turk, Adrianople is a holy city. Here is the most splendid mosque in all the empire, that built by the conqueror Sultan Selim. With the shadow of the minarets over his shoulder, the Turkish private in a trench was ready to die for Allah. But death must come for him. He is not going to hustle intelligently after paradise. In short, he is a sit-and-take-it fighter. While any delay of the Bulgarian advance was invaluable in gaining time, he made no use of his opportunities in a country of hills and transverse valleys and ravines, which nature meant for rear-guard action. A company of infantry posted on a hill could force a regiment to deploy and attack, and a few miles farther on could repeat the process. Cavalry could harass the flanks of the attacking force. Field-guns could get a commanding position above a road, with safe cover for retreat. At Mustapha Pasha, twenty miles in front of Adrianople, was a solid old stone bridge over the Maritza, whose floods in the winter rains would be a nightmare to engineers who had to maintain a crossing with pontoons. If ever a corps needed a bridge the second Bulgarian corps needed this one. They found that a small and badly placed charge of dynamite had merely knocked out a few stones between two of the buttresses, leaving the bridge intact enough for all the armies of Europe to pass over it; and the Turks did not even put a mitrailleuse behind sandbags in the streets or use field-guns from the adjacent hills to delay the Bulgars in their crossing. The soldier who is good only for the defensive can never win. What beat the Turk was the Turk himself. His army was in the chaos between old-fashioned organization and an attempt at a modern organization. His generals were divided in their counsels; his junior officers aped the modern officer in form, but lacked application. They had ceased to believe in their religion. Therefore, they did not lead their privates who did believe. In the midst of the war, captains and lieutenants, trustworthy observers tell me, would leave their untrained companies of reservists to march by the road while they themselves rode by train. They took their soldiers' pay. They neglected all the detail which is the very essence of that preparation at the bottom without which no generalship at the top can prevail. The Bulgarian officers, two-thirds of whom were reservists, enjoyed a comradeship with their men at the same time that discipline was rigid. They believed in their God; at least, in the god of efficiency. They worked hard. They belong in the world of to-day and the Turk does not. Therefore the Turk has to go. "We will not make peace without Adrianople!" was the cry of every Bulgar. Its possession became a national fetish, no less than naval superiority to the British. Adrianople stood for the real territorial object of the war. It must be the center of any future line of defense against the Turk. Practically its siege was set, once there was stalemate at Tchatalja. With no hope of beating the main Bulgarian army back, there was no hope of relieving the garrison, whose fate was only a matter of time. At the London Peace Conference the allies stood firm for the possession of Adrianople. The Turkish commissioners, after repeating for six weeks that they would never cede it, had finally agreed to yield on orders from Constantinople, when the young Turks killed Nazim Pasha, the Turkish commander-in-chief, and overthrew the old cabinet. "You can have Adrianople when you take it!" was the defiance of the new cabinet to the allies. PROF. STEPHEN P. DUGGAN The Peace Conference came to naught and hostilities were resumed on February 14, 1913, because of the impossibility of agreement between the allies and Turks on three important points: the status of Adrianople, the disposal of the Aegean islands, and the payment of an indemnity by Turkey. Bulgaria and Turkey both maintained that Adrianople was essential to their national safety. Moreover, its possession by Bulgaria was absolutely necessary were she to secure the hegemony in the Balkans at which she aimed. On the other hand, to the Turks, Adrianople is a sacred city around which cluster the most glorious memories of their race. Thus they would yield it only as a last necessity. The ambassadorial conference, anxious to bring to an end a war which was threatening to embroil Austria-Hungary and Russia and desirous also to make the settlement permanent, had already on January 17th in its collective note to the Porte unavailingly recommended to the Porte the cession of Adrianople to the Balkan States. The question of the Aegean islands presented similar difficulties. They are inhabited almost exclusively by Greeks who demand to be united to the mother country; but Turkey insisted that the possession of some of them (_e.g._, Imbros, Tenedos, and Lemnos) was necessary to her for the protection of the Dardanelles, since they command the entrance to the straits, while others (_e.g._, Chios and Mitylene) are part of Asiatic Turkey. The Greeks asserted that to leave any of them to Turkey would cause constant unrest in Greece, and subsequent uprising against Turkey, thus merely repeating the history of Crete. Moreover, the Greeks maintained that they must have the disputed islands because they are the only large and profitable ones; but they expressed a willingness to neutralize them so that the integrity of the Dardanelles would not be endangered. The difficulty was complicated by the retention of a number of the islands by Italy until Turkey should fulfil all the provisions of the Treaty of Lausanne arising from the Tripolitan war. The Greeks asserted that their fleet would have taken all the islands except for the Italian occupation. Moreover, they are suspicious of Italian intentions, especially with regard to Rhodes. The ambassadorial conference in its collective note to the Porte had advised the Porte "to leave to the Powers the task of deciding upon the fate of the islands of the Aegean Sea and the Powers would arrange a settlement of the question which will exclude all menace to the security of Turkey." The third question in dispute concerned a money indemnity. The war had been a fearful drain upon the resources of the allies. They were determined not to share any of the Ottoman debt and to compel Turkey, if possible, to bear the financial burden of the war. But to yield to this demand would absolutely destroy Turkish credit. This would result in the financial ruin of many of the subjects of the great Powers. Hence this demand of the allies met with scant favor in the ambassadorial conference. The war dragged on during the entire month of February without changing the relative positions of the belligerents. In the mean time, the relations between Austria-Hungary and Russia were daily becoming more strained. This was due to the determination of Austria-Hungary to prevent Servia from securing a seaboard upon the Adriatic. In the slogan of the allies, "the Balkan peninsula for the Balkan peoples," Austria-Hungary found a principle which could be utilized against their demands. She took the stand that the Albanians are a Balkan people entirely distinct from Slavs and Greeks and particularly unfriendly to the Slavs. It would be as suicidal to place any of the Albanians under the Slavs as to put back any of the Slavs under the Turks. Albania must be an autonomous State; that it may live in peace, it must possess its seaboard intact. In this position Austria-Hungary was seconded by Italy, which has interests in Albania as important as those of Austria-Hungary. Neither State can afford to allow the other to possess the eastern shore of the Adriatic; and both are determined that it shall not fall into the possession of another possibly stronger power. As early as December 20, 1912, the ambassadors had recommended to their governments, and the latter had accepted, the principle of Albanian autonomy, together with a provision guaranteeing to Servia commercial access to the Adriatic. This had aroused the intense indignation of the Serbs, whose armies, contrary to the express prohibitions of Austria-Hungary, had already occupied Durazzo on the Adriatic and overrun northern Albania. The Serbs denied the right of any State to forbid them to occupy the territory of the enemy whom they had conquered, and Servia sent a detachment of her best troops and some of her largest siege guns to help the Montenegrins take Scutari. Moreover, numerous reports of outrages committed upon Albanians by the "Liberators" in their attempts to convert both Moslem and Catholic Albanians to the orthodox faith reached central Europe and caused great danger in Vienna. Count Berchtold's statement to the Delegations that Austria-Hungary would insist upon territory enough to enable independent Albania to be a stable State with Scutari as the capital, aroused in turn much excitement in Russia. Scutari was the chief goal of Montenegrin ambition. To possess it had been the hope of King Nicholas and his people during his long reign of half a century. To forbid him to possess it would be to deprive him of the fruits of the really heroic sacrifices his people had made during this war. Hence the excitement in all Slavdom. On February 7th Francis Joseph sent Prince Hohenlohe to St. Petersburg with an autograph letter to the Czar which had the good effect of reducing the tension between the two countries. The ambassadorial conference at London then directed its attention exclusively to settling the status of Albania. After more than a month of acrimonious discussion a settlement was reached on March 26th in which the principle of nationality which had been invoked to justify the creation of an independent Albania was quietly ignored. The conference agreed upon the northern and northeastern boundaries of Albania. In order to carry her point that Scutari must be Albanian, Austria-Hungary agreed that the almost exclusively Albanian towns of Ipek, Djakova, Prizrend, and Dibra should go to the Serbs. On April 1st King Nicholas was notified that the powers had unanimously agreed to blockade his coast if he did not raise the siege of Scutari. His answer was that the proposed action of the powers was a breach of neutrality and that Montenegro would not alter her attitude until she had signed a treaty of peace. At once the warships of all the powers save Russia (which had none in the Mediterranean) engaged in the blockade. On April 15th, owing to the pressure of the powers and to the strained relations that had arisen between Servia and Bulgaria, the Servian troops were recalled from Scutari. Nevertheless the Montenegrins persisted alone and Scutari fell April 22, 1913. Two days later the Austro-Hungarian government demanded that vigorous action be undertaken by the powers to put independent Albania in possession of Scutari according to the agreement of March 26th. At once the greatest excitement prevailed throughout Russia. Street demonstrations against the Austro-Hungarian policy were held in many of the large cities. In Austria-Hungary military preparations became active on a large scale, and on May 1st the Dual Monarchy gave notice that it would undertake individual action should Montenegro not agree to the ultimatum. Italy, which is determined never to permit the Dual Monarchy individual action in Albania, announced that she would support her ally. As the result of all the pressure brought to bear upon him, on May 5th, King Nicholas yielded and placed Scutari in the hands of the powers, just in time, as Sir Edward Grey informed the English House of Commons, to prevent an outbreak of hostilities between Austria-Hungary and Russia. While the chancelleries of the great powers were thus straining every nerve to agree upon the status of Albania and thereby to prevent a conflict between the two powers most vitally interested, the war between the allies and Turkey was prosecuted during March with greater vigor and with more definite results. On March 5th, Janina surrendered to the Greeks and on March 26th Adrianople fell. The powers had already offered to mediate between the belligerents, and their good offices had been accepted by both sides. The allies at first insisted upon the Rodosto-Malatra line as the western boundary of Turkey, but were informed that the powers would not consent to giving Bulgaria a foothold on the Dardanelles. After much outcry and violent denunciation by the allies, an armistice was signed at Bulair on April 19th by representatives of all the belligerents except Montenegro, which was thereby only incited to more heroic efforts to capture Scutari. Nevertheless the allies had profited so much by delay in their relations with the powers since the very outbreak of the war that they now hoped to secure advantages by a similar policy, and it was not until May 21st that their representatives reassembled at London. Even then there appeared to be no sincere desire to come to terms, and on May 27th Sir Edward Grey informed the delegates that they would soon lose the confidence of Europe, and that for all that was being accomplished they might as well not be in London. The delegates were very indignant at this strong language, but it had the desired effect, for on May 30, 1913, the Treaty of London was signed by the representatives of all the belligerents. Its principal provisions were those already suggested by the powers, _viz_.: (1) The boundary between Turkey and the allies to be a line drawn from Midia to Enos, to be delimited by an international commission: (2) The boundaries of Albania to be determined by the powers. (3) Turkey to cede Crete to Greece. (4) The powers to decide the status of the Aegean islands. (5) The settlement of all the financial questions arising out of the war to be left to an international commission to meet at Paris. It was time for a settlement, since the problem was no longer to secure peace between Turkey and the allies, but rather to maintain peace among the allies. The solution of the great problem of the war, the division of the spoils, could no longer be deferred. From the moment that Adrianople had fallen, the troops of Bulgaria, Servia, and Greece maneuvered for position, each state determined to secure possession of as much territory as possible, in the hope that at the final settlement it might retain what it had seized. MEXICO PLUNGED INTO ANARCHY HUERTA SEIZES A DICTATORSHIP A.D. 1913 EDWIN EMERSON WILLIAM CAROL Mexico has loomed large in the affairs of the world during recent years. The overthrow of Diaz in 1911 did not, as the world had hoped, bring into power an earnest and energetic middle class capable of guiding the downtrodden peons into the blessings of civilization. On the contrary, the land passed from the grip of a cruel oligarchy into that of a far more cruel anarchy. Hordes of bandits sprang up everywhere. The new president, Madero, was a philosopher and a patriot. But he failed wholly to get any real grasp of the situation. He was betrayed on every side; rebellion rose all around him; and in his extremity he entrusted his army and his personal safety to the most savage of his secret enemies, General Huerta. Madero died because he was too far in advance of his countrymen to be able to understand them. After that, Huerta sought to reestablish the old Diaz regime of wealth and terrorism; but he only succeeded in plunging the land back into utter barbarism. The Mexicans are the last large section of the earth's population thus left to rule themselves in savagery. Hence the rest of the world has watched them with eagerness. Europe repeatedly reminded the United States that by her Monroe Doctrine she had assumed the duty of keeping order in America. At last she felt compelled to interfere. The picture of those days of anarchy is here sketched by two eye-witnesses, an Englishman and an American, both fresh from the scene of action. EDWIN EMERSON There is a saying in Mexico that it is much easier to be a successful general than a successful president. Inasmuch as almost all Mexican presidents during the hundred years since Mexico became a Republic, owed their presidency to successful generalship, this saying is significant. At all events, no Mexican general who won his way into the National Palace by his military prowess ever won his way out with credit to himself or to his country. General Victoriano Huerta, Mexico's latest Interim-President, during the first few months that followed his overthrow of the Madero Government found out to his own cost how much harder it is to rule a people than an army. As a matter of fact, General Huerta was pushed into his interim-presidency before he really had a fair opportunity to learn how to command an army. At the time he was so suddenly made Chief Magistrate of Mexico he was not commanding the Mexican army, but was merely a recently appointed major-general who happened to command that small fraction of the regular army at the capital which was supposed to have remained loyal to President Madero and his constitutional government. Huerta had been appointed by President Madero to the supreme command of the loyal forces at the capital, numbering barely three thousand soldiers, only a few days before Madero's fall. Even if he had not turned traitor to his commander-in-chief, as he did in the end, Huerta's command of the loyal troops during the ten days' struggle at the capital preceding the fall of the constitutional government could not be described as anything but a dismal failure. Before considering General Huerta's qualifications as a President, one should know something of his career as a soldier. During the last few years it has repeatedly fallen to my lot to follow General Huerta in the field, so that I have had a fair chance to view some of his soldierly qualities at close hand. I accompanied General Huerta during his campaign through Chihuahua, in 1912, and was present at his famous Battle of Bachimba, near Chihuahua City, on July 3, 1912--the one decisive victory won by General Huerta against the rebel forces of Pascual Orozco. Before this campaign I was in Cuernavaca, in the State of Morelos, during the time when General Huerta had his headquarters there in his campaign against Zapata's bandit hordes in that State after the fall of General Diaz's government. General Huerta then took charge of the last military escort which accompanied General Porfirio Diaz on his midnight flight from Mexico City to the port of Vera Cruz. During the ten hours' run down to the coast, it may be recalled, the train on which President Diaz and his family rode was held up by rebels in the gray of dawn, and the soldiers of the military escort had to deploy in skirmish order, led by Generals Diaz and Huerta in person; but the affair was over after a few minutes' firing, with no casualties on either side. Before this eventful year General Huerta had but few opportunities of winning laurels on the field of battle. Having entered the Military Academy of Chapultepec in the early 'seventies under Lerdo de Tejada's presidency, Victoriano Huerta was graduated in 1875, at the age of twenty-one, and was commissioned a second lieutenant of engineers. While still a cadet at Chapultepec he distinguished himself by his predilection for scientific subjects, particularly mathematics and astronomy. During the military rebellion of Oaxaca, when General Diaz rose against President Lerdo, Lieutenant Huerta was engaged in garrison duty, and got no opportunity to enter this campaign. After General Diaz had come into power and had begun his reorganization of the Mexican army, young Huerta, lately promoted to a captaincy of engineers, came forward with a plan for organizing a General Staff. General Diaz approved of his plans, and Captain Huerta, accordingly, in 1879, became the founder of Mexico's present General Staff Corps. The first work of the new General Staff was to undertake the drawing up of a military map of Mexico on a large scale. The earliest sections of this immense map, on which the Mexican General Staff is still hard at work, were surveyed and drawn up in the State of Vera Cruz, where the Mexican Military Map Commission still has its headquarters. Captain Huerta accompanied the Commission to Jalapa, the capital of the State of Vera Cruz, and served there through a period of eight years, receiving his promotion to major in 1880 and to lieutenant-colonel in 1884. During this time he had charge of all the astronomical work of the Commission, and he also led surveying and exploring parties over the rough mountainous region that extends between the cities of Jalapa and Orizaba. While at Jalapa he married Emilia Aguila, of Mexico City, who bore him three sons and a daughter. In 1890 Huerta was promoted to a colonelcy and was recalled to Mexico City. As a reward for Indian campaign services Huerta was promoted to the rank of brigadier-general. In Mexico's centennial year of 1910, when Francisco Madero rose in the north, and other parts of the Republic gave signs of disaffection, General Huerta was ordered south to take charge of all the detached Government force in the mountainous State of Guerrero. Almost simultaneously with his arrival in Chilpancingo, the capital of the State of Guerrero, almost the whole south of Mexico rose in rebellion. The military situation there was soon found to be so hopeless that Huerta was recalled to Mexico City. After General Huerta saw General Porfirio Diaz off to Europe at Vera Cruz, he returned to the capital and placed himself at the disposition of Don Francisco L. de la Barra, Mexico's new President _ad interim_. President de la Barra dispatched him with a column of soldiers to Cuernavaca to restore peace. Huerta placed himself at Señor Madero's complete disposition when the latter was elected and inaugurated as President at Mexico. Madero, for reasons that are self-evident, was anxious to propitiate the military element, and to secure the cooperation of the more experienced officers in the regular army for the better pacification of the country. Accordingly, when Zapata and his bandit hordes gave signs of returning to their old ways, refusing to "stay bought," President Madero sent General Huerta back into Morelos, at the head of a strong force of cavalry, mountain artillery, and machine guns, numbering altogether 3,500 men, with orders to put down Zapata's new rebellion "at any cost." At the same time President Madero induced his former fellow rebel, Ambrosio Figueroa, now Commander-in-Chief of Mexico's rural guards, to cooperate with General Huerta by bringing a mounted force of three thousand rurales from Guerrero into Morelos from the south so as to hem in the Zapatistas between himself and Huerta at Cuernavaca. Figueroa's men, though they had to cover three times the distance, struck the main body of the rebels first and got badly mussed up in the battle that followed. General Huerta's column did not get away from Cuernavaca until the second day of the fight, and did not reach the battlefield in the extinct crater of Mount Herradura until Figueroa's rurales had been all but routed. In the battle that followed, General Huerta succeeded in driving the rebels out of their strong position, but the losses of the federals, owing to their belated arrival and hastily taken positions, were disproportionately heavy. This affair caused much ill-feeling between the rurales and regulars, and Figueroa sent word to Madero that he could not afford to sacrifice his men by trying to cooperate with such a poor general as Huerta. The much-heralded joint campaign accordingly fell to the ground. President Madero thereupon recalled General Huerta, and sent General Robles, of the regular army, to replace him in command. This furnished Huerta with another grievance against Madero. Some time afterward I heard General Huerta explain in private conversation to some of his old army comrades that he had been recalled from Morelos because of his sharp military measures against the Zapatistas, owing to President Madero's sentimental preference for dealing leniently with his old Zapatista friends. At the time when General Huerta made this private complaint, however, it was a notorious fact that his successor in Morelos, General Robles, had received public instructions from Madero to deal more severely with the Morelos rebels. General Robles did, as a matter of fact, handle the Morelos rebels far more ruthlessly than Huerta, leading to his own subsequent recall on charges of excessive cruelty. Meanwhile the Orozco rebellion had arisen in the north, and became so threatening that General Gonzalez Salas, Madero's War Minister, felt called upon to resign his portfolio to take the field against Orozco. General Salas, after organizing a fairly formidable-looking force of 3,500 regulars and three batteries of field artillery at Torreon, rushed into the fray, only to suffer a disgraceful defeat in his first battle at Rellano, in Chihuahua, not far from Torreon. General Salas took his defeat so much to heart that he committed suicide on his way back to Torreon. This, together with the panic-stricken return of his army to Torreon, caused the greatest dismay at the Capital, the inhabitants of which already believed themselves threatened by an irresistible advance of Orozco's rebel followers. None of the federal generals at the front were considered strong enough to stem the tide. The only available federal general of high rank, who had any experience in commanding large forces in the field, was Victoriano Huerta. President Madero, in his extremity, called upon Huerta to reorganize the badly disordered forces at Torreon, and to take the field against Orozco, "cost what it may." This was toward the end of March, 1912. General Huerta, whom the army had come to regard as "shelved," lost no time in getting to Torreon. There he soon found that the situation was by no means so black as it had been painted--General Trucy Aubert, who had been cut off with one of the columns of the army, having cleverly extricated his force from its dangerous predicament so as to bring it safely back to the base at Torreon without undue loss of men or prestige. Thenceforth no expense was saved by General Huerta in bringing the army to better fighting efficiency. Heavy reenforcements of regulars, especially of field artillery, were rushed to Torreon from the Capital, and large bodies of volunteers and irregulars were sent after them from all parts of the Republic. President Madero had said: "Let it cost what it may"; so all the preparation went forward regardless of cost. "Hang the expense!" became the blithe motto of the army. When General Huerta at last took the field against Orozco, early in May, his federal army, now swelled to more than six thousand men and twenty pieces of field artillery, moved to the front in a column of eleven long railway trains, each numbering from forty to sixty cars, loaded down with army supplies and munitions of all kinds, besides a horde of several thousand camp followers, women, sutlers, and other non-combatants. The entire column stretched over a distance of more than four miles. The transportation and sustenance of this unwieldy column, which had to carry its own supply of drinking water, it was estimated, cost the Mexican Government nearly 350,000 pesos per day. Its progress was exasperatingly slow, owing to the fact that the Mexican Central Railway, which was Huerta's only chosen line of advance, had to be repaired almost rail by rail. After more than a fortnight's slow progress, General Huerta struck Orozco's forces at Conejos, in Chihuahua, near the branch line running out to the American mines at Mapimi. Orozco's forces, finding themselves heavily outnumbered and overmatched in artillery, hastily evacuated Conejos, retreating northward up the railway line by means of some half-dozen railway trains. Several weeks more passed before Huerta again struck Orozco's forces at Rellano, in Chihuahua, close to the former battlefield, along the railway, where his predecessor, General Gonzalez Salas, had come to grief. This was in June. Huerta, with nearly twice as many men and three times as much artillery, drove Orozco back along the line of the railway after a two days' long-range artillery bombardment, against which the rebels were powerless. This battle, in which the combined losses in dead and wounded on both sides were less than 200, was described in General Huerta's official report as "more terrific than any battle that had been fought in the Western Hemisphere during the last fifty years." In his last triumphant bulletin from the field, General Huerta telegraphed to President Madero that his brave men had driven the enemy from the heights with a final fierce bayonet charge, and that their bugle blasts of victory could be heard even then on the crest. Pascual Orozco, on the other hand, reported to the revolutionary Junta in El Paso that he had ordered his men to retire before the superior force of the federals, and that they had accomplished this without disorder by the simple process of boarding their waiting trains and steaming slowly off to the north, destroying the bridges and culverts behind him as they went along. One of my fellow war correspondents, who served on the rebel side during this battle, afterward told me that the federals, whose bugle calls Huerta heard on the heights, did not get up to this position until two days after the rebels had abandoned their trenches along the crest. The subsequent advance of the federals from Rellano to the town of Jimenez, Orozco's old headquarters, which had been evacuated by him without firing a shot, lasted another week. Here Huerta's army camped for another week. At Jimenez the long-brewing unpleasantness between Huerta's regular officers and some of Madero's bandit friends, commanding forces of irregular cavalry, came to a head. The most noted of these former guerrilla chieftains was Francisco Villa, an old-time bandit, who now rejoiced in the honorary rank of a Colonel. Villa had appropriated a splendid Arab stallion, originally imported by a Spanish horse-breeder with a ranch near Chihuahua City. General Huerta coveted this horse, and one day, after an unusually lively carouse at general headquarters, he sent a squad of soldiers to bring the horse out of Villa's corral to his own stable. The old bandit took offense at this, and came stalking into headquarters to make a personal remonstrance. He was put under arrest, and Huerta forthwith sentenced him to be shot. That same day the sentence was to be put into execution. Villa was already facing the firing squad, and the officer in charge had given the command to load, when President Madero's brother, Emilio, who was serving on Huerta's staff in an advisory capacity, put a stop to the execution by taking Villa under his personal protection. President Madero was telegraphed to, and immediately replied, reprieving Villa's sentence, and ordering him to be sent to Mexico City pending further official investigation. This act of interference infuriated Huerta. For the moment he had to content himself with formulating a long string of serious charges against Villa, ranging from military insubordination to burglary, highway robbery, and rape. It was even given out at headquarters that Villa had struck his commanding general. Huerta never forgave the Madero brothers for their part in this affair, and his resentment was fanned to white heat, subsequently, when Francisco Villa was allowed to escape scot-free from his prison in Mexico City. Meanwhile Huerta kept telegraphing to President Madero for more reenforcements of men, munitions, and supplies, more engines, more railway trains and tank cars, and, above all, for more artillery. Madero kept sending them, though it cost his Government a new loan of forty million dollars. Every other day or so a new train, with fresh supplies, arrived at the front. At the end of several more weeks, when Orozco had slowly retreated half-way through the State of Chihuahua, and when he found that the destruction of the big seven-span bridge over the Conchos River at Santa Rosalia did not permanently stop Huerta's advance, he reluctantly decided to make another stand at the deep cut of Bachimba, just south of Chihuahua City. This was in July. By this time General Huerta's Federal column had swelled to 7,500 fighting men, 20 pieces of field artillery, 30 machine guns, and some 7,500 camp-followers and women, making a total of more than 15,000 persons of all sexes and ages, who were being carried along on more than twenty railroad trains, stretching over a dozen miles of single track. The column was so long that some of my companions and I, when we climbed a high hill near the front end of the column at Bachimba, found it impossible to discern the tail end through our field-glasses. All the hungry people that were being carried on all those twenty railroad trains had to be fed, of course, so that none of us were surprised to read in the Mexican newspapers that the Chihuahua campaign was now costing Madero's Government nearly 500,000 pesos per day. The battle at Bachimba must have swelled this budget. During this one day's fight nearly two million rifle cartridges and more than 10,000 artillery projectiles were fired away by the Federals. Huerta's twenty pieces of field artillery, neatly posted in a straight line on the open plain, barely half a mile away from his ammunition railway train, kept firing at the supposed rebel positions all day long without any appreciable interruption, and all day long the artillery caissons and limbers kept trotting to and fro between the batteries and ammunition cars. Orozco had but 3,000 men with two pieces of so-called artillery, with gun barrels improvised from railroad axles, so he once more ordered a general retreat by way of his railroad trains, waiting at a convenient distance on a bend of the road behind the intervening hills. As at Rellano, at Conejos, and at other places in the campaign where the railroad swept in big bends around the hills, no attempt was made on the Federal side to cut off the rebels' retreat by short-cut flanking movements of cavalry, of which Huerta had more than he could conveniently use, or chose to use. The whole ten hours' bombardment and rifle fire resulted in but fourteen dead rebels; but it won the campaign for the Government, and earned for Huerta his promotion to Major-General besides the proud title of "Hero of Bachimba." President Madero and his anxious Government associates were more than glad to receive the tidings of this "decisive victory." The only trouble was that it did not decide anything in particular. Orozco and his followers, while evacuating the capital of Chihuahua, kept on wrecking railway property between Chihuahua City and Juarez, and the campaign kept growing more expensive every day. It took Huerta from July until August to work his slow way from the center of Chihuahua to Ciudad Juarez on the northern frontier. Before he reached this goal, though, the rebels had split into many smaller detachments, some of which cut his communications in the rear, while others harried his flanks with guerrilla tactics and threatened to carry the "war" into the neighboring State of Sonora. So far as the trouble and expense to the Federal Government was concerned this guerrilla warfare was far worse than the preceding slow but sure railway campaign. General Huerta himself, who was threatened with the loss of his eyesight from cataract, gave up trying to pursue the fleeing rebel detachments in person, but kept close to his comfortable headquarters in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua City. This unsatisfactory condition of affairs gave promise of enduring indefinitely, until President Madero in Mexico City, whose Government had to bear the financial brunt of it all, suddenly lost his patience and recalled Huerta to the capital, leaving the command in General Rabago's hands. For reasons that were never quite fathomed by Madero's Government, Huerta took his time about obeying these orders. Thus, he lingered first at Ciudad Juarez, then at Chihuahua City, then at Santa Rosalía, next at Jimenez, and presently at Torreon, where he remained for over a week, apparently sulking in his tent like Achilles. This gave rise to grave suspicions, and rumors flew all over Mexico that Huerta was about to make common cause with Orozco. President Madero himself, at this time, told a friend of mine that he was afraid Huerta was going to turn traitor. About the same time, at a diplomatic reception, President Madero stated openly to Ambassador Wilson that he had reasons to suspect Huerta's loyalty. At length, however, General Huerta appeared at the capital, and after a somewhat chilly interview with the President, obtained a suspension from duty so that he might have his eyes treated by a specialist. Thus it happened that Huerta, who was nearly blind then, escaped being drawn into the sudden military movements that grew out of General Felix Diaz's unexpected revolt and temporary capture of the port of Vera Cruz last October. General Huerta's part in Felix Diaz's second revolution, four months later, is almost too recent to have been forgotten. He was the senior ranking general at the capital when the rebellion broke out, and was summoned to his post of duty by President Madero from the very first. He accompanied Madero in his celebrated ride from Chapultepec Castle to the National Palace on the morning of the first day of the famous "Ten Days," and was put in supreme command of the forces of the Government after the first hurried council of war. President Madero, totally lacking in military professional knowledge as he was, confided the entire conduct of the necessary war measures to General Huerta; but it soon became apparent that the old General either could not or would not direct any energetic offensive movement against the rebels. From the very first the Government committed the fatal blunder of letting the rebels slowly proceed to the Citadel--a fortified military arsenal--the retention of which was of paramount importance, without even attempting to intercept their roundabout march or to frustrate their belated entry into the poorly guarded Citadel. Later, when it became clear that the rebels could not be dislodged from this stronghold by street rushes, no attempt was made to shell them out of their strong position by a high-angle bombardment of plunging explosive shells. After it was all over General Huerta explained the ill-success of his military measures during the ten days' street-fighting by saying that President Madero was a madman who had spoiled all Huerta's military plans and measures by utterly impracticable counter-orders. At the time, though, it was given out officially that Huerta had been placed in absolute, unrestricted command. When the American Ambassador, toward the close of the long bombardment, appealed to President Madero to remove some Federal batteries, the fire from which threatened the foreign quarter of Mexico City, President Madero replied that he had nothing to do with the military dispositions, and referred the Ambassador to General Huerta, who promptly acceded to the request. On another occasion, later in the bombardment, when Madero insisted that the Federal artillery should use explosive shells against the Citadel, General Huerta did not hesitate to take it upon himself to countermand the President's suggestions to Colonel Navarrete, the Federal chief of artillery. Afterward General Navarrete admitted in a speech at a military banquet that his Federal artillery "could have reduced the Citadel in short order had this really been desired." Whether General Huerta was really able to win or not is beside the issue, since the final turn of events plainly revealed that his heart was not in the fight, and that he was only waiting for a favorable moment to turn against Madero. Before General Blanquet with his supposed relief column was allowed to enter the city, General Huerta had a private conference with Blanquet. This conference sealed Madero's doom. Later, after Blanquet's forces had been admitted to the Palace, on Huerta's assurances to the President that Blanquet was loyal to the Government, it was agreed between the two generals that Blanquet should make sure of the person of the President, while Huerta would personally capture the President's brother, Gustavo, with whom he was to dine that day. The plot was carried out to the letter. When Huerta put Gustavo Madero under arrest, still sitting at the table where Huerta had been his guest, Huerta sought to palliate his action by claiming that Gustavo Madero had tried to poison him by putting "knock-out" drops into Huerta's after-dinner brandy. At the same time Huerta claimed that President Madero had tried to have him assassinated, on the day before, by leading Huerta to a window in the Palace, which an instant afterward was shattered by a rifle bullet from outside. Neither of the two prisoners ever had a chance to defend themselves against these charges, for Gustavo Madero on the night following his arrest was shot to death by a squad of soldiers in the garden of the Citadel, and President Madero met a similar fate a few nights afterward. General Huerta, who by this time had got himself officially recognized as President, gave out an official statement from the Palace pretending that Gustavo Madero had lost his life while attempting to escape, and that his brother, the President, had been accidentally shot by some of his own friends who were trying to rescue him from his guard. Few people in Mexico were inclined to believe this official version. Yet the murder of the two Maderos, and of Vice-President Pino Suarez, as well as the subsequent killing of other prisoners, like Governor Abraham Gonzalez, of Chihuahua, was condoned by many in Mexico on the ground that these men, if allowed to remain alive, were bound to make serious trouble for the new Government. It was generally hoped, at the same time, even by those who condemned these murders as barbarous, that General Huerta might still prove himself a wise and able ruler, no matter how severe. These fond hopes were changed to gloomy foreboding only a few weeks after Huerta's assumption of the presidency, when he was seen to surround himself with notorious wasters of all kinds, and when he was seen to fall into Madero's old error of extending the "glad hand" to unrepentant rebels and bandits like Orozco, Cheche Campos, Tuerto Morales, and Salgado. Victoriano Huerta, whether he be considered as a general or as a president, can be expressed in one phrase: He is an Indian. Huerta himself proudly says that he is a pure-blooded Aztec. His friends claim for him that he has the virtues of an Indian--courage, patience, endurance, and dignified reserve. His enemies, on the other hand, profess to see in him some of the vices of Indian blood. From what I have seen of General Huerta in the field, in private life, and as a President, I would say that he combines in himself both the virtues and the faults of his race. In battle I have seen him expose himself with a courage worthy of the best Indian traditions; nor have I ever heard it intimated by any one that he was a coward. One of his strong points as a commander was that he was a man of few words. On the other hand, his own soldiers at the front hailed him as a stern and cruel leader; and some of the things that were done to his prisoners of war at the front were enough to curdle any one's blood. It was during a moment of conviviality that General Huerta once revealed his true sentiments toward the United States and ourselves. This was during a banquet given in his honor at Mexico City on the eve of his departure to the front in Chihuahua. On this occasion an Englishman, who had long been on terms of intimacy with Huerta, asked the General what he would do if northern Mexico should secede to the United States and the Americans should take a hand in the fray. This question aroused General Huerta to the following extemporary speech: "I am not afraid of the _gringoes_. Why should I be? No good Mexican need be afraid of the _gringoes_. If it had not been for the treachery of President Santa Anna, who sold himself to the United States in 1847, we should have beaten the Yankees then, as we surely shall beat them the next time. Let them cross the Rio Bravo! We will send them back with bloody heads. "We Mexicans need not be afraid of any foreign nation. Did we not beat the Spaniards? Did we not also beat the French, and the Austrians, and the Belgians, and all the other foreign adventurers who came with Maximilian? In the same way we would have beaten the _gringoes_ had we had a fair chance at them. The Texans, who beat Santa Anna, at San Jacinto, you must know, were not _gringoes_, but brother Mexicans, of whom we have reason to be proud. "To my mind, there are only two real nations in the world, besides our old Aztec nation. Those nations are England and Japan. "All the others can not properly be called nations; least of all the United States, which is a mere hodge-podge of other nations. One of these days England and Japan and Mexico will get together, and after that there will be an end to the United States." WILLIAM CAROL[1] [Footnote 1: Reproduced in condensed form from _The World's Work_ by the kind permission of Doubleday, Page & Co.] In order to understand the situation in Mexico, it is necessary to get firmly in our minds that there are in reality two Mexicos. One may be called American Mexico and the other Mexican Mexico. The representative of the new, half-formed northern or American Mexico was Francisco Madero--rich, educated, well mannered, honest, and idealistically inclined. The representative of the old Mexico is Huerta--"rough, plain, old Indian," as he describes himself, pugnacious, crafty, ignorant of political amenities, without understanding of any rule except the rule of blood and powder. By the law of 1894 Diaz changed the character of the land titles in Mexico. Many smaller landowners, unable to prove their titles under the new system, lost their holdings, which in large measure eventually fell into the hands of a few rich men. In the feudal south this did not cause so much disturbance. But in the north the growing middle class bitterly resented it. Madero became the spokesman of this discontent. In his books and in his program of reform, "the plan of San Luis Potosi," he attacked the Diaz regime. And then in 1910 he joined the rebel band organized by Pascual Orozco in the mountains of Chihuahua. With his weakened army Diaz was unable to cope with this revolution, and in October, 1911, Madero became President. The country was then at peace, except for the band of robbers led by Zapata in the provinces of Morelos and Guerrero. These are and have been the most atrocious of the many bandits with which Mexico is infested. No outrage or barbarity known to savages have they left untried. Madero attempted to buy them off, but to no avail. He then sent military forces against them, one column commanded by General Huerta, but with no success. In the mean time, Pascual Orozco, who emerged from the Madero revolution as a great war hero in his own State, was given no post of responsibility under the new Government, but was left as commander of the militia in the State of Chihuahua. The adherents of the old Diaz régime took this opportunity to win him over to their side, for Orozco's fighting was done purely for profit, not for principle. A reactionary movement, with Orozco at its head, broke out in February, 1912. Five thousand men were quickly got together. The Madero Administration--a Northern Administration in the Southern country--was not fully organized, and, with the army not yet rehabilitated, found itself seriously embarrassed. Had Orozco been an intelligent and competent leader he probably could have marched straight through to Mexico City at that time, as the only governmental troops that were available to fight him were only about sixteen hundred, which he defeated and nearly annihilated at Rellano in Chihuahua. Their commander, General Gonzalez Salas, Madero's war minister, committed suicide after the defeat. The only general available at the time who had had experience in handling large forces in the field was Victoriano Huerta. Although he had never especially distinguished himself, Huerta's record shows that he was one of the most progressive members of the army. Huerta's column encountered little resistance. Chihuahua City was occupied on July 7th, and later, Juarez. The rebels were not pursued to any extent away from the railroads. They separated into bands, keeping up a guerrilla warfare, raiding American mining camps and ranches, and seizing and holding Americans and others for ransom. Prominent among these leaders of banditti was Inez Salazar, a former rock driller in an American mine, who raised a force in Chihuahua and declared against Madero. Little was done to destroy these rebel bands by the Federals, and no engagements of any size took place. In fact, it was a current rumor that the Federals did not wish to put them down. In the first place, the regular army was the same old Diaz organization which considered Madero largely as a usurper and which remained with the established Government in a rather lukewarm manner. Besides, the bands of Orozco, Salazar, and others were instigated and supported by the adherents of the old regime, and, although opposed to the Mexican army, both had many ideas in common regarding the Madero Administration. Furthermore, the officers and men of the army were receiving large increases of pay for the campaign. An instance showing this disposition on the part of the Federals occurred in the State of Sonora in October, 1912. General Obregon, now the commander of the Sonora State forces, was at that time a colonel of the army and had his battalion, composed largely of Maya Indians, at Agua Prietá, just across the border from Douglas, Ariz. Salazar's band of rebels had crossed the mountains from Chihuahua and had come into Sonora. Popular clamor forced the Federal commander at Agua Prietá to do something, and accordingly he ordered Obregon to take his battalion, proceed south, get in touch with Salazar, and "remain in observation." Salazar was looting the ranch of a friend of Obregon's near Fronteras. The rebel had taken no means to secure his bivouac against surprise; his men were scattered around engaged in slaughtering cattle, cooking, and making camp for the night. Obregon deployed his force and charged Salazar's camp. Forty of Salazar's men were killed, and a machine gun and a number of horses, mules, and rifles were captured; whereupon Salazar left that part of the country. Upon Obregon's return to Agua Prietá he was severely reprimanded and nearly court-martialed for disobeying his orders in not "remaining in observation" of Salazar, and attacking him instead. Had Obregon been given a free hand, he undoubtedly could have destroyed Salazar's force. After Salazar's defeat at Fronteras, he moved east again, and about a month later appeared near Palomas, a town about three miles from the international boundary south of Columbus, N.M. At Palomas there was a Federal detachment of about one hundred and thirty men under an old colonel. They had been sent there to protect various cattle interests in that vicinity; and they had a considerable amount of money, equipment, and ammunition for maintaining and providing rations and forage for themselves and for some outlying detachments. Salazar, hearing of this, demanded that the money and equipment be immediately surrendered. Upon being refused, Salazar, with about three hundred and fifty men, attacked. A furious battle was fought, ending in a house-to-house fight with grenades--cans filled with dynamite, with fuse attached, which are thrown by hand. Salazar's force captured the town after the Federals had suffered more than 50 per cent. in casualties, including the Federal commander, who was wounded several times; the rebels suffered more than 30 per cent. casualties. The town, in the mean time, was wrecked. This particular instance shows that the Mexicans fight and fight well from a standpoint of physical courage. The general idea that the Mexicans would not fight, which Americans obtained during this period, was obtained because they did not care to in the majority of cases. Meanwhile, General Huerta, having "finished" his Chihuahua campaign in the autumn of 1912, was promoted to the rank of General of Division (Major-General) and decorated for his achievement. It was rumored in many places at that time that General Huerta was about to turn against the Madero Government. Madero, suspecting his loyalty, ordered him back to Mexico City. Huerta took his time about obeying this order, and, when he reported in Mexico City, obtained a sick-leave to have his eyes treated. Huerta was nearly blind when Felix Diaz's revolt broke out in Vera Cruz in October, 1912, and probably thus escaped being drawn into that unsuccessful demonstration. From this time until the _coup d'etat_ of February 8, 1913, there was no large organized resistance to the Madero Administration, although banditism increased at an alarming rate in all parts of the Republic. The Diaz-Reyes outburst, in Mexico City on February 8, 1913, which resulted in the death of Madero and Suarez and the elevation of Huerta to practical military dictatorship, was brought about by the adherents of the old regime, who looked upon Madero's extinction as a punishment meted out to a criminal who had raised the slaves against their masters. This view prevailed to a considerable extent in Mexico south of San Luis Potosi. In the North, however, the people almost as a whole (at least 90 per cent. in Sonera, and only to a slightly lesser extent in the other provinces) saw in it the cold-blooded murder of their political idol at the hands of unscrupulous moneyed interests and of adherents of the old regime of the days of Porfirio Diaz. The resentment was general in the North--this new, largely Americanized North, Venustiano Carranza, the governor of Coahuila, organized the resistance in the provinces of Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas, while Maytorena, the governor of Sonora, and Pesqueira (later in Washington, D.C., as Carranza's representative), with Obregon as the head of their military forces, rapidly cleared that State of Federals, with the exception of the port of Guaymas. These fights were no mere bloodless affairs, but stubbornly contested, with heavy casualties, as a decided principle was involved in the conflict. Villa, the old bandit and personal enemy of Huerta, organized a force in Sonora, and Urbina did likewise in northern Durango. Arms, and especially money to buy them with, were hard to get. Funds were obtained from the tariff at ports of entry, internal taxation, amounting at times to practical confiscation, contributions, and gifts from various sources. It is said that the Madero family put aside $1,000,000, gold, for this purpose. Though a few individuals went over to the Constitutionalist cause, the Mexican regular army remained true to the _ad interim_ Government. The revolutionists either held or rapidly possessed themselves of the great railroad lines in the majority of cases. Huerta, who is an excellent organizer, soon appreciated the magnitude of the revolt and rushed troops to the north as rapidly as possible, his strategy being to hold all railroad lines and cities with strong columns which would force the revolutionists to operate in the intervals between the railroads. Then Huerta, with these columns as a supporting framework, pushed out mobile columns for the destruction of the rebel bands. The Carranzistas understood this plan and, to meet it, tore up all the railroads that they could and adopted as their fixed plan never to risk a general engagement of a large force. For the first few months, the rebels, who had adopted the name of Constitutionalists, continued recruiting their forces and destroying the railroads. The Federals tried to repair the railroads and get enough troops into the north to cope with this movement. They obtained new military equipment of all descriptions, the army was increased, and old rebels, such as Orozco and Salazar, sympathizers or tools of the old régime, were taken into the Federal forces as irregulars and given commands. To understand the apparent slowness of the Federals in moving from place to place and their inability to pursue the rebels away from the railroads, some idea must be given as to their system of operating. The officers of the regular army are well instructed and quite competent. The enlisted men, however, come from the lowest strata of society, and, except in the case of a foreign war, have to be impressed into the ranks. They bring their women with them to act as cooks and to transport their food and camp equipage. Military transportation, that is to say, baggage trains of four-mule wagons and excellent horses for the artillery, does not exist in the Mexican army. In fact, when away from a railroad, the "soldaderas," as the women are called, carry nearly everything; and they obtain the food necessary for the soldiers' rations. A commissariat, as we understand it, does not exist. This ties the Federals to the railroads, as they can not carry enough ammunition and food for any length of time. On the other hand, those who first saw Obregon's rebel forces in Sonora and Villa's in Chihuahua were surprised at their organization. There were no women taken with them. They had wagons, regular issues of rations and ammunition, a paymaster, and the men were well mounted and armed. With Obregon, also, were regiments of Yaqui Indians, who are excellent fighting material. These forces were mobile, and could easily operate away from the railroad. They lacked artillery, without which they were greatly handicapped, especially in the attack on fortified places and on stone or adobe towns. As most of the horses and mules were driven away from the railroads, the insurgents could get all the animals they wanted. The first large battle occurred on May 9-10-11-12th outside of Guaymas, between Ojeda's Federals and Obregon's Constitutionalists, at a place called Santa Rosa. The Federal advance north consisted of about twelve hundred men and eighteen pieces of artillery. They were opposed by about four thousand men under Obregon, without artillery. Eight hundred Federals were killed and all their artillery captured. The Constitutionalists lost two hundred and fifty men killed and wounded. Comparatively few Federals returned to Guaymas. Each side killed all the wounded that they found, and also all captives who refused to enlist in the captor's force. This success was not followed up and Guaymas remained in the hands of the Federals. The artillery captured by the Constitutionalists had had the breech blocks removed to render them unserviceable; new ones, however, were made in the shops at Cananca by a German mechanician named Klaus. In the summer, Urbina captured the city of Durango, annihilating the Federals. The city was given over to loot and the greatest excesses were indulged in by the victors. Arson, rape, and the robbing of banks, stores, and private houses were indiscriminately carried on. Horses were stabled in the parlors of the homes of the prosperous citizens, and many non-combatants were killed by the soldiers before order was restored. At this time the only points held by the Federals on the boundary between the United States and Mexico were Juarez, in Chihuahua, and Nuevo Laredo, in Tamaulipas. The railroads south of these points were also in the physical possession of the Federals but subject to continual interruption at the hands of the Constitutionalists. Venustiano Carranza had established headquarters at Ciudad Porfirio Diaz (Piedras Negras) across the Rio Grande from Eagle Pass, Tex. He started on a trip, during the late summer, through the northern provinces to confer with the leaders of the Constitutionalist movement in order to bring about better coordination of effort on their part. He went through the States of Coahuila, Durango, Chihuahua, and Sonora and established a new headquarters in Sonora. Since then the efforts of the Constitutionalists have been much better coordinated, with the result that they have had much better success. Jesus Carranza and Pablo Gonzalez were left in charge at Ciudad Porfirio Diaz by Venustiano Carranza when he left on his trip. Shortly after this a Federal column was organized under General Maas for the capture of the railroad between Saltillo and Ciudad Porfirio Diaz. This column slowly worked its way to Monclova and then to Ciudad Porfirio Diaz, which it occupied on October 7th; the Constitutionalists ripped up the railroad and destroyed everything that might be useful to the Federals and a good deal that could not, and offered very little resistance. Villa, in the mean time, having been reenforced by men from Durango and some from Sonora, had been operating in Chihuahua with considerable success. He had fallen on several small Federal columns, destroyed them, and obtained about six pieces of artillery, besides a fresh supply of rifles and ammunition. In September, he had interposed his force between the Federals at Chihuahua City and Torreon, at a place called Santa Rosalía. Villa and the Federals each had about four thousand men. The Federals from the south were making a determined attempt to retake Durango and had started two columns for Torreon of more than two thousand men each, one west from Saltillo, another north from Zacatecas. These had to repair the railroad as they went. Torreon was being held by about one thousand Federal soldiers. Villa was well informed of these movements, and also of the fact that, in their anxiety to take Durango, a Federal force of about 800 men, under General Alvirez, was to leave Torreon before the arrival of the Saltillo and Zacatecas columns. Having the inner line, Villa with his mobile force could maneuver freely against any one of these. He accordingly left a rear guard in front of the Federals at Santa Rosalía, and, marching south rapidly, met and completely defeated General Alvirez's Federal column about eighteen miles west of Torreon, near the town of Aviles. General Alvirez and 287 of his men were killed, fighting to the last. Villa then turned toward Torreon. The "soldaderas" of Alvirez's force had escaped when the fight at Aviles began and reached Torreon, quickly spreading the news. The Federal officer in command attempted to round them up, but to no avail, and Torreon's weak garrison became panic stricken, put up a feeble resistance, and evacuated the town. Villa occupied it on the night of October 1st. He sent his mounted troops against the Federal columns from Saltillo and Zacatecas, tearing up the railroad around them, until they both retreated. He maintained splendid order in Torreon; sent a detachment of one officer and twenty-five men to the American consul to protect American interests, and stationed patrols throughout the city with orders to shoot all looters. At first, a few stores containing provisions and clothing were looted, and some Spaniards who were supposed to be aiding the Federals were killed, but the pillaging soon stopped. Villa's occupation of Torreon thus contrasted strikingly with Urbina's occupation of Durango. The capture of Torreon made precarious the military position of the Federals in Chihuahua, as Torreon was their principal supply point. When Villa's advance reached Santa Rosalía, the Federals evacuated their fortified position at that place and concentrated all available troops at Chihuahua City. They expected that a decided attempt would be made by Villa to take it. The Federals did succeed in repelling small attacks against Chihuahua on November 6th-9th and, to strengthen their garrison, they reduced the troops in Juarez until only 400 remained. Villa, while keeping up the investment of Chihuahua City, prepared a force for a dash on Juarez, and on the night of November 14th-15th the Federal garrison at that place was completely surprised and the city was captured. These are the main events (to December 1st) that marked this chapter in the inevitable struggle between the new Mexico and the old, before the United States by interfering actively in the tumult changed the entire character of the war. The Carranza practise of killing the wounded shows that even the North has much to learn in civilized methods of warfare. On the other hand, the self-restraint exercised, in many cases, against looting captured towns, indicates that progress has been made. This account also indicates that the new Mexico, in aims as well as in material things, is getting the upper hand. THE NEW DEMOCRACY THE FORCES OF CHANGE DOMINATE AMERICA A.D. 1913 WOODROW WILSON On March 4, 1913, Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated as President of the United States, and thus became the central figure of a new and tremendously important movement. He was, it is true, elected as the candidate of what is known as the Democratic party, which has existed since the days of Thomas Jefferson. But the ideas advanced by President Wilson as being democratic were so different from the original theories and policies of Jefferson that President Wilson himself felt called on to formulate his principles in a now celebrated work entitled "The New Freedom." From the opening pages of this, as originally published in _The World's Work_, we here, by permission of both the President and the magazine, give his own statement of the ideas of the new era. The voting body of Americans who stand behind President Wilson are obviously of the type now generally called progressive. In the convention which nominated him, the conservative element of the old Democracy struggled long and bitterly against the naming of any "progressive" candidate. In the Republican party, the strife between conservatism and progress was so bitter as to produce a complete split; and the progressives nominated a candidate of their own, preferring, if they could not control the government themselves, to hand it over to the progressive element among the Democrats. The former political parties in the United States seem to have been so completely disrupted by recent events that even though they continue to hold some power under the old names, they now stand for wholly different things. The two parties which in the triangular presidential contest polled the largest numbers of votes were both "progressive." So it seems settled that we are to "progress." But whither--and into what? Is there any clear purpose before our new leaders, and how does it differ from mankind's former purposes? That is what President Wilson tries to tell us. There is one great basic fact which underlies all the questions that are discussed on the political platform at the present moment. That singular fact is that nothing is done in this country as it was done twenty years ago. We are in the presence of a new organization of society. Our life has broken away from the past. The life of America is not the life that it was twenty years ago; it is not the life that it was ten years ago. We have changed our economic conditions, absolutely, from top to bottom; and, with our economic society, the organization of our life. The old political formulae do not fit the present problems; they read now like documents taken out of a forgotten age. The older cries sound as if they belonged to a past age which men have almost forgotten. Things which used to be put into the party platforms of ten years ago would sound antiquated if put into a platform now. We are facing the necessity of fitting a new social organization, as we did once fit the old organization, to the happiness and prosperity of the great body of citizens; for we are conscious that the new order of society has not been made to fit and provide the convenience or prosperity of the average man. The life of the nation has grown infinitely varied. It does not center now upon questions of governmental structure or of the distribution of governmental powers. It centers upon questions of the very structure and operation of society itself, of which government is only the instrument. Our development has run so fast and so far along the line sketched in the earlier days of constitutional definition, has so crossed and interlaced those lines, has piled upon them such novel structures of trust and combination, has elaborated within them a life so manifold, so full of forces which transcend the boundaries of the country itself and fill the eyes of the world, that a new nation seems to have been created which the old formulae do not fit or afford a vital interpretation of. We have come upon a very different age from any that preceded us. We have come upon an age when we do not do business in the way in which we used to do business--when we do not carry on any of the operations of manufacture, sale, transportation, or communication as men used to carry them on. There is a sense in which in our day the individual has been submerged. In most parts of our country men work for themselves, not as partners in the old way in which they used to work, but as employees--in a higher or lower grade--of great corporations. There was a time when corporations played a very minor part in our business affairs, but now they play the chief part, and most men are the servants of corporations. You know what happens when you are the servant of a corporation. You have in no instance access to the men who are really determining the policy of the corporation. If the corporation is doing the things that it ought not to do, you really have no voice in the matter and must obey the orders, and you have, with deep mortification, to cooperate in the doing of things which you know are against the public interest. Your individuality is swallowed up in the individuality and purpose of a great organization. It is true that, while most men are thus submerged in the corporation, a few, a very few, are exalted to power which as individuals they could never have wielded. Through the great organizations of which they are the heads, a few are enabled to play a part unprecedented by anything in history in the control of the business operations of the country and in the determination of the happiness of great numbers of people. Yesterday, and ever since history began, men were related to one another as individuals. To be sure there were the family, the Church, and the State, institutions which associated men in certain limited circles of relationships. But in the ordinary concerns of life, in the ordinary work, in the daily round, men dealt freely and directly with one another. To-day, the everyday relationships of men are largely with great impersonal concerns, with organizations, not with other individual men. Now this is nothing short of a new social age, a new era of human relationships, a new stage-setting for the drama of life. In this new age we find, for instance, that our laws with regard to the relations of employer and employee are in many respects wholly antiquated and impossible. They were framed for another age, which nobody now living remembers, which is, indeed, so remote from our life that it would be difficult for many of us to understand it if it were described to us. The employer is now generally a corporation or a huge company of some kind; the employee is one of hundreds or of thousands brought together, not by individual masters whom they know and with whom they have personal relations, but by agents of one sort or another. Working men are marshaled in great numbers for the performance of a multitude of particular tasks under a common discipline. They generally use dangerous and powerful machinery, over whose repair and renewal they have no control. New rules must be devised with regard to their obligations and their rights, their obligations to their employers and their responsibilities to one another. New rules must be devised for their protection, for their compensation when injured, for their support when disabled. There is something very new and very big and very complex about these new relations of capital and labor. A new economic society has sprung up, and we must effect a new set of adjustments. We must not pit power against weakness. The employer is generally, in our day, as I have said, not an individual, but a powerful group; and yet the working man when dealing with his employer is still, under our existing law, an individual. Why is it that we have a labor question at all? It is for the simple and very sufficient reason that the laboring man and the employer are not intimate associates now, as they used to be in time past. Most of our laws were formed in the age when employer and employees knew each other, knew each other's characters, were associates with each other, dealt with each other as man with man. That is no longer the case. You not only do not come into personal contact with the men who have the supreme command in those corporations, but it would be out of the question for you to do it. Our modern corporations employ thousands, and in some instances hundreds of thousands, of men. The only persons whom you see or deal with are local superintendents or local representatives of a vast organization, which is not like anything that the working men of the time in which our laws were framed knew anything about. A little group of working men, seeing their employer every day, dealing with him in a personal way, is one thing, and the modern body of labor engaged as employees of the huge enterprises that spread all over the country, dealing with men of whom they can form no personal conception, is another thing. A very different thing. You never saw a corporation, any more than you ever saw a government. Many a working man to-day never saw the body of men who are conducting the industry in which he is employed. And they never saw him. What they know about him is written in ledgers and books and letters, in the correspondence of the office, in the reports of the superintendents. He is a long way off from them. So what we have to discuss is, not wrongs which individuals intentionally do--I do not believe there are a great many of those--but the wrongs of the system. I want to record my protest against any discussion of this matter which would seem to indicate that there are bodies of our fellow citizens who are trying to grind us down and do us injustice. There are some men of that sort. I don't know how they sleep o' nights, but there are men of that kind. Thank God they are not numerous. The truth is, we are all caught in a great economic system which is heartless. The modern corporation is not engaged in business as an individual. When we deal with it we deal with an impersonal element, a material piece of society. A modern corporation is a means of cooperation in the conduct of an enterprise which is so big that no one can conduct it, and which the resources of no one man are sufficient to finance. A company is formed; that company puts out a prospectus; the promoters expect to raise a certain fund as capital stock. Well, how are they going to raise it? They are going to raise it from the public in general, some of whom will buy their stock. The moment that begins, there is formed--what? A joint-stock corporation. Men begin to pool their earnings, little piles, big piles. A certain number of men are elected by the stockholders to be directors, and these directors elect a president. This president is the head of the undertaking, and the directors are its managers. Now, do the working men employed by that stock corporation deal with that president and those directors? Not at all. Does the public deal with that president and that board of directors? It does not. Can anybody bring them to account? It is next to impossible to do so. If you undertake it you will find it a game of hide and seek, with the objects of your search taking refuge now behind the tree of their individual personality, now behind that of their corporate irresponsibility. And do our laws take note of this curious state of things? Do they even attempt to distinguish between a man's act as a corporation director and as an individual? They do not. Our laws still deal with us on the basis of the old system. The law is still living in the dead past which we have left behind. This is evident, for instance, with regard to the matter of employers' liability for working men's injuries. Suppose that a superintendent wants a workman to use a certain piece of machinery which it is not safe for him to use, and that the workman is injured by that piece of machinery. Our courts have held that the superintendent is a fellow servant, or, as the law states it, a fellow employee, and that, therefore, the man can not recover damages for his injury. The superintendent who probably engaged the man is not his employer. Who is his employer? And whose negligence could conceivably come in there? The board of directors did not tell the employee to use that piece of machinery; and the president of the corporation did not tell him to use that piece of machinery. And so forth. Don't you see by that theory that a man never can get redress for negligence on the part of the employer? When I hear judges reason upon the analogy of the relationships that used to exist between workmen and their employers a generation ago, I wonder if they have not opened their eyes to the modern world. You know, we have a right to expect that judges will have their eyes open, even though the law which they administer hasn't awakened. Yet that is but a single small detail illustrative of the difficulties we are in because we have not adjusted the law to the facts of the new order. Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it. They know that America is not a place of which it can be said, as it used to be, that a man may choose his own calling and pursue it just so far as his abilities enable him to pursue it; because to-day, if he enters certain fields, there are organizations which will use means against him that will prevent his building up a business which they do not want to have built up; organizations that will see to it that the ground is cut from under him and the markets shut against him. For if he begins to sell to certain retail dealers, to any retail dealers, the monopoly will refuse to sell to those dealers, and those dealers will be afraid and will not buy the new man's wares. And this is the country which has lifted to the admiration of the world its ideals of absolutely free opportunity, where no man is supposed to be under any limitation except the limitations of his character and of his mind; where there is supposed to be no distinction of class, no distinction of blood, no distinction of social status, but where men win or lose on their merits. I lay it very close to my own conscience as a public man whether we can any longer stand at our doors and welcome all newcomers upon those terms. American industry is not free, as once it was free; American enterprise is not free; the man with only a little capital is finding it harder to get into the field, more and more impossible to compete with the big fellow. Why? Because the laws of this country do not prevent the strong from crushing the weak. That is the reason, and because the strong have crushed the weak, the strong dominate the industry and the economic life of this country. No man can deny that the lines of endeavor have more and more narrowed and stiffened; no man who knows anything about the development of industry in this country can have failed to observe that the larger kinds of credit are more and more difficult to obtain, unless you obtain them upon the terms of uniting your efforts with those who already control the industries of the country; and nobody can fail to observe that any man who tries to set himself up in competition with any process of manufacture which has been taken under the control of large combinations of capital will presently find himself either squeezed out or obliged to sell and allow himself to be absorbed. There is a great deal that needs reconstruction in the United States. I should like to take a census of the business men--I mean the rank and file of the business men--as to whether they think that business conditions in this country, or rather whether the organization of business in this country, is satisfactory or not. I know what they would say if they dared. If they could vote secretly they would vote overwhelmingly that the present organization of business was meant for the big fellows and was not meant for the little fellows; that it was meant for those who are at the top and was meant to exclude those who are at the bottom; that it was meant to shut out beginners, to prevent new entries in the race, to prevent the building up of competitive enterprise that would interfere with the monopolies which the great trusts have built up. What this country needs, above everything else, is a body of laws which will look after the men who are on the make rather than the men who are already made. Because the men who are already made are not going to live indefinitely, and they are not always kind enough to leave sons as able and as honest as they are. The originative part of America, the part of America that makes new enterprises, the part into which the ambitious and gifted working man makes his way up, the class that saves, that plans, that organizes, that presently spreads its enterprises until they have a national scope and character--that middle class is being more and more squeezed out by the processes which we have been taught to call processes of prosperity. Its members are sharing prosperity, no doubt; but what alarms me is that they are not _originating_ prosperity. No country can afford to have its prosperity originated by a small controlling class. The treasury of America does not lie in the brains of the small body of men now in control of the great enterprises that have been concentrated under the direction of a very small number of persons. The treasury of America lies in those ambitions, those energies, that can not be restricted to a special, favored class. It depends upon the inventions of unknown men, upon the originations of unknown men, upon the ambitions of unknown men. Every country is renewed out of the ranks of the unknown, not out of the ranks of those already famous and powerful and in control. There has come over the land that un-American set of conditions which enables a small number of men who control the Government to get favors from the Government; by those favors to exclude their fellows from equal business opportunity; by those favors to extend a network of control that will presently drive every industry in the country, and so make men forget the ancient time when America lay in every hamlet, when America was to be seen on every fair valley, when America displayed her great forces on the broad prairies, ran her fine fires of enterprise up over the mountain sides and down into the bowels of the earth, and eager men were everywhere captains of industry, not employees; not looking to a distant city to find out what they might do, but looking about among their neighbors, finding credit according to their character, not according to their connections, finding credit in proportion to what was known to be in them and behind them, not in proportion to the securities they held that were approved where they were not known. In order to start an enterprise now, you have to be authenticated, in a perfectly impersonal way, not according to yourself, but according to what you own that somebody else approves of your owning. You can not begin such an enterprise as those that have made America until you are so authenticated, until you have succeeded in obtaining the good-will of large allied capitalists. Is that freedom? That is dependence, not freedom. We used to think, in the old-fashioned days when life was very simple, that all that government had to do was to put on a policeman's uniform and say, "Now don't anybody hurt anybody else." We used to say that the ideal of government was for every man to be left alone and not interfered with, except when he interfered with somebody else; and that the best government was the government that did as little governing as possible. That was the idea that obtained in Jefferson's time. But we are coming now to realize that life is so complicated that we are not dealing with the old conditions, and that the law has to step in and create the conditions under which we live, the conditions which will make it tolerable for us to live. Let me illustrate what I mean: It used to be true in our cities that every family occupied a separate house of its own, that every family had its own little premises, that every family was separated in its life from every other family. That is no longer the case in our great cities. Families live in tenements, they live in flats, they live on floors; they are piled layer upon layer in the great tenement houses of our crowded districts, and not only are they piled layer upon layer, but they are associated room by room, so that there is in every room, sometimes, in our congested districts, a separate family. In some foreign countries they have made much more progress than we in handling these things. In the city of Glasgow, for example (Glasgow is one of the model cities of the world), they have made up their minds that the entries and the hallways of great tenements are public streets. Therefore, the policeman goes up the stairway and patrols the corridors; the lighting department of the city sees to it that the halls are abundantly lighted. The city does not deceive itself into supposing that that great building is a unit from which the police are to keep out and the civic authority to be excluded, but it says: "These are public highways, and light is needed in them, and control by the authority of the city." I liken that to our great modern industrial enterprises. A corporation is very like a large tenement house; it isn't the premises of a single commercial family; it is just as much a public affair as a tenement house is a network of public highways. When you offer the securities, of a great corporation to anybody who wishes to purchase them, you must open that corporation to the inspection of everybody who wants to purchase. There must, to follow out the figure of the tenement house, be lights along the corridors, there must be police patrolling the openings, there must be inspection wherever it is known that men may be deceived with regard to the contents of the premises. If we believe that fraud lies in wait for us, we must have the means of determining whether our suspicions are well founded or not. Similarly, the treatment of labor by the great corporations is not what it was in Jefferson's time. Whenever bodies of men employ bodies of men, it ceases to be a private relationship. So that when courts hold that working men can not peaceably dissuade other working men from taking employment, and base the decision upon the analogy of domestic servants, they simply show that their minds and understandings are lingering in an age which has passed away. This dealing of great bodies of men with other bodies of men is a matter of public scrutiny, and should be a matter of public regulation. Similarly, it was no business of the law in the time of Jefferson to come into my house and see how I kept house. But when my house, when my so-called private property, became a great mine, and men went along dark corridors amidst every kind of danger in order to dig out of the bowels of the earth things necessary for the industries of a whole nation, and when it came about that no individual owned these mines, that they were owned by great stock companies, then all the old analogies absolutely collapsed, and it became the right of the government to go down into these mines to see whether human beings were properly treated in them or not; to see whether accidents were properly safeguarded against; to see whether modern economical methods of using these inestimable riches of the earth were followed or were not followed. If somebody puts a derrick improperly secured on top of a building or overtopping the street, then the government of the city has the right to see that that derrick is so secured that you and I can walk under it and not be afraid that the heavens are going to fall on us. Likewise in these great beehives where in every corridor swarm men of flesh and blood, it is the privilege of the government, whether of the State or of the United States, as the case may be, to see that human life is properly cared for, and that human lungs have something to breathe. These, again, are merely illustrations of conditions. We are in a new world, struggling under old laws. As we go inspecting our lives to-day, surveying this new scene of centralized and complex society, we shall find many more things out of joint. One of the most alarming phenomena of the time--or rather it would be alarming if the Nation had not awakened to it and shown its determination to control it--one of the most significant signs of the new social era is the degree to which government has become associated with business. I speak, for the moment, of the control over the Government exercised by Big Business. Behind the whole subject, of course, is the truth that, in the new order, government and business must be associated, closely. But that association is, at present, of a nature absolutely intolerable; the precedence is wrong, the association is upside down. Our Government has been for the past few years under the control of heads of great allied corporations with special interests. It has not controlled these interests and assigned them a proper place in the whole system of business; it has submitted itself to their control. As a result, there have grown up vicious systems and schemes of governmental favoritism (the most obvious being the extravagant tariff), far-reaching in effect upon the whole fabric of life, touching to his injury every inhabitant of the land, laying unfair and impossible handicaps upon competitors, imposing taxes in every direction, stifling everywhere the free spirit of American enterprise. Now this has come about naturally; as we go on, we shall see how very naturally. It is no use denouncing anybody or anything, except human nature. Nevertheless, it is an intolerable thing that the government of the Republic should have got so far out of the hands of the people; should have been captured by interests which are special and not general. In the train of this capture follow the troops of scandals, wrongs, indecencies, with which our politics swarm. There are cities in America of whose government we are ashamed. There are cities everywhere, in every part of the land, in which we feel that, not the interests of the public, but the interests of special privileges of selfish men, are served; where contracts take precedence over public interest. Not only in big cities is this the case. Have you not noticed the growth of socialistic sentiment in the smaller towns? Not many months ago I stopped at a little town in Nebraska while my train lingered, and I met on the platform, a very engaging young fellow, dressed in overalls, who introduced himself to me as the mayor of the town, and added that he was a Socialist. I said, "What does that mean? Does that mean that this town is socialistic?" "No, sir," he said; "I have not deceived myself; the vote by which I was elected was about 20 per cent. socialistic and 80 per cent, protest." It was protest against the treachery to the people and those who led both the other parties of that town. All over the Union people are coming to feel that they have no control over the course of affairs. I live in one of the greatest States in the Union, which was at one time in slavery. Until two years ago we had witnessed with increasing concern the growth in New Jersey of a spirit of almost cynical despair. Men said, "We vote; we are offered the platform we want; we elect the men who stand on that platform, and we get absolutely nothing." So they began to ask, "What is the use of voting? We know that the machines of both parties are subsidized by the same persons, and therefore it is useless to turn in either direction." It is not confined to some of the State governments and those of some of the towns and cities. We know that something intervenes between the people of the United States and the control of their own affairs at Washington. It is not the people who have been ruling there of late. Why are we in the presence, why are we at the threshold, of a revolution? Because we are profoundly disturbed by the influences which we see reigning in the determination of our public life and our public policy. There was a time when America was blithe with self-confidence. She boasted that she, and she alone, knew the processes of popular government; but now she sees her sky overcast; she sees that there are at work forces which she did not dream of in her hopeful youth. Don't you know that some man with eloquent tongue, without conscience, who did not care for the Nation, could put this whole country into a flame? Don't you know that this country from one end to another believes that something is wrong? What an opportunity it would be for some man without conscience to spring up and say: "This is the way. Follow me!"--and lead in paths of destruction. The old order changeth--changeth under our very eyes, not quietly and equably, but swiftly and with the noise and heat and tumult of reconstruction. I suppose that all struggle for law has been conscious, that very little of it has been blind or merely instinctive. It is the fashion to say, as if with superior knowledge of affairs and of human weakness, that every age has been an age of transition, and that no age is more full of change than another; yet in very few ages of the world can the struggle for change have been so widespread, so deliberate, or upon so great a scale as in this in which we are taking part. The transition we are witnessing is no equable transition of growth and normal alteration; no silent, unconscious unfolding of one age into another, its natural heir and successor. Society is looking itself over, in our day, from top to bottom; is making fresh and critical analysis of its very elements; is questioning its oldest practises as freely as its newest, scrutinizing every arrangement and motive of its life; and it stands ready to attempt nothing less than a radical reconstruction, which only frank and honest counsels and the forces of generous cooperation can hold back from becoming a revolution. We are in a temper to reconstruct economic society, as we were once in a temper to reconstruct political society, and political society may itself undergo a radical modification in the process. I doubt if any age was ever more conscious of its task or more unanimously desirous of radical and extended changes in its economic and political practise. We stand in the presence of a revolution--not a bloody revolution, America is not given to the spilling of blood--but a silent revolution whereby America will insist upon recovering in practise those ideals which she has always professed, upon securing a government devoted to the general interest and not to special interests. We are upon the eve of a great reconstruction. It calls for creative statesmanship as no age has done since that great age in which we set up the government under which we live, that government which was the admiration of the world until it suffered wrongs to grow up under it which have made many of our own compatriots question the freedom of our institutions and preach revolution against them. I do not fear revolution. I have unshaken faith in the power of America to keep its self-possession. Revolution will come in peaceful guise, as it came when we put aside the crude government of the Confederation, and created the great Federal Union which governed individuals, not States, and which has been these one hundred and thirty years our vehicle of progress. Some radical changes we must make in our law and practise. Some reconstructions we must push forward, which a new age and new circumstances impose upon us. But we can do it all in calm and sober fashion, like statesmen and patriots. I do not speak of these things in apprehension, because all is open and above-board. This is not a day in which great forces rally in secret. The whole stupendous program must be publicly planned and canvassed. Good temper, the wisdom that comes of sober counsel, the energy of thoughtful and unselfish men, the habit of cooperation and of compromise which has been bred in us by long years of free government in which reason rather than passion has been made to prevail by the sheer virtue of candid and universal debate, will enable us to win through to still another great age without violence. THE INCOME TAX IN AMERICA THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION AMENDED A.D. 1913 JOSEPH A. HILL During the year 1913 a most amazing event happened. The United States amended its Constitution by peaceful means. Indeed the Constitution was twice amended; for, having passed the sixteenth amendment in February, permitting an income tax, the States, just to show what they could do when aroused to it, passed the seventeenth amendment in May, authorizing the direct election of United States senators by the people. Amending the United States Constitution is so difficult and cumbrous a proceeding, that it had not previously been accomplished for over a century, except by the throes of the terrible Civil War. The original Constitution had twelve amendments added to it before it was fully established in running order in 1804. The thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments were added after 1865 to prohibit slavery. They were forced upon the unwilling Southern States. From 1804 to 1913 no amendment was put through by the regular process. Yet in that time efforts to amend were made on over one hundred and forty occasions. Men had grown discouraged at last; they said that amendment was impossible. The cumbrous system which has thus so long blocked all change was that Congress must by a two-thirds vote in each House agree to submit an amendment to the States. These must then pass upon the new law, each in its own legislature. If three-fourths of the legislatures approved, the amendment was to be accepted. Few of the proposed changes ever won a two-thirds vote in both Congressional Houses; and of those few not one had ever appealed to the necessary overwhelming majority of State legislatures. The Senatorial amendment passed Congress several years ago, and had long been knocking rather hopelessly at legislative doors. Then the Income Tax amendment appeared. Congress passed it almost hurriedly in a spasm of progressiveness in 1909. Then came the great sweep of progressive policies to victory in the elections of 1912; and legislatures everywhere awoke to the universal insistence on the Income Tax. All the States but six approved the amendment; and one of the last acts of President Taft during his administration was to proclaim its adoption. The popular amendment swept along in its train the Senatorial change; and the latter, though still opposed by most of the old South, was ratified by all the rest of the States except Rhode Island and Utah. So it also became law. Nothing illustrates better the "tyranny of the dead hand" in the United States than the history of the income tax. The Constitution laid it down that no head tax or other direct tax should be imposed except by apportioning it among the several States on the basis of their population. No more effective barrier to any system of direct taxation could possibly have been devised. It would seem clear that the main intention of this Constitutional provision was not merely to protect the people of the smaller States, but to force the United States Government to depend for its revenue upon indirect taxes. Such, at any rate, has been its effect. Legal ingenuity, however, can get round anything. The Supreme Court decided as long ago as 1789 that an income tax was not a direct tax, and need not, therefore, be apportioned among the States. During the Civil War, though not, curiously enough, until every other source of taxable wealth had pretty well run dry, an income tax was actually imposed by three separate Acts of Congress, the Act of 1864 levying a tax of 5 per cent. on all incomes between $600 and $5,000, and of 10 per cent. on all incomes above $5,000. The tax continued to be collected up to 1872, when it was repealed. The constitutional character of the tax, when levied without apportionment among the States of the Union, was once more fully argued out in the Supreme Court, which in 1880 reaffirmed its decision of 1789, that a tax on incomes was not a direct tax. Some fifteen years later, however, the question emerged again, and in a crucial form. The Democrats came into power in 1893, and proceeded to reduce the tariff, relying upon a tax of 2 per cent. on all incomes of over $4,000 to make good the expected loss of revenue. The Supreme Court in 1895 shattered all their fiscal plans and policies by pronouncing the income tax to be a direct tax, and therefore incapable of being levied, except in strict proportion to the population of the various States, and therefore, in effect, incapable of being levied at all. That decision, in all its absurdity, has stood ever since. Its consequences were to deny to the United States Government the right to tax incomes, to restrict it still further to customs duties as virtually its sole source of revenue, to deprive it of a power that might one day be vital to the safety of the Union, and to exhibit it in a condition of feebleness that was altogether incompatible with any rational conception of a sovereign State. It is true that the Supreme Court has changed not only its _personnel_, but its spirit, and its whole attitude toward questions of public policy, since 1895. It has more and more allowed the influence of the age and the necessities of the times and the clear demands of social and economic justice to moderate its decisions; and had the question of an income tax been brought before it any time in the last five years, it would probably have reversed its judgment of 1895. But President Taft was undoubtedly right when he urged, in 1909, that the risk of another adverse decision was too great to be run, and that the safer course was to proceed by way of an amendment to the Constitution. The mere passing of the Income Tax amendment did not, however, establish an income tax. It merely authorized the government to do this at will. President Wilson's administration was prompt to take the matter up. The Democrats, in conjunction with their reduction of the tariff, needed a new source of revenue. So in October of 1913 the Income Tax law was passed. In theory an Income Tax is obviously the most just of all taxes. It summons each citizen to pay for the government in proportion to his wealth; and his wealth marks roughly the amount of government protection that he needs. In practise, however, the working out of an income tax is so complex that every grumbler can find in its intricacies some cause of complaint. The present tax is therefore described here by an expert statistician, Mr. Joseph A. Hill, the United States Government official at the head of the Division of Revision and Results of the Census Bureau in Washington. Among the notable events of the year 1913, one of the most important in its influence upon the national finances and constitutional development of the United States is the adoption of an amendment to the Federal Constitution giving Congress the power "to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States and without regard to any census or enumeration." The mere fact that an amendment of any kind has been adopted is notable, this being the first occasion on which the Constitution had undergone any change since the period of the Civil War, and the first amendment adopted in peaceful and normal times since the early days of the Republic. It is a little remarkable, although perhaps not altogether accidental, that the adoption of this amendment should coincide with the return to power of the political party whose attempt to levy an income tax in 1894 was frustrated by the decision of the Supreme Court in that year. Then as now an income tax was a component part of the program of fiscal and commercial reform to which that party was committed. This program included the reduction of protective tariff duties and the direct taxation of incomes. What the Democratic party failed to accomplish in 1894, it has had a free hand to do in 1913. Indeed, the national taxation of incomes might almost be regarded as a mandate of the people of the United States. At any rate, it was a foregone conclusion that the adoption of the constitutional amendment would be immediately followed by the enactment of an income-tax law. The law instituting the income tax was approved October 31[?], together with the law revising the tariff, both measures being included in one comprehensive statute entitled "An Act to reduce tariff duties and to provide revenue for Government, and for other purposes." It is the object of the present article to give a general description of the income tax. This seems to be especially well worth while because the tax can not be readily understood from a mere perusal of the involved and sometimes obscure phraseology of the law itself. For the same reason, however, the task of interpretation is not easy or entirely safe. The law has certain novel features; and some of the questions of detail to which they give rise can not be answered until we have the official construction placed upon the language of the act by the executive branch of the government and possibly by the courts. At the same time, the main features of the tax become fairly evident to any one who makes a careful study of the provisions of the act, even though its application to specific cases may remain doubtful. The law provides that incomes shall be subject to a tax of one per cent. on the amount by which they exceed the prescribed minimum limit of exemption. This is designated as the "normal income tax." There is, then, an "additional tax" of one per cent, on the amount by which any income exceeds $20,000. The rate is increased to two per cent. on the amount above $50,000, to three per cent. above $75,000, to four per cent. above $100,000, to five per cent. above $250,000, and to six per cent. above $500,000. Therefore, under the normal and additional tax combined, the first $20,000 of income, exclusive of the minimum exemption, will be taxed one per cent.; the next $30,000, two per cent.; the next $25,000, three per cent.; the next $25,000, four per cent.; the next $150,000, five per cent.; the next $250,000, six per cent.; and all income above that point seven per cent. This is a rigorous application of the progressive principle. The minimum exemption, at the same time, is comparatively high,--$4,000 for a married person and $3,000 for everybody else. The higher exemption in case of the married is conditional upon husband and wife living together, and applies only to their aggregate income; that is to say, it can not be deducted from the income of each. It may be noted, in this connection, that in England the exemption allowed under the income tax is £160 or $800; in Prussia it is 900 marks, or $225; and in the State of Wisconsin it is $800 for individuals and $1,200 for a husband and wife, with a further allowance for children or dependent members of the family. The sharply progressive rates and the comparatively high exemption have given rise to the criticism that this is a rich man's income tax and disregards the principle that all persons should contribute to the expenses of the government in proportion to their several abilities. It is often said that an income tax ought to reach all incomes with the exception of those which are close to or below the minimum necessary for subsistence, and that if people generally were called upon to contribute directly to the government they would take greater interest in public affairs and show more concern over any wasteful or unwise expenditure of public money. In reply it is contended that the limitation of the tax to the wealthy or well-to-do classes is justified because these classes do not pay their fair share of the indirect national taxes, or of local property taxes. These debatable questions lie outside the scope of the present article. It is evident, however, that the income tax should not be criticized as if it were a single tax or formed the only source of revenue for the Federal government. From the fiscal standpoint it occupies a subordinate position in the national finances, being expected to yield about $125,000,000 annually out of a total estimated tax revenue of $680,000,000. The normal tax of one per cent, is to be levied upon the income of corporations. In effect this provision of the law merely continues the corporation or "excise" tax which was already in existence. But that tax now becomes an integral part of the income tax, covering the income which accrues to the stockholder and is distributable in the form of dividends. On the theory that this income is reached at the source by the tax upon the net earnings of the corporation the dividends as such are exempt. They are not to be included, so far as concerns the normal tax, in the taxable incomes of the individual stockholders and the law does not provide that the tax paid by the corporation shall be deducted from the dividend. It is perhaps a question whether under these conditions income which consists of dividends should be considered as subject to the normal tax or as exempt. It may be contended that a tax upon the net earnings of corporations is virtually a tax on the stockholder's income, and in theory this is true. But so long as the tax is not actually withheld from the dividends, or the dividends are not reduced in consequence of the tax, the stockholder's current income is not affected. The imposition of the tax might indeed affect his prospective income and might depreciate the value of his stocks. It is hardly likely, however, that such effects will be perceptible, at least as regards the stocks of railroads and other large corporations. If, however, it be considered that income consisting of dividends pays the tax, it follows that the stockholder's income is taxed no matter how small it may be. No minimum is left exempt. On the other hand, if it be considered that all dividends are virtually exempt, the stockholder would seem to be unduly favored under this form of taxation in comparison with people whose incomes are derived from other sources. Doubtless in future the investor will look upon dividends as a form of income not subject to the normal income tax. In the levy of the normal income tax there is to be a limited application of the method of assessment and collection at the source of the income. This method is applied very completely in the taxation of income in Great Britain. It may be well to recall summarily the essential features of the British system. The tax is levied upon the property or industrial enterprise which yields or produces the income. But the person occupying the property or conducting the enterprise, and paying the assessment in the first instance, is authorized and required to deduct the tax from the income as it is distributed among the persons entitled to share in it either as proprietors, landlords, creditors, or employees. Under the English system, an industrial corporation, for instance, pays the income tax upon its gross earnings and then deducts it from the dividends, interest, salaries, and rents as these payments are made. The householder pays an assessment levied upon the annual value of his dwelling (less an allowance for repairs and insurance) and then if he occupies the premises as tenant deducts the tax from his rent. The income from agriculture is reached by a similar assessment upon the farmer, based upon the annual or rental value of the farm and with the same right of deduction from the rent if he is a tenant farmer. From the standpoint of the government, the main advantage of this mode of assessment as compared with a tax levied directly upon the recipients of the income is the greater certainty with which it reaches the income subject to taxation. The opportunities for evasion by concealment of income are reduced to a minimum, partly because the sources of income are, in general, not easily concealed and partly because, to a considerable extent, the persons upon whom the tax is assessed are not interested in avoiding the tax. The advantages, however, are not all on the side of the government. The tax possesses certain advantages from the standpoint of the taxpayer, also, assuming him to be an honest taxpayer who is not seeking opportunities to evade taxation. One advantage is that he is relieved in almost every case from the necessity of revealing to the tax officials the whole of his personal income. The tax does not pry into his personal affairs. Another advantage is that the tax is paid out of current income, being deducted from the income as it is received. It is therefore distributed over the year and adjusted to the flow of income as it comes in. A tax thus collected is less burdensome in its incidence than a tax paid in one lump sum several months after the expiration of the year to which it related and after the income on which it is levied has been all received and perhaps all expended. The English system of assessing an income tax at the source, however, has its disadvantages. It is admirably suited for a tax levied at a uniform rate on all income or on all income above a small minimum. But it is not well suited for the application of progressive taxation or for the introduction of gradations or distinctions based upon the size or character of the individual incomes. Nevertheless, the English income tax, besides exempting a minimum, provides for graded reductions or abatements in favor of the possessors of small incomes above the minimum, and for a reduced rate on "unearned" income within certain limits. All this, however, makes necessary a declaration or complete statement of income from the persons claiming the benefit of those provisions, and also necessitates refunding a large amount of the tax collected at the source. Moreover, the progressive principle has recently been applied by imposing a "super-tax" on incomes in excess of £5,000, which also requires a declaration, the tax being necessarily assessed upon the possessor of the income and not at the source. The super-tax, it may be observed, occupies a position in the English system similar to that of the additional tax in the United States, serving to increase the tax upon the larger incomes in accordance with the principle of progression. Considering the various provisos and exceptions in connection with the general rule of the act, the scope of the application of the method of collecting the tax at the source may perhaps be safely stated thus: the normal tax is to be deducted (1) from all interest payments made by corporations on bonds and the like, without regard to the amount; (2) from all other interest payments when the amount is more than $3,000 in any one year; (3) from all payments of rents, salaries, or wages amounting in any one case to over $3,000 annually; (4) from all other payments of over $3,000 (excepting dividends) which may be comprised under the designations "premiums, compensations, remuneration, emoluments, or other fixed or determinable gains, profits, or income." The principle of assessing income at its source, as applied in this act, does not relieve the individual from the necessity of making a full revelation to the tax officials of his personal income from all sources. Though this statement needs to be qualified in one or two particulars, the law provides in general that every person subject to the tax and having an income of $3,000 or over shall make a true and accurate return under oath or affirmation "setting forth specifically the gross amount of income from all separate sources and from the total thereof deducting the aggregate items or expenses and allowance" authorized by the law. Although income from which the tax has been withheld is not included in the net personal and taxable income of the taxpayer, it must, nevertheless, be accounted for and included in his declaration as a part of his gross income, forming one of the specified items which are to be deducted from the gross income in arriving at the income subject to taxation. As already intimated, the general requirement of the full and complete statement of income is subject to certain exceptions. One relates to the income from dividends, the law providing that "persons liable to the normal tax only ... shall not be required to make return of the income derived from dividends on the capital stock or from the net earnings of corporations, joint-stock companies or associations, and insurance companies taxable upon their net income." It will be noted that this proviso is restricted to persons who are "liable for the normal tax only," _i.e._, persons having net incomes under $20,000. It would seem, therefore, that the taxpayer claiming and securing this privilege must in some way, without revealing the amount received from dividends, satisfy the tax assessors that his total net income, including the dividends (amount not stated), does not exceed $20,000. Of course a form of statement can easily be devised to cover the situation. But whether the law will be administered in such a way that this provision affords some relief from the general obligation of making a detailed and complete statement of income remains to be seen. Another exception to the general requirement of a complete declaration of income covers the case of the taxpayer whose entire income has been assessed and the tax on it deducted at the source. The law relieves such persons from the obligation of making any declaration of income; although it is not certain that this privilege can be secured without foregoing or sacrificing the benefits of any abatements to which the individual taxpayer might be entitled on account of business expenses, interest payments, losses, etc. It seems probable that where the income is all assessed at the source the taxpayer may obtain the benefit of the minimum exemption without making a declaration of income. It appears, therefore, that assessment at the source does not, under this law, operate in such a way as to afford the taxpayer any substantial relief from the necessity of making a revelation of his income to tax officials. Whatever basis there may be for the common criticism or complaint that an income tax is inquisitorial remains under the operation of this law to nearly the same extent that it would if the tax were levied wholly and directly upon the recipients of the income, with no resort to taxation at the source. Regarding the assessment of the additional tax not much need be said in the way of explanation. It is, in theory at least, a comparatively simple matter. There is no attempt here to make any application of the principle of collection at the source. The tax is all levied directly upon the recipients of the individual incomes, and the assessment is based upon the taxpayer's declaration, which for the purposes of this tax must cover the "entire net income from all sources, corporate or otherwise." The tax is thus largely distinct from the normal income tax as regards both the method of assessment and the rates. It is, however, to be administered through the same machinery, and no doubt to some extent the information obtained as to the sources of income in connection with the assessment of the normal tax will prove useful as a check upon the returns of income required for assessment of the additional tax. Every person whose income exceeds $20,000 will be subject to both taxes, the normal and the additional, but presumably will be required to make only one declaration. For the purposes of the additional tax he will be required to declare his income from all sources, and therefore any relief from the obligation of making a complete revelation of income which may be secured to him through the application of the principle of assessment at the source in connection with the normal tax will be entirely sacrificed. The administration of a direct personal income tax--using that term to describe a tax levied directly on individual incomes--is a comparatively simple matter, however ineffective it may prove to be in reaching the income subject to it. Under this method of taxation it is easy to exempt a minimum, to apply progression in the rates, or to make any other adjustments that may be deemed equitable with reference either to the size or character of the income or to the circumstances of the taxpayer. But as soon as we depart from this simple method and resort to taxation at the source, we encounter difficulties in varying the rates, allowing exemptions, or making any similar adjustments. In the English income tax, these difficulties are squarely met and surmounted. As previously explained, that tax is in the first instance levied indiscriminately on all accessible sources of income and the adjustments are effected by refunding the tax collected at the source so far as may be necessary. No provision is made for forestalling the deduction of the tax, and no returns are required of the names and addresses of persons to whom payments of incomes are made. The exemption, however, is small ($800), and the abatements extend only to incomes below $3,500. Above that point the entire income is taxable. A tax which provides for the exemption of $3,000 or $4,000 from every individual income places a formidable barrier in the way of a thoroughgoing application of assessment at the source. It is evident that with a universal exemption as high as this, a very large amount of tax withheld and collected at the source would ultimately have to be refunded. The law as enacted indicates an intention to secure in part the advantage of assessment at the source and at the same time avoid in part the attendant disadvantage of having to refund the tax. The measure might be characterized as one which as regards the "normal tax" applies the principle of assessment at the source to corporate income completely and to other income in spots. The "additional tax" is simply the direct personal tax. The normal tax will doubtless be successful in reaching the large amount of income earned or created by enterprises conducted under the corporate form of organization, much of which would probably escape assessment under a direct personal income tax. But beyond this it is questionable whether the method of assessment at the source as here applied will be of sufficient advantage to justify the administrative complications which it involves. It seems useless, however, as well as unwise, to venture any predictions as to how successful the tax will be in reaching the income subject to it or how well it will work in actual practise. The law will doubtless require amendment in many particulars, even if it does not need to be radically revised. That the income tax in some form will be perpetuated as a permanent part of our system of national finance may safely be predicted. Properly adjusted and wisely administered, it should greatly strengthen the financial resources of the Government, make possible a closer adjustment of revenue to expenditure, and secure a more equitable distribution of the burden of taxation. THE SECOND BALKAN WAR GREECE AND SERVIA CRUSH THE AMBITIONS OF BULGARIA A.D. 1913 PROF. STEPHEN P. DUGGAN CAPT. A.H. TRAPMANN The crushing defeat of Turkey by the Balkan States during the winter of 1912-13 had been accomplished mainly by Bulgaria. The Bulgarians were therefore eager to assert themselves as the chief Balkan State, the Power which was to take the place of Turkey as ruler of the "Near East." Naturally this roused the antagonism not only of Bulgaria's recent allies, Greece and Servia, but also of the other neighboring State, Roumania. Bulgaria hoped to meet and crush her two allies before Roumania could join them. Thus she deliberately precipitated a war which resulted in her utter defeat. From this contest Greece has emerged as the chief State of the eastern Mediterranean, a growing Power which at last bears some resemblance to the classic Greece of ancient times. To understand this war, it should be realized that the Bulgars are really an Asiatic race, who broke into Europe as the Hungarians had done before them, and as the Turks did afterward. Hence their kinship with European races or manners is really slight, though they have something of Slavic or Russian blood. The Servians are near akin to the Russians. The Roumanians trace their ancestry proudly, if somewhat dubiously, back to the old Roman colonists of the days of Rome's world empire. The Greeks are really the most ancient dwellers in the region; and to their pride of race was now added a furious eagerness to prove their military power. This had been much scorned after their ineffective war against Turkey in 1897, and they had found no opportunity to give decisive proof of their strength during the war of 1912. To Professor Duggan's account of the causes and results of the war, which appeared originally in the _Political Science Quarterly_, we append the picture of its most striking incidents by Captain Trapmann, who was with the Greek army through its brief but brilliant campaign. PROF. STEPHEN P. DUGGAN When the secret treaty of alliance of March, 1912, between Bulgaria and Servia against Turkey was signed, a division of the territory that might possibly fall to the allies was agreed upon. Neither Bulgaria nor Servia has ever published the treaty in full, but from the denunciations and recriminations indulged in by the parliaments of both, we know in general what the division was to be. The river Maritza, it was hoped, would become the western boundary of Turkey, and a line running from a point just east of Kumanova to the head of Lake Ochrida was to divide the conquered territory between Servia and Bulgaria. This would give Monastir, Prilip, Ochrida, and Veles to the Bulgarians--a great concession on the part of Servia. Certain other disputed towns were to be left to the arbitrament of the Czar of Russia. The chief aim to be attained by this division was that Servia should obtain a seaboard upon the Adriatic Sea, and Bulgaria upon the Aegean. Incidentally Bulgaria would obtain western Thrace and the greater part of Macedonia, and Servia would secure the greater part of Albania. These calculations had been entirely upset by the course of events. Bulgaria's share had been considerably increased by the unexpected conquest of eastern Thrace, including Adrianople, whereas Servia's portion had been greatly diminished by the creation of an independent Albania out of her share. Moreover, M. Pashitch, the Servian prime minister, maintained that whereas by the preliminary treaty Bulgaria was to send detachments to assist the Servian armies operating in the Vardar valley, the reverse had been found necessary and Adrianople had only been taken with the help of 60,000 Servians and by means of the Servian siege guns. Equity demanded that the new conditions which had arisen and which had entirely altered the situation should be given consideration and that Bulgaria should not expect the preliminary agreement to be carried out. Now, from the outbreak of hostilities Bulgaria's foreign affairs, in which King Ferdinand was supposed to be supreme, were really controlled by the prime minister, Dr. Daneff. He proved to be the evil genius of his country; for his arrogant, unyielding attitude upon every disputed point, not only with the enemy, but with the allies and with the Powers, destroyed all kindly feeling for Bulgaria, and left her friendless in her hour of need. Dr. Daneff's answer to the Servian contention was that Bulgaria bore the brunt of the fight; that, had she not kept the main Turkish force occupied, Servia and Greece would have been crushed; that a treaty is a treaty, and that the additional gain of eastern Thrace in no way invalidated the old agreement. The recriminations between Greeks and Bulgarians were quite as bitter. There had been no preliminary agreement as to the division of conquered territory between them, and this permitted each to indulge in the most extravagant claims. The great bone of contention was the possession of the fine port of Salonika. As soon as the war against Turkey broke out, both states pushed forward troops to occupy that city. The Greeks arrived first and were still in possession. Moreover, they maintained that, except for the Jews, the population is chiefly Greek. So are the trade and the schools. M. Venezelos, the Greek prime minister, insisted also that the erection of an independent Albania deprived Greece of a large part of northern Epirus, as it had deprived Servia of a great part of Old Servia, and Montenegro of Scutari. In fact, he asserted that Bulgaria alone would retain everything she hoped for, securing nearly three-fifths of the conquered territory, and leaving only two-fifths to be divided among her three allies; and this, despite the fact that but for the activity of the Greek navy in preventing the convoy of Turkey's best troops from Asia, Bulgaria would never have had her rapid success at the beginning of the war. Finally, he strenuously objected to the whole seaboard of Macedonia going to Bulgaria, as the population where it was not Moslem was chiefly Greek. All the parties to the dispute made much of ethnical and historical claims--"A thousand years are as a day" in their sight. The answer of Dr. Daneff to the Greek demands was to the effect that Greece already had one good port on the Mediterranean, while Bulgaria had none, and that Bulgaria would have to spend immense sums on either Kavala or Dedeagatch to make them of any great value. Moreover, as a result of the war, Greece would get Crete, the Aegean islands, and a good slice of the mainland. She had suffered least in the war and was really being overpaid for her services. Behind all these formal contentions were the conflicting ambitions and the racial hatreds which no discussion could effectually resolve. Bulgaria was determined to secure the hegemony of the Balkan peninsula. She believed that her role was that of a Balkan Prussia, and her great victories made her confident of her ability to play the role successfully. To this Servia would never consent. The Servians far outnumber the Bulgarians. Were they united under one scepter they would be the strongest nation in the Balkans. Their policy is to maintain an equilibrium in the peninsula until the hoped-for annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina will give them the preponderance. This alone would incline Servia to make common cause with Greece. In addition, she had the powerful motive of direct self-interest. Since she did not secure the coveted territory on the Adriatic, Salonika would be more than ever the natural outlet for her products. Should Bulgaria wedge in behind Greece at Salonika, Servia would have two Powers to deal with, each of which could pursue the policy of destroying her commerce by a prohibitory tariff, a policy so often adopted toward her by Austria-Hungary. M. Pashitch, therefore, was determined to have the new southern boundary of Servia coterminous with the northern boundary of Greece. Moreover, Greeks and Servians were aware of the relative weakness of the Bulgarians due to their great losses and to the wide territory occupied by their troops. The war party was in the ascendant in each country. The Servians were anxious to avenge Slivnitza, and the Greeks still further to redeem themselves from the reputation of 1897. Had peace been signed in January, there is little doubt that a greater spirit of conciliation would have prevailed. The Young Turks were universally condemned at that time for refusing to yield; but had they deliberately adopted Abdul Hamid's policy of playing off one people against another, they could not have succeeded better than by their determination to fight. Even before the fall of Adrianople, on March 26th, military conflicts had taken place between Bulgarians and Servians and between Bulgarians and Greeks. On March 12th a pitched battle occurred between the latter at Nigrita; and though a mixed commission at once drew up a code of regulations for use in towns occupied by joint armies, not the slightest attention was subsequently paid to it. The Servians shortly afterward expelled the manager of the branch of the National Bulgarian Bank at Monastir, a step which drew forth emphatic protests from Sofia against the policy of Serbizing districts in anticipation of the final settlement. On April 17th, M. Pashitch informed Bulgaria that the Government would refuse to be bound by the terms of the preliminary treaty of March, 1912. From that date until the signing of the treaty of peace with Turkey on May 31st, the recent allies carried on an unofficial war, which consisted of combats of extermination marked by inhuman rage. After that event each of the combatants strained every nerve to push forward its armies and to possess new territories, while each continued to accuse the other of violating every principle of international law. The ambassadors of the great Powers at the capitals of the Balkan States made urgent representations to the Balkan Governments to restrain their armies, but without effect. On June 10th the Servian Government dispatched a note to Sofia demanding a categorical answer to the Servian demand for a revision of the preliminary treaty. On July 11th the Czar telegraphed to King Peter and King Ferdinand appealing to them to avoid a fratricidal war, reminding them of his position as arbitrator under the preliminary treaty and warning them that he would hold responsible whichever state appealed to force. "The state which begins war will be responsible before the Slav cause." This well-meant action had an effect the opposite of that hoped for. In Vienna it was looked upon as an indirect assertion of moral guardianship by Russia over the Slav world. The Austrian press insisted that the Balkan states were of age and could take care of themselves. If not, it was for Europe, not for Russia, to control them. The political horizon grew still darker when one week later Dr. Daneff answered the Servian note in the negative. This resulted in the Servian Minister withdrawing from Sofia on June 22d. What was the plan of campaign and the degree of preparedness of the principal belligerent in the second Balkan war which was about to commence? The plan of the Bulgarians was the only one whereby they could hope to secure victory. It depended for success upon surprizing the Servians by sending masses of Bulgarian troops into the home territory of Servia by way of the passes leading directly from Sofia westward through the mountains. This would cut off the Servian armies operating in Macedonia from their base of supplies and require their immediate recall for the defense of the home territory. It was an operation attended by almost insurmountable obstacles. The major part of the Bulgarian army was in eastern Thrace and would have to be brought across a country unprovided with either railroads or sufficient highways. Moreover, the army would have to rely for the transport of provisions and equipment upon slow-moving bullock wagons. Nevertheless, given time, secrecy, and freedom from interference, the aim might be attained. The necessary divisions of the army were set in motion in the beginning of May. So successful were the Bulgarians in keeping secret the route and the progress of the army, that by the middle of June they confidently looked forward to success. Their high hopes were destroyed by the evil diplomacy of Dr. Daneff in his relations with Roumania. Russia rewarded Roumania for her splendid assistance in the Russo-Turkish war of 1877 by depriving her of her fertile province of Bessarabia and compelling her to take in exchange the Dobrudja, a low, marshy district inhabited chiefly by Bulgarians and Moslems. And that was not all. Through Russian influence the commission appointed to delimit the boundary between Roumania and the new principality of Bulgaria put the town of Silistria upon the Bulgarian side of the boundary. Now the heights of Silistria command absolutely the Roumanian territory opposite to it and the Dobrudja. The Danube directly in front of Silistria spreads out in a marsh several miles wide, so that it is impossible to approach Silistria from the Roumanian side by bridge. As a result Roumania has always felt that her southern border was at the mercy of Bulgaria and has always, as one of the chief aims of her national existence, looked forward to the rectification of her southern boundary. The unfriendly attitude of Russia threw Roumania into the arms of Austria, so that from the days of the Berlin treaty to the Balkan war, Roumania has been considered a true friend of the Triple Alliance. She viewed with jealousy and fear the rapid growth of Bulgaria in power and in strength. Crowded in between the two military empires of Russia and Austria-Hungary, Roumania naturally looked upon the development of another military state upon her southern border as a menace to her national existence. Hence when the Macedonian question became very acute in 1903, and it seemed that action would be undertaken by Bulgaria and Servia against Turkey, Roumania had declared that she would not tolerate an alteration of the _status quo_. She did not move, however, when the allies undertook the war of liberation in October, 1912. But when a month's campaign changed the war from one of liberation to one of conquest, Roumania demanded from Bulgaria as the price of neutrality Silistria and a small slice of the Black Sea coast sufficient to satisfy strategic military demands. It was in his relations with Roumania that Daneff's diplomacy was most stupid. M. Take Jonescu, one of Roumanians ablest statesmen, was sent by the Government to the first Peace Conference at London to secure pledges from Dr. Daneff in regard to the Roumanian demand. He could get no answer. Daneff used every device to gain time in the hope that a settlement with Turkey would relieve Bulgaria from the necessity of giving anything. When the peace negotiations failed and the war between the allies and Turkey recommenced, the relations between Roumania and Bulgaria became very critical. However, at the Czar's suggestion, both countries agreed to refer the dispute to a conference of the ambassadors of the great Powers at St. Petersburg. Dr. Daneff, who represented Bulgaria, adopted a most truculent attitude and refused to yield on any point. As a result of the skilful diplomacy of the French ambassador, M. Delcassé, in reconciling the divergent views of the great Powers, Roumania was awarded, on April 19th, the town of Silistria and a three-mile zone around it, but was refused an increase on the seaboard. The award was very unpopular in Roumania, but M. Jonescu risked his official life by successfully urging the Roumanian Government to accept it. But when it became perfectly evident, after the signing of the Treaty of London on May 30th, that the former allies were now to be enemies, the Roumanian government notified Bulgaria that she could not rely upon its neutrality without compensation in the interests of the equilibrium of the Balkans. Such was the diplomatic situation when the Czar's telegram of June 11th was received by King Ferdinand. Nothing could have been more inopportune for the Bulgarian cause. Though the government had no intention of changing its plan, sufficient deference had to be paid to the Czar's request to suspend the forward movement of troops. The delay was fatal. The Servians, who were already aware that the Bulgarians were in motion, now learned their direction and their actual positions. The Servian Government hastened to fortify the passes of the Balkans between Bulgaria and the home territory, and the Servian army in Macedonia effected a junction with the Greek army from Salonika. There was nothing left for the Bulgarians but to direct their offensive movements against the southern Servian divisions in Macedonia. The great _coup_ had failed. Instead of attacking first the Servians and then the Greeks and overwhelming them separately, it was necessary to fight their combined forces. Every element in the situation demanded the utmost caution on the part of Bulgaria. Elementary prudence dictated that she yield to Roumanians demand for a slice of the seaboard to Baltchik in order to prevent Roumania from joining Servia and Greece. No doubt, had Daneff yielded he would have been voted out of office by the opposition, for the military party was in the ascendant at Sofia also. But a real statesman would not have flinched. Seldom has the influence of home politics upon the foreign affairs of a State operated so disastrously upon both. It was determined to carry out that part of the original plan of campaign which called for a surprise attack upon the Servians. It must be remembered that all the engagements that had hitherto taken place between the former allies had been unofficial, Daneff all the while insisting that there existed no war, but "only military action to enforce the Serbo-Bulgarian treaty." Nevertheless, on June 29th the word went forth from Bulgarian headquarters for a general attack upon the Servian line which, taken by surprise, yielded. In the mean time public opinion at Bucharest became almost uncontrollable in its demand for the mobilization of the troops, and the government was outraged at the continued prohibition by Russia of a forward movement. The Roumanian Government had already appealed to Count Berchtold for Austro-Hungarian support against Russian interference, but Austria-Hungary, like every other great power, expected Bulgaria to win, and she intended that Bulgaria should take the place vacated by Turkey as a counterpoise to Russia in the Balkans. Hence Count Berchtold informed Roumania that she could not rely upon Austro-Hungarian support, were she to ignore the Russian veto. But in the mean time an exaggerated report of the Servian defeat had reached St. Petersburg on July 1st, and to save Servia, Russia lifted the embargo on Roumanian action. Forty-eight hours later Europe knew that the Greeks had fought the fearful battle of Kilchis, resulting in the utter rout of the Bulgarians, who were in full retreat to defend the Balkan passes into their home territory. Russia at once recalled her permission for Roumanian mobilization, but it was too late. The army was on the march. The situation of Bulgaria was now truly desperate. Not only had her _coup_ against the Servians failed, but her troops were fleeing before the victorious Greeks up the Struma valley. On July 5th war was officially recognized by the withdrawal of the representatives of Greece, Montenegro, and Roumania, from Sofia. On the same day Turkey requested the withdrawal of all Bulgarian troops east of the Enos-Midia line. In the bloody battles which continued to be fought against Greeks and Servians, the Bulgarians were nearly everywhere defeated, and on July 10th Bulgaria placed herself unreservedly in the hands of Russia with a view to a cessation of hostilities. This did not, however, prevent the forward movement of all her enemies. On July 15th, Turkey, "moved by the unnatural war" existing in the Balkan Peninsula, dispatched Enver Bey with an army to Adrianople, which he reoccupied July 20th. By that time the Roumanians were within twenty miles of Sofia, and the guns of the Servians and Greeks could be heard in the Bulgarian capital. The next day King Ferdinand telegraphed to King Charles of Roumania, asking him to intercede with the kings of Greece, Servia, and Montenegro. He did so, and all the belligerents agreed to send peace delegates to Bucharest. They assembled there on July 29th and at once concluded an armistice. Each of the belligerent States sent its best man to the peace conference. Greece was represented by M. Venezelos, Servia by M. Pashitch, Roumania by M. Jonescu, Montenegro by M. Melanovitch, and Bulgaria chiefly by General Fitcheff, who had opposed the surprise attack upon the Servians. The policy of Bulgaria at the conference was to satisfy the demands of Roumania at once, sign a separate treaty which would rid her territory of Roumanian troops, and then treat with Greece and Servia. But M. Jonescu, who controlled the situation, insisted that peace must be restored by one treaty, not by several. At the same time he let it be known that Roumania would not uphold extravagant claims on the part of Greece and Servia which they could never have advanced were her troops not at the gates of Sofia. The moderate Roumanian demands were easily settled. Her southern boundary was to run from Turtukai via Dobritch to Baltchik on the Black Sea. She also secured cultural privileges for the Kutzovlachs in Bulgaria. The Servians, who before the second Balkan war would have been satisfied with the Vardar river as a boundary, now insisted upon the possession of the important towns of Kotchana, Ishtib, Radovishta, and Strumnitza, to the east of the Vardar. With the assistance of Roumania, Bulgaria was permitted to retain Strumnitza. The Greeks were the most unyielding. Before the war they would have been perfectly satisfied to have secured the Struma river as their eastern boundary. Now they demanded much more of the Aegean seacoast, including the important port of Kavala. The Bulgarian representatives refused to sign without the possession of Kavala, but under pressure from Roumania they had to consent. But they would yield on nothing else. The money indemnity demanded by Greece and Servia and the all-around grant of religious privileges suggested by Roumania had to be dropped. The treaty was signed August 6, 1913. In the mean time the Powers had not been passive onlookers. Austria-Hungary insisted that Balkan affairs are European affairs and that the Treaty of Bucharest should be considered as merely provisional, to be made definitive by the great Powers. On this proposition the members of both the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente divided. Austria and Italy in the one, and Russia in the other, favored a revision. Austria fears a strong Servia, and Italy dislikes the growth of Greek influence in the eastern Mediterranean. These two States and Russia favored a whittling-down of the gains of Greece and Servia and insisted upon Kavala and a bigger slice of the Aegean seaboard for Bulgaria. But France, England, and Germany insisted upon letting well-enough alone. King Charles of Roumania, who demanded that the peace should be considered definitive, sent a telegram to Emperor William containing the following sentence: "Peace is assured, and thanks to you, will remain definitive." This gave great umbrage at Vienna; but in the divided condition of the European Concert, no State wanted to act alone. So the treaty stands. The condition of Bulgaria was indeed pitiable, but her cup was not yet full. Immediately after occupying Adrianople on July 20th, the Turks had made advances to the Bulgarian government looking to the settlement of a new boundary. But Bulgaria, relying upon the intervention of the Powers, had refused to treat at all. On August 7th the representatives of the great Powers at Constantinople called collectively upon the Porte to demand that it respect the Treaty of London. But the Porte had seen Europe so frequently flouted by the little Balkan States during the previous year, that it had slight respect for Europe as a collective entity. In fact, Europe's prestige at Constantinople had disappeared. _J'y suis, j'y reste_ was the answer of the Turks to the demand to evacuate Adrianople. The recapture of that city had been a godsend to the Young Turk party. The Treaty of London had destroyed what little influence it had retained after the defeat of the armies, and it grasped at the seizure of Adrianople as a means of awakening enthusiasm and keeping office. As the days passed by, it became evident that further delay would cost Bulgaria dear. On August 15th the Turkish troops crossed the Maritza river and occupied western Thrace, though the Porte had hitherto been willing to accept the Maritza as the boundary. The Bulgarian hope of a European intervention began to fade. The Turks were soon able to convince the Bulgarian Government that most of the great Powers were willing to acquiesce in the retention of Adrianople by the Turks in return for economic and political concessions to themselves. There was nothing for Bulgaria to do but yield, and on September 3d General Savoff and M. Tontcheff started for Constantinople to treat with the Turkish government for a new boundary line. They pleaded for the Maritza as the boundary between the two States, the possession of the west bank being essential for railway connection between Bulgaria and Dedeagatch, her only port on the Aegean. But this plea came in conflict with the determination of the Turks to keep a sufficient strategic area around Adrianople. Hence the Turks demanded and secured a considerable district on the west bank, including the important town of Dimotika. By the preliminary agreement signed on September 18th the boundary starts at the mouth of the Maritza river, goes up the river to Mandra, then west around Dimotika almost to Mustafa Pasha. On the north the line starts at Sveti Stefan and runs west so that Kirk Kilesseh is retained by Turkey. While the Balkan belligerents were settling upon terms of peace among themselves, the conference of ambassadors at London was trying to bring the settlement of the Albanian problem to a conclusion. On August 11th the conference agreed that an international commission of control, consisting of a representative of each of the great Powers, should administer the affairs of Albania until the Powers should select a prince as ruler of the autonomous State. The conference also decided to establish a _gendarmerie_ under the command of military officers selected from one of the small neutral States of Europe. At the same time the conference agreed upon the southern boundary of Albania. This line was a compromise between that demanded by Greece and that demanded by Austria-Hungary and Italy. Unfortunately it was agreed that the international boundary commission which was to be appointed should in drawing the line be guided mainly by the nationality of the inhabitants of the districts through which it would pass. At once Greeks and Albanians began a campaign of nationalization in the disputed territory, which resulted in sanguinary conflicts. Unrest soon spread throughout the whole of Albania. On August 17th a committee of Malissori chiefs visited Admiral Burney, who was in command, at Scutari, of the marines from the international fleet, to notify him that the Malissori would never agree to incorporation in Montenegro. They proceeded to make good their threat by capturing the important town of Dibra and driving the Servians from the neighborhood of Djakova and Prizrend. Since then the greater part of northern and southern Albania has been practically in a state of anarchy. The settlement of the Balkans described in this article will probably last for at least a generation, not because all the parties to the settlement are content, but because it will take at least a generation for the dissatisfied States to recuperate. Bulgaria is in far worse condition than she was before the war with Turkey. The second Balkan war, caused by her policy of greed and arrogance, destroyed 100,000 of the flower of her manhood, lost her all of Macedonia and eastern Thrace, and increased her expenses enormously. Her total gains, whether from Turkey or from her former allies, were but eighty miles of seaboard on the Aegean, with a Thracian hinterland wofully depopulated. Even railway communication with her one new port of Dedeagatch has been denied her. Bulgaria is in despair, but full of hate. However, with a reduced population and a bankrupt treasury, she will need many years to recuperate before she can hope to upset the new arrangement. And it will be hard even to attempt that; for the _status quo_ is founded upon the principle of a balance of power in the Balkan peninsula; and Roumania has definitely announced herself as a Balkan power. Servia, and more particularly Greece, have made acquisitions beyond their wildest dreams at the beginning of the war and have now become strong adherents of the policy of equilibrium. The future of the Turks is in Asia, and Turkey in Asia just now is in a most unhappy condition. Syria, Armenia, and Arabia are demanding autonomy; and the former respect of the other Moslems for the governing race, _i.e._, the Turks, has received a severe blow. Whether Turkey can pull itself together, consolidate its resources, and develop the immense possibilities of its Asiatic possessions remains, of course, to be seen. But it will have no power, and probably no desire, to upset the new arrangement in the Balkans. The settlement is probably a landmark in Balkan history in that it brings to a close the period of tutelage exercised by the great Powers over the Christian States of the Balkans. Neither Austria-Hungary nor Russia emerges from the ordeal with prestige. The pan-Slavic idea has received a distinct rebuff. To Roumania and Greece, another non-Slavic State, _i.e._, Albania, has been added; and in no part of the peninsula is Russia so detested as in Bulgaria which unreasonably protests that Russia betrayed her. "Call us Huns, Turks, or Tatars, but not Slavs." Twice the Austro-Hungarians, in their anxiety to maintain the balance of power in the Balkans, made the mistake of backing the wrong combatant. In the first war, they upheld Turkey; and in the second, they favored Bulgaria. In encouraging Bulgarian aggression they estranged Roumania, the faithful friend of a generation, and Bulgaria won only debt and disgrace. Yet Austria-Hungary must now continue to support Bulgaria as a counterpoise to a stronger Servia which they consider a menace to their security because of Servian influence on their southern Slavs. The Balkan states will manage their own affairs in the future, but they will still offer abundant opportunity for the play of Russian and Austro-Hungarian rivalry. It had been hoped that the Balkan peninsula, when freed from the incubus of Turkish misrule, would settle down to a period of general tranquillity. Instead of this, the ejectment of the Turk has resulted in increased bitterness and more dangerous hate. CAPT. ALBERT H. TRAPMANN I doubt if history can show a more brilliant or dramatic campaign than that which the Greeks commenced on the first of July and ended on the last day of the same month; certainly no country has ever been drenched with so much blood in so short a space of time as was Macedonia, and never in the history of the human race have such enormities been committed upon the helpless civilian inhabitants of a war-stricken land. Bulgaria felt herself amply strong enough to crush the Servian and Greek armies single-handed, provided peace with Turkey could be assured, and the Bulgarian troops at Tchataldja set free. Thus, while Bulgaria talked loudly about the conference at St. Petersburg, she was making feverish haste to persuade the Allies to join with her in concluding peace with Turkey. But the Allies were quite alive to the dangers they ran. As peace with Turkey became daily more assured, the Bulgarian army at Tchataldja was gradually withdrawn and transported to face the Greek and Servian armies in Macedonia. But meanwhile Bulgaria had got one more preparation to make. Her plan was to attack the Allies suddenly, but to do it in such a way that the Czar and Europe might believe that the attack was mutual and unpremeditated. She therefore set herself to accustom the world to frontier incidents between the rival armies. On no fewer than four occasions various Bulgarian generals acting under secret instructions attacked the Greek or Servian troops in their vicinity. The last of these incidents, which was by far the most serious, took place on the 24th of May in the Pangheion region, when the sudden attack at sunset of 25,000 Bulgarians drove the Greek defenders back some six miles upon their supports. On each occasion the Bulgarian Government disclaimed all responsibility, and attributed the bloodshed to the personal initiative of individual soldiers acting under (imaginary) provocation. The incident of the 24th of May cost the Bulgarians some 1,500 casualties, while the Greeks lost about 800 men, sixteen of whom were prisoners; two of these subsequently died from ill-treatment. In connection with this last "incident" a circumstance arose which demonstrates more vividly than mere adjectives the underhand methods employed by the Sofia authorities. It was announced that the Bulgarians had captured six Greek guns, and these were duly displayed at Sofia and inspected by King Ferdinand. I myself was at Salonica at the time, and, knowing that this was not true, I protested through the _Daily Telegraph_ against the misleading rumor. A controversy arose, but it was subsequently proved by two artillery experts who inspected the guns in question that they were really Bulgarian guns painted gray, with their telltale breech-blocks removed. On the morning of the 29th of June we at Salonica received the news that during the night Bulgarian troops in force had attacked the Greek outposts in the Pangheion region and driven them in. All through the day came in fresh news of further attacks all along the line. At Guevgheli, where the Greek and Servian armies met, the Bulgarians had attacked fiercely, occupied the town, and cut the railway line. The two armies were separated from each other by an interposing Bulgarian force. On the morning of the 30th of June it was learned that all along the line the Bulgarians had crossed the neutral line and were advancing, while at Nigrita they had driven back a Greek detachment and pressed some fifteen miles southward, thus threatening entirely to cut off the Greek troops remaining in the Pangheion district. The situation was critical and demanded prompt attention. King Constantine was away at Athens, but he sent his instructions by wireless and hastened hotfoot back to Salonica to place himself at the head of the army. At noon General Hessaptchieff (brother-in-law of M. Daneff), the Bulgarian plenipotentiary accredited to Greek Army Headquarters, drove to the station and with his staff left by the last train for Bulgarian Headquarters at Serres. Orders were immediately given for all Bulgarian troops to be confined to barracks, and the Cretan gendarmerie duly arrested any found about the streets. Gradually as the afternoon wore on, the civilian element retired behind closed doors and shuttered windows; all shops were shut, and pickets of Greek soldiery were alone to be seen in the deserted streets. At 4.30 P.M. the Bulgarian battalion commander was invited to surrender the arms of his men, when they would be conveyed in two special trains to Serres or anywhere else they liked. He was given an hour to decide. Owing to the intervention of the French Consul the time limit was extended, but the offer was refused, and at 6.50 P.M. on the 30th of June the Greeks applied force. Around every house occupied by Bulgarian soldiery Greek troops had been introduced into neighboring houses, machine guns had been installed on rooftops, companies of infantry were picketed at street corners. Suddenly throughout the town all this hell was let loose. The streets gave back the echo a thousandfold. The crackle of musketry and din of machine guns was positively infernal. As evening came and darkened into night, one after another of the Bulgarian forts Chabrol surrendered, sometimes persuaded thereto by the deadly effect of a field-gun at thirty yards' range, but the sun had risen ere the chief stronghold containing five hundred Bulgarians gave up the hopeless struggle. By nine o'clock the Bulgarian garrison of Salonica, deprived of its arms, was safely stowed in the holds of Greek ships bound for Crete. The casualty list was as follows: Bulgarians--prisoners: 11 officers, 1,241 men; 11 men wounded; 51 men killed; comitadjis, 4 wounded, 11 killed. Greeks: 11 soldiers killed; 4 Cretan gendarmes killed; 4 officers wounded; 6 soldiers wounded; while 6 Bulgarian officers who had deserted their men and escaped in women's clothing were not captured until later in the day. All the morning of the 1st of July the Greek troops were busy rounding up Bulgarian comitadjis and collecting hidden explosives, but at 4 P.M. the Second Division marched out of the town. King Constantine, who had arrived in the small hours of the morning, had given the order for a general advance of his army. Greek patience was expended, and no wonder. Meanwhile, let us consider the Bulgarian intentions as revealed by the captured dispatch-box of the General commanding the 3d Bulgarian Division, which contained documents likely to become historic. On the 28th of June the Bulgarian Divisional Commanders received orders from the Commander-in-Chief to undertake a general attack upon the Allies on the 2d of July. Unfortunately for the Bulgarians, General Ivanoff, Commanding-in-Chief against the Greeks, could not restrain his impatience, and instead of waiting for a sudden and general attack on the 2d of July his troops attacked piecemeal during the nights of the 29th and 30th of June as described; thus the Greek general forward movement on the 1st and 2d of July found the bulk of his troops unprepared, while the 14th Bulgarian Division, scheduled to arrive at Kilkis on the 2d of July from Tchataldja, was not available during that day to oppose the Greek initiative, though they saved the situation on the 3d of July by detraining partly at Kilkis and partly at Doiran. The two weak points of the Allies were at Guevgheli and in the Pangheion region, and it was precisely at these points that the Bulgarians struck. As regards numbers, on the 2d of July the respective forces numbered: Bulgarians, 80,000; Greeks, 60,000; on the 3d of July (not deducting losses)--Bulgarians, 115,000; Greeks, 80,000; in both cases the troops on lines of communication are not reckoned with; these probably amounted to--Bulgarians, 25,000; Greeks, 12,000. Almost immediately and at all points the opposing armies came into contact. The Bulgarian gunners had very carefully taken all ranges on the ground over which the Greeks had to advance, and at first their shrapnel fire was extremely damaging. The Greeks, however, did not wait to fight the battle out according to the usual rules of warfare--by endeavoring to silence the enemy's artillery before launching their infantry forward. Phenomenal rapidity characterized the Greek tactics from the moment their troops first came under fire. Their artillery immediately swept into action and plied the Bulgarian batteries with shell and shrapnel, the while Greek infantry deployed into lines of attack and pushed forward. At Kilkis so rapid was the advance of the Greek infantry that the Bulgarian gunners could hardly alter their ranges sufficiently fast, and every time that the Greek infantry had made good five hundred yards the Greek artillery would gallop forward and come into action on a new alinement. It was a running fight. By leaps and bounds the incredible _élan_ of the Greek troops drove the Bulgarians back toward Kilkis itself, which position had been heavily entrenched. By 4 P.M. on the 2d of July, the Greek main army was within three miles of the town, while the 10th Division, helped by two battalions of Servian infantry, gradually fought its way up the Vardar toward Guevgheli. At 4.30 P.M. (at Kilkis) the Bulgarians delivered a furious counter-attack in which some 20,000 bayonets took part, but it was repulsed with heavy slaughter, and the weary Greek soldiers, who had fought their way over twenty miles of disputed country, rolled over on their sides and slept. Toward Guevgheli the Evzone battalions had for two hours to advance through waist-deep marshes under a heavy artillery fire, but they struggled along through muddy waters singing their own melancholy songs and without paying the least attention to the heavy losses they were sustaining. On the 3d of July the Greeks reoccupied Guevgheli, and toward evening the Bulgarian trenches at Kilkis were taken at the bayonet's point, the town being entirely destroyed, partly by Greek shell fire (for the Bulgarian batteries had been located in the streets) and partly by the Bulgarians, who fired the town as they retired. On the 3d and 4th the Bulgarians retired sullenly northward toward Doiran, contesting every yard and putting in the units of the 14th Division as quickly as they could be detrained; but the Greeks never flagged for one moment in the pursuit. The 10th and 3d Divisions, marching at tremendous speed, came up on the left, menacing the line of retreat on Strumnitza. It was in the pass ten miles south of this town that remnants of the Bulgarian 3d and 14th Divisions made their last stand upon the 8th of July. Throughout the week they had been fighting and retreating incessantly, had lost at least 10,000 in killed and wounded, some 4,500 prisoners, and about forty guns, while the Greeks lost about 4,500 and 5,000 men in front of Kilkis and another 3,000 between Doiran and Strumnitza. Meanwhile at Lakhanas an equally sanguinary two days' conflict had been in progress. The Greeks attacked and finally captured the Bulgarian entrenched positions. Time after time their charges failed to reach, but eventually their persistent courage and inimitable _élan_ won home, and the Bulgarians fled in utter rout and panic, leaving everything, even many of their uniforms, behind them. King Constantine, speaking in Germany recently, attributed the success of the Greek armies to the courage of his men, the excellence of the artillery, and to the soundness of the strategy, but I think he overlooked the chief factor that made for victory--the unspeakable horror, loathing, and rage aroused by the atrocities committed upon the Greek wounded whenever a temporary local reverse left a few of the gallant fellows at the mercy of the Bulgarians. I have seen an officer and a dozen men who had had their eyes put out, and their ears, tongues, and noses cut off, upon the field of battle during the lull between two Greek charges. And there were other worse, but nameless, barbarities both upon the wounded and the dead who for a brief moment fell into Bulgarian hands. This was during the very first days of the war; later, when the news of the wholesale massacres of Greek peaceable inhabitants at Nigrita, Serres, Drama, Doxat, etc., became known to the army, it raised a spirit which no pen can describe. The men "saw red," they were drunk with lust for honorable revenge, from which nothing but death could stop them. Wounds, mortal wounds, were unheeded so long as the man still had strength to stagger on; I have seen a sergeant with a great fragment of common shell through his lungs run forward for several hundred yards vomiting blood, but still encouraging his men, who, truth to tell, were as eager as he. It is impossible to describe or even conceive the purposeful and aching desire to get to close quarters regardless of all losses and of all consequences. The Bulgarians, in committing those obscene atrocities, not only damned themselves forever in the eyes of humanity, but they doubled, nay, quadrupled, the strength of the Greek army. Nothing short of extermination could have prevented the Greek army from victory; there was not a man who would not have a million times rather died than have hesitated for a moment to go forward. The days of those first battles were steaming hot with a pitiless Macedonian sun. The Greek troops were in far too high a state of spiritual excitation to require food, even if food had been able to keep pace with their lightning advance. All that the men wanted, all they ever asked for, was water and ammunition; and here the greatest self-sacrifice of all to the cause was frequently seen; for a wounded man, unable to struggle forward another yard, would, as he fell to the ground, hastily unbuckle water-bottle and cartridge-cases and hand them to an advancing comrade with a cheery word, "Go on and good luck, my lad," and then as often as not he would lay him down to die with parched lips and cleaving tongue. I was myself, at the pressing and personal invitation of King Constantine, the first to visit Nigrita, where the Bulgarian General, before leaving, had the inhabitants locked into their houses, and then with guncotton and petroleum burned the place to the ground. Here 470 victims were burned alive, mostly old folk, women, and children. Serres, Drama, Kilkis, and Demir Hissar (all important towns) have similar tales to tell, only the death-roll is longer. Small wonder that these stories of ferocity are not given credence, for they are incredible, and it is only when one studies the Bulgarian character that one can understand how such orgies of carnage were possible. The scope of this article does not permit me to describe in detail the minor battles and operations between the 6th of July and the 25th of July; suffice it to say that the rapidity of the Greek advance upon Strumnitza and up the valley of the Struma forced the Bulgarians to beat in full retreat toward their frontier, leaving behind them all that impeded their flight. Military stores, guns, carts, and even uniforms strewed the line of their march, and they were only saved from annihilation because the mountains which guarded their flanks were impassable for the Greek artillery. By blowing up the bridges over the Struma the impetuosity of the Greek pursuit was delayed, and it was in the Kresna Pass that the Bulgarian rear-guard first turned at bay. The pass is a twenty-mile gorge cut through mountains 7,000 feet high, but the Greeks turned the Bulgarian positions by marching across the mountains, and it was near Semitli, five miles north of the pass, that the Bulgarians offered their last serious resistance. It was a wonderful battle. The Greeks, at the urgent request of the Servian General Staff, had detailed two divisions to help the Servians. On the west bank of the Struma they pushed the 2d and 4th Divisions gently northward, while in the narrow Struma valley (it is little better than a gorge in most places) they had the 1st Division on the main road with the 5th behind it in reserve; on the right, perched on the summit of well-nigh inaccessible mountains, was the Greek 6th Division, with the 7th Division on its right, somewhat drawn back. It came to the knowledge of Greek headquarters that the Bulgarians contemplated an attack upon Mehomia, a village six miles on the extreme right and rear of the 7th Division, only held by a small detachment of that Division; reenforcements were immediately dispatched to relieve the pressure, and the 6th Division was called upon to reenforce the positions of the 7th during the absence of the relief column, with the result that on the 25th of July the 6th Division only had some 6,000 men available. Meanwhile, the Bulgarians had secretly transferred the 40,000 men of their 1st Division from facing the Servians at Kustendil to Djumaia; 20,000 of these were sent in a column to strike at the junction of the Greek and Servian armies, where they were held by the 3d and 10th Greek divisions after a bloody battle which lasted three days; 5,000 marched on Mehomia and were annihilated by the Greek 7th Division; the remaining 15,000 reenforced the troops facing the Greek 6th Division. It was a most dramatic fight. On the 25th of July the Greeks, unconscious of the Bulgarian reenforcements, pushed northward, and all day long their 1st, 5th, and 6th Divisions gradually drove the enemy in front of them. The fighting was of the most desperate nature, and at one moment, the ammunition on both sides having given out, the troops pelted each other with fragments of rock. At last, toward 5 P.M., the Greek 6th Division found the enemy in front of them retiring; they pushed onward fighting for every yard. The men were dead-weary; they had slept for days upon bleak and waterless mountain summits--frozen at night, they were grilled at noon, but they pushed ever onward. At last, when victory seemed within their grasp, when their foe was seen to run, a general advance was ordered. The men sprang forward with a last effort of physical endurance--the Bulgars were running! They gave chase. Suddenly, in one solid wall, 15,000 entirely new Bulgarian troops of the 1st Division rose, as if from the ground, and delivered a counter-attack. It was a crucial moment: some 4,000 Greeks chasing a similar number of Bulgarians suddenly had to face 15,000 new troops. The impact was terrible. The Greek line broke up into fragments, around which the Bulgarians clustered and pecked like vultures at a feast. For ten minutes it was anybody's battle. The remnants of each Greek company formed itself into a ring and defended itself as best it could. These rings gradually grew smaller as bullet and bayonet claimed their victims; many of them were wiped out altogether, and when the battle was over it was possible to find the places where these companies had made their last stands, for there was not a single survivor--the wounded were killed by the victors. But the victory was short-lived. True, the right of the 6th Division had crumpled up, but a regiment of the 1st Division came up at the critical moment and stiffened up the left and center, and again the tide of battle swayed irresolute; then, ten minutes later perhaps, a regiment from the 5th Division came up at the double on the right rear of the Bulgarians, taking them in reverse and enfilade. The Bulgarian right and center crumpled like a rotten egg, while their left fell hastily back. The Bulgars had thrown their last hazard and had lost. The carnage was appalling on both sides. The Greek 6th Division had commenced the day with about 6,000 men; at sunset barely 2,000 remained. Opposite the Greek positions nearly 10,000 Bulgarians were buried next day, which speaks well for the fighting power of the Greek when he is making his last stand. The holocaust of wounded beggars description, but that eminent French painter, George Scott, told me an incident which came to his own notice. He was riding up to the front the day after Semitli, and was just emerging from the awesome Kresna Pass, when he and his companion came upon a Greek dressing station. The narrow space between cliff and river was entirely occupied by some hundreds of Greek wounded, some of them already dead, many dying, and others fainting. They were lying about awaiting their turn for the surgeon's knife. In the center stood the surgeon, with the sleeves of his operating-coat turned up, his arms red to the elbow in blood, all about him blood-stained bandages and wads of cotton-wool. They reined in their horses and surveyed the scene; as one patient was being removed from the packing-case that served as operating-table, the surgeon raised his weary eyes and saw them, the only unwounded men in all that vast and silent gathering. "You are newspaper correspondents?" he asked. "Well, tell me, tell me when this butchery will cease! For seventy-two hours I have been plying my knife, and look at those who have yet to come"--he swept the circle of wounded with an outstretched bloody hand. "O God! If you know how to write, write to your papers and tell Europe she must stop this gruesome war." Then, tired out and enervated, he swooned into the arms of the medical orderly. As he came to to be apologized. "That," he said, "is the third time I have fainted; I suppose I must waste precious time in eating something to sustain me!" The battle of Semitli was fought almost contemporaneously with that of the 3d and 10th Greek Divisions on the extreme Greek left flank, which latter action resulted in a Bulgarian repulse after a temporary success, and these were the last great battles of the shortest and bloodiest campaign on record. On the 29th and 30th of July there were some skirmishes three miles south of Djumaia. On the 31st of July the armistice was conceded. During the month of July the Greek army had practically wiped out the 1st, 3d, 4th, and 14th Bulgarian Divisions, some 160,000 strong; they had marched 200 miles over terrible mountains; they had taken 12,000 prisoners, 120 guns; and had cheerfully sustained 27,000 casualties out of a total number of 120,000 troops engaged. It is difficult to do justice to such an exploit within the scope of a single article. The privations suffered by the troops, their uncomplaining endurance, the fight with cholera, the appalling atrocities perpetrated by the Bulgarians upon those who fell within their power, furnish matter for a monumental volume. OPENING OF THE PANAMA CANAL A.D. 1914 COL. GEO. W. GOETHALS BAMPFYLDE FULLER As was told in a previous volume, the United States acquired possession of the Panama Canal territory in 1903. Actual work on the Canal was begun by Americans in 1905 with the prediction that the Canal would be finished in ten years, 1915. The engineers have been better than their word. The difficulties with Mexico rendered the Canal suddenly useful to the United States, and Colonel Goethals reported that he would have the "big ditch" ready for the passage of any war-ship by May 15, 1914. That promise he carried out. The Canal is still in danger of being blocked by slides of mud in the deep Culebra Cut, and probably will continue exposed to this difficulty for some years to come. But the work is practically complete; ships passed through the Canal under government orders in 1914. The greatest engineering work man ever attempted, the profoundest change he has ever made in the geographical face of the globe, has been successfully accomplished. Honor where honor is due! The man chiefly responsible for the success of this great work has been Colonel Goethals. We quote here by his special permission a portion of one of his official reports on the Canal. We then show the work "as others see us," by giving an account of the Canal and the impression it has made on other nations, written by one of the most distinguished of its recent British visitors, the Hon. Bampfylde Fuller. COL. GEO. W. GOETHALS, U.S. ARMY A canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans has occupied public attention for upward of four centuries, during which period various routes have been proposed, each having certain special or peculiar advantages. It was not until the nineteenth century, however, that any definite action was taken looking toward its accomplishment. In 1876 an organization was perfected in France for making surveys and collecting data on which to base the construction of a canal across the Isthmus of Panama, and in 1878 a concession for prosecuting the work was secured from the Colombian Government. In May, 1879, an international congress was convened, under the auspices of Ferdinand de Lesseps, to consider the question of the best location and plan of the Canal. This congress, after a two weeks' session, decided in favor of the Panama route and of a sea-level canal without locks. De Lesseps's success with the Suez Canal made him a strong advocate of the sea-level type, and his opinion had considerable influence in the final decision. Immediately following this action the Panama Canal Company was organized under the general laws of France, with Ferdinand de Lesseps as its president. The concession granted in 1878 by Colombia was purchased by the company, and the stock was successfully floated in December, 1880. The two years following were devoted largely to surveys, examinations, and preliminary work. In the first plan adopted the Canal was to be 29.5 feet deep, with a ruling bottom width of 72 feet. Leaving Colon, the Canal passed through low ground to the valley of the Chagres River at Gatun, a distance of about 6 miles; thence through this valley, for 21 miles, to Obispo, where, leaving the river, it crossed the continental divide at Culebra by means of a tunnel, and reached the Pacific through the valley of the Rio Grande. The difference in the tides of the two oceans, 9 inches in either direction from the mean in the Atlantic and from 9 to 11 feet from the same datum in the Pacific, was to be overcome and the final currents reduced by a proper sloping of the bottom of the Pacific portion of the Canal. No provisions were made for the control of the Chagres River. In the early eighties after a study of the flow due to the tidal differences, a tidal lock near the Pacific was provided. Various schemes were also proposed for the control of the Chagres, the most prominent being the construction of a dam at Gamboa. The dam as proposed afterward proved to be impracticable, and this problem remained, for the time being, unsolved. The tunnel through the divide was also abandoned in favor of an open cut. Work was prosecuted on the sea-level canal until 1887, when a change to the lock type was made, in order to secure the use of the Canal for navigation as soon as possible. It was agreed at that time that the change in plan did not contemplate abandonment of the sea-level Canal, which was ultimately to be secured, but merely its postponement for the time being. In this new plan the summit level was placed above the flood line of the Chagres River, to be supplied with water from that stream by pumps. Work was pushed forward until 1889, when the company went into bankruptcy; and on February 4th that year a liquidator was appointed to take charge of its affairs. Work was suspended on May 15, 1889. The new Panama Canal Company was organized in October, 1894, when work was again resumed, on the plan recommended by a commission of engineers. This plan contemplated a sea-level canal from Limon Bay to Bohio, where a dam across the valley created a lake extending to Bas Obispo, the difference in level being overcome by two locks; the summit level extended from Bas Obispo to Paraiso, reached by two more locks, and was supplied with water by a feeder from an artificial reservoir created by a dam at Alhajuela, in the upper Chagres Valley. Four locks were located on the Pacific side, the two middle ones at Pedro Miguel combined in a flight. A second or alternative plan was proposed at the same time, by which the summit level was to be a lake formed by the Bohio dam, fed directly by the Chagres. Work was continued on this plan until the rights and property of the new company were purchased by the United States. The United States, not unmindful of the advantages of an isthmian canal, had from time to time made investigations and surveys of the various routes. With a view to government ownership and control, Congress directed an investigation of the Nicaraguan Canal, for which a concession had been granted to a private company. The resulting report brought about such a discussion of the advantages of the Panama route to the Nicaraguan route that by an act of Congress, approved March 3, 1889, a commission was appointed to "make full and complete investigation of the Isthmus of Panama, with a view to the construction of a canal." The commission reported on November 16, 1901, in favor of Panama, and recommended the lock type of canal. By act of Congress, approved June 28, 1902, the President of the United States was authorized to acquire, at a cost not exceeding $40,000,000, the property rights of the New Panama Canal Company on the Isthmus of Panama, and also to secure from the Republic of Colombia perpetual control of a strip of land not less than 6 miles wide, extending from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific Ocean, and "the right ... to excavate, construct, and to perpetually maintain, operate, and protect thereon a canal of such depth and capacity as will afford convenient passage of ships of the greatest tonnage and draft now in use." Pursuant to the legislation, negotiations were entered into with Colombia and with the New Panama Canal Company, with the end that a treaty was made with the Republic of Panama granting to the United States control of a 10-mile strip, constituting the Canal Zone, with the right to construct, maintain, and operate a canal. This treaty was ratified by the Republic of Panama on December 2, 1903, and by the United States on February 23, 1904. The formal transfer of the property of the New Panama Canal Company on the Isthmus was made on May 4, 1904, after which the United States began the organization of a force for the construction of the lock type of canal, in the mean time continuing the excavation by utilizing the French material and equipment and such labor as was procurable on the Isthmus. President Roosevelt, in a message to Congress, dated February 19, 1906, stated: "The law now on our statute-books seems to contemplate a lock canal. In my judgment a lock canal, as herein recommended, is advisable. If the Congress directs that a sea-level canal be constructed its direction will, of course, be carried out; otherwise the Canal will be built on substantially the plan for a lock canal outlined in the accompanying papers, such changes being made, of course, as may be found actually necessary, including possibly the change recommended by the Secretary of War as to the site of the dam on the Pacific side." On June 29, 1906, Congress provided that a lock type of canal be constructed across the Isthmus of Panama, of the general type proposed by the minority of the Board of Consulting Engineers, and work has continued along these lines. The Board of Consulting Engineers estimated the cost of the lock type of canal at $139,705,200 and of the sea-level canal at $247,021,000, excluding the cost of sanitation, civil government, the purchase price, and interest on the investment. These sums were for construction purposes only. I ventured a guess that the construction of the lock type of canal would approach $300,000,000, and without stopping to consider that the same causes which led to an increase in cost over the original estimates for the lock canal must affect equally the sea-level type, the advocates of the latter argued that the excess of the new estimates was an additional reason why the lock type should be abandoned in favor of the sea-level canal. The estimated cost by the present commission for completing the adopted project, excluding the items let out by the Board of Consulting Engineers, is placed at $297,766,000. If to this be added the estimated cost of sanitation and civil government until the completion of the work, and the $50,000,000 purchase price, the total cost to the United States of the lock type of canal will amount to $375,201,000. In the preparation of these estimates there are no unknown factors. The estimated cost of the sea-level canal for construction alone sums up to $477,601,000, and if to this be added the cost of sanitation and civil government up to the time of the completion of the canal, which will be at least six years later than the lock canal, and the purchase price, the total cost to the United States will aggregate $563,000,000. In this case, however, parts of the estimate are more or less conjectural--such as the cost of diverting the Chagres to permit the building of the Gamboa dam and the cost of constructing the dam itself. Much criticism has resulted because of the excess of the present estimates over those originally proposed, arising largely from a failure to analyze the two estimates or to appreciate fully the actual conditions. The estimates prepared and accompanying the report of the consulting engineers were based on data less complete than are available at present. The unit costs in the report of 1906 are identical with those in the report of 1901, and since 1906 there has been an increase in the wage scale and in the cost of material. On the Isthmus wages exceed those in the United States from 40 to 80 per cent. for the same class of labor. The original estimates were based on a ten-hour day, but Congress imposed the eight-hour day. Subsequent surveys and the various changes already noted have increased the quantity of work by 50 per cent., whereas the unit costs have increased only 20 per cent.--not such a bad showing. In addition, municipal improvements in Panama and Colon, advances to the Panama Railroad, and moneys received and deposited to the credit of miscellaneous receipts aggregate $15,000,000, which amount will eventually and has in part already been returned to the Treasury. Finally, no such system of housing and caring for employees was ever contemplated as has been introduced and installed, materially increasing the overhead charges and administration. The idea of the sea-level canal appeals to the popular mind, which pictures an open ditch offering free and unobstructed navigation from sea to sea, but no such substitute is offered for the present lock canal. As between the sea-level and the lock canal, the latter can be constructed in less time, at less cost, will give easier and safer navigation, and in addition secure such a control of the Chagres River as to make a friend and aid of what remains an enemy and menace in the sea-level type. In this connection attention is invited to the statement made by Mr. Taft, when Secretary of War, in his letter transmitting the reports of the Board of Consulting Engineers: "We may well concede that if we could have a sea-level canal with a prism of 300 to 400 feet wide, with the curves that must now exist reduced, it would be preferable to the plan of the minority, but the time and cost of constructing such a canal are in effect prohibitive." We are justly proud of the organization for the prosecution of the work. The force originally organized by Mr. John F. Stevens for the attack upon the continental divide has been modified and enlarged as the necessities of the situation required, until at the present time it approaches the perfection of a huge machine, and all are working together to a common end. The manner in which the work is being done and the spirit of enthusiasm that is manifested by all forcibly strike every one who visits the works. The main object of our being there is the construction of the Canal; everything else is subordinate to it, and the work of every department is directed to the accomplishment of that object. Too much credit can not be given to the department of sanitation, which, in conjunction with the division of municipal engineering, has wrought such a change in the conditions as they existed in 1904 as to make the construction of the Canal possible. This department is subdivided into the health department, which has charge of the hospitals, supervision of health matters in Panama and Colon, and of the quarantine, and into the sanitary inspection department, which looks after the destruction of the mosquito by various methods, by grass and brush cutting, the draining of various swampy areas, and the oiling of unavoidable pools and stagnant streams. According to the statistics of the health department, based on the death-rate, the Canal Zone is one of the healthiest communities in the world, but in this connection it must be remembered that our population consists of men and women in the prime of life, with few, if any, of the aged, and that a number of the sick are returned to the United States before death overtakes them. BAMPFYLDE FULLER The Panama Canal stands out as one of the most noteworthy contributions that the Teutonic race has made toward the material improvement of the world. So regarding it, Englishmen and Germans may take some pride to themselves from this great achievement of the Americans. The Teutonic race has its limitations. It is deficient in the gaiety of mind, the expansiveness of heart, which add so largely to human happiness. Its bent has lain in directions that are, superficially at all events, less attractive. But by its cult of cleanliness, self-control, and efficiency, it has given a new meaning to civilization; it has invented Puritanism, the gospel of the day's work, and the water-closet. These reflections may not seem very apposite to the subject of the Canal; but they will suggest themselves to one who arrives in Panama after traveling through the Latin States of South America. It was, however, by some sacrifice of moral sense that the United States gained control of the Isthmus. They offered a financial deal to the republic of Colombia: the terms were liberal, and the Colombian Government had in principle no objection to make money by the grant of a perpetual lease of so much land as was needed for the Canal. But it haggled unreasonably over the details, with the object of delaying business until the period of the French concession had expired, so that it might secure, not only its own share of the compensation, but the share that was to be paid to the French investors whose rights and achievements were taken over by the United States. A revolution occurred: the province of Panama declared its independence of Colombia, and at once completed the bargain. The revolution was so exceedingly opportune in the interests of the United States, and of the French concessionaires, that it is impossible not to suspect its instigation in these interests. Beyond a doubt the United States assisted the revolutionaries: they prevented the Colombian forces from attacking them. Panama was originally independent of Colombia, and had been badly treated by the Colombian Government, which, in its distant capital of Bogota, was out of touch with Panamanian interests, and returned to the province but a very small share of its taxes. But, however this may be, we may take it, without straining facts, that the United States, being unable to bring Colombia to terms, evicted her in favor of a more pliable authority. This is not in accord with Christian morality. Nor are political dealings generally. And, from a practical point of view, it was preposterous that the cupidity of some Colombian politicians should stand in the way of an improvement in geography. The agreement with the newly born republic of Panama gave the United States a perpetual lease of a strip of land, ten miles broad, across the Isthmus. This is styled the "Canal Zone." The Latin towns of Panama and Colon fall within its limits. But they are expressly excluded from the United States jurisdiction. In substance the Canal works consist, first, of an enormous dam (at Gatun), which holds up the water of the river Chagres so as to flood a valley twenty-four miles long; secondly, of a channel--nine miles in length--(the Culebra Cut)--which carries the valley on through a range of low hills; and, thirdly, of a set of locks at each end of this stretch of water that are connected by comparatively short approaches with the sea. The surface of the lake will be from 79 to 85 feet above sea-level, and vessels will be raised to this height and lowered again by passing through a flight of three locks upward and another flight of three locks downward. The passage of both flights of locks is not expected to occupy more than three hours, and ships should complete the transit of the Isthmus--a distance of about fifty miles--within twelve hours at most. The design of the work offers nothing that is new in principle to engineering science. Dams, cuttings, and locks are familiar contrivances. But they are on an immensely larger scale than anything which has previously been attempted. The area of the lake of impounded water will be 164 square miles, and it has been doubted whether the damming of so large a mass of water, to a height of 85 feet, could safely be undertaken. But this portion of Central America is apparently not liable to earthquakes. And the dam is so large as to be a feature of the earth's surface. It is nearly half a mile broad across its base, so that although its crest is 105 feet above sea-level its slope is not very perceptible. Its core is formed of a mixture of sand and clay, poured in from above by hydraulic processes. This has set hard, and is believed to be quite impervious to water at a much higher pressure than that to which it will be subjected. In the center of the river valley--a mile and a half broad--across which the dam has been flung, there very fortunately arose a low rocky hill. This is included in the dam, and across its summit has been constructed the escape or spill-way. During seasons of heavy rain the surplus discharge of river water will be very heavy, and a cataract will pour over the spill-way. But it will rush across a bed of rock, and will be unable to erode its channel. And it will be employed to generate electrical power which will open and shut the lock-gates and generally operate the Canal machinery. The river Chagres will energize the Canal as well as fill it. The locks are gigantic constructions of concrete. Standing within them one is impressed as by the mass of the Pyramids. The gates are hollow structures of steel, 7 feet thick. Their lower portions are water-tight, so that their buoyancy in the water will relieve the stress upon the bearings which hinge them to the lock-wall. Along the top of each lock-wall there runs an electric railway; four small electric locomotives will be coupled to a vessel as it enters the lock approach, and will tow it to its place. The vessel will not use its own steam. This will lessen the risk of its getting out of hand and ramming the lock-gate, an accident which has occurred on the big locks that connect Lake Superior with Lake Huron. So catastrophic would be such a mishap, releasing as it might this immense accumulation of water, that it seemed desirable at whatever expense to provide additional safeguards against it. There are in the first place cross-chains, tightening under pressure, which may be drawn across the bows of a ship that threatens to become unmanageable. Secondly, the lock-gates are doubled at the entrance to all the locks, and at the lower end of the upper lock in each flight. And, thirdly, each flight of locks can be cut off from the lake by an "emergency dam" of peculiar construction. It is essentially a skeleton gate, which ordinarily lies uplifted along the top of the lock-wall, but can be swung across, lowered, and gradually closed against the water by letting down panels. In its ordinary position it lies high above the masonry--conspicuous from some distance out at sea as a large cantilever bridge, swung in air. Peculiar difficulties have been encountered in establishing the foundations of the locks. The lowest of each flight are planted in deep morasses, and could only be settled by removing vast masses of estuary slime to a depth of 80 feet below sea-level. The sea was cut off and a dredger introduced, which gradually cleared its way down to the bottom rock. But the troubles which the American engineers will remember are those which have presented themselves in the Culebra cutting. The channel is nine miles long. Its average depth is between 100 and 200 feet, but at one point it reaches 490 feet. The formation of the ground varies extraordinarily. At some points it is rock; at others rock gives place to contorted layers of brilliantly colored earth which is almost as restless as quicksand. Unfortunately, it is at places where the cutting is deepest that its banks are most unstable. The sides of the lowest 40 feet of the excavation--the actual water channel--are cut vertically and not to a slope; in a firm formation this reduces the amount of excavation, but in loose material it must apparently have increased the risk of slides. But, however this may be, slips on a gigantic scale were inevitable. The cutting is an endeavor to form precipitous slopes of crumbling material under a tropical rain-fall: it may be likened to molding in brown sugar under the rose of a watering-pot. The banks have been in a state of constant movement, and are broken up into irregular shelves and chasms, so that at some points the channel resembles a natural ravine rather than an artificial cutting. One thing is certain,--that for some years to come the channel will only be kept open by constant assiduous dredging. But it is, of course, easier to dredge out of water than to excavate in the dry. The material excavated from the Culebra channel will aggregate nearly one hundred million cubic yards. Some of it has been utilized in reclaiming land; much has been carried out to sea and heaped into a break-water three miles long, which runs out from the Panama or southern end of the Canal, and will check a coast-ways current that might, if uncontrolled, silt up the approach. The Canal is a triumph, not of man's hands, but of machinery. Regiments of steam shovels attack the banks, exhibiting a grotesque appearance of animal intelligence in their behavior. An iron grabber is lowered by a crane, it pauses as if to examine the ground before it, in search of a good bite, opens a pair of enormous jaws, takes a grab, and, swinging round, empties its mouthful onto a railway truck. The material is loosened for the shovels by blasts of dynamite and, all the day through, the air is shaken by explosions. Alongside each row of shovels stands a train in waiting; over a hundred and fifty trains run seaward each day loaded with spoil. The bed of the Canal is ribboned with railway tracks, which are shifted as required by special track-lifting machines. The masonry work of the locks is laid without hands. High latticed towers--grinding mills and cranes combined--overhang the wall that is being built up. They take up stone and cement by the truck-load, mix them and grind them--in fact, digest them--and, swinging the concrete out in cages, gently and accurately deposit it between the molding boards. How sharp is the contrast between this elaborate steam machinery and the hand-labor of the _fellahín_ who patiently dug out the Suez Canal! But there are, so to speak, edges to be trimmed: this mass of machinery is to be guided and controlled, and there is work to employ a staff of over thirty thousand men. Some four thousand of them are Americans, who form a superior service, styled "gold employees" in order to avoid racial implications. Their salaries are calculated in American dollars. The remainder, classed as "silver employees," are paid in Panama dollars, the value of which is half that of the American. Two series of coins are current, one being double the value of the other; and, since the corresponding coins of the two series are of about the same size, newcomers are harassed by constant suspicions of their small change. The "silver employees" number about twenty-six thousand. Some of them are immigrants from Europe--mostly from Italy and the north of Spain--but the great majority are negroes, British subjects from Jamaica and Trinidad. It was foreseen that if negroes from the Southern States were employed, the high wages rates might unsettle the American cotton labor market: so it was decided to recruit from British colonies, and it is not too much to say that, so far as the Canal is hand-made, it is mainly the work of British labor. Several hundreds of Hindus have found their way here; they are chiefly employed upon the fortifications, because, it is said, they are unlikely to talk about them. These British colored laborers, with their families, constitute the bulk of the population of the Canal Zone: the town of Panama swarms with them, and one sees few of any other class in the streets of Colon. The American engineers have thus been working with a staff that can claim the protection of the British Minister; and it is pleasing to an Englishman to hear on every side the heartiest tributes to the energy, tact, and good sense of England's representative, Sir Claude Mallet. At the outset the negro laborers were exceedingly suspicious of the American authorities, and were ready to strike on the smallest provocation: they have refused to take their rations until Sir Claude has tasted them. He possesses the complete confidence of the British labor force, and indeed the Hindu immigrants, who deposit money at the Consulate, will hardly wait to obtain receipts for it. Speaking of rations, it may be mentioned that the Canal authorities undertake to feed all their employees, and a large commissariat establishment, including extensive cold-storage depots at Colon, is one of the most prominent features of their administration. Every morning a heavy trainload of provisions leaves Colon, dropping its freight as it passes the various labor settlements. In numerous eating-houses meals are provided at very moderate charges, and at Panama and Colon large, up-to-date hotels are maintained by the American Government. These are used very extensively by the Canal staff, and give periodic dances, which are crowded with young people. The vagaries of the one-step are sternly barred by a puritan committee, and, to one who expects surprises, the style of dancing is disappointingly monotonous. But these hotels are also of great use in conciliating the American taxpayers. Tourists come by thousands, and elaborate arrangements are made for their education by special sight-seeing trains, by appreciative guides, and by courses of lectures. The Canal staff is also housed by the State--in wooden structures, built upon piles, and protected by mosquito-proof wire screening. The accommodation for bachelors is somewhat meager; but married couples are treated very liberally, and their quarters are brightened by pretty little gardens. The rates of pay are high, and there are numerous concessions which to one of Indian experience appear exceedingly generous. But the expenditure throughout is on a lavish scale: the Canal will not cost much less than eighty million pounds. The money that is drawn from the American taxpayers is, however, for the most part returned to them. Practically the whole of the machinery is of American manufacture; the food is American; the stores that are sold in the shops are mainly American; and the only money that is lost to the States is that which is saved by the foreign laborers. Very few of these have any intention of remaining under the American flag, or will, indeed, be permitted to remain. Residence within the Canal Zone, apart from the towns of Panama and Colon, is only to be permitted to the permanent working staff of the Canal and to the military force in occupation. It should be added that the salaries of the American "gold employees," liberal though they may appear, do not tempt them to remain in service. One is astonished to learn that nearly half the American staff changes annually: young men come to acquire a little experience and save a little money, which may help them to a start in their own country. Service on the Canal works leads to no pension; and the medal which is to be granted to all who remain two years in employ is but moderately attractive to men whose objects are severely practical. The chief controlling authorities are all in the military service of the State. In the Northern States of America the British love of cleanliness has become a gospel of life, and the sanitation of the Canal Zone is a model of scientific and successful thoroughness. To India it is also a model of hopeless generosity, nearly three million pounds having been spent in improving the health conditions of this small area. The agreement which reserves the towns of Panama and Colon to the administration of the republic of Panama provides for American interference in matters that may concern general health, and the Canal authorities have taken the fullest advantage of this provision. The streets of both towns have been paved; insanitary dwellings have been ruthlessly demolished; water-works have been provided by loans of American money, the water rate being collected by American officials. The meanest house is equipped with a water-closet and a shower-bath. Panama and Colon are now models of cleanliness, and from their appearance might belong to a North American State. Efficiency is the watchword, and in cleansing these towns the American health officers have not troubled themselves with the compromises which would temper the despotism of British officials. Americans can hardly be imagined as stretching their consciences by such a concession as that, for instance, which in British India exempts gentlemen of position from appearance in the civil courts. Efficiency is not popular with those who do not practise it, and the Latin races of Southern and Central America have no love for their northern neighbors. The Americans, like the Germans, would increase their popularity did they appreciate the value of personal geniality in smoothing government. Within the Canal Zone the jungle has been cut back from the proximity of dwelling-houses; surface water, whether stagnant or running, is regularly sterilized by doses of larvicide; all inhabited buildings are protected by mosquito-proof screening, and, in some places, a mosquito-catching staff is maintained. At the time of my visit not a mosquito was to be seen; but this was during the season of dry heat. During the rainy months mosquitos are, it seems, still far from uncommon; and the latest sanitary rules emphasize the importance of systematically catching them. Medical experience has shown that if houses are kept clear of mosquitos, there is very little fever, even in places where the water pools and channels are left unsterilized. Wire screening, supplemented by a butterfly net, is the great preventive. But we can not attain the good without an admixture of evil: behind the wire screening the indoor atmosphere becomes very oppressive. Yellow fever, the scourge of the isthmus in former days, has been completely eradicated. Admissions to hospital for malarial fever amount, it must be confessed, to several thousands a year. But, judging from the terrible experiences of the French Company, were it not for these precautions fever would incapacitate for long periods the whole of the staff. The hospital, a heritage from the French, is a village of wooden buildings set upon a hill overlooking the Gulf of Panama, in the midst of a charming study in tropical gardening. It is managed with an energy which explores to the uttermost the medical experiences of other tropical countries, and is not afraid of improving upon time-honored methods. The daily dose of quinine is seldom less than forty-five grains, and patients are not allowed to leave their beds until their temperature has remained normal for five days at least. Complaints of deafness are disregarded; if the patient turns of a blue color he may be consoled by a dose of Epsom salts. It is claimed that by this drastic treatment the relapses are prevented which, in India and elsewhere, probably account for at least nine attacks out of ten. Democracies are not always fortunate in the selection of their executives. But Mr. Roosevelt's Government was gifted with the wit to find, in the United States Army, men who could carry out this big work, and with the good sense to employ them. So much is told of the commanding influence of Colonel Goethals, the chief in command; of the administrative talents of Colonel Gorgas, the head of the sanitary department; of the engineering skill of Colonel Sibert, the protagonist of the Gatun dam, that an Englishman must wish to claim kinship with these American officers who are making so large a mark upon the surface of the earth. Devotion to the great work in hand has exorcised meaner feelings, and you will hear little of the "boost" which we are tempted to associate with the other side of the Atlantic. I asked Colonel Sibert whether his initial calculations had needed much correction as the operation developed. "Our _guesses_" he replied, "have been remarkably fortunate." The medical staff relate with delight how a British doctor, sent by the Indian Government to study their methods, being left to himself for half an hour, succeeded in catching quite a number of mosquitoes of a very noxious kind within the mosquito-proof precincts of a hospital ward. New York is now divided from San Francisco by 13,135 miles of sea travel. The Canal will reduce this distance by 7,873 miles, and will bring New York 6,250 miles nearer Callao and 3,747 miles nearer Valparaiso. The Pacific Ocean includes so large an extent of the curvature of the earth that the effect of the Canal in developing trade routes with Asia will depend very greatly upon their direction across it. Vessels from New York which, after passing the Canal, trend northward or southward upon the great circle, will find that the Panama route will be much shorter than that _via_ Suez; they will save 3,281 miles on the distance to Yokohama and 2,822 miles on the distance to Melbourne. But if their course lies along the equator the Panama Canal will not curtail their journey very materially. It is surprising to find that Manila will be only forty-one miles nearer New York _via_ Panama than it is _via_ Suez, and the saving on a journey to Hong Kong will be no more than 245 miles. In trading with Peru, Chile, Australia, North China, and Japan, the merchants of New York will gain very materially by the opening of the Canal. They will gain, moreover, by the withdrawal of the advantage which English merchants now enjoy in trading with New Zealand, Australia, North China, and Japan _via_ the Suez Canal. At present London is nearer to these places than New York is by 1,000 miles or more. The Canal will not only withdraw this advantage: it will give New York a positive advantage in distance of 2,000 to 3,000 miles. It is more than doubtful, however, whether the Canal would ever have been constructed in the sole interests of commerce. Its chief value to the United States is strategical; it will mobilize their fleet and enable them to concentrate it upon either their eastern or their western coastline. The Canal will primarily be an instrument against war; but, like much else in this world, it will incidentally bestow multifarious advantages. The importance of fortifying it is manifest. It would appear that the locks at either end are open to naval bombardment; indeed, those at Gatun are clearly visible from the sea. Fortifications are being constructed at both entrances, and it is probable that the Canal Zone will be garrisoned by a force of 25,000 men. World enterprises involve world responsibilities. CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY EMBRACING THE PERIOD COVERED IN THIS VOLUME A.D. 1910-1914 DANIEL EDWIN WHEELER Events treated at length are here indicated in large type; the numerals following give volume and page. Separate chronologies of the various nations, and of the careers of famous persons, will be found in the Index Volume. 1910. The United States established an annual meeting of State Governors as a new machinery of government. See "THE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF GOVERNORS," XXI, 1. Chile and Argentina completed the first railroad crossing the Andes Mountains. A naval revolt in Brazil, finally pacified. Mrs. Eddy, founder of Christian Science, died. King Edward VII of England died and was succeeded by his son, George V. The various British provinces in South Africa united in a single confederation. See "UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA," XXI, 17. The "Labor" party gained complete control of power in Australia under Mr. Fisher as Prime Minister. A Revolution made Portugal a republic. See "PORTUGAL BECOMES A REPUBLIC," XXI, 28. In Paris there were unprecedented floods, and many people were killed. In Greece a National Assembly was called, and the Constitution was revised. The new Turkish government faced revolts in Albania and other provinces. Russia completed the destruction of Finnish liberty. See "THE CRUSHING OF FINLAND," XXI, 47. In Egypt the native Prime Minister Boutros Pasha was assassinated; England adopted severe repressive measures. In Persia, Morgan Shuster, an American, undertook the financial administration of the new constitutional government. Corea was formally annexed by Japan. China began establishing representative assemblies in each province, also a National Senate, in preparation for an elective government. Tumultuous demands made for a Constitution. 1911. Widespread use of automobiles seemed to establish an Automobile Age; unprecedented records of speed made. See "MAN'S FASTEST MILE," XXI, 73. The Woman Suffrage movement gained a most important step by its victory in California. See "WOMAN SUFFRAGE," XXI, 156. A Canadian movement for trade reciprocity with the United States led to suggestions of annexation and was then vehemently rejected. Renewed persecution of the Jews in Russia led the United States to abrogate her long-standing Russian treaties. In Mexico President Diaz was overthrown by a revolution headed by Francisco Madero. See "THE FALL OF DIAZ," XXI, 96. In England the Liberals took almost all power from the House of Lords. See "FALL OF THE ENGLISH HOUSE OF LORDS," XXI, 113. Germany made Alsace-Lorraine a State of the Empire, partly self-governing. A French protectorate was established over Morocco; Germany objected and war came very close. See "MILITARISM," XXI, 186. Spain faced a naval mutiny and proclaimed universal martial law. In Italy a noted Camorrist trial was held at Viterbo, breaking the criminal power. Italy attacked Turkey and snatched away her last African province. See "THE TURKISH-ITALIAN WAR," XXI, 140. The Russian prime minister Stolypin was assassinated by revolutionists. In Persia the exiled Shah invaded the country and was again defeated and expelled; Russia demanded the expulsion of Mr. Shuster. The Persian parliament refused submission, and Russia invaded Persia, overthrew the government, and compelled submission to all her demands. See "PERSIA'S LOSS OF LIBERTY," XXI, 199. In Japan a widespread anarchistic murder plot was discovered and suppressed. In China a revolt for a republic began at Wuchang in October; the Manchu court made Yuan Shi-kai dictator; he summoned a National Assembly. All southern China joined the republic movement under Sun Yat Sen; Nanking captured and made capital of the Republic. See "THE CHINESE REVOLUTION," XXI, 238. 1912. Surgeons established the possibility of keeping human tissues and organs alive outside the body, and even transferring them from one body to another. See "OUR PROGRESSING KNOWLEDGE OF LIFE SURGERY," XXI, 273. England and France made arbitration treaties with the United States. See "A STEP TOWARD WORLD PEACE," XXI, 259. New Mexico and Arizona were admitted to United States statehood; the close of the old territorial system within the mainland of the United States. The United States presidential election resulted in almost a political revolution. Woodrow Wilson was elected to power by the "Progressive Democrats." See "THE NEW DEMOCRACY," XXI, 323. In Canada the French of Ontario province made vigorous protest against efforts to Anglicize them. "TRAGEDY OF THE 'TITANIC,'" XXI, 265. In England there were extensive coal strikes; the Liberals prepared a Home Rule bill and Ulster threatened rebellion. German Socialists made such gains in the German election that they became the strongest political party in the Empire. The suffrage was extended in Italy, so as to include almost all adult males. In Spain, prime minister Canalejas was assassinated by anarchists. The Balkan States formed a league against Turkey, and Montenegro precipitated a war in which Bulgaria, Greece, and Servia joined her. See "THE OVERTHROW OF TURKEY," XXI, 282. Turkey made peace with Italy so as to meet her new foes. Turks everywhere defeated by the Balkan League; Bulgarians defeated Turks in chief battle of Lule-Burgas, and besieged Adrianople. The European Powers intervened for peace. In India England transferred the official capital to Delhi, the ancient Mogul capital. In China, the north and south came to an agreement; the Manchu emperor abdicated and Yuan Shi-kai was made temporary president. Peking was made the capital of the new republic. See "THE CHINESE REVOLUTION," XXI, 238. The great Japanese Emperor Mutsuhito died. 1913. Two amendments were made to the United States Constitution. See "THE INCOME TAX IN AMERICA," XXI, 338. The progressive Democrats under President Wilson passed a Low-Tariff bill, an Income-Tax, law and a Currency-Revision law. Several arbitration treaties were made with smaller nations. In Mexico a revolution overthrew President Madero, and Huerta became dictator. See "MEXICO PLUNGED INTO ANARCHY," XXI, 300. A political strike of half a million laborers in Belgium forced the government to abandon the "plural voting" system. The "Liberals" ousted the Labor party from control of the government of Australia. Peace negotiations between the Balkan League and Turkey broke down; the Bulgarians and Servians captured Adrianople and beleaguered Constantinople; the Greeks captured Janina and their fleet captured Turkish islands; peace left Turkey expelled from all Europe except Constantinople. See "THE OVERTHROW OF TURKEY," XXI, 282. The European Powers refused to let the Balkan States take all the conquered territory, and established the new state of Albania with a German king; Servia especially aggrieved at Austrian interference. The Balkan States quarreled; Bulgaria attacked Greece and Servia; Roumania joined them, and the three allies crushed Bulgaria. Turkey regained a portion of her territory from Bulgaria. General peace followed. See "THE SECOND BALKAN WAR," XXI, 350. King George of Greece assassinated; Greece became the chief state of the eastern Mediterranean. The Arabs took advantage of the Turkish defeat to reassert complete independence. In China Yuan Shi-kai was elected as the first regular president of the republic; he had much trouble with his parliament. 1914. "OPENING OF THE PANAMA CANAL," XXI, 374. The United States was forced to intervene in Mexico, and seized Vera Cruz. Renewed racial bitterness in Japan against the United States because of persistent exclusion of emigrants. The Canadian steamship _Empress of Ireland_ sank with loss of a thousand lives. In Peru, a revolt overthrew the president and established a new and more liberal government. Irish Home Rule bill passed by the English Parliament despite violent opposition. Woman Suffrage voted in the Denmark parliament. Severe labor riots in Italy. The Albanians revolted against the foreign king imposed on them by the Powers. The Archduke of Austria and his wife were assassinated in Bosnia by a revengeful Serb. Turkey began reconstructing her navy under British guidance; and Greece purchased warships from the United States. The Chinese president dissolved his parliament and assumed dictatorial power, promising to resign it when the people were trained in political knowledge. The long-threatened European War broke out at last. END OF VOL. XXI 
48276	----	(MormonTextsProject.org), with thanks to Paul Freebairn and Cheryl Jennings for proofreading. [Frontispiece Image: Mount Calvary.] THE HAND OF PROVIDENCE, AS SHOWN IN THE HISTORY OF NATIONS AND INDIVIDUALS, From the Great Apostasy to the Restoration of the Gospel. ILLUSTRATED. BY ELDER J. H. WARD. SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH: Published at the Juvenile Instructor Office. 1883. PREFACE. Don't throw this book down carelessly. It will do you no harm. It assumes no dictation. It may benefit you if you will read it carefully. "We have plenty of histories." True. But most are too large to be of practical value to the sons and daughters of toil. Many are written in the interest of some party or sect, and in order to gain favor, they flatter the vanity of men. "But they tell of wonderful deeds, and thrilling adventures." Very true. Some of them are mostly composed of recitals of legalized slaughter, and praise of tyrants who have climbed to power over the mangled bodies of their fellow-men, and whose names will not live in one grateful memory; while the real benefactors of the race, the unfolding of new and higher truths and, above all, the over-ruling hand of God are unnoticed, or, at most, barely mentioned. "Does God rule the world?" Yes, verily. The greatest actors on the theatre of the world are only instruments in the hand of God, for the execution of His purposes. "Where have you obtained the facts contained in this volume?" From many authentic works, some of them not easily accessible to most readers. {IV.} "This will be a good book for the young, and all those who have not the opportunity to consult larger works, will it not?" With this idea it has been written and to this end I dedicate it to my children as heirs in the kingdom of God, to the youth of Zion and to my earnest friends everywhere. THE AUTHOR. Salt Lake City, March 16th, 1883. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Injustice of Roman Governors--Nero Emperor--Vespasian and Titus Sent to Judea--Fortifications of Jerusalem--Titus Offers Terms of Peace--Horrors of the Siege--Women Devour their own Children--Temple Burned--City Destroyed--Dispersion of the Jews--Universal Apostasy--Priesthood no More--Ideas of God Perverted--Worship Corrupted with Heathen Rites--Persecution of Christians--Emperor Constantine--Rise of Monastic Order. CHAPTER II. Description of Arabia--Arabian Customs--Birth of Mahomet--Early Life--Journey to Syria--Christian Sects--Doctrines Taught by Mahomet--His Marriage--Proclaims Himself a Prophet--Persecution--Flees to Medina--Becomes Powerful--Sickness and Death--Personal Appearance. CHAPTER III. Causes of Triumphs--Abou-Beker Elected Caliph--War Declared--Fall of Bozrah--Battle of Aiznadin--Siege of Jerusalem--Departure of Roman Emperor--Saracen Fleet--Eastern Conquests--Fall of Alexandria--Conquest of Northern Africa--Conquest of Spain--Battle of Poictiers--Extent of Saracen Empire. CHAPTER IV. Intellectual Stagnation--Saracens and Jews Revive Learning--University of Bagdad--Public Schools--Medical College of Cairo--Circulating Library--Modern Form of Books--Arabic Notation--Discoveries in Chemistry--Rotundity of the Earth--Mariner's Compass--Discoveries of Alhazin--Astronomical Observatories--Golden Age of Judaism--Cities of Andalusia--Saracen Dwellings--Condition of Women--Female Physicians. CHAPTER V. Jerusalem the Sacred City--Alexandria Noted for Philosophy--School of Hypatia--Mob Murders Her--Doctrines of Cyril--Jerusalem a Scene of Suffering--Fulfillment of Prophecy--Herculaneum and Pompeii--Their Destruction--Evidences {VI.} of their Wickedness--Excavations--Roman Rule--Removal of Capital--Crimes of Constantine--Commencement of Greek Empire--Description of Constantinople--Its Capture by Crusaders--Taken by the Turks--Intellectual Degradation--Priestcraft--Debauchery--Turkish Rule. CHAPTER VI. Growth of Relic-Worship--Schemes of the Roman Pontiffs--Manufacture of Relics--Their Great Variety--Value of Relics--Insults Offered to Pilgrims--Peter the Hermit--Crusades--Disorderly Rabble--Terrible Suffering--Capture of Jerusalem--Terrible Massacre--Capture of Constantinople--Crusades of the Children--Results of the Crusades--Revival of Learning. CHAPTER VII. The Morning Dawns--Rise of Knighthood--Principles of Knights--Apostate Priests Held in Contempt--Waldenses--Persecutions in Southern France--Rise of the Inquisition--Liberal Policy of Frederick--"Everlasting Gospel"--Its Remarkable Teachings--Bacon's Discoveries--Geographical Knowledge--Azores and Canary Islands--Travels of Marco Polo--Condition of European States--Modern States. CHAPTER VIII. Lesson from Heathen Mythology--Vicissitudes of Roman Church--Boniface Pope--Advancement in Civilization--Work of the Roman Church--Invention of Printing--Gutenberg--Bible First Printed--Columbus--His Wonderful Dream--His Great Voyage--Discovery of America--Trials and Triumphs. CHAPTER IX. History in Words--British Coat of Arms--The Ten Tribes--Account of Esdras--Dispersion of the Tribes--Mixed Seed of Israel--Effect on European Society--Jewish Influence--Discovery of Cape of Good Hope--Pacific Ocean Discovered--Magellan's Voyage--Discovers Cape Horn--Distance Sailed--Death of Magellan--Voyage Completed--Its Effect on the Public--Huss and Jerome Burned--John Ziska--Persecutions of Waldenses--Capture of Mentz--Dispersion of Printers--Hans Boheim--Joss Fritz--Sale of Indulgences--Martin Luther Burns the Pope's Letter--Grand Council at Worms--Rome in a Rage--Luther Kidnapped. CHAPTER X. Germany Aroused--Peasants' War--Muntzer's Proclamation--Emperor Quarrels With the Pope--Results in Other {VII.} Countries--Growth in Modern Languages--Luther's Crowning Work--Power of Superstition--Witchcraft--Reformers not Inspired--Extracts from Mosheim--Battle-Ax of God--Copernicus--Galileo--Newton--Death of Bruno--Change in Commercial Affairs--Spanish Armada--Blessed by the Pope--Destroyed by a Storm--Its Effect on Europe--England's Influence and Position--America the Land of Refuge. CHAPTER XI. Columbus Destroyed Papal Dogmas--Cruelty of Spaniards--Their Retribution--Relics in Massachusetts--Newport Tower--Mounds in Ohio--Remains Found in Iowa--Plates Found in Illinois--Ancient Mexican Pyramids--Human Sacrifices--View from the Great Pyramid--Ancient American Sculptures--Mammoths--Mexican Customs--Religious Rites--Computation of Time--Arts and Sciences--Description of Peru--Its Civilization--Massacre of the Incas--Testimony of Travellers--Indian Traditions. CHAPTER XII. England's Development--Reign of Elizabeth--Influence of the Bible--Tyranny of the Kings--Jacques Cartier--Discovery of the St. Lawrence--Quebec Founded--Acadia Colonized--Transferred to England--Extracts from Longfellow's Poem--Virginia Settled. CHAPTER XIII. Character of the Colonists--They Leave England--Sojourn in Holland--Brewster's Printing Press--Puritans Embark for America--Their Trust in God--Robinson's Prophecy--Plymouth Founded--Sufferings of the Colonists--Conflict in England--Peculiarities of the Puritans--Harvard College Founded--Extent of Settlements--First Confederation. CHAPTER XIV. Description of Holland--A Land of Refuge--Tyranny of Alva--The Struggle for Independence--Siege of Leyden--The Country Submerged--Famine in the City--Speech of the Mayor--Heroic Conduct--Trust in God--Storm Raises the Waters--Spaniards Retreat--Leyden is Saved--Thanksgiving--Waters Retire. CHAPTER XV. Rise of Quakerism--George Fox--William Penn--Founds Pennsylvania--Kindness to the Indians--Philadelphia Founded--Maryland, Carolina and Georgia Settled--Roger Williams--Rhode Island Founded--Its Toleration. {VIII.} CHAPTER XVI. Condition of English Society--Manufacture of Gin and Rum--Origin of Methodism--Eloquence of Whitfield--John and Charles Wesley--Remarkable Teachings--Robert Raikes--John Howard--William Wilberforce--Mechanical Inventions--Growth of American Freedom--Three Great Battles--Cook's Voyages--Extension of the English Language--Greatness of Pitt--Washington's Early Life--Benjamin Franklin. CHAPTER XVII. Gathering of Political Forces--General Revolution--Civil Reformers--Decay of Old Institutions--Rosseau and His Writings--Voltaire--Holland, a Political Refuge--American Settlers--Lines of Albert B. Street--Growth of the Colonies--Love for England--Causes of Revolution--Manufactures Forbidden--Stamp Act--Tax on Tea--Philadelphia Convention--Address to the King--Appeal To England--To Canada--Incident in Old South Church, Boston--Paul Revere's Ride. CHAPTER XVIII. Battle of Lexington--Officers Chosen--A Year of Discussion--Declaration of Independence--Spirit of English Nobility--Defeat of American Forces--Success at Trenton and Princeton--Sufferings at Valley Forge--Washington's Prayer--Burgoyne's Campaign--Arrival of La Fayette--Arnold's Treason--Andre's Death--Siege of Yorktown--Close of the War--Treaty of Peace--Army Disbanded--Washington Resigns his Commission--Constitutional Convention--Washington Elected President--His Death--His Tomb. CHAPTER XIX. Influence of La Fayette--Despotism in France--The Bastile--Corruption of the Church--Commencement of the Revolution--The Marseillaise--Its Wonderful Influence--Reign of Terror--Napoleon Bonaparte--His Wonderful Career--Jewish Sanhedrim--Fall of Napoleon--His Death--Progress of Liberty. CHAPTER XX. The Genius of the Age--European Wars--American Tranquil--Declaration of War--Divisions of North America--United States--Canada--Mexico--American Common Schools--Their Influence--Progress of Invention--First Steamboat--First Locomotive--Electric Telegraph--Improvements in Printing--Spiritual Darkness--The Kingdom of God--Wants of the Present Age--Joseph Smith--His Tragic Death--Conclusion. {9} THE HAND OF PROVIDENCE. CHAPTER I. THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM AND APOSTASY OF THE EARLY CHURCH. INJUSTICE OF ROMAN GOVERNORS--NERO EMPEROR--VESPASIAN AND TITUS SENT TO JUDEA--FORTIFICATIONS OF JERUSALEM--TITUS OFFERS TERMS OF PEACE--HORRORS OF THE SIEGE--WOMEN DEVOUR THEIR OWN CHILDREN--TEMPLE BURNED--CITY DESTROYED--DISPERSION OF THE JEWS--UNIVERSAL APOSTASY--PRIESTHOOD NO MORE--IDEAS OF GOD PERVERTED--WORSHIP CORRUPTED WITH HEATHEN RITES--PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS--EMPEROR CONSTANTINE--RISE OF MONASTIC ORDER. According to the best records that have come down to us, the last book of the New Testament (commonly called the Apocalypse of St. John) was written about sixty years after the ascension of our Savior. At that time the gospel of Jesus Christ had been preached in all the principal cities and countries of the known world. Numerous branches of the primitive church had been planted in Palestine, Syria, Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece and Italy. In the meantime the awful doom which the Savior predicted against Jerusalem had been literally fulfilled. Shortly after the crucifixion and ascension of the Savior, Judea became the theatre of many cruelties and oppressions arising from contentions between the Jewish priests, the depredations of numerous bands of robbers, which infested the country; but more than all from the injustice and avarice of the Roman governors. {10} The last of these governors was Gessius Floras, whom Josephus represents as a monster in wickedness and cruelty, and whom the Jews regarded rather as a bloody executioner, sent to torture, than as a magistrate to govern them. [Image: Jerusalem.] During the government of Felix, his predecessor, a dispute having arisen between the Jews and Syrians about the city of Caesarea, their respective claims were referred to the emperor, Nero, at Rome. The decision was in favor of the Syrians, and the Jews immediately took up arms to avenge their cause. {11} In this state of things, Nero gave orders to Vespasian to march into Judea with a powerful army. Accordingly, Vespasian, accompanied by his son Titus, marched into Palestine at the head of 60,000 well-disciplined troops. While Vespasian was thus preparing more effectually to curb the still unbroken spirit of the Jews, intelligence arrived of the death of the emperor and his own election to the throne. Departing therefore for Rome he left the best of his troops with his son, ordering him to besiege and utterly destroy Jerusalem. Titus lost no time in carrying into effect his father's injunction. Jerusalem was strongly fortified both by nature and art. Three walls surrounded it which were considered impregnable; besides which it had numerous towers outside of the walls, lofty, firm and strong. The circumference was nearly four miles. Desirous of saving the city, Titus repeatedly sent offers of peace to the inhabitants; but they were indignantly rejected. At length finding all efforts at treaty ineffectual, he entered upon the siege determined not to leave it until he had razed the city to its foundation. The internal state of the city soon became horrible. The inhabitants being divided in their counsels fought with one another, and the streets were often deluged with blood shed by the hands of kindred. In the meantime famine spread its horrors abroad, and pestilence its ravages. Thousands died daily and were carried out of the gates to be buried at the public expense; until being unable to hurry them to the grave the wretched victims were thrown into houses as fast as they fell, and there shut up. During the prevalence of the famine, the house of a certain woman by the name of Miriam was repeatedly plundered of such provisions as she had been able to procure. So extreme did her suffering become, that she entreated those around her, to put an end to her miserable existence. At length frantic with fury and despair she snatched her infant from her bosom, killed and cooked it; and having satiated her present hunger, concealed the rest. The smell of food soon drew the voracious human tigers to her house; they threatened her with tortures; she hid her provisions from them. Being thus compelled {12} she set before them the relics of her mangled babe. At the sight of this horrid spectacle, inhuman as they were, they stood aghast, petrified with horror, and at length rushed precipitately from the house. When the report of this spread through the city, the consternation was universal and inexpressible. The people now, for the first time, began to think themselves forsaken of God. In the mind of Titus the recital awakened both horror and indignation, and he resolved to push the siege with still greater vigor, aiming particularly to obtain possession of the temple. The preservation of this noble edifice was strongly desired by him; but one of the Roman soldiers being exasperated by the Jews, or, as Josephus says, "pushed on by the hand of Providence," seized a blazing firebrand, and getting on his comrades' shoulders, threw it through a window, and soon the whole north side was in a flame. Titus immediately gave order to extinguish the fire; but the enraged soldiers, bent on destroying the city and all it contained, either did not hear or did not regard him. The flames continued to spread until this consecrated edifice, the glory of the nation, became one mingled heap of ruins. Then followed a terrible massacre in which thousands perished, some in the flames and others by the sword of the enemy. At length the city was abandoned to the fury of the soldiers. It is said that nearly one million five hundred thousand persons perished in the siege. The conquest of the city being achieved, Titus proceeded to demolish its noble structures, its fortifications, palaces and walls. So literally were the predictions of the Savior fulfilled respecting its destruction that not one stone was left upon another that was not thrown down. From that day the Jews have been dispersed through the world, despised and hated, persecuted and yet upheld--lost as it were among the nations, and yet distinct--they live as the monuments of the truth of God. While the apostles lived the churches planted by them continued to exist with more or less of spiritual life. But the spirit of apostasy was already at work. In some places pagan rites and ceremonies had perverted the worship of the true God and but few could be found who remained {13} pure amid the corruptions of the age or undaunted by the trials and persecutions that surrounded them on every side. So universal was this apostasy that only seven churches throughout Asia, Africa and Europe were considered worthy of being either reproved or blessed by the voice of revelation. (_See Revelations 2nd and 3rd chapters_.) The whole eastern continent of which we have authentic history was at that period under the control of Rome, and paganism was the religion of the empire. Thus the whole power of the realm was brought to bear against the infant church. Pagan priests excited the populace to frenzy, and royal decrees delivered the saints to the most terrible tortures and death. In a few years the apostolic organization and priesthood were no more. A few glimmerings of spiritual light remained for a short time, among those who had taken refuge in the catacombs or subterranean vaults of Rome, or had fled to the wilds of the Libyan desert. But even this light was soon extinguished, and then fell that mental, moral, and spiritual night from which mankind are only now slowly emerging. But false religion could never satisfy the cravings of the immortal soul. Paganism presented only a cheerless prospect. It gave itself no concern for the lowly and unfortunate, limited the hopes and destiny of man to this present life, and taught him that temporal prosperity might be selfishly gained at any cost to others in property and suffering. For example, Rome, for many ages had enriched herself with the wealth of conquered nations, and impoverished them that her sons and daughters might live in luxury and grandeur. Yet throughout her vast dominions there were no institutions of benevolence; no hospitals for the sick, no asylums for the afflicted or unfortunate. The pleasant pastimes of her populace were to witness scenes of cruelty; and the most refined ladies of that period eagerly thronged the amphitheatres to view the agonies of captives from distant tribes or early Christian martyrs as they were thrown to famished and enraged wild beasts in the public arena. Many of the early Christians were thus put to death {14} in the Coliseum, the ruins of which are shown in the engraving. [Image: Engraving of Coliseum in ruins.] No wonder then that when the church was taken from the earth, and its forms amalgamated with pagan institutions, the {15} world presented an unparalleled scene of carnage and cruelty, bloodshed and terror. But Rome was destined to endure a terrible retribution. The northern barbarians whom she had so long oppressed, and from whom she had drawn many of the victims of her gladiatorial combats now wreaked their long-sought vengeance, spreading terror and devastation wherever they went. One of them, Attila, king of the Huns, called himself the scourge of God, and boasted that grass never grew where his horse had trodden. These incursions spread an intellectual famine throughout Europe. The only men of learning were the monks, who seldom left their cloisters, and the only books were manuscripts concealed in the libraries of the monasteries. Not only were the common people extremely ignorant, but also the rich and noble, and even the kings could scarcely read or write. The reign of superstition was universal. The simplicity of primitive worship was changed to an unmeaning round of rites and ceremonies: and the glorious principles of the gospel were hidden from sight by a dark cloud of ignorance, mysticism and unintelligible jargon, out of which there too often flashed the lurid lightenings of priestly vengeance and persecutions. The Lord, speaking by the mouth of Jeremiah, says, "My people have committed two errors; they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water." When the voice of revelation was hushed men began to follow fables and traditions, and he who possessed the liveliest imagination invented the greatest number. They, instead of the word of God, became the rule of life; and men sought by bodily suffering to purchase admission to the courts of heaven. {16} [Image: Fakir.] We pity the devotee of India, who measures by the length of his body, the wearisome journey of hundreds of miles; or the fakir who sits with his legs in an upright position, for years until the limbs becomes, withered, distorted and useless. But what shall we say of a professed follower of the Savior who makes a pilgrimage of a thousand miles with sharp spikes driven into the inside of his shoes, by which his feet are lacerated {17} at every step! Or of one who spends the greater part of his life sitting on a column thirty feet high and only three feet in diameter, through all the vicissitudes of the seasons, storm and sunshine, cold and heat, with the idea that, by this means, he could secure salvation and exaltation in the presence of God! Surely it was the self-same pagan idea that actuated all. In those days, also, even the forms and ceremonies of the primitive church underwent complete transformation. Pagan rites were celebrated at Christian festivals, and days commemorative of great events were made to conform to the times appointed for the worship of heathen divinities. For example, the festival of Easter as observed by the Catholic church, was and still is degraded by pagan rites. And the day that commemorates our Savior's birth, which event took place in April, when the shepherds were abroad on the plains of Bethlehem, with their flocks, was changed from the beautiful Spring time to the dark and gloomy December, that it might conform to a day already set apart for pagan ceremonies, and by this means was secured its universal observance. The ideas concerning God were also perverted. Space will permit only a glance at this subject. The passions that were said to control the character of heathen gods were attributed to the great Creator and loving Father of us all. He was represented as delighting in vengeance; and glorying in the eternal sufferings of His creatures. Thus the most inhuman persecutors claimed they were doing His will; and hence arose the doctrine of endless torments beyond the grave, which still disgraces nearly all the sects of Christendom. The doctrine of fate has ever been a prominent doctrine of pagan religions. This dogma was also engrafted into their creed; hence, we find learned teachers of the present age gravely asserting that, owing to the unalterable decrees of God, there are young and irresponsible infants, scarcely a span in length, who are and ever will be doomed to suffer the torments of the lost. Such was the condition of the social and religious world at the time of the Emperor Constantine. {18} This politic prince was not a man of religious convictions, but hoping to consolidate his power and gain vast numbers of adherents he granted universal religious toleration and even went so far as to proclaim himself a Christian. This act of toleration gave a temporary protection to all classes and was of especial benefit to those who wished to retire from the confusion and corruption of the age, and spend their lives in pursuit of science, literature and philosophy. Such were the tasteless and often brutal amusements, the low sensuality, the base intrigue and bloody warfare of those times, that many longed for retirement and seclusion. Men and also women, sometimes of the highest rank, awoke, suddenly to the discovery that life was given them for nobler purposes. Loathing society, despising themselves, and often their companions, to whom they had been wedded in loveless marriages--companions whose infidelities and licentiousness they had too often, to endure, they fled from a world which had sated and sickened them. Thus arose the monastic order. By the side of Alpine torrents and in the valleys of Piedmont, by the rocky shores of the beautiful Aegean sea and on its lonely yet lovely islands, as well as on the classic hillsides of Judea, arose thousands of monasteries. At first, no doubt, the inmates sought for a higher and purer life; but after a time they too sunk into luxury, licentiousness and debauchery. Yet these monastic institutions served one good purpose, and that one was important. During these perilous times science and literature here found an asylum. Libraries were formed and carefully preserved, which, on the restoration of learning, were of great value to the world. The foregoing will indicate to some extent the condition of mankind at the close of the sixth century of the Christian era. The light of antiquity had perished. The dawn of modern days had not yet gilded the eastern horizon. The world presented over its whole surface one vast field of contention and {19} bloodshed, with scarcely an object sufficiently prominent to excite interest or deserve attention. It was the midnight hour of human history. Though the early church had been destroyed and the priesthood taken from the earth; yet God did not give it up as lost, nor entirely withdraw His Spirit. Then as now "the earth is the Lord's," and He will yet make good His claim to it. It is a blood-bought world, and He who ransomed it at so dear a price will one day return to rule over it as King of kings and Lord of lords. The earth that was bedewed with the Savior's tears and sweat--the earth that was trodden by His hallowed feet--the earth that drank His life blood shall yet throw off the curse that has so long blighted it and receive its paradisaic glory. Through agencies the most diverse the minds of men were developed and disciplined for the reception of truth until in the Lord's due time in a prepared place and among a people prepared to receive His truth, He would again restore His priesthood, and set up His kingdom upon the earth. {20} CHAPTER II. MAHOMET. DESCRIPTION OF ARABIA--ARABIAN CUSTOMS--BIRTH OF MAHOMET--EARLY LIFE--JOURNEY TO SYRIA--CHRISTIAN SECTS--DOCTRINES TAUGHT BY MAHOMET--HIS MARRIAGE--PROCLAIMS HIMSELF A PROPHET--PERSECUTION--FLEES TO MEDINA--BECOMES POWERFUL--SICKNESS AND DEATH--PERSONAL APPEARANCE. Far away in the south-western part of Asia, lies a strange and peculiar country called Arabia. It is bounded on the north by Syria, on the east by the Persian Gulf, on the south by the Indian Ocean, and on the west by the Red Sea, and comprises more than a million of square miles, or about twelve times the area of Utah. This vast region possesses a diversified landscape. In some places vast sandy deserts stretch away farther than the eye can reach; in others, immense piles of dark volcanic rock rear aloft their barren peaks, around whose base the dry, hot winds have drifted the sands of the desert for untold centuries. However, in the secluded valleys of the mountains, and along the base of the great mountain chains, may be found many fertile tracts, where, watered by pure and never-failing mountain streams, and warmed by the rays of a tropical sun, the earth produces in abundance nearly every kind of grain, vegetable, fruit, flower and aromatic shrub that can conduce to the happiness of man. Indeed, some portions are so wonderfully productive, that in ancient as well as modern times it has received the significant title of "Araby the blest." Most of the inhabitants of this country are generally considered to be the descendants of Ishmael, the son of Abraham. Many of them lead a wild, nomadic life, supported by their flocks and herds and the spontaneous productions of the soil, {21} and retain among their laws and customs, many of the usages that prevailed in the primitive, patriarchal times of their great ancestor. Others live in towns and cities and engage in commerce, either with foreign countries or with distant parts of their own land. The usual method of transporting their merchandise is on the backs of camels, and sometimes several hundred or even a thousand of these animals, accompanied by their drivers, may be seen slowly wending their way across the desert, carrying with them the coffee of Mocha and spices of Muscat to the distant cities of Bagdad and Damascus. As among the Jews the ruling priests were chosen from the tribe of Levi and family of Aaron, so, among the ancient Arabs, the guardians of the sacred things of their worship were chosen from the tribe of Koreish and family of Haschem. Abd-Al-Mutallib was the ruling priest in Mecca, the sacred city of Arabia, at the time that his grandson, Mahomet, was born, which event occurred at Mecca, in the year 570 of the Christian era. Of Mahomet's parents, but little is recorded, except that his father, Abdallah, was remarkable for his commanding presence and great personal beauty. He died when his future illustrious son was only two months old. Amina, his mother, who is said to have been of Jewish descent, also died when Mahomet was only six years old. The early life of Mahomet was spent in the house of his Uncle, Abou Taleb, who had become the principal guardian of the Ca-aba, or great temple, of ancient Arabian worship. The ceremonies and devotions connected with this temple-worship may have given an early bias to Mahomet's mind, and inclined it to those speculations and ideas in which it afterwards became engrossed. His education in childhood seems to have been neglected; for he was not taught either to read or write. But he was a thoughtful child, quick to observe, prone to meditate on all that he had observed, and possessed of an imagination fertile, daring and expansive. {22} At the age of twelve years, Mahomet solicited the privilege of accompanying his uncle, Abou Taleb, to Syria, whither he was about to conduct a caravan. Their route lay through regions fertile in fables and traditions, which it is the delight of the Arabs to recount in the evening halts of the caravan. With an attentive ear, the youthful Mahomet listened to those tales of enchantment and wonderful events which happened in days of old, and doubtless imbibed ideas that had a powerful influence on him in his after life. In this journey also he listened to the conversation of many of those exiles from the Christian sects, who, in fleeing from persecution had taken refuge in the wilds of Northern Arabia. Thus he learned many facts concerning the Christian religion. Having arrived at the city of Bozrah, which was situated on the confines of Syria, about seventy miles south of Damascus, Mahomet was entertained at a Nestorian convent. One of the monks named Bahira, was very much interested by the spirit of inquiry and intelligence which the youth manifested, especially on religious subjects, and gave him all possible information. Mahomet returned to Mecca, his imagination teeming with the wild tales and traditions picked up in the desert, and his mind deeply impressed with the teachings he had received among the Nestorians. In order that we may understand the nature of the teachings which Mahomet received on this and subsequent journeys to Syria, an enumeration of the leading dogmas of the jarring sects of oriental Christians will be necessary: The most numerous of these sects were the Arians, so called from Arius, a great religious teacher of Alexandria. They claimed that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, the Father; that His existence commenced at His advent in this world; that He was created for a special mission, but was subject to the influences of virtue and vice like common mortals. The followers of Nestorius, the great bishop of Constantinople, were also very numerous; and Mahomet, in his subsequent journeys to Syria, frequently came in contact with them. They claimed that Christ had two distinct natures, human and divine; that Jesus was a man; that Mary was only His {23} mother according to the flesh, and that it was an abomination to style her "Mary the mother of God," as was and still is the custom of the Catholic church. Another sect was the Marianites, or worshippers of Mary. They regarded the trinity as consisting of God, the eternal Father, Mary, the eternal mother, and Christ, their Son. The Valentinians were another sect, who taught that Jesus Christ was only a wise and virtuous mortal, selected by God to reform and instruct mankind. Their creed is still professed by some of the Unitarian sects of the present day. The Nazarenes were a sect of Jewish Christians, who considered Christ as the promised Messiah, but conformed in all other respects to the rites and ceremonies of the Mosaic law. Many other sects might be enumerated who took their names from learned and zealous leaders, and who were subdivided into various and opposing parties of fanatical enthusiasts. A glance at these dissentions which convulsed society at this period is sufficient to acquit Mahomet of any charge of conscious blasphemy in the opinions he taught concerning the nature and mission of our Savior. The principal doctrines taught by Mahomet were drawn from the writings of the Old and New Testaments. He recognized in all about three hundred prophets. This number included all the ancient worthies of the Old Testament, as well as the Savior and the apostles, evangelists and martyrs mentioned in the New. However, four persons were considered as greater prophets than the rest, and were reverenced as the founders of four distinct dispensations. These were Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Mahomet. The book containing the writings and revelations of Mahomet is commonly called the Koran. However, Mahomet should not be held responsible for all that the Koran contains, as there is abundant evidence that it has been changed and corrupted in many places since his death. Prayer, fasting and acts of charity are inculcated by it. Merchants were especially commanded to perform acts of charity, as they were the class who were most liable to the sins {24} of deception and extortion. The creed which all were required to believe, was simply, "There is one God, and Mahomet is His prophet." But little is known of Mahomet's history between his twelfth and twenty-fifth year. He seems to have been engaged principally in conducting caravans across the desert. He thereby gained much practical knowledge, and became known as a young man of ability and integrity, pleasing appearance, and engaging manners. At the age of twenty-five, he became the steward or business agent of a certain wealthy widow, named Cadijah; and a few years later she married him and faithfully followed him till her death, through all the vicissitudes of his strange and eventful life. When Mahomet, in his fortieth year, proclaimed himself the prophet of God, Cadijah replied, "I will be thy first believer." They knelt down in prayer together. Twelve centuries have passed since then, and nine thousand millions of human beings have followed her example. We are told that as Mahomet lay wrapped in his mantle, in the silent watches of the night, he heard a voice calling upon him. Uncovering his head, a flood of light burst upon him of such intolerable splendor that he swooned away. On regaining his senses, he beheld an angel, who, approaching him from a distance, displayed a scroll, covered with written characters. "Read," said the angel. "I know not how to read," replied Mahomet. "Read," repeated the angel, "in the name of God, who has created all things." Upon this, Mahomet instantly felt his understanding illumined, and read what was written. These words were afterwards promulgated in the Koran, which also contains many of the doctrines taught in the New Testament. When he had finished reading, the heavenly messenger announced, "O, Mahomet, verily thou art a prophet of God, and I am His angel Gabriel." Mahomet, we are told, came trembling and agitated to Cadijah in the morning, and told her what he had seen and {25} heard. She saw everything with the eye of faith, and embraced those teachings with the devotion of an affectionate woman. "Joyful tidings dost thou bring!" exclaimed she. "By Him in whose hand is the soul of Cadijah, I henceforth regard thee as the prophet of our nation. Rejoice! rejoice! Allah will not suffer thee to come to shame. Hast thou not been loving to thy kindred, kind to thy neighbors, charitable to the poor, hospitable to the stranger, faithful to thy word, and ever a defender of the truth?" The announcement of Mahomet's message provoked bitter opposition among his kindred. Only one of them, his cousin Ali, became his disciple. Those who had known him from his infancy, who had seen him a boy about the streets of Mecca, and afterwards engaged in the ordinary concerns of life, scoffed at the idea of his assuming the prophetic character. When he walked the streets he was subjected to jeers and insults. If he attempted to preach, his voice was drowned by discordant noises and ribald songs. As gradually his followers increased, so did the opposition in bitterness and intensity. At length he was obliged to flee from his native city and take refuge in Medina, a city of north-western Arabia. Space will not permit a recital of the numerous intrigues of his enemies, or his various successes. Suffice it to say that, in a few years he became the leader of a powerful, constantly-increasing and enthusiastic people. The time had at length arrived when the wild, wandering and discordant tribes of Arabia were to be marshalled under one banner, united in one creed and animated by one cause; when a mighty genius had arisen, who should bring together those scattered remnants, inspire them with his own religious zeal and daring spirit, and send them forth an invincible host, to shake and overturn the empires of the earth. Mahomet survived the most of his children, and died in the sixty-third year of his age. In his last illness, he gave his followers three parting commands: "Expel all idolaters from Arabia; allow every believer equal privileges with yourselves; devote yourselves to prayer and the propagation of the faith." {26} When the hour of death approached he feared it not, but, gazing upwards with unmoving eyelids, he exclaimed, "O, Allah! be it so, forever with the glorious associates in paradise." Thus passed away the man who gave embodiment to a faith that is still adhered to by more than 130,000,000 of the human family; and who founded an empire that was the most extensive the world has ever seen. In appearance, he was of the middle stature. His head was capacious, and well set on a neck that rose like a pillar from his ample chest. He had an oval face; dark eyes, long, wavy hair and a full beard. His deportment was calm and dignified, and he is said to have possessed a smile of captivating sweetness. His complexion was fairer than Arabs usually are, and in his enthusiastic moments there was a glow and radiance to his countenance. He was extremely cleanly in his person, abstemious in his diet, and simple and unaffected in his dress and manners. He seemed to have an intuitive knowledge of human nature, and an innate power to counsel, command, reprove and inspire his followers with his own ardent nature. Take him all in all, the race has seldom seen a teacher more kind, more noble or more sincere. {27} CHAPTER III. THE SARACENIC CONQUEST. CAUSES OF TRIUMPHS--ABOU-BEKER ELECTED CALIPH--WAR DECLARED--FALL OF BOZRAH--BATTLE OF AIZNADIN--SIEGE OF JERUSALEM--DEPARTURE OF ROMAN EMPEROR--SARACEN FLEET--EASTERN CONQUESTS--FALL OF ALEXANDRIA--CONQUEST OF NORTHERN AFRICA--CONQUEST OF SPAIN--BATTLE OF POICTIERS--EXTENT OF SARACEN EMPIRE. After the death of Mahomet, his followers assumed the name of Saracens, by which title they were afterwards generally known. This term, it is said, is derived from two Arabic words which signify eastern, or oriental, and conquerors. Scarcely was Mahomet buried, when it was found necessary to form a civil and political constitution and code of laws, by which his followers were to be governed. This government was called the Caliphate. Mahometanism, even during the life of its founder, gave unmistakable indications of overpassing the bounds of Arabia. A few years later it entered upon a system of conquest unparalleled in the history of the world. One cause of this phenomenon is to be found in the moral and social condition of the world. The influence of religion had long before ceased. Christianity was completely paganized. Her popes were busy denouncing and excommunicating each other, in their rivalry for earthly power; or bribing royal females and courtesans to influence the decision of councils, that were supposed by the masses to speak with the voice of God. Her bishops no longer sought to feed their flocks with the bread of life. On the other hand they were concerned in assassinations, poisonings, adulteries, riots, treason and civil {28} war. The religious teachers of those days never raised their voices in the sacred cause of liberty, or spoke in defense of the outraged rights of man. No wonder then that, in the midst of the wrangling of sects, and unintelligible jargon of Arians, Augustinians, Nestorians and Marianites, society stood in breathless awe, when it heard the terrible Arabian battle cry, "There is but one God, and Mahomet is His prophet!" enforced as it was by the tempest of Saracen armies. These warriors, armed with lances and cimeters, and mounted on fleet Arabian steeds, passed swiftly from city to city, and frequently found the masses of the people so crushed by tyranny, so worn out by wrangling and civil wars, that they welcomed the Saracens as deliverers. Mahomet's life had been almost entirely occupied in the conquest or conversion of his native country. It is true, in the latter part of his career he felt himself strong enough to threaten Persia for the aid she had given his enemies; and he even declared war against the Roman Empire for the same reason. But failing health frustrated his designs. He had made no provision for the perpetuation of his own power. Hence, a struggle ensued before a successor was appointed. At length, Abou Beker, the father of his wife Ayesha, was selected. He was proclaimed the first Caliph, and immediately attacked both the Romans and the Persians. The renowned general, Khaled, commonly called by Saracen historians, "the sword of God," was despatched into Syria. His name struck terror into the hearts of the inhabitants. The fortified town of Bozrah fell into his hands without a struggle. This was the same town where fifty years previous the youthful Mahomet had been entertained at the Nestorian convent. Marching northward seventy miles, to Damascus, Khaled laid siege to the Syrian capital. A decisive battle took place on the plain of Aiznadin. The Roman army was overthrown and dispersed. A few days later Damascus surrendered to the Saracens. Guarded on the right by the beautiful river Orontes, and on the left by the snow-clad peaks of Lebanon, they still continued their march northward. To resist their further progress, the Roman emperor, Heraclius, collected an army of one hundred {29} and forty thousand men. A great battle took place on the plains of Yermuck. At the first onset the Saracens were repulsed; but driven back to the field by the heroism of their women, who also aided them, they ended the conflict by the complete overthrow of the Roman army. The whole of Syria now fell into the hands of the Saracens. They then turned south and laid siege to the city of Jerusalem. After a defense of four months the patriarch, Sophronius, appeared on the wall and asked the terms of capitulation. It was stipulated that the surrender should take place in the presence of the Caliph himself. Accordingly, he came all the way from Medina for that purpose. At that time such were the customs among the Saracens, that it is said the ambassador found the Caliph Omar asleep under the shadow of a mosque. It is also said that he journeyed alone on a red camel, carrying with him a bag of dates for his own food and one of corn for his camel, a wooden dish and a leathern water bottle. [Image: Damascus.] After receiving the surrender of the city, Omar returned to Medina as quietly as he had come. Thus fell the Roman power in Syria and Palestine, after having ruled those countries nearly eight hundred years. Thus {30} was transferred without tumult or outrage the religious capital of the professedly Christian world into the hands of the Caliph Omar. Thus, Jerusalem, so long considered the birthplace of Christianity, the scene of its most sacred and tragic memories, passed into the hands of the Mahometans. Considerably more than a thousand years have elapsed since then, and it is still under their dominion. The mosque of Omar now rears its glittering dome where once stood the temple of Solomon. Heraclius, the Roman emperor, struggled valiantly to retain his possessions. He plainly saw that the corruptions of Christianity were among the causes of Saracenic triumphs. He made a heroic attempt to rouse the clergy to their duties, but it was then too late. Heraclius himself was obliged to seek safety in flight. From the deck of the little vessel that bore him homeward, he gazed intently on the receding hills, and in bitterness of anguish exclaimed, "Farewell, Syria, forever farewell!" The remaining details of the Saracen conquest we need not here relate. The naming of their victories is sufficient to indicate the greatness of their triumphs. The great cities of Tyre and Caesarea were captured. With the cedars of Lebanon and sailors of Tyre they equipped a fleet that drove the Roman navy into the Hellespont. Thus they gained undisturbed control of the Mediterranean, and conquered or colonized the islands of Cyprus, Candia, Rhodes, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica and many others. A Saracen naval expedition even appeared before the walls of Rome, and after threatening the imperial city, carried away the altar of silver from St. Peter's church, and gathered other relics from the tombs of St. Peter and St. Paul. One of the Saracen armies turned eastward, and on the battlefield of Cadesia the fate of Persia was decided. After the battle of Neha-vend the treasury and royal arms of Persia fell into the hands of the Saracens. After this battle the eastern army divided into two divisions. One marched northward to the Caspian Sea and took possession of the neighboring countries; another, southward to Persepolis, from whence the king of Persia fled for his life across the drearv deserts of Khorassan. The name of Saracen terrified {31} the wild tribes of independent Tartary, and they hastened to pay tribute and accept the faith of their conquerors. The emperor of China, in his palace at Peking, heard of their exploits, and sent ambassadors to them, craving their friendship. The kingdoms now included in Afghanistan and Beloochistan surrendered at their approach, and the Mahometan standard of the crescent waved on the banks of the Indus. Meanwhile important events were transpiring in the west. A large proportion of the Egyptian people welcomed the Saracens. The Arabs of the desert loitered in the palaces of the ancient Pharaohs. Alexandria, aided by Roman troops, alone held out. After a siege of fourteen months it also fell, and with it Egypt and Abyssinia were added to the dominions of the Caliphs. The most powerful religious empire that the world has ever seen had suddenly sprung into existence. It stretched from the Great Wall of China to the burning sands of Tripoli, and from the Caspian Sea on the north to Abyssinia on the south. Yet this was but little more than half the territory that it soon afterwards controlled. One of its armies advanced on Constantinople. It did not fall then, but afterwards became the capital of the Mahometan power in Europe. Another took possession of the whole north of Africa, and, having consolidated its power there, under the command of their general, Tarik, they crossed the straits that separate Africa from Spain, and landing on the rocky clift of Gib-el-Tarik, or mountain of Tarik (now called Gibraltar), unfurled their green banner with golden crescent for the first time on the soil of Europe. Tarik was soon followed into Spain by his superior officer, the emir Musa. They took possession of the whole southern portion of Spain and Portugal, which in their own picturesque language, they named Andalusia, or the region of the evening. It was soon found that the whole peninsula was ripe for revolution. The Jews comprised a large proportion of the Spanish people. They were, to a great extent, the cultivators of the soil, which pursuit well repaid their labors. They were {32} then, as now, famous as merchants and money-lenders, and many of them held high positions in the government, while thousands of them were scattered in every city, town and village, as the physicians and teachers of the people. Their wrongs had been accumulating for centuries. Bigotry, envy and avarice had conspired to point them out as objects of persecution. Laws were passed which were never intended to be executed. It was expected that they would purchase a remission of the penalties by pouring their hard-earned treasures into the lap of Rome. No doubt the Jews exulted as the tide of Saracen conquest swept onward. They did not deplore a change of masters for those who would leave them in possession of civil and religious liberty. Before long the whole Iberian peninsula fell into the hands of the Mahometans. Not content with this, they crossed the Pyrenees, and took possession of that portion of France that lies to the south of the river Loire. All Central France was overrun. Castles, churches and monasteries were despoiled. For a time they held undisturbed dominion. The empire of the Saracens was then at its greatest extent. It reached from the confines of China to the Atlantic ocean, and comprised within its limits forty degrees of latitude and nearly one hundred and twenty of longitude. In Western Europe alone it stretched in an unbroken line more than a thousand miles northward from the cliffs of Gibraltar. More than thirty-six thousand cities paid tribute to the successors of Mahomet in the city of Medina. In attempting to extend their conquests northward the Saracens were met by an army under Charles Martel, king of France, A. D. 732. Between Tours and Poictiers a terrible battle was fought, which lasted seven days. The Franks and Goths lost so many that it was impossible to tell the number of the slain. But these losses were more than counterbalanced by the losses of the Saracens whose great general, Abderahman, was found among the slain. Their previous successes had filled them with pride. They looked with contempt upon their enemies. For example, when the Roman emperor, Nicephorous, had sent a threatening letter to the Caliph Haroun-al-Raschid, the latter replied, "In the name of the most merciful {33} God, Haroun-al-Raschid, commander of the faithful, to Nicephorous, the Roman dog! I have read thy letter, O thou son of an unbelieving mother! Thou shalt not hear my words; thou shalt behold my reply!" A few weeks later it was written in letters of blood on the plains of Phrygia. Although the Saracen empire had reached the zenith of its power, in one sense Mahometanism had not reached its culmination. The day was to come, when under the name of Ottoman Turks, it would expel the descendants of the Caesars from their capital, hold the classic land of Greece in subjection, and under the very walls of Vienna dispute the empire of Europe in the center of that continent; and in Africa extend its dogmas and faith across burning deserts and pestilential forests far south of the equinoctial line. It is a mistaken idea that the progress of the Saracens depended on the sword alone. The causes of their success were many and various. One of these, the paganization of Christianity, has already been noticed. The long and desolating wars of the Romans had thrown the whole oriental and African trade into the hands of the Arabs. Hence a commercial interest and sympathy had grown up between these peoples. Another reason was the mildness of the Saracen government in comparison with that of the Romans. The only taxation was a single annual tribute, amounting to less than one-half the various taxes by the Romans. Another feature was complete religious toleration except to idolators. The only creed required was simply, "There is but one God, and Mahomet is His prophet." Still, another cause of Saracen success was the effective plan adopted for the consolidation of their power. In battle they were simply terrible, and the destruction of human life was in some instances without a parallel; yet the widows and children of their fallen foes were universally treated with kindness. As a consequence, the children became ardent disciples of Mahometanism, and the widows often married their former conquerors. This was all the more frequent as polygamy was an established custom. The children of these unions gloried in their descent from their conquering fathers. {34} No wonder then, that in a little more than a single generation Abderahman wrote to the Caliph that in North Africa and Andalusia all tribute must cease, as all the children born in those regions were Mahometans, and Arabic had become the language of the county. But above all these causes, the careful student of history will perceive the hand of Providence. Though Christianity was paganized, and the priesthood and divine authority were taken from the earth, God had put forth His hand, and through agencies the most diverse was disciplining the minds of men for the reception of truth, and preparing a place and a people for the coming of the Son of Man. CHAPTER IV. ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE SARACENS. INTELLECTUAL STAGNATION--SARACENS AND JEWS REVIVE LEARNING--UNIVERSITY OF BAGDAD--PUBLIC SCHOOLS--MEDICAL COLLEGE OF CAIRO--CIRCULATING LIBRARY--MODERN FORM OF BOOKS--ARABIC NOTATION--DISCOVERIES IN CHEMISTRY--ROTUNDITY OF THE EARTH--MARINER'S COMPASS--DISCOVERIES OF ALHAZIN--ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORIES--GOLDEN AGE OF JUDAISM--CITIES OF ANDALUSIA--SARACEN DWELLINGS--CONDITION OF WOMEN--FEMALE PHYSICIANS. The civilized world is dotted over with theological seminaries, the teachers in which are considered to be men well educated in the learning of ancient and modern times. The avowed purpose of these institutions is to teach the facts, philosophy and history of the so-called Christian religion, yet not a teacher in these institutions can be found who dares to assert the stupendous fact that from the time of the apostles to the ninth century science, literature and philosophy were well nigh extinct. During all this time, with the exception {35} of Jewish and Saracen writers, scarcely a work can be found of sufficient merit to rescue the name of the author from oblivion. Let the skeptic answer this question: Why was it that when the voice of inspiration was hushed and the gospel and its ordinances taken from the earth, there fell upon it an intellectual stagnation, an invisible atmosphere of oppression, ready to crash down morally and physically whatever provoked its weight? Thus the dreary and weary centuries rolled on, until a nation, hitherto considered barbarous, yet of the seed of Abraham, and heirs of the promises made to Ishmael and Esau, aroused society from the hideous fanaticism, ignorance and superstition into which apostasy had plunged it. If it be true that the Saracens burned the Alexandrian library, it must be considered that this was the act of an uneducated general and the vengeance of the soldiery after a terrible siege, rather than the deliberate policy of the government. Within twenty-five years from the death of Mahomet the Caliphs had become famous for their patronage of learning. Ali, the fourth Caliph and son-in-law of Mahomet, used to say, "The world is sustained by four things only: the prayers of the good, the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, and the valor of the brave." This sentiment was echoed and re-echoed until it became an honored maxim in the minds of millions. Under the influence of Jewish, Nestorian and Saracen teachers the manners of the Saracens became more polished and their thoughts more elevated. They made conquests in the realms of science, literature and the arts as quickly as in the provinces of the Roman empire. For example, Almansor, who reigned as Caliph from A. D. 753 to 775, established the University of Bagdad, and endowed it with two hundred thousand pieces of gold, and an annual revenue of fifteen thousand dinars, equal in commercial value to one hundred and twenty thousand dollars of our money. He invited thither learned men from every land, irrespective of their religious opinions. By these men were founded celebrated schools of mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, medicine, law and languages. {36} His grand-son, Haroun-al-Raschid, ordered in A. D. 786, that a public school should be attached to every mosque in his dominions. This was more than seven hundred years before the establishment of the famous parish schools of Scotland. The Caliph-al-Mamun, in A. D. 813, founded the great medical college of Cairo, which required students to pass a rigid examination before receiving authority to enter on the practice of their profession. At this college we have the first account of dissecting human bodies for the purpose of ascertaining the nature and locality of diseases, and the first circulating library for students. These books were bound according to the modern form, which then began to be used among the Saracens in place of the ancient form of the scroll. By the means just mentioned, the ancient sciences were greatly extended and new ones introduced. To the Saracens we are indebted for our present system of arithmetical notation. If, for example, we wish to multiply 1882 by 125 and then attempt it by the ancient method MDCCCLXXXII., multiplied by CXXV., we shall soon perceive the vast superiority of the Arabic system over that formerly in use. No wonder, then that under the ancient system those who were engaged in solving difficult mathematical problems were frequently styled "sweating calculators." In this case as in many others the Arab has left his impress on this science. For instance, our word cipher, and kindred words, such as decipher, ciphering, etc., are derived from the word _tsaphara, or ciphra_, the name for the 0 in the Arabic language. In experimental sciences, they originated chemistry and discovered the nature and properties of sulphuric acid, nitric acid, alcohol and many other chemical agents. From their schools of medicine may be traced such words as julep, syrup, elixir, alchemy, etc. To them we are indebted for algebra, or universal arithmetic, and in astronomy they made such advances that many constellations and stars of the first magnitude still retain the Arabic names. In geography, the Saracens made important discoveries. Hitherto mankind had been taught that the earth was a vast {37} plain, surmounted by an immense vault commonly called the sky. They were the first to prove that the earth is a vast globe, or ball; and in order to determine its size, they first ascertained on the level shore of the Red sea the exact position of the North Star. Then traveling directly north until it had attained another degree of elevation, they measured the distance between these points, and multiplying the result by three hundred and sixty (the number of degrees in a circle), they found the earth to be nearly twenty-five thousand miles in circumference. So accurate were their observations and measurements that the best calculators of recent times differ from them less than one-third of a mile. Five hundred years later the Roman pontiffs were excommunicating and torturing those who taught the rotundity of the earth. While Catholic monks were teaching, in all its absurdity, the flatness of the earth, and how it rested on a vast rock, and that rock on another and so on all the way down to the bottom(?), the Saracens were teaching geography from globes in their common schools. It cost a long struggle through several centuries, "with spiritual wickedness in high places," before the truth finally triumphed. European historians have generally given great credit to Pope Gregory for the invention and adoption of the Gregorian calendar and a more accurate method of measuring the exact length of the civil year. Yet, Gregory only adopted what had been discovered and taught by Thebit-Ben-Corrah, the Saracen astronomer, more than five hundred years before, and what Gregory himself had learned in youth while attending a Saracen university. The mariner's compass was well known to the Arabs, who probably brought it from China and introduced it to the nations of Europe. From this we may correctly infer that they were a maritime people. In fact, long before the time of Mahomet, Arabian merchants were acquainted with the Indies, and even China and the eastern coast of Africa as far south as Madagascar. Alhazin, who wrote about A. D. 1080, made the great discovery of atmospheric refraction--that a ray of light when it touches the atmosphere is bent from a straight line; and {38} consequently we see the sun before it rises and after it sets, in the same manner that an object lying at the bottom of a bucket filled with water appears in quite a different position from that in which it really is. He was the first to give that beautiful and scientific explanation of twilight, viz., the refraction of light, which is still regarded by modern scientists as the true one. He even attempted to ascertain the height of the atmosphere, which he estimated to be about fifty-eight and a half miles. This philosopher also wrote a treatise on weights and measures, and introduced that excellent system of weighing by means of a small, movable weight attached to the longer arm of a lever, as in our modern scales or steelyards. The Arabian astronomer, Ebn-Junis, was the first who made use of the pendulum in the machinery of clocks for the accurate measurement of the hours. In the golden age of the Saracen empire, there were colleges in every part of its vast dominions. So numerous were these institutions, that more than six thousand students received instructions in them annually. In the far east were the college and astronomical observatory of Samercand; while in the western province of Andalusia were the famous school and observatory of Giralda. The first medical college established in Europe was that founded by the Saracens at Salerno, in Italy; the first famous school of mathematics and astronomy was that established by them at Seville, in Spain. Among them, learning was not confined to the rich, but every class received its benefits. The teachers of their colleges were paid liberal salaries for their services, and an allowance was made for indigent scholars, so that the son of the mechanic could graduate from the same class as the heirs of the Caliphs. At first glance it seems remarkable that the wild ferocity of the Arabs should so suddenly change into a passion for intellectual pursuits; yet it should not be forgotten that this ferocity was to a great extent caused by religious enthusiasm. Thus, when the General Akbah had conquered his way from Egypt to the Atlantic ocean, opposite the Canary Islands, he rode his horse into the sea and drew his sword, exclaiming, {39} "Great Allah! if my course were not stopped by this sea, I would still go on to the unknown regions of the West, preaching the unity of thy holy name, and putting to the sword the rebellious nations who worship any other gods than thee." Again, when we consider that a large majority of their teachers and philosophers were of the Jewish nation, we see a beautiful Providence in all this. The remnants of God's chosen people, though exiles and wanderers, despised and down-trodden by the Gentiles, were yet the instruments in God's hands for the execution of His purposes and the elevation of the race. Surely there is a broader, higher, grander meaning in the promise given to Abraham, "In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed," than many are willing to admit! And this is all the more remarkable, that, at the very time when mankind so much needed instruction, should occur what Milman so aptly terms, "The golden age of Judaism." Not an age of royal pomp and political power--that passed away with David and Solomon--but an age of intellectual culture, scientific research and practical discovery. Strange it would appear to the casual student, if upon further research he should find that all great religious teachers have been of Israelitish origin, as well as a large proportion of those who have achieved distinction in the arts and sciences. But it was in Spain, southern France and Sicily that the Saracens attained their greatest power and influence; for there they came in contact with the nations of western Europe, and so influenced European manners, customs and modes of thought that through them that influence has been transmitted to our times. To the ingenuity of the Saracens we are indebted for the origin of many articles of clothing and personal comfort. Their religion taught them to be clean in person. They did not therefore clothe themselves, according to prevailing customs in that age, in an under-garment made from the skins of wild beasts--a garment which remained unwashed and unchanged until it dropped to pieces of itself, a loathsome mass of vermin, stench and rags. They taught us the use of that often-changed and often-washed garment commonly called a shirt, {40} which still is known among the ladies under its old Arabic name, _chemise_. To them we are indebted for some of our most valuable fruits, such as the apricot and peach. Remembering the cooling effects of water in their own hot climate, they spared no pains in constructing artificial lakes and fountains and streams for the irrigation of their gardens. Andalusia became the paradise of the world. The capital was Cordova, which they greatly embellished as well as the rival cities Toledo, Seville and Granada. A person might walk for miles through their cities after night-fall by the light of their public lamps. Seven hundred years afterwards, not a single public lamp could be found in the city of London. The streets of these cities were solidly paved, through which rolled magnificent carriages, drawn by horses, the fame of which has descended to our times. Five hundred years later the sovereigns of Great Britain and Germany were still traveling in uncouth wagons, drawn by oxen, goaded on by pedestrian drivers. The sidewalks of Cordova, Toledo, Seville and Granada were paved with flagstones; while at a corresponding period the inhabitant of London or Paris who ventured beyond his threshold on a rainy day sank ankle-deep in filth and mud. Their residences were frequently in the midst of orchards or embosomed in shady groves. They had cool and spacious porches for rest in the heat of the day. Often these porches had roofs of stained glass, on which fell in soothing cadences the glittering pearl-drops of water from elevated fountains. Their houses were usually built of brick or stone, and contained many apartments, such as sleeping rooms, baths, libraries, parlors and dining halls. In the best class of dwellings, the ceilings were frescoed and the walls covered with paintings, representing scenes of paradise, groves and fruits, lawns and fountains. Yet, delineations of the human form, either nude or partly so, were religiously forbidden, as it was considered that such representations were promotive of licentiousness. {41} Some of these apartments were furnished with musical instruments, where the young of both sexes were wont to join in mirth and festivity, and dancing to the music of the lute and mandolin. In others, the sedate and reflecting, could engage in scientific research or philosophical discussion. The {42} dwellings of the rich were carpeted, and sometimes warmed by furnaces in winter and cooled in summer with perfumed air, brought by under-ground pipes from distant flower gardens. The use of wine was prohibited. The feasts of the Saracens were marked with sobriety, and furnished a pleasing contrast to the drunken revelries of their northern neighbors. [Image: Interior of a Saracen Palace.] The enchanting moonlight evenings of Andalusia were frequently spent by the devout in sequestered gardens, consoling themselves for the disappointments of this life by the hope of immortality, and reconciling themselves to their daily toil by the expectation of the joys of paradise, where flowers never fade nor fruits decay, where sickness, and sorrow, and death are known no more. Under Saracen government, religious persecution was unknown. Students from Great Britain, Ireland, France and Germany came to study at Saracen universities. There, among distinguished characters, whose names and influence have descended to our times, was Frederick, afterwards Frederick II., king of Italy; Gerbert, afterwards famous as Pope Sylvester II.; Peter the Venerable, Abelard, the poet, and Arnold of Brescia. No wonder then that the Saracens looked with contempt upon the barbarism of the native races of Europe, who could scarcely be said to have emerged from the savage state--unclean in person, benighted in mind, inhabiting huts in which it was a mark of wealth if there were bulrushes on the floor and straw mats against the wall; subsisting on barley, beans, cabbages, herbs and even the bark of trees; clothed in rudely-tanned skins of wild animals, which were famous indeed for durability, but not very conducive to personal cleanliness. But the arts, sciences and general culture were not confined to the Saracen men alone. Among the women there were many who, like Valada, Ayesha, Labana and Algasania, achieved a national reputation. Some of these were daughters of Caliphs, who considered it not beneath their dignity to devote their lives to science and the elevation of their sex. Where shall we find their equals at that time in so-called Christian countries? Albucasis, a celebrated physician of Cordova, {43} in his medical works, makes mention of several female physicians, and recommends the employment of such in certain cases. No doubt the condition of women was superior and their duties and position better understood among polygamous Saracens than in monogamous Christendom. The foregoing will indicate to some extent the condition of Saracen society in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Shall we compare it with the contemporary barbarism of the other portions of Europe? Were we to pursue this subject further it would not be difficult to show that Venice owed her commercial greatness to Saracen fleets and Jewish merchants; that Marco Polo only traveled over countries already well delineated on maps, and well described by Abulfeda and other Arabian geographers; that Columbus himself first received scientific proof of the rotundity of the earth while corresponding with Torricelli, the great Florentine astronomer, who in turn had received his education at the Saracen university of Seville, and modelled his globes, maps and charts from those in its possession. The careful student of history must deplore the attempts made by many historians to ignore our indebtedness to the Saracens, who in the providence of God have left their impress on the religions, arts and sciences of the world. Surely prejudice founded on national conceit and sectarian bigotry cannot last forever. {44} CHAPTER V. REMARKABLE CITIES OF MEDIEVAL TIMES. JERUSALEM THE SACRED CITY--ALEXANDRIA NOTED FOR PHILOSOPHY--SCHOOL OF HYPATIA--MOB MURDERS HER--DOCTRINES OF CYRIL--JERUSALEM A SCENE OF SUFFERING--FULFILLMENT OF PROPHECY--HERCULANEUM AND POMPEII--THEIR DESTRUCTION--EVIDENCES OF THEIR WICKEDNESS--EXCAVATIONS--ROMAN RULE--REMOVAL OF CAPITAL--CRIMES OF CONSTANTINE--COMMENCEMENT OF GREEK EMPIRE--DESCRIPTION OF CONSTANTINOPLE--ITS CAPTURE BY CRUSADERS--TAKEN BY THE TURKS--INTELLECTUAL DEGRADATION--PRIESTCRAFT--DEBAUCHERY--TURKISH RULE. The four great cities of medieval times were Jerusalem, Rome, Alexandria and Constantinople. The first named has ever been the sacred city, not merely of the Jews, but also of devout Christian pilgrims of all ages. During the crusades it was the great object for the possession of which so much blood and treasure were expended. Alexandria, for the first three centuries of the Christian era, was the commercial metropolis of the world, as well as the chief seat of pagan learning and philosophy. It was here that Hypatia, the daughter of Theon, the mathematician, held her famous school. Each day before her academy stood a long train of chariots. Her lecture room was crowded with the cultured classes of Alexandria. They came to ask those profound questions that human reason, unaided, can never answer: "What am I? Where am I? What can I know?" At this time, Cyril, archbishop of Alexandria, was attempting to force upon the world his trinitarian views. His absurd ideas could not endure the sharp criticism of philosophic {45} minds. Cyril employed a mob of Alexandrian monks. Amid the fearful yelling of these bare-legged and black-cowled fiends, Hypatia was dragged from her chariot. In mortal terror she fled to an adjacent church, and was there brutally murdered by the club of Peter the Reader. But this was not all. We can only get a faint idea of the depraved condition of paganized Christianity, when we call to mind the fact that the monks finished their infernal crime by dismembering her body and scraping the flesh from her bones with oyster shells. Cyril then procured the banishment of all who held opposing doctrines, and thus his absurd doctrines were forced upon society. Such was the debased condition of society in a city where had been planted one of the apostolic churches. As vice increased her prosperity decreased. During the reign of Constantine, the influence of Alexandria was much diminished, and with the Mahometan conquest it fell to the rank of a provincial town. Jerusalem, once the "glory of the earth, and the pride of the nations," never recovered from the siege by Titus, in A. D. 70. The answer which the Jews made to Pilate, "_His blood be upon us and upon our children_," which they spake in reference to the Savior, has been terribly and literally fulfilled. It may be safely asserted that Jerusalem has witnessed more scenes of human suffering than any other spot on earth. Who does not see the hand of Providence in her retribution, as well as in the fate of Herculaneum and Pompeii? These cities were destroyed in A. D. 79, by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius, and buried by a shower of ashes, sand and stones. Herculaneum was situated about eight miles south of the present city of Naples, and Pompeii about fifteen miles eastward. Thus they remained buried for nearly seventeen hundred years. Extensive excavations have been made during the past century, disclosing the city walls, streets, temples, theatres, private dwellings, domestic utensils and statuary. Many objects have been found which indicate the wicked and licentious character of the inhabitants, and go to prove that they were ripe for the destruction which awaited them. The inhabitants died just as the catastrophe found them, guests in their {46} banqueting halls, soldiers at their posts, prisoners in their dungeons, maidens at the mirror and students at their books. [Image: Eruption of Mount Vesuvius.] {47} When the city was unearthed, the houses were found standing. The interior paintings were still fresh, and the skeletons remained in the very position and the very place in which death had overtaken them so long ago. The marks left by the cups of the tiplers still remained on the counters; the prisoners still wore their fetters, the ladies their chains and bracelets. The researches are still going on, new wonders are every day coming to light, and we shall soon have quite a distinct idea of Roman towns in the first century of the Christian era. Rome, from before the commencement of the Christian era, had been the political and military capital of the world. From her gates issued forth those imperial armies that conquered nations and crushed the liberties of mankind. Her rule was not one of reason but one of force. From the age of Augustus Caesar her power had been waning, and when the Emperor Constantine removed the capital to Constantinople, Rome became a city of secondary importance. Though her political prestige was gone she became the seat of a religious empire which had and still has a mighty influence in the nations of the earth. The wrongs which she inflicted on others have recoiled with terrible retribution on herself. Her ruins are silent and majestic witnesses of the providence of God. To the reign of Constantine the Great, must be referred the commencement of those dark and dismal times which oppressed Europe for a thousand years. Constantine, while dwelling at Rome, had murdered his son Crispus, his nephew Licinius, and had suffocated, in a steam bath, his wife, Fausta, to whom he had been married twenty years, and who was the mother of three of his sons. The public abhorrence of his crimes could no longer be concealed. Constantine therefore determined to change his residence and build another metropolis, which he named in honor of himself. He also found it politic to favor the paganized and wrangling Christian sects, that by their aid he might be able to triumph over the powerful coalition that had been formed against him. The reign of Constantine is therefore the true close of the Roman empire: the beginning of the Greek. The transition from the one to the other is emphatically {48} and abruptly marked, by a new metropolis and a new national religion. Constantinople, at present the capital of the Turkish empire, stands, like Rome, on seven hills, and on a tongue of land projecting into the Bosphorus, which here forms an inlet or small bay known as the Golden Horn. The Bosphorus, as most of our readers are aware, is the name given to the strait through which flow the waters of the Black sea into the sea of Marmora, and which divides Europe from Asia. Constantinople is admirably situated for commerce. This is one reason why Russia has so long looked upon it with a covetous eye. In fact, the reason why the bay, on the shores of which the city is built, has been called the "Golden Horn," or horn of abundance, is because into it was brought the wealth of three continents and the products of every clime. That which is commonly called Constantinople, in reality consists of three great cities, divided by arms of the sea, yet so near to each other that the edifices of either of the cities may be seen distinctly from the other two. The view here given represents Constantinople looking from the north. In the background is seen the city of Scutari, on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus. The hills in the distance are those of Asia Minor. On the right is shown the city of Stamboul, which stands on the site of the ancient Byzantium, and the foreground represents the modern city of Galata, where the greater part of the foreign population resides, and where the exchange, custom-house, and most of the churches, convents and hospitals are situated. As here depicted the current of the Bosphorus flows from left to right and disappears in the distance. {49} [Image: Constantinople.] The history of this city is very remarkable, and runs far back into the mist of antiquity. Long before the Christian era it was a place of considerable trade and political importance. Here the barbarians from the coast of the Black sea came to barter their furs for the products of more favored regions. Near this point Alexander the Great crossed the Bosphorus on his great campaign of eastern conquest. In the second century before Christ, the Romans having subdued the neighboring {50} countries, built a fort on the site of the ancient city and named it Byzantium. The Roman emperor, Constantine the Great, enlarged and beautified the city and made it the capital of the Roman empire, and in honor of himself changed the name to Constantinople. After his death the Roman empire was divided, and Constantinople continued to be the capital of the eastern division. For more than one thousand years it was the residence of the Caesars and the commercial metropolis of the world. Owing to the religious rivalry of Rome it was taken and partly burned, by the Crusaders, in A. D. 1205. But the most memorable siege it has ever endured was in A. D. 1453, when it fell into the hands of the Ottoman Turks. By a strange coincidence a Constantine gave his name to the city, and a Constantine reigned at its fall. It was on the morning of April 6th, A. D. 1453. that Mahomet II., gave the signal for the attack, and the Turkish cannon (then a new invention) thundered against the walls of the city. For fifty days the siege was carried on with little success. At last, food was getting scarce, and the pangs of hunger were sorely felt by the Christians within the city. But hope revived as away on the sea of Marmora, they spied five great ships well laden with supplies and with the Christian flag unfurled. Onward the vessels flew before the breeze, but what a sight met them as they neared the port! Three hundred Turkish ships were drawn up in a line across the straits, each filled with troops and eager for the fight. But there were brave hearts in those five gallant Christian ships, full willing to meet the outnumbering enemy. Gaily they careened before the swelling breeze, and steering straight for the Turkish line bore down upon the foe. Suddenly from the Christian ranks there burst a joyous shout, as the Turkish ships first wavered and then fled. In vain the fierce sultan, Mahomet II., mad with rage, called upon his captains to make good the fight. But the rent was made, and amid a hundred thousand Christian cheers the succoring ships sailed in victoriously to the Golden Horn, and many a mother's heart was glad as she closely clasped her half-famished child. {51} A strong chain had meanwhile been placed across the harbor, to prevent the entrance of the Turkish fleet. But Mahomet was determined not to be baffled. In the silence of the night he caused eighty boats to be dragged ten miles across the neck of land that divides the sea of Marmora from the tip of the Golden Horn. Rafts were then made, on which cannon were floated to bombard the city from the harbor. By the 29th of May all was ready for the final battle. The great Byzantine empire, once foremost in the powers of the world, had shrunk into the narrow limits of a few square miles. The sun had set, and night fell upon the contending hosts. Christian warriors, as they lay under the starry canopy of heaven, cast off the sterner half of man, and let their softer natures free: and loving thoughts of sisters, mothers, wives went winding through the air, to meet in last embrace. And now the solemn calm before the storm drew near, and all was hushed and still. Constantine did not sleep. He knew that his hour was at hand. With a few chosen knights, he retired to the great church of St. Sophia, and there uncovered stood before the cross. To-morrow the great Byzantine empire would pass away with him! His tears fell thickly at the thought; and he prayed that he might die as became a Christian knight. Then for the last time he partook of the sacrament, and, turning to those around, he said, "I pray forgiveness if I have injured any one in thought, or word, or deed." He stepped to the portal of the church, where stood his impatient steed, placed his helmet on his noble head, and mounting into the saddle, the humble penitent rode off as warrior Christian king, to battle and to die. He was afterwards found among a heap of the slain. The banner of the crescent waved over the waters of the Bosphorus, and what was then the richest capital and finest country in Europe. Four hundred and thirty years have rolled by since then. It is still in their possession. The appearance of Constantinople at the present time is very peculiar. The city is embosomed in gardens, orchards and vineyards. The houses are for the most part built in the form of a hollow square, with flat roofs and the windows facing {52} inward. This gives to the compact parts of the city a rather dingy appearance. The streets, especially in the ancient portions, are extremely narrow, and frequently filthy. It is therefore pleasant to turn from these crowded thoroughfares, and in a few moments' walk, find yourself surrounded with shady trees, singing birds, fountains and flowers. Here, in the limits of a single city, may be found representatives of almost every race and clime. The fair-haired natives of northern Europe, the swarthy inhabitants of Tartary, tall fierce-looking Circassians, and flat-nosed, woolly-headed negroes from central Africa; all mingling with the more polished inhabitants of western Europe, each dressed in his own peculiar garb, and presenting a living picture no less striking than strange. In this great hive of humanity may be heard at least fifty different languages making a complete Babel of sounds. Here, also, may be seen in striking contrast, the different manners, customs and usages of oriental and western nations. The different methods used in the transportation of merchandise are no less peculiar; for while on the eastern side of the city, may be seen approaching long caravans of camels laden with the rich products of the East, on the western side may be heard the shriek of the locomotive, announcing the arrival of a train, bringing passengers, merchandise and latest intelligence from western nations. But the most significant custom is that five times a day the _muezzins_, or Mahometan priests, ascend to the top of the mosques (as places of worship are called) and which are thickly scattered through the city, and in a loud wailing voice exclaim, "God is great! There is one God! Mahomet is His prophet! Come to prayer!" This is repeated four times facing the east, south, west and north, and has a penetrating effect on the mind of the hearer, much more than the sound of the church-bell of the Christians, or the trumpet of the Jews. Most European historians have lamented the seizure of Constantinople by the Turks as a terrible disaster. To the unprejudiced student of history there seems to be but little reason for regret. For eleven hundred years Constantinople had greatly influenced the destinies of the world; but during {53} all that time her power had tended more to the degradation than to the elevation of mankind. Her citizens possessed all the classical writings and works of art of the great authors of antiquity; yet in a thousand years they never produced one original, never advanced one step in philosophy or science, or made a single practical discovery. What was it that produced this barrenness, this intellectual degradation in Constantinople? It was the tyranny of priestcraft over thought. For a thousand years Constantinople had been not merely the leading commercial city, but also the leading city in debauchery and crime. In this respect it has vastly improved under Turkish rule. At the present time, especially in the Mahometan portions of the city, it is the least licentious of all the great capitals of modern Europe. CHAPTER VI. RELIC-WORSHIP, PILGRIMAGES AND CRUSADES. GROWTH OF RELIC-WORSHIP--SCHEMES OF THE ROMAN PONTIFFS--MANUFACTURE OF RELICS--THEIR GREAT VARIETY--VALUE OF RELICS--INSULTS OFFERED TO PILGRIMS--PETER THE HERMIT--CRUSADES--DISORDERLY RABBLE--TERRIBLE SUFFERING--CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM--TERRIBLE MASSACRE--CAPTURE OF CONSTANTINOPLE--CRUSADES OF THE CHILDREN--RESULT OF THE CRUSADES--REVIVAL OF LEARNING. In previous chapters has been traced the apostasy of the early church, also the career of Mahomet, and the conquests and achievements of the Saracens. While these events were transpiring, other causes were at work which led eventually to the elevation of mankind, the history of which plainly indicates the workings of an All-wise Providence. {54} At this period there were no printed books, and the only means of religious instruction to which the masses had access, were the pictures and images to be found in the churches, together with the explanations of them given by the priests. By means of these practical object-lessons much useful information was imparted. The principal events in the life of our Savior were thus depicted, and, though the people did not fully understand the grandeur of His mission, they at least learned something of His history, their duties to each other and their own future destiny. Thus there came to be associated in their minds a reverence for the picture or image itself, and this idea extended until it included the localities where the great events of the Savior's life, death and resurrection transpired. With the growth of devotion to the person of Christ, grew the feeling of reverence for every place which He had visited and every memorial which He had left behind Him. The impulse once given, soon became irresistible. Every incident of the gospel narratives was associated with some particular spot, and millions believed that the sight of these places brought them nearer to heaven. The cave or excavation in which it was said the Redeemer was born, and where the wise men of the East laid before Him their royal gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, the mount from which He uttered His blessings on the meek, the merciful and the pure in heart, in short, every spot connected with his life, death and resurrection called forth emotions of passionate veneration. These feelings were greatly intensified by the alleged discovery of the cross on which the Savior died, together with the two crosses on which the thieves were crucified. The splendid churches raised by the Emperor Constantine and his mother Helena over the supposed spot of our Savior's birth at Bethlehem, and His sepulchre at Jerusalem, became for the Christian of that day what the tomb of the prophet at Medina became afterwards to the followers of Mahomet. The remission of sins and eternal rewards in the world to come were the blessings promised to the weary pilgrim when he should tread the classic soil of Judea, bathe in the river Jordan, chant his quiet anthem of praise in the cave at Bethlehem, {55} walk in the quiet shades of Gethsemane and kneel in reverence at the Savior's tomb. No wonder then that a hundred thousand pilgrims might have been seen each year wending their way across the plains of Asia Minor, destined for Jerusalem. The Roman pontiffs, owing to the ignorance of the times, had already built up a wide-spread system of superstition. [Image: Church of the Holy Sepulchre.] They held almost imperial sway over the countless hordes of central and northern Europe. Even kings and emperors paid tribute, and sovereigns dared not disobey their commands. As an instance, might be mentioned Henry IV., of Germany, who having displeased Pope Gregory VII., was obliged, under penalty of losing his kingdom, to stand as a penitent at the pope's castle gate during three dreary winter {56} days, seeking pardon and reconciliation of the inexorable pontiff. It is not surprising that the popes, who had long trafficked in human credulity, saw, in the growth of relic-worship, an opportunity to increase their own power and the revenues of the church of Rome. Accordingly an understanding was made with the monks of Palestine and relics were manufactured in untold numbers. An amusing and instructive chapter might be written on this subject: amusing because of its absurdity, and instructive as it shows to what extremes of folly men will go when left without the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The crimes and corruptions of the papacy had destroyed public confidence. The devout instinctively turned with reverence towards every object that recalled the memories of the pure and good who once lived upon the earth. No sooner had the wild rage for relics fairly set in than each monastery in the vicinity of Jerusalem made a specialty of some particular relic. The monks at Bethlehem sold thousands of pounds of half rotten rags, each fragment purporting to be a portion of the swaddling cloths of the infant Savior. The monks who guarded the supposed sepulchre of Christ, sold hundreds of thousands of little chips of stone said to have been broken off from the very walls of the tomb where the body of Jesus had lain. It does not seem to have shaken the credulity of the pilgrims in the least, that the tomb still remained in as good repair as ever, and showed no marks of demolition. The monks who inhabited the monasteries on the banks of the Jordan could point to at least twenty places where it was said the Savior had been baptized, and each monastery possessed numerous pebbles which the monks claimed had been touched by His feet. No less than seven monasteries claimed to have the true cross in their possession, and thousands of pieces, of wood amounting to many tons in weight, were sold to devout pilgrims. Each of these pieces, it was claimed, was a part of the true cross. But it would require a long and tedious list to even enumerate the various articles comprised in this relic-worship. In {57} order to get some faint idea of their extent and variety, the relics which the Abbot Martin obtained for his monastery in Alsace might be mentioned. These, among other things, included "a piece of the true cross, a fragment of the infant Savior's swaddling cloths, some pebbles from the river Jordan which the Savior's feet had touched, a branch of the tree under which He prayed in the garden of Gethsemane, a piece of the Savior's robe, for which the Roman soldiers cast lots," (see Matthew, 27th chapter), "a tooth of St. Mark, seven hairs of the martyr, Stephen, a thigh bone of the animal which Jesus rode into Jerusalem," (see Luke, 19th chapter), and (I hesitate to write such blasphemy) "a bottle of the milk of the mother of God." In connection with this relic-worship, an amusing anecdote is related: It so happened that about thirty pilgrims were traveling homeward from Palestine together. Being somewhat weary, they concluded to rest and refresh themselves. Having partaken of some wine too freely they commenced to boast of the various relics which each had in his possession. One claimed that he had actually the identical piece of money which Peter took out of the fish's mouth (see Matthew, 17th chapter, 27th verse). But, to their mutual surprise, they soon found that each had made a similar purchase. It was plain that at least twenty-nine of them had been defrauded. But they reasoned that if it was not wrong for the monks to defraud them, it would not be wrong for them to defraud others. So they quietly sold the pieces of money as soon as possible. No doubt one reason why relic-worship became so extensive, was the encouragement given to it by the Roman pontiffs. It was boldly asserted that the possession of a relic was a specific against evil spirits, accidents, disease, and, in short, nearly every evil to which humanity is heir. Hence the great demand for relics by the ignorant and superstitious, and the vast sums of money which were thus poured into the treasury of the church of Rome. For example, a tooth of an apostle was valued at a sum equal commercially to one hundred dollars of our money, and a thousand dollars would scarcely buy a piece of the true cross {58} as large as a common friction match. Of course these prices varied according to the wealth and the credulity of the purchaser. When, in A. D. 637, Jerusalem was captured by the Saracens, the Christians and pilgrims were treated with much consideration. They were not only to be safe in their persons, but undisturbed in the exercise of their religion and in the use of their churches. The yearly influx of at least one hundred thousand pilgrims, however, aroused suspicion among the great mass of Mahometans, who failed to comprehend the purport of their extraordinary journey, but perceived the necessity of putting some restraint on this annual rush of such countless multitudes. The consequence was that wrongs were inflicted and retaliated until the mere journey to Jerusalem involved dangers from which even the bravest might shrink. Insults offered to the pilgrims were accompanied by insults offered to the holy places and to those who ministered in them. Still the pilgrims went forth by thousands, and occasionally hundreds and frequently only tens returned to recount the miseries and wanton cruelties they had undergone. Throughout the length and breadth of Christendom a fierce indignation was stirring the hearts of men, and their rage, like pent up waters, needed only an opportunity to rush forth as a flood over the lands under the control of the Mahometans. That opportunity was not long wanting. Peter, the hermit, who had witnessed the barbarities to which the pilgrims were exposed, roused Europe to a frantic state by his preaching. Dwarfish in stature and mean in person, he was yet filled with a zeal that knew no bounds. The horrors which fired his soul were those which would most surely stir the conscience and arouse the wrath of his hearers. His fiery appeals carried everything before him. Wherever he went, the rich and the poor, the aged and the young, the nobles and the peasants thronged in thousands around the emaciated stranger. He traveled with his head and feet bare, calling on all classes to deliver from the unbeliever the land which was the cradle of their faith. {59} The vehemence which choked his own utterance became contagious. His sobs and groans called forth the tears and cries of the vast crowds who hung upon his words and greedily devoured the harrowing accounts of the pilgrims, whom Peter brought forward as witnesses of the truth of his picture. The excitement and frenzy of the moment threw, no doubt, a specious coloring over an enterprise of doubtful morality, and which eventually pandered to the basest passion of humanity. These wars are known in history by the name of Crusades, from the Latin term _crux_, a cross, which emblem was painted on the breasts or shoulders of all who engaged in them. When the masses were thoroughly excited, Pope Urban gave the enterprise his sanction, and promised to all who would enlist a full remission of their sins. This encouraged innumerable desperadoes to assume the badge of the cross. Fanaticism and hypocrisy, lust and avarice strangely urged their several votaries to pursue one path, and all under the sacred and now woefully profaned name of Christian zeal! Yet the hand of Providence was in all this. Even the rage of men worked out His purpose, and, as the sequel will show, produced results which, under the controlling hand of God led to the elevation of the race. To give a detailed description of the Crusades would alone require a volume. It is enough to say that the first Crusade failed, not only disastrously, but hideously, so far as the ignorant rabbles under Peter, the hermit, and Walter, the penniless, were concerned. The long and ghastly line of bones whitening the roadside all the way from Hungary to Judea, showed how different a thing it was for a peaceable and solitary pilgrim with his staff and wallet and scallop-shell to beg his way, and the disorderly rabble of thousands upon thousands to rush forward without any organization, and gathering their daily supplies by robbing and killing the helpless peasants on their route. This, in their ignorance or blasphemy, they called "trusting in the providence of God." The van of the Crusades consisted of two hundred and seventy-five thousand men. Behind these came a rabble of {60} two hundred thousand men, women and children, preceded by a goat and a goose, into which some blasphemous lunatic had told them that the Holy Ghost had entered. When at length these animals died, a representation of them was painted on their banner. In this vile horde no pretense was kept up of order or of decency. Driven to madness by disappointment and famine, and expecting, in their ignorance, that every town they came to must be Jerusalem, they laid hands on whatever they could in their extremity. Their track was marked by robbery, fire and bloodshed. In the first Crusade alone, more than five hundred thousand human beings perished. However, a better organized expedition soon followed, commanded by Godfrey de Bouillon, Duke of Lorraine. By him Jerusalem was captured July 15th, A. D. 1099. As might be expected, its siege and capture were attended by the perpetration of cruelties almost surpassing belief. What a contrast to the conduct of the Arabs, when the Caliph Omar took Jerusalem, A. D. 637! He rode into the city by the side of the patriarch, Saphronius, conversing with him on its antiquities. When the time of evening prayer arrived, he declined to pay his devotions in the church of Constantine, fearing that his followers might wish to imitate his example, and thus render it practically useless to the Christians; but he knelt outside in the yard near the entrance gate. What a supreme act of religious toleration! When will free-born Americans learn to act thus nobly? But in the capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders the brains of young children were dashed out against the walls, infants were thrown over the battlements, men and women were tortured that they might be compelled to disclose hidden wealth, the Jews were driven into their synagogue and there burnt. A massacre of seventy thousand persons took place, and the pope's especial ambassador was seen "partaking in the triumph." Such were the exploits of the first Crusade. The second was barren of results except the inhuman butchery of thousands of unoffending Jews. The third produced no permanent effects, but a halo of false glory is shed around it, from the {61} exploits of Richard the Lion-heart, king of England, who was connected with it, and whose adventures have stirred to enthusiasm even the dullest of historians. With great difficulty, Pope Innocent III., succeeded in preparing the fourth Crusade, A. D. 1202. The government of Venice agreed to furnish ships to carry them to Palestine, but, actuated by a love of plunder, and a desire to gratify the bitter feeling which existed between the popes of Rome and the bishops of Constantinople, they turned aside to vent their rage on their fellow-Christians. Constantinople was taken by storm A. D. 1204. On the night of its capture more houses were burned than could be found in any three of the largest cities of France. The treasures of the churches were carried away, and even the tombs of the ancient emperors were rifled in the mad search for relics. Thus, Crusade followed Crusade for more than one hundred and fifty years, until nine armies, comprising more than three millions of men, laid their bodies down to decay and their bones to whiten on the plains and hill-sides of the East. Among all the enterprises, none were more wild and wicked than those which are called the "Crusades of the children." Emissaries from Rome went throughout Western Europe, preaching and declaring that God would only give the Holy Land into the hands of innocent children. Pope Innocent III. applauded their wild enthusiasm. "These children," said he, "are a reproach to us of riper age. While they hurry to Palestine, we are asleep." {62} [Image: Ancient Vessels.] A few words will suffice to tell the story how twenty thousand children, under the boy Stephen, encamped around Vendome. In less than a month ten thousand of them had perished or strayed away. When they reached Marseilles, they lingered near the shore, expecting the Mediterranean to divide, and, like the Red Sea in ancient times, give them a dry passage to Palestine. At length two merchants offered to convey them there in ships, without charge; but at the end of their journey they found themselves, not in Palestine, but in the slave markets of Alexandria and Algiers. A sequel to this "o'er true tale" is found in the sufferings of another rabble of thirty thousand boys and girls, who, under {63} the peasant lad, Nicholas, in crossing the Alps lost nearly half their number. Five thousand reached Genoa, and, being invited by the senate, concluded to settle there. The rest marched to Brindisi, and, setting sail for Palestine, were never heard of more. Worthless in themselves and wholly useless as a means for founding any permanent dominion in Palestine or elsewhere, these enterprises were a means in the overruling hand of God of effecting the nations of Europe in a way which the promoters never dreamed of. Their results were many and various. One was that they drew away many of the warlike and turbulent, and gave, as it were, a resting time for the states of Western Europe, during which, learning, science and general culture, among the quietly-disposed, made rapid advances, and many cities and smaller states rose from obscurity to opulence and power. Another was the change of feeling which took place in the Crusaders themselves. What a surprise awaited these religious barbarians--for such they really were--when for the first time they gazed on the splendors of Constantinople in its palmiest days! What a contrast to their own rude homes, when they passed into Asia Minor, that garden of the world, presenting well-cultivated fields, orchards, vineyards, palaces and schools, the civilization of a thousand years! How unexpected the character of those Saracens, whom they had been taught to regard as no better than bloodthirsty fiends, but whom they found to be valiant, merciful and just! When Richard the Lion-heart, king of England, lay in his tent consumed by a fever, there came into the camp camels laden with snow, from Mount Lebanon, to assuage his disease. It was a present from his enemy, the great Mahometan Saladin--the homage of one brave soldier to another. But when Richard was returning to England it was by a Christian prince, who should have aided him, that he was treacherously seized and secretly confined. This was doubtless only one of many such incidents. Every Crusader must have recognized the difference between what they had anticipated and what they had found. They had seen undaunted courage, chivalrous bearing, intellectual culture and {64} religious toleration far greater than their own. When the Crusaders returned to their native lands, they carried with them the memory of their experiences, and a relish for more polished manners and a higher civilization than that to which they had been accustomed at home. Hence, immediately after the Crusades the arts and sciences began to be sedulously cultivated in Europe. They had departed with the intent of conquering, aye even exterminating their enemies; but by contact with those enemies they had learned in some things "a more excellent way." The words of the Koran inscribed on the banner of Saladin are true: "There is no conqueror but God!" Equally true the words written by the Prophet Esdras, as he sat by the side of the willow-fringed river of Babylon more than twenty-three hundred years ago: "As for truth, it endureth and is always strong; it liveth and conquereth for evermore," (see Apocrypha, I. Esdras, iv., 38). CHAPTER VII. THE DAWN OF MODERN INTELLIGENCE. THE MORNING DAWNS--RISE OF KNIGHTHOOD--PRINCIPLES OF KNIGHTS--APOSTATE PRIESTS HELD IN CONTEMPT--WALDENSES--PERSECUTIONS IN SOUTHERN FRANCE--RISE OF THE INQUISITION--LIBERAL POLICY OF FREDERICK--"EVERLASTING GOSPEL"--ITS REMARKABLE TEACHINGS--BACON'S DISCOVERIES--GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE--AZORES AND CANARY ISLANDS--TRAVELS OF MARCO POLO--CONDITION OF EUROPEAN STATES--MODERN STATES. Those who have waited for the dawning of the morning in the latter part of a clear summer night, can understand the delight experienced at the first tokens of approaching day. At first the rays of light are very faint and only perceptible to a keen and experienced eye. As time wears on the timid approach of twilight becomes more perceptible. The intense blue of the sky begins to soften. The rays that first darted up {65} in the far north-east, though occasionally intercepted by mountains or banks of clouds, gradually swing around to the east. The darkness of the night dissolves into the glories of the dawn. The great watch-stars fade away, one by one. The whole firmament is filled with the inflowing tides of morning light. At length a stream of golden sunlight flashes out from above the hills and turns the dewy tear-drops of flower and leaf into rubies and diamonds. Thus the king of day begins his course arrayed in glories too severe for the gaze of man. In like manner we may in imagination gaze at the dawning of "the dispensation of the fullness of times," and watch the increasing rays of moral, intellectual and spiritual light, feeble indeed at first, yet constantly growing stronger, though sometimes intercepted by mountains of bigotry and mists of error, until at length the gospel's glorious sunshine again lights a benighted world, and the divine authority and Priesthood are restored to the children of men. But let us not anticipate. Let us rather patiently decipher on history's scroll the characters written there by the finger of God. Let us carefully watch the development of His purposes amid the strife and commotion of those perilous times. With the close of the Crusades the midnight darkness of human history ended. Human misery had reached its climax. Superstition and ignorance had done their most terrible work. Thousands, aye even millions had had an opportunity of comparing the teachings and pretenses of Rome with other civilizations. It is almost needless to say that Catholicism had seriously suffered by the comparison. Rome was weighed in the balance and found wanting. Those of the Crusaders who remained in Palestine were soon blended with the Mahometan population, and in a few years scarce a vestige of them remained. Many of the leaders who returned were, like Richard the Lion-Hearted, full of praise of the treatment they had received from their enemies, and spent much of their time in founding various orders of chivalry and knighthood. At first those orders received the benediction of the popes. Some of them were even organized before they returned from the Holy Land. Of such were the famous {66} knights of St. John and Knights Hospitaller. But it was soon found that those brave men loved liberty more than priestcraft, so after a time, notwithstanding their eminent services, they were weakened and divided by stratagem, charges were preferred against them and they were cruelly put to death. The story of their fate will ever, remain one of the darkest pages in the annals of our race. But their death only accelerated the progress of their ideas. The spirit and institutions of chivalry spread rapidly. Treachery and hypocrisy were held by them in detestation. "To speak the truth, to succor the helpless and never turn back from an enemy," was the first vow of the youth who sought the honors of chivalry. In an age of darkness and degradation, chivalry developed the character of woman. It caused her virtues to be appreciated and honored, made her the equal and companion of man, and the object of his love and devotion. The love of God and the protection of women were enjoined as a single duty (see Halem's Middle Ages, page 512). He who was faithful to his vow and true to his wife was sure of salvation in the opinion of the knights, though he failed to perform the penance prescribed by the Romish clergy. Chivalry was the religion of the heart, in a rude and untutored age. It had the effect of infusing more of humanity and generous principle into the operations of war than the ancient nations had any conception of. Hence we seldom or never hear in modern times of such scenes of unmingled atrocity, such deadly treachery, such extensive and cold-blooded massacres as we so frequently read of in ancient pagan or papal history. At the close of the Crusades a great change commenced in society. The minstrels, who with harps had gone about singing ballads, commemorating deeds of heroism and adventure, now changed their theme and sang songs of a very different character. Amid shouts of laughter they went through the land, wagging their heads, and slyly winking their eyes, and singing derisive songs about the amours of the priests, who in turn were not slow to denounce the minstrels as lewd blasphemers and atheists. {67} While the young were singing, the old were thinking; while the gay were carried away with romance and chivalry, the grave and reflecting were falling into heresy. About A. D. 1100, Peter Waldo, a wealthy citizen of Lyons, became convinced of the corruptions of Rome. He, probably aided by others, translated the scriptures into Provencal French. Thus, to him the world is indebted for the first translation of the Bible into a modern tongue. Waldo could not long remain in Lyons. He fled into Germany and afterwards settled in Bohemia, where he died about A. D. 1179. He was the instrument of spreading those liberal ideas in Bohemia, of which John Huss and Jerome of Prague became in after times worthy representatives. At the time of his death it is said that Waldo had five hundred thousand followers. Already, A. D. 1134, Peter de Brueys had been burned at Languedoc for denying infant baptism. Already the valleys of Piedmont were full of Waldenses, who denounced the greed of the popes and the intermingling of bishops in bloodshed and war. At this juncture Innocent III., ascended the pontifical throne. Here was a state of things which, as he considered, demanded immediate attention. The methods to which he resorted for the suppression and extinction of heretics, as misbelievers were called, have made his name forever infamous. Innocent well knew that the greed and the corruptions of the clergy had made them unpopular with the people. He therefore established the mendicant orders of priests, more commonly known under the names of Franciscans and Dominicans. Vowed to poverty and living on alms, they lived and moved among the masses, and yet were held sacred. The accusations and dissipation of luxury so forcibly urged against the regular clergy, were altogether inapplicable to these half-starved wandering fanatics. Once more for a time the popes had gained possession of the ear of the masses. At this time Southern France was the garden of reform. Here the eloquence of Abelard, the patriotism of Arnold and the statesmanship of Frederick wielded a mighty influence. Like seeds falling into good ground, they brought forth much fruit. Already Arnold had been burned at the stake and his {68} ashes thrown on the waves of the Tiber. He has thus become the heritage, as it were, of every nation whose shores are washed by the tides of the sea. Seven centuries have rolled by since then, yet the memory of Arnold of Brescia is ever green; the principles for which he lived and died are now incorporated in every constitutional government on the globe. In no land were his principles more prevalent than in Southern France, and on it Innocent determined to vent his rage. In looking around for a suitable pretext that would rouse the masses and excite them to religious frenzy, he soon discovered the object for which he sought. It was Raymond, earl of Toulouse, who had so far turned Mahometan that he had no less than three wives in emulation of his Saracen neighbors beyond the Pyrenees. An investigation of the domestic life of Raymond, would have shown it to have been far more honorable than that of the popes, themselves. Raymond was therefore arrested on the charge of heresy, of harboring heretics and placing offices of trust in the hands of worthy Jews. His subjects were indignant, for Raymond, it would seem, was a wise and good ruler and much loved by his people. In the disputes that ensued the pope's ambassador was accidentally killed. Innocent considered this a sufficient reason for sending into the earl's dominion an army of nearly five hundred thousand men. There was no alternative for the earl but to submit. He surrendered up his strong places, and even acknowledged the justice of his punishment. He was publicly stripped naked to the waist, and, with a rope around his neck, led to the altar of the cathedral and there scourged. But the humiliation and scourging of the earl was not sufficient to satisfy the soldiery. They had come for blood and plunder, and blood and plunder they must have. Then followed such a scene of horror as tongue or pen cannot describe. The army was officered by Roman and French prelates. Bishops were its generals and an archdeacon its engineer. The pope's ambassador was the commander-in-chief, who, when asked by a subordinate officer at the battle of Beziers, how the Catholics might be distinguished from the misbelievers {69} and saved, replied: "Kill them all, God will know His own in the resurrection." In the church of St. Mary Magdalene, seven thousand persons were massacred. In the city twenty thousand more were slaughtered. The place was then fired and left as a monument of priestly vengeance. [Image: Dungeon of the Inquisition.] {70} At the massacre of Levaur four hundred persons were piled together and burned. The embassador, in making up his dispatches to the pope, said that "they made a wonderful blaze, and then went to burn everlastingly in hell." It was hoped that these horrors would so terrify men that they would never again dare to use the God-given power of reason. The soil had been steeped with the blood of men and the air polluted by their burnings; yet all this did not stifle the truth, nor prevent its growth. Hoping still to effect this, that infernal institution, the Inquisition, was established. Its projectors intended it not only to put an end to public teaching, but also to private thought. When once the Inquisition seized its victim, no person, not even the nearest relative, could converse with him, write to him or intercede for him. He was lost to public view until the hour for his torture or execution had arrived. In Spain alone more than three hundred and forty thousand passed through its terrible ordeal. But this fearful tribunal did not fail to draw upon itself the indignation of men. Such outrages against humanity cannot be perpetrated without bringing retribution in the end. The great forces which were then at work in society, were well illustrated in the characters of the two leading actors. On one side stands Innocent III., his hands red with the blood of his fellow-men, and hesitating at no atrocity in order to accomplish his purposes. On the other, was Frederick II., emperor of Germany and Italy. Frederick's early life had been spent in familiar intercourse with Jews and Arabs. In a Saracen university he had received his education; and to his many other accomplishments, he added the speaking of the Arabic as fluently as a Saracen. Jewish and Saracen philosophers had taught him to sneer at the pretensions of the church of Rome: as might be expected he soon came in conflict with her authority. Between Innocent and Frederick was perpetual enmity; but for a time the conflict was deferred. During this interval the greatness of Frederick was manifested in the internal improvements of his kingdom. He instituted a representative assembly or parliament, which by his sanction framed a {71} code of wise and useful laws. This code asserted the principle of equal rights to all, the peasants, the nobles and the church, and an equal proportion of taxation. It also provided for the toleration of all religions, Catholic, Jewish and Mahometan. Frederick emancipated all the serfs and slaves of his dominions, established cheap courts of justice for the poor, and regulated trade and commerce. He even laid down some of those commercial and political maxims recently discussed by Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill, and only in our own times finally received as true. He also established fairs and markets, for the exchange of products, and offered prizes for mechanical improvements and the best breeds of domestic animals. In Naples he founded a great university with liberal provision for worthy but indigent youths. Under him sculpture, painting, poetry and music were liberally patronized, and the Italian tongue first rose to the dignity of a language. All this was an abomination in the sight of Rome. Gregory IX., succeeded to the pontifical chair in A. D. 1228. Frederick and his parliaments, his laws and universities, his libraries and his toleration were all denounced, and Frederick himself was delivered over to Satan for the good of his soul. For thirty years Frederick combated the power of the church, but he sank in the conflict at last. But the fate of men is by no means an indication of the fate of principles. "Truth crushed to earth will rise again, The eternal years of God are hers." Though denounced then, Frederick is now considered one of the benefactors of his race. Meanwhile an ominous cloud was gathering in the horizon of Rome. The Franciscans, weary of poverty, began to denounce the luxury and corruptions of the regular clergy. At this juncture a strange book made its appearance, which, under the title of "The Everlasting Gospel," struck terror to the hearts of the papal authorities. It was affirmed that an angel brought it from heaven and gave it to the priest called Cyril, who it was said delivered it to the Abbot Joachim, by whom the book was published. Cyril {72} had been dead about fifty years when the work first made its appearance. According to the admissions of Catholic historians, "The work displayed an enlarged and masterly conception of the historical progress of humanity." It claimed that Romanism had done its work and must now make way for a new order of ideas. It proceeded to show that there are epochs, or ages in the divine government of the world. During the Jewish dispensation, it had been under the immediate influence of God the Father. For the next twelve hundred years, it had been under the control of God the Son, but the time has now arrived when the world would be under the special control of the Holy Spirit. That man need no longer treasure up the relics of antiquity, search after the sayings of the early fathers or even solely and implicitly rely on the letter of the ancient scriptures, for the Holy Spirit would manifest itself in visions, dreams and revelations to the children of men. One of the grand principles which it taught was, "the divine right of private judgment." It asserted that genius should not be considered an individual possession, but rather "the gift of God--the visible manifestation of the secret workings of the Holy Spirit for the elevation of the race." In short, it taught that "every invention and discovery was only, in some degree, a revelation of God to man," an unfolding of the secret laws of nature to man's finite understanding. It considered, "those heroes as inspired, who, springing from society at appointed epochs, displayed a mental or moral power beyond the ordinary limits of humanity, and around whom, as around a superior and mysterious power, nations and individuals unhesitatingly gather." It recognized the hand of God in those grand revolutions, those great men, those mighty nations, which, arising from obscurity, communicate a fresh impulse, new vigor and advanced ideas to the human race. It was without doubt the most powerful written work which had appeared since the days of the apostles. No wonder the pope, Alexander IV., took immediate measures for its destruction. So far from being suppressed, its copies were multiplied rapidly, though printing was as yet unknown. {73} On the far off plains of Bohemia, among the rugged mountains of the Tyrol, by Alpine torrents and in the valleys of Piedmont, as well as on the distant shores of England and Scotland, its words were carefully read and pondered. In size it was nearly equal to the New Testament, and by many of the humble classes it was revered as its equal in authority. Many of its truths were conveyed in the form of fable or parable. Historians generally write in the interest of some sect or party, and finding in it little to flatter the pride or vanity of man, have frequently passed it by in silence or have given it merely a passing notice, but it was evidently an instrument in the hands of God for awakening human intellect. Meanwhile the boundaries of human knowledge were greatly enlarged. Chemistry and medicine had taken their places as established sciences. Roger Bacon, who was born A. D. 1214, had already astonished the learned by his experiments and discoveries in optics, mathematics and chemistry. At the present time it is almost impossible to comprehend the difficulties and perils which then attended every step in experimental science. For example, in making some experiments on the properties of antimony, or stibium, as it was then called, it was found that when given to the swine in their food it increased their fatness with surprising rapidity. But when it was administered to some half-starved monks the poor fellows were every one killed. Hence the modern name of antimony, from _anti_, against, and _moine_, a monk. It may also be added that antimony, whether used as a medicine or in the composition of printer's type for the dissemination of truth is equally unhealthy for sectarian bigots of every description. Geographical knowledge had also been greatly extended. Adventurous merchants had sailed along both the eastern and western shores of Africa far south of the equator, for they discovered stars and constellations invisible in northern latitudes. The Azores and Canary Islands had been rediscovered after a lapse of more than a thousand years. Portuguese sailors had already made voyages to far off Iceland, the "Ullima Thule" of the ancients. With the exception of north-eastern Asia and southern Africa, the entire boundaries of the eastern continent were known. Marco Polo, in the {74} interests of Venetian commerce, had explored the vast regions of central Asia, and Moorish merchants of Tripoli, by means of caravans, had trafficked with the tribes of central Africa. The states of Europe had commenced to assume their modern forms; Portugal had become independent of Spain about A. D. 1139; Switzerland, under Rudolph of Hapsburg, became a distinct nationality in A. D. 1151; Ireland was subjugated by Henry II., of England, in A. D. 1172, and British constitutional government commenced by wresting the Magna Charta from King John, in A. D. 1215. In fine arts we find that Cimabue, who was born in A. D. 1140, and his pupil Giotto, who was born in A. D. 1276, established the Italian school of modern painting. The foregoing will indicate to some extent the condition of society at the latter end of the thirteenth century. The darkness of night had commenced to vanish. The morning star of intelligence had arisen, heralding the coming of a peaceful day-- "A day not cloudless or devoid of storm, But sunny for the most and clear and warm." CHAPTER VIII. THE MORNING OF MODERN TIMES. LESSON FROM HEATHEN MYTHOLOGY--VICISSITUDES OF ROMAN CHURCH--BONIFACE POPE--ADVANCEMENT IN CIVILIZATION--WORK OF THE ROMAN CHURCH--INVENTION OF PRINTING--GUTENBERG--BIBLE FIRST PRINTED--COLUMBUS--HIS WONDERFUL DREAM--HIS GREAT VOYAGE--DISCOVERY OF AMERICA--TRIALS AND TRIUMPHS. "It breaks--it comes--the misty shadows fly: A rosy radiance gleams upon the sky; The mountain tops reflect it calm and clear, The plain is yet in shade, but day is near."--_Chas. Mackay_. The fifteenth century may be justly considered the commencement of modern times; for then began the great {75} revolution in science, religion and general knowledge, which has continued until the present time. The time-worn colossus of Rome was tottering under its own weight. Great princes filled the thrones of all the principal countries of Europe. The minds of men seemed awakening as from a sleep. A spirit of scientific research had seized the learned, and a desire for knowledge found its way even to the homes of the lowly. In every grade of society a new life was in motion. "What an age!" exclaimed Huetton, the religious knight of Germany, "studies flourish, minds are awakening; it is a joy merely to be alive!" The history of those times cannot be correctly told by a simple recital of facts. This truth should ever be acknowledged, that God is ever present on that vast theatre where successive generations of men meet and struggle. It is true He is unseen; and the unthinking multitude may pass heedlessly by. To the ignorant crowd, the history of the world presents a confused chaos; but to men of thought, it appears as a majestic temple on which the invisible hand of God is at work. Modern minds might learn a lesson from heathen mythology. The name given by the ancient Greeks to the Deity shows that they had received some primeval revelation of this great truth. He was styled _Zeus_, or the life-giver to all that lives--to nations as well as individuals. From his inspirations Minos and other legislators professed to have received their laws; and on his altars kings and people swore their solemn oaths. This great truth is taught by one of the most beautiful fables of heathen mythology. Thus _Zeus_, the life-giving principle is the father of _Clio_, the muse of history, whose mother is _Mnemosyne_, or memory. History then is the memory of men's acts and God's providences, and combines a heavenly with an earthly nature. She is the daughter of God and man; but, alas, the purblind philosophy of the nineteenth century has not attained to the lofty views of heathen wisdom! What a startling fact, that men brought up amid the glorious light of the present age should deny that divine {76} intervention in human affairs which even the very heathens admitted! The beginning of the fifteenth century finds Boniface IX., on the pontifical throne. During his reign the papal power culminated and began to decline. No empire of ancient or modern times has experienced such marvelous and varied vicissitudes, as those which have befallen the empire of the Roman church. Born in obscurity and reared in adversity, that church nevertheless succeeded in climbing to a loftier throne and grasping the scepter of a more absolute dominion than either a Xerxes or an Alexander could boast. Pretending to despise mere worldly gains, she cunningly turned the channels of riches towards herself, and emptied them without scruple into her own coffers. When Boniface ascended the papal throne, the authority of Rome was apparently greater than ever; but in reality it was much undermined by the advancing labors of civilization. Society had made a great advance in the previous eight hundred years. In the seventh century, a cloud of more than Egyptian darkness overshadowed Europe. Then it was occupied by wandering savages; now it was organized into families, neighborhoods and cities. The seventh century left it full of bondmen; the fifteenth found it without a slave. Where there had been trackless forests there were now the abodes of civilized men. Instead of bloody chieftains drinking out of their enemies' skulls, there were grave professors teaching the laws of nature and the principles of science. Nor was this all. Rome herself had a preparatory work to do, and had she confined herself to that work, and sought not to trammel the minds of men, she would have continued a blessing to the race. Never before in the history of the world was there such a system. From her central seat she could equally take in a hemisphere at a glance or examine the private life of any individual. In all Europe there was not a man too great or too obscure, too insignificant or too desolate for her. Surrounded by her solemnities every one received his name at her altar; her bells chimed at his marriage; and her knell tolled at his funeral. When even to his friends his lifeless corpse had become an offense, she received it into her {77} consecrated ground, there to rest until the great reckoning day. In times of lawlessness and rapine, she sheltered the helpless from the tyrant, and made her sanctuaries a refuge for the despairing and oppressed, But like all man-made systems of religion, she failed by attempting to enforce fixed laws on society in the presence of higher truths and advancing civilization. During all these centuries mankind had slowly but surely advanced and Abraham's seed, the Jews and Saracens, had been the leaders of that progress. Quietly the materials had been gathering until the whole continent was ripe for revolution. Meanwhile God had raised up instruments, by which the commerce, politics and religious thought of Europe were completely changed. In A. D. 1484, there were living in various parts of Europe three persons who were destined to set in motion these mighty movements. These were Gutenberg, Columbus and Luther. Around these men cluster many notable events; and a history of their lives and times would include some of the brightest pages in the annals of our race. Gutenberg was then an old man living at Mentz, in Germany. His broad shoulders, well knit frame and strong arms showed that he was acquainted with labor, and capable of great endurance. His broad and full forehead indicated a man of reflective mind and inventive faculty. His keen, full grey eye revealed a soul full of earnestness, intelligence and power. He had conferred on mankind the most useful invention, since Cadmus, nearly three thousand years ago, taught the barbarian Greeks the art of writing. This invention was the art of printing, which has been such a mighty instrument for the transmission of thought, and the civilization of the world. The Saracens had already invented the art of making paper from linen rags. Previous to this, parchment was the only substance well adapted for writing upon. Paper-making and printing produced great changes in the manufacture of books. By the one, books were greatly cheapened, by the other, greatly multiplied. Thought could now be transmitted cheaply and swiftly in a thousand different directions. Priestcraft saw the {78} danger, and, terrified lest truth should emerge, immediately attempted to control and restrain the press. At this time the art of printing was known to only five or six persons. It is curious to observe that even war was the means of quickening the growth and extension of this wonderful art. In 1462, the storming of Mentz dispersed Gutenberg and his co-workers and gave the secret to the world. In A. D. 1465, it appeared in Italy; in 1469, in France; in 1474, Caxton brought it to England, and in 1477 it was introduced in Spain. Meanwhile Pope Alexander VI., excommunicated all printers not licensed by him, and an order was issued to burn all books not recommended by the papal authorities. But these frantic struggles of the powers of darkness were unavailing. Lovers of books were gratified by seeing them multiplied by thousands. The Bible was printed as early as 1454, and was followed shortly afterwards by other important books. The power of the press continued to increase, until at the present time it is without doubt the most powerful aid to modern civilization. At the beginning of the fifteenth century a profound ignorance prevailed concerning the western regions of the Atlantic. Its vast waters were regarded with awe and wonder; and though from time to time, pieces of carved wood and other relics of Indian skill had floated to the shores of the old world, giving to its wondering inhabitants evidences of land beyond the watery horizon, yet no one ventured to spread a sail and seek that land veiled in mystery and peril. Columbus was the first who had the inspiration to conceive and the heroic courage to brave the mysteries of this perilous deep. He unfolded to the wandering gaze of the inhabitants of Europe a new hemisphere, and opened it to their spirit of discovery and enterprise--opened it also, alas, to their cupidity and cruelty! Christopher Columbus was born in the city Genoa, about 1447, and became one of the most remarkable men of any land or time. Having carefully studied the sciences of geography and astronomy he became convinced that the earth was not flat, as most men then believed, but was really a vast globe or ball. He perceived that when the moon was eclipsed, the {79} shadow which the earth cast upon the moon was round; and he reasoned that as the shadow was round, the object that made that shadow must be round also. He visited the great Saracen schools in Spain, and there received additional proof of this truth. Spain, was then a great maritime nation, and there he conversed with great sea-captains whose voyages were already attracting the attention of the learned. He himself also made a voyage to far off Iceland, and possibly to Greenland, to which country the pope had already sent a bishop and several missionaries. [Image: Christopher Columbus.] In A. D. 1485, when Columbus was about thirty-eight years of age he made his first application to the king of Portugal for aid in his great scheme of maritime discovery, but without success. He then successively applied to Spain, Genoa, Venice and England. But the monarchs of Europe were under the control of Rome, and therefore too busy in aiding her religious persecutions to listen to the appeals of science. Indeed in the very year in which Columbus made his first application, the Inquisition put to death nearly seventeen thousand persons, besides imprisoning thirty-two thousand {80} more. Nor was this all, ninety-two thousand Jews had suffered confiscation of their property, and had been given the unenviable choice of death, banishment or perpetual slavery. And the Saracens, who had dwelt in Spain for more than seven hundred years, or nearly twice as long a time as has elapsed since the discovery of America, were expelled from the lands which they had so long cultivated and beautified, and from their cities which had so long led the world in the arts, sciences and general civilization. One evening in the autumn of A. D. 1485, a man of majestic appearance, pale, care-worn, and though in the meridian of life, with silver hair, leading a little boy by the hand, asked alms at the gate of a Franciscan convent near Polos--not for himself, but only a little bread and water for his child. That man was Columbus, destined to startle the inhabitants of Europe with the discovery of a new continent. But he was obliged to wait until he could take advantage of the commercial rivalry of Spain and Portugal. The trade of Eastern Asia had always been a source of immense wealth to the nations that had controlled it. For more than a thousand years Venice had held the keys to that commerce. As discoveries extended, other nations perceived the possibility of opening new routes to the East and thus rivalling the commercial greatness of Venice. One of these plans was to sail around the southern end of Africa, the other to sail directly westward across the Atlantic. It was plain to every thinking person that if India could be reached by sailing westward, maritime power would pass from the Mediterranean countries to those upon the Atlantic coast. About this time Columbus had a wonderful dream, or vision. An unknown voice spoke to him, and said: "God will cause thy name to be wonderfully resounded throughout the earth; and will give thee the keys to the ocean which are held with strong chains." From this time forward, Columbus looked upon himself as chosen from among men to accomplish the purposes of heaven; to bring the ends of the earth together, that all nations, and peoples, and tongues might be united under the banner of the Redeemer. {81} Isabella and Ferdinand were then joint king and queen of Spain. Meanwhile, Columbus had gained many influential friends, among whom was a Jewish sea-faring family named Pinzon, and Luis de Santangel the spiritual adviser of Queen Isabella. At this time Columbus seemed more likely to fall into the hands of the Inquisition and suffer for his heresy than to succeed in his great enterprise. At this juncture Luis de Santangel obtained audience with the queen, and addressed her with all the energy of a man who speaks for the last time in behalf of a favored project. Isabella listened attentively, hesitated a moment and then pledged her jewels to raise the amount necessary for the expedition. Contemporary writers have been enthusiastic in their descriptions of Isabella: but time has sanctioned their eulogies. She is one of the purest and most beautiful characters on the pages of history. At length, on the 17th of April, A. D. 1492, Columbus was ushered into the royal presence, and received his commission. Immediately he commenced preparations, and on the 3rd of August, 1492, set sail on his ever-memorable voyage. The expedition consisted of three small vessels: the _Santa Maria_, commanded by Columbus; the _Pinta_, by Martin Alonzo Pinzon; and the _Nina_, by Vincent Yanez Pinzon. "The Pinzons were doubly interested in this voyage, for while they sought for a new and profitable route of commerce, they doubtless also felt a desire to find an asylum for their persecuted Jewish brethren." (See Lovel's American History, Canadian edition.) Having touched at the Canary Islands they sailed directly westward. On losing sight of the last trace of land the hearts of the crews failed them. Behind them was everything dear to the heart of man: country, family, friends, life itself; before them everything was chaos, mystery and peril. Columbus tried in every way to soothe their distress and inspire them with his own glorious anticipations. He described to them the magnificent countries to which he was about to conduct them: the islands of the Indian seas, teeming with {82} gold and precious stones; the regions of Mangi and Cathay with their cities of unrivalled wealth and splendor. Nor were these promises made for purposes of deception. Columbus evidently believed that he would realize them all. For many days they were gently but speedily wafted over a tranquil sea, but when near the middle of the Atlantic, they, for the first time, observed the variation of the needle of the compass, which no longer pointed directly north, but had veered around and pointed in a somewhat different direction. [Image: Ships of Columbus.] Columbus was greatly perplexed yet dared not communicate his thoughts to anyone. It seemed as if the very laws of nature were changing, as they advanced, and they were entering another world subject to unknown influences; that the compass was about to lose its mysterious virtue, and without that guide what was to become of them on a vast and trackless ocean? Columbus gave an explanation of this phenomenon which satisfied the crew though unsatisfactory to himself. His situation was daily becoming more critical in proportion as they {83} approached the regions where he expected to find land. At length, on the 9th of October, the crew broke out in open mutiny and threatened to throw him overboard, designing then to return to Spain. A compromise was effected, that if they would continue to sail westward three days longer, and no land was discovered he would then return. Two days passed away and still no sight of land. [Image: Landing of Columbus.] {84} On the evening of the second day, Columbus remained on deck. What were the feelings that pervaded his breast no one but God can tell; with nothing but the heaving ocean beneath him and the silent stars o'er head. Anxiously he stands upon the prow of his vessel and peers into the darkness. It is one o'clock! Suddenly a gleam as of a torch is seen in the horizon! Is it a flash of phosphoric light as is sometimes seen on the surface of these tropical seas, or is it a blaze of fire indicating the habitations of men? Soon the joyful cry of "Ho! land, ho!" resounded throughout the ship, and the booming of cannon announced the discovery to the other vessels. When the dawning of the morning came, they beheld in all their grandeur and beauty, the hills and valleys, streams and forests of a new world. The men who had been so lately mutinous now came forward and bowed down before Columbus, and did homage to him as though he were a god. Trials before triumphs have ever been the lot of self-taught men, and will be to the end of time. If the chosen heroes of this earth were counted over, they would be found to be men who stood alone and labored and waited; while those for whom they agonized and toiled poured upon them contumely and scorn. The very martyrs of the past who were hooted at, reviled and spit upon by the mob, are the ones who are honored now. They suffered cruel tortures and burnings; to-day, the children of this generation are gathering up their scattered ashes to deposit them in the golden urn of a nation's history. {85} CHAPTER IX. INFLUENCE OF ISRAEL--DISCOVERERS AND REFORMERS. HISTORY IN WORDS--BRITISH COAT OF ARMS--THE TEN TRIBES--ACCOUNT OF ESDRAS--DISPERSION OF THE TRIBES--MIXED SEED OF ISRAEL--EFFECT ON EUROPEAN SOCIETY--JEWISH INFLUENCE--DISCOVERY OF CAPE OF GOOD HOPE--PACIFIC OCEAN DISCOVERED--MAGELLAN'S VOYAGE--DISCOVERS CAPE HORN--DISTANCE SAILED--DEATH OF MAGELLAN--VOYAGE COMPLETED--ITS EFFECT ON THE PUBLIC--HUSS AND JEROME BURNED--JOHN ZISKA--PERSECUTIONS OF WALDENSES--CAPTURE OF MENTZ--DISPERSION OF PRINTERS--HANS BOHEIM--JOSS FRITZ--SALE OF INDULGENCES--MARTIN LUTHER BURNS THE POPE'S LETTER--GRAND COUNCIL AT WORMS--ROME IN A RAGE--LUTHER KIDNAPPED. One of the most pleasing and at the same time instructive amusements in which a thoughtful mind can engage, is to trace the derivation of certain words of our language to the primitive times and people where they originated, and thus learn the social and mental condition of the people who first used them. It is pleasing to know that _dish_ and _mop_, _mat_ and _rug_, and other household terms are the very words that were spoken by the women of ancient Britain, two thousand years ago, and have been handed down from generation to generation, with little or no variation. In like manner the words _ax_, _plow_, _house_, _post_, _bed_, _fire_, and hundreds of others, can be easily discerned under the old Saxon forms. And as these words are precisely those that would be used by a rude or half-civilized people, while those words that refer to a more advanced state of society cannot be traced to our Saxon ancestors we may correctly infer the extent of their knowledge {86} and social condition. Further, as the ancient British words refer to domestic affairs while those of Saxon origin refer exclusively to the avocations of man, we can easily perceive that the Anglo-Saxon tongue has originated from the marriage of the ancient British women with their Saxon conquerors. Hence Max Muller, the learned professor of languages, in the university at Oxford, England, very justly remarks that "by means of philology we have a more accurate record of our race than any narrative written by prejudice or ill-informed historians." Now it is generally admitted that Germans, Anglo-Saxons and men descended from these nationalities, in one word, German thought, led the van of progress in science, literature and religious thought, during the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and in fact has continued to do so up to the present time. From the fifth century, when Attila, king of the Huns, declared himself "The scourge of God," wave after wave of conquest by these hardy warriors had swept over the hills and plains of western and southern Europe, until their blood and their love of civil and religious liberty were infused into every European nation. Now the language of the Goths, or ancient Germans, plainly indicates that they were not the primitive people of Europe, but had conquered and intermingled with them in the same manner as the Saxons conquered and intermingled with the inhabitants of ancient Britain, or the Spaniards with those of Mexico. But it may be asked, whence came they? In this connection two other questions may also be asked: why is it that the German language contains so many idioms and terms that bear a close relationship to the language of the ancient Hebrews and Chaldeans? (_See Max Muller's lectures on language_.) And why is it that the lion, which was the emblem of Judah, and the unicorn, which was the emblem of Israel, are in modern times, emblazoned on the coat of arms of England? (_See Ant. of Jews by Josephus, also Num. xxiii., 22 and Deut. xxxiii, 17_.) These questions are worthy of deep and {87} careful consideration; and to better understand them it will be necessary to briefly trace the history of the children of Israel. As is well known, after the death of Solomon the kingdom was divided into two parts, known as the kingdom of Judah and the kingdom of Israel. In 730 B. C, Hashem, king of Israel, became tributary to Shalmaneser, king of Assyria. Nine years later his capital was taken and the greater portion of the people were carried away captive beyond the river Euphrates, and people from other countries were put in possession of their inheritance. In the Apocrypha the Prophet Esdras states that these ten tribes went a journey of a year and a half into the north country. He says: "These are the ten tribes which were carried away prisoners out of their own land in the time of Hosea the king, whom Shalmaneser the king of Assyria led away captive; and he carried them over the waters so they came into another land. But they took this council among themselves, that they would leave the multitude of the heathen and go forth into a farther country where never mankind dwelt, that they might there keep their statutes which they never kept in their own land. For through that country there was a great way to go, namely, in a year and a half's journey, and the same region is called Arsareth." (_II. Esdras, xiii, 40, 41, 42 and 45_.) Now by looking on a map of the eastern continent it will be seen at once that the Black Sea and the Caucasus mountains lie directly north of the river Euphrates. It is quite possible that the Black Sea is the "waters" to which Esdras refers. Also Josephus, in speaking of the return of the Jews under Esdras, says, "Many of them took their effects with them and came to Babylon, as very desirous of going down to Jerusalem, but then the entire body of the people of Israel remained in that country, wherefore there are but two tribes in Asia and Europe subject to the Romans, while the ten tribes are beyond the Euphrates till now, and are an immense multitude and not to be estimated by numbers." (_Ant. Book II. chapter 5_.) Perhaps the words of the ancient Roman are not altogether fable when he says that "Beyond the Borean (Caucasus) Mountains live a people who are sublime in their virtue since they {88} dwell very distant form the provinces, in great simplicity and give great heed to the oracles which their gods have given unto them." Thus we have not only the sure word of prophecy, but likewise the admission of heathen writers. Max Muller, in his work on language, in referring to the migrations of ancient European tribes, says, "Two great routes lay before them, one by way of the valleys of the Don and Volga across modern Russia to the shores of the Baltic, the other along the shores of the Black Sea to the valley of the Danube." He also demonstrates the close relationship that exists between the Hebrew language and the language of the people of Finland in western Russia. Considering that more than twenty-five centuries have rolled by since the dispersion of Israel, sufficient time has elapsed for mighty changes. Muller adds in another place, "The time was when the ancestors of the Indians, the Fins, the Slavonic and German tribes of central Europe and the modern English lived in one enclosure, nay, under the same roof." In the latter part of the second century or beginning of the third, these new settlers had spread as far westward as the Danube, and settled in the Roman province of Dacia, which lay on the north bank of that river. They also asked permission to cross the river which was granted under certain stipulations. Still they continued to increase in numbers, and by inter-marriage with the native tribes had in the fifth century become formidable enemies of Rome and under the name of Dacians, Huns, Vandals, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Suevi and Heruli precipitated themselves upon Italy and wreaked a terrible vengeance. The history of some of these, as the Huns for example, may be traced to the second century before the Christian era and to the very locality indicated by the Prophet Esdras and by Josephus. For over twenty-six centuries these scattered tribes have continued to mix up with the nations of the earth, but in their long migrations westward they have lost many of their distinctive characteristics. {89} Doubtless it is from this mixed seed of Israel that many, aye nearly all, the great reformers, inventors and discoverers have sprung. This infusion of new blood had a marked effect on the nations of western Europe, but more especially on Italy, which had continued to decline, from the days of Augustus, until these nations mingled with the degenerate ancient race, and infused new life into her decaying civilization. The result was that a succession of poets, painters, sculptors, philosophers, inventors and discoverers sprung up in Italy and western Europe unparalleled in the history of the world. Above all, the invention of printing had just come in time to spread whatever new ideas were afloat, with a rapidity never known before. In fifty-two years from the time of that invention came the discovery of America. Five years later two Jewish priests, Rabbi Abraham, and Rabbi Joseph, brought to King John II., of Portugal, a Saracen map of the entire coast of Africa. Thus instructed King John sent out several expeditions in one of which Brazil was accidentally discovered. Aided by this, Vasco de Gama set sail, and on Nov. 20th, 1497, rounded the cape of Good Hope. Sixteen years later Balboa discovered the Pacific Ocean, and six years still later, or in A. D. 1519, Magellan set out on his memorable voyage to circumnavigate the world. The story of that voyage of wild adventure seems never to grow old by repeating. The narrative of that voyage is too long for this brief sketch, but a few items may not be out of place. After many months of sailing in strange seas, he at length discovered a new land to which he gave the name of Patagonia. Here he found giants clad in skins, one of whom was greatly terrified at seeing his own image in a looking-glass. {90} [Image: The Straits of Magellan.] His perseverance was at last rewarded, and after fifteen months of struggling and adventures he discovered Cape Horn, passed through the strait which now bears his name and entered the Great South Sea, on Nov. 28th, 1520. An eye-witness relates that he shed tears of joy when he recognized its great expanse, and that God had brought him where he might grapple with its unknown dangers. Admiring its placid {91} surface he courteously gave it the name it will ever bear, the "Pacific Ocean." Magellan was the first European to discover that when the nights are long in the northern hemisphere they are correspondingly short in the southern. When he passed through the straits the nights were only four hours long. At the same time in Spain they were nearly fifteen hours long. And now the great sailor having burst through the barrier of the great American continent steered for the north-west. For three months and fifteen days he sailed on and on, but saw no inhabited land. He and his crew were compelled by famine to soak old leather in the sea, then boil it and make of it a wretched food; and to drink water that had become putrid by keeping; yet he resolutely held his course, though his men were dying daily. He estimated that he sailed over this unknown sea more than twelve thousand miles. In the whole history of human undertakings there is nothing that exceeds, if indeed there is anything that equals, this voyage of Magellan. That of Columbus dwindles away in comparison. It is a display of super-human courage and perseverance, an exhibition of heroic resolution, not to be diverted from its purpose by any motive, or any suffering, but inflexibly persisting to its end. This unparalleled resolution met its reward at last. He reached the Ladrones, a group of islands north of the equator. Thence he sailed to the Spice Islands, where he met with European merchants. He had accomplished his object and proven that the earth was round. At an island called Zebu, or Mutan, he was murdered either by the natives or by his own men. In a few days more his crew learned that they were actually in the vicinity of their friends. On the morning of Nov. 8th, 1521, they entered Tidore, the capital of the Spice Islands, and the king swore upon the Koran alliance to the sovereign of Spain. Magellan's crew continued their voyage amid hardships and perils, and at length, on Sept. 10th, 1522, the good ship, _San Vittoria_, sailed into the very port from which she had departed just three years and twenty-seven days before. She had accomplished the greatest achievement in the history of the {92} human race. She had circumnavigated the earth. Magellan lost his life in his great enterprise, but he made his name immortal. His lieutenant Sebastian d'Elcano received the proudest and noblest medal ever given to a sailor. It was a golden globe belted with this inscription, _Primus circumdedisti me_--"Thou hast first circumnavigated me." At the present time it is almost impossible to conceive the effect of Magellan's voyage had upon the public mind. One of the leading dogmas of Rome had been that the earth was flat. Now it was proved that the earth was indeed a vast ball. If Rome had been in error in this case, where was her infallibility? Might not some of her other teachings be equally false? Many leading minds began to doubt her authority. Even Pope Leo X., is said to have become skeptical. At all events he chose to spend his leisure time in his library reading to his sister out of the beautiful new printed books which were then throwing a flood of intellectual light on all grades of society. The philosophy of Aristotle and Plato, the poems of Homer and Virgil, the sciences of the Saracens and the narratives of the adventures of Columbus and Vasco de Gama had more charms for him than burning and torturing heretics as his predecessors had done. While science was undermining the influence of Rome in one direction, religious thought was busy at work in another. That great religious revolution commonly called the Reformation had long been gathering its forces; and already sounded from behind the Alps the loud clarion of battle. The memory of John Huss and Jerome of Prague was still fresh in the minds of the populace. Huss had been burned at Constance, in A. D. 1415, and Jerome the year following. When the news of these barbarous executions reached Bohemia, it threw the whole kingdom into confusion and a civil war was kindled from the ashes of the martyrs. John Ziska, the leader of the populace, collected an army of forty thousand men and defeated the emperor, Sigismund, in several battles. When Ziska found that he was dying, he gave orders that his skin should be made into a drum which was long the symbol of victory to his followers. {93} [Image: The Rack.] The Waldenses also who dwelt in the valleys of Switzerland and Piedmont had lively memories of cruel wrongs. Their ancestors had been destroyed by Pope Innocent III., and as late as A. D. 1487, they had been driven to the mountains and obliged to wander there until their feeble and little ones were {94} left buried in the Alpine snows. No wonder they chanted that grand old Hymn, commencing: "O God, arise, avenge Thy slaughtered Saints, Whose bones lie bleaching on the Alpine mountains cold." The writings of Dante and Petrarch, Reuchlin and Erasmus, were already scattered in every direction, by means of the printing press, and wielded a mighty influence in society. The siege and capture of Mentz, in A. D. 1462, had the effect of scattering Guttenberg and his co-workers. Printing presses were established immediately afterwards in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Holland, France and England. In 1476, on the banks of the river Maine, in central Germany had appeared a strange character named Hans Boheim. He professed to be a prophet of God, to have received visions, and to have been sent to proclaim that the kingdom of heaven was at hand. More than forty thousand men flocked to his standard. At length the bishops of Mentz and Wurtzburg interfered, dispersed the crowd and burned the prophet. He was but a sign of the times--"a voice crying in the wilderness." His memory was not forgotten. In 1493, another movement took place, and again in 1501. Maximilian, the emperor of Germany, ordered the leaders to be quartered alive and their wives and children to be banished. But the fire was only slumbering. In 1512, it commenced again on a larger scale. It found a leader in Joss Fritz, a soldier of commanding presence and great natural eloquence, used to battle and above all to patience. He was one of those who had escaped being quartered. His banner was blue silk with a white cross, and underneath the motto, "O Lord, help the righteous." Fritz was the William Tell of his times. No wonder his name is a favorite one among the Germans. These conflicts, commonly known as the "Wars of the Peasants," had shown the masses that with more union and better information they were the real strength of the nation. Such was the condition of affairs in the very locality where, four years afterwards, burst forth the great religious revolution known as the Reformation. Society seemed waiting for a coming man of strong will and fervent religious nature, who should give something of organization {95} to those movements, and gather around him an irresistible phalanx of the noble, the learned and ardent spirits of the age. This man was Martin Luther. He came from his cell a shaven monk, in his hand no sceptre, on his head no crown. But he had a human heart within him; and it gushed out for human woe. Strong in the principles of right he hurled the firebrands of truth right and left and kindled such a flame that all the waves of error could never quench it. The immediate cause of the Reformation was when John Tetzel, in 1574, was sent into Germany to sell indulgences. The church of Rome had long taught the people that the pope and clergy under him held the keys of heaven. At this time the pope was in need of means to complete that great cathedral called St. Peter's Church. He therefore issued indulgences or pardons for all kinds of sins. These pardons or indulgences entitled whoever bought them to a free passport to heaven. Nor was this all. A man of sufficient wealth could purchase the pardon of a sin he _intended_ to commit. Thus the civil law was shorn of its power and the nation of its wealth. This bold blasphemy provoked the indignation of a people already ripe for revolution. Luther, then thirty-four years of age, began to denounce the sale of these indulgences. In 1520, the pope issued a decree, or bull, as it was called, condemning Luther and his writings. Luther in turn defied the pope. When the news reached him he took the decree and all the Roman books he could find, and on December 10, 1520, burned them in a public place just outside the walls of the city of Wittenberg. Then Luther was summoned to appear before a grand council, or court, to be held in the city of Worms. His friends procured him a passport or pledge of security, lest the papal authorities should take his life. Accordingly, on the 17th of April, 1521, Luther appeared before the council, or diet, as it was called. The Emperor Charles V., of Germany, presided in person. When Luther was asked to recant his opinions and deny his own teachings, he not only refused to do so but also pleaded his own cause {96} with eloquence and power. So powerful were his arguments that many of the nobility were won over to his side. A poor monk, the son of a simple peasant, clad in the armor of truth, had defied and defeated the proudest potentates of earth! No wonder that Rome was in a rage! No wonder that the friends of Luther deemed it advisable to kidnap him and carry him away to the castle of Wartburg, in the solitudes of the Thuringian forest! No wonder that those valiant knights, Ulrich von Hutten and Franz von Sickingen, prepared to use their swords and eloquence in defense of right! We may not in all things admire the character of Luther or defend his acts; yet no grander figure appears on the pages of modern history than Luther, as, with one hand upon his breast and the other lifted towards heaven, he refused the emperor's demand to retract his writings or deny the truth, closing with these memorable words, "_Hier stehe ich, Gott helfe mir. Amen_." "Here I stand, God help me. Amen." The battle that Luther fought was not only for Germany and the sixteenth century, but for all countries, all peoples and all coming times. It was a battle not merely against the pope, but against all powers religious or secular, that seek to enchain the human mind or prevent the free exercise of religion. {97} CHAPTER X. RESULTS OF THE REFORMATION. GERMANY AROUSED--PEASANTS' WAR--MUNTZER'S PROCLAMATION--EMPEROR QUARRELS WITH THE POPE--RESULTS IN OTHER COUNTRIES--GROWTH OF MODERN LANGUAGES--LUTHER'S CROWNING WORK--POWER OF SUPERSTITION--WITCHCRAFT--REFORMERS NOT INSPIRED--EXTRACTS FROM MOSHEIM--BATTLE-AX OF GOD--COPERNICUS--GALILEO--NEWTON--DEATH OF BRUNO--CHANGE IN COMMERCIAL AFFAIRS--SPANISH ARMADA--BLESSED BY THE POPE--DESTROYED BY A STORM--ITS EFFECT ON EUROPE--ENGLAND'S INFLUENCE AND POSITION--AMERICA THE LAND OF REFUGE. As the booming of cannon, announcing the beginning of battle echoes and re-echoes far and wide, so did the result of the council, or diet, in the city of Worms. The answer of Luther was repeated by thousands of sympathizing friends. Instead of growing fainter as it died away in the distance, it increased in intensity and power, till its echoes reverberated through every valley, and over every hill-top in central Germany. Within twenty-four hours Ulrich von Hutten and Franz von Sickingen had mustered four hundred armed knights and eight thousand foot soldiers all ready to fight, or, if need be, to die for the principles Luther had advocated. The commotion continued until it culminated in a civil war, in A. D. 1525. The horrors of that war no tongue can tell. Nightly the papal party burned at the stake the prisoners they had taken. Amid the groans of wounded and dying peasants on the battle field around them, and the drunken revelry of the camp, might be heard the laughter of the nobles as they watched the struggles and heard the shrieks of their victims as they slowly roasted to death. But the revolution continued to spread. The rage of {98} the peasants, who had so long been crushed by the iron heel of oppression, knew no bounds. A few extracts from the proclamation of their leader, Munzer, may not be out of place, as they indicate to some extent the nature of the conflict then going on! "Arise and fight the battle of the Lord! On! on! on! Now is the time; the wicked tremble when they hear of you. Be pitiless! Heed not the groans of the impious! Rouse up ye townsmen and villagers; above all, rouse up ye free men of the mountains! On! on! on! while the fire is burning, while the warm sword is yet reeking with the slaughter! Give the fire no time to go out, the sword no time to cool! Kill all the proud ones! While they reign over you it is no time to talk of God! Amen. "Given at Muhlhausen, 1525. "THOMAS MUNZER, "servant of God against the wicked." Such was the character of the men with whom the pope had to deal. At length the emperor, Charles V., found it politic to side with his people. Meanwhile Clement VII., succeeded to the papal throne, in 1523. The emperor and the new pope soon quarrelled, and, in 1527, a German army acting under the direction of the German emperor captured and sacked the imperial city of Rome, and more pitilessly pillaged it than it had been a thousand years before by the Goths and Vandals. From this time Rome ceased to be the capital of the professedly Christian world. But the revolution stayed not here. Its principles of reform passed over the Alps and found a hearty welcome among the hardy mountaineers of Switzerland. It reached the Rhine and with the current of that mighty river flowed onward to the sea. The sturdy sons of Holland received its teachings; and the patient peasantry of Denmark, Norway and Sweden accepted it as an improvement on the past. Germany continued in the throes of revolution for more than thirty years, or until the peace of Augsburg, in 1555. In the meantime England had revolted from Rome, in 1532; Denmark followed in 1538; Geneva in 1541; Norway and Sweden in 1550; Scotland in 1560; and Holland in 1581. {99} Never in the history of the world was fulfilled more literally the words that our Savior said in reference to the truth: "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace but a sword," etc. (_See Matt. x. 34, 38_.) For more than a hundred years Europe continued to be the theatre of civil wars, until the nations were completely exhausted--in some cases their power and influence permanently weakened. We might in view of its immediate results, be inclined to look upon the Reformation as producing more evil than good. Yet amid the wars, bloodshed, anarchy and persecutions, society made rapid steps in the path of progress. The Reformation promoted national growth, and mental activity. During the middle ages, the various nations of Europe were in the condition of colonies to a vast religious empire whose center and seat of government was Rome. But after the peace at Augsburg, 1555, all this was changed. Each nation that accepted the Reformation, became socially and religiously as well as politically free. Rome was shorn of her power. She was no longer the supreme court of appeal; nor did the high dignitaries of those realms look to her for preferment. The Reformation was obviously only partially successful. Where it succeeded it infused new energy; where it failed it produced reaction. Those nations that rejected the light, glimmering though it was, fell back into the double bondage of kingcraft and priestcraft. The Bastile of France was a symbol of the one; the Inquisition of Spain a type of the other. Wave after wave of revolution has swept over these unhappy countries. The guilty streets of Paris and Madrid have been deluged with blood until their population has sunk down into religious apathy or brazen infidelity. In no particular was the effect of the Reformation more apparent than in the impulse it gave to national languages and literature. Latin had been the language of the Roman empire and Roman church. But when the nations revolted from this central authority they immediately began to cultivate their own native tongues. Learning was no longer confined to the {100} few, nor communicated through the medium of a foreign language, but became the heritage of the people. The crowning work of Luther was in giving to the German people his German Bible and hymns. The earnest, vigorous German in which they were written fixed the future style of the language. The classic German of to-day is the German of Luther's Bible, and Luther's hymns. In England, too, the same thing is to be marked. The English translation of the Bible, together with other works of that era, such as Shakspeare's dramas, Milton's poems and Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, have done more to stamp the character of our modern English than all later publications. It may be asked, Why did not the human mind, in this era, free itself from its trammels, claim its true freedom and concede it to every one? The answer is, the range of knowledge was too narrow. The minds of men could not take a broader view of things than the horizon of their knowledge let them. Ignorance and superstition still held a terrible sway. It is true that the whole character of that age bears the stamp of the German rather than the Italian intellect. It was the energy of a Luther, the learning and loving heart of a Melanchthon, the polished wit of an Erasmus, which then gave impulse and direction to the thoughts and opinions of the world, much more than the frivolous jesting of the infidel priests who thronged the streets of Rome and the halls of the Vatican. Yet even these great men were controlled by superstition, to a very great extent. Witchcraft was universally believed in at that time. Hundreds, aye thousands, of unoffending old women, with no other fault than that they were poor and old, were burned to death as witches, instead of being treated with that respect due to those who have lived many years and spent their best days for the good of others. Social eminence was no safeguard against these delusions. When it was affirmed that Agnes Sampson, with two hundred other witches, had sailed in sieves from Leith to North Berwick church to hold a banquet with the devil, James I., {101} had the torture applied to the wretched woman, and took pleasure in putting appropriate questions to her. It then was charged that the two hundred old women had baptized and then drowned a black cat, thereby raising a dreadful storm in which the ship that carried the king narrowly escaped being wrecked. Upon this, Agnes was condemned to the flames. She died protesting her innocence, and piteously calling on Jesus to have mercy on her for Christian men would not. Of all the early reformers, Luther and Melanchthon were perhaps the freest from superstition, and yet even they devoutly believed that in the Tiber, not far distant from the pope's palace, a monster had been found having the head of an ass, the body of a man and the claws of a bird. After searching their Bibles to find out what the prodigy meant, they at length concluded that it was one of the signs and wonders which were to precede the fall of the papacy, and published a pamphlet about it. Yet Luther and Melanchthon were the leaders of a great movement, the teachers of a great nation, and were in every respect the most influential persons in that nation. The people, credulous and grossly ignorant, listened and believed. We, at this distance of time and living in another realm of thought, can form but a faint conception of the effect these horrible conceits produced upon them. But the greatest need of those times was the want of divine authority. The writings of Luther, Melanchthon, Erasmus and Calvin were never considered as inspired. Luther himself never professed to have divine authority for his teachings; but on the other hand denounced the very idea of inspiration. When, in 1525, Munzer and his associates (commonly known as the prophets of Zwickaw) claimed divine authority, Luther was foremost in denouncing and persecuting them, and their followers. According to Mosheim, their principal crimes were in denying infant baptism and the right of a distinct class to preach for hire; and asserting that "God still continued to reveal His will to chosen persons by dreams and visions." (_See Mosheim Vol. II, p. 128_.) They also claimed "that God in His own good time would erect to Himself a holy church possessing a perfect organization, and would set {102} apart for the execution of this grand design, a certain number of chosen instruments divinely assisted and prepared for this chosen work, by the aid and inspiration of His Holy Spirit." As a consequence they claimed the right to rebaptizing persons coming from other churches. Mosheim further admits, "The extreme difficulty of correcting or influencing by the prospect of suffering, or even by the terrors of death, minds that are firmly bound by the ties of religion. In almost all the countries of Europe, an unspeakable number of those unhappy people preferred death, in its worst forms, to a retraction of their opinions. Neither the view of the flames that were kindled to consume them, nor the ignominy of the gibbet, nor the terrors of the sword, could shake their invincible constancy or make them abandon tenets that appeared dearer to them than life itself and all its enjoyments." (_See Mosheim Vol. II, p. 131_.) To this sect and its principles Luther was bitterly opposed, but this opposition argues nothing in his favor, nor does it strengthen his authority. It may also be added that if Rome had divine authority, Luther had no right to secede from her. But if, as Luther claimed, she had through apostasy lost her authority, then, it may be asked, From whence did Luther receive his authority? In all this, Luther's actions were indeed logical, but fatal to the claims of modern sectarians who profess to be the ministers of Christ. Luther was simply the battle-ax of God to hew down the edifice of popery which stood in the way of human progress. The churches, which, under the leadership of Luther, Melanchthon, Zwingle, Calvin, Knox and Henry VIII. of England, separated from Rome received the name of Protestant. And this very name implies that they were merely a protest against Rome, her teachings and authority. The right of protesting being once granted, it follows that others, also, have the right to protest against them. This principle caused the long and bloody wars which were only closed by the peace of Westphalia, in 1648, and then it was found that central and northern Europe had cast off the intellectual tyranny of Rome, and had established the right of every man to think for himself. {103} The Protestant party having thus established its existence, by protest and separation, was obliged to submit to the operation of the same principles. A decomposition into many rival sects was inevitable. These having no central or controlling authority, and no longer in fear of their great Roman adversary, commenced bitter warfares on each other; Lutherans persecuted Catholics and Catholics persecuted Protestants, and they in turn persecuted Puritans. Even Calvin proved the darkness of his own mind when he put to death the celebrated philosopher and physician, Michael Servetus, whose greatest crimes were that in religion he denied that the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost were one and the same person; and in science he had partially succeeded in discovering the circulation of the blood. The circumstances also were of the most atrocious character. For two hours he was roasted in the flames of a slow fire, begging for the love of God that they would put on more wood, or do something to end his torture. Yet the death of Servetus was not without advantage to the world. Men asked with amazement and indignation if the atrocities of the Inquisition were again to be revived. They saw at once that intolerance was not confined to the Romish church. In spite of all these commotions, science was making rapid progress. Copernicus lived at the same time as Luther and died two years before him. His was as brave a life as ever lived in story. For thirty-six years--at the very time the Protestant struggle was raging--he was working at that immortal book, in which he so clearly demonstrates the motions of the earth and the revolutions of the planets around the sun. But he did not dare to publish it until there was a lull in the political storm. He was then an old man in broken health. His book was in the printer's hands when he was on his death bed. He waited at death's door from day to day. At length the messenger arrived with the printed book. He received it with tears in his eyes, composed himself and died. Copernicus was followed by Tycho Brahe, Kepler and Galileo, and last, but by no means least, Isaac Newton, that scientific giant, who burst through the fetters of the ages, and taught {104} man the laws, harmony and grandeur of the Creator's works. During these troublous times Leonardo da Vinci wrote his celebrated works on mathematics and natural philosophy; and the arts of painting, sculpture and music were greatly improved under the direction of Titian, Corregio, Michael Angelo and Filippo Neri. A few years later Bruno wrote his work on the plurality of worlds. Copernicus having died soon after the publication of his works, was beyond the reach of his persecutors. Galileo was brought before the Inquisition, and after years of imprisonment, only saved his life by denying the great truths he had discovered. But Bruno heroically refused to recant, and was tortured to death February 16th, 1700, a martyr to the cause of truth. While these things were transpiring, great changes had taken place in the maritime and commercial affairs of the world. Bold navigators had sailed along the whole eastern coast of America, and a large part of the western coast. Tolerably accurate maps of the outlines of the western hemisphere, had been published as early as 1590. After these discoveries, the great centers of commerce were no longer to be found on the shores of the Mediterranean, but had shifted to the shores of the Atlantic. England by her geographical position, betwixt the two continents, and in the very center of the inhabitable portion of the earth, as well as the indomitable energy of her sons, had rapidly become the foremost commercial nation of the world. The great naval armament called the Invincible Armada, was equipped for the subjugation of England; but in the providence of God she destroyed the Armada and paralysed the influence of Spain. In May, 1588, a Spanish fleet of one hundred and thirty ships sailed from the harbor of Lisbon for the English coast. Some of these ships were the largest that had yet been built; they carried eight thousand sailors, and twenty thousand Spanish troops. The pope had blessed the expedition and offered the sovereignty of England as the conqueror's prize. The Catholics throughout Europe were so confident of success {105} that they named the armament "The Invincible Armada." So vast was the number of ships that, as they sailed along in the form of an inverted V (thus ^), or in the form of a vast flock of wild geese, the distance from one extremity of the fleet to the other was more than seven miles. But they were destined to realize that "God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform; He plants His footsteps in the sea, And rides upon the storm." Scarcely had the fleet entered the English channel when a storm arose which lasted more than a week. The wind blew a perfect gale from the south-west, so that it was impossible for them to return if they had so desired. The line of battle could no longer be kept up. They drifted helplessly and in disorder up the straits of Dover. When nearly opposite Calais, the English loaded several vessels with gunpowder, set them on fire and sent them into the Spanish fleet. The explosions caused terrible havoc. The Spanish admiral no longer thought of victory, but only of escape. But his disasters were not yet ended. Many of his vessels were wrecked on the shores of Norway and Scotland. In returning around the north coast of Ireland a second storm was experienced with almost equal loss. Only a few shattered vessels of this mighty armament returned to Spain to bring intelligence of the calamities that had overwhelmed the rest. The defeat of the Armada was regarded even then as the work of Providence. The Spanish king, when he heard the news, exclaimed, "I did not expect to fight the elements!" Thus was the triumph of the Protestant cause secured, the lovers of freedom throughout Europe were encouraged, and the power of Spain forever paralysed in the affairs of Europe. Henceforth the commerce and prosperity of Spain declined. King Philip, who had planned the Armada, died in 1598, and bequeathed a vast debt to his nation whose resources were already exhausted, notwithstanding her rich mines of gold and silver in the new world. In 1589, the next year after the destruction of the Armada, Henry IV,, the first Protestant king of France, {106} ascended the throne, and by the Edict of Nantes secured to the Protestants the free exercise of their religion. England, at that time the mistress of the seas, held the keys of the commerce of Europe. Her long conflict with her Catholic sovereigns, and the Catholic powers of Europe, had taught her self-reliance, and had educated her people in the principles of self-government. Her laws were the best the world then new. Henceforth she became the favored land of the seed of Abraham, and the asylum of the oppressed of every nation. The foregoing will indicate to some extent the condition of society in Europe at the beginning of the seventeenth century. It is not surprising that under such circumstances men began to look toward America, as the land of refuge, where the institutions of liberty might be planted and fostered, and political institutions framed which would insure unto all, life, liberty and religious toleration. CHAPTER XI. ANCIENT AMERICAN CIVILIZATION. COLUMBUS DESTROYED PAPAL DOGMAS--CRUELTY OF SPANIARDS--THEIR RETRIBUTION--RELICS IN MASSACHUSETTS--NEWPORT TOWER--MOUNDS IN OHIO--REMAINS FOUND IN IOWA--PLATES FOUND IN ILLINOIS--ANCIENT MEXICAN PYRAMIDS--HUMAN SACRIFICES--VIEW FROM THE GREAT PYRAMID--ANCIENT AMERICAN SCULPTURES--MAMMOTHS--MEXICAN CUSTOMS--RELIGIOUS RITES--COMPUTATION OF TIME--ARTS AND SCIENCES--DESCRIPTION OF PERU--ITS CIVILIZATION--MASSACRE OF THE INCAS--TESTIMONY OF TRAVELLERS--INDIAN TRADITIONS. In ancient times, Rome had taught that the earth was flat; and that the whole habitable world was comprised in the three divisions of the eastern continent. To these divisions {107} were assigned respectively the descendants of Shem, Ham and Japheth, the three sons of Noah. When America was discovered, these dogmas were obliged to fall. If indeed Columbus had, as he supposed, reached the Indies by a westward voyage, then the world was proven to be a vast ball. If on the other hand America was a separate continent, divided from the eastern by a wild waste of waters of many thousand miles in extent, as was shown by the voyage of Magellan, a few years later, then it was found necessary to account for the origin of the inhabitants. The teachings of Rome were altogether against their being descended from Adam, since none such were mentioned in their scriptures. The protestant sects were too busy in their rivalries, dissensions and civil wars, to give much attention to the subject. The stupendous event recorded in Gen. x. 25, seems to have entirely escaped their notice. Hence they proceeded to act towards the unfortunate inhabitants of ancient America, as though they did not belong to the human race. The conquest of Mexico and Peru by the Spaniards will ever remain one of "the bloodiest pictures in the book of Time." By millions upon millions, whole races and nations were ruthlessly destroyed. It was one unspeakable outrage, one unutterable ruin, without discrimination of age, sex or character. Those who fell not by the sword, died under the lash in a tropical clime, or perished in the darkness and dampness of the mines. From the fever-stricken coast of Mexico, and the gloom of dense forests in Central America; from hiding places in the clefts of the rocks, and from the eternal snows of the Andes, where there was no witness but the all-seeing eye of God, there went up to Him a cry of human despair. The Bishop of Chiapa affirms that more than fifteen millions were destroyed in his time. From Mexico and Peru was crushed out a civilization that might have instructed Europe. What treasures would now be given for a view of that wonderful civilization and people that met the gaze of Cortez and his companions! {108} [Image: Ancient Peruvian Residence.] Is it for nothing that Spain has been made a hideous skeleton among the nations--a warning spectacle to the world? Had not her punishment overtaken her, men would have surely said: "There is no retribution; there is no God." She has been the instrument in the hands of Rome of ruining two civilizations: an eastern and a western: and both of the {109} seed of Abraham; and in turn she has been ruined thereby herself. With circumstances of dreadful barbarity, she expelled the Jews and Saracens who had become the children of her soil by a residence of more than seven hundred years, and in America destroyed nations, in some respects more civilized than herself. By expulsion she lost some of her best citizens; and the wealth of Mexico and Peru, induced habits of luxury and effeminacy among the remainder. Her great cities have sunk into insignificance, and towns that once boasted of more than a million inhabitants can now only show a few scanty thousands. Surely the hand of God is visible in the degradation of Spain. It is not alone the massive ruins of Central America, Yucatan, Peru and Mexico, that astonish the beholder. In almost every part of the western continent may be found the footprints of a mighty race, now vanished from the earth. In the copper mines on the shores of Lake Superior, have been found the implements of those who worked in those mines many centuries ago. These instruments are made of copper, yet some of them are of so fine a temper that they will turn the edge of the best steel instruments of our times. A few years ago, in digging down a hill near the town of Fall River, Massachusetts, a mass of earth slid off uncovering a human skull which was found to belong to a human skeleton buried in a sitting posture. When the covering was removed, the astonished workman saw that the trunk of the skeleton was encased in a breastplate of brass. This breast plate was oval in form, about thirteen inches long, ten in width and nearly one-fourth of an inch in thickness. Below the breastplate, and entirely encircling the body, was a belt composed of brass tubes, each four and a half inches in length and one-fourth of an inch in diameter. The poet, Longfellow, has written a poem on this subject with which, no doubt, many of our readers are familiar. The poem commences: "Speak, speak thou fearful guest, Who, with thy hollow breast. Still in rude armor drest, Comest to daunt me." {110} Not far distant, on the bank of the Taunton river, is the celebrated Dighton Rock, a huge piece of fine-grained granite covered with sculptures and hieroglyphic inscriptions. Both the skeleton and the inscriptions on the rock seem to be of Asiatic origin. The armor is the same as appears in drawings taken from the sculptures found at Palanque, Mexico. [Image: Ancient Tower at Newport.] Not far from Newport, in the state of Rhode Island, near the sea shore, is a strange tower, which may have been the base for a beacon or light-house. At Marietta, Ohio, are ancient works that cover an area about three-fourths of a mile long, and half a mile broad. But {111} the most intricate, and perhaps the most extensive, are those in the Licking Valley, near Newark, Ohio, extending over an area of two square miles. These mounds are evidently the remains of ancient fortifications, as they are invariably situated on a commanding eminence, or by the side of a stream. Many of these mounds have been found to contain skeletons; and the appearance of the bones would seem to point to an antiquity of more than a thousand years. Curious pottery, known as "coil-made pottery," has been found in the mounds and caves, and at the ruined "pueblos," or ancient villages, in Utah. These vessels seem to have been formed without the aid of a potter's wheel, by coiling bands of clay upon themselves. Other relics have been discovered in various parts of the continent which throw some light on the mental and social condition of the ancient inhabitants of America. In August, 1875, on an island in the Mississippi river, near the city of Davenport, Iowa, was found a petrified skeleton. But the most singular part of the find came to light in the hardened and petrified straps, bronze buckles and wooden leg which continued the right extremity, that limb having been removed about midway between the hip and knee. This very interesting discovery proves that the arts of manufacturing bronze, and artificial limbs, as well as the art of surgery, were well known among the ancient Americans. These remains were handed over to the Academy of Sciences, and a photograph was taken of the inscription contained on a rock in the vicinity. A copy of this photograph was forwarded to the late Mr. Barfoot, then curator of the Deseret Museum, in Salt Lake City. On the 16th of April, 1843, in a mound near Kinderhook, Pike county, Illinois, were found _six plates of brass_ of a bell shape, each having a hole near the small end, and a ring through them all. The plates were so completely covered with rust, as almost to obliterate the characters inscribed upon each side of them. But after undergoing a chemical process, the inscriptions were brought out plain and distinct. There were indications that lead to the belief that this mound was the tomb of a family or person of distinction, in {112} ages long gone by; and these plates probably contain the history of a person or people who existed at a time far beyond the memory of the present race. (_For further particulars see appendix to O. Pratt's Works_.) In 1815, near Pittsfield, Mass., at a place called _Indian Hill_, was found what appeared to be a black strap about six inches in length and one and a half in breadth, and about the thickness of a leather trace to a harness. On examination it was found to be formed of two pieces of thick raw-hide sewed and made water-tight with the sinews of some animal and gummed over; and in the fold were contained pieces of parchment, of a dark-yellow hue and on which was some kind of writing. Three of the pieces were preserved and sent to the University of Cambridge, Mass., where they were examined and discovered to have been written with a pen in _Hebrew_, plain and legible. The writing was quotations from the Old Testament, Deut, vi. 4-9, inclusive, and chap. xi. 13-21, inclusive, and Exodus xiii, 11-16, inclusive. (_See Voice of Warning_.) The ancient Mexican pyramids, "teocallis," or temples of the sun, were still more remarkable. Two of the most ancient of these, near the city of Mexico, were each nearly 200 feet high, and the larger of these two, covers an area of eleven acres, which is nearly equal to that of the pyramid of Cheops, in Egypt. But the greatest pyramid was that of Cholula. Each side of its base was one thousand four hundred and twenty-three feet, twice as long as the great pyramid of Cheops. It may give some idea of its dimensions to state that its base covers nearly forty-four acres, and the area on its summit embraces more than one. On this elevation stood a costly temple, in which was the image of the mystic deity Quetzalcoatl "god of the air," wearing a mitre on his head, waving with "plumes of fire." A resplendent collar of gold hung around his neck: he held a richly-jeweled scepter of gold in one hand, and a curiously painted shield, emblematic of his rule over the winds, in the other. This temple faced the east, and in front of it, and in view of the whole valley, was the great altar of porphyry on which were offered human sacrifices. {113} Each year, one was chosen from the most illustrious captives taken in war. He was arrayed in costly apparel. He feasted on the most delicate viands. The people did homage to him as to a king. Whatever could contribute to his pleasure was freely given. At length the fatal day arrives. Slowly and by a circuitous route a procession ascends the pyramid. It is composed of the captive, Mexican priests, and some of the notables of the government, accompanied by bands of music. As they ascend the captive throws away his garlands, then his jewels and at length portions of his dress, as emblematic that death will disrobe us all. Having arrived at the top, he is stretched upon the huge altar of stone, and there sacrificed for the sins of the people. Afterwards the people feast upon his flesh--not as famished cannibals--but at a table teeming with delicious fruits and fragrant flowers. They who partook of his flesh were considered to have an especial share in the merits of the sacrifice. Compare with this, John, vi. chapter, 48 to 55 verse, III. Nephi, xviii. chapter. Some idea may thus be gained concerning the origin of these rites and their terrible perversion caused by apostasy. Nothing can be more grand than the view which meets the eye, from the area on the summit of the pyramid. Towards the West stretched that bold barrier of rocks, which nature has reared around the valley of Mexico. Far away to the East are the barren though beautifully-shaped Sierras, towering high into the clouds and standing like sentinels to guard the entrance to the valley. Three of these are volcanoes, higher than the highest mountain peak in Europe, and shrouded in snows which never melt under the fierce sun of the tropics. At the feet of the spectator lay the sacred city of Cholula with its bright towers and pinnacles sparkling in the sun, reposing amidst gardens and verdant groves. Such was the magnificent prospect which met the gaze of Cortes and his companions, and may still with slight change, meet that of the modern traveller, as from the platform of the great pyramid, his eye wanders over the fairest portion of the beautiful plateau of Pueblo. Now the question arises, who built these mounds in the Mississippi valley, and these pyramids in Mexico? To {114} what race belong the relics found in Massachusetts, Illinois and Iowa? Surely not to the Indians who were found in America when the country was discovered; for these things indicate a greater skill and culture than those tribes possessed. Antiquaries have furnished many theories to answer this question which arises in the mind of every student. Some of these theories are very ingenious, but all are lacking in that important element, truth. For more than three hundred years no certain light was thrown upon the history of that race. But that which man could not find out, with all his learning and research, God has revealed in His own due time. And here we see a wonderful manifestation of the hand of God in the history of this continent. A record, authentic, though brief, has been given to the world. The writings of some of the ancient worthies of that race have been preserved in the earth and have now come forth for the guidance and instruction of living men. The Book of Mormon contains sketches of their history and the dealings of God with these peoples in a similar manner, as the Bible teaches the history and dealings of God with His ancient people, the Jews. It also contains many incidental references to their mental and social condition and the extent to which the arts and sciences were cultivated among them. It teaches us that when the Lord confounded the languages at Babel, He led forth a colony from thence to the western continent, now called America. This colony, after crossing the ocean in eight vessels and landing in this country, became in process of time a great nation. They inhabited America about fifteen hundred years but were at length destroyed for their wickedness, about six hundred years before Christ. A prophet by the name of Ether wrote their history and an account of their destruction. This people is known in modern history by the name of Toltecs, the ruins of whose edifices are widely scattered in Yucatan and Central America. {115} [Image: Mammoth.] The sculptures and hieroglyphics on these ruins bear a striking resemblance to those found in the ruins of Babylon and Nineveh. It also appears that the mammoth, or American elephant, and mastodon--animals which are now extinct--then roamed the wilds of the western continent; for representations of these animals are often found sculptured on the walls of Toltec ruins. Some persons have tried to throw doubts upon these statements alleging that no such animals ever existed outside of tropical regions. However, numerous remains of them have been found in various parts of America, especially in Kentucky, Ohio, Missouri and Oregon. In Siberia they have been found frozen in a complete state of preservation. The illustrious Rufin Piotrowski, a Polish {116} exile, gives a full account of these animals and the methods employed by the Russian government in cutting them out of the ice. (_See Souvenirs d'un Siberien_.) It is no doubt to these animals that reference is made in the fourth chapter of the book of Ether. After this, another colony came from Jerusalem about six hundred years before Christ and re-peopled America. This last colony grew and multiplied, and finally gave rise to two mighty nations. One of these was called Nephites, the other Lamanites. The Nephites were a civilized and enlightened people. For nearly one thousand years they were, from time to time, favored with revelations from God. Prophet after prophet was raised up from among them, and at length they were blessed with a personal appearance of Jesus Christ, after His resurrection, from whose mouth they received the doctrine of the gospel and a knowledge of the future down through all succeeding ages. But, after all the blessings and privileges conferred upon them, they fell into great wickedness in the third and fourth centuries of the Christian era, and finally were destroyed by their enemies, the Lamanites. But though the Nephite race has vanished from the earth, still the grandeur of its ruins attest the greatness of its civilization. Indeed it seems impossible to understand the character and extent of these ruins unless we admit the truth of the records given by Mosiah, Alma and Nephi, concerning the arts, sciences, mode of warfare, religion and subsequent apostasy and degradation of that people. In fact, as researches continue it becomes more and more evident that ancient American civilization was only a transcript of ancient Jewish and Egyptian architecture, manners, customs and modes of thought. In matters of government, the pomp of their monarchs, the arbitrary power, and the obligation of all to military service present a striking resemblance to the powers and privileges of the kings of ancient Israel. Likewise their religious state was only a reflection of that of Asia. Their worship was an imposing ceremonial. Though the common people had a mythology of many gods, similar to the saint-worship {117} of Rome, yet the higher-cultured classes acknowledged but one almighty Creator. Marriage was celebrated by religious ceremonies and the laws pertaining thereto bore a striking resemblance to those of ancient Israel. Polygamy was sanctioned, but in practice was generally confined to the wealthy. The priests administered a rite of baptism to infants and proselytes for the purpose of washing away their sins. They also taught that there are rewards and punishments in a world to come--a paradise for the good, and a hell of darkness for the wicked. But the highest glory and reward was preserved for the noble few who fell in sacrifice or in battle for the cause of right. They went directly in to the presence of the sun, whom they accompanied in his bright progress through the heavens. After a few years these spirits went to animate the clouds and add luster to the glories of the sunset, or were sent to rule over and increase the pure and undying light of the stars. Who does not see in all this the traces of a purer religion, which centuries of apostasy and degradation had not been able to entirely destroy? This is all the more manifest when we consider some of their maxims and forms of prayer. One was: "Bear injuries with humility, God, who sees, will avenge you." Another was: "Clothe the naked and feed the hungry, whatever privations it may cost thee; for remember, _their flesh is like thine and they are men like thee_." Again: "Impart to us, Lord, out of Thy great mercy Thy gifts which we are not worthy to receive through our own merits." Also: "O, merciful Lord, _thou who knowest the secrets of all hearts_, let Thy forgiveness and favor descend." In all these we find sentiments such as are contained in the scriptures of the Old Testament. One of the most important duties of the priesthood was that of education, to which certain buildings were appropriated. To each of the principal temples, schools were attached and lands were annexed for the maintenance of the priests. Their writings were on cotton cloth or skins, or on papyrus, a kind of paper made from the aloe. At the time of the Spanish conquest, vast collections of these manuscripts were in existence; but the first archbishop of Mexico, burned them in the {118} market-place. Rome was determined that no literature should exist but her own. The Mexican year consisted of eighteen months and each month of twenty days; five days were added to make the number to three hundred and sixty-five. To provide for the leap years they added twenty-four days to each century. The Mexican mode of reckoning was then superior to that of Europe. When the nations of Europe adopted the calendar discovered and perfected by the Jews and Saracens, then their mode of reckoning corresponded with that discovered by the seed of Abraham on this continent and both were true. The ancient Americans had ascertained the globular form of the earth previous to their contact with Europeans. Catholic Europe would not admit that truth till compelled to by the voyages of Columbus and Magellan. Their agriculture was in some respects superior to that of Europe. There was nothing in the old world to compare with the menageries and botanical gardens of Huax-tepec, Chapultepec and Tezcuco. They excelled in the arts of the jeweller and enameller. They were skillful weavers of fine cloth. They were not ignorant of the use of iron; and understood the manufacture of bronze, of which they also made use. To them we are indebted for tobacco, snuff, chocolate and cochineal. From them we learned the use of the potato, which has now extended to all parts of the civilized world. They, like us, knew the use of intoxicating drinks; and like us sometimes partook of them to excess. This sketch would be incomplete without a reference to the civilization of Peru. As Egypt was the cradle of civilization in the old world, so Peru was in the new. Like Egypt also it was in most parts a rainless region. The ancient Peruvian empire was nearly two thousand four hundred miles in length, but scarcely sixty miles in width--a narrow strip hemmed in between the grand Andes mountains and the Pacific ocean. {119} [Image: Mummy.] The sides of this great mountain range might seem altogether unfitted for agriculture. But the advanced state of Peruvian civilization is at once demonstrated when it is said that these mountain slopes had become a garden. Immense terraces were constructed wherever required, and irrigation was employed on the grandest scale the world has ever seen. Peru possessed a varied climate. In the lower valleys near the coast could be raised all the products of tropical regions, at an elevation of a few thousand feet the climate was adapted for grains of a temperate zone. On table-lands, at a great elevation above the sea, there were villages and even cities. Thus the plain on which Quito stands, under the equator, is nearly ten thousand feet high, and enjoys a climate of perpetual {120} spring. So great was their industry that the Peruvians had gardens and orchards above the clouds, and on ranges still higher flocks of sheep and llamas, in regions bordering on the limit of perpetual snow. In Cuzco, the metropolis, was the residence of the _inca_ or emperor, and the great temple of the sun. The inca was both temporal prince and ruling priest of their religion. Though they ostensibly worshiped the sun, yet the higher classes recognized the existence of one almighty, invisible God. Like the Egyptians, the Peruvians understood the art of embalming the dead. The mummies of their incas being placed in the vaults beneath the temple of the sun, at Cuzco. This city contained edifices which excited the amazement of the Spanish adventurers themselves--streets, squares, bridges and fortresses surrounded by turreted walls. The public walls of Peru as well as Mexico were superior to those of Spain herself. Two great military roads extended the whole length of the empire--one along the coast, the other along the base of the mountains. These highways greatly aided the Spaniards in their conquest of the country. Having gained possession of the country and robbed the inhabitants of their gold, silver and precious stones, they put to death the inca and nobility, and took possession of their residences. The enormous crime of Spain in destroying this civilization has never been fully appreciated. In vain the Spaniards excuse their atrocities, on the plea that those nations were savages and permitted human sacrifices. True, the nations of America sank very low when the light of the gospel was withdrawn; but every candid mind will ask: "Which was the more degraded, papal Europe or apostate America?" Human sacrifice, however cruel, has nothing in it degrading to its victim. It may be rather said to ennoble him by devoting him to the gods. Although so terrible with the Mexicans, it was sometimes voluntarily embraced by them as the most glorious death, and one that opened a sure passage into paradise. There was no spectacle on the American continent, at which a just man might so deeply blush for his race as that presented {121} in Western Europe when the martyr, from whom confession had been wrung by torture, passed to the stake in a sleeveless garment, with flames of fire and pictures of devils painted upon it. Let it be remembered that from A. D. 1481 to 1808, more than three hundred and forty thousand persons had been tortured, and out of these nearly thirty-two thousand burnt. [Image: Massacre of the Incas.] Let it also be remembered that the body of man is of less value than the immortal soul, for the redemption of which the agony and death of the Son of God was not too great a price to pay. Let it not be forgotten that at that period the entire authority of Europe was directed to the enslaving of the minds and souls of men and making that noblest creation of heaven a worthless machine. {122} Everywhere throughout the continent may be found traces of Bible and Nephite history. Humbolt, in his travels, mentions a multitude of native books in which were described all the leading circumstances and history of the deluge, of the fall of man, and the first murder as perpetrated by Cain. Clavigero, in his history of Mexico, tells of an ancient native manuscript, found at Chiapa, which gives a plain and brief account of the building of the tower of Babel, the confusion of tongues, and the subsequent migration of Votan, or Jotan, (no doubt a corruption of Jared) and his companions to the continent of America. The Indians of Cuba related to Bernal Diaz, a companion and historian of Columbus, a complete and scarcely corrupted account of the deluge, the intoxication of Noah and Ham's shameful conduct. Humboldt mentions numerous traditions existing among the natives of Yucatan and Central America concerning a great religious teacher, a wonderful personage, whom they called Quetzalcoatl, and who was a white and bearded man. "Many things are said of him in their books of parchment, and among others, that when he left them he gave them wise laws and maxims, and promised to return and rule over them and renew their happiness." Compare with this the record of Nephi. (_See III. Nephi, chap. ii. to xxviii. inclusive_.) A tradition of the Wyandott Indians, published by Frederick Falley, of Sandusky, O., in 1823, gives a plain account of the battle of Cumorah. Both Breckenridge and Humboldt conclude that "a great battle took place in the region of the great lakes not later than the year 544 of the Christian era, after which the Aztecs [Lamanites] took possession of the country southward." The foregoing will indicate to some extent the workings of the hand of God, as manifested in the history of this continent. Volumes might be written on this subject, but enough has been said to awaken inquiry among the honest-in-heart and indicate the treasures contained in the Nephite annals, and corroborated by the ruins of "This old, old land, which men call new; This land as old as time is old." {123} CHAPTER XII. THE COLONIZATION OF ACADIA. ENGLAND'S DEVELOPMENT--REIGN OF ELIZABETH--INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE--TYRANNY OF THE KINGS--JACQUES CARTIER--DISCOVERY OF THE ST. LAWRENCE--QUEBEC FOUNDED--ACADIA COLONIZED--TRANSFERRED TO ENGLAND--EXTRACTS FROM LONGFELLOW'S POEM--VIRGINIA SETTLED. In previous chapters we have traced the instrumentalities which God used in the unshackling of the minds of men from the superstitions of the past, and disciplining them for the reception of higher truths. We have seen how, amidst the rage of tyrants and in spite of the opposition of the powers of evil, society had gradually climbed to a loftier intellectual eminence than that to which she had attained in any previous age. The time had at length arrived, when, far from the jarring scenes of Europe's strife, a nation was to come into existence, earnest in its love of human liberty, and vigorous in the execution of its purposes--a nation, which should accomplish some of the mightiest achievements of the human race; and where, under the benign influences of its political institutions, and in the Lord's due time, the gospel should be again revealed and the Kingdom of God set up among the children of men. To rightly understand the history and character of an individual, we must know something of his parentage and the circumstances of his early life. Hence to understand the character of the American people, we must know something of their great national mother, the people of England. The defeat of the great Spanish armada delivered England from the control of continental Europe, and marked a critical epoch in her development. From that hour England's destiny {124} was fixed. She was to be the great protestant power. Her sphere of action was to be upon the seas. She was to take a leading part in the new world of the west. The time was coming when her commerce should surpass all the nations of ancient or modern times; but, above all, her language and literature were fast developing, by means of which her laws and influence would effect the remotest nations of the earth. Hitherto England had lagged behind in the intellectual development of Europe. In the single reign of Elizabeth she leaped to the first rank among the nations of the earth; nay more, she was to become the mother of nations. An impression, vague and shadowy indeed, but none the less real, penetrated the minds of the English people, that they were to be the repository of the divine will, and the executor of His purposes--that the blessings and prerogatives of ancient Israel, were to be their inheritance. Beneath the rough exterior and blunt manners of that age, lay the new sense of a prophetic power--the sense of a divine commission. And who will say that they were wrong, or prove that they were not divinely commissioned to break down the barriers to human progress, and to some extent prepare society for the "dispensation of the fullness of times?" The English translation of the Bible, became the great rule of life. The whole moral effect which is now produced by the newspaper, the sermon, the lecture and the circulating library was then produced by the Bible alone; and its effect on the national character was simply amazing. Religion was no longer confined to the cloister and cathedral, but became a subject of thought for every individual. The profound meditations that Shakspeare puts into the mouth of Hamlet were but a transcript of the thoughts and feelings of the earnest men of that age, who saw themselves day by day in the theater of a mighty struggle between the powers of light and the powers of darkness--their souls the prize of an eternal conflict between heaven and hell. It was this phase of thought that gave to the world the sublime conceptions of Milton, the realistic dreams of Bunyan, as well as the stern and solemn character of Oliver Cromwell and his followers; and made these liberty-loving peasants more {125} than a match for the chivalry and iron-clad knights of King Charles I. Nor was this feeling confined to any one class. It permeated all ranks and conditions, even to the sovereign. Tradition still points out the tree in Hatfield Park, beneath which Elizabeth was sitting when she received the news of her peaceful accession to the throne. She fell on her knees and exclaimed: "It is the Lord's doing, and marvelous in our eyes." To the end of her reign these words remained stamped on the golden coinage of the realm. Through all her long and eventful life, the feeling seems never to have left her, that her preservation and her reign were the issues of a direct interposition of God. The foregoing may help us to understand the character of the English people at the time they commenced to plant the institutions of liberty on this continent. Who can read the thrilling narrative of English history during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries without acknowledging the hand of God, in moulding the character of the British people? It was not a pleasant world which the men and women of Europe had to live in during the sixteenth century. Fighting was the constant occupation of the kings of that time; civil wars were also frequent. In these confused strifes men slew their acquaintances and friends as the only method they knew of deciding who was to fill the throne. Feeble commerce was crushed under the iron heel of war. No such thing as security for life and property was expected. The fields of the husbandman were trodden down by the march of armies. Disbanded or deserted soldiers wandered as lawless men over the country and robbed and murdered at their will. Epidemic diseases of strange type, the result of insufficient and unwholesome food, and the poisonous air of undrained lands and filthy streets destroyed the inhabitants. Under what hardships and miseries the men of the sixteenth century passed their days, it is scarcely possible for us now to conceive. From the persecutions of the old world they fled to the wilds of the new. The thrilling story of their adventures, though indeed real, sounds more like romance than reality. Unlike the history of eastern nations, which frequently loses itself in {126} mists of antiquity, the history of the American people begins at a comparatively recent date. It is less than four hundred years since Columbus and his companions first saw the western continent, and less than two hundred and seventy-five years since the first colony was planted in the territory which formed the thirteen original states. Another peculiarity is, that from the very first this land has been an asylum for the persecuted and oppressed of every nation. It was in the beautiful month of May, 1535, that Jacques Cartier, a bold navigator in the service of the king of France, sailed along the shores of the gulf of St. Lawrence, stopping here and there to examine the country and lay out plats for future settlements. In July he entered the river St. Lawrence and sailed on its broad waters, amidst picturesque scenery in which was realized all his glowing expectations and dreams. Leaving his vessel at the present site of Quebec, he proceeded up the river in a small boat, as far as the Indian settlement of Hochelaga. This place he named Mount Royal. It is now the magnificent city of Montreal. However, no permanent settlements were formed, and it was not till 1604 that De Monts, Champlain and other explorers began to colonize the country, on the banks of the gulf of St. Lawrence. Quebec was founded in 1608. The whole region on the south shore of the gulf was then called Acadia. Its history shows the wonderful influence kindness exerts, even among the savage tribes of North America. Poutrincourt, the governor of the colony, caused an immense banqueting hall to be erected, which was well supplied with deer, moose, bear and all kinds of wild fowl. He made friends of the Indians and entertained the chiefs at sumptuous feasts. In the Winter evenings by the blazing pine logs, Champlain would relate the stories of his wonderful adventures among the hills, and valleys, and lakes, and streams, and cataracts, and red men of the west. At length, by the fortunes of war, this colony was transferred to England; but its heart was still with France. The English distrusted its loyalty, and sent an armed force to surprise and attack it, and carry away the once happy people, and scatter them throughout their American domains. The Acadians were {127} crowded into transports, their families were separated, their friendships and attachments broken up, and they were exiled among strangers, never to see each other again. The name of Acadia was blotted out. Most people are familiar with Longfellow's beautiful story of Evangeline. It is now almost the only memorial that remains of the history of that colony. As a picture of peace and prosperity, contentment and neighborly love, worthy of imitation in this selfish age, a few lines from Longfellow's beautiful poem, may not be out of place: "There, in the midst of its farms reposed the Acadian village, Strongly built were the houses with frames of oak and of hemlock; There, in the tranquil evenings when sunset had faded to twilight, Softly the church-bell sounded calling the people to worship. Thus dwelt in love these simple Acadian farmers, Dwelt in the love of God and of man. Alike they were free from Fear that reigns with the tyrant, and envy the vice of republics, Neither locks had they to their doors nor bars to their windows, But their dwellings were open as day and the hearts of the owners; There the richest was poor, and the poorest lived in abundance." Meanwhile attempts at colonizing were going on farther south. The settlement at Jamestown, Virginia, was founded in 1607. The adventures of Captain John Smith, the virtual founder of the colony, are well known to most readers, as well as the romantic story of Pocahontas, the Indian princess. Its early history is a narrative of strife and human suffering. Many of its early inhabitants were scions of nobility, men unused to toil; in some cases they were mere adventurers, actuated by a lust for gold or love of plunder. However, it teaches one important lesson, that noble birth and high-sounding titles are of little account when compared with the plain virtues of industry, honesty, and trust in God--that it is not men of wealth, but men of noble character that are of most importance in founding a commonwealth. {128} CHAPTER XIII. COLONIZATION OF NEW ENGLAND. CHARACTER OF THE COLONISTS--THEY LEAVE ENGLAND--SOJOURN IN HOLLAND--BREWSTER'S PRINTING PRESS--PURITANS EMBARK FOR AMERICA--THEIR TRUST IN GOD--ROBINSON'S PROPHECY--PLYMOUTH FOUNDED--SUFFERINGS OF THE COLONISTS--CONFLICT IN ENGLAND--PECULIARITIES OF THE PURITANS--HARVARD COLLEGE FOUNDED--EXTENT OF SETTLEMENTS--FIRST CONFEDERATION. "What constitutes a state? Not high-raised battlements or labored mound, Thick wall or moated gate; Not cities proud, with spires and turrets crowned, Not bays and broad armed ports Where, laughing at the storm, proud navies ride; Not starred and spangled courts Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride; No! Men, high-minded men, With powers as far above dull brutes endued, In forest, brake or den, As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude; Men, who their duties know, But know their rights; and knowing dare maintain." The mind instinctively turns to the colonizing of New England as one of the great landmarks of human history. A little more than two centuries ago this land was covered with forests in which roamed various tribes of Indians; and the rivers, which now give life to so much cheerful industry, flowed uselessly to the sea. To-day this same land is covered with cities, towns and villages, gardens, vineyards and orchards, schools and palaces--a civilization surpassing, in some respects, that of any other country on the face of the globe. Whence came the men who wrought these mighty changes? What were the circumstances that led them to abandon their {129} country and their kindred, and all the sacred associations that link man to his native land, to seek homes beyond the stormy Atlantic, in a wilderness then inhabited only by savage beasts, and men still more savage; and above all, that trained them in the principles of self-government and fitted them to become the founders of a mighty empire? At that time protestant princes, no more than popish, were willing that their subjects should think for themselves. James I. had just ascended the English throne. His was the head of a fool and the heart of a tyrant. He was determined that every one of his subjects should observe the rites and ceremonies of the Episcopal church. On the northern border of Nottinghamshire stands the little town of Scrooby. Here were some brave and honest people, to whom the ceremonies of the Episcopal or Established church were an offense. They held their meetings in secret, at the house of one of their number, a gentleman named Brewster. They chose Mr. Robinson, a wise and good man, to be their leader in spiritual things. But their secret meetings were betrayed to the authorities and their lives were made bitter by the persecutions that fell upon them. They resolved to leave their own land and seek among strangers that freedom which was denied them at home. They embarked with all their goods for Holland. But when the ship was about to sail, soldiers came upon them, plundered them and drove them on shore. After some weeks in prison they were suffered to return home. Next Spring they tried again to escape. This time a good many were on board, and the others were waiting for the return of the boat, which would carry them to the ship. Suddenly soldiers on horseback were seen spurring across the sands. The shipmaster weighed his anchor and set sail with those whom he had on board. The soldiers conducted the remainder back to prison. After a time they were set at liberty. In little groups they made their way to Holland, and thus they accomplished the first stage of the tedious journey from the old England to the new. Here they remained for eleven years, and worked with patient industry at their various trades. They gained a reputation for honesty and skill in all their undertakings, and thus they found {130} abundant employment. Mr. Brewster established a printing press and printed books about liberty, which greatly enraged the foolish King James. Meanwhile this little band received additions from time to time, as oppression in England became more intolerable. Still they looked upon themselves as exiles. The language and manners of the Dutch were not pleasing to them. They did not wish to lose their identity. Already their sons and daughters were forming alliances that threatened this result. They therefore determined to go again on a pilgrimage, and seek a home in the wilds of America; where they could dwell apart and found a state, where all should enjoy civil and religious liberty. They collected their little funds and procured two vessels, the _Speedwell_, of sixty tons, and the _Mayflower_, of one hundred and eighty. The _Speedwell_ was found to be unseaworthy and was abandoned. They had not sufficient funds for all to come at once. Brewster was placed in command of the company, which was composed of "such of the youngest and strongest, as freely offered themselves." A solemn fast was held. "Let us seek God," said they, "a right way for us, and for our little ones, and for all our substance." On a sunny morning in July, 1620, the pilgrims knelt upon the seashore at Delfthaven, while their pastor, Mr. Robinson, prayed for the success of their journey. Out upon the gleaming sea a little ship lay waiting. Money was wanting and so only one hundred could depart. They left the remainder with tears and fond farewells, to follow when they could. Mr. Robinson dismissed them with counsels which breathed a pure and high-toned wisdom. Some of the words which he then uttered, seemed to have a prophetic import. This will be readily seen from the following extract: "The Lord has more truth yet to break forth out of His holy word. Luther and Calvin were great and shining lights in their times, yet they penetrated not into the whole counsel of God. I beseech of you, remember it, that you be ready to receive whatever truth shall be made known to you." Who will attempt to deny that God, through him, spake words pregnant with a meaning that men at that age did not understand? {131} A prosperous wind soon wafted them across the North sea and they sighted the coast of England. After considerable delay at Southampton, Dartmouth, and Plymouth, the _Mayflower_ started early in September on her long and lonely voyage from the old world to the new. After a boisterous voyage of sixty-three days they espied land, and in two days more cast anchor in the harbor of Cape Cod. How truthful the lines, "The heavy clouds hung dark The woods and waters o'er, When a band of exiles moored their bark On the wild New England shore!" It was a bleak-looking and discouraging coast which lay before them. Nothing met the eye but low sand-hills, covered with stunted trees down to the margin of the sea. At first no suitable locality for a settlement could be found; but at length they selected a spot where the soil appeared to be good, with "delicate springs of water." On December 22, 1620, the pilgrims landed--stepping ashore upon a huge boulder of granite, which is still preserved as a memorial of that event. The cold was so excessive that the spray froze upon their clothes till they resembled men cased in armor. They had been badly fed on board the ship, which, together with exposure, caused sickness to prevail among them. Every second day a grave had to be dug in the frozen ground. The care of the sick and the burying of the dead, sadly hindered their work; but the building of their little town went on. When Spring arrived there were only fifty survivors, and these were sadly enfeebled and dispirited. Upon an eminence beside their town they erected a structure which served a double purpose. The upper story was used for a fort, in which were placed six small cannon. The lower story served for a meeting-house and school-house. The pilgrims had already drawn up and signed in the cabin of the _Mayflower_, a document forming themselves into an organized government, to which they unanimously promised obedience. Under this constitution they elected John Carver to be their first governor. It is true they acknowledged King James, but they left no very large place for his authority. {132} [Image: Landing of the Pilgrims.] {133} They had experienced what despotism was, and they determined from the first to be a self-governing people. In memory of the hospitalities which they had received at the last English port from which they had sailed, this colony took the name of Plymouth. The years which followed the settlement of Plymouth was a time through which good men found it bitter to live. Charles I., was upon the throne of England. William Laud, archbishop of Canterbury, was the king's right-hand man for dealing out persecution. Whoever refused to perform the religious ceremonies commanded by Laud was forthwith imprisoned. A Scotch clergyman named Leighton, was publicly whipped, branded on the cheek, had one of his ears cut off and his nostrils slit, for calling Laud's ceremonies the inventions of men. Many others were treated in a similar manner. Meanwhile John Hampden, the incorruptible patriot, was arrested for not paying an unlawful tax. A greater than he--his cousin, Oliver Cromwell--was leading his quiet, rural life at Huntington, not without many anxious and indignant thoughts about the evils of his time. He walked over his fields and along the streams, "Pondering the solemn miracle of life As one who, wandering in a starless night, Feels momently the jar of unseen waves, And hears the thunder of an unknown sea Breaking along an unimagined shore. And as he walked he prayed." The weary victims of this senseless persecution looked to New England for refuge. The pilgrims wrote to their friends at home; and every letter was read with interest. They had hardships to tell of at first; then they had prosperity and comfort; always they had liberty! Every Summer a few ships were freighted for the settlements. At one time eight ships lay in the Thames, with their passengers on board, when the order was issued, that no one should leave without the king's permission. The soldiers cleared the ships, and the poor emigrants were driven back in despair to endure the miseries from which they were so eager to escape. Among these were Hampden and Cromwell. Well would it have been for the {134} king if he had let them go! But God had a work for them to do. They were to be the instruments in His hand "To hurl down wrong from its high seat, To the poor and oppressed, firm friends and true." The details of the long war between the king and the people we need not here relate. The result was the death of the unhappy monarch, and another step forward by the British people in the principles of self-government. Meanwhile the settlements in America continued to flourish. The virgin soil yielded abundant harvests. From the fleece of their sheep, and the flax of their fields they made a supply of clothing. They felled the timber of their boundless forests, and built ships and sent away to foreign countries, the timber, the fish and the furs which were not required at home. They were a noble people who had thus begun to strike their roots in the great forests of the west. Their peculiarities may indeed amuse us; as for example the strange names they gave their children. Many of the boys bore names in memory of some fortunate circumstance, or historical event, as "Rejoice in the Lord," "Pillar of Fire," "Strength of Israel," "Praise God Barebones," etc.; while the girls rejoiced in such names as "Truth," "Temperance," "Patience," "Chastity," and "Love the Lord." We may smile at these things; yet the most wise of all ages will admire the purity and earnestness of this people. They brought with them the love of learning. In a very few years schools began to appear. Such means as could be afforded were freely given. Some tolerably qualified brother was "entreated to become the schoolmaster." Soon a law was passed that every township, containing fifty families, must have a common school. Harvard College was established within fifteen years of the landing. The founders of New England were men who had known at home the value of books. Brewster carried with him a library of two hundred and seventy-five volumes, and his was not the largest collection in the colony. At that time books were very scarce and twenty times more costly than they are now. Twenty-three years after the landing of the pilgrims, the population of New England had grown to twenty-four thousand. {135} Forty-nine little wooden towns, with their wooden churches, wooden forts and wooden ramparts, were dotted here and there over the land. There were then four separate colonies: Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Haven. For mutual defense and protection these colonies united together and thus formed the first confederation of states on the western continent. CHAPTER XIV. THE CONFLICT IN THE NETHERLANDS. DESCRIPTION OF HOLLAND--A LAND OF REFUGE--TYRANNY OF ALVA--THE STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE--SIEGE OF LEYDEN--THE COUNTRY SUBMERGED--FAMINE IN THE CITY--SPEECH OF THE MAYOR--HEROIC CONDUCT--TRUST IN GOD--STORM RAISES THE WATERS--SPANIARDS RETREAT--LEYDEN IS SAVED--THANKSGIVING--WATERS RETIRE. In a previous chapter have been described the circumstances which led to the colonization of Acadia and New England. While these events were transpiring in old England and New England, others of scarcely less importance were occurring in Holland, or the Netherlands, as it is frequently called, and in its colony of New Netherlands. It is a fact too frequently forgotten, that at least three of the thirteen original states were colonized by Holland. It is true Pennsylvania and Delaware received a few colonists from Sweden and Finland, who had settled there to escape religious persecution; but their dominions in the new world were not of long duration. To Holland and England belong the chief glory of colonizing the lands embraced in the United Colonies of 1776. The country now embraced in the states of New York, New Jersey and {136} Delaware, received the name of New Netherlands, and like the inhabitants of New England, they were for the most part a religious people. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Holland had been the refuge of exiles from many lands. When John Huss and Jerome of Prague fell under papal vengeance, many of their followers there found a home. When the fury of persecution was raging against the Waldenses, many of them fled to Holland for protection. After the terrible massacre of the French protestants or Huguenots, as they were called, in 1572, many of them took refuge in the Netherlands. This liberty-loving population was the cause of that deadly hatred manifested toward them by the Duke of Alva. This insatiate monster, during his brief administration, caused more than eighteen thousand persons to perish by the hand of the executioner. His cruelties at length aroused the indignation of the people, and brought about those notable events so well described by the historian, Motley, in his _Rise of the Dutch Republic_. This contest was one of the most memorable in the history of the human race, for in it was clearly shown the wonderful providence of God. Holland, as is well known, is a low, flat country, so low, in fact, that the inhabitants have been obliged to build dykes, or embankments of earth, along the coast, in order to protect the country from the waters of the ocean during high tides and storms. Were it not for this precaution, Holland would frequently present the appearance of a vast, shallow bay or lake, thickly studded with orchards dwellings and cities half submerged in the water. At this time Holland was under the dominion of Spain. The tyranny of Alva, the governor, provoked the people to resistance, and King Philip sent an army from Spain to enforce submission. Rather than longer endure this oppression, the brave Hollanders resolved to achieve their independence or perish in the attempt. The fortifications of their country were few, but, in one respect, they held the keys of the ocean. They opened the flood-gates of the dykes and prepared to submerge the country when the first storm should come. Meanwhile the Spaniards were besieging Leyden, and if that city fell, the {137} conquest of the country would inevitably follow. The Hollanders well knew that the ocean would damage their fields and destroy their growing crops, but they preferred the chances of starvation to an indiscriminate massacre. Leyden was situated twenty miles inland. It was impossible to bring Leyden to the ocean. They prayed that God would aid their efforts to bring the ocean to Leyden. Meantime the besieged city was at its last gasp. At the dawn of each day the brave defenders turned their eyes toward the vanes of the church steeples, that they might ascertain the direction of the wind. So long as an easterly wind prevailed, they felt that they must look in vain for the welcome ocean. Yet, while thus patiently waiting, they were literally starving. Such was the condition of Leyden on the 11th of September, 1574. The commander of the Dutch fleet, Admiral Boisot, had constructed a number of flat boats, by which he hoped to be able to bring provisions and munitions of war to the besieged city. But a week elapsed after the opening of the dykes, and no storm nor high tide had come to force the ocean inland. The flotilla of boats now lay motionless in shallow water, having accomplished less than two miles. Everything wore a gloomy aspect; still the hearts of the patriots were lifted to God in prayer. On the 18th the wind shifted to the north-west, and for three days blew a gale. The waters rose rapidly, and before the second was closed, the flat boats were again afloat. Onward the boats flew before the breeze, and soon arrived at the villages of Zoetermeer and Benthuyzen. A strong force of Spaniards were stationed at each place, but they were astonished to see these brave and liberty-loving men, sailing on a sea, where a few hours before, was dry and solid land. Some of their officers even asked in amazement, "was it true that God and the elements were going to fight against them?" Few things are more appalling to the imagination than the rising ocean tide, when man feels himself within its power. The Spanish soldiers saw the waters deepening and closing around them, and, as it were, devouring the earth beneath their feet, while on the waves rode a flotilla, manned by a liberty-loving and determined race, whose courage was known throughout the world. No wonder the Spaniards were seized with a panic and fled precipitately. {138} Behind them came the roaring tide; and thousands sank beneath the deepening flood. In a few hours the flotilla had arrived at North Aa, from whence Admiral Boiset sent, on September 28th, a carrier pigeon with a letter of encouragement to the famished inhabitants of Leyden. As time passed on, the mortality in the city became frightful. Mothers dropped dead in the streets with their dead children in their arms. A terrible plague, engendered by hardships and famine, was sweeping away the people like grass before the scythe. From six to eight thousand human beings sank before this scourge alone, yet the people resolutely held out--women and men mutually encouraging each other to resist the entrance of the foreign foe--an evil more horrible than pest or famine. The heroism of the Hollanders towered to sublimity. True a few of the faint-hearted one day assailed the mayor of Leyden, the heroic Adrian Van der Werf, with threats and reproaches as he passed through the streets. He stepped to one side and mounted the steps of the church of St. Pancras. There he stood, a tall, haggard, imposing figure, with dark visage, and a tranquil, but commanding eye. He waved his broad-brimmed hat for silence, and then exclaimed: "What would ye, my friends? Why do ye murmur that we do not break our vows and surrender the city to the Spaniards?--a fate more horrible than the agony which she now endures. I tell you, I have made an oath to hold the city, and may God give me strength to keep my oath! I can die but once; whether by your hands, the enemy's, or by the hand of God. My own fate is indifferent to me, not so that of the city entrusted to my care. I know that we shall starve if not soon relieved; but starvation is preferable to the dishonored death which is our only alternative. Your menaces move me not; my life is at your disposal, here is my sword, plunge it into my breast, and divide my flesh among you. Take my body to appease your hunger, but expect no surrender, so long as I remain alive." The words of the firm, old mayor, inspired a new courage in the hearts of those who heard him, and a shout of applause and defiance arose from the famishing, but enthusiastic crowd. After exchanging new vows of fidelity with their magistrate, {139} they left the place and again ascended tower and battlement to watch for the coming fleet. From the ramparts they hurled renewed defiance at the enemy. "Ye call us rat-eaters and dog-eaters," they cried, "and it is true. So long then, as ye hear dog bark, or cat mew, within the walls of the city, ye may know that it still holds out. And when all has perished but ourselves, be sure that we will each devour our left arms, retaining our right to defend our women, our liberty and our religion, against the foreign tyrant. Should God, in His providence, deny us all relief, even then will we maintain ourselves against your entrance. When the last hour has come, with our own hands we will set fire to the city and perish, men, women and children, together in the flames, rather than suffer our homes to be polluted and our liberties to be crushed." The Spaniards shouted back derisively: "As well can the prince of Orange pluck down the stars from the sky as bring the ocean to the walls of Leyden for your relief." But they had forgotten that "prayer moves the arm that moves the world;" that He, whom the winds and seas obey, and who holds the tempests as in the hollow of his hand, had heard the cry of that patient and persecuted people, and was sending the darkness and the storm, to sweep away their enemies as with the besom of destruction. When the stoutest hearts began to fail, the tempest came again to their relief. A violent gale, on the night of the 1st of October, came storming from the north-west, shifting after a few hours, and then blowing still more violently from the south-west. The waters of the North sea were piled in vast masses upon the southern coast, and then dashed furiously land-ward. The waters rose higher than ever before known, and swept with unobstructed fury across the ruined dykes. The fleet of flat-boats at North Aa, was no longer stranded. At midnight, amidst the storm and darkness, Admiral Boisot gave orders to advance. A few sentinels challenged them as they swept by the village of Zoeterwoude. The answer was a flash from Boisot's cannon, lighting the dark, wild waste of waters. Then came a fierce naval midnight battle. It was a strange spectacle among the branches of those quiet orchards and {140} chimney stacks of half submerged farm-houses. Swiftly the fleet sailed on over the waters between Zoeterwoude and Zwieten. As they approached shallows the sailors dashed into the sea and literally shouldered the vessels through. These forts and that of Lammen might have proved serious obstacles, had not the panic, which had hitherto driven their foes before the advancing patriots, come again to their relief. A long procession of lights was seen to flit across the black face of the waters, in the dead of night. The Spaniards had fled precipitately along a road which led in a westerly direction toward the Hague. Their narrow path was rapidly vanishing in the waves, and hundreds sank in the constantly deepening flood, to rise no more. The morning dawned, but all was calm and still around the city of Leyden. The hand of God which had sent the ocean and the tempest for her deliverance, had likewise struck her enemies with terror. The lights which had been seen during the night, were lanterns of the retreating Spaniards. The succoring fleet sailed victoriously into the city on the morning of the 3rd of October, 1574. Bread was freely given to the poor creatures, who for months had tasted no wholesome human food. When the admiral stepped on shore a procession was formed consisting of citizens, sailors, soldiers, women and children. They repaired to the great cathedral; and they who had been firm in their resistance to an earthly tyrant, now bowed in humble gratitude before the King of kings. After prayers the whole, vast congregation, joined in the thanksgiving hymn. Thousands of voices raised the song, but few were able to carry it to its conclusion, for the universal emotion, deepened by the music, became too full for utterance. The hymn was abruptly suspended while the multitude wept like children. "On the following day, the 4th of October, the wind shifted to the north-east, and again blew a tempest. It was as if the waters, having now done their work, had been rolled back to the ocean by an Omnipotent hand, for in the course of a few days the land was bare again, and the work of reconstructing the dykes commenced." {141} From this terrible ordeal came out many illustrious characters. Its results tended to civil and religious liberty, as well as the great principle of federal union which has since been carried out to such a wonderful extent. These principles the Dutch emigrants brought with them; and when a few years afterwards their settlements fell into the hands of the English they were already assimilated to the ideas prevailing in the New England colonies. CHAPTER XV. EARLY COLONIAL HISTORY. RISE OF QUAKERISM--GEORGE FOX--WILLIAM PENN--FOUNDS PENNSYLVANIA--KINDNESS TO THE INDIANS--PHILADELPHIA FOUNDED--MARYLAND, CAROLINA AND GEORGIA SETTLED--ROGER WILLIAMS--RHODE ISLAND FOUNDED--ITS TOLERATION. The history of Pennsylvania as a distinct colony began in 1682. Its founder, William Penn, was the son of Admiral Penn, who had gained many victories for England and enjoyed the favor of the king, as well as of the great statesmen of his time. At this time there was in England a numerous sect called Quakers. Some of their principles were true, and most of them were far in advance of the opinions generally entertained in that age. The rise of the people called Quakers is one of the memorable events in the history of man. It marks the moment when intellectual freedom was claimed by the people as an inalienable right. The sect had its birth in a period of intense national activity, when zeal for reform was invading all ranks of society, and even subverting the throne. Its creed was summed up in one short phrase, "_The inner light or voice of God in the soul_." Their leader, George Fox, professed to {142} have visions from heaven. Having listened to the revelation which had been made to his soul, he thirsted for a reform in every branch of learning. The physician and the scientist should quit their strife of unintelligible words and solve the appearances of nature by an intimate study of the laws of being. The lawyers should abandon their deceit and seek to establish justice among men according to the teachings of the Savior. And the priests should cease to preach for hire, and seek God in prayer as the oracle of all truth. [Image: Fox in Discussion.] {143} No wonder there was a great commotion. In Lancaster, forty priests appeared against him at once. Nothing could daunt his enthusiasm. When cast into jail among felons, he claimed of the public tribunals a release, only to continue his exertions. If cruelly beaten, or set in the stocks, or ridiculed as mad, he none the less proclaimed the principles of his faith. When driven from the church, he preached in the open air; when refused shelter at a private dwelling or humble tavern, he slept without fear under a haystack. His fame increased; crowds gathered like flocks of pigeons to hear him. His voice and frame in prayer are described as the most awful and reverent ever felt or seen. His clear convictions and glowing thoughts delivered in plain words made him powerful among the masses and the terror of the priests in public discussions to which he defied the world. By degrees "the hypocrites," as the historian Barclay called them, feared to dispute with him. The simplicity of the truth he uttered and the plainness of his speech found such ready acceptance among the people, "that the priests trembled and scud as he drew near, so that it was a dreadful thing to them when it was told them, 'The man in leathern breeches is come.'" Far from rejecting Christianity, the Quakers insisted that they alone followed its primitive simplicity. They believed in the unity of truth; that there can be no contradiction between correct reason and revelation; and that the Holy Spirit is the guide that leads into all truth. The Quakers read the Bible not with idolatry but with delight, for in there own souls they had a testimony that it was true. "The scriptures," says Barclay, "are not religion but a record of it; a declaration of the fountain, but not the fountain itself." In reading a record of those times it might appear to one that God was then ready to restore His Priesthood and set up His kingdom on the earth. But mankind were not yet ready nor was there a fit place in all the inhabited countries of the world for its establishment. {144} [Image: Penn's Treaty with the Indians.] The well-known William Penn joined this sect, and by this act greatly provoked his father's displeasure. Like Moses of old he refused the favors and honors of the monarch, choosing {145} rather to obey what he considered to be the truth than to enjoy all the pomp and pleasures of the world. Space will not permit us to relate the story of his sufferings while an exile from his father's home; how he traveled to and fro on the continent of Europe, from the Weser to the Main, from the Rhine to the Danube, distributing tracts, preaching to princes and to peasants, and rebuking every attempt to enthrall the mind of man. Before he had reached the age of twenty-five, he had thrice suffered unjust imprisonment. To the king's messenger, who asked him to recant, he heroically replied, "_Club-law may make hypocrites, it never can make converts_" Single handed and alone he plead his cause before the highest courts of England. In vain did wicked men endeavor to construe the laws of England to his injury. After a tedious trial he was at length acquitted, though the jurymen were fined forty marks apiece for not bringing in a verdict of guilty. His constancy called forth the admiration of his father. "Son William," said the dying admiral, "if you and your friends keep to your plain way of preaching and living, you will make an end of the priests." At the admiral's death, William succeeded to his father's possessions. It deeply grieved him that his Quaker brethren should endure such wrongs as were continually heaped upon them. He, therefore, formed the design of leading them forth to America. The king had owed Penn's father sixteen thousand pounds, nearly equal to eighty thousand dollars of our money. Penn offered to relinquish this claim for a grant of land; and the king readily bestowed upon him a vast region, stretching west from the river Delaware, to which was given the name of Pennsylvania. Here Penn proposed to found a state, free and self-governing. He claimed it to be his highest ambition "to make men as free and happy as they can be." When he arrived, he proclaimed to the people that he wished them to be governed by laws of their own making. He was as good as his word. The people elected their own representatives by whom a constitution was framed, and Penn signed this charter of their liberties. Penn also dealt justly and kindly with the Indians, and they showed a love for him such as they bestowed on no other Englishman. {146} Soon after his arrival, he invited the chief men of the Indian tribes to a conference. The meeting took place beneath a huge elm-tree. The ancient forest had long given way to the houses and streets of Philadelphia; but a monument still points out to the stranger the scene of this interview. They met, Penn assured them, "on the broad pathway of good faith and good will. All was to be openness and love." And Penn meant what he said. Strong in the power of truth and kindness, he bent the fierce savages of the Delaware tribe to his will. They vowed to live in love with William Penn and his children as long as the moon and the sun should endure. Long years after, aged Indians were accustomed to come from the distant forests and recount with deep emotion the words that Penn had spoken to them under the old elm-tree. The fame of Penn's settlements went abroad in all lands. An asylum was opened for the good and oppressed of every nation. Grave and God-fearing men from all the Protestant countries of Europe sought a home where they might live as conscience taught them. "For here the exiles met from every clime, And spoke in friendship every distant tongue; Men, from the blood of warring Europe sprung, Were but divided by the running brook; And happy where no Rhenish trumpet sung, The blue-eyed German changed his sword to pruning-hook." The new colony grew apace. During the first year twenty-two vessels arrived, bringing two thousand persons. In three years Philadelphia was a town of six hundred houses. Thus did Penn prove himself a benefactor to his race. May we not also consider him an instrument in the hands of God for the execution of His purposes? Meanwhile Maryland had been colonized by Catholics under Lord Baltimore, in 1634. The first colonists were exiles who fled here to escape persecution in their native land. Let it also be said to their credit that they were the first who embodied in their laws complete religious toleration. A few scattering colonists had settled within the boundaries of the Carolinas as early as 1653, and these colonies also became a refuge for the Huguenots of France. {147} Lastly Georgia was colonized, in 1732, by the English philanthropist James Oglethorpe; and it also became an asylum and a refuge for the deserving poor. Had these states been colonized immediately after the discovery of America, they must inevitably have brought with them the institutions of Catholic Europe. Such, for example, as still characterize the civilization of Mexico. Even had they been colonized a century earlier, the colonists would not have been disciplined sufficiently in the principles of civil liberty to have built up free and self-governing states. Who does not see a divine providence--a marvelous wisdom in all this? Though the pilgrims had left their native lands, that they might enjoy the liberty to worship God in the way which they deemed right; yet they had not discovered that people who differed from them were as well entitled to be tolerated as they themselves were. Simple as it seems there are many to this day who have not found out that every one is entitled to think for himself. One day there stepped ashore at Boston, a young man named Roger Williams. He was a man of culture and refinement, a lover of truth and justice, a man of rare virtue and power. He had been an intimate friend of Cromwell and Milton, in the bright days of the poet's youth. Williams brought to America what was then considered strange opinions. Long thought had satisfied him that "in regard to religious belief and worship man is responsible to God alone." New England society was not sufficiently advanced to receive such sentiments. Williams had become minister at Salem where he was held in high esteem. In time his opinions drew upon him the unfavorable notice of the authorities; and he was brought to trial before the general court of Massachusetts. His townsmen and congregation deserted him. His poor wife reproached him bitterly for the evil he was bringing on his family. Still he was firm and continued to testify against the soul-oppression he saw around him. At length the court declared him guilty and pronounced against him the sentence of banishment. All honor to this brave and good man! He, of all the men of his time, saw most clearly the beauty of {148} absolute freedom in matters of conscience. He cheerfully left his home and wandered in the wilderness. During the part of one winter he lived with Massasoit, the Indian chief, who befriended him and gave him a grant of land, now included in the state of Rhode Island. Here he laid out a city which he called Providence, in grateful recognition of the power which had guided his steps. To-day it is one of the most beautiful and thrifty cities in the United States. Roger Williams cherished a very forgiving spirit towards those who sent him into exile. Learning that the Indians were planning the destruction of the Massachusetts colony, he boldly went among the Indians and dissuaded them from their purpose. Thus did this good man put his life in peril for his enemies. Providence Plantation, as it was called, became a shelter for all who were distressed for conscience sake; and so it has continued to the present time. Rhode Island has no record of persecution in her history. Massachusetts continued to drive out misbelievers. Rhode Island took them in. When Massachusetts was convulsed with supposed witchcraft and the horrors of witch-burning, Rhode Island gave no heed to such delusions. In after years, Roger Williams became the president of the colony which he had founded. The neighboring states were at that time severely punishing the Quakers with the lash, branding-iron and imprisonment; and they invited Rhode Island to join in the persecution. Mr. Williams replied that he "had no law to punish any man for his belief." He was opposed to the doctrines of the Quakers. In his seventy-third year he rowed thirty miles in an open boat to wage a public debate against them. In this manner, and this only, would he resist the progress of opinions which he deemed pernicious. Thus to the end of his life stood forth this good man's loyalty to the absolute liberty of the human conscience. From the foregoing, we may get some idea of the moral and social condition of England and her colonies during the latter part of the seventeenth century. {149} CHAPTER XVI. MODERN ENGLAND AND HER COLONIES. CONDITION OF ENGLISH SOCIETY--MANUFACTURE OF GIN AND RUM--ORIGIN OF METHODISM--ELOQUENCE OF WHITFIELD--JOHN AND CHARLES WESLEY--REMARKABLE TEACHINGS--ROBERT RAIKES--JOHN HOWARD--WILLIAM WILBERFORCE--MECHANICAL INVENTIONS--GROWTH OF AMERICAN FREEDOM--THREE GREAT BATTLES--COOK'S VOYAGES--EXTENSION OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE--GREATNESS OF PITT--WASHINGTON'S EARLY LIFE--BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. "Westward the course of empire takes its way." From the first settling of the North American colonies, the relations between Europe and America were such that every great revolution occurring in the parent country had its due effect in the colonies. In 1688, just sixty-eight years after the sailing of the pilgrims, another famous departure took place from the coast of Holland. It was that of William, prince of Orange, coming to deliver England from tyranny, and give a new course to English history. A powerful fleet and army sailed with the prince, the wicked and foolish King James fled from the people he had so long misruled, and William, prince of Orange, with Mary his wife, were proclaimed joint king and queen of England. With the revolution of 1688, a new spirit appears in England. Hitherto English philosophy and literature were almost unknown upon the continent. It was only after the revolution that we hear of foreigners visiting England, learning English and seeking to understand English life and character. Thus on the eve of the eighteenth century English ideas took a {150} great stride forward. The people instead of the king became the virtual rulers of the nation. The preceding age had done its work. It had given to the world the philosophy of Newton, the literature of Shakspeare, and Addison, Pope and Swift, the political agitation of Cromwell, and the colonization of America. The avenues of knowledge were thus opened to the masses. Even the dullest and most backward minds began to have notions of literature and the discoveries of science. The ancient forms of royalty and chivalry had lost their prestige and stood in the shady background of the past. A new world of citizens henceforth occupies the ground, attracts the gaze, imposes its ideas on the public manners and stamps its image on the minds of men. In 1709 appeared the first newspaper, a sheet as big as a man's hand which the editor did not know how to fill. At the present time there are more than 1,000,000,000 copies of newspapers published in the English language annually, many of which contain more reading matter in a single number than the whole New Testament scriptures. With the increase of intelligence the power of the people began to be felt. Increased intelligence brought political reforms, and these in turn were followed by a reform in morals and manners. During the reign of the Stuarts the morals of the people had been extremely low. As an illustration might be mentioned the disrespect shown to the clergy. A parish priest was only permitted to dine at the second table, after his superiors (?) had been served. He might fill himself with the beef and cabbage, but did not dare to touch the better dishes until invited to do so by the hostess. A law had been passed during the reign of Charles II., that no clergyman should marry a servant-girl without the consent of her mistress. Most of the prominent statesmen during the previous half century were unbelievers in any form of religion. Such were the irreligious tendencies of the age, that drunkenness and foul talk were considered no reproach to Robert Walpole, prime minister of England. Purity of life was sneered at by the nobility as "out of fashion." For example, Lord Chesterfield, in his letters to his son (which were designed for publication), {151} instructs him in the art of seduction, as part of a polite education. At the lower end of the social scale lay the masses of the extremely poor. They were ignorant and brutal to a degree which it is hard to conceive. The manufacture of gin and rum had been discovered in 1684; and intemperance overran the nation as a plague. Tavern-keepers, on their sign-boards, invited the people to come and get drunk for a penny. For two pence they might get dead drunk, and have "a place to lie down with no charge for straw." Much of this social degradation was due, without doubt, to the apathy and sloth of the religious teachers. Such was the condition of society when a remarkable religious revival began in a small knot of Oxford students whose revolt against the wickedness of the times expressed itself in enthusiastic religious worship and an austere and methodical regularity of life, that gave them the nickname of "Methodists." Of these students, three soon attracted special attention by their religious fervor and even extravagance. One of these, George Whitfield, became the greatest orator. His voice was soon heard in the wildest and most barbarous corners of the land, among the bleak moors of Northumberland, in the dens of London, and in the dark and gloomy mines of Cornwall. Whitfield's preaching was such as England had never heard before, theatrical, extravagant, sometimes common-place, but winning favor by its earnestness and deep tremulous sympathy for the sins and sorrows of mankind. He was no common enthusiast who could so eloquently plead the cause of the erring and unfortunate as to draw out the last cent from the cool and calculating Franklin, and command admiration from the fastidious and skeptical Horace Walpole; or who could look down, from the top of a green knoll at Kingswood, on twenty thousand colliers, grimy from the Bristol coal-pits, and see as he preached, the tears making white channels down their blackened cheeks. On the rough and ignorant masses to whom they spoke, the effects of Whitfield and his co-workers were mighty both for good and ill. Their preaching stirred a passionate hatred in {152} the hearts of their opponents. Their lives were often in danger; they were mobbed, ducked, stoned and smothered with filth; but the enthusiasm they aroused among their followers was equally intense. Very important to the cause was Charles Wesley, a student at Oxford, who came as the sweet singer of the movement. His hymns expressed the fiery zeal of its converts, in lines so chaste and beautiful that many of the cultured classes were numbered among the adherents of the movement. But most important of all was the elder brother, John Wesley, an ordained minister of the Church of England, who by his learning, energy and power of organization gave stability to the movement. No man of that age surpassed him in self-denial and trust in God. With all his extravagance and superstition, Wesley's mind was essentially practical and orderly. He, beyond most men of his age, saw that he lacked divine authority to found a church. Hence to the last he clung passionately to the Church of England, and looked upon the sect he had formed as only a lay society or branch in full communication with the parent church. For a long time he would not permit his co-workers to administer the sacrament of the Lord's supper; as he considered they did not possess the requisite authority. Wesley saw with wonderful clearness a fact that no one of that age perceived or, if he did, had not the moral courage to declare. He perceived the universal as well as the total apostasy of the so-called Christian church. In his 94th sermon he says; "The real cause why the extraordinary gifts of the Holy Ghost were no longer to be found in the Christian church was _because the Christians were turned heathens again, and had only a dead form left_." In another place he says: "A string of opinions is no more Christian faith, than a string of beads is Christian holiness." The justifying faith which he considered so essential and taught so earnestly, implied a personal revelation--an inward evidence of Christianity. Thus he unconsciously yet logically taught the insufficiency of the ancient scriptures as a guide to salvation. It also implied the need of new and continuous revelation as necessary for the vitality and growth of the church. Wesley continued his labors for upwards of fifty-two {153} years, traveling and preaching until within a short time of his death, which occurred in his eighty-eighth year. At the time of his death, his followers numbered more than one hundred thousand. Now they are estimated at nearly eight millions. [Image: John Wesley.] It was the teachings and practices of the Puritans, the Quakers and the Methodists that gave to England that great moral impulse which led to the establishment of Sunday schools by Robert Raikes of Gloucester, the reforming of prisons by John Howard, and the abolition of the slave trade by William Wilberforce. The ardor and perseverance which these men showed in behalf of the poor, the wronged and the afflicted, excited a wave of human sympathy throughout the length and breadth of the civilized world. It is from this time that may be dated the commencement of charity schools, foundling hospitals, insane asylums and other institutions {154} of benevolence for which English-speaking people are now so famous. While the moral and religious movements were in progress, others of a political or scientific nature, were pressing forward with rapid strides. Amid the tumult of these times, James Brindley was quietly making England a net work of canals. Watt was silently perfecting his invention of the steam-engine and Adam Smith was working out the great problem of political and industrial economy, which has made England and her colonies the leading commercial and manufacturing countries of the world. Meanwhile John Hargreaves, Richard Arkwright and Samuel Crompton, by their inventions were revolutionizing the art of spinning and weaving. However, these ingenious devices would have done but little had it not been for the new and inexhaustible labor force of the steam-engine which had then come into general use. One of the first effects was to develop the iron manufactures of England. Previous to 1750, England and her colonies imported four-fifths of their iron goods from Sweden; now they produce more than four-fifths of all the iron used in the world. The influence of the steam-engine and spinning jenny on the civilization of England is beyond human calculation. Mines were developed, manufactories established and the whole national industry so increased that the population of England was twice doubled in less than fifty years. At the same time agriculture was so improved that one-sixth of the people raised food for the remainder. While these events were transpiring in England they had their due influence in the colonies. Europe saw for the first time a state growing up amidst the forests of the west, where religious freedom had become complete. Religious tolerance had been brought about by strange circumstances--a medley of religious sects such as the world had never seen before. New England was the stronghold of the Puritans. In some of the southern colonies the Episcopal church was established by law and the bulk of the settlers clung to it. The Roman Catholics formed a large majority in Maryland. Pennsylvania was a state of Quakers. Presbyterians and Baptists fled from {155} persecution to colonize New Jersey; Lutherans and Moravians from Germany abounded among the settlers of Georgia, and the persecuted Huguenots of France had fled from their native land to the forests of Carolina. In such a chaos of creeds, religious persecution was well nigh impossible. As there were but few large fortunes among the colonists, so nearly all had the same social standing and privileges. Education was general. It was the proud boast of many of the colonies that every man and woman could read and write. Such was the condition of the colonies in 1748, when Montesquieu, the wisest and most reflecting statesman of France, declared that a free, prosperous and great people were forming in the forests of America. The hereditary dynasties of the old world were all unconscious of the rapid growth of this power, which was soon to involve them in its new and prevailing influence. The hour of revolution was at hand, promising freedom to conscience and dominion to intelligence. From the fragments of European society--fragments that in some instances had been considered worthless--humanity in the providence of God was building up a self-governing and democratic dominion. About the middle of the eighteenth century occurred three famous battles which did much to determine the destinies of men for ages to come. The first of these, was the great victory achieved by the English arms on the plains of Plassey, June 23, 1757, which laid the foundation of the empire of British India, an empire which comprises more than one hundred and twenty millions of people. The second was the victory of Rossbach, which determined the re-union of the German states and laid the foundation of the present German empire. The third was the triumph of Wolfe on the plains of Abraham, September 13, 1759, for with it virtually began the history of the United States. France had ever been an enemy whose dread had knit the colonists together and to the mother country, England. By wresting Canada from her grasp and breaking through the line with which France had barred the British colonists from the basin of the Mississippi, Pitt laid the foundation of the great republic of the West. {156} Hitherto the possessions of France in North America had been twenty times as vast as those of England; henceforth they were destined to dwindle into insignificance and eventually become extinct. The close of the seven years' war, which ended at the peace of Paris, 1763, was a turning point in the history of the world. England was no longer a mere European power. Her future action lay in a wider sphere than that of Europe. Mistress of North America, the future mistress of India, claiming as her own the empire of the seas, Britain suddenly towered high above rival nations whose interest and position, being on a single continent, doomed them to comparative insignificance in the after history of mankind. It is this that gives William Pitt so peculiar a position among the statesmen of the world. It was his faith, his daring--shall we not say his inspiration?--that called the English people to a sense of the destiny that lay before them. With England on one side and her American colonies on the other, the Atlantic was dwindling into a mere strait within the British realms; but beyond it to the westward lay a vast ocean where the British flag was almost unknown. True the Pacific ocean had been discovered by Balboa in 1513, and crossed by Magellan in 1521. Dutch voyagers had discovered that "Great Southern Land," which they had named New Holland and also the northern extremity of New Zealand. But the discoveries had remained unheeded for more than a century. It was not till 1778 that, under Pitt's direction, Captain Cook was sent into the Pacific ocean on a voyage of discovery. He discovered the Sandwich Islands circumnavigated New Zealand and took possession of Australia, or New Holland, in the name of the English king. The reports which he published of that vast ocean and those far-off islands, of their coral reefs, and palms, and bread-fruit, and gum trees, and kangaroos, and tattooed warriors, awoke an interest in the minds of the English concerning this world of wonders. They saw in all this a vast realm opened for the expansion of the English race, and English civilization. {157} The extension of the English language over vast territories and populations is without a parallel in the history of the world. Fully one-fifth of the surface of the globe and one-fourth of its population are under the dominion of England and the United States. The English language is now spoken, and English and American literature is read in every zone. "They spread where Winter piles deep snows on bleak Canadian plains, And where on green Pacific isles eternal summer reigns. They glad Acadia's misty coasts, Jamaica's glowing isle, And bide where gay with early flowers green Texan prairies smile. "They dwell where Californian brooks wash down their sands of gold, And track the Frazier's swelling flood thro' sunset valleys rolled; They're found in Borneo's camphor groves, on shores of fierce Malay, In valleys washed by Ganges' flood where Ceylon's zephyrs stray. "Old Albions laws, Columbia's songs rejoice the captive's limbs; The dark Liberian soothes her child with English cradle hymns, Tasmanian maids are wooed and won, in gentle Saxon speech. Australian boys read Crusoe's life, by Sidney's sheltered beach. "They speak to men so far apart, that while this praise we sing, Some may rejoice with autumn fruits, others with flowers of spring, They speak with Shakspeare's searching thoughts and Bryant's lofty mind, With Alfred's laws and Franklin's lore, to cheer and bless mankind." Who does not see a marvelous wisdom in all this? The language thus widely spread was destined to be the medium by which the gospel is to be spread in all the nations of the earth. Who does not perceive that the statesmanship of Pitt was one of the great instrumentalities for the execution of the divine purposes? Like all great men, Pitt was in advance of the age in which he lived. But England could not forget the eminent services of him, who had done so much to promote her greatness. The ashes of Pitt (now best known as the earl of Chatham) repose in Westminster Abbey, the burial place of {158} the kings of England. History will declare that among statesmen, few have left a more stainless, none a more splendid name. While these leading events were transpiring around them two remarkable persons were developing in the American colonies. One of these was George Washington, the other, Benjamin Franklin. Washington was born in 1732. His father, a gentleman of good fortune, died when his future illustrious son was only eleven years of age. Upon Washington's mother devolved the care of his early education. She was a devout woman, of excellent sense and deep affections, yet of a temper which could brook no shadow of insubordination. Under her rule--gentle and yet strong, George learned obedience and self-control. In boyhood he gave remarkable promise of those excellencies which distinguished his mature years. His person was large and powerful. He was accustomed to labor, which gave him endurance to perform the work that lay before him. His education was limited to the common English branches, mathematics and land surveying. In his eighteenth year he was employed by the government as surveyor of public lands. Many of his measurements are still on record, and long experience has established their unvarying accuracy. A massive intellect and an iron strength of will were given to him, with a gentle, loving heart, dauntless courage, and loftiness of purpose. He possessed, in a wonderful degree, clear perceptions of his duty, and a deep insight into the wants of his time. While Washington's boyhood was being passed on the banks of the Potomac, Benjamin Franklin was toiling hard in the city of Philadelphia to earn an honest livelihood. He edited a newspaper, bound books, made ink, sold rags, soap and coffee. He also published the first American almanac. A _facsimile_ of the title page is given on the next page. {159} [Image: A Facsimile of the Title Page for Poor Richard, 1773 Almanac.] {160} [Image: Benjamin Franklin.] He was a thriving man, but he was not ashamed to convey along the streets in a wheelbarrow the paper which he bought for the purpose of his trade. As a boy, he had been studious and thoughtful. As a man, he was prudent, sagacious and trustworthy. When he had earned a moderate competency he {161} ceased to labor at his business. Henceforth he labored to serve his fellow-men. Philadelphia owes to Franklin her university, her hospital, and her first and greatest library. It was he who discovered the identity of lightning and electricity. Before the revolution he was sent to England to plead the cause of the colonists. During the war he was sent as ambassador to the court of France. At the close of the war he was appointed one of the commissioners to negotiate a treaty of peace between the United States and Great Britain. The last great work of his life was to aid in the forming of the constitution of the United States. He continued in public office till within six months of his death and in public service till within twenty-four days of it. CHAPTER XVII. THE EVE OF REVOLUTION. GATHERING OF POLITICAL FORCES--GENERAL REVOLUTION--CIVIL REFORMS--DECAY OF OLD INSTITUTIONS--ROSSEAU AND HIS WRITINGS--VOLTAIRE--HOLLAND, A POLITICAL REFUGE--AMERICAN SETTLERS--LINES OF ALBERT B. STREET--GROWTH OF THE COLONIES--LOVE FOR ENGLAND--CAUSES OF REVOLUTION--MANUFACTURES FORBIDDEN--STAMP ACT--TAX ON TEA--PHILADELPHIA CONVENTION--ADDRESS TO THE KING--APPEAL TO ENGLAND--TO CANADA--INCIDENT IN OLD SOUTH CHURCH, BOSTON--PAUL REVERE'S RIDE. "Freedom, thy brow, Glorious in beauty though it be, is scarred With tokens of old wars; thy massive limbs Are strong with struggling. Power at thee has launched His bolts, and with his lightnings smitten thee. They could not quench the light thou hast from heaven." Who has failed to observe on a calm summer day the elements of a storm collecting silently, and gradually, until the whole heavens grew dark, and the light of the sun was hid? The calm was changed into a tempest, the lightning flashed, the thunder roared, the clouds piled up {162} thicker and heavier until at length the storm burst, the rain fell in torrents deluging the earth and in some cases uprooting the plants it was designed to nourish and strengthen. So, too, in the political world the forces gather gradually, until they have attained sufficient power, and then burst upon the affrighted nations in all the tumult of a terrible revolution. There are few intelligent people in this age but what have a general idea of the history of the world; yet how comparatively few are there who realize the fact, that in the seventy-five years which elapsed between 1775 and 1850 the great majority of civilized nations passed through a great social and political change. Among the nations so affected may be mentioned the United States, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Belgium, Poland, Hungary, Turkey, Mexico, Central America and nearly all the South American states. To this may be added the great commotions in Russia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Holland, Switzerland and the states of the German empire caused by the wars of Napoleon. In England, Ireland and Canada, wars were only averted by civil reforms and concessions to popular rights. For Europe this epoch was the result of the struggles of generations. At the close of the seven years' war in 1763 the representatives of even the Catholic powers admitted the decay of old institutions. The Catholic monarchies headed by the pope, in their struggle against Protestantism and free thought had encountered defeat. From this great struggle came forth a principle of all-pervading energy. The life-giving truth of the Reformation was the right of private judgment. The world was rising up against superstition; the oppression of industry was passing away. The use of reason was no longer considered a crime, but was on the other hand, considered a duty. Ideas of the brotherhood of man were flashing across the minds of leading men. At this juncture a remarkable political writer made his appearance. From the discipleship of Calvin, from the republic of Geneva, from the abodes of poverty, Jean Jacques Rosseau came as the advocate of the poor and the oppressed. Through him the "sons of toil" breathed out their wrongs, {163} and a new class gained a voice in the world of published thought. Though full of weaknesses and jealousies and betrayed by poverty into shameful deeds, he possessed a deep and real feeling for humanity. In an age of skepticism he solaced the ills of life by trust in God. Fearlessly questioning all the grandeurs of the world, he breathed the spirit of revolution into words of flame. What though the church of Rome cursed his writings with her ban; and parliaments burned them at the gibbet by the hangman's hand! What though France drove him from her soil, and the republic of his birth disowned her son! What though the wise and noble hooted at his wildness! Yet from the woes of the world in which he had suffered, from the wrongs of the down-trodden which he had shared, he derived an eloquence that went to the heart of the masses of Europe. Beyond most men of his time he saw the hand of Providence in the history of men. "Nor God alone in the still calm we find, He mounts the storm and rides upon the wind." Institutions may crumble and governments fall, but it is only that they may renew a better youth; the petals of the flower wither that fruit may form. On the banks of the stream of time not a great deed has been done by a hero, or monument raised by a nation, but tells the story of human progress. Each people that has disappeared, every great institution that has passed away, has been but a step in the ladder by which humanity ascends to a higher plane. The generations that handed the truth, from rank to rank down the ages, have themselves become dust; but the light still increases its ever-burning flame. From the intelligence that had been slowly ripening sprang the American revolution. While Rosseau was putting his burning thoughts in print, and Voltaire, the prince of scoffers, was hurling his venomed shafts of sarcasm at the priesthood of the Roman church, farther north was the little country, Holland, which had already gained a large share of civil and religious liberty. Here thought ranged through the wide domain of speculative reason; here the literary fugitive found an asylum, and the boldest writings, which in other countries were circulated by stealth, were openly published to the world. {164} While the learned and thoughtful men of Europe were thinking, the pioneers of America were acting. Nothing could restrain them from peopling the wilderness. To be a land-owner was the ruling passion of the New England man. In general, marriages were early and very fruitful. The sons, as they grew up skilled in the use of the ax and the rifle, would, one after another, move from the old homestead; and, with a wife, a yoke of oxen, a cow and a few necessary implements, build a small hut in the forest and by dint of industry soon win for themselves plenty and independence. The beautiful lines of Albert B. Street well describe the circumstances as well as the character of the men who founded American institutions and moulded the national character: "His echoing ax the settler swung Amid the sea-like solitude, And rushing, thundering down were flung The Titans of the wood. Loud shrieked the eagle as he dashed From out his mossy nest, which crashed With its supporting bough, And the first sunlight leaping flashed On the wolf's haunt below. "Rude was the garb, and strong the frame Of him who plied his ceaseless toil: To form the garb, the wild-wood game Contributed their spoil; The soul that warmed that frame disdained The tinsel gaud and glare, that reigned Where men their crowds collect; The simple fur untrimmed, unstained, This forest tamer decked. "His roof adorned a pleasant spot, 'Mid the black logs, green glowed the grain, And fruits and plants the woods knew not Bloomed in the sun and rain. The smoke-wreath curling o'er the dell, The lowing herds--the tinkling bell, All made a landscape strange. Which was the living chronicle Of deeds that wrought the change. {165} "Humble the lot, yet his the race, When liberty sent forth her cry, Who thronged in conflict's deadliest place To fight--to bleed--to die; Who cumbered Bunker's hight of red. By hope through weary years were led And witnessed Yorktown's sun Blaze on a nations banner spread-- A nation's freedom won." A century and a half had now passed since the first colony had been planted on American soil. The colonists were fast ripening into fitness for independence. They had increased with marvelous rapidity. Europe never ceased to send forth her needy thousands. America opened wide her hospitable doors and gave assurance of liberty and comfort to all who came. The thirteen colonies now contained a population of about three millions. Up to the year 1764, the Americans cherished a deep reverence and affection for the mother country. They were proud to be considered British subjects, and of the lofty place England held among the nations of the earth. They gloried in the splendor of her military achievements. They copied her manners and her fashions. Her language, laws and literature were as fondly cherished by the colonists as by the English themselves. Why was it then that such a marvelous change should take place in the minds of the American people, during the next twelve years? In 1764 the colonists loved England as their mother country. In 1776 they had learned to despise her authority. They bound themselves, by solemn oaths, to use no article of English manufacture. They publicly burned the Acts of the English Parliament. They even killed the king's soldiers and cast from them forever his authority. By what terrible magic was this change wrought so swiftly: that three millions of people should be taught to abhor the country they once loved? To answer this question rightly we must remember that the cause of the colonists was one of popular rights against royal prerogative, that the best and wisest men in England were in favor of the colonists; that even William Pitt, the {166} greatest statesman England had ever seen, declared openly in Parliament, "I rejoice that America has resisted." We must also bear in mind that for many years England had governed her American colonies harshly; and in a spirit of undisguised selfishness, America was ruled not for her own good but for the good of English commerce. The colonists were not allowed to export their products except to England. No foreign ships were permitted to enter colonial ports. Whatever were the exorbitant demands of English manufacturers or merchants, still the colonists were not permitted to buy at a cheaper market. Still more, certain goods, woolen for example, were not allowed to be sent from one colony to another. The manufacture of hats was forbidden, and even the Bible was not allowed to be printed in America. The colonists had long borne the cost of their own government and defense. But in that age of profuse expenditure on useless wars, the king and nobility of England thought to gather from America's toiling sons the means to pay for their own misrule. The Parliament of England passed a law to tax America. The colonists replied they were willing to vote what moneys the king required of them; but they vehemently denied the right of any assembly, in which they were not represented, to take from them any portion of their property. Another law was also passed requiring a royal stamp to be placed on every legal document. Benjamin Franklin had been sent to England by the colonists. He went to plead their cause before the British government. He told them plainly that the colonists could not submit to such taxation. The act was to come in force on the first of November, 1763. On that day the church bells were tolled, and the people wore the aspect of those on whom some heavy calamity had fallen. Not one of the stamps was ever sold in America. Without stamps mercantile transactions ceased to be binding, notes were not legal, marriages were null. Yet the business of life went on. Men married; they bought; they sold--illegally, because without stamps; but no harm came of it. England heard with amazement that America refused to obey the law. The great statesman, Pitt, denounced the act, {167} and, at length, it was repealed. The repeal of the stamp act only delayed for a little the fast-coming crisis. It was during this agitation that the colonists first felt the need of a commercial and political union. The idea of a general congress of the states was suggested, which soon afterwards met in the city of New York. The king of England was still determined to tax America, and soon levied a tax on tea. The people determined they would drink no more tea rather than pay the tax. One day ships loaded with taxed tea arrived in Boston harbor. There was a great commotion; the men ran together to hold council. It was Sunday, and the people of Boston were very strict, yet here was an emergency in the presence of which all ordinary rules were suspended. The crisis had come at length. If that tea was landed, it would be sold; it would be used, and American liberty would become a by-word upon the earth. The brave and liberty-loving Samuel Adams was the leading man of Boston at that time. He was a man in middle life just forty-two years of age, of cultivated mind and stainless reputation, a powerful speaker and writer, and a man in whose sagacity and moderation all men trusted. He resembled Cromwell in some particulars--his love of liberty, undaunted courage and trust in God. He was among the first to see that there was no resting place short of independence. He said: "Our forefathers were driven from the land of their birth in the cause of religious liberty. They made themselves homes in the wilds of America. We have earned a competence and are self-sustaining. We are free and need no king but God." The men of Boston felt the power of his resolute spirit and manfully followed where Samuel Adams led. Several days of excitement and discussion followed. People flocked in from the neighboring towns. The time was spent mainly in political meetings. At Fanueil Hall, in the churches and at the market place, the rights of the people were discussed. One day a meeting was held and the excited people continued in hot debate till the shades of evening fell. At length Samuel Adams stood up in the dimly lighted church and announced: "This meeting can do nothing more to save the country." With a stern shout the meeting broke up. Fifty men disguised {168} as Indians hurried down to the wharf, each man with a hatchet in his hand. The crowd followed, and stood on the shore in silence while the so-called Indians went on board the ship, broke open the chests of tea and threw them and their contents into the sea. No wonder King George was in a rage. No wonder that he demanded that the guilty parties, if they could be found, should be sent to England for trial. The great statesman, William Pitt, also called the Earl of Chatham, pleaded for measures of conciliation; but all in vain. General Gage with four regiments was sent to Boston. He threw up fortifications and lay as in a hostile city. The colonists appointed a day of fasting and prayer. They knew that their cause was just. They looked to Him for protection, who "holds the nations in the hollow of His hand." They knew that He, who had guided them across the rolling deep and had preserved them in the wilderness, could also protect them from the rage and avarice of wicked men. They also formed themselves into military companies. They occupied themselves with drill. They laid up stores of ammunition. Most of them had muskets and could use them. He who had no musket, now got one. They hoped that civil war might be averted, but there was no harm in being ready. While these things were going on in Boston, a congress of delegates had met in Philadelphia and were busy discussing measures in regard to the troubles that were thickening around them. Twelve colonies were represented but Georgia, the youngest and feeblest colony, still paused timidly on the brink of the perilous enterprise. Some of the truly great men of America met in that congress. Of it the great Earl of Chatham said: "For genuine sagacity, for singular moderation, for solid wisdom the congress of Philadelphia shines unrivalled." That quaint old building where they met became one of the spots ever dear to the patriot's heart. Among the famous men assembled there were George Washington whose massive sense and copious knowledge attracted attention, and made him a guiding power, and Patrick Henry, then a young man. He brought to the council a wisdom beyond his years, and a fiery eloquence, which, to some of his hearers, seemed almost more than human. He had already shown that he was {169} unfitted for farming or merchandising. He was now to prove that he could utter words which would sweep over a continent, thrill men's hearts like the most sublime strains of music, and rouse them up to high and noble deeds. There also was Richard Henry Lee, with his bewitching voice, his ripe scholarship, and rich stores of historical and political knowledge, which would have graced the highest assemblies of the old world. Nor should we forget to mention the noble-minded farmer, John Dickinson, whose published letters had done so much to form the public sentiment. His enthusiastic love of England was now overborne by a sense of wrong. And last, but by no means least, we may place on the list the name of Benjamin Franklin, the sage philosopher, the practical scientist, the shrewd diplomatist, the incorruptible patriot, the wise philanthropist. Such were some of the men whom God raised up to mould the character of the infant nation. Still they did not wish for separation. They wished to have their wrongs redressed and continue British subjects. They drew up a narrative of their wrongs. They implored King George to remove those grievances. They even addressed the people of Great Britain, as subjects of the same empire, as men possessing common sympathies and common interests; yet they added that "they would not be 'hewers of wood and drawers of water' to any nation in the world." Had all the colonists been Englishmen or descendants of Englishmen no more could have been expected. When we recollect that they had been gathered from many nations and different climes, their subserviency to the interests of the British empire is remarkable. The colonists even appealed to their fellow-colonists in Canada for aid and sympathy. But Canada, newly conquered from France, was peopled almost wholly by Frenchmen. They were strangers to the religious struggles through which the more southern colonists had passed. And so from Canada there came no response of sympathy or help. King George now determined to reduce the colonists to obedience. All trade with the colonies was forbidden. No ship of any nation was permitted to enter American ports or bring supplies to the settlers in America. In justice to the {170} English people it should be said, that in those days they had no control over the government of their country. All this was managed for them by a few great families. Their allotted part was to toil hard, pay their taxes, and be silent. If they had been permitted to speak, their voice would have been on the side of popular rights. They would have vindicated the men who asserted the right of self-government--a right which the great mass of Englishmen were not to enjoy for many a long year after. Two incidents occurred about this time which well illustrate the spirit of the people. It was the Sabbath morning before the battle of Lexington. The scene of the first is the Old South Church, itself rich with the mementos of the past. Its walls are lined with monuments. The burying-ground around the church is a picturesque spot and was first used about 1660. The trees interweave their branches above the tombs, and only pencil-rays of sunlight break the broad, cool shadows of the spot. The Boston branch of the Winslow family rests here, and here also sleeps the famous Mary Chilson, who is said to have been the first to step on shore from the Mayflower. She died in 1679. Here lie the remains of Governor John Winthrop; Hon. John Philips, the first mayor of the city; Robert Treat Paine, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence; and many others among which should not be forgotten the name of Paul Revere. At this church the governor of the colony and other British government officials usually attended. On this beautiful April Sabbath morning they had come as usual; and the happy yet determined people were quietly talking and loitering among the graves of their ancestors. At length the pastor came, and they followed him into the church. The hymn they sang is known as the ninety-fourth psalm. It commences: "O Lord our God, to whom alone, all vengeance doth belong; O mighty God, who vengeance ownest, shine forth avenging wrong, Thy folk they break in pieces, Lord, thine heritage oppress, The widow they and stranger slay, and kill the fatherless." The pastor's text was Psalms xlvi., 1: "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. {171} He spoke of the wrongs the colonists had endured, the position they held in regard to posterity, and the responsibility which rested upon them to plant the institutions of liberty for the benefit of future generations. Warming with his theme, he uttered sentences which caused the hearts of foes to quake and the hearts of friends to glow and burn within them. Standing on the platform of truth and right, he dared to hurl defiance at a tyrant king. The governor, Berkley, interrupted the speaker, and, calling him a traitor, demanded that he should cease. Some of the militia of Boston foreseeing the danger of the daring speaker had followed him to the church, and already stood in the vestibule. Just at that moment the trumpet sounded, the drums beat and the great church-bell rang out its clarion notes calling the citizens to arms. Such was the spirit of the people that the governor sought in vain to stay their indignation which swept like a flood over the land. With the Puritans liberty was a part of their religion. The other incident occurred on the eve of the battle of Lexington. Early in April 1775, General Gage learned that considerable stores of ammunition were collected at the village of Concord, eighteen miles from Boston, and he determined to capture them. Late on the night of April 18th, eight hundred soldiers set out on this errand. The patriots observed that there was something more than ordinary in progress. Companies of soldiers were massed on Boston common under pretense of learning a new military exercise. Doctor, afterwards General, Joseph Warren, who fell at Bunker Hill, received notice of the design of the troops, and at once sent Paul Revere to arouse the country. It was agreed that a signal light should be placed in the tower of the Old North Church to notify the watchers of the direction the troops had taken--one if by land, two if by sea. Paul Revere then rowed across the stream to Charlestown. He was not a moment too soon. General Gage heard that his plans were discovered, and orders were at once given that no person should be allowed to leave Boston. Had these orders been given five minutes sooner, the whole course of the revolution {172} might have been changed. As it was Revere reached the other side in safety. Having obtained a fleet and sure-footed steed he stood impatiently watching the belfry tower of the Old North Church. Meanwhile Warren, in disguise, wandered through the darkness and listened with eager ears till he heard the measured tread of the grenadiers marching down to the boats. Then with lantern in hand he climbed up into the belfry and a gleam of light shone over the dark and silent city. Paul Revere sprang into the saddle, but paused a moment and gazed until a second light gleamed out distinctly and clearly. Then "A hurry of hoofs in a village street, A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark, And beneath from the pebbles in passing, a spark Struck out by the steed that flies fearless and fleet; That was all! And yet thro' the darkness and gloom The fate of a nation was riding that night, And the spark struck out by the steed in his flight Kindled the land into flame with its heat. It was twelve by the village clock When he crossed the bridge into Medford town. It was one by the village clock When he rode into Lexington. He saw the gilded weathercock swim In the moonlight as he passed, And the meeting-house windows blank and bare Gaze at him with a spectral glare As if they already stood aghast, At the bloody work they would look upon. You know the rest. In the books you have read How the British regulars fired and fled, How the farmers gave them ball for ball, From behind each fence and farm-yard wall, Chasing the red-coats down the lane, Then crossing the fields to emerge again Under the trees, at the turn of the road, And only pausing to fire and load. So through the night rode Paul Revere; And so through the night went his cry of alarm To every Middlesex village and farm-- A cry of defiance and not of fear-- A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door, {173} A word that shall echo for evermore! For, borne on the night wind of the past Through human history to the last The good shall pray and by faith shall hear A delivering foot-fall as of that steed And a midnight message as of Paul Revere." CHAPTER XVIII. THE BOYS OF '76. BATTLE OF LEXINGTON--OFFICERS CHOSEN--A YEAR OF DISCUSSION--DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE--SPIRIT OF ENGLISH NOBILITY--DEFEAT OF AMERICAN FORCES--SUCCESS AT TRENTON AND PRINCETON--SUFFERINGS AT VALLEY FORGE--WASHINGTON'S PRAYER--BURGOYNE'S CAMPAIGN--ARRIVAL OF LA FAYETTE--ARNOLD'S TREASON--ANDRE'S DEATH--SIEGE OF YORKTOWN--CLOSE OF THE WAR--TREATY OF PEACE--ARMY DISBANDED--WASHINGTON RESIGNS HIS COMMISSION--CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION--WASHINGTON ELECTED PRESIDENT--HIS DEATH--HIS TOMB. With the battle of Lexington the war of the Revolution may be said to commence. Henceforth the colonies were united. Georgia no longer hesitated, but sent her delegates to the continental Congress. Resolutions were unanimously passed to provide for the defense of the country. But it was not till after the battle of Bunker Hill that the people favored independence. When the tidings of the battle arrived, Patrick Henry exclaimed: "This was needed to rouse the country to action." On the same day Congress appointed George Washington commander-in-chief of the colonial forces. On the day following it elected its four major-generals. {174} From deference to Massachusetts, for the noble part she had taken, the first of these was Artemas Ward. The second was Charles Lee, the son of an English officer, the third was Philip Schuyler, of New York; the fourth was Israel Putnam, of Connecticut. Thus the country took up arms with only one general officer, who drew to himself the trust and love of the country. Washington immediately accepted the position and wrote to his brother: "I bid adieu to every kind and domestic ease, and embark on a wide ocean, boundless in its prospect, and in which, perhaps, no safe harbor is to be found." [Image: George Washington.] Trumbull, the governor of Connecticut, wrote to him: "Now be strong and very courageous; may the God of the armies of Israel give you wisdom and fortitude and cover your head in the day of battle and danger." To this Washington replied: "The cause of our common country calls us both to an active and dangerous duty; divine Providence, which wisely orders the affairs of men, will enable us to discharge it with fidelity and success." Such were the sentiments which animated the colonists in June, 1775. A year of discussion and anxiety followed, during {175} which a remarkable pamphlet was published, entitled, "Common Sense." The writer, who embodied in words the vague longing of the people, mixed with crude notions of his own, was Thomas Paine, the son of an English Quaker, and, at that time, a little under forty years of age. In after years he became a profligate and a reviler of the scriptures, yet, at that time, his writings did much to prepare the American people for self-government. However, it was not until June, 1776, that the colonists gave up the hope of reconciliation. At that time the Assembly of Virginia issued a famous circular entitled, "The Rights of Man." The leading principles which it taught were, that "government ought to be instituted for the benefit of the people; that freedom of speech and of the press should never be interfered with; and that religion can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by fraud or violence." A month later, July 4th, 1776, the continental Congress issued THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. And for the support of this declaration they added: "With a firm reliance on the protection of DIVINE PROVIDENCE, we mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor." Thus the youthful nation, as it took its place among the powers of the world, proclaimed its faith in the truth and reality and unchangeableness of freedom, virtue and right. The heart of Jefferson, in writing the declaration, and of Congress in adopting it, beat for all humanity. The assertion of right was made for all nations and for all coming generations. It was addressed to all mankind and was destined to make the circuit of the world. As it passed by the despotic countries of Europe, and the astonished people read with mingled surprise and joy, that "all men are created equal," and have an equal right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, they started as from the sleep of years; like those, who have been exiles from their native land from childhood, start up when they suddenly hear the dimly remembered accents of their mother tongue. When the news of the declaration of independence reached England the spirit of the nobility was vehement against the Americans. Had the decision of the conflict hung on the {176} strength of armies alone, the colonists could not have gained the victory; but it involved the interests of Europe's toiling millions, and brought into action ideas which had hitherto no opportunity for expression, and forces which until then had no sphere of action. The principles that gave life to the new institutions pervaded history like a prophecy, and seemed like the realizing of the golden age of which the poets dreamed. The most profound thinkers and most intense lovers of the race saw in America's future an opportunity for man's higher development; the spiritual-minded saw in the history and circumstances of America the wonder-working and controlling hand of Providence. The history of the military campaigns of 1776 and 1777, are too well known to need repetition here. The Americans were beaten in every attack made upon them, from the battle of Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775, to the battle of Fort Mifflin, October 22, 1777. At Cambridge they had no powder, yet their courage and perseverance held out. They lost Long Island, New York, Fort Washington and more than three thousand men. They fled through New Jersey followed by the victorious English. The American army kept on dwindling and shrinking till it comprised scarcely seven thousand men, ill armed, unpaid, ill clad and unfed. During those two years and four months the only battles, that were precursors of success and gave renewed hope and vigor to the patriot cause, were the brilliant successes at Trenton and Princeton. {177} [Image: Washington Crossing the Delaware.] It was the night before Christmas. The British lay waiting fur the Delaware river to freeze over, that they might again pursue Washington and his little band. Meanwhile the Americans collected all the boats up and down the river for seventy miles. After dark they commenced to cross the river. The night was dark and tempestuous, and the weather so intensely cold that two of the soldiers were frozen to death. Yet amidst the floating ice and gusts of wind they fearlessly rowed across the river. At day-break Christmas morning they attacked the astonished royalists. Three times as many prisoners were taken as the number of the American troops engaged. The Americans then recrossed the river taking the {178} prisoners with them. A week later, Washington made another night march and surprised the British at Princeton, capturing prisoners and making good his escape. These exploits, inconsiderable as they may seem, greatly raised the spirits of the American people. When triumphs like these were possible, under circumstances so discouraging, there was no need to despair. Though the British advanced on Philadelphia and took possession of it, still there was a feeling of insecurity in the British army. They knew not what moment they might be attacked. Notwithstanding these successes many of the American officers left the army in disgust. The nation could not pay her soldiers and made no promise of future indemnity. The British had full possession of New York, and were rioting and feasting at Philadelphia. Meanwhile Washington with his little army had retreated to a secluded place among the Pennsylvania hills, which was known by the name of Valley Forge. As the men moved toward the spot selected for their winter resting-place, they had no clothes to cover their nakedness, blankets to lie on, nor tents to sleep under. For the want of shoes, their marches through frost and snow might be traced by the blood from their feet, and they were almost as often without provisions as with them. An extract from one of Washington's letters to Congress may not be out of place: "We have this day no less than two thousand eight hundred and ninety-eight men unfit for duty, because they are barefoot or otherwise naked. Our whole strength in continental troops amounts to no more than eight thousand two hundred men. Since the fourth instant, owing to hardships and exposures, our numbers have decreased nearly two thousand men. Numbers are obliged to sit all night by the fires; or sleep on a cold, bleak hill, under frost and snow, without clothes or blankets." All this time the British soldiers in Philadelphia were well provided for; the officers were living in luxury at the expense of the inhabitants. The days were spent in pastime, the nights in entertainments. {179} It was at this period of the war--the darkest through which the nation ever passed--that the following incident occurred. It was observed that each day after Washington had visited the hospital tents and administered to the sick whatever necessities or comforts he had in his power to bestow, he retired into the forest at some distance from the camp. Curiosity prompted an individual, named Isaac Pitts, to follow him. There, at the foot of a large tree, with head uncovered, kneeling in the snow, was seen the commander-in-chief of the American armies, engaged in prayer before God. With an anxious and burdened mind--a mind conscious of its need of divine support and consolation--Washington went and rolled those mighty burdens--too heavy for him to bear unaided--upon the arm of Omnipotence. Isaac Pitts related what he had seen and heard, and on a subsequent day at least three persons beheld the venerated "father of his country," at prayer before his God. It is recorded in Matthew vi., 6: "But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father, which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." May we not believe that the high moral courage which dared greater perils than the whistling of bullets; that will of mighty strength which having chosen the right, though unpopular, never deviated from it; that calm self-command, which bore up under the greatest reverses and still preserved its equanimity amidst the taunts of enemies and censure of friends--may we not believe that these things were among the open rewards of secret prayer? From that time forward success seems to have attended the American arms. Meanwhile the tidings of American heroism and suffering had reached the old world and thrilled the hearts of the lovers of liberty in Europe. Prominent among these was the Marquis de la Fayette, a young French nobleman, then scarcely nineteen years of age, who offered to serve in the American army, without pension or allowance. The king of France dreaded the growth of civil and political liberty; yet he could not withstand the temptation to wreak a terrible vengeance on England for having wrested Canada from his {180} grasp. He sent a fleet and army to America, which greatly aided the cause of Independence. Thus did the rage of wicked men further the designs of Providence. While Washington was still hemmed in among the hills of Pennsylvania, the British general, Burgoyne, had marched from Canada into the heart of New England. At his approach every man took down his musket from the wall and hurried to the front. Little discipline had they, but a resolute purpose and a sure aim. Difficulties thickened around the fated army. [Image: Scene of Burgoyne's Surrender.] At length, Burgoyne found himself at Saratoga. It was now October. Heavy rains fell. Provisions were growing scanty. Gradually it became evident that the British were surrounded. Night and day a circle of fire encompassed them. Burgoyne called his officers together. There was but one thing to do and it was done. The British army surrendered. Nearly six thousand brave men, in sorrow and in shame, laid down their arms. The men who took them were mere peasants. No two of them were dressed alike. These grotesque American {181} warriors behaved towards their conquered enemies with true nobility. General Gates, the American commander, kept his men strictly within their lines, that they might not witness the piling of the British arms. No taunt was offered, no look of disrespect was directed against the fallen. All were mute in astonishment and pity. [Image: Meeting Place of Andre and Arnold.] One of the saddest incidents of the war, was the tragic fate of Major Andre. The Americans had a strong fortress at West Point, on the Hudson river. The English desired to {182} obtain this place, as its possession would give them command of the Hudson river, up which their ships might sail more than a hundred miles. But that fort, sitting impregnably on rocks, two hundred feet above the river, was hard to win. Benedict Arnold, a proud and ambitious American officer, was in command of this post. Loving money more than duty, he determined to sell this fortress to the English. He opened negotiations with Sir Henry Clinton, then in command of the English at New York, who sent Major Andre to arrange the terms of the transfer. At midnight Major Andre landed from a British ship at a lonely place, where Arnold awaited him. Their conference lasted so long, that it was deemed unsafe for Andre to return to the ship. It was determined that the next night he should attempt, in disguise, to reach New York by land. The pass given to him by Arnold, permitted him to go through the American lines. His danger might now be considered at an end, and, under cover of the darkness, he rode cheerfully on his lonely journey, till he came to a small stream. Thick woods on each side made the darkness still more gloomy. Suddenly three men stepped from among the trees and ordered him to halt. Thinking them to be friends, he told them he was a British officer on very important business. Alas for Andre! they were Americans. Andre was searched, and in his boots were discovered Arnold's drawings of West Point. The men knew then that he was a spy. He vainly offered them a large sum of money, but the men nobly refused to sell their liberty and their country for gold. Andre was tried, condemned, and, ten days after, executed. His death caused deep sensation throughout the army and England. Men in England began to inquire into the causes of this terrible, fratricidal war. While the British general, Clinton, was holding New York, Lord Cornwallis was fortifying himself in Yorktown, Virginia. The French fleet sailed for the Chesapeake bay, and Washington decided to act in concert with the French, and lay siege to Yorktown. The bombarding was carried on with extraordinary energy. In a few days the defenses lay in utter ruins. Cornwallis determined to evacuate Yorktown and join Clinton {183} at New York. One night he began to embark his men in order to cross the York river and set out on his desperate march. A violent storm arose and scattered his boats. All hope was now at an end. In about a fortnight from the opening of the siege, the British army, eight thousand strong, laid down its arms. Well might the colonists rejoice for their long and bitter struggle was about to close. Eight years had passed since the first blood was shed at Lexington. The representatives of the English people had learned the causes of the American revolution, and refused to continue the fratricidal war. The independence of the United States was acknowledged and the British forces were withdrawn. On the 30th of November, 1782, a treaty of peace was signed at Versailles, between the commissioners, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and John Jay, appointed by the Congress of the United States and those of Great Britain. The treaty was not a compact imposed by force, but a perpetual settlement of all that had been called in question. By doing this act of justice to her former colonies, England rescued her own liberties from imminent danger, and gave a pledge of liberty to her other dependencies. That selfish colonial policy, which had led to the cruel and unnatural war, was laid aside forever. Great Britain was henceforth the mother of nations--the great colonizing power--destined to found colonies in every quarter of the globe, and sow the islands of the ocean with the seeds of freedom. For the United States, the war which began on Lexington Green, ended with the independence and possession of a country, which has increased till it is now thirty times larger than the parent state. "The boys of '76" had fought their last battle. December 4th, 1783, Washington came to disband the army. Many of the soldiers had been home by permission. They now came to bid farewell to their commander-in-chief, and then return to their great work of building a nation. Washington and his soldiers met for the last time. No more beating of drums or roar of cannon; no more weary marches or the clash of arms. They had fought side by side, and the memories of {184} those conflicts could never be effaced. Washington said: "With a heart full of love and gratitude, I now take leave of you, most devoutly wishing, that your latter days may be as prosperous and happy, as your former ones have been glorious and honorable." The officers then took his hand. There were tears upon his cheek, and the officers felt a choking in their throats. They passed out of doors down to the ferry. Washington stepped into a boat, took off his hat and waved a farewell. The oars of the rowers soon bore him from New York to the New Jersey side. At noon on the 20th of December, he stood in the old hall of the state house at Annapolis, in the presence of the Congress, which had called him from his quiet home eight years before, to take command of the armies of the United States. Now he was to resign it. He said: "I commend the interests of our country to the protection of Almighty God, and those who have the superintendence of them to His holy keeping. Having finished the work assigned me, and bidding an affectionate farewell to this august body, under whose order I have so long acted, I here offer my commission and take leave of all employments of public life." Thus did Washington gladly return to his home on the Potomac. The simple grandeur of his character was now revealed beyond the possibility of misconception. Afterwards he was twice elected president; yet never abused the trust reposed in him. There were many who would have made him king. He trampled on their offer, and went back to his fields of corn and quiet haunts at Mount Vernon. The grandest act of his public life was to give up power; the most magnanimous deed of his private life, was to liberate his slaves. During the Revolution most of the states had adopted written codes or constitutions on which all their civil laws were based. They were virtually, at that time, thirteen independent states. Congress had but little authority; could not enforce laws or collect taxes. A general constitution was needed, which would fuse them into one nationality, and control their conflicting interests. {185} [Image: Mount Vernon.] In 1787, fifty-five delegates met in Philadelphia. They came together to devise means for perpetuating the liberty they had so dearly won. Washington was appointed to preside over the Convention; Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Alexander Hamilton and many other wise men were there. Benjamin Franklin brought to this--his latest and greatest task--the ripe experience of eighty-two years. There were many perplexing questions to be settled. Some of the states were large, others small: ought the small ones to have equal voice in the government with the large ones? They decided that Congress should consist of a Senate and House of Representatives--two senators from each state, no matter what its size or number of population; but the representatives were to be elected according to population. For four months the delegates discussed the momentous issues that came before them. They sat with closed doors; the world will never know how wise or foolish, how eloquent or angry were their words. At {186} one time it seemed impossible to reconcile their differences. Benjamin Franklin proposed that the blessing of God should be asked upon their labors. From that time forward, prayer was offered each morning, and greater unanimity prevailed in counsel. A spirit of concession was manifest, and a willingness to give up their private interests for the general good. {187} Thus did the Spirit of God act on the hearts of the founders of this nation. [Image: The Tomb of Washington.] At length they embodied their labors in a written constitution, which, by a vote of the people, became, in 1789, the supreme law of the land. With few amendments the original constitution remains in full force now, receiving, as it increases in age, the growing reverence of right minded people. Washington was the first president. He took the oath of office April 30th, 1789, in the presence of a vast multitude. He served eight years, and then retired again to Mount Vernon, where he died in the sixty-eighth year of his age, December 15, 1799. His countrymen mourned him with a sorrow, sincere and deep. Their reverence for him has not diminished with the progress of the years. To this day the steamers, which ply upon the Potomac, strike mournful notes as they sweep past Mount Vernon, where Washington spent the happiest years of his life, and where he now reposes. CHAPTER XIX. PROGRESS OF LIBERTY IN EUROPE. INFLUENCE OF LA FAYETTE--DESPOTISM IN FRANCE--THE BASTILE--CORRUPTIONS OF THE CHURCH--COMMENCEMENT OF THE REVOLUTION--THE MARSEILLAISE--ITS WONDERFUL INFLUENCE--REIGN OF TERROR--NAPOLEON BONAPARTE--HIS WONDERFUL CAREER--JEWISH SANHEDRIM--FALL OF NAPOLEON--HIS DEATH--PROGRESS OF LIBERTY. When the war of independence was over La Fayette returned to France. He was the lightning-rod by which the current of republican sentiments flashed from America to Europe. He was the hero of the hour. A man {188} who had helped to set up a republic in America, was a dangerous element for old despotic France to receive into her bosom. With the charm of a great name, immense wealth and boundless popularity to aid him, he everywhere urged that men should be free and self-governing. The influence of La Fayette was soon apparent. The people of France were living under a government which had come down from the feudal ages. They wished to follow the example of the United States, but how could this be accomplished? The king could do as he pleased--make war, build fleets, tax the people, even send men to prison when charged with no crime, keeping them in prison till they became old and gray-haired, or until death set them free. Of all the gloomy prisons of France, the Bastile was the most horrible. Its dark, deep dungeons were ever dripping with water and alive with vermin. No straggling ray of light ever entered them The floor was covered with mud and slime and the bones of victims who had died of starvation. Louis XV., king of France was accustomed to sign his name to blank letters and give them to his friends to fill in as they pleased the names of those they wished to punish. One day, the king wanted money, and demanded $120,000 of M. Massot. "I cannot pay it," he replied. "Into the Bastile with him," cried the king, and ordered his goods to be seized. M. Catalan was very rich. The king cast him into the Bastile and he did not get out till he handed over $1,200,000! Madame de Pompadour, the mistress of the king, ruled France, and woe to him who provoked her displeasure! M. Latude, twenty years old, offended her, and the great door of the Bastile closed upon him. The years rolled on, Madame de Pompadour and the king went down to the grave, yet M. Latude was still a prisoner in the Bastile. Thus for sixty years did Louis XV., plunder and imprison the people of France. The nobility, the priests and the officers of the government paid no taxes, but, on the other hand, received great revenues from the people. They had nothing to do except to eat, drink, attend balls or hunting parties and play cards. They lived in fine castles, and had beautiful parks, gardens and hunting-grounds. The tax collectors came several times a year to {189} the poor man's home, but never to the castle. Of every sixteen dollars produced from the land by the hard-working peasants, the king took four, the priests took four, and the nobleman who owned the land took five, leaving only three for the poor man and his family. Meanwhile Louis XVI. succeeded to the throne. The church was as corrupt as the king. The priests lived luxuriously on the revenue wrung from the toiling people. They charged the people enormous fees for every service, for baptism, marriage, burial, and masses for the dead. From the cradle to the grave it was one continual extortion. Such was the condition of the people when La Fayette presented to the National Assembly a Declaration of Rights. It resembled the Declaration of Independence in many particulars, and declared that all men are free and equal. It was on Saturday, July 11th, 1789, that La Fayette presented the Declaration of Rights. Sunday came, and the troops were marching. The king had resolved to disperse the National Assembly, and if the people resisted to mow them down with cannon balls. A great crowd assembled in the Palais Royal Garden. They eagerly asked "What is to be done?" A young man named Camille Desmoulins, sprang upon a table, with a pistol in each hand to defend himself. "To arms! to arms!" he cried, "we must defend ourselves!" He plucked a green leaf and put it in his hat-band, for a plume. The people followed his example. They had no arms, but there were muskets in the great arsenal, called the Hotel des Invalides. They broke it open and armed themselves. The cry rung through the streets, "Down with the Bastile!" They rushed to the gloomy prison and planted their cannon to batter down the gates. The guards in the Bastile were heart and soul with the people. They hung out a white flag, and the prison was surrendered. Then came forth to the light of day the emaciated victims who had been so long immured in its filthy dungeons. A duke rode to the king's palace at Versailles to tell the news. "It is a revolt," exclaimed the king. The duke replied, "Nay, sire, it is a revolution." The deluge of blood had come. Revengeful men were roaming the streets of Paris murdering the nobles and the clergy. The National Assembly ordered {190} the Bastile to be torn down, and the people leveled it to the ground. In Strasburg, was a young man named Rouget de l'Isle. One day he was dining with his friend Dietrich, and they talked of liberty and equal rights. After dinner, he went to his chamber, sat down to the clavichord and began to play and sing. His soul was on fire for liberty for France. He seemed to be wrought upon by a higher power. Words came, and with them a strange, wild melody. He did not know which came first. He sang and played, and played and sang, and felt a strange delight. At length his head fell upon his breast: he was asleep. The morning sun was shining in his face when he awoke and the song was still stirring in his heart. He called in his friend Dietrich to hear it, he liked it well, and other friends were called in to hear it. A young lady sat down to the clavichord and played while Rouget de l'Isle sang: "Ye sons of freedom, wake to glory! Hark! hark! what myriads bid you rise! Your children, wives and grand-sires hoary, Behold their tears and hear their cries! "Shall hateful tyrants, mischief breeding, With hireling host, a ruffian band, While peace and liberty lie bleeding, Affright and desolate the land? "Do you not hear the prisoners moaning? Arise ye brave, the sword unsheath, 'Neath tyrants yoke no longer groaning, Resolved on liberty or death." The peculiar genius of the French language, as well as the strange versification of the song, will not permit of an exact translation. For the benefit of those of our readers who understand the French language we give one of the stanzas as originally written: "_Quoi! des cohortes etrangeres, Feraient la loi dans nos foyers, Quoi! ces phalanges mercenaires Terrasseraient nos fiers gueriers. {191} Grand Dieu! par des mains enchainees, Nos fronts sous le joug se plieraient, De vils despotes deviendraient, Les maitres de nos destinees_. In a few hours all Strasburg was singing it. It went from village to village, from city to city, from province to province, and became known as the _Marseillaise_, or national song of France, which above all other songs ever written has stirred the hearts of men. Great events took place. The king of France and his beautiful queen, Maria Antoinette, were beheaded. A republic was started, but was soon overthrown, and the government seized by blood-thirsty villains. More than a million people perished by the guillotine, war, famine and starvation. The nation waded through a sea of blood. Old things passed away never to return. The internal history of France during a period of two years from the fall of the monarchy, is perhaps the most appalling record, which the annals of the human family present. Why did not France succeed in establishing a free government? Because all such must be founded on intelligence, virtue, and faith in God and immortality. Out of the revolution came the one man who could restore order to France--Napoleon Bonaparte. It does not come within the limits of this work to relate the various wars of Napoleon. The French revolution--abortive as it seemed--rendered forever impossible the continuance of the despotism which had heretofore governed Europe. Napoleon, though one of the worst despots, sowed revolutionary principles broad-cast over Europe. His judicial code taught the equality of man before the law. His overthrow of so many princes taught the people to place a lower estimate on the sanctity of crowned heads. His consolidation of the petty German states, awakened the desire for a united Germany and paved the way for its accomplishment. He introduced constitutional government to Italy, Westphalia and Spain. He weakened the temporal power of the pope, and dealt fatal blows at the feudal nobility. His rude assaults shook to its foundations the whole fabric of European despotism, and led the lower orders of the people to entertain new ideas regarding their own rights. {192} Never before had influences so powerful been brought so widely into operation over vast multitudes of men. [Image: Napoleon Bonaparte.] Napoleon, with the exception of Oliver Cromwell, was the first great statesman in Europe to engage in designs for the advantage of the Jews. In 1806, the world heard with amazement that Napoleon had summoned a grand Sanhedrim of the Jews to assemble at Paris. The twelve great questions which Napoleon submitted to the Jewish Rabbis thus assembled and the answers which they gave to him, did much to dispel popular prejudice against that people, and prepare the way for their social and material advancement. Some of these questions and answers were of peculiar importance in a religious point of view. From these we learn, that in 1806, among the Jewish people, and among some of the advanced thinkers of that age, marriage was considered null and void unless the ceremony was {193} performed by a person possessing divine authority. Further, that polygamy is taught in the Jewish scriptures, but had been discontinued by the Jews by virtue of a decree of the Synod of Worms, in A. D. 1030. (_For further particulars see "Journal des Debats" pour 1807. Milman's History of the Jews, page 592_.) The influence which Napoleon exerted upon the course of human affairs is without parallel in history. In comparison with these, the conquest of Caesar and Alexander dwindle into insignificance. Never before had any man inflicted upon his fellows, miseries so appalling; yet did never one man's hand scatter seeds destined to produce a harvest of political change, so vast and so beneficent. To the despots of Europe he was the dreaded apostle of democracy. The amazing events which followed each other in so swift succession in France were watched with profound interest in other lands. The results were quickly apparent. When Napoleon fell, the desire for self-government had silently spread over Europe. The anxiety, which the dethroned monarchs evinced to please their subjects, began to disclose to the people the secret of their own strength. A congress of delegates from the great powers met in Vienna, in 1814, to restore the thrones to the kings who had been exiled during the wars of Napoleon. They were blind to the lesson which the revolution had taught. They dreamed not of the new forces which had been silently growing strong underneath the tumult and confusion of universal war. Napoleon was at length banished to St. Helena, a rocky island in the South Atlantic, far from any other inhabited land, where he died, May 5th, 1821. Thus darkly closed a career the most brilliant, the most influential, and the most remarkable of modern times. The power of the people now began to be everywhere felt. In 1820, the American possessions of Spain rose against the despotism under which they had long suffered, and successfully asserted their independence. Insurrections broke out in Spain, Portugal, Naples and Piedmont, and only ended when they obtained constitutional government. {194} Across the Adriatic, Greece took encouragement from the energy of her neighbors to assert the liberty of which Turkish oppression defrauded her. Helped by Europe, she succeeded. [Image: The City of Athens.] Athens, once the seat of learning and philosophy, the home of poets, painters and sculptors, the city that once led the world in civilization and art, became the capital of the modern kingdom of Greece. {195} The influence continued to spread until it effected all the states of western Europe. It turned men's minds everywhere to political thought and discussion. It quickened the hardy mountaineers of Switzerland to reorganize their republican institutions, on the basis of equal rights. The little republic of the mountains founded so long ago, in the days of William Tell, started on a new era of prosperity. France, in 1830, once more attempted to throw off the yoke of her ancient kings. [Image: Scene in Switzerland.] These events may be said to mark the complete political awakening of Europe. Western Europe was now free and {196} self-governing. The long and painful transition from despotism to responsible government was at length accomplished. One hundred and eighty millions of Europeans had risen from a degraded vassalage to the rank and condition of freemen. CHAPTER XX. FORCES OF CIVILIZATION IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. THE GENIUS OF THE AGE--EUROPEAN WARS--AMERICA TRANQUIL--DECLARATION OF WAR--DIVISIONS OF NORTH AMERICA--UNITED STATES--CANADA--MEXICO--AMERICAN COMMON SCHOOLS--THEIR INFLUENCE--PROGRESS OF INVENTION--FIRST STEAMBOAT--FIRST LOCOMOTIVE--ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH--IMPROVEMENTS IN PRINTING--SPIRITUAL DARKNESS--THE KINGDOM OF GOD--WANTS OF THE PRESENT AGE--JOSEPH SMITH--HIS TRAGIC DEATH--CONCLUSION. Human history should be a record of progress--a record of accumulating knowledge and increasing wisdom, of continual advancement from a lower to a higher platform of intelligence and well-being. Each generation should pass on to the next the treasures which it has inherited, beneficially modified by its own experience, and enlarged by the acquisitions which itself has gained. Sometimes the stream of human development seems to pause and the years seem to roll on without change. Yet this is only apparent. All the while there is a silent accumulation of forces, which at length burst forth in the violent overthrow of evils, which had been endured for generations. The nineteenth century, has witnessed progress beyond all precedent, for it has beheld the overthrow of the barriers that prevented progress. It has vindicated for all succeeding ages, {197} the right of man to his own unimpeded development. The genius of the age has tended to the abolition of serfdom and slavery, and the up-lifting of the poor, the down-trodden and oppressed. More than at all previous times it has seen the removal of artificial obstacles placed in the path of human progress by the selfishness and ignorance of the strong. At the opening of the nineteenth century, all Europe was occupied with war. From the North to the shores of the Mediterranean, from the confines of Asia to the Atlantic, men toiled to burn each other's cities, to waste each other's fields, and destroy each other's lives. In some places there was heard the shout of victory, in some the wail of defeat. The first twelve years of the century were spent by America in profound tranquility. She looked from afar with a serene neutrality upon the furious efforts which the European nations were making to compass the ruin of each other. In process of time, England and France, eagerly bent on mutual harm, adopted measures which nearly destroyed trans-Atlantic commerce. American ships lay in unprofitable idleness; grass grew upon the untrodden wharfs of New York and Philadelphia. Moreover the high-handed British enforced a hateful claim to search American ships and take away any sailors suspected of being British subjects. These grievances might have been peacefully redressed; but America and England were too angry to be reasonable. James Madison was president at that time. He did not want to go to war, but he desired to be elected president a second time. His friends who were eager for war informed him that unless he declared war he could not be re-elected. With closed doors the bill proposing war was discussed. It was passed in secret session, and on June 19th, 1812, President Madison affixed his signature, and issued a proclamation declaring war against Great Britain. The principal European powers, including England, were then engaged in a mighty struggle against Napoleon. England could spare scarcely three thousand men for the defense of her colonies. The British forces in America were principally composed of Canadian voluntiers and militia. {198} Then came a war of mingled success and disaster. The surrender of Detroit, the disaster at Queenston Heights, the victory of Perry, the midnight struggle at Lundy's Lane, the capture of Washington, the terrible havoc at New Orleans--all these are too well known to need repetition here. After two years and a half of mutual injuries, a treaty of peace was signed in which nothing was said about the imprisonment of seamen; but from that day to the present no American citizen has been imprisoned on board a British vessel. Then came an era of peaceful industrial progress without parallel in the annals of the human family. The forces of modern civilization began to work. North America was now divided into three great divisions, the United States, Canada and Mexico. For obvious reasons the United States has developed the most rapidly. The dominion of Canada is destined in process of years to become a powerful empire. Its area is more than three million five hundred thousand square miles, which is more than that of the United States, and nearly equal to the whole of Europe. Most of this enormous region proves to be of marvelous fertility, producing in abundance nearly all the grains of temperate regions. Millions of acres are added annually to the area under cultivation. The vast and magnificent region watered by the Saskatchewan and Assiniboine seems destined to become one of the granaries of the world. Quietly and peacefully, the dominion is growing in power and influence. The area of cultivated land is fast extending. Manufactures of all kinds are rapidly multiplying, and in ship-building and commerce she has already outstripped the great republic. In these respects, if considered separate from England, Canada now ranks the fourth power in the world. Recent developments indicate that Mexico has an important work to do in the economy of God. In the last few years she has made astonishing progress in the arts, sciences and social condition of her people. As an illustration one of her sons, the late President Juarez showed himself to be one of the most remarkable men that has lived on this continent during the present century. The population of North America in 1800, was scarcely more than ten millions, now it approaches seventy {199} millions and increases in a ratio that defies calculation. Already it is the theater of some of the most important events in the world's history, and greater events still await the coming years. At the time that America commenced to be governed by the first written constitution that the world had ever seen, one of the great questions that was asked by the leading minds of the age as well as by the toiling millions of Europe was: "What will be the future of America, what the forces that will mould and fashion it?" One of these was the common school. Here the future citizens met upon a level. Money and position in society counted nothing; merit won. A boy with a patch on each knee, his jacket in rags, who lived in a cabin, whose breakfast was potato and salt, and whose supper was mush, and milk, quite likely stood at the head of the class; while the boy who wore good clothes and whose father was rich, possibly found himself at the foot of the long line of spellers. From these schools many of the boys made their way through college, became teachers, ministers, lawyers, legislators and governors. The lessons there learned together, with the instructions of honest God-fearing parents, laid the foundation of character and made them the pioneers of a new civilization. The education of the masses multiplied the number thinkers. As a consequence, mechanical skill and invention is the peculiar growth of the present century and the United States in this regard ranks among the foremost nations of the world. From the creation of the world down to the middle of the last century, nearly all the work of the world had been done by the muscular labor of men or animals. But in England and America men were discovering that machinery might be made to do work of human hands. It was not until 1764, that James Watt commenced his wonderful inventions, and ten years more elapsed before his engine was of any practical use. Meanwhile Hargreaves, Arkwright and Crompton had invented machines for the manufacture of cloth. In America there were lands well adapted for raising cotton, but owing to {200} the difficulty of extricating the seeds from the cotton, but little was used and that little was very expensive. In 1784, only eight bagfuls of cotton were exported from Savannah to England but when Eli Whitney invented the cotton-gin in 1792, a great change took place. It was seen immediately that the machine would do the work of hundreds of men and a new industry and new product was given to the world. Inconsiderable as these inventions may seem, they changed the clothing material of the English-speaking people throughout the world. In a few years their costume so changed that they might be looked upon as belonging to a different race and a different civilization. On August 27th, 1787, while the National convention was at work at Philadelphia framing the constitution they were invited to behold a sight that the world had never seen. It was John Fitch gliding up stream in the first practical steamboat ever constructed. In July, 1788, the boat made its first trip from Philadelphia up the river to Burlington--amid the cheering of crowds and the salvos of artillery. It continued to make trips during part of two years but never exceeded three miles an hour. As the machinery was imperfect and the running expensive, it was at length abandoned. Genius is far-sighted and prophetic. John Fitch looking into the future saw that the time would come when steamships would traverse the ocean, and glide to and fro upon the great rivers of the West. He went to Ohio to spend his last days, and when the shadow of death was upon him, he made this request, "Bury me on the banks of the Ohio that I may be where the song of the boatmen and the music of the engines shall enliven the stillness of my resting place." Twenty years passed away before Fitch's idea was realized. At length Robert Fulton built the Clermont in 1807 and started up the Hudson river. The country people knew not what to make of it. A Dutchman shouted to his wife, "The devil is on his way up the river with a sawmill in a boat." Fulton had succeeded where others had failed. It was the beginning of a new era in navigation. In 1819, the _Savannah_ was the first steamboat to cross the Atlantic ocean. John Stevens of Hoboken, New Jersey appeared in 1812 before Congress with a plan for a railroad. {201} [Image: An Ocean Steamer.] {202} Two years later, July 25th, 1814, George Stevenson of England completed and ran the Rocket, the first practical locomotive in the world. But it was not till September, 1825, that the first railway for passengers was opened in England. Six years later railway trains were running in America. The improved facilities for traveling by means of steam, have had a wonderful influence upon society. A century ago human society was composed of a multitude of little communities, dwelling apart, mutually ignorant, and therefore, cherishing mutual antipathies. Facilities of travel brought together men of different towns and different countries. They learned how little there was, on either side, to hate, how much to love. Thus ancient prejudice was broken up by the fuller knowledge gained by this extended acquaintance. Peculiarities of dialect and manners grew indistinct, and errors of opinion were corrected by friendly conflict of mind. In 1832, Samuel F. B. Morse, conceived the idea of the electric telegraph, and in 1837, Congress granted him thirty thousand dollars to aid his great enterprise. In 1844, Professor Morse sent his first message over the world's first electric telegraph. The words were, "What hath God wrought!" Thus it was found that the same mysterious and terrible power which flashes out in the midnight storm was ready to convey across continents and seas the messages of man. This use of electricity is of peculiar interest. It is the first invention which is apparently final. In the race of improvement all other inventions and instrumentalities may be superceded. But what agency for conveying intelligence can ever excel that which is instantaneous? It would seem that here, for the first time, the human mind has reached the utmost limits of its progress. From the time of its first invention to the year 1814, scarcely any improvement had been made on the printing press. A rude machine, printing at its best scarcely 150 copies per hour, was still universally in use. Now we have machines that print 25,000 copies per hour; books and papers have greatly cheapened in consequence. Such were some of the forces at work upon society during the first half of the nineteenth century. {203} But while mankind had progressed in science they had remained stationary in religion; and how could it be otherwise? Invention and discovery are but the unfolding of the laws, attributes and objects of nature to man's limited understanding--the action of the divine will on the minds of men. When God revealed nature's laws, man progressed scientifically: until God revealed religious truth man groped in spiritual darkness. The intellectual light of that age only made to observing minds, their spiritual night more palpable; even as a candle shining in the night only intensifies the surrounding gloom. Many leading minds perceived somewhat, the errors of the times, and sought to bring about reform in various ways. These attempts brought forth discussion and division. The disintegration which had commenced in the days of Luther, now worked with unexampled rapidity, until the various so-called Christian sects numbered more than six hundred, each tenacious of its own ideas, and bitterly denouncing all the others. None of these jarring sects ever had divine authority; in fact, they denied the possibility of revelation from God. Even admitting their claims, their creeds are only the crystallized ideas of the leading men of the age that gave them birth. For example, Rome depended not upon revelation, nor even upon the letter of the scriptures, but upon the tradition of the fathers. In other words, the rule of faith, in the church of Rome was the conflicting opinions of men--often ill-informed and superstitious--who lived between the great apostasy and the time of Luther. So again, the creed of Lutherism is only the best ideas of men who lived in Central Europe three hundred and fifty years ago. In like manner, Presbyterianism is the reflex of the stern and rugged character of the Scotch in the 17th century. So also Methodism and Quakerism are the products of zealous English reformers in the 17th and 18th centuries. All of the religions that existed in America at the beginning of this century, were the outgrowth of European thought. They were systems that had been transplanted from foreign lands, by no means adapted to the progressive ideas that prevail on this continent. {204} Humanly speaking, it was time to establish a religion, which should harmonize with the circumstances and age in which we live. Divinely speaking, man had become so developed and disciplined that he could receive the gospel. It was the Lord's due time to again reveal His will and set up His kingdom upon the earth. Not only was the age peculiar, but likewise the land in which this work was to be accomplished. The governments of European countries were all committed to some particular creed, some peculiar form of religious worship. But in America there was no established religion. All were free to accept or reject the truth untrammelled by the arbitrary requirements of the civil law. The instrumentalities used for the establishment of this work were very peculiar. No hoary-headed philosopher, full of worldly wisdom; no crafty politician, zealous for a party or sect; no profound doctor of divinity, deeply versed in antiquarian lore, was appointed to do this work. No! A pure and ingenuous youth, who had spent the few years of his mortal life in the quiet and peaceful avocations of agricultural life--a youth who had not yet drunk in the poison of man's theology--such was the instrument chosen by the Almighty for the execution of His purposes. The sublime and tragic history of Joseph Smith is too well known to need repetition here. A few leading facts will suffice. Joseph Smith was born December 23rd, 1805, at Sharon, Windsor Co., Vt. He received his first vision on the morning of a beautiful, clear day, early in the Spring of 1820. Joseph was then a little more than fourteen years of age. Three years and a half passed away, when he received his second vision. It was September 21st, 1823; he had retired to rest when the divine messenger made his appearance. During the night the angel appeared three times to Joseph, and immediately after, the dawn approached; so that their interviews must have occupied the whole of that night. Thrice had the angel descended, and thrice had he ascended, with all the circumstances of reality. There is something grand in the very simplicity of the narrative of Joseph and all the more impressive when we consider his mental and physical {205} characteristics--a man of lofty stature and giant mind. He dwelt in the very glare and illumination of a spiritual existence, and yet was the founder, organizer and leader of a latter-day Israel. Not more real was Jacob's angel with whom he wrestled all night, than were the angels of our times to Joseph. Then he commenced a life of toil and persecution--toil in the service of his divine Master, persecution from the enemy of all good. We can only understand the life and character of Joseph Smith, when we consider the peculiar wants of the present age. Never was there a time in the history of the race when learning and general intelligence were so well diffused as at the present. The press is throwing off continually its millions of printed pages which are scattered broadcast, as the leaves of autumn. Never was there a time of more intense activity. Who can pass through the crowded streets of our cities, listen to the throbbing of the steam engine, the hum of machinery, gaze at the vast trains that are driven with fire and vapor along our railways, or view those magnificent structures that cross the mighty deep without feeling that this is an earnest age? Now this earnest, active, thinking age, demands a religion that has life and power in it. Not a religion of cold formality and narrow sectarianism, but a religion that will satisfy the intelligent with its truths, and touch the heart with its love, and sway the will with its persuasiveness, and gratify the taste with its beauties, and fill the imagination with its sublimities. A religion is wanted that will enlist upon its side the whole nature of man and command his willing and devoted homage; a religion, that, bearing the full impress of its Author's image, shall carry its own credentials with it, and which, clothed with all the elements of truth and righteousness, beauty and grandeur, of love and power, shall be revered by all those who love the truth, and dreaded by all who love it not. It is evident to every thinking mind that the strife and confusion and babel of the six hundred jarring sects of Christendom can not do this. Their half-deserted cathedrals and cold, formal ceremonies, as well as the triumphant march of infidelity {206} and crime, attest the fact, that they have lost their hold on the masses of men. As in the days of old the Lord renewed his communications with man through the dutiful and obedient Samuel; so in this age he spake to the youthful Joseph. And how did Joseph accomplish so much in so short a time? Simply because he entered into his work with his whole heart. He allowed no inferior object to weaken his interest or divide his attention, and he continually sought the inspiration of the Almighty, who came to his aid and enabled him to accomplish in the short space of a few years the mightiest work that any man has wrought since the Savior was upon the earth. After an active and self-sacrificing life of nearly thirty-nine years, he was brutally murdered by a mob June 27th, 1844. Thus lived, suffered, toiled, and died, the martyr-prophet of the nineteenth century. Thus flashed athwart the spiritual darkness of his age, the light of the latter days. Even as in days of old the light shone in the darkness and the darkness comprehended it not. Contemplating his death the mind instinctively reverts to that scene, when the Savior suffered on Calvary, eighteen hundred years ago. Across the ages stride the footprints of the self-same spirit. Unconsciously are associated the death of the Redeemer and the martyrdom of His servant. Already the principles enunciated by Joseph Smith, have shaken the religious world from center to circumference. The ignorant may effect to scorn, yet the day is nigh, when America will be proud of her prophet son. {207} List of Illustrations Mount Calvary - Frontispiece Jerusalem - 10 Coliseum - 14 Fakir - 16 Damascus - 29 Interior of a Saracen Palace - 41 Eruption of Mount Vesuvius - 46 Constantinople - 49 Church of the Holy Sepulchre - 55 Ancient Vessels - 62 Dungeon of the Inquisition - 69 Christopher Columbus - 79 Ships of Columbus - 82 Landing of Columbus - 83 The Straits of Magellan - 90 The Rack - 93 Ancient Peruvian Residence - 108 Ancient Tower at Newport - 110 Mammoth - 115 Mummy - 119 Massacre of the Incas - 151 Landing of the Pilgrims - 132 Fox in Discussion - 142 Penn's Treaty with the Indians - 144 John Wesley - 153 First American Almanac - 159 Benjamin Franklin - 160 George Washington - 174 {208} Washington Crossing the Delaware - 177 Scene of Burgoyne's Surrender - 180 Meeting Place of Andre and Arnold - 181 Mount Vernon - 185 The Tomb of Washington - 186 Napoleon Bonaparte - 192 The City of Athens - 194 Scene in Switzerland - 195 An Ocean Steamer - 201 {209} INDEX. Abou-Beker 28 Adam Smith 71, 154 Alhazin 37 Andalusia 31, 40 America Discovered 84 American Antiquities 109-112 Africa, First Map of 89 Apostasy of Primitive Church 13 Arabia, Description of 20 Arabic Notation 36 Ayesha 28 Armada, Invincible 104, 105 Ancient American Races 114, 117 Acadia, Colonization of 126, 127 Almanac, First American 158, 159 Adams, Samuel 167 Antimony, Why so Called 73 Arnold's Treason 182 Andre, Major 181 American Revolution 173 Al Mamun Measures the Earth 37 Andalusia, Conquest of 31 Atmospheric Refraction 38 Arabian Astronomy 36 Arnold of Brescia 67, 68 Bacon, Roger 73 Bastile 188,189 Bozrah 22,28 Bagdad, University of 35 Boheim, Hans 94 Balboa Discovers Pacific Ocean 89 Bruno, Death of 104 {210} Barbarism of Europe 42 Boniface IX. 76 Byzantium 48, 50 Bible First Printed 78 Brewster 129, 130 " Library 134 Brindley, James 154 British India 155, 156 Burgoyne's Surrender 180 Bonaparte 180 Bible, Influence of 124 Caaba 21 Cadijah 24 Caliphate 27 Caliphs Patronize Learning 35 Chivalry, Rise of 65, 66 Canada 198 " First Settlements in 126 Common Schools, Effect of 199 Christians Persecuted 13 Christian, Early Sects 23 Columbus 78 " Vessels of 81 Compass, Mariner's 37 Constantine, Crimes of 47 Constantinople 48 " View of 49 " Siege of 50, 51 Cholula, Pyramid of 112 Cotton-Gin, Invention of 200 Copernicus 103, 104 Constitutional Convention 185 Coliseum 14 Crusades 59 " of Children 61 " Results of 63 Culture of Women Among Saracens 42 Cyril of Alexandria 44 " the Priest 71 {211} Civilization of Mexico 117, 118 " of Peru 118, 120 Champlain's Voyages 126 Chatham, Earl of 168 Cromwell 133 Confederation, First American 135 Colonizing of New England 128 Charles I. 133, 134 Chemistry, Origin of 36 Carver, John 131 Cartier, Jacques 126 Damascus, Capture of 29 Destruction of Jerusalem 11, 12 Destruction of Herculaneum and Pompeii 45 Dominicans 67 Discovery of America 84 Declaration of Independence 175 Delaware Crossed by Washington 176 Diet of Worms 95 Earth Proved to be Round 37 " Circumnavigated 89, 92 Earl of Chatham 168 Extent of Primitive Church 9 Extension of English Language 157 Europe Assumes Modern Form 74 Everlasting Gospel, The 71, 72 Everlasting Gospel, Its Teachings 72 Everlasting Gospel, Its Influence 73 Esdras, Account of 87 English Revolution 149 Electric Telegraph 202 England's Dominion 156 Ebn Junis Invents the Pendulum 38 Franciscans 67 Frederick II. of Italy 70 " His Liberal Policy 71 Fox, George 141-143 Fitch, John 200 French Revolution 189 {212} Fall River Skeleton 109 Franklin, Benjamin 158, 161 Female Physicians 43 Gregorian Calendar 37 Gutenberg 77 Gin First Made 151 General Gates 181 General Revolution 162 Galileo, His Degradation 104 Globes First Used by Arabs 34, 43 Greece, Kingdom of 194 Hampden, John 133 Harvard College Founded 133 Holland, Description of 136 Henry, Patrick 168 Heraclius, Emperor 30 Haroun al Raschid 36 Herculaneum Destroyed 45 Huss Burned 92 Hypatia 44 Huguenots, Massacre of 136 " Flee to America 146, 155 Howard, John 153 Henry IV. of Germany, a Penitent 55 Human Sacrifices 113 Incas, Massacre of 120, 121 India, British 155, 156 Indians, Penn's Treaty with 146 Indian Races Destroyed 107 Inquisition Established 70 Innocent III. 67, 68, 70 Influence of Minstrels 66 Invention of Printing 77 Invention of Steelyards 38 Jamestown Founded 127 Jerusalem destroyed by Romans 12 " Captured by Saracens 29 " Taken by Crusaders 60 Joss Fritz 94 {213} Juarez 198 Judaism, Golden Age of 39 Jews Expelled from Spain 109 Koran 23 Khaled 28 La Fayette 187 Leyden, Siege of 137-140 Luther, Martin 95,96 Locomotive, First 202 Levaur, Massacre of 70 Massacre in Southern France 68 Mahomet 21-26 Mahometan Schools 38 Marco Polo, Travels of 73, 74 Magellan's Voyage 89-92 Monasteries, Rise of 18 Munzer's Proclamation 98 Mexican Pyramids 112 " Year 119 " Arts and Sciences 118 Mammoth, Remains of 115 Maryland Colonized 146 Methodists, Rise of 151 Montesquieu 155 Marseillaise 191 Morse, Samuel F. B. 202 Nestorians 22 Newport Tower 110 Newspaper, First 150 Napoleon Bonaparte 192 " his Influence 193 " his Death 193 Netherlands, Independence of 136 Omar Caliph 29 Ottoman Turks 33 Oliver Cromwell 133 Old South Church Incident 170 Peter Waldo 67 Peter the Hermit 58 {214} Pompeii Destroyed 45 Peasant's War 97 Printing, Invention of 77 Persecution of Christians 13 " of Quakers 148 Peru, Description of 118, 120 Penn, William 143-146 Pennsylvania Founded 145 Pitt, William 155, 157 Paine, Thomas 175 Pilgrim Fathers 129, 133 Pyramids of Mexico 112 Quebec Founded 126 Quetzalcoatl 112, 122 Quakerism, Rise of 141 Queen Isabella 81 Raymond, Earl of Toulouse 68 Relic-Worship 54 Richard the Lion-Hearted 61-63 Rise of Chivalry 65, 66 Reformation 95-99 Religion of Mexico 116, 117 Roger Williams 147 Rum, First Made 151 Revolutions General 162 Rosseau 163 Revere, Paul 172 Rouget de l'Isle 190 Revolution, French 189 Railroad, First 202 Robinson's Prophecy 130 Saracen, Conquest of 30 " Discoveries 36 " Expelled from Spain 109 " Cities 40 " Schools 42 Ships of Columbus 81 Servetus, Death of 103 Smith, Adam 154 {215} Stamp Act 166 Steamboat, First 200 Smith, Joseph 204 " " His Birth 204 " " His Death 206 Spain, Degradation of 109 Spanish-American Revolution 193 Skeleton, Fall River 109 Ten Tribes 87 Treaty of Peace 183 Telegraph Invented 202 Twilight, Reason of 138 Valley Forge 178 Vasco de Gama 89 Vesuvius, Eruption of 46 Van der Werf, Speech of 139 Voltaire 163 Worms, Diet of 95 " Synod of 192 Worship, Corrupted 17 Waldenses, Rise of 67 Waldo, Peter 67 Witchcraft 100, 101 Williams, Roger 147 Whitfield, George 151 Wesley, Charles 152 Wesley, John 152 Wilberforce, William 153 Watt, James 154 Washington's Boyhood 158 Washington Chosen General 174 " as President 184 Washington's Death 187 Woman, Condition of, Among the Saracens 42, 43 Wyandotts, Tradition of 122 Ziska, John 94 Transcriber's Note: Some obvious printer's errors have been corrected as seemed reasonable, such as certain punctuation errors (like omitted periods, periods to commas or semi-colons to commas, and some mismatched quotation marks, etc.). Some inconsistent or obvious spelling errors or typos within the text were also corrected (e. g., make to made, begining to beginning, conviced to convinced, satisfiy to satisfy, immedite to immediate, successsful to successful, maratime to maritime, gunpower to gunpowder, bowlder to boulder, asend to ascend, degardation to degradation, forgivness to forgiveness, en to ten, myrtyr to martyr, continet to continent, gratitute to gratitude, loyality to loyalty, philanthrophist to philanthropist, extavagant to extravagant, justifiying to justifying, weakend to weakened, Fich's to Fitch's, Reedemer to Redeemer, matyrdom to martyrdom, etc., etc.). The book used as a reference for this e-book transcription originally belonged to O. N. Toomey, and was digitized by the Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University. It can be viewed or downloaded free at https://archive.org/details/handofprovidence00award. 
10151	----	THE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS A COMPREHENSIVE AND READABLE ACCOUNT OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY. EMPHASIZING THE MORE IMPORTANT EVENTS, AND PRESENTING THESE AS COMPLETE NARRATIVES IN THE MASTER-WORDS OF THE MOST EMINENT HISTORIANS NON-SECTARIAN NON-PARTISAN NON-SECTIONAL ON THE PLAN EVOLVED FROM A CONSENSUS OF OPINIONS GATHERED FROM THE MOST DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARS OF AMERICA AND EUROPE. INCLUDING BRIEF INTRODUCTIONS BY SPECIALISTS TO CONNECT AND EXPLAIN THE CELEBRATED NARRATIVES. ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY. WITH THOROUGH INDICES, BIBLIOGRAPHIES. CHRONOLOGIES, AND COURSES OF READING SUPERVISING EDITOR ROSSITER JOHNSON, LL.D. LITERARY EDITORS CHARLES F. HORNE, Ph.D. JOHN RUDD, LL.D. DIRECTING EDITOR WALTER F. AUSTIN, LL.M. With a staff of specialists CONTENTS VOLUME V An Outline Narrative of the Great Events CHARLES F. HORNE Feudalism: Its Frankish Birth and English Development (9th to 12th Century) WILLIAM STUBBS Decay of the Frankish Empire Division into Modern France, Germany, and Italy (A.D. 843-911) FRANÇOIS P. G. GUIZOT Career of Alfred the Great (A.D. 871-901) THOMAS HUGHES JOHN R. GREEN Henry the Fowler Founds the Saxon Line of German Kings Origin of the German Burghers or Middle Classes (A.D. 911-936) WOLFGANG MENZEL Conquest of Egypt by the Fatimites (A.D. 969) STANLEY LANE-POOLE Growth and Decadence of Chivalry (10th to 15th Century) LÉON GAUTIER Conversion of Vladimir the Great Introduction of Christianity into Russia (A.D. 988-1015) A. N. MOURAVIEFF Leif Ericson Discovers America (A.D. 1000) CHARLES C. RAFN SAGA OF ERIC THE RED Mahometans In India Bloody Invasions under Mahmud (A.D. 1000) ALEXANDER DOW Canute Becomes King of England (A.D. 1017) DAVID HUME Henry III Deposes the Popes (A.D. 1048) The German Empire Controls the Papacy FERDINAND GREGOROVIUS JOSEPH DARRAS Dissension and Separation of the Greek and Roman Churches (A.D. 1054) HENRY F. TOZER JOSEPH DEHARBE Norman Conquest of England Battle of Hastings (A.D. 1066) SIR EDWARD S. CREASY Triumphs of Hildebrand "The Turning-point of the Middle Ages" Henry IV Begs for Mercy at Canossa (A.D. 1073-1085) ARTHUR R. PENNINGTON ARTAUD DE MONTOR Completion of the Domesday Book (A.D. 1086) CHARLES KNIGHT Decline of the Moorish Power in Spain Growth and Decay of the Almoravide and Almohade Dynasties (A.D. 1086-1214) S.A. DUNHAM The First Crusade (A.D. 1096-1099) SIR GEORGE W. COX Foundation of the Order of Knights Templars (A.D. 1118) CHARLES G. ADDISON Stephen Usurps the English Crown His Conflicts with Matilda Decisive Influence of the Church (A.D. 1135-1154) CHARLES KNIGHT Antipapal Democratic Movement Arnold of Brescia St. Bernard and the Second Crusade (A.D. 1145-1155) JOHANN A. W. NEANDER Decline of the Byzantine Empire Ravages of Roger of Sicily (A.D. 1146) GEORGE FINLAY Universal Chronology (A.D. 843-1161) JOHN RUDD AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, CONNECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE GREAT EVENTS (FROM CHARLEMAGNE TO FREDERICK BARBAROSSA) CHARLES F. HORNE The three centuries which follow the downfall of the empire of Charlemagne laid the foundations of modern Europe, and made of it a world wholly different, politically, socially, and religiously, from that which had preceded it. In the careers of Greece and Rome we saw exemplified the results of two sharply opposing tendencies of the Aryan mind, the one toward individualism and separation, the other toward self-subordination and union. In the time of Charlemagne's splendid successes it appeared settled that the second of these tendencies was to guide the Teutonic Aryans, that the Europe of the future was to be a single empire, ever pushing out its borders as Rome had done, ever subduing its weaker neighbors, until the "Teutonic peace" should be substituted for the shattered "Roman peace," soldiers should be needed only for the duties of police, and a whole civilized world again obey the rule of a single man. Instead of this, the race has since followed a destiny of separation. Europe is divided into many countries, each of them a vast camp bristling with armies and arsenals. Civilization has continued hag-ridden by war even to our own day, and, during at least seven hundred of the years that followed Charlemagne, mankind made no greater progress in the arts and sciences than the ancients had sometimes achieved in a single century. We do indeed believe that at last we have entered on an age of rapid advance, that individualism has justified itself. The wider personal liberty of to-day is worth all that the race has suffered for it. Yet the retardation of wellnigh a thousand years has surely been a giant price to pay. DOWNFALL OF CHARLEMAGNE'S EMPIRE This mighty change in the course of Teutonic destiny, this breakdown of the Frankish empire, was wrought by two destroying forces, one from within, one from without. From within came the insubordination, the still savage love of combat, the natural turbulence of the race. It is conceivable that, had Charlemagne been followed on the throne by a son and then a grandson as mighty as he and his immediate ancestors, the course of the whole broad earth would have been altered. The Franks would have grown accustomed to obey; further conquest abroad would have insured peace at home; the imperial power would have become strong as in Roman days, when the most feeble emperors could not be shaken. But the descendants of Charlemagne sank into a decline. He himself had directed the fighting energy of the Franks against foreign enemies. His son and successor had no taste for war, and so allowed his idle subjects time to quarrel with him and with one another. The next generation, under the grandsons of Charlemagne, devoted their entire lives to repeated and furious civil wars, in which the empire fell apart, the flower of the Frankish race perished, and the strength of its dominion was sapped to nothingness.[1] [Footnote 1: See _Decay of Frankish Empire_, page 22.] There were three of these grandsons, and, when their struggle had left them thoroughly exhausted, they divided the empire into three. Their treaty of Verdun (843) is often quoted as beginning the modern kingdoms of Germany, France, and Italy. The division was in some sense a natural one, emphasized by differences of language and of race. Italy was peopled by descendants of the ancient Italians, with a thin intermingling of Goths and Lombards; France held half-Romanized Gauls, with a very considerable percentage of the Frankish blood; while Germany was far more barbaric than the other regions. Its people, whether Frank or Saxon, were all pure Teuton, and still spoke in their Teutonic or German tongue. The Franks themselves, however, did not regard this as a breaking of their empire. They looked on it as merely a family affair, an arrangement made for the convenience of government among the descendants of the great Charles. So firm had been that mighty hero's grasp upon the national imagination, that the Franks accepted as matter of course that his family should bear rule, and rallied round the various worthless members of it with rather pathetic loyalty, fighting for them one against the other, reuniting and redividing the various fragments of the empire, until the feeble Carlovingian race died out completely. It is thus evident that there was a strong tendency toward union among the Franks. But there was also an outside influence to disrupt their empire. Charlemagne had not carried far enough their career of conquest. He subdued the Teutons within the limits of Germany, but he did not reach their weaker Scandinavian brethren to the north, the Danes and Norsemen. He chastised the Avars, a vague non-Aryan people east of Germany, but he could not make provision against future Asiatic swarms. He humbled the Arabs in Spain, but he did not break their African dominion. From all these sources, as the Franks grew weaker instead of stronger, their lands became exposed to new invasion. THE LAST INVADERS Let us take a moment to trace the fortunes of these outside races, though the main destiny of the future still lay with Teutonic Europe. In speaking of the followers of Mahomet, we might perhaps at this period better drop the term Arabs, and call them Saracens. They were thus known to the Christians; and their conquests had drawn in their train so many other peoples that in truth there was little pure Arab blood left among them. The Saracens, then, had begun to lose somewhat of their intense fanaticism. Feuds broke out among them. Different chiefs established different kingdoms or "caliphates," whose dominion became political rather than religious. Spain had one ruler, Egypt[2] another, Asia a third. In the eleventh century an army of Saracens invaded India[3] and added that strange and ancient land to their domain. Europe they had failed to conquer; but their fleets commanded the Mediterranean. They held all its islands, Sicily, Crete, Sardinia, and Corsica. They plundered the coast towns of France and Italy. There was a Saracenic ravaging of Rome. [Footnote 2: See _Conquest of Egypt by the Fatimites_, page 94.] [Footnote 3: See _Mahometans in India_, page 151.] On the whole, however, the wave of Mahometan conquest receded. In Spain the remnants of the Christian population, Visigoths, Romans, and still older peoples, pressed their way down from their old-time, secret mountain retreats and began driving the Saracens southward.[4] The decaying Roman Empire of the East still resisted the Mahometan attack; Constantinople remained a splendid city, type and picture of what the ancient world had been. [Footnote 4: See _Decline of the Moorish Power in Spain_, page 296.] While the Saracens were thus laying waste the Frankish empire along its Mediterranean coasts, a more dangerous enemy was assailing it from the east. Toward the end of the ninth century the Magyars, an Asiatic, Turanian people, burst on Europe, as the Huns had done five centuries before. Indeed, the Christians called these later comers Huns also, and told of them the same extravagant tales of terror. The land which the Magyars settled was called Hungary. They dwell there and possess it even to this day, the only instance of a Turanian people having permanently established themselves in an Aryan continent and at the expense of Aryan neighbors. From Hungary the Magyars soon advanced to the German border line, and made fierce plundering inroads upon the more civilized regions beyond. They came on horseback, so that the slower Teutons could never gather quickly enough to resist them. The marauding parties, as they learned the wealth and weakness of this new land, grew bigger, until at length they were armies, and defeated the German Franks in pitched battles, and spread desolation through all the country. They returned now every year. Their ravages extended even to the Rhine and to the ancient Gallic land beyond. The Frankish empire seemed doomed to reënact, in a smaller, far more savage way, the fate of Rome. Yet more widespread in destruction, more important in result than the raids of either Saracens or Magyars, were those of the Scandinavians or Northmen. These, the latest, and perhaps therefore the finest, flower of the Teutonic stock, are closer to us and hence better known than the early Goths or Franks. Shut off in their cold northern peninsulas and islands, they had grown more slowly, it may be, than their southern brethren. Now they burst suddenly on the world with spectacular dramatic effect, wild, fierce, and splendid conquerors, as keen of intellect and quick of wit as they were strong of arm and daring of adventure. We see them first as sea-robbers, pirates, venturing even in Charlemagne's time to plunder the German and French coasts. One tribe of them, the Danes, had already been harrying England and Ireland. Only Alfred,[5] by heroic exertions, saved a fragment of his kingdom from them. Later, under Canute,[6] they become its kings. The Northmen penetrate Russia and appear as rulers of the strange Slavic tribes there; they settle in Iceland, Greenland, and even distant and unknown America.[7] [Footnote 5: See _Career of Alfred the Great_.] [Footnote 6: See _Canute Becomes King of England_.] [Footnote 7: _Leif Ericson Discovers America_.] Meanwhile, after Charlemagne's death they become a main factor in the downfall of his empire. Year after year their little ships plunder the undefended French coast, until it is abandoned to them and becomes a desert. They build winter camps at the river mouths, so that in the spring they need lose less time and can hurry inland after their retreating prey. Sudden in attack, strong in defence, they venture hundreds of miles up the winding waterways. Paris is twice attacked by them and must fight for life. They penetrate so far up the Loire as to burn Orleans. It was under stress of all these assaults that the Franks, grown too feeble to defend themselves as Charlemagne would have done, by marching out and pursuing the invaders to their own homes, developed instead a system of defence which made the Middle Ages what they were. All central authority seemed lost; each little community was left to defend itself as best it might. So the local chieftain built himself a rude fortress, which in time became a towered castle; and thither the people fled in time of danger. Each man looked up to and swore faith to this, his own chief, his immediate protector, and took little thought of a distant and feeble king or emperor. Occasionally, of course, a stronger lord or king bestirred himself, and demanded homage of these various petty chieftains. They gave him such service as they wished or as they must. This was the "feudal system."[8] [Footnote 8: See _Feudalism: Its Frankish Birth and English Development_.] The inclination of each lesser lord was obviously to assert as much independence as he could. He naturally objected to paying money or service without benefit received; and he could see no good that this "overlord" did for him or for his district. It seemed likely at this time that instead of being divided into three kingdoms, the Frankish empire would split into thousands of little castled states. That is, it seemed so, after the various marauding nations were disposed of. The Northmen were pacified by presenting them outright with the coast lands they had most harried. Their great leader, Rolf, accepted the territory with some vague and ill-kept promise of vassalage to the French King, and with a very firmly held determination that he would let no pirates ravage his land or cross it to reach others. So the French coast became Normandy, and the Northmen learned the tongue and manners of their new home, and softened their harsh name to "Norman," even as they softened their harsh ways, and rapidly became the most able and most cultured of Frenchmen. As for the Saracens, being unprogressive and no longer enthusiastic, they grew ever feebler, while the Italian cities, being Aryan and left to themselves, grew strong. At length their fleets met those of the Saracens on equal terms, and defeated them, and gradually wrested from them the control of the Mediterranean. Invaders were thus everywhere met as they came, locally. There was no general gathering of the Frankish forces against them. The repulse of the Huns proved the hardest matter of all. Fortunately for the Germans, their line of Carlovingian emperors died out. So the various dukes and counts, practically each an independent sovereign, met and elected a king from among themselves, not really to rule them, but to enable them to unite against the Huns. After their first elected king had been soundly beaten by one of his dukes, he died, and in their next choice they had the luck to light upon a leader really great. Henry the Fowler, more honorably known as Henry the City-builder,[9] taught them how to defeat their foe. [Footnote 9: See _Henry the Fowler Founds the Saxon Line of German Kings_.] Much to the disgust of his simple and war-hardened comrades, he first sent to the Hungarians and purchased peace and paid them tribute. Having thus secured a temporary respite, Henry encouraged and aided his people in building walled cities all along the frontier. He also planned to meet the invaders on equal terms by training his warriors to fight on horseback. He instituted tournaments and created an order of knighthood, and is thus generally regarded as the founder of chivalry, that fairest fruit of mediaeval times, which did so much to preserve honor and tenderness and respect for womankind.[10] [Footnote 10: See _Growth and Decadence of Chivalry_.] When he felt all prepared, Henry deliberately defied and insulted the Hungarians, and so provoked from them a combined national invasion, which he met and completely overthrew in the battle of Merseburg (933). A generation later the Huns felt themselves strong enough to try again; but Henry's son, Otto the Great, repeated the chastisement. He then formed a boundary colony or "East-mark" from which sprang Austria; and this border kingdom was always able to keep the weakened Huns in check. At the same time there was growing up in Russia a Slavic civilization, which received Christianity[11] from the South as it had received Teutonic dominion from the North, and so developed along very similar lines to Western Europe. The Russian states served as a barrier against later Asiatic hordes; and this, combined with the civilizing of the last remnants of the Scandinavians in the North, and the fading of Saracenic power in the South, left the tottering civilization of the West free from further barbarian invasion. We shall find destruction threatened again in later ages by Tartar and by Turk; but the intruders never reach beyond the frontier. The Teutons and the half-Romanized ancients with whom they had assimilated were left to work out their own problems. All the ingredients, even to the last, the Northmen, had been poured into the caldron. There remains to see what the intermingling has brought forth. [Footnote 11: See _Conversion of Vladimir the Great_.] FEUDAL EUROPE We have here, then, somewhere about the middle of the tenth century, a date which may be regarded as marking a distinctly new era. The ceaseless work of social organization and improvement, which seems so strong an instinct of the Aryan mind, had been recommenced again and again from under repeated deluges of barbarism. To-day for nearly a thousand years it has progressed uninterrupted, except by disturbances from within; nor does it appear possible, with our present knowledge of science and of the remoter corners of the globe, that our civilization will ever again be even menaced by the other races. Chronologists frequently adopt as a convenient starting-point for this modern development the year 962, in which Otto the Great, conqueror of the Huns, felt himself strong enough to march a German army to Rome and assume there the title of emperor, which had been long in abeyance. To be sure, there was still an Emperor of the East in Constantinople, but nobody thought of him; and, to be sure, the power of Otto and the later emperors was purely German, with scarce a pretence of extending beyond their own country and sometimes Italy. Yet here was at least one restored influence that made toward unity and, by its own devious and erratic ways, toward peace. It must not be supposed, of course, that there was no more war. But, as it became a private affair between relatives, or at least acquaintances, its ravages were greatly reduced. It was accepted as the "pastime of gentlemen," "the sport of kings;" and though we may quote the phrases to-day with kindling sarcasm, yet they open a very different vision from that of the older inroads by unknown hordes, frenzied with the passion and the purpose of the brute. The usefulness of the common people was recognized, and they were allowed to continue to live and cultivate the ground; while all the great dukes and even the lesser nobles, having secured as many castles as possible, intrenched themselves in their strongholds and defied all comers. They asserted their right of "private war" and attacked each other upon every conceivable provocation, whether it were the disputed succession to some vast estate or the ravage spread by a reckless cow in a foreign field. Indeed, it is not always easy to distinguish these private wars from mere robberies or plundering expeditions; and it is not probable that the wild barons exercised any very delicate discrimination. Even Otto the Great had little real influence or authority over such lords as these. His immediate successors found themselves with even less. In short, it was the golden age of feudalism, of the individual feudal lords. In Italy there was no central authority whatever, nor among the little Christian states gradually arising in Spain. In France and England the title of king was but a name. France was really composed of a dozen or more independent counties and dukedoms. For a while its lords elected a king as the Germans did; and gradually the title became hereditary in the Capet family, the counts of Paris, who had fought most valiantly against the Northmen. But the entire power of these so-called kings lay in their own estates, in the fact that they were counts of Paris, and by marriage or by force were slowly adding new possessions to their old. Any other noble might have been equally fortunate in his investments, and wrested from them their purely honorary title. In fact, there was more than once a king of Aquitaine. Yet, in 1066, William the Conqueror was able to form for a moment a strong and centralized monarchy in England.[12] With him we reach the period of the second Northmen, or now Norman, outbreak. The marauders had grown polished, but not peaceful, in their French home. They had become more numerous and more restless, until we find them again taking to their ships and seeking newer lands to master. Only they go now as a civilizing as well as a devastating influence. [Footnote 12: See _Norman Conquest of England_.] Most famed of their undertakings, of course, was William's Conquest of England. But we find them also sailing along the Spanish coast, entering the Mediterranean, seizing the Balearic Isles, making out of Sicily and most of Southern Italy a kingdom which lasted until 1860, and finally ravaging the Eastern Empire, and entering Constantinople itself.[13] Last and mightiest of the wandering races, they accomplished what all their predecessors had failed to do. [Footnote 13: See _Decline of the Byzantine Empire_, page 353.] In England, William, with the shrewdness of his race, recognized the tendencies of the age, and erected a state so planned that there could be no question as to who was master. He gave fiefs liberally to his followers; but he took care that the gifts should be in small and scattered parcels. No one man controlled any region sufficiently extensive to give him the faintest chance of defying the King. William had the famous _Domesday Book_[14] compiled, that he might know just what every freeman in his dominions owned and for what he could be held accountable. The England of the later days of the Conqueror seemed far advanced upon our modern ways. [Footnote 14: See _Completion of the Domesday Book_, page 242.] But what can one man, however able and advanced, do against the current of his age? History shows us constantly that the great reformers have been those who felt and followed the general feeling of their times, who became mouthpieces for the great mass of thought and effort behind them, not those who struggled against the tide. William's successors failed to comprehend what he had done, or why. By the time of Stephen (1135)[15] we find the barons of England wellnigh as powerful as those of other lands. A civil war arises in which Stephen and his rival Matilda are scarce more than pawns upon the board. The lords shift sides at will, retreat to safety in their strong castles, plunder the common folk, and make private war quite as they please. [Footnote 15: See _Stephen Usurps the English Crown_, page 317.] If any sage before the reign of the Emperor Barbarossa, that is, before the middle of the twelfth century, had studied to predict the course of society, he would probably have said that the empire was wholly destroyed, and that the principle of separation was becoming ever more insistent, that even kings were mere fading relics of the past, and that the future world would soon see every lordship an independent state. THE CONDITION OF SOCIETY UNDER FEUDALISM Amid all this turmoil of the upper classes, one would like much to know what was the condition, what the lives, of the common people. Unfortunately, the data are very slight. We see dimly the peasant staring from his field as the armed knights ride by; we see him fleeing to the shelter of the forests before more savage bandits. We see the people of the cities drawing together, building walls around their towns, and defying in their turn their so-called "overlords." We see Henry the City-builder thus become champion of the lower classes, despite the strenuous warning of his conservative and not wholly disinterested barons. We see shadowy troops of armed merchants drift along the unsafe roads. And, most interesting perhaps of all, we see one Arnold of Brescia,[16] an Italian monk, advocating a democracy, actually urging a return to what he supposed early Rome to have been, a government by the masses. Arnold, too, you see, was in advance of his time. He was executed by the advice of even so good and wise a man as St. Bernard. But the principle of modern life was there, the germ seems to have been planted. These humble people of the cities, "citizens," grow to be rulers of the world. [Footnote 16: See _Antipapal Democratic Movement_ page 340.] There was a revival, too, of learning in this quieter age. Schools and universities become clearly visible. Abelard teaches at the great University of Paris, lectures to "forty thousand students," if one chooses to believe in such carrying power of his voice, or such radiating power of his influence at second hand through those who heard. The arts spring up, great cathedrals are begun, the wonder and despair of even twentieth-century resources. Royal ladies work on tapestries, queer things in their way, but certainly not barbaric. Musical notation is improved. Manuscripts are gorgeously illumined. Paintings and mosaics, though of the crudest, reappear on long-barren walls. Civilization begins to advance with increasing stride. THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY Of all the influences that through these wandering and desolate ages had sustained humanity and helped it onward, the mightiest has been left to speak of last. It was Christianity, a Christianity which had by now taken definite form as the Roman Catholic Church. Strongest of all the institutions bequeathed by the ancient empire to her conquerors was this Church. Indeed, it has been said that Rome had influenced Christianity quite as much as Christianity did Rome. The legal-minded Romans insisted on the laying out of exact doctrines and creeds, on the building of a definite organization, a priesthood, a hierarchy. They lent the weight of law to what had been but individual belief and impulse. Thus the Church grew hard and strong. In the same manner that the early emperors had ordered the persecution of Christianity, so the later ones ordered the persecution of heathendom, nor had the Church grown civilized or Christian enough to oppose this method of conversion. Luckily for all parties, however, the heathen were scarce sufficiently enthusiastic to insist on martyrdom, and so the persecuting spirit which man ultimately imparted to even the purest of religions remained latent. With the downfall of Rome there came another interval in which the Church was weak, and was trampled on by barbarians, and was heroic. Then the bishops of Rome joined forces with Pépin and Charlemagne. Christianity became physically powerful again. The Saxons were converted by the sword. So, also, in Henry the Fowler's time, were the Slavic Wends. These Roman bishops, or "popes," were accepted unquestioned throughout Western Europe as the leaders of a militant Christianity, a position never after denied them until the sixteenth century. In the East, however, the bishops of Constantinople insisted on an equal, if not higher, authority, and so the two churches broke apart.[17] [Footnote 17: See _Dissension and Separation of the Greek and Roman Churches_.] In the West, Christianity undoubtedly did great good. Its teachings, though applied by often fallible instruments and in blundering ways, yet never completely lost sight of their own higher meanings of mercy and peace. From the Abbey of Cluny originated that quaint mediaeval idea of the "truce of God," by which nobles were very widely persuaded to restrict their private wars to the middle of the week, and reserve at least Friday, Saturday, and Sunday as days of brotherly love and religious devotion. The Church also, from very early days, founded monasteries, wherein learning and the knowledge of the past were kept alive, where pity continued to exist, where the oppressed found refuge. It is from these monasteries that all the arts and scholarship of the eleventh century begin dimly to emerge. Moreover, the fact that the Teutons were all of a common religion undoubtedly held them much closer together, made them more merciful among themselves, more nearly a unit against the outside world. Perhaps in this respect more important even than the religion was the Church; that is, the hierarchy, the vast army of monks and priests, abbots and bishops, spread over all kingdoms, yet looking always toward Rome. Here at least was one common centre for Western civilization, one mighty influence that all men acknowledged, that all to some faint extent obeyed. THE GROWTH OF THE PAPACY The power thus concentrating in the Roman papacy made the office one to attract eager ambition. It has a political history of its own. At first the Christian populace that continued to dwell in Rome despite the repeated spoliations, elected, from among themselves, their own pope or bishop, regarding him not only as their spiritual guide, but as their earthly leader and protector also. Naturally, in their distress, they chose the very ablest man they could, their wisest and their noblest. It was no pleasant task being pope in those dark days; and sometimes the bravest shrank from the position. But centuries of war and self-defence developed a Roman populace more fierce and savage and degenerate, while the growing importance of their pope beyond the city's walls brought wealth and splendor to his office. The result was that some very unsaintly popes were elected amid unseemly squabbles. The conditions surrounding the high office became so bad that they were felt as a disgrace throughout all Christendom; and in 1046 the German emperor Henry III took upon himself to depose three fiercely contending Romans, each claiming to be pope. He appointed in their stead a candidate of his own, not a dweller in the city at all, but a German. Henry, therefore, must have considered the duties of the pope as bishop of the Romans to be far less important than his duties as head of the Church outside of Rome.[18] [Footnote 18: See _Henry III Deposes the Popes_.] So necessary had this interference by the Emperor become that it was everywhere approved. Yet as he continued to appoint pope after pope, churchmen realized that in the hands of an evil emperor this method of securing their head might prove quite as dangerous and unsatisfactory as the former one. So the Church took the matter in hand and declared that a conclave of its own highest officials should thereafter choose the man who was to lead them. Under this surely more suitable arrangement, the papal office rose at once in dignity. It was held for a time by true leaders, earnest prelates of the highest worth and ability. We have said that the rank of the bishop of Rome as head of the Church had never been seriously questioned among the Teutons; but now the popes asserted a political authority as well. They regarded themselves, theoretically, as supreme heads of the entire Christian world. They claimed and even partly exercised the right to create and depose kings and emperors. To such a supremacy as this, however, the Teutons were still too rude and warlike to submit. Much is made of the fact that the Emperor Henry IV was compelled to come as a suppliant to Pope Gregory at Canossa, 1077.[19] But this submission was only forced on him by quarrels with his barons, who welcomed the Pope as a chance ally. It proved the power of feudalism rather than that of religion. Still we may trace here the beginnings of a later day when spirit was really to dominate bodily force, when ideas should prove stronger than swords. [Footnote 19: See _Triumphs of Hildebrand_.] THE FIRST CRUSADE Under these aroused and able popes, the Western world was stirred to the first widespread religious enthusiasm since the ancient days of persecution. Jerusalem, long in the hands of a tolerant sect of Saracens who welcomed the coming of Christian worshippers as a source of revenue, was captured in 1075 by another more fanatic Mahometan sect, and word came back to Europe that pilgrimage was stopped. The crusades followed. A great mass of warriors from every nation of the West, men who certainly had never intended to go on pilgrimage themselves, were roused to what seems a somewhat perverse anger of religious devotion. Under the lead of Godfrey of Bouillon they marched eastward, saw the wonders of Constantinople, marvellous indeed to their ruder eyes, defeated the sultans of Asia Minor and of Antioch, and ended by storming Jerusalem, and erecting there a Christian kingdom where Mahometanism had ruled for nearly five hundred years.[20] [Footnote 20: See _The First Crusade_, page 276.] Of course, a great flow of pilgrims followed them. Religious orders of knighthood were formed[21] to help defend the shrine of Christ and to extend Christian conquest farther through the surrounding regions. Travel began again. Europe, after having forgotten Asia for seven centuries, was introduced once more to its languor, its splendor, and its vices. The Aryan peoples had at last filled full their little world of Western Europe. They had reached among themselves a state of law and union, confused and weak, perhaps, yet secure enough to enable them once more to overflow their boundaries and become again the aggressive, intrusive race we have seen them in earlier days. [Footnote 21: See _Foundation of the Order of Knights Templars_, page 301.] FEUDALISM: ITS FRANKISH BIRTH AND ENGLISH DEVELOPMENT NINTH TO TWELFTH CENTURY WILLIAM STUBBS (That social system--however varying in different times and places--in which ownership of land is the basis of authority is known in history as feudalism. From the time of Clovis, the Frankish King, who died in A.D. 511, the progress of the Franks in civilization was slow, and for more than two centuries they spent their energies mainly in useless wars. But Charles Martel and his son, Pépin the Short--the latter dying in 768--built up a kingdom which Charlemagne erected into a powerful empire. Under the predecessors of Charlemagne the beginnings of feudalism, which are very obscure, may be said vaguely to appear. Charles Martel had to buy the services of his nobles by granting them lands, and although he and Pépin strengthened the royal power, which Charlemagne still further increased, under the weak rulers who followed them the forces of the incipient feudalism again became active, and the State was divided into petty countships and dukedoms almost independent of the king. The gift of land by the king in return for feudal services was called a feudal grant, and the land so given was termed a "feud" or "fief." In the course of time fiefs became hereditary. Lands were also sometimes usurped or otherwise obtained by subjects, who thereby became feudal lords. By a process called "subinfeudation," lands were granted in parcels to other men by those who received them from the king or otherwise, and by these lower landholders to others again; and as the first recipient became the vassal of the king and the suzerain of the man who held next below him, there was created a regular descending scale of such vassalage and suzerainty, in which each man's allegiance was directly due to his feudal lord, and not to the king himself. From the king down to the lowest landholder all were bound together by obligation of service and defence; the lord to protect his vassal, the vassal to do service to his lord. These are the essential features of the social system which, from its early growth under the later Carlovingians in the ninth century, spread over Europe and reached its highest development in the twelfth century. At a time midway between these periods it was carried by the Norman Conquest into England. The history of this system of distinctly Frankish origin--a knowledge of which is absolutely essential to a proper understanding of history and the evolution of our present social system--is told by Stubbs with that discernment and thoroughness of analysis which have given him his rank as one of the few masterly writers in this field.) Feudalism had grown up from two great sources--the _beneficium_, and the practice of commendation--and had been specially fostered on Gallic soil by the existence of a subject population which admitted of any amount of extension in the methods of dependence. The beneficiary system originated partly in gifts of land made by the kings out of their own estates to their kinsmen and servants, with a special undertaking to be faithful; partly in the surrender by land-owners of their estates to churches or powerful men, to be received back again and held by them as tenants for rent or service. By the latter arrangement the weaker man obtained the protection of the stronger, and he who felt himself insecure placed his title under the defence of the church. By the practice of commendation, on the other hand, the inferior put himself under the personal care of a lord, but without altering his title or divesting himself of his right to his estate; he became a vassal and did homage. The placing of his hands between those of his lord was the typical act by which the connection was formed; and the oath of fealty was taken at the same time. The union of the beneficiary tie with that of commendation completed the idea of feudal obligation-- the twofold engagement: that of the lord, to defend; and that of the vassal, to be faithful. A third ingredient was supplied by the grants of immunity by which in the Frank empire, as in England, the possession of land was united with the right of judicature; the dwellers on a feudal property were placed under the tribunal of the lord, and the rights which had belonged to the nation or to its chosen head were devolved upon the receiver of a fief. The rapid spread of the system thus originated, and the assimilation of all other tenures to it, may be regarded as the work of the tenth century; but as early as A.D. 877 Charles the Bald recognized the hereditary character of all benefices; and from that year the growth of strictly feudal jurisprudence may be held to date. The system testifies to the country and causes of its birth. The beneficium is partly of Roman, partly of German origin; in the Roman system the usufruct--the occupation of land belonging to another person--involved no diminution of status; in the Germanic system he who tilled land that was not his own was imperfectly free; the reduction of a large Roman population to dependence placed the two classes on a level, and conduced to the wide extension of the institution. Commendation, on the other hand, may have had a Gallic or Celtic origin, and an analogy only with the Roman clientship. The German _comitatus_, which seems to have ultimately merged its existence in one or other of these developments, is of course to be carefully distinguished in its origin from them. The tie of the benefice or of commendation could be formed between any two persons whatever; none but the king could have _antrustions_. But the comitatus of Anglo-Saxon history preserved a more distinct existence, and this perhaps was one of the causes that distinguished the later Anglo-Saxon system most definitely from the feudalism of the Frank empire. The process by which the machinery of government became feudalized, although rapid, was gradual. The weakness of the Carlovingian kings and emperors gave room for the speedy development of disruptive tendencies in a territory so extensive and so little consolidated. The duchies and counties of the eighth and ninth centuries were still official magistracies, the holders of which discharged the functions of imperial judges or generals. Such officers were of course men whom the kings could trust, in most cases Franks, courtiers or kinsmen, who at an earlier date would have been _comites_ or antrustions, and who were provided for by feudal benefices. The official magistracy had in itself the tendency to become hereditary, and when the benefice was recognized as heritable, the provincial governorship became so too. But the provincial governor had many opportunities of improving his position, especially if he could identify himself with the manners and aspirations of the people he ruled. By marriage or inheritance he might accumulate in his family not only the old allodial estates which, especially on German soil, still continued to subsist, but the traditions and local loyalties which were connected with the possession of them. So in a few years the Frank magistrate could unite in his own person the beneficiary endowment, the imperial deputation, and the headship of the nation over which he presided. And then it was only necessary for the central power to be a little weakened, and the independence of duke or count was limited by his homage and fealty alone, that is, by obligations that depended on conscience only for their fulfilment. It is in Germany that the disruptive tendency most distinctly takes the political form; Saxony and Bavaria assert their national independence under Swabian and Saxon dukes who have identified the interests of their subjects with their own. In France, where the ancient tribal divisions had been long obsolete, and where the existence of the allod involved little or no feeling of loyalty, the process was simpler still; the provincial rulers aimed at practical rather than political sovereignty; the people were too weak to have any aspirations at all. The disruption was due more to the abeyance of central attraction than to any centrifugal force existing in the provinces. But the result was the same; feudal government, a graduated system of jurisdiction based on land tenure, in which every lord judged, taxed, and commanded the class next below him, of which abject slavery formed the lowest, and irresponsible tyranny the highest grade, and private war, private coinage, private prisons, took the place of the imperial institutions of government. This was the social system which William the Conqueror and his barons had been accustomed to see at work in France. One part of it--the feudal tenure of land--was perhaps the only kind of tenure which they could understand; the king was the original lord, and every title issued mediately or immediately from him. The other part, the governmental system of feudalism, was the point on which sooner or later the duke and his barons were sure to differ. Already the incompatibility of the system with the existence of the strong central power had been exemplified in Normandy, where the strength of the dukes had been tasked to maintain their hold on the castles and to enforce their own high justice. Much more difficult would England be to retain in Norman hands if the new king allowed himself to be fettered by the French system. On the other hand the Norman barons would fain rise a step in the social scale answering to that by which their duke had become a king; and they aspired to the same independence which they had seen enjoyed by the counts of Southern and Eastern France. Nor was the aspiration on their part altogether unreasonable; they had joined in the Conquest rather as sharers in the great adventure than as mere vassals of the duke, whose birth they despised as much as they feared his strength. William, however, was wise and wary as well as strong. While, by the insensible process of custom, or rather by the mere assumption that feudal tenure of land was the only lawful and reasonable one, the Frankish system of tenure was substituted for the Anglo-Saxon, the organization of government on the same basis was not equally a matter of course. The Conqueror himself was too strong to suffer that organization to become formidable in his reign, but neither the brutal force of William Rufus nor the heavy and equal pressure of the government of Henry I could extinguish the tendency toward it. It was only after it had, under Stephen, broken out into anarchy and plunged the whole nation in misery; when the great houses founded by the barons of the Conquest had suffered forfeiture or extinction; when the Normans had become Englishmen under the legal and constitutional reforms of Henry II--that the royal authority, in close alliance with the nation, was enabled to put an end to the evil. William the Conqueror claimed the crown of England as the chosen heir of Edward the Confessor. It was a claim which the English did not admit, and of which the Normans saw the fallacy, but which he himself consistently maintained and did his best to justify. In that claim he saw not only the justification of the Conquest in the eyes of the church, but his great safeguard against the jealous and aggressive host by whose aid he had realized it; therefore, immediately after the battle of Hastings he proceeded to seek the national recognition of its validity. He obtained it from the divided and dismayed _witan_ with no great trouble, and was crowned by the archbishop of York--the most influential and patriotic among them--binding himself by the constitutional promises of justice and good laws. Standing before the altar at Westminster, "in the presence of the clergy and people he promised with an oath that he would defend God's holy churches and their rulers; that he would, moreover, rule the whole people subject to him with righteousness and royal providence; would enact and hold fast right law and utterly forbid rapine and unrighteous judgments." The form of election and acceptance was regularly observed and the legal position of the new King completed before he went forth to finish the Conquest. Had it not been for this the Norman host might have fairly claimed a division of the land such as the Danes had made in the ninth century. But to the people who had recognized William it was but just that the chance should be given them of retaining what was their own. Accordingly, when the lands of all those who had fought for Harold were confiscated, those who were willing to acknowledge William were allowed to redeem theirs, either paying money at once or giving hostages for the payment. That under this redemption lay the idea of a new title to the lands redeemed may be regarded as questionable. The feudal lawyer might take one view, and the plundered proprietor another. But if charters of confirmation or regrant were generally issued on the occasion to those who were willing to redeem, there can be no doubt that, as soon as the feudal law gained general acceptance, these would be regarded as conveying a feudal title. What to the English might be a mere payment of _fyrdwite_, or composition for a recognized offence, might to the Normans seem equivalent to forfeiture and restoration. But however this was, the process of confiscation and redistribution of lands under the new title began from the moment of the coronation. The next few years, occupied in the reduction of Western and Northern England, added largely to the stock of divisible estates. The tyranny of Odo of Bayeux and William Fitzosbern, which provoked attempts at rebellion in 1067; the stand made by the house of Godwin in Devonshire in 1068; the attempts of Mercia and Northumbria to shake off the Normans in 1069 and 1070; the last struggle for independence in 1071, in which Edwin and Morcar finally fell; the conspiracy of the Norman earls in 1074, in consequence of which Waltheof perished--all tended to the same result. After each effort the royal hand was laid on more heavily; more and more land changed owners, and with the change of owners the title changed. The complicated and unintelligible irregularities of the Anglo-Saxon tenures were exchanged for the simple and uniform feudal theory. The fifteen hundred tenants-in-chief of _Domesday Book_ take the place of the countless land-owners of King Edward's time, and the loose, unsystematic arrangements which had grown up in the confusion of title, tenure, and jurisdiction were replaced by systematic custom. The change was effected without any legislative act, simply by the process of transfer under circumstances in which simplicity and uniformity were an absolute necessity. It was not the change from allodial to feudal so much as from confusion to order. The actual amount of dispossession was no doubt greatest in the higher ranks; the smaller owners may to a large extent have remained in a mediatized position on their estates; but even _Domesday_, with all its fulness and accuracy, cannot be supposed to enumerate all the changes of the twenty eventful years that followed the battle of Hastings. It is enough for our purpose to ascertain that a universal assimilation of title followed the general changes of ownership. The king of _Domesday_ is the supreme landlord; all the land of the nation, the old folkland, has become the king's; and all private land is held mediately or immediately of him; all holders are bound to their lords by homage and fealty, either actually demanded or understood to be demandable, in every case of transfer by inheritance or otherwise. The result of this process is partly legal and partly constitutional or political. The legal result is the introduction of an elaborate system of customs, tenures, rights, duties, profits, and jurisdictions. The constitutional result is the creation of several intermediate links between the body of the nation and the king, in the place of or side by side with the duty of allegiance. On the former of these points we have very insufficient data; for we are quite in the dark as to the development of feudal law in Normandy before the invasion, and may be reasonably inclined to refer some at least of the peculiarities of English feudal law to the leaven of the system which it superseded. Nor is it easy to reduce the organization described in _Domesday_ to strict conformity with feudal law as it appears later, especially with the general prevalence of military tenure. The growth of knighthood is a subject on which the greatest obscurity prevails, and the most probable explanation of its existence in England--the theory that it is a translation into Norman forms of the _thegnage_ of the Anglo-Saxon law--can only be stated as probable. Between the picture drawn in _Domesday_ and the state of affairs which the charter of Henry I was designed to remedy, there is a difference which the short interval of time will not account for, and which testifies to the action of some skilful organizing hand working with neither justice nor mercy, hardening and sharpening all lines and points to the perfecting of a strong government. It is unnecessary to recapitulate here all the points in which the Anglo-Saxon institutions were already approaching the feudal model; it may be assumed that the actual obligation of military service was much the same in both systems, and that even the amount of land which was bound to furnish a mounted warrior was the same however the conformity may have been produced. The _heriot_ of the English earl or _thegn_ was in close resemblance with the _relief_ of the Norman count or knight. But however close the resemblance, something was now added that made the two identical. The change of the heriot to the relief implies a suspension of ownership, and carries with it the custom of "livery of seisin." The heriot was the payment of a debt from the dead man to his lord; his son succeeded him by allodial right. The relief was paid by the heir before he could obtain his father's lands; between the death of the father and livery of seisin to the son the right of the "overlord" had entered; the ownership was to a certain extent resumed, and the succession of the heir took somewhat of the character of a new grant. The right of wardship also became in the same way a reëntry, by the lord, on the profits of the estate of the minor, instead of being, as before, a protection, by the head of the kin, of the indefeasible rights of the heir, which it was the duty of the whole community to maintain. There can be no doubt that the military tenure--the most prominent feature of historical feudalism--was itself introduced by the same gradual process which we have assumed in the case of the feudal usages in general. We have no light on the point from any original grant made by the Conqueror to a lay follower, but judging by the grants made to the churches we cannot suppose it probable that such gifts were made on any expressed condition, or accepted with a distinct pledge to provide a certain contingent of knights for the king's service. The obligation of national defence was incumbent, as of old, on all land-owners, and the customary service of one fully armed man for each five hides of land was probably the rate at which the newly endowed follower of the king would be expected to discharge his duty. The wording of the _Domesday_ survey does not imply that in this respect the new military service differed from the old; the land is marked out, not into knights' fees, but into hides, and the number of knights to be furnished by a particular feudatory would be ascertained by inquiring the number of hides that he held, without apportioning the particular acres that were to support the particular knight. It would undoubtedly be on the estates of the lay vassals that a more definite usage would first be adopted, and knights bound by feudal obligations to their lords receive a definite estate from them. Our earliest information, however, on this as on most points of tenure, is derived from the notices of ecclesiastical practice. Lanfranc, we are told, turned the _drengs_, the rent-paying tenants of his archiepiscopal estates, into knights for the defence of the country; he enfeoffed a certain number of knights who performed the military service due from the archiepiscopal barony. This had been done before the _Domesday_ survey, and almost necessarily implies that a like measure had been taken by the lay vassals. Lanfranc likewise maintained ten knights to answer for the military service due from the convent of Christ Church, which made over to him, in consideration of the relief, land worth two hundred pounds annually. The value of the knight's fee must already have been fixed at twenty pounds a year. In the reign of William Rufus the abbot of Ramsey obtained a charter which exempted his monastery from the service of ten knights due from it on festivals, substituting the obligation to furnish three knights to perform service on the north of the Thames--a proof that the lands of that house had not yet been divided into knights' fees. In the next reign, we may infer--from the favor granted by the King to the knights who defended their lands _per loricas_ (that is, by the hauberk) that their demesne lands shall be exempt from pecuniary taxation--that the process of definite military infeudation had largely advanced. But it was not even yet forced on the clerical or monastic estates. When, in 1167, the abbot of Milton, in Dorset, was questioned as to the number of knights' fees for which he had to account, he replied that all the services due from his monastery were discharged out of the demesne; but he added that in the reign of Henry I, during a vacancy in the abbacy, Bishop Roger, of Salisbury, had enfeoffed two knights out of the abbey lands. He had, however, subsequently reversed the act and had restored the lands, whose tenure had been thus altered, to their original condition of rent-paying estate or "socage." The very term "the new feoffment," which was applied to the knights' fees created between the death of Henry I and the year in which the account preserved in the _Black Book_ of the exchequer was taken, proves that the process was going on for nearly a hundred years, and that the form in which the knights' fees appear when called on by Henry II for "scutage" was most probably the result of a series of compositions by which the great vassals relieved their lands from a general burden by carving out particular estates, the holders of which performed the services due from the whole; it was a matter of convenience and not of tyrannical pressure. The statement of Ordericus Vitalis that the Conqueror "distributed lands to his knights in such fashion that the kingdom of England should have forever sixty thousand knights, and furnish them at the king's command according to the occasion," must be regarded as one of the many numerical exaggerations of the early historians. The officers of the exchequer in the twelfth century were quite unable to fix the number of existing knights' fees. It cannot even be granted that a definite area of land was necessary to constitute a knight's fee; for although at a later period and in local computations we may find four or five hides adopted as a basis of calculation, where the extent of the particular knight's fee is given exactly, it affords no ground for such a conclusion. In the _Liber Niger_ we find knights' fees of two hides and a half, of two hides, of four, five, and six hides. Geoffrey Ridel states that his father held one hundred and eighty-four _carucates_ and a _virgate_, for which the service of fifteen knights was due, but that no knights' fees had been carved out of it, the obligation lying equally on every carucate. The archbishop of York had far more knights than his tenure required. It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the extent of a knight's fee was determined by rent or valuation rather than acreage, and that the common quantity was really expressed in the twenty _librates_, the twenty pounds' worth of annual value which until the reign of Edward I was the qualification for knighthood. It is most probable that no regular account of the knights' fees was ever taken until they became liable to taxation, either in the form of _auxilium militum_ under Henry I, or in that of scutage under his grandson. The facts, however, which are here adduced, preclude the possibility of referring this portion of the feudal innovations to the direct legislation of the Conqueror. It may be regarded as a secondary question whether the knighthood here referred to was completed by the investiture with knightly arms and the honorable accolade. The ceremonial of knighthood was practised by the Normans, whereas the evidence that the English had retained the primitive practice of investing the youthful warrior is insufficient; yet it would be rash to infer that so early as this, if indeed it ever was the case, every possessor of a knight's fee received formal initiation before he assumed his spurs. But every such analogy would make the process of transition easier and prevent the necessity of any general legislative act of change. It has been maintained that a formal and definitive act, forming the initial point of the feudalization of England, is to be found in a clause of the laws, as they are called, of the Conqueror; which directs that every freeman shall affirm, by covenant and oath, that "he will be faithful to King William within England and without, will join him in preserving his lands and honor with all fidelity, and defend him against his enemies." But this injunction is little more than the demand of the oath of allegiance which had been taken to the Anglo-Saxon kings and is here required not of every feudal dependent of the King, but of every freeman or freeholder whatsoever. In that famous council of Salisbury of 1086, which was summoned immediately after the making of the _Domesday_ survey, we learn from the _Chronicle_ that there came to the King "all his witan, and all the landholders of substance in England whose vassals soever they were, and they all submitted to him, and became his men and swore oaths of allegiance that they would be faithful to him against all others." In this act have been seen the formal acceptance and date of the introduction of feudalism, but it has a very different meaning. The oath described is the oath of allegiance, combined with the act of homage, and obtained from all land-owners, whoever their feudal lord might be. It is a measure of precaution taken against the disintegrating power of feudalism, providing a direct tie between the sovereign and all freeholders which no inferior relation existing between them and the mesne lords would justify them in breaking. The real importance of the passage as bearing on the date of the introduction of feudal tenure is merely that it shows the system to have already become consolidated; all the land-owners of the kingdom had already become, somehow or other, vassals, either of the king or of some tenant under him. The lesson may be learned from the fact of the _Domesday_ survey. The introduction of such a system would necessarily have effects far wider than the mere modification of the law of tenure; it might be regarded as a means of consolidating and concentrating the whole machinery of government; legislation, taxation, judicature, and military defence were all capable of being organized on the feudal principle, and might have been so had the moral and political results been in harmony with the legal. But its tendency when applied to governmental machinery is disruptive. The great feature of the Conqueror's policy is his defeat of that tendency. Guarding against it he obtained recognition as the King of the nation and, so far as he could understand them and the attitude of the nation allowed, he maintained the usages of the nation. He kept up the popular institutions of the hundred court and the shire court. He confirmed the laws which had been in use in King Edward's days, with the additions which he himself made for the benefit, as he especially tells us, of the English. We are told, on what seems to be the highest legal authority of the next century, that he issued in his fourth year a commission of inquiry into the national customs, and obtained from sworn representatives of each county a declaration of the laws under which they wished to live. The compilation that bears his name is very little more than a reissue of the code of Canute; and this proceeding helped greatly to reconcile the English people to his rule. Although the oppressions of his later years were far heavier than the measures taken to secure the immediate success of the Conquest, all the troubles of the kingdom after 1075, in his sons' reigns as well as in his own, proceeded from the insubordination of the Normans, not from the attempts of the English to dethrone the king. Very early they learned that, if their interest was not the king's, at least their enemies were his enemies; hence they are invariably found on the royal side against the feudatories. This accounts for the maintenance of the national force of defence, over and above the feudal army. The _fyrd_ of the English, the general armament of the men of the counties and hundreds, was not abolished at the Conquest, but subsisted even through the reigns of William Rufus and Henry I, to be reformed and reconstituted under Henry II; and in each reign it gave proof of its strength and faithfulness. The _witenagemot_ itself retained the ancient form, the bishops and abbots formed a chief part of it, instead of being, as in Normandy, so insignificant an element that their very participation in deliberation has been doubted. The king sat crowned three times in the year in the old royal towns of Westminster, Winchester, and Gloucester, hearing the complaints of his people, and executing such justice as his knowledge of their law and language and his own imperious will allowed. In all this there is no violent innovation, only such gradual essential changes as twenty eventful years of new actors and new principles must bring, however insensibly the people themselves--passing away and being replaced by their children--may be educated to endurance. It would be wrong to impute to the Conqueror any intention of deceiving the nation by maintaining its official forms while introducing new principles and a new race of administrators. What he saw required change he changed with a high hand. But not the less surely did the change of administrators involve a change of custom, both in the church and in the state. The bishops, ealdormen, and sheriffs of English birth were replaced by Normans; not unreasonably, perhaps, considering the necessity of preserving the balance of the state. With the change of officials came a sort of amalgamation or duplication of titles; the ealdorman or earl became the _comes_ or count; the sheriff became the _vicecomes_; the office in each case receiving the name of that which corresponded most closely with it in Normandy itself. With the amalgamation of titles came an importation of new principles and possibly new functions; for the Norman count and viscount had not exactly the same customs as the earls and sheriffs. And this ran up into the highest grades of organization; the King's court of counsellors was composed of his feudal tenants; the ownership of land was now the qualification for the witenagemot, instead of wisdom; the earldoms became fiefs instead of magistracies, and even the bishops had to accept the status of barons. There was a very certain danger that the mere change of persons might bring in the whole machinery of hereditary magistracies, and that king and people might be edged out of the administration of justice, taxation, and other functions of supreme or local independence. Against this it was most important to guard; as the Conqueror learned from the events of the first year of his reign, when the severe rule of Odo and William Fitzosbern had provoked Herefordshire. Ralph Guader, Roger Montgomery, and Hugh of Avranches filled the places of Edwin and Morcar and the brothers of Harold. But the conspiracy of the earls in 1074 opened William's eyes to the danger of this proceeding, and from that time onward he governed the provinces through sheriffs immediately dependent on himself, avoiding the foreign plan of appointing hereditary counts, as well as the English custom of ruling by viceregal ealdormen. He was, however, very sparing in giving earldoms at all, and inclined to confine the title to those who were already counts in Normandy or in France. To this plan there were some marked exceptions, which may be accounted for either on the ground that the arrangements had been completed before the need of watchfulness was impressed on the King by the treachery of the Normans, or on that of the exigencies of national defence. In these cases he created, or suffered the continuance of, great palatine jurisdictions; earldoms in which the earls were endowed with the superiority of whole counties, so that all the land-owners held feudally of them, in which they received the whole profits of the courts and exercised all the "regalia" or royal rights, nominated the sheriffs, held their own councils, and acted as independent princes except in the owing of homage and fealty to the King. Two of these palatinates, the earldom of Chester and the bishopric of Durham, retained much of their character to our own days. A third, the palatinate of Bishop Odo in Kent, if it were really a jurisdiction of the same sort, came to an end when Odo forfeited the confidence of his brother and nephew. A fourth, the earldom of Shropshire, which is not commonly counted among the palatine jurisdictions, but which possessed under the Montgomery earls all the characteristics of such a dignity, was confiscated after the treason of Robert of Belesme by Henry I. These had been all founded before the conspiracy of 1074; they were also, like the later lordships of the marches, a part of the national defence; Chester and Shropshire kept the Welsh marches in order, Kent was the frontier exposed to attacks from Picardy, and Durham, the patrimony of St. Cuthbert, lay as a sacred boundary between England and Scotland; Northumberland and Cumberland were still a debatable ground between the two kingdoms. Chester was held by its earls as freely by the sword as the King held England by the crown; no lay vassal in the county held of the King, all of the earl. In Shropshire there were only five lay tenants _in capite_ besides Roger Montgomery; in Kent, Bishop Odo held an enormous proportion of the manors, but the nature of his jurisdiction is not very clear, and its duration is too short to make it of much importance. If William founded any earldoms at all after 1074 (which may be doubted), he did it on a very different scale. The hereditary sheriffdoms he did not guard against with equal care. The Norman viscounties were hereditary, and there was some risk that the English ones would become so too; and with the worst consequences, for the English counties were much larger than the bailiwicks of the Norman viscount, and the authority of the sheriff, when he was relieved from the company of the ealdorman, and was soon to lose that of the bishop, would have no check except the direct control of the King. If William perceived this, it was too late to prevent it entirely; some of the sheriffdoms became hereditary, and continued to be so long after the abuse had become constitutionally dangerous. The independence of the greater feudatories was still further limited by the principle, which the Conqueror seems to have observed, of avoiding the accumulation in any one hand of a great number of contiguous estates. The rule is not without some important exceptions, and it may have been suggested by the diversity of occasions on which the fiefs were bestowed, but the result is one which William must have foreseen. An insubordinate baron whose strength lay in twelve different counties would have to rouse the suspicions and perhaps to defy the arms of twelve powerful sheriffs, before he could draw his forces to a head. In his manorial courts, scattered and unconnected, he could set up no central tribunal, nor even force a new custom upon his tenants, nor could he attempt oppression on any extensive scale. By such limitation the people were protected and the central power secured. Yet the changes of ownership, even thus guarded, wrought other changes. It is not to be supposed that the Norman baron, when he had received his fief, proceeded to carve it out into demesne and tenants' land as if he were making a new settlement in an uninhabited country. He might indeed build his castle and enclose his chase with very little respect to the rights of his weaker neighbors, but he did not attempt any such radical change as the legal theory of the creation of manors seems to presume. The name "manor" is of Norman origin: but the estate to which it was given existed, in its essential character, long before the Conquest; it received a new name as the shire also did, but neither the one nor the other was created by this change. The local jurisdictions of the thegns who had grants of _sac_ and _soc_, or who exercised judicial functions among their free neighbors, were identical with the manorial jurisdictions of the new owners. It may be conjectured with great probability that in many cases the weaker freemen, who had either willingly or under constraint attended the courts of their great neighbors, were now, under the general infusion of feudal principle, regarded as holding their lands of them as lords; it is not less probable that in a great number of grants the right to suit and service from small land-owners passed from the king to the receiver of the fief as a matter of course; but it is certain that even before the Conquest such a proceeding was not uncommon; Edward the Confessor had transferred to St. Augustine's monastery a number of allodiaries in Kent, and every such measure in the case of a church must have had its parallel in similar grants to laymen. The manorial system brought in a number of new names; and perhaps a duplication of offices. The _gerefa_ of the old thegn, or of the ancient township, was replaced, as president of the courts, by a Norman steward or seneschal; and the _bydel_ of the old system by the bailiff of the new; but the gerefa and bydel still continued to exist in a subordinate capacity as the _grave_ or reeve and the _bedell_; and when the lord's steward takes his place in the county court, the reeve and four men of the township are there also. The common of the township may be treated as the lord's waste, but the townsmen do not lose their customary share. The changes that take place in the state have their resulting analogies in every village, but no new England is created; new forms displace but do not destroy the old, and old rights remain, although changed in title and forced into symmetry with a new legal and pseudo-historical theory. The changes may not seem at first sight very oppressive, but they opened the way for oppression; the forms they had introduced tended, under the spirit of Norman legality and feudal selfishness, to become hard realities, and in the profound miseries of Stephen's reign the people learned how completely the new theory left them at the mercy of their lords; nor were all the reforms of his successor more stringent or the struggles of the century that followed a whit more impassioned than were necessary to protect the English yeoman from the men who lived upon his strength. In attempting thus to estimate the real amount of change introduced by the feudalism of the Conquest, many points of further interest have been touched upon, to which it is necessary to recur only so far as to give them their proper place in a more general view of the reformed organization. The Norman king is still the king of the nation. He has become the supreme landlord; all estates are held of him mediately or immediately, but he still demands the allegiance of all his subjects. The oath which he exacted at Salisbury in 1086, and which is embodied in the semi-legal form already quoted, was a modification of the oath taken to Edmund, and was intended to set the general obligation of obedience to the king in its proper relation to the new tie of homage and fealty by which the tenant was bound to his lord. All men continued to be primarily the king's men, and the public peace to be his peace. Their lords might demand their service to fulfil their own obligations, but the king could call them to the _fyrd_, summon them to his courts, and tax them without the intervention of their lords; and to the king they could look for protection against all foes. Accordingly the king could rely on the help of the bulk of the free people in all struggles with his feudatories, and the people, finding that their connection with their lords would be no excuse for unfaithfulness to the king, had a further inducement to adhere to the more permanent institutions. In the department of law the direct changes introduced by the Conquest were not great. Much that is regarded as peculiarly Norman was developed upon English soil, and although originated and systematized by Norman lawyers, contained elements which would have worked in a very different way in Normandy. Even the vestiges of Carlovingian practice which appear in the inquests of the Norman reigns are modified by English usage. The great inquest of all, the _Domesday_ survey, may owe its principle to a foreign source; the oath of the reporters may be Norman, but the machinery that furnishes the jurors is native; "the king's barons inquire by the oath of the sheriff of the shire, and of all the barons and their Frenchmen, and of the whole hundred, the priest, the reeve, and six _ceorls_ of every township." The institution of the collective Frank pledge, which recent writers incline to treat as a Norman innovation, is so distinctly colored by English custom that it has been generally regarded as purely indigenous. If it were indeed a precaution taken by the new rulers against the avoidance of justice by the absconding or harboring of criminals, it fell with ease into the usages and even the legal terms which had been common for other similar purposes since the reign of Athelstan. The trial by battle, which on clearer evidence seems to have been brought in by the Normans, is a relic of old Teutonic jurisprudence, the absence of which from the Anglo-Saxon courts is far more curious than its introduction from abroad. The organization of jurisdiction required and underwent no great change in these respects. The Norman lord who undertook the office of sheriff had, as we have seen, more unrestricted power than the sheriffs of old. He was the king's representative in all matters judicial, military, and financial in his shire, and had many opportunities of tyrannizing in each of those departments: but he introduced no new machinery. From him, or from the courts of which he was the presiding officer, appeal lay to the king alone; but the king was often absent from England and did not understand the language of his subjects. In his absence the administration was intrusted to a _judiciar_, a regent, or lieutenant, of the kingdom; and the convenience being once ascertained of having a minister who could in the whole kingdom represent the king, as the sheriff did in the shire, the judiciar became a permanent functionary. This, however, cannot be certainly affirmed of the reign of the Conqueror, who, when present at Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, held great courts of justice as well as for other purposes of state; and the legal importance of the office belongs to a later stage. The royal court, containing the tenants-in-chief of the crown, both lay and clerical, and entering into all the functions of the witenagemot, was the supreme council of the nation, with the advice and consent of which the King legislated, taxed, and judged. In the one authentic monument of William's jurisprudence, the act which removed the bishops from the secular courts and recognized their spiritual jurisdictions, he tells us that he acts "with the common council and counsel of the archbishops, bishops, abbots, and all the princes of the kingdom." The ancient summary of his laws contained in the _Textus Roffensis_ is entitled "_What William, King of the English, with his Princes enacted after the Conquest of England_"; and the same form is preserved in the tradition of his confirming the ancient laws reported to him by the representatives of the shires. The _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_ enumerates the classes of men who attended his great courts: "There were with him all the great men over all England, archbishops and bishops, abbots and earls, thegns and knights." The great suit between Lanfranc as Archbishop of Canterbury and Odo as Earl of Kent, which is perhaps the best reported trial of the reign, was tried in the county court of Kent before the King's representative, Gosfrid, bishop of Coutances; whose presence and that of most of the great men of the kingdom seem to have made it a witenagemot. The archbishop pleaded the cause of his Church in a session of three days on Pennenden Heath; the aged South-Saxon bishop, Ethelric, was brought by the King's command to declare the ancient customs of the laws; and with him several other Englishmen skilled in ancient laws and customs. All these good and wise men supported the archbishop's claim, and the decision was agreed on and determined by the whole county. The sentence was laid before the King, and confirmed by him. Here we have probably a good instance of the principle universally adopted; all the lower machinery of the court was retained entire, but the presence of the Norman justiciar and barons gave it an additional authority, a more direct connection with the king, and the appearance at least of a joint tribunal. The principle of amalgamating the two laws and nationalities by superimposing the better consolidated Norman superstructure on the better consolidated English substructure, runs through the whole policy. The English system was strong in the cohesion of its lower organism, the association of individuals in the township, in the hundred, and in the shire; the Norman system was strong in its higher ranges, in the close relation to the Crown of the tenants-in-chief whom the King had enriched. On the other hand, the English system was weak in the higher organization, and the Normans in England had hardly any subordinate organization at all. The strongest elements of both were brought together. DECAY OF THE FRANKISH EMPIRE DIVISION INTO MODERN FRANCE, GERMANY, AND ITALY A.D. 843-911 FRANÇOIS P.G. GUIZOT (The period with which the following article deals may be said to mark the end of distinctively Frankish history. A striking mixture of races entered into the formation of this people, and the beginnings of the great modern nations into which the Frankish empire was divided brought to them varied elements of strength and a diversity of constituents that were to be commingled in new national characters and careers. In 840 Charles the Bald became King of France, and his reign, both as king and afterward as emperor, continued for thirty-seven years, during which he proved himself to be lacking in those qualities which his responsibilities and the wants of his people demanded. He had great obstacles to contend against; for besides the ambitions of various districts for separate nationality, which led to insurrections in many quarters, Greek pirates ravaged the South, where the Saracens also wrought havoc, while in the North and West the Northmen burned and pillaged, laying waste a wide region and leaving many towns in ruins. It was an age of turbulence in Europe, and the violence of predatory invaders brought woes upon many peoples. On the east of Charles' empire the Hungarians, successors of the Huns, began to threaten. In the midst of all these distractions and dangers, assailed by enemies without and within, Charles found it a task far beyond his abilities to construct a state upon foundations of unity. He bore many titles and held several crowns, but his actual dominion was narrowly restricted, and his nominal subjects were in a state of political subdivision almost amounting to dismemberment. After various futile efforts during his later years to unify his empire, Charles died from an illness which seized him in 877, on his return to France from a fruitless campaign of subjugation and pillage in Italy. In the subsequent division of the empire, according to the terms of the treaty of Verdun, the several portions included Italy, the nucleus of France, and that of the present Germany. Already suffering from the devastating expeditions of the Norse or Northmen, the Carlovingian empire, now weakened by division, became an easier prey for the invaders. Emboldened by success, the Northmen at length commenced to settle in the regions they invaded, no longer returning, as formerly, to their northern homes in winter. Among chieftains of the early Norman invaders who settled in France was Hastings, who became Count of Chartres; later came Rou, Rolf, or Rollo the Rover, to whom Charles the Simple of France gave Normandy, whence sprang the conquerors and rulers of England, who laid the foundation of the English-speaking nations of today.) The first of Charlemagne's grand designs, the territorial security of the Gallo-Frankish and Christian dominion, was accomplished. In the East and the North, the Germanic and Asiatic populations, which had so long upset it, were partly arrested at its frontiers, partly incorporated regularly in its midst. In the South, the Mussulman populations which, in the eighth century, had appeared so near overwhelming it, were powerless to deal it any heavy blow. Substantially France was founded. But what had become of Charlemagne's second grand design, the resuscitation of the Roman Empire at the hands of the barbarians that had conquered it and become Christians? Let us leave Louis the Debonair his traditional name, although it is not an exact rendering of that which was given him by his contemporaries. They called him Louis the Pious. And so, indeed, he was, sincerely and even scrupulously pious; but he was still more weak than pious, as weak in heart and character as in mind; as destitute of ruling ideas as of strength of will, fluctuating at the mercy of transitory impressions or surrounding influences or positional embarrassments. The name of _Débonnaire_ is suited to him; it expresses his moral worth and his political incapacity both at once. As king of Aquitaine in the time of Charlemagne, Louis made himself esteemed and loved; his justice, his suavity, his probity, and his piety were pleasing to the people, and his weaknesses disappeared under the strong hand of his father. When he became emperor, he began his reign by a reaction against the excesses, real or supposed, of the preceding reign. Charlemagne's morals were far from regular, and he troubled himself but little about the license prevailing in his family or his palace. At a distance, he ruled with a tight and heavy hand. Louis established at his court, for his sisters as well as his servants, austere regulations. He restored to the subjugated Saxons certain of the rights of which Charlemagne had deprived them. He sent out everywhere his commissioners with orders to listen to complaints and redress grievances, and to mitigate his father's rule, which was rigorous in its application and yet insufficient to repress disturbance, notwithstanding its preventive purpose and its watchful supervision. Almost simultaneously with his accession, Louis committed an act more serious and compromising. He had, by his wife Hermengarde, three sons, Lothair, Pépin, and Louis, aged respectively nineteen, eleven, and eight. In 817, Louis summoned at Aix-la-Chapelle the general assembly of his dominions; and there, while declaring that "neither to those who were wisely minded nor to himself did it appear expedient to break up, for the love he bare his sons and by the will of man, the unity of the empire, preserved by God himself," he had resolved to share with his eldest son, Lothair, the imperial throne. Lothair was in fact crowned emperor; and his two brothers, Pépin and Louis, were crowned king, "in order that they might reign, after their father's death and under their brother and lord, Lothair, to wit: Pépin, over Aquitaine and a great part of Southern Gaul and of Burgundy; Louis, beyond the Rhine, over Bavaria and the divers peoples in the east of Germany." The rest of Gaul and of Germany, as well as the kingdom of Italy, was to belong to Lothair, Emperor and head of the Frankish monarchy, to whom his brothers would have to repair year by year to come to an understanding with him and receive his instructions. The last-named kingdom, the most considerable of the three, remained under the direct government of Louis the Debonair, and at the same time of his son Lothair, sharing the title of emperor. The two other sons, Pépin and Louis, entered, notwithstanding their childhood, upon immediate possession, the one of Aquitaine and the other of Bavaria, under the superior authority of their father and their brother, the joint emperors. Charlemagne had vigorously maintained the unity of the empire, for all that he had delegated to two of his sons, Pépin and Louis, the government of Italy and Aquitaine with the title of king. Louis the Debonair, while regulating beforehand the division of his dominion, likewise desired, as he said, to maintain the unity of the empire. But he forgot that he was no Charlemagne. It was not long before numerous mournful experiences showed to what extent the unity of the empire required personal superiority in the emperor, and how rapid would be the decay of the fabric when there remained nothing but the title of the founder. In 816 Pope Stephen IV came to France to consecrate Louis the Debonair emperor. Many a time already the popes had rendered the Frankish kings this service and honor. The Franks had been proud to see their King, Charlemagne, protecting Adrian I against the Lombards; then crowned emperor at Rome by Leo III, and then having his two sons, Pépin and Louis, crowned at Rome, by the same Pope, kings respectively of Italy and of Aquitaine. On these different occasions Charlemagne, while testifying the most profound respect for the Pope, had, in his relations with him, always taken care to preserve, together with his political greatness, all his personal dignity. But when, in 816, the Franks saw Louis the Pious not only go out of Rheims to meet Stephen IV, but prostrate himself, from head to foot, and rise only when the Pope held out a hand to him, the spectators felt saddened and humiliated at the sight of their Emperor in the posture of a penitent monk. Several insurrections burst out in the empire; the first among the Basques of Aquitaine; the next in Italy, where Bernard, son of Pépin, having, after his father's death, become king in 812, with the consent of his grandfather Charlemagne, could not quietly see his kingdom pass into the hands of his cousin Lothair at the orders of his uncle Louis. These two attempts were easily repressed, but the third was more serious. It took place in Brittany among those populations of Armorica who were still buried in their woods, and were excessively jealous of their independence. In 818 they took for king one of their principal chieftains, named Morvan; and, not confining themselves to a refusal of all tribute to the King of the Franks, they renewed their ravages upon the Frankish territories bordering on their frontier. Louis was at that time holding a general assembly of his dominions at Aix-la-Chapelle; and Count Lantbert, commandant of the marches of Brittany, came and reported to him what was going on. A Frankish monk, named Ditcar, happened to be at the assembly: he was a man of piety and sense, a friend of peace, and, moreover, with some knowledge of the Breton king Morvan, as his monastery had property in the neighborhood. Him the Emperor commissioned to convey to the King his grievances and his demands. After some days' journey the monk passed the frontier and arrived at a vast space enclosed on one side by a noble river, and on all the others by forests and swamps, hedges and ditches. In the middle of this space was a large dwelling, which was Morvan's. Ditcar found it full of warriors, the King having, no doubt, some expedition on hand. The monk announced himself as a messenger from the Emperor of the Franks. The style of announcement caused some confusion at first, to the Briton, who, however, hastened to conceal his emotion under an air of good-will and joyousness, to impose upon his comrades. The latter were got rid of; and the King remained alone with the monk, who explained the object of his mission. He descanted upon the power of the emperor Louis, recounted his complaints, and warned the Briton, kindly and in a private capacity, of the danger of his situation, a danger so much the greater in that he and his people would meet with the less consideration, seeing that they kept up the religion of their pagan forefathers. Morvan gave attentive ear to this sermon, with his eyes fixed on the ground, and his foot tapping it from time to time. Ditcar thought he had succeeded; but an incident supervened. It was the hour when Morvan's wife was accustomed to come and look for him ere they retired to the nuptial couch. She appeared, eager to know who the stranger was, what he had come for, what he had said, what answer he had received. She preluded her questions with oglings and caresses; she kissed the knees, the hands, the beard, and the face of the King, testifying her desire to be alone with him. "O King and glory of the mighty Britons, dear spouse of mine! what tidings bringeth this stranger? Is it peace, or is it war?" "This stranger," answered Morvan, with a smile, "is an envoy of the Franks; but bring he peace or bring he war is the affair of men alone; as for thee, content thee with thy woman's duties." Thereupon Ditcar, perceiving that he was countered, said to Morvan: "Sir King, 'tis time that I return; tell me what answer I am to take back to my sovereign." "Leave me this night to take thought thereon," replied the Breton chief, with a wavering air. When the morning came, Ditcar presented himself once more to Morvan, whom he found up, but still half drunk and full of very different sentiments from those of the night before. It required some effort, stupefied and tottering as he was with the effects of wine and the pleasures of the night, to say to Ditcar: "Go back to thy King, and tell him from me that my land was never his, and that I owe him naught of tribute or submission. Let him reign over the Franks; as for me, I reign over the Britons. If he will bring war on me, he will find me ready to pay him back." The monk returned to Louis the Debonair and rendered account of his mission. War was resolved upon, and the Emperor collected his troops--Alemannians, Saxons, Thuringians, Burgundians, and Aquitanians, without counting Franks or Gallo-Romans. They began their march, moving upon Vannes; Louis was at their head, and the Empress accompanied him, but he left her, already ill and fatigued, at Angers. The Franks entered the country of the Britons, searched the woods and morasses, found no armed men in the open country, but encountered them in scattered and scanty companies, at the entrance of all the defiles, on the heights commanding pathways, and wherever men could hide themselves and await the moment for appearing unexpectedly. The Franks heard them, from amid the heather and the brushwood, uttering shrill cries, to give warning one to another or to alarm the enemy. The Franks advanced cautiously, and at last arrived at the entrance of the thick wood which surrounded Morvan's abode. He had not yet set out with the pick of the warriors he had about him; but, at the approach of the Franks, he summoned his wife and his domestics, and said to them: "Defend ye well this house and these woods; as for me, I am going to march forward to collect my people; after which to return, but not without booty and spoils." He put on his armor, took a javelin in each hand, and mounted his horse. "Thou seest," said he to his wife, "these javelins I brandish: I will bring them back to thee this very day dyed with the blood of Franks. Farewell." Setting out he pierced, followed by his men, through the thickness of the forest, and advanced to meet the Franks. The battle began. The large numbers of the Franks who covered the ground for some distance dismayed the Britons, and many of them fled, seeking where they might hide themselves. Morvan, beside himself with rage and at the head of his most devoted followers, rushed down upon the Franks as if to demolish them at a single stroke; and many fell beneath his blows. He singled out a warrior of inferior grade, toward whom he made at a gallop, and, insulting him by word of mouth, after the ancient fashion of the Celtic warriors, cried: "Frank, I am going to give thee my first present, a present which I have been keeping for thee a long while, and which I hope thou wilt bear in mind;" and launched at him a javelin which the other received on his shield. "Proud Briton," replied the Frank, "I have received thy present, and I am going to give thee mine." He dug both spurs into his horse's sides and galloped down upon Morvan, who, clad though he was in a coat of mail, fell pierced by the thrust of a lance. The Frank had but time to dismount and cut off his head when he fell himself, mortally wounded by one of Morvan's young warriors, but not without having, in his turn, dealt the other his deathblow. It spreads on all sides that Morvan is dead; and the Franks come thronging to the scene of the encounter. There is picked up and passed from hand to hand a head all bloody and fearfully disfigured. Ditcar the monk is called to see it, and to say whether it is that of Morvan; but he has to wash the mass of disfigurement, and to partially adjust the hair, before he can pronounce that it is really Morvan's. There is then no more doubt; resistance is now impossible; the widow, the family and the servants of Morvan arrive, are brought before Louis the Debonair, accept all the conditions imposed upon them, and the Franks withdraw with the boast that Brittany is henceforth their tributary. On arriving at Angers, Louis found the empress Hermengarde dying; and two days afterward she was dead. He had a tender heart which was not proof against sorrow; and he testified a desire to abdicate and turn monk. But he was dissuaded from his purpose; for it was easy to influence his resolutions. A little later, he was advised to marry again, and he yielded. Several princesses were introduced; and he chose Judith of Bavaria, daughter of Count Welf (Guelf), a family already powerful and in later times celebrated. Judith was young, beautiful, witty, ambitious, and skilled in the art of making the gift of pleasing subserve the passion for ruling. Louis, during his expedition into Brittany, had just witnessed the fatal result of a woman's empire over her husband; he was destined himself to offer a more striking and more long-lived example of it. In 823, he had, by his new empress Judith, a son, whom he called Charles, and who was hereafter to be known as Charles the Bald. This son became his mother's ruling, if not exclusive, passion, and the source of his father's woes. His birth could not fail to cause ill-temper and mistrust in Louis' three sons by Hermengarde, who were already kings. They had but a short time previously received the first proof of their father's weakness. In 822, Louis, repenting of his severity toward his nephew, Bernard of Italy, whose eyes he had caused to be put out as a punishment for rebellion, and who had died in consequence, considered himself bound to perform at Attigny, in the church and before the people, a solemn act of penance; which was creditable to his honesty and piety, but the details left upon the minds of the beholders an impression unfavorable to the Emperor's dignity and authority. In 829, during an assembly held at Worms, he, yielding to his wife's entreaties, and doubtless also to his own yearnings toward his youngest son, set at naught the solemn act whereby, in 817, he had shared his dominions among his three elder sons; and took away from two of them, in Burgundy and Alemannia, some of the territories he had assigned to them, and gave them to the boy Charles for his share. Lothair, Pépin, and Louis thereupon revolted. Court rivalries were added to family differences. The Emperor had summoned to his side a young southron, Bernard by name, duke of Septimania and son of Count William of Toulouse, who had gallantly fought the Saracens. He made him his chief chamberlain and his favorite counsellor. Bernard was bold, ambitious, vain, imperious, and restless. He removed his rivals from court, and put in their places his own creatures. He was accused not only of abusing the Emperor's favor, but even of carrying on a guilty intrigue with the empress Judith. There grew up against him, and, by consequence, against the Emperor, the Empress, and their youngest son, a powerful opposition, in which certain ecclesiastics, and, among them, Wala, abbot of Corbie, cousin-german and but lately one of the privy counsellors of Charlemagne, joined eagerly. Some had at heart the unity of the empire, which Louis was breaking up more and more; others were concerned for the spiritual interests of the Church, which Louis, in spite of his piety and by reason of his weakness, often permitted to be attacked. Thus strengthened, the conspirators considered themselves certain of success. They had the empress Judith carried off and shut up in the convent of St. Radegonde at Poitiers; and Louis in person came to deliver himself up to them at Compiègne, where they were assembled. There they passed a decree to the effect that the power and title of emperor were transferred from Louis to Lothair, his eldest son; that the act whereby a share of the empire had but lately been assigned to Charles was annulled; and that the act of 817, which had regulated the partition of Louis' dominions after his death, was once more in force. But soon there was a burst of reaction in favor of the Emperor; Lothair's two brothers, jealous of his late elevation, made overtures to their father; the ecclesiastics were a little ashamed at being mixed up in a revolt; the people felt pity for the poor, honest Emperor; and a general assembly, meeting at Nimeguen, abolished the acts of Compiègne, and restored to Louis his title and his power. But it was not long before there was revolt again, originating this time with Pépin, King of Aquitaine. Louis fought him, and gave Aquitaine to Charles the Bald. The alliance between the three sons of Hermengarde was at once renewed; they raised an army; the Emperor marched against them with his; and the two hosts met between Colmar and Bâle, in a place called _le Champ rouge_ ("the Field of Red"). Negotiations were set on foot; and Louis was called upon to leave his wife Judith and his son Charles, and put himself under the guardianship of his elder sons. He refused; but, just when the conflict was about to commence, desertion took place in Louis' army; most of the prelates, laics, and men-at-arms who had accompanied him passed over to the camp of Lothair; and the "Field of Red" became the "Field of Falsehood" (_le Champ du Mensonge_). Louis, left almost alone, ordered his attendants to withdraw, "being unwilling," he said, "that any one of them should lose life or limb on his account," and surrendered to his sons. They received him with great demonstrations of respect, but without relinquishing the prosecution of their enterprise. Lothair hastily collected an assembly, which proclaimed him Emperor, with the addition of divers territories to the kingdoms of Aquitaine and Bavaria: and, three months afterward, another assembly, meeting at Compiègne, declared the emperor Louis to have forfeited the crown, "for having, by his faults and incapacity, suffered to sink so sadly low the empire which had been raised to grandeur and brought into unity by Charlemagne and his predecessors." Louis submitted to this decision; himself read out aloud, in the Church of St. Médard at Soissons, but not quite unresistingly, a confession, in eight articles, of his faults, and, laying his baldric upon the altar, stripped off his royal robe, and received from the hands of Ebbo, archbishop of Rheims, the gray vestment of a penitent. Lothair considered his father dethroned for good, and himself henceforth sole Emperor; but he was mistaken. For years longer the scenes which have just been described kept repeating themselves again and again; rivalries and secret plots began once more between the three victorious brothers and their partisans; popular feeling revived in favor of Louis; a large portion of the clergy shared it; several counts of Neustria and Burgundy appeared in arms, in the name of the deposed Emperor; and the seductive and able Judith came afresh upon the scene, and gained over to the cause of her husband and her son a multitude of friends. In 834, two assemblies, one meeting at St. Denis and the other at Thionville, annulled all the acts of the assembly of Compiègne, and for the third time put Louis in possession of the imperial title and power. He displayed no violence in his use of it; but he was growing more and more irresolute and weak, when, in 838, the second of his rebellious sons, Pépin, king of Aquitaine, died suddenly. Louis, ever under the sway of Judith, speedily convoked at Worms, in 839, once more and for the last time, a general assembly, whereat, leaving his son Louis of Bavaria reduced to his kingdom in Eastern Europe, he divided the rest of his dominions into two nearly equal parts, separated by the course of the Meuse and the Rhone. Between these two parts he left the choice to Lothair, who took the eastern portion, promising at the same time to guarantee the western portion to his younger brother Charles. Louis the Germanic protested against this partition, and took up arms to resist it. His father, the Emperor, set himself in motion toward the Rhine, to reduce him to submission; but, on arriving close to Mayence, he caught a violent fever, and died on the 20th of June, 840, at the castle Ingelheim, on a little island in the river. His last acts were a fresh proof of his goodness toward even his rebellious sons and of his solicitude for his last-born. He sent to Louis the Germanic his pardon, and to Lothair the golden crown and sword, at the same time bidding him fulfil his father's wishes on behalf of Charles and Judith. There is no telling whether, in the credulousness of his good nature, Louis had, at his dying hour, any great confidence in the appeal he made to his son Lothair, and in the impression which would be produced on his other son, Louis of Bavaria, by the pardon bestowed. The prayers of the dying are of little avail against violent passions and barbaric manners. Scarcely was Louis the Debonair dead, when Lothair was already conspiring against young Charles, and was in secret alliance, for his despoilment, with Pépin II, the late King of Aquitaine's son, who had taken up arms for the purpose of seizing his father's kingdom, in the possession of which his grandfather Louis had not been pleased to confirm him. Charles suddenly learned that his mother Judith was on the point of being besieged in Poitiers by the Aquitanians; and, in spite of the friendly protestations sent to him by Lothair, it was not long before he discovered the plot formed against him. He was not wanting in shrewdness or energy; and, having first provided for his mother's safety, he set about forming an alliance, in the cause of their common interests, with his other brother, Louis the Germanic, who was equally in danger from the ambition of Lothair. The historians of the period do not say what negotiator was employed by Charles on this distant and delicate mission; but several circumstances indicate that the empress Judith herself undertook it; that she went in quest of the King of Bavaria; and that it was she who, with her accustomed grace and address, determined him to make common cause with his youngest against their eldest brother. Divers incidents retarded for a whole year the outburst of this family plot, and of the war of which it was the precursor. The position of the young king Charles appeared for some time a very bad one; but "certain chieftains," says the historian Nithard, "faithful to his mother and to him, and having nothing more to lose than life or limb, chose rather to die gloriously than to betray their King." The arrival of Louis the Germanic with his troops helped to swell the forces and increase the confidence of Charles; and it was on the 21st of June, 841, exactly a year after the death of Louis the Debonair, that the two armies, that of Lothair and Pépin on the one side, and that of Charles the Bald and Louis the Germanic on the other, stood face to face in the neighborhood of the village of Fontenailles, six leagues from Auxerre, on the rivulet of Audries. Never, according to such evidence as is forthcoming, since the battle on the plains of Châlons against the Huns, and that of Poitiers against the Saracens, had so great masses of men been engaged. "There would be nothing untruthlike," says that scrupulous authority, M. Fauriel, "in putting the whole number of combatants at three hundred thousand; and there is nothing to show that either of the two armies was much less numerous than the other." However that may be, the leaders hesitated for four days to come to blows; and while they were hesitating, the old favorite, not only of Louis the Debonair, but also, according to several chroniclers, of the empress Judith, held himself aloof with his troops in the vicinity, having made equal promise of assistance to both sides, and waiting, to govern his decision, for the prospect afforded by the first conflict. The battle began on the 25th of June, at daybreak, and was at first in favor of Lothair; but the troops of Charles the Bald recovered the advantage which had been lost by those of Louis the Germanic, and the action was soon nothing but a terribly simple scene of carnage between enormous masses of men, charging hand to hand, again and again, with a front extending over a couple of leagues. Before midday the slaughter, the plunder, the spoliation of the dead--all was over; the victory of Charles and Louis was complete; the victors had retired to their camp, and there remained nothing on the field of battle but corpses in thick heaps or a long line, according as they had fallen in the disorder of flight or steadily fighting in their ranks.... "Accursed be this day!" cries Angilbert, one of Lothair's officers, in rough Latin verse; "be it unnumbered in the return of the year, but wiped out of all remembrance! Be it unlit by the light of the sun! Be it without either dawn or twilight! Accursed, also, be this night, this awful night in which fell the brave, the most expert in battle! Eye ne'er hath seen more fearful slaughter: in streams of blood fell Christian men; the linen vestments of the dead did whiten the champaign even as it is whitened by the birds of autumn!" In spite of this battle, which appeared a decisive one, Lothair made zealous efforts to continue the struggle; he scoured the countries wherein he hoped to find partisans; to the Saxons he promised the unrestricted reëstablishment of their pagan worship, and several of the Saxon tribes responded to his appeal. Louis the Germanic and Charles the Bald, having information of these preliminaries, resolved to solemnly renew their alliance and, seven months after their victory at Fontenailles, in February, 842, they repaired both of them, each with his army, to Argentaria, on the right bank of the Rhine, between Bâle and Strasburg, and there, at an open-air meeting, Louis first, addressing the chieftains about him in the German tongue, said: "Ye all know how often, since our father's death, Lothair hath attacked us, in order to destroy us, this my brother and me. Having never been able, as brothers and Christians, or in any just way, to obtain peace from him, we were constrained to appeal to the judgment of God. Lothair was beaten and retired, whither he could, with his following; for we, restrained by paternal affection and moved with compassion for Christian people, were unwilling to pursue them to extermination. Neither then nor aforetime did we demand aught else save that each of us should be maintained in his rights. But he, rebelling against the judgment of God, ceaseth not to attack us as enemies, this my brother and me; and he destroyeth our peoples with fire and pillage and the sword. That is the cause which hath united us afresh; and, as we trow that ye doubt the soundness of our alliance and our fraternal union, we have resolved to bind ourselves afresh by this oath in your presence, being led thereto by no prompting of wicked covetousness, but only that we may secure our common advantage in case that, by your aid, God should cause us to obtain peace. If, then, I violate--which God forbid--this oath that I am about to take to my brother, I hold you all quit of submission to me and of the faith ye have sworn to me." Charles repeated this speech, word for word, to his own troops, in the Romance language, in that idiom derived from a mixture of Latin and of the tongues of ancient Gaul, and spoken, thenceforth, with varieties of dialect and pronunciation, in nearly all parts of Frankish Gaul. After this address, Louis pronounced and Charles repeated after him, each in his own tongue, the oath couched in these terms: "For the love of God, for the Christian people and for our common weal, from this day forth and so long as God shall grant me power and knowledge, I will defend this my brother and will be an aid to him in everything, as one ought to defend his brother, provided that he do likewise unto me; and I will never make with Lothair any covenant which may be, to my knowledge, to the damage of this my brother." When the two brothers had thus sworn, the two armies, officers and men, took, in their turn, a similar oath, going bail, in a mass, for the engagements of their kings. Then they took up their quarters, all of them, for some time, between Worms and Mayence, and followed up their political proceeding with military fêtes, precursors of the knightly tournaments of the Middle Ages. "A place of meeting was fixed," says the contemporary historian Nithard, "at a spot suitable for this kind of exercises. Here were drawn up, on one side, a certain number of combatants, Saxons, Vasconians, Austrasians, or Britons; there were ranged, on the opposite side, an equal number of warriors, and the two divisions advanced, each against the other, as if to attack. One of them, with their bucklers at their backs, took to flight as if to seek, in the main body, shelter against those who were pursuing them; then suddenly, facing about, they dashed out in pursuit of those before whom they had just been flying. This sport lasted until the two kings, appearing with all the youth of their suites, rode up at a gallop, brandishing their spears and chasing first one lot and then the other. It was a fine sight to see so much temper among so many valiant folk, for, great as was the number and the mixture of different nationalities, no one was insulted or maltreated, though the contrary is often the case among men in small numbers and known one to another." After four or five months of tentative measures or of incidents which taught both parties that they could not, either of them, hope to completely destroy their opponents, the two allied brothers received at Verdun, whither they had repaired to concert their next movement, a messenger from Lothair, with peaceful proposals which they were unwilling to reject. The principal was that, with the exception of Italy, Aquitaine, and Bavaria, to be secured without dispute to their then possessors, the Frankish empire should be divided into three portions, that the arbiters elected to preside over the partition should swear to make it as equal as possible, and that Lothair should have his choice, with the title of emperor. About mid-June, 842, the three brothers met on an island of the Saône, near Châlons, where they began to discuss the questions which divided them; but it was not till more than a year after, in August, 843, that assembling, all three of them, with their umpires, at Verdun, they at last came to an agreement about the partition of the Frankish empire, save the three countries which it had been beforehand agreed to accept. Louis kept all the provinces of Germany of which he was already in possession, and received besides, on the left bank of the Rhine, the towns of Mayence, Worms, and Spire, with the territory appertaining to them. Lothair, for his part, had the eastern belt of Gaul, bounded on one side by the Rhine and the Alps, on the other by the courses of the Meuse, the Saône, and the Rhone, starting from the confluence of the two latter rivers, and, further, the country comprised between the Meuse and the Scheldt, together with certain countships lying to the west of that river. To Charles fell all the rest of Gaul: Vasconia or Biscaye, Septimania, the marshes of Spain, beyond the Pyrenees; and the other countries of Southern Gaul which had enjoyed hitherto, under the title of the kingdom of Aquitaine, a special government subordinated to the general government of the empire, but distinct from it, lost this last remnant of their Gallo-Roman nationality, and became integral portions of Frankish Gaul, which fell by partition to Charles the Bald, and formed one and the same kingdom under one and the same king. Thus fell through and disappeared, in 843, by virtue of the treaty of Verdun, the second of Charlemagne's grand designs, the resuscitation of the Roman Empire by means of the Frankish and Christian masters of Gaul. The name of _emperor_ still retained a certain value in the minds of the people, and still remained an object of ambition to princes; but the empire was completely abolished, and, in its stead, sprang up three kingdoms, independent one of another, without any necessary connection or relation. One of the three was thenceforth France. In this great event are comprehended two facts: the disappearance of the empire and the formation of the three kingdoms which took its place. The first is easily explained. The resuscitation of the Roman Empire had been a dream of ambition and ignorance on the part of a great man, but a barbarian. Political unity and central, absolute power had been the essential characteristics of that empire. They became introduced and established, through a long succession of ages, on the ruins of the splendid Roman Republic destroyed by its own dissensions, under favor of the still great influence of the old Roman senate though fallen from its high estate, and beneath the guardianship of the Roman legions and Imperial praetorians. Not one of these conditions, not one of these forces, was to be met with in the Roman world reigned over by Charlemagne. The nation of the Franks and Charlemagne himself were but of yesterday; the new Emperor had neither ancient senate to hedge at the same time that it obeyed him, nor old bodies of troops to support him. Political unity and absolute power were repugnant alike to the intellectual and the social condition, to the national manners and personal sentiments of the victorious barbarians. The necessity of placing their conquests beyond the reach of a new swarm of barbarians and the personal ascendency of Charlemagne were the only things which gave his government a momentary gleam of success in the way of unity and of factitious despotism under the name of empire. In 814 Charlemagne had made territorial security an accomplished fact; but the personal power he had exercised disappeared with him. The new Gallo-Frankish community recovered, under the mighty but gradual influence of Christianity, its proper and natural course, producing disruption into different local communities and bold struggles for individual liberties, either one with another, or against whosoever tried to become their master. As for the second fact, the formation of the three kingdoms which were the issue of the treaty of Verdun, various explanations have been given of it. This distribution of certain peoples of Western Europe into three distinct and independent groups, Italians, Germans, and French, has been attributed at one time to a diversity of histories and manners; at another to geographical causes and to what is called the rule of natural frontiers; and oftener still to a spirit of nationality and to differences of language. Let none of these causes be gainsaid; they all exercised some sort of influence, but they are all incomplete in themselves and far too redolent of theoretical system. It is true that Germany, France, and Italy began at that time to emerge from the chaos into which they had been plunged by barbaric invasion and the conquests of Charlemagne, and to form themselves into quite distinct nations; but there were, in each of the kingdoms of Lothair, of Louis the Germanic, and of Charles the Bald, populations widely differing in race, language, manners, and geographical affinity, and it required many great events and the lapse of many centuries to bring about the degree of national unity they now possess. To say nothing touching the agency of individual and independent forces, which is always considerable, although so many men of intellect ignore it in the present day, what would have happened, had any one of the three new kings, Lothair, or Louis the Germanic, or Charles the Bald, been a second Charlemagne, as Charlemagne had been a second Charles Martel? Who can say that, in such a case, the three kingdoms would have taken the form they took in 843? Happily or unhappily, it was not so; none of Charlemagne's successors was capable of exercising on the events of his time, by virtue of his brain and his own will, any notable influence. Attempts at foreign invasion of France were renewed very often and in many parts of Gallo-Frankish territory during the whole duration of the Carlovingian dynasty, and, even though they failed, they caused the population of the kingdom to suffer from cruel ravages. Charlemagne, even after his successes against the different barbaric invaders, had foreseen the evils which would be inflicted on France by the most formidable and most determined of them, the Northmen, coming by sea and landing on the coast. The most closely contemporaneous and most given to detail of his chroniclers, the monk of St. Gall, tells in prolix and pompous but evidently heartfelt and sincere terms the tale of the great Emperor's farsightedness. "Charles, who was ever astir," says he, "arrived by mere hap and unexpectedly in a certain town of Narbonnese Gaul. While he was at dinner and was as yet unrecognized of any, some corsairs of the Northmen came to ply their piracies in the very port. When their vessels were descried, they were supposed to be Jewish traders according to some, African according to others, and British in the opinion of others; but the gifted monarch, perceiving by the build and lightness of the craft, that they bare not merchandise but foes, said to his own folk, 'These vessels be not laden with merchandise, but manned with cruel foes.' At these words all the Franks, in rivalry one with another, run to their ships, but uselessly; for the Northmen, indeed, hearing that yonder was he whom it was still their wont to call Charles the 'Hammer,'[22] feared lest all their fleet should be taken or destroyed in the port, and they avoided, by a flight of inconceivable rapidity, not only the glaives, but even the eyes of those who were pursuing them. "Pious Charles, however, a prey to well-grounded fear, rose up from table, stationed himself at a window looking eastward, and there remained a long while, and his eyes were filled with tears. As none durst question him, this warlike prince explained to the grandees who were about his person the cause of his movement and of his tears: 'Know ye, my lieges, wherefore I weep so bitterly? Of a surety I fear not lest these fellows should succeed in injuring me by their miserable piracies; but it grieveth me deeply that, while I live, they should have been nigh to touching at this shore, and I am a prey to violent sorrow when I foresee what evils they will heap upon my descendants and their people.'" [Footnote 22: After his grandfather, Charles Martel.] The forecast and the dejection of Charles were not unreasonable. It will be found that there is special mention made, in the chronicles of the ninth and tenth centuries, of forty-seven incursions into France of Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, and Irish pirates, all comprised under the name of Northmen; and doubtless many other incursions of less gravity have left no trace in history. "The Northmen," says Fauriel, "descended from the north to the south by a sort of natural gradation or ladder. The Scheldt was the first river by the mouth of which they penetrated inland; the Seine was the second; the Loire the third. The advance was threatening for the countries traversed by the Garonne; and it was in 844 that vessels freighted with Northmen for the first time ascended this last river to a considerable distance inland, and there took immense booty. The following year they pillaged and burnt Saintes. In 846 they got as far as Limoges. The inhabitants, finding themselves unable to make head against the dauntless pirates, abandoned their hearths, together with all they had not time to carry away. Encouraged by these successes the Northmen reappeared next year upon the coasts and in the rivers of Aquitaine, and they attempted to take Bordeaux, whence they were valorously repulsed by the inhabitants; but in 848, having once more laid siege to that city, they were admitted into it at night by the Jews, who were there in great force; the city was given up to plunder and conflagration; a portion of the people was scattered abroad, and the rest put to the sword." The monasteries and churches, wherein they hoped to find treasures, were the favorite object of the Northmen's enterprises; in particular, they plundered, at the gates of Paris, the abbey of St. Germain des Prés and that of St. Denis, whence they carried off the abbot, who could not purchase his freedom save by a heavy ransom. They penetrated more than once into Paris itself, and subjected many of its quarters to contributions or pillage. The populations grew into the habit of suffering and fleeing; and the local lords, and even the kings, made arrangement sometimes with the pirates either for saving the royal domains from the ravages, or for having their own share therein. In 850 Pépin, King of Aquitaine, and brother of Charles the Bald, came to an understanding with the Northmen who had ascended the Garonne and were threatening Toulouse. "They arrived under his guidance," says Fauriel, "they laid siege to it, took it and plundered it, not halfwise, not hastily, as folks who feared to be surprised, but leisurely, with all security, by virtue of a treaty of alliance with one of the kings of the country. Throughout Aquitaine there was but one cry of indignation against Pépin, and the popularity of Charles was increased in proportion to all the horror inspired by the ineffable misdeed of his adversary. Charles the Bald himself, if he did not ally himself, as Pépin did, with the invaders, took scarce any interest in the fate of the populations and scarcely more trouble to protect them, for Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, wrote to him in 859: 'Many folks say that you are incessantly repeating that it is not for you to mix yourself up with these depredations and robberies, and that everyone has but to defend himself as best he may.'" In the middle and during the last half of the ninth century, a chief of the Northmen, named Hastenc or Hastings, appeared several times over on the coasts and in the rivers of France, with numerous vessels and a following. He had also with him, say the chronicles, a young Norwegian or Danish prince, Bioern, called "Ironsides," whom he had educated, and who had preferred sharing the fortunes of his governor to living quietly with the King, his father. After several expeditions into Western France, Hastings became the theme of terrible and very probably fabulous stories. He extended his cruises, they say, to the Mediterranean, and, having arrived at the coasts of Tuscany, within sight of a city which in his ignorance he took for Rome, he resolved to pillage it; but, not feeling strong enough to attack it by assault, he sent to the bishop to say he was very ill, felt a wish to become a Christian, and begged to be baptized. Some days afterward his comrades spread a report that he was dead, and claimed for him the honors of a solemn burial. The bishop consented; the coffin of Hastings was carried into the church, attended by a large number of his followers, without visible weapons; but, in the middle of the ceremony, Hastings suddenly leaped up, sword in hand, from his coffin; his followers displayed the weapons they had concealed, closed the doors, slew the priests, pillaged the ecclesiastical treasures, and reëmbarked before the very eyes of the stupefied population, to go and resume, on the coasts of France, their incursions and their ravages. Whether they were true or false, these rumors of bold artifices and distant expeditions on the part of Hastings aggravated the dismay inspired by his appearance. He penetrated into the interior of the country, took possession of Chartres, and appeared before Paris, where Charles the Bald, intrenched at St. Denis, was deliberating with his prelates and barons as to how he might resist the Northmen or treat with them. The chronicle says that the barons advised resistance, but that the King preferred negotiation, and sent the abbot of St. Denis, "the which was an exceeding wise man," to Hastings, who, "after long parley and by reason of large gifts and promises," consented to stop his cruisings, to become a Christian, and to settle in the countship of Chartres, "which the King gave him as an hereditary possession, with all its appurtenances." According to other accounts, it was only some years later, under the young king Louis III, grandson of Charles the Bald, that Hastings was induced, either by reverses or by payment of money, to cease from his piracies and accept in recompense the countship of Chartres. Whatever may have been the date, he was, it is believed, the first chieftain of the Northmen who renounced a life of adventure and plunder, to become, in France, a great landed proprietor and a count of the King's. A greater chieftain of the Northmen than Hastings was soon to follow his example, and found Normandy in France; but before Rolf, that is, Rollo, came and gave the name of his race to a French province, the piratical Northmen were again to attempt a greater blow against France and to suffer a great reverse. In November, 885, under the reign of Charles the Fat, after having, for more than forty years, irregularly ravaged France, they resolved to unite their forces in order at length to obtain possession of Paris, whose outskirts they had so often pillaged without having been able to enter the heart of the place. Two bodies of troops were set in motion: one, under the command of Rollo, who was already famous among his comrades, marched on Rouen; the other went right up the course of the Seine, under the orders of Siegfried, whom the Northmen called their king. Rollo took Rouen, and pushed on at once for Paris. Duke Renaud, general of the Gallo-Frankish troops, went to encounter him on the banks of the Eure, and sent to him, to sound his intentions, Hastings, the newly made count of Chartres. "Valiant warriors," said Hastings to Rollo, "whence come ye? What seek ye here? What is the name of your lord and master? Tell us this; for we be sent unto you by the King of the Franks." "We be Danes," answered Rollo, "and all be equally masters among us. We be come to drive out the inhabitants of this land, and to subject it as our own country. But who art thou, thou who speakest so glibly?" "Ye have sometime heard tell of one Hastings, who, issuing forth from among you, came hither with much shipping and made desert a great part of the kingdom of the Franks?" "Yes," said Rollo, "we have heard tell of him; Hastings began well and ended ill." "Will ye yield you to King Charles?" asked Hastings. "We yield," was the answer, "to none; all that we shall take by our arms we will keep as our right. Go and tell this, if thou wilt, to the King, whose envoy thou boastest to be." Hastings returned to the Gallo-Frankish army, and Rollo prepared to march on Paris. Hastings had gone back somewhat troubled in mind. Now there was among the Franks one Count Tetbold (Thibault), who greatly coveted the countship of Chartres, and he said to Hastings: "Why slumberest thou softly? Knowest thou not that King Charles doth purpose thy death by cause of all the Christian blood that thou didst aforetime unjustly shed? Bethink thee of all the evil thou hast done him, by reason whereof he purposeth to drive thee from his land. Take heed to thyself that thou be not smitten unawares." Hastings, dismayed, at once sold to Tetbold the town of Chartres, and, removing all that belonged to him, departed to go and resume, for all that appears, his old course of life. On the 25th of November, 885, all the forces of the Northmen formed a junction before Paris; seven hundred huge barks covered two leagues of the Seine, bringing, it is said, more than thirty thousand men. The chieftains were astonished at sight of the new fortifications of the city, a double wall of circumvallation, the bridges crowned with towers, and in the environs the ramparts of the abbeys of St. Denis and St. Germain solidly rebuilt. Siegfried hesitated to attack a town so well defended. He demanded to enter alone and have an interview with the bishop, Gozlin. "Take pity on thyself and thy flock," said he to him; "let us pass through the city; we will in no wise touch the town; we will do our best to preserve, for thee and Count Eudes, all your possessions." "This city," replied the bishop, "hath been confided unto us by the emperor Charles, king and ruler, under God, of the powers of the earth. He hath confided it unto us, not that it should cause the ruin but the salvation of the kingdom. If peradventure these walls had been confided to thy keeping as they have been to mine, wouldst thou do as thou biddest me?" "If ever I do so," answered Siegfried, "may my head be condemned to fall by the sword and serve as food to the dogs! But if thou yield not to our prayers, so soon as the sun shall commence his course our armies will launch upon thee their poisoned arrows; and when the sun shall end his course, they will give thee over to all the horrors of famine; and this will they do from year to year." The bishop, however, persisted, without further discussion; being as certain of Count Eudes as he was of himself. Eudes, who was young and but recently made Count of Paris, was the eldest son of Robert the Strong, Count of Anjou, of the same line as Charlemagne, and but lately slain in battle against the Northmen. Paris had for defenders two heroes, one of the Church and the other of the empire: the faith of the Christian and the fealty of the vassal; the conscientiousness of the priest and the honor of the warrior. The siege lasted thirteen months, whiles pushed vigorously forward with eight several assaults, whiles maintained by close investment, and with all the alternations of success and reverse, all the intermixture of brilliant daring and obscure sufferings that can occur when the assailants are determined and the defenders devoted. Not only a contemporary but an eye-witness, Abbo, a monk of St. Germain des Près, has recounted the details in a long poem, wherein the writer, devoid of talent, adds nothing to the simple representation of events; it is history itself which gives to Abbo's poem a high degree of interest. We do not possess, in reference to these continual struggles of the Northmen with the Gallo-Frankish populations, any other document which is equally precise and complete, or which could make us so well acquainted with all the incidents, all the phases of this irregular warfare between two peoples, one without a government, the other without a country. The bishop, Gozlin, died during the siege. Count Eudes quitted Paris for a time to go and beg aid of the Emperor; but the Parisians soon saw him reappear on the heights of Montmartre with three battalions of troops, and he reëntered the town, spurring on his horse and striking right and left with his battle-axe through the ranks of the dumfounded besiegers. The struggle was prolonged throughout the summer; and when, in November, 886, Charles the Fat at last appeared before Paris, "with a large army of all nations," it was to purchase the retreat of the Northmen at the cost of a heavy ransom, and by allowing them to go and winter in Burgundy, "whereof the inhabitants obeyed not the Emperor." Some months afterward, in 887, Charles the Fat was deposed, at a diet held on the banks of the Rhine, by the grandees of Germanic France; and Arnulf, a natural son of Carloman, the brother of Louis III, was proclaimed emperor in his stead. At the same time Count Eudes, the gallant defender of Paris, was elected King at Compiègne, and crowned by the archbishop of Sens. Guy, Duke of Spoleto, descended from Charlemagne in the female line, hastened to France and was declared king at Langres by the bishop of that town, but returned with precipitation to Italy, seeing no chance of maintaining himself in his French kingship. Elsewhere Boso, Duke of Arles, became King of Provence, and the Burgundian Count Rudolph had himself crowned at St. Maurice, in the Valais, King of transjuran Burgundy. There was still in France a legitimate Carlovingian, a son of Louis the Stutterer, who was hereafter to become Charles the Simple; but being only a child, he had been rejected or completely forgotten, and, in the interval that was to elapse ere his time should arrive, kings were being made in all directions. In the midst of this confusion the Northmen, though they kept at a distance from Paris, pursued in Western France their cruising and plundering. In Rollo they had a chieftain far superior to his vagabond predecessors. Though he still led the same life that they had, he displayed therein other faculties, other inclinations, other views. In his youth he had made an expedition to England, and had there contracted a real friendship with the wise king Alfred the Great. During a campaign in Friesland he had taken prisoner Rainier, Count of Hainault; and Alberade, Countess of Brabant, made a request to Rollo for her husband's release, offering in return to set free twelve captains of the Northmen, her prisoners, and to give up all the gold she possessed. Rollo took only half the gold, and restored to the countess her husband. When, in 885, he became master of Rouen, instead of devastating the city after the fashion of his kind, he respected the buildings, had the walls repaired, and humored the inhabitants. In spite of his violent and extortionate practices where he met with obstinate resistance, there were to be discerned in him symptoms of more noble sentiments and of an instinctive leaning toward order, civilization, and government. After the deposition of Charles the Fat and during the reign of Eudes, a lively struggle was maintained between the Frankish King and the chieftain of the Northmen, who had neither of them forgotten their early encounters. They strove, one against the other, with varied fortunes; Eudes succeeded in beating the Northmen at Montfaucon, but was beaten in Vermandois by another band, commanded, it is said, by the veteran Hastings, sometime Count of Chartres. Rollo, too, had his share at one time of success, at another of reverse; but he made himself master of several important towns, showed a disposition to treat the quiet populations gently, and made a fresh trip to England, during which he renewed friendly relations with her King, Athelstan, the successor of Alfred the Great. He thus became, from day to day, more reputable as well as more formidable in France, insomuch that Eudes himself was obliged to have recourse, in dealing with him, to negotiations and presents. When, in 898, Eudes was dead, and Charles the Simple, at hardly nineteen years of age, had been recognized sole King of France, the ascendency of Rollo became such that the necessity of treating with him was clear. In 911 Charles, by the advice of his councillors and, among them, of Robert, brother of the late king Eudes, who had himself become Count of Paris and Duke of France, sent to the chieftain of the Northmen Franco, Archbishop of Rouen, with orders to offer him the cession of a considerable portion of Neustria and the hand of his young daughter Gisèle, on condition that he became a Christian and acknowledged himself the King's vassal. Rollo, by the advice of his comrades, received these overtures with a good grace and agreed to a truce for three months, during which they might treat about peace. On the day fixed Charles, accompanied by Duke Robert, and Rollo, surrounded by his warriors, repaired to St. Clair-sur-Epte, on the opposite banks of the river, and exchanged numerous messages. Charles offered Rollo Flanders, which the Northman refused, considering it too swampy; as to the maritime portion of Neustria he would not be contented with it; it was, he said, covered with forests, and had become quite a stranger to the ploughshare by reason of the Northmen's incessant incursions. He demanded the addition of territories taken from Brittany, and that the princes of that province, Bérenger and Alan, lords, respectively, of Redon and Dol, should take the oath of fidelity to him. When matters had been arranged on this basis, "the bishops told Rollo that he who received such a gift as the duchy of Normandy was bound to kiss the King's foot. 'Never,' quoth Rollo, 'will I bend the knee before the knees of any, and I will kiss the foot of none.' At the solicitation of the Franks he then ordered one of his warriors to kiss the King's foot. The Northman, remaining bolt upright, took hold of the King's foot, raised it to his mouth, and so made the King fall backward, which caused great bursts of laughter and much disturbance among the throng. Then the King and all the grandees who were about him, prelates, abbots, dukes, and counts, swore, in the name of the Catholic faith, that they would protect the patrician Rollo in his life, his members, and his folk, and would guarantee to him the possession of the aforesaid land, to him and his descendants forever; after which the King, well satisfied, returned to his domains; and Rollo departed with Duke Robert for the town of Rouen." The dignity of Charles the Simple had no reason to be well satisfied; but the great political question which, a century before, caused Charlemagne such lively anxiety was solved; the most dangerous, the most incessantly renewed of all foreign invasions, those of the Northmen, ceased to threaten France. The vagabond pirates had a country to cultivate and defend; the Northmen were becoming French. CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT A.D. 871-901 T. HUGHES J.R. GREEN (Alfred the Great was the grandson of Egbert, King of the West Saxons, who during a reign of thirty-seven years consolidated in the Saxon heptarchy the seven Teutonic kingdoms into which Anglia or England had been divided, since the expulsion of the Britons by the Saxons about 585. In the latter part of Egbert's reign the Danish Northmen appeared in the estuaries and rivers of England, sacking and burning the towns along their banks. Ethelwulf who had been made King of Kent in 828, and succeeded his father Egbert as King of Anglia in 837, was early occupied in resisting and repelling attacks along his coasts, and by several successful pitched battles with the Danish invaders obtained comparative freedom from their visits for eight years. Ethelwulf had married Osburga, the daughter of Oslac his cup-bearer, and had a daughter and five sons, of whom Alfred, the youngest, was born in 849. Part of Alfred's childhood was spent in Rome. At Compiègne and Verberie among his playmates were Charles, the boy king of Aquitaine, and Judith, children of the French king Charles the Bald. Judith at fourteen years of age became Ethelwulf's second wife, and when the old King died two years later, to the amazement and scandal of the nation married her stepson Ethelbald. According to Ethelwulf's will, Ethelbald became King of Wessex, Ethelbert, the second son, King of Kent, while Ethelred and Alfred were to be in the line of succession to Ethelbald. Ethelbald died in 860, and Judith returned to France, subsequently marrying Baldwin, Count of Flanders. Ethelbert as successor joined the kingdoms of Wessex and Kent. Alfred lived at the court of Ethelbert, and became noted for the intelligence and studious activities which were to make his future reign the conspicuous epoch in English history, so brilliantly commemorated a thousand years after his death in 901, in the millenary celebrated in Winchester and its neighborhood in 1901. Ethelbert died in 866 and was succeeded by Ethelred. In 868 Alfred married Elswitha, the daughter of Ethelred Mucil of Mercia. Meanwhile the Danes had resumed their predatory excursions, and in the winter of 870-871 Ethelred accompanied by Alfred attacked them at Reading, but after an initial victory was repulsed. Four days later, Ethelred and Alfred with their forces were attacked on Ashdown near White Horse Hill; after a heavy slaughter the Danes were out to flight. The Danes, however, reinforced by Guthrum with new troops from over the sea, within a fortnight resumed offensive operations, and at Merton, two months later, Ethelred was mortally wounded. He died almost immediately after the battle, and "at the age of twenty-three Alfred ascended the throne of his fathers, which was tottering, as it seemed, to its fall.") THOMAS HUGHES The throne of the West Saxons was not an inheritance to be desired in the year 871, when Alfred succeeded his gallant brother. It descended on him without comment or ceremony, as a matter of course. There was not even an assembly of the witan to declare the succession as in ordinary times. With Guthrum and Hinguar in their intrenched camp at the confluence of the Thames and Kennet, and fresh bands of marauders sailing up the former river, and constantly swelling the ranks of the pagan army during these summer months, there was neither time nor heart among the wise men of the West Saxons for strict adherence to the letter of the constitution, however venerable. The succession had already been settled by the Great Council, when they formally accepted the provisions of Ethelwulf's will, that his three sons should succeed, to the exclusion of the children of any one of them. The idea of strict hereditary succession has taken so strong a hold of us English in later times that it is necessary constantly to insist that our old English kingship was elective. Alfred's title was based on election; and so little was the idea of usurpation, or of any wrong done to the two infant sons of Ethelred, connected with his accession, that even the lineal descendant of one of those sons, in his chronicle of that eventful year, does not pause to notice the fact that Ethelred left children. He is writing to his "beloved cousin Matilda," to instruct her in the things which he had received from ancient traditions, "of the history of our race down to these two kings from whom we have our origin." "The fourth son of Ethelwulf," he writes, "was Ethelred, who, after the death of Ethelbert, succeeded to the kingdom, and was also my grandfather's grandfather. The fifth was Alfred, who succeeded after all the others to the whole sovereignty, and was your grandfather's grandfather." And so passes on to the next facts, without a word as to the claims of his own lineal ancestor, though he had paused in his narrative at this point for the special purpose of introducing a little family episode. When Alfred had buried his brother in the cloisters of Wimborne Minster, and had time to look out from his Dorsetshire resting-place, and take stock of the immediate prospects and work which lay before him, we can well believe that those historians are right who have told us that for the moment he lost heart and hope, and suffered himself to doubt whether God would by his hand deliver the afflicted nation from its terrible straits. In the eight pitched battles which we find by the _Saxon Chronicle_ (Asser giving seven only) had already been fought with the pagan army, the flower of the youth of these parts of the West Saxon kingdom must have fallen. The other Teutonic kingdoms of the island, of which he was overlord, and so bound to defend, had ceased to exist except in name, or lay utterly powerless, like Mercia, awaiting their doom. Kent, Sussex, and Surrey, which were now an integral part of the royal inheritance of his own family, were at the mercy of his enemies, and he without a hope of striking a blow for them. London had been pillaged, and was in ruins. Even in Wessex proper, Berkshire and Hampshire, with parts of Wilts and Dorset, had been crossed and recrossed by marauding bands, in whose track only smoking ruins and dead bodies were found. "The land was as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness." These bands were at this very moment on foot, striking into new districts farther to the southwest than they had yet reached. If the rich lands of Somersetshire and Devonshire, and the yet unplundered parts of Wilts and Dorset, are to be saved, it must be by prompt and decisive fighting, and it is time for a king to be in the field. But it is a month from his brother's death before Alfred can gather men enough round his standard to take the field openly. Even then, when he fights, it is "almost against his will," for his ranks are sadly thin, and the whole pagan army are before him, at Wilton near Salisbury. The action would seem to have been brought on by the impetuosity of Alfred's own men, whose spirit was still unbroken, and their confidence in their young King enthusiastic. There was a long and fierce fight as usual, during the earlier part of which the Saxons had the advantage, though greatly outnumbered. But again we get glimpses of the old trap of a feigned flight and ambuscade, into which they fell, and so again lose "possession of the place of death," the ultimate test of victory. "This year," says the _Saxon Chronicle_, "nine general battles were fought against the army in the kingdom south of the Thames; besides which Alfred, the king's brother, and single aldermen and king's thanes, oftentimes made attacks on them, which were not counted; and within the year one king and nine jarls [earls] were slain." Wilton was the last of these general actions, and not long afterward, probably in the autumn, Alfred made peace with the pagans, on condition that they should quit Wessex at once. They were probably allowed to carry off whatever spoils they may have been able to accumulate in their Reading camp, but I can find no authority for believing that Alfred fell into the fatal and humiliating mistake of either paying them anything or giving hostages or promising tribute. This young King, who, as crown prince, led the West Saxons up the slopes at Ashdown, when Bagsac, the two Sidrocs, and the rest were killed, and who has very much their own way of fighting--going into the clash of arms "when the hard steel rings upon the high helmets," and "the beasts of prey have ample spoil," like a veritable child of Odin--is clearly one whom it is best to let alone, at any rate so long as easy plunder and rich lands are to be found elsewhere, without such poison-mad fighting for every herd of cattle and rood of ground. Indeed, I think the careful reader may trace from the date of Ashdown a decided unwillingness on the part of the Danes to meet Alfred, except when they could catch him at disastrous odds. They succeeded, indeed, for a time in overrunning almost the whole of his kingdom, in driving him an exile for a few wretched weeks to the shelter of his own forests; but whenever he was once fairly in the field they preferred taking refuge in strong places, and offering treaties and hostages to the actual arbitrament of battle. So the pagan army quitted Reading, and wintered in 872 in the neighborhood of London, at which place they received proposals from Buhred, King of the Mercians, Alfred's brother-in-law, and for a money payment pass him and his people contemptuously by for the time, making some kind of treaty of peace with them, and go northward into what has now become their own country. They winter in Lincolnshire, gathering fresh strength during 873 from the never-failing sources of supply across the narrow seas. Again, however, in this year of ominous rest they renew their sham peace with poor Buhred and his Mercians, who thus manage to tide it over another winter. In 874, however, their time has come. In the spring, the pagan army under the three kings, Guthrum, Oskytal, and Amund, burst into Mercia. In this one only of the English Teutonic kingdoms they find neither fighting nor suffering hero to cross their way, and leave behind for a thousand years the memory of a noble end, cut out there in some half-dozen lines of an old chronicler, but full of life and inspiration to this day for all Englishmen. The whole country is overrun, and reduced under pagan rule, without a blow struck, so far as we know, and within the year. Poor Buhred, titular King of the Mercians, who has made believe to rule this English kingdom these twenty-two years--who in his time has marched with his father-in-law Ethelwulf across North Wales--has beleaguered Nottingham with his brothers-in-law, Ethelred and Alfred, six years back, not without show of manhood--sees for his part nothing for it under such circumstances but to get away as swiftly as possible, as many so-called kings have done before him, and since. The West Saxon court is no place for him, quite other views of kingship prevailing in those parts. So the poor Buhred breaks away from his anchors, leaving his wife Ethelswitha even, in his haste, to take refuge with her brother; or is it that the heart of the daughter of the race of Cerdic swells against leaving the land which her sires had won, the people they had planted there, in the moment of sorest need? In any case Buhred drifts away alone across into France, and so toward the winter to Rome. There he dies at once--about Christmas-time, 874--of shame and sorrow probably, or of a broken heart as we say; at any rate having this kingly gift left in him, that he cannot live and look on the ruin of his people, as St. Edmund's brother Edwold is doing in these same years, "near a clear well at Carnelia, in Dorsetshire," doing the hermit business there on bread and water. The English in Rome bury away poor Buhred, with all the honors, in the Church of St. Mary's, to which the English schools rebuilt by his father-in-law Ethelwulf were attached. Ethelswitha visited, or started to visit, the tomb years later, we are told, in 888, when Mercia had risen to new life under her great brother's rule. Through these same months Guthrum, Oskytal, and the rest are wintering at Repton, after destroying there the cloister where the kingly line of Mercia lie; disturbing perhaps the bones of the great Offa, whom Charlemagne had to treat as an equal. Neither of the pagan kings is inclined at this time to settle in Mercia; so, casting about what to do with it, they light on "a certain foolish man," a king's thane, one Ceolwulf, and set him up as a sort of King Popinjay. From this Ceolwulf they take hostages for the payment of yearly tribute--to be wrung out of these poor Mercians on pain of dethronement--and for the surrender of the kingdom to them on whatever day they would have it back again. Foolish king's thanes, turned into King Popinjays by pagans, and left to play at government on such terms, are not pleasant or profitable objects in such times as these of one thousand years since--or indeed in any times, for the matter of that. So let us finish with Ceolwulf, just noting that a year or two later his pagan lords seem to have found much of the spoil of monasteries, and the pickings of earl and churl, of folkland and bookland, sticking to his fingers, instead of finding its way to their coffers. This was far from their meaning in setting him up in the high places of Mercia. So they strip him and thrust him out, and he dies in beggary. This, then, is the winter's work of the great pagan army at Repton, Alfred watching them and their work doubtless with keen eye--not without misgivings too at their numbers, swollen again to terrible proportions since they sailed away down Thames after Wilton fight. It will take years yet before the gaps in the fighting strength of Wessex, left by those nine pitched battles, and other smaller fights, will be filled by the crop of youths passing from childhood to manhood. An anxious thought, that, for a young king. The pagans, however, are not yet ready for another throw for Wessex; and so when Mercia is sucked dry for the present, and will no longer suitably maintain so great a host, they again sever. Halfdene, who would seem to have joined them recently, takes a large part of the army away with him northward. Settling his head-quarters by the river Tyne, he subdues all the land, and "ofttimes spoils the Picts and the Strathclyde Britons." Among other holy places in those parts, Halfdene visits the Isle of Lindisfarne, hoping perhaps in his pagan soul not only to commit ordinary sacrilege in the holy places there, which is every-day work for the like of him, but even to lay impious hands on, and to treat with indignity, the remains of that holy man St. Cuthbert, who has become, in due course, patron and guardian saint of hunters, and of that scourge of pagans, Alfred the West Saxon. If such were his thoughts, he is disappointed of his sacrilege; for Bishop Eardulf and Abbot Eadred--devout and strenuous persons--having timely warning of his approach, carry away the sainted body from Lindisfarne, and for nine years hide with it up and down the distracted northern counties, now here, now there, moving that sacred treasure from place to place until this bitterness is overpast, and holy persons and things, dead or living, are no longer in danger, and the bodies of saints may rest safely in fixed shrines; the pagan armies and disorderly persons of all kinds having been converted or suppressed in the mean time; for which good deed the royal Alfred--in whose calendar St. Cuthbert, patron of huntsmen, stands very high--will surely warmly befriend them hereafter, when he has settled his accounts with many persons and things. From the time of this incursion of Halfdene, Northumbria may be considered once more a settled state, but a Danish, not a Saxon one. The rest and greater part of the army, under Guthrum, Oskytal, and Amund, on leaving Repton, strike southeast, through what was "Landlord" Edmund's country, to Cambridge, where, in their usual heathen way, they pass the winter of 875. The downfall, exile, and death of his brother-in-law in 874 must have warned Alfred, if he had any need of warning, that no treaty could bind these foemen, and that he had nothing to look for but the same measure as soon as the pagan leaders felt themselves strong enough to mete it out to him and Wessex. In the following year we accordingly find him on the alert, and taking action in a new direction. These heathen pirates, he sees, fight his people at terrible advantage by reason of their command of the sea. This enables them to choose their own point of attack, not only along the sea-coast, but up every river as far as their light galleys can swim; to retreat unmolested, at their own time, whenever the fortune of war turns against them; to bring reinforcements of men and supplies to the scene of action without fear of hindrance. His Saxons have long since given up their seafaring habits. They have become before all things an agricultural people, drawing almost everything they need from their own soil. The few foreign tastes they have are supplied by foreign traders. However, if Wessex is to be made safe the sea-kings must be met on their own element; and so, with what expenditure of patience and money and encouraging words and example we may easily conjecture, the young King gets together a small fleet, and himself takes command of it. We have no clew to the point on the south coast where the admiral of twenty five fights his first naval action, but know only that in the summer of 875 he is cruising with his fleet, and meets seven tall ships of the enemy. One of these he captures, and the rest make off after a hard fight--no small encouragement to the sailor King, who has thus for another year saved Saxon homesteads from devastation by fire and sword. The second wave of invasion had now at last gathered weight and volume enough, and broke on the King and people of the West Saxons. The year 876 was still young when the whole pagan army, which had wintered at and about Cambridge, marched to their ships and put to sea. Guthrum was in command, with the other two kings, Anketel and Amund, as his lieutenants, under whom was a host as formidable as that which had marched across Mercia through forest and waste, and sailed up the Thames five years before to the assault of Reading. There must have been some few days of harassing suspense, for we cannot suppose that Alfred was not aware of the movements of his terrible foes. Probably his new fleet cruised off the south coast on the watch for them, and all up the Thames there were gloomy watchings and forebodings of a repetition of the evil days of 871. But the suspense was soon over. Passing by the Thames' mouth, and through Dover Straits, the pagan fleet sailed, and westward still past many tempting harbors and rivers' mouths, until they came off the coast of Dorsetshire. There they land at Wareham, and seize and fortify the neck of land between the rivers Frome and Piddle, on which stood, when they landed, a fortress of the West Saxons and a monastery of holy virgins. Fortress and monastery fell into the hands of the Danes, who set to work at once to throw up earthworks and otherwise fortify a space large enough to contain their army, and all spoil brought in by marauding bands from this hitherto unplundered country. This fortified camp was soon very strong, except on the western side, upon which Alfred shortly appeared with a body of horsemen and such other troops as could be gathered hastily together. The detachment of the pagans, who were already out pillaging the whole neighborhood, fell back apparently before him, concentrating on the Wareham camp. Before its outworks Alfred paused. He is too experienced a soldier now to risk at the outset of a campaign such a disaster as that which he and Ethelred had sustained in their attempt to assault the camp at Reading in 871. He is just strong enough to keep the pagans within their lines, but has no margin to spare. So he sits down before the camp, but no battle is fought, neither he nor Guthrum caring to bring matters to that issue. Soon negotiations are commenced, and again a treaty is made. On this occasion Alfred would seem to have taken special pains to bind his faithless foe. All the holy relics which could be procured from holy places in the neighborhood were brought together, that he himself and his people might set the example of pledging themselves in the most solemn manner known to Christian men. Then a holy ring or bracelet, smeared with the blood of beasts sacrificed to Woden, was placed on a heathen altar. Upon this Guthrum and his fellow kings and earls swore on behalf of the army that they would quit the King's country and give hostages. Such an oath had never been sworn by Danish leader on English soil before. It was the most solemn known to them. They would seem also to have sworn on Alfred's relics, as an extra proof of their sincerity for this once, and their hostages "from among the most renowned men in the army" were duly handed over. Alfred now relaxed his watch, even if he did not withdraw with the main body of his army, leaving his horse to see that the terms of the treaty were performed, and to watch the Wareham camp until the departure of the pagan host. But neither oath on sacred ring, nor the risk to their hostages, weighed with Guthrum and his followers when any advantage was to be gained by treachery. They steal out of the camp by night, surprise and murder the Saxon horsemen, seize the horses, and strike across the country, the mounted men leading, to Exeter, but leaving a sufficient garrison to hold Wareham for the present. They surprise and get possession of the western capital, and there settle down to pass the winter. Rollo, fiercest of the vikings, is said by Asser to have passed the winter with them in their Exeter quarters on his way to Normandy; but whether the great robber himself were here or not, it is certain that the channel swarmed with pirate fleets, who could put in to Wareham or Exeter at their discretion, and find a safe stronghold in either place from which to carry fire and sword through the unhappy country. Alfred had vainly endeavored to overtake the march to Exeter in the autumn of 876, and, failing in the pursuit, had disbanded his own troops as usual, allowing them to go to their own homes until the spring. Before he could be afoot again in the spring of 877 the main body of the pagans at Exeter had made that city too strong for any attempt at assault, so the King and his troops could do no more than beleaguer it on the land side, as he had done at Wareham. But Guthrum could laugh at all efforts of his great antagonist, and wait in confidence the sure disbanding of the Saxon troops at harvest time, so long as his ships held the sea. Supplies were running short in Exeter, but the Exe was open and communications going on with Wareham. It is arranged that the camp there shall be broken up, and the whole garrison with their spoil shall join head-quarters. One hundred and twenty Danish war-galleys are freighted, and beat down channel, but are baffled by adverse winds for nearly a month. They and all their supplies may be looked for any day in the Exe when the wind changes. Alfred, from his camp before Exeter, sends to his little fleet to put to sea. He cannot himself be with them as in their first action, for he knows well that Guthrum will seize the first moment of his absence to sally from Exeter, break the Saxon lines, and scatter his army in roving bands over Devonshire, on their way back to the eastern kingdom. The Saxon fleet puts out, manned itself, as some say, partly with sea-robbers, hired to fight their own people. However manned, it attacks bravely a portion of the pirates. But a mightier power than the fleet fought for Alfred at this crisis. First a dense fog and then a great storm came on, bursting on the south coast with such fury that the pagans lost no less than one hundred of their chief ships off Swanage, as mighty a deliverance perhaps for England--though the memory of it is nearly forgotten--as that which began in the same seas seven hundred years later, when Drake and the sea-kings of the sixteenth century were hanging on the rear of the Spanish _armada_ along the Devon and Dorset coasts, while the beacons blazed up all over England and the whole nation flew to arms. The destruction of the fleet decided the fate of the siege of Exeter. Once more negotiations are opened by the pagans; once more Alfred, fearful of driving them to extremities, listens, treats, and finally accepts oaths and more hostages, acknowledging probably in sorrow to himself that he can for the moment do no better. And on this occasion Guthrum, being caught far from home, and without supplies or ships, "keeps the peace well," moving as we conjecture, watched jealously by Alfred, on the shortest line across Devon and Somerset to some ford in the Avon, and so across into Mercia, where he arrives during harvest, and billets his army on Ceolwulf, camping them for the winter about the city of Gloster. Here they run up huts for themselves, and make some pretense of permanent settlement on the Severn, dividing large tracts of land among those who cared to take them. The campaigns of 876-77 are generally looked upon as disastrous ones for the Saxon arms, but this view is certainly not supported by the chroniclers. It is true that both at Wareham and Exeter the pagans broke new ground, and secured their position, from which no doubt they did sore damage in the neighboring districts, but we can trace in these years none of the old ostentatious daring and thirst for battle with Alfred. Whenever he appears the pirate bands draw back at once into their strongholds, and, exhausted as great part of Wessex must have been by the constant strain, the West Saxons show no signs yet of falling from their gallant King. If he can no longer collect in a week such an army as fought at Ashdown, he can still, without much delay, bring to his side a sufficient force to hem the pagans in and keep them behind their ramparts. But the nature of the service was telling sadly on the resources of the kingdom south of the Thames. To the Saxons there came no new levies, while from the north and east of England, as well as from over the sea, Guthrum was ever drawing to his standard wandering bands of sturdy Northmen. The most important of these reinforcements came to him from an unexpected quarter this autumn. We have not heard for some years of Hubba, the brother of Hinguar, the younger of the two vikings who planned and led the first great invasion in 868. Perhaps he may have resented the arrival of Guthrum and other kings in the following years, to whom he had to give place. Whatever may have been the cause, he seems to have gone off on his own account: carrying with him the famous raven standard, to do his appointed work in these years on other coasts under its ominous shade. This "war flag which they call raven" was a sacred object to the Northmen. When Hinguar and Hubba had heard of the death of their father, Regnar Lodbrog, and had resolved to avenge him, while they were calling together their followers, their three sisters in one day wove for them this war-flag, in the midst of which was portrayed the figure of a raven. Whenever the flag went before them into battle, if they were to win the day the sacred raven would rouse itself and stretch its wings; but if defeat awaited them, the flag would hang round its staff and the bird remain motionless. This wonder had been proved in many a fight, so the wild pagans who fought under the standard of Regnar's children believed. It was a power in itself, and Hubba and a strong fleet were with it. They had appeared in the Bristol Channel in this autumn of 877, and had ruthlessly slaughtered and spoiled the people of South Wales. Here they propose to winter; but, as the country is wild mountain for the most part, and the people very poor, they will remain no longer than they can help. Already a large part of the army about Gloster are getting restless. The story of their march from Devonshire, through rich districts of Wessex yet unplundered, goes round among the new-comers. Guthrum has no power, probably no will, to keep them to their oaths. In the early winter a joint attack is planned by him and Hubba on the West Saxon territory. By Christmas they are strong enough to take the field, and so in midwinter, shortly after Twelfth Night, the camp at Gloster breaks up, and the army "stole away to Chippenham," recrossing the Avon once more into Wessex, under Guthrum. The fleet, after a short delay, crosses to the Devonshire coast, under Hubba, in thirty war-ships. And now at last the courage of the West Saxons gives way. The surprise is complete. Wiltshire is at the mercy of the pagans, who, occupying the royal burgh of Chippenham as headquarters, overrun the whole district, drive many of the inhabitants "beyond the sea for want of the necessaries of life," and reduce to subjection all those that remain. Alfred is at his post, but for the moment can make no head against them. His own strong heart and trust in God are left him, and with them and a scanty band of followers he disappears into the forest of Selwood, which then stretched away from the confines of Wiltshire for thirty miles to the west. East Somerset, now one of the fairest and richest of English counties, was then for the most part thick wood and tangled swamp, but miserable as the lodging is it is welcome for the time to the King. In the first months of 878 Selwood Forest holds in its recesses the hope of England. It is at this point, as is natural enough, that romance has been most busy, and it has become impossible to disentangle the actual facts from monkish legend and Saxon ballad. In happier times Alfred was in the habit himself of talking over the events of his wandering life pleasantly with his courtiers, and there is no reason to doubt that the foundation of most of the stories still current rests on those conversations of the truth-loving King, noted down by Bishop Asser and others. The best known of these is, of course, the story of the cakes. In the depths of the Saxon forests there were always a few neatherds and swineherds, scattered up and down, living in rough huts enough, we may be sure, and occupied with the care of the cattle and herds of their masters. Among these in Selwood was a neatherd of the King, a faithful man, to whom the secret of Alfred's disguise was intrusted, and who kept it even from his wife. To this man's hut the King came one day alone, and, sitting himself down by the burning logs on the hearth, began mending his bow and arrows. The neatherd's wife had just finished her baking, and having other household matters to attend to, confided her loaves to the King, a poor tired-looking body, who might be glad of the warmth, and could make himself useful by turning the batch, and so earn his share while she got on with other business. But Alfred worked away at his weapons, thinking of anything but the good housewife's batch of loaves, which in due course were not only done, but rapidly burning to a cinder. At this moment the neatherd's wife comes back, and flying to the hearth to rescue the bread, cries out: "Drat the man! never to turn the loaves when you see them burning. I'ze warrant you ready enough to eat them when they are done." But besides the King's faithful neatherd, whose name is not preserved, there are other churls in the forest, who must be Alfred's comrades just now if he will have any. And even here he has an eye for a good man, and will lose no opportunity to help one to the best of his power. Such a one he finds in a certain swineherd called Denewulf, whom he gets to know, a thoughtful Saxon man, minding his charge there in the oak woods. The rough churl, or thrall, we know not which, has great capacity, as Alfred soon finds out, and desire to learn. So the King goes to work upon Denewulf under the oak trees, when the swine will let him, and is well satisfied with the results of his teaching and the progress of his pupil. But in those miserable days the commonest necessaries of life were hard enough to come by for the King and his few companions, and for his wife and family, who soon joined him in the forest, even if they were not with him from the first. The poor foresters cannot maintain them, nor are this band of exiles the men to live on the poor. So Alfred and his comrades are soon out foraging on the borders of the forest, and getting what subsistence they can from the pagans, or from the Christians who had submitted to their yoke. So we may imagine them dragging on life till near Easter, when a gleam of good news comes tip from the west, to gladden the hearts and strengthen the arms of these poor men in the depths of Selwood. Soon after Guthrum and the main body of the pagans moved from Gloster, southward, the viking Hubba, as had been agreed, sailed with thirty ships-of-war from his winter quarters on the South Welsh coast, and landed in Devon. The news of the catastrophe at Chippenham, and of the disappearance of the King, was no doubt already known in the West; and in the face of it Odda the alderman cannot gather strength to meet the pagan in the open field. But he is a brave and true man, and will make no terms with the spoilers; so, with other faithful thanes of King Alfred and their followers, he throws himself into a castle or fort called Cynwith, or Cynuit, there to abide whatever issue of this business God shall send them. Hubba, with the war-flag Raven, and a host laden with the spoil of rich Devon vales, appear in due course before the place. It is not strong naturally, and has only "walls in our own fashion," meaning probably rough earthworks. But there are resolute men behind them, and on the whole Hubba declines the assault, and sits down before the place. There is no spring of water, he hears, within the Saxon lines, and they are otherwise wholly unprepared for a siege. A few days will no doubt settle the matter, and the sword or slavery will be the portion of Odda and the rest of Alfred's men; meantime there is spoil enough in the camp from Devonshire homesteads, which brave men can revel in round the war-flag Raven, while they watch the Saxon ramparts. Odda, however, has quite other views than death from thirst, or surrender. Before any stress comes, early one morning he and his whole force sally out over their earthworks, and from the first "cut down the pagans in great numbers": eight hundred and forty warriors--some say twelve hundred--with Hubba himself are slain before Cynuit fort; the rest, few in number, escape to their ships. The war-flag Raven is left in the hands of Odda and the men of Devon. This is the news which comes to Alfred, Ethelnoth the alderman of Somerset, Denewulf the swineherd, and the rest of the Selwood Forest group, some time before Easter. These men of Devonshire, it seems, are still stanch, and ready to peril their lives against the pagan. No doubt up and down Wessex, thrashed and trodden out as the nation is by this time, there are other good men and true, who will neither cross the sea nor the Welsh marches nor make terms with the pagan; some sprinkling of men who will yet set life at stake, for faith in Christ and love of England. If these can only be rallied, who can say what may follow? So, in the lengthening days of spring, council is held in Selwood, and there will have been Easter services in some chapel or hermitage in the forest, or, at any rate, in some quiet glade. The "day of days" will surely have had its voice of hope for this poor remnant. Christ is risen and reigns; and it is not in these heathen Danes, or in all the Northmen who ever sailed across the sea, to put back his kingdom or to enslave those whom he has freed. The result is that, far away from the eastern boundary of the forest, on a rising ground--hill it can scarcely be called--surrounded by dangerous marshes formed by the little rivers Thone and Parret, fordable only in summer, and even then dangerous to all who have not the secret, a small fortified camp is thrown up under Alfred's eye, by Ethelnoth and the Somersetshire men, where he can once again raise his standard. The spot has been chosen by the King with the utmost care, for it is his last throw. He names it the Etheling's _eig_ or island, "Athelney." Probably his young son, the Etheling of England, is there among the first, with his mother and his grandmother Eadburgha, the widow of Ethelred Mucil, the venerable lady whom Asser saw in later years, and who has now no country but her daughter's. There are, as has been reckoned, some two acres of hard ground on the island, and around vast brakes of alder-bush, full of deer and other game. Here the Somersetshire men can keep up constant communication with him, and a small army grows together. They are soon strong enough to make forays into the open country, and in many skirmishes they cut off parties of the pagans and supplies. "For, even when overthrown and cast down," says Malmesbury, "Alfred had always to be fought with; so, then when one would esteem him altogether worn down and broken, like a snake slipping from the hand of him who would grasp it, he would suddenly flash out again from his hiding-places, rising up to smite his foes in the height of their insolent confidence, and never more hard to beat than after a flight." But it was still a trying life at Athelney. Followers came in slowly, and provender and supplies of all kinds are hard to wring from the pagan, and harder still to take from Christian men. One day, while it was yet so cold that the water was still frozen, the King's people had gone out "to get them fish or fowl, or some such purveyance as they sustained themselves withal." No one was left in the royal hut for the moment but himself, and his mother-in-law Eadburgha. The King--after his constant wont whensoever he had opportunity--was reading from the Psalms of David, out of the Manual which he carried always in his bosom. At this moment a poor man appeared at the door and begged for a morsel of bread "for Christ his sake." Whereupon the King, receiving the stranger as a brother, called to his mother-in-law to give him to eat. Eadburgha replied that there was but one loaf in their store, and a little wine in a pitcher, a provision wholly insufficient for his own family and people. But the King bade her nevertheless to give the stranger part of the last loaf, which she accordingly did. But when he had been served the stranger was no more seen, and the loaf remained whole, and the pitcher full to the brim. Alfred, meantime, had turned to his reading, over which he fell asleep, and dreamt that St. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne stood by him, and told him it was he who had been his guest, and that God had seen his afflictions and those of his people, which were now about to end, in token whereof his people would return that day from their expedition with a great take of fish. The King awakening, and being much impressed with his dream, called to his mother-in-law and recounted it to her, who thereupon assured him that she too had been overcome with sleep and had had the same dream. And while they yet talked together on what had happened so strangely to them, their servants come in, bringing fish enough, as it seemed to them, to have fed an army. The monkish legend goes on to tell that on the next morning the King crossed to the mainland in a boat, and wound his horn thrice, which drew to him before noon five hundred men. What we may think of the story and the dream, as Sir John Spelman says, "is not here very much material," seeing that, whether we deem it natural or supernatural, "the one as well as the other serves at God's appointment, by raising or dejecting of the mind with hopes or fears, to lead man to the resolution of those things whereof he has before ordained the event." Alfred, we may be sure, was ready to accept and be thankful for any help, let it come from whence it might, and soon after Easter it was becoming clear that the time is at hand for more than skirmishing expeditions. Through all the neighboring counties word is spreading that their hero King is alive and on foot again, and that there will be another chance for brave men ere long of meeting once more these scourges of the land under his leading. A popular legend is found in the later chroniclers which relates that at this crisis of his fortunes Alfred, not daring to rely on any evidence but that of his own senses as to the numbers, disposition, and discipline of the pagan army, assumed the garb of a minstrel and with one attendant visited the camp of Guthrum. Here he stayed, "showing tricks and making sport," until he had penetrated to the King's tents, and learned all that he wished to know. After satisfying himself as to the chances of a sudden attack, he returns to Athelney, and, the time having come for a great effort, if his people will but make it, sends round messengers to the aldermen and king's thanes of neighboring shires, giving them a tryst for the seventh week after Easter, the second week in May. On or about the 12th of May, 878, King Alfred left his island in the great wood, and his wife and children and such household gods [sic] as he had gathered round him there, and came publicly forth among his people once more, riding to Egbert's Stone--probably Brixton--on the east of Selwood, a distance of twenty-six miles. Here met him the men of the neighboring shires--Odda, no doubt, with his men of Devonshire, full of courage and hope after their recent triumph; the men of Somersetshire, under their brave and faithful alderman Ethelnoth; and the men of Wilts and Hants, such of them at least as had not fled the country or made submission to the enemy. "And when they saw their King alive after such great tribulation, they received him, as he merited, with joy and acclamation." The gathering had been so carefully planned by Alfred and the nobles who had been in conference or correspondence with him at Athelney that the Saxon host was organized and ready for immediate action on the very day of muster. Whether Alfred had been his own spy we cannot tell, but it is plain that he knew well what was passing in the pagan camp, and how necessary swiftness and secrecy were to the success of his attack. Local traditions cannot be much relied upon for events which took place a thousand years ago, but where there is clearly nothing improbable in them they are at least worth mentioning. We may note, then, that according to Somersetshire tradition, first collected by Dr. Giles--himself a Somersetshire man, and one who, besides his _Life of Alfred_ and other excellent works bearing on the time, is the author of the _Harmony of the Chroniclers_, published by the Alfred Committee in 1852--the signal for the actual gathering of the West Saxons at Egbert's Stone was given by a beacon lighted on the top of Stourton hill, where Alfred's Tower now stands. Such a beacon would be hidden from the Danes, who must have been encamped about Westbury, by the range of the Wiltshire hills, while it would be visible to the west over the low country toward the Bristol Channel, and to the south far into Dorsetshire. Not an hour was lost by Alfred at the place of muster. The bands which came together there were composed of men well used to arms, each band under its own alderman, or reeve. The small army he had himself been disciplining at Athelney, and training in skirmishes during the last few months, would form a reliable centre on which the rest would have to form as best they could. So after one day's halt he breaks up his camp at Egbert's Stone and marches to Aeglea, now called Clay hill, an important height, commanding the vale to the north of Westbury, which the Danish army were now occupying. The day's march of the army would be a short five miles. Here the annals record that St. Neot, his kinsman, appeared to him, and promised that on the morrow his misfortunes would end. There are still traces of rude earthworks round the top of Clay hill, which are said to have been thrown up by Alfred's army at this time. If there had been time for such a work, it would undoubtedly have been a wise step, as a fortified encampment here would have served Alfred in good stead in case of a reverse. But the few hours during which the army halted on Clay hill would have been quite too short time for such an undertaking, which, moreover, would have exhausted the troops. It is more likely that the earthworks, which are of the oldest type, similar to those at White Horse hill, above Ashdown, were there long before Alfred's arrival in May, 878. After resting one night on Clay hill, Alfred led out his men in close order of battle against the pagan host, which lay at Ethandune. There has been much doubt among the antiquaries as to the site of Ethandune, but Dr. Giles and others have at length established the claims of Edington, a village seven miles from Clay hill, on the northeast, to the spot where the strength of the second wave of pagan invasion was utterly broken and rolled back weak and helpless from the rock of the West Saxon kingdom. Sir John Spelman, relying apparently only on the authority of Nicholas Harpesfeld's _Ecclesiastical History of England_, puts a speech into Alfred's mouth, which he is supposed to have delivered before the battle of Edington. He tells them that the great sufferings of the land had been yet far short of what their sins had deserved. That God had only dealt with them as a loving Father, and was now about to succor them, having already stricken their foe with fear and astonishment, and given him, on the other hand, much encouragement by dreams and otherwise. That they had to do with pirates and robbers, who had broken faith with them over and over again; and the issue they had to try that day was whether Christ's faith or heathenism was henceforth to be established in England. There is no trace of any such speech in the _Saxon Chronicle_ or Asser, and the one reported does not ring like that of Judas Maccabaeus. That Alfred's soul was on fire that morning, on finding himself once more at the head of a force he could rely on, and before the enemy he had met so often, we may be sure enough, but shall never know how the fire kindled into speech, if indeed it did so at all. In such supreme moments many of the strongest men have no word to say--keep all their heat within. Nor have we any clew to the numbers who fought on either side at Ethandune, or indeed in any of Alfred's battles. In the _Chronicles_ there are only a few vague and general statements, from which little can be gathered. The most precise of them is that in the _Saxon Chronicle_, which gives eight hundred and forty as the number of men who were slain, as we heard, with Hubba before Cynuit fort, in Devonshire, earlier in this same year. Such a death-roll, in an action in which only a small detachment of the pagan army was engaged, would lead to the conclusion that the armies were far larger than one would expect. On the other hand, it is difficult to imagine how any large bodies of men could find subsistence in a small country, which was the seat of so devastating a war, and in which so much land remained still unreclaimed. But whatever the power on either side amounted to we may be quite sure that it had been exerted to the utmost to bring as large a force as possible into line at Ethandune. Guthrum fought to protect Chippenham, his base of operations, some sixteen miles in his rear, and all the accumulated plunder of the busy months which had passed since Twelfth Night; and it is clear that his men behaved with the most desperate gallantry. The fight began at noon--one chronicler says at sunrise, but the distance makes this impossible unless Alfred marched in the night--and lasted through the greater part of the day. Warned by many previous disasters the Saxons never broke their close order, and so, though greatly outnumbered, hurled back again and again the onslaughts of the Northmen. At last Alfred and his Saxons prevailed, and smote his pagan foes with a very great slaughter, and pursued them up to their fortified camp on Bratton hill or Edge, into which the great body of the fugitives threw themselves. All who were left outside were slain, and the great spoil was all recovered. The camp may still be seen, called Bratton Castle, with its double ditches and deep trenches, and barrow in the midst sixty yards long, and its two entrances guarded by mounds. It contains more than twenty acres, and commands the whole country side. There can be little doubt that this camp, and not Chippenham, which is sixteen miles away, was the last refuge of Guthrum and the great northern army on Saxon soil. So, in three days from the breaking up of his little camp at Athelney, Alfred was once more King of all England south of the Thames; for this army of pagans, shut up within their earthworks on Bratton Edge, are little better than a broken and disorderly rabble, with no supplies and no chance of succor from any quarter. Nevertheless he will make sure of them, and above all will guard jealously against any such mishap as that of 876, when they stole out of Wareham, murdered the horsemen he had left to watch them, and got away to Exeter. So Bratton camp is strictly besieged by Alfred with his whole power. Guthrum, the destroyer, and now the King of East Anglia, the strongest and ablest of all the Northmen who had ever landed in England, is now at last fairly in Alfred's power. At Reading, Wareham, Exeter, he had always held a fortified camp, on a river easily navigable by the Danish war-ships, where he might look for speedy succor or whence at the worst he might hope to escape to the sea. But now he, with the remains of his army, is shut up in an inland fort with no ships on the Avon, the nearest river, even if they could cut their way out and reach it, and no hopes of reinforcements overland. Halfdene is the nearest viking who might be called to the rescue, and he, in Northumbria, is far too distant. It is a matter of a few days only, for food runs short at once in the besieged camp. In former years, or against any other enemy, Guthrum would probably have preferred to sally out and cut his way through the Saxon lines, or die sword in hand as a son of Odin should. Whether it were that the wild spirit in him is thoroughly broken for the time by the unexpected defeat at Ethandune, or that long residence in a Christian land and contact with Christian subjects have shaken his faith in his own gods, or that he has learned to measure and appreciate the strength and nobleness of the man he had so often deceived, at any rate for the time Guthrum is subdued. At the end of fourteen days he sends to Alfred, suing humbly for terms of any kind; offering on the part of the army as many hostages as may be required, without asking for any in return; once again giving solemn pledges to quit Wessex for good; and, above all, declaring his own readiness to receive baptism. If it had not been for the last proposal, we may doubt whether even Alfred would have allowed the ruthless foes with whom he and his people had fought so often, and with such varying success, to escape now. Over and over again they had sworn to him, and broken their oaths the moment it suited their purpose; had given hostages, and left them to their fate. In all English kingdoms they had now for ten years been destroying and pillaging the houses of God and slaying even women and children. They had driven his sister's husband from the throne of Mercia, and had grievously tortured the martyr Edmund. If ever foe deserved no mercy, Guthrum and his army were the men. When David smote the children of Moab, he "measured them with a line, casting them down to the ground; even with two lines measured he to put to death, and with one full line to keep alive." When he took Rabbah of the children of Ammon, "he brought forth the people that were therein, and put them under saws and under harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and made them pass through the brick-kiln." That was the old Hebrew method, even under King David, and in the ninth century Christianity had as yet done little to soften the old heathen custom of "woe to the vanquished." Charlemagne's proselytizing campaigns had been as merciless as Mahomet's. But there is about this English King a divine patience, the rarest of all virtues in those who are set in high places. He accepts Guthrum's proffered terms at once, rejoicing over the chance of adding these fierce heathen warriors to the church of his Master, by an act of mercy which even they must feel. And so the remnant of the army are allowed to march out of their fortified camp, and to recross the Avon into Mercia, not quite five months after the day of their winter attack and the seizing of Chippenham. The northern army went away to Cirencester, where they stayed over the winter, and then returning into East Anglia settled down there, and Alfred and Wessex hear no more of them. Never was triumph more complete or better deserved; and in all history there is no instance of more noble use of victory than this. The West Saxon army was not at once disbanded. Alfred led them back to Athelney, where he had left his wife and children; and while they are there, seven weeks after the surrender, Guthrum and thirty of the bravest of his followers arrive to make good their pledge. The ceremony of baptism was performed at Wedmore, a royal residence which had probably escaped the fate of Chippenham, and still contained a church. Here Guthrum and his thirty nobles were sworn in, the soldiers of a greater King than Woden, and the white linen cloth, the sign of their new faith, was bound round their heads. Alfred himself was godfather to the viking, giving him the Christian name of Athelstan; and the chrism-loosing, or unbinding of the sacramental cloths, was performed on the eighth day by Ethelnoth, the faithful alderman of Somersetshire. After the religious ceremony there still remained the task of settling the terms upon which the victors and vanquished were hereafter to live together side by side in the same island; for Alfred had the wisdom, even in his enemy's humiliation, to accept the accomplished fact, and to acknowledge East Anglia as a Danish kingdom. The Witenagemot had been summoned to Wedmore, and was sitting there, and with their advice the treaty was then made, from which, according to some historians, English history begins. We have still the text of the two documents which together contain Alfred and Guthrum's peace, or the treaty of Wedmore; the first and shorter being probably the articles hastily agreed on before the capitulation of the Danish army at Chippenham; the latter the final terms settled between Alfred and his witan, and Guthrum and his thirty nobles, after mature deliberation and conference at Wedmore, but not formally executed until some years later. The shorter one, that made at the capitulation, runs as follows: "ALFRED AND GUTHRUM'S PEACE.--This is the peace that King Alfred and King Guthrum, and the witan of all the English nation, and all the people that are in East Anglia have all ordained, and with oaths confirmed, for themselves and their descendants, as well for born as unborn, who reck of God's mercy or of ours. "First, concerning our land boundaries. These are upon the Thames, and then upon the Lea, and along the Lea unto its source, then straight to Bedford, then up the Ouse to Watling Street. "Then there is this: if a man be slain we reckon all equally dear, English and Dane, at eight half marks of pure gold, except the churl who dwells on gavel land and their leisings, they are also equally dear at two hundred shillings. And if a king's thane be accused of manslaughter, if he desire to clear himself, let him do so before twelve king's thanes. If any man accuse a man who is of less degree than king's thane, let him clear himself with eleven of his equals and one king's thane. And so in every suit which be for more than four mancuses; and if he dare not, let him pay for it threefold, as it may be valued. "_Of Warrantors_.--And that every man know his warrantor, for men, and for horses, and for oxen. "And we all ordained, on that day that the oaths were sworn, that neither bondman nor freeman might go to the army without leave, nor any of them to us. But if it happen that any of them from necessity will have traffic with us, or we with them, for cattle or goods, that is to be allowed on this wise: that hostages be given in pledge of peace, and as evidence whereby it may be known that the party has a clean book." By the treaty Alfred is thus established as King of the whole of England south of the Thames; of all the old kingdom of Essex south of the Lea, including London, Hertford, and St. Albans; of the whole of the great kingdom of Mercia, which lay to the west of Watling Street, and of so much to the east as lay south of the Ouse. That he should have regained so much proves the straits to which he had brought the northern army, who would have to give up all their new settlements round Gloster. That he should have resigned so much of the kingdom which had acknowledged his grandfather, father, and brothers as overlords proves how formidable his foe still was, even in defeat, and how thoroughly the northeastern parts of the island had by this time been settled by the Danes. The remainder of the short treaty would seem simply to be provisional, and intended to settle the relations between Alfred's subjects and the army while it remained within the limits of the new Saxon kingdom. Many of the soldiers would have to break up their homes in Glostershire; and, with this view, the halt at Cirencester is allowed, where, as we have already heard, they rest until the winter. While they remain in the Saxon kingdom there is to be no distinction between Saxon and Dane. The were-gild, or life-ransom, is to be the same in each case for men of like rank; and all suits for more than four mancuses (about twenty-four shillings) are to be tried by a jury of peers of the accused. On the other hand, only necessary communications are to be allowed between the northern army and the people; and where there must be trading, fair and peaceful dealing is to be insured by the giving of hostages. This last provision, and the clause declaring that each man shall know his warrantor, inserted in a five-clause treaty, where nothing but what the contracting parties must hold to be of the very first importance would find place, are another curious proof of the care with which our ancestors, and all Germanic tribes, guarded against social isolation--the doctrine that one man has nothing to do with another--a doctrine which the great body of their descendants, under the leading of Schultze, Delitzsch, and others, seem likely to repudiate with equal emphasis in these latter days, both in Germany and England. Thus, in July, 878, the foundations of the new kingdom of England were laid, for new it undoubtedly became when the treaty of Wedmore was signed. The Danish nation, no longer strangers and enemies, are recognized by the heir of Cerdic as lawful owners of the full half of England. Having achieved which result, Guthrum and the rest of the new converts leave the Saxon camp and return to Cirencester at the end of twelve days, loaded with such gifts as it was still in the power of their conquerors to bestow: and Alfred was left in peace, to turn to a greater and more arduous task than any he had yet encountered. JOHN RICHARD GREEN Alfred was the noblest as he was the most complete embodiment of all that is great, all that is lovable, in the English temper. He combined as no other man has ever combined its practical energy, its patient and enduring force, its profound sense of duty, the reserve and self-control that steady in it a wide outlook and a restless daring, its temperance and fairness, its frank geniality, its sensitiveness to action, its poetic tenderness, its deep and passionate religion. Religion, indeed, was the groundwork of Alfred's character. His temper was instinct with piety. Everywhere throughout his writings that remain to us the name of God, the thought of God, stir him to outbursts of ecstatic adoration. But he was no mere saint. He felt none of that scorn of the world about him which drove the nobler souls of his day to monastery or hermitage. Vexed as he was by sickness and constant pain, his temper took no touch of asceticism. His rare geniality, a peculiar elasticity and mobility of nature, gave color and charm to his life. A sunny frankness and openness of spirit breathe in the pleasant chat of his books, and what he was in his books he showed himself in his daily converse. Alfred was in truth an artist, and both the lights and shadows of his life were those of the artistic temperament. His love of books, his love of strangers, his questionings of travellers and scholars, betray an imaginative restlessness that longs to break out of the narrow world of experience which hemmed him in. At one time he jots down news of a voyage to the unknown seas of the north. At another he listens to tidings which his envoys bring back from the churches of Malabar. And side by side with this restless outlook of the artistic nature he showed its tenderness and susceptibility, its vivid apprehension of unseen danger, its craving for affection, its sensitiveness to wrong. It was with himself rather than with his reader that he communed as thoughts of the foe without, of ingratitude and opposition within, broke the calm pages of Gregory or Boethius. "Oh, what a happy man was he," he cries once, "that man that had a naked sword hanging over his head from a single thread; so as to me it always did!" "Desirest thou power?" he asks at another time. "But thou shalt never obtain it without sorrows--sorrows from strange folk, and yet keener sorrows from thine own kindred." "Hardship and sorrow!" he breaks out again; "not a king but would wish to be without these if he could. But I know that he cannot!" The loneliness which breathes in words like these has often begotten in great rulers a cynical contempt of men and the judgments of men. But cynicism found no echo in the large and sympathetic temper of Alfred. He not only longed for the love of his subjects, but for the remembrance of "generations" to come. Nor did his inner gloom or anxiety check for an instant his vivid and versatile activity. To the scholars he gathered round him he seemed the very type of a scholar, snatching every hour he could find to read or listen to books read to him. The singers of his court found in him a brother singer, gathering the old songs of his people to teach them to his children, breaking his renderings from the Latin with simple verse, solacing himself in hours of depression with the music of the Psalms. He passed from court and study to plan buildings and instruct craftsmen in gold work, to teach even falconers and dog-keepers their business. But all this versatility and ingenuity was controlled by a cool good sense. Alfred was a thorough man of business. He was careful of detail, laborious, methodical. He carried in his bosom a little handbook in which he noted things as they struck him--now a bit of family genealogy, now a prayer, now such a story as that of Ealdhelm playing minstrel on the bridge. Each hour of the day had its appointed task; there was the same order in the division of his revenue and in the arrangement of his court. Wide, however, and various as was the King's temper, its range was less wonderful than its harmony. Of the narrowness, of the want of proportion, of the predominance of one quality over another which go commonly with an intensity of moral purpose Alfred showed not a trace. Scholar and soldier, artist and man of business, poet and saint, his character kept that perfect balance which charms us in no other Englishman save Shakespeare. But full and harmonious as his temper was, it was the temper of a king. Every power was bent to the work of rule. His practical energy found scope for itself in the material and administrative restoration of the wasted land. His intellectual activity breathed fresh life into education and literature. His capacity for inspiring trust and affection drew the hearts of Englishmen to a common centre, and began the upbuilding of a new England. And all was guided, controlled, ennobled by a single aim. "So long as I have lived," said the King as life closed about him, "I have striven to live worthily." Little by little men came to know what such a life of worthiness meant. Little by little they came to recognize in Alfred a ruler of higher and nobler stamp than the world had seen. Never had it seen a king who lived solely for the good of his people. Never had it seen a ruler who set aside every personal aim to devote himself solely to the welfare of those whom he ruled. It was this grand self-mastery that gave him his power over the men about him. Warrior and conqueror as he was, they saw him set aside at thirty the warrior's dream of conquest; and the self-renouncement of Wedmore struck the keynote of his reign. But still more is it this height and singleness of purpose, this absolute concentration of the noblest faculties to the noblest aim, that lifts Alfred out of the narrow bounds of Wessex. If the sphere of his action seems too small to justify the comparison of him with the few whom the world owns as its greatest men, he rises to their level in the moral grandeur of his life. And it is this which has hallowed his memory among his own English people. "I desire," said the King in some of his latest words, "I desire to leave to the men that come after me a remembrance of me in good works." His aim has been more than fulfilled. His memory has come down to us with a living distinctness through the mists of exaggeration and legend which time gathered round it. The instinct of the people has clung to him with a singular affection. The love which he won a thousand years ago has lingered round his name from that day to this. While every other name of those earlier times has all but faded from the recollection of Englishmen, that of Alfred remains familiar to every English child. The secret of Alfred's government lay in his own vivid energy. He could hardly have chosen braver or more active helpers than those whom he employed both in his political and in his educational efforts. The children whom he trained to rule proved the ablest rulers of their time. But at the outset of his reign he stood alone, and what work was to be done was done by the King himself. His first efforts were directed to the material restoration of his realm. The burnt and wasted country saw its towns built again, forts erected in positions of danger, new abbeys founded, the machinery of justice and government restored, the laws codified and amended. Still more strenuous were Alfred's efforts for its moral and intellectual restoration. Even in Mercia and Northumbria the pirate's sword had left few survivors of the schools of Egbert or Bede, and matters were even worse in Wessex, which had been as yet the most ignorant of the English kingdoms. "When I began to reign," said Alfred, "I cannot remember one priest south of the Thames who could render his service-book into English." For instructors indeed he could find only a few Mercian prelates and priests, with one Welsh bishop, Asser. "Formerly," the King writes bitterly, "men came hither from foreign lands to seek for instruction, and now when we desire it we can only obtain it from abroad." But his mind was far from being prisoned within his own island. He sent a Norwegian shipmaster to explore the White Sea, and Wulfstan to trace the coast of Esthonia; envoys bore his presents to the churches of India and Jerusalem, and an annual mission carried Peter's pence to Rome. But it was with the Franks that his intercourse was closest, and it was from them that he drew the scholars to aid him in his work of education. A scholar named Grimbald came from St. Omer to preside over his new abbey at Winchester; and John, the old Saxon, was fetched from the abbey of Corbey to rule a monastery and school that Alfred's gratitude for his deliverance from the Danes raised in the marshes of Athelney. The real work, however, to be done was done, not by these teachers, but by the King himself. Alfred established a school for the young nobles in his court, and it was to the need of books for these scholars in their own tongue that we owe his most remarkable literary effort. He took his books as he found them--they were the popular manuals of his age--the _Consolation of Boethius_, the _Pastoral_ of Pope Gregory, the compilation of Orosius, then the one accessible handbook of universal history, and the history of his own people by Bede. He translated these works into English, but he was far more than a translator, he was an editor for the people. Here he omitted, there he expanded. He enriched Orosius by a sketch of the new geographical discoveries in the north. He gave a West Saxon form to his selections from Bede. In one place he stops to explain his theory of government, his wish for a thicker population, his conception of national welfare as consisting in a due balance of priest, soldier, and churl. The mention of Nero spurs him to an outbreak on the abuses of power. The cold providence of Boethius gives way to an enthusiastic acknowledgment of the goodness of God. As he writes, his large-hearted nature flings off its royal mantle, and he talks as a man to men. "Do not blame me," he prays with a charming simplicity, "if any know Latin better than I, for every man must say what he says and do what he does according to his ability." But simple as was his aim, Alfred changed the whole front of our literature. Before him, England possessed in her own tongue one great poem and a train of ballads and battle-songs. Prose she had none. The mighty roll of the prose books that fill her libraries begins with the translations of Alfred, and above all with the chronicle of his reign. It seems likely that the King's rendering of Bede's history gave the first impulse toward the compilation of what is known as the English or _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_, which was certainly thrown into its present form during his reign. The meagre lists of the kings of Wessex and the bishops of Winchester, which had been preserved from older times, were roughly expanded into a national history by insertions from Bede; but it is when it reaches the reign of Alfred that the chronicle suddenly widens into the vigorous narrative, full of life and originality, that marks the gift of a new power to the English tongue. Varying as it does from age to age in historic value, it remains the first vernacular history of any Teutonic people, and, save for the Gothic translations of Ulfilas, the earliest and most venerable monument of Teutonic prose. But all this literary activity was only a part of that general upbuilding of Wessex by which Alfred was preparing for a fresh contest with the stranger. He knew that the actual winning back of the Danelagh must be a work of the sword, and through these long years of peace he was busy with the creation of such a force as might match that of the Northmen. A fleet grew out of the little squadron which Alfred had been forced to man with Frisian seamen. The national _fyrd_ or levy of all freemen at the King's call was reorganized. It was now divided into two halves, one of which served in the field while the other guarded its own _burhs_ (burghs or boroughs) and townships, and served to relieve its fellow when the men's forty days of service were ended. A more disciplined military force was provided by subjecting all owners of five hides of land to "thane-service," a step which recognized the change that had now substituted the _thegn_ for the _eorl_ and in which we see the beginning of a feudal system. How effective these measures were was seen when the new resistance they met on the Continent drove the Northmen to a fresh attack on Britain. In 893 a large fleet steered for the Andredsweald, while the sea-king Hasting entered the Thames. Alfred held both at bay through the year till the men of the Danelagh rose at their comrades' call. Wessex stood again front to front with the Northmen. But the King's measures had made the realm strong enough to set aside its old policy of defence for one of vigorous attack. His son Edward and his son-in-law Ethelred, whom he had set as ealdorman[23] over what remained of Mercia, showed themselves as skilful and active as the King. [Footnote 23: Primitive of alderman; in this period, a chieftain, lord, or earl; subsequently, the chief magistrate of a territorial district, as of a county or province.] The aim of the Northmen was to rouse again the hostility of the Welsh, but while Alfred held Exeter against their fleet, Edward and Ethelred caught their army near the Severn and overthrew it with a vast slaughter at Buttington. The destruction of their camp on the Lea by the united English forces ended the war; in 897 Hasting again withdrew across the Channel, and the Danelagh made peace. It was with the peace he had won still about him that Alfred died in 901; and warrior as his son Edward had shown himself, he clung to his father's policy of rest. HENRY THE FOWLER FOUNDS THE SAXON LINE OF GERMAN KINGS ORIGIN OF THE GERMAN BURGHERS OR MIDDLE CLASSES A.D. 911-936 WOLFGANG MENZEL (The famous treaty of Verdun [843] was the culmination of a series of civil wars between the descendants of Charlemagne. By it the great empire which Charlemagne had built up was divided among his three grandsons, Lothair, Charles the Bald, and Louis. With this treaty the history of the Franks closes, and Germany and France take their places, along with Italy, as distinct and separate nations. The Teutonic kingdom, or Germany, fell to Louis. On his death, in 876, after an uneventful reign, he was succeeded by his sons Charles the Fat, Carloman, and Louis. The latter two dying, Charles the Fat became sole King of Germany. A little later he became ruler of Italy, and was crowned emperor by the pope. Then he was invited by the West Franks to become their king. Thus almost the whole empire of the great Charlemagne was reunited in the hands of Charles the Fat. However, his people soon became disgusted with his weak efforts in the treatment of a series of invasions by the Northmen, and he was deposed in 887. He died the next year, and the Carlovingian empire fell to pieces, never to be united again. Charles the Fat was succeeded in Germany by his nephew, Arnulf, who also took possession of Italy and was crowned emperor by the pope, though his power in Italy was merely nominal. On his death in 889 his second son, Ludwig [Louis III] the child, became king in Germany. The race of Charlemagne in Germany ended in 911 by the death of Ludwig. Though a mere child he had been enthroned through the intrigues of Otto, Duke of Saxony, and Hatto, Archbishop of Mayence, who virtually governed the empire during Ludwig's short reign. The empire at that time was composed of various nations, each under the rule of a powerful duke. The bond of union between these nations was slight. The dukes were constantly waging war against each other, and these internal dissensions greatly weakened the central government. At the same time the empire was exposed to the incursions of the Magyars or Hungarians, whose wholesale depredations and cruelties so dismayed the child-king that he concluded a treaty of peace with the invaders and consented to pay them a ten-years' tribute. The Germans were deeply sensible of the dishonor incurred by this ignominious tribute, and of the dangers of their internal dissensions. They longed for a stronger government, and on the death of Ludwig the crown was offered to Otto of Saxony, the strongest of the dukes. He declined in favor of Conrad, Duke of Franconia, a descendant in the female line from Charlemagne. But Conrad's rule was weak, and during his short reign of seven years civil war continued, part of the time with Henry the Fowler, son of Duke Otto [who died in 912], owing to Conrad's attempt to separate Thuringia from Saxony in order to weaken Henry's ducal power. The empire also was again invaded by the Slavs and Hungarians. Conrad died without male issue in 918, whereupon the Germans elected as emperor Henry the Fowler, who thus became the first of the Saxon dynasty in Germany, and proved himself to be the wisest and most vigorous sovereign who had ruled in Germany since the days of Charlemagne.) The extinction of the Carlovingian line did not sever the bond of union that existed between the different nations of Germany, although a contention arose between them concerning the election of the new emperor, each claiming that privilege for itself; and as the increase of the ducal power had naturally led to a wider distinction between them, the diet convoked for the purpose represented nations instead of classes. There were consequently four nations and four votes: the Franks under Duke Conrad, whose authority, nevertheless, could not compete with that of the now venerable Hatto, Archbishop of Mayence, who may be said to have been, at that period, the pope in Germany; the Saxons, Frieslanders, Thuringians, and some of the subdued Slavi, under Duke Otto; the Swabians, with Switzerland and Elsace, under different _grafs_, who, as the immediate officers of the crown, were named _kammerboten_, in order to distinguish them from the grafs nominated by the dukes; the Bavarians, with the Tyrolese and some of the subdued eastern Slavi, under Duke Arnulf the Bad, the son of the brave duke Luitpold. The Lothringians formed a fifth nation, under their duke Regingar, but were at that period incorporated with France. The first impulse of the diet was to bestow the crown on the most powerful among the different competitors, and it was accordingly offered to Otto of Saxony, who not only possessed the most extensive territory and the most warlike subjects, but whose authority, having descended to him from his father and grandfather, was also the most firmly secured. But both Otto and his ancient ally, the bishop Hatto, had found the system they had hitherto pursued, of reigning in the name of an imbecile monarch, so greatly conducive to their interest that they were disinclined to abandon it. Otto was a man who mistook the prudence inculcated by private interest for wisdom, and his mind, narrow as the limits of his dukedom, and solely intent upon the interests of his family, was incapable of the comprehensive views requisite in a German emperor, and indifferent to the welfare of the great body of the nation. The examples of Boso, of Odo, of Rudolph of Upper Burgundy, and of Berenger, who, favored by the difference in descent of the people they governed, had all succeeded in severing themselves from the empire, were ever present to his imagination, and he believed that as, on the other side of the Rhine, the Frank, the Burgundian, and the Lombard severally obeyed an independent sovereign, the East Frank, the Saxon, the Swabian, and the Bavarian, on this side of the Rhine, were also desirous of asserting a similar independence, and that it would be easier and less hazardous to found a hereditary dukedom in a powerful and separate state than to maintain the imperial dignity, undermined, as it was, by universal hostility. The influence of Hatto and the consent of Otto placed Conrad, Duke of Franconia, on the imperial throne. Sprung from a newly risen family, a mere creature of the bishop, his nobility as a feudal lord only dating from the period of the Babenberg feud, he was regarded by the Church as a pliable tool and by the dukes as little to be feared. His weakness was quickly demonstrated by his inability to retain the rich allods of the Carlovingian dynasty as heir to the imperial crown, and his being constrained to share them with the rest of the dukes; he was, nevertheless, more fully sensible of the dignity and of the duties of his station than those to whom he owed his election probably expected. His first step was to recall Regingar of Lothringia, who was oppressed by France, to his allegiance as vassal of the empire. Otto died in 912, and his son Henry, a high-spirited youth, who had greatly distinguished himself against the Slavi, ere long quarrelled with the aged bishop Hatto. According to the legendary account, the bishop sent him a golden chain so skilfully contrived as to strangle its wearer. The truth is that the ancient family feud between the house of Conrad and that of Otto, which was connected with the Babenbergers, again broke out, and that the Emperor attempted again to separate Thuringia, which Otto had governed since the death of Burkhard, from Saxony, in order to hinder the overpreponderance of that ducal house. Hatto, it is probable, counselled this step, as a considerable portion of Thuringia belonged to the diocese of Mayence, and a collision between him and the duke was therefore unavoidable. Henry flew to arms, and expelled the adherents of the bishop from Thuringia, which forced the Emperor to take the field in the name of the empire against his haughty vassal. This unfortunate civil war was a signal for a fresh irruption of the Slavi and Hungarians. During this year the Bohemians and Sorbi also made an inroad into Thuringia and Bavaria, and in 913 the Hungarians advanced as far as Swabia, but being surprised near Oetting by the Bavarians under Arnulf, who on this occasion bloodily avenged his father's death, and by the Swabians under the kammerboten Erchanger and Berthold, they were all, with the exception of thirty of their number, cut to pieces. Arnulf subsequently embraced a contrary line of policy, married the daughter of Geisa, King of Hungary, and entered into a confederacy with the Hungarian and the Swabian kammerboten, for the purpose of founding an independent state in the south of Germany, where he had already strengthened himself by the appointment of several markgrafs, Rudiger of Pechlarn in Austria, Rathold in Carinthia, and Berthold in the Tyrol. He then instigated all the enemies of the empire simultaneously to attack the Franks and Saxons, at that crisis at war with each other, in 915, and while the Danes under Gorm the Old, and the Obotrites, destroyed Hamburg, immense hordes of Hungarians, Bohemians, and Sorbi laid the country waste as far as Bremen. The Emperor was, meanwhile, engaged with the Saxons. On one occasion Henry narrowly escaped being taken prisoner, being merely saved by the stratagem of his faithful servant, Thiatmar, who caused the Emperor to retreat by falsely announcing to him the arrival of a body of auxiliaries. At length a pitched battle was fought near Merseburg, in 915, between Henry and Eberhard, the Emperor's brother, in which the Franks[24] were defeated, and the superiority of the Saxons remained, henceforward, unquestioned for more than a century. The Emperor was forced to negotiate with the victor, whom he induced to protect the northern frontiers of the empire while he applied himself in person to the reëstablishment of order in the south. [Footnote 24: So great a slaughter took place that the Saxons said on the occasion: "'Twere difficult to find a hell Where so many Franks might dwell!"] In Swabia, Salomon, Bishop of Constance, who was supported by the commonalty, adhered to the imperial cause, while the kammerboten were unable to palliate their treason, and were gradually driven to extremities. Erchanger, relying upon aid from Arnulf and the Hungarians, usurped the ducal crown and took the bishop prisoner. Salomon's extreme popularity filled him with such rage that he caused the feet of some shepherds, who threw themselves on their knees as the captured prelate passed by, to be chopped off. His wife, Bertha, terror-stricken at the rashness of her husband, and foreseeing his destruction, received the prisoner with every demonstration of humility, and secretly aided his escape. He no sooner reappeared than the people flocked in thousands around him. "_Heil Herro! Heil Liebo!_" ("Hail, master! Hail, beloved one!") they shouted, and in their zeal attacked and defeated the traitors and their adherents. Berthold vainly defended himself in his mountain stronghold of Hohentwiel. The people so urgently demanded the death of these traitors to their country that the Emperor convoked a general assembly at Albingen in Swabia, sentenced Erchanger and Berthold to be publicly beheaded, and nominated Burkhard, in 917, whose father and uncle had been assassinated by order of Erchanger, as successor to the ducal throne. Arnulf withdrew to his fortress at Salzburg, and quietly awaited more favorable times. His name was branded with infamy by the people, who henceforth affixed to it the epithet of "the Bad," and the _Nibelungenlied_ has perpetuated his detested memory. Conrad died in 918 without issue. On his death-bed, mindful only of the welfare of the empire, he proved himself deserving even by his latest act of the crown he had so worthily worn, by charging his brother Eberhard to forget the ancient feud between their houses, and to deliver the crown with his own hands to his enemy, the free-spirited Henry, whom he judged alone capable of meeting all the exigencies of the State. Eberhard obeyed his brother's injunctions, and the princes respected the will of their dying sovereign. The princes, with the exception of Burkhard and of Arnulf, assembled at Fritzlar, elected the absent Henry king, and despatched an embassy to inform him of their decision. It is said that the young duke was at the time among the Harz Mountains, and that the ambassadors found him in the homely attire of a sportsman in the fowling floor. He obeyed the call of the nation without delay and without manifesting surprise. The error he had committed in rebelling against the State, it was his firm purpose to atone for by his conduct as emperor. Of a lofty and majestic stature, although slight and youthful in form, powerful and active in person, with a commanding and penetrating glance, his very appearance attracted popular favor; besides these personal advantages, he was prudent and learned, and possessed a mind replete with intelligence. The influence of such a monarch on the progressive development of society in Germany could not fail of producing results fully equalling the improvements introduced by Charlemagne. The youthful Henry, the first of the Saxon line, was proclaimed king of Germany at Fritzlar, in 919, by the majority of votes, and, according to ancient custom, raised upon the shield. The Archbishop of Mayence offered to anoint him according to the usual ceremony, but Henry refused, alleging that he was content to owe his election to the grace of God and to the piety of the German princes, and that he left the ceremony of anointment to those who wished to be still more pious. Before Henry could pursue his more elevated projects, the assent of the southern Germans, who had not acknowledged the choice of their northern compatriots, had to be gained. Burkhard of Swabia, who had asserted his independence, and who was at that time carrying on a bitter feud with Rudolph, King of Burgundy, whom he had defeated, in 919, in a bloody engagement near Winterthur, was the first against whom he directed the united forces of the empire, in whose name he, at the same time, offered him peace and pardon. Burkhard, seeing himself constrained to yield, took the oath of fealty to the new-elected King at Worms, but continued to act with almost his former unlimited authority in Swabia, and even undertook an expedition into Italy in favor of Rudolph, with whom he had become reconciled. The Italians, enraged at the wantonness with which he mocked them, assassinated him. Henry bestowed the dukedom of Swabia on Hermann, one of his relations, to whom he gave Burkhard's widow in marriage. He also bestowed a portion of the south of Alemannia on King Rudolph in order to win him over, and in return received from him the holy lance with which the side of the Saviour had been pierced as he hung on the cross. Finding it no longer possible to dissolve the dukedoms and great fiefs, Henry, in order to strengthen the unity of the empire, introduced the novel policy of bestowing the dukedoms, as they fell vacant, on his relations and personal adherents, and of allying the rest of the dukes with himself by intermarriage, thus uniting the different powerful houses in the State into one family. Bavaria still remained in an unsettled state. Arnulf the Bad, leagued with the Hungarians, against whom Henry had great designs, had still much in his power, and Henry, resolved at any price to dissolve this dangerous alliance, not only concluded peace with this traitor on that condition, but also married his son Henry to Judith, Arnulf's daughter, in 921. Arnulf deprived the rich churches of great part of their treasures, and was consequently abhorred by the clergy, the chroniclers of those times, who, chiefly on that account, depicted his character in such unfavorable colors. In France, Charles the Simple was still the tool and jest of the vassals. His most dangerous enemy was Robert, Count of Paris, brother to Odo, the late King. Both solicited aid from Henry, but in a battle that shortly ensued near Soissons, Count Robert losing his life and Charles being defeated, Rudolph of Burgundy, one of Boso's nephews, set himself up as king of France, and imprisoned Charles the Simple, who craved assistance from the German monarch, to whom he promised to perform homage as his liege lord. Henry, meanwhile, contented himself with expelling Rudolph from Lotharingia, and, after taking possession of Metz, bestowed that dukedom upon Gisilbrecht, the son of Regingar, and reincorporated it with the empire. These successes now roused the apprehensions of the Hungarians, who again poured their invading hordes across the frontier. In 926 they plundered St. Gall, but were routed near Seckingen by the peasantry, headed by the country people of Hirminger, who had been roused by alarm fires; and again in Alsace, by Count Liutfried: another horde was cut to pieces near Bleiburg, in Carinthia, by Eberhard and the Count of Meran. The Hungarian King, probably Zoldan, was, by chance, taken prisoner during an incursion by the Germans, a circumstance turned by Henry to a very judicious use. He restored the captured prince to liberty, and also agreed to pay him a yearly tribute, on condition of his entering into a solemn truce for nine years. The experience of earlier times had taught Henry that a completely new organization was necessary in the management of military affairs in Germany before this dangerous enemy could be rendered innoxious, and, as an undertaking of this nature required time, he prudently resolved to incur a seeming disgrace by means of which he in fact secured the honor of the State. During this interval of nine years he aimed at bringing the other enemies of the empire, more particularly the Slavi, into subjection, and making preparations for an expedition against Hungary by which her power should receive a fatal blow. In the mean time Gisilbrecht, the youthful Duke of Lotharingia, again rebelled, but was besieged and taken prisoner in Zuelpich by Henry, who, struck by his noble appearance, restored to him his dukedom, and bestowed upon him his daughter, Gerberga, in marriage. Rudolph of France also sued for peace, being hard pressed by his powerful rival, Hugo the Great or Wise, the son of Robert. Charles the Simple was, on Henry's demand, restored to liberty, but quickly fell anew into the power of his faithless vassals. Peace was now established throughout the empire, and afforded Henry an opportunity for turning his attention to the introduction of measures, in the interior economy of the State, calculated to obviate for the future the dangers that had hitherto threatened it from without. The best expedient against the irruptions of the Hungarians appeared to him to be the circumvallation of the most important districts, the erection of forts and of fortified cities. The most important point, however, was to place the garrisons immediately under him as citizens of the State, commanded by his immediate officers, instead of their being indirectly governed by the feudal aristocracy and by the clergy. As these garrisons were intended not only for the protection of the walls, but also for open warfare, he had them trained to fight in rank and file, and formed them into a body of infantry, whose solid masses were calculated to withstand the furious onset of the Hungarian horse. These garrisons were solely composed of the ancient freemen, and the whole measure was, in fact, merely a reform of the ancient _arrier-ban_, which no longer sufficed for the protection of the State, and whose deficiency had long been supplied by the addition of vassals under the command of their temporal or spiritual lieges, and by the mercenaries or bodyguards of the emperors. The ancient class of freemen, who originally composed the arrier-ban, had been gradually converted into feudal vassals; but they were at that time still so numerous as to enable Henry to give them a completely new military organization, which at once secured to them their freedom, hitherto endangered by the preponderating power of the feudal aristocracy, and rendered them a powerful support to the throne. By collecting them into the cities, he afforded them a secure retreat against the attempts of the grafs, dukes, abbots, and bishops, and created for himself a body of trusty friends, of whom it would naturally be expected that they would ever side with the Emperor against the nobility. This new regulation appears to have been founded on the ancient mode of division. At first, out of every nine freemen--which recalls the _decania_--one only was placed within the new fortress, and the remaining eight were bound--perhaps on account of their ancient association into corporations or guilds--to nourish and support him; but the remaining freemen, in the neighborhood of the new cities, appear to have been also gradually collected within their walls, and to have committed the cultivation of their lands in the vicinity to their bondmen. However that may be, the ancient class of freemen completely disappeared as the cities increased in importance, and it was only among the wild mountains, where no cities sprang up, that the _centen_ or cantons and whole districts or _gauen_ of free peasantry were to be met with. Henry's original intention in the introduction of this new system was, it is evident, solely to provide a military force answering to the exigencies of the State; still there is no reason to suppose him blind to the great political advantage to be derived from the formation of an independent class of citizens; and that he had in reality premeditated a civil as well as a military reformation may be concluded from the fact of his having established fairs, markets, and public assemblies, which, of themselves, would be closely connected with civil industry, within the walls of the cities; and, even if these trading warriors were at first merely feudatories of the Emperor, they must naturally in the end have formed a class of free citizens, the more so as, attracted within the cities by the advantages offered to them, their number rapidly and annually increased. The same military reasons which induced the emperor Henry to enroll the ancient freemen into a regular corps of infantry, and to form them into a civil corporation, caused him also to metamorphose the feudal aristocracy into a regular troop of cavalry and a knightly institution. The wild disorder with which the mounted vassals of the empire, the dukes, grafs, bishops, and abbots, each distinguished by his own banner, rushed to the attack, or vied with each other in the fury of the assault, was now changed by Henry, who was well versed in every knightly art, to the disciplined manoeuvres of the line, and to that of fighting in close ranks, so well calculated to withstand the furious onset of their Hungarian foe. The discipline necessary for carrying these new military tactics into practice among a nobility habituated to license could alone be enforced by motives of honor, and Henry accordingly formed a chivalric institution, which gave rise to new manners and to an enthusiasm that imparted a new character to the age. The tournament-- from the ancient verb _turnen_, to wrestle or fight, a public contest in every species of warfare, carried on by the knights in the presence of noble dames and maidens, whose favor they sought to gain by their prowess, and which chiefly consisted of tilting and jousting either singly or in troops, the day concluding with a banquet and a dance--was then instituted. In these tournaments the ancient heroism of the Germans revived; they were in reality founded upon the ancient pagan legends of the heroes who carried on an eternal contest in their Walhalla, in order to win the smiles of the Walkyren, now represented by earth's well-born dames. The ancient spirit of brotherhood in arms, which had been almost quenched by that of self-interest, by the desire of acquiring feudal possessions, by the slavish subjection of the vassals under their lieges, and by the intrigues of the bishops, who intermeddled with all feudal matters, also reappeared. A great universal society of Christian knights, bound to the observance of peculiar laws, whose highest aim was to fight only for God--before long also for the ladies--and who swore never to make use of dishonorable means for success, but solely to live and to die for honor, was formed; an innovation which, although merely military in its origin, speedily became of political importance, for, by means of this knightly honor, the little vassal of a minor lord was no longer viewed as a mere underling, but as a confederate in the great universal chivalric fraternity. There were also many freemen who sometimes gained their livelihood by offering their services to different courts, or by robbing on the highways, and who were too proud to serve on foot; Henry offered them free pardon, and formed them into a body of light cavalry. In the cities the free citizens, who were originally intended only to serve as foot soldiery, appear ere long to have formed themselves into mounted troops, and to have created a fresh body of infantry out of their artificers and apprentices. It is certain that every freeman could pretend to knighthood. Although the chivalric regulations ascribed to the emperor Henry, and to his most distinguished vassals, may not be genuine, they offer nevertheless infallible proofs of the most ancient spirit of knighthood. Henry ordained that no one should be created a knight who either by word or by deed injured the holy Church; the Pfalzgraf Conrad added, "no one who either by word or by deed injured the holy German empire"; Hermann of Swabia, "no one who injured a woman or a maiden"; Berthold, the brother of Arnulf of Bavaria, "no one who had ever deceived another or had broken his word"; Conrad of Franconia, "no one who had ever run away from the field of battle." These appear to have been, in fact, the first chivalric laws, for they spring from the spirit of the times, while all the regulations concerning nobility of birth, the number of ancestors, the exclusion of all those who were engaged in trade, etc., are, it is evident from their very nature, of a much later origin. CONQUEST OF EGYPT BY THE FATIMITES A.D. 969 STANLEY LANE-POOLE (It was the fate of the religion which Mahomet founded, as it has been of other great systems, to undergo many sectarian divisions, and to be used as the instrument of conquest and political power. When Islam had somewhat departed from the character which it first manifested in moral sternness and fiery zeal, and had established itself in various parts of the world on a basis of commerce or of science, rather than that of its original inspiration, various off shoots of the faith began to assume prominence. Among the sects which sprang up was one that claimed to represent the true succession of Mahomet. This sect was itself the result of a schism among the adherents of one of the two principal divisions of the Moslems--the Shiahs. They maintained that Ali, a relation and the adopted son of Mahomet and husband of his daughter Fatima, was the first legitimate imam or successor of the prophet. They regarded the other and greater division--the Sunnites, who recognized the first three caliphs, Abu-Bekr, Omar, and Othman--as usurpers. Ali was the fourth caliph, and the Sunnites in turn looked upon his followers, the Shiahs, as heretics. The schism among the Shiahs grew out of the claim of the schismatics that the legitimate imam or successor of the Prophet must be in the line of descent from Ali. The sixth imam, Jaffer, upon the death of his eldest son, Ismail, appointed another son, Moussa or Moses, his heir; but a large body of the Shiahs denied the right of Jaffer to make a new nomination, declaring the imamate to be strictly hereditary. They formed a new party of Ismailians, and in 908 a chief of this sect, Mahomet, surnamed el-Mahdi, or the Leader--a title of the Shiahs for their imams--revolted in Africa. He called himself a descendant of Ismail and claimed to be the legitimate imam. He aimed at the temporal power of a caliph, and soon established a rival caliphate in Africa, where he had obtained a considerable sovereignty. The dynasty thus begun assumed the name of Fatimites in honor of Fatima. The fourth caliph of this line, El-Moizz, conquered Egypt about 969, founded the modern Cairo, and made it his capital. The claims of the Egyptian caliphate were heralded throughout all Islam, and its rule was rapidly extended into Syria and Arabia. It played an important part in the history of the Crusades, but in 1171 was abolished by the famous Saladin, and Egypt was restored to the obedience which it had formerly owned to Bagdad. The Bagdad caliphs, called Abbassides--claiming descent from Abbas, the uncle of Mahomet--remained rulers of Egypt until 1517, or until within twenty years of the death of the last Abbasside.) Three hundred and thirty years had passed since the Saracens first invaded the valley of the Nile. The people, with traditional docility, had liberally adopted the religion of their rulers, and the Moslems now formed the great majority of the population. Arabs and natives had blended into much the same race that we now call Egyptians; but so far the mixture had not produced any conspicuous men. The few commanding figures among the governors, Ibn-Tulun, the Ikshid, Kafur, were foreigners, and even these were but a step above the stereotyped official. They essayed no great extension of their dominions; they did not try to extinguish their dangerous neighbors the schismatic Fatimites; and though they possessed and used fleets, they ventured upon no excursions against Europe. The great revolution which had swept over North Africa, and now spread to Egypt, arose out of the old controversy over the legitimacy of the caliphate. The prophet Mahomet died without definitely naming a successor, and thereby bequeathed an interminable quarrel to his followers. The principle of election, thus introduced, raised the first three caliphs, Abu-Bekr, Omar, Othman, to the _cathedra_ at Medina; but a strong minority held that the "divine right" rested with Ali, the "Lion of God," first convert to Islam, husband of the prophet's daughter Fatima, and father of Mahomet's only male descendants. When Ali in turn became the fourth caliph, he was the mark for jealousy, intrigue, and at length assassination; his sons, the grandsons of the Prophet, were excluded from the succession; his family were cruelly persecuted by their successful rivals, the Ommiad usurpers; and the tragedy of Kerbela and the murder of Hoseyn set the seal of martyrdom on the holy family and stirred a passionate enthusiasm which still rouses intense excitement in the annual representations of the Persian passion play. The rent thus opened in Islam was never closed. The ostracism of Ali "laid the foundation of the grand interminable schism which has divided the Mahometan Church, and equally destroyed the practice of charity among the members of their common creed and endangered the speculative truths of doctrine." The descendants of Ali, though almost universally devoid of the qualities of great leaders, possessed the persistence and devotion of martyrs, and their sufferings heightened the fanatical enthusiasm of their supporters. All attempts to recover the temporal power having proved vain, the Alides fell back upon the spiritual authority of the successive candidates of the holy family, whom they proclaimed to be the imams or spiritual leaders of the faithful. This doctrine of the imamate gradually acquired a more mystical meaning, supported by an allegorical interpretation of the _Koran_; and a mysterious influence was ascribed to the imam, who, though hidden from mortal eye, on account of the persecution of his enemies, would soon come forward publicly in the character of the ever-expected _mahdi_, sweep away the corruptions of the heretical caliphate, and revive the majesty of the pure lineage of the prophet. All Mahometans believe in a coming mahdi, a messiah, who shall restore right and prepare for the second advent of Mahomet and the tribunal of the last day; but the Shiahs turned the expectation to special account. They taught that the true Imam, though invisible to mortal sight, is ever living; they predicted the mahdi's speedy appearance, and kept their adherents on the alert to take up arms in his service. With a view to his coming they organized a pervasive conspiracy, instituted a secret society with carefully graduated stages of initiation, used the doctrines of all religions and sects as weapons in the propaganda, and sent missionaries throughout the provinces of Islam to increase the numbers of the initiates and pave the way for the great revolution. We see their partial success in the ravages of the Karmathians, who were the true parents of the Fatimites. The leaders and chief missionaries had really nothing in common with Mahometanism. Among themselves they were frankly atheists. Their objects were political, and they used religion in any form, and adapted it in all modes, to secure proselytes, to whom they imparted only so much of their doctrine as they were able to bear. These men were furnished with "an armory of proselytism" as perfect, perhaps, as any known to history: they had appeals to enthusiasm, and arguments for the reason, and "fuel for the fiercest passions of the people and times in which they moved." Their real aim was not religious or constructive, but pure nihilism. They used the claim of the family of Ali, not because they believed in any divine right or any caliphate, but because some flag had to be flourished in order to rouse the people. One of these missionaries, disguised as a merchant, journeyed back to Barbary in 893, with some Berber pilgrims who had performed the sacred ceremonies at Mecca. He was welcomed by the great tribe of the Kitama, and rapidly acquired an extraordinary influence over the Berbers--a race prone to superstition, and easily impressed by the mysterious rites of initiation and the emotional doctrines of the propagandist, the wrongs of the prophetic house, and the approaching triumph of the Mahdi. Barbary had never been much attached to the caliphate, and for a century it had been practically independent under the Aglabite dynasty, the barbarous excesses of whose later sovereigns had alienated their subjects. Alides, moreover, had established themselves, in the dynasty of the Idrisides, in Morocco since the end of the eighth century. The land was in every respect ripe for revolution, and the success of Abu-Abdallah esh-Shii, the new missionary, was extraordinarily rapid. In a few years he had a following of two hundred thousand armed men, and after a series of battles he drove Ziyadat-Allah, the last Aglabite prince, out of the country in 908. The missionary then proclaimed the imam Obeid-Allah as the true caliph and spiritual head of Islam. Whether this Obeid-Allah was really a descendant of Ali or not, he had been carefully prepared for the role, and reached Barbary in disguise, with the greatest mystery and some difficulty, pursued by the suspicions of the Bagdad caliph, who, in great alarm, sent repeated orders for his arrest. Indeed, the victorious missionary had to rescue his spiritual chief from a sordid prison at Sigilmasa. Then humbly prostrating himself before him, he hailed him as the expected mahdi, and in January, 910, he was duly prayed for in the mosque of Kayrawan as "the Imam 'Obeid-Allah el-Mahdi, Commander of the Faithful.'" The missionary's Berber proselytes were too numerous to encourage resistance, and the few who indulged the luxury of conscientious scruples were killed or imprisoned. El-Mahdi, indeed, appeared so secure in power that he excited the jealousy of his discoverer. Abu-Abdallah, the missionary, now found himself nobody, where a month before he had been supreme. The Fatimite restoration was to him only a means to an end; he had used Obeid-Allah's title as an engine of revolution, intending to proceed to the furthest lengths of his philosophy, to a complete social and political anarchy, the destruction of Islam, community of lands and women, and all the delight of unshackled license. Instead of this, his creature had absorbed his power, and all such designs were made void. He began to hatch treason and to hint doubts as to the genuineness of the Mahdi, who, as he truly represented, according to prophecy, ought to work miracles and show other proofs of his divine mission. People began to ask for a "sign." In reply, the Mahdi had the missionary murdered. The first Fatimite caliph, though without experience, was so vigorous a ruler that he could dispense with the dangerous support of his discoverer. He held the throne for a quarter of a century and established his authority, more or less continuously, over the Arab and Berber tribes and settled cities from the frontier of Egypt to the province of Fez (Fas) in Morocco, received the allegiance of the Mahometan governor of Sicily, and twice despatched expeditions into Egypt, which he would probably have permanently conquered if he had not been hampered by perpetual insurrections in Barbary. Distant governors, and often whole tribes of Berbers, were constantly in revolt, and the disastrous famine of 928-929, coupled with the Asiatic plague which his troops had brought back with them from Egypt, led to general disturbances and insurrections which fully occupied the later years of his reign. The western provinces, from Tahart and Nakur to Fez and beyond, frequently threw off all show of allegiance. His authority was founded more on fear than on religious enthusiasm, though zeal for the Alide cause had its share in his original success. The new "Eastern doctrines," as they were called, were enforced at the sword's point, and frightful examples were made of those who ventured to tread in the old paths. Nor were the freethinkers of the large towns, who shared the missionary's esoteric principles, encouraged; for outwardly, at least, the Mahdi was strictly a Moslem. When people at Kayrawan began to put in practice the missionary's advanced theories, to scoff at all the rules of Islam, to indulge in free love, pig's flesh, and wine, they were sternly brought to order. The mysterious powers expected of a mahdi were sedulously rumored among the credulous Berbers, though no miracles were actually exhibited; and the obedience of the conquered provinces was secured by horrible outrages and atrocities, of which the terrified people dared not provoke a repetition at the hands of the Mahdi's savage generals. His eldest son Abul-Kasim, who had twice led expeditions into Egypt, succeeded to the caliphate with the title of El-Kaim, 934-946. He began his reign with warlike vigor. He sent out a fleet in 934 or 935, which harried the southern coast of France, blockaded and took Genoa, and coasted along Calabria, massacring and plundering, burning the shipping, and carrying off slaves wherever it touched. At the same time he despatched a third army against Egypt; but the firm hand of the Ikshid now held the government, and his brother, Obeid-Allah, with fifteen thousand horse, drove the enemy out of Alexandria and gave them a crushing defeat on their way home. But for the greater part of his reign El-Kaim was on the defensive, fighting for existence against the usurpation of one Abu-Yezid, who repudiated Shiism, cursed the Mahdi and his successor, stirred up most of Morocco and Barbary against El-Kaim, drove him out of his capital, and went near to putting an end to the Fatimite caliphate. It was only after seven years of uninterrupted civil war that this formidable insurrection died out, under the firm but politic management of the third caliph, El-Mansur (946-953), a brave man who knew both when to strike and when to be generous. Abu-Yezid was at last run to earth, and his body was skinned and stuffed with straw, and exposed in a cage with a couple of ludicrous apes as a warning to the disaffected. The Fatimites so far wear a brutal and barbarous character. They do not seem to have encouraged literature or learning; but this is partly explained by the fact that culture belonged chiefly to the orthodox caliphate; and its learned men could have no dealings with the heretical pretender. The city of Kayrawan, which dates from the Arab conquest in the eighth century, preserves the remains of some noble buildings, but of their other capitals or royal residences no traces of art or architecture remain to bear witness to the taste of their founders. Each began to decay as soon as its successor was built. With the fourth caliph, however, El-Moizz, the conqueror of Egypt, 953-975, the Fatimites entered upon a new phase. El-Moizz was a man of politic temper, a born statesman, able to grasp the conditions of success and to take advantage of every point in his favor. He was also highly educated, and not only wrote Arabic poetry and delighted in its literature, but studied Greek, mastered Berber and Sudani dialects, and is even said to have taught himself Slavonic in order to converse with his slaves from Eastern Europe. His eloquence was such as to move his audience to tears. To prudent statesmanship he added a large generosity, and his love of justice was among his noblest qualities. So far as outward acts could show, he was a strict Moslem of the Shiah sect, and the statement of his adversaries that he was really an atheist seems to rest merely upon the belief that all the Fatimites adopted the esoteric doctrines of the Ismailian missionaries. When he ascended the throne in April, 953, he had already a policy, and he lost no time in carrying it into execution. He first made a progress through his dominions, visiting each town, investigating its needs, and providing for its peace and prosperity. He bearded the rebels in their mountain fastnesses, till they laid down their arms and fell at his feet. He conciliated the chiefs and governors with presents and appointments, and was rewarded by their loyalty. At the head of his ministers he set Gawhar "the Roman," a slave from the Eastern Empire, who had risen to the post of secretary to the late Caliph, and was now by his son promoted to the rank of _wazir_ commander of the forces. He was sent in 958 to bring the ever-refractory Maghreb (Morocco) to allegiance. The expedition was entirely successful, Sigilmasa and Fez were taken, and Gawhar reached the shore of the Atlantic. Jars of live fish and sea-weed reached the capital, and proved to the Caliph that his empire touched the ocean, the "limitless limit" of the world. All the African littoral, from the Atlantic to the frontier of Egypt--with the single exception of Spanish Ceuta--now peaceably admitted the sway of the Fatimite Caliph. The result was due partly to the exhaustion caused by the long struggle during the preceding reigns, partly to the politic concessions and personal influence of the able young ruler. He was liberal and conciliatory toward different provinces, but to the Arabs of the capital he was severe. Kayrawan teemed with disaffected folk, sheiks, and theologians bitterly hostile to the heretical "orientalism" of the Fatimites, and always ready to excite a tumult. Moizz was resolved to give them no chance, and one of his repressive measures was the curfew. At sunset a trumpet sounded, and anyone found abroad after that was liable to lose not only his way, but his head. So long as they were quiet, however, he used the people justly, and sought to impress them in his favor. In a singular interview, recorded by Makrisi, he exhibited himself to a deputation of sheiks, dressed in the utmost simplicity, and seated before his writing materials in a plain room, surrounded by books. He wished to disabuse them of the idea that he led in private a life of luxury and self-indulgence. "You see what employs me when I am alone," he said; "I read letters that come to me from the lands of the East and the West, and answer them with my own hand; I deny myself all the pleasures of the world, and I seek only to protect your lives, multiply your children, shame your rivals, and daunt your enemies." Then he gave them much good advice, and especially recommended them to keep to one wife. "One woman is enough for one man. If you straitly observe what I have ordained," he concluded, "I trust that God will, through you, procure our conquest of the East in like manner as he has vouchsafed us the West." The conquest of Egypt was indeed the aim of his life. To rule over tumultuous Arab and Berber tribes in a poor country formed no fit ambition for a man of his capacity. Egypt, its wealth, its commerce, its great port, and its docile population--these were his dream. For two years he had been digging wells and building rest-houses on the road to Alexandria. The West was now outwardly quiet, and between Egypt and any hope of succor from the eastern caliphate stood the ravaging armies of the Karmatis. Egypt itself was in helpless disorder. The great Kafur was dead, and its nominal ruler was a child. Ibn-Furat, the _wazir_, had made himself obnoxious to the people by arrests and extortions. The very soldiery was in revolt, and the Turkish retainers of the court mutinied, plundered the wazir's palace, and even opened negotiations with Moizz. Hoseyn, the nephew of the Ikshid, attempted to restore public order, but after three months of vacillating and unpopular government he returned to his own province in Palestine to make terms with the Karmatis. Famine, the result of the exceptionally low Nile of 967, added to the misery of the country; plague, as usual, followed in the steps of famine; over six hundred thousand people died in and around Fustat, and the wretched inhabitants began in despair to migrate to happier lands. All these matters were fully reported to Moizz by the renegade Jew Yakub Killis, a former favorite of Kafur, who had been driven from Egypt by the jealous exactions of the wazir, Ibn-Furat, and who was perfectly familiar with the political and financial state of the Nile valley. His representations confirmed the Fatimite Caliph's resolve; the Arab tribes were summoned to his standard; an immense treasure was collected, all of which was spent in the campaign; gratuities were lavishly distributed to the army, and at the head of over one hundred thousand men, all well mounted and armed, accompanied by a thousand camels and a mob of horses carrying money, stores, and ammunition, Gawhar marched from Kayrawan in February, 969. The Caliph himself reviewed the troops. The marshal kissed his hand and his horse's shoe. All the princes, emirs, and courtiers passed reverently on foot before the honored leader of the conquering army, who, as a last proof of favor, received the gift of his master's own robes and charger. The governors of all the towns on the route had orders to come on foot to Gawhar's stirrup, and one of them vainly offered a large bribe to be excused the indignity. The approach of this overwhelming force filled the Egyptian ministers with consternation, and they thought only of obtaining favorable terms. A deputation of notables, headed by Abu-Giafar Moslem, a _sherif_, or descendant of the Prophet's family, waited upon Gawhar near Alexandria, and demanded a capitulation. The general consented without reserve, and in a conciliatory letter granted all they asked. But they had reckoned without their host; the troops at Fustat would not listen to such humiliation, and there was a strong war party among the citizens, to which some of the ministers leaned. The city prepared for resistance, and skirmishes took place with Gawhar's army, which had meanwhile arrived at the opposite town of Giza in July. Forcing the passage of the river, with the help of some boats supplied by Egyptian soldiers, the invaders fell upon the imposing army drawn up on the other bank, and totally defeated them. The troops deserted Fustat in a panic, and the women of the city, running out of their houses, implored the sherif to intercede with the conqueror. Gawhar, like his master, always disposed to a politic leniency, renewed his former promises, and granted a complete amnesty to all who submitted. The overjoyed populace cut off the heads of some of the refractory leaders, in their enthusiasm, and sent them to the camp in pleasing token of allegiance. A herald, bearing a white flag, rode through the streets of Fustat proclaiming the amnesty and forbidding pillage, and on August the 5th the Fatimite army, with full pomp of drums and banners, entered the capital. That very night Gawhar laid the foundations of a new city, or rather fortified palace, destined for the reception of his sovereign. He was encamped on the sandy waste which stretched northeast of Fustat on the road to Heliopolis, and there, at a distance of about a mile from the river, he marked out the boundaries of the new capital. There were no buildings, save the old "Convent of the Bones," nor any cultivation except the beautiful park called "Kafur's Garden," to obstruct his plans. A square, somewhat less than a mile each way, was pegged out with poles, and the Maghrabi astrologers, in whom Moizz reposed extravagant faith, consulted together to determine the auspicious moment for the opening ceremony. Bells were hung on ropes from pole to pole, and at the signal of the sages their ringing was to announce the precise moment when the laborers were to turn the first sod. The calculations of the astrologers were, however, anticipated by a raven, who perched on one of the ropes and set the bells jingling, upon which every mattock was struck into the earth, and the trenches were opened. It was an unlucky hour; the planet Mars (El-Kahir) was in the ascendant; but it could not be undone, and the place was accordingly named after the hostile planet, El-Kahira, "the Martial" or "Triumphant," in the hope that the sinister omen might be turned to a triumphant issue. Cairo, as Kahira has come to be called, may fairly be said to have outlived all astrological prejudices. The name of the Abbasside caliph was at once expunged from the Friday prayers at the old mosque of Amr at Fustat; the black Abbasside robes were proscribed, and the preacher, in pure white, recited the Khutba for the imam Moizz, emir el-muminin, and invoked blessings on his ancestors Ali and Fatima and all their holy family. The call to prayer from the minarets was adapted to Shiah taste. The joyful news was sent to the Fatimite Caliph on swift dromedaries, together with the heads of the slain. Coins were struck with the special formulas of the Fatimite creed--"Ali is the noblest of [God's] delegates, the wazir of the best of apostles"; "the Imam Maadd calls men to profess the unity of the Eternal"--in addition to the usual dogmas of the Mahometan faith. For two centuries the mosques and the mint proclaimed the shibboleth of the Shiahs. Gawhar set himself at once to restore tranquillity and alleviate the sufferings of the famine-stricken people. Moizz had providently sent grain ships to relieve their distress, and as the price of bread nevertheless remained at famine rates, Gawhar publicly flogged the millers, established a central corn-exchange, and compelled everyone to sell his corn there under the eye of a government inspector. In spite of his efforts the famine lasted for two years; plague spread alarmingly, insomuch that the corpses could not be buried fast enough, and were thrown into the Nile; and it was not till the winter of 971-972 that plenty returned and the pest disappeared. As usual, the viceroy took a personal part in all public functions. Every Saturday he sat in court, assisted by the wazir Ibn-Furat, the cadi, and skilled lawyers, to hear causes and petitions and to administer justice. To secure impartiality, he appointed to every department of state an Egyptian and a Maghrabi officer. His firm and equitable rule insured peace and order; and the great palace he was building, and the new mosque, the Azhar, which he founded in 970 and finished in 972, not only added to the beauty of the capital, but gave employment to innumerable craftsmen. The inhabitants of Egypt accepted the new _regime_ with their habitual phlegm. An Ikshidi officer in the Bashmur district of Lower Egypt did, indeed, incite the people to rebellion, but his fate was not such as to encourage others. He was chased out of Egypt, captured on the coast of Palestine, and then, it is gravely recorded, he was given sesame oil to drink for a month, till his skin stripped off, whereupon it was stuffed with straw and hung up on a beam, as a reminder to him who would be admonished. With this brief exception we read of no riots, no sectarian risings, and the general surrender was complete when the remaining partisans of the deposed dynasty, to the number of five thousand, laid down their arms. An embassy sent to George, King of Nubia, to invite him to embrace Islam, and to exact the customary tribute, was received with courtesy, and the money, but not the conversion, was arranged. The holy cities of Mecca and Medina in the Higaz, where the gold of Moizz had been prudently distributed some years before, responded to his generosity and success by proclaiming his supremacy in the mosques; the Hamdanide prince who held Northern Syria paid similar homage to the Fatimite Caliph at Aleppo, where the Abbassides had hitherto been recognized. Southern Syria, however, which had formed part of the Ikshid's kingdom, did not submit to the usurpers without a struggle. Hoseyn was still independent at Ramla, and Gawhar's lieutenant, Giafar ben Fellah, was obliged to give him battle. Hoseyn was defeated and exposed bareheaded to the insults of the mob at Fustat, to be finally sent, with the rest of the family of Ikshid, to a Barbary jail. Damascus, the home of orthodoxy, was taken by Giafar, not without a struggle, and the Fatimite doctrine was there published, to the indignation and disgust of the Sunnite population. A worse plague than the Fatimite conquest soon afflicted Syria. The Karmati leader, Hasan ben Ahmad, surnamed El-Asam, finding the blackmail, which he had lately received out of the revenues of Damascus, suddenly stopped, resolved to extort it by force of arms. The Fatimites indeed sprang from the same movement, and their founder professed the same political and irreligious philosophy as Hasan himself; but this did not stand in his way, and his knowledge of their origin made him the less disposed to render homage to the sacred pretensions of the new imams, whom he contemptuously designated as the spawn of the quacks, charlatans, and the enemies of Islam. He tried to enlist the support of the Abbasside Caliph, but El-Muti replied that Fatimis and Karmatis were all one to him, and he would have nothing to do with either. The Buweyhid prince of Irak, however, supplied Hasan with arms and money; Abu-Taghlib, the Hamdanide ruler of Rahba on the Euphrates, contributed men; and, supported by the Arab tribes of Okeyl, Tavy, and others, Hasan marched upon Damascus, where the Fatimites were routed, and their general, Giafar, killed. Moizz was forthwith publicly cursed from the pulpit in the Syrian capital, to the qualified satisfaction of the inhabitants, who had to pay handsomely for the pleasure. Hasan next marched to Ramla, and thence, leaving the Fatimite army of eleven thousand men shut up in Jaffa, invaded Egypt. His troops surprised Kulzum at the head of the Red Sea, and Farama (Pelusium), near the Mediterranean, at the two ends of the Egyptian frontier. Tinnis declared against the Fatimites, and Hasan appeared at Heliopolis in October, 971. Gawhar had already intrenched the new capital with a deep ditch, leaving but one entrance, which he closed with an iron gate. He armed the Egyptians as well as the African troops, and a spy was set to watch the wazir Ibn-Furat, lest he should be guilty of treachery. The sherifs of the family of Ali were summoned to the camp, as hostages for the good behavior of the inhabitants. Meanwhile, the officers of the enemy were liberally tempted with bribes. Two months they lay before Cairo, and then, after an indecisive engagement, Hasan stormed the gate, forced his way across the ditch, and attacked the Egyptians on their own ground. The result was a severe repulse, and Hasan retreated, under cover of night, to Kulzum, leaving his camp and baggage to be plundered by the Fatimites, who were only balked of a sanguinary pursuit by the intervention of night. The Egyptian volunteers displayed unexpected valor in the fight, and many of the partisans of the late dynasty, who were with the enemy, were made prisoners. Thus the serious danger, which went near to cutting short the Fatimite occupation of Egypt, was not only resolutely met, but even turned into an advantage. There was no more intriguing on behalf of the Ikshidids; Tinnis was recovered from its temporary defection and occupied by the reinforcements which Moizz had hurriedly despatched under Ibn-Ammar to the succor of Gawhar; and the Karmati fleet, which attempted to recover this fort, was obliged to slip anchor, abandoning seven ships and five hundred prisoners. Jaffa, which still held out resolutely against the besieging Arabs, was now relieved by the despatch of African troops from Cairo, who brought back the garrison, but did not dare to hold the post. The enemy fell back upon Damascus, and the leaders fell out among themselves. The Karmati chief was not crushed, however, by his defeat. In the following year he was collecting ships and Arabs for a fresh invasion. Gawhar, who had long urged his master to come and protect his conquest, now pointed out the extreme danger of a second attack from an enemy which had already succeeded in boldly forcing his way to the gate of Cairo. Moizz had delayed his journey, because he could not safely trust his western provinces in his absence; but on the receipt of this grave news, he appointed Yusuf Bulugin ben Zeyri, of the Berber tribe of Sanhaga, to act as his deputy in Barbary, left Sardaniya--the Fontainebleau of Kayrawan, as Mansuriya was its Versailles--in November, 972, and making a leisurely progress, by way of Kabis, Tripolis, Agdabiya, and Barka, reached Alexandria in the following May. Here the Caliph received a deputation, consisting of the cadi of Fustat and other eminent persons, whom he moved to tears by his eloquent and virtuous discourse. A month later he was encamped in the gardens of the monastery near Giza, where he was reverently welcomed by his devoted servant, Gawhar, content to efface himself in his master's shadow. The entry of the new Caliph into his new capital was a solemn spectacle. With him were all his sons and brothers and kinsfolk, and before him were borne the coffins of his ancestors. Fustat was illuminated and decked for his reception; but Moizz would not enter the old capital of the usurping caliphs. He crossed from Roda by Gawhar's new bridge, and proceeded direct to the palace-city of Cairo. Here he threw himself on his face and gave thanks to God. There was yet an ordeal to be gone through before he could regard himself as safe. Egypt was the home of many undoubted sherifs or descendants of Ali, and these, headed by a representative of the distinguished Tabataba family, came boldly to examine his credentials. Moizz must prove his title to the holy imamate inherited from Ali, to the satisfaction of these experts in genealogy. According to the story, the Caliph called a great assembly of the people, and invited the sherifs to appear; then, half drawing his sword, he said: "Here is my pedigree," and scattering gold among the spectators, added, "and there is my proof." It was perhaps the best argument he could produce. The sherifs could only protest their entire satisfaction at this convincing evidence; and it is at any rate certain that, whatever they thought of the Caliph's claim, they did not contest it. The capital was placarded with his name, and the praises of Ali and Moizz were acclaimed by the people, who flocked to his first public audience. Among the presents offered him, that of Gawhar was especially splendid, and its costliness illustrates the colossal wealth acquired by the Fatimites. It included five hundred horses with saddles and bridles encrusted with gold, amber, and precious stones; tents of silk and cloth of gold, borne on Bactrian camels; dromedaries, mules, and camels of burden; filigree coffers full of gold and silver vessels; gold-mounted swords; caskets of chased silver containing precious stones; a turban set with jewels, and nine hundred boxes filled with samples of all the goods that Egypt produced. GROWTH AND DECADENCE OF CHIVALRY TENTH TO FIFTEENTH CENTURY LÉON GAUTIER (Writers on the history of chivalry are unable to refer its origin to any definite time or place; and even specific definition of chivalry is seldom attempted by careful students. They rather give us, as does Gautier in the picturesque account which follows, some recognized starting-point, and for definition content themselves with characterization of the spirit and aims of chivalry, analysis of its methods, and the story of its rise and fall. Chivalry was not an official institution that came into existence by the decree of a sovereign. Although religious in its original elements and impulses, there was nothing in its origin to remind us of the foundation of a religious order. It would be useless to search for the place of its birth or for the name of its founder. It was born everywhere at once, and has been everywhere at the same time the natural effect of the same aspirations and the same needs. "There was a moment when people everywhere felt the necessity of tempering the ardor of old German blood, and of giving to their ill-regulated passions an ideal. Hence chivalry!" Yet chivalry arose from a German custom which was idealized by the Christian church; and chivalry was more an ideal than an institution. It was "the Christian form of the military profession; the knight was the Christian soldier." True, the profession and mission of the church meant the spread of peace and the hatred of war, she holding with her Master that "they who take the sword shall perish with the sword." Her thought was formulated by St. Augustine: "He who can think of war and can support it without great sorrow is truly dead to human feelings." "It is necessary," he says, "to submit to war, but to wish for peace." The church did, however, look upon war as a divine means of punishment and of expiation, for individuals and nations. And the eloquent Bossuet showed the church's view of war as the terrestrial preparation for the Kingdom of God, and described how empires fall upon one another to form a foundation whereon to build the church. In the light of such interpretations the church availed herself of the militant auxiliary known as chivalry. Along with the religious impulse that animated it, chivalry bore, throughout its purer course, the character of knightliness which it received from Teutonic sources. How the fine sentiments and ennobling customs of the Teutonic nations, particularly with respect to the gallantry and generosity of the male toward the female sex, grew into beautiful combination with the rule of protecting the weak and defenceless everywhere, and how these elements were blended with the spirit of religious devotion which entered into the organization and practices of chivalry, forms one of the most fascinating features in the study of its development; and this gentler side, no less than its sterner aspects, is faithfully presented in the brilliant examination of Gautier. And the heroic sentiment and action which inspired and accomplished the sacred warfare of the Crusades are not less admirably depicted in these pages; while in his summary of the decline of chivalry Gautier has perhaps never been surpassed for penetrating insight and lucid exposition.) There is a sentence of Tacitus--the celebrated passage in the _Germania_--that refers to a German rite in which we really find all the military elements of the future chivalry. The scene took place beneath the shade of an old forest. The barbarous tribe is assembled, and one feels that a solemn ceremony is in preparation. Into the midst of the assembly advances a very young man, whom you can picture to yourself with sea-green eyes, long fair hair, and perhaps some tattooing. A chief of the tribe is present, who without delay places gravely in the hands of the young man a _framea_ and a buckler. Failing a sovereign ruler, it is the father of the youth, or some relative, who undertakes this delivery of weapons. "Such is the 'virile robe' of these people," as Tacitus well puts it; "such is the first honor of their youth. Till then the young man was only one in a family; he becomes by this rite a member of the Republic. _Ante hoc domus pars videtur: mox rei publicae_. This sword and buckler he will never abandon, for the Germans in all their acts, whether public or private, are always armed. So, the ceremony finished, the assembly separates, and the tribe reckons a _miles_--a warrior--the more. That is all!" The solemn handing of arms to the young German--such is the first germ of chivalry which Christianity was one day to animate into life. "_Vestigium vetus creandi equites seu milites_." It is with reason that Sainte-Palaye comments in the very same way upon the text of the _Germania_, and that a scholar of our own days exclaims with more than scientific exactness, "The true origin of _miles_ is this bestowal of arms which among the Germans marks the entry into civil life." No other origin will support the scrutiny of the critic, and he will not find anyone now to support the theory of Roman origin with Sainte-Marie, or that of the Arabian origin with Beaumont. There only remains to explain in this place the term knight (chevalier), but it is well known to be derived from _caballus_, which primarily signifies a beast of burden, a pack-horse, and has ended by signifying a war-horse. The knight, also, has always preserved the name of _miles_ in the Latin tongue of the Middle Ages, in which chivalry is always called _militia_. Nothing can be clearer than this. We do not intend to go further, however, without replying to two objections, which are not without weight, and which we do not wish to leave behind us unanswered. In a certain number of Latin books of the Middle Ages we find, to describe chivalry, an expression which the "Romanists" oppose triumphantly to us, and of which the Romish origin cannot seriously be doubted. When it is intended to signify that a knight has been created, it is stated that the individual has been girt with the _cingulum militare_. Here we find ourselves in full Roman parlance, and the word signified certain terms which described admission into military service, the release from this service, and the degradation of the legionary. When St. Martin left the militia, his action was qualified as _solutio cinguli_, and at all those who act like him the insulting expression _militaribus zonis discincti_ is cast. The girdle which sustains the sword of the Roman officer--_cingulum zona_, or rather _cinctorium_--as also the baldric, from _balteus_, passed over the shoulder and was intended to support the weapon of the common soldier. "You perceive quite well," say our adversaries, "that we have to do with a Roman costume." Two very simple observations will, perhaps, suffice to get to the bottom of such a specious argument: The first is that the Germans in early times wore, in imitation of the Romans, "a wide belt ornamented with bosses of metal," a baldric, by which their swords were suspended on the left side; and the second is that the chroniclers of old days, who wrote in Latin and affected the classic style, very naturally adopted the word _cingulum_ in all its acceptations, and made use of this Latin paraphrasis--_cingulo militari decorare_--to express this solemn adoption of the sword. This evidently German custom was always one of the principal rites of the collation of chivalry. There is then nothing more in it than a somewhat vague reminiscence of a Roman custom with a very natural conjunction of terms which has always been the habit of a literary people. To sum up, the word is Roman, but the thing itself is German. Between the _militia_ of the Romans and the chivalry of the Middle Ages there is really nothing in common but the military profession considered generally. The official admittance of the Roman soldier to an army hierarchically organized in no way resembled the admission of a new knight into a sort of military college and the "pink of society." As we read further the singularly primitive and barbarous ritual of the service of knightly reception in the twelfth century, one is persuaded that the words exhale a German odor, and have nothing Roman about them. But there is another argument, and one which would appear decisive. The Roman legionary could not, as a rule, withdraw from the service; he could not avoid the baldric. The youthful knight of the Middle Ages, on the contrary, was always free to arm himself or not as he pleased, just as other cavaliers are at liberty to leave or join their ranks. The principal characteristic of the knightly service, and one which separates it most decidedly from the Roman _militia_, was its freedom of action. One very specious objection is made as regards feudalism, which some clear-minded people obstinately confound with chivalry. This was the favorite theory of Montalembert. Now there are two kinds of feudalism, which the old feudalists put down very clearly in two words now out of date--"fiefs of dignity" and "fiefs simple." About the middle of the ninth century, the dukes and counts made themselves independent of the central power, and declared that people owed the same allegiance to them as they did to the emperor or the king. Such were the acts of the "fiefs of dignity," and we may at once allow that they had nothing in common with chivalry. The "fiefs simple," then, remained. In the Merovingian period we find a certain number of small proprietors, called _vassi_, commending themselves to other men more powerful and more rich, who were called _seniores_. To his senior who made him a present of land the _vassus_ owed assistance and fidelity. It is true that as early as the reign of Charlemagne he followed him to war, but it must be noted that it was to the emperor, to the central power, that he actually rendered military service. There was nothing very particular in this, but the time was approaching when things would be altered. Toward the middle of the ninth century we find a large number of men falling "on their knees" before other men! What are they about? They are "recommending" themselves, but, in plainer terms, "Protect us and we will be your men." And they added: "It is to you and to you only that we intend in future to render military service; but in exchange you must protect the land we possess--defend what you will in time concede to us; and defend _us_ ourselves." These people on their knees were "vassals" at the feet of their "lords"; and the fief was generally only a grant of land conceded in exchange for military service. Feudalism of this nature has nothing in common with chivalry. If we consider chivalry in fact as a kind of privileged body into which men were received on certain conditions and with a certain ritual, it is important to observe that every vassal is not necessarily a cavalier. There were vassals who, with the object of averting the cost of initiation or for other reasons, remained _damoiseaux_, or pages, all their lives. The majority, of course, did nothing of the kind; but all could do so, and a great many did. On the other hand we see conferred the dignity of chivalry upon insignificant people who had never held fiefs, who owed to no one any fealty, and to whom no one owed any. We cannot repeat too often that it was not the cavalier (or knight), it was the _vassal_ who owed military service, or _ost_, to the _seigneur_, or lord; and the service _in curte_ or _court_: it was the vassal, not the knight, who owed to the "lord" relief, "aid," homage. The feudal system soon became hereditary. Chivalry, on the contrary, has never been hereditary, and a special rite has always been necessary to create a knight. In default of all other arguments this would be sufficient. But if, instead of regarding chivalry as an institution, we consider it as an ideal, the doubt is not really more admissible. It is here that, in the eyes of a philosophic historian, chivalry is clearly distinct from feudalism. If the western world in the ninth century had _not_ been feudalized, chivalry would nevertheless have come into existence; and, notwithstanding everything, it would have come to light in Christendom; for chivalry is nothing more than the Christianized form of military service, the armed _force_ in the service of the unarmed Truth; and it was inevitable that at some time or other it must have sprung, living and fully armed, from the brain of the church, as Minerva did from the brain of Jupiter. Feudalism, on the contrary, is not of Christian origin at all. It is a particular form of government, and of society, which has scarcely been less rigorous for the church than other forms of society and government. Feudalism has disputed with the church over and over again, while chivalry has protected her a hundred times. Feudalism is force--chivalry is the brake. Let us look at Godfrey de Bouillon. The fact that he owed homage to any suzerain, the fact that he exacted service from such and such vassals, are questions which concern feudal rights, and have nothing to do with chivalry. But if I contemplate him in battle beneath the walls of Jerusalem; if I am a spectator of his entry into the Holy City; if I see him ardent, brave, powerful and pure, valiant and gentle, humble and proud, refusing to wear the golden crown in the Holy City where Jesus wore the crown of thorns, I am not then anxious--I am not curious--to learn from whom he holds his fief, or to know the names of his vassals; and I exclaim, "There is the knight!" And how many knights, what chivalrous virtues, have existed in the Christian world since feudalism has ceased to exist! The adoption of arms in the German fashion remains the true origin of chivalry; and the Franks have handed down this custom to us--a custom perpetuated to a comparatively modern period. This simple, almost rude rite so decidedly marked the line of civil life in the code of manners of people of German origin, that under the Carlovingians we still find numerous traces of it. In 791 Louis, eldest son of Charlemagne, was only thirteen years old, and yet he had worn the crown of Aquitaine for three years upon his "baby brow." The king of the Franks felt that it was time to bestow upon this child the military consecration which would more quickly assure him of the respect of his people. He summoned him to Ingelheim, then to Ratisbon, and solemnly girded him with the sword which "makes men." He did not trouble himself about the framea or the buckler--the sword occupied the first place. It will retain it for a long time. In 838 at Kiersy we have a similar scene. This time it is old Louis who, full of sadness and nigh to death, bestows upon his son Charles, whom he loved so well, the "virile arms"--that is to say, the sword. Then immediately afterward he put upon his brow the crown of "Neustria." Charles was fifteen years old. These examples are not numerous, but their importance is decisive, and they carry us to the time when the church came to intervene positively in the education of the German _miles_. The time was rough, and it is not easy to picture a more distracted period than that in the ninth and tenth centuries. The great idea of the Roman Empire no longer, in the minds of the people, coincided with the idea of the Frankish kingdom, but rather inclined, so to speak, to the side of Germany, where it tended to fix itself. Countries were on the way to be formed, and people were asking to which country they could best belong. Independent kingdoms were founded which had no precedents and were not destined to have a long life. The Saracens were for the last time harassing the southern French coasts, but it was not so with the Norman pirates, for they did not cease for a single year to ravage the littoral which is now represented by the Picardy and Normandy coasts, until the day it became necessary to cede the greater part of it to them. People were fighting everywhere more or less--family against family--man to man. No road was safe, the churches were burned, there was universal terror, and everyone sought protection. The king had no longer strength to resist anyone, and the counts made themselves kings. The sun of the realm was set, and one had to look at the stars for light. As soon as the people perceived a strong man-at-arms, resolute, defiant, well established in his wooden keep, well fortified within the lines of his hedge, behind his palisade of dead branches, or within his barriers of planks; well posted on his hill, against his rock, or on his hillock, and dominating all the surrounding country--as soon as they saw this each said to him, "I am your man"; and all these weak ones grouped themselves around the strong one, who next day proceeded to wage war with his neighbors. Thence supervened a terrible series of private wars. Everyone was fighting or thinking of fighting. In addition to this, the still green memory of the grand figure of Charlemagne and the old empire, and I can't tell what imperial splendors, were still felt in the air of great cities; all hearts throbbed at the mere thought of the Saracens and the Holy Sepulchre; the crusade gathered strength of preparation far in advance, in the rage and indignation of all the Christian race; all eyes were turned toward Jerusalem, and in the midst of so many disbandments and so much darkness, the unity of the church survived fallen majesty! It was then, it was in that horrible hour--the decisive epoch in our history--that the church undertook the education of the Christian soldier; and it was at that time, by a resolute step, she found the feudal baron in his rude wooden citadel, and proposed to him an ideal. This ideal was chivalry! That chivalry may be considered a great military confraternity as well as an eighth sacrament, will be conceded. But, before familiarizing themselves with these ideals, the rough spirits of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries had to learn the principles of them. The chivalrous ideal was not conceived "all of a piece," and certainly it did not triumph without sustained effort; so it was by degrees, and very slowly, that the church succeeded in inoculating the almost animal intelligence and the untrained minds of our ancestors with so many virtues. In the hands of the church, which wished to mould him into a Christian knight, the feudal baron was a very intractable individual. No one could be more brutal or more barbarous than he. Our more ancient ballads--those which are founded on the traditions of the ninth and tenth centuries--supply us with a portrait which does not appear exaggerated. I know nothing in this sense more terrible than _Raoul de Cambrai_, and the hero of this old poem would pass for a type of a half-civilized savage. This Raoul was a kind of Sioux or other redskin, who only wanted tattoo and feathers in his hair to be complete. Even a redskin is a believer, or superstitious to some extent, while Raoul defied the Deity himself. The savage respects his mother, as a rule; but Raoul laughed at his mother, who cursed him. Behold him as he invaded the Vermandois, contrary to all the rights of legitimate heirs. He pillaged, burned, and slew in all directions: he was everywhere pitiless, cruel, horrible. But at Origni he appears in all his ferocity. "You will erect my tent in the church, you will make my bed before the altar, and put my hawks on the golden crucifix." Now that church belonged to a convent. What did that signify to him? He burned the convent, he burned the church, he burned the nuns! Among them was the mother of his most faithful servitor, Bernier--his most devoted companion and friend--almost his brother! but he burned her with the others. Then, when the flames were still burning, he sat himself down, on a fast-day, to feast amid the scenes of his sanguinary exploits--defying God and man, his hands steeped in blood, his face lifted to heaven. That was the kind of soldier, the savage of the tenth century, whom the church had to educate! Unfortunately this Raoul de Cambrai is not a unique specimen; he was not the only one who had uttered this ferocious speech: "I shall not be happy until I see your heart cut out of your body." Aubri de Bourguignon was not less cruel, and took no trouble to curb his passions. Had he the right to massacre? He knew nothing about that, but meanwhile he continued to kill. "Bah!" he would say, "it is always an enemy the less." On one occasion he slew his four cousins. He was as sensual as cruel. His thick-skinned savagery did not appear to feel either shame or remorse; he was strong and had a weighty hand--that was sufficient. Ogier was scarcely any better, but notwithstanding all the glory attaching to his name, I know nothing more saddening than the final episode of the rude poem attributed to Raimbert of Paris. The son of Ogier, Baudouinet, had been slain by the son of Charlemagne, who called himself Charlot. Ogier did nothing but breathe vengeance, and would not agree to assist Christendom against the Saracen invaders unless the unfortunate Charlot was delivered to him. He wanted to kill him, he determined to kill him, and he rejoiced over it in anticipation. In vain did Charlot humble himself before this brute, and endeavor to pacify him by the sincerity of his repentance; in vain the old Emperor himself prayed most earnestly to God; in vain the venerable Naimes, the Nestor of our ballads, offered to serve Ogier all the rest of his life, and begged the Dane "not to forget the Saviour, who was born of the Virgin at Bethlehem." All their devotion and prayers were unavailing. Ogier, pitiless, placed one of his heavy hands on the youthful head, and with the other drew his sword, his terrible sword "Courtain." Nothing less than the intervention of an angel from heaven could have put an end to this terrible scene in which all the savagery of the German forests was displayed. The majority of these early heroes had no other shibboleth than "I am going to separate the head from the trunk!" It was their war-cry. But if you desire something more frightful still, something more "primitive," you have only to open the _Loherains_ at hazard, and read a few stanzas of that raging ballad of "derring-do," and you will almost fancy you are perusing one of those pages in which Livingstone describes in such indignant terms the manners of some tribe in Central Africa. Read this: "Begue struck Isore upon his black helmet through the golden circlet, cutting him to the chine; then he plunged into his body his sword Flamberge with the golden hilt; took the heart out with both hands, and threw it, still warm, at the head of William, saying, 'There is your cousin's heart; you can salt and roast it.'" Here words fail us; it would be too tame to say with Goedecke, "These heroes act like the forces of nature, in the manner of the hurricane which knows no pity." We must use more indignant terms than these, for we are truly amid cannibals. Once again we say, there was the warrior, there was the savage whom the church had to elevate and educate! Such is the point of departure of this wonderful progress; such are the refractory elements out of which chivalry and the knight have been fashioned. The point of departure is Raoul of Cambrai burning Origni. The point of arrival is Girard of Roussillon falling one day at the feet of an old priest and expiating his former pride by twenty-two years of penitence. These two episodes embrace many centuries between them. A very interesting study might be made of the gradual transformation from the redskin to the knight; it might be shown how, and at what period of history, each of the virtues of chivalry penetrated victoriously into the undisciplined souls of these brutal warriors who were our ancestors; it might be determined at what moment the church became strong enough to impose upon our knights the great duties of defending it and of loving one another. This victory was attained in a certain number of cases undoubtedly toward the end of the eleventh century: and the knight appears to us perfected, finished, radiant, in the most ancient edition of the _Chanson of Roland_, which is considered to have been produced between 1066 and 1095. It is scarcely necessary to observe that chivalry was no longer in course of establishment when Pope Urban II threw with a powerful hand the whole of the Christian West upon the East, where the Tomb of Christ was in possession of the Infidel. In legendary lore the embodiment of chivalry is Roland: in history it is Godfrey de Bouillon. There are no more worthy names than these. The decadence of chivalry--and when one is speaking of human institutions, sooner or later this word must be used--perhaps set in sooner than historians can believe. We need not attach too much importance to the grumblings of certain poets, who complain of their time with an evidently exaggerated bitterness, and we do not care for our own part to take literally the testimony of the unknown author of _La Vie de Saint Alexis_, who exclaims--about the middle of the eleventh century--that everything is degenerate and all is lost! Thus: "In olden times the world was good. Justice and love were springs of action in it. People then had faith, which has disappeared from amongst us. The world is entirely changed. The world has lost its healthy color. It is pale--it has grown old. It is growing worse, and will soon cease altogether." The poet exaggerates in a very singular manner the evil which he perceives around him, and one might aver that, far from bordering upon old age, chivalry was then almost in the very zenith of its glory. The twelfth century was its apogee, and it was not until the thirteenth that it manifested the first symptoms of decay. "_Li maus est moult want_" exclaims the author of _Godfrey de Bouillon_, and he adds, sadly, "_Tos li biens est finés_." He was more correct in speaking thus than was the author of _Saint Alexis_ in his complainings, for the decadence of chivalry actually commenced in his time. And it is not unreasonable to inquire into the causes of its decay. _The Romance of the Round Table_, which in the opinion of prepossessed or thoughtless critics appears so profoundly chivalrous, may be considered one of the works which hastened the downfall of chivalry. We are aware that by this seeming paradox we shall probably scandalize some of our readers, who look upon these adventurous cavaliers as veritable knights. What does it matter? _Avienne que puet_. The heroes of our _chansons de geste_ are really the authorized representatives and types of the society of their time, and not those fine adventure-seeking individuals who have been so brilliantly sketched by the pencil of Crétien de Troyes. It is true, however, that this charming and delicate spirit did not give, in his works, an accurate idea of his century and generation. We do not say that he embellished all he touched, but only that he enlivened it. Notwithstanding all that one could say about it, this school introduced the old Gaelic spirit into a poetry which had been till then chiefly Christian or German. Our epic poems are of German origin, and the _Table Round_ is of Celtic origin. Sensual and light, witty and delicate, descriptive and charming, these pleasing romances are never masculine, and become too often effeminate and effeminating. They sing always, or nearly so, the same theme. By lovely pasturages clothed with beautiful flowers, the air full of birds, a young knight proceeds in search of the unknown, and through a series of adventures whose only fault is that they resemble one another somewhat too closely. We find insolent defiances, magnificent duels, enchanted castles, tender love-scenes, mysterious talismans. The marvellous mingles with the supernatural, magicians with saints, fairies with angels. The whole is written in a style essentially French, and it must be confessed in clear, polished, and chastened language--perfect! But we must not forget, as we said just now, that this poetry, so greatly attractive, began as early as the twelfth century to be the mode universally; and let us not forget that it was at the same period that the _Percevalde Gallois_ and _Aliscans, Cleomadès_, and the _Couronnement Looys_ were written. The two schools have coexisted for many centuries: both camps have enjoyed the favor of the public. But in such a struggle it was all too easy to decide to which of them the victory would eventually incline. The ladies decided it, and no doubt the greater number of them wept over the perusal of _Erec_ or _Enid_ more than over that of the _Covenant Vivien_ or _Raoul de Cambrai_. When the grand century of the Middle Ages had closed, when the blatant thirteenth century commenced, the sentimental had already gained the advantage over our old classic _chansons_; and the new school, the romantic set of the _Table Round_, triumphed! Unfortunately, they also triumphed in their manners; and they were the knights of the Round Table who, with the Valois, seated themselves upon the throne of France. In this way temerity replaced true courage; so good, polite manners replaced heroic rudeness; so foolish generosity replaced the charitable austerity of the early chivalry. It was the love of the unforeseen even in the military art; the rage for adventure--even in politics. We know whither this strategy and these theatrical politics led us, and that Joan of Arc and Providence were required to drag us out of the consequences. The other causes of the decadence of the spirit of chivalry are more difficult to determine. There is one of them which has not, perhaps, been sufficiently brought to light, and this is--will it be believed?--the exdevelopment of certain orders of chivalry! This statement requires some explanation. We must confess that we are enthusiastic, passionate admirers of these grand military orders which were formed at the commencement of the twelfth century. There have never been their like in the world, and it was only given to Christianity to display to us such a spectacle. To give to one single soul the double ideal of the soldier and the monk, to impose upon him this double charge, to fix in one these two conditions and in one only these two duties, to cause to spring from the earth I cannot tell how many thousands of men who voluntarily accepted this burden, and who were not crushed by it--that is a problem which one might have been pardoned for thinking insoluble. We have not sufficiently considered it. We have not pictured to ourselves with sufficient vividness the Templars and the Hospitallers in the midst of one of those great battles in the Holy Land in which the fate of the world was in the balance. No: painters have not sufficiently portrayed them in the arid plains of Asia forming an incomparable squadron in the midst of the battle. One might talk forever and yet not say too much about the charge of the Cuirassiers at Reichshoffen; but how many times did the Hospitaller knights and the Templars charge in similar fashion? Those soldier-monks, in truth, invented a new idea of courage. Unfortunately they were not always fighting, and peace troubled some of them. They became too rich, and their riches lowered them in the eyes of men and before heaven. We do not intend to adopt all the calumnies which have been circulated concerning the Templars, but it is difficult not to admit that many of these accusations had some foundation. The Hospitallers, at any rate, have given no ground for such attacks. They, thank heaven, remained undefiled, if not poor, and were an honor to that chivalry which others had compromised and emasculated. But when all is said, that which best became chivalry, the spice which preserved it the most surely, was poverty! Love of riches had not only attacked the chivalrous orders, but in a very short space of time all knights caught the infection. Sensuality and enjoyment had penetrated into their castles. "Scarcely had they received the knightly baldric before they commenced to break the commandments and to pillage the poor. When it became necessary to go to war, their sumpter-horses were laden with wine, and not with weapons; with leathern bottles instead of swords; with spits instead of lances. One might have fancied, in truth, that they were going out to dinner, and not to fight. It is true their shields were beautifully gilt, but they were kept in a virgin and unused condition. Chivalrous combats were represented upon their bucklers and their saddles, certainly; but that was all!" Now who is it who writes thus? It is not, as one might fancy, an author of the fifteenth century--it is a writer of the twelfth; and the greatest satirist, somewhat excessive and unjust in his statements, the Christian Juvenal whom we have just quoted, was none other than Peter of Blois. A hundred other witnesses might be cited in support of these indignant words. But if there is some exaggeration in them, we are compelled to confess that there is a considerable substratum of truth also. These abuses--which wealth engendered, which more than one poet has stigmatized--attracted, in the fourteenth century, the attention of an important individual, a person whose name occupies a worthy place in literature and history. Philip of Mezières, chancellor of Cyprus under Peter of Lusignan, was a true knight, who one day conceived the idea of reforming chivalry. Now the way he found most feasible in accomplishing his object, in arriving at such a difficult and complex reform, was to found a new order of chivalry himself, to which he gave the high-sounding title of "the Chivalry of the Passion of Christ." The decadence of chivalry is attested, alas! by the very character of the reformers by which this well-meaning Utopian attempted to oppose it. The good knight complains of the great advances of sensuality, and permits and advises the marriage of all knights. He complains of the accursed riches which the Hospitallers themselves were putting to a bad use, and forbade them in his _Institutions_; but nevertheless the luxurious habits of his time had an influence upon his mind, and he permitted his knights to wear the most extravagant costumes, and the dignitaries of his order to adopt the most high-sounding titles. There was something mystical in all this conception, and something theatrical in all this agency. It is hardly necessary to add that the "Chivalry of the Passion" was only a beautiful dream, originating in a generous mind. Notwithstanding the adherence of some brilliant personages, the order never attained to more than a theoretical organization, and had only a fictitious foundation. The idea of the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre from the Infidel was hardly the object of the fifteenth-century chivalry; for the struggle between France and England then was engaging the most courageous warriors and the most practised swords. Decay hurried on apace! This was not the only cause of such a fatal falling away. The portals of chivalry had been opened to too many unworthy candidates. It had been made vulgar! In consequence of having become so cheap the grand title of "knight" was degraded. Eustace Deschamps, in his fine, straightforward way, states the scandal boldly and "lashes" it with his tongue. He says: "Picture to yourself the fact that the degree of knighthood is about to be conferred now upon babies of eight and ten years old." Well might this excellent man exclaim in another place: "Disorders always go on gathering strength, and even incomparable knights like Du Guesclin and Bayard cannot arrest the fatal course of the institution toward ruin." Chivalry was destined to disappear. It is very important that one should make one's self acquainted with the true character of such a downfall. France and England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries still boasted many high-bred knights. They exchanged the most superb defiances, the most audacious challenges, and proceeded from one country to another to run each other through the body proudly. The Beaumanoirs, who drank their blood, abounded. It was a question who would engage himself in the most incredible pranks; who would commit the most daring folly! They tell us afterward of the beautiful passages of arms, the grand feats performed, and the inimitable Froissart is the most charming of all these narrators, who make their readers as chivalrous as themselves. But we must tell everything: among these knights in beautiful armor there was a band of adventurers who never observed, and who could not understand, certain commandments of the ancient chivalry. The laxity of luxury had everywhere replaced the rigorous enactments of the old manliness, and even warriors themselves loved their ease too much. The religious sentiment was not the dominant one in their minds, in which the idea of a crusade now never entered. They had not sufficient respect for the weakness of the Church nor for other failings. They no longer felt themselves the champions of the good and the enemies of evil. Their sense of justice had become warped, as had love for their great native land. Again, what they termed "the license of camps" had grown very much worse; and we know in what condition Joan of Arc found the army of the King. Blasphemy and ribaldry in every quarter. The noble girl swept away these pests, but the effect of her action was not long-lived. She was the person to reestablish chivalry, which in her found the purity of its now-effaced type; but she died too soon, and had not sufficient imitators. There were, after her time, many chivalrous souls, and, thank heaven, there are still some among us; but the old institution is no longer with us. The events which we have had the misfortune to witness do not give us any ground to hope that chivalry, extinct and dead, will rise again to-morrow to light and life. In St. Louis' time, caricature and parody--they were low-class forces, but forces nevertheless--had already commenced the work of destruction. We are in possession of an abominable little poem of the thirteenth century, which is nothing but a scatological pamphlet directed against chivalry. This ignoble _Audigier_, the author of which is the basest of men, is not the only attack which one may disinter from amid the literature of that period. If one wishes to draw up a really complete list it would be necessary to include the _jabliaux_--the _Renart_ and the _Rose_, which constitute the most anti-chivalrous--I had nearly written the most Voltairian--works that I am acquainted with. The thread is easy enough to follow from the twelfth century down to the author of _Don Quixote_--which I do not confound with its infamous predecessors-- to Cervantes, whose work has been fatal, but whose mind was elevated. However that may be, parody and the parodists were themselves a cause of decay. They weakened morals. Gallic-like, they popularized little _bourgeois_ sentiments, narrow-minded, satirical sentiments; they inoculated manly souls with contempt for such great things as one performs disinterestedly. This disdain is a sure element of decay, and we may regard it as an announcement of death. Against the knights who, here and there, showed themselves unworthy and degenerate, was put in practice the terrible apparatus of degradation. Modern historians of chivalry have not failed to describe in detail all the rites of this solemn punishment, and we have presented to us a scene which is well calculated to excite the imagination of the most matter-of-fact, and to make the most timid heart swell. The knight judicially condemned to submit to this shame was first conducted to a scaffold, where they broke or trod under foot all his weapons. He saw his shield, with device effaced, turned upside down and trailed in the mud. Priests, after reciting prayers for the vigil of the dead, pronounced over his head the psalm, "_Deus laudem meam_," which contains terrible maledictions against traitors. The herald of arms who carried out this sentence took from the hands of the pursuivant of arms a basin full of dirty water, and threw it all over the head of the recreant knight in order to wash away the sacred character which had been conferred upon him by the accolade. The guilty one, degraded in this way, was subsequently thrown upon a hurdle, or upon a stretcher, covered with a mortuary cloak, and finally carried to the church, where they repeated the same prayers and the same ceremonies as for the dead. This was really terrible, even if somewhat theatrical, and it is easy to see that this complicated ritual contained only a very few ancient elements. In the twelfth century the ceremonial of degradation was infinitely more simple. The spurs were hacked off close to the heels of the guilty knight. Nothing could be more summary or more significant. Such a person was publicly denounced as unworthy to ride on horseback, and consequently quite unworthy to be a knight. The more ancient and chivalrous, the less theatrical is it. It is so in many other institutions in the histories of all nations. That such a penalty may have prevented a certain number of treasons and forfeitures we willingly admit, but one cannot expect it to preserve all the whole body of chivalry from that decadence from which no institution of human establishment can escape. Notwithstanding inevitable weaknesses and accidents, the Decalogue of Chivalry has none the less been regnant in some millions of souls which it has made pure and great. These ten commandments have been the rules and the reins of youthful generations, who without them would have been wild and undisciplined. This legislation, in fact--which, to tell the truth, is only one of the chapters of the great Catholic Code--has raised the moral level of humanity. Besides, chivalry is not yet quite dead. No doubt, the ritual of chivalry, the solemn reception, the order itself, and the ancient oaths, no longer exist. No doubt, among these grand commandments there are many which are known only to the erudite, and which the world is unacquainted with. The Catholic Faith is no longer the essence of modern chivalry; the Church is no longer seated on the throne around which the old knights stand with their drawn swords; Islam is no longer the hereditary enemy; we have another which threatens us nearer home; widows and orphans have need rather of the tongues of advocates than of the iron weapon of the knights; there are no more duties toward liege-lords to be fulfilled; and we even do not want any kind of superior lord at all; _largesse_ is now confounded with charity; and the becoming hatred of evil-doing is no longer our chief, our best, passion! But whatever we may do there still remains to us, in the marrow, a certain leaven of chivalry which preserves us from death. There are still in the world an immense number of fine souls--strong and upright souls--who hate all that is small and mean, who know and who practise all the delicate promptings of honor, and who prefer death to an unworthy action or to a lie! That is what we owe to chivalry, that is what it has bequeathed to us. On the day when these last vestiges of such a grand past are effaced from our souls--we shall cease to exist! CONVERSION OF VLADIMIR THE GREAT INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY INTO RUSSIA A.D. 988-1015 A. N. MOURAVIEFF (According to early Greek and Roman writers, Russia in their time was inhabited by Scythians and Sarmatians. The Greeks established commercial relations with the most southerly tribes. In the fourth and fifth centuries, during the migrations of the nations, Russia was invaded by Goths, Alans, Huns, Avars, and Bulgarians, who, however, made no settlements. They were followed by the Slavs, who are looked upon as the Sarmatians already mentioned. The Slavs settled as far north as the upper Volga. The chief settlements were Novgorod and Kieff, which became the capitals of independent principalities, Novgorod especially becoming an important commercial and trading centre. The commerce northward through the Baltic was subject to the attacks of the Scandinavian Northmen, known as Varangians. They demanded tribute of the Slavs, and on its refusal attacked and captured Novgorod. A little later Novgorod established its independence as a republic; but within a few years we find this section controlled by a Varangian tribe from Rus, a district of Sweden. This tribe was led by three brothers, Ruric the Peaceful, Sineous the Victorious, and Trouvor the Faithful, who settled and ruled in different parts of the country. In 864, on the death of his brothers, Ruric consolidated their territories with his, assumed the title of grand prince, peaceably took possession of Novgorod and made it his capital, naming the country Russia, after his native place. With the advent of the Varangians the authentic history of Russia begins. The millenary of that event was celebrated in 1862 at Novgorod, as the foundation of the Russian empire. Ruric died in 879. In the next hundred years his successors conquered many neighboring lands and added them to the empire. Kieff became the capital. Numerous invasions into the territory of the Greek empire were made and Constantinople was frequently attacked, resulting sometimes in repulse, and at others in exacting heavy tribute from the Eastern Emperor. Treaties were executed and a gradual growth of commerce and intercourse between the Greeks and Russians took place. Olga, the famous and popular widow of Ruric's son, Igor, became a Christian and was baptized in Constantinople in 955, and during the rest of her life lent her powerful influence to the spread of the faith. And though her son, the emperor Sviatoslaf, remained a pagan throughout his reign, Christianity continued to grow, and the general Christianization of Russia during the reign of her grandson, Vladimir, was aided materially by the great example of the good queen Olga. In 970 Sviatoslaf divided his empire among his three sons, Iaropolk I, Oleg, and Vladimir. After the death of Sviatoslaf in 972 civil war began between the three brothers. Oleg was killed and Vladimir fled to Sweden. In 980, supported by a force of Varangians, Vladimir returned, captured Novgorod and Kieff, and put Iaropolk to death. Under Vladimir, later known as Vladimir the Great, Russia increased in importance, and civilization was enhanced by the spread of Christianity through the missionary efforts of the Greek Church, now the Holy, Orthodox, Catholic, Apostolic, Oriental Church. It is, therefore, not strange that the Russian prelates were distinguished by their loyalty and fidelity to the Greek Church throughout the continued conflicts between it and the Roman Church which resulted in their separation in 1054. In the fifteenth century, with the consent of the patriarchate of Constantinople, the Orthodox Graeco-Russian Church assumed national independence, and became the state church; and after the establishment of Mahometanism in Constantinople, since its capture by Mahomet II in 1453, the reigning Czar of Russia has come to be regarded not only as the temporal and spiritual head of the Greek Church by the great mass of adherents which form the bulk of the population in Russia, but also as the champion of all the followers of the church in Greece and throughout the orient. The story of the introduction of Christianity into Russia presents an interesting psychological study of the growth and development of the religious sentiment inherent in man--be he never so brutalized and barbarous. Notwithstanding its display of national pride and bias, pardonable in a native historian, Mouravieff's account is exceedingly interesting.) The Russian Church, like the other orthodox churches of the East, had an apostle for its founder. St. Andrew, the first called of the Twelve, hailed with his blessing long beforehand the destined introduction of Christianity into our country; ascending up and penetrating by the Dnieper into the deserts of Scythia, he planted the first cross on the hills of Kieff. "See you," said he to his disciples, "these hills? On these hills shall shine the light of divine grace. There shall be here a great city, and God shall have in it many churches to his name." Such are the words of the holy Nestor, the monk and annalist of the Pechersky monastery, that point from whence Christian Russia has sprung. But it was only after an interval of nine centuries that the rays of divine light beamed upon Russia from the walls of Byzantium, in which city the same apostle, St. Andrew, had appointed Stachys to be the first bishop, and so committed, as it were, to him and to his successors, in the spirit of prescience, the charge of that wide region in which he had himself preached Christ. Hence the indissoluble connection of the Russian with the Greek Church, and the dependence of her metropolitans during six centuries upon the patriarchal throne of Constantinople, until, with its consent, she obtained her own equality and independence in that which was accorded to her native primates. The Bulgarians of the Danube, the Moravians, and the Slavonians of Illyria had been already enlightened by holy baptism about the middle of the ninth century, during the reign of the Greek emperor Michael and the patriarchate of the illustrious Photius. St. Cyril and St. Methodius, two learned Greek brothers, translated into the Slavonic the New Testament and the books used in divine service, and according to some accounts even the whole Bible. This translation of the Word of God became afterward a most blessed instrument for the conversion of the Russians, for the missionaries were by it enabled to expound the truths of the Gospel to the heathens in their native dialect, and so win for them a readier entrance to their hearts. Oskold and Dir, two princes of Kieff and the companions of Ruric, were the first of the Russians who embraced Christianity. In the year 866 they made their appearance in armed vessels before the walls of Constantinople when the Emperor was absent, and threw the Greek capital into no little alarm and confusion. Tradition reports that "The patriarch Photius took the virginal robe of the Mother of God from the Blachern Church, and plunged it beneath the waves of the strait, when the sea immediately boiled up from underneath and wrecked the vessels of the heathen. Struck with awe, they believed in that God who had smitten them, and became the first-fruits of their people to the Lord." The hymn of victory of the Greek Church, "To the protecting Conductress," in honor of the most holy Virgin, has remained a memorial of this triumph, and even now concludes the _Office for the First Hour_ in the daily _Matins_; for that was, indeed, the first hour of salvation to the land of Russia. It is probable that on their return to their own country the princes of Kieff sowed there the seeds of Christianity; for, eighty years afterward, on occasion of a conference for peace between the prince Igor and certain Byzantine ambassadors, we find mention already of a "Church of the Prophet Elias" in Kieff where the Christian Varangians swore to the observance of the treaty. Constantine Porphyrogenitus and other Greek annalists even relate that in the lifetime of Oskold there was a bishop sent to the Russians by the emperor Basil the Macedonian, and the patriarch St. Ignatius, and that he made many converts, chiefly "in consequence of the miraculous preservation of a volume of the Gospels, which was thrown publicly into the flames and taken out after some time unconsumed." Also in Condinus, _Catalogue of Sees Subject to the Patriarch of Constantinople_, the metropolitical see of Russia appears as early as the year 891. Lastly, it is certain that many of the Varangians who served in the imperial bodyguard were Christians, and that the Greek sovereigns never lost sight of any opportunity of converting them to their own faith, by which they hoped to soften their savage manners. When the emperor Leo was concluding a peace with Oleg, he showed not only his own treasures to the ambassadors of the Russian prince, but also the splendor of the churches, the holy relics, the precious _icons_, and the "Instruments of the Passion of our Lord," if by any means they might catch from them the spirit of the faith. Some such influences as these, while Christianity as yet was only struggling for an uncertain existence at Kieff, produced in good time their effect on the wisest of the daughters of the Slavonians, the widowed princess Olga, who governed Russia during the minority of her son Sviatoslaf. She undertook a voyage to Constantinople for no other end than to obtain a knowledge of the true God, and there she received baptism at the hands of the patriarch Polyeuctes; the emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus himself, who admired her wisdom, being her godfather. Nestor draws an affecting picture of the patriarch foretelling to the newly illumined princess the blessings which were to descend by her means on future generations of the Russians, while Olga, now become Helena by baptism--that she might resemble both in name and deed the mother of Constantine the Great--stood meekly bowing down her head and drinking in, as a sponge that is thirsty of moisture, the instructions of the prelate concerning the canons of the Church, fasting, prayer, almsgiving, and continence, all which she observed with exactness on her return to her own country. Although, in spite of all her entreaties, the fierce and warlike prince Sviatoslaf persisted in refusing to humble his proud heart under the meek yoke of Christ, he had still so much affection for his mother as not to persecute such as agreed with her in religion, but even to allow them freely to make open profession of their faith under the protection of that princess. He confided his children to her care during his incessant military expeditions, and so enabled her to confirm the saving impressions of Christianity among the people who respected her, and to instil them into the mind of her young grandson Vladimir; for nothing sinks so deep into the heart as the simple-and affectionate words of a mother. The princess had with her a priest named Gregory, whom she had brought from Constantinople, and by him she was buried after her death in the spot which she had herself appointed, without any of the usual pagan ceremonies. The people, by whom she had been surnamed "the Wise" during life, began to bless her for a saint after her death, when they came themselves to follow the example of this "Morning Star" which had risen and gone before to lead Russia into the path of salvation. Nowhere has Christianity ever been less persecuted at its first introduction than in our own country. The _Chronicle_ speaks of only two Christian martyrs, the Varangians Theodore and John, who were put to death by the fury of the people because one of them, from natural affection, had refused to give up his son when he had been devoted by the prince Vladimir to be offered as a sacrifice to Peroun. Probably the very zeal of this prince for the heathen deities, to whom he set up statues and multiplied altars, may have inspired the neighboring nations with the desire of converting so powerful a ruler to their respective creeds; and thus his blind impulse toward the Deity, which was unknown to him, received a true direction. The Mahometan Bulgarians were the first to send ambassadors to him, with the offer of their faith; but the mercy of Providence--for so it plainly was--inspired him to give them a decided refusal on the ground that he did not choose to comply with some of their regulations; though else a sensual religion might well have enticed a man who was given up to the indulgence of his passions. The Chazarian Jews flattered themselves with the hope of attracting the Prince by boasting of their religion and the ancient glory of Jerusalem. "But where," demanded the wise grandson of Olga, "is your country?" "It is ruined by the wrath of God for the sins of our fathers," was their answer. Vladimir then said that he had no mind to embrace the law of a people whom God had abandoned. There came also western doctors from Germany, who would have persuaded Vladimir to embrace Christianity, but their Christianity seemed strange to him; for Russia had hitherto no acquaintance but with Byzantium. "Return home," he said; "our ancestors did not receive this religion from you." A Greek embassy had the best success of them all. A certain philosopher, a monk named Constantine, after having exposed the insufficiency of other religions, eloquently set before the Prince those judgments of God which are in the world, the redemption of the human race by the blood of Christ, and the retribution of the life to come. His discourse powerfully affected the heathen monarch, who was burdened with the heavy sins of a tumultuous youth; and this was particularly the case when the monk pointed out to him on an icon, which represented the last judgment, the different lot of the just and of the wicked. "Good to these on the right hand, but woe to those on the left!" exclaimed Vladimir, deeply affected. But sensual nature still struggled in him against heavenly truth. Having dismissed the missionary, or ambassador, with presents, he still hesitated to decide, and wished first to examine further concerning the faith, in concert with the elders of his council, that all Russia might have a share in his conversion. The council of the Prince decided to send chosen men to make their observations on each religion on the spot where it was professed; and this public agreement explains in some degree the sudden and general acceptance of Christianity which shortly after followed in Russia. It is probable that not only the chiefs, but the common people also, were expecting and ready for the change. The Greek emperors did not fail to profit by this favorable opportunity, and the patriarch himself in person celebrated the divine liturgy in the Church of St. Sophia with the utmost possible magnificence before the astonished ambassadors of Vladimir. The sublimity and splendor of the service struck them; but we do not ascribe to the mere external impression that softening of the hearts of these heathens, on which depended the conversion of a whole nation. From the very earliest times of the Church, extraordinary signs of God's power have constantly gone hand-in-hand with that apparent weakness of man by which the Gospel was preached; and so also the _Byzantine Chronicle_ relates of the Russian ambassadors, "That during the Divine liturgy, at the time of carrying the Holy Gifts in procession to the throne or altar and singing the cherubic hymn, the eyes of their spirits were opened, and they saw, as in an ecstasy, glittering youths who joined in singing the hymn of the 'Thrice Holy.'" Being thus fully persuaded of the truth of the orthodox faith, they returned to their own country already Christians in heart, and without saying a word before the Prince in favor of the other religions, they declared thus concerning the Greek: "When we stood in the temple we did not know where we were, for there is nothing else like it upon earth: there in truth God has his dwelling with men; and we can never forget the beauty we saw there. No one who has once tasted sweets will afterward take that which is bitter; nor can we now any longer abide in heathenism." Then the _boyars_ said to Vladimir: "If the religion of the Greeks had not been good, your grandmother Olga, who was the wisest of women, would not have embraced it." The weight of the name of Olga decided her grandson, and he said no more in answer than these words: "Where shall we be baptized?" But Vladimir, led by a sense which had not yet been purged by Greece, thought it best to follow the custom of his ancestors, who made warlike descents upon Constantinople, and so win to himself, sword in hand, his new religion. He embarked his warriors on board their vessels and attacked Cherson in the Taurid, a city which was subject to the emperors Basil and Constantine. After a long and unsuccessful siege a certain priest, named Anastasius, by means of an arrow shot from the town, informed the Prince that the fate of the besieged depended upon his cutting off the aqueducts, which supplied them with water. Vladimir in great joy made a vow that he would be baptized if he gained possession of the town; and he did gain possession of it. Then he sent to Constantinople to demand from the Greek Emperor the hand of their sister Anna, and they in answer proposed as a condition that he should embrace Christianity; for though they themselves desired an alliance with so powerful a prince, they at the same time took care to follow the prudent and pious policy of their predecessors, who had ever sought to bring their fierce neighbors under the humanizing influence of the faith. The Prince declared his consent; because, in his own words, he had "long since examined and conceived a love for the Greek law." It was her faith alone which influenced the princess to sacrifice herself at once for the temporal interests of her own country and for the eternal welfare of a strange people. Accompanied by a venerable body of clergy, she sailed for Cherson, and on her arrival induced the Prince to hasten his baptism. "For it was so ordered," says the pious annalist, "by the wisdom of God, that the sight of the Prince was at that time much affected by a complaint of the eyes, but at the moment that the Bishop of Cherson laid his hands upon him, when he had risen up out of the bath of regeneration, Vladimir suddenly received not only spiritual illumination, but also the bodily sight of his eyes, and cried out, 'Now I have seen the true God!'" Many of the Prince's suite were so struck by his miraculous recovery that they followed his example and were baptized in like manner; and these were doubtless afterward zealous for the introduction of Christianity into their country. The baptism and marriage of Vladimir were both celebrated in the Church of the Most Holy Mother of God; and hence, no doubt, arose his peculiar zeal for the most pure Virgin, to whose honor he afterward erected a cathedral church in his own city of Kieff. In Cherson itself he built a church, in the name of his angel or patron St. Basil; and taking with him the relics of St. Clement, Bishop of Rome, and his disciple Thebas, with church vessels and ornaments and icons, he restored the city to be again under the power of the emperors, and returned to Kieff, accompanied by the princess, their daughter, and her Greek ecclesiastics. Nestor makes no mention of any of the bishops and priests from Constantinople and Cherson who followed in the train of the Prince, excepting only of one, Anastasius, the priest who had rendered him such good service during the siege; but the _Books of the Genealogies_ give the name of Michael, a Syrian by birth, and of six other bishops who were sent together with him to Cherson by the patriarch Nicholas Chrysoberges. Some have ventured to suppose that Michael was the name of the bishop of the times of Oskold; but Nestor says nothing about him, and this much only is certain, that he stands the first in the list of the metropolitans of Russia. After his return to Kieff the "Great Prince" caused his twelve sons to be baptized, and proceeded to destroy the monuments of heathenism. He ordered Peroun to be thrown into the Dnieper. The people at first followed their idol, as it was borne down the stream, but were soon quieted when they saw that the statue had no power to help itself. And now Vladimir, being surrounded and supported by believers in his own domestic circle, and encouraged by seeing that his boyars and suite were prepared and ready to embrace the faith, made a proclamation to the people, "That whoever, on the morrow, should not repair to the river, whether rich or poor, he should hold him for his enemy." At the call of their respected lord all the multitude of the citizens in troops, with their wives and children, flocked to the Dnieper; and without any manner of opposition received holy baptism as a nation from the Greek bishops and priests. Nestor draws a touching picture of this baptism of a whole people at once: "Some stood in the water up to their necks, others up to their breasts, holding their young children in their arms; the priests read the prayers from the shore, naming at once whole companies by the same name." He who was the means of thus bringing them to salvation, filled with a transport of joy at the affecting sight, cried out to the Lord, offering and commending into his hands himself and his people: "O great God! who hast made heaven and earth, look down upon these thy new people. Grant them, O Lord, to know thee the true God, as thou hast been made known to Christian lands, and confirm in them a true and unfailing faith; and assist me, O Lord, against my enemy that opposes me, that, trusting in thee and in thy power, I may overcome all his wiles." Vladimir erected the first church--that of St. Basil, after whom he was named--on the very mount which had formerly been sacred to Peroun, adjoining his own palace. Thus was Russia enlightened. So sudden and ready a conversion of the inhabitants of Kieff might well seem improbable--that is, unless effected by violence--did we not attend to the fact that the Russians had been gradually becoming enlightened ever since the times of Oskold, for more than a hundred years, by means of commerce, treaties of peace, and relations of every kind with the Greeks, as well as with the Bulgarians and Slavonians of kindred origin with ourselves, who had already been long in possession of the Holy Scriptures in their own language. The constant endeavors of the Greek emperors for the conversion of the Russians by means of their ambassadors and preachers, the tolerance of the princes, the example and protection of Olga, and the very delay and hesitation of Vladimir in selecting his religion must have favorably disposed the minds of the people toward it; especially if it be true, as has been asserted, that Russia had already had a bishop in the time of Oskold. In a similar way, though under different circumstances, in the vast Roman Empire, the conversion of Constantine the Great suddenly rendered Christianity the dominant religion, because, in fact, it had long before penetrated among all ranks of his subjects. Vladimir engaged zealously in building churches throughout the towns and villages of his dominions, and sent priests to preach in them. He also founded many towns all around Kieff, and so propagated and confirmed the Christian religion in the neighborhood of the capital, from whence the new colonies were sent forth. Neither was he slow in establishing schools, into which he brought together the children of the boyars, sometimes even in spite of the unwillingness of their rude parents. In the mean time the Metropolitan with his bishops made progresses into the interior of Russia, to the cities of Rostoff and Novgorod, everywhere baptizing and instructing the people. Vladimir himself, for the same good end, went in company with other bishops to the district of Souzdal and to Volhynia. The boyars on the Volga and some of the Pechenegian princes embraced the gospel of salvation together with his subjects, and rejoiced to be admitted to holy baptism. The pious Prince wished to see in his own capital a magnificent temple in honor of the birth of the most holy Virgin, to be a likeness and memorial of that at Cherson, in which he himself had been baptized; and the year after his conversion he sent to Greece for builders, and laid the foundation of the first stone cathedral in Russia, on the very same spot where the Varangian martyrs had suffered. But the first metropolitan was not to live to its completion; only his holy remains were buried in it, and were thence translated afterward to the Pechersky Lavra. Another metropolitan, Leontius, a Greek by birth, sent by the same patriarch Nicholas, consecrated the new temple, to the great satisfaction of Vladimir, who made a vow to endow it with the tenth part of all his revenues; and from hence it was called "the Cathedral of the Tithes." These tithes, according to the ordinance ascribed to Prince Vladimir, consisted of the fixed quota of corn, cattle, and the profits of trade, for the support of the clergy and the poor; and besides this there was a further tithe collected from every cause which was tried; for the right of judging causes was granted to the bishops and the metropolitan, and they judged according to the Nomocanon. The canons of the holy councils and the Greek ecclesiastical laws, together with the Holy Scriptures, were taken, from the very first, as the basis of all ecclesiastical administration in Russia; and together with them there came into use some portions also of the civil law of the Greeks, through the influence of the Church. The care of the new temple and the collection of tithes for its support were intrusted to a native of Cherson named Anastasius, who enjoyed the confidence of Vladimir and his successors. The light of Christianity had now been diffused throughout the whole of Russia; but still the faith was nowhere as yet firmly established, because there were no bishops regularly settled in the towns. The metropolitan Leontius formed the first five dioceses, and appointed Joachim of Cherson to be Bishop of Novgorod, Theodorus of Rostoff, Neophytus of Chernigoff, Stephen the Volhynian of Vladimir, and Nicetas of Belgorod. Assisted by Dobrina, the uncle of the "Great Prince," who had long governed in Novgorod, the new bishop Joachim threw the statue of Peroun into the Volkoff, and broke down the idolatrous altars without any opposition on the part of the citizens; for they, too, like the inhabitants of Kieff, from their comparative degree of civilization and from their relations of intercourse with the Greeks, were in all probability already favorably disposed for the reception of Christianity. Tradition asserts that even as far back as the time of St. Olga the hermits Sergius and Germanus lived upon the desolate island of Balaam in the lake Ladoga, and that from thence St. Abramius went forth to preach Christ to the savage inhabitants of Rostoff. The attempt to found a diocese at Rostoff was less successful. The first two bishops, Theodore and Hilarion, were driven away by the fierce tribes of the forest district of Meri, who held obstinately to their idols in spite of the zeal of St. Abramius. It cost the two succeeding bishops, St. Leontius and St. Isaiah, many years of extraordinary labor and exertion, attended frequently by persecutions, before they at length succeeded in establishing Christianity in that savage region, from whence it spread itself by degrees into all the surrounding districts. Thus Vladimir, having piously observed the commandments of Christ during the course of his long reign, had the consolation of seeing before his death the fruits of his own conversion in all the wide extent of his dominions. He departed this life in peace at Kieff, and was soon reckoned with his grandmother Olga among the guardian saints of Russia. John, the third metropolitan, who had been sent from Constantinople upon the death of Leontius, buried the Prince in the Church of the Tithes, which he had built, near the tomb of the Grecian princess, his wife, and the uncorrupted relics of St. Olga were translated to the same spot. LEIF ERICSON DISCOVERS AMERICA A.D. 1000 CHARLES C. RAFN SAGA OF ERIC THE RED (Besides the Northmen or Norsemen, those ancient Scandinavians celebrated in history for their adventurous exploits at sea, the Chinese and the Welsh have laid claim to the discovery of North America at periods much earlier than that of Columbus and the Cabots. But to the Norse sailors alone is it generally agreed that credit for that achievement is probably due. Associated with their supposed arrival and sojourn on the coast of what is now New England, about A.D. 1000, the "Round Tower" or "Old Stone Mill" at Newport, R.I., the mysterious inscription on the "Dighton Rock" in Massachusetts, and the "Skeleton in Armor" dug up at Fall River, Mass., and made the subject of a ballad by Longfellow, have figured prominently in the discussion of this pre-Columbian discovery. But these conjectural evidences are no longer regarded as having any connection with historical probability or as dating back to the time of the Northmen. It is considered, however, to be pretty certain that at the end of the tenth century or at the beginning of the eleventh the Northmen reached the shores of North America. About that time, it is known, they settled Iceland, and from there a colony went to Greenland, where they long remained. From there, either by design or by accident, some of them, it is supposed, may have reached the coast of Labrador, and thence sailed down until they came to the region which they named Vinland. From there they sent home glowing accounts to their countrymen in the northern lands, who came in larger numbers to join them in the New World. About the middle of the nineteenth century great interest among students of this subject was aroused by a work written by Prof. C.C. Rafn, of the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries, Copenhagen. In this work-- _Antiquitates Americanae_--the proofs of this visit of the Northmen to the shores of North America were convincingly set forth. In the same work the Icelandic sagas, written in the fourteenth century, and containing the original accounts of the Northmen's voyages to Vinland, were first brought prominently before modern scholars. Although many other writings on the voyages have since appeared, the great work of Rafn still holds its place of authority, very little in the way of new material having been brought to light. The portion of his narrative which follows covers the main facts of the history, and the translation from the saga furnishes an excellent example of its quaint and simple narration.) CHARLES C. RAFN Eric The Red, in the spring of 986, emigrated from Iceland to Greenland, formed a settlement there, and fixed his residence at Brattalid in Ericsfiord. Among others who accompanied him was Heriulf Bardson, who established himself at Heriulfsnes. Biarne, the son of the latter, was at that time absent on a trading voyage to Norway; but in the course of the summer returning to Eyrar, in Iceland, and finding that his father had taken his departure, this bold navigator resolved "still to spend the following winter, like all the preceding ones, with his father," although neither he nor any of his people had ever navigated the Greenland sea. They set sail, but met with northerly winds and fogs, and, after many days' sailing, knew not whither they had been carried. At length when the weather again cleared up, they saw a land which was without mountains, overgrown with wood, and having many gentle elevations. As this land did not correspond to the descriptions of Greenland, they left it on the larboard hand, and continued sailing two days, when they saw another land, which was flat and overgrown with wood. From thence they stood out to sea, and sailed three days with a southwest wind, when they saw a third land, which was high and mountainous and covered with icebergs (glaciers). They coasted along the shore and saw that it was an island. They did not go on shore, as Biarne did not find the country to be inviting. Bearing away from this island, they stood out to sea with the same wind, and, after four days' sailing with fresh gales, they reached Heriulfsnes, in Greenland. Some time after this, probably in the year 994, Biarne paid a visit to Eric, Earl of Norway, and told him of his voyage and of the unknown lands he had discovered. He was blamed by many for not having examined these countries more accurately. On his return to Greenland there was much talk about undertaking a voyage of discovery. Leif, a son of Eric the Red, bought Biarne's ship, and equipped it with a crew of thirty-five men, among whom was a German, of the name of Tyrker, who had long resided with his father, and who had been very fond of Leif in his childhood. In the year 1000 they commenced the projected voyage, and came first to the land which Biarne had seen last. They cast anchor and went on shore. No grass was seen; but everywhere in this country were vast ice mountains (glaciers), and the intermediate space between these and the shore was, as it were, one uniform plain of slate (_hella_). The country appearing to them destitute of good qualities, they called it Hellu-Land. They put out to sea, and came to another land, where they also went on shore. The country was very level and covered with woods; and wheresoever they went there were cliffs of white sand (_sand-ar hvitir_), and a low coast (_o-soe-bratt_). They called the country Mark Land (woodland). From thence they again stood out to sea, with a northeast wind, and continued sailing for two days before they made land again. They then came to an island which lay to the eastward of the mainland. They sailed westward in waters where there was much ground left dry at ebb tide. Afterward they went on shore at a place where a river, issuing from a lake, fell into the sea. They brought their ship into the river, and from thence into the lake, where they cast anchor. Here they constructed some temporary log huts; but later, when they had made up their mind to winter there, they built large houses, afterward called Leifs-Budir (Leif's-booths). When the buildings were completed Leif divided his people into two companies, who were by turns employed in keeping watch at the houses, and in making small excursions for the purpose of exploring the country in the vicinity. His instructions to them were that they should not go to a greater distance than that they might return in the course of the same evening, and that they should not separate from one another. Leif took his turn also, joining the exploring party the one day, and remaining at the houses the other. It so happened that one day the German, Tyrker, was missing. Leif accordingly went out with twelve men in search of him, but they had not gone far from their houses when they met him coming toward them. When Leif inquired why he had been so long absent, he at first answered in German, but they did not understand what he said. He then said to them in the Norse tongue: "I did not go much farther, yet I have a discovery to acquaint you with: I have found vines and grapes." He added by way of confirmation that he had been born in a country where there were plenty of vines. They had now two occupations: namely, to hew timber for loading the ship, and collect grapes; with these last they filled the ship's longboat. Leif gave a name to the country, and called it Vinland (Vineland). In the spring they sailed again from thence, and returned to Greenland. Leif's Vineland voyage was now a subject of frequent conversation in Greenland, and his brother Thorwald was of opinion that the country had not been sufficiently explored. He, accordingly, borrowed Leif's ship, and, aided by his brother's counsel and directions, commenced a voyage in the year 1002. He arrived at Leif's-booths, in Vineland, where they spent the winter, he and his crew employing themselves in fishing. In the spring of 1003 Thorwald sent a party in the ship's long-boat on a voyage of discovery southward. They found the country beautiful and well wooded, with but little space between the woods and the sea; there were likewise extensive ranges of white sand, and many islands and shallows. They found no traces of men having been there before them, excepting on an island lying to westward, where they found a wooden shed. They did not return to Leif's-booths until the fall. In the following summer, 1004, Thorwald sailed eastward with the large ship, and then northward past a remarkable headland enclosing a bay, and which was opposite to another headland. They called it Kial-Ar-Nes (Keel Cape). From thence they sailed along the eastern coast of the land, into the nearest firths, to a promontory which there projected, and which was everywhere overgrown with wood. There Thorwald went ashore with all his companions. He was so pleased with this place that he exclaimed: "This is beautiful! and here I should like well to fix my dwelling!" Afterward, when they were preparing to go on board, they observed on the sandy beach, within the promontory, three hillocks, and repairing hither they found three canoes, under each of which were three Skrellings (Esquimaux). They came to blows with the latter and killed eight, but the ninth escaped with his canoe. Afterward a countless number issued forth against them from the interior of the bay. They endeavored to protect themselves by raising battle-screens on the ship's side. The Skrellings continued shooting at them for a while and then retired. Thorwald was wounded by an arrow under the arm, and finding that the wound was mortal he said: "I now advise you to prepare for your departure as soon as possible, but me ye shall bring to the promontory, where I thought it good to dwell; it may be that it was a prophetic word that fell from my mouth about my abiding there for a season; there shall ye bury me, and plant a cross at my head, and another at my feet, and call the place Kross-a-Ness (Crossness) in all time coming." He died, and they did as he had ordered. Afterward they returned to their companions at Leif's-booths, and spent the winter there; but in the spring of 1005 they sailed again to Greenland, having important intelligence to communicate to Leif. Thorstein, Eric's third son, had resolved to proceed to Vine-land to fetch his brother's body. He fitted out the same ship, and selected twenty-five strong and able-bodied men for his crew; his wife, Gudrida, also went along with him. They were tossed about the ocean during the whole summer, and knew not whither they were driven; but at the close of the first week of winter they landed at Lysufiord, in the western settlement of Greenland. There Thorstein died during the winter; and in the spring Gudrida returned again to Ericsfiord. SAGA OF ERIC THE RED There was a man named Thorwald; he was a son of Asvald, Ulf's son, Eyxna-Thori's son. His son's name was Eric. He and his father went from Jaederen to Iceland, on account of manslaughter, and settled on Hornstrandir, and dwelt at Draugar. There Thorwald died, and Eric then married Thorheld, a daughter of Jorund, Atli's son, and Thorbiorg the sheep-chested, who had been married before to Thorbiorn of the Haukadal family. Eric then removed from the north, and cleared land in Haukadal, and dwelt at Ericsstadir, by Vatnshorn. Then Eric's thralls caused a landslide on Valthiof's farm, Valthiofsstadir. Eyiolf the Foul, Valthiof's kinsman, slew the thralls near Skeidsbrekkur, above Vatnshorn. For this Eric killed Eyiolf the Foul, and he also killed Duelling-Hrafn, at Leikskalar. Geirstein and Odd of Jorva, Eyiolf's kinsmen, conducted the prosecution for the slaying of their kinsmen, and Eric was in consequence banished from Haukadal. He then took possession of Brokey and Eyxney, and dwelt at Tradir on Sudrey the first winter. It was at this time that he loaned Thorgest his outer dais-boards. Eric afterward went to Eyxney, and dwelt at Ericsstad. He then demanded his outer dais-boards, but did not obtain them. Eric then carried the outer dais-boards away from Breidabolstad, and Thorgest gave chase. They came to blows a short distance from the farm of Drangar. There two of Thorgest's sons were killed, and certain other men besides. After this each of them retained a considerable body of men with him at his home. Styr gave Eric his support, as did also Eyiolf of Sviney, Thorbiorn, Vifil's son, and the sons of Thorbrand of Alptafirth; while Thorgest was backed by the sons of Thord the Yeller, and Thorgeir of Hitardal, Aslak of Langadal, and his son, Illugi. Eric and his people were condemned to outlawry at Thorsness-thing. He equipped his ship for a voyage in Ericsvag; while Eyiolf concealed him in Dimunarvag, when Thorgest and his people were searching for him among the islands. He said to them that it was his intention to go in search of that land which Gunnbiorn, son of Ulf the Crow, saw when he was driven out of his course, westward across the main, and discovered Gunnviorns-skerries. He told them that he would return again to his friends if he should succeed in finding that country. Thorbiorn and Eyiolf and Styr accompanied Eric out beyond the islands, and they parted with the greatest friendliness. Eric said to them that he would render them similar aid, so far as it might be within his power, if they should ever stand in need of his help. Eric sailed out to sea, from Snaefells-iokul, and arrived at that ice mountain which is called Blacksark. Thence he sailed to the southward that he might ascertain whether there was habitable country in that direction. He passed the first winter at Ericsey, near the middle of the western settlement. In the following spring he proceeded to Ericsfirth, and selected a site there for his homestead. That summer he explored the western uninhabited region, remaining there for a long time, and assigning many local names there. The second winter he spent at Ericsholms, beyond Hvarfsgnipa. But the third summer he sailed northward to Snaefell, and into Hrafnsfirth. He believed then that he had reached the head of Ericsfirth; he turned back then, and remained the third winter at Ericsey, at the mouth of Ericsfirth. The following summer he sailed to Iceland and landed in Breidafirth. He remained that winter with Ingolf at Holmlatr. In the spring he and Thorgest fought together, and Eric was defeated; after this a reconciliation was effected between them. That summer Eric set out to colonize the land which he had discovered, and which he called Greenland, because, he said, men would be the more readily persuaded thither if the land had a good name. Eric was married to a woman named Thorhild, and had two sons; one of these was named Thorstein, and the other Leif. They were both promising men. Thorstein lived at home with his father, and there was not at that time a man in Greenland who was accounted of so great promise as he. Leif had sailed to Norway, where he was at the court of King Olaf Tryggvason. When Leif sailed from Greenland, in the summer, they were driven out of their course to the Hebrides. It was late before they got fair winds thence, and they remained there far into the summer. Leif became enamoured of a certain woman, whose name was Thorgunna. She was a woman of fine family, and Leif observed that she was possessed of rare intelligence. When Leif was preparing for his departure, Thorgunna asked to be permitted to accompany him. Leif inquired whether she had in this the approval of her kinsmen. She replied that she did not care for it. Leif responded that he did not deem it the part of wisdom to abduct so high-born a woman in a strange country, "and we so few in number." "It is by no means certain that thou shalt find this to be the better decision," said Thorgunna. "I shall put it to the proof, notwithstanding," said Leif. "Then I tell thee," said Thorgunna, "that I foresee that I shall give birth to a male child; and though thou give this no heed, yet will I rear the boy, and send him to thee in Greenland when he shall be fit to take his place with other men. And I foresee that thou will get as much profit of this son as is thy due from this our parting; moreover, I mean to come to Greenland myself before the end comes." Leif gave her a gold finger-ring, a Greenland Wadmal mantle, and a belt of walrus tusk. This boy came to Greenland, and was called Thorgils. Leif acknowledged his paternity, and some men will have it that this Thorgils came to Iceland in the summer before the Froda-wonder. However, this Thorgils was afterward in Greenland, and there seemed to be something not altogether natural about him before the end came. Leif and his companions sailed away from the Hebrides, and arrived in Norway in the autumn. Leif went to the court of King Olaf Tryggvason. He was well received by the King, who felt that he could see that Leif was a man of great accomplishments. Upon one occasion the King came to speech with Leif, and asked him, "Is it thy purpose to sail to Greenland in the summer?" "It is my purpose," said Leif, "if it be your will." "I believe it will be well," answered the King, "and thither thou shalt go upon my errand, to proclaim Christianity there." Leif replied that the King should decide, but gave it as his belief that it would be difficult to carry this mission to a successful issue in Greenland. The King replied that he knew of no man who would be better fitted for this undertaking; "and in thy hands the cause will surely prosper." "This can only be," said Leif, "if I enjoy the grace of your protection." Leif put to sea when his ship was ready for the voyage. For a long time he was tossed about upon the ocean, and came upon lands of which he had previously had no knowledge. There were self-sown wheat-fields and vines growing there. There were also those trees there which are called "mansur," and of all these they took specimens. Some of the timbers were so large that they were used in building. Leif found men upon a wreck, and took them home with him, and procured quarters for them all during the winter. In this wise he showed his nobleness and goodness, since he introduced Christianity into the country, and saved the men from the wreck; and he was called Leif "the Lucky" ever after. Leif landed in Ericsfirth, and then went home to Brattahlid; he was well received by everyone. He soon proclaimed Christianity throughout the land, and the Catholic faith, and announced King Olaf Tryggvason's messages to the people, telling them how much excellence and how great glory accompanied this faith. Eric was slow in forming the determination to forsake his old belief, but Thiodhild embraced the faith promptly, and caused a church to be built at some distance from the house. This building was called Thiodhild's church, and there she and those persons who had accepted Christianity--and there were many--were wont to offer their prayers. At this time there began to be much talk about a voyage of exploration to that country which Leif had discovered. The leader of this expedition was Thorstein Ericsson, who was a good man and an intelligent, and blessed with many friends. Eric was likewise invited to join them, for the men believed that his luck and foresight would be of great furtherance. He was slow in deciding, but did not say nay when his friends besought him to go. They thereupon equipped that ship in which Thorbiorn had come out, and twenty men were selected for the expedition. They took little cargo with them, naught else save their weapons and provisions. On that morning when Eric set out from his home he took with him a little chest containing gold and silver; he hid this treasure and then went his way. He had proceeded but a short distance, however, when he fell from his horse and broke his ribs and dislocated his shoulder, whereat he cried, "Ai, ai!" By reason of this accident he sent his wife word that she should procure the treasure which he had concealed--for to the hiding of the treasure he attributed his misfortune. Thereafter they sailed cheerily out of Ericsfirth, in high spirits over their plan. They were long tossed about upon the ocean, and could not lay the course they wished. They came in sight of Iceland, and likewise saw birds from the Irish coast. Their ship was, in sooth, driven hither and thither over the sea. In autumn they turned back, worn out by toil and exposure to the elements, and exhausted by their labors, and arrived at Ericsfirth at the very beginning of winter. Then said Eric: "More cheerful were we in the summer, when we put out of the firth, but we still live, and it might have been much worse." Thorstein answers: "It will be a princely deed to endeavor to look well after the wants of all these men who are now in need, and to make provision for them during the winter." Eric answers: "It is ever true, as it is said, that 'It is never clear ere the winter comes,' and so it must be here. We will act now upon thy counsel in this matter." All of the men who were not otherwise provided for accompanied the father and son. They landed thereupon, and went home to Brattahlid, where they remained throughout the winter. MAHOMETANS IN INDIA BLOODY INVASIONS UNDER MAHMUD A.D. 1000 ALEXANDER DOW (While Buddhism was giving place to Hinduism in India a new faith had arisen in Arabia. Mahomet, born A.D. 570, created a conquering religion, and died in 632. Within a hundred years after his death, his followers had invaded the countries of Asia as far as the Hindu Kush. Here their progress was stayed, and Islam had to consolidate itself during three more centuries before it grew strong enough to grasp the rich prize of India. But almost from the first the Arabs had fixed eager eyes upon that wealthy empire, and several premature inroads foretold the coming storm. About fifteen years after the death of the Prophet, Othman sent a naval expedition to Thana and Broach on the Bombay coast. Other raids toward Sind took place in 662 and 664, with no lasting results. Hinduism was for a time submerged, but never drowned, by the tide of Mahometan conquest, which set steadily toward India about A.D. 1000. At the present day the south of India remains almost entirely Hindu. By far the greater number of the Indian feudatory chiefs are still under Brahman influence. But in the northwest, where the first waves of invasion have always broken, about one-third of the population now profess Islam. The upper valley of the Ganges boasts a succession of Mussulman capitals; and in the swamps of Lower Bengal the bulk of the non-Aryan or aboriginal population have become converts to the Mahometan religion. The Mussulmans now make fifty-seven millions of the total of two hundred and eighty-eight millions in India. The armies of Islam had carried the crescent throughout Asia west of the Hindu Kush, and through Africa and Southern Europe, to distant Spain and France, before they obtained a foothold in the Punjab. The brilliant attempt in 711 to found a lasting Mahometan dynasty in Sind failed. Three centuries later, the utmost efforts of a series of Mussulman invaders from the northwest only succeeded in annexing a small portion of the frontier Punjab provinces. The popular notion that India fell an easy prey to the Mussulmans is opposed to the historical facts. Mahometan rule in India consists of a series of invasions and partial conquests, during eleven centuries from Othman's raid, about A.D. 647, to Ahmad Shah's tempest of devastation in 1761. At no time was Islam triumphant throughout all India. Hindu dynasties always ruled over a large area. The first collision between Hinduism and Islam on the Punjab frontier was the act of the Hindus. In 977 Jaipal, the Hindu chief of Lahore, annoyed by Afghan raids, led his troops through the mountains against the Mahometan kingdom of Ghazni, in Afghanistan. Subuktigin, the Ghaznivide prince, after severe fighting, took advantage of a hurricane to cut off the retreat of the Hindus through the pass. He allowed them, however, to return to India, on the surrender of fifty elephants and the promise of one million _dirhams_ [about $125,000]. In 997 Subuktigin died, and was succeeded by his son, Mahmud of Ghazni, aged sixteen. This valiant monarch, surnamed "the Great," reigned for thirty-three years, and extended his father's little Afghan kingdom into a great Mahometan sovereignty, stretching from Persia on the west to far within the Punjab on the east.) Mahmud was born about the year 357 of the Hegira--or 350, according to some authorities--and, as astrologers say, with many happy omens expressed in the horoscope of his life. Subuktigin, being asleep at the time of his birth, dreamed that he beheld a green tree springing forth from his chimney, which threw its shadow over the face of the earth and screened from the storms of heaven the whole animal creation. This indeed was verified by the justice of Mahmud; for, if we can believe the poet, in his reign the wolf and the sheep drank together at the same brook. When Mahmud had settled his dispute with his brother Ismail, he hastened to Balik, from whence he sent an ambassador to Munsur, Emperor of Bokhara, to whom the family of Ghazni still pretended to owe allegiance, complaining of the indignity which he met with in the appointment of Buktusin to the government of Khorassan, a country so long in possession of his father. It was returned to him for answer that he was already in possession of the territories of Balik, Turmuz, and Herat, which was part of the empire, and that there was a necessity to divide the favors of Bokhara among her friends. Buktusin, it was also insinuated, had been a faithful and good servant; which seemed to throw a reflection upon the family of Ghazni, who had rendered themselves independent in the governments they held of the royal house of Samania. Mahmud, not discouraged by this answer, sent Hasan Jemmavi with rich presents to the court of Bokhara, and a letter in the following terms: "That he hoped the pure spring of friendship, which had flowed in the time of his father, should not now be polluted with the ashes of indignity, nor Mahmud be reduced to the necessity of divesting himself of that obedience which he had hitherto paid to the imperial family of Samania." When Hasan delivered his embassy, his capacity and elocution appeared so great to the Emperor, that, desirous to gain him over to his interest by any means, he bribed him at last with the honors of the wazirate, but never returned an answer to Mahmud. That prince having received information of this transaction, through necessity turned his face toward Nishapur, and marched to Murgab. Buktusin, in the mean time, treacherously entered into a confederacy with Faek, and, forming a conspiracy in the camp of Munsur, seized upon the person of that prince and cruelly put out his eyes. Abdul, the younger brother of Munsur, who was but a boy, was advanced by the traitors to the throne. Being, however, afraid of the resentment of Mahmud, the conspirators hastened to Merv, whither they were pursued by the King with great expedition. Finding themselves, upon their march, hard pressed in the rear by Mahmud, they halted and gave him battle. But the sin of ingratitude had darkened the face of their fortune, so that the breeze of victory blew upon the standards of the King of Ghazni. Faek carried off the young King, and fled to Bokhara, and Buktusin was not heard of for some time, but at length he found his way to his fellows in iniquity and began to collect his scattered troops. Faek, in the mean time, fell ill and soon afterward expired. Elak, the Usbek King, seizing upon the opportunity offered him by that event, marched with an army from Kashgar to Bokhara and deprived Abdul-Mallek and his adherents of life and empire at the same time. Thus perished the last of the house of Samania, which had reigned for the space of one hundred and twenty-seven years. The Emperor of Ghazni, at this juncture, employed himself in settling the government of the provinces of Balik and Khorassan, the affairs of which he regulated in such an able manner that the fame thereof reached the ears of the Caliph of Bagdad, the illustrious Al-Kadar Balla, of the noble house of Abbas. The Caliph sent him a rich dress of honor, such as he had never before bestowed on any king, and dignified Mahmud with the titles of the Protector of the State and Treasurer of Fortune. In the end of the month Zikada, in the year of the Hegira 390, Mahmud hastened from the city of Balak to Herat, and from Herat to Sistan, where he defeated Khaliph, the son of Achmet, the governor of that province of the extinguished family of Bokhara, and returned to Ghazni. He then turned his face toward India, took many forts and provinces, in which, having appointed his own governors, he returned to his dominions where he "spread the carpet of justice so smoothly upon the face of the earth that the love of him, and loyalty, gained a place in every heart." Having negotiated a treaty with Elak the Usbek, the province of Maver-ul-nere was ceded to him, for which he made an ample return in presents of great value; and the closest friendship and familiarity, for a long time, existed between the kings. Mahmud made a vow to heaven that if ever he should be blessed with tranquillity in his own dominions he would turn his arms against the idolaters of Hindustan. He marched in the year 391 (Ad Hegira) from Ghazni with ten thousand of his chosen horse, and came to Peshawur, where Jipal, the Indian prince of Lahore, with twelve thousand horse and thirty thousand foot, supported by three hundred chain-elephants, opposed him. On Saturday, the 8th of the month Mohirrim, in the year 392 of the Hegira, an obstinate battle ensued, in which the Emperor was victorious; Jipal, with fifteen of his principal officers, was taken prisoner, and five thousand of his troops lay dead upon the field. Mahmud in this action acquired great wealth and fame, for round the neck of Jipal alone were found sixteen strings of jewels, each of which was valued at one hundred and eighty thousand rupees. After this victory, the Emperor marched from Peshawur, and investing the fort of Batandi, reduced it, releasing his prisoners upon the payment of a large ransom, and the further stipulation of an annual tribute, then returned to Ghazni. It was in those days a custom of the Hindus that whatever rajah was twice defeated by the Moslems should be, by that disgrace, rendered ineligible for further command. Jipal, in compliance with this custom, having raised his son to the government, ordered a funeral pile to be prepared, upon which he sacrificed himself to his gods. A year later, Mahmud again marched into Sistan, and brought Kaliph, who had mismanaged his government, prisoner to Ghazni. Finding that the tribute from Hindustan had not been paid, in the year A.H. 395 he directed his march toward the city of Battea, and, leaving the boundaries of Multan, arrived at Tahera, which was fortified with an exceeding high wall and a deep, broad ditch. Tahera was at that time governed by a prince called Bakhera, who had, in the pride of power and wealth, greatly troubled the Mahometan governors whom Mahmud had delegated to rule in Hindustan. Bakhera had also refused to pay his proportion of the tribute to Annandpal, the son of Jipal, of whom he held his authority. When Mahmud entered the territories of Bakhera, that prince called out his troops to receive him, and, taking possession of a strong position, engaged the Mahometan army for the space of three days; in which time they suffered so much that they were on the point of abandoning the attack. But on the fourth day, Mahmud appeared at the head of his troops, and addressed them at length, encouraging them to win glory. He concluded by telling them that this day he had devoted himself to conquest or to death. Bakhera, on his part, invoked the gods at the temple, and prepared, with his former resolution, to repel the enemy. The Mahometans charged with their usual impetuosity, but were repulsed with great slaughter; yet returning with fresh courage and redoubled rage, the attack was continued until the evening, when Mahmud, turning his face to the holy Kaaba, invoked the aid of the Prophet in the presence of his army. "Advance! advance!" cried then the King. "Our prayers have found favor with God!" Immediately a great shout arose among the host, and the Moslems, pressing forward as if they courted death, obliged the enemy to give ground, and pursued them in full retreat to the gates of the city. The Emperor having next morning invested the place, gave orders to make preparations for filling up the ditch, which task in a few days was nearly completed. Bakhera, finding he could not long defend the city, determined to leave only a small garrison for its defence; and accordingly, one night, he marched out with the rest of his troops, and took position in a wood on the banks of the Indus. Mahmud, being informed of his retreat, detached part of his army to pursue him. Bakhera, by this time, was deserted by fortune and consequently by most of his friends; he found himself surrounded by the Mahometans and attempted in vain to force his way through them. When just on the point of being taken prisoner, he turned his sword against his breast, while the most of his adherents were slaughtered in attempting to avenge his death. Mahmud, in the mean time, had taken Tahera by assault; and found there one hundred and twenty elephants, many slaves, and much plunder. He annexed the town and its dependencies to his own dominions, and returned victorious to Ghazni. In the year A.H. 396 he formed the design of reconquering Multan, which had revolted from his rule. Achmet Lodi, the regent of Multan, had formerly acknowledged the suzerainty of Mahmud, and after him his grandson Daud, till the expedition against Bakhera, when Daud withdrew his allegiance. The King marched in the beginning of the spring, with a great army from Ghazni, and was met by Annandpal, the son of Jipal, Prince of Lahore, in the hills of Peshawur, whom he defeated and obliged to fly into Cashmere. Annandpal had entered into an alliance with Daud; and as there were two passes only by which the Mahometans could enter Multan, Annandpal had taken upon himself to secure that by the way of Peshawur, which Mahmud chanced to take. The Sultan, returning from the pursuit, entered Multan by the way of Betanda, which was his first intention. When Daud received intelligence of the fate of Annandpal, thinking himself too weak to keep the field, he shut himself up in his fortified place and humbly solicited forgiveness for his fault, promising to pay a large tribute and in the future to obey implicitly the Sultan's command. Mahmud received him again as a vassal, and prepared to return to Ghazni, when news was brought to him from Arsallah, who commanded at Herat, that Elak, the King of Kashgar, had invaded his realm with an army. The King hastened to settle the affairs of Hindustan, which he put into the hands of Shokpal, a Hindu prince who had resided with Abu-Ali, governor of Peshawur, and had turned Mussulman, taking the name of Zab Sais. The particulars of the war of Mahmud with Elak are these: It has already been mentioned that an uncommon friendship had existed between this Elak, the Usbek king of Kashgar, a kingdom in Tartary, and Mahmud. The Emperor himself was married to the daughter of Elak, but some factious men about the two courts, by misrepresentations of the princes to one another, changed their former friendship to enmity. When Mahmud therefore marched into Hindustan, and had left the field of Khorassan almost destitute of troops, Elak took advantage of the opportunity, and resolved to appropriate that province to himself. To accomplish his design he ordered his general-in-chief Sapastagi, with a large force, to enter Khorassan; and Jaffir Taghi at the same time was appointed to command in the territory of Balak. Arsallah, the governor of Herat, being informed of these motions, hastened to Ghazni, that he might secure the capital. In the mean time the chiefs of Khorassan, finding themselves deserted and being in no condition to oppose the enemy, submitted themselves to Sapastagi, the general of Elak. But Mahmud, having by great marches reached Ghazni, flowed onward like a torrent with his army toward Balak. Taghi, who had by this time possessed himself of the place, fled toward Turmuz at his approach. The Emperor then detached Arsallah with a great part of his army to drive Sapastagi out of Khorassan; and he also, upon the approach of the troops of Ghazni, abandoned Herat, and marched toward Maber-ul-nere. The King of Kashgar, seeing the bad state of his affairs, solicited the aid of Kudar, King of Chuton, a province of Tartary, on the confines of China, and that prince marched to join him with fifty thousand horse. Strengthened by this alliance, he crossed, with the confederate armies, the river Gaon, which was five parasangs from Balak, and opposed himself to the camp of Mahmud. That monarch immediately drew up his army in order of battle, giving the command of the centre to his brother, the noble Nasir, supported by Abu-Nasir, governor of Gorgan, and by Abdallah, a chief of reputation in arms. The right wing he committed to the care of Alta Sash, an old experienced officer, while the left was the charge of the valiant Arsallah, a chief of the Afghans. The front of his line he strengthened with five hundred chain-elephants, with open spaces behind them, to facilitate their retreat in case of a defeat. The King of Kashgar posted himself in the centre, the noble Kudir led the right, and Taghi the left. The armies advanced to the charge. The shouts of warriors, the neighing of horses, and the clashing of arms reached the broad arch of heaven, while dust obscured the face of day. Elak, advancing with some chosen squadrons, threw the centre of Mahmud's army into disorder. Mahmud, perceiving the enemy's progress, leaped from his horse, and, kissing the ground, invoked the aid of the Almighty. He then mounted an elephant-of-war, encouraged his troops, and made a violent assault upon Elak. The elephant seizing the standard-bearer of the enemy, folded his trunk around him and tossed him aloft in the air. He then surged forward like a mountain removed from its base by an earthquake, and trod the enemy under his feet like locusts. When the troops of Ghazni saw their King forcing his way alone through the enemy's ranks they rushed forward with headlong impetuosity and drove the enemy with great slaughter before them. Elak, abandoned by fortune and his army, turned his face to fly. He crossed the river with a few of his surviving friends, never afterward appearing in the field to dispute the victory with Mahmud. The King after this triumph marched two days after the runaways. On the third night a great storm of wind and snow overtook the Ghaznian army in the desert. The King's tents were pitched with much difficulty, while the army was obliged to lie in the snow. Mahmud, having ordered great fires to be kindled around his tents, they became so warm that many of the courtiers began to take off their upper garments; when a facetious chief, whose name was Dalk, came in shivering with the cold, at which the King, observing, said: "Go out, Dalk, and tell the Winter that he may burst his cheeks with blustering, for here we value not his resentment." Dalk went out accordingly, and, returning in a short time, kissed the ground, and thus addressed the King: "I have delivered the King's message to Winter, but the Surly Season replied that if his hands cannot tear the skirts of Royalty and hurt the attendants of the King, yet he will so use his power to-night on his army that in the morning Mahmud will be obliged to saddle his own horses." The King smiled at this reply, but it presently rendered him more thoughtful and he determined to proceed no farther. In the morning some hundreds of men and horses were found to have perished with the cold. Mahmud at the same time received advices from India, that Zab Sais, the renegade Hindu, had thrown off his allegiance, and, returning to his former religion, expelled all the officers who had been appointed by the King, from their respective departments. The King immediately determined to punish this renegade, and with great expedition advanced toward India. He sent on a part of his cavalry in front, which, coming unexpectedly upon Zab Sais, defeated him and brought him prisoner to the King. The rebel was fined four lacs of rupees, of which Mahmud made a present to his treasurer, and made Zab Sais a prisoner for life. Mahmud, having thus settled his affairs in India, returned in autumn to Ghazni, where he remained for the winter in peace. But in the spring of the year A.H. 399 Annandpal, sovereign of Lahore, began to raise disturbance in Multan, so that the King was obliged to undertake another expedition into those parts, with a great army, to correct the Indians. Annandpal, hearing of his intentions, sent ambassadors everywhere to request the assistance of the other princes of Hindustan, who considered the extirpation of the Moslems from India as a meritorious and political as well as a religious action. Accordingly the princes of Ugin, Gualier, Callinger, Kannoge, Delhi, and Ajmere entered into a confederacy, and, collecting their forces, advanced toward the heads of the Indus, with the greatest army that had been for some centuries seen upon the field in India. The two armies came in sight of one another in a great plain near the confines of the province of Peshawur. They remained there encamped forty days without action: but the troops of the idolaters daily increased in number. They were joined by the Gakers, and other tribes with their armies, and surrounded the Mahometans, who, fearing a general assault, were obliged to intrench themselves. The King, having thus secured himself, ordered a thousand archers to the front, to endeavor to provoke the enemy to advance to the intrenchments. The archers accordingly were attacked by the Gakers, who, notwithstanding all the King could do, pursued the retreating bowmen within the trenches, where a dreadful scene of carnage ensued on both sides, in which five thousand Moslems in a few minutes were slain. The enemy's soldiers being now cut down as fast as they advanced, the attack grew weaker, when suddenly the elephant which carried the Prince of Lahore, who was chief in command, took fright at the report of a gun (_sic_), and turned tail in flight. This circumstance struck the Hindus with a panic, for, thinking they were deserted by their general, they immediately followed the example. Abdallah, with six thousand Arabian horse, and Arsallah, with ten thousand Turks, Afghans, and Chilligis, pursued the enemy for two days and nights; so that twenty thousand Hindus were killed in their flight--in addition to the great multitude that fell on the field of battle. Thirty elephants, with much rich plunder, were brought to the King, who, to establish the faith, marched against the Hindus of Nagrakot, breaking down their idols and destroying their temples. There was at that time, in the territory of Nagrakot, a strong fort called Bima, which Mahmud invested after having destroyed the country round about with fire and sword. Bima was built by a prince of the same name, on the top of a steep mountain; and here the Hindus--on account of its strength--had deposited the wealth consecrated to their idols in all the neighboring kingdoms; so that in this fort, it was said, there was a greater quantity of gold, silver, precious stones, and pearls than ever had been collected in the royal treasury of any prince on earth. Mahmud invested the place with such expedition that the Hindus had not time to send troops into it for its defence--the greater part of the garrison having been sent to the field. Those within consisted, for the most part, of priests, who being adverse to the bloody business of war, in a few days solicited permission to capitulate. Their request being granted, they opened the gates and fell upon their faces before Mahmud, who with a few of his officers and attendants immediately entered and took possession of the place. In Bima were found: seven hundred thousand _dinars_; seven hundred maunds of gold and silver plate; forty maunds of pure gold in ingots; two thousand maunds of silver bullion, and twenty maunds of various jewels set, which had been collecting from the time of Bima. With this immense treasure the King returned to Ghazni, and in the year A.H. 400 held a magnificent festival, where he displayed to the people his wealth in golden thrones, and in other rich receptacles, in a great plain without the city of Ghazni; and after the feast every individual received a princely gift. In the following year Mahmud led his army toward Ghor. The native prince of that country, Mahomet of the Sur tribe of Afghans, with ten thousand troops, opposed him. The King, finding that the troops of Ghor defended themselves in their intrenchments with such obstinacy, commanded his army to make a feint of retreating, to lure the enemy out of their fortified camp, which manoeuvre proved successful. The Ghorians, being deceived, pursued the army of Ghazni to the plain, where the King, facing round with his troops, attacked them with great impetuosity. Mahomet was taken prisoner and brought to the King; but in his despair he had taken poison, which he always kept under his ring, and died in a few hours. His country was annexed to the dominion of Ghazni. Some historians affirm that neither the sovereigns of Ghor nor its inhabitants were Mussulmans till after this victory; while others of good credit assure us that they were converted many years before, even so early as the time of the famous Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet. Mahmud, in the same year, was under the necessity of marching again to Multan, which had revolted; but having soon reduced it, and cut off a great number of the chiefs, he brought Daud, the son of Nazir, the rebellious governor, prisoner to Ghazni, and imprisoned him in the fort of Gorci for life. In the year A.H. 402, the passion of war fermenting in the mind of Mahmud, he resolved upon the conquest of Tannasar, in the kingdom of Hindustan. It had reached the ears of the King that Tannasar was held in the same veneration by idolaters as Mecca was by the Mahometans; that there they had set up a great number of idols, the chief of which they called Jug Sum. This Jug Sum, they pretended to say, existed when as yet the world existed not. When the King reached the country about the five branches of the Indus, he desired that--according to the treaty that existed between himself and Annandpal--he should not be disturbed by his march through that country. He accordingly sent an embassy to Annandpal, advising him of his intentions, and desiring him to send guards for the protection of his towns and villages, which he, the King, would take care should not be molested by the followers of his camp. Annandpal agreed to this proposal, and prepared an entertainment for the reception of the King, issuing an order for all his subjects to supply the royal camp with every necessary of life. In the mean time he sent his brother with two thousand horse to meet the King and deliver this message: "That he was the subject and slave of the King; but that he begged permission to acquaint his Majesty that Tannasar was the principal place of worship of the inhabitants of that country; that if it was a virtue required by the religion of Mahmud to destroy the religion of others, he had already acquitted himself of that duty to his God in the destruction of the temple of Nagracot; but if he should be pleased to alter his resolution against Tannasar, Annandpal would undertake that the amount of the revenues of that country should be annually paid to Mahmud, to reimburse the expense of his expedition: that besides, he, on his own part, would present him with fifty elephants, and jewels to a considerable amount." The King replied: "That in the Mahometan religion it was an established tenet that the more the glory of the Prophet was exalted, and the more his followers exerted themselves in the subversion of idolatry, the greater would be their reward in heaven; that therefore it was his firm resolution, with the assistance of God, to root out the abominable worship of idols from the land of India: why then should he spare Tannasar?" When this news reached the Indian king of Delhi, he prepared to oppose the invaders, sending messages all over Hindustan to acquaint the rajahs that Mahmud, without any reason or provocation, was marching with an innumerable army to destroy Tannasar, which was under his immediate protection: that if a dam was not expeditiously raised against this roaring torrent, the country of Hindustan would soon be overwhelmed in ruin, and the tree of prosperity rooted up; that therefore it was advisable for them to join their forces at Tannasar, to oppose with united strength the impending danger. But Mahmud reached Tannasar before they could take any measure for its defence, plundered the city and broke the idols, sending Jug Sum to Ghazni, where he was soon stripped of his ornaments. He then ordered his head to be struck off and his body to be thrown on the highway. According to the account of the historian Hago Mahomet of Kandahar, there was a ruby found in one of the temples which weighed four hundred and fifty miskals! Mahmud, after these transactions at Tannasar, proceeded to Delhi, which he also took, and wanted greatly to annex to his dominions, but his nobles told him that it was impossible to keep the rajahship of Delhi till he had entirely subjected Multan to Mahometan rule, destroyed the power and exterminated the family of Annandpal, Prince of Lahore, which lay between Delhi and the northern dominions of Mahmud. The King approved of this counsel, and immediately determined to proceed no further against that country, till he had accomplished the reduction of Multan and Annandpal. But that prince behaved with so much policy and hospitality that he changed the purpose of the King, who returned to Ghazni. He brought to Ghazni forty thousand captives and much wealth, so that that city could now be hardly distinguished in riches from India itself. CANUTE BECOMES KING OF ENGLAND A.D. 1017 DAVID HUME (After the success of King Alfred over the Danes in the last quarter of the ninth century, England enjoyed a considerable respite from the invasions of the bold ravagers who had caused great suffering and loss to the country. This immunity of England seems to have been partly due to the fact that the Danish adventurers had gained a foothold in the north of France, where they found all the employment they needed in maintaining their establishments. Under the reign of Edward the Elder--chosen to succeed Alfred--the English enjoyed an interval of comparative peace and industry. During this time and under the following reigns, known as those of the Six Boy-Kings, the social side of life had an opportunity to develop from a semi-barbarous to a more civilized state. The bare and rough walls of hall and court were screened by tapestry hangings, often of silk, and elaborately ornamented with birds and flowers or scenes from the battlefield or the chase. Chairs and tables were skilfully carved and inlaid with different woods and, among the wealthier nobility, often decorated with gold and silver. Knives and spoons were now used at table--the fork was to come many long years later; golden ornaments were worn; and a variety of dishes were fashioned, often of precious metals, brass, and even bone. The bedstead became a household article, no longer looked upon with superstitious awe; and musical instruments--principally of the harp pattern--began to find favor in their eyes, and were passed round from hand to hand, like the drinking-bowl, at their rude festivals. But toward the end of a century following the victories of Alfred the Danes again threatened an invasion, and in 981-991 they made several landings, in the latter year overrunning much territory. King Ethelred [the "Unready"] procured their departure by bribery, which led the Danes to repeat their visit the next year, following it up by a descent in force under King Sweyn of Denmark and Olaf of Norway. They defeated the English in battle and ravaged a great part of the country, exacting as before ruinous contributions from the already impoverished people. After the siege and taking of London, 1011-1013, the flight of the cowardly Ethelred to the court of Normandy, the sudden death of Sweyn, who had been but a few months before proclaimed King of England, and the return of Ethelred to his throne, Canute, the son of Sweyn, claimed the crown and ravaged the land in the manner and custom of his race. The complications and strife engendered by the rival claims of the Dane and Edmund ["Ironside"], son of Ethelred, and which ended in the triumph of Canute and the complete subjugation of England, are hereinafter narrated by Hume, the English historian.) The Danes had been established during a longer period in England than in France; and though the similarity of their original language to that of the Saxons invited them to a more early coalition with the natives, they had hitherto found so little example of civilized manners among the English that they retained all their ancient ferocity, and valued themselves only on their national character of military bravery. The recent as well as more ancient achievements of their countrymen tended to support this idea; and the English princes, particularly Athelstan and Edgar, sensible of that superiority, had been accustomed to keep in pay bodies of Danish troops, who were quartered about the country and committed many violences upon the inhabitants. These mercenaries had attained to such a height of luxury, according to the old English writers, that they combed their hair once a day, bathed themselves once a week, changed their clothes frequently; and by all these arts of effeminacy, as well as by their military character, had rendered themselves so agreeable to the fair sex that they debauched the wives and daughters of the English and dishonored many families. But what most provoked the inhabitants was that, instead of defending them against invaders, they were ever ready to betray them to the foreign Danes, and to associate themselves with all straggling parties of that nation. The animosity between the inhabitants of English and Danish race had, from these repeated injuries, risen to a great height, when Ethelred (1002), from a policy incident to weak princes, embraced the cruel resolution of massacring the latter throughout all his dominions. Secret orders were despatched to commence the execution everywhere on the same day, and the festival of St. Brice, which fell on a Sunday, the day on which the Danes usually bathed themselves, was chosen for that purpose. It is needless to repeat the accounts transmitted concerning the barbarity of this massacre: the rage of the populace, excited by so many injuries, sanctioned by authority, and stimulated by example, distinguished not between innocence and guilt, spared neither sex nor age, and was not satiated without the tortures as well as death of the unhappy victims. Even Gunhilda, sister to the King of Denmark, who had married Earl Paling and had embraced Christianity, was, by the advice of Edric, Earl of Wilts, seized and condemned to death by Ethelred, after seeing her husband and children butchered before her face. This unhappy princess foretold, in the agonies of despair, that her murder would soon be avenged by the total ruin of the English nation. Never was prophecy better fulfilled, and never did barbarous policy prove more fatal to the authors. Sweyn and his Danes, who wanted but a pretence for invading the English, appeared off the western coast, and threatened to take full revenge for the slaughter of their countrymen. Exeter fell first into their hands, from the negligence or treachery of Earl Hugh, a Norman, who had been made governor by the interest of Queen Emma. They began to spread their devastations over the country, when the English, sensible what outrages they must now expect from their barbarous and offended enemy, assembled more early and in greater numbers than usual, and made an appearance of vigorous resistance. But all these preparations were frustrated by the treachery of Duke Alfric, who was intrusted with the command, and who, feigning sickness, refused to lead the army against the Danes, till it was dispirited and at last dissipated by his fatal misconduct. Alfric soon after died, and Edric, a greater traitor than he, who had married the King's daughter and had acquired a total ascendant over him, succeeded Alfric in the government of Mercia and in the command of the English armies. A great famine, proceeding partly from the bad seasons, partly from the decay of agriculture, added to all the other miseries of the inhabitants. The country, wasted by the Danes, harassed by the fruitless expeditions of its own forces, was reduced to the utmost desolation, and at last submitted (1007) to the infamy of purchasing a precarious peace from the enemy by the payment of thirty thousand pounds. The English endeavored to employ this interval in making preparations against the return of the Danes, which they had reason soon to expect. A law was made, ordering the proprietors of eight hides of land to provide each a horseman and a complete suit of armor, and those of three hundred and ten hides to equip a ship for the defence of the coast. When this navy was assembled, which must have consisted of near eight hundred vessels, all hopes of its success were disappointed by the factions, animosities, and dissensions of the nobility. Edric had impelled his brother Brightric to prefer an accusation of treason against Wolfnoth, governor of Sussex, the father of the famous earl Godwin; and that nobleman, well acquainted with the malevolence as well as power of his enemy, found no means of safety but in deserting with twenty ships to the Danes. Brightric pursued him with a fleet of eighty sail; but his ships being shattered in a tempest, and stranded on the coast, he was suddenly attacked by Wolfnoth, and all his vessels burned and destroyed. The imbecility of the King was little capable of repairing this misfortune. The treachery of Edric frustrated every plan for future defence; and the English navy, disconcerted, discouraged, and divided, was at last scattered into its several harbors. It is almost impossible, or would be tedious, to relate particularly all the miseries to which the English were henceforth exposed. We hear of nothing but the sacking and burning of towns; the devastation of the open country; the appearance of the enemy in every quarter of the kingdom; their cruel diligence in discovering any corner which had not been ransacked by their former violence. The broken and disjointed narration of the ancient historians is here well adapted to the nature of the war, which was conducted by such sudden inroads as would have been dangerous even to a united and well-governed kingdom, but proved fatal where nothing but a general consternation and mutual diffidence and dissension prevailed. The governors of one province refused to march to the assistance of another, and were at last terrified from assembling their forces for the defence of their own province. General councils were summoned; but either no resolution was taken or none was carried into execution. And the only expedient in which the English agreed was the base and imprudent one of buying a new peace from the Danes, by the payment of forty-eight thousand pounds. This measure did not bring them even that short interval of repose which they had expected from it. The Danes, disregarding all engagements, continued their devastations and hostilities; levied a new contribution of eight thousand pounds upon the county of Kent alone; murdered the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had refused to countenance this exaction; and the English nobility found no other resource than that of submitting everywhere to the Danish monarch, swearing allegiance to him, and delivering him hostages for their fidelity. Ethelred, equally afraid of the violence of the enemy and the treachery of his own subjects, fled into Normandy (1013), whither he had sent before him Queen Emma and her two sons, Alfred and Edward. Richard received his unhappy guests with a generosity that does honor to his memory. The King had not been above six weeks in Normandy when he heard of the death of Sweyn, who expired at Gainsborough before he had time to establish himself in his new-acquired dominions. The English prelates and nobility, taking advantage of this event, sent over a deputation to Normandy, inviting Ethelred to return to them, expressing a desire of being again governed by their native prince, and intimating their hopes that, being now tutored by experience, he would avoid all those errors which had been attended with such misfortunes to himself and to his people. But the misconduct of Ethelred was incurable; and on his resuming the government, he discovered the same incapacity, indolence, cowardice, and credulity which had so often exposed him to the insults of his enemies. His son-in-law Edric, notwithstanding his repeated treasons, retained such influence at court as to instil into the King jealousies of Sigefert and Morcar, two of the chief nobles of Mercia. Edric allured them into his house, where he murdered them; while Ethelred participated in the infamy of the action by confiscating their estates and thrusting into a convent the widow of Sigefert. She was a woman of singular beauty and merit; and in a visit which was paid her, during her confinement, by Prince Edmund, the King's eldest son, she inspired him with so violent an affection that he released her from the convent, and soon after married her without the consent of his father. Meanwhile the English found in Canute, the son and successor of Sweyn, an enemy no less terrible than the prince from whom death had so lately delivered them. He ravaged the eastern coast with merciless fury, and put ashore all the English hostages at Sandwich, after having cut off their hands and noses. He was obliged, by the necessity of his affairs, to make a voyage to Denmark; but, returning soon after, he continued his depredations along the southern coast. He even broke into the counties of Dorset, Wilts, and Somerset, where an army was assembled against him, under the command of Prince Edmund and Duke Edric. The latter still continued his perfidious machinations, and, after endeavoring in vain to get the prince into his power, he found means to disperse the army, and he then openly deserted to Canute with forty vessels. Notwithstanding this misfortune Edmund was not disconcerted, but, assembling all the force of England, was in a condition to give battle to the enemy. The King had had such frequent experience of perfidy among his subjects that he had lost all confidence in them: he remained at London, pretending sickness, but really from apprehensions that they intended to buy their peace by delivering him into the hands of his enemies. The army called aloud for their sovereign to march at their head against the Danes; and, on his refusal to take the field, they were so discouraged that those vast preparations became ineffectual for the defence of the kingdom. Edmund, deprived of all regular supplies to maintain his soldiers, was obliged to commit equal ravages with those which were practised by the Danes; and, after making some fruitless expeditions into the north, which had submitted entirely to Canute's power, he retired to London, determined there to maintain to the last extremity the small remains of English liberty. He here found everything in confusion by the death of the King, who expired after an unhappy and inglorious reign of thirty-five years (1016). He left two sons by his first marriage, Edmund, who succeeded him, and Edwy, whom Canute afterward murdered. His two sons by the second marriage, Alfred and Edward, were, immediately upon Ethelred's death, conveyed into Normandy by Queen Emma. Edmund, who received the name of "Ironside" from his hardy valor, possessed courage and abilities sufficient to have prevented his country from sinking into those calamities, but not to raise it from that abyss of misery into which it had already fallen. Among the other misfortunes of the English, treachery and disaffection had crept in among the nobility and prelates; and Edmund found no better expedient for stopping the further progress of these fatal evils than to lead his army instantly into the field, and to employ them against the common enemy. After meeting with some success at Gillingham, he prepared himself to decide, in one general engagement, the fate of his crown; and at Scoerston, in the county of Gloucester, he offered battle to the enemy, who were commanded by Canute and Edric. Fortune, in the beginning of the day, declared for him; but Edric, having cut off the head of one Osmer, whose countenance resembled that of Edmund, fixed it on a spear, carried it through the ranks in triumph, and called aloud to the English that it was time to fly; for, behold! the head of their sovereign. And though Edmund, observing the consternation of the troops, took off his helmet, and showed himself to them, the utmost he could gain by his activity and valor was to leave the victory undecided. Edric now took a surer method to ruin him, by pretending to desert to him; and as Edmund was well acquainted with his power, and probably knew no other of the chief nobility in whom he could repose more confidence, he was obliged, notwithstanding the repeated perfidy of the man, to give him a considerable command in the army. A battle soon after ensued at Assington, in Essex, where Edric, flying in the beginning of the day, occasioned the total defeat of the English, followed by a great slaughter of the nobility. The indefatigable Edmund, however, had still resources. Assembling a new army at Gloucester, he was again in condition to dispute the field, when the Danish and English nobility, equally harassed with those convulsions, obliged their kings to come to a compromise and to divide the kingdom between them by treaty. Canute reserved to himself the northern division, consisting of Mercia, East Anglia, and Northumberland, which he had entirely subdued. The southern parts were left to Edmund. This prince survived the treaty about a month. He was murdered at Oxford by two of his chamberlains, accomplices of Edric, who thereby made way for the succession of Canute the Dane to the crown of England. The English, who had been unable to defend their country and maintain their independency under so active and brave a prince as Edmund, could after his death expect nothing but total subjection from Canute, who, active and brave himself, and at the head of a great force, was ready to take advantage of the minority of Edwin and Edward, the two sons of Edmund. Yet this conqueror, who was commonly so little scrupulous, showed himself anxious to cover his injustice under plausible pretences. Before he seized the dominions of the English princes, he summoned a general assembly of the states in order to fix the succession of the kingdom. He here suborned some nobles to depose that, in the treaty of Gloucester, it had been verbally agreed, either to name Canute, in case of Edmund's death, successor to his dominions or tutor to his children--for historians vary in this particular; and that evidence, supported by the great power of Canute, determined the states immediately to put the Danish monarch in possession of the government. Canute, jealous of the two princes, but sensible that he should render himself extremely odious if he ordered them to be despatched in England, sent them abroad to his ally, the King of Sweden, whom he desired, as soon as they arrived at his court, to free him, by their death, from all further anxiety. The Swedish monarch was too generous to comply with the request; but being afraid of drawing on himself a quarrel with Canute, by protecting the young princes, he sent them to Solomon, King of Hungary, to be educated in his court. The elder, Edwin, was afterward married to the sister of the King of Hungary; but the English prince dying without issue, Solomon gave his sister-in-law, Agatha, daughter of the emperor Henry II, in marriage to Edward, the younger brother; and she bore him Edgar, Atheling, Margaret, afterward Queen of Scotland, and Christina, who retired into a convent. Canute, though he had reached the great point of his ambition in obtaining possession of the English crown, was obliged at first to make great sacrifices to it; and to gratify the chief of the nobility, by bestowing on them the most extensive governments and jurisdictions. He created Thurkill Earl or Duke of East Anglia--for these titles were then nearly of the same import--Yric of Northumberland, and Edric of Mercia; reserving only to himself the administration of Wessex. But seizing afterward a favorable opportunity, he expelled Thurkill and Yric from their governments, and banished them the kingdom; he put to death many of the English nobility, on whose fidelity he could not rely, and whom he hated on account of their disloyalty to their native prince. And even the traitor Edric, having had the assurance to reproach him with his services, was condemned to be executed and his body to be thrown into the Thames; a suitable reward for his multiplied acts of perfidy and rebellion. Canute also found himself obliged, in the beginning of his reign, to load the people with heavy taxes in order to reward his Danish followers: he exacted from them at one time the sum of seventy-two thousand pounds, besides eleven thousand which he levied on London alone. He was probably willing, from political motives, to mulct severely that city, on account of the affection which it had borne to Edmund and the resistance which it had made to the Danish power in two obstinate sieges.[25] But these rigors were imputed to necessity; and Canute, like a wise prince, was determined that the English, now deprived of all their dangerous leaders, should be reconciled to the Danish yoke, by the justice and impartiality of his administration. He sent back to Denmark as many of his followers as he could safely spare; he restored the Saxon customs in a general assembly of the states; he made no distinction between Danes and English in the distribution of justice; and he took care, by a strict execution of law, to protect the lives and properties of all his people. The Danes were gradually incorporated with his new subjects; and both were glad to obtain a little respite from those multiplied calamities from which the one, no less than the other, had, in their fierce contest for power, experienced such fatal consequences. [Footnote 25: In one of these sieges Canute diverted the course of the Thames, and by that means brought his ships above London bridge.] The removal of Edmund's children into so distant a country as Hungary was, next to their death, regarded by Canute as the greatest security to his government: he had no further anxiety, except with regard to Alfred and Edward, who were protected and supported by their uncle Richard, Duke of Normandy. Richard even fitted out a great armament, in order to restore the English princes to the throne of their ancestors; and though the navy was dispersed by a storm, Canute saw the danger to which he was exposed from the enmity of so warlike a people as the Normans. In order to acquire the friendship of the duke, he paid his addresses to Queen Emma, sister of that prince, and promised that he would leave the children whom he should have by that marriage in possession of the Crown of England. Richard complied with his demand and sent over Emma to England, where she was soon after married to Canute. The English, though they disapproved of her espousing the mortal enemy of her former husband and his family, were pleased to find at court a sovereign to whom they were accustomed, and who had already formed connections with them; and thus Canute, besides securing, by this marriage, the alliance of Normandy, gradually acquired, by the same means, the confidence of his own subjects. The Norman prince did not long survive the marriage of Emma; and he left the inheritance of the duchy to his eldest son of the same name, who, dying a year after him without children, was succeeded by his brother Robert, a man of valor and abilities. Canute, having settled his power in England beyond all danger of a revolution, made a voyage to Denmark, in order to resist the attacks of the King of Sweden; and he carried along with him a great body of the English, under the command of Earl Godwin. This nobleman had here an opportunity of performing a service, by which he both reconciled the King's mind to the English nation and, gaining to himself the friendship of his sovereign, laid the foundation of that immense fortune which he acquired to his family. He was stationed next the Swedish camp, and observing a favorable opportunity, which he was obliged suddenly to seize, he attacked the enemy in the night, drove them from their trenches, threw them into disorder, pursued his advantage, and obtained a decisive victory over them. Next morning Canute, seeing the English camp entirely abandoned, imagined that those disaffected troops had deserted to the enemy: he was agreeably surprised to find that they were at that time engaged in pursuit of the discomfited Swedes. He was so pleased with this success, and with the manner of obtaining it, that he bestowed his daughter in marriage upon Godwin, and treated him ever after with entire confidence and regard. In another voyage, which he made afterward to Denmark, Canute attacked Norway, and, expelling the just but unwarlike Olaus, kept possession of his kingdom till the death of that prince. He had now by his conquests and valor attained the utmost height of grandeur: having leisure from wars and intrigues, he felt the unsatisfactory nature of all human enjoyments; and equally weary of the glories and turmoils of this life, he began to cast his view toward that future existence, which it is so natural for the human mind, whether satiated by prosperity or disgusted with adversity, to make the object of its attention. Unfortunately, the spirit which prevailed in that age gave a wrong direction to his devotion: instead of making compensation to those whom he had injured by his former acts of violence, he employed himself entirely in those exercises of piety which the monks represented as the most meritorious. He built churches, he endowed monasteries, he enriched the ecclesiastics, and he bestowed revenues for the support of chantries at Assington and other places, where he appointed prayers to be said for the souls of those who had there fallen in battle against him. He even undertook a pilgrimage to Rome, where he resided a considerable time: besides obtaining from the pope some privileges for the English school erected there, he engaged all the princes through whose dominions he was obliged to pass to desist from those heavy impositions and tolls which they were accustomed to exact from the English pilgrims. By this spirit of devotion, no less than by his equitable and politic administration, he gained, in a good measure, the affections of his subjects. Canute, the greatest and most powerful monarch of his time, sovereign of Denmark and Norway, as well as of England, could not fail of meeting with adulation from his courtiers; a tribute which is liberally paid even to the meanest and weakest princes. Some of his flatterers, breaking out one day in admiration of his grandeur, exclaimed that everything was possible for him; upon which the monarch, it is said, ordered his chair to be set on the sea-shore while the tide was rising; and as the waters approached, he commanded them to retire, and to obey the voice of him who was lord of the ocean. He feigned to sit some time in expectation of their submission; but when the sea still advanced toward him, and began to wash him with its billows, he turned to his courtiers, and remarked to them that every creature in the universe was feeble and impotent, and that power resided with one Being alone, in whose hands were all the elements of nature; who could say to the ocean, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther," and who could level with his nod the most towering piles of human pride and ambition. The only memorable action which Canute performed after his return from Rome was an expedition against Malcolm, King of Scotland. During the reign of Ethelred, a tax of a shilling a hide had been imposed on all the lands of England. It was commonly called _danegelt_; because the revenue had been employed either in buying peace with the Danes or in making preparations against the inroads of that hostile nation. That monarch had required that the same tax should be paid by Cumberland, which was held by the Scots; but Malcolm, a warlike prince, told him that as he was always able to repulse the Danes by his own power, he would neither submit to buy peace of his enemies nor pay others for resisting them. Ethelred, offended at this reply, which contained a secret reproach on his own conduct, undertook an expedition against Cumberland; but though he committed ravages upon the country, he could never bring Malcolm to a temper more humble or submissive. Canute, after his accession, summoned the Scottish King to acknowledge himself a vassal for Cumberland to the Crown of England; but Malcolm refused compliance, on pretence that he owed homage to those princes only who inherited that kingdom by right of blood. Canute was not of a temper to bear this insult; and the King of Scotland soon found that the sceptre was in very different hands from those of the feeble and irresolute Ethelred. Upon Canute's appearing on the frontiers with a formidable army, Malcolm agreed that his grandson and heir, Duncan, whom he put in possession of Cumberland, should make the submissions required, and that the heirs of Scotland should always acknowledge themselves vassals to England for that province. Canute passed four years in peace after this enterprise, and he died at Shaftesbury; leaving three sons, Sweyn, Harold, and Hardicanute. Sweyn, whom he had by his first marriage with Alfwen, daughter of the Earl of Hampshire, was crowned in Norway; Hardicanute, whom Emma had borne him, was in possession of Denmark; Harold, who was of the same marriage with Sweyn, was at that time in England. HENRY III DEPOSES THE POPE THE GERMAN EMPIRE CONTROLS THE PAPACY A.D. 1048 FERDINAND GREGOROVIUS JOSEPH E. DARRAS (After the extinction of the Carlovingian line, A.D. 887, and the division of the empire, the Church of Rome and the Christian world fell into a highly demoralized state, attributable to the destitution to which ecclesiastical bodies were reduced by the frequent predations of bands of robbers, the immorality of the priesthood, and the power of electing the popes falling into the hands of intriguing and licentious patrician females, whom aspirants to the holy see were not ashamed to bribe for their favors. So depraved had the general spirit of the age become that Pope Boniface VII, A.D. 974, robbed St. Peter's Church and its treasury and fled to Constantinople; while Pope John XVIII, A.D. 1003, was prevented, by general indignation only, from accepting a sum of money from Emperor Basil to recognize the right of the Greek patriarch to the title of "Universal Bishop." A child, son of one of the old noble houses, was consecrated pope as Benedict IX, A.D. 1033, according to some authorities, at the age of ten or twelve years. He became noted for his profligacy and was driven from his throne, the Romans electing, as Pope Sylvester III, John, Bishop of Sabina, who is said to have paid a high price for the dignity. Benedict, however, regained the papal seat shortly afterward, and drove Sylvester into a refuge, but later sold the office to John Gratianus, Arch-priest of Rome, who as Gregory VI made laudable attempts to effect a general reformation. He failed in his efforts, and a chaotic state ensued; three popes claiming the triple tiara and reigning in Rome: Gregory at the Vatican, Benedict in the Lateran, and Sylvester in the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore. On the invitation of the Roman people, Henry the Black, the young and zealous Emperor of Germany, repaired to Italy in 1045 and summoned a great ecclesiastical council at Sutri, which passed a decree deposing the three papal claimants. The same council elected to the tiara the German bishop of Bamberg, who reigned in the holy see as Clement II. One of his first ceremonies, carried out with all the gorgeous pomp of the Roman Church, was the imperial coronation of Henry and his wife Agnes. But Henry's action, while "it dragged the Church out of the slough it had fallen into," startled the ecclesiastical world, and was a prelude to the struggle between pope and emperor which, under St. Hildebrand, Pope Gregory VII, culminated in the independent establishment of the pontificate and papal power.) FERDINAND GREGOROVIUS Henry III, the son and successor of Conrad, was young, vigorous, and God-fearing; a noble prince called, like Charles and Otto the Great, to restore Rome, to deliver it from tyrants, and to reform the almost annihilated Church. For the papacy had been still further dishonored by Benedict IX. It seemed as if a demon from hell, in the disguise of a priest, occupied the chair of Peter and profaned the sacred mysteries of religion by his insolent courses. Benedict IX, restored in 1038, protected by his brother Gregory, who ruled the city as senator of the Romans, led unchecked the life of a Turkish sultan in the palace of the Lateran. He and his family filled Rome with robbery and murder; all lawful conditions had ceased. Toward the end of 1044, or in the beginning of the following year, the populace at length rose in furious revolt; the Pope fled, but his vassals defended the Leonina against the attacks of the Romans. The Trasteverines remained faithful to Benedict, and he summoned friends and adherents; Count Gerard of Galeria advanced with a numerous body of horse to the Saxon gate and repulsed the Romans. An earthquake added to the horrors in the revolted city. The ancient chronicle which relates these events does not tell us whether Trastevere was taken by assault after a three-days' struggle, but merely relates that the Romans unanimously renounced Benedict, and elected Bishop John of the Sabina to the papacy as Sylvester III. John also owed his elevation to the gold with which he bribed the rebels and their leader, Girardo de Saxo. This powerful Roman had first promised his daughter in marriage to the Pope, and afterward refused her; for the Pope had not hesitated, in all seriousness, to sue for the hand of a Roman lady, a relative of his own. Her father lured him on with the hope of winning her, but required that Benedict should in the first place resign the tiara. The Pope, burning with passion, consented and fulfilled his promise during the revolt of the Romans. He was mastered by the demon of sensuality; it was reported by the superstitious that he associated with devils in the woods and attracted women by means of spells. It was asserted that books of magic, with which he had conjured demons, had been found in the Lateran. His banishment meanwhile aroused the haughty spirit of his house, and anger at Gerard's treacherous conduct proved a further incentive to revenge. His numerous adherents still held St. Angelo, and his gold acquired him new friends. After a forty-nine days' reign, Sylvester III was driven from the apostolic chair, which the Tusculan reascended in March, 1045. Benedict now ruled for some time in Rome, while Sylvester III found safety either within some fortified monument in the city or in some Sabine fortress, and continued to call himself pope. A beneficent darkness veils the horrors of this year. Hated by the Romans, insecure on his throne, in constant terror of the renewal of the revolution, Benedict eventually found himself obliged to abdicate. The abbot Bartholomew of Grotta Ferrata urged him to the step, but he unblushingly sold the papacy for money like a piece of merchandise. In exchange for a considerable income, that is to say, for the revenue of "Peter's pence" from England, he made over his papal dignities by a formal contract to John Gratianus, a rich archpriest of the Church of St. John at the Latin gate, on May 1, 1045. Could the holiest office in Christendom be more deeply outraged than by a sale such as this? And yet so general was the traffic in ecclesiastical dignities throughout the world that when a pope finally sold the chair of Peter the scandal did not strike society as specially heinous. John Gratian, or Gregory VI, set aside the canon law with a defiant courage which perhaps was only understood by the minority of his compatriots; he bought the papacy in order to wrest it from the hands of a criminal, and this remarkable Pope, although regarded as an idiot in that terrible period, was possibly an earnest and high-minded man. Scarcely had Peter Damian knowledge of this traffic when he wrote to Gregory VI on his elevation, rejoicing that the dove with the olive branch had returned to the ark. The Saint may have known the Pope personally and have been persuaded of his spiritual virtues. Even the chroniclers of the time, who represent him--assuredly with injustice--as so rude and simple that he was obliged to appoint a representative, are unable to fasten any crime upon him. The Cluniacs in France and the congregations of Italy all hailed his elevation as the beginning of a better time, and side by side with this simonist Pope a young and brave monk suddenly appears, who, after the heroic exertions of a lifetime, was to raise the degenerate papacy to a height hitherto undreamed of. Hildebrand first issues from obscurity by the side of Gregory VI; he became the Pope's chaplain, and this fact alone proves that Gregory was no idiot. How far Hildebrand's activity already extended, whether he had any share in Gregory's illegal elevation, we do not know; but in the "representative" spoken of by the chronicles, we may easily recognize the gifted young monk who was Gregory's counsellor, and who later took the name of Gregory VII in grateful recollection of his predecessor. While Benedict IX pursued his wild career in Tusculum or Rome, Gregory VI remained Pope for nearly two years. His desire was to save the Church, which stood in need of a drastic reform--and which soon afterward obtained it. The papacy, lately a hereditary fief of the counts of Tusculum, was utterly ruined; the _dominium temporale_, the ominous gift of the Carlovingians, the box of Pandora in the hands of the Pope from which a thousand evils had arisen, had disappeared, since the Church could scarcely command the fortresses in the immediate neighborhood of the city. A hundred lords, the captains or vassals of the Pope, stood ready to fall upon Rome; every road was infested with robbers, every pilgrim was robbed; within the city the churches lay in ruins, while the priests caroused. Daily assassinations made the streets insecure. Roman nobles, sword in hand, forced their way into St. Peter's itself to snatch the gifts which pious hands still placed upon the altar. The chronicler who describes this state of things extols Gregory for having repressed it. The captains, it is true, besieged the city, but the Pope boldly assembled the militia, restored a degree of order, and even conquered several fortresses in the district. Sylvester had apparently made an attempt on Rome; he was, however, defeated by Gregory's energy. The short and dark period of Gregory's pontificate was terrible, and his severity toward the robbers soon made him hated by the nobles and even by the equally rapacious cardinals. Whatever he may have done under the influence of French and Italian monks to rescue the Church from its state of barbarous confusion, it was--as in the time of Otto the Great--by the German dictatorship alone that it could be saved. The exertions of Gregory VI soon ceased to bear any result; his means were exhausted, and his opponents gradually overpowered him. So utter was the state of anarchy that it is said that all three popes lived in the city at the same time: one in the Lateran, a second in St. Peter's, and a third in Santa Maria Maggiore. The eyes of the better citizens at length turned to the King of Germany. The archdeacon Peter convoked a synod without consulting Gregory, and it was here resolved urgently to invite Henry to come and take the imperial crown and raise the Church from the ruin into which it had fallen. Henry, coming from Augsburg, crossed the Brenner, and arrived at Verona in September, 1046, accompanied by a great army and filled with the ardent desire of becoming the reformer of the Church. No enemy opposed him, the bishops and dukes, among them the powerful margrave Boniface of Tuscany, did homage without delay. The Roman situation was provisionally discussed at a great synod in Pavia. Gregory VI now hastened to meet the King at Piacenza, where he hoped to gain the monarch to his side. Henry, however, dismissed him with the explanation that his fate and that of the antipopes would be canonically decided by a council. Shortly before Christmas he assembled one thousand and forty-six bishops and Roman clergy at Sutri. The three popes were summoned, and Gregory and Sylvester III actually appeared. Sylvester was deposed from his pontificate and condemned to penance in a monastery. Gregory VI, however, gave the council cause to doubt its competence to judge him. Gregory, who was an upright man, or one at least conscious of good intentions, consented publicly to describe the circumstances of his elevation, and was thereby forced to condemn himself as guilty of simony and unworthy of the papal office. He quietly laid down the insignia of the papacy, and his renunciation did him honor. Henry, with the bishops and the margrave Boniface, immediately started for the city, which did not shut its gates against him; for Benedict II had hid himself in Tusculum, and his brothers did not venture on any resistance. Rome, weary of the Tusculum horrors, joyfully accepted the German King as her deliverer. Never afterward was a king of Germany received with such glad acclamations by the Roman people; never again did any other effect such great results or achieve the like changes. With the Roman expedition of Henry III begins a new epoch in the history of the city, and more especially of the Church. It seemed as if the waters of the deluge had subsided, and as if men from the ark had landed on the rock of Peter to give new races and new laws to a new world. What law, that stern and terrible power which kills, binds, and holds together, signifies in human affairs, has indeed been experienced by few periods so fully as by that with which we have now to deal. A synod, assembled in St. Peter's on December 23d, again pronounced all three popes deposed, and a canonical pope had consequently to be elected. Like Otto III before his coronation, Henry had also at his side a man who was to wear the tiara and to confer the crown upon himself. Adalbert of Hamburg and Bremen having refused the papacy, the King chose Suidger of Bamberg. The royal command was all that was required to place the candidate on the sacred chair. Henry, however, would not violate any of the canonical forms. As King of Germany he possessed no right either over that city or yet over the papal election. The right must first be conferred upon him, and this was done by a treaty which he had already concluded with the Romans at Sutri. "Roman Signors," said Henry at the second sitting of the synod on December 24th, "however thoughtless your conduct may hitherto have been, I still accord you liberty to elect a pope according to ancient custom; choose from among this assembly whom you will." The Romans replied: "When the royal majesty is present, the assent to the election does not belong to us, and, when it is lacking, you are represented by your _patricius_. For in the affairs of the republic the patricius is not patricius of the pope, but of the emperor. We admit that we have been so thoughtless as to appoint idiots as popes. It now behooves your imperial power to give the Roman republic the benefit of law, the ornament of manners, and to lend the arm of protection to the Church." The senators of the year 1046, who so meekly surrendered the valuable right to the German King, heeded not the shades of Alberic and the three Crescentii; since these--their patricians--would have accused them of treason. The Romans of these days were, however, ready for any sacrifice so that they obtained freedom from the Tusculum tyranny. Nothing more clearly shows the utter depth of their exhaustion and the extent of their sufferings than the light surrender of a right which it had formerly cost Otto the Great such repeated efforts to extort from the city. Rome made the humiliating confession that she possessed no priest worthy of the papacy, that the clergy in the city were rude and utter simonists. All other circumstances, moreover, forbade the election of a Roman or even of an Italian to the papacy. The Romans besought Henry to give them a good pope; he presented the Bishop of Bamberg to the assenting clergy, and led the reluctant candidate to the apostolic chair. Clement II, consecrated on Christmas Day, 1046, immediately placed the imperial crown on Henry's head and on that of his wife Agnes. There were still many Romans who had been eye-witnesses of like transactions--that is to say, of papal election and imperial coronation following one the other in immediate succession--in the case of Otto III and Henry V; who, as they now saw the second German pope mount the chair of Peter, may have recalled the fact that the first had only lived a few sad years in Rome and had died in misery. The coronation of Henry III was performed under such significant conditions and in such perfect tranquillity that it offers the most fitting opportunity for describing in a few sentences the ceremonial of the imperial coronation. Since Charles the Great, these repeated ceremonies, with the more frequent coronations or Lateran processions of the popes, formed the most brilliant spectacle in Rome. When the Emperor-elect approached with his wife and retinue, he first took an oath to the Romans, at the little bridge on the Neronian Field, faithfully to observe the rights and usages of the city. On the day of the coronation he made his entrance through the Porta Castella close to St. Angelo and here repeated the oath. The clergy and the corporations of Rome greeted him at the Church of Santa Maria Traspontina, on a legendary site called the Terebinthus of Nero. The solemn procession then advanced to the steps of the cathedral. Senators walked by the side of the King, the prefect of the city carried the naked sword before him, and his chamberlains scattered money. Arrived at the steps he dismounted from his horse and, accompanied by his retinue, ascended to the platform where the Pope, surrounded by the higher clergy, awaited him sitting. The King stooped to kiss the Pope's foot, tendered the oath to be an upright protector of the Church, received from the Pope the kiss of peace, and was adopted by him as the son of the Church. With solemn song both King and Pope entered the Church of Santa Maria in Turri, beside the steps of St. Peter's, and here the King was formally made canon of the cathedral. He then advanced, conducted by the Lateran count of the palace and by the _primicerius_ of the judges, to the silver door of the cathedral, where he prayed, and the Bishop of Albano delivered the first oration. Innumerable mystic ceremonies awaited the King in St. Peter's itself. Here, a short way from the entrance, was the _rota porphyretica_, a round porphyry stone inserted in the pavement, on which the King and Pope knelt. The imperial candidate here made his profession of faith, the Cardinal-bishop of Portus placed himself in the middle of the rota and pronounced the second oration. The King was then draped in new vestments, was made a cleric in the sacristy by the Pope, was clad with tunic, dalmatica, pluviale, mitre and sandals, and was then led to the altar of St. Maurice, whither his wife, after similar but less fatiguing ceremonies, accompanied him. The Bishop of Ostia here anointed the King on the right arm and neck and delivered the third oration. If the Emperor-elect were fitted by the dignity of his calling, then the solemnity of the function, the mystic and tedious pomp, the magnificent monotone of prayer and song in the ancient cathedral, hallowed by so many exalted memories, must have stirred his inmost soul. The pinnacle of all human ambition, the crown of Charles the Great, lay glittering before his longing eyes on the altar of the Prince of the Apostles. The Pope, however, first placed a ring on the finger of the Anointed, as symbol of the faith, the permanence and strength of his Catholic rule; with similar formulæ girt him with the sword, and finally placed the crown upon his head. "Take," he said, "the symbol of fame, the diadem of royalty, the crown, the empire, in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; renounce the archfiend and all sins, be upright and merciful, and live in such pious love that thou mayest hereafter receive the everlasting crown in company with the saints, from our Lord Jesus Christ." The church resounded with the Gloria and the Laudes: "Life and victory to the Emperor, to the Roman and the German army," and with the endless acclamations of the rude soldiers who hailed their King in German, Slav, and Romance tongues. The Emperor divested himself of the symbols of the empire, and now ministered to the Pope as subdeacon at mass. The Count Palatine afterward removed the sandals, and put the red imperial boots with the spurs of St. Maurice upon him. Whereupon the entire procession, accompanied by the Pope, left the church and advanced along the so-called "Triumphal Way," through the flower-bedecked city, amid the ringing of all the bells, to the Lateran. At special stations were posted clergy singing praises, and the _scholæ_ or guilds placed to salute the Emperor as he passed. Chamberlains scattered money before and behind the procession, and all the scholæ and the officials of the palace received the _presbyterium_ or customary present of money. A banquet closed the solemnities in the papal palace. Such are merely the barest outlines of an imperial coronation of this period. The ceremonies, borrowed from Byzantine pomp, had been established since Charles the Great, and had remained essentially the same, although, in the course of time, many details had been altered and others had been introduced. The magnificence of these spectacles is no longer rivalled by the pageantry of our days. The multitudes of dukes and counts, of bishops and abbots, knights and nobles with their retinues, the splendor of their attire, the strangeness of their faces and their tongues, the martial array of warriors, the mystic magnificence of the papacy with all its orders in such picturesque costume, the aspect of secular Rome, of judges and senators, of consuls and _duces_, of the militia with their banners, in curious, motley, fantastic attire; lastly, as the sublime scene of the drama, the stern, gloomy, ruinous city, through which the procession solemnly advanced--all combined to produce a picture of such mighty and universal historic interest that even a Roman accustomed to the pomp of Trajan's period could not have beheld it without feelings of astonishment. These coronation processions restored to the city its character of metropolis. The Romans of the time might flatter themselves that the emperors whom they elected still ruled the universe. The strangers who flocked to the city freely distributed their gold, and the hungry populace could live for weeks on the proceeds of the coronation. J.E. DARRAS The accession of Gregory VI was the harbinger of an epoch of moral renaissance. The wise Pontiff, whose glory it had been to free the Church from a disgraceful yoke, proved himself worthy of the sovereign power, as much by the zeal with which he wielded as by the noble disinterestedness with which he resigned it. He found the temporal domains of the Church so far diminished that they hardly furnished the Pope with the means of an honorable maintenance. As guardian of the rights of the Church, he hurled an excommunication against the usurpers. The infuriated plunderers marched upon Rome with an armed force. The Pope also raised troops, took possession of St. Peter's church, drove out the wretches who stole the offerings laid upon the tombs of the Apostles, took back several estates belonging to the domain of the Church, and secured the safety of the roads, upon which pilgrims no longer ventured to travel except in caravans. This policy displeased the Romans, who had now become habituated to plunder. Their complaints induced Henry III, King of Germany, to hurry to Italy, and to summon a council at Sutri, during the Christmas festival, to inquire whether the election of Gregory should be regarded as simoniacal. The Pope and the clergy entertained the sincere conviction that they were justified in bringing about, even by means of money, the abdication of the unworthy Benedict, thus to end the scandal which so foully disgraced the Holy See. As opinions were divided on this point, Gregory VI, to set all doubts at rest, stripped himself, with his own hands, of the Pontifical vestments, and gave up to the bishops his pastoral staff. Having given to the world this noble example of self-denial, Gregory withdrew to the monastery of Cluny, bearing with him the consciousness of a great duty done. He died in that holy solitude in the odor of sanctity. The see left vacant by the magnanimous humility of Gregory VI was bestowed, by general consent, upon Suidger, bishop of Bamberg, whom King Henry had brought with him to Rome. The new Pope, whose elevation was due only to universally known and acknowledged virtues, took the name of Clement II, and was crowned on Christmas-Day (A.D. 1046); in the same solemnity he bestowed the imperial title and crown upon Henry III, and his queen, Agnes, daughter of William, duke of Aquitaine. The Emperor Henry, during his sojourn in Rome, sent for St. Peter Damian to assist the Pope by his counsels. The illustrious religious thus wrote to the Pontiff, in excuse for not complying: "Notwithstanding the Emperor's request, so expressive of his benevolence in my regard, I cannot devote to journeys the time which I have promised to consecrate to God in solitude. I send the imperial letter in order that your Holiness may decide, if it become necessary. My soul is weighed down with grief when I see the churches of our provinces plunged into shameful confusion through the fault of bad bishops and abbots. What does it profit us to learn that the Holy See has been brought out from darkness into the light, if we still remain buried in the same gloom of ignominy? But we hope that you are destined to be the savior of Israel. Labor then, Most Holy Father, once more to raise up the kingdom of justice, and use the vigor of discipline to humble the wicked and to raise the courage of the good." On his return to Germany, Henry took the Pope with him. The city of Beneventum refused to open its gates to the Sovereign Pontiff, who, at the Emperor's request, pronounced against it a sentence of excommunication. Clement made but a short visit to his native land, and hastened back to Rome. His apostolic zeal led him to visit, in person, the churches of Umbria, the deplorable condition of which he had learned from the letter of St. Peter Damian. On reaching the monastery of St. Thomas of Aposello, he was seized with a mortal disease, before having accomplished the object of his journey. His last thought was for his beloved church of Bamberg, to which he sent, from his dying couch, a confirmation of all its former privileges, assuring it, in the most touching terms, of his unchanging affection. DISSENSION AND SEPARATION OF THE GREEK AND ROMAN CHURCHES A.D. 1054 HENRY FANSHAWE TOZER JOSEPH DEHARBE (In the division of the Greek Catholic Church from that at Rome, Protestant writers see a very natural and legitimate separation of two equal powers. Roman Catholics, regarding the Papal supremacy as established from the beginning, treat the division as a plot by evil and malignant men. Both viewpoints are here given. The Eastern--or Greek Christian--Church, now known as the Holy Orthodox, Catholic, Apostolic, Oriental Church, first assumed individuality at Ephesus, and in the catechetical school of Alexandria, which flourished after A.D. 180. It early came into conflict with the Western or Roman Church: "the Eastern Church enacting creeds, and the Western Church discipline." In the third century, Dionysius, Bishop of Rome, accused the Patriarch of Alexandria of error in points of faith, but the Patriarch vindicated his orthodoxy. Eastern monachism arose about 300; the Church of Armenia was founded about the same year; and the Church of Georgia or Iberia in 340. Constantine the Great caused Christianity to be recognized throughout the Roman Empire, and in 325 convened the first ecumenical or general Council at Nicaea [Nice], when Arius, excommunicated for heresy by a provincial synod at Alexandria in 321, defended his views, but was condemned. Arianism long maintained a theological and political importance in the East and among the Goths and other nations converted by Arian missionaries. In A.D. 330, Constantine removed the capital of the Roman Empire to Constantinople, and thence dates the definite establishment of the Greek Church and the serious rivalry with the Roman Church over claims of preeminence, differences of doctrine and ritual, charges of heresy and inter-excommunications, which ended in the final separation of the churches in 1054. In A.D. 461, the churches of Egypt, Syria, and Armenia separated from the Church of Constantinople, over the Monophysite controversy on the single divine or single compound nature of the Son; in 634 the struggle with Mahometanism began; in 676 the Maronites of Lebanon formed a strong sect, which, in 1182, joined the Roman Church. In 988, Vladimir the Great of Russia founded the Græco-Russian Church, in which the Greek Church found a refuge, when Mahometanism was established at Constantinople, after its capture by the Turks in 1453.) HENRY FANSHAWE TOZER The separation of the Eastern and Western churches, which finally took place in the year 1054, was due to the operation of influences which had been at work for several centuries before. From very early times a tendency to divergence existed, arising from the tone of thought of the dominant races in the two, the more speculative Greeks being chiefly occupied with purely theological questions, while the more practical Roman mind devoted itself rather to subjects connected with the nature and destiny of man. In differences such as these there was nothing irreconcilable: the members of both communions professed the same forms of belief, rested their faith on the same divine persons, were guided by the same standard of morals, and were animated by the same hopes and fears; and they were bound by the first principles of their religion to maintain unity with one another. But in societies, as in individuals, inherent diversity of character is liable to be intensified by time, and thus counteracts the natural bonds of sympathy, and prevents the two sides from seeing one another's point of view. In this way it coöperates with and aggravates the force of other causes of disunion, which adverse circumstances may generate. Such causes there were in the present instance, political, ecclesiastical, and theological; and the nature of these it may be well for us to consider, before proceeding to narrate the history of the disruption. The office of bishop of Rome assumed to some extent a political character as early as the time of the first Christian emperors. By them this prelate was constituted a sort of secretary of state for Christian affairs, and was employed as a central authority for communicating with the bishops in the provinces; so that after a while he acted as minister of religion and public instruction. As the civil and military power of the Western Empire declined, the extent of this authority increased; and by the time when Italy was annexed to the Empire of the East, in the reign of Justinian, the popes had become the political chiefs of Roman society. Nominally, indeed, they were subject to the exarch of Ravenna, as vicegerent of the Emperor at Constantinople, but in reality the inhabitants of Western Europe were more disposed to look to the spiritual potentate in the Imperial city as representing the traditions of ancient Rome. The political rivalry that was thus engendered was sharpened by the traditional jealousy of Rome and Constantinople, which had existed ever since the new capital had been erected on the shores of the Bosporus. Then followed struggles for administrative superiority between the popes and the exarchs, culminating in the shameful maltreatment and banishment of Martin I by the emperor Constans--an event which the See of Rome could never forget. The attempt to enforce iconoclasm in Central Italy was influential in causing the loss of that province to the Empire; and even after the Byzantine rule had ceased there, the controversy about images tended to keep alive the antagonism, because, although that question was once and again settled in favor of the maintenance of images, yet many of the emperors, in whose persons the power of the East was embodied, were foremost in advocating their destruction. Indeed, from first to last, owing to the close connection of church and state in the Byzantine empire, the unpopularity of the latter in Western Europe was shared by the former. To this must be added the contempt for one another's character which had arisen among the adherents of the two churches, for the Easterns had learned to regard the people of the West as ignorant and barbarous, and were esteemed by them in turn as mendacious and unmanly. In ecclesiastical matters also the differences were of long standing. These related to questions of jurisdiction between the two patriarchates. Up to the eighth century, the patriarchate of the West included a number of provinces on the eastern side of the Adriatic--Illyricum, Dacia, Macedonia, and Greece. But Leo the Isaurian, who probably foresaw that Italy would ere long cease to form part of his dominions, and was unwilling that these important territories should own spiritual allegiance to one who was not his subject, altered this arrangement, and transferred the jurisdiction over them to the Patriarch of Constantinople. Against this measure the bishops of Rome did not fail to protest, and demands for their restoration were made up to the time of the final schism. A further ecclesiastical question, which in part depended on this, was that of the Church of the Bulgarians. The prince Bogoris had swayed to and fro in his inclinations between the two churches, and had ultimately given his allegiance to that of the East; but the controversy did not end there. According to the ancient territorial arrangement the Danubian provinces were made subject to the archbishopric of Thessalonica, and that city was included within the Western patriarchate; and on this ground Bulgaria was claimed by the Roman see as falling within that area. The matter was several times pressed on the attention of the Greek Church, especially on the occasion of the council held at Constantinople in 879, but in vain. The Eastern prelates replied evasively, saying that to determine the boundaries of dioceses was a matter which belonged to the sovereign. The Emperor, for his part, had good reason for not yielding, for by so doing he would not only have admitted into a neighboring country an agency which would soon have been employed for political purposes to his disadvantage, but would have justified the assumption on which the demand rested, viz., that the pope had a right to claim the provinces which his predecessors had lost. Thus this point of difference also remained open, as a source of irritation between the two churches. But behind these questions another of far greater magnitude was coming into view, that of the papal supremacy. From being in the first instance the head of the Christian church in the old Imperial city, and afterward Patriarch of the West, and _primus inter pares_ in relation to the other spiritual heads of Christendom, the bishop of Rome had gradually claimed, on the strength of his occupying the _cathedra Petri_, a position which approximated more and more to that of supremacy over the whole Church. This claim had never been admitted in the East, but the appeals which were made from Constantinople to his judgment and authority, both at the time of the iconoclastic controversy and subsequently, lent some countenance to its validity. But the great advance was made in the pontificate of Nicholas I (858-867), who promulgated, or at least recognized, the _False Decretals_. This famous compilation, which is now universally acknowledged to be spurious, and can be shown to be the work of that period, contains, among other documents, letters and decrees of the early bishops of Rome, in which the organization and discipline of the Church from the earliest time are set forth, and the whole system is shown to have depended on the supremacy of the popes. The newly discovered collection was recognized as genuine by Nicholas, and was accepted by the Western Church. The effect of this was at once to formulate all the claims which had before been vaguely asserted, and to give them the authority of unbroken tradition. The result to Christendom at large was in the highest degree momentous. It was impossible for future popes to recede from them, and equally impossible for other churches which valued their independence to acknowledge them. The last attempt on the part of the Eastern Church to arrange a compromise in this matter was made by the emperor Basil II, a potentate who both by his conquests and the vigor of his administration might rightly claim to negotiate with others on equal terms. By him it was proposed (A.D. 1024) that the Eastern Church should recognize the honorary primacy of the Western patriarch, and that he in turn should acknowledge the internal independence of the Eastern Church. These terms were rejected, and from that moment it was clear that the separation of the two branches of Christendom was only a question of time. Already in the papacy of Nicholas I a rupture had occurred in connection with the dispute between the rival patriarchs of Constantinople, Ignatius and Photius. The former of these prelates, who was son of the emperor Michael I, and a man of high character and a devout opponent of iconoclasm, was appointed, through the influence of Theodora, the restorer of images, in the reign of her son, Michael the Drunkard. But the uncle of the Emperor, the Caesar Bardas, who was a man of flagrantly immoral life, had divorced his own wife, and was living publicly with his son's widow. For this incestuous connection Ignatius repelled him from the communion. Fired with indignation at this insult, the Caesar determined to ruin both the Patriarch and his patroness, the Empress-mother, and with this view persuaded the Emperor to free himself from the trammels of his mother's influence by forcing her to take monastic vows. To this step Ignatius would not consent, because it was forbidden by the laws of the Church that any should enter on the monastic life except of their own free will. In consequence of his resistance a charge of treasonable correspondence was invented against him, and when he refused to resign his office he was deposed (857). Photius, who was chosen to succeed him, was the most learned man of his age, and like his rival, unblemished in character and a supporter of images, but boundless in ambition. He was a layman at the time of his appointment, but in six days he passed through the inferior orders which led up to the patriarchate. Still, the party that remained faithful to Ignatius numbered many adherents, and therefore Photius thought it well to enlist the support of the Bishop of Rome on his side. An embassy was therefore sent to inform Pope Nicholas that the late Patriarch had voluntarily retired, and that Photius had been lawfully chosen, and had undertaken the office with great reluctance. In answer to this appeal the Pope despatched two legates to Constantinople, and Ignatius was summoned to appear before a council at which they were present. He was condemned, but appealed to the Pope in person. On the return of the legates to Rome it was discovered that they had received bribes, and thereupon Nicholas, whose judgment, however imperious, was ever on the side of the oppressed, called together a synod of the Roman Church, and refused his consent to the deposition of Ignatius. To this effect he wrote to the authorities of the Eastern Church, calling upon them at the same time to concur in the decrees of the apostolic see; but subsequently, having obtained full information as to the harsh treatment to which the deposed Patriarch had been subjected, he excommunicated Photius, and commanded the restoration of Ignatius "by the power committed to him by Christ through St. Peter." These denunciations produced no effect on the Emperor and the new Patriarch, and a correspondence between Michael and Nicholas, couched in violent language, continued at intervals for several years. At last, in consequence of a renewed demand on the part of the Pope that Ignatius and Photius should be sent to Rome for judgment, the latter prelate, whose ability and eloquence had obtained great influence for him, summoned a council at Constantinople in the year 867, to decree the counter-excommunication of the Western Patriarch. Of the eight articles which were drawn up on this occasion for the incrimination of the Church of Rome, all but two relate to trivial matters, such as the observance of Saturday as a fast, and the shaving of their beards by the clergy. The two important ones deal with the doctrine of the Procession of the Holy Spirit, and the enforced celibacy of the clergy. The condemnation of the Western Church on these grounds was voted, and a messenger was despatched to bear the defiance to Rome; but ere he reached his destination he was recalled, in consequence of a revolution in the palace at Constantinople. The author of this, Basil the Macedonian, the founder of the most important dynasty that ever occupied the throne of the Eastern Empire, had for some time been associated in the government with the emperor Michael; but at length, being fearful for his own safety, he resolved to put his colleague out of the way, and assassinated him during one of his fits of drunkenness. It is said that in consequence of this crime Photius refused to admit him to the communion; anyhow, one of the first acts of Basil was to depose Photius. A council, hostile to him, was now assembled, and was attended by the legates of the new pope, Hadrian II (869). By this Ignatius was restored to his former dignity, while Photius was degraded and his ordinations were declared void. So violent was the animosity displayed against him that he was dragged before the assembly by the Emperor's guard, and his condemnation was written in the sacramental wine. During the ten years which elapsed between his restoration and his death Ignatius continued to enjoy his high position in peace, but for Photius other vicissitudes were in store. On the removal of his rival, so strangely did opinion sway to and fro at this time in the empire, the current of feeling set strongly in favor of the learned exile. He was recalled, and his reinstatement was ratified by a council (879). But with the death of Basil the Macedonian (886), he again fell from power, for the successor of that Emperor, Leo the Philosopher, ignominiously removed him, in order to confer the dignity on his brother Stephen. He passed the remainder of his life in honorable retirement, and by his death the chief obstacle in the way of reconcilement with the Roman Church was removed. It is consoling to learn, when reading of the unhappy rivalry of the two men so superior to the ordinary run of Byzantine prelates, that they never shared the passions of their respective partisans, but retained a mutual regard for one another. We have now to consider the doctrinal questions which were in dispute between the two churches. Far the most important of these was that relating to the addition of the _Filioque_ clause to the Nicene Creed. In the first draft of the Creed, as promulgated by the council of Nicaea, the article relating to the Holy Spirit ran simply thus: "I believe in the Holy Ghost." But in the Second General Council, that of Constantinople, which condemned the heresy of Macedonius, it was thought advisable to state more explicitly the doctrine of the Church on this subject, and among other affirmations the clause was added, "who proceedeth from the Father." Again, at the next general council, at Ephesus, it was ordered that it should not be lawful to make any addition to the Creed, as ratified by the Council of Constantinople. The followers of the Western Church, however, generally taught that the Spirit proceeds from the Son as well as from the Father, while those of the East preferred to use the expression, "the Spirit of Christ, proceeding from the Father, and receiving of the Son," or, "proceeding from the Father through the Son." It was in the churches of Spain and France that the _Filioque_ clause was first introduced into the Creed and thus recited in the services, but the addition was not at once approved at Rome. Pope Leo III, early in the ninth century, not only expressed his disapproval of this departure from the original form, but, in order to show his sense of the importance of adhering to the traditional practice, caused the Creed of Constantinople to be engraved on silver plates, both in Greek and Latin, and thus to be publicly set forth in the Church. The first pontiff who authorized the addition was Nicholas I, and against this Photius protested, both during the lifetime of that Pope and also in the time of John VIII, when it was condemned by the council held at Constantinople in 879, which is called by the Greeks the Eighth General Council. It is clear from what we have already seen that Photius was prepared to seize on _any_ point of disagreement in order to throw it in the teeth of his opponents, but in this matter the Eastern Church had a real grievance to complain of. The Nicene Creed was to them what it was not to the Western Church, their only creed, and the authority of the councils, by which its form and wording were determined, stood far higher in their estimation. To add to the one and to disregard the other were, at least in their judgment, the violation of a sacred compact. The other question, which, if not actually one of doctrine, had come to be regarded as such, was that of the _azyma_, that is, the use of unfermented bread in the celebration of the eucharist. As far as one can judge from the doubtful evidence on the subject, it seems probable that ordinary, that is, leavened bread, was generally used in the church for this purpose until the seventh or eighth century, when unleavened bread began to be employed in the West, on the ground that it was used in the original institution of the sacrament, which took place during the Feast of the Passover. In the Eastern Church this change was never admitted. It seems strange that so insignificant a matter of observance should have been erected into a question of the first importance between the two communions, but the reason of this is not far to seek. The fact is that, whereas the weighty matters of dispute--the doctrine of the Procession of the Holy Spirit, and the papal claims to supremacy-- required some knowledge and reflection in order rightly to understand their bearings, the use of leavened or unleavened bread was a matter within the range of all, and those who were on the lookout for a ground of antagonism found it here ready to hand. In the story of the conversion of the Russian Vladimir we are told that the Greek missionary who expounded to him the religious views of the Eastern Church, when combating the claims of the emissaries of the Roman communion, remarked: "They celebrate the mass with unleavened bread; therefore they have not the true religion." Still, even Photius, when raking together the most minute points of difference between him and his adversaries, did not introduce this one. It was reserved for a hot-headed partisan at a later period to bring forward as a subject of public discussion. This was Michael Cerularius, Patriarch of Constantinople, with whose name the Great Schism will forever be associated. The circumstances which led up to that event are as follows: For a century and a half from the death of Photius the controversy slumbered, though no advance was made toward an understanding with respect to the points at issue. In Italy, and even at Rome, churches and monasteries were tolerated in which the Greek rite was maintained, and similar freedom was allowed to the Latins resident in the Greek empire. But this tacit compact was broken in 1053 by the patriarch Michael, who, in his passionate antagonism to everything Western, gave orders that all the churches in Constantinople in which worship was celebrated according to the Roman rite should be closed. At the same time--aroused, perhaps, in some measure by the progress of the Normans in conquering Apulia, which tended to interfere with the jurisdiction still exercised by the Eastern Church in that province--he joined with Leo, the archbishop of Achrida and metropolitan of Bulgaria, in addressing a letter to the Bishop of Trani in Southern Italy, containing a violent attack on the Latin Church, in which the question of the azyma was put prominently forward. Directions were further given for circulating this missive among the Western clergy. It happened that at the time when the letter arrived at Trani, Cardinal Humbert, a vigorous champion of ecclesiastical rights, was residing in that city, and he translated it into Latin and communicated it to Pope Leo IX. In answer, the Pope addressed a remonstrance to the Patriarch, in which, without entering into the specific charges that he had brought forward, he contrasted the security of the Roman See in matters of doctrine, arising from the guidance which was guaranteed to it through St. Peter, with the liability of the Eastern Church to fall into error, and pointedly referred to the more Christian spirit manifested by his own communion in tolerating those from whose opinions they differed. Afterward, at the commencement of 1054, in compliance with a request from the emperor Constantine Monomachus, who was anxious on political grounds to avoid a rupture, he sent three legates to Constantinople to arrange the terms of an agreement. These were Frederick of Lorraine, Chancellor of the Roman Church; Peter, Archbishop of Amalfi, and Cardinal Humbert. The legates were welcomed by the Emperor, but they unwisely adopted a lofty tone toward the haughty Patriarch, who thenceforward avoided all communication with them, declaring that on a matter which so seriously affected the whole Eastern Church he could take no steps without consulting the other patriarchs. Humbert now published an argumentative reply to Michael's letter to the Pope, in the form of a dialogue between two members of the Greek and Latin churches, in which the charges brought against his own communion were discussed _seriatim_, and especially those relating to fasting on Saturday and the use of unleavened bread in the eucharist. A rejoinder to this appeared from the pen of a monk of the monastery of Studium, Nicetas Pectoratus, in which the enforced celibacy of the Western clergy, on which Photius had before animadverted, was severely criticised. The Cardinal retorted in intemperate language, and so entirely had the legates secured the support of Constantine that Nicetas' work was committed to the flames, and he was forced to recant what he had said against the Roman Church. But the Patriarch was immovable, and for the moment he occupied a stronger position than the Emperor, who desired to conciliate him. At last the patience of the legates was exhausted, and on July 16, 1054, they proceeded to the Church of St. Sophia, and deposited on the altar, which was prepared for the celebration of the eucharist, a document containing a fierce anathema, by which Michael Cerularius and his adherents were condemned. After their departure they were for a moment recalled, because the Patriarch expressed a desire to confer with them; but this Constantine would not permit, fearing some act of violence on the part of the people. They then finally left Constantinople, and from that time to the present all communion has been broken off between the two great branches of Christendom. The breach thus made was greatly widened at the period of the crusades. However serious may have been the alienation between the East and West at the time of their separation, it is clear that the Greeks were not regarded by the Latins as a mere heretical sect, for one of the primary objects with which the First Crusade was undertaken was the deliverance of the Eastern Empire from the attacks of the Mahometans. But the familiarity which arose from the presence of the crusaders on Greek soil ripened the seeds of mutual dislike and distrust. As long as negotiations between the two parties took place at a distance, the differences, however irreconcilable they might be in principle, did not necessarily bring them into open antagonism, whereas their more intimate acquaintance with one another produced personal and national ill-will. The people of the West now appeared more than ever barbarous and overbearing, and the Court of Constantinople more than ever senile and designing. The crafty policy of Alexius Comnenus in transferring his allies with all speed into Asia, and declining to take the lead in the expedition, was almost justified by the necessity of delivering his subjects from these unwelcome visitors and avoiding further embarrassments. But the iniquitous Fourth Crusade (1204) produced an ineradicable feeling of animosity in the minds of the Byzantine people. The memory of the barbarities of that time, when many Greeks died as martyrs at the stake for their religious convictions, survives at the present day in various places bordering on the Aegean, in legends which relate that they were formerly destroyed by the Pope of Rome. Still, the anxiety of the Eastern emperors to maintain their position by means of political support from Western Europe brought it to pass that proposals for reunion were made on several occasions. The final attempt at reconciliation was made when the Greek empire was reduced to the direst straits, and its rulers were prepared to purchase the aid of Western Europe against the Ottomans by almost any sacrifice. Accordingly, application was made to Pope Eugenius IV, and by him the representatives of the Eastern Church were invited to attend the council which was summoned to meet at Ferrara in 1438. The Emperor, John Palaeologus and the Greek patriarch Joseph proceeded thither. The Emperor, however, on his return home, soon discovered that his pilgrimage to the West had been lost labor. Pope Eugenius, indeed, provided him with two galleys and a guard of three hundred men, equipped at his own expense, but the hoped-for succors from Western Europe did not arrive. His own subjects were completely alienated by the betrayal of their cherished faith; the clergy who favored the union were regarded as traitors. John Palaeologus himself did not survive to see the final catastrophe; but Constantinople was captured by the Turks, and the Empire of the East ceased to exist. JOSEPH DEHARBE The bonds so often and so painfully knit between the Eastern and Western churches were destined at last to be completely torn asunder, and the truth of our Lord's words, "Who is not for Me, is against Me," was again to be proved. The Greek schism places strikingly before our eyes the fate of such churches as supinely yield their rights and independence, and submit willingly to State tyranny. In the year 857 the wicked Bardas, uncle to the reigning Emperor, who wielded an almost absolute power and disregarded all laws, human and divine, unjustly banished from his See, Ignatius, the rightful patriarch of Constantinople, and placed in his stead the learned, but worthless, Photius. Such bishops as refused to recognize the intruder (who had received all the orders in six days from an excommunicated bishop) were deposed, imprisoned and exiled. Photius tried, by cruel ill-treatment, to force the aged Ignatius to abdicate, and by a well-contrived fabrication endeavored to obtain the support of Pope Nicholas I. When, however, this great Pope learned the true facts of the case from the imprisoned Ignatius, he assembled a synod in Rome in 864, by which Photius and all the bishops whom he had consecrated were deposed. Fired by ambition, Photius now threw off all concealments. He summoned the bishops of his own party, laid various charges against the Roman Church, and in his inconsiderate rage ended by anathematising the holy Father. Pope Nicholas, in a most powerful letter, exhorted the Emperor Michael III to set bounds to the disorders of Photius, warning him that a fearful judgment would await him if the faithful were misled and so many believers caused to swerve from the right path. It was not, however, till the reign of his successor that Photius was banished and the much-tried St. Ignatius restored to his rights. To remedy the evil brought about by Photius, the eighth general council was held in Constantinople, at the desire of St. Ignatius and the Emperor, and presided over by the legates of Pope Adrian. Photius, when called upon to answer for himself, having nothing to say in his own defence, excused his silence by the example of our Lord, who also was silent when accused. The fathers were filled with indignation at this blasphemous speech, and his guilt having been fully proved, they cried unanimously: "Anathema on Photius, promoted through court favor! Anathema to the tyrant Photius, to the inventor of lies, to the new Judas! Anathema on all his followers and protectors! Everlasting glory to the most holy Roman Pope Nicholas! Long life to Adrian, the holy Father in Rome!" At the next sitting of the council, a collection of spurious and falsified writings, together with the acts of the synod which Photius had held against Pope Nicholas, and which were filled with lies and invective and had forged signatures appended to them, were publicly burned in the church. But hardly had Ignatius died in the year 879, when the crafty Photius, who knew well how to ingratiate himself with the Emperor, reascended the ill-fated chair and began afresh his old courses. His rule did not last long. He was again deposed and banished to a monastery, where he died about the year 891. His death, however, in nowise healed the wounds which he had inflicted on the Eastern Church. His party survived him. He had filled most of the Greek sees with men of his own cast, and had illegally bestowed benefices on great numbers of priests. These all harbored a deep-seated dislike towards Rome, and only awaited a favorable opportunity to renew the breach with her. Thus that sectarian spirit which Photius had kindled continued to smoulder on like a spark beneath the ashes, and spread itself wider and wider, as well among the worst sort of the clergy as among the fickle and discontented population. It was after all this that the patriarchs of Constantinople attempted to make themselves fully independent of the West. The splendor of the imperial city of Byzantium was a constant incitement to their desire for freedom, and they were certain for the most part of being supported in their endeavors by the emperors. As early as the time of Pope Gregory the Great, the patriarch John the Faster had taken on himself the title of "Oecumenical," or universal bishop, whilst Gregory, in apostolic humility, chose that of "Servant of the servants of God." It was in the middle of the eleventh century that a complete separation was accomplished. The universally recognized precedence of the See of Peter was intolerable to the ambitious spirit of the patriarch Michael Cerularius. To aid him in casting off the hated yoke, he circulated, like Photius, a document in which the Western Church was loaded with invective and all manner of accusations laid to her charge. The celibacy of the secular clergy, the use of unleavened bread for the sacrifice, fasting on Saturdays, the shaving of beards, the omission of the Alleluia in Lent, were all brought forward as causes of offence. These complaints were at once answered by Pope St. Leo IX, who tried, in a most eloquent letter, to bring the deluded patriarch to reason. He reminded him of the sanctity and inviolability of the unity of Christ's Church, the folly and presumption of his attempting to direct the successor of Peter, whom Christ had Himself confirmed in the faith, and pointed out to him with what ingratitude and contempt he was treating the Roman Church, the mother and guardian of all the churches. Lastly, he urged upon the patriarch to set aside all discord and pride, and to allow divine mercy and peace to prevail instead of strife. But the paternal words were spoken in vain, and the legates also who were sent by the Pope to Constantinople were powerless to move the obduracy of the patriarch. He persistently refused all communication with them by speech or writing. Having therefore formally laid their complaints in the most distinct terms before the Emperor and Senate, they proceeded to extremities. On the 16th of July, 1054, they appeared in the church of St. Sophia at the beginning of divine service, and declared solemnly that all their endeavors to re-establish peace and union had been defeated by Cerularius. They then laid the bull of excommunication on the high altar and left the church, shaking, as they did so, the dust from off their feet, and exclaiming in the deepest grief, "God sees it; He will judge." Thus was the unhappy schism between the East and the West accomplished. NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND BATTLE OF HASTINGS A.D. 1066 SIR EDWARD SHEPHERD CREASY (Toward the end of the reign of Edward the Confessor the claims of three rival competitors for the English crown were persistently urged. These claimants were Harald Hardrada, King of Norway, whose claim was based upon an alleged compact of King Hardicanute with King Magnus, Harald's predecessor; Duke William of Normandy, and the Saxon Harold, son of Godwin, Earl of Wessex. This Harold, born about 1022, became Earl of East Anglia about 1045; was banished with his father by Edward the Confessor in 1051, and restored with his father in 1052; succeeded his father as Earl of Wessex in 1053--relinquishing the earldom of East Anglia--and from 1053 to 1066 was chief minister of Edward. Harold--probably in 1064--being shipwrecked on the coast of Normandy, became a guest and virtual prisoner of William, Duke of Normandy, by whom the Saxon was forced to take an oath that he would marry William's daughter and assist him in obtaining the crown of England; William then allowed Harold to return to his country. Upon the death of Edward the Confessor--January 5, 1066--an assembly of thanes and prelates and leading citizens of London declared that Harold should be their king. His accession as Harold II dates from the day after Edward's death. Harold justified himself on the ground that his oath to William of Normandy was taken under constraint. William published his protest against what he called the bad faith of Harold, and proclaimed his purpose to assert his rights by the sword. He also obtained the countenance of the Pope, whose authority Harold refused to recognize. A banner, blessed by the Pope for the invasion of England, was sent to William from the Holy See, and the clergy of the Continent upheld his enterprise as being the Cause of God. Thus supported by the spiritual power, then wielding vast influence, William proceeded to gather "the most remarkable and formidable armament which the western nations had witnessed." With this following he entered upon an undertaking the speedy and complete success of which, in the single and decisive battle of Hastings, was fruitful in historic results such as are seldom so traceable to definite causes and events. "No one who appreciates the influence of England and her empire upon the destinies of the world will ever rank that victory as one of secondary importance.") All the adventurous spirits of Christendom flocked to the holy banner, under which Duke William, the most renowned knight and sagest general of the age, promised to lead them to glory and wealth in the fair domains of England. His army was filled with the chivalry of Continental Europe, all eager to save their souls by fighting at the Pope's bidding, eager to signalize their valor in so great an enterprise, and eager also for the pay and the plunder which William liberally promised. But the Normans themselves were the pith and the flower of the army, and William himself was the strongest, the sagest, and the fiercest spirit of them all. Throughout the spring and summer of 1066 all the seaports of Normandy, Picardy, and Brittany rang with the busy sound of preparation. On the opposite side of the Channel King Harold collected the army and the fleet with which he hoped to crush the southern invaders. But the unexpected attack of King Harald Hardrada of Norway upon another part of England disconcerted the skilful measures which the Saxon had taken against the menacing armada of Duke William. Harold's renegade brother, Earl Tostig, had excited the Norse King to this enterprise, the importance of which has naturally been eclipsed by the superior interest attached to the victorious expedition of Duke William, but which was on a scale of grandeur which the Scandinavian ports had rarely, if ever, before witnessed. Hardrada's fleet consisted of two hundred warships and three hundred other vessels, and all the best warriors of Norway were in his host. He sailed first to the Orkneys, where many of the islanders joined him, and then to Yorkshire. After a severe conflict near York he completely routed Earls Edwin and Morcar, the governors of Northumbria. The city of York opened its gates, and all the country, from the Tyne to the Humber, submitted to him. The tidings of the defeat of Edwin and Morcar compelled Harold to leave his position on the southern coast and move instantly against the Norwegians. By a remarkably rapid march he reached Yorkshire in four days, and took the Norse King and his confederates by surprise. Nevertheless, the battle which ensued, and which was fought near Stamford Bridge, was desperate, and was long doubtful. Unable to break the ranks of the Norwegian phalanx by force, Harold at length tempted them to quit their close order by a pretended flight. Then the English columns burst in among them, and a carnage ensued the extent of which may be judged of by the exhaustion and inactivity of Norway for a quarter of a century afterward. King Harald Hardrada and all the flower of his nobility perished on the 25th of September, 1066, at Stamford Bridge, a battle which was a Flodden to Norway. Harold's victory was splendid; but he had bought it dearly by the fall of many of his best officers and men, and still more dearly by the opportunity which Duke William had gained of effecting an unopposed landing on the Sussex coast. The whole of William's shipping had assembled at the mouth of the Dive, a little river between the Seine and the Orne, as early as the middle of August. The army which he had collected amounted to fifty thousand knights and ten thousand soldiers of inferior degree. Many of the knights were mounted, but many must have served on foot, as it is hardly possible to believe that William could have found transports for the conveyance of fifty thousand war-horses across the Channel. For a long time the winds were adverse, and the Duke employed the interval that passed before he could set sail in completing the organization in and improving the discipline of his army, which he seems to have brought into the same state of perfection as was seven centuries and a half afterward the boast of another army assembled on the same coast, and which Napoleon designed for a similar descent upon England. It was not till the approach of the equinox that the wind veered from the northeast to the west, and gave the Normans an opportunity of quitting the weary shores of the Dive. They eagerly embarked and set sail, but the wind soon freshened to a gale, and drove them along the French coast to St. Valery, where the greater part of them found shelter; but many of their vessels were wrecked, and the whole coast of Normandy was strewn with the bodies of the drowned. William's army began to grow discouraged and averse to the enterprise, which the very elements thus seemed to fight against; though, in reality, the northeast wind, which had cooped them so long at the mouth of the Dive, and the western gale, which had forced them into St. Valery, were the best possible friends to the invaders. They prevented the Normans from crossing the Channel until the Saxon King and his army of defence had been called away from the Sussex coast to encounter Harald Hardrada in Yorkshire; and also until a formidable English fleet, which by King Harold's orders had been cruising in the Channel to intercept the Normans, had been obliged to disperse temporarily for the purpose of refitting and taking in fresh stores of provisions. Duke William used every expedient to reanimate the drooping spirits of his men at St. Valery; and at last he caused the body of the patron saint of the place to be exhumed and carried in solemn procession, while the whole assemblage of soldiers, mariners, and appurtenant priests implored the saint's intercession for a change of wind. That very night the wind veered, and enabled the mediaeval Agamemnon to quit his Aulis. With full sails, and a following southern breeze, the Norman armada left the French shores and steered for England. The invaders crossed an undefended sea, and found an undefended coast. It was in Pevensey Bay, in Sussex, at Bulverhithe, between the castle of Pevensey and Hastings, that the last conquerors of this island landed on the 29th of September, 1066. Harold was at York, rejoicing over his recent victory, which had delivered England from her ancient Scandinavian foes, and resettling the government of the counties which Harald Hardrada had overrun, when the tidings reached him that Duke William of Normandy and his host had landed on the Sussex shore. Harold instantly hurried southward to meet this long-expected enemy. The severe loss which his army had sustained in the battle with the Norwegians must have made it impossible for many of his veteran troops to accompany him in his forced march to London, and thence to Sussex. He halted at the capital only six days, and during that time gave orders for collecting forces from the southern and midland counties, and also directed his fleet to reassemble off the Sussex coast. Harold was well received in London, and his summons to arms was promptly obeyed by citizen, by thane, by socman, and by ceorl, for he had shown himself, during his brief reign, a just and wise king, affable to all men, active for the good of his country, and, in the words of the old historian, sparing himself from no fatigue by land or by sea. He might have gathered a much more numerous army than that of William; but his recent victory had made him overconfident, and he was irritated by the reports of the country being ravaged by the invaders. As soon, therefore, as he had collected a small army in London he marched off toward the coast, pressing forward as rapidly as his men could traverse Surrey and Sussex, in the hope of taking the Normans unawares, as he had recently, by a similar forced march, succeeded in surprising the Norwegians. But he had now to deal with a foe equally brave with Harald Hardrada and far more skilful and wary. The old Norman chroniclers describe the preparations of William on his landing with a graphic vigor, which would be wholly lost by transfusing their racy Norman couplets and terse Latin prose into the current style of modern history. It is best to follow them closely, though at the expense of much quaintness and occasional uncouthness of expression. They tell us how Duke William's own ship was the first of the Norman fleet. It was called the _Mora_, and was the gift of his duchess Matilda. On the head of the ship, in the front, which mariners call the prow, there was a brazen child bearing an arrow with a bended bow. His face was turned toward England, and thither he looked, as though he was about to shoot. The breeze became soft and sweet, and the sea was smooth for their landing. The ships ran on dry land, and each ranged by the other's side. There you might see the good sailors, the sergeants, and squires sally forth and unload the ships; cast the anchors, haul the ropes, bear out shields and saddles, and land the war-horses and the palfreys. The archers came forth and touched land the first, each with his bow strung, and with his quiver full of arrows slung at his side. All were shaven and shorn; and all clad in short garments, ready to attack, to shoot, to wheel about and skirmish. All stood well equipped and of good courage for the fight; and they scoured the whole shore, but found not an armed man there. After the archers had thus gone forth, the knights landed all armed, with their hauberks on, their shields slung at their necks, and their helmets laced. They formed together on the shore, each armed and mounted on his war-horse; all had their swords girded on, and rode forward into the country with their lances raised. Then the carpenters landed, who had great axes in their hands, and planes and adzes hung at their sides. They took counsel together, and sought for a good spot to place a castle on. They had brought with them in the fleet three wooden castles from Normandy in pieces, all ready for framing together, and they took the materials of one of these out of the ships, all shaped and pierced to receive the pins which they had brought cut and ready in large barrels; and before evening had set in they had finished a good fort on the English ground, and there they placed their stores. All then ate and drank enough, and were right glad that they were ashore. When Duke William himself landed, as he stepped on the shore he slipped and fell forward upon his two hands. Forthwith all raised a loud cry of distress. "An evil sign," said they, "is here." But he cried out lustily: "See, my lords, by the splendor of God,[26] I have taken possession of England with both my hands. It is now mine, and what is mine is yours." [Footnote 26: William's customary oath.] The next day they marched along the sea-shore to Hastings. Near that place the Duke fortified a camp, and set up the two other wooden castles. The foragers, and those who looked out for booty, seized all the clothing and provisions they could find, lest what had been brought by the ships should fail them. And the English were to be seen fleeing before them, driving off their cattle, and quitting their houses. Many took shelter in burying-places, and even there they were in grievous alarm. Besides the marauders from the Norman camp, strong bodies of cavalry were detached by William into the country, and these, when Harold and his army made their rapid march from London southward, fell back in good order upon the main body of the Normans, and reported that the Saxon King was rushing on like a madman. But Harold, when he found that his hopes of surprising his adversary were vain, changed his tactics, and halted about seven miles from the Norman lines. He sent some spies, who spoke the French language, to examine the number and preparations of the enemy, who, on their return, related with astonishment that there were more priests in William's camp than there were fighting men in the English army. They had mistaken for priests all the Norman soldiers who had short hair and shaven chins, for the English laymen were then accustomed to wear long hair and mustaches. Harold, who knew the Norman usages, smiled at their words, and said, "Those whom you have seen in such numbers are not priests, but stout soldiers, as they will soon make us feel." Harold's army was far inferior in number to that of the Normans, and some of his captains advised him to retreat upon London and lay waste the country, so as to starve down the strength of the invaders. The policy thus recommended was unquestionably the wisest, for the Saxon fleet had now reassembled, and intercepted all William's communications with Normandy; and as soon as his stores of provisions were exhausted, he must have moved forward upon London, where Harold, at the head of the full military strength of the kingdom, could have defied his assault, and probably might have witnessed his rival's destruction by famine and disease, without having to strike a single blow. But Harold's bold blood was up, and his kindly heart could not endure to inflict on the South Saxon subjects even the temporary misery of wasting the country. "He would not burn houses and villages, neither would he take away the substance, of his people." Harold's brothers, Gurth and Leofwine, were with him in the camp, and Gurth endeavored to persuade him to absent himself from the battle. The incident shows how well devised had been William's scheme of binding Harold by the oath on the holy relics. "My brother," said the young Saxon prince, "thou canst not deny that either by force or free will thou hast made Duke William an oath on the bodies of saints. Why then risk thyself in the battle with a perjury upon thee? To us, who have sworn nothing, this is a holy and a just war, for we are fighting for our country. Leave us then alone to fight this battle, and he who has the right will win." Harold replied that he would not look on while others risked their lives for him. Men would hold him a coward, and blame him for sending his best friends where he dared not go himself. He resolved, therefore, to fight, and to fight in person; but he was still too good a general to be the assailant in the action; and he posted his army with great skill along a ridge of rising ground which opened southward, and was covered on the back by an extensive wood. He strengthened his position by a palisade of stakes and osier hurdles, and there he said he would defend himself against whoever should seek him. The ruins of Battle Abbey at this hour attest the place where Harold's army was posted; and the high altar of the abbey stood on the very spot where Harold's own standard was planted during the fight, and where the carnage was the thickest. Immediately after his victory William vowed to build an abbey on the site; and a fair and stately pile soon rose there, where for many ages the monks prayed and said masses for the souls of those who were slain in the battle, whence the abbey took its name. Before that time the place was called Senlac. Little of the ancient edifice now remains; but it is easy to trace in the park and the neighborhood the scenes of the chief incidents in the action; and it is impossible to deny the generalship shown by Harold in stationing his men, especially when we bear in mind that he was deficient in cavalry, the arm in which his adversary's main strength consisted. William's only chance of safety lay in bringing on a general engagement; and he joyfully advanced his army from their camp on the hill over Hastings, nearer to the Saxon position. But he neglected no means of weakening his opponent, and renewed his summonses and demands on Harold with an ostentatious air of sanctity and moderation. "A monk, named Hugues Maigrot, came in William's name to call upon the Saxon King to do one of three things--either to resign his royalty in favor of William, or to refer it to the arbitration of the pope to decide which of the two ought to be king, or let it be determined by the issue of a single combat. Harold abruptly replied, 'I will not resign my title, I will not refer it to the pope, nor will I accept the single combat.' He was far from being deficient in bravery; but he was no more at liberty to stake the crown which he had received from a whole people in the chance of a duel than to deposit it in the hands of an Italian priest. William, not at all ruffled by the Saxon's refusal, but steadily pursuing the course of his calculated measures, sent the Norman monk again, after giving him these instructions: 'Go and tell Harold that if he will keep his former compact with me, I will leave to him all the country which is beyond the Humber, and will give his brother Gurth all the lands which Godwin held. If he still persist in refusing my offers, then thou shalt tell him, before all his people, that he is a perjurer and a liar; that he and all who shall support him are excommunicated by the mouth of the Pope, and that the bull to that effect is in my hands.' "Hugues Maigrot delivered this message in a solemn tone; and the Norman chronicle says that at the word _excommunication_ the English chiefs looked at one another as if some great danger were impending. One of them then spoke as follows: 'We must fight, whatever may be the danger to us; for what we have to consider is not whether we shall accept and receive a new lord, as if our king were dead; the case is quite otherwise. The Norman has given our lands to his captains, to his knights, to all his people, the greater part of whom have already done homage to him for them: they will all look for their gift if their duke become our king; and he himself is bound to deliver up to them our goods, our wives, and our daughters: all is promised to them beforehand. They come, not only to ruin us, but to ruin our descendants also, and to take from us the country of our ancestors. And what shall we do--whither shall we go, when we have no longer a country?' The English promised, by a unanimous oath, to make neither peace nor truce nor treaty with the invader, but to die or drive away the Normans." The 13th of October was occupied in these negotiations, and at night the Duke announced to his men that the next day would be the day of battle. That night is said to have been passed by the two armies in very different manners. The Saxon soldiers spent it in joviality, singing their national songs, and draining huge horns of ale and wine round their campfires. The Normans, when they had looked to their arms and horses, confessed themselves to the priests, with whom their camp was thronged, and received the sacrament by thousands at a time. On Saturday, the 14th of October, was fought the great battle. It is not difficult to compose a narrative of its principal incidents from the historical information which we possess, especially if aided by an examination of the ground. But it is far better to adopt the spirit-stirring words of the old chroniclers, who wrote while the recollections of the battle were yet fresh, and while the feelings and prejudices of the combatants yet glowed in the bosoms of living men. Robert Wace, the Norman poet, who presented his _Roman de Rou_ to Henry II, is the most picturesque and animated of the old writers, and from him we can obtain a more vivid and full description of the conflict than even the most brilliant romance-writer of the present time can supply. We have also an antique memorial of the battle more to be relied on than either chronicler or poet (and which confirms Wace's narrative remarkably) in the celebrated Bayeux tapestry, which represents the principal scenes of Duke William's expedition and of the circumstances connected with it, in minute though occasionally grotesque details, and which was undoubtedly the production of the same age in which the battle took place, whether we admit or reject the legend that Queen Matilda and the ladies of her court wrought it with their own hands in honor of the royal Conqueror. Let us therefore suffer the old Norman chronicler to transport our imaginations to the fair Sussex scenery northwest of Hastings, as it appeared on that October morning. The Norman host is pouring forth from its tents, and each troop and each company is forming fast under the banner of its leader. The masses have been sung, which were finished betimes in the morning; the barons have all assembled round Duke William; and the Duke has ordered that the army shall be formed in three divisions, so as to make the attack upon the Saxon position in three places. The Duke stood on a hill where he could best see his men; the barons surrounded him, and he spake to them proudly. He told them how he trusted them, and how all that he gained should be theirs, and how sure he felt of conquest, for in all the world there was not so brave an army or such good men and true as were then forming around him. Then they cheered him in turn, and cried out: "'You will not see one coward; none here will fear to die for love of you, if need be.' And he answered them: 'I thank you well. For God's sake, spare not; strike hard at the beginning; stay not to take spoil; all the booty shall be in common, and there will be plenty for everyone. There will be no safety in asking quarter or in flight; the English will never love or spare a Norman. Felons they were, and felons they are; false they were, and false they will be. Show no weakness toward them, for they will have no pity on you; neither the coward for running well, nor the bold man for smiting well, will be the better liked by the English, nor will any be the more spared on either account. You may fly to the sea, but you can fly no farther; you will find neither ships nor bridge there; there will be no sailors to receive you, and the English will overtake you there and slay you in your shame. More of you will die in flight than in battle. Then, as flight will not secure you, fight and you will conquer. I have no doubt of the victory; we are come for glory; the victory is in our hands, and we may make sure of obtaining it if we so please.' "As the Duke was speaking thus and would yet have spoken more, William Fitzosbern rode up with his horse all coated with iron. 'Sire,' said he, 'we tarry here too long; let us all arm ourselves. _Allons! allons!_' "Then all went to their tents and armed themselves as they best might; and the Duke was very busy, giving everyone his orders; and he was courteous to all the vassals, giving away many arms and horses to them. When he prepared to arm himself, he called first for his hauberk, and a man brought it on his arm and placed it before him, but in putting his head in, to get it on, he unawares turned it the wrong way, with the back part in front. He soon changed it; but when he saw that those who stood by were sorely alarmed, he said: 'I have seen many a man who if such a thing had happened to him would not have borne arms or entered the field the same day; but I never believed in omens, and I never will. I trust in God, for he does in all things his pleasure, and ordains what is to come to pass according to his will. I have never liked fortune-tellers, nor believed in diviners, but I commend myself to Our Lady. Let not this mischance give you trouble. The hauberk which was turned wrong, and then set right by me, signifies that a change will arise out of the matter which we are now stirring. You shall see the name of duke changed into king. Yea, a king shall I be, who hitherto have been but duke.' "Then he crossed himself, and straightway took his hauberk, stooped his head and put it on aright, and laced his helmet, and girt on his sword, which a varlet brought him. Then the Duke called for his good horse--a better could not be found. It had been sent him by a king of Spain, out of very great friendship. Neither arms nor the press of fighting men did it fear if its lord spurred it on. Walter Giffard brought it. The Duke stretched out his hand, took the reins, put foot in stirrup, and mounted, and the good horse pawed, pranced, reared himself up, and curvetted. "The Viscount of Toarz saw how the Duke bore himself in arms and said to his people that were around him: 'Never have I seen a man so fairly armed, nor one who rode so gallantly, or bore his arms or became his hauberk so well; neither any one who bore his lance so gracefully or sat his horse and managed him so nobly. There is no such knight under heaven! a fair count he is, and fair king he will be. Let him fight and he shall overcome; shame be to the man who shall fail him!' "Then the Duke called for the standard which the Pope had sent him, and, he who bore it having unfolded it, the Duke took it and called to Raoul de Conches. 'Bear my standard,' said he, 'for I would not but do you right; by right and by ancestry your line are standard-bearers of Normandy, and very good knights have they all been.' But Raoul said that he would serve the Duke that day in other guise, and would fight the English with his hand as long as life should last. "Then the Duke bade Walter Giffard bear the standard. But he was old and white-headed, and bade the Duke give the standard to some younger and stronger man to carry. Then the Duke said fiercely, 'By the splendor of God, my lords, I think you mean to betray and fail me in this great need.' 'Sire,' said Giffart, 'not so! we have done no treason, nor do I refuse from any felony toward you; but I have to lead a great chivalry, both hired men and the men of my fief. Never had I such good means of serving you as I now have; and, if God please, I will serve you; if need be I will die for you, and will give my own heart for yours.' "'By my faith,' quoth the Duke, 'I always loved thee, and now I love thee more; if I survive this day, thou shalt be the better for it all thy days.' Then he called out a knight, whom he had heard much praised, Tosteins Fitz-Rou le Blanc by name, whose abode was at Bec-en-Caux. To him he delivered the standard; and Tosteins took it right cheerfully, and bowed low to him in thanks, and bore it gallantly and with good heart. His kindred still have quittance of all service for their inheritance on this account, and their heirs are entitled so to hold their inheritance forever. "William sat on his war-horse, and called out Rogier, whom they call De Montgomeri. 'I rely much on you,' said he; 'lead your men thitherward and attack them from that side. William, the son of Osbern the seneschal, a right good vassal, shall go with you and help in the attack, and you shall have the men of Boilogne and Poix and all my soldiers. Alain Fergert and Ameri shall attack on the other side; they shall lead the Poitevins and the Bretons and all the barons of Maine; and I, with my own great men, my friends and kindred, will fight in the middle throng, where the battle shall be the hottest.' "The barons and knights and men-at-arms were all now armed; the foot-soldiers were well equipped, each bearing bow and sword; on their heads were caps, and to their feet were bound buskins. Some had good hides which they had bound round their bodies; and many were clad in frocks, and had quivers and bows hung to their girdles. The knights had hauberks and swords, boots of steel, and shining helmets; shields at their necks, and in their hands lances. And all had their cognizances, so that each might know his fellow, and Norman might not strike Norman, nor Frenchman kill his countryman by mistake. Those on foot led the way, with serried ranks, bearing their bows. The knights rode next, supporting the archers from behind. Thus both horse and foot kept their course and order of march as they began, in close ranks at a gentle pace, that the one might not pass or separate from the other. All went firmly and compactly, bearing themselves gallantly. "Harold had summoned his men, earls, barons, and vavasors, from the castles and the cities, from the ports, the villages and boroughs. The peasants were also called together from the villages, bearing such arms as they found; clubs and great picks, iron forks and stakes. The English had enclosed the place where Harold was with his friends and the barons of the country whom he had summoned and called together. "Those of London had come at once, and those of Kent, of Hertfort, and of Essesse; those of Surée and Susesse, of St. Edmund and Sufoc; of Norwis and Norfoc; of Cantorbierre and Stanfort, Bedefort and Hundetone. The men of Northanton also came; and those of Eurowic and Bokinkeham, of Bed and Notinkeham, Lindesie and Nichole. There came also from the west all who heard the summons; and very many were to be seen coming from Salebiere and Dorset, from Bat and from Sumerset. Many came, too, from about Glocestre, and many from Wirecestre, from Wincestre, Hontesire and Brichesire; and many more from other counties that we have not named, and cannot, indeed, recount. All who could bear arms, and had learned the news of the Duke's arrival, came to defend the land. But none came from beyond Humbre, for they had other business upon their hands, the Danes and Tosti having much damaged and weakened them. "Harold knew that the Normans would come and attack him hand to hand, so he had early enclosed the field in which he had placed his men. He made them arm early and range themselves for the battle, he himself having put on arms and equipments that became such a lord. The Duke, he said, ought to seek him, as he wanted to conquer England; and it became him to abide the attack who had to defend the land. He commanded the people, and counselled his barons to keep themselves all together and defend themselves in a body, for if they once separated, they would with difficulty recover themselves. 'The Normans,' said he, 'are good vassals, valiant on foot and on horseback; good knights are they on horseback and well used to battle; all is lost if they once penetrate our ranks. They have brought long lances and swords, but you have pointed lances and keen-edged bills; and I do not expect that their arms can stand against yours. Cleave whenever you can; it will be ill done if you spare aught.' "The English had built up a fence before them with their shields and with ash and other wood, and had well joined and wattled in the whole work, so as not to leave even a crevice; and thus they had a barricade in their front through which any Norman who would attack them must first pass. Being covered in this way by their shields and barricades, their aim was to defend themselves; and if they had remained steady for that purpose, they would not have been conquered that day; for every Norman who made his way in lost his life in dishonor, either by hatchet or bill, by club or other weapon. "They wore short and close hauberks, and helmets that hung over their garments. King Harold issued orders, and made proclamation round, that all should be ranged with their faces toward the enemy, and that no one should move from where he was, so that whoever came might find them ready; and that whatever anyone, be he Norman or other, should do, each should do his best to defend his own place. Then he ordered the men of Kent to go where the Normans were likely to make the attack; for they say that the men of Kent are entitled to strike first; and that whenever the king goes to battle, the first blow belongs to them. The right of the men of London is to guard the king's body, to place themselves around him, and to guard his standard; and they were accordingly placed by the standard to watch and defend it. "When Harold had made all ready, and given his orders, he came into the midst of the English and dismounted by the side of the standard; Leofwine and Gurth, his brothers, were with him; and around him he had barons enough, as he stood by his standard, which was, in truth, a noble one, sparkling with gold and precious stones. After the victory William sent it to the Pope, to prove and commemorate his great conquest and glory. The English stood in close ranks, ready and eager for the fight; and they, moreover, made a fosse, which went across the field, guarding one side of their army. "Meanwhile the Normans appeared advancing over the ridge of a rising ground, and the first division of their troops moved onward along the hill and across a valley. And presently another division, still larger, came in sight, close following upon the first, and they were led toward another part of the field, forming together as the first body had done. And while Harold saw and examined them, and was pointing them out to Gurth, a fresh company came in sight, covering all the plain; and in the midst of them was raised the standard that came from Rome. "Near it was the Duke, and the best men and greatest strength of the army were there. The good knights, the good vassals, and brave warriors were there; and there were gathered together the gentle barons, the good archers, and the men-at-arms, whose duty it was to guard the Duke, and range themselves around him. The youths and common herd of the camp, whose business was not to join in the battle, but to take care of the harness and stores, moved off toward a rising ground. The priests and the clerks also ascended a hill, there to offer up prayers to God, and watch the event of the battle. "The English stood firm on foot in close ranks, and carried themselves right boldly. Each man had his hauberk on, with his sword girt, and his shield at his neck. Great hatchets were also slung at their necks, with which they expected to strike heavy blows. "The Normans brought on the three divisions of their army to attack at different places. They set out in three companies, and in three companies did they fight. The first and second had come up, and then advanced the third, which was the greatest; with that came the Duke with his own men, and all moved boldly forward. "As soon as the two armies were in full view of each other, great noise and tumult arose. You might hear the sound of many trumpets, of bugles, and of horns; and then you might see men ranging themselves in line, lifting their shields, raising their lances, bending their bows, handling their arrows, ready for assault and defence. "The English stood steady to their post, the Normans still moved on; and when they drew near, the English were to be seen stirring to and fro; were going and coming; troops ranging themselves in order; some with their color rising, others turning pale; some making ready their arms, others raising their shields; the brave man rousing himself to fight, the coward trembling at the approach of danger. "Then Taillefer, who sang right well, rode, mounted on a swift horse, before the Duke, singing of Charlemagne and of Roland, of Oliver, and the peers who died in Roncesvalles. And when they drew nigh to the English, "'A boon, sire!' cried Taillefer; 'I have long served you, and you owe me for all such service. To-day, so please you, you shall repay it. I ask as my guerdon, and beseech you for it earnestly, that you will allow me to strike the first blow in the battle!' And the Duke answered, 'I grant it.' "Then Taillefer put his horse to a gallop, charging before all the rest, and struck an Englishman dead, driving his lance below the breast into his body, and stretching him upon the ground. Then he drew his sword, and struck another, crying out, 'Come on, come on! What do ye, sirs? lay on, lay on!' At the second blow he struck the English pushed forward, and surrounded, and slew him. Forthwith arose the noise and cry of war, and on either side the people put themselves in motion. "The Normans moved on to the assault, and the English defended themselves well. Some were striking, others urging onward; all were bold and cast aside fear. And now, behold, that battle was gathered whereof the fame is yet mighty. "Loud and far resounded the bray of the horns and the shocks of the lances, the mighty strokes of maces and the quick clashing of swords. One while the Englishmen rushed on, another while they fell back; one while the men from over sea charged onward, and again at other times retreated. The Normans shouted, '_Dex Aie_,' the English people, 'Out.' Then came the cunning manoeuvres, the rude shocks and strokes of the lance and blows of the swords, among the sergeants and soldiers, both English and Norman. "When the English fall, the Normans shout. Each side taunts and defies the other, yet neither knoweth what the other saith; and the Normans say the English bark, because they understand not their speech. "Some wax strong, others weak: the brave exult, but the cowards tremble, as men who are sore dismayed. The Normans press on the assault, and the English defend their post well; they pierce the hauberks and cleave the shields, receive and return mighty blows. Again, some press forward, others yield; and thus, in various ways, the struggle proceeds. In the plain was a fosse, which the Normans had now behind them, having passed it in the fight without regarding it. But the English charged and drove the Normans before them till they made them fall back upon this fosse, overthrowing into it horses and men. Many were to be seen falling therein, rolling one over the others, with their faces to the earth, and unable to rise. Many of the English also, whom the Normans drew down along with them, died there. At no time during the day's battle did so many Normans die as perished in that fosse. So those said who saw the dead. "The varlets who were set to guard the harness began to abandon it as they saw the loss of the Frenchmen when thrown back upon the fosse without power to recover themselves. Being greatly alarmed at seeing the difficulty in restoring order, they began to quit the harness, and sought around, not knowing where to find shelter. Then Duke William's brother, Odo, the good priest, the Bishop of Bayeux, galloped up and said to them: 'Stand fast! stand fast! be quiet and move not! fear nothing; for, if God please, we shall conquer yet.' So they took courage and rested where they were; and Odo returned galloping back to where the battle was most fierce, and was of great service on that day. He had put a hauberk on over a white aube, wide in the body, with the sleeve tight, and sat on a white horse, so that all might recognize him. In his hand he held a mace, and wherever he saw most need he held up and stationed the knights, and often urged them on to assault and strike the enemy. "From nine o'clock in the morning, when the combat began, till three o'clock came, the battle was up and down, this way and that, and no one knew who would conquer and win the land. Both sides stood so firm and fought so well that no one could guess which would prevail. The Norman archers with their bows shot thickly upon the English; but they covered themselves with their shields, so that the arrows could not reach their bodies nor do any mischief, how true so ever was their aim or however well they shot. Then the Normans determined to shoot their arrows upward into the air, so that they might fall on their enemies' heads and strike their faces. The archers adopted this scheme and shot up into the air toward the English; and the arrows, in falling, struck their heads and faces and put out the eyes of many; and all feared to open their eyes or leave their faces unguarded. "The arrows now flew thicker than rain before the wind; fast sped the shafts that the English call 'wibetes.' Then it was that an arrow, that had been thus shot upward, struck Harold above his right eye, and put it out. In his agony he drew the arrow and threw it away, breaking it with his hands; and the pain to his head was so great that he leaned upon his shield. So the English were wont to say, and still say to the French, that the arrow was well shot which was so sent up against their King, and that the archer won them great glory who thus put out Harold's eye. "The Normans saw that the English defended themselves well, and were so strong in their position that they could do little against them. So they consulted together privily, and arranged to draw off, and pretend to flee, till the English should pursue and scatter themselves over the field; for they saw that if they could once get their enemies to break their ranks, they might be attacked and discomfited much more easily. As they had said, so they did. The Normans by little and little fled, the English following them. As the one fell back, the other pressed after; and when the Frenchmen retreated, the English thought and cried out that the men of France fled and would never return. "Thus they were deceived by the pretended flight, and great mischief thereby befell them; for if they had not moved from their position, it is not likely that they would have been conquered at all; but, like fools, they broke their lines and pursued. "The Normans were to be seen following up their stratagem, retreating slowly so as to draw the English farther on. As they still flee, the English pursue; they push out their lances and stretch forth their hatchets, following the Normans as they go, rejoicing in the success of their scheme, and scattering themselves over the plain. And the English meantime jeered and insulted their foes with words. 'Cowards,' they cried, 'you came hither in an evil hour, wanting our lands and seeking to seize our property; fools that ye were to come! Normandy is too far off, and you will not easily reach it. It is of little use to run back; unless you can cross the sea at a leap or can drink it dry, your sons and daughters are lost to you.' "The Normans bore it all; but, in fact, they knew not what the English said: their language seemed like the baying of dogs, which they could not understand. At length they stopped and turned round, determined to recover their ranks; and the barons might be heard crying, '_Dex Aie_!' for a halt. Then the Normans resumed their former position, turning their faces toward the enemy; and their men were to be seen facing round and rushing onward to a fresh _mêlée_, the one party assaulting the other; this man striking, another pressing onward. One hits, another misses; one flies, another pursues; one is aiming a stroke, while another discharges his blow. Norman strives with Englishman again, and aims his blows afresh. One flies, another pursues swiftly: the combatants are many, the plain wide, the battle and the _mêlée_ fierce. On every hand they fight hard, the blows are heavy, and the struggle becomes fierce. "The Normans were playing their part well, when an English knight came rushing up, having in his company a hundred men furnished with various arms. He wielded a northern hatchet with the blade a full foot long, and was well armed after his manner, being tall, bold, and of noble carriage. In the front of the battle, where the Normans thronged most, he came bounding on swifter than the stag, many Normans falling before him and his company. "He rushed straight upon a Norman who was armed and riding on a war-horse, and tried with his hatchet of steel to cleave his helmet; but the blow miscarried, and the sharp blade glanced down before the saddle-bow, driving through the horse's neck down to the ground, so that both horse and master fell together to the earth. I know not whether the Englishman struck another blow; but the Normans who saw the stroke were astonished and about to abandon the assault, when Roger de Montgomeri came galloping up, with his lance set, and, heeding not the long-handled axe which the Englishman wielded aloft, struck him down and left him stretched on the ground. Then Roger cried out, 'Frenchmen, strike! the day is ours!' And again a fierce _mêlée_ was to be seen, with many a blow of lance and sword; the English still defending themselves, killing the horses and cleaving the shields. "There was a French soldier of noble mien who sat his horse gallantly. He spied two Englishmen who were also carrying themselves boldly. They were both men of great worth and had become companions in arms and fought together, the one protecting the other. They bore two long and broad bills and did great mischief to the Normans, killing both horses and men. "The French soldier looked at them and their bills and was sore alarmed, for he was afraid of losing his good horse, the best that he had, and would willingly have turned to some other quarter if it would not have looked like cowardice. He soon, however, recovered his courage, and, spurring his horse, gave him the bridle and galloped swiftly forward. Fearing the two bills, he raised his shield, and struck one of the Englishmen with his lance on the breast, so that the iron passed out at his back. At the moment that he fell the lance broke, and the Frenchman seized the mace that hung at his right side, and struck the other Englishman a blow that completely fractured his skull. "On the other side was an Englishman who much annoyed the French, continually assaulting them with a keen-edged hatchet. He had a helmet made of wood, which he had fastened down to his coat and laced round his neck, so that no blows could reach his head. The ravage he was making was seen by a gallant Norman knight, who rode a horse that neither fire nor water could stop in its career when its master urged it on. The knight spurred, and his horse carried him on well till he charged the Englishman, striking him over the helmet so that it fell down over his eyes; and as he stretched out his hand to raise it and uncover his face, the Norman cut off his right hand, so that his hatchet fell to the ground. Another Norman sprang forward and eagerly seized the prize with both his hands, but he kept it little space and paid dearly for it, for as he stooped to pick up the hatchet an Englishman with his long-handled axe struck him over the back, breaking all his bones, so that his entrails and lungs gushed forth. The knight of the good horse meantime returned without injury; but on his way he met another Englishman and bore him down under his horse, wounding him grievously and trampling him altogether under foot. "And now might be heard the loud clang and cry of battle and the clashing of lances. The English stood firm in their barricades, and shivered the lances, beating them into pieces with their bills and maces. The Normans drew their swords and hewed down the barricades, and the English, in great trouble, fell back upon their standard, where were collected the maimed and wounded. "There were many knights of Chauz who jousted and made attacks. The English knew not how to joust, or bear arms on horseback, but fought with hatchets and bills. A man, when he wanted to strike with one of their hatchets, was obliged to hold it with both his hands, and could not at the same time, as it seems to me, both cover himself and strike with any freedom. "The English fell back toward the standard, which was upon a rising ground, and the Normans followed them across the valley, attacking them on foot and horseback. Then Hue de Mortemer, with the Sires D'Auviler, D'Onebac, and St. Cler, rode up and charged, overthrowing many. "Robert Fitz Erneis fixed his lance, took his shield, and, galloping toward the standard, with his keen-edged sword struck an Englishman who was in front, killed him, and then drawing back his sword, attacked many others, and pushed straight for the standard, trying to beat it down; but the English surrounded it and killed him with their bills. He was found on the spot, when they afterward sought for him, dead and lying at the standard's foot. "Duke William pressed close upon the English with his lance, striving hard to reach the standard with the great troop he led, and seeking earnestly for Harold, on whose account the whole war was. The Normans follow their lord, and press around him; they ply their blows upon the English, and these defend themselves stoutly, striving hard with their enemies, returning blow for blow. "One of them was a man of great strength, a wrestler, who did great mischief to the Normans with his hatchet; all feared him, for he struck down a great many Normans. The Duke spurred on his horse, and aimed a blow at him, but he stooped, and so escaped the stroke; then jumping on one side, he lifted his hatchet aloft, and as the Duke bent to avoid the blow, the Englishman boldly struck him on the head and beat in his helmet, though without doing much injury. He was very near falling, however; but, bearing on his stirrups, he recovered himself immediately; and when he thought to have revenged himself upon the churl by killing him, he had escaped, dreading the Duke's blow. He ran back in among the English, but he was not safe even there; for the Normans, seeing him, pursued and caught him, and having pierced him through and through with their lances, left him dead on the ground. "Where the throng of the battle was greatest, the men of Kent and Essex fought wondrously well, and made the Normans again retreat, but without doing them much injury. And when the Duke saw his men fall back and the English triumphing over them, his spirit rose high, and he seized his shield and his lance, which a vassal handed to him, and took his post by his standard. "Then those who kept close guard by him and rode where he rode, being about a thousand armed men, came and rushed with closed ranks upon the English, and, with the weight of their good horses, and the blows the knights gave, broke the press of the enemy, and scattered the crowd before them, the good Duke leading them on in front. Many pursued and many fled; many were the Englishmen who fell around, and were trampled under the horses, crawling upon the earth, and not able to rise. Many of the richest and noblest men fell in the rout, but still the English rallied in places, smote down those whom they reached, and maintained the combat the best they could, beating down the men and killing the horses. One Englishman watched the Duke, and plotted to kill him; he would have struck him with his lance, but he could not, for the Duke struck him first, and felled him to the earth. "Loud was now the clamor and great the slaughter; many a soul then quitted the body it inhabited. The living marched over the heaps of dead, and each side was weary of striking. He charged on who could, and he who could no longer strike still pushed forward. The strong struggled with the strong; some failed, others triumphed; the cowards fell back, the brave pressed on; and sad was his fate who fell in the midst, for he had little chance of rising again; and many in truth fell who never rose at all, being crushed under the throng. "And now the Normans had pressed on so far that at last they had reached the standard. There Harold had remained, defending himself to the utmost; but he was sorely wounded in his eye by the arrow, and suffered grievous pain from the blow. An armed man came in the throng of the battle, and struck him on the ventail of his helmet, and beat him to the ground; and as he sought to recover himself a knight beat him down again, striking him on the thick of his thigh, down to the bone. "Gurth saw the English falling around, and that there was no remedy. He saw his race hastening to ruin, and despaired of any aid; he would have fled, but could not, for the throng continually increased. And the Duke pushed on till he reached him, and struck him with great force. Whether he died of that blow I know not, but it was said that he fell under it and rose no more. "The standard was beaten down, the golden standard was taken, and Harold and the rest of his friends were slain; but there was so much eagerness, and throng of so many around, seeking to kill him, that I know not who it was that slew him. "The English were in great trouble at having lost their King and at the Duke's having conquered and beat down the standard; but they still fought on, and defended themselves long, and in fact till the day drew to a close. Then it clearly appeared to all that the standard was lost, and the news had spread throughout the army that Harold, for certain, was dead; and all saw that there was no longer any hope, so they left the field, and those fled who could. "William fought well; many an assault did he lead, many a blow did he give, and many receive, and many fell dead under his hand. Two horses were killed under him, and he took a third when necessary, so that he fell not to the ground and lost not a drop of blood. But whatever anyone did, and whoever lived or died, this is certain that William conquered and that many of the English fled from the field, and many died on the spot. Then he returned thanks to God, and in his pride ordered his standard to be brought and set up on high, where the English standard had stood; and that was the signal of his having conquered, and beaten down the standard. And he ordered his tent to be raised on the spot among the dead, and had his meat brought thither, and his supper prepared there. "Then he took off his armor; and the barons and knights, pages and squires came, when he had unstrung his shield; and they took the helmet from his head and the hauberk from his back, and saw the heavy blows upon his shield and how his helmet was dinted in. And all greatly wondered and said: 'Such a baron (_ber_) never bestrode war-horse nor dealt such blows nor did such feats of arms; neither has there been on earth such a knight since Rollant and Oliver.' "Thus they lauded and extolled him greatly and rejoiced in what they saw, but grieving also for their friends who were slain in the battle. And the Duke stood meanwhile among them, of noble stature and mien, and rendered thanks to the King of Glory, through whom he had the victory, and thanked the knights around him, mourning also frequently for the dead. And he ate and drank among the dead, and made his bed that night upon the field. "The morrow was Sunday; and those who had slept upon the field of battle, keeping watch around and suffering great fatigue, bestirred themselves at break of day and sought out and buried such of the bodies of their dead friends as they might find. The noble ladies of the land also came, some to seek their husbands, and others their fathers, sons, or brothers. They bore the bodies to their villages and interred them at the churches; and the clerks and priests of the country were ready, and at the request of their friends took the bodies that were found, and prepared graves and lay them therein. "King Harold was carried and buried at Varham; but I know not who it was that bore him thither, neither do I know who buried him. Many remained on the field, and many had fled in the night." Such is a Norman account of the battle of Hastings, which does full justice to the valor of the Saxons as well as to the skill and bravery of the victors. It is indeed evident that the loss of the battle by the English was owing to the wound which Harold received in the afternoon, and which must have incapacitated him from effective command. When we remember that he had himself just won the battle of Stamford Bridge over Harald Hardrada by the manoeuvre of a feigned flight, it is impossible to suppose that he could be deceived by the same stratagem on the part of the Normans at Hastings. But his men, when deprived of his control, would very naturally be led by their inconsiderate ardor into the pursuit that proved so fatal to them. All the narratives of the battle, however much they vary as to the precise time and manner of Harold's fall, eulogize the generalship and the personal prowess which he displayed until the fatal arrow struck him. The skill with which he had posted his army was proved both by the slaughter which it cost the Normans to force the position, and also by the desperate rally which some of the Saxons made after the battle in the forest in the rear, in which they cut off a large number of the pursuing Normans. This circumstance is particularly mentioned by William of Poictiers, the Conqueror's own chaplain. Indeed, if Harold or either of his brothers had survived, the remains of the English army might have formed again in the wood, and could at least have effected an orderly retreat and prolonged the war. But both Gurth and Leofwine, and all the bravest thanes of Southern England, lay dead on Senlac, around their fallen King and the fallen standard of their country. The exact number that perished on the Saxons' side is unknown; but we read that, on the side of the victors, out of sixty thousand men who had been engaged, no less than a fourth perished; so well had the English billmen "plyed the ghastly blow," and so sternly had the Saxon battle-axe cloven Norman's casque and mail. The old historian Daniel justly as well as forcibly remarks: "Thus was tried, by the great assize of God's judgment in battle, the right of power between the English and Norman nations; a battle the most memorable of all others, and, however miserably lost, yet most nobly fought on the part of England." Many a pathetic legend was told in after years respecting the discovery and the burial of the corpse of our last Saxon King. The main circumstances, though they seem to vary, are perhaps reconcilable. Two of the monks of Waltham Abbey, which Harold had founded a little time before his election to the throne, had accompanied him to the battle. On the morning after the slaughter they begged and gained permission of the Conqueror to search for the body of their benefactor. The Norman soldiery and camp followers had stripped and gashed the slain, and the two monks vainly strove to recognize from among the mutilated and gory heaps around them the features of their former King. They sent for Harold's mistress, Edith, surnamed "the Fair," and "the Swan-necked," to aid them. The eye of love proved keener than the eye of gratitude, and the Saxon lady even in that Aceldama knew her Harold. The King's mother now sought the victorious Norman, and begged the dead body of her son. But William at first answered, in his wrath and the hardness of his heart, that a man who had been false to his word and his religion should have no other sepulchre than the sand of the shore. He added, with a sneer: "Harold mounted guard on the coast while he was alive; he may continue his guard now he is dead." The taunt was an unintentional eulogy; and a grave washed by the spray of the Sussex waves would have been the noblest burial-place for the martyr of Saxon freedom. But Harold's mother was urgent in her lamentations and her prayers; the Conqueror relented: like Achilles, he gave up the dead body of his fallen foe to a parent's supplications, and the remains of King Harold were deposited with regal honors in Waltham Abbey. On Christmas Day in the same year William the Conqueror was crowned, at London, King of England. TRIUMPHS OF HILDEBRAND "THE TURNING-POINT OF THE MIDDLE AGES:" HENRY IV BEGS FOR MERCY AT CANOSSA A.D. 1073-1085 ARTHUR R. PENNINGTON ARTAUD DE MONTOR (If during the pontificate of Innocent III [1198-1216] the papal power attained its greatest height, yet under one of his predecessors the chair of St. Peter became a throne of almost absolute supremacy. This mighty pontiff, Gregory VII, whose real name, Hildebrand, indicates his German descent, was born--the son of a carpenter--in Tuscany, about 1020. He became a monk of the Benedictine order, and was educated at the abbey of Cluny in France. In 1044 he went to Rome, called by a papal election, and there saw abuses which from that moment he fixed his mind upon striving to abolish. In 1048 he was again in Rome and soon rose to the rank of cardinal. For many years Hildebrand was the real director of papal policy, and long before his election as pope, in 1073, he worked to accomplish the reforms that distinguish his pontificate, which continued till his death, in 1085. As a part of the Holy Roman Empire, Italy held a dual relation to the emperor and the pope. Between the Roman pontiffs and the secular heads of the Empire the struggle for supremacy had been long and often bitter. At the time of Hildebrand's active appearance the papacy was in a state of degradation which demoralized the Church itself. Long before his elevation to the papal chair Hildebrand's efforts had met with much success, and the power of the holy see was gradually increased. Independently of the Emperor, whose will had hitherto governed the papal elections, in 1058--chiefly through the influence of Hildebrand--Pope Nicholas II was chosen by a new method, and from that time the choice of popes has been made by the sacred college of cardinals. Hildebrand reluctantly accepted the office of pope; but having entered upon the task which he knew to be so formidable, he pursued it with such energy, courage, and success as to make his pontificate one of the most memorable in the annals of the Church. Of his greatest contests within the ecclesiastical jurisdiction--over the celibacy of the clergy and simony--as well as of those with the Imperial power represented by Henry IV--the "War of Investitures"--the following account will be found to present the essential features with a clearness and comprehensiveness which are seldom seen in the relation of matter so complex and in a narrative so concise. The differing viewpoints are also instructive, as presented by Pennington of the Church of England, and Artaud, the standard Roman Catholic authority.) ARTHUR R. PENNINGTON The time had come when Hildebrand was to receive the reward of the important services which he had rendered to the holy see. He had been the ruling spirit under five popes--Leo, Victor, Stephen, Nicholas, and Alexander--four of whom were indebted to him for their election. But now he must himself be raised to the papal throne. The clergy were assembled in the Lateran Church to celebrate the obsequies of Alexander. Hildebrand, as archdeacon, was performing the service. Suddenly, in the midst of the requiem for the departed, a shout was heard which seemed to come as if by inspiration from the assembled multitude: "Hildebrand is Pope! St. Peter chooses the archdeacon Hildebrand!" From the funeral procession Hildebrand flew to the pulpit, and with impassioned gestures seemed to be imploring silence. The storm, however, did not cease till one of the cardinals, in the name of the sacred college, declared that they had unanimously elected him whom the people had chosen. Arrayed in scarlet robes, crowned with the papal tiara, Gregory VII ascended the chair of St. Peter. The Pope very soon made known the course which he should pursue. He issued a prohibition against the marriage of the clergy, and in a council at Rome abolished the right of investiture.[27] He was determined to redress the wrongs of society. He had seen oppression laying waste the fairest provinces of Europe, he had seen many princes, goaded on by the revengeful passions of their nature, flinging wide their standard to the winds, and dipping their hands in the blood of those who, if Christianity be not a fable, were their very brothers. A magnificent vision rose up before him. He would rule the world by religion; he would be the caesar of the spiritual monarchy. He and a council of prelates, annually assembled at Rome, would constitute a tribunal from whose judgment there should be no appeal, empowered to hold the supreme mediation in matters relating to the interests of the body politic, to settle contested successions to kingdoms; and to compel men to cease from their dissensions. [Footnote 27: That is, the right of the civil power to grant church offices at will, and to invest ecclesiastics with symbols of their offices and receive their oaths of fealty.] The civil power was to pledge itself to be prompt in the execution of their decrees against those who despised their authority. But if the decisions of those judges were to carry weight, they must be men of unblemished integrity. The purity of their ermine must be altogether unsullied. The sale of the highest spiritual offices by the prince, who had deprived the clergy and people of their right to elect them, which had stained the hands of the Church and undermined its power, must be altogether forbidden. Elections must be free. The custom of investiture by sovereigns with the ring and crozier, which had rendered the hierarchy and clergy the creatures of their will, must be forbidden. The clergy must possess an absolute exemption from the criminal justice of the state. They must recognize but one ruler, the pope, who disposed of them indirectly through the bishops or directly in cases of exemption, and used them as tools for the execution of his behests. In fact, they were to constitute a vast army, exclusively devoted to the service of an ecclesiastical monarch. They must be unconnected by marriage with the world around them, that they might be bound more closely to one another and to their head; that they might be saved from the temptation of restless projects for the advancement of their families, which have caused so much scandal in the world; and that they might give an exalted idea of their sanctity, inasmuch as, in order that they might give themselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word, they would forego that connubial bliss, the portion of those, "The happiest of their kind, Whom gentler stars unite and in one fate Their hearts, their fortunes, and their beings blend." The marriage of the clergy was everywhere more or less repugnant to the general feeling of Christendom. The rise and progress of asceticism in the Church had their source in human nature, and its growth was quickened by a reaction from the immorality of paganism. The general effect on the position of the clergy was to compel them to keep progress with the prevailing movement. Men consecrated to the service of Jehovah must rise superior to the common herd of their fellow-creatures. By a decree of Pope Siricius at the end of the fourth century marriage was interdicted to all priests and deacons. This decree was, however, very imperfectly observed during the following centuries. The general feeling was, however, at this time very strongly against the married clergy. But throughout the spiritual realm of Hildebrand in Italy, from Calabria to the Alps, the clergy had risen up in rebellion against him and the popes his predecessors when they attempted to coerce them into celibacy. We believe that this opposition, much more than the strife as to investitures, was the cause of the strong feeling, almost unprecedented, which existed against Gregory VII. We must now show that Gregory enforced his views as to investitures. This part of our subject is important, because it gave occasion for the assertion that the pope could depose the Holy Roman emperor and the king of Italy, if he should find him morally or physically disqualified for fulfilling the condition on which his appointment depended--that he should defend him from his enemies. Henry IV, at the beginning of his reign only ten years of age, was at this time Emperor.[28] [Footnote 28: That is, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, which included the German-speaking people of Europe, and also, in theory at least, Italy.] One day, as he was standing by the Rhine, a galley with silken streamers appeared, into which he was invited to enter. After he had been gliding for some time down the stream, he found that he was a prisoner. The archbishops of Milan and Cologne, with other powerful lords, having consigned him to a degrading captivity, administered, in his name, the government of the empire. By affording him every means of vicious indulgence, they were only too successful in corrupting a noble and generous nature. Very soon he was guilty of crimes, and plunged into excesses which seemed to cry aloud for vengeance. The Pope saw that the time had come for the execution of his designs. Henry had been guilty of the grossest simony. The spiritual dignities had been openly sold to the highest bidder. He saw also that, while the clergy took the oath of fealty to the monarch and were invested by him with the ring and crozier, he could not establish the superiority of the spiritual to the temporal jurisdiction. He therefore summoned a council at the Lateran (1075), which issued a decree against lay investitures. The Pope, having thus declared war against the Emperor, proceeded to fill up certain vacant bishoprics, and to suspend bishops, both in Germany and Italy, who had been guilty of simony. He also cited Henry before him to answer for his simony, crimes, and excesses. This citation is alleged to have given occasion for an attempted crime, supposed to have been sanctioned by Henry, which may show us that while the Pope was asserting a right to rule over the nations, he could not rule in his own city. On Christmas Eve, 1075, the city of Rome was visited with a violent tempest. Darkness brooded over the land. The inhabitants thought that the day of judgment was at hand. In the midst of this war of the elements two processions were seen advancing toward the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore. At the head of one of them was Hildebrand, leading his priests to worship at a shrine. At the head of the other was Cencius, a Roman noble. In one of the pauses in the roar of the tempest, when the Pope was heard blessing his flock, the arm of Cencius grasped his person, and the sword of a ruffian inflicted a wound on his forehead. Bound with cords, the Pope was removed to a mansion in the city, from which he was the next day to be removed to exile or to death. A sword was aimed at the Pontiff's bosom, when the cries of a fierce multitude, threatening to burn down the house, arrested the arm of the assassin. An arrow, discharged from below, reached and slew the latter. Cencius fell at the Pope's feet, a suppliant for pardon and for life. The Pontiff immediately pardoned him. Then, amid the acclamations of the Roman people, Gregory proceeded to complete the interrupted solemnities at Santa Maria Maggiore. The war between Henry and the Pope continued. Henry summoned a synod at Worms in January, 1076, which decreed the deposition of the Pope. The envoy charged to convey this sentence appeared in the council chamber of the Lateran in February, before an assembly consisting of the mightiest in the land, whom the Pope had summoned to sit in judgment on Henry. With flashing eyes and in a voice of thunder he directed the Pope to descend from the chair of St. Peter. Cries of indignation rang through the hall, and a hundred swords were seen leaping from their scabbards to inflict vengeance on the daring intruder. The Pope, with difficulty, stilled the angry tumult. Then, rising with calm dignity, amid the breathless silence of the assembled multitude, he uttered that dread anathema which "shuts paradise and opens hell," and absolved the subjects of Henry from their allegiance. The inhabitants of Europe were struck dumb with amazement when they witnessed this exercise of papal prerogative. They thought that the powerful arm of Henry would have been raised to smite down the audacious Hildebrand. The Pope, however, well knew that Henry had by his excesses alienated from himself the affections of his subjects. The sentence gave a pretext to many of his nobility to withdraw from their allegiance. Awed by spiritual terrors, his attendants fell away from him as if he had been smitten by a leprosy. An assembly was now summoned at Trebur, in obedience to a requisition from the Pope, at which it was decreed that, if the Emperor continued excommunicate on the 23d of February, 1077, his crown should be given to another. The theory of the Holy Roman Empire had thus become a practical reality. The vassal of Otho had reduced the successor of Otho to vassalage. A great pope had wrung from the superstition and reverence of mankind a spiritual empire, which, it was hoped, would extend its sway to earth's remotest boundaries. ARTAUD DE MONTOR Gregory made it an invariable rule to act at the outset with gentleness. "No one," says he, "reaches the highest rank at a single spring; great edifices rise gradually." Certain of his strength, he chose to employ conciliation. He especially sought to convince Henry, but the excesses in which that prince wallowed were so abominable that his subjects in all parts, and especially the great, revolted against him. In 1076, Gregory assembled a council, which pronounced the excommunication of the King, with all the terrible consequences attendant upon it. History shows several emperors of the East excommunicated by preceding popes: Arcadius, by Innocent I; Anastasius, by Saint Symmachus; and Leo the Isaurian, by Gregory II and Gregory III. The decree of the same council set forth that the throne vacated by Henry was adjudged to Rudolph, duke of Swabia, already created king of Germany by the electors of the empire. Before the election of Rudolph, Gregory had declared that he would repair to Germany. King Henry, on his part, promised to come into Italy. The Pope left Rome with an escort furnished by the countess of Tuscany, daughter of Boniface, marquis of Tuscany. The march of Gregory was a triumph. Amidst that escort he reached Vercelli. It was feared by some that Henry would make his appearance at the head of an army, but he had not that intention. The Pope, nevertheless, deemed it best to retire into the fortress of Canossa, belonging to the Countess Matilda, in order that he might be secure from all violence. Henry had spent nearly two months at Spires in a profound and melancholy solitude. The weight of the excommunication oppressed him with a thousand griefs. Weary of that state of uncertainty, and still, as ever, tricky and hypocritical, he conceived the idea of winning over the Pope by an apparent piety, and of satisfying his requirements by a brief humiliation; moreover, the decree of excommunication declared that it should be withdrawn if the King appeared before the Pope within a year from the date of the decree. The winter was severe. After running a thousand dangers, the King and his queen arrived at Turin, and proceeded to Placentia. Thence the prince announced that he would proceed to Canossa, by way of Reggio. The Countess Matilda met him with Hugo, Bishop of Cluny. She wished to restore harmony between the Pope and the King. Gregory seemed to desire that Henry should return to Augsburg, to be judged by the Diet. The envoys of the King at Canossa replied: "Henry does not fear being judged; he knows that the Pope will protect innocence and justice; but the anniversary of the excommunication is at hand, and if the excommunication be not removed, the King, _according to the laws of the land_, will lose his right to the crown. The prince humbly requests the Holy Father to raise the interdict, and to restore him to the communion of the Church. He is ready to give every satisfaction that the Pope shall require; to present himself at such place and at such time as the Pope shall order; to meet his accusers, and to commit himself entirely to the decision of the head of the Church." Henry, says Voigt, having received permission to advance, was not long on the way. The fortress had triple inclosures; Henry was conducted into the second; his retinue remained outside the first. He had laid aside the insignia of royalty; nothing announced his rank. All day long, Henry, bareheaded, clad in penitential garb, and fasting from morning till night, awaited the sentence of the sovereign pontiff. He thus waited during a second and a third day. During the intervening time he had not ceased to negotiate. On the morrow, Matilda interceded with the Pope on behalf of Henry, and the conditions of the treaty were settled. The prince promised to give satisfaction to the complaints made against him by his subjects, and he took an oath, in which his sureties joined. When those oaths were taken, the pontiff gave the King the benediction and the apostolic peace, and celebrated Mass. After the consecration of the host, the Pope called Henry and all present, and still holding the host in his hand, said to the King: "We have received letters from you and those of your party, in which we are accused of having usurped the Holy See by simony, and of having, both before and since our episcopacy, committed crimes which, according to the canons, excluded us from holy orders. "Although we could justify ourselves by the testimony of those who have known our manner of life from our childhood, and who were the authors of our promotion to the episcopacy, nevertheless, to do away with all kind of scandal, we will appeal to the judgment, not of men, but of God. Let the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, that we are about to take, be this day a proof of our innocence. We pray the Almighty to dispel all suspicion, if we are innocent, and to cause us suddenly to die, if we are guilty." Then turning towards the King, Gregory again spoke: "Dear son, do also as you have seen us do. The German princes have daily accused you to us of a great number of crimes, for which those nobles maintain that you ought to be interdicted, during your whole life, not only from royalty and all public function, but also from all ecclesiastical communion, and from all commerce of civil life. They urgently demand that you be judged, and you know how uncertain are all human judgments. Do, then, as we advise, and if you feel that you are innocent, deliver the Church from this scandal, and yourself from this embarrassment. Take this other portion of the host, that this proof of your innocence may close the lips of your enemies, and engage us to be your most ardent defender, to reconcile you with the nobles, and forever to terminate the civil war." This address astonished the King. Going apart with his confidants, he tremblingly consulted as to what he could do to avoid so terrible a test. At length, having somewhat recovered his calmness, he said to the Pope, that as those nobles who remained faithful were, for the most part, absent, as well as those who accused him, the latter would give little faith to what he might do in his own justification, unless it were done in their presence. For that reason, he asked that the test should be postponed to the day of the sitting of the general diet, and the Pope consented. When the Pope had finished Mass, he invited the King to dinner, treated him with much attention, and dismissed him in peace to his own people, who had remained outside the castle. Henry, on his return to his nobles, was not well received. Henry, as Voigt shows, soon became alarmed at their disapprobation, which originated only in a feeling of wounded complicity and ambitious views, which could not hope for success after the victory gained by Gregory. Henry, hearing himself accused of weakness, thought to deliver himself from so much annoyance by a bold perjury; and he endeavored to draw Gregory and Matilda into a snare. Warned by faithful friends, they did not visit the King as had been agreed; and that new wrong determined Gregory to suspend his departure for the Diet of Augsburg. No one, not even the pious Matilda, now dared to speak of a reconciliation. Henry held at Brescia, in 1080, a pseudo council of the bishops devoted to him; and there he caused Guibert, Archbishop of Ravenna, an avowed enemy of Gregory, to be elected as Pope; and he deposed Gregory, although he was recognized as the legitimate pope by the whole Catholic world, with the exception of the bishops in revolt, under the direction of Henry. On learning this, Gregory celebrated at Rome, in the year 1080, a regular council, in which he again excommunicated Henry, and especially the antipope, whom he would never absolve. ARTHUR PENNINGTON The war continued. Henry's rival for the empire, Rudolph of Swabia, was supported by many German partisans, especially by the Saxons. He was defeated with great loss at Fladenheim. The skill and courage of the Saxon commander, however, turned a defeat into a victory. Emboldened by this victory, Gregory excommunicated Henry, and "gave, granted, and conceded" that Rudolph might rule the Italian and German empires. With the sanction of thirty bishops, an antipope, Guibert, was elected at Brixen. The war raged with undiminished violence. The Saxons, the only power in alliance with the Romans, gained a victory over Henry in Germany at the very same time when Matilda's forces fled before his army in the Mantuan territory. Matilda had lately granted all her hereditary states to Gregory and his successors forever. Before the summer of the year 1080 the citizens of Rome saw the forces of Henry in the Campagna. The siege of Rome continued for three years. The capture of the city was imminent, when the forces of Robert Guiscard, the Norman, came to the rescue of the Pope. Nicholas II had bestowed on Robert Guiscard the investiture of the duchies of Apulia and Calabria; Sicily also, the conquest of which his brother Richard was meditating, being prospectively added to Robert's dominions. The oath taken by Robert Guiscard on this occasion bound him to be the devoted defender of the pontificate. He now became a friend indeed. A hasty retreat saved the forces of Henry from the impending danger. The Pope returned in triumph to the Lateran. But within a few hours he heard from the streets the clash of arms and the loud shouts of the combatants. A fierce contest was raging between the soldiers of Robert and the citizens who espoused the cause of Henry. A conflagration was kindled, which at length destroyed three-fourths of the city. Gregory, perhaps conscience-stricken when he thought of the wars he had kindled, sought, in the castle of Salerno, from the Normans the security which he could no longer expect among his own subjects. He soon found that the hand of death was upon him. He summoned round his bed the bishops and cardinals who had accompanied him in his flight from Rome. He maintained the truth of the principles for which he had always contended. He forgave and blessed his enemies, with the exception of the antipope and the Emperor. He had received the transubstantiated elements. The final unction had been given to him. He then prepared himself to die. Anxious to catch the last words from that tongue, to the utterances of which they had always listened with intense delight, his followers were bending over him, when, collecting his powers for one last effort, he said, in an indignant tone, "I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity, and, therefore, I die in exile." COMPLETION OF THE DOMESDAY BOOK A.D. 1086 CHARLES KNIGHT (When William the Conqueror had been some years established in his English realm, he found himself confronted with a feudal baronage largely composed of men who had gone with him from Normandy, where many of them had reluctantly bowed to his command. They were jealous of the royal power and eager for military and judicial independence within their own manors. The Conqueror met this situation with the skill of political genius. He granted large estates to the nobles, but so widely scattered as to render union of the great land-owners and hereditary attachment of great areas of population to separate feudal lords impossible. He caused under-tenants to be bound to their lords by the same conditions of service which bound the lords to the crown, to which each sub-tenant swore direct fealty. William also strengthened his position as king by means of a new military organization and by his control of the judicial and administrative systems of the kingdom. By the abolition of the four great earldoms of the realm he struck a final blow at the ambition of the greater nobles for independent power. By this stroke he made the shire the largest unit of local government. By his control of the national revenues he secured a great financial power in his own hands. A large part of the manors were burdened with special dues to the crown, and for the purpose of ascertaining and recording these William sent into each county commissioners to make a survey, whose inquiries were recorded in the _Domesday Book_, so called because its decision was regarded as final. This book, in Norman-French, contains the results of his survey of England made in 1085-1086, and consists of two volumes in vellum, a large folio of three hundred and eighty-two pages, and a quarto of four hundred and fifty pages. For a long time it was kept under three locks in the exchequer with the King's seal, and is now kept in the Public Record Office. In 1783 the British Government issued a fac-simile edition of it, in two folio volumes, printed from types specially made for the purpose. It is one of the principal sources for the political and social history of the time. The _Domesday Book_ contains a record of the ownership, extent, and value of the lands of England at the time of the survey, at the time of their bestowal when granted by the King, and at the time of a previous survey under Edward the Confessor. Of the detailed registrations of tenants, defendants, live stock, etc., as well, as of contemporary social features of the English people, the following account presents interesting pictures.) The survey contained in the _Domesday Book_ extended to all England, with the exception of Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Durham. All the country between the Tees and the Tyne was held by the Bishop of Durham; and he was reputed a count palatine, having a separate government. The other three northern counties were probably so devastated that they were purposely omitted. Let us first see, from the information of _Domesday Book_, by "what men" the land was occupied. First, we have barons and we have thanes. The barons were the Norman nobles; the thanes, the Saxon. These were included under the general designation of _liberi homines_, free men; which term included all the freeholders of a manor. Many of these were tenants of the King "_in capite_"--that is, they held their possessions direct from the Crown. Others of these had placed themselves under the protection of some lord, as the defender of their persons and estates, they paying some stipend or performing some service. In the _Register_ there are also _liberae feminae_, free women. Next to the free class were the _sochemanni_ or "socmen," a class of inferior land-owners, who held lands under a lord, and owed suit and service in the lord's court, but whose tenure was permanent. They sometimes performed services in husbandry; but those services, as well as their payments, were defined. Descending in the scale, we come to the _villani_. These were allowed to occupy land at the will of the lord, upon the condition of performing services, uncertain in their amount and often of the meanest nature. But they could acquire no property in lands or goods; and they were subject to many exactions and oppressions. There are entries in _Domesday Book_ which show that the villani were not altogether bondmen, but represented the Saxon "churl." The lowest class were _servi_, slaves; the class corresponding with the Saxon _theow_. By a degradation in the condition of the villani, and the elevation of that of the servi, the two classes were brought gradually nearer together; till at last the military oppression of the Normans, thrusting down all degrees of tenants and servants into one common slavery, or at least into strict dependence, one name was adopted for both of them as a generic term, that of _villeins regardant_. Of the subdivisions of these great classes, the _Register_ of 1085 affords us some particulars. We find that some of the nobles are described as _milites_, soldiers; and sometimes the milites are classed with the inferior orders of tenantry. Many of the chief tenants are distinguished by their offices. We have among these the great regal officers, such as they existed in the Saxon times--the _camerarius_ and _cubicularius_, from whom we have our lord chamberlain; the _dapifer_, or lord steward; the _pincerna_, or chief butler; the constable, and the treasurer. We have the hawkkeepers, and the bowkeepers; the providers of the king's carriages, and his standard-bearers. We have lawmen, and legates, and mediciners. We have foresters and hunters. Coming to the inferior officers and artificers, we have carpenters, smiths, goldsmiths, farriers, potters, ditchers, launders, armorers, fishermen, millers, bakers, salters, tailors, and barbers. We have mariners, moneyers, minstrels, and watchmen. Of rural occupations we have the beekeepers, ploughmen, shepherds, neatherds, goatherds, and swineherds. Here is a population in which there is a large division of labor. The freemen, tenants, villeins, slaves, are laboring and deriving sustenance from arable land, meadow, common pasture, wood, and water. The grain-growing land is, of course, carefully registered as to its extent and value, and so the meadow and pasture. An equal exactness is bestowed upon the woods. It was not that the timber was of great commercial value, in a country which possessed such insufficient means of transport; but that the acorns and beech-mast, upon which great herds of swine subsisted, were of essential importance to keep up the supply of food. We constantly find such entries as "a wood for pannage of fifty hogs." There are woods described which will feed a hundred, two hundred, three hundred hogs; and on the Bishop of London's demesne at Fulham a thousand hogs could fatten. The value of a tree was determined by the number of hogs that could lie under it, in the Saxon time; and in this survey of the Norman period, we find entries of useless woods, and woods without pannage, which to some extent were considered identical. In some of the woods there were patches of cultivated ground, as the entries show, where the tenant had cleared the dense undergrowth and had his corn land and his meadows. Even the fen lands were of value, for their rents were paid in eels. There is only mention of five forests in this record, Windsor, Gravelings (Wiltshire), Winburn, Whichwood, and the New Forest. Undoubtedly there were many more, but being no objects of assessment they are passed over. It would be difficult not to associate the memory of the Conqueror with the New Forest, and not to believe that his unbridled will was here the cause of great misery and devastation. Ordericus Vitalis says, speaking of the death of William's second son, Richard: "Learn now, my reader, why the forest in which the young prince was slain received the name of the New Forest. That part of the country was extremely populous from early times, and full of well-inhabited hamlets and farms. A numerous population cultivated Hampshire with unceasing industry, so that the southern part of the district plentifully supplied Winchester with the products of the land. When William I ascended the throne of Albion, being a great lover of forests, he laid waste more than sixty parishes, compelling the inhabitants to emigrate to other places, and substituted beasts of the chase for human beings, that he might satisfy his ardor for hunting." There is probably some exaggeration in the statement of the country being "extremely populous from early times." This was an old woody district, called Ytene. No forest was artificially planted, as Voltaire has imagined; but the chases were opened through the ancient thickets, and hamlets and solitary cottages were demolished. It is a curious fact that some woodland spots in the New Forest have still names with the terminations of _ham_ and _ton_. There are many evidences of the former existence of human abodes in places now solitary; yet we doubt whether this part of the district plentifully supplied Winchester with food, as Ordericus relates; for it is a sterile district, in most places, fitted for little else than the growth of timber. The lower lands are marsh, and the upper are sand. The Conqueror, says the _Saxon Chronicle_, "so much loved the high deer as if he had been their father." The first of the Norman kings, and his immediate successors, would not be very scrupulous about the depopulation of a district if the presence of men interfered with their pleasures. But Thierry thinks that the extreme severity of the Forest Laws was chiefly enforced to prevent the assemblage of Saxons in those vast wooded spaces which were now included in the royal demesnes. All these extensive tracts were, more or less, retreats for the dispossessed and the discontented. The Normans, under pretence of preserving the stag and the hare, could tyrannize with a pretended legality over the dwellers in these secluded places; and thus William might have driven the Saxon people of Ytene to emigrate, and have destroyed their cottages, as much from a possible fear of their association as from his own love of "the high deer." Whatever was the motive, there were devastation and misery. _Domesday_ shows that in the district of the New Forest certain manors were afforested after the Conquest; cultivated portions, in which the Sabbath bell was heard. William of Jumièges, the Conqueror's own chaplain, says, speaking of the deaths of Richard and Rufus: "There were many who held that the two sons of William the King perished by the judgment of God in these woods, since for the _extension_ of the forest he had destroyed many inhabited _places (villas) and churches within its circuit_." It appears that in the time of Edward the Confessor about seventeen thousand acres of this district had been afforested; but that the cultivated parts remaining had then an estimated value of three hundred and sixty-three pounds. After the afforestation by the Conqueror, the cultivated parts yielded only one hundred and twenty-nine pounds. The grants of land to huntsmen (_venatores_) are common in Hampshire, as in other parts of England; and it appears to have been the duty of an especial officer to stall the deer--that is, to drive them with his troop of followers from all parts to the centre of a circle, gradually contracting, where they were to stand for the onslaught of the hunters. In the survey many parks are enumerated. The word hay (_haia_), which is still found in some of our counties, meant an enclosed part of a wood to which the deer were driven. In the seventeenth century this mode of hunting upon a large scale, by stalling the deer--this mimic war--was common in Scotland. Taylor, called the "Water Poet," was present at such a gathering, and has described the scene with a minuteness which may help us to form a picture of the Norman hunters: "Five or six hundred men do rise early in the morning, and they do disperse themselves divers ways; and seven, eight, or ten miles' compass, they do bring or chase in the deer in many herds--two, three, or four hundred in a herd--to such a place as the noblemen shall appoint them; then, when the day is come, the lords and gentlemen of their companies do ride or go to the said places, sometimes wading up to the middle through bourns and rivers; and then they being come to the place, do lie down on the ground till those foresaid scouts, which are called the 'tinkhelt,' do bring down the deer. Then, after we had stayed there three hours or thereabouts, we might perceive the deer appear on the hills round about us--their heads making a show like a wood--which being followed close by the tinkhelt, are chased down into the valley where we lay; then all the valley on each side being waylaid with a hundred couple of strong Irish greyhounds, they are let loose as occasion serves upon the herd of deer, that with dogs, guns, arrows, dirks, and daggers, in the space of two hours fourscore fat deer were slain." _Domesday_ affords indubitable proof of the culture of the vine in England. There are thirty-eight entries of vineyards in the southern and eastern counties. Many gardens are enumerated. Mills are registered with great distinctness; for they were invariably the property of the lords of the manors, lay or ecclesiastical; and the tenants could only grind at the lord's mill. Wherever we find a mill specified in _Domesday_, there we generally find a mill now. At Arundel, for example, we see what rent was paid by a mill; and there still stands at Arundel an old mill whose foundations might have been laid before the Conquest. Salt works are repeatedly mentioned. They were either works upon the coast for procuring marine salt by evaporation, or were established in the localities of inland salt springs. The salt works of Cheshire were the most numerous, and were called "wiches." Hence the names of some places, such as Middlewich and Nantwich. The revenue from mines offers some curious facts. No mention of tin is to be found in Cornwall. The ravages of Saxon and Dane, and the constant state of hostility between races, had destroyed much of that mineral industry which existed in the Roman times. A century and a half after the Conquest had elapsed before the Norman kings had a revenue from the Cornish iron mines. Iron forges were registered, and lumps of hammered iron are stated to have been paid as rent. Lead works are found only upon the king's demesne in Derbyshire. Fisheries are important sources of rent. Payments of eels are enumerated by hundreds and thousands. Herrings appear to have been consumed in vast numbers in the monasteries. Sandwich yielded forty thousand annually to Christ Church in Canterbury. Kent, Sussex, and Norfolk appear to have been the great seats of this fishery. The Severn and the Wye had their salmon fisheries, whose produce king, bishop, and lord were glad to receive as rent. There was a weir for Thames fish at Mortlake. The religious houses had their _piscinae_ and _vivaria_--their stews and fish-pools. _Domesday_ affords us many curious glimpses of the condition of the people in cities and burghs. For the most part they seem to have preserved their ancient customs. London, Winchester, and several other important places are not mentioned in the record. We shall very briefly notice a few indications of the state of society. Dover was an important place, for it supplied the king with twenty ships for fifteen days in a year, each vessel having twenty-one men on board. Dover could therefore command the service of four hundred and twenty mariners. Every burgess in Lewes compounded for a payment of twenty shillings when the king fitted out a fleet to keep the sea. At Oxford the king could command the services of twenty burgesses whenever he went on an expedition; or they might compound for their services by a payment of twenty pounds. Oxford was a considerable place at this period. It contained upward of seven hundred houses; but four hundred and seventy-eight were so desolated that they could pay no dues. Hereford was the king's demesne; and the honor of being his immediate tenants appears to have been qualified by considerable exactions. When he went to war, and when he went to hunt, men were to be ready for his service. If the wife of a burgher brewed his ale, he paid tenpence. The smith who kept a forge had to make nails from the king's iron. In Hereford, as in other cities, there were moneyers, or coiners. There were seven at Hereford, who were bound to coin as much of the king's silver into pence as he demanded. At Cambridge the burgesses were compelled to lend the sheriff their ploughs. Leicester was bound to find the king a hawk or to pay ten pounds; while a sumpter or baggage-horse was compounded for at one pound. At Warwick there were two hundred and twenty-five houses on which the king and his barons claimed tax; and nineteen houses belonged to free burgesses. The dues were paid in honey and corn. In Shrewsbury there were two hundred and fifty-two houses belonging to burgesses; but the burgesses complained that they were called upon to pay as much tax as in the time of the Confessor, although Earl Roger had taken possession of extensive lands for building his castle. Chester was a port in which the king had his dues upon every cargo, and where he had fines whenever a trader was detected in using a false measure. The fraudulent female brewer of adulterated beer was placed in the cucking-stool, a degradation afterward reserved for scolds. This city has a more particular notice as to laws and customs in the time of the Confessor than any other place in the survey. Particular care seems to have been taken against fire. The owner of a house on fire not only paid a fine to the king, but forfeited two shillings to his nearest neighbor. Marten skins appear to have been a great article of trade in this city. No stranger could cart goods within a particular part of the city without being subjected to a forfeiture of four shillings or two oxen to the bishop. We find, as might be expected, no mention of that peculiar architecture of Chester called the "Rows," which has so puzzled antiquarian writers. The probability is that in a place so exposed to the attacks of the Welsh they were intended for defence. The low streets in which the Rows are situated have the road considerably beneath them, like the cutting of a railway; and from the covered way of the Rows an enemy in the road beneath might be assailed with great advantage. In the civil wars of Charles I the possession of the Rows by the Royalists, or Parliamentary troops, was fiercely contested. Of their antiquity there is no doubt. They probably belong to the same period as the Castle. The wall of Chester and the bridge were kept in repair, according to the survey, by the service of one laborer for every hide of land in the county. It is to be remarked that in all the cities and burghs the inhabitants are described as belonging to the king or a bishop or a baron. Many, even in the most privileged places, were attached to particular manors. The _Domesday_ survey shows that in some towns there was an admixture of Norman and English burgesses; and it is clear that they were so settled after the Conquest, for a distinction is made between the old customary dues of the place and those the foreigner should pay. The foreigner had to bear a small addition to the ancient charge. No doubt the Norman clung to many of the habits of his own land; and the Saxon unwillingly parted with those of the locality in which his fathers had lived. But their manners were gradually assimilated. The Normans grew fond of the English beer, and the English adopted the Norman dress. The survey of 1085 affords the most complete evidence of the extent to which the Normans had possessed themselves of the landed property of the country. The ancient demesnes of the crown consisted of fourteen hundred and twenty-two manors. But the king had confiscated the properties of Godwin, Harold, Algar, Edwin, Morcar, and other great Saxon earls; and his revenues thus became enormous. Ordericus Vitalis states, with a minuteness that seems to imply the possession of official information, that "the king himself received daily one-and-sixty pounds thirty thousand pence and three farthings sterling money from his regular revenues in England alone, independently of presents, fines for offences, and many other matters which constantly enrich a royal treasury." The numbers of manors held by the favorites of the Conqueror would appear incredible, if we did not know that these great nobles were grasping and unscrupulous; indulging the grossest sensuality with a pretence of refinement; limited in their perpetration of injustice only by the extent of their power; and so blinded by their pride as to call their plunder their inheritance. Ten Norman chiefs who held under the crown are enumerated in the survey as possessing two thousand eight hundred and twenty manors. This enormous transfer of property did not take place without the most formidable resistance, but when a period of tranquillity arrived came the era of castle-building. The Saxons had their rude fortresses and intrenched earthworks. But solid walls of stone, for defence and residence, were to become the local seats of regal and baronial domination. _Domesday_ contains notices of forty-nine castles; but only one is mentioned as having existed in the time of Edward the Confessor. Some which the Conqueror is known to have built are not noticed in the survey. Among these is the White Tower of London. The site of Rochester Castle is mentioned. These two buildings are associated by our old antiquaries as being erected by the same architect. Stow says: "I find in a fair register-book of the acts of the bishops of Rochester, set down by Edmund of Hadenham, that William I, surnamed Conqueror, builded the Tower of London, to wit, the great white and square tower there, about the year of Christ 1078, appointing Gundulph, then Bishop of Rochester, to be principal surveyor and overseer of that work, who was for that time lodged in the house of Edmere, a burghess of London." The chapel in the White Tower is a remarkable specimen of early Norman architecture. The keep of Rochester Castle, so picturesquely situated on the Medway, was not a mere fortress without domestic convenience. Here we still look upon the remains of sculptured columns and arches. We see where there were spacious fireplaces in the walls, and how each of four floors was served with water by a well. The third story contains the most ornamental portions of the building. In the _Domesday_ enumeration of castles, we have repeated mention of houses destroyed and lands wasted, for their erection. At Cambridge twenty-seven houses are recorded to have been thus demolished. This was the fortress to overawe the fen districts. At Lincoln a hundred and sixty-six mansions were destroyed, "on account of the castle." In the ruins of all these castles we may trace their general plan. There were an outer court, an inner court, and a keep. Round the whole area was a wall, with parapets and loopholes. The entrance was defended by an outwork or barbacan. The prodigious strength of the keep is the most remarkable characteristic of these fortresses; and thus many of these towers remain, stripped of every interior fitting by time, but as untouched in their solid construction as the mounts upon which they stand. We ascend the steep steps which lead to the ruined keep of Carisbrook, with all our historical associations directed to the confinement of Charles I in this castle. But this fortress was registered in _Domesday Book_. Five centuries and a half had elapsed between William I and James I. The Norman keep was out of harmony with the principles of the seventeenth century, as much as the feudal prerogatives to which Charles unhappily clung. We have thus enumerated some of the more prominent statistics of this ancient survey, which are truly as much matter of history as the events of this beginning of the Norman period. There is one more feature of this _Domesday Book_ which we cannot pass over. The number of parish churches in England in the eleventh century will, in some degree, furnish an indication of the amount of religious instruction. By some most extraordinary exaggeration, the number of these churches has been stated to be above forty-five thousand. In _Domesday_ the number enumerated is a little above seventeen hundred. No doubt this enumeration is extremely imperfect. Very nearly half of all the churches put down are found in Lincolnshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk. The _Register_, in some cases, gives the amount of land with which the church was endowed. Bosham, in Sussex, the estate of Harold, had, in the time of King Edward, a hundred and twelve hides of land. At the date of the survey it had sixty-five hides. This was an enormous endowment. Some churches had five acres only; some fifty; some a hundred. Some are without land altogether. But, whether the endowment be large or small, here is the evidence of a church planted upon the same foundation as the monarchy, that of territorial possessions. The politic ruler of England had, in the completion of _Domesday Book_, possessed himself of the most perfect instrument for the profitable administration of his government. He was no longer working in the dark, whether he called out soldiers or levied taxes. He had carried through a great measure, rapidly, and with a minuteness which puts to shame some of our clumsy modern statistics. But the Conqueror did not want his books for the gratification of official curiosity. He went to work when he knew how many tenants-in-chief he could command, and how many men they could bring into the field. He instituted the great feudal principle of knight-service. His ordinance is in these words: "We command that all earls, barons, knights, sergeants, and freemen be always provided with horses and arms as they ought, and that they be always ready to perform to us their whole service, in manner as they owe it to us of right for their fees and tenements, and as we have appointed to them by the common council of our whole kingdom, and as we have granted to them in fee with right of inheritance." These words, "in fee, with right of inheritance," leave no doubt that the great vassals of the crown were absolute proprietors, and that all their subvassals had the same right of holding in perpetuity. The estate, however, reverted to the crown if the race of the original feoffee became extinct, and in cases, also, of felony and treason. When Alain of Bretagne, who commanded the rear of the army at the battle of Hastings, and who had received four hundred and forty-two manors, bowed before the King at Salisbury, at the great council in 1085, and swore to be true to him against all manner of men, he also brought with him his principal _land-sittende_ men (land-owners), who also bowed before the King and became his men. They had previously taken the oath of fealty to Alain of Bretagne, and engaged to perform all the customs and services due to him for their lands and tenements. Alain, and his men, were proprietors, but with very unequal rights. Alain, by his tenure, was bound to provide for the King as many armed horsemen as the vast extent of his estates demanded. But all those whom he had enfeoffed, or made proprietors, upon his four hundred and forty-two manors, were each bound to contribute a proportionate number. When the free service of forty days was to be enforced, the great earl had only to send round to his vassals, and the men were at his command. By this organization, which was universal throughout the kingdom, sixty thousand cavalry could, with little delay, be called into the field. Those who held by this military service had their allotments divided into so many knights' fees, and each knight's fee was to furnish one mounted and armed soldier. The great vassals retained a portion of their land as their demesnes, having tenants who paid rents and performed services not military. But, under any circumstances, the vassal of the crown was bound to perform his whole free service with men and horses and arms. It is perfectly clear that this wonderful organization rendered the whole system of government one great confederacy, in which the small proprietors, tenants, and villeins had not a chance of independence; and that their condition could only be ameliorated by those gradual changes which result from a long intercourse between the strong and the weak, in which power relaxes its severity and becomes protection. In the ordinance in which the King commanded "free service" he also says, "we will that all the freemen of the kingdom possess their lands in peace, free from all tallage and unjust exaction." This, unhappily for the freemen, was little more than a theory under the Norman kings. There were various modes of making legal exaction the source of the grossest injustice. When the heir of an estate entered into possession he had to pay a "relief," or _heriot_, to the lord. This soon became a source of oppression in the crown; and enormous sums were exacted from the great vassals. The lord was not more sparing of his men. He had another mode of extortion. He demanded "aid" on many occasions, such as the marriage of his eldest daughter, or when he made his eldest son a knight. The estate of inheritance, which looks so generous and equitable an arrangement, was a perpetual grievance; for the possessor could neither transmit his property by will nor transfer it by sale. The heir, however remote in blood, was the only legitimate successor. The feudal obligation to the lord was, in many other ways, a fruitful source of tyranny, which lasted up to the time of the Stuarts. If the heir were a minor, the lord entered into possession of the estate without any accountability. If it descended to a female, the lord could compel her to marry according to his will, or could prevent her marrying. During a long period all these harassing obligations connected with property were upheld. The crown and the nobles were equally interested in their enforcement; and there can be little doubt that, though the great vassals sometimes suffered under these feudal obligations to the king, the inferior tenants had a much greater amount of oppression to endure at the hands of their immediate lords. But if the freemen were oppressed in the tenure of their property, we can scarcely expect that the landless man had not much more to suffer. If he committed an offence in the Saxon time, he paid a "mulct"; if in the Norman, he was subjected to an _amerciament_. His whole personal estate was at the mercy of the lord. Having thus obtained a general notion of the system of society established in less than twenty years after the Conquest, we see that there was nothing wanting to complete the most entire subjection of the great body of the nation. What had been wanting was accomplished in the practical working out of the theory that the entire land of the country belonged to the King. It was now established that every tenant-in-chief should do homage to the king; that every superior tenant should do homage to his lord; that every villein should be the bondman of the free; and that every slave should, without any property however limited and insecure, be the absolute chattel of some master. The whole system was connected with military service. This was the feudal system. There was some resemblance to it in parts of the Saxon organization; but under that organization there was so much of freedom in the allodial or free tenure of land that a great deal of other freedom went with it. The casting-off of the chains of feudality was the labor of six centuries. DECLINE OF THE MOORISH POWER IN SPAIN GROWTH AND DECAY OF THE ALMORAVIDE AND ALMOHADE DYNASTIES A.D. 1086-1214 S.A. DUNHAM (During the early part of the eleventh century the western caliphate, which with its splendid capital of Cordova had flourished for almost three hundred years, entered upon a decline that was the beginning of its final dissolution. By A.D. 1020 the local governors openly asserted their independence of Cordova and assumed the title of kings. Conspicuous among them was Mahomet ben Ismail ben Abid, the _wali_ of Seville. While these petty rulers were determined to renounce allegiance to Cordova, it was resolved at that capital to elect a sovereign to subdue them and restore the ancient splendor of the empire. The choice fell upon Gehwar ben Mahomet, who soon established a degree of tranquillity and commercial prosperity unknown for many years. But he failed to reëstablish the supremacy of Cordova, which capital Mahomet of Seville was preparing to invade when he died. His son, Mahomet Almoateded, having subdued Southern Andalusia, became the ally of Mahomet, son and successor of Gehwar on the throne of Cordova; but he betrayed the latter under pretence of aiding him against his enemies, and usurped the sovereignty. On the death of Mahomet Almoateded, his son Mahomet succeeded him at Cordova. He was already King of Seville, and as he soon occupied many other cities he became the most independent and powerful sovereign of Mahometan Spain. His chief rival, Yahia Alkadia, King of Toledo, was so contemptible to his people that they expelled him. He appealed for aid to Alfonso VI, King of Leon [Alfonso of Castile]; but that Christian soldier was persuaded by Mahomet to oppose, instead of assisting, Yahia. The latter was restored to his throne by the King of Badajoz, but Alfonso invested Toledo and, after a three-years' siege, reduced the city, in A.D. 1085. In the history of the events directly following the capitulation it is shown how costly to himself was the alliance of Mahomet with Alfonso, and how it played its part in the coming of his coreligionists from Africa to his assistance, and finally, as it proved, to his own undoing and the supplanting of the power he represented in the Mahometan government of Spain.) The fall of Toledo, however it might have been foreseen by the Mahometans, filled them with equal dismay and indignation. As Mahomet was too formidable to be openly assailed, they turned their vociferations of anger against his _hagib_, whom they accused of betraying the faith of Islam. Alarmed at the universal outcry, Mahomet was not sorry that he could devolve the heavy load of responsibility on the shoulders of his minister. The latter fled; but though he procured a temporary asylum from several princes, he was at length seized by the emissaries of his offended master; was brought, first to Cordova, next to Seville; confined within the walls of a dungeon; and soon beheaded by the royal hand of Mahomet. Thus was a servant of the King sacrificed for no other reason than that he had served that King too well. The conquest of Toledo was far from satisfying the ambition of Alfonso: he rapidly seized on the fortresses of Madrid, Maqueda, Guadalaxara, and established his dominion on both banks of the Tagus. Mahomet now began seriously to repent his treaty with the Christian, and to tremble even for his own possessions. He vainly endeavored to divert his ally from the projects of aggrandizement which that ally had evidently formed. The kings of Badajoz and Saragossa became tributaries to the latter; nay, if any reliance is to be placed on either Christian or Arabic historians,[29] the King of Seville himself was subjected to the same humiliation. However this may have been, Mahomet saw that unless he leagued himself with those whose subjugation had hitherto been his constant object--the princes of his faith--his and their destruction was inevitable. The magnitude of the danger compelled him to solicit their alliance. [Footnote 29: Condé gives the translation of two letters--one from Alfonso to Mahomet, distinguished for a tone of superiority and even of arrogance, which could arise only from the confidence felt by the writer in his own strength; the other from Mahomet to Alfonso, containing a defiance. The latter begins: "To the proud enemy of Allah, Alfonso ben Sancho, who calls himself lord of both nations and both laws. May God confound his arrogance, and prosper those who walk in the right way!" One passage of the same letter says: "Fatigued with war, we were willing to offer thee an annual tribute; but this does not satisfy thee: thou wishest us to deliver into thine hands our towns and fortresses; but are we thy subjects, that thou makest such demands, or hast thou ever subdued us? Thine injustice has roused us from our lethargy," etc.] As the King of Saragossa was too much in fear of the Christians to enter into any league against them, and as the one of Valencia (Yahia) reigned only at the pleasure of Alfonso, the sovereigns of Badajoz, Almeria, and Granada were the only powers on whose coöperation he could calculate (he had annihilated the authority of several petty kings). He invited those princes to send their representatives to Seville, to consult as to the measures necessary to protect their threatened independence. The invitation was readily accepted. On the day appointed, Mahomet, with his son Al Raxid and a considerable number of his _wazirs_ and _cadis_, was present at the deliberations. The danger was so imminent--the force of the Christians was so augmented, and that of the Moslems so weakened-- that such resistance as Mahometan Spain alone could offer seemed hopeless. With this conviction in their hearts, two of the most influential cadis proposed an appeal to the celebrated African conqueror, Yussef ben Taxfin, whose arm alone seemed able to preserve the faith of Islam in the Peninsula. The proposal was received with general applause by all present: they did not make the very obvious reflection that when a nation admits into its bosom an ally more powerful than itself, it admits at the same time a conqueror. The wali of Malaga alone, Abdallah ben Zagut, had courage to oppose the dangerous embassy under consideration: "You mean to call in the aid of the Almoravides! Are you ignorant that these fierce inhabitants of the desert resemble their own native tigers? Suffer them not, I beseech you, to enter the fertile plains of Andulasia and Granada! Doubtless they would break the iron sceptre which Alfonso intends for us; but you would still be doomed to wear the chains of slavery. Do you not know that Yussef has taken all the cities of Almagreb; that he has subdued the powerful tribes of the east and west; that he has everywhere substituted despotism for liberty and independence?" The aged Zagut spoke in vain: he was even accused of being a secret partisan of the Christian; and the embassy was decreed. But Zagut was not the only one who foresaw the catastrophe to which that embassy must inevitably lead: Al Raxid shared the same prophetic feeling. In reply to his father, who, after the separation of the assembly, expatiated on the absolute necessity of soliciting the alliance of Aben Taxfin as the only measure capable of saving the rest of Mahometan Spain from the yoke of Alfonso, he said: "This Aben Taxfin, who has subdued all that he pleased, will serve us as he has already served the people of Almagreb and Mauritania--he will expel us from our country!" "Anything," rejoined the father, "rather than Andalusia should become the prey of the Christians! Dost thou wish the Mussulmans to curse me? I would rather become an humble shepherd, a driver of Yussef's camels, than reign dependent on these Christian dogs! But my trust is in Allah." "May Allah protect both thee and thy people!" replied Al Raxid, mournfully, who saw that the die of fate was cast. The course of this history must be interrupted for a moment, while the origin and exploits of this formidable African are recorded. Beyond the chain of Mount Atlas, in the deserts of ancient Getulia, dwelt two tribes of Arabian descent--both, probably, of the greater one of Zanhaga, so illustrious in Arabian history. At what time they had been expelled, or had voluntarily exiled themselves, from their native Yemen, they knew not; but tradition taught them that they had been located in the African deserts from ages immemorial. Their life was passed under the tent; their only possessions were their camels and their freedom. Yahia ben Ibrahim, belonging to one of these tribes--that of Gudala--made the pilgrimage of Mecca. On his return through the province of Cairwan he became acquainted with Abu-Amram, a famous _alfaqui_, originally of Fez. Being questioned by his new friend as to the religion and manners of his countrymen, he replied that they were sunk in ignorance, both from their isolated situation in the desert and from their want of teachers; he added, however, that they were strangers to cruelty, and that they would be willing enough to receive instruction from any quarter. He even entreated the alfaqui to allow some one of his disciples to accompany him into his native country; but none of those disciples was willing to undertake so long and perilous a journey, and it was not without considerable difficulty that Abdallah ben Yassim, the disciple of another alfaqui, was persuaded to accompany the patriotic Yahia. Abdallah was one of those ruling minds which, fortunately for the peace of society, nature so seldom produces. Seeing his enthusiastic reception by the tribe of Gudala, and the influence he was sure of maintaining over it, he formed the design of founding a sovereignty in the heart of these vast regions. Under the pretext that to diffuse a holy religion and useful knowledge was among the most imperative of duties, he prevailed on his obedient disciples to make war on the kindred tribe of Lamtuna. That tribe submitted, acknowledging his spiritual authority, and zealously assisted him in his great purpose of gaining proselytes by the sword. His ambition naturally increased with his success: in a short time he had reduced, in a similar manner, the isolated tribes around him. To his valiant followers of Lamtuna he now gave the name of _Muraditins_, or _Almoravides_,[30] which signifies men consecrated to the service of God. [Footnote 30: This Moslem dynasty, founded about 1050, ruled in Africa, and afterward in Spain, until 1147, when it was overthrown and succeeded by that of the Almohades.] The whole country of Darah was gradually subdued by this new apostle, and his authority was acknowledged over a region extensive enough to form a respectable kingdom. But though he exercised all the rights of sovereignty, he prudently abstained from assuming the title: he left to the emir of Lamtuna the ostensible exercise of temporal power; and when, in A.D. 1058, that emir fell in battle, he nominated Abu-Bekr ben Omar to the vacant dignity. His own death, which was that of a warrior, left Abu-Bekr in possession of an undivided sovereignty. The power and consequently the reputation of the emir, spread far and wide, and numbers flocked from distant provinces to share in the advantages of religion and plunder. His native plains were now too narrow for the ambition of Abu-Bekr, who crossed the chain of Mount Atlas, and fixed his residence in the city of Agmat, between those mountains and the sea. But even this place was soon too confined for his increased subjects, and he looked round for a site on which he might lay the foundations of a great city, the destined metropolis of a great empire. One was at length found; and the city of Morocco began to rear its head from the valley of Eylana. Before, however, his great work was half completed, he received intelligence that the tribe of Gudala had declared a deadly war against that of Lamtuna; and that the ruin of one at least of the hostile people was to be apprehended. As he belonged to the latter, he naturally trembled for the fate of his kindred; and at the head of his cavalry he departed for his native deserts, leaving the superintendence of the buildings and the command of the army, during his absence, to his cousin, Yussef ben Taxfin. The person and character of Yussef are drawn in the most favorable colors by the Arabian writers. We are told that his stature was tall and noble, his countenance prepossessing, his eye dark and piercing, his beard long, his tone of voice harmonious, his whole frame, which no sickness ever assailed, strong, robust, and familiar with fatigue; that his mind corresponded with his outward appearance, his generosity, his care of the poor, his sobriety, his justice, his religious zeal, yet freedom from intolerance, rendering him the admiration of foreigners and the love of his own people. But whatever were his other virtues, it will be seen that gratitude, honor, and good faith were not among the number. Scarcely had his kinsman left the city, than, in pursuance of the design he had formed of usurping the supreme authority, he began to win the affection of the troops, partly by his gifts and partly by that winning affability of manner which he could easily assume. How well he succeeded will soon appear. Nor was his success in war less agreeable to so fierce and martial a people as the Almoravides. The Berbers who inhabited the defiles of Mount Atlas, and who, animated by the spirit of independence so characteristic of mountaineers, endeavored to vindicate their natural liberty, were quickly subdued by him. But his policy was still superior. He had long loved, or at least long aspired to the hope of marrying, the beautiful Zainab, sister of Abu-Bekr; but the fear of a repulse from the proud chief of his family had caused him to smother his inclination. He now disdained to supplicate for that chief's consent: he married the lady, and from that moment proceeded boldly in his projects of ambition. Having put the finishing touch to his magnificent city of Morocco, he transferred thither the seat of his empire; and by the encouragement he afforded to individuals of all nations who chose to settle there, he soon filled it with a prosperous and numerous population. The augmentation of his army was his next great object; and so well did he succeed in it that on his departure, in a hostile expedition against Fez, he found his troops exceeded one hundred thousand. With so formidable a force, he had little difficulty in rapidly extending his conquests. Yussef had just completed the subjugation of Fez when Abu-Bekr returned from the desert and encamped in the vicinity of Agmat. He was soon made acquainted--probably common report had acquainted him long before--with the usurpation of his kinsman. With a force so far inferior to his rival's, and still more with the conviction that the hearts of the people were weaned from him, he might well hesitate as to the course he should adopt. His greatest mortification was to hear his own horsemen, whom curiosity drew into Morocco, loud in the praises of Yussef, whose liberality to the army was the theme of universal admiration, and whose service for that reason many avowed their intention of embracing. He now feared that his power was at an end, yet he resolved to have an interview with his cousin. The two chiefs met about half-way between Morocco and Agmat,[31] and after a formal salutation took their seats on the same carpet. The appearance of Yussef's formidable guard, the alacrity with which he was obeyed, and the grandeur which surrounded him convinced Abu-Bekr that the throne of the usurper was too firmly established to be shaken. The poor emir, so far from demanding the restitution of his rights, durst not even utter one word of complaint; on the contrary, he pretended that he had long renounced empire, and that his only wish was to pass the remainder of his days in the retirement of the desert. With equal hypocrisy Yussef humbly thanked him for his abdication; the sheiks and walis were summoned to witness the renewed declaration of the emir, after which the two princes separated. The following day, however, Abu-Bekr received a magnificent present from Yussef,[32] who, indeed, continued to send him one every year to the period of his death. [Footnote 31: The distance is about ten or twelve leagues.] [Footnote 32: This present is made to consist of twenty-five thousand crowns of gold, seventy horses of the best breed, all splendidly accoutred, one hundred and fifty mules, one hundred magnificent turbans with as many costly habits, four hundred common turbans, two hundred white mantles, one thousand pieces of rich stuffs, two hundred pieces of fine linen, one hundred and fifty black slaves, twenty beautiful young maidens, with a considerable quantity of perfumes, corn, and cattle. Such a gift was worthy of royalty. In a similar situation a modern English sovereign would probably have sent--one hundred pounds.] Yussef, who, though he had refused to receive the title of _almumenin_, which he considered as properly belonging to the Caliph of the East, had just exchanged his humble one of emir for those of _almuzlemin_, or prince of the believers, and of _nazaradin_, or defender of the faith, when the letters of Mahomet reached him. A similar application from Omar, King of Badajoz, he had disregarded, not because he was indifferent to the glory of serving his religion, still less to the advantage of extending his conquests, but because he had not then sufficiently consolidated his power. Now, however, he was in peaceful possession of an extended empire, and he assembled his chiefs to hear their sentiments on an expedition which he had resolved to undertake. All immediately exclaimed that war should be undertaken in defence of the tottering throne of Islam. Before, however, he returned a final answer to the King of Seville, he insisted that the fortress of Algeziras should be placed in his hands, on the pretence that if fortune were unpropitious he should have some place to which he might retreat. That Mahomet should have been so blind as to not perceive the designs involved in the insidious proposal is almost enough to make one agree with the Arabic historians that destiny had decreed he should fall by his own measures. The place was not only surrendered to the artful Moor, but Mahomet himself went to Morocco to hasten the departure of Yussef. He was assured of speedy succor and induced to return. He was soon followed by the ambitious African, at the head of a mighty armament. Alfonso was besieging Saragossa, which he had every expectation of reducing, when intelligence reached him of Yussef's disembarkation. He resolved to meet the approaching storm. At the head of all the forces he could muster he advanced toward Andalusia, and encountered Yussef on the plains of Zalaca, between Badajoz and Merida. As the latter was a strict observer of the outward forms of his religion, he summoned the Christian King by letter to embrace the faith of the Prophet or consent to pay an annual tribute or prepare for immediate battle. "I am told," added the writer, "that thou wishest for vessels to carry the war into my kingdom; I spare thee the trouble of the voyage. Allah brings thee into my presence that I may punish thy presumption and pride!" The indignant Christian trampled the letter under foot, and at the same time said to the messenger: "Tell thy master what thou hast seen! Tell him also not to hide himself during the action: let him meet me face to face!" The two armies engaged the 13th day of the moon Regeb, A.H. 479.[33] [Footnote 33: October 23, A.D. 1086.] The onset of Alfonso at the head of the Christian cavalry was so fierce that the ranks of the Almoravides were thrown into confusion; not less successful was Sancho, King of Navarre, against the Andalusians, who retreated toward Badajoz. But the troops of Seville kept the field, and fought with desperate valor: they would, however, have given way, had not Yussef at this critical moment advanced with his reserve and his own guard, consisting of his bravest troops, and assailed the Christians in the rear and flanks. This unexpected movement decided the fortune of the day. Alfonso was severely wounded and compelled to retreat, but not until nightfall, nor until he had displayed a valor worthy of the greatest heroes. Though his own loss was severe, amounting, according to the Arabians, to twenty-four thousand men, that of the enemy could scarcely be inferior, when we consider that this victory had no result; Yussef was evidently too much weakened to profit by it. Not long after the battle, Yussef being called to Africa by the death of a son, the command of the Almoravides devolved on Syr ben Abu-Bekr, the ablest of his generals. That general advanced northward, and seized some insignificant fortresses; but the advantage was but temporary, and was more than counterbalanced by the disasters of the following year. The King of Saragossa, Abu-Giafar, had hoped that the defeat of Zalaca would prevent the Christians from attacking him; but that of his allies, the Mahometan princes, in the neighborhood, and the taking of Huesca by the King of Navarre, convinced him how fallacious was his fancied security. Seeing that no advantage whatever had accrued from his former expedition, Yussef now proclaimed the Alhiged, or holy war, and invited all the Andalusian princes to join him. In A.D. 1088, he again disembarked at Algeziras and joined the confederates. But this present demonstration of force proved as useless as the preceding: it ended in nothing; owing partly to the dissensions of Mahometans, and partly to the activity of the Christians, who not only rendered abortive the measures of the enemy, but gained some signal advantages over them. Yussef was forced to retreat on Almeida. Whether through the distrust of the Mahometan princes, who appear to have penetrated his intention of subjecting them to his empire, or through his apprehension of Alfonso, he again returned to Africa, to procure new and more considerable levies. In A.D. 1091 he landed a third time at Algeziras, not so much with the view of humbling the Christian King as of executing the perfidious design he had so long harbored. For form's sake, indeed, he invested Toledo, but he could have entertained no expectation of reducing it; and when he perceived that the Andalusian princes refused to join him, he eagerly left that city, and proceeded to secure far dearer and easier interests: he openly threw off the mask, and commenced his career of spoliation. The King of Granada, Abdallah ben Balkin, was the first victim to African perfidy. In the conviction that he must be overwhelmed if resistance were offered, he left his city to welcome Yussef. His submission was vain: he was instantly loaded with chains, and with his family sent to Agmat. Timur ben Balkin, brother of Abdallah, was in the same violent manner despoiled of Malaga. Mahomet now perceived the grievous error which he had committed, and the prudent foresight of his son Al Raxid. "Did not I tell thee," said the latter, mournfully, "what the consequences would be; that we should be driven from our palace and country?" "Thou wert indeed a true prophet," replied the self-accused father; "but what power could avert the decrees of fate?" It seemed as if fate had indeed resolved that this well-meaning but misguided prince should fall by his own obstinacy; for though his son advised him to seek the alliance of Alfonso, he refused to do so until that alliance could no longer avail him. He himself seemed to think that the knell of his departing greatness was about to sound; and the most melancholy images were present to his fancy, even in sleep. "One night," says an Arabic historian, "he heard in a dream his ruin predicted by one of his sons: he awoke, and the same verses were repeated: "'Once, Fortune carried thee in her car of triumph and thy name was by renown spread to the ends of the earth. Now, the same renown conveys only thy sighs. Days and nights pass away, and like them the enjoyments of the world; thy greatness has vanished like a dream!'" But if Mahomet was superstitious--if he felt that fate had doomed him, and that resistance would be useless--he resolved not to fall ignobly. His defence was indeed heroic; but it was vain, even though Alfonso sent him an aid of twenty thousand men: his cities fell one by one; Seville was constrained to capitulate: he and his family were thrown into prison until a ship was prepared to convey them into Africa, whither their perfidious ally had retired some weeks before. His conduct in this melancholy reverse of fortune is represented as truly great. Not a sigh escaped him, except for the innocent companions of his misfortune, especially for his son, Al Raxid, whose virtues and talents deserved a better destiny. Surrounded by the best beloved of his wives, by his daughters, and his four surviving sons, he endeavored to console them as they wept on seeing his royal hands oppressed with fetters, and still more when the ship conveyed all from the shores of Spain. "My children and friends," said the suffering monarch, "let us learn to support our lot with resignation! In this state of being our enjoyments are but lent us, to be resumed when heaven sees fit. Joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, closely follow each other; but the noble heart is above the inconstancy of fortune!" The royal party disembarked at Ceuta, and were conveyed to Agmat, to be confined in a fortress. We are told that on their journey a compassionate poet presented the fallen King with a copy of verses deploring his misfortunes, and that he rewarded the poet with thirty-six pieces of gold--the only money he had left, from his once exhaustless riches. He had little apprehension of what was to follow--that Yussef would leave him without support; that his future life was to be passed in penury; nay, that his daughters would be compelled to earn his subsistence and their own by the labor of their hands. Yet even in that indigent condition, says Aben Lebuna, and through the sadness which covered their countenances, there was something about them which revealed their high origin. The unfortunate monarch outlived the loss of his crown and liberty about four years. After the fall of Mahomet, the general of Yussef had little difficulty in subduing the princes of Andalusia. Valencia next received the African yoke. The King of Saragossa was more fortunate. He sent ambassadors to Yussef, bearing rich presents, and proposing an alliance with a common league against the Christians. "My dominions," said Abu-Giafar, "are the only barrier between thee and the Christian princes. Hitherto my predecessors and myself have withstood all their efforts; with thy succor I shall fear them still less." Yussef accepted the proposal; a treaty of alliance was made; and the army of Abu-Giafar was reinforced by a considerable body of Amoravides, A.H. 486, with whom he repelled an invasion of Sancho, King of Aragon. A third division of the Africans, which marched to destroy the sovereignty of Algarve and Badajoz, was no less successful. Badajoz capitulated; but, in violation of the treaty, the dethroned Omar, with two of his sons, was surrounded and assassinated by a body of cavalry, as he was unsuspiciously journeying from the scene of his past prosperity in search of another asylum. A third son was placed in close confinement. Thus ended the petty kingdoms of Andalusia, after a stormy existence of about sixty years. For some years after the usurpation of Yussef, peace appears to have existed in Spain between the Mahometans and the Christians. Fearing a new irruption of Africans, Alfonso contented himself with fortifying Toledo; and Yussef felt little inclination to renew the war with one whose prowess he had so fatally experienced. But Christian Spain was, at one moment, near the brink of ruin. The passion for the crusades was no less ardently felt by the Spaniards than by other nations of Europe; thousands of the best warriors were preparing to depart for the Holy Land, as if there were more merit in contending with the infidels, in a remote region, for a barren sepulchre, than at home for the dearest interests of man--for honor, patriotism, and religion. Fortunately for Spain, Pope Pascal II, in answer to the representations of Alfonso, declared that the proper post of every Spaniard was at home, and there were his true enemies. Soon afterward Yussef returned to Morocco, where he died on the 3d day of the moon Muharram, A.H. 500, after living one hundred Arabian or about ninety-seven Christian years. In A.H. 514 the empire of the Almoravides was tottering to its fall. It had never been agreeable to the Mahometans of Spain, whose manners, from their intercourse with a civilized people, were comparatively refined. The sheiks of Lamtuna were so many insupportable tyrants; the Jews, the universal agents for the collection of the revenues, were here, as in Poland, the most pitiless extortioners; every savage from the desert looked with contempt on the milder inhabitant of the Peninsula. The domination of these strangers was indeed so odious that, except for the divisions between Alfonso and his ambitious queen Donna Urraca, who was sovereign in her own right, all Andalusia might speedily have been subjected to Christian rule. Alfonso, the King of Aragon, fell at the siege of Fraga about A.D. 1109, but the Almoravides met an equally valiant foe in his son and successor, Alfonso Raymond, King of Leon and Castile. After a period of about forty years, during which the Christians were steadily increasing their dominions, Coria and Mora and other Mahometan strongholds were acquired by Alfonso, now styled the "Emperor"; and almost every contest between the two natural enemies had turned to the advantage of the Christians. So long, indeed, as the walis were eager only to preserve or to extend their authority, independent of each other and of every superior, this success need not surprise us--we may rather be surprised that the Mahometans were allowed to retain any footing in the Peninsula. Probably they would at this time have been driven from it but for the seasonable arrival of the victorious Almohades. Both Christians and Africans now contended for the superiority. While the troops of Alfonso reduced Baeza, and, with a Mahometan ally, even Cordova, Malaga, and Seville acknowledged Abu Amram; Calatrava and Almeria next fell to the Christian Emperor, about the same time that Lisbon and the neighboring towns received Don Enrique, the new sovereign of Portugal. Most of these conquests, however, were subsequently recovered by the Almohades. Being reinforced by a new army from Africa, the latter pursued their successes with greater vigor. They reduced Cordova, which was held by an ally of Alfonso; defeated, and forever paralyzed, the expiring efforts of the Almoravides; and proclaimed their Emperor Abdelmumen as sovereign of all Mahometan Spain. Notwithstanding the destructive wars which had prevailed for nearly a century, neither Moors nor Christians had acquired much advantage by them. From the reduction of Saragossa to the present time, the victory, indeed, had generally declared for the Christians; but their conquests, with the exception of Lisbon and a few fortresses in Central Spain, were lost almost as soon as gained; and the same fate attended the equally transient successes of the Mahometans. The reasons why the former did not permanently extend their territories, were their internal dissensions; while Leon was at war with Castile, or Castile with Leon, or either with Aragon, we need not wonder that the united Almoravides, or their successors the Almohades, should sometimes triumph; but those triumphs were sure to be followed by reverses whenever not all, but any one, of the Christian states was at liberty to assail its natural enemy. The Christians, when at peace among themselves, were always too many for their Mahometan neighbors, even when the latter were aided by the whole power of Western Africa. In A.H. 572 (about A.D. 1179) the King of Castile reduced Caenza, and the Moors were defeated before Toledo. The following year the Portuguese were no less successful before Abrantes, which the Africans had besieged. These disasters roused the wrath of Yussef abu Yagur (son and successor of Abdulmumen who died A.H. 558 = A.D. 1165); but as an obscure rebellion required his presence at that time in Mauritania, he did not land in Spain until A.H. 580. He marched without delay against Santarem, which his soldiers had vainly besieged some years before. Wishing to divide the Portuguese force, he one night sent an order to his son Cid Abu Ishac, who lay encamped near him, to march with the Andalusian cavalry on Lisbon. The officer who carried the order instead of Lisbon named Seville; the whole Moslem army were sure that some disaster was impending, and that the siege was to be raised; before morning the camp was deserted, the guard alone of Yussef remaining. While he despatched orders to recall the alarmed fugitives, the Christians, who were soon aware of the retreat, issued from the walls, surrounded and massacred the guard. Yussef defended himself like a hero: six of the advancing assailants he laid low, before the same fate was inflicted on himself. The merciless carnage of the Christians spared not even his female attendants. At this moment two companies of cavalry arrived, and, finding their monarch dying, furiously charged the Christians, whom they soon put to flight. In a few hours the whole army returned, and, inspired with the same hope of vengeance, they stormed and took the place, and put every living creature to the sword. Yacub ben Yussef, from his victories afterward named Almansor, who was then in Spain, was immediately declared successor to his father. For some years he was not personally opposed to the Christians, though his walis carried on a desultory indecisive war; he was long detained in Africa, first in quelling some domestic commotions, and afterward by severe illness. He was scarcely recovered, when the intelligence that the Christians were making insulting irruptions to the very outworks of Algeziras made him resolve on punishing their audacity. His preparations were of the most formidable description. In A.H. 591 he landed in Andalusia, and proceeded toward Valencia, where the Christian army then lay. There Alfonso VIII, King of Castile, was awaiting the expected reinforcements from his allies, the kings of Leon and Navarre. Both armies pitched their tents on the plains of Alarcon. The following day the Christians commenced the attack, and with so much impetuosity that the centre was soon broken. But an Andalusian chief conducted a strong body of his men against Alfonso, who with the reserve occupied the hill above the plain. While the struggle was in all its fury, Yacub and his division took the Christians in flank. The result was fatal to the Castilian army, which, discouraged at what it considered a new enemy, gave way in every direction. Alfonso, preferring an honorable death to the shame of defeat, prepared to plunge into the heart of the Mahometan squadrons, when his nobles surrounded him and forced him from the field. His loss must have been immense, amounting probably to twenty thousand men. With a generosity very rare in a Mahometan, and still more in an African, Yacub restored his prisoners to liberty--an action for which, we are informed, he received few thanks from his followers. Alfonso retreated to Toledo just as the King of Leon arrived with the promised reinforcement. After this signal victory Yacub rapidly reduced Calatrava, Guadalaxara, Madrid and Esalona, Salamanca, etc. Toledo, too, he invested, but in vain. He returned to Africa, caused his son Mahomet to be declared _wali alhadi_, and died, the 22d day of the moon Regeb, A.H. 595.[34] He left behind him the character of an able, a valiant, a liberal, a just, and even magnanimous prince--of one who labored more for the real welfare of his people than any other potentate of his age. He was, beyond doubt, the greatest and best of the Almohades. [Footnote 34: May 19, 1199.] The character of Mahomet Abu Abdallah, surnamed Alnassir, was very different from that of his great father. Absorbed in effeminate pleasures, he paid little attention to the internal administration of his empire or to the welfare of his people. Yet he was not insensible to martial fame; and he accordingly showed no indisposition to forsake his harem for the field. After quelling two inconsiderable rebellions, he prepared to punish the audacity of Alfonso of Castile, who made destructive inroads into Andalusia. Much as the world had been astounded at the preparations of his grandfather Yussef, they were not surpassed by his own, if, as we are credibly informed, one alone of the five divisions of his army amounted to one hundred and sixty thousand men. It is certain that a year was required for the assembling of this vast armament, that two months were necessary to convey it across the straits, and that all Christian Europe was filled with alarm at its disembarkation. Innocent III proclaimed a crusade to Spain; and Rodrigo of Toledo, the celebrated historian, accompanied by several prelates, went from one court to another, to rouse the Christian princes. While the kings of Aragon and Navarre[35] promised to unite their forces with their brother of Castile to repel the common danger, great numbers of volunteers from Portugal[36] and Southern France hastened to the general rendezvous at Toledo, the Pope ordered fasting, prayers, and processions to be made, to propitiate the favor of heaven, and to avert from Christendom the greatest danger that had threatened it since the days of the emir Abderahman. [Footnote 35: Sancho, King of Navarre, is justly accused of backwardness at least in joining the Christian alliance. He even sought that of Yacub and Mahomet, on condition that his own states should be spared, or perhaps amplified at the expense of his neighbors. If the Arabian writers are correct, he privately waited on Mahomet in Seville; but the result of the interview is unknown.] [Footnote 36: The King of Portugal was not present in this campaign, confidently as the contrary has been asserted by most historians.--_La Cléde: Histoire Générale de Portugal_, ii.] Mahomet opened the campaign of A.H. 608 by the siege of Salvatierra, a strong but not important fortress of Estremadura, defended by the knights of Calatrava. That he should waste his forces on objects so incommensurate with their extent proves how little he was qualified to wield them. The place stood out for several months, and did not surrender until the Emperor had sustained a heavy loss, nor until the season was too far advanced to permit any advantage to be derived from this partial success. By suspending the execution of his great design until the following season, he allowed Alfonso time to prepare for the contest. The following June, the kings of Leon and Castile having assembled at Toledo, and been joined by a considerable number of foreign volunteers, the Christian army advanced toward the south. That of the infidels lay in the neighborhood of Baeza, and extended to the Sierra Morena. On July 12th, A.H. 608, the crusaders reached the mountainous chain which divides New Castile from Andalusia. They found not only the passes, but the summits of the mountains, occupied by the Almohades. To force a passage was impossible; and they even deliberated on retreating, so as to draw out, if possible, the enemy from positions so formidable, when a shepherd entered the camp of Alfonso and proposed to conduct the Christian army, by a path unknown to both armies, to the summit of this elevated chain--by a path, too, which would be invisible to the enemy's outposts. A few companies having accompanied the man and found him equally faithful and well informed, the whole army silently ascended and intrenched themselves on the summit, the level of which was extensive enough to contain them all. Below appeared the wide-spread tents of the Moslems, whose surprise was great on perceiving the heights thus occupied by the crusaders. For two days the latter, whose fatigues had been harassing, kept their position; but on the third day they descended into the plains of Tolosa, which were about to be immortalized by their valor. Their right wing was led by the King of Navarre, their left by the King of Aragon, while Alfonso took his station in the centre. Mahomet had drawn up his army in a similar manner; but, with a strong body of reserve, he occupied an elevation well defended besides by vast iron chains, which surrounded his impenetrable guard.[37] In one hand he held a useless scimitar, in the other the _Koran_. The attack was made by the Christian centre against that of the Mahometans; and immediately the two wings moved against those of the enemy. The African centre, which consisted of the one hundred and sixty thousand volunteers, made a determined stand; and though it was broken, it soon rallied, on being reinforced from the reserve. At one time, indeed, the superiority of numbers was so great on the part of the Moslems that the troops of Alfonso appeared about to give way. At this moment that King, addressing the archbishop Rodrigo, who was with him, said, "Let us die here, prelate!" and he prepared to rush amid the dense ranks of the enemy. The prelate, however, and a Castilian general, retained him by the bridle of his horse, representing the rashness of his purpose, and advising him to reinforce his weak points by new succors. Accordingly those succors, among which were the vassals with the pennon of the archbishop, advanced to support the sinking Castilians. This manoeuvre decided the fortune of the day.[38] The Mahometan centre, after a sharp conflict, was again broken, this time irretrievably, and a way opened to the intrenchments of the Emperor. Seeing the success of their allies, the two wings charged their opponents with double fury and triumphed likewise. But the Africans[39] rallied round Mahomet, and presented a mass deep and formidable to the conquerors. Rodrigo, with his brother prelate, the Archbishop of Narbonne, now incited the Christians to overcome this last obstacle: both intrepidly accompanied the van of the centre. The struggle was terrific, but short; myriads of the barbarians fell; the boundary was first broken down by the King of Navarre; the Castilians and Aragonese followed; all opponents were massacred or fled; and the victors began to ascend the eminence on which Mahomet still remained. Seeing the total destruction or flight of his vast host, the Emperor sorrowfully exclaimed, "Allah alone is just and powerful; the devil is false and wicked!" Scarcely had he uttered the truism, when an Alarab approached, leading by the hand a strong but nimble mule. "Prince of the faithful!" said the African, "how long wilt thou remain here? Dost thou not perceive that thy Moslems flee? The will of Allah be done! Mount this mule, which is fleeter than the bird of heaven, or even the arrow which strikes it; never yet did she fail her rider; away! for on thy safety depends that of us all!" Mahomet mounted the beast, while the Alarab ascended the Emperor's horse, and both soon outstripped not only the pursuers but the fugitives. The carnage of the latter was dreadful until darkness put an end to it. The victors now occupied the tents of the Mahometans, while the two martial prelates sounded the _Te Deum_ for the most splendid success which had shone on the banners of the Christians since the time of Charles Martel. The loss of the Africans, even according to the Arabian writers, who admit that the centre was wholly destroyed, could not fall short of one hundred and sixty thousand men.[40] [Footnote 37: These chains are not mentioned by the Arabs; but what can be expected from their brevity?] [Footnote 38: The standard-bearer of Rodrigo, don Domingo Pasquel, canon of Toledo, showed that he was well fitted to serve the church militant; he twice carried his banner through the heart of the Mahometan forces.] [Footnote 39: The Arabian account says that the Andalusians were the first to flee.] [Footnote 40: Of this great battle we have an account by four eye-witnesses: 1, By King Alfonso, in a letter to the Pope; 2, by the historian Rodrigo of Toledo; 3, by Arnaud, Archbishop of Narbonne; 4, by the author of the _Annals of Toledo_. The reduction of several towns, from Tolosa to Baeza, immediately followed this glorious victory--a victory in which Don Alfonso nobly redeemed his failure in the field of Zalaca--and which, in its immediate consequences, involved the ruin of the Mahometan empire in Spain. After an unsuccessful attempt on Ubeda, as the hot season was raging, the allies returned to Toledo, satisfied that the power of Mahomet was forever broken. That Emperor, indeed, did not long survive his disaster. Having precipitately fled to Morocco, he abandoned himself to licentious pleasures, left the cares of government to his son, or rather his ministers, and died on the 10th day of the moon Shaffan, A.H. 610 (A.D. 1214), not without suspicion of poison. By recent writers of Spain the number of slain on the part of the Africans was two hundred thousand; on that of the Christians, twenty-five individuals only. Of course the whole campaign is represented as miraculous; and, indeed, actual miracles are recorded--which we have neither space nor inclination to notice.] THE FIRST CRUSADE A.D. 1096-1099 SIR GEORGE W. COX (Religious feeling in the eleventh century rose to a great pitch of enthusiasm, and led men of various nations, with still more various motives and aims in worldly affairs, to pursue one common end with their whole heart. Between the years 1096 and 1270 these attempts of Christian nations to rescue the Holy Land from the "Infidels," as the Mahometans were called, added a wholly new character of human enterprise to the world's history. At the time--in the middle of the eleventh century--when the Seljuks, a Turkish tribe of Western Asia, had overrun Syria and Asia Minor, throwing the East into a state of anarchy, Europe was beginning to adopt modes of settled order. Through the Byzantine empire great numbers of pilgrims for centuries had passed to visit Palestine. With the improved condition of the western nations, which led to an extension of commerce in the East, the pilgrimage to that part of the world acquired a new importance. As early as 1064 a caravan of seven thousand pilgrims made their way to the neighborhood of Jerusalem, where they narrowly escaped destruction by the Bedouins, their rescue being effected by a Saracen emir. In 1070 the Seljuks took possession of Jerusalem, inflicting hardships on the pilgrims by intolerable exactions, insult, and plunder. Besides outraging Christian sentiment, they ruined the commerce of the western nations. Throughout Europe arose the cry for vengeance, and men's minds were fully prepared for an attempt to conquer Palestine when their leaders began to preach the sacred duty of delivering the Holy Sepulchre from the hands of the infidels. At the Council of Clermont, in 1094, Pope Urban II depicted the miseries of Christians in Palestine, and, with a power of eloquence unsurpassed in his day, called upon those who heard him to wipe off from the face of the earth the impurities which caused them, and to lift their oppressed fellow-Christians from the depths into which they had been trampled. He urged them to take up arms in the service of the Cross, at the same time setting before them the temporal, no less than the spiritual, advantages that would accrue from the conquest of a land "flowing with milk and honey," and which, he said, should be divided among them. He likewise offered them full pardon for all their sins. The enthusiasm of his hearers burst all bounds, and with one voice they cried: "God wills it! God wills it!" To all parts of Europe the fervor spread. The Pope was powerfully aided by an earnest and eloquent--if ignorant--monk, Peter the Hermit, of Amiens, who declared that he would rouse the martial spirit of Europe in the cause, and he himself was the first--with whatsoever of misguided zeal--to lead the way to the Holy Land. The crusades are so called from the simple circumstance that the badge chosen for the movement was the cross, which Pope Urban bade the Christian warriors wear on their breasts or on their shoulders, as the sign of Him who died for the salvation of their souls, and as the pledge of a vow that could never be recalled.) In the enterprise to which Latin Christendom stood committed, the several nations or countries of Europe took equal parts; or, rather, no _nation_, as such, took any part in it at all; and in this fact we have the explanation of that want of coherent action, and even decent or average generalship, which is commonly seen in national undertakings. For the crusade there was no attempt at a commissariat, no care for a base of supplies; and the crusading hosts were a collection of individual adventurers who either went without making any provisions for their journey or provided for their own needs and those of their followers from their own resources. The number of these adventurers was naturally determined by the political conditions of the country from which they came. In Italy the struggle between the pope and the antipope went far toward chilling enthusiasm; and the recruits for the crusading army came chiefly from the Normans who had followed Robert Guiscard to the sunny southern lands. The Spaniards were busied with a crusade nearer home, and were already pushing back to the south the Mahometan dominion which had once threatened to pass the barriers of the Pyrenees and carry the Crescent to the shores of the Baltic Sea. About ten years before the council of Clermont the Moslem dynasty of Toledo had been expelled by Alfonso, King of Galicia: the kingdom of Cordova had fallen twenty years earlier (1065), and while Peter the Hermit was hurrying hither and thither through the countries of Northern Europe, the Christians of Spain were winning victories in Murcia, and the land was ringing with the exploits of the dauntless Cid, Ruy Diaz de Bivar. By the Germans the summons to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre was received with comparative coldness; the partisans of emperors, who had been humbled to the dust by the predecessors of Urban, if not by himself, were not vehemently eager to obey it. The bishops of Salzburg, Passau, and Strasburg, the aged duke Guelph of Bavaria, had undertaken the toilsome and perilous journey: not one of them saw their homes again, and their death in the distant East was not regarded by their countrymen as an encouragement to follow their example. In England the English were too much weighed down by the miseries of the Conquest, the Normans too much occupied in strengthening their position, and the King, William the Red, more ready to take advantage of the needs of his brother Robert than to incur any risks of his own. The great movement came from the lands extending from the Scheldt to the Pyrenees. Franks and Normans alike made ready with impetuous haste for the great adventure; and tens of thousands, who could not wait for the formation of something like a regular army, hurried away, under leaders as frantic as themselves, to their inevitable doom. Little more than half the time allowed for the gathering of the crusaders had passed away, when a crowd of some sixty thousand men and women, neither caring nor thinking about the means by which their ends could be attained, insisted that the hermit Peter should lead them at once to the Holy City. Mere charity may justify the belief that some even among these may have been folk of decent lives moved by the earnest conviction that their going to Jerusalem would do some good; that the vast majority looked upon their vow as a license for the commission of any sin, there can be no moral doubt; that they exhibited not a single quality needed for the successful prosecution of their enterprise is absolutely certain. With a foolhardiness equal to his ignorance Peter undertook the task, in which he was aided by Walter the Penniless, a man with some pretensions to the soldier-like character. But the utter disorder of this motley host made it impossible for them to journey long together. At Cologne they parted company; and fifteen thousand under the penniless Walter made their way to the frontiers of Hungary, while Peter led onward a host which swelled gradually on the march to about forty thousand. Another army or horde of perhaps twenty thousand marched under the guidance of Emico, Count of Leiningen, a third under that of the monk Gottschalk, a man not notorious for the purity or disinterestedness of his motives. Behind these came a rabble, it is said, of two hundred thousand men, women, and children, preceded by a goose and a goat, or, as some have supposed, by banners on which, as symbols of the mysterious faith of Gnostics and Paulicians, the likeness of these animals was painted. In this vile horde no pretence was kept up of order or of decency. Sinning freely, it would seem, that grace might abound, they plundered and harried the lands through which they marched, while three thousand horsemen, headed by some counts and gentlemen, were not too dignified to act as their attendants and to share their spoil. But if they had no scruple in robbing Christians, their delight was to prove the reality of their mission as soldiers of the cross by plundering, torturing, and slaying Jews. The crusade against the Turk was interpreted as a crusade directed not less explicitly against the descendants of those who had crucified the Redeemer. The streets of Verdun and Treves and of the great cities on the Rhine ran red with the blood of their victims; and if some saved their lives by pretended conversions, many more cheated their persecutors by throwing their property and their persons either into the rivers or into the consuming fires. A space of six hundred miles lay between the Austrian frontier and Constantinople; and across the dreary waste the followers of Walter the Penniless struggled on, destitute of money, and rousing the hostility of the inhabitants whom they robbed and ill-used. In Bulgaria their misdeeds provoked reprisals which threatened their destruction; and none perhaps would have reached Constantinople if the imperial commander at Naissos had not rescued them from their enemies, supplied them with food, and guarded them through the remainder of their journey. These succors involved some costs; and the costs were paid by the sale of unarmed men among the pilgrims, and especially of the women and children, who were seized to provide the necessary funds. Of those who formed the train of the hermit Peter, seven thousand only, it is said, reached Constantinople. Of such a rabble rout the emperor Alexius[41] needed not to be afraid. He had already seen and encountered far larger armies of Normans, Turks, and Romans; and he now extended to this vanguard of the hosts of Latin Christendom a hospitality which was almost immediately abused. They had refused to comply with his request that they should quietly await the arrival of their fellow-crusaders; and consulting the safety of his people not less than his own, he induced them to cross the Bosporus, and pitch their camp on Asiatic soil, the land which they had come to wrest from the unbelievers. [Footnote 41: Head of the Byzantine empire.] Alexius wished simply to be rid of their presence: they had to deal with an enemy still more crafty and formidable in the Seljukian sultan David. The vagrants whom Peter and Walter had brought thus far on the road to Jerusalem were scattered about the land in search of food; and it was no hard task for David to cheat the main body with the false tidings that their companions had carried the walls of Nice, and were revelling in the pleasures and spoils of his capital. The doomed horde rushed into the plain which fronts the city; and a vast heap of bones alone remained to tell the story of the great catastrophe, when the forces which might more legitimately claim the name of an army passed the spot where the Seljukian had entrapped and crushed his victims. In this wild expedition not less, it is said, than three hundred thousand human beings had already paid the penalty of their lives. Still the First Crusade was destined to accomplish more than any of the seven or eight crusades which followed it; and this measure of success it achieved probably because none of the great European sovereigns took part in it. The task of setting up a Latin kingdom in Palestine was to be achieved by princes of the second order. Of these the foremost and the most deservedly illustrious was Godfrey, of Bouillon in the Ardennes, a kinsman of the counts of Boulogne, and Duke of Lotharingen (Lorraine). In the service of the emperor Henry IV, the enemy or the victim of Hildebrand, he had been the first to mount the walls of Rome and cleave his way into the city; he might now hope that his crusading vow would be accepted as an atonement for his sacrilege. Speaking the Frank and Teutonic dialects with equal ease, he exercised by his bravery, his wisdom, and the uprightness of his life an influence which brought to his standard, it is said, not less than eighty thousand infantry and ten thousand horsemen, together with his brothers Baldwin and Eustace, Count of Boulogne. Among the most conspicuous of Godfrey's colleagues was Hugh, Count of Vermandois. With him may be placed the Norman duke Robert, whose carelessness had lost him the crown of England, and who had now pawned his duchy for a pittance scarcely less paltry than that for which Esau bartered away his birthright. The number of the great chiefs who led the pilgrims from Northern Europe is completed with the names of Robert, Count of Flanders, and of Stephen, Count of Chartres, Troyes, and Blois. Foremost, by virtue of his title and office, among the leaders of the southern bands was the papal legate Adhemar (Aymer) Bishop of Puy--a leader rather as guiding the counsels of the army than as gathering soldiers under his banner. A hundred thousand horse and foot attested, we are told, the greatness, the wealth, and the zeal of Raymond, Count of Toulouse, lord of Auvergne and Languedoc, who had grown old in warfare. Less tinged with the fanatical enthusiasm of his comrades, and certainly more cool and deliberate in his ambition, Bohemond, son of Robert Guiscard, looked to the crusade as a means by which he might regain the vast regions extending from the Dalmatian coast to the northern shores of the Aegean. Nay, if we are to believe William of Malmesbury, he urged Urban to set forward the enterprise for the very purpose, partly, of thus recovering what he was pleased to regard as his inheritance, and in part of enabling the Pontiff to suppress all opposition in Rome. Guiscard had left his Apulian domains to a younger son, and Bohemond was resolved, it would seem, to add to his principality of Tarentum a kingdom which would make him a formidable rival of the Eastern Emperor. Far above Bohemond rises his cousin Tancred, the son of the marquis Odo, surnamed the Good, and of Emma, the sister of Robert Guiscard. In Tancred was seen the embodiment of those peculiar sentiments and modes of thought which gave birth to the crusades, and to which the crusades in their turn imparted marvellous strength and splendor. The miserable remnant of three thousand men who escaped from the field of blood before the city of the Seljukian sultan found a refuge in Byzantine territory about the time when the better appointed armies of the crusaders were setting off on their eastward journey. The most disciplined of these troops set out with a vast following from the banks of the Meuse and the Moselle under Godfrey of Bouillon, who led them safely and without opposition to the Hungarian border. Here the armies of Hungary barred the way against the advance of a host at whose hands they dreaded a repetition of the havoc wrought by the lawless bands of Peter the Hermit and his self-chosen colleagues. Three weeks passed away in vain attempts to get over the difficulty. The Hungarian King demanded as a hostage Baldwin, the brother of the general: the demand was refused, and Godfrey put him to shame by surrendering himself. He asked only for a free passage and a free market; but although these were granted, it was not in his power to prevent some disorder and some depredations as his army or horde passed through the country. The mischief might have been much worse, had not the Hungarian cavalry, acting professedly as a friendly escort, but really as cautious warders, kept close to the crusading hosts. At length they reached the gates of Philippopolis, and here Godfrey learned that Hugh of Vermandois, whose coming had been announced to the Greek emperor Alexius by four-and-twenty knights in golden armor, and who styled himself the brother of the king of kings and lord of all the Frankish hosts, was a prisoner within the walls of Constantinople. With Robert of Normandy and Robert of Flanders, with Stephen of Chartres and some lesser chiefs, Hugh had chosen to make his way through Italy; and the charms of that voluptuous land had a greater effect, it seems, in breaking up and corrupting their forces than the delights of Capua had in weakening the soldiers of Hannibal. With little regard to order, the chiefs determined to cross the sea as best they might. Hugh embarked at Bari; and if we may believe Anna Comnena, the historian and the worshipper of her father Alexius, his fleet was broken by a tempest which shattered his own ship on the coast between Palos and Dyrrhachium (Durazzo), of which John Comnenus, the nephew of the Emperor, was at this time the governor. The Frank chief was here detained until the good pleasure of Alexius should be known. That wary and cunning prince saw at once how much might be made of his prisoner, who was by his orders conducted with careful respect and ceremony to the capital. Kept here really as a hostage, but welcomed to outward seeming as a friend, Hugh was so completely won by the charm of manner which Alexius well knew how and when to put on, that, paying him homage and declaring himself his man, he promised to do what he could to induce others to follow his example. From Philippopolis Godfrey sent ambassadors to Alexius, demanding the immediate surrender of Hugh. The request was refused, and Godfrey resumed his march, treating the land through which he passed as an enemy's country, until by way of Adrianople he at length appeared before the walls of the capital at Christmastide, 1096. The fears of Alexius were aroused by the sight of a host so vast and so formidable: they quickened into terror as he thought of the armies which were still on their way under the command of Bohemond and Tancred. Of Godfrey, beyond the fact of his mission as a crusader, he knew little or nothing; but in Bohemond he saw one who claimed as his inheritance no small portion of his empire. This gathering of myriads, whom a false step on his part might convert into open enemies, was the result of his own entreaties urged through his envoys before Urban II in the Council of Piacenza; and his mind was divided between a feverish anxiety to hurry them on to their destination and so to rid himself of their hateful presence, and the desire to retain a hold not only on the crusading chiefs but on any conquests which they might make in Syria. Hugh was sent back to Godfrey's camp; but the quarrel was patched up, rather than ended. It was easier to rouse suspicion and jealousy than to restore friendship. But it was of the first importance for Alexius that he should secure the homage of the princes already gathered round his capital before the arrival of his ancient enemy Bohemond. In this he succeeded, and a compact was made by which Alexius pledged them his word that he would supply them with food and aid them in their eastward march, and would protect all pilgrims passing through his dominions. On the other hand the crusading chiefs, as already subjects of other sovereigns, gave their fealty to the Emperor as their liege lord only for the time during which they might remain within his borders, and undertook to restore to him such of their conquests as had been recently wrested from the empire. The policy and the bribes of Alexius had overcome the opposition of Bohemond. He was to experience a stouter resistance from Raymond of Toulouse, who, though he had been the first to enlist, was the last to set out on his crusade. The Count of Toulouse scarcely regarded himself as the vassal even of the French King. He was ready, he said, to be the friend of Alexius on equal terms; but he would not declare himself to be his man. On this point he was immovable, although Bohemond tried the effect of a threat (which was never forgiven), that if the quarrel came to blows, he should be found on the side of the Emperor. But Alexius soon saw that in Raymond he had to deal with an enthusiast as sincere and persistent as Godfrey. He took his measures accordingly, winning the heart of the old warrior, although he failed to compel his obedience. While Alexius was busied in dealing with Godfrey and Raymond, Bohemond and Tancred, he was not less anxiously occupied with the task of sending across the Bosporus the swarms which might soon become an army of devouring locusts round his own capital. It was easier to give them a welcome than to get rid of them: and more than two months had passed since Christmas, when the followers of Godfrey found themselves on the soil of Asia. Godfrey's men had no sooner been landed on the eastern side of the Bosporus than all the vessels which had transported them were brought back to the western shore. With great astuteness, and at the cost of large gifts, Alexius in like manner freed the neighborhood of his capital from the invading multitudes. As fast as they came they were hurried across, and the Emperor breathed more freely when, on the Feast of Pentecost, not a single Latin pilgrim remained on the European shore. The danger of conflict had throughout been imminent; and the danger arose, not so much from the fact that the crusaders were armed men, marching through the country of professed allies, but from the thorough antagonism between Greeks and Latins in modes of thought and habits of life. Nor must we forget the vast gulf which separated the Eastern from the Western clergy. The clergy of the West despised their brethren of the East for their cowardly submission to the secular arm. These, in their turn, shrunk with horror from the sight of bishops, priests, and monks riding with blood-stained weapons over fields of battle, and exhibiting at other times an ignorance equal to their ferocity. The strength and valor of the crusaders were soon to be tested. They were now face to face with the Turks, on whose cowardice Urban II had enlarged with so much complacency before the Council of Clermont. The sultan David, or Kilidje Arslan, placed his family and treasures in his capital city of Nice and retreated with fifty thousand horsemen to the mountains, whence he swooped down from time to time on the outposts of the Christians. By these his city was formally invested; and for seven weeks it was assailed to little purpose by the old instruments of Roman warfare, while some of the besiegers shot their weapons from the hill on which were mouldering the bones of the fanatic followers of Peter. It was protected to the west by the Askanian lake, and so long as the Turks had command of this lake they felt themselves safe. But Alexius sent thither on sledges a large number of boats, and the city, subjected to a double blockade, submitted to the Emperor, who was in no way anxious to see the crusaders masters of the place. The crusaders were making ready for the last assault, when they saw the imperial banner floating on the walls. Their disappointment at the escape of the miscreants, or unbelievers, for so they delighted to speak of them, was vented in threats which seemed to bode a renewal of the old troubles; but Alexius, with gifts, which added force to his words, professed that his only desire now, as it had been, was to forward them safely on their journey. Nor had they to go many stages before they found themselves again confronted with their adversary. The conflict took place near the Phrygian Dorylaion, and seemed at first to portend dire defeat to the crusaders. More than once the issue of the day seemed to be turned by the indomitable personal bravery of the Norman Robert, of Tancred, and of Bohemond; and when even those seemed likely to be borne down, they received timely succors from Godfrey, and Hugh of Vermandois, from Bishop Adhemar of Puy and from Raymond, Count of Toulouse. Still the Turks held out, and it seemed likely that they would long hold out, when the appearance of the last division of Raymond's army filled them with the fear that a new host was upon them. The crusaders had won a considerable victory. Three thousand knights belonging to the enemy had been slain, and Kilidje Arslan was hurrying away to enlist the services of his kinsmen. Meanwhile the Latin hosts were sweeping onward. Hundreds died from the heat, and dogs or goats took the place of the baggage-horses which had perished. At length Tancred with his troop found himself before Tarsus, the birthplace and the home of that single-hearted apostle who long ago had preached a gospel strangely unlike the creed of the crusaders. Following rapidly behind him, Baldwin saw with keen jealousy the banner of the Italian chief floating on its towers, and insisted on taking the precedence. Tancred pleaded the choice of the people and his own promise to protect them; but the intrigues of Baldwin changed their humor, and the rejection of Tancred by the men of Tarsus was followed by an attempt at private war between Tancred and Baldwin, in which the troops of Tancred were overborne. So early was the first harvest of murderous discord reaped among the holy warriors of the Cross. It was ruin, however, to stay where they were; and the main army again began its march, to undergo once more the old monotony of hardship and peril. A very small force would have sufficed to disorganize and rout them as they clambered over the defiles of Mount Taurus; nor could Raymond, recovering from a terrible illness, or Godfrey, suffering from wounds inflicted by a bear, have done much to help them. But for the present their enemies were dismayed; and Baldwin, brother of Godfrey, hastened with eagerness to obey a summons which besought him to aid the Greek or Armenian tyrant of Edessa. As Alexius had done to his brother, so this chief welcomed Baldwin as his son; but Baldwin, having once entered into the city, cared nothing for the means which had brought him thither, and the death of his adoptive father was followed by the establishment at Edessa of a Latin principality which lasted for fifty-four, or, as some have thought, forty-seven years. Baldwin had anticipated the unconditional surrender of Samosata; but the Turkish governor had some of the Edessenes in his power, and he refused to give up the city except on the payment of ten thousand gold pieces. The Turk shortly afterward fell into Baldwin's hands, and was put to death. Meanwhile the main army of the crusaders was advancing toward the Syrian capital (Antioch), that ancient and luxurious city whose fame had gone over the whole Roman world for its magnificence, its unbounded wealth, its soft delights, and its unholy pleasures. The days of its greatest splendor had passed away. Its walls were partially in ruins; its buildings were in some parts crumbling away or had already fallen; but against assailants utterly ignorant and awkward in all that relates to the blockade of cities it was still a formidable position. Nor could they invest it until they had passed the iron bridge--so called from its iron-plated gates--of nine stone arches, which spanned the stream of the Ifrin at a distance of nine miles from the city. This bridge was carried by the impetuous charge of Robert of Normandy, aided by the more steady efforts of Godfrey; and in the language of an age which delighted in round numbers, a hundred thousand warriors hurried across to seize the splendid prize which now seemed almost within their grasp. But the city was in the hands of men who had been long accustomed to despise the Greeks, and who had not yet learned to respect the valor of the Latins. Preparing himself for a resolute defence, the Seljukian governor Baghasian had sent away as useless, if not mischievous, most of the Christians within the town; and the crusading chiefs had begun to discuss the prudence of postponing all operations till the spring, when Raymond of Toulouse with some other chiefs insisted that delay would imply fear, and that the imputation of cowardice would insure the paralysis of their enterprise. The city was therefore at once invested, so far as the forces of the crusaders could suffice to encircle it; and a siege began which in the eyes of the military historian must be absolutely without interest, and of which the issue was decided by paroxysms of fanatical vehemence on the one side, and by lack, not of bravery, but of generalship on the other. Of the eastern and northern walls the blockade was complete; of the west it was partial; and the failure to invest a portion of the western wall, with two out of the five gates of the city, left the movements of the Turks in this direction free. But the besiegers were in no hurry to begin the work of death. The wealth of the harvest and the vintage spread before them its irresistible temptations, and the herds feeding in the rich pastures seemed to promise an endless feast. The cattle, the corn, and the wine were alike wasted with besotted folly, while the Turks within the walls received tidings, it is said, of all that passed in the crusading camp from some Greek and Armenian Christians to whom they allowed free egress and ingress. Of this knowledge they availed themselves in planning the sallies by which they caused great distress to the besiegers, whose clumsy engines and devices seemed to produce no result beyond the waste of time, and who felt perhaps that they had done something when they blocked up the gate of the bridge with huge stones dug from the neighboring quarries. Three months passed away, and the crusaders found themselves not conquerors, but in desperate straits from famine. The winter rains had turned the land round their camp into a swamp, and lack of food left them more and more unable to resist the pestilential diseases which were rapidly thinning their numbers. A foraging expedition under Bohemond and Tancred filled the camp with food; it was again recklessly wasted. The second famine scared away Tatikios, the lieutenant of the Greek emperor Alexius; but the crusading chiefs were perhaps still more disgusted by the desertion of William of Melun, called "the Carpenter," from the sledgehammer blows which he dealt out in battle. Hunger obtained a victory even over the hermit Peter, who was stealing away with William of Melun, when he with his companion was caught by Tancred and brought back to the tent of Bohemond. For a moment the look of things was changed by the arrival of ambassadors from Egypt. To the Fatimite caliph of that country the progress of the crusading arms had thus far brought with it but little dissatisfaction. The humiliation of the Seljukian Turks could not fail to bring gain to himself, if the flood of Latin conquests could be checked and turned back in time. His generals besieged Jerusalem and Tyre; and when the Fatimite once more ruled in Palestine, his envoys hastened to the crusaders' camp to announce the deliverance of the Holy Land from its oppressors, to assure to all unarmed and peaceable pilgrims a month's unmolested sojourn in Jerusalem, and to promise them his aid during their march, on condition that they should acknowledge his supremacy within the limits of his Syrian empire. The arguments and threats of the Caliph were alike thrown away. The Latin chiefs disclaimed all interest in the feuds and quarrels of rival sultans and in the fortunes of Mahometan sects. God himself had destined Jerusalem for the Christians, and if any held it who were not Christians, these were usurpers whose resistance must be punished by their expulsion or their death. The envoys departed not encouraged by this answer, and still more perplexed by the appearance of plenty and by the magnificence of a camp in which they had expected to see a terrible spectacle of disorder and misery. The resolute persistence of the besiegers convinced Baghasian of the need of reinforcements. These were hastening to him from Caesarea, Aleppo, and other places, when they were cut off by Bohemond and Raymond, who sent a multitude of heads to the envoys of the Fatimite Caliph, and discharged many hundreds from their engines into the city of Antioch. The Turks had their opportunity for reprisals when the arrival of some Pisan and Genoese ships at the mouth of the Orontes drew off the greater part of the besieging army. The crusaders were returning with provisions and arms, when their enemies started upon them from an ambuscade. The battle was fierce; but the defeat of Raymond, which threatened dire disaster, was changed into victory on the arrival of Godfrey and the Norman Robert, whose exploits equalled or surpassed, if we are to believe the story, even those of Arthur, Lancelot, or Tristram. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Turks fell. Their bodies were buried by their comrades in the cemetery without the walls: the Christians dug them up, severed the heads from the trunks, and paraded the ghastly trophies on their pikes, not forgetting to send a goodly number to the Egyptian Caliph, by way of showing how his Seljukian friends or enemies had fared. The picture is disgusting; but if we shut our eyes to these loathsome details, the truth of the history is gone. We are dealing with the wars of savages, and it is right that we should know this. The next scene exhibits Godfrey and Bohemond in fierce quarrel about a splendid tent, which, being intended as a gift for the former, had been seized by an Armenian chief and sent to the latter. But there was now more serious business on hand. Rumor spoke of the near approach of a Persian army, and the besieged, under the plea of wishing to arrange terms of capitulation, obtained a truce which they sought probably only for the sake of gaining time. The days passed by, but no offers were made; and their disposition was shown by seizing a crusading knight in the groves near the city and tearing his body in pieces. The Latins returned with increased fury to the siege: but the defence, although more feeble, was still protracted, and Bohemond began to feel not only that fraud might succeed where force had failed, but that from fraud he might reap, not safety merely, but wealth and greatness. His plans were laid with a renegade Christian named Phirouz, high in the favor of the governor, with whom he had come into contact either during the truce or in some other way. By splendid promises he insured the zealous aid of his new ally, and then came forward in the council with the assurance that he could place the city in their hands, but that he could do this only on condition that he should rule in Antioch as Baldwin ruled in Edessa. His claim was angrily opposed by the Provençal Raymond; but this opposition was overruled, and it was resolved that the plan should be carried out at once. There was need for so doing. Rumors spread within the city that some attempt was to be made to betray the place to the besiegers, and hints or open accusations pointed out Phirouz as the traitor. Like other traitors, the renegade thought it best to anticipate the charge by urging that the guards of the towers should on the very next day be changed. His proposal was received as indubitable proof of his innocence and his faithfulness; but he had made up his mind that Antioch should fall that night, and that night by means of a rope ladder Bohemond with about sixty followers (the ropes broke before more could ascend) climbed up the wall. Seizing ten towers, of which all the guards were killed, they opened a gate, and the Christian host rushed in. The banner of Bohemond rose on one of the towers; the trumpets sounded for the onset, and a carnage began in which at first the assailants took no heed to distinguish between the Christian and the Turk. In the awful confusion of the moment some of the besieged made their way to the citadel, and there shut themselves in, ready to resist to the death. Of the rest few escaped; ten thousand, it is said, were massacred. Baghasian with some friends passed out beyond the besiegers' lines, but, fainting from loss of blood, he fell from his horse, and his companions hurried on. A Syrian Christian heard his groans, and striking off his head carried the prize to the camp of the conquerors. Phirouz lived to be a second time a renegade, and to close his career as a thief. The victory was for the crusaders a change from famine to abundance; and their feasting was accompanied by the wildest riot and the most filthy debauchery. But if heedless waste may have been one of the most venial of their sins, it was the greatest of their blunders. The reports which spoke of the approach of the Persians were not false. The Turks within the citadel suddenly found that they were rather besiegers than besieged, and that the Christians' were hemmed in by the myriads of Kerboga, Prince of Mosul, and the warriors of Kilidje Arslan. The old horrors of famine were now repeated, but in greater intensity; and the doom of the Latin host seemed now to be sealed. Stephen, Count of Chartres, had deserted his companions before the fall of the city; others now followed his example, and with him set out on their return to Europe. In Phrygia, Stephen encountered the emperor Alexius, who was marching to the aid of the crusaders, not only with a Greek army, but with a force of well-appointed pilgrims who had reached Constantinople after the departure of Godfrey and his fellows. The story told by Stephen drove out of his head every thought except that of his own safety. The order for retreat was given; and the pilgrim warriors, not less than the Greeks, were compelled to turn their faces westward. In Antioch the crusading soldiers were fast sinking into utter despair. Discipline had well-nigh come to an end, and so obstinate was their refusal to bear arms any longer that Bohemond resolved to burn them out of their quarters. These were consumed by the flames, which spread so rapidly as to fill him with fear that he had destroyed, not only their dwellings, but his whole principality. His experiment brought the men back to their duty; but so despondingly was their work done that but for some signal succor the end, it was manifest, must soon come. In a credulous age such succor at the darkest hour, if obtained at all, will generally be obtained through miracle. A Lombard priest came forward, to whom St. Ambrose of Milan had declared in a vision that the third year of the crusade should see the conquest of Jerusalem; another had seen the Saviour himself, attended by his Virgin Mother and the Prince of the Apostles, had heard from his lips a stern rebuke of the crusaders for yielding to the seductions of pagan women--as if the profession of Christianity altered the color and the guilt of a vice--and lastly had received the distinct assurance that in five days they should have the help which they needed. The hopes of the crusaders were roused; with hope came a return of vigorous energy; and Peter Barthelemy, chaplain to Raymond of Toulouse, seized the opportunity for recounting a vision which was to be something more than a dream. To him St. Andrew had revealed the fact that in the Church of St. Peter lay hidden the steel head of the spear which had pierced the side of the Redeemer as he hung upon the cross; and that Holy Lance should win them victory over all their enemies as surely as the spear which imparted irresistible power to the Knight of the Sangreal. After two days of special devotion they were to search for the long-lost weapon; on the third day the workmen began to dig, but until the sun had set they toiled in vain. The darkness of night made it easier for the chaplain to play the part which Sir Walter Scott, in the _Antiquary_, assigns to Herman Dousterswivel in the ruins of St. Ruth. Barefooted and with a single garment the priest went down into the pit. For a time the strokes of his spade were heard, and then the sacred relic was found, carefully wrapped in a veil of silk and gold. The priest proclaimed his discovery; the people rushed into the church; and from the church throughout the city spread the flame of a fierce enthusiasm. Nine or ten months later Peter Barthelemy paid the penalty of his life for his fraud or his superstition. A bribe taken by his master Raymond brought that chief into ill odor with his comrades, and let loose against his chaplain the tongue of Arnold, the chaplain of Bohemond. Raymond had traded on fresh visions of his clerk; and Arnold boldly attacked him in his citadel by denying the genuineness of the Holy Lance. Peter appealed to the ordeal of fire. He passed through the flames, as it seemed, unhurt. The bystanders pressed to feel his flesh, and were vehement in their rejoicings at the result which vindicated his integrity. He had really received fatal injuries. Twelve days afterward he died, and Raymond suffered greatly in his dignity and his influence. The infidel was doomed; but the crusaders resolved to give him one chance of escape. Peter the Hermit was sent as their envoy to Kerboga to offer the alternative of departure from a land which St. Peter had bestowed on the faithful, or of baptism which should leave him master of the city and territory of Antioch. The reply was short and decisive. The Turk would not embrace an idolatry which he hated and despised, nor would he give up soil which belonged to him by right of conquest. The report of the hermit raised the spirit of the crusaders to fever heat; and on the feast of St. Peter and St. Paul they marched out in twelve divisions, in remembrance of the mission of the Twelve Apostles, while Raymond of Toulouse remained to prevent the escape of the Turks shut up in the citadel. The Holy Lance was borne by the papal legate, Adhemar, Bishop of Puy; and the morning air laden with the perfume of roses was now regarded as a sign assuring them of the divine favor. They were prepared to see good omens in everything; and they went in full confidence that departed saints would, as they had been told, take part in the battle and smite down the infidel. The fight--one of brute force on the Christian side, of some little skill as well as strength on the other--had gone on for some time when such help seemed to become needful. Tancred had hurried to the aid of Bohemond, who was grievously pressed by Kilidje Arslan; and Kerboga was bearing heavily on Godfrey and Hugh of Vermandois, when, clothed in white armor and riding on white horses, some human forms were seen on the neighboring heights. "The saints are coming to your aid," shouted the Bishop of Puy, and the people saw in these radiant strangers the martyrs St. George, St. Maurice, and St. Theodore. Without awaiting their nearer approach the crusaders turned on the enemy with a force and fury which were now irresistible. Their cavalry could do little. Two hundred horses only remained of the sixty thousand which had filled the plain a few months before. But the hedge of spears advanced like a wall of iron, and the Turks gave way, broke, and fled. It was rout, not retreat; and with the crusaders victory was followed by the massacre of men, women, and children. The garrison in the citadel at once surrendered. Some declared themselves Christians and were baptized; those who refused to abandon Islam were taken to the nearest Mohametan territory. The city was the prize of Bohemond; and in his keeping it remained, although Raymond of Toulouse had made an effort to seize it by hoisting his banner on the walls. The work of pillage being ended, the churches were cleansed and repaired, and their altars blazed with golden spoils taken from the infidel. The Greek Patriarch was again seated on his throne; but he held his office at the good pleasure of the Latins, and two years later he was made to give place to Bernard, a chaplain of the Bishop of Puy. Ten months had passed away after the conquest of Antioch when the main body of the crusading army set out on its march to Jerusalem. They had wished to depart at once, but their chiefs dreaded to encounter waterless wastes at the end of a Syrian summer, and for the present they were content to send Hugh of Vermandois and Baldwin of Hainault as envoys to the Greek Emperor, to reproach him with his remissness or his want of faith. But the miseries endured by Christians and Turks were the pleasantest tidings in the ears of Alexius, for in the weakening of both lay his own strength; and he saw with satisfaction the departure of Hugh, not for Antioch, but for Europe, whither Stephen of Chartres had preceded him. Winter came, but the chiefs still lingered at Antioch. Some were occupied in expeditions against neighboring cities; but a more pressing care was the plague which punished the foulness and disorder of the pilgrims. A band of fifteen hundred Germans, recently landed in strong health and full equipments, were all, it is said, cut off; and among the victims the most lamented perhaps was the papal legate Adhemar. A feeling of discouragement was again spreading through the army generally. The chiefs vainly entreated the Pope to visit the city where the disciples of St. Peter first received the Christian name; the people were disheartened by the animosities and the selfish or crooked policy of their chiefs. Raymond still hankered after the principality of Antioch, and insisted that Bohemond and his people should share in the last great enterprise of the crusade. More disgraceful than these feuds were the scenes witnessed during the siege and after the conquest of Marra. Heedlessness and waste soon brought the assailants to devour the flesh of dogs and of human beings. The bodies of Turks were torn from their sepulchres, ripped up for the gold which they were supposed to have swallowed, and the fragments cooked and eaten. Of the besieged many slew themselves to avoid falling into the hands of the Christians; to some Bohemond, tempted by a large bribe, gave an assurance of safety. When the massacre had begun he ordered these to be brought forward. The weak and old he slaughtered; the rest he sent to the slave markets of Antioch. A weak attempt made by Alexius to detain the crusaders only spurred them to more vigorous efforts. They had already left Antioch, and Laodicea was in their hands, when he desired them to await his coming in June. The chiefs, remembering the departure of Tatikios with his Byzantine troops for Cyprus, retorted that he had broken his compact, and had therefore no further claims on their obedience. Hastening on their way, they crossed the plain of Berytos (Beyrout), overlooked by the eternal snows of Lebanon, along the narrow strip of land whence the great Phoenician cities had sent their seamen and their colonists, with all the wealth of the East, to the shores of the Adriatic and the gates of the Mediterranean. Having reached Jaffa, they turned inland to Ramlah, a town sixteen miles only from Jerusalem. Two days later the crusaders came in sight of the Holy City, the object of their long pilgrimage, the cause of wretchedness and death to millions. As their eyes rested on the scene hallowed to them through all the associations of their faith, the crusaders passed in an instant from fierce enthusiasm to a humiliation which showed itself in sighs and tears. All fell on their knees, to kiss the sacred earth and to pour forth thanksgivings that they had been suffered to look upon the desire of their eyes. Putting aside their armor and their weapons, they advanced in pilgrim's garb and with bare feet toward the spot which the Saviour had trodden in the hours of his agony and his passion. But before their feelings of devotion could be indulged, there was other work to be done. The chiefs took up their posts on those sides from which the nature of the ground gave most hope of a successful assault. On the northern side were Godfrey and Tancred, Robert of Flanders, and Robert of Normandy; on the west Raymond with his Provençals. On the fifth day, without siege instruments, with only one ladder, and trusting to mere weight, the crusaders made a desperate assault upon the walls. Some succeeded in reaching the summit, and the very rashness of their attack struck terror for a moment into their enemies. But the garrison soon rallied, and the invaders were all driven back or hurled from the ramparts. The task, it was manifest, must be undertaken in a more formal manner. Siege engines must be made, and the palm and olive of the immediate neighborhood would not supply fit materials for their construction. These were obtained from the woods of Shechem, a distance of thirty miles; and the work of preparation was carried on under the guidance of Gaston of Beam by the crews of some Genoese vessels which had recently anchored at Jaffa. So passed away more than thirty days, days of intense suffering to the besiegers. At Antioch they had been distressed chiefly by famine: in place of this wretchedness they had here the greater miseries of thirst. The enemy had carefully destroyed every place which might serve as a receptacle of water; and in seeking for it over miles of desolate country they were exposed to the harassing attacks of Moslem horsemen. Nor had visions and miracles improved the morals or discipline of the camp; and the ghost of Adhemar of Puy appeared to rebuke the horrible sins which were drawing down upon them the judgments of the Almighty. Better service was done by the generosity of Tancred, who made up his quarrel with Raymond: and the enthusiasm of the crusaders was again roused by the preaching of Arnold and the hermit Peter. The narrative of the siege of Jericho in the book of Joshua suggested probably the procession in which the clergy singing hymns preceded the laity round the walls of the city. The Saracens on the ramparts mocked their devotions by throwing dirt upon crucifixes; but they paid a terrible price for these insults. On the next day the final assault began, and was carried on through the day with the same monotony of brute force and carnage which marked all the operations of this merciless war. The darkness of night brought no rest. The actual combat was suspended, but the besieged were incessantly occupied in repairing the breaches made by the assailants, while these were busied in making their dispositions for the last mortal conflict. In the midst of that deadly struggle, when it seemed that the Cross must after all go down before the Crescent, a knight was seen on Mount Olivet, waving his glistening shield to rouse the champions of the Holy Sepulchre to the supreme effort. "It is St. George the Martyr who has come again to help us," cried Godfrey, and at his words the crusaders started up without a feeling of fatigue and carried everything before them. The day, we are told, was Friday, the hour was three in the afternoon-- the moment at which the last cry from the cross announced the accomplishment of the Saviour's passion--when Letold of Tournay stood, the first victorious champion of the Cross, on the walls of Jerusalem. Next to him came, we are told, his brother Engelbert; the third was Godfrey. Tancred with the two Roberts stormed the gate of St. Stephen; the Provençals climbed the ramparts by ladders, and the conquest of Jerusalem was achieved. The insults offered a little while ago to the crucifixes were avenged by Godfrey's orders in the massacre of hundreds; the carnage in the Mosque of Omar swept away the bodies of thousands in a deluge of human blood. The Jews were all burnt alive in their synagogues. The horses of the crusaders, who rode up to the porch of the Temple, were--so the story goes--up to the knees in the loathsome stream; and the forms of Christian knights hacking and hewing the bodies of the living and the dead furnished a pleasant commentary on the sermon of Urban at Clermont. From the duties of slaughter these disciples of the Lamb of God passed to those of devotion. Bareheaded and barefooted, clad in a robe of pure white linen, in an ecstasy of joy and thankfulness mingled with profound contrition, Godfrey entered the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and knelt at the tomb of his Lord. With groans and tears his followers came, each in his turn, to offer his praises for the divine mercy which had vouchsafed this triumph to the armies of Christendom. With feverish earnestness they poured forth the vows which bound them to sin no more, and the excitement of prayer and slaughter, perhaps of both combined, led them to see everything which might be needed to give effect to the closing scene of this appalling tragedy. As the saints had arisen from their graves when the Son of Man gave up the ghost on Calvary, so the spirits of the pilgrims who had died on the terrible journey came to take part in the great thanksgiving. Foremost among them was Adhemar of Puy, rejoicing in the prayers for forgiveness and the resolutions of repentance which promised a new era of peace upon earth and of good-will toward all men. With departed saints were mingled living men who deserved all the honor which might be paid to them. The backsliding of the hermit Peter was blotted out of the memory of those who remembered only the fiery eloquence which had first called them to their now triumphant pilgrimage, and the zeal which had stirred the heart of Christendom to cut short the tyranny of the Unbeliever in the birthland of Christianity. The assembled throng fell down at his feet, and gave thanks to God, who had vouchsafed to them such a teacher. His task was done, and in the annals of the time Peter is heard of no more. On this dreadful day Tancred had spared three hundred captives to whom he had given a standard as a pledge of his protection and a guarantee of their safety. Such misplaced mercy was a crime in the eyes of the crusaders. The massacre of the first day may have been aggravated by the ungovernable excitement of victory; but it was resolved that on the next day there should be offered up a more solemn and deliberate sacrifice. The men whom Tancred had spared were all murdered; and the wrath of Tancred was roused, not by their fate, but by an act which called his honor into question. The butchery went on with impartial completeness, old and young, decrepit men and women, mothers with their infants, boys and girls, young men and maidens in the bloom of their vigor, all were mowed down, and their bodies mangled until heads and limbs were tossed together in awful chaos. A few were hidden away by Raymond of Toulouse; his motive, however, was not mercy, but the prospects of gain in the slave market. After this great act of faith and devotion the streets of the Holy City were washed by Saracen prisoners; but whether these were butchered when their work was ended we are not told. Four centuries and a half had passed away, when these things were done, since Omar had entered Jerusalem as a conqueror and knelt outside the Church of Constantine, that his followers might not trespass within it on the privileges of the Christians. The contrast is at the least marked between the Caliph of the Prophet and the children of the Holy Catholic Church. When, the business of the slaughter being ended, the chiefs met to choose a king for the realm which they had won with their swords, one man only appeared to whom the crown could fitly be offered. Baldwin was lord of Edessa; Bohemond ruled at Antioch; Hugh of Vermandois and Stephen of Chartres had returned to Europe; Robert of Flanders cared not to stay; the Norman Robert had no mind to forfeit the duchy which he had mortgaged; and Raymond was discredited by his avarice, and in part also by his traffic in the visions of Peter Barthelemy. But in the city where his Lord had worn the thorny crown, the veteran leader who had looked on ruthless slaughter without blanching and had borne his share in swelling the stream of blood would wear no earthly diadem nor take the title of king. He would watch over his Master's grave and the interests of his worshippers under the humble guise of Baron and Defender of the Holy Sepulchre; and as such, a fortnight after his election, Godfrey departed to do battle with the hosts of the Fatimite Caliph of Egypt, who now felt that the loss of Jerusalem was too high a price for the humiliation of his rivals. The conflict took place at Ascalon, and the Fatimite army was miserably routed. Godfrey returned to Jerusalem, to hang the sword and standard of the Sultan before the Holy Sepulchre and to bid farewell to the pilgrims who were now to set out on their homeward journey. He retained, with three hundred knights under Tancred, only two thousand foot soldiers for the defence of his kingdom; and so ended the first act in the great drama of the crusades. FOUNDATION OF THE ORDER OF KNIGHTS TEMPLARS A.D. 1118 CHARLES G. ADDISON (Among the military orders of past ages, that of the Knights Templars, founded for the defence of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, with its lofty motive, its superb organization and discipline, and its history extending over nearly two centuries, is justly accounted one of the most illustrious. At the period when this extraordinary and romantic order came into existence, the contrasting spirits of warlike enterprise and monastic retirement were drawing men, some from the field to the cloister, others from the life of ascetic piety to the scenes of strife. There appeared a strange blending of these two tendencies, which indeed was the leading characteristic of the time. This union of the religious with the militant spirit had been promoted by the enthusiasm of the crusades which had already been undertaken, and among the crusaders themselves the blended spiritual and military ideal of the holy war had its complete development. Let us recall the reasons and the beginnings of the crusades themselves. Upon the legendary discovery of the Holy Sepulchre by Helena, the mother of Constantine, about three hundred years after the death of Christ, and the consequent erection, as it is said, by her great son--the first Christian emperor of Rome--of the magnificent Church of the Holy Sepulchre over the sacred spot, a tide of pilgrimage set in toward Jerusalem which increased in strength as Christianity gradually spread throughout Europe. When in A.D. 637 the Holy City was surrendered to the Saracens, the caliph Omar gave guarantees for the security of the Christian population. Under this safeguard the pilgrimages to Jerusalem continued to increase, until in 1064 the Holy Sepulchre was visited by seven thousand pilgrims, led by an archbishop and three bishops. But in 1065 Jerusalem was taken by the Turcomans, who massacred three thousand citizens, and placed the command of the city in savage hands. Terrible oppression of the Christians there followed; the Patriarch of Jerusalem was dragged by the hair of his head over the sacred pavement of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and cast into a dungeon for ransom; extortion, imprisonment, and massacre were indiscriminately visited upon the people. Such were the conditions that aroused the indignant spirit of Christendom and prepared it for the cry of Peter the Hermit, which awoke the wild enthusiasm of the crusades. When Jerusalem was captured by the crusaders under Godfrey of Bouillon in 1099, the zeal of pilgrimage burst forth anew. But although Jerusalem was delivered, Palestine was still infested with the infidels, who made it as hazardous as before for the pilgrims entering there. Some means for their protection must be found, and out of this necessity grew the great military order of which the following pages treat.) To alleviate the dangers and distresses to which the pilgrim enthusiasts were exposed; to guard the honor of the saintly virgins and matrons, and to protect the gray hairs of the venerable palmers, nine noble knights formed a holy brotherhood-in-arms, and entered into a solemn compact to aid one another in clearing the highways of infidels and robbers, and in protecting the pilgrims through the passes and defiles of the mountains to the Holy City. Warmed with the religious and military fervor of the day, and animated by the sacredness of the cause to which they had devoted their swords, they called themselves the "Poor Fellow-soldiers of Jesus Christ." They renounced the world and its pleasures, and in the Holy Church of the Resurrection, in the presence of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, they embraced vows of perpetual chastity, obedience, and poverty, after the manner of monks. Uniting in themselves the two most popular qualities of the age, devotion and valor, and exercising them in the most popular of all enterprises, the protection of the pilgrims and of the road to the Holy Sepulchre, they speedily acquired a vast reputation and a splendid renown. At first, we are told, they had no church and no particular place of abode, but in the year of our Lord 1118--nineteen years after the conquest of Jerusalem by the crusaders--they had rendered such good and acceptable service to the Christians that Baldwin II, King of Jerusalem, granted them a place of habitation within the sacred enclosure of the Temple on Mount Moriah, amid those holy and magnificent structures, partly erected by the Christian emperor Justinian and partly built by the caliph Omar, which were then exhibited by the monks and priests of Jerusalem, whose restless zeal led them to practise on the credulity of the pilgrims, and to multiply relics and all objects likely to be sacred in their eyes, as the Temple of Solomon, whence the "Poor Fellow-soldiers of Jesus Christ" came thenceforth to be known by the name of "the Knighthood of the Temple of Solomon." A few remarks in elucidation of the name "Templars," or "Knights of the Temple," may not be unacceptable. By the Mussulmans the site of the great Jewish Temple on Mount Moriah has always been regarded with peculiar veneration. Mahomet, in the first year of the publication of the _Koran_, directed his followers, when at prayer, to turn their faces toward it, and pilgrimages have constantly been made to the holy spot by devout Moslems. On the conquest of Jerusalem by the Arabians, it was the first care of the caliph Omar to rebuild "the Temple of the Lord." Assisted by the principal chieftains of his army, the Commander of the Faithful undertook the pious office of clearing the ground with his own hands, and of tracing out the foundations of the magnificent mosque which now crowns with its dark and swelling dome the elevated summit of Mount Moriah. This great house of prayer, the most holy Mussulman temple in the world after that of Mecca, is erected over the spot where "Solomon began to build the house of the Lord at Jerusalem in Mount Moriah, where the Lord appeared unto David his father, in the place that David had prepared in the threshing-floor of Oman the Jebusite." It remains to this day in a state of perfect preservation, and is one of the finest specimens of Saracenic architecture in existence. It is entered by four spacious doorways, each door facing one of the cardinal points: the _Bab el D'Jannat_ (or "Gate of the Garden"), on the north; the _Bab el Kebla_, (or "Gate of Prayer"), on the south; the _Bab ibn el Daoud_ (or "Gate of the Son of David"), on the east; and the _Bab el Garbi_, on the west. By the Arabian geographers it is called _Beit Allah_ ("the House of God"), also _Beit Almokaddas_ or _Beit Almacdes_ ("the Holy House"). From it Jerusalem derives its Arabic name, _El Kods_ ("the Holy"), _El Schereef_ ("the Noble"), and _El Mobarek_ ("the Blessed"); while the governors of the city, instead of the customary high-sounding titles of sovereignty and dominion, take the simple title of _Hami_ (or "Protectors"). On the conquest of Jerusalem by the crusaders, the crescent was torn down from the summit of this famous Mussulman temple, and was replaced by an immense golden cross, and the edifice was then consecrated to the services of the Christian religion, but retained its simple appellation of "the Temple of the Lord." William, Archbishop of Tyre and Chancellor of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, gives an interesting account of this famous edifice as it existed in his time, during the Latin dominion. He speaks of the splendid mosaic work, of the Arabic characters setting forth the name of the founder and the cost of the undertaking, and of the famous rock under the centre of the dome, which is to this day shown by the Moslems as the spot whereon the destroying angel stood, "with his drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem." This rock, he informs us, was left exposed and uncovered for the space of fifteen years after the conquest of the Holy City by the crusaders, but was, after that period, cased with a handsome altar of white marble, upon which the priests daily said mass. To the south of this holy Mussulman temple, on the extreme edge of the summit of Mount Moriah, and resting against the modern walls of the town of Jerusalem, stands the venerable Church of the Virgin, erected by the emperor Justinian, whose stupendous foundations, remaining to this day, fully justify the astonishing description given of the building by Procopius. That writer informs us that in order to get a level surface for the erection of the edifice, it was necessary, on the east and south sides of the hill, to raise up a wall of masonry from the valley below, and to construct a vast foundation, partly composed of solid stone and partly of arches and pillars. The stones were of such magnitude that each block required to be transported in a truck drawn by forty of the Emperor's strongest oxen; and to admit of the passage of these trucks it was necessary to widen the roads leading to Jerusalem. The forests of Lebanon yielded their choicest cedars for the timbers of the roof; and a quarry of variegated marble, seasonably discovered in the adjoining mountains, furnished the edifice with superb marble columns. The interior of this interesting structure, which still remains at Jerusalem, after a lapse of more than thirteen centuries, in an excellent state of preservation, is adorned with six rows of columns, from whence spring arches supporting the cedar beams and timbers of the roof; and at the end of the building is a round tower, surmounted by a dome. The vast stones, the walls of masonry, and the subterranean colonnade raised to support the southeast angle of the platform whereon the church is erected are truly wonderful, and may still be seen by penetrating through a small door and descending several flights of steps at the southeast corner of the enclosure. Adjoining the sacred edifice the Emperor erected hospitals, or houses of refuge, for travellers, sick people, and mendicants of all nations; the foundations whereof, composed of handsome Roman masonry, are still visible on either side of the southern end of the building. On the conquest of Jerusalem by the Moslems this venerable church was converted into a mosque, and was called D'Jame al Acsa; it was enclosed, together with the great Mussulman "Temple of the Lord" erected by the caliph Omar, within a large area by a high stone wall, which runs around the edge of the summit of Mount Moriah and guards from the profane tread of the unbeliever the whole of that sacred ground whereon once stood the gorgeous Temple of the wisest of kings. When the Holy City was taken by the crusaders, the D'Jame al Acsa, with the various buildings constructed around it, became the property of the kings of Jerusalem, and is denominated by William of Tyre "the Palace," or "Royal House to the south of the Temple of the Lord, vulgarly called the 'Temple of Solomon.'" It was this edifice or temple on Mount Moriah which was appropriated to the use of the "Poor Fellow-soldiers of Jesus Christ," as they had no church and no particular place of abode, and from it they derived their name of "Knights Templars." James of Vitry, Bishop of Acre, who gives an interesting account of the holy places, thus speaks of the temple of the Knights Templars: "There is, moreover, at Jerusalem another temple of immense spaciousness and extent, from which the brethren of the Knighthood of the Temple derive their name of 'Templars,' which is called the 'Temple of Solomon,' perhaps to distinguish it from the one above described, which is specially called the 'Temple of the Lord.'" He moreover informs us in his oriental history that "in the 'Temple of the Lord' there is an abbot and canons regular; and be it known that the one is the 'Temple of the _Lord_,' and the other the 'Temple of the _Chivalry_.' These are _clerks_; the others are _knights_." The canons of the "Temple of the Lord" conceded to the "Poor Fellow-soldiers of Jesus Christ" the large court extending between that building and the Temple of Solomon; the King, the Patriarch, and the prelates of Jerusalem, and the barons of the Latin kingdom assigned them various gifts and revenues for their maintenance and support, and, the order being now settled in a regular place of abode, the knights soon began to entertain more extended views and to seek a larger theatre for the exercise of their holy profession. Their first aim and object had been, as before mentioned, simply to protect the poor pilgrims on their journey backward and forward from the sea-coast to Jerusalem; but as the hostile tribes of Mussulmans, which everywhere surrounded the Latin kingdom, were gradually recovering from the stupefying terror into which they had been plunged by the successful and exterminating warfare of the first crusaders, and were assuming an aggressive and threatening attitude, it was determined that the holy warriors of the temple should, in addition to the protection of pilgrims, make the defence of the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem, of the Eastern Church, and of all the holy places a part of their particular profession. The two most distinguished members of the fraternity were Hugh de Payens and Geoffrey de St. Aldemar, or St. Omer, two valiant soldiers of the cross, who had fought with great credit and renown at the siege of Jerusalem. Hugh de Payens was chosen by the knights to be superior of the new religious and military society, by the title of "the Master of the Temple"; and he has, in consequence, been generally called the founder of the order. The name and reputation of the Knights Templars speedily spread throughout Europe, and various illustrious pilgrims of the Far West aspired to become members of the holy fraternity. Among these was Fulk, Count of Anjou, who joined the society as a married brother (1120), and annually remitted the order thirty pounds of silver. Baldwin, King of Jerusalem, foreseeing that great advantages would accrue to the Latin kingdom by the increase of the power and numbers of these holy warriors, exerted himself to extend the order throughout all Christendom, so that he might, by means of so politic an institution, keep alive the holy enthusiasm of the West, and draw a constant succor from the bold and warlike races of Europe for the support of his Christian throne and kingdom. St. Bernard, the holy abbot of Clairvaux, had been a great admirer of the Templars. He wrote a letter to the Count of Champagne, on his entering the order (1123), praising the act as one of eminent merit in the sight of God; and it was determined to enlist the all-powerful influence of this great ecclesiastic in favor of the fraternity. "By a vow of poverty and penance, by closing his eyes against the visible world, by the refusal of all ecclesiastical dignities, the abbot of Clairvaux became the oracle of Europe and the founder of one hundred and sixty convents. Princes and pontiffs trembled at the freedom of his apostolical censures; France, England, and Milan consulted and obeyed his judgment in a schism of the Church; the debt was repaid by the gratitude of Innocent II; and his successor, Eugenius III, was the friend and disciple of the holy St. Bernard." To this learned and devout prelate two Knights Templars were despatched with the following letter: "Baldwin, by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, King of Jerusalem and Prince of Antioch, to the venerable Father Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux; health and regard. "The Brothers of the Temple, whom the Lord hath deigned to raise up, and whom by an especial providence he preserves for the defence of this kingdom, desiring to obtain from the Holy See the confirmation of their institution and a rule for their particular guidance, we have determined to send to you the two knights, Andrew and Gondemar, men as much distinguished by their military exploits as by the splendor of their birth, to obtain from the Pope the approbation of their order, and to dispose his holiness to send succor and subsidies against the enemies of the faith, reunited in their design to destroy us and to invade our Christian territories. "Well knowing the weight of your mediation with God and his vicar upon earth, as well as with the princes and powers of Europe, we have thought fit to confide to you these two important matters, whose successful issue cannot be otherwise than most agreeable to ourselves. The statutes we ask of you should be so ordered and arranged as to be reconcilable with the tumult of the camp and the profession of arms; they must, in fact, be of such a nature as to obtain favor and popularity with the Christian princes. "Do you then so manage that we may, through you, have the happiness of seeing this important affair brought to a successful issue, and address for us to Heaven the incense of your prayers." Soon after the above letter had been despatched to St. Bernard, Hugh de Payens himself proceeded to Rome, accompanied by Geoffrey de St. Aldemar and four other brothers of the order: namely, Brother Payen de Montdidier, Brother Gorall, Brother Geoffrey Bisol, and Brother Archambauld de St. Armand. They were received with great honor and distinction by Pope Honorius, who warmly approved of the objects and designs of the holy fraternity. St. Bernard had, in the mean time, taken the affair greatly to heart; he negotiated with the pope, the legate, and the bishops of France, and obtained the convocation of a great ecclesiastical council at Troyes (1128), which Hugh de Payens and his brethren were invited to attend. This council consisted of several archbishops, bishops, and abbots, among which last was St. Bernard himself. The rules to which the Templars had subjected themselves were there described by the master, and to the holy abbot of Clairvaux was confided the task of revising and correcting these rules, and of framing a code of statutes fit and proper for the governance of the great religious and military fraternity of the temple. _The Rule of the Poor Fellow-soldiers of Jesus Christ and of the Temple of Solomon_, arranged by St. Bernard, and sanctioned by the holy Fathers of the Council of Troyes, for the government and regulation of the monastic and military society of the Temple, is principally of a religious character and of an austere and gloomy cast. It is divided into seventy-two heads or chapters, and is preceded by a short prologue addressed "to all who disdain to follow after their own wills, and desire with purity of mind to fight for the most high and true King," exhorting them to put on the armor of obedience, and to associate themselves together with piety and humility for the defence of the Holy Catholic Church; and to employ a pure diligence, and a steady perseverance in the exercise of their sacred profession, so that they might share in the happy destiny reserved for the holy warriors who had given up their lives for Christ. The rule enjoins severe devotional exercises, self-mortification, fasting, and prayer, and a constant attendance at matins, vespers, and on all the services of the Church, "that, being refreshed and satisfied with heavenly food, instructed and stablished with heavenly precepts, after the consummation of the divine mysteries," none might be afraid of the _Fight_, but be prepared for the _Crown_. If unable to attend the regular service of God, the absent brother is for matins to say over thirteen _pater-nosters_, for every hour seven, and for vespers nine. When any Templar draweth nigh unto death, the chaplains and clerk are to assemble and offer up a solemn mass for his soul; the surrounding brethren are to spend the night in prayer, and a hundred pater-nosters are to be repeated for the dead brother. "Moreover," say the holy Fathers, "we do strictly enjoin you, that with divine and most tender charity ye do daily bestow as much meat and drink as was given to that brother when alive, unto some poor man for forty days." The brethren are, on all occasions, to speak sparingly and to wear a grave and serious deportment. They are to be constant in the exercise of charity and almsgiving, to have a watchful care over all sick brethren, and to support and sustain all old men. They are not to receive letters from their parents, relations, or friends without the license of the master, and all gifts are immediately to be taken to the latter or to the treasurer, to be disposed of as he may direct. They are, moreover, to receive no service or attendance from a woman, and are commanded, above all things, to shun feminine kisses. "This same year (1128) Hugh of the Temple came from Jerusalem to the King in Normandy, and the King received him with much honor and gave him much treasure in gold and silver, and afterward he sent him into England, and there he was well received by all good men, and all gave him treasure, and in Scotland also, and they sent in all a great sum in gold and silver by him to Jerusalem, and there went with him and after him so great a number as never before since the days of Pope Urban." Grants of land, as well as of money, were at the same time made to Hugh de Payens and his brethren, some of which were shortly afterward confirmed by King Stephen on his accession to the throne (1135). Among these is a grant of the manor of Bistelesham made to the Templars by Count Robert de Ferrara, and a grant of the Church of Langeforde in Bedfordshire made by Simon de Wahull and Sibylla his wife and Walter their son. Hugh de Payens, before his departure, placed a Knight Templar at the head of the order in England, who was called the prior of the temple and was the procurator and viceregent of the master. It was his duty to manage the estates granted to the fraternity, and to transmit the revenues to Jerusalem. He was also delegated with the power of admitting members into the order, subject to the control and direction of the master, and was to provide means of transport for such newly-admitted brethren to the Far East, to enable them to fulfil the duties of their profession. As the houses of the Temple increased in number in England, subpriors came to be appointed, and the superior of the order in this country was then called the "grand prior," and afterward master, of the temple. Many illustrious knights of the best families in Europe aspired to the habit and vows, but, however exalted their rank, they were not received within the bosom of the fraternity until they had proved themselves by their conduct worthy of such a fellowship. Thus, when Hugh d'Amboise, who had harassed and oppressed the people of Marmontier by unjust exactions, and had refused to submit to the judicial decision of the Count of Anjou, desired to enter the order, Hugh de Payens refused to admit him to the vows until he had humbled himself, renounced his pretensions, and given perfect satisfaction to those whom he had injured. The candidates, moreover, previous to their admission, were required to make reparation and satisfaction for all damage done by them at any time to churches and to public or private property. An astonishing enthusiasm was excited throughout Christendom in behalf of the Templars; princes and nobles, sovereigns and their subjects, vied with each other in heaping gifts and benefits upon them, and scarce a will of importance was made without an article in it in their favor. Many illustrious persons on their death-beds took the vows, that they might be buried in the habit of the order; and sovereigns, quitting the government of their kingdoms, enrolled themselves among the holy fraternity, and bequeathed even their dominions to the master and the brethren of the temple. Thus, Raymond Berenger, Count of Barcelona and Provence, at a very advanced age, abdicating his throne and shaking off the ensigns of royal authority, retired to the house of the Templars at Barcelona, and pronounced his vows (1130) before Brother Hugh de Rigauld, the prior. His infirmities not allowing him to proceed in person to the chief house of the order at Jerusalem, he sent vast sums of money thither, and immuring himself in a small cell in the temple at Barcelona, he there remained in the constant exercise of the religious duties of his profession until the day of his death. At the same period, the emperor Lothair bestowed on the order a large portion of his patrimony of Supplinburg; and the year following (1131), Alphonso I, King of Navarre and Aragon, also styled Emperor of Spain, one of the greatest warriors of the age, by his will declared the Knights of the Temple his heirs and successors in the crowns of Navarre and Aragon, and a few hours before his death he caused this will to be ratified and signed by most of the barons of both kingdoms. The validity of this document, however, was disputed, and the claims of the Templars were successfully resisted by the nobles of Navarre; but in Aragon they obtained, by way of compromise, lands and castles and considerable dependencies, a portion of the customs and duties levied throughout the kingdom, and the contributions raised from the Moors. To increase the enthusiasm in favor of the Templars, and still further to swell their ranks with the best and bravest of the European chivalry, St. Bernard, at the request of Hugh de Payens, took up his powerful pen in their behalf. In a famous discourse, _In Praise of the New Chivalry_, the holy abbot sets forth, in eloquent and enthusiastic terms, the spiritual advantages and blessings enjoyed by the military friars of the temple over all other warriors. He draws a curious picture of the relative situations and circumstances of the _secular_ soldiery and the soldiery of _Christ_, and shows how different in the sight of God are the bloodshed and slaughter of the one from that committed by the other. This extraordinary discourse is written with great spirit; it is addressed "To Hugh, Knight of Christ, and Master of the Knighthood of Christ," is divided into fourteen parts or chapters, and commences with a short prologue. It is curiously illustrative of the spirit of the times, and some of its most striking passages will be read with interest. The holy abbot thus pursues his comparison between the soldier of the world and the soldier of Christ--the _secular_ and the _religious_ warrior: "As often as thou who wagest a secular warfare marchest forth to battle, it is greatly to be feared lest when thou slayest thine enemy in the body, he should destroy thee in the spirit, or lest peradventure thou shouldst be at once slain by him both in body and soul. From the disposition of the heart, indeed, not by the event of the fight, is to be estimated either the jeopardy or the victory of the Christian. If, fighting with the desire of killing another, thou shouldst chance to get killed thyself, thou diest a manslayer; if, on the other hand, thou prevailest, and through a desire of conquest or revenge killest a man, thou livest a manslayer.... O unfortunate victory! when in overcoming thine adversary thou fallest into sin, and, anger or pride having the mastery over thee, in vain thou gloriest over the vanquished.... "What, therefore, is the fruit of this secular, I will not say _militia_, but _malitia_, if the slayer committeth a deadly sin, and the slain perisheth eternally? Verily, to use the words of the apostle, he that plougheth should plough in hope, and he that thresheth should be partaker of his hope. Whence, therefore, O soldiers, cometh this so stupendous error? What insufferable madness is this--to wage war with so great cost and labor, but with no pay except either death or crime? Ye cover your horses with silken trappings, and I know not how much fine cloth hangs pendent from your coats of mail. Ye paint your spears, shields, and saddles; your bridles and spurs are adorned on all sides with gold and silver and gems, and with all this pomp, with a shameful fury and a reckless insensibility, ye rush on to death. Are these military ensigns, or are they not rather the garnishments of women? Can it happen that the sharp-pointed sword of the enemy will respect gold, will it spare gems, will it be unable to penetrate the silken garment? "As ye yourselves have often experienced, three things are indispensably necessary to the success of the soldier: he must, for example, be bold, active, and circumspect; quick in running, prompt in striking; ye, however, to the disgust of the eye, nourish your hair after the manner of women, ye gather around your footsteps long and flowing vestures, ye bury up your delicate and tender hands in ample and wide-spreading sleeves. Among you indeed naught provoketh war or awakeneth strife, but either an irrational impulse of anger or an insane lust of glory or the covetous desire of possessing another man's lands and possessions. In such cases it is neither safe to slay nor to be slain.... But the soldiers of Christ indeed securely fight the battles of their Lord, in no wise fearing sin, either from the slaughter of the enemy or danger from their own death. When indeed death is to be given or received for Christ, it has naught of crime in it, but much of glory.... "And now for an example, or to the confusion of our soldiers fighting not manifestly for God, but for the devil, we will briefly display the mode of life of the Knights of Christ, such as it is in the field and in the convent, by which means it will be made plainly manifest to what extent the soldiery of God and the soldiery of the World differ from one another.... The soldiers of Christ live together in common in an agreeable but frugal manner, without wives and without children; and that nothing may be wanting to evangelical perfection, they dwell together without property of any kind, in one house, under one rule, careful to preserve the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. You may say that to the whole multitude there is but one heart and one soul, as each one in no respect followeth after his own will or desire, but is diligent to do the will of the Master. They are never idle nor rambling abroad, but, when they are not in the field, that they may not eat their bread in idleness, they are fitting and repairing their armor and their clothing, or employing themselves in such occupations as the will of the Master requireth or their common necessities render expedient. Among them there is no distinction of persons; respect is paid to the best and most virtuous, not the most noble. They participate in each other's honor, they bear one anothers' burdens, that they may fulfil the law of Christ. "An insolent expression, a useless undertaking, immoderate laughter, the least murmur or whispering, if found out, passeth not without severe rebuke. They detest cards and dice, they shun the sports of the field, and take no delight in the ludicrous catching of birds (hawking), which men are wont to indulge in. Jesters and soothsayers and story-tellers, scurrilous songs, shows, and games, they contemptuously despise and abominate as vanities and mad follies. They cut their hair, knowing that, according to the apostle, it is not seemly in a man to have long hair. They are never combed, seldom washed, but appear rather with rough neglected hair, foul with dust, and with skins browned by the sun and their coats of mail. "Moreover, on the approach of battle they fortify themselves with faith within and with steel without, and not with gold, so that, armed and not adorned, they may strike terror into the enemy, rather than awaken his lust of plunder. They strive earnestly to possess strong and swift horses, but not garnished with ornaments or decked with trappings, thinking of battle and of victory, and not of pomp and show, studying to inspire fear rather than admiration.... "Such hath God chosen for his own, and hath collected together as his ministers from the ends of the earth, from among the bravest of Israel, who indeed vigilantly and faithfully guard the Holy Sepulchre, all armed with the sword, and most learned in the art of war.... "There is indeed a temple at Jerusalem in which they dwell together, unequal, it is true, as a building, to that ancient and most famous one of Solomon, but not inferior in glory. For truly the entire magnificence of that consisted in corrupt things, in gold and silver, in carved stone, and in a variety of woods; but the whole beauty of this resteth in the adornment of an agreeable conversation, in the godly devotion of its inmates, and their beautifully ordered mode of life. That was admired for its various external beauties, this is venerated for its different virtues and sacred actions, as becomes the sanctity of the house of God, who delighteth not so much in polished marbles as in well-ordered behavior, and regardeth pure minds more than gilded walls. The face likewise of this temple is adorned with arms, not with gems, and the wall, instead of the ancient golden chapiters, is covered around with pendent shields. "Instead of the ancient candelabra, censers, and lavers, the house is on all sides furnished with bridles, saddles, and lances, all which plainly demonstrate that the soldiers burn with the same zeal for the house of God as that which formerly animated their great Leader, when, vehemently enraged, he entered into the Temple, and with that most sacred hand, armed not with steel, but with a scourge which he had made of small thongs, drove out the merchants, poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables of them that sold doves; most indignantly condemning the pollution of the house of prayer by the making of it a place of merchandise. "The devout army of Christ, therefore, earnestly incited by the example of its king, thinking indeed that the holy places are much more impiously and insufferably polluted by the infidels than when defiled by merchants, abide in the holy house with horses and with arms, so that from that, as well as all the other sacred places, all filthy and diabolical madness of infidelity being driven out, they may occupy themselves by day and by night in honorable and useful offices. They emulously honor the temple of God with sedulous and sincere oblations, offering sacrifices therein with constant devotion, not indeed of the flesh of cattle after the manner of the ancients, but peaceful sacrifices, brotherly love, devout obedience, voluntary poverty. "These things are done perpetually at Jerusalem, and the world is aroused, the islands hear, and the nations take heed from afar...." St. Bernard then congratulates Jerusalem on the advent of the soldiers of Christ, and declares that the Holy City will rejoice with a double joy in being rid of all her oppressors, the ungodly, the robbers, the blasphemers, murderers, perjurers, and adulterers; and in receiving her faithful defenders and sweet consolers, under the shadow of whose protection "Mount Zion shall rejoice, and the daughters of Judah sing for joy." STEPHEN USURPS THE ENGLISH CROWN HIS CONFLICTS WITH MATILDA: DECISIVE INFLUENCE OF THE CHURCH A.D. 1135-1154 CHARLES KNIGHT (William the Conqueror, King of England, was succeeded by his sons William Rufus and Henry--on account of his scholarship known as Beauclerc. Prince William, Henry's only son, was drowned when starting from Normandy for England in 1120. In the absence of male issue Henry settled the English and Norman crowns upon his daughter Matilda, and demanded an oath of fidelity to her from the barons. Matilda had been married first to Emperor Henry V of Germany, who died in 1125, and secondly to Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou. Stephen was the son of Adela, daughter of William the Conqueror, who had married Stephen, Count of Blois. Stephen, with his brother Henry, had been invited to the court of England by their uncle, and had received honors, preferments, and riches. Henry becoming an ecclesiast was created abbot of Glastonbury and bishop of Winchester. Stephen, among other possessions, received the great estate forfeited by Robert Mallet in England, and that forfeited by the Earl of Mortaigne in Normandy. By his marriage with Matilda, daughter of the Earl of Boulogne, he had succeeded also to the territories of his father-in-law. Stephen by studied arts and personal qualities became a great favorite with the English barons and the people. The empress Matilda and her husband Geoffrey, unfortunately, were unpopular both in England and Normandy, the English barons especially viewing with disfavor the prospect of a woman occupying the throne. Henry Beauclerc died in 1135 at his favorite hunting-seat, the Castle of Lions, near Rouen, in Normandy. Stephen, ignoring the oath of fealty to the daughter of his benefactor, hastened to England, and, notwithstanding some opposition, with the help of his clerical brother and other functionaries had himself proclaimed and crowned king. This act involved England in years of civil war, anarchy, and wretchedness, which ended only with the accession as Henry II of Empress Matilda's son, Henry Plantagenet of Anjou.) Of the reign of Stephen, Sir James Mackintosh has said, "It perhaps contains the most perfect condensation of all the ills of feudality to be found in history." He adds, "The whole narrative would have been rejected, as devoid of all likeness to truth, if it had been hazarded in fiction." As a picture of "all the ills of feudality," this narrative is a picture of the entire social state--the monarchy, the Church, the aristocracy, the people--and appears to us, therefore, to demand a more careful examination than if the historical interest were chiefly centred in the battles and adventures belonging to a disputed succession, and in the personal characters of a courageous princess and her knightly rival. Stephen, Earl of Boulogne, the nephew of King Henry I, was no stranger to the country which he aspired to rule. He had lived much in England and was a universal favorite. "From his complacency of manners, and his readiness to joke, and sit and regale even with low people, he had gained so much on their affections as is hardly to be conceived." This popular man was at the death-bed of his uncle; but before the royal body was borne on the shoulders of nobles from the Castle of Lions to Rouen, Stephen was on his road to England. He embarked at Whitsand, undeterred by boisterous weather, and landed during a winter storm of thunder and lightning. It was a more evil omen when Dover and Canterbury shut their gates against him. But he went boldly on to London. There can be no doubt that his proceedings were not the result of a sudden impulse, and that his usurpation of the crown was successful through a very powerful organization. His brother Henry was Bishop of Winchester; and his influence with the other dignitaries of the Church was mainly instrumental in the election of Stephen to be king, in open disregard of the oaths taken a few years before to recognize the succession of Matilda and of her son. Between the death of a king and the coronation of his successor there was usually a short interval, in which the form of election was gone through. But it is held that during that suspension of the royal functions there was usually a proclamation of "the king's peace," under which all violations of law were punished as if the head of the law were in the full exercise of his functions and dignities. King Henry I died on the 1st of December, 1135. Stephen was crowned on the 26th of December. The death of Henry would probably have been generally known in England in a week after the event. There is a sufficient proof that this succession was considered doubtful, and, consequently, that there was an unusual delay in the proclamation of "the king's peace." The Forest Laws were the great grievance of Henry's reign. His death was the signal for their violation by the whole body of the people. "It was wonderful how so many myriads of wild animals, which in large herds before plentifully stocked the country, suddenly disappeared, so that out of the vast number scarcely two now could be found together. They seemed to be entirely extirpated." According to the same authority, "the people also turned to plundering each other without mercy"; and "whatever the evil passions suggested in peaceable times, now that the opportunity of vengeance presented itself, was quickly executed." This is a remarkable condition of a country which, having been governed by terror, suddenly passed out of the evils of despotism into the greater evils of anarchy. This temporary confusion must have contributed to urge on the election of Stephen. By the Londoners he was received with acclamations; and the _witan_ chose him for king without hesitation, as one who could best fulfil the duties of the office and put an end to the dangers of the kingdom. Stephen succeeded to a vast amount of treasure. All the rents of Henry I had been paid in money, instead of in necessaries; and he was rigid in enforcing the payment in coin of the best quality. With this possession of means, Stephen surrounded himself with troops from Flanders and Brittany. The objections to his want of hereditary right appear to have been altogether laid aside for a time, in the popularity which he derived from his personal qualities and his command of wealth. Strict hereditary claims to the choice of the nation had been disregarded since the time of the Confessor. The oath to Matilda, it was maintained, had been unwillingly given, and even extorted by force. It is easy to conceive that, both to Saxon and Norman, the notion of a female sovereign would be out of harmony with their ancient traditions and their warlike habits. The king was the great military chief, as well as the supreme dispenser of justice and guardian of property. The time was far distant when the sovereign rule might be held to be most beneficially exercised by a wise choice of administrators, civil and military; and the power of the crown, being coördinate with other powers, strengthening as well as controlling its final authority, might be safely and happily exercised by a discreet, energetic, and just female. King Stephen vindicated the choice of the nation at the very outset of his reign. He went in person against the robbers who were ravaging the country. The daughter of "the Lion of Justice" would probably have done the same. But more than three hundred years had passed since the Lady of Mercia, the sister of Alfred, had asserted the courage of her race. Norman and Saxon wanted a king; for though ladies defended castles, and showed that firmness and bravery were not the exclusive possession of one sex, no thane or baron had yet knelt before a queen, and sworn to be her "liege man of life and limb." The unanimity which appeared to hail the accession of Stephen was soon interrupted. David, King of Scotland, had advanced to Carlisle and Newcastle, to assert the claim of Matilda which he had sworn to uphold. But Stephen came against him with a great army, and for a time there was peace. Robert, Earl of Gloucester, the illegitimate son of Henry I, had done homage to Stephen; but his allegiance was very doubtful; and the general belief that he would renounce his fealty engendered secret hostility or open resistance among other powerful barons. Robert of Gloucester very soon defied the King's power. Within two years of his accession the throne of Stephen was evidently becoming an insecure seat. To counteract the power of the great nobles, he made a lavish distribution of crown lands to a large number of tenants-in-chief. Some of them were called earls; but they had no official charge, as the greater barons had, but were mere titular lords, made by the royal bounty. All those who held direct from the Crown were called barons; and these new barons, who were scattered over the country, had permission from the King to build castles. Such permission was extended to many other lay barons. The accustomed manor-house of the land proprietor, in which he dwelt amid the churls and serfs of his demesne, was now replaced by a stone tower, surrounded by a moat and a wall. The wooden one-storied homestead, with its thatched roof, shaded by the "toft" of ash and elm and maple, was pulled down, and a square fortress with loopholes and battlement stood in solitary nakedness upon some bleak hill, ugly and defiant. There with a band of armed men--sometimes with a wife and children, and not unfrequently with an unhappy victim of his licentiousness--the baron lived in gloom and gluttony, till the love of excitement, the approach of want, or the call to battle drove him forth. His passion for hunting was not always free to be exercised. Venison was not everywhere to be obtained without danger even to the powerful and lawless. But within a ride of a few miles there was generally corn in the barns and herds were in the pastures. The petty baron was almost invariably a robber--sometimes on his own account, often in some combined adventure of plunder. The spirit of rapine, always too prevalent under the strongest government of those times, was now universal when the government was fighting for its own existence. Bands of marauders sallied forth from the great towns, especially from Bristol; and of their proceedings the author of the _Gesta Stephani_ speaks with the precision of an eye-witness. The Bristolians, under the instigation of the Earl of Gloucester, were partisans of the ex-empress Matilda; and wherever the King or his adherents had estates they came to seize their oxen and sheep, and carried men of substance into Bristol as captives, with bandaged eyes and bits in their mouths. From other towns as well as Bristol came forth plunderers, with humble gait and courteous discourse; who, when they met with a lonely man having the appearance of being wealthy, would bear him off to starvation and torture, till they had mulcted him to the last farthing. These and other indications of an unsettled government took place before the landing of Matilda to assert her claims. An invasion of England, by the Scottish King, without regard to the previous pacification, was made in 1138. But this attempt, although grounded upon the oath which David had sworn to Henry, was regarded by the Northumbrians as a national hostility which demanded a national resistance. The course of this invasion has been minutely described by contemporary chroniclers. The author of the _Gesta Stephani_ says: "Scotland, also called Albany, is a country overspread by extensive moors, but containing flourishing woods and pastures, which feed large herds of cows and oxen." Of the mountainous regions he says nothing. Describing the natives as savage, swift of foot, and lightly armed, he adds, "A confused multitude of this people being assembled from the lowlands of Scotland, they were formed into an irregular army and marched for England." From the period of the Conquest, a large number of Anglo-Saxons had been settled in the lowlands; and the border countries of Westmoreland and Cumberland were also occupied, to a considerable extent, by the same race. The people of Galloway were chiefly of the original British stock. The historians describe "the confused multitude" as exercising great cruelties in their advance through the country that lies between the Tweed and the Tees; and Matthew Paris uses a significant phrase which marks how completely they spread over the land. He calls them the "Scottish Ants." The Archbishop of York, Thurstan, an aged but vigorous man, collected a large army to resist the invaders; and he made a politic appeal to the old English nationality, by calling out the population under the banners of their Saxon saints. The Bishop of Durham was the leader of this army, composed of the Norman chivalry and the English archers. The opposing forces met at Northallerton, on the 22d of August, 1138. The Anglo-Norman army was gathered round a tall cross, raised on a car, and surrounded by the banners of St. Cuthbert and St. Wilfred and St. John of Beverley. From this incident the bloody day of Northallerton was called "the Battle of the Standard." Hoveden has given an oration made by Ralph, Bishop of Durham, in which he addresses the captains as "Brave nobles of England, Normans by birth"; and pointing to the enemy, who knew not the use of armor, exclaims, "Your head is covered with the helmet, your breast with a coat of mail, your legs with greaves, and your whole body with the shield." Of the Saxon yeomanry he says nothing. Whether the oration be genuine or not, it exhibits the mode in which the mass of the people were regarded at that time. Thierry appears to consider that the bold attempt of David of Scotland was made in reliance upon the support of the Anglo-Saxon race. But it is perfectly clear that they bore the brunt of the English battle; and whatever might be their wrongs, were not disposed to yield their fields and houses to a fierce multitude who came for spoil and for possession. The Scotch fought with darts and long spears, and attacked the solid mass of Normans and English gathered round the standard. Prince Henry, the son of the King of Scotland, made a vigorous onslaught with a body of horse, composed of English and Normans attached to his father's household. These were, without doubt, especial partisans of the claim to the English crown of the ex-empress Matilda; and, as the King of Scotland himself is described, were "inflamed with zeal for a just cause."[42] The issue of the battle was the signal defeat of the Scottish army, with the loss of eleven thousand men upon the field. A peace was concluded with King Stephen in the following year. [Footnote 42: Scott has given a picturesque account of the battle in his _Tales of a Grandfather_. Writing, as he often did, from general impressions, in describing the gallant charge of Prince Henry, he states that he broke the English line "as if it had been a spider's web." Hoveden, the historian to whom Scott alludes, applies this strong image to the scattering of the men of Lothian: "For the Almighty was offended at them, and their strength was rent like a cobweb."] The issue of the battle of the Standard might have given rest to England if Stephen had understood the spirit of his age. In 1139 he engaged in a contest more full of peril than the assaults of Scotland or the disturbances of Wales. He had been successful against some of the disaffected barons. He had besieged and taken Hereford Castle and Shrewsbury Castle. Dover Castle had surrendered to his Queen. Robert, Earl of Gloucester, kept possession of the castles of Bristol and Leeds; and other nobles held out against him in various strong places. London and some of the larger towns appear to have steadily clung to his government. The influence of the Church, by which he had been chiefly raised to sovereignty, had supported him during his four years of struggle. But that influence was now to be shaken. The rapid and steady growth of the ecclesiastical power in England, from the period of the Conquest, is one of the most remarkable characteristics of that age. This progress we must steadily keep in view if we would rightly understand the general condition of society. All the great offices of the Church, with scarcely an exception, were filled by Normans. The Conqueror sternly resisted any attempts of bishops or abbots to control his civil government. The "Red King" misappropriated their revenues in many cases. Henry I quarrelled with Anselm about the right of investiture, which the Pope declared should not be in the hands of any layman, but Henry compromised a difficult question with his usual prudence. Whatever difficulties the Church encountered, during seventy years, and especially during the whole course of Henry's reign, wealth flowed in upon the ecclesiastics, from king and noble, from burgess and socman; and every improvement of the country increased the value of church possessions. It was not only from the lands of the Crown and the manors of earls that bishoprics and monasteries derived their large endowments. Henry I founded the Abbey of Reading, but the _mimus_ of Henry I built the priory and hospital of St. Bartholomew. This "pleasant-witted gentleman," as Stow calls the royal mimus (which Percy interprets "minstrel"), having, according to the legend, "diverted the palaces of princes with courtly mockeries and triflings" for many years, bethought himself at last of more serious matters, and went to do penance at Rome. He returned to London; and obtaining a grant of land in a part of the King's market of Smithfield, which was a filthy marsh where the common gallows stood, there erected the priory, whose Norman arches as satisfactorily attest its date as Henry's charter. The piety of a court jester in the twelfth century, when the science of medicine was wholly empirical, founded one of the most valuable medical schools of the nineteenth century. The desire to raise up splendid churches in the place of the dilapidated Saxon buildings was a passion with Normans, whether clerics or laymen. Ralph Flambard, the bold and unscrupulous minister of William II, erected the great priory of Christchurch, in his capacity of bishop. But he raised the necessary funds with his usual financial vigor. He took the revenues of the canons into his hands, and put the canons upon a short allowance till the work was completed. The Cistercian order of monks was established in England late in the reign of Henry I. Their rule was one of the most severe mortification and of the strictest discipline. Their lives were spent in labor and in prayer, and their one frugal daily meal was eaten in silence. While other religious orders had their splendid abbeys amid large communities, the Cistercians humbly asked grants of land in the most solitary places, where the recluse could meditate without interruption by his fellow-men, amid desolate moors and in the uncultivated gorges of inaccessible mountains. In such a barren district Walter l'Espée, who had fought at Northallerton, founded Rievaulx Abbey. It was "a solitary place in Blakemore," in the midst of hills. The Norman knight had lost his son, and here he derived a holy comfort in seeing the monastic buildings rise under his munificent care, and the waste lands become fertile under the incessant labors of the devoted monks. The ruins of Tintern Abbey and Melrose Abbey, whose solemn influences have inspired the poets of our own age with thoughts akin to the contemplations of their Cistercian founders, belong to a later period of ecclesiastical architecture; for the dwellings of the original monks have perished, and the "broken arches," and "shafted oriel," the "imagery," and "the scrolls that teach thee to live and die," speak of another century, when the Norman architecture, like the Norman character, was losing its distinctive features and becoming "Early English." We dwell a little upon these Norman foundations, to show how completely the Church was spreading itself over the land, and asserting its influence in places where man had seldom trod, as well as in populous towns, where the great cathedral was crowded with earnest votaries, and the lessons of peace were proclaimed amid the distractions of unsettled government and the oppressions of lordly despotism. Whatever was the misery of the country, the ordinary family ties still bound the people to the universal Christian church, whether the priest were Norman or English. The new-born infant was dipped in the great Norman font, as the children of the Confessor's time had been dipped in the ruder Saxon. The same Latin office, unintelligible in words, but significant in its import, was said and sung when the bride stood at the altar and the father was laid in his grave. The vernacular tongue gradually melted into one dialect; and the penitent and the confessor were the first to lay aside the great distinction of race and country--that of language. The Norman prelates were men of learning and ability, of taste and magnificence; and, whatever might have been the luxury and even vices of some among them, the vast revenues of the great sees were not wholly devoted to worldly pomp, but were applied to noble uses. After the lapse of seven centuries we still tread with reverence those portions of our cathedrals in which the early Norman architecture is manifest. There is no English cathedral in which we are so completely impressed with the massive grandeur of the round-arched style as by Durham. Durham Cathedral was commenced in the middle of the reign of Rufus, and the building went on through the reign of Henry I. Canterbury was commenced by Archbishop Lanfranc, soon after the Conquest, and was enlarged and altered in various details, till it was burned in 1174. Some portions of the original building remain. Rochester was commenced eleven years after the Conquest; and its present nave is an unaltered part of the original building. Chichester has nearly the same date of its commencement; and the building of this church was continued till its dedication in 1148. Norwich was founded in 1094, and its erection was carried forward so rapidly that in seven years there were sixty monks here located. Winchester is one of the earliest of these noble cathedrals; but its Norman feature of the round arch is not the general characteristic of the edifice, the original piers having been recased in the pointed style, in the reign of Edward III. The dates of these buildings, so grand in their conception, so solid in their execution, would be sufficient of themselves to show the wealth and activity of the Church during the reigns of the Conqueror and his sons. But, during this period of seventy years, and in part of the reign of Stephen, the erection of monastic buildings was universal in England, as in Continental Europe. The crusades gave a most powerful impulse to the religious fervor. In the enthusiasm of chivalry, which covered many of its enormities with outward acts of piety, vows were frequently made by wealthy nobles that they would depart for the Holy Wars. But sometimes the vow was inconvenient. The lady of the castle wept at the almost certain perils of her lord, and his projects of ambition often kept the lord at home to look after his own especial interests. Then the vow to wear the cross might be commuted by the foundation of a religious house. Death-bed repentance for crimes of violence and a licentious life increased the number of these endowments. It has been computed that three hundred monastic establishments were founded in England during the reigns of Henry I, Stephen, and Henry II. We have briefly stated these few general facts regarding the outward manifestation of the power and the wealth of the Church at this period, to show how important an influence it must have exercised upon all questions of government. But its organization was of far greater importance than the aggregate wealth of the sees and abbeys. The English Church, during the troubled reign of Stephen, had become more completely under the papal dominion than at any previous period of its history. The King attempted, rashly perhaps, but honestly, to interpose some check to the ecclesiastical desire for supremacy; but from the hour when he entered into a contest with bishops and synods, his reign became one of kingly trouble and national misery. The Norman bishops not only combined in their own persons the functions of the priest and of the lawyer, but were often military leaders. As barons they had knight-service to perform; and this condition of their tenures naturally surrounded them with armed retainers. That this anomalous position should have corrupted the ambitious churchman into a proud and luxurious lord was almost inevitable. The authority of the Crown might have been strong enough to repress the individual discontent, or to punish the individual treason, of these great prelates; but every one of them was doubly formidable as a member of a confederacy over which a foreign head claimed to preside. There were three bishops whose intrigues King Stephen had especially to dread at the time when an open war for the succession of Matilda was on the point of bursting forth. Roger, the Bishop of Salisbury, had been promoted from the condition of a parish priest at Caen, to be chaplain, secretary, chancellor, and chief justiciary of Henry I. He was instrumental in the election of Stephen to the throne; and he was rewarded with extravagant gifts, as he had been previously rewarded by Henry. Stephen appears to have fostered his rapacity, in the conviction that his pride would have a speedier fall; the King often saying, "I would give him half England, if he asked for it: till the time be ripe he shall tire of asking ere I tire of giving." The time was ripe in 1139. The Bishop had erected castles at Devizes, at Sherborne, and at Malmesbury. King Henry had given him the castle of Salisbury. This lord of four castles had powerful auxiliaries in his nephews, the Bishop of Lincoln and the Bishop of Ely. Alexander of Lincoln had built the castles of Newark and Sleaford, and was almost as powerful as his uncle. In July, 1139, a great council was held at Oxford; and thither came these three bishops with military and secular pomp, and with an escort that became "the wonder of all beholders." A quarrel ensued between the retainers of the bishops and those of Alain, Earl of Brittany, about a right to quarters; and the quarrel went on to a battle, in which men were slain on both sides. The bishops of Salisbury and Lincoln were arrested, as breakers of the king's peace. The Bishop of Ely fled to his uncle's castle of Devizes. The King, under the advice of the sagacious Earl Millent, resolved to dispossess these dangerous prelates of their fortresses, which were all finally surrendered. "The bishops, humbled and mortified, and stripped of all pomp and vainglory, were reduced to a simple ecclesiastical life, and to the possessions belonging to them as churchmen." The contemporary who writes this--the author of the _Gesta Stephani_--although a decided partisan of Stephen, speaks of this event as the result of mad counsels, and a grievous sin that resembled the wickedness of the sons of Korah and of Saul. The great body of the ecclesiastics were indignant at what they considered an offence to their order. The Bishop of Winchester, the brother of Stephen, had become the Pope's legate in England, and he summoned the King to attend a synod at Winchester. He there produced his authority as legate from Pope Innocent, and denounced the arrest of the bishops as a dreadful crime. The King had refused to attend the council, but he sent Alberic de Vere, "a man deeply versed in legal affairs," to represent him. This advocate urged that the Bishop of Lincoln was the author of the tumult at Oxford; that whenever Bishop Roger came to court, his people, presuming on his power, excited tumults; that the Bishop secretly favored the King's enemies, and was ready to join the party of the Empress. The council was adjourned, but on a subsequent day came the Archbishop of Rouen, as the champion of the King, and contended that it was against the canons that the bishops should possess castles; and that even if they had the right, they were bound to deliver them up to the will of the King, as the times were eventful, and the King was bound to make war for the common security. The Archbishop of Rouen reasoned as a statesman; the Bishop of Winchester as the Pope's legate. Some of the bishops threatened to proceed to Rome; and the King's advocate intimated that if they did so, their return might not be so easy. Swords were at last unsheathed. The King and the earls were now in open hostility with the legate and the bishops. Excommunication of the King was hinted at; but persuasion was resorted to. Stephen, according to one authority, made humble submission, and thus "abated the rigor of ecclesiastical discipline." If he did submit, his submission was too late. Within a month Earl Robert and the empress Matilda were in England. Matilda and the Earl of Gloucester landed at Arundel, where the widow of Henry I was dwelling. They had a very small force to support their pretensions. The Earl crossed the country to Bristol. "All England was struck with alarm, and men's minds were agitated in various ways. Those who secretly or openly favored the invaders were roused to more than usual activity against the King, while his own partisans were terrified as if a thunderbolt had fallen." Stephen invested the castle of Arundel. But in the most romantic spirit of chivalry he permitted the Empress to pass out, and to set forward to join her brother at Bristol, under a safe-conduct. In 1140 the whole kingdom appears to have been subjected to the horrors of a partisan warfare. The barons in their castles were making a show of "defending their neighborhoods, but, more properly to speak, were laying them waste." The legate and the bishops were excommunicating the plunderers of churches, but the plunderers laughed at their anathemas. Freebooters came over from Flanders, not to practise the industrial arts as in the time of Henry I, but to take their part in the general pillage. There was frightful scarcity in the country, and the ordinary interchange of man with man was unsettled by the debasement of the coin. "All things," says Malmesbury, "became venial in England; and churches and abbeys were no longer secretly but even publicly exposed to sale." All things become venial, under a government too weak to repress plunder or to punish corruption. The strong aim to be rich by rapine, and the cunning by fraud, when the confusion of a kingdom is grown so great that, as is recorded of this period, "the neighbor could put no faith in his nearest neighbor, nor the friend in his friend, nor the brother in his own brother." The demoralization of anarchy is even more terrible than its bloodshed. The marches and sieges, the revolts and treacheries, of this evil time are occasionally varied by incidents which illustrate the state of society. Robert Fitz-Herbert, with a detachment of the Earl of Gloucester's soldiers, surprised the castle of Devizes, which the King had taken from the Bishop of Salisbury. Robert Fitz-Herbert varies the atrocities of his fellow-barons, by rubbing his prisoners with honey, and exposing them naked to the sun. But Robert, having obtained Devizes, refused to admit the Earl of Gloucester to any advantage of its possession, and commenced the subjection of the neighborhood on his own account. Another crafty baron, John Fitz-Gilbert, held the castle of Marlborough; and Robert Fitz-Herbert, having an anxious desire to be lord of that castle also, endeavoring to cajole Fitz-Gilbert into the admission of his followers, went there as a guest, but was detained as a prisoner. Upon this the Earl of Gloucester came in force for revenge against his treacherous ally, Fitz-Herbert, and, conducting him to Devizes, there hanged him. The surprise of Lincoln Castle, upon which the events of 1141 mainly turned, is equally characteristic of the age. Ranulf, Earl of Chester, and William de Roumare, his half-brother, were avowed friends of King Stephen. But their ambition took a new direction for the support of Matilda. The garrison of Lincoln had no apprehension of a surprise, and were busy in those sports which hardy men enjoy even amid the rougher sport of war. The Countess of Chester and her sister-in-law, with a politeness that the ladies of the court of Louis le Grand could not excel, paid a visit to the wife of the knight who had the defence of the castle. While there, at this pleasant morning call, "talking and joking" with the unsuspecting matron, as Ordericus relates, the Earl of Chester came in, "without his armor or even his mantle," attended only by three soldiers. His courtesy was as flattering as that of his countess and her friend. But his men-at-arms suddenly mastered the unprepared guards, and the gates were thrown open to Earl William and his numerous followers. The earls, after this stratagem, held the castle against the King, who speedily marched to Lincoln. But the Earl of Chester contrived to leave the castle, and soon raised a powerful army of his own vassals. The Earl of Gloucester joined him with a considerable force, and they together advanced to the relief of the besieged city. The battle of Lincoln was preceded by a trifling incident to which the chroniclers have attached importance. It was the Feast of the Purification; and at the mass which was celebrated at the dawn of day, when the King was holding a lighted taper in his hand it was suddenly extinguished. "This was an omen of sorrow to the King," says Hoveden. But another chronicler, the author of the _Gesta Stephain_, tells us, in addition, that the wax candle was suddenly relighted; and he accordingly argues that this incident was "a token that for his sins he should be deprived of his crown, but on his repentance, through God's mercy, he should wonderfully and gloriously recover it." The King had been more than a month laying siege to the castle, and his army was encamped around the city of Lincoln. When it was ascertained that his enemies were at hand he was advised to raise the siege and march out to strengthen his power by a general levy. He decided upon instant battle. He was then exhorted not to fight on the solemn festival of the Purification. But his courage was greater than his prudence or his piety. He set forth to meet the insurgent earls. The best knights were in his army; but the infantry of his rivals was far more numerous. Stephen detached a strong body of horse and foot to dispute the passage of a ford of the Trent. But Gloucester by an impetuous charge obtained possession of the ford, and the battle became general. The King's horsemen fled. The desperate bravery of Stephen, and the issue of the battle, have been described by Henry of Huntingdon with singular animation: "King Stephen, therefore, with his infantry, stood alone in the midst of the enemy. These surrounded the royal troops, attacking the columns on all sides, as if they were assaulting a castle. Then the battle raged terribly round this circle; helmets and swords gleamed as they clashed, and the fearful cries and shouts reëchoed from the neighboring hills and city walls. The cavalry, furiously charging the royal column, slew some and trampled down others; some were made prisoners. No respite, no breathing time, was allowed; except in the quarter in which the King himself had taken his stand, where the assailants recoiled from the unmatched force of his terrible arm. The Earl of Chester seeing this, and envious of the glory the King was gaining, threw himself upon him with the whole weight of his men-at-arms. Even then the King's courage did not fail, but his heavy battle-axe gleamed like lightning, striking down some, bearing back others. At length it was shattered by repeated blows. Then he drew his well-tried sword, with which he wrought wonders, until that too was broken. Perceiving which, William de Kaims, a brave soldier, rushed on him, and seizing him by his helmet, shouted, 'Here, here, I have taken the King!' Others came to his aid, and the King was made prisoner." After the capture of King Stephen, at this brief but decisive battle, he was kept a close prisoner at Bristol Castle. Then commenced what might be called the reign of Queen Matilda, which lasted about eight months. The defeat of Stephen was the triumph of the greater ecclesiastics. On the third Sunday in Lent, 1141, there was a conference on the plain in the neighborhood of Winchester--a day dark and rainy, which portended disasters. The Bishop of Winchester came forth from his city with all the pomp of the pope's legate; and there Matilda swore that in all matters of importance, and especially in the bestowal of bishoprics and abbeys, she would submit to the Church; and the Bishop and his supporters pledged their faith to the Empress on these conditions. After Easter, a great council was held at Winchester, which the Bishop called as the Pope's vicegerent. The unscrupulous churchman boldly came forward, and denounced his brother, inviting the assembly to elect a sovereign; and, with an amount of arrogance totally unprecedented, thus asserted the notorious untruth that the right of electing a king of England principally belonged to the clergy: "The case was yesterday agitated before a part of the higher clergy of England, to whose right it principally pertains to elect the sovereign, and also to crown him. First, then, as is fitting, invoking God's assistance, we elect the daughter of that peaceful, that glorious, that rich, that good, and in our times incomparable king, as sovereign of England and Normandy, and promise her fidelity and support." The Bishop then said to the applauding assembly: "We have despatched messengers for the Londoners, who, from the importance of their city in England, are almost nobles, as it were, to meet us on this business." The next day the Londoners came. They were sent, they said, by their fraternity to entreat that their lord, the King, might be liberated from captivity. The legate refused them, and repeated his oration against his brother. It was a work of great difficulty to soothe the minds of the Londoners; and St. John's Day had arrived before they would consent to acknowledge Matilda. Many parts of the kingdom had then submitted to her government, and she entered London with great state. Her nature seems to have been rash and imperious. Her first act was to demand subsidies of the citizens; and when they said that their wealth was greatly diminished by the troubled state of the kingdom, she broke forth into insufferable rage. The vigilant queen of Stephen, who kept possession of Kent, now approached the city with a numerous force, and by her envoys demanded her husband's freedom. Of course her demand was made in vain. She then put forth a front of battle. Instead of being crowned at Westminster, the daughter of Henry I fled in terror; for "the whole city flew to arms at the ringing of the bells, which was the signal for war, and all with one accord rose upon the Countess [of Anjou] and her adherents, as swarms of wasps issue from their hives." William Fitzstephen, the biographer of Thomas à Becket, in his _Description of London_, supposed to be written about the middle of the reign of Henry II, says of this city, "ennobled by her men, graced by her arms, and peopled by a multitude of inhabitants," that "in the wars under King Stephen there went out to a muster of armed horsemen, esteemed fit for war, twenty thousand, and of infantry, sixty thousand." In general, the _Description of London_ appears trustworthy, and in some instances is supported by other authorities. But this vast number of fighting men must, unquestionably, be exaggerated: unless, as Lyttelton conjectures, such a muster included the militia of Middlesex, Kent, and other counties adjacent to London. Peter of Blois, in the reign of Henry II, reckons the inhabitants of the city at forty thousand. That the citizens were trained to warlike exercises, and that their manly sports nurtured them in the hardihood of military habits, we may well conclude from Fitzstephen's account of this community at a little later period than that of which we are writing. To the north of the city were pasture lands, with streams on whose banks the clack of many mills was pleasing to the ear; and beyond was an immense forest, with densely wooded thickets, where stags, fallow-deer, boars, and wild bulls had their coverts. We have seen that in the charter of Henry I the citizens had liberty to hunt through a very extensive district, and hawking was also among their free recreations. Football was the favorite game; and the boys of the schools, and the various guilds of craftsmen, had each their ball. The elder citizens came on horseback to see these contests of the young men. Every Sunday in Lent a company with lances and shields went out to joust. In the Easter holidays they had river tournaments. During the summer the youths exercised themselves in leaping, archery, wrestling, stone-throwing, slinging javelins, and fighting with bucklers. When the great marsh which washed the walls of the city on the north was frozen over, sliding, sledging, and skating were the sports of crowds. They had sham fights on the ice, and legs and arms were sometimes broken. "But," says Fitzstephen, "youth is an age eager for glory and desirous of victory, and so young men engage in counterfeit battles, that they may conduct themselves more valiantly in real ones." That universal love of hardy sports, which is one of the greatest characteristics of England, and from which we derive no little of that spirit which keeps our island safe, is not of modern growth. It was one of the most important portions of the education of the people seven centuries ago. It was this community, then, so brave, so energetic, so enriched by commerce above all the other cities of England, that resolutely abided by the fortunes of King Stephen. They had little to dread from any hostile assaults of the rival faction; for the city was strongly fortified on all sides except to the river; but on that side it was secure, after the Tower was built. The palace of Westminster had also a breastwork and bastions. After Matilda had taken her hasty departure, the indignant Londoners marched out, and they sustained a principal part in what has been called "the rout of Winchester," in which Robert, Earl of Gloucester, was taken prisoner. The ex-Empress escaped to Devizes. The capture of the Earl of Gloucester led to important results. A convention was agreed to between the adherents of each party that the King should be exchanged for the Earl. Stephen was once more "every inch a king." But still there was no peace in the land. The Bishop of Winchester had again changed his side. In the hour of success the empress Matilda had refused the reasonable request that Prince Eustace, the son of Stephen, should be put in possession of his father's earldom of Boulogne. Malmesbury says, "A misunderstanding arose between the legate and the Empress which may be justly considered as the melancholy cause of every subsequent evil in England." The chief actors in this extraordinary drama present a curious study of human character. Matilda, resting her claim to the throne upon her legitimate descent from Henry I, who had himself usurped the throne--possessing her father's courage and daring, with some of his cruelty--haughty, vindictive--furnishes one of the most striking portraits of the proud lady of the feudal period, who shrank from no danger by reason of her sex, but made the homage of chivalry to woman a powerful instrument for enforcing her absolute will. The Earl of Gloucester, the illegitimate brother of Matilda, brave, steadfast, of a free and generous nature, a sagacious counsellor, a lover of literature, appears to have had few of the vices of that age, and most of its elevating qualities. Of Stephen it has been said, "He deserves no other reproach than that of having embraced the occupation of a captain of banditti." This appears rather a harsh judgment from a philosophical writer. Bearing in mind that the principle of election prevailed in the choice of a king, whatever was the hereditary claim, and seeing how welcome was the advent of Stephen when he came, in 1135, to avert the dangers of the kingdom, he merits the title of "a captain of banditti" no more than Harold or William the Conqueror. After the contests of six years--the victories, the defeats, the hostility of the Church, his capture and imprisonment--the attachment of the people of the great towns to his person and government appears to have been unshaken. When he was defeated at Lincoln, and led captive through the city, "the surrounding multitude were moved with pity, shedding tears and uttering cries of grief." Ordericus says: "The King's disaster filled with grief the clergy and monks and the common people; because he was condescending and courteous to those who were good and quiet, and if his treacherous nobles had allowed it, he would have put an end to their rapacious enterprises, and been a generous protector and benevolent friend of the country." The fourth and not least remarkable personage of this history is Henry, the Bishop of Winchester, and the Pope's legate. At that period, when the functions of churchman and statesman were united, we find this man the chief instrument for securing the crown for his brother. He subsequently becomes the vicegerent of the papal see. Stephen, with more justice than discretion, is of opinion that bishops are not doing their duty when they build castles, ride about in armor, with crowds of retainers, and are not at all scrupulous in appropriating some of the booty of a lawless time. From the day when he exhibited his hostility to fighting bishops, the Pope's legate was his brother's deadly enemy. But he found that the rival whom he had set up was by no means a pliant tool in his hands, and he then turned against Matilda. When Stephen had shaken off the chains with which he was loaded in Bristol Castle, the Bishop summoned a council at Westminster, on his legatine authority; and there "by great powers of eloquence, endeavored to extenuate the odium of his own conduct"; affirming that he had supported the Empress, "not from inclination, but necessity." He then "commanded on the part of God and of the Pope, that they should strenuously assist the King, appointed by the will of the people, and by the approbation of the Holy See." Malmesbury, who records these doings, adds that a layman sent from the Empress affirmed that "her coming to England had been effected by the legate's frequent letters"; and that "her taking the King, and holding him in captivity, had been done principally by his connivance." The reign of Stephen is not only "the most perfect condensation of all the ills of feudality," but affords a striking picture of the ills which befall a people when an ambitious hierarchy, swayed to and fro at the will of a foreign power, regards the supremacy of the Church as the one great object to be attained, at whatever expense of treachery and falsehood, of national degradation and general suffering. In 1142 the civil war is raging more fiercely than ever. Matilda is at Oxford, a fortified city, protected by the Thames, by a wall, and by an impregnable castle. Stephen, with a body of veterans, wades across the river and enters the city. Matilda and her followers take refuge in the keep. For three months the King presses the siege, surrounding the fortress on all sides. Famine is approaching to the helpless garrison. It is the Christmas season. The country is covered with a deep snow. The Thames and the tributary rivers are frozen over. With a small escort Matilda contrives to escape, and passes undiscovered through the royal posts, on a dark and silent night, when no sound is heard but the clang of a trumpet or the challenge of a sentinel. In the course of the night she went to Abingdon on foot, and afterwards reached Wallingford on horseback. The author of the _Gesta Stephani_ expresses his wonder at the marvellous escapes of this courageous woman. The changes of her fortune are equally remarkable. After the flight from Oxford the arms of the Earl of Gloucester are again successful. Stephen is beaten at Wilton, and retreats precipitately with his military brother, the Bishop of Winchester. There are now in the autumn of 1142 universal turmoil and desolation. Many people emigrate. Others crowd round the sanctuary of the churches, and dwell there in mean hovels. Famine is general. Fields are white with ripened corn, but the cultivators have fled, and there is none to gather the harvest. Cities are deserted and depopulated. Fierce foreign mercenaries, for whom the barons have no pay, pillage the farms and the monasteries. The bishops, for the most part, rest supine amid all this storm of tyranny. When they rouse themselves they increase rather than mitigate the miseries of the people. Milo, Earl of Hereford, has demanded money of the Bishop of Hereford to pay his troops. The Bishop refuses, and Milo seizes his lands and goods. The Bishop then pronounces sentence of excommunication against Milo and his adherents, and lays an interdict upon the country subject to the Earl's authority. We might hastily think that the solemn curse pronounced against a nation, or a district, was an unmeaning ceremony, with its "bell, book, and candle," to terrify only the weakminded. It was one of the most outrageous of the numerous ecclesiastical tyrannies. The consolations of religion were eagerly sought for and justly prized by the great body of the people, who earnestly believed that a happy future would be a reward for the patient endurance of a miserable present. As they were admitted to the holy communion, they recognized an acknowledgment of the equality of men before the great Father of all. Their marriages were blessed and their funerals were hallowed. Under an interdict all the churches were shut. No knell was tolled for the dead, for the dead remained unburied. No merry peals welcomed the bridal procession, for no couple could be joined in wedlock. The awe-stricken mother might have her infant baptized, and the dying might receive extreme unction. But all public offices of the Church were suspended. If we imagine such a condition of society in a village devastated by fire and sword, we may wonder how a free government and a Christian church have ever grown up among us. If Stephen had quietly possessed the throne, and his heir had succeeded him, the crowns of England and Normandy would have been disconnected before the thirteenth century. Geoffrey of Anjou, while his duchess was in England, had become master of Normandy, and its nobles had acknowledged his son Henry as their rightful duke. The boy was in England, under the protection of the Earl of Gloucester, who attended to his education. The great Earl died in 1147. For a few years there had been no decided contest between the forces of the King and the Empress. After eight years of terrible hostility, and of desperate adventure, Matilda left the country. Stephen made many efforts to control the license of the barons, but with little effect. He was now engaged in another quarrel with the Church. His brother had been superseded as legate by Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, in consequence of the death of the Pope who had supported the Bishop of Winchester. Theobald was Stephen's enemy, and his hostility was rendered formidable by his alliance with Bigod, the Earl of Norfolk. The Archbishop excommunicated Stephen and his adherents, and the King was enforced to submission. In 1150 Stephen, having been again reconciled to the Church, sought the recognition of his son Eustace as the heir to the kingdom. This recognition was absolutely refused by the Archbishop, who said that Stephen was regarded by the papal see as an usurper. But time was preparing a solution of the difficulties of the kingdom. Henry of Anjou was grown into manhood. Born in 1133, he had been knighted by his uncle, David of Scotland, in 1149. His father died in 1151, and he became not only Duke of Normandy, but Earl of Anjou, Touraine, and Maine. In 1152 he contracted a marriage of ambition with Eleanor, the divorced wife of Louis of France, and thus became Lord of Aquitaine and Poitou, which Eleanor possessed in her own right. Master of all the western coast of France, from the Somme to the Pyrenees, with the exception of Brittany, his ambition, thus strengthened by his power, prepared to dispute the sovereignty of England with better hopes than ever waited on his mother's career. He landed with a well-appointed band of followers in 1153, and besieged various castles. But no general encounter took place. The King and the Duke had a conference, without witnesses, across a rivulet, and this meeting prepared the way for a final pacification. The negotiators were Henry, the Bishop, on the one part, and Theobald, the Archbishop, on the other. Finally Stephen led the Prince in solemn procession through the streets of Winchester, "and all the great men of the realm, by the King's command, did homage, and pronounced the fealty due to their liege lord, to the Duke of Normandy, saving only their allegiance to King Stephen during his life." Stephen's son Eustace had died during the negotiations. The troublesome reign of Stephen was soon after brought to a close. He died on the 25th of October, 1154. His constant and heroic queen had died three years before him. ANTIPAPAL DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT: ARNOLD OF BRESCIA ST. BERNARD AND THE SECOND CRUSADE A.D. 1145-1155 JOHANN A.W. NEANDER (During the first half of the twelfth century--a period marked by conflicting spiritual tendencies--in Italy began a work of political and religious reform, which has ever since been associated with the name of its chief originator and apostle, Arnold of Brescia, so called from his native city in Lombardy. He was born about the year 1100, became a disciple of Abelard--whose teachings fired him with enthusiasm--and entered the priesthood. Although quite orthodox in doctrine, he rebelled against the secularization of the Church--which had given to the pope almost supreme power in temporal affairs--and against the worldly disposition and life then prevalent among ecclesiastics and monks. His own life was sternly simple and ascetic, and this habit had been strongly confirmed by the ethical passion which burned in the religious and philosophical instructions of Abelard. With the popular religion Arnold had earnest sympathy, but he would reduce the clergy to their primitive and apostolic poverty, depriving them of individual wealth and of all temporal power. The inspiring idea of Arnold's movement was that of a holy and pure church, a renovation of the spiritual order after the pattern of the apostolic church. He conformed in dress as well as in his mode of life to the principles he taught. The worldly and often corrupt clergy, he maintained, were unfit to discharge the priestly functions--they were no longer priests, and the secularized Church was no longer the house of God. Arnold dreamed of a great Christian republic and labored to establish it, insomuch that his ideal, never realized in concrete form, either in church or state, took, and in history has kept, the name of republic. His eloquence and sincerity brought him powerful popular support, and even a large part of the nobility were won to his side. But of course, among those whom his aims condemned or antagonized, there were many who spared no pains to place him in an unfavorable light and to bring his labors to naught. In the simple story of his career, as here told by the great church historian, his figure appears in an attitude of heroism, which the pathos of his end can only make the reader more deeply appreciate. Through all this agitation is heard the voice of St. Bernard urging the religious conscience and better aspiration of the time, preaching the Second Crusade, and speeding its eastward march with earnest expectation--his high hope doomed to perish with its inglorious result.) Arnold's discourses were directly calculated by their tendency to find ready entrance into the minds of the laity, before whose eyes the worldly lives of the ecclesiastics and monks were constantly present, and to create a faction in deadly hostility to the clergy. Superadded to this was the inflammable matter already prepared by the collision of the spirit of political freedom with the power of the higher clergy. Thus Arnold's addresses produced in the minds of the Italian people, quite susceptible to such excitements, a prodigious effect, which threatened to spread more widely, and Pope Innocent felt himself called upon to take preventive measures against it. At the Lateran Council, in the year 1139, he declared against Arnold's proceedings, and commanded him to quit Italy--the scene of the disturbances thus far--and not to return again without express permission from the Pope. Arnold, moreover, is said to have bound himself by an oath to obey this injunction, which probably was expressed in such terms as to leave him free to interpret it as referring exclusively to the person of Pope Innocent. If the oath was not so expressed, he might afterward have been accused of violating that oath. It is to be regretted that the form in which the sentence was pronounced against Arnold has not come down to us; but from its very character it is evident that he could not have been convicted of any false doctrine, since otherwise the Pope would certainly not have treated him so mildly--would not have been contented with merely banishing him from Italy, since teachers of false doctrine would be dangerous to the Church everywhere. Bernard, moreover, in his letter directed against Arnold, states that he was accused before the Pope of being the author of a very bad schism. Arnold now betook himself to France, and here he became entangled in the quarrels with his old teacher Abelard, to whom he was indebted for the first impulse of his mind toward this more serious and free bent of the religious spirit. Expelled from France, he directed his steps to Switzerland, and sojourned in Zurich. The abbot Bernard thought it necessary to caution the Bishop of Constance against him; but the man who had been condemned by the Pope found protection there from the papal legate, Cardinal Guido, who, indeed, made him a member of his household and companion of his table. The abbot Bernard severely censured the prelate, on the ground that Arnold's connection with him would contribute, without fail, to give importance and influence to that dangerous man. This deserves to be noticed on two accounts, for it makes it evident what power he could exercise over men's minds, and that no false doctrines could be charged to his account. But independent of Arnold's personal presence, the impulse which he had given continued to operate in Italy, and the effects of it extended even to Rome. By the papal condemnation, public attention was only more strongly drawn to the subject. The Romans certainly felt no great sympathy for the religious element in that serious spirit of reform which animated Arnold; but the political movements, which had sprung out of his reforming tendency, found a point of attachment in their love of liberty, and their dreams of the ancient dominion of Rome over the world. The idea of emancipating themselves from the yoke of the Pope, and of reestablishing the old Republic, flattered their Roman pride. Espousing the principles of Arnold, they required that the Pope, as spiritual head of the Church, should confine himself to the administration of spiritual affairs; and they committed to a senate the supreme direction of civil affairs. Innocent could do nothing to stem such a violent current; and he died in the midst of these disturbances, in the year 1143. The mild Cardinal Guido, the friend of Abelard and Arnold, became his successor, and called himself, when pope, Celestine II. By his gentleness, quiet was restored for a short time. Perhaps it was the news of the elevation of this friendly man to the papal throne that encouraged Arnold himself to come to Rome. But Celestine died after six months, and Lucius II was his successor. Under his reign the Romans renewed the former agitations with more violence; they utterly renounced obedience to the Pope, whom they recognized only in his priestly character, and the restored Roman Republic sought to strike a league in opposition to the Pope and to papacy with the new Emperor, Conrad III. In the name of the "senate and Roman people," a pompous letter was addressed to Conrad. The Emperor was invited to come to Rome, that from thence, like Justinian and Constantine, in former days, he might give laws to the world. Caesar should have the things that are Caesar's; the priest the things that are the priest's, as Christ ordained when Peter paid the tribute money. Long did the tendency awakened by Arnold's principles continue to agitate Rome. In the letters written amidst these commotions, by individual noblemen of Rome to the Emperor, we perceive a singular mixing together of the Arnoldian spirit with the dreams of Roman vanity; a radical tendency to the separation of secular from spiritual things which if it had been capable enough in itself, and if it could have found more points of attachment in the age, would have brought destruction on the old theocratical system of the Church. They said that the Pope could claim no political sovereignty in Rome; he could not even be consecrated without the consent of the Emperor--a rule which had in fact been observed till the time of Gregory VII. Men complained of the worldliness of the clergy, of their bad lives, of the contradiction between their conduct and the teachings of Scripture. The popes were accused as the instigators of the wars. "The popes," it was said, "should no longer unite the cup of the eucharist with the sword; it was their vocation to preach, and to confirm what they preached by good works. How could those who eagerly grasped at all the wealth of this world, and corrupted the true riches of the Church, the doctrine of salvation obtained by Christ, by their false doctrines and their luxurious living, receive that word of our Lord, 'Blessed are the poor in spirit,' when they were poor themselves neither in fact nor in disposition?" Even the donative of Constantine to the Roman bishop Silvester was declared to be a pitiable fiction. This lie had been so clearly exposed that it was obvious to the very day-laborers and to women, and that these could put to silence the most learned men if they ventured to defend the genuineness of this donative; so that the Pope, with his cardinals, no longer dared to appear in public. But Arnold was perhaps the only individual in whose case such a tendency was deeply rooted in religious conviction; with many it was but a transitory intoxication, in which their political interests had become merged for the moment. The pope Lucius II was killed as early as 1145, in the attack on the Capitol. A scholar of the great abbot Bernard, the abbot Peter Bernard of Pisa, now mounted the papal chair under the name of Eugene III. As Eugene honored and loved the abbot Bernard as his spiritual father and old preceptor, so the latter took advantage of his relation to the Pope to speak the truth to him with a plainness which no other man would easily have ventured to use. In congratulating him upon his elevation to the papal dignity, he took occasion to exhort him to do away with the many abuses which had become so widely spread in the Church by worldly influences. "Who will give me the satisfaction," said he in his letter, "of beholding the Church of God, before I die, in a condition like that in which it was in ancient days, when the apostles threw out their nets, not for silver and gold, but for souls? How fervently I wish thou mightest inherit the word of that apostle whose episcopal seat thou hast acquired, of him who said, 'Thy gold perish with thee.' Oh that all the enemies of Zion might tremble before this dreadful word, and shrink back abashed! This, thy mother indeed expects and requires of thee, for this long and sigh the sons of thy mother, small and great, that every plant which our Father in heaven has not planted may be rooted up by thy hands." He then alluded to the sudden deaths of the last predecessors of the Pope, exhorting him to humility, and reminding him of his responsibility. "In all thy works," he wrote, "remember that thou art a man; and let the fear of Him who taketh away the breath of rulers be ever before thine eyes." Eugene was soon forced to yield, it is true, to the superior force of the insurrectionary spirit in Rome, and in 1146 to take refuge in France; but, like Urban and Innocent, he too, from this country, attained to the highest triumph of the papal power. Like Innocent, he found there, in the abbot Bernard of Clairvaux, a mightier instrument for operating on the minds of the age than he could have found in any other country; and like Urban, when banished from the ancient seat of the papacy, he was enabled to place himself at the head of a crusade proclaimed in his name, and undertaken with great enthusiasm; an enterprise from which a new impression of sacredness would be reflected back upon his own person. The news of the success which had attended the arms of the Saracens in Syria, the defeat of the Christians, the conquest of the ancient Christian territory of Edessa, the danger which threatened the new Christian kingdom of Jerusalem and the Holy City, had spread alarm among the Western nations, and the Pope considered himself bound to summon the Christians of the West to the assistance of their hard-pressed brethren in the faith and to the recovery of the holy places. By a letter directed to the abbot Bernard he commissioned him to exhort the Western Christians in his name, that, for penance and forgiveness of sins, they should march to the East, to deliver their brethren, or to give up their lives for them. Enthusiastic for the cause himself Bernard communicated, through the power of the living word and by letters, his enthusiasm to the nations. He represented the new crusade as a means furnished by God to the multitudes sunk in sin, of calling them to repentance, and of paving the way, by devout participation in a pious work, for the forgiveness of their sins. Thus, in his letter to the clergy and people in East Frankland (Germany), he exhorts them eagerly to lay hold on this opportunity; he declares that the Almighty condescended to invite murderers, robbers, adulterers, perjurers, and those sunk in other crimes, into his service, as well as the righteous. He calls upon them to make an end of waging war with one another, and to seek an object for their warlike prowess in this holy contest. "Here, brave warrior," he exclaims, "thou hast a field where thou mayest fight without danger, where victory is glory and death is gain. Take the sign of the cross, and thou shalt obtain the forgiveness of all the sins which thou hast never confessed with a contrite heart." By Bernard's fiery discourses men of all ranks were carried away. In France and in Germany he travelled about, conquering by an effort his great bodily infirmities, and the living word from his lips produced even mightier effects than his letters. A peculiar charm, and a peculiar power of moving men's minds, must have existed in the tones of his voice; to this must be added the awe-inspiring effect of his whole appearance, the way in which his whole being and the motions of his bodily frame joined in testifying of that which seized and inspired him. Thus it admits of being explained how, in Germany, even those who understood but little, or in fact nothing, of what he said, could be so moved as to shed tears and smite their breasts; could, by his own speeches in a foreign language, be more strongly affected and agitated than by the immediate interpretation of his words by another. From all quarters sick persons were conveyed to him by the friends who sought from him a cure; and the power of his faith, the confidence he inspired in the minds of men, might sometimes produce remarkable effects. With this enthusiasm, however, Bernard united a degree of prudence and a discernment of character such as few of that age possessed, and such qualities were required to counteract the multiform excitements of the wild spirit of fanaticism which mixed in with this great ferment of minds. Thus, he warned the Germans not to suffer themselves to be misled so far as to follow certain independent enthusiasts, ignorant of war, who were bent on moving forward the bodies of the crusaders prematurely. He held up as a warning the example of Peter the Hermit, and declared himself very decidedly opposed to the proposition of an abbot who was disposed to march with a number of monks to Jerusalem; "for," said he, "fighting warriors are more needed there than singing monks." At an assembly held at Chartres it was proposed that he himself should take the lead of the expedition; but he rejected the proposition at once, declaring that it was beyond his power and contrary to his calling. Having, perhaps, reason to fear that the Pope might be hurried on, by the shouts of the many, to lay upon him some charge to which he did not feel himself called, he besought the Pope that he would not make him a victim to men's arbitrary will, but that he would inquire, as it was his duty to do, how God had determined to dispose of him. With the preaching of this Second Crusade, as with the invitation to the First, was connected an extraordinary awakening. Many who had hitherto given themselves up to their unrestrained passions and desires, and become strangers to all higher feelings, were seized with compunction. Bernard's call to repentance penetrated many a heart; people who had lived in all manner of crime were seen following this voice and flocking together in troops to receive the badge of the cross. Bishop Otto of Freisingen, the historian, who himself took the cross at that time, expresses it as his opinion "that every man of sound understanding would be forced to acknowledge so sudden and uncommon a change could have been produced in no other way than by the right hand of the Lord." The provost Gerhoh of Reichersberg, who wrote in the midst of these movements, was persuaded that he saw here a work of the Holy Spirit, designed to counteract the vices and corruptions which had got the upper hand in the Church. Many who had been awakened to repentance confessed what they had taken from others by robbery or fraud, and hastened, before they went to the holy war, to seek reconciliation with their enemies. The Christian enthusiasm of the German people found utterance in songs in the German tongue; and even now the peculiar adaptation of this language to sacred poetry began to be remarked. Indecent songs could no longer venture to appear abroad. While some were awakened by Bernard's preaching from a life of crime to repentance, and by taking part in the holy war strove to obtain the remission of their sins, others again, who though hitherto borne along in the current of ordinary worldly pursuits, yet had not given themselves up to vice, were filled by Bernard's words with loathing of the worldly life, inflamed with a vehement longing after a higher stage of Christian perfection, after a life of entire consecration to God. They longed rather to enter upon the pilgrimage to the heavenly than to an earthly Jerusalem; they resolved to become monks, and would fain have the man of God himself, whose words had made so deep an impression on their hearts, as their guide in the spiritual life, and commit themselves to his directions, in the monastery of Clairvaux. But here Bernard showed his prudence and knowledge of mankind; he did not allow all to become monks who wished to do so. Many he rejected because he perceived they were not fitted for the quiet of the contemplative life, but needed to be disciplined by the conflicts and cares of a life of action. As contemporaries themselves acknowledge, these first impressions, in the case of many who went to the crusades, were of no permanent duration, and their old nature broke forth again the more strongly under the manifold temptations to which they were exposed, in proportion to the facility with which, through the confidence they reposed in a plenary indulgence, without really laying to heart the condition upon which it was bestowed, they could flatter themselves with security in their sins. Gerhoh of Reichersberg, in describing the blessed effects of that awakening which accompanied the preaching of the crusader, yet says: "We doubt not that among so vast a multitude some became in the true sense and in all sincerity soldiers of Christ. Some, however, were led to embark in the enterprise by various other occasions, concerning whom it does not belong to us to judge, but only to Him who alone knows the hearts of those who marched to the contest either in the right or not in the right spirit. Yet this we do confidently affirm, that to this crusade many were called, but few were chosen." And it was said that many returned from this expedition, not better, but worse than they went. Therefore the monk Cesarius of Heisterbach, who states this, adds: "All depends on bearing the yoke of Christ not _one_ year or _two_ years, but daily, if a man is really intent on doing it in truth, and in that sense in which our Lord requires it to be done, in order to follow him." When it turned out, however, that the event did not answer the expectations excited by Bernard's enthusiastic confidence, but the crusade came to that unfortunate issue which was brought about especially by the treachery of the princes and nobles of the Christian kingdom in Syria, this was a source of great chagrin to Bernard, who had been so active in setting it in motion, and who had inspired such confident hopes by his promises. He appeared now in the light of a bad prophet, and he was reproached by many with having incited men to engage in an enterprise which had cost so much blood to no purpose; but Bernard's friends alleged, in his defence, that he had not excited such a popular movement single-handed, but as the organ of the Pope, in whose name he acted; and they appealed to the facts by which his preaching of the cross was proved to be a work of God--to the wonders which attended it. Or they ascribed the failure of the undertaking to the bad conduct of the crusaders themselves, to the unchristian mode of life which many of them led, as one of these friends maintained, in a consoling letter to Bernard himself, adding, "God, however, has turned it to good. Numbers who, if they had returned home, would have continued to live a life of crime, disciplined and purified by many sufferings, have passed into the life eternal." But Bernard himself could not be staggered in his faith by this event. In writing to Pope Eugene on this subject, he refers to the incomprehensibleness of the divine ways and judgments; to the example of Moses, who, although his work carried on its face incontestable evidence of being a work of God, yet was not permitted himself to conduct the Jews into the Promised Land. As this was owing to the fault of the Jews themselves, so too the crusaders had none to blame but themselves for the failure of the divine work. "But," says he, "it will be said, perhaps, how do we know that this work came from the Lord? What miracle dost thou work that we should believe thee? To this question I need not give an answer; it is a point on which my modesty asks to be excused from speaking. Do you answer," says he to the Pope, "for me and for yourself, according to that which you have seen and heard." So firmly was Bernard convinced that God had sustained his labors by miracles. Eugene was at length enabled, in the year 1149, after having for a long time excited against himself the indignation of the cardinals by his dependence on the French abbot, with the assistance of Roger, King of the Sicilies, to return to Rome; where, however, he still had to maintain a struggle with the party of Arnold. The provost Gerhoh finds something to complain of in the fact that the Church of St. Peter wore so warlike an aspect that men beheld the tomb of the apostle surrounded with bastions and the implements of war. As Bernard was no longer sufficiently near the Pope to exert on him the same immediate personal influence as in times past, he addressed to him a voice of admonition and warning, such as the mighty of the earth seldom enjoy the privilege of hearing. With the frankness of a love which, as he himself expresses it, knew not the master, but recognized the son, even under the pontifical robes, he set before him, in his four books _On Meditation_, which he sent to him singly at different times, the duties of his office, and the faults against which, in order to fulfil these duties, he needed especially to guard. Bernard was penetrated with a conviction that to the Pope, as St. Peter's successor, was committed by God a sovereign power of church government over all, and responsible to no other tribunal; that to this church theocracy, guided by the Pope, the administration even of the secular power, though independent within its own peculiar sphere, should be subjected, for the service of the kingdom of God; but he also perceived, with the deepest pain, how very far the papacy was from corresponding to this its idea and destination; what prodigious corruption had sprung and continued to spring from the abuse of papal authority; he perceived already, with prophetic eye, that this very abuse of arbitrary will must eventually bring about the destruction of this power. He desired that the Pope should disentangle himself from the secular part of his office, and reduce that office within the purely spiritual domain; and that, above all, he should learn to govern and restrict himself. But to the close of his life, in the year 1153, Pope Eugene had to contend with the turbulent spirit of the Romans and the influences of the principles disseminated by Arnold; and this contest was prolonged into the reign of his second successor, Adrian IV. Among the people and among the nobles, a considerable party had arisen who would concede to the Pope no kind of secular dominion. And there seems to have been a shade of difference among the members of this party. A mob of the people is said to have gone to such an extreme of arrogance as to propose the choosing of a new emperor from among the Romans themselves, the restoration of a Roman empire independent of the Pope. The other party, to which belonged the nobles, were for placing the emperor Frederick I at the head of the Roman Republic, and uniting themselves with him in a common interest against the Pope. They invited him to receive the imperial crown, in the ancient manner, from the "senate and Roman people," and not from the heretical and recreant clergy and false monks, who acted in contradiction to their calling, exercising lordship despite of the evangelical and apostolical doctrine; and in contempt of all laws, divine and human, brought the Church of God and the kingdom of the world into confusion. Those who pretend that they are the representatives of Peter, it was said, in a letter addressed in the spirit of this party to the emperor Frederick I, "act in contradiction to the doctrines which that apostle teaches in his epistles. How can they say with the apostle Peter, 'Lo, we have left all and followed thee,' and, 'Silver and gold have I none'? How can our Lord say to such, 'Ye are the light of the world,' 'the salt of the earth'? Much rather is to be applied to them what our Lord says of the salt that has lost its savor. 'Eager after earthly riches, they spoil the true riches, from which the salvation of the world has proceeded.' How can the saying be applied to them, 'Blessed are the poor in spirit'? for they are neither poor in spirit nor in fact." Pope Adrian IV was first enabled, under more favorable circumstances, and assisted by the Emperor Frederick I, to deprive the Arnold party of its leader, and then to suppress it entirely. It so happened that, in the first year of Adrian's reign, 1155, a cardinal, on his way to visit the Pope, was attacked and wounded by followers of Arnold. This induced the Pope to put all Rome under the interdict, with a view to force the expulsion of Arnold and his party. This means did not fail of its effect. The people who could not bear the suspension of divine worship, now themselves compelled the nobles to bring about the ejection of Arnold and his friends. Arnold, on leaving Rome, found protection from Italian nobles. By the order, however, of the emperor Frederick, who had come into Italy, he was torn from his protectors and surrendered up to the papal authority. The Prefect of Rome then took possession of his person and caused him to be hanged. His body was burned, and its ashes thrown into the Tiber, lest his bones might be preserved as the relics of a martyr by the Romans, who were enthusiastically devoted to him. Worthy men, who were in other respects zealous defenders of the church orthodoxy and of the hierarchy--as, for example, Gerhoh of Reichersberg--expressed their disapprobation, first, that Arnold should be punished with death on account of the errors which he disseminated; secondly, that the sentence of death should proceed from a spiritual tribunal, or that such a tribunal should at least have subjected itself to that bad appearance. But on the part of the Roman court it was alleged, in defence of this proceeding, that "it was done without the knowledge and contrary to the will of the Roman curia." "The Prefect of Rome had forcibly removed Arnold from the prison where he was kept, and his servants had put him to death in revenge for injuries they had suffered from Arnold's party. Arnold, therefore, was executed, not on account of his doctrines, but in consequence of tumults excited by himself." It may be a question whether this was said with sincerity, or whether, according to the proverb, a confession of guilt is not implied in the excuse. But Gerhoh was of the opinion that in this case they should at least have done as David did, in the case of Abner's death, and, by allowing Arnold to be buried, and his death to be mourned over, instead of causing his body to be burned, and the remains thrown into the Tiber, washed their hands of the whole transaction. But the idea for which Arnold had contended, and for which he died, continued to work in various forms, even after his death--the idea of a purification of the Church from the foreign worldly elements with which it had become vitiated, of its restoration to its original spiritual character. DECLINE OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE: RAVAGES OF ROGER OF SICILY A.D. 1146 GEORGE FINLAY (From the enthronement of the Commenian dynasty in A.D. 1081, which was accomplished through a successful rebellion, attended by shameful treachery and rapine, the Byzantine empire, and especially Constantinople, its capital, passed through many vicissitudes; but the sack of the city by Alexius Commenus, the founder of the line, was remembered by the populace to the disadvantage of all his successors; the last of whom, Andronicus I, ended his reign in 1185. John, the son of Alexius [1118-1143], ruled with discretion and ability, and recovered some territory from the Turks. Manuel I, the son of John [1143-1181], ruled during a period of almost constant war, and for a time he held the enemies of the empire in check. But he appears to have been more endowed with courage and the spirit of enterprise than with good judgment, and his conduct of the empire coincided with events that, as seen in history, contributed to its decline, which after his death followed rapidly. As this decline is to be dated especially from the passing but not ineffectual invasion of Roger II, King of Sicily, in 1146, some account of that, together with a view of conditions immediately preceding, becomes important in a work like this. The century and a half before Roger's invasion had been a period of tranquillity for the distinctively Greek people of the empire, who had increased rapidly in numbers and wealth, and were in possession of an extensive commerce and many manufactures. Therefore they were perhaps the greatest sufferers from the adverse events which befell the State.) The emperor Alexius I had concluded a commercial treaty with Pisa toward the end of his reign. Manuel renewed this alliance, and he appears to have been the first of the Byzantine emperors who concluded a public treaty with Genoa. The pride of the emperors of the Romans--as the sovereigns of Constantinople were styled--induced them to treat the Italian republics as municipalities still dependent on the Empire of the Caesars, of which they had once formed a part; and the rulers both of Pisa and Genoa yielded to this assumption of supremacy, and consented to appear as vassals and liegemen of the Byzantine emperors, in order to participate in the profits which they saw the Venetians gained by trading in their dominions. Several commercial treaties with Pisa and Genoa, as well as with Venice, have been preserved. The obligations of the republics are embodied in the charter enumerating the concessions granted by the Emperor, and the document is called a _chrysobulum_, or golden bull, from the golden seal of the Emperor attached to it as the certificate of its authenticity. In Manuel's treaties with the Genoese and Pisans, the republics bind themselves never to engage in hostilities against the empire; but, on the contrary, all the subjects of the republics residing in the Emperor's dominions become bound to assist him against all assailants; they engage to act with their own ships, or to serve on board the imperial fleet, for the usual pay granted to Latin mercenaries. They promise to offer no impediment to the extension of the empire in Syria, reserving to themselves the factories and privileges they already possess in any place that may be conquered. They submit their civil and criminal affairs to the jurisdiction of the Byzantine courts of justice, as was then the case with the Venetians and other foreigners in the empire. Acts of piracy and armed violence, unless the criminals were taken in the act, were to be reported to the rulers of the republic whose subjects had committed the crime, and the Byzantine authorities were not to render the innocent traders in the empire responsible for the injuries inflicted by these brigands. The republicans engaged to observe all the stipulations in their treaties, in defiance of ecclesiastical excommunication or the prohibition of any individual, crowned or not crowned. Manuel, in return, granted to the republicans the right of forming a factory, erecting a quay for landing their goods, and building a church; and the Genoese received their grant in an agreeable position on the side of the port opposite Constantinople, where in after-times their great colony of Galata was formed. The Emperor promised to send an annual of from four hundred to five hundred gold bezants, with two pieces of a rich brocade then manufactured only in the Byzantine empire, to the republican governments, and sixty bezants, with one piece of brocade, to their archbishops. These treaties fixed the duty levied on the goods imported or exported from Constantinople by the Italians at 4 per cent.; but in the other cities of the empire, the Pisans and Genoese were to pay the same duties as other Latin traders, excepting, of course, the privileged Venetians. These duties generally amounted to 10 per cent. The republics were expressly excluded, by the Genoese treaty, from the Black Sea trade, except when they received a special license from the Emperor. In case of shipwreck, the property of the foreigners was to be protected by the imperial authorities and respected by the people, and every assistance was to be granted to the unfortunate sufferers. This humane clause was not new in Byzantine commercial treaties, for it is contained in the earliest treaty concluded by Alexius I with the Pisans. On the whole, the arrangements for the administration of justice in these treaties prove that the Byzantine empire still enjoyed a greater degree of order than the rest of Europe. The state of civilization in the Eastern Empire rendered the public finances the moving power of the government, as in the nations of modern Europe. This must always tend to the centralization of political authority, for the highest branch of the executive will always endeavor to dispose of the revenues of the State according to its views of necessity. This centralizing policy led Manuel to order all the money which the Greek commercial communities had hitherto devoted to maintaining local squadrons of galleys for the defence of the islands and coasts of the Aegean to be remitted to the treasury at Constantinople. The ships were compelled to visit the imperial dockyard in the capital to undergo repairs and to receive provisions and pay. A navy is a most expensive establishment; kings, ministers, and people are all very apt to think that when it is not wanted at any particular time, the cost of its maintenance may be more profitably applied to other objects. Manuel, after he had secured the funds of the Greeks for his own treasury, soon left their ships to rot, and the commerce of Greece became exposed to the attacks of small squadrons of Italian pirates who previously would not have dared to plunder in the Archipelago. It may be thought by some that Manuel acted wisely in centralizing the naval administration of his empire; but the great number, the small size, and the relative position of many of the Greek islands with regard to the prevailing winds render the permanent establishment of naval stations at several points necessary to prevent piracy. Manuel and Otho ruined the navy of Greece by their unwise measures of centralization; Pericles, by prudently centralizing the maritime forces of the various states, increased the naval power of Athens, and gave additional security to every Greek ship that navigated the sea. The same fiscal views which induced Manuel to centralize the naval administration when it was injurious to the interests of the empire, prompted him to act diametrically opposite with regard to the army. The emperor John had added greatly to the efficiency of the Byzantine military force by improving and centralizing its administration, and he left Manuel an excellent army, which rendered the Eastern Empire the most powerful state in Europe. But Manuel, from motives of economy, abandoned his father's system. Instead of assembling all the military forces of the empire annually in camps, where they received pay and were subjected to strict discipline, toward the end of his reign he distributed even the regular army in cities and provinces, where they were quartered far apart, in order that each district, by maintaining a certain number of men, might relieve the treasury from the burden of their pay and subsistence while they were not on actual service. The money thus retained in the central treasury was spent in idle festivals at Constantinople, and the troops, dispersed and neglected, became careless of their military exercises, and lived in a state of relaxed discipline. Other abuses were quickly introduced; resident yeomen, shopkeepers, and artisans were enrolled in the legions, with the connivance of the officers. The burden of maintaining the troops was in this way diminished, but the army was deteriorated. In other districts, where the divisions were exposed to be called into action, or were more directly under central inspection, the effective force was kept up at its full complement, but the people were compelled to submit to every kind of extortion and tyranny. The tendency of absolute power being always to weaken the power of the law, and to increase the authority of the executive agents of the sovereign, soon manifested its effects in the rapid progress of administrative corruption. The Byzantine garrisons in a few years became prototypes of the shopkeeping janizaries of the Ottoman empire, and bore no resemblance to the feudal militia of Western Europe, which Manuel had proposed as the model of his reform. This change produced a rapid decline in the military strength of the Byzantine army and accelerated the fall of the empire. For a considerable period the Byzantine emperors had been gradually increasing the proportion of foreign mercenaries in their service; this practice Manuel carried further than any of his predecessors. Besides the usual Varangian, Italian, and German guards, we find large corps of Patzinaks, Franks, and Turks enrolled in his armies, and officers of these nations occupying situations of the highest rank. A change had taken place in the military tactics, caused by the heavy armor and powerful horses which the crusaders brought into the field, and by the greater personal strength and skill in warlike exercises of the Western troops, who had no occupation from infancy but gymnastic exercises and athletic amusements. The nobility of the feudal nations expended more money on arms and armor than on other luxuries; and this becoming the general fashion, the Western troops were much better armed than the Byzantine soldiers. War became the profession of the higher ranks, and the expense of military undertakings was greatly increased by the military classes being completely separated from the rest of society. The warlike disposition of Manuel led him to favor the military nobles of the West who took service at his court; while his confidence in his own power, and in the political superiority of his empire, deluded him with the hope of being able to quell the turbulence of the Franks, and set bounds to the ambition and power of the popes. The wars of Manuel were sometimes forced on him by foreign powers, and sometimes commenced for temporary objects; but he appears never to have formed any fixed idea of the permanent policy which ought to have determined the constant employment of all the military resources at his command, for the purpose of advancing the interest of his empire and giving security to his subjects. His military exploits may be considered under three heads: His wars with the Franks, whether in Asia or Europe; his wars with the Hungarians and Servians; and his wars with the Turks. His first operations were against the principality of Antioch. The death of John II caused the dispersion of the fine army he had assembled for the conquest of Syria; but Manuel sent a portion of that army, and a strong fleet, to attack the principality. One of the generals of the land forces was Prosuch, a Turkish officer in high favor with his father. Raymond of Antioch was no longer the idle gambler he had shown himself in the camp of the emperor John; but though he was now distinguished by his courage and skill in arms, he was completely defeated, and the imperial army carried its ravages up to the very walls of Antioch, while the fleet laid waste the coast. Though the Byzantine troops retired, the losses of the campaign convinced Raymond that it would be impossible to defend Antioch should Manuel take the field in person. He therefore hastened to Constantinople, as a suppliant, to sue for peace; but Manuel, before admitting him to an audience, required that he should repair to the tomb of the emperor John and ask pardon for having violated his former promises. When the Hercules of the Franks, as Raymond was called, had submitted to this humiliation, he was admitted to the imperial presence, swore fealty to the Byzantine empire as Prince of Antioch, and became the vassal of the emperor Manuel. The conquest of Edessa by the Mahometans, which took place in the month of December, 1144, rendered the defence of Antioch by the Latins a doubtful enterprise, unless they could secure the assistance of the Greeks. Manuel involved himself in a war with Roger, King of Sicily, which perhaps he might have avoided by more prudent conduct. An envoy he had sent to the Sicilian court concluded a treaty, which Manuel thought fit to disavow with unsuitable violence. This gave the Sicilian King a pretext for commencing war, but the real cause of hostilities must be sought in the ambition of Roger and the hostile feelings of Manuel. Roger was one of the wealthiest princes of his time; he had united under his sceptre both Sicily and all the Norman possessions in Southern Italy; his ambition was equal to his wealth and power, and he aspired at eclipsing the glory of Robert Guiscard and Bohemund by some permanent conquests in the Byzantine empire. On the other hand, the renown of Roger excited the envy of Manuel, who, proud of his army and confident of his own valor and military skill, hoped to reconquer Sicily. His passion made him forget that he was surrounded by numerous enemies, who would combine to prevent his employing all his forces against one adversary. Manuel consequently acted imprudently in revealing his hostile intentions; while Roger could direct all his forces against one point, and avail himself of Manuel's embarrassments. He commenced hostilities by inflicting a blow on the wealth and prosperity of Greece, from which it never recovered. At the commencement of the Second Crusade, when the attention of Manuel was anxiously directed to the movements of Louis VII of France, and Conrad, Emperor of Germany, Roger, who had collected a powerful fleet at Brindisi, for the purpose either of attacking the Byzantine empire or transporting the crusaders to Palestine, availed himself of an insurrection in Corfu to conclude a convention with the inhabitants, who admitted a garrison of one thousand Norman troops into their citadel. The Corfutes complained with great reason of the intolerable weight of taxation to which they were subjected; of the utter neglect of their interests by the central government, which consumed their wealth, and of the great abuses which prevailed in the administration of justice; but the remedy they adopted, by placing themselves under the rule of foreign masters, was not likely to alleviate these evils. The Sicilian admiral, after landing the Norman garrison at Corfu, sailed to Monembasia, then one of the principal commercial cities in the East, hoping to gain possession of it without difficulty; but the maritime population of this impregnable fortress gave him a warm reception and easily repulsed his attack. After plundering the coasts of Euboea and Attica, the Sicilian fleet returned to the West, and laid waste Acarnania and Etolia; it then entered the Gulf of Corinth, and debarked a body of troops at Crissa. This force marched through the country to Thebes, plundering every town and village on the way. Thebes offered no resistance and was plundered in the most deliberate and barbarous manner. The inhabitants were numerous and wealthy. The soil of Boeotia is extremely productive, and numerous manufactures established in the city of Thebes gave additional value to the abundant produce of agricultural industry. A century had elapsed since the citizens of Thebes had gone out valiantly to fight the army of Slavonian rebels in the reign of Michael IV (the Paphlagonian), and that defeat had long been forgotten. But all military spirit was now dead, and the Thebans had so long lived without any fear of invasion that they had forgotten the use of arms. The Sicilians found them not only unprepared to offer any resistance, but so surprised that they had not even adopted any effectual measures to secure or conceal their movable property. The conquerors, secure against all danger of interruption, plundered Thebes at their leisure. Not only gold, silver, jewels, and church plate were carried off, but even the goods found in the warehouses, and the rarest articles of furniture in private houses, were transported to the ships. Bales of silk and dyed leather were sent off to the fleet as deliberately as if they had been legally purchased in time of peace. When all ordinary means of collecting booty were exhausted, the citizens were compelled to take an oath on the Holy Scriptures that they had not concealed any portion of their property; yet many of the wealthiest were dragged away captive, in order to profit by their ransom; and many of the most skilful workmen in the silk manufactories, for which Thebes had long been famous, were pressed on board the fleet to labor at the oar. From Boeotia the army passed to Corinth. Nicephorus Caluphes, the governor, retired into the Acro-Corinth, but the garrison appeared to his cowardly heart not strong enough to defend this impregnable fortress, and he surrendered it to George Antiochenus, the Sicilian admiral, on the first summons. On examining the fortress of which he had thus unexpectedly gained possession, the admiral could not help exclaiming that he fought under the protection of heaven, for if Caluphes had not been more timid than a virgin, Corinth should have repulsed every attack. Corinth was sacked as cruelly as Thebes; men of rank, beautiful women, and skilful artisans, with their wives and families, were carried away into captivity. Even the relics of St. Theodore were taken from the church in which they were preserved; and it was not until the whole Sicilian fleet was laden with as much of the wealth of Greece as it was capable of transporting that the admiral ordered it to sail. The Sicilians did not venture to retain possession of the impregnable citadel of Corinth, as it would have been extremely difficult for them to keep up their communications with the garrison. This invasion of Greece was conducted entirely as a plundering expedition, having for its object to inflict the greatest possible injury on the Byzantine empire, while it collected the largest possible quantity of booty for the Sicilian troops. Corfu was the only conquest of which Roger retained possession. The ruin of the Greek commerce and manufactures has been ascribed to the transference of the silk trade from Thebes and Corinth to Palermo, under the judicious protection it received from Roger; but it would be more correct to say that the injudicious and oppressive financial administration of the Byzantine emperors destroyed the commercial prosperity and manufacturing industry of the Greeks; while the wise liberality and intelligent protection of the Norman kings extended the commerce and increased the industry of the Sicilians. When the Sicilian fleet returned to Palermo, Roger determined to employ all the silk manufacturers in their original occupations. He consequently collected all their families together, and settled them at Palermo, supplying them with the means of exercising their industry with profit to themselves, and inducing them to teach his own subjects to manufacture the richest brocades and to rival the rarest productions of the East. Roger, unlike most of the monarchs of his age, paid particular attention to improving the wealth of his dominions by increasing the prosperity of his subjects. During his reign the cultivation of the sugar-cane was introduced into Sicily. The conduct of Manuel was very different; when he concluded peace with William, the son and successor of Roger, in 1158, he paid no attention to the commercial interests of his Greek subjects; the silk manufactures of Thebes and Corinth were not reclaimed and reinstated in their native seats; they were left to exercise their industry for the profit of their new prince, while their old sovereign would have abandoned them to perish from want. Under such circumstances it is not remarkable that the commerce and the manufactures of Greece were transferred in the course of another century to Sicily and Italy. CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY EMBRACING THE PERIOD COVERED IN THIS VOLUME A.D. 843-1161 JOHN RUDD, LL.D. Events treated at length are here indicated in large type; the numerals following give volume and page. Separate chronologies of the various nations, and of the careers of famous persons, will be found in the INDEX VOLUME, with volume and page references showing where the several events are fully treated. A.D. 843. Messina in Sicily captured by the Saracens. Feudalism may be said to become an actuality from about this time. See "FEUDALISM: ITS FRANKISH BIRTH AND ENGLISH DEVELOPMENT," v, 1. The Danes--called by Arabian writers "_Magioges_," people of Gog and Magog--land at Lisbon from fifty-four ships and carry off a rich booty. The treaty of Verdun, between the three sons of Louis _le Débonnaire_. See "DECAY OF THE FRANKISH EMPIRE," v, 22. 844. Lothair gives the title king of Italy to his son Louis, who is crowned at Rome. Abderrahman fits out a fleet to resist the Danes who have infested the neighborhood of Cadiz and Seville. 845. Paris is pillaged for the first time by the Danes or Northmen. See "DECAY OF THE FRANKISH EMPIRE," v, 22. Hamburg is looted and destroyed by the Danes. 846. Rome is attacked by the Saracens, who, after plundering the country, lay siege to Gaeta. Spain afflicted by a great drought and swarms of locusts. 847. A violent storm drives the Saracens from the siege of Gaeta. The distress in Spain is relieved by Abderrahman, who remits the taxes and constructs aqueducts and fountains. 848. Louis, King of Italy, drives the Saracens out of Beneventum. Bordeaux is assailed by the Northmen, but they are vigorously repulsed. See "DECAY OF THE FRANKISH EMPIRE," v, 22. Pope Leo IV adds a new quarter to the city of Rome by surrounding the Vatican with walls. 849. Birth of Alfred the Great. See "CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT," v, 49. Gottschalk, a German bishop who preached the doctrine of twofold predestination, sentenced by the Council of Quincy to be flogged and suffer perpetual imprisonment. The Saracens range at will through the Mediterranean; they are defeated at the mouth of the Tiber by the combined fleets of Naples, Gaeta, and Amalphi. On Gallic soil the _benificium_ and practice of commendation is specially fostered. See "FEUDALISM: ITS FRANKISH BIRTH AND ENGLISH DEVELOPMENT," v, 1. 850. Roric, a nephew of Harold, collects a piratical armament in Friesland and attacks adjacent coasts; Lothair grants Durstadt to him to secure his own lands. Pépin strengthens himself in Aquitaine by leagues with the Northmen. See "DECAY OF THE FRANKISH EMPIRE," v, 22. 851. Danes ascend the Rhine with 252 ships and plunder Ghent, Cologne, Treves, and Aix-la-Chapelle. Roric, with 350 sail, proceeds up the Thames and pillages Canterbury and London, after defeating the King of Mercia; he is at last defeated by Ethelwulf, with great slaughter, at Ockley. 852. A revolt against the Moslems in Armenia. 853. Hastings' (the Danish chief) ruse at Tuscany. See "DECAY OF THE FRANKISH EMPIRE," v, 22. 855. Death of Lothair, Emperor of the Franks; civil war between his sons. A band of Danes keep the Isle of Sheppey through the winter; their first foothold in England. 860. Iceland discovered by the Northmen. 862. Rurik, the Varangian chief, conquers Novgorod and Kiov and lays the foundation of the Russian empire. 863. Cyril and Methodius, the "apostles of the Slavs," undertake the conversion of the Moravians. Pope Nicholas deposes Photius and declares Ignatius to be the patriarch of Constantinople; Photius in turn excommunicates the Pope. Charles the Bald founds the County of Flanders. 864. Pope Nicholas asserts his exclusive right to appoint and depose bishops; the sovereigns and prelates of France and Germany resist his claim. Christianity first introduced into Russia; it makes little progress. 865. First naval expedition of the Varangians or Russians against Constantinople; their fleet is dispersed by a storm. 866. East Anglia invaded by a numerous body of Danes. Accession of Alfonso the Great of Asturias. 868. Nottingham captured by the Danes; they are besieged by Burhred, Alfred, and his brother, who allow them to return to York with their booty. See "CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT," v, 49. 869. Eighth general council held at Constantinople; the deposition of Photius confirmed and all iconoclasts anathematized. 870. Malta captured by the Saracens. East Anglia captured by the Danes; Edmund, titular king of the country, is treacherously slain by them; is afterward canonized. 871. Hincmar, a French prelate, encourages Charles the Bald to resist the authority assumed by the Pope over the church of France. Bari, a Saracen fortress in Southern Italy, is surrendered to the Franks and Greeks. Alfred ascends the throne of Wessex. See "CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT," v, 49. 872. Louis of Germany relinquishes to Emperor Louis his portion of Lorraine. 873. On the approach of Emperor Louis with an army the Saracens, who were besieging Salerno, retire; they land in Calabria and commit great depredations. Locusts lay waste Italy, France, and Germany. Organs introduced into the churches of Germany. 874. Mercia is conquered by the Danes, who set up Ceolwulf as their king. Iceland is settled by the Danes. 875. Death of Emperor Louis; Charles the Bald and Louis of Germany contend for the succession. The former, by granting new privileges to the Church of Rome, obtains the support of the Pope, and is acknowledged as the king of Italy and emperor of the West. Alfred, King of Wessex, fits out a fleet and conquers the Danes in a great sea battle. See "CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT," v, 49. 876. Death of Louis of Germany; division of his kingdom among his three sons: Bavaria to Carloman; Saxony to Louis the Stammerer; and East France (Franconia and Swabia) to Charles the Fat. Their uncle, Charles the Bald, attempts to dispossess them, but is defeated by Louis at Andernach. Rollo, at the head of the Northmen, enters the Seine and makes his first settlement in Normandy. See "DECAY OF THE FRANKISH EMPIRE," v, 22. 877. No emperor of the West for three years. Carloman acquires the crown of Italy; the Pope, who opposes him, is driven from Rome by Lambert, Duke of Spoleto, and takes refuge in France. A large traffic in slaves carried on by the Venetians. Count Boso founds the kingdom of Florence. 878. Alfred defeats a great host of the Danes at Eddington. See "CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT," v, 49. Syracuse captured by the Saracens, who become the masters of Sicily. 879. Methodius forbidden by the Pope to perform the services of the Church for the Slavonians in their own language. The kingdom of Cisjurane, Burgundy, founded; it included Provence, Dauphiné, and the southern part of Savoy. 880. Germany is ravaged by the Northmen. Alfred, the English King, defeats the Danes at the battle of Ethandun; by treaty he gives them equal rights, and they acknowledge his supremacy. See "CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT," v, 49. 881. Methodius gets leave to use the Slavonic tongue in the churches. Charles the Fat ascends the throne of Italy and Germany; is emperor of the West. 882. Albategni, the Arabian astronomer, observes the autumnal equinox, September 19th. 883. Alfred sends Singhelm and Athelstan on missions to Rome and the Christian church in India. 884. Charles the Fat reunites the Frankish empire of Charlemagne. 885. Siege of Paris by the Northmen. See "DECAY OF THE FRANKISH EMPIRE," v, 22. 886. Alfred the Great said to have founded the University of Oxford. 887. Deposition of Charles the Fat; Arnulf, natural son of Carloman of Bavaria, elected by the nobles. 888. Death of Charles the Fat; final disruption of the Frankish empire; the crown of France in dispute between the Count of Paris, Eudes, and Charles the Simple. See "DECAY OF THE FRANKISH EMPIRE," v, 22. Founding of the kingdom of Transjurane, Burgundy, which includes the northern part of Savoy and all Switzerland between the Reuss and the Jura. Alfred the Great begins his translations from Latin into Anglo-Saxon. See "AUGUSTINE'S MISSIONARY WORK IN ENGLAND," iv, 182. 890. Southern Italy constituted a province of the Greek empire and called Lombardia. 891. King Arnulf, of Germany, defeats the Northmen or Danes at Louvain. 894. Arnulf becomes emperor of Germany. Hungarians (Magyars) cross the Carpathians and occupy the plains of the Theiss. 895. Rome is captured by Emperor Arnulf of Germany; he is crowned emperor of the West. 896. Pope Stephen VII declares the election of his predecessor, Formosus, invalid; disinters his body and has it thrown in the Tiber. 897. Pope Stephen imprisoned and strangled. Alfred constructs a powerful navy and defeats Hastings the Dane. See "CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT," v, 49. 899. Accession of Louis the Child, on the death of Arnulf, to the German throne. 900. Hungarians ravage Northern Italy. 901. Death of Alfred the Great, King of England; his son, Edward the Elder, succeeds. 904. Russians, with a large naval force, attack Constantinople, and the Saracens Thessalonica. 907. Bavaria desolated by the Hungarians. 909. Founding of the Fatimite caliphate in Africa. See "CONQUEST OF EGYPT BY THE FATIMITES," v, 94. 911. End of the Carlovingian line in Germany. See "HENRY THE FOWLER FOUNDS THE SAXON LINE OF GERMAN KINGS," v, 82. 912. Rollo, converted to Christianity, takes the name of Robert and receives from Peter the Simple the province afterward called Normandy, of which he is the first duke. See "DECAY OF THE FRANKISH EMPIRE," v, 22. 913. Igor, son of Rurik, by the death of his guardian, Oleg, is invested with the government of Russia. Bodies of Hungarians and Slavs make inroads on German territory. See "HENRY THE FOWLER FOUNDS THE SAXON LINE OF GERMAN KINGS," v, 82. 914. John X elected pope through the intrigues of Theodora. 916. Berengar is crowned emperor of the West, in Italy. 918. Death of Conrad, the King of Germany. See "HENRY THE FOWLER FOUNDS THE SAXON LINE OF GERMAN KINGS," v, 82. 919. Founding of the Danish kingdom of Dublin, Ireland. "HENRY THE FOWLER FOUNDS THE SAXON LINE OF GERMAN KINGS." See v, 82. 923. Rudolph of Burgundy disputes with Charles the Simple for the crown of France. 924. Germany is overrun and devastated by the Hungarians. Death of Berengar, upon which the imperial title lapses. 925. Edward the Elder is succeeded by his son Athelstan, in England. 926. Henry the Fowler conquers the Slavonians; he establishes the margravate of Brandenburg. 928. Guido and Marozia usurp supreme temporal power in Rome and confine Pope John X in prison, where he dies. (Date uncertain.) 929. Charles the Simple dies in captivity at Péronne. Abu Taher, the Carmathian leader, plunders Mecca and massacres the pilgrims. 930. Prague is besieged by Henry the Fowler, who becomes superior lord of Bohemia; his son, Otho, marries Eadgith, sister of Athelstan, King of England. 931. Marozia still rules in Rome; she makes her son pope John XI. 932. Hugh marries Marozia and is expelled from Rome by her son Alberic, who confines his mother, and his brother, Pope John, in St. Angelo and governs the city. 933. Henry the Fowler is victorious over the Hungarians at Merseburg. See "HENRY THE FOWLER FOUNDS THE SAXON LINE OF GERMAN KINGS," v, 82. Union of Cis- and Transjurane Burgundy into one realm, the kingdom of Arles. Saracens invade Castile and are defeated at Uxama. 936. Death of Henry the Fowler; accession of Otho the Great in Germany and of Louis _d'Outre-Mer_ in France. Louis was given the surname for having been in exile in England, whence he was recalled to the crown. From this time chivalry may be said to arise. See "GROWTH AND DECADENCE OF CHIVALRY," v, 109. 937. Confederation of Scots and Irish with the Danes of Northumberland, totally defeated by Athelstan, at Brunanburh. France is invaded by the Hungarians. 939. The Marquis of Istria levies imposts on Venetian merchants, the repeal of which is enforced by the Doge suspending all intercourse between the two states. 940. Death of King Athelstan; his brother Edmund succeeds to the English throne. 941. Constantinople attacked by the Russians under Igor; they are repelled by Romanus. 945. Death of Igor; his widow, Olga, governs the Russians during the minority of their son Swatoslaus. Cumberland and Westmoreland, England, granted as a fief to Malcolm, King of Scotland. 946. Edmund, who had conquered Mercia and the "Five Boroughs" of the Danish confederacy, England, slain by an outlaw; his brother Edred succeeds. 951. Otho the Great marches an army in to Italy; he dethrones Berengar for cruelly ill-treating Adelaide. 952. Otho restores Italy to Berengar and his son; they do homage to him at the Diet of Augsburg. 955. Otho vanquishes the Hungarians on the Lech; he afterward conquers the Slavonians. Olga, the Russian Princess, baptized at Constantinople; she carries back into her own country some beginnings of civilization. 956. Many provinces, including Armenia, recovered from the Saracens by the Eastern Empire. 959. St. Dunstan made archbishop of Canterbury on the accession of Edgar. 961. Berengar finally dethroned by Otho the Great; the sovereignty of Italy passes from Charlemagne's descendants to German rulers. 962. Otho the Great, master of Italy; his coronation as emperor of the Romans by Pope John XII; establishment of the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation. 963. Nicephorus Phocas defeats the Saracens and recovers the former provinces of the empire as far as the Euphrates. Al Hakem, Caliph of Cordova, famous as a patron of literature and learning, and who is said to have collected a library of 600,000 volumes, employs agents in Africa and Arabia to purchase or copy manuscripts. King Edgar, England, defeats the Welsh and exacts an annual tribute of three hundred wolves' heads. 964. Pope Leo VIII is expelled; John XII reinstated, he dies soon after; Rome is besieged and captured by the Emperor, after a revolt encouraged by Berengar. 966. After 328 years' subjection Antioch is recovered from the Saracens. Bulgaria invaded by the Russians, who also extend their dominion to the Black Sea. Miecislas, ruler of Poland, embraces Christianity. 969. Kahira (now Cairo) built by the Fatimites, who establish a caliphate in Egypt. See "CONQUEST OF EGYPT BY THE FATIMITES," v, 94. Nicephorus Phocas, Emperor of the East, murdered by John Zimisces, who succeeds. 971. All munitions of war and arms are by the Venetians forbidden to be sold by their merchants to the Saracens. 973. On the death of his father, Otho the Great, Otho II ascends the throne of the German empire. His Empress, Theophania, introduces Greek customs and manners into Germany. 976. Henry, Duke of Bavaria, defeated by Otho II and deposed, takes refuge in Bohemia. Death of Al Hakem; his reign the most glorious of the Saracenic dominion in Spain. Commotion in Venice; the Doge attempts to introduce mercenary troops and is slain; his palace, St. Mark's, and other churches burned. 978. Otho II makes a victorious movement into France. 979. King Edward the Martyr assassinated by command of his mother-in-law, Elfrida; Ethelred the Unready succeeds. (Date uncertain.) 980. Theophania urges her husband, Otho II, to claim the Greek provinces in Italy; he advances with his army to Ravenna. Vladimir obtains the assistance of the sea-kings, defeats his brother, Jaropolk, puts him to death, and becomes sole ruler of Russia. 982. Saracens of Africa are invited by the Greek emperors to join them in opposing Otho; battle of Basientello, total defeat of Otho; he is taken prisoner, but escapes by swimming. 983. Eric the Red, a Norseman, first visits Greenland, which he thus names, and afterward settles. See "LEIF ERICSON DISCOVERS AMERICA," v, 141. Death of Otho II; Otho III succeeds to the throne of Germany under the regency of his mother, Theophania. 987. Death of Louis V, the last of the Carlovingian line; Hugh Capet is elected king of France; this inaugurates the Capetian dynasty. 988. Vladimir the Great of Russia embraces Christianity. See "CONVERSION OF VLADIMIR THE GREAT," v, 128. 989. Sedition in Rome; Empress Theophania arrives there and suppresses it. In Germany rural counts and barons commence their depredations on the properties of their neighbors. Learned men from all parts of the East flock to Cordova, Almansor, the Saracen regent, having set apart a fund to promote literature. 991. Archbishop Gerbert, of Rheims, introduces the use of Arabic numerals, which he had learned at Cordova. Ipswich and Maldon, England, ravaged by the Danes; a tribute raised for them by means of the "Danegild" tax. 994. Hugh Capet maintains Gerbert in the see of Rheims, against the opposition of the Pope. With a fleet of ninety-four ships the kings of Norway and Denmark attack London; they are beaten off by the citizens. 996. Death of Hugh Capet; his son Robert succeeds. 997. Venetians conquer the coast and islands of the Adriatic as far as Ragusa; their Doge styles himself duke of Dalmatia. Death of Gejza, first Christian prince of Hungary. Insurrection of peasants in Normandy. 998. Crescentius, having usurped power in Rome and expelled the Pope, is defeated, captured, and put to death by Otho III. 1000. Leif Ericson and Biorn discover America. See "LEIF ERICSON DISCOVERS AMERICA," v, 141. Otho III and Boleslas the Valiant, King of Poland, meet at Gnesen. Expectation of the end of the world causes the sowing of seed and other agricultural work to be neglected; famine ensues therefrom. Duke Stephen of Hungary receives the royal title from Pope Sylvester II. First invasion of India by Mahmud. See "MAHOMETANS IN INDIA," v, 151. 1002. Massacre of Danes in England; the Day of St. Brice. Henry, Duke of Bavaria, elected king of Germany on the death of Otho III. 1003. Sweyn of Denmark invades England to avenge the massacre of his people. 1013. After various repulses and successes Sweyn takes nearly the whole of England; King Ethelred and his Queen flee to her brother Richard, Duke of Normandy. Imperial coronation of Henry II. 1014. Death of Sweyn. Ethelred returns to England; he battles with the Danes, under Sweyn's son, Canute, who is driven from the country. King Brian, the Brian Boroimhe or Boru, the most famous of Irish kings, defeats the Danes at the battle of Clontarf, but perishes in the conflict. 1016. Pope Benedict VIII repulses the Saracens at Luni, Tuscany; they besiege Salerno and are defeated by the aid of a band of Norman pilgrims returning from Jerusalem. Edmund "Ironsides," the English King, assassinated. See "CANUTE BECOMES KING OF ENGLAND," v, 164. 1017. Swatopolk, Grand Duke of Russia, defeated by his brother, Jaroslav, Prince of Novgorod, seeks an asylum in Poland. All England acknowledges Canute as king. See "CANUTE BECOMES KING OF ENGLAND," v, 164. 1018. Complete destruction of the Bulgarian realm by the Eastern emperor Basil II. Swatopolk finally expelled from Russia by Jaroslav, who becomes ruler. 1020. Death of Firdusi, a famous Persian poet. 1022. Guido Aretinus invents the staff, and is the first to adopt as names for the notes of the musical scale the initial syllables of the hemistichs of a hymn in honor of St. John the Baptist. 1024. Death of the emperor Henry II of Germany; the Franconian dynasty inaugurated by Conrad II. 1027. Conrad II crowned emperor at Rome; Canute of England and Rudolph of Burgundy attend the ceremony. Schleswig is formally ceded to Denmark by Conrad II. 1028. Canute invades Norway; he conquers King Olaf and annexes his dominions. See "CANUTE BECOMES KING OF ENGLAND," v, 164. 1031. End of the Ommiad caliphate of Cordova; Spain divided by the Moorish chiefs into many states. 1033. Institution of the "Truce of God." A suspension of private feuds observed in England, France, Italy, and elsewhere. Such a truce provided that these feuds should cease on all the more important church festivals and fasts, from Thursday evening to Monday morning, during Lent, or similar occasions. Castile created an independent kingdom by Sancho the Great, King of Navarre. Conrad II extends his dominion over the Arletan territories. 1035. Death of King Canute; his sons, Hardicanute in Denmark, Harold in England, and Sweyn in Norway, succeed him. See "CANUTE BECOMES KING OF ENGLAND," v, 164. Aragon created an independent kingdom. 1037. Avicenna, Arabian physician and scholar, dies. (Date uncertain.) Harold becomes king of all England. 1039. Murder of King Duncan, of Scotland, by Macbeth, who succeeds. 1042. End of the Danish rule in England; Hardicanute succeeded by Edward the Confessor. 1045. Ferdinand of Castile exacts tribute from his Moorish neighbors. 1046. Henry III holds a council at Sutri on the question of the papacy. See "HENRY III DEPOSES THE SIMONIACAL POPES," v, 177. 1047. Count Guelf given the duchy Carinthia by Emperor Henry III. 1048. On the death of Clement II, the deposed Pope again intrudes himself. See "HENRY III DEPOSES THE SIMONIACAL POPES," v, 177. 1049. Hildebrand, the monk, assumes charge of the patrimony of St. Peter, at Rome. 1050. Bérenger of Tours condemned and imprisoned for denying the doctrine of transubstantiation. 1051. William of Normandy visits England; he confers with Edward the Confessor. 1052. Archbishop Robert, with the Norman bishops and nobles, driven out of England. 1053. In Italy the Norman conquests of that country are conferred on them as a fief of the Church. 1054. Separation of the Greek and Latin churches. See "DISSENSION AND SEPARATION OF THE GREEK AND ROMAN CHURCHES," v, 189. 1055. Togrul Beg drives the Buyides from Bagdad and establishes his authority there. 1056. Death of Emperor Henry III; his son, Henry IV, is elected king under the regency of his mother, Agnes. Malcolm defeats Macbeth, King of Scotland, at Dunsinane. 1057. Harold, son of Earl Godwin, is designated heir to the throne of England. See "NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND," v, 204. 1059. Nicholas II and the Council of Rome decree that future popes shall be elected by the college of cardinals, but confirmed by the people and clergy of Rome and the emperor. 1060. King Andrew slain in battle by his brother, Bela, who ascends the throne of Hungary. 1061. Robert Guiscard and his brother Roger, at the head of the Normans, engage in the conquest of Sicily from the Saracens. 1062. The Archbishop of Cologne, Anno, assumes the reins of government after seizing the young emperor Henry IV. 1066. Death of Edward the Confessor, who is succeeded by Harold II. The Norwegians invade England; they are defeated by Harold. William, Duke of Normandy, invades and conquers England. See "NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND," v, 204. 1067. Council of Mantua; Hildebrand denies the imperial right to interfere in the election of a pope. 1068. Carrier pigeons are employed by the Saracens to convey intelligence to the besieged in Palermo. 1069. Morocco founded by Abu-Bekr, Ameer of Lantuna. 1071. Alp Arslan, the Seljuk Sultan, defeats and captures the Eastern Emperor, Romanus Diogenes. 1072. Palermo is taken by the Normans, who reduce the whole of Sicily. 1073. Lissa, taken by the Normans, is recovered by the Venetians. Hildebrand elected pope; he takes the name of Gregory VII; the sale of church benefices in Germany forbidden by him. See "TRIUMPHS OF HILDEBRAND," v, 231. 1074. Gregory VII suggests the first idea of a general crusade against the Turks. 1075. Lay investiture prohibited by a council called by Gregory VII. See "TRIUMPHS OF HILDEBRAND," v, 231. 1076. Atziz, Malek Shah's lieutenant, conquers Syria from the Fatimites of Egypt, and takes Jerusalem. Christian pilgrims are persecuted by the Seljukian Turks. Henry IV, Emperor of Germany, holds a council at Rome which deposes Gregory VII. In union with the German princes the Pope deposes the Emperor. 1077. Pope Gregory exacts an annual tribute from Alfonso, King of Castile. At Canossa Henry IV humbles himself before the Pope and is absolved. See "TRIUMPHS OF HILDEBRAND," v, 231. 1079. Boleslas of Poland excommunicated by Gregory and expelled by his subjects. 1080. Henry IV convenes a council which deposes Gregory VII; it elects Guibert, Antipope Clement III, in his stead. End of the war between Henry and Rudolph of Saxony caused by the death of the latter. 1081. Constantinople captured by Alexis Comnenus, who is placed by his soldiers on the Byzantine throne. 1084. Gregory VII is besieged in the castle of St. Angelo; Robert Guiscard delivers the Pope. See "TRIUMPHS OF HILDEBRAND," v, 231. 1085. Death of Gregory VII, in exile at Salerno; the papacy vacant till the following year. Conquest of Toledo from the Moors by Alfonso of Castile. 1086. "COMPLETION OF THE DOMESDAY BOOK." See v, 242. The Mahometans of Spain invite the chief of the Almoravides to assist them. See "DECLINE OF THE MOORISH POWER IN SPAIN," v, 256. 1087. King William of England invades France; he dies at Rouen. His eldest son, Robert, inherits Normandy; his second son, William Rufus, secures the throne of England. 1088. Yussef is called into Spain by the Moorish princes; their jealousies and discords render his assistance unavailing. See "DECLINE OF THE MOORISH POWER IN SPAIN," v, 256. 1089. Henry IV excommunicated by Pope Urban II. A violent earthquake in England. The disease known as St. Anthony's fire breaks out in Lorraine. 1090. Hasan, Subah of Nishapur, collects a band of Carmathians who are named after him, "Assassins." William Rufus, King of England, invades Normandy and captures St. Valery. 1091. Yussef conquers Seville and Almeria, sends Almoatamad to Africa, and becomes supreme ruler in Mahometan Spain. See "DECLINE OF THE MOORISH POWER IN SPAIN," v, 256. 1092. Guibert's party hold the castle of St. Angelo; Guibert's title to the papacy is still asserted by Henry IV. Complete disruption of the empire of the Seljuks follows the death of Shah Malek. 1093. King Malcolm of Scotland invades England; he is killed near Alnwick, by Roger de Mowbray. 1094. Sancho, King of Aragon and Navarre, falls in battle; he is succeeded by his son Pedro. Peter the Hermit goes on his pilgrimage to Jerusalem. See "THE FIRST CRUSADE," v, 276. 1095. Philip and Henry again excommunicated by Pope Urban II. Henry of Besangon marries Theresa, daughter of Alfonso the Valiant, who erects Portugal into a county for his son-in-law. 1096. Aphdal, the Fatimite, expels the sons of Ortok from Jerusalem. Movement of the first crusading armies; massacre of Jews in Europe. See "THE FIRST CRUSADE," v, 276. 1097. William Rufus expels Archbishop Anselm, from England in defiance of the papal legate. Emperor Henry IV protects the German Jews. Death of Albert Azzo, Marquis of Lombardy, more than 100 years old; he was father of Guelf IV, the progenitor of the Brunswick family, afterward one of the English royal lines. The crusaders take Nicaea; the Eastern emperor Alexius, suspicious of the crusaders, obtains the city of Nicasa for himself. See "THE FIRST CRUSADE," v, 276. 1098. Edgar, son of Malcolm, seated on the throne of Scotland by Edgar Atheling with an English army. Pope Urban II holds a council at Bari to condemn the doctrines of the Greek Church. 1099. Jerusalem captured by the crusaders. See "THE FIRST CRUSADE," v, 276. Founding of the order of the Knights Hospitallers; Gerard of Jerusalem the first provost or grand master. Coronation of Henry V, second son of the Emperor, as king of the Romans. 1100. New antipopes arise on the death of Guibert (Clement III), one of whom assumes the name of Sylvester IV. William Rufus accidentally slain; Henry I becomes king of England; he renews the laws of Edward the Confessor and unites the Saxon and Norman races by his marriage with Matilda, granddaughter of Edmund "Ironside." 1101. Robert, Duke of Normandy, invades England and makes war on his brother, Henry I. Guelf, Duke of Bavaria, and William, Duke of Aquitaine, conduct a large body of crusaders to the East. United with those who set out in the preceding year, they are met by Kilidsch Arslan, on entering Asia Minor, and are cut to pieces or dispersed. 1102. Pope Paschal II obtains from Matilda a deed of gift of all her states to the Church. Coloman, King of Hungary, conquers Croatia and Dalmatia. 1103. Yussef's son Ali recognized as heir to the thrones of Spain and Africa. 1104. Baldwin, King of Jerusalem, defeats the Turks and captures Acre. Emperor Henry IV faces a rebellion of his son, incited by the papal party. 1105. Interview between Emperor Henry and his son at Elbingen; a diet is called to be held at Mainz for the settlement of their dispute. The English, under King Henry, take Caen and Bayeux in Normandy. Defeat of the Turks in an attempt to retake Jerusalem; Bohemond, Prince of Tarentum, who had taken Antioch from the Turks, made prisoner. 1106. King Henry I overthrows Duke Robert, who is captured, and secures Normandy. Death of Henry IV and accession of his son Henry V to the German throne; the new Emperor asserts his right to appoint bishops. 1108. Death of Philip, King of France; Louis VI, the Fat, succeeds. 1109. Baldwin, King of Jerusalem, assisted by a Venetian fleet, captures Tripoli. Portugal declared independent and the hereditary succession established in Count Henry's family. 1111. Emperor Henry V enters Rome; bloody contests between his soldiers and the people. Pope Paschal II, a prisoner, resigns the right of investiture and crowns the Emperor. 1113. Death of Swatopolk, Duke of Russia; his brother Vladimir succeeds. 1114. War in Wales; King Henry I erects castles there to secure his conquests. 1117. The Doge of Venice falls at Zara in defending Dalmatia against the Hungarians. 1118. "FOUNDATION OF THE ORDER OF KNIGHTS TEMPLAR." See v, 301. On the death of Paschal II the cardinals elect Gelasius II; the Emperor appoints the Archbishop of Braga to assume the papal dignity under the name of Gregory VIII. The factions afterward known as the Guelfs and Ghibellines arose from this event. 1119. Battle of Noyon, by which Henry I reestablishes his ascendency in Normandy. Defeat of the Turks at Antioch by King Baldwin II and the Knights Hospitallers. Henry I resists the papal claim to investiture in England; banishment of Thurstan, Archbishop of Canterbury. 1120. Sinking of the White Ship (_La Blanche Nef_), in which Prince William, son of Henry I, was lost. The King is said to have "never smiled again" after the receipt of the news. 1121. Siege of Sutri by the army of Pope Calixtus II, and surrender of Antipope Gregory. 1122. Henry V and Calixtus II compromise, at the Diet of Worms, the dispute respecting the right of investiture. Baldwin, King of Jerusalem, and Jocelyn de Courtenay made prisoners by the Turks. Abelard, a noted French theologian, accused of heresy at the Council of Soissons, is condemned to burn his writings. 1123. Ninth general council; First Lateran Council. War renewed in Normandy by the rebellion of certain powerful barons; Henry I, King of England, takes their castles. 1124. A rich Pisan convoy, on its voyage from Sardinia, captured by the Genoese. 1125. Death of the emperor Henry V of Germany, which ends the Franconian dynasty; the Duke of Saxony, Lothair II, elected his successor; he declares war against the Hohenstaufens. Punishment of the mintmen in England for issuing base coin. 1126. King Henry leaves Normandy and takes his prisoners to England. 1127. Marriage of Henry's daughter, Matilda, to Geoffrey Plantagenet; she is acknowledged by the English barons as heiress to her father's throne. See "STEPHEN USURPS THE ENGLISH CROWN," v, 317. Death of William, Duke of Apulia; Roger II, Great Count of Sicily, succeeds. This unites the Norman conquests in Italy with Sicily; the Pope excommunicates him. 1128. Conrad, Duke of Franconia, of the Hohenstaufen house, crowned king of Italy at Milan, in opposition to Lothair II; he is excommunicated by the Pope. Roger II overcomes the papal resistance and is formally acknowledged duke of Apulia and Calabria. 1129. King Henry of England releases his Norman prisoners and restores their lands to them. 1130. On the death of Pope Honorius II the cardinals divide into two factions, one of which elects Innocent II, and the other the antipope Anacletus II. The latter gains possession of the Lateran and is there consecrated; Innocent takes refuge in France. 1131. Birth of Maimonides, who, next to Moses, is believed to have had the greatest influence on Jewish thought. (Date uncertain.) 1132. Lothair II goes to Rome in support of Pope Innocent II against Antipope Anacletus II; he expels Conrad. Wool-spinning is introduced into England by the Flemings at Worstead; hence the name "worsted." 1133. Lothair conducts Innocent to Rome and is there crowned emperor by him. 1134. Aragon and Navarre choose separate sovereigns, who are protected by Alfonso the Noble, King of Castile. 1135. Death of Henry I of England; Stephen usurps the throne. See "STEPHEN USURPS THE ENGLISH CROWN," v, 317. A copy of Justinian's _Pandects_ said to have been discovered at Amalfi. The house of Hohenstaufen forced into submission by Lothair. 1136. Lothair marches into Italy with a large army; the cities make submission. Matilda resists Stephen's usurpation of the English crown, and invades Normandy. 1137. Death of Louis VI; his son, Louis VII, succeeds to the French crown. 1138. David I of Scotland defeated at the Battle of the Standard. See "STEPHEN USURPS THE ENGLISH CROWN," v, 317. Conrad, Duke of Franconia, elected emperor of Germany; he founds the Hohenstaufen dynasty. From his castle of Wiblingen his party takes the name of Ghibellines; his opponent, Henry Guelf, is put under the ban of the empire, hence the papal party were called Guelfs. 1139. Pope Innocent II taken prisoner by Roger; a treaty of peace confirms Roger's title. Arnold of Brescia is banished Italy. See "ANTI-PAPAL DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT," v, 340. Robert, Earl of Gloucester, a natural son of Henry I, promises assistance to Matilda in her war against King Stephen of England. See "STEPHEN USURPS THE ENGLISH CROWN," v, 317. 1140. Conrad III defeats the forces of Guelf VI, uncle of Henry the Lion, while attempting to gain possession of Bavaria. 1141. Battle of Lincoln; King Stephen defeated and carried prisoner to Bristol. See "STEPHEN USURPS THE ENGLISH CROWN," v, 317. 1142. Henry the Lion is invested with the duchy of Saxony by Conrad III. His rival, Albert the Bear, created margrave of Brandenburg. 1143. Geisa, King of Hungary, invites German emigrants to join the colony of that people in Transylvania. 1144. Edessa, Turkey, stormed and captured by Zenghi, Sultan of Aleppo. 1145. Arnold of Brescia initiates the antipapal democratic movement. See "ANTIPAPAL DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT," v, 340. Disruption of the Almoravide kingdom in Spain. 1146. Prince Henry inherits Anjou and Maine; Normandy submits to him. St. Bernard, at the instance of Pope Eugenius, preaches a crusade for the protection of the Holy Land against Noureddin, Sultan of Aleppo. Byzantium is ravaged by Roger, King of Sicily. See "DECLINE OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE," v, 353. Crusaders and mobs massacre Jews in Germany. 1147. Louis VII of France and Emperor Conrad III lead the Second Crusade. Lisbon, after being taken from the Moors, is made the capital of Portugal. Moscow, Russia, is founded by the Prince of Suzdal, Dolgoucki. 1148. Unsuccessful sieges of Damascus and Ascalon by the crusaders. 1149. Louis, returning by sea from his crusade, is captured by the Greeks, and rescued by the Sicilian fleet. 1150. Victory of Manuel, the Byzantine Emperor, over the Servians, who become vassals of that empire. 1151. Manuel invades Hungary, crosses the Danube, grants a truce to Geisa, and carries a large booty to Constantinople. 1152. Death of Conrad III; Frederick I, Barbarossa, elected emperor. 1153. Treaty by King Stephen and Henry Plantagenet concerning the succession of the English crown. See "STEPHEN USURPS THE ENGLISH CROWN," v, 317. 1154. A large portion of France united with the crown of England on the accession of Henry II, who founds the Plantagenet line, following Stephen's death. The first Italian expedition of Frederick Barbarossa. Pope Adrian IV, by a bull, grants Ireland to the English crown. 1155. Frederick reëstablishes the papal rule in Rome. Pope Adrian IV orders the execution of Arnold. See "ANTIPAPAL DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT," v, 340. 1156. Henry the Lion, of the Guelf line, has Bavaria restored to him. Austria erected into a duchy. 1157. Pope Adrian, in a letter to the German Emperor, asserts Germany to be a papal benefice; Frederick resists the claim. Poland is compelled by Emperor Frederick I to pay him homage. 1158. Eric IX of Sweden conquers the coast of Finland and builds Abo. Frederick I, Barbarossa, a second time invades Italy; he captures Milan. 1159. Election of Pope Alexander III; Frederick I creates an anti-pope, Victor IV. War ensues between Henry II of England and Louis VII of France; the former claiming the county of Toulouse, Southern France. 1160. Emperor Frederick I calls the Council of Pavia; it declares Victor to be pope; Alexander excommunicates them all. 1161. Peace concluded between Henry II and Louis VII; they acknowledge Alexander as pope. The kings of Denmark, Norway, Bohemia, and Hungary declare in favor of Victor. Henry II limits the papal authority in England. END OF VOLUME V 
10114	----	THE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS VOLUME II A COMPREHENSIVE AND READABLE ACCOUNT OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY. EMPHASIZING THE MORE IMPORTANT EVENTS, AND PRESENTING THESE AS COMPLETE NARRATIVES IN THE MASTER-WORDS OF THE MOST EMINENT HISTORIANS NON-SECTARIAN NON-PARTISAN NON-SECTIONAL ON THE PLAN EVOLVED FROM A CONSENSUS OF OPINIONS GATHERED FROM THE MOST DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARS OF AMERICA AND EUROPE, INCLUDING BRIEF INTRODUCTIONS BY SPECIALISTS TO CONNECT AND EXPLAIN THE CELEBRATED NARRATIVES, ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY, WITH THOROUGH INDICES, BIBLIOGRAPHIES, CHRONOLOGIES, AND COURSES OF READING EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ROSSITER JOHNSON, LL.D. ASSOCIATE EDITORS CHARLES F. HORNE, Ph.D. JOHN RUDD, LL.D. 1905 BINDING Vol. II The binding of this volume is a facsimile of the original on exhibition in the Bibliothèque Nationale. It was executed by the Royal Binder, Clovis Eve, for Marie de' Médicis, Queen Consort of Henry IV of France. She was a great lover of fine arts, and especially of rich bindings. The one here shown was her special pride. It shows her arms--the arms of France and Tuscany--surrounded with the cordelière, the sign of her widowhood, accompanied by the monogram M.M. (Marie Médicis). She was exiled by Cardinal Richelieu in 1631. CONTENTS VOLUME II An Outline Narrative of the Great Events, CHARLES F. HORNE Institution and Fall of the Decemvirate in Rome (B.C. 450), HENRY G. LIDDELL Pericles Rules in Athens (B.C. 444), PLUTARCH Great Plague at Athens (B.C. 430), GEORGE GROTE Defeat of the Athenians at Syracuse (B.C. 413), SIR EDWARD S. CREASY Retreat of the Ten Thousand Greeks (B.C. 401-399), XENOPHON Condemnation and Death of Socrates (B.C. 399), PLATO Brennus Burns Rome (B.C. 388), BARTHOLD GEORG NIEBUHR Tartar Invasion of China by Meha (B.C. 341), DEMETRIUS CHARLES BOULGER Alexander Reduces Tyre, Later Founds Alexandria (B.C. 332), OLIVER GOLDSMITH The Battle of Arbela (B.C. 331), SIR EDWARD S. CREASY First Battle Between Greeks and Romans (B.C. 280-279), PLUTARCH The Punic Wars (B.C. 264-219-149), FLORUS Battle of the Metaurus (B.C. 2O7), SIR EDWARD S. CREASY Scipio Africanus Crushes Hannibal at Zama and Subjugates Carthage (B.C. 202), LIVY Judas Maccabaeus Liberates Judea (B.C. 165-141), JOSEPHUS The Gracchi and Their Reforms (B.C. 133), THEODOR MOMMSEN Caesar Conquers Gaul (B.C. 58-50), NAPOLEON III Roman Invasion and Conquest of Britain (B.C. 55-A.D. 79), OLIVER GOLDSMITH Cleopatra's Conquest of Caesar and Antony (B.C. 51-30), JOHN P. MAHAFFY Assassination of Caesar (B.C. 44), NIEBUHR PLUTARCH Rome Becomes a Monarchy Death of Antony and Cleopatra (B.C. 44-30), HENRY GEORGE LIDDELL Germans under Arminius Revolt Against Rome (A.D. 9), SIR EDWARD S. CREASY Universal Chronology (B.C. 450-A.D. 12), JOHN RUDD ILLUSTRATIONS VOLUME II Blind Appius Claudius led into the Roman Senate Chamber to vote on the proposition of peace or war with Pyrrhus (page 174), Painting by Prof, A. Maccari. Oracle of Delphi, Painting by Claudius Harper. Death of Alexander the Great after a prolonged debauch, Painting by Carl von Piloty. AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, CONNECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE GREAT EVENTS (FROM THE RISE OF GREECE TO THE CHRISTIAN ERA) CHARLES F. HORNE, Ph.D. Earth's upward struggle has been baffled by so many stumbles that critics have not been lacking to suggest that we do not advance at all, but only swing in circles, like a squirrel in its cage. Certain it is that each ancient civilization seemed to bear in itself the seeds of its own destruction. Yet it may be held with equal truth that each new power, rising above the ruins of the last, held something nobler, was borne upward by some truth its rival could not reach. At no period is this more evident than in the five centuries immediately preceding the Christian era. Persia, Greece, Carthage, Rome, each in turn was with some justice proclaimed lord of the world; each in turn felt the impulse of her glory and advanced rapidly in culture and knowledge of the arts; and each in turn succumbed to the temptations that beset unlimited success. They degenerated not only in physical strength, but in moral honesty. Let us recognize, however, that the term "world-ruler" as applied to even the greatest of these nations has but a restricted sense. When the Persian monarch called himself lord of the sun and moon, he only meant in a figurative way that he was acquainted with no other king so powerful as himself; that beyond his own dominions he heard only of feeble colonies, and beyond those the wilderness. Alexander, when he sighed for more worlds to conquer, had in reality made himself lord of less than a quarter of Asia and of about one-sixtieth part of Europe. No man and no nation has ever yet been intrusted with the government of the entire globe. None has proved sufficiently fitted for the giant task. Each empire has been, as it were, but an experiment; and beyond the border line of seas and deserts which ringed each boastful conqueror, there were always other races developing along slower, and it may be surer, lines. In those old days our world was in truth too big for conquest. Armies marched on foot. Provisions could not be carried in any quantity, unless a general clung to the sea-shore and depended on his ships. What Alexander might with more truth have sighed for, was some modern means of swift transportation, possessed of which he might still have enjoyed many interesting, bloody battles in more distant lands. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE GREEKS Taking the idea "world power" in the restricted sense suggested, Persia lost it to Greece at Salamis. As the Asiatic hordes fled behind their panic-stricken king, the Greeks, looking round their limited horizon, could see no power that might vie with them. The idea of pressing home their success and overthrowing the entire unwieldy Persian empire was at once conceived. But the Greeks were of all races least like to weld earth into one dominion. They could not even unite among themselves. In short it cannot be too emphatically pointed out that the work of Greece was not to consolidate, but to separate, to teach the value of each individual man. Asia had made monarchies in plenty. King after king had passed in splendid, glittering pomp across her plains, circled by a crowd of obsequious courtiers, trampling on a nameless multitude of slaves. Europe was to make democracies, or at least to try her hand at them. It has been well said that a democracy is the strongest government for defence, the weakest for attack. Every little Greek city clung jealously to its own freedom, and to its equally obvious right to dominate its neighbors. The supreme danger of the Persian invasion united them for a moment; but as soon as safety was assured, they recommenced their bickering. Sparta with her record of ancient leadership, Athens with her new-won glory against the common foe, each tried to draw the other cities in her train. There was no one man who could dominate them all and concentrate their strength against the enemy. So for a time Persia continued to exist; she even by degrees regained something of her former influence over the divided cities. Among these Athens held the foremost rank. She was, as we have previously seen, far more truly representative of the Greek spirit than her rival. Sparta was aristocratic and conservative; Athens democratic and progressive. The genius of her leaders gathered the lesser towns into a great naval league, in which she grew ever more powerful. Her allies sank to be dependent and unwilling vassals, forced to contribute large sums to the treasury of their overlord. This was the age of Pericles.[1] As Athens became wealthy, her citizens became cultured. Statues, temples, theatres made the city beautiful. Dramatists, orators, and poets made her intellectually renowned. A marvellous outburst, this of Athens! Displaying for the first time in history the full capacity of the human mind! Had there been similar flowerings of genius amid forgotten Asiatic times? One doubts it; doubts if such brilliancy could ever anywhere have passed, and left no clearer record of its triumphs. [Footnote 1: See _Pericles Rules in Athens_, page 12.] Amid such splendor it seems captious to point out the flaw. Yet Athenian and all Greek civilization did ultimately decline. It represented intellectual, but not moral culture. The Greeks delighted intensely in the purely physical life about them; they had small conception of anything beyond. To enjoy, to be successful, that was all their goal; the means scarce counted. The Athenians called Aristides the Just; but so little did they honor his high rectitude that they banished him for a decade. His title, or it may have been his insistence on the subject, bored them. His rival, Themistocles, was more suited to their taste, a clever scamp, who must always be dealing with both sides in every quarrel, and outwitting both. Athens was driven to banish him also at last, at his too flagrant treachery. But he was not dismissed with the scathing scorn our modern age would heap upon a traitor. He was sent regretfully, as one turns from a charming but too persistently lawless friend. The banishment was only for ten years, and he had his nest already prepared with the Persian King. If you would understand the Greek spirit in its fullest perfection, study Themistocles. Rampant individualism, seeking personal pleasure, clamorous for the admiration of its fellows, but not restrained from secret falsity by any strong moral sense--that was what the Greeks developed in the end. Neither must Athens be regarded as a democracy in the modern sense. She was only so by contrast with Persia or with Sparta. Not every man in the beautiful city voted, or enjoyed the riches that flowed into her coffers, and could thus afford, free from pecuniary care, to devote himself to art. Athens probably had never more than thirty thousand "citizens." The rest of the adult male population, vastly outnumbering these, were slaves, or foreigners attracted by the city's splendor. But those thirty thousand were certainly men. "There were giants in those days." One sometimes stands in wonder at their boldness. What all Greece could not do, what Persia had completely failed in, they undertook. Athens alone should conquer the world. By force of arms they would found an empire of intellect. They fought Persia and Sparta, both at once. Plague swept their city, yet they would not yield.[2] Their own subject allies turned against them; and they fought those too. They sent fleets and armies against Syracuse, the mightiest power of the West. It was Athens against all mankind! [Footnote 2: See _Great Plague at Athens_, page 34.] She was unequal to the task, superbly unequal to it. The destruction of her army at Syracuse[3] was only the foremost of a series of inevitable disasters, which left her helpless. After that, Sparta, and then Thebes, became the leading city of Greece. Athens slowly regained her fighting strength; her intellectual supremacy she had not lost. Socrates,[4] greatest of her sons, endeavored to teach a morality higher than earth had yet received, higher than his contemporaries could grasp. Plato gave to thought a scientific basis. [Footnote 3: See _Defeat of the Athenians at Syracuse_, page 48.] [Footnote 4: See _Condemnation and Death of Socrates_, page 87.] Then Macedonia, a border kingdom of ancient kinship to the Greeks, but not recognized as belonging among them, began to obtrude herself in their affairs, and at length won that leadership for which they had all contended. A hundred and fifty years had elapsed since the Greeks had stood united against Persia. During all that time their strength had been turned against themselves. Now at last the internecine wars were checked, and all the power of the sturdy race was directed by one man, Alexander, King of Macedon. Democracy had made the Greeks intellectually glorious, but politically weak. Monarchy rose from the ruin they had wrought. As though that ancient invasion of Xerxes had been a crime of yesterday, Alexander proclaimed his intention of avenging it; and the Greeks applauded. They understood Persia now far better than in the elder days; they saw what a feeble mass the huge heterogeneous empire had become. Its people were slaves, its soldiers mercenaries. The Greeks themselves had been hired to suppress more than one Persian rebellion,[5] and to foment these also. They had learned the enormous advantage their stronger personality gave them against the masses of sheeplike Asiatics. [Footnote 5: See _Retreat of the Ten Thousand Greeks_, page 68.] So it was in holiday mood that they followed Alexander, and in schoolboy roughness that they trampled on the civilization of the East. In fact, it is worth noting that the most vigorous resistance they encountered was not from the Persians, but from a remnant of the Semites, the merchants of the Phoenician city of Tyre.[6] In less than eight years, B.C. 331-323, Alexander overran the whole known world of the East,[7] only stopping when, on the border of India, his soldiers broke into open revolt, not against fighting, but against further wandering. [Footnote 6: See _Alexander Reduces Tyre_, page 133.] [Footnote 7: See _The Battle of Arbela_, page 141.] If this invasion had been the mere outcome of one man's ambition, it might scarce be worth recording. But Alexander was only the topmost wave in the surging of a long imminent, inevitable racial movement. Its effect upon civilization, upon the world, was incalculably vast. Alexander and his successors were city-builders, administrators. As such they spread Greek culture, the Greek idea of individualism, over all their world. How deep was the change, made upon the imbruted Asiatics, we may perhaps question. Our own age has seen how much of education may be lavished on an inferior race without materially altering the brute instincts within. The building-up of the soul in man is not a matter of individuals, but of centuries. Yet in at least a superficial way Greek thought became the thought of all mankind. We may dismiss Alexander's savage conquests with a sigh of pity; but we cannot deny him recognition as a most potent teacher of the world. His empire did not last. It was in too obvious opposition to all that we have recognized as the Grecian spirit. At his death the same impulse seems to have stirred each one of his subordinates, to snatch for himself a kingdom from the confusion. Instead of one there were soon three, four, and then a dozen semi-Grecian states in Asia. The Greek element in each grew very faint. From this time onward Asia takes a less prominent place in world affairs. Her ancient leadership in the march of civilization had long been yielded to the Greeks. Now her semblance of military power disappeared as well. Only two further happenings in all Asia seem worth noting, down to the birth of Christ. One of these was the Tartar conquest of China, an event which coalesced the Tartars, helped make them a nation.[8] It was thus fraught with most disastrous consequences for the Europe of the future. The other was the revolt of the Hebrews under Judas Maccabaeus, against their Grecian rulers. This was a religious revolt, a religious war. Here for the first time we find a people who will believe, who can believe, in no god but their own, who will die sooner than give worship to another. We approach the borders of an age where the spirit is more valued than the body, where the mental is stronger than the physical, where facts are dominated by ideas.[9] [Footnote 8: See _Tartar Invasion of China_, page 126.] [Footnote 9: See _Judas Maccabaeus Liberates Judea_, page 245.] Had Alexander even at the moment of his greatest strength directed his forces westward instead of east, he would have found a different world and encountered a sturdier resistance. He himself recognized this, and during his last years was gathering all the resources of his unwieldy empire, to hurl them against Carthage and against Italy. What the issue might have been no man can say. Alexander's death ended forever the impossible attempt to unite his race. Once more and until the end, Grecian strength was wasted against itself. This gave opportunity to the growing powers of the West. Alexander is scarce gone ere we hear Carthage boasting that the Mediterranean is but a private lake in her possession. She rules all Western Africa and Spain, Sardinia and Corsica. She masters the Greeks of Sicily, against whom Athens failed. Rome is compelled to sign treaties with her as an inferior. THE GROWTH OF ROME Rome was only husbanding her strength; the little republic of B.C. 510 had grown much during the two centuries of Grecian splendor. Her people had become far better fitted for conquest than their eastern kinsmen. It is presumable that here too it was the difference of surroundings which had differentiated the race. The ancient Etrurian (non-Aryan) civilization on which the Latins intruded, was apparently more advanced than their own. For centuries their utmost prowess scarce sufficed to maintain their independence. Thus it was not possible for them to become too self-satisfied, to stand afar off and look down on their neighbors with Grecian scorn. The _ego_ was less prominently developed; the necessity of mutual dependence and united action was more deeply taught. Their records display less of brilliancy, but more of patient persistency, than those of Greece, less of spectacular individualism, more of truly patriotic self-suppression. In Rome, even more than in Sparta, the "State" was everything. During the early days men found their highest glory in making their city glorious; their proudest boast was to be "citizens of Rome." To trace the slow steps by which the tiny republic grew to be mistress of all Italy would take too long. She settled her internal difficulties as all such difficulties must be settled, if the race is to progress; that is, she became more democratic.[10] As the lower classes advanced in knowledge and intelligence they insisted on a share of the government. They fought their way to it. They united Rome, mastered the other Latin cities, and admitted them to partnership in her power. She conquered the Etruscans and the Samnites. For a moment we find her almost overwhelmed by an inroad of the wild Celtic tribes from the forests of Central Europe;[11] but, fortunately for her, the other Italian states were equally crushed. It was weakness against weakness, and the Romans retained their foremost place. [Footnote 10: See _Institution and Fall of the Decemvirate in Rome_, page 1.] [Footnote 11: See _Brennus Burns Rome_, page 110.] Not till more than a century later were they brought into serious conflict with the Greeks. In the year B.C. 280, Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, who had won a temporary leadership over a portion of the Grecian land, undertook the conquest of the West.[12] Fifty years before, Alexander with far greater power might have been victorious over a feebler Rome. Pyrrhus failed completely. If the Romans had less dash and a less wide experience of varied warfare than his followers, they had far more of true, heroic endurance. The Greeks had reached that stage of individual culture where they were much too selfishly intelligent to be willing to die in battle. Pyrrhus withdrew from Italy. Grecian brilliancy was helpless against Roman strength of union. [Footnote 12: See _First Battle between Greeks and Romans_, page 166.] Then came the far more serious contest between Rome and Carthage.[13] Carthage was a Phoenician, a Semite state; and hers was the last, the most gigantic struggle made by Semitism to recover its waning superiority, to dominate the ancient world. Three times in three tremendous wars did she and Rome put forth their utmost strength against each other. Hannibal, perhaps the greatest military genius who ever lived, fought upon the side of Carthage. At one time Rome seemed crushed, helpless before him.[14] Yet in the end Rome won.[15] It was not by the brilliancy of her commanders, not by the superiority of her resources. It was the grim, cool courage of the Aryan mind, showing strongest and calmest when face to face with ruin. [Footnote 13: See _The Punic Wars_, page 179.] [Footnote 14: See _Battle of the Metaurus_, page 195.] [Footnote 15: See _Scipio Africanus Crushes Hannibal at Zama and Subjugates Carthage_, page 224.] Our modern philosophers, being Aryan, assure us that the victory of Carthage would have been an irretrievable disaster to mankind; that her falsity, her narrow selfishness, her bloody inhumanity, would have stifled all progress; that her dominion would have been the tyranny of a few heartless masters over a world of tortured slaves. On the other hand, Rome up to this point had certainly been a generous mistress to her subjects. She had left them peace and prosperity among themselves; she had given them as much political freedom as was consistent with her sovereignty; she had wellnigh succeeded in welding all Italy into a Roman nation. It is noteworthy that the large majority of the Italian cities clung to her, even in the darkest straits to which she was reduced by Hannibal. Yet when the fall of her last great rival left Rome irresistible abroad, her methods changed. It is hard to see how even Carthaginians could have been more cruel, more grasping, more corrupt than the Roman rulers of the provinces. Having conquered the governments of the world, Rome had to face outbreak after outbreak from the unarmed, unsheltered masses of the people. Her barbarity drove them to mad despair. "Servile" wars, slave outbreaks are dotted over all the last century of the Roman Republic. The good, if there was any good, that Roman dominion brought the world at that period was the spreading of Greek culture across the western half of the world. As Rome mastered the Greek states one by one, their genius won a subtler triumph over the conqueror. Her generals recognized and admired a culture superior to their own. They carried off the statues of Greece for the adornment of their villas, and with equal eagerness they appropriated her manners and her thought, her literature and her gods. But this superficial culture could not save the Roman Republic from the dry-rot that sapped her vitals from within. As a mere matter of numbers, the actual citizens of Rome or even of the semi-Roman districts close around her were too few to continue fighting over all the vast empire they controlled. The sturdy peasant population of Italy slowly disappeared. The actual inhabitants of the capital came to consist of a few thousand vastly wealthy families, who held all the power, a few thousand more of poorer citizens dependent on the rich, and then a vast swarm of slaves and foreigners, feeders on the crumbs of the Roman table. In the battles against Carthage, the mass of Rome's armies had consisted of her own citizens or of allies closely united to them in blood and fortune. Her later victories were won by hired troops, men gathered from every clime and every race. Roman generals still might lead them, Roman laws environ them, Roman gold employ them. Yet the fact remained, that in these armies lay the strength of the Republic, no longer within her own walls, no longer in the stout hearts of her citizens. Perhaps the world itself was slow in seeing this degeneration. The Gracchi brothers tried to stem the tide, and they were slain, sacrificed by the nation they sought to save.[16] Cornelius Sulla was the man who completed, and at the same time made plain to all, the change that had been growing up. Having bitter grievances against his enemies in the capital, he appealed for redress, not to the Roman senate, not to the votes of the populace, but to the swords of the legions he commanded. Twice he marched his soldiers against Rome. He brushed aside the feeble resistance that was offered, and entered the city like a conqueror. The blood of those who had opposed his wishes flowed in streams. Three thousand senators and knights, the flower of the Roman aristocracy, were slain at his nod. Of the common folk and of the Italians throughout the peninsula, the slaughter was immeasurable. And when his bloody vengeance was at last glutted, Sulla ruled as an extravagant, conscienceless, licentious dictator. Rome had found a fitting master. [Footnote 16: See _The Gracchi and Their Reforms_, page 259.] THE STRUGGLE OF INDIVIDUALS FOR SUPREMACY The Roman people, the mighty race who had defied a Hannibal at their gates, were clearly come to an end. Sulla had proved the power of the Republic to be an empty shell. After his death, men used the empty forms awhile; but the surviving aristocrats had learned their awful lesson. They put no further faith in the strength of the city; they watched the armies and the generals; they intrigued for the various commands. It was an exciting game. Life and fortune were the stakes they risked; the prize--the mastery of a helpless world, waiting to be plundered. Pompey and Caesar proved the ablest players. Pompey overthrew what was left of the Greek Asiatic kingdoms and returned to Rome the idol of his troops, wellnigh as powerful as had been Sulla. Caesar, looking in his turn for a place to build up an army devoted to himself, selected Gaul and spent eight years in subduing and civilizing what was in a way the most important of all Rome's conquests. In Gaul he came in contact with another, fresher Aryan race.[17] Rome received new soldiers for her legions, new brains fitted to understand and carry on the work of civilizing the world. [Footnote 17: See _Caesar Conquers Gaul_, page 267.] When Caesar, turning away from Britain,[18] marched these new-formed legions back against Rome, even as Sulla had done, it was almost like another Gallic invasion of the South. Pompey fled. He gathered his legions from Asia; and the world resounded once more to the clash of arms. [Footnote 18: See _Roman Invasion and Conquest of Britain_, page 285.] This, then, was the third and final stage of the huge struggle for empire. War was still the business of the world. Rome had first defeated foreign nations; then she had to defeat the uprisings of the subject peoples; now her chiefs, finding her exhausted, fought among themselves for the supreme power. Armies of Asiatics, armies of Gauls, each claiming to represent Rome, battled over her helpless body. Caesar was victorious. But when the conquering power which had once belonged to the united nation became embodied in a single man, there was a new way by which it might be checked. The government of Rome, like that of the Greek and Asiatic tyrannies, became a "despotism tempered by assassination"; and Caesar was its foremost victim.[19] [Footnote 19: See _Assassination of Caesar_, page 313.] His death did not stop the fascinating gamble for empire. It only added one more move to the possible complexities of the game. The lesser players had their chance. They intrigued and they fought. Egypt, the last remaining civilized state outside of Rome, was drawn into the whirlpool also.[20] Cleopatra and Antony acted their reckless parts, and at length out of the world-wide tumult emerged "young Octavius," to assume his _rôle_ as "Augustus Caesar," acknowledged emperor of the world.[21] [Footnote 20: See _Cleopatra's Conquest of Caesar and Antony_, page 295.] [Footnote 21: See _Rome Becomes a Monarchy_, page 333.] Note, however, that the term "world" is still one of boast, not truth. Emperor over many men, Augustus was; but the powers of nature still shut many races safe beyond his mastery. The ocean bounded his dominion on the west; the deserts to the south and east; the German forests to the north. These last he did essay to conquer, but they proved beyond him. The wild German tribes having no cities, which they must defend at any cost, could afford to flee or hide. Choosing their own time and place they rose suddenly, smote the legions of Augustus, and melted into the wilderness again.[22] [Footnote 22: See _Germans Under Arminius Revolt against Rome_, page 362.] Rome was checked at last. No civilized nation had been able to stand against her; but the wild tribes of the Germans and the Parthians did. Barbarism had still by far the larger portion of the world wherein to live and develop, and gather brain and brawn. Rome could not conquer the wilderness. (For the next section of this general survey see Volume III.) INSTITUTION AND FALL OF THE DECEMVIRATE IN ROME B.C. 450 HENRY G. LIDDELL (When wars and pestilence had laid a heavy burden upon the Roman people, there appears to have been a period in which internal commotions and civil strife were stilled, and the quarrels of patricians and plebeians gave way to temporary truce. On the inevitable renewal of the old struggle the college of tribunes adopted a measure favorable to the plebeians in so far as it provided means for checking the abuse of power on the part of consuls in punishing members of that class in connection with the prosecution of suits against them. The passage of this measure had the effect of reopening former conflicts, the patrician elements becoming greatly alarmed at what they regarded as a fresh encroachment upon their hereditary rights. The contest was long and bitter, each side either bringing forward or rejecting again and again the same measures or the same representatives. Finally, compromises were made, and in the year B.C. 452 a commission of ten men, called _decemvirs_, constituting the _Decemvirate_, was chosen, consisting wholly of patricians, who entered with great efficiency upon the discharge of legislative duties which resulted in the production of a new code. This was approved by the senate and by the popular representatives, and was published in the form of ten copper plates or tables, which were affixed to the speaker's pulpit in the Forum. Among the new decemvirs appointed in the year B.C. 450 were several plebeians, the first official representatives of the entire people who were chosen from that class.) The patrician burgesses endeavored to wrest independence from the "plebs" after the battle of Lake Regillus; and the latter, ruined by constant wars with the neighboring nations, being compelled to make good their losses by borrowing money from patrician creditors, and liable to become bondsmen in default of payment, at length deserted the city, and only returned on condition of being protected by tribunes of their own; they then, by the firmness of Publilius Volero and Lætorius, obtained the right of electing these tribunes at their own assembly, the "Comitia of the Tribes." Finally the great consul Spurius Cassius endeavored to relieve the commonalty by an agrarian law, so as to better their condition permanently. The execution of the Agrarian law was constantly evaded. But on the conquest of Antium from the Volscians, in the year B.C. 468, a colony was sent thither, and this was one of the first examples of a distribution of public land to poorer citizens; which answered two purposes--the improvement of their condition, and the defence of the place against the enemy. Nor did the tribunes, now made altogether independent of the patricians, fail to assert their power. One of the first persons who felt the force of their arm was the second Appius Claudius. This Sabine noble, following his father's example, had, after the departure of the Fabii, led the opposition to the Publilian law. When he took the field against the Volscians, his soldiers would not fight, and the stern commander put to death every tenth man in his legions. For the acts of his consulship he was brought to trial by the tribunes M. Duillius and C. Sicinius. Seeing that conviction was certain, the proud patrician avoided humiliation by suicide. Nevertheless the border wars still continued, and the plebeians suffered much. To the evils of debt and want were added about this time the horrors of pestilential disease, which visited the Roman territory several times at that period. In one year (B.C. 464) the two consuls, two of the four augurs, and the curio Maximus, who was the head of all the patricians, were swept off--a fact which implies the death of a vast number of less distinguished persons. The government was administered by the plebeian aediles, under the control of senatorial interreges. The Volscians and Aequians ravaged the country up to the walls of Rome; and the safety of the city must be attributed to the Latins and Hernici, not to the men of Rome. Meantime the tribunes had in vain demanded a full execution of the Agrarian law. But in the year B.C. 462, one of the Sacred College, by name C. Terentilius Harsa, came forward with a bill, the object of which was to give the plebeians a surer footing in the state. This man perceived that as long as the consuls retained their almost despotic power, and were elected by the influence of the patricians, this order had it in its power to thwart all measures, even after they were passed, which tended to advance the interests of the plebeians. He therefore no longer demanded the execution of the Agrarian law, but proposed that a commission of ten men (_decemviri_) should be appointed to draw up constitutional laws for regulating the future relations of the patricians and plebeians. The Reform Bill of Terentilius was, as might be supposed, vehemently resisted by the patrician burgesses. But the plebeians supported their champion no less warmly. For five consecutive years the same tribunes were reelected and in vain endeavored to carry the bill. This was the time which least fulfils the character which we have claimed for the Roman people--patience and temperance, combined with firmness in their demands. To prevent the tribunes from carrying their law, the younger patricians thronged to the assemblies and interfered with all proceedings; Terentilius, they said, was endeavoring to confound all distinction between the orders. Some scenes occurred which seem to show that both sides were prepared for civil war. In the year B.C. 460 the city was alarmed by hearing that the Capitol had been seized by a band of Sabines and exiled Romans, under the command of one Herdonius. Who these exiles were is uncertain. But we know, by the legend of Cincinnatus, that Cæso Quinctius, the son of that old hero, was an exile. It has been inferred, therefore, that he was among them, that the tribunes had succeeded in banishing from the city the most violent of their opponents, and that these persons had not scrupled to associate themselves with Sabines to recover their homes. The consul Valerius, aided by the Latins of Tusculum, levied an army to attack the insurgents, on condition that after success the law should be fully considered. The exiles were driven out and Herdonius was killed. But the consul fell in the assault, and the patricians, led by old Cincinnatus, refused to fulfil his promises. Then followed the danger of the Æquian invasion, to which the legend of Cincinnatus, as given above, refers. The stern old man used his dictatorial power quite as much to crush the tribunes at home as to conquer the enemies abroad. One of the historians tells us that in this period of seditious violence many of the leading plebeians were assassinated (as the tribune Genucius had been), and to this time only can be attributed the horrible story, mentioned by more than one writer, that nine tribunes were burned alive at the instance of their colleague Mucius. Society was utterly disorganized. The two orders were on the brink of civil war. It seemed as if Rome was to become the city of discord, not of law. Happily, there were moderate men in both orders. Now, as at the time of the secession, their voices prevailed, and a compromise was arranged. In the eighth year after the first promulgation of the Terentilian law, this compromise was made (B.C. 454). The law itself was no longer pressed by the tribunes. The patricians, on the other hand, so far gave way as to allow three men (_triumviri_) to be appointed, who were to travel into Greece, and bring back a copy of the laws of Solon, as well as the laws and institutes of any other Greek states which they might deem good and useful. These were to be the groundwork of a new code of laws, such as should give fair and equal rights to both orders and restrain the arbitrary power of the patrician magistrates. Another concession made by the patrician lords was a small installment of the Agrarian law. L. Icilius, tribune of the plebs, proposed that all the Aventine hill, being public land, should be made over to the plebs, to be their quarter forever, as the other hills were occupied by the patricians and their clients. This hill, it will be remembered, was consecrated to the goddess Diana (Jana), and though included in the walls of Servius, was yet not within the sacred limits (_pomoerium_) of the patrician city. After some opposition the patricians suffered this Icilian law to pass, in hopes of soothing the anger of the plebeians. The land was parcelled out into building-sites. But as there was not enough to give a separate plot to every plebeian householder that wished to live in the city, one allotment was assigned to several persons, who built a joint house _flats_ or stories, each of which was inhabited--as in Edinburgh and in most foreign towns--by a separate family. The three men who had been sent into Greece returned in the third year (B.C. 452). They found the city free from domestic strife, partly from the concessions already made, partly from expectation of what was now to follow, and partly from the effect of a pestilence which had broken out anew. So far did moderate counsels now prevail among the patricians, that after some little delay they agreed to suspend the ordinary government by the consuls and other officers, and in their stead to appoint a council of ten, who were, during their existence, to be intrusted with all the functions of government. But they were to have a double duty: they were not only an administrative, but also a legislative council. On the one hand, they were to conduct the government, administer justice, and command the armies. On the other, they were to draw up a code of laws by which equal justice was to be dealt out to the whole Roman people, to patricians and plebeians alike, and by which especially the authority to be exercised by the consuls, or chief magistrates, was to be clearly determined and settled. This supreme council of ten, or decemvirs, was first appointed in the year B.C. 450. They were all patricians. At their head stood Appius Claudius and T. Genucius, who had already been chosen consuls for this memorable year. This Appius Claudius (the third of his name) was son and grandson of those two patrician chiefs who had opposed the leaders of the plebeians so vehemently in the matter of the tribunate. But he affected a different conduct from his sires. He was the most popular man of the whole council, and became in fact the sovereign of Rome. At first he used his great power well, and the first year's government of the decemvirs was famed for justice and moderation. They also applied themselves diligently to their great work of law-making, and before the end of the year had drawn up a code of ten tables, which were posted in the Forum, that all citizens might examine them and suggest amendments to the decemvirs. After due time thus spent, the ten tables were confirmed and made law at the Comitia of the Centuries. By this code equal justice was to be administered to both orders without distinction of persons. At the close of the year the first decemvirs laid down their office, just as the consuls and other officers of state had been accustomed to do before. They were succeeded by a second set of ten, who, for the next year at least, were to conduct the government like their predecessors. The only one of the old decemvirs reelected was Appius Claudius. The patricians, indeed, endeavored to prevent even this, and to this end he was himself appointed to preside at the new elections; for it was held impossible for a chief magistrate to return his own name, when he was himself presiding. But Appius scorned precedents. He returned himself as elected, together with nine others, men of no name, while two of the great Quinctian gens, who offered themselves, were rejected. Of the new decemvirs, it is certain that three--and it is probable that five--were plebeians. Appius, with the plebeian Oppius, held the judicial office, and remained in the city; and these two seem to have been regarded as the chiefs. The other six commanded the armies and discharged the duties previously assigned to the quæstors and ædiles. The first decemvirs had earned the respect and esteem of their fellow-citizens. The new Council of Ten deserved the hatred which has ever since cloven to their name. Appius now threw off the mask which he had so long worn, and assumed his natural character--the same as had distinguished his sire and grandsire, of unhappy memory. He became an absolute despot. His brethren in the council offered no hinderance to his will; even the plebeian decemvirs, bribed by power, fell into his way of action and supported his tyranny. They each had twelve lictors, who carried fasces with the axes in them the symbol of absolute power, as in the times of the kings; so that it was said, "Rome had now twelve Tarquins instead of one, and one hundred and twenty armed lictors instead of twelve!" All freedom of speech ceased. The senate was seldom called together. The leading men, patricians and plebeians, left the city. The outward aspect of things was that of perfect calm and peace, but an opportunity only was wanting for the discontent which was smouldering in all men's hearts to break out and show itself. By the end of the year the decemvirs had added two more tables to the code, so that there were now twelve tables. But these two last were of a most oppressive and arbitrary kind, devoted chiefly to restore the ancient privileges of the patrician caste. Of these tables, it should be observed that they were made laws not by the vote of the people, but by the simple edict of the decemvirs. It was, no doubt, expected that the second decemvirs also would have held _comitia_ for the election of successors. But Appius and his colleagues showed no such intention, and when the year came to a close they continued to hold office as if they had been reelected. So firmly did their power seem to be established that we hear of no endeavor being made to induce them to resign. In the course of this next year (B.C. 449), the border wars were renewed. On the north the Sabines, and the Æquians on the northeast, invaded the Roman country at the same time. The latter penetrated as far as Mount Algidus, as in B.C. 458, when they were routed by old Cincinnatus. The decemvirs probably, like the patrician burgesses in former times, regarded these inroads not without satisfaction; for they turned away the mind of the people from their sufferings at home. Yet from these very wars sprung the events which overturned their power and destroyed themselves. Two armies were levied, one to check the Sabines, the other to oppose the Æquians, and these were commanded by the six military decemvirs. Appius and Oppius remained to administer affairs at home. But there was no spirit in the armies. Both were defeated; and that which was opposed to the Æquians was compelled to take refuge within the walls of Tusculum. Then followed two events which were preserved in well-known legends, and which give the popular narrative of the manner in which the power of the decemvirs was at last overthrown. LEGEND OF SICCIUS DENTATUS In the army sent against the Sabines, Siccius Dentatus was known as the bravest man. He was then serving as a centurion; he had fought in one hundred and twenty battles; he had slain eight champions in single combat; had saved the lives of fourteen citizens; had received forty wounds, all in front; had followed in nine triumphal processions, and had won crowns and decorations without number. This gallant veteran had taken an active part in the civil contests between the two orders, and was now suspected, by the decemvirs commanding the Sabine army, of plotting against them. Accordingly they determined to get rid of him; and for this end they sent him out as if to reconnoitre, with a party of soldiers, who were secretly instructed to murder him. Having discovered their design, he set his back against a rock and resolved to sell his life dearly. More than one of his assailants fell and the rest stood at bay around him, not venturing to come within sword's length, when one wretch climbed up the rock behind and crushed the brave old man with a massive stone. But the manner of his death could not be hidden from the army, and the generals only prevented an outbreak by honoring him with a magnificent funeral. Such was the state of things in the Sabine army. LEGEND OF VIRGINIA[23] [Footnote 23: Dionysius is the authority for this legend.] The other army had a still grosser outrage to complain of. In this there was a notable centurion, Virginius by name. His daughter Virginia, just ripening into womanhood, beautiful as the day, was betrothed to L. Icilius, the tribune who had carried the law for allotting the Aventine hill to the plebeians. Appius Claudius, the decemvir, saw her and lusted to make her his own. And with this intent he ordered one of his clients, M. Claudius by name, to lay hands upon her as she was going to her school in the Forum, and to claim her as his slave. The man did so; and when the cries of her nurse brought a crowd round them, M. Claudius insisted on taking her before the decemvir, in order, as he said, to have the case fairly tried. Her friends consented; and no sooner had Appius heard the matter than he gave judgment that the maiden should be delivered up to the claimant, who should be bound to produce her in case her alleged father appeared to gainsay the claim. Now this judgment was directly against one of the laws of the twelve tables, which Appius himself had framed; for therein it was provided that any person being at freedom should continue free till it was proved that such person was a slave. Icilius, therefore, with Numitorius, the uncle of the maiden, boldly argued against the legality of the judgment, and at length Appius, fearing a tumult, agreed to leave the girl in their hands on condition of their giving bail to bring her before him next morning; and then, if Virginius did not appear, he would at once, he said, give her up to her pretended master. To this Icilius consented, but he delayed giving bail, pretending that he could not procure it readily; and in the mean time he sent off a secret message to the camp on Algidus, to inform Virginius of what had happened. As soon as the bail was given, Appius also sent a message to the decemvirs in command of that army, ordering them to refuse leave of absence to Virginius. But when this last message arrived, Virginius was already halfway on his road to Rome; for the distance was not more than twenty miles, and he had started at nightfall. Next morning, early, Virginius entered the Forum, leading his daughter by the hand, both clad in mean attire. A great number of friends and matrons attended him, and he went about among the people entreating them to support him against the tyranny of Appius. So when Appius came to take his place on the judgment seat he found the Forum full of people, all friendly to Virginius and his cause. But he inherited the boldness as well as the vices of his sires, and though he saw Virginius standing there ready to prove that he was the maiden's father, he at once gave judgment, against his own law, that Virginia should be given up to M. Claudius till it should be proved that she was free. The wretch came up to seize her, and the lictors kept the people from him. Virginius, now despairing of deliverance, begged Appius to allow him to ask the maiden whether she were indeed his daughter or not. "If," said he, "I find I am not her father, I shall bear her loss the lighter." Under this pretence he drew her aside to a spot upon the northern side of the Forum, afterward called the "_Nova Tabernce_" and here, snatching up a knife from a butcher's stall, he cried: "In this way only can I keep thee free!"--and so saying, stabbed her to the heart. Then he turned to the tribunal and said, "On thee, Appius, and on thy head be this blood!" Appius cried out to seize "the murderer," but the crowd made way for Virginius, and he passed through them holding up the bloody knife, and went out at the gate and made straight for the army. There, when the soldiers had heard his tale, they at once abandoned their decemviral generals and marched to Rome. They were soon followed by the other army from the Sabine frontier; for to them Icilius had gone, and Numitorius; and they found willing ears among men who were already enraged by the murder of old Siccius Dentatus. So the two armies joined their banners, elected new generals, and encamped upon the Aventine hill, the quarter of the plebeians. Meantime the people at home had risen against Appius, and after driving him from the Forum they joined their armed fellow-citizens upon the Aventine. There the whole body of the commons, armed and unarmed, hung like a dark cloud ready to burst upon the city. Whatever may be the truth of the legends of Siccius and Virginia, there can be no doubt that the conduct of the decemvirs had brought matters to the verge of civil war. At this juncture the senate met, and the moderate party so far prevailed as to send their own leaders, M. Horatius Barbatus and L. Valerius Potitus, to negotiate with the insurgents. The plebeians were ready to listen to the voices of these men; for they remembered that the consuls of the first year of the Republic, when the patrician burgesses were friends to the plebeians, were named Valerius and Horatius; and so they appointed M. Duillius, a former tribune, to be their spokesman. But no good came of it; and Duillius persuaded the plebeians to leave the city, and once more to occupy the Sacred Mount. Then remembrances of the great secession came back upon the minds of the patricians, and the senate, observing the calm and resolute bearing of the plebeian leaders, compelled the decemvirs to resign, and sent back Valerius and Horatius to negotiate anew. The leaders of the plebeians demanded: First, that the tribuneship should be restored, and the _Comitia Tributa_ recognized; secondly, that a right of appeal to the people against the power of the supreme magistrate should be secured; thirdly, that full indemnity should be granted to the movers and promoters of the late secession; fourthly, that the decemvirs should be burnt alive. Of these demands the deputies of the senate agreed to the three first; but the fourth, they said, was unworthy of a free people; it was a piece of tyranny, as bad as any of the worst acts of the late government; and it was needless, because anyone who had reason of complaint against the late decemvirs might proceed against them according to law. The plebeians listened to these words of wisdom, and withdrew their savage demand. The other three were confirmed by the fathers, and the plebeians returned to their quarters on the Aventine. Here they held an assembly according to their tribes, in which the pontifex Maximus presided; and they now, for the first time, elected ten tribunes--first Virginius, Numitorius, and Icilius, then Duillius and six others: so full were their minds of the wrong done to the daughter of Virginius; so entirely was it the blood of young Virginia that overthrew the decemvirs, even as that of Lucretia had driven out the Tarquins. The plebeians had now returned to the city, headed by their ten tribunes, a number which was never again altered so long as the tribunate continued in existence. It remained for the patricians to redeem the pledges given by their agents Valerius and Horatius on the other demands of the plebeian leaders. The first thing to settle was the election of the supreme magistrates. The decemvirs had fallen, and the state was without any executive government. It has been supposed, as we have said above, that the government of the decemvirs was intended to be perpetual. The patricians gave up their consuls, and the plebeians their tribunes, on condition that each order was to be admitted to an equal share in the new decemviral college. But the tribunes were now restored in augmented number, and it was but natural that the patricians should insist on again occupying all places in the supreme magistracy. By common consent, as it would seem, the Comitia of the Centuries met and elected to the consulate the two patricians who had shown themselves the friends of both orders: L. Valerius Potitus and M. Horatius Barbatus. Thus ended the government of the decemvirate. PERICLES RULES IN ATHENS B.C. 444 PLUTARCH (Under the sway of Pericles many changes occurred in the civil affairs of Athens affecting the constitution of the state and the character and administration of its laws. Events of magnitude marked the struggles of the Athenians with other powers. The development of art and learning was carried to an unprecedented height, and the Age of Pericles is the most illustrious in ancient history. Pericles began his career by opposing the aristocratic party of Athens, led by Cimon. In this policy he was aided by complications arising with Sparta and Argos. Directing his attack particularly against the Areopagus, he succeeded in greatly modifying the composition of that body and diminishing its powers. The exile of Cimon, the strengthening of Athens by new alliances, and the vigorous prosecution of wars against Persia and Corinth combined to establish his supremacy, which was still further confirmed by the building of the long walls connecting Athens with the sea, and by the acquisition of neighboring territory. A favorable convention was concluded with Persia, Athens resumed a state of general peace, and Pericles found himself at the head of a powerful empire formed out of a confederacy previously existing. The strength of this empire was indeed soon impaired by ill-judged military movements, against the advice of Pericles himself, but during six years of peace which followed he succeeded in perfecting a state whose preeminence in intellectual, political, and artistic development has had no rival. In the later wars of Athens the renown of Pericles was still further enhanced; but his chief glory arose from the architectural adornment of the city, and especially from the building of the Parthenon and the splendid decoration of the Acropolis; while his work of judicial reform remains an added monument to his fame, and among the masters of eloquence his orations preserve for him a foremost place.) Pericles was of the tribe Acamantis, and of the township of Cholargos, and was descended from the noblest families in Athens, on both his father's and mother's side. His father, Xanthippus, defeated the Persian generals at Mycale, while his mother, Agariste, was a descendant of Clisthenes, who drove the sons of Pisistratus out of Athens, put an end to their despotic rule, and established a new constitution admirably calculated to reconcile all parties and save the country. She dreamed that she had brought forth a lion, and a few days afterward was delivered of Pericles. His body was symmetrical, but his head was long, out of all proportion; for which reason, in nearly all his statues he is represented wearing a helmet, as the sculptors did not wish, I suppose, to reproach him with this blemish. The Attic poets called him squill-head, and the comic poet Cratinus, in his play _Chirones_, says; "From Chronos old and faction Is sprung a tyrant dread, And all Olympus calls him The man-compelling head." And again in the play of _Nemesis_: "Come, hospitable Zeus, with lofty head." Teleclides, too, speaks of him as sitting "Bowed down With a dreadful frown, Because matters of state have gone wrong, Until at last, From his head so vast, His ideas burst forth in a throng." And Eupolis, in his play of _Demoi_, asking questions about each of the great orators as they come up from the other world one after the other, when at last Pericles ascends, says: "The great headpiece of those below." Most writers tell us that his tutor in music was Damon, whose name they say should be pronounced with the first syllable short. Aristotle, however, says that he studied under Pythoclides. This Damon, it seems, was a sophist of the highest order, who used the name of music to conceal this accomplishment from the world, but who really trained Pericles for his political contests just as a trainer prepares an athlete for the games. However, Damon's use of music as a pretext did not impose upon the Athenians, who banished him by ostracism, as a busybody and lover of despotism. Pericles greatly admired Anaxagoras, and became deeply interested in grand speculations, which gave him a haughty spirit and a lofty style of oratory far removed from vulgarity and low buffoonery, and also an imperturbable gravity of countenance and a calmness of demeanor and appearance which no incident could disturb as he was speaking, while the tone of his voice never showed that he heeded any interruption. These advantages greatly impressed the people. The poet Ion, however, says that Pericles was overbearing and insolent in conversation, and that his pride had in it a great deal of contempt for others, while he praises Cimon's civil, sensible, and polished address. But we may disregard Ion as a mere dramatic poet who always sees in great men something upon which to exercise his satiric vein; whereas Zeno used to invite those who called the haughtiness of Pericles a mere courting of popularity and affectation of grandeur, to court popularity themselves in the same fashion, since the acting of such a part might insensibly mould their dispositions until they resembled that of their model. Pericles when young greatly feared the people. He had a certain personal likeness to the despot Pisistratus; and as his own voice was sweet, and he was ready and fluent in speech, old men who had known Pisistratus were struck by his resemblance to him. He was also rich, of noble birth, and had powerful friends, so that he feared he might be banished by ostracism, and consequently held aloof from politics, but proved himself a brave and daring soldier in the wars. But when Aristides was dead, Themistocles banished, and Cimon generally absent on distant campaigns, Pericles engaged in public affairs, taking the popular side, that of the poor and many, against that of the rich and few; quite contrary to his own feelings, which were entirely aristocratic. He feared, it seems, that he might be suspected of a design to make himself despot, and seeing that Cimon took the side of the nobility, and was much beloved by them, he betook himself to the people, as a means of obtaining safety for himself, and a strong party to combat that of Cimon. He immediately altered his mode of life; was never seen in any street except that which led to the market-place and the national assembly, and declined all invitations to dinner and such like social gatherings. But Pericles feared to make himself too common even with the people, and only addressed them after long intervals; not speaking upon every subject, and not constantly addressing them, but, as Critolaus says, keeping himself like the Salaminian trireme for great crises, and allowing his friends and the other orators to manage matters of less moment. Wishing to adopt a style of speaking consonant with his haughty manner and lofty spirit, Pericles made free use of the instrument which Anaxagoras, as it were, put into his hand, and often tinged his oratory with natural philosophy. He far surpassed all others by using this "lofty intelligence and power of universal consummation," as the divine Plato calls it; in addition to his natural advantages, adorning his oratory with apt illustrations drawn from physical science. For this reason some think that he was nicknamed the Olympian; though some refer this to his improvement of the city by new and beautiful buildings, and others from his power both as a politician and a general. It is not by any means unlikely that these causes all combined to produce the name. Pericles was very cautious about his words, and, whenever he ascended the tribune to speak, used first to pray to the gods that nothing unfitted for the present occasion might fall from his lips. He left no writings, except the measures which he brought forward, and very few of his sayings are recorded. Thucydides represents the constitution under Pericles as a democracy in name, but really an aristocracy, because the government was all in the hands of one leading citizen. But as many other writers tell us that, during his administration, the people received grants of land abroad, and were indulged with dramatic entertainments, and payments for their services, in consequence of which they fell into bad habits, and became extravagant and licentious, instead of sober hard-working people as they had been before, let us consider the history of this change, viewing it by the light of the facts themselves. First of all, Pericles had to measure himself with Cimon, and to transfer the affections of the people from Cimon to himself. As he was not so rich a man as Cimon, who used from his own ample means to give a dinner daily to any poor Athenian who required it, clothe aged persons, and take away the fences round his property, so that anyone might gather the fruit, Pericles, unable to vie with him in this, turned his attention to a distribution of the public funds among the people, at the suggestion, we are told by Aristotle, of Damonides of Oia. By the money paid for public spectacles, for citizens acting as jurymen, and other paid offices, and largesses, he soon won over the people to his side, so that he was able to use them in his attack upon the senate of the Areopagus, of which he himself was not a member, never having been chosen _archon_, or _thesmothete_, or _king archon_, or _polemarch_. These offices had from ancient times been obtained by lot, and it was only through them that those who had approved themselves in the discharge of them were advanced to the Areopagus. For this reason it was that Pericles, when he gained strength with the populace, destroyed this senate, making Ephialtes bring forward a bill which restricted its judicial powers, while he himself succeeded in getting Cimon banished by ostracism, as a friend of Sparta and a hater of the people, although he was second to no Athenian in birth or fortune, and won most brilliant victories over the Persians, and had filled Athens with plunder and spoils of war. So great was the power of Pericles with the common people. One of the provisions of ostracism was that the person banished should remain in exile for ten years. But during this period the Lacedæmonians with a great force invaded the territory of Tanagra, and, as the Athenians at once marched out to attack them, Cimon came back from exile, took his place in full armor among the ranks of his own tribe, and hoped by distinguishing himself in the battle among his fellow-citizens to prove the falsehood of the Laconian sympathies with which he had been charged. However, the friends of Pericles drove him away, as an exile. On the other hand, Pericles fought more bravely in that battle than he had ever fought before, and surpassed everyone in reckless daring. The friends of Cimon also, whom Pericles had accused of Laconian leanings, fell, all together, in their ranks; and the Athenians felt great sorrow for their treatment of Cimon, and a great longing for his restoration, now that they had lost a great battle on the frontier, and expected to be hard pressed during the summer by the Lacedaemonians. Pericles, perceiving this, lost no time in gratifying the popular wish, but himself proposed the decree for his recall; and Cimon on his return reconciled the two states, for he was on familiar terms with the Spartans, who were hated by Pericles and the other leaders of the common people. Some say that, before Cimon's recall by Pericles, a secret compact was made with him by Elpinice, Cimon's sister, that Cimon was to proceed on foreign service against the Persians with a fleet of two hundred ships, while Pericles was to retain his power in the city. It is also said that, when Cimon was being tried for his life, Elpinice softened the resentment of Pericles, who was one of those appointed to impeach him. When Elpinice came to beg her brother's life of him, he answered with a smile, "Elpinice, you are too old to meddle in affairs of this sort." But, for all that, he spoke only once, for form's sake, and pressed Cimon less than any of his other prosecutors. How, then, can one put any faith in Idomeneus, when he accuses Pericles of procuring the assassination of his friend and colleague Ephialtes, because he was jealous of his reputation? This seems an ignoble calumny which Idomeneus has drawn from some obscure source to fling at a man who, no doubt, was not faultless, but of a generous spirit and noble mind, incapable of entertaining so savage and brutal a design. Ephialtes was disliked and feared by the nobles, and was inexorable in punishing those who wronged the people; wherefore his enemies had him assassinated by means of Aristodicus of Tanagra. This we are told by Aristotle. Cimon died in Cyprus while in command of the Athenian forces. The nobles now perceived that Pericles was the most important man in the state, and far more powerful than any other citizen; wherefore, as they still hoped to check his authority, and not allow him to be omnipotent, they set up Thucydides, of the township of Alopecae, as his rival, a man of good sense and a relative of Cimon, but less of a warrior and more of a politician, who, by watching his opportunities, and opposing Pericles in debate, soon brought about a balance of power. He did not allow the nobles to mix themselves up with the people in the public assembly as they had been wont to do, so that their dignity was lost among the masses; but he collected them into a separate body, and by thus concentrating their strength was able to use it to counterbalance that of the other party. From the beginning these two factions had been but imperfectly welded together, because their tendencies were different; but now the struggle for power between Pericles and Thucydides drew a sharp line of demarcation between them, and one was called the party of the Many, the other that of the Few. Pericles now courted the people in every way, constantly arranging public spectacles, festivals, and processions in the city, by which he educated the Athenians to take pleasure in refined amusements; and also he sent out sixty triremes to cruise every year, in which many of the people served for hire for eight months, learning and practising seamanship. Besides this he sent a thousand settlers to the Chersonese, five hundred to Naxos, half as many to Andros, a thousand to dwell among the Thracian tribe of the Bisaltae, and others to the new colony in Italy founded by the city of Sybaris, which was named Thurii. By this means he relieved the state of numerous idle agitators, assisted the necessitous, and overawed the allies of Athens by placing his colonists near them to watch their behavior. The building of the temples, by which Athens was adorned, the people delighted, and the rest of the world astonished, and which now alone prove that the tales of the ancient power and glory of Greece are no fables, was what particularly excited the spleen of the opposite faction, who inveighed against him in the public assembly, declaring that the Athenians had disgraced themselves by transferring the common treasury of the Greeks from the island of Delos to their own custody. "Pericles himself," they urged, "has taken away the only possible excuse for such an act--the fear that it might be exposed to the attacks of the Persians when at Delos, whereas it would be safe at Athens. Greece has been outraged, and feels itself openly tyrannized over, when it sees us using the funds--which we extorted from it for the war against the Persians--for gilding and beautifying our city as if it were a vain woman, and adorning it with precious marbles and statues and temples worth a thousand talents." To this Pericles replied that the allies had no right to consider how their money was spent, so long as Athens defended them from the Persians; while they supplied neither horses, ships, nor men, but merely money, which the Athenians had a right to spend as they pleased, provided they afforded them that security which it purchased. It was right, he argued, that after the city had provided all that was necessary for war, it should devote its surplus money to the erection of buildings which would be a glory to it for all ages, while these works would create plenty by leaving no man unemployed, and encouraging all sorts of handicraft, so that nearly the whole city would earn wages, and thus derive both its beauty and its profit from itself. For those who were in the flower of their age, military service offered a means of earning money from the common stock; while, as he did not wish the mechanics and lower classes to be without their share, nor yet to see them receive it without doing work for it, he had laid the foundations of great edifices which would require industries of every kind to complete them; and he had done this in the interests of the lower classes, who thus, although they remained at home, would have just as good a claim to their share of the public funds as those who were serving at sea, in garrison, or in the field. The different materials used, such as stone, brass, ivory, gold, ebony, cypress-wood, and so forth, would require special artisans for each, such as carpenters, modelers, smiths, stone-masons, dyers, melters and moulders of gold, and ivory painters, embroiderers, workers in relief; and also men to bring them to the city, such as sailors and captains of ships and pilots for such as came by sea; and, for those who came by land, carriage builders, horse breeders, drivers, ropemakers, linen manufacturers, shoemakers, road menders, and miners. Each trade, moreover, employed a number of unskilled laborers, so that, in a word, there would be work for persons of every age and every class, and general prosperity would be the result. These buildings were of immense size, and unequalled in beauty and grace, as the workmen endeavored to make the execution surpass the design in beauty; but what was most remarkable was the speed with which they were built. All these edifices, each of which one would have thought it would have taken many generations to complete, were all finished during the most brilliant period of one man's administration. In beauty each of them at once appeared venerable as soon as it was built; but even at the present day the work looks as fresh as ever, for they bloom with an eternal freshness which defies time, and seems to make the work instinct with an unfading spirit of youth. The overseer and manager of the whole was Phidias, although there were other excellent architects and workmen, such as Callicrates and Ictinus, who built the Parthenon on the site of the old Hecatompedon, which had been destroyed by the Persians, and Coroebus, who began to build the Temple of Initiation at Eleusis, but who only lived to see the columns erected and the architraves placed upon them. On his death, Metagenes, of Xypete, added the frieze and the upper row of columns, and Xenocles, of Cholargos, crowned it with the domed roof over the shrine. As to the long wall, about which Socrates says that he heard Pericles bring forward a motion, Callicrates undertook to build it. The Odeum, which internally consisted of many rows of seats and many columns, and externally of a roof sloping on all sides from a central point, was said to have been built in imitation of the king of Persia's tent, and was built under Pericles' direction. The Propylaea, before the Acropolis, were finished in five years by Mnesicles the architect; and a miraculous incident during the work seemed to show that the goddess did not disapprove, but rather encouraged and assisted the building. The most energetic and active of the workmen fell from a great height, and lay in a dangerous condition, given over by his doctors. Pericles grieved much for him; but the goddess appeared to him in a dream, and suggested a course of treatment by which Pericles quickly healed the workman. In consequence of this, he set up the brazen statue of Athene the Healer, near the old altar in the Acropolis. The golden statue of the goddess was made by Phidias, and his name appears upon the basement in the inscription. Almost everything was in his hands, and he gave his orders to all the workmen--as has been said before--because of his friendship with Pericles. When the speakers of Thucydides' party complained that Pericles had wasted the public money, and destroyed the revenue, he asked the people in the assembly whether they thought he had spent much. When they answered, "Very much indeed," he said in reply; "Do not, then, put it down to the public account, but to mine; and I will inscribe my name upon all the public buildings." When Pericles said this, the people, either in admiration of his magnificence of manner, or being eager to bear their share in the glory of the new buildings, shouted to him with one accord to take what money he pleased from the treasury, and spend it as he pleased, without stint. And finally, he underwent the trial of ostracism with Thucydides, and not only succeeded in driving him into exile, but broke up his party. As now there was no opposition to encounter in the city, and all parties had been blended into one, Pericles undertook the sole administration of the home and foreign affairs of Athens, dealing with the public revenue, the army, the navy, the islands and maritime affairs, and the great sources of strength which Athens derived from her alliances, as well with Greek as with foreign princes and states. Henceforth he became quite a different man: he no longer gave way to the people, and ceased to watch the breath of popular favor; but he changed the loose and licentious democracy which had hitherto existed, into a stricter aristocratic, or rather monarchical, form of government. This he used honorably and unswervingly for the public benefit, finding the people, as a rule, willing to second the measures which he explained to them to be necessary and to which he asked their consent, but occasionally having to use violence, and to force them, much against their will, to do what was expedient; like a physician dealing with some complicated disorder, who at one time allows his patient innocent recreation, and at another inflicts upon him sharp pains and bitter though salutary draughts. Every possible kind of disorder was to be found among a people possessing so great an empire as the Athenians, and he alone was able to bring them into harmony by playing alternately upon their hopes and fears, checking them when overconfident, and raising their spirits when they were cast down and disheartened. Thus, as Plato says, he was able to prove that oratory is the art of influencing men's minds, and to use it in its highest application, when it deals with men's passions and characters, which, like certain strings of a musical instrument, require a skilful and delicate touch. The secret of his power is to be found, however, as Thucydides says, not so much in his mere oratory as in his pure and blameless life, because he was so well known to be incorruptible, and indifferent to money; for though he made the city, which was a great one, into the greatest and richest city of Greece, and though he himself became more powerful than many independent sovereigns, who were able to leave their kingdoms to their sons, yet Pericles did not increase by one single drachma the estate which he received from his father. For forty years he held the first place among such men as Ephialtes, Leocrates, Myronides, Cimon, Tolmides, and Thucydides; and, after the fall and banishment of Thucydides by ostracism, he united in himself for five-and-twenty years all the various offices of state, which were supposed to last only for one year; and yet during the whole of that period proved himself incorruptible by bribes. As the Lacedaemonians began to be jealous of the prosperity of the Athenians, Pericles, wishing to raise the spirit of the people and to make them feel capable of immense operations, passed a decree, inviting all the Greeks, whether inhabiting Europe or Asia, whether living in large cities or small ones, to send representatives to a meeting at Athens to deliberate about the restoration of the Greek temples which had been burned by the barbarians, about the sacrifices which were due in consequence of the vows which they had made to the gods on behalf of Greece before joining battle, and about the sea, that all men might be able to sail upon it in peace and without fear. To carry out this decree twenty men, selected from the citizens over fifty years of age, were sent out, five of whom invited the Ionian and Dorian Greeks in Asia and the islands as far as Lesbos and Rhodes, five went to the inhabitants of the Hellespont and Thrace as far as Byzantium, and five more proceeded to Boeotia, Phocis, and Peloponnesus, passing from thence through Locris to the neighboring continent as far as Acarnania and Ambracia; while the remainder journeyed through Euboea to the Oetaeans and the Malian Gulf, and to the Achaeans of Phthia and the Thessalians, urging them to join the assembly and take part in the deliberations concerning the peace and well-being of Greece. However, nothing was effected, and the cities never assembled, in consequence it is said of the covert hostility of the Lacedaemonians, and because the attempt was first made in Peloponnesus and failed there: yet I have inserted an account of it in order to show the lofty spirit and the magnificent designs of Pericles. In his campaigns he was chiefly remarkable for caution, for he would not, if he could help it, begin a battle of which the issue was doubtful; nor did he wish to emulate those generals who have won themselves a great reputation by running risks and trusting to good luck. But he ever used to say to his countrymen, that none of them should come by their deaths through any act of his. Observing that Tolmides, the son of Tolmaeus, elated by previous successes and by the credit which he had gained as a general, was about to invade Boeotia in a reckless manner, and had persuaded a thousand young men to follow him without any support whatever, he endeavored to stop him, and made that memorable saying in the public assembly, that if Tolmides would not take the advice of Pericles, he would at any rate do well to consult that best of advisers, Time. This speech had but little success at the time; but when, a few days afterward, the news came that Tolmides had fallen in action at Coronea, and many noble citizens with him, Pericles was greatly respected and admired as a wise and patriotic man. His most successful campaign was that in the Chersonesus, which proved the salvation of the Greeks residing there: for he not only settled a thousand colonists there, and thus increased the available force of the cities, but built a continuous line of fortifications reaching across the isthmus from one sea to the other, by which he shut off the Thracians, who had previously ravaged the peninsula, and put an end to a constant and harassing border warfare to which the settlers were exposed, as they had for neighbors tribes of wild plundering barbarians. But that by which he obtained most glory and renown was when he started from Pegae, in the Megarian territory, and sailed round the Peloponnesus with a fleet of a hundred triremes; for he not only laid waste much of the country near the coast, as Tolmides had previously done, but he proceeded far inland, away from his ships, leading the troops who were on board, and terrified the inhabitants so much that they shut themselves up in their strongholds. The men of Sicyon alone ventured to meet him at Nemea, and them he overthrew in a pitched battle, and erected a trophy. Next he took on board troops from the friendly district of Achaia, and, crossing over to the opposite side of the Corinthian Gulf, coasted along past the mouth of the river Achelous, overran Acarnania, drove the people of Oeneadae to the shelter of their city walls, and after ravaging the country returned home, having made himself a terror to his enemies, and done good service to Athens; for not the least casualty, even by accident, befell the troops under his command. When he sailed into the Black Sea with a great and splendidly equipped fleet, he assisted the Greek cities there, and treated them with consideration, and showed the neighboring savage tribes and their chiefs the greatness of his force, and his confidence in his power, by sailing where he pleased, and taking complete control over that sea. He left at Sinope thirteen ships, and a land force under the command of Lamachus, to act against Timesileon, who had made himself despot of that city. When he and his party were driven out, Pericles passed a decree that six hundred Athenian volunteers should sail to Sinope, and become citizens there, receiving the houses and lands which had formerly been in the possession of the despot and his party. But in other cases he would not agree to the impulsive proposals of the Athenians, and he opposed them when, elated by their power and good fortune, they talked of recovering Egypt and attacking the seaboard of the Persian empire. Many, too, were inflamed with that ill-starred notion of an attempt on Sicily, which was afterward blown into a flame by Alcibiades and other orators. Some even dreamed of the conquest of Etruria and Carthage, in consequence of the greatness which the Athenian empire had already reached, and the full tide of success which seemed to attend it. Pericles, however, restrained these outbursts, and would not allow the people to meddle with foreign states, but used the power of Athens chiefly to preserve and guard her already existing empire, thinking it to be of paramount importance to oppose the Lacedaemonians, a task to which he bent all his energies, as is proved by many of his acts, especially in connection with the Sacred War. In this war the Lacedaemonians sent a force to Delphi, and made the Phocians, who held it, give it up to the people of Delphi: but as soon as they were gone Pericles made an expedition into the country, and restored the temple to the Phocians; and as the Lacedaemonians had scratched the oracle which the Delphians had given them, on the forehead of the brazen wolf there, Pericles got a response from the oracle for the Athenians, and carved it on the right side of the same wolf. Events proved that Pericles was right in confining the Athenian empire to Greece. First of all Euboea revolted, and he was obliged to lead an army to subdue that island. Shortly after this, news came that the Megarians had become hostile, and that an army, under the command of Plistoanax, king of the Lacedaemonians, was menacing the frontier of Attica. Pericles now in all haste withdrew his troops from Euboea, to meet the invader. He did not venture on an engagement with the numerous and warlike forces of the enemy, although repeatedly invited by them to fight: but, observing that Plistoanax was a very young man, and entirely under the influence of Cleandrides, whom the _ephors_ had sent to act as his tutor and counsellor because of his tender years, he opened secret negotiations with the latter, who at once, for a bribe, agreed to withdraw the Peloponnesians from Attica. When their army returned and dispersed, the Lacedaemonians were so incensed that they imposed a fine on their king, and condemned Cleandrides, who fled the country, to be put to death. This Cleandrides was the father of Gylippus, who caused the ruin of the Athenian expedition in Sicily. Avarice seems to have been hereditary in the family, for Gylippus himself, after brilliant exploits in war, was convicted of taking bribes, and banished from Sparta in disgrace. When Pericles submitted the accounts of the campaign to the people, there was an item of ten talents, "for a necessary purpose," which the people passed without any questioning, or any curiosity to learn the secret. Some historians, among whom is Theophrastus the philosopher, say that Pericles sent ten talents annually to Sparta, by means of which he bribed the chief magistrates to defer the war, thus not buying peace, but time to make preparations for a better defence. He immediately turned his attention to the insurgents in Euboea, and proceeding thither with a fleet of fifty sail, and five thousand heavy armed troops, he reduced their cities to submission. He banished from Chalcis the "equestrian order," as it was called, consisting of men of wealth and station; and he drove all the inhabitants of Hestiaea out of their country, replacing them by Athenian settlers. He treated these people with this pitiless severity, because they had captured an Athenian ship, and put its crew to the sword. After this, as the Athenians and Lacedaemonians made a truce for thirty years, Pericles decreed the expedition against Samos, on the pretext that they had disregarded the commands of the Athenians to cease from their war with the Milesians. Pericles is accused of going to war with Samos to save the Milesians. These states were at war about the possession of the city of Priene, and the Samians, who were victorious, would not lay down their arms and allow the Athenians to settle the matter by arbitration, as they ordered them to do. For this reason Pericles proceeded to Samos, put an end to the oligarchical form of government there, and sent fifty hostages and as many children to Lemnos, to insure the good behavior of the leading men. It is said that each of these hostages offered him a talent for his own freedom, and that much more was offered by that party which was loath to see a democracy established in the city. Besides all this, Pissuthnes the Persian, who had a liking for the Samians, sent and offered him ten thousand pieces of gold if he would spare the city. Pericles, however, took none of these bribes, but dealt with Samos as he had previously determined, and returned to Athens. The Samians now at once revolted, as Pissuthnes managed to get them back their hostages, and furnished them with the means of carrying on the war. Pericles now made a second expedition against them, and found them in no mind to submit quietly, but determined to dispute the empire of the seas with the Athenians. Pericles gained a signal victory over them in a sea-fight off the Goats' Island, beating a fleet of seventy ships with only forty-four, twenty of which were transports. Simultaneously with his victory and the flight of the enemy he obtained command of the harbor of Samos, and besieged the Samians in their city. They, in spite of their defeat, still possessed courage enough to sally out and fight a battle under the walls; but soon a larger force arrived from Athens, and the Samians were completely blockaded. Pericles now with sixty ships sailed out of the Archipelago into the Mediterranean, according to the most current report intending to meet the Phoenician fleet which was coming to help the Samians, but, according to Stesimbrotus, with the intention of attacking Cyprus, which seems improbable. Whatever his intention may have been, his expedition was a failure, for Melissus, the son of Ithagenes, a man of culture, who was then in command of the Samian forces, conceiving a contempt for the small force of the Athenians and the want of experience of their leaders after Pericles' departure, persuaded his countrymen to attack them. In the battle the Samians proved victorious, taking many Athenians prisoners, and destroying many of their ships. By this victory they obtained command of the sea, and were able to supply themselves with more warlike stores than they had possessed before. Aristotle even says that Pericles himself was before this beaten by Melissus in a sea-fight. The Samians branded the figure of an owl on the foreheads of their Athenian prisoners, to revenge themselves for the branding of their own prisoners by the Athenians with the figure of a _samaina_. This is a ship having a beak turned up like a swine's snout, but with a roomy hull, so as both to carry a large cargo and sail fast. This class of vessel is called _samaina_ because it was first built at Samos by Polycrates, the despot of that island. When Pericles heard of the disaster which had befallen his army, he returned in all haste to assist them. He beat Melissus, who came out to meet him, and, after putting the enemy to rout, at once built a wall round their city, preferring to reduce it by blockade to risking the lives of his countrymen in an assault. In the ninth month of the siege the Samians surrendered. Pericles demolished their walls, confiscated their fleet, and imposed a heavy fine upon them, some part of which was paid at once by the Samians, who gave hostages for the payment of the remainder at fixed periods. Pericles, after the reduction of Samos, returned to Athens, where he buried those who had fallen in the war in a magnificent manner, and was much admired for the funeral oration which, as is customary, was spoken by him over the graves of his countrymen. Ion says that his victory over the Samians wonderfully flattered his vanity. Agamemnon, he was wont to say, took ten years to take a barbarian city, but he in nine months had made himself master of the first and most powerful city in Ionia. And the comparison was not an unjust one, for truly the war was a very great undertaking, and its issue quite uncertain, since, as Thucydides tells us, the Samians came very near to wresting the empire of the sea from the Athenians. After these events, as the clouds were gathering for the Peloponnesian war, Pericles persuaded the Athenians to send assistance to the people of Corcyra, who were at war with the Corinthians, and thus to attach to their own side an island with a powerful naval force, at a moment when the Peloponnesians had all but declared war against them. When the people passed this decree, Pericles sent only ten ships under the command of Lacedaemonius, the son of Cimon, as if he designed a deliberate insult; for the house of Cimon was on peculiarly friendly terms with the Lacedaemonians. His design in sending Lacedaemonius out, against his will, and with so few ships, was that if he performed nothing brilliant he might be accused, even more than he was already, of leaning to the side of the Spartans. Indeed, by all means in his power, he always threw obstacles in the way of the advancement of Cimon's family, representing that by their very names they were aliens, one son being named Lacedaemonius, another Thessalus, another Elius. Moreover, the mother of all three was an Arcadian. Now Pericles was much reproached for sending these ten ships, which were of little value to the Corcyreans, and gave a great handle to his enemies to use against him, and in consequence sent a larger force after them to Corcyra, which arrived there after the battle. The Corinthians, enraged at this, complained in the congress of Sparta of the conduct of the Athenians, as did also the Megarians, who said that they were excluded from every market and every harbor which was in Athenian hands, contrary to the ancient rights and common privileges of the Hellenic race. The people of Aegina also considered themselves to be oppressed and ill-treated, and secretly bemoaned their grievances in the ears of the Spartans, for they dared not openly bring any charges against the Athenians. At this time, too, Potidaea, a city subject to Athens, but a colony of Corinth, revolted, and its siege materially hastened the outbreak of the war. Archidamus, indeed, the king of the Lacedaemonians, sent ambassadors to Athens, was willing to submit all disputed points to arbitration, and endeavored to moderate the excitement of his allies, so that war probably would not have broken out if the Athenians could have been persuaded to rescind their decree of exclusion against the Megarians, and to come to terms with them. And, for this reason, Pericles, who was particularly opposed to this, and urged the people not to give way to the Megarians, alone bore the blame of having begun the war. Pericles passed a decree for a herald to be sent to the Megarians, and then to go on to the Lacedaemonians to complain of their conduct. This decree of Pericles is worded in a candid and reasonable manner; but the herald, Anthemocritus, was thought to have met his death at the hands of the Megarians, and Charinus passed a decree to the effect that Athens should wage war against them to the death, without truce or armistice; that any Megarian found in Attica should be punished with death, and that the generals, when taking the usual oath for each year, should swear in addition that they would invade the Megarian territory twice every year; and that Anthemocritus should be buried near the city gate leading into the Thriasian plain, which is now called the Double Gate. How the dispute originated it is hard to say, but all writers agree in throwing on Pericles the blame of refusing to reverse the decree. Now, as the Lacedaemonians knew that if he could be removed from power they would find the Athenians much more easy to deal with, they bade them "drive forth the accursed thing," alluding to Pericles' descent from the Alcmaeonidae by his mother's side, as we are told by Thucydides the historian. But this attempt had just the contrary effect to that which they intended; for, instead of suspicion and dislike, Pericles met with much greater honor and respect from his countrymen than before, because they saw that he was an object of especial dislike to the enemy. For this reason, before the Peloponnesians, under Archidamus, invaded Attica, he warned the Athenians that if Archidamus, when he laid waste everything else, spared his own private estate because of the friendly private relations existing between them, or in order to give his personal enemies a ground for impeaching him, he should give both the land and the farm buildings upon it to the state. The Lacedaemonians invaded Attica with a great host of their own troops and those of their allies, led by Archidamus, their king. They proceeded, ravaging the country as they went, as far as Acharnae (close to Athens), where they encamped, imagining that the Athenians would never endure to see them there, but would be driven by pride and shame to come out and fight them. However, Pericles thought that it would be a very serious matter to fight for the very existence of Athens against sixty thousand Peloponnesian and Boeotian heavy-armed troops, and so he pacified those who were dissatisfied at his inactivity by pointing out that trees when cut down quickly grow again, but that when the men of a state are lost, it is hard to raise up others to take their place. He would not call an assembly of the people, because he feared that they would force him to act against his better judgment, but, just as the captain of a ship, when a storm comes on at sea, places everything in the best trim to meet it, and trusting to his own skill and seamanship, disregarding the tears and entreaties of the seasick and terrified passengers, so did Pericles shut the gates of Athens, place sufficient forces to insure the safety of the city at all points, and calmly carry out his own policy, taking little heed of the noisy grumblings of the discontented. Many of his friends besought him to attack, many of his enemies threatened him and abused him, and many songs and offensive jests were written about him, speaking of him as a coward, and one who was betraying the city to its enemies. Cleon too attacked him, using the anger which the citizens felt against him to advance his own personal popularity. Pericles was unmoved by any of these attacks, but quietly endured all this storm of obloquy. He sent a fleet of a hundred ships to attack Peloponnesus, but did not sail with it himself, remaining at home to keep a tight hand over Athens until the Peloponnesians drew off their forces. He regained his popularity with the common people, who suffered much from the war, by giving them allowances of money from the public revenue, and grants of land; for he drove out the entire population of the island of Aegina, and divided the land by lot among the Athenians. A certain amount of relief also was experienced by reflecting upon the injuries which they were inflicting on the enemy; for the fleet as it sailed round Peloponnesus destroyed many small villages and cities, and ravaged a great extent of country, while Pericles himself led an expedition into the territory of Megara and laid it all waste. By this it is clear that the allies, although they did much damage to the Athenians, yet suffered equally themselves, and never could have protracted the war for such a length of time as it really lasted, but, as Pericles foretold, must soon have desisted had not Providence interfered and confounded human counsels. For now the pestilence fell among the Athenians, and cut off the flower of their youth. Suffering both in body and mind they raved against Pericles, just as people when delirious with disease attack their fathers or their physicians. They endeavored to ruin him, urged on by his personal enemies, who assured them that he was the author of the plague, because he had brought all the country people into the city, where they were compelled to live during the heat of summer, crowded together in small rooms and stifling tents, living an idle life too, and breathing foul air instead of the pure country breeze to which they were accustomed. The cause of this, they said, was the man who, when the war began, admitted the masses of the country people into the city, and then made no use of them, but allowed them to be penned up together like cattle, and transmit the contagion from one to another, without devising any remedy or alleviation of their sufferings. Hoping to relieve them somewhat, and also to annoy the enemy, Pericles manned a hundred and fifty ships, placed on board, besides the sailors, many brave infantry and cavalry soldiers, and was about to put to sea. The Athenians conceived great hopes, and the enemy no less terror from so large an armament. When all was ready, and Pericles himself had just embarked in his own trireme, an eclipse of the sun took place, producing total darkness, and all men were terrified at so great a portent. Pericles sailed with the fleet, but did nothing worthy of so great a force. He besieged the sacred city of Epidaurus, but, although he had great hopes of taking it, he failed on account of the plague, which destroyed not only his own men, but every one who came in contact with them. After this he again endeavored to encourage the Athenians, to whom he had become an object of dislike. However, he did not succeed in pacifying them, but they condemned him by a public vote to be general no more, and to pay a fine which is stated at the lowest estimate to have been fifteen talents, and at the highest fifty. This was carried, according to Idomeneus, by Cleon, but, according to Theophrastus, by Simmias; while Heraclides of Pontus says that it was effected by Lacratides. He soon regained his public position, for the people's outburst of anger was quenched by the blow they had dealt him, just as a bee leaves its sting in the wound; but his private affairs were in great distress and disorder, as he had lost many of his relatives during the plague, while others were estranged from him on political grounds. Yet he would not yield, nor abate his firmness and constancy of spirit because of these afflictions, but was not observed to weep or mourn, or attend the funeral of any of his relations, until he lost Paralus, the last of his legitimate offspring. Crushed by this blow, he tried in vain to keep up his grand air of indifference, and when carrying a garland to lay upon the corpse he was overpowered by his feelings, so as to burst into a passion of tears and sobs, which he had never done before in his whole life. Athens made trial of her other generals and public men to conduct her affairs, but none appeared to be of sufficient weight or reputation to have such a charge intrusted to him. The city longed for Pericles, and invited him again to lead its counsels and direct its armies; and he, although dejected in spirits and living in seclusion in his own house, was yet persuaded by Alcibiades and his other friends to resume the direction of affairs. After this it appears that Pericles was attacked by the plague, not acutely or continuously, as in most cases, but in a slow wasting fashion, exhibiting many varieties of symptoms, and gradually undermining his strength. As he was now on his death-bed, the most distinguished of the citizens and his surviving friends collected round him and spoke admiringly of his nobleness and immense power, enumerating also the number of his exploits, and the trophies which he had set up for victories gained; for while in chief command he had won no less than nine victories for Athens. Events soon made the loss of Pericles felt and regretted by the Athenians. Those who during his lifetime had complained that his power completely threw them into the shade, when after his death they had made trial of other orators and statesmen, were obliged to confess that with all his arrogance no man ever was really more moderate, and that his real mildness in dealing with men was as remarkable as his apparent pride and assumption. His power, which had been so grudged and envied, and called monarchy and despotism, now was proved to have been the saving of the State; such an amount of corrupt dealing and wickedness suddenly broke out in public affairs, which he before had crushed and forced to hide itself, and so prevented its becoming incurable through impunity and license. GREAT PLAGUE AT ATHENS B.C. 430 GEORGE GROTE (Almost at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, when the prosperity of Athens had placed her at the height of her power and given her unquestioned supremacy among the Grecian states, her strength was greatly impaired by a visitation against which there was nothing in military prowess or patriotic pride and devotion that could prevail. It is one of the tragic contrasts of history--the picture of Athens, in her full triumph and glory, smitten, at a moment when she needed to put forth her full strength, by a deadly foe against whose might mortal arms were vain. Her citizens were rejoicing in her social no less than her military preëminence, and they had already been trained in the hardships necessary to be endured in defence of an invaded country. Again they were prepared to undergo whatever service might be laid upon them in her behalf. They could foresee the arduous tasks and inevitable sufferings of a great war, but had no warning of an impending calamity far worse than those which even war, though always attended with horrors, usually entails. Pericles had lately delivered his great funeral oration at the public interment of soldiers who had fallen for Athens. "The bright colors and tone of cheerful confidence," says Grote, whose account of the plague follows, "which pervaded the discourse of Pericles, appear the more striking from being in immediate antecedence to the awful description of this distemper." The death of Pericles himself, who directly or indirectly fell a victim to the prevailing pestilence, marked a grievous crisis for Athens in what was already become a measureless public woe. During the autumn of the year B.C. 427 the epidemic again broke out, after a considerable intermission, and for one year continued, "to the sad ruin both of the strength and the comfort of the city.") At the close of one year after the attempted surprise of Plataea by the Thebans, the belligerent parties in Greece remained in an unaltered position as to relative strength. Nothing decisive had been accomplished on either side, either by the invasion of Attica or by the flying descents round the coast of Peloponnesus. In spite of mutual damage inflicted--doubtless in the greatest measure upon Attica--no progress was yet made toward the fulfilment of those objects which had induced the Peloponnesians to go to war. Especially the most pressing among all their wishes--the relief of Potidaea--was in no way advanced; for the Athenians had not found it necessary to relax the blockade of that city, The result of the first year's operations had thus been to disappoint the hopes of the Corinthians and the other ardent instigators of war, while it justified the anticipations both of Pericles and of Archidamus. A second devastation of Attica was resolved upon for the commencement of spring; and measures were taken for carrying it all over that territory, since the settled policy of Athens, not to hazard a battle with the invaders, was now ascertained. About the end of March or beginning of April the entire Peloponnesian force--two-thirds from each confederate city as before--was assembled under the command of Archidamus and marched into Attica. This time they carried the work of systematic destruction not merely over the Thriasian plain and the plain immediately near to Athens, as before; but also to the more southerly portions of Attica, down even as far as the mines of Laurium. They traversed and ravaged both the eastern and the western coast, remaining not less than forty days in the country. They found the territory deserted as before, all the population having retired within the walls. In regard to this second invasion, Pericles recommended the same defensive policy as he had applied to the first; and apparently the citizens had now come to acquiesce in it, if not willingly, at least with a full conviction of its necessity. But a new visitation had now occurred, diverting their attention from the invader, though enormously aggravating their sufferings. A few days after Archidamus entered Attica, a pestilence or epidemic sickness broke out unexpectedly at Athens. It appears that this terrific disorder had been raging for some time throughout the regions round the Mediterranean; having begun, as was believed, in Ethiopia--thence passing into Egypt and Libya, and overrunning a considerable portion of Asia under the Persian government. About sixteen years before, there had been a similar calamity in Rome and in various parts of Italy. Recently it had been felt in Lemnos and some other islands of the Aegean, yet seemingly not with such intensity as to excite much notice generally in the Grecian world: at length it passed to Athens, and first showed itself in the Piraeus. The progress of the disease was as rapid and destructive as its appearance had been sudden; while the extraordinary accumulation of people within the city and long walls, in consequence of the presence of the invaders in the country, was but too favorable to every form of contagion. Families crowded together in close cabins and places of temporary shelter--throughout a city constructed, like most of those in Greece, with little regard to the conditions of salubrity and in a state of mental chagrin from the forced abandonment and sacrifice of their properties in the country, transmitted the disorder with fatal facility from one to the other. Beginning as it did about the middle of April, the increasing heat of summer further aided the disorder, the symptoms of which, alike violent and sudden, made themselves the more remarked because the year was particularly exempt from maladies of every other description. Of this plague--or, more properly, eruptive typhoid fever, distinct from, yet analogous to, the smallpox--a description no less clear than impressive has been left by the historian Thucydides, himself not only a spectator but a sufferer. It is not one of the least of his merits, that his notice of the symptoms, given at so early a stage of medical science and observation, is such as to instruct the medical reader of the present age, and to enable the malady to be understood and identified. The observations with which that notice is ushered in deserve particular attention. "In respect to this distemper (he says), let every man, physician or not, say what he thinks respecting the source from whence it may probably have arisen, and respecting the causes which he deems sufficiently powerful to have produced so great a revolution. But I, having myself had the distemper, and having seen others suffering under it, will state _what it actually was_, and will indicate in addition such other matters as will furnish any man, who lays them to heart, with knowledge and the means of calculation beforehand, in case the same misfortune should ever occur again." To record past facts, as a basis for rational prevision in regard to the future--the same sentiment which Thucydides mentions in his preface, as having animated him to the composition of his history--was at that time a duty so little understood that we have reason to admire not less the manner in which he performs it in practice than the distinctness with which he conceives it in theory. We infer from his language that speculation in his day was active respecting the causes of this plague, according to the vague and fanciful physics, and scanty stock of ascertained facts, which was all that could then be consulted. By resisting the itch of theorizing from one of those loose hypotheses which then appeared plausibly to explain everything, he probably renounced the point of view from which most credit and interest would be derivable at the time. But his simple and precise summary of observed facts carries with it an imperishable value, and even affords grounds for imagining that he was no stranger to the habits and training of his contemporary Hippocrates, and the other Asclepiads of Cos. It is hardly within the province of a historian of Greece to repeat after Thucydides the painful enumeration of symptoms, violent in the extreme and pervading every portion of the bodily system, which marked this fearful disorder. Beginning in Piraeus, it quickly passed into the city, and both the one and the other was speedily filled with sickness and suffering, the like of which had never before been known. The seizures were sudden, and a large proportion of the sufferers perished after deplorable agonies on the seventh or on the ninth day. Others, whose strength of constitution carried them over this period, found themselves the victims of exhausting and incurable diarrhoea afterward; with others again, after traversing both these stages, the distemper fixed itself in some particular member, the eyes, the genitals, the hands, or the feet, which were rendered permanently useless, or in some cases amputated, even where the patient himself recovered. There were also some whose recovery was attended with a total loss of memory, so that they no more knew themselves or recognized their friends. No treatment or remedy appearing, except in accidental cases, to produce any beneficial effect, the physicians or surgeons whose aid was invoked became completely at fault. While trying their accustomed means without avail, they soon ended by catching the malady themselves and perishing. The charms and incantations, to which the unhappy patient resorted, were not likely to be more efficacious. While some asserted that the Peloponnesians had poisoned the cisterns of water, others referred the visitation to the wrath of the gods, and especially to Apollo, known by hearers of the _Iliad_ as author of pestilence in the Greek host before Troy. It was remembered that this Delphian god had promised the Lacedaemonians, in reply to their application immediately before the war, that he would assist them whether invoked or uninvoked; and the disorder now raging was ascribed to the intervention of their irresistible ally; while the elderly men further called to mind an oracular verse sung in the time of their youth: "The Dorian war will come, and pestilence along with it." Under the distress which suggested, and was reciprocally aggravated by these gloomy ideas, prophets were consulted, and supplications with solemn procession were held at the temples, to appease the divine wrath. When it was found that neither the priest nor the physician could retard the spread or mitigate the intensity of the disorder, the Athenians abandoned themselves to despair, and the space within the walls became a scene of desolating misery. Every man attacked with the malady at once lost his courage--a state of depression itself among the worst features of the case, which made him lie down and die, without any attempt to seek for preservatives. And although at first friends and relatives lent their aid to tend the sick with the usual family sympathies, yet so terrible was the number of these attendants who perished, "like sheep," from such contact, that at length no man would thus expose himself; while the most generous spirits, who persisted longest in the discharge of their duty, were carried off in the greatest numbers. The patient was thus left to die alone and unheeded. Sometimes all the inmates of a house were swept away one after the other, no man being willing to go near it: desertion on the one hand, attendance on the other, both tended to aggravate the calamity. There remained only those who, having had the disorder and recovered, were willing to tend the sufferers. These men formed the single exception to the all-pervading misery of the time--for the disorder seldom attacked anyone twice, and when it did the second attack was never fatal. Elate with their own escape, they deemed themselves out of the reach of all disease, and were full of compassionate kindness for others whose sufferings were just beginning. It was from them too that the principal attention to the bodies of deceased victims proceeded: for such was the state of dismay and sorrow that even the nearest relatives neglected the sepulchral duties, sacred beyond all others in the eyes of a Greek. Nor is there any circumstance which conveys to us so vivid an idea of the prevalent agony and despair as when we read, in the words of an eyewitness, that the deaths took place among this close-packed crowd without the smallest decencies of attention--that the dead and the dying lay piled one upon another not merely in the public roads, but even in the temples, in spite of the understood defilement of the sacred building--that half-dead sufferers were seen lying round all the springs, from insupportable thirst--that the numerous corpses thus unburied and exposed were in such a condition that the dogs which meddled with them died in consequence, while no vultures or other birds of the like habits ever came near. Those bodies which escaped entire neglect were burnt or buried without the customary mourning, and with unseemly carelessness. In some cases the bearers of a body, passing by a funeral pile on which another body was burning, would put their own there to be burnt also; or perhaps, if the pile was prepared ready for a body not yet arrived, would deposit their own upon it, set fire to the pile, and then depart. Such indecent confusion would have been intolerable to the feelings of the Athenians in any ordinary times. To all these scenes of physical suffering, death, and reckless despair was superadded another evil, which affected those who were fortunate enough to escape the rest. The bonds both of law and morality became relaxed, amid such total uncertainty of every man both for his own life and that of others. Men cared not to abstain from wrong, under circumstances in which punishment was not likely to overtake them, nor to put a check upon their passions, and endure privations, in obedience even to their strongest conviction, when the chance was so small of their living to reap reward or enjoy any future esteem. An interval, short and sweet, before their doom was realized--before they became plunged in the widespread misery which they witnessed around, and which affected indiscriminately the virtuous and the profligate--was all that they looked to enjoy; embracing with avidity the immediate pleasures of sense, as well as such positive gains, however ill-gotten, as could be made the means of procuring them, and throwing aside all thought both of honor and of long-sighted advantage. Life and property being alike ephemeral, there was no hope left but to snatch a moment of enjoyment, before the outstretched hand of destiny should fall upon its victims. The picture of society under the pressure of a murderous epidemic, with its train of physical torments, wretchedness, and demoralization, has been drawn by more than one eminent author, but by none with more impressive fidelity and conciseness than by Thucydides, who had no predecessor, nor anything but the reality, to copy from. We may remark that amid all the melancholy accompaniments of the time there are no human sacrifices, such as those offered up at Carthage during pestilence to appease the anger of the gods--there are no cruel persecutions against imaginary authors of the disease, such as those against the Untori (anointers of doors) in the plague of Milan in 1630. Three years altogether did this calamity desolate Athens: continuously, during the entire second and third years of the war--after which followed a period of marked abatement for a year and a half; but it then revived again, and lasted for another year, with the same fury as at first. The public loss, over and above the private misery, which this unexpected enemy inflicted upon Athens, was incalculable. Out of twelve hundred horsemen, all among the rich men of the state, three hundred died of the epidemic; besides forty-four hundred _hoplites_ out of the roll formally kept, and a number of the poorer population so great as to defy computation. No efforts of the Peloponnesians could have done so much to ruin Athens, or to bring the war to a termination such as they desired: and the distemper told the more in their favor, as it never spread at all into Peloponnesus, though it passed from Athens to some of the more populous islands. The Lacedaemonian army was withdrawn from Attica somewhat earlier than it would otherwise have been, for fear of taking the contagion. But it was while the Lacedaemonians were yet in Attica, and during the first freshness of the terrible malady, that Pericles equipped and conducted from Piraeus an armament of one hundred triremes and four thousand hoplites to attack the coasts of Peloponnesus; three hundred horsemen were also carried in some horse-transports, prepared for the occasion out of old triremes. To diminish the crowd accumulated in the city was doubtless of beneficial tendency, and perhaps those who went aboard might consider it as a chance of escape to quit an infected home. But unhappily they carried the infection along with them, which desolated the fleet not less than the city, and crippled all its efforts. Reenforced by fifty ships of war from Chios and Lesbos, the Athenians first landed near Epidaurus in Peloponnesus, ravaging the territory and making an unavailing attempt upon the city; next they made like incursions on the most southerly portions of the Argolic peninsula--Troezen, Halieis, and Hermione--and lastly attacked and captured Prasiae, on the eastern coast of Laconia. On returning to Athens, the same armament was immediately conducted under Agnon and Cleopompus, to press the siege of Potidaea, the blockade of which still continued without any visible progress. On arriving there an attack was made on the walls by battering engines and by the other aggressive methods then practised; but nothing whatever was achieved. In fact, the armament became incompetent for all serious effort, from the aggravated character which the distemper here assumed, communicated by the soldiers fresh from Athens even to those who had before been free from it at Potidaea. So frightful was the mortality that out of the four thousand hoplites under Agnon no fewer than one thousand and fifty died in the short space of forty days. The armament was brought back in this distressed condition to Athens, while the reduction of Potidaea was left as before, to the slow course of blockade. On returning from the expedition against Peloponnesus, Pericles found his countrymen almost distracted with their manifold sufferings. Over and above the raging epidemic they had just gone over Attica and ascertained the devastations committed by the invaders throughout all the territory--except the Marathonian Tetrapolis and Deceleia, districts spared, as we are told, through indulgence founded on an ancient legendary sympathy--during their long stay of forty days. The rich had found their comfortable mansions and farms, the poor their modest cottages, in the various _demes_, torn down and ruined. Death, sickness, loss of property, and despair of the future now rendered the Athenians angry and intractable to the last degree. They vented their feelings against Pericles as the cause not merely of the war, but also of all that they were now enduring. Either with or without his consent, they sent envoys to Sparta to open negotiations for peace, but the Spartans turned a deaf ear to the proposition. This new disappointment rendered them still more furious against Pericles, whose long-standing political enemies now doubtless found strong sympathy in their denunciations of his character and policy. That unshaken and majestic firmness, which ranked first among his many eminent qualities, was never more imperiously required and never more effectively manifested. In his capacity of _strategus_, or general, Pericles convoked a formal assembly of the people, for the purpose of vindicating himself publicly against the prevailing sentiment, and recommending perseverance in his line of policy. The speeches made by his opponents, assuredly very bitter, are not given by Thucydides; but that of Pericles himself is set down at considerable length, and a memorable discourse it is. It strikingly brings into relief both the character of the man and the impress of actual circumstances--an impregnable mind conscious not only of right purposes, but of just and reasonable anticipations, and bearing up with manliness, or even defiance, against the natural difficulty of the case, heightened by an extreme of incalculable misfortune. He had foreseen, while advising the war originally, the probable impatience of his countrymen under its first hardships, but he could not foresee the epidemic by which that impatience had been exasperated into madness: and he now addressed them not merely with unabated adherence to his own deliberate convictions, but also in a tone of reproachful remonstrance against their unmerited change of sentiment toward him--seeking at the same time to combat that uncontrolled despair which for the moment overlaid both their pride and their patriotism. Far from humbling himself before the present sentiment, it is at this time that he sets forth his titles to their esteem in the most direct and unqualified manner, and claims the continuance of that which they had so long accorded, as something belonging to him by acquired right. His main object, through this discourse, is to fill the minds of his audience with patriotic sympathy for the weal of the entire city, so as to counterbalance the absorbing sense of private woe. If the collective city flourishes, he argues, private misfortunes may at least be borne; but no amount of private prosperity will avail if the collective city falls--a proposition literally true in ancient times and under the circumstances of ancient warfare, though less true at present. "Distracted by domestic calamity, ye are now angry both with me who advised you to go to war, and with yourselves who followed the advice. Ye listened to me, considering me superior to others in judgment, in speech, in patriotism, and in incorruptible probity--nor ought I now to be treated as culpable for giving such advice, when in point of fact the war was unavoidable and there would have been still greater danger in shrinking from it. I am the same man, still unchanged--but ye in your misfortunes cannot stand to the convictions which ye adopted when yet unhurt. Extreme and unforeseen, indeed, are the sorrows which have fallen upon you: yet inhabiting as ye do a great city, and brought up in dispositions suitable to it, ye must also resolve to bear up against the utmost pressure of adversity, and never to surrender your dignity. I have often explained to you that ye have no reason to doubt of eventual success in the war, but I will now remind you, more emphatically than before, and even with a degree of ostentation suitable as a stimulus to your present unnatural depression, that your naval force makes you masters not only of your allies, but of the entire sea--one-half of the visible field for action and employment. Compared with so vast a power as this, the temporary use of your houses and territory is a mere trifle, an ornamental accessory not worth considering: and this too, if ye preserve your freedom, ye will quickly recover. It was your fathers who first gained this empire, without any of the advantages which ye now enjoy; ye must not disgrace yourselves by losing what they acquired. "Delighting as ye all do in the honor and empire enjoyed by the city, ye must not shrink from the toils whereby alone that honor is sustained: moreover, ye now fight, not merely for freedom instead of slavery, but for empire against loss of empire, with all the perils arising out of imperial unpopularity. It is not safe for you now to abdicate, even if ye chose to do so; for ye hold your empire like a despotism--unjust perhaps in the original acquisition, but ruinous to part with when once acquired. Be not angry with me, whose advice ye followed in going to war, because the enemy have done such damage as might be expected from them: still less on account of this unforeseen distemper: I know that this makes me an object of your special present hatred, though very unjustly, unless ye will consent to give me credit also for any unexpected good-luck which may occur. Our city derives its particular glory from unshaken bearing up against misfortune: her power, her name, her empire of Greeks over Greeks, are such as have never before been seen; and if we choose to be great, we must take the consequence of that temporary envy and hatred which is the necessary price of permanent renown. Behave ye now in a manner worthy of that glory: display that courage which is essential to protect you against disgrace at present, as well as to guarantee your honor for the future. Send no further embassy to Sparta, and bear your misfortunes without showing symptoms of distress." The irresistible reason, as well as the proud and resolute bearing of this discourse, set forth with an eloquence which it was not possible for Thucydides to reproduce--together with the age and character of Pericles--carried the assent of the assembled people, who when in the Pnyx, and engaged according to habit on public matters, would for a moment forget their private sufferings in considerations of the safety and grandeur of Athens. Possibly, indeed, those sufferings, though still continuing, might become somewhat alleviated when the invaders quitted Attica, and when it was no longer indispensable for all the population to confine itself within the walls. Accordingly, the assembly resolved that no further propositions should be made for peace, and that the war should be prosecuted with vigor. But though the public resolution thus adopted showed the ancient habit of deference to the authority of Pericles, the sentiments of individuals taken separately were still those of anger against him as the author of that system which had brought them into so much distress. His political opponents--Cleon, Simmias, or Lacratidas, perhaps all three in conjunction--took care to provide an opportunity for this prevalent irritation to manifest itself in act, by bringing an accusation against him before the _dicastery_. The accusation is said to have been preferred on the ground of pecuniary malversation, and ended by his being sentenced to pay a considerable fine, the amount of which is differently reported--fifteen, fifty, or eighty talents, by different authors. The accusing party thus appeared to have carried their point, and to have disgraced, as well as excluded from reelection, the veteran statesman. The event, however, disappointed their expectations. The imposition of the fine not only satiated all the irritation of the people against him, but even occasioned a serious reaction in his favor, and brought back as strongly as ever the ancient sentiment of esteem and admiration. It was quickly found that those who had succeeded Pericles as generals neither possessed nor deserved in an equal degree the public confidence. He was accordingly soon reelected, with as much power and influence as he had ever in his life enjoyed. But that life, long, honorable, and useful, had already been prolonged considerably beyond the sixtieth year, and there were but too many circumstances, besides the recent fine, which tended to hasten as well as to embitter its close. At the very moment when Pericles was preaching to his countrymen, in a tone almost reproachful, the necessity of manful and unabated devotion to the common country in the midst of private suffering, he was himself among the greatest of sufferers, and most hardly pressed to set the example of observing his own precepts. The epidemic carried off not merely his two sons--the only two legitimate, Xanthippus and Paralus--but also his sister, several other relatives, and his best and most useful political friends. Amid this train of domestic calamities, and in the funeral obsequies of so many of his dearest friends, he remained master of his grief, and maintained his habitual self-command, until the last misfortune--the death of his favorite son Paralus, which left his house without any legitimate representative to maintain the family and the hereditary sacred rites. On this final blow, though he strove to command himself as before, yet at the obsequies of the young man, when it became his duty to place a wreath on the dead body, his grief became uncontrollable, and he burst out, for the first time in his life, into profuse tears and sobbing. In the midst of these several personal trials he received the intimation, through Alcibiades and some other friends, of the restored confidence of the people toward him, and of his reelection to the office of strategus. But it was not without difficulty that he was persuaded to present himself again at the public assembly and resume the direction of affairs. The regret of the people was formally expressed to him for the recent sentence--perhaps, indeed, the fine may have been repaid to him, or some evasion of it permitted, saving the forms of law--in the present temper of the city; which was further displayed toward him by the grant of a remarkable exemption from a law of his own original proposition. He had himself, some years before, been the author of that law whereby the citizenship of Athens was restricted to persons born both of Athenian fathers and Athenian mothers, under which restriction several thousand persons, illegitimate on the mother's side, are said to have been deprived of the citizenship, on occasion of a public distribution of corn. Invidious as it appeared to grant, to Pericles singly, an exemption from a law which had been strictly enforced against so many others, the people were now moved not less by compassion than by anxiety to redress their own previous severity. Without a legitimate heir, the house of Pericles, one branch of the great Alcmaeonid gens by his mother's side, would be left deserted, and the continuity of the family sacred rites would be broken--a misfortune painfully felt by every Athenian family, as calculated to wrong all the deceased members, and provoke their posthumous displeasure toward the city. Accordingly, permission was granted to Pericles to legitimize, and to inscribe in his own gens and phratry, his natural son by Aspasia, who bore his own name. It was thus that Pericles was reinstated in his post of strategus as well as in his ascendency over the public counsels--seemingly about August or September, B.C. 430. He lived about one year longer, and seems to have maintained his influence as long as his health permitted. Yet we hear nothing of him after this moment, and he fell a victim, not to the violent symptoms of the epidemic, but to a slow and wearing fever, which undermined his strength as well as his capacity. To a friend who came to ask after him when in this disease, Pericles replied by showing a charm or amulet which his female relations had hung about his neck--a proof how low he was reduced, and how completely he had become a passive subject in the hands of others. And according to another anecdote which we read--yet more interesting and equally illustrative of his character--it was during his last moments, when he was lying apparently unconscious and insensible, that the friends around his bed were passing in review the acts of his life, and the nine trophies which he had erected at different times for so many victories. He heard what they said, though they fancied that he was past hearing, and interrupted them by remarking: "What you praise in my life belongs partly to good fortune--and is, at best, common to me with many other generals. But the peculiarity of which I am most proud, you have not noticed--no Athenian has ever put on mourning through any action of mine." DEFEAT OF THE ATHENIANS AT SYRACUSE B.C. 413 SIR EDWARD SHEPHERD CREASY (That great writer of the history of the Romans, Thomas Arnold, says of the defeat of the Athenian fleet at Syracuse: "The Romans knew not, and could not know, how deeply the greatness of their own posterity, and the fate of the whole western world, were involved in the destruction of the fleet of Athens in the harbor of Syracuse. Had that great expedition proved victorious, the energies of Greece during the next eventful century would have found their field in the West no less than in the East; Greece, and not Rome; might have conquered Carthage; Greek instead of Latin might have been at this day the principal element of the language of Spain, of France, and of Italy; and the laws of Athens, rather than of Rome, might be the foundation of the law of the civilized world." The foregoing, the author's own selection, really sums up all that need be said as to the importance of the great event so finely treated by Creasy.) Few cities have undergone more memorable sieges during ancient and mediaeval times than has the city of Syracuse. Athenian, Carthaginian, Roman, Vandal, Byzantine, Saracen, and Norman have in turns beleaguered her walls; and the resistance which she successfully opposed to some of her early assailants was of the deepest importance, not only to the fortunes of the generations then in being, but to all the subsequent current of human events. To adopt the eloquent expressions of Arnold respecting the check which she gave to the Carthaginian arms, "Syracuse was a breakwater which God's providence raised up to protect the yet immature strength of Rome." And her triumphant repulse of the great Athenian expedition against her was of even more widespread and enduring importance. It forms a decisive epoch in the strife for universal empire, in which all the great states of antiquity successively engaged and failed. The present city of Syracuse is a place of little or no military strength, as the fire of artillery from the neighboring heights would almost completely command it. But in ancient warfare its position, and the care bestowed on its walls, rendered it formidably strong against the means of offence which were then employed by besieging armies. The ancient city, in its most prosperous times, was chiefly built on the knob of land which projects into the sea on the eastern coast of Sicily, between two bays; one of which, to the north, was called the Bay of Thapsus, while the southern one formed the great harbor of the city of Syracuse itself. A small island, or peninsula (for such it soon was rendered), lies at the southeastern extremity of this knob of land, stretching almost entirely across the mouth of the great harbor, and rendering it nearly land-locked. This island comprised the original settlement of the first Greek colonists from Corinth, who founded Syracuse two thousand five hundred years ago; and the modern city has shrunk again into these primary limits. But, in the fifth century before our era, the growing wealth and population of the Syracusans had led them to occupy and include within their city walls portion after portion of the mainland lying next to the little isle, so that at the time of the Athenian expedition the seaward part of the land between the two bays already spoken of was built over, and fortified from bay to bay, and constituted the larger part of Syracuse. The landward wall, therefore, of this district of the city traversed this knob of land, which continues to slope upward from the sea, and which, to the west of the old fortifications, that is, toward the interior of Sicily, rises rapidly for a mile or two, but diminishes in width, and finally terminates in a long narrow ridge, between which and Mount Hybla a succession of chasms and uneven low ground extends. On each flank of this ridge the descent is steep and precipitous from its summits to the strips of level land that lie immediately below it, both to the southwest and northwest. The usual mode of assailing fortified towns in the time of the Peloponnesian war was to build a double wall round them sufficiently strong to check any sally of the garrison from within or any attack of a relieving force from without. The interval within the two walls of the circumvallation was roofed over, and formed barracks, in which the besiegers posted themselves, and awaited the effects of want or treachery among the besieged in producing a surrender; and in every Greek city of those days, as in every Italian republic of the Middle Ages, the rage of domestic sedition between aristocrats and democrats ran high. Rancorous refugees swarmed in the camp of every invading enemy; and every blockaded city was sure to contain within its walls a body of intriguing malcontents, who were eager to purchase a party triumph at the expense of a national disaster. Famine and faction were the allies on whom besiegers relied. The generals of that time trusted to the operation of these sure confederates as soon as they could establish a complete blockade. They rarely ventured on the attempt to storm any fortified post, for the military engines of antiquity were feeble in breaching masonry before the improvements which the first Dionysius effected in the mechanics of destruction; and the lives of spearmen the boldest and most high-trained would, of course, have been idly spent in charges against unshattered walls. A city built close to the sea, like Syracuse, was impregnable save by the combined operations of a superior hostile fleet and a superior hostile army; and Syracuse, from her size, her population, and her military and naval resources, not unnaturally thought herself secure from finding in another Greek city a foe capable of sending a sufficient armament to menace her with capture and subjection. But in the spring of B.C. 414 the Athenian navy was mistress of her harbor and the adjacent seas; an Athenian army had defeated her troops, and cooped them within the town; and from bay to bay a blockading wall was being rapidly carried across the strips of level ground and the high ridge outside the city (then termed Epipolae), which, if completed, would have cut the Syracusans off from all succor from the interior of Sicily, and have left them at the mercy of the Athenian generals. The besiegers' works were, indeed, unfinished; but every day the unfortified interval in their lines grew narrower, and with it diminished all apparent hope of safety for the beleaguered town. Athens was now staking the flower of her forces, and the accumulated fruits of seventy years of glory, on one bold throw for the dominion of the western world. As Napoleon from Mount Coeur de Lion pointed to St. Jean d'Acre, and told his staff that the capture of that town would decide his destiny and would change the face of the world, so the Athenian officers, from the heights of Epipolae, must have looked on Syracuse, and felt that with its fall all the known powers of the earth would fall beneath them. They must have felt also that Athens, if repulsed there, must pause forever from her career of conquest, and sink from an imperial republic into a ruined and subservient community. At Marathon, the first in date of the great battles of the world, we beheld Athens struggling for self-preservation against the invading armies of the East. At Syracuse she appears as the ambitious and oppressive invader of others. In her, as in other republics of old and of modern times, the same energy that had inspired the most heroic efforts in defence of the national independence soon learned to employ itself in daring and unscrupulous schemes of self-aggrandizement at the expense of neighboring nations. In the interval between the Persian and the Peloponnesian wars she had rapidly grown into a conquering and dominant state, the chief of a thousand tributary cities, and the mistress of the largest and best-manned navy that the Mediterranean had yet beheld. The occupations of her territory by Xerxes and Mardonius, in the second Persian war, had forced her whole population to become marines; and the glorious results of that struggle confirmed them in their zeal for their country's service at sea. The voluntary suffrage of the Greek cities of the coasts and islands of the Aegean first placed Athens at the head of the confederation formed for the further prosecution of the war against Persia. But this titular ascendency was soon converted by her into practical and arbitrary dominion. She protected them from piracy and the Persian power, which soon fell into decrepitude and decay, but she exacted in return implicit obedience to herself. She claimed and enforced a prerogative of taxing them at her discretion, and proudly refused to be accountable for her mode of expending their supplies. Remonstrance against her assessments was treated as factious disloyalty, and refusal to pay was promptly punished as revolt. Permitting and encouraging her subject allies to furnish all their contingents in money, instead of part consisting of ships and men, the sovereign republic gained the double object of training her own citizens by constant and well-paid service in her fleets, and of seeing her confederates lose their skill and discipline by inaction, and become more and more passive and powerless under her yoke. Their towns were generally dismantled, while the imperial city herself was fortified with the greatest care and sumptuousness; the accumulated revenues from her tributaries serving to strengthen and adorn to the utmost her havens, her docks, her arsenals, her theatres, and her shrines, and to array her in that plenitude of architectural magnificence the ruins of which still attest the intellectual grandeur of the age and people which produced a Pericles to plan and a Phidias to execute. All republics that acquire supremacy over other nations rule them selfishly and oppressively. There is no exception to this in either ancient or modern times. Carthage, Rome, Venice, Genoa, Florence, Pisa, Holland, and republican France, all tyrannized over every province and subject state where they gained authority. But none of them openly avowed their system of doing so upon principle with the candor which the Athenian republicans displayed when any remonstrance was made against the severe exactions which they imposed upon their vassal allies. They avowed that their empire was a tyranny, and frankly stated that they solely trusted to force and terror to uphold it. They appealed to what they called "the eternal law of nature, that the weak should be coerced by the strong." Sometimes they stated, and not without some truth, that the unjust hatred of Sparta against themselves forced them to be unjust to others in self-defence. To be safe, they must be powerful; and to be powerful, they must plunder and coerce their neighbors. They never dreamed of communicating any franchise, or share in office, to their dependants, but jealously monopolized every post of command and all political and judicial power; exposing themselves to every risk with unflinching gallantry; embarking readily in every ambitious scheme; and never suffering difficulty or disaster to shake their tenacity of purpose: in the hope of acquiring unbounded empire for their country, and the means of maintaining each of the thirty thousand citizens who made up the sovereign republic, in exclusive devotion to military occupations, and to those brilliant sciences and arts in which Athens already had reached the meridian of intellectual splendor. Her great political dramatist speaks of the Athenian empire as comprehending a thousand states. The language of the stage must not be taken too literally; but the number of the dependencies of Athens, at the time when the Peloponnesian confederacy attacked her, was undoubtedly very great. With a few trifling exceptions, all the islands of the Aegean, and all the Greek cities which in that age fringed the coasts of Asia Minor, the Hellespont, and Thrace, paid tribute to Athens, and implicitly obeyed her orders. The Aegean Sea was an Attic lake. Westward of Greece, her influence, though strong, was not equally predominant. She had colonies and allies among the wealthy and populous Greek settlements in Sicily and South Italy, but she had no organized system of confederates in those regions; and her galleys brought her no tribute from the Western seas. The extension of her empire over Sicily was the favorite project of her ambitious orators and generals. While her great statesman, Pericles, lived, his commanding genius kept his countrymen under control, and forbade them to risk the fortunes of Athens in distant enterprises, while they had unsubdued and powerful enemies at their own doors. He taught Athens this maxim; but he also taught her to know and to use her own strength; and when Pericles had departed, the bold spirit which he had fostered overleaped the salutary limits which he had prescribed. When her bitter enemies, the Corinthians, succeeded, B.C. 431, in inducing Sparta to attack her, and a confederacy was formed of five-sixths of the continental Greeks, all animated by anxious jealousy and bitter hatred of Athens; when armies far superior in numbers and equipment to those which had marched against the Persians were poured into the Athenian territory, and laid it waste to the city walls, the general opinion was that Athens would be reduced, in two or three years at the furthest, to submit to the requisitions of her invaders. But her strong fortifications, by which she was girt and linked to her principal haven, gave her, in those ages, almost all the advantages of an insular position. Pericles had made her trust to her empire of the seas. Every Athenian in those days was a practised seaman. A state, indeed, whose members, of an age fit for service, at no time exceeded thirty thousand, could only have acquired such a naval dominion as Athens once held by devoting and zealously training all its sons to service in its fleets. In order to man the numerous galleys which she sent out, she necessarily employed large numbers of hired mariners and slaves at the oar; but the staple of her crews was Athenian, and all posts of command were held by native citizens. It was by reminding them of this, of their long practice in seamanship, and the certain superiority which their discipline gave them over the enemy's marine, that their great minister mainly encouraged them to resist the combined power of Lacedaemon and her allies. He taught them that Athens might thus reap the fruit of her zealous devotion to maritime affairs ever since the invasion of the Medes; "she had not, indeed, perfected herself; but the reward of her superior training was the rule of the sea--a mighty dominion, for it gave her the rule of much fair land beyond its waves, safe from the idle ravages with which the Lacedaemonians might harass Attica, but never could subdue Athens." Athens accepted the war with which her enemies threatened her rather than descend from her pride of place; and though the awful visitation of the plague came upon her, and swept away more of her citizens than the Dorian spear laid low, she held her own gallantly against her enemies. If the Peloponnesian armies in irresistible strength wasted every spring her corn-lands, her vineyards, and her olive groves with fire and sword, she retaliated on their coasts with her fleets; which, if resisted, were only resisted to display the preëminent skill and bravery of her seamen. Some of her subject allies revolted, but the revolts were in general sternly and promptly quelled. The genius of one enemy had indeed inflicted blows on her power in Thrace which she was unable to remedy; but he fell in battle in the tenth year of the war, and with the loss of Brasidas the Lacedaemonians seemed to have lost all energy and judgment. Both sides at length grew weary of the war, and in 421 a truce for fifty years was concluded, which, though ill kept, and though many of the confederates of Sparta refused to recognize it, and hostilities still continued in many parts of Greece, protected the Athenian territory from the ravages of enemies, and enabled Athens to accumulate large sums out of the proceeds of her annual revenues. So also, as a few years passed by, the havoc which the pestilence and the sword had made in her population was repaired; and in 415 Athens was full of bold and restless spirits, who longed for some field of distant enterprise wherein they might signalize themselves and aggrandize the state, and who looked on the alarm of Spartan hostility as a mere old-woman's tale. When Sparta had wasted their territory she had done her worst; and the fact of its always being in her power to do so seemed a strong reason for seeking to increase the transmarine dominion of Athens. The West was now the quarter toward which the thoughts of every aspiring Athenian were directed. From the very beginning of the war Athens had kept up an interest in Sicily, and her squadron had, from time to time, appeared on its coasts and taken part in the dissensions in which the Sicilian Greeks were universally engaged one against the other. There were plausible grounds for a direct quarrel, and an open attack by the Athenians upon Syracuse. With the capture of Syracuse, all Sicily, it was hoped, would be secured. Carthage and Italy were next to be attacked. With large levies of Iberian mercenaries she then meant to overwhelm her Peloponnesian enemies. The Persian monarchy lay in hopeless imbecility, inviting Greek invasion; nor did the known world contain the power that seemed capable of checking the growing might of Athens, if Syracuse once should be hers. The national historian of Rome has left us an episode of his great work, a disquisition on the probable effects that would have followed if Alexander the Great had invaded Italy. Posterity has generally regarded that disquisition as proving Livy's patriotism more strongly than his impartiality or acuteness. Yet, right or wrong, the speculations of the Roman writer were directed to the consideration of a very remote possibility. To whatever age Alexander's life might have been prolonged, the East would have furnished full occupation for his martial ambition, as well as for those schemes of commercial grandeur and imperial amalgamation of nations in which the truly great qualities of his mind loved to display themselves. With his death the dismemberment of his empire among his generals was certain, even as the dismemberment of Napoleon's empire among his marshals would certainly have ensued if he had been cut off in the zenith of his power. Rome, also, was far weaker when the Athenians were in Sicily than she was a century afterward in Alexander's time. There can be little doubt but that Rome would have been blotted out from the independent powers of the West, had she been attacked at the end of the fifth century B.C. by an Athenian army, largely aided by Spanish mercenaries, and flushed with triumphs over Sicily and Africa, instead of the collision between her and Greece having been deferred until the latter had sunk into decrepitude, and the Roman Mars had grown into full vigor. The armament which the Athenians equipped against Syracuse was in every way worthy of the state which formed such projects of universal empire, and it has been truly termed "the noblest that ever yet had been sent forth by a free and civilized commonwealth." The fleet consisted of one hundred and thirty-four war-galleys, with a multitude of storeships. A powerful force of the best heavy-armed infantry that Athens and her allies could furnish was sent on board it, together with a smaller number of slingers and bowmen. The quality of the forces was even more remarkable than the number. The zeal of individuals vied with that of the republic in giving every galley the best possible crew and every troop the most perfect accoutrements. And with private as well as public wealth eagerly lavished on all that could give splendor as well as efficiency to the expedition, the fated fleet began its voyage for the Sicilian shores in the summer of 415. The Syracusans themselves, at the time of the Peloponnesian war, were a bold and turbulent democracy, tyrannizing over the weaker Greek cities in Sicily, and trying to gain in that island the same arbitrary supremacy which Athens maintained along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean. In numbers and in spirit they were fully equal to the Athenians, but far inferior to them in military and naval discipline. When the probability of an Athenian invasion was first publicly discussed at Syracuse, and efforts were made by some of the wiser citizens to improve the state of the national defences and prepare for the impending danger, the rumors of coming war and the proposal for preparation were received by the mass of the Syracusans with scornful incredulity. The speech of one of their popular orators is preserved to us in Thucydides. The Syracusan orator told his countrymen to dismiss with scorn the visionary terrors which a set of designing men among themselves strove to excite, in order to get power and influence thrown into their own hands. He told them that Athens knew her own interest too well to think of wantonly provoking their hostility: "Even if the enemies were to come," said he, "so distant from their resources, and opposed to such a power as ours, their destruction would be easy and inevitable. Their ships will have enough to do to get to our island at all, and to carry such stores of all sorts as will be needed. They cannot therefore carry, besides, an army large enough to cope with such a population as ours. They will have no fortified place from which to commence their operations, but must rest them on no better base than a set of wretched tents, and such means as the necessities of the moment will allow them. But, in truth, I do not believe that they would even be able to effect a disembarkation. Let us, therefore, set at naught these reports as altogether of home manufacture; and be sure that if any enemy does come, the state will know how to defend itself in a manner worthy of the national honor." Such assertions pleased the Syracusan assembly; but the invaders of Syracuse came, made good their landing in Sicily; and if they had promptly attacked the city itself, instead of wasting nearly a year in desultory operations in other parts of Sicily, the Syracusans must have paid the penalty of their self-sufficient carelessness in submission to the Athenian yoke. But, of the three generals who led the Athenian expedition, two only were men of ability, and one was most weak and incompetent. Fortunately for Syracuse, Alcibiades, the most skilful of the three, was soon deposed from his command by a factious and fanatic vote of his fellow-countrymen, and the other competent one, Lamachus, fell early in a skirmish; while, more fortunately still for her, the feeble and vacillating Nicias remained unrecalled and unhurt, to assume the undivided leadership of the Athenian army and fleet, and to mar, by alternate over-caution and over-carelessness, every chance of success which the early part of the operations offered. Still, even under him, the Athenians nearly won the town. They defeated the raw levies of the Syracusans, cooped them within the walls, and, as before mentioned, almost effected a continuous fortification from bay to bay over Epipolae, the completion of which would certainly have been followed by a capitulation. Alcibiades--the most complete example of genius without principle that history produces; the Bolingbroke of antiquity, but with high military talents superadded to diplomatic and oratorical powers--on being summoned home from his command in Sicily to take his trial before the Athenian tribunal, had escaped to Sparta, and had exerted himself there with all the selfish rancor of a renegade to renew the war with Athens and to send instant assistance to Syracuse. When we read his words in the pages of Thucydides--who was himself an exile from Athens at this period, and may probably have been at Sparta, and heard Alcibiades speak--we are at a loss whether most to admire or abhor his subtle counsels. After an artful exordium, in which he tried to disarm the suspicions which he felt must be entertained of him, and to point out to the Spartans how completely his interests and theirs were identified, through hatred of the Athenian democracy, he thus proceeded: "Hear me, at any rate, on the matters which require your grave attention, and which I, from the personal knowledge that I have of them, can and ought to bring before you. We Athenians sailed to Sicily with the design of subduing, first the Greek cities there, and next those in Italy. Then we intended to make an attempt on the dominions of Carthage, and on Carthage itself.[24] If all these projects succeeded--nor did we limit ourselves to them in these quarters--we intended to increase our fleet with the inexhaustible supplies of ship timber which Italy affords, to put in requisition the whole military force of the conquered Greek states, and also to hire large armies of the barbarians, of the Iberians,[25] and others in those regions, who are allowed to make the best possible soldiers. _Then_, when we had done all this, we intended to assail Peloponnesus with our collected force. Our fleets would blockade you by sea and desolate your coasts, our armies would be landed at different points and assail your cities. Some of these we expected to storm,[26] and others we meant to take by surrounding them with fortified lines. We thought that it would thus be an easy matter thoroughly to war you down; and then we should become the masters of the whole Greek race. As for expense, we reckoned that each conquered state would give us supplies of money and provisions sufficient to pay for its own conquest, and furnish the means for the conquest of its neighbors." [Footnote 24: Arnold, in his notes on this passage, well reminds the reader that Agathocles, with a Greek force far inferior to that of the Athenians at this period, did, some years afterward, very nearly conquer Carthage.] [Footnote 25: It will be remembered that Spanish infantry were the staple of the Carthaginian armies. Doubtless Alcibiades and other leading Athenians had made themselves acquainted with the Carthaginian system of carrying on war, and meant to adopt it. With the marvellous powers which Alcibiades possessed of ingratiating himself with men of every class and every nation, and his high military genius, he would have been as formidable a chief of an army of _condottieri_ as Hannibal afterward was.] [Footnote 26: Alcibiades here alluded to Sparta itself, which was unfortified. His Spartan hearers must have glanced round them at these words with mixed alarm and indignation.] "Such are the designs of the present Athenian expedition to Sicily, and you have heard them from the lips of the man who, of all men living, is most accurately acquainted with them. The other Athenian generals, who remain with the expedition, will endeavor to carry out these plans. And be sure that without your speedy interference they will all be accomplished. The Sicilian Greeks are deficient in military training; but still, if they could at once be brought to combine in an organized resistance to Athens, they might even now be saved. But as for the Syracusans resisting Athens by themselves, they have already, with the whole strength of their population, fought a battle and been beaten; they cannot face the Athenians at sea; and it is quite impossible for them to hold out against the force of their invaders. And if this city falls into the hands of the Athenians, all Sicily is theirs, and presently Italy also; and the danger, which I warned you of from that quarter, will soon fall upon yourselves. You must, therefore, in Sicily, fight for the safety of Peloponnesus. Send some galleys thither instantly. Put men on board who can work their own way over, and who, as soon as they land, can do duty as regular troops. But, above all, let one of yourselves, let a man of Sparta, go over to take the chief command, to bring into order and effective discipline the forces that are in Syracuse, and urge those who at present hang back to come forward and aid the Syracusans. The presence of a Spartan general at this crisis will do more to save the city than a whole army." The renegade then proceeded to urge on them the necessity of encouraging their friends in Sicily, by showing that they themselves were in earnest in hostility to Athens. He exhorted them not only to march their armies into Attica again, but to take up a permanent fortified position in the country; and he gave them in detail information of all that the Athenians most dreaded, and how his country might receive the most distressing and enduring injury at their hands. The Spartans resolved to act on his advice, and appointed Gylippus to the Sicilian command. Gylippus was a man who, to the national bravery and military skill of a Spartan united political sagacity that was worthy of his great fellow-countryman Brasidas; but his merits were debased by mean and sordid vices; and his is one of the cases in which history has been austerely just, and where little or no fame has been accorded to the successful but venal soldier. But for the purpose for which he was required in Sicily, an abler man could not have been found in Lacedaemon. His country gave him neither men nor money, but she gave him her authority; and the influence of her name and of his own talents was speedily seen in the zeal with which the Corinthians and other Peloponnesian Greeks began to equip a squadron to act under him for the rescue of Sicily. As soon as four galleys were ready, he hurried over with them to the southern coast of Italy, and there, though he received such evil tidings of the state of Syracuse that he abandoned all hope of saving that city, he determined to remain on the coast, and do what he could in preserving the Italian cities from the Athenians. So nearly, indeed, had Nicias completed his beleaguering lines, and so utterly desperate had the state of Syracuse seemingly become, that an assembly of the Syracusans was actually convened, and they were discussing the terms on which they should offer to capitulate, when a galley was seen dashing into the great harbor, and making her way toward the town with all the speed which her rowers could supply. From her shunning the part of the harbor where the Athenian fleet lay, and making straight for the Syracusan side, it was clear that she was a friend; the enemy's cruisers, careless through confidence of success, made no attempt to cut her off; she touched the beach, and a Corinthian captain, springing on shore from her, was eagerly conducted to the assembly of the Syracusan people just in time to prevent the fatal vote being put for a surrender. Providentially for Syracuse, Gongylus, the commander of the galley, had been prevented by an Athenian squadron from following Gylippus to South Italy, and he had been obliged to push direct for Syracuse from Greece. The sight of actual succor, and the promise of more, revived the drooping spirits of the Syracusans. They felt that they were not left desolate to perish, and the tidings that a Spartan was coming to command them confirmed their resolution to continue their resistance. Gylippus was already near the city. He had learned at Locri that the first report which had reached him of the state of Syracuse was exaggerated, and that there was unfinished space in the besiegers' lines through which it was barely possible to introduce reënforcements into the town. Crossing the Straits of Messina, which the culpable negligence of Nicias had left unguarded, Gylippus landed on the northern coast of Sicily, and there began to collect from the Greek cities an army, of which the regular troops that he brought from Peloponnesus formed the nucleus. Such was the influence of the name of Sparta, and such were his own abilities and activity, that he succeeded in raising a force of about two thousand fully armed infantry, with a larger number of irregular troops. Nicias, as if infatuated, made no attempt to counteract his operation, nor, when Gylippus marched his little army toward Syracuse, did the Athenian commander endeavor to check him. The Syracusans marched out to meet him; and while the Athenians were solely intent on completing their fortifications on the southern side toward the harbor, Gylippus turned their position by occupying the high ground in the extreme rear of Epipolae. He then marched through the unfortified interval of Nicias' lines into the besieged town, and joining his troops with the Syracusan forces, after some engagements with varying success, gained the mastery over Nicias, drove the Athenians from Epipolae, and hemmed them into a disadvantageous position in the low grounds near the great harbor. The attention of all Greece was now fixed on Syracuse, and every enemy of Athens felt the importance of the opportunity now offered of checking her ambition, and, perhaps, of striking a deadly blow at her power. Larger reinforcements from Corinth, Thebes, and other cities now reached the Syracusans, while the baffled and dispirited Athenian general earnestly besought his countrymen to recall him, and represented the further prosecution of the siege as hopeless. But Athens had made it a maxim never to let difficulty or disaster drive her back from any enterprise once undertaken, so long as she possessed the means of making any effort, however desperate, for its accomplishment. With indomitable pertinacity, she now decreed, instead of recalling her first armament from before Syracuse, to send out a second, though her enemies near home had now renewed open warfare against her, and by occupying a permanent fortification in her territory had severely distressed her population, and were pressing her with almost all the hardships of an actual siege. She still was mistress of the sea, and she sent forth another fleet of seventy galleys, and another army, which seemed to drain almost the last reserves of her military population, to try if Syracuse could not yet be won, and the honor of the Athenian arms be preserved from the stigma of a retreat. Hers was, indeed, a spirit that might be broken, but never would bend. At the head of this second expedition she wisely placed her best general, Demosthenes, one of the most distinguished officers that the long Peloponnesian war had produced, and who, if he had originally held the Sicilian command, would soon have brought Syracuse to submission. The fame of Demosthenes the general has been dimmed by the superior lustre of his great countryman, Demosthenes the orator. When the name of Demosthenes is mentioned, it is the latter alone that is thought of. The soldier has found no biographer. Yet out of the long list of great men whom the Athenian republic produced, there are few that deserve to stand higher than this brave, though finally unsuccessful leader of her fleets and armies in the first half of the Peloponnesian war. In his first campaign in Aetolia he had shown some of the rashness of youth, and had received a lesson of caution by which he profited throughout the rest of his career, but without losing any of his natural energy in enterprise or in execution. He had performed the distinguished service of rescuing Naupactus from a powerful hostile armament in the seventh year of the war; he had then, at the request of the Acarnanian republics, taken on himself the office of commander-in-chief of all their forces, and at their head he had gained some important advantages over the enemies of Athens in Western Greece. His most celebrated exploits had been the occupation of Pylos on the Messenian coast, the successful defence of that place against the fleet and armies of Lacedaemon, and the subsequent capture of the Spartan forces on the isle of Sphacteria, which was the severest blow dealt to Sparta throughout the war, and which had mainly caused her to humble herself to make the truce with Athens. Demosthenes was as honorably unknown in the war of party politics at Athens as he was eminent in the war against the foreign enemy. We read of no intrigues of his on either the aristocratic or democratic side. He was neither in the interest of Nicias nor of Cleon. His private character was free from any of the stains which polluted that of Alcibiades. On all these points the silence of the comic dramatist is decisive evidence in his favor. He had also the moral courage, not always combined with physical, of seeking to do his duty to his country, irrespective of any odium that he himself might incur, and unhampered by any petty jealousy of those who were associated with him in command. There are few men named in ancient history of whom posterity would gladly know more or whom we sympathize with more deeply in the calamities that befell them than Demosthenes, the son of Alcisthenes, who, in the spring of the year 413, left Piraeus at the head of the second Athenian expedition against Sicily. His arrival was critically timed; for Gylippus had encouraged the Syracusans to attack the Athenians under Nicias by sea as well as by land, and by one able stratagem of Ariston, one of the admirals of the Corinthian auxiliary squadron, the Syracusans and their confederates had inflicted on the fleet of Nicias the first defeat that the Athenian navy had ever sustained from a numerically inferior enemy. Gylippus was preparing to follow up his advantage by fresh attacks on the Athenians on both elements, when the arrival of Demosthenes completely changed the aspect of affairs and restored the superiority to the invaders. With seventy-three war-galleys in the highest state of efficiency, and brilliantly equipped, with a force of five thousand picked men of the regular infantry of Athens and her allies, and a still larger number of bowmen, javelin-men, and slingers on board, Demosthenes rowed round the great harbor with loud cheers and martial music, as if in defiance of the Syracusans and their confederates. His arrival had indeed changed their newly born hopes into the deepest consternation. The resources of Athens seemed inexhaustible, and resistance to her hopeless. They had been told that she was reduced to the last extremities, and that her territory was occupied by an enemy; and yet here they saw her sending forth, as if in prodigality of power, a second armament, to make foreign conquests, not inferior to that with which Nicias had first landed on the Sicilian shores. With the intuitive decision of a great commander, Demosthenes at once saw that the possession of Epipolae was the key to the possession of Syracuse, and he resolved to make a prompt and vigorous attempt to recover that position while his force was unimpaired and the consternation which its arrival had produced among the besieged remained unabated. The Syracusans and their allies had run out an outwork along Epipolae from the city walls, intersecting the fortified lines of circumvallation which Nicias had commenced, but from which he had been driven by Gylippus. Could Demosthenes succeed in storming this outwork, and in reëstablishing the Athenian troops on the high ground, he might fairly hope to be able to resume the circumvallation of the city and become the conqueror of Syracuse; for when once the besiegers' lines were completed, the number of the troops with which Gylippus had garrisoned the place would only tend to exhaust the stores of provisions and accelerate its downfall. An easily repelled attack was first made on the outwork in the daytime, probably more with the view of blinding the besieged to the nature of the main operations than with any expectation of succeeding in an open assault, with every disadvantage of the ground to contend against. But, when the darkness had set in, Demosthenes formed his men in columns, each soldier taking with him five days' provisions, and the engineers and workmen of the camp following the troops with their tools and all portable implements of fortification, so as at once to secure any advantage of ground that the army might gain. Thus equipped and prepared, he led his men along by the foot of the southern flank of Epipolae, in a direction toward the interior of the island, till he came immediately below the narrow ridge that forms the extremity of the high ground looking westward. He then wheeled his vanguard to the right, sent them rapidly up the paths that wind along the face of the cliff, and succeeded in completely surprising the Syracusan outposts, and in placing his troops fairly on the extreme summit of the all-important Epipolae. Thence the Athenians marched eagerly down the slope toward the town, routing some Syracusan detachments that were quartered in their way, and vigorously assailing the unprotected side of the outwork. All at first favored them. The outwork was abandoned by its garrison, and the Athenian engineers began to dismantle it. In vain Gylippus brought up fresh troops to check the assault; the Athenians broke and drove them back, and continued to press hotly forward, in the full confidence of victory. But, amid the general consternation of the Syracusans and their confederates, one body of infantry stood firm. This was a brigade of their Boeotian allies, which was posted low down the slope of Epipolae, outside the city walls. Coolly and steadily the Boeotian infantry formed their line, and, undismayed by the current of flight around them, advanced against the advancing Athenians. This was the crisis of the battle. But the Athenian van was disorganized by its own previous successes; and, yielding to the unexpected charge thus made on it by troops in perfect order, and of the most obstinate courage, it was driven back in confusion upon the other divisions of the army that still continued to press forward. When once the tide was thus turned, the Syracusans passed rapidly from the extreme of panic to the extreme of vengeful daring, and with all their forces they now fiercely assailed the embarrassed and receding Athenians. In vain did the officers of the latter strive to reform their line. Amid the din and the shouting of the fight, and the confusion inseparable upon a night engagement, especially one where many thousand combatants were pent and whirled together in a narrow and uneven area, the necessary manoeuvres were impracticable; and though many companies still fought on desperately, wherever the moonlight showed them the semblance of a foe, they fought without concert or subordination; and not infrequently, amid the deadly chaos, Athenian troops assailed each other. Keeping their ranks close, the Syracusans and their allies pressed on against the disorganized masses of the besiegers, and at length drove them, with heavy slaughter, over the cliffs, which an hour or two before they had scaled full of hope and apparently certain of success. This defeat was decisive of the event of the siege. The Athenians afterward struggled only to protect themselves from the vengeance which the Syracusans sought to wreak in the complete destruction of their invaders. Never, however, was vengeance more complete and terrible. A series of sea-fights followed, in which the Athenian galleys were utterly destroyed or captured. The mariners and soldiers who escaped death in disastrous engagements, and a vain attempt to force a retreat into the interior of the island, became prisoners of war. Nicias and Demosthenes were put to death in cold blood, and their men either perished miserably in the Syracusan dungeons or were sold into slavery to the very persons whom, in their pride of power, they had crossed the seas to enslave. All danger from Athens to the independent nations of the West was now forever at an end. She, indeed, continued to struggle against her combined enemies and revolted allies with unparalleled gallantry, and many more years of varying warfare passed away before she surrendered to their arms. But no success in subsequent contests could ever have restored her to the preëminence in enterprise, resources, and maritime skill which she had acquired before her fatal reverses in Sicily. Nor among the rival Greek republics, whom her own rashness aided to crush her, was there any capable of reorganizing her empire, or resuming her schemes of conquest. The dominion of Western Europe was left for Rome and Carthage to dispute two centuries later, in conflicts still more terrible, and with even higher displays of military daring and genius than Athens had witnessed either in her rise, her meridian, or her fall. RETREAT OF THE TEN THOUSAND GREEKS B.C. 401-399 XENOPHON (The expedition of the Greeks, generally known as the "Retreat of the Ten Thousand," was conducted by Xenophon, a Greek historian, essayist, and military commander. Xenophon was a pupil of Socrates, of whom he left a famous memoir. In B.C. 401 he accepted the invitation of his friend Proxenus of Boeotia, a general of Greek mercenaries, to take service under Cyrus the Younger, brother of Artaxerxes Mnemon, king of Persia. Cyrus had considered himself as deeply wronged by his elder brother, who had thrown him into prison on the death of their father, Darius. Escaping from prison, he formed a design to wrest the throne from Artaxerxes. For this purpose he engaged the forces of Proxenus, and to this army Xenophon attached himself. The rendezvous was Sardis, from which the army marched east under the pretext of chastising the revolting mountaineers of Pisidia. Instead of attacking the Pisidians, the followers of Cyrus proceeded east through Asia and Babylonia till they met the forces of Artaxerxes at Cunaxa. A furious battle took place, and the rout of the king's army had begun when Cyrus, elated with the victory that seemed just within his grasp, challenged his brother to single combat. In the duel that ensued Cyrus was slain. Proxenus had already fallen, and the virtual command of the Greek army soon devolved upon Xenophon, who thereupon began the famous retreat. A vivid account of battles, and of hardships endured from the cold, in the struggle through mountain snows, through almost impassable forests, and across bridgeless rivers, is given in Xenophon's _Anabasis_, the celebrated work, in seven books, which forms the classical narrative of the campaign and the retreat. Soon after the death of Cyrus, in September, B.C. 401, the seizure and murder of the leading Greek generals by the treacherous Persian satrap, Tissaphernes, placed the Greek army in great peril. Xenophon, who now took practical command, counselled and exhorted the surviving leaders, and on the next day the Greeks formed in a hollow square, the baggage in the centre, and began their retreat, which led them along the Tigris to the territory of the Carduchi [Kurds], through Armenia, and across Georgia, the enemy often harassing them. At the point where the climax of the story, which is presented here, may be said to begin, the Greeks have entered Armenia, passed the sources of the Tigris, and reached the Teleboas. Having made a treaty with Tiribazus, governor of the province, and discovered his insincerity, and that he was ready to attack them in their passage over the mountains, they resolved upon a quick resumption of their march. When, in the fifth month of the retreat the Greeks at last from a hilltop beheld the Euxine, they sent up a cry, "The sea! the sea!" which has echoed through succeeding ages as one of the great historic jubilations of humanity. At the end of the retreat their numbers were reduced to about six thousand, and from the starting-point at Cunaxa to the middle of the southern coast of the Black Sea they had travelled as much as two thousand miles. From Ephesus to Cunaxa and thence to the Black Sea region they had marched in fifteen months [February, B.C. 401, to June, 400], and nine months more passed before they joined the Spartan army in Asia Minor, and their task was fully accomplished. Their great performance is regarded as having prepared the way for Alexander's triumphant advances in the East. The young conqueror, on the eve of the battle of Issus, declared that he owed inspiration to the feat of the Ten Thousand.) It was thought necessary to march away as fast as possible, before the enemy's force should be reassembled, and get possession of the pass. Collecting their baggage at once, therefore, they set forward through a deep snow, taking with them several guides, and, having the same day passed the height on which Tiribazus had intended to attack them, they encamped. Hence they proceeded three days' journey through a desert tract of country, a distance of fifteen _parasangs_, to the river Euphrates, and passed it without being wet higher than the middle. The sources of the river were said not to be far off. From hence they advanced three days' march, through much snow and a level plain, a distance of fifteen parasangs; the third day's march was extremely troublesome, as the north wind blew full in their faces, completely parching up everything and benumbing the men. One of the augurs, in consequence, advised that they should sacrifice to the wind, and a sacrifice was accordingly offered, when the vehemence of the wind appeared to everyone manifestly to abate. The depth of the snow was a fathom, so that many of the baggage cattle and slaves perished, with about thirty of the soldiers. They continued to burn fires through the whole night, for there was plenty of wood at the place of encampment. But those who came up late could get no wood; those, therefore, who had arrived before and had kindled fires would not admit the late comers to the fire unless they gave them a share of the corn or other provisions that they had brought. Thus they shared with each other what they respectively had. In the places where the fires were made, as the snow melted, there were formed large pits that reached down to the ground, and here there was accordingly opportunity to measure the depth of the snow. From hence they marched through snow the whole of the following day, and many of the men contracted the _bulimia_.[28] Xenophon, who commanded in the rear, finding in his way such of the men as had fallen down with it, knew not what disease it was. But as one of these acquainted with it told him that they were evidently affected with bulimia, and that they would get up if they had something to eat, he went round among the baggage and wherever he saw anything eatable he gave it out, and sent such as were able to run to distribute it among those diseased, who, as soon as they had eaten, rose up and continued their march. As they proceeded, Chirisophus came, just as it grew dark, to a village, and found, at a spring in front of the rampart, some women and girls belonging to the place fetching water. The women asked them who they were, and the interpreter answered, in the Persian language, that they were people going from the king to the satrap. They replied that he was not there, but about a parasang off. [Footnote 28: Spelman quotes a description of the bulimia from Galen, in which it is said to be "a disease in which the patient frequently craves for food, loses the use of his limbs, falls down, turns pale, feels his extremities become cold, his stomach oppressed, and his pulse feeble." Here, however, it seems to mean little more than a faintness from long fasting.] However, as it was late, they went with the water-carriers within the rampart, to the head man of the village, and here Chirisophus and as many of the troops as could come up encamped; but of the rest, such as were unable to get to the end of the journey spent the night on the way without food or fire, and some of the soldiers lost their lives on that occasion. Some of the enemy too, who had collected themselves into a body, pursued our rear, and seized any of the baggage-cattle that were unable to proceed, fighting with one another for the possession of them. Such of the soldiers also as had lost their sight from the effects of the snow, or had their toes mortified by the cold, were left behind. It was found to be a relief to the eyes against the snow, if the soldiers kept something black before them on the march, and to the feet, if they kept constantly in motion, and allowed themselves no rest, and if they took off their shoes in the night. But as to such as slept with their shoes on, the straps worked into their feet, and the soles were frozen about them, for when their old shoes had failed them, shoes of raw hides had been made by the men themselves from the newly skinned oxen. From such unavoidable sufferings some of the soldiers were left behind, who, seeing a piece of ground of a black appearance, from the snow having disappeared there, conjectured that it must have melted, and it had in fact melted in the spot from the effect of a fountain, which was sending up vapor in a wooded hollow close at hand. Turning aside thither, they sat down and refused to proceed farther. Xenophon, who was with the rear-guard, as soon as he heard this tried to prevail on them by every art and means not to be left behind, telling them, at the same time, that the enemy were collected and pursuing them in great numbers. At last he grew angry, and they told him to kill them, as they were quite unable to go forward. He then thought it the best course to strike a terror, if possible, into the enemy that were behind, lest they should fall upon the exhausted soldiers. It was now dark, and the enemy were advancing with a great noise, quarrelling about the booty that they had taken, when such of the rear-guard as were not disabled started up and rushed toward them, while the tired men, shouting as loud as they could, clashed their spears against their shields. The enemy, struck with alarm, threw themselves among the snow into the hollow, and no one of them afterward made himself heard from any quarter. Xenophon and those with him, telling the sick men that a party should come to their relief next day, proceeded on their march, but before they had gone four _stadia_ they found other soldiers resting by the way in the snow, and covered up with it, no guard being stationed over them. They roused them up, but they said that the head of the army was not moving forward. Xenophon, going past them and sending on some of the ablest of the _peltasts_, ordered them to ascertain what it was that hindered their progress. They brought word that the whole army was in that manner taking rest. Xenophon and his men, therefore, stationing such a guard as they could, took up their quarters there without fire or supper. When it was near day, he sent the youngest of his men to the sick, telling them to rouse them and oblige them to proceed. At this juncture Chirisophus sent some of his people from the village to see how the rear were faring. The young men were rejoiced to see them, and gave them the sick to conduct to the camp, while they themselves went forward, and, before they had gone twenty stadia, found themselves at the village in which Chirisophus was quartered. When they came together, it was thought safe enough to lodge the troops up and down in the village. Chirisophus accordingly remained where he was, and the other officers, appropriating by lot the several villages that they had in sight, went to their respective quarters with their men. Here Polycrates, an Athenian captain, requested leave of absence, and taking with him the most active of his men, and hastening to the village to which Xenophon had been allotted, surprised all the villagers and their head man in their houses, together with seventeen colts that were bred as a tribute for the king, and the head man's daughter, who had been but nine days married; her husband was gone out to hunt hares, and was not found in any of the villages. Their houses were underground, the entrance like the mouth of a well, but spacious below; there were passages dug into them for the cattle, but the people descended by ladders. In the houses were goats, sheep, cows, and fowls, with their young; all the cattle were kept on fodder within the walls.[29] There were also wheat, barley, leguminous vegetables, and barley wine[30] in large bowls; the grains of barley floated in it even with the brim of the vessels, and reeds also lay in it, some larger and some smaller, without joints; and these, when any one was thirsty, he was to take in his mouth and suck.[31] The liquor was very strong, unless one mixed water with it, and a very pleasant drink to those accustomed to it. [Footnote 29: This description of a village on the Armenian uplands applies itself to many that I visited in the present day. The descent by wells is now rare, but is still to be met with; but in exposed and elevated situations the houses are uniformly semi-subterraneous and entered by as small an aperture as possible, to prevent the cold getting in. Whatever the kind of cottage used, cows, sheep, goats, and fowls participate with the family in the warmth and protection thereof.] [Footnote 30: Something like our ale.] [Footnote 31: The reeds were used, says Krueger, that none of the grains of barley might be taken into the mouth.] Xenophon made the chief man of his village sup with him, and told him to be of good courage, assuring him that he should not be deprived of his children, and that they would not go away without filling his house with provisions in return for what they took, if he would but prove himself the author of some service to the army till they should reach another tribe. This he promised, and, to show his good-will, pointed out where some wine[32] was buried. This night, therefore, the soldiers rested in their several quarters in the midst of great abundance, setting a guard over the chief, and keeping his children at the same time under their eye. The following day Xenophon took the head man and went with him to Chirisophus, and wherever he passed by a village he turned aside to visit those who were quartered in it, and found them in all parts feasting and enjoying themselves; nor would they anywhere let them go till they had set refreshments before them; and they placed everywhere upon the same table lamb, kid, pork, veal, and fowl, with plenty of bread, both of wheat and barley. Whenever any person, to pay a compliment, wished to drink to another, he took him to the large bowl, where he had to stoop down and drink, sucking like an ox. The chief they allowed to take whatever he pleased, but he accepted nothing from them; where he found any of his relatives, however, he took them with him. [Footnote 32: Xenophon seems to mean _grape_ wine, rather than to refer to the barley wine just before mentioned, of which the taste does not appear to have been much liked by the Greeks. Wine from grapes was not made, it is probable, in these parts, on account of the cold, but Strabo speaks of the fruit wine of Armenia Minor as not inferior to any of the Greek wines.--_Schneider_.] When they came to Chirisophus, they found his men also feasting in their quarters, crowned with wreaths made of hay, and Armenian boys, in their barbarian dress, waiting upon them, to whom they made signs what they were to do as if they had been deaf and dumb. When Chirisophus and Xenophon had saluted one another, they both asked the chief man, through the interpreter who spoke the Persian language, what country it was. He replied that it was Armenia. They then asked him for whom the horses were bred, and he said that they were a tribute for the king, and added that the neighboring country was that of Chalybes, and told them in what direction the road lay. Xenophon then went away, conducting the chief back to his family, giving him the horse that he had taken, which was rather old, to fatten and offer in sacrifice (for he had heard that it had been consecrated to the sun), being afraid, indeed, that it might die, as it had been injured by the journey. He then took some of the young horses, and gave one of them to each of the other generals and captains. The horses in this country were smaller than those of Persia, but far more spirited. The chief instructed the men to tie little bags round the feet of the horses and other cattle when they drove them through the snow, for without such bags they sunk up to their bellies. When the eighth day was come, Xenophon committed the guide to Chirisophus. He left the chief[33] all the members of his family, except his son, a youth just coming to mature age; him he gave in charge to Episthenes of Amphipolis, in order that if the father should conduct them properly he might return home with him. At the same time they carried to his house as many provisions as they could, and then broke up their camp and resumed their march. The chief conducted them through the snow, walking at liberty. When he came to the end of the third day's march, Chirisophus was angry at him for not guiding them to some villages. He said that there was none in that part of the country. Chirisophus then struck him, but did not confine him, and in consequence he ran off in the night, leaving his son behind him. This affair, the ill-treatment and neglect of the guide, was the only cause of dissension between Chirisophus and Xenophon during the march. Episthenes conceived an affection for the youth, and, taking him home, found him extremely attached to him. [Footnote 33: This is rather oddly expressed, for the guide and the chief were the same person.] After this occurrence they proceeded seven days' journey, five parasangs each day, till they came to the river Phasis, the breadth of which is a _plethrum_. Hence they advanced two days' journey, ten parasangs, when, on the pass that led over the mountains into the plain, the Chalybes, Taochi, and Phasians were drawn up to oppose their progress. Chirisophus, seeing these enemies in possession of the height, came to a halt, at the distance of about thirty stadia, that he might not approach them while leading the army in a column. He accordingly ordered the other officers to bring up their companies, that the whole force might be formed in line. When the rear-guard was come up, he called together the generals and captains and spoke to them as follows: "The enemy, as you see, is in possession of the pass over the mountains, and it is proper for us to consider how we may encounter them to the best advantage. It is my opinion, therefore, that we should direct the troops to get their dinner and that we ourselves should hold a council, in the mean time, whether it is advisable to cross the mountain to-day or to-morrow." "It seems best to me," exclaimed Cleanor, "to march at once, as soon as we have dined and resumed our arms, against the enemy; for if we waste the present day in inaction the enemy, who are now looking down upon us, will grow bolder, and it is likely that, as their confidence is increased, others will join them in greater numbers." After him Xenophon said: "I am of opinion that if it be necessary to fight, we ought to make our arrangements so as to fight with the greatest advantage; but that if we propose to pass the mountains as easily as possible, we ought to consider how we may incur the fewest wounds and lose the fewest men. The range of hills, as far as we see, extends more than sixty stadia in length; but the people nowhere seem to be watching us except along the line of road; and it is, therefore, better, I think, to endeavor to try to seize unobserved some part of the unguarded range, and to get possession of it, if we can, beforehand, than to attack a strong post and men prepared to resist us, for it is far less difficult to march up a steep ascent without fighting than along a level road with enemies on each side; and in the night, if men are not obliged to fight, they can see better what is before them than by day if engaged with enemies; while a rough road is easier to the feet to those who are marching without molestation than a smooth one to those who are pelted on the head with missiles. Nor do I think it at all impracticable for us to steal a way for ourselves, as we can march by night, so as not to be seen, and can keep at such a distance from the enemy as to allow no possibility of being heard. We seem likely, too, in my opinion, if we make a pretended attack on this point, to find the rest of the range still less guarded, for the enemy will so much the more probably stay where they are. But why should I speak doubtfully about stealing? For I hear that you Lacedaemonians, O Chirisophus, such of you at least as are of the better class, practise stealing from your boyhood, and it is not a disgrace, but an honor, to steal whatever the law does not forbid; while, in order that you may steal with the utmost dexterity, and strive to escape discovery, it is appointed by law that, if you are caught stealing, you are scourged. It is now high time for you, therefore, to give proof of your education, and to take care that we may not receive many stripes." "But I hear that you Athenians also," rejoined Chirisophus, "are very clever at stealing the public money, though great danger threatens him that steals it; and that your best men steal it most, if indeed your best men are thought worthy to be your magistrates; so that it is time for you likewise to give proof of your education." "I am then ready," exclaimed Xenophon, "to march with the rear-guard, as soon as we have supped, to take possession of the hills. I have guides too, for our light-armed men captured some of the marauders following us, by lying in ambush, and from them I learn that the mountains are not impassable, but are grazed over by goats and oxen, so that if we once gain possession of any part of the range, there will be tracks also for our baggage cattle. I expect also that the enemy will no longer keep their ground, when they see us upon a level with them on the heights, for they will not now come down to be upon a level with us." Chirisophus then said: "But why should you go, and leave the charge of the rear? Rather send others, unless some volunteers present themselves." Upon this Aristonymus of Methydria came forward with his heavy-armed men, and Aristeas of Chios and Nichomachus of Oeta with their light-armed; and they made an arrangement that as soon as they should reach the top they should light a number of fires. Having settled these points, they went to dinner; and after dinner Chirisophus led forward the whole army ten stadia toward the enemy, that he might appear to be fully resolved to march against them on that quarter. When they had taken their supper, and night came on, those appointed for the service went forward and got possession of the hills; the other troops rested where they were. The enemy, when they saw the heights occupied, kept watch and burned a number of fires all night. As soon as it was day, Chirisophus, after having offered sacrifice, marched forward along the road; while those who had gained the heights advanced by the ridge. Most of the enemy, meanwhile, stayed at the pass, but a part went to meet the troops coming along the heights. But before the main bodies came together, those on the ridge closed with one another, and the Greeks had the advantage, and put the enemy to flight. At the same time the Grecian peltasts ran up from the plain to attack the enemy drawn up to receive them, and Chirisophus followed at a quick pace with the heavy-armed men. The enemy at the pass, however, when they saw those above defeated, took to flight. Not many of them were killed, but a great number of shields were taken, which the Greeks, by hacking them with their swords, rendered useless. As soon as they had gained the ascent, and had sacrificed and erected a trophy, they went down into the plain before them, and arrived at a number of villages stored with abundance of excellent provisions. From hence they marched five days' journey, thirty parasangs, to the country of the Taochi, where provisions began to fail them; for the Taochi inhabited strong fastnesses, in which they had laid up all their supplies. Having at length, however, arrived at one place which had no city or houses attached to it, but in which men and women and a great number of cattle were assembled, Chirisophus, as soon as he came before it, made it the object of an attack; and when the first division that assailed it began to be tired, another succeeded, and then another, for it was not possible for them to surround it in a body, as there was a river about it. When Xenophon came up with his rear-guard, peltasts, and heavy-armed men, Chirisophus exclaimed: "You come seasonably, for we must take this place, as there are no provisions for the army unless we take it." They then deliberated together, and Xenophon asking what hindered them from taking the place, Chirisophus replied: "The only approach to it is the one which you see; but when any of our men attempt to pass along it, the enemy roll down stones over yonder impending rock, and whoever is struck is treated as you behold;" and he pointed, at the same moment, to some of the men who had had their legs and ribs broken. "But if they expend all their stones," rejoined Xenophon, "is there anything else to prevent us from advancing? For we see, in front of us, only a few men, and but two or three of them armed. The space, too, through which we have to pass under exposure to the stones is, as you see, only about a hundred and fifty feet in length; and of this about a hundred feet is covered with large pine trees in groups, against which, if the men place themselves, what would they suffer either from the flying stones or the rolling ones? The remaining part of the space is not above fifty feet, over which, when the stones cease, we must pass at a running pace." "But," said Chirisophus, "the instant we offer to go to the part covered with trees, the stones fly in great numbers." "That," cried Xenophon, "would be the very thing we want, for thus they will exhaust their stones the sooner. Let us then advance, if we can, to the point whence we shall have but a short way to run, and from which we may, if we please, easily retreat." Chirisophus and Xenophon, with Callimachus of Parrhasia, one of the captains, who had that day the lead of all the other captains of the rear-guard, then went forward, all the rest of the captains remaining out of danger. Next, about seventy of the men advanced under the trees, not in a body, but one by one, each sheltering himself as he could. Agasias of Stymphalus, and Aristonymus of Methydria, who were also captains of the rear-guard, with some others were at the same time standing behind, without the trees, for it was not safe for more than one company to stand under them. Callimachus then adopted the following stratagem: he ran forward two or three paces from the tree under which he was sheltered, and when the stones began to be hurled, hastily drew back; and at each of his sallies more than ten cartloads of stones were spent. Agasias, observing what Callimachus was doing, and that the eyes of the whole army were upon him, and fearing that he himself might not be the first to enter the place, began to advance alone--neither calling to Aristonymus who was next him, nor to Eurylochus of Lusia, both of whom were his intimate friends, nor to any other person--and passed by all the rest. Callimachus, seeing him rushing by, caught hold of the rim of his shield, and at that moment Aristonymus of Methydria ran past them both, and after him Eurylochus of Lusia, for all these sought distinction for valor, and were rivals to one another; and thus, in mutual emulation, they got possession of the place, for when they had once rushed in, not a stone was hurled from above. But a dreadful spectacle was then to be seen; for the women, flinging their children over the precipice, threw themselves after them; and the men followed their example. Æneas of Stymphalus, a captain, seeing one of them, who had on a rich garment, running to throw himself over, caught hold of it with intent to stop him. But the man dragged him forward, and they both went rolling down the rocks together, and were killed. Thus very few prisoners were taken, but a great number of oxen, asses, and sheep. Hence they advanced, seven days' journey, a distance of fifty parasangs, through the country of the Chalybes. These were the most warlike people of all that they passed through, and came to close combat with them. They had linen cuirasses, reaching down to the groin, and, instead of skirts, thick cords twisted. They had also greaves and helmets, and at their girdles a short falchion, as large as a Spartan crooked dagger, with which they cut the throats of all whom they could master, and then, cutting off their heads, carried them away with them. They sang and danced when the enemy were likely to see them. They carried also a spear of about fifteen cubits in length, having one spike.[34] They stayed in their villages till the Greeks had passed by, when they pursued and perpetually harassed them. They had their dwellings in strong places, in which they had also laid up their provisions, so that the Greeks could get nothing from that country, but lived upon the cattle which they had taken from the Taochi. [Footnote 34: Having one iron point at the upper end, and no point at the lower for fixing the spear in the ground.] The Greeks next arrived at the river Harpasus, the breadth of which was four _plethra_. Hence they proceeded through the territory of the Scythini, four days' journey, making twenty parasangs, over a level tract, until they came to some villages, in which they halted three days and collected provisions. From this place they advanced four days' journey, twenty parasangs, to a large, rich and populous city, called Gymnias, from which the governor of the country sent the Greeks a guide to conduct them through a region at war with his own people. The guide, when he came, said that he would take them in five days to a place whence they should see the sea; if not, he would consent to be put to death. When, as he proceeded, he entered the country of their enemies, he exhorted them to burn and lay waste the lands; whence it was evident that he had come for this very purpose, and not from any good-will to the Greeks. On the fifth day they came to the mountain; and the name of it was Theches. When the men who were in the front had mounted the height, and looked down upon the sea, a great shout proceeded from them; and Xenophon and the rearguard, on hearing it, thought that some new enemies were assailing the front, for in the rear, too, the people from the country that they had burned were following them, and the rear-guard, by placing an ambuscade, had killed some, and taken others prisoners, and had captured about twenty shields made of raw ox-hides with the hair on. But as the noise still increased, and drew nearer, and as those who came up from time to time kept running at full speed to join those who were continually shouting, the cries becoming louder as the men became more numerous, it appeared to Xenophon that it must be something of very great moment. Mounting his horse, therefore, and taking with him Lycius and the cavalry, he hastened forward to give aid, when presently they heard the soldiers shouting, "The sea, the sea!" and cheering on one another. They then all began to run, the rear-guard as well as the rest, and the baggage-cattle and horses were put to their speed; and when they had all arrived at the top, the men embraced one another and their generals and captains, with tears in their eyes. Suddenly, whoever it was that suggested it, the soldiers brought stones, and raised a large mound, on which they laid a number of raw ox-hides, staves, and shields taken from the enemy. The shields the guide himself hacked in pieces, and exhorted the rest to do the same. Soon after, the Greeks sent away the guide, giving him presents from the common stock: a horse, a silver cup, a Persian robe, and ten _darics_; but he showed most desire for the rings on their fingers, and obtained many of them from the soldiers. Having then pointed out to them a village where they might take up their quarters, and the road by which they were to proceed to the Macrones, when the evening came on he departed, pursuing his way during the night. Hence the Greeks advanced three days' journey, a distance of ten parasangs, through the country of the Macrones. On the first day they came to a river which divides the territories of the Macrones from those of the Scythini. On their right they had an eminence extremely difficult of access, and on their left another river, into which the boundary river, which they had to cross, empties itself. This stream was thickly edged with trees, not indeed large, but growing closely together. These the Greeks, as soon as they came to the spot, cut down,[35] being in haste to get out of the country as soon as possible. The Macrones, however, equipped with wicker shields, and spears, and hair tunics, were drawn up on the opposite side of the crossing-place; they were animating one another and throwing stones into the river.[36] They did not hit our men or cause them any inconvenience. [Footnote 35: The Greeks cut down the trees in order to throw them into the stream, and form a kind of bridge on which they might cross.] [Footnote 36: They threw stones into the river that they might stand on them and approach nearer to the Greeks, so as to use their weapons with more effect.] At this juncture one of the peltasts came up to Xenophon, saying that he had been a slave at Athens, and adding that he knew the language of these men. "I think, indeed," said he, "that this is my country, and, if there is nothing to prevent, I should wish to speak to the people." "There is nothing to prevent," replied Xenophon; "so speak to them, and first ascertain what people they are." When he asked them, they said that they were the Macrones. "Inquire, then," said Xenophon, "why they are drawn up to oppose us and wish to be our enemies." They replied, "Because you come against our country." The generals then told him to acquaint them that we were not come with any wish to do them injury, but that we were returning to Greece after having been engaged in war with the king, and that we were desirous to reach the sea. They asked if the Greeks would give pledges to this effect; and the Greeks replied that they were willing both to give and receive them. The Macrones accordingly presented the Greeks with a barbarian lance, and the Greeks gave them a Grecian one; for they said that such were their usual pledges. Both parties called the gods to witness. After these mutual assurances, the Macrones immediately assisted them in cutting away the trees and made a passage for them as if to bring them over, mingling freely among the Greeks; they also gave such facilities as they could for buying provisions, and conducted them through their country for three days, until they brought them to the confines of the Colchians. Here was a range of hills, high, but accessible, and upon them the Colchians were drawn up in array. The Greeks, at first, drew up against them in a line, with the intention of marching up the hill in this disposition; but afterward the generals thought proper to assemble and deliberate how they might engage with the best effect. Xenophon then said it appeared to him that they ought to relinquish the arrangement in line, and to dispose the troops in columns; "for a line," pursued he, "will be broken at once, as we shall find the hills in some parts impassable, though in others easy of access; and this disruption will immediately produce despondency in the men, when, after being ranged in a regular line, they find it dispersed. Again, if we advance drawn up very many deep, the enemy will stretch beyond us on both sides, and will employ the parts that outreach us in any way they may think proper; and if we advance only a few deep, it would not be at all surprising if our line be broken through by showers of missiles and men falling upon us in large bodies. If this happen in any part, it will be ill for the whole extent of the line. I think, then, that having formed our companies in columns, we should keep them so far apart from each other as that the last companies on each side may be beyond the enemy's wings. Thus our extreme companies will both outflank the line of the enemy, and, as we march in file, the bravest of our men will close with the enemy first, and wherever the ascent is easiest, there each division will direct its course. Nor will it be easy for the enemy to penetrate into the intervening spaces when there are companies on each side, nor will it be easy to break through a column as it advances; while, if any one of the companies be hard pressed, the neighboring one will support it; and if but one of the companies can by any path attain the summit, the enemy will no longer stand their ground." This plan was approved, and they threw the companies into columns. Xenophon, riding along from the right wing to the left, said: "Soldiers, the enemy whom you see before you is now the only obstacle to hinder us from being where we have long been eager to be. These, if we can, we must eat up alive." When the men were all in their places, and they had formed the companies into columns, there were about eighty companies of heavy-armed men, and each company consisted of about eighty men. The peltasts and archers they divided into three bodies, each about six hundred men, one of which they placed beyond the left wing, another beyond the right, and the third in the centre. The generals then desired the soldiers to make their vows to the gods; and having made them, and sung the paean, they moved forward. Chirisophus and Xenophon, and the peltasts that they had with them, who were beyond the enemy's flanks, pushed on; and the enemy, observing their motions, and hurrying forward to receive them, was drawn off, some to the right and others to the left, and left a great void in the centre of the line; when the peltasts in the Arcadian division, whom Aeschines the Acarnanian commanded, seeing the Colchians separate, ran forward in all haste, thinking that they were taking to flight; and these were the first that reached the summit. The Arcadian heavy-armed troop, of which Clearnor the Orchomenian was captain, followed them. But the enemy, when once the Greeks began to run, no longer stood its ground, but went off in flight, some one way and some another. Having passed the summit, the Greeks encamped in a number of villages containing abundance of provisions. As to other things here, there was nothing at which they were surprised; but the number of bee-hives was extraordinary, and all the soldiers that ate of the combs lost their senses, vomited, and were affected with purging, and not any of them was able to stand upright; such as had eaten a little were like men greatly intoxicated, and such as had eaten much were like madmen, and some like persons at the point of death. They lay upon the ground, in consequence, in great numbers, as if there had been a defeat; and there was general dejection. The next day no one of them was found dead; and they recovered their senses about the same hour that they had lost them on the preceding day; and on the third and fourth days they got up as if after having taken physic.[37] [Footnote 37: That there was honey in these parts, with intoxicating qualities, was well known to antiquity. Pliny mentions two sorts of it, one produced at Heraclea in Pontus, and the other among the Sanni or Macrones. The peculiarities of the honey arose from the herbs to which the bees resorted; the first came from the flower of a plant called _oegolethron_, or goatsbane; the other from a species of rhododendron. Tournefort, when he was in that country, saw honey of this description. Ainsworth found that the intoxicating honey had a bitter taste. This honey is also mentioned by Dioscorides.] From hence they proceeded two days' march, seven parasangs, and arrived at Trebizond, a Greek city, of large population, on the Euxine Sea; a colony of Sinope, but lying in the territory of the Colchians. Here they stayed about thirty days, encamping in the villages of the Colchians, whence they made excursions and plundered the country of Colchis. The people of Trebizond provided a market for the Greeks in the camp, and entertained them in the city; and made them presents of oxen, barley-meal, and wine. They negotiated with them also on behalf of the neighboring Colchians, those especially who dwelt in the plain, and from them too were brought presents of oxen. Soon after, they prepared to perform the sacrifice which they had vowed. Oxen enough had been brought them to offer to Jupiter the Preserver, and to Hercules, for their safe conduct, and whatever they had vowed to the other gods. They also celebrated gymnastic games upon the hill where they were encamped, and chose Dracontius, a Spartan--who had become an exile from his country when quite a boy, for having involuntarily killed a child by striking him with a dagger--to prepare the course and preside at the contests. When the sacrifice was ended, they gave the hides[38] to Dracontius, and desired him to conduct them to the place where he had made the course. Dracontius, pointing to the place where they were standing, said, "This hill is an excellent place for running, in whatever direction the men may wish." [Footnote 38: Lion and Kuehner have a notion that these skins were to be given as prizes to the victors, referring to Herodotus, who says that the Egyptians, in certain games which they celebrate in honor of Perseus, offer as prizes cattle, cloaks, and hides. Krueger doubts whether they were intended for prizes, or were given as a present to Dracontius.] "But how will they be able," said they, "to wrestle on ground so rough and bushy?" "He that falls," said he, "will suffer the more." Boys, most of them from among the prisoners, contended in the short course, and in the long course above sixty Cretans ran; while others were matched in wrestling, boxing, and the _pancratium_. It was a fine sight; for many entered the lists, and as their friends were spectators, there was great emulation. Horses also ran; and they had to gallop down the steep, and, turning round in the sea, to come up again to the altar. In the descent, many rolled down; but in the ascent, against the exceedingly steep ground, the horses could scarcely get up at a walking pace. There was consequently great shouting and laughter and cheering from the people. CONDEMNATION AND DEATH OF SOCRATES B.C. 399 PLATO (The death of Socrates was brought about under the restored democracy by three of his enemies--Lycon, Meletus, and Anytus, the last a man of high rank and reputation in the state. Socrates was accused by them of despising the ancient gods of the state, introducing new divinities and corrupting the youth of Athens. He was charged with having taught his followers, young men of the first Athenian families, to despise the established government, to be turbulent and seditious, and his accusors pointed to Alcibiades and Critias, notorious for their lawlessness, as examples of the fruits of his teaching. It is quite certain that Socrates disliked the Athenian government and considered democracy as tyrannical as despotism. But there was no law at Athens by which he could be put to death for his words and actions, and the vague charge could never have been made unless the whole trial of the philosopher had been a party movement, headed by men like Lycon and Anytus, whose support of the unjust measure made the condemnation of Socrates a foregone conclusion. Xenophon, the pupil and admirer of the philosopher, expresses in his _Memorabilia of Socrates_ his surprise that the Athenians should have condemned to death a man of such exalted character and transparent innocence. But the influence of the teacher with his pupils, most of them sons of the wealthiest citizens, might well have been dreaded by those in office and engaged in the conduct of public business. By them, the common politicians of the day, Socrates, with his keen and witty criticism of political corruption and demagogism, must have been considered a formidable adversary. Accordingly, by the decision of the Athenian court, the philosopher was sentenced to death by drinking a cup of hemlock. Although it was usual for criminals to be executed the day following their condemnation, he enjoyed a respite of thirty days, during which time his friends had access to his prison cell. It was the time when the ceremonial galley was crowned and sent on her pilgrimage to the holy Isle of Delos, and no criminal could be executed until her return. Socrates exhibited heroic constancy and cheerfulness during this interval, and repudiated the offers of his friends to aid in his escape, though they had chartered a ship to carry him to Thessaly. With calm composure he reasoned on the immortality of the soul, and cheered his visitors with words of hope. The literary portraits of Socrates furnished by himself, and the writings of Plato, are among the most precious monuments of antiquity, and the life and death of such a man form a memorable era in the moral and intellectual history of mankind. Plato, in his _Phædo, or the Immortality of the Soul_, gives the following dialogue between Echecrates and Phædo--two friends and disciples of the late philosopher--evidently with no other purpose in view than to lend to the account of the great teacher's last hours, and the last words his followers were to hear from his lips, the additional force and dramatic value of a personal narrative in the mouth of a loving pupil and an actual eyewitness of his death.) Echecrates. Were you personally present, Phaedo, with Socrates on that day when he drank the poison in prison? or did you hear an account of it from someone else? _Phæd._ I was there myself, Echecrates. _Ech._ What then did he say before his death? and how did he die? for I should be glad to hear; for scarcely any citizen of Phlius[39] ever visits Athens now, nor has any stranger for a long time come from thence, who was able to give us a clear account of the particulars, except that he died from drinking poison; but he was unable to tell us anything more. [Footnote 39: Phlius, to which Echecrates belonged, was a town of Sicyonia in Peloponnesus.] _Phæd._ And did you not hear about the trial how it went off? _Ech._ Yes; some one told me this; and I wondered, that as it took place so long ago, he appears to have died long afterward. What was the reason of this, Phaedo? _Phæd._ An accidental circumstance happened in his favor, Echecrates: for the poop of the ship which the Athenians send to Delos, chanced to be crowned on the day before the trial. _Ech._ But what is this ship? _Phæd._ It is the ship, as the Athenians say, in which Theseus formerly conveyed the fourteen boys and girls to Crete and saved both them and himself. They, therefore, made a vow to Apollo on that occasion, as it is said, that if they were saved they would every year despatch a solemn embassy to Delos; which, from that time to the present, they send yearly to the god. When they begin the preparations for this solemn embassy, they have a law that the city shall be purified during this period, and that no public execution shall take place until the ship has reached Delos, and returned to Athens: and this occasionally takes a long time, when the winds happen to impede their passage. The commencement of the embassy is when the priest of Apollo has crowned the poop of the ship. And this was done, as I said, on the day before the trial: on this account Socrates had a long interval in prison between the trial and his death. _Ech._ And what, Phædo, were the circumstances of his death? what was said and done? and who of his friends were with him? or would not the magistrates allow them to be present, but did he die destitute of friends? _Phæd._ By no means; but some, indeed several, were present. _Ech._ Take the trouble, then, to relate to me all the particulars as clearly as you can, unless you have any pressing business. _Phæd._ I am at leisure, and will endeavor to give you a full account: for to call Socrates to mind, whether speaking myself or listening to some one else, is always most delightful to me. _Ech._ And indeed, Phaedo, you have others to listen to you who are of the same mind. However, endeavor to relate everything as accurately as you can. _Phæd._ I was indeed wonderfully affected by being present, for I was not impressed with a feeling of pity, like one present at the death of a friend; for the man appeared to me to be happy, Echecrates, both from his manner and discourse, so fearlessly and nobly did he meet his death: so much so that it occurred to me that in going to Hades he was not going without a divine destiny, but that when he arrived there he would be happy, if anyone ever was. For this reason I was entirely uninfluenced by any feeling of pity, as would seem likely to be the case with one present on so mournful an occasion; nor was I affected by pleasure from being engaged in philosophical discussions, as was our custom; for our conversation was of that kind. But an altogether unaccountable feeling possessed me, a kind of unusual mixture compounded of pleasure and pain together, when I considered that he was immediately about to die. And all of us who were present were affected in much the same manner, at one time laughing, at another weeping one of us especially, Apollodorus, for you know the man and his manner. _Ech._ How should I not? _Phæd._ He, then, was entirely overcome by these emotions; and I too was troubled, as well as the others. _Ech._ But who were present, Phaedo? _Phæd._ Of his fellow-countrymen, this Apollodorus was present, and Critobulus, and his father Crito, moreover Hermogenes, Epigenes, Æschines, and Antisthenes; Ctesippus the Pæanian, Menexenus, and some other of his countrymen were also there: Plato I think was sick. _Ech._ Were any strangers present? _Phæd._ Yes: Simmias the Theban, Cebes, and Phaedondes: and from Megara, Euclides and Terpsion. _Ech._ But what! were not Aristippus and Cleombrotus present? _Phæd._ No: for they were said to be at Ægina. _Ech._ Was anyone else there? _Phæd._ I think that these were nearly all who were present. _Ech._ Well, now, what do you say was the subject of conversation? _Phæd._ I will endeavor to relate the whole to you from the beginning. On the preceding days I and the others were constantly in the habit of visiting Socrates, meeting early in the morning at the court-house where the trial took place, for it was near the prison. Here then we waited every day till the prison was opened, conversing with each other; for it was not opened very early, but, as soon as it was opened we went in to Socrates, and usually spent the day with him. On that occasion, however, we met earlier than usual; for on the preceding day, when we left the prison in the evening, we heard that the ship had arrived from Delos. We therefore urged each other to come as early as possible to the accustomed place; accordingly we came, and the porter, who used to admit us, coming out, told us to wait, and not enter until he called us. "For," he said, "the Eleven are now freeing Socrates from his bonds, and announcing to him that he must die to-day." But in no long time he returned, and bade us enter. When we entered, we found Socrates just freed from his bonds, and Xantippe (you know her), holding his little boy and sitting by him. As soon as Xantippe saw us, she wept aloud and said such things as women usually do on such occasions, as, "Socrates, your friends will now converse with you for the last time, and you with them." But Socrates, looking toward Crito, said, "Crito, let some one take her home." Upon which some of Crito's attendants led her away, wailing and beating herself. But Socrates, sitting up in bed, drew up his leg and rubbed it with his hand, and as he rubbed it said: "What an unaccountable thing, my friends, that seems to be which men call pleasure; and how wonderfully is it related toward that which appears to be its contrary, pain; in that they will not both be present to a man at the same time, yet, if anyone pursues and attains the one, he is almost always compelled to receive the other, as if they were both united together from one head. "And it seems to me," he said, "that if Æsop had observed this he would have made a fable from it, how the Deity, wishing to reconcile these warring principles, when he could not do so, united their heads together, and from hence whomsoever the one visits the other attends immediately after; as appears to be the case with me, since I suffered pain in my leg before from the chain, but now pleasure seems to have succeeded." Hereupon Cebes, interrupting him, said: "By Jupiter, Socrates, you have done well in reminding me. With respect to the poems which you made, by putting into metre those Fables of Æsop and the hymn to Apollo, several other persons asked me, and especially Evenus recently, with what design you made them after you came here, whereas before, you had never made any. If, therefore, you care at all that I should be able to answer Evenus when he asks me again--for I am sure he will do so--tell me what I must say to him." "Tell him the truth then, Cebes," he replied, "that I did not make them from a wish to compete with him, or his poems, for I knew that this would be no easy matter; but that I might discover the meaning of certain dreams, and discharge my conscience, if this should happen to be the music which they have often ordered me to apply myself to. For they were to the following purport: often in my past life the same dream visited me, appearing at different times in different forms, yet always saying the same thing. 'Socrates,' it said, 'apply yourself to and practise music.' And I formerly supposed that it exhorted and encouraged me to continue the pursuit I was engaged in, as those who cheer on racers, so that the dream encouraged me to continue the pursuit I was engaged in, namely, to apply myself to music, since philosophy is the highest music, and I was devoted to it. But now since my trial took place, and the festival of the god retarded my death, it appeared to me that, if by chance the dream so frequently enjoined me to apply myself to popular music, I ought not to disobey it but do so, for that it would be safer for me not to depart hence before I had discharged my conscience by making some poems in obedience to the dream. Thus, then, I first of all composed a hymn to the god whose festival was present, and after the god, considering that a poet, if he means to be a poet, ought to make fables and not discourses, and knowing that I was not skilled in making fables, I therefore put into verse those fables of Æsop, which were at hand, and were known to me, and which first occurred to me. "Tell this then to Evenus, Cebes, and bid him farewell, and, if he is wise, to follow me as soon as he can. But I depart, as it seems, to-day; for so the Athenians order." To this Simmias said: "What is this, Socrates, which you exhort Evenus to do? for I often meet with him; and from what I know of him, I am pretty certain that he will not at all be willing to comply with your advice." "What then," said he, "is not Evenus a philosopher?" "To me he seems to be so," said Simmias. "Then he will be willing," rejoined Socrates, "and so will everyone who worthily engages in this study; perhaps indeed he will not commit violence on himself, for that they say is not allowable." And as he said this he let down his leg from the bed on the ground, and in this posture continued during the remainder of the discussion. Cebes then asked him: "What do you mean, Socrates, by saying that it is not lawful to commit violence on one's self, but that a philosopher should be willing to follow one who is dying?" "What, Cebes, have not you and Simmias, who have conversed familiarly with Philolaus[40] on this subject, heard?" [Footnote 40: A Pythagorean of Crotona.] "Nothing very clearly, Socrates." "I however speak only from hearsay; what then I have heard I have no scruple in telling. And perhaps it is most becoming for one who is about to travel there, to inquire and speculate about the journey thither, what kind we think it is. What else can one do in the interval before sunset?" "Why, then, Socrates, do they say that it is not allowable to kill one's self? for I, as you asked just now, have heard both Philolaus, when he lived with us, and several others say that it was not right to do this; but I never heard anything clear upon the subject from anyone." "Then you should consider it attentively," said Socrates, "for perhaps you may hear: probably, however, it will appear wonderful to you, if this alone of all other things is an universal truth,[41] and it never happens to a man, as is the case in all other things, that at some times and to some persons only it is better to die than to live; yet that these men for whom it is better to die--this probably will appear wonderful to you--may not, without impiety, do this good to themselves, but must await another benefactor." [Footnote 41: Namely, "that it is better to die than live."] Then Cebes, gently smiling, said, speaking in his own dialect, "Jove be witness." "And indeed," said Socrates, "it would appear to be unreasonable, yet still perhaps it has some reason on its side. The maxim indeed given on this subject in the mystical doctrines,[42] that we men are in a kind of prison, and that we ought not to free ourselves from it and escape, appears to me difficult to be understood, and not easy to penetrate. This however appears to me, Cebes, to be well said, that the gods take care of us, and that we men are one of their possessions. Does it not seem so to you?" [Footnote 42: Of Pythagoras.] "It does," replied Cebes. "Therefore," said he, "if one of your slaves were to kill himself, without your having intimated that you wished him to die, should you not be angry with him, and should you not punish him if you could?" "Certainly," he replied. "Perhaps then, in this point of view, it is not unreasonable to assert, that a man ought not to kill himself before the deity lays him under a necessity of doing so, such as that now laid on me." "This, indeed," said Cebes, "appears to be probable. But what you said just now, Socrates, that philosophers should be very willing to die, appears to be an absurdity, if what we said just now is agreeable to reason, that it is God who takes care of us, and that we are his property. For that the wisest men should not be grieved at leaving that service in which they govern them who are the best of all masters, namely, the gods, is not consistent with reason. For surely he cannot think that he will take better care of himself when he has become free: but a foolish man might perhaps think thus, that he should fly from his master, and would not reflect that he ought not to fly from a good one, but should cling to him as much as possible, therefore he would fly against all reason; but a man of sense would desire to be constantly with one better than himself. Thus, Socrates, the contrary of what you just now said is likely to be the case; for it becomes the wise to be grieved at dying, but the foolish to rejoice." Socrates, on hearing this, appeared to me to be pleased with the pertinacity of Cebes, and looking toward us said: "Cebes, you see, always searches out arguments, and is not at all willing to admit at once anything one has said." Whereupon Simmias replied: "But indeed, Socrates, Cebes appears to me, now, to say something to the purpose; for with what design should men really wise fly from masters who are better than themselves, and so readily leave them? And Cebes appears to me to direct his argument against you, because you so easily endure to abandon both us and those good rulers--as you yourself confess--the gods." "You speak justly," said Socrates, "for I think you mean that I ought to make my defence to this charge, as if I were in a court of justice." "Certainly," replied Simmias. "Come then," said he, "I will endeavor to defend myself more successfully before you than before the judges. For," he proceeded, "Simmias and Cebes, if I did not think that I should go first of all among other deities who are both wise and good, and next among men who have departed this life better than any here, I should be wrong in not grieving at death: but now be assured, I hope to go among good men, though I would not positively assert it; that, however, I shall go among gods who are perfectly good masters, be assured I can positively assert this, if I can anything of the kind. So that, on this account, I am not so much troubled, but I entertain a good hope that something awaits those who die, and that, as was said long since, it will be far better for the good than the evil." "What then, Socrates," said Simmias, "would you go away keeping this persuasion to yourself, or would you impart it to us? For this good appears to me to be also common to us; and at the same time it will be an apology for you, if you can persuade us to believe what you say." "I will endeavor to do so," he said. "But first let us attend to Crito here, and see what it is he seems to have for some time wished to say." "What else, Socrates," said Crito, "but what he who is to give you the poison told me some time ago, that I should tell you to speak as little as possible? For he says that men become too much heated by speaking, and that nothing of this kind ought to interfere with the poison, and that, otherwise, those who did so were sometimes compelled to drink two or three times." To which Socrates replied: "Let him alone, and let him attend to his own business, and prepare to give it me twice, or, if occasion requires, even thrice." "I was almost certain what you would say," answered Crito, "but he has been some time pestering me." "Never mind him," he rejoined. "But now I wish to render an account to you, my judges, of the reason why a man who has really devoted his life to philosophy, when he is about to die appears to me, on good grounds, to have confidence, and to entertain a firm hope that the greatest good will befall him in the other world, when he has departed this life. How then this comes to pass, Simmias and Cebes, I will endeavor to explain. "For as many as rightly apply themselves to philosophy seem to have left all others in ignorance, that they aim at nothing else than to die and be dead. If this then is true, it would surely be absurd to be anxious about nothing else than this during their whole life, but when it arrives, to be grieved at what they have been long anxious about and aimed at." Upon this, Simmias, smiling, said: "By Jupiter, Socrates, though I am not now at all inclined to smile, you have made me do so; for I think that the multitude, if they heard this, would think it was very well said in reference to philosophers, and that our countrymen particularly would agree with you, that true philosophers do desire death, and that they are by no means ignorant that they deserve to suffer it." "And indeed, Simmias, they would speak the truth, except in asserting that they are not ignorant; for they are ignorant of the sense in which true philosophers desire to die, and in what sense they deserve death, and what kind of death. But," he said, "let us take leave of them, and speak to one another. Do we think that death is anything?" "Certainly," replied Simmias. "Is it anything else than the separation of the soul from the body? and is not this to die, for the body to be apart by itself separated from the soul, and for the soul to subsist apart by itself separated from the body? Is death anything else than this?" "No, but this," he replied. "Consider then, my good friend, whether you are of the same opinion as me; for thus I think we shall understand better the subject we are considering. Does it appear to you to be becoming in a philosopher to be anxious about pleasures, as they are called, such as meats and drinks?" "By no means, Socrates," said Simmias. "But what? about the pleasures of love?" "Not at all" "What then? does such a man appear to you to think other bodily indulgences of value? for instance, does he seem to you to value or despise the possession of magnificent garments and sandals, and other ornaments of the body, except so far as necessity compels him to use them?" "The true philosopher," he answered, "appears to me to despise them." "Does not, then," he continued, "the whole employment of such a man appear to you to be, not about the body, but to separate himself from it as much as possible, and be occupied about his soul?" "It does." "First of all, then, in such matters, does not the philosopher, above all other men, evidently free his soul as much as he can from communion with the body?" "It appears so." "And it appears, Simmias, to the generality of men, that he who takes no pleasure in such things, and who does not use them, does not deserve to live; but that he nearly approaches to death who cares nothing for the pleasures that subsist through the body." "You speak very truly." "But what with respect to the acquisition of wisdom, is the body an impediment or not, if anyone takes it with him as a partner in the search? What I mean is this: Do sight and hearing convey any truth to men, or are they such as the poets constantly sing, who say that we neither hear nor see anything with accuracy? If, however, these bodily senses are neither accurate nor clear, much less can the others be so: for they are all far inferior to these. Do they not seem so to you?" "Certainly," he replied. "When, then," said he, "does the soul light on the truth? for, when it attempts to consider anything in conjunction with the body, it is plain that it is then led astray by it." "You say truly." "Must it not then be by reasoning, if at all, that any of the things that really are become known to it?" "Yes." "And surely the soul then reasons best when none of these things disturbs it, neither hearing, nor sight, nor pain, nor pleasure of any kind, but it retires as much as possible within itself, taking leave of the body, and, as far as it can, not communicating or being in contact with it, it aims at the discovery of that which is." "Such is the case." "Does not then the soul of the philosopher, in these cases, despise the body, and flee from it, and seek to retire within itself?" "It appears so." "But what as to such things as these, Simmias? Do we say that justice itself is something or nothing?" "We say it is something, by Jupiter." "And that beauty and goodness are something?" "How not?" "Now, then, have you ever seen anything of this kind with your eyes?" "By no means," he replied. "Did you ever lay hold of them by any other bodily sense? but I speak generally, as of magnitude, health, strength, and, in a word, of the essence of everything, that is to say, what each is. Is then the exact truth of these perceived by means of the body, or is it thus, whoever among us habituates himself to reflect most deeply and accurately on each several thing about which he is considering, he will make the nearest approach to the knowledge of it?" "Certainly." "Would not he, then, do this with the utmost purity, who should in the highest degree approach each subject by means of the mere mental faculties, neither employing the sight in conjunction with the reflective faculty, nor introducing any other sense together with reasoning; but who, using pure reflection by itself, should attempt to search out each essence purely by itself, freed as much as possible from the eyes and ears, and, in a word, from the whole body, as disturbing the soul, and not suffering it to acquire truth and wisdom, when it is in communion with it. Is not he the person, Simmias, if any one can, who will arrive at the knowledge of that which is?" "You speak with wonderful truth, Socrates," replied Simmias. "Wherefore," he said, "it necessarily follows from all this, that some such opinion as this should be entertained by genuine philosophers, so that they should speak among themselves as follows: 'A by-path, as it were, seems to lead us on in our researches undertaken by reason,' because as long as we are encumbered with the body, and our soul is contaminated with such an evil, we can never fully attain to what we desire; and this, we say, is truth. For the body subjects us to innumerable hinderances on account of its necessary support, and moreover if any diseases befall us, they impede us in our search after that which is; and it fills us with longings, desires, fears, all kinds of fancies, and a multitude of absurdities, so that, as it is said in real truth, by reason of the body it is never possible for us to make any advances in wisdom. "For nothing else but the body and its desires occasions wars, seditions, and contests; for all wars among us arise on account of our desire to acquire wealth; and we are compelled to acquire wealth on account of the body, being enslaved to its service; and consequently on all these accounts we are hindered in the pursuit of philosophy. But the worst of all is, that if it leaves us any leisure, and we apply ourselves to the consideration of any subject, it constantly obtrudes itself in the midst of our researches, and occasions trouble and disturbance, and confounds us so that we are not able by reason of it to discern the truth. It has then in reality been demonstrated to us, that if we are ever to know anything purely, we must be separated from the body, and contemplate the things themselves by the mere soul. And then, as it seems, we shall obtain that which we desire, and which we profess ourselves to be lovers of, wisdom, when we are dead, as reason shows, but not while we are alive. For if it is not possible to know anything purely in conjunction with the body, one of these two things must follow, either that we can never acquire knowledge, or only after we are dead; for then the soul will subsist apart by itself, separate from the body, but not before. And while we live, we shall thus, as it seems, approach nearest to knowledge, if we hold no intercourse or communion at all with the body, except what absolute necessity requires, nor suffer ourselves to be polluted by its nature, but purify ourselves from it, until God himself shall release us. And thus being pure, and freed from the folly of body, we shall in all likelihood be with others like ourselves, and shall of ourselves know the whole real essence, and that probably is truth; for it is not allowable for the impure to attain to the pure. Such things, I think, Simmias, all true lovers of wisdom must both think and say to one another. Does it not seem so to you?" "Most assuredly, Socrates." "If this, then," said Socrates, "is true, my friend, there is great hope for one who arrives where I am going, there, if anywhere, to acquire that perfection for the sake of which we have taken so much pains during our past life; so that the journey now appointed me is set out upon with good hope, and will be so by any other man who thinks that his mind has been as it were purified. "This earth and the whole region here are decayed and corroded, as things in the sea by the saltness; for nothing of any value grows in the sea, nor, in a word, does it contain anything perfect, but there are caverns, and sand, and mud in abundance, and filth in whatever parts of the sea there is earth, nor are they at all worthy to be compared with the beautiful things with us. But, on the other hand, those things in the upper regions of the earth would appear far more to excel the things with us. For, if we may tell a beautiful fable, it is well worth hearing, Simmias, what kind the things are on the earth beneath the heavens." "Indeed, Socrates," said Simmias, "we should be very glad to hear that fable." "First of all, then, my friend," he continued, "this earth, if anyone should survey it from above, is said to have the appearance of balls covered with twelve different pieces of leather, variegated and distinguished with colors, of which the colors found here, and which painters use, are as it were copies. But there the whole earth is composed of such, and far more brilliant and pure than these; for one part of it is purple, and of wonderful beauty, part of a golden color, and part of white, more white than chalk or snow, and in like manner composed of other colors, and those more in number and more beautiful than any we have ever beheld. And those very hollow parts of the earth, though filled with water and air, exhibit a certain species of color, shining among the variety of other colors, so that one continually variegated aspect presents itself to the view. In this earth, being such, all things that grow grow in a manner proportioned to its nature--trees, flowers, and fruits; and again, in like manner, its mountains and stones possess, in the same proportion, smoothness and transparency and more beautiful colors; of which the well-known stones here that are so highly prized are but fragments, such as sardin-stones, jaspers, and emeralds, and all of that kind. But there, there is nothing subsists that is not of this character, and even more beautiful than these. "But the reason of this is, because the stones there are pure, and not eaten up and decayed, like those here, by rottenness and saltness, which flow down hither together, and which produce deformity and disease in the stones and the earth, and in other things, even animals and plants. But that earth is adorned with all these, and moreover with gold and silver, and other things of the kind: for they are naturally conspicuous, being numerous and large, and in all parts of the earth; so that to behold it is a sight for the blessed. There are also many other animals and men upon it, some dwelling in mid-earth, others about the air, as we do about the sea, and others in islands which the air flows round, and which are near the continent: and in one word, what water and the sea are to us for our necessities, the air is to them; and what air is to us, that ether is to them. "But their seasons are of such a temperament that they are free from disease, and live for a much longer time than those here, and surpass us in sight, hearing, and smelling, and everything of this kind, as much as air excels water, and ether air, in purity. Moreover, they have abodes and temples of the gods, in which gods really dwell, and voices and oracles, and sensible visions of the gods, and such-like intercourse with them; the sun, too, and moon, and stars, are seen by them such as they really are, and their felicity in other respects is correspondent with these things. "And such, indeed, is the nature of the whole earth and the parts about the earth; but there are many places all round it throughout its cavities, some deeper and more open than that in which we dwell: but others that are deeper have less chasm than in our region, and other are shallower in depth than they are here, and broader. "But all these are in many places perforated one into another under the earth, some with narrower and some with wider channels, and have passages through, by which a great quantity of water flows from one into another, as into basins, and there are immense bulks of ever-flowing rivers under the earth, both of hot and cold water, and a great quantity of fire, and mighty rivers of fire, and many of liquid mire, some purer and some more miry, as in Sicily there are rivers of mud that flow before the lava, and the lava itself, and from these the several places are filled, according as the overflow from time to time happens to come to each of them. But all these move up and down as it were by a certain oscillation existing in the earth. And this oscillation proceeds from such natural cause as this: one of the chasms of the earth is exceedingly large, and perforated through the entire earth, and is that which Homer[43] speaks of, 'very far off, where is the most profound abyss beneath the earth,' which elsewhere both he and many other poets have called Tartarus. For into this chasm all rivers flow together, and from it flow out again, but they severally derive their character from the earth through which they flow." [Footnote 43: _Iliad_, lib. viii., v. 14.] "And the reason why all streams flow out from thence and flow into it is because this liquid has neither bottom nor base. Therefore it oscillates and fluctuates up and down, and the air and the wind around it do the same; for they accompany it, both when it rushes to those parts of the earth, and when to these. And as in respiration the flowing breath is continually breathed out and drawn in, so there the wind, oscillating with the liquid, causes certain vehement and irresistible winds both as it enters and goes out. When, therefore, the water rushing in descends to the place which we call the lower region, it flows through the earth into the streams there and fills them, just as men pump up water. But when again it leaves those regions and rushes hither, it again fills the rivers here, and these, when filled, flow through channels and through the earth, and having severally reached the several places to which they are journeying, they make seas, lakes, rivers, and fountains. "Then sinking again from thence beneath the earth, some of them having gone round longer and more numerous places, and others round fewer and shorter, they again discharge themselves into Tartarus, some much lower than they were drawn up, others only a little so, but all of them flow in again beneath the point at which they flowed out. And some issue out directly opposite the place by which they flow in, others on the same side: there are also some which having gone round altogether in a circle, folding themselves once or several times round the earth, like serpents, when they had descended as low as possible, discharge themselves again; and it is possible for them to descend on either side as far as the middle, but not beyond; for in each direction there is an acclivity to the streams both ways. "Now there are many other large and various streams, and among this great number there are four certain streams, of which the largest, and that which flows most outwardly round the earth, is called Ocean, but directly opposite this, and flowing in a contrary direction, is Acheron, which flows through other desert places, and moreover passing under the earth, reaches the Acherusian lake, where the souls of most who die arrive, and having remained there for certain destined periods, some longer and some shorter, are again sent forth into the generations of animals. A third river issues midway between these, and near its source falls into a vast region, burning with abundance of fire, and forms a lake larger than our sea, boiling with water and mud; from hence it proceeds in a circle, turbulent and muddy, and folding itself round it reaches both other places and the extremity of the Acherusian lake, but does not mingle with its water; but folding itself oftentimes beneath the earth, it discharges itself into the lower parts of Tartarus. And this is the river which they call Pyriphlegethon, whose burning streams emit dissevered fragments in whatever part of the earth they happen to be. Opposite to this again the fourth river first falls into a place dreadful and savage, as it is said, having its whole color like _cyanus_: this they call Stygian, and the lake which the river forms by its discharge, Styx. This river having fallen in here, and received awful power in the water, sinking beneath the earth, proceeds, folding itself round, in an opposite course to Pyriphlegethon, and meets it in the Acherusian lake from a contrary direction. Neither does the water of this river mingle with any other, but it, too, having gone round in a circle, discharges itself into Tartarus opposite to Pyriphlegethon. Its name, as the poets say, is Cocytus. "These things being thus constituted, when the dead arrive at the place to which their demon leads them severally, first of all they are judged, as well those who have lived well and piously as those who have not. And those who appear to have passed a middle kind of life, proceeding to Acheron, and embarking in the vessels they have, on these arrive at the lake, and there dwell, and when they are purified, and have suffered punishment for the iniquities they may have committed, they are set free, and each receives the reward of his good deeds, according to his deserts: but those who appear to be incurable, through the magnitude of their offences, either from having committed many and great sacrileges, or many unjust and lawless murders, or other similar crimes, these a suitable destiny hurls into Tartarus, whence they never come forth. "But those who appear to have been guilty of curable yet great offences, such as those who through anger have committed any violence against father or mother, and have lived the remainder of their life in a state of penitence, or they who have become homicides in a similar manner, these must of necessity fall into Tartarus, but after they have fallen, and have been there for a year, the wave casts them forth, the homicides into Cocytus, but the parricides and matricides into Pyriphlegethon: but when, being borne along, they arrive at the Acherusian lake, there they cry out to and invoke, some those whom they slew, others those whom they injured, and invoking them they entreat and implore them to suffer them to go out into the lake, and to receive them, and if they persuade them they go out and are freed from their sufferings; but if not, they are borne back to Tartarus, and thence again to the rivers, and they do not cease from suffering this until they have persuaded those whom they have injured, for this sentence was imposed on them by the judges. "But those who are found to have lived an eminently holy life, these are they who, being freed and set at large from these regions in the earth, as from a prison, arrive at the pure abode above, and dwell on the upper parts of the earth. And among these, they who have sufficiently purified themselves by philosophy shall live without bodies, throughout all future time, and shall arrive at habitations yet more beautiful than these, which it is neither easy to describe nor at present is there sufficient time for the purpose. "But for the sake of these things which we have described, we should use every endeavor, Simmias, so as to acquire virtue and wisdom in this life; for the reward is noble, and the hope great. "To affirm positively, indeed, that these things are exactly as I have described them does not become a man of sense; that however either this or something of the kind takes place with respect to our souls and their habitations--since our soul is certainly immortal--this appears to me most fitting to be believed, and worthy the hazard for one who trusts in its reality; for the hazard is noble, and it is right to allure ourselves with such things, as with enchantments; for which reason I have prolonged my story to such a length. "On account of these things, then, a man ought to be confident about his soul who during this life has disregarded all the pleasures and ornaments of the body as foreign from his nature, and who, having thought that they do more harm than good, has zealously applied himself to the acquirement of knowledge, and who having adorned his soul not with a foreign but its own proper ornament--temperance, justice, fortitude, freedom, and truth--thus waits for his passage to Hades, as one who is ready to depart whenever destiny shall summon him. You, then," he continued, "Simmias and Cebes, and the rest, will each of you depart at some future time; but now 'destiny summons me,' as a tragic writer would say, and it is nearly time for me to betake myself to the bath; for it appears to me to be better to drink the poison after I have bathed myself, and not to trouble the women with washing my dead body." When he had thus spoken, Crito said: "So be it, Socrates, but what commands have you to give to these or to me, either respecting your children or any other matter, in attending to which we can most oblige you?" "What I always say, Crito," he replied, "nothing new; that by taking care of yourselves you will oblige both me and mine and yourselves, whatever you do, though you should not now promise it; but if you neglect yourselves, and will not live as it were in the footsteps of what has been now and formerly said, even though you should promise much at present, and that earnestly, you will do no good at all." "We will endeavor then so to do," he said; "but how shall we bury you?" "Just as you please," he said, "if only you can catch me, and I do not escape from you." And at the same time smiling gently, and looking round on us, he said: "I cannot persuade Crito, my friends, that I am that Socrates who is now conversing with you, and who methodizes each part of the discourse; but he thinks that I am he whom he will shortly behold dead, and asks how he should bury me. But that which I some time since argued at length, that when I have drunk the poison I shall no longer remain with you, but shall depart to some happy state of the blessed, this I seem to have urged to him in vain, though I meant at the same time to console both you and myself. Be ye then my sureties to Crito," he said, "in an obligation contrary to that which he made to the judges; for he undertook that I should remain; but do you be sureties that, when I die, I shall not remain, but shall depart, that Crito may more easily bear it, and when he sees my body either burnt or buried, may not be afflicted for me, as if I suffered some dreadful thing, nor say at my interment that Socrates is laid out, or is carried out, or is buried. "For be well assured," he said, "most excellent Crito, that to speak improperly is not only culpable as to the thing itself, but likewise occasions some injury to our souls. You must have a good courage, then, and say that you bury my body, and bury it in such a manner as is pleasing to you, and as you think is most agreeable to our laws." When he had said thus he rose and went into a chamber to bathe, and Crito followed him, but he directed us to wait for him. We waited, therefore, conversing among ourselves about what had been said, and considering it again, and sometimes speaking about our calamity, how severe it would be to us, sincerely thinking that, like those who are deprived of a father, we should pass the rest of our life as orphans. When he had bathed, and his children were brought to him, for he had two little sons, and one grown up; and the women belonging to his family were come, having conversed with them in the presence of Crito and given them such injunctions as he wished, he directed the women and children to go away, and then returned to us. And it was now near sunset; for he spent a considerable time within. But when he came from bathing he sat down, and did not speak much afterward; then the officer of the Eleven came in, and standing near him, said: "Socrates, I shall not have to find that fault with you that I do with others, that they are angry with me and curse me, when, by order of the archons, I bid them drink the poison. But you, on all other occasions during the time you have been here, I have found to be the most noble, meek, and excellent man of all that ever came into this place; and therefore I am now well convinced that you will not be angry with me (for you know who are to blame) but with them. Now, then, for you know what I came to announce to you, farewell; and endeavor to bear what is inevitable as easily as possible." And at the same time, bursting into tears, he turned away and withdrew. And Socrates, looking after him, said: "And thou too, farewell; we will do as you direct." At the same time turning to us, he said: "How courteous the man is; during the whole time I have been here he has visited me, and conversed with me sometimes, and proved the worthiest of men; and now how generously he weeps for me. But come, Crito, let us obey him, and let some one bring the poison, if it is ready pounded, but if not, let the man pound it." Then Crito said: "But I think, Socrates, that the sun is still on the mountains and has not yet set. Besides, I know that others have drunk the poison very late, after it had been announced to them, and have supped and drunk freely, and some even have enjoyed the objects of their love. Do not hasten, then, for there is yet time." Upon this Socrates replied: "These men whom you mention, Crito, do these things with good reason, for they think they shall gain by so doing, and I too with good reason shall not do so; for I think I shall gain nothing by drinking a little later, except to become ridiculous to myself, in being so fond of life, and sparing of it when none any longer remains. Go, then," he said, "obey, and do not resist." Crito having heard this, nodded to the boy that stood near. And the boy having gone out, and stayed for some time, came, bringing with him the man that was to administer the poison, who brought it ready pounded in a cup. And Socrates, on seeing the man, said: "Well, my good friend, as you are skilled in these matters, what must I do?" "Nothing else," he replied, "than when you have drunk it walk about until there is a heaviness in your legs, then lie down; thus it will do its purpose." And at the same time he held out the cup to Socrates. And he having received it very cheerfully, Echecrates, neither trembling nor changing at all in color or countenance, but, as he was wont, looking steadfastly at the man, said: "What say you of this potion, with respect to making a libation to anyone, is it lawful or not?" "We only pound so much, Socrates," he said, "as we think sufficient to drink." "I understand you," he said; "but it is certainly both lawful and right to pray to the gods, that my departure hence thither may be happy; which therefore I pray, and so may it be." And as he said this he drank it off readily and calmly. Thus far, most of us were with difficulty able to restrain ourselves from weeping, but when we saw him drinking, and having finished the draught, we could do so no longer; but in spite of myself the tears came in full torrent, so that, covering my face, I wept for myself, for I did not weep for him, but for my own fortune, in being deprived of such a friend. But Crito, even before me when he could not restrain his tears, had risen up. But Apollodorus, even before this, had not ceased weeping, and then bursting into an agony of grief, weeping and lamenting, he pierced the heart of everyone present except Socrates himself. But he said: "What are you doing, my admirable friends? I indeed, for this reason chiefly, sent away the women that they might not commit any folly of this kind. For I have heard that it is right to die with good omens. Be quiet, therefore, and bear up." When we heard this we were ashamed and restrained our tears. But he, having walked about, when he said that his legs were growing heavy, laid down on his back; for the man so directed him. And at the same time he who gave him the poison, taking hold of him, after a short interval examined his feet and legs; and then having pressed his foot hard, he asked if he felt it. He said that he did not. And after this he pressed his thighs; and thus going higher, he showed us that he was growing cold and stiff. Then Socrates touched himself, and said that when the poison reached his heart he should then depart. But now the parts around the lower belly were almost cold; when, uncovering himself (for he had been covered over), he said, and they were his last words: "Crito, we owe a cock to Aesculapius; pay it, therefore, and do not neglect it!" "It shall be done," said Crito; "but consider whether you have anything else to say?" To this question he gave no reply; but shortly after he gave a convulsive movement, and the man covered him, and his eyes were fixed; and Crito, perceiving it, closed his mouth and eyes. This, Echecrates, was the end of our friend, a man, as we may say, the best of all of his time that we have known, and, moreover, the most wise and just. BRENNUS BURNS ROME B.C. 388 BARTHOLD GEORG NIEBUHR (Julius Caesar is the first writer who gives us an authentic and enlightening account of the Gauls, whom he divided into three groups. The Gauls were the chief branch of the great original stock of Celts. They were a nomadic people, and from their home in Western Europe they spread to Britain, invaded Spain, and swarmed over the Alps into Italy, and it is from the latter event that this tall, fair, and fighting nation first came into the region of history. Before the Gauls had come within the borders of Italy, Camillus, the Dictator, had dealt the death-blow to the Etruscan League through his capture and destruction of its stronghold, Veii. But at the very summit of his triumph he lost the grace of his countrymen by demanding a tenth of their spoil taken at Veii, and which he claimed to have vowed to Apollo. It was popularly considered a ruse to increase his private fortune. Furthermore, a counter-claim was brought against him for appropriating bronze gates, which in Rome at that time were nothing less than actual money--bronze being the medium of currency. Camillus went into exile in consequence of the accusation. His parting prayer was that his country might feel his need and call him back. His desire was fulfilled, for soon after "the Gaul was at the gates" under the leadership of the haughty Brennus, who had come upon the Romans at a most opportune moment. This event of the overthrow of the Romans on the Alia has been the occasion for the well-known tale of the cackling of the geese in the temple of Juno, which alarmed the garrison. The episode also gave rise to the saying of the conqueror, Brennus, who, when reproached by his antagonists with using false weights, cast his sword into the scale, crying, "Woe to the conquered!") At that time no Roman foresaw the calamity which was threatening the empire. Rome had become great, because the country which she had conquered was weak through its oligarchical institutions; the subjects of the other states gladly joined the Romans, because under them their lot was more favorable, and probably because they were kindred nations. But matters went with the Romans as they did with Basilius, who subdued the Armenians when they were threatened by the Turks, and who soon after attacked the whole Greek empire and took away far more than had been gained before. The expedition of the Gauls into Italy must be regarded as a migration, and not as an invasion for the purpose of conquest: as for the historical account of it, we must adhere to Polybius and Diodorus, who place it shortly before the taking of Rome by the Gauls. We can attach no importance to the statement of Livy that they had come into Italy as early as the time of Tarquinius Priscus, having been driven from their country by a famine. It undoubtedly arose from the fact that some Greek writer, perhaps Timaeus, connected this migration with the settlement of the Phocians at Massilia. It is possible that Livy even here made use of Dionysius; and that the latter followed Timaeus; for as Livy made use of Dionysius in the eighth book, why not also in the fifth? He himself knew very little of Greek history;[44] but Justin's account is here evidently opposed to Livy. [Footnote 44: Comp. _Hist. of Rome_, vol. iii. n. 485.] Trogus Pompeius was born in the neighborhood of Massilia, and in writing his forty-third book he obviously made use of native chronicles, for from no other source could he derive the account of the _decreta honorifica_ of the Romans to the Massilians for the friendship which the latter had shown to the Romans during the Gallic war; and from the same source must he have obtained his information about the maritime wars of Massilia against Carthage. Trogus knows nothing of the story that the Gauls assisted the Phocians on their arrival; but according to him, they met with a kind reception among the Ligurians, who continued to inhabit those parts for a long time after. Even the story of the _lucumo_ who is said to have invited the Gauls is opposed to him, and if it were referred to Clusium alone it would be absurd. Polybius places the passage of the Gauls across the Alps about ten or twenty years before the taking of Rome; and Diodorus describes them as advancing toward Rome by an uninterrupted march. It is further stated that Melpum in the country of the Insubrians was destroyed on the same day as Veii: without admitting this coincidence, we have no reason to doubt that the statement is substantially true; and it is made by Cornelius Nepos, who, as a native of Gallia Transpadana, might possess accurate information, and whose chronological accounts were highly esteemed by the Romans. There was no other passage for the Gauls except either across the Little St. Bernard or across the Simplon; it is not probable that they took the former road, because their country extended only as far as the Ticinus, and if they had come across the Little St. Bernard, they would naturally have occupied also all the country between that mountain and the Ticinus. The Salassi may indeed have been a Gallic people, but it is by no means certain; moreover, between them and the Gauls who had come across the Alps the Laevi also lived; and there can be no doubt that at that time Ligurians still continued to dwell on the Ticinus. Melpum must have been situated in the district of Milan. The latter place has an uncommonly happy situation: often as it has been destroyed, it has always been restored, so that it is not impossible that Melpum may have been situated on the very spot afterward occupied by Milan. The Gallic migration undoubtedly passed by like a torrent with irresistible rapidity: how then is it possible to suppose that Melpum resisted them for two centuries, or that they conquered it and yet did not disturb the Etruscans for two hundred years? It would be absurd to believe it, merely to save an uncritical expression of Livy. According to the common chronology, the Triballi, who in the time of Herodotus inhabited the plains, and were afterward expelled by the Gauls, appeared in Thrace twelve years after the taking of Rome--according to a more correct chronology it was only nine years after that event. It was the same movement assuredly which led the Gauls to the countries through which the middle course of the Danube extends, and to the Po; and could the people who came in a few days from Clusium to Rome, and afterward appeared in Apulia, have been sitting quiet in a corner of Italy for two hundred years? If they had remained there because they had not the power to advance, they would have been cut to pieces by the Etruscans. We must therefore look upon it as an established fact, that the migration took place at the late period mentioned by Polybius and Diodorus. These Gauls were partly Celts, and partly (indeed principally) Belgae or Cymri, as may be perceived from the circumstance that their king, as well as the one who appeared before Delphi, is called Brennus. _Brenin_, according to Adelung, in his _Mithridates_, signifies in the language of Wales and Lower Brittany a _king_. But what caused this whole emigration? The statement of Livy, that the Gauls were compelled by famine to leave their country, is quite in keeping with the nature of all traditions about migrations, such as we find them in Saxo Grammaticus, in Paul Warnefried from the sagas of the Swedes, in the Tyrrhenian traditions of Lydia, and others. However, in the case of a people like the Celts, every specific statement of this kind, in which even the names of their leaders are mentioned, is of no more value than the traditions of other barbarous nations which were unacquainted with the art of writing. It is indeed, well known that the Celts in writing used the Greek alphabet, but they probably employed it only in the transactions of daily life; for we know that they were not allowed to commit their ancient songs to writing. During the Gallic migration we are again made aware how little we know of the history of Italy generally: our knowledge is limited to Rome, so that we are in the same predicament there, as if of all the historical authorities of the whole German empire we had nothing but the annals of a single imperial city. According to Livy's account, it would seem as if the only object of the Gauls had been to march to Rome; and yet this immigration changed the whole aspect of Italy. After the Gauls had once crossed the Apennines, there was no further obstacle to prevent their marching to the south of Italy by any road they pleased; and it is in fact mentioned that they did proceed farther south. The Umbrians still inhabited the country on the lower Po, in the modern Romagna and Urbino, parts of which were occupied by Liburnians. Polybius says that many people there became tributary to the Gauls, and that this was the case with the Umbrians is quite certain. The first historical appearance of the Gauls is at Clusium, whither a noble Clusine is said to have invited them for the purpose of taking vengeance on his native city. Whether this account is true, however, must remain undecided, and if there is any truth in it, it is more probable that the offended Clusine went across the Apennines and fetched his avengers. Clusium has not been mentioned since the time of Porsena; the fact of the Clusines soliciting the aid of Rome is a proof how little that northern city of Etruria was concerned about the fate of the southern towns, and makes us even suspect that it was allied with Rome; however, the danger was so great that all jealousy must have been suppressed. The natural road for the Gauls would have been along the Adriatic, then through the country of Umbrians who were tributary to them and already quite broken down, and thence through the Romagna across the Apennines. But the Apennines which separate Tuscany from the Romagna are very difficult to cross, especially for sumpter-horses; as therefore the Gauls could not enter Etruria on that side--which the Etruscans had intentionally allowed to grow wild--and as they had been convinced of this in an unsuccessful attempt, they crossed the Apennines in the neighborhood of Clusium, and appeared before that city. Clusium was the great bulwark of the valley of the Tiber; and if it were taken, the roads along the Tiber and the Arno would be open, and the Gauls might reach Arezzo from the rear: the Romans therefore looked upon the fate of Clusium as decisive of their own. The Clusines sued for a treaty with the mighty city of Rome, and the Romans were wise enough readily to accept the offer: they sent ambassadors to the Gauls, ordering them to withdraw. According to a very probable account, the Gauls had demanded of the Clusines a division of their territory as the condition of peace, and not, as was customary with the Romans, as a tax upon a people already subdued: if this is correct, the Romans sent the embassy confiding in their own strength. But the Gauls scorned the ambassadors, and the latter, allowing themselves to be carried away by their warlike disposition, joined the Etruscans in a fight against the Gauls. This was probably only an insignificant and isolated engagement. Such is the account of Livy, who goes on to say that the Gauls, as soon as they perceived this violation in the law of nations, gave the signal for a retreat, and, having called upon the gods to avenge the wrong, marched against Rome. This is evidently a mere fiction, for a barbarous nation like the Gauls cannot possibly have had such ideas, nor was there in reality any violation of the law of nations, as the Romans stood in no kind of connection with the Gauls. But it was a natural feeling with the Romans to look upon the fall of their city as the consequence of a _nefas_ which no human power could resist. Roman vanity also is at work here, inasmuch as the Roman ambassadors are said to have so distinguished themselves that they were recognized by the barbarians among the hosts of Etruscans. Now, according to another tradition directly opposed to these statements, the Gauls sent to Rome to demand the surrender of those ambassadors: as the senate was hesitating and left the decision to the people, the latter not only rejected the demand, but appointed the same ambassadors to the office of military tribunes, whereupon the Gauls with all their forces at once marched toward Rome. Livy here again speaks of the _populus_ as the people to whom the senate left the decision: this must have been the patricians only, for they alone had the right to decide upon the fate of the members of their own order. It is not fair to accuse the Romans on that occasion of dishonesty; but this account assuredly originated with later writers, who transferred to barbarians the right belonging to a nation standing in a legal relation to another. The statement that the three ambassadors, all of whom were Fabii, were appointed military tribunes, is not even the usual one, for there is another in Diodorus, who must here have used Roman authorities written in Greek, that is, Fabius; since he calls the Cærites [Greek: Kairioi] and not [Greek: Agullaioi]. He speaks of a single ambassador, who being a son of a military tribune fought against the Gauls. This is at least a sign how uncertain history yet is. The battle on the Alia was fought on the 16th of July; the military tribunes entered upon their office on the first of that month; and the distance between Clusium and Rome is only three good days' marches. It is impossible to restore the true history, but we can discern what is fabulous from what is really historical. An innumerable host of Gauls now marched from Clusium toward Rome. For a long time the Gauls were most formidable to the Romans, as well as to all other nations with whom they came in contact, even as far east as the Ukraine; as to Rome, we see this as late as the Cisalpine war of the year A.U. 527. Polybius and Diodorus are our best guides in seeking for information about the manners of the Gauls, for in the time of Caesar they had already become changed. In the description of their persons we partly recognize the modern Gael, or the inhabitants of the Highlands of Scotland: huge bodies, blue eyes, bristly hair; even their dress and armor are those of the Highlanders, for they wore the checked and variegated tartans; their arms consisted of the broad, unpointed battle-sword, the same weapon as the claymore among the Highlanders. They had a vast number of horns, which were used in the Highlands for many centuries after, and threw themselves upon the enemy in immense irregular masses with terrible fury, those standing behind impelling those stationed in front, whereby they became irresistible by the tactics of those times. The Romans ought to have used against them their phalanx and doubled it, until they were accustomed to this enemy and were enabled by their greater skill to repel them. If the Romans had been able to withstand their first shock, the Gauls would have easily been thrown into disorder, and put to flight. The Gauls who were subsequently conquered by the Romans were the descendants of such as were born in Italy, and had lost much of their courage and strength. The Goths under Vitiges, not fifty years after the immigration of Theodoric into Italy, were cowards, and unable to resist the twenty thousand men of Belisarius: showing how easily barbarians degenerate in such climates. The Gauls, moreover, were terrible on account of their inhuman cruelty, for, wherever they settled, the original towns and their inhabitants completely disappeared from the face of the earth. In their own country they had the feudal system and a priestly government: the Druids were their only rulers, who avenged the oppressed people on the lords, but in their turn became tyrants: all the people were in the condition of serfs, a proof that the Gauls, in their own country too, were the conquerors who had subdued an earlier population. We always find mention of the wealth of the Gauls in gold, and yet France has no rivers that carry gold-sand, and the Pyrenees were then no longer in their possession: the gold must therefore have been obtained by barter. Much may be exaggeration; and the fact of some noble individuals wearing gold chains was probably transferred by ancient poets to the whole nation, since popular poetry takes great liberty, especially in such embellishments. Pliny states that previous to the Gallic calamity the census amounted to one hundred and fifty thousand persons, which probably refers only to men entitled to vote in the assemblies, and does not comprise women, children, slaves, and strangers. If this be correct, the number of citizens was enormous; but it must not be supposed to include the inhabitants of the city only, the population of which was doubtless much smaller. The statement of Diodorus that all men were called to arms to resist the Gauls, and that the number amounted to forty thousand, is by no means improbable: according to the testimony of Polybius, Latins and Hernicans also were enlisted. Another account makes the Romans take the field against the Gauls with twenty-four thousand men, that is, with four field legions and four civic legions: the field legions were formed only of plebeians, and served, according to the order of the classes, probably in _maniples_; the civic legions contained all those who belonged neither to the patricians nor to the plebeians, that is, all the _aerarii, proletarii_, freedmen, and artisans who had never before faced an enemy. They were certainly not armed with the _pilum_, nor drawn up in _maniples_; but used pikes and were employed in phalanxes. Now as for the field legions, each consisted half of Latins and half of Romans, there being in each _maniple_ one century of Roman and one of Latins. There were at that time four legions, and as a legion, including the reserve troops, contained three thousand men, the total is twelve thousand; now the account which mentions twenty-four thousand men must have presumed that there were four field legions and four irregular civic ones. There would accordingly have been no more than six thousand plebeians, and, even if the legions were all made up of Romans, only twelve thousand; if in addition to these we take twelve thousand irregular troops and sixteen thousand allies, the number of forty thousand would be completed. In this case, the population of Rome would not have been as large as that of Athens in the Peloponnesian war, and this is indeed very probable. The cavalry is not included in this calculation: but forty thousand must be taken as the maximum of the whole army. There seems to be no exaggeration in this statement, and the battle on the Alia, speaking generally, is an historical event. It is surprising that the Romans did not appoint a dictator to command in the battle; it cannot be said indeed that they regarded this war as an ordinary one, for in that case they would not have raised so great a force, but they cannot have comprehended the danger in all its greatness. New swarms continued to come across the Alps; the Senones also now appeared to seek habitations for themselves; they, like the Germans in after-times, demanded land, as they found the Insubrians, Boians, and others already settled; the latter had taken up their abode in Umbria, but only until they should find a more extensive and suitable territory. The Romans committed the great mistake of fighting with their hurriedly collected troops a battle against an enemy who had hitherto been invincible. The hills along which the right wing is said to have been drawn up are no longer discernible, and they were probably nothing but little mounds of earth: at any rate it was senseless to draw up a long line against the immense mass of enemies. The Gauls, on the other hand, were enabled without any difficulty to turn off to the left. They proceeded to a higher part of the river, where it was more easily fordable, and with great prudence threw themselves with all their force upon the right wing, consisting of the civic legions. The latter at first resisted, but not long; and when they fled, the whole remaining line, which until then seems to have been useless and inactive, was seized with a panic. Terror preceded the Gauls as they laid waste everything on their way, and this paralyzed the courage of the Romans, instead of rousing them to a desperate resistance. The Romans therefore were defeated on the Alia in the most inglorious manner. The Gauls had taken them in their rear, and cut off their return to Rome. A portion fled toward the Tiber, where some effected a retreat across the river, and others were drowned; another part escaped into a forest. The loss of life must have been prodigious, and it is inconceivable how Livy could have attached so much importance to the mere disgrace. If the Roman army had not been almost annihilated, it would not have been necessary to give up the defence of the city, as was done, for the city was left undefended and deserted by all. Many fled to Veii instead of returning to Rome: only a few, who had escaped along the high road, entered the city by the Colline gate. Rome was exhausted, her power shattered, her legions defenceless, and her warlike allies had partly been beaten in the same battle, and were partly awaiting the fearful enemy in their own countries. At Rome it was believed that the whole army was destroyed, for nothing was known of those who had reached Veii. In the city itself there were only old men, women, and children, so that there was no possibility of defending it. It is, however, inconceivable that the gates should have been left open, and that the Gauls, from fear of a stratagem, should have encamped for several days outside the gates. A more probable account is that the gates were shut and barricaded. We may form a vivid conception of the condition of Rome after this battle, by comparing it with that of Moscow before the conflagration: the people were convinced that a long defence was impossible, since there was probably a want of provisions. Livy gives a false notion of the evacuation of the city, as if the defenceless citizens had remained immovable in their consternation, and only a few had been received into the Capitol. The determination, in fact, was to defend the Capitol, and the tribune Sulpicius had taken refuge there, with about one thousand men. There was on the Capitol an ancient well which still exists, and without which the garrison would soon have perished. This well remained unknown to all antiquaries, till I discovered it by means of information gathered from the people who live there. Its depth in the rock descends to the level of the Tiber, but the water is now not fit to drink. The Capitol was a rock which had been hewn steep, and thereby made inaccessible, but a _clivus_, closed by gates both below and above, led up from the Forum and the Sacred Way. The rock, indeed, was not so steep as in later times, as is clear from the account of the attempt to storm it; but the Capitol was nevertheless very strong. Whether some few remained in the city, as at Moscow, who in their stupefaction did not consider what kind of enemy they had before them, cannot be decided. The narrative is very beautiful, and reminds us of the taking of the Acropolis of Athens by the Persians, where, likewise, the old men allowed themselves to be cut down by the Persians. Notwithstanding the improbability of the matter, I am inclined to believe that a number of aged patricians--their number may not be exactly historical--sat down in the Forum, in their official robes, on their curule chairs, and that the chief pontiff devoted them to death. Such devotions are a well-known Roman custom. It is certainly not improbable that the Gauls were amazed when they found the city deserted, and only these old men sitting immovable, that they took them for statues or supernatural visions, and did nothing to them, until one of them struck a Gaul who touched him, whereupon all were slaughtered. To commit suicide was repugnant to the customs of the Romans, who were guided in many things by feelings more correct and more resembling our own, than many other ancient nations. The old men, indeed, had given up the hope of their country being saved; but the Capitol might be maintained, and the survivors preferred dying in the attempt of self-defence to taking refuge at Veii, where after all they could not have maintained themselves in the end. The sacred treasures were removed to Caere, and the hope of the Romans now was that the barbarians would be tired of the long siege. Provisions for a time had been conveyed to the Capitol, where a couple of thousand men may have been assembled, and where all buildings, temples, as well as public and private houses, were used as habitations. The Gauls made fearful havoc at Rome, even more fearful than the Spaniards and Germans did in the year 1527. Soldiers plunder, and when they find no human beings they engage in the work of destruction; and fires break out, as at Moscow, without the existence of any intention to cause a conflagration. The whole city was changed into a heap of ashes, with the exception of a few houses on the Palatine, which were occupied by the leaders of the Gauls. It is astonishing to find, nevertheless, that a few monuments of the preceding period, such as statues, situated at some distance from the Capitol, are mentioned as having been preserved; but we must remember that _travertino_ is tolerably fireproof. That Rome was burned down is certain; and when it was rebuilt, not even the ancient streets were restored. The Gauls were now encamped in the city. At first they attempted to storm the _clivus_, but were repelled with great loss, which is surprising, since we know that at an earlier time the Romans succeeded in storming it against Appius Herdonius. Afterward they discovered the footsteps of a messenger who had been sent from Veii, in order that the State might be taken care of in due form; for the Romans in the Capitol were patricians, and represented the _curies_ and the Government, whereas those assembled at Veii represented the tribes, but had no leaders. The latter had resolved to recall Camillus, and raise him to the dictatorship. For this reason Pontius Cominius had been sent to Rome to obtain the sanction of the senate and the curies. This was quite in the spirit of the ancient times. If the curies had interdicted him _aqua et igni_, they alone could recall him, if they previously obtained a resolution of the senate authorizing them to do so; but if he had gone into voluntary exile, and had given up his Roman franchise by becoming a citizen of Ardea before a sentence had been passed upon him by the centuries, it was again in the power of the curies alone, he being a patrician, to recall him as a citizen; and otherwise he could not have become dictator, nor could he have regarded himself as such. It was the time of the dog-days when the Gauls came to Rome, and as the summer at Rome is always pestilential, especially during the two months and a half before the first of September, the unavoidable consequence must have been, as Livy relates, that the barbarians, bivouacking on the ruins of the city in the open air, were attacked by disease and carried off, like the army of Frederick Barbarossa when encamped before the castle of St. Angelo. The whole army of the Gauls, however, was not in the city, but only as many as were necessary to blockade the garrison of the Capitol; the rest were scattered far and wide over the face of the country, and were ravaging all the unprotected places and isolated farms in Latium; many an ancient town, which is no longer mentioned after this time, may have been destroyed by the Gauls. None but fortified places like Ostia, which could obtain supplies by sea, made a successful resistance, for the Gauls were unacquainted with the art of besieging. The Ardeatans, whose territory was likewise invaded by the Gauls, opposed them, under the command of Camillus; the Etruscans would seem to have endeavored to avail themselves of the opportunity of recovering Veii, for we are told that the Romans at Veii, commanded by Caedicius, gained a battle against them, and that, encouraged by this success, they began to entertain a hope of regaining Rome, since by this victory they got possession of arms. A Roman of the name of Fabius Dorso is said to have offered up, in broad daylight, a _gentilician_ sacrifice on the Quirinal; and the astonished Gauls are said to have done him no harm--a tradition which is not improbable. The provisions in the Capitol were exhausted, but the Gauls themselves being seized with epidemic diseases became tired of their conquests, and were not inclined to settle in a country so far away from their own home. They once more attempted to take the Capitol by storm, having observed that the messenger from Veii had ascended the rock, and come down again near the Porta Carmentalis, below Araceli. The ancient rock is now covered with rubbish, and no longer discernible. The besieged did not think of a storm on that side; it may be that formerly there had in that part been a wall, which had become decayed; and in southern countries an abundant vegetation always springs up between the stones, and if this had actually been neglected it cannot have been very difficult to climb up. The Gauls had already gained a firm footing, as there was no wall at the top--the rock which they stormed was not the Tarpeian, but the Arx--when Manlius, who lived there, was roused by the screaming of the geese: he came to the spot and thrust down those who were climbing up. This rendered the Gauls still more inclined to commence negotiations; they were, moreover, called back by an inroad of some Alpine tribes into Lombardy, where they had left their wives and children: they offered to depart if the Romans would pay them a ransom of a thousand pounds of gold, to be taken no doubt from the Capitoline treasury. Considering the value of money at that time, the sum was enormous: in the time of Theodosius, indeed, there were people at Rome who possessed several hundredweight of gold, nay, one is said to have had an annual revenue of two hundredweight. There can be no doubt that the Gauls received the sum they demanded, and quitted Rome; that in weighing it they scornfully imposed upon the Romans is very possible, and the _vae victis_ too may be true: we ourselves have seen similar things before the year 1813. But there can be no truth in the story told by Livy, that while they were disputing Camillus appeared with an army and stopped the proceedings, because the military tribunes had had no right to conclude the treaty. He is there said to have driven the Gauls from the city, and afterward in a twofold battle to have so completely defeated them that not even a messenger escaped. Beaufort, inspired by Gallic patriotism, has most excellently shown what a complete fable this story is. To attempt to disguise the misfortunes of our forefathers by substituting fables in their place is mere childishness. This charge does not affect Livy, indeed, for he copied only what others had written before him; but he did not allow his own conviction to appear as he generally does, for he treats the whole of the early history with a sort of irony, half believing, half disbelieving it. According to another account in Diodorus, the Gauls besieged a town allied with Rome--its name seems to be mis-written, but is probably intended for Vulsinii--and the Romans relieved it and took back from the Gauls the gold which they had paid them; but this siege of Vulsinii is quite unknown to Livy. A third account in Strabo and also mentioned by Diodorus does not allow this honor to the Romans, but states that the Caerites pursued the Gauls, attacked them in the country of the Sabines, and completely annihilated them. In like manner the Greeks endeavored to disguise the fact that the Gauls took the money from the Delphic treasury, and that in a quite historical period (Olymp. 120). The true explanation is undoubtedly the one found in Polybius, that the Gauls were induced to quit Rome by an insurrection of the Alpine tribes, after it had experienced the extremity of humiliation. Whatever the enemy had taken as booty was consumed; they had not made any conquests, but only indulged in plunder and devastation; they had been staying at Rome for seven or eight months, and could have gained nothing further than the Capitol and the very money which they received without taking that fortress. The account of Polybius throws light upon many discrepant statements, and all of them, not even excepting Livy's fairy-tale-like embellishment, may be explained by means of it. The Romans attempted to prove that the Gauls had actually been defeated, by relating that the gold afterward taken from the Gauls and buried in the Capitol was double the sum paid to them as a ransom; but it is much more probable that the Romans paid their ransom out of the treasury of the temple of the Capitoline Jupiter and of other temples, and that afterward double this sum was made up by a tax; which agrees with a statement in the history of Manlius, that a tax was imposed for the purpose of raising the Gallic ransom: surely this could not have been done at the time of the siege, when the Romans were scattered in all parts of the country, but must have taken place afterward for the purpose of restoring the money that had been taken. Now if at a later time there actually existed in the Capitol such a quantity of gold, it is clear that it was believed to be a proof that the Gauls had not kept the gold which was paid to them. Even as late as the time of Cicero and Caesar, the spot was shown at Rome in the Carinae, where the Gauls had heaped up and burned their dead; it was called _busta Gallica_, which was corrupted in the Middle Ages into Protogallo, whence the church which was built there was in reality called _S. Andreas in bustis Gallicis_, or, according to the later Latinity, _in busta Gallica--busta Gallica_ not being declined. The Gauls departed with their gold, which the Romans had been compelled to pay on account of the famine that prevailed in the Capitol, which was so great that they pulled the leather from their shields and cooked it, just as was done during the siege of Jerusalem. The Gauls were certainly not destroyed. Justin has preserved the remarkable statement that the same Gauls who sacked Rome went to Apulia, and there offered for money their assistance to the elder Dionysius of Syracuse. From this important statement it is at any rate clear that they traversed all Italy, and then probably returned along the shore of the Adriatic: their devastations extended over many parts of Italy, and there is no doubt that the Æquians received their death-blow at that time, for henceforth we hear no more of the hostilities of the Æquians against Rome. Praeneste, on the other hand, which must formerly have been subject to the Æquians, now appears as an independent town. The Æquians, who inhabited small and easily destructible towns, must have been annihilated during the progress of the Gauls. There is nothing so strange in the history of Livy as his view of the consequences of the Gallic calamity; he must have conceived it as a transitory storm by which Rome was humbled but not broken. The army, according to him, was only scattered, and the Romans appear afterward just as they had been before, as if the preceding period had only been an evil dream, and as if there had been nothing to do but to rebuild the city. But assuredly the devastation must have been tremendous throughout the Roman territory: for eight months the barbarians had been ravaging the country, every trace of cultivation, every farmer's house, all the temples and public buildings were destroyed; the walls of the city had been purposely pulled down, a large number of its inhabitants were led into slavery, the rest were living in great misery at Veii; and what they had saved scarcely sufficed to buy their bread. In this condition they returned to Rome. Camillus as dictator is called a second Romulus, and to him is due the glory of not having despaired in those distressing circumstances. TARTAR INVASION OF CHINA BY MEHA B.C. 341 DEMETRIUS CHARLES BOULGER (The first Chinese are supposed to have been a nomad tribe in the provinces of Shensi, which lies in the northwest of China, and among them at last appeared a ruler, Fohi, whose name at least has been preserved. His deeds and his person are mythical, but he is credited with having given his country its first regular institutions. The annalists of the Chinese chronicles placed the date of the Creation at a point of time two millions of years before Confucius; this interval they filled up with lines of dynasties. Preceding the Chow dynasty the chronicles give ten epochs--prior to the eighth of these there is no authentic history. Yew-chow She [the "Nest-having"] taught the people to build huts of the boughs of trees. Fire was discovered by Say-jin She [the "Fire producer"]. Fuh-he [B.C. 2862] was the discoverer of iron. With Yaou [B.C. 2356] is the period whence Confucius begins his story. He says of that epoch: "The house door could safely be left open." Yaou greatly extended and strengthened the empire and established fairs and marts over the land. One of China's most notable rulers was Tsin Chi Hwangti, who was studious in providing for the security of his empire, and with this object began the construction of a fortified wall across the northern frontier to serve as a defence against the troublesome Hiongnou tribes, who are identified with the Huns of Attila. This wall, which he began in the first years of his reign--about the close of the third century B.C.--was finished before his death. It still exists, known as the Great Wall of China, and has long been considered one of the wonders of the world. Every third man of the whole empire was employed on this work. It is said that five hundred thousand of them died of starvation. The contents of the Great Wall would be enough to build two walls six feet high and two feet thick around the equator. It is the largest artificial structure in the world; carried for fourteen hundred miles over height and hollow, reaching in one place the level of five thousand feet--nearly one mile--above the sea. Earth, gravel, brick, and stone were used in its construction. The weak successors of Hwangti finally gave way to the usurper, Kaotsou, who had been originally the ruler of a small town, and had borne the name of Lieou Pang. The reign of Kaotsou was distinguished by the consolidation of the empire; the connection of Western with Eastern China by high walls and bridges, some of which are still in perfect condition, and the institution of an elaborate code of court etiquette. His attention to these things was, however, rudely interrupted by an irruption of the Hiongnou Tartars.) The death of Tsin Chi Hwangti proved the signal for the outbreak of disturbances throughout the realm. Within a few months five princes had founded as many kingdoms, each hoping, if not to become supreme, at least to remain independent. Moungtien, beloved by the army, and at the head, as he tells us in his own words, of three hundred thousand soldiers, might have been the arbiter of the empire; but a weak feeling of respect for the imperial authority induced him to obey an order, sent by Eulchi, Hwangti's son and successor, commanding him "to drink the waters of eternal life." Eulchi's brief reign of three years was a succession of misfortunes. The reins of office were held by the eunuch Chow-kow, who first murdered the minister Lissep and then Eulchi himself. Ing Wang, a grandson of Hwangti, was the next and last of the Tsin emperors. On coming to power, he at once caused Chow-kow, whose crimes had been discovered, to be arrested and executed. This vigorous commencement proved very transitory, for when he had enjoyed nominal authority during six weeks, Ing Wang's troops, after a reverse in the field, went over in a body to Lieou Pang, the leader of a rebel force. Ing Wang put an end to his existence, thus terminating, in a manner not less ignominious than any of its predecessors, the dynasty of the Tsins, which Hwangti had hoped to place permanently on the throne of China, and to which his genius gave a lustre far surpassing that of many other families who had enjoyed the same privilege during a much longer period. The crisis in the history of the country had afforded one of those great men who rise periodically from the ranks of the people to give law to nations the opportunity for advancing his personal interests at the same time that he made them appear to be identical with the public weal. Of such geniuses, if the test applied be the work accomplished, there have been few with higher claims to respectful and admiring consideration than Lieou Pang, who after the fall of the Tsins became the founder of the Han dynasty under the style of Kaotsou. Originally the governor of a small town, he had, soon after the death of Hwangti, gathered round him the nucleus of a formidable army, and while nominally serving under one of the greater princes, he scarcely affected to conceal that he was fighting for his own interest. On the other hand, he was no mere soldier of fortune, and the moderation which he showed after victory enhanced his reputation as a general. The path to the throne being thus cleared, the successful general became emperor. His first act was to proclaim an amnesty to all those who had borne arms against him. In a public proclamation he expressed his regret at the suffering of the people "from the evils which follow in the train of war." During the earlier years of his reign he chose the city of Loyang as his capital--now the flourishing and populous town of Honan--but at a later period he removed it to Singanfoo, in the western province of Shensi. His dynasty became known by the name of the small state where he was born, and which had fallen early in his career into his hands. Kaotsou sanctioned or personally undertook various important public works, which in many places still exist to testify to the greatness of his character. Prominent among those must be placed the bridges constructed along the great roads of Western China. Some of them are still believed to be in perfect condition. No act of Kaotsou's reign places him higher in the scale of sovereigns than the improvement of the roads and the construction of those remarkable bridges. Kaotsou loved splendor and sought to make his receptions and banquets imposing by their brilliance. He drew up a special ceremonial which must have proved a trying ordeal for his courtiers, and dire was the offence if it were infringed in the smallest particular. He kept up festivities at Singanfoo for several weeks, and on one of these occasions he exclaimed: "To-day I feel I am emperor and perceive all the difference between a subject and his master." Kaotsou's attention was rudely summoned away from these trivialities by the outbreak of revolts against his authority and by inroads on the part of the Tartars. The latter were the more serious. The disturbances that followed Hwangti's death were a fresh inducement to these clans to again gather round a common head and prey upon the weakness of China, for Kaotsou's authority was not yet recognized in many of the tributary states which had been fain to admit the supremacy of the great Tsin emperor. About this time the Hiongnou[45] Tartars were governed by two chiefs in particular, one named Tonghou, the other Meha or Mehe. Of these the former appears to have been instigated by a reckless ambition or an overweening arrogance, and at first it seemed that the forbearance of Meha would allow his pretensions[46] to pass unchallenged. [Footnote 45: Probably the same race as the Huns.] [Footnote 46: Meha had become chief of his clan by murdering his father, Teou-man, who was on the point of ordering his son's assassination when thus forestalled in his intention. Tonghou sent to demand from him a favorite horse, which Meha sent him. His kinsmen advised him to refuse compliance; but he replied: "What! Would you quarrel with your neighbors for a horse?" Shortly afterward Tonghou sent to ask for one of the wives of the former chief. This also Meha granted, saying: "Why should we undertake a war for the sake of a woman?" It was only when Tonghou menaced his possessions that Meha took up arms.] Meha's successes followed rapidly upon each other. Issuing from the desert, and marching in the direction of China, he wrested many fertile districts from the feeble hands of those who held them; and while establishing his personal authority on the banks of the Hoangho, his lieutenants returned laden with plunder from expeditions into the rich provinces of Shensi and Szchuen. He won back all the territory lost by his ancestors to Hwangti and Moungtien, and he paved the way to greater success by the siege and capture of the city of Maye, thus obtaining possession of the key of the road to Tsinyang. Several of the border chiefs and of the Emperor's lieutenants, dreading the punishment allotted in China to want of success, went over to the Tartars, and took service under Meha. The Emperor, fully aroused to the gravity of the danger, assembled his army, and placing himself at its head marched against the Tartars. Encouraged by the result of several preliminary encounters, the Emperor was eager to engage Meha's main army, and after some weeks' searching and manoeuvring, the two forces halted in front of each other. Kaotsou, imagining that victory was within his grasp, and believing the stories brought to him by spies of the weakness of the Tartar army, resolved on an immediate attack. He turned a deaf ear to the cautious advice of one of his generals, who warned him that "in war we should never despise an enemy," and marched in person at the head of his advance guard to find the Tartars. Meha, who had been at all these pains to throw dust in the Emperor's eyes and to conceal his true strength, no sooner saw how well his stratagem had succeeded, and that Kaotsou was rushing into the trap so elaborately laid for him, than by a skilful movement he cut off his communications with the main body of his army, and, surrounding him with an overwhelming force, compelled him to take refuge in the city of Pingching in Shensi. With a very short supply of provisions, and hopelessly outnumbered, it looked as if the Chinese Emperor could not possibly escape the grasp of the desert chief. In this strait one of his officers suggested as a last chance that the most beautiful virgin in the town should be discovered, and sent as a present to mollify the conqueror. Kaotsou seized at this suggestion, as the drowning man will catch at a straw, and the story is preserved, though her name has passed into oblivion, of how the young Chinese girl entered into the plan and devoted all her wits to charming the Tartar conqueror. She succeeded as much as their fondest hopes could have led them to believe; and Meha permitted Kaotsou, after signing an ignominious treaty, to leave his place of confinement and rejoin his army, glad to welcome the return of the Emperor, yet without him helpless to stir a hand to effect his release. Meha retired to his own territory, well satisfied with the material results of the war and the rich booty which had been obtained in the sack of Chinese cities, while Kaotsou, like the ordinary type of an oriental ruler, vented his discomfiture on his subordinates. The closing acts of the war were the lavishing of rewards on the head of the general to whose warnings he had paid no heed, and the execution of the scouts who had been misled by the wiles of Meha. The success which had attended this incursion and the spoil of war were potent inducements to the Tartars to repeat the invasion. While Kaotsou was meditating over the possibility of revenge, and considering schemes for the better protection of his frontier, the Tartars, disregarding the truce that had been concluded, retraced their steps, and pillaged the border districts with impunity. In this year (B.C. 199) they were carrying everything before them, and the Emperor, either unnerved by recent disaster or appalled at the apparently irresistible energy of the followers of Meha, remained apathetic in his palace. The representations of his ministers and generals failed to rouse him from his stupor, and the weapon to which he resorted was the abuse of his opponent, and not his prompt chastisement. Meha was "a wicked and faithless man, who had risen to power by the murder of his father, and one with whom oaths and treaties carried no weight." In the mean while the Tartars were continuing their victorious career. The capital itself could not be pronounced safe from their assaults, or from the insult of their presence. In this crisis counsels of craft and dissimulation alone found favor in the Emperor's cabinet. No voice was raised in support of the bold and only true course of going forth to meet the national enemy. The capitulation of Pingching had for the time destroyed the manhood of the race, and Kaotsou held in esteem the advice of men widely different to those who had placed him on the throne. Kaotsou opened fresh negotiations with Meha, who concluded a treaty on condition of the Emperor's daughter being given to him in marriage, and on the assumption that he was an independent ruler. With these terms Kaotsou felt obliged to comply, and thus for the first time this never-ceasing collision between the tribes of the desert and the agriculturists of the plains of China closed with the admitted triumph of the former. The contest was soon to be renewed with different results, but the triumph of Meha was beyond question.[47] [Footnote 47: One historian had the courage to declare that "Never was so great a shame inflicted on the Middle Kingdom, which then lost its dignity and honor."] The weakness thus shown against a foreign foe brought its own punishment in domestic troubles. The palace became the scene of broils, plots, and counterplots, and so badly did Kaotsou manage his affairs at this epoch that one of his favorite generals raised the standard of revolt against him through apparently a mere misunderstanding. In this instance Kaotsou easily put down the rising, but others followed which, if not pregnant with danger, were at the least extremely troublesome. The murder of Hansin, to whose aid Kaotsou owed his elevation to the throne as much as to any other, by order of the empress, during a reception at the palace, shook confidence still more in the ruler, and many of his followers were forced into open rebellion through dread of personal danger. What wonder that, as he has said, "the very name of revolt inspired Kaotsou with apprehension." In B.C. 195 we find Kaotsou going out of his way to visit the tomb of Confucius. Shortly after this event it became evident that he was approaching his end. His eldest son Hiaohoei was proclaimed heir apparent. Kaotsou died in the fifty-third year of his age, having reigned as emperor during eight years. The close of his reign did not bear out all the promise of its commencement; and the extent of his authority was greatly curtailed by the disastrous effects of the war with the Tartars and the subsequent revolts among his generals. Despite these reverses there remains much in favor of his character. He had performed his part in the consolidation of the Hans; it remained for those who came after him to complete what he left half finished. Under Hoeiti, the Tartar King Meha sent an envoy to the capital, but either the form or the substance of his message enraged the empress-mother, who ordered his execution. The two peoples were thus again brought to the brink of war, but eventually the difference was sunk for the time, and the Chinese chroniclers have represented that the satisfactory turn in the question was due to Meha seeing the error of his ways.[48] Not long afterward the Tartar King died, and was succeeded by his son Lao Chang. [Footnote 48: Meha's letter of excuse is thus given: "In the barbarous country which I govern both virtue and the decencies of life are unknown. I have been unable to free myself from them, and, therefore, I blush. China has her wise men; that is a happiness which I envy. They would have prevented my being wanting in the respect due to your rank."] ALEXANDER REDUCES TYRE: LATER FOUNDS ALEXANDRIA B.C. 332 OLIVER GOLDSMITH (The master spirit who could sigh for more worlds to conquer was at this time high in his dazzling flight. Alexander has always been considered one of the most striking and picturesque characters of history. His personality was pleasing, his endurance remarkable, and courage dauntless. Educated by Aristotle, his keen mind was well trained. He was skilled in horsemanship, and his control over the fiery Bucephalus, untamable by others, has become a household tale in all lands. There never was a more kingly prince. A king at twenty, his career has been an object of wonder to succeeding generations. He shot like a meteor across the sky of ancient civilization. His military achievements were remarkable for quickness of conception and rapidity of execution; his life was a progress from conquest to conquest. Alexander's army, with its solid phalanx, its darting cavalry, and light troops, had become irresistible. He possessed Napoleon's ability to select good generals and to make the most of his talents. In battle Alexander was entirely devoid of fear. After a victory his chief thoughts were for the wounded. Like Napoleon, he also possessed that personal equation of absolute popularity with his soldiers. Their devotion to him was simply complete. After Thebes came the invasion of Asia. The invincible Macedonian had fought and won the battle of the Granicus. In this battle nearly all of the Persian leaders were slain, and its result spread terror throughout Persia. Halicarnassus was next reduced. The march of Alexander was ever onward. In the citadel of Gordium he cut the "Gordian knot," and prophecy marked him for the lord of Asia. And now Darius marched to meet him, making a fatally bad choice of battle-ground. Darius was totally defeated at the celebrated battle of Issus, although he had anticipated a victory. After the Persian rout and the flight of Darius, whose numbers counted for nothing before the Macedonian's skill, Lindon welcomed the invaders, and Alexander determined to take Tyre. This was accomplished after a siege, which was attended with much cruelty. The siege of Gaza followed, in which nearly all of the citizens perished. In B.C. 332 Alexander began his expedition to Egypt. He conciliated the natives by paying honors to their gods. In his progress he was struck by the advantages of a certain site for a city, and founded there the town which is now called Alexandria.) All Phoenicia was subdued except Tyre, the capital city. This city was justly entitled the "Queen of the Sea," that element bringing to it the tribute of all nations. She boasted of having first invented navigation and taught mankind the art of braving the winds and waves by the assistance of a frail bark. The happy situation of Tyre, at the upper end of the Mediterranean; the conveniency of its ports, which were both safe and capacious; and the character of its inhabitants, who were industrious, laborious, patient, and extremely courteous to strangers, invited thither merchants from all parts of the globe; so that it might be considered, not so much a city belonging to any particular nation, as the common city of all nations and the centre of their commerce. Alexander thought it necessary, both for his glory and his interest, to take this city. The spring was now coming on. Tyre was at that time seated on an island of the sea, about a quarter of a league from the continent. It was surrounded by a strong wall, a hundred and fifty feet high, which the waves of the sea washed; and the Carthaginians, a colony from Tyre, a mighty people, and sovereigns of the ocean, promised to come to the assistance of their parent State. Encouraged, therefore, by these favorable circumstances, the Tyrians determined not to surrender, but to hold out the place to the last extremity. This resolution, however imprudent, was certainly magnanimous, but it was soon after followed by an act which was as blamable as the other was praiseworthy. Alexander was desirous of gaining the place rather by treaty than by force of arms, and with this in view sent heralds into the town with offers of peace; but the inhabitants were so far from listening to his proposals, or endeavoring to avert his resentment by any kind of concession, that they actually killed his ambassadors and threw their bodies from the top of the walls into the sea. It is easy to imagine what effect so shocking an outrage must produce in a mind like Alexander's. He instantly resolved to besiege the place, and not to desist until he had made himself master of it and razed it to the ground. As Tyre was divided from the continent by an arm of the sea, there was necessity for filling up the intermediate space with a bank or pier, before the place could be closely invested. This work, accordingly, was immediately undertaken and in a great measure completed; when all the wood, of which it was principally composed, was unexpectedly burned by means of a fire-ship sent in by the enemy. The damage, however, was very soon repaired, and the mole rendered more perfect than formerly, and carried nearer to the town, when all of a sudden a furious tempest arose, which, undermining the stonework that supported the wood, laid the whole at once in the bottom of the sea. Two such disasters, following so closely on the heels of each other, would have cooled the ardor of any man except Alexander, but nothing could daunt his invincible spirit, or make him relinquish an enterprise he had once undertaken. He, therefore, resolved to prosecute the siege; and in order to encourage his men to second his views, he took care to inspire them with the belief that heaven was on their side and would soon crown their labors with the wished-for success. At one time he gave out that Apollo was about to abandon the Tyrians to their doom, and that, to prevent his flight, they had bound him to his pedestal with a golden chain; at another, he pretended that Hercules, the tutelar deity of Macedon, had appeared to him, and, having opened prospects of the most glorious kind, had invited him to proceed to take possession of Tyre. These favorable circumstances were announced by the augurs as intimations from above; and every heart was in consequence cheered. The soldiers, as if that moment arrived before the city, forgetting all the toils they had undergone and the disappointments they had suffered, began to raise a new mole, at which they worked incessantly. To protect them from being annoyed by the ships of the enemy, Alexander fitted out a fleet, with which he not only secured his own men, but offered the Tyrians battle, which, however, they thought proper to decline, and withdrew all their galleys into the harbor. The besiegers, now allowed to proceed unmolested, went on with the work with the utmost vigor, and in a little time completed it and brought it close to the walls. A general attack was therefore resolved on, both by sea and land, and with this in view the King, having manned his galleys and joined them together with strong cables, ordered them to approach the walls about midnight and attack the city with resolution. But just as the assault was going to begin, a dreadful storm arose, which not only shook the ships asunder, but even shattered them in a terrible manner, so that they were all obliged to be towed toward the shore, without having made the least impression on the city. The Tyrians were elated with this gleam of good fortune; but that joy was of short duration, for in a little time they received intelligence from Carthage that they must expect no assistance from that quarter, as the Carthaginians themselves were then overawed by a powerful army of Syracusans, who had invaded their country. Reduced, therefore, to the hard necessity of depending entirely upon their own strength and their own resources, the Tyrians sent all their women and children to Carthage, and prepared to encounter the very last extremities. For now the enemy was attacking the place with greater spirit and activity than ever. And, to do the Tyrians justice, it must be acknowledged that they employed a number of methods of defence which, considering the rude state of the art of war at that early period, were really astonishing. They warded off the darts discharged from the ballisters against them, by the assistance of turning wheels, which either broke them to pieces or carried them another way. They deadened the violence of the stones that were hurled at them, by setting up sails and curtains made of a soft substance which easily gave way. To annoy the ships which advanced against their walls, they fixed grappling irons and scythes to joists or beams; then, straining their catapultas--an enormous kind of crossbow--they laid those great pieces of timber upon them instead of arrows, and shot them off on a sudden at the enemy. These crushed some of their ships by their great weight, and, by means of the hooks or hanging scythes, tore others to pieces. They also had brazen shields, which they drew red-hot out of the fire; and filling these with burning sand, hurled them in an instant from the top of the wall upon the enemy. There was nothing the Macedonians dreaded so much as this fatal instrument; for the moment the burning sand got to the flesh through the crevices of the armor, it penetrated to the very bone, and stuck so close that there was no pulling it off; so that the soldiers, throwing down their arms, and tearing their clothes to pieces, were in this manner exposed, naked and defenceless, to the shot of the enemy. Alexander, finding the resources and even the courage of the Tyrians increased in proportion as the siege continued, resolved to make a last effort, and attack them at once both by sea and land, in order, if possible, to overwhelm them with the multiplicity of dangers to which they would be thus exposed. With this view, having manned his galleys with some of the bravest of his troops, he commanded them to advance against the enemy's fleet, while he himself took his post at the head of his men on the mole. And now the attack began on all sides with irresistible and unremitting fury. Wherever the battering-rams had beat down any part of the wall, and the bridges were thrown out, instantly the argyraspides mounted the breach with the utmost valor, being led on by Admetus, one of the bravest officers in the army, who was killed by the thrust of a spear as he was encouraging his soldiers. The presence of the King, and the example he set, fired his troops with unusual bravery. He himself ascended one of the towers on the mole, which was of a prodigious height, and there was exposed to the greatest dangers he had ever yet encountered; for being immediately known by his insignia and the richness of his armor, he served as a mark for all the arrows of the enemy. On this occasion he performed wonders, killing with javelins several of those who defended the wall; then, advancing nearer to them, he forced some with his sword, and others with his shield, either into the city or the sea, the tower on which he fought almost touching the wall. He soon ascended the wall, followed by his principal officers, and possessed himself of two towers and the space between them. The battering-rams had already made several breaches; the fleet had forced its way into the harbor; and some of the Macedonians had possessed themselves of the towers which were abandoned. The Tyrians, seeing the enemy masters of their rampart, retired toward an open place, called Agenor, and there stood their ground; but Alexander, marching up with his regiment of bodyguards, killed part of them and obliged the rest to fly. At the same time, Tyre being taken on that side which lay toward the harbor, a general carnage of the citizens ensued, and none was spared, except the few that fell into the hands of the Siclonians in Alexander's army, who--considering the Tyrians as countrymen--granted them protection and carried them privately on board their ships. The number that was slaughtered on this occasion is almost incredible; even after conquest, the victor's resentment did not subside. He ordered no less than five thousand men, who were taken in the storming, to be nailed to crosses along the shore. The number of prisoners amounted to thirty thousand and were all sold as slaves in different parts of the world. Thus fell Tyre, that had been for many ages the most flourishing city in the world, and had spread the arts and commerce into the remotest regions. While Alexander was employed in the siege of Tyre he received a second letter from Darius, in which that monarch treated him with greater respect than before. He now gave him the title of king; he offered him ten thousand talents as a ransom for his captive mother and queen; and he promised him his daughter Statira in marriage, with all the country he had conquered, as far as the river Euphrates, provided he would agree to a peace. These terms were so advantageous that, when the King debated upon them in council, Parmenio, one of his generals, could not help observing that he would certainly accept of them were he Alexander. "And so would I," replied the King, "were I Parmenio!" But deeming it inconsistent with his dignity to listen to any proposals from a man whom he had so lately overcome, he haughtily rejected them, and scorned to accept of that as a favor which he already considered his own by conquest. From Tyre, Alexander marched to Jerusalem, fully determined to punish that city for having refused to supply his army with provisions during the siege; but his resentment was mollified by a deputation of the citizens coming out to meet him, with their high priest, Taddua, before them, dressed in white, and having a mitre on his head, on the front of which the name of God was written. The moment the King perceived the high priest, he advanced toward him with an air of the most profound respect, bowed his body, adored the august name upon his front, and saluted him who wore it with religious veneration. And when some of his courtiers expressed their surprise that he, who was adored by everyone, should adore the high priest of the Jews: "I do not," said he, "adore the high priest, but the God whose minister he is; for while I was at Dium in Macedonia, my mind wholly fixed on the great design of the Persian war, as I was revolving the methods how to conquer Asia, this very man, dressed in the same robes, appeared to me in a dream, exhorted me to banish my fear, bade me cross the Hellespont boldly, and assured me that God would march at the head of my army and give me the victory over the Persians." This speech, delivered with an air of sincerity, no doubt had its effect in encouraging the army and establishing an opinion that his mission was from heaven. From Jerusalem he went to Gaza, where, having met with a more obstinate resistance than he expected, he cut to pieces the whole garrison, consisting of ten thousand men. Not satisfied with this act of cruelty, he caused holes to be bored through the heels of Boetis, the governor, and tying him with cords to the back of his chariot dragged him in this manner around the walls of the city. This he did in imitation of Achilles, whom Homer describes as having dragged Hector around the walls of Troy in the same manner. It was reading the past to very little, or rather, indeed, to very bad purpose, to imitate this hero in the most unworthy part of his character. Alexander, having left a garrison in Gaza, turned his arms toward Egypt; of which he made himself master without opposition. Here he formed the design of visiting the temple of Jupiter, which was situated in the sandy deserts of Lybia at the distance of twelve days' journey from Memphis, the capital of Egypt. His chief object in going thither was to get himself acknowledged the son of Jupiter, an honor he had long aspired to. In this journey he founded the city of Alexandria, which soon became one of the greatest towns in the world for commerce. Nothing could be more dreary than the desert through which he passed, nor anything more charming--according to the fabulous accounts of the poets--than the particular spot where the temple was situated. It was a perfect paradise in the midst of an immeasurable wilderness. At last, having reached the place, and appeared before the altar of the deity, the priest, who was no stranger to Alexander's wishes, declared him to be the son of Jupiter. The conqueror, elated with this high compliment, asked whether he should have success in his expedition. The priest answered that he should be monarch of the world. The conqueror inquired if his father's murderers were punished. The priest replied that his father Jupiter was immortal, but that the murderers of Philip had all been extirpated. THE BATTLE OF ARBELA B.C. 331 SIR EDWARD SHEPHERD CREASY (When Alexander, having returned from his campaign against the barbarians of the North, had suppressed a revolt which meanwhile had broken out in Greece, he found himself free for undertaking those great foreign conquests which he had planned. When he left Greece to conquer the world, he said farewell to his own country forever. Crossing the Hellespont into Asia Minor with a small but well equipped and disciplined army, he advanced unopposed until he reached the river Granicus, where he found himself confronted with a Persian host. Upon this army he inflicted a defeat so signal as to bring at once to submission nearly the whole of Asia Minor. He next advanced into Syria and met the Persian king, Darius III, who in person commanded an immense body of soldiers, against which the young conqueror fought at Issus, winning a decisive victory. He not only captured the Persian camp, but also secured the King's treasures and took his family prisoners. From this time Alexander held complete mastery of the western dominions of Darius, whom the conqueror afterward dethroned. After he had next invaded and subjugated Egypt and there founded the city of Alexandria, he pursued King Darius, who had taken flight, into the very heart of his empire, where the Persian monarch, on the plains of Gaugamela, near the village of Arbela, made his last stand against his invincible foe. Of the battle to which Arbela gave its name, and which proved the death-blow of the Persian empire, Creasy's narrative furnishes a realistic description.) A long and not uninstructive list might be made out of illustrious men whose characters have been vindicated during recent times from aspersions which for centuries had been thrown on them. The spirit of modern inquiry, and the tendency of modern scholarship, both of which are often said to be solely negative and destructive, have, in truth, restored to splendor, and almost created anew, far more than they have assailed with censure or dismissed from consideration as unreal. The truth of many a brilliant narrative of brilliant exploits has of late years been triumphantly demonstrated, and the shallowness of the sceptical scoffs with which little minds have carped at the great minds of antiquity has been in many instances decisively exposed. The laws, the politics, and the lines of action adopted or recommended by eminent men and powerful nations have been examined with keener investigation and considered with more comprehensive judgment than formerly were brought to bear on these subjects. The result has been at least as often favorable as unfavorable to the persons and the states so scrutinized, and many an oft-repeated slander against both measures and men has thus been silenced, we may hope forever. The veracity of Herodotus, the pure patriotism of Pericles, of Demosthenes, and of the Gracchi, the wisdom of Clisthenes and of Licinius as constitutional reformers, may be mentioned as facts which recent writers have cleared from unjust suspicion and censure. And it might be easily shown that the defensive tendency which distinguishes the present and recent great writers of Germany, France, and England has been equally manifested in the spirit in which they have treated the heroes of thought and heroes of action who lived during what we term the Middle Ages, and whom it was so long the fashion to sneer at or neglect. The name of the victor of Arbela has led to these reflections; for, although the rapidity and extent of Alexander's conquests have through all ages challenged admiration and amazement, the grandeur of genius which he displayed in his schemes of commerce, civilization, and of comprehensive union and unity among nations, has, until lately, been comparatively unhonored. This long-continued depreciation was of early date. The ancient rhetoricians--a class of babblers, a school for lies and scandal, as Niebuhr justly termed them--chose, among the stock themes for their commonplaces, the character and exploits of Alexander. They had their followers in every age; and, until a very recent period, all who wished to "point a moral or adorn a tale," about unreasoning ambition, extravagant pride, and the formidable frenzies of free will when leagued with free power, have never failed to blazon forth the so-called madman of Macedonia as one of the most glaring examples. Without doubt, many of these writers adopted with implicit credence traditional ideas, and supposed, with uninquiring philanthropy, that in blackening Alexander they were doing humanity good service. But also, without doubt, many of his assailants, like those of other great men, have been mainly instigated by "that strongest of all antipathies, the antipathy of a second-rate mind to a first-rate one," and by the envy which talent too often bears to genius. Arrian, who wrote his history of Alexander when Hadrian was emperor of the Roman world, and when the spirit of declamation and dogmatism was at its full height, but who was himself, unlike the dreaming pedants of the schools, a statesman and a soldier of practical and proved ability, well rebuked the malevolent aspersions which he heard continually thrown upon the memory of the great conqueror of the East. He truly says: "Let the man who speaks evil of Alexander not merely bring forward those passages of Alexander's life which were really evil, but let him collect and review _all_ the actions of Alexander, and then let him thoroughly consider first who and what manner of man he himself is, and what has been his own career; and then let him consider who and what manner of man Alexander was, and to what an eminence of human grandeur _he_ arrived. Let him consider that Alexander was a king, and the undisputed lord of the two continents, and that his name is renowned throughout the whole earth. "Let the evil-speaker against Alexander bear all this in mind, and then let him reflect on his own insignificance, the pettiness of his own circumstances and affairs, and the blunders that he makes about these, paltry and trifling as they are. Let him then ask himself whether he is a fit person to censure and revile such a man as Alexander. I believe that there was in his time no nation of men, no city, nay, no single individual with whom Alexander's name had not become a familiar word. I therefore hold that such a man, who was like no ordinary mortal, was not born into the world without some special providence." And one of the most distinguished soldiers and writers, Sir Walter Raleigh, though he failed to estimate justly the full merits of Alexander, has expressed his sense of the grandeur of the part played in the world by "the great Emathian conqueror" in language that well deserves quotation: "So much hath the spirit of some one man excelled as it hath undertaken and effected the alteration of the greatest states and commonweals, the erection of monarchies, the conquest of kingdoms and empires, guided handfuls of men against multitudes of equal bodily strength, contrived victories beyond all hope and discourse of reason, converted the fearful passions of his own followers into magnanimity, and the valor of his enemies into cowardice; such spirits have been stirred up in sundry ages of the world, and in divers parts thereof, to erect and cast down again, to establish and to destroy, and to bring all things, persons, and states to the same certain ends which the infinite spirit of the _Universal_, piercing, moving, and governing all things, hath ordained. Certainly, the things that this King did were marvellous and would hardly have been undertaken by anyone else; and though his father had determined to have invaded the Lesser Asia, it is like enough that he would have contented himself with some part thereof, and not have discovered the river of Indus, as this man did." A higher authority than either Arrian or Raleigh may now be referred to by those who wish to know the real merit of Alexander as a general, and how far the commonplace assertions are true that his successes were the mere results of fortunate rashness and unreasoning pugnacity. Napoleon selected Alexander as one of the seven greatest generals whose noble deeds history has handed down to us, and from the study of whose campaigns the principles of war are to be learned. The critique of the greatest conqueror of modern times on the military career of the great conqueror of the Old World is no less graphic than true: "Alexander crossed the Dardanelles B.C. 334, with an army of about forty thousand men, of which one-eighth was cavalry; he forced the passage of the Granicus in opposition to an army under Memnon, the Greek, who commanded for Darius on the coast of Asia, and he spent the whole of the year 333 in establishing his power in Asia Minor. He was seconded by the Greek colonies, who dwelt on the borders of the Black Sea and on the Mediterranean, and in Sardis, Ephesus, Tarsus, Miletus, etc. The kings of Persia left their provinces and towns to be governed according to their own particular laws. Their empire was a union of confederated states, and did not form one nation; this facilitated its conquest. As Alexander only wished for the throne of the monarch, he easily effected the change by respecting the customs, manners, and laws of the people, who experienced no change in their condition. "In the year 332 he met with Darius at the head of sixty thousand men, who had taken up a position near Tarsus, on the banks of the Issus, in the province of Cilicia. He defeated him, entered Syria, took Damascus, which contained all the riches of the Great King, and laid siege to Tyre. This superb metropolis of the commerce of the world detained him nine months. "He took Gaza after a siege of two months; crossed the desert in seven days; entered Pelusium and Memphis, and founded Alexandria. In less than two years, after two battles and four or five sieges, the coasts of the Black Sea, from Phasis to Byzantium, those of the Mediterranean as far as Alexandria, all Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, had submitted to his arms. "In 331 he repassed the desert, encamped in Tyre, re-crossed Syria, entered Damascus, passed the Euphrates and Tigris, and defeated Darius on the field of Arbela when he was at the head of a still stronger army than that which he commanded on the Issus, and Babylon opened her gates to him. In 330 he overran Susa and took that city, Persepolis, and Pasargada, which contained the tomb of Cyrus. In 329 he directed his course northward, entered Ecbatana, and extended his conquests to the coasts of the Caspian, punished Bessus, the cowardly assassin of Darius, penetrated into Scythia, and subdued the Scythians. "In 328 he forced the passage of the Oxus, received sixteen thousand recruits from Macedonia, and reduced the neighboring people to subjection. In 327 he crossed the Indus, vanquished Porus in a pitched battle, took him prisoner, and treated him as a king. He contemplated passing the Ganges, but his army refused. He sailed down the Indus, in the year 326, with eight hundred vessels; having arrived at the ocean, he sent Nearchus with a fleet to run along the coasts of the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf as far as the mouth of the Euphrates. In 325 he took sixty days in crossing from Gedrosia, entered Keramania, returned to Pasargada, Persepolis, and Susa, and married Statira, the daughter of Darius. In 324 he marched once more to the north, passed Echatana, and terminated his career at Babylon." The enduring importance of Alexander's conquests is to be estimated, not by the duration of his own life and empire, or even by the duration of the kingdoms which his generals after his death formed out of the fragments of that mighty dominion. In every region of the world that he traversed, Alexander planted Greek settlements and founded cities, in the populations of which the Greek element at once asserted its predominance. Among his successors, the Seleucidae and the Ptolemies imitated their great captain in blending schemes of civilization, of commercial intercourse, and of literary and scientific research with all their enterprises of military aggrandizement and with all their systems of civil administration. Such was the ascendency of the Greek genius, so wonderfully comprehensive and assimilating was the cultivation which it introduced, that, within thirty years after Alexander crossed the Hellespont, the Greek language was spoken in every country from the shores of the Ægean to the Indus, and also throughout Egypt--not, indeed, wholly to the extirpation of the native dialects, but it became the language of every court, of all literature, of every judicial and political function, and formed a medium of communication among the many myriads of mankind inhabiting these large portions of the Old World. Throughout Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt the Hellenic character that was thus imparted remained in full vigor down to the time of the Mahometan conquests. The infinite value of this to humanity in the highest and holiest point of view has often been pointed out, and the workings of the finger of Providence have been gratefully recognized by those who have observed how the early growth and progress of Christianity were aided by that diffusion of the Greek language and civilization throughout Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt which had been caused by the Macedonian conquest of the East. In Upper Asia, beyond the Euphrates, the direct and material influence of Greek ascendency was more short-lived. Yet, during the existence of the Hellenic kingdoms in these regions, especially of the Greek kingdom of Bactria, the modern Bokhara, very important effects were produced on the intellectual tendencies and tastes of the inhabitants of those countries, and of the adjacent ones, by the animating contact of the Grecian spirit. Much of Hindu science and philosophy, much of the literature of the later Persian kingdom of the Arsacidæ, either originated from or was largely modified by Grecian influences. So, also, the learning and science of the Arabians were in a far less degree the result of original invention and genius than the reproduction, in an altered form, of the Greek philosophy and the Greek lore acquired by the Saracenic conquerors, together with their acquisition of the provinces which Alexander had subjugated, nearly a thousand years before the armed disciples of Mahomet commenced their career in the East. It is well known that Western Europe in the Middle Ages drew its philosophy, its arts, and its science principally from Arabian teachers. And thus we see how the intellectual influence of ancient Greece, poured on the Eastern world by Alexander's victories, and then brought back to bear on mediæval Europe by the spread of the Saracenic powers, has exerted its action on the elements of modern civilization by this powerful though indirect channel, as well as by the more obvious effects of the remnants of classic civilization which survived in Italy, Gaul, Britain, and Spain, after the irruption of the Germanic nations. These considerations invest the Macedonian triumphs in the East with never-dying interest, such as the most showy and sanguinary successes of mere "low ambition and the pride of kings," however they may dazzle for a moment, can never retain with posterity. Whether the old Persian empire which Cyrus founded could have survived much longer than it did, even if Darius had been victorious at Arbela, may safely be disputed. That ancient dominion, like the Turkish at the present time, labored under every cause of decay and dissolution. The satraps, like the modern pachas, continually rebelled against the central power, and Egypt in particular was almost always in a state of insurrection against its nominal sovereign. There was no longer any effective central control, or any internal principle of unity fused through the huge mass of the empire, and binding it together. Persia was evidently about to fall; but, had it not been for Alexander's invasion of Asia, she would most probably have fallen beneath some other oriental power, as Media and Babylon had formerly fallen before herself, and as, in after-times, the Parthian supremacy gave way to the revived ascendency of Persia in the East, under the sceptres of the Arsacidæ. A revolution that merely substituted one Eastern power for another would have been utterly barren and unprofitable to mankind. Alexander's victory at Arbela not only overthrew an oriental dynasty, but established European rulers in its stead. It broke the monotony of the eastern world by the impression of western energy and superior civilization, even as England's present mission is to break up the mental and moral stagnation of India and Cathay by pouring upon and through them the impulsive current of Anglo-Saxon commerce and conquest. Arbela, the city which has furnished its name to the decisive battle which gave Asia to Alexander, lies more than twenty miles from the actual scene of conflict. The little village, then named Gaugamela, is close to the spot where the armies met, but has ceded the honor of naming the battle to its more euphonious neighbor. Gaugamela is situated in one of the wide plains that lie between the Tigris and the mountains of Kurdistan. A few undulating hillocks diversify the surface of this sandy tract; but the ground is generally level and admirably qualified for the evolutions of cavalry, and also calculated to give the larger of two armies the full advantage of numerical superiority. The Persian King--who, before he came to the throne, had proved his personal valor as a soldier and his skill as a general--had wisely selected this region for the third and decisive encounter between his forces and the invader. The previous defeats of his troops, however severe they had been, were not looked on as irreparable. The Granicus had been fought by his generals rashly and without mutual concert; and, though Darius himself had commanded and been beaten at Issus, that defeat might be attributed to the disadvantageous nature of the ground, where, cooped up between the mountains, the river, and the sea, the numbers of the Persians confused and clogged alike the general's skill and the soldiers' prowess, and their very strength had been made their weakness. Here, on the broad plains of Kurdistan, there was scope for Asia's largest host to array its lines, to wheel, to skirmish, to condense or expand its squadrons, to manoeuvre, and to charge at will. Should Alexander and his scanty band dare to plunge into that living sea of war, their destruction seemed inevitable. Darius felt, however, the critical nature to himself as well as to his adversary of the coming encounter. He could not hope to retrieve the consequences of a third overthrow. The great cities of Mesopotamia and Upper Asia, the central provinces of the Persian empire, were certain to be at the mercy of the victor. Darius knew also the Asiatic character well enough to be aware how it yields to _prestige_ of success and the apparent career of destiny. He felt that the diadem was now either to be firmly replaced on his own brow or to be irrevocably transferred to the head of his European conqueror. He, therefore, during the long interval left him after the battle of Issus, while Alexander was subjugating Syria and Egypt, assiduously busied himself in selecting the best troops which his vast empire supplied, and in training his varied forces to act together with some uniformity of discipline and system. The hardy mountaineers of Afghanistan, Bokhara, Khiva, and Tibet were then, as at present, far different from the generality of Asiatics in warlike spirit and endurance. From these districts Darius collected large bodies of admirable infantry; and the countries of the modern Kurds and Turkomans supplied, as they do now, squadrons of horsemen, hardy, skilful, bold, and trained to a life of constant activity and warfare. It is not uninteresting to notice that the ancestors of our own late enemies, the Sikhs, served as allies of Darius against the Macedonians. They are spoken of in Arrian as Indians who dwelt near Bactria. They were attached to the troops of that satrapy, and their cavalry was one of the most formidable forces in the whole Persian army. Besides these picked troops, contingents also came in from the numerous other provinces that yet obeyed the Great King. Altogether, the horse are said to have been forty thousand, the scythe-bearing chariots two hundred, and the armed elephants fifteen in number. The amount of the infantry is uncertain; but the knowledge which both ancient and modern times supply of the usual character of oriental armies, and of their populations of camp-followers, may warrant us in believing that many myriads were prepared to fight or to encumber those who fought for the last Darius. The position of the Persian King near Mesopotamia was chosen with great military skill. It was certain that Alexander, on his return from Egypt, must march northward along the Syrian coast before he attacked the central provinces of the Persian empire. A direct eastward march from the lower part of Palestine across the great Syrian Desert was then, as ever, utterly impracticable. Marching eastward from Syria, Alexander would, on crossing the Euphrates, arrive at the vast Mesopotamian plains. The wealthy capitals of the empire, Babylon, Susa, and Persepolis, would then lie to the south; and if he marched down through Mesopotamia to attack them, Darius might reasonably hope to follow the Macedonians with his immense force of cavalry, and, without even risking a pitched battle, to harass and finally overwhelm them. We may remember that three centuries afterward a Roman army under Crassus was thus actually destroyed by the oriental archers and horsemen in these very plains, and that the ancestors of the Parthians who thus vanquished the Roman legions served by thousands under King Darius. If, on the contrary, Alexander should defer his march against Babylon, and first seek an encounter with the Persian army, the country on each side of the Tigris in this latitude was highly advantageous for such an army as Darius commanded, and he had close in his rear the mountainous districts of Northern Media, where he himself had in early life been satrap, where he had acquired reputation as a soldier and a general, and where he justly expected to find loyalty to his person, and a safe refuge in case of defeat.[49] [Footnote 49: Mitford's remarks on the strategy of Darius in his last campaign are very just. After having been unduly admired as a historian, Mitford is now unduly neglected. His partiality and his deficiency in scholarship have been exposed sufficiently to make him no longer a dangerous guide as to Greek politics, while the clearness and brilliance of his narrative, and the strong common sense of his remarks (where his party prejudices do not interfere), must always make his volumes valuable as well as entertaining.] His great antagonist came on across the Euphrates against him, at the head of an army which Arrian, copying from the journals of Macedonian officers, states to have consisted of forty thousand foot and seven thousand horse. In studying the campaigns of Alexander, we possess the peculiar advantage of deriving our information from two of Alexander's generals of division, who bore an important part in all his enterprises. Aristobulus and Ptolemy--who afterward became king of Egypt--kept regular journals of the military events which they witnessed, and these journals were in the possession of Arrian when he drew up his history of Alexander's expedition. The high character of Arrian for integrity makes us confident that he used them fairly, and his comments on the occasional discrepancies between the two Macedonian narratives prove that he used them sensibly. He frequently quotes the very words of his authorities; and his history thus acquires a charm such as very few ancient or modern military narratives possess. The anecdotes and expressions which he records we fairly believe to be genuine, and not to be the coinage of a rhetorician, like those in Curtius. In fact, in reading Arrian, we read General Aristobulus and General Ptolemy on the campaigns of the Macedonians, and it is like reading General Jomini or General Foy on the campaigns of the French. The estimate which we find in Arrian of the strength of Alexander's army seems reasonable enough, when we take into account both the losses which he had sustained and the reënforcements which he had received since he left Europe. Indeed, to Englishmen, who know with what mere handfuls of men our own generals have, at Plassy, at Assaye, at Meeanee, and other Indian battles, routed large hosts of Asiatics, the disparity of numbers that we read of in the victories won by the Macedonians over the Persians presents nothing incredible. The army which Alexander now led was wholly composed of veteran troops in the highest possible state of equipment and discipline, enthusiastically devoted to their leader, and full of confidence in his military genius and his victorious destiny. The celebrated Macedonian phalanx formed the main strength of his infantry. This force had been raised and organized by his father, Philip, who, on his accession to the Macedonian throne, needed a numerous and quickly formed army, and who, by lengthening the spear of the ordinary Greek phalanx, and increasing the depth of the files, brought the tactics of armed masses to the highest extent of which it was capable with such materials as he possessed. He formed his men sixteen deep, and placed in their grasp the _sarissa_, as the Macedonian pike was called, which was four-and-twenty feet in length, and, when couched for action, reached eighteen feet in front of the soldier; so that, as a space of about two feet was allowed between the ranks, the spears of the five files behind him projected in front of each front-rank man. The phalangite soldier was fully equipped in the defensive armor of the regular Greek infantry. And thus the phalanx presented a ponderous and bristling mass, which, as long as its order was kept compact, was sure to bear down all opposition. The defects of such an organization are obvious, and were proved in after-years, when the Macedonians were opposed to the Roman legions. But it is clear that under Alexander the phalanx was not the cumbrous, unwieldy body which it was at Cynoscephate and Pydna. His men were veterans; and he could obtain from them an accuracy of movement and steadiness of evolution such as probably the recruits of his father would only have floundered in attempting, and such as certainly were impracticable in the phalanx when handled by his successors, especially as under them it ceased to be a standing force, and became only a militia. Under Alexander the phalanx consisted of an aggregate of eighteen thousand men, who were divided into six brigades of three thousand each. These were again subdivided into regiments and companies; and the men were carefully trained to wheel, to face about, to take more ground, or to close up, as the emergencies of the battle required. Alexander also arrayed troops armed in a different manner in the intervals of the regiments of his phalangites, who could prevent their line from being pierced and their companies taken in flank, when the nature of the ground prevented a close formation, and who could be withdrawn when a favorable opportunity arrived for closing up the phalanx or any of its brigades for a charge, or when it was necessary to prepare to receive cavalry. Besides the phalanx, Alexander had a considerable force of infantry who were called shield-bearers: they were not so heavily armed as the phalangites, or as was the case with the Greek regular infantry in general, but they were equipped for close fight as well as for skirmishing, and were far superior to the ordinary irregular troops of Greek warfare. They were about six thousand strong. Besides these, he had several bodies of Greek regular infantry; and he had archers, slingers, and javelin-men, who fought also with broadsword and target, and who were principally supplied him by the highlanders of Illyria and Thracia. The main strength of his cavalry consisted in two chosen regiments of cuirassiers, one Macedonian and one Thessalian, each of which was about fifteen hundred strong. They were provided with long lances and heavy swords, and horse as well as man was fully equipped with defensive armor. Other regiments of regular cavalry were less heavily armed, and there were several bodies of light-horsemen, whom Alexander's conquests in Egypt and Syria had enabled him to mount superbly. A little before the end of August, Alexander crossed the Euphrates at Thapsacus, a small corps of Persian cavalry under Mazaeus retiring before him. Alexander was too prudent to march down through the Mesopotamian deserts, and continued to advance eastward with the intention of passing the Tigris, and then, if he was unable to find Darius and bring him to action, of marching southward on the left side of that river along the skirts of a mountainous district where his men would suffer less from heat and thirst, and where provisions would be more abundant. Darius, finding that his adversary was not to be enticed into the march through Mesopotamia against his capital, determined to remain on the battle-ground, which he had chosen on the left of the Tigris; where, if his enemy met a defeat or a check, the destruction of the invaders would be certain with two such rivers as the Euphrates and the Tigris in their rear. The Persian King availed himself to the utmost of every advantage in his power. He caused a large space of ground to be carefully levelled for the operation of his scythe-armed chariots; and he deposited his military stores in the strong town of Arbela, about twenty miles in his rear. The rhetoricians of after-ages have loved to describe Darius Codomanus as a second Xerxes in ostentation and imbecility; but a fair examination of his generalship in this his last campaign shows that he was worthy of bearing the same name as his great predecessor, the royal son of Hystaspes. On learning that Darius was with a large army on the left of the Tigris, Alexander hurried forward and crossed that river without opposition. He was at first unable to procure any certain intelligence of the precise position of the enemy, and after giving his army a short interval of rest he marched for four days down the left bank of the river. A moralist may pause upon the fact that Alexander must in this march have passed within a few miles of the ruins of Nineveh, the great city of the primæval conquerors of the human race. Neither the Macedonian King nor any of his followers knew what those vast mounds had once been. They had already sunk into utter destruction; and it is only within the last few years that the intellectual energy of one of our own countrymen has rescued Nineveh from its long centuries of oblivion. On the fourth day of Alexander's southward march, his advance guard reported that a body of the enemy's cavalry was in sight. He instantly formed his army in order for battle, and directing them to advance steadily he rode forward at the head of some squadrons of cavalry and charged the Persian horse, whom he found before him. This was a mere reconnoitring party, and they broke and fled immediately; but the Macedonians made some prisoners, and from them Alexander found that Darius was posted only a few miles off, and learned the strength of the army that he had with him. On receiving this news Alexander halted, and gave his men repose for four days, so that they should go into action fresh and vigorous. He also fortified his camp and deposited in it all his military stores and all his sick and disabled soldiers, intending to advance upon the enemy with the serviceable part of his army perfectly unencumbered. After this halt, he moved forward, while it was yet dark, with the intention of reaching the enemy, and attacking them at break of day. About half way between the camps there were some undulations of the ground, which concealed the two armies from each other's view; but, on Alexander arriving at their summit, he saw, by the early light, the Persian host arrayed before him, and he probably also observed traces of some engineering operation having been carried on along part of the ground in front of them. Not knowing that these marks had been caused by the Persians having levelled the ground for the free use of their war chariots, Alexander suspected that hidden pitfalls had been prepared with a view of disordering the approach of his cavalry. He summoned a council of war forthwith. Some of the officers were for attacking instantly, at all hazards; but the more prudent opinion of Parmenio prevailed, and it was determined not to advance farther till the battle-ground had been carefully surveyed. Alexander halted his army on the heights, and, taking with him some light-armed infantry and some cavalry, he passed part of the day in reconnoitring the enemy and observing the nature of the ground which he had to fight on. Darius wisely refrained from moving from his position to attack the Macedonians on the eminences which they occupied, and the two armies remained until night without molesting each other. On Alexander's return to his headquarters, he summoned his generals and superior officers together, and telling them that he knew well that _their_ zeal wanted no exhortation, he besought them to do their utmost in encouraging and instructing those whom each commanded, to do their best in the next day's battle. They were to remind them that they were now not going to fight for a province as they had hitherto fought, but they were about to decide by their swords the dominion of all Asia. Each officer ought to impress this upon his subalterns, and they should urge it on their men. Their natural courage required no long words to excite its ardor; but they should be reminded of the paramount importance of steadiness in action. The silence in the ranks must be unbroken as long as silence was proper; but when the time came for the charge, the shout and the cheer must be full of terror for the foe. The officers were to be alert in receiving and communicating orders; and everyone was to act as if he felt that the whole result of the battle depended on his own single good conduct. Having thus briefly instructed his generals, Alexander ordered that the army should sup and take their rest for the night. Darkness had closed over the tents of the Macedonians when Alexander's veteran general, Parmenio, came to him and proposed that they should make a night attack on the Persians. The King is said to have answered that he scorned to filch a victory, and that Alexander must conquer openly and fairly. Arrian justly remarks that Alexander's resolution was as wise as it was spirited. Besides the confusion and uncertainty which are inseparable from night engagements, the value of Alexander's victory would have been impaired if gained under circumstances which might supply the enemy with any excuse for his defeat, and encourage him to renew the contest. It was necessary for Alexander not only to beat Darius, but to gain such a victory as should leave his rival without apology and without hope of recovery. The Persians, in fact, expected and were prepared to meet a night attack. Such was the apprehension that Darius entertained of it that he formed his troops at evening in order of battle, and kept them under arms all night. The effect of this was that the morning found them jaded and dispirited, while it brought their adversaries all fresh and vigorous against them. The written order of battle which Darius himself caused to be drawn up fell into the hands of the Macedonians after the engagement, and Aristobulus copied it into his journal. We thus possess, through Arrian, unusually authentic information as to the composition and arrangement of the Persian army. On the extreme left were the Bactrian, Daan, and Arachosian cavalry. Next to these Darius placed the troops from Persia proper, both horse and foot. Then came the Susians, and next to these the Cadusians. These forces made up the left wing. Darius' own station was in the centre. This was composed of the Indians, the Carians, the Mardian archers, and the division of Persians who were distinguished by the golden apples that formed the knobs of their spears. Here also were stationed the bodyguard of the Persian nobility. Besides these, there were, in the centre, formed in deep order, the Uxian and Babylonian troops and the soldiers from the Red Sea. The brigade of Greek mercenaries whom Darius had in his service, and who alone were considered fit to stand the charge of the Macedonian phalanx, was drawn up on either side of the royal chariot. The right wing was composed of the Coelosyrians and Mesopotamians, the Medes, the Parthians, the Sacians, the Tapurians, Hyrcanians, Albanians, and Sacesinae. In advance of the line on the left wing were placed the Scythian cavalry, with a thousand of the Bactrian horse and a hundred scythe-armed chariots. The elephants and fifty scythe-armed chariots were ranged in front of the centre; and fifty more chariots, with the Armenian and Cappadocian cavalry, were drawn up in advance of the right wing. Thus arrayed, the great host of King Darius passed the night that to many thousands of them was the last of their existence. The morning of the first of October[50] dawned slowly to their wearied watching, and they could hear the note of the Macedonian trumpet sounding to arms, and could see King Alexander's forces descend from their tents on the heights and form in order of battle on the plain. [Footnote 50: The battle was fought eleven days after an eclipse of the moon, which gives the means of fixing the precise date.] There was deep need of skill, as well as of valor, on Alexander's side; and few battle-fields have witnessed more consummate generalship than was now displayed by the Macedonian King. There were no natural barriers by which he could protect his flanks; and not only was he certain to be overlapped on either wing by the vast lines of the Persian army, but there was imminent risk of their circling round him, and charging him in the rear, while he advanced against their centre. He formed, therefore, a second, or reserve line, which was to wheel round, if required, or to detach troops to either flank, as the enemy's movements might necessitate; and thus, with their whole army ready at any moment to be thrown into one vast hollow square, the Macedonians advanced in two lines against the enemy, Alexander himself leading on the right wing, and the renowned phalanx forming the centre, while Parmenio commanded on the left. Such was the general nature of the disposition which Alexander made of his army. But we have in Arrian the details of the position of each brigade and regiment; and as we know that these details were taken from the journals of Macedonian generals, it is interesting to examine them, and to read the names and stations of King Alexander's generals and colonels in this the greatest of his battles. The eight regiments of the royal horse-guards formed the right of Alexander's line. Their colonels were Clitus--whose regiment was on the extreme right, the post of peculiar danger--Glaucias, Ariston, Sopolis, Heraclides, Demetrias, Meleager, and Hegelochus. Philotas was general of the whole division. Then came the shield-bearing infantry: Nicanor was their general. Then came the phalanx in six brigades. Coenus' brigade was on the right, and nearest to the shield-bearers; next to this stood the brigade of Perdiccas, then Meleager's, then Polysperchon's; and then the brigade of Amynias, but which was now commanded by Simmias, as Amynias had been sent to Macedonia to levy recruits. Then came the infantry of the left wing, under the command of Craterus. Next to Craterus' infantry were placed the cavalry regiments of the allies, with Eriguius for their general. The Thessalian cavalry, commanded by Philippus, were next, and held the extreme left of the whole army. The whole left wing was intrusted to the command of Parmenio, who had round his person the Pharsalian regiment of cavalry, which was the strongest and best of all the Thessalian horse regiments. The centre of the second line was occupied by a body of phalangite infantry, formed of companies which were drafted for this purpose from each of the brigades of their phalanx. The officers in command of this corps were ordered to be ready to face about if the enemy should succeed in gaining the rear of the army. On the right of this reserve of infantry, in the second line, and behind the royal horse-guards, Alexander placed half the Agrian light-armed infantry under Attalus, and with them Brison's body of Macedonian archers and Cleander's regiment of foot. He also placed in this part of his army Menidas' squadron of cavalry and Aretes' and Ariston's light horse. Menidas was ordered to watch if the enemy's cavalry tried to turn their flank, and, if they did so, to charge them before they wheeled completely round, and so take them in flank themselves. A similar force was arranged on the left of the second line for the same purpose. The Thracian infantry of Sitalces were placed there, and Coeranus' regiment of the cavalry of the Greek allies, and Agathon's troops of the Odrysian irregular horse. The extreme left of the second line in this quarter was held by Andromachus' cavalry. A division of Thracian infantry was left in guard of the camp. In advance of the right wing and centre was scattered a number of light-armed troops, of javelin-men and bowmen, with the intention of warding off the charge of the armed chariots.[51] [Footnote 51: Kleber's arrangement of his troops at the battle of Heliopolis, where, with ten thousand Europeans, he had to encounter eighty thousand Asiatics in an open plain, is worth comparing with Alexander's tactics at Arbela. See Thiers' _Histoire du Consulat_.] Conspicuous by the brilliancy of his armor, and by the chosen band of officers who were round his person, Alexander took his own station, as his custom was, in the right wing, at the head of his cavalry; and when all the arrangements for the battle were complete, and his generals were fully instructed how to act in each probable emergency, he began to lead his men toward the enemy. It was ever his custom to expose his life freely in battle, and to emulate the personal prowess of his great ancestor, Achilles. Perhaps, in the bold enterprise of conquering Persia, it was politic for Alexander to raise his army's daring to the utmost by the example of his own heroic valor; and, in his subsequent campaigns, the love of the excitement, of "the raptures of the strife," may have made him, like Murat, continue from choice a custom which he commenced from duty. But he never suffered the ardor of the soldier to make him lose the coolness of the general. Great reliance had been placed by the Persian King on the effects of the scythe-bearing chariots. It was designed to launch these against the Macedonian phalanx, and to follow them up by a heavy charge of cavalry, which, it was hoped, would find the ranks of the spearmen disordered by the rush of the chariots, and easily destroy this most formidable part of Alexander's force. In front, therefore, of the Persian centre, where Darius took his station, and which it was supposed that the phalanx would attack, the ground had been carefully levelled and smoothed, so as to allow the chariots to charge over it with their full sweep and speed. As the Macedonian army approached the Persian, Alexander found that the front of his whole line barely equalled the front of the Persian centre, so that he was outflanked on his right by the entire left wing of the enemy, and by their entire right wing on his left. His tactics were to assail some one point of the hostile army, and gain a decisive advantage, while he refused, as far as possible, the encounter along the rest of the line. He therefore inclined his order of march to the right, so as to enable his right wing and centre to come into collision with the enemy on as favorable terms as possible, although the manoeuvre might in some respect compromise his left. The effect of this oblique movement was to bring the phalanx and his own wing nearly beyond the limits of the ground which the Persians had prepared for the operations of the chariots; and Darius, fearing to lose the benefit of this arm against the most important parts of the Macedonian force, ordered the Scythian and Bactrian cavalry, who were drawn up in advance on his extreme left, to charge round upon Alexander's right wing, and check its farther lateral progress. Against these assailants Alexander sent from his second line Menidas' cavalry. As these proved too few to make head against the enemy, he ordered Ariston also from the second line with his right horse, and Cleander with his foot, in support of Menidas. The Bactrians and Scythians now began to give way; but Darius reenforced them by the mass of Bactrian cavalry from his main line, and an obstinate cavalry fight now took place. The Bactrians and Scythians were numerous, and were better armed than the horsemen under Menidas and Ariston; and the loss at first was heaviest on the Macedonian side. But still the European cavalry stood the charge of the Asiatics, and at last, by their superior discipline, and by acting in squadrons that supported each other,[52] instead of fighting in a confused mass like the barbarians, the Macedonians broke their adversaries and drove them off the field. [Footnote 52: The best explanation of this may be found in Napoleon's account of the cavalry fights between the French and the mamelukes: "Two mamelukes were able to make head against three Frenchmen, because they were better armed, better mounted, and better trained; they had two pair of pistols, a blunderbuss, a carbine, a helmet with a visor, and a coat of mail; they had several horses, and several attendants on foot. One hundred cuirassiers, however, were not afraid of one hundred mamelukes; three hundred could beat an equal number, and one thousand could easily put to the rout fifteen hundred, so great is the influence of tactics, order, and evolutions! Leclerc and Lasalle presented their men to the mamelukes in several lines. When the Arabs were on the point of overwhelming the first, the second came to its assistance on the right and left; the mamelukes then halted and wheeled, in order to turn the wings of this new line; this moment was always seized upon to charge them, and they were uniformly broken."] Darius now directed the scythe-armed chariots to be driven against Alexander's horse-guards and the phalanx, and these formidable vehicles were accordingly sent rattling across the plain, against the Macedonian line. When we remember the alarm which the war chariots of the Britons created among Cæsar's legions, we shall not be prone to deride this arm of ancient warfare as always useless. The object of the chariots was to create unsteadiness in the ranks against which they were driven, and squadrons of cavalry followed close upon them to profit by such disorder. But the Asiatic chariots were rendered ineffective at Arbela by the light-armed troops, whom Alexander had specially appointed for the service, and who, wounding the horses and drivers with their missile weapons, and running alongside so as to cut the traces or seize the reins, marred the intended charge; and the few chariots that reached the phalanx passed harmlessly through the internals which the spearmen opened for them, and were easily captured in the rear. A mass of the Asiatic cavalry was now, for the second time, collected against Alexander's extreme right, and moved round it, with the view of gaining the flank of his army. At the critical moment, when their own flanks were exposed by this evolution, Aretes dashed on the Persian squadrons with his horsemen from Alexander's second line. While Alexander thus met and baffled all the flanking attacks of the enemy with troops brought up from his second line, he kept his own horse-guards and the rest of the front line of his wing fresh, and ready to take advantage of the first opportunity for striking a decisive blow. This soon came. A large body of horse, who were posted on the Persian left wing nearest to the centre, quitted their station, and rode off to help their comrades in the cavalry fight that still was going on at the extreme right of Alexander's wing against the detachments from his second line. This made a huge gap in the Persian array, and into this space Alexander instantly charged with his guard and all the cavalry of his wing; and then, pressing toward his left, he soon began to make havoc in the left flank of the Persian centre. The shield-bearing infantry now charged also among the reeling masses of the Asiatics; and five of the brigades of the phalanx, with the irresistible might of their sarissas, bore down the Greek mercenaries of Darius, and dug their way through the Persian centre. In the early part of the battle Darius had showed skill and energy; and he now, for some time, encouraged his men, by voice and example, to keep firm. But the lances of Alexander's cavalry and the pikes of the phalanx now pressed nearer and nearer to him. His charioteer was struck down by a javelin at his side; and at last Darius' nerve failed him, and, descending from his chariot, he mounted on a fleet horse and galloped from the plain, regardless of the state of the battle in other parts of the field, where matters were going on much more favorably for his cause, and where his presence might have done much toward gaining a victory. Alexander's operations with his right and centre had exposed his left to an immensely preponderating force of the enemy. Parmenio kept out of action as long as possible; but Mazaeus, who commanded the Persian right wing, advanced against him, completely outflanked him, and pressed him severely with reiterated charges by superior numbers. Seeing the distress of Parmenio's wing, Simmias, who commanded the sixth brigade of the phalanx, which was next to the left wing, did not advance with the other brigades in the great charge upon the Persian centre, but kept back to cover Parmenio's troops on their right flank, as otherwise they would have been completely surrounded and cut off from the rest of the Macedonian army. By so doing, Simmias had unavoidably opened a gap in the Macedonian left centre; and a large column of Indian and Persian horse, from the Persian right centre, had galloped forward through this interval, and right through the troops of the Macedonian second line. Instead of then wheeling round upon Parmenio, or upon the rear of Alexander's conquering wing, the Indian and Persian cavalry rode straight on to the Macedonian camp, overpowered the Thracians who were left in charge of it, and began to plunder. This was stopped by the phalangite troops of the second line, who, after the enemy's horsemen had rushed by them, faced about, countermarched upon the camp, killed many of the Indians and Persians in the act of plundering, and forced the rest to ride off again. Just at this crisis, Alexander had been recalled from his pursuit of Darius by tidings of the distress of Parmenio and of his inability to bear up any longer against the hot attacks of Mazaeus. Taking his horse-guards with him, Alexander rode toward the part of the field where his left wing was fighting; but on his way thither he encountered the Persian and Indian cavalry on their return from his camp. These men now saw that their only chance of safety was to cut their way through, and in one huge column they charged desperately upon the Macedonian regiments. There was here a close hand-to-hand fight, which lasted some time, and sixty of the royal horse-guards fell, and three generals, who fought close to Alexander's side, were wounded. At length the Macedonian discipline and valor again prevailed, and a large number of the Persian and Indian horsemen were cut down, some few only succeeding in breaking through and riding away. Relieved of these obstinate enemies, Alexander again formed his regiments of horse-guards, and led them toward Parmenio; but by this time that general also was victorious. Probably the news of Darius' flight had reached Mazæus, and had damped the ardor of the Persian right wing, while the tidings of their comrades' success must have proportionally encouraged the Macedonian forces under Parmenio. His Thessalian cavalry particularly distinguished themselves by their gallantry and persevering good conduct; and by the time that Alexander had ridden up to Parmenio, the whole Persian army was in full flight from the field. It was of the deepest importance to Alexander to secure the person of Darius, and he now urged on the pursuit. The river Lycus was between the field of battle and the city of Arbela, whither the fugitives directed their course, and the passage of this river was even more destructive to the Persians than the swords and spears of the Macedonians had been in the engagement.[53] [Footnote 53: I purposely omit any statement of the loss in the battle. There is a palpable error of the transcribers in the numbers which we find in our present manuscripts of Arrian, and Curtius is of no authority.] The narrow bridge was soon choked up by the flying thousands who rushed toward it, and vast numbers of the Persians threw themselves, or were hurried by others, into the rapid stream, and perished in its waters. Darius had crossed it, and had ridden on through Arbela without halting. Alexander reached the city on the next day, and made himself master of all Darius' treasure and stores; but the Persian King, unfortunately for himself, had fled too fast for his conqueror, but had only escaped to perish by the treachery of his Bactrian satrap, Bessus. A few days after the battle Alexander entered Babylon, "the oldest seat of earthly empire" then in existence, as its acknowledged lord and master. There were yet some campaigns of his brief and bright career to be accomplished. Central Asia was yet to witness the march of his phalanx. He was yet to effect that conquest of Afghanistan in which England since has failed. His generalship, as well as his valor, was yet to be signalized on the banks of the Hydaspes and the field of Chillianwallah; and he was yet to precede the queen of England in annexing the Punjab to the dominions of a European sovereign. But the crisis of his career was reached; the great object of his mission was accomplished; and the ancient Persian empire, which once menaced all the nations of the earth with subjection, was irreparably crushed when Alexander had won his crowning victory at Arbela. FIRST BATTLE BETWEEN GREEKS AND ROMANS B.C. 280-279 PLUTARCH (The Romans, in B.C. 290, had conquered the Samnites and this extended the Roman power to the very gates of the Grecian cities on the Gulf of Tarentine. Tarentum, the chief city among them, was almost totally controlled by a party which advised a peaceful submission to the Roman conquerors. The opposing party of patriots, against such cowardly measures, looked abroad for aid and found a ready ally in Pyrrhus, the Molossian king of Epirus. He was warlike and adventurous, and a member of the royal family of Macedonia, through Olympias, who was the mother of Alexander the Great. Pyrrhus had established a reputation for fighting. Not alone had he fought at the memorable battle of Ipsus, in Phrygia, but he had proven a formidable opponent to Demetinus, king of Macedonia, having forced the latter powerful monarch to conclude a truce with him, though afterward he had been conquered and driven back to his little kingdom of Epirus. At the time the Tarentines sent to him to help them against Rome he was eager for a field in which he might do something to prove his mettle. This was the greatest opportunity of his life, and he seized upon it. The campaign is memorable for having brought the Romans and Greeks into conflict on the battle-field for the first time.) Pyrrhus, now that he had lost Macedonia, might have spent his days peacefully ruling his own subjects in Epirus; but he could not endure repose, thinking that not to trouble others and be troubled by them was a life of unbearable ennui, and, like Achilles in the _Iliad_, "he could not rest in indolence at home, He longed for battle, and the joys of war." As he desired some new adventures he embraced the following opportunity. The Romans were at war with the Tarentines; and as that people were not sufficiently powerful to carry on the war, and yet were not allowed by the audacious folly of their mob orators to make peace, they proposed to make Pyrrhus their leader and to invite him to be their ally in the war, because he was more at leisure than any of the other kings, and also was the best general of them all. Of the older and more sensible citizens some endeavored to oppose this fatal decision, but were overwhelmed by the clamor of the war party, while the rest, observing this, ceased to attend the public assembly. There was one citizen of good repute, named Meton, who, on the day when the final decision was to be made, when the people were all assembled, took a withered garland and a torch, and like a drunkard, reeled into the assembly with a girl playing the flute before him. At this, as one may expect in a disorderly popular meeting, some applauded and some laughed, but no one stopped him. They next bade the girl play, and Meton come forward and dance to the music; and he made as though he would do so. When he had obtained silence he said: "Men of Tarentum, you do well in encouraging those who wish to be merry and amuse themselves while they may. If you are wise you will all enjoy your freedom now, for when Pyrrhus is come to our city you will have very different things to think of and will live very differently." By these words he made an impression on the mass of the Tarentine people, and a murmur ran through the crowd that he had spoken well. But those politicians who feared that if peace were made they should be delivered up to the Romans, reproached the people for allowing anyone to insult them by such a disgraceful exhibition, and prevailed on them to turn Meton out of the assembly. Thus the vote for war was passed, and ambassadors were sent to Epirus, not from Tarentum alone, but from the other Greek cities in Italy, carrying with them presents for Pyrrhus, with instructions to tell him that they required a leader of skill and renown, and that they possessed a force of Lucanians, Messapians, Samnites, and Tarentines, which amounted to twenty thousand cavalry and three hundred and fifty thousand infantry. This not only excited Pyrrhus, but also made all the Epirotes eager to take part in the campaign. There was one Cineas, a Thessalian, who was thought to be a man of good sense, and who, having heard Demosthenes the orator speak, was better able than any of the speakers of his age to delight his hearers with an imitation of the eloquence of that great master of rhetoric. He was now in the service of Pyrrhus, and being sent about to various cities, proved the truth of the Euripidean saw, that "All can be done by words Which foemen wish to do with conquering swords." Pyrrhus at any rate used to say that more cities were won for him by Cineas with words than he himself won by force of arms. This man, observing that Pyrrhus was eagerly preparing for his Italian expedition, once when he was at leisure conversed with him in the following manner. "Pyrrhus," said he, "the Romans are said to be good soldiers, and to rule over many warlike nations. Now, if heaven grants us the victory over them, what use shall we make of it?" "You ask what is self-evident," answered Pyrrhus. "If we can conquer the Romans, there is no city, Greek or barbarian, that can resist us, and we shall gain possession of the whole of Italy, a country whose size, richness, and power no one knows better than yourself." Cineas then, after waiting for a short time, said: "O King, when we have taken Italy, what shall we do then?" Pyrrhus, not yet seeing his drift, answered: "Close to it Sicily invites us, a noble and populous island, and one which is very easy to conquer; for, my Cineas, now that Agathocles is dead, there is nothing there but revolution and faction and the violence of party spirit." "What you say," answered Cineas, "is very probably true. But is this conquest of Sicily to be the extreme limit of our campaign?" "Heaven," answered Pyrrhus, "alone can give us victory and success; but these conquests would merely prove to us the stepping-stones to greater things. Who could refrain from making an attempt upon Carthage and Libya when he was so close to them, countries which were all but conquered by Agathocles when he ran away from Syracuse with only a few ships? and if we were masters of these countries, none of the enemies who now give themselves such airs at our expense will dare to resist us." "Certainly not," answered Cineas; "with such a force at our disposal we clearly could recover Macedonia, and have the whole of Greece at our feet. And after we have made all these conquests, what shall we do then?" Pyrrhus laughing answered: "We will take our ease and carouse every day, and enjoy pleasant conversation with one another." Having brought Pyrrhus to say this, Cineas asked in reply: "But what prevents our carousing and taking our ease now, since we have already at hand all those things which we propose to obtain with much bloodshed, and great toils and perils, and after suffering much ourselves and causing much suffering to others?" By talking in this manner Cineas vexed Pyrrhus, because he made him reflect on the pleasant home which he was leaving, but his reasoning had no effect in turning him from his purpose. He first despatched Cineas to Tarentum with three thousand men; next he collected from Tarentum many horse-transports, decked vessels, and boats of all sorts, and embarked upon them twenty elephants, twenty-three thousand cavalry, twenty-two thousand infantry, and five hundred slingers. When all was ready he put to sea; and when half way across a storm burst upon him from the north, which was unusual at that season of the year. He himself, though his ship was carried away by the tempest, yet, by the great pains and skill of the sailors and pilots, resisted it and reached the land, with great toil to the rowers, and beyond everyone's expectation; for the rest of the fleet was overpowered by the gale and scattered. Some ships were driven off the Italian coast altogether, and forced into the Libyan and Sicilian seas, and some which could not weather the Iapygian Cape were overtaken by night, and being dashed by a violent and boisterous sea against that harborless coast were utterly lost, except only the King's ship. She was so large and strongly built as to resist the waves as long as they broke upon her from the seaward; but when the wind changed and blew directly off the shore, the ship, which now met the waves directly with her head, was in great danger of going to pieces, while to let her drive out to sea again now that it was so rough, and the wind changed so frequently, seemed more terrible than to remain where they were. Pyrrhus rose and leaped into the water, and at once was eagerly followed by his friends and his bodyguard. The darkness of night and the violent recoil of the roaring waves made it hard for them to help him, and it was not until daybreak, when the wind abated, that he reached the land, faint and helpless in body, but with his spirit invincible in misfortune. The Messapians, upon whose coast he had been thrown, now assembled from the neighboring villages and offered their help, while some of the ships which had outlived the storm appeared, bringing a few horsemen, about two thousand foot, and two elephants. With these Pyrrhus marched to Tarentum; Cineas, as soon as he heard of his arrival, bringing out the Tarentine army to meet him. When he reached the city he did nothing to displease the Tarentines until his fleet returned to the coast and he had assembled the greater part of his army. But then, as he saw that the populace, unless ruled by a strong hand, could neither help him nor help themselves, but intended to stay idling about their baths and entertainments at home, while he fought their battles in the field, he closed the gymnasia and public walks, in which the people were wont to waste their time in empty talk about the war. He forbade all drinking, feasting, and unseasonable revels, and forced the people to take up arms, proving himself inexorable to everyone who was on the muster-roll of able-bodied citizens. This conduct made him much disliked, and many of the Tarentines left the city in disgust; for they were so unused to discipline that they considered that not to be able to pass their lives as they chose was no better than slavery. When news came that Laevinus, the Roman consul, was marching to attack him with a large force, and was plundering the country of Lucania as he advanced, while Pyrrhus' allies had not yet arrived, he thought it a shameful thing to allow the enemy to proceed any farther, and marched out with his army. He sent before him a herald to the Roman general, informing him that he was willing to act as arbitrator in the dispute between the Romans and the Greek cities of Italy, if they chose to terminate it peacefully. On receiving for an answer that the Romans neither wished for Pyrrhus as an arbitrator, nor feared him as an enemy, he marched forward, and encamped in the plain between the city of Pandosia and Heraclea. Learning that the Romans were close by, and were encamping on the farther side of the river Siris (the river Aciris, now called Agri), he rode up to the river to view them; and when he observed their even ranks, their orderly movements, and their well-arranged camp, he was surprised, and said to the nearest of his friends: "These barbarians, Megacles, have nothing barbarous in their military discipline; but we shall soon learn what they can do." He began indeed already to feel some uncertainty as to the issue of the campaign, and determined to wait until his allies came up, and till then to observe the movements of the Romans, and prevent their crossing the river. They, however, perceiving his object, at once crossed the river, the infantry at a ford, the cavalry at many points at once, so that the Greeks feared they might be surrounded, and drew back. Pyrrhus, perceiving this, ordered his officers instantly to form the troops in order of battle and wait under arms while he himself charged with the cavalry, three thousand strong, hoping to catch the Romans in the act of crossing the river and consequently in disorder. When he saw many shields of the Roman infantry appearing over the river bank, and their horsemen all ranged in order, he closed up his own ranks and charged them first himself, a conspicuous figure in his beautiful glittering armor, and proving by his exploits that he deserved his high reputation; especially as although he fought personally, and engaged in combat with the enemy, yet he continually watched the whole battle, and handled his troops with as much facility as though he were not in the thick of the fight, appearing always wherever his presence was required, and reenforcing those who seemed likely to give way. In this battle Leonnatus the Macedonian, observing one of the Italians watching Pyrrhus and constantly following him about the field, said to him: "My King, do you see that barbarian on the black horse with white feet? He seems to be meditating some desperate deed. He is a man of spirit and courage, and he never takes his eyes off you, and takes no notice of anyone else. Beware of that man." Pyrrhus answered: "Leonnatus, no man can avoid his fate; but neither that Italian nor anyone else who attacks me will do so with impunity." While they were yet talking the Italian levelled his lance and urged his horse in full career against Pyrrhus. He struck the King's horse with his spear, and at the same instant his own horse was struck a sidelong blow by Leonnatus. Both horses fell; Pyrrhus was saved by his friends, and the Italian perished fighting. He was of the nation of the Frentani, Hoplacus by name, and was the captain of a troop of horse. This incident taught Pyrrhus to be more cautious. He observed that his cavalry were inclined to give way, and therefore sent for his phalanx, and arrayed it against the enemy. Then he gave his cloak and armor to one of his companions, Megacles, and after partially disguising himself in those of his friend, led his main body to attack the Roman army. The Romans stoutly resisted him, and an obstinate battle took place, for it is said that the combatants alternately yielded and again pressed forward no less than seven distinct times. The King's exchange of armor, too, though it saved his life, yet very nearly lost him the victory: for many attacked Megacles, and the man who first struck him down, who was named Decius, snatched up his cloak and helmet, and rode with them to Lævinus, displaying them and shouting aloud that he had slain Pyrrhus. The Romans, when they saw these spoils carried in triumph along their ranks, raised a joyful cry, while the Greeks were correspondingly disheartened, until Pyrrhus, learning what had taken place, rode along the line with his head bare, stretching out his hands to his soldiers and telling them that he was safe. At length he was victorious, chiefly by means of a sudden charge of his Thessalian horse on the Romans after they had been thrown into disorder by the advance of the elephants. The Roman horses were terrified at these animals, and, long before they came near, ran away with their riders in panic. The slaughter was very great: Dionysius says that of the Romans there fell but little short of fifteen thousand, but Hieronymus reduces this to seven thousand, while on Pyrrhus' side there fell, according to Dionysius, thirteen thousand, but according to Hieronymus less than four thousand. These, however, were the very flower of Pyrrhus' army; for he lost all his most trusty officers and his most intimate personal friends. Still, he captured the Roman camp, which was abandoned by the enemy, induced several of their allied cities to join him, plundered a vast extent of country, and advanced within three hundred stades--less than forty English miles--of Rome itself. After the battle many of the Lucanians and Samnites came up; these allies he reproached for their dilatory movements, but was evidently well pleased at having conquered the great Roman army with no other forces but his own Epirotes and the Tarentines. The Romans did not remove Laevinus from his office of consul, although Caius Fabricius is reported to have said that it was not the Epirotes who had conquered the Romans, but Pyrrhus who had conquered Laevinus; meaning that he thought that the defeat was owing not to the greater force but the superior generalship of the enemy. They astonished Pyrrhus by quickly filling up their ranks with fresh levies, and talking about the war in a spirit of fearless confidence. He decided to try whether they were disposed to make terms with him, as he perceived that to capture Rome and utterly subdue the Roman people would be a work of no small difficulty, and that it would be vain to attempt it with the force at his disposal, while after his victory he could make peace on terms which would reflect great lustre on himself. Cineas was sent as ambassador to conduct this negotiation. He conversed with the leading men of Rome, and offered their wives and children presents from the King. No one, however, would accept them, but they all, men and women alike, replied that if peace were publicly concluded with the King, they would then have no objection to regard him as a friend. And when Cineas spoke before the senate in a winning and persuasive manner he could not make any impression upon his audience, although he announced to them that Pyrrhus would restore the prisoners he had taken without any ransom, and would assist them in subduing all Italy, while all that he asked in return was that he should be regarded as a friend, and that the people of Tarentum should not be molested. The common people, however, were evidently eager for peace, in consequence of their having been defeated in one great battle, and expecting that they would have to fight another against a larger force, because the Italian states would join Pyrrhus. At this crisis Appius Claudius, an illustrious man, but who had long since been prevented by old age and blindness from taking any active part in politics, when he heard of the proposals of Pyrrhus, and that the question of peace or war was about to be voted upon by the senate, could no longer endure to remain at home, but caused his slaves to carry him through the Forum to the senate house in a litter. When he reached the doors of the senate house his sons and sons-in-law supported him and guided him into the house, while all the assembly observed a respectful silence. Speaking from where he stood, he addressed them as follows: "My countrymen, I used to grieve at the loss of my sight, but now I am sorry not to be deaf also, when I hear the disgraceful propositions with which you are tarnishing the glory of Rome. What has become of that boast which we were so fond of making before all mankind, that if Alexander the Great had invaded Italy, and had met us when we were young, and our fathers when they were in the prime of life, he would not have been reputed invincible, but would either have fled or perhaps even have fallen, and added to the glory of Rome? "You now prove that this was mere empty vaporing, by your terror of these Chaonians and Molossians, nations who have always been a prey and a spoil to the Macedonians, and by your fear of this Pyrrhus, who used formerly to dance attendance on one of Alexander's bodyguards,[54] and who has now wandered hither not so much in order to assist the Greeks in Italy as to escape from his enemies at home, and promises to be our friend and protector, forsooth, when the army he commands did not suffice to keep for him the least portion of that Macedonia which he once acquired. Do not imagine that you will get rid of this man by making a treaty with him. Rather you will encourage other Greek princes to invade you, for they will despise you and think you an easy prey to all men if you let Pyrrhus go home again without paying the penalty of his outrages upon you, nay, with the power to boast that he has made Rome a laughing-stock for Tarentines and Samnites." [Footnote 54: Demetrius.] By these words Appius roused a warlike spirit in the Romans, and they dismissed Cineas with the answer that if Pyrrhus would leave Italy they would, if he wished, discuss the question of an alliance with him, but that while he remained in arms in their country the Romans would fight him to the death, however many Laevinuses he might defeat. It is related that Cineas, during his mission to Rome, took great interest in observing the national life of the Romans, and fully appreciated the excellence of their political constitution, which he learned by conversing with many of the leading men of the State. On his return he told Pyrrhus that the senate seemed to him like an assembly of kings, and that as to the populace he feared that the Greeks might find in them a new Lernæan hydra; for twice as many troops had been enrolled in the consul's army as he had before, and yet there remained many more Romans capable of bearing arms. After this Caius Fabricius came to arrange terms for the exchange of prisoners; a man whom Cineas said the Romans especially valued for his virtue and bravery, but who was excessively poor. Pyrrhus, in consequence of this, entertained Fabricius privately, and made him an offer of money, not as a bribe for any act of baseness, but speaking of it as a pledge of friendship and sincerity. As Fabricius refused this, Pyrrhus waited till the next day, when, desirous of making an impression on him, as he had never seen an elephant, he had his largest elephant placed behind Fabricius during their conference, concealed by a curtain. At a given signal, the curtain was withdrawn, and the creature reached out his trunk over the head of Fabricius with a harsh and terrible cry. Fabricius, however, quietly turned round, and then said to Pyrrhus with a smile, "You could not move me by your gold yesterday, nor can you with your beast to-day." At table that day they conversed upon all subjects, but chiefly about Greece and Greek philosophy. Cineas repeated the opinion of Epicurus and his school, about the gods, and the practice of political life, and the objects at which we should aim, how they considered pleasure to be the highest good, and held aloof from taking any active part in politics, because it spoiled and destroyed perfect happiness; and about how they thought that the gods lived far removed from hopes and fears, and interest in human affairs, in a placid state of eternal fruition.[55] While he was speaking in this strain Fabricius burst out: "Hercules!" cried he, "may Pyrrhus and the Samnites continue to waste their time on these speculations as long as they remain at war with us!" Pyrrhus, at this, was struck by the spirit and noble disposition of Fabricius, and longed more than ever to make Rome his friend instead of his enemy. He begged him to arrange terms of peace, and after they were concluded to come and live with him as the first of his friends and officers. [Footnote 55: I have translated the above passages almost literally from the Greek. Yet I am inclined to think that Arnold has penetrated the true meaning, and shows us the reason for Fabricius' exclamation when he states the Epicurean philosophy, as expounded by Cineas, to be "that war and state affairs were but toil and trouble, and that the wise man should imitate the blissful rest of the gods, who, dwelling in their own divinity, regarded not the vain turmoil of this lower world."] Fabricius is said to have quietly answered: "That, O King, will not be to your advantage; for those who now obey you, and look up to you, if they had any experience of me, would prefer me to you for their king." Pyrrhus was not angry at this speech, but spoke to all his friends about the magnanimous conduct of Fabricius, and intrusted the prisoners to him alone, on the condition that, if the senate refused to make peace, they should be allowed to embrace their friends, and spend the festival of the Saturnalia with them, and then be sent back to him. And they were sent back after the Saturnalia, for the senate decreed that any of them who remained behind should be put to death. After this, when C. Fabricius was consul, a man came into his camp bringing a letter from King Pyrrhus' physician, in which he offered to poison the King if he could be assured of a suitable reward for his services in thus bringing the war to an end without a blow. Fabricius, disgusted at the man's treachery, brought his colleague to share his views, and in haste sent off a letter to Pyrrhus, bidding him be on his guard. The letter ran as follows: "Caius Fabricius and Quintus Æmilius, the Roman consuls, greet King Pyrrhus. You appear to be a bad judge both of your friends and of your enemies. You will perceive, by reading the enclosed letter which has been sent to us, that you are fighting against good and virtuous men, and trusting to wicked and treacherous ones. We do not give you this information out of any love we bear you, but for fear that we might be charged with having assassinated you and be thought to have brought the war to a close by treachery because we could not do so by manhood." Pyrrhus on receiving this letter, and discovering the plot against his life, punished his physician, and, in return for the kindness of Fabricius and the Romans, delivered up their prisoners without ransom, and sent Cineas a second time to arrange terms of peace. However, the Romans refused to receive their prisoners back without ransom, being unwilling either to receive a favor from their enemy or to be rewarded for having abstained from treachery toward him, but set free an equal number of Tarentines and Samnites, and sent them to him. As to terms of peace, they refused to entertain the question unless Pyrrhus first placed his entire armament on board the ships in which it came, and sailed back to Epirus with it. As it was now necessary that Pyrrhus should fight another battle, he advanced with his army to the city of Asculum, and attacked the Romans. Here he was forced to fight on rough ground, near the swampy banks of a river, where his elephants and cavalry were of no service, and he was forced to attack with his phalanx. After a drawn battle, in which many fell, night parted the combatants. Next day Pyrrhus manoeuvred so as to bring the Romans fairly into the plain, where his elephants could act upon the enemy's line. He occupied the rough ground on either side, placed many archers and slingers among his elephants, and advanced with his phalanx in close order and irresistible strength. The Romans, who were unable on the level ground to practise the bush-fighting and skirmishing of the previous day, were compelled to attack the phalanx in front. They endeavored to force their way through that hedge of spears before the elephants could come up, and showed marvellous courage in hacking at the spears with their swords, exposing themselves recklessly, careless of wounds or death. After a long struggle, it is said that they first gave way at the point where Pyrrhus was urging on his soldiers in person, though the defeat was chiefly due to the weight and crushing charge of the elephants. The Romans could not find any opportunity in this sort of battle for the display of their courage, but thought it their duty to stand aside and save themselves from a useless death, just as they would have done in the case of a wave of the sea or an earthquake coming upon them. In the flight to their camp, which was not far off, Hieronymus says that six thousand Romans perished, and that in Pyrrhus' commentaries his loss is stated at three thousand five hundred and five. Dionysius, on the other hand, does not admit that there were two battles at Asculum, or that the Romans suffered a defeat, but tells us that they fought the whole of one day until sunset, and then separated, Pyrrhus being wounded in the arm by a javelin, and the Samnites having plundered his baggage. He also states the total loss on both sides to be above fifteen thousand. The armies separated after the battle, and it is said that Pyrrhus, when congratulated on his victory by his friends, said in reply: "If we win one more such victory over the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined." For a large part of the force which he had brought with him had perished, and very nearly all his friends and officers, and there were no more to send for at home. THE PUNIC WARS B.C. 264-219-149 FLORUS (The three Punic wars stand out in history as a mighty "duel _à l'outrance_" [a fight to the death], as Victor Hugo says, in the final scene of which Rome, having herself been brought near to defeat, "rises again, uses the limits of her strength in a last blow, throws herself on Carthage, and effaces her from the world." Jealousy and antagonism had long existed between Rome and Carthage, but it was the preeminence of the African city which held Roman ambition in check and for generations deferred the final struggle. But when at last Rome had acquired the strength she needed in order to assert her rivalry, it was only a question of actual preparation, and the first cause of quarrel was sure to be seized upon by either party, especially by the growing and haughty Italian Power. The immediate object of contention was the island of Sicily, lying between the territory of Rome and that of Carthage. In Sicily the First Punic War, lasting about twenty-three years, was mainly carried on by the Romans with success, while on the sea Carthage for a long time maintained superiority. During the intervals between the Punic wars two things appear with striking force in the history of these events--the passive strength and recuperative power of Carthage, which enabled her to return again and again to the struggle from almost crushing defeat, and the marvellous development of resources and aggressive vigor on the part of Rome, in whose case the rise of powerful individual leaders more than offset the weight of long-accumulated energies, supplemented as these were by the genius and achievement of great Carthaginian warriors. The wars progressed in a spirit of deadly hatred, constantly intensified on both sides, and the Roman determination, of which Cato was the mouthpiece, that Carthage must be destroyed, met its stubborn answer in the endeavors of the Carthaginians to turn this vengeance against Rome herself. Carthage had been mistress of the world, the richest and most powerful of cities. Her naval supremacy alone had sufficed to secure her safety and superiority over all rivals or possible combinations of force. But the strength of her government lay not so much in her people, or even in her statesmen and soldiers, as in her men of wealth. A political establishment founded upon such supports was peculiarly liable to all the dangers of corruption and of public ignorance and apathy in the conduct of affairs. These causes appear conspicuously in the history of the Punic wars, as contributing largely to the overthrow and final extinguishment of Carthage, which left to her successful rival the open way to universal dominion. The account of Florus presents in a style at once comprehensive and succinct a splendid narrative of these wars, with their decisive and world-changing events.) THE FIRST PUNIC WAR The victor-people of Italy, having now spread over the land as far as the sea, checked its course for a little, like a fire, which, having consumed the woods lying in its track, is stopped by some intervening river. But soon after, seeing at no great distance a rich prey, which seemed in a manner detached and torn away from their own Italy, they were so inflamed with a desire to possess it that, since it could neither be joined to their country by a mole or bridge, they resolved that it should be secured by arms and war, and reunited, as it were, to their continent. And behold! as if the Fates themselves opened a way for them, an opportunity was not wanting, for Messana, a city of Sicily in alliance with them, happened then to make a complaint concerning the tyranny of the Carthaginians. As the Romans coveted Sicily, so likewise did the people of Carthage; and both at the same time, with equal desires and equal forces, contemplated the attainment of the empire of the world. Under the pretext, therefore, of assisting their allies, but in reality being allured by the prey, that rude people, that people sprung from shepherds, and merely accustomed to the land, made it appear, though the strangeness of the attempt startled them (yet such confidence is there in true courage), that to the brave it is indifferent whether a battle be fought on horseback or in ships, by land or by sea. It was in the consulship of Appius Claudius that they first ventured upon that strait which has so ill a name from the strange things related of it, and so impetuous a current. But they were so far from being affrighted, that they regarded the violence of the rushing tide as something in their favor, and, sailing forward immediately and without delay, they defeated Hiero, king of Syracuse, with so much rapidity that he owned he was conquered before he saw the enemy. In the consulship of Duilius and Cornelius, they likewise had courage to engage at sea, and then the expedition used in equipping the fleet was a presage of victory; for within sixty days after the timber was felled, a navy of a hundred and sixty ships lay at anchor; so that the vessels did not seem to have been made by art, but the trees themselves appeared to have been turned into ships by the aid of the gods. The aspect of the battle, too, was wonderful; as the heavy and slow ships of the Romans closed with the swift and nimble barks of the enemy. Little availed their naval arts, such as breaking off the oars of a ship, and eluding the beaks of the enemy by turning aside; for the grappling-irons and other instruments, which, before the engagement, had been greatly derided by the enemy, were fastened upon their ships, and they were compelled to fight as on solid ground. Being victorious, therefore, at Liparæ, by sinking and scattering the enemy's fleet, they celebrated their first naval triumph. And how great was the exultation at it! Duilius, the commander, not content with one day's triumph, ordered, during all the rest of his life, when he returned from supper, lighted torches to be carried, and flutes to play, before him, as if he would triumph every day. The loss in this battle was trifling, in comparison with the greatness of the victory; though the other consul, Cornelius Asina, was cut off, being invited by the enemy to a pretended conference, and put to death; an instance of Carthaginian perfidy. Under the dictatorship of Calatinus, the Romans expelled almost all the garrisons of the Carthaginians from Agrigentum, Drepanum, Panormus, Eryx, and Lilybæum. Some alarm was experienced at the forest of Camarina, but we were rescued by the extraordinary valor of Calpurnius Flamma, a tribune of the soldiers, who, with a choice troop of three hundred men, seized upon an eminence occupied by the enemy, to our annoyance, and so kept them in play till the whole army escaped; thus, by eminent success, equalling the fame of Thermopylæ and Leonidas, though our hero was indeed more illustrious, inasmuch as he escaped and outlived so great an effort, notwithstanding he wrote nothing with his blood. In the consulship of Lucius Cornelius Scipio, when Sicily was become as a suburban province of the Roman people, and the war was spreading farther, they crossed over into Sardinia, and into Corsica, which lies near it. In the latter they terrified the natives by the destruction of the city of Olbia, in the former by that of Aleria; and so effectually humbled the Carthaginians, both by land and sea, that nothing remained to be conquered but Africa itself. Accordingly, under the leadership of Marcus Atilius Regulus, the war passed over into Africa. Nor were there wanting some on the occasion who mutinied at the mere name and dread of the Punic sea, a tribune named Mannius increasing their alarm; but the general, threatening him with the axe if he did not obey, produced courage for the voyage by the terror of death. They then hastened their course by the aid of winds and oars, and such was the terror of the Africans at the approach of the enemy that Carthage was almost surprised with its gates opened. The first prize taken in the war was the city of Clypea, which juts out from the Carthaginian shore as a fortress or watch-tower. Both this and more than three hundred fortresses besides were destroyed. Nor had the Romans to contend only with men, but with monsters also; for a serpent of vast size, born, as it were, to avenge Africa, harassed their camp on the Bagrada. But Regulus, who overcame all obstacles, having spread the terror of his name far and wide, having killed or taken prisoners a great number of the enemy's force, and their captains themselves, and having despatched his fleet, laden with much spoil and stored with materials for a triumph, to Rome, proceeded to besiege Carthage itself, the origin of the war, and took his position close to the gates of it. Here fortune was a little changed; but it was only that more proofs of Roman fortitude might be given, the greatness of which was generally best shown in calamities. For the enemy applying for foreign assistance, and Lacedaemon having sent them Xanthippus as a general, we were defeated by a captain so eminently skilled in military affairs. It was then that by an ignominious defeat, such as the Romans had never before experienced, their most valiant commander fell alive into the enemy's hands. But he was a man able to endure so great a calamity; as he was neither humbled by his imprisonment at Carthage nor by the deputation which he headed to Rome; for he advised what was contrary to the injunctions of the enemy, and recommended that no peace should be made, and no exchange of prisoners admitted. Even by his voluntary return to his enemies, and by his last sufferings, whether in prison or on the cross, the dignity of the man was not at all obscured. But being rendered, by all these occurrences, even more worthy of admiration, what can be said of him but that, when conquered, he was superior to his conquerors, and that, though Carthage had not submitted, he triumphed over Fortune herself? The Roman people were now much keener and more ardent to revenge the fate of Regulus than to obtain victory. Under the consul Metellus, therefore, when the Carthaginians were growing insolent, and when the war had returned into Sicily, they gave the enemy such a defeat at Panormus that they thought no more of that island. A proof of the greatness of this victory was the capture of about a hundred elephants, a vast prey, even if they had taken that number, not in war, but in hunting.[56] Under the consulship of Appius Claudius, they were overcome, not by the enemy, but by the gods themselves, whose auspices they had despised, their fleet being sunk in that very place where the consul had ordered the chickens to be thrown overboard, because he was warned by them not to fight. Under the consulship of Marcus Fabius Buteo, they overthrew, near Ægimurus, in the African sea, a fleet of the enemy which was just sailing for Italy. But, oh! how great materials for a triumph were then lost by a storm, when the Roman fleet, richly laden with spoil, and driven by contrary winds, covered with its wreck the coasts of Africa and the Syrtes, and of all the islands lying amid those seas! A great calamity! But not without some honor to this eminent people, from the circumstance that their victory was intercepted only by a storm, and that the matter for their triumph was lost only by a shipwreck. Yet, though the Punic spoils were scattered abroad, and thrown up by the waves on every promontory and island, the Romans still celebrated a triumph. In the consulship of Lutatius Catulus, an end was at last put to the war near the islands named Ægates. Nor was there any greater fight during this war; for the fleet of the enemy was laden with provisions, troops, towers, and arms; indeed, all Carthage, as it were, was in it; a state of things which proved its destruction, as the Roman fleet, on the contrary, being active, light, free from encumbrance, and in some degree resembling a land-camp, was wheeled about by its oars like cavalry in a battle by their reins; and the beaks of the vessels, directed now against one part of the enemy and now against another, presented the appearance of living creatures. In a very short time, accordingly, the ships of the enemy were shattered to pieces, and filled the whole sea between Sicily and Sardinia with their wrecks. So great, indeed, was the victory that there was no thought of demolishing the enemy's city; since it seemed superfluous to pour their fury on towers and walls, when Carthage had already been destroyed at sea. [Footnote 56: "A vast prey--not in war, but in hunting." The sense is, it would have been a considerable capture if he had taken these hundred elephants, not in battle, but in hunting, in which more are often taken.] THE SECOND PUNIC WAR After the first Carthaginian war there was scarcely a rest of four years, when there was another war, inferior, indeed, in length of time, for it occupied but eighteen years, but so much more terrible, from the direfulness of its havoc, that if anyone compares the losses on both sides, the people that conquered was more like one defeated. What provoked this noble people was that the command of the sea was forced from them, that their islands were taken, and that they were obliged to pay tribute which they had before been accustomed to impose. Hannibal, when but a boy, swore to his father, before an altar, to take revenge on the Romans; nor was he backward to execute his oath. Saguntum, accordingly, was made the occasion of a war; an old and wealthy city of Spain, and a great but sad example of fidelity to the Romans. This city, though granted, by the common treaty, the special privilege of enjoying its liberty, Hannibal, seeking pretences for new disturbances, destroyed with his own hands and those of its inhabitants, in order that, by an infraction of the compact, he might open a passage for himself into Italy. Among the Romans there is the highest regard to treaties, and consequently, on hearing of the siege of an allied city, and remembering, too, the compact made with the Carthaginians, they did not at once have recourse to arms, but chose rather to expostulate on legal grounds. In the mean time the Saguntines, exhausted with famine, the assaults of machines, and the sword, and their fidelity being at last carried to desperation, raised a vast pile in the market-place, on which they destroyed, with fire and sword, themselves, their wives and children, and all that they possessed. Hannibal, the cause of this great destruction, was required to be given up. The Carthaginians hesitating to comply, Fabius, who was at the head of the embassy, exclaimed: "What is the meaning of this delay? In the fold of this garment I carry war and peace; which of the two do you choose?" As they cried out "War," "Take war, then," he rejoined, and, shaking out the fore-part of his toga in the middle of the senate house, as if he really carried war in its folds, he spread it abroad, not without awe on the part of the spectators. The sequel of the war was in conformity with its commencement; for, as if the last imprecations of the Saguntines, at their public self-immolation and burning of the city, had required such obsequies to be performed to them, atonement was made to their _manes_ by the devastation of Italy, the reduction of Africa, and the destruction of the leaders and kings who engaged in that contest. When once, therefore, that sad and dismal force and storm of the Punic War had arisen in Spain, and had forged, in the fire of Saguntum, the thunderbolt long before intended for the Romans, it immediately burst, as if hurried along by resistless violence, through the middle of the Alps, and descended, from those snows of incredible altitude, on the plains of Italy, as if it had been hurled from the skies. The violence of its first assault burst, with a mighty sound, between the Po and the Ticinus. There the army under Scipio was routed; and the general himself, being wounded, would have fallen into the hands of the enemy, had not his son, then quite a boy, covered his father with his shield, and rescued him from death. This was the Scipio who grew up for the conquest of Africa, and who was to receive a name from its ill-fortune. To Ticinus succeeded Trebia, where, in the consulship of Sempronius, the second outburst of the Punic War was spent. On that occasion, the crafty enemy, having chosen a cold and snowy day, and having first warmed themselves at their fires, and anointed their bodies with oil, conquered us, though they were men that came from the south and a warm sun, by the aid (strange to say!) of our own winter. The third thunderbolt of Hannibal fell at the Trasimene lake, when Flaminius was commander. There also was employed a new stratagem of Carthaginian subtlety; for a body of cavalry, being concealed by a mist rising from the lake, and by the osiers growing in the fens, fell upon the rear of the Romans as they were fighting. Nor can we complain of the gods; for swarms of bees settling upon the standards, the reluctance of the eagles to move forward, and a great earthquake that happened at the commencement of the battle--unless, indeed, it was the tramping of horse and foot, and the violent concussion of arms, that produced this trembling of the ground--had forewarned the rash leader of approaching defeat. The fourth and almost mortal wound of the Roman Empire was at Cannæ, an obscure village of Apulia; which, however, became famous by the greatness of the defeat, its celebrity being acquired by the slaughter of forty thousand men. Here the general, the ground, the face of heaven, the day, indeed, all nature conspired together for the destruction of the unfortunate army. For Hannibal, the most artful of generals, not content with sending pretended deserters among the Romans, who fell upon their rear as they were fighting, but having also noted the nature of the ground in those open plains, where the heat of the sun is extremely violent, the dust very great, and the wind blows constantly, and as it were statedly, from the east, drew up his army in such a position that, while the Romans were exposed to all these inconveniences, he himself, having heaven, as it were, on his side, fought with wind, dust, and sun in his favor. Two vast armies, in consequence, were slaughtered till the enemy were satiated, and till Hannibal said to his soldiers, "Put up your swords." Of the two commanders, one escaped, the other was slain; which of them showed the greater spirit is doubtful. Paulus was ashamed to survive; Varrodid not despair. Of the greatness of the slaughter the following proofs may be noticed: that the Aufidus was for some time red with blood; that a bridge was made of dead bodies, by order of Hannibal, over the torrent of Vergellus, and that two _modii_ of rings were sent to Carthage, and the equestrian dignity estimated by measure. It was afterward not doubted but that Rome might have seen its last day, and that Hannibal, within five days, might have feasted in the Capitol, if--as they say that Adherbal, the Carthaginian, the son of Bomilcar, observed--"he had known as well how to use his victory as how to gain it." But at that crisis, as is generally said, either the fate of the city that was to be empress of the world, or his own want of judgment, and the influence of deities unfavorable to Carthage, carried him in a different direction. When he might have taken advantage of his victory, he chose rather to seek enjoyment from it, and, leaving Rome, to march into Campania and to Tarentum, where both he and his army soon lost their vigor, so that it was justly remarked that "Capua proved a Cannæ to Hannibal"; since the sunshine of Campania and the warm springs of Baiæ subdued--who could have believed it?--him who had been unconquered by the Alps and unshaken in the field. In the mean time the Romans began to recover and to rise, as it were, from the dead. They had no arms, but they took them down from the temples; men were wanting, but slaves were freed to take the oath of service; the treasury was exhausted, but the senate willingly offered their wealth for the public service, leaving themselves no gold but what was contained in their children's _bullæ_[57] and in their own belts and rings. The knights followed their example, and the common people that of the knights; so that when the wealth of private persons was brought to the public treasury--in the consulship of Lævinus and Marcellus--the registers scarcely sufficed to contain the account of it, or the hands of the clerks to record it. [Footnote 57: A sort of ornament suspended from the necks of children, which, among the wealthy, was made of gold. It was in the shape of a bubble on water, or, as Pliny says, of a heart.] But how can I sufficiently praise the wisdom of the centuries in the choice of magistrates, when the younger sought advice from the elder as to what consuls should be created? They saw that against an enemy so often victorious, and so full of subtlety, it was necessary to contend, not only with courage, but with his own wiles. The first hope of the empire now recovering, and, if I may use the expression, coming to life again, was Fabius, who found a new mode of conquering Hannibal, which was, _not to fight_. Hence he received that new name, so salutary to the commonwealth, of _Cunctator_, or Delayer. Hence too it happened that he was called by the people _the shield of the empire_. Through the whole of Samnium, and through the Falerian and Gauran forests, he so harassed Hannibal that he who could not be reduced by valor was weakened by delay. The Romans then ventured, under the command of Claudius Marcellus, to engage him; they came to close quarters with him, drove him out of his dear Campania, and forced him to raise the siege of Nola. They ventured likewise, under the leadership of Sempronius Gracchus, to pursue him through Lucania, and to press hard upon his rear as he retired; though they then fought him (sad dishonor!) with a body of slaves, for to this extremity had so many disasters reduced them, but they were rewarded with liberty, and from slaves they made them Romans. O amazing confidence in the midst of so much adversity! O extraordinary courage and spirit of the Roman people in such oppressive and distressing circumstances! At a time when they were uncertain of preserving their own Italy, they yet ventured to look to other countries; and when the enemy were at their throat, flying through Campania and Apulia, and making an Africa in the middle of Italy, they at the same time both withstood that enemy and dispersed their arms over the earth into Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain. Sicily was assigned to Marcellus, and did not long resist his efforts; for the whole island was conquered in the conquest of one city. Syracuse, its great and, till that period, unconquered capital, though defended by the genius of Archimedes, was at last obliged to yield. Its triple wall and three citadels, its marble harbor and the celebrated fountain of Arethusa, were no defence to it, except so far as to procure consideration for its beauty when it was conquered. Sardinia Gracchus reduced; the savageness of the inhabitants, and the vastness of its Mad Mountains--for so they are called--availed it nothing. Great severity was exercised upon its cities, and upon Caralis, the city of its cities, that a nation, obstinate and regardless of death, might at least be humbled by concern for the soil of its country. Into Spain were sent the two Scipios, Cnaeus, and Publius, who wrested almost the whole of it from the Carthaginians; but, being surprised by the artifices of Punic subtlety, they again lost it, even after they had slaughtered the enemy's forces in great battles. The wiles of the Carthaginians cut off one of them by the sword as he was pitching his camp, and the other by surrounding him with lighted fagots after he had made his escape into a tower. But the other Scipio, to whom the Fates had decreed so great a name from Africa, being sent with an army to revenge the death of his father and uncle, recovered all that warlike country of Spain, so famous for its men and arms, that seminary of the enemy's force, that instructress of Hannibal, from the Pyrenean mountains--the account is scarcely credible--to the Pillars of Hercules and the ocean, whether with greater speed or good fortune is difficult to decide; how great was his speed, four years bear witness; how remarkable his good fortune, even one city proves, for it was taken on the same day in which siege was laid to it, and it was an omen of the conquest of Africa that Carthage in Spain was so easily reduced. It is certain, however, that what most contributed to make the province submit was the eminent virtue of the general, who restored to the barbarians certain captive youths and maidens of extraordinary beauty, not allowing them even to be brought into his sight, that he might not seem, even by a single glance, to have detracted from their virgin purity. These actions the Romans performed in different parts of the world, yet were they unable, notwithstanding, to remove Hannibal, who was lodged in the heart of Italy. Most of the towns had revolted to the enemy, whose vigorous commander used even the strength of Italy against the Romans. However, we had now forced him out of many towns and districts. Tarentum had returned to our side; and Capua, the seat, home, and second country of Hannibal, was again in our hands; the loss of which caused the Punic leader so much affliction that he then directed all his force against Rome. O people worthy of the empire of the world, worthy of the favor and admiration of all, not only men, but gods! Though they were brought into the greatest alarm, they desisted not from their original design; though they were concerned for their own city, they did not abandon their attempts on Capua; but, part of their army being left there with the consul Appius, and part having followed Flaccus to Rome, they fought both at home and abroad at the same time. Why then should we wonder that the gods themselves, the gods, I say--nor shall I be ashamed[58] to admit it--again opposed Hannibal as he was preparing to march forward when at three miles' distance from Rome. For, at every movement of his force, so copious a flood of rain descended, and such a violent storm of wind arose, that it was evident the enemy was repulsed by divine influence, and the tempest proceeded, not from heaven, but from the walls of the city and the Capitol. He therefore fled and departed, and withdrew to the farthest corner of Italy, leaving the city in a manner adored. It is but a small matter to mention, yet sufficiently indicative of the magnanimity of the Roman people, that during those very days in which the city was besieged, the ground which Hannibal occupied with his camp was offered for sale at Rome, and, being put up to auction, actually found a purchaser. Hannibal, on the other side, wished to imitate such confidence, and put up for sale the bankers' houses in the city; but no buyer was found; so that it was evident that the Fates had their presages. [Footnote 58: Why should he be ashamed to admit that Rome was saved by the aid of the gods? To receive assistance from the gods was a proof of merit. The gods help those who help themselves, says the proverb. When he says that the gods "_again_ opposed Hannibal," he seems to refer to what he said above in speaking of the battle of Cannae, that the deities, averse to Carthage, prevented Hannibal from marching at that time to Rome.] But as yet nothing had been effectually accomplished by so much valor, or even through such eminent favor from the gods; for Hasdrubal, the brother of Hannibal, was approaching with a new army, new strength, and every fresh requisite for war. There had doubtless been an end of Rome, if that general had united himself with his brother; but Claudius Nero, in conjunction with Livius Salinator, overthrew him as he was pitching his camp. Nero was at that time keeping Hannibal at bay in the farthest corner of Italy; while Livius had marched to the very opposite quarter, that is, to the very entrance and confines of Italy; and of the ability and expedition with which the consuls joined their forces--though so vast a space, that is, the whole of Italy where it is longest, lay between them--and defeated the enemy with their combined strength, when they expected no attack, and without the knowledge of Hannibal, it is difficult to give a notion. When Hannibal, however, had knowledge of the matter, and saw his brother's head thrown down before his camp, he exclaimed, "I perceive the evil destiny of Carthage." This was his first confession of that kind, not without a sure presage of his approaching fate; and it was now certain, even from his own acknowledgment, that Hannibal might be conquered. But the Roman people, full of confidence from so many successes, thought it would be a noble enterprise to subdue such a desperate enemy in his own Africa. Directing their whole force, therefore, under the leadership of Scipio, upon Africa itself, they began to imitate Hannibal, and to avenge upon Africa the sufferings of their own Italy. What forces of Hasdrubal (good gods!), what armies of Syphax, did that commander put to flight! How great were the camps of both that he destroyed in one night by casting firebrands into them! At last, not at three miles distance, but by a close siege, he shook the very gates of Carthage itself. And thus he succeeded in drawing off Hannibal when he was still clinging to and brooding over Italy. There was no more remarkable day, during the whole course of the Roman Empire, than that on which those two generals, the greatest of all that ever lived, whether before or after them, the one the conqueror of Italy, and the other of Spain, drew up their forces for a close engagement. But previously a conference was held between them concerning conditions of peace. They stood motionless awhile in admiration of each other. When they could not agree on a peace, they gave the signal for battle. It is certain, from the confession of both, that no troops could have been better drawn up, and no fight more obstinately maintained. This Hannibal acknowledged concerning the army of Scipio, and Scipio concerning that of Hannibal. But Hannibal was forced to yield, and Africa became the prize of the victory; and the whole earth soon followed the fate of Africa. THE THIRD PUNIC WAR The third war with Africa was both short in its duration--for it was finished in four years--and, compared with those that preceded it, of much less difficulty; as we had to fight not so much against troops in the field as against the city itself; but it was far the greatest of the three in its consequences, for in it Carthage was at last destroyed. And if anyone contemplates the events of the three periods, he will understand that the war was begun in the first, greatly advanced in the second, and entirely finished in the third. The cause of this war was that Carthage, in violation of an article in the treaty, had once fitted out a fleet and army against the Numidians, and had frequently threatened the frontiers of Masinissa. But the Romans were partial to this good king, who was also their ally. When the war had been determined upon, they had to consider about the end of it. Cato, even when his opinion was asked on any other subject, pronounced, with implacable enmity, that Carthage should be destroyed. Scipio Nasica gave his voice for its preservation, lest, if the fear of the rival city were removed, the exultation of Rome should grow extravagant. The senate decided on a middle course, resolving that the city should only be removed from its place; for nothing appeared to them more glorious than that there should be a Carthage which should not be feared. In the consulship of Manlius and Censorinus, therefore, the Roman people having attacked Carthage, but giving them some hopes of peace, burned their fleet, which they voluntarily delivered up, in sight of the city. Having next summoned the chief men, they commanded them to quit the place if they wished to preserve their lives. This requisition, from its cruelty, so incensed them that they chose rather to submit to the utmost extremities. They accordingly bewailed their necessities publicly, and shouted with one voice _to arms_; and a resolution was made to resist the enemy by every means in their power; not because any hope of success was left, but because they had rather their birthplace should be destroyed by the hands of the enemy than by their own. With what spirit they resumed the war may be understood from the facts that they pulled down their roofs and houses for the equipment of a new fleet; that gold and silver, instead of brass and iron, were melted in their forges for the construction of arms; and that the women parted with their hair to make cordage for the engines of war. Under the command of the consul Mancinus, the siege was warmly conducted both by land and sea. The harbor was dismantled of its works, and a first, second, and even third wall taken, while nevertheless the Byrsa, which was the name of the citadel, held out like another city. But though the destruction of the place was thus very far advanced, it was the name of the Scipios only that seemed fatal to Africa. The Government, accordingly, applying to another Scipio, desired from him a termination of the war. This Scipio, the son of Paulus Macedonicus, the son of the great Africanus had adopted as an honor to his family, and, as it appeared, with this destiny, that the grandson should overthrow the city which the grandfather had shaken. But as the bites of dying beasts are wont to be most fatal, so there was more trouble with Carthage half-ruined than when it was in its full strength. The Romans having shut the enemy up in their single fortress, had also blockaded the harbor; but upon this they dug another harbor on the other side of the city, not with a design to escape, but because no one supposed that they could even force an outlet there. Here a new fleet, as if just born, started forth; and, in the mean while, sometimes by day and sometimes by night, some new mole, some new machine, some new band of desperate men perpetually started up, like a sudden flame from a fire sunk in ashes. At last, their affairs becoming desperate, forty thousand men, and (what is hardly credible) with Hasdrubal at their head, surrendered themselves. How much more nobly did a woman behave, the wife of the general, who, taking hold of her two children, threw herself from the top of her house into the midst of the flames, imitating the queen that built Carthage. How great a city was then destroyed is shown, to say nothing of other things, by the duration of the fire, for the flames could scarcely be extinguished at the end of seventeen days; flames which the enemy themselves had raised in their houses and temples, that, since the city could not be rescued from the Romans, all matter for triumph might at least be burned. BATTLE OF THE METAURUS B.C. 207 SIR EDWARD SHEPHERD CREASY (During the closing years of the Second Punic War the resources of the Romans were drained to such an extent as to bring great disheartenment to their rulers and generals. Under the stress of financial difficulties, the cost of living greatly increased, and the State was compelled to resort to loans of various kinds, and to levy upon citizens of means for the pay of seamen. This scheme for raising Roman "ship money" was one of the most significant indications of the extreme weight resting upon the republic in the prosecution of this arduous war. A war with Sicily was fortunately terminated, releasing some additional force for employment against the Carthaginians; but for some time little headway was made by the Roman commanders, and when, in B.C. 207, the people were called upon to elect consuls, their affairs were still in a condition which caused serious anxiety. The consuls chosen in that year were Marcus Livius and Caius Claudius Nero, and without delay they went to take command in southern Italy, which the Carthaginians under Hannibal, though not in much strength, had invaded. But when, later in the season, Hasdrubal crossed the Alps from the north to join his brother, Hannibal, the aspect of the war became still more grave in the eyes of the Romans. Hasdrubal solicited the support of the Gauls, but to little purpose. Meanwhile Hannibal made skilful use of his small forces in eluding the consul Nero; but the capture by the Romans of despatches from Hasdrubal disclosed his plans, and Nero at once formed his own for intercepting him. The result was that Nero and Livius joined their forces in Hasdrubal's front, and to the Carthaginian they offered immediate battle. Hasdrubal attempted a retreat, but was compelled to give battle on the banks of the Metaurus. Of this, one of the "decisive battles of the world," Creasy has left an authoritative and graphic account, which here follows. The part of the consul Nero in the campaign is thus remarked upon by Lord Byron: "The consul Nero, who made the unequalled march which deceived Hannibal and deceived Hasdrubal, thereby accomplished an achievement almost unrivalled in military annals. The first intelligence of his return, to Hannibal, was the sight of Hasdrubal's head thrown into his camp. When Hannibal saw this, he exclaimed, with a sigh, that 'Rome would now be the mistress of the world.' To this victory of Nero's it might be owing that his imperial namesake reigned at all. But the infamy of the one has eclipsed the glory of the other. When the name of Nero is heard, who thinks of the consul? But such are human things.") About midway between Rimini and Ancona a little river falls into the Adriatic, after traversing one of those districts of Italy in which a vain attempt has lately been made to revive, after long centuries of servitude and shame, the spirit of Italian nationality and the energy of free institutions. That stream is still called the Metauro, and wakens by its name the recollections of the resolute daring of ancient Rome, and of the slaughter that stained its current two thousand and sixty-three years ago, when the combined consular armies of Livius and Nero encountered and crushed near its banks the varied hosts which Hannibal's brother was leading from the Pyrenees, the Rhone, the Alps, and the Po, to aid the great Carthaginian in his stern struggle to annihilate the growing might of the Roman republic, and make the Punic power supreme over all the nations of the world. The Roman historian,[59] who termed that struggle the most memorable of all wars that ever were carried on, wrote in no spirit of exaggeration; for it is not in ancient, but in modern history that parallels for its incidents and its heroes are to be found. The similitude between the contest which Rome maintained against Hannibal, and that which England was for many years engaged in against Napoleon, has not passed unobserved by recent historians. "Twice," says Arnold, "has there been witnessed the struggle of the highest individual genius against the resources and institutions of a great nation, and in both cases the nation has been victorious. For seventeen years Hannibal strove against Rome; for sixteen years Napoleon Bonaparte strove against England: the efforts of the first ended in Zama; those of the second in Waterloo." [Footnote 59: Livy.] One point, however, of the similitude between the two wars has scarcely been adequately dwelt on; that is, the remarkable parallel between the Roman general who finally defeated the great Carthaginian, and the English general who gave the last deadly overthrow to the French Emperor. Scipio and Wellington both held for many years commands of high importance, but distant from the main theatres of warfare. The same country was the scene of the principal military career of each. It was in Spain that Scipio, like Wellington, successively encountered and overthrew nearly all the subordinate generals of the enemy before being opposed to the chief champion and conqueror himself. Both Scipio and Wellington restored their countrymen's confidence in arms when shaken by a series of reverses, and each of them closed a long and perilous war by a complete and overwhelming defeat of the chosen leader and the chosen veterans of the foe. Nor is the parallel between them limited to their military characters and exploits. Scipio, like Wellington, became an important leader of the aristocratic party among his countrymen, and was exposed to the unmeasured invectives of the violent section of his political antagonists. When, early in the last reign, an infuriated mob assaulted the Duke of Wellington in the streets of the English capital on the anniversary of Waterloo, England was even more disgraced by that outrage than Rome was by the factious accusations which demagogues brought against Scipio, but which he proudly repelled on the day of trial by reminding the assembled people that it was the anniversary of the battle of Zama. Happily, a wiser and a better spirit has now for years pervaded all classes of our community, and we shall be spared the ignominy of having worked out to the end the parallel of national ingratitude. Scipio died a voluntary exile from the malevolent turbulence of Rome. Englishmen of all ranks and politics have now long united in affectionate admiration of our modern Scipio; and even those who have most widely differed from the duke on legislative or administrative questions, forget what they deem the political errors of that time-honored head, while they gratefully call to mind the laurels that have wreathed it. Scipio at Zama trampled in the dust the power of Carthage, but that power had been already irreparably shattered in another field, where neither Scipio nor Hannibal commanded. When the Metaurus witnessed the defeat and death of Hasdrubal, it witnessed the ruin of the scheme by which alone Carthage could hope to organize decisive success--the scheme of enveloping Rome at once from the north and the south of Italy by two chosen armies, led by two sons of Hamilcar. That battle was the determining crisis of the contest, not merely between Rome and Carthage, but between the two great families of the world, which then made Italy the arena of their oft-renewed contest for preëminence. The French historian, Michelet, whose _Histoire Romaine_ would have been invaluable if the general industry and accuracy of the writer had in any degree equalled his originality and brilliancy, eloquently remarks: "It is not without reason that so universal and vivid a remembrance of the Punic wars has dwelt in the memories of men. They formed no mere struggle to determine the lot of two cities or two empires; but it was a strife on the event of which depended the fate of two races of mankind, whether the dominion of the world should belong to the Indo-Germanic or to the Semitic family of nations. Bear in mind that the first of these comprises, besides the Indians and the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Germans. In the other are ranked the Jews and the Arabs, the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians. On the one side is the genius of heroism, of art, and legislation; on the other is the spirit of industry, of commerce, of navigation. "The two opposite races have everywhere come into contact, everywhere into hostility. In the primitive history of Persia and Chaldaea, the heroes are perpetually engaged in combat with their industrious and perfidious neighbors. The struggle is renewed between the Phoenicians and the Greeks on every coast of the Mediterranean. The Greek supplants the Phoenician in all his factories, all his colonies in the East: soon will the Roman come, and do likewise in the West. Alexander did far more against Tyre than Shalmaneser or Nebuchadnezzar had done. Not content with crushing her, he took care that she never should revive; for he founded Alexandria as her substitute, and changed forever the track of the commerce of the world. There remained Carthage--the great Carthage, and her mighty empire--mighty in a far different degree than Phoenicia's had been. Rome annihilated it. Then occurred that which has no parallel in history--an entire civilization perished at one blow--banished, like a falling star. The _Periplus_ of Hanno, a few coins, a score of lines in Plautus, and, lo, all that remains of the Carthaginian world! "Many generations must needs pass away before the struggle between the two races could be renewed; and the Arabs, that formidable rear-guard of the Semitic world, dashed forth from their deserts. The conflict between the two races then became the conflict of two religions. Fortunate was it that those daring Saracenic cavaliers encountered in the East the impregnable walls of Constantinople, in the West the chivalrous valor of Charles Martel and the sword of the Cid. The crusades were the natural reprisals for the Arab invasions, and form the last epoch of that great struggle between the two principal families of the human race." It is difficult, amid the glimmering light supplied by the allusions of the classical writers, to gain a full idea of the character and institutions of Rome's great rival. But we can perceive how inferior Carthage was to her competitor in military resources, and how far less fitted than Rome she was to become the founder of centralized and centralizing dominion that should endure for centuries, and fuse into imperial unity the narrow nationalities of the ancient races that dwelt around and near the shores of the Mediterranean Sea? Carthage was originally neither the most ancient nor the most powerful of the numerous colonies which the Phoenicians planted on the coast of Northern Africa. But her advantageous position, the excellence of her constitution--of which, though ill-informed as to its details, we know that it commanded the admiration of Aristotle--and the commercial and political energy of her citizens gave her the ascendency over Hippo, Utica, Leptis, and her other sister Phoenician cities in those regions; and she finally reduced them to a condition of dependency similar to that which the subject allies of Athens occupied relatively to that once imperial city. When Tyre and Sidon and the other cities of Phoenicia itself sank from independent republics into mere vassal states of the great Asiatic monarchies, and obeyed by turns a Babylonian, a Persian, and a Macedonian master, their power and their traffic rapidly declined, and Carthage succeeded to the important maritime and commercial character which they had previously maintained. The Carthaginians did not seek to compete with the Greeks on the northeastern shores of the Mediterranean, or in the three inland seas which are connected with it; but they maintained an active intercourse with the Phoenicians, and through them with Lower and Central Asia; and they, and they alone, after the decline and fall of Tyre, navigated the waters of the Atlantic. They had the monopoly of all the commerce of the world that was carried on beyond the Straits of Gibraltar. We have yet extant (in a Greek translation) the narrative of the voyage of Hanno, one of their admirals, along the western coast of Africa as far as Sierra Leone; and in the Latin poem of Festus Avienus frequent references are made to the records of the voyages of another celebrated Carthaginian admiral, Himilco, who had explored the northwestern coast of Europe. Our own islands are mentioned by Himilco as the lands of the Hiberni and Albioni. It is indeed certain that the Carthaginians frequented the Cornish coast--as the Phoenicians had done before them--for the purpose of procuring tin; and there is every reason to believe that they sailed as far as the coasts of the Baltic for amber. When it is remembered that the mariner's compass was unknown in those ages, the boldness and skill of the seamen of Carthage, and the enterprise of her merchants, may be paralleled with any achievements that the history of modern navigation and commerce can produce. In their Atlantic voyages along the African shores the Carthaginians followed the double object of traffic and colonization. The numerous settlements that were planted by them along the coast from Morocco to Senegal provided for the needy members of the constantly increasing population of a great commercial capital, and also strengthened the influence which Carthage exercised among the tribes of the African coast. Besides her fleets, her caravans gave her a large and lucrative trade with the native Africans; nor must we limit our belief of the extent of the Carthaginian trade with the tribes of Central and Western Africa by the narrowness of the commercial intercourse which civilized nations of modern times have been able to create in those regions. Although essentially a mercantile and seafaring people, the Carthaginians by no means neglected agriculture. On the contrary, the whole of their territory was cultivated like a garden. The fertility of the soil repaid the skill and toil bestowed on it; and every invader, from Agathocles to Scipio Æmilianus, was struck with admiration at the rich pasture lands carefully irrigated, the abundant harvests, the luxuriant vineyards, the plantations of fig and olive trees, the thriving villages, the populous towns, and the splendid villas of the wealthy Carthaginians, through which his march lay, as long as he was on Carthaginian ground. Although the Carthaginians abandoned the Ægean and the Pontus to the Greek, they were by no means disposed to relinquish to those rivals the commerce and the dominion of the coasts of the Mediterranean westward of Italy. For centuries the Carthaginians strove to make themselves masters of the islands that lie between Italy and Spain. They acquired the Balearic Islands, where the principal harbor, Port Mahon, still bears the name of a Carthaginian admiral. They succeeded in reducing the greater part of Sardinia; but Sicily could never be brought into their power. They repeatedly invaded that island, and nearly overran it; but the resistance which was opposed to them by the Syracusans under Gelon, Dionysius, Timoleon, and Agathocles preserved the island from becoming Punic, though many of its cities remained under the Carthaginian rule until Rome finally settled the question to whom Sicily was to belong by conquering it for herself. With so many elements of success, with almost unbounded wealth, with commercial and maritime activity, with a fertile territory, with a capital city of almost impregnable strength, with a constitution that insured for centuries the blessing of social order, with an aristocracy singularly fertile in men of the highest genius, Carthage yet failed signally and calamitously in her contest for power with Rome. One of the immediate causes of this may seem to have been the want of firmness among her citizens, which made them terminate the First Punic War by begging peace, sooner than endure any longer the hardships and burdens caused by a state of warfare, although their antagonists had suffered far more severely than themselves. Another cause was the spirit of faction among their leading men, which prevented Hannibal in the second war from being properly reënforced and supported. But there were also more general causes why Carthage proved inferior to Rome. These were her position relatively to the mass of the inhabitants of the country which she ruled, and her habit of trusting to mercenary armies in her wars. Our clearest information as to the different races of men in and about Carthage is derived from Diodorus Siculus. That historian enumerates four different races: first, he mentions the Phoenicians who dwelt in Carthage; next, he speaks of the Liby-Phoenicians: these, he tells us, dwelt in many of the maritime cities, and were connected by intermarriage with the Phoenicians, which was the cause of their compound name; thirdly, he mentions the Libyans, the bulk and the most ancient part of the population, hating the Carthaginians intensely on account of the oppressiveness of their domination; lastly, he names the Numidians, the nomad tribes of the frontier. It is evident, from this description, that the native Libyans were a subject class, without franchise or political rights; and, accordingly, we find no instance specified in history of a Libyan holding political office or military command. The half-castes, the Liby-Phoenicians, seem to have been sometimes sent out as colonists; but it may be inferred, from what Diodorus says of their residence, that they had not the right of the citizenship of Carthage; and only a single solitary case occurs of one of this race being intrusted with authority, and that, too, not emanating from the home government. This is the instance of the officer sent by Hannibal to Sicily after the fall of Syracuse, whom Polybius calls Myttinus the Libyan, but whom, from the fuller account in Livy, we find to have been a Liby-Phoenician; and it is expressly mentioned what indignation was felt by the Carthaginian commanders in the island that this half-caste should control their operations. With respect to the composition of their armies, it is observable that, though thirsting for extended empire, and though some of her leading men became generals of the highest order, the Carthaginians, as a people, were anything but personally warlike. As long as they could hire mercenaries to fight for them, they had little appetite for the irksome training and the loss of valuable time which military service would have entailed on themselves. As Michelet remarks: "The life of an industrious merchant, of a Carthaginian, was too precious to be risked, as long as it was possible to substitute advantageously for it that of a barbarian from Spain or Gaul. Carthage knew, and could tell to a drachma, what the life of a man of each nation came to. A Greek was worth more than a Campanian, a Campanian worth more than a Gaul or a Spaniard. When once this tariff of blood was correctly made out, Carthage began a war as a mercantile speculation. She tried to make conquests in the hope of getting new mines to work or to open fresh markets for her exports. In one venture she could afford to spend fifty thousand mercenaries, in another rather more. If the returns were good, there was no regret felt for the capital that had been sunk in the investment; more money got more men, and all went on well." Armies composed of foreign mercenaries have in all ages been as formidable to their employers as to the enemy against whom they were directed. We know of one occasion--between the First and Second Punic wars--when Carthage was brought to the very brink of destruction by a revolt of her foreign troops. Other mutinies of the same kind must from time to time have occurred. Probably one of these was the cause of the comparative weakness of Carthage at the time of the Athenian expedition against Syracuse, so different from the energy with which she attacked Gelon half a century earlier and Dionysius half a century later. And even when we consider her armies with reference only to their efficiency in warfare, we perceive at once the inferiority of such bands of _condottieri_, brought together without any common bond of origin, tactics, or cause, to the legions of Rome, which, at the time of the Punic wars, were raised from the very flower of a hardy agricultural population, trained in the strictest discipline, habituated to victory, and animated by the most resolute patriotism. And this shows, also, the transcendency of the genius of Hannibal, which could form such discordant materials into a compact organized force, and inspire them with the spirit of patient discipline and loyalty to their chief, so that they were true to him in his adverse as well as in his prosperous fortunes; and throughout the checkered series of his campaigns no panic rout ever disgraced a division under his command, no mutiny, or even attempt at mutiny, was ever known in his camp; and finally, after fifteen years of Italian warfare, his men followed their old leader to Zama, "with no fear and little hope,"[60] and there, on that disastrous field, stood firm around him, his Old Guard, till Scipio's Numidian allies came up on their flank, when at last, surrounded and overpowered, the veteran battalions sealed their devotion to their general by their blood! [Footnote 60: "We advanced to Waterloo as the Greeks did to Thermopylae: all of us without fear, and most of us without hope."--_Speech of General Foy._] "But if Hannibal's genius may be likened to the Homeric god, who, in his hatred to the Trojans, rises from the deep to rally the fainting Greeks and to lead them against the enemy, so the calm courage with which Hector met his more than human adversary in his country's cause is no unworthy image of the unyielding magnanimity displayed by the aristocracy of Rome. As Hannibal utterly eclipses Carthage, so, on the contrary, Fabius, Marcellus, Claudius Nero, even Scipio himself, are as nothing when compared to the spirit and wisdom and power of Rome. The senate, which voted its thanks to its political enemy, Varro, after his disastrous defeat, 'because he had not despaired of the commonwealth,' and which disdained either to solicit or to reprove or to threaten or in any way to notice the twelve colonies which had refused their accustomed supplies of men for the army, is far more to be honored than the conqueror of Zama. This we should the more carefully bear in mind because our tendency is to admire individual greatness far more than national; and, as no single Roman will bear comparison to Hannibal, we are apt to murmur at the event of the contest, and to think that the victory was awarded to the least worthy of the combatants. On the contrary, never was the wisdom of God's providence more manifest than in the issue of the struggle between Rome and Carthage. "It was clearly for the good of mankind that Hannibal should be conquered; his triumph would have stopped the progress of the world; for great men can only act permanently by forming great nations; and no one man, even though it were Hannibal himself, can in one generation effect such a work. But where the nation has been merely enkindled for a while by a great man's spirit, the light passes away with him who communicated it; and the nation, when he is gone, is like a dead body to which magic power had for a moment given unnatural life: when the charm has ceased, the body is cold and stiff as before. He who grieves over the battle of Zama should carry on his thoughts to a period thirty years later, when Hannibal must in the course of nature have been dead, and consider how the isolated Phoenician city of Carthage was fitted to receive and to consolidate the civilization of Greece, or by its laws and institutions to bind together barbarians of every race and language into an organized empire, and prepare them for becoming, when that empire was dissolved, the free members of the commonwealth of Christian Europe."[61] [Footnote 61: Arnold.] It was in the spring of 207 B.C. that Hasdrubal, after skilfully disentangling himself from the Roman forces in Spain, and after a march conducted with great judgment and little loss through the interior of Gaul and the passes of the Alps, appeared in the country that now is the north of Lombardy, at the head of troops which he had partly brought out of Spain and partly levied among the Gauls and Ligurians on his way. At this time Hannibal, with his unconquered and seemingly unconquerable army, had been eight years in Italy, executing with strenuous ferocity the vow of hatred to Rome which had been sworn by him while yet a child at the bidding of his father, Hamilcar, who, as he boasted, had trained up his three sons, Hannibal, Hasdrubal, and Mago, like three lion's whelps, to prey upon the Romans. But Hannibal's latter campaigns had not been signalized by any such great victories as marked the first years of his invasion of Italy. The stern spirit of Roman resolution, ever highest in disaster and danger, had neither bent nor despaired beneath the merciless blows which "the dire African" dealt her in rapid succession at Trebia, at Thrasymene, and at Cannae. Her population was thinned by repeated slaughter in the field; poverty and actual scarcity ground down the survivors, through the fearful ravages which Hannibal's cavalry spread through their cornfields, their pasture lands, and their vineyards; many of her allies went over to the invader's side, and new clouds of foreign war threatened her from Macedonia and Gaul. But Rome receded not. Rich and poor among her citizens vied with each other in devotion to their country. The wealthy placed their stores, and all placed their lives, at the State's disposal. And though Hannibal could not be driven out of Italy, though every year brought its sufferings and sacrifices, Rome felt that her constancy had not been exerted in vain. If she was weakened by the continued strife, so was Hannibal also; and it was clear that the unaided resources of his army were unequal to the task of her destruction. The single deerhound could not pull down the quarry which he had so furiously assailed. Rome not only stood fiercely at bay, but had pressed back and gored her antagonist, that still, however, watched her in act to spring. She was weary, and bleeding at every pore; and there seemed to be little hope of her escape if the other hound of old Hamilcar's race should come up in time to aid his brother in the death grapple. Hasdrubal had commanded the Carthaginian armies in Spain for some time with varying but generally unfavorable fortune. He had not the full authority over the Punic forces in that country which his brother and his father had previously exercised. The faction at Carthage, which was at feud with his family, succeeded in fettering and interfering with his power; and other generals were from time to time sent into Spain, whose errors and misconduct caused the reverses that Hasdrubal met with. This is expressly attested by the Greek historian Polybius, who was the intimate friend of the younger Africanus, and drew his information respecting the Second Punic War from the best possible authorities. Livy gives a long narrative of campaigns between the Roman commanders in Spain and Hasdrubal, which is so palpably deformed by fictions and exaggerations as to be hardly deserving of attention. It is clear that in the year B.C. 208, at least, Hasdrubal outmanoeuvred Publius Scipio, who held the command of the Roman forces in Spain, and whose object was to prevent him from passing the Pyrenees and marching upon Italy. Scipio expected that Hasdrubal would attempt the nearest route along the coast of the Mediterranean, and he therefore carefully fortified and guarded the passes of the eastern Pyrenees. But Hasdrubal passed these mountains near their western extremity; and then, with a considerable force of Spanish infantry, with a small number of African troops, with some elephants and much treasure, he marched, not directly toward the coast of the Mediterranean, but in a northeastern line toward the centre of Gaul. He halted for the winter in the territory of the Arverni, the modern Auvergne, and conciliated or purchased the goodwill of the Gauls in that region so far that he not only found friendly winter quarters among them, but great numbers of them enlisted under him, and, on the approach of spring, marched with him to invade Italy. By thus entering Gaul at the southwest, and avoiding its southern maritime districts, Hasdrubal kept the Romans in complete ignorance of his precise operations and movements in that country; all that they knew was that Hasdrubal had baffled Scipio's attempts to detain him in Spain; that he had crossed the Pyrenees with soldiers, elephants, and money, and that he was raising fresh forces among the Gauls. The spring was sure to bring him into Italy, and then would come the real tempest of the war, when from the north and from the south the two Carthaginian armies, each under a son of the Thunderbolt[62], were to gather together around the seven hills of Rome. [Footnote 62: Hamilcar was surnamed Barca, which means the Thunderbolt. Sultan Bajazet had the similar surname of Yilderim.] In this emergency the Romans looked among themselves earnestly and anxiously for leaders fit to meet the perils of the coming campaign. The senate recommended the people to elect, as one of their consuls, Caius Claudius Nero, a patrician of one of the families of the great Claudian house. Nero had served during the preceding years of the war both against Hannibal in Italy and against Hasdrubal in Spain; but it is remarkable that the histories which we possess record no successes as having been achieved by him either before or after his great campaign of the Metaurus. It proves much for the sagacity of the leading men of the senate that they recognized in Nero the energy and spirit which were required at this crisis, and it is equally creditable to the patriotism of the people that they followed the advice of the senate by electing a general who had no showy exploits to recommend him to their choice. It was a matter of greater difficulty to find a second consul; the laws required that one consul should be a plebeian; and the plebeian nobility had been fearfully thinned by the events of the war. While the senators anxiously deliberated among themselves what fit colleague for Nero could be nominated at the coming comitia, and sorrowfully recalled the names of Marcellus, Gracchus, and other plebeian generals who were no more, one taciturn and moody old man sat in sullen apathy among the conscript fathers. This was Marcus Livius, who had been consul in the year before the beginning of this war, and had then gained a victory over the Illyrians. After his consulship he had been impeached before the people on a charge of peculation and unfair division of the spoils among his soldiers; the verdict was unjustly given against him, and the sense of this wrong, and of the indignity thus put upon him, had rankled unceasingly in the bosom of Livius, so that for eight years after his trial he had lived in seclusion in his country seat, taking no part in any affairs of State. Latterly the censors had compelled him to come to Rome and resume his place in the senate, where he used to sit gloomily apart, giving only a silent vote. At last an unjust accusation against one of his near kinsmen made him break silence, and he harangued the house in words of weight and sense, which drew attention to him and taught the senators that a strong spirit dwelt beneath that unimposing exterior. Now, while they were debating on what noble of a plebeian house was fit to assume the perilous honors of the consulate, some of the elder of them looked on Marcus Livius, and remembered that in the very last triumph which had been celebrated in the streets of Rome, this grim old man had sat in the car of victory, and that he had offered the last thanksgiving sacrifice for the success of the Roman arms which had bled before Capitoline Jove. There had been no triumphs since Hannibal came into Italy. The Illyrian campaign of Livius was the last that had been so honored; perhaps it might be destined for him now to renew the long-interrupted series. The senators resolved that Livius should be put in nomination as consul with Nero; the people were willing to elect him: the only opposition came from himself. He taunted them with their inconsistency in honoring the man whom they had convicted of a base crime. "If I am innocent," said he, "why did you place such a stain on me? If I am guilty, why am I more fit for a second consulship than I was for my first one?" The other senators remonstrated with him, urging the example of the great Camillus, who, after an unjust condemnation on a similar charge, both served and saved his country. At last Livius ceased to object; and Caius Claudius Nero and Marcus Livius were chosen consuls of Rome. A quarrel had long existed between the two consuls, and the senators strove to effect a reconciliation between them before the campaign. Here again Livius for a long time obstinately resisted the wish of his fellow-senators. He said it was best for the State that he and Nero should continue to hate one another. Each would do his duty better when he knew that he was watched by an enemy in the person of his own colleague. At last the entreaties of the senate prevailed, and Livius consented to forego the feud, and to cooperate with Nero in preparing for the coming struggle. As soon as the winter snows were thawed, Hasdrubal commenced his march from Auvergne to the Alps. He experienced none of the difficulties which his brother had met with from the mountain tribes. Hannibal's army had been the first body of regular troops that had ever traversed their regions; and, as wild animals assail a traveller, the natives rose against it instinctively, in imagined defence of their own habitations, which they supposed to be the objects of Carthaginian ambition. But the fame of the war, with which Italy had now been convulsed for twelve years, had penetrated into the Alpine passes, and the mountaineers now understood that a mighty city southward of the Alps was to be attacked by the troops whom they saw marching among them. They now not only opposed no resistance to the passage of Hasdrubal, but many of them, out of love of enterprise and plunder, or allured by the high pay that he offered, took service with him; and thus he advanced upon Italy with an army that gathered strength at every league. It is said, also, that some of the most important engineering works which Hannibal had constructed were found by Hasdrubal still in existence, and materially favored the speed of his advance. He thus emerged into Italy from the Alpine valleys much sooner than had been anticipated. Many warriors of the Ligurian tribes joined him; and, crossing the River Po, he marched down its southern bank to the city of Placentia, which he wished to secure as a base for his future operations. Placentia resisted him as bravely as it had resisted Hannibal twelve years before, and for some time Hasdrubal was occupied with a fruitless siege before its walls. Six armies were levied for the defence of Italy when the long-dreaded approach of Hasdrubal was announced. Seventy thousand Romans served in the fifteen legions of which, with an equal number of Italian allies, those armies and the garrisons were composed. Upward of thirty thousand more Romans were serving in Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain. The whole number of Roman citizens of an age fit for military duty scarcely exceeded a hundred and thirty thousand. The census taken before the commencement of the war had shown a total of two hundred and seventy thousand, which had been diminished by more than half during twelve years. These numbers are fearfully emphatic of the extremity to which Rome was reduced, and of her gigantic efforts in that great agony of her fate. Not merely men, but money and military stores, were drained to the utmost, and if the armies of that year should be swept off by a repetition of the slaughters of Thrasymene and Cannae all felt that Rome would cease to exist. Even if the campaign were to be marked by no decisive success on either side her ruin seemed certain. In South Italy, Hannibal had either detached Rome's allies from her or had impoverished them by the ravages of his army. If Hasdrubal could have done the same in Upper Italy; if Etruria, Umbria, and Northern Latium had either revolted or been laid waste, Rome must have sunk beneath sheer starvation, for the hostile or desolated territory would have yielded no supplies of corn for her population, and money to purchase it from abroad there was none. Instant victory was a matter of life or death. Three of her six armies were ordered to the North, but the first of these was required to overawe the disaffected Etruscan. The second army of the North was pushed forward, under Porcius, the praetor, to meet and keep in check the advanced troops of Hasdrubal; while the third, the grand army of the North, which was to be under the immediate command of the consul Livius, who had the chief command in all North Italy, advanced more slowly in its support. There were similarly three armies in the South, under the orders of the other consul, Claudius Nero. The lot had decided that Livius was to be opposed to Hasdrubal, and that Nero should face Hannibal. And "when all was ordered as themselves thought best, the two consuls went forth from the city, each his several way. The people of Rome were now quite otherwise affected than they had been when L. Æmilius Paulus and C. Terentius Varro were sent against Hannibal. They did no longer take upon them to direct their generals, or bid them despatch and win the victory betimes, but rather they stood in fear lest all diligence, wisdom, and valor should prove too little; for since few years had passed wherein some one of their generals had not been slain, and since it was manifest that, if either of these present consuls were defeated or put to the worst, the two Carthaginians would forthwith join, and make short work with the other, it seemed a greater happiness than could be expected that each of them should return home victor, and come off with honor from such mighty opposition as he was like to find. With extreme difficulty had Rome held up her head ever since the battle of Cannae; though it were so, that Hannibal alone, with little help from Carthage, had continued the war in Italy. But there was now arrived another son of Hamilcar, and one that in his present expedition had seemed a man of more sufficiency than Hannibal himself; for whereas, in that long and dangerous march through barbarous nations, over great rivers and mountains that were thought unpassable, Hannibal had lost a great part of his army, this Hasdrubal, in the same places, had multiplied his numbers, and gathering the people that he found in the way, descended from the Alps like a rolling snowball, far greater than he came over the Pyrenees at his first setting out of Spain. These considerations and the like, of which fear presented many unto them, caused the people of Rome to wait upon their consuls out of the town, like a pensive train of mourners, thinking upon Marcellus and Crispinus, upon whom, in the like sort, they had given attendance the last year, but saw neither of them return alive from a less dangerous war. Particularly old Q. Fabius gave his accustomed advice to M. Livius, that he should abstain from giving or taking battle until he well understood the enemy's condition. But the consul made him a froward answer, and said that he would fight the very first day, for that he thought it long till he should either recover his honor by victory, or, by seeing the overthrow of his own unjust citizens, satisfy himself with the joy of a great though not an honest revenge. But his meaning was better than his words." Hannibal at this period occupied with his veteran but much-reduced forces the extreme south of Italy. It had not been expected either by friend or foe that Hasdrubal would effect his passage of the Alps so early in the year as actually occurred. And even when Hannibal learned that his brother was in Italy, and had advanced as far as Placentia, he was obliged to pause for further intelligence before he himself commenced active operations, as he could not tell whether his brother might not be invited into Etruria, to aid the party there that was disaffected to Rome, or whether he would march down by the Adriatic Sea. Hannibal led his troops out of their winter quarters in Bruttium, and marched northward as far as Canusium. Nero had his head-quarters near Venusia, with an army which he had increased to forty thousand foot and two thousand five hundred horse, by incorporating under his own command some of the legions which had been intended to act under other generals in the South. There was another Roman army, twenty thousand strong, south of Hannibal at Tarentum. The strength of that city secured this Roman force from any attack by Hannibal, and it was a serious matter to march northward and leave it in his rear, free to act against all his depots and allies in the friendly part of Italy, which for the two or three last campaigns had served him for a base of his operations. Moreover, Nero's army was so strong that Hannibal could not concentrate troops enough to assume the offensive against it without weakening his garrisons and relinquishing, at least for a time, his grasp upon the southern provinces. To do this before he was certainly informed of his brother's operations would have been a useless sacrifice, as Nero could retreat before him upon the other Roman armies near the capital, and Hannibal knew by experience that a mere advance of his army upon the walls of Rome would have no effect on the fortunes of the war. In the hope, probably, of inducing Nero to follow him and of gaining an opportunity of outmanoeuvring the Roman consul and attacking him on his march, Hannibal moved into Lucania, and then back into Apulia; he again marched down into Bruttium, and strengthened his army by a levy of recruits in that district. Nero followed him, but gave him no chance of assailing him at a disadvantage. Some partial encounters seem to have taken place; but the consul could not prevent Hannibal's junction with his Bruttian levies, nor could Hannibal gain an opportunity of surprising and crushing the consul.[63] Hannibal returned to his former headquarters at Canusium, and halted there in expectation of further tidings of his brother's movements. Nero also resumed his former position in observation of the Carthaginian army. [Footnote 63: The annalists whom Livy copied spoke of Nero's gaining repeated victories over Hannibal, and killing and taking his men by tens of thousands. The falsehood of all this is self-evident. If Nero could thus always beat Hannibal, the Romans would not have been in such an agony of dread about Hasdrubal as all writers describe. Indeed, we have the express testimony of Polybius that the statements which we read in Livy of Marcellus, Nero, and others gaining victories over Hannibal in Italy must be all fabrications of Roman vanity. Polybius states that Hannibal was never defeated before the battle of Zama; and in another passage he mentions that after the defeats which Hannibal inflicted on the Romans in the early years of the war, they no longer dared face his army in a pitched battle on a fair field, and yet they resolutely maintained the war. He rightly explains this by referring to the superiority of Hannibal's cavalry, the arm which gained him all his victories. By keeping within fortified lines, or close to the sides of the mountains when Hannibal approached them, the Romans rendered his cavalry ineffective; and a glance at the geography of Italy will show how an army can traverse the greater part of that country without venturing far from the high grounds.] Meanwhile, Hasdrubal had raised the siege of Placentia, and was advancing toward Ariminum on the Adriatic, and driving before him the Roman army under Porcius. Nor when the consul Livius had come up, and united the second and third armies of the North, could he make head against the invaders. The Romans still fell back before Hasdrubal beyond Ariminum, beyond the Metaurus, and as far as the little town of Sena, to the southeast of that river. Hasdrubal was not unmindful of the necessity of acting in concert with his brother. He sent messengers to Hannibal to announce his own line of march, and to propose that they should unite their armies in South Umbria and then wheel round against Rome. Those messengers traversed the greater part of Italy in safety, but, when close to the object of their mission, were captured by a Roman detachment; and Hasdrubal's letter, detailing his whole plan of the campaign, was laid, not in his brother's hands, but in those of the commander of the Roman armies of the South. Nero saw at once the full importance of the crisis. The two sons of Hamilcar were now within two hundred miles of each other, and if Rome were to be saved the brothers must never meet alive. Nero instantly ordered seven thousand picked men, a thousand being cavalry, to hold themselves in readiness for a secret expedition against one of Hannibal's garrisons, and as soon as night had set in he hurried forward on his bold enterprise; but he quickly left the southern road toward Lucania, and, wheeling round, pressed northward with the utmost rapidity toward Picenum. He had, during the preceding afternoon, sent messengers to Rome, who were to lay Hasdrubal's letters before the senate. There was a law forbidding a consul to make war or march his army beyond the limits of the province assigned to him; but in such an emergency, Nero did not wait for the permission of the senate to execute his project, but informed them that he was already on his march to join Livius against Hasdrubal. He advised them to send the two legions which formed the home garrison on to Narnia, so as to defend that pass of the Flaminian road against Hasdrubal, in case he should march upon Rome before the consular armies could attack him. They were to supply the place of these two legions at Rome by a levy _en masse_ in the city, and by ordering up the reserve legion from Capua. These were his communications to the senate. He also sent horsemen forward along his line of march, with orders to the local authorities to bring stores of provisions and refreshment of every kind to the roadside, and to have relays of carriages ready for the conveyance of the wearied soldiers. Such were the precautions which he took for accelerating his march; and when he had advanced some little distance from his camp, he briefly informed his soldiers of the real object of their expedition. He told them that never was there a design more seemingly audacious and more really safe. He said he was leading them to a certain victory, for his colleague had an army large enough to balance the enemy already, so that _their_ swords would decisively turn the scale. The very rumor that a fresh consul and a fresh army had come up, when heard on the battle-field--and he would take care that they should not be heard of before they were seen and felt--would settle the business. They would have all the credit of the victory and of having dealt the final decisive blow. He appealed to the enthusiastic reception which they already met with on their line of march as a proof and an omen of their good fortune. And, indeed, their whole path was amid the vows and prayers and praises of their countrymen. The entire population of the districts through which they passed flocked to the roadside to see and bless the deliverers of their country. Food, drink, and refreshments of every kind were eagerly pressed on their acceptance. Each peasant thought a favor was conferred on him if one of Nero's chosen band would accept aught at his hands. The soldiers caught the full spirit of their leader. Night and day they marched forward, taking their hurried meals in the ranks, and resting by relay in the wagons which the zeal of the country people provided, and which followed in the rear of the column. Meanwhile, at Rome, the news of Nero's expedition had caused the greatest excitement and alarm. All men felt the full audacity of the enterprise, but hesitated what epithet to apply to it. It was evident that Nero's conduct would be judged of by the event, that most unfair criterion, as the Roman historian truly terms it. People reasoned on the perilous state in which Nero had left the rest of his army, without a general, and deprived of the core of its strength, in the vicinity of the terrible Hannibal. They speculated on how long it would take Hannibal to pursue and overtake Nero himself, and his expeditionary force. They talked over the former disasters of the war, and the fall of both the consuls of the last year. All these calamities had come on them while they had only one Carthaginian general and army to deal with in Italy. Now they had two Punic wars at a time. They had two Carthaginian armies, they had almost two Hannibals, in Italy. Hasdrubal was sprung from the same father; trained up in the same hostility to Rome; equally practised in battle against their legions; and, if the comparative speed and success with which he had crossed the Alps were a fair test, he was even a better general than his brother. With fear for their interpreter of every rumor, they exaggerated the strength of their enemy's forces in every quarter, and criticised and distrusted their own. Fortunately for Rome, while she was thus a prey to terror and anxiety, her consul's nerves were stout and strong, and he resolutely urged on his march toward Sena, where his colleague Livius and the praetor Porcius were encamped, Hasdrubal's army being in position about half a mile to their north. Nero had sent couriers forward to apprise his colleague of his project and of his approach; and by the advice of Livius, Nero so timed his final march as to reach the camp at Sena by night. According to a previous arrangement, Nero's men were received silently into the tents of their comrades, each according to his rank. By these means there was no enlargement of the camp that could betray to Hasdrubal the accession of force which the Romans had received. This was considerable, as Nero's numbers had been increased on the march by the volunteers, who offered themselves in crowds, and from whom he selected the most promising men, and especially the veterans of former campaigns. A council of war was held on the morning after his arrival, in which some advised that time should be given for Nero's men to refresh themselves after the fatigue of such a march. But Nero vehemently opposed all delay. "The officer," said he, "who is for giving time to my men here to rest themselves is for giving time to Hannibal to attack my men, whom I have left in the camp in Apulia. He is for giving time to Hannibal and Hasdrubal to discover my march, and to manoeuvre for a junction with each other in Cisalpine Gaul at their leisure. We must fight instantly, while both the foe here and the foe in the South are ignorant of our movements. We must destroy this Hasdrubal, and I must be back in Apulia before Hannibal awakes from his torpor." Nero's advice prevailed. It was resolved to fight directly; and before the consuls and praetor left the tent of Livius, the red ensign, which was the signal to prepare for immediate action, was hoisted, and the Romans forthwith drew up in battle array outside the camp. Hasdrubal had been anxious to bring Livius and Porcius to battle, though he had not judged it expedient to attack them in their lines. And now, on hearing that the Romans offered battle, he also drew up his men and advanced toward them. No spy or deserter had informed him of Nero's arrival, nor had he received any direct information that he had more than his old enemies to deal with. But as he rode forward to reconnoitre the Roman line, he thought that their numbers seemed to have increased, and that the armor of some of them was unusually dull and stained. He noticed, also, that the horses of some of the cavalry appeared to be rough and out of condition, as if they had just come from a succession of forced marches. So also, though, owing to the precaution of Livius, the Roman camp showed no change of size, it had not escaped the quick ear of the Carthaginian general that the trumpet which gave the signal to the Roman legions sounded that morning once oftener than usual, as if directing the troops of some additional superior officer. Hasdrubal, from his Spanish campaigns, was well acquainted with all the sounds and signals of Roman war, and from all that he heard and saw he felt convinced that both the Roman consuls were before him. In doubt and difficulty as to what might have taken place between the armies of the South, and probably hoping that Hannibal also was approaching, Hasdrubal determined to avoid an encounter with the combined Roman forces, and to endeavor to retreat upon Insubrian Gaul, where he would be in a friendly country, and could endeavor to reopen his communication with his brother. He therefore led his troops back into their camp; and as the Romans did not venture on an assault upon his intrenchments, and Hasdrubal did not choose to commence his retreat in their sight, the day passed away in inaction. At the first watch of the night Hasdrubal led his men silently out of their camp, and moved northward toward the Metaurus, in the hope of placing that river between himself and the Romans before his retreat was discovered. His guides betrayed him; and having purposely led him away from the part of the river that was fordable, they made their escape in the dark, and left Hasdrubal and his army wandering in confusion along the steep bank, and seeking in vain for a spot where the stream could be safely crossed. At last they halted; and when day dawned on them, Hasdrubal found that great numbers of his men, in their fatigue and impatience, had lost all discipline and subordination, and that many of his Gallic auxiliaries had got drunk, and were lying helpless in their quarters. The Roman cavalry was soon seen coming up in pursuit, followed at no great distance by the legions, which marched in readiness for an instant engagement. It was hopeless for Hasdrubal to think of continuing his retreat before them. The prospect of immediate battle might recall the disordered part of his troops to a sense of duty, and revive the instinct of discipline. He therefore ordered his men to prepare for action instantly, and made the best arrangement of them that the nature of the ground would permit. Heeren has well described the general appearance of a Carthaginian army. He says: "It was an assemblage of the most opposite races of the human species from the farthest parts of the globe. Hordes of half-naked Gauls were ranged next to companies of white-clothed Iberians, and savage Ligurians next to the far-travelled Nasamones and Lotophagi. Carthaginians and Phoenici-Africans formed the centre, while innumerable troops of Numidian horsemen, taken from all the tribes of the Desert, swarmed about on unsaddled horses, and formed the wings; the van was composed of Balearic slingers; and a line of colossal elephants, with their Ethiopian guides, formed, as it were, a chain of moving fortresses before the whole army." Such were the usual materials and arrangements of the hosts that fought for Carthage; but the troops under Hasdrubal were not in all respects thus constituted or thus stationed. He seems to have been especially deficient in cavalry, and he had few African troops, though some Carthaginians of high rank were with him. His veteran Spanish infantry, armed with helmets and shields, and short cut-and-thrust swords, were the best part of his army. These and his few Africans he drew up on his right wing, under his own personal command. In the centre he placed his Ligurian infantry, and on the left wing he placed or retained the Gauls, who were armed with long javelins and with huge broadswords and targets. The rugged nature of the ground in front and on the flank of this part of his line made him hope that the Roman right wing would be unable to come to close quarters with these unserviceable barbarians before he could make some impression with his Spanish veterans on the Roman left. This was the only chance that he had of victory or safety, and he seems to have done everything that good generalship could do to secure it. He placed his elephants in advance of his centre and right wing. He had caused the driver of each of them to be provided with a sharp iron spike and a mallet, and had given orders that every beast that became unmanageable, and ran back upon his own ranks, should be instantly killed by driving the spike into the vertebra at the junction of the head and the spine. Hasdrubal's elephants were ten in number. We have no trustworthy information as to the amount of his infantry, but it is quite clear that he was greatly outnumbered by the combined Roman forces. The tactics of the Roman legions had not yet acquired that perfection which they received from the military genius of Marius,[64] and which we read of in the first chapter of Gibbon. We possess, in that great work, an account of the Roman legions at the end of the commonwealth, and during the early ages of the empire, which those alone can adequately admire who have attempted a similar description. We have also, in the sixth and seventeenth books of Polybius, an elaborate discussion on the military system of the Romans in his time, which was not far distant from the time of the battle of the Metaurus. But the subject is beset with difficulties; and instead of entering into minute but inconclusive details, I would refer to Gibbon's first chapter as serving for a general description of the Roman army in its period of perfection, and remark that the training and armor which the whole legion received in the time of Augustus were, two centuries earlier, only partially introduced. Two divisions of troops, called _hastati_ and _principes_, formed the bulk of each Roman legion in the Second Punic War. Each of these divisions was twelve hundred strong. The hastatus and the princeps legionary bore a breastplate or coat of mail, brazen greaves, and a brazen helmet with a lofty upright crest of scarlet or black feathers. He had a large oblong shield; and, as weapons of offence, two javelins, one of which was light and slender, but the other was a strong and massive weapon, with a shaft about four feet long and an iron head of equal length. The sword was carried on the right thigh, and was a short cut-and-thrust weapon, like that which was used by the Spaniards. Thus armed, the hastati formed the front division of the legion, and the principes the second. Each division was drawn up about ten deep, a space of three feet being allowed between the files as well as the ranks, so as to give each legionary ample room for the use of his javelins and of his sword and shield. The men in the second rank did not stand immediately behind those in the first rank, but the files were alternate, like the position of the men on a draught-board. This was termed the _quincunx_ order. [Footnote 64: Most probably during the period of his prolonged consulship, from B.C. 104 to B.C. 101, while he was training his army against the Cimbri and the Teutons.] Niebuhr considers that this arrangement enabled the legion to keep up a shower of javelins on the enemy for some considerable time. He says: "When the first line had hurled its _pila_, it probably stepped back between those who stood behind it, and two steps forward restored the front nearly to its first position; a movement which, on account of the arrangement of the quincunx, could be executed without losing a moment. Thus one line succeeded the other in the front till it was time to draw the swords; nay, when it was found expedient, the lines which had already been in the front might repeat this change, since the stores of pila were surely not confined to the two which each soldier took with him into battle. "The same charge must have taken place in fighting with the sword, which, when the same tactics were adopted on both sides, was anything but a confused _mêlée_; on the contrary, it was a series of single combats." He adds that a military man of experience had been consulted by him on the subject and had given it as his opinion "that the change of the lines as described above was by no means impracticable; but, in the absence of the deafening noise of gunpowder, it cannot have had even any difficulty with well-trained troops." The third division of the legion was six hundred strong and acted as a reserve. It was always composed of veteran soldiers, who were called the _triarii_. Their arms were the same as these of the principes and hastati, except that each _triarian_ carried a spear instead of javelins. The rest of the legion consisted of light-armed troops, who acted as skirmishers. The cavalry of each legion was at this period about three hundred strong. The Italian allies who were attached to the legion seem to have been similarly armed and equipped, but their numerical proportion of cavalry was much larger. Such was the nature of the forces that advanced on the Roman side to the battle of the Metaurus. Nero commanded the right wing, Livius the left, and the praetor Porcius had the command of the centre. "Both Romans and Carthaginians well understood how much depended upon the fortune of this day, and how little hope of safety there was for the vanquished. Only the Romans herein seemed to have had the better in conceit and opinion that they were to fight with men desirous to have fled from them; and according to this presumption came Livius the consul, with a proud bravery, to give charge on the Spaniards and Africans, by whom he was so sharply entertained that the victory seemed very doubtful. The Africans and Spaniards were stout soldiers, and well acquainted with the manner of the Roman fight. The Ligurians also were a hardy nation, and not accustomed to give ground, which they needed the less, or were able now to do, being placed in the midst. Livius, therefore, and Porcius found great opposition; and with great slaughter on both sides prevailed little or nothing. Besides other difficulties, they were exceedingly troubled by the elephants, that brake their first ranks and put them in such disorder as the Roman ensigns were driven to fall back; all this while Claudius Nero, laboring in vain against a steep hill, was unable to come to blows with the Gauls that stood opposite him, but out of danger. This made Hasdrubal the more confident, who, seeing his own left wing safe, did the more boldly and fiercely make impression on the other side upon the left wing of the Romans."[65] [Footnote 65: Sir Walter Raleigh: _Historie of the World_.] But at last Nero, who found that Hasdrubal refused his left wing, and who could not overcome the difficulties of the ground in the quarter assigned to him, decided the battle by another stroke of that military genius which had inspired his march. Wheeling a brigade of his best men round the rear of the rest of the Roman army, Nero fiercely charged the flank of the Spaniards and Africans. The charge was as successful as it was sudden. Rolled back in disorder upon each other, and overwhelmed by numbers, the Spaniards and Ligurians died, fighting gallantly to the last. The Gauls, who had taken little or no part in the strife of the day, were then surrounded, and butchered almost without resistance. Hasdrubal, after having, by the confession of his enemies, done all that a general could do, when he saw that the victory was irreparably lost, scorning to survive the gallant host which he had led, and to gratify, as a captive, Roman cruelty and pride, spurred his horse into the midst of a Roman cohort, and sword in hand, met the death that was worthy of the son of Hamilcar and the brother of Hannibal. Success the most complete had crowned Nero's enterprise. Returning as rapidly as he had advanced, he was again facing the inactive enemies in the South before they even knew of his march. But he brought with him a ghastly trophy of what he had done. In the true spirit of that savage brutality which deformed the Roman national character, Nero ordered Hasdrubal's head to be flung into his brother's camp. Ten years had passed since Hannibal had last gazed on those features. The sons of Hamilcar had then planned their system of warfare against Rome which they had so nearly brought to successful accomplishment. Year after year had Hannibal been struggling in Italy, in the hope of one day hailing the arrival of him whom he had left in Spain, and of seeing his brother's eye flash with affection and pride at the junction of their irresistible hosts. He now saw that eye glazed in death, and in the agony of his heart the great Carthaginian groaned aloud that he recognized his country's destiny. Meanwhile, at the tidings of the great battle, Rome at once rose from the thrill of anxiety and terror to the full confidence of triumph. Hannibal might retain his hold on Southern Italy for a few years longer, but the imperial city and her allies were no longer in danger from his arms; and, after Hannibal's downfall, the great military republic of the ancient world met in her career of conquest no other worthy competitor. Byron has termed Nero's march "unequalled," and, in the magnitude of its consequences, it is so. Viewed only as a military exploit, it remains unparalleled save by Marlborough's bold march from Flanders to the Danube in the campaign of Blenheim, and perhaps also by the Archduke Charles' lateral march in 1796, by which he overwhelmed the French under Jourdan, and then, driving Moreau through the Black Forest and across the Rhine, for a while freed Germany from her invaders. SCIPIO AFRICANUS CRUSHES HANNIBAL AT ZAMA AND SUBJUGATES CARTHAGE B.C. 202 LIVY (Sprung from a colony of Tyre, Carthage, founded about B.C. 800, rapidly developed, through a wonderful system of colonization, into a dominating power, her rule extending through Northwestern Africa and Western Europe. In B.C. 509 Carthage made her first treaty with Rome. But the rivalry which grew up between the two Powers developed into a stubborn contest for the empire of the world, culminating in the three Punic wars. The first of these lasted from B.C. 264 to 241; the second, from B.C. 218 to 201. In the interval between these two wars Rome acquired the northern part of Italy, whence she sent victorious armies against the barbarians in Gaul. Meanwhile, under Hamilcar Barcar, the Carthaginians had effected the conquest of Southern Spain, which they reduced to the condition of a dependency. Hamilcar's greater son, Hannibal, was compelled by his father to swear eternal enmity to Rome. Having established the Carthaginian empire in Spain, at the age of twenty-six he took the Spanish city of Saguntum, an ally of Rome, and this was the immediate cause of the Second Punic War, which the Romans declared. The passage of the Alps by Hannibal is regarded as one of the greatest military performances in history. He was welcomed by the Gauls as a deliverer, and was soon operating in Northern Italy, his appearance there being a complete surprise to the Romans. He won victories over them at the rivers Ticinus and Trebia, B.C. 218; another in 217 at Lake Trasimenus; a great triumph at Cannae in 216; took Capua in the same year, and wintered there; in 212 captured Tarentum; marched against Rome in 211; and in 203 was recalled to Africa. In the mean time the Romans had decided to carry the war into Africa, although in 215 they had beaten Hannibal, and in 211 had retaken Capua. Publius Cornelius Scipio [Scipio Africanus Major] in B.C. 210-206 drove the Carthaginians out of Spain. In 205 he was made consul, and the next year invaded Africa. Landing on the coast, he was met by the forces of the Numidian King, who became his allies against Carthage. In 203 he defeated Syphax and Hasdrubal. Hannibal now having returned to Carthage, he took command of the forces which she opposed to the Roman invaders, but in B.C. 202 suffered final overthrow at Zama, in the battle that ended the Second Punic War. Livy's account of the closing scenes of that war, which here follows, gives the reader a clear understanding of the sequence and conclusion of the events related.) Marcus Servilius and Tiberius Claudius, having assembled the senate, consulted them respecting the provinces. As both were desirous of having Africa, they wished Italy and Africa to be disposed of by lots; but, principally in consequence of the exertions of Quintus Metellus, Africa was neither assigned to anyone nor withheld. The consuls were ordered to make application to the tribunes of the people, to the effect that, if they thought proper, they should put it to the people to decide whom they wished to conduct the war in Africa. All the tribes nominated Publius Scipio. Nevertheless, the consuls put the province of Africa to the lot, for so the senate had decreed. Africa fell to the lot of Tiberius Claudius, who was to cross over into Africa with a fleet of fifty ships, all quinqueremes, and have an equal command with Scipio. Marcus Servilius obtained Etruria. Caius Servilius was continued in command in the same province, in case the senate resolved that the consul should remain at the city. Of the praetors, Marcus Sextus obtained Gaul, which province, together with two legions, Publius Quinctilius Varus was to deliver to him; Caius Livius obtained Bruttium, with the two legions which Publius Sempronius, the proconsul, had commanded the former year; Cneius Tremellius had Sicily, and was to receive the province and two legions from Publius Villius Tappulus, a praetor of the former year; Villius, as propraetor, was to protect the coast of Sicily with twenty men-of-war and a thousand soldiers; and Marcus Pomponius was to convey thence to Rome one thousand five hundred soldiers, with the remaining twenty ships. The city jurisdiction fell to Caius Aurelius Cotta; and the rest of the praetors were continued in command of the respective provinces and armies which they then had. Not more than sixteen legions were employed this year in the defence of the empire. And, that they might have the gods favorably disposed toward them in all their undertakings and proceedings, it was ordered that the consuls, before they set out to the war, should celebrate those games and sacrifice those victims of the larger sort which, in the consulate of Marcus Claudius Marcellus and Titus Quinctius, Titus Manlius the dictator had vowed, provided the commonwealth should continue in the same state for the next five years. The games were exhibited in the circus during four days, and the victims sacrificed to those deities to whom they had been vowed. Meanwhile, hope and anxiety daily and simultaneously increased; nor could the minds of men be brought to any fixed conclusion, whether it was a fit subject for rejoicing that Hannibal had now at length, after the sixteenth year, departed from Italy and left the Romans in the unmolested possession of it or whether they had not greater cause to fear from his having transported his army in safety into Africa. They said that the scene of action certainly was changed, but not the danger. That Quintus Fabius, lately deceased, who had foretold how arduous the contest would be, was used to predict, not without good reason, that Hannibal would prove a more formidable enemy in his own country than he had been in a foreign one; and that Scipio would have to encounter, not Syphax, a king of undisciplined barbarians whose armies Statorius, a man little better than a soldier's drudge, was used to lead, nor his father-in-law Hasdrubal, that most fugacious general, nor tumultuary armies hastily collected out of a crowd of half-armed rustics, but Hannibal, born in a manner in the pavilion of his father, that bravest of generals, nurtured and educated in the midst of arms, who served as a soldier formerly, when a boy, and became a general when he had scarcely attained the age of manhood; who, having grown old in victory, had filled Spain, Gaul, and Italy, from the Alps to the strait, with monuments of his vast achievements; who commanded troops who had served as long as he had himself; troops hardened by the endurance of every species of suffering, such as it is scarcely credible that men could have supported; stained a thousand times with Roman blood, and bearing with them the spoils not only of soldiers, but of generals. That many would meet the eyes of Scipio in battle who had with their own hands slain Roman praetors, generals, and consuls; many decorated with crowns in reward for having scaled walls and crossed ramparts; many who had traversed the captured camps and cities of the Romans. That the magistrates of the Roman people had not then so many fasces as Hannibal could have carried before him, having taken them from generals whom he had slain. While their minds were harassed by these apprehensions, their anxiety and fears were further increased from the circumstance that, whereas they had been accustomed to carry on war for several years in different parts of Italy, and within their view, with languid hopes and without the prospect of bringing it to a speedy termination, Scipio and Hannibal had stimulated the minds of all, as generals prepared for a final contest. Even those persons whose confidence in Scipio and hopes of victory were great, were affected with anxiety, increasing in proportion as they saw their completion approaching. The state of feeling among the Carthaginians was much the same; for when they turned their eyes on Hannibal, and the greatness of his achievements, they repented having solicited peace; but when again they reflected that they had been twice defeated in a pitched battle, that Syphax had been made prisoner, that they had been driven out of Spain and Italy, and that all this had been effected by the valor and conduct of Scipio alone, they regarded him with horror, as a general marked out by destiny, and born for their destruction. Hannibal had by this time arrived at Adrumetum, from which place, after employing a few days there in refreshing his soldiers, who had suffered from the motion by sea, he proceeded by forced marches to Zama, roused by the alarming statements of messengers who brought word that all the country around Carthage was filled with armed troops. Zama is distant from Carthage a five days' journey. Some spies whom he sent out from this place, being intercepted by the Roman guard and brought before Scipio, he directed that they should be handed over to the military tribunes, and after having been desired fearlessly to survey everything, to be conducted through the camp wherever they chose; then, asking them whether they had examined everything to their satisfaction, he assigned them an escort and sent them back to Hannibal. Hannibal received none of the circumstances which were reported to him with feelings of joy, for they brought word that, as it happened, Masinissa had joined the enemy that very day with six thousand infantry and four thousand horse; but he was principally dispirited by the confidence of his enemy, which, doubtless, was not conceived without some ground. Accordingly, though he himself was the originator of the war, and by his coming had upset the truce which had been entered into, and cut off all hopes of a treaty, yet concluding that more favorable terms might be obtained if he solicited peace while his strength was unimpaired than when vanquished, he sent a message to Scipio requesting permission to confer with him. Scipio took up his position not far from the city of Naragara, in a situation convenient not only for other purposes, but also because there was a watering-place within a dart's throw. Hannibal took possession of an eminence four miles thence, safe and convenient in every respect, except that he had a long way to go for water. Here in the intermediate space a place was chosen open to view from all sides, that there might be no opportunity for treachery. Their armed attendants having retired to an equal distance, they met, each attended by one interpreter, being the greatest generals not only of their own times, but of any to be found in the records of the times preceding them, and equal to any of the kings or generals of any nation whatever. When they came within sight of each other they remained silent for a short time, thunderstruck, as it were, with mutual admiration. At length Hannibal thus began: "Since fate hath so ordained it that I, who was the first to wage war upon the Romans, and who have so often had victory almost within my reach, should voluntarily come to sue for peace, I rejoice that it is you, above all others, from whom it is my lot to solicit it. To you, also, amid the many distinguished events of your life, it will not be esteemed one of the least glorious that Hannibal, to whom the gods had so often granted victory over the Roman generals, should have yielded to you; and that you should have put an end to this war, which has been rendered remarkable by your calamities before it was by ours. "Peace is proposed at a time when you have the advantage. We who negotiate it are the persons whom it most concerns to obtain it, and we are persons whose arrangements, be they what they will, our states will ratify. You have recovered Spain, which had been lost, after driving thence four Carthaginian armies. When elected consul, though all others wanted courage to defend Italy, you crossed over into Africa, where having cut to pieces two armies, having at once captured and burnt two camps in the same hour, having made prisoner Syphax, a most powerful king, and seized so many towns of his dominions and so many of ours, you have dragged me from Italy, the possession of which I had firmly held for now sixteen years. While your affairs are in a favorable and ours in a dubious state, you would derive honor and splendor from granting peace; while to us, who solicit it, it would be considered as necessary rather than honorable. "It is indeed the right of him who grants, and not of him who solicits it, to dictate the terms of peace, but perhaps we may not be unworthy to impose upon ourselves the fine. We do not refuse that all those possessions on account of which the war was begun should be yours; Sicily, Sardinia, Spain, with all the islands lying in any part of the sea, between Africa and Italy. Let us Carthaginians, confined within the shores of Africa, behold you, since such is the pleasure of the gods, extending your empire over foreign nations both by sea and land. I cannot deny that you have reason to suspect the Carthaginian faith, in consequence of their insincerity lately in soliciting a peace and while awaiting the decision. The sincerity with which a peace will be observed depends much, Scipio, on the person by whom it is sought. Your senate, as I hear, refused to grant a peace in some measure because the deputies were deficient in respectability. It is I, Hannibal, who now solicit peace; who would neither ask for it unless I believed it expedient, nor will I fail to observe it for the same reason of expedience on account of which I have solicited it. And in the same manner as I, because the war was commenced by me, brought it to pass that no one regretted it till the gods began to regard me with displeasure; so will I also exert myself that no one may regret the peace procured by my means." In answer to these things the Roman general spoke nearly to the following effect: "I was aware that it was in consequence of the expectation of your arrival that the Carthaginians violated the existing faith of the truce and broke off all hope of a peace. Nor, indeed, do you conceal the fact, inasmuch as you artfully withdraw from the former conditions of peace every concession except what relates to those things which have for a long time been in our own power. But as it is your object that your countrymen should be sensible how great a burden they are relieved from by your means, so it is incumbent upon me to endeavor that they may not receive, as the reward of their perfidy, the concessions which they formerly stipulated, by expunging them now from the conditions of the peace. Though you do not deserve to be allowed the same conditions as before, you now request even to be benefited by your treachery. "Neither did our fathers first make war respecting Sicily, nor did we respecting Spain. In the former case the danger which threatened our allies the Mamertines, and in the present the destruction of Saguntum, girded us with just and pious arms. That you were the aggressors, both you yourselves confess and the gods are witnesses, who determined the issue of the former war, and who are now determining and will determine the issue of the present according to right and justice. As to myself, I am not forgetful of the instability of human affairs, but consider the influence of fortune, and am well aware that all our measures are liable to a thousand casualties. But as I should acknowledge that my conduct would savor of insolence and oppression if I rejected you on your coming in person to solicit peace before I crossed over into Africa, you voluntarily retiring from Italy, and after you had embarked your troops, so now, when I have dragged you into Africa almost by manual force, notwithstanding your resistance and evasions, I am not bound to treat you with any respect. Wherefore, if in addition to those stipulations on which it was considered that a peace would at that time have been agreed upon, and what they are you are informed, a compensation is proposed for having seized our ships together with their stores during a truce, and for the violence offered to our ambassadors, I shall then have matter to lay before my council. But if these things also appear oppressive, prepare for war, since you could not brook the conditions of peace." Thus, without effecting an accommodation, when they had returned from the conference to their armies, they informed them that words had been bandied to no purpose, that the question must be decided by arms, and that they must accept that fortune which the gods assigned them. When they had arrived at their camps, they both issued orders that their soldiers should get their arms in readiness and prepare their minds for the final contest; in which, if fortune should favor them, they would continue victorious, not for a single day, but forever. "Before to-morrow night," they said, "they would know whether Rome or Carthage should give laws to the world, and that neither Africa nor Italy, but the whole world, would be the prize of victory. That the dangers which threatened those who had the misfortune to be defeated were proportioned to the rewards of the victors." For the Romans had not any place of refuge in an unknown and foreign land, and immediate destruction seemed to await Carthage if the troops which formed her last reliance were defeated. To this important contest, the day following, two generals, by far the most renowned of any, and belonging to two of the most powerful nations in the world, advanced either to crown or overthrow on that day the many honors they had previously acquired. Scipio drew up his troops, posting the hastati in front, the principes behind them, and closing his rear line with the triarii. He did not draw up his cohorts in close order, but each before their respective standards; placing the companies at some distance from each other, so as to leave a space through which the elephants of the enemy passing might not at all break their ranks. Laelius, whom he had employed before as lieutenant-general, but this year as quaestor, by special appointment, according to a decree of the senate, he posted with the Italian cavalry in the left wing, Masinissa and the Numidians in the right. The open spaces between the companies of those in the van he filled with velites, which then formed the Roman light-armed troops, with an injunction that on the charge of the elephants they should either retire behind the files, which extended in a right line, or, running to the right and left and placing themselves by the side of those in the van, afford a passage by which the elephants might rush in between weapons on both sides. Hannibal, in order to terrify the enemy, drew up his elephants in front, and he had eighty of them, being more than he had ever had in any battle; behind these his Ligurian and Gallic auxiliaries, with Balearians and Moors intermixed. In the second line he placed the Carthaginians, Africans, and a legion of Macedonians; then, leaving a moderate interval, he formed a reserve of Italian troops, consisting principally of Bruttians, more of whom had followed him on his departure from Italy by compulsion and necessity than by choice. His cavalry also he placed in the wings, the Carthaginian occupying the right, the Numidian the left. Various were the means of exhortation employed in an army consisting of a mixture of so many different kinds of men; men differing in language, customs, laws, arms, dress, and appearance, and in the motives for serving. To the auxiliaries, the prospect both of their present pay and many times more from the spoils was held out. The Gauls were stimulated by their peculiar and inherent animosity against the Romans. To the Ligurians the hope was held out of enjoying the fertile plains of Italy, and quitting their rugged mountains, if victorious. The Moors and Numidians were terrified with subjection to the government of Masinissa, which he would exercise with despotic severity. Different grounds of hope and fear were represented to different persons. The view of the Carthaginians was directed to the walls of their city, their household gods, the sepulchres of their ancestors, their children and parents, and their trembling wives; they were told that either the destruction of their city and slavery or the empire of the world awaited them; that there was nothing intermediate which they could hope for or fear. While the general was thus busily employed among the Carthaginians, and the captains of the respective nations among their countrymen, most of them employing interpreters among troops intermixed with those of different nations, the trumpets and cornets of the Romans sounded; and such a clamor arose that the elephants, especially those in the left wing, turned round upon their own party, the Moors and Numidians. Masinissa had no difficulty in increasing the alarm of the terrified enemy, and deprived them of the aid of their cavalry in that wing. A few, however, of the beasts which were driven against the enemy, and were not turned back through fear, made great havoc among the ranks of the velites, though not without receiving many wounds themselves; for when the velites, retiring to the companies, had made way for the elephants, that they might not be trampled down, they discharged their darts at them; exposed as they were to wounds on both sides, those in the van also keeping up a continual discharge of javelins, until driven out of the Roman line by the weapons which fell upon them from all quarters, these elephants also put to flight even the cavalry of the Carthaginians posted in their right wing. Laelius, when he saw the enemy in disorder, struck additional terror into them in their confusion. The Carthaginian line was deprived of the cavalry on both sides, when the infantry, who were now not a match for the Romans in confidence or strength, engaged. In addition to this there was one circumstance, trifling in itself, but at the same time producing important consequences in the action. On the part of the Romans the shout was uniform, and on that account louder and more terrific, while the voices of the enemy, consisting as they did of many nations of different languages, were dissonant. The Romans used the stationary kind of fight, pressing upon the enemy with their own weight and that of their arms; but on the other side there was more of skirmishing and rapid movement than force. Accordingly, on the first charge, the Romans immediately drove back the line of their opponents; then pushing them with their elbows and the bosses of their shields, and pressing forward into the places from which they had pushed them, they advanced a considerable space, as though there had been no one to resist them, those who formed the rear urging forward those in front when they perceived the line of the enemy giving way, which circumstance itself gave great additional force in repelling them. On the side of the enemy, the second line, consisting of the Africans and Carthaginians, were so far from supporting the first line when giving ground, that on the contrary they even retired, lest their enemy, by slaying those who made a firm resistance, should penetrate to themselves also. Accordingly the auxiliaries suddenly turned their backs, and facing about upon their own party, fled, some of them into the second line, while others slew those who did not receive them into their ranks, since before they did not support them, and now refused to receive them. And now there were, in a manner, two contests going on together, the Carthaginians being compelled to fight at once with the enemy and with their own party. Not even then, however, did they receive into their line the terrified and exasperated troops, but, closing their ranks, drove them out of the scene of action to the wings and the surrounding plain, lest they should mingle these soldiers, terrified with defeat and wounds, with that part of their line which was firm and fresh. But such a heap of men and arms had filled the space in which the auxiliaries a little while ago had stood that it was almost more difficult to pass through it than through a close line of troops. The spearmen, therefore, who formed the front line, pursuing the enemy as each could find a way through the heap of arms and men and streams of blood, threw into complete disorder the battalions and companies. The standards also of the principes had begun to waver when they saw the line before them driven from their ground. Scipio, perceiving this, promptly ordered the signal to be given for the spearmen to retreat, and having taken his wounded into the rear, brought the principes and triarii to the wings in order that the line of spearmen in the centre might be more strong and secure. Thus a fresh and renewed battle commenced, inasmuch as they had penetrated to their real antagonists, men equal to them in the nature of their arms, in their experience in war, in the fame of their achievements, and the greatness of their hopes and fears. But the Romans were superior both in numbers and courage, for they had now routed both the cavalry and the elephants, and, having already defeated the front line, were fighting against the second. Lælius and Masinissa, who had pursued the routed cavalry through a considerable space, returning very opportunely, charged the rear of the enemy's line. This attack of the cavalry at length routed them. Many of them, being surrounded, were slain in the field; and many, dispersed in flight through the open plain around, were slain on all hands, as the cavalry were in possession of every part. Of the Carthaginians and their allies, above twenty thousand were slain on that day; about an equal number were captured, with a hundred and thirty-three military standards and eleven elephants. Of the victors as many as two thousand fell. Hannibal, slipping off during the confusion, with a few horsemen, came to Adrumetum, not quitting the field till he had tried every expedient both in the battle and before the engagement; having, according to the admission of Scipio and everyone skilled in military science, acquired the fame of having marshalled his troops on that day with singular judgment. He placed his elephants in the front, in order that their desultory attack and insupportable violence might prevent the Romans from following their standards and preserving their ranks, on which they placed their principal dependence. Then he posted his auxiliaries before the line of Carthaginians, in order that men who were made up of the refuse of all nations, and who were not bound by honor but by gain, might not have any retreat open to them in case they fled; at the same time that the first ardor and impetuosity might be exhausted upon them, and, if they could render no other service, that the weapons of the enemy might be blunted in wounding them. Next he placed the Carthaginian and African soldiers, on whom he placed all his hopes, in order that, being equal to the enemy in every other respect, they might have the advantage of them inasmuch as, being fresh and unimpaired in strength themselves, they would fight with those who were fatigued and wounded. The Italians he removed into the rear, separating them also by an intervening space, as he knew not with certainty whether they were friends or enemies. Hannibal, after performing this as it were his last work of valor, fled to Adrumetum, whence, having been summoned to Carthage, he returned thither in the sixth and thirtieth year after he had left it when a boy, and confessed in the senate house that he was defeated, not only in the battle, but in the war, and that there was no hope of safety in anything but in obtaining peace. Immediately after the battle, Scipio, having taken and plundered the enemy's camp, returned to the sea and his ships with an immense booty, news having reached him that Publius Lentulus had arrived at Utica with fifty men-of-war, and a hundred transports laden with every kind of stores. Concluding that he ought to bring before Carthage everything which could increase the consternation already existing there, after sending Laelius to Rome to report his victory, he ordered Cneius Octavius to conduct the legions thither by land, and setting out himself from Utica with the fresh fleet of Lentulus added to his former one, made for the harbor of Carthage. When he had arrived within a short distance he was met by a Carthaginian ship decked with fillets and branches of olive. There were ten deputies, the leading men in the State, sent at the instance of Hannibal to solicit peace, to whom, when they had come up to the stern of the general's ship, holding out the badges of suppliants, entreating and imploring the protection and compassion of Scipio, the only answer given was that they must come to Tunis, to which place he would move his camp. After taking a view of the site of Carthage, not so much for the sake of acquainting himself with it for any present object as to dispirit the enemy, he returned to Utica, having recalled Octavius to the same place. As they were proceeding thence to Tunis, they received intelligence that Vermina, the son of Syphax, with a greater number of horse than foot, was coming to the assistance of the Carthaginians. A part of his infantry with all the cavalry having attacked them on their march on the first day of the Saturnalia, routed the Numidians with little opposition, and as every way by which they could escape in flight was blocked up, for the cavalry surrounded them on all sides, fifteen thousand men were slain, twelve hundred were taken alive, with fifteen hundred Numidian horses and seventy-two military standards. The prince himself fled from the field with a few attendants during the confusion. The camp was then pitched near Tunis in the same place as before, and thirty ambassadors came to Scipio from Carthage. These behaved in a manner even more calculated to excite compassion than the former, in proportion as their situation was more pressing; but from the recollection of their recent perfidy, they were heard with considerably less pity. In the council, though all were impelled by just resentment to demolish Carthage, yet, when they reflected upon the magnitude of the undertaking and the length of time which would be consumed in the siege of so well fortified and strong a city, while Scipio himself was uneasy in consequence of the expectation of a successor, who would come in for the glory of having terminated the war, though it was accomplished already by the exertions and danger of another, the minds of all were inclined to peace. The next day the ambassadors being called in again, and with many rebukes of their perfidy, warned that instructed by so many disasters they would at length believe in the existence of the gods and the obligation of an oath, these conditions of the peace were stated to them: "That they should enjoy their liberty and live under their own laws; that they should possess such cities and territories as they had enjoyed before the war, and with the same boundaries, and that the Romans should on that day desist from devastation. That they should restore to the Romans all deserters and fugitives, giving up all their ships-of-war except ten triremes, with such tamed elephants as they had, and that they should not tame any more. That they should not carry on war in or out of Africa without the permission of the Roman people. That they should make restitution to Masinissa, and form a league with him. That they should furnish corn, and pay for the auxiliaries until the ambassadors had returned from Rome. That they should pay ten thousand talents of silver in equal annual installments distributed over fifty years. That they should give a hundred hostages, according to the pleasure of Scipio, not younger than fourteen nor older than thirty. That he would grant them a truce on condition that the transports, together with their cargoes, which had been seized during the former truce, were restored. Otherwise they would have no truce, nor any hope of a peace." When the ambassadors who were ordered to bear these conditions home reported them in an assembly, and Gisgo had stood forth to dissuade them from the terms, and was being listened to by the multitude, who were at once indisposed for peace and unfit for war, Hannibal, indignant that such language should be held and listened to at such a juncture, laid hold of Gisgo with his own hand and dragged him from his elevated position. This unusual sight in a free State having raised a murmur among the people, the soldier, disconcerted at the liberties which the citizens took, thus addressed them: "Having left you when nine years old, I have returned after a lapse of thirty-six years. I flatter myself I am well acquainted with the qualifications of a soldier, having been instructed in them from my childhood, sometimes by my own situation and sometimes by that of my country. The privileges, the laws, and customs of the city and the forum you ought to teach me." Having thus apologized for his indiscretion, he discoursed largely concerning the peace, showing how inoppressive the terms were, and how necessary it was. The greatest difficulty was that of the ships which had been seized during the truce nothing was to be found except the ships themselves, nor was it easy to collect the property, because those who were charged with having it were opposed to the peace. It was resolved that the ships should be restored and that the men at least should be looked up; and as to whatever else was missing, that it should be left to Scipio to put a value upon it, and that the Carthaginians should make compensation accordingly in money. There are those who say that Hannibal went from the field of battle to the sea-coast; whence he immediately sailed in a ship, which he had ready for the purpose, to king Antiochus; and that when Scipio demanded above everything that Hannibal should be given up to him, answer was made that Hannibal was not in Africa. After the ambassadors returned to Scipio, the quaestors were ordered to give in an account, made out from the public registers, of the public property which had been in the ships; and the owners to make a return of the private property. For the amount of the value twenty-five thousand pounds of silver were required to be paid down; and a truce for three months was granted to the Carthaginians. It was added that during the time of the truce they should not send ambassadors anywhere else than to Rome; and that whatever ambassadors came to Carthage, they should not dismiss them before informing the Roman general who they were and what they sought. With the Carthaginian ambassadors, Lucius Veturius Philo, Marcus Marcius Ralla, and Lucius Scipio, brother of the general, were sent to Rome. The Roman, together with the Carthaginian, ambassadors having arrived at Rome from Africa, the senate was assembled at the temple of Bellona; when Lucius Veturius Philo stated, to the great joy of the senate, that a battle had been fought with Hannibal which was decisive of the fate of the Carthaginians, and that a period was at length put to that calamitous war. He added what formed a small accession to their successes, that Vermina, the son of Syphax, had been vanquished. He was then ordered to go forth to the public assembly and impart the joyful tidings to the people. Then, a thanksgiving having been appointed, all the temples in the city were thrown open and supplications for three days were decreed. Publius Scipio was continued in command in the province of Africa with the armies which he then had. The Carthaginian ambassadors were called before the senate. On observing their ages and dignified appearance, for they were by far the first men of the State, all promptly declared their conviction that now they were sincere in their desire to effect a peace. Hasdrubal, however, surnamed by his countrymen Haedus, who had invariably recommended peace and was opposed to the Barcine faction, was regarded with greater interest than the rest. On these accounts the greater weight was attached to him when transferring the blame of the war from the State at large to the cupidity of a few. After a speech of varied character, in which he sometimes refuted the charges which had been brought, at other times admitted some, lest by imprudently denying what was manifestly true their forgiveness might be the more difficult; and then, even admonishing the conscript fathers to be guided by the rules of decorum and moderation in their prosperity, he said that if the Carthaginians had listened to himself and Hanno, and had been disposed to make a proper use of circumstances, they would themselves have dictated terms of peace, instead of begging it as they now did. That it rarely happened that good fortune and a sound judgment were bestowed upon men at the same time. That the Roman people were therefore invincible, because when successful they forgot not the maxims of wisdom and prudence; and indeed it would have been matter of astonishment did they act otherwise. That those persons to whom success was a new and uncommon thing proceeded to a pitch of madness in their ungoverned transports in consequence of their not being accustomed to it. That to the Roman people the joy arising from victory was a matter of common occurrence, and was now almost become old-fashioned. That they had extended their empire more by sparing the vanquished than by conquering. The language employed by the others was of a nature more calculated to excite compassion; they represented from what a height of power the Carthaginian affairs had fallen. That nothing besides the walls of Carthage remained to those who a little time ago held almost the whole world in subjection by their arms; that shut up within these, they could see nothing anywhere on sea or land which owned their authority. That they would retain possession of their city itself and their household gods only in case the Roman people should refrain from venting their indignation upon these, which is all that remains for them to do. When it was manifest that the fathers were moved by compassion, it is said that one of the senators, violently incensed at the perfidy of the Carthaginians, immediately asked with a loud voice by what gods they would swear in striking the league, since they had broken their faith with those by whom they swore in striking the former one? By those same, replied Hasdrubal, who have shown such determined hostility to the violators of treaties. The minds of all being disposed to peace, Cneius Lentulus, whose province the fleet was, protested against the decree of the senate. Upon this, Manius Acilius and Quintus Minucius, tribunes of the people, put the question to the people whether they willed and ordered that the senate should decree that peace should be made with the Carthaginians? whom they ordered to grant that peace, and whom to conduct the army out of Africa? All the tribes ordered respecting the peace according as the question had been put. That Publius Scipio should grant the peace, and that he also should conduct the army home. Agreeably to this order, the senate decreed that Publius Scipio, acting according to the opinion of the ten deputies, should make peace with the Carthaginian people on what terms he pleased. The Carthaginians then returned thanks to the senate, and requested that they might be allowed to enter the city and converse with their countrymen who had been made prisoners and were in custody of the State; observing that some of them were their relations and friends, and men of rank, and some, persons to whom they were charged with messages from their relations. Having obtained these requests, they again asked permission to ransom such of them as they pleased; when they were desired to give in their names. Having given in a list of about two hundred, a decree of the senate was passed to the effect that the Carthaginian ambassadors should be allowed to take away into Africa to Publius Cornelius Scipio two hundred of the Carthaginian prisoners, selecting whom they pleased; and that they should convey to him a message that if the peace were concluded he should restore them to the Carthaginians without ransom. The heralds being ordered to go into Africa to strike the league, at their own desire the senate passed a decree that they should take with them flint stones of their own and vervain of their own; that the Roman praetor should command them to strike the league, and that they should demand of him herbs. The description of herb usually given to the heralds is taken from the Capitol. Thus the Carthaginians being allowed to depart from Rome, when they had gone into Africa to Scipio concluded the peace on the terms before mentioned. They delivered up their men-of-war, their elephants, deserters, fugitives, and four thousand prisoners, among whom was Quintus Terentius Culleo, a senator. The ships he ordered to be taken out into the main and burned. Some say there were five hundred of every description of those which are worked with oars, and that the sudden sight of these when burning occasioned as deep a sensation of grief to the Carthaginians as if Carthage had been in flames. The measures adopted respecting the deserters were more severe than those respecting the fugitives. Those who were of the Latin confederacy were decapitated; the Romans were crucified. The last peace with the Carthaginians was made forty years before this in the consulate of Quintus Lutatius and Aulus Manlius. The war commenced twenty-three years afterward in the consulate of Publius Cornelius and Tiberius Sempronius. It was concluded in the seventeenth year, in the consulate of Cneius Cornelius and Publius Aelius Paetus. It is related that Scipio frequently said afterward, that first the ambition of Tiberius Claudius, and afterward of Cneius Cornelius, were the causes which prevented his terminating the war by the destruction of Carthage. The Carthaginians finding difficulty in raising the first sum of money to be paid, as their finances were exhausted by a protracted war, and in consequence great lamentation and grief arising in the senate house, it is said that Hannibal was observed laughing, and when Hasdrubal Haedus rebuked him for laughing amid the public grief, when he himself was the occasion of the tears which were shed, he said: "If, as the expression of the countenance is discerned by the sight, so the inward feelings of the mind could be distinguished, it would clearly appear to you that that laughter which you censure came from a heart not elated with joy, but frantic with misfortunes. And yet it is not so ill-timed as those absurd and inconsistent tears of yours. Then you ought to have wept when our arms were taken from us, our ships burned, and we were forbidden to engage in foreign wars, for that was the wound by which we fell. Nor is it just that you should suppose that the measures which the Romans have adopted toward you have been dictated by animosity. No great state can remain at rest long together. If it has no enemy abroad it finds one at home in the same manner as over-robust bodies seem secure from external causes, but are encumbered with their own strength. So far, forsooth, we are affected with the public calamities as they reach our private affairs; nor is there any circumstance attending them which is felt more acutely than the loss of money. Accordingly, when the spoils were torn down from vanquished Carthage, when you beheld her left unarmed and defenceless amid so many armed nations of Africa, none heaved a sigh. Now, because a tribute is to be levied from private property you lament with one accord, as though at the funeral of the State. How much do I dread lest you should soon be made sensible that you have shed tears this day for the lightest of your misfortunes!" Such were the sentiments which Hannibal delivered to the Carthaginians. Scipio, having summoned an assembly, presented Masinissa, in addition to his paternal dominions, with the town of Cirta, and the other cities and territories which had passed from the kingdom of Syphax into the possession of the Romans. He ordered Cneius Octavius to conduct the fleet to Sicily and deliver it to Cneius Cornelius the consul, and directed the Carthaginian ambassadors to go to Rome, that the arrangements he had made with the advice of the ten deputies might be ratified by the sanction of the fathers and the order of the people. Peace having been established by sea and land, he embarked his troops and crossed over to Lilybæum in Sicily, whence, having sent a great part of his soldiers by ships, he himself proceeded through Italy, which was rejoicing not less on account of the peace than the victory; while not only the inhabitants of the cities poured out to show him honor, but crowds of rustics thronged the roads. He arrived at Rome and entered the city in a triumph of unparalleled splendor. He brought into the treasury one hundred and twenty-three thousand pounds of silver. He distributed to each of his soldiers four hundred asses out of the spoils. By the death of Syphax, which took place but a short time before at Tibur, whither he had been removed from Alba, a diminution was occasioned in the interest of the pageant rather than in the glory of him who triumphed. His death, however, was attended with circumstances which produced a strong sensation, for he was buried at the public expense. Polybius, an author by no means to be despised, asserts that this King was led in the triumph. Quintus Terentius Culleo followed Scipio in his triumph with a cap of liberty on his head, and during the remainder of his life treated him with the respect due to him as the author of his freedom. I have not been able to ascertain whether the partiality of the soldiers or the favor of the people fixed upon him the surname of Africanus, or whether in the same manner as Felix was applied to Sulla, and Magnus to Pompey, in the memory of our fathers, it originated in the flattery of his friends. He was doubtless the first general who was distinguished by a name derived from the nation which he had conquered. Afterward, in imitation of his example, some, by no means his equals in his victories, affixed splendid inscriptions on their statues and gave honorable surnames to their families. JUDAS MACCAÆBUS LIBERATES JUDEA B.C. 165 JOSEPHUS (The noble-minded Judas Maccabaeus was the hero of Jewish independence-- the deliverer of Judea and Judaism during the bloody persecutions of the Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes, in the second century B.C. This King was attempting to destroy in Palestine the national religion. For this purpose pagan altars were set up among the Jews and pagan sacrifices enjoined upon the worshippers of Jehovah. Many Jews fled from their own towns and villages into the uninhabited wilderness, in order that they might have liberty to worship the God of their fathers; but a few conformed to the ordinances of Antiochus. Soon, however, open resistance to the decrees of the pagan ruler began to manifest itself among the faithful. The first protest in the shape of active opposition was made by Mattathias, a priest living at Modin. When the servants of Antiochus came to that retired village and commanded Mattathias to do sacrifice to the heathen gods, he refused; he went so far as to strike down at the altar a Jew who was preparing to offer such a sacrifice. Then he escaped to the mountains with his five sons and a band of followers. These followers grew in numbers and activity, overthrowing pagan altars, circumcising heathen children, and putting to the sword both apostates and unbelievers. When Mattathias died, in B.C. 166, he was succeeded as leader by his son Judas, called Maccabaeus, "the Hammer"; as Charles, who defeated the Saracens at Tours, is called Martel or hammer. The successes of Judas were uninterrupted, and culminated B.C. 165 in the repulse of Lysias, the general of Antiochus, at Bethzur, where a large Syrian force gathered in the expectation of crushing the patriotic army of Judas. After this victory Judas led his followers into Jerusalem and proceeded to restore the Temple and the worship of the national religion, and to cleanse the Temple from all traces of pagan worship. The great altar was rebuilt; new sacred vessels provided; and an eight-days' dedication festival begun on the very day when, three years before, the altar of Jehovah had been desecrated by a heathen sacrifice. This Feast of the Dedication was ever afterward observed in the Temple at Jerusalem and is mentioned in the gospels [John x. 22]. Judas established a dynasty of priest-kings, which lasted until supplanted by Herod, with the aid of the Romans, in B.C. 40; and gave by his genuinely heroic bearing his name to this whole glorious epoch of Jewish history.) Now at this time there was one whose name was Mattathias, who dwelt at Modin, the son of John, the son of Simeon, the son of Asamoneus, a priest of the order of Joarib, and a citizen of Jerusalem. He had five sons: John, who was called Gaddis, and Simon, who was called Matthes, and Judas, who was called Maccabæus,[66] and Eleazar, who was called Auran, and Jonathan, who was called Apphus. Now this Mattathias lamented to his children the sad state of their affairs, and the ravage made in the city, and the plundering of the Temple, and the calamities the multitude were under; and he told them that it was better for them to die for the laws of their country than to live so ingloriously as they then did. [Footnote 66: That this appellation of Maccabee was not first of all given to Judas Maccabæaus, nor was derived from any initial letters of the Hebrew words on his banner, _Mi Kamoka Be Elim, Jehovah_? ("Who is like unto thee among the gods, O Jehovah?"), Exod. xv. II, as the modern rabbins vainly pretend, see _Authent. Rec._, part i., pp. 205, 206. Only we may note, by the way, that the original name of these Maccabees and their posterity was Asamoneans, which was derived from Asamoneus, the great-grandfather of Mattathias, as Josephus here informs us.] But when those that were appointed by the King were come to Modin that they might compel the Jews to do what they were commanded, and to enjoin those that were there to offer sacrifice, as the King had commanded, they desired that Mattathias, a person of the greatest character among them, both on other accounts and particularly on account of such a numerous and so deserving a family of children, would begin the sacrifice, because his fellow-citizens would follow his example, and because such a procedure would make him honored by the King. But Mattathias said that he would not do it, and that if all the other nations would obey the commands of Antiochus, either out of fear or to please him, yet would not he nor his sons leave the religious worship of their country; but as soon as he had ended his speech there came one of the Jews into the midst of them and sacrificed as Antiochus had commanded. At which Mattathias had great indignation, and ran upon him violently with his sons, who had swords with them, and slew both the man himself that sacrificed and Apelles, the King's general who compelled him to sacrifice, with a few of his soldiers. He also overthrew the idol altar and cried out, "If," said he, "anyone be zealous for the laws of his country and for the worship of God, let him follow me"; and when he had said this he made haste into the desert with his sons, and left all his substance in the village. Many others did the same also, and fled with their children and wives into the desert and dwelt in caves; but when the King's generals heard this, they took all the forces they then had in the citadel at Jerusalem, and pursued the Jews into the desert; and when they had overtaken them, they in the first place endeavored to persuade them to repent, and to choose what was most for their advantage and not put them to the necessity of using them according to the law of war; but when they would not comply with their persuasions, but continued to be of a different mind, they fought against them on the Sabbath day, and they burned them as they were in the caves, without resistance, and without so much as stopping up the entrances of the caves. And they avoided to defend themselves on that day because they were not willing to break in upon the honor they owed the Sabbath, even in such distresses; for our law requires that we rest upon that day. There were about a thousand, with their wives and children, who were smothered and died in these caves; but many of those that escaped joined themselves to Mattathias and appointed him to be their ruler, who taught them to fight even on the Sabbath day, and told them that unless they would do so they would become their own enemies by observing the law [so rigorously] while their adversaries would still assault them on this day, and they would not then defend themselves; and that nothing could then hinder but they must all perish without fighting. This speech persuaded them, and this rule continues among us to this day, that if there be a necessity we may fight on Sabbath days. So Mattathias got a great army about him and overthrew their idol altars and slew those that broke the laws, even all that he could get under his power; for many of them were dispersed among the nations round about them for fear of him. He also commanded that those boys who were not yet circumcised should be circumcised now; and he drove those away that were appointed to hinder such their circumcision. But when he had ruled one year and was fallen into a distemper, he called for his sons and set them round about him, and said: "O my sons, I am going the way of all the earth; and I recommend to you my resolution and beseech you not to be negligent in keeping it, but to be mindful of the desires of him who begat you and brought you up, and to preserve the customs of your country, and to recover your ancient form of government which is in danger of being overturned, and not to be carried away with those that either by their own inclination or out of necessity betray it, but to become such sons as are worthy of me; to be above all force and necessity, and so to dispose your souls as to be ready when it shall be necessary to die for your laws, as sensible of this, by just reasoning, that if God see that you are so disposed he will not overlook you, but will have a great value for your virtue, and will restore to you again what you have lost and will return to you that freedom in which you shall live quietly and enjoy your own customs. "Your bodies are mortal and subject to fate; but they receive a sort of immortality by the remembrance of what actions they have done; and I would have you so in love with this immortality that you may pursue after glory, and that when you have undergone the greatest difficulties you may not scruple for such things to lose your lives. I exhort you especially to agree one with another, and in what excellency any one of you exceeds another, to yield to him so far, and by that means to reap the advantage of everyone's own virtues. Do you then esteem Simon as your father because he is a man of extraordinary prudence, and be governed by him in what counsels he gives you. Take Maccabaeus for the general of your army, because of his courage and strength, for he will avenge your nation and will bring vengeance on your enemies. Admit among you the righteous and religious, and augment their power." When Mattathias had thus discoursed to his sons and had prayed to God to be their assistant and to recover to the people their former constitution, he died a little afterward, and was buried at Modin, all the people making great lamentation for him. Whereupon his son Judas took upon him the administration of public affairs, in the hundred and forty-sixth year; and thus, by the ready assistance of his brethren and of others, Judas cast their enemies out of the country and put those of their own country to death who had transgressed its laws, and purified the land of all the pollutions that were in it. When Apollonius, the general of the Samaritan forces, heard this he took his army and made haste to go against Judas, who met him and joined battle with him, and beat him and slew many of his men, and among them Apollonius himself, their general, whose sword, being that which he happened then to wear, he seized upon and kept for himself; but he wounded more than he slew, and took a great deal of prey from the enemy's camp, and went his way; but when Seron, who was general of the army of Celesyria, heard that many had joined themselves to Judas, and that he had about him an army sufficient for fighting and for making war, he determined to make an expedition against him, as thinking it became him to endeavor to punish those that transgressed the King's injunctions. He then got together an army as large as he was able, and joined to it the renegade and wicked Jews, and came against Judas. He then came as far as Bethoron, a village of Judea, and there pitched his camp; upon which Judas met him, and when he intended to give him battle he saw that his soldiers were backward to fight because their number was small and because they wanted food, for they were fasting. He encouraged them and said to them that victory and conquest of enemies are not derived from the multitude in armies, but in the exercise of piety toward God; and that they had the plainest instances in their forefathers, who, by their righteousness and exerting themselves on behalf of their own laws and their own children, had frequently conquered many ten thousands, for innocence is the strongest army. By this speech he induced his men to contemn the multitude of the enemy, and to fall upon Seron; and upon joining battle with him he beat the Syrians; and when their general fell among the rest they all ran away with speed, as thinking that to be their best way of escaping. So he pursued them unto the plain and slew about eight hundred of the enemy, but the rest escaped to the region which lay near to the sea. When king Antiochus heard of these things he was very angry at what had happened; so he got together all his own army, with many mercenaries whom he had hired from the islands, and took them with him, and prepared to break into Judea about the beginning of the spring; but when, upon his mustering his soldiers, he perceived that his treasures were deficient, and there was a want of money in them, for all the taxes were not paid, by reason of the seditions there had been among the nations, he having been so magnanimous and so liberal that what he had was not sufficient for him, he therefore resolved first to go into Persia and collect the taxes of that country. Hereupon he left one whose name was Lysias, who was in great repute with him, governor of the kingdom, as far as the bounds of Egypt and of the Lower Asia and reaching from the river Euphrates, and committed to him a certain part of his forces and of his elephants and charged him to bring up his son Antiochus with all possible care until he came back; and that he should conquer Judea and take its inhabitants for slaves and utterly destroy Jerusalem, and abolish the whole nation; and when king Antiochus had given these things in charge to Lysias, he went into Persia, and in the hundred and forty-seventh year he passed over Euphrates and went to the superior provinces. Upon this Lysias chose Ptolemy the son of Dorymenes, and Nicanor, and Gorgias, very potent men among the King's friends, and delivered to them forty thousand foot-soldiers and seven thousand horsemen, and sent them against Judea, who came as far as the city Emmaus and pitched their camp in the plain country. There came also to them auxiliaries out of Syria and the country round about, as also many of the renegade Jews; and besides these came some merchants to buy those that should be carried captives--having bonds with them to bind those that should be made prisoners--with that silver and gold which they were to pay for their price; and when Judas saw their camp and how numerous their enemies were, he persuaded his own soldiers to be of good courage, and exhorted them to place their hopes of victory in God and to make supplication to him, according to the custom of their country, clothed in sackcloth, and to show what was their usual habit of supplication in the greatest dangers, and thereby to prevail with God to grant them the victory over their enemies. So he set them in their ancient order of battle used by their forefathers, under their captains of thousands, and other officers, and dismissed such as were newly married, as well as those that had newly gained possessions, that they might not fight in a cowardly manner out of an inordinate love of life, in order to enjoy those blessings. When he had thus disposed his soldiers he encouraged them to fight by the following speech, which he made to them: "O my fellow-soldiers, no other time remains more opportune than the present for courage and contempt of dangers; for if you now fight manfully you may recover your liberty, which, as it is a thing of itself agreeable to all men, so it proves to be to us much more desirable, by its affording us the liberty of worshipping God. Since, therefore, you are in such circumstances at present, you must either recover that liberty and so regain a happy and blessed way of living, which is that according to our laws and the customs of our country, or to submit to the most opprobrious sufferings; nor will any seed of your nation remain if you be beat in this battle. Fight therefore manfully, and suppose that you must die though you do not fight; but believe that besides such glorious rewards as those of the liberty of your country, of your laws, of your religion, you shall then obtain everlasting glory. Prepare yourselves, therefore, and put yourselves into such an agreeable posture that you may be ready to fight with the enemy as soon as it is day to-morrow morning." And this was the speech which Judas made to encourage them. But when the enemy sent Gorgias with five thousand foot and one thousand horse, that he might fall upon Judas by night, and had for that purpose certain of the renegade Jews as guides, the son of Mattathias perceived it and resolved to fall upon those enemies that were in their camp, now their forces were divided. When they had therefore supped in good time and had left many fires in their camp he marched all night to those enemies that were at Emmaus; so that when Gorgias found no enemy in their camp, but suspected that they were retired and had hidden themselves among the mountains, he resolved to go and seek them wheresoever they were. But about break of day Judas appeared to those enemies that were at Emmaus, with only three thousand men, and those ill-armed by reason of their poverty; and when he saw the enemy very well and skilfully fortified in their camp he encouraged the Jews and told them that they ought to fight, though it were with their naked bodies, for that God had sometimes of old given such men strength, and that against such as were more in number, and were armed also, out of regard to their great courage. So he commanded the trumpeters to sound for the battle, and by thus falling upon the enemy when they did not expect it, and thereby astonishing and disturbing their minds, he slew many of those that resisted him and went on pursuing the rest as far as Gadara and the plains of Idumea, and Ashdod, and Jamnia; and of these there fell about three thousand. Yet did Judas exhort his soldiers not to be too desirous of the spoils, for that still they must have a contest and battle with Gorgias and the forces that were with him, but that when they had once overcome them then they might securely plunder the camp because they were the only enemies remaining, and they expected no others. And just as he was speaking to his soldiers, Gorigas' men looked down into that army which they left in their camp and saw that it was overthrown and the camp burned; for the smoke that arose from it showed them, even when they were a great way off, what had happened. When, therefore, those that were with Gorgias understood that things were in this posture, and perceived that those that were with Judas were ready to fight them, they also were affrighted and put to flight; but then Judas, as though he had already beaten Gorgias' soldiers without fighting, returned and seized on the spoils. He took a great quantity of gold and silver and purple and blue, and then returned home with joy, and singing hymns to God for their good success; for this victory greatly contributed to the recovery of their liberty. Hereupon Lysias was confounded at the defeat of the army which he had sent, and the next year he got together sixty thousand chosen men. He also took five thousand horsemen and fell upon Judea, and he went up to the hill country of Bethsur, a village of Judea, and pitched his camp there, where Judas met him with ten thousand men; and when he saw the great number of his enemies, he prayed to God that he would assist him, and joined battle with the first of the enemy that appeared and beat them and slew about five thousand of them, and thereby became terrible to the rest of them. Nay, indeed, Lysias observing the great spirit of the Jews, how they were prepared to die rather than lose their liberty, and being afraid of their desperate way of fighting, as if it were real strength, he took the rest of the army back with him and returned to Antioch. When, therefore, the generals of Antiochus' armies had been beaten so often, Judas assembled the people together, and told them that after these many victories which God had given them, they ought to go up to Jerusalem and purify the Temple and offer the appointed sacrifices. But as soon as he with the whole multitude was come to Jerusalem and found the Temple deserted and its gates burned down and plants growing in the Temple of their own accord on account of its desertion, he and those that were with him began to lament and were quite confounded at the sight of the Temple; so he chose out some of his soldiers and gave them orders to fight against those guards that were in the citadel until he should have purified the Temple. When therefore he had carefully purged it and had brought in new vessels, the candlestick, the table [of shewbread], and the altar [of incense], which were made of gold, he hung up the veils at the gates and added doors to them. He also took down the altar [of burnt-offering], and built a new one of stones that he gathered together and not of such as were hewn with iron tools. So on the five-and-twentieth day of the month of Casleu, which the Macedonians call Apelleus, they lighted the lamps that were on the candlestick and offered incense upon the altar [of incense], and laid the loaves upon the table [of shew-bread], and offered burnt-offerings upon the new altar [of burnt-offering]. Now it so fell out that these things were done on the very same day on which their divine worship had fallen off and was reduced to a profane and common use after three years' time; for so it was, that the Temple was made desolate by Antiochus, and so continued for three years. This desolation happened to the Temple in the hundred forty and fifth year, on the twenty-fifth day of the month Apelleus, and on the hundred and fifty-third Olympiad; but it was dedicated anew, on the same day, the twenty-fifth of the month Apelleus, in the hundred and forty-eighth year, and on the hundred and fifty-fourth Olympiad. And this desolation came to pass according to the prophecy of Daniel, which was given four hundred and eight years before, for he declared that the Macedonians would dissolve that worship [for some time]. Now Judas celebrated the festival of the restoration of the sacrifices of the Temple for eight days, and omitted no sort of pleasures thereon; but he feasted them upon very rich and splendid sacrifices, and he honored God and delighted them by hymns and psalms. Nay, they were so very glad at the revival of their customs, when after a long time of intermission they unexpectedly had regained the freedom of their worship, that they made it a law for their posterity that they should keep a festival, on account of the restoration of their Temple worship, for eight days. And from that time to this we celebrate this festival and call it Lights. I suppose the reason was, because this liberty beyond our hopes appeared to us, and that thence was the name given to that festival. Judas also rebuilt the walls round about the city, and reared towers of great height against the incursions of enemies, and set guards therein. He also fortified the city Bethsura that it might serve as a citadel against any distresses that might come from our enemies. When these things were over, the nations round about the Jews were very uneasy at the revival of their power and rose up together and destroyed many of them, as gaining advantage over them by laying snares for them and making secret conspiracies against them. Judas made perpetual expeditions against these men, and endeavored to restrain them from those incursions and to prevent the mischiefs they did to the Jews. So he fell upon the Idumeans, the posterity of Esau, at Acra-battene, and slew a great many of them and took their spoils. He also shut up the sons of Bean, that laid wait for the Jews; and he sat down about them, and besieged them, and burned their towers and destroyed the men [that were in them]. After this he went thence in haste against the Ammonites who had a great and a numerous army, of which Timotheus was the commander. And when he had subdued them he seized on the city of Jazer, and took their wives and their children captives and burned the city and then returned into Judea. But when the neighboring nations understood that he was returned they got together in great numbers in the land of Gilead and came against those Jews that were at their borders, who then fled to the garrison of Dathema, and sent to Judas to inform him that Timotheus was endeavoring to take the place whither they were fled. And as these epistles were reading, there came other messengers out of Galilee who informed him that the inhabitants of Ptolemais, and of Tyre and Sidon, and strangers of Galilee, were gotten together. Accordingly Judas, upon considering what was fit to be done with relation to the necessity both these cases required, gave order that Simon his brother should take three thousand chosen men and go to the assistance of the Jews in Galilee, while he and another of his brothers, Jonathan, made haste into the land of Gilead with eight thousand soldiers. And he left Joseph, the son of Zacharias, and Azarias, to be over the rest of the forces, and charged them to keep Judea very carefully and to fight no battles with any persons whomsoever until his return. Accordingly Simon went into Galilee and fought the enemy and put them to flight, and pursued them to the very gates of Ptolemais, and slew about three thousand of them, and took the spoils of those that were slain and those Jews whom they had made captives, with their baggage, and then returned home. Now as for Judas Maccabaeus and his brother Jonathan, they passed over the river Jordan, and when they had gone three days' journey they lighted upon the Nabateans, who came to meet them peaceably and who told them how the affairs of those in the land of Galilee stood and how many of them were in distress and driven into garrisons and into the cities of Galilee, and exhorted him to make haste to go against the foreigners, and to endeavor to save his own countrymen out of their hands. To this exhortation Judas hearkened and returned into the wilderness, and in the first place fell upon the inhabitants of Bosor, and took the city, and beat the inhabitants, and destroyed all the males, and all that were able to fight, and burned the city. Nor did he stop even when night came on, but he journeyed in it to the garrison where the Jews happened to be then shut up, and where Timotheus lay round the place with his army; and Judas came upon the city in the morning, and when he found that the enemy were making an assault upon the walls, and that some of them brought ladders on which they might get upon those walls, and that others brought engines [to batter them], he bid the trumpeter to sound his trumpet, and he encouraged his soldiers cheerfully to undergo dangers for the sake of their brethren and kindred; he also parted his army into three bodies and fell upon the backs of their enemies. But when Timotheus' men perceived that it was Maccabaeus that was upon them, of both whose courage and good success in war they had formerly had sufficient experience, they were put to flight; but Judas followed them with his army and slew about eight thousand of them. He then turned aside to a city of the foreigners called Malle, and took it, and slew all the males and burned the city itself. He then removed from thence, and overthrew Casphom and Bosor, and many other cities of the land of Gilead. But not long after this Timotheus prepared a great army, and took many others as auxiliaries, and induced some of the Arabians by the promise of rewards to go with him in this expedition, and came with his army beyond the brook over against the city Raphon; and he encouraged his soldiers, if it came to a battle with the Jews, to fight courageously, and to hinder their passing over the brook; for he said to them beforehand that "if they come over it we shall be beaten." And when Judas heard that Timotheus prepared himself to fight he took all his own army and went in haste against Timotheus, his enemy; and when he had passed over the brook he fell upon his enemies, and some of them met him, whom he slew, and others of them he so terrified that he compelled them to throw down their arms and fly, and some of them escaped; but some of them fled to what was called the temple of Carnaim, and hoped thereby to preserve themselves, but Judas took the city and slew them and burned the temple, and so used several ways of destroying his enemies. When he had done this he gathered the Jews together with their children and wives and the substance that belonged to them, and was going to bring them back into Judea. But as soon as he was come to a certain city the name of which was Ephron, that lay upon the road--and as it was not possible for him to go any other way, so he was not willing to go back again--he then sent to the inhabitants, and desired that they would open their gates and permit them to go on their way through the city; for they had stopped up the gates with stones and cut off their passage through it. And when the inhabitants of Ephron would not agree to this proposal, he encouraged those that were with him, and encompassed the city round and besieged it, and lying round it by day and night took the city and slew every male in it and burned it all down, and so obtained a way through it; and the multitude of those that were slain was so great that they went over the dead bodies. So they came over Jordan and arrived at the great plain over against which is situate the city Bethshan, which is called by the Greeks Scythopolis.[67] And going away hastily from thence, they came into Judea, singing psalms and hymns as they went, and indulging such tokens of mirth as are usual in triumphs upon victory. They also offered thank-offerings both for their good success and for the preservation of their army, for not one of the Jews was slain in these battles. [Footnote 67: The reason why Bethshan was called Scythopolis is well known from Herodotus, b. i., p. 105, and Syncellus, p. 214, that the Scythians, where they overran Asia, in the days of Josiah, seized on this city, and kept it as long as they continued in Asia; from which time it retained the name of Scythopolis, or the City of the Scythians.] But as to Joseph, the son of Zacharias, and Azarias, whom Judas left generals [of the rest of his forces] at the same time when Simon was in Galilee fighting against the people of Ptolemais, and Judas himself and his brother Jonathan were in the land of Gilead, did these men also affect the glory of being courageous generals in war, in order whereto they took the army that was under their command and came to Jamnia. There Gorgias, the general of the forces of Jamnia, met them, and upon joining battle with him they lost two thousand of their army and fled away, and were pursued to the very borders of Judea. And this misfortune befell them by their disobedience to what injunctions Judas had given them not to fight with anyone before his return. For besides the rest of Judas' sagacious counsels, one may well wonder at this concerning the misfortune that befell the forces commanded by Joseph and Azarias, which he understood would happen if they broke any of the injunctions he had given them. But Judas and his brethren did not leave off fighting with the Idumeans, but pressed upon them on all sides, and took from them the city of Hebron, and demolished all its fortifications and set all its towers on fire, and burned the country of the foreigners and the city Marissa. They came also to Ashdod, and took it, and laid it waste, and took away a great deal of the spoils and prey that were in it and returned to Judea. THE GRACCHI AND THEIR REFORMS B.C. 133 THEODOR MOMMSEN (Cornelia, whose father was Scipio Africanus, preferred to be called "Mother of the Gracchi" rather than daughter of the conqueror of Numantia. Tiberius and Caius Gracchus, her sons, were born at a time when the social condition of Rome was rank with corruption. The small farmer class were deprived of holdings, the soil was being worked by slaves, and its products wasted on pleasure and debauchery by the rich; the law courts were controlled by the wealthy and powerful, while oppression, bribery, and fraud were generally rampant in the city. On December 10, B.C. 133, Tiberius Gracchus entered upon the office of tribune, to which he had been elected, and pledged himself to the abolition of crying abuses. His first movement was in the direction of agrarian legislation. He proposed to vest all public lands in the hands of three commissioners [triumviri], who were to distribute the public lands, at that time largely monopolized by the wealthy, to all citizens in needy circumstances. The bill met with bitter opposition from the rich landholders, but was eventually passed, and Gracchus rose to the summit of popular power. He also brought forward a measure limiting the necessary period of military service; a second bill was drawn up by him for the reformation of the law courts, and a third established a right of appeal from the law courts to the popular assembly. These measures were afterward carried by his brother Caius. Tiberius Gracchus was killed in a tumult which was raised in the Forum by the nobles and their partisans, and three hundred of his followers lost their lives in the fray. Caius Gracchus, his brother, returned to Rome B.C. 124 from Sardinia, where he had been engaged in subduing the mountaineers. For ten years he had kept aloof from public life, but was at once elected tribune, in the discharge of which office he showed distinguished powers as an orator. He brought forth the important measures known as the Sempronian Laws, the provisions of which were quite revolutionary in character. The first of these laws renewed and extended the agrarian laws of his brother and instituted new colonies in Italy and the provinces. By the second Sempronian law the State undertook to furnish corn at a low price to all Roman citizens. Other measures aimed at diminishing the great administrative power of the senate, which had so far monopolized all judicial offices. By the law of Gracchus the administration of justice was entirely transferred to a body of three hundred persons who possessed the equestrian rate of property. The Sempronian law for the assignment of consular provinces, which hitherto had been left to the senate, made the allotment of two designated provinces to be decided by the newly elected consuls themselves. The power of the senate was also crippled by the law of Gracchus in which he transferred to the tribunes the burden of improving the roads of Italy, contracts for which had hitherto been awarded by the censor under the approval of the senate. These movements were all in the direction of increasing popular and democratic power, and the work of the Gracchi tended to the extension of political freedom. In the history of politics these social struggles are among the most important events illustrative of the gradual dawn of civil liberty among a people which had been dominated and oppressed by a selfish aristocracy.) The power of Gracchus rested on the mercantile class and the proletariat; primarily on the latter, which in this conflict--wherein neither side had any military reserve--acted, as it were, the part of an army. It was clear that the senate was not powerful enough to wrest either from the merchants or from the proletariat their new privileges; any attempt to assail the corn laws or the new jury arrangement would have led under a somewhat grosser or somewhat more civilized form to a street riot, in presence of which the senate was utterly defenceless. But it was no less clear that Gracchus himself and these merchants and proletarians were only kept together by mutual advantage, and that the men of material interests were ready to accept their posts, and the populace, strictly so called, its bread, quite as well from any other as from Caius Gracchus. The institutions of Gracchus stood, for the moment at least, immovably firm, with the exception of a single one--his own supremacy. The weakness of the latter lay in the fact that in the constitution of Gracchus there was no relation of allegiance subsisting at all between the chief and the army; and, while the new constitution possessed all other elements of vitality, it lacked one--the moral tie between ruler and ruled, without which every state rests on a pedestal of clay. In the rejection of the proposal to admit the Latins to the franchise it had been demonstrated with decisive clearness that the multitude in fact never voted for Gracchus, but always simply for itself. The aristocracy conceived the plan of offering battle to the author of the corn largesses and land assignations on his own ground. As a matter of course the senate offered to the proletariat not merely the same advantages as Gracchus had already assured to it in corn and otherwise, but advantages still greater. Commissioned by the senate, the tribune of the people, Marcus Livius Drusus, proposed to relieve those who received land under the laws of Gracchus from the rent imposed on them, and to declare their allotments to be free and alienable property; and, further, to provide for the proletariat not in transmarine, but in twelve Italian, colonies, each of three thousand colonists, for the planting of which the people might nominate suitable men; only Drusus himself declined--in contrast with the family complexion of the Gracchan commission--to take part in this honorable duty. Presumably the Latins were named as those who would have to bear the costs of the plan, for there does not appear to have existed then in Italy other occupied domain land of any extent save that which was enjoyed by them. We find isolated enactments of Drusus--such as the regulation that the punishment of scourging might only be inflicted on the Latin soldier by the Latin officer set over him, and not by the Roman officer--which were to all appearance intended to indemnify the Latins for other losses. The plan was not the most refined. The attempt at rivalry was too clear; the endeavor to draw the fair bond between the nobles and the proletariat still closer by their exercising jointly a tyranny over the Latins was too transparent; the inquiry suggested itself too readily. In what part of the peninsula, now that the Italian domains had been mainly given away already--even granting that the whole domains assigned to the Latins were confiscated--was the occupied domain land requisite for the formation of twelve new, numerous, and compact burgess communities to be discovered? Lastly, the declaration of Drusus that he would have nothing to do with the execution of his law was so dreadfully prudent as to border on sheer folly. But the clumsy snare was quite suited to the stupid game which they wished to catch. There was the additional and perhaps decisive consideration that Gracchus, on whose personal influence everything depended, was just then establishing the Carthaginian colony in Africa, and that his lieutenant in the capital, Marcus Flaccus, played into the hands of his opponents by his vehement and maladroit acts. The "people" accordingly ratified the Livian laws as readily as it had before ratified the Sempronian. It then as usual repaid its latest by inflicting a gentle blow on its earlier benefactor, declining to reëlect him when he stood for the third time as a candidate for the tribunate for the year B.C. 120. On this occasion, however, there are alleged to have been unjust proceedings on the part of the tribune presiding at the election, who had been offended by Gracchus. Thus the foundation of his despotism gave way beneath him. A second blow was inflicted on him by the consular elections, which not only proved, in a general sense, adverse to the democracy, but which placed at the head of the State Lucius Opimius, one of the least scrupulous chiefs of the strict aristocratic party and a man firmly resolved to get rid of their dangerous antagonist at the earliest opportunity. Such an opportunity soon occurred. On the 10th of December, B.C. 121, Gracchus ceased to be tribune of the people. On the 1st of January, B.C. 120, Opimius entered upon his office. The first attack, as was fair, was directed against the most useful and the most unpopular measure of Gracchus, the reëstablishment of Carthage, while the transmarine colonies had hitherto been only indirectly assailed through the greater allurements of the Italian. African hyenas, it was now alleged, dug up the newly placed boundary stones of Carthage, and the Roman priests when requested certified that such signs and portents ought to form an express warning against rebuilding on a site accursed by the gods. The senate thereby found itself in its conscience compelled to have a law proposed which prohibited the planting of the colony of Sunonia. Gracchus, who with the other men nominated to establish it was just then selecting the colonists, appeared on the day of voting at the Capitol, whither the burgesses were convoked, with a view to procure by means of his adherents the rejection of the law. He wished to shun acts of violence that he might not himself supply his opponents with the pretext which they sought, but he had not been able to prevent a great portion of his faithful partisans--who remembered the catastrophe of Tiberius, and were well acquainted with the designs of the aristocracy--from appearing in arms, fearing that, amid the immense excitement on both sides, quarrels could hardly be avoided. The consul Lucius Opimius offered the usual sacrifice in the porch of the Capitoline temple, one of the attendants assisting at the ceremony. Quintus Antullius, with the holy entrails in his hands, haughtily ordered the "bad citizens" to quit the porch, and seemed as though he would lay hands on Caius himself; whereupon a zealous Gracchan drew his sword and cut the man down. A fearful tumult arose. Gracchus vainly sought to address the people and to disclaim the responsibility for the sacreligious murder; he only furnished his antagonists with a further formal ground of accusation, as, without being aware of it in the confusion, he interrupted a tribune in the act of speaking to the people--an offence for which an obsolete statute, originating at the time of the old dissensions between the orders (I. 353), had prescribed the severest penalty. The consul Lucius Opimius took his measures to put down by force of arms the insurrection for the overthrow of the republican constitution, as they were fond of designating the events of this day. He himself passed the night in the temple of Castor in the Forum. At early dawn the Capitol was filled with Cretan archers, the senate house and Forum with the men of the government party (the senators and that section of the _equites_ adhering to them), who by order of the consul had all appeared in arms, each attended by two armed slaves. None of the aristocracy was absent; even the aged and venerable Quintus Metellus, well disposed to reform, had appeared with shield and sword. An officer of ability and experience acquired in the Spanish wars, Decimus Brutus, was intrusted with the command of the armed force; the senate assembled in the senate house. The bier with the corpse of Antullius was deposited in front of it, the senate as if surprised appeared _en masse_ at the door in order to view the dead body, and then retired to determine what should be done. The leaders of the democracy had gone from the Capitol to their houses; Marcus Flaccus had spent the night in preparing for the war in the streets, while Gracchus apparently disdained to strive with destiny. Next morning when they learned of the preparations made by their opponents at the Capitol and the Forum, both proceeded to the Aventine, the old stronghold of the popular party in the struggles between the patricians and the plebeians. Gracchus went thither silent and unarmed. Flaccus called the slaves to arms and intrenched himself in the temple of Diana, while he at the same time sent his younger son Quintus to the enemy's camp in order if possible to arrange a compromise. The latter returned with the announcement that the aristocracy demanded unconditional surrender. At the same time he brought a summons from the senate to Gracchus and Flaccus to appear before it and to answer for their violation of the majesty of the tribunes. Gracchus wished to comply with the summons, but Flaccus prevented him from doing so, and repeated the equally weak and mistaken attempt to move such antagonists to a compromise. When instead of the two cited leaders the young Quintus Flaccus once more presented himself alone, the consul treated their refusal to appear as the beginning of open insurrection against the Government. He ordered the messenger to be arrested and gave the signal for attack on the Aventine, while at the same time he caused proclamations to be made in the streets that the Government would give to whomsoever should bring the head of Gracchus or of Flaccus its literal weight in gold; and that they would guarantee complete indemnity to everyone who should leave the Aventine before the beginning of the conflict. The ranks on the Aventine speedily thinned; the valiant nobility in conjunction with the Cretans and the slaves stormed the almost undefended mount, and killed all whom they found--about two hundred and fifty persons, mostly of humble rank. Marcus Flaccus fled with his eldest son to a place of concealment, where they were soon afterward hunted out and put to death. Gracchus had at the beginning of the conflict retired into the temple of Minerva and was there about to pierce himself with his sword when his friend Publius Laetorius seized his arm and besought him to preserve himself, if possible, for better times. Gracchus was induced to make an attempt to escape to the other bank of the Tiber, but when hastening down the hill he fell and sprained his foot. To gain time for him to escape, his two attendants turned, and facing his pursuers allowed themselves to be cut down. As Marcus Pomponius at the Porta Trigemina under the Aventine; Publius Laetorius at the bridge over the Tiber--where Horatius Cocles was said to have once withstood, singly, the Etruscan army--so Gracchus, attended only by his slave Euporus, reached the suburb on the right bank of the Tiber. There, in the grove of Furrina, afterward were found the two dead bodies. It seemed as if the slave had put to death first his master, and then himself. The heads of the two fallen leaders were handed over to the Government as required. The stipulated price, and more, was paid to Lucius Septumuleius, a man of quality, the bearer of the head of Gracchus; while the murderers of Flaccus, persons of humble rank, were sent away with empty hands. The bodies of the dead were thrown into the river, and the houses of the leaders were abandoned to the pillage of the multitude. The warfare of prosecution against the partisans of Gracchus began on the grandest scale; as many as three thousand of them are said to have been strangled in prison, among whom was Quintus Flaccus, eighteen years of age, who had taken no part in the conflict, and was universally lamented on account of his youth and his amiable disposition. On the open space beneath the Capitol, where the altar consecrated by Camillus after the restoration of internal peace (I. 382), and other shrines--erected on similar occasions to Concord--were situated, the small chapels were pulled down, and out of the property of the killed or condemned traitors--which was confiscated, even to the portions of their wives--a new and splendid temple of Concord, with the basilica belonging to it, was erected in accordance with a decree of the senate by the consul Lucius Opimius. Certainly it was an act in accordance with the spirit of the age to remove the memorials of the old and to inaugurate a new Concord over the remains of the three grandsons of Zama, all of whom--first, Tiberius Gracchus, then Scipio Aemilianus, and lastly the youngest and the mightiest, Caius Gracchus--had now been engulfed by the revolution. The memory of the Gracchi remained officially proscribed; Cornelia was not allowed even to put on mourning for the death of her last son; but the passionate attachment which very many had felt toward the two noble brothers, and especially toward Caius, during their life, was touchingly displayed also after their death, in the almost religious veneration which the multitude, in spite of all precautions of the police, continued to pay to their memory and to the spots where they had fallen. CAESAR CONQUERS GAUL[68] B.C. 58-50 NAPOLEON III [Footnote 68: From Louis Napoleon's Julius Caesar, by permission of Harper & Brothers.] (In Caesar's military performances the Gallic war plays the most important part, as shown in his _Commentaries_, his sole extant literary work and almost the only authority for this part of Roman history. Cisalpine Gaul--that portion lying on the southern or Italian side of the Alps--came partly under the dominion of Rome as early as B.C. 282, when a Roman colony was founded at Sena Gallica. This division of Gaul was wholly conquered by B.C. 191; and in B.C. 43, having been made a Roman province, it became a part of Italy. Transalpine Gaul--that part lying north and northwest of the Alps from Rome--comprised in Caesar's day three divisions: Aquitaine to the southwest, Celtic Gaul in the middle, and Belgic Gaul to the northwest. The region was inhabited by various tribes having neither unity of race nor of customs whereby nationality becomes distinguished. Toward the close of the second century B.C. the Romans made their first settlements in Transalpine Gaul, in the southeastern part. At the time when Caesar became proconsul in Gaul, B.C. 58, the province was in a state of tranquillity, but Fortune seemed determined that he should have great opportunities for the display of his military genius, and, when Asia had been subdued by Pompey, "conferred what remained to be done in Europe upon Caesar." The attempt of the Helvetii to leave their homes in the Alps for new dwelling-places in Gaul served him as an occasion for war. As they were crossing the Arar [now Saone] he attacked and routed them, later defeated them again, and at last drove them back to their own country. The story of the long war, with its various campaigns, has become familiar to the world's readers through the masterly account of Caesar himself, known to "every schoolboy" who advances to the dignity of classical studies. In the end the country between the Pyrenees and the Rhine was subjugated, and for several centuries it remained a Roman province. At the time when the history is taken up in the following narrative by Napoleon III, the great rebellion, B.C. 52, had sustained a heavy blow in the surrender of Alesia, and the capture of the heroic chief and leader of the insurrection, Vercingetorix, whom Caesar exhibited in his triumph at Rome, B.C. 46, and then caused to be put to death. The distinguished author of the article says he wrote "for the purpose of proving that when Providence raises up such men as Caesar, Charlemagne, and Napoleon it is to trace out to peoples the path they ought to follow, to stamp with the seal of their genius a new era, and to accomplish in a few years the work of many centuries." The work was prepared [_vide Manual of Historical Literature_: Adams] with the utmost care--a care which extended in some instances to special surveys, to insure perfect accuracy in the descriptions, etc.) The capture of Alesia and that of Vercingetorix, in spite of the united efforts of all Gaul, naturally gave Caesar hopes of a general submission; and he therefore believed that he could leave his army during the winter to rest quietly in its quarters from the hard labors which had lasted without interruption during the whole of the past summer. But the spirit of insurrection was not extinct among the Gauls; and convinced by experience that whatever might be their number they could not in a body cope with troops inured to war, they resolved, by partial insurrections raised on all points at once, to divide the attention and the forces of the Romans as their only chance of resisting them with advantage. Caesar was unwilling to leave them time to realize this new plan, but gave the command of his winter quarters to his quaestor, Mark Antony; quitted Bibracte on the day before the Calends of January (the 25th of December) with an escort of cavalry, joined the Thirteenth legion, which was in winter quarters among the Bituriges, not far from the frontier of the Aldui, and called to him the Eleventh legion, which was the nearest at hand. Having left two cohorts of each legion to guard the baggage, he proceeded toward the fertile country of the Bituriges, a vast territory, where the presence of a single legion was insufficient to put a stop to the preparations for insurrection. His sudden arrival in the midst of men without distrust, who were spread over the open country, produced the result which he expected. They were surprised before they could enter into their _oppidae_--for Caesar had strictly forbidden everything which might have raised their suspicion; especially the application of fire, which usually betrays the sudden presence of an enemy. Several thousands of captives were made. Those who succeeded in escaping sought in vain a refuge among the neighboring nations. Caesar, by forced marches, came up with them everywhere and obliged each tribe to think of its own safety before that of others. This activity held the populations in their fidelity, and through fear engaged the wavering to submit to the conditions of peace. Thus the Bituriges, seeing that Caesar offered them an easy way to recover his protection, and that the neighboring states had suffered no other chastisement than that of having to deliver hostages, did not hesitate in submitting. The soldiers of the Eleventh and Thirteenth legions had, during the winter, supported with rare constancy the fatigues of very difficult marches in intolerable cold. To reward them he promised to give by way of prize-money two hundred _sestertii_ to each soldier and two thousand to each centurion. He then sent them into their winter quarters and returned to Bibracte after an absence of forty days. While he was there, dispensing justice, the Bituriges came to implore his support against the attacks of the Carnutes. Although it was only eighteen days since he returned, he marched again at the head of two legions--the Sixth and the Fourteenth--which had been placed on the Saone to insure the supply of provisions. On his approach the Carnutes, taught by the fate of others, abandoned their miserable huts--which they had erected on the site of their burgs and oppida destroyed in the last campaign--and fled in every direction. Caesar, unwilling to expose his soldiers to the rigor of the season, established his camp at Genabum (Gien), and lodged them partly in the huts which had remained undestroyed, partly in tents under penthouses covered with straw. The cavalry and auxiliary infantry were sent in pursuit of the Carnutes, who, hunted down everywhere, and without shelter, took refuge in the neighboring counties. After having dispersed some rebellious meetings and stifled the germs of an insurrection, Caesar believed that the summer would pass without any serious war. He left therefore at Genabum the two legions he had with him, and gave the command of them to C. Trebonius. Nevertheless, he learned by several intimations from the Remi that the Bellovaci and neighboring peoples, with Correus and Commius at their head, were collecting troops to make an inroad on the territory of the Suessiones, who had been placed--since the campaign of 697--under the dependence of the Remi. He considered that he regarded his interest as well as his dignity in protecting allies who had deserved so well of the republic. He again drew the Eleventh legion from its winter quarters, sent written orders to C. Fabius, who was encamped in the country of the Remi, to bring into that of the Suessiones the two legions under his command, and demanded one of his legions from Labienus, who was at Besançon. Thus without taking any rest himself he shared the fatigues among the legions by turns, as far as the position of the winter quarters and the necessities of the war permitted. When this army was assembled he marched against the Bellovaci, established his camp on their territory, and sent cavalry in every direction in order to make some prisoners and learn from them the designs of the enemy. The cavalry reported that the emigration was general, and that the few inhabitants who were to be seen were not remaining behind in order to apply themselves to agriculture, but to act as spies upon the Romans. Caesar by interrogating the prisoners learned that all the Bellovaci able to fight had assembled on one spot, and that they had been joined by the Ambiani, the Aulerci, the Caletes, the Veliocasses, and the Atrebates. Their camp was in a forest on a height surrounded by marshes--Mont Saint Marc, in the forest of Compiègne; their baggage had been transported to more distant woods. The command was divided among several chiefs, but the greater part obeyed Correus on account of his well-known hatred of the Romans. Commius had a few days before gone to seek succor from the numerous Germans who lived in great numbers in the neighboring counties--probably those on the banks of the Meuse. The Bellovaci resolved with one accord to give Caesar battle, if, as report said, he was advancing with only three legions; for they would not run the risk of having afterward to encounter his entire army. If, on the contrary, the Romans were advancing with more considerable forces they proposed to keep their positions and confine themselves to intercepting, by means of ambuscades, the provisions and forage, which were very scarce at that season. This plan, confirmed by many reports, seemed to Caesar full of prudence and altogether contrary to the usual rashness of the barbarians. He took therefore every possible care to dissimulate as to the number of his troops. He had with him the Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth legions, composed of old soldiers of tried valor, and the Eleventh, which, formed of picked young men who had gone through eight campaigns, deserved his confidence, although it could not be compared with the others with regard to bravery and experience in war. In order to deceive the enemy by showing them only three legions--the only number they were willing to fight--he placed the Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth in one line; while the baggage, which was not very considerable, was placed behind under the protection of the Eleventh legion, which closed the march. In this order, which formed almost a square, he came unawares in sight of the Bellovaci. At the unexpected view of the legions, which advanced in order of battle and with a firm step, they lost their courage and, instead of attacking, as they had engaged to do, they confined themselves to drawing themselves up before their camp without leaving the height. A valley deeper than it was wide separated the two armies. On account of this obstacle and the numerical superiority of the barbarians, Caesar, though he had wished for battle, abandoned the idea of attacking them and placed his camp opposite that of the Gauls in a strong position. He caused it to be surrounded with a parapet twelve feet high, surmounted by accessory works proportioned to the importance of the retrenchment and preceded by a double fosse fifteen feet wide, with a square bottom. Towers of three stories were constructed from distance to distance and united together by covered bridges, the exterior parts of which were protected by hurdle-work. In this manner the camp was protected not only by a double fosse, but also by a double row of defenders, some of whom, placed on the bridges, could from this elevated and sheltered position throw their missiles farther and with a better aim; while the others, placed on the _vallum_, nearer to the enemy, were protected by the bridges from the missiles which showered down upon them. The entrances were defended by means of higher towers and were closed with gates. These formidable retrenchments had a double aim--to increase the confidence of the barbarians by making them believe that they were feared, and next to allow the number of the garrison to be reduced with safety when they had to go far for provisions. For some days there were no serious engagements, but slight skirmishes in the marshy plain which extended between the two camps. The capture, however, of a few foragers did not fail to swell the presumption of the barbarians, which was still more increased by the arrival of Commius, although he had brought only five hundred German cavalry. The enemy remained for several days shut up in its impregnable position. Caesar judged that an assault would cost too many lives; an investment alone seemed to him opportune, but it would require a greater number of troops. He wrote thereupon to Trebonius to send him as soon as possible the Thirteenth legion, which, under the command of T. Sextius, was in winter quarters among the Bituriges, to join it with the Sixth and the Fourteenth (which the first of these lieutenants commanded at Genabum), and to come himself with these three legions by forced marches. During this time he employed the numerous cavalry of the Remi, the Lingones and the other allies, to protect the foragers and to prevent surprises, but this daily service, as is often the case, ended by being negligently performed. And one day the Remi, pursuing the Bellovaci with too much ardor, fell into an ambuscade. In withdrawing they were surrounded by foot-soldiers in the midst of whom Vertiscus, their chief, met with his death. True to his Gaulish nature, he would not allow his age to exempt him from commanding and mounting on horseback, although he was hardly able to keep his seat. His death and this feeble advantage raised the self-confidence of the barbarians still more, but it rendered the Romans more circumspect. Nevertheless, in one of the skirmishes which were continually taking place within sight of the two camps about the fordable places of the marsh, the German infantry--which Caesar had sent for from beyond the Rhine in order to mix them with the cavalry--joined in a body, boldly crossed the marsh, and, meeting with little resistance, continued the pursuit with such impetuosity that fear seized not only the enemy who fought, but even those who were in reserve. Instead of availing themselves of the advantages of the ground, all fled in a cowardly manner. They did not stop until they were within their camp, and some even were not ashamed to fly beyond it. This defeat caused a general discouragement, for the Gauls were as easily daunted by the least reverse as they were made arrogant by the smallest success. Day after day was passing in this manner when Caesar was informed of the arrival of C. Trebonius and his troops, which raised the number of his legions to seven. The chiefs of the Bellovaci then feared an investment like that of Alesia, and resolved to quit their position. They sent away by night the old men, the infirm, the unarmed men, and the part of the baggage which they had kept with them. Scarcely was this confused multitude in motion--embarrassed by its own mass and its numerous chariots--when daylight surprised it, and the troops had to be drawn up in line before the camp to give the column time to move away. Caesar saw no advantage either in giving battle to those who were in position, nor, on account of the steepness of the hill, in pursuing those who were making their retreat; he resolved, nevertheless, to make two legions advance in order to disturb the enemy in its retreat. Having observed that the mountain on which the Gauls were established was connected with another height (Mont Collet), from which it was only separated by a narrow valley, he ordered bridges to be thrown across the marsh. The legions crossed over them and soon attained the summit of the height, which was defended on both sides by abrupt declivities. There he collected his troops and advanced in order of battle up to the extremity of the plateau, whence the engines placed in battery could reach the masses of the enemy with their missiles. The barbarians, rendered confident by the advantage of their position, were ready to accept battle if the Romans dared to attack the mountain; besides, they were afraid to withdraw their troops successively, as, if divided, they might have been thrown into disorder. This attitude led Cæsar to resolve upon leaving twenty cohorts under arms, and on tracing a camp on this spot and retrenching it. When the works were completed the legions were placed before the retrenchments and the cavalry distributed with their horses bridled at the outposts. The Bellovaci had recourse to a stratagem in order to effect their retreat. They passed from hand to hand the fascines and the straw on which, according to the Gaulish custom, they were in the habit of sitting, preserving at the same time their order of battle; placed them in front of the camp, and toward the close of the day, on a preconcerted signal, set fire to them. Immediately a vast flame concealed from the Romans the Gaulish troops, who fled in haste. Although the fire prevented Cæsar from seeing the retreat of the enemy he suspected it. He ordered his legions to advance, and sent the cavalry in pursuit, but he marched slowly in fear of some stratagem, suspecting the barbarians to have formed the design of drawing the Romans to disadvantageous ground. Besides, the cavalry did not dare to ride through the smoke and flames; and thus the Bellovaci were able to pass over a distance of ten miles and halt in a place strongly fortified by nature (Mont Ganelon), where they pitched their camp. In this position they confined themselves to placing cavalry and infantry in frequent ambuscades, thus inflicting great damage on the Romans when they went to forage. After several encounters of this kind Cæsar learned by a prisoner that Correus, chief of the Bellovaci, with six thousand picked infantry and one thousand horsemen, was preparing an ambuscade in places where the abundance of corn and forage was likely to attract the Romans. In consequence of this information he sent forward the cavalry, which was always employed to protect the foragers, and joined with them some light-armed auxiliaries, while he himself, with a greater number of legions, followed them as closely as possible. The enemy had posted themselves in a plain--that of Choisy-au-Bac--of about one thousand paces in length and the same in breadth, surrounded on one side by forests, on the other by a river which was difficult to pass (the Aisne). The cavalry becoming acquainted with the designs of the Gauls and feeling themselves supported, advanced resolutely in squadrons toward this plain, which was surrounded with ambushes on all sides. Correus, seeing them arrive in this manner, believed the opportunity favorable for the execution of his plan and began by attacking the first squadrons with a few men. The Romans sustained the shock without concentrating themselves in a mass on the same point, "which," says Hirtius, "usually happens in cavalry engagements, and leads always to a dangerous confusion." There, on the contrary, the squadrons, remaining separated, fought in detached bodies, and when one of them advanced, its flanks were protected by the others. Correus then ordered the rest of his cavalry to issue from the woods. An obstinate combat began on all sides without any decisive result until the enemy's infantry, debouching from the forest in close ranks, forced the Roman cavalry to fall back. The lightly armed soldiers who preceded the legions placed themselves between the squadrons and restored the fortune of the combat. After a certain time the troops, animated by the approach of the legions and the arrival of Caesar, and ambitious of obtaining alone the honor of the victory, redoubled their efforts and gained the advantage. The enemy, on the other hand, were discouraged and took to flight, but were stopped by the very obstacles which they intended to throw in the way of the Romans. A small number, nevertheless, escaped through the forest and crossed the river. Correus, who remained unshaken under this catastrophe, obstinately refused to surrender, and fell pierced with wounds. After this success Caesar hoped that if he continued his march the enemy in dismay would abandon his camp, which was only eight miles from the field of battle. He therefore crossed the Aisne, though not without great difficulties. The Bellovaci and their allies, informed by the fugitives of the death of Correus, of the loss of their cavalry and the flower of their infantry, and fearing every moment to see the Romans appear, convoked by sound of trumpet a general assembly and decided by acclamation to send deputies and hostages to the proconsul. The barbarians implored forgiveness, alleging that this last defeat had ruined their power, and that the death of Correus, the instigator of the war, delivered them from oppression, for, during his life, it was not the senate which governed, but an ignorant multitude. To their prayers Caesar replied that last year the Bellovaci had revolted in concert with the other Gaulish peoples, but that _they_ alone had persisted in the revolt. It was very convenient to throw their faults upon those who were dead, but how could it be believed that with nothing but the help of a weak populace a man should have had sufficient influence to raise and sustain a war contrary to the will of the chiefs, the decision of the senate, and the desire of honest people? However, the evil which they had drawn upon themselves was for him a sufficient reparation. The following night the Bellovaci and their allies submitted, with the exception of Commius, who fled to the country from which he had but recently drawn support. He had not dared to trust the Romans for the following reason: "The year before, in the absence of Caesar, T. Labienus, informed that Commius was conspiring and preparing an insurrection, thought that without accusing him of bad faith," says Hirtius, "he could repress his treason." ("Under pretext of an interview he sent C. Volusenus Quadratus, with some centurions, to kill him; but when they were in the presence of the Gaulish chief the centurion who was to strike him missed his blow and only wounded him; swords were drawn on both sides and Commius had time to escape.") The most warlike tribes had been vanquished and none of them dreamed of further revolt. Nevertheless, many inhabitants of the newly conquered countries abandoned the towns and the fields in order to withdraw themselves from the Roman dominion. Caesar, in order to put a stop to this emigration, distributed his army in different countries. He ordered the quaestor, Mark Antony, to come to him with the Twelfth legion, and sent the lieutenant Fabius with twenty-five cohorts into an opposite part of Gaul--to the country situated between the Creuse and the Vienne--where it was said that several tribes were in arms, and where the lieutenant, Caninius Rebilus, who commanded with two legions, did not appear to be sufficiently strong. Lastly, he ordered T. Labienus to join him in person and to send the Fifteenth legion, which he had under his command, into Cisalpine Gaul to protect the colonies of Roman citizens there against the sudden inroads of the barbarians, who the summer before had attacked the Tergestini (the inhabitants of Trieste). As for Cæsar, he proceeded with four legions to the territory of the Eburones to lay it waste. As he could not secure Ambiorix, who was still wandering at large, he thought it advisable to destroy everything by fire and sword, persuaded that this chief would never dare to return to a country upon which he had brought such a terrible calamity. The legions and the auxiliaries were charged with the execution of this plan. Then he sent Labienus, with two legions, to the country of the Treviri, who, always at war with the Germans, were only kept in obedience by the presence of a Roman army. During this time Caninius Rebilus, who had first been appointed to go into the country of the Ruteni, but who had been detained by petty insurrections in the region situated between the Creuse and the Vienne, learned that numerous hostile bands were assembling in the country of the Pictones. He was informed of this by letters from Duratius, their king, who, amid the defection of a part of his people, had remained invariably faithful to the Romans. He started immediately for Lemonum (Poitiers). On the road he learned from prisoners that Duratius was shut up there and besieged by several thousand men under the orders of Dumnacus, chief of the Andes. Rebilus, at the head of two weak legions, did not dare to measure his strength with the enemy; he contented himself with establishing his camp in a strong position. At the news of his approach, Dumnacus raised the siege, and marched to meet the legions, but after several days of fruitless attempts to force their camp he returned to attack Lemonum. Meanwhile, the lieutenant, Caius Fabius, occupied in pacifying several other tribes, learned from Caninius Rebilus what was going on in the country of the Pictones and marched without delay to the assistance of Duratius. The news of the march of Fabius deprived Dumnacus of all hope of opposing, at the same time, the troops shut up in Lemonum and the relieving army. He abandoned the siege again in great haste, not thinking himself safe until he had placed the Loire between himself and the Romans; but he could only pass that river where there was a bridge (at Saumur). Before he had joined Rebilus, before he had even obtained a sight of the enemy, Fabius, who came from the North, and had lost no time, doubted not, from what he heard from the people of the country, that Dumnacus, in his fear, had taken the road which led to that bridge. He therefore marched thither with his legions, preceded at a short distance by his cavalry. The latter surprised the column of Dumnacus on its march, dispersed it, and returned to the camp laden with booty. During the night of the following day Fabius again sent his cavalry forward with orders to delay the march of the enemy so as to give time for the arrival of the infantry. The two bodies of cavalry were soon engaged, but the enemy, thinking he had to contend with only the same troops as the day before, drew up his infantry in line so as to support the squadrons, when suddenly the Roman legions appeared in order of battle. At this sight the barbarians were struck with terror, the long train of baggage thrown into confusion, and the infantry dispersed. More than twelve thousand men were killed and all the baggage fell into the hands of the Romans. Only five thousand fugitives escaped from this rout; they were received by the Senonan, Drappes, the same who in the first revolt of the Gauls had collected a crowd of vagabonds, slaves, exiles, and robbers to intercept the convoys of the Romans. They took the direction of the Narbonnese with the Cadurcan Lucterius who had before attempted a similar invasion. Rebilus pursued them with two legions in order to avoid the shame of seeing the province suffering any injury from such a contemptible rabble. As for Fabius, he led the twenty-five cohorts against the Carnutes and the other tribes whose forces had already been reduced by the defeat they had suffered from Dumnacus. The Carnutes, though often beaten, had never been completely subdued. They gave hostages, and the Armoricans followed their example. Dumnacus, driven out of his own territory, went to seek a refuge in the remotest part of Gaul. Drappes and Lucterius, when they learned that they were pursued by Rebilus and his two legions, gave up the design of penetrating into the province; they halted in the country of the Cadurci and threw themselves into the _oppidum_ of Uxellodunum (Puy-d'Issolu, near Varac), an exceedingly strong place formerly under the dependence of Lucterius, who soon incited the inhabitants to revolt. Rebilus appeared immediately before the town, which, surrounded on all sides by steep rocks, was, even without being defended, difficult of access to armed men. Knowing that there was in the oppidum so great a quantity of baggage that the besieged could not send it away secretly without being detected and overtaken by the cavalry, and even by the infantry, he divided his cohorts into three bodies and established three camps on the highest points. Next he ordered a countervallation to be made. On seeing these preparations the besieged remembered the ill-fortune of Alesia, and feared a similar fate. Lucterius, who had witnessed the horrors of famine during the investment of that town, now took especial care of the provisions. During this time the garrison of the oppidum attacked the redoubts of Rebilus several times, which obliged him to interrupt the work of the countervallation, which, indeed, he had not sufficient forces to defend. Drappes and Lucterius established themselves at a distance of ten miles from the oppidum, with the intention of introducing the provisions gradually. They shared the duties between them. Drappes remained with part of the troops to protect the camp. Lucterius, during the night-time, endeavored to introduce beasts of burden into the town by a narrow and wooded path. The noise of their march gave warning to the sentries. Rebilus, informed of what was going on, ordered the cohorts to sally from the neighboring redoubts, and at daybreak fell upon the convoy, the escort of which was slaughtered. Lucterius, having escaped with a small number of his followers, was unable to rejoin Drappes. Rebilus soon learned from prisoners that the rest of the troops which had left the oppidum were with Drappes at a distance of twelve miles, and that by a fortunate chance not one fugitive had taken that direction to carry him news of the last combat. The Roman general sent in advance all the cavalry and the light German infantry; he followed them with one legion, without baggage, leaving the other as a guard to the three camps. When he came near the enemy he learned, by his scouts, that the barbarians--according to their custom of neglecting the heights--had placed their camp on the banks of a river (probably the Dordogne); that the Germans and the cavalry had surprised them, and that they were already fighting. Rebilus then advanced rapidly at the head of the legion drawn up in order of battle and took possession of the heights. As soon as the ensigns appeared, the cavalry redoubled its ardor; the cohorts rushed forward from all sides and the Gauls were taken or killed. The booty was immense and Drappes fell into the hands of the Romans. Rebilus, after this successful exploit, which cost him but a few wounded, returned under the walls of Uxellodunum. Fearing no longer any attack from without, he set resolutely to work to continue his circumvallation. The day after, C. Fabius arrived, followed by his troops, and shared with him the labors of the siege. While the south of Gaul was the scene of serious trouble, Cæsar left the quaestor, Mark Antony, with fifteen cohorts in the country of the Bellovaci. To deprive the Belgæ of all idea of revolt he had proceeded to the neighboring countries with two legions; had exacted hostages, and restored confidence by his conciliating speeches. When he arrived among the Carnutes--who the year before had been the first to revolt--he saw that the remembrance of their conduct kept them in great alarm, and he resolved to put an end to it by causing his vengeance to fall only upon Gutruatus, the instigator of the war. This man was brought in and delivered up. Although Cæsar was naturally inclined to be indulgent, he could not resist the tumultuous entreaties of his soldiers, who made that chief responsible for all the dangers they had run and for all the misery they had suffered. Gutruatus died under the stripes and was afterward beheaded. It was in the land of the Carnutes that Cæsar received news, by the letters of Rebilus, of the events which had taken place at Uxellodunum and of the resistance of the besieged. Although a handful of men shut up in a fortress was not very formidable, he judged it necessary to punish their obstinacy, for fear that the Gauls should entertain the conviction that it was not strength, but constancy, which had failed them in resisting the Romans; and lest this example might encourage the other states which possessed fortresses advantageously situated, to recover their independence. Moreover, it was known everywhere among the Gauls that Cæsar had only one more summer to hold his command, and that after that time they would have nothing more to fear. He left therefore the lieutenant Quintus Calenus at the head of his two legions, with orders to follow him by ordinary marches, and, with his cavalry, hastened by long marches toward Uxellodunum. Cæsar, arriving unexpectedly before the town, found it completely defended at all accessible points. He judged that it could not be taken by assault (_neque ab oppugnatione recedi vidaret ulla conditione posse_), and, as it was abundantly provided with provisions, conceived the project of depriving the inhabitants of water. The mountain was surrounded almost on every side by very low ground, but on one side there existed a valley through which a river (the Tourmente) ran. As it flowed at the foot of two precipitous mountains the disposition of the localities did not admit of turning it aside and conducting it into lower channels. It was difficult for the besieged to come down to it, and the Romans rendered the approaches to it still more dangerous. They placed posts of archers and slingers, and brought engines which commanded all the slopes which gave access to the river. The besieged had thenceforth no other means of procuring water but by carrying it from an abundant spring which arose at the foot of the wall three hundred feet from the channel of the Tourmente. Cæsar resolved to drain this spring, and for this purpose he did not hesitate to attempt a laborious undertaking. Opposite the point where it rose he ordered covered galleries to be pushed forward against the mountain, and under protection of these a terrace to be raised--labors which were carried on in the midst of continual fighting and weariness. Although the besieged from their elevated position fought without danger and wounded many Romans, yet the latter did not yield to discouragement, but continued the work. At the same time they made a subterranean gallery, which, running from the covered galleries, was intended to lead up to the spring. This work, carried on free from all danger, was executed without being perceived by the enemy. The terrace attained a height of sixty feet and was surmounted by a tower of ten stories, which, without equalling the elevation of the wall--a result it was impossible to obtain--still commanded the fountain. Its approaches, battered by engines from the top of this tower, became inaccessible. In consequence of this, many men and animals in the place died of thirst. The besieged, terrified at this mortality, filled barrels with pitch, grease, and shavings, and rolled them flaming upon the Roman works, making at the same time a sally to prevent them from extinguishing the fire. Soon it spread to the covered galleries and the terrace, which stopped the progress of the inflammable materials. Notwithstanding the difficult nature of the ground and the increasing danger, the Romans still persevered in their struggle. The battle took place on a height within sight of the army. Loud cries were raised on both sides. Each individual sought to rival his fellow in zeal, and the more he was exposed to view the more courageously he faced the missiles and the fire. Caesar, as he was sustaining great loss, determined to feign an assault. In order to create a diversion he ordered some cohorts to climb the hill on all sides, uttering loud cries. This movement terrified the besieged, who, fearing to be attacked at other points, called back to the defence of the wall those who were setting fire to the works. Then the Romans were enabled to extinguish the flames. The Gauls, although exhausted by thirst and reduced to a small number, ceased not to defend themselves vigorously. At length the subterranean gallery having reached the source of the spring, the supply was turned aside. The besieged, beholding the fountain suddenly become dry, believed in their despair that it was an intervention of the gods, and, submitting to necessity, surrendered. Caesar considered that the pacification of Gaul would never be completed if as strong a resistance was encountered in other towns. He thought it advisable to spread terror by a severe example--so much the more so as "the well-known mildness of his temper," says Hirtius, "would not allow this necessary rigor to be ascribed to cruelty." He ordered that all those who had borne arms should have their hands cut off, and sent them away living examples of the punishment reserved for rebels. Drappes, who had been taken prisoner, starved himself to death; Lucterius, who had been arrested by the Arvernan Epasnactus (a friend of the Romans), was delivered up to Caesar. While these events were taking place on the banks of the Dordogne, Labienus, in a cavalry engagement, had gained a decisive advantage over a part of the Treviri and Germans; had taken prisoner their chief, and thus subjected a people who were always ready to support any insurrection against the Romans. The Aeduan Surus fell also into his hands. He was a chief distinguished for his courage and birth, and the only one of that nation who had not yet laid down his arms. From that moment Caesar considered Gaul to be completely pacified. He resolved, however, to go himself to Aquitaine, which he had not yet visited and which Publius Crassus had partly conquered. Arriving there at the head of two legions, he obtained the complete submission of that country without difficulty. All the tribes sent him hostages. He proceeded next to Narbonne with a detachment of cavalry and charged his lieutenants to put the army into winter quarters. Four legions, under the orders of Mark Antony, Caius Trebonius, Publius Vatinius, and Q. Tullius, were quartered in Belgium, two among the Aedui and two among the Turones on the frontier of the Carnutes, to hold in check all the countries bordering on the ocean. These two last legions took up their winter quarters on the territory of the Lemovices, not far from the Arverni, so that no part of Gaul should be without troops. Caesar remained but a short time in the province, presiding hastily over the assemblies, determining cases of public dispute, and rewarding those who had served him well. He had had occasion more than anyone to know their sentiments individually, because during the general revolt of Gaul the fidelity and succor of the province had aided him in triumphing over it. When these affairs were settled he returned to his legions in Belgium and took up his winter quarters at Nemetocenna (Arras). There he was informed of the last attempts of Commius, who, continuing a partisan war at the head of a small number of cavalry, intercepted the Roman convoys. Mark Antony had charged C. Volusenus Quadratus, prefect of the cavalry, to pursue him. He had accepted the task eagerly in the hope of succeeding the second time better than the first, but Commius, taking advantage of the rash ardor with which his enemy had rushed upon him, had wounded him seriously and escaped. He was discouraged, however, and had promised Mark Antony to retire to any spot which should be appointed him on condition that he should never be compelled to appear before a Roman. This condition having been accepted, he had given hostages. Gaul was hereby subjugated. Death or slavery had carried off its principal citizens. Of all the chiefs who had fought for its independence only two survived--Commius and Ambiorix. Banished far from their country they died in obscurity. ROMAN INVASION AND CONQUEST OF BRITAIN B.C. 55 - A.D. 79 OLIVER GOLDSMITH (When Julius Caesar received the province of Gaul as his government, B.C. 58, it was only a small portion of the territory inhabited by the Gauls or Celts, being almost conterminous with the mediaeval Provence. It was also at peace, and there seemed no excuse for making an extension of Roman territory among the three tribes or races between which Northern and Western Gaul were divided. But the Helvetii, who occupied that part of the Alps known to-day as Switzerland, meditated an emigration into the plains of Gaul, and, as their shortest route lay across the Roman provinces, they asked leave of Caesar to pass three hundred and sixty thousand souls in all, counting women and children, through the imperial territory. The Roman commander, after giving them an evasive answer, met them in the territory of the Sequani and Aedui and defeated them, driving them back to their mountains. He next went to the aid of the Aedui, ancient allies of Rome, against the Arverni and Sequani, who had invaded the Aeduan territory under a German chieftain, Ariovistus. The result was that Ariovistus was defeated and driven eastward across the Rhine. He then defeated the Belgae, who, in B.C. 57, took up arms against the garrisons which he had left in the country of the Sequani [dwellers on the Seine]. He continued his conquest of the Belgic territory, and subjected the three nations who occupied it, finally entering the country of the warlike Nervii, whom he only conquered after a stubborn and bloody battle. As soon as he had subjugated the whole of Gaul, he crossed the Rhine for the purpose of intimidating the Germans and teaching them to keep within their own boundaries. He pursued the same policy with regard to the Britons, who, according to information received by him, had sent aid to the Gauls in their struggle with Rome. His ships were brought round from the Loire to that part of the French coast now known as Boulogne, and he set out for Britain, where he landed, and eventually received the submission of the British chieftains.) The Britons in their rude and barbarous state seemed to stand in need of more polished instructors; and indeed whatever evils may attend the conquest of heroes, their success has generally produced one good effect in disseminating the arts of refinement and humanity. It ever happens when a barbarous nation is conquered by another more advanced in the arts of peace, that it gains in elegance a recompense for what it loses in liberty. The Britons had long remained in this rude but independent state, when Cæsar, having overrun Gaul with his victories, and willing still further to extend his fame, determined upon the conquest of a country that seemed to promise an easy triumph. He was allured neither by the riches nor by the renown of the inhabitants; but being ambitious rather of splendid than of useful conquests, he was willing to carry the Roman arms into a country the remote situation of which would add seeming difficulty to the enterprise and consequently produce an increase of reputation. His pretence was to punish these islanders for having sent succors to the Gauls while he waged war against that nation, as well as for granting an asylum to such of the enemy as had sought protection from his resentment. The natives, informed of his intention, were sensible of the unequal contest and endeavored to appease him by submission. He received their ambassadors with great complacency, and having exhorted them to continue steadfast in the same sentiments, in the mean time made preparations for the execution of his design. When the troops designed for the expedition were embarked he set sail for Britain about midnight, and the next morning arrived on the coast near Dover, where he saw the rocks and cliffs covered with armed men to oppose his landing. Finding it impracticable to gain the shore where he first intended, from the agitation of the sea and the impending mountains, he resolved to choose a landing-place of greater security. The place he chose was about eight miles farther on (some suppose at Deal), where an inclining shore and a level country invited his attempts. The poor, naked, ill-armed Britons we may well suppose were but an unequal match for the disciplined Romans who had before conquered Gaul and afterward became the conquerors of the world. However, they made a brave opposition against the veteran army; the conflicts between them were fierce, the losses mutual, and the success various. The Britons had chosen Cassibelaunus for their commander-in-chief; but the petty princes under his command, either desiring his station or suspecting his fidelity, threw off their allegiance. Some of them fled with their forces into the internal parts of the kingdom, others submitted to Caesar; till at length Cassibelaunus himself, weakened by so many desertions, resolved upon making what terms he was able while yet he had power to keep the field. The conditions offered by Caesar and accepted by him were that he should send to the Continent double the number of hostages at first demanded and that he should acknowledge subjection to the Romans. The Romans were pleased with the name of this new and remote conquest, and the senate decreed a supplication of twenty days in consequence of their general's success. Having therefore in this manner rather discovered than subdued the southern parts of the island, Caesar returned into Gaul with his forces and left the Britons to enjoy their customs, religion, and laws. But the inhabitants, thus relieved from the terror of his arms, neglected the performance of their stipulations, and only two of their states sent over hostages according to the treaty. Caesar, it is likely, was not much displeased at the omission, as it furnished him with a pretext for visiting the island once more and completing a conquest which he had only begun. Accordingly the ensuing spring he set sail for Britain with eight hundred ships,[69] and arriving at the place of his descent he landed without opposition. The islanders being apprised of his invasion had assembled an army and marched down to the sea-side to oppose him, but seeing the number of his forces, and the whole sea, as it were, covered with his shipping, they were struck with consternation and retired to their places of security. The Romans, however, pursued them to their retreats until at last common danger induced these poor barbarians to forget their former dissensions and to unite their whole strength for the mutual defence of their liberty and possessions. [Footnote 69: With regard to these Roman _ships_, let not our readers be misled by a familiar notion or a pompous name. They were but little more than rowboats, as may be easily imagined from the fact that Cicero instances for its uncommon magnitude a _ship_ of only fifty-six tons! These ancient vessels were occasionally sheathed with leather or lead, and had the prow decorated with paint and gilding, while the stern was sometimes carved in the figure of a shield, elaborately adorned. Upon a staff there erected hung ribbons distinctive of the ship and serving at the same time to show the direction of the wind. There, too, stood the _tutela_, or chosen patron of the ship, to whom prayers and sacrifices were daily offered. The selection of this deity was guided by either private or professional reasons, and as merchants committed themselves to the protection of Mercury, or lovers to the care of Cupid, warriors, it will at once be surmised, made Mars the object of their pious supplication. At a later period than the epoch to which our present note attaches, when Constantius removed from Heliopolis to Rome an enormous obelisk, weighing fifteen hundred tons, the vessel on board of which it was shipped also carried _eleven hundred and thirty-eight tons_ of pulse; but such vast and unmanageable masses were regarded as monsters, and owed their existence to the absolute urgency of a remarkable purpose, backed by the despotic institutions of the times.] Cassibelaunus was chosen to conduct the common cause, and for some time he harassed the Romans in their march and revived the desponding hopes of his countrymen. But no opposition that undisciplined strength could make was able to repress the vigor and intrepidity of Cæsar. He discomfited the Britons in every action; he advanced into the country, passed the Thames in the face of the enemy, took and burned the capital city of Cassibelaunus, established his ally Mandubratius as sovereign of the Trinobantes; and having obliged the inhabitants to make new submissions, he again returned with his army into Gaul, having made himself rather the nominal than the real possessor of the island. Whatever the stipulated tribute might have been, it is more than probable, as there was no authority left to exact it, that it was but indifferently paid. Upon the accession of Augustus, that Emperor had formed a design of visiting Britain, but was diverted from it by an unexpected revolt of the Pannonians. Some years after he resumed his design; but being met in his way by the British ambassadors, who promised the accustomed tribute and made the usual submissions, he desisted from his intention. The year following, finding them remiss in their supplies and untrue to their former professions, he once more prepared for the invasion of the country; but a well-timed embassy again averted his indignation, and the submissions he received seemed to satisfy his resentment; upon his death-bed he appeared sensible of the overgrown extent of the Roman Empire and recommended it to his successors never to enlarge their territories. Tiberius followed the maxims of Augustus and, wisely judging the empire already too extensive, made no attempt upon Britain. Some Roman soldiers having been wrecked on the British coast the inhabitants not only assisted them with the greatest humanity, but sent them in safety back to their general. In consequence of these friendly dispositions, a constant intercourse of good offices subsisted between the two nations; the principal British nobility resorted to Rome, and many received their education there. From that time the Britons began to improve in all the arts which contribute to the advancement of human nature. The first art which a savage people is generally taught by politer neighbors is that of war. The Britons thenceforward, though not wholly addicted to the Roman method of fighting, nevertheless adopted several of their improvements, as well in their arms as in their arrangement in the field. Their ferocity to strangers, for which they had been always remarkable, was mitigated and they began to permit an intercourse of commerce even in the internal parts of the country. They still, however, continued to live as herdsmen and hunters; a manifest proof that the country was yet but thinly inhabited. A nation of hunters can never be populous, as their subsistence is necessarily diffused over a large tract of country, while the husbandman converts every part of nature to human use, and flourishes most by the vicinity of those whom he is to support. The wild extravagances of Caligula by which he threatened Britain with an invasion served rather to expose him to ridicule than the island to danger. The Britons therefore for almost a century enjoyed their liberty unmolested, till at length the Romans in the reign of Claudius began to think seriously of reducing them under their dominion. The expedition for this purpose was conducted in the beginning by Plautius and other commanders, with that success which usually attended the Roman arms. Claudius himself, finding affairs sufficiently prepared for his reception, made a journey thither and received the submission of such states as living by commerce were willing to purchase tranquillity at the expense of freedom. It is true that many of the inland provinces preferred their native simplicity to imported elegance and, rather than bow their necks to the Roman yoke, offered their bosoms to the sword. But the southern coast with all the adjacent inland country was seized by the conquerors, who secured the possession by fortifying camps, building fortresses, and planting colonies. The other parts of the country, either thought themselves in no danger or continued patient spectators of the approaching devastation. Caractacus was the first who seemed willing, by a vigorous effort, to rescue his country and repel its insulting and rapacious conquerors.[70] The venality and corruption of the Roman prætors and officers, who were appointed to levy the contributions in Britain, served to excite the indignation of the natives and give spirit to his attempts. This rude soldier, though with inferior forces, continued for about the space of nine years to oppose and harass the Romans; so that at length Ostorius Scapula was sent over to command their armies. He was more successful than his predecessors. He advanced the Roman conquest over Britain, pierced the country of the Silures, a warlike nation along the banks of the Severn, and at length came up with Caractacus, who had taken possession of a very advantageous post upon an almost inaccessible mountain, washed by a deep and rapid stream. [Footnote 70: The character of this hero has been powerfully depicted by Beaumont and Fletcher, in one of their noblest dramas.] The unfortunate British general, when he saw the enemy approaching, drew up his army, composed of different tribes, and going from rank to rank exhorted them to strike the last blow for liberty, safety, and life. To these exhortations his soldiers replied with shouts of determined valor. But what could undisciplined bravery avail against the attack of an army skilled in all the arts of war and inspired by a long train of conquests? The Britons were, after an obstinate resistance, totally routed, and a few days after Caractacus himself was delivered up to the conquerors by Cartismandua, queen of the Brigantes, with whom he had taken refuge. The capture of this general was received with such joy at Rome that Claudius commanded that he should be brought from Britain in order to be exhibited as a spectacle to the Roman people. Accordingly, on the day appointed for that purpose, the Emperor, ascending his throne, ordered the captives and Caractacus among the number to be brought into his presence. The vassals of the British King, with the spoils taken in war, were first brought forward; these were followed by his family, who, with abject lamentations, were seen to implore for mercy. Last of all came Caractacus with an undaunted air and a dignified aspect. He appeared no way dejected at the amazing concourse of spectators that were gathered upon this occasion, but, casting his eyes on the splendors that surrounded him, "Alas!" cried he, "how is it possible that a people possessed of such magnificence at home could envy me an humble cottage in Britain?" When brought into the Emperor's presence he is said to have addressed him in the following manner: "Had my moderation been equal to my birth and fortune, I had arrived in this city not as a captive, but as a friend. But my present misfortunes redound as much to your honor as to my disgrace; and the obstinacy of my opposition serves to increase the splendor of your victory. Had I surrendered myself in the beginning of the contest, neither my disgrace nor your glory would have attracted the attention of the world, and my fate would have been buried in general oblivion. I am now at your mercy; but if my life be spared, I shall remain an eternal monument of your clemency and moderation." The Emperor was affected with the British hero's misfortunes and won by his address. He ordered him to be unchained upon the spot, with the rest of the captives, and the first use they made of their liberty was to go and prostrate themselves before the empress Agrippina, who as some suppose had been an intercessor for their freedom. Notwithstanding these misfortunes, the Britons were not subdued, and this island was regarded by the ambitious Romans as a field in which military honor might still be acquired. The Britons made one expiring effort to recover their liberty in the time of Nero, taking advantage of the absence of Paulinus, the Roman general, who was employed in subduing the isle of Anglesey. That small island, separated from Britain by a narrow channel, still continued the chief seat of the Druidical superstition, and constantly afforded a retreat to their defeated forces. It was thought necessary therefore to subdue that place, in order to extirpate a religion that disdained submission to foreign laws or leaders; and Paulinus, the greatest general of his age, undertook the task. The Britons endeavored to obstruct his landing on that last retreat of their superstitions and liberties, both by the force of their arms and the terrors of their religion. The priests and islanders were drawn up in order of battle upon the shore, to oppose his landing. The women, dressed like Furies, with dishevelled hair, and torches in their hands, poured forth the most terrible execrations. Such a sight at first confounded the Romans and fixed them motionless on the spot; so that they received the first assault without opposition. But Paulinus, exhorting his troops to despise the menaces of an absurd superstition, impelled them to the attack, drove the Britons off the field, burned the Druids in the same fires they had prepared for their captive enemies, and destroyed all their consecrated groves and altars. In the mean time the Britons, taking advantage of his absence, resolved, by a general insurrection, to free themselves from that state of abject servitude to which they were reduced by the Romans. They had many motives to aggravate their resentment--the greatness of their taxes, which were levied with unremitting severity; the cruel insolence of their conquerors, who reproached that very poverty which they had caused, but particularly the barbarous treatment of Boadicea, queen of the Iceni, drove them at last into open rebellion. Prasatagus, king of the Iceni, at his death had bequeathed one-half of his dominions to the Romans, and the other to his daughters; thus hoping by the sacrifice of a part to secure the rest in his family; but it had a different effect; for the Roman procurator immediately took possession of the whole, and when Boadicea, the widow of the deceased, attempted to remonstrate, he ordered her to be scourged like a slave, and violated the chastity of her daughters. These outrages were sufficient to produce a revolt through the whole island. The Iceni, being the most deeply interested in the quarrel, were the first to take arms; all the other states soon followed the example, and Boadicea, a woman of great beauty and masculine spirit, was appointed to head the common forces, which amounted to two hundred and thirty thousand fighting men. These, exasperated by their wrongs, attacked several of the Roman settlements and colonies with success, Paulinus hastened to relieve London, which was already a flourishing colony; but found on his arrival that it would be requisite, for the general safety, to abandon that place to the merciless fury of the enemy. London was therefore soon reduced to ashes; such of the inhabitants as remained in it were massacred; and the Romans with all other strangers to the number of seventy thousand were cruelly put to the sword. Flushed with these successes the Britons no longer sought to avoid the enemy, but boldly came to the place where Paulinus awaited their arrival, posted in a very advantageous manner with a body of ten thousand men. The battle was obstinate and bloody. Boadicea herself appeared in a chariot with her two daughters and harangued her army with masculine firmness; but the irregular and undisciplined bravery of her troops was unable to resist the cool intrepidity of the Romans. They were routed with great slaughter; eighty thousand perished in the field, and an infinite number were made prisoners, while Boadicea herself, fearing to fall into the hands of the enraged victor, put an end to her life by poison. Nero soon after recalled Paulinus from a government where, by suffering and inflicting so many severities, he was judged improper to compose the angry and alarmed minds of the natives. After an interval, Cerealis received the command from Vespasian, and by his bravery propagated the terror of the Roman arms. Julius Frontinus succeeded Cerealis both in authority and reputation. The general who finally established the dominion of the Romans in this island was Julius Agricola, who governed it during the reigns of Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian, and distinguished himself as well by his courage as humanity. Agricola, who is considered as one of the greatest characters in history, formed a regular plan for subduing and civilizing the island, and thus rendering the acquisition useful to the conquerors. As the northern part of the country was least tractable, he carried his victorious arms thither, and defeated the undisciplined enemy in every encounter. He pierced into the formerly inaccessible forests and mountains of Caledonia; he drove onward all those fierce and intractable spirits who preferred famine to slavery, and who, rather than submit, chose to remain in perpetual hostility. Nor was it without opposition that he thus made his way into a country rude and impervious by nature. He was opposed by Galgacus at the head of a numerous army, whom he defeated in a decisive action, in which considerable numbers were slain. Being thus successful, he did not think proper to pursue the enemy into their retreats; but embarking a body of troops on board his fleet, he ordered the commander to surround the whole coast of Britain, which had not been discovered to be an island till the preceding year. This armament, pursuant to his orders, steered to the northward, and there subdued the Orkneys; then making the tour of the whole island, it arrived in the port of Sandwich, without having met with the least disaster. During these military enterprises, Agricola was ever attentive to the arts of peace. He attempted to humanize the fierceness of those who acknowledged his power, by introducing the Roman laws, habits, manners, and learning. He taught them to desire and raise all the conveniences of life, instructed them in the arts of agriculture, and, in order to protect them in their peaceable possessions, he drew a rampart, and fixed a train of garrisons between them and their northern neighbors, thus cutting off the ruder and more barren parts of the island and securing the Roman province from the invasion of a fierce and necessitous enemy. In this manner the Britons, being almost totally subdued, now began to throw off all hopes of recovering their former liberty, and, having often experienced the superiority of the Romans, consented to submit, and were content with safety. From that time the Romans seemed more desirous of securing what they possessed than of making new conquests, and were employed rather in repressing than punishing their restless northern invaders. CLEOPATRA'S CONQUEST OF CÆSAR AND ANTONY B.C. 51-30 JOHN P. MAHAFFY (Several Egyptian princesses of the line of the Ptolemies bore the name of Cleopatra, but history, romance, and tragedy are all illumined with the story of one--Cleopatra the daughter of Ptolemy Auletes. Born at Alexandria, B.C. 69, she ruled jointly with her brother Ptolemy from 51 to 48. Being then expelled by her colleague, she entered upon the performance of her part in Roman history when her cause was espoused by Julius Cæsar, whom she had captivated by her charms. Her reinstatement by the help of Cæsar, as well as all that followed in her relations with Roman rulers, was due primarily to personal considerations, rather than political or military causes; and among women whose lives have vitally influenced the conduct of great historic leaders, and thereby affected the course of events, Cleopatra holds a place at once the most conspicuous and most unique. Like Cæsar, Mark Antony, at his first interview with Cleopatra, succumbed to the fascinations of the "Rare Egyptian," and he never after ceased to be her slave. Not long after Cæsar's death Antony had married Fulvia, whom he deserted for the "enchanting queen." From this point to its culmination in overwhelming disaster and the tragic death of this celebrated pair of lovers, the romantic drama of Cleopatra's conquests becomes even more important in literature than in history. This extraordinary voluptuary, whose beauty and witcheries have interested mankind for almost twenty centuries, has been the subject of some thirty tragedies in various languages; and in _Antony and Cleopatra_--one of his greatest plays--Shakespeare, closely following the narratives of Plutarch and other classical writers, has invested her with a potency of charm unparalleled among literary creations. She matches Antony in qualities of intellect, while she dazzles him with her coquettish arts. "A queen, a siren," says Thomas Campbell, "a Shakespeare's Cleopatra alone could have entangled Shakespeare's Antony." And Shakespeare alone, as declared by Mrs. Jameson, "has dared to exhibit the Egyptian Queen with all her greatness and all her littleness, all her paltry arts and dissolute passions, yet awakened our pity for fallen grandeur without once beguiling us into sympathy with guilt." Yet the plain history of this "Sorceress of the Nile," with her "infinite variety," as told by Plutarch and the other ancients, and retold, with whatever advantages gained from critical research, by the modern masters, makes the same impression of moral contrast and inscrutability as that imparted by the greatest poet who has dramatized the character of Cleopatra.) Now at last Egypt, coming into close connection with the world's masters, becomes the stage for some of the most striking scenes in ancient history. They seem to most readers something new and strange--the pageants and passions of the fratricide Cleopatra as something unparalleled--and yet she was one of a race in which almost every reigning princess for the last two hundred years had been swayed by like storms of passion, or had been guilty of like daring violations of common humanity. What Arsinoë, what Cleopatra, from the first to the last, had hesitated to murder a brother or a husband, to assume the throne, to raise and command armies, to discard or adopt a partner of her throne from caprice in policy, or policy in caprice? But hitherto this desperate gambling with life had been carried on in Egypt and Syria; the play had been with Hellenistic pawns--Egyptian or Syrian princes; the last Cleopatra came to play with Roman pieces, easier apparently to move than the others, but implying higher stakes, greater glory in the victory, greater disaster in the defeat. Therefore is it that this last Cleopatra, probably no more than an average specimen of the beauty, talent, daring, and cruelty of her ancestors, has taken an unique place among them in the imagination of the world, and holds her own even now and forever as a familiar name throughout the world. Ptolemy Auletes, when dying, had taken great care not to bequeath his mortgaged kingdom to his Roman creditors. In his will he had named as his heirs the elder of his two sons, and his daughter, who was the eldest of the family. Nobody thought of claiming Egypt for a heritage of the Roman Republic, when the whole world was the prize proposed in the civil conflict, for though the war of Cæsar and Pompey had not actually broken out, the political sky was lowering with blackness, and the coming tempest was muttering its thunder through the sultry air. So Cleopatra, now about sixteen or seventeen years of age, and her much younger brother (about ten) assumed the throne as was traditional, without any tumult or controversy, The opening discords came from within the royal family. The tutors and advisers of the young King, among whom Pothinos, a eunuch brought up with him as his playmate, according to the custom of the court, was the ablest and most influential, persuaded him to assume sole direction of affairs and to depose his elder sister. Cleopatra was not able to maintain herself in Alexandria, but went to Syria as an exile, where she promptly collected an army, as was the wont of these Egyptian princesses, who seem to have resources always under their control, and returned--within a few months, says Cæsar--by way of Pelusium, to reconquer her lawful share in the throne. This happened in the fourth year of their so-called joint reign, B.C. 48, at the very time that Pompey and Cæsar were engaged in their conflict for a far greater kingdom. Cæsar expressed his opinion that the quarrel of the sovereigns in Egypt concerned the Roman people, and himself as consul, the more so as it was in his previous consulate that the recognition of and alliance with their father had taken place. So he signified his decision that Ptolemy and Cleopatra should dismiss their armies, and should discuss their claims before him by argument and not by arms. All our authorities, except Dio Cassius, state that he sent for Cleopatra that she might personally urge her claims; but Dio tells us, with far more detail and I think greater probability, "that at first the quarrel with her brother was argued for her by friends, till she, learning the amorous character of Cæsar, sent him word that her case was being mismanaged by her advocates, and she desired to plead it herself, She was then in the flower of her age (about twenty) and celebrated for her beauty. Moreover, she had the sweetest of voices, and every charm of conversation, so that she was likely to ensnare even the most obdurate and elderly man. These gifts she regarded as her claims upon Cæsar. She prayed therefore for an interview, and adorned herself in a garb most becoming, but likely to arouse his pity, and so came secretly by night to visit him." If she indeed arrived secretly and was carried into the palace by one faithful follower as a bale of carpet, it was from fear of assassination by the party of Pothinos. She knew that as soon as she had reached Cæsar's sentries she was safe; as the event proved, she was more than safe, for in the brief interval of peace, and perhaps even of apparent jollity, while the royal dispute was under discussion, she gained an influence over Cæsar which she retained till his death. Cæsar adjudicated the throne according to the will of Auletes; he even restored Cyprus to Egypt, and proposed to send the younger brother and his sister Arsinoë to govern it; but he also insisted on a repayment, in part at least, of the enormous outstanding debt of Auletes to him and his party. A few months after Cæsar's departure from Egypt Cleopatra gave birth to a son, whom she alleged, without any immediate contradiction, to be the dictator's. The Alexandrians called him Cæsarion, and she never swerved from asserting for him royal privileges. We hear of no other lover, though it is impossible to imagine Cleopatra arriving at the age of twenty without providing herself with this luxury. She was, however, afraid to let Cæsar live far from her influence, and some time before his assassination--that is to say, some time between B.C. 48 and 44--she came with the young King her brother to Rome, where she was received in Cæsar's palace beyond the Tiber, causing by her residence there considerable scandal among the stricter Romans. Cicero confesses that he went to see her, but protests that his reasons for doing so were absolutely nonpolitical. Cicero found her haughty; he does not say she was beautiful and fascinating. We do not hear of any political activity on her part, though Cicero evidently suspects it; it is well-nigh impossible that she can have preferred her very doubtful position at Rome to her brilliant life in the East. She was suspected of urging Cæsar to move eastward the capital of his new empire, to desert Rome, and choose either Ilium, the imaginary cradle of his race, or Alexandria, as his residence. She is likely to have encouraged at all events his expedition against the Parthians, which would bring him to Syria, whence she hoped to gain new territory for her son. The whole situation is eloquently, perhaps too eloquently, described by Merivale, for he weaves in many conjectures of his own, as if they were ascertained facts. The colors of this imitation of a hateful original [the oriental despot] were heightened by the demeanor of Cleopatra, who followed her lover to Rome at his invitation. She came with the younger Ptolemæus, who now shared her throne, and her ostensible object was to negotiate a treaty between her kingdom and the Commonwealth. While the Egyptian nation was formally admitted to the friendship and alliance of Rome, its sovereign was lodged in Cæsar's villa on the other side of the Tiber, and the statue of the most fascinating of women was erected in the temple of the Goddess of Love and Beauty. The connection which subsisted between her and the dictator was unblushingly avowed. Public opinion demanded no concessions to its delicacy; the feelings of the injured Calpurnia had been blunted by repeated outrage, and Cleopatra was encouraged to proclaim openly that her child Cæsarion was the son of her Roman admirer. A tribune, named Helvius Cinna, ventured, it is said, to assert among his friends that he was prepared to propose a law, with the dictator's sanction, to enable him to marry more wives than one, for the sake of progeny, and to disregard in his choice the legitimate qualification of Roman descent. The Romans, however, were spared this last insult to their prejudices. The queen of Egypt felt bitterly the scorn with which she was popularly regarded as the representative of an effeminate and licentious people. It is not improbable that she employed her fatal influence to withdraw her lover from the Roman capital, and urged him to schemes of oriental conquest to bring him more completely within her toils. In the mean while the haughtiness of her demeanor corresponded with the splendid anticipations in which she indulged. She held a court in the suburbs of the city, at which the adherents of the dictator's policy were not the only attendants. Even his opponents and concealed enemies were glad to bask in the sunshine of her smiles. When Cæsar was assassinated, she was still at Rome, and had some wild hopes of having her son recognized by the Cæsareans. But failing in this she escaped secretly, and sailed to Egypt, not without causing satisfaction to cautious men like Cicero that she was gone. The passage in which he seems to allude to a rumor that she was about to have another child--another misfortune to the State--does not bear that interpretation. As he says not a word concerning the young king Ptolemy, we may assume that the youth was already dead, and that he died at Rome. The common belief was that Cleopatra poisoned him as soon as his increasing years made him troublesome to her. In her reign four years are assigned to a joint rule with her elder brother, four more to that with her younger, so that this latter must have died in the same year as Cæsar. Cleopatra, watching from Egypt the great civil war which ensued, summoned and commanded by the various leaders to send aid in ships and money, threatened with plunder and confiscation by those who were now exhausting Asia Minor and the islands with monstrous exactions, had ample occupation for her talents in steering safely among these constant dangers. Appian says she pleaded famine and pestilence in her country in declining the demands of Cassius for subsidies. The latter was on the point of invading Egypt, at the moment denuded of defending forces and _wasted with famine_, when he was summoned to Philippi by Brutus. It was not till B.C. 41, after the decisive battle of Philippi, that the victorious Antony, turning to subdue the East to the Cæsarean cause, held his _joyeuse entrée_ into Ephesus, and then proceeded to drain all Asia Minor of money for the satisfaction of his greedy legionaries and his own still more greedy vices. Reaching Cilicia, he sent an order to the queen of Egypt to come before him and explain her conduct during the late war, for she was reported to have sent aid to Cassius. The sequel may be told in Plutarch's famous narrative: "Dellius, who was sent on this message, had no sooner seen her face, and remarked her adroitness and subtlety in speech, than he felt convinced that Antony would not so much as think of giving any molestation to a woman like this. On the contrary, she would be the first in favor with him. So he set himself at once to pay his court to the Egyptian, and gave her his advice, 'to go,' in the Homeric style, to Cilicia, 'in her best attire,' and bade her fear nothing from Antony, the gentlest and kindest of soldiers. She had some faith in the words of Dellius, but more in her own attractions, which, having formerly recommended her to Cæsar and the young Cnaeus Pompey, she did not doubt might yet prove more successful with Antony. Their acquaintance was with her when a girl, young, and ignorant of the world, but she was to meet Antony in the time of life when women's beauty is most splendid and their intellects are in full maturity. She made great preparation for her journey, of money, gifts, and ornaments of value, such as so wealthy a kingdom might afford, but she brought with her her surest hopes in her own magic arts and charms. "She received several letters, both from Antony and from his friends, to summon her, but she took no account of these orders; and at last, as if in mockery of them, she came sailing up the river Cydnus, in a barge with gilded stern and outspread sails of purple, while oars of silver beat time to the music of flutes and fifes and harps. She herself lay all along, under a canopy of cloth of gold, dressed as Venus in a picture, and beautiful young boys, like painted cupids, stood on each side to fan her. Her maids were dressed like sea nymphs and graces, some steering at the rudder, some working at the ropes.[71] The perfumes diffused themselves from the vessel to the shore, which was covered with multitudes, part following the galley up the river on either bank, part running out of the city to see the sight. The market-place was quite emptied, and Antony at last was left alone sitting upon the tribunal, while the word went through all the multitude that Venus was come to feast with Bacchus, for the common good of Asia.[72] On her arrival, Antony sent to invite her to supper. She thought it fitter he should come to her; so, willing to show his good humor and courtesy, he complied, and went. He found the preparations to receive him magnificent beyond expression, but nothing so admirable as the great number of lights, for on a sudden there was let down altogether so great a number of branches with lights in them so ingeniously disposed, some in squares and some in circles, that the whole thing was a spectacle that has seldom been equalled for beauty." [Footnote 71: There was no Egyptian feature in this show, which was purely Hellenistic.] [Footnote 72: How easily such a belief started up in the minds of a crowd in the Asia Minor of that day appears from Acts xiv. 11 _seq_., where the crowd at Iconium, on seeing a cripple cured, at once exclaim that the gods are come down to them in the likeness of men, and call Barnabas Jupiter, and Paul Mercurius, because he was the chief speaker, bringing sacrifices to offer to the apostles.] "The next day Antony invited her to supper, and was very desirous to outdo her as well in magnificence as contrivance; but he found he was altogether beaten in both, and was so well convinced of it that he was himself the first to jest and mock at his poverty of wit and his rustic awkwardness. She, perceiving that his raillery was broad and gross and savored more of the soldier than the courtier, rejoined in the same taste, and fell into it at once, without any sort of reluctance or reserve, for her actual beauty, it is said, was not in itself so remarkable that none could be compared with her, or that no one could see her without being struck by it, but the contact of her presence, if you lived with her, was irresistible; the attraction of her person, joining with the charm of her conversation and the character that attended all she said or did, was something bewitching. It was a pleasure merely to hear the sound of her voice, with which, like an instrument of many strings, she could pass from one language to another; so that there were few of the barbarian nations that she answered by an interpreter. To most of them she spoke herself, as to the Ethiopians, troglodytes, Hebrews, Arabians, Syrians, Medes, Parthians, and many others, whose language she had learned;[73] which was all the more surprising, because most of the kings her predecessors scarcely gave themselves the trouble to acquire the Egyptian tongue, and several of them quite abandoned the Macedonian." [Footnote 73: We have here the usual lies of courtiers.] "Antony was so captivated by her that, while Fulvia, his wife, maintained his quarrels in Rome against Cæsar by actual force of arms, and the Parthian troops, commanded by Labienus--the King's generals having made him commander-in-chief--were assembled in Mesopotamia, and ready to enter Syria, he could yet suffer himself to be carried away by her to Alexandria, there to keep holiday, like a boy, in play and diversion, squandering and fooling away in enjoyments that most costly, as Antiphon says, of all valuables, time. They had a sort of company, to which they gave a particular name, calling it that of the 'Inimitable Livers.' The members entertained one another daily in turn, with an extravagance of expenditure beyond measure or belief. Philotas, a physician of Amphissa, who was at that time a student of medicine in Alexandria, used to tell my grandfather Lamprias that, having some acquaintance with one of the royal cooks, he was invited by him, being a young man, to come and see the sumptuous preparations for dinner. So he was taken into the kitchen, where he admired the prodigious variety of all things, but, particularly seeing eight wild boars roasting whole, says he, 'Surely you have a great number of guests.' The cook laughed at his simplicity, and told him there were not above twelve to dine, but that every dish was to be served up just roasted to a turn, and if anything was but one minute ill-timed it was spoiled. 'And,' said he, 'maybe Antony will dine just now, maybe not this hour, maybe he will call for wine, or begin to talk, and will put it off. So that,' he continued, 'it is not one, but many dinners, must be had in readiness, as it is impossible to guess at his hour.'" Plato admits four sorts of flattery, but Cleopatra had a thousand. Were Antony serious or disposed to mirth she had any moment some new delight or charm to meet his wishes. At every turn she was upon him, and let him escape her neither by day nor by night. She played at dice with him, drank with him, hunted with him, and when he exercised in arms she was there to see. At night she would go rambling with him to joke with people at their doors and windows, dressed like a servant woman, for Antony also went in servant's disguise, and from these expeditions he always came home very scurvily answered, and sometimes even beaten severely, though most people guessed who it was. However, the Alexandrians in general liked it all well enough, and joined good-humoredly and kindly in his frolic and play, saying they were much obliged to Antony for acting his tragic parts at Rome and keeping his comedy for them. It would be trifling without end to be particular in relating his follies, but his fishing must not be forgotten. He went out one day to angle with Cleopatra, and being so unfortunate as to catch nothing in the presence of his mistress, he gave secret orders to the fishermen to dive under water and put fishes that had been already taken upon his hooks, and these he drew in so fast that the Egyptian perceived it. But feigning great admiration, she told everybody how dexterous Antony was, and invited them next day to come and see him again. So when a number of them had come on board the fishing boats, as soon as he had let down his hook, one of her servants was beforehand with his divers and fixed upon his hook a salted fish from Pontus. Antony, feeling his line taut, drew up the prey, and when, as may be imagined, great laughter ensued, "Leave," said Cleopatra, "the fishing rod, autocrat, to us poor sovereigns of Pharos and Canopus; your game is cities, kingdoms, and continents." Plutarch does not mention the most tragic and the most characteristic proof of Cleopatra's complete conquest of Antony. Among his other crimes of obedience he sent by her orders and put to death the Princess Arsinoë, who, knowing well her danger, had taken refuge as a suppliant in the temple of Artemis Leucophryne at Miletus. It is not our duty to follow the various complications of war and diplomacy, accompanied by the marriage with the serious and gentle Octavia, whereby the brilliant but dissolute Antony was weaned, as it were, from his follies, and persuaded to live a life of public activity. Whether the wily Octavian did not foresee the result, whether he did not even sacrifice his sister to accumulate odium against his dangerous rival, is not for us to determine. But when it was arranged (in B.C. 36) that Antony should lead an expedition against the Parthians, any man of ordinary sense must have known that he would come within the reach of the eastern siren, and was sure to be again attracted by her fatal voice. It is hard to account for her strange patience during these four years. She had borne twins to Antony, probably after the meeting in Cilicia. Though she still maintained the claims of her eldest son Cæsarion to be the divine Julius' only direct heir, we do not hear of her sending requests to Antony to support him, or that any agents were working in her interests at Rome. She was too subtle a woman to solicit his return to Alexandria. There are mistaken insinuations that she thought the chances of Sextus Pompey, with his naval supremacy, better than those of Antony, but these stories refer to his brother Cnaeus, who visited Egypt before Pharsalia. It is probably to this pause in her life, as we know it, that we may refer her activity in repairing and enlarging the national temples. The splendid edifice at Dendera, at present among the most perfect of Egyptian temples, bears no older names than those of Cleopatra and her son Cæsarion, and their portraits represent the latter as a growing lad, his mother as an essentially Egyptian figure, conventionally drawn according to the rules which had determined the figures of gods and kings for fifteen hundred years. Under these circumstances it is idle to speak of this well-known relief picture as a portrait of the Queen. It is no more so than the granite statues in the Vatican are portraits of Philadelphus and Arsinoë. The artist had probably never seen the Queen, and if he had, it would not have produced the slightest alteration in his drawing. Plutarch expressly says that it was not in peerless beauty that her fascination lay, but in the combination of more than average beauty with many other personal attractions. The Egyptian portrait is likely to confirm in the spectator's mind the impression derived from Shakespeare's play, that Cleopatra was a swarthy Egyptian, in strong contrast to the fair Roman ladies, and suggesting a wide difference of race. She was no more an Egyptian than she was an Indian, but a pure Macedonian, of a race akin to, and perhaps fairer than, the Greeks. No sooner had Antony reached Syria than the fell influence of the Egyptian Queen revived. In the words of Plutarch: "But the mischief that thus long had lain still, the passion for Cleopatra, which better thoughts had seemed to have lulled and charmed into oblivion, upon his approach to Syria, gathered strength again, and broke out into a flame. And in fine, like Plato's restive and rebellious horse of the human soul, flinging off all good and wholesome counsel and breaking fairly loose, he sent Fonteius Capito to bring Cleopatra into Syria; to whom at her arrival he made no small or trifling present--Phoenicia, Coele-Syria, Cyprus, great part of Cilicia, that side of Judea which produces balm, that part of Arabia where the Nabathaeans extend to the outer sea--profuse gifts which much displeased the Romans. For although he had invested several private persons with great governments and kingdoms, and bereaved many kings of theirs, as Antigonus of Judea, whose head he caused to be struck off--the first example of that punishment being inflicted on a king--yet nothing stung the Romans like the shame of these honors paid to Cleopatra. Their dissatisfaction was augmented also by his acknowledging as his own the twin children he had by her, giving them the names of Alexander and Cleopatra, and adding, as their surnames, the titles of Sun and Moon." After much dallying the triumvir really started for the wild East, whither it is not our business to follow him. Cleopatra he sent home to Egypt, to await his victorious return, and it was on this occasion that she came in state to Jerusalem to visit Herod the Great--probably the most brilliant scene of the kind which had taken place since the queen of Sheba came to learn the wisdom of Solomon. But it was a very different wisdom that Herod professed, and in which he was verily a high authority, nor was the subtle daughter of the Ptolemies a docile pupil, but a practised expert in the same arts of cruelty and cunning; wherewith both pursued their several courses of ambition and sought to wheedle from their Roman masters cities and provinces. The reunion of Antony and Cleopatra must have greatly alarmed Herod, whose plans were directly thwarted by the freaks of Antony, and he must have been preparing at the time to make his case with Octavian, and seek from his favor protection against the new caprices of the then lord of the East. "The scene at Herod's palace must have been inimitable. The display of counter-fascinations between these two tigers; their voluptuous natures mutually attracted; their hatred giving to each that deep interest in the other which so often turns to mutual passion while it incites to conquest; the grace and finish of their manners, concealing a ruthless ferocity; the splendor of their appointments--what more dramatic picture can we imagine in history? "We hear that she actually attempted to seduce Herod, but failed, owing to his deep devotion to his wife Mariamne. The prosaic Josephus adds that Herod consulted his council whether he should not put her to death for this attempt upon his virtue. He was dissuaded by them on the ground that Antony would listen to no arguments, not even from the most persuasive of the world's princes, and would take awful vengeance when he heard of her death. So she was escorted with great gifts and politenesses back to Egypt." Such, then, was the character of this notorious Queen. But her violation of temples, and even of ancient tombs, for the sake of treasure must have been a far more public and odious exhibition of that want of respect for the sentiment of others which is the essence of bad manners.[74] [Footnote 74: _The Greek World under Roman Sway._] As is well known, the first campaign of Antony against Armenians and Parthians was a signal failure, and it was only with great difficulty that he escaped the fate of Crassus. But Cleopatra was ready to meet him in Syria with provisions and clothes for his distressed and ragged battalions, and he returned with her to spend the winter (B.C. 36-35) at Alexandria. She thus snatched him again from his noble wife, Octavia, who had come from Rome to Athens with succors even greater than Cleopatra had brought. This at least is the word of the historians who write in the interest of the Romans, and regard the queen of Egypt with horror and with fear. The new campaign of Antony (B.C. 34) was apparently more prosperous, but it was only carried far enough to warrant his holding a Roman triumph at Alexandria--perhaps the only novelty in pomp which the triumvir could exhibit to the Alexandrian populace, while it gave the most poignant offence at Rome. It was apparently now that he made that formal distribution of provinces which Octavian used as his chief _casus belli_. "Nor was the division he made among his sons at Alexandria less unpopular. It seemed a theatrical piece of insolence and contempt of his country, for, assembling the people in the exercise ground, and causing two golden thrones to be placed on a platform of silver, the one for him and the other for Cleopatra, and at their feet lower thrones for their children, he proclaimed Cleopatra queen of Egypt, Cyprus, Libya, and Coele-Syria, and with her conjointly Cæsarion, the reputed son of the former Cæsar. His own sons by Cleopatra were to have the style of 'King of Kings'; to Alexander he gave Armenia and Media, with Parthia so soon as it should be overcome; to Ptolemy Phoenicia, Syria, and Cilicia. Alexander was brought out before the people in Median costume, the tiara and upright peak, and Ptolemy in boots and mantle and Macedonian cap done about with the diadem; for this was the habit of the successors of Alexander, as the other was of the Medes and Armenians. And, as soon as they had saluted their parents, the one was received by a guard of Macedonians, the other by one of Armenians. Cleopatra was then, as at other times when she appeared in public, dressed in the habit of the goddess Isis, and gave audience to the people under the name of the New Isis. "This over, he gave Priene to his players for a habitation, and set sail for Athens, where fresh sports and play-acting employed him. Cleopatra, jealous of the honors Octavia had received at Athens--for Octavia was much beloved by the Athenians--courted the favor of the people with all sorts of attentions. The Athenians, in requital, having decreed her public honors, deputed several of the citizens to wait upon her at her house, among whom went Antony as one, he being an Athenian citizen, and he it was that made the speech. "The speed and extent of Antony's preparations alarmed Cæsar, who feared he might be forced to fight the decisive battle that summer, for he wanted many necessaries, and the people grudged very much to pay the taxes; freemen being called upon to pay a fourth part of their incomes, and freed slaves an eighth of their property, so that there were loud outcries against him, and disturbances throughout all Italy. And this is looked upon as one of the greatest of Antony's oversights that he did not then press the war, for he allowed time at once for Cæsar to make his preparations, and for the commotions to pass over, for while people were having their money called for they were mutinous and violent; but, having paid it, they held their peace. "Titius and Plancus, men of consular dignity and friends to Antony, having been ill-used by Cleopatra, whom they had most resisted in her design of being present in the war, came over to Cæsar, and gave information of the contents of Antony's will, with which they were acquainted. It was deposited in the hands of the vestal virgins, who refused to deliver it up, and sent Cæsar word, if he pleased, he should come and seize it himself, which he did. And, reading it over to himself, he noted those places that were most for his purpose, and, having summoned the senate, read them publicly. Many were scandalized at the proceeding, thinking it out of reason and equity to call a man to account for what was not to be until after his death. Cæsar specially pressed what Antony said in his will about his burial, for he had ordered that even if he died in the city of Rome, his body, after being carried in state through the Forum, should be sent to Cleopatra at Alexandria. "Calvisius, a dependent of Cæsar's, urged other charges in connection with Cleopatra against Antony: that he had given her the library of Pergamus, containing two hundred thousand distinct volumes; that at a great banquet, in the presence of many guests, he had risen up and rubbed her feet, to fulfil some wager or promise; that he had suffered the Ephesians to salute her as their queen; that he had frequently at the public audience of kings and princes received amorous messages written in tablets made of onyx and crystal, and read them openly on the tribunal; that when Furnius, a man of great authority and eloquence among the Romans, was pleading, Cleopatra happening to pass by in her litter, Antony started up and left them in the middle of their cause, to follow at her side and attend her home."[75] [Footnote 75: Plutarch: _Antony_.] When war was declared, Antony sought to gain the support of the East in the conflict. He made alliance with a Median king who betrothed his daughter to Cleopatra's infant son Alexander; but he made the fatal mistake of allowing Cleopatra to accompany him to Samos, where he gathered his army, and even to Actium, where she led the way in flying from the fight, and so persuading the infatuated Antony to leave his army and join in her disgraceful escape. Historians have regarded this act of Cleopatra as the mere cowardice of a woman who feared to look upon an armed conflict and join in the din of battle. But she was surely made of sterner stuff. She had probably computed with the utmost care the chances of the rivals, and had made up her mind that, in spite of Antony's gallantry, his cause was lost.[76] If she fought out the battle with her strong contingent of ships, she would probably fall into Octavian's hands as a prisoner, and would have no choice between suicide or death in the Roman prison, after being exhibited to the mob in Octavian's triumph. There was no chance whatever that she would have been spared, as was her sister Arsinoë after Julius Cæsar's triumph, nor would such clemency be less hateful than death. But there was still a chance, if Antony were killed or taken prisoner, that she might negotiate with the victor as queen of Egypt, with her fleet, army, and treasures intact, and who could tell what effect her charms, though now full ripe, might have upon the conqueror? Two great Romans had yielded to her, why not the third, who seemed a smaller man? [Footnote 76: Dion says that Antony was of the same opinion, and went into the battle intending to fly; but this does not agree with his character or with the facts.] This view implies that she was already false to Antony, and it may well be asked how such a charge is compatible with the affecting scenes which followed at Alexandria, where her policy seemed defeated by her passion, and she felt her old love too strong even for her heartless ambition? I will say in answer that there is no more frequent anomaly in the psychology of female love than a strong passion coexisting with selfish ambition, so that each takes the lead in turn; nay, even the consciousness of treachery may so intensify the passion as to make a woman embrace with keener transports the lover whom she has betrayed than one whom she has no thought of surrendering. There are, moreover, in these tragedies unexpected accidents, which so affect even the hardest nature that calculations are cast aside, and the old loyalty resumes a temporary sway. Nor must we fail to insist again upon the traditions wherein this last Cleopatra was born and bred. She came from a stock whose women played with love and with life as if they were mere counters. To hesitate whether such a scion of such a house would have delayed to discard Antony and to assume another passion is to show small appreciation of the effects of heredity and of example. Dion tells us that she arrived in Alexandria before the news of her defeat, pretended a victory, and took the occasion of committing many murders, in order to get rid of secret opponents, and also to gather wealth by confiscation of their goods, for both she and Antony, who came along the coast of Libya, seem still to have thought of defending the inaccessible Egypt, and making terms for themselves and their children with the conqueror. But Antony's efforts completely failed; no one would rally to his standard. And meanwhile the false Queen had begun to send presents to Cæsar and encourage him to treat with her. But when he bluntly proposed to her to murder Antony as the price of her reconciliation with himself, and when he even declared by proxy that he was in love with her, he clearly made a rash move in this game of diplomacy, though Dion says he persuaded her of his love, and that accordingly she betrayed to him the fortress of Pelusium, the key of the country. Dion also differs from Plutarch in repeatedly ascribing to Octavian great anxiety to secure the treasures which Cleopatra had with her, and which she was likely to destroy by fire if driven to despair. The historian may well leave to the biographer, nay, to the poet, the affecting details of the closing scenes of Cleopatra's life. In the fourth and fifth acts of _Antony and Cleopatra_ Shakespeare has reproduced every detail of Plutarch's narrative, which was drawn from that of her physician Olympos. Her fascinations were not dead, for they swayed Dolabella to play false to his master so far as to warn her of his intentions, and leave her time for her dignified and royal end. But if these Hellenistic queens knew how to die, they knew not how to live. Even the penultimate scene of the tragedy, when she presents an inventory of her treasures to Octavian, and is charged by her steward with dishonesty, shows her in uncivilized violence striking the man in the face and bursting into indecent fury, such as an Athenian, still less a Roman, matron would have been ashamed to exhibit. Nor is there any reason to doubt the genuineness of this scene, though we must not be weary of cautioning ourselves against the hostile witnesses who have reported to us her life. They praise nothing in her but her bewitching presence and her majestic death. "After her repast Cleopatra sent to Cæsar a letter which she had written and sealed, and, putting everybody out of the monument but her two women, she shut the doors. Cæsar, opening her letter, and finding pathetic prayers and entreaties that she might be buried in the same tomb with Antony, soon guessed what was doing. At first he was going himself in all haste; but, changing his mind, he sent others to see. The thing had been quickly done. The messengers came at full speed, and found the guards apprehensive of nothing; but on opening the doors they saw her stone dead, lying upon a bed of gold, set out in all her royal ornaments. Iras, one of her women, lay dying at her feet, and Charmion, just ready to fall, scarce able to hold up her head, was adjusting her mistress' diadem. And when one that came in said angrily, 'Was this well done of your lady, Charmion?' 'Perfectly well,' she answered, 'and as became the daughter of so many kings'; and as she said this she fell down dead by the bedside." Even the hostile accounts cannot conceal from us that both in physique and in intellect she was a very remarkable figure, exceptional in her own, exceptional had she been born in any other, age. She is a speaking instance of the falsehood of a prevailing belief, that the intermarriage of near relations invariably produces a decadence in the human race. The whole dynasty of the Ptolemies contradicts this current theory, and exhibits in the last of the series the most signal exception. Cleopatra VI was descended from many generations of breeding-in, of which four exhibit marriages of full brother and sister. And yet she was deficient in no quality, physical or intellectual, which goes to make up a well-bred and well-developed human being. Her morals were indeed those of her ancestors, and as bad as could be, but I am not aware that it is degeneration in this direction which is assumed by the theory in question, except as a consequence of physical decay. Physically, however, Cleopatra was perfect. She was not only beautiful, but prolific, and retained her vigor, and apparently her beauty, to the time of her death, when she was nearly forty years old. ASSASSINATION OF CÆSAR B.C. 44 NIEBUHR and PLUTARCH (Cæsar's assassination forms the groundwork of one of Shakespeare's most notable tragedies. The "itching palm" of Cassius, Brutus' rectitude and honesty of purpose, and Mark Antony's oration will ever live while the English language endures. When the great Cæsar was struck down, the civil war was over and he was master of the world. The month of the year B.C. 100 in which he was born, Quinctilis, was afterward called in his honor, July. Caius Julius Cæsar was one of the greatest figures in history, and early took a prominent part in the affairs of Rome. He was a rival of Cicero in forensic eloquence and highly esteemed as a writer, his _Commentaries_ being universally admired. Ransomed from pirates who had captured him on his way to study philosophy at Rhodes, he attacked them in turn, took them to Pergamus, and crucified them. After various successful engagements Cæsar marched against Pharnaces, now established in the kingdom of the Bosphorus, gaining at Zela, in Pontus, the decisive victory which he announced in the famous despatch, _Veni, vidi, vici_ ["I came, I saw, I conquered"]. His unbounded affability, his liveliness and cordiality, his unaffected kindness to his friends had made him popular with the high as well as the low. His ambition began to show itself. During the wrangles over the election of Afranius as consul, Cæsar returned from his brilliant successes in Spain. The troops saluted him as imperator and the senate voted a thanksgiving in his honor. He was now strong enough to take his place as the leader of the popular party. He was elected consul in spite of the hostility of the senate. A coalition was formed between Cæsar and Pompey. Cæsar's agrarian law added to his popularity with the people, and he gained the influence of the _equites_ by relief of one-third of the farmed taxes of Asia. He now became proconsul of Illyricum and Gaul for five years. This suited his ambition. At this time Pompey was the absolute master of Rome. And now arose his duel for power with Cæsar. For a time he opposed the latter's election as consul, but later yielded. Cæsar had achieved his brilliant success beyond the Alps. He had won victories in Gaul and Britain; but in the mean time his enemies had been active at Rome. Still believing that the senate would permit his quiet election to the consulship, he refused to strike any blow at their authority. But the senate had determined to humble Cæsar. Both Pompey and Cæsar were removed from leadership, but the Consul Marcellus refused to execute the decree. Cæsar was directed by the senate to disband his army by a fixed day, on pain of being considered a public enemy. Pompey sided with the senate. This meant civil war. Antony and Cassius fled to the camp of Cæsar, who was enthusiastically supported by his soldiers and "crossed the Rubicon." Having become master of all Italy in three months without a battle, Cæsar reëntered Rome. Pompey had fled, and at the battle of Pharsalia was utterly routed, and took refuge in Egypt, where he was murdered a few days before the arrival of Cæsar. Upon receipt of the news of Pompey's death Cæsar was named dictator for one year. The government was now placed without disguise in his hands. He was invested with the tribunician power for life. He was also again elected consul and named dictator. Cæsar had now become a demi-god, and was named dictator for ten years, being awarded a fourfold triumph, and a thanksgiving being decreed for forty days. He was also made censor. This was in B.C. 46. After defeating the remnant of the Pompeians, he returned to Rome in September, B.C. 45, and was named imperator, and appointed consul for ten years and dictator for life, being hailed as _Parens Patriæ_. All these triumphs had caused jealousies. It was thought that he aspired to become king, and this led to his fall.) NIEBUHR It is one of the inestimable advantages of a hereditary government commonly called the legitimate, whatever its form may be, that it may be formally inactive in regard to the state and the population--that it may reserve its interference until it is absolutely necessary, and apparently leave things to take their own course. If we look around us and observe the various constitutions, we shall scarcely perceive the interference of the government; the greater part of the time passes away without those who have the reins in their hands being obliged to pay any particular attention to what they are doing, and a very large amount of individual liberty may be enjoyed. But if the government is what we call a usurpation, the ruler has not only to take care to maintain his power, but in all that he undertakes he has to consider by what means and in what ways he can establish his right to govern, and his own personal qualifications for it. Men who are in such a position are urged on to act by a very sad necessity, from which they cannot escape, and such was the position of Cæsar at Rome. In our European States, men have wide and extensive spheres in which they can act and move. The much-decried system of centralization has indeed many disadvantages; but it has this advantage for the ruler, that he can exert an activity which shows its influence far and wide. But what could Cæsar do, in the centre of nearly the whole of the known world? He could not hope to effect any material improvements either in Italy or in the provinces. He had been accustomed from his youth, and more especially during the last fifteen years, to an enormous activity, and idleness was intolerable to him. At the close of the civil war he would have had little or nothing to do unless he had turned his attention to some foreign enterprise. He was obliged to venture upon something that would occupy his whole soul, for he could not rest. His thoughts were therefore again directed to war, and that in a quarter where the most brilliant triumphs awaited him, where the bones of the legions of Crassus lay unavenged--to a war against the Parthians. About this time the Getae also had spread in Thrace, and he intended to check their progress likewise. But his main problem was to destroy the Parthian empire and to extend the Roman dominion as far as India, a plan in which he would certainly have been successful; and he himself felt so sure of this that he was already thinking of what he should undertake afterward. It is by no means incredible that, as we are told, he intended on his return to march through the passes of the Caucasus, and through ancient Scythia into the country of the Getae, and thence through Germany and Gaul into Italy. Besides this expedition, he entertained other plans of no less gigantic dimensions. The port of Ostia was bad, and in reality little better than a mere roadstead, so that great ships could not come up the river. Accordingly it is said that Cæsar intended to dig a canal for sea-ships, from the Tiber, above or below Rome, through the Pomptine marshes as far as Terracina. He further contemplated to cut through the Isthmus of Corinth. It is not easy to see in what manner he would have accomplished this, considering the state of hydraulic architecture in those times. The Roman canals were mere _fossæ_, and canals with sluices, though not unknown to the Romans, were not constructed by them.[77] [Footnote 77: The first canals with sluices were executed by the Dutch in the fifteenth century.] The fact of Cæsar forming such enormous plans is not very surprising; but we can scarcely comprehend how it was possible for him to accomplish so much of what he undertook in the short time of five months preceding his death. Following the unfortunate system of Sulla, Cæsar founded throughout Italy a number of colonies of veterans. The old Sullanian colonists were treated with great severity, and many of them and their children were expelled from their lands, and were thus punished for the cruelty which they or their fathers had committed against the inhabitants of the municipia. In like manner colonies were established in Southern Gaul, Italy, Africa, and other parts; I may mention in particular the colonies founded at Carthage and Corinth. The latter, however, was a _colonia libertinorum_, and never rose to any importance. We do not know the details of its foundation, but one would imagine that Cæsar would have preferred restoring the place as a purely Greek town. This, however, he did not do. Its population was and remained a mixed one, and Corinth never rose to a state of real prosperity. Cæsar made various new arrangements in the State, and among others he restored the full franchise, or the _jus honorum_, to the sons of those who had been proscribed in the time of Sulla. He had obtained for himself the title of imperator and the dictatorship for life and the consulship for ten years. Half of the offices of the republic to which persons had before been elected by the centuries were in his gift, and for the other half he usually recommended candidates; so that the elections were merely nominal. The tribes seem to have retained their rights of election uncurtailed, and the last tribunes must have been elected by the people. But although Cæsar did not himself confer the consulship, yet the whole republic was reduced to a mere form and appearance. Cæsar made various new laws and regulations; for example, to lighten the burdens of debtors and the like; but the changes he introduced in the form of the constitution were of little importance. He increased the number of prætors, which Sulla had raised to eight, successively to ten, twelve, fourteen, and sixteen, and the number of quaestors was increased to forty. Hence the number of persons from whom the senate was to be filled up became greater than that of the vacancies, and Cæsar accordingly increased the number of senators, though it is uncertain what number he fixed upon, and raised a great many of his friends to the dignity of senators. In this, as in many other cases, he acted very arbitrarily; for he elected into the senate whomsoever he pleased, and conferred the franchise in a manner equally arbitrary. These things did not fail to create much discontent. It is a remarkable fact that, notwithstanding his mode of filling up the senate, not even the majority of senators were attached to his cause after his death. If we consider the changes and regulations which Cæsar introduced, it must strike us as a singular circumstance that among all his measures there is no trace of any indicating that he thought of modifying the constitution for the purpose of putting an end to the anarchy, for all his changes are in reality not essential or of great importance. Sulla felt the necessity of remodelling the constitution, but he did not attain his end; and the manner, too, in which he set about it was that of a short-sighted man; but he was at least intelligent enough to see that the constitution as it then was could not continue to exist. In the regulations of Cæsar we see no trace of such a conviction; and I think that he despaired of the possibility of effecting any real good by constitutional reforms. Hence, among all his laws there is not one that had any relation to the constitution. The fact of his increasing the number of patrician families had no reference to the constitution; so far in fact were the patricians from having any advantages over the plebeians that the office of the two _oediles Cereales_, which Cæsar instituted, was confined to the plebeians--a regulation which was opposed to the very nature of the patriciate. His raising persons to the rank of patricians was neither more nor less than the modern practice of raising a family to the rank of nobility; he picked out an individual and gave him the rank of patrician for himself and his descendants, but did not elevate a whole gens. The distinction itself was merely a nominal one and conferred no privilege upon a person except that of holding certain priestly offices, which could be filled by none but patricians, and for which their number was scarcely sufficient. If Cæsar had died quietly the republic would have been in the same, nay, in a much worse, state of dissolution than if he had not existed at all. I consider it a proof of the wisdom and good sense of Cæsar that he did not, like Sulla, think an improvement in the state of public affairs so near at hand or a matter of so little difficulty. The cure of the disease lay yet at a very great distance, and the first condition on which it could be undertaken was the sovereignty of Cæsar, a condition which would have been quite unbearable even to many of his followers, who as rebels did not scruple to go along with him. But Rome could no longer exist as a republic. It is curious to see in Cicero's work, _de Republica_, the consciousness running through it that Rome, as it then stood, required the strong hand of a king. Cicero had surely often owned this to himself; but he saw no one who would have entered into such an idea. The title of king had a great fascination for Cæsar, as it had for Cromwell--a surprising phenomenon in a practical mind like that of Cæsar. Everyone knows the fact that while Cæsar was sitting on the _suggestum_, during the celebration of the _Lupercalia_, Antony presented to him the diadem, to try how the people would take it. Cæsar saw the great alarm which the act created and declined the diadem for the sake of appearance; but had the people been silent, Cæsar would unquestionably have accepted it. His refusal was accompanied by loud shouts of acclamation, which for the present rendered all further attempts impossible. Antony then had a statue of Cæsar adorned with the diadem; but two tribunes of the people, L. Caesetius Flavus and Epidius Marullus, took it away: and here Cæsar showed the real state of his feelings, for he treated the conduct of the tribunes as a personal insult toward himself. He had lost his self-possession and his fate carried him irresistibly onward. He wished to have the tribunes imprisoned, but was prevailed upon to be satisfied with their being stripped of their office and sent into exile. This created a great sensation at Rome. Cæsar had also been guilty of an act of thoughtlessness, or perhaps merely of distraction, as might happen very easily to a man in his circumstances. When the senate had made its last decrees, conferring upon Cæsar unlimited powers, the senators, consuls, and prætors, or the whole senate, in festal attire, presented the decrees to him, and Cæsar at the moment forgot to show his respect for the senators; he did not rise from his _sella curulis_, but received the decrees in an unceremonious manner. This want of politeness was never forgiven by the persons who had not scrupled to make him their master; for it had been expected that he would at least behave politely and be grateful for such decrees.[78] Cæsar himself had no design in the act, which was merely the consequence of distraction or thoughtlessness; but it made the senate his irreconcilable enemies. The affair with the tribunes, moreover, had made a deep impression upon the people. We must, however, remember that the people under such circumstances are most sensible to anything affecting their honor, as we have seen at the beginning of the French Revolution. [Footnote 78: I have known an instance of a man of rank and influence who could never forgive another man, who was by far his superior in every respect, for having forgotten to take off his hat during a visit.] In the year of Cæsar's death, Brutus and Cassius were prætors. Both had been generals under Pompey. Brutus' mother, Servilia, was a half-sister of Cato, for after the death of her first husband Cato's mother had married Servilius Caepio. She was a remarkable woman, but very immoral, and unworthy of her son; not even the honor of her own daughter was sacred to her. The family of Brutus derived its origin from L. Junius Brutus, and from the time of its first appearance among the plebeians it had had few men of importance to boast of. During the period subsequent to the passing of the Licinian laws we meet with some Junii in the Fasti, but not one of them acquired any great reputation. The family had become reduced and almost contemptible. One M. Brutus in particular disgraced his family by sycophancy in the time of Sulla and was afterward killed in Gaul by Pompey. Although no Roman family belonged to a more illustrious gens, yet Brutus was not by any means one of those men who are raised by fortunate circumstances. The education, however, which he received had a great influence upon him. His uncle Cato, whose daughter Porcia he married--whether in Cato's lifetime or afterward is doubtful--had initiated him from his early youth in the Stoic philosophy, and had instilled into his mind a veneration for it, as though it had been a religion. Brutus had qualities which Cato did not possess. The latter had something of an ascetic nature, and was, if I may say so, a scrupulously pious character; but Brutus had no such scrupulous timidity; his mind was more flexible and lovable. Cato spoke well, but could not be reckoned among the eloquent men of his time. Brutus' great talents had been developed with the utmost care, and if he had lived longer and in peace he would have become a classical writer of the highest order. He had been known to Cicero from his early age, and Cicero felt a fatherly attachment to him; he saw in him a young man who he hoped would exert a beneficial influence upon the next generation. Cæsar too had known and loved him from his childhood; but the stories which are related to account for this attachment must be rejected as foolish inventions of idle persons; for nothing is more natural than that Cæsar should look with great fondness upon a young man of such extraordinary and amiable qualities. The absence of envy was one of the distinguishing features in the character of Cæsar, as it was in that of Cicero. In the battle of Pharsalus, Brutus served in the army of Pompey, and after the battle he wrote a letter to Cæsar, who had inquired after him; and when Cæsar heard of his safety he was delighted, and invited him to his camp. Cæsar afterward gave him the administration of Cisalpine Gaul, where Brutus distinguished himself in a very extraordinary manner by his love of justice. Cassius was related to Brutus, and had likewise belonged to the Pompeian party, but he was very unlike Brutus; he was much older, and a distinguished military officer. After the death of Crassus he had maintained himself as quaestor in Syria against the Parthians, and he enjoyed a very great reputation in the army, but he was after all no better than an ordinary officer of Cæsar. After the battle of Pharsalus, Cæsar did not at first know whither Pompey was gone. Cassius was at the time stationed with some galleys in the Hellespont, notwithstanding which Cæsar with his usual boldness took a boat to sail across that strait, and on meeting Cassius called upon him to embrace his party. Cassius readily complied, and Cæsar forgave him, as he forgave all his adversaries: even Marcellus, who had mortally offended him, was pardoned at the request of Cicero. Cæsar thus endeavored to efface all recollections of the civil war. Cæsar had appointed both Brutus and Cassius prætors for that year. With the exception of the office of _prætor urbanus_, which was honorable and lucrative, the prætorship was a burdensome office and conferred little distinction, since the other prætors were only the presidents of the courts. Formerly they had been elected by lot, but the office was now altogether in the gift of Cæsar. Both Brutus and Cassius had wished for the prætura urbana, and, when Cæsar gave that office to Brutus, Cassius was not only indignant at Cæsar, but began quarrelling with Brutus also. While Cassius was in this state of exasperation, a meeting of the senate was announced for the 15th of March, on which day, as the report went, a proposal was to be made to offer Cæsar the crown. This was a welcome opportunity for Cassius, who resolved to take vengeance, for he had even before entertained a personal hatred of Cæsar, and was now disappointed at not having obtained the city prætorship. He first sounded Brutus and, finding that he was safe, made direct overtures to him. During the night some one wrote on the tribunal and the house of Brutus the words, "Remember that thou art Brutus." Brutus became reconciled to Cassius, offered his assistance, and gained over several other persons to join the conspiracy. All party differences seemed to have vanished all at once; two of the conspirators were old generals of Cæsar, C. Trebonius and Decimus Brutus, both of whom had fought with him in Gaul, and against Massilia, and had been raised to high honors by their chief. There were among the conspirators persons of all parties. Men who had fought against one another at Pharsalus now went hand-in-hand and intrusted their lives to one another. No proposals were made to Cicero, the reasons usually assigned for which are of the most calumniatory kind. It is generally said that the conspirators had no confidence in Cicero, an opinion which is perfectly contemptible. Cicero would not have betrayed them for any consideration, but what they feared were his objections. Brutus had as noble a soul as anyone, but he was passionate; Cicero, on the other hand, who was at an advanced age, had many sad experiences, and his feelings were so exceedingly delicate that he could not have consented to take away the life of him to whom he himself owed his own, who had always behaved most nobly toward him, and had intentionally drawn him before the world as his friend. Cæsar's conduct toward those who had fought in the ranks of Pompey and afterward returned to him was extremely noble, and he regarded the reconciliation of those men as a personal favor conferred upon himself. All who knew Cicero must have been convinced that he would not have given his consent to the plan of the conspirators; and if they ever did give the matter a serious thought, they must have owned to themselves that every wise man would have dissuaded them from it; for it was in fact the most complete absurdity to fancy that the republic could be restored by Cæsar's death. Goethe says somewhere that the murder of Cæsar was the most senseless act that the Romans ever committed; and a truer word was never spoken. The result of it could not possibly be any other than that which did follow the deed. Cæsar was cautioned by Hirtius and Pansa, both wise men of noble character, especially the former, who saw that the republic must become consolidated and not thrown into fresh convulsions. They advised Cæsar to be careful, and to take a bodyguard; but he replied that he would rather not live at all than be in constant fear of losing his life. Cæsar once expressed to some of his friends his conviction that Brutus was capable of harboring a murderous design, but he added that as he, Cæsar, could not live much longer, Brutus would wait, and not be guilty of such a crime. Cæsar's health was at that time weak, and the general opinion was that he intended to surrender his power to Brutus as the most worthy. While the conspirators were making their preparations, Porcia, the wife of Brutus, inferred from the excitement and restlessness of her husband that some fearful secret was pressing on his mind; but as he did not show her any confidence, she seriously wounded herself with a knife and was seized with a violent wound-fever. No one knew the cause of her illness; and it was not till after many entreaties of her husband that at length she revealed it to him, saying that as she had been able to conceal the cause of her illness, so she could also keep any secret that might be intrusted to her. Her entreaties induced Brutus to communicate to her the plan of the conspirators. Cæsar was also cautioned by the haruspices, by a dream of his wife, and by his own forebodings, which we have no reason for doubting. But on the morning of the 15th of March, the day fixed upon for assassinating Cæsar, Decimus Brutus treacherously enticed him to go with him to the Curia, as it was impossible to delay the deed any longer. The conspirators were at first seized with fear lest their plan should be betrayed; but on Cæsar's entrance into the senate house, C. Tillius (not Tullius) Cimber made his way up to him, and insulted him with his importunities, and Casca gave the first stroke. Cæsar fell covered with twenty-three wounds. He was either in his fifty-sixth year or had completed it; I am not quite certain on this point, though, if we judge by the time of his first consulship, he must have been fifty-six years old. His birthday, which is not generally known, was the 11th of Quinctilis, which month was afterward called Julius, and his death took place on the 15th of March, between eleven and twelve o'clock. PLUTARCH At one time the senate having decreed Cæsar some extravagant honors, the consuls and prætors, attended by the whole body of patricians, went to inform him of what they had done. When they came, he did not rise to receive them, but kept his seat, as if they had been persons in a private station, and his answer to their address was, "that there was more need to retrench his honors than to enlarge them." This haughtiness gave pain not only to the senate, but the people, who thought the contempt of that body reflected dishonor upon the whole Commonwealth; for all who could decently withdraw went off greatly dejected. Perceiving the false step he had taken, he retired immediately to his own house, and, laying his neck bare, told his friends "he was ready for the first hand that would strike." He then bethought himself of alleging his distemper as an excuse; and asserted that those who are under its influence are apt to find their faculties fail them when they speak standing, a trembling and giddiness coming upon them, which bereave them of their senses. This, however, was not really the case; for it is said he was desirous to rise to the senate; but Cornelius Balbus, one of his friends, or rather flatterers, held him, and had servility enough to say, "Will you not remember that you are Cæsar, and suffer them to pay their court to you as their superior?" These discontents were greatly increased by the indignity with which he treated the tribunes of the people. In the Lupercalia, which, according to most writers, is an ancient pastoral feast, and which answers in many respects to the _Lycaea_ among the Arcadians, young men of noble families, and indeed many of the magistrates, run about the streets naked, and, by way of diversion, strike all they meet with leathern thongs with the hair upon them. Numbers of women of the first quality put themselves in their way, and present their hands for stripes--as scholars do to a master--being persuaded that the pregnant gain an easy delivery by it, and that the barren are enabled to conceive. Cæsar wore a triumphal robe that day, and seated himself in a golden chair upon the _rostra_, to see the ceremony. Antony ran among the rest, in compliance with the rules of the festival, for he was consul. When he came into the Forum, and the crowd had made way for him, he approached Cæsar, and offered him a diadem wreathed with laurel. Upon this some plaudits were heard, but very feeble, because they proceeded only from persons placed there on purpose. Cæsar refused it, and then the plaudits were loud and general. Antony presented it once more, and few applauded his officiousness; but when Cæsar rejected it again, the applause again was general. Cæsar, undeceived by his second trial, rose up and ordered the diadem to be consecrated in the Capitol. A few days after, his statues were seen adorned with royal diadems; and Flavius and Marullus, two of the tribunes, went and tore them off. They also found out the persons who first saluted Cæsar king, and committed them to prison. The people followed with cheerful acclamations, and called them Brutuses, because Brutus was the man who expelled the kings and put the government in the hands of the senate and people. Cæsar, highly incensed at their behavior, deposed the tribunes, and by way of reprimand to them, as well as insult to the people, called them several times _Brutes_ and _Cumceans_. Upon this, many applied to Marcus Brutus, who, by the father's side, was supposed to be a descendant of that ancient Brutus, and whose mother was of the illustrious house of the Servilli. He was also nephew and son-in-law to Cato. No man was more inclined than he to lift his hand against monarchy, but he was withheld by the honors and favors he had received from Cæsar, who had not only given him his life after the defeat of Pompey at Pharsalia, and pardoned many of his friends at his request, but continued to honor him with his confidence. That very year he had procured him the most honorable prætorship, and he had named him for the consulship four years after, in preference to Cassius, who was his competitor; on which occasion Cæsar is reported to have said, "Cassius assigns the strongest reasons, but I cannot refuse Brutus." Some impeached Brutus after the conspiracy was formed; but, instead of listening to them, he laid his hand on his body and said, "Brutus will wait for this skin"; intimating that though the virtue of Brutus rendered him worthy of empire, he would not be guilty of any ingratitude or baseness to obtain it. Those, however, who were desirous of a change kept their eyes upon him only, or principally at least; and as they durst not speak out plain, they put billets night after night in the tribunal and seat which he used as prætor, mostly in these terms: "Thou sleepest, Brutus," or, "Thou art not Brutus." Cassius, perceiving his friend's ambition a little stimulated by these papers, began to ply him closer than before, and spur him on to the great enterprise; for he had a particular enmity against Cæsar. Cæsar, too, had some suspicion of him, and he even said one day to his friends: "What think you of Cassius? I do not like his pale looks." Another time, when Antony and Dolabella were accused of some designs against his person and government, he said: "I have no apprehensions from those fat and sleek men; I rather fear the pale and lean ones," meaning Cassius and Brutus. It seems, from this instance, that fate is not so secret as it is inevitable; for we are told there were strong signs and presages of the death of Cæsar. As to the lights in the heavens, the strange noises heard in various quarters by night, and the appearance of solitary birds in the Forum, perhaps they deserve not our notice in so great an event as this. But some attention should be given to Strabo the philosopher. According to him there were seen in the air men of fire encountering each other; such a flame appeared to issue from the hand of a soldier's servant that all the spectators thought it must be burned, yet, when it was over, he found no harm; and one of the victims which Cæsar offered was found without a heart. The latter was certainly a most alarming prodigy; for, according to the rules of nature, no creature can exist without a heart. What is still more extraordinary, many report that a certain soothsayer forewarned him of a great danger which threatened him on the ides of March, and that when the day was come, as he was going to the senate house, he called to the soothsayer, and said, laughing, "The ides of March are come"; to which he answered softly, "Yes; but they are not gone." The evening before, he supped with Marcus Lepidus, and signed, according to custom, a number of letters, as he sat at table. While he was so employed, there arose a question, "What kind of death was the best?" and Cæsar, answering before them all, cried out, "A sudden one." The same night, as he was in bed with his wife, the doors and windows of the room flew open at once. Disturbed both with the noise and the light, he observed, by moonshine, Calpurnia in a deep sleep, uttering broken words and inarticulate groans. She dreamed that she was weeping over him, as she held him, murdered, in her arms. Others say she dreamed that the pinnacle was fallen, which, as Livy tells us, the senate had ordered to be erected upon Cæsar's house by way of ornament and distinction; and that it was the fall of it which she lamented and wept for. Be that as it may, the next morning she conjured Cæsar not to go out that day if he could possibly avoid it, but to adjourn the senate; and, if he had no regard to her dreams, to have recourse to some other species of divination, or to sacrifices, for information as to his fate. This gave him some suspicion and alarm; for he had never known before, in Calpurnia, anything of the weakness or superstition of her sex, though she was now so much affected. He therefore offered a number of sacrifices, and, as the diviners found no auspicious tokens in any of them, he sent Antony to dismiss the senate. In the mean time Decius Brutus, surnamed Albinus, came in. He was a person in whom Cæsar placed such confidence that he had appointed him his second heir, yet he was engaged in the conspiracy with the other Brutus and Cassius. This man, fearing that if Cæsar adjourned the senate to another day the affair might be discovered, laughed at the diviners, and told Cæsar he would be highly to blame if by such a slight he gave the senate an occasion of complaint against him. "For they were met," he said, "at his summons, and came prepared with one voice to honor him with the title of king in the provinces, and to grant that he should wear the diadem both by sea and land everywhere out of Italy. But if anyone go and tell them, now they have taken their places, they must go home again, and return when Calpurnia happens to have better dreams, what room will your enemies have to launch out against you? Or who will hear your friends when they attempt to show that this is not an open servitude on the one hand and tyranny on the other? If you are absolutely persuaded that this is an unlucky day, it is certainly better to go yourself and tell them you have strong reasons for putting off business till another time." So saying he took Cæsar by the hand and led him out. He was not gone far from the door when a slave, who belonged to some other person, attempted to get up to speak to him, but finding it impossible, by reason of the crowd that was about him, he made his way into the house, and putting himself into the hands of Calpurnia desired her to keep him safe till Cæsar's return, because he had matters of great importance to communicate. Artemidorus the Cnidian, who, by teaching the Greek eloquence, became acquainted with some of Brutus' friends, and had got intelligence of most of the transactions, approached Cæsar with a paper explaining what he had to discover. Observing that he gave the papers, as fast as he received them, to his officers, he got up as close as possible and said: "Cæsar, read this to yourself, and quickly, for it contains matters of great consequence and of the last concern to you." He took it and attempted several times to read it, but was always prevented by one application or other. He therefore kept that paper, and that only, in his hand, when he entered the house. Some say it was delivered to him by another man, Artemidorus being kept from approaching him all the way by the crowd. These things might, indeed, fall out by chance; but as in the place where the senate was that day assembled, and which proved the scene of that tragedy, there was a statue of Pompey, and it was an edifice which Pompey had consecrated for an ornament to his theatre, nothing can be clearer than that some deity conducted the whole business and directed the execution of it to that very spot. Even Cassius himself, though inclined to the doctrines of Epicurus, turned his eye to the statue of Pompey, and secretly invoked his aid, before the great attempt. The arduous occasion, it seems, overruled his former sentiments, and laid them open to all the influence of enthusiasm. Antony, who was a faithful friend to Cæsar, and a man of great strength, was held in discourse without, by Brutus Albinus, who had contrived a long story to detain him. When Cæsar entered the house, the senate rose to do him honor. Some of Brutus' accomplices came up behind his chair, and others before it, pretending to intercede, along with Metillius Cimber, for the recall of his brother from exile. They continued their instances till he came to his seat. When he was seated he gave them a positive denial; and as they continued their importunities with an air of compulsion, he grew angry. Cimber, then, with both hands, pulled his gown off his neck, which was the signal for the attack. Casca gave him the first blow. It was a stroke upon the neck with his sword, but the wound was not dangerous; for in the beginning of so tremendous an enterprise he was probably in some disorder. Cæsar therefore turned upon him and laid hold of his sword. At the same time they both cried out, the one in Latin, "Villain! Casca! what dost thou mean?" and the other in Greek, to his brother, "Brother, help!" After such a beginning, those who knew nothing of the conspiracy were seized with consternation and horror, insomuch that they durst neither fly nor assist, nor even utter a word. All the conspirators now drew their swords, and surrounded him in such a manner that, whatever way he turned, he saw nothing but steel gleaming in his face, and met nothing but wounds. Like some savage beast attacked by the hunters, he found every hand lifted against him, for they all agreed to have a share in the sacrifice and a taste of his blood. Therefore Brutus himself gave him a stroke in the groin. Some say he opposed the rest, and continued struggling and crying out till he perceived the sword of Brutus; then he drew his robe over his face and yielded to his fate. Either by accident or pushed thither by the conspirators, he expired on the pedestal of Pompey's statue, and dyed it with his blood; so that Pompey seemed to preside over the work of vengeance, to tread his enemy under his feet, and to enjoy his agonies. Those agonies were great, for he received no less than three-and-twenty wounds. And many of the conspirators wounded each other as they were aiming their blows at him. Cæsar thus despatched, Brutus advanced to speak to the senate and to assign his reasons for what he had done, but they could not bear to hear him; they fled out of the house and filled the people with inexpressible horror and dismay. Some shut up their houses; others left their shops and counters. All were in motion; one was running to see the spectacle; another running back. Antony and Lepidus, Cæsar's principal friends, withdrew, and hid themselves in other people's houses. Meantime Brutus and his confederates, yet warm from the slaughter, marched in a body with their bloody swords in their hands, from the senate house to the Capitol, not like men that fled, but with an air of gayety and confidence, calling the people to liberty, and stopping to talk with every man of consequence whom they met. There were some who even joined them and mingled with their train, desirous of appearing to have had a share in the action and hoping for one in the glory. Of this number were Caius Octavius and Lentulus Spinther, who afterward paid dear for their vanity, being put to death by Antony and young Cæsar; so that they gained not even the honor for which they lost their lives, for nobody believed that they had any part in the enterprise; and they were punished, not for the deed, but for the will. Next day Brutus and the rest of the conspirators came down from the Capitol and addressed the people, who attended to their discourse without expressing either dislike or approbation of what was done. But by their silence it appeared that they pitied Cæsar, at the same time that they revered Brutus. The senate passed a general amnesty; and, to reconcile all parties, they decreed Cæsar divine honors and confirmed all the acts of his dictatorship; while on Brutus and his friends they bestowed governments and such honors as were suitable; so that it was generally imagined the Commonwealth was firmly established again, and all brought into the best order. But when, upon the opening of Cæsar's will, it was found that he had left every Roman citizen a considerable legacy, and they beheld the body, as it was carried through the Forum, all mangled with wounds, the multitude could no longer be kept within bounds. They stopped the procession, and, tearing up the benches, with the doors and tables, heaped them into a pile, and burned the corpse there. Then snatching flaming brands from the pile, some ran to burn the houses of the assassins, while others ranged the city to find the conspirators themselves and tear them in pieces; but they had taken such care to secure themselves that they could not meet with one of them. One Cinna, a friend of Cæsar's, had a strange dream the preceding night. He dreamed--as they tell us--that Cæsar invited him to supper, and, upon his refusal to go, caught him by the hand and drew him after him, in spite of all the resistance he could make. Hearing, however, that the body of Cæsar was to be burned in the Forum, he went to assist in doing him the last honors, though he had a fever upon him, the consequence of his uneasiness about his dream. On his coming up, one of the populace asked who that was? and having learned his name, told it to his next neighbor. A report immediately spread through the whole company that it was one of Cæsar's murderers; and, indeed, one of the conspirators was named Cinna. The multitude, taking this for the man, fell upon him, and tore him to pieces upon the spot. Brutus and Cassius were so terrified at this rage of the populace that a few days after they left the city. An account of their subsequent actions, sufferings, and death may be found in the life of Brutus. Cæsar died at the age of fifty-six, and did not survive Pompey above four years. His object was sovereign power and authority, which he pursued through innumerable dangers, and by prodigious efforts he gained it at last. But he reaped no other fruit from it than an empty and invidious title. It is true the divine Power, which conducted him through life, attended him after his death as his avenger, pursued and hunted out the assassins over sea and land, and rested not till there was not a man left, either of those who dipped their hands in his blood or of those who gave their sanction to the deed. The most remarkable of natural events relative to this affair was that Cassius, after he had lost the battle of Philippi, killed himself with the same dagger which he had made use of against Cæsar; and the most signal phenomenon in the heavens was that of a great comet, which shone very bright for seven nights after Cæsar's death, and then disappeared; to which we may add the fading of the sun's lustre; for his orb looked pale all that year; he rose not with a sparkling radiance, nor had the heat he afforded its usual strength. The air, of course, was dark and heavy, for want of that vigorous heat which clears and rarefies it; and the fruits were so crude and unconcocted that they pined away and decayed, through the chilliness of the atmosphere. We have a proof still more striking that the assassination of Cæsar was displeasing to the gods, in the phantom that appeared to Brutus. The story of it is this: Brutus was on the point of transporting his army from Abydos to the opposite continent; and the night before, he lay in his tent awake, according to custom, and in deep thought about what might be the event of the war; for it was natural for him to watch a great part of the night, and no general ever required so little sleep. With all his senses about him, he heard a noise at the door of his tent, and looking toward the light, which was now burned very low, he saw a terrible appearance in the human form, but of prodigious stature and the most hideous aspect. At first he was struck with astonishment; but when he saw it neither did nor spoke anything to him, but stood in silence by his bed, he asked it who it was? The spectre answered: "I am thy evil genius, Brutus; thou shalt see me at Philippi." Brutus answered boldly, "I'll meet thee there"; and the spectre immediately vanished. Some time after, he engaged Antony and Octavius Cæsar at Philippi, and the first day was victorious, carrying all before him, where he fought in person, and even pillaging Cæsar's camp. The night before he was to fight the second battle the same spectre appeared to him again, but spoke not a word. Brutus, however, understood that his last hour was near, and courted danger with all the violence of despair. Yet he did not fall in the action; but seeing all was lost, he retired to the top of a rock, where he presented his naked sword to his breast, and a friend, as they tell us, assisting the thrust, he died upon the spot. ROME BECOMES A MONARCHY DEATH OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA B.C. 44-30 HENRY GEORGE LIDDELL (After the death of Cæsar, Rome was in confusion; consternation seized the people, and the "liberators" failed to rally them to their own support. In possession of Cæsar's treasure, Antony, the surviving consul, bided his time. His oration at Cæsar's funeral stirred the populace against the "liberators," and made him for the moment master of Rome; but his self-seeking soon turned the people against him. The young Octavius, Cæsar's heir, had become popular with the army. He returned to Rome and claimed his inheritance, demanded from Antony Cæsar's moneys, but in vain, and assumed the title of Cæsar. The rivalry between the two leaders rapidly approached a crisis. The partisans of Antony and Octavius began to clash, and civil war followed. Defeated, Antony retreated across the Alps. Octavius was elected consul, and began negotiations with Antony and Lepidus, which resulted in the three new masters constituting themselves a triumvirate--the Second Triumvirate--to settle the affairs of the Commonwealth. They divided the powers of government, and a partition of territory was made between them. Their next business was to put out of the way, by proscription, the enemies of this new order of things. Three hundred senators, including Cicero, were massacred, as well as two thousand knights. When the terrified senate had legalized the self-assumed authority of the triumvirs, they turned their attention to Brutus and Cassius in the East, whither they had gone after the assassination of Cæsar and established and maintained themselves in power. At the battle of Philippi in Macedonia [B.C. 42] Antony and Octavius defeated Brutus and Cassius, both of whom died by their own hands. The Roman world was now in the hands of the triumvirs. Antony ruled in the East, Octavius in the West, and Lepidus in Africa, B.C. 42-36. In the latter year Lepidus was deposed by Octavius after a short conflict. And only a year after Philippi a war between Octavius and Antony was threatened because of a revolt in Italy, raised by Antony's brother Lucius and Fulvia, wife of Antony; but it was prevented by a treaty of peace, sealed by the marriage of Antony to Octavia, sister of Octavius. This peace lasted for ten years, during which time, however, there was constant friction between them. At Tarsus, in B.C. 41, Antony received a visit from Cleopatra, to whose charms he had yielded years before. This was the turning-point in his career; he went with her to Alexandria. By his oppression of the people of the East, and his dalliance with Cleopatra, he made himself the object of hatred and contempt. His army met with a series of defeats. In the mean time Octavius was constantly strengthening himself. The rivalry between them finally reached the point where both prepared for war. The great sea fight near Actium, September 2d, B.C. 31, resulted in the destruction of Antony's fleet after he had followed Cleopatra in her flight. A year later occurred the death of both. This important battle established Octavius as the sole ruler of the Roman possessions, and historians regard it as marking the end of the republic and the beginning of the empire.) While the conspirators were at their bloody work [of slaying Cæsar], the mass of the senators rushed in confused terror to the doors; and when Brutus turned to address his peers in defence of the deed, the hall was well-nigh empty. Cicero, who had been present, answered not, though he was called by name; Antony had hurried away to exchange his consular robes for the garb of a slave. Disappointed of obtaining the sanction of the senate, the conspirators sallied out into the Forum to win the ear of the people. But here, too, they were disappointed. Not knowing what massacre might be in store, every man had fled to his own house; and in vain the conspirators paraded the Forum, holding up their blood-stained weapons and proclaiming themselves the liberators of Rome. Disappointment was not their only feeling: they were not without fear. They knew that Lepidus, being on the eve of departure for his province of Narbonnese Gaul, had a legion encamped on the island of the Tiber: and if he were to unite with Antony against them, Cæsar would quickly be avenged. In all haste, therefore, they retired to the Capitol. Meanwhile three of Cæsar's slaves placed their master's body upon a stretcher and carried it to his house on the south side of the Forum, with one arm dangling from the unsupported corner. In this condition the widowed Calpurnia received the lifeless clay of him who had lately been sovereign of the world. Lepidus moved his troops to the Campus Martius. But Antony had no thoughts of using force; for in that case probably Lepidus would have become master of Rome. During the night he took possession of the treasure which Cæsar had collected to defray the expenses of his Parthian campaign, and persuaded Calpurnia to put into his hands all the dictator's papers. Possessed of these securities, he barricaded his house on the Carinae, and determined to watch the course of events. In the evening Cicero, with other senators, visited the self-styled liberators in the Capitol. They had not communicated their plot to the orator, through fear (they said) of his irresolute counsels; but now that the deed was done, he extolled it as a godlike act. Next morning, Dolabella, Cicero's son-in-law, whom Cæsar had promised should be his successor in the consulship, assumed the consular fasces and joined the liberators; while Cinna, son of the old Marian leader and therefore brother-in-law to Cæsar, threw aside his praetorian robes, declaring he would no longer wear the tyrant's livery. Dec. Brutus, a good soldier, had taken a band of gladiators into pay, to serve as a bodyguard of the liberators. Thus strengthened, they ventured again to descend into the Forum. Brutus mounted the tribune, and addressed the people in a dispassionate speech, which produced little effect. But when Cinna assailed the memory of the dictator, the crowd broke out into menacing cries, and the liberators again retired to the Capitol. That same night they entered into negotiations with Antony, and the result appeared next morning, the second after the murder. The senate, summoned to meet, obeyed the call in large numbers. Antony and Dolabella attended in their consular robes, and Cinna resumed his praetorian garb. It was soon apparent that a reconciliation had been effected: for Antony moved that a general amnesty should be granted, and Cicero seconded the motion in an animated speech. It was carried; and Antony next moved that all the acts of the dictator should be recognized as law. He had his own purposes here; but the liberators also saw in the motion an advantage to themselves; for they were actually in possession of some of the chief magistracies, and had received appointments to some of the richest provinces of the empire. This proposal, therefore, was favorably received; but it was adjourned to the next day, together with the important question of Cæsar's funeral. On the next day Cæsar's acts were formally confirmed, and among them his will was declared valid, though its provisions were yet unknown. After this, it was difficult to reject the proposal that the dictator should have a public burial. Old senators remembered the riots that attended the funeral of Clodius and shook their heads. Cassius opposed it. But Brutus, with imprudent magnanimity, decided in favor of allowing it. To seal the reconciliation, Lepidus entertained Brutus at dinner and Cassius was feasted by Mark Antony. The will was immediately made public. Cleopatra was still in Rome, and entertained hopes that the boy Cæsarion would be declared the dictator's heir; for though he had been married thrice, there was no one of his lineage surviving. But Cæsar was too much a Roman, and knew the Romans too well, to be guilty of this folly. Young C. Octavius, his sister's son, was declared his heir. Legacies were left to all his supposed friends, among whom were several of those who had assassinated him. His noble gardens beyond the Tiber were devised to the use of the public, and every Roman citizen was to receive a donation of three hundred sesterces--between ten and fifteen dollars. The effect of this recital was electric. Devotion to the memory of the dictator and hatred for his murderers at once filled every breast. Two or three days after this followed the funeral. The body was to be burned, and the ashes deposited in the Campus Martius, near the tomb of his daughter Julia. But it was first brought into the Forum upon a bier inlaid with ivory and covered with rich tapestries, which was carried by men high in rank and office. There Antony, as consul, rose to pronounce the funeral oration. He ran through the chief acts of Cæsar's life, recited his will, and then spoke of the death which had rewarded him. To make this more vividly present to the excitable Italians he displayed a waxen image marked with the three-and-twenty wounds, and produced the very robe which he had worn, all rent and blood-stained. Soul-stirring dirges added to the solemn horror of the scene. But to us the memorable speech which Shakespeare puts into Antony's mouth will give the liveliest notion of the art used and the impression produced. That impression was instantaneous. The senator friends of the liberators who had attended the ceremony looked on in moody silence. Soon the menacing gestures of the crowd made them look to their safety. They fled; and the multitude insisted on burning the body, as they had burned the body of Clodius, in the sacred precincts of the Forum. Some of the veterans who attended the funeral set fire to the bier; benches and firewood heaped round it soon made a sufficient pile. From the blazing pyre the crowd rushed, eager for vengeance, to the houses of the conspirators. But all had fled betimes. One poor wretch fell a victim to the fury of the mob--Helvius Cinna, a poet who had devoted his art to the service of the dictator. He was mistaken for L. Cornelius Cinna the prætor, and was torn to pieces before the mistake could be explained.[79] [Footnote 79: This story is, however, rendered somewhat doubtful by the manner in which Cinna is mentioned in Vergil's ninth _Eclogue_, which was certainly written in or after the year B.C. 40.] Antony was now the real master of Rome. The treasure which he had seized gave him the means of purchasing good will, and of securing the attachment of the veterans stationed in various parts of Italy. He did not, however, proceed in the course which, from the tone of his funeral harangue, might have been expected. He renewed friendly intercourse with Brutus and Cassius, who were encouraged to visit Rome once at least, if not oftener, after that day; and Dec. Brutus, with his gladiators, was suffered to remain in the city. Antony went still further. He gratified the senate by passing a law to abolish the dictatorship forever. He then left Rome to win the favor of the Italian communities and try the temper of the veterans. Meanwhile another actor appeared upon the scene. This was young Octavius. He had been but six months in the camp at Apollonia; but in that short time he had formed a close friendship with M. Vipsanius Agrippa, a young man of his own age, who possessed great abilities for active life, but could not boast of any distinguished ancestry. As soon as the news of his uncle's assassination reached the camp, his friend Agrippa recommended him to appeal to the troops and march upon Rome. But the youth, with a wariness above his years, resisted these bold counsels. Landing near Brundusium almost alone, he there first heard that Cæsar's will had been published and that he was declared Cæsar's heir. He at once accepted the dangerous honor. As he travelled slowly toward the city he stayed some days at Puteoli with his mother, Atia, who was now married to L. Philippus. Both mother and stepfather attempted to dissuade him from the perilous business of claiming his inheritance. At the same place he had an interview with Cicero, who had quitted Rome in despair after the funeral, and left the orator under the impression that he might be won to what was deemed the patriotic party. He arrived at Rome about the beginning of May, and demanded from Antony, who had now returned from his Italian tour, an account of the moneys of which the consul had taken possession, in order that he might discharge the obligations laid upon him by his uncle's will. But Antony had already spent great part of the money in bribing Dolabella and other influential persons; nor was he willing to give up any portion of his spoil. Octavius therefore sold what remained of his uncle's property, raised money on his own credit, and paid all legacies with great exactness. This act earned him much popularity. Antony began to fear this boy of eighteen, whom he had hitherto despised, and the senate learned to look on him as a person to be conciliated. Still Antony remained in possession of all actual power. Cicero, not remarkable for political firmness, in this crisis displayed a vigor worthy of his earlier days. He had at one moment made up his mind to retire from public life and end his days at Athens in learned leisure. In the course of this summer he continued to employ himself on some of his most elaborate treatises. His works on the _Nature of the Gods_ and on _Divination_, his _Offices_, his _Dialogue on Old Age_, and several other essays belong to this period and mark the restless activity of his mind. But though he twice set sail from Italy, he was driven back to port at Velia, where he found Brutus and Cassius. Here he received letters from Au. Hirtius and other friends of Cæsar, which gave him hopes that, in the name of Octavius, they might successfully oppose Antony and restore constitutional government. He determined to return, and announced his purpose to Brutus and Cassius, who commended him and took leave of him. They went their way to the east to raise armies against Antony; he repaired to Rome to fight the battles of his party in the senate house. Meanwhile Antony had been running riot. In possession of Cæsar's papers, with no one to check him, he produced ready warrant for every measure which he wished to carry, and pleaded the vote of the senate which confirmed all the acts of Cæsar. When he could not produce a genuine paper, he interpolated or forged what was needful. On the day after Cicero's return (September 1st) there was a meeting of the senate. But the orator did not attend, and Antony threatened to send men to drag him from his house. Next day Cicero was in his place, but now Antony was absent. The orator arose and addressed the senate in what is called his _First Philippic_. This was a measured attack upon the government and policy of Antony, but personalities were carefully eschewed: the tone of the whole speech, indeed, is such as might be delivered by a leader of opposition in parliament at the present day. But Antony, enraged at his boldness, summoned a meeting for the 19th of September, which Cicero did not think it prudent to attend. He then attacked the absent orator in the strongest language of personal abuse and menace. Cicero sat down and composed his famous _Second Philippic_, which is written as if it were delivered on the same day, in reply to Antony's invective. At present, however, he contented himself with sending a copy of it to Atticus, enjoining secrecy. Matters quickly drew to a head between Antony and Octavius. The latter had succeeded in securing a thousand men of his uncle's veterans who had settled in Campania; and by great exertions in the different towns of Italy had levied a considerable force. Meantime four of the Epirote legions had just landed at Brundusium, and Antony hastened to attach them to his cause. But the largess which he offered them was only a hundred _denaries_ a man, and the soldiers laughed in his face. Antony, enraged at their conduct, seized the ringleaders and decimated them. But this severity only served to change their open insolence into sullen anger, and emissaries from Octavius were ready to draw them over to the side of their young master. They had so far obeyed Antony as to march northward to Ariminum, while he repaired to Rome. But as he entered the senate house he heard that two of the four legions had deserted to his rival, and in great alarm he hastened to the camp just in time to keep the remainder of the troops under his standard by distributing to every man five hundred denaries. The persons to hold the consulship for the next year had been designated by Cæsar. They were both old officers of the Gallic army, C. Vibius Pansa and Au. Hirtius, the reputed author of the Eighth Book of the _History of the Gallic War_. Cicero was ready to believe that they had become patriots, because, disgusted with the arrogance of Antony, they had declared for Octavius and the senate. Antony began to fear that all parties might combine to crush him. He determined, therefore, no longer to remain inactive; and about the end of November, having now collected all his troops at Ariminum, he marched along the Æmilian road to drive Dec. Brutus out of Cisalpine Gaul. Decimus was obliged to throw himself into Mutina (Modena), and Antony blockaded the place. As soon as his back was turned, Cicero published the famous _Second Philippic_, in which he lashed the consul with the most unsparing hand, going through the history of his past life, exaggerating the debaucheries, which were common to Antony with great part of the Roman youth, and painting in the strongest colors the profligate use he had made of Cæsar's papers. Its effect was great, and Cicero followed up the blow by the following twelve _Philippics_, which were speeches delivered in the senate house and Forum, at intervals from December (44) to April in the next year. Cicero was anxious to break with Antony at once, by declaring him a public enemy. But the latter was still regarded by many senators as the head of the Cæsarean party, and it was resolved to treat with him. But the demands of Antony were so extravagant that negotiations were at once broken off, and nothing remained but to try the fortune of arms. The consuls proceeded to levy troops; but so exhausted was the treasury that now for the first time since the triumph of Æmilius Paullus it was found necessary to levy a property tax on the citizens of Rome. Octavius and the consuls assembled their forces at Alba. On the first day of the new year (43) Hirtius marched for Mutina, with Octavius under his command. The other consul, Pansa, remained at Rome to raise new levies; but by the end of March he also marched to form a junction with Hirtius. Both parties pretended to be acting in Cæsar's name. Antony left his brother Lucius in the trenches before Mutina, and took the field against Hirtius and Octavius. For three months the opponents lay watching each other. But when Antony learned that Pansa was coming up, he made a rapid movement southward with two of his veteran legions and attacked him. A sharp conflict followed, in which Pansa's troops were defeated, and the consul himself was carried, mortally wounded, off the field. But Hirtius was on the alert, and assaulted Antony's wearied troops on their way back to their camp, with some advantage. This was on the 15th of April, and on the 27th Hirtius drew Antony from his intrenchments before Mutina. A fierce battle followed, which ended in the troops of Antony being driven back into their lines. Hirtius followed close upon the flying enemy; the camp was carried by storm, and a complete victory would have been won had not Hirtius himself fallen. Upon this disaster Octavius drew off the troops. The news of the first battle had been reported at Rome as a victory, and gave rise to extravagant rejoicings. The second battle was really a victory, but all rejoicing was damped by the news that one consul was dead and the other dying. No such fatal mischance had happened since the Second Punic War, when Marcellus and Crispinus fell in one day. After his defeat Antony felt it impossible to maintain the siege of Mutina. With Dec. Brutus in the town behind him, and the victorious legions of Octavius before him, his position was critical. He therefore prepared to retreat, and effected this purpose like a good soldier. His destination was the province of Narbonnese Gaul, where Lepidus had assumed the government and had promised him support. But the senate also had hopes in the same quarter. L. Munatius Plancus commanded in Northern Gaul, and C. Asinius Pollio in Southern Spain. Sext. Pompeius had made good his ground in the latter country, and had almost expelled Pollio from Bætica. Plancus and Pollio, both friends and favorites of Cæsar, had as yet declared neither for Antony nor Octavius. If they would declare for the senate, Lepidus, a feeble and fickle man, might desert Antony; or if Octavius would join with Dec. Brutus, and pursue him, Antony might not be able to escape from Italy at all. But these political combinations failed. Plancus and Pollio stood aloof, waiting for the course of events. Dec. Brutus was not strong enough to pursue Antony by himself, and Octavius was unwilling, perhaps unable, to unite the veterans of Cæsar with troops commanded by one of Cæsar's murderers. And so it happened that Antony effected his retreat across the Alps, but not without extreme hardships, which he bore in common with the meanest soldier. It was at such times that his good qualities always showed themselves, and his gallant endurance of misery endeared him to every man under his command. On his arrival in Narbonnese Gaul he met Lepidus at Forum Julii (Frejus), and here the two commanders agreed on a plan of operations. The conduct of Octavius gave rise to grave suspicions. It was even said that the consuls had been killed by his agents. Cicero, who had hitherto maintained his cause, was silent. He had delivered his _Fourteenth_ and last _Philippic_ on the news of the first victory gained by Hirtius. But now he talked in private of "removing" the boy of whom he had hoped to make a tool. Octavius, however, had taken his part, and was not to be removed. Secretly he entered into negotiations with Antony. After some vain efforts on the part of the senate to thwart him, he appeared in the Campus Martius with his legions. Cicero and most of the senators disappeared, and the fickle populace greeted the young heir of Cæsar with applause. Though he was not yet twenty he demanded the consulship, having been previously relieved from the provisions of the _Lex Annalis_ by a decree of the senate, and he was elected to the first office in the State, with his cousin, Q. Pedius.[80] [Footnote 80: Pedius was son of Cæsar's second sister, Julia minor, and therefore first cousin (once removed) to Octavius.] A curiate law passed, by which Octavius was adopted into the patrician gens of the Julii, and was put into legal possession of the name which he had already assumed--C. Julius Cæsar Octavianus. We shall henceforth call him Octavian. The change in his policy was soon indicated by a law in which he formally separated himself from the senate. Pedius brought it forward. By its provisions all Cæsar's murderers were summoned to take their trial. Of course none of them appeared and they were condemned by default. By the end of September Octavian was again in Cisalpine Gaul and in close negotiation with Antony and Lepidus. The fruits of his conduct soon appeared. Plancus and Pollio declared against Cæsar's murderers. Dec. Brutus, deserted by his soldiery, attempted to escape into Macedonia through Illyricum; but he was overtaken near Aquileia and slain by order of Antony. Italy and Gaul being now clear of the senatorial party, Lepidus, as mediator, arranged a meeting between Octavian and Antony, upon an island in a small river near Bononia (Bologna). Here the three potentates agreed that they should assume a joint and coordinate authority, under the name of "Triumvirs for settling the affairs of the Commonwealth." Antony was to have the two Gauls, except the Narbonnese district, which, with Spain, was assigned to Lepidus; Octavian received Sicily, Sardinia, and Africa. Italy was for the present to be left to the consuls of the year, and for the ensuing year Lepidus, with Plancus, received promise of this high office. In return, Lepidus gave up his military force, while Octavian and Antony, each at the head of ten legions, prepared to conquer the Eastern part of the empire, which could not yet be divided like the Western provinces, because it was in possession of Brutus and Cassius. But before they began war, the triumvirs agreed to follow the example set by Sylla--to extirpate their opponents by a proscription, and to raise money by confiscation. They framed a list of all men's names whose death could be regarded as advantageous to any of the three, and on this list each in turn pricked a name. Antony had made many personal enemies by his proceedings at Rome, and was at no loss for victims. Octavian had few direct enemies; but the boy-despot discerned with precocious sagacity those who were likely to impede his ambitious projects, and chose his victims with little hesitation. Lepidus would not be left behind in the bloody work. The author of the _Philippics_ was one of Antony's first victims; Octavian gave him up, and took as an equivalent for his late friend the life of L. Cæsar, uncle of Antony. Lepidus surrendered his brother Paullus for some similar favor. So the work went on. Not fewer than three hundred senators and two thousand knights were on the list. Q. Pedius, an honest and upright man, died in his consulship, overcome by vexation and shame at being implicated in these transactions. As soon as their secret business was ended, the triumvirs determined to enter Rome publicly. Hitherto they had not published more than seventeen names of the proscribed. They made their entrance severally on three successive days, each attended by a legion. A law was immediately brought in to invest them formally with the supreme authority, which they had assumed. This was followed by the promulgation of successive lists, each larger than its predecessor. Among the victims, far the most conspicuous was Cicero. With his brother Quintus, the old orator had retired to his Tusculan villa after the battle of Mutina; and now they endeavored to escape in the hope of joining Brutus in Macedonia; for the orator's only son was serving as a tribune in the liberator's army. After many changes of domicile they reached Astura, a little island near Antium, where they found themselves short of money, and Quintus ventured to Rome to procure the necessary supply. Here he was recognized and seized, together with his son. Each desired to die first, and the mournful claim to precedence was settled by the soldiers killing both at the same moment. Meantime Cicero had put to sea. But even in this extremity he could not make up his mind to leave Italy, and put to land at Circeii. After further hesitation he again embarked, and again sought the Italian shore near Formiae. For the night he stayed at his villa near that place, and next morning would not move, exclaiming: "Let me die in my own country--that country which I have so often saved." But his faithful slaves forced him into a litter and carried him again toward the coast. Scarcely were they gone when a band of Antony's bloodhounds reached his villa, and were put upon the track of their victim by a young man who owed everything to the Ciceros. The old orator from his litter saw the pursuers coming up. His own followers were strong enough to have made resistance, but he desired them to set the litter down. Then, raising himself on his elbow, he calmly waited for the ruffians and offered his neck to the sword. He was soon despatched. The chief of the band, by Antony's express orders, hewed off the head and hands and carried them to Rome. Fulvia, the widow of Clodius and now the wife of Antony, drove her hairpin through the tongue which had denounced the iniquities of both her husbands. The head which had given birth to the _Second Philippic_, and the hands which had written it, were nailed to the Rostra, the home of their eloquence. The sight and the associations raised feelings of horror and pity in every heart. Cicero died in his sixty-fourth year. Brutus and Cassius left Italy in the autumn of B.C. 44 and repaired to the provinces which had been allotted to them, though by Antony's influence the senate had transferred Macedonia from Brutus to his own brother Caius, and Syria from Cassius to Dolabella. C. Antonius was already in possession of parts of Macedonia; but Brutus succeeded in dislodging him. Meanwhile Cassius, already well known in Syria for his successful conduct of the Parthian War, had established himself in that province before he heard of the approach of Dolabella. This worthless man left Italy about the same time as Brutus and Cassius, and at the head of several legions marched without opposition through Macedonia into Asia Minor. Here C. Trebonius had already arrived. But he was unable to cope with Dolabella; and the latter surprised him and took him prisoner at Smyrna. He was put to death with unseemly contumely in Dolabella's presence. This was in February, 43; and thus two of Cæsar's murderers, in less than a year's time, felt the blow of retributive justice. When the news of this piece of butchery reached Rome, Cicero, believing that Octavian was a puppet in his hands, was ruling Rome by the eloquence of his _Philippics_. On his motion Dolabella was declared a public enemy.[81] Cassius lost no time in marching his legions into Asia, to execute the behest of the senate, though he had been dispossessed of his province by the senate itself. Dolabella threw himself into Laodicea, where he sought a voluntary death. [Footnote 81: He had divorced Tullia, the orator's daughter, before he left Italy.] By the end of B.C. 43, therefore, the whole of the East was in the hands of Brutus and Cassius. But instead of making preparations for war with Antony, the two commanders spent the early part of the year 42 in plundering the miserable cities of Asia Minor. Brutus demanded men and money of the Lycians; and, when they refused, he laid siege to Xanthus, their principal city. The Xanthians made the same brave resistance which they had offered five hundred years before to the Persian invaders. They burned their city and put themselves to death rather than submit. Brutus wept over their fate and abstained from further exactions. But Cassius showed less moderation; from the Rhodians alone, though they were allies of Rome, he demanded all their precious metals. After this campaign of plunder, the two chiefs met at Sardis and renewed the altercations which Cicero had deplored in Italy. It is probable that war might have broken out between them had not the preparations of the triumvirs waked them from their dream of security. It was as he was passing over into Europe that Brutus, who continued his studious habits amid all disquietudes, and limited his time of sleep to a period too small for the requirements of health, was dispirited by the vision which Shakespeare, after Plutarch, has made famous. It was no doubt the result of a diseased frame, though it was universally held to be a divine visitation. As he sat in his tent in the dead of night, he thought a huge and shadowy form stood by him; and when he calmly asked, "What and whence art thou?" it answered, or seemed to answer: "I am thine evil genius, Brutus: we shall meet again at Philippi." Meantime Antony's lieutenants had crossed the Ionian Sea and penetrated without opposition into Thrace. The republican leaders found them at Philippi. The army of Brutus and Cassius amounted to at least eighty thousand infantry, supported by twenty thousand horse; but they were ill-supplied with experienced officers. For M. Valerius Messalla, a young man of twenty-eight, held the chief command after Brutus and Cassius; and Horace, who was but three-and-twenty, the son of a freedman, and a youth of feeble constitution, was appointed a legionary tribune. The forces opposed to them would have been at once overpowered had not Antony himself opportunely arrived with the second corps of the triumviral army. Octavian was detained by illness at Dyrrhachium, but he ordered himself to be carried on a litter to join his legions. The army of the triumvirs was now superior to the enemy; but their cavalry, counting only thirteen thousand, was considerably weaker than the force opposed to it. The republicans were strongly posted upon two hills, with intrenchments between: the camp of Cassius upon the left next the sea, that of Brutus inland on the right. The triumviral army lay upon the open plain before them, in a position rendered unhealthy by marshes; Antony, on the right, was opposed to Cassius; Octavian, on the left, fronted Brutus. But they were ill-supplied with provisions and anxious for a decisive battle. The republicans, however, kept to their intrenchments, and the other party began to suffer severely from famine. Determined to bring on an action, Antony began works for the purpose of cutting off Cassius from the sea. Cassius had always opposed a general action, but Brutus insisted on putting an end to the suspense, and his colleague yielded. The day of the attack was probably in October. Brutus attacked Octavian's army, while Cassius assaulted the working parties of Antony. Cassius' assault was beaten back with loss, but he succeeded in regaining his camp in safety. Meanwhile, Messalla, who commanded the right wing of Brutus' army, had defeated the host of Octavian, who was still too ill to appear on the field, and the republican soldiers penetrated into the triumvirs' camp. Presently his litter was brought in stained with blood, and the corpse of a young man found near it was supposed to be Octavian's. But Brutus, not receiving any tidings of the movements of Cassius, became so anxious for his fate that he sent off a party of horse to make inquiries, and neglected to support the successful assaults of Messalla. Cassius, on his part, discouraged at his ill-success, was unable to ascertain the progress of Brutus. When he saw the party of horse he hastily concluded that they belonged to the enemy, and retired into his tent with his freedman Pindarus. What passed there we know not for certain. Cassius was found dead, with the head severed from the body. Pindarus was never seen again. It was generally believed that Pindarus slew his master in obedience to orders; but many thought that he had dealt a felon blow. The intelligence of Cassius' death was a heavy blow to Brutus. He forgot his own success, and pronounced the elegy of Cassius in the well-known words, "There lies the last of the Romans." The praise was ill-deserved. Except in his conduct of the war against the Parthians, Cassius had never played a worthy part. After the first battle of Philippi it would have still been politic in Brutus to abstain from battle. The triumviral armies were in great distress, and every day increased their losses. Reinforcements coming to their aid by sea were intercepted--a proof of the neglect of the republican leaders in not sooner bringing their fleet into action. Nor did Brutus ever hear of this success. He was ill-fitted for the life of the camp, and after the death of Cassius he only kept his men together by largesse and promises of plunder. Twenty days after the first battle he led them out again. Both armies faced one another. There was little manoeuvring. The second battle was decided by numbers and force, not by skill; and it was decided in favor of the triumvirs. Brutus retired with four legions to a strong position in the rear, while the rest of his broken army sought refuge in the camp. Octavian remained to watch them, while Antony pursued the republican chief. Next day Brutus endeavored to rouse his men to another effort; but they sullenly refused to fight; and Brutus withdrew with a few friends into a neighboring wood. Here he took them aside one by one, and prayed each to do him the last service that a Roman could render to his friend. All refused with horror; till at nightfall a trusty Greek freedman named Strato held the sword, and his master threw himself upon it. Most of his friends followed the sad example. The body of Brutus was sent by Antony to his mother. His wife Portia, the daughter of Cato, refused all comfort; and being too closely watched to be able to slay herself by ordinary means, she suffocated herself by thrusting burning charcoal into her mouth. Massalla, with a number of other fugitives, sought safety in the island of Thasos, and soon after made submission to Antony. The name of Brutus has, by Plutarch's beautiful narrative, sublimed by Shakespeare, become a byword for self-devoted patriotism. This exalted opinion is now generally confessed to be unjust. Brutus was not a patriot, unless devotion to the party of the senate be patriotism. Toward the provincials he was a true Roman, harsh and oppressive. He was free from the sensuality and profligacy of his age, but for public life he was unfit. His habits were those of a student. His application was great, his memory remarkable. But he possessed little power of turning his acquirements to account; and to the last he was rather a learned man than a man improved by learning. In comparison with Cassius, he was humane and generous; but in all respects his character is contrasted for the worse with that of the great man from whom he accepted favors and then became his murderer. The battle of Philippi was in reality the closing scene of the republican drama. But the rivalship of the triumvirs prolonged for several years the divided state of the Roman world; and it was not till after the crowning victory of Actium that the imperial government was established in its unity. We shall, therefore, here add a rapid narrative of the events which led to that consummation. The hopeless state of the republican or rather the senatorial party was such that almost all hastened to make submission to the conquerors: those whose sturdy spirit still disdained submission resorted to Sext. Pompeius in Sicily. Octavian, still suffering from ill-health, was anxious to return to Italy; but before he parted from Antony, they agreed to a second distribution of the provinces of the empire. Antony was to have the Eastern world; Octavian the Western provinces. To Lepidus, who was not consulted in this second division, Africa alone was left. Sext. Pompeius remained in possession of Sicily. Antony at once proceeded to make a tour through Western Asia, in order to exact money from its unfortunate people. About midsummer (B.C. 41) he arrived at Tarsus, and here he received a visit which determined the future course of his life and influenced Roman history for the next ten years. Antony had visited Alexandria fourteen years before, and had been smitten by the charms of Cleopatra, then a girl of fifteen. She became Cæsar's paramour, and from the time of the dictator's death Antony had never seen her. She now came to meet him in Cilicia. The galley which carried her up the Cydnus was of more than oriental gorgeousness: the sails of purple; oars of silver, moving to the sound of music; the raised poop burnished with gold. There she lay upon a splendid couch, shaded by a spangled canopy; her attire was that of Venus; around her flitted attendant cupids and graces. At the news of her approach to Tarsus, the triumvir found his tribunal deserted by the people. She invited him to her ship, and he complied. From that moment he was her slave. He accompanied her to Alexandria, exchanged the Roman garb for the Graeco-Egyptian costume of the court, and lent his power to the Queen to execute all her caprices. Meanwhile Octavian was not without his difficulties. He was so ill at Brundusium that his death was reported at Rome. The veterans, eager for their promised rewards, were on the eve of mutiny. In a short time Octavian was sufficiently recovered to show himself. But he could find no other means of satisfying the greedy soldiery than by a confiscation of lands more sweeping than that which followed the proscription of Sylla. The towns of Cisalpine Gaul were accused of favoring Dec. Brutus, and saw nearly all their lands handed over to new possessors. The young poet, Vergil, lost his little patrimony, but was reinstated at the instance of Pollio and Maecenas, and showed his gratitude in his _First Eclogue_. Other parts of Italy also suffered: Apulia, for example, as we learn from Horace's friend Ofellus, who became the tenant of the estate which had formerly been his own. But these violent measures deferred rather than obviated the difficulty. The expulsion of so many persons threw thousands loose upon society, ripe for any crime. Many of the veterans were ready to join any new leader who promised them booty. Such a leader was at hand. Fulvia, wife of Antony, was a woman of fierce passions and ambitious spirit. She had not been invited to follow her husband to the East. She saw that in his absence imperial power would fall into the hands of Octavian. Lucius, brother of Mark Antony, was consul for the year, and at her instigation he raised his standard at Præneste. But L. Antonius knew not how to use his strength; and young Agrippa, to whom Octavian intrusted the command, obliged Antonius and Fulvia to retire northward and shut themselves up in Perusia. Their store of provisions was so small that it sufficed only for the soldiery. Early in the next year Perusia surrendered, on condition that the lives of the leaders should be spared. The town was sacked; the conduct of L. Antonius alienated all Italy from his brother. While his wife, his brother, and his friends were quitting Italy in confusion, the arms of Antony suffered a still heavier blow in the Eastern provinces, which were under his special government. After the battle of Philippi, Q. Labienus, son of Cæsar's old lieutenant Titus, sought refuge at the court of Orodes, king of Parthia. Encouraged by the proffered aid of a Roman officer, Pacorus (the King's son) led a formidable army into Syria. Antony's lieutenant was entirely routed; and while Pacorus with one army poured into Palestine and Phoenicia, Q. Labienus with another broke into Cilicia. Here he found no opposition; and, overrunning all Asia Minor even to the Ionian Sea, he assumed the name of Parthicus, as if he had been a Roman conqueror of the people whom he served. These complicated disasters roused Antony from his lethargy. He sailed to Tyre, intending to take the field against the Parthians; but the season was too far advanced, and he therefore crossed the Ægean to Athens, where he found Fulvia and his brother, accompanied by Pollio, Plancus, and others, all discontented with Octavian's government. Octavian was absent in Gaul, and their representation of the state of Italy encouraged him to make another attempt. Late in the year (41) Antony formed a league with Sext. Pompeius; and while that chief blockaded Thurii and Consentia, Antony assailed Brundusium. Agrippa was preparing to meet this new combination; and a fresh civil war was imminent. But the soldiery was weary of war: both armies compelled their leaders to make pacific overtures, and the new year was ushered in by a general peace, which was rendered easier by the death of Fulvia. Antony and Octavian renewed their professions of amity, and entered Rome together in joint ovation to celebrate the restoration of peace. They now made a third division of the provinces, by which Scodra (Scutari) in Illyricum was fixed as the boundary of the West and East; Lepidus was still left in possession of Africa. It was further agreed that Octavian was to drive Sext. Pompeius, lately the ally of Antony, out of Sicily; while Antony renewed his pledges to recover the standards of Crassus from the Parthians. The new compact was sealed by the marriage of Antony with Octavia, his colleague's sister, a virtuous and beautiful lady, worthy of a better consort. These auspicious events were celebrated by the lofty verse of Vergil's _Fourth Eclogue_. Sext. Pompeius had reason to complain. By the peace of Brundusium he was abandoned by his late friend to Octavian. He was not a man to brook ungenerous treatment. Of late years his possession of Sicily had given him command of the Roman corn market. During the winter which followed the peace of Brundusium (B.C. 40-39), Sextus blockaded Italy so closely that Rome was threatened with a positive dearth. Riots arose; the triumvirs were pelted with stones in the Forum, and they deemed it prudent to temporize by inviting Pompey to enter their league. He met them at Misenum, and the two chiefs went on board his ship to settle the terms of alliance. It is said that one of his chief officers, a Greek named Menas or Menodorus, suggested to him the expediency of putting to sea with the great prize, and then making his own terms. Sextus rejected the advice with the characteristic words, "You should have done it without asking me." It was agreed that Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica should be given up to his absolute rule, and that Achaia should be added to his portion; so that the Roman world was now partitioned among four: Octavian, Antony, Lepidus, and Sext. Pompeius. On their return the triumvirs were received with vociferous applause. Before winter, Antony sailed for Athens in company with Octavia, who for the time seems to have banished Cleopatra from his thoughts. But he disgusted all true Romans by assuming the attributes of Grecian gods and indulging in Grecian orgies. He found the state of things in the East greatly changed since his departure. He had commissioned P. Ventidius Bassus, an officer who had followed Fulvia from Italy, to hold the Parthians in check till his return. Ventidius was son of a Picenian nobleman of Asculum, who had been brought to Rome as a captive in the Social War. In his youth he had been a contractor to supply mules for the use of the Roman commissariat. But in the civil wars which followed, men of military talent easily rose to command; and such was the lot of Ventidius. While Antony was absent in Italy, he drove Q. Labienus into the defiles of Taurus, and here that adventurer was defeated and slain. The conqueror then marched rapidly into Syria, and forced Pacorus also to withdraw to the eastern bank of the Euphrates. In the following year (38) he repelled a fresh invasion of the Parthians, and defeated them in three battles. In the last of these engagements Pacorus himself was slain on the fifteenth anniversary of the death of Crassus. Antony found Ventidius laying siege to Samosata, and displaced him, only to abandon the siege and return to Athens. Ventidius repaired to Rome, where he was honored with a well-deserved triumph. He had left it as a mule jobber; he returned with the laurel round his brows. He was the first, and almost the last, Roman general who could claim such a distinction for victory over the Parthians. The alliance with Sext. Pompeius was not intended to last, and it did not last. Antony refused to put him in possession of Achaia, and to avenge himself for this breach of faith Pompeius again began to intercept the Italian corn fleets. Fresh discontent appeared at Rome, and Octavian equipped a second fleet to sail against the naval chief; but after two battles of doubtful result, the fleet was destroyed by a storm, and Sextus was again left in undisputed mastery of the sea. Octavian, however, was never daunted by reverses, and he gave his favorite Agrippa full powers to conduct the war against Pompeius. This able commander set about his work with that resolution that marked a man determined not to fail. As a harbor for his fleet, he executed a plan of the great Cæsar; namely, to make a good and secure harbor on the coast of Latium, which then, as now, offered no shelter to ships. For this purpose he cut a passage through the narrow necks of land which separated Lake Lucrinus from the sea, and Lake Avernus from Lake Lucrinus, and faced the outer barrier with stone. This was the famous Julian Port. In the whole of the two years B.C. 38 and 37 Agrippa was occupied in this work and in preparing a sufficient force of ships. Every dockyard in Italy was called into requisition. A large body of slaves was set free that they might be trained to serve as rowers. On the 1st of July, B.C. 36, the fleet put to sea. Octavian himself, with one division, purposed to attack the northern coast of Sicily, while a second squadron was assembled at Tarentum for the purpose of assailing the eastern side. Lepidus, with a third fleet from Africa, was to assault Lilybaeum. But the winds were again adverse; and, though Lepidus effected a landing on the southern coast, Octavian's two fleets were driven back to Italy with great damage. But the injured ships were refitted, and Agrippa was sent westward toward Panormus, while Octavian himself kept guard near Messana. Off Mylae, a place famous for having witnessed the first naval victory of the Romans, Agrippa encountered the fleet of Sext. Pompeius; but Sextus, with the larger portion of his ships, gave Agrippa the slip, and sailing eastward fell suddenly upon Octavian's squadron off Tauromenium. A desperate conflict followed, which ended in the complete triumph of Sextus, and Octavian escaped to Italy with a few ships only. But Agrippa was soon upon the traces of the enemy. On the 3d of September Sextus was obliged once more to accept battle near the Straits of Messana, and suffered an irretrievable defeat. His troops on land were attacked and dispersed by an army which had been landed on the eastern coast by the indefatigable Octavian; and Sextus sailed off to Lesbos, where he had found refuge as a boy during the campaign of Pharsalia, to seek protection from the jealousy of Antony. Lepidus had assisted in the campaign; but after the departure of Sextus he openly declared himself independent of his brother triumvirs. Octavian, with prompt and prudent boldness, entered the camp of Lepidus in person with a few attendants. The soldiers deserted in crowds, and in a few hours Lepidus was fain to sue for pardon, where he had hoped to rule. He was treated with contemptuous indifference, Africa was taken from him; but he was allowed to live and die at Rome in quiet enjoyment of the chief pontificate. It was fortunate for Octavian that during this campaign Antony was on friendly terms with him. In B.C. 37 the ruler of the East again visited Italy, and a meeting between the two chiefs was arranged at Tarentum. The five years for which the triumvirs were originally appointed were now fast expiring; and it was settled that their authority should be renewed by the subservient senate and people for a second period of the same duration. They parted good friends; and Octavian undertook his campaign against Sext. Pompeius without fear from Antony. This was proved by the fate of the fugitive. From Lesbos Sextus passed over to Asia, where he was taken prisoner by Antony's lieutenants and put to death. Hitherto Octavia had retained her influence over Antony. But presently, after his last interview with her brother, the fickle triumvir abruptly quitted a wife who was too good for him, and returned to the fascinating presence of the Egyptian Queen, whom he had not seen for three years. From this time forth he made no attempt to break the silken chain of her enchantments. During the next summer, indeed, he attempted a new Parthian campaign. But his advance was made with reckless indifference to the safety of his troops. Provisions failed; disease broke out; and after great suffering he was forced to seek safety by a precipitate retreat into the Armenian mountains. In the next year he contented himself with a campaign in Armenia, to punish the King of that country for alleged treachery in the last campaign. The King fell into his hands; and with this trophy Antony returned to Alexandria, where the Romans were disgusted to see the streets of a Graeco-Egyptian town honored by a mimicry of a Roman triumph. For the next three years he surrendered himself absolutely to the will of the enchantress. To this period belong those tales of luxurious indulgence which are known to every reader. The brave soldier, who in the perils of war could shake off all luxurious habits and could rival the commonest man in the cheerfulness with which he underwent every hardship, was seen no more. He sunk into an indolent voluptuary, pleased by childish amusements. At one time he would lounge in a boat at a fishing party, and laugh when he drew up pieces of salt fish which by the Queen's order had been attached to his hook by divers. At another time she wagered that she would consume ten million sesterces at one meal, and won her wager by dissolving in vinegar a pearl of unknown value. While Cleopatra bore the character of the goddess Isis, her lover appeared as Osiris. Her head was placed conjointly with his own on the coins which he issued as a Roman magistrate. He disposed of the kingdoms and principalities of the East by his sole word. By his influence Herod, son of Antipater, the Idumæan minister of Hyrcanus, the late sovereign of Judea, was made king to the exclusion of the rightful heir. Polemo, his own son by Cleopatra, was invested with the sceptre of Armenia. Encouraged by the absolute submission of her lover, Cleopatra fixed her eye upon the Capitol, and dreamed of winning by means of Antony that imperial crown which she had vainly sought from Cæsar. While Antony was engaged in voluptuous dalliance, Octavian was resolutely pursuing the work of consolidating his power in the West. His patience, his industry, his attention to business, his affability, were winning golden opinions and rapidly obliterating all memory of the bloody work by which he had risen to power. He had won little glory in war; but so long as the corn fleets arrived daily from Sicily and Africa, the populace cared little whether the victory had been won by Octavian or by his generals. In Agrippa he possessed a consummate captain, in Maecenas a wise and temperate minister. It is much to his credit that he never showed any jealousy of the men to whom he owed so much. He flattered the people with the hope that he would, when Antony had fulfilled his mission of recovering the standards of Crassus, engage him to join in putting an end to their sovereign power and restoring constitutional liberty. In point of fidelity to his marriage vows Octavian was little better than Antony. He renounced his marriage with Clodia, the daughter of Fulvia, when her mother attempted to raise Italy against him. He divorced Scribonia, when it no longer suited him to court the favor of her kinsman. To replace this second wife, he forcibly took away Livia from her husband, T. Claudius Nero, though she was at that time pregnant of her second son. But in this and other less pardonable immoralities there was nothing to shock the feelings of Romans. But Octavian never suffered pleasure to divert him from business. If he could not be a successful general, he resolved at least to show that he could be a hardy soldier. While Antony in his Egyptian palace was neglecting the Parthian War, his rival led his legions in more than one dangerous campaign against the barbarous Dalmatians and Pannonians, who had been for some time infesting the province of Illyricum. In the year B.C. 33 he announced that the limits of the empire had been extended northward to the banks of the Save. Octavian now began to feel that any appearance of friendship with Antony was a source of weakness rather than of strength at Rome. Misunderstandings had already broken out. Antony complained that Octavian had given him no share in the provinces wrested from Sext. Pompeius and Lepidus. Octavian retorted by accusing his colleague of appropriating Egypt and Armenia, and of increasing Cleopatra's power at the expense of the Roman Empire. Popular indignation rose to its height when Plancus and Titius, who had been admitted to Antony's confidence, passed over to Octavian, and disclosed the contents of their master's will. In that document Antony ordered that his body should be buried at Alexandria, in the mausoleum of Cleopatra. Men began to fancy that Cleopatra had already planted her throne upon the Capitol. These suspicions were sedulously encouraged by Octavian. Before the close of B.C. 32, Octavian, by the authority of the senate, declared war nominally against Cleopatra. Antony, roused from his sleep by reports from Rome, passed over to Athens, issuing orders everywhere to levy men and collect ships for the impending struggle. At Athens he received news of the declaration of war, and replied by divorcing Octavia. His fleet was ordered to assemble at Corcyra; and his legions in the early spring prepared to pour into Epirus. He established his head-quarters at Patræ on the Corinthian Gulf. But Antony, though his fleet was superior to that of Octavian, allowed Agrippa to sweep the Ionian Sea, and to take possession of Methone, in Messenia, as a station for a flying squadron to intercept Antony's communications with the East, nay, even to occupy Corcyra, which had been destined for his own place of rendezvous. Antony's fleet now anchored in the waters of the Ambracian Gulf, while his legions encamped on a spot of land which forms the northern horn of that spacious inlet. But the place chosen for the camp was unhealthy; and in the heats of early summer his army suffered greatly from disease. Agrippa lay close at hand watching his opportunity. In the course of the spring Octavian joined him in person. Early in the season Antony had repaired from Patræ to his army, so as to be ready either to cross over into Italy or to meet the enemy if they attempted to land in Epirus. At first he showed something of his old military spirit, and the soldiers, who always loved his military frankness, warmed into enthusiasm; but his chief officers, won by Octavian or disgusted by the influence of Cleopatra, deserted him in such numbers that he knew not whom to trust, and gave up all thoughts of maintaining the contest with energy. Urged by Cleopatra, he resolved to carry off his fleet and abandon the army. All preparations were made in secret, and the great fleet put to sea on the 28th of August. For the four following days there was a strong gale from the south. Neither could Antony escape nor could Octavian put to sea against him from Corcyra. On the 2d of September, however, the wind fell, and Octavian's light vessels, by using their oars, easily came up with the unwieldy galleys of the eastern fleet. A battle was now inevitable. Antony's ships were like impregnable fortresses to the assault of the slight vessels of Octavian; and, though they lay nearly motionless in the calm sea, little impression was made upon them. But about noon a breeze sprung up from the west; and Cleopatra, followed by sixty Egyptian ships, made sail in a southerly direction. Antony immediately sprang from his ship-of-war into a light galley and followed. Deserted by their commander, the captains of Antony's ships continued to resist desperately; nor was it till the greater part of them were set on fire that the contest was decided. Before evening closed, the whole fleet was destroyed; most of the men and all the treasure on board perished. A few days after, when the shameful flight of Antony was made known to his army, all his legions went over to the conqueror. It was not for eleven months after the battle of Actium that Octavian entered the open gates of Alexandria. He had been employed in the interval in founding the city of Nicopolis to celebrate his victory on the northern horn of the Ambracian Gulf, in rewarding his soldiers, and settling the affairs of the provinces of the East. In the winter he returned to Italy, and it was midsummer, B.C. 30, before he arrived in Egypt. When Antony and Cleopatra arrived off Alexandria they put a bold face upon the matter. Some time passed before the real state of the case was known; but it soon became plain that Egypt was at the mercy of the conqueror. The Queen formed all kinds of wild designs. One was to transport the ships that she had saved across the Isthmus of Suez and seek refuge in some distant land where the name of Rome was yet unknown. Some ships were actually drawn across, but they were destroyed by the Arabs, and the plan was abandoned. She now flattered herself that her powers of fascination, proved so potent over Cæsar and Antony, might subdue Octavian. Secret messages passed between the conqueror and the Queen; nor were Octavian's answers such as to banish hope. Antony, full of repentance and despair, shut himself up in Pharos, and there remained in gloomy isolation. In July, B.C. 30, Octavian appeared before Pelusium. The place was surrendered without a blow. Yet, at the approach of the conqueror, Antony put himself at the head of a division of cavalry and gained some advantage. But on his return to Alexandria he found that Cleopatra had given up all her ships; and no more opposition was offered. On the 1st of August (Sextilis, as it was then called) Octavian entered the open gates of Alexandria. Both Antony and Cleopatra sought to win him. Antony's messengers the conqueror refused to see; but he still used fair words to Cleopatra. The Queen had shut herself up in a sort of mausoleum built to receive her body after death, which was not approachable by any door; and it was given out that she was really dead. All the tenderness of old times revived in Antony's heart. He stabbed himself, and in a dying state ordered himself to be laid by the side of Cleopatra. The Queen, touched by pity, ordered her expiring lover to be drawn up by cords into her retreat, and bathed his temples with her tears. After he had breathed his last, she consented to see Octavian. Her penetration soon told her that she had nothing to hope from him. She saw that his fair words were only intended to prevent her from desperate acts and reserve her for the degradation of his triumph. This impression was confirmed when all instruments by which death could be inflicted were found to have been removed from her apartments. But she was not to be so baffled. She pretended all submission; but when the ministers of Octavian came to carry her away, they found her lying dead upon her couch, attended by her faithful waiting-women, Iras and Charmion. The manner of her death was never ascertained; popular belief ascribed it to the bite of an asp which had been conveyed to her in a basket of fruit. Thus died Antony and Cleopatra. Antony was by nature a genial, open-hearted Roman, a good soldier, quick, resolute, and vigorous, but reckless and self-indulgent, devoid alike of prudence and of principle. The corruptions of the age, the seductions of power, and the evil influence of Cleopatra paralyzed a nature capable of better things. We know him chiefly through the exaggerated assaults of Cicero in his _Philippic_, and the narratives of writers devoted to Octavian. But after all deductions for partial representation, enough remains to show that Antony had all the faults of Cæsar, with little of his redeeming greatness. Cleopatra was an extraordinary person. At her death she was but thirty-eight years of age. Her power rested not so much on actual beauty as on her fascinating manners and her extreme readiness of wit. In her follies there was a certain magnificence which excites even a dull imagination. We may estimate the real power of her mental qualities by observing the impression her character made upon the Roman poets of the time. No meditated praises could have borne such testimony to her greatness as the lofty strain in which Horace celebrates her fall and congratulates the Roman world on its escape from the ruin which she was threatening to the Capitol. Octavian dated the years of his imperial monarchy from the day of the battle of Actium. But it was not till two years after (the summer of B.C. 29) that he established himself in Rome as ruler of the Roman world. Then he celebrated three magnificent triumphs, after the example of his uncle the great dictator, for his victories in Dalmatia, at Actium, and in Egypt. At the same time the temple of Janus was closed--notwithstanding that border wars still continued in Gaul and Spain--for the first time since the year B.C. 235. All men drew breath more freely, and all except the soldiery looked forward to a time of tranquillity. Liberty and independence were forgotten words. After the terrible disorders of the last century, the general cry was for quiet at any price. Octavian was a person admirably fitted to fulfil these aspirations. His uncle Julius was too fond of active exertion to play such a part well. Octavian never shone in war, while his vigilant and patient mind was well fitted for the discharge of business. He avoided shocking popular feeling by assuming any title savoring of royalty; but he enjoyed by universal consent an authority more than regal. GERMANS UNDER ARMINIUS REVOLT AGAINST ROME A.D. 9 SIR EDWARD SHEPHERD CREASY (The German race was beginning to make itself felt to a greater extent than hitherto in its efforts for freedom from the Roman rule. Research shows that from the earliest days there were two distinct peoples under this designation of _German_--the northern or Scandinavian, and the southern, being more truly the German. Both consisted of numerous tribes, the Romans giving separate names to each: from this arose the generic titles of _Franks, Bavarians, Alamanni_, and the rest. They were great fighters and, as a natural sequence, mighty hunters. When warfare did not occupy their attention, hunting, feasting, and drinking took its place. Tacitus writes: "To drink continuously, night and day, was no shame for them." Their chief beverage was barley beer, though, in the South, wine was used to some extent. Rome had garrisons throughout the whole land, and the fortunes of the Germans were at a low ebb. Freedom seemed stifled forever when Arminius led his forces against the Roman hosts in the forest of Teutoburgium. Rightly does Creasy rate this important battle so highly, for it meant the final uplifting of the Teuton, and with him the English-speaking races of a later time.) To a truly illustrious Frenchman, whose reverses as a minister can never obscure his achievements in the world of letters, we are indebted for the most profound and most eloquent estimate that we possess of the importance of the Germanic element in European civilization, and of the extent to which the human race is indebted to those brave warriors who long were the unconquered antagonists, and finally became the conquerors, of imperial Rome. Twenty-three eventful years have passed away since M. Guizot[82] delivered from the chair of modern history, at Paris, his course of lectures on the history of civilization in Europe. During those years the spirit of earnest inquiry into the germs and primary developments of existing institutions has become more and more active and universal, and the merited celebrity of M. Guizot's work has proportionally increased. Its admirable analysis of the complex political and social organizations of which the modern civilized world is made up must have led thousands to trace with keener interest the great crises of times past, by which the characteristics of the present were determined. The narrative of one of these great crises, of the epoch A.D. 9, when Germany took up arms for her independence against Roman invasion, has for us this special attraction--that it forms part of our own national history. Had Arminius been supine or unsuccessful, our Germanic ancestors would have been enslaved or exterminated in their original seats along the Eider and the Elbe. This island would never have borne the name of England, and "we, this great English nation, whose race and language are now overrunning the earth, from one end of it to the other," would have been utterly cut off from existence. [Footnote 82: Guizot was minister of foreign affairs, and later (1848) prime minister, under Louis Philippe.] Arnold may, indeed, go too far in holding that we are wholly unconnected in race with the Romans and Britons who inhabited this country before the coming over of the Saxons; that, "nationally speaking, the history of Cæsar's invasion has no more to do with us than the natural history of the animals which then inhabited our forests." There seems ample evidence to prove that the Romanized Celts whom our Teutonic forefathers found here influenced materially the character of our nation. But the main stream of our people was, and is, Germanic. Our language alone decisively proves this. Arminius is far more truly one of our national heroes than Caractacus; and it was our own primeval fatherland that the brave German rescued when he slaughtered the Roman legions, eighteen centuries ago, in the marshy glens between the Lippe and the Ems. Dark and disheartening, even to heroic spirits, must have seemed the prospects of Germany when Arminius planned the general rising of his countrymen against Rome. Half the land was occupied by Roman garrisons; and, what was worse, many of the Germans seemed patiently acquiescent in their state of bondage. The braver portion, whose patriotism could be relied on, was ill-armed and undisciplined, while the enemy's troops consisted of veterans in the highest state of equipment and training, familiarized with victory and commanded by officers of proved skill and valor. The resources of Rome seemed boundless; her tenacity of purpose was believed to be invincible. There was no hope of foreign sympathy or aid; for "the self-governing powers that had filled the Old World had bent one after another before the rising power of Rome, and had vanished. The earth seemed left void of independent nations." The German chieftain knew well the gigantic power of the oppressor. Arminius was no rude savage, fighting out of mere animal instinct or in ignorance of the might of his adversary. He was familiar with the Roman language and civilization; he had served in the Roman armies; he had been admitted to the Roman citizenship, and raised to the rank of the equestrian order. It was part of the subtle policy of Rome to confer rank and privileges on the youth of the leading families in the nations which she wished to enslave. Among other young German chieftains, Arminius and his brother, who were the heads of the noblest house in the tribe of the Cherusci, had been selected as fit objects for the exercise of this insidious system. Roman refinements and dignities succeeded in denationalizing the brother, who assumed the Roman name of Flavius, and adhered to Rome throughout all her wars against his country. Arminius remained unbought by honors or wealth, uncorrupted by refinement or luxury. He aspired to and obtained from Roman enmity a higher title than ever could have been given him by Roman favor. It is in the page of Rome's greatest historian that his name has come down to us with the proud addition of "_Liberator hand dubie Germaniae_." Often must the young chieftain, while meditating the exploit which has thus immortalized him, have anxiously revolved in his mind the fate of the many great men who had been crushed in the attempt which he was about to renew--the attempt to stay the chariot wheels of triumphant Rome. Could he hope to succeed where Hannibal and Mithradates had perished? What had been the doom of Viriathus? and what warning against vain valor was written on the desolate site where Numantia once had flourished? Nor was a caution wanting in scenes nearer home and more recent times. The Gauls had fruitlessly struggled for eight years against Cæsar; and the gallant Vercingetorix, who in the last year of the war had roused all his countrymen to insurrection, who had cut off Roman detachments, and brought Cæsar himself to the extreme of peril at Alesia--he, too, had finally succumbed, had been led captive in Cæsar's triumph, and had then been butchered in cold blood in a Roman dungeon. It was true that Rome was no longer the great military republic which for so many ages had shattered the kingdoms of the world. Her system of government was changed, and, after a century of revolution and civil war, she had placed herself under the despotism of a single ruler. But the discipline of her troops was yet unimpaired and her warlike spirit seemed unabated. The first year of the empire had been signalized by conquests as valuable as any gained by the republic in a corresponding period. It is a great fallacy--though apparently sanctioned by great authorities--to suppose that the foreign policy pursued by Augustus was pacific; he certainly recommended such a policy to his successors (_incertum metu an per invidiam_: Tac., _Ann_., i. 11), but he himself, until Arminius broke his spirit, had followed a very different course. Besides his Spanish wars, his generals, in a series of generally aggressive campaigns, had extended the Roman frontier from the Alps to the Danube, and had reduced into subjection the large and important countries that now form the territories of all Austria south of that river, and of East Switzerland, Lower Wuertemberg, Bavaria, the Valtelline, and the Tyrol. While the progress of the Roman arms thus pressed the Germans from the south, still more formidable inroads had been made by the imperial legions on the west. Roman armies, moving from the province of Gaul, established a chain of fortresses along the right as well as the left bank of the Rhine, and, in a series of victorious campaigns, advanced their eagles as far as the Elbe, which now seemed added to the list of vassal rivers, to the Nile, the Rhine, the Rhone, the Danube, the Tagus, the Seine, and many more, that acknowledged the supremacy of the Tiber. Roman fleets also, sailing from the harbors of Gaul along the German coasts and up the estuaries, coöperated with the land forces of the empire, and seemed to display, even more decisively than her armies, her overwhelming superiority over the rude Germanic tribes. Throughout the territory thus invaded the Romans had with their usual military skill established fortified posts; and a powerful army of occupation was kept on foot, ready to move instantly on any spot where a popular outbreak might be attempted. Vast, however, and admirably organized as the fabric of Roman power appeared on the frontiers and in the provinces, there was rottenness at the core. In Rome's unceasing hostilities with foreign foes, and still more in her long series of desolating civil wars, the free middle classes of Italy had almost wholly disappeared. Above the position which they had occupied, an oligarchy of wealth had reared itself; beneath that position a degraded mass of poverty and misery was fermenting. Slaves; the chance sweepings of every conquered country; shoals of Africans, Sardinians, Asiatics, Illyrians, and others made up the bulk of the population of the Italian peninsula. The foulest profligacy of manners was general in all ranks. In universal weariness of revolution and civil war, and in consciousness of being too debased for self-government, the nation had submitted itself to the absolute authority of Augustus. Adulation was now the chief function of the senate; and the gifts of genius and accomplishments of art were devoted to the elaboration of eloquently false panegyrics upon the prince and his favorite courtiers. With bitter indignation must the German chieftain have beheld all this and contrasted with it the rough worth of his own countrymen: their bravery, their fidelity to their word, their manly independence of spirit, their love of their national free institutions, and their loathing of every pollution and meanness. Above all, he must have thought of the domestic virtues that hallowed a German home; of the respect there shown to the female character, and of the pure affection by which that respect was repaid. His soul must have burned within him at the contemplation of such a race yielding to these debased Italians. Still, to persuade the Germans to combine, in spite of the frequent feuds among themselves, in one sudden outbreak against Rome; to keep the scheme concealed from the Romans until the hour for action arrived; and then, without possessing a single walled town, without military stores, without training, to teach his insurgent countrymen to defeat veteran armies and storm fortifications, seemed so perilous an enterprise that probably Arminius would have receded from it had not a stronger feeling even than patriotism urged him on. Among the Germans of high rank who had most readily submitted to the invaders and become zealous partisans of Roman authority was a chieftain named Segestes. His daughter, Thusnelda, was preeminent among the noble maidens of Germany. Arminius had sought her hand in marriage; but Segestes, who probably discerned the young chief's disaffection to Rome, forbade his suit, and strove to preclude all communication between him and his daughter. Thusnelda, however, sympathized far more with the heroic spirit of her lover than with the timeserving policy of her father. An elopement baffled the precautions of Segestes, who, disappointed in his hope of preventing the marriage, accused Arminius before the Roman governor of having carried off his daughter and of planning treason against Rome. Thus assailed, and dreading to see his bride torn from him by the officials of the foreign oppressor, Arminius delayed no longer, but bent all his energies to organize and execute a general insurrection of the great mass of his countrymen, who hitherto had submitted in sullen hatred to the Roman dominion. A change of governors had recently taken place, which, while it materially favored the ultimate success of the insurgents, served, by the immediate aggravation of the Roman oppressions which it produced, to make the native population more universally eager to take arms. Tiberius, who was afterward emperor, had recently been recalled from the command in Germany and sent into Pannonia to put down a dangerous revolt which had broken out against the Romans in that province. The German patriots were thus delivered from the stern supervision of one of the most suspicious of mankind, and were also relieved from having to contend against the high military talents of a veteran commander, who thoroughly understood their national character, and also the nature of the country, which he himself had principally subdued. In the room of Tiberius, Augustus sent into Germany Quintilius Varus, who had lately returned from the proconsulate of Syria. Varus was a true representative of the higher classes of the Romans, among whom a general taste for literature, a keen susceptibility to all intellectual gratifications, a minute acquaintance with the principles and practice of their own national jurisprudence, a careful training in the schools of the rhetoricians, and a fondness for either partaking in or watching the intellectual strife of forensic oratory had become generally diffused, without, however, having humanized the old Roman spirit of cruel indifference to human feelings and human sufferings, and without acting as the least checks on unprincipled avarice and ambition or on habitual and gross profligacy. Accustomed to govern the depraved and debased natives of Syria--a country where courage in man and virtue in woman had for centuries been unknown--Varus thought that he might gratify his licentious and rapacious passions with equal impunity among the high-minded sons and pure-spirited daughters of Germany. When the general of an army sets the example of outrages of this description, he is soon faithfully imitated by his officers, and surpassed by his still more brutal soldiery. The Romans now habitually indulged in those violations of the sanctity of the domestic shrine, and those insults upon honor and modesty, by which far less gallant spirits than those of our Teutonic ancestors have often been maddened into insurrection. Arminius found among the other German chiefs many who sympathized with him in his indignation at their country's abasement, and many whom private wrongs had stung yet more deeply. There was little difficulty in collecting bold leaders for an attack on the oppressors, and little fear of the population not rising readily at those leaders' call. But to declare open war against Rome and to encounter Varus' army in a pitched battle would have been merely rushing upon certain destruction. Varus had three legions under him, a force which, after allowing for detachments, cannot be estimated at less than fourteen thousand Roman infantry. He had also eight or nine hundred Roman cavalry, and at least an equal number of horse and foot sent from the allied states, or raised among those provincials who had not received the Roman franchise. It was not merely the number, but the quality of this force that made them formidable; and, however contemptible Varus might be as a general, Arminius well knew how admirably the Roman armies were organized and officered, and how perfectly the legionaries understood every manoeuvre and every duty which the varying emergencies of a stricken field might require. Stratagem was, therefore, indispensable; and it was necessary to blind Varus to their schemes until a favorable opportunity should arrive for striking a decisive blow. For this purpose, the German confederates frequented the head-quarters of Varus, which seem to have been near the centre of the modern country of Westphalia, where the Roman general conducted himself with all the arrogant security of the governor of a perfectly submissive province. There Varus gratified at once his vanity, his rhetorical tastes, and his avarice, by holding courts, to which he summoned the Germans for the settlement of all their disputes, while a bar of Roman advocates attended to argue the cases before the tribunal of Varus, who did not omit the opportunity of exacting court fees and accepting bribes. Varus trusted implicitly to the respect which the Germans pretended to pay to his abilities as a judge, and to the interest which they affected to take in the forensic eloquence of their conquerors. Meanwhile a succession of heavy rains rendered the country more difficult for the operations of regular troops, and Arminius, seeing that the infatuation of Varus was complete, secretly directed the tribes near the Weser and the Ems to take up arms in open revolt against the Romans. This was represented to Varus as an occasion which required his prompt attendance at the spot; but he was kept in studied ignorance of its being part of a concerted national rising; and he still looked on Arminius as his submissive vassal, whose aid he might rely on in facilitating the march of his troops against the rebels and in extinguishing the local disturbance. He therefore set his army in motion, and marched eastward in a line parallel to the course of the Lippe. For some distance his route lay along a level plain; but on arriving at the tract between the curve of the upper part of that stream and the sources of the Ems, the country assumes a very different character; and here, in the territory of the modern little principality of Lippe, it was that Arminius had fixed the scene of his enterprise. A wooded and hilly region intervenes between the heads of the two rivers, and forms the water-shed of their streams. This region still retains the name (Teutobergenwald = _Teutobergiensis saltus_) which it bore in the days of Arminius. The nature of the ground has probably also remained unaltered. The eastern part of it, round Detmold, the modern capital of the principality of Lippe, is described by a modern German scholar, Dr. Plate, as being a "table-land intersected by numerous deep and narrow valleys, which in some places form small plains, surrounded by steep mountains and rocks, and only accessible by narrow defiles. All the valleys are traversed by rapid streams, shallow in the dry season, but subject to sudden swellings in autumn and winter. The vast forests which cover the summits and slopes of the hills consist chiefly of oak; there is little underwood, and both men and horse would move with ease in the forests if the ground were not broken by gulleys or rendered impracticable by fallen trees." This is the district to which Varus is supposed to have marched; and Dr. Plate adds that "the names of several localities on and near that spot seem to indicate that a great battle had once been fought there. We find the names '_das Winnefeld_' (the field of victory), '_die Knochenbahn_' (the bone-lane), '_die Knochenleke_' (the bone-brook), '_der Mordkessel_' (the kettle of slaughter), and others." Contrary to the usual strict principles of Roman discipline, Varus had suffered his army to be accompanied and impeded by an immense train of baggage wagons and by a rabble of camp followers, as if his troops had been merely changing their quarters in a friendly country. When the long array quitted the firm, level ground and began to wind its way among the woods, the marshes, and the ravines, the difficulties of the march, even without the intervention of an armed foe, became fearfully apparent. In many places the soil, sodden with rain, was impracticable for cavalry and even for infantry, until trees had been felled and a rude causeway formed through the morass. The duties of the engineer were familiar to all who served in the Roman armies. But the crowd and confusion of the columns embarrassed the working parties of the soldiery, and in the midst of their toil and disorder the word was suddenly passed through their ranks that the rear-guard was attacked by the barbarians. Varus resolved on pressing forward; but a heavy discharge of missiles from the woods on either flank taught him how serious was the peril, and he saw his best men falling round him without the opportunity of retaliation; for his light-armed auxiliaries, who were principally of Germanic race, now rapidly deserted, and it was impossible to deploy the legionaries on such broken ground for a charge against the enemy. Choosing one of the most open and firm spots which they could force their way to, the Romans halted for the night; and, faithful to their national discipline and tactics, formed their camp amid the harassing attacks of the rapidly thronging foes with the elaborate toil and systematic skill the traces of which are impressed permanently on the soil of so many European countries, attesting the presence in the olden time of the imperial eagles. On the morrow the Romans renewed their march, the veteran officers who served under Varus now probably directing the operations and hoping to find the Germans drawn up to meet them, in which case they relied on their own superior discipline and tactics for such a victory as should reassure the supremacy of Rome. But Arminius was far too sage a commander to lead on his followers, with their unwieldy broadswords and inefficient defensive armor, against the Roman legionaries, fully armed with helmet, cuirass, greaves, and shield, who were skilled to commence the conflict with a murderous volley of heavy javelins hurled upon the foe when a few yards distant, and then, with their short cut-and-thrust swords, to hew their way through all opposition, preserving the utmost steadiness and coolness, and obeying each word of command in the midst of strife and slaughter with the same precision and alertness as if upon parade. Arminius suffered the Romans to march out from their camp, to form first in line for action and then in column for marching, without the show of opposition. For some distance Varus was allowed to move on, only harassed by slight skirmishes, but struggling with difficulty through the broken ground, the toil and distress of his men being aggravated by heavy torrents of rain, which burst upon the devoted legions, as if the angry gods of Germany were pouring out the vials of their wrath upon the invaders. After some little time their van approached a ridge of high wooded ground, which is one of the offshoots of the great Hercynian forest, and is situated between the modern villages of Driburg and Bielefeld. Arminius had caused barricades of hewn trees to be formed here, so as to add to the natural difficulties of the passage. Fatigue and discouragement now began to betray themselves in the Roman ranks. Their line became less steady; baggage wagons were abandoned from the impossibility of forcing them along; and, as this happened, many soldiers left their ranks and crowded round the wagons to secure the most valuable portions of their property; each was busy about his own affairs, and purposely slow in hearing the word of command from his officers. Arminius now gave the signal for a general attack. The fierce shouts of the Germans pealed through the gloom of the forests, and in thronging multitudes they assailed the flanks of the invaders, pouring in clouds of darts on the encumbered legionaries as they struggled up the glens or floundered in the morasses, and watching every opportunity of charging through the intervals of the disjointed column, and so cutting off the communication between its several brigades. Arminius, with a chosen band of personal retainers round him, cheered on his countrymen by voice and example. He and his men aimed their weapons particularly at the horses of the Roman cavalry. The wounded animals, slipping about in the mire and their own blood, threw their riders and plunged among the ranks of the legions, disordering all round them. Varus now ordered the troops to be countermarched, in the hope of reaching the nearest Roman garrison on the Lippe. But retreat now was as impracticable as advance; and the falling back of the Romans only augmented the courage of their assailants and caused fiercer and more frequent charges on the flanks of the disheartened army. The Roman officer who commanded the cavalry, Numonius Vala, rode off with his squadrons in the vain hope of escaping by thus abandoning his comrades. Unable to keep together or force their way across the woods and swamps, the horsemen were overpowered in detail and slaughtered to the last man. The Roman infantry still held together and resisted, but more through the instinct of discipline and bravery than from any hope of success or escape. Varus, after being severely wounded in a charge of the Germans against his part of the column, committed suicide to avoid falling into the hands of those whom he had exasperated by his oppressions. One of the lieutenants-general of the army fell fighting; the other surrendered to the enemy. But mercy to a fallen foe had never been a Roman virtue, and those among her legions who now laid down their arms in hope of quarter, drank deep of the cup of suffering, which Rome had held to the lips of many a brave but unfortunate enemy. The infuriated Germans slaughtered their oppressors with deliberate ferocity, and those prisoners who were not hewn to pieces on the spot were only preserved to perish by a more cruel death in cold blood. The bulk of the Roman army fought steadily and stubbornly, frequently repelling the masses of assailants, but gradually losing the compactness of their array and becoming weaker and weaker beneath the incessant shower of darts and the reiterated assaults of the vigorous and unencumbered Germans. At last, in a series of desperate attacks, the column was pierced through and through, two of the eagles captured, and the Roman host, which on the morning before had marched forth in such pride and might--now broken up into confused fragments--either fell fighting beneath the overpowering numbers of the enemy or perished in the swamps and woods in unavailing efforts at flight. Few, very few, ever saw again the left bank of the Rhine. One body of brave veterans, arraying themselves in a ring on a little mound, beat off every charge of the Germans, and prolonged their honorable resistance to the close of that dreadful day. The traces of a feeble attempt at forming a ditch and mound attested in after-years the spot where the last of the Romans passed their night of suffering and despair. But on the morrow this remnant also, worn out with hunger, wounds, and toil, was charged by the victorious Germans, and either massacred on the spot or offered up in fearful rites on the altars of the deities of the old mythology of the North. A gorge in the mountain ridge, through which runs the modern road between Paderborn and Pyrmont, leads from the spot where the heat of the battle raged to the Extersteine--a cluster of bold and grotesque rocks of sandstone--near which is a small sheet of water, overshadowed by a grove of aged trees. According to local tradition, this was one of the sacred groves of the ancient Germans, and it was here that the Roman captives were slain in sacrifice by the victorious warriors of Arminius. Never was victory more decisive; never was the liberation of an oppressed people more instantaneous and complete. Throughout Germany the Roman garrisons were assailed and cut off; and within a few weeks after Varus had fallen, the German soil was freed from the foot of an invader. At Rome the tidings of the battle were received with an agony of terror, the reports of which we would deem exaggerated did they not come from Roman historians themselves. They not only tell emphatically how great was the awe which the Romans felt of the prowess of the Germans if their various tribes could be brought to unite for a common purpose,[83] but they also reveal how weakened and debased the population of Italy had become. Dion Cassius says: "Then Augustus, when he heard the calamity of Varus, rent his garment, and was in great affliction for the troops he had lost, and for terror respecting the Germans and the Gauls. And his chief alarm was that he expected them to push on against Italy and Rome; and there remained no Roman youth fit for military duty that were worth speaking of, and the allied populations, that were at all serviceable, had been wasted away. Yet he prepared for the emergency as well as his means allowed; and when none of the citizens of military age were willing to enlist, he made them cast lots, and punished, by confiscation of goods and disfranchisement, every fifth man among those under thirty-five and every tenth man of those above that age. At last, when he found that not even thus could he make many come forward, he put some of them to death. So he made a conscription of discharged veterans and of emancipated slaves, and, collecting as large a force as he could, sent it, under Tiberius, with all speed into Germany." [Footnote 83: It is clear that the Romans followed the policy of fomenting dissensions and wars of the Germans among themselves.] Dion mentions also a number of terrific portents that were believed to have occurred at the time, and the narration of which is not immaterial, as it shows the state of the public mind when such things were so believed in and so interpreted. The summits of the Alps were said to have fallen, and three columns of fire to have blazed up from them. In the Campus Martius, the temple of the war-god, from whom the founder of Rome had sprung, was struck by a thunderbolt. The nightly heavens glowed several times as if on fire. Many comets blazed forth together; and fiery meteors, shaped like spears, had shot from the northern quarter of the sky down into the Roman camps. It was said, too, that a statue of Victory, which had stood at a place on the frontier, pointing the way toward Germany, had of its own accord turned round, and now pointed to Italy. These and other prodigies were believed by the multitude to accompany the slaughter of Varus' legions and to manifest the anger of the gods against Rome. Augustus himself was not free from superstition; but on this occasion no supernatural terrors were needed to increase the alarm and grief that he felt, and which made him, even months after the news of the battle had arrived, often beat his head against the wall and exclaim, "Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions." We learn this from his biographer Suetonius; and, indeed, every ancient writer who alludes to the overthrow of Varus attests the importance of the blow against the Roman power, and the bitterness with which it was felt. The Germans did not pursue their victory beyond their own territory; but that victory secured at once and forever the independence of the Teutonic race. Rome sent, indeed, her legions again into Germany, to parade a temporary superiority, but all hopes of permanent conquests were abandoned by Augustus and his successors. The blow which Arminius had struck never was forgotten. Roman fear disguised itself under the specious title of moderation, and the Rhine became the acknowledged boundary of the two nations until the fifth century of our era, when the Germans became the assailants, and carved with their conquering swords the provinces of imperial Rome into the kingdoms of modern Europe. ARMINIUS I have said above that the great Cheruscan is more truly one of our national heroes than Caractacus is. It may be added that an Englishman is entitled to claim a closer degree of relationship with Arminius than can be claimed by any German of modern Germany. The proof of this depends on the proof of four facts: First, that the Cheruscans were Old Saxons, or Saxons of the interior of Germany; secondly, that the Anglo-Saxons, or Saxons of the coast of Germany, were more closely akin than other German tribes were to the Cheruscan Saxons; thirdly, that the Old Saxons were almost exterminated by Charlemagne; fourthly, that the Anglo-Saxons are our immediate ancestors. The last of these may be assumed as an axiom in English history. The proofs of the other three are partly philological and partly historical. It may be, however, here remarked that the present Saxons of Germany are of the _High_ Germanic division of the German race, whereas both the Anglo-Saxon and Old Saxon were of the _Low_ Germanic. Being thus the nearest heirs of the glory of Arminius, we may fairly devote more attention to his career than, in such a work as the present, could be allowed to any individual leader; and it is interesting to trace how far his fame survived during the Middle Ages, both among the Germans of the Continent and among ourselves. It seems probable that the jealousy with which Maroboduus, the king of the Suevi and Marcomanni, regarded Arminius, and which ultimately broke out into open hostilities between those German tribes and the Cherusci, prevented Arminius from leading the confederate Germans to attack Italy after his first victory. Perhaps he may have had the rare moderation of being content with the liberation of his country, without seeking to retaliate on her former oppressors. When Tiberius marched into Germany in the year 10, Arminius was too cautious to attack him on ground favorable to the legions, and Tiberius was too skilful to entangle his troops in the difficult parts of the country. His march and countermarch were as unresisted as they were unproductive. A few years later, when a dangerous revolt of the Roman legions near the frontier caused their generals to find them active employment by leading them into the interior of Germany, we find Arminius again active in his country's defence. The old quarrel between him and his father-in-law, Segestes, had broken out afresh. Segestes now called in the aid of the Roman general, Germanicus, to whom he surrendered himself; and by his contrivance, his daughter, Thusnelda, the wife of Arminius, also came into the hands of the Romans, she being far advanced in pregnancy. She showed, as Tacitus relates, more of the spirit of her husband than of her father, a spirit that could not be subdued into tears or supplications. She was sent to Ravenna, and there gave birth to a son, whose life we know, from an allusion in Tacitus, to have been eventful and unhappy; but the part of the great historian's work which narrated his fate has perished, and we only know from another quarter that the son of Arminius was, at the age of four years, led captive in a triumphal pageant along the streets of Rome. The high spirit of Arminius was goaded almost into frenzy by these bereavements. The fate of his wife, thus torn from him, and of his babe doomed to bondage even before its birth, inflamed the eloquent invectives with which he roused his countrymen against the home-traitors, and against their invaders, who thus made war upon women and children. Germanicus had marched his army to the place where Varus had perished, and had there paid funeral honors to the ghastly relics of his predecessor's legions that he found heaped around him.[84] Arminius lured him to advance a little farther into the country, and then assailed him, and fought a battle, which, by the Roman accounts, was a drawn one. [Footnote 84: In the Museum of Rhenish Antiquities at Bonn there is a Roman sepulchral monument the inscription on which records that it was erected to the memory of M. Coelius, who fell "_Bella Variano_."] The effect of it was to make Germanicus resolve on retreating to the Rhine. He himself, with part of his troops, embarked in some vessels on the Ems, and returned by that river, and then by sea; but part of his forces were intrusted to a Roman general named Caecina, to lead them back by land to the Rhine. Arminius followed this division on its march, and fought several battles with it, in which he inflicted heavy loss on the Romans, captured the greater part of their baggage, and would have destroyed them completely had not his skilful system of operations been finally thwarted by the haste of Inguiomerus, a confederate German chief, who insisted on assaulting the Romans in their camp, instead of waiting till they were entangled in the difficulties of the country, and assailing their columns on the march. In the following year the Romans were inactive, but in the year afterward Germanicus led a fresh invasion. He placed his army on shipboard and sailed to the mouth of the Ems, where he disembarked and marched to the Weser, there encamping, probably in the neighborhood of Minden. Arminius had collected his army on the other side of the river; and a scene occurred, which is powerfully told by Tacitus, and which is the subject of a beautiful poem by Praed. It has been already mentioned that the brother of Arminius, like himself, had been trained up while young to serve in the Roman armies; but, unlike Arminius, he not only refused to quit the Roman service for that of his country, but fought against his country with the legions of Germanicus. He had assumed the Roman name of Flavius, and had gained considerable distinction in the Roman service, in which he had lost an eye from a wound in battle. When the Roman outposts approached the river Weser, Arminius called out to them from the opposite bank and expressed a wish to see his brother. Flavius stepped forward, and Arminius ordered his own followers to retire, and requested that the archers should be removed from the Roman bank of the river. This was done; and the brothers, who apparently had not seen each other for some years, began a conversation from the opposite sides of the stream, in which Arminius questioned his brother respecting the loss of his eye, and what battle it had been lost in, and what reward he had received for his wound. Flavius told him how the eye was lost, and mentioned the increased pay that he had on account of its loss, and showed the collar and other military decorations that had been given him. Arminius mocked at these as badges of slavery; and then each began to try to win the other over--Flavius boasting the power of Rome and her generosity to the submissive; Arminius appealing to him in the name of their country's gods, of the mother that had borne them, and by the holy names of fatherland and freedom, not to prefer being the betrayer to being the champion of his country. They soon proceeded to mutual taunts and menaces, and Flavius called aloud for his horse and his arms, that he might dash across the river and attack his brother; nor would he have been checked from doing so had not the Roman general Stertinius run up to him and forcibly detained him. Arminius stood on the other bank, threatening the renegade, and defying him to battle. I shall not be thought to need apology for quoting here the stanzas in which Praed has described this scene--a scene among the most affecting, as well as the most striking, that history supplies. It makes us reflect on the desolate position of Arminius, with his wife and child captives in the enemy's hands, and with his brother a renegade in arms against him. The great liberator of our German race was there, with every source of human happiness denied him except the consciousness of doing his duty to his country. "Back, back! he fears not foaming flood Who fears not steel-clad line: No warrior thou of German blood, No brother thou of mine. Go, earn Rome's chain to load thy neck, Her gems to deck thy hilt; And blazon honor's hapless wreck With all the gauds of guilt. "But wouldst thou have _me_ share the prey? By all that I have done, The Varian bones that day by day Lie whitening in the sun, The legion's trampled panoply, The eagle's shatter'd wing-- I would not be for earth or sky So scorn'd and mean a thing. "Ho, call me here the wizard, boy, Of dark and subtle skill, To agonize but not destroy, To torture, not to kill. When swords are out and shriek and shout Leave little room for prayer, No fetter on man's arm or heart Hangs half so heavy there. "I curse him by the gifts the land Hath won from him and Rome, The riving axe, the wasting brand, Rent forest, blazing home. I curse him by our country's gods, The terrible, the dark, The breakers of the Roman rods, The smiters of the bark. "Oh, misery that such a ban On such a brow should be! Why comes he not in battle's van His country's chief to be? To stand a comrade by my side, The sharer of my fame, And worthy of a brother's pride And of a brother's name? "But it is past! where heroes press And cowards bend the knee, Arminius is not brotherless, His brethren are the free. They come around: one hour, and light Will fade from turf and tide, Then onward, onward to the fight, With darkness for our guide. "To-night, to-night, when we shall meet In combat face to face, Then only would Arminius greet The renegade's embrace. The canker of Rome's guilt shall be Upon his dying name; And as he lived in slavery, So shall he fall in shame." On the day after the Romans had reached the Weser, Germanicus led his army across that river, and a partial encounter took place, in which Arminius was successful. But on the succeeding day a general action was fought, in which Arminius was severely wounded and the German infantry routed with heavy loss. The horsemen of the two armies encountered without either party gaining the advantage. But the Roman army remained master of the ground and claimed a complete victory. Germanicus erected a trophy in the field, with a vaunting inscription that the nations between the Rhine and the Elbe had been thoroughly conquered by his army. But that army speedily made a final retreat to the left bank of the Rhine; nor was the effect of their campaign more durable than their trophy. The sarcasm with which Tacitus speaks of certain other triumphs of Roman generals over Germans may apply to the pageant which Germanicus celebrated on his return to Rome from his command of the Roman army of the Rhine. The Germans were "_triumphati potius quam victi_." After the Romans had abandoned their attempts on Germany, we find Arminius engaged in hostilities with Maroboduus, king of the Suevi and Marcomanni, who was endeavoring to bring the other German tribes into a state of dependency on him. Arminius was at the head of the Germans who took up arms against this home invader of their liberties. After some minor engagements a pitched battle was fought between the two confederacies (A.D. 19) in which the loss on each side was equal, but Maroboduus confessed the ascendency of his antagonist by avoiding a renewal of the engagement and by imploring the intervention of the Romans in his defence. The younger Drusus then commanded the Roman legions in the province of Illyricum, and by his mediation a peace was concluded between Arminius and Maroboduus, by the terms of which it is evident that the latter must have renounced his ambitious schemes against the freedom of the other German tribes. Arminius did not long survive this second war of independence, which he successfully waged for his country. He was assassinated in the thirty-seventh year of his age by some of his own kinsmen, who conspired against him. Tacitus says that this happened while he was engaged in a civil war, which had been caused by his attempts to make himself king over his countrymen. It is far more probable, as one of the best biographers[85] has observed, that Tacitus misunderstood an attempt of Arminius to extend his influence as elective war chieftain of the Cherusci and other tribes, for an attempt to obtain the royal dignity. [Footnote 85: Dr. Plate, in _Biographical Dictionary_.] When we remember that his father-in-law and his brother were renegades, we can well understand that a party among his kinsmen may have been bitterly hostile to him, and have opposed his authority with the tribe by open violence, and, when that seemed ineffectual, by secret assassination. Arminius left a name which the historians of the nation against which he combated so long and so gloriously have delighted to honor. It is from the most indisputable source, from the lips of enemies, that we know his exploits.[86] His countrymen made history, but did not write it. But his memory lived among them in the days of their bards, who recorded "The deeds he did, the fields he won, The freedom he restored." Tacitus, writing years after the death of Arminius, says of him, "_Canitur adhuc barbaras apud gentes_." As time passed on, the gratitude of ancient Germany to her great deliverer grew into adoration, and divine honors were paid for centuries to Arminius by every tribe of the Low Germanic division of the Teutonic races. The _Irmin-sul_, or the column of Herman, near Eresburgh (the modern Stadtberg), was the chosen object of worship to the descendants of the Cherusci (the Old Saxons), and in defence of which they fought most desperately against Charlemagne and his Christianized Franks. "Irmin, in the cloudy Olympus of Teutonic belief, appears as a king and a warrior; and the pillar, the 'Irmin-sul,' bearing the statue, and considered as the symbol of the deity, was the Palladium of the Saxon nation until the temple of Eresburgh was destroyed by Charlemagne, and the column itself transferred to the monastery of Corbey, where perhaps a portion of the rude rock idol yet remains, covered by the ornaments of the Gothic era."[87] Traces of the worship of Arminius are to be found among our Anglo-Saxon ancestors after their settlement in this island. One of the four great highways was held to be under the protection of the deity, and was called the "Irmin street." The name _Arminius_ is, of course, the mere Latinized form of _Herman_, the name by which the hero and the deity were known by every man of Low German blood on either side of the German Sea. It means, etymologically, the _War-man_, the _man of hosts_. No other explanation of the worship of the Irmin-sul, and of the name of the Irmin street, is so satisfactory as that which connects them with the deified Arminius. We know for certain of the existence of other columns of an analogous character. Thus there was the _Roland-seule_ in North Germany; there was a _Thor-seule_ in Sweden, and (what is more important) there was an _Athelstan-seule_ in Saxon England.[88] [Footnote 86: Tacitus: _Annales_.] [Footnote 87: Palgrave: _English Commonwealth_.] [Footnote 88: Lappenburg: _Anglo-Saxons_.] CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY EMBRACING THE PERIOD COVERED IN THIS VOLUME B.C. 450-A.D. 12 JOHN RUDD, LL.D. Events treated at length are here indicated in large type; the numerals following give volume and page. Separate chronologies of the various nations, and of the careers of famous persons, will be found in the INDEX VOLUME, with volume and page references showing where the several events are fully treated. "Est" means date uncertain. B.C. 450. The decemvirate instituted at Rome; the Twelve Tables of law framed. See "INSTITUTION AND FALL OF THE DECEMVIRATE IN ROME," ii, 1. Alcibiades born.[Est] 448. First Sacred War between the Phocians and Delphians for the possession of the temple at Delphi. The decemvirate abolished at Rome. See "INSTITUTION AND FALL OF THE DECEMVIRATE IN ROME," ii, 1. Athens is now the principal seat of Greek philosophy, literature, and art. 447. The Boeotians defeat the Athenians at Coronea; the conflict was brought about by Athens breaking the truce arranged between the Greek states to endure for five years, in order to combine against Persia. The result was the loss to Athens of Boeotia, Phocis, and Locris. 445.[Est] Nehemiah begins the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem. Peace of Callias between the Greeks and Persians. Birth of Xenophon, general and historian. 444. Ascendency of Pericles at Athens.[Est] See "PERICLES RULES IN ATHENS," ii, 12. The military tribunes instituted at Rome. The consulship was in no sense abolished; until the passage of the Licinian Rogations (when it reappeared as a permanent annual magistracy) it alternated irregularly with the military tribunes. See "INSTITUTION AND FALL OF THE DECEMVIRATE IN ROME," ii, 1. Thucydides exiled Athens. 443. An Athenian colony planted at Thurium, near Sybarius; it is accompanied by Herodotus and Lysias. 442. Pericles, guided by Phidias the sculptor, adorns Athens; the Parthenon, Propylæa, and Odeum built. 440. Samos resists the Athenian sway; is besieged by Pericles and Sophocles; Melissus defends the city, but surrenders after a siege of nine months. Comedies prohibited performance at Athens. 439. Great famine in Rome; Sp. Mælius distributes corn to the citizens, for which he is accused of wishing to be king, and is assassinated by Servilius Ahala. 438. Spartacus becomes king of Bosporus. Ahala impeached and exiled Rome. 437. The prohibition of comedy repealed at Athens. Syracuse, the predominant state in Sicily, reaches the height of its prosperity. See "DEFEAT OF THE ATHENIANS AT SYRACUSE," ii, 48. 436. Commencement of the dispute between Corinth and Corcyra regarding the city of Epidamnus, in which Athens supported the latter; this led to the Peloponnesian War. 435. Naval victory over the Corinthians by the Corcyræans, near Actium. 432. Ambassadors from Corcyra implore the aid of Athens, which series a fleet to defend the island against the Corinthian attack. Corinth incites Potidæa to revolt from Athens. 431. Beginning of the Peloponnesian War. Sparta declares on the side of Corinth and makes war on Athens. The real cause of the war--which was to be so disastrous to Greece--was that Sparta and its allies were jealous of the great power Athens had attained. Sparta was an oligarchy and a friend of the nobles everywhere; Athens was a democracy and the friend of the common people; so that the war was to some extent a struggle between these classes all over Greece. 430. "GREAT PLAGUE AT ATHENS." See ii, 34. The physician Hippocrates distinguishes himself by extraordinary cures of the sick. Second invasion of Attica by the Spartans. 429. Death of Pericles, during the plague, at Athens. Potidæa reduced by the Athenians. Birth of Plato. 428. Attica invaded the third time. Lesbos revolts from the Athenian confederacy; on this the Athenians besiege Mitylene. 427. Mitylene reduced; Athens becomes master of Lesbos. Platæa, the ally of Athens, after being besieged, surrenders to the Peloponnesians and is destroyed. Attica again invaded. 425. Agis begins the fifth invasion of Attica; he retires on learning that the Athenians under Cleon had taken Pylos and Sapachteria. Mount Æetna in eruption. On the death of Artaxerxes I, his son, Xerxes II, succeeds him as ruler of Persia; he reigns only forty-five days, being slain by his brother Sogdianus, who usurps the throne. 424. The island of Cythera taken by the Athenians. Brasidas, the Spartan general, captures Amphipolis, defeating Thucydides. Ochus (Darius Nothus) rids himself of Sogdianus and succeeds him on the Persian throne. 423. The Athenians banish Thucydides for having suffered Amphipolis to be taken. 422. The Athenians send Cleon to recover Amphipolis; he is defeated by Brasidas; both fall in the battle. 421. Peace of Nicias between Sparta and Athens. End of the first period of the Peloponnesian War. 420. Alcibiades negotiates an alliance between Athens and Argos. Amphipolis retained by the Spartans. 419. An Athenian expedition is led into the Peloponnesus by Alcibiades. 418. Victory of the Spartans at Mantinea. The league between Athens and Argos dissolved. 416. The island of Melos, which had remained neutral, is conquered by the Athenians; its inhabitants are treated with extreme cruelty. 415. The Athenians send an expedition against Syracuse under Nicias, Lamachus, and Alcibiades; the latter is recalled to answer an accusation of having broken some statues of Mercury in Athens; he takes refuge in Sparta. Andocides, the orator, implicated in the same charge, is imprisoned and exiled. 414. Syracuse is invested by the Athenians under Nicias; being hard pressed, Syracuse appeals to the other Greek states; Cylippus, the Spartan commander, comes with a fleet to the aid of the city. See "DEFEAT OF THE ATHENIANS AT SYRACUSE," ii, 48. The Romans capture Bolae, an Æquian town; the division of the booty causes a mutiny among the soldiers, who slay the quaestor and the military tribune, M. Postumius. 413. On Alcibiades' advice the Spartans fortify a position at Decelea, in Attica. "DEFEAT OF THE ATHENIANS AT SYRACUSE." See ii, 48. 412. Alcibiades visits the Persian satrap Tissaphernes, with whose aid he negotiates an alliance between Persia and Sparta. 411. Owing to the machinations of Alcibiades a revolt is organized in Athens, by the aid of the clubs of the nobles and rich men; its object being to overthrow the democracy and establish an oligarchy. The rising is successful and the "Reign of the Four Hundred" ensues; it lasts four months; its framer, Antipho, is put to death. Alcibiades is recalled. 410. The Spartans are defeated by Alcibiades in a naval encounter at Cyzicus. Sparta makes overtures for peace. 409. The Carthaginians invade Sicily; they reduce Silenus and Himera. 408. Alcibiades takes Selymbria and Byzantium. Psammeticus is king of Egypt. Roman plebs first admitted to the quaestorship. 407. Lysander, the Spartan admiral, defeats the Athenian fleet at Notium; in consequence of this defeat, Alcibiades, who had been received with great honor, is banished, and ten generals are nominated to succeed him. 406. The Athenians vanquish the Spartan fleet under Callicratidas, at Arginusae. The Athenian generals are executed at Athens for not saving the shattered vessels and the bodies of the slain. Dionysius the Elder becomes ruler of Syracuse. Anxur and other towns captured by the Romans, who now first give their soldiers a regular pay. 405. The Spartan under Lysander, who had been restored to command, annihilate the Athenian navy at Aegospotami. Artaxerxes II succeeds Darius II on the Persian throne. Successful revolt of the Egyptians against the Persians; the independence of Egypt secured. 404. Athens taken by Lysander and dismantled; thirty tyrants appointed by him. Lysias and other orators banished. End of the Peloponnesian War. 403. Democracy is restored in Athens by Thrasybulus; he publishes an act of amnesty. The Ionian alphabet adopted at Athens. 401. Cyrus rebels against his brother Artaxerxes, of Persia; he is defeated and slain at the battle of Cunaxa. 400. The Ten Thousand Greek auxiliaries of Cyrus effect their retreat to the sea. See "RETREAT OF THE TEN THOUSAND GREEKS," ii, 68. 399. Sparta and Persia engage in war. "CONDEMNATION AND DEATH OF SOCRATES." See ii, 87. 396. Agesilaus, the Spartan general, begins his victorious campaigns against the Persians. The Romans, headed by Camillus, capture Veii, after a ten years' siege. 395. Corinth, Thebes, Argos, and Athens combine against Sparta; the Spartans are defeated at Haliartus; Lysander is slain. Tissaphernes' Persian army is defeated by Agesilaus, near Sardis. 394. The Athenian admiral Conon, in charge of the Persian fleet, crushingly defeats that of the Spartans, under Pisander, off Cnidus. Agesilaus is recalled from Asia; commanding the Spartans, he gains a victory over the confederate Greeks at Coronea. 393. Conon undertakes the rebuilding of the walls in Athens and restores the fortifications. 392. Conon excites the jealousy of the Persians; he retires into Cyprus, where he dies. 391. Camillus banished from Rome, charged with misappropriating the booty secured at Veii, but really on account of his patrician haughtiness; he dies at Ardea, whither he had withdrawn. 389. Aeschines born; he was accounted in Athens second only to Demosthenes as an orator. 388[89] (387). Brennus, commanding the Gauls, burns Rome. See "BRENNUS BURNS ROME," ii, 110. [Footnote 89: By the old chronological reckoning this event occurred B.C. 390.] 387. Through the mediation of Persia, Sparta compels the Greek states to accept the peace of Antalcidas, which leaves the Ionian cities and Cyprus at his mercy; this enables Sparta to maintain her supremacy in Greece. 385.[Est] Birth of Demosthenes, the famous Greek orator and general. 384. Aristotle born. 383. War of Syracuse with Carthage. Thebes is betrayed to Sparta, during her war against Olynthus. 379. The Olynthians are forced to submission by the Spartans. Pelopidas and his associates drive the Spartans from Thebes. 378. Athens declares in favor of Thebes against Sparta. 376. Cleombrotus leads the Spartans into Boeotia; the Spartan fleet, under Pollis, is overwhelmed off Maxos, by Chabrias. 371. Congress of Sparta, Thebes being excluded from the treaty of peace; Pelopidas and Epaminondas gain the great victory of Leuctra, in which Cleombrotus, King of Sparta, is slain. Thebes becomes the dominant power in Greece. The Arcadian union formed. One of the first effects of the battle of Leuctra was to emancipate the Arcadians, and a plan was formed to raise them in the political affairs of Greece. 370. Epaminondas, the Theban general, heads his first expedition into the Peloponnesus; he threatens Sparta, which Agesilaus saves. 369. The Thebans advance into Laconia; they restore the independence of the Messenians. Epaminondas and Pelopidas are condemned for having retained their command beyond the term allowed by the laws of Thebes; they are pardoned and reappointed. The Arcadians found Megalopolis, which they make the capital of the Arcadian confederacy. 368. The Thebans again enter the Peloponnesus, but retreat before the arrival of succor sent by Dionysius to the Lacedaemonians. Pelopidas, treacherously made prisoner by Alexander of Pherae, is rescued by Epaminondas. A congress, under the mediation of Persia, is held at Delphi; it fails, because the Thebans will not abandon the Messenians. The Carthaginians at war with Dionysius; but, after losing Selinus and other towns, they make peace. Camillus, more than eighty years old, appointed dictator at Rome; he persuades the patricians to assent to the demands of the plebs, and builds the temple of Concord. A celestial globe brought into Greece from Egypt. 367. The Licinian Rogations, Rome; three bills introduced by Licinius, decreeing: 1. That interest on loans be deducted from the principal; 2. Limiting the public land held by any individual to 500 jugera (320 acres); 3. Ordering that one of the two consuls should be a plebeian. Institution of the praetorship. 364. Pelopidas attacks Alexander of Pherae; during the battle of Cymoscephale his soldiers are alarmed at an eclipse of the sun, and he is slain. 362. The Spartans and allies defeated at Mantinea by Epaminondas; he is slain. 361 (359). Artaxerxes II of Persia succeeded by Artaxerxes III (Ochus). 359. Philip ascends the throne of Macedon; he concludes peace with the Athenians. 358.[Est] Athens involves herself in the Social War with Cos, Rhodes, Chios, and Byzantium. Amphipolis captured by Philip of Macedon; he loses his right eye by an arrow from Astor. 357. Outbreak of the Ten Years' Sacred War, caused by the Crissians levying grievous taxes on those who went to consult the oracle of Delphi. 356. Burning of the temple of Diana at Ephesus; this building was accounted one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Birth of Alexander the Great. Dion frees Syracuse from Dionysius the Younger; he is expelled from Sicily. 355. The Social War ends in Greece. Athens recognizes the independence of the confederated states. 353. Final conquest of Egypt by the Persians. 352. Philip of Macedon interferes in the Greek Sacred War; Demosthenes delivers his First Philippic encouraging the Greeks to resist the Macedonians; Philip's attempt to seize Thermopylae is defeated. Two thousand colonists are sent from Athens to Samos. 347. Philip of Macedon captures and destroys Olynthus. 346. Phocis occupied by Philip of Macedon; this ends the Sacred War. Dionysius the Younger again assumes power in Syracuse. 343 (340). Timoleon effects the deliverance of Syracuse from Dionysius the Younger. Rome engages in the First Samnite War. 341 (338). End of the First Samnite War. Invasion of China by Meha the Hun. See "TARTAR INVASION OF CHINA BY MEHA," ii, 126.[Est] 340. Adoption of the Publilian laws in Rome, which further restricted the power of the patricians. The Romans make war upon the Latins; the latter are subjugated. Manlius, one of the Roman consuls, condemns his son to death for a breach of discipline. 338. Athens and Thebes form an alliance to resist Philip of Macedon, who had passed Thermopylae and seized Elatea. The allied forces are overwhelmed at Chaeronea, and Philip establishes the Macedonian dominion in Greece. Artaxerxes III is succeeded by Arses in Persia. 337. Philip of Macedon declares himself commander of the Greeks against the Persians; he repudiates his wife Olympias; their son Alexander attends his mother into Epirus. 336. Assassination of Philip of Macedon, by Pausanias at Aegae, while preparing to invade Persia; he is succeeded by his son, Alexander the Great. Arses is succeeded by Darius III (Codomannus) in Persia. 335. Thebes, revolting against the Macedonian authority, is subdued and destroyed by Alexander, who, however, spares the house of Pindar the poet. Rome concludes a peace with Gaul. 334. Alexander enters upon the conquest of Persia; he is victorious over Darius at the Granicus. 333. Lycia and Syria reduced by Alexander; Damascus captured by Parmenio, Alexander's general, and the siege of Tyre begun. Darius is defeated at Issus; his family are among Alexander's captives. 332. "ALEXANDER REDUCES TYRE: LATER FOUNDS ALEXANDRIA." See ii, 133. He takes Gaza and occupies Egypt. The Lucanians and Bruttians defeat and slay Alexander of Epirus, his ambitious designs in Italy having been betrayed. 331. "THE BATTLE OF ARBELA," in which Alexander the Great conquers Darius and overthrows the Persian empire. See ii, 141. 330. The Spartans, under Agis III, revolt against the Macedonians; Antipater defeats the Spartans and their allies at Megalopolis; Agis is slain. Darius is seized and laden with chains by Bessus, a Bactrian satrap who soon after slays him. Alexander captures Bessus and delivers him to Oxathres, the brother of Darius, by whom he is executed. Alexander pursues his conquests in Parthia, Media, Bactria, and on the shores of the Caspian. 329. The Oxus and Jaxartes are crossed by Alexander; he drives back the Scythians; he founds new cities in the countries adjacent, and winters in Bactria. The consuls at Rome are granted a triumph and the surname of "Privernas," for the conquest of Privernum. 328. Sogdiana, Central Asia, occupies Alexander during this, his seventh campaign, and he winters there at Nautaca. 327. Marriage of Alexander to Roxana, daughter of Oxyartes, a Bactrian ruler. 326. Alexander invades India and defeats Porus; his soldiers refuse to proceed farther. Rome begins the Second Samnite War. 325-4. Alexander marches from the Indus to Persepolis; his fleet is sailed to the Euphrates by Nearchus. Harpalus flees from Babylon with immense treasures, which he conveys to Athens. 323. Death of Alexander the Great at Babylon. His principal generals endeavored to obtain, each for himself, a portion of his empire. Ptolemy first secures Egypt and establishes his dynasty firmly there. Philip Aridaeus, half-brother of Alexander, succeeds him on the throne of Macedon, with Perdiccas as regent. Demosthenes returns to Athens and rouses the Greek states to recover their freedom; under Leosthenes they overpower Antipater, who takes refuge in Lamia, whence this is called the Lamian War. The Samnites sue for peace, but reject the terms on which it is offered by the Romans. 322. The body of Alexander is entombed at Alexandria. The confederate Greeks are defeated by Antipater at Crannon; end of the Lamian War. Demosthenes, who was accused by the Macedonians of being privy to the looting of the treasury by Harpalus, after the battle of Crannon fled to Calauria; he was captured by the Macedonian troops and thereupon poisoned himself. 321. Beginning of the wars between Alexander's successors; Perdiccas and Eumenes oppose themselves to Antipater, Craterus, Antigonus, and Ptolemy. Perdiccas assails Ptolemy in Egypt; Perdiccas is slain in a mutiny. In Asia Minor, Eumenes triumphs over Craterus, who is killed. Victory of the Samnites over the Romans at the Caudine Forks. These were two narrow gorges, united by a range of mountains on each side. The Romans went through the first pass, but found the second blocked up; on returning they found the first similarly obstructed. Being thus hemmed in they passed under the yoke. 320. Eumenes, defeated by Antigonus, shuts himself up in the castle of Nora, where he sustains a year's siege. 319. Polysperchon is appointed by Antipater to succeed him as regent for Philip Arrhidaeus and Alexander Aegus, half-brother and son of Alexander the Great, on his, Antipater's, death. Polysperchon's elevation to power is followed by a league against him, formed by Antipater's son Cassander, Antigonus, and Ptolemy. Eumenes lends his support to Polysperchon, after escaping from Nora. 318. The Romans and Samnites make a truce. Polysperchon prevailed over by Cassander in the struggle for power in Greece and Macedonia. Athens he places under the rule of Phalereus. 317. Phocion, an Athenian general who wisely advised in vain for peace with Antipater, became regarded as a traitor; he fled to Phocis, entered into the intrigues of Cassander, who delivered him up to the Athenians, who condemned him to drink hemlock. Olympias, mother of Alexander the Great, aided by Polysperchon and the Epirotes, seizes Macedonia. Olympias is put to death by Cassander. Eumenes, being betrayed to Antigonus, is put to death; Antigonus holds the supreme power in Asia. 315. The rebuilding of Thebes undertaken by Cassander. 314. Commencement of the struggle against Antigonus waged by Cassander, Ptolemy, Seleucus, and Lysimachus. 313. Tyre surrenders to Antigonus. Ptolemy engages with him and conquers Cyprus. The Romans take Fregellae and other towns from the Samnites. 312. Seleucus Nicator establishes the realm of the Seleucidae, the army of Antigonus, under his son Demetrius Poliorcetes, being defeated by Ptolemy and Seleucus. Babylon is made the capital. Ptolemy conquers Judea; he transplants many Jews to Alexandria and Cyrene, where their industry is encouraged and their religion protected. At Rome Appius Claudius, the blind, constructs the Via Appia, the first aqueduct, and a canal through the Pontine marshes. Zeno institutes the sect of Stoics at Athens. 311. A temporary peace among the competitors for power in Asia. Greece is declared to be free, and Ptolemy resigns Phoenicia to Antigonus. Roxana, the widow of Alexander the Great, and her young son Alexander Aegas, are put to death by Cassander. The Roman consul Bubulcus penetrates into Samnium, where he is surrounded, and cuts his way through with great courage. 310. Agathocles, the Syracusan ruler, defeated by the Carthaginians at Himera, passes over to Africa and carries the war into their own country. The Etruscans take up arms in favor of the Samnites. Civil war in the little kingdom of Bosporus; Satyrus II, king for a few months, falls in battle. An eclipse of the sun, August 15th. 309. Hercules, a natural son of Alexander, proclaimed king of Macedon; he is murdered by Cassander. The Romans are victorious over the Samnites and the Etruscans. 308. The Romans, under Fabius, compel the Etruscans to make peace; Fabius then turns against the Samnites, whom he defeats. 307. Demetrius Poliorcetes, son of Antigonus, arrives with a fleet at Athens, expels Demetrius Phalereus, and restores the democracy, the Athenians throw down Phalereus' statues and condemn him to death. 306. Ptolemy's fleet is destroyed by Demetrius Poliorcetes at Salamis; but Antigonus fails in his attempt on Egypt. Antigonus assumes the title of king of Asia; Ptolemy Lagi, Lysimachus, and Seleucus, the rulers of Egypt, Thrace, and that part of Alexander's empire east of the Euphrates, likewise assume the royal title. Cassander of Macedon is hailed king by his subjects. 305. War between Seleucus and India, under Sandrocottus, ends in a treaty of amity. Flavius reconciles all orders of the Roman state and erects a temple of Concord. Demetrius Poliorcetes besieges Rome. 304. The Romans triumphantly end the Second Samnite War. 302. The priesthood at Rome is opened to the plebs. 300.[90] Battle of Ipsus. Seleucus and Lysimachus overwhelm the army of Antigonus and his son, Demetrius Poliorcetes; Antigonus is slain. His dominions are divided among the victors. Lysimachus takes a large portion of Asia Minor; Seleucus appropriates Upper Syria, Capuadocia, and other territory. [Footnote 90: The date is usually given as 301.] Seleucus Nicator builds Antioch, which he makes the capital of his kingdom of Syria. 299. Rome engages in the Third Samnite War, which becomes one of extermination, but the Samnites bravely resist in their mountain holds. 295. Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, espouses Antigone of the house of Ptolemy; he returns to his dominions, out of which he had been driven by the Molossi. The Samnites, Etruscans, Umbrians, and Gauls unite against Rome. Q. Fabius Rullianus and P. Decimo Mus defeat the Samnites and Gauls at Sentinum. Demetrius Poliorcetes retakes Athens; Lysimachus and Ptolemy deprive him of all he possesses. 294. The Macedonian throne is seized by Demetrius Poliorcetes; by violence or treachery the sons of Cassander are slain. 293. Many towns of the Samnites are so utterly destroyed by the Romans that their sites are unknown; a portion of the spoil is cast into a brazen colossus, and placed in front of the Roman Capitol. The Roman census is 272,308 citizens. The first sun-dial at Rome is placed on the temple of Quirinus. 290. The end of the Third Samnite War, which results in the submission of the Samnites to Rome. 287. Birth of Archimedes, celebrated mathematician.[Est] Lysimachus and Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, wrest Macedonia from Demetrius Poliorcetes; immediately after, Lysimachus expels Pyrrhus. 286. The Hortensian law, passed by Q. Hortensino, affirmed the legislative power granted the plebeians B.C. 446 and 336. 285. Completion of the Septuagint, a Greek version of the Scriptures, called "the Alexandrian." The length of the solar year first accurately determined by Dionysius, in the astronomical canon. 283. Death of Ptolemy Lagi (Ptolemy Soter); Ptolemy Philadelphus (jointly on the throne with his father since 295) succeeds him as King of Egypt. He further encourages the immigration of the Jews, who flourish exceedingly. 282. The Tarentines attack a Roman fleet and insult the ambassadors, who demand satisfaction. Rome prepares for war; the Tarentines engage Pyrrhus to assist them. 281. Lysimachus, at war with Seleucus Nicator, is defeated and slain in Phrygia. The Roman consul Aemilius invades the territory of Tarentum. 280. Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, invades Italy; he makes the cause of Tarentum his own and wars on Rome. Laevinus, the Roman consul, is defeated. See "FIRST BATTLE BETWEEN GREEKS AND ROMANS," ii, 166. Revival of the Achaean League. The Achaei originally inhabited the neighborhood of Argos; when driven thence by the Heraclidae, they retired among the Ionians, expelled the natives, and seized their thirteen cities, forming the Achaean League. 279. Pyrrhus, who had tried to mediate between Tarentum and Rome, meeting with non-success, advances on Rome. He fails to make any impression and returns to Tarentum; the Romans follow him, and he gains an unimportant victory over them at Asculum. See "FIRST BATTLE BETWEEN GREEKS AND ROMANS," ii, 166. Irruption of Gauls into Macedonia; King Ptolemy Ceraunus offers battle to them, in which he is killed.[91] [Footnote 91: The date usually given is B.C. 280.] 278. The Gauls under Brennus invade Greece; they are cut to pieces near Delphi. Alliance formed between Rome and Carthage. Pyrrhus wars against Carthage in Sicily. 277. A body of Gauls enter Northern Phrygia, of which they take possession. Pyrrhus expels the Carthaginians from most of their possessions in Sicily. 276. Other Grecian cities join the Achaean League. 275. Pyrrhus, on the arrival of Carthaginian reenforcements, returns to Italy; he is totally defeated by M. Curius Dentatus (at Beneventum), who exhibits in his triumphs the first elephants ever seen in Rome. 273. Ptolemy Philadelphus, of Egypt, sends an embassy to congratulate the Romans on their victory and to ask an alliance with them. 272. Pyrrhus attempts the siege of Sparta; he is repulsed. In an attack on Argos, Pyrrhus is slain. Tarentum surrenders to the Romans. Lucania and Brittium also submit to Rome. 269. The first silver coinage at Rome. 266. The Romans capture and destroy Volsinii; Rome controls all Italy. 264. War between Rome and Carthage. See "THE PUNIC WARS," ii, 179. Gladiators first introduced into Rome. 263. Antigonus Gonatus, King of Macedon, captures Athens. The Romans compel Hiero, King of Syracuse, to withdraw from the support of Carthage. See "THE PUNIC WARS," ii, 179. Philetaerus at his death appoints his nephew, Eumenes, King of Pergamus; the competition for books between him and Ptolemy Philadelphus causes the latter to prohibit the export of papyrus from Egypt; this leads to the invention of parchment at Pergamus, whence it takes its name. Hiero makes peace with the Romans; he becomes their most trusted ally. 260. Ships-of-war first built by the Romans; the naval power of Rome inaugurated by the decisive victory of Duilius over the Carthaginians at Mylae. See "THE PUNIC WARS," ii, 179. 259. The Romans invade Corsica; they carry off much rich spoil from thence and Sardinia, but make no permanent conquests. The island of Melita (Malta) is captured by the Romans. 258. Atilius, the Roman consul, surrounded by the Carthaginians in Sicily, escapes with difficulty. 257. A drawn battle between the fleets of Rome and Carthage off Tyndaris causes the Romans to prepare larger ships, in order to strike a decisive blow. 256. Total defeat of the Carthaginian fleet near Ecnomus; the victorious Roman consuls land in Africa. The Carthaginians hire troops from Greece and give the command to Xanthippus. See "THE PUNIC WARS," ii, 179. 255. Regelus and his Roman legions are vanquished by Xanthippus; Regelus is taken captive. The Romans fit out a large fleet, which gains another victory and brings off the remains of the army from Africa. Many of the ships are wrecked. 254. Another fleet consisting of 220 ships is equipped in three months by the Romans; Panormus (Palermo) is captured. See "THE PUNIC WARS," ii, 179. 253. The Romans again land in Africa and ravage many Carthaginian coast cities; on their return most of their ships are wrecked; the Romans resolve to abstain from naval warfare. 252. Birth of Philopoemen, called the "Last of the Greeks." 251. Aratus restores the freedom of Sicyon; joins the Achaean League, which becomes a powerful body. 250. Arsaceo founds the kingdom of Parthia. The Romans begin the siege of Lilybaeum; the Carthaginians successfully defend it till the close of the war. Metellus, the Roman proconsul, commanding in Sicily, gains a great victory over Hasdrubal near Panoramus; over one hundred elephants form part of his triumphal procession. 249. Naval victory of the Carthaginians over the Romans at Drepanum. Regelus is sent to Rome to propose an exchange of prisoners; on his return the Carthaginians put him to death with the utmost cruelty. The war between Syria and Egypt, which had been ruinous to the former, is ended by a treaty between Antiochus II and Ptolemy Philadelphus. One of the conditions was that Antiochus repudiate Laodice and marry Berenice, Ptolemy's daughter. 248. Parthia becomes an independent kingdom. 247. Birth of Hannibal, the famous Carthaginian general. Ptolemy Euergetes succeeds his father Ptolemy Philadelphus on the throne of Egypt. 243. Corinth, delivered by Aratus from the yoke of Macedon, joins the Achaean League; other states follow the example. 241. Agis IV, of Sparta, assists the Achaeans in their war against the Aetolians. Rome, having again assembled a great fleet, under Lutatius Catalus, vanquishes the Carthaginians in a naval encounter off the Aegates. End of the First Punic War; Sicily is relinquished by Carthage to Rome. 240. The Carthaginian mercenaries in Africa revolt; Hamilcar Barca crushes it out. 237. Carthage is compelled to cede Sardinia to Rome. 236-221. Celomenes III of Sparta institutes great political reforms and engages in a struggle with the Achaean League. 236-220. Hamilcar Barca and Hasdrubal, his son-in-law, conquer a great part of Spain. 235. Rome, at peace with all the world, closes the temple of Janus, for the first time since Numa, according to legend, the second king of Rome. 234. Birth of Cato the Elder. Scipio Africanus born. 230. Ambassadors sent by Rome to protest against the piracies of the Illyrians are murdered by the order of Queen Teuta. 229. A successful war is waged by the Romans against the Greek kingdom of Illyria; the Roman power is extended across the Adriatic. On the death of Hamilcar, his son-in-law, Hasdrubal, takes his place in Spain; he founds Carthago Nova (Carthagena). 227. Sparta makes war with the Achaean League. 225-222. Cisalpine Gaul is conquered by the Romans. 221. Cleomenes III is crushed by Antigonus Doson, ruler of Macedon, at Sellasia; the Spartan power is utterly destroyed. 220. Social war; the war made by the Aetolian League on the Achaean League. 219. Hannibal lays siege to Saguntum, which he destroys; this is the real commencement of the Second Punic War. See "THE PUNIC WARS," ii, 179. Philip V, of Macedon, is victorious in his campaigns against the Aetolian League. 218. Hannibal crosses the Alps into Italy; he defeats the Romans on the Ticinus and Trebia. See "THE PUNIC WARS," ii, 179. 217. Philip V continues his victorious way against the Aetolian League. Hannibal defeats the Romans at the Trasimene Lake. Antiochus the Great cedes Coele-Syria and Palestine to Egypt. 216. Crushing defeat of the Romans by Hannibal at Cannae. See "THE PUNIC WARS," ii, 179. 214. Rome has her first encounter with Macedon; Philip V allies himself with Hannibal and begins the war. Marcellus is sent into Sicily and besieges Syracuse, which had declared against Rome. 213. Aratus, strategus of the Achaean League, is poisoned by Philip V of Macedon; this alienates from him many Greek states. Hwangti crushes out literature in China. 212. After a two-years' siege the Romans under Marcellus take Syracuse. The two Scipios defeated and killed in Spain. See "THE PUNIC WARS," ii, 179. 211. Hannibal before the gates of Rome. See "THE PUNIC WARS," ii, 179. The Aetolian League with its allies assists Rome against Macedon. 210. Aegina taken by the Romans; the inhabitants reduced to slavery. Agrigentum, being conquered by Caevinus, places all Sicily again under Roman subjection. Scipio, victorious in Spain, takes Carthago Nova. See "THE PUNIC WARS," ii, 179. 208. Suspension of his operations against Scipio--the future Scipio Africanus--in Spain by Hasdrubal, son of Hamilcar, who sets out to relieve his brother Hannibal in Italy. 207. Hasdrubal is defeated and slain on the Metaurus. See "BATTLE OF THE METAURUS," ii, 195. A signal victory is achieved by Philopoemen, general of the Achaean League, with Macedon, over the Spartans at Matinea. 206. Birth of Polybius, Greek historian. The Carthaginian power in Spain completely destroyed by Scipio. 205. End of the first Romo-Macedonian war. 204. Scipio carries the war into Africa; he defeats the Carthaginians and the Numidians. 203. Hannibal, recalled from Italy, arrives at Carthage. 202. The Carthaginian power is completely broken, ending the Second Punic War. See "SCIPIO AFRICANUS CRUSHES HANNIBAL AT ZAMA AND SUBJUGATES CARTHAGE," ii, 224. 201. A war is begun by Rome for the resubjugation of the Boii and Insubres of Cisalpine Gaul, who had attained freedom owing to the Carthaginian invasion. The Jews become subject to the Seleucid monarchy. 200. Declaration of war by Rome against Macedon; the second Macedonian war. 198. Antiochus the Great, of Syria, conquers Palestine and Coele-Syria from Egypt, defeating Scopas and the Aetolian allies. 197. Decisive Roman victory over the Macedonians at Cynoscephale; Philip V of Macedon makes a humiliating peace. 196. The Roman general Flaminius proclaims the freedom of the Greeks. 195.[Est] Birth of Terrence, Roman comic poet. Ptolemy V, Epiphanes, King of Egypt. See i, 1, "The Rosetta Stone." 192. In concert with the Aetolians, Antiochus the Great takes up arms against Rome. 191. Antiochus is defeated by the Romans under Acilius Glabrio, at Thermopylae, in Greece. The resubjugation of Cisalpine Gaul is completed by Rome. All the Peloponnesus is included in the Achaean League, which attains its apogee. 190. Scipio Asiaticus takes command of the Romans in Greece, with his brother Africanus as lieutenant; Antiochus is vanquished at Magnesia and he is compelled to release his hold on the greater part of Asia Minor. Most of the conquered territory is annexed to Pergamus. Scipio Asiaticus takes his surname for the courage and ability he showed. 189. Fall of the Aetolian League. 185. Birth of Scipio Africanus the Younger. 179. Death of Philip V of Macedon. His son Perseus negotiates secretly with other states against Rome. The Celtiberians and Lusitanians lay down their arms. 177. Rome suppresses a revolt in Sardinia. A colony settled at Lucca. The Achaeans contract an alliance with Rome. Thessaly relapses under the Macedonian influence. 176. The consul Scipio dies, and C. Valerius Laevinus takes his place for the rest of the year. His colleague Petilius is slain in battle against the Ligurians. The Orchian and other sumptuary laws fail to repress the luxury of the Romans. 175. Disgraceful struggles for the high-priesthood of Jerusalem; Antiochus sells it to Jason, the brother of Onias, who is deposed. 174. Masinissa, after many encroachments, seizes the Carthaginian provinces of Tyssa, with fifty cities; Roman ambassadors sent to settle the dispute. Others deputed to ascertain the intentions of Perseus. Mithridates VI of the Arsacidae begins his reign and prepares the elevation of Parthia to great power. 173. The Roman ambassadors return, Perseus having refused to receive them. Death of Cleopatra, who, in the name of her young son, had been regent of Egypt. 172. The Ligurians are subdued and Northern Italy filled with Roman colonies. Eumenes honorably received at Rome; on his way back he is attacked by assassins near Delphi. Menelaus, another brother, supplants Jason in the high-priesthood of Jerusalem. 171. Commencement of the Third Macedonian War; King Perseus begins his struggle with Rome. Antiochus invades Egypt and takes Memphis. 170. Hostilius, who takes the command in Macedon, makes no progress; the Roman fleet ravages the sea-coast. Perseus negotiates with Antiochus, Prusias, and many Greek states to form a coalition against Rome; even Eumenes begins to treat with him. Ptolemy Physcon is associated with his brother as joint King of Egypt. 169. The manoeuvres of Marcius Philippus drive Perseus from his strong position in Tempe. Antiochus lays siege to Alexandria; the Egyptians apply to Rome for aid. 168. Battle of Pydna; complete defeat of Perseus, King of Macedon, by the Romans, under L. Aenilius Paulas. Macedon becomes a Roman province. Antiochus, awed by the Roman ambassador Popillius and the fate of Perseus, evacuates Egypt. In his retreat he plunders Jerusalem and despoils the Temple, in which he sets up the statue of Jupiter Olympias. 167. Deportation of a thousand Achaeans to Rome; among them is Polybius, the historian, who there finds patrons and friends. The first library opened in Rome, consisting of books plundered from Macedon. Arms are taken up by the Asmoneans against Antiochus, King of Syria. 165. Judas Maccabaeus enters Jerusalem; he purifies the Temple. See "JUDAS MACCABEUS LIBERATES JUDEA," ii, 245. 160. Defeat and death of Judas Maccabaeus in battle. 158. Roman citizens are almost entirely relieved of direct taxation by the revenues from Macedon and other conquests. 149. Commencement of the Third Punic War between Rome and Carthage. See "THE PUNIC WARS," ii, 179. First Roman law against bribery at elections. 147.[Est] Viriathus, the Lusitanian leader, has his first great victory over the Romans. 146. Scipio Africanus the Younger completely destroys Carthage. Mummius, commanding in Greece, defeats the Archaeans at Leucopetra; he captures and destroys Corinth. The treasures of Grecian art conveyed to Rome. Greece becomes a Roman province. Demetrius Nicator slays Alexander Bala in battle and becomes king of Syria. 141. Simon Maccabaeus captures the citadel of Jerusalem. Silanus, accused by the Macedonians of corrupt practices, is condemned by his father, Torquatus, and takes his own life. 140. The Jews proclaim Simon Maccabaeus hereditary prince; with this dignity is united the office of high-priest. [Est]Viriathus, the Lusitanian leader against the Romans in Spain, is assassinated by order of the consul Caepio. 135. Simon Maccabaeus is assassinated; John Hyrcanus, his son, succeeds him as ruler at Jerusalem. 134-133. Antiochus Tidetes, King of Syria, besieges Jerusalem; he is repulsed. 134-132. Servile War in Sicily, caused by the inhuman treatment of the slaves by their owners; two great battles were fought before the rising was suppressed. 133. Tiberius Gracchus attempts his great political and agrarian reforms in Rome. See "THE GRACCHI AND THEIR REFORMS," ii, 259. Scipio Africanus the Younger reduces Numantia. Attalus III of Pergamus bequeaths his kingdom, which embraces a great part of Asia Minor, to the Romans. 125-121. The southeastern portion of Transalpine Gaul conquered by the Romans. 123-122. Caius Gracchus commences his agrarian reforms in Rome. See "THE GRACCHI AND THEIR REFORMS," ii, 259. 118. Rome extends her dominion beyond the Rhone; the colony of Narbo Martius (Narbonne) founded. 113. Hordes of the Cimbri and Teutons threaten the Rome dominion by an invasion of Illyrium. 112. Jugurtha, King of Numidia, kills Adherbal, who has been restored to the throne of Numidia after being driven thence by Jugurtha. 111. The consul Calpurnius proceeds with a Roman army into Numidia; bribed by Jugurtha, he makes a peace and withdraws his forces. 109. Jugurtha is opposed in Numidia by the Roman army headed by Metellus. John Hyrcanus, the Jewish Prince and high-priest, defeats Ptolemy Lathyrus and captures Samaria.[Est] The Cimbri request an allotment of land from the Romans, whereon to settle; it is refused; they ravage the country, but are checked in Thrace by Nimicus Rufus. 108. Metellus, as proconsul, continues the war in Numidia. The Cimbri defeat the consul Scaurus in Gaul. Mithridates of Pontus secretly prepares to regain by force the province of Phrygia, which the Romans took from him during his minority. 107. Marius vigorously carries on the war against Jugurtha; Marius is consul, Sylla his quaestor. Cassius, Roman consul, is defeated and slain by the Cimbri in Gaul. 106. Birth of Cicero. Birth of Pompey the Great. Jugurtha is betrayed by Bocchus, King of Mauretania, into the hands of the Romans, which ends the Jugurthine War. 105. The Cimbri and Teutones defeat the consul Manilius and proconsul Caepio, near the Rhone, with great loss. Aristobulus, son of John Hyrcanus, succeeds his father and assumes the title of king of Judea. 104. Alexander Jannaeus succeeds his brother Aristobulus in Judea. 102. Marius overwhelmingly defeats the Teutones, while they were retreating from Spain, at Aquae Sextiae (Aix). Another revolt of the slaves in Sicily (Second Servile War). 101. Marius utterly crushes the Cimbri on the Raudian Fields, after they had previously defeated the proconsul Lutatius Catulus. 100. The Second Servile War continues. Birth of Julius Cæsar. 99. M. Aquilius finally crushes out the slave uprising in Sicily. 94. Mithridates makes his son king of Cappadocia. 93. Cappadocians appeal to the Romans, who give them Ariobarzanes for their king. Mithridates seizes Galatia. 92. Sulla is sent by the Romans into Cappadocia to observe Mithridates' proceedings; ambassadors from Parthia meet him there. 91. M. Livius Drussus, people's tribune, advocates giving the rights of citizenship to the Roman allies; he is assassinated. 90. Social or Marsic War, a conflict of the Italian states against Rome, begins, the cause being the refusal of the franchise by Rome. Cæsar, the consul, is unfortunate against the Samnites, and Rutilius is defeated and slain by the Marsi. Marius retrieves these disasters. Citizenship granted to the states which remain faithful to Rome. The Roman senate promises aid to Cappadocia against Mithridates. 89. The consul Pompeius (father of Pompey the Great) gains decided victories over the Picentines; his colleague, Cato, defeats the Marsi, but is killed in the battle; Sulla takes the command, and is so successful that he is elected consul for the ensuing year. Cicero is a cadet in the army of Pompeius. Cleopatra is put to death by her son Alexander, who is expelled from Egypt, and Ptolemy Soter restored. 88. End of the Social War. Most of the refractory states admitted to Roman citizenship. Mithridates, King of Pontus, occupies Phrygia; he asks all Asia Minor to join him; a general massacre of the Romans occurs. Quarrel between Sulla and Marius which causes war between them for the control of the Roman army. The first Roman civil war. 87. Sulla proceeds to Greece to conduct the war against Mithridates; Sulla besieges Athens. The consul Cinna, deposed by the senate, calls Marius from Africa, raises an Italian army, and reinstates himself in office; bloody proscriptions by Marius and Cinna follow. 86. Death of Marius, in the beginning of his seventh consulate; Flaccus, appointed in his place, is assassinated on his march to the east, by C. Fimbria, who assumes command of the Roman army. Sulla captures the revolted city of Athens and defeats the army of Mithridates under Archelaus. A sedition of the Jews is quelled with merciless severity by Alexander Jannaeus. 85. The Romans are successful against Mithridates in Asia. 84. End of the First Mithridatic War; Mithridates, finding himself between two victorious Roman armies, agrees to peace and relinquishes all his acquisitions. 83. Sulla makes war against the Marian party in Italy. The Roman senate refuses to send Mithridates a formal ratification of the treaty. He retains a part of Cappadocia. The Second Mithridatic War begins. 82. Sulla becomes dictator at Rome, after crushing the Marian party; he inflicts a bloody vengeance on his enemies. End of the Second Mithridatic War. 81. Pompey, having been successful in Africa, is granted a triumph in Rome. 80. Sertorius, the Marian leader, sets up an independent state in Spain. Cæsar serves as a cadet at the siege of Mitylene; he receives a civic crown for saving the life of a citizen. 79. Sulla resigns the dictatorship, but remains master of Rome. Alexander Jannaeus, King of Judea, is succeeded on his death by his widow Alexandra. 78. Death of Sulla. 76. Pompey is sent into Spain to oppose Sertorius. 74. Mithridates renews hostilities; he enters into an abortive alliance with Sertorius. Third Mithridatic War. Lucullus commands the Roman forces. 73. Lucullus routs the army of Mithridates. Rising of the gladiators; Spartacus collects, on Mount Vesuvius, a numerous army of slaves and gladiators; they overcome the forces sent against them and ravage Southern Italy. The Third Servile War. 72. Sertorius is assassinated in Spain; the Spaniards submit to Pompey. King Mithridates is driven from his dominions by Lucullus; the King takes refuge in Armenia. 71. Crassus defeats and slays Spartacus; the gladiators are crushed. 70. Death of Alexandra, widow of Jannaeus; she nominates her son, Hyrcanus, as her successor; but his brother, Aristobulus, usurps the throne of Judea. Pompey and Crassus, previously at variance, are reconciled during their joint consulship. Cicero's six orations (the first only being actually delivered) against Verres, who, when governor of Sicily, had plundered the island of property, art treasures, etc. Birth of Vergil. 69. Lucullus crosses the Euphrates, captures Tigranocerta, and defeats Tigranes, who had succored Mithridates in Armenia. 68. Lucullus defeats Tigranes and takes Nisibis. 67. A mutiny in the Roman army caused by the appointment of Glabrio to succeed Lucullus. Pompey crushes the pirates of Cilicia and makes it a Roman province. Julius Cæsar is quaestor in Spain. Metellus completes the conquest of Crete for the Romans. Mithridates makes a successful advance. 66. Pompey, after a conference with Lucullus, completely crushes Mithridates and drives him over the Cimmerian Bosporus. 65. End of the Third Mithridatic War. Antiochus XIII is deposed by Pompey; this puts an end to the kingdom of the Seleucidas (Syria). Hyrcanus takes up arms against his brother Aristobulus in Judea. 64. Pompey takes possession of Syria; he is recalled thence to oppose Mithridates, who, returned to his states, prepares for further resistance. 63. Having intervened between the brothers John Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II, and decided in favor of Hyrcanus, Pompey lays siege to Jerusalem, where Aristobulus reigns, captures it, and makes Judea a Roman province. Mithridates, betrayed by his son, poisons himself. Cicero frustrates the conspiracy of Catiline, having for its object the cancellation of debts, the proscription of the wealthy, and the distribution among the conspirators of all the offices of honor and emolument. 62. Catiline is defeated and slain, after having collected an army in Etruria. Discord arises between Cæsar, now prætor, and Cato, tribune of the people. 60. First Triumvirate in Rome, formed of Pompey, Crassus, and Cæsar, equally dividing the power. 59. Consulship of Cæsar at Rome; he carries his agrarian law and ingratiates himself with the people; he is given the command in Gaul and Illyrium for five years. 58. Cæsar begins his campaigns in Gaul. See "CÆSAR CONQUERS GAUL," ii, 267. Cicero exiled from Rome; he had saved the Republic at the time of the Catiline conspiracy, but had broken the constitution, which forbade capital punishment without the sentence of the assembly of the people. 57. The Belgae conquered by Cæsar. Cicero recalled to Rome. 56. Roman conquest of Aquitaine. 55. Cato is imprisoned for opposing the vote giving the triumvirs five more years in their respective provinces: Pompey in Spain; Cæsar in Gaul; Crassus in Syria. The triumvirs meet at Lucca. Caesar's first expedition into Britain. See "ROMAN INVASION AND CONQUEST OF BRITAIN," ii, 285. 54. First campaign of Crassus; he plunders the Temple of Jerusalem and proceeds against the Parthians. Mithridates of Parthia is murdered by his brother Orodes. Cæsar's second invasion of Britain. See "ROMAN INVASION AND CONQUEST OF BRITAIN," ii, 285. 53. Crassus defeated and slain in the war against the Parthians at Carrhae. 52. Vercingetorix, at the head of various Gallic tribes, makes a formidable effort to drive Cæsar out of Gaul; he is unsuccessful, and Cæsar, besieging him in his stronghold Alesia, forces him to surrender. 51. Peace between Rome and Parthia. Cæsar completes his conquest of Gaul. Cleopatra, on the death of her father, Ptolemy Auletes, becomes queen of Egypt. See "CLEOPATRA'S CONQUEST OF CÆSAR AND ANTONY," ii, 295. 50. Cæsar returns to Italy; jealousy between him and Pompey arouses the people of Rome. 49. War breaks out between Cæsar and Pompey; the second civil war in Rome. 48. Pompey is defeated by Cæsar at Pharsalia; Pompey flees to Egypt, where he is assassinated. 47. The Roman senate appoints Cæsar dictator, M. Antony as his master of the horse. Cæsar subdues Egypt. 46. Cæsar overwhelms the Pompeians in Africa at the battle of Thapsus; Juba, King of Numidia, on the defeat, takes his own life.[92] [Footnote 92: Other authorities say he fell in battle.] Death of Cato. The calendar is reformed by Cæsar. 45. Cæsar conquers the sons of Pompey at Munda, Spain. He is appointed dictator for life. 44. Brutus, Cassius, and other conspirators murder Cæsar in Rome. See "ASSASSINATION OF CÆSAR," ii, 313. Conflict for power between Antony and Octavius; Cicero's oration secures Octavius' success in Rome. Antony resorts to arms to regain his lost ascendency. See "ROME BECOMES A MONARCHY," ii, 333. 43. Second Triumvirate at Rome, formed by Octavius, Antony, and Lepidus. Murder of Cicero. Birth of Ovid. 42. Brutus and Cassius are defeated at the two battles of Philippi. See "ROME BECOMES A MONARCHY," ii, 333. 41. Octavius and Antony's party war in Italy. Fulvia, the wife of Antony, and the consul Lucius, his brother, oppose Octavius, who drives them from Rome. See "ROME BECOMES A MONARCHY," ii, 333. 40. Herod I, in his absence at Rome, is proclaimed by Antony and Octavius king of Judea. Antony accompanies Cleopatra to Egypt. See "ROME BECOMES A MONARCHY," ii, 333. 39. Herod lands in Syria to take the throne of Judea. 38. Pompey is defeated in a naval engagement and loses all his fleet. 37. Herod conquers Jerusalem; the Asmonean house ends. 36. Lepidus, aspiring to greater power, is deserted by his soldiers and ejected from the triumvirate. 31. War of Antony and Octavius; Octavius is victorious at Actium: he becomes master of the Roman dominions. Flight of Antony with Cleopatra to Egypt. See "ROME BECOMES A MONARCHY," ii, 333. 30. Death of Antony and Cleopatra. See "ROME BECOMES A MONARCHY," ii, 333. Egypt becomes a Roman province. 27. Octavius has a triumph at Rome and receives the title of Augustus. The temple of Janus is closed. 24. Aelius Gallus, governor of Egypt, fails in an expedition into Arabia. 19. Final subjugation of the Cantabri by Agrippa; the whole Spanish peninsula subject to Rome. 15. The Rhaetians and Vindelicians subdued by Drassus and Tiberius, at the head of the Roman troops. 12. Victorious advance of Drusus in Germany. 9. Pannonia completely subdued by Tiberius. Last German campaign and death of Drusus. 4. Death of Herod the Great, King of Judea. Probable date of the birth of Jesus. A.D. 1. Beginning of the Christian era. 4. Emperor Tiberius' campaign in Germany. 6. Archelaus, the Herodian ethnarch, is deposed; Judea becomes a district of the Roman prefecture of Syria. 9. Arminius annihilates the army of Varus in Teutoburg Forest. See "GERMANS UNDER ARMINIUS REVOLT AGAINST ROME," ii, 362. 12. Tiberius leaves Germanicus to prosecute the war, and returns to Rome. END OF VOLUME II 
16352	----	THE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS A COMPREHENSIVE AND READABLE ACCOUNT OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY, EMPHASIZING THE MORE IMPORTANT EVENTS, AND PRESENTING THESE AS COMPLETE NARRATIVES IN THE MASTER-WORDS OF THE MOST EMINENT HISTORIANS NON-SECTARIAN NON-PARTISAN NON-SECTIONAL ON THE PLAN EVOLVED FROM A CONSENSUS OF OPINIONS GATHERED FROM THE MOST DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARS OF AMERICA AND EUROPE, INCLUDING BRIEF INTRODUCTIONS BY SPECIALISTS TO CONNECT AND EXPLAIN THE CELEBRATED NARRATIVES, ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY, WITH THOROUGH INDICES, BIBLIOGRAPHIES, CHRONOLOGIES, AND COURSES OF READING EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ROSSITER JOHNSON, LL.D. ASSOCIATE EDITORS CHARLES F. HORNE, Ph.D. JOHN RUDD, LL.D. _With a staff of specialists_ _VOLUME 1_ The National Alumni COPYRIGHT, 1905, By THE NATIONAL ALUMNI CONTENTS VOLUME I _General Introduction_ _An Outline Narrative of the Great Events_ CHARLES F. HORNE _Dawn of Civilization_ (_B.C. 5867_) G.C.C. MASPERO _Compilation of the Earliest Code_ (_B.C. 2250_) HAMMURABI _Theseus Founds Athens_ (_B.C. 1235_) PLUTARCH _The Formation of the Castes in India_ (_B.C. 1200_) GUSTAVE LE BON W.W. HUNTER _Fall of Troy_ (_B.C. 1184_) GEORGE GROTE _Accession of Solomon_ _Building of the Temple at Jerusalem_ (_B.C. 1017_) HENRY HART MILMAN _Rise and Fall of Assyria_ _Destruction of Nineveh_ (_B.C. 789_) F. LENORMANT AND E. CHEVALLIER _The Foundation of Rome_ (_B.C. 753_) BARTHOLD GEORG NIEBUHR _Prince Jimmu Founds Japan's Capital_ (_B.C. 660_) SIR EDWARD REED THE "NEHONGI" _The Foundation of Buddhism_ (_B.C. 623_) THOMAS W. RHYS-DAVIDS _Pythian Games at Delphi_ (_B.C. 585_) GEORGE GROTE _Solon's Early Greek Legislation_ (_B.C. 594_) GEORGE GROTE _Conquests of Cyrus the Great_ (_B.C. 550_) GEORGE GROTE _Rise of Confucius, the Chinese Sage_ (_B.C. 550_) R.K. DOUGLAS _Rome Established as a Republic_ _Institution of Tribunes_ (_B.C. 510-494_) HENRY GEORGE LIDDELL _The Battle of Marathon_ (_B.C. 490_) SIR EDWARD SHEPHERD CREASY _Invasion of Greece by Persians under Xerxes_ _Defence of Thermopylæ_ (_B.C. 480_) HERODOTUS _Universal Chronology_ (_B.C. 5867-451_) JOHN RUDD LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS VOLUME I _Sphinx, with Great and Second Pyramids of Gizeh_ (_page 12_) Frontispiece From an original photograph. _The Rosetta Stone, and Description_ Facsimile of original in the British Museum. _The Sabine Women_--_now mothers_--_suing for peace between the combatants_ (_their Roman husbands and their Sabine relatives_) Painting by Jacques L. David. THE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS * * * * * General Introduction THE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS is the answer to a problem which has long been agitating the learned world. How shall real history, the ablest and profoundest work of the greatest historians, be rescued from its present oblivion on the dusty shelves of scholars, and made welcome to the homes of the people? THE NATIONAL ALUMNI, an association of college men, having given this question long and earnest discussion among themselves, sought finally the views of a carefully elaborated list of authorities throughout America and Europe. They consulted the foremost living historians and professors of history, successful writers in other fields, statesmen, university and college presidents, and prominent business men. From this widely gathered consensus of opinions, after much comparison and sifting of ideas, was evolved the following practical, and it would seem incontrovertible, series of plain facts. And these all pointed toward "THE GREAT EVENTS." In the first place, the entire American public, from top to bottom of the social ladder, are at this moment anxious to read history. Its predominant importance among the varied forms of literature is fully recognized. To understand the past is to understand the future. The successful men in every line of life are those who look ahead, whose keen foresight enables them to probe into the future, not by magic, but by patiently acquired knowledge. To see clearly what the world has done, and why, is to see at least vaguely what the world will do, and when. Moreover, no man can understand himself unless he understands others; and he cannot do that without some idea of the past, which has produced both him and them. To know his neighbors, he must know something of the country from which they came, the conditions under which they formerly lived. He cannot do his own simple duty by his own country if he does not know through what tribulations that country has passed. He cannot be a good citizen, he cannot even vote honestly, much less intelligently, unless he has read history. Fortunately the point needs little urging. It is almost an impertinence to refer to it. We are all anxious, more than anxious to learn--_if only the path of study be made easy_. Can this be accomplished? Can the vanishing pictures of the past be made as simply obvious as mathematics, as fascinating as a breezy novel of adventure? Genius has already answered, yes. Hand to a mere boy Macaulay's sketch of Warren Hastings in India, and the lad will see as easily as if laid out upon a map the host of interwoven and elaborate problems that perplexed the great administrator. Offer to the youngest lass the tale told by Guizot of King Robert of France and his struggle to retain his beloved wife Bertha. Its vivid reality will draw from the girl's heart far deeper and truer tears than the most pathetic romance. We begin to realize that in very truth History has been one vast stupendous drama, world-embracing in its splendor, majestic, awful, irresistible in the insistence of its pointing finger of fate. It has indeed its comic interludes, a Prussian king befuddling ambassadors in his "Tobacco Parliament"; its pauses of intense and cumulative suspense, Queen Louise pleading to Napoleon for her country's life; but it has also its magnificent pageants, its gorgeous culminating spectacles of wonder. Kings and emperors are but the supernumeraries upon its boards; its hero is the common man, its plot his triumph over ignorance, his struggle upward out of the slime of earth. _Yet the great historians are not being widely read_. The ablest and most convincing stories of his own development seem closed against the ordinary man. Why? In the first place, the works of the masters are too voluminous. Grote's unrivalled history of Greece fills ten large and forbidding volumes. Guizot takes thirty-one to tell a portion of the story of France. Freeman won credit in the professorial world by devoting five to the detailing of a single episode, the Norman Conquest. Surely no busy man can gather a general historic knowledge, if he must read such works as these! We are told that the great library of Paris contains over four hundred thousand volumes and pamphlets on French history alone. The output of historic works in all languages approaches ten thousand volumes every year. No scholar, even, can peruse more than the smallest fraction of this enormously increasing mass. Herodotus is forgotten, Livy remains to most of us but a recollection of our school-days, and Thucydides has become an exercise in Greek. There is yet another difficulty. Even the honest man who tries, who takes down his Grote or Freeman, heroically resolved to struggle through it at all speed, fails often in his purpose. He discovers that the greatest masters nod. Sometimes in their slow advance they come upon a point that rouses their enthusiasm; they become vigorous, passionate, sarcastic, fascinating, they are masters indeed. But the fire soon dies, the inspiration flags, "no man can be always on the heights," and the unhappy reader drowses in the company of his guide. This leads us then to one clear point. From these justly famous works a selection should be made. Their length should be avoided, their prosy passages eliminated; the one picture, or perhaps the many pictures, which each master has painted better than any rival before or since, that and that alone should be preserved. Read in this way, history may be sought with genuine pleasure. It is only pedantry has made it dreary, only blindness has left it dull. The story of man is the most wonderful ever conceived. It can be made the most fascinating ever written. With this idea firmly established in mind, we seek another line of thought. The world grows smaller every day. Russia fights huge battles five thousand miles from her capital. England governs India. Spain and the United States contend for empire in the antipodes. Our rapidly improving means of communication, electric trains, and, it may be, flying machines, cables, and wireless telegraphy, link lands so close together that no man lives to-day the subject of an isolated state. Rather, indeed, do all the kingdoms seem to shrink, to become but districts in one world-including commonwealth. To tell the story of one nation by itself is thus no longer possible. Great movements of the human race do not stop for imaginary boundary lines thrown across a map. It was not the German students, nor the Parisian mob, nor the Italian peasants who rebelled in 1848; it was the "people of Europe" who arose against their oppressors. To read the history of one's own country only is to get distorted views, to exaggerate our own importance, to remain often in densest ignorance of the real meaning of what we read. The ideas American school-boys get of the Revolution are in many cases simply absurd, until they have been modified by wider reading. From this it becomes very evident that a good history now must be, not a local, but a world history. The idea of such a work is not new. Diodorus penned one two hundred years before Christ. But even then the tale took forty books; and we have been making history rather rapidly since Diodorus' time. Of the many who have more recently attempted his task, few have improved upon his methods; and the best of these works only shows upon a larger scale the same dreariness that we have found in other masters. Let us then be frank and admit that no one man can make a thoroughly good world history. No one man could be possessed of the almost infinite learning required; none could have the infinite enthusiasm to delight equally in each separate event, to dwell on all impartially and yet ecstatically. So once more we are forced back upon the same conclusion. We will take what we already have. We will appeal to each master for the event in which he did delight, the one in which we find him at his best. This also has been attempted before, but perhaps in a manner too lengthy, too exact, too pedantic to be popular. The aim has been to get in everything. Everything great or small has been narrated, and so the real points of value have been lost in the multiplicity of lesser facts, about which no ordinary reader cares or needs to care. After all, what we want to know and remember are the Great Events, the ones which have really changed and influenced humanity. How many of us do really know about them? or even know what they are? or one-twentieth part of them? And until we know, is it not a waste of time to pore over the lesser happenings between? Yet the connection between these events must somehow be shown. They must not stand as separate, unrelated fragments. If the story of the world is indeed one, it must be shown as one, not even broken by arbitrary division into countries, those temporary political constructions, often separating a single race, lines of imaginary demarcation, varying with the centuries, invisible in earth's yesterday, sure to change if not to perish in her to-morrow. Moreover, such a system of division necessitates endless repetition. Each really important occurrence influences many countries, and so is told of again and again with monotonous iteration and extravagant waste of space. It may, however, be fairly urged that the story should vary according to the country for which it is designed. To our individual lives the events happening nearest prove most important. Great though others be, their influence diminishes with their increasing distance in space and time. For the people of North America the story of the world should have the part taken by America written large across the pages. From all these lines of reasoning arose the present work, which the National Alumni believe has solved the problem. It tells the story of the world, tells it in the most famous words of the most famous writers, makes of it a single, continued story, giving the results of the most recent research. Yet all dry detail has been deliberately eliminated; the tale runs rapidly and brightly. Whatever else may happen, the reader shall not yawn. Only important points are dwelt on, and their relative value is made clear. Each volume of THE GREAT EVENTS opens with a brief survey of the period with which it deals. The broad world movements of the time are pointed out, their importance is emphasized, their mutual relationship made clear. If the reader finds his interest specially roused in one of these events, and he would learn more of it, he is aided by a directing note, which, in each case, tells him where in the body of the volume the subject is further treated. Turning thither he may plunge at once into the fuller account which he desires, sure that it will be both vivid and authoritative; in short, the best-known treatment of the subject. Meanwhile the general survey, being thus relieved from the necessity of constant explanation, expansion, and digression, is enabled to flow straight onward with its story, rapidly, simply, entertainingly. Indeed, these opening sketches, written especially for this series, and in a popular style, may be read on from volume to volume, forming a book in themselves, presenting a bird's-eye view of the whole course of earth, an ideal world history which leaves the details to be filled in by the reader at his pleasure. It is thus, we believe, and thus only, that world history can be made plain and popular. The great lessons of history can thus be clearly grasped. And by their light all life takes on a deeper meaning. The body of each volume, then, contains the Great Events of the period, ranged in chronological order. Of each event there are given one, perhaps two, or even three complete accounts, not chosen hap-hazard, but selected after conference with many scholars, accounts the most accurate and most celebrated in existence, gathered from all languages and all times. Where the event itself is under dispute, the editors do not presume to judge for the reader; they present the authorities upon both sides. The Reformation is thus portrayed from the Catholic as well as the Protestant standpoint. The American Revolution is shown in part as England saw it; and in the American Civil War, and the causes which produced it, the North and the South speak for themselves in the words of their best historians. To each of these accounts is prefixed a brief introduction, prepared for this work by a specialist in the field of history of which it treats. This introduction serves a double purpose. In the first place, it explains whatever is necessary for the understanding and appreciation of the story that follows. Unfortunately, many a striking bit of historic writing has become antiquated in the present day. Scholars have discovered that it blunders here and there, perhaps is prejudiced, perhaps extravagant. Newer writers, therefore, base a new book upon the old one, not changing much, but paraphrasing it into deadly dullness by their efforts after accuracy. Thanks to our introduction we can revive the more spirited account, and, while pointing out its value to the reader, can warn him of its errors. Thus he secures in briefest form the results of the most recent research. Another purpose of the introduction is to link each event with the preceding ones in whatever countries it affects. Thus if one chooses he may read by countries after all, and get a completed story of a single nation. That is, he may peruse the account of the battle of Hastings and then turn onward to the making of the _Domesday Book_, where he will find a few brief lines to cover the intervening space in England's history. From the struggles of Stephen and Matilda he is led to the quarrel of her son, King Henry, with Thomas Becket, and so onward step by step. Starting with this ground plan of the design in mind, the reader will see that its compilation was a work of enormous labor. This has been undertaken seriously, patiently, and with earnest purpose. The first problem to be confronted was, What were the Great Events that should be told? Almost every writer and teacher of history, every well-known authority, was appealed to; many lists of events were compiled, revised, collated, and compared; and so at last our final list was evolved, fitted to bear the brunt of every criticism. Then came the heavier problem of what authorities to quote for each event. And here also the editors owe much to the capable aid of many generous, unremunerated advisers. Thus, for instance, they sought and obtained from the Hon. Joseph Chamberlain his advice as to the authorities to be used for the Jameson raid and the Boer war. The account presented may therefore be fairly regarded as England's own authoritative presentment of those events. Several little known and wholly unused Russian sources were pointed out by Professor Rambaud, the French Academician. But this is mentioned only to illustrate the impartiality with which the editors have endeavored to cover all fields. If, under the plea of expressing gratitude to all those who have lent us courteous assistance, we were to spread across these pages the long roll of their distinguished names, it would sound too much like boasting of their condescension. The work of selecting the accounts has been one of time and careful thought. Many thousands of books have been read and read again. The cardinal points of consideration in the choice have been: (1) Interest, that is, vividness of narration; (2) simplicity, for we aim to reach the people, to make a book fit even for a child; (3) the fame of the author, for everyone is pleased to be thus easily introduced to some long-heard-of celebrity, distantly revered, but dreaded; and (4) accuracy, a point set last because its defects could be so easily remedied by the specialist's introduction to each event. These considerations have led occasionally to the selection of very ancient documents, the original "sources" of history themselves, as, for instance, Columbus' own story of his voyage, rather than any later account built up on this; Pliny's picture of the destruction of Pompeii, for Pliny was there and saw the heavens rain down fire, and told of it as no man has done since. So, too, we give a literal translation of the earliest known code of laws, antedating those of Moses by more than a thousand years, rather than some modern commentary on them. At other times the same principles have led to the other extreme, and on modern events, where there seemed no wholly satisfactory or standard accounts, we have had them written for us by the specialists best acquainted with the field. As the work thus grew in hand, it became manifest that it would be, in truth, far more than a mere story of events. With each event was connected the man who embodied it. Often his life was handled quite as fully as the event, and so we had biography. Lands had to be described--geography. Peoples and customs--sociology. Laws and the arguments concerning them--political economy. In short, our history proved a universal cyclopædia as well. To give it its full value, therefore, an index became obviously necessary--and no ordinary index. Its aim must be to anticipate every possible question with which a reader might approach the past, and direct him to the answer. Even, it might be, he would want details more elaborate than we give. If so, we must direct him where to find them. Professional index-makers were therefore summoned to our help, a complete and readable chronology was appended to each volume, and the final volume of the series was turned over to the indexers entirely. We believe their work will prove not the least valuable feature of the whole. Briefly, the Index Volume contains: 1. A complete list of the Great Events of the world's history. Opposite each event are given the date, the name of the author and standard work from which our account is selected, and a number of references to other works and to a short discussion of these in our Bibliography. Thus the reader may pursue an extended course of study on each particular event. 2. A bibliography of the best general histories of ancient, mediæval, and modern times, and of important political, religious, and educational movements; also a bibliography of the best historical works dealing with each nation, and arranged under the following subdivisions: (_a_) The general history of the nation; (_b_) special periods in its career; (_c_) the descriptions of the people, their civilization and institutions. On each work thus mentioned there is a critical comment with suggestions to readers. This bibliography is designed chiefly for those who desire to pursue more extended courses of reading, and it offers them the experience and guidance of those who have preceded them on their special field. 3. A classified index of famous historic characters. The names are grouped under such headings as "Rulers, Statesmen, and Patriots," "Famous Women," "Military and Naval Commanders," "Philosophers and Teachers," "Religious Leaders," etc. Under each person's name is given a biographical chronology of his career, showing every important event in which he played a part, together with the date of the event, and the volume and page of this series where a full account of it may be found. This plan provides a new and very valuable means of reading the biography of any noted personage, one of the great advantages being that the accounts of the various events in his life are not all in the language of the same author, not written by a man anxious to bring out the importance of his special hero. The writers are mainly interested in the event, and show the hero only in his true and unexaggerated relation to it. Under each name will also be found references to such further authorities on the biography of the personage as may be consulted with profit by those students and scholars who wish to pursue an exhaustive study of his career. 4. A biographical index of the authors represented in the series. This consists of brief sketches of the many writers whose work has been drawn upon for the narratives of Great Events. It is intended for ready reference, and gives only the essential facts. This index serves a double purpose. Suppose, for instance, that a reader is familiar with the name of John Lothrop Motley, but happens not to know whether he is still living, whether he had other occupation than writing, or what offices he held. This index will answer these questions. On the other hand, an admirer of Thomas Jefferson or Theodore Roosevelt may wish to know whether we have taken anything--and, if so, what--from their writings. This index will answer at once. 5. A general index covering every reference in the series to dates, events, persons, and places of historic importance. These are made easily accessible by a careful and elaborate system of cross-references. 6. A separate and complete chronology of each nation of ancient, mediæval, and modern times, with references to the volume and page where each item is treated, either as an entire article or as part of one; so that the history of any one nation may be read in its logical order and in the language of its best historians. Such, as the National Alumni regard it, are the general character, wide scope, and earnest purpose of THE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS. Let us end by saying, in the friendly fashion of the old days when bookmakers and their readers were more intimate than now: "Kind reader, if this our performance doth in aught fall short of promise, blame not our good intent, but our unperfect wit." THE NATIONAL ALUMNI. AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, CONNECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE GREAT EVENTS A GENERAL SURVEY OF THE PROGRESS OF THE HUMAN RACE, ITS ADVANCE IN KNOWLEDGE AND CIVILIZATION, AND THE BROAD WORLD MOVEMENTS WHICH HAVE SHAPED ITS DESTINY CHARLES F. HORNE, Ph.D. CONTINUED THROUGH THE SUCCESSIVE VOLUMES AND COVERING THE SUCCESSIVE PERIODS OF THE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, CONNECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE GREAT EVENTS (FROM THE BEGINNING TO THE OVERTHROW OF THE PERSIANS) CHARLES F. HORNE History, if we define it as the mere transcription of the written records of former generations, can go no farther back than the time such records were first made, no farther than the art of writing. But now that we have come to recognize the great earth itself as a story-book, as a keeper of records buried one beneath the other, confused and half obliterated, yet not wholly beyond our comprehension, now the historian may fairly be allowed to speak of a far earlier day. For unmeasured and immeasurable centuries man lived on earth a creature so little removed from "the beasts that die," so little superior to them, that he has left no clearer record than they of his presence here. From the dry bones of an extinct mammoth or a plesiosaur, Cuvier reconstructed the entire animal and described its habits and its home. So, too, looking on an ancient, strange, scarce human skull, dug from the deeper strata beneath our feet, anatomists tell us that the owner was a man indeed, but one little better than an ape. A few æons later this creature leaves among his bones chipped flints that narrow to a point; and the archæologist, taking up the tale, explains that man has become tool-using, he has become intelligent beyond all the other animals of earth. Physically he is but a mite amid the beast monsters that surround him, but by value of his brain he conquers them. He has begun his career of mastery. If we delve amid more recent strata, we find the flint weapons have become bronze. Their owner has learned to handle a ductile metal, to draw it from the rocks and fuse it in the fire. Later still he has discovered how to melt the harder and more useful iron. We say roughly, therefore, that man passed through a stone age, a bronze age, and then an iron age. Somewhere, perhaps in the earliest of these, he began to build rude houses. In the next, he drew pictures. During the latest, his pictures grew into an alphabet of signs, his structures developed into vast and enduring piles of brick or stone. Buildings and inscriptions became his relics, more like to our own, more fully understandable, giving us a sense of closer kinship with his race. SOURCES OF EARLY KNOWLEDGE There are three different lines along which we have succeeded in securing some knowledge of these our distant ancestors, three telephones from the past, over which they send to us confused and feeble murmurings, whose fascination makes only more maddening the vagueness of their speech. First, we have the picture-writings, whether of Central America, of Egypt, of Babylonia, or of other lands. These when translatable bring us nearest of all to the heart of the great past. It is the mind, the thought, the spoken word, of man that is most intimately he; not his face, nor his figure, nor his clothes. Unfortunately, the translation of these writings is no easy task. Those of Central America are still an unsolved riddle. Those of Babylon have been slowly pieced together like a puzzle, a puzzle to which the learned world has given its most able thought. Yet they are not fully understood. In Egypt we have had the luck to stumble on a clew, the Rosetta Stone, which makes the ancient writing fairly clear.[1] [Footnote 1: See page 1 for an engraving and account of this famous stone. It was found over a century ago and its value was instantly recognized, but many years passed before its secrets were deciphered. It contains an inscription repeated in three forms of writing: the early Egyptian of the hieroglyphics, a later Egyptian (the demotic), and Greek.] Where this mode of communication fails, we turn to another which carries us even farther into the past. The records which have been less intentionally preserved, not only the buildings themselves, but their decorations, the personal ornaments of men, idols, coins, every imaginable fragment, chance escaped from the maw of time, has its own story for our reading. In Egypt we have found deep-hidden, secret tombs, and, intruding on their many centuries of silence, have reaped rich harvests of knowledge from the garnered wealth. In Babylonia the rank vegetation had covered whole cities underneath green hillocks, and preserved them till our modern curiosity delved them out. To-day, he who wills, may walk amid the halls of Sennacherib, may tread the streets whence Abraham fled, ay, he may gaze upon the handiwork of men who lived perhaps as far before Abraham as we ourselves do after him. Nor are our means of penetrating the past even thus exhausted. A third chain yet more subtle and more marvellous has been found to link us to an ancestry immeasurably remote. This unbroken chain consists of the words from our own mouths. We speak as our fathers spoke; and they did but follow the generations before. Occasional pronunciations have altered, new words have been added, and old ones forgotten; but some basal sounds of names, some root-thoughts of the heart, have proved as immutable as the superficial elegancies are changeful. "Father" and "mother" mean what they have meant for uncounted ages. Comparative philology, the science which compares one language with another to note the points of similarity between them, has discovered that many of these root-sounds are alike in almost all the varied tongues of Europe. The resemblance is too common to be the result of coincidence, too deep-seated to be accounted for by mere communication between the nations. We have gotten far beyond the possibility of such explanations; and science says now with positive confidence that there must have been a time when all these nations were but one, that their languages are all but variations of the tongue their distant ancestors once held in common. Study has progressed beyond this point, can tell us far more intricate and fainter facts. It argues that one by one the various tribes left their common home and became completely separated; and that each root-sound still used by all the nations represents an idea, an object, they already possessed before their dispersal. Thus we can vaguely reconstruct that ancient, aboriginal civilization. We can even guess which tribes first broke away, and where again these wanderers subdivided, and at what stage of progress. Surely a fascinating science this! And in its infancy! If its later development shall justify present promise, it has still strange tales to tell us in the future. THE RACES OF MAN Turn now from this tracing of our means of knowledge, to speak of the facts they tell us. When our humankind first become clearly visible they are already divided into races, which for convenience we speak of as white, yellow, and black. Of these the whites had apparently advanced farthest on the road to civilization; and the white race itself had become divided into at least three varieties, so clearly marked as to have persisted through all the modern centuries of communication and intermarriage. Science is not even able to say positively that these varieties or families had a common origin. She inclines to think so; but when all these later ages have failed to obliterate the marks of difference, what far longer period of separation must have been required to establish them! These three clearly outlined families of the whites are the Hamites, of whom the Egyptians are the best-known type; the Semites, as represented by ancient Babylonians and modern Jews and Arabs; and the great Aryan or Indo-European family, once called the Japhites, and including Hindus, Persians, Greeks, Latins, the modern Celtic and Germanic races, and even the Slavs or Russians. The Egyptians, when we first see them, are already well advanced toward civilization.[2] To say that they were the first people to emerge from barbarism is going much further than we dare. Their records are the most ancient that have come clearly down to us; but there may easily have been other social organisms, other races, to whom the chances of time and nature have been less gentle. Cataclysms may have engulfed more than one Atlantis; and few climates are so fitted for the preservation of man's buildings as is the rainless valley of the Nile. [Footnote 2: See the _Dawn of Civilization_, page 1.] Moreover, the Egyptians may not have been the earliest inhabitants even of their own rich valley. We find hints that they were wanderers, invaders, coming from the East, and that with the land they appropriated also the ideas, the inventions, of an earlier negroid race. But whatever they took they added to, they improved on. The idea of futurity, of man's existence beyond the grave, became prominent among them; and in the absence of clearer knowledge we may well take this idea as the groundwork, the starting-point, of all man's later and more striking progress. Since the Egyptians believed in a future life they strove to preserve the body for it, and built ever stronger and more gigantic tombs. They strove to fit the mind for it, and cultivated virtues, not wholly animal such as physical strength, nor wholly commercial such as cunning. They even carved around the sepulchre of the departed a record of his doings, lest they--and perhaps he too in that next life--forget. There were elements of intellectual growth in all this, conditions to stimulate the mind beyond the body. And the Egyptians did develop. If one reads the tales, the romances, that have survived from their remoter periods, he finds few emotions higher than childish curiosity or mere animal rage and fear. Amid their latest stories, on the contrary, we encounter touches of sentiment, of pity and self-sacrifice, such as would even now be not unworthy of praise. But, alas! the improvement seems most marked where it was most distant. Perhaps the material prosperity of the land was too great, the conditions of life too easy; there was no stimulus to effort, to endeavor. By about the year 2200 B.C. we find Egypt fallen into the grip of a cold and lifeless formalism. Everything was fixed by law; even pictures must be drawn in a certain way, thoughts must be expressed by stated and unvariable symbols. Advance became well-nigh impossible. Everything lay in the hands of a priestly caste the completeness of whose dominion has perhaps never been matched in history. The leaders lived lives of luxurious pleasure enlightened by scientific study; but the people scarce existed except as automatons. The race was dead; its true life, the vigor of its masses, was exhausted, and the land soon fell an easy prey to every spirited invader. Meanwhile a rougher, stronger civilization was growing in the river valleys eastward from the Nile. The Semitic tribes, who seem to have had their early seat and centre of dispersion somewhere in this region, were coalescing into nations, Babylonians along the lower Tigris and Euphrates, Assyrians later along the upper rivers, Hebrews under David and Solomon[3] by the Jordan, Phoenicians on the Mediterranean coast. [Footnote 3: See _Accession of Solomon_, page 92.] The early Babylonian civilization may antedate even the Egyptian; but its monuments were less permanent, its rulers less anxious for the future. The "appeal to posterity," the desire for a posthumous fame, seems with them to have been slower of conception. True, the first Babylonian monarchs of whom we have any record, in an era perhaps over five thousand years before Christianity, stamped the royal signet on every brick of their walls and temples. But common-sense suggests that this was less to preserve their fame than to preserve their bricks. Theft is no modern innovation. They were a mathematical race, these Babylonians. In fact, Semite and mathematician are names that have been closely allied through all the course of history, and one cannot help but wish our Aryan race had somewhere lived through an experience which would produce in them the exactitude in balance and measurement of facts that has distinguished the Arabs and the Jews. The Babylonians founded astronomy and chronology; they recorded the movements of the stars, and divided their year according to the sun and moon. They built a vast and intricate network of canals to fertilize their land; and they arranged the earliest system of legal government, the earliest code of laws, that has come down to us.[4] [Footnote 4: _Compilation of the Earliest Code_, page 14.] The sciences, then, arise more truly here than with the Egyptians. Man here began to take notice, to record and to classify the facts of nature. We may count this the second visible step in his great progress. Never again shall we find him in a childish attitude of idle wonder. Always is his brain alert, striving to understand, self-conscious of its own power over nature. It may have been wealth and luxury that enfeebled the Babylonians as, it did the Egyptians. At any rate, their empire was overturned by a border colony of their own, the Assyrians, a rough and hardy folk who had maintained themselves for centuries battling against tribes from the surrounding mountains. It was like a return to barbarism when about B.C. 880 the Assyrians swept over the various Semite lands. Loud were the laments of the Hebrews; terrible the tales of cruelty; deep the scorn with which the Babylonians submitted to the rude conquerors. We approach here a clearer historic period; we can trace with plainness the devastating track of war;[5] we can read the boastful triumph of the Assyrian chiefs, can watch them step by step as they adopt the culture and the vices of their new subjects, growing ever more graceful and more enfeebled, until they too are overthrown by a new and hardier race, the Persians, an Aryan folk. [Footnote 5: See _Rise and Fall of Assyria_, page 105.] Before turning to this last and most prominent family of humankind, let us look for a moment at the other, darker races, seen vaguely as they come in contact with the whites. The negroes, set sharply by themselves in Africa, never seem to have created any progressive civilization of their own, never seem to have advanced further than we find the wild tribes in the interior of the country to-day. But the yellow or Turanian races, the Chinese and Japanese, the Turks and the Tartars, did not linger so helplessly behind. The Chinese, at least, established a social world of their own, widely different from that of the whites, in some respects perhaps superior to it. But the fatal weakness of the yellow civilization was that it was not ennobling like the Egyptian, not scientific like the Babylonian, not adventurous and progressive as we shall find the Aryan. This, of course, is speaking in general terms. Something somewhat ennobling there may be in the contemplations of Confucius;[6] but no man can favorably compare the Chinese character to-day with the European, whether we regard either intensity of feeling, or variety, range, subtlety, and beauty of emotion. So, also, the Chinese made scientific discoveries--but knew not how to apply them or improve them. So also they made conquests--and abandoned them; toiled--and sank back into inertia. [Footnote 6: See _Rise of Confucius_, page 270.] The Japanese present a separate problem, as yet little understood in its earlier stages.[7] As to the Tartars, wild and hardy horsemen roaming over Northern Asia, they kept for ages their independent animal strength and fierceness. They appear and disappear like flashes. They seem to seek no civilization of their own; they threaten again and again to destroy that of all the other races of the globe. Fitly, indeed, was their leader Attila once termed "the Scourge of God." [Footnote 7: See _Prince Jimmu_, page 140.] THE ARYANS Of our own progressive Aryan race, we have no monuments nor inscriptions so old as those of the Hamites and the Semites. What comparative philology tells is this: An early, if not the original, home of the Aryans was in Asia, to the eastward of the Semites, probably in the mountain district back of modern Persia. That is, they were not, like the other whites, a people of the marsh lands and river valleys. They lived in a higher, hardier, and more bracing atmosphere. Perhaps it was here that their minds took a freer bent, their spirits caught a bolder tone. Wherever they moved they came as conquerors among other races. In their primeval home and probably before the year B.C. 3000, they had already acquired a fair degree of civilization. They built houses, ploughed the land, and ground grain into flour for their baking. The family relations were established among them; they had some social organization and simple form of government; they had learned to worship a god, and to see in him a counterpart of their tribal ruler. From their upland farms they must have looked eastward upon yet higher mountains, rising impenetrable above the snowline; but to north and south and west they might turn to lower regions; and by degrees, perhaps as they grew too numerous for comfort, a few families wandered off along the more inviting routes. Whichever way they started, their adventurous spirit led them on. We find no trace of a single case where hearts failed or strength grew weary and the movement became retrograde, back toward the ancient home. Spreading out, radiating in all directions, it is they who have explored the earth, who have measured it and marked its bounds and penetrated almost to its every corner. It is they who still pant to complete the work so long ago begun. Before B.C. 2000 one of these exuded swarms had penetrated India, probably by way of the Indus River. In the course of a thousand years or so, the intruders expanded and fought their way slowly from the Indus to the Ganges. The earlier and duskier inhabitants gave way before them or became incorporated in the stronger race. A mighty Aryan or Hindu empire was formed in India and endured there until well within historic times. Yet its power faded. Life in the hot and languid tropics tends to weaken, not invigorate, the sinews of a race. Then, too, a formal religion, a system of castes[8] as arbitrary as among the Egyptians, laid its paralyzing grip upon the land. About B.C. 600 Buddhism, a new and beautiful religion, sought to revive the despairing people; but they were beyond its help.[9] Their slothful languor had become too deep. From having been perhaps the first and foremost and most civilized of the Aryan tribes, the Hindus sank to be degenerate members of the race. We shall turn to look on them again in a later period; but they will be seen in no favorable light. [Footnote 8: See _The Formation of the Castes_, page 52.] [Footnote 9: See _The Foundation of Buddhism_, page 160.] Meanwhile other wanderers from the Aryan home appear to the north and west. Perhaps even the fierce Tartars are an Aryan race, much altered from long dwelling among the yellow peoples. One tribe, the Persians, moved directly west, and became neighbors of the already noted Semitic group. After long wars backward and forward, bringing us well within the range of history, the Persians proved too powerful for the whole Semite group. They helped destroy Assyria,[10] they overthrew the second Babylonian empire which Nebuchadnezzar had built up, and then, pressing on to the conquest of Egypt, they swept the Hamites too from their place of sovereignty.[11] [Footnote 10: See _Destruction of Nineveh_, page 105.] [Footnote 11: See _Conquests of Cyrus_, page 250.] How surely do those tropic lands avenge themselves on each new savage horde of invaders from the hardy North. It is not done in a generation, not in a century, perhaps. But drop by drop the vigorous, tingling, Arctic blood is sapped away. Year after year the lazy comfort, the loose pleasure, of the south land fastens its curse upon the mighty warriors. As we watch the Persians, we see their kings go mad, or become effeminate tyrants sending underlings to do their fighting for them. We see the whole race visibly degenerate, until one questions if Marathon[12] were after all so marvellous a victory, and suspects that at whatever point the Persians had begun their advance on Europe they would have been easily hurled back. [Footnote 12: See _The Battle of Marathon_, page 322.] It was in Europe only that the Aryan wanderers found a temperate climate, a region similar to that in which they had been bred. Recent speculation has even suggested that Europe was their primeval home, from which they had strayed toward Asia, and to which they now returned. Certainly it is in Europe that the race has continued to develop. Earliest of these Aryan waves to take possession of their modern heritage, were the Celts, who must have journeyed over the European continent at some dim period too remote even for a guess. Then came the Greeks and Latins, closely allied tribes, representing possibly a single migration, that spread westward along the islands and peninsulas of the Mediterranean. The Teutons may have left Asia before B.C. 1000, for they seem to have reached their German forests by three centuries beyond that time, and these vast migratory movements were very slow. The latest Aryan wave, that of the Slavs, came well within historic times. We almost fancy we can see its movement. Russian statesmen, indeed, have hopes that this is not yet completed. They dream that they, the youngest of the peoples, are yet to dominate the whole. THE GREEKS AND LATINS Of these European Aryans the only branches that come within the limits of our present period, that become noteworthy before B.C. 480, are the Greeks and Latins. Their languages tell us that they formed but a single tribe long after they became separated from the other peoples of their race. Finally, however, the Latins, journeying onward, lost sight of their friends, and it must have taken many centuries of separation for the two tongues to grow so different as they were when Greeks and Romans, each risen to a mighty nation, met again. The Greeks, or Hellenes as they called themselves, seem to have been only one of a number of kindred tribes who occupied not only the shores of the Ægean, but Thrace, Macedonia, a considerable part of Asia Minor, and other neighboring regions. The Greeks developed in intellect more rapidly than their neighbors, outdistanced them in the race for civilization, forgot these poor relations, and grouped them with the rest of outside mankind under the scornful name "barbarians." Why it was that the Greeks were thus specially stimulated beyond their brethren we do not know. It has long been one of the commonplaces of history to declare them the result of their environment. It is pointed out that in Greece they lived amid precipitous mountains, where, as hunters, they became strong and venturesome, independent and self-reliant. A sea of islands lay all around; and while an open ocean might only have awed and intimidated them, this ever-luring prospect of shore beyond shore rising in turn on the horizon made them sailors, made them friendly traffickers among themselves. Always meeting new faces, driving new bargains, they became alert, quick-witted, progressive, the foremost race of all the ancient world. They do not seem to have been a creative folk. They only adapted and carried to a higher point what they learned from the older nations with whom they now came in contact. Phoenicia supplied them with an alphabet, and they began the writing of books. Egypt showed them her records, and, improving on her idea, they became historians. So far as we know, the earliest real "histories" were written in Greece; that is, the earliest accounts of a whole people, an entire series of events, as opposed to the merely individual statements on the Egyptian monuments, the personal, boastful clamor of some king. Before we reach this period of written history we know that the Greeks had long been civilized. Their own legends scarce reach back farther than the first founding of Athens,[13] which they place about B.C. 1500. Yet recent excavations in Crete have revealed the remains of a civilization which must have antedated that by several centuries. [Footnote 13: See _Theseus Founds Athens_, page 45.] But we grope in darkness! The most ancient Greek book that has come down to us is the _Iliad_, with its tale of the great war against Troy.[14] Critics will not permit us to call the _Iliad_ a history, because it was not composed, or at least not written down, until some centuries after the events of which it tells. Moreover, it poetizes its theme, doubtless enlarges its pictures, brings gods and goddesses before our eyes, instead of severely excluding everything except what the blind bard perchance could personally vouch for. [Footnote 14: See _Fall of Troy_, page 70.] Still both the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ are good enough history for most of us, in that they give a full, outline of Grecian life and society as Homer knew it. We see the little, petty states, with their chiefs all-powerful, and the people quite ignored. We see the heroes driving to battle in their chariots, guarded by shield and helmet, flourishing sword and spear. We learn what Ulysses did not know of foreign lands.. We hear Achilles' famed lament amid the dead, and note the vague glimmering idea of a future life, which the Greeks had caught perhaps from the Egyptians, perhaps from the suggestive land of dreams. With the year B.C. 776 we come in contact with a clear marked chronology. The Greeks themselves reckoned from that date by means of olympiads or intervals between the Olympic games. The story becomes clear. The autocratic little city kings, governing almost as they pleased, have everywhere been displaced by oligarchies. The few leading nobles may name one of themselves to bear rule, but the real power lies divided among the class. Then, with the growing prominence of the Pythian games[15] we come upon a new stage of national development. The various cities begin to form alliances, to recognize the fact that they may be made safer and happier by a larger national life. The sense of brotherhood begins to extend beyond the circle of personal acquaintance. [Footnote 15: See _Pythian Games at Delphi_, page 181.] This period was one of lawmaking, of experimenting. The traditions, the simple customs of the old kingly days, were no longer sufficient for the guidance of the larger cities, the more complicated circles of society, which were growing up. It was no longer possible for a man who did not like his tribe to abandon it and wander elsewhere with his family and herds. The land was too fully peopled for that. The dissatisfied could only endure and grumble and rebel. One system of law after another was tried and thrown aside. The class on whom in practice a rule bore most hard, would refuse longer assent to it. There were uprisings, tumults, bloody frays. Sparta, at this time the most prominent of the Greek cities, evolved a code which made her in some ways the wonder of ancient days. The state was made all-powerful; it took entire possession of the citizen, with the purpose of making him a fighter, a strong defender of himself and of his country. His home life was almost obliterated, or, if you like, the whole city was made one huge family. All men ate in common; youth was severely restrained; its training was all for physical hardihood. Modern socialism, communism, have seldom ventured further in theory than the Spartans went in practice. The result seems to have been the production of a race possessed of tremendous bodily power and courage, but of stunted intellectual growth. The great individual minds of Greece, the thinkers, the creators, did not come from Sparta. In Athens a different _régime_ was meanwhile developing Hellenes of another type. A realization of how superior the Greeks were to earlier races, of what vast strides man was making in intelligence and social organization, can in no way be better gained than by comparing the law code of the Babylonian Hammurabi with that of Solon in Athens.[16] A period of perhaps sixteen hundred years separates the two, but the difference in their mental power is wider still. [Footnote 16: See _Solon's Legislation_, page 203, and _Compilation of the Earliest Code_, page 14.] While the Greeks were thus forging rapidly ahead, their ancient kindred, the Latins, were also progressing, though at a rate less dazzling. The true date of Rome's founding we do not know. Her own legends give B.C. 753.[17] But recent excavations on the Palatine hill show that it was already fortified at a much earlier period. Rome, we believe, was originally a frontier fortress erected by the Latins to protect them from the attacks of the non-Aryan races among whom they had intruded. This stronghold became ever more numerously peopled, until it grew into an individual state separate from the other Latin cities. [Footnote 17: See _The Foundation of Rome_, page 116.] The Romans passed through the vicissitudes which we have already noted in Greece as characteristic of the Aryan development. The early war leader became an absolute king, his power tended to become hereditary, but its abuse roused the more powerful citizens to rebellion, and the kingdom vanished in an oligarchy.[18] This last change occurred in Rome about B.C. 510, and it was attended by such disasters that the city sank back into a condition that was almost barbarous when compared with her opulence under the Tarquin kings. [Footnote 18: See _Rome Established as a Republic_, page 300.] It was soon after this that the Persians, ignorant of their own decadence, and dreaming still of world power, resolved to conquer the remaining little states lying scarce known along the boundaries of their empire. They attacked the Greeks, and at Marathon (B.C. 490) and Salamis (B.C. 480) were hurled back and their power broken.[19] [Footnote 19: See _Battle of Marathon_, page 322, and _Invasion of Greece_, page 354.] This was a world event, one of the great turning points, a decision that could not have been otherwise if man was really to progress. The degenerate, enfeebled, half-Semitized Aryans of Asia were not permitted to crush the higher type which was developing in Europe. The more vigorous bodies and far abler brains of the Greeks enabled them to triumph over all the hordes of their opponents. The few conquered the many; and the following era became one of European progress, not of Asiatic stagnation. (FOR THE NEXT SECTION OF THIS GENERAL SURVEY SEE VOLUME II.) DAWN OF CIVILIZATION B.C. 5867[20] G.C.C. MASPERO It is a far cry to hark back to 11,000 years before Christ, yet borings in the valley of the Nile, whence comes the first recorded history of the human race, have unveiled to the light pottery and other relics of civilization that, at the rate of deposits of the Nile, must have taken at least that number of years to cover. [Footnote 20: Champollion.] Nature takes countless thousands of years to form and build up her limestone hills, but buried deep in these we find evidences of a stone age wherein man devised and made himself edged tools and weapons of rudely chipped stone. These shaped, edged implements, we have learned, were made by white-heating a suitable flint or stone and tracing thereon with cold water the pattern desired, just as practised by the Indians of the American continent, and in our day by the manufacturers of ancient (_sic_) arrow-, spear-, and axe-heads. This shows a civilization that has learned the method of artificially producing fire, and its uses. Egypt is the monumental land of the earth, as the Egyptians are the monumental people of history. The first human monarch to reign over all Egypt was Menes, the founder of Memphis. As the gate of Africa, Egypt has always held an important position in world-politics. Its ancient wealth and power were enormous. Inclusive of the Soudan, its population is now more than eight millions. Its present importance is indicated by its relations to England. Historians vary in their compilations of Egyptian chronology. The epoch of Menes is fixed by Bunsen at B.C. 3643, by Lepsius at B.C. 3892, and by Poole at B.C. 2717. Before Menes Egypt was divided into independent kingdoms. It has always been a country of mysteries, with the mighty Nile, and its inundations, so little understood by the ancients; its trackless desert; its camels and caravans; its tombs and temples; its obelisks and pyramids, its groups of gods: Ra, Osiris, Isis, Apis, Horus, Hathor--the very names breathe suggestions of mystery, cruelty, pomp, and power. In the sciences and in the industrial arts the ancient Egyptians were highly cultivated. Much Egyptian literature has come down to us, but it is unsystematic and entirely devoid of style, being without lofty ideas or charms. In art, however, Egypt may be placed next to Greece, particularly in architecture. The age of the Pyramid-builders was a brilliant one. They prove the magnificence of the kings and the vast amount of human labor at their disposal. The regal power at that time was very strong. The reign of Khufu or Cheops is marked by the building of the great pyramid. The pyramids were the tombs of kings, built in the necropolis of Memphis, ten miles above the modern Cairo. Security was the object as well as splendor. As remarked by a great Egyptologist, the whole life of the Egyptian was spent in the contemplation of death; thus the tomb became the concrete thought. The belief of the ancient Egyptian was that so long as his body remained intact so was his immortality; whence arose the embalming of the great, and hence the immense structures of stone to secure the inviolability of the entombed monarch. The monuments have as yet yielded no account of the events which tended to unite Egypt under the rule of one man; we can only surmise that the feudal principalities had gradually been drawn together into two groups, each of which formed a separate kingdom. Heliopolis became the chief focus in the north, from which civilization radiated over the wet plain and the marshes of the Delta. Its colleges of priests had collected, condensed, and arranged the principal myths of the local regions; the Ennead to which it gave conception would never have obtained the popularity which we must acknowledge it had, if its princes had not exercised, for at least some period, an actual suzerainty over the neighboring plains. It was around Heliopolis that the kingdom of Lower Egypt was organized; everything there bore traces of Heliopolitan theories--the protocol of the kings, their supposed descent from Ra, and the enthusiastic worship which they offered to the sun. The Delta, owing to its compact and restricted area, was aptly suited for government from one centre; the Nile valley proper, narrow, tortuous, and stretching like a thin strip on either bank of the river, did not lend itself to so complete a unity. It, too, represented a single kingdom, having the reed and the lotus for its emblems; but its component parts were more loosely united, its religion was less systematized, and it lacked a well-placed city to serve as a political and sacerdotal centre. Hermopolis contained schools of theologians who certainly played an important part in the development of myths and dogmas; but the influence of its rulers was never widely felt. In the south, Siut disputed their supremacy, and Heracleopolis stopped their road to the north. These three cities thwarted and neutralized one another, and not one of them ever succeeded in obtaining a lasting authority over Upper Egypt. Each of the two kingdoms had its own natural advantages and its system of government, which gave to it a peculiar character, and stamped it, as it were, with a distinct personality down to its latest days. The kingdom of Upper Egypt was more powerful, richer, better populated, and was governed apparently by more active and enterprising rulers. It is to one of the latter, Mini or Menes of Thinis, that tradition ascribes the honor of having fused the two Egypts into a single empire, and of having inaugurated the reign of the human dynasties. Thinis figured in the historic period as one of the least of Egyptian cities. It barely maintained an existence on the left bank of the Nile, if not on the exact spot now occupied by Girgeh, at least only a short distance from it. The principality of the Osirian Reliquary, of which it was the metropolis, occupied the valley from one mountain to the other, and gradually extended across the desert as far as the Great Theban Oasis. Its inhabitants worshipped a sky-god, Anhuri, or rather two twin gods, Anhuri-shu, who were speedily amalgamated with the solar deities and became a warlike personification of Ra. Anhuri-shu, like all other solar manifestations, came to be associated with a goddess having the form or head of a lioness--a Sokhit, who took for the occasion the epithet of Mihit, the northern one. Some of the dead from this city are buried on the other side of the Nile, near the modern village of Mesheikh, at the foot of the Arabian chain, whose deep cliffs here approach somewhat near the river: the principal necropolis was at some distance to the east, near the sacred town of Abydos. It would appear that, at the outset, Abydos was the capital of the country, for the entire nome bore the same name as the city, and had adopted for its symbol the representation of the reliquary in which the god reposed. In very early times Abydos fell into decay, and resigned its political rank to Thinis, but its religious importance remained unimpaired. The city occupied a long and narrow strip between the canal and the first slopes of the Libyan mountains. A brick fortress defended it from the incursions of the Bedouin, and beside it the temple of the god of the dead reared its naked walls. Here Anhuri, having passed from life to death, was worshipped under the name of Khontamentit, the chief of that western region whither souls repair on quitting this earth. It is impossible to say by what blending of doctrines or by what political combinations this Sun of the Night came to be identified with Osiris of Mendes, since the fusion dates back to a very remote antiquity; it had become an established fact long before the most ancient sacred books were compiled. Osiris Khontamentit grew rapidly in popular favor, and his temple attracted annually an increasing number of pilgrims. The Great Oasis had been considered at first as a sort of mysterious paradise, whither the dead went in search of peace and happiness. It was called Uit, the Sepulchre; this name clung to it after it had become an actual Egyptian province, and the remembrance of its ancient purpose survived in the minds of the people, so that the "cleft," the gorge in the mountain through which the doubles journeyed toward it, never ceased to be regarded as one of the gates of the other world. At the time of the New Year festivals, spirits flocked thither from all parts of the valley; they there awaited the coming of the dying sun, in order to embark with him and enter safely the dominions of Khontamentit. Abydos, even before the historic period, was the only town, and its god the only god, whose worship, practised by all Egyptians, inspired them all with an equal devotion. Did this sort of moral conquest give rise, later on, to a belief in a material conquest by the princes of Thinis and Abydos, or is there an historical foundation for the tradition which ascribes to them the establishment of a single monarchy? It is the Thinite Menes, whom the Theban annalists point out as the ancestor of the glorious Pharaohs of the XVIII dynasty: it is he also who is inscribed in the Memphite chronicles, followed by Manetho, at the head of their lists of human kings, and all Egypt for centuries acknowledged him as its first mortal ruler. It is true that a chief of Thinis may well have borne such a name, and may have accomplished feats which rendered him famous; but on closer examination his pretensions to reality disappear, and his personality is reduced to a cipher. "This Menes, according to the priests, surrounded Memphis with dikes. For the river formerly followed the sand-hills for some distance on the Libyan side. Menes, having dammed up the reach about a hundred stadia to the south of Memphis, caused the old bed to dry up, and conveyed the river through an artificial channel dug midway between the two mountain ranges. "Then Menes, the first who was king, having enclosed a space of ground with dikes, founded that town which is still called Memphis: he then made a lake around it to the north and west, fed by the river; the city he bounded on the east by the Nile." The history of Memphis, such as it can be gathered from the monuments, differs considerably from the tradition current in Egypt at the time of Herodotus. It appears, indeed, that at the outset the site on which it subsequently arose was occupied by a small fortress, Anbu-hazu--the white wall--which was dependent on Heliopolis and in which Phtah possessed a sanctuary. After the "white wall" was separated from the Heliopolitan principality to form a nome by itself it assumed a certain importance, and furnished, so it was said, the dynasties which succeeded the Thinite. Its prosperity dates only, however, from the time when the sovereigns of the V and VI dynasties fixed on it for their residence; one of them, Papi I, there founded for himself and for his "double" after him, a new town, which he called Minnofiru, from his tomb. Minnofiru, which is the correct pronunciation and the origin of Memphis, probably signified "the good refuge," the haven of the good, the burying-place where the blessed dead came to rest beside Osiris. The people soon forgot the true interpretation, or probably it did not fall in with their taste for romantic tales. They rather despised, as a rule, to discover in the beginnings of history individuals from whom the countries or cities with which they were familiar took their names: if no tradition supplied them with this, they did not experience any scruples in inventing one. The Egyptians of the time of the Ptolemies, who were guided in their philological speculations by the pronunciation in vogue around them, attributed the patronship of their city to a Princess Memphis, a daughter of its founder, the fabulous Uchoreus; those of preceding ages before the name had become altered thought to find in Minnofiru or "Mini Nofir," or "Menes the Good," the reputed founder of the capital of the Delta. Menes the Good, divested of his epithet, is none other than Menes, the first king of all Egypt, and he owes his existence to a popular attempt at etymology. The legend which identifies the establishment of the kingdom with the construction of the city, must have originated at a time when Memphis was still the residence of the kings and the seat of government, at latest about the end of the Memphite period. It must have been an old tradition at the time of the Theban dynasties, since they admitted unhesitatingly the authenticity of the statements which ascribed to the northern city so marked a superiority over their own country. When the hero was once created and firmly established in his position, there was little difficulty in inventing a story about him which would portray him as a paragon and an ideal sovereign. He was represented in turn as architect, warrior, and statesman; he had founded Memphis, he had begun the temple of Phtah, written laws and regulated the worship of the gods, particularly that of Hapis, and he had conducted expeditions against the Libyans. When he lost his only son in the flower of his age, the people improvised a hymn of mourning to console him--the "Maneros"--both the words and the tune of which were handed down from generation to generation. He did not, moreover, disdain the luxuries of the table, for he invented the art of serving a dinner, and the mode of eating it in a reclining posture. One day, while hunting, his dogs, excited by something or other, fell upon him to devour him. He escaped with difficulty and, pursued by them, fled to the shore of Lake Moeris, and was there brought to bay; he was on the point of succumbing to them, when a crocodile took him on his back and carried him across to the other side. In gratitude he built a new town, which he called Crocodilopolis, and assigned to it for its god the crocodile which had saved him; he then erected close to it the famous labyrinth and a pyramid for his tomb. Other traditions show him in a less favorable light. They accuse him of having, by horrible crimes, excited against him the anger of the gods, and allege that after a reign of sixty-two years he was killed by a hippopotamus which came forth from the Nile. They also relate that the Saite Tafnakhti, returning from an expedition against the Arabs, during which he had been obliged to renounce the pomp and luxuries of life, had solemnly cursed him, and had caused his imprecations to be inscribed upon a "stele"[21] set up in the temple of Amon at Thebes. Nevertheless, in the memory that Egypt preserved of its first Pharaoh, the good outweighed the evil. He was worshipped in Memphis, side by side with Phtah and Ramses II.; his name figured at the head of the royal lists, and his cult continued till the time of the Ptolemies. [Footnote 21: The burned tile showing the impression of the stylus, made on the clay while plastic.--ED.] His immediate successors have only a semblance of reality, such as he had. The lists give the order of succession, it is true, with the years of their reigns almost to a day, sometimes the length of their lives, but we may well ask whence the chroniclers procured so much precise information. They were in the same position as ourselves with regard to these ancient kings: they knew them by a tradition of a later age, by a fragment papyrus fortuitously preserved in a temple, by accidentally coming across some monument bearing their name, and were reduced, as it were, to put together the few facts which they possessed, or to supply such as were wanting by conjectures, often in a very improbable manner. It is quite possible that they were unable to gather from the memory of the past the names of those individuals of which they made up the first two dynasties. The forms of these names are curt and rugged, and indicative of a rude and savage state, harmonizing with the semi-barbaric period to which they are relegated: Ati the Wrestler, Teti the Runner, Qeunqoni the Crusher, are suitable rulers for a people the first duty of whose chief was to lead his followers into battle, and to strike harder than any other man in the thickest of the fight. The inscriptions supply us with proofs that some of these princes lived and reigned:--Sondi, who is classed in the II dynasty, received a continuous worship toward the end of the III dynasty. But did all those who preceded him, and those who followed him, exist as he did? And if they existed, do the order and relation agree with actual truth? The different lists do not contain the same names in the same position; certain Pharaohs are added or suppressed without appreciable reason. Where Manetho inscribes Kenkenes and Ouenephes, the tables of the time of Seti I give us Ati and Ata; Manetho reckons nine kings to the II dynasty, while they register only five. The monuments, indeed, show us that Egypt in the past obeyed princes whom her annalists were unable to classify: for instance, they associated with Sondi a Pirsenu, who is not mentioned in the annals. We must, therefore, take the record of all this opening period of history for what it is--namely, a system invented at a much later date, by means of various artifices and combinations--to be partially accepted in default of a better, but without, according to it, that excessive confidence which it has hitherto received. The two Thinite dynasties, in direct descent from the fabulous Menes, furnish, like this hero himself, only a tissue of romantic tales and miraculous legends in the place of history. A double-headed stork, which had appeared in the first year of Teti, son of Menes, had foreshadowed to Egypt a long prosperity, but a famine under Ouenephes, and a terrible plague under Semempses, had depopulated the country; the laws had been relaxed, great crimes had been committed, and revolts had broken out. During the reign of the Boethos a gulf had opened near Bubastis, and swallowed up many people, then the Nile had flowed with honey for fifteen days in the time of Nephercheres, and Sesochris was supposed to have been a giant in stature. A few details about royal edifices were mixed up with these prodigies. Teti had laid the foundation of the great palace of Memphis, Ouenephes had built the pyramids of Ko-kome near Saqqara. Several of the ancient Pharaohs had published books on theology, or had written treatises on anatomy and medicine; several had made laws called Kakôû, the male of males, or the bull of bulls. They explained his name by the statement that he had concerned himself about the sacred animals; he had proclaimed as gods, Hapis of Memphis, Mnevis of Heliopolis, and the goat of Mendes. After him, Binothris had conferred the right of succession upon all women of the blood-royal. The accession of the III dynasty, a Memphite one according to Manetho, did not at first change the miraculous character of this history. The Libyans had revolted against Necherophes, and the two armies were encamped before each other, when one night the disk of the moon became immeasurably enlarged, to the great alarm of the rebels, who recognized in this phenomenon a sign of the anger of heaven, and yielded without fighting. Tosorthros, the successor of Necherophes, brought the hieroglyphs and the art of stone-cutting to perfection. He composed, as Teti did, books of medicine, a fact which caused him to be identified with the healing god Imhotpu. The priests related these things seriously, and the Greek writers took them down from their lips with the respect which they offered to everything emanating from the wise men of Egypt. What they related of the human kings was not more detailed, as we see, than their accounts of the gods. Whether the legends dealt with deities or kings, all that we know took its origin, not in popular imagination, but in sacerdotal dogma: they were invented long after the times they dealt with, in the recesses of the temples, with an intention and a method of which we are enabled to detect flagrant instances on the monuments. Toward the middle of the third century before our era the Greek troops stationed on the southern frontier, in the forts at the first cataract, developed a particular veneration for Isis of Philæ. Their devotion spread to the superior officers who came to inspect them, then to the whole population of the Thebaid, and finally reached the court of the Macedonian kings. The latter, carried away by force of example, gave every encouragement to a movement which attracted worshippers to a common sanctuary, and united in one cult two races over which they ruled. They pulled down the meagre building of the Saite period, which had hitherto sufficed for the worship of Isis, constructed at great cost the temple which still remains almost intact, and assigned to it considerable possessions in Nubia, which, in addition to gifts from private individuals, made the goddess the richest land-owner in Southern Egypt. Knumu and his two wives, Anukit and Satit, who, before Isis, had been the undisputed suzerains of the cataract, perceived with jealousy their neighbor's prosperity: the civil wars and invasions of the centuries immediately preceding had ruined their temples, and their poverty contrasted painfully with the riches of the new-comer. The priests resolved to lay this sad state of affairs before King Ptolemy, to represent to him the services which they had rendered and still continued to render to Egypt, and above all to remind him of the generosity of the ancient Pharaohs, whose example, owing to the poverty of the times, the recent Pharaohs had been unable to follow. Doubtless authentic documents were wanting in their archives to support their pretensions: they therefore inscribed upon a rock, in the island of Sehel, a long inscription which they attributed to Zosiri of the III dynasty. This sovereign had left behind him a vague reputation for greatness. As early as the XII dynasty Usirtasen III had claimed him as "his father"--his ancestor--and had erected a statue to him; the priests knew that, by invoking him, they had a chance of obtaining a hearing. The inscription which they fabricated set forth that in the eighteenth year of Zosiri's reign he had sent to Madir, lord of Elephantine, a message couched in these terms: "I am overcome with sorrow for the throne, and for those who reside in the palace, and my heart is afflicted and suffers greatly because the Nile has not risen in my time, for the space of eight years. Corn is scarce, there is a lack of herbage, and nothing is left to eat: when any one calls upon his neighbors for help, they take pains not to go. The child weeps, the young man is uneasy, the hearts of the old men are in despair, their limbs are bent, they crouch on the earth, they fold their hands; the courtiers have no further resources; the shops formerly furnished with rich wares are now filled only with air, all that was within them has disappeared. My spirit also, mindful of the beginning of things, seeks to call upon the savior who was here where I am, during the centuries of the gods, upon Thot-Ibis, that great wise one, upon Imhotpu, son of Phtah of Memphis. Where is the place in which the Nile is born? Who is the god or goddess concealed there? What is his likeness?" The lord of Elephantine brought his reply in person. He described to the king, who was evidently ignorant of it, the situation of the island and the rocks of the cataract, the phenomena of the inundation, the gods who presided over it, and who alone could relieve Egypt from her disastrous plight. Zosiri repaired to the temple of the principality and offered the prescribed sacrifices; the god arose, opened his eyes, panted, and cried aloud, "I am Khnumu who created thee!" and promised him a speedy return of a high Nile and the cessation of the famine. Pharaoh was touched by the benevolence which his divine father had shown him; he forthwith made a decree by which he ceded to the temple all his rights of suzerainty over the neighboring nomes within a radius of twenty miles. Henceforward the entire population, tillers and vinedressers, fishermen and hunters, had to yield the tithe of their income to the priests; the quarries could not be worked without the consent of Khnumu, and the payment of a suitable indemnity into his coffers; finally, metals and precious woods, shipped thence for Egypt, had to submit to a toll on behalf of the temple. Did the Ptolemies admit the claims which the local priests attempted to deduce from this romantic tale? and did the god regain possession of the domains and dues which they declared had been his right? The stele shows us with what ease the scribes could forge official documents when the exigencies of daily life forced the necessity upon them; it teaches us at the same time how that fabulous chronicle was elaborated, whose remains have been preserved for us by classical writers. Every prodigy, every fact related by Manetho, was taken from some document analogous to the supposed inscription of Zosiri. The real history of the early centuries, therefore, eludes our researches, and no contemporary record traces for us those vicissitudes which Egypt passed through before being consolidated into a single kingdom, under the rule of one man. Many names, apparently of powerful and illustrious princes, had survived in the memory of the people; these were collected, classified, and grouped in a regular manner into dynasties, but the people were ignorant of any exact facts connected with the names, and the historians, on their own account, were reduced to collect apocryphal traditions for their sacred archives. The monuments of these remote ages, however, cannot have entirely disappeared: they existed in places where we have not as yet thought of applying the pick, and chance excavations will some day most certainly bring them to light. The few which we do possess barely go back beyond the III dynasty: namely, the hypogeum of Shiri, priest of Sondi and Pirsenu; possibly the tomb of Khuithotpu at Saqqara; the Great Sphinx of Gizeh; a short inscription on the rocks of Wady Maghara, which represents Zosiri (the same king of whom the priests of Khnumu in the Greek period made a precedent) working the turquoise or copper mines of Sinai; and finally the step pyramid where this Pharaoh rests. It forms a rectangular mass, incorrectly oriented, with a variation from the true north of 4° 35', 393 ft., 8 in. long from east to west, and 352 ft. deep, with a height of 159 ft. 9 in. It is composed of six cubes, with sloping sides, each being about 13 ft. less in width than the one below it; that nearest to the ground measures 37 ft. 8 in. in height, and the uppermost one 29 ft. 2 in. It was entirely constructed of limestone from neighboring mountains. The blocks are small and badly cut, the stone courses being concave, to offer a better resistance to downward thrust and to shocks of earthquake. When breaches in the masonry are examined, it can be seen that the external surface of the steps has, as it were, a double stone facing, each facing being carefully dressed. The body of the pyramid is solid, the chambers being cut in the rock beneath. These chambers have often been enlarged, restored, and reworked in the course of centuries, and the passages which connect them form a perfect labyrinth into which it is dangerous to venture without a guide. The columned porch, the galleries and halls, all lead to a sort of enormous shaft, at the bottom of which the architect had contrived a hiding-place, destined, no doubt, to contain the more precious objects of the funerary furniture. Until the beginning of this century the vault had preserved its original lining of glazed pottery. Three quarters of the wall surface was covered with green tiles, oblong and lightly convex on the outer side, but flat on the inner: a square projection pierced with a hole served to fix them at the back in a horizontal line by means of flexible wooden rods. Three bands which frame one of the doors are inscribed with the titles of the Pharaoh. The hieroglyphs are raised in either blue, red, green, or yellow, on a fawn-colored ground. The towns, palaces, temples, all the buildings which princes and kings had constructed to be witnesses of their power or piety to future generations, have disappeared in the course of ages, under the feet and before the triumphal blasts of many invading hosts: the pyramid alone has survived, and the most ancient of the historic monuments of Egypt is a tomb. COMPILATION OF THE EARLIEST CODE B.C. 2250 HAMMURABI The foundation of all law-making in Babylonia from about the middle of the twenty-third century B.C. to the fall of the empire was the code of Hammurabi, the first king of all Babylonia. He expelled invaders from his dominions, cemented the union of north and south Babylonia, made Babylon the capital, and thus consolidated an empire which endured for almost twenty centuries. The code which he compiled is the oldest known in history, older by nearly a thousand years than the Mosaic, and of earlier date than the so-called Laws of Manu. It is one of the most important historical landmarks in existence, a document which gives us knowledge not otherwise furnished of the country and people, the civilization and life of a great centre of human action hitherto almost hidden in obscurity. Hammurabi, who is supposed to be identical with Amraphel, a contemporary of Abraham, is regarded as having certainly contributed through his laws to the Hebrew traditions. The discovery of this code has, therefore, a special value in relation to biblical studies, upon which so many other important side-lights have recently been thrown. The discovery was made at Susa, Persia, in December and January, 1901-2, by M. de Morgan's French excavating expedition. The monument on which the laws are inscribed, a stele of black diorite nearly eight feet high, has been fully described by Assyriologists, and the inscription transcribed. It has been completely translated by Dr. Hugo Winckler, whose translation (in _Die Gesetze Hammurabis_, Band IV, Heft 4, of _Der Alte Orient_) furnishes the basis of the version herewith presented. Following an autobiographic preface, the text of the code contains two hundred and eighty edicts and an epilogue. To readers of the code who are familiar with the Hebrew Scriptures many biblical parallels will occur. When Anu the Sublime, king of the Anunaki, and Bel [god of the earth], the Lord of Heaven and earth, who decreed the fate of the land, assigned to Marduk [or Merodach, the great god of Babylon] the over-ruling son of Ea [god of the waters], God of righteousness, dominion over earthly man, and made him great among the Igigi, they called Babylon by his illustrious name, made it great on earth, and founded an everlasting kingdom in it [Babylon], whose foundations are laid so solidly as those of heaven and earth; then Anu and Bel called by name me, Hammurabi, the exalted prince, who feared God, to bring about the rule of righteousness in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil-doers; so that the strong should not harm the weak; so that I should rule over the black-headed people like Shamash [the sun-god], and enlighten the land, to further the well-being of mankind. Hammurabi, the prince, called of Bel am I, making riches and increase, enriching Nippur and Dur-ilu beyond compare, sublime patron of E-kur [temple of Bel in Nippur, the seat of Bel's worship]; who reëstablished Eridu and purified the worship of E-apsu [temple of Ea, at Eridu, the chief seat of Ea's worship]; who conquered the four quarters of the world, made great the name of Babylon, rejoiced the heart of Marduk, his lord who daily pays his devotions in Saggil [Marduk's temple in Babylon]; the royal scion whom Sin made; who enriched Ur [Abraham's birthplace, the seat of the worship of Sin, the moon-god]; the humble, the reverent, who brings wealth to Gish-shir-gal; the white king, heard of Shamash, the mighty, who again laid the foundations of Sippana [seat of worship of Shamash and his wife, Malkat]; who clothed the gravestones of Malkat with green [symbolizing the resurrection of nature]; who made E-babbar [temple of the sun in Sippara] great, which is like the heavens; the warrior who guarded Larsa and renewed E-babbar [temple of the sun in Larsa, biblical Elassar, in Southern Babylonia], with Shamash as his helper; the lord who granted new life to Uruk [biblical Erech], who brought plenteous water to its inhabitants, raised the head of E-anna [temple of Ishtar-Nana at Uruk], and perfected the beauty of Anu and Nana; shield of the land, who reunited the scattered inhabitants of Isin; who richly endowed E-gal-mach [temple of Isin]; the protecting king of the city, brother of the god Zamama [god of Kish]; who firmly founded the farms of Kish, crowned E-me-te-ursag [sister city of Kish] with glory, redoubled the great holy treasures of Nana, managed the temple of Harsag-kalama [temple of Nergal at Cuthah]; the grave of the enemy, whose help brought about the victory; who increased the power of Cuthah; made all glorious in E-shidlam [a temple], the black steer [title of Marduk] who gored the enemy; beloved of the god Nebo, who rejoiced the inhabitants of Borsippa, the Sublime; who is indefatigable for E-zida [temple of Nebo in Babylon]; the divine king of the city; the White, Wise; who broadened the fields of Dilbat, who heaped up the harvests for Urash; the Mighty, the lord to whom come sceptre and crown, with which he clothes himself; the Elect of Ma-ma; who fixed the temple bounds of Kesh, who made rich the holy feasts of Nin-tu [goddess of Kesh]; the provident, solicitous, who provided food and drink for Lagash and Girsu, who provided large sacrificial offerings for the temple of Ningirsu [at Lagash]; who captured the enemy, the Elect of the oracle who fulfilled the prediction of Hallab, who rejoiced the heart of Anunit [whose oracle had predicted victory]; the pure prince, whose prayer is accepted by Adad [god of Hallab, with goddess Anunit]; who satisfied the heart of Adad, the warrior, in Karkar, who restored the vessels for worship in E-ud-gal-gal; the king who granted life to the city of Adab; the guide of E-mach; the princely king of the city, the irresistible warrior, who granted life to the inhabitants of Mashkanshabri, and brought abundance to the temple of Shid-lam; the White, Potent, who penetrated the secret cave of the bandits, saved the inhabitants of Malka from misfortune, and fixed their home fast in wealth; who established pure sacrificial gifts for Ea and Dam-gal-nun-na, who made his kingdom everlastingly great; the princely king of the city, who subjected the districts on the Ud-kib-nun-na Canal [Euphrates?] to the sway of Dagon, his Creator; who spared the inhabitants of Mera and Tutul; the sublime prince, who makes the face of Ninni shine; who presents holy meals to the divinity of Nin-a-zu, who cared for its inhabitants in their need, provided a portion for them in Babylon in peace; the shepherd of the oppressed and of the slaves; whose deeds find favor before Anunit, who provided for Anunit in the temple of Dumash in the suburb of Agade; who recognizes the right, who rules by law; who gave back to the city of Assur its protecting god; who let the name of Istar of Nineveh remain in E-mish-mish; the Sublime, who humbles himself before the great gods; successor of Sumula-il; the mighty son of Sin-muballit; the royal scion of Eternity; the mighty monarch, the sun of Babylon, whose rays shed light over the land of Sumer and Akkad; the king, obeyed by the four quarters of the world; Beloved of Ninni, am I. When Marduk sent me to rule over men, to give the protection of right to the land, I did right and righteousness in..., and brought about the well-being of the oppressed. CODE OF LAWS 1. If any one ensnare another, putting a ban upon him, but he cannot prove it, then he that ensnared him shall be put to death. 2. If any one bring an accusation against a man, and the accused go to the river and leap into the river, if he sink in the river his accuser shall take possession of his house. But if the river prove that the accused is not guilty, and he escape unhurt, then he who had brought the accusation shall be put to death, while he who leaped into the river shall take possession of the house that had belonged to his accuser. 3. If any one bring an accusation of any crime before the elders, and does not prove what he has charged, he shall, if it be a capital offence charged, be put to death. 4. If he satisfy the elders to impose a fine of grain or money, he shall receive the fine that the action produces. 5. If a judge try a case, reach a decision and present his judgment in writing; if later error shall appear in his decision, and it be through his own fault, then he shall pay twelve times the fine set by him in the case, and he shall be publicly removed from the judge's bench, and never again shall he sit there to render judgment. 6. If any one steal the property of a temple or of the court, he shall be put to death, and also the one who receives the stolen thing from him shall be put to death. 7. If any one buy from the son or the slave of another man, without witnesses or a contract, silver or gold, a male or female slave, an ox or a sheep, an ass or anything, or if he take it in charge, he is considered a thief and shall be put to death. 8. If any one steal cattle or sheep, or an ass, or a pig or a goat, if it belong to a god or to the court, the thief shall pay thirtyfold therefor; if they belonged to a freed man [of the king] he shall pay tenfold; if the thief has nothing with which to pay he shall be put to death. 9. If any one lose an article, and find it in the possession of another: if the person in whose possession the thing is found say "A merchant sold it to me, I paid for it before witnesses," and if the owner of the thing say "I will bring witnesses who know my property," then shall the purchaser bring the merchant who sold it to him, and the witnesses before whom he bought it, and the owner shall bring witnesses who can identify his property. The judge shall examine their testimony--both of the witnesses before whom the price was paid, and of the witnesses who identify the lost article on oath. The merchant is then proven to be a thief and shall be put to death. The owner of the lost article receives his property, and he who bought it receives the money he paid from the estate of the merchant. 10. If the purchaser does not bring the merchant and the witnesses before whom he bought the article, but its owner bring witnesses who identify it, then the buyer is the thief and shall be put to death, and the owner receives the lost article. 11. If the owner do not bring witnesses to identify the lost article, he is an evil-doer, he has traduced, and shall be put to death. 12. If the witnesses be not at hand, then shall the judge set a limit, at the expiration of six months. If his witnesses have not appeared within the six months, he is an evil-doer, and shall bear the fine of the pending case. 14. If any one steal the minor son of another, he shall be put to death. 15. If any one take a male or female slave of the court, or a male or female slave of a freed man, outside the city gates, he shall be put to death. 16. If any one receive into his house a runaway male or female slave of the court, or of a freedman, and does not bring it out at the public proclamation of the major domus, the master of the house shall be put to death. 17. If any one find a runaway male or female slave in the open country and bring them to their masters, the master of the slaves shall pay him two shekels of silver. 18. If the slave will not give the name of the master, the finder shall bring him to the palace; a further investigation must follow and the slave shall be returned to his master. 19. If he hold the slaves in his house, and they are caught there, he shall be put to death. 20. If the slave that he caught run away from him, then shall he swear to the owners of the slave, and he is free of all blame. 21. If any one break a hole into a house [break in to steal], he shall be put to death before that hole and be buried. 22. If any one is committing a robbery and is caught, then he shall be put to death. 23. If the robber is not caught, then shall he who was robbed claim under oath the amount of his loss; then shall the community, and ... on whose ground and territory and in whose domain it was compensate him for the goods stolen. 24. If persons are stolen, then shall the community and ... pay one mina of silver to their relatives. 25. If fire break out in a house, and some one who comes to put it out, cast his eye upon the property of the owner of the house, and take the property of the master of the house, he shall be thrown into that self-same fire. 26. If a chieftain or a man [common soldier], who has been ordered to go upon the king's highway [for war] does not go, but hires a mercenary, if he withholds the compensation, then shall this officer or man be put to death, and he who represented him shall take possession of his house. 27. If a chieftain or man be caught in the misfortune of the king [captured in battle], and if his fields and garden be given to another and he take possession, if he return and reaches his place, his field and garden shall be returned to him, he shall take it over again. 28. If a chieftain or a man be caught in the misfortune of a king, if his son is able to enter into possession, then the field and garden shall be given to him, he shall take over the fee of his father. 29. If his son is still young, and cannot take possession, a third of the field and garden shall be given to his mother, and she shall bring him up. 30. If a chieftain or a man leave his house, garden and field and hires it out, and some one else takes possession of his house, garden and field and uses it for three years: if the first owner return and claims his house, garden and field, it shall not be given to him, but he who has taken possession of it and used it shall continue to use it. 31. If he hire it out for one year and then return, the house, garden and field shall be given back to him, and he shall take it over again. 32. If a chieftain or a man is captured on the "Way of the King" [in war], and a merchant buy him free, and bring him back to his place; if he have the means in his house to buy his freedom, he shall buy himself free: if he have nothing in his house with which to buy himself free, he shall be bought free by the temple of his community; if there be nothing in the temple with which to buy him free, the court shall buy his freedom. His field, garden and house shall not be given for the purchase of his freedom. 33. If a ... or a ... [from the connection, some man higher in rank than a chieftain] enter himself as withdrawn from the "Way of the King," and send a mercenary as substitute, but withdraw him, then the ... or ... shall be put to death. 34. If a ... [same as in 33] or a ... harm the property of a captain, injure the captain, or take away from the captain a gift presented to him by the king then the ... or ... shall be put to death. 35. If any one buy the cattle or sheep which the king has given to chieftains from him he loses his money. 35. The field, garden and house of a chieftain, of a man, or of one subject to quit-rent, cannot be sold. 37. If any one buy the field, garden and house of a chieftain, man or one subject to quit-rent, his contract tablet of sale shall be broken [declared invalid] and he loses his money. The field, garden and house return to their owners. 38. A chieftain, man or one subject to quit-rent cannot assign his tenure of field, house and garden to his wife or daughter, nor can he assign it for a debt. 39. He may, however, assign a field, garden or house which he has bought, and holds as property, to his wife or daughter or give it for debt. 40. He may sell field, garden and house to a merchant [royal agents] or to any other public official, the buyer holding field, house and garden for its usufruct. 41. If any one fence in the field, garden and house of a chieftain, man or one subject to quit-rent, furnishing the palings therefor; if the chieftain, man or one subject to quit-rent return to field, garden and house, the palings which were given to him become his property. 42. If any one take over a field to till it, and obtain no harvest therefrom, it must be proved that he did no work on the field, and he must deliver grain, just as his neighbor raised, to the owner of the field. 43. If he do not till the field, but let it lie fallow, he shall give grain like his neighbor's to the owner of the field, and the field which he let lie fallow he must plow and sow and return to its owner. 44. If any one take over a waste-lying field to make it arable, but is lazy, and does not make it arable, he shall plow the fallow field in the fourth year, harrow it and till it, and give it back to its owner and for each ten _gan_ [a measure of area] ten _gur_ [dry measure] of grain shall be paid. 45. If a man rent his field for tillage for a fixed rental, and receive the rent of his field, but bad weather come and destroy the harvest, the injury falls upon the tiller of the soil. 46. If he do not receive a fixed rental for his field, but lets it on half or third shares of the harvest, the grain on the field shall be divided proportionately between the tiller and the owner. 47. If the tiller, because he did not succeed in the first year, has had the soil tilled by others, the owner may raise no objection; the field has been cultivated and he receives the harvest according to agreement. 48. If any one owe a debt for a loan, and a storm prostrates the grain, or the harvest fail, or the grain does not grow for lack of water; in that year he need not give his creditor any grain, he washes his debt-tablet in water [a symbolic action indicating the inability to pay] and pays no rent for this year. 49. If any one take money from a merchant, and give the merchant a field tillable for corn or sesame and order him to plant corn or sesame in the field, and to harvest the crop; if the cultivator plant corn or sesame in the field, at the harvest the corn or sesame that is in the field shall belong to the owner of the field and he shall pay corn as rent, for the money he received from the merchant, and the livelihood of the cultivator shall he give to the merchant. 50. If he give a cultivated corn-field or a cultivated sesame-field, the corn or sesame in the field shall belong to the owner of the field, and he shall return the money to the merchant as rent. 51. If he have no money to repay, then he shall pay in corn or sesame in place of the money as rent for what he received from the merchant, according to the royal tariff. 52. If the cultivator do not plant corn or sesame in the field, the debtor's contract is not weakened. 53. If any one be too lazy to keep his dam in proper condition, and does not so keep it; if then the dam break and all the fields be flooded, then shall he in whose dam the break occurred be sold for money, and the money shall replace the corn which he has caused to be ruined. 54. If he be not able to replace the corn, then he and his possessions shall be divided among the farmers whose corn he has flooded. 55. If any one open his ditches to water his crop, but is careless, and the water flood the field of his neighbor, then he shall pay his neighbor corn for his loss. 56. If a man let in the water, and the water overflow the plantation of his neighbor, he shall pay ten _gur_ of corn for every ten _gan_ of land. 57. If a shepherd, without the permission of the owner of the field, and without the knowledge of the owner of the sheep, lets the sheep into a field to graze, then the owner of the field shall harvest his crop, and the shepherd, who had pastured his flock there without permission of the owner of the field, shall pay to the owner twenty _gur_ of corn for every ten _gan_. 58. If after the flocks have left the pasture and been shut up in the common fold at the city gate, any shepherd let them into a field and they graze there, this shepherd shall take possession of the field which he has allowed to be grazed on, and at the harvest he must pay sixty _gur_ of corn for every ten _gan_. 59. If any man, without the knowledge of the owner of a garden, fell a tree in a garden he shall pay half a mina in money. 60. If any one give over a field to a gardener, for him to plant it as a garden, if he work at it, and care for it for four years, in the fifth year the owner and the gardener shall divide it, the owner taking his part in charge. 61. If the gardener has not completed the planting of the field, leaving one part unused, this shall be assigned to him as his. 62. If he do not plant the field that was given over to him as a garden, if it be arable land [for corn or sesame] the gardener shall pay the owner the produce of the field for the years that he let it lie fallow, according to the product of neighboring fields, put the field in arable condition and return it to its owner. 63. If he transform waste land into arable fields and return it to its owner, the latter shall pay him for one year ten _gur_ for ten _gan_. 64. If any one hand over his garden to a gardener to work, the gardener shall pay to its owner two-thirds of the produce of the garden, for so long as he has it in possession, and the other third shall he keep. 65. If the gardener do not work in the garden and the product fall off, the gardener shall pay in proportion to other neighboring gardens. [Here a portion of the text is missing, apparently comprising thirty-five paragraphs.] 100. ... interest for the money, as much as he has received, he shall give a note therefor, and on the day, when they settle, pay to the merchant. 101. If there are no mercantile arrangements in the place whither he went, he shall leave the entire amount of money which he received with the broker to give to the merchant. 102. If a merchant intrust money to an agent [broker] for some investment, and the broker suffer a loss in the place to which he goes, he shall make good the capital to the merchant. 103. If, while on the journey, an enemy take away from him anything that he had, the broker shall swear by God [take an oath] and be free of obligation. 104. If a merchant give an agent corn, wool, oil or any other goods to transport, the agent shall give a receipt for the amount, and compensate the merchant therefor. Then he shall obtain a receipt from the merchant for the money that he gives the merchant. 105. If the agent is careless, and does not take a receipt for the money which he gave the merchant, he cannot consider the unreceipted money as his own. 106. If the agent accept money from the merchant, but have a quarrel with the merchant [denying the receipt], then shall the merchant swear before God and witnesses that he has given this money to the agent, and the agent shall pay him three times the sum. 107. If the merchant cheat the agent, in that as the latter has returned to him all that had been given him, but the merchant denies the receipt of what had been returned to him, then shall this agent convict the merchant before God and the judges, and if he still deny receiving what the agent had given him shall pay six times the sum to the agent. 108. If a tavern-keeper [feminine] does not accept corn according to gross weight in payment of drink, but takes money, and the price of the drink is less than that of the corn, she shall be convicted and thrown into the water. 109. If conspirators meet in the house of a tavern-keeper, and these conspirators are not captured and delivered to the court, the tavern-keeper shall be put to death. 110. If a "sister of a god" [one devoted to the temple] open a tavern, or enter a tavern to drink, then shall this woman be burned to death. 111. If an inn-keeper furnish sixty _ka_ of _usakani_-drink to ... she shall receive fifty _ka_ of corn at the harvest. 112. If anyone be on a journey and intrust silver, gold, precious stones, or any movable property to another, and wish to recover it from him; if the latter do not bring all of the property to the appointed place, but appropriate it to his own use, then shall this man, who did not bring the property to hand it over be convicted, and he shall pay fivefold for all that had been intrusted to him. 113. If any one have a consignment of corn or money, and he take from the granary or box, without the knowledge of the owner, then shall he who took corn without the knowledge of the owner out of the granary or money out of the box be legally convicted, and repay the corn he has taken. And he shall lose whatever commission was paid to him, or due him. 114. If a man have no claim on another for corn and money, and try to demand it by force, he shall pay one-third of a mina of silver in every case. 115. If any one have a claim for corn or money upon another and imprison him; if the prisoner die in prison a natural death, the case shall go no further. 116. If the prisoner die in prison from blows or maltreatment, the master of the prisoner shall convict the merchant before the judge. If he was a free-born man, the son of the merchant shall be put to death; if it was a slave, he shall pay one-third of a mina of gold, and all that the master of the prisoner gave he shall forfeit. 117. If any one fail to meet a claim for debt, and sell himself, his wife, his son and daughter for money or give them away to forced labor: they shall work for three years in the house of the man who bought them or the proprietor and in the fourth year they shall be set free. 118. If he give a male or female slave away for forced labor, and the merchant sublease them, or sell them for money, no objection can be raised. 119. If any one fail to meet a claim for debt, and he sell the maid servant who has borne him children, for money, the money which the merchant has paid shall be repaid to him by the owner of the slave and she shall be freed. 120. If any one store corn for safe keeping in another person's house, and any harm happen to the corn in storage, or if the owner of the house open the granary and take some of the corn, or if especially he deny that the corn was stored in his house: then the owner of the corn shall claim his corn before God [on oath], and the owner of the house shall pay its owner for all of the corn that he took. 121. If any one store corn in another man's house he shall pay him storage at the rate of one _gur_ for every five _ka_ of corn per year. 122. If any one give another silver, gold or anything else to keep, he shall show everything to some witness, draw up a contract, and then hand it over for safe keeping. 123. If he turn it over for safe keeping without witness or contract, and if he to whom it was given deny it, then he has no legitimate claim. 124. If any one deliver silver, gold or anything else to another for safe keeping, before a witness, but he deny it, he shall be brought before a judge, and all that he has denied he shall pay in full. 125. If any one place his property with another for safe keeping, and there, either through thieves or robbers, his property and the property of the other man be lost, the owner of the house, through whose neglect the loss took place, shall compensate the owner for all that was given to him in charge. But the owner of the house shall try to follow up and recover his property, and take it away from the thief. 126. If any one who has not lost his goods, state that they have been lost, and make false claims: if he claim his goods and amount of injury before God, even though he has not lost them, he shall be fully compensated for all his loss claimed [_i.e._, the oath is all that is needed]. 127. If any one point the finger [slander] at a sister of a god or the wife of any one, and cannot prove it, this man shall be taken, before the judges and his brow shall be marked [by cutting the skin, or perhaps hair]. 128. If a man take a woman to wife, but have no intercourse with her, this woman is no wife to him. 129. If a man's wife be surprised with another man, both shall be tied and thrown into the water, but the husband may pardon his wife and the king his slaves. 130. If a man violate the wife [betrothed or child-wife] of another man, who has never known a man, and still lives in her father's house, and sleep with her and be surprised, this man shall be put to death, but the wife is blameless. 131. If a man bring a charge against one's wife, but she is not surprised with another man [_delit flagrant_ is necessary for divorce], she must take an oath and then may return to her house. 132. If the "finger is pointed" at a man's wife about another man, but she is not caught sleeping with the other man, she shall jump into the river for her husband [prove her innocence by this test]. 133. If a man is taken prisoner in war, and there is a sustenance in his house, but his wife leave house and court, and go to another house: because this wife did not keep her court, and went to another house, she shall be judicially condemned and thrown into the water. 134. If any one be captured in war and there is no sustenance in his house, if then his wife go to another house, this woman shall be held blameless. 135. If a man be taken prisoner in war and there be no sustenance in his house and his wife go to another house and bear children; and if later her husband return and come to his home: then this wife shall return to her husband, but the children follow their father. 136. If any one leave his house, run away, and then his wife go to another house, if then he return, and wishes to take his wife back: because he fled from his home and ran away, the wife of this runaway shall not return to her husband. 137. If a man wish to separate from a woman who has borne him children, or from his wife who has borne him children: then he shall give that wife her dowry, and a part of the usufruct of field, garden and property, so that she can rear her children. When she has brought up her children, a portion of all that is given to the children, equal as that of one son, shall be given to her. She may then marry the man of her heart. 138. If a man wishes to separate from his wife who has borne him no children, he shall give her the amount of her purchase money [amount formerly paid to the bride's father] and the dowry which she brought from her father's house, and let her go. 139. If there was no purchase price he shall give her one mina of gold as a gift of release. 140. If he be a freed man he shall give her one-third of a mina of gold. 141. If a man's wife, who lives in his house, wishes to leave it, plunges into debt, tries to ruin her house, neglects her husband, and is judicially convicted: if her husband offer her release, she may go on her way, and he gives her nothing as a gift of release. If her husband does not wish to release her, and if he take another wife, she shall remain as servant in her husband's house. 142. If a woman quarrel with her husband, and say: "You are not congenial to me," the reasons for her prejudice must be presented. If she is guiltless, and there is no fault on her part, but he leaves and neglects her, then no guilt attaches to this woman, she shall take her dowry and go back to her father's house. 143. If she is not innocent, but leaves her husband, and ruins her house, neglecting her husband, this woman shall be cast into the water. 144. If a man take a wife and this woman give her husband a maid-servant, and she bear him children, but this man wishes to take another wife, this shall not be permitted to him; he shall not take a second wife. 145. If a man take a wife, and she bear him no children, and he intend to take another wife: if he take this second wife, and bring her into the house, this second wife shall not be allowed equality with his wife. 146. If a man take a wife and she give this man a maid servant as wife and she bear him children, and then this maid assume equality with the wife: because she has borne him children her master shall not sell her for money, but he may keep her as a slave, reckoning her among the maid-servants. 147. If she have not borne him children, then her mistress may sell her for money. 148. If a man take a wife, and she be seized by disease, if he then desire to take a second wife he shall not put away his wife, who has been attacked by disease, but he shall keep her in the house which he has built and support her so long as she lives. 149. If this woman does not wish to remain in her husband's house, then he shall compensate her for the dowry that she brought with her from her father's house, and she may go. 150. If a man give his wife a field, garden and house and a deed therefor, if then after the death of her husband the sons raise no claim, then the mother may bequeath all to one of her sons whom she prefers, and need leave nothing to his brothers. 151. If a woman who lived in a man's house, made an agreement with her husband, that no creditor can arrest her, and has given a document therefor: if that man, before he married that woman, had a debt, the creditor cannot hold the woman for it. But if the woman, before she entered the man's house, had contracted a debt, her creditor cannot arrest her husband therefor. 152. If after the woman had entered the man's house, both contracted a debt, both must pay the merchant. 153. If the wife of one man on account of another man has their mates [her husband and the other man's wife] murdered, both of them shall be impaled. 154. If a man be guilty of incest with his daughter, he shall be driven from the place [exiled]. 155. If a man betroth a girl to his son, and his son have intercourse with her, but he [the father] afterward defile her, and be surprised, then he shall be bound and cast into the water [drowned]. 156. If a man betroth a girl to his son, but his son has not known her, and if then he defile her, he shall pay her half a gold mina, and compensate her for all that she brought out of her father's house. She may marry the man of her heart. 157. If any one be guilty of incest with his mother after his father, both shall be burned. 158. If any one be surprised after his father with his chief wife, who has borne children, he shall be driven out of his father's house. 159. If any one, who has brought chattels into his father-in-law's house, and has paid the purchase-money, looks for another wife, and says to his father-in-law: "I do not want your daughter," the girl's father may keep all that he had brought. 160. If a man bring chattels into the house of his father-in-law, and pay the "purchase price" [for his wife]: if then the father of the girl say: "I will not give you my daughter," he shall give him back all that he brought with him. 161. If a man bring chattels into his father-in-law's house and pay the "purchase price," if then his friend slander him, and his father-in-law say to the young husband: "You shall not marry my daughter," then he shall give back to him undiminished all that he had brought with him; but his wife shall not be married to the friend. 162. If a man marry a woman, and she bear sons to him; if then this woman die, then shall her father have no claim on her dowry; this belongs to her sons. 163. If a man marry a woman and she bear him no sons; if then this woman die, if the "purchase price" which he had paid into the house of his father-in-law is repaid to him, her husband shall have no claim upon the dowry of this woman; it belongs to her father's house. 164. If his father-in-law do not pay back to him the amount of the "purchase price" he may subtract the amount of the "purchase price" from the dowry, and then pay the remainder to her father's house. 165. If a man give to one of his sons whom he prefers, a field, garden and house and a deed therefor: if later the father die, and the brothers divide [the estate], then they shall first give him the present of his father, and he shall accept it; and the rest of the paternal property shall they divide. 166. If a man take wives for his sons, but take no wife for his minor son, and if then he die: if the sons divide the estate, they shall set aside besides his portion the money for the "purchase price" for the minor brother who had taken no wife as yet, and secure a wife for him. 167. If a man marry a wife and she bear him children: if this wife die and he then take another wife and she bear him children: if then the father die, the sons must not partition the estate according to the mothers, they shall divide the dowries of their mothers only in this way; the paternal estate they shall divide equally with one another. 168. If a man wish to put his son out of his house, and declare before the judge: "I want to put my son out," then the judge shall examine into his reasons. If the son be guilty of no great fault, for which he can be rightfully put out, the father shall not put him out. 169. If he be guilty of a grave fault, which should rightfully deprive him of the filial relationship, the father shall forgive him the first time; but if he be guilty of a grave fault a second time the father may deprive his son of all filial relation. 170. If his wife bear sons to a man, or his maid-servant have borne sons, and the father while still living says to the children whom his maid-servant has borne: "My sons," and he count them with the sons of his wife; if then the father die, then the sons of the wife and of the maid-servant shall divide the paternal property in common. The son of the wife is to partition and choose. 171. If, however, the father while still living did not say to the sons of the maid-servant: "My sons," and then the father dies, then the sons of the maid-servant shall not share with the sons of the wife, but the freedom of the maid and her sons shall be granted. The sons of the wife shall have no right to enslave the sons of the maid; the wife shall take her dowry [from her father], and the gift that her husband gave her and deeded to her [separate from dowry, or the purchase money paid her father], and live in the home of her husband: so long as she lives she shall use it, it shall not be sold for money. Whatever she leaves shall belong to her children. 172. If her husband made her no gift, she shall be compensated for her gift, and she shall receive a portion from the estate of her husband, equal to that of one child. If her sons oppress her, to force her out of the house, the judge shall examine into the matter, and if the sons are at fault the woman shall not leave her husband's house. If the woman desire to leave the house, she must leave to her sons the gift which her husband gave her, but she may take the dowry of her father's house. Then she may marry the man of her heart. 173. If this woman bear sons to her second husband, in the place to which she went, and then die, her earlier and later sons shall divide the dowry between them. 174. If she bear no sons to her second husband, the sons of her first husband shall have the dowry. 175. If a state slave or the slave of a freed man marry the daughter of a free man, and children are born, the master of the slave shall have no right to enslave the children of the free. 176. If, however, a state slave or the slave of a freed man marry a man's daughter, and after he married her she bring a dowry from a father's house, if then they both enjoy it and found a household, and accumulate means, if then the slave die, then she who was free born may take her dowry, and all that her husband and she had earned; she shall divide them into two parts, one-half the master for the slave shall take, and the other half shall the free-born woman take for her children. If the free-born woman had no gift she shall take all that her husband and she had earned and divide it into two parts; and the master of the slave shall take one-half and she shall take the other for her children. 177. If a widow, whose children are not grown, wishes to enter another house [remarry], she shall not enter it without the knowledge of the judge. If she enter another house the judge shall examine the estate of the house of her first husband. Then the house of her first husband shall be intrusted to the second husband and the woman herself as managers. And a record must be made thereof. She shall keep the house in order, bring up the children, and not sell the household utensils. He who buys the utensils of the children of a widow shall lose his money, and the goods shall return to their owners. 178. If a "devoted woman" or a prostitute [connected with the temple neither can marry] to whom her father has given a dowry and a deed therefor, but if in this deed it is not stated that she may bequeath it as she pleases, and has not explicitly stated that she has the right of disposal; if then her father die, then her brothers shall hold her field and garden, and give her corn, oil and milk according to her portion, and satisfy her. If her brothers do not give her corn, oil and milk according to her share, then her field and garden shall be given to a farmer whom she chooses and the farmer shall support her. She shall have the usufruct of field and garden and all that her father gave her so long as she lives, but she cannot sell or assign it to others. Her position of inheritance belongs to her brothers. 179. If a "sister of a god" [whose hire went to the revenue of the temple, counterpart to the public prostitute], or a prostitute, receive a gift from her father, and a deed in which it has been explicitly stated that she may dispose of it as she pleases, and give her complete disposition thereof: if then her father die, then she may leave her property to whomsoever she pleases. Her brothers can raise no claim thereto. 180. If a father give a present to his daughter--either marriageable or a prostitute [unmarriageable]--and then die, then she is to receive a portion as a child from the paternal estate, and enjoy its usufruct so long as she lives. Her estate belongs to her brothers. 181. If a father devote a temple-maid or temple-virgin to God and give her no present: if then the father die, she shall receive the third of a child's portion from the inheritance of her father's house, and enjoy its usufruct so long as she lives. Her estate belongs to her brothers. 182. If a father devote his daughter as a wife of Marduk of Babylon [as in 181], and give her no present, nor a deed; if then her father die, then shall she receive one-third of her portion as a child of her father's house from her brothers, but she shall not have the management thereof. A wife of Marduk may leave her estate to whomsoever she wishes. 183. If a man give his daughter by a concubine a dowry, and a husband, and a deed; if then her father die, she shall receive no portion from the paternal estate. 184. If a man do not give a dowry to his daughter by a concubine, and no husband; if then her father die then her brother shall give her a dowry according to her father's wealth and secure a husband for her. 185. If a man adopt a child and to his name as son, and rear him, this grown son cannot be demanded back again. 186. If a man adopt a son, and if after he has taken him he injure his foster father and mother, then this adopted son shall return to his father's house. 187. The son of a paramour in the palace service, or of a prostitute, cannot be demanded back. 188. If an artisan has undertaken to rear a child and teaches him his craft, he cannot be demanded back. 189. If he has not taught him his craft, this adopted son may return to his father's house. 190. If a man does not maintain a child that he has adopted as son and reared with his other children, then his adopted son may return to his father's house. 191. If a man, who had adopted a son and reared him, founded a household, and had children, wish to put this adopted son out, then this son shall not simply go his way. His adoptive father shall give him of his wealth one-third of a child's portion, and then he may go. He shall not give him of the field, garden and house. 192. If a son of a paramour or a prostitute say to his adoptive father or mother: "You are not my father, or my mother," his tongue shall be cut off. 193. If the son of a paramour or a prostitute desire his father's house, and desert his adoptive father and adoptive mother, and goes to his father's house, then shall his eye be put out. 194. If a man give his child to a nurse and the child die in her hands, but the nurse unbeknown to the father and mother nurse another child, then they shall convict her of having nursed another child without the knowledge of the father and mother and her breasts shall be cut off. 195. If a son strike his father, his hands shall be hewn off. 196. If a man put out the eye of another man, his eye shall be put out. 197. If he break another man's bone, his bone shall be broken. 198. If he put out the eye of a freed man, or break the bone of a freed man, he shall pay one gold mina. 199. If he put out the eye of a man's slave, or break the bone of a man's slave, he shall pay one-half of its value. 200. If a man knock out the teeth of his equal, his teeth shall be knocked out. 201. If he knock out the teeth of a freed man, he shall pay one-third of a gold mina. 202. If any one strike the body of a man higher in rank than he, he shall receive sixty blows with an ox-hide whip in public. 203. If a free-born man strike the body of another free-born man of equal rank, he shall pay one gold mina. 204. If a freed man strike the body of another freed man, he shall pay ten shekels in money. 205. If the slave of a freed man strike the body of a freed man, his ear shall be cut off. 206. If during a quarrel one man strike another and wound him, then he shall swear, "I did not injure him wittingly," and pay the physician. 207. If the man die of his wound, he shall swear similarly, and if he [the deceased] was a free-born man, he shall pay half a mina in money. 208. If he was a freed man, he shall pay one-third of a mina. 209. If a man strike a free-born woman so that she lose her unborn child, he shall pay ten shekels for her loss. 210. If the woman die, his daughter shall be put to death. 211. If a woman of the freed class lose her child by a blow, he shall pay five shekels in money. 212. If this woman die, he shall pay half a mina. 213. If he strike the maid-servant of a man, and she lose her child, he shall pay two shekels in money. 214. If this maid-servant die, he shall pay one-third of a mina. 215. If a physician make a large incision with a operating knife and cure it, or if he open a tumor [over the eye] with an operating knife, and saves the eye, he shall receive ten shekels in money. 216. If the patient be a freed man, he receives five shekels. 217. If he be the slave of some one, his owner shall give the physician two shekels. 218. If a physician make a large incision with the operating knife, and kill him, or open a tumor with the operating knife, and cut out the eye, his hands shall be cut off. 219. If a physician make a large incision in the slave of a freed man, and kill him, he shall replace the slave with another slave. 220. If he had opened a tumor with the operating knife, and put out his eye, he shall pay half his value. 221. If a physician heal the broken bone or diseased soft part of a man, the patient shall pay the physician five shekels in money. 222. If he were a freed man he shall pay three shekels. 223. If he were a slave his owner shall pay the physician two shekels. 224. If a veterinary surgeon perform a serious operation on an ass or an ox, and cure it, the owner shall pay the surgeon one-sixth of a shekel as fee. 225. If he perform, a serious operation on an ass or ox, and kill it, he shall pay the owner one-fourth of its value. 226. If a barber, without the knowledge of his master, cut the sign of a slave on a slave not to be sold, the hands of this barber shall be cut off. 227. If any one deceive a barber, and have him mark a slave not for sale with the sign of a slave, he shall be put to death, and buried in his house. The barber shall swear: "I did not mark him wittingly," and shall be guiltless. 228. If a builder build a house for some one and complete it, he shall give him a fee of two shekels in money for each _sar_ of surface. 229. If a builder build a house for some one, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built fall in and kill its owner, then that builder shall be put to death. 230. If it kill the son of the owner the son of that builder shall be put to death. 231. If it kill a slave of the owner, then he shall pay slave for slave to the owner of the house. 232. If it ruin goods, he shall make compensation for all that has been ruined, and inasmuch as he did not construct properly this house which he built and it fell, he shall reërect the house from his own means. 233. If a builder build a house for some one, even though he has not yet completed it; if then the walls seem toppling, the builder must make the walls solid from his own means. 234. If a shipbuilder build a boat of sixty _gur_ for a man, he shall pay him a fee of two shekels in money. 235. If a shipbuilder build a boat for some one, and do not make it tight, if during that same year that boat is sent away and suffers injury, the shipbuilder shall take the boat apart and put it together tight at his own expense. The tight boat he shall give to the boat owner. 236. If a man rent his boat to a sailor, and the sailor is careless, and the boat is wrecked or goes aground, the sailor shall give the owner of the boat another boat as compensation. 237. If a man hire a sailor and his boat, and provide it with corn, clothing, oil and dates, and other things of the kind needed for fitting it: if the sailor is careless, the boat is wrecked, and its contents ruined, then the sailor shall compensate for the boat which was wrecked and all in it that he ruined. 238. If a sailor wreck any one's ship, but saves it, he shall pay the half of its value in money. 239. If a man hire a sailor, he shall pay him six _gur_ of corn per year. 240. If a merchantman run against a ferryboat, and wreck it, the master of the ship that was wrecked shall seek justice before God; the master of the merchantman, which wrecked the ferryboat, must compensate the owner for the boat and all that he ruined. 241. If any one impresses an ox for forced labor, he shall pay one-third of a mina in money. 242. If any one hire oxen for a year, he shall pay four _gur_ of corn for plow-oxen. 243. As rent of herd cattle he shall pay three _gur_ of corn to the owner. 244. If any one hire an ox or an ass, and a lion kill it in the field, the loss is upon its owner. 245. If any one hire oxen, and kill them by bad treatment or blows, he shall compensate the owner, oxen for oxen. 246. If a man hire an ox, and he break its leg or cut the ligament of its neck, he shall compensate the owner with ox for ox. 247. If any one hire an ox, and put out its eye, he shall pay the owner one-half of its value. 248. If any one hire an ox, and break off a horn, or cut off its tail or hurt its muzzle, he shall pay one-fourth of its value in money. 249. If any one hire an ox, and God strike it that it die, the man who hired it shall swear by God and be considered guiltless. 250. If while an ox is passing on the street [market?] some one push it, and kill it, the owner can set up no claim in the suit [against the hirer]. 251. If an ox be a goring ox, and it is shown that he is a gorer, and he do not bind his horns, or fasten the ox up, and the ox gore a free-born man and kill him, the owner shall pay one-half a mina in money. 252. If he kill a man's slave, he shall pay one-third of a mina. 253. If any one agree with another to tend his field, give him seed, intrust a yoke of oxen to him, and bind him to cultivate the field, if he steal the corn or plants, and take them for himself, his hands shall be hewn off. 254. If he take the seed-corn for himself, and do not use the yoke of oxen, he shall compensate him for the amount of the seed-corn. 255. If he sublet the man's yoke of oxen or steal the seed-corn, planting nothing in the field, he shall be convicted, and for each one hundred _gan_ he shall pay sixty _gur_ of corn. 256. If his community will not pay for him, then he shall be placed in that field with the cattle [at work]. 257. If any one hire a field laborer, he shall pay him eight _gur_ of corn per year. 258. If any one hire an ox-driver, he shall pay him six _gur_ of corn per year. 259. If any one steal a water-wheel from the field, he shall pay five shekels in money to its owner. 260. If any one steal a _shadduf_ [used to draw water from the river or canal] or a plow, he shall pay three shekels in money. 261. If any one hire a herdsman for cattle or sheep, he shall pay him eight _gur_ of corn per annum. 262. If any one, a cow or a sheep ... [broken off]. 263. If he kill the cattle or sheep that were given to him, he shall compensate the owner with cattle for cattle and sheep for sheep. 264. If a herdsman, to whom cattle or sheep have been intrusted for watching over, and who has received his wages as agreed upon, and is satisfied, diminish the number of the cattle or sheep, or make the increase by birth less, he shall make good the increase and profit which was lost in the terms of settlement. 265. If a herdsman, to whose care cattle or sheep have been intrusted, be guilty of fraud and make false returns of the natural increase, or sell them for money, then shall he be convicted and pay the owner ten times the loss. 266. If the animal be killed in the stable by God [an accident], or if a lion kill it, the herdsman shall declare his innocence before God, and the owner bears the accident in the stable. 267. If the herdsman overlook something, and an accident happen in the stable, then the herdsman is at fault for the accident which he has caused in the stable, and he must compensate the owner for the cattle or sheep. 268. If any one hire an ox for threshing, the amount of the hire is twenty _ka_ of corn. 269. If he hire an ass for threshing, the hire is twenty _ka_ of corn. 270. If he hire a young animal for threshing, the hire is ten _ka_ of corn. 271. If any one hire oxen, cart and driver, he shall pay one hundred and eighty _ka_ of corn per day. 272. If any one hire a cart alone, he shall pay forty _ka_ of corn per day. 273. If any one hire a day laborer, he shall pay him from the New Year until the fifth month [April to August, when days are long and work hard] six gerahs in money per day; from the sixth month to the end of the year he shall give him five gerahs per day. 274. If any one hire a skilled artisan, he shall pay as wages of the ... five gerahs, as wages of the potter five gerahs, of a tailor five gerahs, of ... gerahs, ... of ... gerahs ... of ... gerahs, of a carpenter four gerahs, of a rope-maker four gerahs, of ... gerahs, of a mason ... gerahs per day. 275. If any one hire a ferryboat, he shall pay three gerahs in money per day. 276. If he hire a freight-boat, he shall pay two and one-half gerahs per day. 277. If any one hire a ship of sixty _gur_ he shall pay one-sixth of a shekel in money as its hire per day. 278. If any one buy a male or female slave, and before a month has elapsed the _benu_-disease be developed, he shall return the slave to the seller, and receive the money which he had paid. 279. If any one buy a male or female slave, and a third party claim it, the seller is liable for the claim. 280. If while in a foreign country a man buy a male or female slave belonging to another [of his own country]: if when he return home the owner of the male or female slave recognize it: if the male or female slave be a native of the country, he shall give them back without any money. 281. If they are from another country, the buyer shall declare the amount of money he paid before God, and the owner shall give the money paid therefor to the merchant, and keep the male or female slave. 282. If a slave say to his master: "You are not my master," if they convict him his master shall cut off his ear. THE EPILOGUE Laws of justice which Hammurabi, the wise king, established, A righteous law, and pious statute did he teach the land. Hammurabi, the protecting king am I. I have not withdrawn myself from the men, whom Bel gave to me, the rule over whom Marduk gave to me, I was not negligent, but I made them a peaceful abiding place. I expounded all great difficulties, I made the light shine upon them. With the mighty weapons which Zamama and Ishtar intrusted to me, with the keen vision with which Ea endowed me, with the wisdom that Marduk gave me, I have uprooted the enemy above and below [in north and south], subdued the earth, brought prosperity to the land, guaranteed security to the inhabitants in their homes; a disturber was not permitted. The great gods have called me, I am the salvation-bearing shepherd [ruler], whose staff [sceptre] is straight [just], the good shadow that is spread over my city; on my breast I cherish the inhabitants of the land of Sumer and Akkad [Babylonia]; in my shelter I have let them repose in peace; in my deep wisdom have I inclosed them. That the strong might not injure the weak, in order to protect the widows and orphans, I have in Babylon the city where Anu and Bel raise high their head, in E-Sagil, the Temple, whose foundations stand firm as heaven and earth, in order to bespeak justice in the land, to settle all disputes, and heal all injuries, set up these my precious words, written upon my memorial stone, before the image of me, as king of righteousness. The king who ruleth among the kings of the cities am I. My words are well considered; there is no wisdom like unto mine. By the command of Shamash [the sun-god], the great judge of heaven and earth, let righteousness go forth in the land: by the order of Marduk, my lord, let no destruction befall my monument. In E-Sagil, which I love, let my name be ever repeated; let the oppressed, who has a case at law, come and stand before this my image as king of righteousness; let him read the inscription, and understand my precious words: the inscription will explain his case to him; he will find out what is just, and his heart will be glad [so that he will say]: "Hammurabi is a ruler, who is as a father to his subjects, who holds the words of Marduk in reverence, who has achieved conquest for Marduk over the north and south, who rejoices the heart of Marduk, his lord, who has bestowed benefits forever and ever on his subjects, and has established order in the land." When he reads the record, let him pray with full heart to Marduk, my lord, and Zarpanit, my lady; and then shall the protecting deities and the gods, who frequent E-Sagil, graciously grant the desires daily presented before Marduk, my lord, and Zarpanit, my lady. In future time, through all coming generations, let the king, who may be in the land, observe the words of righteousness which I have written on my monument; let him not alter the law of the land which I have given, the edicts which I have enacted; my monument let him not mar. If such a ruler have wisdom, and be able to keep his land in order, he shall observe the words which I have written in this inscription; the rule, statute and law of the land which I have given; the decisions which I have made will this inscription show him; let him rule his subjects accordingly, speak justice to them, give right decisions, root out the miscreants and criminals from his land, and grant prosperity to his subjects. Hammurabi, the king of righteousness, on whom Shamash has conferred right [or law] am I. My words are well considered, my deeds are not equaled, to bring low those that were high, to humble the proud, to expel insolence. If a succeeding ruler considers my words, which I have written in this my inscription, if he do not annul my law, nor corrupt my words, nor change my monument, then may Shamash lengthen that king's reign, as he has that of me, the king of righteousness, that he may reign in righteousness over his subjects. If this ruler do not esteem my words, which I have written in my inscription, if he despise my curses, and fear not the curse of God, if he destroy the law which I have given, corrupt my words, change my monument, efface my name, write his name there, or on account of the curses commission another so to do, that man, whether king or ruler, patesi [priest-viceroy] or commoner, no matter what he be, may the great God [Anu], the Father of the gods, who has ordered my rule, withdraw from him the glory of royalty, break his sceptre, curse his destiny. May Bel, the lord, who fixeth destiny, whose command cannot be altered, who has made my kingdom great, order a rebellion which his hand cannot control; may he let the wind of the overthrow of his habitation blow, may he ordain the years of his rule in groaning, years of scarcity, years of famine, darkness without light, death with seeing eyes be fated to him; may he [Bel] order with his potent mouth the destruction of his city, the dispersion of his subjects, the cutting off of his rule, the removal of his name and memory from the land. May Belit, the great Mother, whose command is potent in E-Kur [the Babylonian Olympus], the Mistress, who hearkens graciously to my petitions, in the seat of judgment and decision [where Bel fixes destiny], turn his affairs evil before Bel, and put the devastation of his land, the destruction of his subjects, the pouring out of his life like water into the mouth of King Bel. May Ea, the great ruler, whose fated decrees come to pass, the thinker of the gods, the omniscient, who maketh long the days of my life, withdraw understanding and wisdom from him, lead him to forgetfulness, shut up his rivers at their sources, and not allow corn or sustenance for man to grow in his land. May Shamash, the great Judge of heaven and earth, who supporteth all means of livelihood, Lord of life-courage, shatter his dominion, annul his law, destroy his way, make vain the march of his troops, send him in his visions forecasts of the uprooting of the foundations of his throne and of the destruction of his land. May the condemnation of Shamash overtake him forthwith; may he be deprived of water above among the living, and his spirit below in the earth. May Sin [the moon-god], the Lord of Heaven, the divine father, whose crescent gives light among the gods, take away the crown and regal throne from him; may he put upon him heavy guilt, great decay, that nothing may be lower than he. May he destine him as fated, days, months and years of dominion filled with sighing and tears, increase of the burden of dominion, a life that is like unto death. May Adad, the lord of fruitfulness, ruler of heaven and earth, my helper, withhold from him rain from heaven, and the flood of water from the springs, destroying his land by famine and want; may he rage mightily over his city, and make his land into flood-hills [heaps of ruined cities]. May Zamama, the great warrior, the first born son of E-Kur, who goeth at my right hand, shatter his weapons on the field of battle, turn day into night for him, and let his foe triumph over him. May Ishtar, the goddess of fighting and war, who unfetters my weapons, my gracious protecting spirit, who loveth my dominion, curse his kingdom in her angry heart; in her great wrath, change his grace into evil, and shatter his weapons on the place of fighting and war. May she create disorder and sedition for him, strike down his warriors, that the earth may drink their blood, and throw down the piles of corpses of his warriors on the field; may she not grant him a life of mercy, deliver him into the hands of his enemies, and imprison him in the land of his enemies. May Nergal, the mighty among the gods, whose contest is irresistible, who grants me victory, in his great might burn up his subjects like a slender reed-stalk, cut off his limbs with his mighty weapons, and shatter him like an earthen image. May Nin-tu, the sublime mistress of the lands, the fruitful mother, deny him a son, vouchsafe him no name, give him no successor among men. May Nin-karak, the daughter of Anu, who adjudges grace to me, cause to come upon his members in E-kur, high fever, severe wounds, that cannot be healed, whose nature the physician does not understand, which he cannot treat with dressing, which, like the bite of death, cannot be removed, until they have sapped away his life. May he lament the loss of his life-power, and may the great gods of heaven and earth, the Anunnaki altogether inflict a curse and evil upon the confines of the temple, the walls of this E-barra [the Sun temple of Sippara], upon his dominion, his land, his warriors, his subjects and his troops. May Bel curse him with the potent curses of his mouth that cannot be altered, and may they come upon, him forthwith. THESEUS FOUNDS ATHENS B.C. 1235 PLUTARCH The founding of the city of Athens, apart from the mythological lore which ascribes its name to Athené, the goddess, is credited by the Greeks to Sais, a native of Egypt. The real founder of Athens, the one who made it a city and kingdom, was Theseus; an unacknowledged illegitimate child. The usual myth surrounds his birth and upbringing. King Ægeus, of Attica, his father, had an intrigue with Æthra. Before leaving, Ægeus informed her that he had hidden his sword and sandals beneath a great stone, hollowed out to receive them. She was charged that should a son be born to them and, on growing to man's estate, be able to lift the stone, Æthra must send him to his father, with these things under it, in all secrecy. These happenings were in Troezen, in which place Ægeus had been sojourning. All came about as expected. Theseus, the son, lifted the stone, took thence the deposit and departed for Attica, his father's home. On his way Theseus had a number of adventures which proved his prowess, not the least being his encounter with and defeat of Periphetes, the "club-bearer," so called from the weapon he used. Theseus had complied with the custom of his country by journeying to Delphi and offering the first-fruits of his hair, then cut for the first time. This first cutting of the hair was always an occasion of solemnity among the Greeks, the hair being dedicated to some god. It will be remembered that Homer speaks of this in the _Iliad_. One salient fact must be borne in mind in Grecian history, which is that it was a settled maxim that each city should have an independent sovereignty. "The patriotism of a Greek was confined to his city, and rarely kindled into any general love for the common welfare of Hellas."[22] [Footnote 22: Smith.] A Greek citizen of Athens was an alien in any other city of the peninsula. This political disunion caused the various cities to turn against each other, and laid them open to conquest by the Macedonians. As he [Theseus] proceeded on his way, and reached the river Cephisus, men of the Phytalid race were the first to meet and greet him. He demanded to be purified from the guilt of bloodshed, and they purified him, made propitiatory offerings, and also entertained him in their houses, being the first persons from whom he had received any kindness on his journey. It is said to have been on the eighth day of the month Cronion, which is now called Hecatombaion, that he came to his own city. On entering it he found public affairs disturbed by factions, and the house of Ægeus in great disorder; for Medea, who had been banished from Corinth, was living with Ægeus, and had engaged by her drugs to enable Ægeus to have children. She was the first to discover who Theseus was, while Ægeus, who was an old man, and feared every one because of the disturbed state of society, did not recognize him. Consequently she advised Ægeus to invite him to a feast, that she might poison him. Theseus accordingly came to Ægeus's table. He did not wish to be the first to tell his name, but, to give his father an opportunity of recognizing him, he drew his sword, as if he meant to cut some of the meat with it, and showed it to Ægeus. Ægeus at once recognized it, overset the cup of poison, looked closely at his son, and embraced him. He then called a public meeting and made Theseus known as his son to the citizens, with whom he was already very popular because of his bravery, It is said that when the cup was overset the poison was spilt in the place where now there is the enclosure in the Delphinium, for there Ægeus dwelt; and the Hermes to the east of the temple there they call the one who is "at the door of Ægeus." But the sons of Pallas, who had previously to this expected that they would inherit the kingdom on the death of Ægeus without issue, now that Theseus was declared the heir, were much enraged, first that Ægeus should be king, a man who was merely an adopted child of Pandion, and had no blood relationship to Erechtheus, and next that Theseus, a stranger and a foreigner, should inherit the kingdom. They consequently declared war. Dividing themselves into two bodies, the one proceeded to march openly upon the city from Sphettus, under the command of Pallas their father, while the other lay in ambush at Gargettus, in order that they might fall upon their opponents on two sides at once. But there was a herald among them named Leos, of the township of Agnus, who betrayed the plans of the sons of Pallas to Theseus. He suddenly attacked those who were in ambush, and killed them all, hearing which the other body under Pallas dispersed. From this time forth they say that the township of Pallene has never intermarried with that of Agnus, and that it is not customary amongst them for heralds to begin a proclamation with the words "Acouete Leo," (Oyez) for they hate the name of Leo because of the treachery of that man. Shortly after this the ship from Crete arrived for the third time to collect the customary tribute. Most writers agree that the origin of this was, that on the death of Androgeus, in Attica, which was ascribed to treachery, his father Minos went to war, and wrought much evil to the country, which at the same time was afflicted by scourges from heaven (for the land did not bear fruit, and there was a great pestilence, and the rivers sank into the earth). So that as the oracle told the Athenians that, if they propitiated Minos and came to terms with him, the anger of heaven would cease and they should have a respite from their sufferings, they sent an embassy to Minos and prevailed on him to make peace, on the condition that every nine years they should send him a tribute of seven youths and seven maidens. The most tragic of the legends states these poor children when they reached Crete were thrown into the Labyrinth, and there either were devoured by the Minotaur or else perished with hunger, being unable to find the way out. The Minotaur, as Euripides tells us, was: "A form commingled, and a monstrous birth, Half man, half bull, in twofold shape combined." So when the time of the third payment of the tribute arrived, and those fathers who had sons not yet grown up had to submit to draw lots, the unhappy people began to revile Ægeus, complaining that he, although the author of this calamity, yet took no share in their affliction, but endured to see them left childless, robbed of their own legitimate offspring, while he made a foreigner and a bastard the heir to his kingdom. This vexed Theseus, and determining not to hold aloof, but to share the fortunes of the people, he came forward and offered himself without being drawn by lot. The people all admired his courage and patriotism, and Ægeus finding that his prayers and entreaties had no effect on his unalterable resolution, proceeded to choose the rest by lot. Hellanicus says that the city did not select the youths and maidens by lot, but that Minos himself came thither and chose them, and that he picked out Theseus first of all, upon the usual conditions, which were that the Athenians should furnish a ship, and that the youths should embark in it and sail with him, not carrying with them any weapon of war; and that when the Minotaur was slain, the tribute should cease. Formerly, no one had any hope of safety; so they used to send out the ship with a black sail, as if it were going to a certain doom; but now Theseus so encouraged his father, and boasted that he would overcome the Minotaur, that he gave a second sail, a white one, to the steersman, and charged him on his return, if Theseus were safe, to hoist the white one, if not, the black one as a sign of mourning. But Simonides says that it was not a white sail which was given by Ægeus, but "a scarlet sail embrued in holm oak's juice," and that this was agreed on by him as the signal of safety. The ship was steered by Phereclus, the son of Amarsyas, according to Simonides. When they reached Crete, according to most historians and poets, Ariadne fell in love with Theseus, and from her he received the clew of string, and was taught how to thread the mazes of the Labyrinth. He slew the Minotaur, and, taking with him Ariadne and the youths, sailed away. Pherecydes also says that Theseus also knocked out the bottoms of the Cretan ships, to prevent pursuit. But Demon says that Taurus, Minos' general, was slain in a sea-fight in the harbor, when Theseus sailed away. But according to Philochorus, when Minos instituted his games, Taurus was expected to win every prize, and was grudged this honor; for his great influence and his unpopular manners made him disliked, and scandal said that he was too intimate with Pasiphaë. On this account, when Theseus offered to contend with him, Minos agreed. And, as it was the custom in Crete for women as well as men to be spectators of the games, Ariadne was present, and was struck with the appearance of Theseus, and his strength, as he conquered all competitors. Minos was especially pleased, in the wrestling match, at Taurus's defeat and shame, and, restoring the children to Theseus, remitted the tribute for the future. As he approached Attica, on his return, both he and his steersman in their delight forgot to hoist the sail which was to be a signal of their safety to Ægeus; and he in his despair flung himself down the cliffs and perished. Theseus, as soon as he reached the harbor, performed at Phalerum the sacrifices which he had vowed to the gods if he returned safe, and sent off a herald to the city with the news of his safe return. This man met with many who were lamenting the death of the king, and, as was natural, with others who were delighted at the news of their safety, and who congratulated him and wished to crown him with garlands. These he received, but placed them on his herald's staff, and when he came back to the seashore, finding that Theseus had not completed his libation, he waited outside the temple, not wishing to disturb the sacrifice. When the libation was finished he announced the death of Ægeus, and then they all hurried up to the city with loud lamentations: wherefore to this day, at the Oschophoria, they say that it is not the herald that is crowned, but his staff, and that at the libations the bystanders cry out, "Eleleu, Iou, Iou!" of which cries the first is used by men in haste, or raising the pæan for battle, while the second is used by persons in surprise and trouble. Theseus, after burying his father, paid his vow to Apollo, on the seventh day of the month Pyanepsion; for on this day it was that the rescued youths went up into the city. The boiling of pulse, which is customary on this anniversary, is said to be done because the rescued youths put what remained of their pulse together into one pot, boiled it all, and merrily feasted on it together. And on this day also the Athenians carry about the Eiresione, a bough of the olive tree garlanded with wool, just as Theseus had before carried the suppliants' bough, and covered with first-fruits of all sorts of produce, because the barrenness of the land ceased on that day; and they sing, "Eiresione, bring us figs, And wheaten loaves, and oil, And wine to quaff, that we may all Rest merrily from toil." However, some say that these ceremonies are performed in memory of the Heracleidæ, who were thus entertained by the Athenians; but most writers tell the tale as I have told it. After the death of Ægeus, Theseus conceived a great and important design. He gathered together all the inhabitants of Attica and made them citizens of one city, whereas before they had lived dispersed, so as to be hard to assemble together for the common weal, and at times even fighting with one another. He visited all the villages and tribes, and won their consent, the poor and lower classes gladly accepting his proposals, while he gained over the more powerful by promising that the new constitution should not include a king, but that it should be a pure commonwealth, with himself merely acting as general of its army and guardian of its laws, while in other respects it would allow perfect freedom and equality to every one. By these arguments he convinced some of them, and the rest knowing his power and courage chose rather to be persuaded than forced into compliance. He therefore destroyed the prytanea, the senate house, and the magistracy of each individual township, built one common prytaneum and senate house for them all on the site of the present acropolis, called the city Athens, and instituted the Panathenaic festival common to all of them. He also instituted a festival for the resident aliens, on the sixteenth of the month, Hecatombaion, which is still kept up. And having, according to his promise, laid down his sovereign power, he arranged the new constitution under the auspices of the gods; for he made inquiry at Delphi as to how he should deal with the city, and received the following answer: "Thou son of Ægeus and of Pittheus' maid, My father hath within thy city laid The bounds of many cities; weigh not down Thy soul with thought; the bladder cannot drown." The same thing they say was afterward prophesied by the Sibyl concerning the city, in these words: "The bladder may be dipped, but cannot drown." Wishing still further to increase the number of his citizens, he invited all strangers to come and share equal privileges, and they say that the words now used, "Come hither all ye peoples," was the proclamation then used by Theseus, establishing as it were a commonwealth of all nations. But he did not permit his state to fall into the disorder which this influx of all kinds of people would probably have produced, but divided the people into three classes, of Eupatridæ or nobles, Geomori or farmers, Demiurgi or artisans. To the Eupatridæ he assigned the care of religious rites, the supply of magistrates for the city, and the interpretation of the laws and customs sacred or profane; yet he placed them on an equality with the other citizens, thinking that the nobles would always excel in dignity, the farmers in usefulness, and the artisans in numbers. Aristotle tells us that he was the first who inclined to democracy, and gave up the title of king; and Homer seems to confirm this view by speaking of the people of the Athenians alone of all the states mentioned in his catalogue of ships. Theseus also struck money with the figure of a bull, either alluding to the bull of Marathon, or Taurus, Minos' general, or else to encourage farming among the citizens. Hence, they say, came the words, "worth ten," or "worth a hundred oxen." He permanently annexed Megara to Attica, and set up the famous pillar on the Isthmus, on which he wrote the distinction between the countries in two trimeter lines, of which the one looking east says, "This is not Peloponnesus, but Ionia, and the one looking west says, "This is Peloponnesus, not Ionia." And also he instituted games there, in emulation of Heracles; that, just as Heracles had ordained that the Greeks should celebrate the Olympic games in honor of Zeus, so by Theseus' appointment they should celebrate the Isthmian games in honor of Poseidon. THE FORMATION OF THE CASTES IN INDIA B.C. 1200 GUSTAVE LE BON[23] W.W. HUNTER The institution of caste was not peculiar to India. In Rome there was a long struggle over the connubium. Among the Greeks the right of commensality, or eating together, was restricted. In fact, the phenomena of caste are world-wide in their extent. In India the priests and nobles contended for the first place. India had progressed along the line of ethnic evolution from a loose confederacy of tribes into several nations, ruled by kings and priests, and the iron fetters of caste were becoming more rigidly welded. At first the father of the family was the priest. Then the chiefs and sages took the office of spiritual guide, and conducted the sacrifices. As writing was unknown, the liturgies were learned by heart, and handed down in families. The exclusive knowledge of the ancient hymns became hereditary, as it were. The ministrants increased in number, and thus sprang up the powerful priestly caste. [Footnote 23: Translated from the French by Chauncey C. Starkweather.] Then the warrior class arose and grew strong in numbers and power, becoming differentiated from the agriculturists, and forming the military caste. The husbandmen drifted into another caste, and the three orders were rigidly separated by a cessation of intermarriage. At the bottom came the Sudras, or slave bands, the servile dregs of the population. In course of time, from various influences, the third class became almost eliminated in many provinces. From the cradle to the grave these cruel barriers still intervene between the strata of the people, relentless as fate and insurmountable as death. GUSTAVE LE BON In ancient times the power of kings [in India] was only nominal. In the Aryan village, forming a little republic, the chief, bearing the name of rajah, was secure in his fortress, exercising full sway. Such was the political system prevailing in India through all the ages, and which has always been respected by the conquerors, whoever they might be. So, for so many centuries back we see arise the first elements of an organization which still endures. We find here also the beginnings of that system of castes, which, at first indistinct and floating, when the classes sought only to be distinguished from each other, was to become so rigid, when it was constituted under the influence of ethnological reasons, as to dig fathomless abysses between the races. In the Vedas may be traced the progression of the distance between the priests and the warriors, at first slight, and then increasing more and more. The division of functions did not stop there. While the sacrificing priest was consecrating himself more exclusively day by day to the accomplishment of the sacred rites and to the composition of hymns; while the warrior passed his days in adventurous expeditions or daring feats, what would have become of the land and what would it have produced if others had not applied themselves without ceasing, to cultivate it? A third class became distinct, the agriculturists. In one of the last hymns of Rig Veda these three classes appear, absolutely separated and already designated by the three words Brahmans, Kchatryas, Vaisyas. The fourth class, that of the Sudras, was to arise later and to include the mass of conquered peoples when the latter joined the circle of Aryan civilization. The classes, hitherto mingling, now became rigidly separated castes. The most important of these divisions, and that which was first formed, was the one between the priests and the warriors. The Brahmans, intermediaries between men and the gods, soon became more and more exacting, and finally considered themselves as entirely superior beings and were accepted as such. The distinction between the warriors and the agriculturists also soon became marked, arising doubtless rather from a difference in fortune than in functions. The war chief, who returned laden with booty, covered himself with rings of gold, rich vestments, and gleaming arms. He became "rajah," that is to say "shining," for such was the meaning of the word at the Vedic epoch. Still no absolute barrier between the classes had arisen. They mingled to offer sacrifices, and sometimes ate in common. Heredity of office and profession began to be established. The sacred songs were handed down in families, as were also the functions of the sacrificers. And here among the Vedic Aryans are seen in process of elaboration the germs of the institution which later gained so much power in India and which dominates it still with apparent immutability. The system of castes has been the corner-stone of all the institutions of India for two thousand years. Such is its importance, and so generally is it misunderstood, that it will be well briefly to explain its origins, sources, and consequences. A system, the result of which is to permit a handful of Europeans to hold sway over two hundred and fifty millions of men deserves the attention of the observer. The system of castes has existed for more than twenty centuries in India. It doubtless had its origin in the recognition of the inevitable laws of heredity. When the white-skinned conquerors, whom we call Aryans, penetrated India, they found, in addition to other invaders of Turanian origin, black, half-savage populations whom they subjugated. The conquerors were half-pastoral, half-stationary tribes, under chiefs whose authority was counterbalanced by the all-powerful influence of the priests whose duty it was to secure the protection of the gods. Their occupations were divided into classes, that of Brahmans or priests, Kchatryas or warriors, and Vaisyas, laborers or artisans. The last class was perhaps formed by the invaders anterior to the Aryans, whom we have just mentioned. These divisions corresponded, as is evident, to our three ancient castes, the clergy, the nobility, and the third estate. Beneath these classes was the aboriginal population, the Sudras, forming three quarters of the whole population. Experience soon revealed the inconveniences which might rise from the mixture of the superior race with the inferior ones, and all the proscriptions of religion tended thereafter to prevent it. "Every country which gives birth to men of mixed races," said the ancient law-giver of the Hindus, the sage Manu, "is soon destroyed together with those who inhabit it." The decree is harsh, but it is impossible not to recognize its truth. Every superior race which has mingled with another too inferior has speedily been degraded or absorbed by it. The Spaniards in America, the Portuguese in India, are proofs of the sad results produced by such mixtures. The descendants of the brave Portuguese adventurers, who in other days conquered part of India, fill to-day the employments of servants, and the name of their race has become a term of contempt. Imbued with the importance of this anthropological truth, the Code of Manu, which has been the law of India for so many centuries, and which, like all codes, is the result of long anterior experiences, neglects nothing to preserve the purity of blood. It pronounces severe penalties against all intermingling of the superior castes between themselves, and especially with the caste of the Sudras. There are no frightful threats which it does not employ to keep the latter apart. But in the course of the centuries nature triumphed over these formidable prohibitions. Woman always has her charms, no matter how inferior she may be in caste. In spite of Manu, crossings of caste were numerous, and one need not travel India throughout to perceive that, to-day, the populations of all the races are mixed to a large extent. The number of individuals white enough to prove that their blood is quite pure is very restricted. The word caste, taken in its primitive sense, is no longer a synonym of color, as it used to be in Sanscrit, and, if caste had had only formerly prevailing ethnological reasons to invoke, it would have had no reason for continuing. In fact, the primitive divisions of caste have long since disappeared. They were replaced by new divisions, the origin of which is other than the difference of races, except in the case of the Brahmans, who still form the less mixed portion of the population. Among the causes which have perpetuated the system of castes, the law of heredity has furthermore continued to play a fundamental part. Aptness is inevitably hereditary among the Hindus, and, also inevitably, the son follows the profession of the father. The principle of heredity of the professions being universally admitted, there has resulted the formation of castes as numerous as the professions themselves, and to-day in India castes are numbered by the thousand. Each new profession has for an immediate consequence the formation of a new caste. The European who comes to India to live soon perceives to what an extent the castes have multiplied in observing the number of different persons whom he is obliged to hire to wait on him. To the two preceding causes of the formations of castes, the ethnological cause, now very weak, and the professional, which is still very strong, are added political office, and the heterogeneity of religious beliefs. The castes springing from political office might, strictly speaking, be placed in the category of professional castes, but those produced by diversity of religious beliefs should be attached to none of the preceding causes. In theory, that is, only judged by the reading of books, all India would be divided into two or three great religions only. But practically these religions are very numerous. New gods, considered as simple incarnations of ancient ones, are born and die every day, and their votaries soon form a new caste as rigid in its exclusions as the others. Two fundamental signs mark the conformity of castes, and separate from all the others the persons belonging to them. The first is that the individuals of the same caste cannot eat except among themselves. The second is that they can only marry among themselves. These two proscriptions are quite fundamental, and the first not less than the second. You may meet by the hundreds in India Brahmans who are employed by the government in the post-office and railway service, or even Brahmans who are beggars. But the humble functionary or wretched mendicant would rather die than sit at table with the viceroy of India. The quality of Brahmans is hereditary, like a title of nobility in Europe. It is not a synonym of priest, as is generally believed, because it is from this caste that priests are recruited. This caste was formerly so exalted that the rank of royalty was not sufficient to enable one to aspire to the hand of a Brahman's daughter. The Hindu would rather die than violate the laws of his caste. Nothing is more terrible than for him to lose it. Such loss may be compared to excommunication in the middle ages, or to a condemnation for an infamous crime in modern Europe. To lose his caste is to lose everything at one blow, parents, relations, and fortune. Every one turns his back upon the culprit and refuses to have any dealings with him. He must enter the casteless category, which is employed only for the most abject functions. As to the social and political consequences of such a system, the only social bond among the Hindus is caste. Outside of caste the world does not exist for him. He is separated from persons of another caste by an abyss much deeper than that which separates Europeans of the most different nationalities. The latter may intermarry, but persons of different castes cannot. The result is that every village possesses as many groups as there are castes represented. With such a system union against a master is impossible. This system of caste explains the phenomenon of two hundred and fifty millions of men obeying, without a murmur, sixty or seventy thousand strangers[24] whom they detest. The only fatherland of the Hindu is his caste. He has never had another. His country is not a fatherland to him, and he has never dreamed of its unity. [Footnote 24: English.] W.W. HUNTER At a very early period we catch sight of a nobler race from the northwest, forcing its way in among the primitive peoples of India. This race belonged to the splendid Aryan or Indo-Germanic stock from which the Brahman, the Rajput, and the Englishman alike descend. Its earliest home seems to have been in Western Asia. From that common camping-ground certain branches of the race started for the east, others for the farther west. One of the western offshoots built Athens and Sparta, and became the Greek nation; another went on to Italy, and reared the city on the Seven Hills, which grew into Imperial Rome. A distant colony of the same race excavated the silver ores of prehistoric Spain; and when we first catch a sight of ancient England, we see an Aryan settlement fishing in wattle canoes, and working the tin mines of Cornwall. Meanwhile other branches of the Aryan stock had gone forth from the primitive Asiatic home to the east. Powerful bands found their way through the passes of the Himalayas into the Punjab, and spread themselves, chiefly as Brahmans and Rajputs, over India. The Aryan offshoots, alike to the east and to the west, asserted their superiority over the earlier peoples whom they found in possession of the soil. The history of ancient Europe is the story of the Aryan settlements around the shores of the Mediterranean; and that wide term, modern civilization, merely means the civilization of the western branches of the same race. The history of India consists in like manner of the history of the eastern offshoots of the Aryan stock who settled in that land. We know little regarding these noble Aryan tribes in their early camping-ground in Western Asia. From words preserved in the languages of their long-separated descendants in Europe and India, scholars infer that they roamed over the grassy steppes with their cattle, making long halts to raise crops of grain. They had tamed most of the domestic animals; were acquainted with iron; understood the arts of weaving and sewing; wore clothes, and ate cooked food. They lived the hardy life of the comparatively temperate zone; and the feeling of cold seems to be one of the earliest common remembrances of the eastern and the western branches of the race. The forefathers of the Greek and the Roman, of the English and the Hindu, dwelt together in Western Asia, spoke the same tongue, worshipped the same gods. The languages of Europe and India, although at first sight they seem wide apart, are merely different growths from the original Aryan speech. This is especially true of the common words of family life. The names for _father, mother, brother, sister_, and _widow_ are the same in most of the Aryan languages, whether spoken on the banks of the Ganges, of the Tiber, or of the Thames. Thus the word _daughter_, which occurs in nearly all of them, has been derived from the Aryan root _dugh_, which in Sanscrit has the form of _duh_, to milk; and perhaps preserves the memory of the time when the daughter was the little milkmaid in the primitive Aryan household. The ancient religions of Europe and India had a common origin. They were to some extent made up of the sacred stories or myths which our joint ancestors had learned while dwelling together in Asia. Several of the Vedic gods were also the gods of Greece and Rome; and to this day the Divinity is adored by names derived from the same old Aryan word (_deva_, the Shining One), by Brahmans in Calcutta, by the Protestant clergy of England, and by Roman Catholic priests in Peru. The Vedic hymns exhibit the Indian branch of the Aryans on their march to the southeast, and in their new homes. The earliest songs disclose the race still to the north of the Khaibar pass, in Kabul; the later ones bring them as far as the Ganges. Their victorious advance eastward through the intermediate tract can be traced in the Vedic writings almost step by step. The steady supply of water among the five rivers of the Punjab led the Aryans to settle down from their old state of wandering half-pastoral tribes into regular communities of husbandmen. The Vedic poets praised the rivers which enabled them to make this great change--perhaps the most important step in the progress of a race. "May the Indus," they sang, "the far-famed giver of wealth, hear us; [fertilizing our] broad fields with water." The Himalayas, through whose southwestern passes they had reached India, and at whose southern base they long dwelt, made a lasting impression on their memory. The Vedic singer praised "Him whose greatness the snowy ranges, and the sea, and the aerial river declare." The Aryan race in India never forgot its northern home. There dwelt its gods and holy singers; and there eloquence descended from heaven among men; while high amid the Himalayan mountains lay the paradise of deities and heroes, where the kind and the brave forever repose. The Rig-Veda forms the great literary memorial of the early Aryan settlements in the Punjab. The age of this venerable hymnal is unknown. Orthodox Hindus believe, without evidence, that it existed "from before all time," or at least from 3001 years B.C. European scholars have inferred from astronomical data that its composition was going on about 1400 B.C. But the evidence might have been calculated backward, and inserted later in the Veda. We only know that the Vedic religion had been at work long before the rise of Buddhism in the sixth century B.C. The Rig-Veda is a very old collection of 1017 short poems, chiefly addressed to the gods, and containing 10,580 verses. Its hymns show us the Aryans on the banks of the Indus, divided into various tribes, sometimes at war with each other, sometimes united against the "black-skinned" aborigines. Caste, in its later sense, is unknown. Each father of a family is the priest of his own household. The chieftain acts as father and priest to the tribe; but at the greater festivals he chooses some one specially learned in holy offerings to conduct the sacrifice in the name of the people. The king himself seems to have been elected; and his title of Vis-pat, literally "Lord of the Settlers," survives in the old Persian Vis-paiti, and as the Lithuanian Wiez-patis in east-central Europe at this day. Women enjoyed a high position; and some of the most beautiful hymns were composed by ladies and queens. Marriage was held sacred. Husband and wife were both "rulers of the house" (_dampati_); and drew near to the gods together in prayer. The burning of widows on their husbands' funeral pile was unknown; and the verses in the Veda which the Brahmans afterwards distorted into a sanction for the practice, have the very opposite meaning. "Rise, woman," says the Vedic text to the mourner; "come to the world of life. Come to us, Thou hast fulfilled thy duties as a wife to thy husband." The Aryan tribes in the Veda have blacksmiths, coppersmiths, and goldsmiths among them, besides carpenters, barbers, and other artisans. They fight from chariots, and freely use the horse, although not yet the elephant, in war. They have settled down as husbandmen, till their fields with the plough, and live in villages or towns. But they also cling to their old wandering life, with their herds and "cattle-pens." Cattle, indeed, still form their chief wealth--the coin in which payment of fines is made--reminding us of the Latin word for money, _pecunia_, from _pecus_, a herd. One of the Vedic words for war literally means "a desire for cows." Unlike the modern Hindus, the Aryans of the Veda ate beef; used a fermented liquor or beer, made from the _soma_ plant; and offered the same strong meat and drink to their gods. Thus the stout Aryans spread eastward through Northern India, pushed on from behind by later arrivals of their own stock, and driving before them, or reducing to bondage, the earlier "black-skinned" races. They marched in whole communities from one river valley to another; each house-father a warrior, husbandman, and priest; with his wife, and his little ones, and his cattle. These free-hearted tribes had a great trust in themselves and their gods. Like other conquering races, they believed that both themselves and their deities were altogether superior to the people of the land, and to their poor, rude objects of worship. Indeed, this noble self-confidence is a great aid to the success of a nation. Their divinities--_devas_, literally "the shining ones," from the Sanscrit root _div_, "to shine"--were the great powers of nature. They adored the Father-heaven,--_Dyaush-pitar_ in Sanscrit, the _Dies piter_ or _Jupiter_ of Rome, the _Zeus_ of Greece; and the Encompassing Sky--_Varuna_ in Sanscrit, _Uranus_ in Latin, _Ouranos_ in Greek. _Indra_, or the Aqueous Vapor, that brings the precious rain on which plenty or famine still depends each autumn, received the largest number of hymns. By degrees, as the settlers realized more and more keenly the importance of the periodical rains to their new life as husbandmen, he became the chief of the Vedic gods. "The gods do not reach unto thee, O Indra, nor men; thou overcomest all creatures in strength." Agni, the God of Fire (Latin _ignis_), ranks perhaps next to Indra in the number of hymns addressed to him. He is "the Youngest of the Gods," "the Lord and Giver of Wealth." The Maruts are the Storm Gods, "who make the rock to tremble, who tear in pieces the forest." Ushas, "the High-born Dawn" (Greek _Eos_), "shines upon us like a young wife, rousing every living being to go forth to his work." The Asvins, the "Horsemen" or fleet outriders of the dawn, are the first rays of sunrise, "Lords of Lustre." The Solar Orb himself (Surya), the Wind (Vayu), the Sunshine or Friendly Day (Mitra), the intoxicating fermented juice of the Sacrificial Plant (Soma), and many other deities are invoked in the Veda--in all, about thirty-three gods, "who are eleven in heaven, eleven on earth, and eleven dwelling in glory in mid-air." The Aryan settler lived on excellent terms with his bright gods. He asked for protection, with an assured conviction that it would be granted. At the same time, he was deeply stirred by the glory and mystery of the earth and the heavens. Indeed, the majesty of nature so filled his mind, that when he praises any one of his Shining Gods, he can think of none other for the time being, and adores him as the supreme ruler. Verses may be quoted declaring each of the greater deities to be the One Supreme: "Neither gods nor men reach unto thee, O Indra!" Another hymn speaks of Soma as "king of heaven and earth, the conqueror of all." To Varuna also it is said, "Thou art lord of all, of heaven and earth; thou art king of all those who are gods, and of all those who are men." The more spiritual of the Vedic singers, therefore, may be said to have worshipped One God, though not One alone. "In the beginning there arose the Golden Child. He was the one born lord of all that is. He established the earth and this sky. Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice? "He who gives life, he who gives strength; whose command all the Bright Gods revere; whose shadow is immortality, whose shadow is death. Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice? "He who, through his power, is the one king of the breathing and awakening world. He who governs all, man and beast. Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice? "He through whom the sky is bright and the earth firm; he through whom the heaven was established, nay, the highest heaven; he who measured out the light and the air. Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice? "He who by his might looked even over the water-clouds; he who alone is God above all gods. Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?" While the aboriginal races buried their dead in the earth or under rude stone monuments, the Aryan--alike in India, in Greece, and in Italy--made use of the funeral-pile. Several exquisite Sanscrit hymns bid farewell to the dead:--"Depart thou, depart thou by the ancient paths to the place whither our fathers have departed. Meet with the Ancient Ones; meet with the Lord of Death. Throwing off thine imperfections, go to thy home. Become united with a body; clothe thyself in a shining form." "Let him depart to those for whom flow the rivers of nectar. Let him depart to those who, through meditation, have obtained the victory; who, by fixing their thoughts on the unseen, have gone to heaven. Let him depart to the mighty in battle, to the heroes who have laid down their lives for others, to those who have bestowed their goods on the poor." The doctrine of transmigration was at first unknown. The circle round the funeral-pile sang with a firm assurance that their friend went direct to a state of blessedness and reunion with the loved ones who had gone before. "Do thou conduct us to heaven," says a hymn of the later Atharva-Veda; "let us be with our wives and children." "In heaven, where our friends dwell in bliss--having left behind the infirmities of the body, free from lameness, free from crookedness of limb--there let us behold our parents and our children." "May the water-shedding Spirits bear thee upward, cooling thee with their swift motion through the air, and sprinkling thee with dew." "Bear him, carry him; let him, with all his faculties complete, go to the world of the righteous. Crossing the dark valley which spreadeth boundless around him, let the unborn soul ascend to heaven. Wash the feet of him who is stained with sin; let him go upward with cleansed feet. Crossing the gloom, gazing with wonder in many directions, let the unborn soul go up to heaven." By degrees the old collection of hymns, or the Rig-Veda, no longer sufficed. Three other collections or service-books were therefore added, making the Four Vedas. The word Veda is from the same root as the Latin _vid-ere_, to see: the early Greek _feid-enai_, infinitive of _oida_, I know: and the English _wisdom_, or I _wit_. The Brahmans taught that the Veda was divinely inspired, and that it was literally "the _wisdom_ of God." There was, first, the Rig-Veda, or the hymns in their simplest form. Second, the Sama-Veda, made up of hymns of the Rig-Veda to be used at the Soma sacrifice. Third, the Yajur-Veda, consisting not only of Rig-Vedic hymns, but also of prose sentences, to be used at the great sacrifices; and divided into two editions, the Black and White Yajur. The fourth, or Atharva-Veda, was compiled from the least ancient hymns at the end of the Rig-Veda, very old religious spells, and later sources. Some of its spells have a similarity to the ancient German and Lithuanian charms, and appear to have come down from the most primitive times, before the Indian and European branches of the Aryan race struck out from their common home. To each of the four Vedas were attached prose works, called Brahmanas, in order to explain the sacrifices and the duties of the priests. Like the Four Vedas, the Brahmanas were held to be the very word of God. The Vedas and the Brahmanas form the revealed Scriptures of the Hindus--the _sruti_, literally "Things _heard_ from God." The Vedas supplied their divinely-inspired psalms, and the Brahmanas their divinely-inspired theology or body of doctrine. To them were afterward added the Sutras, literally "_Strings_ of pithy sentences" regarding laws and ceremonies. Still later the Upanishads were composed, treating of God and the soul; the Aranyakas, or "Tracts for the forest recluse;" and, after a very long interval, the Puranas, or "Traditions from of old." All these ranked, however, not as divinely-inspired knowledge, or things "heard from God" (_sruti_), like the Vedas and Brahmanas, but only as sacred traditions--_smriti_, literally "The things _remembered_." Meanwhile the Four Castes had been formed. In the old Aryan colonies among the Five Rivers of the Punjab, each house-father was a husbandman, warrior, and priest. But by degrees certain gifted families, who composed the Vedic hymns or learned them off by heart, were always chosen by the king to perform the great sacrifices. In this way probably the priestly caste sprang up. As the Aryans conquered more territory, fortunate soldiers received a larger share of the lands than others, and cultivated it not with their own hands, but by means of the vanquished non-Aryan tribes. In this way the Four Castes arose. First, the priests or Brahmans. Second, the warriors or fighting companions of the king, called Rajputs or Kchatryas, literally "of the _royal_ stock." Third, the Aryan agricultural settlers, who kept the old name of Vaisyas, from the root _vis_, which in the primitive Vedic period had included the whole Aryan people. Fourth, the Sudras, or conquered non-Aryan tribes, who became serfs. The three first castes were of Aryan descent, and were honored by the name of the Twice-born Castes. They could all be present at the sacrifices, and they worshipped the same Bright Gods. The Sudras were "the slave-bands of black descent" of the Veda. They were distinguished from their "Twice-born" Aryan conquerors as being only "Once-born," and by many contemptuous epithets. They were not allowed to be present at the great national sacrifices, or at the feasts which followed them. They could never rise out of their servile condition; and to them was assigned the severest toil in the fields, and all the hard and dirty work of the village community. The Brahmans or priests claimed the highest rank. But they seemed to have had a long struggle with the Kchatryas, or warrior caste, before they won their proud position at the head of the Indian people. They afterward secured themselves in that position by teaching that it had been given to them by God. At the beginning of the world, they said, the Brahman proceeded from the mouth of the Creator, the Kchatryas or Rajput from his arms, the Vaisya from his thighs or belly, and the Sudra from his feet. This legend is true so far that the Brahmans were really the brain power of the Indian people, the Kchatryas its armed hands, the Vaisyas the food-growers, and the Sudras the down-trodden serfs. When the Brahmans had established their power, they made a wise use of it. From the ancient Vedic times they recognized that if they were to exercise spiritual supremacy, they must renounce earthly pomp. In arrogating the priestly function, they gave up all claim to the royal office. They were divinely appointed to be the guides of nations and the counsellors of kings, but they could not be kings themselves. As the duty of the Sudra was to serve, of the Vaisya to till the ground and follow middle-class trades or crafts; so the business of the Kchatryas was to fight the public enemy, and of the Brahman to propitiate the national gods. Each day brought to the Brahmans its routine of ceremonies, studies, and duties. Their whole life was mapped out into four clearly defined stages of discipline. For their existence, in its full religious significance, commenced not at birth, but on being invested at the close of childhood with the sacred thread of the Twice-born. Their youth and early manhood were to be entirely spent in learning the Veda by heart from an older Brahman, tending the sacred fire, and serving their preceptor. Having completed his long studies, the young Brahman entered on the second stage of his life, as a householder. He married, and commenced a course of family duties. When he had reared a family, and gained a practical knowledge of the world, he retired into the forest as a recluse, for the third period of his life; feeding on roots or fruits, practising his religious duties with increased devotion. The fourth stage was that of the ascetic or religious mendicant, wholly withdrawn from earthly affairs, and striving to attain a condition of mind which, heedless of the joys, or pains, or wants of the body, is intent only on its final absorption into the deity. The Brahman, in this fourth stage of his life, ate nothing but what was given to him unasked, and abode not more than one day in any village, lest the vanities of the world should find entrance into his heart. This was the ideal life prescribed for a Brahman, and ancient Indian literature shows that it was to a large extent practically carried out. Throughout his whole existence the true Brahman practised a strict temperance; drinking no wine, using a simple diet, curbing the desires; shut off from the tumults of war, as his business was to pray, not to fight, and having his thoughts ever fixed on study and contemplation. "What is this world?" says a Brahman sage. "It is even as the bough of a tree, on which a bird rests for a night, and in the morning flies away." The Brahmans, therefore, were a body of men who, in an early stage of this world's history, bound themselves by a rule of life the essential precepts of which were self-culture and self-restraint. The Brahmans of the present India are the result of 3000 years of hereditary education and temperance; and they have evolved a type of mankind quite distinct from the surrounding population. Even the passing traveller in India marks them out, alike from the bronze-cheeked, large-limbed, leisure-loving Rajput or Kchatryas, the warrior caste of Aryan descent; and from the dark-skinned, flat-nosed, thick-lipped low castes of non-Aryan origin, with their short bodies and bullet heads. The Brahman stands apart from both, tall and slim, with finely-modelled lips and nose, fair complexion, high forehead, and slightly cocoanut shaped skull--the man of self-centred refinement. He is an example of a class becoming the ruling power in a country, not by force of arms, but by the vigor of hereditary culture and temperance. One race has swept across India after another, dynasties have risen and fallen, religions have spread themselves over the land and disappeared. But since the dawn of history the Brahman has calmly ruled; swaying the minds and receiving the homage of the people, and accepted by foreign nations as the highest type of Indian mankind. The position which the Brahmans won resulted in no small measure from the benefits which they bestowed. For their own Aryan countrymen they developed a noble language and literature. The Brahmans were not only the priests and philosophers, but also the lawgivers, the men of science and the poets of their race. Their influence on the aboriginal peoples, the hill and forest races of India, was even more important. To these rude remnants of the flint and stone ages they brought in ancient times a knowledge of the metals and the gods. As a social league, Hinduism arranged the people into the old division of the "Twice-born" Aryan castes, namely, the Brahmans, Kchatryas, Vaisyas; and the "Once-born" castes, consisting of the non-Aryan Sudras and the classes of mixed descent. This arrangement of the Indian races remains to the present day. The "Twice-born" castes still wear the sacred thread, and claim a joint, although an unequal, inheritance in the holy books of the Veda. The "Once-born" castes are still denied the sacred thread; and they were not allowed to study the holy books, until the English set up schools in India for all classes of the people. But while caste is thus founded on the distinctions of race, it has been influenced by two other systems of division, namely, the employments of the people, and the localities in which they live. Even in the oldest times, the castes had separate occupations assigned to them. They could be divided either into Brahmans, Kchatryas, Vaisyas, and Sudras; or into priests, warriors, husbandmen, and serfs. They are also divided according to the parts of India in which they live. Even the Brahmans have among themselves ten distinct classes, or rather nations. Five of these classes or Brahman nations live to the north of the Vindhya mountains; five of them live to the south. Each of the ten feels itself to be quite apart from the rest; and they have among themselves no fewer than 1886 subdivisions or separate Brahmanical tribes. In like manner, the Kchatryas or Rajputs number 590 separate tribes in different parts of India. While, therefore, Indian caste seems at first a very simple arrangement of the people into four classes, it is in reality a very complex one. For it rests upon three distinct systems of division: namely, upon race, occupation, and geographical position. It is very difficult even to guess at the number of the Indian castes. But there are not fewer than 3,000 of them which have separate names, and which regard themselves as separate classes. The different castes cannot intermarry with each other, and most of them cannot eat together. The ordinary rule is that no Hindu of good caste can touch food cooked by a man of inferior caste. By rights, too, each caste should keep to its own occupation. Indeed, there has been a tendency to erect every separate kind of employment or handicraft in each separate province into a distinct caste. But, as a matter of practice, the castes often change their occupation, and the lower ones sometimes raise themselves in the social scale. Thus the Vaisya caste were in ancient times the tillers of the soil. They have in most provinces given up this toilsome occupation, and the Vaisyas are now the great merchants and bankers of India. Their fair skins, intelligent faces, and polite bearing must have altered since the days when their forefathers ploughed, sowed, and reaped under the hot sun. Such changes of employment still occur on a smaller scale throughout India. The system of caste exercises a great influence upon the industries of the people. Each caste is, in the first place, a trade-guild. It insures the proper training of the youth of its own special craft; it makes rules for the conduct of the caste-trade; it promotes good feeling by feasts or social gatherings. The famous manufactures of mediæval India, its muslins, silks, cloth of gold, inlaid weapons, and exquisite work in precious stones--were brought to perfection under the care of the castes or trade-guilds. Such guilds may still be found in full work in many parts of India, Thus, in the northwestern districts of Bombay all heads of artisan families are ranged under their proper trade-guild. The trade-guild or caste prevents undue competition among the members, and upholds the interest of its own body in any dispute arising with other craftsmen. In 1873, for example, a number of the bricklayers in Ahmadabad could not find work. Men of this class sometimes added to their daily wages by rising very early in the morning, and working overtime. But when several families complained that they could not get employment, the bricklayers' guild met, and decided that as there was not enough work for all, no member should be allowed to work in extra hours. In the same city, the cloth dealers in 1872 tried to cut down the wages of the sizers or men who dress the cotton cloth. The sizers' guild refused to work at lower rates, and remained six weeks on strike. At length they arranged their dispute, and both the trade-guilds signed a stamped agreement fixing the rates for the future. Each of the higher castes or trade-guilds in Ahmadabad receives a fee from young men on entering their business. The revenue derived from these fees, and from fines upon members who break caste rules, is spent in feasts to the brethren of the guild, and in helping the poorer craftsmen or their orphans. A favorite plan of raising money in Surat is for the members of the trade to keep a certain day as a holiday, and to shut up all their shops except one. The right to keep open this one shop is put up to auction, and the amount bid is expended on a feast. The trade-guild or caste allows none of its members to starve. It thus acts as a mutual assurance society and takes the place of a poor-law in India. The severest social penalty which can be inflicted upon a Hindu is to be put out of his caste. Hinduism is, however, not only a social league resting upon caste--it is also a religious alliance based upon worship. As the various race elements of the Indian people have been welded into caste, so the simple old beliefs of the Veda, the mild doctrines of Buddha, and the fierce rites of the non-Aryan tribes, have been thrown into the melting-pot, and poured out thence as a mixture of precious metal and dross, to be worked up into the complex worship of the Hindu gods. FALL OF TROY B.C. 1184 GEORGE GROTE The siege of Troy is an event not to be reckoned as history, although Herodotus, the "Father of History," speaks of it as such, and it would be quite impossible to understand the history and character of the Greek people without a study of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ poems attributed to "a blind bard of Scio's isle"--immortal Homer. The campaign of the Greek heroes in Asia is to be referred to a hazy point in the past when Europe was just beginning to have an Eastern Question. A vast circle of tales and poems has gathered round this mythical event, and the _Iliad_--Song of Ilium, or Troy--is still a poem of unfailing interest and fascination. Ilium, or Troy, was a city of Asia Minor, a little south of the Hellespont. It was the centre of a powerful state, Grecian in race and language; and when Paris, son of King Priam, visited Sparta and carried off the beautiful wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta, all the heroes of Greece banded together and invaded Priam's dominions. The twelve hundred ships that sailed for Troy transported one hundred thousand warriors to the valley of Simois and Scamander. Among them was Agamemnon, "king of men," brother of Menelaus. He was the leader, and in his train were Achilles, "swift of foot"; "god-like, wise" Ulysses, King of Ithaca, the two Ajaxes, and the aged Nestor. The narrative of their adventures is told in the Homeric poems with a power of musical expression, a charm of language, and a vividness of imagery unsurpassed in poetry. For ten years the besiegers encircled the city of Priam. After many engagements and single combats on "the windy plain of Troy" the great hero of the Greeks, Achilles of Thessaly, is wronged by Agamemnon, who carries away Briseis, a fair captive girl allotted as the spoils of war to the "Swift-footed." The hero of Thessaly thenceforth refuses to join in the war, and sullenly shuts himself up in his tent. It is only when his dear friend Patroclus has been slain by the valiant Hector, eldest son of Priam, that he sallies forth, meets Hector in single combat, and finally slays him. Achilles then attaches the body of Hector to his chariot and insultingly trails it in the dust as he drives three times around the walls of Troy. The _Iliad_ closes with the funeral rites celebrated over the corpse of Hector. We now arrive at the capital and culminating point of the Grecian epic--the two sieges and captures of Troy, with the destinies of the dispersed heroes, Trojan as well as Grecian, after the second and most celebrated capture and destruction of the city. It would require a large volume to convey any tolerable idea of the vast extent and expansion of this interesting fable, first handled by so many poets, epic, lyric, and tragic, with their endless additions, transformations, and contradictions,--then purged and recast by historical inquirers, who, under color of setting aside the exaggerations of the poets, introduced a new vein of prosaic invention,--lastly, moralized and allegorized by philosophers. In the present brief outline of the general field of Grecian legend, or of that which the Greeks believed to be their antiquities, the Trojan war can be regarded as only one among a large number of incidents upon which Hecatæus and Herodotus looked back as constituting their fore-time. Taken as a special legendary event, it is, indeed, of wider and larger interest than any other, but it is a mistake to single it out from the rest as if it rested upon a different and more trustworthy basis. I must, therefore, confine myself to an abridged narrative of the current and leading facts; and amid the numerous contradictory statements which are to be found respecting every one of them, I know no better ground of preference than comparative antiquity, though even the oldest tales which we possess--those contained in the _Iliad_--evidently presuppose others of prior date. The primitive ancestor of the Trojan line of kings is Dardanus, son of Zeus, founder and eponymus of Dardania: in the account of later authors, Dardanus was called the son of Zeus by Electra, daughter of Atlas, and was further said to have come from Samothrace, or from Arcadia, or from Italy; but of this Homer mentions nothing. The first Dardanian town founded by him was in a lofty position on the descent of Mount Ida; for he was not yet strong enough to establish himself on the plain. But his son Erichthonius, by the favor of Zeus, became the wealthiest of mankind. His flocks and herds having multiplied, he had in his pastures three thousand mares, the offspring of some of whom, by Boreas, produced horses of preternatural swiftness. Tros, the son of Erichthonius, and the eponym of the Trojans, had three sons--Ilus, Assaracus, and the beautiful Ganymedes, whom Zeus stole away to become his cup-bearer in Olympus, giving to his father Tros, as the price of the youth, a team of immortal horses. From Ilus and Assaracus the Trojan and Dardanian lines diverge; the former passing from Ilus to Laomedon, Priam, and Hector; the latter from Assaracus to Capys, Anchises, and Æneas. Ilus founded in the plain of Troy the holy city of Ilium; Assaracus and his descendants remained sovereigns of Dardania. It was under the proud Laomedon, son of Ilus, that Poseidon and Apollo underwent, by command of Zeus, a temporary servitude; the former building the walls of the town, the latter tending the flocks and herds. When their task was completed and the penal period had expired, they claimed the stipulated reward; but Laomedon angrily repudiated their demand, and even threatened to cut off their ears, to tie them hand and foot, and to sell them in some distant island as slaves. He was punished for this treachery by a sea-monster, whom Poseidon sent to ravage his fields and to destroy his subjects. Laomedon publicly offered the immortal horses given by Zeus to his father Tros, as a reward to any one who would destroy the monster. But an oracle declared that a virgin of noble blood must be surrendered to him, and the lot fell upon Hesione, daughter of Laomedon himself. Heracles, arriving at this critical moment, killed the monster by the aid of a fort built for him by Athene and the Trojans, so as to rescue both the exposed maiden and the people; but Laomedon, by a second act of perfidy, gave him mortal horses in place of the matchless animals which had been promised. Thus defrauded of his due, Heracles equipped six ships, attacked and captured Troy, and killed Laomedon, giving Hesione to his friend and auxiliary Telamon, to whom she bore the celebrated archer Teucros. A painful sense of this expedition was preserved among the inhabitants of the historical town of Ilium, who offered no worship to Heracles. Among all the sons of Laomedon, Priam was the only one who had remonstrated against the refusal of the well-earned guerdon of Heracles; for which the hero recompensed him by placing him on the throne. Many and distinguished were his sons and daughters, as well by his wife Hecuba, daughter of Cisseus, as by other women. Among the sons were Hector, Paris, Deiphobus, Helenus, Troilus, Polites, Polydorus; among the daughters, Laodice, Creusa, Polyxena, and Cassandra. The birth of Paris was preceded by formidable presage; for Hecuba dreamed that she was delivered of a firebrand, and Priam, on consulting the soothsayers, was informed that the son about to be born would prove fatal to him. Accordingly he directed the child to be exposed on Mount Ida; but the inauspicious kindness of the gods preserved him; and he grew up amid the flocks and herds, active and beautiful, fair of hair and symmetrical in person, and the special favorite of Aphrodite. It was to this youth, in his solitary shepherd's walk on Mount Ida, that the three goddesses, Here, Athene, and Aphrodite, were conducted, in order that he might determine the dispute respecting their comparative beauty, which had arisen at the nuptials of Peleus and Thetis,--a dispute brought about in pursuance of the arrangement, and in accomplishment of the deep-laid designs of Zeus. For Zeus, remarking with pain the immoderate numbers of the then existing heroic race, pitied the earth for the overwhelming burden which she was compelled to bear, and determined to lighten it by exciting a destructive and long-continued war. Paris awarded the palm of beauty to Aphrodite, who promised him in recompense the possession of Helen, wife of the Spartan Menelaus,--the daughter of Zeus and the fairest of living women. At the instance of Aphrodite, ships were built for him, and he embarked on the enterprise so fraught with eventual disaster to his native city, in spite of the menacing prophecies of his brother Helenus, and the always neglected warnings of Cassandra. Paris, on arriving at Sparta, was hospitably entertained by Menelaus as well as by Castor and Pollux, and was enabled to present the rich gifts which he had brought to Helen. Menelaus then departed to Crete, leaving Helen to entertain his Trojan guest--a favorable moment, which was employed by Aphrodite to bring about the intrigue and the elopement. Paris carried away with him both Helen and a large sum of money belonging to Menelaus, made a prosperous voyage to Troy, and arrived there safely with his prize on the third day. Menelaus, informed by Iris in Crete of the perfidious return made by Paris for his hospitality, hastened home in grief and indignation to consult with his brother Agamemnon, as well as with the venerable Nestor, on the means of avenging the outrage. They made known the event to the Greek chiefs around them, among whom they found universal sympathy; Nestor, Palamedes, and others went round to solicit aid in a contemplated attack of Troy, under the command of Agamemnon, to whom each chief promised both obedience and unwearied exertion until Helen should be recovered. Ten years were spent in equipping the expedition. The goddesses Here and Athene, incensed at the preference given by Paris to Aphrodite, and animated by steady attachment to Argos, Sparta, and Mycenæ, took an active part in the cause, and the horses of Here were fatigued with her repeated visits to the different parts of Greece. By such efforts a force was at length assembled at Aulis in Boeotia, consisting of 1,186 ships and more than one hundred thousand men--a force outnumbering by more than ten to one anything that the Trojans themselves could oppose, and superior to the defenders of Troy even with all her allies included. It comprised heroes with their followers from the extreme points of Greece--from the northwestern portions of Thessaly under Mount Olympus, as well as the western islands of Dulichium and Ithaca, and the eastern islands of Crete and Rhodes. Agamemnon himself contributed 100 ships manned with the subjects of his kingdom Mycenæ, besides furnishing 60 ships to the Arcadians, who possessed none of their own. Menelaus brought with him 60 ships, Nestor from Pylus, 90, Idomeneus from Crete and Diomedes from Argos, 80 each. Forty ships were manned by the Elians, under four different chiefs; the like number under Meges from Dulichium and the Echinades, and under Thoas from Calydon and the other Ætolian towns. Odysseus from Ithaca, and Ajax from Salamis, brought 12 ships each. The Abantes from Euboea, under Elphenor, filled 40 vessels; the Boeotians, under Peneleos and Leitus, 50; the inhabitants of Orchomenus and Aspledon, 30; the light-armed Locrians, under Ajax son of Oileus, 40; the Phocians as many. The Athenians, under Menestheus, a chief distinguished for his skill in marshalling an army, mustered 50 ships; the Myrmidons from Phthia and Hellas, under Achilles, assembled in 50 ships; Protesilaus from Phylace and Pyrasus, and Eurypylus from Ormenium, each came with 40 ships; Machaon and Podaleirius, from Trikka, with 30; Eumelus, from Pheræ and the lake Boebeis, with 11; and Philoctetes from Meliboea with 7; the Lapithæ, under Polypoetes, son of Peirithous, filled 40 vessels, the Ænianes and Perrhæbians, under Guneus, 22; and the Magnetes, under Prothous, 40; these last two were from the northernmost parts of Thessaly, near the mountains Pelion and Olympus. From Rhodes, under Tlepolemus, son of Heracles, appeared 9 ships; from Syme, under the comely but effeminate Nireus, 3; from Cos, Crapathus, and the neighboring islands, 30, under the orders of Pheidippus and Antiphus, sons of Thessalus and grandsons of Heracles. Among this band of heroes were included the distinguished warriors Ajax and Diomedes, and the sagacious Nestor; while Agamemnon himself, scarcely inferior to either of them in prowess, brought with him a high reputation for prudence in command. But the most marked and conspicuous of all were Achilles and Odysseus; the former a beautiful youth born of a divine mother, swift in the race, of fierce temper and irresistible might; the latter not less efficient as an ally, from his eloquence, his untiring endurance, his inexhaustible resources under difficulty, and the mixture of daring courage with deep-laid cunning which never deserted him: the blood of the arch-deceiver Sisyphus, through an illicit connection with his mother Anticleia, was said to flow in his veins, and he was especially patronized and protected by the goddess Athene. Odysseus, unwilling at first to take part in the expedition, had even simulated insanity; but Palamedes, sent to Ithaca to invite him, tested the reality of his madness by placing in the furrow where Odysseus was ploughing his infant son Telemachus. Thus detected, Odysseus could not refuse to join the Achæan host, but the prophet Halitherses predicted to him that twenty years would elapse before he revisited his native land. To Achilles the gods had promised the full effulgence of heroic glory before the walls of Troy; nor could the place be taken without both his coöperation and that of his son after him. But they had forewarned him that this brilliant career would be rapidly brought to a close; and that if he desired a long life, he must remain tranquil and inglorious in his native land. In spite of the reluctance of his mother Thetis he preferred few years with bright renown, and joined the Achæan host. When Nestor and Odysseus came to Phthia to invite him, both he and his intimate friend Patroclus eagerly obeyed the call. Agamemnon and his powerful host set sail from Aulis; but being ignorant of the locality and the direction, they landed by mistake in Teuthrania, a part of Mysia near the river Caicus, and began to ravage the country under the persuasion that it was the neighborhood of Troy. Telephus, the king of the country, opposed and repelled them, but was ultimately defeated and severely wounded by Achilles. The Greeks, now discovering their mistake, retired; but their fleet was dispersed by a storm and driven back to Greece. Achilles attacked and took Scyrus, and there married Deidamia, the daughter of Lycomedes. Telephus, suffering from his wounds, was directed by the oracle to come to Greece and present himself to Achilles to be healed, by applying the scrapings of the spear with which the wound had been given; thus restored, he became the guide of the Greeks when they were prepared to renew their expedition. The armament was again assembled at Aulis, but the goddess Artemis, displeased with the boastful language of Agamemnon, prolonged the duration of adverse winds, and the offending chief was compelled to appease her by the well-known sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia. They then proceeded to Tenedos, from whence Odysseus and Menelaus were dispatched as envoys to Troy, to redemand Helen and the stolen property. In spite of the prudent counsels of Antenor, who received the two Grecian chiefs with friendly hospitality, the Trojans rejected the demand, and the attack was resolved upon. It was foredoomed by the gods that the Greek who first landed should perish: Protesilaus was generous enough to put himself upon this forlorn hope, and accordingly fell by the hand of Hector. Meanwhile, the Trojans had assembled a large body of allies from various parts of Asia Minor and Thrace: Dardanians under Æneas, Lycians under Sarpedon, Mysians, Carians, Mæonians, Alizonians, Phrygians, Thracians, and Pæonians. But vain was the attempt to oppose the landing of the Greeks: the Trojans were routed, and even the invulnerable Cyncus, son of Poseidon, one of the great bulwarks of the defense, was slain by Achilles. Having driven the Trojans within their walls, Achilles attacked and stormed Lyrnessus, Pedasus, Lesbos, and other places in the neighborhood, twelve towns on the sea-coast, and eleven in the interior: he drove off the oxen of Æneas and pursued the hero himself, who narrowly escaped with his life: he surprised and killed the youthful Troilus, son of Priam, and captured several of the other sons, whom he sold as prisoners into the islands of the Ægean. He acquired as his captive the fair Briseis, while Chryseis was awarded to Agamemnon; he was, moreover, eager to see the divine Helen, the prize and stimulus of this memorable struggle; and Aphrodite and Thetis contrived to bring about an interview between them. At this period of the war the Grecian army was deprived of Palamedes, one of its ablest chiefs. Odysseus had not forgiven the artifice by which Palamedes had detected his simulated insanity, nor was he without jealousy of a rival clever and cunning in a degree equal, if not superior, to himself; one who had enriched the Greeks with the invention of letters of dice for amusement of night-watches as well as with other useful suggestions. According to the old Cyprian epic, Palamedes was drowned while fishing by the hands of Odysseus and Diomedes. Neither in the _Iliad_ nor the _Odyssey_ does the name of Palamedes occur; the lofty position which Odysseus occupies in both those poems--noticed with some degree of displeasure even by Pindar, who described Palamedes as the wiser man of the two--is sufficient to explain the omission. But in the more advanced period of the Greek mind, when intellectual superiority came to acquire a higher place in the public esteem as compared with military prowess, the character of Palamedes, combined with his unhappy fate, rendered him one of the most interesting personages in the Trojan legend. Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides each consecrated to him a special tragedy; but the mode of his death as described in the old epic was not suitable to Athenian ideas, and accordingly he was represented as having been falsely accused of treason by Odysseus, who caused gold to be buried in his tent, and persuaded Agamemnon and the Grecian chiefs that Palamedes had received it from the Trojans. He thus forfeited his life, a victim to the calumny of Odysseus and to the delusion of the leading Greeks. The philosopher Socrates, in the last speech made to his Athenian judges, alludes with solemnity and fellow-feeling to the unjust condemnation of Palamedes as analogous to that which he himself was about to suffer; and his companions seem to have dwelt with satisfaction on the comparison. Palamedes passed for an instance of the slanderous enmity and misfortune which so often wait upon superior genius. In these expeditions the Grecian army consumed nine years, during which the subdued Trojans dared not give battle without their walls for fear of Achilles. Ten years was the fixed epical duration of the siege of Troy, just as five years was the duration of the siege of Camicus by the Cretan armament which came to avenge the death of Minos: ten years of preparation, ten years of siege, and ten years of wandering for Odysseus were periods suited to the rough chronological dashes of the ancient epic, and suggesting no doubts nor difficulties with the original hearers. But it was otherwise when the same events came to be contemplated by the historicizing Greeks, who could not be satisfied without either finding or inventing satisfactory bonds of coherence between the separate events. Thucydides tells us that the Greeks were less numerous than the poets have represented, and that being, moreover, very poor, they were unable to procure adequate and constant provisions: hence they were compelled to disperse their army, and to employ a part of it in cultivating the Chersonese--a part in marauding expeditions over the neighborhood. Could the whole army have been employed against Troy at once (he says), the siege would have been much more speedily and easily concluded. If the great historian could permit himself thus to amend the legend in so many points, we might have imagined that a simpler course would have been to include the duration of the siege among the list of poetical exaggerations and to affirm that the real siege had lasted only one year instead of ten. But it seems that the ten years' duration was so capital a feature in the ancient tale that no critic ventured to meddle with it. A period of comparative intermission, however, was now at hand for the Trojans. The gods brought about the memorable fit of anger of Achilles, under the influence of which he refused to put on his armor, and kept his Myrmidons in camp. According to the _Cypria_ this was the behest of Zeus, who had compassion on the Trojans: according to the _Iliad_, Apollo was the originating cause, from anxiety to avenge the injury which his priest Chryses had endured from Agamemnon. For a considerable time, the combats of the Greeks against Troy were conducted without their best warrior, and severe, indeed, was the humiliation which they underwent in consequence. How the remaining Grecian chiefs vainly strove to make amends for his absence--how Hector and the Trojans defeated and drove them to their ships--how the actual blaze of the destroying flame, applied by Hector to the ship of Protesilaus, roused up the anxious and sympathizing Patroclus, and extorted a reluctant consent from Achilles to allow his friend and his followers to go forth and avert the last extremity of ruin--how Achilles, when Patroclus had been killed by Hector, forgetting his anger in grief for the death of his friend, reëntered the fight, drove the Trojans within their walls with immense slaughter, and satiated his revenge both upon the living and the dead Hector,--all these events have been chronicled, together with those divine dispensations on which most of them are made to depend, in the immortal verse of the _Iliad_. Homer breaks off with the burial of Hector, whose body has just been ransomed by the disconsolate Priam; while the lost poem of Arctinus, entitled the _Æthiopis_, so far as we can judge from the argument still remaining of it, handled only the subsequent events of the siege. The poem of Quintus Smyrnæus, composed about the fourth century of the Christian era, seems in its first books to coincide with _Æthiopis_, in the subsequent books partly with the _Ilias Minor_ of Lesches. The Trojans, dismayed by the death of Hector, were again animated with hope by the appearance of the warlike and beautiful queen of the Amazons, Penthesilia, daughter of Ares, hitherto invincible in the field, who came to their assistance from Thrace at the head of a band of her country-women. She again led the besieged without the walls to encounter the Greeks in the open field; and under her auspices the latter were at first driven back, until she, too, was slain by the invincible arm of Achilles. The victor, on taking off the helmet of his fair enemy as she lay on the ground, was profoundly affected and captivated by her charms, for which he was scornfully taunted by Thersites; exasperated by this rash insult, he killed Thersites on the spot with a blow of his fist. A violent dispute among the Grecian chiefs was the result, for Diomedes, the kinsman of Thersites, warmly resented the proceeding; and Achilles was obliged to go to Lesbos, where he was purified from the act of homicide by Odysseus. Next arrived Memnon, son of Tithonus and Eos, the most stately of living men, with a powerful band of black Ethiopians, to the assistance of Troy. Sallying forth against the Greeks, he made great havoc among them: the brave and popular Antilochus perished by his hand, a victim to filial devotion in defence of Nestor. Achilles at length attacked him, and for a long time the combat was doubtful between them: the prowess of Achilles and the supplication of Thetis with Zeus finally prevailed; while Eos obtained for her vanquished son the consoling gift of immortality. His tomb, however, was shown near the Propontis, within a few miles of the mouth of the river Æsopus, and was visited annually by the birds called Memnonides, who swept it and bedewed it with water from the stream. So the traveller Pausanias was told, even in the second century after the Christian era, by the Hellespontine Greeks. But the fate of Achilles himself was now at hand. After routing the Trojans and chasing them into the town, he was slain near the Scæan gate by an arrow from the quiver of Paris, directed under the unerring auspices of Apollo. The greatest efforts were made by the Trojans to possess themselves of the body, which was, however, rescued and borne off to the Grecian camp by the valor of Ajax and Odysseus. Bitter was the grief of Thetis for the loss of her son; she came into the camp with the Muses and the Nereids to mourn over him; and when a magnificent funeral-pile had been prepared by the Greeks to burn him with every mark of honor, she stole away the body and conveyed it to a renewed and immortal life in the island of Leuce in the Euxine Sea. According to some accounts he was there blest with the nuptials and company of Helen. Thetis celebrated splendid funeral games in honor of her son, and offered the unrivalled panoply which Hephæstus had forged and wrought for him as a prize to the most distinguished warrior in the Grecian army. Odysseus and Ajax became rivals for the distinction, when Athene, together with some Trojan prisoners, who were asked from which of the two their country had sustained greatest injury, decided in favor of the former. The gallant Ajax lost his senses with grief and humiliation: in a fit of frenzy he slew some sheep, mistaking them for the men who had wronged him, and then fell upon his own sword. Odysseus now learned from Helenus, son of Priam, whom he had captured in an ambuscade, that Troy could not be taken unless both Philoctetes and Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, could be prevailed upon to join the besiegers. The former, having been stung in the foot by a serpent, and becoming insupportable to the Greeks from the stench of his wound, had been left at Lemnos in the commencement of the expedition, and had spent ten years in misery on that desolate island; but he still possessed the peerless bow and arrows of Heracles, which were said to be essential to the capture of Troy. Diomedes fetched Philoctetes from Lemnos to the Grecian camp, where he was healed by the skill of Machaon, and took an active part against the Trojans--engaging in single combat with Paris, and killing him with one of the Heracleian arrows. The Trojans were allowed to carry away for burial the body of this prince, the fatal cause of all their sufferings; but not until it had been mangled by the hand of Menelaus. Odysseus went to the island of Scyros to invite Neoptolemus to the army. The untried but impetuous youth, gladly obeying the call, received from Odysseus his father's armor; while, on the other hand, Eurypylus, son of Telephus, came from Mysia as auxiliary to the Trojans and rendered to them valuable service turning the tide of fortune for a time against the Greeks, and killing some of their bravest chiefs, among whom were numbered Peneleos, and the unrivalled leech Machaon. The exploits of Neoptolemus were numerous, worthy of the glory of his race and the renown of his father. He encountered and slew Eurypylus, together with numbers of the Mysian warriors: he routed the Trojans and drove them within their walls, from whence they never again emerged to give battle: and he was not less distinguished for good sense and persuasive diction than for forward energy in the field. Troy, however, was still impregnable so long as the Palladium, a statue given by Zeus himself to Dardanus, remained in the citadel; and great care had been taken by the Trojans not only to conceal this valuable present, but to construct other statues so like it as to mislead any intruding robber. Nevertheless, the enterprising Odysseus, having disguised his person with miserable clothing and self-inflicted injuries, found means to penetrate into the city and to convey the Palladium by stealth away. Helen alone recognized him; but she was now anxious to return to Greece, and even assisted Odysseus in concerting means for the capture of the town. To accomplish this object, one final stratagem was resorted to. By the hands of Epeius of Panopeus, and at the suggestion of Athene, a capacious hollow wooden horse was constructed, capable of containing one hundred men. In the inside of this horse the elite of the Grecian heroes, Neoptolemus, Odysseus, Menelaus, and others, concealed themselves while the entire Grecian army sailed away to Tenedos, burning their tents and pretending to have abandoned the siege. The Trojans, overjoyed to find themselves free, issued from the city and contemplated with astonishment the fabric which their enemies had left behind. They long doubted what should be done with it; and the anxious heroes from within heard the surrounding consultations, as well as the voice of Helen when she pronounced their names and counterfeited the accents of their wives. Many of the Trojans were anxious to dedicate it to the gods in the city as a token of gratitude for their deliverance; but the more cautious spirits inculcated distrust of an enemy's legacy. Laocoon, the priest of Poseidon, manifested his aversion by striking the side of the horse with his spear. The sound revealed that the horse was hollow, but the Trojans heeded not this warning of possible fraud. The unfortunate Laocoon, a victim to his own sagacity and patriotism, miserably perished before the eyes of his countrymen, together with one of his sons: two serpents being sent expressly by the gods out of the sea to destroy him. By this terrific spectacle, together with the perfidious counsels of Simon--a traitor whom the Greeks had left behind for the special purpose of giving false information--the Trojans were induced to make a breach in their own walls, and to drag the fatal fabric with triumph and exultation into their city. The destruction of Troy, according to the decree of the gods, was now irrevocably sealed. While the Trojans indulged in a night of riotous festivity, Simon kindled the fire-signal to the Greeks at Tenedos, loosening the bolts of the wooden horse, from out of which the enclosed heroes descended. The city, assailed both from within and from without, was thoroughly sacked and destroyed, with the slaughter or captivity of the larger portion of its heroes as well as its people. The venerable Priam perished by the hand of Neoptolemus, having in vain sought shelter at the domestic altar of Zeus Herceius. But his son Deiphobus, who since the death of Paris had become the husband of Helen, defended his house desperately against Odysseus and Menelaus, and sold his life dearly. After he was slain, his body was fearfully mutilated by the latter. Thus was Troy utterly destroyed--the city, the altars and temples, and the population. Æneas and Antenor were permitted to escape, with their families, having been always more favorably regarded by the Greeks than the remaining Trojans. According to one version of the story they had betrayed the city to the Greeks: a panther's skin had been hung over the door of Antenor's house as a signal for the victorious besiegers to spare it in general plunder. In the distribution of the principal captives, Astyanax, the infant son of Hector, was cast from the top of the wall and killed by Odysseus or Neoptolemus: Polyxena, the daughter of Priam, was immolated on the tomb of Achilles, in compliance with a requisition made by the shade of the deceased hero to his countrymen; while her sister Cassandra was presented as a prize to Agamemnon. She had sought sanctuary at the altar of Athene, where Ajax, the son of Oileus, making a guilty attempt to seize her, had drawn both upon himself and upon the army the serious wrath of the goddess, insomuch that the Greeks could hardly be restrained from stoning him to death. Andromache and Helenus were both given to Neoptolemus, who, according to the _Ilias Minor_, carried away also Æneas as his captive. Helen gladly resumed her union with Menelaus; she accompanied him back to Sparta, and lived with him there many years in comfort and dignity, passing afterward to a happy immortality in the Elysian fields. She was worshipped as a goddess, with her brothers, the Dioscuri, and her husband, having her temple, statue, and altar at Therapnæ and elsewhere. Various examples of her miraculous intervention were cited among the Greeks. The lyric poet Stesichorus had ventured to denounce her, conjointly with her sister Clytemnestra, in a tone of rude and plain-spoken severity, resembling that of Euripides and Lycophron afterward, but strikingly opposite to the delicacy and respect with which she is always handled by Homer, who never admits reproaches against her except from her own lips. He was smitten with blindness, and made sensible of his impiety; but, having repented and composed a special poem formally retracting the calumny, was permitted to recover his sight. In his poem of recantation (the famous _Palinode_ now unfortunately lost) he pointedly contradicted the Homeric narrative, affirming that Helen had never been at Troy at all, and that the Trojans had carried thither nothing but her image or _eidolon_. It is, probably, to the excited religious feelings of Stesichorus that we owe the first idea of this glaring deviation from the old legend, which could never have been recommended by any considerations of poetical interest. Other versions were afterward started, forming a sort of compromise between Homer and Stesichorus, admitting that Helen had never really been at Troy, without altogether denying her elopement. Such is the story of her having been detained in Egypt during the whole term of the siege. Paris, on his departure from Sparta, had been driven thither by storms, and the Egyptian king Proteus, hearing of the grievous wrong which he had committed toward Menelaus, had sent him away from the country with severe menaces, detaining Helen until her lawful husband should come to seek her. When the Greeks reclaimed Helen from Troy, the Trojans assured them solemnly that she neither was nor ever had been in the town; but the Greeks, treating this allegation as fraudulent, prosecuted the siege until their ultimate success confirmed the correctness of the statement. Menelaus did not recover Helen until, on his return from Troy, he visited Egypt. Such was the story told by the Egyptian priests to Herodotus, and it appeared satisfactory to his historicizing mind. "For if Helen had really been at Troy," he argues, "she would certainly have been given up, even had she been mistress of Priam himself instead of Paris: the Trojan king, with all his family and all his subjects, would never knowingly have incurred utter and irretrievable destruction for the purpose of retaining her: their misfortune was that, while they did not possess and therefore could not restore her, they yet found it impossible to convince the Greeks that such was the fact." Assuming the historical character of the war of Troy, the remark of Herodotus admits of no reply; nor can we greatly wonder that he acquiesced in the tale of Helen's Egyptian detention, as a substitute for the "incredible insanity" which the genuine legend imputes to Priam and the Trojans. Pausanias, upon the same ground and by the same mode of reasoning, pronounced that the Trojan horse must have been, in point of fact, a battering-engine, because to admit the literal narrative would be to impute utter childishness to the defenders of the city. And Mr. Payne Knight rejects Helen altogether as the real cause of the Trojan war, though she may have been the pretext of it; for he thinks that neither the Greeks nor the Trojans could have been so mad and silly as to endure calamities of such magnitude "for one little woman." Mr. Knight suggests various political causes as substitutes; these might deserve consideration, either if any evidence could be produced to countenance them, or if the subject on which they are brought to bear could be shown to belong to the domain of history. The return of the Grecian chiefs from Troy furnished matter to the ancient epic hardly less copious than the siege itself, and the more susceptible of indefinite diversity, inasmuch as those who had before acted in concert were now dispersed and isolated. Moreover, the stormy voyages and compulsory wanderings of the heroes exactly fell in with the common aspirations after an heroic founder, and enabled even the most remote Hellenic settlers to connect the origin of their town with this prominent event of their ante-historical and semi-divine world. And an absence of ten years afforded room for the supposition of many domestic changes in their native abode, and many family misfortunes and misdeeds during the interval. One of these historic "Returns," that of Odysseus, has been immortalized by the verse of Homer. The hero, after a series of long protracted suffering and expatriation inflicted on him by the anger of Poseidon, at last reaches his native island, but finds his wife beset, his youthful son insulted, and his substance plundered by a troop of insolent suitors; he is forced to appear as a wretched beggar, and to endure in his own person their scornful treatment; but finally, by the interference of Athene coming in aid of his own courage and stratagem, he is enabled to overwhelm his enemies, to resume his family position, and to recover his property. The return of several other Grecian chiefs was the subject of an epic poem by Hagias which is now lost, but of which a brief abstract or argument still remains: there were in antiquity various other poems of similar title and analogous matter. As usual with the ancient epic, the multiplied sufferings of this back voyage are traced to divine wrath, justly provoked by the sins of the Greeks, who, in the fierce exultation of a victory purchased by so many hardships, had neither respected nor even spared the altars of the gods in Troy. Athene, who had been their most zealous ally during the siege, was so incensed by their final recklessness, more especially by the outrage of Ajax, son of Oileus, that she actively harassed and embittered their return, in spite of every effort to appease her. The chiefs began to quarrel among themselves; their formal assembly became a scene of drunkenness; even Agamemnon and Menelaus lost their fraternal harmony, and each man acted on his own separate resolution. Nevertheless, according to the _Odyssey_, Nestor, Diomedes, Neoptolemus, Idomeneus, and Philoctetes reached home speedily and safely; Agamemnon also arrived in Peloponnesus, to perish by the hand of a treacherous wife; but Menelaus was condemned to long wanderings and to the severest privations in Egypt, Cyprus, and elsewhere before he could set foot in his native land. The Locrian Ajax perished on the Gyræan rock. Though exposed to a terrible storm, he had already reached this place of safety, when he indulged in the rash boast of having escaped in defiance of the gods. No sooner did Poseidon hear this language than he struck with his trident the rock which Ajax was grasping and precipitated both into the sea. Calchas, the soothsayer, together with Leonteus and Polypoetes, proceeded by land from Troy to Colophon. In respect, however, to these and other Grecian heroes, tales were told different from those in the _Odyssey_, assigning to them a long expatriation and a distant home. Nestor went to Italy, where he founded Metapontum, Pisa, and Heracleia: Philoctetes also went to Italy, founded Petilia and Crimisa, and sent settlers to Egesta in Sicily. Neoptolemus, under the advice of Thetis, marched by land across Thrace, met with Odysseus, who had come by sea, at Maroneia, and then pursued his journey to Epirus, where he became king of the Molossians. Idomeneus came to Italy, and founded Uria in the Salentine peninsula. Diomedes, after wandering far and wide, went along the Italian coast into the innermost Adriatic gulf, and finally settled in Daunia, founding the cities of Argyrippa, Beneventum, Atria, and Diomedeia: by the favor of Athene he became immortal, and was worshipped as a god in many different places. The Locrian followers of Ajax founded the Epizephyrian Locri on the southernmost corner of Italy, besides another settlement in Libya. The previously exiled Teucros, besides founding the city of Salamis in Cyprus, is said to have established some settlements in the Iberian peninsula. Menestheus, the Athenian, did the like, and also founded both Elæa in Mysia and Scylletium in Italy. The Arcadian chief Agapenor founded Paphos in Cyprus. Epius, of Panopeus in Phocis, the constructor of the Trojan horse with the aid of the goddess Athene, settled at Lagaria, near Sybaris, on the coast of Italy; and the very tools which he had employed in that remarkable fabric were shown down to a late date in the temple of Athene at Metapontum. Temples, altars, and towns were also pointed out in Asia Minor, in Samos, and in Crete, the foundation of Agamemnon or of his followers. The inhabitants of the Grecian town of Scione, in the Thracian peninsula called Pallene or Pellene, accounted themselves the offspring of the Pellenians from Achæa in Peloponnesus, who had served under Agamemnon before Troy, and who on their return from the siege had been driven on the spot by a storm and there settled. The Pamphylians, on the southern coast of Asia Minor, deduced their origin from the wanderings of Amphilochus and Calchas after the siege of Troy: the inhabitants of the Amphilochian Argos on the Gulf of Ambracia revered the same Amphilochus as their founder. The Orchomenians under Iamenus, on quitting the conquered city, wandered or were driven to the eastern extremity of the Euxine Sea; and the barbarous Achæans under Mount Caucasus were supposed to have derived their first establishment from this source. Meriones, with his Cretan followers, settled at Engyion in Sicily, along with the preceding Cretans who had remained there after the invasion of Minos. The Elymians in Sicily also were composed of Trojans and Greeks separately driven to the spot, who, forgetting their previous differences, united in the joint settlements of Eryx and Egesta. We hear of Podalerius both in Italy and on the coast of Caria; of Acamas, son of Theseus, at Amphipolus in Thrace, at Soli in Cyprus, and at Synnada in Phrygia; of Guneus, Prothous, and Eurypylus, in Crete as well as in Libya. The obscure poem of Lycophron enumerates many of these dispersed and expatriated heroes, whose conquest of Troy was indeed a "Cadmean" victory (according to the proverbial phrase of the Greeks), wherein the sufferings of the victor were little inferior to those of the vanquished. It was particularly among the Italian Greeks, where they were worshipped with very special solemnity, that their presence as wanderers from Troy was reported and believed. I pass over the numerous other tales which circulated among the ancients, illustrating the ubiquity of the Grecian and Trojan heroes as well as that of the Argonauts--one of the most striking features in the Hellenic legendary world. Among them all, the most interesting, individually, is Odysseus, whose romantic adventures in fabulous places and among fabulous persons have been made familiarly known by Homer. The goddesses Calypso and Circe; the semi-divine mariners of Phæacia, whose ships are endowed with consciousness and obey without a steersman; the one-eyed Cyclopes, the gigantic Læstrygones, and the wind-ruler Æolus; the Sirens, who ensnare by their song, as the Lotophagi fascinate by their food,--all these pictures formed integral and interesting portions of the old epic. Homer leaves Odysseus reëstablished in his house and family. But so marked a personage could never be permitted to remain in the tameness of domestic life; the epic poem called the _Telegonia_ ascribed to him a subsequent series of adventures. Telegonus, his son by Circe, coming to Ithaca in search of his father, ravaged the island and killed Odysseus without knowing who he was. Bitter repentance overtook the son for his undesigned parricide: at his prayer and by the intervention of his mother Circe, both Penelope and Telemachus were made immortal: Telegonus married Penelope, and Telemachus married Circe. We see by this poem that Odysseus was represented as the mythical ancestor of the Thesprotian kings, just as Neoptolemus was of the Molossian. It has already been mentioned that Antenor and Æneas stand distinguished from the other Trojans by a dissatisfaction with Priam and a sympathy with the Greeks, which was by Sophocles and others construed as treacherous collusion,--a suspicion indirectly glanced at, though emphatically repelled, by the Æneas of Vergil. In the old epic of Arctinus, next in age to the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, Æneas abandons Troy and retires to Mount Ida, in terror at the miraculous death of Laocoon, before the entry of the Greeks into the town and the last night battle: yet Lesches, in another of the ancient epic poems, represented him as having been carried away captive by Neoptolemus. In a remarkable passage of the _Iliad_, Poseidon describes the family of Priam as having incurred the hatred of Zeus, and predicts that Æneas and his descendants shall reign over the Trojans: the race of Dardanus, beloved by Zeus more than all his other sons, would thus be preserved, since Æneas belonged to it. Accordingly, when Æneas is in imminent peril from the hands of Achilles, Poseidon specially interferes to rescue him, and even the implacable miso-Trojan goddess Here assents to the proceeding. These passages have been construed by various able critics to refer to a family of philo-Hellenic or semi-Hellenic Æneadæ, known even in the time of the early singers of the _Iliad_ as masters of some territory in or near the Troad, and professing to be descended from, as well as worshipping, Æneas. In the town of Scepsis, situated in the mountainous range of Ida, about thirty miles eastward of Ilium, there existed two noble and priestly families who professed to be descended, the one from Hector, the other from Æneas. The Scepsian critic Demetrius (in whose time both these families were still to be found) informs us that Scamandrius, son of Hector, and Ascanius, son of Æneas, were the _archegets_ or heroic founders of his native city, which had been originally situated on one of the highest ranges of Ida, and was subsequently transferred by them to the less lofty spot on which it stood in his time. In Arisbe and Gentinus there seem to have been families professing the same descent, since the same _archegets_ were acknowledged. In Ophrynium, Hector had his consecrated edifice, while in Ilium both he and Æneas were worshipped as gods: and it was the remarkable statement of the Lesbian Menecrates that Æneas, "having been wronged by Paris and stripped of the sacred privileges which belonged to him, avenged himself by betraying the city, and then became one of the Greeks." One tale thus among many respecting Æneas, and that, too, the most ancient of all, preserved among natives of the Troad, who worshipped him as their heroic ancestor, was that after the capture of Troy he continued in the country as king of the remaining Trojans, on friendly terms with the Greeks. But there were other tales respecting him, alike numerous and irreconcilable: the hand of destiny marked him as a wanderer (_fato profugus_) and his ubiquity is not exceeded even by that of Odysseus. We hear of him at Ænus in Thrace, in Pallene, at Æneia in the Thermaic Gulf, in Delos, at Orchomenus and Mantineia in Arcadia, in the islands of Cythera and Zacynthus, in Leucas and Ambracia, at Buthrotum in Epirus, on the Salentine peninsula and various other places in the southern region of Italy; at Drepana and Segesta in Sicily, at Carthage, at Cape Palinurus, Cumæ, Misenum, Caieta, and finally in Latium, where he lays the first humble foundation of the mighty Rome and her empire. And the reason why his wanderings were not continued still further was, that the oracles and the pronounced will of the gods directed him to settle in Latium. In each of these numerous places his visit was commemorated and certified by local monuments or special legends, particularly by temples and permanent ceremonies in honor of his mother Aphrodite, whose worship accompanied him everywhere: there were also many temples and many different tombs of Æneas himself. The vast ascendancy acquired by Rome, the ardor with which all the literary Romans espoused the idea of a Trojan origin, and the fact that the Julian family recognized Æneas as their gentile primary ancestor,--all contributed to give to the Roman version of this legend the preponderance over every other. The various other places in which monuments of Æneas were found came thus to be represented as places where he had halted for a time on his way from Troy to Latium. But though the legendary pretensions of these places were thus eclipsed in the eyes of those who constituted the literary public, the local belief was not extinguished; they claimed the hero as their permanent property, and his tomb was to them a proof that he had lived and died among them. Antenor, who shares with Æneas the favorable sympathy of the Greeks, is said by Pindar to have gone from Troy along with Menelaus and Helen into the region of Cyrene in Libya. But according to the more current narrative, he placed himself at the head of a body of Eneti or Veneti from Paphlagonia, who had come as allies of Troy, and went by sea into the inner part of the Adriatic Gulf, where he conquered the neighboring barbarians and founded the town of Patavium (the modern Padua); the Veneti in this region were said to owe their origin to his immigration. We learn further from Strabo that Opsicellas, one of the companions of Antenor, had continued his wanderings even into Iberia, and that he had there established a settlement bearing his name. Thus endeth the Trojan war, together with its sequel, the dispersion of the heroes, victors as well as vanquished. ACCESSION OF SOLOMON BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE AT JERUSALEM B.C. 1017 HENRY HART MILMAN After many weary years of travail and fighting in the wilderness and the land of Canaan, the Jews had at last founded their kingdom, with Jerusalem as the capital. Saul was proclaimed the first king; afterward followed David, the "Lion of the tribe of Judah." During the many wars in which the Israelites had been engaged, the Ark of the Covenant was the one thing in which their faith was bound. No undertaking could fail while they retained possession of it. In their wanderings the tabernacle enclosing the precious ark was first erected before the dwellings for the people. It had been captured by the Philistines, then restored to the Hebrews, and became of greater veneration than before. It will be remembered that, among other things, it contained the rod of Aaron which budded and was the cause of his selection as high-priest. It also contained the tables of stone which bore the Ten Commandments. David desired to build a fitting shrine, a temple, in which to place the Ark of the Covenant; it should be a place wherein the people could worship; a centre of religion in which the ark should have paid it the distinction due it as the seat of tremendous majesty. But David had been a man of war; this temple was a place of peace. Blood must not stain its walls; no shedder of gore could be its architect. Yet David collected stone, timber, and precious metals for its erection; and, not being allowed to erect the temple himself, was permitted to depute that office to his son and successor, "Solomon the Wise." At this time all the enemies of Israel had been conquered, the country was at peace; the domain of the Hebrews was greater than at any other time, before or afterward. It was the fitting time for the erection of a great shrine to enclose the sacred ark. Nobly was this done, and no human work of ancient or modern times has so impressed mankind as the building of Solomon's Temple. Solomon succeeded to the Hebrew kingdom at the age of twenty. He was environed by designing, bold, and dangerous enemies. The pretensions of Adonijah still commanded a powerful party: Abiathar swayed the priesthood; Joab the army. The singular connection in public opinion between the title to the crown and the possession of the deceased monarch's harem is well understood.[25] Adonijah, in making request for Abishag, a youthful concubine taken by David in his old age, was considered as insidiously renewing his claims to the sovereignty. Solomon saw at once the wisdom of his father's dying admonition: he seized the opportunity of crushing all future opposition and all danger of a civil war. He caused Adonijah to be put to death; suspended Abiathar from his office, and banished him from Jerusalem: and though Joab fled to the altar, he commanded him to be slain for the two murders of which he had been guilty, those of Abner and Amasa. Shimei, another dangerous man, was commanded to reside in Jerusalem, on pain of death if he should quit the city. Three years afterward he was detected in a suspicious journey to Gath, on the Philistine border; and having violated the compact, he suffered the penalty. [Footnote 25: I Kings, i.] Thus secured by the policy of his father from internal enemies, by the terror of his victories from foreign invasion, Solomon commenced his peaceful reign, during which Judah and Israel dwelt safely, _Every man under his vine and under his fig-tree, from Dan to Beersheba_. This peace was broken only by a revolt of the Edomites. Hadad, of the royal race, after the exterminating war waged by David and by Joab, had fled to Egypt, where he married the sister of the king's wife. No sooner had he heard of the death of David and of Joab than he returned, and seems to have kept up a kind of predatory warfare during the reign of Solomon. Another adventurer, Rezon, a subject of Hadadezer, king of Zobah, seized on Damascus, and maintained a great part of Syria in hostility to Solomon. Solomon's conquest of Hamath Zobah in a later part of his reign, after which he built Tadmor in the wilderness and raised a line of fortresses along his frontier to the Euphrates, is probably connected with these hostilities.[26] The justice of Solomon was proverbial. Among his first acts after his accession, it is related that when he had offered a costly sacrifice at Gibeon, the place where the Tabernacle remained, God had appeared to him in a dream, and offered him whatever gift he chose: the wise king requested an understanding heart to judge the people. God not merely assented to his prayer, but added the gift of honor and riches. His judicial wisdom was displayed in the memorable history of the two women who contested the right to a child. Solomon, in the wild spirit of Oriental justice, commanded the infant to be divided before their faces: the heart of the real mother was struck with terror and abhorrence, while the false one consented to the horrible partition, and by this appeal to nature the cause was instantaneously decided. [Footnote 26: I Kings, xi., 23; I Chron., viii., 3.] The internal government of his extensive dominions next demanded the attention of Solomon. Besides the local and municipal governors, he divided the kingdom into twelve districts: over each of these he appointed a purveyor for the collection of the royal tribute, which was received in kind; and thus the growing capital and the immense establishments of Solomon were abundantly furnished with provisions. Each purveyor supplied the court for a month. The daily consumption of his household was three hundred bushels of finer flour, six hundred of a coarser sort; ten fatted, twenty other oxen; one hundred sheep; besides poultry, and various kinds of venison. Provender was furnished for forty thousand horses, and a great number of dromedaries. Yet the population of the country did not, at first at least, feel these burdens: _Judah and Israel were many, as the sand which is by the sea in multitude, eating and drinking, and making merry_. The foreign treaties of Solomon were as wisely directed to secure the profound peace of his dominions. He entered into a matrimonial alliance with the royal family of Egypt, whose daughter he received with great magnificence; and he renewed the important alliance with the king of Tyre.[27] The friendship of this monarch was of the highest value in contributing to the great royal and national work, the building of the Temple. The cedar timber could only be obtained from the forests of Lebanon: the Sidonian artisans, celebrated in the Homeric poems, were the most skilful workmen in every kind of manufacture, particularly in the precious metals. [Footnote 27: After inserting the correspondence between King Solomon and King Hiram of Tyre, according to I Kings, v., Josephus asserts that copies of these letters were not only preserved by his countrymen, but also in the archives of Tyre. I presume that Josephus adverts to the statement of Tyrian historians, not to an actual inspection of the archives, which he seems to assert as existing and accessible.] Solomon entered into a regular treaty, by which he bound himself to supply the Tyrians with large quantities of corn; receiving in return their timber, which was floated down to Joppa, and a large body of artificers. The timber was cut by his own subjects, of whom he raised a body of thirty thousand; ten thousand employed at a time, and relieving each other every month; so that to one month of labor they had two of rest. He raised two other corps, one of seventy thousand porters of burdens, the other of eighty thousand hewers of stone, who were employed in the quarries among the mountains. All these labors were thrown, not on the Israelites, but on the strangers who, chiefly of Canaanitish descent, had been permitted to inhabit the country. These preparations, in addition to those of King David, being completed, the work began. The eminence of Moriah, the Mount of Vision, _i.e._, the height seen afar from the adjacent country, which tradition pointed out as the spot where Abraham had offered his son (where recently the plague had been stayed, by the altar built in the threshing-floor of Ornan or Araunah, the Jebusite), rose on the east side of the city. Its rugged top was levelled with immense labor; its sides, which to the east and south were precipitous, were faced with a wall of stone, built up perpendicular from the bottom of the valley, so as to appear to those who looked down of most terrific height; a work of prodigious skill and labor, as the immense stones were strongly mortised together and wedged into the rock. Around the whole area or esplanade, an irregular quadrangle, was a solid wall of considerable height and strength: within this was an open court, into which the Gentiles were either from the first, or subsequently, admitted. A second wall encompassed another quadrangle, called the court of the Israelites. Along this wall, on the inside, ran a portico or cloister, over which were chambers for different sacred purposes. Within this again another, probably a lower, wall separated the court of the priests from that of the Israelites. To each court the ascent was by steps, so that the platform of the inner court was on a higher level than that of the outer. The Temple itself was rather a monument of the wealth than the architectural skill and science of the people. It was a wonder of the world from the splendor of its materials, more than the grace, boldness, or majesty of its height and dimensions. It had neither the colossal magnitude of the Egyptian, the simple dignity and perfect proportional harmony of the Grecian, nor perhaps the fantastic grace and lightness of later Oriental architecture. Some writers, calling to their assistance the visionary temple of Ezekiel, have erected a most superb edifice; to which there is this fatal objection, that if the dimensions of the prophet are taken as they stand in the text, the area of the Temple and its courts would not only have covered the whole of Mount Moriah, but almost all Jerusalem. In fact our accounts of the Temple of Solomon are altogether unsatisfactory. The details, as they now stand in the books of Kings and Chronicles, the only safe authorities, are unscientific, and, what is worse, contradictory. Josephus has evidently blended together the three temples, and attributed to the earlier all the subsequent additions and alterations. The Temple, on the whole, was an enlargement of the tabernacle, built of more costly and durable materials. Like its model, it retained the ground-plan and disposition of the Egyptian, or rather of almost all the sacred edifices of antiquity: even its measurements are singularly in unison with some of the most ancient temples in Upper Egypt. It consisted of a propylæon, a temple, and a sanctuary; called respectively the Porch, the Holy Place, and the Holy of Holies. Yet in some respects, if the measurements are correct, the Temple must rather have resembled the form of a simple Gothic church. In the front to the east stood the porch, a tall tower, rising to the height of 210 feet. Either within, or, like the Egyptian obelisks, before the porch, stood two pillars of brass; by one account 27, by another above 60 feet high, the latter statement probably including their capitals and bases. These were called Jachin and Boaz (Durability and Strength).[28] The capitals of these were of the richest workmanship, with net-work, chain-work, and pomegranates. The porch was the same width with the Temple, 35 feet; its depth 17-1/2. The length of the main building, including the Holy Place, 70 feet, and the Holy of Holies, 35, was in the whole 105 feet; the height 52-1/2 feet.[29] [Footnote 28: Ewald, following, he says, the Septuagint, makes these pillars not standing alone like obelisks before the porch, but as forming the front of the porch, with the capitals connected together, and supporting a kind of balcony, with ornamental work above it. The pillars measured 12 cubits (22 feet) round.] [Footnote 29: Mr. Fergusson, estimating the cubit rather lower than in the text, makes the porch 30 by 15; the pronaos, or Holy Place, 60 by 30; the Holy of Holies, 30; the height 45 feet. Mr. Fergusson, following Josephus, supposes that the whole Temple had an upper story of wood, a talar, as appears in other Eastern edifices. I doubt the authority of Josephus as to the older Temple, though, as Mr. Fergusson observes, the discrepancies between the measurements in Kings and in Chronicles may be partially reconciled on this supposition. Mr. Fergusson makes the height of the eastern tower only 90 feet. The text followed 2 Chron., iii., 4, reckoning the cubit at 1 foot 9 inches.] Josephus carries the whole building up to the height of the porch; but this is out of all credible proportion, making the height twice the length and six times the width. Along each side, and perhaps at the back of the main building, ran an aisle, divided into three stories of small chambers: the wall of the Temple being thicker at the bottom, left a rest to support the beams of these chambers, which were not let into the wall. These aisles, the chambers of which were appropriated as vestiaries, treasuries, and for other sacred purposes, seem to have reached about half way up the main wall of what we may call the nave and choir: the windows into the latter were probably above them; these were narrow, but widened inward. If the dimensions of the Temple appear by no means imposing, it must be remembered that but a small part of the religious ceremonies took place within the walls. The Holy of Holies was entered only once a year, and that by the High-priest alone. It was the secret and unapproachable shrine of the Divinity. The Holy Place, the body of the Temple, admitted only the officiating priests. The courts, called in popular language the Temple, or rather the inner quadrangle, were in fact the great place of divine worship. Here, under the open air, were celebrated the great public and national rites, the processions, the offerings, the sacrifices; here stood the great tank for ablution, and the high altar for burnt-offerings. But the costliness of the materials, the richness and variety of the details, amply compensated for the moderate dimensions of the building. It was such a sacred edifice as a traveller might have expected to find in El Dorado. The walls were of hewn stone, faced within with cedar which was richly carved with knosps and flowers; the ceiling was of fir-tree. But in every part gold was lavished with the utmost profusion; within and without, the floor, the walls, the ceiling, in short, the whole house is described as overlaid with gold. The finest and purest--that of Parvaim, by some supposed to be Ceylon--was reserved for the sanctuary. Here the cherubim, which stood upon the covering of the Ark, with their wings touching each wall, were entirely covered with gold. The sumptuous veil, of the richest materials and brightest colors, which divided the Holy of Holies from the Holy Place was suspended on chains of gold. Cherubim, palm-trees, and flowers, the favorite ornaments, everywhere covered with gilding, were wrought in almost all parts. The altar within the Temple and the table of shewbread were likewise covered with the same precious metal. All the vessels, the ten candlesticks, five hundred basins, and all the rest of the sacrificial and other utensils, were of solid gold. Yet the Hebrew writers seem to dwell with the greatest astonishment and admiration on the works which were founded in brass by Huram, a man of Jewish extraction, who had learned his art at Tyre. Besides the lofty pillars above mentioned, there was a great tank, called a sea, of molten brass, supported on twelve oxen, three turned each way; this was seventeen and one-half feet in diameter. There was also a great altar, and ten large vessels for the purpose of ablution, called lavers, standing on bases or pedestals, the rims of which were richly ornamented with a border, on which were wrought figures of lions, oxen, and cherubim. The bases below were formed of four wheels, like those of a chariot. All the works in brass were cast in a place near the Jordan, where the soil was of a stiff clay suited to the purpose. For seven years and a half the fabric arose in silence. All the timbers, the stones, even of the most enormous size, measuring seventeen and eighteen feet, were hewn and fitted, so as to be put together without the sound of any tool whatever; as it has been expressed, with great poetical beauty: "Like some tall palm the noiseless fabric grew." At the end of this period, the Temple and its courts being completed, the solemn dedication took place, with the greatest magnificence which the king and the nation could display. All the chieftains of the different tribes, and all of every order who could be brought together, assembled. David had already organized the priesthood and the Levites; and assigned to the thirty-eight thousand of the latter tribe each his particular office; twenty-four thousand were appointed for the common duties, six thousand as officers, four thousand as guards and porters, four thousand as singers and musicians. On this great occasion, the Dedication of the Temple, all the tribe of Levi, without regard to their courses, the whole priestly order of every class, attended. Around the great brazen altar, which rose in the court of the priests before the door of the Temple, stood in front the sacrificers, all around the whole choir, arrayed in white linen. One hundred and twenty of these were trumpeters, the rest had cymbals, harps, and psalteries. Solomon himself took his place on an elevated scaffold, or raised throne of brass. The whole assembled nation crowded the spacious courts beyond. The ceremony began with the preparation of burnt-offerings, so numerous that they could not be counted. At an appointed signal commenced the more important part of the scene, the removal of the Ark, the installation of the God of Israel in his new and appropriate dwelling, to the sound of all the voices and all the instruments, chanting some of those splendid odes, the 47th, 97th, 98th, and 107th psalms. The Ark advanced, borne by the Levites, to the open portals of the Temple. It can scarcely be doubted that the 24th psalm, even if composed before, was adopted and used on this occasion. The singers, as it drew near the gate, broke out in these words:--_Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in_. It was answered from the other part of the choir,--_Who is the King of Glory?_--the whole choir responded,--_The Lord of Hosts, he is the King of Glory_. When the procession arrived at the Holy Place, the gates flew open; when it reached the Holy of Holies, the veil was drawn back. The Ark took its place under the extended wings of the cherubim, which might seem to fold over, and receive it under their protection. At that instant all the trumpeters and singers were at once _to make one sound to be heard in praising and thanking the Lord; and when they lifted up their voice, with the trumpets, and cymbals, and instruments of music, and praised the Lord, saying, For he is good, for his mercy endureth forever, the house was filled with a cloud, even the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister by reason of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord had filled the house of God_. Thus the Divinity took possession of his sacred edifice. The king then rose upon the brazen scaffold, knelt down, and spreading his hands toward heaven, uttered the prayer of consecration. The prayer was of unexampled sublimity: while it implored the perpetual presence of the Almighty, as the tutelar Deity and Sovereign of the Israelites, it recognized his spiritual and illimitable nature. _But will God in very deed dwell with men on the earth? behold heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee, how much less this house which I have built?_ It then recapitulated the principles of the Hebrew theocracy, the dependence of the national prosperity and happiness on the national conformity to the civil and religious law. As the king concluded in these emphatic terms:--_Now, therefore, arise, O Lord God, into thy resting-place, thou and the ark of thy strength: let thy priests, O Lord God, be clothed with salvation, and thy saints rejoice in goodness. O Lord God, turn not away the face of thine anointed: remember the mercies of David thy servant,_--cloud which had rested over the Holy of Holies grew brighter and more dazzling; fire broke out and consumed all the sacrifices; the priests stood without, awe-struck by the insupportable splendor; the whole people fell on their faces, and worshipped and praised the Lord, _for he is good, for his mercy is forever_. Which was the greater, the external magnificence, or the moral sublimity of this scene? Was it the Temple, situated on its commanding eminence, with all its courts, the dazzling splendor of its materials, the innumerable multitudes, the priesthood in their gorgeous attire, the king, with all the insignia of royalty, on his throne of burnished brass, the music, the radiant cloud filling the Temple, the sudden fire flashing upon the altar, the whole nation upon their knees? Was it not rather the religious grandeur of the hymns and of the prayer: the exalted and rational views of the Divine Nature, the union of a whole people in the adoration of the one Great, Incomprehensible, Almighty, Everlasting Creator? This extraordinary festival, which took place at the time of that of Tabernacles, lasted for two weeks, twice the usual time: during this period twenty-two thousand oxen and one hundred and twenty thousand sheep were sacrificed,[30] every individual probably contributing to this great propitiatory rite; and the whole people feasting on those parts of the sacrifices which were not set apart for holy uses. [Footnote 30: Gibbon, in one of his malicious notes, observes, "As the blood and smoke of so many hecatombs might be inconvenient, Lightfoot, the Christian Rabbi, removes them by a miracle. Le Clerc (_ad loc._) is bold enough to suspect the fidelity of the numbers." To this I ventured to subjoin the following illustration: "According to the historian Kotobeddyn, quoted by Burckhardt, _Travels in Arabia_, p. 276, the Khalif Moktader sacrificed during his pilgrimage to Mecca, in the year of the Hegira 350, forty thousand camels and cows, and fifty thousand sheep. Barthema describes thirty thousand oxen slain, and their carcasses given to the poor. Tavernier speaks of one hundred thousand victims offered by the king of Tonquin." Gibbon, ch. xxiii., iv., p. 96, edit. Milman.] Though the chief magnificence of Solomon was lavished on the Temple of God, yet the sumptuous palaces which he erected for his own residence display an opulence and profusion which may vie with the older monarchs of Egypt or Assyria. The great palace stood in Jerusalem; it occupied thirteen years in building. A causeway bridged the deep ravine, and leading directly to the Temple, united the part either of Acra or Sion, on which the palace stood, with Mount Moriah. In this palace was a vast hall for public business, from its cedar pillars called the House of the Forest of Lebanon. It was 175 feet long, half that measurement in width, above 50 feet high; four rows of cedar columns supported a roof made of beams of the same wood; there were three rows of windows on each side facing each other. Besides this great hall, there were two others, called porches, of smaller dimensions, in one of which the throne of justice was placed. The harem, or women's apartments, adjoined to these buildings; with other piles of vast extent for different purposes, particularly, if we may credit Josephus, a great banqueting hall. The same author informs us that the whole was surrounded with spacious and luxuriant gardens, and adds a less credible fact, ornamented with sculptures and paintings. Another palace was built in a romantic part of the country in the valleys at the foot of Lebanon for his wife, the daughter of the king of Egypt; in the luxurious gardens of which we may lay the scene of that poetical epithalamium,[31] or collection of Idyls, the Song of Solomon.[32] The splendid works of Solomon were not confined to royal magnificence and display; they condescended to usefulness. To Solomon are traced at least the first channels and courses of the natural and artificial water supply which has always enabled Jerusalem to maintain its thousands of worshippers at different periods, and to endure long and obstinate sieges.[33] [Footnote 31: I here assume that the Song of Solomon was an epithalamium. I enter not into the interminable controversy as to the literal or allegorical or spiritual meaning of this poem, nor into that of its age. A very particular though succinct account of all these theories, ancient and modern, may be found in a work by Dr. Ginsberg. I confess that Dr. Ginsberg's theory, which is rather tinged with the virtuous sentimentality of the modern novel, seems to me singularly out of harmony with the Oriental and ancient character of the poem. It is adopted, however, though modified, by M. Rénan.] [Footnote 32: According to Ewald, the ivory tower in this poem was raised in one of these beautiful "pleasances," in the Anti-Libanus, looking toward Hamath.] [Footnote 33: Ewald: _Geschichte_, iii., pp. 62-68; a very remarkable and valuable passage.] The descriptions in the Greek writers of the Persian courts in Susa and Ecbatana; the tales of the early travellers in the East about the kings of Samarcand or Cathay; and even the imagination of the Oriental romancers and poets, have scarcely conceived a more splendid pageant than Solomon, seated on his throne of ivory, receiving the homage of distant princes who came to admire his magnificence, and put to the test his noted wisdom.[34] This throne was of pure ivory, covered with gold; six steps led up to the seat, and on each side of the steps stood twelve lions. [Footnote 34: Compare the great Mogul's throne, in Tavernier; that of the King of Persia, in Morier.] All the vessels of his palace were of pure gold, silver was thought too mean: his armory was furnished with gold; two hundred targets and three hundred shields of beaten gold were suspended in the house of Lebanon. Josephus mentions a body of archers who escorted him from the city to his country palace, clad in dresses of Tyrian purple, and their hair powdered with gold dust. But enormous as this wealth appears, the statement of his expenditure on the Temple, and of his annual revenue, so passes all credibility, that any attempt at forming a calculation on the uncertain data we possess may at once be abandoned as a hopeless task. No better proof can be given of the uncertainty of our authorities, of our imperfect knowledge of the Hebrew weights of money, and, above all, of our total ignorance of the relative value which the precious metals bore to the commodities of life, than the estimate, made by Dr. Prideaux, of the treasures left by David, amounting to eight hundred millions, nearly the capital of our national debt. Our inquiry into the sources of the vast wealth which Solomon undoubtedly possessed may lead to more satisfactory, though still imperfect, results. The treasures of David were accumulated rather by conquest than by traffic. Some of the nations he subdued, particularly the Edomites, were wealthy. All the tribes seem to have worn a great deal of gold and silver in their ornaments and their armor; their idols were often of gold, and the treasuries of their temples perhaps contained considerable wealth. But during the reign of Solomon almost the whole commerce of the world passed into his territories. The treaty with Tyre was of the utmost importance: nor is there any instance in which two neighboring nations so clearly saw, and so steadily pursued, without jealousy or mistrust, their mutual and inseparable interests.[35] [Footnote 35: The very learned work of Movers, _Die Phönizier_ (Bonn, 1841, Berlin, 1849) contains everything which true German industry and comprehensiveness can accumulate about this people. Movers, though in such an inquiry conjecture is inevitable, is neither so bold, so arbitrary, nor so dogmatic in his conjectures as many of his contemporaries. See on Hiram, ii. 326 _et seq._ Movers is disposed to appreciate as of high value the fragments preserved in Josephus of the Phoenician histories of Menander and Dios. Mr. Kenrick's _Phoenicia_ may also be consulted with advantage.] On one occasion only, when Solomon presented to Hiram twenty inland cities which he had conquered, Hiram expressed great dissatisfaction, and called the territory by the opprobrious name of Cabul. The Tyrian had perhaps cast a wistful eye on the noble bay and harbor of Acco, or Ptolemais, which the prudent Hebrew either would not, or could not--since it was part of the promised land--dissever from his dominions. So strict was the confederacy, that Tyre may be considered the port of Palestine, Palestine the granary of Tyre. Tyre furnished the shipbuilders and mariners; the fruitful plains of Palestine victualled the fleets, and supplied the manufacturers and merchants of the Phoenician league with all the necessaries of life.[36] [Footnote 36: To a late period Tyre and Sidon were mostly dependent on Palestine for their supply of grain. The inhabitants of these cities desired peace with Herod (Agrippa) because their country was nourished by the king's country (Acts xii., 20).] RISE AND FALL OF ASSYRIA DESTRUCTION OF NINEVEH B.C. 789 F. LENORMANT AND E. CHEVALLIER Mesopotamia for many centuries was the field of battle for the opposing hosts of Babylonia and Assyria, each striving for mastery over the other. At first each city had its own prince, but at length one of these petty kingdoms absorbed the rest, and Nineveh became the capital of a united Assyria. Babylonia had her own kings, but they were little more than hereditary satraps receiving investiture from Nineveh. From about B.C. 1060 to 1020 Babylon seems to have recovered the upper hand. Her victories put an end to what is known as the First Assyrian Empire. After a few generations a new family ascended the throne and ultimately founded the Second Assyrian Empire. The first princes whose figured monuments have come down to us belonged to those days. The oldest of all was Assurnizirpal; the bas-reliefs with which his palace was decorated are now in the British Museum and the Louvre; most of them in the former. His son Shalmaneser III, and later Shalmaneser IV, made many campaigns against the neighboring peoples, and Assyria became rapidly a great and powerful nation. The effeminate Sardanapalus was the last of the dynasty. The capital of Assyria was Nineveh, one of the most famous of cities. It was remarkable for extent, wealth, and architectural grandeur. Diodorus Siculus says its walls were sixty miles around and one hundred feet high. Three chariots could be driven abreast around the summit of its walls, which were defended by fifteen hundred bastions, each of them two hundred feet in height. These dimensions may be exaggerated, but the Hebrew scriptures and recent excavations at the ancient site leave no doubt as to the splendor of the Assyrian palaces and the greatness of the city of Nineveh in population, wealth, and power. In historical times it was destroyed by the Medes, under King Cyaxares, and by the Babylonians, under Nebuchadnezzar, about B.C. 607. We are indebted to the monuments, tablets, and "books" recently discovered for the history of Assyria and other ancient oriental nations. Layard unearthed the greater portion, on the site of ancient Nineveh, of the Assyrian "books" (for so are named the tablets of clay, sometimes enamelled, at others only sun-dried or burnt). The writing on these "books" is the cuneiform, and was done by impressing the "style" on the clay while in a waxlike condition. Many of the tablets were broken when Layard and Rawlinson gave them over to the British Museum. The reconstruction of these tablets was undertaken by George Smith, an English Assyriologist of the British Museum, who displayed great skill and earnest application in the deciphering of the cuneiform text. In each reign the history of the king and his acts was written by a poet or historian detailed to that office. The "books" were collected and kept in great libraries, the largest of these being made by Sardanapalus. The greater part of the expeditions of Shalmaneser IV, succeeding each other year after year, were directed, like those of his father, sometimes to the north, into Armenia and Pontus; sometimes to the east, into Media, never completely subdued; sometimes to the south, into Chaldæa, where revolts were of constant occurrence; and finally westward, toward Syria and the region of Amanus. In this direction he advanced farther than his predecessors, and came into contact with some personages mentioned in Bible history. The part of his annals relating to the campaigns that brought him into collision with the kings of Damascus and Israel possesses peculiar interest for us, much greater than that attaching to the narrative of any other wars. The sixteenth campaign of Shalmaneser IV (B.C. 890) commenced a new series of wars; the King crossed the Zab, or Zabat; to make war on the mountain people of Upper Media, and afterward on the Scythian tribes around the Caspian Sea. He did not, however, abandon the western countries, where he soon found himself opposed by the new King whom the revolution arising from the influence of Elisha the prophet had placed on the throne of Damascus in the room of Benhidai. "In my eighteenth campaign" (886), we read on the Nimrud obelisk, "I crossed the Euphrates for the sixteenth time. Hazael, king of Damascus, came toward me to give battle. I took from him eleven hundred and twenty-one chariots and four hundred and seventy horsemen, with his camp. "In my nineteenth campaign (885) I crossed the Euphrates for the eighteenth time. I marched toward Mount Amanus, and there cut beams of cedar. "In my twenty-first campaign (883) I crossed the Euphrates for the twenty-second time. I marched to the cities of Hazael of Damascus. I received tribute from Tyre, Sidon, and Byblus." It evidently was at the end of this campaign that Jehu, king of Israel, whose territory Hazael had ravaged, appealed to Shalmaneser for help against his powerful enemy. The inscription on the obelisk says that the Assyrian King received tribute from Jehu, whom it names "son of Omri," for the great renown of the founder of Samaria had made the Assyrians consider all the kings of Israel as his descendants. One of the bas-reliefs of the same monument represents Jehu prostrating himself before Shalmaneser, as if acknowledging himself a vassal. The annals of Shalmaneser say no more after this, either of the king of Damascus or of Israel. They record, as his twenty-seventh campaign, a great war in Armenia that brought about the submission of all the districts of that country that still resisted the Assyrian monarch. In the thirty-first campaign (873), the last mentioned on the obelisk, the King sent the general-in-chief of his armies, Tartan, again into Armenia, where he gave up to pillage fifty cities, among them Van; and during this time he himself went into Media, subjected part of the northern districts of that country, which were in a state of rebellion, chastised the people in the neighborhood of Mount Elwand, where in after-times Ecbatana was built, and finally made war on the Scythians of the Caspian Sea. The official chronology of the Assyrians dates the termination of the reign of Shalmaneser IV in 870, the period of his death. But during the last two years his power was entirely lost, and he was reduced to the possession of two cities, Nineveh and Calah. His second son, Asshurdaninpal, in consequence of circumstances unknown to us, raised the standard of revolt against his father, assumed the royal title, and was supported by twenty-seven of the most important cities in the empire. One of the monuments has preserved a list of these cities, and among them we find Arrapkha, capital of the province of Arrapachitis, Amida (now Diarbekr), Arbela, Ellasar, and all the towns of the banks of the Tigris. War broke out between the father and his rebellious son; the army embraced the cause of the latter; he was recognized by all the provinces, and kept Shalmaneser until his death shut up and closely blockaded in his capital. Shalmaneser died in B.C. 870; his son, Shamash-Bin, continued the legitimate line. He succeeded in repressing the revolt of his brother Asshurdaninpal and in depriving him of the authority he had usurped. The monument recording the exploits of his first years gives no details, however, of the civil war; it merely records, after enumerating the cities that had joined the revolt of Asshurdaninpal, "With the aid of the great gods, my masters, I subjected them to my sceptre." The usurpation of the second son of Shalmaneser and a civil war of five years had introduced many disorders into the empire and shaken the fidelity of many provinces. The early years of Shamash-Bin were occupied in reducing the whole to order. In the narrative which has been preserved, extending only to his fourth year, we find that the King overran and chastised with terrible severity Osrhoene or Aramæan Mesopotamia, where the people had been in rebellion, and reduced to obedience the mountainous districts, where are the sources of the Tigris and Euphrates, and finally Armenia proper. In his fourth year he marched against Mardukbalatirib, king of Babylon, who had taken advantage of the disorders in Assyria to assert his independence, and who was supported by the Susianians or Elamites. He completely defeated him and compelled him to fly to the desert, killed very many of his army in the battle, took two hundred war chariots, and made seven thousand prisoners, of whom five thousand were put to death on the field of battle as an example. Unfortunately our information ceases at that period and we know absolutely nothing of the greater part of the reign of Shamash-Bin, or of the expeditions to the west of Asia, Syria, and Palestine, that must have been made after the termination of the campaigns by which the royal authority was reëstablished in all the ancient provinces of the empire. This King remained on the throne until 857. In 859 and 858 he had to repress a great revolt in Babylon and Chaldæa. Binlikhish [or Binnirari] III, the next king, reigned twenty-nine years, from 857 to 828. An inscription of his, engraved in the first years of his reign, describing the extent of the empire, says that he governed on one side "From the land of Siluna, toward the rising sun, the countries of Elam, Albania (at the foot of Caucasus), Kharkhar, Araziash, Misu, Media, Giratbunda (a portion of Atropatene, frequently mentioned in the cuneiform inscriptions), the lands of Munna, Parsua (Parthia), Allabria (Hyrcania), Abdadana (Hecatompyla), Namri (the Caspian Scythians), even to all the tribes of the Andiu (a Turanian or Scythian people, whose country is far off), the whole of the mountainous country as far as the sea of the rising sun, the Caspian Sea; on the other side from the Euphrates, Syria, all Phoenicia, the land of Tyre, of Sidon, the land of Omri (Samaria), Edom, the Philistines, as far as the sea of the setting sun (the Mediterranean)"; on all these countries he says that "he imposed tribute." "I marched," he says again, "against the land of Syria, and I took Marih, king of Syria, in Damascus, the city of his kingdom. The great dread of Asshur, my master, persuaded him; he embraced my knees and made submission." Binlikhish III was a warlike prince; every year of his reign was marked by an expedition. We have a summary of these in a chronological tablet in the British Museum, containing a fragment--from the end of the reign of Shamash-Bin to that of Tiglath-pileser II--of a canon of eponymes mentioning the principal events year by year. They nearly all occurred in Southern Armenia and in the land of Van, where obedience was only maintained by incessant military demonstrations, and subsequently in the countries to the north of Media as far as the Caspian Sea. Other expeditions were also made as far as Parthia, toward Ariana and the various countries that, to the Assyrians, were the extreme East. We do not, however, know what that region was called by them, as it is always designated by a group of ideographic characters of unknown pronunciation. By the defeat of Marih, king of Damascus, the submission of the western provinces was secured for the remainder of this reign, for there is no record of any other campaign there. The year 849 was marked by a great plague in Assyria; 834 by a religious festival, of which unfortunately no particulars are known; and, lastly, 833 by the solemn inauguration of a new temple to the god Nebo, in the capital. But the most interesting monument of the reign of Binlikhish III is the statue of Nebo, one of the great gods of Babylon, discovered by Mr. Loftus and now in the British Museum; the inscription on the base of the statue mentions the wife of the King, and calls her "the queen Sammuramat"; this is the only historical Semiramis, the one mentioned by Herodotus. He places her correctly about a century and a half before Nitocris, the wife of Nabopolassar, king of Babylon. "Semiramis," says the father of history, "raised magnificent embankments to restrain the river (Euphrates), which till then used to overflow and flood the whole country round Babylon." But why did Herodotus, and the Babylonian tradition he has so faithfully reported, attribute these useful works to the queen and not to her husband, Binlikhish? It was once supposed, as a solution of this problem, that Sammuramat had governed alone for some time, as queen regnant, after the death of her husband. But this conjecture is absolutely contradicted by the table of eponymes in the British Museum, where it can be seen that Sammuramat never reigned alone. In our opinion the only possible explanation will be found in regarding Binlikhish and Sammuramat as the Ferdinand and Isabella of Mesopotamia. The restless desire of Babylonia and Chaldæa to form a state separate from Assyria grew more decided as time went on; in the time of Binlikhish it had already gained great strength, and the day was not far distant when the separation was definitely to take place, and to occasion the utter ruin of Nineveh. In this position of affairs it was natural for a king of Assyria to seek to strengthen his authority in Chaldæa by a marriage with a daughter of the royal line of that country, who were his vassals, and thus, in the opinion of the people of Babylon, acquire a legitimate right to the possession of the country by means of his wife, as well as the advantages to be derived from the attachment of the people to their own legitimate sovereign. We shall therefore consider Sammuramat as a Babylonian princess married by Binlikhish, and as reigning nominally at Babylon while her husband occupied the throne at Nineveh, and as being the only sovereign registered by the Babylonians in their national annals. In fact, her position must have been a peculiar one; she must have been considered the rightful queen in one part of the empire, to have been named as queen, and in the same rank as the king, in such an official document as the inscription on the statue of the god Nebo. She is the only princess mentioned in any of the Assyrian texts, as we might naturally suppose; for unless under such very exceptional circumstances as we imagine in the case of Sammuramat, there can have been no queens, but only favorite concubines, under the organization of harem life, such as it was under the Assyrian kings, and as it still is in our days. The exaggerated development of the Assyrian empire was quite unnatural; the kings of Nineveh had never succeeded in welding into one nation the numerous tribes whom they subdued by force of arms, or in checking in them the spirit of independence; they had not even attempted to do so. The empire was absolutely without cohesion; the administrative system was so imperfect, the bond attaching the various provinces to each other, and to the centre of the monarchy, so weak that at the commencement of almost every reign a revolt broke out, sometimes at one point, sometimes at another. It was therefore easy to foresee that, so soon as the reins of government were no longer in a really strong hand--so soon as the king of Assyria should cease to be an active and warlike king, always in the field, always at the head of his troops--the great edifice laboriously built up by his predecessors of the tenth and ninth centuries would collapse, and the immense fabric of empire would vanish like smoke with such rapidity as to astonish the world. And this is exactly what occurred after the death of Binlikhish III. The tablet in the British Museum allows us to follow year by year the events and the progress of the dissolution of the empire. Under Shalmaneser V, who reigned from B.C. 828 to 818, some foreign expeditions were still made, as, for instance, to Damascus in B.C. 819; but the forces of the empire were especially engaged during many following years in attempting to hold countries already subdued, such as Armenia, then in a chronic state of revolt; the wars in one and the same province were constant, and occupied some six successive campaigns--the Armenian war was from B.C. 827 to 822--proving that no decisive results were obtained. Under Asshur-edil-ilani II, who reigned from B.C. 818 to 800, we do not see any new conquests; insurrections constantly broke out, and were no longer confined to the extremities of the empire; they encroached on the heart of the country, and gradually approached nearer to Nineveh. The revolutionary spirit increased in the provinces, a great insurrection became imminent, and was ready to break out on the slightest excuse. At this period, B.C. 804, it is that the British Museum tablet registers, as a memorable fact in the column of events, "Peace in the land." Two great plagues are also mentioned under this reign, in 811 and 805, and on the 13th of June, B.C. 809--30 Sivan in the eponymos of Bur-el-salkhi--an almost total eclipse of the sun, visible at Nineveh. The revolution was not long in coming. Asshurlikhish [Assurbanipal] ascended the throne in B.C. 800, and fixed his residence at Nineveh, instead of Ellasar, where his predecessor had lived after quitting Nineveh; he is the Sardanapalus of the Greeks, the ever-famous prototype of the voluptuous and effeminate prince. The tablet in the British Museum only mentions two expeditions in his reign, both of small importance, in 795 and 794; to all the other years the only notice is "in the country," proving that nothing was done and that all thought of war was abandoned. Sardanapalus had entirely given himself up to the orgies of his harem, and never left his palace walls, entirely renouncing all manly and warlike habits of life. He had reigned thus for seven years, and discontent continued to increase; the desire for independence was spreading in the subject provinces; the bond of their obedience each year relaxed still more, and was nearer breaking, when Arbaces, who commanded the Median contingent of the army and was himself a Mede, chanced to see in the palace at Nineveh the King, in a female dress, spindle in hand, hiding in the retirement of the harem his slothful cowardice and voluptuous life. He considered that it would be easy to deal with a prince so degraded, who would be unable to renew the valorous traditions of his ancestors. The time seemed to him to have come when the provinces, held only by force of arms, might finally throw off the weighty Assyrian yoke. Arbaces communicated his ideas and projects to the prince then intrusted with the government of Babylon, the Chaldæan Phul (Palia?), surnamed Balazu (the Terrible), a name the Greeks have made into Belesis; he entered into the plot with the willingness to be expected from a Babylonian, one of a nation so frequently rising in revolt. Arbaces and Balazu consulted with other chiefs, who commanded contingents of foreign troops, and with the vassal kings of those countries that aspired to independence; and they all formed the resolution of overthrowing Sardanapalus. Arbaces engaged to raise the Medes and Persians, while Balazu set on foot the insurrection in Babylon and Chaldæa. At the end of a year the chiefs assembled their soldiers, to the number of forty thousand, in Assyria, under the pretext of relieving, according to custom, the troops who had served the former year. When once there, the soldiers broke into open rebellion. The tablet in the British Museum tells us that the insurrection commenced at Calah in B.C. 792. Immediately after this the confusion became so great that from this year there was no nomination of an eponyme. Sardanapalus, rudely interrupted in his debaucheries by a danger he had not been able to foresee, showed himself suddenly inspired with activity and courage; he put himself at the head of the native Assyrian troops who remained faithful to him, met the rebels, and gained three complete victories over them. The confederates already began to despair of success, when Phul, calling in the aid of superstition to a cause that seemed lost, declared to them that if they would hold together for five days more, the gods, whose will he had ascertained by consulting the stars, would undoubtedly give them the victory. In fact, some days afterward a large body of troops, whom the King had summoned to his assistance from the provinces near the Caspian Sea, went over, on their arrival, to the side of the insurgents and gained them a victory. Sardanapalus then shut himself up in Nineveh, and determined to defend himself to the last. The siege continued two years, for the walls of the city were too strong for the battering machines of the enemy, who were compelled to trust to reducing it by famine. Sardanapalus was under no apprehension, confiding in an oracle declaring that Nineveh should never be taken until the river became its enemy. But, in the third year, rain fell in such abundance that the waters of the Tigris inundated part of the city and overturned one of its walls for a distance of twenty _stades_. Then the King, convinced that the oracle was accomplished and despairing of any means of escape, to avoid falling alive into the enemy's hands constructed in his palace an immense funeral pyre, placed on it his gold and silver and his royal robes, and then, shutting himself up with his wives and eunuchs in a chamber formed in the midst of the pile, disappeared in the flames. Nineveh opened its gates to the besiegers, but this tardy submission did not save the proud city. It was pillaged and burned, and then razed to the ground so completely as to evidence the implacable hatred enkindled in the minds of subject nations by the fierce and cruel Assyrian government. The Medes and Babylonians did not leave one stone upon another in the ramparts, palaces, temples, or houses of the city that for two centuries had been dominant over all Western Asia. So complete was the destruction that the excavations of modern explorers on the site of Nineveh have not yet found one single wall slab earlier than the capture of the city by Arbaces and Balazu. All we possess of the first Nineveh is one broken statue. History has no other example of so complete a destruction. The Assyrian empire was, like the capital, overthrown, and the people who had taken part in the revolt formed independent states--the Medes under Arbaces, the Babylonians under Phul or Balazu, and the Susianians under Shutruk-Nakhunta. Assyria, reduced to the enslaved state in which she had so long held other countries, remained for some time a dependency of Babylon. This great event occurred in the year B.C. 789. [When the noble sculptures and vast palaces of Nimrud had been first uncovered, it was natural to suppose that they marked the real site of ancient Nineveh; a passage of Strabo, and another of Ptolemy, lent confirmation to this theory. Shortly afterward a rival claimant started up in the region farther to the north. "After a while an attempt was made to reconcile the rival claims by a theory the grandeur of which gained it acceptance, despite its improbability. It was suggested that the various ruins, which had hitherto disputed the name, were in fact all included within the circuit of the ancient Nineveh, which was described as a rectangle, or oblong square, eighteen miles long and twelve broad. The remains at Khorsabad, Koyunjik, Nimrud, and Keremles marked the four corners of this vast quadrangle, which contained an area of two hundred and sixteen square miles--about ten times that of London! "In confirmation of this view was urged, first, the description in Diodorus, derived probably from Ctesias, which corresponded (it was said) both with the proportions and with the actual distances; and, next, the statements contained in the Book of Jonah, which, it was argued, implied a city of some such dimensions. The parallel of Babylon, according to the description given by Herodotus, might fairly have been cited as a further argument; since it might have seemed reasonable to suppose that there was no great difference of size between the chief cities of the two kindred empires."--_Rawlinson_.] THE FOUNDATION OF ROME B.C. 753 BARTHOLD GEORG NIEBUHR Rome occupies a unique position in the history of the world. The whole Mediterranean basin was at one time merely a Roman lake, and the adjacent countries were Roman in letters, law, religion and the practice of war. Roman roads crossed the continents east and west and penetrated to the depths of Asia and Africa. Roman garrisons were stationed in every important city of the provinces, and when the great city on the banks of the Tiber at last fell before successive irruptions of northeasterly barbarians and Roman power was at its extreme ebb, the spirit of Roman institutions still survived in the civilization of Spain, France, Italy, Britain, even in Greece and Asia. Roman law had become the code of the world. Iberian, Gaul, and Italian had modified in varying degree their native dialects in conformity with the more copious and logical idiom of Latium. A group of legends gathers round the birthplace of the Eternal City. It is Æneas who escapes from Troy and brings into the land of Italian Latinus his native gods. His son Ascanius conquers and slays Mezentius in a battle between Latins and Etruscans, and eleven kings of Alba, all surnamed Silvius, succeeded him on the throne. The last king of Alba Longa is Procas, whose usurping son Amulius drives his eldest brother Numitor from the throne. Numitor's daughter, Silvia, becomes the mother of the immortal twins Romulus and Remus, by Mamers, the god of war; the children are exposed by cruel Amulius, suckled by a wolf, and become founders of Rome. Such is the outline of the poem, or rather tissue of poetry in which the founding of Rome is embalmed. The critical acumen of Niebuhr may have dispelled some of the clouds and contradictions in which early historians and poets have wrapped the record of this great event. But no critic can ever destroy the beauty and charm of the old Latin chronicles or diminish the glory of the day that saw the first walls rise about the seven hills of the most important of ancient European cities. I believe that few persons, when Alba is mentioned, can get rid of the idea, to which I too adhered for a long time, that the history of Alba is lost to such an extent, that we can speak of it only in reference to the Trojan time and the preceding period, as if all the statements made concerning it by the Romans were based upon fancy and error; and that accordingly it must be effaced from the pages of history altogether. It is true that what we read concerning the foundation of Alba by Ascanius, and the wonderful signs accompanying it, as well as the whole series of the Alban kings, with the years of their reigns, the story of Numitor and Amulius and the story of the destruction of the city, do not belong to history; but the historical existence of Alba is not at all doubtful on that account, nor have the ancients ever doubted it. The _Sacra Albana_ and the _Albani tumuli atque luci_, which existed as late as the time of Cicero, are proofs of its early existence; ruins indeed no longer exist, but the situation of the city in the valley of Grotta Ferrata may still be recognized. Between the lake and the long chain of hills near the monastery of Palazzuolo one still sees the rock cut steep down toward the lake, evidently the work of man, which rendered it impossible to attack the city on that side; the summit on the other side formed the arx. That the Albans were in possession of the sovereignty of Latium is a tradition which we may believe to be founded on good authority, as it is traced to Cincius. Afterward the Latins became the masters of the district and temple of Jupiter. Further, the statement that Alba shared the flesh of the victim on the Alban mount with the thirty towns, and that after the fall of Alba the Latins chose their own magistrates, are glimpses of real history. The ancient tunnel made for discharging the water of the Alban Lake still exists, and through its vault a canal was made called _Fossa Cluilia_: this vault, which is still visible, is a work of earlier construction than any Roman one. But all that can be said of Alba and the Latins at that time is, that Alba was the capital, exercising the sovereignty over Latium; that its temple of Jupiter was the rallying point of the people who were governed by it; and that the gens Silvia was the ruling clan. It cannot be doubted that the number of Latin towns was actually thirty, just that of the Albensian demi; this number afterward occurs again in the later thirty Latin towns and in the thirty Roman tribes, and it is moreover indicated by the story of the foundation of Lavinium by thirty families, in which we may recognize the union of the two tribes. The statement that Lavinium was a Trojan colony and was afterward abandoned, but restored by Alba, and further that the sanctuary could not be transferred from it to Alba, is only an accommodation to the Trojan and native tradition, however much it may bear the appearance of antiquity. For Lavinium is nothing else than a general name for Latium, just as Panionium is for Ionia, _Latinus_, _Lavinus_, and _Lavicus_ being one and the same name, as is recognized even by Servius. Lavinium was the central point of the Prisci Latini, and there is no doubt that in the early period before Alba ruled over Lavinium, worship was offered mutually at Alba and at Lavinium, as was afterward the case at Rome in the temple of Diana on the Aventine, and at the festivals of the Romans and Latins on the Alban mount. The personages of the Trojan legend therefore present themselves to us in the following light. Turnus is nothing else but Turinus, in Dionysius [Greek: Turrênos]; Lavinia, the fair maiden, is the name of the Latin people, which may perhaps be so distinguished that the inhabitants of the coast were called Tyrrhenians, and those further inland Latins. Since, after the battle of Lake Regillus, the Latins are mentioned in the treaty with Rome as forming thirty towns, there can be no doubt that the towns, over which Alba had the supremacy in the earliest times, were likewise thirty in number; but the confederacy did not at all times contain the same towns, as some may afterward have perished and others may have been added. In such political developments there is at work an instinctive tendency to fill up that which has become vacant; and this instinct acts as long as people proceed unconsciously according to the ancient forms and not in accordance with actual wants. Such also was the case in the twelve Achæan towns and in the seven Frisian maritime communities; for as soon as one disappeared, another, dividing itself into two, supplied its place. Wherever there is a fixed number, it is kept up, even when one part dies away, and it ever continues to be renewed. We may add that the state of the Latins lost in the West, but gained in the East. We must therefore, I repeat it, conceive on the one hand Alba with its thirty _demi_, and on the other the thirty Latin towns, the latter at first forming a state allied with Alba, and at a later time under its supremacy. According to an important statement of Cato preserved in Dionysius, the ancient towns of the Aborigines were small places scattered over the mountains. One town of this kind was situated on the Palatine hill, and bore the name of Roma, which is most certainly Greek. Not far from it there occur several other places with Greek names, such as Pyrgi and Alsium; for the people inhabiting those districts were closely akin to the Greeks; and it is by no means an erroneous conjecture, that Terracina was formerly called [Greek: Tracheinê] or the "rough place on a rock"; Formiæ must be connected with [Greek: hormos] "a roadstead" or "place for casting anchor." As certain as Pyrgi signifies "towers," so certainly does _Roma_ signify "strength," and I believe that those are quite right who consider that the name Roma in this sense is not accidental. This Roma is described as a Pelasgian place in which Evander, the introducer of scientific culture, resided. According to tradition, the first foundation of civilization was laid by Saturn, in the golden age of mankind. The tradition in Vergil, who was extremely learned in matters of antiquity, that the first men were created out of trees, must be taken quite literally; for as in Greece the [Greek: myrmêches] were metamorphosed into the Myrmidons, and the stones thrown by Deucalion and Pyrrha into men and women, so in Italy trees, by some divine power, were changed into human beings. These beings, at first only half human, gradually acquired a civilization which they owed to Saturn; but the real intellectual culture was traced to Evander, who must not be regarded as a person who had come from Arcadia, but as _the good man_, as the teacher of the alphabet and of mental culture, which man gradually works out for himself. The Romans clung to the conviction that Romulus, the founder of Rome, was the son of a virgin by a god, that his life was marvellously preserved, that he was saved from the floods of the river and was reared by a she-wolf. That this poetry is very ancient cannot be doubted; but did the legend at all times describe Romulus as the son of Rea Silvia or Ilia? Perizonius was the first who remarked against Ryccius that Rea Ilia never occurs together, and that Rea Silvia was a daughter of Numitor, while Ilia is called a daughter of Æneas. He is perfectly right: Nævius and Ennius called Romulus a son of Ilia, the daughter of Æneas, as is attested by Servius on Vergil and Porphyrio on Horace; but it cannot be hence inferred that this was the national opinion of the Romans themselves, for the poets who were familiar with the Greeks might accommodate their stories to Greek poems. The ancient Romans, on the other hand, could not possibly look upon the mother of the founder of their city as a daughter of Æneas, who was believed to have lived three hundred and thirty-three or three hundred and sixty years earlier. Dionysius says that his account, which is that of Fabius, occurred in the sacred songs, and it is in itself perfectly consistent. Fabius cannot have taken it, as Plutarch asserts, from Diocles, a miserable unknown Greek author; the statue of the she-wolf was erected in the year A.U. 457, long before Diocles wrote, and at least a hundred years before Fabius. This tradition therefore is certainly the more ancient Roman one; and it puts Rome in connection with Alba. A monument has lately been discovered at Bovillæ: it is an altar which the _Gentiles Julii_ erected _lege Albana_, and therefore expresses a religious relation of a Roman gens to Alba. The connection of the two towns continues down to the founder of Rome; and the well-known tradition, with its ancient poetical details, many of which Livy and Dionysius omitted from their histories lest they should seem to deal too much in the marvellous, runs as follows: Numitor and Amulius were contending for the throne of Alba. Amulius took possession of the throne, and made Rea Silvia, the daughter of Numitor, a vestal virgin, in order that the Silvian house might become extinct. This part of the story was composed without any insight into political laws, for a daughter could not have transmitted any gentilician rights. The name Rea Silvia is ancient, but Rea is only a surname: _rea femmina_ often occurs in Boccaccio, and is used to this day in Tuscany to designate a woman whose reputation is blighted; a priestess Rea is described by Vergil as having been overpowered by Hercules. While Rea was fetching water in a grove for a sacrifice the sun became eclipsed, and she took refuge from a wolf in a cave, where she was overpowered by Mars. When she was delivered, the sun was again eclipsed and the statue of Vesta covered its eyes. Livy has here abandoned the marvellous. The tyrant threw Rea with her infants into the river Anio: she lost her life in the waves, but the god of the river took her soul and changed it into an immortal goddess, whom he married. This story has been softened down into the tale of her imprisonment, which is unpoetical enough to be a later invention. The river Anio carried the cradle, like a boat, into the Tiber, and the latter conveyed it to the foot of the Palatine, the water having overflowed the country, and the cradle was upset at the root of a fig-tree. A she-wolf carried the babies away and suckled them; Mars sent a woodpecker which provided the children with food, and the bird _parra_ which protected them from insects. These statements are gathered from various quarters; for the historians got rid of the marvellous as much as possible. Faustulus, the legend continues, found the boys feeding on the milk of the huge wild beast; he brought them up with his twelve sons, and they became the staunchest of all. Being at the head of the shepherds on Mount Palatine, they became involved in a quarrel with the shepherds of Numitor on the Aventine--the Palatine and the Aventine are always hostile to each other. Remus being taken prisoner was led to Alba, but Romulus rescued him, and their descent from Numitor being discovered, the latter was restored to the throne, and the two young men obtained permission to form a settlement at the foot of Mount Palatine where they had been saved. Out of this beautiful poem the falsifiers endeavored to make some credible story: even the unprejudiced and poetical Livy tried to avoid the most marvellous points as much as he could, but the falsifiers went a step farther. In the days when men had altogether ceased to believe in the ancient gods, attempts were made to find something intelligible in the old legends, and thus a history was made up, which Plutarch fondly embraced and Dionysius did not reject, though he also relates the ancient tradition in a mutilated form. He says that many people believe in demons, and that such a demon might have been the father of Romulus; but he himself is very far from believing it, and rather thinks that Amulius himself, in disguise, violated Rea Silvia amid thunder and lightning produced by artifice. This he is said to have done in order to have a pretext for getting rid of her, but being entreated by his daughter not to drown her, he imprisoned her for life. The children were saved by the shepherd who was commissioned to expose them, at the request of Numitor, and two other boys were put in their place. Numitor's grandsons were taken to a friend at Gabii, who caused them to be educated according to their rank, and to be instructed in Greek literature. Attempts have actually been made to introduce this stupid forgery into history, and some portions of it have been adopted in the narrative of our historians; for example, that the ancient Alban nobility migrated with the two brothers to Rome; but if this had been the case there would have been no need of opening an asylum, nor would it have been necessary to obtain by force the _connubium_ with other nations. But of more historical importance is the difference of opinion between the two brothers respecting the building of the city and its site. According to the ancient tradition, both were kings and the equal heads of the colony; Romulus is universally said to have wished to build on the Palatine, while Remus, according to some, preferred the Aventine; according to others, the hill Remuria. Plutarch states that the latter is a hill three miles south of Rome, and cannot have been any other than the hill nearly opposite St. Paul, which is the more credible, since this hill, though situated in an otherwise unhealthy district, has an extremely fine air: a very important point in investigations respecting the ancient Latin towns, for it may be taken for certain that where the air is now healthy it was so in those times also, and that where it is now decidedly unhealthy, it was anciently no better. The legend now goes on to say that a dispute arose between Romulus and Remus as to which of them should give the name to the town, and also as to where it was to be built. A town Remuria therefore undoubtedly existed on that hill, though subsequently we find the name transferred to the Aventine, as is the case so frequently. According to the common tradition, the auguries were to decide between the brothers: Romulus took his stand on the Palatine, Remus on the Aventine. The latter observed the whole night, but saw nothing until about sunrise, when he saw six vultures flying from north to south, and sent word of it to Romulus; but at that very time the latter, annoyed at not having seen any sign, fraudulently sent a messenger to say that he had seen twelve vultures, and at the very moment the messenger arrived there did appear twelve vultures, to which Romulus appealed. This account is impossible; for the Palatine and Aventine are so near each other that, as every Roman well knew, whatever a person on one of the two hills saw high in the air, could not escape the observation of any one who was watching on the other. This part of the story therefore cannot be ancient, and can be saved only by substituting the Remuria for the Aventine. As the Palatine was the seat of the noblest patrician tribe, and the Aventine the special town of the plebeians, there existed between the two a perpetual feud, and thus it came to pass that in after times the story relating to the Remuria, which was far away from the city, was transferred to the Aventine. According to Ennius, Romulus made his observations on the Aventine; in this case Remus must certainly have been on the Remuria, and it is said that when Romulus obtained the augury he threw his spear toward the Palatine. This is the ancient legend which was neglected by the later writers. Romulus took possession of the Palatine. The spear taking root and becoming a tree, which existed down to the time of Nero, is a symbol of the eternity of the new city, and of the protection of the gods. The statement that Romulus tried to deceive his brother is a later addition; and the beautiful poem of Ennius, quoted by Cicero, knows nothing of this circumstance. The conclusion which must be drawn from all this is, that in the earliest times there were two towns, Roma and Remuria, the latter being far distant from the city and from the Palatine. Romulus now fixed the boundary of his town, but Remus scornfully leaped across the ditch, for which he was slain by Celer, a hint that no one should cross the fortifications of Rome with impunity. But Romulus fell into a state of melancholy occasioned by the death of Remus; he instituted festivals to honor him, and ordered an empty throne to be put up by the side of his own. Thus we have a double kingdom, which ends with the defeat of Remuria. The question now is, What were these two towns of Roma and Remuria? They were evidently Pelasgian places: the ancient tradition states that Sicelus migrated from Rome southward to the Pelasgians, that is, the Tyrrhenian Pelasgians were pushed forward to the Morgetes, a kindred nation in Lucania and in Sicily. Among the Greeks it was, as Dionysius states, a general opinion that Rome was a Pelasgian, that is, a Tyrrhenian city, but the authorities from whom he learned this are no longer extant. There is, however, a fragment in which it is stated that Rome was a sister city of Antium and Ardea; here too we must apply the statement from the chronicle of Cumæ, that Evander, who, as an Arcadian, was likewise a Pelasgian, had his _palatium_ on the Palatine. To us he appears of less importance than in the legend, for in the latter he is one of the benefactors of nations, and introduced among the Pelasgians in Italy the use of the alphabet and other arts, just as Damaratus did among the Tyrrhenians in Etruria. In this sense, therefore, Rome was certainly a Latin town, and had not a mixed but a purely Tyrrheno-Pelasgian population. The subsequent vicissitudes of this settlement may be gathered from the allegories. Romulus now found the number of his fellow-settlers too small; the number of three thousand foot and three hundred horse, which Livy gives from the commentaries of the pontiffs, is worth nothing; for it is only an outline of the later military arrangement transferred to the earliest times. According to the ancient tradition, Romulus's band was too small, and he opened an asylum on the Capitoline hill. This asylum, the old description states, contained only a very small space, a proof how little these things were understood historically. All manner of people, thieves, murderers, and vagabonds of every kind, flocked thither. This is the simple view taken of the origin of the clients. In the bitterness with which the estates subsequently looked upon one another, it was made a matter of reproach to the Patricians that their earliest ancestors had been vagabonds; though it was a common opinion that the Patricians were descended from the free companions of Romulus, and that those who took refuge in the asylum placed themselves as clients under the protection of the real free citizens. But now they wanted women, and attempts were made to obtain the _connubium_ with neighboring towns, especially perhaps with Antemnæ, which was only four miles distant from Rome, with the Sabines and others. This being refused Romulus had recourse to a stratagem, proclaiming that he had discovered the altar of Consus, the god of counsels, an allegory of his cunning in general. In the midst of the solemnities, the Sabine maidens, thirty in number, were carried off, from whom the _curiæ_ received their names: this is the genuine ancient legend, and it proves how small ancient Rome was conceived to have been. In later times the number was thought too small; it was supposed that these thirty had been chosen by lot for the purpose of naming the _curiæ_ after them; and Valerius Antias fixed the number of the women who had been carried off at five hundred and twenty-seven. The rape is placed in the fourth month of the city, because the _consualia_ fall in August, and the festival commemorating the foundation of the city in April; later writers, as Cn. Gellius, extended this period to four years, and Dionysius found this of course far more credible. From this rape there arose wars, first with the neighboring towns, which were defeated one after another, and at last with the Sabines. The ancient legend contains not a trace of this war having been of long continuance; but in later times it was necessarily supposed to have lasted for a considerable time, since matters were then measured by a different standard. Lucumo and Cælius came to the assistance of Romulus, an allusion to the expedition of Cæles Vibenna, which however belongs to a much later period. The Sabine king, Tatius, was induced by treachery to settle on the hill which is called the Tarpeian _arx_. Between the Palatine and the Tarpeian rock a battle was fought, in which neither party gained a decisive victory, until the Sabine women threw themselves between the combatants, who agreed that henceforth the sovereignty should be divided between the Romans and the Sabines. According to the annals, this happened in the fourth year of Rome. But this arrangement lasted only a short time; Tatius was slain during a sacrifice at Lavinium, and his vacant throne was not filled up. During their common reign, each king had a senate of one hundred members, and the two senates, after consulting separately, used to meet, and this was called _comitium_. Romulus during the remainder of his life ruled alone; the ancient legend knows nothing of his having been a tyrant: according to Ennius he continued, on the contrary, to be a mild and benevolent king, while Tatius was a tyrant. The ancient tradition contained nothing beyond the beginning and the end of the reign of Romulus; all that lies between these points, the war with the Veientines, Fidenates, and so on, is a foolish invention of later annalists. The poem itself is beautiful, but this inserted narrative is highly absurd, as for example the statement that Romulus slew ten thousand Veientines with his own hand. The ancient poem passed on at once to the time when Romulus had completed his earthly career, and Jupiter fulfilled his promise to Mars, that Romulus was the only man whom he would introduce among the gods. According to this ancient legend, the king was reviewing his army near the marsh of Capræ, when, as at the moment of his conception, there occurred an eclipse of the sun and at the same time a hurricane, during which Mars descended in a fiery chariot and took his son up to heaven. Out of this beautiful poem the most wretched stories have been manufactured: Romulus, it is said, while in the midst of his senators was knocked down, cut into pieces, and thus carried away by them under their togas. This stupid story was generally adopted, and that a cause for so horrible a deed might not be wanting, it was related that in his latter years Romulus had become a tyrant, and that the senators took revenge by murdering him. After the death of Romulus, the Romans and the people of Tatius quarrelled for a long time with each other, the Sabines wishing that one of their nation should be raised to the throne, while the Romans claimed that the new king should be chosen from among them. At length they agreed, it is said, that the one nation should choose a king from the other. We have now reached the point at which it is necessary to speak of the relation between the two nations, such as it actually existed. All the nations of antiquity lived in fixed forms, and their civil relations were always marked by various divisions and subdivisions. When cities raise themselves to the rank of nations, we always find a division at first into tribes; Herodotus mentions such tribes in the colonization of Cyrene, and the same was afterward the case at the foundation of Thurii; but when a place existed anywhere as a distinct township, its nature was characterized by the fact of its citizens being at a certain time divided into _gentes_ [Greek: genê], each of which had a common chapel and a common hero. These _gentes_ were united in definite numerical proportions into _curiæ_ [Greek: phratrai]. The _gentes_ are not families, but free corporations, sometimes close and sometimes open; in certain cases the whole body of the state might assign to them new associates; the great council at Venice was a close body, and no one could be admitted whose ancestors had not been in it, and such also was the case in many oligarchical states of antiquity. All civil communities had a council and an assembly of burghers, that is, a small and a great council; the burghers consisted of the guilds or _gentes_, and these again were united, as it were, in parishes; all the Latin towns had a council of one hundred members, who were divided into ten _curiæ_; this division gave rise to the name of _decuriones_, which remained in use as a title of civic magistrates down to the latest times, and through the _lex Julia_ was transferred to the constitution of the Italian _municipia_. That this council consisted of one hundred persons has been proved by Savigny, in the first volume of his history of the Roman law. This constitution continued to exist till a late period of the middle ages, but perished when the institution of guilds took the place of municipal constitutions. Giovanni Villani says, that previously to the revolution in the twelfth century there were at Florence one hundred _buoni nomini_, who had the administration of the city. There is nothing in the German cities which answers to this constitution. We must not conceive those hundred to have been nobles; they were an assembly of burghers and country people, as was the case in our small imperial cities, or as in the small cantons of Switzerland. Each of them represented a _gens_; and they are those whom Propertius calls _patres pelliti_. The _curia_ of Rome, a cottage covered with straw, was a faithful memorial of the times when Rome stood buried in the night of history, as a small country town surrounded by its little domain. The most ancient occurrence which we can discover from the form of the allegory, by a comparison of what happened in other parts of Italy, is a result of the great and continued commotion among the nations of Italy. It did not terminate when the Oscans had been pressed forward from Lake Fucinus to the lake of Alba, but continued much longer. The Sabines may have rested for a time, but they advanced far beyond the districts about which we have any traditions. These Sabines began as a very small tribe, but afterward became one of the greatest nations of Italy, for the Marrucinians, Caudines, Vestinians, Marsians, Pelignians, and in short all the Samnite tribes, the Lucanians, the Oscan part of the Bruttians, the Picentians, and several others were all descended from the Sabine stock, and yet there are no traditions about their settlements except in a few cases. At the time to which we must refer the foundation of Rome, the Sabines were widely diffused. It is said that, guided by a bull, they penetrated into Opica, and thus occupied the country of the Samnites. It was perhaps at an earlier time that they migrated down the Tiber, whence we there find Sabine towns mixed with Latin ones; some of their places also existed on the Anio. The country afterward inhabited by the Sabines was probably not occupied by them till a later period, for Falerii is a Tuscan town, and its population was certainly at one time thoroughly Tyrrhenian. As the Sabines advanced, some Latin towns maintained their independence, others were subdued; Fidenæ belonged to the former, but north of it all the country was Sabine. Now by the side of the ancient Roma we find a Sabine town on the Quirinal and Capitoline close to the Latin town; but its existence is all that we know about it. A tradition states that there previously existed on the Capitoline a Siculian town of the name of Saturnia, which, in this case, must have been conquered by the Sabines. But whatever we may think of this, as well as of the existence of another ancient town on the Janiculum, it is certain that there were a number of small towns in that district. The two towns could exist perfectly well side by side, as there was a deep marsh between them. The town on the Palatine may for a long time have been in a state of dependence on the Sabine conqueror whom tradition calls Titus Tatius; hence he was slain during the Laurentine sacrifice, and hence also his memory was hateful. The existence of a Sabine town on the Quirinal is attested by the undoubted occurrence there of a number of Sabine chapels, which were known as late as the time of Varro, and from which he proved that the Sabine ritual was adopted by the Romans. This Sabine element in the worship of the Romans has almost always been overlooked, in consequence of the prevailing desire to look upon everything as Etruscan; but, I repeat, there is no doubt of the Sabine settlement, and that it was the result of a great commotion among the tribes of middle Italy. The tradition that the Sabine women were carried off because there existed no _connubium_, and that the rape was followed by a war, is undoubtedly a symbolical representation of the relation between the two towns, previous to the establishment of the right of intermarriage; the Sabines had the ascendancy and refused that right, but the Romans gained it by force of arms. There can be no doubt that the Sabines were originally the ruling people, but that in some insurrection of the Romans various Sabine places, such as Antemnæ, Fidenæ, and others, were subdued, and thus these Sabines were separated from their kinsmen. The Romans, therefore, reëstablished their independence by a war, the result of which may have been such as we read it in the tradition--Romulus being, of course, set aside--namely, that both places as two closely united towns formed a kind of confederacy, each with a senate of one hundred members, a king, an offensive and defensive alliance, and on the understanding that in common deliberations the burghers of each should meet together in the space between the two towns which was afterward called the _comitium_. In this manner they formed a united state in regard to foreign nations. The idea of a double state was not unknown to the ancient writers themselves, although the indications of it are preserved only in scattered passages, especially in the scholiasts. The head of Janus, which in the earliest times was represented on the Roman _as_, is the symbol of it, as has been correctly observed by writers on Roman antiquities. The vacant throne by the side of the _curule_ chair of Romulus points to the time when there was only one king, and represents the equal but quiescent right of the other people. That concord was not of long duration is an historical fact likewise; nor can it be doubted that the Roman king assumed the supremacy over the Sabines, and that in consequence the two councils were united so as to form one senate under one king, it being agreed that the king should be alternately a Roman and a Sabine, and that each time he should be chosen by the other people: the king, however, if displeasing to the non-electing people, was not to be forced upon them, but was to be invested with the _imperium_ only on condition of the auguries being favorable to him, and of his being sanctioned by the whole nation. The non-electing tribe accordingly had the right of either sanctioning or rejecting his election. In the case of Numa this is related as a fact, but it is only a disguisement of the right derived from the ritual books. In this manner the strange double election, which is otherwise so mysterious and was formerly completely misunderstood, becomes quite intelligible. One portion of the nation elected and the other sanctioned; it being intended that, for example, the Romans should not elect from among the Sabines a king devoted exclusively to their own interests, but one who was at the same time acceptable to the Sabines. When, perhaps after several generations of a separate existence, the two states became united, the towns ceased to be towns, and the collective body of the burghers of each became tribes, so that the nation consisted of two tribes. The form of addressing the Roman people was from the earliest times _Populus Romanus Quirites_, which, when its origin was forgotten, was changed into _Populus Romanus Quiritium_, just as _lis vindiciæ_ was afterward changed into _lis vindiciaruum_. This change is more ancient than Livy; the correct expression still continued to be used, but was to a great extent supplanted by the false one. The ancient tradition relates that after the union of the two tribes the name _Quirites_ was adopted as the common designation for the whole people; but this is erroneous, for the name was not used in this sense till a very late period. This designation remained in use and was transferred to the plebeians at a time when the distinction between Romans and Sabines, between these two and the Luceres, nay, when even that between patricians and plebeians had almost ceased to be noticed. Thus the two towns stood side by side as tribes forming one state, and it is merely a recognition of the ancient tradition when we call the Latins _Ramnes_, and the Sabines _Tities_; that the derivation of these appellations from Romulus and T. Tatius is incorrect is no argument against the view here taken. Dionysius, who had good materials and made use of a great many, must, as far as the consular period is concerned, have had more than he gives; there is in particular one important change in the constitution, concerning which he has only a few words, either because he did not see clearly or because he was careless. But as regards the kingly period, he was well acquainted with his subject; he says that there was a dispute between the two tribes respecting the senates, and that Numa settled it by not depriving the Ramnes, as the first tribe, of anything, and by conferring honors on the Tities. This is perfectly clear. The senate, which had at first consisted of one hundred and now two hundred members, was divided into ten _decuries_, each being headed by one, who was its leader; these are the _decem primi_, and they were taken from the Ramnes. They formed the college, which, when there was no king, undertook the government, one after another, each for five days, but in such a manner that they always succeeded one another in the same order, as we must believe with Livy, for Dionysius here introduces his Greek notions of the Attic _prytanes_, and Plutarch misunderstands the matter altogether. After the example of the senate the number of the augurs and pontiffs also was doubled, so that each college consisted of four members, two being taken from the Ramnes and two from the Tities. Although it is not possible to fix these changes chronologically, as Dionysius and Cicero do, yet they are as historically certain as if we actually knew the kings who introduced them. Such was Rome in the second stage of its development. This period of equalization is one of peace, and is described as the reign of Numa, about whom the traditions are simple and brief. It is the picture of a peaceful condition with a holy man at the head of affairs, like Nicolas von der Flue in Switzerland. Numa was supposed to have been inspired by the goddess. Egeria, to whom he was married in the grove of the Camenæ, and who introduced him into the choir of her sisters; she melted away in tears at his death, and thus gave her name to the spring which arose out of her tears. Such a peace of forty years, during which no nation rose against Rome, because Numa's piety was communicated to the surrounding nations, is a beautiful idea, but historically impossible in those times, and manifestly a poetical fiction. The death of Numa forms the conclusion of the first _sæculum_, and an entirely new period follows, just as in the Theogony of Hesiod the age of heroes is followed by the iron age; there is evidently a change, and an entirely new order of things is conceived to have arisen. Up to this point we have had nothing except poetry, but with Tullus Hostilius a kind of history begins, that is, events are related which must be taken in general as historical, though in the light in which they are presented to us they are not historical. Thus, for example, the destruction of Alba is historical, and so in all probability is the reception of the Albans at Rome. The conquests of Ancus Martius are quite credible; and they appear like an oasis of real history in the midst of fables. A similar case occurs once in the chronicle of Cologne. In the Abyssinian annals, we find in the thirteenth century a very minute account of one particular event, in which we recognize a piece of contemporaneous history, though we meet with nothing historical either before or after. The history which then follows is like a picture viewed from the wrong side, like phantasmata; the names of the kings are perfectly fictitious; no man can tell how long the Roman kings reigned, as we do not know how many there were, since it is only for the sake of the number that seven were supposed to have ruled, seven being a number which appears in many relations, especially in important astronomical ones. Hence the chronological statements are utterly worthless. We must conceive as a succession of centuries the period from the origin of Rome down to the times wherein were constructed the enormous works, such as the great drains, the wall of Servius, and others, which were actually executed under the kings and rival the great architectural works of the Egyptians. Romulus and Numa must be entirely set aside; but a long period follows, in which the nations gradually unite and develop themselves until the kingly government disappears and makes way for republican institutions. But it is nevertheless necessary to relate the history, such as it has been handed down, because much depends upon it. There was not the slightest connection between Rome and Alba, nor is it even mentioned by the historians, though they suppose that Rome received its first inhabitants from Alba; but in the reign of Tullus Hostilius the two cities on a sudden appear as enemies: each of the two nations seeks war, and tries to allure fortune by representing itself as the injured party, each wishing to declare war. Both sent ambassadors to demand reparation for robberies which had been committed. The form of procedure was this: the ambassadors, that is the Fetiales, related the grievances of their city to every person they met, they then proclaimed them in the market-place of the other city, and if, after the expiration of thrice ten days no reparation was made, they said, "We have done enough and now return," whereupon the elders at home held counsel as to how they should obtain redress. In this formula accordingly the _res_, that is, the surrender of the guilty and the restoration of the stolen property, must have been demanded. Now it is related that the two nations sent such ambassadors quite simultaneously, but that Tullus Hostilius retained the Alban ambassadors, until he was certain that the Romans at Alba had not obtained the justice due to them, and had therefore declared war. After this he admitted the ambassadors into the senate, and the reply made to their complaint was, that they themselves had not satisfied the demands of the Romans. Livy then continues: _bellum in trigesimum diem dixerant_. But the real formula is, _post trigesimum diem_, and we may ask, Why did Livy or the annalist whom he followed make this alteration? For an obvious reason: a person may ride from Rome to Alba in a couple of hours, so that the detention of the Alban ambassadors at Rome for thirty days, without their hearing what was going on in the mean time at Alba, was a matter of impossibility. Livy saw this, and therefore altered the formula. But the ancient poet was not concerned about such things, and without hesitation increased the distance in his imagination, and represented Rome and Alba as great states. The whole description of the circumstances under which the fate of Alba was decided is just as manifestly poetical, but we shall dwell upon it for a while in order to show how a semblance of history may arise. Between Rome and Alba there was a ditch, _Fossa Cluilia_ or _Cloelia_, and there must have been a tradition that the Albans had been encamped there; Livy and Dionysius mention that Cluilius, a general of the Albans, had given the ditch its name, having perished there. It was necessary to mention the latter circumstance, in order to explain the fact that afterward their general was a different person, Mettius Fuffetius, and yet to be able to connect the name of that ditch with the Albans. The two states committed the decision of their dispute to champions, and Dionysius says that tradition did not agree as to whether the name of the Roman champions was Horatii or Curiatii, although he himself, as well as Livy, assumes that it was Horatii, probably because it was thus stated by the majority of the annalists. Who would suspect any uncertainty here if it were not for this passage of Dionysius? The contest of the three brothers on each side is a symbolical indication that each of the two states was then divided into three tribes. Attempts have indeed been made to deny that the three men were brothers of the same birth, and thus to remove the improbability; but the legend went even further, representing the three brothers on each side as the sons of two sisters, and as born on the same day. This contains the suggestion of a perfect equality between Rome and Alba. The contest ended in the complete submission of Alba; it did not remain faithful, however, and in the ensuing struggle with the Etruscans, Mettius Fuffetius acted the part of a traitor toward Rome, but not being able to carry his design into effect, he afterward fell upon the fugitive Etruscans. Tullus ordered him to be torn to pieces and Alba to be razed to the ground, the noblest Alban families being transplanted to Rome. The death of Tullus is no less poetical. Like Numa he undertook to call down lightning from heaven, but he thereby destroyed himself and his house. If we endeavor to discover the historical substance of these legends, we at once find ourselves in a period when Rome no longer stood alone, but had colonies with Roman settlers, possessing a third of the territory and exercising sovereign power over the original inhabitants. This was the case in a small number of towns, for the most part of ancient Siculian origin. It is an undoubted fact that Alba was destroyed, and that after this event the towns of the _Prisci Latini_ formed an independent and compact confederacy; but whether Alba fell in the manner described, whether it was ever compelled to recognize the supremacy of Rome, and whether it was destroyed by the Romans and Latins conjointly, or by the Romans or Latins alone, are questions which no human ingenuity can solve. It is, however, most probable that the destruction of Alba was the work of the Latins, who rose against her supremacy; whether in this case the Romans received the Albans among themselves, and thus became their benefactors instead of destroyers, must ever remain a matter of uncertainty. That Alban families were transplanted to Rome cannot be doubted, any more than that the _Prisci Latini_ from that time constituted a compact state; if we consider that Alba was situated in the midst of the Latin districts, that the Alban mount was their common sanctuary, and that the grove of Ferentina was the place of assembly for all the Latins, it must appear more probable that Rome did not destroy Alba, but that it perished in an insurrection of the Latin towns, and that the Romans strengthened themselves by receiving the Albans into their city. Whether the Albans were the first that settled on the Cælian hill, or whether it was previously occupied, cannot be decided. The account which places the foundation of the town on the Cælius in the reign of Romulus suggests that a town existed there before the reception of the Albans; but what is the authenticity of this account? A third tradition represents it as an Etruscan settlement of Cæles Vibenna. This much is certain, that the destruction of Alba greatly contributed to increase the power of Rome. There can be no doubt that a third town, which seems to have been very populous, now existed on the Cælius and on a portion of the Esquiliæ: such a settlement close to other towns was made for the sake of mutual protection. Between the two more ancient towns there continued to be a marsh or swamp, and Rome was protected on the south by stagnant water; but between Rome and the third town there was a dry plain. Rome also had a considerable suburb toward the Aventine, protected by a wall and a ditch, as is implied in the story of Remus. He is a personification of the _plebs_, leaping across the ditch from the side of the Aventine, though we ought to be very cautious in regard to allegory. The most ancient town on the Palatine was Rome; the Sabine town also must have had a name, and I have no doubt that, according to common analogy, it was Quirium, the name of its citizens being Quirites. This I look upon as certain. I have almost as little doubt that the town on the Cælian was called Lucerum, because when it was united with Rome, its citizens were called, _Lucertes_ (_Luceres_). The ancients derive this name from Lucumo, king of the Tuscans, or from Lucerus, king of Ardea; the latter derivation probably meaning that the race was Tyrrheno-Latin, because Ardea was the capital of that race. Rome was thus enlarged by a third element, which, however, did not stand on a footing of equality with the two others, but was in a state of dependence similar to that of Ireland relatively to Great Britain down to the year 1782. But although the Luceres were obliged to recognize the supremacy of the two older tribes, they were considered as an integral part of the whole state, that is, as a third tribe with an administration of its own, but inferior rights. What throws light upon our way here is a passage of Festus, who is a great authority on matters of Roman antiquity, because he made his excerpts from Verrius Flaccus; it is only in a few points that, in my opinion, either of them was mistaken; all the rest of the mistakes in Festus may be accounted for by the imperfection of the abridgment, Festus not always understanding Verrius Flaccus. The statement of Festus to which I here allude is that Tarquinius Superbus increased the number of the Vestals in order that each tribe might have two. With this we must connect a passage from the tenth book of Livy, where he says that the augurs were to represent the three tribes. The numbers in the Roman colleges of priests were always multiples either of two or of three; the latter was the case with the Vestal Virgins and the great Flamines, and the former with the Augurs, Pontiffs, and Fetiales, who represented only the first two tribes. Previously to the passing of the Ogulnian law the number of augurs was four, and when subsequently five plebeians were added, the basis of this increase was different, it is true, but the ancient rule of the number being a multiple of three was preserved. The number of pontiffs, which was then four, was increased only by four: this might seem to contradict what has just been stated, but it has been overlooked that Cicero speaks of _five_ new ones having been added, for he included the Pontifex Maximus, which Livy does not. In like manner there were twenty Fetiales, ten for each tribe. To the Salii on the Palatine Numa added another brotherhood on the Quirinal; thus we everywhere see a manifest distinction between the first two tribes and the third, the latter being treated as inferior. The third tribe, then, consisted of free citizens, but they had not the same rights as the members of the first two; yet its members considered themselves superior to all other people; and their relation to the other two tribes was the same as that existing between the Venetian citizens of the mainland and the _nobili_. A Venetian nobleman treated those citizens with far more condescension than he displayed toward others, provided they did not presume to exercise any authority in political matters. Whoever belonged to the Luceres called himself a Roman, and if the very dictator of Tusculum had come to Rome, a man of the third tribe there would have looked upon him as an inferior person, though he himself had no influence whatever. Tullus was succeeded by Ancus. Tullus appears as one of the Ramnes, and as descended from Hostus Hostilius, one of the companions of Romulus; but Ancus was a Sabine, a grandson of Numa. The accounts about him are to some extent historical, and there is no trace of poetry in them. In his reign, the development of the state again made a step in advance. According to the ancient tradition, Rome was at war with the Latin towns, and carried it on successfully. How many of the particular events which are recorded may be historical I am unable to say; but that there was a war is credible enough. Ancus, it is said, carried away after this war many thousands of Latins, and gave them settlements on the Aventine. The ancients express various opinions about him; sometimes he is described as a _captator auræ popularis_; sometimes he is called _bonus Ancus_. Like the first three kings, he is said to have been a legislator, a fact which is not mentioned in reference to the later kings. He is moreover stated to have established the colony of Ostia, and thus his kingdom must have extended as far as the mouth of the Tiber. Ancus and Tullus seem to me to be historical personages; but we can scarcely suppose that the latter was succeeded by the former, and that the events assigned to their reigns actually occurred in them. These events must be conceived in the following manner: Toward the end of the fourth reign, when, after a feud which lasted many years, the Romans came to an understanding with the Latins about the renewal of the long-neglected alliance, Rome gave up its claims to the supremacy which it could not maintain, and indemnified itself by extending its dominion in another and safer direction. The eastern colonies joined the Latin towns which still existed: this is evident, though it is nowhere expressly mentioned; and a portion of the Latin country was ceded to Rome, with which the rest of the Latins formed a connection of friendship, perhaps of isopolity. Rome here acted as wisely as England did when she recognized the independence of North America. In this manner Rome obtained a territory. The many thousand settlers whom Ancus is said to have led to the Aventine were the population of the Latin towns which became subject to Rome, and they were far more numerous than the two ancient tribes, even after the latter had been increased by their union with the third tribe. In these country districts lay the power of Rome, and from them she raised the armies with which she carried on her wars. It would have been natural to admit this population as a fourth tribe, but such a measure was not agreeable to the Romans: the constitution of the state was completed and was looked upon as a sacred trust in which no change ought to be introduced. It was with the Greeks and Romans as it was with our own ancestors, whose separate tribes clung to their hereditary laws, and differed from one another in this respect as much as they did from the Gauls in the color of their eyes and hair. They knew well enough that it was in their power to alter the laws, but they considered them as something which ought not to be altered. Thus when the emperor Otho was doubtful on a point of the law of inheritance, he caused the case to be decided by an ordeal or judgment of God. In Sicily, one city had Chalcidian, another Doric laws, although their populations, as well as their dialects, were greatly mixed; but the leaders of those colonies had been Chalcidians in the one case and Dorians in the others. The Chalcidians, moreover, were divided into four, the Dorians into three tribes, and their differences in these respects were manifested even in their weights and measures. The division into three tribes was a genuine Latin institution; and there are reasons which render it probable that the Sabines had a division of their states into four tribes. The transportation of the Latins to Rome must be regarded as the origin of the _plebs_. PRINCE JIMMU FOUNDS JAPAN'S CAPITAL B.C. 660 SIR EDWARD REED THE "NEHONGI" Prince Jimmu is the founder of the Empire of Japan, according to Japanese tradition. The whole of his history is overlaid with myth and legend. But it points to the immigration of western Asiatics by way of Corea into the Japanese islands of Izumo and Kyushu. The historical records of the Japanese relate that Jimmu, accompanied by an elder brother, Prince Itsuse, started from their grandfather's palace on Mount Takaclicho. They marched with a large number of followers, a horde of men, women, and children, as well as a band of armed men. On landing in Japan, after many years wandering by sea and land, they had serious conflicts with the native tribes. They eventually succeeded in overcoming all opposition and in conquering the country, so that Prince Jimmu was enabled to build a palace and set up a capital, Kashiha-bara, in Yamato. This prince is regarded by Japanese historians as the founder of the Japanese Empire. He is said to have reigned seventy-five years after his accession, and to have died at the age of one hundred and twenty-seven years, and his burial place is pointed out on the northern side of Mount Unebi, in the province of Yamato. Prince Jimmu, or whoever was the foreign ruler who conquered and founded an empire in Japan, must have been a bold, enterprising, and sagacious man. The islands he subdued were barbarous, and he civilized them; the inhabitants were warlike and cruel, and he kept them in peace. He founded a dynasty which extended its dominion over Nagato, Izumo, and Owari, and still has representatives in rulers whose people are by far the most progressive dwellers in the East. That part of the following historical matter, which is translated from the old Japanese chronicle, the _Nehongi_, is marked by local color and by Oriental characteristics, whereby it curiously contrasts with the plain recitals of modern and Western history. SIR EDWARD REED There are endless varying legends about this god-period of Japan. All that we need now say in the way of reciting the legends of the gods has relation to the descent of the mikados of Japan from the deities. It was the misconduct of Susanoo that drove the sun-goddess into the cave and for this misconduct he was banished. Some say that, instead of proceeding to his place of banishment, he descended, with his son Idakiso no Mikoto, upon Shiraga (in Corea), but not liking the place went back by a vessel to the bank of the Hinokawa River, in Idzumo, Japan. At the time of their descent, Idakiso had many plants or seeds of trees with him, but he planted none in Shiraga, but took them across with him, and scattered them from Kuishiu all over Japan, so that the whole country became green with trees. It is said that Idakiso is respected as the god of merit, and is worshipped in Kinokuni. His two sisters also took care of the plantation. One of the gods who reigned over the country in the prehistoric period was Ohonamuchi, who is said by some to be the son of Susanoo, and by others to be one of his later descendants; "And which is right, it is more than we can say," remarked one of my scholarly friends. However, during his reign he was anxious about the people, and, consulting with Sukuna no Mikoto, applied "his whole heart," we are told, to their good government, and they all became loyal to him. One time he said to his friend just named, "Do you think we are governing the people well?" And his friend answered: "In some respects well, and in some not," so that they were frank and honest with each other in those days. When Sukunahikona went away, Ohonamuchi said: "It is I who should govern this country. Is there any who will assist me?" Then there appeared over the sea a divine light, and there came a god floating and floating, and said: "You cannot govern the country without me." And this proved to be the god Ohomiwa no Kami, who built a palace at Mimuro, in Yamato, and dwelt therein. He affords a direct link with the Mikado family, for his daughter became the empress of the first historic emperor Jimmu. Her name was Humetatara Izudsuhime. All the descendants of her father are named, like him, Ohomiwa no Kami, and it is said that the present empress of Japan is probably a descendant of this god. As regards the descent of the Emperor Jimmu himself we already know that Ninigi no Mikoto, "the sovran grandchild" of the sun-goddess, was sent down with the sacred symbols of empire given to him in the sun by the sun-goddess herself before he started for the earth. Now Ninigi married (reader, forgive me for quoting the lady's name and her father's) Konohaneno-sakuyahime, the daughter of Ohoyamazumino-Kami, and the pair had three sons, of whom the last named Howori no Mikoto succeeded to the throne. He is sometimes called by the following simple--and possibly endearing--name: Amatsuhitakahi Kohoho-demi no Mikoto. He married Toyatama-hime, the daughter of the sea-god, and they had a son, Ugaya-fuki-ayedsu no Mikoto, born, it is said, under an unfinished roof of cormorants' wings, who succeeded the father, and who married Tamayori-hime, also a daughter of the sea-god. This illustrious couple had four sons, of whom the last succeeded to the throne in the year B.C. 660. He was named Kamuyamatoi warehiko no Mikoto, but posterity has fortunately simplified his designation to the now familiar Jimmu-Tenno, the first historic Emperor of Japan, and the ancestor of the present emperor. The histories of Japan, prepared under the sanction of the present Japanese government, date the commencement of the historic period from the first year of the reign of the first emperor, Jimmu-Tenno, who is said to have ruled for seventy-six years, viz., from B.C. 660 to 585. Some persons consider that this reign, and a few reigns that succeeded it, probably or possibly belong to the legendary period, because while, on the one hand, the Emperor Jimmu is described as the founder of the present empire and the ancestor of the present emperor, on the other, he is described as the fourth son of Ukay Fukiaezu no Mikoto, who was fifth in direct descent from the beautiful sun-goddess, Tensho-Daijin. But as no such thing as writing existed in Japan in those days, or for many centuries afterward, it would not be surprising if a real monarch should have a mythical origin assigned to him; and as I have quite lately heard the guns firing at Nagasaki an imperial salute in honor of his coronation, and have seen the flags waving over the capital city, Tokio, in honor of the birthday, the Emperor Jimmu is quite historical enough for my present purpose. The commencement of his reign shall fix for us, as it does for others, the Japanese year 1, which was 660 years prior to our year 1, so that any date of the Christian era can be converted into one of the Japanese era by the addition of 660 years, and _vice-versa._ Some of the emperors will be found to have lived very long lives, no doubt; but as I have said elsewhere, none of them lived nearly so long as our Adam, Methuselah, and others, in whose longevity so many of us profess to believe; and besides, it is impossible for me to attempt to correct a chronology which Japanese scholars, and Englishmen versed in the Japanese language, have thus far left without specific correction. Deferring for after consideration the incidents of the successive imperial reigns, except in so far as they bear directly upon the descent of the crown, let us, then, first glance at the succession of emperors and empresses who have ruled in the Morning Land. After the death of the Emperor Jimmu there appears to have been an interregnum for three years--although it is seldom taken account of--the second Emperor Suisei, who was the fifth son of the first emperor, having ascended the throne B.C. 581 and reigned till 549. The cause of the interregnum appears to have been the extreme grief which Suisei felt at the death of his father, in consequence of which he committed the administration of the empire, for a time, to one of his relatives--an unworthy fellow, as he proved, named Tagishi Mimi no Mikoto, who tried to assassinate his master and seize the throne for himself, and who was put to death by Suisei for his pains. The fifth son of the Emperor Jimmu was nominated by him as the successor, and it is probable that older sons were living and passed over, and that the throne was inherited in part by nomination even in this its first transfer. Some writers on Japanese history profess to see in the pantheon of Japan, pictured in the Kojiki and Nihonki, nothing more than a collection of distinguished personages who lived and labored and contended in the country before the historic period, thus bringing deified men and women down to earth again. Such persons accept the records of Jimmu-Tenno's origin as essentially accurate in so far as they state what is human and reasonable, rejecting them only when they set forth what is supernatural, and, to them, unbelievable. Others, on the contrary, consider, or profess to consider, the supernatural portions of those narratives as perfectly trustworthy, and discredit only those statements concerning the first of the sacred emperors which would seem in any way to detract from his divinity. I should be sorry to have to argue the case with either of these parties, but I must take the liberty of accepting as sufficiently accurate as much of the recorded lives of Jimmu and his successors as the modern prosaic histories in Japan are content to put forth, and no more. Proceeding upon this basis, there is not much to be said of the reigns of the mikados who ruled before the Christian era, beyond what has been already stated. As regards the first emperor, his ancestor Ninigi no Mikoto--whether a god or not, or whether he came down from the sun by means of "the bridge of heaven" or not--appears to have established his residence at the ancient Himuka, now Hiuga; there it was that Jimmu-Tenno first resided, and thence it was that he started on his historic and memorable career. The central parts of Japan were militarily occupied by rebels (whose names are preserved), and it was to subdue them that he proceeded eastward. He stopped for three years at Taka Shima, constructing the necessary vessels for crossing the waters, and then, in the course of years, making his way victoriously as far as Nanieva, the modern Osaka, encountered his foes at Kawachi, and defeated them, the chief general being left dead on the battle-field. Jimmu was now sole master of Japan, as then known, and in the following year he mounted the throne. The eastern and northern parts of the country were, however, still, and long afterwards, peopled by the Aino race, who were at a later period treated as troublesome savages, and conquered by a famous prince, Yamato-Dake, by help of the sacred sword. The spot selected by the Emperor Jimmu for his capital was Kashiwabara, in the province of Yamato, not far from the present western capital of Kioto. He there did honor to the gods, married, built himself a palace, and deposited in the throne-room the sacred mirror, sword, and ball, the insignia of the imperial power handed down from the sun-goddess. He organized two imperial guards, one as a body-guard to protect the interior of the palace, and the other to act as sentinels around the palace. THE "NEHONGI" The Emperor Kami Yamato Iharebiko's personal name was Hikohoho-demi. He was the fourth child of Hiko-nagisa-take-ugaya-fuki-ahezu no Mikoto. His mother's name was Tama-yori-hime, daughter of the sea-god. From his birth this emperor was of clear intelligence and resolute will. At the age of fifteen he was made heir to the throne. When he grew up he married Ahira-tsu-hime, of the district of Ata in the province of Hiuga, and made her his consort. By her he had Tagishi-mimi no Mikoto and Kisu-mimi no Mikoto. When he reached the age of forty-five, he addressed his elder brothers and his children, saying: "Of old, our heavenly deities Taka-mi-Musubi no Mikoto, and Oho-hiru-me no Mikoto, pointing to this land of fair rice-ears of the fertile reed-plain, gave it to our heavenly ancestor, Hiko-ho no Ninigi no Mikoto. Thereupon Hiko-ho no Ninigi no Mikoto, throwing open the barrier of heaven and clearing a cloud-path, urged on his superhuman course until he came to rest. At this time the world was given over to widespread desolation. It was an age of darkness and disorder. In this gloom, therefore, he fostered justice, and so governed this western border. "Our imperial ancestors and imperial parent, like gods, like sages, accumulated happiness and amassed glory. Many years elapsed from the date when our heavenly ancestor descended until now it is over 1,792,470 years. But the remote regions do not yet enjoy the blessings of imperial rule. Every town has always been allowed to have its lord, and every village its chief, who, each one for himself, makes division of territory and practises mutual aggression and conflict. "Now I have heard from the Ancient of the Sea, that in the East there is a fair land encircled on all sides by blue mountains. Moreover, there is there one who flew down riding in a heavenly rock-boat. I think that this land will undoubtedly be suitable for the extension of the heavenly task, so that its glory should fill the universe. It is doubtless the centre of the world. The person who flew clown was, I believe, Nigihaya-hi. Why should we not proceed thither, and make it the capital?" All the imperial princes answered, and said: "The truth of this is manifest. This thought is constantly present to our minds also. Let us go thither quickly." This was the year Kinoye Tora (51st) of the Great Year. In that year, in winter, on the Kanoto Tori day (the 5th) of the 10th month, the new moon of which was on the day Hinoto Mi, the emperor in person led the imperial princes and a naval force on an expedition against the East. When he arrived at the Haya-suhi gate, there was there a fisherman who came riding in a boat. The emperor summoned him and then inquired of him, saying: "Who art thou?" He answered and said: "Thy servant is a country-god, and his name is Utsuhiko. I angle for fish in the bays of ocean. Hearing that the son of the heavenly deity was coming, therefore I forthwith came to receive him." Again he inquired of him, saying: "Canst thou act as my guide?" He answered and said: "I will do so." The emperor ordered the end of a pole of Shihi wood to be given to the fisher, and caused him to be taken and pulled into the imperial vessel, of which he was made pilot. A name was especially granted him, and he was called Shihi-ne-tsu-hiko. He was the first ancestor of the Yamato no Atahe. Proceeding on their voyage, they arrived at Usa in the land of Tsukushi. At this time there appeared the ancestors of the Kuni-tsu-ko of Usa, named Usa-tsu-hiko and Usa-tsu-hime. They built a palace raised on one pillar on the banks of the River Usa, and offered them a banquet. Then, by imperial command, Usa-tsu-hime was given in marriage to the emperor's attendant minister Ama notane no Mikoto. Now, Ama notane no Mikoto was the remote ancestor of the Nakatomi Uji. Eleventh month, 9th day. The emperor arrived at the harbor of Oka in the Land of Tsukushi. Twelfth month, 27th day. He arrived at the province of Aki, where he dwelt in the palace of Ye. The year Kinoto U, Spring, 3rd month, 6th day. Going onward, he entered the land of Kibi, and built a temporary palace in which he dwelt. It was called the palace of Takashima. Three years passed, during which time he set in order the helms of his ships, and prepared a store of provisions. It was his desire by a single effort to subdue the empire. The year Tsuchinoye Muma, Spring, 2d month, 11th day. The imperial forces at length proceeded eastward, the prow of one ship touching the stern of another. Just when they reached Cape Naniho they encountered a current of great swiftness. Whereupon that place was called Nami-haya (wave-swift) or Nami-hana (wave-flower). It is now called Naniha, which is a corruption of this. Third month, 10th day. Proceeding upwards against the stream, they went straight on, and arrived at the port of Awo-Kumo no Shira-date, in the township of Kusaka, in the province of Kafuchi. Summer, 4th month, 9th day. The imperial forces in martial array marched on to Tatsuta. The road was narrow and precipitous, and the men were unable to march abreast, so they returned and again endeavored to go eastward, crossing over Mount Ikoma. In this way they entered the inner country. Now when Naga-sune-hiko heard this, he said: "The object of the children of the heavenly deity in coming hither is assuredly to rob me of my country." So he straightway levied all the forces under his dominion, and intercepted them at the Hill of Kusaka. A battle was engaged, and Itsuse no Mikoto was hit by a random arrow on the elbow. The imperial forces were unable to advance against the enemy. The emperor was vexed, and revolved in his inmost heart a divine plan, saying: "I am the descendant of the sun-goddess, and if I proceed against the sun to attack the enemy, I shall act contrary to the way of heaven. Better to retreat and make a show of weakness. Then, sacrificing to the gods of heaven and earth, and bringing on our backs the might of the sun goddess, let us follow her rays and trample them down. If we do so, the enemy will assuredly be routed of themselves, and we shall not stain our swords with blood." They all said: "It is good." Thereupon he gave orders to the army, saying: "Wait a while and advance no further." So he withdrew his forces, and the enemy also did not dare to attack him. He then retired to the port of Kusaka, where he set up shields, and made a warlike show. Therefore the name of this port was changed to Tatetsu, which is now corrupted into Tadetsu. Before this, at the battle of Kusaka, there was a man who hid in a great tree, and by so doing escaped danger. So pointing to this tree, he said: "I am grateful to it, as to my mother." Therefore the people of the day called that place Omo no ki no Mura. Fifth month, 8th day. The army arrived at the port of Yamaki in Chinu (also called Port Yama no wi). Now Itsuse no Mikoto's arrow wound was extremely painful. He grasped his sword, and striking a martial attitude, said: "How exasperating it is that a man should die of a wound received at the hands of slaves, and should not avenge it!" The people of that day therefore called the place Wo no Minoto. Proceeding onward, they reached Mount Kama in the Land of Kii, where Itsuse no Mikoto died in the army, and was therefore buried at Mount Kama. Sixth month, 23d day. The army arrived at the village of Nagusa, where they put to death the Tohe of Nagusa. Finally they crossed the moor of Sano, and arrived at the village of Kami in Kumano. Here he embarked in the rock-boat of heaven, and leading his army, proceeded onward by slow degrees. In the midst of the sea, they suddenly met with a violent wind, and the imperial vessel was tossed about. Then Ina-ihi no Mikoto exclaimed and said: "Alas! my ancestors were heavenly deities, and my mother was a goddess of the sea. Why do they harass me by land, and why, moreover, do they harass me by sea?" When he had said this, he drew his sword and plunged into the sea, where he became changed into the god Sabi-Mochi. Miki In no no Mikoto, also indignant at this, said: "My mother and my aunt are both sea-goddesses; why do they raise great billows to overwhelm us?" So, treading upon the waves, he went to the Eternal Land. The emperor was now alone with the imperial prince, Tagishi-Mimi no Mikoto. Leading his army forward, he arrived at Port Arazaka in Kumano (also called Nishiki Bay), where he put to death the Tohe of Nishiki. At this time the gods belched up a poisonous vapor, from which every one suffered. For this reason the imperial army was again unable to exert itself. Then there was there a man by name Kumano no Takakuraji, who unexpectedly had a dream, in which Ama-terasu no Ohokami spoke to Take-mika-tsuchi no Kami, saying: "I still hear a sound of disturbance from the central land of reed-plains. Do thou again go and chastise it." Take-mika-tsuchi no Kami answered and said: "Even if I go not I can send down my sword, with which I subdued the land, upon which the country will of its own accord become peaceful." To this Ama-terasu no Kami assented. Thereupon Take-mika-tsuchi no Kami addressed Taka Kuraji, saying: "My sword, which is called Futsu no Mitama, I will now place in the storehouse. Do thou take it and present it to the heavenly grandchild." Taka Kuraji said, "Yes," and thereupon awoke. The next morning, as instructed in his dream, he opened the storehouse, and on looking in, there was indeed there a sword which had fallen down (from heaven) and was standing upside down on the plank floor of the storehouse. So he took it and offered it to the emperor. At this time the emperor happened to be asleep. He awoke suddenly, and said: "What a long time I have slept." On inquiry he found that the troops who had been affected by the poison had all recovered their senses and were afoot. The emperor then endeavored to advance into the interior, but among the mountains it was so precipitous that there was no road by which they could travel. And they wandered about not knowing whither to direct their march. Then Ama-terasu no Oho-Kami instructed the emperor in a dream of the night saying: "I will now send the Yata-garasu, make it thy guide through the land." Then there did indeed appear the Yata-garasu flying down from the void. The emperor said: "The coming of this crow is in due accordance with my auspicious dream. How grand! How splendid! My imperial ancestor Ama-terasu no Oho-Kami, desires therewith to assist me in creating the hereditary institution." At this time Hi no Omi no Mikoto, ancestor of the Ohotomo House, taking with him Oho-kume as commander of the main body, guided by the direction taken by the crow, looked up to it and followed after, until at length they arrived at the district of Lower Uda. Therefore they named the place which they reached the village of Ukechi in Uda. At this time by an imperial order he commended Hi no Omi no Mikoto, saying: "Thou art faithful and brave, and art moreover a successful guide. Therefore will I give thee a new name, and will call thee Michi no Omi!" Autumn, 8th month, 2d day. The emperor sent to summon Ukeshi the elder and Ukeshi the younger. These two were chiefs of the district of Uda. Now Ukeshi the elder did not come. But Ukeshi the younger came, and making obeisance at the gate of the camp, declared as follows: "Thy servant's elder brother, Ukeshi the elder, shows signs of resistance. Hearing that the descendant of heaven was about to arrive, he forthwith raised an army with which to make an attack. But having seen from afar the might of the imperial army, he was afraid, and did not dare to oppose it. Therefore he has secretly placed his troops in ambush, and has built for the occasion a new palace, in the hall of which he has prepared engines. It is his intention to invite the emperor to a banquet there, and then to do him a mischief. I pray that this treachery be noted, and that good care be taken to make preparation against it." The emperor straightway sent Michi no Omi no Mikoto to observe the signs of his opposition. Michi no Omi no Mikoto clearly ascertained his hostile intentions, and being greatly enraged, shouted at him in a blustering manner: "Wretch! thou shalt thyself dwell in the house which thou hast: made." So grasping his sword and drawing his bow, he urged him and drove him within it. Ukeshi the elder being guilty before heaven, and the matter not admitting of excuse, of his own accord trod upon the engine and was crushed to death, His body was then brought out and decapitated, and the blood which flowed from it reached above the ankle. Therefore that place was called Udan no chi-hara. After this Ukeshi the younger prepared a great feast of beef and _sake_, with which he entertained the imperial army. The emperor distributed this flesh and _sake_ to the common soldiers, upon which they sang the following verses: "In the high {castle tree} of Uda I set a snare for woodcock, And waited, But no woodcock came to it; A valiant whale came to it." This is called a Kume song. At the present time, when the department of music performs this song, there is still the measurement of great and small by the hand, as well as a distinction of coarse and fine in the notes of the voice. This is by a rule handed down from antiquity. After this the emperor wished to respect the Land of Yoshino, so, taking personal command of the light troops, he made a progress round by way of Ukechi Mura in Uda. When he came to Yoshino, there was a man who came out of a well. He shone and had a tail. The emperor inquired of him, saying: "What man art thou?" He answered and said: "Thy servant is a local deity, and his name is Wihikari." He it is who was the first ancestor of the Yoshino no Obito. Proceeding a little further, there was another man with a tail, who burst open a rock and came forth from it. The emperor inquired of him, saying: "What man art thou?" He answered and said: "Thy servant is the child of Iha-oshiwake." It is he who was the first ancestor of the Kuzu of Yoshino. Then, skirting the river, he proceeded westward, when there appeared another man, who had made a fishtrap and was catching fish. On the emperor making inquiry of him, he answered and said: "Thy servant is the son of Nihe-molsu." He it is who was the first ancestor of the U-kahi of Ata. Ninth month, 5th day. The emperor ascended to the peak of Mount Takakura in Uda, whence he had a prospect over all the land. On Kuni-mi Hill there were descried eighty bandits. Moreover at the acclivity of the Me-Zaka there was posted an army of women, and at the acclivity of Wo-Zaka there was stationed a force of men. At the acclivity of Sumi-Zaka was placed burning charcoal. This was the origin of the names Me-Zaka, Wo-Zaka and Sumi-Zaka. Again there was the army of Ye-Shiki, which covered all the village of Ihare. All the places occupied by the enemy were strong positions, and therefore the roads were cut off and obstructed, so that there was no room for passage. The emperor, indignant at this, made prayer on that night in person, and then fell asleep. The heavenly deity appeared to him in a dream, and instructed him, saying: "Take earth from within the shrine of the heavenly mount Kagu, and of it make eighty heavenly platters. Also make sacred jars and therewith sacrifice to the gods of heaven and earth. Moreover pronounce a solemn imprecation. If thou doest so, the enemy will render submission of their own accord." The emperor received with reverence the directions given in his dream, and proceeded to carry them into execution. Now Ukeshi the younger again addressed the emperor, saying: "There are in the province of Yamato, in the village of Shiki, eighty Shiki bandits. Moreover in the village of Taka-wohari (some say Katsuraki) there are eighty Akagane bandits. "All these tribes intend to give battle to the emperor, and thy servant is anxious in his own mind on his account. It were now good to take clay from the heavenly mount Kagu and therewith to make heavenly platters with which to sacrifice to the gods of the heavenly shrines and of the earthly shrines. If after doing so thou dost attack the enemy, they may be easily driven off." The emperor, who had already taken the words of his dream for a good omen, when he now heard the words of Ukeshi the younger, was still more pleased in his heart. He caused Shihi netsu-hiko to put on ragged garments and a grass hat and to disguise himself as an old man. He also caused Ukeshi the younger to cover himself with a winnowing tray, so as to assume the appearance of an old woman, and then addressed them, saying: "Do ye two proceed to the heavenly mount Kagu, and secretly take earth from its summit. Having done so, return hither. By means of you I shall then divine whether my undertaking will be successful or not. Do your utmost and be watchful." Now the enemy's army filled the road, and made all passage impossible. Then Shihi-netsu-hiko prayed, and said: "If it will be possible for our emperor to conquer this land, let the road by which we must travel become open. But if not, let the brigands surely oppose our passage." Having thus spoken they set forth and went straight onward. Now the hostile band, seeing the two men, laughed loudly, and said: "What an uncouth old man and old woman!" So with one accord they left the road, and allowed the two men to pass and proceed to the mountain, where they took the clay and returned with it. Hereupon the emperor was greatly pleased, and with this clay he made eighty platters, eighty heavenly small jars and sacred jars, with which he went to the upper waters of the River Nifu and sacrificed to the gods of heaven and earth. Immediately, on the Asahara plain by the river of Uda, it became as it were like foam on the water, the result of the curse cleaving to them. Moreover the emperor went on to utter a vow, saying: "I will now make _Ame_ in the eighty platters without using water. If the _Ame_ is formed, then shall I assuredly without effort and without recourse to the might of arms reduce the empire to peace." So he made _Ame_, which forthwith became formed of itself. Again he made a vow, saying: "I will now take the sacred jars and sink them in the River Nifu. If the fishes, whether great or small, become every one drunken and are carried down the stream, like as it were to floating _maki_ leaves, then shall I assuredly succeed in establishing this land. But if this be not so, there will never be any results." Thereupon he sank the jars in the river with their mouths downward. After a while the fish all came to the surface gaping, gasping as they floated down the stream. Then Shihi-netsu-hiko, seeing this, represented it to the emperor, who was greatly rejoiced, and plucking up a five-hundred-branched masakaki tree of the upper waters of the River Nifu, he did worship therewith to all the gods. It was with this that the custom began of selling sacred jars. At this time he commanded Michi no Omi no Mikoto, saying: "We are now in person about to celebrate a public festival to Taka-mi-Musubi no Mikoto, and I appoint thee ruler of the festival, and I grant thee the title of Idzu-hime. The earthen jars which are set up shall be called the Idzube or sacred jars, the fire shall be called Idzu no Kagu-tsuchi or sacred-fire-elder, the water shall be called Idzu no Midzu-ha no me or sacred-water-female, the food shall be called Idzuuka no me, or sacred-food-female, the firewood shall be called Idzu no Yama-tsuchi or sacred-mountain-elder, and the grass shall be called Idzu no no-tsuchi or sacred-moor-elder." Winter, 10th month, 1st day. The emperor tasted the food of the Idzube, and arraying his troops set forth upon his march. He first of all attacked the eighty bandits at Mount Kunimi, routed and slew them. It was in this campaign that the emperor, fully resolved on victory, made these verses, saying: "Like the Shitadami Which creep round The great rock Of the Sea of Ise, Where blows the divine wind-- Like the Shitadami, My boys! My boys! We will creep around And smite them utterly, And smite them utterly." In this poem, by the "great rock" is intended the Hill of Kunimi. After this the band which remained was still numerous, and their disposition could not be fathomed. So the emperor privately commanded Michi no Omi no Mikoto, saying: "Do thou take with thee the Oho Kume, and make a great _muro_ at the village of Osaka. Prepare a copious banquet, invite the enemy to it, and then capture them." Michi no Omi no Mikoto thereupon, in obedience to the emperor's sacred behest, dug a _muro_ at Osaka, and having selected his bravest soldiers, stayed therein mingled with the enemy. He secretly arranged with them, saying: "When they have got tipsy with _sake_, I will strike up a song. Do you when you hear the sound of my song, all at the same time stab the enemy." Having made this arrangement they took their seats, and the drinking bout proceeded. The enemy, unaware that there was any plot, abandoned themselves to their feelings, and promptly became intoxicated. Then Michi no Omi no Mikoto struck up the following song: "At Osaka In the great Muro-house, Though men in plenty Enter and stay, We the glorious Sons of warriors, Wielding our mallet-heads, Wielding our stone-mallets, Will smite them utterly." Now when our troops heard this song, they all drew at the same time their mallet-headed swords, and simultaneously slew the enemy, so that there were no eaters left. The imperial army were greatly delighted; they looked up to heaven and laughed. Therefore he made a song saying: "Though folk say That one Yemishi Is a match for one hundred men, They do not so much as resist." The practice according to which, at the present time, the Kume sing this and then laugh loud, had this origin. Again he sang, saying: "Ho! now is the time! Ho! now is the time! Ha! Ha! Psha! Even now My boys! Even now, My boys!" All these songs were sung in accordance with the secret behest of the emperor. He had not presumed to compose them with his own motion. Then the emperor said: "It is the part of a good general when victorious to avoid arrogance. The chief brigands have now been destroyed, but there are ten bands of villains of a similar stamp, who are disputatious. "Their disposition cannot be ascertained. Why should we remain for a long time in one place? By so doing we could not have control over emergencies!" So he removed his camp to another place. Eleventh month, 7th day. The imperial army proceeded in great force to attack the Hiko of Shiki. First of all the emperor sent a messenger to summon Shiki the elder, but he refused to obey. Again the Yata-garasu was sent to bring him. When the crow reached his camp it cried to him, saying: "The child of the heavenly deity sends for thee. Haste! haste!" Shiki the elder was enraged at this and said: "Just when I heard that the conquering deity of heaven was coming I was indignant at this; why shouldst thou, a bird of the crow tribe, utter such an abominable cry?" So he drew his bow and aimed at it. The crow forthwith fled away, and next proceeded to the house of Shiki the younger, where it cried, saying: "The child of the heavenly deity summons thee. Haste! haste!" Then Shiki the younger was afraid, and changing countenance, said: "Thy servant, hearing of the approach of the conquering deity of heaven, is full of dread morning and evening. Well hast thou cried to me, O crow!" He straightway made eight leaf-platters, on which he disposed food, and entertained the crow. Accordingly, in obedience to the crow, he proceeded to the emperor and informed him, saying: "My elder brother, Shiki the elder, hearing of the approach of the child of the heavenly deity, forthwith assembled eighty bandits and provided arms, with which he is about to do battle with thee. It will be well to take measures against him without delay." The emperor accordingly assembled his generals and inquired of them, saying: "It appears that Shiki the elder has now rebellious intentions. I summoned him, but again he will not come. What is to be done?" The generals said: "Shiki the elder is a crafty knave. It will be well, first of all, to send Shiki the younger to make matters clear to him, and at the same time to make explanations to Kuraji the elder and Kuraji the younger. If after that they still refuse submission, it will not be too late to take warlike measures against them." Shiki the younger was accordingly sent to explain to them their interests. But Shiki the elder and the others adhered to their foolish design, and would not consent to submit. Then Shiki-netsu-hiko advised as follows: "Let us first send out our feebler troops by the Osaka road. When the enemy sees them he will assuredly proceed thither with all his best troops. We should then straightway urge forward our robust troops, and make straight for Sumi-Zaka. "Then with the water of the River Uda we should sprinkle the burning charcoal, and suddenly take them unawares; when they cannot fail to be routed." The emperor approved this plan, and sent out the feebler troops toward the enemy, who, thinking that a powerful force was approaching, awaited them with all their power. Now up to this time, whenever the imperial army attacked, they invariably captured, and when they fought they were invariably victorious, so that the fighting men were all wearied out. Therefore the emperor, to comfort the hearts of his leaders and men, struck off this verse: "As we fight Going forth and watching From between the trees Of Mount Inasa, We are famished. Ye keepers of cormorants (Birds of the island) Come now to our aid." In the end he crossed Sumi-Zaka with the stronger troops, and, going round by the rear, attacked them from two sides and put them to the rout, killing their chieftains, Shiki the elder, and the others. Third month, 7th day. The emperor made an order, saying: "During the six years that our expedition against the East has lasted, owing to my reliance on the majesty of Imperial Heaven, the wicked bands have met death. It is true that the frontier lands are still unpurified, and that a remnant of evil is still refractory. But in the region of the Central Land there is no more wind and dust. Truly we should make a vast and spacious capital and plan it great and strong. "At present things are in a crude and obscure condition, and the people's minds are unsophisticated. They roost in nests or dwell in caves. Their manners are simply what is customary. Now if a great man were to establish laws, justice could not fail to flourish. And even if some gain should accrue to the people, in what way would this interfere with the sage's action? Moreover it will be well to open up and clear the mountains and forests, and to construct a palace. Then I may reverently assume the precious dignity, and so give peace to my good subjects. Above, I should then respond to the kindness of the heavenly powers in granting me the kingdom; and below, I should extend the line of the imperial descendants and foster rightmindedness. Thereafter the capital may be extended so as to embrace all the six cardinal points (_sic_), and the eight cords may be covered so as to form a roof. Will this not be well? When I observe the Kashiha-bara plain, which lies southwest of Mount Unebi, it seems the centre of the land. I must set it in order." Accordingly, he, in this month, commanded officers to set about the construction of an imperial residence. Year Kanoye Saru, Autumn, 8th month, 16th day. The emperor, intending to appoint a wife, sought afresh children of noble families. Now there was a man who made representation to him, saying: "There is a child, who was born to Koto-Shiro-Nushi no Kami by his union with Tama-Kushi-hime, daughter of Mizo-kuhi-ni no Kami of Mishima. Her name is Hime-tatara-i-suzu-hime no Mikoto. She is a woman of remarkable beauty." The emperor was rejoiced. And on the 24th day of the 9th month he received Hime-tatara-i-suzu-hime no Mikoto and made her his wife. Year Kanoto Tori, Spring, 1st month, 1st day. The emperor assumed the imperial dignity in the palace of Kashiha-bara. This year is reckoned the first year of his reign. He honored his wife by making her empress. The children born to him by her were Kami-ya-wi-Mimi no Mikoto and Kami-Nunagaha-Mimi no Mikoto. Therefore there is an ancient saying in praise of this, as follows: "In Kashiha-bara in Unebi, he mightily established his palace-pillars on the foundation of the bottom rock, and reared aloft the cross roof-timbers to the plain of high heaven. The name of the emperor who thus began to rule the empire was Kami Yamato Ihare-biko Hohodemi." Fourth year, Spring, 2d month, 23d day. The emperor issued the following decree: "The spirits of our imperial ancestors, reflecting their radiance down from heaven, illuminate and assist us. All our enemies have now been subdued, and there is peace within the seas. We ought to take advantage of this to perform sacrifice to the heavenly deities, and therewith develop filial duty." He accordingly established spirit-terraces among the Tomi hills, which were called Kami-tsu-wono no Kaki-hara and Shimo tsu-wono no Kaki-hara. There he worshipped his imperial ancestors, the heavenly deities. Seventy-sixth year, Spring, 3d month, 11th day. The emperor died in the palace of Kashiha-bara. His age was then 127. The following year, Autumn, the 12th day of the 9th month, he was buried in the Misasigi, northeast of Mount Unebi. THE FOUNDATION OF BUDDHISM B.C. 623 THOMAS WILLIAM RHYS-DAVIDS Not so many years ago, at the time when Buddhism first became known in Europe through philosophic writings of about six centuries after Buddha, then newly translated, it caused amazement that a religion which had brought three hundred millions of people under its sway should acknowledge no god. But the religion of Buddha, during a thousand years of practice by the Hindus, is entirely different from the representations given us in these translations. As shown by the bas-reliefs covering the ancient monuments of India, this religion, changed by modern scientists into a belief in atheism, is, in fact, of all religions the most polytheistic. In the first Buddhist monuments, dating back eighteen to twenty centuries, the reformer simply figures as an emblem. The imprint of his feet, the figure of the "Bo tree" under which he entered the state of supreme wisdom, are worshipped; and though he disdained all gods, and only sought to teach a new code of morals, we shortly see Buddha himself depicted as a god. In the early stages he is generally represented as alone, but gradually appears in the company of the Brahman gods. He is finally lost in a crowd of gods, and becomes nothing more than an incarnation of one of the Brahman deities. From that time Buddhism has been practically extinct in India. This transformation took a thousand years to bring about. During part of this great interval Buddha was being worshipped as an all-powerful god. Legends are told of his appearance to his disciples, and of favors he granted them. It has been said that Buddha tried to set aside the laws of caste. This is an error. Neither did he attempt to break the Brahmanic Pantheon. Buddhism, which to-day is the religion of three hundred million people, about one-fifth of the world's inhabitants, toward the seventh or eighth century of our era almost entirely disappeared from its birthplace, India, whence it had spread over the rest of Asia, China, Russian Tartary, Burmah, etc. Only the two extreme frontiers of India, Nepal, in the north, and Ceylon, in the south, now practise the Buddhist cult. Gautama Buddha left behind him no written works. The Buddhists believe that he composed works which his immediate disciples learned by heart, and which were committed to writing long afterward. This is not impossible, as the _Vedas_[37] were handed down in this manner for many hundreds of years. [Footnote 37: _Vedas_: The sacred books of the Hindus, in Sanscrit; probably written about six or seven centuries before Christ. _Veda_ means knowledge. The books comprise hymns, prayers, and liturgical forms.] There was certainly an historical basis for the Buddhist legend. In fact, the legends group themselves round a number of very distinct occurrences. At the end of the sixth century B.C. those Aryan tribes sprung from the same stem as our own ancestors, who have preserved for us in their Vedic songs so precious a relic of ancient thought and life, had pushed on beyond the five rivers of the Punjab, and were settled far down into the valley of the Ganges. They had given up their nomadic habits, dwelling in villages and towns, their wealth being in land, produce, and cattle. From democratic beginnings the whole nation had gradually become bound by an iron system of caste. The country was split up into little sections, each governed by some petty despot, and harassed by internecine feuds. Religion had become a debasing ritualism, with charms and incantations, fear of the influence of the stars, and belief in dreams and omens. The idea of the existence of a soul was supplemented by the doctrine of transmigration. The priests were well-meaning, ignorant, and possessed of a sincere belief in their own divinity. The religious use of the _Vedas_ and the right to sacrifice were strictly confined to the Brahmans. There were travelling logicians, anchorites, ascetics, and solitary hermits. Although the ranks of the priesthood were closed against intruders, still a man of lower caste might become a religious teacher and reformer. Such were the conditions which welcomed Gautama Buddha. One hundred miles northeast of Benares, at Kapilavastu, on the banks of the river Rohini, the modern Kohana, there lived about five hundred years before Christ a tribe called Sakyas. The peaks of the mighty Himalayas could be seen in the distance. The Sakyas frequently quarrelled with the Koliyans, a neighboring tribe, over their water supplies from the river. Just now the two clans were at peace, and two daughters of the rajah of the Koliyans were wives of Suddhodana, the rajah of the Sakyas. Both were childless. This was deemed a very great misfortune among the Aryans, who thought that the star of a man's existence after death depended upon ceremonies to be performed by his heir. There was great rejoicing, therefore, when, in about the forty-fifth year of her age, the elder sister promised her husband a son. In due time she started with the intention of being confined at her parents' house, but it was on the way, under the shade of some lofty satin trees in a pleasant grove called Lumbini, that her son, the future Buddha, was unexpectedly born. The mother and child were carried back to Suddhodana's house, and there, seven days afterward, the mother died; but the boy found a careful nurse in his mother's sister, his father's other wife. Many marvellous stories have been told about the miraculous birth and precocious wisdom and power of Gautama. The name Siddhartha is said to have been given him as a child, Gautama being the family name. Numerous were his later titles, such as Sakyasinha, the lion of the tribe of Sakya; Sakya-muni, the Sakya sage; Sugata, the happy one; Sattha, the teacher; Jina, the conqueror; Bhagava, the blessed one, and many others. In his twentieth year he was married to his cousin, Yasodhara, daughter of the rajah of Koli. Devoting himself to home pleasures, he was accused by his relations of neglecting those manly exercises necessary for one who might at any time have to lead his people in war. Gautama heard of this, and appointed a day for a general tournament, at which he distinguished himself by being easily the first at all the trials of skill and prowess, thus winning the good opinions of all the clansmen. This is the solitary record of his youth. Nothing more is heard of him until, in his twenty-ninth year, Gautama suddenly abandoned his home to devote himself entirely to the study of religion and philosophy. It is said that an angel appeared to him in four visions: a man broken down by age, a sick man, a decaying corpse, and lastly, a dignified hermit. Each time Channa, his charioteer, told him that decay and death were the fate of all living beings. The charioteer also explained to him the character and aims of the ascetics, exemplified by the hermit. Thoughts of the calm life of the hermit strongly stirred him. One day, the occasion of the last vision, as he was entering his chariot to return home, news was brought to him that his wife Yasodhara had given birth to a son, his only child, who was called Rahula. This was about ten years after his marriage. The idea that this new tie might become too strong for him to break seems to have been the immediate cause of his flight. He returned home thoughtful and sad. But the people of Kapilavastu were greatly delighted at the birth of the young heir, their rajah's only grandson. Gautama's return became an ovation, and he entered the town amid a general celebration of the happy event. Amid the singers was a young girl, his cousin, whose song contained the words, "Happy the father, happy the mother, happy the wife of such a son and husband." In the word "Happy" there was a double meaning: it meant also "freed" from the chains of sin and of existence, saved. In gratitude to one who at such a time reminded him of his higher duties, Gautama took off his necklace of pearls and sent it to her. She imagined that she had won the love of young Siddhartha, but he took no further notice of her. That night the dancing girls came, but he paid them no attention, and gradually fell into an uneasy slumber. At midnight he awoke, and sent Channa for his horse. While waiting for the steed Gautama gently opened the door of the room where Yasodhara was sleeping, surrounded by flowers, with one hand on the head of her child. After one loving, fond glance he tore himself away. Accompanied only by Channa he left his home and wealth and power, his wife and only child behind him, to become a penniless wanderer. This was the Great Renunciation. There follows a story of a vision. Mara, the great tempter, the spirit of evil, appears in the sky, urging Gautama to stop. He promises him a universal kingdom over the four great continents if he will but give up his enterprise. The tempter does not prevail, but from that time he followed Gautama as a shadow, hoping to seduce him from that right way. All night Gautama rode, and at the dawn, when beyond the confines of his father's domain, dismounts. He cuts off his long hair with his sword, and sends back all his ornaments and his horse by the faithful charioteer. Seven days he spends alone beneath the shade of a mango grove, and then fares onward to Rajogriha, the capital of Magadha. This town was the seat of Bimbasara, one of the most powerful princes in the eastern valley of the Ganges. In the hillside caves near at hand were several hermits. To one of these Brahman teachers, Alara, Gautama attached himself, and later to another named Udraka. From these he learned all that Hindu philosophy could teach. Still unsatisfied, Gautama next retired to the jungle of Uruvela, on the most northerly spur of the Viadhya range of mountains, near the present temple of Buddha Gaya. Here for six years he gave himself up to the severest penance until he was wasted away to a shadow by fasting and self-mortification. Such self-control spread his fame "like the sound of a great bell hung in the skies." But the more he fasted and denied himself, the more he felt himself a prey to a mental torture worse than any bodily suffering. At last one day when walking slowly up and down, lost in thought, through extreme weakness he staggered and fell to the ground. His disciples thought he was dead, but he recovered. Despairing of further profit from such rigorous penance, he began to take regular food and gave up his self-mortification. At this his disciples forsook him and went away to Benares. In their opinion mental conquest lay only through bodily suppression. There now ensued a second crisis in Gautama's career which culminated in his withstanding the renewed attacks of the tempter after violent struggles. Soon after, if not on the very day when his disciples had left him, he wandered out toward the banks of the Nairaujara, receiving his morning meal from the hands of Sujuta, the daughter of a neighboring villager, and sat down to eat it under the shade of a large tree (_ficus religiosa_), called from that day the sacred "Bo tree," or tree of wisdom. He remained there all day long, pondering what next to do. All the attractions of the luxurious home he had abandoned rose up before him most alluringly. But as the day ended his lofty spirit had won the victory. All doubts had lifted as mists before the morning sun. He had become Buddha, that is, enlightened. He had grasped the solution of the great mystery of sorrow. He thought, having solved its causes and its cure, he had gained the haven of peace, and believed that in the power over the human heart of inward culture and of love to others he had discovered a foundation which could never be shaken. From this time Gautama claimed no merit for penances. A feeling of great loneliness possessed him as he arrived at his psychological and ethical conclusions. He almost despaired of winning his fellow-men to his system of salvation, salvation merely by self-control and love, without any of the rites, ceremonies, charms, or incantations of the Hindu religion. The thought of mankind, otherwise, as he imagined, utterly doomed and lost, made Gautama resolve, at whatever hazard, to proclaim his doctrine to the world. It is certain that he had a most intense belief in himself and his mission. He had intended first to proclaim his new doctrine to his old teachers, Alara and Udraka, but finding that they were dead, he proceeded to the deer forest near Benares where his former disciples were then living. In the cool of the evening he enters the deer-park near the city, but his former disciples resolve not to recognize him as a master. He tells them that they are still in the way of death, whereas he has found the way of salvation and can lead them to it, having become a Buddha. And as they reply with objections to his claims, he explains the fundamental truths of his system and principles of his new gospel, which the aged Kondanya was the first to accept from his master's lips. This exposition is preserved in the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, the Sutra of the Foundations of the Kingdom of Righteousness. Gautama Buddha taught that everything corporeal is material and therefore impermanent. Man in his bodily existence is liable to sorrow, decay, and death. The reign of unholy desires in his heart produces unsatisfactory longings, useless weariness, and care. Attempted purification by oppressing the body is only wasted effort. It is the moral evil of the heart which keeps a man chained down in the degraded state of bodily life, which binds him in a union with the material world. Virtue and goodness will only insure him for a time, and, in another birth, a higher form of material life. From the chains of existence only the complete eradication of all evil will set him free. But these ideas must not be confused with Christian beliefs, for Buddhism teaches nothing of any immaterial existence. The foundations of its creed have been summed up in the Four Great Truths, which are as follows: 1. That misery always accompanies existence; 2. That all modes of existence of men or animals, in death or heaven, result from passion or desire (tanha); 3. That there is no escape from existence except by destruction of desire; 4. That this may be accomplished by following the fourfold way to Nirvana. The four stages are called the Paths, the first being an awakening of the heart. The first enemy which the believer has to fight against is sensuality and the last is unkindliness. Above everything is universal charity. Till he has gained that the believer is still bound, his mind is still dark. True enlightenment, true freedom, are complete only in love. The last great reward is "Nirvana," eternal rest or extinction. For forty-five years Gautama taught in the valley of the Ganges. In the twentieth year his cousin Ananda became a mendicant and attended on Gautama. Another cousin, however, stirred up some persecution of the great teacher, and the oppositions of the Brahmans had to be faced. There are clear accounts of the last few days of Gautama's life. On a journey toward Kusi-nagara he had rested in a grove at Pawa, presented to the society by a goldsmith of that place named Chunda. After a midday meal of rice and pork, prepared by Chunda, the Master started for Kusi-nagara, but stopped to rest at the river Kukusta. Feeling that he was dying, he left a message for Chunda, promising him a great reward in some future existence. He died at the river Kukusta, near Kusi-nagara, teaching to the last. Gautama's power arose from his practical philanthropy. His philosophy and ethics attracted the masses. He did not seek to found a new religion, but thought that all men would accept his form of the ancient creed. It was his society, the Sangha, or Buddhist order, rather than his doctrine, which gave to his religion its practical vitality. The following lines, filled with the poetic beauty of the Orient, are taken from the last spoken words of the great founder of Buddhism and the _Book of the Great Decease_. They give a clew to the cult of that religion and breathe the spirit of Nirvana in every scintillating sentence. As nearly as may be the translation is a literal one, done by Rhys-Davids, the world's greatest living authority on this subject: Now the Blessed One addressed the venerable Ananda, and said: "It may be, Ananda, that in some of you the thought may arise, 'The word of the Master is ended, we have no teacher more!' But it is not thus, Ananda, that you should regard it. The truths and the rules of the order which I have set forth and laid down for you all, let them, after I am gone, be the Teacher to you. "Ananda! when I am gone address not one another in the way in which the brethren have heretofore addressed each other--with the epithet, that is, of 'Avuso' (Friend). A younger brother may be addressed by an elder with his name, or his family name, or the title 'Friend,' But an elder should be addressed by a younger brother as 'Lord' or as 'Venerable Sir.' "When I am gone, Ananda, let the order, if it should so wish, abolish all the lesser and minor precepts. "When I am gone, Ananda, let the higher penalty be imposed on brother Khanna." "But what, Lord, is the higher penalty?" "Let Khanna say whatever he may like, Ananda; the brethren should neither speak to him, nor exhort him, nor admonish him." Then the Blessed One addressed the brethren, and said: "It may be, brethren, that there may be doubt or misgiving in the mind of some brother as to the Buddha, or the truth, or the path, or the way. Inquire, brethren, freely. Do not have to reproach yourselves afterward with the thought, 'Our teacher was face to face with us, and we could not bring ourselves to inquire of the Blessed One when we were face to face with him.'" And when he had thus spoken the brethren were silent. And again the second and the third time the Blessed One addressed the brethren, and said: "It may be, brethren, that there may be doubt or misgiving in the mind of some brother as to the Buddha, or the truth, or the path, or the way. Inquire, brethren, freely. Do not have to reproach yourselves afterward with the thought, 'Our teacher was face to face with us, and we could not bring ourselves to inquire of the Blessed One when we were face to face with him.'" And even the third time the brethren were silent. Then the Blessed One addressed the brethren, and said: "It may be, brethren, that you put no questions out of reverence for the teacher. Let one friend communicate to another." And when he had thus spoken the brethren were silent. And the venerable Ananda said to the Blessed One: "How wonderful a thing is it, Lord, and how marvellous! Verily, I believe that in this whole assembly of the brethren there is not one brother who has any doubt or misgiving as to the Buddha, or the truth, or the path, or the way!" "It is out of the fulness of faith that thou hast spoken, Ananda! But, Ananda, the Tathagata knows for certain that in this whole assembly of the brethren there is not one brother who has any doubt or misgiving as to the Buddha, or the truth, or the path, or the way! For even the most backward, Ananda, of all these five hundred brethren has become converted, and is no longer liable to be born in a state of suffering, and is assured of final salvation." Then the Blessed One addressed the brethren, and said: "Behold now, brethren, I exhort you, saying, 'Decay is inherent in all component things! Work out your salvation with diligence!'" This was the last word of the Tathagata! Then the Blessed One entered into the first stage of deep meditation. And rising out of the first stage he passed into the second. And rising out of the second he passed into the third. And rising out of the third stage he passed into the fourth. And rising out of the fourth stage of deep meditation he entered into the state of mind to which the infinity of space is alone present. And passing out of the mere consciousness of the infinity of space he entered into the state of mind to which nothing at all was specially present. And passing out of the consciousness of no special object he fell into a state between consciousness and unconsciousness. And passing out of the state between consciousness and unconsciousness he fell into a state in which the consciousness both of sensations and of ideas had wholly passed away. Then the venerable Ananda said to the venerable Anuruddha: "O my Lord, O Anuruddha, the Blessed One is dead!" "Nay! brother Ananda, the Blessed One is not dead. He has entered into that state in which both sensations and ideas have ceased to be!" Then the Blessed One passing out of the state in which both sensations and ideas have ceased to be, entered into the state between consciousness and unconsciousness. And passing out of the state between consciousness and unconsciousness he entered into the state of mind to which nothing at all is specially present. And passing out of the consciousness of no special object he entered into the state of mind to which the infinity of thought is alone present. And passing out of the mere consciousness of the infinity of thought he entered into the state of mind to which the infinity of space is alone present. And passing out of the mere consciousness of the infinity of space he entered into the fourth stage of deep meditation. And passing out of the fourth stage he entered into the third. And passing out of the third stage he entered into the second. And passing out of the second he entered into the first. And passing out of the first stage of deep meditation he entered the second. And passing out of the second stage he entered into the third. And passing out of the third stage he entered into the fourth stage of deep meditation. And passing out of the last stage of deep meditation he immediately expired. When the Blessed One died there arose, at the moment of his passing out of existence, a mighty earthquake, terrible and awe-inspiring: and the thunders of heaven burst forth. When the Blessed One died, Brahma Sahampati, at the moment of his passing away from existence, uttered this stanza: "They all, all beings that have life, shall lay Aside their complex form--that aggregation Of mental and material qualities, That gives them, or in heaven or on earth, Their fleeting individuality! E'en as the teacher--being such a one, Unequalled among all the men that are, Successor of the prophets of old time, Mighty by wisdom, and in insight clear-- Hath died!" When the Blessed One died, Sakka, the king of the gods, at the moment of his passing away from existence, uttered this stanza: "They're transient all, each being's parts and powers, Growth is their nature, and decay. They are produced, they are dissolved again, And then is best, when they have sunk to rest!" When the Blessed One died, the venerable Anuruddha, at the moment of his passing away from existence, uttered these stanzas: "When he who from all craving want was free, Who to Nirvana's tranquil state had reached, When the great sage finished his span of life, No gasping struggle vexed that steadfast heart! All resolute, and with unshaken mind. He calmly triumphed o'er the pain of death. E'en as a bright flame dies away, so was His last deliverance from the bonds of life!" When the Blessed One died, the venerable Ananda, at the moment of his passing away from existence, uttered this stanza: "Then was there terror! Then stood the hair on end! When he endowed with every grace-- The supreme Buddha--died!" When the Blessed One died, of those of the brethren who were not free from the passions, some stretched out their arms and wept, and some fell headlong to the ground, rolling to and fro in anguish at the thought: "Too soon has the Blessed One died! Too soon has the Happy One passed away from existence! Too soon has the Light gone out in the world!" But those of the brethren who were free from the passions (the Arahats) bore their grief collected and composed at the thought: "Impermanent are all component things! How is it possible that [they should not be dissolved]?" Then the venerable Anuruddha exhorted the brethren, and said: "Enough, my brethren! Weep not, neither lament! Has not the Blessed One formerly declared this to us, that it is in the very nature of all things near and dear unto us, that we must divide ourselves from them, leave them, sever ourselves from them? How, then, brethren, can this be possible--that whereas anything whatever born, brought into being, and organized, contains within itself the inherent necessity of dissolution--how then can this be possible that such a being should not be dissolved? No such condition can exist! Even the spirits, brethren, will reproach us." "But of what kind of spirits is the Lord, the venerable Anuruddha, thinking?" "There are spirits, brother Ananda, in the sky, but of worldly mind, who dishevel their hair and weep, and stretch forth their arms and weep, fall prostrate on the ground, and roll to and fro in anguish at the thought: 'Too soon has the Blessed One died! Too soon has the Happy One passed away! Too soon has the Light gone out in the world!' "There are spirits, too, Ananda, on the earth, and of worldly mind, who tear their hair and weep, and stretch forth their arms and weep, fall prostrate on the ground, and roll to and fro in anguish at the thought: 'Too soon has the Blessed One died! Too soon has the Happy One passed away! Too soon has the Light gone out in the world!' "But the spirits who are free from passion hear it, calm and self-possessed, mindful of the saying which begins, 'Impermanent indeed are all component things. How then is it possible [that such a being should not be dissolved]?'" Now the venerable Anuruddha and the venerable Ananda spent the rest of that night in religious discourse. Then the venerable Anuruddha said to the venerable Ananda: "Go now, brother Ananda, into Kusinara and inform the Mallas of Kusinara, saying, 'The Blessed One, O Vasetthas, is dead: do, then, whatever seemeth to you fit!'" "Even so, Lord!" said the venerable Ananda, in assent to the venerable Anuruddha. And having robed himself early in the morning, he took his bowl, and went into Kusinara with one of the brethren as an attendant. Now at that time the Mallas of Kusinara were assembled in the council hall concerning that very matter. And the venerable Ananda went to the council hall of the Mallas of Kusinara; and when he had arrived there, he informed them, saying, "The Blessed One, O Vasetthas, is dead; do, then, whatever seemeth to you fit!" And when they had heard this saying of the venerable Ananda, the Mallas, with their young men and their maidens and their wives, were grieved, and sad, and afflicted at heart. And some of them wept, dishevelling their hair, and some stretched forth their arms and wept, and some fell prostrate on the ground, and some reeled to and fro in anguish at the thought: "Too soon has the Blessed One died! Too soon has the Happy One passed away! Too soon has the Light gone out in the world!" Then the Mallas of Kusinara gave orders to their attendants, saying, "Gather together perfumes and garlands, and all the music in Kusinara!" And the Mallas of Kusinara took the perfumes and garlands, and all the musical instruments, and five hundred suits of apparel, and went to the Upavattana, to the Sala Grove of the Mallas, where the body of the Blessed One lay. There they passed the day in paying honor, reverence, respect, and homage to the remains of the Blessed One with dancing, and hymns, and music, and with garlands and perfumes; and in making canopies of their garments, and preparing decoration wreaths to hang thereon. Then the Mallas of Kusinara thought: "It is much too late to burn the body of the Blessed One to-day. Let us now perform the cremation to-morrow." And in paying honor, reverence, respect, and homage to the remains of the Blessed One with dancing, and hymns, and music, and with garlands and perfumes; and in making canopies of their garments, and preparing decoration wreaths to hang thereon, they passed the second day too, and then the third day, and the fourth, and the fifth, and the sixth day also. Then on the seventh day the Mallas of Kusinara thought: "Let us carry the body of the Blessed One, by the south and outside, to a spot on the south, and outside of the city,--paying it honor, and reverence, and respect, and homage, with dance and song and music, with garlands and perfumes,--and there, to the south of the city, let us perform the cremation ceremony!" And thereupon eight chieftains among the Mallas bathed their heads, and clad themselves in new garments with the intention of bearing the body of the Blessed One. But, behold, they could not lift it up! Then the Mallas of Kusinara said to the venerable Anuruddha: "What, Lord, can be the reason, what can be the cause that eight chieftains of the Mallas who have bathed their heads, and clad themselves in new garments with the intention of bearing the body of the Blessed One, are unable to lift it up?" "It is because you, O Vasetthas, have one purpose and the spirits have another purpose." "But what, Lord, is the purpose of the spirits?" "Your purpose, O Vasetthas, is this: 'Let us carry the body of the Blessed One, by the south and outside, to a spot on the south, and outside of the city,--paying it honor, and reverence, and respect, and homage, with dance and song and music, with garlands and perfumes,--and there, to the south of the city, let us perform the cremation ceremony.' But the purpose of the spirits, Vasetthas, is this: 'Let us carry the body of the Blessed One by the north to the north of the city, and entering the city by the north gate, let us bring it through the midst of the city into the midst thereof. And going out again by the eastern gate,--paying honor, and reverence, and respect, and homage to the body of the Blessed One, with heavenly dance, and song, and music, and garlands, and perfumes,--let us carry it to the shrine of the Mallas called Makuta-bandhana, to the east of the city, and there let us perform the cremation ceremony.'" "Even according to the purpose of the spirits, so, Lord, let it be!" Then immediately all Kusinara down even to the dust-bins and rubbish heaps became strewn knee-deep with Mandarava flowers from heaven! and while both the spirits from the skies, and the Mallas of Kusinara upon earth, paid honor, and reverence, and respect, and homage to the body of the Blessed One, with dance and song and music, with garlands and with perfumes, they carried the body by the north to the north of the city; and entering the city by the north gate they carried it through the midst of the city into the midst thereof; and going out again by the eastern gate they carried it to the shrine of the Mallas, called Makuta-bandhana; and there, to the east of the city, they laid down the body of the Blessed One. Then the Mallas of Kusinara said to the venerable Ananda: "What should be done, Lord, with the remains of the Tathagata?" "As men treat the remains of a king of kings, so, Vasetthas, should they treat the remains of a Tathagata." "And how, Lord, do they treat the remains of a king of kings?" "They wrap the body of a king of kings, Vasetthas, in a new cloth. When that is done they wrap it in cotton wool. When that is done they wrap it in a new cloth,--and so on till they have wrapped the body in five hundred successive layers of both kinds. Then they place the body in an oil vessel of iron, and cover that close up with another oil vessel of iron. They then build a funeral pile of all kinds of perfumes, and burn the body of the king of kings. And then at the four cross roads they erect a dagaba to the king of kings. This, Vasetthas, is the way in which they treat the remains of a king of kings. And as they treat the remains of a king of kings, so, Vasetthas, should they treat the remains of the Tathagata. At the four cross roads a dagaba should be erected to the Tathagata. And whosoever shall there place garlands or perfumes or paint, or make salutation there, or become in its presence calm in heart--that shall long be to them for a profit and a joy." Therefore the Mallas gave orders to their attendants, saying, "Gather together all the carded cotton wool of the Mallas!" Then the Mallas of Kusinara wrapped the body of the Blessed One in a new cloth. And when that was done they wrapped it in cotton wool. And when that was done, they wrapped it in a new cloth,--and so on till they had wrapped the body of the Blessed One in five hundred layers of both kinds. And then they placed the body in an oil vessel of iron, and covered that close up with another vessel of iron. And then they built a funeral pile of all kinds of perfumes, and upon it they placed the body of the Blessed One. Now at that time the venerable Maha Kassapa was journeying along the high road from Pava to Kusinara with a great company of the brethren, with about five hundred of the brethren. And the venerable Maha Kassapa left the high road, and sat himself down at the foot of a certain tree. Just at that time a certain naked ascetic who had picked up a Mandarava flower in Kusinara was coming along the high road to Pava. And the venerable Maha Kassapa saw the naked ascetic coming in the distance; and when he had seen him he said to the naked ascetic: "O friend! surely thou knowest our Master?" "Yea, friend! I know him. This day the Samana Gautama has been dead a week! That is how I obtained this Mandarava flower." And immediately of those of the brethren who were not yet free from the passions, some stretched out their arms and wept, and some fell headlong on the ground, and some reeled to and fro in anguish at the thought: "Too soon has the Blessed One died! Too soon has the Happy One passed away from existence! Too soon has the Light gone out in the world!" But those of the brethren who were free from the passions (the Arahats) bore their grief collected and composed at the thought: "Impermanent are all component things! How is it possible that they should not be dissolved?" Now at that time a brother named Subhadda, who had been received into the order in his old age, was seated there in their company. And Subhadda the old addressed the brethren and said: "Enough, brethren! Weep not, neither lament! We are well rid of the great Samana. We used to be annoyed by being told, 'This beseems you, this beseems you not.' But now we shall be able to do whatever we like; and what we do not like that we shall not have to do!" But the venerable Maha Kassapa addressed the brethren, and said: "Enough, my brethren! Weep not, neither lament! Has not the Blessed One formerly declared this to us, that it is in the very nature of all things near and dear unto us that we must divide ourselves from them, leave them, sever ourselves from them? How then, brethren, can this be possible--that whereas anything whatever born, brought into being, and organized contains within itself the inherent necessity of dissolution--how then can this be possible that such a being should not be dissolved? No such condition can exist!" Now just at that time four chieftains of the Mallas had bathed their heads and clad themselves in new garments with the intention of setting on fire the funeral pile of the Blessed One. But, behold, they were unable to set it alight! Then the Mallas of Kusinara said to the venerable Anuruddha: "What, Lord, can be the reason, and what the cause, that four chieftains of the Mallas who have bathed their heads, and clad themselves in new garments, with the intention of setting on fire the funeral pile of the Blessed One, are unable to set it on fire?" "It is because you, O Vasetthas, have one purpose, and the spirits have another purpose." "But what, Lord, is the purpose of the spirits?" "The purpose of the spirits, O Vasetthas, is this: 'That venerable brother Maha Kassapa is now journeying along the high road from Pava to Kusinara with a great company of the brethren, with five hundred of the brethren. The funeral pile of the Blessed One shall not catch fire, until the venerable Maha Kassapa shall have been able reverently to salute the sacred feet of the Blessed One.'" "Even according to the purpose of the spirits, so, Lord, let it be!" Then the venerable Maha Kassapa went on to Makuta-bandhana of Kusinara, to the shrine of the Mallas, to the place where the funeral pile of the Blessed One was. And when he had come up to it, he arranged his robe on one shoulder; and bowing down with clasped hands he thrice walked reverently round the pile; and then, uncovering the feet, he bowed down in reverence at the feet of the Blessed One. And those five hundred brethren arranged their robes on one shoulder; and bowing down with clasped hands, they thrice walked reverently round the pile, and then bowed down in reverence at the feet of the Blessed One. And when the homage of the venerable Maha Kassapa and of those five hundred brethren was ended, the funeral pile of the Blessed One caught fire of itself. Now as the body of the Blessed One burned itself away, from the skin and the integument, and the flesh, and the nerves, and the fluid of the joints, neither soot nor ash was seen: and only the bones remained behind. Just as one sees no soot nor ash when glue or oil is burned, so, as the body of the Blessed One burned itself away, from the skin and the integument, and the flesh, and the nerves, and the fluid of the joints, neither soot nor ash was seen: and only the bones remained behind. And of those five hundred pieces of raiment the very innermost and outermost were both consumed. And when the body of the Blessed One had been burned up, there came down streams of water from the sky and extinguished the funeral pile of the Blessed One; and there burst forth streams of water from the storehouse of the waters (beneath the earth), and extinguished the funeral pile of the Blessed One. The Mallas of Kusinara also brought water scented with all kinds of perfumes, and extinguished the funeral pile of the Blessed One. Then the Mallas of Kusinara surrounded the bones of the Blessed One in their council hall with a lattice work of spears, and with a rampart of bows; and there for seven days they paid honor and reverence and respect and homage to them with dance and song and music, and with garlands and perfumes. Now the king of Magadha, Agatasattu, the son of the queen of the Videha clan, heard the news that the Blessed One had died at Kusinara. Then the king of Magadha, Agatasattu, the son of the queen of the Videha clan, sent a messenger to the Mallas, saying, "The Blessed One belonged to the soldier caste, and I too am of the soldier caste. I am worthy to receive a portion of the relics of the Blessed One. Over the remains of the Blessed One will I put up a sacred cairn, and in honor thereof will I celebrate a feast!" And the Likkhavis of Vesali heard the news that the Blessed One had died at Kusinara. And the Likkhavis of Vesali sent a messenger to the Mallas, saying, "The Blessed One belonged to the soldier caste, and we too are of the soldier caste. We are worthy to receive a portion of the relics of the Blessed One. Over the remains of the Blessed One will we put up a sacred cairn, and in honor thereof will we celebrate a feast!" And the Sakiyas of Kapila-vatthu heard the news that the Blessed One had died at Kusinara. And the Sakiyas of Kapila-vatthu sent a messenger to the Mallas, saying "The Blessed One was the pride of our race. We are worthy to receive a portion of the relics of the Blessed One. Over the remains of the Blessed One will we put up a sacred cairn, and in honor thereof will we celebrate a feast!" And the Bulis of Allakappa heard the news that the Blessed One had died at Kusinara. And the Bulis of Allakappa sent a messenger to the Mallas, saying, "The Blessed One belonged to the soldier caste, and we too are of the soldier caste. We are worthy to receive a portion of the relics of the Blessed One. Over the remains of the Blessed One will we put up a sacred cairn, and in honor thereof will we celebrate a feast!" And the Brahman of Vethadipa heard the news that the Blessed One had died at Kusinara. And the Brahman of Vethadipa sent a messenger to the Mallas, saying, "The Blessed One belonged to the soldier caste, and I am a Brahman. I am worthy to receive a portion of the relics of the Blessed One. Over the remains of the Blessed One will I put up a sacred cairn, and in honor thereof will I celebrate a feast!" And the Mallas of Pava heard the news that the Blessed One had died at Kusinara. Then the Mallas of Pava sent a messenger to the Mallas, saying, "The Blessed One belonged to the soldier caste, and we too are of the soldier caste. We are worthy to receive a portion of the relics of the Blessed One. Over the remains of the Blessed One will we put up a sacred cairn, and in honor thereof will we celebrate a feast!" When they heard these things the Mallas of Kusinara spoke to the assembled brethren, saying, "The Blessed One died in our village domain, We will not give away any part of the remains of the Blessed One!" When they had thus spoken, Dona the Brahman addressed the assembled brethren, and said: "Hear, reverend sir, one single word from me. Forbearance was our Buddha wont to teach. Unseemly is it that over the division Of the remains of him who was the best of beings Strife should arise, and wounds, and war! Let us all, sirs, with one accord unite In friendly harmony to make eight portions. Wide spread let Thupas rise in every land That in the Enlightened One mankind may trust!" "Do thou then, O Brahman, thyself divide the remains of the Blessed One equally into eight parts with fair division." "Be it so, sir!" said Dona, in assent, to the assembled brethren. And he divided the remains of the Blessed One equally into eight parts, with fair division. And he said to them: "Give me, sirs, this vessel, and I will set up over it a sacred cairn, and in its honor will I establish a feast." And they gave the vessel to Dona the Brahman. And the Moriyas of Pipphalivana heard the news that the Blessed One had died at Kusinara. Then the Moriyas of Pipphalivana sent a messenger to the Mallas, saying, "The Blessed One belonged to the soldier caste, and we too are of the soldier caste. We are worthy to receive a portion of the relics of the Blessed One. Over the remains of the Blessed One will we put up a sacred cairn, and in honor thereof will we celebrate a feast!" And when they heard the answer, saying, "There is no portion of the remains of the Blessed One left over. The remains of the Blessed One are all distributed," then they took away the embers. Then the king of Magadha, Agatasattu, the son of the queen of the Videha clan, made a mound in Ragagaha over the remains of the Blessed One, and held a feast. And the Likkhavis of Vesali made a mound in Vesali over the remains of the Blessed One, and held a feast. And the Bulis of Allakappa made a mound in Allakappa over the remains of the Blessed One, and held a feast. And the Koliyas of Ramagama made a mound in Ramagama over the remains of the Blessed One, and held a feast. And Vethadipaka the Brahman made a mound in Vethadipa over the remains of the Blessed One, and held a feast. And the Mallas of Pava made a mound in Pava over the remains of the Blessed One, and held a feast. And the Mallas of Kusinara made a mound in Kusinara over the remains of the Blessed One, and held a feast. And Dona the Brahman made a mound over the vessel in which the body had been burned, and held a feast. And the Moriyas of Pipphalivana made a mound over the embers, and held a feast. Thus were there eight mounds [Thupas] for the remains, and one for the vessel, and one for the embers. This was how it used to be. Eight measures of relics there were of him of the far-seeing eye, of the best of the best of men. In India seven are worshipped, and one measure in Ramagama, by the kings of the serpent race. One tooth, too, is honored in heaven, and one in Gandhara's city, one in the Kalinga realm, and one more by the Naga race. Through their glory the bountiful earth is made bright with offerings painless, for with such are the Great Teacher's relics best honored by those who are honored, by gods and by Nagas and kings, yea, thus by the noblest of monarchs--bow down with clasped hands! Hard, hard is a Buddha to meet with through hundreds of ages! End of the _Book of the Great Decease_ PYTHIAN GAMES AT DELPHI B.C. 585 GEORGE GROTE Among the leading features of Greek life, especially those belonging to its religious customs and observances none are more characteristic, and none possess a more attractive interest for the modern reader and student than the peculiar festivals which it was their practice to hold. The four great national festivals or games were: The Olympic, held every four years, in honor of Zeus, on the banks of the Alpheus, in Elis; the Pythian, celebrated once in four years, in honor of Apollo, at Delphi; the Isthmian, held every two years, at the isthmian sanctuary in the Isthmus of Corinth, in honor of Poseidon (Neptune); and the Nemean, celebrated at Nemea, in the second and fourth years of each Olympiad, in honor of the Nemean Juno. With regard to the influence of these games or festivals upon the political and social life of Greece, much has been written by historians and special students of the Grecian states. While the celebrations do not appear to have accomplished much for the political union of Greece, they are to be credited with marked beneficial effects in the promotion of a pan-Hellenic spirit which, if it failed to produce such a union of the Greek race, nevertheless quickened and strengthened the common feeling of family relationship. Thus a sense of their identical origin and racial traits was kept alive, and the tendencies of Greek development and culture preserved their essential character and distinction. By means of these periodical gatherings, representing all parts of the Greek world, not only was friendly competition in every field of talent and performance secured, but even trade and commerce found through them new channels of activity. So in various ways the national games proved a source of fresh energy and broader enterprise among the various branches of the Grecian people. The particular character and significance of the Pythian games at Delphi, and their relation to the other national festivals, form an interesting subject for study in connection with the general history of Greece. What are called the Olympic, Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian games (the four most conspicuous amid many others analogous) were in reality great religious festivals--for the gods then gave their special sanction, name, and presence to recreative meetings--the closest association then prevailed between the feelings of common worship and the sympathy in common amusement. Though this association is now no longer recognized, it is nevertheless essential that we should keep it fully before us if we desire to understand the life and proceedings of the Greek. To Herodotus and his contemporaries these great festivals, then frequented by crowds from every part of Greece, were of overwhelming importance and interest; yet they had once been purely local, attracting no visitors except from a very narrow neighborhood. In the Homeric poems much is said about the common gods, and about special places consecrated to and occupied by several of them; the chiefs celebrate funeral games in honor of a deceased father, which are visited by competitors from different parts of Greece, but nothing appears to manifest public or town festivals open to Grecian visitors generally. And though the rocky Pytho with its temple stands out in the _Iliad_ as a place both venerated and rich--the Pythian games, under the superintendence of the Amphictyons, with continuous enrollment of victors and a pan-Hellenic reputation, do not begin until after the Sacred War, in the 48th Olympiad, or B.C. 586. The Olympic games, more conspicuous than the Pythian as well as considerably older, are also remarkable on another ground, inasmuch as they supplied historical computers with the oldest backward record of continuous time. It was in the year B.C. 776 that the Eleans inscribed the name of their countryman Coroebus as victor in the competition of runners, and that they began the practice of inscribing in like manner, in each Olympic or fifth recurring year, the name of the runner who won the prize. Even for a long time after this, however, the Olympic games seem to have remained a local festival; the prize being uniformly carried off, at the first twelve Olympiads, by some competitor either of Elis or its immediate neighborhood. The Nemean and Isthmian games did not become notorious or frequented until later even than the Pythian. Solon in his legislation proclaimed the large reward of 500 drams for every Athenian who gained an Olympic prize, and the lower sum of 100 drams for an Isthmiac prize. He counts the former as pan-Hellenic rank and renown, an ornament even to the city of which the victor was a member--the latter as partial and confined to the neighborhood. Of the beginnings of these great solemnities we cannot presume to speak, except in mythical language; we know them only in their comparative maturity. But the habit of common sacrifice, on a small scale and between near neighbors, is a part of the earliest habits of Greece. The sentiment of fraternity, between two tribes or villages, first manifested itself by sending a sacred legation or Theoria to offer sacrifices to each other's festivals and to partake in the recreations which followed; thus establishing a truce with solemn guarantee, and bringing themselves into direct connexion each with the god of the other under his appropriate local surname. The pacific communion so fostered, and the increased assurance of intercourse, as Greece gradually emerged from the turbulence and pugnacity of the heroic age, operated especially in extending the range of this ancient habit: the village festivals became town festivals, largely frequented by the citizens of other towns, and sometimes with special invitations sent round to attract Theors from every Hellenic community--and thus these once humble assemblages gradually swelled into the pomp and immense confluence of the Olympic and Pythian games. The city administering such holy ceremonies enjoyed inviolability of territory during the month of their occurrence, being itself under obligation at that time to refrain from all aggression, as well as to notify by heralds the commencement of the truce to all other cities not in avowed hostility with it. Elis imposed heavy fines upon other towns--even on the powerful Lacedæmon--for violation of the Olympic truce, on pain of exclusion from the festival in case of non-payment. Sometimes this tendency to religious fraternity took a form called an _Amphictyony_, different from the common festival. A certain number of towns entered into an exclusive religious partnership for the celebration of sacrifices periodically to the god of a particular temple, which was supposed to be the common property and under the common protection of all, though one of the number was often named as permanent administrator; while all other Greeks were excluded. That there were many religious partnerships of this sort, which have never acquired a place in history, among the early Grecian villages, we may perhaps gather from the etymology of the word _Amphictyons_--designating residents around, or neighbors, considered in the point of view of fellow-religionists--as well as from the indications preserved to us in reference to various parts of the country. Thus there was an Amphictyony of seven cities at the holy island of Caluria, close to the harbor of Troezen. Hermione, Epidaurus, Ægina, Athens, Prasiæ, Nauplia, and Orchomenus, jointly maintained the temple and sanctuary of Poseidon in that island--with which it would seem that the city of Troezen, though close at hand, had no connection--meeting there at stated periods, to offer formal sacrifices. These seven cities indeed were not immediate neighbors, but the speciality and exclusiveness of their interest in the temple is seen from the fact that when the Argians took Nauplia, they adopted and fulfilled these religious obligations on behalf of the prior inhabitants: so also did the Lacedæmonians when they had captured Prasiæ. Again, in Triphylia, situated between the Pisatid and Messenia in the western part of Peloponnesus, there was a similar religious meeting and partnership of the Triphylians on Cape Samicon, at the temple of the Samian Poseidon. Here the inhabitants of Maciston were intrusted with the details of superintendence, as well as with the duty of notifying beforehand the exact time of meeting (a precaution essential amidst the diversities and irregularities of the Greek calendar) and also of proclaiming what was called the Samian truce--a temporary abstinence from hostilities which bound all Triphylians during the holy period. This latter custom discloses the salutary influence of such institutions in presenting to men's minds a common object of reverence, common duties, and common enjoyments; thus generating sympathies and feelings of mutual obligation amid petty communities not less fierce than suspicious. So, too, the twelve chief Ionic cities in and near Asia Minor had their pan-Ionic Amphictyony peculiar to themselves: the six Doric cities, in and near the southern corner of that peninsula, combined for the like purpose at the temple of the Triopian Apollo, and the feeling of special partnership is here particularly illustrated by the fact that Halicarnassus, one of the six, was formally extruded by the remaining five in consequence of a violation of the rules. There was also an Amphictyonic union at Onchestus in Boeotia, in the venerated grove and temple at Poseidon: of whom it consisted we are not informed. There are some specimens of the sort of special religious conventions and assemblies which seem to have been frequent throughout Greece. Nor ought we to omit those religious meetings and sacrifices which were common to all the members of one Hellenic subdivision, such as the pan-Boeotia to all the Boeotians, celebrated at the temple of the Ionian Athene near Coroneia; the common observances, rendered to the temple of Apollo Pythæus at Argos, by all those neighboring towns which had once been attached by this religious thread to the Argian; the similar periodical ceremonies, frequented by all who bore the Achæan or Ætolian name; and the splendid and exhilarating festivals, so favorable to the diffusion of the early Grecian poetry, which brought all Ionians at stated intervals to the sacred island of Delos. This later class of festivals agreed with the Amphictyony in being of a special and exclusive character, not open to all Greeks. But there was one among these many Amphictyonies, which, though starting from the smallest beginnings, gradually expanded into so comprehensive a character, had acquired so marked a predominance over the rest, as to be called the "Amphictyonic assembly," and even to have been mistaken by some authors for a sort of federal Hellenic diet. Twelve sub-races, out of the number which made up entire Hellas, belonged to this ancient Amphictyony, the meetings of which were held twice in every year: in spring at the temple of Apollo at Delphi; in autumn at Thermopylæ, in the sacred precinct of Demeter Amphictyonis. Sacred deputies, including a chief called the _Hieromnemon_ and subordinates called the _Pylagoræ_, attended at these meetings from each of the twelve races: a crowd of volunteers seem to have accompanied them, for purposes of sacrifice, trade, or enjoyment. Their special, and most important, function consisted in watching over the Delphian temple, in which all the twelve sub-races had a joint interest, and it was the immense wealth and national ascendency of this temple which enhanced to so great a pitch the dignity of its acknowledged administrators. The twelve constituent members were as follows: Thessalians, Boeotians, Dorians, Ionians, Perrhæbians, Magnetes, Locrians, Oetæans, Achæans, Phocians, Dolopes, and Malians. All are counted as _races_ (if we treat the Hellenes as a race, we must call these _sub-races_), no mention being made of cities: all count equally in respect to voting, two votes being given by the deputies from each of the twelve: moreover, we are told that in determining the deputies to be sent or the manner in which the votes of each race should be given, the powerful Athens, Sparta, and Thebes had no more influence than the humblest Ionian, Dorian, or Boeotian city. This latter fact is distinctly stated by Æschines, himself a Pylagore sent to Delphi by Athens. And so, doubtless, the theory of the case stood: the votes of the Ionic races counted for neither more nor less than two, whether given by deputies from Athens, or from the small towns of Erythræ and Priene; and in like manner the Dorian votes were as good in the division, when given by deputies from Boeon and Cytinion in the little territory of Doris, as if the men delivering them had been Spartans. But there can be as little question that in practice the little Ionic cities and the little Doric cities pretended to no share in the Amphictyonic deliberations. As the Ionic vote came to be substantially the vote of Athens, so, if Sparta was ever obstructed in the management of the Doric vote, it must have been by powerful Doric cities like Argos or Corinth, not by the insignificant towns of Doris. But the theory of Amphictyonic suffrage as laid down by Æschines, however little realized in practice during his day, is important inasmuch as it shows in full evidence the primitive and original constitution. The first establishment of the Amphictyonic convocation dates from a time when all the twelve members were on a footing of equal independence, and when there were no overwhelming cities--such as Sparta and Athens--to cast in the shade the humbler members; when Sparta was only one Doric city, and Athens only one Ionic city, among various others of consideration not much inferior. There are also other proofs which show the high antiquity of this Amphictyonic convocation. Æschines gives us an extract from the oath which had been taken by the sacred deputies who attended on behalf of their respective races, ever since its first establishment, and which still apparently continued to be taken in his day. The antique simplicity of this oath, and of the conditions to which the members bind themselves, betrays the early age in which it originated, as well as the humble resources of those towns to which it was applied. "We will not destroy any Amphictyonic town--we will not cut off any Amphictyonic town from running water"--such are the two prominent obligations which Æschines specifies out of the old oath. The second of the two carries us back to the simplest state of society, and to towns of the smallest size, when the maidens went out with their basins to fetch water from the spring, like the daughters of Celeos at Eleusis, or those of Athens from the fountain Callirrhoe. We may even conceive that the special mention of this detail, in the covenant between the twelve races, is borrowed literally from agreements still earlier, among the villages or little towns in which the members of each race were distributed. At any rate, it proves satisfactorily the very ancient date to which the commencement of the Amphictyonic convocations must be referred. The belief of Æschines (perhaps also the belief general in his time) was, that it commenced simultaneously with the first foundation of the Delphian temple--an event of which we have no historical knowledge; but there seems reason to suppose that its original establishment is connected with Thermopylæ and Demeter Amphictyonia, rather than with Delphi and Apollo. The special surname by which Demeter and her temple at Thermopylæ was known--the temple of the hero Amphictyon which stood at its side--the word _Pyloea_, which obtained footing in the language to designate the half-yearly meeting of the deputies both at Thermopylæ and at Delphi--these indications point to Thermopylæ (the real central point for all the twelve) as the primary place of meeting, and to the Delphian half-year as something secondary and superadded. On such a matter, however, we cannot go beyond a conjecture. The hero Amphictyon, whose temple stood at Thermopylæ, passed in mythical genealogy for the brother of Hellen. And it may be affirmed, with truth, that the habit of forming Amphictyonic unions, and of frequenting each other's religious festivals, was the great means of creating and fostering the primitive feeling of brotherhood among the children of Hellen, in those early times when rudeness, insecurity, and pugnacity did so much to isolate them. A certain number of salutary habits and sentiments, such as that which the Amphictyonic oath embodies, in regard to abstinence from injury as well as to mutual protection, gradually found their way into men's minds: the obligations thus brought into play acquired a substantive efficacy of their own, and the religious feeling which always remained connected with them, came afterward to be only one out of many complex agencies by which the later historical Greek was moved. Athens and Sparta in the days of their might, and the inferior cities in relation to them, played each their own political game, in which religious considerations will be found to bear only a subordinate part. The special function of the Amphictyonic council, so far as we know it, consisted in watching over the safety, the interests, and the treasures of the Delphian temple. "If any one shall plunder the property of the god, or shall be cognizant thereof, or shall take treacherous counsel against the things in the temple, we will punish him with foot, and hand, and voice, and by every means in our power." So ran the old Amphictyonic oath, with an energetic imprecation attached to it. And there are some examples in which the council constitutes its functions so largely as to receive and adjudicate upon complaints against entire cities, for offences against the religious and patriotic sentiment of the Greeks generally. But for the most part its interference relates directly to the Delphian temple. The earliest case in which it is brought to our view is the Sacred War against Cirrha, in the 46th Olympiad or B.C. 595, conducted by Eurolychus the Thessalian, and Clisthenes of Sicyon, and proposed by Solon of Athens: we find the Amphictyons also about half a century afterward undertaking the duty of collecting subscriptions throughout the Hellenic world, and making the contract with the Alcmæonids for rebuilding the temple after a conflagration. But the influence of this council is essentially of a fluctuating and intermittent character. Sometimes it appears forward to decide, and its decisions command respect; but such occasions are rare, taking the general course of known Grecian history; while there are other occasions, and those too especially affecting the Delphian temple, on which we are surprised to find nothing said about it. In the long and perturbed period which Thucydides describes, he never once mentions the Amphictyons, though the temple and the safety of its treasures form the repeated subject as well of dispute as of express stipulation between Athens and Sparta. Moreover, among the twelve constituent members of the council, we find three--the Perrhæbians, the Magnetes, and the Achæans of Phthia--who were not even independent, but subject to the Thessalians; so that its meetings, when they were not matters of mere form, probably expressed only the feelings of the three or four leading members. When one or more of these great powers had a party purpose to accomplish against others--when Philip of Macedon wished to extrude one of the members in order to procure admission for himself--it became convenient to turn this ancient form into a serious reality; and we shall see the Athenian Æschines providing a pretext for Philip to meddle in favor of the minor Boeotian cities against Thebes, by alleging that these cities were under the protection of the old Amphictyonic oath. It is thus that we have to consider the council as an element in Grecian affairs--an ancient institution, one among many instances of the primitive habit of religious fraternization, but wider and more comprehensive than the rest; at first purely religious, then religious and political at once, lastly more the latter than the former; highly valuable in the infancy, but unsuited to the maturity of Greece, and called into real working only on rare occasions, when its efficiency happened to fall in with the views of Athens, Thebes, or the king of Macedon. In such special moments it shines with a transient light which affords a partial pretense for the imposing title bestowed on it by Cicero--_commune Græciæ concilium;_ but we should completely misinterpret Grecian history if we regarded it as a federal council habitually directed or habitually obeyed. Had there existed any such "commune concilium" of tolerable wisdom and patriotism, and had the tendencies of the Hellenic mind been capable of adapting themselves to it, the whole course of later Grecian history would probably have been altered; the Macedonian kings would have remained only as respectable neighbors, borrowing civilization from Greece and expending their military energies upon Thracians and Illyrians; while united Hellas might even have maintained her own territory against the conquering legions of Rome. The twelve constituent Amphictyonic races remained unchanged until the Sacred War against the Phocians (B.C. 355), after which, though the number twelve was continued, the Phocians were disfranchised, and their votes transferred to Philip of Macedon. It has been already mentioned that these twelve did not exhaust the whole of Hellas. Arcadians, Eleans, Pisans, Minyæ, Dryopes, Ætolians, all genuine Hellenes, are not comprehended in it; but all of them had a right to make use of the temple of Delphi, and to contend in the Pythian and Olympic games. The Pythian games, celebrated near Delphi, were under the superintendence of the Amphictyons, or of some acting magistrate chosen by and presumed to represent them. Like the Olympic games, they came round every four years (the interval between one celebration and another being four complete years, which the Greeks called a _Pentæteris_): the Isthmian and Nemean games recurred every two years. In its first humble form a competition among bards to sing a hymn in praise of Apollo, this festival was doubtless of immemorial antiquity; but the first extension of it into pan-Hellenic notoriety (as I have already remarked), the first multiplication of the subjects of competition, and the first introduction of a continuous record of the conquerors, date only from the time when it came under the presidency of the Amphictyon, at the close of the Sacred War against Cirrha, What is called the first Pythian contest coincides with the third year of the 48th Olympiad, or B.C. 585. From that period forward the games become crowded and celebrated: but the date just named, nearly two centuries after the first Olympiad, is a proof that the habit of periodical frequentation of festivals, by numbers and from distant parts, grew up but slowly in the Grecian world. The foundation of the temple of Delphi itself reaches far beyond all historical knowledge, forming one of the aboriginal institutions of Hellas. It is a sanctified and wealthy place even in the _Iliad_; the legislation of Lycurgus at Sparta is introduced under its auspices, and the earliest Grecian colonies, those of Sicily and Italy in the eighth century B.C., are established in consonance with its mandate. Delphi and Dodona appear, in the most ancient circumstances of Greece, as universally venerated oracles and sanctuaries: and Delphi not only receives honors and donations, but also answers questions from Lydians, Phrygians, Etruscans, Romans, etc.: it is not exclusively Hellenic. One of the valuable services which a Greek looked for from this and other great religious establishments was, that it should resolve his doubts in cases of perplexity; that it should advise him whether to begin a new, or to persist in an old project; that it should foretell what would be his fate under given circumstances, and inform him, if suffering under distress, on what conditions the gods would grant him relief. The three priestesses of Dodona with their venerable oak, and the priestess of Delphi sitting on her tripod under the influence of a certain gas or vapor exhaling from the rock, were alike competent to determine these difficult points: and we shall have constant occasion to notice in this history with what complete faith both the question was put and the answer treasured up--what serious influence it often exercised both upon public and private proceeding. The hexameter verses in which the Pythian priestess delivered herself were indeed often so equivocal or unintelligible, that the most serious believer, with all anxiety to interpret and obey them, often found himself ruined by the result. Yet the general faith in the oracle was no way shaken by such painful experience. For as the unfortunate issue always admitted of being explained upon two hypotheses--either that the god had spoken falsely, or that his meaning had not been correctly understood--no man of genuine piety ever hesitated to adopt the latter. There were many other oracles throughout Greece besides Delphi and Dodona; Apollo was open to the inquiries of the faithful at Ptoon in Boeotia, at Abæ in Phocis, at Branchidæ near Miletus, at Patara in Lycia, and other places: in like manner, Zeus gave answers at Olympia, Poseidon at Tænarus, Amphiaraus at Thebes, Amphilochus at Mallus, etc. And this habit of consulting the oracle formed part of the still more general tendency of the Greek mind to undertake no enterprise without having first ascertained how the gods viewed it, and what measures they were likely to take. Sacrifices were offered, and the interior of the victim carefully examined, with the same intent: omens, prodigies, unlooked-for coincidences, casual expressions, etc., were all construed as significant of the divine will. To sacrifice with a view to this or that undertaking, or to consult the oracle with the same view, are familiar expressions embodied in the language. Nor could any man set about a scheme with comfort until he had satisfied himself in some manner or other that the gods were favorable to it. The disposition here adverted to is one of these mental analogies pervading the whole Hellenic nation, which Herodotus indicates. And the common habit among all Greeks of respectfully listening to the oracle of Delphi will be found on many occasions useful in maintaining unanimity among men not accustomed to obey the same political superior. In the numerous colonies especially, founded by mixed multitudes from distant parts of Greece, the minds of the emigrants were greatly determined toward cordial coöperation by their knowledge that the expedition had been directed, the oecist indicated, and the spot either chosen or approved by Apollo of Delphi. Such in most cases was the fact: that god, according to the conception of the Greeks, "takes delight always in the foundation of new cities, and himself in person lays the first stone." These are the elements of union with which the historical Hellenes take their start: community of blood, language, religious point of view, legends, sacrifices, festivals, and also (with certain allowances) of manners and character. The analogy of manners and character between the rude inhabitants of the Arcadian Cynætha and the polite Athens, was, indeed, accompanied with wide differences; yet if we compare the two with foreign contemporaries, we shall find certain negative characteristics of much importance common to both. In no city of historical Greece did there prevail either human sacrifices or deliberate mutilation, such as cutting off the nose, ears, hands, feet, etc.; or castration; or selling of children into slavery; or polygamy; or the feeling of unlimited obedience toward one man: all customs which might be pointed out as existing among the contemporary Carthaginians, Egyptians, Persians, Thracians, etc. The habit of running, wrestling, boxing, etc., in gymnastic contests, with the body perfectly naked, was common to all Greeks, having been first adopted as a Lacedæmonian fashion in the fourteenth Olympiad: Thucydides and Herodotus remark that it was not only not practised, but even regarded as unseemly, among non-Hellenes. Of such customs, indeed, at once common to all the Greeks, and peculiar to them as distinguished from others, we cannot specify a great number, but we may see enough to convince ourselves that there did really exist, in spite of local differences, a general Hellenic sentiment and character, which counted among the cementing causes of a union apparently so little assured. During the two centuries succeeding B.C. 776, the festival of the Olympic Zeus in the Pisatid gradually passed from a local to a national character, and acquired an attractive force capable of bringing together into temporary union the dispersed fragments of Hellas, from Marseilles to Trebizond. In this important function it did not long stand alone. During the sixth century B.C., three other festivals, at first local, became successively nationalized--the Pythia near Delphi, the Isthmia near Corinth, the Nemea near Cleone, between Sicyon and Argos. In regard to the Pythian festival, we find a short notice of the particular incidents and individuals by whom its reconstitution and enlargement were brought about--a notice the more interesting inasmuch as these very incidents are themselves a manifestation of something like pan-Hellenic patriotism, standing almost alone in an age which presents little else in operation except distinct city interests. At the time when the Homeric Hymn to the Delphinian Apollo was composed (probably in the seventh century B.C.), the Pythian festival had as yet acquired little eminence. The rich and holy temple of Apollo was then purely oracular, established for the purpose of communicating to pious inquirers "the counsels of the Immortals." Multitudes of visitors came to consult it, as well as to sacrifice victims and to deposit costly offerings; but while the god delighted in the sound of the harp as an accompaniment to the singing of pæans, he was by no means anxious to encourage horse-races and chariot-races in the neighborhood. Nay, this psalmist considers that the noise of horses would be "a nuisance", the drinking of mules a desecration to the sacred fountains, and the ostentation of fine-built chariots objectionable, as tending to divert the attention of spectators away from the great temple and its wealth. From such inconveniences the god was protected by placing his sanctuary "in the rocky Pytho"--a rugged and uneven recess, of no great dimensions, embosomed in the southern declivity of Parnassus, and about two thousand feet above the level of the sea, while the topmost Parnassian summits reach a height of near eight thousand feet. The situation was extremely imposing, but unsuited by nature for the congregation of any considerable number of spectators; altogether impracticable for chariot-races; and only rendered practicable by later art and outlay for the theatre as well as for the stadium. Such a site furnished little means of subsistence, but the sacrifices and presents of visitors enabled the ministers of the temple to live in abundance, and gathered together by degrees a village around it. Near the sanctuary of Pytho, and about the same altitude, was situated the ancient Phocian town of Crissa, on a projecting spur of Parnassus--overhung above by the line of rocky precipice called the Phædriades, and itself overhanging below the deep ravine through which flows the river Peistus. On the other side of this river rises the steep mountain Cirphis, which projects southward into the Corinthian gulf--the river reaching that gulf through the broad Crissoean plain, which stretches westward nearly to the Locrian town of Amphissa; a plain for the most part fertile and productive, though least so in its eastern part immediately under the Cirphis, where the seaport Cirrha was placed. The temple, the oracle, and the wealth of Pytho, belong to the very earliest periods of Grecian antiquity. But the octennial solemnity in honor of the god included at first no other competition except that of bards, who sang each a pæan with the harp. The Amphictyonic assembly held one of its half-yearly meetings near the temple of Pytho, the other at Thermopylæ. In those early times when the Homeric Hymn to Apollo was composed, the town of Crissa appears to have been great and powerful, possessing all the broad plain between Parnassus, Cirphis, and the gulf, to which latter it gave its name--and possessing also, what was a property not less valuable, the adjoining sanctuary of Pytho itself, which the Hymn identifies with Crissa, not indicating Delphi as a separate place. The Crissæans doubtless derived great profits from the number of visitors who came to visit Delphi, both by land and by sea, and Cirrha was originally only the name for their seaport. Gradually, however, the port appears to have grown in importance at the expense of the town, just as Apollonia and Ptolemais came to equal Cyrene and Barca, and as Plymouth Dock has swelled into Devonport; while at the same time the sanctuary of Pytho with its administrators expanded into the town of Delphi, and came to claim an independent existence of its own. The original relations between Crissa, Cirrha, and Delphi, were in this manner at length subverted, the first declining and the two latter rising. The Crissæans found themselves dispossessed of the management of the temple, which passed to the Delphians; as well as of the profits arising from the visitors, whose disbursements went to enrich the inhabitants of Cirrha. Crissa was a primitive city of the Phocian name, and could boast of a place as such in the Homeric Catalogue, so that her loss of importance was not likely to be quietly endured. Moreover, in addition to the above facts, already sufficient in themselves as seeds of quarrel, we are told that the Cirrhæans abused their position as masters of the avenue to the temple by sea, and levied exorbitant tolls on the visitors who landed there--a number constantly increasing from the multiplication of the transmarine colonies, and from the prosperity of those in Italy and Sicily. Besides such offence against the general Grecian public, they had also incurred the enmity of their Phocian neighbors by outrages upon women, Phocian as well as Argian, who were returning from the temple. Thus stood the case, apparently, about B.C. 595, when the Amphictyonic meeting interfered--either prompted by the Phocians, or perhaps on their own spontaneous impulse, out of regard to the temple--to punish the Cirrhæans. After a war of ten years, the first sacred war in Greece, this object was completely accomplished by a joint force of Thessalians under Eurolychus, Sicyonians under Clisthenes, and Athenians under Alemæon; the Athenian Solon being the person who originated and enforced in the Amphictyonic council the proposition of interference. Cirrha appears to have made a strenuous resistance until its supplies from the sea were intercepted by the naval force of the Sicyonian Clisthenes. Even after the town was taken, its inhabitants defended themselves for some time on the heights of Cirphis. At length, however, they were thoroughly subdued. Their town was destroyed or left to subsist merely us a landing-place; while the whole adjoining plain was consecrated to the Delphian god, whose domains thus touched the sea. Under this sentence, pronounced by the religious fooling of Greece, and sanctified by a solemn oath publicly sworn and inscribed at Delphi, the land was condemned to remain untilled and implanted, without any species of human care, and serving only for the pasturage of cattle. The latter circumstance was convenient to the temple, inasmuch as it furnished abundance of victims for the pilgrims who landed and came to sacrifice--for without preliminary sacrifice no man could consult the oracle; while the entire prohibition of tillage was the only means of obviating the growth of another troublesome neighbor on the seaboard. The ruin of Cirrha in this war is certain: though the necessity of a harbor for visitors arriving by sea, led to the gradual revival of the town upon a humbler scale of pretension. But the fate of Crissa is not so clear, nor do we know whether it was destroyed, or left subsisting in a position of inferiority with regard to Delphi. From this time forward, however, the Delphian community appear as substantive and autonomous, exercising in their own right the management of the temple; though we shall find, on more than one occasion, that the Phocians contest this right, and lay claim to the management of it for themselves--a remnant of that early period when the oracle stood in the domain of the Phocian Crissa. There seems, moreover, to have been a standing antipathy between the Delphians and the Phocians. The Sacred War emanating from a solemn Amphictyonic decree, carried on jointly by troops of different states whom we do not know to have ever before coöperated, and directed exclusively toward an object of common interest--is in itself a fact of high importance, as manifesting a decided growth of pan-Hellenic feeling. Sparta is not named as interfering--a circumstance which seems remarkable when we consider both her power, even as it then stood, and her intimate connection with the Delphian oracle--while the Athenians appear as the chief movers, through the greatest and best of their citizens. The credit of a large-minded patriotism rests prominently upon them. But if this sacred war itself is a proof that the pan-Hellenic spirit was growing stronger, the positive result in which it ended reinforced that spirit still farther. The spoils of Cirrha were employed by the victorious allies in founding the Pythian games. The octennial festival hitherto celebrated at Delphi in honor of the god, including no other competition except in the harp and the pæan, was expanded into comprehensive games on the model of the Olympic, with matches not only of music, but also of gymnastics and chariots--celebrated, not at Delphi itself, but on the maritime plain near the ruined Cirrha--and under the direct superintendence of the Amphictyons themselves. I have already mentioned that Solon provided large rewards for such Athenians as gained victories in the Olympic and Isthmian games, thereby indicating his sense of the great value of the national games as a means of promoting Hellenic intercommunion. It was the same feeling which instigated the foundation of the new games on the Cirrhæan plain, in commemoration of the vindicated honor of Apollo, and in the territory newly made over to him. They were celebrated in the autumn, or first half of every third Olympic year; the Amphictyons being the ostensible _Agonothets_ or administrators, and appointing persons to discharge the duty in their names. At the first Pythian ceremony (in B.C. 586), valuable rewards were given to the different victors; at the second (B.C. 582), nothing was conferred but wreaths of laurel--the rapidly attained celebrity of the games being such as to render any further recompense superfluous. The Sicyonian despot, Clisthenes himself, once the leader in the conquest of Cirrha, gained the prize at the chariot-race of the second Pythia. We find other great personages in Greece frequently mentioned as competitors, and the games long maintained a dignity second only to the Olympic, over which indeed they had some advantages; first, that they were not abused for the purpose of promoting petty jealousies and antipathies of any administering state, as the Olympic games were perverted by the Eleans on more than one occasion; next, that they comprised music and poetry as well as bodily display. From the circumstances attending their foundation, the Pythian games deserved, even more than the Olympic, the title bestowed on them by Demosthenes--"the common _Agon_ of the Greeks." The Olympic and Pythian games continued always to be the most venerated solemnities in Greece. Yet the Nemea and Isthmia acquired a celebrity not much inferior; the Olympic prize counting for the highest of all. Both the Nemea and Isthmia were distinguished from the other two festivals by occurring not once in four years, but once in two years; the former in the second and fourth years of each Olympiad, the latter in the first and third years. To both is assigned, according to Greek custom, an origin connected with the interesting persons and circumstances of legendary antiquity; but our historical knowledge of both begins with the sixth century B.C. The first historical Nemead is presented as belonging to Olympiad B.C. 52 or 53 (572-568), a few years subsequent to the Sacred War above mentioned and to the origin of the Pythia. The festival was celebrated in honor of the Nemean Zeus, in the valley of Nemea between Philus and Cleonæ. The Cleonæans themselves were originally its presidents, until, some period after B.C. 460, the Argians deprived them of that honor and assumed the honors of administration to themselves. The Nemean games had their Hellanodicæ to superintend, to keep order, and to distribute the prizes, as well as the Olympic. Respecting the Isthmian festival, our first historical information is a little earlier, for it has already been stated that Solon conferred a premium upon every Athenian citizen who gained a prize at that festival as well as at the Olympian--in or after B.C. 594. It was celebrated by the Corinthians at their isthmus, in honor of Poseidon, and if we may draw any inference from the legends respecting its foundation, which is ascribed sometimes to Theseus, the Athenians appear to have identified it with the antiquities of their own state. We thus perceive that the interval between B.C. 600-560, exhibits the first historical manifestation of the Pythia, Isthmia, and Nemea--the first expansion of all the three from local into pan-Hellenic festivals. To the Olympic games, for some time the only great centre of union among all the widely dispersed Greeks, are now added three other sacred _Agones_ of the like public, open, national character; constituting visible marks, as well as tutelary bonds, of collective Hellenism, and insuring to every Greek who went to compete in the matches, a safe and inviolate transit even through hostile Hellenic states. These four, all in or near Peloponnesus, and one of which occurred in each year, formed the period or cycle of sacred games, and those who had gained prizes at all the four received the enviable designation of Periodonices. The honors paid to Olympic victors, on their return to their native city, were prodigious even in the sixth century B.C., and became even more extravagant afterward. We may remark that in the Olympic games alone, the oldest as well as the most illustrious of the four, the musical and intellectual element was wanting. All the three more recent _Agones_ included crowns for exercises of music and poetry, along with gymnastics, chariots, and horses. It was not only in the distinguishing national stamp set upon these four great festivals, that the gradual increase of Hellenic family feeling exhibited itself, during the course of this earliest period of Grecian history. Pursuant to the same tendencies, religious festivals in all the considerable towns gradually became more and more open and accessible, attracting guests as well as competitors from beyond the border. The comparative dignity of the city, as well as the honor rendered to the presiding god, were measured by the numbers, admiration, and envy, of the frequenting visitors. There is no positive evidence indeed of such expansion in the Attic festivals earlier than the reign of Pisistratus, who first added the quadrennial or greater Panathenæ to the ancient annual or lesser Panathenæa. Nor can we trace the steps of progress in regard to Thebes, Orchomenus, Thespiæ, Megara, Sicyon, Pellene, Ægina, Argos, etc., but we find full reason for believing that such was the general reality. Of the Olympic or Isthmian victors whom Pindar and Simonides celebrated, many derived a portion of their renown from previous victories acquired at several of these local contests--victories sometimes so numerous as to prove how widespread the habit of reciprocal frequentation had become: though we find, even in the third century B.C., treaties of alliance between different cities in which it is thought necessary to confer such mutual right by express stipulation. Temptation was offered, to the distinguished gymnastic or musical competitors, by prizes of great value. Timæus even asserted, as a proof of the overweening pride of Croton and Sybaris, that these cities tried to supplant the preëminence of the Olympic games by instituting games of their own with the richest prizes to be celebrated at the same time--a statement in itself not worthy of credit, yet nevertheless illustrating the animated rivalry known to prevail among the Grecian cities in procuring for themselves splendid and crowded games. At the time when the Homeric hymn to Demeter was composed, the worship of that goddess seems to have been purely local at Eleusis. But before the Persian war, the festival celebrated by the Athenians every year, in honor of the Eleusinian Demeter, admitted Greeks of all cities to be initiated, and was attended by vast crowds of them. It was thus that the simplicity and strict local application of the primitive religious festival among the greater states in Greece gradually expanded, on certain great occasions periodically recurring, into an elaborate and regulated series of exhibitions not merely admitting, but soliciting, the fraternal presence of all Hellenic spectators. In this respect Sparta seems to have formed an exception to the remaining states. Her festivals were for herself alone, and her general rudeness toward other Greeks was not materially softened even at the Carneia and Hyacinthia, or Gymnopædiæ. On the other hand, the Attic Dionysia were gradually exalted, from their original rude spontaneous outburst of village feeling in thankfulness to the god, followed by song, dance and revelry of various kinds, into costly and diversified performances, first by a trained chorus, next by actors superadded to it. And the dramatic compositions thus produced, as they embodied the perfection of Grecian art, so they were eminently calculated to invite a pan-Hellenic audience and to encourage the sentiment of Hellenic unity. The dramatic literature of Athens however belongs properly to a later period. Previous to the year B.C. 560, we see only those commencements of innovation which drew upon Thespis the rebuke of Solon; who however himself contributed to impart to the Panathenaic festival a more solemn and attractive character by checking the license of the rhapsodes and insuring to those present a full orderly recital of the _Iliad_. The sacred games and festivals took hold of the Greek mind by so great a variety of feelings as to counterbalance in a high degree the political disseverance, and to keep alive among their widespread cities, in the midst of constant jealousy and frequent quarrel, a feeling of brotherhood and congenial sentiment such as must otherwise have died away. The Theors, or sacred envoys who came to Olympia or Delphi from so many different points, all sacrificed to the same god and at the same altar, witnessed the same sports, and contributed by their donatives to enrich or adorn one respective scene. Moreover the festival afforded opportunity for a sort of fair, including much traffic amid so large a mass of spectators; and besides the exhibitions of the games themselves, there were recitations and lectures in a spacious council-room for those who chose to listen to them, by poets, rhapsodes, philosophers and historians--among which last the history of Herodotus is said to have been publicly read by its author. Of the wealthy and great men in the various cities, many contended simply for the chariot-victories and horse-victories. But there were others whose ambition was of a character more strictly personal, and who stripped naked as runners, wrestlers, boxers, or pancratiasts, having gone through the extreme fatigue of a complete previous training. Cylon, whose unfortunate attempt to usurp the scepter at Athens has been recounted, had gained the prize in the Olympic stadium; Alexander son of Amyntas, the prince of Macedon, had run for it; the great family of the Diagoridæ at Rhodes, who furnished magistrates and generals to their native city, supplied a still greater number of successful boxers and pancratiasts at Olympia, while other instances also occur of generals named by various cities from the list of successful Olympic gymnasts; and the odes of Pindar, always dearly purchased, attest how many of the great and wealthy were found in that list. The perfect popularity and equality of persons at these great games, is a feature not less remarkable than the exact adherence to predetermined rule, and the self-imposed submission of the immense crowd to a handful of servants armed with sticks, who executed the orders of the Elean Hellanodice. The ground upon which the ceremony took place, and even the territory of the administering state, was protected by a "Truce of God" during the month of the festival, the commencement of which was formally announced by heralds sent round to the different states. Treaties of peace between different cities were often formally commemorated by pillars there erected, and the general impression of the scene suggested nothing but ideas of peace and brotherhood among Greeks. And I may remark that the impression of the games as belonging to all Greeks, and to none but Greeks, was stronger and clearer during the interval between B.C. 600-300 than it came to be afterward. For the Macedonian conquests had the effect of diluting and corrupting Hellenism, by spreading an exterior varnish of Hellenic tastes and manners over a wide area of incongruous foreigners who were incapable of the real elevation of the Hellenic character; so that although in later times the games continued undiminished both in attraction and in number of visitors, the spirit of pan-Hellenic communion which had once animated the scene was gone forever. SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION B.C. 594 GEORGE GROTE Lycurgus, the reputed Spartan lawgiver, is credited with the construction, about B.C. 800, of the earliest Grecian commonwealth founded upon a specific code of laws. These laws had mainly a military basis, and through obedience to them the Spartans became a people of great hardiness, accustomed to self-discipline, famous for their prowess and endurance in war, and for sternness of individual and social virtues. In Athens there were no written laws until the time of Draco, B.C. 621, the government before that period having been long in the hands of an oligarchy. In the year above named Draco was archon, and to him was intrusted the work of framing a legal code, conditions under the oligarchic rule having become intolerable to the people at large. The chief features of Draco's legislation had reference to the punishment of crime, and so extreme were the severities of the system and so cruel the penalties it prescribed that in later times it was declared to have been written in blood. The Draconian laws remained in force until superseded by the great system of Solon, whose advent as the new lawgiver was brought about mainly through the conspiracy of Cylon, twelve years after the legislation of Draco. Affairs in Athens were in a deplorable state of confusion and violence, the revolt of the poor against the power and privilege of the rich leading to dangerous dissensions and collisions. Solon, who enjoyed a universal reputation for wisdom and uprightness, was called upon by the oligarchy, which again held rule, to assume what was, in fact, almost absolute power. The character of his legislation and its influence upon the course of Greek history have been set forth by many authors, and the following account is perhaps the best that has appeared in modern literature. Solon, son of Execestides, was a Eupatrid of middling fortune, but of the purest heroic blood, belonging to the _gens_ or family of the Codrids and Neleids, and tracing his origin to the god Poseidon. His father is said to have diminished his substance by prodigality, which compelled Solon in his earlier years to have recourse to trade, and in this pursuit he visited many parts of Greece and Asia. He was thus enabled to enlarge the sphere of his observation, and to provide material for thought as well as for composition. His poetical talents displayed themselves at a very early age, first on light, afterward on serious subjects. It will be recollected that there was at that time no Greek prose writing, and that the acquisitions as well as the effusions of an intellectual man, even in their simplest form, adjusted themselves not to the limitations of the period and the semicolon, but to those of the hexameter and pentameter. Nor, in point of fact, do the verses of Solon aspire to any higher effect than we are accustomed to associate with an earnest, touching, and admonitory prose composition. The advice and appeals which he frequently addressed to his countrymen were delivered in this easy metre, doubtless far less difficult than the elaborate prose of subsequent writers or speakers, such as Thucydides, Isocrates, or Demosthenes. His poetry and his reputation became known throughout many parts of Greece, so that he was classed along with Thales of Miletus, Bias of Priene, Pittacus of Mitylene, Periander of Corinth, Cleobulus of Lindus, Cheilon of Lacedæmon--altogether forming the constellation afterward renowned as the seven wise men. The first particular event in respect to which Solon appears as an active politician, is the possession of the island of Salamis, then disputed between Megara and Athens. Megara was at that time able to contest with Athens, and for some time to contest with success, the occupation of this important island--a remarkable fact, which perhaps may be explained by supposing that the inhabitants of Athens and its neighborhood carried on the struggle with only partial aid from the rest of Attica. However this may be, it appears that the Megarians had actually established themselves in Salamis, at the time when Solon began his political career, and that the Athenians had experienced so much loss in the struggle as to have formally prohibited any citizen from ever submitting a proposition for its reconquest. Stung with this dishonorable abnegation, Solon counterfeited a state of ecstatic excitement, rushed into the agora, and there on the stone usually occupied by the official herald, pronounced to the surrounding crowd a short elegiac poem which he had previously composed on the subject of Salamis. Enforcing upon them the disgrace of abandoning the island, he wrought so powerfully upon their feelings that they rescinded the prohibitory law. "Rather (he exclaimed) would I forfeit my native city and become a citizen of Pholegandrus, than be still named an Athenian, branded with the shame of surrendered Salamis!" The Athenians again entered into the war, and conferred upon him the command of it--partly, as we are told, at the instigation of Pisistratus, though the latter must have been at this time (B.C. 600-594) a very young man, or rather a boy. The stories in Plutarch, as to the way in which Salamis was recovered, are contradictory as well as apocryphal, ascribing to Solon various stratagems to deceive the Megarian occupiers. Unfortunately no authority is given for any of them. According to that which seems the most plausible, he was directed by the Delphian god first to propitiate the local heroes of the island; and he accordingly crossed over to it by night, for the purpose of sacrificing to the heroes Periphemus and Cychreus on the Salaminian shore. Five hundred Athenian volunteers were then levied for the attack of the island, under the stipulation that if they were victorious they should hold it in property and citizenship. They were safely landed on an outlying promontory, while Solon, having been fortunate enough to seize a ship which the Megarians had sent to watch the proceedings, manned it with Athenians and sailed straight toward the city of Salamis, to which the Athenians who had landed also directed their march. The Megarians marched out from the city to repel the latter, and during the heat of the engagement Solon, with his Megarian ship and Athenian crew, sailed directly to the city. The Megarians, interpreting this as the return of their own crew, permitted the ship to approach without resistance, and the city was thus taken by surprise. Permission having been given to the Megarians to quit the island, Solon took possession of it for the Athenians, erecting a temple to Enyalius, the god of war, on Cape Sciradium, near the city of Salamis. The citizens of Megara, however, made various efforts for the recovery of so valuable a possession, so that a war ensued long as well as disastrous to both parties. At last it was agreed between them to refer the dispute to the arbitration of Sparta, and five Spartans were appointed to decide it--Critolaidas, Amompharetus, Hypsechidas, Anaxilas, and Cleomenes. The verdict in favor of Athens was founded on evidence which it is somewhat curious to trace. Both parties attempted to show that the dead bodies buried in the island conformed to their own peculiar mode of interment, and both parties are said to have cited verses from the catalogue of the _Iliad_--each accusing the other of error or interpolation. But the Athenians had the advantage on two points: first, there were oracles from Delphi, wherein Salamis was mentioned with the epithet Ionian; next Philæus and Eurysaces, sons of the Telamonian Ajax, the great hero of the island, had accepted the citizenship of Athens, made over Salamis to the Athenians, and transferred their own residences to Brauron and Melite in Attica, where the _deme_, or _gens_, Philaidæ still worshipped Philæus as its eponymous ancestor. Such a title was held sufficient, and Salamis was adjudged by the five Spartans to Attica, with which it ever afterward remained incorporated until the days of Macedonian supremacy. Two centuries and a half later, when the orator Æschines argued the Athenian right to Amphipolis against Philip of Macedon, the legendary elements of the title were indeed put forward, but more in the way of preface or introduction to the substantial political grounds. But in the year 600 B.C. the authority of the legend was more deep-seated and operative, and adequate by itself to determine a favorable verdict. In addition to the conquest of Salamis, Solon increased his reputation by espousing the cause of the Delphian temple against the extortionate proceedings of the inhabitants of Cirrha, and the favor of the oracle was probably not without its effect in procuring for him that encouraging prophecy with which his legislative career opened. It is on the occasion of Solon's legislation that we obtain our first glimpse--unfortunately but a glimpse--of the actual state of Attica and its inhabitants. It is a sad and repulsive picture, presenting to us political discord and private suffering combined. Violent dissensions prevailed among the inhabitants of Attica, who were separated into three factions--the Pedieis, or men of the plain, comprising Athens, Eleusis, and the neighboring territory, among whom the greatest number of rich families were included; the mountaineers in the east and north of Attica, called Diacrii, who were, on the whole, the poorest party; and the Paralii in the southern portion of Attica from sea to sea, whose means and social position were intermediate between the two. Upon what particular points these intestine disputes turned we are not distinctly informed. They were not, however, peculiar to the period immediately preceding the archonship of Solon. They had prevailed before, and they reappear afterward prior to the despotism of Pisistratus; the latter standing forward as the leader of the Diacrii, and as champion, real or pretended, of the poorer population. But in the time of Solon these intestine quarrels were aggravated by something much more difficult to deal with--a general mutiny of the poorer population against the rich, resulting from misery combined with oppression. The Thetes, whose condition we have already contemplated in the poems of Homer and Hesiod, are now presented to us as forming the bulk of the population of Attica--the cultivating tenants, metayers, and small proprietors of the country. They are exhibited as weighed down by debts and dependence, and driven in large numbers out of a state of freedom into slavery--the whole mass of them (we are told) being in debt to the rich, who were proprietors of the greater part of the soil. They had either borrowed money for their own necessities, or they tilled the lands of the rich as dependent tenants, paying a stipulated portion of the produce, and in this capacity they were largely in arrear. All the calamitous effects were here seen of the old harsh law of debtor and creditor--once prevalent in Greece, Italy, Asia, and a large portion of the world--combined with the recognition of slavery as a legitimate status, and of the right of one man to sell himself as well as that of another man to buy him. Every debtor unable to fulfil his contract was liable to be adjudged as the slave of his creditor, until he could find means either of paying it or working it out; and not only he himself, but his minor sons and unmarried daughters and sisters also, whom the law gave him the power of selling. The poor man thus borrowed upon the security of his body (to translate literally the Greek phrase) and upon that of the persons in his family. So severely had these oppressive contracts been enforced, that many debtors had been reduced from freedom to slavery in Attica itself, many others had been sold for exportation, and some had only hitherto preserved their own freedom by selling their children. Moreover, a great number of the smaller properties in Attica were under mortgage, signified--according to the formality usual in the Attic law, and continued down throughout the historical times--by a stone pillar erected on the land, inscribed with the name of the lender and the amount of the loan. The proprietors of these mortgaged lands, in case of an unfavorable turn of events, had no other prospect except that of irremediable slavery for themselves and their families, either in their own native country robbed of all its delights, or in some barbarian region where the Attic accent would never meet their ears. Some had fled the country to escape legal adjudication of their persons, and earned a miserable subsistence in foreign parts by degrading occupations. Upon several, too, this deplorable lot had fallen by unjust condemnation and corrupt judges; the conduct of the rich, in regard to money sacred and profane, in regard to matters public as well as private, being thoroughly unprincipled and rapacious. The manifold and long-continued suffering of the poor under this system, plunged into a state of debasement not more tolerable than that of the Gallic _plebs_--and the injustices of the rich, in whom all political power was then vested--are facts well attested by the poems of Solon himself, even in the short fragments preserved to us. It appears that immediately preceding the time of his archonship the evils had ripened to such a point, and the determination of the mass of sufferers to extort for themselves some mode of relief had become so pronounced, that the existing laws could no longer be enforced. According to the profound remark of Aristotle--that seditions are generated by great causes but out of small incidents--we may conceive that some recent events had occurred as immediate stimulants to the outbreak of the debtors, like those which lent so striking an interest to the early Roman annals, as the inflaming sparks of violent popular movements for which the train had long before been laid. Condemnations by the archons of insolvent debtors may have been unusually numerous; or the maltreatment of some particular debtor, once a respected freeman, in his condition of slavery, may have been brought to act vividly upon the public sympathies; like the case of the old plebeian centurion at Rome--first impoverished by the plunder of the enemy, then reduced to borrow, and lastly adjudged to his creditor as an insolvent--who claimed the protection of the people in the forum, rousing their feelings to the highest pitch by the marks of the slave-whip visible on his person. Some such incidents had probably happened, though we have no historians to recount them. Moreover, it is not unreasonable to imagine that that public mental affliction which the purifier Epimenides had been invoked to appease, as it sprung in part from pestilence, so it had its cause partly in years of sterility, which must of course have aggravated the distress of the small cultivators. However this may be, such was the condition of things in B.C. 594 through mutiny of the poor freemen and _Thetes_, and uneasiness of the middling citizens, that the governing oligarchy, unable either to enforce their private debts or to maintain their political power, were obliged to invoke the well-known wisdom and integrity of Solon. Though his vigorous protest--which doubtless rendered him acceptable to the mass of the people--against the iniquity of the existing system had already been proclaimed in his poems, they still hoped that he would serve as an auxiliary to help them over their difficulties. They therefore chose him, nominally as archon along with Philombrotus, but with power in substance dictatorial. It had happened in several Grecian states that the governing oligarchies, either by quarrels among their own members or by the general bad condition of the people under their government, were deprived of that hold upon the public mind which was essential to their power. Sometimes--as in the case of Pittacus of Mitylene anterior to the archonship of Solon, and often in the factions of the Italian republics in the middle ages--the collision of opposing forces had rendered society intolerable, and driven all parties to acquiesce in the choice of some reforming dictator. Usually, however, in the early Greek oligarchies, this ultimate crisis was anticipated by some ambitious individual, who availed himself of the public discontent to overthrow the oligarchy and usurp the powers of a despot. And so probably it might have happened in Athens, had not the recent failure of Cylon, with all its miserable consequences, operated as a deterring motive. It is curious to read, in the words of Solon himself, the temper in which his appointment was construed by a large portion of the community, but more especially by his own friends: bearing in mind that at this early day, so far as our knowledge goes, democratical government was a thing unknown in Greece--all Grecian governments were either oligarchical or despotic--the mass of the freemen having not yet tasted of constitutional privilege. His own friends and supporters were the first to urge him, while redressing the prevalent discontents, to multiply partisans for himself personally, and seize the supreme power. They even "chid him as a mad-man, for declining to haul up the net when the fish were already enmeshed." The mass of the people, in despair with their lot, would gladly have seconded him in such an attempt; while many even among the oligarchy might have acquiesced in his personal government, from the mere apprehension of something worse if they resisted it. That Solon might easily have made himself despot admits of little doubt. And though the position of a Greek despot was always perilous, he would have had greater facility for maintaining himself in it than Pisistratus possessed after him; so that nothing but the combination of prudence and virtue, which marks his lofty character, restricted him within the trust specially confided to him. To the surprise of every one--to the dissatisfaction of his own friends--under the complaints alike (as he says) of various extreme and dissentient parties, who required him to adopt measures fatal to the peace of society--he set himself honestly to solve the very difficult and critical problem submitted to him. Of all grievances, the most urgent was the condition of the poorer class of debtors. To their relief Solon's first measure, the memorable _Seisachtheia_, or shaking off of burdens, was directed. The relief which it afforded was complete and immediate. It cancelled at once all those contracts in which the debtor had borrowed on the security either of his person or of his land: it forbade all future loans or contracts in which the person of the debtor was pledged as security; it deprived the creditor in future of all power to imprison, or enslave, or extort work, from his debtor, and confined him to an effective judgment at law authorizing the seizure of the property of the latter. It swept off all the numerous mortgage pillars from the landed properties in Attica, leaving the land free from all past claims. It liberated and restored to their full rights all debtors actually in slavery under previous legal adjudication; and it even provided the means (we do not know how) of repurchasing in foreign lands, and bringing back to a renewed life of liberty in Attica, many insolvents who had been sold for exportation. And while Solon forbade every Athenian to pledge or sell his own person into slavery, he took a step farther in the same direction by forbidding him to pledge or sell his son, his daughter, or an unmarried sister under his tutelage--excepting only the case in which either of the latter might be detected in unchastity. Whether this last ordinance was contemporaneous with the Seisachtheia, or followed as one of his subsequent reforms, seems doubtful. By this extensive measure the poor debtors--the Thetes, small tenants, and proprietors--together with their families, were rescued from suffering and peril. But these were not the only debtors in the state: the creditors and landlords of the exonerated Thetes were doubtless in their turn debtors to others, and were less able to discharge their obligations in consequence of the loss inflicted upon them by the Seisachtheia. It was to assist these wealthier debtors, whose bodies were in no danger--yet without exonerating them entirely--that Solon resorted to the additional expedient of debasing the money standard. He lowered the standard of the drachma in a proportion of something more than 25 per cent., so that 100 drachmas of the new standard contained no more silver than 73 of the old, or 100 of the old were equivalent to 138 of the new. By this change the creditors of these more substantial debtors were obliged to submit to a loss, while the debtors acquired an exemption to the extent of about 27 per cent. Lastly, Solon decreed that all those who had been condemned by the archons to _atimy_ (civil disfranchisement) should be restored to their full privileges of citizens--excepting, however, from this indulgence those who had been condemned by the Ephetæ, or by the Areopagus, or by the Phylo-Basileis (the four kings of the tribes), after trial in the Prytaneum, on charges either of murder or treason. So wholesale a measure of amnesty affords strong grounds for believing that the previous judgments of the archons had been intolerably harsh; and it is to be recollected that the Draconian ordinances were then in force. Such were the measures of relief with which Solon met the dangerous discontent then prevalent. That the wealthy men and leaders of the people--whose insolence and iniquity he has himself severely denounced in his poems, and whose views in nominating him he had greatly disappointed--should have detested propositions which robbed them without compensation of many legal rights, it is easy to imagine. But the statement of Plutarch that the poor emancipated debtors were also dissatisfied, from having expected that Solon would not only remit their debts, but also redivide the soil of Attica, seems utterly incredible; nor is it confirmed by any passage now remaining of the Solonian poems. Plutarch conceives the poor debtors as having in their minds the comparison with Lycurgus and the equality of property at Sparta, which, in my opinion, is clearly a matter of fiction; and even had it been true as a matter of history long past and antiquated, would not have been likely to work upon the minds of the multitude of Attica in the forcible way that the biographer supposes. The Seisachtheia must have exasperated the feelings and diminished the fortunes of many persons; but it gave to the large body of Thetes and small proprietors all that they could possibly have hoped. We are told that after a short interval it became eminently acceptable in the general public mind, and procured for Solon a great increase of popularity--all ranks concurring in a common sacrifice of thanksgiving and harmony. One incident there was which occasioned an outcry of indignation. Three rich friends of Solon, all men of great family in the state, and bearing names which appear in history as borne by their descendants--namely: Conon, Cleinias, and Hipponicus--having obtained from Solon some previous hint of his designs, profited by it, first to borrow money, and next to make purchases of lands; and this selfish breach of confidence would have disgraced Solon himself, had it not been found that he was personally a great loser, having lent money to the extent of five talents. In regard to the whole measure of the Seisachtheia, indeed, though the poems of Solon were open to every one, ancient authors gave different statements both of its purport and of its extent. Most of them construed it as having cancelled indiscriminately all money contracts; while Androtion and others thought that it did nothing more than lower the rate of interest and depreciate the currency to the extent of 27 per cent., leaving the letter of the contracts unchanged. How Androtion came to maintain such an opinion we cannot easily understand. For the fragments now remaining from Solon seem distinctly to refute it, though, on the other hand, they do not go so far as to substantiate the full extent of the opposite view entertained by many writers--that all money contracts indiscriminately were rescinded--against which there is also a further reason, that if the fact had been so, Solon could have had no motive to debase the money standard. Such debasement supposes that there must have been _some_ debtors at least whose contracts remained valid, and whom nevertheless he desired partially to assist. His poems distinctly mention three things: 1. The removal of the mortgage-pillars. 2. The enfranchisement of the land. 3. The protection, liberation, and restoration of the persons of endangered or enslaved debtors. All these expressions point distinctly to the Thetes and small proprietors, whose sufferings and peril were the most urgent, and whose case required a remedy immediate as well as complete. We find that his repudiation of debts was carried far enough to exonerate them, but no farther. It seems to have been the respect entertained for the character of Solon which partly occasioned these various misconceptions of his ordinances for the relief of debtors. Androtion in ancient, and some eminent critics in modern times are anxious to make out that he gave relief without loss or injustice to any one. But this opinion seems inadmissible. The loss to creditors by the wholesale abrogation of numerous preëxisting contracts, and by the partial depreciation of the coin, is a fact not to be disguised. The Seisachtheia of Solon, unjust so far as it rescinded previous agreements, but highly salutary in its consequences, is to be vindicated by showing that in no other way could the bonds of government have been held together, or the misery of the multitude alleviated. We are to consider, first, the great personal cruelty of these preëxisting contracts, which condemned the body of the free debtor and his family to slavery; next, the profound detestation created by such a system in the large mass of the poor, against both the judges and the creditors by whom it had been enforced, which rendered their feelings unmanageable so soon as they came together under the sentiment of a common danger and with the determination to insure to each other mutual protection. Moreover, the law which vests a creditor with power over the person of his debtor so as to convert him into a slave, is likely to give rise to a class of loans which inspire nothing but abhorrence--money lent with the foreknowledge that the borrower will be unable to repay it, but also in the conviction that the value of his person as a slave will make good the loss; thus reducing him to a condition of extreme misery, for the purpose sometimes of aggrandizing, sometimes of enriching, the lender. Now the foundation on which the respect for contracts rests, under a good law of debtor and creditor, is the very reverse of this. It rests on the firm conviction that such contracts are advantageous to both parties as a class, and that to break up the confidence essential to their existence would produce extensive mischief throughout all society. The man whose reverence for the obligation of a contract is now the most profound, would have entertained a very different sentiment if he had witnessed the dealings of lender and borrower at Athens under the old ante-Solonian law. The oligarchy had tried their best to enforce this law of debtor and creditor with its disastrous series of contracts, and the only reason why they consented to invoke the aid of Solon was because they had lost the power of enforcing it any longer, in consequence of the newly awakened courage and combination of the people. That which they could not do for themselves, Solon could not have done for them, even had he been willing. Nor had he in his position the means either of exempting or compensating those creditors who, separately taken, were open to no reproach; indeed, in following his proceedings, we see plainly that he thought compensation due, not to the creditors, but to the past sufferings of the enslaved debtor, since he redeemed several of them from foreign captivity, and brought them back to their homes. It is certain that no measure simply and exclusively prospective would have sufficed for the emergency. There was an absolute necessity for overruling all that class of preëxisting rights which had produced so violent a social fever. While, therefore, to this extent, the Seisachtheia cannot be acquitted of injustice, we may confidently affirm that the injustice inflicted was an indispensable price paid for the maintenance of the peace of society, and for the final abrogation of a disastrous system as regarded insolvents. And the feeling as well as the legislation universal in the modern European world, by interdicting beforehand all contracts for selling a man's person or that of his children into slavery, goes far to sanction practically the Solonian repudiation. One thing is never to be forgotten in regard to this measure, combined with the concurrent amendments introduced by Solon in the law--it settled finally the question to which it referred. Never again do we hear of the law of debtor and creditor as disturbing Athenian tranquillity. The general sentiment which grew up at Athens, under the Solonian money-law and under the democratical government, was one of high respect for the sanctity of contracts. Not only was there never any demand in the Athenian democracy for new tables or a depreciation of the money standard, but a formal abnegation of any such projects was inserted in the solemn oath taken annually by the numerous Dicasts, who formed the popular judicial body called Heliæa or the Heliastic jurors: the same oath which pledged them to uphold the democratical constitution, also bound them to repudiate all proposals either for an abrogation of debts or for a redivision of the lands. There can be little doubt that under the Solonian law, which enabled the creditor to seize the property of his debtor, but gave him no power over the person, the system of money-lending assumed a more beneficial character. The old noxious contracts, mere snares for the liberty of a poor freeman and his children, disappeared, and loans of money took their place, founded on the property and prospective earnings of the debtor, which were in the main useful to both parties, and therefore maintained their place in the moral sentiment of the public. And though Solon had found himself compelled to rescind all the mortgages on land subsisting in his time, we see money freely lent upon this same security throughout the historical times of Athens, and the evidentiary mortgage-pillars remaining ever after undisturbed. In the sentiment of an early society, as in the old Roman law, a distinction is commonly made between the principal and the interest of a loan, though the creditors have sought to blend them indissolubly together. If the borrower cannot fulfil his promise to repay the principal, the public will regard him as having committed a wrong which he must make good by his person. But there is not the same unanimity as to his promise to pay interest: on the contrary, the very exaction of interest will be regarded by many in the same light in which the English law considers usurious interest, as tainting the whole transaction. But in the modern mind, principal, and interest within a limited rate, have so grown together, that we hardly understand how it can ever have been pronounced unworthy of an honorable citizen to lend money on interest. Yet such is the declared opinion of Aristotle and other superior men of antiquity; while at Rome, Cato the censor went so far as to denounce the practice as a heinous crime. It was comprehended by them among the worst of the tricks of trade--and they held that all trade, or profit derived from interchange, was unnatural, as being made by one man at the expense of another; such pursuits therefore could not be commended, though they might be tolerated to a certain extent as a matter of necessity, but they belonged essentially to an inferior order of citizens. What is remarkable in Greece is, that the antipathy of a very early state of society against traders and money-lenders lasted longer among the philosophers than among the mass of the people--it harmonized more with the social _idéal_ of the former, than with the practical instincts of the latter. In a rude condition such as that of the ancient Germans described by Tacitus, loans on interest are unknown. Habitually careless of the future, the Germans were gratified both in giving and receiving presents, but without any idea that they thereby either imposed or contracted an obligation. To a people in this state of feeling, a loan on interest presents the repulsive idea of making profit out of the distress of the borrower. Moreover, it is worthy of remark that the first borrowers must have been for the most part men driven to this necessity by the pressure of want, and contracting debt as a desperate resource, without any fair prospect of ability to repay: debt and famine run together in the mind of the poet Hesiod. The borrower is, in this unhappy state, rather a distressed man soliciting aid than a solvent man capable of making and fulfilling a contract. If he cannot find a friend to make him a free gift in the former character, he will not, under the latter character, obtain a loan from a stranger, except by the promise of exorbitant interest, and by the fullest eventual power over his person which he is in a condition to grant. In process of time a new class of borrowers arise who demand money for temporary convenience or profit, but with full prospect of repayment--a relation of lender and borrower quite different from that of the earlier period, when it presented itself in the repulsive form of misery on the one side, set against the prospect of very large profit on the other. If the Germans of the time of Tacitus looked to the condition of the poor debtors in Gaul, reduced to servitude under a rich creditor, and swelling by hundreds the crowd of his attendants, they would not be disposed to regret their own ignorance of the practice of money-lending. How much the interest of money was then regarded as an undue profit extorted from distress is powerfully illustrated by the old Jewish law; the Jew being permitted to take interest from foreigners--whom the lawgiver did not think himself obliged to protect--but not from his own countrymen. The _Koran_ follows out this point of view consistently, and prohibits the taking of interest altogether. In most other nations laws have been made to limit the rate of interest, and at Rome especially the legal rate was successively lowered--though it seems, as might have been expected, that the restrictive ordinances were constantly eluded. All such restrictions have been intended for the protection of debtors; an effect which large experience proves them never to produce, unless it be called protection to render the obtaining of money on loan impracticable for the most distressed borrowers. But there was another effect which they _did_ tend to produce--they softened down the primitive antipathy against the practice generally, and confined the odious name of usury to loans lent above the fixed legal rate. In this way alone could they operate beneficially, and their tendency to counterwork the previous feeling was at that time not unimportant, coinciding as it did with other tendencies arising out of the industrial progress of society, which gradually exhibited the relation of lender and borrower in a light more reciprocal, beneficial, and less repugnant to the sympathies of the bystander. At Athens the more favorable point of view prevailed throughout all the historical times. The march of industry and commerce, under the mitigated law which prevailed subsequently to Solon, had been sufficient to bring it about at a very early period and to suppress all public antipathy against lenders at interest. We may remark, too, that this more equitable tone of opinion grew up spontaneously, without any legal restriction on the rate of interest--no such restriction having ever been imposed and the rate being expressly declared free by a law ascribed to Solon himself. The same may probably be said of the communities of Greece generally--at least there is no information to make us suppose the contrary. But the feeling against lending money at interest remained in the bosoms of the philosophical men long after it had ceased to form a part of the practical morality of the citizens, and long after it had ceased to be justified by the appearances of the case as at first it really had been. Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Plutarch, treat the practice as a branch of the commercial and money-getting spirit which they are anxious to discourage; and one consequence of this was that they were, less disposed to contend strenuously for the inviolability of existing money-contracts. The conservative feeling on this point was stronger among the mass than among the philosophers. Plato even complains of it as inconveniently preponderant, and as arresting the legislator in all comprehensive projects of reform. For the most part, indeed, schemes of cancelling debts and redividing lands were never thought of except by men of desperate and selfish ambition, who made them stepping-stones to despotic power. Such men were denounced alike by the practical sense of the community and by the speculative thinkers: but when we turn to the case of the Spartan king, Agis III, who proposed a complete extinction of debts and an equal redivision of the landed property of the state, not with any selfish or personal views, but upon pure ideas of patriotism, well or ill understood, and for the purpose of renovating the lost ascendancy of Sparta--we find Plutarch expressing the most unqualified admiration of this young king and his projects, and treating the opposition made to him as originating in no better feelings than meanness and cupidity. The philosophical thinkers on politics conceived--and to a great degree justly, as I shall show hereafter--that the conditions of security, in the ancient world, imposed upon the citizens generally the absolute necessity of keeping up a military spirit and willingness to brave at all times personal hardship and discomfort: so that increase of wealth, on account of the habits of self-indulgence which it commonly introduces, was regarded by them with more or less of disfavor. If in their estimation any Grecian community had become corrupt, they were willing to sanction great interference with preëxisting rights for the purpose of bringing it back nearer to their ideal standard. And the real security for the maintenance of these rights lay in the conservative feelings of the citizens generally, much more than in the opinions which superior minds imbibed from the philosophers. Such conservative feelings were in the subsequent Athenian democracy peculiarly deep-rooted. The mass of the Athenian people identified inseparably the maintenance of property in all its various shapes with that of their laws and constitution. And it is a remarkable fact, that though the admiration entertained at Athens for Solon was universal, the principle of his Seisachtheia and of his money-depreciation was not only never imitated, but found the strongest tacit reprobation; whereas at Rome, as well as in most of the kingdoms of modern Europe, we know that one debasement of the coin succeeded another. The temptation of thus partially eluding the pressure of financial embarrassments proved, after one successful trial, too strong to be resisted, and brought down the coin by successive depreciations from the full pound of twelve ounces to the standard of one half ounce. It is of some importance to take notice of this fact, when we reflect how much "Grecian faith" has been degraded by the Roman writers into a byword for duplicity in pecuniary dealings. The democracy of Athens--and indeed the cities of Greece generally, both oligarchies and democracies--stands far above the senate of Rome, and far above the modern kingdoms of France and England until comparatively recent times, in respect of honest dealing with the coinage. Moreover, while there occurred at Rome several political changes which brought about new tables, or at least a partial depreciation of contracts, no phenomenon of the same kind ever happened at Athens, during the three centuries between Solon and the end of the free working of the democracy, Doubtless there were fraudulent debtors at Athens; while the administration of private law, though not in any way conniving at their proceedings, was far too imperfect to repress them as effectually as might have been wished. But the public sentiment on the point was just and decided. It may be asserted with confidence that a loan of money at Athens was quite as secure as it ever was at any time or place of the ancient world--in spite of the great and important superiority of Rome with respect to the accumulation of a body of authoritative legal precedent, the source of what was ultimately shaped into the Roman jurisprudence. Among the various causes of sedition or mischief in the Grecian communities, we hear little of the pressure of private debt. By the measures of relief above described, Solon had accomplished results surpassing his own best hopes. He had healed the prevailing discontents; and such was the confidence and gratitude which he had inspired, that he was now called upon to draw up a constitution and laws for the better working of the government in future. His constitutional changes were great and valuable: respecting his laws, what we hear is rather curious than important. It has been already stated that, down to the time of Solon, the classification received in Attica was that of the four Ionic tribes, comprising in one scale the Phratries and Gentes, and in another scale the three Trittyes and forty-eight Naucraries--while the Eupatridæ, seemingly a few specially respected gentes, and perhaps a few distinguished families in all the gentes, had in their hands all the powers of government. Solon introduced a new principle of classification--called in Greek the "timocratic principle." He distributed all the citizens of the tribes, without any reference to their gentes or phratries, into four classes, according to the amount of their property, which he caused to be assessed and entered in a public schedule. Those whose annual income was equal to five hundred medimni of corn (about seven hundred imperial bushels) and upward--one medimnus being considered equivalent to one drachma in money--he placed in the highest class; those who received between three hundred and five hundred medimni or drachmas formed the second class; and those between two hundred and three hundred, the third. The fourth and most numerous class comprised all those who did not possess land yielding a produce equal to two hundred medimni. The first class, called Pentacosiomedimni, were alone eligible to the archonship and to all commands: the second were called the knights or horsemen of the state, as possessing enough to enable them to keep a horse and perform military service in that capacity: the third class, called the [Greek: Zeugitæ], formed the heavy-armed infantry, and were bound to serve, each with his full panoply. Each of these three classes was entered in the public schedule as possessed of a taxable capital calculated with a certain reference to his annual income, but in a proportion diminishing according to the scale of that income--and a man paid taxes to the state according to the sum for which he stood rated in the schedule; so that this direct taxation acted really like a graduated income-tax. The ratable property of the citizen belonging to the richest class (the Pentacosiomedimnus) was calculated and entered on the state schedule at a sum of capital equal to twelve times his annual income; that of the Hippeus, horseman or knight, at a sum equal to ten times his annual income: that of the Zeugite, at a sum equal to five times his annual income. Thus a Pentacosiomedimnus, whose income was exactly 500 drachmas (the minimum qualification of his class), stood rated in the schedule for a taxable property of 6,000 drachmas or one talent, being twelve times his income--if his annual income were 1,000 drachmas, he would stand rated for 12,000 drachmas or two talents, being the same proportion of income to ratable capital. But when we pass to the second class, horsemen or knights, the proportion of the two is changed. The horseman possessing an income of just 300 drachmas (or 300 medimni) would stand rated for 3,000 drachmas, or ten times his real income, and so in the same proportion for any income above 300 and below 500. Again, in the third class, or below 300, the proportion is a second time altered--the Zeugite possessing exactly 200 drachmas of income was rated upon a still lower calculation, at 1,000 drachmas, or a sum equal to five times his income; and all incomes of this class (between 200 and 300 drachmas) would in like manner be multiplied by five in order to obtain the amount of ratable capital. Upon these respective sums of schedule capital all direct taxation was levied. If the state required 1 percent of direct tax, the poorest Pentacosiomedimnus would pay (upon 6,000 drachmas) 60 drachmas; the poorest Hippeus would pay (upon 3,000 drachmas) 30; the poorest Zeugite would pay (upon 1,000 drachmas) 10 drachmas. And thus this mode of assessment would operate like a _graduated_ income-tax, looking at it in reference to the three different classes--but as an _equal_ income-tax, looking at it in reference to the different individuals comprised in one and the same class. All persons in the state whose annual income amounted to less than two hundred medimni or drachmas were placed in the fourth class, and they must have constituted the large majority of the community. They were not liable to any direct taxation, and perhaps were not at first even entered upon the taxable schedule, more especially as we do not know that any taxes were actually levied upon this schedule during the Solonian times. It is said that they were all called Thetes, but this appellation is not well sustained, and cannot be admitted: the fourth compartment in the descending scale was indeed termed the Thetic census, because it contained all the Thetes, and because most of its members were of that humble description; but it is not conceivable that a proprietor whose land yielded to him a clear annual return of 100, 120, 140, or 180 drachmas, could ever have been designated by that name. Such were the divisions in the political scale established by Solon, called by Aristotle a _timocracy_, in which the rights, honors, functions, and liabilities of the citizens were measured out according to the assessed property of each. The highest honors of the state--that is, the places of the nine archons annually chosen, as well as those in the senate of Areopagus, into which the past archons always entered (perhaps also the posts of Prytanes of the Naukrari) were reserved for the first class: the poor Eupatrids became ineligible, while rich men, not Eupatrids, were admitted. Other posts of inferior distinction were filled by the second and third classes, who were, moreover, bound to military service--the one on horseback, the other as heavy-armed soldiers on foot. Moreover, the _liturgies_ of the state, as they were called--unpaid functions such as the trierarchy, choregy, gymnasiarchy, etc., which entailed expense and trouble on the holder of them--were distributed in some way or other between the members of the three classes, though we do not know how the distribution was made in these early times. On the other hand, the members of the fourth or lowest class were disqualified from holding any individual office of dignity. They performed no liturgies, served in case of war only as light-armed or with a panoply provided by the state, and paid nothing to the direct property-tax or Eisphora. It would be incorrect to say that they paid _no_ taxes, for indirect taxes, such as duties on imports, fell upon them in common with the rest; and we must recollect that these latter were, throughout a long period of Athenian history, in steady operation, while the direct taxes were only levied on rare occasions. But though this fourth class, constituting the great numerical majority of the free people, were shut out from individual office, their collective importance was in another way greatly increased. They were invested with the right of choosing the annual archons, out of the class of Pentacosiomedimni; and what was of more importance still, the archons and the magistrates generally, after their year of office, instead of being accountable to the senate of Areopagus, were made formally accountable to the public assembly sitting in judgment upon their past conduct. They might be impeached and called upon to defend themselves, punished in case of misbehavior, and debarred from the usual honor of a seat in the senate of Areopagus. Had the public assembly been called upon to act alone without aid or guidance, this accountability would have proved only nominal. But Solon converted it into a reality by another new institution, which will hereafter be found of great moment in the working out of the Athenian democracy. He created the pro-bouleutic, or pre-considering senate, with intimate and especial reference to the public assembly--to prepare matters for its discussion, to convoke and superintend its meetings, and to insure the execution of its decrees. The senate, as first constituted by Solon, comprised four hundred members, taken in equal proportions from the four tribes; not chosen by lot, as they will be found to be in the more advanced stage of the democracy, but elected by the people, in the same way as the archons then were--persons of the fourth, or poorest class of the census, though contributing to elect, not being themselves eligible. But while Solon thus created the new pre-considering senate, identified with and subsidiary to the popular assembly, he manifested no jealousy of the preëxisting Areopagitic senate. On the contrary, he enlarged its powers, gave to it an ample supervision over the execution of the laws generally, and imposed upon it the censorial duty of inspecting the lives and occupation of the citizens, as well as of punishing men of idle and dissolute habits. He was himself, as past archon, a member of this ancient senate, and he is said to have contemplated that by means of the two senates the state would be held fast, as it were with a double anchor, against all shocks and storms. Such are the only new political institutions (apart from the laws to be noticed presently) which there are grounds for ascribing to Solon, when we take proper care to discriminate what really belongs to Solon and his age from the Athenian constitution as afterward remodelled. It has been a practice common with many able expositors of Grecian affairs, and followed partly even by Dr. Thirlwall, to connect the name of Solon with the whole political and judicial state of Athens as it stood between the age of Pericles and that of Demosthenes--the regulations of the senate of five hundred, the numerous public dicasts or jurors taken by lot from the people--as well as the body annually selected for law-revision, and called _nomothets_--and the open prosecution (called the _graphe paranomon_) to be instituted against the proposer of any measure illegal, unconstitutional, or dangerous. There is indeed some countenance for this confusion between Solonian and post-Solonian Athens, in the usage of the orators themselves. For Demosthenes and Æschines employ the name of Solon in a very loose manner, and treat him as the author of institutions belonging evidently to a later age--for example: the striking and characteristic oath of the Heliastic jurors, which Demosthenes ascribes to Solon, proclaims itself in many ways as belonging to the age after Clisthenes, especially by the mention of the senate of five hundred, and not of four hundred. Among the citizens who served as jurors or dicasts, Solon was venerated generally as the author of the Athenian laws. An orator, therefore, might well employ his name for the purpose of emphasis, without provoking any critical inquiry whether the particular institution, which he happened to be then impressing upon his audience, belonged really to Solon himself or to the subsequent periods. Many of those institutions, which Dr. Thirlwall mentions in conjunction with the name of Solon, are among the last refinements and elaborations of the democratical mind of Athens--gradually prepared, doubtless, during the interval between Clisthenes and Pericles, but not brought into full operation until the period of the latter (B.C. 460-429). For it is hardly possible to conceive these numerous dicasteries and assemblies in regular, frequent, and long-standing operation, without an assured payment to the dicasts who composed them. Now such payment first began to be made about the time of Pericles, if not by his actual proposition; and Demosthenes had good reason for contending that if it were suspended, the judicial as well as the administrative system of Athens would at once fall to pieces. It would be a marvel, such as nothing short of strong direct evidence would justify us in believing, that in an age when even partial democracy was yet untried, Solon should conceive the idea of such institutions; it would be a marvel still greater, that the half-emancipated Thetes and small proprietors, for whom he legislated--yet trembling under the rod of the Eupatrid archons, and utterly inexperienced in collective business--should have been found suddenly competent to fulfil these ascendant functions, such as the citizens of conquering Athens in the days of Pericles, full of the sentiment of force and actively identifying themselves with the dignity of their community, became gradually competent, and not more than competent, to exercise with effect. To suppose that Solon contemplated and provided for the periodical revision of his laws by establishing a nomothetic jury or dicastery, such as that which we find in operation during the time of Demosthenes, would be at variance (in my judgment) with any reasonable estimate either of the man or of the age. Herodotus says that Solon, having exacted from the Athenians solemn oaths that _they_ would not rescind any of his laws for ten years, quitted Athens for that period, in order that he might not be compelled to rescind them himself. Plutarch informs us that he gave to his laws force for a century. Solon himself, and Draco before him, had been lawgivers evoked and empowered by the special emergency of the times: the idea of a frequent revision of laws, by a body of lot-selected dicasts, belongs to a far more advanced age, and could not well have been present to the minds of either. The wooden rollers of Solon, like the tables of the Roman decemvìrs, were doubtless intended as a permanent "_fons omnis publici privatique juris_". If we examine the facts of the case, we shall see that nothing more than the bare foundation of the democracy of Athens as it stood in the time of Pericles can reasonably be ascribed to Solon. "I gave to the people (Solon says in one of his short remaining fragments) as much strength as sufficed for their needs, without either enlarging or diminishing their dignity: for those too, who possessed power and were noted for wealth, I took care that no unworthy treatment should be reserved. I stood with the strong shield cast over both parties so as not to allow an unjust triumph to either." Again, Aristotle tells us that Solon bestowed upon the people as much power as was indispensable, but no more: the power to elect their magistrates and hold them to accountability: if the people had had less than this, they could not have been expected to remain tranquil--they would have been in slavery and hostile to the constitution. Not less distinctly does Herodotus speak, when he describes the revolution subsequently operated by Clisthenes--the latter (he tells us) found "the Athenian people excluded from everything." These passages seem positively to contradict the supposition, in itself sufficiently improbable, that Solon is the author of the peculiar democratical institutions of Athens, such as the constant and numerous dicasts for judicial trials and revision of laws. The genuine and forward democratical movement of Athens begins only with Clisthenes, from the moment when that distinguished Alcmæonid, either spontaneously, or from finding himself worsted in his party strife with Isagoras, purchased by large popular concessions the hearty coöperation of the multitude under very dangerous circumstances. While Solon, in his own statement as well as in that of Aristotle, gave to the people as much power as was strictly needful--but no more--Clisthenes (to use the significant phrase of Herodotus), "being vanquished in the party contest with his rival, _took the people into partnership_." It was, thus, to the interests of the weaker section, in a strife of contending nobles, that the Athenian people owed their first admission to political ascendancy--in part, at least, to this cause, though the proceedings of Clisthenes indicate a hearty and spontaneous popular sentiment. But such constitutional admission of the people would not have been so astonishingly fruitful in positive results, if the course of public events for the half century after Clisthenes had not been such as to stimulate most powerfully their energy, their self-reliance, their mutual sympathies, and their ambition. I shall recount in a future chapter these historical causes, which, acting upon the Athenian character, gave such efficiency and expansion to the great democratical impulse communicated by Clisthenes: at present it is enough to remark that that impulse commences properly with Clisthenes, and not with Solon. But the Solonian constitution, though only the foundation, was yet the indispensable foundation, of the subsequent democracy. And if the discontents of the miserable Athenian population, instead of experiencing his disinterested and healing management, had fallen at once into the hands of selfish power-seekers like Cylon or Pisistratus--the memorable expansion of the Athenian mind during the ensuing century would never have taken place, and the whole subsequent history of Greece would probably have taken a different course. Solon left the essential powers of the state still in the hands of the oligarchy. The party combats between Pisistratus, Lycurgus, and Megacles, thirty years after his legislation, which ended in the despotism of Pisistratus, will appear to be of the same purely oligarchical character as they had been before Solon was appointed archon. But the oligarchy which he established was very different from the unmitigated oligarchy which he found, so teeming with oppression and so destitute of redress, as his own poems testify. It was he who first gave both to the citizens of middling property and to the general mass a _locus standi_ against the Eupatrids. He enabled the people partially to protect themselves, and familiarized them with the idea of protecting themselves, by the peaceful exercise of a constitutional franchise. The new force, through which this protection was carried into effect, was the public assembly called _Heliæa_, regularized and armed with enlarged prerogatives and further strengthened by its indispensable ally--the pro-bouleutic, or pre-considering, senate. Under the Solonian constitution, this force was merely secondary and defensive, but after the renovation of Clisthenes it became paramount and sovereign. It branched out gradually into those numerous popular dicasteries which so powerfully modified both public and private Athenian life, drew to itself the undivided reverence and submission of the people, and by degrees rendered the single magistracies essentially subordinate functions. The popular assembly, as constituted by Solon, appearing in modified efficiency and trained to the office of reviewing and judging the general conduct of a past magistrate--forms the intermediate stage between the passive Homeric agora and those omnipotent assemblies and dicasteries which listened to Pericles or Demosthenes. Compared with these last, it has in it but a faint streak of democracy--and so it naturally appeared to Aristotle, who wrote with a practical experience of Athens in the time of the orators; but compared with the first, or with the ante-Solonian constitution of Attica, it must doubtless have appeared a concession eminently democratical. To impose upon the Eupatrid archon the necessity of being elected, or put upon his trial of after-accountability, by the _rabble_ of freemen (such would be the phrase in Eupatrid society), would be a bitter humiliation to those among whom it was first introduced; for we must recollect that this was the most extensive scheme of constitutional reform yet propounded in Greece, and that despots and oligarchies shared between them at that time the whole Grecian world. As it appears that Solon, while constituting the popular assembly with its pro-bouleutic senate, had no jealousy of the senate of Areopagus, and indeed, even enlarged its powers, we may infer that his grand object was, not to weaken the oligarchy generally, but to improve the administration and to repress the misconduct and irregularities of the individual archons; and that, too, not by diminishing their powers, but by making some degree of popularity the condition both of their entry into office, and of their safety or honor after it. It is, in my judgment, a mistake to suppose that Solon transferred the judicial power of the archons to a popular dicastery. These magistrates still continued self-acting judges, deciding and condemning without appeal--not mere presidents of an assembled jury, as they afterward came to be during the next century. For the general exercise of such power they were accountable after their year of office. Such accountability was the security against abuse--a very insufficient security, yet not wholly inoperative. It will be seen, however, presently that these archons, though strong to coerce, and perhaps to oppress, small and poor men, had no means of keeping down rebellious nobles of their own rank, such as Pisistratus, Lycurgus, and Megacles, each with his armed followers. When we compare the drawn swords of these ambitious competitors, ending in the despotism of one of them, with the vehement parliamentary strife between Themistocles and Aristides afterward, peaceably decided by the vote of the sovereign people and never disturbing the public tranquillity--we shall see that the democracy of the ensuing century fulfilled the conditions of order, as well as of progress, better than the Solonian constitution. To distinguish this Solonian constitution from the democracy which followed it, is essential to a due comprehension of the progress of the Greek mind, and especially of Athenian affairs. That democracy was achieved by gradual steps. Demosthenes and Æschines lived under it as a system consummated and in full activity, when the stages of its previous growth were no longer matter of exact memory; and the dicasts then assembled in judgment were pleased to hear their constitution associated with the names either of Solon or of Theseus. Their inquisitive contemporary Aristotle was not thus misled: but even commonplace Athenians of the century preceding would have escaped the same delusion. For during the whole course of the democratical movement, from the Persian invasion down to the Peloponnesian war, and especially during the changes proposed by Pericles and Ephialtes, there was always a strenuous party of resistance, who would not suffer the people to forget that they had already forsaken, and were on the point of forsaking still more, the orbit marked out by Solon. The illustrious Pericles underwent innumerable attacks both from the orators in the assembly and from the comic writers in the theatre. And among these sarcasms on the political tendencies of the day we are probably to number the complaint, breathed by the poet Cratinus, of the desuetude into which both Solon and Draco had fallen--"I swear (said he in a fragment of one of his comedies) by Solon and Draco, whose wooden tablets (of laws) are now employed by people to roast their barley." The laws of Solon respecting penal offences, respecting inheritance and adoption, respecting the private relations generally, etc., remained for the most part in force: his quadripartite census also continued, at least for financial purposes, until the archonship of Nausinicus in B.C. 377--so that Cicero and others might be warranted in affirming that his laws still prevailed at Athens: but his political and judicial arrangements had undergone a revolution not less complete and memorable than the character and spirit of the Athenian people generally. The choice, by way of lot, of archons and other magistrates--and the distribution by lot of the general body of dicasts or jurors into panels for judicial business--may be decidedly considered as not belonging to Solon, but adopted after the revolution of Clisthenes; probably the choice of senators by lot also. The lot was a symptom of pronounced democratical spirit, such as we must not seek in the Solonian institutions. It is not easy to make out distinctly what was the political position of the ancient gentes and phratries, as Solon left them. The four tribes consisted altogether of gentes and phratries, insomuch that no one could be included in any one of the tribes who was not also a member of some gens and phratry. Now the new pro-bouleutic, or pre-considering, senate consisted of four hundred members,--one hundred from each of the tribes: persons not included in any gens or phratry could therefore have had no access to it. The conditions of eligibility were similar, according to ancient custom, for the nine archons--of course, also, for the senate of Areopagus. So that there remained only the public assembly, in which an Athenian not a member of these tribes could take part: yet he was a citizen, since he could give his vote for archons and senators, and could take part in the annual decision of their accountability, besides being entitled to claim redress for wrong from the archons in his own person--while the alien could only do so through the intervention of an avouching citizen or Prostates. It seems, therefore, that all persons not included in the four tribes, whatever their grade of fortune might be, were on the same level in respect to political privilege as the fourth and poorest class of the Solonian census. It has already been remarked, that even before the time of Solon the number of Athenians not included in the gentes or phratries was probably considerable: it tended to become greater and greater, since these bodies were close and unexpansive, while the policy of the new lawgiver tended to invite industrious settlers from other parts of Greece and Athens. Such great and increasing inequality of political privilege helps to explain the weakness of the government in repelling the aggressions of Pisistratus, and exhibits the importance of the revolution afterward wrought by Clisthenes, when he abolished (for all political purposes) the four old tribes, and created ten new comprehensive tribes in place of them. In regard to the regulations of the senate and the assembly of the people, as constituted by Solon, we are altogether without information: nor is it safe to transfer to the Solonian constitution the information, comparatively ample, which we possess respecting these bodies under the later democracy. The laws of Solon were inscribed on wooden rollers and triangular tablets, in the species of writing called _Boustrophedon_ (lines alternating first from left to right, and next from right to left, like the course of the ploughman)--and preserved first in the Acropolis, subsequently in the Prytaneum. On the tablets, called _Cyrbis_, were chiefly commemorated the laws respecting sacred rites and sacrifices; on the pillars or rollers, of which there were at least sixteen, were placed the regulations respecting matters profane. So small are the fragments which have come down to us, and so much has been ascribed to Solon by the orators which belongs really to the subsequent times, that it is hardly possible to form any critical judgment respecting the legislation as a whole, or to discover by what general principles or purposes he was guided. He left unchanged all the previous laws and practices respecting the crime of homicide, connected as they were intimately with the religious feelings of the people. The laws of Draco on this subject, therefore, remained, but on other subjects, according to Plutarch, they were altogether abrogated: there is, however, room for supposing that the repeal cannot have been so sweeping as this biographer represents. The Solonian laws seem to have borne more or less upon all the great departments of human interest and duty. We find regulations political and religious, public and private, civil and criminal, commercial, agricultural, sumptuary, and disciplinarian. Solon provides punishment for crimes, restricts the profession and status of the citizen, prescribes detailed rules for marriage as well as for burial, for the common use of springs and wells, and for the mutual interest of conterminous farmers in planting or hedging their properties. As far as we can judge from the imperfect manner in which his laws come before us, there does not seem to have been any attempt at a systematic order or classification. Some of them are mere general and vague directions, while others again run into the extreme of specialty. By far the most important of all was the amendment of the law of debtor and creditor which has already been adverted to, and the abolition of the power of fathers and brothers to sell their daughters and sisters into slavery. The prohibition of all contracts on the security of the body was itself sufficient to produce a vast improvement in the character and condition of the poorer population,--a result which seems to have been so sensibly obtained from the legislation of Solon, that Boeckh and some other eminent authors suppose him to have abolished villeinage and conferred upon the poor tenants a property in their lands, annulling the seigniorial rights of the landlord. But this opinion rests upon no positive evidence, nor are we warranted in ascribing to him any stronger measure in reference to the land than the annulment of the previous mortgages. The first pillar of his laws contained a regulation respecting exportable produce. He forbade the exportation of all produce of the Attic soil, except olive oil alone. And the sanction employed to enforce observance of this law deserves notice, as an illustration of the ideas of the time: the archon was bound, on pain of forfeiting one hundred drachmas, to pronounce solemn curses against every offender. We are probably to take this prohibition in conjunction with other objects said to have been contemplated by Solon, especially the encouragement of artisans and manufacturers at Athens. Observing (we are told) that many new immigrants were just then flocking into Attica to seek an establishment, in consequence of its greater security, he was anxious to turn them rather to manufacturing industry than to the cultivation of a soil naturally poor. He forbade the granting of citizenship to any immigrants, except to such as had quitted irrevocably their former abodes and come to Athens for the purpose of carrying on some industrial profession; and in order to prevent idleness, he directed the senate of Areopagus to keep watch over the lives of the citizens generally, and punish every one who had no course of regular labor to support him. If a father had not taught his son some art or profession, Solon relieved the son from all obligation to maintain him in his old age. And it was to encourage the multiplication of these artisans that he insured, or sought to insure, to the residents in Attica, the exclusive right of buying and consuming all its landed produce except olive oil, which was raised in abundance, more than sufficient for their wants. It was his wish that the trade with foreigners should be carried on by exporting the produce of artisan labor, instead of the produce of land. This commercial prohibition is founded on principles substantially similar to those which were acted upon in the early history of England, with reference both to corn and to wool, and in other European countries also. In so far as it was at all operative it tended to lessen the total quantity of produce raised upon the soil of Attica, and thus to keep the price of it from rising. But the law of Solon must have been altogether inoperative, in reference to the great articles of human subsistence; for Attica imported, both largely and constantly, grain and salt provisions, probably also wool and flax for the spinning and weaving of the women, and certainly timber for building. Whether the law was ever enforced with reference to figs and honey may well be doubted; at least these productions of Attica were in after times trafficked in, and generally consumed throughout Greece. Probably also in the time of Solon the silver mines of Laurium had hardly begun to be worked: these afterward became highly productive, and furnished to Athens a commodity for foreign payments no less convenient than lucrative. It is interesting to notice the anxiety, both of Solon and of Draco, to enforce among their fellow-citizens industrious and self-maintaining habits; and we shall find the same sentiment proclaimed by Pericles, at the time when Athenian power was at its maximum. Nor ought we to pass over this early manifestation in Attica of an opinion equitable and tolerant toward sedentary industry, which in most other parts of Greece was regarded as comparatively dishonorable. The general tone of Grecian sentiment recognized no occupations as perfectly worthy of a free citizen except arms, agriculture, and athletic and musical exercises; and the proceedings of the Spartans, who kept aloof even from agriculture and left it to their helots, were admired, though they could not be copied, throughout most of the Hellenic world. Even minds like Plato, Aristotle, and Xenophon concurred to a considerable extent in this feeling, which they justified on the ground that the sedentary life and unceasing house-work of the artisan were inconsistent with military aptitude. The town-occupations are usually described by a word which carries with it contemptuous ideas, and though recognized as indispensable to the existence of the city, are held suitable only for an inferior and semi-privileged order of citizens. This, the received sentiment among Greeks, as well as foreigners, found a strong and growing opposition at Athens, as I have already said--corroborated also by a similar feeling at Corinth. The trade of Corinth, as well as of Chalcis in Euboea, was extensive, at a time when that of Athens had scarce any existence. But while the despotism of Periander can hardly have failed to operate as a discouragement to industry at Corinth, the contemporaneous legislation of Solon provided for traders and artisans a new home at Athens, giving the first encouragement to that numerous town-population both in the city and in the Piræus, which we find actually residing there in the succeeding century. The multiplication of such town residents, both citizens and _metics_ (_i.e.,_ resident persons, not citizens, but enjoying an assured position and civil rights), was a capital fact in the onward march of Athens, since it determined not merely the extension of her trade, but also the preëminence of her naval forces--and thus, as a further consequence, lent extraordinary vigor to her democratical government. It seems, moreover, to have been a departure from the primitive temper of Atticism, which tended both to cantonal residence and rural occupation. We have, therefore, the greater interest in noting the first mention of it as a consequence of the Solonian legislation. To Solon is first owing the admission of a power of testamentary bequest at Athens in all cases in which a man had no legitimate children. According to the preëxisting custom, we may rather presume that if a deceased person left neither children nor blood relations, his property descended (as at Rome) to his gens and phratry. Throughout most rude states of society the power of willing is unknown, as among the ancient Germans--among the Romans prior to the twelve tables--in the old laws of the Hindus, etc. Society limits a man's interest or power of enjoyment to his life, and considers his relatives as having joint reversionary claims to his property, which take effect, in certain determinate proportions, after his death. Such a law was the more likely to prevail at Athens, since the perpetuity of the family sacred rites, in which the children and near relatives partook of right, was considered by the Athenians as a matter of public as well as of private concern. Solon gave permission to every man dying without children to bequeath his property by will as he should think fit; and the testament was maintained unless it could be shown to have been procured by some compulsion or improper seduction. Speaking generally, this continued to be the law throughout the historical times of Athens. Sons, wherever there were sons, succeeded to the property of their father in equal shares, with the obligation of giving out their sisters in marriage along with a certain dowry. If there were no sons, then the daughters succeeded, though the father might by will, within certain limits, determine the person to whom they should be married, with their rights of succession attached to them; or might, with the consent of his daughters, make by will certain other arrangements about his property. A person who had no children or direct lineal descendants might bequeath his property at pleasure: if he died without a will, first his father, then his brother or brother's children, next his sister or sister's children succeeded: if none such existed, then the cousins by the father's side, next the cousins by the mother's side,--the male line of descent having preference over the female. Such was the principle of the Solonian laws of succession, though the particulars are in several ways obscure and doubtful. Solon, it appears, was the first who gave power of superseding by testament the rights of agnates and gentiles to succession,--a proceeding in consonance with his plan of encouraging both industrious occupation and the consequent multiplication of individual acquisitions. It has been already mentioned that Solon forbade the sale of daughters or sisters into slavery by fathers or brothers; a prohibition which shows how much females had before been looked upon as articles of property. And it would seem that before his time the violation of a free woman must have been punished at the discretion of the magistrates; for we are told that he was the first who enacted a penalty of one hundred drachmas against the offender, and twenty drachmas against the seducer of a free woman. Moreover, it is said that he forbade a bride when given in marriage to carry with her any personal ornaments and appurtenances, except to the extent of three robes and certain matters of furniture not very valuable. Solon further imposed upon women several restraints in regard to proceeding at the obsequies of deceased relatives. He forbade profuse demonstrations of sorrow, singing of composed dirges, and costly sacrifices and contributions. He limited strictly the quantity of meat and drink admissible for the funeral banquet, and prohibited nocturnal exit, except in a car and with a light. It appears that both in Greece and Rome, the feelings of duty and affection on the part of surviving relatives prompted them to ruinous expense in a funeral, as well as to unmeasured effusions both of grief and conviviality; and the general necessity experienced for legal restriction is attested by the remark of Plutarch, that similar prohibitions to those enacted by Solon were likewise in force at his native town of Chæronea. Other penal enactments of Solon are yet to be mentioned. He forbade absolutely evil speaking with respect to the dead. He forbade it likewise with respect to the living, either in a temple or before judges or archons, or at any public festival--on pain of a forfeit of three drachmas to the person aggrieved, and two more to the public treasury. How mild the general character of his punishments was, may be judged by this law against foul language, not less than by the law before mentioned against rape. Both the one and the other of these offences were much more severely dealt with under the subsequent law of democratical Athens. The peremptory edict against speaking ill of a deceased person, though doubtless springing in a great degree from disinterested repugnance, is traceable also in part to that fear of the wrath of the departed which strongly possessed the early Greek mind. It seems generally that Solon determined by law the outlay for the public sacrifices, though we do not know what were his particular directions. We are told that he reckoned a sheep and a medimnus (of wheat or barley?) as equivalent, either of them, to a drachma, and that he also prescribed the prices to be paid for first-rate oxen intended for solemn occasions. But it astonishes us to see the large recompense which he awarded out of the public treasury to a victor at the Olympic or Isthmian games: to the former, five hundred drachmas, equal to one year's income of the highest of the four classes on the census; to the latter one hundred drachmas. The magnitude of these rewards strikes us the more when we compare them with the fines on rape and evil speaking. We cannot be surprised that the philosopher Xenophanes noticed, with some degree of severity, the extravagant estimate of this species of excellence, current among the Grecian cities. At the same time, we must remember both that these Pan-Hellenic games presented the chief visible evidence of peace and sympathy among the numerous communities of Greece, and that in the time of Solon, factitious reward was still needful to encourage them. In respect to land and agriculture Solon proclaimed a public reward of five drachmas for every wolf brought in, and one drachma for every wolf's cub; the extent of wild land has at all times been considerable in Attica. He also provided rules respecting the use of wells between neighbors, and respecting the planting in conterminous olive grounds. Whether any of these regulations continued in operation during the better-known period of Athenian history cannot be safely affirmed. In respect to theft, we find it stated that Solon repealed the punishment of death which Draco had annexed to that crime, and enacted, as a penalty, compensation to an amount double the value of the property stolen. The simplicity of this law perhaps affords ground for presuming that it really does belong to Solon. But the law which prevailed during the time of the orators respecting theft must have been introduced at some later period, since it enters into distinctions and mentions both places and forms of procedure, which we cannot reasonably refer to the forty-sixth Olympiad. The public dinners at the Prytaneum, of which the archons and a select few partook in common, were also either first established, or perhaps only more strictly regulated, by Solon. He ordered barley cakes for their ordinary meals, and wheaten loaves for festival days, prescribing how often each person should dine at the table. The honor of dining at the table of the Prytaneum was maintained throughout as a valuable reward at the disposal of the government. Among the various laws of Solon, there are few which have attracted more notice than that which pronounces the man who in a sedition stood aloof, and took part with neither side, to be dishonored and disfranchised. Strictly speaking, this seems more in the nature of an emphatic moral denunciation, or a religious curse, than a legal sanction capable of being formally applied in an individual case and after judicial trial,--though the sentence of _atimy_, under the more elaborated Attic procedure, was both definite in its penal consequences and also judicially delivered. We may, however, follow the course of ideas under which Solon was induced to write this sentence on his tables, and we may trace the influence of similar ideas in later Attic institutions. It is obvious that his denunciation is confined to that special case in which a sedition has already broken out: we must suppose that Cylon has seized the Acropolis, or that Pisistratus, Megacles, and Lycurgus are in arms at the head of their partisans. Assuming these leaders to be wealthy and powerful men, which would in all probability be the fact, the constituted authority--such as Solon saw before him in Attica, even after his own organic amendments--was not strong enough to maintain the peace; it became, in fact, itself one of the contending parties. Under such given circumstances, the sooner every citizen publicly declared his adherence to some of them, the earlier this suspension of legal authority was likely to terminate. Nothing was so mischievous as the indifference of the mass, or their disposition to let the combatants fight out the matter among themselves, and then to submit to the victor. Nothing was more likely to encourage aggression on the part of an ambitious malcontent, than the conviction that if he could once overpower the small amount of physical force which surrounded the archons, and exhibit himself in armed possession of the Prytaneum or the Acropolis, he might immediately count upon passive submission on the part of all the freemen without. Under the state of feeling which Solon inculcates, the insurgent leader would have to calculate that every man who was not actively in his favor would be actively against him, and this would render his enterprise much more dangerous. Indeed, he could then never hope to succeed, except on the double supposition of extraordinary popularity in his own person and widespread detestation of the existing government. He would thus be placed under the influence of powerful deterring motives; so that ambition would be less likely to seduce him into a course which threatened nothing but ruin, unless under such encouragements from the preëxisting public opinion as to make his success a result desirable for the community. Among the small political societies of Greece--especially in the age of Solon, when the number of despots in other parts of Greece seems to have been at its maximum--every government, whatever might be its form, was sufficiently weak to make its overthrow a matter of comparative facility. Unless upon the supposition of a band of foreign mercenaries--which would render the government a system of naked force, and which the Athenian lawgiver would of course never contemplate--there was no other stay for it except a positive and pronounced feeling of attachment on the part of the mass of citizens. Indifference on their part would render them a prey to every daring man of wealth who chose to become a conspirator. That they should be ready to come forward, not only with voice but with arms--and that they should be known beforehand to be so--was essential to the maintenance of every good Grecian government. It was salutary in preventing mere personal attempts at revolution; and pacific in its tendency, even where the revolution had actually broken out, because in the greater number of cases the proportion of partisans would probably be very unequal, and the inferior party would be compelled to renounce their hopes. It will be observed that, in this enactment of Solon, the existing government is ranked merely as one of the contending parties. The virtuous citizen is enjoined, not to come forward in its support, but to come forward at all events, either for it or against it. Positive and early action is all which is prescribed to him as matter of duty. In the age of Solon there was no political idea or system yet current which could be assumed as an unquestionable datum--no conspicuous standard to which the citizens could be pledged under all circumstances to attach themselves. The option lay only between a mitigated oligarchy in possession, and a despot in possibility; a contest wherein the affections of the people could rarely be counted upon in favor of the established government. But this neutrality in respect to the constitution was at an end after the revolution of Clisthenes, when the idea of the sovereign people and the democratical institutions became both familiar and precious to every individual citizen. We shall hereafter find the Athenians binding themselves by the most sincere and solemn oaths to uphold their democracy against all attempts to subvert it; we shall discover in them a sentiment not less positive and uncompromising in its direction, than energetic in its inspirations. But while we notice this very important change in their character, we shall at the same time perceive that the wise precautionary recommendation of Solon, to obviate sedition by an early declaration of the impartial public between two contending leaders, was not lost upon them. Such, in point of fact, was the purpose of that salutary and protective institution which is called the _Ostracism_. When two party leaders, in the early stages of the Athenian democracy, each powerful in adherents and influence, had become passionately embarked in bitter and prolonged opposition to each other, such opposition was likely to conduct one or other to violent measures. Over and above the hopes of party triumph, each might well fear that, if he himself continued within the bounds of legality, he might fall a victim to aggressive proceedings on the part of his antagonists. To ward off this formidable danger, a public vote was called for, to determine which of the two should go into temporary banishment, retaining his property and unvisited by any disgrace. A number of citizens, not less than six thousand, voting secretly, and therefore independently, were required to take part, pronouncing upon one or other of these eminent rivals a sentence of exile for ten years. The one who remained became, of course, more powerful, yet less in a situation to be driven into anti-constitutional courses than he was before. Tragedy and comedy were now beginning to be grafted on the lyric and choric song. First, one actor was provided to relieve the chorus; next, two actors were introduced to sustain fictitious characters and carry on a dialogue in such manner that the songs of the chorus and the interlocution of the actors formed a continuous piece. Solon, after having heard Thespis acting (as all the early composers did, both tragic and comic) in his own comedy, asked him afterward if he was not ashamed to pronounce such falsehoods before so large an audience. And when Thespis answered that there was no harm in saying and doing such things merely for amusement, Solon indignantly exclaimed, striking the ground with his stick, "If once we come to praise and esteem such amusement as this, we shall quickly find the effects of it in our daily transactions." For the authenticity of this anecdote it would be rash to vouch, but we may at least treat it as the protest of some early philosopher against the deceptions of the drama: and it is interesting as marking the incipient struggles of that literature in which Athens afterward attained such unrivaled excellence. It would appear that all the laws of Solon were proclaimed, inscribed, and accepted without either discussion or resistance. He is said to have described them, not as the best laws which he could himself have imagined, but as the best which he could have induced the people to accept. He gave them validity for the space of ten years, during which period both the senate collectively and the archons individually swore to observe them with fidelity; under penalty, in case of non-observance, of a golden statue as large as life to be erected at Delphi. But though the acceptance of the laws was accomplished without difficulty, it was not found so easy either for the people to understand and obey, or for the framer to explain them. Every day persons came to Solon either with praise, or criticism, or suggestions of various improvements, or questions as to the construction of particular enactments; until at last he became tired of this endless process of reply and vindication, which was seldom successful either in removing obscurity or in satisfying complainants. Foreseeing that if he remained he would be compelled to make changes, he obtained leave of absence from his countrymen for ten years, trusting that before the expiration of that period they would have become accustomed to his laws. He quitted his native city in the full certainty that his laws would remain unrepealed until his return; for (says Herodotus) "the Athenians _could not_ repeal them, since they were bound by solemn oaths to observe them for ten years." The unqualified manner in which the historian here speaks of an oath, as if it created a sort of physical necessity and shut out all possibility of a contrary result, deserves notice as illustrating Grecian sentiment. On departing from Athens, Solon first visited Egypt, where he communicated largely with Psenophis of Heliopolis and Sonchis of Sais, Egyptian priests who had much to tell respecting their ancient history, and from whom he learned matters, real or pretended, far transcending in alleged antiquity the oldest Grecian genealogies--especially the history of the vast submerged island of Atlantis, and the war which the ancestors of the Athenians had successfully carried on against it, nine thousand years before. Solon is said to have commenced an epic poem upon this subject, but he did not live to finish it, and nothing of it now remains. From Egypt he went to Cyprus, where he visited the small town of Æpia, said to have been originally founded by Demophon, son of Theseus, and ruled at this period by the prince Philocyprus--each town in Cyprus having its own petty prince. It was situated near the river Clarius in a position precipitous and secure, but inconvenient and ill-supplied, Solon persuaded Philocyprus to quit the old site and establish a new town down in the fertile plain beneath. He himself stayed and became _æcist_ of the new establishment, making all the regulations requisite for its safe and prosperous march, which was indeed so decisively manifested that many new settlers flocked into the new plantation, called by Philocyprus _Soli_, in honor of Solon. To our deep regret, we are not permitted to know what these regulations were; but the general fact is attested by the poems of Solon himself, and the lines in which he bade farewell to Philocyprus on quitting the island are yet before us. On the dispositions of this prince his poem bestowed unqualified commendation. Besides his visit to Egypt and Cyprus, a story was also current of his having conversed with the Lydian king Croesus at Sardis. The communication said to have taken place between them has been woven by Herodotus into a sort of moral tale which forms one of the most beautiful episodes in his whole history. Though this tale has been told and retold as if it were genuine history, yet as it now stands it is irreconcilable with chronology--although very possibly Solon may at some time or other have visited Sardis, and seen Croesus as hereditary prince. But even if no chronological objections existed, the moral purpose of the tale is so prominent, and pervades it so systematically from beginning to end, that these internal grounds are of themselves sufficiently strong to impeach its credibility as a matter of fact, unless such doubts happen to be out-weighed--which in this case they are not--by good contemporary testimony. The narrative of Solon and Croesus can be taken for nothing else but an illustrative fiction, borrowed by Herodotus from some philosopher, and clothed in his own peculiar beauty of expression, which on this occasion is more decidedly poetical than is habitual with him. I cannot transcribe, and I hardly dare to abridge it. The vainglorious Croesus, at the summit of his conquests and his riches, endeavors to win from his visitor Solon an opinion that he is the happiest of mankind. The latter, after having twice preferred to him modest and meritorious Grecian citizens, at length reminds him that his vast wealth and power are of a tenure too precarious to serve as an evidence of happiness; that the gods are jealous and meddlesome, and often make the show of happiness a mere prelude to extreme disaster; and that no man's life can be called happy until the whole of it has been played out, so that it may be seen to be out of the reach of reverses. Croesus treats this opinion as absurd, but "a great judgment from God fell upon him, after Solon was departed--probably (observes Herodotus) because he fancied himself the happiest of all men." First he lost his favorite son Atys, a brave and intelligent youth (his only other son being dumb). For the Mysians of Olympus being ruined by a destructive and formidable wild boar, which they were unable to subdue, applied for aid to Croesus, who sent to the spot a chosen hunting force, and permitted--though with great reluctance, in consequence of an alarming dream--that his favorite son should accompany them. The young prince was unintentionally slain by the Phrygian exile Adrastus, whom Croesus had sheltered and protected, Hardly had the latter recovered from the anguish of this misfortune, when the rapid growth of Cyrus and the Persian power induced him to go to war with them, against the advice of his wisest counsellors. After a struggle of about three years he was completely defeated, his capital Sardis taken by storm, and himself made prisoner. Cyrus ordered a large pile to be prepared, and placed upon it Croesus in fetters, together with fourteen young Lydians, in the intention of burning them alive either as a religious offering, or in fulfilment of a vow, "or perhaps (says Herodotus) to see whether some of the gods would not interfere to rescue a man so preëmiently pious as the king of Lydia." In this sad extremity, Croesus bethought him of the warning which he had before despised, and thrice pronounced, with a deep groan, the name of Solon. Cyrus desired the interpreters to inquire whom he was invoking, and learnt in reply the anecdote of the Athenian lawgiver, together with the solemn memento which he had offered to Croesus during more prosperous days, attesting the frail tenure of all human greatness. The remark sunk deep into the Persian monarch as a token of what might happen to himself: he repented of his purpose, and directed that the pile, which had already been kindled, should be immediately extinguished. But the orders came too late. In spite of the most zealous efforts of the bystanders, the flame was found unquenchable, and Croesus would still have been burned, had he not implored with prayers and tears the succor of Apollo, to whose Delphian and Theban temples he had given such munificent presents. His prayers were heard, the fair sky was immediately overcast and a profuse rain descended, sufficient to extinguish the flames. The life of Croesus was thus saved, and he became afterward the confidential friend and adviser of his conqueror. Such is the brief outline of a narrative which Herodotus has given with full development and with impressive effect. It would have served as a show-lecture to the youth of Athens not less admirably than the well-known fable of the Choice of Heracles, which the philosopher Prodicus, a junior contemporary of Herodotus, delivered with so much popularity. It illustrates forcibly the religious and ethical ideas of antiquity; the deep sense of the jealousy of the gods, who would not endure pride in any one except themselves; the impossibility, for any man, of realizing to himself more than a very moderate share of happiness; the danger from a reactionary Nemesis, if at anytime he had overpassed such limit; and the necessity of calculations taking in the whole of life, as a basis for rational comparison of different individuals. And it embodies, as a practical consequence from these feelings, the often-repeated protest of moralists against vehement impulses and unrestrained aspirations. The more valuable this narrative appears, in its illustrative character, the less can we presume to treat it as a history. It is much to be regretted that we have no information respecting events in Attica immediately after the Solonian laws and constitution, which were promulgated in B.C. 594, so as to understand better the practical effect of these changes. What we next hear respecting Solon in Attica refers to a period immediately preceding the first usurpation of Pisistratus in B.C. 560, and after the return of Solon from his long absence. We are here again introduced to the same oligarchical dissensions as are reported to have prevailed before the Solonian legislation: the Pediis, or opulent proprietors of the plain round Athens, under Lycurgus; the Parali of the south of Attica, under Megacles; and the Diacrii or mountaineers of the eastern cantons, the poorest of the three classes, under Pisistratus, are in a state of violent intestine dispute. The account of Plutarch represents Solon as returning to Athens during the height of this sedition. He was treated with respect by all parties, but his recommendations were no longer obeyed, and he was disqualified by age from acting with effect in public. He employed his best efforts to mitigate party animosities, and applied himself particularly to restrain the ambition of Pisistratus, whose ulterior projects he quickly detected. The future greatness of Pisistratus is said to have been first portended by a miracle which happened, even before his birth, to his father Hippocrates at the Olympic games. It was realized, partly by his bravery and conduct, which had been displayed in the capture of Nisæa from the Megarians--partly by his popularity of speech and manners, his championship of the poor, and his ostentatious disavowal of all selfish pretensions--partly by an artful mixture of stratagem and force. Solon, after having addressed fruitless remonstrances to Pisistratus himself, publicly denounced his designs in verses addressed to the people. The deception, whereby Pisistratus finally accomplished his design, is memorable in Grecian tradition. He appeared one day in the agora of Athens in his chariot with a pair of mules: he had intentionally wounded both his person and the mules, and in this condition he threw himself upon the compassion and defence of the people, pretending that his political enemies had violently attacked him. He implored the people to grant him a guard, and at the moment when their sympathies were freshly aroused both in his favor and against his supposed assassins, Aristo proposed formally to the ecclesia (the pro-bouleutic senate, being composed of friends of Pisistratus, had previously authorized the proposition) that a company of fifty club-men should be assigned as a permanent body-guard for the defence of Pisistratus. To this motion Solon opposed a strenuous resistance, but found himself overborne, and even treated as if he had lost his senses. The poor were earnest in favor of it, while the rich were afraid to express their dissent; and he could only comfort himself after the fatal vote had been passed, by exclaiming that he was wiser than the former and more determined than the latter. Such was one of the first known instances in which this memorable stratagem was played off against the liberty of a Grecian community. The unbounded popular favor which had procured the passing of this grant was still further manifested by the absence of all precautions to prevent the limits of the grant from being exceeded. The number of the body-guard was not long confined to fifty, and probably their clubs were soon exchanged for sharper weapons. Pisistratus thus found himself strong enough to throw off the mask and seize the Acropolis. His leading opponents, Megacles and the Alcinæonids, immediately fled the city, and it was left to the venerable age and undaunted patriotism of Solon to stand forward almost alone in a vain attempt to resist the usurpation. He publicly presented himself in the market-place, employing encouragement, remonstrance and reproach, in order to rouse the spirit of the people. To prevent this despotism from coming (he told them) would have been easy; to shake it off now was more difficult, yet at the same time more glorious. But he spoke in vain, for all who were not actually favorable to Pisistratus listened only to their fears, and remained passive; nor did any one join Solon, when, as a last appeal, he put on his armor and planted himself in military posture before the door of his house. "I have done my duty (he exclaimed at length); I have sustained to the best of my power my country and the laws"; and he then renounced all further hope of opposition--though resisting the instances of his friends that he should flee, and returning for answer, when they asked him on what he relied for protection, "On my old age." Nor did he even think it necessary to repress the inspirations of his Muse. Some verses yet remain, composed seemingly at a moment when the strong hand of the new despot had begun to make itself sorely felt, in which he tells his countrymen--"If ye have endured sorrow from your own baseness of soul, impute not the fault of this to the gods. Ye have yourselves put force and dominion into the hands of these men, and have thus drawn upon yourselves wretched slavery." It is gratifying to learn that Pisistratus, whose conduct throughout his despotism was comparatively mild, left Solon untouched. How long this distinguished man survived the practical subversion of his own constitution, we cannot certainly determine; but according to the most probable statement he died during the very next year, at the advanced age of eighty. We have only to regret that we are deprived of the means of following more in detail his noble and exemplary character. He represents the best tendencies of his age, combined with much that is personally excellent: the improved ethical sensibility; the thirst for enlarged knowledge and observation, not less potent in old age than in youth; the conception of regularized popular institutions, departing sensibly from the type and spirit of the governments around him, and calculated to found a new character in the Athenian people; a genuine and reflecting sympathy with the mass of the poor, anxious not merely to rescue them from the oppressions of the rich, but also to create in them habits of self-relying industry; lastly, during his temporary possession of a power altogether arbitrary, not merely an absence of all selfish ambition, but a rare discretion in seizing the mean between conflicting exigencies. In reading his poems we must always recollect that what now appears commonplace was once new, so that to his comparatively unlettered age the social pictures which he draws were still fresh, and his exhortations calculated to live in the memory. The poems composed on moral subjects generally inculcate a spirit of gentleness toward others and moderation in personal objects. They represent the gods as irresistible, retributive, favoring the good and punishing the bad, though sometimes very tardily. But his compositions on special and present occasions are usually conceived in a more vigorous spirit; denouncing the oppressions of the rich at one time, and the timid submission to Pisistratus at another--and expressing in emphatic language his own proud consciousness of having stood forward as champion of the mass of the people. Of his early poems hardly anything is preserved. The few lines remaining seem to manifest a jovial temperament which we may well conceive to have been overlaid by such political difficulties as he had to encounter--difficulties arising successively out of the Megarian war, the Cylonian sacrilege, the public despondency healed by Epimenides, and the task of arbiter between a rapacious oligarchy and a suffering people. In one of his elegies addressed to Mimnermus, he marked out the sixtieth year as the longest desirable period of life, in preference to the eightieth year, which that poet had expressed a wish to attain. But his own life, as far as we can judge, seems to have reached the longer of the two periods; and not the least honorable part of it (the resistance to Pisistratus) occurs immediately before his death. There prevailed a story that his ashes were collected and scattered around the island of Salamis, which Plutarch treats as absurd--though he tells us at the same time that it was believed both by Aristotle and by many other considerable men. It is at least as ancient as the poet Cratinus, who alluded to it in one of his comedies, and I do not feel inclined to reject it. The inscription on the statue of Solon at Athens described him as a Salaminian; he had been the great means of acquiring the island for his country, and it seems highly probable that among the new Athenian citizens, who went to settle there, he may have received a lot of land and become enrolled among the Salaminian _demots_. The dispersion of his ashes connecting him with the island as its _oecist_, may be construed, if not as the expression of a public vote, at least as a piece of affectionate vanity on the part of his surviving friends. CONQUESTS OF CYRUS THE GREAT B.C. 538 GEORGE GROTE On the destruction of Nineveh three great Powers still stood on the stage of history, being bound together by the strong ties of a mutually supporting alliance. These were Media, Lydia, and Babylon. The capital of Lydia was Sardis. According to Herodotus, the first king of Lydia was Manes. In the semi-mythic period of Lydian history rose the great dynasty of the [Greek: Heraclidæ], which reigned for 505 years, numbering twenty-two kings--B.C. 1229 to B.C. 745. The Lydians are said by Herodotus to have colonized Tyrrhenia, in the Italic peninsula, and to have extended their conquests into Syria, where they founded Ascalon in the territory later known as Palestine. In the reign of Gyges, B.C. 724, they began to attack the Greek cities of Asia Minor: Miletus, Smyrna, and Priene. The glory of the Lydian Empire culminated in the reign of [Greek: Croesus], the fifth and last historic king, B.C. 568. The well-known story of Solon's warning to [Greek: Croesus] was full of ominous import with regard to the ultimate downfall of the Lydian Empire: "For thyself, O Croesus," said the Greek sage in answer to the question, "Who is the happiest man?" I see that thou art wonderfully rich, and art the lord of many nations; but in respect to that whereon thou questionest me, I have no answer to give until I hear that thou hast closed thy life happily." The Median Empire occupied a territory indefinitely extending over a region south of the Caspian, between the Kurdish Mountains and the modern Khorassan. The Median monarchy, according to Herodotus, commenced B.C. 708. The Medes, which were racially akin to the Persians, had been for fifty years subject to the Assyrian monarchy when they revolted, setting up an independent empire. Putting aside the dates given by the Greek historians, we shall perhaps be correct in considering that the great Median kingdom was established by Cyaxares, B.C. 633; and that in B.C. 610 a great struggle of six years between Media and Lydia was amicably ended, under the terror occasioned by an eclipse, by the establishment of a treaty and alliance between the contending powers. With the death of Cyaxares, B.C. 597, the glory of the great Median Empire passed away, for under his son, Astyages, the country was conquered by Cyrus. The rise of the Babylonian Empire seems to have originated B.C. 2234, when the Cushite inhabitants of southern Babylonia raised a native dynasty to the throne, liberated themselves from the yoke of the Zoroastrian Medes, and instituted an empire with several large capitals, where they built mighty temples and introduced the worship of the heavenly bodies in contradistinction to the elemental worship of the Magian Medes. The record of Babylonian kings is full of obscurity, even in the light of recent archæological discoveries. We can trace, however, a gradual expansion of Babylonian dominion, even to the borders of Egypt. Nabo Polassar, B.C. 625 to B.C. 604, was a great warrior, and at Carchemish defeated even the almost invincible Egyptians, B.C. 604. His successor, Nebuchadnezzar, B.C. 604, immediately set about the fortification of his capital. A space of more than 130 square miles was enclosed within walls 80 feet in breadth and 300 or 400 in height, if we may believe the record. Meanwhile, with the assistance of Cyaxares, King of Media, he captured Tyre, in Phoenicia, and Jerusalem, in Syria; but fifteen years after Croesus had been taken prisoner and the Persian Empire extended to the shores of the Ægean, the Empire of Babylon fell before the conquering armies of Cyrus, the Persian. The Ionic and Æolic Greeks on the Asiatic coast had been conquered and made tributary by the Lydian king Croesus: "Down to that time (says Herodotus) all Greeks had been free." Their conqueror, Croesus, who ascended the throne in 560 B.C., appeared to be at the summit of human prosperity and power in his unassailable capital, and with his countless treasures at Sardis. His dominions comprised nearly the whole of Asia Minor, as far as the river Halys to the east; on the other side of that river began the Median monarchy under his brother-in-law Astyages, extending eastward to some boundary which we cannot define, but comprising, in a south-eastern direction, Persis proper or Farsistan, and separated from the Kissians and Assyrians on the east by the line of Mount Zagros (the present boundary-line between Persia and Turkey). Babylonia, with its wondrous city, between the Uphrates and the Tigris, was occupied by the Assyrians or Chaldæans, under their king Labynetus: a territory populous and fertile, partly by nature, partly by prodigies of labor, to a degree which makes us mistrust even an honest eye-witness who describes it afterward in its decline--but which was then in its most flourishing condition. The Chaldean dominion under Labynetus reached to the borders of Egypt, including as dependent territories both Judæa and Phenicia. In Egypt reigned the native king Amasis, powerful and affluent, sustained in his throne by a large body of Grecian mercenaries and himself favorably disposed to Grecian commerce and settlement. Both with Labynetus and with Amasis, Croesus was on terms of alliance; and as Astyages was his brother-in-law, the four kings might well be deemed out of the reach of calamity. Yet within the space of thirty years, or a little more, the whole of their territories had become embodied in one vast empire, under the son of an adventurer as yet not known even by name. The rise and fall of oriental dynasties have been in all times distinguished by the same general features. A brave and adventurous prince, at the head of a population at once poor, warlike, and greedy, acquires dominion; while his successors, abandoning themselves to sensuality and sloth, probably also to oppressive and irascible dispositions, become in process of time victims to those same qualities in a stranger which had enabled their own father to seize the throne. Cyrus, the great founder of the Persian empire, first the subject and afterward the dethroner of the Median Astyages, corresponds to their general description, as far, at least, as we can pretend to know his history. For in truth even the conquests of Cyrus, after he became ruler of Media, are very imperfectly known, while the facts which preceded his rise up to that sovereignty cannot be said to be known at all: we have to choose between different accounts at variance with each other, and of which the most complete and detailed is stamped with all the character of romance. The Cyropædia of Xenophon is memorable and interesting, considered with reference to the Greek mind, and as a philosophical novel. That it should have been quoted so largely as authority on matters of history, is only one proof among many how easily authors have been satisfied as to the essentials of historical evidence. The narrative given by Herodotus of the relations between Cyrus and Astyages, agreeing with Xenophon in little more than the fact that it makes Cyrus son of Cambyses and Mandane and grandson of Astyages, goes even beyond the story of Romulus and Remus in respect to tragical incident and contrast. Astyages, alarmed by a dream, condemns the newborn infant of his daughter Mandane to be exposed: Harpagus, to whom the order is given, delivers the child to one of the royal herdsmen, who exposes it in the mountains, where it is miraculously suckled by a bitch. Thus preserved, and afterward brought up as the herdsman's child, Cyrus manifests great superiority, both physical and mental; is chosen king in play by the boys of the village, and in this capacity severely chastises the son of one of the courtiers; for which offense he is carried before Astyages, who recognizes him for his grandson, but is assured by the Magi that the dream is out and that he has no further danger to apprehend from the boy--and therefore permits him to live. With Harpagus, however, Astyages is extremely incensed, for not having executed his orders: he causes the son of Harpagus to be slain, and served up to be eaten by his unconscious father at a regal banquet. The father, apprised afterward of the fact, dissembles his feelings, but meditates a deadly vengeance against Astyages for this Thyestean meal. He persuades Cyrus, who has been sent back to his father and mother in Persia, to head a revolt of the Persians against the Medes; whilst Astyages--to fill up the Grecian conception of madness as a precursor to ruin--sends an army against the revolters, commanded by Harpagus himself. Of course the army is defeated--Astyages, after a vain resistance, is dethroned--Cyrus becomes king in his place--and Harpagus repays the outrage which he has undergone by the bitterest insults. Such are the heads of a beautiful narrative which is given at some length in Herodotus. It will probably appear to the reader sufficiently romantic; though the historian intimates that he had heard three other narratives different from it, and that all were more full of marvels, as well as in wider circulation, than his own, which he had borrowed from some unusually sober-minded Persian informants. In what points the other three stories departed from it we do not hear. To the historian of Halicarnassus we have to oppose Ctesias--the physician of the neighboring town of Cnidus--who contradicted Herodotus, not without strong terms of censure, on many points, and especially upon that which is the very foundation of the early narrative respecting Cyrus; for he affirmed that Cyrus was no way related to Astyages. However indignant we may be with Ctesias for the disparaging epithets which he presumed to apply to an historian whose work is to us inestimable--we must nevertheless admit that, as surgeon in actual attendance on king Artaxerxes Mnemon, and healer of the wound inflicted on that prince at Cunaxa by his brother Cyrus the younger, he had better opportunities even than Herodotus of conversing with sober-minded Persians, and that the discrepancies between the two statements are to be taken as a proof of the prevalence of discordant, yet equally accredited, stories. Herodotus himself was in fact compelled to choose one out of four. So rare and late a plant is historical authenticity. That Cyrus was the first Persian conqueror, and that the space which he overran covered no less than fifty degrees of longitude, from the coast of Asia Minor to the Oxus and the Indus, are facts quite indisputable; but of the steps by which this was achieved, we know very little. The native Persians, whom he conducted to an empire so immense, were an aggregate of seven agricultural, and four nomadic tribes--all of them rude, hardy, and brave--dwelling in a mountainous region, clothed in skins, ignorant of wine, or fruit, or any of the commonest luxuries of life, and despising the very idea of purchase or sale. Their tribes were very unequal in point of dignity, probably also in respect to numbers and powers, among one another. First in estimation among them stood the Pasargadæ; and the first phratry or clan among the Pasargadæ were the Achæmenidæ, to whom Cyrus himself belonged. Whether his relationship to the Median king whom he dethroned was a matter of fact, or a politic fiction, we cannot well determine. But Xenophon, in noticing the spacious deserted cities, Larissa and Mespila, which he saw in his march with the ten thousand Greeks on the eastern side of the Tigris, gives us to understand that the conquest of Media by the Persians was reported to him as having been an obstinate and protracted struggle. However this may be, the preponderance of the Persians was at last complete: though the Medes always continued to be the second nation in the empire, after the Persians, properly so called; and by early Greek writers the great enemy in the East is often called "the Mede" as well as "the Persian." The Median Ekbatana too remained as one of the capital cities, and the usual summer residence, of the kings of Persia; Susa on the Choaspes, on the Kissian plain farther southward, and east of the Tigris, being their winter abode. The vast space of country comprised between the Indus on the east, the Oxus and Caspian Sea to the north, the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean to the south, and the line of Mount Zagros to the west, appears to have been occupied in these times by a great variety of different tribes and people, yet all or most of them belonging to the religion of Zoroaster, and speaking dialects of the Zend language. It was known amongst its inhabitants by the common name of Iran or Aria: it is, in its central parts at least, a high, cold plateau, totally destitute of wood, and scantily supplied with water; much of it indeed is a salt and sandy desert, unsusceptible of culture. Parts of it are eminently fertile, where water can be procured and irrigation applied. Scattered masses of tolerably dense population thus grew up; but continuity of cultivation is not practicable, and in ancient times, as at present, a large proportion of the population of Iran seems to have consisted of wandering or nomadic tribes with their tents and cattle. The rich pastures, and the freshness of the summer climate, in the region of mountain and valley near Ekbatana, are extolled by modern travellers, just as they attracted the Great King in ancient times during the hot months. The more southerly province called Persis proper (Faristan) consists also in part of mountain land interspersed with valley and plain, abundantly watered, and ample in pasture, sloping gradually down to low grounds on the sea-coast which are hot and dry: the care bestowed both by Medes and Persians on the breeding of their horses was remarkable. There were doubtless material differences between different parts of the population of this vast plateau of Iran. Yet it seems that, along with their common language and religion, they had also something of a common character, which contrasted with the Indian population east of the Indus, the Assyrians west of Mount Zagros, and the Massagetæ and other Nomads of the Caspian and the Sea of Aral--less brutish, restless and blood-thirsty than the latter--more fierce, contemptuous and extortionate, and less capable of sustained industry, than the two former. There can be little doubt, at the time of which we are now speaking, when the wealth and cultivation of Assyria were at their maximum, that Iran also was far better peopled than ever it has been since European observers have been able to survey it--especially the north-eastern portion, Bactria and Sogdiana--so that the invasions of the Nomads from Turkestan and Tartary, which have been so destructive at various intervals since the Mohammedan conquest, were before that period successfully kept back. The general analogy among the population of Iran probably enabled the Persian conqueror with comparative ease to extend his empire to the east, after the conquest of Ekbatana, and to become the full heir of the Median kings. If we may believe Ctesias, even the distant province of Bactria had been before subject to those kings. At first it resisted Cyrus, but finding that he had become son-in-law of Astyages, as well as master of his person, it speedily acknowledged his authority. According to the representation of Herodotus, the war between Cyrus and Croesus of Lydia began shortly after the capture of Astyages, and before the conquest of Bactria. Croesus was the assailant, wishing to avenge his brother-in-law, to arrest the growth of the Persian conqueror, and to increase his own dominions. His more prudent counsellors in vain represented to him that he had little to gain, and much to lose, by war with a nation alike hardy and poor. He is represented as just at that time recovering from the affliction arising out of the death of his son. To ask advice of the oracle, before he took any final decision, was a step which no pious king would omit. But in the present perilous question, Croesus did more--he took a precaution so extreme, that if his piety had not been placed beyond all doubt by his extraordinary munificence to the temples, he might have drawn upon himself the suspicion of a guilty scepticism. Before he would send to ask advice respecting the project itself, he resolved to test the credit of some of the chief surrounding oracles--Delphi, Dodona, Branchidæ near Miletus, Amphiaraus at Thebes, Trophonius at Labadeia, and Ammon in Libya. His envoys started from Sardis on the same day, and were all directed on the hundredth day afterward to ask at the respective oracles how Croesus was at that precise moment employed. This was a severe trial: of the manner in which it was met by four out of the six oracles consulted we have no information, and it rather appears that their answers were unsatisfactory. But Amphiaraus maintained his credit undiminished, while Apollo at Delphi, more omniscient than Apollo at Branchidæ, solved the question with such unerring precision, as to afford a strong additional argument against persons who might be disposed to scoff at divination. No sooner had the envoys put the question to the Delphian priestess, on the day named, "What is Croesus now doing?" than she exclaimed in the accustomed hexameter verse, "I know the number of grains of sand, and the measures of the sea: I understand the dumb, and I hear the man who speaks not. The smell reaches me of a hard-skinned tortoise boiled in a copper with lamb's flesh--copper above and copper below." Croesus was awe-struck on receiving this reply. It described with the utmost detail that which he had been really doing, so that he accounted the Delphian oracle and that of Amphiaraus the only trustworthy oracles on earth--following up these feelings with a holocaust of the most munificent character, in order to win the favor of the Delphian god. Three thousand cattle were offered up, and upon a vast sacrificial pile were placed the most splendid purple robes and tunics, together with couches and censers of gold and silver; besides which he sent to Delphi itself the richest presents in gold and silver--statues, bowls, jugs, etc., the size and weight of which we read with astonishment; the more so as Herodotus himself saw them a century afterwards at Delphi. Nor was Croesus altogether unmindful of Amphiaraus, whose answer had been creditable, though less triumphant than that of the Pythian priestess. He sent to Amphiaraus a spear and shield of pure gold, which were afterward seen at Thebes by Herodotus: this large donative may help the reader to conceive the immensity of those which he sent to Delphi. The envoys who conveyed these gifts were instructed to ask at the same time, whether Croesus should undertake an expedition against the Persians--and if so, whether he should solicit any allies to assist him. In regard to the second question, the answer both of Apollo and of Amphiaraus was deci sive, recommending him to invite the alliance of the most powerful Greeks. In regard to the first and most momentous question, their answer was as remarkable for circumspection as it had been before for detective sagacity: they told Croesus that if he invaded the Persians, he would subvert a mighty monarchy. The blindness of Croesus interpreted this declaration into an unqualified promise of success: he sent further presents to the oracle, and again inquired whether his kingdom would be durable. "When a mule shall become king of the Medes (replied the priestess) then must thou run away--be not ashamed." More assured than ever by such an answer, Croesus sent to Sparta, under the kings Anaxandrides and Aristo, to tender presents and solicit their alliance. His propositions were favorably entertained--the more so, as he had before gratuitously furnished some gold to the Lacedæmonians for a statue to Apollo. The alliance now formed was altogether general--no express effort being as yet demanded from them, though it soon came to be. But the incident is to be noted, as marking the first plunge of the leading Grecian state into Asiatic politics; and that too without any of the generous Hellenic sympathy which afterward induced Athens to send her citizens across the Ægean. At this time Croesus was the master and tribute-exactor of the Asiatic Greeks, whose contingents seem to have formed part of his army for the expedition now contemplated; an army consisting principally, not of native Lydians, but of foreigners. The river Halys formed the boundary at this time between the Median and Lydian empires: and Croesus, marching across that river into the territory of the Syrians or Assyrians of Cappadocia, took the city of Pteria, with many of its surrounding dependencies, inflicting damage and destruction upon these distant subjects of Ekbatana. Cyrus lost no time in bringing an army to their defence considerably larger than that of Croesus; trying at the same time, though unsuccessfully, to prevail on the Ionians to revolt from him. A bloody battle took place between the two armies, but with indecisive result: after which Croesus, seeing that he could not hope to accomplish more with his forces as they stood, thought it wise to return to his capital, and collect a larger army for the next campaign. Immediately on reaching Sardis he despatched envoys to Labynetus king of Babylon; to Amasis, king of Egypt; to the Lacedæmonians, and to other allies; calling upon all of them to send auxiliaries to Sardis during the course of the fifth month. In the mean time he dismissed all the foreign troops who had followed him into Cappadocia. Had these allies appeared, the war might perhaps have been prosecuted with success. And on the part of the Lacedæmonians, at least, there was no tardiness; for their ships were ready and their troops almost on board, when the unexpected news reached them that Croesus was already ruined. Cyrus had forseen and forestalled the defensive plan of his enemy. Pushing on with his army to Sardis without delay, he obliged the Lydian prince to give battle with his own unassisted subjects. The open and spacious plain before that town was highly favorable to Lydian cavalry, which at that time (Herodotus tells us) was superior to the Persian. But Cyrus, employing a strategem whereby this cavalry was rendered unavailable, placed in front of his line the baggage camels, which the Lydian horses could not endure either to smell or to behold. The horsemen of Croesus were thus obliged to dismount; nevertheless they fought bravely on foot, and were not driven into the town till after a sanguinary combat. Though confined within the walls of his capital, Croesus had still good reason for hoping to hold out until the arrival of his allies, to whom he sent pressing envoys of acceleration. For Sardis was considered impregnable--and one assault had already been repulsed, and the Persians would have been reduced to the slow process of blockade. But on the fourteenth day of the siege, accident did for the besiegers that which they could not have accomplished either by skill or force. Sardis was situated on an outlying peak of the northern side of Tmolus; it was well fortified everywhere except toward the mountain; and on that side the rock was so precipitous and inaccessible, that fortifications were thought unnecessary, nor did the inhabitants believe assault to be possible in that quarter. But Hyroeades, a Persian soldier, having accidentally seen one of the garrison descending this precipi tous rock to pick up his helmet which had rolled down, watched his opportunity, tried to climb up, and found it not impracticable; others followed his example, the stronghold was thus seized first, and the whole city speedily taken by storm. Cyrus had given especial orders to spare the life of Croesus, who was accordingly made prisoner. But preparations were made for a solemn and terrible spectacle; the captive king was destined to be burned in chains, together with fourteen Lydian youths, on a vast pile of wood. We are even told that the pile was already kindled and the victim beyond the reach of human aid, when Apollo sent a miraculous rain to preserve him. As to the general fact of supernatural interposition, in one way or another, Herodotus and Ctesias both agree, though they described differently the particular miracles wrought. It is certain that Croesus, after some time, was released and well treated by his conqueror, and lived to become the confidential adviser of the latter as well as of his son Cambyses: Ctesias also acquaints us that a considerable town and territory near Ekbatana, called Barene, was assigned to him, according to a practice which we shall find not infrequent with the Persian kings. The prudent counsel and remarks as to the relations between Persians and Lydians, whereby Croesus is said by Herodotus to have first earned this favorable treatment, are hardly worth repeating; but the indignant remonstrance sent by Croesus to the Delphian god is too characteristic to be passed over. He obtained permission from Cyrus to lay upon the holy pavement of the Delphian temple the chains with which he had at first been bound. The Lydian envoys were instructed, after exhibiting to the god these humiliating memorials, to ask whether it was his custom to deceive his benefactors, and whether he was not ashamed to have encouraged the king of Lydia in an enterprise so disastrous? The god, condescending to justify himself by the lips of the priestess, replied: "Not even a god can escape his destiny. Croesus has suffered for the sin of his fifth ancestor (Gyges), who, conspiring with a woman, slew his master and wrongfully seized the sceptre. Apollo employed all his influence with the Moeræ (Fates) to obtain that this sin might be expiated by the children of Croesus, and not by Croesus himself; but the Moeræ would grant nothing more than a postponement of the judgment for three years. Let Croesus know that Apollo has thus procured for him a reign three years longer than his original destiny, after having tried in vain to rescue him altogether. Moreover he sent that rain which at the critical moment extinguished the burning pile. Nor has Croesus any right to complain of the prophecy by which he was encouraged to enter on the war; for when the god told him that he would subvert _a great empire_, it was his duty to have again inquired which empire the god meant; and if he neither understood the meaning, nor chose to ask for information, he has himself to blame for the result. Besides, Croesus neglected the warning given to him about the acquisition of the Median kingdom by a mule: Cyrus was that mule--son of a Median mother of royal breed, by a Persian father at once of different race and of lower position." This triumphant justification extorted even from Croesus himself a full confession that the sin lay with him, and not with the god. It certainly illustrates in a remarkable manner the theological ideas of the time. It shows us how much, in the mind of Herodotus, the facts of the centuries preceding his own, unrecorded as they were by any contemporary authority, tended to cast themselves into a sort of religious drama; the threads of the historical web being in part put together, in part originally spun, for the purpose of setting forth the religious sentiment and doctrine woven in as a pattern. The Pythian priestess predicts to Gyges that the crime which he had committed in assassinating his master would be expiated by his fifth descendant, though, as Herodotus tells us, no one took any notice of this prophecy until it was at last fulfilled: we see thus the history of the first Mermnad king is made up after the catastrophe of the last. There was something in the main facts of the history of Croesus profoundly striking to the Greek mind, a king at the summit of wealth and power--pious in the extreme and munificent toward the gods--the first destroyer of Hellenic liberty in Asia--then precipitated, at once and on a sudden, into the abyss of ruin. The sin of the first parent helped much toward the solution of this perplexing problem, as well as to exalt the credit of the oracle, when made to assume the shape of an unnoticed prophecy. In the affecting story of Solon and Croesus, the Lydian king is punished with an acute domestic affliction because he thought himself the happiest of mankind--the gods not suffering any one to be arrogant except themselves; and the warning of Solon is made to recur to Croesus after he has become the prisoner of Cyrus, in the narrative of Herodotus. To the same vein of thought belongs the story, just recounted, of the relations of Croesus with the Delphian oracle. An account is provided, satisfactory to the religious feelings of the Greeks, how and why he was ruined--but nothing less than the overruling and omnipotent Moeræ could be invoked to explain so stupendous a result. It is rarely that these supreme goddesses--or hyper-goddesses, since the gods themselves must submit to them--are brought into such distinct light and action. Usually they are kept in the dark, or are left to be understood as the unseen stumbling block in cases of extreme incomprehensibility; and it is difficult clearly to determine (as in the case of some complicated political constitutions) where the Greeks conceived sovereign power to reside, in respect to the government of the world. But here the sovereignity of the Moeræ, and the subordinate agency of the gods, are unequivocally set forth. The gods are still extremely powerful, because the Moeræ comply with their requests up to a certain point, not thinking it proper to be wholly inexorable; but their compliance is carried no farther than they themselves choose; nor would they, even in deference to Apollo, alter the original sentence of punishment for the sin of Gyges in the person of his fifth descendant--sentence, moreover, which Apollo himself had formerly prophesied shortly after the sin was committed, so that, if the Moeræ had listened to his intercession on behalf of Croesus, his own prophetic credit would have been endangered. Their unalterable resolution has predetermined the ruin of Croesus, and the grandeur of the event is manifested by the circumstance that even Apollo himself cannot prevail upon them to alter it, or to grant more than a three years' respite. The religious element must here be viewed as giving the form, the historical element as giving the matter only, and not the whole matter, of the story. These two elements will be found conjoined more or less throughout most of the history of Herodotus, though as we descend to later times, we shall find the latter element in constantly increasing proportion. His conception of history is extremely different from that of Thucydides, who lays down to himself the true scheme and purpose of the historian, common to him with the philosopher--to recount and interpret the past, as a rational aid toward pre-vision of the future. In the short abstract which we now possess of the lost work of Ctesias, no mention appears of the important conquest of Babylon. His narrative, indeed, as far as the abstract enables us to follow it, diverges materially from that of Herodotus, and must have been founded on data altogether different. "I shall mention (says Herodotus) these conquests which gave Cyrus most trouble, and are most memorable: after he had subdued all the rest of the continent, he attacked the Assyrians." Those who recollect the description of Babylon and its surrounding territory, will not be surprised to learn that the capture of it gave the Persian aggressor much trouble. Their only surprise will be, how it could ever have been taken at all--or indeed how a hostile army could have even reached it. Herodotus informs us that the Babylonian queen Nitocris (mother of that very Labynetus who was king when Cyrus attacked the place) apprehensive of invasion from the Medes after their capture of Nineveh, had executed many laborious works near the Euphrates for the purpose of obstructing their approach. Moreover there existed what was called the wall of Media (probably built by her, but certainly built prior to the Persian conquest), one hundred feet high and twenty feet thick, across the entire space of seventy-five miles which joined the Tigris with one of the canals of the Euphrates: while the canals themselves, as we may see by the march of the ten thousand Greeks after the battle of Cunaxa, presented means of defence altogether insuperable by a rude army such as that of the Persians. On the east, the territory of Babylonia was defended by the Tigris, which cannot be forded lower than the ancient Nineveh or the modern Mosul. In addition to these ramparts, natural as well as artificial, to protect the territory--populous, cultivated, productive, and offering every motive to its inhabitants to resist even the entrance of an enemy--we are told that the Babylonians were so thoroughly prepared for the inroad of Cyrus that they had accumulated within their walls a store of provisions for many years. Strange as it may seem, we must suppose that the king of Babylon, after all the cost and labor spent in providing defences for the territory, voluntarily neglected to avail himself of them, suffered the invader to tread down the fertile Babylonia without resistance, and merely drew out the citizens to oppose him when he arrived under the walls of the city--if the statement of Herodotus is correct. And we may illustrate this unaccountable omission by that which we know to have happened in the march of the younger Cyrus to Cunuxa against his brother Artaxerxes Mnemon. The latter had caused to be dug, expressly in preparation for this invasion, a broad and deep ditch (thirty feet wide and eight feet deep) from the wall of Media to the river Euphrates, a distance of twelve parasangs or forty-five English miles, leaving only a passage of twenty feet broad close alongside of the river. Yet when the invading army arrived at this important pass, they found not a man there to defend it, and all of them marched without resistance through the narrow inlet. Cyrus the younger, who had up to that moment felt assured that his brother would fight, now supposed that he had given up the idea of defending Babylon: instead of which, two days afterward, Artaxerxes attacked him on an open plain of ground where there was no advantage of position on either side; though the invaders were taken rather unawares in consequence of their extreme confidence arising from recent unopposed entrance within the artificial ditch. This anecdote is the more valuable as an illustration, because all its circumstances are transmitted to us by a discerning eye-witness. And both the two incidents here brought into comparison demonstrate the recklessness, changefulness, and incapacity of calculation belonging to the Asiatic mind of that day--as well as the great command of hands possessed by these kings, and their prodigal waste of human labor. Vast walls and deep ditches are an inestimable aid to a brave and well-commanded garrison; but they cannot be made entirely to supply the want of bravery and intelligence. In whatever manner the difficulties of approaching Babylon may have been overcome, the fact that they were overcome by Cyrus is certain. On first setting out for this conquest, he was about to cross the river Gyndes (one of the affluents from the east which joins the Tigris near the modern Bagdad, and along which lay the high road crossing the pass of Mount Zagros from Babylon to Ekbatana) when one of the sacred white horses, which accompanied him, entered the river in pure wantonness and tried to cross it by himself. The Gyndes resented this insult and the horse was drowned: upon which Cyrus swore in his wrath that he would so break the strength of the river as that women in future should pass it without wetting their knees. Accordingly he employed his entire army, during the whole summer season, in digging three hundred and sixty artificial channels to disseminate the unit of the stream. Such, according to Herodotus, was the incident which postponed for one year the fall of the great Babylon. But in the next spring Cyrus and his army were before the walls, after having defeated and driven in the population who came out to fight. These walls were artificial mountains (three hundred feet high, seventy-five feet thick, and forming a square of fifteen miles to each side), within which the besieged defied attack, and even blockade, having previously stored up several years' provision. Through the midst of the town, however, flowed the Euphrates. That river which had been so laboriously trained to serve for protection, trade and sustenance to the Babylonians, was now made the avenue of their ruin. Having left a detachment of his army at the two points where the Euphrates enters and quits the city, Cyrus retired with the remainder to the higher part of its course, where an ancient Babylonian queen had prepared one of the great lateral reservoirs for carrying off in case of need the superfluity of its water. Near this point Cyrus caused another reservoir and another canal of communication to be dug, by means of which he drew off the water of the Euphrates to such a degree it became not above the height of a man's thigh. The period chosen was that of a great Babylonian festival, when the whole population were engaged in amusement and revelry. The Persian troops left near the town, watching their opportunity, entered from both sides along the bed of the river, and took it by surprise with scarcely any resistance. At no other time, except during a festival, could they have done this (says Herodotus) had the river been ever so low, for both banks throughout the whole length of the town were provided with quays, with continuous walls, and with gates at the end of every street which led down to the river at right angles so that if the population had not been disqualified by the influences of the moment, they would have caught the assailants in the bed of the river "as in a trap," and overwhelmed them from the walls alongside. Within a square of fifteen miles to each side, we are not surprised to hear that both the extremities were already in the power of the besiegers before the central population heard of it, and while they were yet absorbed in unconscious festivity. Such is the account given by Herodotus of the circumstances which placed Babylon--the greatest city of Western Asia--in the power of the Persians. To what extent the information communicated to him was incorrect or exaggerated, we cannot now decide. The way in which the city was treated would lead us to suppose that its acquisition cannot have cost the conqueror either much time or much loss. Cyrus comes into the list as king of Babylon, and the inhabitants with their whole territory become tributary to the Persians, forming the richest satrapy in the empire; but we do not hear that the people were otherwise ill-used, and it is certain that the vast walls and gates were left untouched. This was very different from the way in which the Medes had treated Nineveh, which seems to have been ruined and for a long time absolutely uninhabited, though reoccupied on a reduced scale under the Parthian empire; and very different also from the way in which Babylon itself was treated twenty years afterward by Darius, when reconquered after a revolt. The importance of Babylon, marking as it does one of the peculiar forms of civilization belonging to the ancient world in a state of full development, gives an interest even to the half-authenticated stories respecting its capture. The other exploits ascribed to Cyrus--his invasion of India, across the desert of Arachosia--and his attack upon the Massagetæ, Nomads ruled by Queen Tomyris and greatly resembling the Scythians, across the mysterious river which Herodotus calls Araxes--are too little known to be at all dwelt upon. In the latter he is said to have perished, his army being defeated in a bloody battle. He was buried at Pasargadæ, in his native province of Persis proper, where his tomb was honored and watched until the breaking up of the empire, while his memory was held in profound veneration among the Persians. Of his real exploits we know little or nothing, but in what we read respecting him there seems, though amid constant fighting, very little cruelty. Xenophon has selected his life as the subject of a moral romance which for a long time was cited as authentic history, and which even now serves as an authority, express or implied, for disputable and even incorrect conclusions. His extraordinary activity and conquests admit of no doubt. He left the Persian empire extending from Sogdiana and the rivers Jaxartes and Indus eastward, to the Hellespont and the Syrian coast westward, and his successors made no permanent addition to it except that of Egypt. Phenicia and Judæa were dependencies of Babylon, at the time when he conquered it, with their princes and grandees in Babylonian captivity. As they seem to have yielded to him, and became his tributaries without difficulty; so the restoration of their captives was conceded to them. It was from Cyrus that the habits of the Persian kings took commencement, to dwell at Susa in the winter, and Ekbatana during the summer; the primitive territory of Persis, with its two towns of Persepolis and Pasargadæ, being reserved for the burial-place of the kings and the religious sanctuary of the empire. How or when the conquest of Susiana was made, we are not informed. It lay eastward of the Tigris, between Babylonia and Persis proper, and its people, the Kissians, as far as we can discern, were of Assyrian and not of Aryan race. The river Choaspes near Susa was supposed to furnish the only water fit for the palate of the great king, and it is said to have been carried about with him wherever he went. While the conquests of Cyrus contributed to assimilate the distinct types of civilization in Western Asia--not by elevating the worse, but by degrading the better--upon the native Persians themselves they operated as an extraordinary stimulus, provoking alike their pride, ambition, cupidity, and warlike propensities. Not only did the territory of Persis proper pay no tribute to Susa or Ekbatana--being the only district so exempted between the Jaxartes and the Mediterranean--but the vast tributes received from the remaining empire were distributed to a great degree among its inhabitants. Empire to them meant--for the great men, lucrative satrapies or pachalics, with powers altogether unlimited, pomp inferior only to that of the great king, and standing armies which they employed at their own discretion sometimes against each other--for the common soldiers, drawn from their fields or flocks, constant plunder, abundant maintenance, and an unrestrained license, either in the suite of one of the satraps, or in the large permanent troops which moved from Susa to Ekbatana with the Great King. And if the entire population of Persis proper did not migrate from their abodes to occupy some of those more inviting spots which the immensity of the imperial dominion furnished--a dominion extending (to use the language of Cyrus the younger before the battle of Cunaxa) from the region of insupportable heat to that of insupportable cold--this was only because the early kings discouraged such a movement, in order that the nation might maintain its military hardihood and be in a situation to furnish undiminished supplies of soldiers. The self-esteem and arrogance of the Persians were no less remarkable than their avidity for sensual enjoyment. They were fond of wine to excess; their wives and their concubines were both numerous; and they adopted eagerly from foreign nations new fashions of luxury as well as of ornament. Even to novelties in religion, they were not strongly averse. For though disciples of Zoroaster, with Magi as their priests and as indispensable companions of their sacrifices, worshipping sun, moon, earth, fire, etc., and recognizing neither image, temple, nor altar--yet they had adopted the voluptuous worship of the goddess Mylitta from the Assyrians and Arabians. A numerous male offspring was the Persian's boast. His warlike character and consciousness of force were displayed in the education of these youths, who were taught, from five years old to twenty, only three things--to ride, to shoot with the bow, and to speak the truth. To owe money, or even to buy and sell, was accounted among the Persians disgraceful--a sentiment which they defended by saying that both the one and the other imposed the necessity of telling falsehood. To exact tribute from subjects, to receive pay or presents from the king, and to give away without forethought whatever was not immediately wanted, was their mode of dealing with money. Industrial pursuits were left to the conquered, who were fortunate if by paying a fixed contribution and sending a military contingent when required, they could purchase undisturbed immunity for their remaining concerns. They could not thus purchase safety for the family hearth, since we find instances of noble Grecian maidens torn from their parents for the harem of the satrap. To a people of this character, whose conceptions of political society went no farther than personal obedience to a chief, a conqueror like Cyrus would communicate the strongest excitement and enthusiasm of which they were capable. He had found them slaves, and made them masters: he was the first and greatest of national benefactors, as well as the most forward of leaders in the field: they followed him from one conquest to another, during the thirty years of his reign, their love of empire growing with the empire itself. And this impulse of aggrandizement continued unabated during the reigns of his three next successors--Cambyses, Darius, and Xerxes--until it was at length violently stifled by the humiliating defeats of Platæa and Salamis; after which the Persians became content with defending themselves at home and playing a secondary game. RISE OF CONFUCIUS, THE CHINESE SAGE B.C. 550 R.K. DOUGLAS Confucius is the Latinized name of Kung Futusze, or "Master Kung," whose work in China did much to educate the people in social and civic virtues. He began as a political reformer at a time when the empire was cut up into a number of petty and discordant principalities. As a practical statesman and administrator, he urged the necessity of reform upon the princes whom one after another he served. His advice was invariably disregarded, and as he said "no intelligent ruler arose in his time." His great maxims of submission to the emperor or supreme head of the state he based on the analogous duty of filial obedience in a household, and his very spirit of piety prevented him from taking independent measures for redressing the evils and oppressions of his distracted country. His moral teachings are not based on any specific religious foundation, but they have become the settled code of Chinese life, of which submissiveness to authority, industry, frugality, and fair dealing as prescribed by Confucian ethics are general characteristics. The political doctrines of this great reformer were eventually adopted, and his teaching and example brought about a peaceful and gradual, but complete revolution, in the Chinese Empire, whose consolidation into a simple kingdom was the practical result of this sage's influence. At the time of which we write the Chinese were still clinging to the banks of the Yellow River, along which they had first entered the country, and formed, within the limits of China proper, a few states on either shore lying between the 33d and 38th parallels of latitude, and the 106th and 119th of longitude. The royal state of Chow occupied part of the modern province of Honan. To the north of this was the powerful state of Tsin, embracing the modern province of Shanse and part of Chili; to the south was the barbarous state of Ts'oo, which stretched as far as the Yang-tsze-kiang; to the east, reaching to the coast, were a number of smaller states, among which those of Ts'e, Loo, Wei, Sung, and Ching were the chief and to the west of the Yellow River was the state of Ts'in, which was destined eventually to gain the mastery over the contending principalities. On the establishment of the Chow dynasty, King Woo had apportioned these fiefships among members of his family, his adherents, and the descendants of some of the ancient virtuous kings. Each prince was empowered to administer his government as he pleased so long as he followed the general lines indicated by history; and in the event of any act of aggression on the part of one state against another, the matter was to be reported to the king of the sovereign state, who was bound to punish the offender. It is plain that in such a system the elements of disorder must lie near the surface; and no sooner was the authority of the central state lessened by the want of ability shown by the successors of kings Woo, Ching, and K'ang, than constant strife broke out between the several chiefs. The hand of every man was against his neighbor, and the smaller states suffered the usual fate, under like circumstances, of being encroached upon and absorbed, notwithstanding their appeals for help to their common sovereign. The House of Chow having been thus found wanting, the device was resorted to of appointing one of the most powerful princes as a presiding chief, who should exercise royal functions, leaving the king only the title and paraphernalia of sovereignity. In fact, the China of this period was governed and administered very much as Japan was up till about twenty years ago. For Mikado, Shogun, and ruling Daimios, read king, presiding chief, and princes, and the parallel is as nearly as possible complete. The result of the system, however, in the two countries was different, for apart from the support received by the Mikado from the belief in his heavenly origin, the insular position of Japan prevented the possibility of the advent of elements of disorder from without, whereas the principalities of China were surrounded by semi-barbarous states, the chiefs of which were engaged in constant warfare with them. Confucius' deep spirit of loyalty to the House of Chow forbade his following in the Book of History the careers of the sovereigns who reigned between the death of Muh in B.C. 946 and the accession of P'ing in 770. One after another these kings rose, reigned, and died, leaving each to his successor an ever-increasing heritage of woe. During the reign of Seuen (827-781) a gleam of light seems to have shot through the pervading darkness. Though falling far short of the excellencies of the founders of the dynasty, he yet strove to follow, though at a long interval, the examples they had set him; and according to the Chinese belief, as an acknowledgment from Heaven of his efforts in the direction of virtue, it was given him to sit upon the throne for nearly half a century. His successor, Yew, "the Dark," appears to even less advantage. No redeeming acts relieve the general disorder of his reign, and at the instigation of a favorite concubine he is said to have committed acts which place him on a level with Kee and Show. Earthquakes, storms, and astrological portents appeared as in the dark days at the close of the Hea and Shang dynasties. His capital was surrounded by the barbarian allies of the Prince of Shin, the father of his wife, whom he had dismissed at the request of his favorite, and in an attempt to escape he fell a victim to their weapons. With this event the Western Chow dynasty was brought to a close. Here, also, the Book of History comes to an end, and the Spring and Autumn Annals by Confucius takes up the tale of iniquity and disorder which overspread the land. No more dreadful record of a nation's struggles can be imagined than that contained in Confucius's history. The country was torn by discord and desolated by wars. Husbandry was neglected, the peace of households was destroyed, and plunder and rapine were the watchwords of the time. Such was the state of China at the time of the birth of Confucius (B.C. 551). Of the parents of the Sage we know but little, except that his father, Shuh-leang Heih, was a military officer, eminent for his commanding stature, his great bravery, and immense strength, and that his mother's name was Yen Ching-tsai The marriage of this couple took place when Heih was seventy years old, and the prospect, therefore, of his having an heir having been but slight, unusual rejoicings commemorated the birth of the son, who was destined to achieve such everlasting fame. Report says that the child was born in a cave on Mount Ne, whither Ching-tsai went in obedience to a vision to be confined. But this is but one of the many legends with which Chinese historians love to surround the birth of Confucius. With the same desire to glorify the Sage, and in perfect good faith, they narrate how the event was heralded by strange portents and miraculous appearances, how genii announced to Ching-tsai the honor that was in store for her, and how fairies attended at his nativity. Of the early years of Confucius we have but scanty record. It would seem that from his childhood he showed ritualistic tendencies, and we are told that as a boy he delighted to play at the arrangement of vessels and postures of ceremony. As he advanced in years he became an earnest student of history, and looked back with love and reverence to the time when the great and good Yaou and Shun reigned in: "A golden age, fruitful of golden deeds." At the age of fifteen "he bent his mind to learning," and when he was nineteen years old he married a lady from the state of Sung. As has befallen many other great men, Confucius' married life was not a happy one, and he finally divorced his wife, not, however, before she had borne him a son. Soon after his marriage, at the instigation of poverty, Confucius accepted the office of keeper of the stores of grain, and in the following year he was promoted to be guardian of the public fields and lands. It was while holding this latter office that his son was born, and so well known and highly esteemed had he already become that the reigning duke, on hearing of the event, sent him a present of a carp, from which circumstance the infant derived his name, Le ("a carp"). The name of this son seldom occurs in the life of his illustrious father, and the few references we have to him are enough to show that a small share of paternal affection fell to his lot. "Have you heard any lessons from your father different from what we have all heard?" asked an inquisitive disciple of him. "No," replied Le, "he was standing alone once when I was passing through the court below with hasty steps, and said to me, 'Have you read the Odes?' On my replying, 'Not yet,' he added, 'If you do not learn the Odes, you will not be fit to converse with.' Another day, in the same place and the same way, he said to me, 'Have you read the rules of Propriety?' On my replying, 'Not yet,' he added, 'If you do not learn the rules of Propriety, your character cannot be established.'" "I asked one thing," said the enthusiastic disciple, "and I have learned three things. I have learned about the Odes; I have learned about the rules of Propriety; and I have learned that the superior man maintains a distant reserve toward his son." At the age of twenty-two we find Confucius released from the toils of office, and devoting his time to the more congenial task of imparting instruction to a band of admiring and earnest students. With idle or stupid scholars he would have nothing to do. "I do not open the truth," he said, "to one who is not eager after knowledge, nor do I help any one who is not anxious to explain himself. When I have presented one corner of a subject, and the listener cannot from it learn the other three, I do not repeat my lesson." When twenty-eight years old Confucius studied archery, and in the following years took lessons in music from the celebrated master, Seang. At thirty he tells us "he stood firm," and about this time his fame mightily increased, many noble youths enrolled themselves among his disciples; and on his expressing a desire to visit the imperial court of Chow to confer on the subject of ancient ceremonies with Laou Tan, the founder of the Taouist sect, the reigning duke placed a carriage and horses at his disposal for the journey. The extreme veneration which Confucius entertained for the founders of the Chow dynasty made the visit to Lo, the capital, one of intense interest to him. With eager delight he wandered through the temple and audience-chambers, the place of sacrifices and the palace, and having completed his inspection of the position and shape of the various sacrificial and ceremonial vessels, he turned to his disciples and said, "Now I understand the wisdom of the duke of Chow, and how his house attained to imperial sway." But the principal object of his visit to Chow was to confer with Laou-tsze; and of the interview between these two very dissimilar men we have various accounts. The Confucian writers as a rule merely mention the fact of their having met, but the admirers of Laou-tsze affirm that Confucius was very roughly handled by his more ascetic contemporary, who looked down from his somewhat higher standpoint with contempt on the great apostle of antiquity. It was only natural that Laou-tsze, who preached that stillness and self-emptiness were the highest attainable objects, should be ready to assail a man whose whole being was wrapt up in ceremonial observances and conscious well-doing. The very measured tones and considered movements of Confucius, coupled with a certain admixture of that pride which apes humility, must have been very irritating to the metaphysically-minded treasurer. And it was eminently characteristic of Confucius, that notwithstanding the great provocation given him on this occasion, he abstained from any rejoinder. We nowhere read of his engaging in a dispute. When an opponent arose, it was in keeping with the doctrine of Confucius to retire before him. "A sage," he said, "will not enter a tottering state nor dwell in a disorganized one. When right principles of government prevail he shows himself, but when they are prostrated he remains concealed." And carrying out the same principle in private life, he invariably refused to wrangle. It was possibly in connection with this incident that Confucius drew the attention of his disciples to the metal statue of a man with a triple clasp upon his mouth, which stood in the ancestral temple at Lo. On the back of the statue were inscribed these words: "The ancients were guarded in their speech, and like them we should avoid loquacity. Many words invite many defeats. Avoid also engaging in many businesses, for many businesses create many difficulties." "Observe this, my children," said he, pointing to the inscription. "These words are true, and commend themselves to our reason." Having gained all the information he desired in Chow, he returned to Loo, where pupils flocked to him until, we are told, he was surrounded by an admiring company of three thousand disciples. His stay in Loo was, however, of short duration, for the three principal clans of the state, those of Ke, Shuh, and Mang, after frequent contests between themselves, engaged in a war with the reigning duke, and overthrew his armies. Upon this the duke took refuge in the state of T'se, whither Confucius followed him. As he passed along the road he saw a woman weeping at a tomb, and having compassion on her, he sent his disciple Tsze-loo to ask her the cause of her grief. "You weep as if you had experienced sorrow upon sorrow," said Tsze-loo. "I have," said the woman, "my father-in-law was killed here by a tiger, and my husband also; and now my son has met the same fate." "Why, then, do you not remove from the place?" asked Confucius. "Because here there is no oppressive government," replied the woman. On hearing this answer, Confucius remarked to his disciples, "My children remember this, oppressive government is fiercer than a tiger." Possibly Confucius was attracted to T'se by a knowledge that the music of the emperor Shun was still preserved at the court. At all events, we are told that having heard a strain of the much-desired music on his way to the capital, he hurried on, and was so ravished with the airs he heard that for three months he never tasted flesh. "I did not think," said he, "that music could reach such a pitch of excellence." Hearing of the arrival of the Sage, the duke of T'se--King, by name--sent for him, and after some conversation, being minded to act the part of a patron to so distinguished a visitor, offered to make him a present of the city of Lin-k'ew with its revenues. But this Confucius declined, remarking to his disciples, "A superior man will not receive rewards except for services done. I have given advice to the duke King, but he has not followed it as yet, and now he would endow me with this place. Very far is he from understanding me." He still, however, discussed politics with the duke, and taught him that "There is good government when the prince is prince, and the minister is minister; when the father is father, and the son is son." "Good," said the duke; "if, indeed, the prince be not prince, the minister not minister, and the son not son, although I have my revenue, can I enjoy it?" Though Duke King was by no means a satisfactory pupil, many of his instincts were good, and he once again expressed a desire to pension Confucius, that he might keep him at hand; but Gan Ying, the Prime Minister, dissuaded him from his purpose. "These scholars," said the minister, "are impracticable, and cannot be imitated. They are haughty and conceited of their own views, so that they will not rest satisfied in inferior positions. They set a high value on all funeral ceremonies, give way to their grief, and will waste their property on great funerals, so that they would only be injurious to the common manners. This Kung Footsze has a thousand peculiarities. It would take ages to exhaust all he knows about the ceremonies of going up and going down. This is not the time to examine into his rules of propriety. If you wish to employ him to change the customs of T'se, you will not be making the people your primary consideration." This reasoning had full weight with the duke, who the next time he was urged to follow the advice of Confucius, cut short the discussion by the remark, "I am too old to adopt his doctrines." Under these circumstances Confucius once more returned to Loo, only however to find that the condition of the state was still unchanged; disorder was rife; and the reins of government were in the hands of the head of the strongest party for the time being. This was no time for Confucius to take office, and he devoted the leisure thus forced upon him to the compilation of the "Book of Odes" and the "Book of History." But in process of time order was once more restored, and he then felt himself free to accept the post of magistrate of the town of Chung-too, which was offered him by the duke King. He now had an opportunity of putting his principles of government to the test, and the result partly justified his expectations. He framed rules for the support of the living, and for the observation of rites for the dead; he arranged appropriate food for the old and the young; and he provided for the proper separation of men and women. And the results were, we are told, that, as in the time of King Alfred, a thing dropped on the road was not picked up; there was no fraudulent carving of vessels; coffins were made of the ordained thickness; graves were unmarked by mounds raised over them; and no two prices were charged in the markets. The duke, surprised at what he saw, asked the sage whether his rule of government could be applied to the whole state. "Certainly," replied Confucius, "and not only to the state of Loo, but to the whole empire." Forthwith, therefore, the duke made him Assistant-Superintendent of Works, and shortly afterwards appointed him Minister of Crime. Here, again, his success was complete. From the day of his appointment crime is said to have disappeared, and the penal laws remained a dead letter. Courage was recognized by Confucius as being one of the great virtues, and about this period we have related two instances in which he showed that he possessed both moral and physical courage to a high degree. The chief of the Ke family, being virtual possessor of the state, when the body of the exiled Duke Chaou was brought from T'se for interment, directed that it should be buried apart from the graves of his ancestors. On Confucius becoming aware of his decision, he ordered a trench to be dug round the burying-ground which should enclose the new tomb. "Thus to censure a prince and signalize his faults is not according to etiquette," said he to Ke. "I have caused the grave to be included in the cemetery, and I have done so to hide your disloyalty." And his action was allowed to pass unchallenged. The other instance referred to was on the occasion, a few years later, of an interview between the dukes of Loo and T'se, at which Confucius was present as master of ceremonies. At his instigation, an altar was raised at the place of meeting, which was mounted by three steps, and on this the dukes ascended, and having pledged one another proceeded to discuss a treaty of alliance. But treachery was intended on the part of the duke of T'se, and at a given signal a band of savages advanced with beat of drum to carry off the duke of Loo. Some such stratagem had been considered probable by Confucius, and the instant the danger became imminent he rushed to the altar and led away the duke. After much disorder, in which Confucius took a firm and prominent part, a treaty was concluded, and even some land on the south of the river Wan, which had been taken by T'se, was by the exertions of the Sage restored to Loo. On this recovered territory the people of Loo, in memory of the circumstance, built a city and called it, "The City of Confession." But to return to Confucius as the Minister of Crime. Though eminently successful, the results obtained under his system were not quite such as his followers have represented them to have been. No doubt crime diminished under his rule, but it was by no means abolished. In fact, his biographers mention a case which must have been peculiarly shocking to him. A father brought an accusation against his son, in the expectation, probably, of gaining his suit with ease before a judge who laid such stress on the virtues of filial piety. But to his surprise, and that of the on-lookers, Confucius cast both father and son into prison, and to the remonstrances of the head of the Ke clan answered, "Am I to punish for a breach of filial piety one who has never been taught to be filially minded? Is not he who neglects to teach his son his duties, equally guilty with the son who fails in them? Crime is not inherent in human nature, and therefore the father in the family, and the government in the state, are responsible for the crimes committed against filial piety and the public laws. If a king is careless about publishing laws, and then peremptorily punishes in accordance with the strict letter of them, he acts the part of a swindler; if he collect the taxes arbitrarily without giving warning, he is guilty of oppression; and if he puts the people to death without having instructed them, he commits a cruelty." On all these points Confucius frequently insisted, and strove both by precept and example to impart the spirit they reflected on all around him. In the presence of his prince we are told that his manner, though self-possessed, displayed respectful uneasiness. When he entered the palace, or when he passed the vacant throne, his countenance changed, his legs bent under him, and he spoke as though he had scarcely breath to utter a word. When it fell to his lot to carry the royal sceptre, he stooped his body as though he were not able to bear its weight. If the prince came to visit him when he was ill, he had himself placed with his head to the east, and lay dressed in his court clothes with his girdle across them. When the prince sent him a present of cooked meat, he carefully adjusted his mat and just tasted the dishes; if the meat were uncooked, he offered it to the spirits of his ancestors, and any animal which was thus sent him he kept alive. At the village festivals he never preceded, but always followed after the elders. To all about him he assumed an appearance of simplicity and sincerity. To the court officials of the lower grade he spoke freely, and to superior officers his manner was bland but precise. Even at the wild gatherings which accompanied the annual ceremony of driving away pestilential influences, he paid honor to the original meaning of the rite, by standing in court robes on the eastern steps of his house, and received the riotous exorcists as though they were favored guests. When sent for by the prince to assist in receiving a royal visitor, his countenance appeared to change. He inclined himself to the officers among whom he stood, and when sent to meet the visitor at the gate, "he hastened forward with his arms spread out like the wings of a bird." Recognizing in the wind and the storm the voice of Heaven, he changed countenance at the sound of a sudden clap of thunder or a violent gust of wind. The principles which underlie all these details relieve them from the sense of affected formality which they would otherwise suggest. Like the sages of old, Confucius had an overweening faith in the effect of example. "What do you say," asked the chief of the Ke clan on one occasion, "to killing the unprincipled for the good of the principled?" "Sir," replied Confucius, "in carrying on your government why should you employ capital punishment at all? Let your evinced desires be for what is good and the people will be good." And then quoting the words of King Ching, he added, "The relation between superiors and inferiors is like that between the wind and the grass. The grass must bend when the wind blows across it." Thus in every act of his life, whether at home or abroad, whether at table or in bed, whether at study or in moments of relaxation, he did all with the avowed object of being seen of men and of influencing them by his conduct. And to a certain extent he gained his end. He succeeded in demolishing a number of fortified cities which had formed the hotbeds of sedition and tumult; and thus added greatly to the power of the reigning duke. He inspired the men with a spirit of loyalty and good faith, and taught the women to be chaste and docile. On the report of the tranquillity prevailing in Loo, strangers flocked into the state, and thus was fulfilled the old criterion of good government which was afterward repeated by Confucius, "the people were happy, and strangers were attracted from afar." But even Confucius found it impossible to carry all his theories into practice, and his experience as Minister of Crime taught him that something more than mere example was necessary to lead the people into the paths of virtue. Before he had been many months in office, he signed the death-warrant of a well-known citizen named Shaou for disturbing the public peace. This departure from the principle he had so lately laid down astonished his followers, and Tsze-kung--the Simon Peter as he has been called among his disciples--took him to task for executing so notable a man. But Confucius held to it that the step was necessary. "There are five great evils in the world," said he: "a man with a rebellious heart who becomes dangerous; a man who joins to vicious deeds a fierce temper; a man whose words are knowingly false; a man who treasures in his memory noxious deeds and disseminates them; a man who follows evil and fertilizes it. All these evil qualities were combined in Shaou. His house was a rendezvous for the disaffected; his words were specious enough to dazzle any one; and his opposition was violent enough to overthrow any independent man." But notwithstanding such departures from the lines he had laid down for himself, the people gloried in his rule and sang at their work songs in which he was described as their savior from oppression and wrong. Confucius was an enthusiast, and his want of success in his attempt completely to reform the age in which he lived never seemed to suggest a doubt to his mind of the complete wisdom of his creed. According to his theory, his official administration should have effected the reform not only of his sovereign and the people, but of those of the neighboring states. But what was the practical result? The contentment which reigned among the people of Loo, instead of instigating the duke of T'se to institute a similar system, only served to rouse his jealousy. "With Confucius at the head of its government," said he, "Loo will become supreme among the states, and T'se, which is nearest to it, will be swallowed up. Let us propitiate it by a surrender of territory." But a more provident statesman suggested that they should first try to bring about the disgrace of the Sage. With this object he sent eighty beautiful girls, well skilled in the arts of music and dancing, and a hundred and twenty of the finest horses which could be procured, as a present to the duke King. The result fully realized the anticipation of the minister. The girls were taken into the duke's harem, the horses were removed to the ducal stables, and Confucius was left to meditate on the folly of men who preferred listening to the songs of the maidens of T'se to the wisdom of Yaou and Shun. Day after day passed and the duke showed no signs of returning to his proper mind. The affairs of state were neglected, and for three days the duke refused to receive his ministers in audience. "Master," said Tsze-loo, "it is time you went." But Confucius, who had more at stake than his disciple, was disinclined to give up the experiment on which his heart was set. Besides, the time was approaching when the great sacrifice to Heaven at the solstice, about which he had had so many conversations with the duke, should be offered up, and he hoped that the recollection of his weighty words would recall the duke to a sense of his duties. But his gay rivals in the affections of the duke still held their sway, and the recurrence of the great festival failed to awaken his conscience even for the moment. Reluctantly therefore Confucius resigned his post and left the capital. But though thus disappointed of the hopes he entertained of the duke of Loo, Confucius was by no means disposed to resign his role as the reformer of the age. "If any one among the princes would employ me," said he, "I would effect something considerable in the course of twelve months, and in three years the government would be perfected." But the tendencies of the times were unfavorable to the Sage. The struggle for supremacy which had been going on for centuries between the princes of the various states was then at its height, and though there might be a question whether it would finally result in the victory of Tsin, or of Ts'oo, or of Ts'in, there could be no doubt that the sceptre had already passed from the hands of the ruler of Chow. To men therefore who were fighting over the possessions of a state which had ceased to live, the idea of employing a minister whose principal object would have been to breathe life into the dead bones of Chow, was ridiculous. This soon became apparent to his disciples, who being even more concerned than their master at his loss of office, and not taking so exalted a view as he did of what he considered to be a heaven-sent mission, were inclined to urge him to make concessions in harmony with the times. "Your principles," said Tsze-kung to him, "are excellent, but they are unacceptable in the empire, would it not be well therefore to bate them a little?" "A good husbandman," replied the Sage, "can sow, but he cannot secure a harvest. An artisan may excel in handicraft, but he cannot provide a market for his goods. And in the same way a superior man can cultivate his principles, but he cannot make them acceptable." But Confucius was at least determined that no efforts on his part should be wanting to discover the opening for which he longed, and on leaving Loo he betook himself to the state of Wei. On arriving at the capital, the reigning duke received him with distinction, but showed no desire to employ him. Probably expecting, however, to gain some advantage from the counsels of the Sage in the art of governing, he determined to attach him to his court by the grant of an annual stipend of sixty thousand measures of grain--that having been the value of the post he had just resigned in Loo. Had the experiences of his public life come up to the sanguine hopes he had entertained at its beginning, Confucius would probably have declined this offer as he did that of the Duke of T'se some years before, but poverty unconsciously impelled him to act up to the advice of Tsze-kung and to bate his principles of conduct somewhat. His stay, however, in Wei was of short duration. The officials at the court, jealous probably of the influence they feared he might gain over the duke, intrigued against him, and Confucius thought it best to bow before the coming storm. After living on the duke's hospitality for ten months, he left the capital, intending to visit the state of Ch'in. It chanced, however, that the way thither led him through the town of Kwang, which had suffered much from the filibustering expeditions of a notorious disturber of the public peace, named Yang-Hoo. To this man of ill-fame Confucius bore a striking resemblance, so much so that the townspeople, fancying that they now had their old enemy in their power, surrounded the house in which he lodged for five days, intending to attack him. The situation was certainly disquieting, and the disciples were much alarmed. But Confucius's belief in the heaven-sent nature of his mission raised him above fear. "After the death of King Wan," said he, "was not the cause of truth lodged in me? If Heaven had wished to let this sacred cause perish, I should not have been put into such a relation to it. Heaven will not let the cause of truth perish, and what therefore can the people of Kwang do to me?" Saying which he tuned his lyre, and sang probably some of those songs from his recently compiled Book of Odes which breathed the wisdom of the ancient emperors. From some unexplained cause, but more probably from the people of Kwang discovering their mistake than from any effect produced by Confucius' ditties, the attacking force suddenly withdrew, leaving the Sage free to go wherever he listed. This misadventure was sufficient to deter him from wandering farther a-field, and, after a short stay at Poo, he returned to Wei. Again the duke welcomed him to the capital, though it does not appear that he renewed his stipend, and even his consort Nan-tsze forgot for a while her intrigues and debaucheries at the news of his arrival. With a complimentary message she begged an interview with the Sage, which he at first refused; but on her urging her request, he was fain obliged to yield the point. On being introduced into her presence, he found her concealed behind a screen, in strict accordance with the prescribed etiquette, and after the usual formalities they entered freely into conversation. Tsze-loo was much disturbed at this want of discretion, as he considered it, on the part of Confucius, and the vehemence of his master's answer showed that there was a doubt in his own mind whether he had not overstepped the limits of sage-like propriety. "Wherein I have done improperly," said he, "may Heaven reject me! may Heaven reject me!" This incident did not, however, prevent him from maintaining friendly relations with the court, and it was not until the duke by a public act showed his inability to understand the dignity of the role which Confucius desired to assume, that he lost all hope of finding employment in the state of his former patron. On this occasion the duke drove through the streets of his capital seated in a carriage with Nan-tsze, and desired Confucius to follow in a carriage behind. As the procession passed through the market-place, the people perceiving more clearly than the duke the incongruity of the proceeding, laughed and jeered at the idea of making virtue follow in the wake of lust. This completed the shame which Confucius felt at being in so false a position. "I have not seen one," said he, "who loves virtue as he loves beauty." To stay any longer under the protection of a court which could inflict such an indignity upon him was more than he could do, and he therefore once again struck southward toward Ch'in. After his retirement from office it is probable that Confucius devoted himself afresh to imparting to his followers those doctrines and opinions which we shall consider later on. Even on the road to Ch'in we are told that he practised ceremonies with his disciples beneath the shadow of a tree by the wayside in Sung. In the spirit of Laou-tsze, Hwuy T'uy, an officer in the neighborhood, was angered at his reported "proud air and many desires, his insinuating habit and wild will," and attempted to prevent him entering the state. In this endeavor, however, he was unsuccessful, as were some more determined opponents, who two years later attacked him at Poo, when he was on his way to Wei. On this occasion he was seized, and though it is said that his followers struggled manfully with his captors, their efforts did not save him from having to give an oath that he would not continue his journey to Wei. But in spite of his oath, and in spite of the public slight which had previously been put upon him by the duke of Wei, an irresistible attraction drew him toward that state, and he had no sooner escaped from the clutches of his captors than he continued his journey. This deliberate forfeiture of his word in one who had commanded them to "hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles," surprised his disciples; and Tsze-kung, who was generally the spokesman on such occasions, asked him whether it was right to violate the oath he had taken. But Confucius, who had learned expediency in adversity, replied, "It was an oath extracted by force. The spirits do not hear such." But to return to Confucius flying from his enemies in Sung. Finding his way barred by the action of Hwan T'uy, he proceeded westward and arrived at Ch'ing, the capital of the state of the same name. Thither it would appear his disciples had preceded him, and he arrived unattended at the eastern gate of the city. But his appearance was so striking that his followers were soon made aware of his presence. "There is a man," said a townsman to Tsze-kung, "standing at the east gate with a forehead like Yaou, a neck like Kaou Yaou, his shoulders on a level with those of Tsze-ch'an, but wanting below the waist three inches of the height of Yu, and altogether having the forsaken appearance of a stray dog." Recognizing his master in this description, Tsze-kung hastened to meet him, and repeated to him the words of his informant. Confucius was much amused, and said: "The personal appearance is a small matter; but to say I was like a stray dog--capital! capital!" The ruling powers in Ch'ing, however, showed no disposition to employ even a man possessing such marked characteristics, and before long he removed to Ch'in, where he remained a year. From Ch'in he once more turned his face toward Wei, and it was while he was on this journey that he was detained at Poo, as mentioned above. Between Confucius and the duke of Wei there evidently existed a personal liking, if not friendship. The duke was always glad to see him and ready to converse with him; but Confucius's unbounded admiration for those whose bones, as Laou-tsze said, were mouldered to dust, and especially for the founders of the Chow dynasty, made it impossible for the duke to place him in any position of importance. At the same time Confucius seems always to have hoped that he would be able to gain the duke over to his views; and thus it came about that the Sage was constantly attracted to the court of Duke Ling, and as often compelled to exile himself from it. On this particular occasion, as at all other times, the duke received him gladly, but their conversations, which had principally turned on the act of peaceful government, were now directed to warlike affairs. The duke was contemplating an attack on Poo, the inhabitants of which, under the leadership of Hwan T'uy, who had arrested Confucius, had rebelled against him. At first Confucius was quite disposed to support the duke in his intended hostilities; but a representation from the duke that the probable support of other states would make the expedition one of considerable danger, converted Confucius to the opinion evidently entertained by the duke, that it would be best to leave Hwan T'uy in possession of his ill-gotten territory. Confucius's latest advice was then to this effect, and the duke acted upon it. The duke was now becoming an old man, and with advancing age came a disposition to leave the task of governing to others, and to weary of Confucius' high-flown lectures. He ceased "to use" Confucius, as the Chinese historians say, and the Sage was therefore indignant, and ready to accept any offer which might come from any quarter. While in this humor he received an invitation from Pih Hih, an officer of the state of Tsin who was holding the town of Chung-mow against his chief, to visit him, and he was inclined to go. It is impossible to study this portion of Confucius' career without feeling that a great change had come over his conduct. There was no longer that lofty love of truth and of virtue which had distinguished the commencement of his official life. Adversity, instead of stiffening his back, had made him pliable. He who had formerly refused to receive money he had not earned, was now willing to take pay in return for no other services than the presentation of courtier-like advice on occasions when Duke Ling desired to have his opinion in support of his own; and in defiance of his oft-repeated denunciation of rebels, he was now ready to go over to the court of a rebel chief, in the hope possibly of being able through his means "to establish," as he said on another occasion, "an Eastern Chow." Again Tsze-loo interfered, and expostulated with him on his inconsistency. "Master," said he, "I have heard you say that when a man is guilty of personal wrong-doing, a superior man will not associate with him. If you accept the invitation of this Pih Hih, who is in open rebellion against his chief, what will people say?" But Confucius, with a dexterity which had now become common with him, replied: "It is true I have said so. But is it not also true that if a thing be really hard, it may be ground without being made thin; and if it be really white, it may be steeped in a black fluid without becoming black? Am I a bitter gourd? Am I to be hung up out of the way of being eaten?" But nevertheless Tsze-loo's remonstrances prevailed, and he did not go. His relations with the duke did not improve, and so dissatisfied was he with his patron that he retired from the court. As at this time Confucius was not in the receipt of any official income, it is probable that he again provided for his wants by imparting to his disciples some of the treasures out of the rich stores of learning which he had collected by means of diligent study and of a wide experience. Every word and action of Confucius were full of such meaning to his admiring followers that they have enabled us to trace him into the retirement of private life. In his dress, we are told, he was careful to wear only the "correct" colors, viz., azure, yellow, carnation, white and black, and he scrupulously avoided red as being the color usually affected by women and girls. At the table he was moderate in his appetite but particular as to the nature of his food and the manner in which it was set before him. Nothing would induce him to touch any meat that was "high" or rice that was musty, nor would he eat anything that was not properly cut up or accompanied with the proper sauce. He allowed himself only a certain quantity of meat and rice, and though no such limit was fixed to the amount of wine with which he accompanied his frugal fare, we are assured that he never allowed himself to be confused by it. When out driving, he never turned his head quite round, and in his actions as well as in his words he avoided all appearance of haste. Such details are interesting in the case of a man like Confucius, who has exercised so powerful an influence over so large a proportion of the world's inhabitants, and whose instructions, far from being confined to the courts of kings, found their loudest utterances in intimate communings with his disciples, and in the example he set by the exact performance of his daily duties. The only accomplishment which Confucius possessed was a love of music, and this he studied less as an accomplishment than as a necessary part of education. "It is by the odes that the mind is aroused," said he. "It is by the rules of propriety that the character is established. And it is music which completes the edifice." But having tasted the sweets of official life, Confucius was not inclined to resign all hope of future employment, and the duke of Wei still remaining deaf to his advice, he determined to visit the state of Tsin, in the hope of finding in Chaou Keen-tsze, one of the three chieftains who virtually governed that state, a more hopeful pupil. With this intention he started westward, but had got no farther than the Yellow River when the news reached him of the execution of Tuh Ming and Tuh Shun-hwa, two men of note in Tsin. The disorder which this indicated put a stop to his journey; for had not he himself said "that a superior man will not enter a tottering state." His disappointment and grief were great, and looking at the yellow waters as they flowed at his feet, he sighed and muttered to himself: "Oh how beautiful were they; this river is not more majestic than they were! and I was not there to avert their fate!" So saying he returned to Wei, only to find the duke as little inclined to listen to his lectures, as he was deeply engaged in warlike preparations. When Confucius presented himself at court, the duke refused to talk on any other subject but military tactics, and forgetting, possibly on purpose, that Confucius was essentially a man of peace, pressed him for information on the art of manoeuvreing an army. "If you should wish to know how to arrange sacrificial vessels," said the Sage, "I will answer you, but about warfare I know nothing." Confucius was now sixty years old, and the condition of the states composing the empire was even more unfavorable for the reception of his doctrines than ever. But though depressed by fortune, he never lost that steady confidence in himself and his mission, which was a leading characteristic of his career, and when he found the duke of Wei deaf to his advice, he removed to Ch'in, in the hope of there finding a ruler who would appreciate his wisdom. In the following year he left Ch'in with his disciples for Ts'ae, a small dependency of the state of Ts'oo. In those days the empire was subjected to constant changes. One day a new state carved out of an old one would appear, and again it would disappear, or increase in size, as the fortunes of war might determine. Thus while Confucius was in Ts'ae, a part of Ts'oo declared itself independent, under the name of Ye, and the ruler usurped the title of duke. In earlier days such rebellion would have called forth a rebuke from Confucius; but it was otherwise now, and, instead of denouncing the usurper as a rebel, he sought him as a patron. The duke did not know how to receive his visitor, and asked Tsze-loo about him. But Tsze-loo, possibly because he considered the duke to be no better than Pih Hih, returned him no answer. For this reticence Confucius found fault with him, and said, "Why did you not say to him, 'He is simply a man who, in his eager pursuit of knowledge, forgets his food; who, in the joy of its attainments, forgets his sorrows; and who does not perceive that old age is coming on?'" But whatever may have been the opinion of Tsze-loo, Confucius was quite ready to be on friendly terms with the duke, who seems to have had no keener relish for Confucius' ethics than the other rulers to whom he had offered his services. We are only told of one conversation which took place between the duke and the Sage, and on that occasion the duke questioned him on the subject of government. Confucius' reply was eminently characteristic of the man. Most of his definitions of good government would have sounded unpleasantly in the ears of a man who had just thrown off his master's yoke and headed a successful rebellion, so he cast about for one which might offer some excuse for the new duke by attributing the fact of his disloyalty to the bad government of his late ruler. Quoting the words of an earlier sage, he replied, "Good government obtains when those who are near are made happy, and those who are far off are attracted." Returning from Ye to Ts'ae, he came to a river which, being unbridged, left him no resource but to ford it. Seeing two men whom he recognized as political recluses ploughing in a neighboring field, he sent the ever-present Tsze-loo to inquire of them where best he could effect a crossing. "Who is that holding the reins in the carriage yonder?" asked the first addressed, in answer to Tsze-loo's inquiry. "Kung Kew," replied the disciple, "Kung Kew, of Loo?" asked the ploughman. "Yes," was the reply. "_He_ knows the ford," was the enigmatic answer of the man as he turned to his work; but whether this reply was suggested by the general belief that Confucius was omniscient, or by wry of a parable to signify that Confucius possessed the knowledge by which the river of disorder, which was barring the progress of liberty and freedom, might be crossed, we are only left to conjecture. Nor from the second recluse could Tsze-loo gain any practical information. "Who are you, sir?" was the somewhat peremptory question which his inquiry met with. Upon his answering that he was a disciple of Confucius, the man, who might have gathered his estimate of Confucius from the mouth of Laou-tsze, replied: "Disorder, like a swelling flood, spreads over the whole empire, and who is he who will change it for you? Rather than follow one who merely withdraws from this court to that court, had you not better follow those who (like ourselves) withdraw from the world altogether?" These words Tsze-loo, as was his wont, repeated to Confucius, who thus justified his career: "It is impossible to associate with birds and beasts as if they were the same as ourselves. If I associate not with people, with mankind, with whom shall I associate? If right principles prevailed throughout the empire, there would be no necessity for me to change its state." Altogether Confucius remained three years in Ts'ae,--three years of strife and war, during which his counsels were completely neglected. Toward their close, the state of Woo made an attack on Ch'in, which found support from the powerful state of Ts'oo on the south. While thus helping his ally, the Duke of Ts'oo heard that Confucius was in Ts'ae, and determined to invite him to his court. With this object he sent messengers bearing presents to the Sage, and charged them with a message begging him to come to Ts'oo. Confucius readily accepted the invitation, and prepared to start. But the news of the transaction alarmed the ministers of Ts'ae and Ch'in. "Ts'oo," said they, "is already a powerful state, and Confucius is a man of wisdom. Experience has proved that those who have despised him have invariably suffered for it, and, should he succeed in guiding the affairs of Ts'oo, we should certainly be ruined. At all hazards we must stop his going." When, therefore, Confucius had started on his journey, these men despatched a force which hemmed him in a wild bit of desert country. Here, we are told, they kept him a prisoner for seven days, during which time he suffered severe privations, and, as was always the case in moments of difficulty, the disciples loudly bewailed their lot and that of their master. "Has the superior man," said Tsze-loo, "indeed, to endure in this way?" "The superior man may indeed have to suffer want," replied Confucius, "but it is only the mean man who, when he is in straits, gives way to unbridled license." In this emergency he had recourse to a solace which had soothed him on many occasions when fortune frowned: he played, on his lute and sang. At length he succeeded in sending word to the duke of Ts'oo of the position he was in. At once the duke sent ambassadors to liberate him, and he himself went out of his capital to meet him. But though he welcomed him cordially, and seems to have availed himself of his advice on occasions, he did not appoint him to any office, and the intention he at one time entertained of granting him a slice of territory was thwarted by his ministers, from motives of expediency. "Has your majesty," said this officer, "any servant who could discharge the duties of ambassador like Tsze-kung? or any so well qualified for a premier as Yen Hwuy? or any one to compare as a general with Tsze-loo? Did not kings Wan and Woo, from their small states of Fung and Kaou, rise to the sovereignty of the empire? And if Kung Kew once acquired territory, with such disciples to be his ministers, it will not be to the prosperity of Ts'oo." This remonstrance not only had the immediate effect which was intended, but appears to have influenced the manner of the duke toward the Sage, for in the interval between this and the duke's death, in the autumn of the same year, we hear of no counsel being either asked or given. In the successor to the throne Confucius evidently despaired of finding a patron, and he once again returned to Wei. Confucius was now sixty-three, and on arriving at Wei he found a grandson of his former friend, the duke Ling, holding the throne against his own father, who had been driven into exile for attempting the life of his mother, the notorious Nan-tsze. This chief, who called himself the duke Chuh, being conscious how much his cause would be strengthened by the support of Confucius, sent Tsze-loo to him, saying, "The Prince of Wei has been waiting to secure your services in the administration of the state, and wishes to know what you consider is the first thing to be done." "It is first of all necessary," replied Confucius, "to rectify names." "Indeed," said Tzse-loo, "you are wide of the mark. Why need there be such rectification?" "How uncultivated you are, Yew," answered Confucius; "a superior man shows a cautious reserve in regard to what he does not know. If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on successfully. When affairs cannot be carried on successfully, proprieties and music will not flourish. When proprieties and music do not flourish, punishments will not properly be awarded. When punishments are not properly awarded, the people do not know how to move hand or foot. Therefore the superior man considers it necessary that names should be used appropriately, and that his directions should be carried out appropriately. A superior man requires that his words should be correct." The position of things in Wei was naturally such as Confucius could not sanction, and, as the duke showed no disposition to amend his ways, the Sage left his court, and lived the remainder of the five or six years, during which he sojourned in the state, in close retirement. He had now been absent from his native state of Loo for fourteen years, and the time had come when he was to return to it. But, by the irony of fate, the accomplishment of his long-felt desire was due, not to his reputation for political or ethical wisdom, but to his knowledge of military tactics, which he heartily despised. It happened that at this time Yen Yew, a disciple of the Sage, being in the service of Ke K'ang, conducted a campaign against T'se with much success. On his triumphal return, Ke K'ang asked him how he had acquired his military skill. "From Confucius," replied the general. "And what kind of man is he?" asked Ke K'ang. "Were you to employ him," answered Yen Yew, "your fame would spread abroad; your people might face demons and gods, and would have nothing to fear or to ask of them. And if you accepted his principles, were you to collect a thousand altars of the spirits of the land it would profit you nothing." Attracted by such a prospect, Ke K'ang proposed to invite the Sage to his court, "If you do," said Yen Yew, "mind you do not allow mean men to come between you and him." But before Ke K'ang's invitation reached Confucius an incident occurred which made the arrival of the messengers from Loo still more welcome to him. K'ung Wan, an officer of Wei, came to consult him as to the best means of attacking the force of another officer with whom he was engaged in a feud. Confucius, disgusted at being consulted on such a subject, professed ignorance, and prepared to leave the state, saying as he went away: "The bird chooses its tree; the tree does not choose the bird." At this juncture Ke K'ang's envoys arrived, and without hesitation he accepted the invitation they brought. On arriving at Loo, he presented himself at court, and in reply to a question of the duke Gae on the subject of government, threw out a strong hint that the duke might do well to offer him an appointment. "Government," he said, "consists in the right choice of ministers." To the same question put by Ke K'ang he replied, "Employ the upright and put aside the crooked, and thus will the crooked be made upright." At this time Ke K'ang was perplexed how to deal with the prevailing brigandage. "If you, sir, were not avaricious, though you might offer rewards to induce people to steal, they would not." This answer sufficiently indicates the estimate formed by Confucius of Ke K'ang and therefore of the duke Gae, for so entirely were the two of one mind that the acts of Ke K'ang appear to have been invariably indorsed by the duke. It was plainly impossible that Confucius could serve under such a regime, and instead, therefore, of seeking employment, he retired to his study and devoted himself to the completion of his literary undertaking. He was now sixty-nine years of age, and if a man is to be considered successful only when he succeeds in realizing the dream of his life, he must be deemed to have been unfortunate. Endowed by nature with a large share of reverence, a cold rather than a fervid disposition, and a studious mind, and reared in the traditions of the ancient kings, whose virtuous achievements obtained an undue prominence by the obliteration of all their faults and failures, he believed himself capable of effecting far more than it was possible for him or any other man to accomplish. In the earlier part of his career, he had in Loo an opportunity given him for carrying his theories of government into practice, and we have seen how they failed to do more than produce a temporary improvement in the condition of the people under his immediate rule. But he had a lofty and steady confidence in himself and in the principles which he professed, which prevented his accepting the only legitimate inference which could be drawn from his want of success. The lessons of his own experience were entirely lost upon him, and he went down to his grave at the age of seventy-two firmly convinced as of yore that if he were placed in a position of authority "in three years the government would be perfected." Finding it impossible to associate himself with the rulers of Loo, he appears to have resigned himself to exclusion from office. His wanderings were over: "And as a hare, when hounds and horns pursue, Pants to the place from whence at first he flew," he had lately been possessed with an absorbing desire to return once more to Loo. This had at last been brought about, and he made up his mind to spend the remainder of his days in his native state. He had now leisure to finish editing the _Shoo King_, or _Book of History_, to which he wrote a preface; he also "carefully digested the rites and ceremonies determined by the wisdom of the more ancient sages and kings; collected and arranged the ancient poetry; and undertook the reform of music." He made a diligent study of the _Book of Changes_, and added a commentary to it, which is sufficient to show that the original meaning of the work was as much a mystery to him as it has been to others. His idea of what would probably be the value of the kernel encased in this unusually hard shell, if it were once rightly understood, is illustrated by his remark, "that if some years could be added to his life, he would give fifty of them to the study of the _Book of Changes_ and that then he expected to be without great faults." In the year B.C. 482 his son Le died, and in the following year he lost by death his faithful disciple Yen Hwuy. When the news of this last misfortune reached him, he exclaimed, "Alas! Heaven is destroying me!" A year later a servant of Ke K'ang caught a strange one-horned animal while on a hunting excursion, and as no one present, could tell what animal it was, Confucius was sent for. At once he declared it to be a K'e-lin, and legend says that its identity with the one which appeared before his birth was proved by its having the piece of ribbon on its horn which Ching-tsae tied to the weird animal which presented itself to her in a dream on Mount Ne. This second apparition could only have one meaning, and Confucius was profoundly affected at the portent. "For whom have you come?" he cried, "for whom have you come?" and then, bursting into tears, he added, "The course of my doctrine is run, and I am unknown." "How do you mean that you are unknown?" asked Tsze-kung. "I don't complain of Providence," answered the Sage, "nor find fault with men that learning is neglected and success is worshipped. Heaven knows me. Never does a superior man pass away without leaving a name behind him. But my principles make no progress, and I, how shall I be viewed in future ages?" At this time, notwithstanding his declining strength and his many employments, he wrote the _Ch'un ts'ew,_ or _Spring and Autumn Annals_, in which he followed the history of his native state of Loo, from the time of the duke Yin to the fourteenth year of the duke Gae, that is, to the time when the appearance of the K'e-lin warned him to consider his life at an end. This is the only work of which Confucius was the author, and of this every word is his own. His biographers say that "what was written, he wrote, and what was erased, was erased by him." Not an expression was either inserted or altered by any one but himself. When he had completed the work, he handed the manuscript to his disciples, saying, "By the _Spring and Autumn Annals_ I shall be known, and by the _Spring and Autumn Annals_ I shall be condemned." This only furnishes another of the many instances in which authors have entirely misjudged the value of their own works. In the estimation of his countrymen even, whose reverence for his every word would incline them to accept his opinion on this as on every subject, the _Spring and Autumn Annals_ holds a very secondary place, his utterances recorded in the _Lun yu_, or _Confucian Analects_, being esteemed of far higher value, as they undoubtedly are. And indeed the two works he compiled, the _Shoo king_ and the _She king_, hold a very much higher place in the public regard than the book on which he so prided himself. To foreigners, whose judgments are unhampered by his recorded opinion, his character as an original historian sinks into insignificance, and he is known only as a philosopher and statesman. Once again only do we hear of Confucius presenting himself at the court of the duke after this. And this was on the occasion of the murder of the duke of T'se by one of his officers. We must suppose that the crime was one of a gross nature, for it raised Confucius' fiercest anger, and he who never wearied of singing the praises of those virtuous men who overthrew the thrones of licentious and tyrannous kings, would have had no room for blame if the murdered duke had been like unto Kee or Show. But the outrage was one which Confucius felt should be avenged, and he therefore bathed and presented himself at court. "Sir," said he, addressing the duke, "Ch'in Hang has slain his sovereign; I beg that you will undertake to punish him." But the duke was indisposed to move in the matter, and pleaded the comparative strength of T'se. Confucius, however, was not to be so silenced. "One-half of the people of Tse," said he, "are not consenting to the deed. If you add to the people of Loo one-half of the people of Tse, you will be sure to overcome." This numerical argument no more affected the duke than the statement of the fact, and wearying with Confucius' importunity, he told him to lay the matter before the chiefs of the three principal families of the state. Before this court of appeal, whither he went with reluctance, his cause fared no better, and the murder remained unavenged. At a period when every prince held his throne by the strength of his right arm, revolutions lost half their crime, and must have been looked upon rather as trials of strength than as disloyal villanies. The frequency of their occurrence, also, made them less the subjects of surprise and horror. At the time of which we write, the states in the neighborhood of Loo appear to have been in a very disturbed condition. Immediately following on the murder of the duke of T'se, news was brought to Confucius that a revolution had broken out in Wei. This was an occurrence which particularly interested him, for when he returned from Wei to Loo he left Tsze-loo and Tsze-kaou, two of his disciples, engaged in the official service of the state. "Tsze-kaou will return," was Confucius' remark, when he was told of the outbreak, "but Tsze-loo will die." The prediction was verified. For when Tsze-kaou saw that matters were desperate he made his escape; but Tsze-loo remained to defend his chief, and fell fighting in the cause of his master. Though Confucius had looked forward to the event as probable, he was none the less grieved when he heard that it had come about, and he mourned for his friend, whom he was so soon to follow to the grave. One morning, in the spring of the year B.C. 478, he walked in front of his door, mumbling as he went: "The great mountain must crumble; The strong beam must break; And the wise man withers away like a plant." These words came as a presage of evil to the faithful Tsze-kung. "If the great mountain crumble," said he, "to what shall I look up? If the strong beam break, and the wise man wither away, on whom shall I lean? The master, I fear, is going to be ill." So saying, he hastened after Confucius into the house. "What makes you so late?" said Confucius, when the disciple presented himself before him; and then he added, "According to the statutes of Hea, the corpse was dressed and coffined at the top of the eastern steps, treating the dead as if he were still the host. Under the Yin, the ceremony was performed between the two pillars, as if the dead were both host and guest. The rule of Chow is to perform it at the top of the western steps, treating the dead as if he were a guest. I am a man of Yin, and last night I dreamed that I was sitting, with offerings before me, between the two pillars. No intelligent monarch arises; there is not one in the empire who will make me his master. My time is come to die." It is eminently characteristic of Confucius that in his last recorded speech and dream, his thoughts should so have dwelt on the ceremonies of bygone ages. But the dream had its fulfilment. That same day he took to his bed, and after a week's illness he expired. On the banks of the river Sze, to the north of the capital city of Loo, his disciples buried him, and for three years they mourned at his grave. Even such marked respect as this fell short of the homage which Tsze-kung, his most faithful disciple, felt was due to him, and for three additional years that loving follower testified by his grief his reverence for his master. "I have all my life had the heaven above my head," said he, "but I do not know its height; and the earth under my feet, but I know not its thickness. In serving Confucius, I am like a thirsty man, who goes with his pitcher to the river and there drinks his fill, without knowing the river's depth." ROME ESTABLISHED AS A REPUBLIC INSTITUTION OF TRIBUNES B.C. 510-494 HENRY GEORGE LIDDELL The republic of Rome was the outcome of a sudden revolution caused by the crimes of the House of Tarquin, an Etruscan family who had reached the highest power at Rome. The indignation raised by the rape of Lucretia by Sextus Tarquinius, and the suicide of the outraged lady at Collatia, moved her father, in conjunction with Lucius Junius Brutus and Publius Valerius, to start a rebellion. The people were assembled by curiæ, or wards, and voted that Tarquinius Superbus should be stripped of the kingly power, and that he and all his family should be banished from Rome. This was accordingly done; and, instead of kings, consuls were appointed to wield the supreme power. These consuls were elected annually at the _comitia centuriata_ and they had sovereign power granted them by a vote of the _comitia curiata_. The first consuls chosen were Lucius Junius Brutus and Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus. What is known as the Secession to the Sacred Hill took place when the plebeians of Rome, in the early days of the Republic, indignant at the oppression and cruelty of the patricians, left the city en masse and gathered with hostile manifestations at a hill, Mons Sacer, some distance from Rome. It was here Menenius Agrippa conciliated them by reciting the famous fable of "The Belly and the Members." After this the people were induced to come to terms with the patricians and to return to the city. The people had, however, gained a great advantage by their bold defiance of the consular and patrician class, who had practically been supreme in the state, had been oppressive money-lenders, and had controlled the decisions of the law courts. It was not in vain that the people now demanded that as the two consuls were practically elected to further the interests of the upper class, so they, the plebeians, should have the election of two tribunes to protect them from wrong and oppression. These new officers were duly appointed, and eventually their number was increased to ten. Their power was almost absolute, but it never seems to have been abused, and this fact is a proof of the native moderation of the ancient Romans. There have been many constitutional struggles in the history of modern times, but nothing like the plebeian tribunate has ever appeared, and it is a question if the institution could have existed for a month, in any country of modern times, with the salutary influences which it exercised in early Rome. Tarquin had made himself king by the aid of the patricians, and chiefly by means of the third or Lucerian tribe, to which his family belonged. The burgesses of the Gentes were indignant at the curtailment of their privileges by the popular reforms of Servius, and were glad to lend themselves to any overthrow of his power. But Tarquin soon kicked away the ladder by which he had risen. He abrogated, it is true, the hated Assembly of the Centuries; but neither did he pay any heed to the Curiate Assembly, nor did he allow any new members to be chosen into the senate in place of those who were removed by death or other causes; so that even those who had helped him to the throne repented them of their deed. The name of Superbus, or the Proud, testifies to the general feeling against the despotic rule of the second Tarquin. It was by foreign alliances that he calculated on supporting his despotism at home. The Etruscans of Tarquinii, and all its associate cities, were his friends; and among the Latins also he sought to raise a power which might counterbalance the senate and people of Rome. The wisdom of Tarquinius Priscus and Servius had united all the Latin name to Rome, so that Rome had become the sovereign city of Latium. The last Tarquin drew those ties still closer. He gave his daughter in marriage to Octavius Mamilius, chief of Tusculum, and favored the Latins in all things. But at a general assembly of the Latins at the Ferentine Grove, beneath the Alban Mount, where they had been accustomed to meet of olden time to settle their national affairs, Turnus Herdonius of Aricia rose and spoke against him. Then Tarquinius accused him of high treason, and brought false witnesses against him; and so powerful with the Latins was the king that they condemned their countryman to be drowned in the Ferentine water, and obeyed Tarquinius in all things. With them he made war upon the Volscians and took the city of Suessa, wherein was a great booty. This booty he applied to the execution of great works in the city, in emulation of his father and King Servius. The elder Tarquin had built up the side of the Tarpeian rock and levelled the summit, to be the foundation of a temple of Jupiter, but he had not completed the work. Tarquinius Superbus now removed all the temples and shrines of the old Sabine gods which had been there since the time of Titus Tatius; but the goddess of Youth and the god Terminus kept their place, whereby was signified that the Roman people should enjoy undecaying vigor, and that the boundaries of their empire should never be drawn in. And on the Tarpeian height he built a magnificent temple, to be dedicated jointly to the great gods of the Latins and Etruscans, Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva; and this part of the Saturnian Hill was ever after called the Capitol or the Chief Place, while the upper part was called the Arx or Citadel. He brought architects from Etruria to plan the temple, but he forced the Roman people to work for him without hire. One day a strange woman appeared before the king and offered him nine books to buy; and when he refused them she went away and burned, three of the nine books and brought back the remaining six and offered to sell them at the same price that she had asked for the nine; and when he laughed at her and again refused, she went as before and burned three more books, and came back and asked still the same price for the three that were left. Then the king was struck by her pertinacity, and he consulted his augurs what this might be; and they bade him by all means buy the three, and said he had done wrong not to buy the nine, for these were the books of the Sibyl and contained great secrets. So the books were kept underground in the Capitol in a stone chest, and two men (_duumviri_) were appointed to take charge of them, and consult them when the state was in danger. The only Latin town that defied Tarquin's power was Gabii; and Sextus, the king's youngest son, promised to win this place also for his father. So he fled from Rome and presented himself at Gabii; and there he made complaints of his father's tyranny and prayed for protection. The Gabians believed him, and took him into their city, and they trusted him, so that in time he was made commander of their army. Now his father suffered him to conquer in many small battles, and the Gabians trusted him more and more. Then he sent privately to his father, and asked what he should do to make the Gabians submit. Then King Tarquin gave no answer to the messenger, but, as he walked up and down his garden, he kept cutting off the heads of the tallest poppies with his staff. At last the messenger was tired, and went back to Sextus and told him what had passed. But Sextus understood what his father meant, and he began to accuse falsely all the chief men, and some of them he put to death and some he banished. So at last the city of Gabii was left defenceless, and Sextus delivered it up to his father. While Tarquin was building his temple on the Capitol, a strange portent offered itself; for a snake came forth and devoured the sacrifices on the altar. The king, not content with the interpretation of his Etruscan soothsayers, sent persons to consult the famous oracle of the Greeks at Delphi, and the persons he sent were his own sons Titus and Aruns, and his sister's son, L. Junius, a young man who, to avoid his uncle's jealousy, feigned to be without common sense, wherefore he was called Brutus or the Dullard. The answer given by the oracle was that the chief power of Rome should belong to him of the three who should first kiss his mother; and the two sons of King Tarquin agreed to draw lots which of them should do this as soon as they returned home. But Brutus perceived that the oracle had another sense; so as soon as they landed in Italy he fell down on the ground as if he had stumbled, and kissed the earth, for she (he thought) was the true mother of all mortal things. When the sons of Tarquin returned with their cousin, L. Junius Brutus, they found the king at war with the Rutulians of Ardea. Being unable to take the place by storm, he was forced to blockade it; and while the Roman army was encamped before the town the young men used to amuse themselves at night with wine and wassail. One night there was a feast, at which Sextus, the king's third son, was present, as also Collatinus, the son of Egerius, the king's uncle, who had been made governor of Collatia. So they soon began to dispute about the worthiness of their wives; and when each maintained that his own wife was worthiest, "Come, gentlemen," said Collatinus, "let us take horse and see what our wives are doing; they expect us not, and so we shall know the truth." All agreed, and they galloped to Rome, and there they found the wives of all the others feasting and revelling: but when they came to Collatia they found Lucretia, the wife of Collatinus, not making merry like the rest, but sitting in the midst of her handmaids carding wool and spinning; so they all allowed that Lucretia was the worthiest. Now Lucretia was the daughter of a noble Roman, Spurius Lucretius, who was at this time prefect of the city; for it was the custom, when the kings went out to war, that they left a chief man at home to administer all things in the king's name, and he was called prefect of the city. But it chanced that Sextus, the king's son, when he saw the fair Lucretia, was smitten with lustful passion; and a few days after he came again to Collatia, and Lucretia entertained him hospitably as her husband's cousin and friend. But at midnight he arose and came with stealthy steps to her bedside: and holding a sword in his right hand, and laying his left hand upon her breast, he bade her yield to his wicked desires; for if not, he would slay her and lay one of her slaves beside her, and would declare that he had taken them in adultery. So for shame she consented to that which no fear would have wrung from her: and Sextus, having wrought this deed of shame, returned to the camp. Then Lucretia sent to Rome for her father, and to the camp at Ardea for her husband. They came in haste. Lucretius brought with him P. Valerius, and Collatinus brought L. Junius Brutus, his cousin, And they came in and asked if all was well Then she told them what was done: "but," she said, "my body only has suffered the shame, for my will consented not to the deed. Therefore," she cried, "avenge me on the wretch Sextus. As for me, though my heart has not sinned, I can live no longer. No one shall say that Lucretia set an example of living in unchastity." So she drew forth a knife and stabbed herself to the heart. When they saw that, her father and her husband cried aloud; but Brutus drew the knife from the wound, and holding it up, spoke thus: "By this pure blood I swear before the gods that I will pursue L. Tarquinius the Proud and all his bloody house with fire, sword, or in whatsoever way I may, and that neither they nor any other shall hereafter be king in Rome." Then he gave the knife to Collatinus and Lucretius and Valerius, and they all swore likewise, much marvelling to hear such words from L. Junius the Dullard. And they took up the body of Lucretia, and carried it into the Forum, and called on the men of Collatia to rise against the tyrant. So they set a guard at the gates of the town, to prevent any news of the matter being carried to King Tarquin: and they themselves, followed by the youth of Collatia, went to Rome. Here Brutus, who was chief captain of the knights, called the people together, and he told them what had been done, and called on them by the deed of shame wrought against Lucretius and Collatinus--by all that they had suffered from the tyrants--by the abominable murder of good King Servius--to assist them in taking vengeance on the Tarquins. So it was hastily agreed to banish Tarquinius and his family. The youth declared themselves ready to follow Brutus against the king's army, and the seniors put themselves under the rule of Lucretius, the prefect of the city. In this tumult, the wicked Tullia fled from her house, pursued by the curses of all men, who prayed that the avengers of her father's blood might be upon her. When the king heard what had passed, he set off in all haste for the city. Brutus also set off for the camp at Ardea; and he turned aside that he might not meet his uncle the king. So he came to the camp at Ardea, and the king came to Rome. And all the Romans at Ardea welcomed Brutus, and joined their arms to his, and thrust out all the king's sons from the camp. But the people of Rome shut the gates against the king, so that he could not enter. And King Tarquin, with his sons Titus and Aruns, went into exile and lived at Cære in Etruria. But Sextus fled to Gabii, where he had before held rule, and the people of Gabii slew him in memory of his former cruelty. So L. Tarquinius Superbus was expelled from Rome, after he had been king five-and-twenty years. And in memory of this event was instituted a festival called the "Regifugium" or "Fugalia," which was celebrated every year on the 24th day of February. To gratify the plebeians, the patricians consented to restore, in some measure at least, the popular institutions of King Servius; and it was resolved to follow his supposed intention with regard to the supreme government--that is, to have two magistrates elected every year, who were to have the same power as the king during the time of their rule. These were in after days known by the name of Consuls; but in ancient times they were called "Prætors" or Judges. They were elected at the great Assembly of Centuries; and they had sovereign power conferred upon them by the assembly of the Curies. They wore a robe edged with violet color, sat in their chairs of state called curule chairs, and were attended by twelve lictors each. These lictors carried fasces, or bundles of rods, out of which arose an axe, in token of the power of life and death possessed by the consuls as successors of the kings. But only one of them at a time had a right to this power; and, in token thereof, his colleague's fasces had no axes in them. Each retained this mark of sovereign power (_Imperium_) for a month at a time. The first consuls were L. Junius Brutus and L. Tarquinius Collatinus. The new consuls filled up the senate to the proper number of three hundred; and the new senators were called "Conscripti," while the old members retained their old name of "Patres." So after this the whole senate was addressed by speakers as "Patres, Conscripti." But in later times it was forgotten that these names belonged to different sorts of persons, and the whole senate was addressed as by one name, "Patres Conscripti." The name of king was hateful. But certain sacrifices had always been performed by the king in person; and therefore, to keep up form, a person was still chosen, with the title of "Rex Sacrorum" or "Rex Sacrificulus," to perform these offerings. But even he was placed under the authority of the chief pontifex. After his expulsion, King Tarquin sent messengers to Rome to ask that his property should be given up to him, and the senate decreed that his prayer should be granted. But the king's ambassadors, while they were in Rome, stirred up the minds of the young men and others who had been favored by Tarquin, so that a plot was made to bring him back. Among those who plotted were Titus and Tiberius, the sons of the Consul Brutus; and they gave letters to the messengers of the king. But it chanced that a certain slave hid himself in the place where they met, and overheard them plotting; and he came and told the thing to the consuls, who seized the messengers of the king with the letters upon their persons, authenticated by the seals of the young men. The culprits were immediately arrested; but the ambassadors were let go, because their persons were regarded as sacred. And the goods of King Tarquin were given up for plunder to the people. Then the traitors were brought up before the consuls, and the sight was such as to move all beholders to pity; for among them were the sons of L. Junius Brutus himself, the first consul, the liberator of the Roman people. And now all men saw how Brutus loved his country; for he bade the lictors put all the traitors to death, and his own sons first; and men could mark in his face the struggle between his duty as a chief magistrate of Rome and his feelings as a father. And while they praised and admired him, they pitied him yet more. Then a decree of the senate was made that no one of the blood of the Tarquins should remain in Rome. And since Collatinus, the consul, was by descent a Tarquin, even he was obliged to give up his office and return to Collatia. In his room, P. Valerius was chosen consul by the people. This was the first attempt to restore Tarquin the Proud. When Tarquin saw that the plot at home had failed, he prevailed on the people of Tarquinii and Veii to make war with him against the Romans. But the consuls came out against them; Valerius commanding the main army, and Brutus the cavalry. And it chanced that Aruns, the king's son, led the cavalry of the enemy. When he saw Brutus he spurred his horse against him, and Brutus declined not the combat. So they rode straight at each other with levelled spears; and so fierce was the shock, that they pierced each other through from breast to back, and both fell dead. Then, also, the armies fought, but the battle was neither won nor lost. But in the night a voice was heard by the Etruscans, saying that the Romans were the conquerors. So the enemy fled by night; and when the Romans arose in the morning, there was no man to oppose them. Then they took up the body of Brutus, and departed home, and buried him in public with great pomp, and the matrons of Rome mourned him for a whole year, because he had avenged the injury of Lucretia. And thus the second attempt to restore King Tarquin was frustrated. After the death of Brutus, Publius Valerius ruled the people for a while by himself, and he began to build himself a house upon the ridge called Velia, which looks down upon the Forum. So the people thought that he was going to make himself king; but when he heard this, he called an assembly of the people, and appeared before them with his fasces lowered, and with no axes in them, whence the custom remained ever after, that no consular lictors wore axes within the city, and no consul had power of life and death except when he was in command of his legions abroad. And he pulled down the beginning of his house upon the Velia, and built it below that hill. Also he passed laws that every Roman citizen might appeal to the people against the judgment of the chief magistrates. Wherefore he was greatly honored among the people, and was called "Poplicola," or "Friend of the People." After this Valerius called together the great Assembly of the Centuries, and they chose Sp. Lucretius, father of Lucretius, to succeed Brutus. But he was an old man, and in not many days he died. So M. Horatius was chosen in his stead. The temple on the Capitol which King Tarquin began had never yet been consecrated. Then Valerius and Horatius drew lots which should be the consecrator, and the lot fell on Horatius. But the friends of Valerius murmured, and they wished to prevent Horatius from having the honor; so when he was now saying the prayer of consecration, with his hand upon the doorpost of the temple, there came a messenger, who told him that his son was just dead, and that one mourning for a son could not rightly consecrate the temple. But Horatius kept his hand upon the doorpost, and told them to see to the burial of his son, and finished the rites of consecration. Thus did he honor the gods even above his own son. In the next year Valerius was again made consul, with T. Lucretius; and Tarquinius, despairing now of aid from his friends at Veii and Tarquinii, went to Lars Porsenna of Clusium, a city on the river Clanis, which falls into the Tiber. Porsenna was at this time acknowledged as chief of the twelve Etruscan cities; and he assembled a powerful army and came to Rome. He came so quickly that he reached the Tiber and was near the Sublician Bridge before there was time to destroy it; and if he had crossed it the city would have been lost. Then a noble Roman, called Horatius Codes, of the Lucerian tribe, with two friends--Sp. Lartius, a Ramnian, and T. Herminius, a Titian--posted themselves at the far end of the bridge, and defended the passage against all the Etruscan host, while the Romans were cutting it off behind them. When it was all but destroyed, his two friends retreated across the bridge, and Horatius was left alone to bear the whole attack of the enemy. Well he kept his ground, standing unmoved amid the darts which were showered upon his shield, till the last beams of the bridge fell crashing into the river. Then he prayed, saying, "Father Tiber, receive me and bear me up, I pray thee." So he plunged in, and reached the other side safely; and the Romans honored him greatly: they put up his statue in the Comitium, and gave him as much land as he could plough round in a day, and every man at Rome subscribed the cost of one day's food to reward him. Then Porsenna, disappointed in his attempt to surprise the city, occupied the Hill Janiculum, and besieged the city, so that the people were greatly distressed by hunger. But C. Mucius, a noble youth, resolved to deliver his country by the death of the king. So he armed himself with a dagger, and went to the place where the king was used to sit in judgment. It chanced that the soldiers were receiving their pay from the king's secretary, who sat at his right hand splendidly apparelled; and as this man seemed to be chief in authority, Mucius thought that this must be the king; so he stabbed him to the heart. Then the guards seized him and dragged him before the king, who was greatly enraged, and ordered them to burn him alive if he would not confess the whole affair. Then Mucius stood before the king and said: "See how little thy tortures can avail to make a brave man tell the secrets committed to him"; and so saying, he thrust his right hand into the fire of the altar, and held it in the flame with unmoved countenance. Then the king marvelled at his courage, and ordered him to be spared, and sent away in safety: "for," said he, "thou art a brave man, and hast done more harm to thyself than to me." Then Mucius replied: "Thy generosity, O king, prevails more with me than thy threats. Know that three hundred Roman youths have sworn thy death: my lot came first. But all the rest remain, prepared to do and suffer like myself." So he was let go, and returned home, and was called "Scævola," or "The Left-handed," because his right hand had been burnt off. King Porsenna was greatly moved by the danger he had escaped, and perceiving the obstinate determination of the Romans, he offered to make peace. The Romans gladly gave ear to his words, for they were hard pressed, and they consented to give back all the land which they had won from the Etruscans beyond the Tiber. And they gave hostages to the king in pledge that they would obey him as they had promised, ten youths and ten maidens. But one of the maidens, named Cloelia, had a man's heart, and she persuaded all her fellows to escape from the king's camp and swim across the Tiber. At first King Porsenna was wroth; but then he was much amazed, even more than at the deeds of Horatius and Mucius. So when the Romans sent back Cloelia and her fellow-maidens--for they would not break faith with the king--he bade her return home again, and told her she might take whom she pleased of the youths who were hostages; and she chose those who were yet boys, and restored them to their parents. So the Roman people gave certain lands to young Mucius, and they set up an equestrian statue to the bold Cloelia at the top of the Sacred Way. And King Porsenna returned home; and thus the third and most formidable attempt to bring back Tarquin failed. When Tarquin now found that he had no hopes of further assistance from Porsenna and his Etruscan friends, he went and dwelt at Tusculum, where Mamilius Octavius, his son-in-law, was still chief. Then the thirty Latin cities combined together and made this Octavius their dictator, and bound themselves to restore their old friend and ally, King Tarquin, to the sovereignty of Rome. P. Valerius, who was called "Poplicola," was now dead, and the Romans looked about for some chief worthy to lead them against the army of the Latins. Poplicola had been made consul four times, and his compeers acknowledged him as their chief, and all men submitted to him as to a king. But now the two consuls were jealous of each other; nor had they power of life and death within the city, for Valerius (as we saw) had taken away the axes from the fasces. Now this was one of the reasons why Brutus and the rest made two consuls instead of one king: for they said that neither one would allow the other to become tyrant; and since they only held office for one year at a time, they might be called on to give account of their government when their year was at an end. Yet though this was a safeguard of liberty in times of peace, it was hurtful in time of war, for the consuls chosen by the people in their great assemblies were not always skilful generals; or if they were so, they were obliged to lay down their command at the year's end. So the senate determined, in cases of great danger, to call upon one of the consuls to appoint a single chief, who should be called "dictator," or master of the people. He had sovereign power (_Imperium_) both in the city and out of the city, and the fasces were always carried before him with the axes in them, as they had been before the king. He could only be appointed for six months, but at the end of the time he had to give no account. So that he was free to act according to his own judgment, having no colleague to interfere with him at the present, and no accusations to fear at a future time. The dictator was general-in-chief, and he appointed a chief officer to command the knights under him, who was called "master of the horse." And now it appeared to be a fit time to appoint such a chief, to take the command of the army against the Latins. So the first dictator was T. Lartius, and he made Spurius Cassius his master of the horse. This was in the year B.C. 499, eight years after the expulsion of Tarquin. But the Latins did not declare war for two years after. Then the senate again ordered the consul to name a master of the people, or dictator; and he named Aul. Postumius, who appointed T. Æbutius (one of the consuls of that year) to be his master of the horse. So they led out the Roman army against the Latins, and they met at the Lake Regillus, in the land of the Tusculans. King Tarquin and all his family were in the host of the Latins; and that day it was to be determined whether Rome should be again subject to the tyrant and whether or not she was to be chief of the Latin cities. King Tarquin himself, old as he was, rode in front of the Latins in full armor; and when he descried the Roman dictator marshalling his men, he rode at him; but Postumius wounded him in the side, and he was rescued by the Latins. Then also Æbutius, the master of the horse, and Oct. Mamilius, the dictator of the Latins, charged one another, and Æbutius was pierced through the arm, and Mamilius wounded in the breast. But the Latin chief, nothing daunted, returned to battle, followed by Titus, the king's son, with his band of exiles. These charged the Romans furiously, so that they gave way; but when M. Valerius, brother of the great Poplicola, saw this, he spurred his horse against Titus, and rode at him with spear in rest; and when Titus turned away and fled, Valerius rode furiously after him into the midst of the Latin host, and a certain Latin smote him in the side as he was riding past, so that he fell dead, and his horse galloped on without a rider. So the band of exiles pressed still more fiercely upon the Romans, and they began to flee. Then Postumius the dictator lifted up his voice and vowed a temple to Castor and Pollux, the great twin heroes of the Greeks, if they would aid him; and behold there appeared on his right two horsemen, taller and fairer than the sons of men, and their horses were as white as snow. And they led the dictator and his guard against the exiles and the Latins, and the Romans prevailed against them; and T. Herminius the Titian, the friend of Horatius Cocles, ran Mamilius, the dictator of the Latins, through the body, so that he died; but when he was stripping the arms from his foe, another ran him through, and he was carried back to the camp, and he also died. Then also Titus, the king's son, was slain, and the Latins fled, and the Romans pursued them with great slaughter, and took their camp and all that was in it. Now Postumius had promised great rewards to those who first broke into the camp of the Latins, and the first who broke in were the two horsemen on white horses; but after the battle they were nowhere to be seen or found, nor was there any sign of them left, save on the hard rock there was the mark of a horse's hoof, which men said was made by the horse of one of those horsemen. But at this very time two youths on white horses rode into the Forum at Rome. They were covered with dust and sweat and blood, like men who had fought long and hard, and their horses also were bathed in sweat and foam: and they alighted near the Temple of Vesta, and washed themselves in a spring that gushes out hard by, and told all the people in the Forum how the battle by the Lake Regillus had been fought and won. Then they mounted their horses and rode away, and were seen no more. But Postumius, when he heard it, knew that these were Castor and Pollux, the great twin brethren of the Greeks, and that it was they who fought so well for Rome at the Lake Regillus. So he built them a temple, according to his vow, over the place where they had alighted in the Forum. And their effigies were displayed on Roman coins to the latest ages of the city. This was the fourth and last attempt to restore King Tarquin. After the great defeat of Lake Regillus, the Latin cities made peace with Rome, and agreed to refuse harborage to the old king. He had lost all his sons, and, accompanied by a few faithful friends, who shared his exile, he sought a last asylum at the Greek city of Cumæ in the Bay of Naples, at the court of the tyrant Aristodemus. Here he died in the course of a year, fourteen years after his expulsion. We shall now record, not only the slow steps by which the Romans recovered dominion over their neighbors, but also the long-continued struggle by which the plebeians raised themselves to a level with the patricians, who had again become the dominant caste at Rome. Mixed up with legendary tales as the history still is, enough is nevertheless preserved to excite the admiration of all who love to look upon a brave people pursuing a worthy object with patient but earnest resolution, never flinching, yet seldom injuring their good cause by reckless violence. To an Englishman this history ought to be especially dear, for more than any other in the annals of the world does it resemble the long-enduring constancy and sturdy determination, the temperate will and noble self-control, with which the Commons of his own country secured their rights. It was by a struggle of this nature, pursued through a century and a half, that the character of the Roman people was molded into that form of strength and energy, which threw back Hannibal to the coasts of Africa, and in half a century more made them masters of the Mediterranean shore. There can be no doubt that the wars that followed the expulsion of the Tarquins, with the loss of territory that accompanied them, must have reduced all orders of men at Rome to great distress. But those who most suffered were the plebeians. The plebeians at that time consisted entirely of landholders, great and small, and husbandmen, for in those times the practice of trades and mechanical arts was considered unworthy of a freeborn man. Some of the plebeian families were as wealthy as any among the patricians; but the mass of them were petty yeoman, who lived on the produce of their small farm, and were solely dependent for a living on their own limbs, their own thrift and industry. Most of them lived in the villages and small towns, which in those times were thickly sprinkled over the slopes of the Campagna. The patricians, on the other hand, resided chiefly within the city. If slaves were few as yet, they had the labor of their clients available to till their farms; and through their clients also they were enabled to derive a profit from the practice of trading and crafts, which personally neither they nor the plebeians would stoop to pursue. Besides these sources of profit, they had at this time the exclusive use of the public land, a subject on which we shall have to speak more at length hereafter. At present, it will be sufficient to say, that the public land now spoken of had been the crown land or regal domain, which on the expulsion of the kings had been forfeited to the state. The patricians being in possession of all actual power, engrossed possession of it, and seem to have paid a very small quit-rent to the treasury for this great advantage. Besides this, the necessity of service in the army, or militia--as it might more justly be called--acted very differently on the rich landholder and the small yeoman. The latter, being called out with sword and spear for the summer's campaign, as his turn came round, was obliged to leave his farm uncared for, and his crop could only be reaped by the kind aid of neighbors; whereas the rich proprietor, by his clients or his hired laborers, could render the required military service without robbing his land of his own labor. Moreover, the territory of Rome was so narrow, and the enemy's borders so close at hand, that any night the stout yeoman might find himself reduced to beggary, by seeing his crops destroyed, his cattle driven away, and his homestead burnt in a sudden foray. The patricians and rich plebeians were, it is true, exposed to the same contingencies. But wealth will always provide some defence; and it is reasonable to think that the larger proprietors provided places of refuge, into which they could drive their cattle and secure much of their property, such as the peel-towers common in our own border counties. Thus the patricians and their clients might escape the storm which destroyed the isolated yeoman. To this must be added that the public land seems to have been mostly in pasturage, and therefore the property of the patricians must have chiefly consisted in cattle, which was more easily saved from depredation than the crops of the plebeian. Lastly, the profit derived from the trades and business of their clients, being secured by the walls of the city, gave to the patricians the command of all the capital that could exist in a state of society so simple and crude, and afforded at once a means of repairing their own losses, and also of obtaining a dominion over the poor yeoman. For some time after the expulsion of the Tarquins it was necessary for the patricians to treat the plebeians with liberality. The institutions of "the Commons' King," King Servius, suspended by Tarquin, were, partially at least, restored: it is said even that one of the first consuls was a plebeian, and that he chose several of the leading plebeians into the senate. But after the death of Porsenna, and when the fear of the Tarquins ceased, all these flattering signs disappeared. The consuls seem still to have been elected by the Centuriate Assembly, but the Curiate Assembly retained in their own hands the right of conferring the _Imperium_, which amounted to a positive veto on the election by the larger body. All the names of the early consuls, except in the first year of the Republic, are patrician. But if by chance a consul displayed popular tendencies, it was in the power of the senate and patricians to suspend his power by the appointment of a dictator. Thus, practically, the patrician burgesses again became the _Populus_, or body politic of Rome. It must not here be forgotten that this dominant body was an exclusive caste; that is, it consisted of a limited number of noble families, who allowed none of their members to marry with persons born out of the pale of their own order. The child of a patrician and a plebeian, or of a patrician and a client, was not considered as born in lawful wedlock; and however proud the blood which it derived from one parent, the child sank to the condition of the parent of lower rank. This was expressed in Roman language by saying, that there was no "Right of Connubium" between patricians and any inferior classes of men. Nothing can be more impolitic than such restrictions; nothing more hurtful even to those who count it their privilege. In all exclusive or oligarchical,_pales_, families become extinct, and the breed decays both in bodily strength and mental vigor. Happily for Rome, the patricians were unable long to maintain themselves as a separate caste. Yet the plebeians might long have submitted to this state of social and political inferiority, had not their personal distress and the severe laws of Rome driven them to seek relief by claiming to be recognized as members of the body politic. The severe laws of which we speak were those of debtor and creditor. If a Roman borrowed money, he was expected to enter into a contract with his creditor to pay the debt by a certain day; and if on that day he was unable to discharge his obligation, he was summoned before the patrician judge, who was authorized by the law to assign the defaulter as a bonds man to his creditor--that is, the debtor was obliged to pay by his own labor the debt which he was unable to pay in money. Or if a man incurred a debt without such formal contract, the rule was still more imperious, for in that case the law itself fixed the day of payment; and if after a lapse of thirty days from that date the debt was not discharged, the creditor was empowered to arrest the person of his debtor, to load him with chains, and feed him on bread and water for another thirty days; and then, if the money still remained unpaid, he might put him to death, or sell him as a slave to the highest bidder; or, if there were several creditors, they might hew his body in pieces and divide it. And in this last case the law provided with scrupulous providence against the evasion by which the Merchant of Venice escaped the cruelty of the Jew; for the Roman law said that "whether a man cut more or less [than his due], he should incur no penalty." These atrocious provisions, however, defeated their own object, for there was no more unprofitable way in which the body of a debtor could be disposed of. Such being the law of debtor and creditor, it remains to say that the creditors were chiefly of the patrician caste, and the debtors almost exclusively of the poorer sort among the plebeians. The patricians were the creditors, because from their occupancy of the public land, and from their engrossing the profits to be derived from trade and crafts, they alone had spare capital to lend. The plebeian yeomen were the debtors, because their independent position made them, at that time, helpless. Vassals, clients, serfs, or by whatever name dependents are called, do not suffer from the ravages of a predatory war like free landholders, because the loss falls on their lords or patrons. But when the independent yeoman's crops are destroyed, his cattle "lifted," and his homestead in ashes, he must himself repair the loss. This was, as we have said, the condition of many Roman plebeians. To rebuild their houses and restock their farms they borrowed; the patricians were their creditors; and the law, instead of protecting the small holders, like the law of the Hebrews, delivered them over into serfdom or slavery. Thus the free plebeian population might have been reduced to a state of mere dependency, and the history of Rome might have presented a repetition of monotonous severity, like that of Sparta or of Venice.[38] But it was ordained otherwise. The distress and oppression of the plebeians led them to demand and to obtain political protectors, by whose means they were slowly but surely raised to equality of rights and privileges with their rulers and oppressors. These protectors were the famous Tribunes of the Plebs. We will now repeat the no less famous legends by which their first creation was accounted for. [Footnote 38: A well-known German historian calls the Spartans by the name of "stunted Romans." There is much resemblance to be traced.] It was, by the common reckoning, fifteen years after the expulsion of the Tarquins (B.C. 494), that the plebeians were roused to take the first step in the assertion of their rights. After the battle of Lake Regillus, the plebeians had reason to expect some relaxation of the law of debt, in consideration of the great services they had rendered in the war. But none was granted. The patrician creditors began to avail themselves of the severity of the law against their plebeian debtors. The discontent that followed was great, and the consuls prepared to meet the storm. These were Appius Claudius, the proud Sabine nobleman who had lately become a Roman, and who now led the high patrician party with all the unbending energy of a chieftain whose will had never been disputed by his obedient clansmen; and P. Servilius, who represented the milder and more liberal party of the Fathers. It chanced that an aged man rushed into the Forum on a market-day, loaded with chains, clothed with a few scanty rags, his hair and beard long and squalid; his whole appearance ghastly, as of one oppressed by long want of food and air. He was recognized as a brave soldier, the old comrade of many who thronged the Forum. He told his story, how that in the late wars the enemy had burned his house and plundered his little farm; that to replace his losses he had borrowed money of a patrician, that his cruel creditor (in default of payment) had thrown him into prison,[39] and tormented him with chains and scourges. At this sad tale, the passions of the people rose high. [Footnote 39: Such prisons were called _ergastula_, and afterward became the places for keeping slaves in.] Appius was obliged to conceal himself, while Servilius undertook to plead the cause of the plebeians with the senate. Meantime news came to the city that the Roman territory was invaded by the Volscian foe. The consuls proclaimed a levy; but the stout yeomen, one and all, refused to give in their names and take the military oath. Servilius now came forward and proclaimed by edict that no citizen should be imprisoned for debt so long as the war lasted, and that at the close of the war he would propose an alteration of the law. The plebeians trusted him, and the enemy was driven back. But when the popular consul returned with his victorious soldiers, he was denied a triumph, and the senate, led by Appius, refused to make any concession in favor of the debtors. The anger of the plebeians rose higher and higher, when again news came that the enemy was ravaging the lands of Rome. The senate, well knowing that the power of the consuls would avail nothing, since Appius was regarded as a tyrant, and Servilius would not choose again to become an instrument for deceiving the people, appointed a dictator to lead the citizens into the field. But to make the act as popular as might be, they named M. Valerius, a descendant of the great Poplicola. The same scene was repeated over again. Valerius protected the plebeians against their creditors while they were at war, and promised them relief when war was over. But when the danger was gone by, Appius again prevailed; the senate refused to listen to Valerius, and the dictator laid down his office, calling gods and men to witness that he was not responsible for his breach of faith. The plebeians whom Valerius had led forth were still under arms, still bound by their military oath, and Appius, with the violent patricians, refused to disband them. The army, therefore, having lost Valerius, their proper general chose two of themselves, L. Junius Brutus and L. Sicinius Bellutus by name, and under their command they marched northward and occupied the hill which commands the junction of the Tiber and the Anio. Here, at a distance of about two miles from Rome, they determined to settle and form a new city, leaving Rome to the patricians and their clients. But the latter were not willing to lose the best of their soldiery, the cultivators of the greater part of the Roman territory, and they sent repeated embassies to persuade the seceders to return. They, however, turned a deaf ear to all promises, for they had too often been deceived. Appius now urged the senate and patricians to leave the plebeians to themselves. The nobles and their clients, he said, could well maintain themselves in the city without such base aid. But wiser sentiments prevailed. T. Lartius, and M. Valerius, both of whom had been dictators, with Menenius Agrippa, an old patrician of popular character, were empowered to treat with the people. Still their leaders were unwilling to listen, till old Menenius addressed them in the famous fable of the "Belly and the Members": "In times of old," said he, "when every member of the body could think for itself, and each had a separate will of its own, they all, with one consent, resolved to revolt against the belly. They knew no reason, they said, why they should toil from morning till night in its service, while the belly lay at its ease in the midst of all, and indolently grew fat upon their labors. Accordingly they agreed to support it no more. The feet vowed they would carry it no longer; the hands that they would do no more work; the teeth that they would not chew a morsel of meat, even were it placed between them. Thus resolved, the members for a time showed their spirit and kept their resolution; but soon they found that instead of mortifying the belly they only undid themselves: they languished for a while, and perceived too late that it was owing to the belly that they had strength to work and courage to mutiny." The moral of this fable was plain. The people readily applied it to the patricians and themselves, and their leaders proposed terms of agreement to the patrician messengers. They required that the debtors who could not pay should have their debts cancelled, and that those who had been given up into slavery should be restored to freedom. This for the past. And as a security for the future, they demanded that two of themselves should be appointed for the sole purpose of protecting the plebeians against the patrician magistrates, if they acted cruelly or unjustly toward the debtors. The two officers thus to be appointed were called "Tribunes of the Plebs." Their persons were to be sacred and inviolable during their year of office, whence their office is called _sacrosancta Potestas_. They were never to leave the city during that time, and their houses were to be open day and night, that all who needed their aid might demand it without delay. This concession, apparently great, was much modified by the fact that the patricians insisted on the election of the tribunes being made at the Comitia of the Centuries, in which they themselves and their wealthy clients could usually command a majority. In later times, the number of the tribunes was increased to five, and afterward to ten. They were elected at the Comitia of the tribes. They had the privilege of attending all sittings of the senate, though they were not considered members of that famous body. Above all, they acquired the great and perilous power of the veto, by which any one of their number might stop any law, or annul any decree of the senate without cause or reason assigned. This right of veto was called the "Right of Intercession." On the spot where this treaty was made, an altar was built to Jupiter, the causer and banisher of fear, for the plebeians had gone thither in fear and returned from it in safety. The place was called Mons Sacer, or the Sacred Hill, forever after, and the laws by which the sanctity of the tribunitian office was secured were called the _Leges Sacratæ_. The tribunes were not properly magistrates or officers, for they had no express functions or official duties to discharge. They were simply representatives and protectors of the plebs. At the same time, however, with the institution of these protective officers, the plebeians were allowed the right of having two ædiles chosen from their own body, whose business it was to preserve order and decency in the streets, to provide for the repair of all buildings and roads there, with other functions partly belonging to police officers, and partly to commissioners of public works. THE BATTLE OF MARATHON B.C. 490 SIR EDWARD SHEPHERD CREASY Marathon! A name to conjure up such visions of glory as few battlefields have ever shown. Heroism and determination on the part of the Athenians, supported by the small but ever noble band of Platæans who came to their aid; who can read the repulse of the Persians on this ever memorable plain without experiencing a thrill of admiration and delight at the achievement? The whole world since that battle has looked upon it as a victory of the under dog. Many of the great engagements of modern times have been likened unto it. For long it has been the synonym of brave despair; the conquering of an enemy many times superior in numbers to its opponent. This attempt of the Persians on the Greeks was not the first against them, That took place B.C. 493 under Mardonius. This commander had reduced Ionia, dethroned the despots, and established democracy throughout the land. After this he turned his attention to Eretria and Athens, taking his army across the straits in vessels. But the ships of war and transports were wrecked by a mighty headwind as they rounded Mount Athos. Many were driven ashore, about three hundred of them were totally lost, and some twenty thousand men perished in the catastrophe. All the trouble between the Persians and Greeks arose over the capture of Sardis by the Ionians, B.C. 500. The city was burned, and then the Ionians retreated. It was to avenge this that Persia determined on a punitive expedition against the Greeks. The Ionians and Milesian men were mostly slain by the Persians, the women and children led into captivity, and the temples in the cities burned and razed to the ground.[40] [Footnote 40: The year following the fall of the Ionic city of Miletus the poet Phrynichus made it the subject of a tragedy. On bringing it on the stage he was fined one thousand drachmae for having recalled to them their own misfortunes.--SMITH.] In the battle of Marathon, which succeeded these events, we have a vivid picture presented to us in Creasy's glowing words: Two thousand three hundred and forty years ago a council of Athenian officers was summoned on the slope of one of the mountains that look over the plain of Marathon, on the eastern coast of Attica. The immediate subject of their meeting was to consider whether they should give battle to an enemy that lay encamped on the shore beneath them; but on the result of their deliberations depended, not merely the fate of two armies, but the whole future progress of human civilization. There were eleven members of that council of war. Ten were the generals who were then annually elected at Athens, one for each of the local tribes into which the Athenians were divided. Each general led the men of his own tribe, and each was invested with equal military authority. But one of the archons was also associated with them in the general command of the army. This magistrate was termed the "Polemarch" or War-ruler, He had the privilege of leading the right wing of the army in battle, and his vote in a council of war was equal to that of any of the generals. A noble Athenian named Callimachus was the war-ruler of this year, and, as such, stood listening to the earnest discussion of the ten generals. They had, indeed, deep matter for anxiety, though little aware how momentous to mankind were the votes they were about to give, or how the generations to come would read with interest the record of their discussions. They saw before them the invading forces of a mighty empire, which had in the last fifty years shattered and enslaved nearly all the kingdoms and principal cities of the then known world. They knew that all the resources of their own country were comprised in the little army intrusted to their guidance. They saw before them a chosen host of the great king, sent to wreak his special wrath on that country and on the other insolent little Greek community which had dared to aid his rebels and burn the capital of one of his provinces. That victorious host had already fulfilled half its mission of vengeance. Eretria, the confederate of Athens in the bold march against Sardis nine years before, had fallen in the last few days; and the Athenian generals could discern from the heights the island of Ægilia, in which the Persians had deposited their Eretrian prisoners, whom they had reserved to be led away captives into Upper Asia, there to hear their doom from the lips of King Darius himself. Moreover, the men of Athens knew that in the camp before them was their own banished tyrant, who was seeking to be reinstated by foreign cimeters in despotic sway over any remnant of his countrymen that might survive the sack of their town, and might be left behind as too worthless for leading away into Median bondage. The numerical disparity between the force which the Athenian commanders had under them, and that which they were called on to encounter, was hopelessly apparent to some of the council. The historians who wrote nearest to the time of the battle do not pretend to give any detailed statements of the numbers engaged, but there are sufficient data for our making a general estimate. Every free Greek was trained to military duty; and, from the incessant border wars between the different states, few Greeks reached the age of manhood without having seen some service. But the muster-roll of free Athenian citizens of an age fit for military duty never exceeded thirty thousand, and at this, epoch probably did not amount to two-thirds of that number. Moreover, the poorer portion of these were unprovided with the equipments, and untrained to the operations of the regular infantry. Some detachments of the best-armed troops would be required to garrison the city itself and man the various fortified posts in the territory, so that it is impossible to reckon the fully equipped force that marched from Athens to Marathon, when the news of the Persian landing arrived, at higher than ten thousand men.[41] [Footnote 41: The historians, who lived long after the time of the battle, such as Justin, Plutarch, and others, give ten thousand as the number of the Athenian army. Not much reliance could be placed on their authority if unsupported by other evidence; but a calculation made for the number of the Athenian free population remarkably confirms it.] With one exception, the other Greeks held back from aiding them. Sparta had promised assistance, but the Persians had landed on the sixth day of the moon, and a religious scruple delayed the march of Spartan troops till the moon should have reached its full. From one quarter only, and that from a most unexpected one, did Athens receive aid at the moment of her great peril. Some years before this time the little state of Platæa in Boeotia, being hard pressed by her powerful neighbor, Thebes, had asked the protection of Athens, and had owed to an Athe man army the rescue of her independence. Now when it was noised over Greece that the Mede had come from the uttermost parts of the earth to destroy Athens, the brave Platæans, unsolicited, marched with their whole force to assist the defence, and to share the fortunes of their benefactors. The general levy of the Platæans amounted only to a thousand men; and this little column, marching from their city along the southern ridge of Mount Cithæron, and thence across the Attic territory, joined the Athenian forces above Marathon almost immediately before the battle. The reënforcement was numerically small, but the gallant spirit of the men who composed it must have made it of tenfold value to the Athenians, and its presence must have gone far to dispel the cheerless feeling of being deserted and friendless, which the delay of the Spartan succors was calculated to create among the Athenian ranks.[42] [Footnote 42: Mr. Grote observes that "this volunteer march of the whole Platæan force to Marathon is one of the most affecting incidents of all Grecian history." In truth, the whole career of Platæa, and the friendship, strong, even unto death, between her and Athens form one of the most affecting episodes in the history of antiquity. In the Peloponnesian war the Platæans again were true to the Athenians against all risks, and all calculation of self-interest: and the destruction of Platæa was the consequence. There are few nobler passages in the classics than the speech in which the Platæan prisoners of war, after the memorable siege of their city, justify before their Spartan executioners their loyal adherence to Athens.] This generous daring of their weak but true-hearted ally was never forgotten at Athens. The Platæans were made the civil fellow-countrymen of the Athenians, except the right of exercising certain political functions; and from that time forth in the solemn sacrifices at Athens, the public prayers were offered up for a joint blessing from Heaven upon the Athenians, and the Platæans also. After the junction of the column from Platæa, the Athenian commanders must have had under them about eleven thousand fully armed and disciplined infantry, and probably a large number of irregular light-armed troops; as, besides the poorer citizens who went to the field armed with javelins, cutlasses, and targets, each regular heavy-armed soldier was attended in the camp by one or more slaves, who were armed like the inferior freemen. Cavalry or archers the Athenians (on this occasion) had none, and the use in the field of military engines was not at that period introduced into ancient warfare. Contrasted with their own scanty forces, the Greek commanders saw stretched before them, along the shores of the winding bay, the tents and shipping of the varied nations who marched to do the bidding of the king of the Eastern world. The difficulty of finding transports and of securing provisions would form the only limit to the numbers of a Persian army. Nor is there any reason to suppose the estimate of Justin exaggerated, who rates at a hundred thousand the force which on this occasion had sailed, under the satraps Datis and Artaphernes, from the Cilician shores against the devoted coasts of Euboea and Attica. And after largely deducting from this total, so as to allow for mere mariners and camp followers, there must still have remained fearful odds against the national levies of the Athenians. Nor could Greek generals then feel that confidence in the superior quality of their troops, which ever since the battle of Marathon has animated Europeans in conflicts with Asiatics, as, for instance, in the after struggles between Greece and Persia, or when the Roman legions encountered the myriads of Mithradates and Tigranes, or as is the case in the Indian campaigns of our own regiments. On the contrary, up to the day of Marathon the Medes and Persians were reputed invincible. They had more than once met Greek troops in Asia Minor, in Cyprus, in Egypt, and had invariably beaten them. Nothing can be stronger than the expressions used by the early Greek writers respecting the terror which the name of the Medes inspired, and the prostration of men's spirits before the apparently resistless career of the Persian arms. It is, therefore, little to be wondered at that five of the ten Athenian generals shrank from the prospect of fighting a pitched battle against an enemy so superior in numbers and so formidable in military renown. Their own position on the heights was strong and offered great advantages to a small defending force against assailing masses. They deemed it mere foolhardiness to descend into the plain to be trampled down by the Asiatic horse, overwhelmed with the archery, or cut to pieces by the invincible veterans of Cambyses and Cyrus. Moreover, Sparta, the great war state of Greece, had been applied to, and had promised succor to Athens, though the religious observance which the Dorians paid to certain times and seasons had for the present delayed their march. Was it not wise, at any rate, to wait till the Spartans came up, and to have the help of the best troops in Greece, before they exposed themselves to the shock of the dreaded Medes? Specious as these reasons might appear, the other five generals were for speedier and bolder operations. And, fortunately for Athens and for the world, one of them was a man, not only of the highest military genius, but also of that energetic character which impresses its own type and ideas upon spirits feebler in conception. Miltiades was the head of one of the noblest houses at Athens. He ranked the Æacidæ among his ancestry, and the blood of Achilles flowed in the veins of the hero of Marathon. One of his immediate ancestors had acquired the dominion of the Thracian Chersonese, and thus the family became at the same time Athenian citizens and Thracian princes. This occurred at the time when Pisistratus was tyrant of Athens. Two of the relatives of Miltiades--an uncle of the same name, and a brother named Stesagoras--had ruled the Chersonese before Miltiades became its prince. He had been brought up at Athens in the house of his father, Cimon,[43] who was renowned throughout Greece for his victories in the Olympic chariot-races, and who must have been possessed of great wealth. [Footnote 43: Herodotus.] The sons of Pisistratus, who succeeded their father in the tyranny at Athens, caused Cimon to be assassinated; but they treated the young Miltiades with favor and kindness and when his brother Stesagoras died in the Chersonese, they sent him out there as lord of the principality. This was about twenty-eight years before the battle of Marathon, and it is with his arrival in the Chersonese that our first knowledge of the career and character of Miltiades commences. We find, in the first act recorded of him, the proof of the same resolute and unscrupulous spirit that marked his mature age. His brother's authority in the principality had been shaken by war and revolt: Miltiades determined to rule more securely. On his arrival he kept close within his house, as if he was mourning for his brother. The principal men of the Chersonese, hearing of this, assembled from all the towns and districts, and went together to the house of Miltiades, on a visit of condolence. As soon as he had thus got them in his power, he made them all prisoners. He then asserted and maintained his own absolute authority in the peninsula, taking into his pay a body of five hundred regular troops, and strengthening his interest by marrying the daughter of the king of the neighboring Thracians. When the Persian power was extended to the Hellespont and its neighborhood, Miltiades, as prince of the Chersonese, submitted to King Darius; and he was one of the numerous tributary rulers who led their contingents of men to serve in the Persian army, in the expedition against Scythia. Miltiades and the vassal Greeks of Asia Minor were left by the Persian king in charge of the bridge across the Danube, when the invading army crossed that river, and plunged into the wilds of the country that now is Russia, in vain pursuit of the ancestors of the modern Cossacks. On learning the reverses that Darius met with in the Scythian wilderness, Miltiades proposed to his companions that they should break the bridge down and leave the Persian king and his army to perish by famine and the Scythian arrows. The rulers of the Asiatic Greek cities, whom Miltiades addressed, shrank from this bold but ruthless stroke against the Persian power, and Darius returned in safety. But it was known what advice Miltiades had given, and the vengeance of Darius was thenceforth specially directed against the man who had counselled such a deadly blow against his empire and his person. The occupation of the Persian arms in other quarters left Miltiades for some years after this in possession of the Chersonese; but it was precarious and interrupted. He, however, availed himself of the opportunity which his position gave him of conciliating the good-will of his fellow-countrymen at Athens, by conquering and placing under the Athenian authority the islands of Lemnos and Imbros, to which Athens had ancient claims, but which she had never previously been able to bring into complete subjection. At length, in B.C. 494, the complete suppression of the Ionian revolt by the Persians left their armies and fleets at liberty to act against the enemies of the Great King to the west of the Hellespont. A strong squadron of Phoenician galleys was sent against the Chersonese. Miltiades knew that resistance was hopeless, and while the Phoenicians were at Tenedos, he loaded five galleys with all the treasure that he could collect, and sailed away for Athens. The Phoenicians fell in with him, and chased him hard along the north of the Ægean. One of his galleys, on board of which was his eldest son Metiochus, was actually captured. But Miltiades, with the other four, succeeded in reaching the friendly coast of Imbros in safety. Thence he afterward proceeded to Athens, and resumed his station as a free citizen of the Athenian commonwealth. The Athenians, at this time, had recently expelled Hippias the son of Pisistratus, the last of their tyrants. They were in the full glow of their newly recovered liberty and equality; and the constitutional changes of Clisthenes had inflamed their republican zeal to the utmost. Miltiades had enemies at Athens; and these, availing themselves of the state of popular feeling, brought him to trial for his life for having been tyrant of the Chersonese. The charge did not necessarily import any acts of cruelty or wrong to individuals: it was founded on no specific law; but it was based on the horror with which the Greeks of that age regarded every man who made himself arbitrary master of his fellow-men, and exercised irresponsible dominion over them. The fact of Miltiades having so ruled in the Chersonese was undeniable; but the question which the Athenians assembled in judgment must have tried, was whether Miltiades, although tyrant of the Chersonese, deserved punishment as an Athenian citizen. The eminent service that he had done the state in conquering Lemnos and Imbros for it, pleaded strongly in his favor. The people refused to convict him. He stood high in public opinion. And when the coming invasion of the Persians was known, the people wisely elected him one of their generals for the year. Two other men of high eminence in history, though their renown was achieved at a later period than that of Miltiades, were also among the ten Athenian generals at Marathon. One was Themistocles, the future founder of the Athenian navy, and the destined victor of Salamis. The other was Aristides, who afterward led the Athenian troops at Platæa, and whose integrity and just popularity acquired for his country, when the Persians had finally been repulsed, the advantageous preëminence of being acknowledged by half of the Greeks as their imperial leader and protector. It is not recorded what part either Themistocles or Aristides took in the debate of the council of war at Marathon. But, from the character of Themistocles, his boldness, and his intuitive genius for extemporizing the best measures in every emergency--a quality which the greatest of historians ascribes to him beyond all his contemporaries--we may well believe that the vote of Themistocles was for prompt and decisive action. On the vote of Aristides it may be more difficult to speculate. His predilection for the Spartans may have made him wish to wait till they came up; but, though circumspect, he was neither timid as a soldier nor as a politician, and the bold advice of Miltiades may probably have found in Aristides a willing, most assuredly it found in him a candid, hearer. Miltiades felt no hesitation, as to the course which the Athenian army ought to pursue; and earnestly did he press his opinion on his brother generals. Practically acquainted with the organization of the Persian armies, Miltiades felt convinced of the superiority of the Greek troops, if properly handled; he saw with the military eye of a great general the advantage which the position of the forces gave him for a sudden attack, and as a profound politician he felt the perils of remaining inactive, and of giving treachery time to ruin the Athenian cause. One officer in the council of war had not yet voted. This was Callimachus, the War-ruler. The votes of the generals were five and five, so that the voice of Callimachus would be decisive. On that vote, in all human probability, the destiny of all the nations of the world depended. Miltiades turned to him, and in simple soldierly eloquence--the substance of which we may read faithfully reported in Herodotus, who had conversed with the veterans of Marathon--the great Athenian thus adjured his countrymen to vote for giving battle: "It now rests with you, Callimachus, either to enslave Athens, or, by assuring her freedom, to win yourself an immortality of fame, such as not even Harmodius and Aristogiton have acquired; for never, since the Athenians were a people, were they in such danger as they are in at this moment. If they bow the knee to these Medes, they are to be given up to Hippias, and you know what they then will have to suffer. But if Athens comes victorious out of this contest, she has it in her to become the first city of Greece. Your vote is to decide whether we are to join battle or not. If we do not bring on a battle presently, some factious intrigue will disunite the Athenians, and the city will be betrayed to the Medes. But if we fight, before there is anything rotten in the state of Athens, I believe that, provided the gods will give fair play and no favor, we are able to get the best of it in an engagement." The vote of the brave War-ruler was gained, the council determined to give battle; and such was the ascendancy and acknowledged military eminence of Miltiades, that his brother generals one and all gave up their days of command to him, and cheerfully acted under his orders. Fearful, however, of creating any jealousy, and of so failing to obtain the vigorous coöperation of all parts of his small army, Miltiades waited till the day when the chief command would have come round to him in regular rotation before he led the troops against the enemy. The inaction of the Asiatic commanders during this interval appears strange at first sight; but Hippias was with them, and they and he were aware of their chance of a bloodless conquest through the machinations of his partisans among the Athenians. The nature of the ground also explains in many points the tactics of the opposite generals before the battle, as well as the operations of the troops during the engagement. The plain of Marathon, which is about twenty-two miles distant from Athens, lies along the bay of the same name on the north-eastern coast of Attica. The plain is nearly in the form of a crescent, and about six miles in length. It is about two miles broad in the centre, where the space between the mountains and the sea is greatest, but it narrows toward either extremity, the mountains coming close clown to the water at the horns of the bay. There is a valley trending inward from the middle of the plain, and a ravine comes down to it to the southward. Elsewhere it is closely girt round on the land side by rugged limestone mountains, which are thickly studded with pines, olive-trees and cedars, and overgrown with the myrtle, arbutus, and the other low odoriferous shrubs that everywhere perfume the Attic air. The level of the ground is now varied by the mound raised over those who fell in the battle, but it was an unbroken plain when the Persians encamped on it. There are marshes at each end, which are dry in spring and summer and then offer no obstruction to the horseman, but are commonly flooded with rain and so rendered impracticable for cavalry in the autumn, the time of year at which the action took place. The Greeks, lying encamped on the mountains, could watch every movement of the Persians on the plain below, while they were enabled completely to mask their own. Miltiades also had, from, his position, the power of giving battle whenever he pleased, or of delaying it at his discretion, unless Datis were to attempt the perilous operation of storming the heights. If we turn to the map of the Old World, to test the comparative territorial resources of the two states whose armies were now about to come into conflict, the immense preponderance of the material power of the Persian king over that of the Athenian republic is more striking than any similar contrast which history can supply. It has been truly remarked that, in estimating mere areas Attica, containing on its whole surface only seven hundred square miles, shrinks into insignificance if compared with many a baronial fief of the Middle Ages, or many a colonial allotment of modern times. Its antagonist, the Persian, empire, comprised the whole of modern Asiatic and much of modern European Turkey, the modern kingdom of Persia and the countries of modern Georgia, Armenia, Balkh, the Punjaub, Afghanistan, Beloochistan, Egypt and Tripoli. Nor could a European, in the beginning of the fifth century before our era, look upon this huge accumulation of power beneath the sceptre of a single Asiatic ruler with the indifference with which we now observe on the map the extensive dominions of modern Oriental sovereigns; for, as has been already remarked, before Marathon was fought, the prestige of success and of supposed superiority of race was on the side of the Asiatic against the European. Asia was the original seat of human societies, and long before any trace can be found of the inhabitants of the rest of the world having emerged from the rudest barbarism, we can perceive that mighty and brilliant empires flourished in the Asiatic continent. They appear before us through the twilight of primeval history, dim and indistinct, but massive and majestic, like mountains in the early dawn. Instead, however, of the infinite variety and restless change which has characterized the institutions and fortunes of European states ever since the commencement of the civilization of our continent, a monotonous uniformity pervades the histories of nearly all Oriental empires, from the most ancient down to the most recent times. They are characterized by the rapidity of their early conquests, by the immense extent of the dominions comprised in them, by the establishment of a satrap or pashaw system of governing the provinces, by an invariable and speedy degeneracy in the princes of the royal house, the effeminate nurslings of the seraglio succeeding to the warrior sovereigns reared in the camp, and by the internal anarchy and insurrections which indicate and accelerate the decline and fall of these unwieldy and ill-organized fabrics of power. It is also a striking fact that the governments of all the great Asiatic empires have in all ages been absolute despotisms. And Heeren is right in connecting this with another great fact, which is important from its influence both on the political and the social life of Asiatics. "Among all the considerable nations of Inner Asia, the paternal government of every household was corrupted by polygamy: where that custom exists, a good political constitution is impossible. Fathers, being converted into domestic despots, are ready to pay the same abject obedience to their sovereign which they exact from their family and dependents in their domestic economy." We should bear in mind, also, the inseparable connection between the state religion and all legislation which has always prevailed in the East, and the constant existence of a powerful sacerdotal body, exercising some check, though precarious and irregular, over the throne itself, grasping at all civil administration, claiming the supreme control of education, stereotyping the lines in which literature and science must move, and limiting the extent to which it shall be lawful for the human mind to prosecute its inquiries. With these general characteristics rightly felt and understood it becomes a comparatively easy task to investigate and appreciate the origin, progress and principles of Oriental empires in general, as well as of the Persian monarchy in particular. And we are thus better enabled to appreciate the repulse which Greece gave to the arms of the East, and to judge of the probable consequences to human civilization, if the Persians had succeeded in bringing Europe under their yoke, as they had already subjugated the fairest portions of the rest of the then known world. The Greeks, from their geographical position, formed the natural van-guard of European liberty against Persian ambition; and they preëminently displayed the salient points of distinctive national character which have rendered European civilization so far superior to Asiatic. The nations that dwelt in ancient times around and near the northern shores of the Mediterranean Sea were the first in our continent to receive from the East the rudiments of art and literature, and the germs of social and political organizations. Of these nations the Greeks, through their vicinity to Asia Minor, Phoenicia, and Egypt, were among the very foremost in acquiring the principles and habits of civilized life; and they also at once imparted a new and wholly original stamp on all which they received. Thus, in their religion, they received from foreign settlers the names of all their deities and many of their rites, but they discarded the loathsome monstrosities of the Nile, the Orontes, and the Ganges; they nationalized their creed, and their own poets created their beautiful mythology. No sacerdotal caste ever existed in Greece. So, in their governments, they lived long under hereditary kings, but never endured the permanent establishment of absolute monarchy. Their early kings were constitutional rulers, governing with defined prerogatives. And long before the Persian invasion, the kingly form of government had given way in almost all the Greek states to republican institutions, presenting infinite varieties of the blending or the alternate predominance of the oligarchical and democratical principles. In literature and science the Greek intellect followed no beaten track, and acknowledged no limitary rules. The Greeks thought their subjects boldly out; and the novelty of a speculation invested it in their minds with interest, and not with criminality. Versatile, restless, enterprising, and self-confident, the Greeks presented the most striking contrast to the habitual quietude and submissiveness of the Orientals; and, of all the Greeks, the Athenians exhibited these national characteristics in the strongest degree. This spirit of activity and daring, joined to a generous sympathy for the fate of their fellow-Greeks in Asia, had led them to join in the last Ionian war, and now mingling with their abhorrence of the usurping family of their own citizens, which for a period had forcibly seized on and exercised despotic power at Athens, nerved them to defy the wrath of King Darius, and to refuse to receive back at his bidding the tyrant whom they had some years before driven out. The enterprise and genius of an Englishman have lately confirmed by fresh evidence, and invested with fresh interest, the might of the Persian monarch who sent his troops to combat at Marathon. Inscriptions in a character termed the Arrow-headed, or Cuneiform, had long been known to exist on the marble monuments at Persepolis, near the site of the ancient Susa, and on the faces of rocks in other places formerly ruled over by the early Persian kings. But for thousands of years they had been mere unintelligible enigmas to the curious but baffled beholder; and they were often referred to as instances of the folly of human pride, which could indeed write its own praises in the solid rock, but only for the rock to outlive the language as well as the memory of the vainglorious inscribers. The elder Niebuhr, Grotefend, and Lassen, had made some guesses at the meaning of the cuneiform letters; but Major Rawlinson of the East India Company's service, after years of labor, has at last accomplished the glorious achievement of fully revealing the alphabet and the grammar of this long unknown tongue. He has, in particular, fully deciphered and expounded the inscription on the sacred rock of Behistun, on the western frontiers of Media. These records of the Achæmenidæ have at length found their interpreter; and Darius himself speaks to us from the consecrated mountain, and tells us the names of the nations that obeyed him, the revolts that he suppressed, his victories, his piety, and his glory. Kings who thus seek the admiration of posterity are little likely to dim the record of their successes by the mention of their occasional defeats; and it throws no suspicion on the narrative of the Greek historians that we find these inscriptions silent respecting the overthrow of Datis and Artaphernes, as well as respecting the reverses which Darius sustained in person during his Scythian campaigns. But these indisputable monuments of Persian fame confirm, and even increase the opinion with which Herodotus inspires us of the vast power which Cyrus founded and Cambyses increased; which Darius augmented by Indian and Arabian conquests, and seemed likely, when he directed his arms against Europe, to make the predominant monarchy of the world. With the exception of the Chinese empire, in which, throughout all ages down to the last few years, one-third of the human race has dwelt almost unconnected with the other portions, all the great kingdoms, which we know to have existed in ancient Asia, were, in Darius' time, blended into the Persian. The northern Indians, the Assyrians, the Syrians, the Babylonians, the Chaldees, the Phoenicians, the nations of Palestine, the Armenians, the Bactrians, the Lydians, the Phrygians, the Parthians, and the Medes, all obeyed the sceptre of the Great King: the Medes standing next to the native Persians in honor, and the empire being frequently spoken of as that of the Medes, or as that of the Medes and Persians. Egypt and Cyrene were Persian provinces; the Greek colonists in Asia Minor and the islands of the Ægean were Darius' subjects; and their gallant but unsuccessful attempts to throw off the Persian yoke had only served to rivet it more strongly, and to increase the general belief that the Greeks could not stand before the Persians in a field of battle. Darius' Scythian war, though unsuccessful in its immediate object, had brought about the subjugation of Thrace and the submission of Macedonia. From the Indus to the Peneus, all was his. We may imagine the wrath with which the lord of so many nations must have heard, nine years before the battle of Marathon, that a strange nation toward the setting sun, called the Athenians, had dared to help his rebels in Ionia against him, and that they had plundered and burned the capital of one of his provinces. Before the burning of Sardis, Darius seems never to have heard of the existence of Athens; but his satraps in Asia Minor had for some time seen Athenian refugees at their provincial courts imploring assistance against their fellow-countrymen. When Hippias was driven away from Athens, and the tyrannic dynasty of the Pisistratidæ finally overthrown in B.C. 510, the banished tyrant and his adherents, after vainly seeking to be restored by Spartan intervention, had betaken themselves to Sardis, the capital city of the satrapy of Artaphernes. There Hippias--in the expressive words of Herodotus--began every kind of agitation, slandering the Athenians before Artaphernes, and doing all he could to induce the satrap to place Athens in subjection to him, as the tributary vassal of King Darius. When the Athenians heard of his practices, they sent envoys to Sardis to remonstrate with the Persians against taking up the quarrel of the Athenian refugees. But Artaphernes gave them in reply a menacing command to receive Hippias back again if they looked for safety. The Athenians were resolved not to purchase safety at such a price, and after rejecting the satrap's terms, they considered that they and the Persians were declared enemies. At this very crisis the Ionian Greeks implored the assistance of their European brethren, to enable them to recover their independence from Persia. Athens, and the city of Eretria in Euboea, alone consented. Twenty Athenian galleys, and five Eretrian, crossed the Ægean Sea, and by a bold and sudden march upon Sardis, the Athenians and their allies succeeded in capturing the capital city of the haughty satrap who had recently menaced them with servitude or destruction. They were pursued, and defeated on their return to the coast, and Athens took no further part in the Ionian war; but the insult that she had put upon the Persian power was speedily made known throughout that empire, and was never to be forgiven or forgotten. In the emphatic simplicity of the narrative of Herodotus, the wrath of the Great King is thus described: "Now when it was told to King Darius that Sardis had been taken and burned by the Athenians and Ionians, he took small heed of the Ionians, well knowing who they were, and that their revolt would soon be put down; but he asked who, and what manner of men, the Athenians were. And when he had been told, he called for his bow; and, having taken it, and placed an arrow on the string, he let the arrow fly toward heaven; and as he shot it into the air, he said, 'Oh! supreme God, grant me that I may avenge myself on the Athenians,' And when he had said this, he appointed one of his servants to say to him every day as he sat at meat, 'Sire, remember the Athenians.'" Some years were occupied in the complete reduction of Ionia. But when this was effected, Darius ordered his victorious forces to proceed to punish Athens and Eretria, and to conquer European Greece, The first armament sent for this purpose was shattered by shipwreck, and nearly destroyed off Mount Athos. But the purpose of King Darius was not easily shaken, A larger army was ordered to be collected in Cilicia, and requisitions were sent to all the maritime cities of the Persian empire for ships of war, and for transports of sufficient size for carrying cavalry as well as infantry across the Ægean. While these preparations were being made, Darius sent heralds round to the Grecian cities demanding their submission to Persia. It was proclaimed in the market-place of each little Hellenic state--some with territories not larger than the Isle of Wight--that King Darius, the lord of all men, from the rising to the setting sun,[44] required earth and water to be delivered to his heralds, as a symbolical acknowledgment that he was head and master of the country. Terror-stricken at the power of Persia and at the severe punishment that had recently been inflicted on the refractory Ionians, many of the continental Greeks and nearly all the islanders submitted, and gave the required tokens of vassalage. At Sparta and Athens an indignant refusal was returned--a refusal which was disgraced by outrage and violence against the persons of the Asiatic heralds. [Footnote 44: Æschines.] Fresh fuel was thus added to the anger of Darius against Athens, and the Persian preparations went on with renewed vigor. In the summer of B.C. 490, the army destined for the invasion was assembled in the Aleian plain of Cilicia, near the sea. A fleet of six hundred galleys and numerous transports was collected on the coast for the embarkation of troops, horse as well as foot. A Median general named Datis, and Artaphernes, the son of the satrap of Sardis, and who was also nephew of Darius, were placed in titular joint-command of the expedition. The real supreme authority was probably given to Datis alone, from the way in which the Greek writers speak of him. We know no details of the previous career of this officer; but there is every reason to believe that his abilities and bravery had been proved by experience, or his Median birth would have prevented his being placed in high command by Darius. He appears to have been the first Mede who was thus trusted by the Persian kings after the overthrow of the conspiracy of the Median magi against the Persians immediately before Darius obtained the throne. Datis received instructions to complete the subjugation of Greece, and especial orders were given him with regard to Eretria and Athens. He was to take these two cities, and he was to lead the inhabitants away captive, and bring them as slaves into the presence of the Great King. Datis embarked his forces in the fleet that awaited them, and coasting along the shores of Asia Minor till he was off Samos, he thence sailed due westward through the Ægean Sea for Greece, taking the islands in his way. The Naxians had, ten years before, successfully stood a siege against a Persian armament, but they now were too terrified to offer any resistance, and fled to the mountain tops, while the enemy burned their town and laid waste their lands. Thence Datis, compelling the Greek islanders to join him with their ships and men, sailed onward to the coast of Euboea. The little town of Carystus essayed resistance, but was quickly overpowered. He next attacked Eretria. The Athenians sent four thousand men to its aid; but treachery was at work among the Eretrians; and the Athenian force received timely warning from one of the leading men of the city to retire to aid in saving their own country, instead of remaining to share in the inevitable destruction of Eretria. Left to themselves, the Eretrians repulsed the assaults of the Persians against their walls for six days; on the seventh they were betrayed by two of their chiefs, and the Persians occupied the city. The temples were burned in revenge for the firing of Sardis, and the inhabitants were bound, and placed as prisoners in the neighboring islet of Ægilia, to wait there till Datis should bring the Athenians to join them in captivity, when both populations were to be led into Upper Asia, there to learn their doom from the lips of King Darius himself. Flushed with success, and with half his mission thus accomplished, Datis reëmbarked his troops, and, crossing the little channel that separates Euboea from the mainland, he encamped his troops on the Attic coast at Marathon, drawing up his galleys on the shelving beach, as was the custom with the navies of antiquity. The conquered islands behind him served as places of deposit for his provisions and military stores. His position at Marathon seemed to him in every respect advantageous, and the level nature of the ground on which he camped was favorable for the employment of his cavalry, if the Athenians should venture to engage him. Hippias, who accompanied him, and acted as the guide of the invaders, had pointed out Marathon as the best place for a landing, for this very reason. Probably Hippias was also influenced by the recollection that forty-seven years previously, he, with his father Pisistratus, had crossed with an army from Eretria to Marathon, and had won an easy victory over their Athenian enemies on that very plain, which had restored them to tyrannic power. The omen seemed cheering. The place was the same, but Hippias soon learned to his cost how great a change had come over the spirit of the Athenians. But though "the fierce democracy" of Athens was zealous and true against foreign invader and domestic tyrant, a faction existed in Athens, as at Eretria, who were willing to purchase a party triumph over their fellow-citizens at the price of their country's ruin. Communications were opened between these men and the Persian camp, which would have led to a catastrophe like that of Eretria, if Miltiades had not resolved and persuaded his colleagues to resolve on fighting at all hazards. When Miltiades arrayed his men for action, he staked on the arbitrament of one battle not only the fate of Athens, but that of all Greece; for if Athens had fallen, no other Greek state, except Lacedæmon, would have had the courage to resist; and the Lacedæmonians, though they would probably have died in their ranks to the last man, never could have successfully resisted the victorious Persians and the numerous Greek troops which would have soon marched under the Persian satraps, had they prevailed over Athens. Nor was there any power to the westward of Greece that could have offered an effectual opposition to Persia, had she once conquered Greece, and made that country a basis for future military operations. Rome was at this time in her season of utmost weakness. Her dynasty of powerful Etruscan kings had been driven out; and her infant commonwealth was reeling under the attacks of the Etruscans and Volscians from without, and the fierce dissensions between the patricians and plebeians within. Etruria, with her _lucumos_ and serfs, was no match for Persia. Samnium had not grown into the might which she afterward put forth; nor could the Greek colonies in South Italy and Sicily hope to conquer when their parent states had perished. Carthage had escaped the Persian yoke in the time of Cambyses, through the reluctance of the Phoenician mariners to serve against their kinsmen. But such forbearance could not long have been relied on, and the future rival of Rome would have become as submissive a minister of the Persian power as were the Phoenician cities themselves. If we turn to Spain; or if we pass the great mountain chain, which, prolonged through the Pyrenees, the Cevennes, the Alps, and the Balkan, divides Northern from Southern Europe, we shall find nothing at that period but mere savage Finns, Celts, Slavs, and Teutons. Had Persia beaten Athens at Marathon, she could have found no obstacle to prevent Darius, the chosen servant of Ormuzd, from advancing his sway over all the known Western races of mankind. The infant energies of Europe would have been trodden out beneath universal conquest, and the history of the world, like the history of Asia, have become a mere record of the rise and fall of despotic dynasties, of the incursions of barbarous hordes, and of the mental and political prostration of millions beneath the diadem, the tiara, and the sword. Great as the preponderance of the Persian over the Athenian power at that crisis seems to have been, it would be unjust to impute wild rashness to the policy of Miltiades and those who voted with him in the Athenian council of war, or to look on the after-current of events as the mere fortunate result of successful folly. As before has been remarked, Miltiades, while prince of the Chersonese, had seen service in the Persian armies; and he knew by personal observation how many elements of weakness lurked beneath their imposing aspect of strength. He knew that the bulk of their troops no longer consisted of the hardy shepherds and mountaineers from Persia proper and Kurdistan, who won Cyrus's battles; but that unwilling contingents from conquered nations now filled up the Persian muster-rolls, fighting more from compulsion than from any zeal in the cause of their masters. He had also the sagacity and the spirit to appreciate the superiority of the Greek armor and organization over the Asiatic, notwithstanding former reverses. Above all, he felt and worthily trusted the enthusiasm of those whom he led. The Athenians whom he led had proved by their newborn valor in recent wars against the neighboring states that "liberty and equality of civic rights are brave spirit-stirring things, and they, who, while under the yoke of a despot, had been no better men of war than any of their neighbors, as soon as they were free, became the foremost men of all; for each felt that in fighting for a free commonwealth, he fought for himself, and whatever he took in hand, he was zealous to do the work thoroughly," So the nearly contemporaneous historian describes the change of spirit that was seen in the Athenians after their tyrants were expelled; and Miltiades knew that in leading them against the invading army, where they had Hippias, the foe they most hated, before them, he was bringing into battle no ordinary men, and could calculate on no ordinary heroism. As for traitors, he was sure that, whatever treachery might lurk among some of the higher born and wealthier Athenians, the rank and file whom he commanded were ready to do their utmost in his and their own cause. With regard to future attacks from Asia, he might reasonably hope that one victory would inspirit all Greece to combine against the common foe; and that the latent seeds of revolt and disunion in the Persian empire would soon burst forth and paralyze its energies, so as to leave Greek independence secure. With these hopes and risks, Miltiades, on the afternoon of a September day, B.C. 490, gave the word for the Athenian army to prepare for battle. There were many local associations connected with those mountain heights which were calculated powerfully to excite the spirits of the men, and of which the commanders well knew how to avail themselves in their exhortations to their troops before the encounter. Marathon itself was a region sacred to Hercules. Close to them was the fountain of Macaria, who had in days of yore devoted herself to death for the liberty of her people. The very plain on which they were to fight was the scene of the exploits of their national hero, Theseus; and there, too, as old legends told, the Athenians and the Heraclidæ had routed the invader, Eurystheus. These traditions were not mere cloudy myths or idle fictions, but matters of implicit earnest faith to the men of that day, and many a fervent prayer arose from the Athenian ranks to the heroic spirits who, while on earth, had striven and suffered on that very spot, and who were believed to be now heavenly powers, looking down with interest on their still beloved country, and capable of interposing with superhuman aid in its behalf. According to old national custom, the warriors of each tribe were arrayed together; neighbor thus fighting by the side of neighbor, friend by friend, and the spirit of emulation and the consciousness of responsibility excited to the very utmost. The War-ruler, Callimachus, had the leading of the right wing; the Platæans formed the extreme left; and Themistocles and Aristides commanded the centre. The line consisted of the heavy-armed spearmen only; for the Greeks--until the time of Iphicrates--took little or no account of light-armed soldiers in a pitched battle, using them only in skirmishes, or for the pursuit of a defeated enemy. The panoply of the regular infantry consisted of a long spear, of a shield, helmet, breastplate, greaves, and short sword. Thus equipped, they usually advanced slowly and steadily into action in a uniform phalanx of about eight spears deep. But the military genius of Miltiades led him to deviate on this occasion from the commonplace tactics of his countrymen. It was essential for him to extend his line so as to cover all the practicable ground, and to secure himself from being outflanked and charged in the rear by the Persian horse. This extension involved the weakening of his line. Instead of a uniform reduction of its strength, he determined on detaching principally from his centre, which, from the nature of the ground, would have the best opportunities for rallying, if broken; and on strengthening his wings so as to insure advantage at those points; and he trusted to his own skill and to his soldiers' discipline for the improvement of that advantage into decisive victory.[45] [Footnote 45: It is remarkable that there is no other instance of a Greek general deviating from the ordinary mode of bringing a phalanx of spearmen into action until the battles of Leuctra and Mantinea, more than a century after Marathon, when Epaminondas introduced the tactics which Alexander the Great in ancient times, and Frederick the Great in modern times, made so famous, of concentrating an overpowering force to bear on some decisive point of the enemy's line, while he kept back, or, in military phrase, refused the weaker part of his own.] In this order, and availing himself probably of the inequalities of the ground, so as to conceal his preparations from the enemy till the last possible moment, Miltiades drew up the eleven thousand infantry whose spears were to decide this crisis in the struggle between the European and the Asiatic worlds. The sacrifices by which the favor of heaven was sought, and its will consulted, were announced to show propitious omens. The trumpet sounded for action, and, chanting the hymn of battle, the little army bore down upon the host of the foe. Then, too, along the mountain slopes of Marathon must have resounded the mutual exhortation which Æschylus, who fought in both battles, tells us was afterward heard over the waves of Salamis: "On, sons of the Greeks! Strike for the freedom of your country! strike for the freedom of your children and of your wives--for the shrines of your fathers' gods, and for the sepulchres of your sires. All--all are now staked upon the strife." Instead of advancing at the usual slow pace of the phalanx, Miltiades brought his men on at a run. They were all trained in the exercise of the _palæstra_, so that there was no fear of their ending the charge in breathless exhaustion; and it was of the deepest importance for him to traverse as rapidly as possible the mile or so of level ground that lay between the mountain foot and the Persian outposts, and so to get his troops into close action before the Asiatic cavalry could mount, form, and manoeuvre against him, or their archers keep him long under fire, and before the enemy's generals could fairly deploy their masses. "When the Persians," says Herodotus, "saw the Athenians running down on them, without horse or bowmen, and scanty in numbers, they thought them a set of madmen rushing upon certain destruction." They began, however, to prepare to receive them, and the Eastern chiefs arrayed, as quickly as time and place allowed, the varied races who served in their motley ranks. Mountaineers from Hyrcania and Afghanistan, wild horsemen from the steppes of Khorassan, the black archers of Ethiopia, swordsmen from the banks of the Indus, the Oxus, the Euphrates and the Nile, made ready against the enemies of the Great King. But no national cause inspired them except the division of native Persians; and in the large host there was no uniformity of language, creed, race or military system. Still, among them there were many gallant men, under a veteran general; they were familiarized with victory, and in contemptuous confidence their infantry, which alone had time to form, awaited the Athenian charge. On came the Greeks, with one unwavering line of leveled spears, against which the light targets, the short lances and cimeters of the Orientals offered weak defence. The front rank of the Asiatics must have gone down to a man at the first shock. Still they recoiled not, but strove by individual gallantry and by the weight of numbers to make up for the disadvantages of weapons and tactics, and to bear back the shallow line of the Europeans. In the centre, where the native Persians and the Sacæ fought, they succeeded in breaking through the weakened part of the Athenian phalanx; and the tribes led by Aristides and Themistocles were, after a brave resistance, driven back over the plain, and chased by the Persians up the valley toward the inner country. There the nature of the ground gave the opportunity of rallying and renewing the struggle. Meanwhile, the Greek wings, where Miltiades had concentrated his chief strength, had routed the Asiatics opposed to them; and the Athenian and Platæan officers, instead of pursuing the fugitives, kept their troops well in hand, and, wheeling round, they formed the two wings together. Miltiades instantly led them against the Persian centre, which had hitherto been triumphant, but which now fell back, and prepared to encounter these new and unexpected assailants. Aristides and Themistocles renewed the fight with their reorganized troops, and the full force of the Greeks was brought into close action with the Persian and Sacean divisions of the enemy. Datis' veterans strove hard to keep their ground, and evening was approaching before the stern encounter was decided. But the Persians, with their slight wicker shields, destitute of body armor, and never taught by training to keep the even front and act with the regular movement of the Greek infantry, fought at heavy disadvantage with their shorter and feebler weapons against the compact array of well-armed Athenian and Platæan spearmen, all perfectly drilled to perform each necessary evolution in concert, and to preserve a uniform and unwavering line in battle. In personal courage and in bodily activity the Persians were not inferior to their adversaries. Their spirits were not yet cowed by the recollection of former defeats; and they lavished their lives freely, rather than forfeit the fame which they had won by so many victories. While their rear ranks poured an incessant shower of arrows over the heads of their comrades, the foremost Persians kept rushing forward, sometimes singly, sometimes in desperate groups of ten or twelve, upon the projecting spears of the Greeks, striving to force a lane into the phalanx, and to bring their cimeters and daggers into play. But the Greeks felt their superiority, and though the fatigue of the long-continued action told heavily on their inferior numbers, the sight of the carnage that they dealt upon their assailants nerved them to fight still more fiercely on. At last the previously unvanquished lords of Asia turned their backs and fled, and the Greeks followed, striking them down, to the water's edge,[46] where the invaders were now hastily launching their galleys, and seeking to embark and fly. Flushed with success, the Athenians attacked and strove to fire the fleet. But here the Asiatics resisted desperately, and the principal loss sustained by the Greeks was in the assault on the ships. Here fell the brave War-ruler Callimachus, the general Stesilaus, and other Athenians of note. Seven galleys were fired; but the Persians succeeded in saving the rest. They pushed off from the fatal shore; but even here the skill of Datis did not desert him, and he sailed round to the western coast of Attica, in hopes to find the city unprotected, and to gain possession of it from some of the partisans of Hippias. [Footnote 46: The flying Mede, his shaftless broken bow; The fiery Greek, his red pursuing spear; Mountains above, Earth's, Ocean's plain below, Death in the front, Destruction in the rear! Such was the scene.--Byron.] Miltiades, however, saw and counteracted his manoeuvre. Leaving Aristides, and the troops of his tribe, to guard the spoil and the slain, the Athenian commander led his conquering army by a rapid night-march back across the country to Athens. And when the Persian fleet had doubled the Cape of Sunium and sailed up to the Athenian harbor in the morning, Datis saw arrayed on the heights above the city the troops before whom his men had fled on the preceding evening. All hope of further conquest in Europe for the time was abandoned, and the baffled armada returned to the Asiatic coasts. After the battle had been fought, but while the dead bodies were yet on the ground, the promised reënforcement from Sparta arrived. Two thousand Lacedæmonian spearmen, starting immediately after the full moon, had marched the hundred and fifty miles between Athens and Sparta in the wonderfully short time of three days. Though too late to share in the glory of the action, they requested to be allowed to march to the battle-field to behold the Medes. They proceeded thither, gazed on the dead bodies of the invaders, and then praising the Athenians and what they had done, they returned to Lacedæmon. The number of the Persian dead was sixty-four hundred; of the Athenians, one hundred and ninety-two. The number of the Platæans who fell is not mentioned; but, as they fought in the part of the army which was not broken, it cannot have been large. The apparent disproportion between the losses of the two armies is not surprising when we remember the armor of the Greek spearmen, and the impossibility of heavy slaughter being inflicted by sword or lance on troops so armed, as long as they kept firm in their ranks.[47] [Footnote 47: Mitford well refers to Crecy, Poictiers, and Agincourt as instances of similar disparity of loss between the conquerors and the conquered.] The Athenian slain were buried on the field of battle. This was contrary to the usual custom, according to which the bones of all who fell fighting for their country in each year were deposited in a public sepulchre in the suburb of Athens called the "Ceramicus." But it was felt that a distinction ought to be made in the funeral honors paid to the men of Marathon, even as their merit had been distinguished over that of all other Athenians. A lofty mound was raised on the plain of Marathon, beneath which the remains of the men of Athens who fell in the battle were deposited. Ten columns were erected on the spot, one for each of the Athenian tribes; and on the monumental column of each tribe were graven the names of those of its members whose glory it was to have fallen in the great battle of liberation. The antiquarian Pausanias read those names there six hundred years after the time when they were first graven.[48] The columns have long perished, but the mound still marks the spot where the noblest heroes of antiquity repose. [Footnote 48: Pausanias stales, with implicit belief, that the battle-field was haunted at night by supernatural beings, and that the noise of combatants and the snorting of horses were heard to resound on it. The superstition has survived the change of creeds, and the shepherds of the neighborhood still believe that spectral warriors contend on the plain at midnight, and they say that they have heard the shouts of the combatants and the neighing of the steeds.] A separate tumulus was raised over the bodies of the slain Platæans, and another over the light-armed slaves who had taken part and had fallen in the battle.[49] There was also a separate funeral monument to the general to whose genius the victory was mainly due. Miltiades did not live long after his achievement at Marathon, but he lived long enough to experience a lamentable reverse of his popularity and success. As soon as the Persians had quitted the western coasts of the Ægean, he proposed to an assembly of the Athenian people that they should fit out seventy galleys, with a proportionate force of soldiers and military stores, and place it at his disposal; not telling them whither he meant to lead it, but promising them that if they would equip the force he asked for, and give him discretionary powers, he would lead it to a land where there was gold in abundance to be won with ease. [Footnote 49: It is probable that the Greek light-armed irregulars were active in the attack on the Persian ships, and it was in this attack that the Greeks suffered their principal loss.] The Greeks of that time believed in the existence of eastern realms teeming with gold, as firmly as the Europeans of the sixteenth century believed in El Dorado of the West. The Athenians probably thought that the recent victor of Marathon, and former officer of Darius, was about to lead them on a secret expedition against some wealthy and unprotected cities of treasure in the Persian dominions. The armament was voted and equipped, and sailed eastward from Attica, no one but Miltiades knowing its destination until the Greek isle of paros was reached, when his true object appeared. In former years, while connected with the Persians as prince of the Chersonese, Miltiades had been involved in a quarrel with one of the leading men among the Parians, who had injured his credit and caused some slights to be put upon him at the court of the Persian satrap Hydarnes. The feud had ever since rankled in the heart of the Athenian chief, and he now attacked Paros for the sake of avenging himself on his ancient enemy. His pretext, as general of the Athenians, was, that the Parians had aided the armament, of Datis with a war-galley. The Parians pretended to treat about terms of surrender, but used the time which they thus gained in repairing the defective parts of the fortifications of their city, and they then set the Athenians at defiance. So far, says Herodotus, the accounts of all the Greeks agree. But the Parians in after years told also a wild legend, how a captive priestess of a Parian temple of the Deities of the Earth promised Miltiades to give him the means of capturing Paros; how, at her bidding, the Athenian general went alone at night and forced his way into a holy shrine, near the city gate, but with what purpose it was not known; how a supernatural awe came over him, and in his flight he fell and fractured his leg; how an oracle afterward forbade the Parians to punish the sacrilegious and traitorous priestess, "because it was fated that Miltiades should come to an ill end, and she was only the instrument to lead, him to evil." Such was the tale that Herodotus heard at Paros. Certain it was that Miltiades either dislocated or broke his leg during an unsuccessful siege of the city, and returned home in evil plight with his baffled and defeated forces. The indignation of the Athenians was proportionate to the hope and excitement which his promises had raised. Xanthippas, the head of one of the first families in Athens, indicted him before the supreme popular tribunal for the capital offence of having deceived the people. His guilt was undeniable, and the Athenians passed their verdict accordingly. But the recollections of Lemnos and Marathon, and the sight of the fallen general, who lay stretched on a couch before them, pleaded successfully in mitigation of punishment, and the sentence was commuted from death to a fine of fifty talents. This was paid by his son, the afterward illustrious Cimon, Miltiades dying, soon after the trial, of the injury which he had received at Paros. The melancholy end of Miltiades, after his elevation to such a height of power and glory, must often have been recalled to the minds of the ancient Greeks by the sight of one in particular of the memorials of the great battle which he won. This was the remarkable statue--minutely described by Pausanias--which the Athenians, in the time of Pericles, caused to be hewn out of a huge block of marble, which, it was believed, had been provided by Datis, to form a trophy of the anticipated victory of the Persians. Phidias fashioned out of this a colossal image of the goddess Nemesis, the deity whose peculiar function was to visit the exuberant prosperity both of nations and individuals with sudden and awful reverses. This statue was placed in a temple of the goddess at Rhamnus, about eight miles from Marathon. Athens itself contained numerous memorials of her primary great victory. Panenus, the cousin of Phidias, represented it in fresco on the walls of the painted porch; and, centuries afterward, the figures of Miltiades and Callimachus at the head of the Athenians were conspicuous in the fresco. The tutelary deities were exhibited taking part in the fray. In the background were seen the Phoenician galleys, and, nearer to the spectator, the Athenians and the Platæans--distinguished by their leather helmets--were chasing routed Asiatics into the marshes and the sea. The battle was sculptured also on the Temple of Victory in the Acropolis, and even now there may be traced on the frieze the figures of the Persian combatants with their lunar shields, their bows and quivers, their curved cimeters, their loose trousers, and Phrygian tiaras. These and other memorials of Marathon were the produce of the meridian age of Athenian intellectual splendor, of the age of Phidias and Pericles; for it was not merely by the generation whom the battle liberated from Hippias and the Medes that the transcendent importance of their victory was gratefully recognized. Through the whole epoch of her prosperity, through the long Olympiads of her decay, through centuries after her fall, Athens looked back on the day of Marathon as the brightest of her national existence. By a natural blending of patriotic pride with grateful piety, the very spirits of the Athenians who fell at Marathon were deified by their countrymen. The inhabitants of the district of Marathon paid religious rites to them, and orators solemnly invoked them in their most impassioned adjurations before the assembled men of Athens. "Nothing was omitted that could keep alive the remembrance of a deed which had first taught the Athenian people to know its own strength, by measuring it with the power which had subdued the greater part of the known world. The consciousness thus awakened fixed its character, its station, and its destiny; it was the spring of its later great actions and ambitious enterprises." It was not indeed by one defeat, however signal, that the pride of Persia could be broken, and her dreams of universal empire dispelled. Ten years afterward she renewed her attempts upon Europe on a grander scale of enterprise, and was repulsed by Greece with greater and reiterated loss. Larger forces and heavier slaughter than had been seen at Marathon signalized the conflicts of Greeks and Persians at Artemisium, Salamis, Platæa, and the Eurymedon. But, mighty and momentous as these battles were, they rank not with Marathon in importance. They originated no new impulse. They turned back no current of fate. They were merely confirmatory of the already existing bias which Marathon had created. The day of Marathon is the critical epoch in the history of the two nations. It broke forever the spell of Persian invincibility, which had previously paralyzed men's minds. It generated among the Greeks the spirit which beat back Xerxes, and afterward led on Xenophon, Agesilaus, and Alexander, in terrible retaliation through their Asiatic campaigns. It secured for mankind the intellectual treasures of Athens, the growth of free institutions, the liberal enlightenment of the Western world, and the gradual ascendency for many ages of the great principles of European civilization. EXPLANATORY REMARKS ON SOME OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE BATTLE OF MARATHON Nothing is said by Herodotus of the Persian cavalry taking any part in the battle, although he mentions that Hippias recommended the Persians to land at Marathon, because the plain was favorable for cavalry evolutions. In the life of Miltiades which is usually cited as the production of Cornelius Nepos, but which I believe to be of no authority whatever, it is said that Miltiades protected his flanks from the enemy's horse by an abatis of felled trees. While he was on the high ground he would not have required this defence, and it is not likely that the Persians would have allowed him to erect it on the plain. But, in truth, whatever amount of cavalry we suppose Datis to have had with him on the day of Marathon, their inaction in the battle is intelligible, if we believe the attack of the Athenian spearmen to have been as sudden as it was rapid. The Persian horse-soldier, on an alarm being given, had to take the shackles off his horse, to strap the saddle on, and bridle him, besides equipping himself (Xenophon), and when each individual horseman was ready, the line had to be formed; and the time that it takes to form the Oriental cavalry in line for a charge has, in all ages, been observed by Europeans. The wet state of the marshes at each end of the plain, in the time of year when the battle was fought, has been adverted to by Wordsworth,[50] and this would hinder the Persian general from arranging and employing his horsemen on his extreme wings, while it also enabled the Greeks, as they came forward, to occupy the whole breadth of the practicable ground with an unbroken line of leveled spears, against which, if any Persian horse advanced, they would be driven back in confusion upon their own foot. [Footnote 50: _Greece_.] Even numerous and fully arrayed bodies of cavalry have been repeatedly broken, both in ancient and modern warfare, by resolute charges of infantry. For instance, it was by an attack of some picked cohorts that Cæsar routed the Pompeian cavalry--which had previously defeated his own--and won the battle of Pharsalia. INVASION OF GREECE BY PERSIANS UNDER XERXES DEFENCE OF THERMOPYLÆ B.C. 480 HERODOTUS The invasion of Greece by Xerxes is the subject of the great history written in nine books by Herodotus. His object is to show the preëminence of Greece, whose fleets and armies defeated the forces of the Persians after these latter had triumphed over the most powerful nations of the earth. Xerxes collected a vast army from all parts of the empire. The Phoenicians furnished him with an enormous fleet, and he made a bridge of a double line of boats across the Hellespont and cut a canal through the peninsula of Mount Athos. He reached Sardis in the autumn of B.C. 481, and the next year his army crossed the bridge of boats, taking seven days and seven nights for the transit. The number of his fighting men was over two millions and a half. His ships of war were twelve hundred and seven in number, and he had three thousand smaller vessels for carrying his land forces and supplies. At the narrow pass of Thermopylæ, in the northeast of Greece, this immense army was checked for a while by the heroic Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans, who, however, perished in their attempt to prevent the Persian's attack on Athens, which city was almost entirely destroyed by the invaders. The sea-fight of Salamis was won by the Greeks against enormous odds; and in the battle of Platæa, B.C. 479, the defeat of the Persians by the Greek land forces was made more complete by the death of Mardonius, the most renowned general of Xerxes. The Greeks, when they arrived at the Isthmus, consulted on the message they had received from Alexander, in what way and in what places they should prosecute the war. The opinion which prevailed was that they should defend the pass at Thermopylæ; for it appeared to be narrower than that into Thessaly, and at the same time nearer to their own territories; for the path by which the Greeks who were taken at Thermopylæ were afterward surprised, they knew nothing of, till, on their arrival at Thermopylæ, they were informed of it by the Trachinians. They accordingly resolved to guard this pass, and not suffer the barbarian to enter Greece; and that the naval force should sail to Artemisium, in the territory of Histiæotis, for these places are near one another, so that they could hear what happened to each other. These spots are thus situated. In the first place, Artemisium is contracted from a wide space of the Thracian sea into a narrow frith, which lies between the island of Sciathus and the continent of Magnesia. From the narrow frith begins the coast of Euboea, called Artemisium, and in it is a temple of Diana. But the entrance into Greece through Trachis, in the narrowest part, is no more than a half _plethrum_ in width: however, the narrowest part of the country is not in this spot, but before and behind Thermopylæ; for near Alpeni, which is behind, there is only a single carriage-road, and before, by the river Phoenix, near the city of Anthela, is another single carriage-road. On the western side of Thermopylæ is an inaccessible and precipitous mountain, stretching to Mount Oeta, and on the eastern side of the way is the sea and a morass. In this passage there are hot baths, which the inhabitants call "Chytri," and above these is an altar to Hercules. A wall had been built in this pass, and formerly there were gates in it. The Phocians built it through fear, when the Thessalians came from Thesprotia to settle in the Æolian territory which they now possess: apprehending that the Thessalians would attempt to subdue them, the Phocians took this precaution; at the same time, they diverted the hot water into the entrance, that the place might be broken into clefts, having recourse to every contrivance to prevent the Thessalians from making inroads into their country. Now this old wall had been built a long time, and the greater part of it had already fallen through age; but they determined to rebuild it, and in that place to repel the barbarian from Greece. Very near this road there is a village called Alpeni; from this the Greeks expected to obtain provisions. Accordingly, these situations appeared suitable for the Greeks; for they, having weighed everything beforehand, and considered that the barbarians would neither be able to use their numbers nor their cavalry, there resolved to await the invader of Greece. As soon as they were informed that the Persian was in Pieria, breaking up from the Isthmus some of them proceeded by land to Thermopylæ, and others by sea to Artemisium. The Greeks, therefore, being appointed in two divisions, hastened to meet the enemy; but, at the same time, the Delphians, alarmed for themselves and for Greece, consulted the oracle, and the answer given them was, "that they should pray to the winds, for that they would be powerful allies to Greece." The Delphians, having received the oracle, first of all communicated the answer to those Greeks who were zealous to be free; and as they very much dreaded the barbarians, by giving that message they acquired a claim to everlasting gratitude. After that, the Delphians erected an altar to the winds at Thyia, where there is an inclosure consecrated to Thyia, daughter of Cephisus, from whom this district derives its name, and conciliated them with sacrifices; and the Delphians, in obedience to that oracle, to this day propitiate the winds. The naval force of Xerxes, setting out from the city of Therma, advanced with ten of the fastest sailing ships straight to Scyathus, where were three Grecian ships keeping a look-out: a Troezenian, an Æginetan, and an Athenian, These, seeing the ships of the barbarians at a distance, betook themselves to flight. The Troezenian ship, which Praxinus commanded, the barbarians pursued and soon captured; and then, having led the handsomest of the marines to the prow of the ship, they slew him, deeming it a good omen that the first Greek they had taken was also very handsome. The name of the man that was slain was Leon, and perhaps he in some measure reaped the fruits of his name. The Æginetan ship, which Asonides commanded, gave them some trouble; Pytheas, son of Ischenous, being a marine on board, a man who on this day displayed the most consummate valor; who, when the ship was taken, continued fighting until he was entirely cut to pieces. But when, having fallen (he was not dead, but still breathed), the Persians who served on board the ships were very anxious to save him alive, on account of his valor, healing his wounds with myrrh, and binding them with bandages of flaxen cloth; and when they returned to their own camp, they showed him with admiration to the whole army, and treated him well; but the others, whom they took in this ship, they treated as slaves. Thus, then, two of the ships were taken; but the other, which Phormus, an Athenian, commanded, in its flight ran ashore at the mouth of the Peneus, and the barbarians got possession of the ship, but not of the men; for as soon as the Athenians had run the ship aground, they leaped out, and, proceeding through Thessaly, reached Athens. The Greeks who were stationed at Artemisium were informed of this event by signal-fires from Sciathus; and being informed of it, and very much alarmed, they retired from Artemisium to Chalcis, intending to defend the Euripus, and leaving scouts on the heights of Euboea. Of the ten barbarian ships, three approached the sunken rock called Myrmex, between Sciathus and Magnesia. Then the barbarians, when they had erected on the rock a stone column, which they had brought with them, set out from Therma, now that every obstacle had been removed, and sailed forward with all their ships, having waited eleven days after the king's departure from Therma. Pammon, a Scyrian, pointed out to them this hidden rock, which was almost directly in their course. The barbarians, sailing all day, reached Sepias in Magnesia, and the shore that lies between the city of Casthanæa and the coast of Sepias. As far as this place and Thermopylæ, the army had suffered no loss, and the numbers were at that time, as I find by calculations, of the following amount: of those in ships from Asia, amounting to one thousand two hundred and seven, originally the whole number of the several nations was two hundred forty-one thousand four hundred men, allowing two hundred to each ship; and on these ships thirty Persians, Medes, and Sacæ served as marines, in addition to the native crews of each; this farther number amounts to thirty-six thousand two hundred and ten. To this and the former number I add those that were on the _penteconters[51]_ supposing eighty men on the average to be on board of each. Three thousand of these vessels were assembled; therefore the men on board them must have been two hundred and forty thousand. This, then, was the naval force from Asia, the total being five hundred and seventeen thousand six hundred and ten. Of infantry there were seventeen hundred thousand, and of cavalry eighty thousand; to these I add the Arabians who drove camels, and the Libyans who drove chariots, reckoning the number at twenty thousand men. Accordingly, the numbers on board the ships and on the land, added together, make up two millions three hundred and seventeen thousand six hundred and ten. This, then, is the force which, as has been mentioned, was assembled from Asia itself, exclusive of the servants that followed, and the provision ships, and the men that were on board them. [Footnote 51: Fifty-oared ships.] But the force brought from Europe must still be added to this whole number that has been summed up; but it is necessary to speak by guess. Now the Grecians from Thrace, and the islands contiguous to Thrace, furnished one hundred and twenty ships; these ships give an amount of twenty-four thousand men. Of land-forces, which were furnished by Thracians, Pæonians, the Eordi, the Bottiæans, the Chalcidian race, Brygi, Pierians, Macedonians, Perrhæbi, Ænianes, Dolopians, Magnesians, and Achæans, together with those who inhabit the maritime parts of Thrace--of these nations I suppose that there were three hundred thousand men, so that these _myriads_, added to those from Asia, make a total of two millions six hundred and forty one thousand six hundred and ten fighting men! I think that the servants who followed them, and with those on board the provision ships and other vessels that sailed with the fleet, were not fewer than the fighting men, but more numerous; but supposing them to be equal in number to the fighting men, they make up the former number of _myriads_.[52] Thus Xerxes, son of Darius, led five millions two hundred and eighty-three thousand two hundred and twenty men to Sepias and Thermopylæ! [Footnote 52: In Greek numeration, ten thousand.] This, then, was the number of the whole force of Xerxes. But of women who made bread, and concubines, and eunuchs, no one could mention the number with accuracy; nor of draught-cattle and other beasts of burden; nor of Indian dogs that followed could any one mention the number, they were so many; therefore I am not astonished that the streams of some rivers failed, but rather it is a wonder to me how provisions held out for so many _myriads_; for I find by calculation, if each man had a _choenix_ of wheat daily, and no more, one hundred and ten thousand three hundred and forty _medimni_ must have been consumed every day; and I have not reckoned the food for the women, eunuchs, beasts of burden, and dogs. But of these _myriads_ of men, not one of them, for beauty and stature, was more entitled than Xerxes himself to possess the supreme command. When the fleet, having set out, sailed and reached the shore of Magnesia that lies between the city of Casthanæa and the coast of Sepias, the foremost of the ships took up their station close to land, others behind rode at anchor--the beach not being extensive enough--with their prows toward the sea, and eight deep. Thus they passed the night; but at daybreak, after serene and tranquil weather, the sea began to swell, and a heavy storm with a violent gale from the east--which those who inhabit these parts call a "Hellespontine"--burst upon them; as many of them then as perceived the gale increasing, and who were able to do so from their position, anticipated the storm by hauling their ships on shore, and both they and their ships escaped. But such of the ships as the storm caught at sea it carried away, some to the parts called Ipni, near Pelion, others to the beach; some were dashed on Cape Sepias itself; some were wrecked at Meliboea, and others at Casthanæa. The storm was indeed irresistible. The barbarians, when the wind had lulled and the waves had subsided, having hauled down their ships, sailed along the continent; and having doubled the promontory of Magnesia, stood directly into the bay leading to Pagasæ. There is a spot in this bay of Magnesia where it is said Hercules was abandoned by Jason and his companions when he had been sent from the Argo for water, as they were sailing to Colchis, in Asia, for the golden fleece; and from there they purposed to put out to sea after they had taken in water. From this circumstance, the name of "Aphetæ" was given to the place. In this place, then, the fleet of Xerxes was moored. Fifteen of these ships happened to be driven out to sea some time after the rest, and somehow saw the ships of the Greeks at Artemisium. The barbarians thought that they were their own, and sailing on, fell among their enemies. They were commanded by Sandoces, son of Thaumasius, governor of Cyme, of Æolia. He, being one of the royal judges, had been formerly condemned by King Darius (who had detected him in the following offence), to be crucified. Sandoces gave an unjust sentence, for a bribe; but while he was actually hanging on the cross, Darius, considering within himself, found that the services he had rendered to the royal family were greater than his faults. Darius, therefore, having discovered this, and perceiving that he, himself, had acted with more expedition than wisdom, released him. Having thus escaped being put to death by Darius, he survived; but now, sailing down among the Grecians, he was not to escape a second time; for when the Greeks saw them sailing toward them, perceiving the mistake they had committed, they bore down upon them and easily took them. King Xerxes encamped in the Trachinian territory of Malis, and the Greeks in the pass. This spot is called by most of the Greeks, "Thermopylæ," but by the inhabitants and neighbors, "Pylæ," Both parties, then, encamped in these places. The one was in possession of all the parts toward the north as far as Trachis, and the others, of the parts which stretch toward the south and meridian of this continent. The following were the Greeks who awaited the Persians in this position. Of Spartans, three hundred heavy-armed men; of Tegeans and Mantineans, one thousand (half of each); from Orchomenus in Arcadia, one hundred and twenty; and from the rest of Arcadia, one thousand (there were so many Arcadians); from Corinth, four hundred; from Phlius, two hundred men; and from Mycenæ, eighty. These came from Peloponnesus. From Boeotia, of Thespians seven hundred; and of Thebans, four hundred. In addition to these, the Opuntian Locrians, being invited, came with all their forces, and a thousand Phocians; for the Greeks themselves had invited them, representing by their embassadors that "they had arrived as forerunners of the others, and that the rest of the allies might be daily expected; that the sea was protected by them, being guarded by the Athenians, the Æginetæ, and others, who were appointed to the naval service; and that they had nothing to fear, for that it was not a god who invaded Greece, but a man; and that there never was, and never would be, any mortal who had not evil mixed with _his prosperity_ from his very birth, and to the greatest of them the greatest _reverses happen_; that it must therefore needs be that he who is marching against us, being a mortal, will be disappointed in his expectation." They, having heard this, marched with assistance to Trachis. These nations had separate generals for their several cities, but the one most admired, and who commanded the whole army, was a Lacedæmonian, Leonidas, son of Anaxandrides, son of Leon, son of Eurycratides, son of Anaxander, son of Eurycates, son of Polydorus, son of Alcamenes, son of Teleclus, son of Archelaus, son of Agesilaus, son of Doryssus, son of Leobotes, son of Echestratus, son of Agis, son of Eurysthenes, son of Aristodemus, son of Aristomachus, son of Cleodæus, son of Hyllus, son of Hercules, who had unexpectedly succeeded to the throne of Sparta. For, as he had two elder brothers, Cleomenes and Dorieus, he was far from any thought of the kingdom. However, Cleomenes having died without male issue, and Dorieus being no longer alive--having ended his days in Sicily--the kingdom thus devolved upon Leonidas; both because he was older than Cleombrotus--for he was the youngest son of Anaxandrides--and also because he had married the daughter of Cleomenes. He then marched to Thermopylæ, having chosen the three hundred men allowed by law, and such as had children. On his march he took with him the Thebans, whose numbers I have already reckoned, and whom Leontiades, son of Eurymachus, commanded. For this reason Leonidas was anxious to take with him the Thebans alone of all the Greeks, because they were strongly accused of favoring the Medes: he therefore summoned them to the war, wishing to know whether they would send their forces with him, or would openly renounce the alliance of the Grecians; but they, though otherwise minded, sent assistance. The Spartans sent these troops first with Leonidas, in order that the rest of the allies, seeing them, might take the field, and might not go over to the Medes if they heard that they were delaying; but afterward--for the Carnean festival was then an obstacle to them--they purposed, when they had kept the feast, to leave a garrison in Sparta and to march immediately with their whole strength. The rest of the confederates likewise intended to act in the same manner; for the Olympic games occurred at the same period as these events. As they did not, therefore, suppose that the engagement at Thermopylæ would so soon be decided, they despatched an advance-guard. The Greeks at Thermopylæ, when the Persians came near the pass, being alarmed, consulted about a retreat; accordingly, it seemed best to the other Peloponnesians to retire to Peloponnesus, and guard the Isthmus; but Leonidas, perceiving the Phocians and Locrians were very indignant at this proposition, determined to stay there, and to despatch messengers to the cities, desiring them to come to their assistance, they being too few to repel the army of the Medes. While they were deliberating on these matters, Xerxes sent a scout on horseback, to see how many they were and what they were doing; for while he was still in Thessaly, he had heard that a small army had been assembled at that spot, and as to their leaders, that they were Lacedæmonians, and Leonidas, who was of the race of Hercules. When the horseman rode up to the camp, he reconnoitred, and saw not indeed the whole camp, for it was not possible that they should be seen who were posted within the wall, which having rebuilt they were now guarding; but he had a clear view of those on the outside, whose arms were piled in front of the wall. At this time the Lacedæmonians happened to be posted outside; and some of the men he saw performing gymnastic exercises, and others combing their hair. On beholding this he was astonished, and ascertained their number, and having informed himself of everything accurately, he rode back at his leisure, for no one pursued him and he met with general contempt. On his return he gave an account to Xerxes of all that he had seen. When Xerxes heard this, he could not comprehend the truth that the Grecians were preparing to be slain and to slay to the utmost of their power; but, as they appeared to behave in a ridiculous manner, he sent for Demaratus, son of Ariston, who was then in the camp, and when he was come into his presence Xerxes questioned him as to each particular, wishing to understand what the Lacedæmonians were doing. Demaratus said: "You before heard me when we were setting out against Greece, speak of these men, and when you heard, you treated me with ridicule though I told you in what way I foresaw these matters would issue; for it is my chief aim, O king, to adhere to the truth in your presence; hear it, therefore, once more. These men have to fight with us for the pass and are now preparing themselves to do so; for such is their custom when they are going to hazard their lives, then they dress their heads; but be assured if you conquer these men and those that remain in Sparta, there is no other nation in the world that will dare to raise its hand against you, O king! for you are now to engage with the noblest kingdom and city of all among the Greeks and with the most valiant men." What was said seemed incredible to Xerxes and he asked again, "how, being so few in number, they could contend with his army." He answered: "O king, deal with me as with a liar if these things do not turn out as I say!" By saying this he did not convince Xerxes. He therefore let four days pass, constantly expecting that they would be taking themselves to flight; but on the fifth day, as they had not retreated, but appeared to him to stay through arrogance and rashness, he, being enraged, sent the Medes and Cissians against them, with orders to take them alive, and bring them into his presence. When the Medes bore down impetuously upon the Greeks, many of them fell; others followed to the charge, and were not repulsed, though they suffered greatly; but they made it evident to every one, and not least of all to the king himself, that they were indeed many men, but few soldiers. The engagement lasted through the day. When the Medes were roughly handled, they thereupon retired, and the Persians whom the king called "Immortal," and whom Hydarnes commanded, taking their place advanced to the attack thinking that they indeed would easily settle the business. But when they engaged with the Grecians they succeeded no better than the Medic troops, but just the same; as they fought in a narrow space and used shorter spears than the Greeks, they were unable to avail themselves of their numbers. The Lacedæmonians fought memorably in other respects, showing that they knew how to fight with men who knew not, and whenever they turned their backs they retreated in close order, but the barbarians, seeing them retreat, followed with a shout and clamor; then they, being overtaken, wheeled round so as to front the barbarians, and having faced about, overthrew an inconceivable number of the Persians, and then some few of the Spartans themselves fell, so that when the Persians were unable to gain anything in their attempt on the pass by attacking in troops and in every possible manner, they retired. It is said that during these onsets of the battle, the king, who witnessed them, thrice sprang from his throne, being alarmed for his army. Thus they strove at that time. On the following day the barbarians fought with no better success; for considering that the Greeks were few in number, and expecting that they were covered with wounds and would not be able to raise their heads against them any more, they renewed the contest. But the Greeks were marshalled in companies and according to their several nations, and each fought in turn, except only the Phocians; they were stationed at the mountain to guard the pathway. When, therefore, the Persians found nothing different from what they had seen on the preceding day, they retired. While the king was in doubt what course to take in the present state of affairs, Ephialtes, son of Eurydemus, a Malian, obtained an audience of him (expecting that he should receive a great reward from the king), and informed him of the path which leads over the mountain to Thermopylæ, and by that means caused the destruction of those Greeks who were stationed there; but afterward, fearing the Lacedæmonians, he fled to Thessaly, and when he had fled, a price was set on his head by the Pylagori when the Amphictyons were assembled at Pylæ; but some time after, he went down to Anticyra and was killed by Athenades, a Trachinian. Another account is given, that Onetes, son of Phanagoras, a Carystian, and Corydallus of Anticyra, were the persons who gave this information to the king and conducted the Persians round the mountains; but to me, this is by no means credible; for, in the first place, we may draw the inference from this circumstance, that the Pylagori of the Grecians set a price on the head, not of Onetes and Corydallus, but of Ephialtes the Trachinian, having surely ascertained the exact truth; and, in the next place, we know that Ephialtes fled on that account. Onetes, indeed, though he was not a Malian, might be acquainted with this path if he had been conversant with the country; but it was Ephialtes who conducted them round the mountain by the path, and I charge him as the guilty person. Xerxes, since he was pleased with what Ephialtes promised to perform, being exceedingly delighted, immediately despatched Hydarnes and the troops that Hydarnes commanded, and he started from the camp about the hour of lamp-lighting. The native Malians discovered this pathway, and having discovered it, conducted the Thessalians by it against the Phocians at the time when the Phocians, having fortified the pass by a wall, were under shelter from an attack. From that time it appeared to have been of no service to the Malians. This path is situated as follows: it begins from the river Asopus, which flows through the cleft; the same name is given both to the mountain and to the path, "Anopæa," and this Anopæa extends along the ridge of the mountain and ends near Alpenus, which is the first city of the Locrians toward the Malians, and by the rock called "Melampygus," and by the seats of the Cercopes, and there the path is the narrowest. Along this path, thus situate, the Persians, having crossed the Asopus, marched all night, having on their right the mountains of the Oetæans, and on their left those of the Trachinians; morning appeared, and they were on the summit of the mountain. At this part of the mountain, as I have already mentioned, a thousand heavy-armed Phocians kept guard, to defend their own country and to secure the pathway--for the lower pass was guarded by those before mentioned--and the Phocians had voluntarily promised Leonidas to guard the path across the mountain. The Phocians discovered them after they had ascended, in the following manner; for the Persian ascended without being observed, as the whole mountain was covered with oaks; there was a perfect calm, and, as was likely, a considerable rustling taking place from the leaves strewn under foot, the Phocians sprang up and put on their arms, and immediately the barbarians made their appearance. But when they saw men clad in armor they were astonished, for, expecting to find nothing to oppose them, they fell in with an army; thereupon Hydarnes, fearing lest the Phocians might be Lacedæmonians, asked Ephialtes of what nation the troops were, and being accurately informed, he drew up the Persians for battle. The Phocians, when they were hit by many and thick-falling arrows, fled to the summit of the mountain, supposing that they had come expressly to attack them, and prepared to perish. Such was their determination. But the Persians, with Ephialtes and Hydarnes, took no notice of the Phocians but marched down the mountain with all speed. To those of the Greeks who were at Thermopylæ, the augur Megistias, having inspected the sacrifices, first made known the death that would befall them in the morning; certain deserters afterward came and brought intelligence of the circuit the Persians were taking. These brought the news while it was yet night; and, thirdly, the scouts running down from the heights as soon as day dawned, _brought the same intelligence_. Upon this the Greeks held a consultation, and their opinions were divided; some would not hear of abandoning their post, and others opposed that view. After this, when the assembly broke up, some of them departed, and being dispersed, betook themselves to their several cities; but others of them prepared to remain there with Leonidas. It is said that Leonidas himself sent them away, being anxious that they should not perish, but that he and the Spartans who were there could not honorably desert the post which they originally came to defend. For my own part, I am rather inclined to think that Leonidas, when he perceived that the allies were averse and unwilling to share the danger with him, bade them withdraw, but that he considered it dishonorable for himself to depart; on the other hand, by remaining there, great renown would be left for him and the prosperity of Sparta would not be obliterated, for it had been announced to the Spartans by the Pythian, when they consulted the oracle concerning this war as soon as it commenced, "that either Lacedæmon must be overthrown by the barbarians, or their king perish." This answer she gave in hexameter verses, to this effect: "To you, O inhabitants of spacious Lacedæmon! either your vast glorious city shall be destroyed by men sprung from Perseus, or, if not so, the confines of Lacedæmon shall mourn a king deceased, of the race of Hercules. For neither shall the strength of bulls nor of lions withstand him with force opposed to force, for he has the strength of Jove, and I say he shall not be restrained before he has certainly obtained one of these for his share." I think, therefore, that Leonidas, considering these things and being desirous to acquire glory for the Spartans alone, sent away the allies, rather than that those who went away differed in opinion, and went away in such an unbecoming manner. The following in no small degree strengthens my conviction on this point; for not only _did he send away_ the others, but it is certain that Leonidas also sent away the augur who followed the army, Megistias the Acarnanian, who was said to have been originally descended from Melampus, the same who announced, from an inspection of the victims, what was about to befall them, in order that he might not perish with them. He however, though dismissed, did not himself depart but sent away his son who served with him in the expedition, being his only child. The allies that were dismissed, accordingly departed, and obeyed Leonidas, but only the Thespians and the Thebans remained with the Lacedæmonians; the Thebans, indeed, remained unwillingly and against their inclination, for Leonidas detained them, treating them as hostages; but the Thespians willingly, for they refused to go away and abandon Leonidas and those with him, but remained and died with them. Demophilus, son of Diadromas, commanded them. Xerxes, after he had poured out libations at sunrise, having waited a short time, began his attack about the time of full market, for he had been so instructed by Ephialtes; for the descent from the mountain is more direct and the distance much shorter than the circuit and ascent. The barbarians, therefore, with Xerxes, advanced, and the Greeks with Leonidas, marching out as if for certain death, now advanced much farther than before into the wide part of the defile, for the fortification of the wall had protected them, and they on the preceding days, having taken up their position in the narrow part, fought there; but now engaging outside the narrows, great numbers of the barbarians fell; for the officers of the companies from behind, having scourges, flogged every man, constantly urging them forward; in consequence, many of them, falling into the sea, perished, and many more were trampled alive under foot by one another and no regard was paid to any that perished, for the Greeks, knowing that death awaited them at the hands of those who were going round the mountain, being desperate and regardless of their own lives, displayed the utmost possible valor against the barbarians. Already were most of their javelins broken and they had begun to despatch the Persians with their swords. In this part of the struggle fell Leonidas, fighting valiantly, and with him other eminent Spartans, whose names, seeing they were deserving men, I have ascertained; indeed, I have ascertained the names of the whole three hundred. On the side of the Persians also, many other eminent men fell on this occasion, and among them two sons of Darius, Abrocomes and Hyperanthes, born to Darius of Phrataguna, daughter of Artanes; but Artanes was brother to king Darius, and son of Hystaspes, son of Arsames. He, when he gave his daughter to Darius, gave him also all his property, as she was his only child. Accordingly, two brothers of Xerxes fell at this spot fighting for the body of Leonidas, and there was a violent struggle between the Persians and Lacedæmonians, until at last the Greeks rescued it by their valor and four times repulsed the enemy. Thus the contest continued until those with Ephialtes came up. When the Greeks heard that they were approaching, from this time the battle was altered; for they retreated to the narrow part of the way, and passing beyond the wall came and took up their position on the rising ground all in a compact body with the exception of the Thebans. The rising ground is at the entrance where the stone lion now stands to the memory of Leonidas. On this spot, while they defended themselves with swords--such as had them still remaining--and with hands and teeth, the barbarians overwhelmed them with missiles, some of them attacking them in front, having thrown down the wall, and others surrounding and attacking them on every side. Though the Lacedæmonians and Thespians behaved in this manner, yet Dieneces, a Spartan, is said to have been the bravest man. They relate that he made the following remark before they engaged with the Medes, having heard a Trachinian say that when the barbarians let fly their arrows they would obscure the sun by the multitude of their shafts, so great was their number; but he, not at all alarmed at this, said, holding in contempt the numbers of the Medes, that "their Trachinian friend told them everything to their advantage, since if the Medes obscure the sun, they would then have to fight in the shade and not in the sun." This, and other sayings of the same kind, they relate that Dieneces the Lacedæmonian left as memorials. Next to him, two Lacedæmonian brothers, Alpheus and Maron, sons of Orisiphantus, are said to have distinguished themselves most; and of the Thespians, he obtained the greatest glory whose name was Dithyrambus, son of Harmatides. In honor of the slain, who were buried on the spot where they fell, and of those who died before they who were dismissed by Leonidas went away, the following inscription has been engraved over them: "Four thousand from Peloponnesus once fought on this spot with three hundred _myriads_![53]" This inscription was made for all; and for the Spartans in particular: "Stranger, go tell the Lacedæmonians that we lie here, obedient to their commands!" This was for the Lacedæmonians; and for the prophet, the following: "This is the monument of the illustrious Megistias, whom once the Medes, having passed the river Sperchius, slew; a prophet who, at the time well knowing the impending fate, would not abandon the leaders of Sparta!" [Footnote 53: Three millions.] The Amphictyons are the persons who honored them with these inscriptions and columns, with the exception of the inscription to the prophet; that of the prophet Megistias, Simonides, son of Leoprepes, caused to be engraved, from personal friendship. CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY EMBRACING THE PERIOD COVERED IN THIS VOLUME B.C. 5867--B.C. 451 JOHN RUDD, LL.D. CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY EMBRACING THE PERIOD COVERED IN THIS VOLUME B.C. 5867--B.C. 451 JOHN RUDD, LL.D. Events treated at length are here indicated in large type; the numerals following give volume and page. Separate chronologies of the various nations, and of the careers of famous persons, will be found in the INDEX VOLUME, with volume and page references showing where the several events are fully treated. All dates are approximate up to B.C. 776, the beginning of the Olympiads. B.C. =5867.= Menes, the first human ruler recorded in history, unites the two kingdoms of Egypt under one crown; introduces the cult of Apis; founds the city of Memphis; rears the great temple of Ptah. See "DAWN OF CIVILIZATION," i, 1. =5000.= Babylonia is invaded by a race of Semites; they conquer the land and become the Babylonians of history. =4500 (before)=. A patesi (priest-ruler), by name En-shag-kush-anna, is King of Kengi, Southern Babylonia; Sungir, which later gave the name Sumer to the whole district, is his capital. =4400.= Shirpurla, Mesopotamia, subjugated by Mesilim, King of Kish. =4200.= The hero of Shirpurla, E-anna-tum, throws off the Kish yoke and takes the title of king. He is successful in conflicts with Erech, Ur, and Larsa. Walls are erected and canals dug by him. =3700.= The great Pyramid of Gizeh erected. This was during the IV or Pyramid dynasty; so called because its chief monarchs built the three great pyramids. Beautiful Queen Nitocris, of the VI dynasty, reigned about this time. She is said to have avenged the killing of her brother, King of Egypt, by inviting his murderers to a banquet held in a subterranean chamber. Into this the river was turned, and they all miserably perished. =3000.= Nineveh, colonized from Babylonia, ruled by subject princes of that country. =2800.= Probable date of the foundation of the Chinese empire. =2500.= Rise of the kingdom of Elam. Asshurbanipal (Sardanapalus), King of Nineveh, records an invasion of Chaldæa, or Babylonia, by the Elamites, B.C. 2300. The records of clay recently unearthed show that Cyrus was originally king of Elam. See "CONQUESTS OF CYRUS THE GREAT," i, 250. =2458=. Zoroaster (Zarathushtra) founds the religion known by his name. Ancient tradition has it that he was a Median king who conquered Babylon about B.C. 2458. M. Haug assigns the date as not later than B.C. 2300. Be the time when he lived what it may, it is certain that, as the Persian national religion, it dates little further back than B.C. 559 and up to A.D. 641. The four elements--fire, air, earth, and water, especially the first--were recognized as the only proper objects of human reverence. =2300.= A chart of the heavens in China. =2250.= Commencement of the reign of Hammurabi, King of Babylonia: the earliest compilation of a code of laws was made in this reign. See "COMPILATION OF THE EARLIEST CODE," i, 14. =2200-1700.= Dominion of the Hyksos, or Shepherd kings, in Egypt. It is not improbable that Abraham made his well-known journey to Egypt during the early reign of these kings. Joseph's visit occurred near the close of their power. =2200.= Hereditary monarchy founded in China. =1700-1250.= The new empire of Egypt attains the period of its greatest splendor and power. Meneptah, about 1320 (1322), has been generally accepted as the Pharaoh of the Exodus. =1500.= Independence of Assyria as the rising of a kingdom apart from Babylonia; the rise of Nineveh. =1450-1300.= The Hittite realm in Syria attains its greatest power. The Egyptians knew the Hittites as the Khita or Khatta. Recent discoveries indicate that they formed a civilized and powerful nation. Many inscriptions and rock sculptures in Asia Minor, formerly inexplicable, are now attributed to the Hittites of the Bible. =1330.= Rameses II of Egypt; the Sesostris of the Greeks. =1300.= Shalmaneser I reigns in Assyria. =1250.= The Phoenicians, closely allied in language to the Hebrews, begin their colonizing career. =1235.= Probable date of the consolidation of Athens, See "THESEUS FOUNDS ATHENS," i, 45. =1200.= Exodus of Israel from Egypt. "FORMATION OF THE CASTES IN INDIA," See i, 52. =1184.= "FALL OF TROY." See i, 70. =1122.= Wou Wang becomes emperor of China. =1120.= Beginning of the reign of Tiglath-Pileser, King of Assyria. =1100.= Dorian migration into the Peloponnesus. =1095 (1055; 1080 common chronology).= Hebrews establish the monarchy. Saul the first king. =1058 (1033).= At Gilboa, Saul is defeated by the Philistines. David becomes king in Judah. =1017 (998).= Accession of Solomon as king of the Hebrews. The Temple at Jerusalem is built in this reign. See "ACCESSION OF SOLOMON," i, 92. =1015.= Smyrna founded. =977 (953).= Israel and Judah become separate kingdoms, following the revolt of the Ten Tribes under Jeroboam. =973 (949).= Jerusalem captured by Sheshonk, King of Egypt. =958 (929).= Asa ascends the throne of Judah. =931 (899).= Omri's accession in Israel. =917 (873).= Jehoshaphat begins his reign in Judah. =900 (853).= The Syrians defeat and slay Ahab, King of Israel, at Ramoth-Gilead. Divambar conquers Armenia, Persia, Syria, and adjacent lands. =887 (843).= The throne of Israel usurped by Jehu. =850.= The Tyrians colonize Carthage. =811 (792).= Uzziah succeeds to the throne of Judah. =800.= The canal and tunnel of Negoub constructed to convey the waters of the Zab River to Nineveh. =800 (850).= Sparta: Probable date of the legislation of Lycurgus. =790 (825).= Jeroboam II becomes King of Israel. =789.= First destruction of Nineveh: death of Sardanapalus. See "FIRST DESTRUCTION OF NINEVEH," i, 105. =776.= Beginning of the Olympiads. Olympiad in ancient Greece meant the space of four years between one celebration of the Olympic games and another. In this year it began as a system of chronology. =772. [A](748)=. End of Jehu's dynasty in Israel. =753 (common chronology).= "FOUNDATION OF ROME." See i, 116. =750.= [A] The Corinthians found Syracuse. =743-724.= First great war between Sparta and Messenia: the latter is subjugated. =734.= [A] Syria becomes subject to Tiglath-Pileser II of Assyria. =731.= [A] Tiglath-Pileser II subjects Chaldea. =727. [A] (728)=. Hezekiah ascends the throne of Judah. =722.= [A] King Sargon of Assyria conquers Samaria; he puts an end to the kingdom of Israel. Captivity of the Ten Tribes. =701.= Siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib; he encounters the Egyptian and Ethiopian forces; his expedition into Syria fails. =697.= Accession of Manasseh to the throne of Judah. =685-668.= The second war between Sparta and Messenia. =660.= [A] Prince Jimmu establishes Yamato as the capital of Japan. See "PRINCE JIMMU FOUNDS JAPAN'S CAPITAL," i, 140. =650.=[A] The whole of Egypt united under Psammetichus I, founder of the XXVI dynasty. He frees Egypt from Assyrian rule and opens the country to the Greeks. =645-628.= The Messenians make an unsuccessful attempt to throw off the yoke of Sparta. [A] Date uncertain =640.= Birth of Thales, one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece. He taught the spherical form of the earth and the true causes of lunar eclipses; discovered the electricity of amber. The Seven Sages, or Wise Men, are commonly made up of Thales, Solon, Bias, Chilo, Cleobulus, Periander, and Pittacus. Media becomes independent of Assyria; she appears as a single united kingdom. =625.= Media, Assyria, and Syria have a great irruption of Scythians in their borders. =623.= "FOUNDATION OF BUDDHISM," See i, 160. =621.= [B](624). Date of the legislation of Draco, at Athens. =612.= Conspiracy of Cylon at Athens. =609.= [B] Josiah is slain at Megiddo, when Necho, the Egyptian King, crushes the power of Judah. =607.= [B] Nineveh taken by the Medes and Babylonians, who overthrow the Assyrian monarchy. =605.= [B] Nebuchadnezzar defeats Necho at Carchemish. Necho maintained a powerful fleet; the Phoenician ships under his order rounded the Cape of Good Hope. Herodotus says that twice during this voyage the crews, fearing a lack of food, after landing, drew their ships on shore, sowed grain and waited for a harvest. It will be noticed that this was over two thousand years before Vasco da Gama, to whom is usually given the credit of first circumnavigating Africa. =597.= [B] Jerusalem captured by Nebuchadnezzar, who carries away the principal inhabitants. =595.= The Delphic Games in Greece. See "PYTHIAN GAMES AT DELPHI," i, 181. =594.= Adoption of the Constitution of Solon at Athens, See "SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION," i, 203. =586.= [B] Nebuchadnezzar captures and destroys Jerusalem; puts an end to the kingdom of Judah. The Babylonish captivity. =570.= [B] Egypt attacked by Nebuchadnezzar, who dethrones Hophra (Apries); he places Amasis on the throne. =560.= Tyranny of Pisistratus at Athens. The Grecian poor were still getting poorer, notwithstanding Solon's legislation; they clamored for relief, placed Pisistratus at their head, and passed a decree allowing him to have a body-guard of fifty men armed with clubs. Pisistratus then threw off all disguise and established himself in the Acropolis as tyrant of Athens. =550.= [B] Cyrus, at the head of the Persians, destroys the Median monarchy. See "CONQUESTS OF CYRUS THE GREAT," i, 250. =550.= [B] "RISE OF CONFUCIUS, THE CHINESE SAGE," See i, 270. =546.= Croesus, King of Lydia, overthrown by Cyrus. See "CONQUESTS OF CYRUS THE GREAT," i, 250. =540.= [B] Calimachus invents the Corinthian order of architecture. [B] Date uncertain. =538.= Conquest of Babylon by Cyrus. See "CONQUESTS OF CYRUS THE GREAT," i, 250. =529.= Death of Cyrus; Cambyses succeeds him on the throne of Persia. =527.= Hippias and Hipparchus succeed their father, Pisistratus, at Athens, in the government of that city. =525 (527).= Conquest of Egypt by Cambyses, King of Persia. He completely subdued it, and, after an attempted rising, crushed Egypt with merciless severity. Cambyses treated the Egyptian deities, priests, and temples with insult and contempt. Æschylus, Greek tragic poet, born. =522.= Pseudo-Smerdis usurps the Persian throne. Cambyses had slain his brother Bardes, whom Herodotus calls Smerdis. A Magian, Gaumata by name, resembling Bardes in appearance, impersonated the murdered prince. A revolution ensued and, owing to the death of Cambyses by his own hand, Pseudo-Smerdis became master of the empire. =521.= Darius I, by defeating Pseudo-Smerdis, who had reigned eight months, ascends the Persian throne. =521-516.= The Temple at Jerusalem, which had been destroyed by the Babylonians, rebuilt. =520.= [C] Birth of Pindar, the chief lyric poet of Greece. He was in the prime of life when Salamis and Thermopylæ were fought. His poems have as groundwork the legends which form the Grecian religious literature. =516.= [C] Invasion of Scythia by Darius, King of Persia, who seems to have acted according to an oriental idea of right, in that he claimed to punish the Scythians for an invasion of Media at some previous time. =514.= Hipparchus, of Athens, assassinated by Harmodius and Aristogiton. =514.= [C] Birth of Themistocles, a famous Athenian commander and statesman. He was largely instrumental in increasing the navy; induced the Athenians to leave Athens for Salamis and the fleet, and brought about the victory of Salamis. =510.= Hippias expelled from Athens. The democratic party is headed by Clisthenes, the master-spirit of the revolution inaugurated for the overthrow of the despotic and hated sons of Pisistratus. The Athenian democracy was reorganized by Clisthenes. =510.= The Crotonians destroy Sybaris. Croton and Sybaris were two ancient Greek cities situated on the Gulf of Tarentum, Southern Italy. Little is known of them except their luxury, fantastic self-indulgence, and extravagant indolence, for which qualities their names remain a synonyme. =510.= Expulsion of the Tarquins from Rome. Founding of the Republic; consulship instituted. See "ROME ESTABLISHED AS A REPUBLIC," i, 300. =506.= [C] The Persians subject Macedonia, and extend their dominion over Thrace. The Thracians occupied the region between the rivers Strymon and Danube. They were more Asiatic than European in character and religion. [C] Date uncertain. =500 [D] (501, 502).= Rising of the Greek colonies in Ionia against the Persians. Harpagus, who had saved Cyrus in his infancy from his grandfather, while governor of Lydia reduced the cities of the coast. Town after town submitted. The Tieans abandoned theirs, retiring to Abdera in Thrace; the Phocians, after settling in Corsica, whence they were driven by the Carthaginians and Tyrrhenians, went to Italy and later founded Massalia (Marseilles) on the coast of Gaul. Thus the Greek colonies became a portion of the Persian empire. The insurrection of the Ionians continued for six years, the fate of the revolt turning at last on the siege of Miletus. =499 [D] (500)=. Ionian expedition against Sardis. The city was taken and during the pillage was accidentally burned. The Ionian forces were utterly inadequate to hold Sardis; and their return was not effected without a serious defeat by the pursuing army of Persians. =497.57= [D] The Latins are defeated by the Romans at Lake Regillus. =495.= Birth of Sophocles. =494.= The naval battle of Lade, in which the Persians defeat the Asiatic Greeks. Fall of Miletus. =494 (492).= First secession of the plebeians from Rome. Creation of the tribunes of the people. See "ROME ESTABLISHED AS A REPUBLIC," i, 300. =493 (491).= The Latins are compelled by the Romans to enter into a league with Rome, which is threatened by the Etruscans, Volscians, and the Æquians. The Latins obtained the name of Roman citizens; the title disguised a real subjection, since the men who bore it had the obligation of citizens without the rights. =492.= [D] Mardonius heads the first Persian expedition against Greece. =490.= Battle of Marathon, in which Darius' Persian host is overwhelmingly defeated by Miltiades, See "THE BATTLE OF MARATHON," i, 322. =489.= Condemnation and death of Miltiades. See "THE BATTLE OF MARATHON," i, 322. =486.= Darius Hystaspes, of Persia, is succeeded on the throne by his son Xerxes. League of Rome with the Hernici. =484.= [D] Birth of Herodotus, the "Father of History," =483.= Aristides, one of the ten leaders of the Greeks at Marathon, ostracized through the jealousy of Themistocles. =480.= Second Persian invasion of Greece, this time by Xerxes. Defence of Thermopylæ by Leonidas. See "DEFENCE OF THERMOPYLÆ," i, 354. Naval battle of Artemisium. Athens burned. The Persian fleet vanquished by Themistocles and Eurybiades at Salamis. Retreat of Xerxes. [D] Date uncertain. The Carthaginians attempt the conquest of the Greek cities of Sicily. Gelon, the tyrant of Syracuse, defeats their army at Himera. Birth of Euripides, the celebrated Greek tragic poet.[E] =479.= The Greeks, under the command of Pausanias, at the battle of Platæa, crush the Persian army under the lead of Mardonius. Leotychides and Nanthippus gain a simultaneous victory over the Persian fleet at Mycale. End of the Persian invasion of Greece. =478.= The tyranny of Hieron, brother of Gelon, begins at Syracuse. He was noted as a patron of literature. =477.= The predominance in Greece passes from Sparta to Athens, by the formation of the Confederacy of Delos. =474.= Hieron, of Syracuse, defeats the Etruscans near Cumæ. =471.= Themistocles exiled from Athens, the Spartan faction having plotted his ruin, alleging his complicity with the enemy. Birth of Thucydides.[E] =470 (471).= The Publilian law passed in Rome; the plebeians accorded the right of initiating legislation in their assemblies. See "ROME ESTABLISHED AS A REPUBLIC," i, 300. =469.= [E] Birth of Socrates. =468.= [E] Democracy triumphs in the cities of Sicily. =466.= Naval victory of the Greeks, under Cimon, over the Persians at Eurymedon. B.C. 470 Cimon had reduced Eion, after a gallant defence by Boges, the Persian governor, who, rather than surrender, cast all his gold and silver into the river Strymon, raised a huge pile of wood, and on it placed the bodies of his wives, children, and slaves--all of whom he had slain--then, having set fire thereto, he flung himself into the flames and perished. The Revolt of Naxos crushed by Cimon during the expedition against the Persians. Fall of the tyrants at Syracuse. =465.= Murder of Xerxes I, by Artabanus, captain of his guard; accession of Artaxerxes I to the Persian throne. =464.= Sparta destroyed by an earthquake which shook the whole of Laconia, opened great chasms in the ground, rolled down huge masses from the peaks of Taygetus, and threw Sparta into a heap of ruins. Not more than five houses are said to have remained standing. Twenty thousand persons lost their lives by the shock. The flower of the Spartan youth was slain by the overthrow of the building in which they were exercising. =464-455.= The Messenian helots rise against the Spartans, taking advantage of the confusion caused by the earthquake. This was the beginning of the third Messenian war. =463.= Mycenæ is reduced by the Argives, who enslave or drive away its inhabitants. =460.= Birth of Hippocrates, in the island of Cos, who became known as the "Father of Medicine." =458.= [E] Jews return from Babylonia to Jerusalem, under Ezra. Esther, the Jewess, pleases King Ahasuerus and is made queen in place of Vashti. This was the origin of the Jewish festival of Purim, celebrated on the 14th and 15th of the month Adar (March). Beginning of the Long Walls of Athens; built to protect the communication of the city with its port. One, four miles long, ran to the harbor of Phalerum, and others, four and one-half miles long, to the Piræus. =457.= Beginning of war of Corinth, Sparta, and Ægina with Athens: Battle of Tanagra, in which the Athenians were defeated. =456.= Athenian victory at OEnophyta; the Boeotians defeated by Myronides, who also secures the submission of Phocis and Locris. =455.= End of the third Messenian war. =451.= Ion of Chios, historian and tragedian, exhibits his first drama. [E] Date uncertain. END OF VOLUME I [Illustration] [Illustration: The Sabine women--now mothers--suing for peace between the combatants (their Roman husbands and their Sabine relations). Painting by Jacques L. David] [Illustration: Sphinx with Great and Second Pyramids of Gizeh From an original photograph.] [Illustration] [Illustration: THE TRILINGUAL INSCRIPTION OF THE ROSETTA STONE. IN HIEROGLYPHIC, DEMOTIC, AND GREEK CHARACTERS. BRITISH MUSEUM, LONDON. (FOR DESCRIPTION OF THIS CUT, SEE OTHER SIDE.)] THE ROSETTA STONE Almost as interesting as the Rosetta Stone itself is the story of its discovery. During the French occupation of Egypt soldiers were digging out the foundations of a fort, and in the trench the famous tablet was found. At the peace of Alexandra the Rosetta Stone passed to the English, who (1801) housed it in the British Museum, where it remains. The text when translated showed that the inscription is a "decree of the priests of Memphis, conferring divine honors on Ptolemy V, Epiphanes, King of Egypt, B.C. 195," on the occasion of his coronation. Further it commands that the decree be inscribed in the sacred letters (hieroglyphics); the alphabet of the people (enuchorial or demotic); and Greek. It was recognized by the trustees of the British Museum that the problem of the Rosetta Stone was one which would test the ingenuity of the scientists of the world to unfathom, and they promptly published a carefully prepared copy of the entire inscription. Scholars of every nation exhausted their learning to unravel the riddle, but beyond a few shrewd guesses (afterward proved to be quite incorrect) nothing was accomplished for a dozen years. The key was there, but its application required the inspired insight of genius. Dr. Thomas Young, the demonstrator of the vibratory nature of light, who had perhaps the most versatile profundity of knowledge and the keenest scientific imagination of his generation, undertook the task. Accident had called Young's attention to the Rosetta Stone, and his rapacity for knowledge led him to speculate as to the possible aid this trilingual inscription might offer in the solution of Egyptian problems. Having an amazing faculty for the acquisition of languages, he, in one short year, had mastered Coptic, after having assured himself that it was the nearest existing approach to the ancient Egyptian language, and had even made a tentative attempt at the translation of the Egyptian scroll. This was the very beginning of our knowledge of the meaning of hieroglyphics. The specific discoveries that Dr. Young made were: 1, That some of the pictures of the hieroglyphics stand for the names of the objects delineated; 2, that other pictures are at times only symbolic; 3, that plural numbers are represented by repetition; 4, that numerals are represented by dashes; 5, that hieroglyphics may read either from the right or from the left, but always from the direction in which the animals and human figures face; 6, that a graven oval ring surrounds proper names, making a cartouche; 7, that the cartouches of the Rosetta Stone stand for the name of Ptolemy alone; 8, that the presence of a female figure after such cartouches always denotes the female sex; 9, that within the cartouches the hieroglyphic symbols have an actual phonetic value, either alphabetic or syllabic; and 10, that several dissimilar characters may have the same phonetic value. K A L A RE SA W SA RE M HA HER RE M T [Illustration: =_Kaharesapusaremkaherremt_=. AN EGYPTIAN PROPER NAME SPELLED OUT IN FULL BY MEANS OF ALPHABETICAL AND SYLLABIC SIGNS.] Dr. Young was certainly on the right track, and very near the complete discovery; unfortunately he failed to take the next step, which was to learn that the use of an alphabet was not confined to proper names. This grand secret Young missed; his French successor, Champollion, ferreted it out from the foundation he had laid. The "Enigma of the Sphinx" was practically solved, and the secrets held by the monuments of Egypt for so many centuries were disclosed to the world. Champollion proved that the Egyptians had developed an alphabet--neglecting the vowels, as did also the early Semitic alphabet--centuries before the Phoenicians were heard of in history. Some of these pictures are purely alphabetical in character, some are otherwise symbolic. Some characters represent syllables, others again stand as representatives of sounds, and once again, as representatives of things; hence the difficulties and complications it presented. 
25821	----	[Illustration: The Imperial Austrian Councillors are thrown out of the window of the castle of the Hradschin, at Prague, by the enraged Bohemian Deputies, thus precipitating the Thirty Years' War Painting by Vacslav Brozik] THE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS A COMPREHENSIVE AND READABLE ACCOUNT OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY, EMPHASIZING THE MORE IMPORTANT EVENTS, AND PRESENTING THESE AS COMPLETE NARRATIVES IN THE MASTER-WORDS OF THE MOST EMINENT HISTORIANS NON-SECTARIAN NON-PARTISAN NON-SECTIONAL ON THE PLAN EVOLVED FROM A CONSENSUS OF OPINIONS GATHERED FROM THE MOST DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARS OF AMERICA AND EUROPE, INCLUDING BRIEF INTRODUCTIONS BY SPECIALISTS TO CONNECT AND EXPLAIN THE CELEBRATED NARRATIVES, ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY. WITH THOROUGH INDICES, BIBLIOGRAPHIES, CHRONOLOGIES, AND COURSES OF READING EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ROSSITER JOHNSON, LL.D. ASSOCIATE EDITORS CHARLES F. HORNE, Ph.D. JOHN RUDD, LL.D. _With a staff of specialists_ _VOLUME XI_ [Illustration: Decorative] The National Alumni COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY THE NATIONAL ALUMNI CONTENTS VOLUME XI PAGE _An Outline Narrative of the Great Events_, xiii CHARLES F. HORNE _Henry Hudson Explores the Hudson River (A.D. 1609)_, 1 HENRY R. CLEVELAND _Galileo Overthrows Ancient Philosophy_ _The Telescope and Its Discoveries (A.D. 1610)_, 14 SIR OLIVER LODGE _The Beginning of British Power in India (A.D. 1612)_, 30 BECKLES WILLSON _The Dutch Settlement of New York (A.D. 1614)_, 44 DAVID T. VALENTINE _Harvey Discovers the Circulation of the Blood (A.D. 1616)_, 50 THOMAS H. HUXLEY _The "Defenestration" at Prague (A.D. 1618)_ _The Thirty Years War_, 62 SAMUEL R. GARDINER CHARLES F. HORNE _The First American Legislature (A.D. 1619)_, 76 CHARLES CAMPBELL _Introduction of Negroes into Virginia (A.D. 1619)_ _Spread of Slavery and Cultivation of Tobacco_, 81 CHARLES CAMPBELL JOHN M. LUDLOW _English Pilgrims Settle at Plymouth (A.D. 1620)_, 93 JOHN S. BARRY _The Birth of Modern Scientific Methods (A.D. 1620)_ _Bacon and Descartes_, 116 GEORGE HENRY LEWES _Siege of La Rochelle (A.D. 1627)_ _Richelieu Rules France_, 129 ANDREW D. WHITE _The Great Puritan Exodus to New England_ _The Founding of Boston (A.D. 1630)_, 153 JOHN G. PALFREY _Triumph and Death of Gustavus Adolphus at Luetzen (A.D. 1632)_, 174 BENJAMIN CHAPMAN _Recantation of Galileo (A.D. 1633)_, 184 SIR OLIVER LODGE _The Educational Reform of Comenius (A.D. 1638)_, 192 SIMON SOMERVILLE LAURIE _The First Written Free Constitution in the World (A.D. 1639)_ _Earliest Union among American Colonies (A.D. 1643)_, 205 GIDEON H. HOLLISTER JOHN MARSHALL _Abolition of the Court of Star-chamber (A.D. 1641)_ _The Popular Revolt against Charles I_, 215 HENRY HALLAM LORD MACAULAY _The Founding of Montreal (A.D. 1642)_, 232 ALFRED SANDHAM _Presbyterianism Established_ _Meeting of the Westminster Assembly (A.D. 1643)_, 238 DAVID MASSON _Masaniello's Revolt at Naples (A.D. 1647)_, 253 ALFRED VON REUMONT _The Peace of Westphalia (A.D. 1648)_ _The War of the Fronde_, 285 ARTHUR HASSALL _Religious Toleration Proclaimed in Maryland (A.D. 1649)_, 303 G. L. DAVIS _The Great Civil War in England_ _The Execution of Charles I (A.D. 1649)_, 311 LORD MACAULAY CHARLES KNIGHT _Cromwell's Campaign in Ireland (A.D. 1649)_, 335 FREDERIC HARRISON _Molière Creates Modern Comedy (A.D. 1659)_, 347 HENRI VAN LAUN _Cromwell's Rule in England_ _The Restoration (A.D. 1660)_, 357 THOMAS CARLYLE JOHN RICHARD GREEN SAMUEL PEPYS _Universal Chronology (A.D. 1609-1660)_, 387 JOHN RUDD LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS VOLUME XI PAGE _The imperial Austrian Councillors are thrown out of the window of the castle of Hradschin by the enraged Bohemian Deputies, thus precipitating the Thirty Years' War (page 65)_, Frontispiece Painting by Vacslaw Brezik. _Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth Rock_, 106 Painting by A. Gisbert. AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, CONNECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE GREAT EVENTS (ERA OF POLITICAL-RELIGIOUS WARS) CHARLES F. HORNE Gazing across the broader field of universal history, one comes more and more to overlook the merely temporary, constantly shifting border lines of states, and to see Western Europe as a whole, to watch its nations as a single people guided by similar developments of the mind, impelled by similar stirrings of the heart, taking part in but a single story, the marvellous tale of man's advance. This sense of an all-enfolding unity, an ever-advancing common destiny, sinks weakest perhaps in the period we now approach. The nations seem sharply separated in their careers. In the preceding age the power of Spain and the fanaticism of its monarch, Philip II, had made the reëstablishment of Catholicism the dominant question throughout Europe. But in 1609 Philip III of Spain abandoned his father's attempt to conquer Holland and again enforce a universal religion. In 1610 Henry IV of France, who had brought peace and amity out of the savage religious wars within his own realm, fell under an assassin's knife. These two events may be accepted as marking a turn in the current of the world, a change in the thoughts of men. The next half-century saw wars indeed, bloody and bitter wars, but they were no longer primarily religious. The strife was more than half political, and men of opposite faiths found themselves at times allied upon the battle-field. The feeling of religious brotherhood grew weaker, that of political allegiance stronger. GROWTH OF NATIONAL SPIRIT The triumph of Holland had much to do with this. During almost a generation the Catholics of the Southern Netherlands had been united with the Protestants of the Northern Provinces in desperate war against the tyranny of Spain; and though only Holland finally achieved independence, her people could scarce forget their long brotherhood with the Catholic South. And now Holland was a republic, her people were self-governing! Looking with prophetic vision into the future, we may assert that this was only the first step toward a broader union of all the nations when every man shall be self-governing, and hence all shall be equal and united and progressive. But for its own time at least the freedom of Holland was a sharp influence toward division among the people of Europe, toward the establishment of differences, the growth of national as opposed to universal brotherhood. There was, to be sure, an earlier republic in Europe, Switzerland. But the Swiss maintained themselves by their isolation, their remoteness from other nations and from one another in their bleak mountain valleys. The Dutch, on the contrary, inhabited a flat sea-coast; they were traders; their very existence depended on intercourse with other lands. Hence they had to be ever alert in defence of their hard-won freedom. The spirit of nationality, of patriotism grew strong within them. At one time they had been members of the German empire; at another, subjects of France, of Burgundy, of Spain. Now they were Hollanders, a distinct nation by themselves, and an example to all others of what a united land of men might do. France also had learned a stronger sense of nationality from her hero-king, Henry IV. Always, through all his religious wars, he had insisted that he was king of all Frenchmen, both Catholic and Protestant, and would be a father to them all. He withdrew his Protestant army from besieging Paris when the surrender of the city seemed certain, abandoned his triumph "lest Frenchmen starve." Englishmen, too, in the age of Elizabeth, had learned to regard themselves not only as different from but as far superior to men of other races. Spain both by her victories and by her sufferings had opened a gap between her people and others. Only Germany, through her very importance and vague imperial predominance over the surrounding lands, failed to find within herself that necessity for union which made other kingdoms strong. By this internal division Germany was now plunged into the awful tragedy of the Thirty Years' War, a partly political, partly religious contest in which all the nations of Europe by degrees took some part. Thus the war forms to a certain extent a centre around which the movements of the age are grouped. England also had her great religious strife, her Puritan revolution, which collapsed in 1660. Yet on the whole the age is political even more than religious, and the ablest statesman of the day, Richelieu, the most successful guardian France has ever known, reaped for his own land all the benefits of the world-wide turmoil. France, which had so often seemed on the point of assuming the foremost place in Europe and had been so often checked, now advanced definitely to the front. The Bourbons, descendants of Henry IV, took the rank of the decaying Hapsburg family as the chief rulers of Europe. Historians often call this the age of Richelieu. DECAY OF THE HAPSBURG POWER Spain and Austria, the two great Hapsburg states, both decayed in power. Italy, the Hapsburg dependent, lost the last vestiges of her ancient intellectual supremacy. Everywhere the South of Europe gave place to the North. The blight of the Inquisition was upon Spain. The Moors were banished, the Jews were banished; and it had been the industry of these two races which had largely supported the pride and laziness of the hidalgos. In Italy, too, the Inquisition held sway. Galileo with his telescope revealed facts which proved the theories of Copernicus, and made impossible the ancient idea that our earth was the centre of the universe.[1] All Europe rang with his discoveries; but the Church refused to understand, forbade him to teach doctrines which it declared heretical. For a time the astronomer's mouth was closed, but not so the minds of those who had listened to him. In England, where thought was free, Harvey founded medical science by his proof of the circulation of the blood;[2] the Lord Chancellor Bacon wrote his celebrated _Novum Organum_, pointing out to modern investigators the methods they must follow. In Germany Comenius revitalized the dead world of education.[3] In France Descartes created within his own mind a revolution scarce less important than that of Luther. He freed philosophy from its thraldom to religion. He bade the mind of man to stand by itself, lone in the midst of an unmeasured universe, and discover of what one thing it could feel assured by its own unbiassed thought. His famous first conclusion, "I think, therefore I exist," stands as the corner-stone of modern philosophy.[4] Meanwhile Galileo, roused by the encouragement of scientific friends, began a second time with infinite wit and sarcasm to expound and defend his doctrines. The Church took him more sternly in hand. He was imprisoned by the Inquisition and emerged from its dark chambers a broken and silent man. Philosophy, terrified, fled from Italy, not to return until over two centuries of the world's advance had prepared for her a less barbaric greeting.[5] Southern Italy was ruled by viceroys from Spain, but so feeble had the Hapsburg grip become that Masaniello, a fisherman of Naples, was able to rouse his city against its tyrants, and for over a year Spain was unable to reëstablish her authority. When she did, it was only by the treachery of the peasant leaders who had succeeded the murdered Masaniello.[6] The internal decay of Spain and the lassitude of her two feeble sovereigns, Philip III (1598-1621) and Philip IV (1621-1665), prevented her from rendering any material assistance to Austria, where the other branch of the Hapsburgs, descendants of Charles V's brother Ferdinand, were reduced to struggle for their very existence. Ferdinand and his immediate successor as Emperor of Germany had kept the religious peace carefully, and Germany had prospered. But then came new emperors who repudiated their methods--Ferdinand had been deemed by the Church little better than a Protestant. In 1608 the Protestant princes, becoming suspicious, formed a league for mutual defence. The Catholics under Maximilian of Bavaria formed an answering league in 1609. They almost came to open war that year over a disputed succession in one of the smaller duchies, the Protestants appealing to Holland for help and the Catholics to Spain. Fortunately the terrible example of the civil wars they had seen in France, held them back for a time. But always there were arising new grounds for quarrel. THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR In 1618 the actual war began. A new leader, Ferdinand II, young and intensely Catholic, had risen to guide the Hapsburg fortunes in Austria, had successfully forced that land to resume the old religion, and now aimed to do the same in Bohemia. The Bohemians, famed fanatics of the unforgotten Hussite wars, broke into open rebellion, threw Ferdinand's ministers through a window, and so roused the war that ruined Germany.[7] Ferdinand became Emperor of Germany the next year (1619), and called the Catholic league to his aid in Bohemia. The rebels elected as king one of the German electors, a son-in-law of the King of England, and head of the Protestant league. Slowly, unwillingly, the various German states, and the surrounding countries also, found themselves dragged into the struggle. At first Emperor Ferdinand was successful, Bohemia was completely subdued and made Catholic, as Austria had been. A great general and shrewd contriver, Wallenstein, rose to the Emperor's aid and laid Germany prostrate at his feet. For a moment the Hapsburgs seemed as all-powerful as in the proudest days of Charles V. But his own coreligionists turned against Ferdinand. The princes of the Catholic league grew frightened; he was indeed crushing Protestantism, but he was trampling on their rights as well. They fell away from his alliance. Richelieu, also dreading the Hapsburg aggrandizement, brought France to take part in the war. Sweden's hero-king Gustavus Adolphus invaded Germany to defend the Protestant faith. He won splendid victories, but at last fell in his supreme battle at Luetzen, from which Wallenstein's troops fled defeated (1632).[8] The war had now lasted fourteen years. The Emperor could raise no more armies. His one able general, Wallenstein, was slain as a traitor. Germany was exhausted. Yet because no one power would consent to the others' proposed terms of peace, the war dragged on and on, in such feeble fashion as it could. Its misery fell almost wholly upon the unhappy peasantry. The armies of both sides lived upon the country; what they could not devour they destroyed, lest it be of use to the enemy. Germany became a desert, and its people starved amid their desolated homes. The troops, brutalized by long familiarity with suffering, tortured their captives to extort money or sometimes, it would seem, for the mere pleasure of the sport. The Emperor Ferdinand died in the midst of the hideous ruin he had wrought. The Swedes, who had long abandoned the high principles of Gustavus, demanded territory as the price of peace. So did France. At last in 1648 the Peace of Westphalia was arranged. By it France became the foremost state of Europe; Sweden became one of the great powers; England, engrossed in her own civil war, could pull no chestnuts from the fire; but the German empire fell practically to pieces. Switzerland and Holland were formally declared outside of it. Each little prince got what increase of power he wanted, and the authority of the empire disappeared. The Hapsburgs still retained their title as its heads, but their real authority was confined entirely to their personal domains, Austria, Bohemia, and such part of Hungary as they could hold against the Turks.[9] Historians tell us that in those terrible thirty years the population of Germany had dwindled from thirty million to only twelve million; nearly two-thirds of its common people had perished, mostly of starvation. The stored-up wealth of ages had been destroyed. The very character of the race had changed, broken from its old hardihood to temporary feebleness and fawning. The land had been set back an entire century, perhaps two, in its advance toward civilization. That is what war means. That is glory! RULE OF RICHELIEU Meanwhile France, profiting by the feebleness of her neighbors, had made great strides. At first the death of Henry IV had threatened her with the old anarchy. Louis XIII, Henry's son, was but a child; the Queen-mother, who became regent, was an Italian, Marie de' Medici, and devoted to the Spanish interests. The Huguenots feared renewed persecution. The nobles of the court grasped after renewed power. In such turmoil was the land that it seemed necessary to summon the "States-General," the assembly of all the notables of France, the last one to be called until that eventful year of 1789. The States-General talked and dissolved, having done nothing but reveal that there was one capable man among its members, a young bishop who was to be a cardinal, Richelieu. His plans for reform and pacification were not adopted, but he drew the attention of the Queen Regent and became her chief adviser, later the chief adviser of the King. Richelieu did four things for France. He broke the power of the Huguenots, who had become a political party, and a very troublesome one, a state within a state, independent and defiant, with their impenetrable capital at La Rochelle. After one of the most remarkable sieges of history Richelieu captured La Rochelle, crushed the resistance of the Huguenots by repeated defeats elsewhere, and then--granted them complete religious freedom![10] It is one of the epochs of the world, the beginning of toleration not through force, but through free-will. A Catholic and a cardinal, having complete power to force these Protestants to his will, bids them worship as they choose, asking only that they become patriotic Frenchmen. Next Richelieu humbled the great nobles of France, hanging them when they disobeyed his laws. Next by his part in the Thirty Years' War he won territory from both Germany and Spain. He was by no means the first Catholic ruler thus to seek Protestant allies; Francis I and Henry II had both done so in France; in Germany Charles V had sent a Lutheran army against the Pope. But it was Richelieu's successful adherence to this plan that positively and finally relegated religion to a minor place in statecraft, and made nationality, political supremacy, what some have called "vainglory," the foremost impulse. Last, not least, in Richelieu's brilliant career, is to be noted that he revived literature in France. He created the "French Academy," the "forty immortals" in whose successors Paris still takes pride to-day. The French drama was born. Corneille wrote _The Cid_, and the Cardinal himself took his pen and attempted to produce a better tragedy. Comedy, too, arose. Molière began the marvellous career which a little later was to make him the undying idol of the stage in France.[11] Nor did Richelieu's death (1642) turn his country from the triumphant course toward which he had led the way. His King died with him, and his power passed to another cardinal, Mazarin, ruling for another baby-king, who was to be Louis XIV. Mazarin found himself confronting an almost similar situation to that which had followed the death of Henry IV. There was a child upon the throne; an incapable queen-mother as regent, foreign, and friendly to the Spaniards; the nobles grasped after power; Paris grumbled under taxation. Mazarin had even to face a feeble, frivolous civil war against himself, the Fronde.[12] But he soon established his supremacy, secured for France in 1648 all she had earned out of the war with Germany, and then ruled with firm hand, bringing wealth and peace and prosperity to the state until his death in 1661. Richelieu and Mazarin made possible that most spectacular period of all French history which immediately followed under Louis XIV. THE PURITAN REVOLUTION Turn now to England, to see why she had held so apart from the continental struggles of the period. James I, her Scotch king of 1603, had indeed interfered a bit in the Thirty Years' War, seeking to aid his unlucky son-in-law, the King of Bohemia. But James had soon found difficulties enough at home. The Elizabethan age had made Englishmen feel very highly their individual importance. Each man, through the entire social scale down even to the peasantry, had felt a personal interest, a personal pride in the repulse of the Spaniards and the upholding of the Queen. She tyrannized over them as a woman; they defended her as men. But when this foreigner, this Scotch king, came to rule them, they saw no need to yield him such exact obedience. Freedom of thought had brought with it new political ideas, and men talked much of the authority of Parliament and their right to tax themselves. James, on the contrary, had a large conception of the "divine right" of kings, not to be restricted by any law whatever, and a still larger opinion of his own personal ability and unfailing wisdom. Gradually there grew up a distinct opposition between King and Parliament, centring always on that one question--who should lay the taxes, that is, who provide the income of the King? The English revolution, like the American one to follow, gave to principles far more noble in themselves the air of a mere money dispute. James, dying in 1625, left a very pretty quarrel to his son. Charles I, more able and kingly than his father, but equally obstinate, equally devoted to the Stuart doctrine of a king's divinity, finally endeavored to rule without summoning any of these arguing parliaments. To accomplish this he had to gather money by other methods, declared illegal by his people. Always appealing to the law, they grew more and more bitter as Charles turned it against them, putting in office judges who would do his will, reëstablishing the ancient Court of Star-Chamber, with its power to torture witnesses. Moreover, there was growing up in England a type of more extreme Protestantism. The English Church had retained many of the forms of Rome, including its hierarchal system of priests and bishops. These were dear to the hearts of the Stuart kings, whose Protestantism had never been very radical. The Scotch Church, on the other hand, had swung far from Rome indeed, and many Protestants everywhere refused to have any priestly interpreter intervene between them and their own consciences, their own beliefs. In England these men came to be called Puritans. They were deeply earnest; religion was ever in their thoughts; they had protested even against the wickedness of the theatre in Shakespeare's time; and now as they watched the light frivolity of the court they became imbittered. They called Charles the "man of sin." Round these stern fanatics began to centre the general opposition to the King. At length the Scotch Protestants broke into open revolt, and the King found he must have help, must summon a parliament at last. That was the beginning of the end. The Englishmen who gathered at his call were in no pleasant mood. They at once took steps to secure other parliaments to follow immediately on their own. All Charles' encroachments on the law were overturned; his courts, Star-Chamber and others, were abolished; his chief minister was declared a traitor and beheaded.[13] The King, helpless, infuriated, raised the standard of civil war (1642). The strife was thus in its inception political; but it soon became religious as well. Since the King was the head of the English Church, most of its members rallied round him. The Puritans in Parliament secured the calling of a convention to settle the various religious questions before the nation. This "Westminster Assembly" established the Presbyterian Church.[14] The less extreme members of the opposition to the King grew doubtful; they saw whither the Puritans would lead them. The war became one of stern religious fanaticism against gallant reckless Cavalier loyalty--of the middle classes against the aristocracy and their servitors. Cromwell rose as the type and model of the Puritans. Under his lead they defeated the Cavaliers and executed their King. Charles perished on the scaffold, and England, following Holland's lead, was declared a republic. This was in 1649, the year after the Peace of Westphalia.[15] Cromwell remained practically the ruler of England. He defeated the Scotch, and compelled them to submit to England's sway. He went over to Ireland and stamped out revolt there, terrorized the land as no Englishman had ever done before, establishing English colonists, Protestants, over a considerable portion of its soil.[16] Secure of power at home, the mighty leader began next to take a part in European affairs, raising England to higher consideration than she had held even in Elizabeth's time. Yet toward the end he must have realized that he had failed in his life's dream, that England was unfitted to be the united religious republic he had hoped to make her. Even before his death the land was broken into endless factions, the majority dissatisfied with the strictness of Puritan rule, a small minority eager to go much further with its severity. Cromwell found himself compelled to dissolve his parliaments as autocratically as ever Charles had done; and when he died, when his iron hand dropped from the helm, no man knew what was to follow. No one wanted war. Each little wrangling party looked a different way for peace and security. At length the majority agreed to call back their Stuart kings. Charles II, son of the Charles I they had beheaded, was voluntarily replaced upon the English throne. Religion had once more proved inefficient as the central principle of government.[17] ACQUISITION OF COLONIAL POSSESSIONS Equally important for the future, though not for their own day, were the movements toward colonization in this period. Even while their war with Spain was in progress the Dutch merchants had begun to look for trading-stations in the distant seas. Following the Portuguese, they sailed around Africa, and wrenched from their feeble predecessors most of the Indian trade. They took possession of the Eastern isles, Java and Sumatra. In the very year of the truce, 1609, they turned their attention westward and sent Henry Hudson to explore the American coast.[18] Claiming possession of the river he had found, they built settlements at Albany and New York.[19] England was their chief rival on the seas. Her ships followed theirs to India and fought with them, refusing to be dispossessed like the Portuguese.[20] The English colonists at Jamestown had preceded the Dutch in defiance of Spain and the denial of her claims upon America. England and Holland quarrelled for the carrying trade of the world. They became the two foremost naval powers, and in Cromwell's time fought a fierce and vigorous naval war. The two Protestant champions of Europe wasting their strength one against the other for commercial causes! Clearly indeed do we approach an age when religion becomes of little international prominence. France also had the colonizing fever. Henry IV had sent an expedition to Quebec. Richelieu authorized one which settled Montreal, destined to be the chief metropolis of Canada.[21] These early settlements had been movements authorized by their governments, encouraged by the parent state for its own purposes; but now there began a civilization very different in character. Some of the English Puritans finding the oppressive hand of King James I fall heavy upon them, extracted from his ministers a half-unwilling permission to settle on his American lands. So came the famous voyage of the Mayflower and the building of Plymouth on the Massachusetts coast.[22] King James had been a foster-father to the Virginia colony, he had drawn up a set of laws for it with his own hand, and when these failed he had granted it a local assembly of its own, the beginning of representative government in America.[23] Virginia was prospering. Slavery was introduced there in 1619 and, much to the royal patron's disgust, the cultivation of tobacco as well.[24] Soon the new colony was supplying the world with tobacco. But the nest of Puritans farther north could expect no such favor from James. As the hand of oppression grew ever heavier at home, the Puritans, not yet dreaming of escape by rebellion, looked more and more thoughtfully to the land beyond the sea. They planned to expatriate themselves almost in a body. A great preliminary fleet carrying over a thousand souls left England in 1630 and settled Boston.[25] During the next ten years twenty thousand Puritans came to Massachusetts. This was colonization on a scale hitherto unconceived. A new and powerful commonwealth burst suddenly into being where the primeval wilderness had so lately been. And it was a commonwealth rebellious from the start. When the civil war broke out in England against Charles, large numbers of the Massachusetts men hurried back to take grim part in it. In America the rule of England became little more than a name. Other colonies were formed both north and south, and they stood by themselves with no mother-country to uphold them. They grew strong through wrestling with the wilderness. Connecticut was settled from Massachusetts, and its pioneers, seeing no arm of authority long enough to reach them, drew up a code of laws of their own, the first written constitution prepared by a free people for their own government.[26] A few years later we find the New England colonies uniting in a union for defence against the Indians--and, if necessary, against King Charles' tyranny as well.[27] Maryland was settled by English Catholics who had found themselves as oppressed as the Puritans at home, and there the assembly of burghers proclaimed religious toleration to all who joined them.[28] Surely the New World had something to teach the Old! Only Europe's brightest and bravest and best had ventured to cross the seas for the freedom they desired. It was with good material indeed, and after sore experience of European blunders, that the land beyond the ocean began its remarkable career. [FOR THE NEXT SECTION OF THIS GENERAL SURVEY SEE VOLUME XII] FOOTNOTES: [1] See _Galileo Overthrows Ancient Philosophy_, page 14. [2] See _Harvey Discovers the Circulation of the Blood_, page 50. [3] See _Educational Reform of Comenius_, page 192. [4] See _Birth of Modern Scientific Methods: Bacon and Descartes_, page 116. [5] See _Recantation of Galileo_, page 184. [6] See _Masaniello's Revolt at Naples_, page 253. [7] See _The "Defenestration" at Prague: The Thirty Years' War_, page 62. [8] See _Triumph and Death of Gustavus Adolphus at Luetzen_, page 174. [9] See _Peace of Westphalia_, page 285. [10] See _Siege of La Rochelle: Richelieu Rules France_, page 129. [11] See _Molière Creates Modern Comedy_, page 347. [12] See _War of the Fronde_, page 285. [13] See _Abolition of the Star-Chamber: Popular Revolt against Charles I_, page 215. [14] See _Presbyterianism Established: Meeting of the Westminster Assembly_, page 238. [15] See _Civil War in England: Execution of Charles I_, page 311. [16] See _Cromwell's Campaign in Ireland_, page 335. [17] See _Cromwell's Rule in England: The Restoration_, page 357. [18] See _Henry Hudson Explores the Hudson River_, page 1. [19] See _Dutch Settlement of New York_, page 44. [20] See _Beginning of British Power in India_, page 30. [21] See _Founding of Montreal_, page 232. [22] See _English Pilgrims Settle at Plymouth_, page 93. [23] See _First American Legislature_, page 76. [24] See _Introduction of Negroes into Virginia: Spread of Slavery and the Cultivation of Tobacco_, page 81. [25] See _Great Puritan Exodus to New England: Founding of Boston_, page 153. [26] See _First Written Free Constitution in the World_, page 205. [27] See _Earliest Union among American Colonies_, page 205. [28] See _Religious Toleration Proclaimed in Maryland_, page 303. HENRY HUDSON EXPLORES THE HUDSON RIVER A.D. 1609 HENRY R. CLEVELAND Although Henry Hudson was not the first discoverer of the waters to which his name was given, he was a bold sailor whose achievements justly gave him rank with the foremost navigators and explorers of his time. He was well versed in scientific navigation. His first recorded voyage was made in the service of the Muscovy or Russia Company of England in 1607. His object was to find a passage across the north pole to the Spice Islands (Moluccas), in the Malay Archipelago. Though failing in this purpose, he reached a higher latitude than had before been attained by any navigator. His next venture (1608), for the same company, was for "finding a passage to the East Indies by the northeast," but he failed to pass in that direction beyond Nova Zembla, and returned to England. These two failures discouraged the Muscovy Company, but did not daunt Henry Hudson. Again he determined to sail the northern seas, and the story of his third great voyage and its results is here given to the reader. Hudson, whose mind was completely bent upon making the discovery which he had undertaken, now sought employment from the Dutch East India Company. The fame of his adventures had already reached Holland, and he had received from the Dutch the appellations of the bold Englishman, the expert pilot, the famous navigator. The company were generally in favor of accepting the offer of his services, though the scheme was strongly opposed by Balthazar Moucheron, one of their number, who had some acquaintance with the arctic seas. They accordingly gave him the command of a small vessel, named the Half Moon, with a crew of twenty men, Dutch and English, among whom was Robert Juet, who had accompanied him as mate on his second voyage. The journal of the present voyage, which is published in _Purchas' Pilgrims_, was written by Juet. He sailed from Amsterdam March 25, 1609, and doubled the North Cape in about a month. His object was to pass through the Vaygats, or perhaps to the north of Nova Zembla, and thus reach China by the northeast passage. But after contending for more than a fortnight with head winds, continual fogs, and ice, and finding it impossible to reach even the coast of Nova Zembla, he determined to abandon this plan, and endeavor to discover a passage by the northwest. He accordingly directed his course westerly, doubled the North Cape again, and in a few days saw a part of the western coast of Norway, in the latitude of 68°. From this point he sailed for the Faroe Islands, where he arrived about the end of May. Having replenished his water-casks at one of these islands he again hoisted sail, and steered southwest, in the hope of making Buss Island, which had been discovered by Sir Martin Frobisher, in 1578, as he wished to ascertain if it was correctly laid down on the chart. As he did not succeed in finding it, he continued this course for nearly a month, having much severe weather and a succession of gales, in one of which the foremast was carried away. Having arrived at the 45th degree of latitude, he judged it best to shape his course westward, with the intention of making Newfoundland. While proceeding in this direction he one day saw a vessel standing to the eastward, and wishing to speak her he put the ship about and gave chase; but finding as night came on that he could not overtake her he resumed the westerly course again. On July 2d he had soundings on the Grand Bank of Newfoundland, and saw a whole fleet of Frenchmen fishing there. Being on soundings for several days he determined to try his luck at fishing; and the weather falling calm he set the whole crew at work to so much purpose that, in the course of the morning, they took between one and two hundred very large cod. After two or three days of calm the wind sprang up again, and he continued his course westward till the 12th, when he first had sight of the coast of North America. The fog was so thick, however, that he did not venture nearer the coast for several days; but at length, the weather clearing up, he ran into a bay at the mouth of a large river, in the latitude of 44°. This was Penobscot Bay, on the coast of Maine. He already had some notion of the kind of inhabitants he was to find here, for a few days before he had been visited by six savages, who came on board in a very friendly manner and ate and drank with him. He found that from their intercourse with the French traders they had learned a few words of their language. Soon after coming to anchor he was visited by several of the natives, who appeared very harmless and inoffensive; and in the afternoon two boats full of them came to the ship, bringing beaver-skins and other fine furs, which they wished to exchange for articles of dress. They offered no violence whatever, though we find in Juet's journal constant expressions of distrust, apparently without foundation. They remained in this bay long enough to cut and rig a new foremast, and being now ready for sea the men were sent on shore upon an expedition that disgraced the whole company. What Hudson's sentiments or motives with regard to this transaction were we can only conjecture from a general knowledge of his character, as we have no account of it from himself. But it seems highly probable that, if he did not project it, he at least gave his consent to its perpetration. The account is in the words of Juet, as follows: "In the morning we manned our scute with four muskets and six men, and took one of their shallops and brought it aboard. Then we manned our boat and scute with twelve men and muskets, and two stone pieces, or murderers, and drave the salvages from their houses, and took the spoil of them, as they would have done of us." After this exploit they returned to the ship and set sail immediately. It does not appear from the journal that the natives had ever offered them any harm or given any provocation for so wanton an act. The writer only asserts that they would have done it if they could. No plea is more commonly used to justify tyranny and cruelty than the supposed bad intentions of the oppressed. He now continued southward along the coast of America. It appears that Hudson had been informed by his friend, Captain John Smith, that there was a passage to the western Pacific Ocean south of Virginia, and that, when he had proved the impossibility of going by the northeast, he had offered his crew the choice either to explore this passage spoken of by Captain John Smith or to seek the northwest passage by going through Davis Strait. Many of the men had been in the East India service, and in the habit of sailing in tropical climates, and were consequently very unwilling to endure the severities of a high northern latitude. It was therefore voted that they should go in search of the passage to the south of Virginia. In a few days they saw land extending north, and terminating in a remarkable headland, which he recognized to be Cape Cod. Wishing to double the headland, he sent some of the men in the boat to sound along the shore, before venturing nearer with the ship. The water was five fathoms deep within bow-shot of the shore, and, landing, they found, as the journal informs us, "goodly grapes and rose-trees," which they brought on board with them. He then weighed anchor and advanced as far as the northern extremity of the headland. Here he heard the voice of someone calling to them, and, thinking it possible some unfortunate European might have been left there, he immediately despatched some of the men to the shore. They found only a few savages; but, as these appeared very friendly, they brought one of them on board, where they gave him refreshments and also a present of three or four glass buttons, with which he seemed greatly delighted. The savages were observed to have green tobacco and pipes, the bowls of which were made of clay and the stems of red copper. The wind not being favorable for passing west of this headland into the bay, Hudson determined to explore the coast farther south, and the next day he saw the southern point of Cape Cod, which had been discovered and named by Bartholomew Gosnold in the year 1602. He passed in sight of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, and continued a southerly course till the middle of August, when he arrived at the entrance of Chesapeake Bay. "This," says the writer of the journal, "is the entrance into the King's river, in Virginia, where our Englishmen are." The colony, under the command of Newport, consisting of one hundred five persons, among whom were Smith, Gosnold, Wingfield, and Ratcliffe, had arrived here a little more than two years before, and if Hudson could have landed he would have enjoyed the satisfaction of seeing and conversing with his own countrymen, and in his own language, in the midst of the forests of the New World. But the wind was blowing a gale from the northeast, and, probably dreading a shore with which he was unacquainted, he made no attempt to find them. He continued to ply to the south for several days, till he reached the latitude of 35° 41', when he again changed his course to the north. It is highly probable that if the journal of the voyage had been kept by Hudson himself we should have been informed of his reasons for changing the southerly course at this point. The cause, however, is not difficult to conjecture. He had gone far enough to ascertain that the information given him by Captain Smith with respect to a passage into the Pacific south of Virginia was incorrect, and he probably did not think it worth while to spend more time in so hopeless a search. He therefore retraced his steps, and on August 28th discovered Delaware Bay, where he examined the currents, soundings, and the appearance of the shores, without attempting to land. From this anchorage he coasted northward, the shore appearing low, like sunken ground, dotted with islands, till September 2d, when he saw the highlands of Navesink, which, the journalist remarks, "is a very good land to fall with and a pleasant land to see." The entrance into the southern waters of New York is thus described in the journal: "At three of the clock in the afternoon we came to three great rivers. So we stood along to the northernmost, thinking to have gone into it, but we found it to have a very shoal bar before it, for we had but ten foot water. Then we cast about to the southward and found two fathoms, three fathoms, and three and a quarter, till we came to the southern side of them; then we had five and six fathoms, and anchored. So we sent in our boat to sound, and they found no less water than four, five, six, and seven fathoms, and returned in an hour and a half. So we weighed and went in and rode in five fathoms, oozy ground, and saw many salmons, and mullets, and rays very great." The next morning having ascertained by sending in the boat that there was a very good harbor before him, he ran in and anchored at two cables' length from the shore. This was within Sandy Hook Bay. He was very soon visited by the natives, who came on board his vessel, and seemed to be greatly rejoiced at his arrival among them. They brought green tobacco, which they desired to exchange for knives and beads, and Hudson observed that they had copper pipes and ornaments of copper. They also appeared to have plenty of maize, from which they made good bread. Their dress was of deerskins, well cured, and hanging loosely about them. There is a tradition that some of his men, being sent out to fish, landed on Coney Island. They found the soil sandy, but supporting a vast number of plum-trees loaded with fruit, and grapevines growing round them. The next day, the men, being sent in the boat to explore the bay still farther, landed, probably on the Jersey shore, where they were very kindly received by the savages, who gave them plenty of tobacco. They found the land covered with large oaks. Several of the natives also came on board, dressed in mantles of feathers and fine furs. Among the presents they brought were dried currants, which were found extremely palatable. Soon afterward five of the men were sent in the boat to examine the north side of the bay and sound the river, which was perceived at the distance of four leagues. They passed through the Narrows, sounding all along, and saw "a narrow river to the westward, between two islands," supposed to be Staten Island and Bergen Neck. They described the land as covered with trees, grass, and flowers, and filled with delightful fragrance. On their return to the ship they were assaulted by two canoes; one contained twelve and the other fourteen savages. It was nearly dark, and the rain which was falling had extinguished their match, so that they could only trust to their oars for escape. One of the men, John Colman, who had accompanied Hudson on his first voyage, was killed by an arrow shot into his throat, and two more were wounded. The darkness probably saved them from the savages, but at the same time it prevented their finding the vessel, so that they did not return till the next day, when they appeared, bringing the body of their comrade. Hudson ordered him to be carried on shore and buried, and named the place, in memory of the event, Colman's Point. He now expected an attack from the natives, and accordingly hoisted in the boat and erected a sort of bulwark along the sides of the vessel, for the better defence. But these precautions were needless. Several of the natives came on board, but in a friendly manner, wishing to exchange tobacco and Indian corn for the trifles which the sailors could spare them. They did not appear to know anything of the affray which had taken place. But the day after two large canoes came off to the vessel, the one filled with armed men, the other under the pretence of trading. Hudson, however, would only allow two of the savages to come on board, keeping the rest at a distance. The two who came on board were detained, and Hudson dressed them up in red coats; the remainder returned to the shore. Presently another canoe, with two men in it, came to the vessel. Hudson also detained one of these, probably wishing to keep him as a hostage, but he very soon jumped overboard and swam to the shore. On the 11th Hudson sailed through the Narrows and anchored in New York Bay. He prepared to explore the magnificent river which came rolling its waters into the sea from unknown regions. Whither he would be conducted in tracing its course he could form no conjecture. A hope may be supposed to have entered his mind that the long-desired passage to the Indies was now at length discovered; that here was to be the end of his toils; that here, in this mild climate, and amid these pleasant scenes, was to be found that object which he had sought in vain through the snows and ice of the Arctic zone. With a glad heart, then, he weighed anchor on September 12th, and commenced his memorable voyage up that majestic stream which now bears his name. The wind only allowed him to advance a few miles the first two days of the voyage, but the time which he was obliged to spend at anchor was fully occupied in trading with the natives, who came off from the shore in great numbers, bringing oysters and vegetables. He observed that they had copper pipes, and earthen vessels to cook their meat in. They seemed very harmless and well disposed, but the crew were unwilling to trust these appearances, and would not allow any of them to come on board. The next day, a fine breeze springing up from the southeast, he was able to make great progress, so that he anchored at night nearly forty miles from the place of starting in the morning. He observes that "here the land grew very high and mountainous," so that he had undoubtedly anchored in the midst of the fine scenery of the Highlands. When he awoke in the morning he found heavy mist over-hanging the river and its shores and concealing the summits of the mountains. But it was dispelled by the sun in a short time, and taking advantage of a fair wind he weighed anchor and continued the voyage. A little circumstance occurred this morning which was destined to be afterward painfully remembered. The two savages, whom he held as hostages, made their escape through the portholes of the vessel and swam to the shore, and as soon as the ship was under sail they took pains to express their indignation at the treatment they had received, by uttering loud and angry cries. Toward night he came to other mountains, which, he says, "lie from the river's side," and anchored, it is supposed, near the present site of Catskill Landing. "There," says the journal, "we found very loving people and very old men, where we were well used. Our boat went to fish and caught great store of very good fish." The next morning, September 16th, the men were sent again to catch fish, but were not so successful as they had been the day before, in consequence of the savages having been there in their canoes all night. A large number of the natives came off to the ship, bringing Indian corn, pumpkins, and tobacco. The day was consumed in trading with the natives and in filling the casks with fresh water, so that they did not weigh anchor till toward night. After sailing about five miles, finding the water shoal, they came to anchor, probably near the spot where the city of Hudson now stands. The weather was hot, and Hudson determined to set his men at work in the cool of the morning. He accordingly, on the 17th, weighed anchor at dawn and ran up the river about fifteen miles, when, finding shoals and small islands, he thought it best to anchor again. Toward night the vessel, having drifted near the shore, grounded in shoal water, but was easily drawn off by carrying out the small anchor. She was aground again in a short time in the channel, but, the tide rising, she floated off. The two days following he advanced only about five miles, being much occupied by his intercourse with the natives. Being in the neighborhood of the present town of Castleton, he went on shore, where he was very kindly received by an old savage, "the governor of the country," who took him to his house, and gave him the best cheer he could. At his anchorage also, five miles above this place, the natives came flocking on board, bringing a great variety of articles, such as grapes, pumpkins, beaver and otter skins, which they exchanged for beads, knives, and hatchets or whatever trifles the sailors could spare them. The next day was occupied in exploring the river, four men being sent in the boat, under the command of the mate, for that purpose. They ascended several miles and found the channel narrow and in some places only two fathoms deep, but after that seven or eight fathoms. In the afternoon they returned to the ship. Hudson resolved to pursue the examination of the channel on the following morning, but was interrupted by the number of natives who came on board. Finding that he was not likely to gain any progress this day, he sent the carpenter ashore to prepare a new foreyard, and in the mean time prepared to make an extraordinary experiment on board. From the whole tenor of the journal it is evident that great distrust was entertained by Hudson and his men toward the natives. He now determined to ascertain, by intoxicating some of the chiefs, and thus throwing them off their guard, whether they were plotting any treachery. He accordingly invited several of them into the cabin and gave them plenty of brandy to drink. One of these men had his wife with him, who, the journal informs us, "sate so modestly as any one of our countrywomen would do in a strange place"; but the men had less delicacy, and were soon quite merry with the brandy. One of them, who had been on board from the first arrival of the ship, was completely intoxicated, and fell sound asleep, to the great astonishment of his companions, who probably feared that he had been poisoned, for they all took to their canoes and made for the shore, leaving their unlucky comrade on board. Their anxiety for his welfare, however, soon induced them to return, and they brought a quantity of beads, which they gave him, perhaps to enable him to purchase his freedom from the spell that had been laid upon him. The poor savage slept quietly all night, and when his friends came to visit him the next morning they found him quite well. This restored their confidence, so that they came to the ship again in crowds, in the afternoon, bringing various presents for Hudson. Their visit, which was one of unusual ceremony, is thus described in the journal: "So, at three of the clock in the afternoon, they came aboard and brought tobacco and more beads and gave them to our master, and made an oration, and showed him all the country round about. Then they sent one of their company on land, who presently returned and brought a great platter full of venison, dressed by themselves, and they caused him to eat with them. Then they made him reverence, and departed, all save the old man that lay aboard." At night the mate returned in the boat, having been sent again to explore the river. He reported that he had ascended eight or nine leagues, and found but seven feet of water and irregular soundings. It was evidently useless to attempt to ascend the river any farther with the ship, and Hudson therefore determined to return. We may well imagine that he was satisfied already with the result of the voyage, even supposing him to have been disappointed in not finding here a passage to the Indies. He had explored a great and navigable river to the distance of nearly a hundred forty miles; he had found the country along the banks extremely fertile, the climate delightful, and the scenery displaying every variety of beauty and grandeur; and he knew that he had opened the way for his patrons to possessions which might prove of inestimable value. It is supposed that the highest place which the Half Moon reached in the river was the neighborhood of the present site of Albany, and that the boats being sent out to explore ascended as high as Waterford, and probably some distance beyond. The voyage down the river was not more expeditious than it had been in ascending; the prevalent winds were southerly, and for several days the ship could advance but very slowly. The time, however, passed agreeably in making excursions on the shore, where they found "good ground for corn and other garden herbs, with a great store of goodly oaks and walnut-trees, and chestnut-trees, ewe-trees and trees of sweetwood in great abundance, and great store of slate for houses, and other good stones"; or in receiving visits from the natives, who came on the ship in numbers. While Hudson was at anchor near the spot where the city bearing his name now stands, two canoes came from the place where the scene of the intoxication had occurred, and in one of them was the old man who had been the sufferer under the strange experiment. He brought another old man with him, who presented Hudson with a string of beads, and "showed all the country there about, as though it were at his command." Hudson entertained them at dinner, with four of their women, and in the afternoon dismissed them with presents. He continued the voyage down the river, taking advantage of wind and tide as he could, and employing the time when at anchor in fishing or in trading with the natives, who came to the ship nearly every day, till on October 1st he anchored near Stony Point. The vessel was no sooner perceived from the shore to be stationary than a party of the native mountaineers came off in their canoes to visit it, and were filled with wonder at everything it contained. While the attention of the crew was taken up with their visitors upon deck, one of the savages managed to run his canoe under the stern and, climbing up the rudder, found his way into the cabin by the window, where, having seized a pillow and a few articles of wearing-apparel, he made off with them in the canoe. The mate detected him as he fled, fired at and killed him. Upon this, all the other savages departed with the utmost precipitation, some taking to their canoes and others plunging into the water. The boat was manned, and sent after the stolen goods, which were easily recovered; but as the men were returning to the vessel, one of the savages, who were in the water, seized hold of the keel of the boat, with the intention, as was supposed, of upsetting it. The cook took a sword and lopped his hand off, and the poor wretch immediately sank. They then weighed anchor and advanced about five miles. The next day Hudson descended about seven leagues and anchored. Here he was visited in a canoe by one of the two savages who had escaped from the ship as he was going up. But fearing treachery, he would not allow him or his companions to come on board. Two canoes filled with armed warriors then came under the stern and commenced an attack with arrows. The men fired at them with their muskets and killed three of them. More than a hundred savages now came down upon the nearest point of land to shoot at the vessel. One of the cannon was brought to bear upon these warriors, and at the first discharge two of them were killed and the rest fled to the woods. The savages were not yet discouraged. They had doubtless been instigated to make this attack by the two who escaped near West Point, and who had probably incited their countrymen by the story of their imprisonment, as well as by representing to them the value of the spoil, if they could capture the vessel, and the small number of men who guarded it. Nine or ten of the boldest warriors now threw themselves into a canoe and put off toward the ship, but a shot from the cannon made a hole in the canoe and killed one of the men. This was followed by a discharge of musketry, which destroyed three or four more. This put an end to the battle, and in the evening, having descended about five miles, Hudson anchored in a part of the river out of the reach of his enemies, probably near Hoboken. Hudson had now explored the bay of New York and the noble stream which pours into it from the north. For his employers he had secured a possession which would beyond measure reward them for the expense they had incurred in fitting out the expedition. For himself he had gained a name that was destined to live in the gratitude of a great nation through unnumbered generations. Happy in the result of his labors and in the brilliant promise they afforded, he spread his sails again for the Old World on October 4th, and in a little more than a month arrived safely at Dartmouth, in England. The journal kept by Juet ends abruptly at this place. The question therefore immediately arises whether Hudson pursued his voyage to Holland, or whether he remained in England and sent the vessel home. Several Dutch authors assert that Hudson was not allowed, after reaching England, to pursue his voyage to Amsterdam; and this seems highly probable when we remember the well-known jealousy with which the maritime enterprises of the Dutch were regarded by King James. Whether Hudson went to Holland himself or not, it seems clear from various circumstances that he secured to the Dutch Company all the benefits of his discoveries, by sending to them his papers and charts. It is worthy of note that the earliest histories of this voyage, with the exception of Juet's journal, were published by Dutch authors. Moreover, Hudson's own journal, or some portion of it at least, was in Holland, and was used by De Laet previously to the publication of Juet's journal in _Purchas' Pilgrims_. But the most substantial proof that the Dutch enjoyed the benefit of his discoveries earlier than any other nation, is the fact that the very next year they were trading in Hudson River, which it is not probable would have happened if they had not had possession of Hudson's charts and journal. GALILEO OVERTHROWS ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY THE TELESCOPE AND ITS DISCOVERIES A.D. 1610 SIR OLIVER LODGE When the Copernican system of astronomy was published to the world (1543) it had to encounter, as all capital theories and discoveries in science have done, the criticism, and, for some time, the opposition, of men holding other views. After Copernicus, the next great name in modern science is that of Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), who rejected the theory of Copernicus in favor of a modified form of the Ptolemaic system. This was still taught in the schools when two mighty contemporaries, geniuses of science, rose to overthrow it forever. These men were Galileo Galilei--commonly known as Galileo--and Kepler, both astronomers, though Galileo's scientific work covered also a much wider field. He is regarded to-day as marking a distinct epoch in the progress of the world, and the following account of his work by the eminent scientist, Sir Oliver Lodge, expresses no more than a just appreciation of his great services to mankind. Galileo exercised a vast influence on the development of human thought. A man of great and wide culture, a so-called universal genius, it is as an experimental philosopher that he takes the first rank. In this capacity he must be placed alongside of Archimedes, and it is pretty certain that between the two there was no man of magnitude equal to either in experimental philosophy. It is perhaps too bold a speculation, but I venture to doubt whether in succeeding generations we find his equal in the domain of purely experimental science until we come to Faraday. Faraday was no doubt his superior, but I know of no other of whom the like can unhesitatingly be said. In mathematical and deductive science, of course, it is quite otherwise. Kepler, for instance, and many men before and since, have far excelled Galileo in mathematical skill and power, though at the same time his achievements in this department are by no means to be despised. Born at Pisa on the very day that Michelangelo lay dying in Rome, he inherited from his father a noble name, cultivated tastes, a keen love of truth, and an impoverished patrimony. Vincenzo de Galilei, a descendant of the important Bonajuti family, was himself a mathematician and a musician, and in a book of his still extant he declares himself in favor of free and open inquiry into scientific matters, unrestrained by the weight of authority and tradition. In all probability the son imbibed these precepts: certainly he acted on them. Vincenzo, having himself experienced the unremunerative character of scientific work, had a horror of his son's taking to it, especially as in his boyhood he was always constructing ingenious mechanical toys and exhibiting other marks of precocity. So the son was destined for business--to be, in fact, a cloth-dealer. But he was to receive a good education first, and was sent to an excellent convent school. Here he made rapid progress, and soon excelled in all branches of classics and literature. He delighted in poetry, and in later years wrote several essays on Dante, Tasso, and Ariosto, besides composing some tolerable poems himself. He played skilfully on several musical instruments, especially on the lute, of which indeed he became a master, and on which he solaced himself when quite an old man. Besides this, he seems to have had some skill as an artist, which was useful afterward in illustrating his discoveries, and to have had a fine sensibility as an art critic, for we find several eminent painters of that day acknowledging the value of the opinion of the young Galileo. Perceiving all this display of ability, the father wisely came to the conclusion that the selling of woollen stuffs would hardly satisfy his aspirations for long, and that it was worth a sacrifice to send him to the university. So to the university of his native town he went, with the avowed object of studying medicine, that career seeming the most likely to be profitable. Old Vincenzo's horror of mathematics or science as a means of obtaining a livelihood is justified by the fact that while the university professor of medicine received two thousand scudi a year, the professor of mathematics had only sixty; that is thirteen pounds a year, or seven and a half pence a day. So the son had been kept properly ignorant of such poverty-stricken subjects, and to study medicine he went. But his natural bent showed itself even here. For praying one day in the cathedral, like a good Catholic as he was all his life, his attention was arrested by the great lamp which, after lighting it, the verger had left swinging to and fro. Galileo proceeded to time its swings by the only watch he possessed--viz., his own pulse. He noticed that the time of swing remained, as near as he could tell, the same, notwithstanding the fact that the swings were getting smaller and smaller. By subsequent experiment he verified the law, and the isochronism of the pendulum was discovered. An immensely important practical discovery this, for upon it all modern clocks are based; and Huyghens soon applied it to the astronomical clock, which up to that time had been a crude and quite untrustworthy instrument. The best clock which Tycho Brahe could get for his observatory was inferior to one that may now be purchased for a few shillings; and this change is owing to the discovery of the pendulum by Galileo. Not that he applied it to clocks; he was not thinking of astronomy, he was thinking of medicine, and wanted to count people's pulses. The pendulum served; and "pulsilogies," as they were called, were thus introduced to and used by medical practitioners. The Tuscan court came to Pisa for the summer months--for it was then a seaside place--and among the suite was Ostillio Ricci, a distinguished mathematician and old friend of the Galileo family. The youth visited him, and one day, it is said, heard a lesson in Euclid being given by Ricci to the pages while he stood outside the door entranced. Anyhow, he implored Ricci to help him into some knowledge of mathematics, and the old man willingly consented. So he mastered Euclid, and passed on to Archimedes, for whom he acquired a great veneration. His father soon heard of this obnoxious proclivity, and did what he could to divert him back to medicine again. But it was no use. Underneath his Galen and Hippocrates were secreted copies of Euclid and Archimedes, to be studied at every available opportunity. Old Vincenzo perceived the bent of genius to be too strong for him, and at last gave way. With prodigious rapidity the released philosopher now assimilated the elements of mathematics and physics, and at twenty-six we find him appointed for three years to the university chair of mathematics, and enjoying the paternally dreaded stipend of seven and a half pence a day. Now it was that he pondered over the laws of falling bodies. He verified, by experiment, the fact that the velocity acquired by falling down any slope of given height was independent of the angle of slope. Also, that the height fallen through was proportional to the square of the time. Another thing he found experimentally was that all bodies, heavy and light, fell at the same rate, striking the ground at the same time. Now this was clean contrary to what he had been taught. The physics of those days were a simple reproduction of statements in old books. Aristotle had asserted certain things to be true, and these were universally believed. No one thought of trying the thing to see if it really were so. The idea of making an experiment would have savored of impiety, because it seemed to tend toward scepticism, and cast a doubt on a reverend authority. Young Galileo, with all the energy and imprudence of youth--what a blessing that youth has a little imprudence and disregard of consequences in pursuing a high ideal!--as soon as he perceived that his instructors were wrong on the subject of falling bodies, instantly informed them of the fact. Whether he expected them to be pleased or not is a question. Anyhow, they were not pleased, but were much annoyed by his impertinent arrogance. It is, perhaps, difficult for us now to appreciate precisely their position. These doctrines of antiquity, which had come down hoary with age, and the discovery of which had reawakened learning and quickened intellectual life, were accepted less as a science or a philosophy than as a religion. Had they regarded Aristotle as a verbally inspired writer, they could not have received his statements with more unhesitating conviction. In any dispute as to a question of fact, such as the one before us concerning the laws of falling bodies, their method was not to make an experiment, but to turn over the pages of Aristotle; and he who could quote chapter and verse of this great writer was held to settle the question and raise it above the reach of controversy. It is very necessary for us to realize this state of things clearly, because otherwise the attitude of the learned of those days toward every new discovery seems stupid and almost insane. They had a crystallized system of truth, perfect, symmetrical; it wanted no novelty, no additions; every addition or growth was an imperfection, an excrescence, a deformity. Progress was unnecessary and undesired. The Church had a rigid system of dogma which must be accepted in its entirety on pain of being treated as a heretic. Philosophers had a cast-iron system of truth to match--a system founded upon Aristotle--and so interwoven with the great theological dogmas that to question one was almost equivalent to casting doubt upon the other. In such an atmosphere true science was impossible. The life-blood of science is growth, expansion, freedom, development. Before it could appear it must throw off these old shackles of centuries. It must burst its old skin, and emerge, worn with the struggle, weakly and unprotected, but free and able to grow and to expand. The conflict was inevitable, and it was severe. Is it over yet? I fear not quite, though so nearly as to disturb science hardly at all. Then it was different: it was terrible. Honor to the men who bore the first shock of the battle! Now, Aristotle had said that bodies fell at rates depending on their weight. A five-pound weight would fall five times as quick as a one-pound weight; a fifty-pound weight fifty times as quick, and so on. Why he said so nobody knows. He cannot have tried. He was not above trying experiments, like his smaller disciples; but probably it never occurred to him to doubt the fact. It seems so natural that a heavy body should fall quicker than a light one; and perhaps he thought of a stone and a feather, and was satisfied. Galileo, however, asserted that the weight did not matter a bit; that everything fell at the same rate--even a stone and a feather, but for the resistance of the air--and would reach the ground in the same time. And he was not content to be pooh-poohed and snubbed. He knew he was right, and he was determined to make everyone see the facts as he saw them. So one morning, before the assembled university, he ascended the famous leaning tower, taking with him a one-hundred-pound shot and a one-pound shot. He balanced them on the edge of the tower, and let them drop together. Together they fell, and together they struck the ground. The simultaneous clang of those two weights sounded the death-knell of the old system of philosophy, and heralded the birth of the new. But was the change sudden? Were his opponents convinced? Not a jot. Though they had seen with their eyes and heard with their ears, the full light of heaven shining upon them, they went back muttering and discontented to their musty old volumes and their garrets, there to invent occult reasons for denying the validity of the observation, and for referring it to some unknown disturbing cause. They saw that if they gave way on this one point they would be letting go their anchorage, and henceforward would be liable to drift along with the tide, not knowing whither. They dared not do this. No; they _must_ cling to the old traditions; they could not cast away their rotting ropes and sail out on to the free ocean of God's truth in a spirit of fearless faith. Yet they had received a shock: as by a breath of fresh salt breeze and a dash of spray in their faces, they had been awakened out of their comfortable lethargy. They felt the approach of a new era. Yes, it was a shock, and they hated the young Galileo for giving it them--hated him with the sullen hatred of men who fight for a lost and dying cause. We need scarcely blame these men; at least we need not blame them overmuch. To say that they acted as they did is to say that they were human, were narrow-minded, and were the apostles of a lost cause. But _they_ could not know this; _they_ had no experience of the past to guide them; the conditions under which they found themselves were novel, and had to be met for the first time. Conduct which was excusable then would be unpardonable now, in the light of all this experience to guide us. Are there any now who practically repeat their error, and resist new truth? who cling to any old anchorage of dogma, and refuse to rise with the tide of advancing knowledge? There may be some even now. Well, the unpopularity of Galileo smouldered for a time, until, by another noble imprudence, he managed to offend a semiroyal personage, Giovanni de' Medici, by giving his real opinion, when consulted, about a machine which De' Medici had invented for cleaning out the harbor of Leghorn. He said it was as useless as it in fact turned out to be. Through the influence of the mortified inventor he lost favor at court; and his enemies took advantage of the fact to render his chair untenable. He resigned before his three years were up, and retired to Florence. His father at this time died, and the family were left in narrow circumstances. He had a brother and three sisters to provide for. He was offered a professorship at Padua for six years by the Senate of Venice, and willingly accepted it. Now began a very successful career. His introductory address was marked by brilliant eloquence, and his lectures soon acquired fame. He wrote for his pupils on the laws of motion, on fortifications, on sun-dials, on mechanics, and on the celestial globe: some of these papers are now lost, others have been printed during the present century. Kepler sent him a copy of his new book, _Mysterium Cosmographicum_, and Galileo, in thanking him for it, writes him the following letter: "I count myself happy, in the search after truth, to have so great an ally as yourself, and one who is so great a friend of the truth itself. It is really pitiful that there are so few who seek truth, and who do not pursue a perverse method of philosophizing. But this is not the place to mourn over the miseries of our times, but to congratulate you on your splendid discoveries in confirmation of truth. I shall read your book to the end, sure of finding much that is excellent in it. I shall do so with the more pleasure, because _I have been for many years an adherent of the Copernican system_, and it explains to me the causes of many of the appearances of nature which are quite unintelligible on the commonly accepted hypothesis. _I have collected many arguments for the purpose of refuting the latter_; but I do not venture to bring them to the light of publicity, for fear of sharing the fate of our master, Copernicus, who, although he has earned immortal fame with some, yet with very many (so great is the number of fools) has become an object of ridicule and scorn. I should certainly venture to publish my speculations if there were more people like you. But this not being the case, I refrain from such an undertaking." Kepler urged him to publish his arguments in favor of the Copernican theory, but he hesitated for the present, knowing that his declaration would be received with ridicule and opposition, and thinking it wiser to get rather more firmly seated in his chair before encountering the storm of controversy. The six years passed away, and the Venetian Senate, anxious not to lose so bright an ornament, renewed his appointment for another six years at a largely increased salary. Soon after this appeared a new star--the _stella nova_ of 1604--not the one Tycho had seen--that was in 1572--but the same that Kepler was so much interested in. Galileo gave a course of three lectures upon it to a great audience. At the first the theatre was overcrowded, so he had to adjourn to a hall holding one thousand persons. At the next he had to lecture in the open air. He took occasion to rebuke his hearers for thronging to hear about an ephemeral novelty, while for the much more wonderful and important truths about the permanent stars and facts of nature they had but deaf ears. But the main point he brought out concerning the new star was that it upset the received Aristotelian doctrine of the immutability of the heavens. According to that doctrine the heavens were unchangeable, perfect, subject neither to growth nor to decay. Here was a body, not a meteor but a real distant star, which had not been visible and which would shortly fade away again, but which meanwhile was brighter than Jupiter. The staff of petrified professorial wisdom were annoyed at the appearance of the star, still more at Galileo's calling public attention to it; and controversy began at Padua. However, he accepted it, and now boldly threw down the gauntlet in favor of the Copernican theory, utterly repudiating the old Ptolemaic system, which up to that time he had taught in the schools according to established custom. The earth no longer the only world to which all else in the firmament were obsequious attendants, but a mere insignificant speck among the host of heaven! Man no longer the centre and cynosure of creation, but, as it were, an insect crawling on the surface of this little speck! All this not set down in crabbed Latin in dry folios for a few learned monks, as in Copernicus' time, but promulgated and argued in rich Italian, illustrated by analogy, by experiment, and with cultured wit; taught not to a few scholars here and there in musty libraries, but proclaimed in the vernacular to the whole populace with all the energy and enthusiasm of a recent convert and a master of language! Had a bombshell been exploded among the fossilized professors it had been less disturbing. But there was worse in store for them. A Dutch optician, Hans Lippershey by name, of Middleburg, had in his shop a curious toy, rigged up, it is said, by an apprentice, and made out of a couple of spectacle lenses, whereby, if one looked through it, the weather-cock of a neighboring church spire was seen nearer and upside down. The tale goes that the Marquis Spinola, happening to call at the shop, was struck with the toy and bought it. He showed it to Prince Maurice of Nassau, who thought of using it for military reconnoitring. All this is trivial. What is important is that some faint and inaccurate echo of this news found its way to Padua and into the ears of Galileo. The seed fell on good soil. All that night he sat up and pondered. He knew about lenses and magnifying-glasses. He had read Kepler's theory of the eye, and had himself lectured on optics. Could he not hit on the device and make an instrument capable of bringing the heavenly bodies nearer? Who knew what marvels he might not so perceive! By morning he had some schemes ready to try, and one of them was successful. Singularly enough it was not the same plan as the Dutch optician's: it was another mode of achieving the same end. He took an old small organ-pipe, jammed a suitably chosen spectacle glass into either end, one convex, the other concave, and, behold! he had the half of a wretchedly bad opera-glass capable of magnifying three times. It was better than the Dutchman's, however: it did not invert. Such a thing as Galileo made may now be bought at a toy-shop for I suppose half a crown, and yet what a potentiality lay in that "glazed optic tube," as Milton called it. Away he went with it to Venice and showed it to the Seigniory, to their great astonishment. "Many noblemen and senators," says Galileo, "though of advanced age, mounted to the top of one of the highest towers to watch the ships, which were visible through my glass two hours before they were seen entering the harbor, for it makes a thing fifty miles off as near and clear as if it were only five." Among the people, too, the instrument excited the greatest astonishment and interest, so that he was nearly mobbed. The Senate hinted to him that a present of the instrument would not be unacceptable, so Galileo took the hint and made another for them. They immediately doubled his salary at Padua, making it one thousand florins, and confirmed him in the enjoyment of it for life. He now eagerly began the construction of a larger and better instrument. Grinding the lenses with his own hands with consummate skill, he succeeded in making a telescope magnifying thirty times. Thus equipped he was ready to begin a survey of the heavens. The first object he carefully examined was naturally the moon. He found there everything at first sight very like the earth, mountains and valleys, craters and plains, rocks, and apparently seas. You may imagine the hostility excited among the Aristotelian philosophers, especially, no doubt, those he had left behind at Pisa, on the ground of his spoiling the pure, smooth, crystalline, celestial face of the moon as they had thought it, and making it harsh and rugged, and like so vile and ignoble a body as the earth. He went further, however, into heterodoxy than this: he not only made the moon like the earth, but he made the earth shine like the moon. The visibility of "the old moon in the new moon's arms" he explained by earth-shine. Leonardo had given the same explanation a century before. Now, one of the many stock arguments against Copernican theory of the earth being a planet like the rest was that the earth was dull and dark and did not shine. Galileo argued that it shone just as much as the moon does, and in fact rather more--especially if it be covered with clouds. One reason of the peculiar brilliancy of Venus is that she is a very cloudy planet.[29] Seen from the moon the earth would look exactly as the moon does to us, only a little brighter and sixteen times as big--four times the diameter. Wherever Galileo turned his telescope new stars appeared. The Milky Way, which had so puzzled the ancients, was found to be composed of stars. Stars that appeared single to the eye were some of them found to be double; and at intervals were found hazy nebulous wisps, some of which seemed to be star clusters, while others seemed only a fleecy cloud. Now we come to his most brilliant, at least his most sensational, discovery. Examining Jupiter minutely on January 7, 1610, he noticed three little stars near it, which he noted down as fixing its then position. On the following night Jupiter had moved to the other side of the three stars. This was natural enough, but was it moving the right way? On examination it appeared not. Was it possible the tables were wrong? The next evening was cloudy, and he had to curb his feverish impatience. On the 10th there were only two, and those on the other side. On the 11th two again, but one bigger than the other. On the 12th the three reappeared, and on the 13th there were four. No more appeared. Jupiter, then, had moons like the earth--four of them in fact!--and they revolved round him in periods which were soon determined. The news of the discovery soon spread and excited the greatest interest and astonishment. Many of course refused to believe it. Some there were who, having been shown them, refused to believe their eyes, and asserted that although the telescope acted well enough for terrestrial objects, it was altogether false and illusory when applied to the heavens. Others took the safer ground of refusing to look through the glass. One of these who would not look at the satellites happened to die soon afterward. "I hope," says Galileo, "that he saw them on his way to heaven." The way in which Kepler received the news is characteristic, though by adding four to the supposed number of planets it might have seemed to upset his notions about the five regular solids. He says: "I was sitting idle at home thinking of you, most excellent Galileo, and your letters, when the news was brought me of the discovery of four planets by the help of the double eye-glass. Wachenfels stopped his carriage at my door to tell me, when such a fit of wonder seized me at a report which seemed so very absurd, and I was thrown into such agitation at seeing an old dispute between us decided in this way, that between his joy, my coloring, and the laughter of us both, confounded as we were by such a novelty, we were hardly capable, he of speaking, or I of listening. "On our separating, I immediately fell to thinking how there could be any addition to the number of planets without overturning my _Mysterium Cosmographicon_, published thirteen years ago, according to which Euclid's five regular solids do not allow more than six planets round the sun. But I am so far from disbelieving the existence of the four circumjovial planets that I long for a telescope to anticipate you if possible in discovering two round Mars--as the proportion seems to me to require--six or eight round Saturn, and one each round Mercury and Venus." As an illustration of the opposite school I will take the following extract from Francesco Sizzi, a Florentine astronomer, who argues against the discovery thus: "There are seven windows in the head--two nostrils, two eyes, two ears, and a mouth; so in the heavens there are two favorable stars, two unpropitious, two luminaries, and Mercury alone undecided and indifferent. From which and many other similar phenomena of nature, such as the seven metals, etc., which it were tedious to enumerate, we gather that the number of planets is necessarily seven. "Moreover, the satellites are invisible to the naked eye, and therefore can have no influence on the earth, and therefore would be useless, and therefore do not exist. "Besides, the Jews and other ancient nations as well as modern Europeans have adopted the division of the week into seven days, and have named them from the seven planets: now if we increase the number of the planets this whole system falls to the ground." To these arguments Galileo replied that whatever their force might be as a reason for believing beforehand that no more than seven planets would be discovered, they hardly seemed of sufficient weight to destroy the new ones when actually seen. Writing to Kepler at this time, Galileo ejaculates: "Oh, my dear Kepler, how I wish that we could have one hearty laugh together! Here, at Padua, is the principal professor of philosophy whom I have repeatedly and urgently requested to look at the moon and planets through my glass, which he pertinaciously refuses to do. Why are you not here? What shouts of laughter we should have at this glorious folly! And to hear the professor of philosophy at Pisa laboring before the Grand Duke with logical arguments, as if with magical incantations, to charm the new planets out of the sky." A young German _protégé_ of Kepler, Martin Horkey, was travelling in Italy, and meeting Galileo at Bologna was favored with a view through his telescope. But supposing that Kepler must necessarily be jealous of such great discoveries, and thinking to please him, he writes: "I cannot tell what to think about these observations. They are stupendous, they are wonderful, but whether they are true or false I cannot tell." He concludes, "I will never concede his four new planets to that Italian from Padua, though I die for it." So he published a pamphlet asserting that reflected rays and optical illusions were the sole cause of the appearance, and that the only use of the imaginary planets was to gratify Galileo's thirst for gold and notoriety. When after this performance he paid a visit to his old instructor Kepler he got a reception which astonished him. However, he pleaded so hard to be forgiven that Kepler restored him to partial favor, on this condition, that he was to look again at the satellites, and this time to see them and own that they were there. By degrees the enemies of Galileo were compelled to confess to the truth of the discovery, and the next step was to outdo him. Scheiner counted five, Rheiter nine, and others went as high as twelve. Some of these were imaginary, some were fixed stars, and four satellites only are known to this day.[30] Here, close to the summit of his greatness, we must leave him for a time. A few steps more and he will be on the brow of the hill; a short piece of table-land, and then the descent begins. In dealing with these historic events will you allow me to repudiate once for all the slightest sectarian bias or meaning? I have nothing to do with Catholic or Protestant as such. I have nothing to do with the Church of Rome as such. I am dealing with the history of science. But historically at one period science and the Church came into conflict. It was not specially one church rather than another--it was the Church in general, the only one that then existed in those countries. Historically, I say, they came into conflict, and historically the Church was the conqueror. It got its way; and science, in the persons of Bruno, Galileo, and several others, was vanquished. Such being the facts, there is no help but to mention them in dealing with the history of science. Doubtless _now_ the Church regards it as an unhappy victory, and gladly would ignore this painful struggle. This, however, is impossible. With their creed the churchmen of that day could act in no other way. They were bound to prosecute heresy, and they were bound to conquer in the struggle or be themselves shattered. But let me insist on the fact that no one accuses the ecclesiastical courts of crime or evil motives. They attacked heresy after their manner, as the civil courts attacked witchcraft after _their_ manner. Both erred grievously, but both acted with the best intentions. We must remember, moreover, that his doctrines were scientifically heterodox, and the university professors of that day were probably quite as ready to condemn them as the Church was. To realize the position we must think of some subjects which _to-day_ are scientifically heterodox, and of the customary attitude adopted toward them by persons of widely differing creeds. If it be contended now, as it is, that the ecclesiastics treated Galileo well, I admit it freely: they treated him as well as they possibly could. They overcame him, and he recanted; but if he had not recanted, if he had persisted in his heresy, they would--well, they would still have treated his soul well, but they would have set fire to his body. Their mistake consisted not in cruelty, but in supposing themselves the arbiters of eternal truth; and by no amount of slurring and glossing over facts can they evade the responsibility assumed by them on account of this mistaken attitude. We left Galileo standing at his telescope and beginning his survey of the heavens. We followed him indeed through a few of his first great discoveries--the discovery of the mountains and other variety of surface in the moon, of the nebulæ and a multitude of faint stars, and lastly of the four satellites of Jupiter. This latter discovery made an immense sensation, and contributed its share to his removal from Padua, which quickly followed it. Before the end of the year 1610 Galileo had made another discovery--this time on Saturn. But to guard against the host of plagiarists and impostors he published it in the form of an anagram, which, at the request of the Emperor Rudolph--a request probably inspired by Kepler--he interpreted; it ran thus: The farthest planet is triple. Very soon after he found that Venus was changing from a full-moon to a half-moon appearance. He announced this also by an anagram, and waited till it should become a crescent, which it did. This was a dreadful blow to the anti-Copernicans, for it removed the last lingering difficulty to the reception of the Copernican doctrine. Copernicus had predicted, indeed, a hundred years before, that, if ever our powers of sight were sufficiently enhanced, Venus and Mercury would be seen to have phases like the moon. And now Galileo with his telescope verifies the prediction to the letter. Here was a triumph for the grand old monk, and a bitter morsel for his opponents. Castelli writes, "This must now convince the most obstinate." But Galileo, with more experience, replies: "You almost make me laugh by saying that these clear observations are sufficient to convince the most obstinate; it seems you have yet to learn that long ago the observations were enough to convince those who are capable of reasoning and those who wish to learn the truth; but that to convince the obstinate and those who care for nothing beyond the vain applause of the senseless vulgar, not even the testimony of the stars would suffice, were they to descend on earth to speak for themselves. Let us, then, endeavor to procure some knowledge for ourselves, and rest contented with this sole satisfaction; but of advancing in popular opinion, or of gaining the assent of the book-philosophers, let us abandon both the hope and the desire." What a year's work it had been! In twelve months observational astronomy had made such a bound as it has never made before or since.[31] Why did not others make any of these observations? Because no one could make telescopes like Galileo. He gathered pupils round him, however, and taught them how to work the lenses, so that gradually these instruments penetrated Europe, and astronomers everywhere verified his splendid discoveries. FOOTNOTES: [29] It is of course the "silver lining" of clouds that outside observers see. [30] A fifth satellite of Jupiter has been recently discovered; and Kepler's guess at two moons for Mars has also been justified. [31] The next year Galileo discovered also the spots upon the sun and estimated roughly its time of rotation. BEGINNING OF BRITISH POWER IN INDIA A.D. 1612 BECKLES WILLSON By chartering the original English East India Company, Queen Elizabeth took the first step toward establishing that empire in the Orient which has since become such an important appanage of the British crown. This oldest English company in India is also called the "Mother Company" and the "John Company." It began English trade with India, and its operations prepared the way for British government in that vast country. After the Portuguese discovery of the passage round Africa, toward the end of the fifteenth century, other European nations for some time appeared to recognize Portugal's exclusive claim to the navigation of that route. In 1510 the Portuguese made a permanent settlement in India at Goa. But during this century the Dutch obtained a foothold in the country, and in 1580 Portugal was conquered by Spain. Dutch enterprise and the Spanish absorption of Portugal's Indian establishments aroused the commercial spirit of England. In 1599 an English association was formed, with a large fund, "for trade to the East Indies." In December, 1600, Queen Elizabeth granted this association a charter, incorporating the "Adventurers" under the title of "the Governor and Company of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies." The company was allowed unlimited rights of purchasing lands, and a fifteen years' monopoly of trade. In 1609 the charter was renewed and made perpetual by James I; but at first the company appears to have done no very extensive business. The beginning of its more active career, in the midst of grave difficulties and conflicts, is well described by Willson, whose history thus covers an important period in the development of India and in the expansion of British power. When the East India Company had been in existence eleven years it possessed hardly more than the rudiments of factories in the Indies, while the Dutch boasted fully a dozen regularly established trading-settlements, from most of which they had ejected the Spaniards and Portuguese. France, no longer restrained by Spain and the Pope, naturally looked jealously on these efforts of Englishmen and Dutchmen to exploit the East to their own advantage. In 1609 we learn that the subjects of Henry IV, "who had long aspired to make themselves strong by sea," took the opportunity of a treaty made between James I and the French King to "set on foot this invention, a society to trade into the East Indies," with a capital of four million crowns. Becher, the English ambassador at Paris, wrote in 1609 to Lord Salisbury that Dutch seamen were being "engaged at great pay and many of their ships bought." The States-General strongly remonstrated against this proceeding, and threatened to "board the French ships wherever they found them, and hang all Flemings found in them." This threat appears to have been effectual, and the project was abandoned. A little later, in 1614, the French again projected taking part in the East India trade, and accounts were current in London concerning ships and patents from King Louis, but this, too, ended lamely and nothing practical was effected for full half a century. The company always had before it the danger of attack by Spanish or Portuguese, and its captains and agents were put perpetually on their guard. But it never seems to have occurred to the court of committees that there was any danger to be apprehended from the Dutch, so that they were all the more astonished and chagrined at the failure to establish trade with the Moluccas, where the natives were so friendly to the English and offered them every facility, but, owing to Dutch oppression, in vain. In the first voyage James Lancaster had established factories at Achin and Bantam. In the second voyage Sir Henry Middleton was instructed to endeavor to found a factory on the island of Banda. He carried on some trade, but neither he nor his successor in the third voyage, Captain Keeling, was able to override the opposition of the Dutch and secure a foothold. In the instructions issued to the last-named he was requested to establish, if possible, a factory at Aden, from whence he was to proceed to the Gulf of Cambay, seeking a good harbor there "for the maintenance of a trade in those parts hereafter in safety from the danger of the Portuguese, or other enemies, endeavoring also to learn whether the King of Cambay or Surat, or any of his havens, be in subjection to the Portuguese--and what havens of his are not?--together with the dangers and depths of the water, there for passage, that by this certain notice and diligent inquiry--which we wish to be set down in writing for the company's better information--whereby we may hereafter attempt further trade there, or otherwise desist." In no fighting mood, therefore, was the company--whatever their servants' views--but prudently inclined to keep out of the way of the once terrible and still dreaded Portuguese. In vain, as we have seen, did Captain Hawkins exert himself to obtain concessions from the Grand Mogul which would survive the displeasure of his European rivals, who had by their ships, arms, and intrigues completely terrified the governors and petty rajahs of the coast. In 1611 Anthony Hippon, in the Globe, sailed for the Coromandel (or Madras) coast with the object of setting a factory, if possible, at Pulicat, and sharing in the port-to-port trade which the Dutch had lately built up there. The idea seems to have originated with a couple of Dutchmen, named Floris and Antheunis, formerly in the Dutch service, who were charged with the management of the business. So far as Pulicat was concerned, the scheme failed, but the captain of the Globe, resolved to land his factory somewhere, lit upon Pettapoli, farther up the coast, where he arrived on August 18, 1611. This was the company's first settlement in the Bay of Bengal. But although the reception from the local governor and the King of Golconda was friendly, yet the place proved to be a deadly swamp and the trade was small. When the landing of certain factors and merchandise had thus taken place at Pettapoli, Captain Hippon set sail farther northward to the ancient port of Masulipatam, which, forming "a coveted roadstead on the open coast line of Madras," was destined to be the theatre of much truculent rivalry between the European traders on the Coromandel coast. Here, on the last day of August, Hippon and Floris landed, and a factory was set up. A cargo of calicoes was duly obtained, whereupon the Globe departed for Bantam and the Far East to seek spices and pepper in exchange. Such were the beginnings of English trade on the east of the Indian peninsula. Two years later the company's servants received from the Hindu King of Vitayanagar a firman to build a fort, written on a leaf of gold--a document which was preserved at Madras until its capture by the French in the next century. Following hard upon their summary dismissal from Surat, Middleton, Hawkins, and the rest, disinclined for their masters' sake to come to close quarters with the Dutch in the Spice Islands, directed their views to the establishment of a factory at Dabul. In this likewise they failed. In despair at not procuring a cargo, they went in for piracy and fierce retaliation upon the Turkish authorities for their treatment of them in the Red Sea. A couple of vessels hailing from Cochin were captured, and some cloves, cinnamon, wax, bales of china silk, and rice were taken out of them and removed to the ship Trade's Increase. In the midst of a lively blockade of the Red Sea ports they were joined by Captain John Saris, with four ships, belonging to the company's eighth voyage, who agreed to lend his forces for whatever the combined fleets undertook, if granted a third of the profits for the benefit of his particular set of subscribers. All this anomalous confusion between the various interests within the same body corporate could have but one issue. The rival commanders took to quarrelling over the disposition of the hundred thousand pieces-of-eight which Middleton hoped to squeeze out of the Governor of Mocha for outrages upon the English fleet. Strife ran high between them, and in the end Saris in the Clove and Towerson in the Hector sailed away from the Red Sea, leaving Middleton and Downton to settle matters on their own account. Powerless to obtain compensation from the Governor of Mocha, Middleton proceeded to make unceremonious levy on all the shipping he could lay his hands upon. On August 16th the Trade's Increase set sail, in company with the Peppercorn, for Tiku, where two others of the company's ships were anchored. Middleton very soon discovered that the Trade's Increase was in a leaky condition; he had hardly got her out of Tiku when she ran aground--for the second time in her brief history. She was floated and brought opposite Pulo Panzang, in Bantam Bay, where the cargo was taken out and stored on shore. The ship, which King James had christened and in which Sir Henry Middleton took such pride, was careened on the beach for repairs. During the process a renegade Spaniard formed a plot to burn her to the water's edge, and one night carried it successfully into execution--a catastrophe which is said to have so affected the doughty old commander, Sir Henry Middleton, that he sickened and died at Bantam, May 24, 1613. The many exploits of Middleton, the _doyen_ of the company's servants in the East, well deserve to be read: the hardships he had suffered, the difficulties he had to contend with, the jealous cabals of which he had been the victim. Among the many insubordinates that prevailed, Captain Nicholas Downton, one of the ablest commanders in the service, was not to be persuaded, despite the plots and schemes occasionally undertaken for that purpose, to abandon the respect and loyalty he owed the old sea-dog. Once, when in the Red Sea, Middleton wrote sharply to Downton for an alleged fault; the latter was filled "with admiration and grief." "Sir," he replied, "I can write nothing so plain, nor with that sincerity, but malicious men, when they list, may make injurious construction; but evil come to me if I meant ill to Sir Henry Middleton or any part of the business. God be judge between him and me, if ever I deserved the least evil thought from him. I desire that he were so much himself that he would neither be led nor carried by any injurious person to abuse an inseparable friend." Wholly ignorant of the fate reserved for Middleton and the "mightie merchantman," the Trade's Increase, Downton resumed command of the Peppercorn and returned direct to England with a full cargo. Many times her timbers sprang aleak on the voyage--for she was but a jerry-built craft at best--but she finally got into the harbor of Waterford, September 13, 1613. Here the rudest of rude welcomes awaited Downton. He was visited by the sheriff and arrested on a warrant from the Earl of Ormond, charged with committing piracy. But, for the present, the plots of his and Middleton's enemies miscarried; their victim was released, and in a few weeks' time was back in the Thames. Downton's proved zeal and endurance won him the applause and favor of the merchant adventurers, and the command of the first voyage under the joint-stock system in the following year. Meanwhile, each year the company had been sending out a small fleet of ships to the East; it was now beginning also to receive communications from its agents and factors, who, as we have seen, were being slowly distributed at various points east of Aden. Irregular as the receipt of these advices was, and incomplete and belated in themselves, they yet were a useful guide to the company in equipping its new ventures. "We are in great hope to get good and peaceful trade at Cambay and Surat," writes Anthony Marlowe to the company from Socotra, "where our ship, by God's grace, is to ride. Our cloth and lead, we hear, will sell well there; our iron not so well as at Aden; that indigo we shall have good store at reasonable rates; and also calicoes and musk, and at Dabul good pepper; so as I hope in God the Hector shall make her voyage at those places and establish a trade there, to the benefit of your worships and the good of our country." For Captain Keeling, Marlowe has many words of praise. "His wisdom, language, and carriage are such as I fear we shall have great want of at Surat in the first settling of our trade." Of some of the other servants of the company Marlowe is not so enthusiastic, and he does not spare his opinion of their characters. In a subsequent letter we are brought right face to face with a very pretty quarrel between Hippon, the master of the Dragon, and his mate, William Tavernour, in which Hawkins tries to act as peacemaker, but is foiled by the bloodthirsty Matthew Mullinux, master of the Hector, who had himself a private grudge against the said Tavernour, or, as is written here, "a poniard in pickle for the space of six months." "And not contented with this (he) afterward came up upon the deck and there before the boatswain and certain of us did most unchristianlike speak these words: that if he might but live to have the opportunity to kill the said Tavernour he would think it to be the happiest day that ever he saw in his life, an it were but with a knife." There seems to have been a surfeit of these internecine brawls for some time to come, and, indeed, stories of dissensions among the servants of the company in the East are plentifully sprinkled throughout its history, both in this century and the next. Of hints for trade the company's agents are profuse in this growing correspondence. "There is an excellent linen," writes one of them, "made at Cape Comorin, and may be brought hither from Cochin in great abundance if the Portugals would be quiet men. It is about two yards broad or better and very strong cloth, and is called _cachade Comoree_. It would certainly sell well in England for sheeting." Here we see the genesis of the calico trade. The company is informed that "if Moorish girdles, Turks, and cloaks will yield any profit, I pray give advice. They are here in abundance and the great chief merchandise. There is also a market for cloth of all kinds of light and pleasing colors, pleasing to the eye, as Venice reds, stamels, some few scarlets for presents, and also to sell to great men, popinjay greens of the brightest dye, cinnamon colors, light dove colors, peach colors, silver colors, light yellows with others like, but no dark or sad colors, for here they are not vendible. Those of the last voyage are yet upon our hands and will not be sold for the monies that they cost in England." Thenceforward, it is to be supposed, the company bought no more of the "suitings of the Puritans," then growing to be the vogue at home. "Of new drinking-glasses, trenchers for sweetmeats, but especially looking-glasses of all sorts and different prices--but not small baubles--some reasonable quantity would be sold to good profit, and I verily suppose that some fair large looking-glass would be highly accepted of this King, for he affects not the value in anything, but rarity in everything, insomuch that some pretty new-fangled toys would give him high content, though their value were small, for he wants no worldly wealth or riches, possessing an inestimable treasury, and is, it is thought, herein far exceeding the Great Turk." Throughout all their reports and epistles the captains and factors appear above all anxious to establish themselves on the mainland, and express much indignation at the conduct of Macarab Khan, the Mogul's vizier, at his juggling with their hopes. "If it please God we attain Surat," sighs one of the factors, "how comfortable it will be to those there, beneficial to the trade, and commodious to your worship." Jostled aside, tormented by the Dutch in the eastern archipelago and by the Turks in the Red Sea, what wonder that the company and its servants now longed to displace the Portuguese in India itself? At home the company had despatched, in 1612, as its tenth expedition, three vessels. They comprised the stout old Dragon, commanded by Captain Thomas Best; the Solomon, alias the James, and the Hoseander. Was the new effort of Best and Kerridge, one of his supercargoes, to establish a factory at Surat to be more successful than that of Middleton in 1610? While the Solomon was forthwith ordered elsewhere in search of trade, Best, with the other two vessels, reached Swally, near the mouth of the Surat River, early in the month of September, 1612. Here Kerridge, disembarking with several companions, was well received by the native merchants and inhabitants, although gaining the disapprobation of the Portuguese. He obtained permission to land some broadcloths, lead, iron, and quicksilver, procuring in exchange for these such Surat merchandise as the company had recommended him to acquire as suitable for the purchase of pepper and spices at Achin and Bantam. In the midst of these agreeable transactions the Portuguese swept down upon the company's men, with four ships, mounting one hundred twenty-four guns, besides a large flotilla of small native galleys. As they advanced, thinking to cut him off and board him, Captain Best perceived, with the intuition of the trained mariner, the weakness of their formation. He called out to Captain Pettie, of the Hoseander, to follow him, and, singling out the two largest of the Portuguese vessels, prepared to dash straight for them, his gunners, half naked, standing ready and alert for the word of command which should begin the fray. But to Best's confusion the Hoseander budged not a rod, being gripped fast by her anchors. In this predicament there was nothing for it. Best must close with the enemy single-handed. Placing his Red Dragon between the Portuguese admiral and vice-admiral, the company's commander gave orders to the gunners, and the battle commenced by the firing of a double broadside, which "well peppered" the enemy, who responded by splintering the Englishman's mainmast and sinking his long-boat. "Having exchanged some forty great shot of each side," reports an eye-witness of the battle to the company, "the night being come they anchored in sight of each other, and the next morning our ships weighed again and began their fight again, which continued some three hours, in which time they drove three of their galleons on the sands. And so our ships came to anchor, and in the afternoon weighed anchor, in which time the flood being come the galleons, with the help of the frigates, were afloat again." Yet there was to be more and fiercer fighting against even greater odds before the Portuguese had had their fill of the English off Swally. After an attempt on their part to set fire to the Hoseander by means of a fire-ship, which utterly failed, and cost the Portuguese a hundred lives, the company's ships sailed away on December 1st, thinking to draw the enemy after them. But not succeeding in this, Best anchored at Moha to await their pleasure. It was not until December 22d that the enemy bore up, having been strengthened by ships and men from Diu. The shores were lined with spectators to see Best gallantly front them with his two ships' colors flying. This time it seemed as if Best and his men were doomed, yet to the astonishment, not merely of the natives and Portuguese, but of the company's servants themselves, they were victorious in this engagement. On the following day, at the close of another battle, the enemy, dazed and staggering from so much fighting and bloodshed, abruptly turned and fled, trailing their wrecked flotilla behind them. Nothing can convey a better idea of the overwhelming superiority of the company gunners and ordnance, as well as of the matchless audacity of their onslaught, than the fact of their having lost but three slain, while the Portuguese list of killed was upward of three hundred. Not only this, but Best's two ships were still in good condition. On December 27th the Dragon and the Hoseander returned triumphantly to Surat, where a number of the company's factors and supercargoes were, as may be imagined, anxiously awaiting them. It was felt by most, on hearing the good news, that the promised firman of the Great Mogul would not be long delayed; but Best, worn out with fighting, was by no means so sanguine, and ordered Aldworth and the other factors to repair on board the fleet at once, with such merchandise as they had. But Aldworth, even after most of the others had given in to the "General's" views, insisted that Best's victory over the Portuguese had removed the opposition of the Mogul, who would surely despatch his firman. This was corroborated by Kerridge, who had gone to Agra to deliver a letter from King James to the Mogul. But Best had no relish for Aldworth's stubbornness, as he called it, and summoned a council "and so required the said Thomas Aldworth to come on board, which he again refused to do, for that he heard certainly the firman was coming." Aldworth's confidence was rewarded, for just as Best was about to depart, Jehangir's decree, granting the company a factory at Surat and at three other places about the Gulf of Cambay, arrived bearing joy to the bosoms of the English traders. At Agra, it appeared from Kerridge's account, he had been admitted to the monarch's chamber, where Jehangir "sat on his bed, newly risen from sleep." In his first letters Kerridge complains of a chilly reception and attributes it to his coming empty-handed. "No other treatment," he says, "is to be expected without continual gifts both to the King and others." The character of Jehangir was described by Kerridge as "extremely proud and covetous," taking himself "to be the greatest monarch in the world," yet a "drunkard" and "given over to vice." The Mogul, however, was very fond of music, and revelled in Robert Trulley's cornet, though virginals were not esteemed, "perhaps because the player was not sufficiently expert," and "it is thought Lawes died with conceit at the King's indifference." Nevertheless, on the whole, Jehangir behaved civilly to the company's envoy, whose success in obtaining an audience was quickly followed up by Aldworth in sending William Edwards, who took with him from Surat "great presents," including portraits of King James and his Queen, and "one that will content the Mogul above all, the picture of Tamberlane, from whence he derives himself." At last, then, the coveted firman "for kind usage of the English, free trade, and so forth," was gained, Edwards remaining in Agra as "lieger" or ambassador, "which will be needful among this inconstant people." By the terms of the firman a duty on imports of 3-1/2 per cent. was to be exacted; but on the other hand no damages were to be claimed for Sir Henry Middleton's piratical exploits, and the company's factories were to be protected by law in event of any calamity overtaking its servants. To Aldworth undoubtedly belongs the credit of having negotiated this concession, but it is doubtful if it would ever have received the imperial sanction had it not been for Best's victory. Even when he had the document in his hands the conqueror was diffident, and could hardly believe the good news. He was "doubtful whether it was the King's firman or not, and, being resolved, would not receive it until some of the chiefs of the city should bring it down unto him to Swally, which in fine they did. And the very day following the receipt of it, being the 4th, the galleons were again in sight, but came not near to proffer fight. Notwithstanding, the general resolved not to make any longer stay there, but took in such goods as were ready, and landed the rest of the cloth, quicksilver, and vermilion, all the elephants' teeth, and some twelve hundred bars of lead, carrying the rest along with him, as also all the pieces-of-eight and iron, and so, the 18th present, departed." In such manner did the company gain at last a certain foothold in the Mogul empire. The factors stationed at the new post reported that Surat was the best situation in India to vend English goods, particularly broadcloths, kerseys, quicksilver, lead, and vermilion, to be exchanged for indigo, calicoes, cotton yarn, and drugs, and added a list of such goods as might annually be disposed of there. They requested the merchant adventurers in London to send them some four thousand pieces of broadcloth, sword-blades, knives, and looking-glasses. They hinted that toys and English bull-dogs should be sent as presents. But the new trade, they were careful to explain, could only be protected by stationing five or six ships in the river at Surat to defend the factory and its occupants against the Portuguese. On his return home Best was summoned to Philport lane to give a detailed account of his exploits, and was considered by the court to have "deserved extraordinarily well." Yet his "great private trade," whereby he had enriched himself, caused some dissatisfaction, and the governor, Sir Thomas Smythe, while admitting that no one could be a fitter commander than Best, thought that "Captain Keeling was far before him for merchandise, and so should command at Surat." But this did not satisfy the victor of Swally. Unless he were allowed private trade he refused to make another voyage for the company, and finally insisted on an investigation into his conduct. The upshot was that the company was "content to remit all that is past and let these things die, which should not have been ripped up had he not called them in question himself." The various inconveniences to the company from the separate classes of adventurers being enabled to fit out equipments on their own particular portions of stock, finally evoked a change in the constitution of the company. In 1612 it was resolved that in future the trade should be carried on by means of a joint stock only, and on the basis of this resolution the then prodigious sum of four hundred twenty-nine thousand pounds was subscribed. Although portions of this capital were applied to the fitting out of four voyages, the general instructions to the commanders were given in the name and by the authority of the governor, deputy governor, and committees of the Company of Merchants of London trading to the East Indies. The whole commerce of the company was now a joint concern, and the embarrassing principle of trading on separate ventures came to an end. Experience had amply demonstrated that detached equipments exposed the whole trade to danger in the East, in their efforts to establish trade. The first twelve voyages were, therefore, regarded in the light of an experiment to establish a solid commerce between England and India. Upon such terms the period known as the first joint stock was entered upon, which comprised four voyages between the years 1613 and 1616. The purchase, repair, and equipment of vessels during these four years amounted to two hundred seventy-two thousand five hundred forty-four pounds, which, with the stock and cargoes, made up the total sum raised among the members at the beginning of the period, viz., four hundred twenty-nine thousand pounds. Under this new system Captain Downton was given command of the fleet, in the company's merchantmen, the New Year's Gift, thus named because it had been launched on January 1st--an armed ship of five hundred fifty tons--and three other vessels. Downton went equipped with legal as well as military implements. King James made him master of the lives of the crews, and empowered him to use martial law in cases of insubordination. "We are not ignorant," said the monarch, in the royal commission which he vouchsafed to the company's commander, "of the emulation and envy which doth accompany the discovery of countries and trade, and of the quarrels and contentions which do many times fall out between the subjects of divers princes when they meet the one with the other in foreign and far remote countries in prosecuting the course of their discoveries." Consequently Captain Downton was warned not to stir up bad blood among the nations, but if he should be by the company's rivals unjustly provoked he was at liberty to retaliate, but not to keep to himself any spoils he might take, which were to be rendered account of, as by ancient usage, to the King. Before Downton could reach his destination, the chief energies of the company's agents in India appear to have been bent upon forming a series of exchanges between the west coast and the factory at Bantam. The little band of servants at the new factory at Surat, headed by the redoubtable Aldworth, gave it as their opinion not only that sales of English goods could be effected at this port, but that they might be pushed to the inland markets and the adjoining seaports. Aldworth stated that in his journey to Ahmedabad he had passed through the cities of Baroche and Baroda, and had discovered that cotton, yarn and "baftees" could be bought cheaper from the manufacturers in that country than at Surat. At Ahmedabad he was able to buy indigo at a low rate, but in order to establish such a trade capital of from twelve to fifteen thousand pounds was required to be constantly in the hands of the factor. It was thought at Surat that it would be expedient to fix a resident at the Mogul's court at Agra to solicit the protection of that monarch and his ministers. Downton arrived at Surat, October 15, 1614, to find the attitude of the Portuguese toward the English more than ever hostile. At the same time trouble impended between the Portuguese and the Nawab of Surat. In order to demolish all opposition at one blow, the former collected their total naval force at Goa for a descent upon both natives and new-comers at Surat. Their force consisted of six large galleons, several smaller vessels, and sixty native barges, or "frigates" as they were called, the whole carrying a hundred thirty-four guns and manned by twenty-six hundred Europeans and six thousand natives. To meet this fleet, Downton had but his four ships, and three or four Indian-built vessels called "galivats," manned altogether with less than six hundred men. The appearance of the Portuguese was the signal for fright and submission on the part of the Nawab; but his suit was contemptuously spurned by the Viceroy of Goa, who, on January 20th, advanced upon the company's little fleet. He did not attempt to force the northern entrance of Swally Hole, where the English lay, which would have necessitated an approach singly, but sent on a squadron of the native "frigates" to cross the shoal, surround and attack the Hope, the smallest of the English ships, and board her. But in this they were foiled after a severe conflict. Numbers of the boarders were slain and drowned, and their frigates burned to the water's edge. Again and again during the ensuing three weeks did the Portuguese make efforts to dislodge the English; but the dangerous fire-ships they launched were evaded by night and their onslaught repulsed by day, and so at length, with a loss of five hundred men, the Portuguese viceroy, on February 13th, withdrew. His withdrawal marked a triumph for the company's men. Downton was received in state by the overjoyed Nawab, who presented him with his own sword, "the hilt of massive gold, and in lieu thereof," says Downton, "I returned him my suit, being sword, dagger, girdle, and hangers, by me much esteemed of, and which made a great deal better show, though of less value." A week later Downton set out with his great fleet for Bantam. Just off the coast the enemy's fleet was again sighted approaching from the west. For three days the English were in momentary apprehension of an attack, but the Viceroy thought better of it, and on the 6th "bore up with the shore and gave over the hopes of their fortunes by further following of us." DUTCH SETTLEMENT OF NEW YORK A.D. 1614 DAVID T. VALENTINE Greater fame ordinarily attaches to the discovery of some vast region of the earth than to the finding or exploring of a limited coast, district, or river-course. There are, however, some instances in which geographical conditions or historical developments magnify the seemingly lesser achievements. This has been the case with Henry Hudson's timely exploration of the river called after him. The enterprising Dutch people, under whose auspices he accomplished this brilliant feat, had just emerged from their long contest with Spain. The return of peace to the Netherlands found many active spirits in readiness for fresh adventures, and Hudson's work opened for them a new and inviting field. Increasing celebrity gathered about the name of Hudson from the very first settlements in the remarkable region which he made known to the world, and which was destined to become the seat of the world's second--perhaps of its greatest--metropolis, and the home of an imperial commonwealth. The simple beginnings of this mighty growth are as simply but quite adequately told in the following pages from the historian of New York city. Having explored the river which bears his name, Hudson put to sea on October 4th, making directly for Europe, with news of his discovery of this fine river and its adjacent country, which he described as offering every inducement for settlers or traders that could be desired. Besides the fertility of the soil, which was satisfactorily shown by the great abundance of grain and vegetables found in the possession of the Indians, a still more enticing prospect was held out to the view of the merchant, in the abundance of valuable furs observed in the country, which were to be had at a very little cost. Hudson had, therefore, scarcely made publicly known the character of the country visited by him when several merchants of Amsterdam fitted out trading-vessels and despatched them to this river. Their returns were highly satisfactory, and arrangements were immediately made to establish a settled agency here to superintend the collection of the furs and the trade with the Indians while the ships should be on their long journey between the two hemispheres. The agents thus employed pitched their cabins on the south point of Manhattan Island, the head man being Hendrick Corstiaensen, who was still the chief of the settlement in 1614, at which period an English ship sailing along the coast from Virginia entered the harbor on a visit of observation. Finding Corstiaensen here, with his company of traders, the English captain summoned him to acknowledge the jurisdiction of Virginia over the country or else to depart. The former alternative was chosen by the trader, and he agreed to pay a small tribute to the Governor of Virginia in token of his right of dominion. The Dutch were thereupon left to prosecute their trade without further molestation. The government of Holland did not, however, recognize the claims of England to jurisdiction over the whole American coast, and took measures to encourage the discovery and appropriation of additional territory, by a decree giving to discoverers of new countries the exclusive privilege of trading thither for four successive voyages, to the exclusion of all other persons. This enactment induced several merchants to fit out five small ships for coasting along the American shores in this vicinity. One of these vessels, commanded by Captain Block, soon after its arrival on the coast, was accidentally destroyed by fire. Block immediately began the construction of another, of thirty-eight-feet keel, forty-four and a half feet on deck, and eleven and a half feet beam, which was the first vessel launched in the waters of New York. She was called the Unrest, or Restless, and ploughed her keel through the waters of Hell Gate and the Sound, the pioneer of all other vessels except the bark canoes of the aboriginal inhabitants. The several ships despatched on this exploring expedition having returned to Holland, from their journals and surveys a map of a large extent of country was made, over which the Dutch claimed jurisdiction, and to which they gave the name of "New Netherlands." The owners of these vessels, as the reward of their enterprise, were granted the promised monopoly of trade hither for four voyages, to be completed within three years, commencing on January 1, 1615. These merchants seemed to have been composed in part of those who had established the first trading-post here, but having increased their number and capital, and enlarged their former designs of trade, formed themselves into a company under the name of the "United New Netherlands Company." Corstiaensen was continued the principal agent here, and they likewise established a post at the head of the river, on an island opposite the present site of Albany. Forts, of a rude description--being merely enclosures of high palisades--were erected at both places. The privileges granted to the United New Netherlands Company being, however, limited in respect to time, their establishment on this island can hardly be considered as a permanent settlement; the cabins of the settlers were nearly of equal rudeness with those of their Indian neighbors; and but few of the luxuries of civilization found their way into their habitations. The great object of the settlement was, however, successfully carried on, and stores of furs were in readiness to freight the ships on their periodical visits from the fatherland. No interruption of the friendly intercourse carried on with the Indians took place, but, on the contrary, the whites were abundantly supplied by the natives with food and most other necessaries of life, without personal labor and at trifling cost. The Indian tribes in the neighborhood of this trading-post were the Manhattans, occupying this island; the Pachamies, the Tankiteks, and the Wickqueskeeks, occupying the country on the east side of Hudson River south of the Highlands; the Hackingsacks and the Raritans on the west side of the river and the Jersey shore; the Canarsees, the Rockways, the Merrikokes, the Marsapeagues, the Mattinecocks, the Nissaquages, the Corchaugs, the Secataugs, and the Shinecocks on Long Island. The trade of this colony of settlers was sufficiently profitable to render its permanency desirable to the United New Netherlands Company, as it is found that at the termination of their grant, in the year 1618, they endeavored to procure from the government in Holland an extension of their term, but did not succeed in obtaining more than a special license, expiring yearly, which they held for two or three subsequent years. In the mean time a more extensive association had been formed among the merchants and capitalists in Holland, which in the year 1621, having matured its plans and projects, received a charter under the title of the West India Company. Their charter gave them the exclusive privilege of trade on the whole American coast, both of the northern and southern continents, so far as the jurisdiction of Holland extended. This great company was invested with most of the functions of a distinct and separate government. It was allowed to appoint governors and other officers; to settle the forms of administering justice; to make Indian treaties and to enact laws. Having completed arrangements for the organization of its government in New Netherlands, the West India Company despatched its pioneer vessel hither in the year 1623. This was the ship New Netherlands, a stanch vessel, which continued her voyages to this port as a regular packet for more than thirty years subsequently. On board the New Netherlands were thirty families to begin the colony. This colony being designed for a settlement at the head of the river, the vessel landed her passengers and freight near the present site of Albany, where a settlement was established. The return cargo of the New Netherlands was five hundred otter-skins, one thousand five hundred beavers, and other freight valued at about twelve thousand dollars. It having been determined that the head-quarters of the company's establishment in New Netherlands should be fixed on Manhattan Island, preparations for a more extensive colony to be planted here were made, and in 1625 two ships cleared from Holland for this place. On board of these vessels were shipped one hundred three head of cattle, together with stallions, mares, hogs, and sheep in a proportionate number. Accompanying these were a considerable number of settlers, with their families, supplied with agricultural implements and seed for planting, household furniture, and the other necessaries for establishing the colony. Other ships followed with similar freight, and the number of emigrants amounted to about two hundred souls. On the arrival of the ships in the harbor the cattle were landed in the first instance on the island now called Governor's Island, where they were left on pasturage until convenient arrangements could be made on the mainland to prevent their straying in the woods. The want of water, however, compelled their speedy transfer to Manhattan Island, where, being put on the fresh grass, they generally throve well, although about twenty died, in the course of the season, from eating some poisonous vegetable. The settlers commenced their town by staking out a fort on the south point of the island, under the direction of one Kryn Frederick, an engineer sent along with them for that purpose; and a horse-mill having been erected, the second story of that building was so constructed as to afford accommodations for the congregation for religious purposes. The habitations of the settlers were of the simplest construction, little better, indeed, than those of their predecessors. A director-general had been sent to superintend the interests of the company in this country, in the person of Peter Minuit, who, in the year 1626, purchased Manhattan Island from the Indian proprietors for the sum of sixty guilders, or twenty-four dollars, by which the title to the whole island, containing about twenty-two thousand acres, became vested in the West India Company. The success of the company proved itself, for a short period, by the rise in the value of its stock, which soon stood at a high premium in Holland. Various interests, however, were at work in the company to turn its advantages to individual account, and in 1628 an act was passed under the title of "Freedoms and Exemptions granted to all such as shall plant Colonies in New Netherlands." This edict gave, to such persons as should send over a colony of fifty souls above fifteen years old, the title of "patroons," and the privileges of selecting any land, except on the island of Manhattan, for a distance of eight miles on each side of any river, and so far inland as should be thought convenient; the company stipulating, however, that all the products of the plantations thus established should be first brought to the Manhattans, before being sent elsewhere, for trade. They also reserved to themselves the sole trade with the Indians for peltries in all places where they had an agency established. With respect to such private persons as should emigrate at their own expense, they were allowed as much land as they could properly improve, upon satisfying the Indians therefor. These privileges gave an impetus to emigration, and assisted, in a great degree, in permanently establishing the settlement of the country. But from this era commenced the decay of the profits of the company, as with all its vigilance it could not restrain the inhabitants from surreptitiously engaging in the Indian trade, and drawing thence a profit which would otherwise have gone into the public treasury. HARVEY DISCOVERS THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD A.D. 1616 THOMAS H. HUXLEY Contemporary with Galileo, and ranking but little below him in influence upon the modern world, was William Harvey. Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood, combined with the truly scientific methods by which he reached, and afterward proved, his great result, has placed his name high on the roll of science. Not only does his work stand at the foundation of modern anatomy and medicine, but it has given him place in the ranks of great philosophers as well. Huxley, himself so long and justly renowned in modern science, rises to enthusiasm in the following account of his mighty predecessor. Harvey was born at Folkestone, England, in 1578, and lived till 1657. He was educated as a physician, studying at Padua in Italy, and was early appointed a lecturer in the London College of Physicians. In his lectures, somewhere about the year 1616 or a little later, he began to explain his new doctrine to his students; but it was not until the publication of his book _Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis_, in 1628, that the theory spread beyond his immediate circle. Huxley's account will perhaps give a clearer idea of Harvey's relation to his predecessors and contemporaries, and of the value of his services to mankind, than would a far longer biography of the great physician, physiologist, and anatomist. Many opinions have been held respecting the exact nature and value of Harvey's contributions to the elucidation of the fundamental problem of the physiology of the higher animals; from those which deny him any merit at all--indeed, roundly charge him with the demerit of plagiarism--to those which enthrone him in a position of supreme honor among great discoverers in science. Nor has there been less controversy as to the method by which Harvey obtained the results which have made his name famous. I think it is desirable that no obscurity should hang around these questions; and I add my mite to the store of disquisitions on Harvey, in the hope that it may help to throw light upon several points about which darkness has accumulated, partly by accident and partly by design. About the year B.C. 300 a great discovery, that of the valves of the heart, was made by Erasistratus. This anatomist found, around the opening by which the vena cava communicates with the right ventricle, three triangular membranous folds, disposed in such a manner as to allow any fluid contained in the vein to pass into the ventricle, but not back again. The opening of the vena arteriosa into the right ventricle is quite distinct from that of the vena cava; and Erasistratus observed that it is provided with three pouch-like, half-moon-shaped valves; the arrangement of which is such that a fluid can pass out of the ventricle into the vena arteriosa, but not back again. Three similar valves were found at the opening of the aorta into the left ventricle. The arteria venosa had a distinct opening into the same ventricle, and this was provided with triangular membranous valves, like those on the right side, but only two in number. Thus the ventricles had four openings, two for each; and there were altogether eleven valves, disposed in such a manner as to permit fluids to enter the ventricles from the vena cava and the arteria venosa respectively, and to pass out of the ventricles by the vena arteriosa and the aorta respectively, but not to go the other way. It followed from this capital discovery that, if the contents of the heart are fluid, and if they move at all, they can only move in one way; namely, from the vena cava, through the ventricle, and toward the lungs, by the vena arteriosa, on the right side; and, from the lungs, by way of the arteria venosa, through the ventricle, and out by the aorta for distribution in the body, on the left side. Erasistratus thus, in a manner, laid the foundations of the theory of the motion of the blood. But it was not given to him to get any further. What the contents of the heart were, and whether they moved or not, was a point which could be determined only by experiment. And, for want of sufficiently careful experimentation, Erasistratus strayed into a hopelessly misleading path. Observing that the arteries are usually empty of blood after death, he adopted the unlucky hypothesis that this is their normal condition, and that during life they are filled with air. And it will be observed that it is not improbable that Erasistratus' discovery of the valves of the heart and of their mechanical action strengthened him in this view. For, as the arteria venosa branches out in the lungs, what more likely than that its ultimate ramifications absorb the air which is inspired; and that this air, passing into the left ventricle, is then pumped all over the body through the aorta, in order to supply the vivifying principle which evidently resides in the air; or, it may be, of cooling the too great heat of the blood? How easy to explain the elastic bounding feel of a pulsating artery by the hypothesis that it is full of air! Had Erasistratus only been acquainted with the structure of insects, the analogy of their tracheal system would have been a tower of strength to him. There was no _prima-facie_ absurdity in his hypothesis--and experiment was the sole means of demonstrating its truth or falsity. More than four hundred years elapsed before the theory of the motion of the blood returned once more to the strait road which leads truthward; and it was brought back by the only possible method, that of experiment. A man of extraordinary genius, Claudius Galenus, of Pergamus, was trained to anatomical and physiological investigation in the great schools of Alexandria, and spent a long life in incessant research, teaching, and medical practice. More than one hundred fifty treatises from his pen, on philosophical, literary, scientific, and practical topics, are extant; and there is reason to believe that they constitute not more than a third of his works. No former anatomist had reached his excellence, while he may be regarded as the founder of experimental physiology. And it is precisely because he was a master of the experimental method that he was able to learn more about the motions of the heart and of the blood than any of his predecessors, and to leave to posterity a legacy of knowledge which was not substantially increased for more than thirteen hundred years. The conceptions of the structures of the heart and vessels, of their actions, and of the motion of the blood in them, which Galen entertained, are not stated in a complete shape in any one of his numerous works. But a careful collation of the various passages in which these conceptions are expressed leaves no doubt upon my mind that Galen's views respecting the structure of the organs concerned were, for the most part, as accurate as the means of anatomical analysis at his command permitted; and that he had exact and consistent, though by no means equally just, notions of the actions of these organs and of the movements of the blood. Starting from the fundamental facts established by Erasistratus respecting the structure of the heart and the working of its valves, Galen's great service was the proof, by the only evidence which could possess demonstrative value; namely, by that derived from experiments upon living animals, that the arteries are as much full of blood during life as the veins are, and that the left cavity of the heart, like the right, is also filled with blood. Galen, moreover, correctly asserted--though the means of investigation at his disposition did not allow him to prove the fact--that the ramifications of the vena arteriosa in the substance of the lungs communicate with those of the arteria venosa, by direct, though invisible, passages, which he terms anastomoses; and that, by means of these communications, a certain portion of the blood of the right ventricle of the heart passes through the lungs into the left ventricle. In fact, Galen is quite clear as to the existence of a current of blood through the lungs, though not of such a current as we now know traverses them. For, while he believed that a part of the blood of the right ventricle passes through the lungs, and even, as I shall show, described at length the mechanical arrangements by which he supposes this passage to be effected, he considered that the greater part of the blood in the right ventricle passes directly, through certain pores in the septum, into the left ventricle. And this was where Galen got upon his wrong track, without which divergence a man of his scientific insight must infallibly have discovered the true character of the pulmonary current, and not improbably have been led to anticipate Harvey. The best evidence of the state of knowledge respecting the motions of the heart and blood in Harvey's time is afforded by those works of his contemporaries which immediately preceded the publication of the _Exercitatio Anatomica_, in 1628. And none can be more fitly cited for this purpose than the _de Humani Corporis Fabrica_, Book X, of Adrian van den Spieghel, who, like Harvey, was a pupil of Fabricius of Aquapendente, and was of such distinguished ability and learning that he succeeded his master in the chair of anatomy of Padua. Van den Spieghel, or Spigelius, as he called himself in accordance with the fashion of those days, died comparatively young, in 1625, and his work was edited by his friend Daniel Bucretius, whose preface is dated 1627. The accounts of the heart and vessels, and of the motion of the blood, which it contains, are full and clear; but, beyond matters of detail, they go beyond Galen in only two points; and with respect to one of these, Spigelius was in error. The first point is the "pulmonary circulation," which is taught as Realdus Columbus taught it nearly eighty years before. The second point is, so far as I know, peculiar to Spigelius himself. He thinks that the pulsation of the arteries has an effect in promoting the motion of the blood contained in the veins which accompany them. Of the true course of the blood as a whole, Spigelius has no more suspicion than had any other physiologist of that age, except William Harvey; no rumor of whose lectures at the College of Physicians, commenced six years before Spieghel's death, was likely in those days of slow communication and in the absence of periodical publications to have reached Italy. Now, let anyone familiar with the pages of Spigelius take up Harvey's treatise and mark the contrast. The main object of the _Exercitatio_ is to put forth and demonstrate by direct experimental and other accessory evidence a proposition which is far from being hinted at either by Spigelius or by any of his contemporaries or predecessors, and which is in diametrical contradiction to the views respecting the course of the blood in the veins which are expounded in their works. From Galen to Spigelius, they one and all believed that the blood in the vena cava and its branches flows from the main trunk toward the smaller ramifications. There is a similar consensus in the doctrine that the greater part, if not the whole, of the blood thus distributed by the veins is derived from the liver; in which organ it is generated out of the materials brought from the alimentary canal by means of the vena portæ. And all Harvey's predecessors further agree in the belief that only a small fraction of the total mass of the venous blood is conveyed by the vena arteriosa to the lungs and passes by the arteria venosa to the left ventricle, thence to be distributed over the body by the arteries. Whether some portion of the refined and "pneumatic" arterial blood traversed the anastomotic channels, the existence of which was assumed, and so reached the systemic veins, or whether, on the contrary, some portion of the venous blood made its entrance by the same passages into the arteries, depended upon circumstances. Sometimes the current might set one way, sometimes the other. In direct opposition to these universally received views Harvey asserts that the natural course of the blood in the veins is from the peripheral ramifications toward the main trunk; that the mass of the blood to be found in the veins at any moment was a short time before contained in the arteries, and has simply flowed out of the latter into the veins; and, finally, that the stream of blood which runs from the arteries into the veins is constant, continuous, and rapid. According to the view of Harvey's predecessors, the veins may be compared to larger and smaller canals, fed by a spring which trickles into the chief canals, whence the water flows to the rest. The heart and lungs represent an engine set up in the principal canal to aerate some of the water and scatter it all over the garden. Whether any of this identical water came back to the engine or not would be a matter of chance, and it would certainly have no sensible effect on the motion of the water in the canals. In Harvey's conception of the matter, on the other hand, the garden is watered by channels so arranged as to form a circle, two points of which are occupied by propulsive engines. The water is kept moving in a continual round within its channels, as much entering the engines on one side as leaves them on the other; and the motion of the water is entirely due to the engines. It is in conceiving the motion of the blood, as a whole, to be circular, and in ascribing that circular motion simply and solely to the contractions of the walls of the heart, that Harvey is so completely original. Before him, no one, that I can discover, had ever so much as dreamed that a given portion of blood, contained, for example, in the right ventricle of the heart, may, by the mere mechanical operation of the working of that organ, be made to return to the very place from which it started, after a long journey through the lungs and through the body generally. And it should be remembered that it is to this complete circuit of the blood alone that the term "circulation" can, in strictness, be applied. It is of the essence of a circular motion that that which moves returns to the place from whence it started. Hence the discovery of the course of the blood from the right ventricle, through the lungs, to the left ventricle was in no wise an anticipation of the discovery of the circulation of the blood. For the blood which traverses this part of its course no more describes a circle than the dweller in a street who goes out of his own house and enters his next-door neighbor's does so. Although there may be nothing but a party wall between him and the room he has just left, it constitutes an efficient _défense de circuler_. Thus, whatever they may have known of the so-called pulmonary circulation, to say that Servetus or Columbus or Cæsalpinus deserves any share of the credit which attaches to Harvey appears to me to be to mistake the question at issue. It must further be borne in mind that the determination of the true course taken by the whole mass of the blood is only the most conspicuous of the discoveries of Harvey; and that his analysis of the mechanism by which the circulation is brought about is far in advance of anything which had previously been published. For the first time it is shown that the walls of the heart are active only during its systole or contraction, and that the dilatation of the heart, in the diastole, is purely passive. Whence it follows that the impulse by which the blood is propelled is a _vis à tergo_, and that the blood is not drawn into the heart by any such inhalent or suctorial action as not only the predecessors, but many of the successors, of Harvey imagined it to possess. Harvey is no less original in his view of the cause of the arterial pulse. In contravention of Galen and of all other anatomists up to his own time, he affirms that the stretching of the arteries which gives rise to the pulse is not due to the active dilatation of their walls, but to their passive distention by the blood which is forced into them at each beat of the heart; reversing Galen's dictum, he says that they dilate as bags and not as bellows. This point of fundamental, practical as well as theoretical, importance is most admirably demonstrated, not only by experiment, but by pathological illustrations. One of the weightiest arguments in Harvey's demonstration of the circulation is based upon the comparison of the quantity of blood driven out of the heart, at each beat, with the total quantity of blood in the body. This, so far as I know, is the first time that quantitative considerations are taken into account in the discussion of a physiological problem. But one of the most striking differences between ancient and modern physiological science, and one of the chief reasons of the rapid progress of physiology in the last half-century, lies in the introduction of exact quantitative determinations into physiological experimentation and observation. The moderns use means of accurate measurement which their forefathers neither possessed nor could conceive, inasmuch as they are products of mechanical skill of the last hundred years, and of the advance of branches of science which hardly existed, even in germ, in the seventeenth century. Having attained to a knowledge of the circulation of the blood, and of the conditions on which its motion depends, Harvey had a ready deductive solution for problems which had puzzled the older physiologists. Thus the true significance of the valves in the veins became at once apparent. Of no importance while the blood is flowing in its normal course toward the heart, they at once oppose any accidental reversal of its current which may arise from the pressure of adjacent muscles or the like. And in like manner the swelling of the veins on the farther side of the ligature, which so much troubled Cæsalpinus, became at once intelligible as the natural result of the damming up of the returning current. In addition to the great positive results which are contained in the treatise which Harvey modestly calls an _Exercise_ and which is, in truth, not so long as many a pamphlet about some wholly insignificant affair, its pages are characterized by such precision and simplicity of statement, such force of reasoning, and such a clear comprehension of the methods of inquiry and of the logic of physical science, that it holds a unique rank among physiological monographs. Under this aspect, I think I may fairly say that it has rarely been equalled and never surpassed. Such being the state of knowledge among his contemporaries, and such the immense progress effected by Harvey, it is not wonderful that the publication of the _Exercitatio_ produced a profound sensation. And the best indirect evidence of the originality of its author, and of the revolutionary character of his views, is to be found in the multiplicity and the virulence of the attacks to which they were at once subjected. Riolan, of Paris, had the greatest reputation of any anatomist of those days, and he followed the course which is usually adopted by the men of temporary notoriety toward those of enduring fame. According to Riolan, Harvey's theory of the circulation was not true; and besides that, it was not new; and, furthermore, he invented a mongrel doctrine of his own, composed of the old views with as much of Harvey's as it was safe to borrow, and tried therewith to fish credit for himself out of the business. In fact, in wading through these forgotten controversies, I felt myself quite at home. Substitute the name of Darwin for that of Harvey, and the truth that history repeats itself will come home to the dullest apprehension. It was said of the doctrine of the circulation of the blood that nobody over forty could be got to adopt it; and I think I remember a passage in the _Origin of Species_ to the effect that its author expects to convert only young and flexible minds. There is another curious point of resemblance in the fact that even those who gave Harvey their general approbation and support sometimes failed to apprehend the value of some of those parts of his doctrine which are, indeed, merely auxiliary to the theory of the circulation, but are only a little less important than it. Harvey's great friend and champion, Sir George Ent, is in this case; and I am sorry to be obliged to admit that Descartes falls under the same reprehension. This great philosopher, mathematician, and physiologist, whose conception of the phenomena of life as the results of mechanism is now playing as great a part in physiological science as Harvey's own discovery, never fails to speak with admiration, as Harvey gratefully acknowledges, of the new theory of the circulation. And it is astonishing--I had almost said humiliating--to find that even he is unable to grasp Harvey's profoundly true view of the nature of the systole and the diastole, or to see the force of the quantitative argument. He adduces experimental evidence against the former position, and is even further from the truth than Galen was, in his ideas of the physical cause of the circulation. Yet one more parallel with Darwin. In spite of all opposition, the doctrine of the circulation propounded by Harvey was, in its essential features, universally adopted within thirty years of the time of its publication. Harvey's friend, Thomas Hobbes, remarked that he was the only man, in his experience, who had the good-fortune to live long enough to see a new doctrine accepted by the world at large. It is, I believe, a cherished belief of Englishmen that Francis Bacon, Viscount St. Albans and sometime lord chancellor of England, invented that "inductive philosophy" of which they speak with almost as much respect as they do of church and state; and that, if it had not been for this "Baconian induction," science would never have extricated itself from the miserable condition in which it was left by a set of hair-splitting folk known as the ancient Greek philosophers. To be accused of departing from the canons of the Baconian philosophy is almost as bad as to be charged with forgetting your aspirates; it is understood as a polite way of saying that you are an entirely absurd speculator. Now the _Novum Organon_ was published in 1620, while Harvey began to teach the doctrine of the circulation, in his public lectures, in 1619. Acquaintance with the Baconian induction, therefore, could not have had much to do with Harvey's investigations. The _Exercitatio_, however, was not published till 1628. Do we find in it any trace of the influence of the _Novum Organon_? Absolutely none. So far from indulging in the short-sighted and profoundly unscientific depreciation of the ancients in which Bacon indulges, Harvey invariably speaks of them with that respect which the faithful and intelligent study of the fragments of their labors that remain to us must inspire in everyone who is practically acquainted with the difficulties with which they had to contend, and which they so often mastered. And, as to method, Harvey's method is the method of Galen, the method of Realdus Columbus, the method of Galileo, the method of every genuine worker in science either in the past or the present. On the other hand, judged strictly by the standard of his own time, Bacon's ignorance of the progress which science had up to that time made is only to be equalled by his insolence toward men in comparison with whom he was the merest sciolist. Even when he had some hearsay knowledge of what has been done, his want of acquaintance with the facts and his abnormal deficiency in what I may call the scientific sense, prevent him from divining its importance. Bacon could see nothing remarkable in the chief contributions to science of Copernicus or of Kepler or of Galileo; Gilbert, his fellow-countryman, is the subject of a sneer; while Galen is bespattered with a shower of impertinences, which reach their climax in the epithets "puppy" and "plague." I venture to think that if Francis Bacon, instead of spending his time in fabricating fine phrases about the advancement of learning, in order to play, with due pomp, the part which he assigned to himself of "trumpeter" of science, had put himself under Harvey's instructions, and had applied his quick wit to discover and methodize the logical process which underlaid the work of that consummate investigator, he would have employed his time to better purpose, and, at any rate, would not have deserved the just but sharp judgment which follows: "that his [Bacon's] method is impracticable cannot I think be denied, if we reflect, not only that it has never produced any result, but also that the process by which scientific truths have been established cannot be so presented as even to appear to be in accordance with it." I quote from one of Mr. Ellis' contributions to the great work of Bacon's most learned, competent, and impartial biographer, Mr. Spedding. Few of Harvey's sayings are recorded, but Aubrey tells us that someone having enlarged upon the merits of the Baconian philosophy in his presence, "Yes," said Harvey, "he writes philosophy like a chancellor." On which pithy reply diverse persons will put diverse interpretations. The illumination of experience may possibly tempt a modern follower of Harvey to expound the dark saying thus: "So this servile courtier, this intriguing politician, this unscrupulous lawyer, this witty master of phrases proposes to teach me my business in the intervals of his. I have borne with Riolan; let me also be patient with him." At any rate, I have no better reading to offer. In the latter half of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries the future of physical science was safe enough in the hands of Gilbert, Galileo, Harvey, Descartes, and the noble army of investigators who flocked to their standard and followed up the advance of their leaders. I do not believe that their wonderfully rapid progress would have been one whit retarded if the _Novum Organon_ had never seen the light; while, if Harvey's little _Exercise_ had been lost, physiology would have stood still until another Harvey was born into the world. THE "DEFENESTRATION" AT PRAGUE THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR A.D. 1618 SAMUEL R. GARDINER CHARLES F. HORNE As the last great struggle between the contending sects of Europe for political as well as spiritual power the Thirty Years' War was one of the most important conflicts of the modern age. It was mainly carried on in the German states, but during its later stages all the great European powers were involved. The horrors of its battles and sieges have often been painted. Among the direct causes of the war--the great general cause being the standing antagonism between Catholics and Protestants--was a clause in the Peace of Augsburg (1555) which remained a source of friction. It provided that any ecclesiastical prince who became Protestant must surrender the lands as well as the authority of his office. In many instances this clause was disregarded by the Protestants, who from the first felt it to be unjust. Until the accession of Rudolph II (1576) as Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, there was no imperial intolerance, and Protestantism rapidly spread. But the harsh dealings of Rudolph with the Protestants provoked resentment. In 1607 Donauworth, a free Protestant city, was seized by the Catholic Duke of Bavaria. Next year the German Protestants formed the defensive Evangelical Union. Meanwhile Rudolph's policy only reacted in favor of the Protestant nobles. In 1611 his brother Matthias supplanted him as King of Bohemia, and in 1612 Rudolph died and Matthias succeeded to the imperial throne. The outbreak of the Thirty Years' War followed upon a revolution in Bohemia, which was precipitated by Rudolph's attempt to evade the Royal Charter, extorted from him in 1609 by the estates. Its chief feature was a guarantee of freedom of conscience to Bohemians so long as they adhered to certain recognized creeds; but it also involved questions of authority over lands with respect to their use for religious purposes. The difficulties with the Royal Charter, which had led to Rudolph's downfall in Bohemia, were left to confront Matthias. SAMUEL R. GARDINER Whether it would have been possible in those days for a Catholic king to have kept a Protestant nation in working order we cannot say. At all events Matthias did not give the experiment a fair trial. He did not, indeed, attack the Royal Charter directly on the lands of the aristocracy. But he did his best to undermine it on his own. The Protestants of Braunau, on the lands of the Abbot of Braunau, and the Protestants of Klostergrab, on the lands of the Archbishop of Prague, built churches for themselves, the use of which was prohibited by the abbot and the archbishop. A dispute immediately arose as to the rights of ecclesiastical land-owners, and it was argued on the Protestant side that their lands were technically crown lands, and that they had therefore no right to close the churches. Matthias took the opposite view. On his own estates Matthias found means to evade the charter. He appointed Catholic priests to Protestant churches, and allowed measures to be taken to compel Protestants to attend the Catholic service. Yet for a long time the Protestant nobility kept quiet. Matthias was old and infirm, and when he died they would, as they supposed, have an opportunity of choosing their next king, and it was generally believed that the election would fall upon a Protestant. The only question was whether the Elector Palatine or the Elector of Saxony would be chosen. Suddenly in 1617 the Bohemian Diet was summoned. When the Estates of the kingdom met they were told that it was a mistake to suppose that the crown of Bohemia was elective. Evidence was produced that for some time before the election of Matthias the Estates had acknowledged the throne to be hereditary, and the precedent of Matthias was to be set aside as occurring in revolutionary times. Intimidation was used to assist the argument, and men in the confidence of the court whispered in the ears of those who refused to be convinced that it was to be hoped that they had at least two heads on their shoulders. If ever there was a moment for resistance, if resistance was to be made at all, it was this. The arguments of the court were undoubtedly strong, but a skilful lawyer could easily have found technicalities on the other side, and the real evasion of the Royal Charter might have been urged as a reason why the court had no right to press technical arguments too closely. The danger was all the greater, as it was known that by the renunciation of all intermediate heirs the hereditary right fell upon Ferdinand of Styria, who had already stamped Protestantism out in his own dominions. Yet, in spite of this, the Diet did as it was bidden, and renounced the right of election by acknowledging Ferdinand as their hereditary king (1617). The new King was more of a devotee and less of a statesman than Maximilian of Bavaria, his cousin on his mother's side. But their judgments of events were formed on the same lines. Neither of them was a mere ordinary bigot, keeping no faith with heretics. But they were both likely to be guided in their interpretation of the law by that which they conceived to be profitable to their church. Ferdinand was personally brave; but except when his course was very clear before him, he was apt to let difficulties settle themselves rather than come to a decision. He had at once to consider whether he would swear to the Royal Charter. He consulted the Jesuits, and was told that, though it had been a sin to grant it, it was no sin to accept it now that it was the law of the land. As he walked in state to his coronation he turned to a nobleman who was by his side. "I am glad," he said, "that I have attained the Bohemian crown without any pangs of conscience." He took the oath without further difficulty. The Bohemians were not long in feeling the effects of the change. Hitherto the hold of the house of Austria upon the country had been limited to the life of one old man. It had now, by the admission of the Diet itself, fixed itself forever upon Bohemia. The proceedings against the Protestants on the royal domains assumed a sharper character. The Braunau worshippers were rigorously excluded from their church. The walls of the new church at Klostergrab were actually levelled with the ground. The Bohemians had thus to resist in 1618, under every disadvantage, the attack which they had done nothing to meet in 1617. Certain persons named "defensors" had, by law, the right of summoning an assembly of representatives of the Protestant Estates. Such an assembly met on March 5th, and, having prepared a petition to Matthias, who was absent from the kingdom, adjourned to May 21st. Long before the time of meeting came, an answer was sent from Matthias justifying all that had been done, and declaring the assembly illegal. It was believed at the time, though incorrectly, that the answer was prepared by Slavata and Martinitz, two members of the regency who had been notorious for the vigor of their opposition to Protestantism. In the Protestant assembly there was a knot of men, headed by Count Henry of Thurn, which was bent on the dethronement of Ferdinand. They resolved to take advantage of the popular feeling to effect the murder of the two Regents, and so to place an impassable gulf between the nation and the King. Accordingly, on the morning of May 23d, the "beginning and cause," as a contemporary calls it, "of all the coming evil," the first day, though men as yet knew it not, of thirty years of war, Thurn sallied forth at the head of a band of noblemen and their followers, all of them with arms in their hands. Trooping into the room where the Regents were seated, they charged the obnoxious two with being the authors of the King's reply. After a bitter altercation both Martinitz and Slavata were dragged to a window which overlooked the fosse below from a dizzy height of some seventy feet. Martinitz, struggling against his enemies, pleaded hard for a confessor. "Commend thy soul to God," was the stern answer. "Shall we allow the Jesuit scoundrels to come here?" In an instant he was hurled out, crying, "Jesus, Mary!" "Let us see," said someone mockingly, "whether his Mary will help him." A moment later he added, "By God, his Mary has helped him." Slavata followed, and then the secretary Fabricius. By a wonderful preservation, in which pious Catholics discerned the protecting hand of God, all three crawled away from the spot without serious hurt. There are moments when the character of a nation or party stands revealed as by a lightning flash, and this was one of them. It is not in such a way as this that successful revolutions are begun. The first steps to constitute a new government were easy. Thirty directors were appointed, and the Jesuits were expelled from Bohemia. The Diet met and ordered soldiers to be levied to form an army. But to support this army money would be needed, and the existing taxes were insufficient. A loan was accordingly thought of, and the nobles resolved to request the towns to make up the sum, they themselves contributing nothing. The project falling dead upon the resistance of the towns, new taxes were voted, but no steps were taken to collect them, and the army was left to depend in a great measure upon chance. Would the princes of Germany come to the help of the directors? John George of Saxony told them that he deeply sympathized with them, but that rebellion was a serious matter. To one who asked him what he meant to do he replied, "Help to put out the fire." There was more help for them at Heidelberg than at Dresden. Frederick IV had died in 1610, and his son, the young Frederick V, looked up to Christian of Anhalt as the first statesman of his age. By his marriage with Elizabeth, the daughter of James I of England, he had contracted an alliance which gave him the appearance rather than the reality of strength. He offered every encouragement to the Bohemians, but for the time held back from giving them actual assistance. CHARLES F. HORNE[32] Ferdinand had crushed Protestantism in every estate he owned. In 1615 he and Matthias began, or at least permitted, measures for its repression in Bohemia. There were tumults, uprisings, and on May 23, 1618, a party of angry citizens of Prague burst into the council hall, seized Slavata and Martinitz, the two most obnoxious of the Catholic leaders, and hurled them from the window. It was an ancient form of Bohemian punishment, which had been used by Ziska and by others. The window this time was over eighty feet from the ground, yet the fall did not prove fatal. The men landed on a soft rubbish heap below, and one was unhurt; the other, though much injured, survived. Their secretary was hurled after them, and is said to have apologized to his masters, even as he landed, for his unavoidable discourtesy in alighting upon them. This semicomic tragedy opened the Thirty Years' War. At first the struggle was confined to Bohemia and Austria. The other states, secure in the fact that four-fifths of the populace of the empire was Protestant, looked on with seeming indifference. The Bohemians drove the scattered imperial troops from their country. Meanwhile Matthias died, and Ferdinand was elected to the imperial throne as Ferdinand II (1619-1637). The Bohemians besieged him in Vienna. The Protestant Austrian nobles turned against him, and a deputation forced its way into the presence of the helpless Emperor, and insisted on his signing for them a grant of political and religious liberty. Ferdinand resolutely refused; the deputation grew threatening. One fierce noble seized the Emperor roughly by the coat front, crying, with an offensive nickname for Ferdinand, "Sign it, Nandel!" A trumpet from the castle yard interrupted them. It signalled the arrival of a body of imperial troops, who had slipped through the lines of the besiegers, and come to the Emperor's rescue. The Austrian nobles withdrew. Spanish and Cossack troops were called by Ferdinand into the country to crush all opposition. The Bohemians, wasted by famine and plague, retreated into their own land, and the war continued there. The people offered the Bohemian throne to Frederick, the elector of the Rhenish Palatinate, and a son-in-law of the English King, James I. Frederick accepted, went to Bohemia in state, and tried to draw the other Protestant princes to his help. But he was a Calvinist, so the Lutherans refused to join him. His new subjects were mainly Lutherans also, and his impolitic effort to enforce his religious views upon Prague soon roused the citizens to a state of revolt against him. The Catholic princes of the empire had long been united in a "League," with Bavaria at its head. Bavaria was, next to Austria, the most powerful state of the empire, and it had become the stronghold of the Roman faith in Germany. Now, the army of this League, under its chief, Maximilian of Bavaria, offered its services to the Emperor against the disunited and wavering Bohemians. A portion of the Bohemian army was defeated at the battle of White Mountain, just outside of Prague. Frederick, the newly elected Bohemian King, saw his troops come fleeing back to the town, and their panic seems to have seized him also. Abandoning the strong walled city, he swept such of his possessions together as he could and fled in haste from Bohemia. "The Winter King" his enemies called him in derision, because his kingship had lasted but one short winter. The citizens, disheartened by his flight, terrified by the overwhelming forces arrayed against them, surrendered to Ferdinand. Executions, proscriptions, banishments, followed without number. Every person of the land was compelled to accept Catholicism. Many burned their homes with their own hands, and fled to other countries. Seldom has liberty been so utterly trampled under foot; seldom has a land been so completely subjugated. The Bohemians, who had been one of the most intellectual, energetic peoples of Europe, here practically disappear from history as a separate nation. We turn now to the second period of this deplorable war. Its scene shifts to the domain of the unhappy Frederick upon the Rhine. He himself fled to Holland, but his land was considered as forfeited, and was deliberately desolated by Spanish troops in the service of the Emperor. The Bohemians had employed a well-known leader of mercenary troops, Count Mansfeld. When their cause was lost, Mansfeld, with most of his army, amused the Catholic forces by negotiations, till he saw his opportunity, when he slipped away from them, and led his army to the Rhine. There he continued the war in Frederick's name, though really for his own sake. His troops supported themselves by pillaging the country, and the wretched inhabitants of Frederick's Palatinate were treated almost as mercilessly by their pretended friends as by their open foes. The peasants of Upper Austria also rebelled against Ferdinand's efforts to force his religion upon them. For a time it seemed they would be as successful as the Swiss mountaineers had been. Under a peasant named Fadinger they gained several impressive victories; but he was killed, and their cause collapsed into ruin. In its last stages their struggle was taken up by an unknown leader, who was called simply "the Student." But it was too late. Remarkable and romantic as was the Student's career, his exploits and victories could not save the cause, and he perished at the head of his followers. Meanwhile, the war along the Rhine assumed more and more the savage character that made it so destructive to the land. Mansfeld, driven from the Palatinate, supported his ferocious troops almost entirely by plundering. Tilly, the chief general of the Catholic League, followed similar tactics, and, wherever they passed, the land lay ruined behind them. Some of the lesser Protestant princes joined Mansfeld, but Tilly proved a great military leader, and his opponents were slowly crowded back into Northern Germany. The Emperor forced his religion upon the Rhine districts, as he had upon Bohemia and Austria. The Protestant world at last began to take alarm. Both England and Holland lent Mansfeld support. The King of Denmark, drawing as many of the Protestant German princes as possible to his side, joined vigorously in the contest. This Danish struggle may be considered the third period of the war. It lasted from about 1625 to 1629, and introduces one of the two most remarkable men of the period. Albert of Waldstein, or Wallenstein, as he is generally called, was a native of Bohemia, who joined the Catholics, and won military fame and experience fighting on the imperial side in the Bohemian war. He acquired vast wealth through marriage and the purchase of the confiscated Protestant estates. Proving a remarkably capable financial manager, he was soon the richest subject in the empire, and was created Duke of Friedland, a district of Bohemia. All of these successes were to Wallenstein mere preliminary steps to an even more boundless ambition. He studied the political outlook, and his keen eye saw the possibility of vastly expanding Mansfeld's barbaric system of supporting his soldiers by plunder. The Emperor Ferdinand had but few troops of his own, and they were needed for quelling rebellion within his personal domains. For carrying on the war along the Rhine, he was entirely dependent upon the princes of the Catholic League and their army under Tilly. Wallenstein now came forward and offered to supply the Emperor with a powerful imperial army which should not cost him a penny. This offer, coming from a mere private gentleman, sounded absurd; and for a time Wallenstein was put aside with contemptuous laughter. At last the Emperor told him, if he thought he could raise as many as ten thousand men, to go ahead. "If I have only ten thousand," said Wallenstein, "we must accept what people choose to give us. If I have thirty thousand, we can take what we like." The answer makes plain his whole system. His troops supported and paid themselves at the expense of the neighborhood where they were quartered. If it was a district which upheld the Emperor they took "contributions to the necessity of the empire." If the land opposed him, no polite words were needed to justify its pillage. Within three months Wallenstein had nearly fifty thousand men under his standard, drawn to him by the tempting offers of plunder that his agents held out. If the war had been terrible before, imagine the awful phase it now assumed, and the blighting curse that fell upon unhappy Germany! Modern justice can find little to choose thereafter between the methods of the opposing armies. We speak, therefore, only of the martial genius which Wallenstein displayed. He completely outmanoeuvred Mansfeld, defeated him, and drove him to flight and death. Then Wallenstein and Tilly proceeded to destroy the high military reputation of the Danish King. He was overcome in battle after battle, and his land so completely devastated that he prayed for peace on any terms. Peace seemed indeed at hand. The remaining Lutheran states of Saxony and Brandenburg, which had been neutral and were as yet almost unharmed, dared not interfere. The Emperor Ferdinand might have arranged everything as he chose had he used his power with moderation. But his hopes had grown with his fortunes, and he seems to have planned the establishment of such an absolute power over Germany as had been the aim of his ancestor, Charles V. Ferdinand passed laws and gave decrees, without any pretence of calling a council or seeking the approval of the princes. His general, Wallenstein, was given one of the conquered states as his dukedom; and Wallenstein declared openly that his master had no further need of councils; the time had come for Germany to be governed as were France and Spain. The Catholic princes, with Maximilian of Bavaria at their head, became frightened by the giant they themselves had created, and began to take measures for their own preservation. They demanded that Wallenstein be removed from his command. The Emperor, perhaps himself afraid of his too powerful general, finally consented. There still remained, however, the serious question whether Wallenstein would accept his dismissal. His huge and ever-growing army was absolutely under his control. His influence over the troops was extraordinary. A firm believer in astrology, he asserted that the stars promised him certain success, and his followers believed him. Tall and thin, dark and solemn, silent and grim, wearing a scarlet cloak and a long, blood-red feather in his hat, he was declared by popular superstition to be in league with the devil, invulnerable and unconquerable. No evil act of his soldiery did he ever rebuke. Only two things he demanded of them--absolute obedience and unshaken daring. The man who flinched or disobeyed was executed on the instant. Otherwise the marauders might desecrate God's earth with whatsoever hideous crimes they would. His troops laughed at the idea of being Catholics or Protestants, Germans or Bohemians; they were "Wallensteiners" and nothing else. Even Ferdinand would scarcely have dared oppose his overgrown servant had not Wallenstein failed in an attempt to capture Stralsund. This little Baltic seaport held out against the assaults of his entire army. Wallenstein vowed that he would capture it "though it were fastened by chains to heaven." But each mad attack of his wild troopers was beaten back from the walls by the desperate townsfolk; and at last, with twelve thousand of his men dead, he retreated from before the stubborn port. A superstitious load was lifted from the minds even of those who pretended to be his friends. Wallenstein was not unconquerable. He accepted the Emperor's notice of removal with haughty disdain. He said he had already seen it in the stars that evil men had sowed dissension between him and his sovereign, but the end was not yet. He retired to his vast estates in Bohemia, and lived at Prague with a magnificence exceeding that of any court in Germany. His table was always set for a hundred guests. He had sixty pages of the noblest families to wait on him. For chamberlains and other household officials, he had men who came from similar places under the Emperor. Meanwhile a new defender had sprung up for exhausted Protestantism. Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, invaded Germany in 1630 and called on the Protestants to help him in the fight to save their faith. All Europe had grown afraid of the tremendous and increasing power of the Hapsburg Emperor. Not only was Protestant England in league with the Swedes, but Catholic France, under its shrewd minister, Richelieu, also upheld them. Still the burden of actual fighting fell upon Gustavus Adolphus, who proved himself the greatest military leader of the age, and, in the eyes of Protestant Europe, the noblest and sublimest man since Luther. It is not our province to analyze the motives of the Swedish King, the "Lion of the North," as he is called. How much he was actuated by ambition, how much by religion, perhaps he himself might have found it hard to say. His coming marks the turning-point of the contest; his brilliant achievements constitute the fourth period of the war. Tilly opposed him with the army of the Catholic League--Tilly, the victor of thirty desperate battles. The Emperor and his court laughed, and, thinking of the Bohemian King and the Dane, said: "Another of these snow kings has come against us. He, too, will melt in our southern sun." The Protestant princes hesitated, fearing to join Gustavus; he was hampered on every side. Tilly in his very face stormed the great Protestant city of Magdeburg, and sacked it with such merciless brutalities as raised a cry of horrified disgust, even in that age of atrocities. "Never was such a victory," wrote Tilly to the Emperor, "since the storming of Troy or of Jerusalem. I am sorry you and the ladies of the court were not there to enjoy the spectacle." A heap of blackened ruins, hiding a few hundred famished and broken outcasts, was all that remained of a splendid and prosperous city of forty thousand souls. Tilly's object in this bloody deed seems to have been to terrify the rest of Protestant Germany into submission. If so, he failed of his purpose. Gustavus promptly abandoned gentle measures, and by a threat of force compelled the Saxon elector to join him. He then met Tilly in a fierce battle near Leipsic and utterly defeated him. Tilly fled, and his army was almost annihilated, the fugitives who escaped the Swedes falling victims to the vengeance of the enraged Protestant peasantry. Few men who had taken part in the sack of Magdeburg lived long to boast of their achievement. Gustavus swept victoriously through all the Rhineland. One Catholic prince or bishop after another was defeated. The advance soon became little more than a triumphal procession, city after city opening its gates to welcome him. The Saxon army conquered Bohemia; Gustavus reached Bavaria. There on the southern bank of the River Lech the Bavarian army under Tilly and Prince Maximilian was drawn to oppose the passage of the Protestant troops. It seemed impossible to cross the broad and deep stream in the face of such a force and such a general. Gustavus kept up a tremendous cannonade for three days. He burned great fires along the shore, that the smoke might conceal his movements. Tilly was struck down by a cannon-ball, the whole Bavarian army fell into confusion, and the Swedes rushed across the river almost unopposed. Maximilian fled with his army; and Bavaria, which as yet had escaped the horrors of the war, was in its turn plundered by an enemy. The stars in their courses seemed indeed to fight for Wallenstein. From the moment that he was deprived of his command, the triumphant cause of the Emperor had fallen, fallen until now it lay in utter ruin. The Saxons held Bohemia; all Western Germany was in Gustavus' hands; nothing interposed between the conquerors and defenceless Austria--nothing but Wallenstein. Messenger after messenger sped from the Emperor to his offended general, entreating him to reaccept his command. Wallenstein dallied, and postponed his consent, until he had wrung from his despairing sovereign such terms as never general secured before or since. Practically Wallenstein became as exalted in authority as the Emperor himself, and wholly independent of his former master. He was to carry on the war or to make peace entirely as he saw fit, without interference of any sort. Certain provinces of Austria were given him to hold as a guarantee of the Emperor's good faith. The mere raising of the great general's standard drew around him another army of "Wallensteiners," with whom he marched against Gustavus. Two of the ablest military leaders in history were thus pitted against each other. There were clever marches and countermarches, partial, indecisive attacks, and at last a great culminating battle at Luetzen, in Saxony, November 6, 1632. Gustavus won; but he perished on the field. He was always exposing himself in battle, and at Luetzen he galloped across in front of his army from one wing to another. A shot struck him--a traitor shot, say some, from his own German allies. He fell from his horse, and a band of the opposing cavalry encircled and slew him, not knowing who he was. His Swedes, who adored him, pressed furiously forward to save or avenge their leader. The Wallensteiners, after a desperate struggle, broke and fled before the resistless attack. Wallenstein himself, his hat and cloak riddled with bullets, rushed in vain among his men, taunting them furiously with their cowardice. It was only the night and the death of Gustavus that prevented the Swedes from reaping the full fruits of their victory. The imperial troops retreated unpursued. Wallenstein held a savage court-martial, and executed all of his men whom he could prove had been among the first in flight. From this time the war enters on its fifth stage. Wallenstein did little more fighting. He withdrew his troops into Bohemia, and it is hard to say what purposes simmered in his dark and inscrutable brain. He certainly was no longer loyal to the Emperor; probably the Emperor plotted against him. Wallenstein seems to have contemplated making himself king of an independent Bohemian kingdom. At any rate, he broke openly with his sovereign, and at a great banquet persuaded his leading officers to sign an oath that they would stand by him in whatever he did. Some of the more timid among them warned the Emperor, and with his approval formed a trap for Wallenstein. The general's chief lieutenants were suddenly set upon and slain; then the murderers rushed to Wallenstein's own apartments. Hearing them coming, he stood up dauntlessly, threw wide his arms to their blows, and died as silent and mysterious as he had lived. His slayers were richly rewarded by Ferdinand. All Germany was weary of the war. The contending parties had fought each other to a standstill; and, had Germany alone been concerned, peace would certainly have followed. But the Swedes, abandoning Gustavus' higher policy, continued the war for what increase of territory they could get; and France helped herself to what German cities she could in Alsace and Lorraine. So the war went on, the German princes taking sides now with this one, now the other, and nobody apparently ever thinking of the poor peasantry. The spirit of the brutal soldiery grew ever more atrocious. Their captives were tortured to death for punishment or for ransom, or, it is to be feared, for the mere amusement of the bestial captors. The open country became everywhere a wilderness. The soldiers themselves began starving in the dismal desert. The Emperor, Ferdinand II, the cause of all this destruction, died in 1637, and was succeeded by his son, Ferdinand III (1637-1657). The war still continued, though in a feeble, listless way, with no decisive victories on either side, until the peace of Westphalia, in 1648. This peace placed Protestants and Catholics on an equal footing of toleration throughout the empire. It gave Sweden what territory she wanted in the north, and France what she asked toward the Rhine. Switzerland and Holland were acknowledged as independent lands. The importance of the smaller princes was increased, they, too, becoming practically independent, and the power of the emperors was all but destroyed. From this time the importance of the Hapsburgs rested solely on their personal possessions in Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia. The title of emperor remained little better than a name. Indeed, Germany itself had become scarcely more than a name. During those terrible thirty years the population of the land is said to have dwindled from fifteen millions to less than five millions. In the Palatinate less than fifty thousand people remained, where there had been five hundred thousand. Whole districts everywhere lay utterly waste, wild, and uninhabited. Men killed themselves to escape starvation, or slew their brothers for a fragment of bread. A full description of the horrors of that awful time will never be written; much has been mercifully obliterated. The material progress of Germany, its students say, was retarded by two centuries' growth. To this day the land has not fully recovered from the exhaustion of that awful war. FOOTNOTES: [32] From _The Story of the Greatest Nations_, by permission of F. R. Niglutsch. FIRST AMERICAN LEGISLATURE A.D. 1619 CHARLES CAMPBELL As a distinctly American event the beginning of formal legislation in this country has special interest, no less for the general reader than for students of legal history. None of the early institutions of the fathers is more important than that which developed into the State legislature. At the opening of 1609 the Virginia colony, which was not then in a flourishing condition, asked and obtained from King James I a new charter. The territory was now greatly enlarged, the powers of local government increased, and Virginia soon entered upon its permanent career. In 1617 "a party of greedy and unprincipled adventurers" in England succeeded in having an agent of their own appointed deputy governor. This was Samuel Argall. Lord Delaware, the Governor, dying in 1618, Argall became virtual dictator, and under his arbitrary and self-seeking rule the people suffered. Meanwhile others, in England, were at work in the interest of the Virginia Company, under whose auspices, from the granting of the new charter, the colony had existed. Sir Edwin Sandys, in 1618, was made treasurer and actual governor of the Virginia Company. Through the efforts of Sandys and others in England, Sir George Yeardley, who had governed Virginia in 1616, was sent in 1619 to supersede Argall. This year "was remarkable in the annals of the colony. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that it witnessed the creation of Virginia as an independent community." From that year Sandys and his followers maintained their ascendency, and a high degree of energy and statesmanlike wisdom marked the administration of the colonial government. The calling of the first assembly was one of the principal acts of Yeardley's administration. Sir Thomas Smith, treasurer or governor of the Virginia Company, was displaced in 1618, and succeeded by Sir Edwin Sandys. This enlightened statesman and exemplary man was born in Worcestershire in 1561, being the second son of the Archbishop of York. Educated at Oxford under the care of "the judicious Hooker," he obtained a prebend in the church of York. He afterward travelled in foreign countries, and published his observations in a work entitled _Europæ Speculum; or,_ _A View of the State of Religion in the Western World_. He resigned his prebend in 1602, was subsequently knighted by James, in 1603, and employed in diplomatic trusts. His appointment as treasurer gave great satisfaction to the colony; for free principles were now, under his auspices, in the ascendent. His name is spelled sometimes "Sandis," sometimes "Sands." When Argall, in April, 1619, stole away from Virginia, he left for his deputy Captain Nathaniel Powell, who had come over with Captain Smith in 1607, and had evinced courage and discretion. He was one of the writers from whose narratives Smith compiled his _General History_. Powell held this office only about ten days, when Sir George Yeardley, recently knighted, arrived as Governor-General, bringing with him new charters for the colony. John Rolfe, who had been secretary, now lost his place, probably owing to his connivance at Argall's malpractices, and was succeeded by John Pory. He was educated at Cambridge, where he took the degree of master of arts in April, 1610. It is supposed that he was a member of the House of Commons. He was much of a traveller, and was at Venice in 1613, at Amsterdam in 1617, and shortly after at Paris. By the Earl of Warwick's influence he now procured the place of secretary of the colony of Virginia, having come over in April, 1619, with Sir George Yeardley, who appointed him one of his council. In June Governor Yeardley summoned the first legislature that ever met in America. It assembled at James City or Jamestown on Friday, July 30, 1619, upward of a year before the Mayflower left England with the Pilgrims. A record of the proceedings is preserved in the London State Paper Office, in the form of a report from the speaker, John Pory. John Pory, secretary of the colony, was chosen speaker, and John Twine, clerk. The Assembly sat in the choir of the church, the members of the council sitting on either side of the Governor, and the speaker right before him, the clerk next the speaker, and Thomas Pierse, the sergeant, standing at the bar. Before commencing business, prayer was said by Mr. Bucke, the minister. Each burgess then, as called on, took the oath of supremacy. When the name of Captain Ward was called, the speaker objected to him as having seated himself on land without authority. Objections were also made to the burgesses appearing to represent Captain Martin's patent, because they were, by its terms, exempted from any obligation to obey the laws of the colony. Complaint was made by Opochancano that corn had been forcibly taken from some of his people in the Chesapeake by Ensign Harrison, commanding a shallop belonging to this Captain John Martin, "master of the Ordinance." The speaker read the commission for establishing the council of state and the General Assembly, and also the charter brought out by Sir Thomas Yeardley. This last was referred to several committees for examination, so that if they should find anything "not perfectly squaring with the state of the colony, or any law pressing or binding too hard," they might by petition seek to have it redressed, "especially because this great charter is to bind us and our heirs forever." Mr. Abraham Persey was the Cape merchant. The price at which he was to receive tobacco, "either for commodities or upon bills," was fixed at three shillings for the best and eighteen pence for the second-rate. After inquiry the burgesses from Martin's patent were excluded, and the Assembly "humbly demanded" of the Virginia Company an explanation of that clause in his patent entitling him to enjoy his lands as amply as any lord of a manor in England, adding, "the least the Assembly can allege against this clause is that it is obscure and that it is a thing impossible for us here to know the prerogatives of all the manors in England." And they prayed that the clause in the charter guaranteeing equal liberties and immunities to grantees, might not be violated, so as to "divert out of the true course the free and public current of justice." Thus did the first Assembly of Virginia insist upon the principle of the Declaration of Rights of 1776, that "no man or set of men are entitled to exclusive or separate emoluments or privileges from the community, but in consideration of public services." Certain instructions sent out from England were "drawn into laws" for protection of the Indians from injury, and regulating intercourse with them, and educating their children, and preparing some of the most promising boys "for the college intended for them; that from thence they may be sent to that work of conversion"; for regulating agriculture, tobacco, and sassafras, then the chief merchantable commodities raised. Upon Captain Powell's petition, "a lewd and treacherous servant of his" was sentenced to stand for four days with his ears nailed to the pillory, and be whipped each day. John Rolfe complained that Captain Martin had made unjust charges against him, and cast "some aspersion upon the present government, which is the most temperate and just that ever was in this country--too mild, indeed, for many of this colony, whom unwonted liberty hath made insolent, and not to know themselves." On the last day of the session were enacted such laws as issued "out of every man's private conceit." "It shall be free for every man to trade with the Indians, servants only excepted upon pain of whipping, unless the master will redeem it off with the payment of an angel." "No man to sell or give any of the greater hoes to the Indians, or any English dog of quality, as a mastiff, greyhound, bloodhound, land or water spaniel." "Any man selling arms or ammunition to the Indians, to be hanged so soon as the fact is proved." All ministers shall duly "read divine service, and exercise their ministerial function according to the ecclesiastical laws and orders of the Church of England, and every Sunday, in the afternoon, shall catechize such as are not ripe to come to the communion." All persons going up or down the James River were to touch at James City, "to know whether the Governor will command them any service." "All persons whatsoever, upon the Sabbath days, shall frequent divine service and sermons, both forenoon and afternoon; and all such as bear arms shall bring their pieces, swords, powder, and shot." Captain Henry Spellman, charged by Robert Poole, interpreter, with speaking ill of the Governor "at Opochancano's court," was degraded from his rank of captain, and condemned to serve the colony for seven years as interpreter to the Governor. Paspaheigh, embracing three hundred acres of land, was also called Argallstown, and was part of the tract appropriated to the Governor. To compensate the speaker, clerk, sergeant, and provost-marshal, a pound of the best tobacco was levied from every male above sixteen years of age. The Assembly prayed that the treasurer, council, and company would not "take it in ill part if these laws, which we have now brought to light, do pass current, and be of force till such time as we may know their further pleasure out of England; for otherwise this people (who now at length have got their reins of former servitude into their own swindge) would, in short time, grow so insolent as they would shake off all government, and there would be no living among them." They also prayed the company to "give us power to allow or disallow of their orders of court, as his majesty hath given them power to allow or reject _our_ laws." So early did it appear that, from the necessity of the case, the colony must in large part legislate for itself, and so early did a spirit of independence manifest itself. Owing to the heat of the weather several of the burgesses fell sick and one died, and thus the Governor was obliged abruptly, on August 4th, to prorogue the Assembly till March 1st. There being as yet no counties laid off, the representatives were elected from the several towns, plantations, and hundreds, styled boroughs, and hence they were called burgesses. INTRODUCTION OF NEGROES INTO VIRGINIA SPREAD OF SLAVERY AND THE CULTIVATION OF TOBACCO A.D. 1619 CHARLES CAMPBELL JOHN M. LUDLOW It was not till one hundred twenty years after the beginning of negro slavery in Spanish America that it was introduced in any part of the present United States. From its first introduction in Virginia (1619) the system grew and spread until it became one of the most prominent features of American society. The comprehensive view of its growth and decline presented by Mr. Ludlow, a well-known English writer, has therefore a special value here. From him and from the Virginia historian Mr. Campbell we get two widely diverging views upon the subject. Along with the adoption and increase of slavery in Virginia went rapid progress in the cultivation there of tobacco, which had begun in 1612. Tobacco proved to be a staple of the first importance. It was destined to exert a controlling influence on the growth and prosperity of the colony. It was not long before this industry, by reason of the great profits which it returned, overshadowed every other. CHARLES CAMPBELL In the month of August, 1619, a Dutch man-of-war visited Jamestown and sold the settlers twenty negroes, the first introduced into Virginia. Some time before this, Captain Argall, the deputy governor of Virginia, sent out on a "filibustering" cruise to the West Indies a ship called the Treasurer, manned "with the ablest men in the colony." She returned to Virginia, after some ten months, with her booty, which consisted of captured negroes, who were not left in Virginia, because Captain Argall had gone back to England, but were put on the Earl of Warwick's plantation in the Somer Islands. It is probable that the planters who first purchased negroes reasoned but little on the morality of the act, or, if any scruples of conscience presented themselves, they could be readily silenced by reflecting that the negroes were heathens, descendants of Ham, and consigned by divine appointment to perpetual bondage. The planters may, if they reasoned at all on the subject, have supposed that they were even performing a humane act in releasing these Africans from the noisome hold of the ship. They might well believe that the condition of the negro slave would be less degraded and wretched in Virginia than it had been in his native country. This first purchase was not probably looked upon as a matter of much consequence, and for several years the increase of the blacks in Virginia was so inconsiderable as not to attract any special attention. The condition of the white servants of the colony, many of them convicts, was so abject that men accustomed to see their own race in bondage could look with more indifference at the worse condition of the slaves. The negroes purchased by the slavers on the coast of Africa were brought from the interior, convicts sold into slavery, children sold by heathen parents destitute of natural affection, kidnapped villagers, and captives taken in war, the greater part of them born in hereditary bondage. The circumstances under which they were consigned to the slave-ship evince the wretchedness of their condition in their native country, where they were the victims of idolatry, barbarism, and war. The negroes imported were usually between the ages of fourteen and thirty, two-thirds of them being males. The new negro, just transferred from the wilds of a distant continent, was indolent, ignorant of the modes and implements of labor, and of the language of his master and, perhaps, of his fellow-laborers. To tame and domesticate, to instruct in the modes of industry, and to reduce to subordination and usefulness a barbarian, gross, obtuse, perverse, must have demanded persevering efforts and severe discipline. While the cruel slave trade was prompted by a remorseless cupidity, an inscrutable Providence turned the wickedness of men into the means of bringing about beneficent results. The system of slavery doubtless entailed many evils on slave and slaveholder, and, perhaps, the greater on the latter. These evils are the tax paid for the elevation of the negro from his aboriginal condition. Among the vessels that came over to Virginia from England about this time is mentioned a bark of five tons. A fleet sent out by the Virginia Company brought over, in 1619, more than twelve hundred settlers. The planters at length enjoyed the blessings of property in the soil and the society of women. The wives were sold to the colonists for one hundred twenty pounds of tobacco, and it was ordered that this debt should have precedence of all others. The price of a wife afterward became higher. The bishops in England, by the King's orders, collected nearly fifteen hundred pounds to build a college or university at Henrico, intended in part for the education of Indian children. In July, 1620, the population of the colony was estimated at four thousand. One hundred "disorderly persons" or convicts sent over during the previous year by the King's order were employed as servants. For a brief interval the Virginia Company had enjoyed freedom of trade with the Low Countries, where they sold their tobacco; but in October, 1621, this was prohibited by an order in council; and from this time England claimed a monopoly of the trade of her plantations, and this principle was gradually adopted by all the European powers as they acquired transatlantic settlements. Many new settlements were now made on the James and York rivers; and the planters, being supplied with wives and servants, began to be more content, and to take more pleasure in cultivating their lands. The brief interval of free trade with Holland had enlarged the demand for tobacco, and it was cultivated more extensively. Sir George Yeardley's term of office having expired, the Company's council, upon the recommendation of the Earl of Southampton, appointed Sir Francis Wyat governor, a young gentleman of Ireland, whose education, family, fortune, and integrity well qualified him for the place. He arrived in October, 1621, with a fleet of nine sail, and brought over a new frame of government constituted by the company, and dated July 24, 1621, establishing a council of state and a general assembly. Wyat brought with him also a body of instructions intended for the permanent guidance of the governor and council. Among other things he was to cultivate corn, wine, and silk; to search for minerals, dyes, gums, and medical drugs, and to draw off the people from the excessive planting of tobacco; to take a census of the colony; to put apprentices to trades and not let them forsake them for planting tobacco or any such useless commodity; to build water-mills, to make salt, pitch, tar, soap and ashes; to make oil of walnuts, and employ apothecaries in distilling lees of beer; to make small quantity of tobacco, and that very good. In 1615 twelve different commodities had been shipped from Virginia; sassafras and tobacco were now the only exports. During the year 1619 the company in England imported twenty thousand pounds of tobacco, the entire crop of the preceding year. James I endeavored to draw a "prerogative" revenue from what he termed a pernicious weed, and against which he had published his _Counterblast_; but he was restrained from this illegal measure by a resolution of the House of Commons. In 1607 he sent a letter forbidding the use of tobacco at St. Mary's College, Cambridge. Smoking was the first mode of using tobacco in England, and when Sir Walter Raleigh first introduced the custom among people of fashion, in order to escape observation he smoked privately in his house (at Islington); the remains of which were till of late years to be seen, as an inn, long known as the Pied Bull. This was the first house in England in which tobacco was smoked, and Raleigh had his arms emblazoned there, with a tobacco-plant on the top. There existed also another tradition in the parish of St. Matthew, Friday Street, London, that Raleigh was accustomed to sit smoking at his door in company with Sir Hugh Middleton. Sir Walter's guests were entertained with pipes, a mug of ale, and a nutmeg, and on these occasions he made use of his tobacco-box, which was of cylindrical form, seven inches in diameter and thirteen inches long; the outside of gilt leather, and within a receiver of glass or metal, which held about a pound of tobacco. A kind of collar connected the receiver with the case, and on every side the box was pierced with holes for the pipes. This relic was preserved in the museum of Ralph Thoresby, of Leeds, in 1719, and about 1843 was added, by the late Duke of Sussex, to his collection of the smoking-utensils of all nations. Although Raleigh first introduced the custom of smoking tobacco in England, yet its use appears to have been not entirely unknown before, for one Kemble, condemned for heresy in the time of Queen Mary the Bloody, while walking to the stake smoked a pipe of tobacco. Hence the last pipe that one smoked was called the Kemble pipe. The writer of a pamphlet, supposed to have been Milton's father, describes many of the playbooks and pamphlets of that day, 1609, as "conceived over night by idle brains, impregnated with tobacco smoke and mulled sack, and brought forth by the help of midwifery of a candle next morning." At the theatres in Shakespeare's time the spectators were allowed to sit on the stage, and to be attended by pages, who furnished them with pipes and tobacco. About the time of the settlement of Jamestown, in 1607, the characteristics of a man of fashion were, to wear velvet breeches, with panes or slashes of silk, an enormous starched ruff, a gilt-handled sword, and a Spanish dagger: to play at cards or dice in the room of the groom-porter, and to smoke tobacco in the tilt-yard, or at the playhouse. The peers engaged in the trial of the Earls of Essex and Southampton smoked much while they deliberated on their verdict. It was alleged against Raleigh that he smoked tobacco on the occasion of the execution of the Earl of Essex, in contempt of him; and it was perhaps in allusion to this circumstance that when Raleigh was passing through London to Winchester, to stand his trial, he was followed by the execrations of the populace, and pelted with tobacco-pipes, stones, and mud. On the scaffold, however, he protested that during the execution of Essex he had retired far off into the armory, where Essex could not see him, although he saw Essex, and shed tears for him. Raleigh used tobacco on the morning of his own execution. As early as the year 1610 tobacco was in general use in England. The manner of using it was partly to inhale the smoke and blow it out through the nostrils, and this was called "drinking tobacco," and this practice continued until the latter part of the reign of James I. In 1614 the number of tobacco-houses in or near London was estimated at seven thousand. In 1620 was chartered the Society of Tobacco-pipe Makers of London; they bore on their shield a tobacco-plant in full blossom. The _Counterblast to Tobacco_, by King James I, if in some parts absurd and puerile, yet is not without a good deal of just reasoning and good sense; some fair hits are made in it, and those who have ridiculed that production might find it not easy to controvert some of its views. King James, in his _Counterblast_, does not omit the opportunity of expressing his hatred toward Sir Walter Raleigh. He continued his opposition to tobacco as long as he lived, and in his ordinary conversation oftentimes argued and inveighed against it. The Virginia tobacco in early times was imported into England in the leaf, in bundles; the Spanish or West Indian tobacco in balls. Molasses or other liquid preparation was used in preparing those balls. Tobacco was then, as now, adulterated in various ways. The nice retailer kept it in what were called lily-pots; that is, white jars. It was cut on a maple block; juniper-wood, which retains fire well, was used for lighting pipes, and among the rich, silver tongs were employed for taking up a coal of it. Tobacco was sometimes called "the American Silver-Weed." The Turkish vizier thrust pipes through the noses of smokers; and the Shah of Persia cropped the ears and slit the noses of those who made use of the fascinating leaf. The _Counterblast_ says of it: "And for the vanity committed in this filthy custom, is it not both great vanity and uncleanness, that at the table--a place of respect of cleanliness, of modesty--men should not be ashamed to sit tossing of tobacco-pipes and puffing of smoke, one at another, making the filthy smoke and stink thereof to exhale athwart the dishes, and infect the air, when very often men who abhor it are at their repast? Surely smoke becomes a kitchen far better than a dining-chamber; and yet it makes the kitchen oftentimes in the inward parts of man, soiling and infecting them with an unctuous and oily kind of soot, as hath been found in some great tobacco-takers that after their deaths were opened." The _Counterblast to Tobacco_ was first printed in quarto, without name or date, at London, 1616. In the frontpiece were engraved the tobacco-pipes, cross-bones, death's-head, etc. It is not improbable that it was directly intended to foment the popular prejudice against Sir Walter Raleigh, who was put to death in the same year (1616). James alludes to the introduction of the use of tobacco and to Raleigh as follows: "It is not so long since the first entry of this abuse among us here, as that this present age cannot very well remember both the first author and the form of the first introduction of it among us. It was neither brought in by king, great conqueror, nor learned doctor of physic. With the report of a great discovery for a conquest, some two or three savage men were brought in together with this savage custom; but the pity is, the poor wild barbarous men died, but that vile barbarous custom is still alive, yea, in fresh vigor, so as it seems a miracle to me how a custom springing from so vile a ground, and brought in by a father so generally hated, should be welcomed upon so slender a warrant." The King thus reasons against the Virginia staple: "Secondly, it is, as you use or rather abuse it, a branch of the sin of drunkenness, which is the root of all sins, for as the only delight that drunkards love any weak or sweet drink, so are not those (I mean the strong heat and fume) the only qualities that make tobacco so delectable to all the lovers of it? And as no man loves strong heavy drinks the first day (because _nemo repente fuit turpissimus_), but by custom is piece and piece allured, while in the end a drunkard will have as great a thirst to be drunk as a sober man to quench his thirst with a draught when he hath need of it; so is not this the true case of all the great takers of tobacco, which therefore they themselves do attribute to a bewitching quality in it? Thirdly, is it not the greatest sin that all of you, the people of all sorts of this kingdom, who are created and ordained by God to bestow both your persons and goods for the maintenance both of the honor and safety of your King and commonwealth, should disable yourself to this shameful imbecility, that you are not able to ride or walk the journey of a Jew's Sabbath, but you must have a reeky coal brought you from the next poorhouse to kindle your tobacco with? whereas he cannot be thought able for any service in the wars that cannot endure ofttimes the want of meat, drink, and sleep; much more then must he endure the want of tobacco." A curious tractate on tobacco, by Dr. Tobias Venner, was published at London in 1621. The author was a graduate of Oxford, and a physician at Bath, and is mentioned in the _Oxoniæ Athenienses_. The amount of tobacco imported in 1619 into England from Virginia, being the entire crop of the preceding year, was, as before said, twenty thousand pounds. At the end of seventy years there were annually imported into England more than fifteen million of pounds of it, from which a revenue of upward of one hundred thousand pounds was derived. In April, 1621, the House of Commons debated whether it was expedient to prohibit the importation of tobacco entirely; and they determined to exclude all save from Virginia and the Somer Isles. It was estimated that the consumption of England amounted to one thousand pounds _per diem_. This seductive narcotic leaf, which soothes the mind and quiets its perturbations, has found its way into all parts of the habitable globe, from the sunny tropics to the snowy regions of the frozen pole. Its fragrant smoke ascends alike to the blackened rafters of the lowly hut and the gilded ceilings of luxurious wealth. JOHN M. LUDLOW The first negro slaves were brought by Dutchmen for sale into Virginia in 1619. The New England public was at first opposed to the practice of negro slavery, and there is even a record of a slave, who had been sold by a member of the Boston Church, being ordered to be sent back to Africa (1645). Yet negro slaves were to be found in New England as early as 1638. Massachusetts and Connecticut recognized the lawfulness of slavery; Massachusetts, however, only when voluntary or in the case of captives taken in war. Rhode Island, more generous, made illegal the perpetual service of "black mankind," requiring them to be set free after two years, the period of white men's indentures--a condition which, however, would only tend to the working slaves to death in the allotted time. But although there was no importation of negroes on any considerable scale into New England, the ships by which the slave trade was mainly carried on were those from Massachusetts and Rhode Island, which carried rum to Africa, and brought back slaves to the West Indies and the southern colonies. In Maryland slavery had been established at once; in South Carolina it came into birth with the colony itself. The attempt to exclude it from Georgia failed. The guilt of the institution cannot, however, be fairly charged on the colonists. Queen Elizabeth had been a partner in the second voyage of Sir John Hawkins, the first English slave-captain. James I chartered a slave-trading company (1618); Charles I a second (1631); Charles II a third (1663), of which the Duke of York was president, and again a fourth, in which he himself, as well as the Duke, was a subscriber. Nor did the expulsion of the Stuarts cause any change of feeling in this respect. England's sharpest stroke of business at the Peace of Utrecht (1713) was the obtaining for herself the shameful monopoly of the "Asiento"--the slave trade with the Spanish West Indies--undertaking "to bring into the West Indies of America belonging to his Catholic majesty, in the space of thirty years, one hundred forty-four thousand negroes," at the rate of forty-eight hundred a year, at a fixed rate of duty, with the right to import any further number at a lower rate. As nearly the whole shores of the Gulf of Mexico were still Spanish, England thus contributed to build up slavery in most of the future Southern States of the Union. Whether for foreign or for English colonies, it is reckoned that, from 1700 to 1750, English ships carried away from Africa probably a million and a half of negroes, of whom one-eighth never lived to see the opposite shore. In the same spirit England dealt with her colonies. When Virginia imposed a tax on the import of negroes, the law had to give way before the interest of the African Company. The same course was followed many years later toward South Carolina, when an act of the provincial Assembly laying a heavy duty on imported slaves was vetoed by the crown (1761). Indeed, the title to a political tract published in 1745, _The African Slave Trade, the Great Pillar and Support of the British Plantation Trade in America_, appears fairly to express the prevalent feeling of the mother-country on the subject before the War of Independence. The most remarkable relaxation of the navigation laws in the eighteenth century was the throwing open the slave trade by the act "for extending and improving the trade to Africa," which, after reciting that "the trade to and from Africa is very advantageous to Great Britain, and necessary for the supplying the plantations and colonies thereunto belonging with a sufficient number of negroes at reasonable rates," enacted that it should be lawful "for all his majesty's subjects to trade and traffick to and from any port or place in Africa, between the port of Sallee in South Barbary and the Cape of Good Hope." By 1763 there were about three hundred thousand negroes in the North American colonies. It seemed at first as if the black man would gain by the Revolution. The mulatto Attucks was one of the victims of the Boston Massacre, and was buried with honor among the "martyrs of liberty." At the first call to arms the negroes freely enlisted; but a meeting of the general officers decided against their enlistment in the new army of 1775. The free negroes were greatly dissatisfied. Lest they should transfer their services to the British, Washington gave leave to enlist them, and it is certain that they served throughout the war, shoulder to shoulder with white men. At the battle of Monmouth there were more than seven hundred black men in the field. Rhode Island formed a battalion of negroes, giving liberty to every slave enlisting, with compensation to his owner; and the battalion did good service. But Washington always considered the policy of arming slaves "a moot point," unless the enemy set the example; and though Congress recommended Georgia and South Carolina to raise three thousand negroes for the war, giving full "compensation to the proprietors of such negroes," South Carolina refused to do so, and Georgia had been already overrun by the British when the advice was brought. Notwithstanding the early adoption of a resolution against the importation of slaves into any of the thirteen colonies (April 6, 1776), Jefferson's fervid paragraph condemning the slave trade, and by implication slavery, was struck out of the Declaration of Independence in deference to South Carolina and Georgia, and a member from South Carolina declared that "if property in slaves should be questioned there must be an end to confederation." The resolution of Congress itself against the slave trade bound no single State, although a law to this effect was adopted by Virginia in 1778, and subsequently by all the other States; but this was so entirely a matter of State concernment that neither was any prohibition of the trade contained in the Articles of Confederation, nor was any suffered to be inserted in the treaty of peace. The feeling against slavery itself was strong in the North. Vermont, in forming a constitution for herself in 1777, allowed no slavery, and was punished for doing so when she applied for admission as a State with the consent of New York, from which she had seceded in 1781: the Southern States refusing to admit her for the present, lest the balance of power should be destroyed. Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, directly or indirectly, abolished slavery in 1780, New Hampshire in 1783. They were followed the next year by Connecticut and Rhode Island, so that by 1784 slavery would be practically at an end in New England and Pennsylvania. Other States--Virginia, Delaware, New Jersey--went no further than to pass laws for allowing voluntary emancipation. In strange contrast to these, Virginia is found in 1780 offering a negro by way of bounty to any white man enlisting for the war. The great Virginians of the day, however--Jefferson, Patrick Henry, George Mason--were opposed to slavery, and large numbers of slaves were emancipated in the State. So much and no more did the black man get from the Americans. It seemed at first, when Lord Dunmore issued his proclamation offering freedom to all slaves who should join the British standard, as if they were to get much more from England. Accordingly, Governor Rutledge of South Carolina declared in 1780 that the negroes offered up their prayers in favor of England. But although Lord Dunmore persisted in recommending the arming and emancipation of the blacks, neither the ministry at home nor the British officers would enter into the plan. Lord George Germain authorized the confiscation and sale of slaves, even of those who voluntarily followed the troops. Indians were encouraged to catch them and bring them in; they were distributed as prizes and shipped to the West Indies, two thousand at one time, being valued at two hundred fifty silver dollars each. The English name became a terror to the black man, and when Greene took the command they flocked in numbers to his standard. The terms of the peace forbade the British troops to carry away "negroes or other property." Whichever side he might fight for, the poor black man earned no gratitude. Yet in little more than three-quarters of a century the political complications arising out of the wrongs inflicted on him were to involve the States that had just won their independence in a civil war in comparison with which the struggle to throw off the yoke of the mother-country would appear almost as child's play. ENGLISH PILGRIMS SETTLE AT PLYMOUTH A.D. 1620 JOHN S. BARRY No event in American history is more famous throughout the world, and none has been followed by results more potent in the making of this country, than the settlement of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. This pioneer company, which founded the second English colony in the New World, was composed of Puritans who had left the Church of England, and were known as Independents or Separatists. In the later years of the sixteenth century the tyranny of the Ecclesiastical Commission drove multitudes of English churchmen into the ranks of the dissenters. At last this tyranny, and the threats of King James I, caused some of the Independents to leave the country. An Independent Church, mainly composed of simple country people, was formed in 1606 at Scrooby, in Nottinghamshire. At its head were John Robinson, the pastor, and William Brewster, often called Elder Brewster, who was postmaster at Scrooby. Robinson was distinguished alike for his learning and his tolerant spirit. Another leader was William Bradford, then but seventeen years old. He was afterward Governor of Plymouth colony for thirty years, and was its historian. For some time the members of this Church quietly endured persecution at the hands of the King's officers. Then they began to talk of fleeing to Holland, whither other dissenters had already escaped. In 1607 some of the Scrooby congregation unsuccessfully attempted the flight. A few months later they succeeded in reaching Amsterdam, where they intended to remain. But finding the English exiles there involved in theological disputes, they acted on Robinson's advice and sought a more peaceful home in Leyden. Here, about three hundred in number, they arrived in 1609, soon after Spain had granted Holland the Twelve Years' Peace, after the long Netherland wars. For eleven years the Pilgrims, as they were already called, remained in their new home, living by various employments. During that time the colony increased to more than a thousand souls. For several years the exiled Pilgrims abode at Leyden in comparative peace. So mutual was the esteem of both pastor and people that it might be said of them, "as of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius and the people of Rome: it was hard to judge whether he delighted more in having such a people, or they in having such a pastor." With their spiritual, their temporal interests were objects of his care, so that he was "every way as a common father to them." And when removed from them by death, as he was in a few years, they sustained "such a loss as they saw could not be easily repaired, for it was as hard for them to find such another leader and feeder as the Taborites to find another Ziska." Eight years' residence, however, in a land of strangers, subjected to its trials and burdened with its sorrows, satisfied this little band that Holland could not be for them a permanent home. The "hardness of the place" discouraged their friends from joining them. Premature age was creeping upon the vigorous. Severe toil enfeebled their children. The corruption of the Dutch youth was pernicious in its influence. They were Englishmen, attached to the land of their nativity. The Sabbath, to them a sacred institution, was openly neglected. A suitable education was difficult to be obtained for their children. The truce with Spain was drawing to a close, and the renewal of hostilities was seriously apprehended. But the motive above all others which prompted their removal was a "great hope and inward zeal of laying some good foundation for the propagating and advancing of the Gospel of the Kingdom of Christ in these remote parts of the world; yea, though they should be but as stepping-stones to others for performing of so great a work." For these reasons--and were they frivolous?--a removal was resolved upon. They could not in peace return to England. It was dangerous to remain in the land of their exile. Whither, then, should they go? Where should an asylum for their children be reared? This question, so vital, was first discussed privately, by the gravest and wisest of the Church; then publicly, by all. The "casualties of the seas," the "length of the voyage," the "miseries of the land," the "cruelty of the savages," the "expense of the outfit," the "ill-success of other colonies," and "their own sad experience" in their removal to Holland were urged as obstacles which must doubtless be encountered. But, as a dissuasive from discouragement, it was remarked that "all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and must both be enterprised and overcome with answerable courages. It was granted the dangers very great, but not invincible; for although there were many of them likely, yet they were not certain. Some of the things they feared might never befall them; others, by providence, care, and the use of good means might in a great measure be prevented; and all of them, through the help of God, by fortitude or patience might either be borne or overcome." Whither should they turn their steps? Some, and "none of the meanest," were "earnest for Guiana." Others, of equal worth, were in favor of Virginia, "where the English had already made entrance and beginning." But a majority were for "living in a distinct body by themselves, though under the general government of Virginia." For Guiana, it was said, "the country was rich, fruitful, and blessed with a perpetual spring and a flourishing greenness"; and the Spaniards "had not planted there nor anywhere near the same." Guiana was the El Dorado of the age. Sir Walter Raleigh, its discoverer, had described its tropical voluptuousness in the most captivating terms; and Chapman, the poet, dazzled by its charms, exclaims: "Guiana, whose rich feet are mines of gold, Whose forehead knocks against the roof of stars, Stands on her tiptoe at fair England looking, Kissing her hands, bowing her mighty breast, And every sign of all submission making, To be the sister and the daughter both Of our most sacred maid." Is it surprising that the thoughts of the exiles were enraptured in contemplating this beautiful land? Was it criminal to seek a pleasant abode? But as an offset to its advantages, its "grievous diseases" and "noisome impediments" were vividly portrayed; and it was urged that, should they settle there and prosper, the "jealous Spaniard" might displace and expel them, as he had already the French from their settlements in Florida; and this the sooner, as there would be none to protect them, and their own strength was inadequate to cope with so powerful an adversary. Against settling in Virginia it was urged that, "if they lived among the English there planted, or under their government, they would be in as great danger to be persecuted for the cause of religion as if they lived in England, and it might be worse, and, if they lived too far off, they should have neither succor nor defence from them." Upon the whole, therefore, it was decided to "live in a distinct body by themselves, under the general government of Virginia, and by their agents to sue his majesty to grant them free liberty and freedom of religion." Accordingly John Carver, one of the deacons of the Church, and Robert Cushman, a private member, were sent to England to treat with the Virginia Company for a grant of land, and to solicit of the King liberty of conscience. The friends from whom aid was expected, and to some of whom letters were written, were Sir Edwin Sandys, the distinguished author of the _Europæ Speculum_; Sir Robert Maunton, afterward secretary of state; and Sir John Wolstenholme, an eminent merchant and a farmer of the customs. Sir Ferdinando Georges seems also to have been interested in their behalf, as he speaks of means used by himself, before his rupture with the Virginia Company, to "draw into their enterprises some of those families that had retired into Holland, for scruple of conscience, giving them such freedom and liberty as might stand with their likings." The messengers--"God going along with them"--bore a missive signed by the principal members of the Church, commending them to favor, and conducted their mission with discretion and propriety; but as their instructions were not plenary, they soon returned, bearing a letter from Sir Edwin Sandys, approving their diligence and proffering aid. The next month a second embassy was despatched, with an answer to Sir Edwin's letter, in which, for his encouragement, the exiles say: "We believe and trust the Lord is with us, and will graciously prosper our endeavors accordingly to the simplicity of our hearts therein. We are well weaned from the delicate milk of our mother-country and inured to the difficulties of a strange and hard land. The people are, for the body of them, industrious and frugal. We are knit together in a strict and sacred bond and covenant of the Lord, of the violation whereof we make great conscience, and by virtue whereof we hold ourselves strictly tied to all care of others' goods. It is not with us, as with others, whom small things can discourage, or small discontentments cause to wish themselves at home again." For the information of the council of the company, the "requests" of the Church were sent, signed by nearly the whole congregation, and, in a letter to Sir John Wolstenholme, explanation was given of their "judgments" upon three points named by his majesty's privy council, in which they affirmed that they differed nothing in doctrine and but little in discipline from the French reformed churches, and expressed their willingness to take the oath of supremacy if required, "if that convenient satisfaction be not given by our taking the oath of allegiance." The new agents, upon their arrival in England, found the Virginia Company anxious for their emigration to America, and "willing to give them a patent with as ample privileges as they had or could grant to any"; and some of the chief members of the company "doubted not to obtain their suit of the King for liberty in religion." But the last "proved a harder work than they took it for." Neither James nor his bishops would grant such a request. The "advancement of his dominions" and "the enlargement of the Gospel" his majesty acknowledged to be "an honorable motive"; and "fishing"--the secular business they expected to follow--"was an honest trade, the apostle's own calling"; but for any further liberties he referred them to the prelates of Canterbury and London. All that could be obtained from the King after the most diligent "sounding" was a verbal promise that "he would connive at them and not molest them, provided they conducted themselves peaceably; but to allow or tolerate them under his seal" he would not consent. With this answer the messengers returned, and their report was discouraging to the hopes of the exiles. Should they trust their monarch's word, when bitter experience had taught them the ease with which it could be broken? And yet, reasoned some, "his word may be as good as his bond; for if he purposes to injure us, though we have a seal as broad as the house-floor, means will be found to recall or reverse it." In this as in other matters, therefore, they relied upon Providence, trusting that distance would prove as effectual a safeguard as the word of a prince which had been so often forfeited. Accordingly other agents were sent to procure a patent, and to negotiate with such merchants as had expressed a willingness to aid them with funds. On reaching England these agents found a division existing in the Virginia Company, growing out of difficulties between Sir Thomas Smith and Sir Edwin Sandys; and disagreeable intelligence had been received from Virginia of disturbances in the colony which had there been established. For these reasons little could be immediately effected. At length, after tedious delays, and "messengers passing to and fro," a patent was obtained, which, by the advice of friends, was taken in the name of John Wincob, a gentleman in the family of the Countess of Lincoln; and with this document, and the proposals of Mr. Thomas Weston, one of the agents returned, and submitted the same to the Church for inspection. The nature of these proposals has never transpired, nor is the original patent--the first which the Pilgrims received--known to be in existence. Future inquirers may discover this instrument, as recently other documents have been rescued from oblivion. We should be glad to be acquainted with its terms, were it only to know definitely the region it embraced. But if ever discovered, we will hazard the conjecture that it will be found to cover territory now included in New York. Upon the reception of the patent and the accompanying proposals, as every enterprise of the Pilgrims began from God--a day of fasting and prayer was appointed to seek divine guidance; and Mr. Robinson, whose services were ever appropriate, discoursed to his flock from the words in Samuel; "And David's men said unto him, See, we be afraid here in Judah: how much more if we come to Keilah, against the host of the Philistines?" Next followed a discussion "as to how many and who should go first." All were ready and anxious to embark; but funds were wanting to defray their expenses. It was concluded, therefore, that the youngest and strongest should be the pioneers of the Church, and that the eldest and weakest should follow at a future date. If the Lord "frowned" upon their proceedings the first emigrants were to return, but if he prospered and favored them they were to "remember and help over the ancient and poor." As the emigrants proved the minority, it was agreed that the pastor should remain in Holland, and that Mr. Brewster, the elder, should accompany those who were to leave. Each party was to be an absolute church in itself; and as any went or came they were to be admitted to fellowship without further testimonies. Thus the church at Plymouth was the first in New England established upon the basis of Independent Congregationalism. Early the next spring Mr. Weston visited Leyden to conclude the arrangements for "shipping and money," and Messrs. Carver and Cushman returned with him to England to "receive the money and provide for the voyage." The latter was to tarry in London, and the former was to proceed to Southampton; Mr. Christopher Martin, of Billerrica, in Essex, was to join them; and from the "county of Essex came several others, as also from London and other places." Pending these negotiations, the property of those who were to embark was sold, and the proceeds were added to the common fund, with which vessels, provisions, and other necessaries were to be obtained. But Mr. Weston already half repented his engagements, and, more interested in trade than in religion, he informed his associates that "sundry honorable lords and worthy gentlemen" were treating for a patent for New England, distinct from the Virginia patent, and advised them to alter their plans and ally with the new company. At the same time their agents sent word that "some of those who should have gone fell off and would not go; other merchants and friends that professed to adventure their money withdrew and pretended many excuses: some disliking they went not to Guiana; others would do nothing unless they went to Virginia; and many who were most relied on refused to adventure if they went thither." Such discouragements would have disheartened men of a less sanguine temperament, and for a time the Pilgrims were "driven to great straits"; but as the patent for New England had not passed the seals, it was deemed useless to linger longer in uncertainty, and they "resolved to adventure with that patent they had." Their greatest hardship was the compact with the merchants. The Pilgrims were poor and their funds were limited. They had no alternative, therefore, but to associate with others; and, as often happens in such cases, wealth took advantage of their impoverished condition. By their instructions the terms on which their agents were to engage with the adventurers were definitely fixed, and no alteration was to be made without consultation. But time was precious; the business was urgent; it had already been delayed so long that many were impatient; and to satisfy the merchants, who drove their bargain sharply and shrewdly, some changes were made, and by ten tight articles the emigrants were bound to them for the term of seven years. At the end of this period, by the original compact, the houses and improved lands were to belong wholly to the planters; and each colonist having a family to support was to be allowed two days in each week to labor for their benefit. The last is a liberty enjoyed by "even a Wallachian serf or a Spanish slave"; and the refusal of the merchants to grant so reasonable a request caused great complaint; but Mr. Cushman answered peremptorily that, unless they had consented to the change, "the whole design would have fallen to the ground, and, necessity having no law, they were constrained to be silent." As it was, it threatened a seven years' check to the pecuniary prosperity of the colony; but as it did not interfere with their civil or religious rights, it was submitted to with the less reluctance, though never acceptable. At this critical juncture, while the Pilgrims were in such perplexity, and surrounded by so many difficulties, the Dutch, who were perfectly acquainted with their proceedings, and who could not but be sensible that the patent they had obtained of the Virginia Company, if sanctioned by the government of England, would interfere seriously with their projected West India Company, and with their settlement at New Netherland, stepped forward with the proposals of the most inviting and apparently disinterested and liberal character. Knowing that but a portion of the Church were preparing to embark for America, and that all would be glad to emigrate in a body, overtures were made to Mr. Robinson, as pastor, that he and his flock, and their friends in England, would embark under the auspices of the Lords States-General, themselves should be transported to America free of expense, and cattle should be furnished for their subsistence on their arrival. These are the "liberal offers" alluded to in general terms by early Pilgrim writers, and which are uniformly represented as having originated with the Dutch, though recently it has been suggested, and even asserted, that the overtures came from the Pilgrims themselves. But there is an inherent improbability in this last representation, arising from the fact that much time had been spent in procuring a patent in England, and in negotiating with the adventurers for the requisite funds, and an avowed object with the Pilgrims in leaving Holland was to preserve their nationality. They had no motive, therefore, to originate such a proposition, though when made to them by the Dutch it may have proved so attractive that they were willing to accept it upon certain conditions, of which one was that the government of Holland should guarantee to protect them. This concession was enough for the merchants to act upon. "They saw at once that so many families going in a body to New Netherland could hardly fail to form a successful colony." But the political part of the question they were unable to decide. They were ready to expend their capital in carrying the emigrants to New Netherland and in supplying them with necessaries; but they had no authority to promise that the Dutch government would afford to the colonists special protection after their arrival there. "They therefore determined to apply directly to the general government at The Hague." The Prince of Orange was then in the zenith of his power; and to him, as stadtholder, the merchants repaired with a memorial, professedly in the name of the "English preacher at Leyden," praying that "the aforesaid preacher and four hundred families may be taken under the protection of the United Provinces, and that two ships-of-war may be sent to secure, provisionally, the said lands to this government, since such lands may be of great importance whenever the West India Company shall be organized." The Stadtholder was too wary a politician to approbate immediately so sweeping a proposal, and referred it to the States-General. For two months it was before this body, where it was several times discussed; and finally, after repeated deliberations, it was resolved "peremptorily to reject the prayer of the memorialists." Nor can we doubt the wisdom of the policy which prompted this decision. It was well known in Holland that the English claimed the territory of New Netherland. The Dutch had hitherto been tolerated in settling there, because they had not openly interfered with the trade of the English. But should they now send over a body of English emigrants, under the tricolored flag, designed to found a colony for the benefit of the Batavian republic, the prudent foresaw that a collision would be inevitable, and might result disastrously to the interests of their nation. Mr. Robinson and his associates, though exiles, were Englishmen, and would be held as such in Holland or America. Hence, had the Pilgrims emigrated under the auspices of the Dutch, and had James I demanded of them the allegiance of subjects, they would have been compelled to submit, or the nation which backed them would have been forced into war. There was wisdom, therefore, in the policy which rejected the memorial of the merchants. In consequence of the disaffection of Mr. Weston, there were complaints of his delay in providing the necessary shipping; but at last the Speedwell, of sixty tons--miserable misnomer--was purchased in Holland for the use of the emigrants; and the Mayflower, of a hundred eighty tons--whose name is immortal--was chartered in England, and was fitting for their reception. The cost of the outfit, including a trading stock of seventeen hundred pounds, was but twenty-four hundred pounds--about twelve thousand dollars of the currency of the United States! It marks the poverty of the Pilgrims that their own funds were inadequate to meet such a disbursement; and it marks the narrowness of the adventurers that they doled the sum so grudgingly, and exacted such securities for their personal indemnity. There were some generous hearts among the members of this company--true and tried friends of the exiles in their troubles--but many of them were illiberal and selfish, and had very little sympathy with the principles of their partners. As the time of departure drew near, a day of public humiliation was observed--the last that the emigrants kept with their pastor--and on this memorable occasion Mr. Robinson discoursed to them from the words in Ezra: "And there, at the river, by Ahava, I proclaimed a fast, that we might humble ourselves before God, and seek of him a right way for us, and for our children, and for all of our substance." The catholic advice of this excellent man was worthy to be addressed to the _Founders of New England_: "We are now ere long to part asunder; and the Lord only knoweth whether ever I shall live to see your faces again. But, whether he hath appointed this or not, I charge you, before him and his blessed angels, to follow me no further than I have followed Christ; and if God should reveal anything to you by any other instrument of his, be as ready to receive it as ever you were to receive any truth by my ministry; and I am confident that the Lord hath more light and truth yet to break forth out of his holy Word. For my part, I cannot but bewail the condition of the reformed churches, who are come to a period of religion, and will go no further than the instruments of their reformation. The Lutherans, for example, cannot be drawn to go beyond what Luther saw; and whatever part of God's will he hath further imparted to Calvin, they will rather die than embrace; and so the Calvinists stick where he left them. This is a misery much to be lamented, for, though they were precious shining lights in their times, God hath not revealed his whole will to them; and were they now living, they would be as ready and willing to embrace further lights as that they did receive. "Remember also your church covenants, and especially that part of it whereby you promise and covenant with God and one with another, to receive whatsoever light or truth shall be made known to you from his written Word. But take heed what you receive for truth, and examine, compare, and weigh it well with the Scriptures. It is not possible that the Christian world should come so lately out of such thick anti-Christian darkness, and that full perfection of knowledge should break forth at once. Shake off, too, the name of Brownists, for it is but a nickname, and a brand to make religion odious, and the professors of it, to the Christian world. And be ready to close with the godly party of the kingdom of England, and rather study union than disunion--how near you may, without sin, close with them, than in the least manner to affect disunion or separation." At the conclusion of this discourse those who were to leave were feasted at their pastor's house, where, after "tears," warm and gushing, from the fulness of their hearts, the song of praise and thanksgiving was raised; and "truly," says an auditor, "it was the sweetest melody that ever mine ears heard." But the parting hour has come! The Speedwell lies at Delfthaven, twenty-two miles south of Leyden, and thither the emigrants are accompanied by their friends, and by others from Amsterdam who are present to pray for the success of their voyage. "_So they left that goodly and pleasant city, which had been their resting-place near twelve years. But they knew they were Pilgrims, and looked not much on those things, and quieted their spirits._" The last night was spent "with little sleep by the most, but with friendly entertainment and Christian discourse, and other real expressions of true Christian love." On the morrow they sailed; "and truly doleful was the sight of that sad and mournful parting; to see what sighs and sobs and prayers did sound among them; what tears did gush from every eye, and pithy speeches pierced each other's hearts; that sundry of the Dutch strangers, that stood on the quay as spectators, could not refrain from tears. Yet comfortable and sweet it was to see such lively and true expressions of dear and unfeigned love. But the tide, which stays for no man, calling them away that were thus loth to depart, their reverend pastor, falling down on his knees, and they all with him, with watery cheeks, commended them with most fervent prayers to the Lord and his blessing; and then, with mutual embraces and many tears, they took their leave one of another, which proved to be _the last leave_ to many of them." At starting they gave their friends "a volley of small shot and three pieces of ordnance"; and so, "lifting up their hands to each other, and their hearts for each other to the Lord God," they set sail, and found his presence with them, "in the midst of the manifold straits he carried them through." Favored by a prosperous gale they soon reached Southampton, where lay the Mayflower in readiness with the rest of their company; and after a joyful welcome and mutual congratulations, they "fell to parley about their proceedings." In about a fortnight the Speedwell, commanded by Captain Reynolds, and the Mayflower, commanded by Captain Jones--both having a hundred twenty passengers on board--were ready to set out to cross the Atlantic. Overseers of the provisions and passengers were selected; Mr. Weston and others were present to witness their departure; and the farewell was said to the friends they were to leave. But "not every cloudless morning is followed by a pleasant day." Scarcely had the two barks left the harbor ere Captain Reynolds complained of the leakiness of the Speedwell, and both put in at Dartmouth for repairs. At the end of eight precious days they started again, but had sailed "only a hundred leagues beyond the land's end" when the former complaints were renewed, and the vessels put in at Plymouth, where, "by the consent of the whole company," the Speedwell was dismissed; and as the Mayflower could accommodate but one hundred passengers, twenty of those who had embarked in the smaller vessel--including Mr. Cushman and his family--were compelled to return; and matters being ordered with reference to this arrangement, "another sad parting took place." Finally, after the lapse of two more precious weeks, the Mayflower, "freighted with the destinies of a continent," and having on board one hundred passengers, resolute men, women, and children, "loosed from Plymouth"--"her inmates having been kindly entertained and courteously used by divers friends there dwelling"--and, with the wind "east-northeast, a fine small gale," was soon far at sea. The particulars of this voyage, more memorable by far than the famed expedition of the Argonauts, and paralleled, if at all, only by the voyage of Columbus, are few and scanty. Though fair winds wafted the bark onward for a season, contrary winds and fierce storms were soon encountered, by which she was "shrewdly shaken" and her "upper works made very leaky." One of the main beams of the midship was also "bowed and cracked," but a passenger having brought with him "a large iron screw," the beam was replaced and carefully fastened, and the vessel continued on. During this storm John Howland, "a stout young man," was by a "heel of the ship thrown into the sea, but catching by the halliards, which hung overboard, he kept his hold, and was saved." "A profane and proud young seaman," also, "stout and able of body, who had despised the poor people in their sickness, telling them he hoped to help cast off half of them overboard before they came to their journey's end, and to make merry with what they had, was smitten with a grievous disease, of which he died in a desperate manner, and was himself the first thrown overboard, to the astonishment of all his fellows." One other death occurred--that of William Button, a servant of Dr. Fuller; and there was one birth, in the family of Stephen Hopkins, of a son, christened "Oceanus," who died shortly after the landing. The ship being leaky, and the passengers closely stowed, their clothes were constantly wet. This added much to the discomfort of the voyage, and laid a foundation for a portion of the mortality which prevailed the first winter. [Illustration: Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth Rock Painting by A. Gisbert] "Land-ho!" This welcome cry was not heard until two months had elapsed, and the sandy cliffs of Cape Cod were the first points which greeted the eyes of the exiles. Yet the appearance of these cliffs "much comforted them, and caused them to rejoice together, and praise God, that had given them once again to see land." Their destination, however, was to "the mouth of the Hudson," and now they were much farther to the north, and within the bounds of the New England Company. They therefore "tacked to stand to the southward," but "becoming entangled among roaring shoals, and the wind shrieking upon them withal, they resolved to bear up again for the Cape," and the next day, "by God's providence, they got into Cape harbor," where, falling upon their knees, they "blessed the Lord, the God of heaven, who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean, and delivered them from all perils and miseries, therein, again to set their feet on the firm and stable earth, their proper element." Morton, in his memorial, asserts that the Mayflower put in at this cape, "partly by reason of a storm by which she was forced in, but more especially by the fraudulency and contrivance of the aforesaid Mr. Jones, the master of the ship; for their intention and his engagement was to Hudson's river; but some of the Dutch having notice of their intention, and having thoughts about the same time of erecting a plantation there likewise, they fraudulently hired the said Jones, by delays, while they were in England, and now under the pretence of the sholes, etc., to disappoint them in their going thither. Of this plot betwixt the Dutch and Mr. Jones I have had _late and certain intelligence_." The explicitness of this assertion has caused charge of treachery--brought by no one but Morton--to be repeated by almost every historian down to the present period; and it is only within a few years that its correctness has been questioned by writers whose judgment is entitled to respect. But notwithstanding the plausibility of the arguments urged to disprove this charge, and even the explicit assertion that it is a "Parthian calumny," and a "sheer falsehood," we must frankly own that, in our estimation, the veracity of Morton yet remains unimpeached. Facts prove that the Dutch were contemplating permanent settlement of New Netherland, and the early Pilgrim writers assert that overtures were made to the Leyden Church by the merchants of Holland to join them in that movement, and the petition to the States-General, when presented by those merchants, was finally rejected, and the Mayflower commenced her voyage intending to proceed to the Hudson. Is it improbable that steps may have been taken to frustrate their intention, and that arrangements may even have been made with the captain of that vessel by Dutch agents in England, to alter her course, and land the emigrants farther to the north? We are aware that one to whose judgment we have usually deferred has said that had the intelligence been early it would have been more certain. But every student of history knows that _late_ intelligence is often more reliable and authentic than _early_; and if it be asked from what source did Morton obtain his information, we can only suggest that, up to 1664, New Netherlands remained under the dominion of the Dutch, and the history of that colony was in a great measure secret to the English. But several of the prominent settlers of Plymouth had ere this removed to Manhattan--as Isaac Allerton and Thomas Willet--and after the reduction of the country and its subjection to England, from these persons the _late_ and _certain_ intelligence may have been received, or from access to documents which were before kept private. The harbor in which the Mayflower now lay is worthy of a passing glance. It is described by Major Grahame as "one of the finest harbors for ships of war on the whole Atlantic coast. The width and freedom from obstructions of every kind, at its entrance, and the extent of sea-room upon the land side, make it accessible to vessels of the largest class in almost all winds. This advantage, its capacity, depth of water, excellent anchorage, and the complete shelter it affords from all winds render it one of the most valuable harbors upon our coast, whether considered in a commercial or a military point of view." If to the advantages here enumerated could have been added a fertile soil, and an extensive back country, suitably furnished with timber and fuel, the spot to which this gallant bark was led would have proved as eligible a site for a flourishing colony as could possibly have been desired. But these advantages were wanting; and though our fathers considered it an "extraordinary blessing of God" in directing their course for these parts, which they were at first inclined to consider "one of the most pleasant, most healthful, and most fruitful parts of the world," longer acquaintance and better information abundantly satisfied them of the insuperable obstacles to agriculture and commerce. The Pilgrims were now ready to pass to the shore. But before taking this step, as the spot where they lay was without the bounds of their patent, and as signs of insubordination had appeared among their servants, an association was deemed necessary, and an agreement to "combine in one body and to submit to such government and governors as should by common consent" be selected and chosen. Accordingly, a compact was prepared, and signed before landing by all the males of the company who were of age; and this instrument was the constitution of the colony for several years. It was as follows: "In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign lord, King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, defender of the faith, etc., having undertaken, for the glory of God, and the advancement of the Christian faith, and honor of our King and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do, by these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together unto a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation, and furtherance of the ends aforesaid, and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony; unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. In witness whereof we have hereunder subscribed our names, at Cape Cod, the 11th of November, in the year of the reign of our sovereign lord, King James of England, France, and Ireland, the 18th, and of Scotland the 54th, A.D. 1620." While on the one hand much eloquence has been expended in expatiating on this compact, as if in the cabin of the Mayflower had consciously and for the first time been discovered in an age of Cimmerian darkness the true principles of republicanism and equality; on the other hand, it has been asserted that the Pilgrims were "actuated by the most daring ambition," and that even at this early period they designed to erect a government absolutely independent of the mother-country. But the truth seems to be that, although the form of government adopted by the emigrants is republican in its character, and remarkably liberal, at the same time its founders acknowledged suitable allegiance to England, and regarded themselves as connected with the land of their nativity by political and social ties, both endearing and enduring. Left to themselves in a wilderness land, apart from all foreign aid, and thrown upon their own resources, with none to help or advise, they adopted that course which commended itself to their calm judgment as the simplest and best; and if, under such circumstances, their compact was democratic, it seems chiefly to intimate that self-government is naturally attractive to the mind, and is spontaneously resorted to in emergencies like the present. It is as unwise to flatter our ancestors by ascribing to them motives different from those which they themselves professed as it is unjust to prefer charges against them to which they are not obnoxious. They were honest, sincere, and God-fearing men; humble in their circumstances, and guided by their own judgment; but endowed with no singular prophetic vision, and claiming no preternatural political sagacity. They could penetrate the future no farther than to confide in the justice of God and the power of truth. The latter they knew must ultimately prevail, for the former was pledged to secure its triumph. The first care of the exiles, having established their provisional government, was to provide for their shelter. Cautiously, therefore, for fear of harm, on the same day that the compact was signed, fifteen or sixteen men, well armed, were set ashore at Long Point to explore the country; and returning at night with a boat-load of juniper, which delighted them with its fragrance, they reported that they had found "neither persons nor habitations." The stillness of the Sabbath was consecrated to worship--the first, probably, ever observed by Christians in Massachusetts--and on the morrow the shallop was drawn to the beach for repairs, and for the first time the whole company landed for refreshment. As the fitting of the shallop promised to be a difficult task, the adventurous, impatient of delay, were eager to prosecute a journey by land for discovery. "The willingness of the persons was liked, but the thing itself, in regard of the danger, was rather permitted than approved." Consent, however, was obtained, and sixteen were detailed under Captain Standish, their military leader, who had served in the armies both of Elizabeth and James; and William Bradford, Stephen Hopkins, and Edward Tilly, being joined with him as "advisers and counsellors," the party debarked at Stevens' Point, at the western extremity of the harbor, and marching in single file, at the distance of about a mile, five savages were espied, who, at their approach, hastily fled. Compassing the head of East Harbor Creek the next day, and reaching a deep valley, fed with numerous springs, the exhausted travellers, whose provisions consisted but of "biscuit and Holland cheese, with a little bottle of aqua vitæ," eagerly halted by one of these springs, and "drank their first draught of New England water with as much delight as ever they drunk drink in all their lives." Passing thence to the shore, and kindling a beacon-fire, they proceeded to another valley, in Truro, in which was a pond, "a musket-shot broad and twice as long," near which the Indians had planted corn. Further on graves were discovered; and at another spot the ruins of a house, and heaps of sand filled with corn stored in baskets. With hesitancy--so scrupulous were they of wilfully wronging the natives--an old kettle, a waif from the ruins, was filled with this corn, for which the next summer the owners were remunerated. In the vicinity of the Pamet were the ruins of a fort, or palisade; and encamping for the night near the pond in Truro, on the following day they returned to the ship "weary and welcome" and their "Eschol" was added for their diminishing stores. Ten days after, another expedition was fitted out, in which twenty-five of the colonists and nine or ten of the sailors, with Jones at their head, were engaged; and visiting the mouth of the Pamet, called by them "Cold Harbor," and obtaining fresh supplies from the aboriginal granaries, after a brief absence, in which a few unimportant discoveries were made, the party returned. Here a discussion ensued. Should they settle at Cold Harbor or seek a more eligible site? In favor of the former it was urged that the harbor was suitable for boats, if not for ships; the corn land was good; it was convenient to their fishing-grounds; the location was healthy; winter was approaching; travelling was dangerous; their provisions were wasting; and the captain of the Mayflower was anxious to return. On the other hand, it was replied that a better place might be found; it would be a hinderance to move a second time; good spring-water was wanting; and lastly, at Agawam, now Ipswich, twenty leagues to the north, was an excellent harbor, better ground, and better fishing. Robert Coppin, their pilot, likewise informed them of "a great and navigable river and good harbour in the other headland of the bay, almost right over against Cape Cod," which he had formerly visited, and which was called "Thievish Harbor." A third expedition, therefore, was agreed upon; and though the weather was unfavorable, and some difficulty was experienced in clearing Billingsgate Point, they reached the weather shore, and there "had better sailing." Yet bitter was the cold, and the spray, as it froze on them, gave them the appearance of being encased in glittering mail. At night their rendezvous was near Great Meadow Creek; and early in the morning, after an encounter with the Indians, in which no one was wounded, their journey was resumed, their destination being the harbor which Coppin had described to them, and which he assured them could be reached in a few hours' sailing. Through rain and snow they steered their course; but by the middle of the afternoon a fearful storm raged; the hinges of their rudder were broken; the mast was split, the sail was rent, and the inmates of the shallop were in imminent peril; yet, by God's mercy, they survived the first shock, and, favored by a flood tide, steered into the harbor. A glance satisfied the pilot that it was not the place he sought; and in an agony of despair he exclaimed: "Lord be merciful to us! My eyes never saw this place before!" In his frenzy he would have run the boat ashore among the breakers; but an intrepid seaman resolutely shouted, "About with her, or we are lost!" And instantly obeying, with hard rowing, dark as it was, with the wind howling fiercely, and the rain dashing furiously, they shot under the lee of an island and moored until morning. The next day the island was explored--now known as Clarke's Island--and the clothing of the adventurers was carefully dried; but, excusable as it might have been under the circumstances in which they were placed to have immediately resumed their researches, the Sabbath was devoutly and sacredly observed. On Monday, December 11th, O. S., a landing was effected upon Forefather's Rock. The site of this stone was preserved by tradition, and a venerable contemporary of several of the Pilgrims, whose head was silvered with the frost of ninety-five winters, settled the question of its identity in 1741. Borne in his arm-chair by a grateful populace, Elder Faunce took his last look at the spot so endeared to his memory, and, bedewing it with tears, he bade it farewell. In 1774 this precious boulder, as if seized with the spirit of that bustling age, was raised from its bed to be consecrated to Liberty, and in the act of its elevation it split in twain--an occurrence regarded by many as ominous of the separation of the colonies from England, and the lower part being left in the spot where it still lies, the upper part, weighing several tons, was conveyed, amid the heartiest rejoicings, to Liberty-pole Square, and adorned with a flag bearing the imperishable motto, "Liberty or Death." On July 4, 1834, the natal day of the freedom of the colonies, this part of the rock was removed to the ground in front of Pilgrim Hall, and there it rests, encircled with a railing, ornamented with heraldic wreaths, bearing the names of the forty-one signers of the compact in the Mayflower. Fragments of this rock are relics in the cabinets of hundreds of our citizens, and are sought with avidity even by strangers as memorials of a pilgrimage to the birthplace of New England. On the day of landing the harbor was sounded and the land explored; and, the place inviting settlement, the adventurers returned with tidings of their success; the Mayflower weighed anchor to proceed to the spot; and ere another Sabbath dawned she was safely moored in the desired haven. Monday and Tuesday were spent in exploring tours; and on Wednesday, the 20th, the settlement at Plymouth was commenced--twenty persons remaining ashore for the night. On the following Saturday the first timber was felled; on Monday their storehouse was commenced; on Thursday preparations were made for the erection of a fort; and allotments of land were made to the families; and on the following Sunday religious worship was performed for the first time in their storehouse. For a month the colonists were busily employed. The distance of the vessel--which lay more than a mile from the shore--was a great hinderance to their work; frequent storms interrupted their operations; and by accident their storehouse was destroyed by fire, and their hospital narrowly escaped destruction. The houses were arranged in two rows, on Leyden street, each man building his own. The storehouse was twenty feet square; the size of the private dwellings we have no means of determining. All were constructed of logs, with the interstices filled with sticks and clay; the roofs were covered with thatch; the chimneys were of fragments of wood, plastered with clay; and oiled paper served as a substitute for glass for the inlet of light. The whole of this first winter was a period of unprecedented hardship and suffering. Mild as was the weather, it was far more severe than that of the land of their birth; and the disease contracted on shipboard, aggravated by colds caught in their wanderings in quest of a home, caused a great and distressing mortality to prevail. In December six died; in January, eight; in February, seventeen; and in March, thirteen; a total of forty-four in four months--of whom twenty-one were signers of the compact. It is remarkable that the leaders of the colony were spared. The survivors were unwearied in their attentions to their companions; but affection could not avert the arrows of the Destroyer. The first burial-place was on Cole's Hill; and as an affecting proof of the miserable condition of the sufferers it is said that, knowing they were surrounded by warlike savages, and fearing their losses might be discovered and advantage be taken of their weakness to attack and exterminate them, the sad mounds formed by rude coffins hidden beneath the earth were carefully levelled and sowed with grain! However rapidly we have sketched, in the preceding pages, the history of the Pilgrims from their settlement in Holland to their removal to America, no one can fail to have been deeply impressed with the inspiring lessons which that history teaches. As has been well said: "Their banishment to Holland was fortunate; the decline of their little company in the strange land was fortunate; the difficulties which they experienced in getting the royal consent to banish themselves to this wilderness was fortunate; all the tears and heartbreakings of that ever-memorable parting at Delfthaven had the happiest influence on the rising destinies of New England. All this purified the rank of the settlers. These rough touches of fortune brushed off the light, uncertain, selfish spirits. They made it a grave, solemn, self-denying expedition, and required of those who were engaged in it to be so too." Touching also is the story of the "long, cold, dreary autumnal passage" in that "one solitary, adventurous vessel, the Mayflower, of a forlorn hope, freighted with the prospects of a future state and bound across the unknown sea." We behold it "pursuing with a thousand misgivings the uncertain, the tedious voyage. Suns rise and set, and winter surprises them on the deep, but brings them not the sight of the wished-for shore. The awful voice of the storm howls through the rigging. The laboring masts seem straining from their base; the dismal sound of the pumps is heard; the ship leaps, as it were, madly from billow to billow; the ocean breaks, and settles with engulfing floods over the floating deck, and beats with deadening, shivering weight against the staggering vessel." Escaped from these perils, after a passage of sixty-six days, and subsequent journeyings until the middle of December, they land on the ice-clad rocks of Plymouth, worn out with suffering, weak and weary from the fatigues of the voyage, poorly armed, scantily provisioned, surrounded by barbarians, without prospect of human succor, without the help or favor of their king, with a useless patent, without assurance of liberty in religion, without shelter, and without means! Yet resolute men are there: Carver, Bradford, Brewster, Standish, Winslow, Alden, Warren, Hopkins, and others. Female fortitude and resignation are there. Wives and mothers, with dauntless courage and unexampled heroism, have braved all these dangers, shared all these trials, borne all these sorrows, submitted to all these privations. And there, too, is "chilled and shivering childhood, houseless but for a mother's arms, couchless but for a mother's breast." But these sepulchres of the dead!--where lie Turner, Chilton, Crackston, Fletcher, Goodman, Mullins, White, Rogers, Priest, Williams, and their companions--these touch the tenderest and holiest chords. Husbands and wives, parents and children, have finished their pilgrimage, and mingled their dust with the dust of New England. Hushed as the unbreathing air, when not a leaf stirs in the mighty forest, was the scene at those graves where the noble and true were buried in peace. "Deeply as they sorrowed at parting with those, doubly endeared to them by the remembrance of what they had suffered together, and by the fellowship of kindred griefs, they committed them to the earth calmly, but with hope." No sculptured marble, no enduring monument, no honorable inscription, marks the spot where they were laid. Is it surprising that local attachments soon sprung up in the breasts of the survivors, endearing them to the place of refuge and their sorrows? They had come "hither from a land to which they were never to return. Hither they had brought, and here they were to fix, their hopes and their affections." Consecrated by persecutions in their native land, by an exile in Holland of hardship and toil, by the perils of the ocean voyage and its terrible storms, by their sufferings and wanderings in quest of a home, and by the heartrending trials of the first lonely winter--by all these was their new home consecrated and hallowed in their inmost thoughts; and forward to the future they looked with confidence in God and a cheerful reliance upon that beneficent Providence which had enabled them with patience to submit to his chastenings, and, Phoenix-like, to rise from the ashes of the dead and from the depths of the bitterest affliction and distress, with invincible courage, determined to subdue the wilderness before them, and to "fill this region of the great continent, which stretches almost from pole to pole," with freedom and intelligence, the arts and the sciences, flourishing villages, temples of worship, and the numerous blessings of civilized life, baptized in the fountain of the Gospel of Christ. BIRTH OF MODERN SCIENTIFIC METHODS BACON AND DESCARTES A.D. 1620 GEORGE HENRY LEWES Three centuries of modern thought have not sufficed to settle the dispute as to its own origin. Many Englishmen still claim insistently that Lord Bacon, in his _Advancement of Learning_, and still more positively in his later and greater work, the _Novum Organum_ (1620) started modern scientific method. Present scientists themselves seem inclined to smile somewhat scornfully at the laurels thus placed on Bacon's brow. And as for Frenchmen, they simply refuse to hear the pompous Lord Chancellor mentioned at all. To them René Descartes is the only genuine originator of all modern philosophy. The publication of his _Discourse on Method_ (1637) marks for them the epoch which separates two worlds of thought. Fortunately, George Henry Lewes, himself a celebrated English critic and the author of a system of philosophy, presents us the two rivals side by side, seeking to explain and balance the honors due to each. It is very certain that somewhere about this period did originate that mathematical exactitude of method in both thought and experiment which has produced modern science. And modern science has, in its brief but marvellous career of three centuries, altered the face of the globe. It has taught man more than ancient science did in all the preceding centuries; it has touched even our deepest faiths. Whether its success has been due mainly to the abstract reasoners like Copernicus and the philosophers, or to the practical experimenters like Galileo and Harvey, is perhaps scarcely a practical question. In the evolution of philosophy, as in the evolution of an organism, it is impossible to fix with any precision a period of origin, because every beginning is also a termination, and presumes the results of a whole series of preceding evolutions. As Mr. Spedding felicitously says, our philosophy "was born about Bacon's time, and Bacon's name, as the brightest which presided at the time of its birth, has been inscribed upon it: "Hesperus that led The starry host rode brightest." "Not that Hesperus did actually lead the other stars; he and they were moving under a common force, and they would have moved just as fast if he had been away; but because he shone brightest, he looked as if he led them." Bacon and Descartes are generally recognized as the "Fathers of Modern Philosophy," though they themselves were carried along by the rapidly swelling current of their age, then decisively setting in the direction of science. It is their glory to have seen visions of the coming greatness, to have expressed in terms of splendid power the thoughts which were dimly stirring the age, and to have sanctioned the new movement by their authoritative genius. The destruction of scholasticism was complete. They came to direct the construction of a grander temple. There are in these two thinkers certain marked features of resemblance, and others equally marked of difference. We see their differences most strikingly in their descendants. From Bacon lineally descended Hobbes, Locke, Diderot, D'Alembert, Condillac, Cabanis, and our Scotch school. From Descartes descended Spinoza, Malebranche, Leibnitz, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. The inductive method predominated in one school, the deductive in the other. These differences we shall recognize more fully later on; at present we may fix our minds on the two great points of resemblance: 1st, the decisive separation of philosophy from theology; 2d, the promulgation of a new method. The separation of philosophy from theology is made emphatic in the rejection of final causes by both Bacon and Descartes. Perhaps the most effective of their novelties was the effort of Descartes to explain the system of the world by matter and motion only, thus quietly setting aside all causes and metaphysical entities which had hitherto been invoked. The hypothesis of vortices was indeed soon disclosed to be untenable; but the scientific attitude from which that hypothesis proceeded was never afterward relinquished. It was a bold attempt at the application of the objective method, and was only defective in its restriction to cosmology, and its exclusion of biology, which was still left to the subjective method, as I shall presently notice. The second point on which Bacon and Descartes resemble each other is in their conception of the results to be achieved by a totally new method. Coming as they did on the top of the revolutionary wave which had washed away the old methods, seeing as they saw the striking results of physical research, and foreseeing yet more glorious conquests from the spirit which achieved those results, they yielded themselves to the pleasant illusion that a new method would rapidly solve all problems. Bacon, as the more magnificent and imaginative mind, had grander visions and more enthusiastic faith; but Descartes also firmly believed that the new method was to do wonders. Indeed, it is interesting to note how these great intellects seem quite unconscious of their individual superiority, and are ready to suppose that their method will equalize all intellects. It reminds us of Sydney Smith maintaining that any man might be witty if he tried. Descartes affirms that "it is not so essential to have a fine understanding as to apply it rightly. Those who walk slowly make greater progress if they follow the right road than those who run swiftly on a wrong one." To the same effect Bacon: "A cripple on the right path will beat a racer on the wrong one." This is true enough, but is beside the question. Equipped with good or bad instruments, the superiority of one worker over another is always made manifest; and it is precisely in the right use of a good method that the scientific genius is called upon for its delicate and patient skill. Into the vexed questions of Bacon's conduct, both with regard to Essex and with regard to bribery, I cannot enter here; but referring the curious to his biographers and critics, I will simply note that he was born in 1561; was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he learned to distrust the Aristotelianism of his masters, and planned his own vast scheme of reform; went to Paris; sat in Parliament as member for Middlesex; was successively appointed of the Privy Council, and lord chancellor; was created Viscount Verulam; was impeached and condemned for corruption as a judge; and died in the spring of 1626. "For my name and memory," said the dying man, "I leave it to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and the next age." Posterity has been generous; the fame of Bacon is immense. Admirers have not always been unanimous as to his special claims; but there has been no lack of enthusiasm, no questioning of his genius. He has been lauded for achievements in which he had no part, and has been adorned with titles to which he had doubtful pretensions; while his most important services have been overlooked. But the general recognition of his greatness, and our national pride in it, have not prevented certain attacks on his reputation, which have been answered in a rather angry spirit; and thus from one cause and another there is great difficulty in arriving at any candid and thorough appreciation of the work he did. It seems to some persons that Bacon did very little in rising against the philosophy of his day, and pointing out a new path; and to others it seems that he did nothing of the kind. But whoever looks closely into the writings of Bacon's predecessors will see that what now seems obvious and trivial was then startling and important. As M. Rémusat felicitously says, "_Il fallait du génie pour avoir ce bon sens_." And to those who deny that Bacon did head the revolution, I would oppose not simply the testimony of nearly three centuries, but the testimony of Gassendi, who, both as contemporary and as foreigner, was capable of judging the effect then produced. It is indeed apparent to anyone familiar with the writings of some of Bacon's immediate predecessors, especially Galileo, that there was little novelty in his denunciations of the erroneous method then popular, or in his exhortations to pursue observation, experiment, and induction. But it is not less apparent that he had wider and profounder views of the philosophy of method than any of them, and that the popular opinion does not err in attributing to him the glory of heading the new era. In England he is commonly regarded as the "Father of Experimental Philosophy" and the originator of the inductive method. Men profess themselves followers of the "Baconian philosophy," sometimes confounding that with a servile attention to facts and a most unscientific scorn of theories; at other times implying that by the Baconian method is to be understood the one on which science has successfully been pursued. A rigorous investigation of Bacon's claims will disclose the truth of his own statement, that he was rather one who sounded the trumpet-call than one who marshalled the troops. He insisted on the importance of experiment, but he could not teach what he did not himself understand--the experimental method. He exhorted men to study nature; but he could not give available directions for that study. He had fervent faith in the possible conquests of science; but never having thoroughly mastered any one science, he was incapable of appreciating the real conditions of research. He saw clearly enough the great truth that the progress of research must be gradual, but he did not see what were the necessary grades, he did not see the kind of inquiries, and the order they must follow before discoveries could be made. That he had really but vague and imperfect conceptions of scientific method is decisively shown by his contemptuous rejection of Copernicus, Galileo, and Gilbert, and by his own plan of investigation into heat. One sentence alone would suffice to show this, namely, his sneer at Copernicus as "a man who thinks nothing of introducing fictions of any kind into nature, provided his calculations turn out well." Bacon did not understand, what Copernicus profoundly saw, that the only value of an hypothesis was its reconciliation of calculations with observations. In his plan for an inquisition into the nature of heat, we see a total misconception of the scientific process; not only does he set about in a laboriously erroneous way, but he seeks that which science proclaims inaccessible, the nature of heat. It is true that he arrives at a hypothesis which bears some resemblance to the hypothesis now accepted, namely, that heat is a mode of motion--"an expansive and restrained motion, modified in certain ways, and exerted in the smaller particles of the body." But those who have been eager to credit him with an anticipation of modern views on the strength of this definition, have overlooked the fact that it is incapable of explaining a single process, includes none of the ascertained laws of phenomena, and is itself an example of the illicit generalization which Bacon elsewhere condemns. It was with some justification, therefore, that Harvey, who knew what science was, and knew better than most men how discoveries were made, said of him that he wrote of science like a lord chancellor. Indeed, it is to mistake his position and his greatness altogether to attribute his influence on philosophy, which is undeniable, to an influence on science which is more than questionable. Bacon was a philosopher; but because with him philosophy, separating itself from the bondage of theology, claimed to ally itself with science, and sought its materials in the generalities of science, those writers who have never made a very accurate distinction between the two, but have confounded philosophy with metaphysics, and science with physics, have naturally regarded Bacon as the precursor of Newton, Laplace, Faraday, and Liebig. It is in vain that critics oppose such a claim by asserting what is undeniable, that the great discoveries in modern science were neither made on Bacon's method nor under any direct guidance from him--that Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler preceded him, that Harvey and Newton ignored him--stanch admirers have their answer ready; they know that Bacon was the herald of the new era, and they believe that it was his trumpet-call which animated the troops and led them to victory. Having thus indicated his position, it will be necessary to give a brief outline of the method which he confidently believed was to be infallible and applicable in all inquiries. This was imperatively needed: "for let a man look carefully into all that variety of books with which the arts and sciences abound, he will find everywhere endless repetitions of the same thing, varying in the method of treatment, but not new in substance, insomuch that the whole stock, numerous as it appears at first view, proves on examination to be but scanty. What was asserted once is asserted still, and what was a question once is a question still, and, instead of being resolved by discussion, is only fixed and fed." He proposes his new method, that thereby "the intellect may be raised and exalted and made capable of overcoming the difficulties and obscurities of nature. The art which I introduce with this view (which I call the 'Interpretation of Nature') is a kind of logic, though the difference between it and the ordinary logic is great, indeed immense. For the ordinary logic professes to contrive and prepare helps and guards for the understanding, as mine does; and in this one point they agree. But mine differs from it in three points: viz., in the end aimed at, in the order of demonstration, and in the starting-point of inquiry. "But the greatest change I introduce is in the form itself of induction and the judgments made thereby. For the induction of which the logicians speak, which proceeds by simple enumeration, is a puerile thing; concluded at hazard, is always liable to be upset by a contradictory instance, takes into account only what is known and ordinary, and leads to no result. Now, what the sciences stand in need of is a form of induction which shall analyze experience and take it to pieces, and by a due process of exclusion and rejection lead to an inevitable conclusion." "Now, my method, though hard to practise, is easy to explain; and it is this: I propose to establish progressive stages of certainty. The evidence of sense, helped and guarded by a certain process of correction, I retain; but the mental operation which follows the act of sense I for the most part reject; and instead of it I open and lay out a new and certain path for the mind to proceed in, starting directly from the simple sensuous perception." The same dissatisfaction with mediæval philosophy expressed itself in Descartes. The incompetence of philosophers to solve the problems they occupied themselves with--the anarchy which reigned in the scientific world, where no two thinkers could agree upon fundamental points--the extravagance of the conclusions to which some accepted premises led, determined him to seek no more to slake his thirst at their fountains. "And that is why, as soon as my age permitted me to quit my preceptors," he says, "I entirely gave up the study of letters; and resolving to seek no other science than that which I could find in myself, or else in the great book of the world, I employed the remainder of my youth in travel, in seeing courts and camps, in frequenting people of diverse humors and conditions, in collecting various experiences, and above all in endeavoring to draw some profitable reflection from what I saw. For it seemed to me that I should meet with more truth in the reasonings which each man makes in his own affairs, and which, if wrong, would be speedily punished by failure, than in those reasonings which the philosopher makes in his study, upon speculations which produce no effect, and which are of no consequence to him, except perhaps that he will be more vain of them the more remote they are from common-sense, because he would then have been forced to employ more ingenuity and subtlety to render them plausible." For many years he led a roving, unsettled life; now serving in the army, now making a tour, now studying mathematics in solitude, now conversing with scientific men. One constant purpose gave unity to those various pursuits. He was elaborating his answers to the questions which perplexed him; he was preparing his method. When only twenty-three he conceived the design of a reformation in philosophy. He was at that time residing in his winter quarters at Neuburg, on the Danube. His travels soon afterward commenced, and at the age of thirty-three he retired into Holland, there in silence and solitude to arrange his thoughts into a consistent whole. He remained there eight years; and so completely did he shut himself from the world that he concealed from his friends the very place of his residence. When the results of this meditative solitude were given to the world in the shape of his celebrated _Discourse on Method_, and his _Meditations_--to which he invented replies--the sensation produced was immense. It was evident to all men that an original thinker had arisen; and although this originality could not but rouse much opposition, from the very fact of being original, yet Descartes gained the day. His name became European. His controversies were European quarrels. Charles I of England invited him over, with the promise of a liberal appointment; and the invitation would probably have been accepted had not the civil war broken out. He afterward received a flattering invitation from Christina of Sweden, who had read some of his works with great satisfaction, and wished to learn from himself the principles of his philosophy. He accepted it, and arrived in Stockholm in 1649. His reception was most gratifying, and the Queen was so pleased with him as earnestly to beg him to remain with her, and give his assistance toward the establishment of an academy of sciences. But the delicate frame of Descartes was ill fitted for the severity of the climate, and a cold, caught in one of his morning visits to Christina, produced inflammation of the lungs, which carried him off. Christina wept for him, had him interred in the cemetery for foreigners, and placed a long eulogium upon his tomb. His remains were subsequently (1666) carried from Sweden into France, and buried with great ceremony in Ste. Geneviève du Mont. Descartes was a great thinker; but having said this, we have almost exhausted the praise we could bestow upon him as a man. In disposition he was timid to servility. When promulgating his proofs of the existence of the Deity, he was in evident alarm lest the Church should see something objectionable in them. He had also written an astronomical treatise; but hearing of the fate of Galileo, he refrained from publishing, and always used some chicane in speaking of the world's movement. He was not a brave man, nor was he an affectionate man. But he was even-tempered, placid, and studious not to give offence. It has already been indicated that the great work performed by Descartes was, like that of Bacon, the promulgation of a new method. This was rendered necessary by their separation from the ancient philosophy and their exclusion of authority. If inquiry is to be independent, if reason is to walk alone, in what direction must she walk? Having relinquished the aid of the Church, there were but two courses open: the one to tread once more in the path of the ancients, and to endeavor by the ancient methods to attain the truth; or else to open a new path, to invent a new method. The former was barely possible. The spirit of the age was deeply imbued with a feeling of opposition against the ancient methods; and Descartes himself had been painfully perplexed by the universal anarchy and uncertainty which prevailed. The second course was therefore chosen. Uncertainty was the disease of the epoch. Scepticism was widespread, and even the most confident dogmatism could offer no criterion of certitude. This want of criterion we saw leading, in Greece, to scepticism, Epicureanism, Stoicism, the New Academy, and finally leading the Alexandrians into the province of faith, to escape from the dilemma. The question of a criterion had long been the vital question of philosophy. Descartes could get no answer to it from the doctors of his day. Unable to find firm ground on any of the prevalent systems, distracted by doubts, mistrusting the conclusions of his own understanding, mistrusting the evidences of his senses, he determined to make a _tabula rasa_, and reconstruct his knowledge. He resolved to examine the premises of every conclusion, and to believe nothing but upon the clearest evidence of reason; evidence so convincing that he could not by any effort refuse to assent to it. He has given us the detailed history of his doubts. He has told us how he found that he could plausibly enough doubt of everything except of his own existence. He pushed his scepticism to the verge of self-annihilation. There he stopped; there in self, in his consciousness, he found at last an irresistible fact, an irreversible certainty. Firm ground was discovered. He could doubt the existence of the external world, and treat it as a phantasm; he could doubt the existence of a God, and treat the belief as a superstition; but of the existing of his thinking, doubting mind no sort of doubt was possible. He, the doubter, existed if nothing else existed. The existence that was revealed in his own consciousness was the primary fact, the first indubitable certainty. Hence his famous "_Cogito, ergo sum_" ("I think, therefore I am"). It is somewhat curious, and, as an illustration of the frivolous verbal disputes of philosophers, not a little instructive, that this celebrated "_Cogito, ergo sum_," should have been frequently attacked for its logical imperfection. It has been objected, from Gassendi downward, that to say, "I think, therefore I am," is a begging of the question; since existence has to be proved identical with thought. Certainly, if Descartes had intended to prove his own existence by reasoning, he would have been guilty of the _petitio principii_ Gassendi attributes to him, viz., that the major premise, "that which thinks exists," is assumed, not proved. But he did not intend this. What was his object? He has told us that it was to find a starting-point from which to reason--to find an irreversible certainty. And where did he find this? In his own consciousness. Doubt as I may, I cannot doubt of my own existence, because my very doubt reveals to me a something which doubts. You may call this an assumption, if you will: I will point out the fact as one above and beyond all logic; which logic can neither prove nor disprove; but which must always remain an irreversible certainty, and as such a fitting basis of philosophy. I exist. No doubt can darken such a truth; no sophism can confute this clear principle. This is a certainty, if there be none other. This is the basis of all science. It is in vain to ask for a proof of that which is self-evident and irresistible. I exist. The consciousness of my existence is to me the assurance of my existence. Had Descartes done no more than point out this fact he would have no claim to notice here; and we are surprised to find many writers looking upon this "_Cogito, ergo sum_" as constituting the great idea in his system. Surely it is only a statement of universal experience--an epigrammatic form given to the common-sense view of the matter. Any clown would have told him that the assurance of his existence was his consciousness of it; but the clown would not have stated it so well. He would have said, "I know I exist, because I feel that I exist." Descartes therefore made no discovery in pointing out this fact as an irreversible certainty. The part it plays in his system is only that of a starting-point. It makes consciousness the basis of all truth. There is none other possible. Interrogate consciousness, and its clear replies will be science. Here we have a new basis and a new philosophy introduced. It was indeed but another shape of the old formula, "Know thyself," so differently interpreted by Thales, Socrates, and the Alexandrians; but it gave that formula a precise signification, a thing it had before always wanted. Of little use could it be to tell man to know himself. How is he to know himself? By looking inward? We all do that. By examining the nature of his thoughts? That had been done without success. By examining the process of his thoughts? That, too, had been accomplished, and the logic of Aristotle was the result. The formula needed a precise interpretation; and that interpretation Descartes gave. Consciousness, said he, is the basis of all knowledge; it is the only ground of absolute certainty. Whatever it distinctly proclaims must be true. The process, then, is simple: examine your consciousness, and its clear replies. Hence the vital portion of his system lies in this axiom: All clear ideas are true: whatever is clearly and distinctly conceived is true. This axiom he calls the foundation of all science, the rule and measure of truth. The next step to be taken was to determine the rules for the proper detection of these ideas; and these rules he has laid down as follows: 1. Never accept anything as true but what is evidently so; to admit nothing but what so clearly and distinctly presents itself as true that there can be no reason to doubt it. 2. To divide every question into as many separate questions as possible; that each part being more easily conceived, the whole may be more intelligible--(Analysis). 3. To conduct the examination with order, beginning by that of objects the most simple, and therefore the easiest to be known, and ascending little by little up to knowledge of the most complex--(Synthesis). 4. To make such exact calculations and such circumspections as to be confident that nothing essential has been omitted. Consciousness, being the ground of all certainty, everything of which you are clearly and distinctly conscious must be true; everything which you clearly and distinctively conceive exists, if the idea of it involves existence. In the four rules, and in this view of consciousness, we have only half of Descartes' system; the psychological half. It was owing to the exclusive consideration of this half that Dugald Stewart was led--in controverting Condorcet's assertion that Descartes had done more than either Galileo or Bacon toward experimental philosophy--to say that Condorcet would have been nearer the truth if he had pointed him out as the "Father of the Experimental Philosophy of the Mind." Perhaps the title is just; but Condorcet's praise, though exaggerated, was not without good foundation. There is, in truth, another half of Descartes' system, equally important, or nearly so: we mean the deductive method. His eminence as a mathematician is universally recognized. He was the first to make the grand discovery of the application of algebra to geometry; and he made this at the age of twenty-three. The discovery that geometrical curves might be expressed by algebraical numbers, though highly important in the history of mathematics, only interests us here by leading us to trace his philosophical development. He was deeply engrossed in mathematics; he saw that mathematics were capable of a still further simplification and a far more extended application. Struck as he was with the certitude of mathematical reasoning, he began applying the principles of mathematical reasoning to the subject of metaphysics. His great object was, amid the scepticism and anarchy of his contemporaries, to found a system which should be solid and convincing. He first wished to find a basis of certitude--a starting-point: this he found in consciousness. He next wished to find a method of certitude: this he found in mathematics. "Those long chains of reasoning," he tells us, "all simple and easy, which geometers use to arrive at their most difficult demonstrations, suggested to me that all things which came within human knowledge must follow each other in a similar chain; and that provided we abstain from admitting anything as true which is not so, and that we always preserve in them the order necessary to deduce one from the other, there can be none so remote to which we cannot finally attain, nor so obscure but that we may discover them." From these glimpses of the twofold nature of Descartes' method, it will be easy to see into his whole system: consciousness being the only ground of certitude, mathematics the only method of certitude. We may say therefore that the deductive method was now completely constituted. The whole operation of philosophy henceforth consisted in deducing consequences. The premises had been found; the conclusions alone were wanting. This was held to be true of physics no less than of psychology. Thus, in his _Principia_, he announces his intention of giving a short account of the principal phenomena of the world, not that we may use them as reasons to prove anything; for he adds: "we desire to deduce effects from causes, not from effects; but only in order that out of the innumerable effects which we learn to be capable of resulting from the same causes, we may determine our minds to consider these rather than others." SIEGE OF LA ROCHELLE RICHELIEU RULES FRANCE A.D. 1627 ANDREW D. WHITE Through the work which Cardinal Richelieu, chief minister of Louis XIII, performed for that monarch and for France, the country was lifted from a state of comparative disorganization and weakness, and started on a fresh career, which led her to the foremost position among European nations. At the death of Henry IV, in 1610, his son Louis XIII was but nine years old, and from 1624 to the end of the reign, in 1643, Richelieu directed the policy of France. By crushing the Huguenots as a political party he prepared the way for building up the power of the King. The Huguenots were aiming at an independent Protestant commonwealth within the kingdom. When Richelieu had defeated this project by his victory at La Rochelle he was free to undertake a readjustment of the relations between the throne and the grasping nobles. After accomplishing this he could turn his attention to foreign affairs. In the last stage of the Thirty Years' War France under Richelieu played her part so well that the house of Austria was humbled, and, although the great Cardinal died before the end of the war, in the final settlement France received territorial and political benefits which greatly added to her prestige. White, our eminent historian, educator, and diplomatist, has given to the world, in the following narrative and analysis, the best account of Richelieu's administration to be found in English. Thus far the struggles of the world have developed its statesmanship after three leading types. First of these is that based on faith in some great militant principle. Strong among statesmen of this type, in this time, stand Cavour, with his faith in constitutional liberty; Cobden, with his faith in freedom of trade; the third Napoleon, with his faith that the world moves, and that a successful policy must keep the world's pace. The second style of statesmanship is seen in the reorganization of old states to fit new times. In this the chiefs are such men as Cranmer and Turgot. But there is a third class of statesmen sometimes doing more brilliant work than either of the others. These are they who serve a state in times of chaos--in times when a nation is by no means ripe for revolution, but only stung by desperate revolt. These are they who are quick enough and firm enough to bind all the good forces of the state into one cosmic force, therewith to compress or crush all chaotic forces; these are they who throttle treason and stab rebellion; who fear not, when defeat must send down misery through ages, to insure victory by using weapons of the hottest and sharpest. Theirs, then, is a statesmanship which it may be well for the leading men of this land and time to be looking at and thinking of, and its representative man shall be Richelieu. Never perhaps did a nation plunge more suddenly from the height of prosperity into the depth of misery than did France on May 14, 1610, when Henry IV fell dead by the dagger of Ravaillac. All earnest men, in a moment, saw the abyss yawning--felt the state sinking--felt themselves sinking with it. And they did what in such a time men always do: first all shrieked, then every man clutched at the means of safety nearest him. Sully, Henry's great minister, rode through the streets of Paris with big tears streaming down his face; strong men whose hearts had been toughened and crusted in the dreadful religious wars sobbed like children; all the populace swarmed abroad bewildered--many swooned--some went mad. This was the first phase of feeling. Then came a second phase yet more terrible. For now burst forth that old whirlwind of anarchy and bigotry and selfishness and terror which Henry had curbed during twenty years. All earnest men felt bound to protect themselves, and seized the nearest means of defence. Sully shut himself up in the Bastille, and sent orders to his son-in-law, the Duke of Rohan, to bring in six thousand soldiers to protect the Protestants. All unearnest men, especially the great nobles, rushed to the court, determined now, that the only guardians of the state were a weak-minded woman and a weak-bodied child, to dip deep into the treasury which Henry had filled to develop the nation, and to wrench away the power which he had built to guard the nation. In order to make ready for this grasp at the state treasure and power by the nobles, the Duke of Épernon--from the corpse of the King by whose side he was sitting when Ravaillac struck him--strides into the Parliament of Paris and orders it to declare the late Queen, Marie de' Medici, regent; and when this Parisian court, knowing full well that it had no right to confer the regency, hesitated, he laid his hand on his sword, and declared that, unless they did his bidding at once, his sword should be drawn from its scabbard. This threat did its work. Within three hours after the King's death the Paris Parliament, which had no right to give it, bestowed the regency on a woman who had no capacity to take it. At first things seemed to brighten a little. The Queen Regent sent such urgent messages to Sully that he left his stronghold of the Bastille and went to the palace. She declared to him before the assembled court that he must govern France still. With tears she gave the young King into his arms, telling Louis that Sully was his father's best friend, and bidding him pray the old statesman to serve the state yet longer. But soon this good scene changed. Mary had a foster-sister, Leonora Galligai, and Leonora was married to an Italian adventurer, Concini. These seemed a poor couple, worthless and shiftless, their only stock in trade Leonora's Italian cunning; but this stock soon came to be of vast account, for thereby she soon managed to bind and rule the Queen Regent--managed to drive Sully into retirement in less than a year--managed to make herself and her husband the great dispensers at court of place and pelf. Penniless though Concini had been, he was in a few months able to buy the Marquisate of Ancre, which cost him nearly a half a million livres; and, soon after, the post of first gentleman of the bedchamber, and that cost him nearly a quarter of a million; and, soon after that, a multitude of broad estates and high offices at immense prices. Leonora also was not idle; among her many gains was the bribe of three hundred thousand livres to screen certain financiers under trial for fraud. Next came the turn of the great nobles. For ages the nobility of France had been the worst among her many afflictions. From age to age attempts had been made to curb them. In the fifteenth century Charles VII had done much to undermine their power, and Louis XI had done much to crush it. But strong as was the policy of Charles, and cunning as was the policy of Louis, they had made one omission, and that omission left France, though advanced, miserable. For these monarchs had not cut the root of the evil. The French nobility continued practically a serf-holding nobility. Despite, then, the curb put upon many old pretensions of the nobles, the serf-owning spirit continued to spread a network of curses over every arm of the French government, over every acre of the French soil, and, worst of all, over the hearts and minds of the French people. Enterprise was deadened, invention crippled. Honesty was nothing, honor everything. Life was of little value. Labor was the badge of servility; laziness the very badge and passport of gentility. The serf-owning spirit was an iron wall between noble and not noble--the only unyielding wall between France and prosperous peace. But the serf-owning spirit begat another evil far more terrible: it begat a substitute for patriotism--a substitute which crushed out patriotism just at the very emergencies when patriotism was most needed. For the first question which in any state emergency sprang into the mind of a French noble was not, How does this affect the welfare of the nation? but, How does this affect the position of my order? The serf-owning spirit developed in the French aristocracy an instinct which led them in national troubles to guard the serf-owning class first and the nation afterward, and to acknowledge fealty to the serf-owning interest first and to the national interest afterward. So it proved in that emergency at the death of Henry. Instead of planting themselves as a firm bulwark between the state and harm, the Duke of Épernon, the Prince of Condé, the Count of Soissons, the Duke of Guise, the Duke of Bouillon, and many others, wheedled or threatened the Queen into granting pensions of such immense amounts that the great treasury filled by Henry and Sully with such noble sacrifices, and to such noble ends, was soon nearly empty. But as soon as the treasury began to run low the nobles began a worse work. Mary had thought to buy their loyalty, but when they had gained such treasures their ideas mounted higher. A saying of one among them became their formula, and became noted: "The day of kings is past; now is come the day of the grandees." Every great noble now tried to grasp some strong fortress or rich city. One fact will show the spirit of many. The Duke of Épernon had served Henry as governor of Metz, and Metz was the most important fortified town in France; therefore Henry, while allowing D'Épernon the honor of governorship, had always kept a royal lieutenant in the citadel, who corresponded directly with the ministry. But on the very day of the King's death D'Épernon despatched commands to his own creatures at Metz to seize the citadel, and to hold it for him against all other orders. But at last even Mary had to refuse to lavish more of the national treasure and to shred more of the national territory among these magnates. Then came their rebellion. Immediately Condé and several great nobles issued a proclamation denouncing the tyranny and extravagance of the court--calling on the Catholics to rise against the Regent in behalf of their religion--calling on the Protestants to rise in behalf of theirs--summoning the whole people to rise against the waste of their state treasure. It was all a glorious joke. To call on the Protestants was wondrous impudence, for Condé had left their faith and had persecuted them. To call on the Catholics was not less impudent, for he had betrayed their cause scores of times; but to call on the whole people to rise in defence of their treasury was impudence sublime, for no man had besieged the treasury more persistently, no man had dipped into it more deeply, than Condé himself. The people saw this and would not stir. Condé could rally only a few great nobles and their retainers, and therefore, as a last tremendous blow to the court, he and his followers raised the cry that the Regent must convoke the States-General. Any who have read much in the history of France, and especially in the history of the French Revolution, know in part how terrible this cry was. By the court, and by the great privileged classes of France, this great assembly of the three estates of the realm was looked upon as the last resort amid direst calamities. For at its summons came stalking forth from the foul past the long train of Titanic abuses and satanic wrongs; and came surging up from the seething present the great hoarse cry of the people; then loomed up, dim in the distance, vast shadowy ideas of new truth and new right; and at the bare hint of these, all that was proud in France trembled. This cry for the States-General, then, brought the Regent to terms at once, and, instead of acting vigorously, she betook herself to her old vicious fashion of compromising--buying off the rebels at prices more enormous than ever. By her treaty of Ste. Ménehould, Condé received a half a million of livres, and his followers received payments proportionate to the evil they had done. But this compromise succeeded no better than the previous compromises. Even if the nobles had wished to remain quiet, they could not. Their lordship over a servile class made them independent of all ordinary labor and all care arising from labor; some exercise of mind and body they must have; Condé took this needed exercise by attempting to seize the city of Poitiers, and, when the burgesses were too strong for him, by ravaging the neighboring country. The other nobles broke the compromise in ways wonderfully numerous and ingenious. France was again filled with misery. Dull as Regent Mary was, she now saw that she must call that dreaded States-General, or lose not only the nobles, but the people. Undecided as she was, she soon saw that she must do it at once; that if she delayed it, her great nobles would raise the cry for it again and again just as often as they wished to extort office or money. Accordingly, on October 14, 1614, she summoned the deputies of the three estates to Paris, and then the storm set in. Each of the three orders presented its "portfolio of grievances" and its programme of reforms. It might seem, to one who has not noted closely the spirit which serf-mastering thrusts into a man, that the nobles would appear in the States-General, not to make complaints, but to answer complaints. It was not so. The noble order, with due form, entered complaint that theirs was the injured order. They asked relief from familiarities and assumptions of equality on the part of the people. Said the Baron de Séneccé, "It is a great piece of insolence to pretend to establish any sort of equality between the people and the nobility": other nobles declared, "There is between them and us as much difference as between master and lackey." To match these complaints and theories, the nobles made demands; demands that commoners should not be allowed to keep firearms, nor to possess dogs unless the dogs were ham-strung; nor to clothe themselves like nobles, nor to clothe their wives like the wives of nobles; nor to wear velvet or satin under a penalty of five thousand livres. And preposterous as such claims may seem to us, they carried them into practice. A deputy of the Third Estate having been severely beaten by a noble, his demands for redress were treated as absurd. One of the orators of the lower order having spoken of the French as forming one great family in which the nobles were the elder brothers and the commoners the younger, the nobles made a formal complaint to the King, charging the Third Estate with insolence insufferable. Next came the complaints and demands of the clergy. They insisted on the adoption in France of the decrees of the Council of Trent, and the destruction of the liberties of the Gallican Church. But far stronger than these came the voice of the people: first spoke Montaigne, denouncing the grasping spirit of the nobles. Then spoke Savaron, stinging them with sarcasm, torturing them with rhetoric, crushing them with statements of facts. But chief among the speakers was the president of the Third Estate, Robert Miron, provost of the merchants of Paris. His speech, though spoken across the great abyss of time and space and thought and custom which separates him from us, warms a true man's heart even now. With touching fidelity he pictured the sad life of the lower orders--their thankless toil, their constant misery; then with a sturdiness which awes us, he arraigned, first, royalty for its crushing taxation; next, the whole upper class for its oppressions, and then, daring death, he thus launched into popular thought an idea: "It is nothing less than a miracle that the people are able to answer so many demands. On the labor of their hands depends the maintenance of your majesty, of the clergy, of the nobility, of the commons. What without their exertions would be the value of the tithes and great possessions of the Church, of the splendid estates of the nobility, or of our own house-rents and inheritances? With their bones scarcely skinned over, your wretched people present themselves before you, beaten down and helpless, with the aspect rather of death itself than of living men, imploring your succor in the name of Him who has appointed you to reign over them--who made you a man, that you might be merciful to other men--and who made you the father of your subjects, that you might be compassionate to these your helpless children. If your majesty shall not take means for that end, I fear lest despair should teach the sufferers that a soldier is, after all, nothing more than a peasant bearing arms; and lest, when the vine-dresser shall have taken up his arquebuse, he should cease to become an anvil only that he may become a hammer." After this the Third Estate demanded the convocation of a general assembly every ten years, a more just distribution of taxes, equality of all before the law, the suppression of interior custom-houses, the abolition of sundry sinecures held by nobles, the forbidding to leading nobles of unauthorized levies of soldiery, some stipulations regarding the working clergy and the non-residence of bishops; and in the midst of all these demands, as a gold grain amid husks, they placed a demand for the emancipation of the serfs. But these demands were sneered at. The idea of the natural equality in rights of all men--the idea of the personal worth of every man--the idea that rough-clad workers have prerogatives which can be whipped out by no smooth-clad idlers--these ideas were as far beyond serf-owners of those days as they were beyond slave-owners of our own days. Nothing was done. Augustin Thierry is authority for the statement that the clergy were willing to yield something. The nobles would yield nothing. The different orders quarrelled until one March morning in 1615, when, on going to their hall, they were barred out and told that the workmen were fitting the place for a court ball. And so the deputies separated--to all appearance no new work was done, no new ideas enforced, no strong men set loose. So it was in seeming; so it was not in reality. Something had been done. That assembly planted ideas in the French mind which struck more and more deeply, and spread more and more widely, until, after a century and a half, the Third Estate met again and refused to present petitions kneeling; and when King and nobles put on their hats, the commons put on theirs, and when that old brilliant stroke was again made, and the hall was closed and filled with busy carpenters and upholsterers, the deputies of the people swore that great tennis-court oath which blasted French tyranny. But something great was done immediately. To that suffering nation a great man was revealed; for when the clergy pressed their requests they chose as their orator a young man only twenty-nine years of age, the Bishop of Luçon, Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu. He spoke well. His thoughts were clear, his words well pointed, his bearing firm. He had been bred a soldier, and so had strengthened his will; afterward he had been made a scholar and so had strengthened his mind. He grappled with the problems given him in that stormy assembly with such force that he seemed about to do something; but just then came that day of the court ball, and Richelieu turned away like the rest. But men had seen him and heard him. Forget him they could not. From that tremendous farce, then, France had gained directly one thing at least, and that was a sight of Richelieu. The year, after the States-General, wore away in the old vile fashion. Condé revolted again, and this time he managed to scare the Protestants into revolt with him. The daring of the nobles was greater than ever. They even attacked the young King's train as he journeyed to Bordeaux, and another compromise had to be wearily built in the Treaty of Loudun. By this Condé was again bought off--but this time only by a bribe of a million and a half of livres. The other nobles were also paid enormously, and on making a reckoning it was found that this compromise had cost the King four millions and the country twenty millions. The nation had also to give into the hands of the nobles some of its richest cities and strongest fortresses. Immediately after this compromise Condé returned to Paris, loud, strong, jubilant, defiant, bearing himself like a king. Soon he and his revolted again; but just at that moment Concini happened to remember Richelieu. The young bishop was called and set at work. Richelieu grasped the rebellion at once. In broad daylight he seized Condé and shut him up in the Bastille; other noble leaders he declared guilty of treason and degraded them; he set forth the crimes and follies of the nobles in a manifesto which stung their cause to death in a moment; he published his policy in a proclamation which ran through France like fire, warming all hearts of patriots, withering all hearts of rebels; he sent out three great armies: one northward to grasp Picardy, one eastward to grasp Champagne, one southward to grasp Berri. There is a man who can do something! The nobles yield in a moment; they _must_ yield. But just at this moment, when a better day seemed to dawn, came an event which threw France back into anarchy and Richelieu into the world again. The young King, Louis XIII, was now sixteen years old. His mother the Regent and her favorite Concini had carefully kept him down. Under their treatment he had grown morose and seemingly stupid; but he had wit enough to understand the policy of his mother and Concini, and strength enough to hate them for it. The only human being to whom Louis showed any love was a young falconer, Albert de Luynes, and with De Luynes he conspired against his mother's power and her favorite's life. On an April morning, 1617, the King and De Luynes sent a party of chosen men to seize Concini. They met him at the gate of the Louvre. As usual he is bird-like in his utterance, snake-like in his bearing. They order him to surrender; he chirps forth his surprise, and they blow out his brains. Louis, understanding the noise, puts on his sword, appears on the balcony of the palace, is saluted with hurrahs, and becomes master of his kingdom. Straightway measures are taken against all supposed to be attached to the regency. Concini's wife, the favorite Leonora, is burned as a witch; Regent Mary is sent to Blois, and Richelieu is banished to his bishopric. And now matters went from bad to worse. King Louis was no stronger than Regent Mary had been; King's favorite, De Luynes, was no better than Regent's favorite, Concini, had been. The nobles rebelled against the new rule as they had rebelled against the old. The King went through the same old extortions and humiliations. Then came also to full development yet another vast evil. As far back as the year after Henry's assassination, the Protestants, in terror of their enemies, now that Henry was gone and the Spaniards seemed to grow in favor, formed themselves into a great republican league--a state within the state--regularly organized; in peace, for political effort, and in war, for military effort, with a Protestant clerical caste which ruled always with pride, and often with menace. Against such a theocratic republic war must come sooner or later, and in 1617 the struggle began. Army was pitted against army; Protestant Duke of Rohan against Catholic Duke of Luynes. Meanwhile Austria and the foreign enemies of France, Condé and the domestic enemies of France fished in the troubled waters, and made rich gains every day. So France plunged into sorrows ever deeper and blacker. But in 1624 Marie de' Medici, having been reconciled to her son, urged him to recall Richelieu. The dislike which Louis bore Richelieu was strong, but the dislike he bore toward compromises had become stronger. Into his poor brain at last began to gleam the truth that a serf-mastering caste, after a compromise, only whines more steadily and snarls more loudly; that at last, compromising becomes worse than fighting, Richelieu was called and set at work. Fortunately for our studies of the great statesman's policy, he left at his death a _Political Testament_, which floods with light his steadiest aims and boldest acts. In that _Testament_ he wrote this message: "When your majesty resolved to give me entrance into your councils and a great share of your confidence, I can declare with truth that the Huguenots divided the authority with your majesty, that the great nobles acted not at all as subjects, that the governors of the provinces took on themselves the airs of sovereigns, and that the foreign alliances of France were despised. I promised your majesty to use all my industry, all the authority you gave me, to ruin the Huguenot party, to abase the pride of the high nobles, and to raise your name among foreign nations to the place where it ought to be." Such were the plans of Richelieu at the outset. Let us see how he wrought out their fulfilment. First of all, he performed daring surgery and cautery about the very heart of the court. In a short time he had cut out from that living centre of French power a number of unworthy ministers and favorites, and replaced them by men on whom he could rely. Then he began his vast work. His policy embraced three great objects: First, the overthrow of the Huguenot power; secondly, the subjugation of the great nobles; thirdly, the destruction of the undue might of Austria. First, then, after some preliminary negotiations with foreign powers, he attacked the great politico-religious party of the Huguenots. These held, as their great centre and stronghold, the famous seaport of La Rochelle. He who but glances at the map shall see how strong was this position; he shall see two islands lying just off the west coast at that point, controlled by La Rochelle, yet affording to any foreign allies, whom the Huguenots might admit there, facilities for stinging France during centuries. The position of the Huguenots seemed impregnable. The city was well fortressed, garrisoned by the bravest of men, mistress of a noble harbor open at all times to supplies from foreign ports, and in that harbor rode a fleet, belonging to the city, greater than the navy of France. Richelieu saw well that here was the head of the rebellion. Here, then, he must strike it. Strange as it may seem, his diplomacy was so skilful that he obtained ships to attack the Protestants in La Rochelle from the two great Protestant powers--England and Holland. With these he was successful. He attacked the city fleet, ruined it, and cleared the harbor. But now came a terrible check. Richelieu had aroused the hate of that incarnation of all that was and is offensive in English politics--the Duke of Buckingham. Scandal-mongers were wont to say that both were in love with the Queen, and that the Cardinal, though unsuccessful in his suit, outwitted the Duke and sent him out of the kingdom; and that the Duke swore a great oath that if he could not enter France in one way, he would enter in another; and that he brought about a war and came himself as a commander. Of this scandal believe what you will, but--be the causes what they may--the English policy changed, and Charles I sent Buckingham with ninety ships to aid La Rochelle. But Buckingham was flippant and careless; Richelieu careful when there was need, and daring when there was need. Buckingham's heavy blows were foiled by Richelieu's keen thrusts, and then, in his confusion, Buckingham blundered so foolishly and Richelieu profited by his blunders so shrewdly that the fleet returned to England without any accomplishment of its purpose. The English were also driven from that vexing position in the Isle of Ré. Having thus sent the English home, for a time at least, he led King and nobles and armies to La Rochelle, and commenced the siege in full force. Difficulties met him at every turn; but the difficulty of all was that arising from the spirit of the nobility. No one could charge the nobles of France with lack of bravery. The only charge was that their bravery was almost sure to shun every useful form, and to take every noxious form. The bravery which finds outlet in duels they showed constantly; the bravery which finds outlets in street fights they had shown from the day when the Duke of Orleans perished in a brawl, to the days when the "Mignons" of Henry III fought at sight every noble whose beard was not cut to suit them. The pride fostered by lording it over serfs, in the country, and by lording it over men who did not own serfs, in the capital, aroused bravery of this sort and plenty of it. But that bravery which serves a great good cause, which must be backed by steadiness and watchfulness, was not so plentiful. So Richelieu found that the nobles who had conducted the siege before he took command had, through their brawling propensities and lazy propensities, allowed the besieged to garner in the crops from the surrounding country, and master all the best points of attack. But Richelieu pressed on. First he built an immense wall and earthwork, nine miles long, surrounding the city, and to protect this he raised eleven great forts and eighteen redoubts. Still the harbor was open, and into this the English fleet might return and succor the city at any time. His plan was soon made. In the midst of that great harbor of La Rochelle he sank sixty hulks of vessels filled with stone; then, across the harbor--nearly a mile wide and, in places, more than eight hundred feet deep--he began building over these sunken ships a great dike and wall; thoroughly fortified, carefully engineered, faced with sloping layers of hewn stone. His own men scolded at the magnitude of the work; the men in La Rochelle laughed at it. Worse than that, the ocean sometimes laughed and scolded at it. Sometimes the waves, sweeping in from that fierce Bay of Biscay, destroyed in an hour the work of a week. The carelessness of a subordinate once destroyed in a moment the work of three months. Yet it is but fair to admit that there was one storm which did not beat against Richelieu's dike. There set in against it no storm of hypocrisy from neighboring nations. Keen works for and against Richelieu were put forth in his day: works calm and strong for and against him have been issuing from the presses of France and England and Germany ever since; but not one of the old school of keen writers, or of the new school of calm writers, is known to have ever hinted that this complete sealing of the only entrance to a leading European harbor was unjust to the world at large or unfair to the besieged themselves. But all other obstacles Richelieu had to break through or cut through constantly. He was his own engineer, general, admiral, prime minister. While he urged on the army to work upon the dike, he organized a French navy, and in due time brought it around to that coast and anchored it so as to guard the dike and to be guarded by it. Yet daring as all this work was, it was but the smallest part of his work. Richelieu found that his officers were cheating his soldiers in their pay and disheartening them; in the face of the enemy he had to reorganize the army and to create a new military system. He made the army twice as effective and supported it at two-thirds less cost than before. It was his boast in his _Testament_ that, from a mob, the army became "like a well-ordered convent." He found also that his subordinates were plundering the surrounding country, and thus rendering it disaffected; he at once ordered that what had been taken should be paid for, and that persons trespassing thereafter should be severely punished. He found also the great nobles who commanded in the army half-hearted and almost traitorous from sympathy with those of their own caste on the other side of the walls of La Rochelle, and from their fear of his increased power should he gain a victory. It was their common saying that they were fools to help him do it. But he saw the true point at once. He placed in the most responsible positions of his army men who felt for their cause, whose hearts and souls were in it--men not of the Dalgetty stamp, but of the Cromwell stamp. He found also--as he afterward said--that he had to conquer not only the kings of England and Spain, but also the King of France. At the most critical moment of the siege Louis defeated him, went back to Paris, allowed courtiers to fill him with suspicions. Not only Richelieu's place, but his life, was in danger, and he well knew it; yet he never left his dike and siege-works, but wrought on steadily until they were done; and then the King, of his own will, in very shame broke away from his courtiers and went back to his master. And now a royal herald summoned the people of La Rochelle to surrender. But they were not yet half conquered. Even when they had seen two English fleets, sent to aid them, driven back from Richelieu's dike, they still held out manfully. The Duchess of Rohan, the Mayor Guiton, and the minister Salbert, by noble sacrifices and burning words, kept the will of the besieged firm as steel. They were reduced to feed on their horses; then on bits of filthy shellfish; then on stewed leather. They died in multitudes. Guiton, the mayor, kept a dagger on the city council-table to stab any man who should speak of surrender; some, who spoke of yielding, he ordered to execution as seditious. When a friend showed him a person dying of hunger, he said: "Does that astonish you? Both you and I must come to that!" When another told him that multitudes were perishing he said, "Provided one remains to hold the city gate, I ask nothing more." But at last even Guiton had to yield. After the siege had lasted more than a year, after five thousand were found remaining out of fifteen thousand, after a mother had been seen to feed her child with her own blood, the Cardinal's policy became too strong for him. The people yielded and Richelieu entered the city as master. And now the victorious statesman showed a greatness of soul to which all the rest of his life was as nothing. He was a Catholic cardinal; the Rochellois were Protestants; he was a stern ruler; they were rebellious subjects who had long worried and almost impoverished him; all Europe, therefore, looked for a retribution more terrible than any in history. Richelieu allowed nothing of the sort. He destroyed the old franchises of the city, for they were incompatible with that royal authority which he so earnestly strove to build. But this was all. He took no vengeance; he allowed the Protestants to worship as before; he took many of them into the public service, and to Guiton he showed marks of respect. He stretched forth that strong arm of his over the city and warded off all harm. He kept back greedy soldiers from pillage; he kept back bigot priests from persecution. Years before this he had said, "The diversity of religions may indeed create a division in the other world, but not in this." At another time he wrote, "Violent remedies only aggravate spiritual diseases." And he was now so tested that these expressions were found to embody not merely an idea, but a belief. For when the Protestants in La Rochelle, though thus owing tolerance--and even existence--to a Catholic, vexed Catholics in a spirit most intolerant, even that could not force him to abridge the religious liberties he had given. He saw beyond his time, not only beyond Catholics, but beyond Protestants. Two years after that great example of toleration in La Rochelle, Nicholas Antoine was executed for apostasy from Calvinism at Geneva. And for his leniency Richelieu received the titles of "Pope of the Protestants" and "Patriarch of the Atheists." But he had gained the first great object of his policy, and he would not abuse it: he had crushed the political power of the Huguenots forever. Let us turn now to the second great object of his policy. He must break the power of the nobility: on that condition alone could France have strength and order, and here he showed his daring at the outset. "It is iniquitous," he was wont to tell the King, "to try to make an example by punishing the lesser offenders; they are but trees which cast no shade: it is the great nobles who must be disciplined." It was not long before he had to begin this work--and with the highest--with no less a personage than Gaston, Duke of Orléans, favorite son of Mary, brother of the King. He who thinks shall come to a higher idea of Richelieu's boldness when he remembers that for many years after this Louis was childless and sickly, and that during all those years Richelieu might awake any morning to find Gaston--king. In 1626 Gaston, with the Duke of Vendôme, half-brother of the King, the Duchess of Chevreuse, confidential friend of the Queen, the Count of Chalais, and the Marshal Ornano, formed a conspiracy after the old fashion. Richelieu had his hand at their lofty throats in a moment. Gaston, who was used only as a makeweight, he forced into the most humble apology and the most binding pledges; Ornano he sent to die in the Bastille; the Duke of Vendôme and the Duchess of Chevreuse he banished; Chalais he sent to the scaffold. The next year he gave the grandees another lesson. The serf-owning spirit had fostered in France, through many years, a rage for duelling. Richelieu determined that this should stop. He gave notice that the law against duelling was revived, and that he would enforce it. It was soon broken by two of the loftiest nobles in France--by the Count of Bouteville Montmorency and the Count des Chapelles. They laughed at the law: they fought defiantly in broad daylight. Nobody dreamed that the law would be carried out against them. The Cardinal would, they thought, deal with them as rulers have dealt with serf-mastering lawbreakers from those days to these--invent some quibble and screen them with it. But his method was sharper and shorter. He seized both, and executed both on the Place de la Grève--the place of execution for the vilest malefactors. No doubt that under the present domineering of the pettifogger caste there are hosts of men whose minds run in such small old grooves that they hold legal forms not a means, but an end; these will cry out against this proceeding as tyrannical. No doubt, too, that under the present palaver of the "sensationist" caste, the old ladies of both sexes have come to regard crime as mere misfortune: these will lament this proceeding as cruel. But for this act, if for no other, an earnest man's heart ought in these times to warm toward the great statesman. The man had a spine. To his mind crime was not mere misfortune: crime was _crime_. Crime was strong; it would pay him well to screen it: it might cost him dear to fight it. But he was not a modern "smart" lawyer to seek popularity by screening criminals; nor a modern soft juryman, to suffer his eyes to be blinded by quirks and quibbles to the great purposes of law; nor a modern bland governor, who lets a murderer loose out of politeness to the murderer's mistress. He hated crime; he whipped the criminal; no petty forms and no petty men of forms could stand between him and a rascal. He had the sense to see that this course was not cruel, but merciful. In the eighteen years before Richelieu's administration, four thousand men perished in duels; in the ten years after Richelieu's death nearly a thousand thus perished; but during his whole administration, duelling was checked completely. Which policy was tyrannical? Which policy was cruel? The hatred of the serf-mastering caste toward their new ruler grew blacker and blacker, but he never flinched. The two brothers Marillac, proud of birth, high in office, endeavored to stir revolt as in their good days of old. The first, who was keeper of the seals, Richelieu threw into prison; with the second, who was a marshal of France, Richelieu took another course. For this marshal had added to revolt things more vile and more insidiously hurtful: he had defrauded the government in army contracts. Richelieu tore him from his army and put him on trial. The Queen-Mother, whose pet he was, insisted on his liberation. Marillac himself blubbered that it "was all about a little straw and hay, a matter for which a master would not whip a lackey." Marshal Marillac was executed. So, when statesmen rule, fare all who take advantage of the agonies of a nation to pilfer a nation's treasure. To crown all, the Queen-Mother began now to plot against Richelieu because he would not be her puppet, and he banished her from France forever. The high nobles were now exasperated. Gaston fled the country, first issuing against Richelieu a threatening manifesto. Now awoke the Duke of Montmorency. By birth he stood next the King's family: by office, as constable of France, he stood next the King himself. Montmorency was defeated and taken. The nobles supplicated for him lustily: they looked on crimes of nobles resulting in deaths of plebeians as lightly as the English House of Lords afterward looked on Lord Mohun's murder of Will Mountfort, or as another body of lords looked on Matt Ward's murder of Professor Butler: but Montmorency was executed. Says Richelieu in his _Memoirs_, "Many murmured at this act, and called it severe; but others, more wise, praised the justice of the King, who preferred the good of the state to the vain reputation of a hurtful clemency." Nor did the great minister grow indolent as he grew old. The Duke of Épernon, who seems to have had more direct power of the old feudal sort than any other man in France, and who had been so turbulent under the regency, him Richelieu humbled completely. The Duke of Valette disobeyed orders in the army, and was executed as a common soldier would have been for the same offence. The Count of Soissons tried to see if he could not revive the good old turbulent times, and raised a rebel army; but Richelieu hunted him down like a wild beast. Then certain court nobles--pets of the King--Cinq-Mars and De Thou, wove a new plot, and, to strengthen it, made a secret treaty with Spain; but the Cardinal, though dying, obtained a copy of the treaty, through his agent, and the traitors expiated their treason with their blood. But this was not all. The Parliament of Paris--a court of justice--filled with the idea that law is not a means, but an end, tried to interpose forms between the master of France and the vermin he was exterminating. That Parisian court might, years before, have done something. They might have insisted that the petty quibbles set forth by the lawyers of Paris should not defeat the eternal laws of retribution set forth by the Lawgiver of the Universe. That they had not done, and the time for legal forms had gone by. The Paris Parliament would not see this, and Richelieu crushed the Parliament. Then the court of aids refused to grant supplies, and he crushed that court. In all this the nation upheld him. Woe to the courts of a nation when they have forced the great body of plain men to regard legality as injustice! Woe to the councils of a nation when they have forced the great body of plain men to regard legislation as traffic! Woe thrice repeated to gentlemen of small pettifogging sort when they have brought such times, and God has brought a man to fit them! There was now in France no man who could stand against the statesman's purpose. And so, having hewn through all that anarchy and bigotry and selfishness a way for the people, he called them to the work. In 1626 he summoned an assembly to carry out reforms. It was essentially a people's assembly. That anarchical States-General, domineered by great nobles, he would not call; but he called an "Assembly of Notables." In this was not one prince or duke, and two-thirds of the members came directly from the people. Into this body he thrust some of his own energy. Measures were taken for the creation of a navy. An idea was now carried into effect which many suppose to have sprung from the French Revolution; for the army was made more effective by opening its high grades to the commons. A reform was also made in taxation, and shrewd measures were taken to spread commerce and industry by calling the nobility into them. Thus did France, under his guidance, secure order and progress. Calmly he destroyed all the useless feudal castles which had so long overawed the people and defied the monarchy. He abolished also the military titles of grand admiral and high constable, which had hitherto given the army and navy into the hands of leading noble families. He destroyed some troublesome remnants of feudal courts, and created royal courts; in one year, that of Poitiers alone, punished for exactions and violence against the people, more than two hundred nobles. Greatest step of all, he deposed the hereditary noble governors, and placed in their stead governors taken from the people--"Intendants"--responsible to the central authority alone. We are brought now to the third great object of Richelieu's policy. He saw from the beginning that Austria and her satellite Spain must be humbled if France was to take her rightful place in Europe. Hardly, then, had he entered the council, when he negotiated a marriage of the King's sister with the son of James I of England; next he signed an alliance with Holland; next he sent ten thousand soldiers to drive the troops of the Pope and Spain out of the Valtelline district of the Alps, and thus secured an alliance with the Swiss. We are to note here that fact, which Buckle wields so well, that, though Richelieu was a cardinal of the Roman Church, all these alliances were with Protestant powers against Catholics. Austria and Spain intrigued against him, sowing money in the mountain districts of South France which brought forth those crops of armed men who defended La Rochelle. But he beat them at their own game. He set loose Count Mansfeld, who revived the Thirty Years' War by raising a rebellion in Bohemia; and when one great man, Wallenstein, stood between Austria and ruin, Richelieu sent his monkish diplomatist, Father Joseph, to the German Assembly of Electors, and persuaded them to dismiss Wallenstein and to disgrace him. But the great Frenchman's masterstroke was his treaty with Gustavus Adolphus. With that keen glance of his he saw and knew Gustavus while yet the world knew him not--while he was battling afar off in the wilds of Poland. Richelieu's plan was formed at once. He brought about a treaty between Gustavus and Poland; then he filled Gustavus' mind with pictures of the wrongs inflicted by Austria on German Protestants, hinted to him probably of a new realm, filled his treasury, and finally hurled against Austria the man who destroyed Tilly, who conquered Wallenstein, who annihilated Austrian supremacy at the battle of Lutzen, who, though in his grave, wrenched Protestant rights from Austria at the treaty of Westphalia, who pierced the Austrian monarchy with the most terrible sorrows it ever saw before the time of Napoleon. To the main objects of Richelieu's policy already given, might be added two subordinate subjects. The first of these was a healthful extension of French territory. In this Richelieu planned better than the first Napoleon; for while he did much to carry France out to her natural boundaries, he kept her always within them. On the south he added Roussillon, on the east Alsace, on the northeast Artois. The second subordinate object of his policy sometimes flashed forth brilliantly. He was determined that England should never again interfere on French soil. We have seen him driving the English from La Rochelle and from the Isle of Ré; but he went further. In 1628, on making some proposals to England, he was repulsed with English haughtiness. "They shall know," said the Cardinal, "that they cannot despise me." Straightway one sees protests and revolts of the Presbyterians of Scotland and Richelieu's agents in the thickest of them. And now what was Richelieu's statesmanship in its sum? 1. In the political progress of France his work has already been sketched as building monarchy and breaking anarchy. Therefore have men said that he swept away old French liberties. What old liberties? Richelieu but tore away the decaying, poisonous husks and rinds which hindered French liberties from their chance of life and growth. Therefore also have men said that Richelieu built up absolutism. The charge is true and welcome. For evidently absolutism was the only force in that age which could destroy the serf-mastering caste. Many a Polish patriot, as he to-day wanders through the Polish villages, groans that absolutism was not built to crush that serf-owning aristocracy which has been the real architect of Poland's ruin. Anyone who reads to much purpose in De Mably, or Guizot, or Henri Martin knows that this part of Richelieu's statesmanship was but a masterful continuation of all great French statesmanship since the twelfth century league of the king and commons, against nobles, and that Richelieu stood in the heirship of all great French statesmen since Suger. That part of Richelieu's work, then, was evidently bedded in the great line of divine purpose running through that age and through all ages. 2. In the internal development of France, Richelieu proved himself a true builder. The founding of the French Academy and of the Jardin des Plantes, the building of the College of Plessis, and the rebuilding of the college of the Sorbonne, are among the monuments of this part-statesmanship. His, also, is much of that praise usually lavished on Louis XIV for the career opened in the seventeenth century to science, literature, and art. He was also a reformer, and his zeal was proved, when in the fiercest of the La Rochelle struggle he found time to institute great reforms not only in the army and navy, but even in the monasteries. 3. On the general progress of Europe, his work must be judged as mainly for good. Austria was the chief barrier to European progress, and that barrier he broke. But a far greater impulse to the general progress of Europe was given by the idea of toleration which he thrust into the methods of European statesmen. He, first of all statesmen in France, saw that in French policy--to use his own words--"A Protestant Frenchman is better than a Catholic Spaniard"; and he, first of all statesmen in Europe, saw that, in European policy, patriotism must outweigh bigotry. 4. His faults in method were many. His underestimate of the sacredness of human life was one; but that was the fault of his age. His frequent workings by intrigue was another; but that also was a vile method accepted by his age. The fair questions, then, are: did he not commit the fewest and smallest wrongs possible in beating back those many and great wrongs? Wrong has often a quick, spasmodic force, but was there not in his arm a steady growing force, which could only be a force of right? 5. His faults in policy crystallized about one; for while he subdued the serf-mastering nobility, he struck no final blow at the serf system itself. Our running readers of French history need here a word of caution. They follow De Tocqueville, and De Tocqueville follows Biot in speaking of the serf system as abolished in most of France hundreds of years before this. But Biot and De Tocqueville take for granted a knowledge in their readers that the essential vileness of the system, and even many of its most shocking outward features, remained. Richelieu might have crushed the serf system, really, as easily as Louis X and Philip the Long had crushed it nominally. This Richelieu did not. And the consequences of this great man's fault were terrible. Hardly was he in his grave when the nobles perverted the effort of the Paris Parliament for advance in liberty and took the lead in the fearful revolts and massacres of the Fronde. Then came Richelieu's pupil, Mazarin, who tricked the nobles into order; and Mazarin's pupil, Louis XIV, who bribed them into order. But a nobility borne on high by the labor of a servile class must despise labor; so there came those weary years of indolent gambling and debauchery and "serf-eating" at Versailles. Then came Louis XV, who was too feeble to maintain even the poor decent restraint imposed by Louis XIV; so the serf-mastering caste became active in a new way, and their leaders in vileness unutterable became at last Fronsac and De Sade. Then came "the deluge." The spirit of the serf-mastering caste, as left by Richelieu, was a main cause of the miseries which brought on the French Revolution. When the Third Estate brought up their "portfolio of grievances," for one complaint against the exactions of the monarchy there were fifty complaints against the exactions of the nobility. Then came the failure of the Revolution in its direct purpose; and of this failure the serf-mastering caste was a main cause. For this caste, hardened by ages of domineering over a servile class, despite 4th of August renunciations, would not, could not, accept a position compatible with freedom and order; so earnest men were maddened, and sought to tear out this cancerous mass, with all its burning roots. But for Richelieu's great fault there is an excuse. His mind was saturated with ideas of the impossibility of inducing freed peasants to work; the impossibility of making them citizens; the impossibility, in short, of making them men. To his view was not unrolled the rich newer world history, to show that a working class is most dangerous when restricted; that oppression is more dangerous to the oppressor than to the oppressed; that if man will hew out paths to liberty, God will hew out paths to prosperity. But Richelieu's fault teaches the world not less than his virtues. At last on December 3, 1642, the great statesman lay upon his death-bed. The death-hour is a great revealer of motives, and, as with weaker men, so with Richelieu. Light then shot over the secret of his whole life's plan and work. He was told that he must die: he received the words with calmness. As the host, which he believed the veritable body of the Crucified, was brought him, he said: "Behold my Judge before whom I must shortly appear! I pray him to condemn me if I have ever had any other motive than the cause of religion and my country." The confessor asked him if he pardoned his enemies: he answered, "I have none but those of the state." So passed from earth this strong man. Keen he was in sight, steady in aim, strong in act. A true man, not "non-committal," but wedded to a great policy in the sight of all men; seen by earnest men, of all times, to have marshalled against riot and bigotry and unreason, divine forces and purposes. GREAT PURITAN EXODUS TO NEW ENGLAND FOUNDING OF BOSTON A.D. 1630 JOHN G. PALFREY Whatever might have been the historic development of New England had it proceeded from the single plantation at Plymouth, it is certain that the growth and character of the new community were vitally affected by the large influx of English Puritans who ten years later followed the Pilgrims to these shores. Soon after the departure of the Pilgrims from England, in 1620, King James I incorporated a successor to that Plymouth Company under whose patent Plymouth colony was founded. This new company is known as the Council for New England. The territory granted to the council extended from 40° to 48° north latitude, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The land was conferred in absolute property, with unlimited powers of legislation and government. Emigrants to New England were placed wholly under the authority of this corporation. The great privileges conferred upon the monopoly caused indignation among James' subjects, but nevertheless the council made numerous grants to settlers in New England. Meanwhile, dissatisfaction in England increased; in 1625 James was succeeded by his son, Charles I; at Plymouth the Pilgrim colony was struggling for existence; at home the Puritans chafed under the growing despotism of Charles. Out of this unrest came the movement leading to the larger emigration to New England which Palfrey, the New England historian, describes. The emigration of the Englishmen who settled at Plymouth had been prompted by religious dissent. In what manner Robinson, who was capable of speculating on political tendencies, or Brewster, whose early position had compelled him to observe them, had augured concerning the prospect of public affairs in their native country, no record tells; while the rustics of the Scrooby congregation, who fled from a government which denied them liberty in their devotions, could have had but little knowledge and no agency in the political sphere. The case was widely different with the founders of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay. That settlement had its rise in a state of things in England which associated religion and politics in an intimate alliance. Years had passed since the severity of the government had overcome the Separatists, forcing them either to disband their congregations or flee from the kingdom. From the time when Bishop Williams was made keeper of the great seal, four years before the death of King James, the high-commission court again became active, and the condition of Puritans in the Church was day by day more uneasy. While some among them looked for relief to a happy issue of the struggle which had been going on in Parliament, and resigned themselves to await and aid the slow progress of a political and religious reformation in the kingdom, numbers, less confident or less patient, pondered on exile as their best resource, and turned their view to a new home on the Western continent. There was yet a third class, who, through feeble resolution or a lingering hope of better things, deferred the sacrifices which they scarcely flattered themselves they should ultimately escape, and, if they were clergymen, retained their preferments by a reluctant obedience to the canons. The coquetry of Buckingham with the Puritans, inspiring false hopes, was not without effect to excuse indecision and hinder a combined and energetic action. Among the eminent persons who had reconciled themselves to the course of compromise and postponement was Mr. John White, an important name, which at this point takes its place in New England history. White, who since the second year of King James' reign had been rector of Trinity Church in Dorchester, was a man widely known and greatly esteemed, alike for his professional character and his public spirit. The subject of New England colonization, much canvassed everywhere among the Puritans, who were numerous in the part of the kingdom where he lived, was commended to his notice in a special form. Dorchester, near the British Channel, the principal town of the shire, furnished numbers of those who now made voyages to New England for fishing and trade; and they were often several months upon the coast without opportunity for religious worship and instruction. Mr. White interested himself with the ship-owners to establish a settlement where the mariners might have a home when not at sea, where supplies might be provided for them by farming and hunting, and where they might be brought under religious influences. The result of the conferences was the formation of an unincorporated joint-stock association, under the name of the "Dorchester Adventurers," which collected a capital of three thousand pounds. The Dorchester company turned its attention to the spot on Cape Ann where now stands the town of Gloucester. The Council for New England, perpetually embarrassed by the oppugnation of the Virginia Company and the reasonable jealousy of Parliament, had recourse to a variety of expedients to realize the benefits vainly expected by its projectors. In carrying out one scheme, that of a division of the common property among the associates, the country about Cape Ann was assigned to Lord Sheffield, better known as a patriot leader under his later title of Earl of Mulgrave. Of him it was purchased for the people of New Plymouth by Edward Winslow, when in England on the business of that colony; and they in turn conveyed to White and his associates such a site as was wanted for their purposes of fishing and planting. The Dorchester company had probably anticipated this arrangement by despatching a party of fourteen persons to pass the winter. They carried out live stock, and erected a house, with stages to dry fish and vats for the manufacture of salt. Thomas Gardner was overseer of the plantation, and John Tilley had the fishery in charge. Everything went wrong. Mishaps befell the vessels. The price of fish went down. The colonists, "being ill chosen and ill commanded, fell into many disorders and did the company little service." An attempt was made to retrieve affairs by putting the colony under a different direction. The Dorchester partners heard of "some religious and well-affected persons that were lately removed out of New Plymouth, out of dislike of their principles of rigid separation, of which number Mr. Roger Conant was one, a religious, sober, and prudent gentleman." He was then at Nantasket, with Lyford and Oldham. The partners engaged Conant "to be their governor" at Cape Ann, with "the charge of all their affairs, as well as fishing and planting." With Lyford they agreed that he should "be the minister of the place," while Oldham, "invited to trade for them with the Indians," preferred to remain where he was and conduct such business on his own account. The change was not followed by the profits that had been hoped, and the next year "the adventurers were so far discouraged that they abandoned the further prosecution of this design, and took order for the dissolving of the company on land, and sold away their shipping and other provisions." Another seemed added to the list of frustrated adventurers in New England. But Mr. White did not despair of its renewal. All along, it is likely, he had regarded it with an interest different from what had yet been avowed. At his instance, when "most part of the land-men returned," "a few of the most honest and industrious resolved to stay behind, and to take charge of the cattle sent over the year before. And not liking their seat at Cape Ann, chosen especially for the supposed commodity of fishing, they transported themselves to Nahumkeike, about four or five leagues distant to the southwest from Cape Ann." White wrote to Conant, exhorting him "not to desert the business, faithfully promising that if himself with three others, whom he knew to be honest and prudent men, viz., John Woodbury, John Balch, and Peter Palfrey, employed by the adventurers, would stay at Naumkeag, and give timely notice thereof, he would provide a patent for them, and likewise send them whatever they should write for, either men, or provision, or goods wherewith to trade with the Indians." With difficulty Conant prevailed upon his companions to persevere. They "stayed to the hazard of their lives." Woodbury was sent to England for supplies. "The business came to agitation afresh in London, and being at first approved by some and disliked by others, by argument and disputation it grew to be more vulgar; insomuch that some men, showing good affection to the work, and offering the help of their purses if fit men might be procured to go over, inquiry was made whether any would be willing to engage their persons in the voyage. By this inquiry it fell out that among others they lighted at last on Master Endicott, a man well known to divers persons of good note, who manifested much willingness to accept of the offer as soon as it was tendered, which gave great encouragement to such as were upon the point of resolution to set on this work of erecting a new colony upon the old foundation." The scheme on foot was no longer one of Dorchester fishermen looking for a profitable exercise of their trade. It had "come to agitation in London," where some men had offered "the help of their purses," and a man of consequence, Humphrey, probably from a county as distant as Lincoln, was already, or very soon after, treasurer of the fund. Matters were ripe for the step of securing a domain for a colony, and the dimensions of the domain show that the colony was not intended to be a small one. A grant of lands extending from the Atlantic to the Western Ocean, and in width from a line of latitude three miles north of the River Merrimac to a line three miles south of the Charles, was obtained from the Council for New England by "Sir Henry Roswell and Sir John Young, knights, and Thomas Southcote, John Humphrey, John Endicott, and Simon Whitcomb, gentlemen," for themselves, "their heirs, and associates." Roswell and Young were gentlemen of Devon, Southcote was probably of the same county, and Whitcomb is believed to have been a London merchant. Gorges, though not in the counsels of the patentees, supposed himself to understand their object. Having mentioned the angry dissolution by King Charles of his second Parliament, and his imprisonment of some of the patriot leaders, he proceeds to say that these transactions "took all hope of reformation of church government from many not affecting episcopal jurisdiction, nor the usual practice of the Common Prayers of the Church; whereof there were several sorts, though not agreeing among themselves, yet all of like dislike of those particulars. Some of the discreeter sort, to avoid what they found themselves subject unto, made use of their friends to procure from Council for the affairs of New England to settle a colony within their limits; to which it pleased the thrice-honored Lord of Warwick to write to me, then at Plymouth, to condescend that a patent might be granted to such as then sued for it. Whereupon I gave my approbation, so far forth as it might not be prejudicial to my son Robert Gorges' interests, whereof he had a patent under the seal of the Council. Hereupon there was a grant passed as was thought reasonable." After three months Endicott, one of the six patentees, was despatched, in charge of a small party, to supersede Conant at Naumkeag as local manager. Woodbury had preceded them. They arrived at the close of summer. The persons quartered on the spot, the remains of Conant's company, were disposed to question the claims of the new-comers. But the dispute was amicably composed, and, in commemoration of its adjustment, the place took the name of Salem, the Hebrew name for peaceful. The colony, made up from the two sources, consisted of "not much above fifty or sixty persons," none of them of special importance except Endicott, who was destined to act for nearly forty years a conspicuous part in New England history. Before the winter, an exploring party either began or made preparations for a settlement at Mishawum, now Charlestown. With another party, Endicott, during Morton's absence in England, visited his diminished company at Merry-Mount, or, as Endicott called it, Mount Dagon, "caused their Maypole to be cut down, and rebuked them for their profaneness, and admonished them to look there should be better walking." The winter proved sickly; an "infection that grew among the passengers at sea, spread also among them ashore, of which many died, some of the scurvy, others of an infectious fever." Endicott sent to Plymouth for medical assistance, and Fuller, the physician of that place, made a visit to Salem. The New Dorchester Company, like that which had preceded it, and like the company of London Adventurers concerned in that settlement at Plymouth, was but a voluntary partnership, with no corporate powers. The extensive acquaintance of Mr. White with persons disaffected to the rulers in church and state was probably the immediate occasion of advancing the business another step. Materials for a powerful combination existed in different parts of the kingdom, and they were now brought together for united action. The company, having been "much enlarged," a royal charter was solicited and obtained, creating a corporation under the name of the "Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England." This is the instrument under which the colony of Massachusetts continued to conduct its affairs for fifty-five years. The patentees named in it were Roswell and his five associates, with twenty other persons, of whom White was not one. It gave power forever to the freemen of the company to elect annually, from their own number, a governor, deputy-governor, and eighteen assistants, on the last Wednesday of Easter term, and to make laws and ordinances, not repugnant to the laws of England, for their own benefit and the government of persons inhabiting their territory. Four meetings of the company were to be held in a year, and others might be convened in a manner prescribed. Meetings of the governor, deputy-governor, and assistants were to be held once a month or oftener. The governor, deputy-governor, and any two assistants were authorized, but not required, to administer to freemen the oaths of supremacy and allegiance. The company might transport settlers not "restrained by special name." They had authority to admit new associates, and to establish the terms of their admission, and elect and constitute such officers as they should see fit for the ordering and managing of their affairs. They were empowered "to encounter, repulse, repel, and resist by force of arms, as well as by sea as by land, and by all fitting ways and means whatsoever, all such person and persons as should at any time thereafter attempt or enterprise the destruction, invasion, detriment, or annoyance to the said plantation or inhabitants." Nothing was said of religious liberty. The government may have relied upon its power to restrain it, and the emigrants on their distance and obscurity to protect it. The first step of the new corporation was to organize a government for its colony. It determined to place the local administration in the hands of thirteen counsellors, to retain their offices for one year. Of these, seven besides the governor--in which office Endicott was continued--were to be appointed by the company at home; these eight were to choose three others; and the whole number was to be made up by the addition of such as should be designated by the persons on the spot at the time of Endicott's arrival, described as "old planters." A proposal had just been accepted from certain "Boston men" to interest themselves in the adventure to the amount of five hundred pounds, being a hundred pounds in addition to what, it appears, they had previously promised, "and to provide able men to send over." Unfortunately, no letter had been preserved of those sent by Endicott to England at this interesting juncture. There are, however, two letters addressed to him by the company, and one by Cradock, appointed in the charter to be its first governor. With various directions as to the details of his administration, they speak of the "propagation of the Gospel" as "the thing they do profess above all to be their aim in settling this plantation." They enjoin the keeping of "a diligent eye over their own people, and they live unblamable and without reproof." They forbid the planting of tobacco, except under severe restrictions. They order satisfaction to be given to the "old planters" by the offer of incorporation into the company and of a share in the lands. They speak of unsuccessful negotiations with Oldham, who asserted a claim under the patent of Robert Gorges, and give orders for anticipating him in taking possession of Massachusetts Bay. They direct that persons who may prove "not conformable to their government," or otherwise disagreeable, shall not be suffered "to remain within the limits of their grant," but be shipped to England. They prescribe a distribution of the servants among families, with a view to domestic order and Christian instruction and discipline. They enjoin a just settlement with the natives for lands. And they transmit a form of oaths to be taken by the governor and members of the council. After the organization under the charter, no time was lost in despatching a reënforcement of colonists. Six vessels were prepared, and license was obtained from the lord treasurer for the embarkation of "eighty women and maids, twenty-six children, and three hundred men, with victuals, arms, and tools, and necessary apparel," and with "one hundred forty head of cattle, and forty goats." A committee of the company were careful "to make plentiful provision of godly ministers." Mr. Skelton, Mr. Higginson, and Mr. Bright, members of the Council, with Mr. Smith, another minister, sailed in the first three vessels, which reached Salem about the same time, and were soon followed by the residue of the fleet. Mr. Graves, another of the counsellors, was employed by the associates as an engineer. Immediately on arriving, he proceeded with "some of the company's servants under his care, and some others," to Mishawum, where he laid out a town. Bright, who was one of his party, returned to England in the following summer, dissatisfied, probably, with the ecclesiastical proceedings which had taken place. Smith went for the present to the fishing-station at Nantasket. Higginson wrote home: "When we came first to Naumkeag we found about half-score houses, and a fair house newly built for the Governor. We found also abundance of corn planted by them, very good and well-liking. And we brought with us about two hundred passengers and planters more, which, by common consent of the old planters, were all combined together into one body politic, under the same Governor. There are in all of us, both old and new planters, about three hundred, whereof two hundred of them are settled at Naumkeag, now called Salem, and the rest have planted themselves at Masathuset's Bay, beginning to build a town there, which we do call Charleston, or Charlestown. But that which is our greatest comfort and means of defence above all other is, that we have here the true religion and holy ordinances of Almighty God taught among us. Thanks be to God, we have here plenty of preaching and diligent catechizing, with strict and careful exercise and good commendable orders to bring our people into a Christian conversation with whom we have to do withal. And thus we doubt not but God will be with us; and if God be with us, who can be against us?" Meanwhile, a movement of the utmost importance, probably meditated long before, was hastened by external pressure. The state of public affairs in England in the spring and summer of this year had brought numbers to the decision which had been heretofore approached with sorrowful reluctance, and several persons of character and condition resolved to emigrate at once to the New World. It was necessary to their purpose to secure self-government as far as it could be exercised by British subjects. Possibly events might permit and require it to be vindicated even beyond that line. At any rate, to be ruled in America by a commercial corporation in England, was a condition in no sort accordant with their aim. At a general court of the company, Cradock, the Governor, "read certain propositions conceived by himself, viz., that for the advancement of the plantation, the inducing and encouraging persons of worth and quality to transplant themselves and families thither, and for other weighty reasons therein contained (it is expedient) to transfer the government of the plantation to those that shall inhabit there, and not to continue the same in subordination to the company here, as now it is." The corporation entertained the proposal, and, in view of "the many great and considerable consequences thereupon depending," reserved it for deliberation. Two days before its next meeting, twelve gentlemen, assembled at Cambridge, pledged themselves to each other to embark for New England with their families for a permanent residence, provided an arrangement should be made for the charter and the administration under it to be transferred to that country. Legal advice was obtained in favor of the authority to make the transfer; and on full consideration it was determined, "by the general consent of the company, that the government patent should be settled in New England." The old officers resigned, and their places were filled with persons of whom most or all were expecting to emigrate. John Winthrop was chosen governor, with John Humphrey for deputy-governor, and eighteen others for assistants. Humphrey's departure was delayed, and on the eve of embarkation his place was supplied by Thomas Dudley. Winthrop, then forty-two years old, was descended from a family of good condition, long seated at Groton, in Suffolk, where he had a property of six or seven hundred pounds a year, the equivalent of at least two thousand pounds at the present day. His father was a lawyer and magistrate. Commanding uncommon respect and confidence from an early age, he had moved in the circles where the highest matters of English policy were discussed, by men who had been associates of Whitgift, Bacon, Essex, and Cecil. Humphrey was "a gentleman of special parts, of learning and activity, and a godly man"; in the home of his father-in-law, Thomas, third earl of Lincoln, the head in that day of the now ducal house of Newcastle, he had been the familiar companion of the patriotic nobles. Of the assistants, Isaac Johnson, esteemed the richest of the emigrants, was another son-in-law of Lord Lincoln, and a land-holder in three counties. Sir Richard Saltonstall of Halifax, in Yorkshire, was rich enough to be a bountiful contributor to the company's operations. Thomas Dudley, with a company of volunteers which he had raised, had served, thirty years before, under Henry IV of France; since which time he had managed the estates of the Earl of Lincoln. He was old enough to have lent a shrill voice to the huzzas at the defeat of the armada, and his military services had indoctrinated him in the lore of civil and religious freedom. Theophilus Eaton, an eminent London merchant, was used to courts and had been minister of Charles I in Denmark. Simon Bradstreet, the son of a Non-conformist minister in Lincolnshire, and a grandson of "a Suffolk gentleman of a fine estate," had studied at Emanuel College, Cambridge. William Vassall was an opulent West-India proprietor. "The principal planters of Massachusetts," says the prejudiced Chalmers, "were English country gentlemen of no inconsiderable fortunes; of enlarged understandings, improved by liberal education; of extensive ambition, concealed under the appearance of religious humility." But it is not alone from what we know of the position, character, and objects of those few members of the Massachusetts Company who were proposing to emigrate at the early period now under our notice, that we are to estimate the power and the purposes of that important corporation. It had been rapidly brought into the form which it now bore, by the political exigencies of the age. Its members had no less in hand than a wide religious and political reform--whether to be carried out in New England, or in Old England, or in both, it was for circumstances, as they should unfold themselves, to determine. The leading emigrants to Massachusetts were of that brotherhood of men who, by force of social consideration as well as of the intelligence and resolute patriotism, moulded the public opinion and action of England in the first half of the seventeenth century. While the larger part stayed at home to found, as it proved, the short-lived English republic, and to introduce elements into the English Constitution which had to wait another half-century for their secure reception, another part devoted themselves at once to the erection of free institutions in this distant wilderness. In an important sense the associates of the Massachusetts Company were builders of the British, as well as of the New England, commonwealth. Some ten or twelve of them, including Cradock, the Governor, served in the Long Parliament. Of the four commoners of that Parliament distinguished by Lord Clarendon as first in influence, Vane had been governor of the company, and Hampden, Pym, and Fiennes--all patentees of Connecticut--if not members, were constantly consulted upon its affairs. The latter statement is also true of the Earl of Warwick, the Parliament's admiral, and of those excellent persons, Lord Say and Sele and Lord Brooke, both of whom at one time proposed to emigrate. The company's meetings placed Winthrop and his colleagues in relations with numerous persons destined to act busy parts in the stirring times that were approaching--with Brereton and Hewson, afterward two of the Parliamentary major-generals; with Philip Nye, who helped Sir Henry Vane to "cozen" the Scottish Presbyterian Commissioners in the phraseology of the Solemn League and Covenant; with Samuel Vassall, whose name shares with those of Hampden and Lord Say and Sele the renown of the refusal to pay ship-money, and of courting the suit which might ruin them or emancipate England; with John Venn, who, at the head of six thousand citizens, beset the House of Lords during the trial of Lord Strafford, and whom, with three other Londoners, King Charles, after the battle of Edgehill, excluded from his offer of pardon; with Owen Rowe, the "firebrand of the city"; with Thomas Andrews, the lord mayor, who proclaimed the abolition of royalty. Sir John Young, named second in the original grant from the Council for New England, as well as in the charter from King Charles, sat in Cromwell's second and third Parliaments. Others of the company, as Vane and Adams, incurred the Protector's displeasure by too uncomplying principles. Six or seven were members of the high court of justice for the King's trial, on which occasion they gave a divided vote. Four were members of the committee of religion, the most important committee of Parliament; and one, the counsellor, John White, was its chairman. A question had been raised, whether the company had a right, and was legally competent, to convey the charter across the ocean, and execute on a foreign soil the powers conferred by it. Certain it is that no such proceeding is forbidden by the letter of the instrument; and a not disingenuous casuistry might inquire, If the business of the company may be lawfully transacted in a western harbor of Great Britain, why not under the King's flag in a ship at sea or on the opposite shore? It cannot be maintained that such a disposition of a colonial charter would be contrary to the permanent policy of England; for other colonial charters, earlier and later, were granted--Sir William Alexander's, William Penn's, Lord Baltimore's, and those of Rhode Island and Connecticut--to be kept and executed without the realm. As to the purpose of the grantor, those were not times for such men as the Massachusetts patentees to ask what the King wished or expected, but rather how much of freedom could be maintained against him by the letter of the law or by other righteous means; and no principle of jurisprudence is better settled than that a grant is to be interpreted favorably to the grantees, inasmuch as the grantor, being able to protect himself, is to be presumed to have done so to the extent of his purpose. The eminent Puritan counsellor, John White, the legal adviser of the company in all stages of this important proceeding, instructed them that they could legally use the charter in this manner. Very probably it had been drawn by his own hand, in the form in which it passed the seals, with a care to have it free from any phraseology which might interfere with this disposition of it. Certainly Winthrop and his coadjutors may be pardoned for believing that it was legally subject to the use to which they put it, since such was the opinion of the crown lawyers themselves, when, in the second following generation, the question became important. In the very heat of the persecution which at length broke down the charter, the Chief Justices, Rainsford and North, spoke of it as "making the adventurers a corporation upon the place," and Sawyer, attorney-general in the next reign, expressed the same opinion--"The patent having created the grantees and their assigns a body corporate, they might transfer their charter and act in New England." He who well weighs the facts which have been presented in connection with the principal emigration to Massachusetts, and other related facts which will offer themselves to notice as we proceed, may find himself conducted to the conclusion that when Winthrop and his associates prepared to convey across the water a charter from the King which, they hoped, would in their beginnings afford them some protection both from himself and through him from the powers of Continental Europe, they had conceived a project no less important than that of laying, on this side of the Atlantic, the foundations of a nation of Puritan Englishmen, foundations to be built upon as future circumstances should decide or allow. It would not perhaps be pressing the point too far to say that in view of the thick clouds that were gathering over their home, they contemplated the possibility that the time was near at hand when all that was best of what they left behind would follow them to these shores; when a renovated England, secure in freedom and pure in religion, would rise in North America; when a transatlantic English empire would fulfil, in its beneficent order, the dreams of English patriots and sages of earlier times. If such were the aims of the members of the Massachusetts Company, it follows that commercial operations were a merely incidental object of their association. And, in fact, it does not appear that, as a corporation, they ever held for distribution any property except their land; or that they ever intended to make sales of their land in order to a division of the profits among the individual freemen; or that a freeman, by virtue of the franchise, could obtain a parcel of land even for his own occupation; or that any money was ever paid for admission into the company, as would necessarily have been done if any pecuniary benefit was attached to membership. Several freemen of the company--among others the three who were first named in the charter as well as in the patent from the Council for New England--appear to have never so much as attended a meeting. They were men of property and public spirit, who, without intending themselves to leave their homes, gave their influence and their money to encourage such as were disposed to go out and establish religion and freedom in a new country. The company had no stock, in the sense in which that word is used in speaking of money corporations. What money was needed to procure the charter, to conduct the business under it, and carry out the scheme of colonization was obtained neither by the sale of negotiable securities nor by assessment, but by voluntary contributions from individuals of the company, and possibly from others, in such sums as suited the contributors respectively. These contributions made up what is called in the records the joint stock, designed to be used in providing vessels and stores for the transportation of settlers. It is true that these contributors, called Adventurers, had more or less expectation of being remunerated for their outlay; and for this purpose two hundred acres of land within the limits of the patent were pledged to them for every fifty pounds subscribed, in addition to a proportional share of the trade which the government of the company was expecting to carry on. But a share of the profits of trade, as of the land, was to be theirs, not because they were freemen, but because they were contributors, which many of the freemen were not, and perhaps others besides freemen were. When the transfer of the charter and of the government to America had been resolved upon, it was agreed that at the end of seven years a division of the profits of a proposed trade in fish, furs, and other articles should be made among the Adventurers agreeably to these principles; and the management of the business was committed to a board consisting of five persons who expected to emigrate, and five who were to remain in England. But this part of the engagement appears to have been lost sight of; at least never to have been executed. It is likely that the commercial speculation was soon perceived to be unpromising; and the outlay had been distributed in such proportions that the loss was not burdensome in any quarter. The richer partners submitted to it silently, from public spirit; the poorer, as a less evil than that of a further expense and risk of time and money. From the ship Arbella, lying in the port of Yarmouth, the Governor and several of his companions took leave of their native country by an address, which they entitled "The Humble Request of his Majesty's Loyal Subjects, the Governor and the Company late gone for New England, to the Rest of their Brethren in and of the Church of England." They asked a favorable construction of their enterprise, and good wishes and prayers for its success. With a tenacious affection which the hour of parting made more tender, they said: "We esteem it our honor to call the Church of England, from whence we rise, our dear mother, and cannot part from our native country where she specially resideth, without much sadness of heart, and many tears in our eyes. Wishing our heads and hearts may be as fountains of tears for your everlasting welfare, when we shall be in our poor cottages in the wilderness, overshadowed with the spirit of supplication, through the manifold necessities and tribulations which may not altogether unexpectedly nor, we hope, unprofitably, befall us, and so commending you to the grace of God in Christ, we shall ever rest your assured friends and brethren." The address is said to have been drawn up by Mr. White, of Dorchester. The incidents of the voyage are minutely related in a journal begun by the Governor on shipboard off the Isle of Wight. Preaching and catechizing, fasting and thanksgiving, were duly observed. A record of the writer's meditations on the great design which occupied his mind while he passed into a new world and a new order of human affairs, would have been a document of the profoundest interest for posterity. But the diary contains nothing of that description. On the voyage Winthrop composed a little treatise, which he called _A Model Christian Charity_. It breathes the noblest spirit of philanthropy. The reader's mind kindles as it enters into the train of thought in which the author referred to "the work we have in hand. It is," he said, "by a mutual consent, through a special overruling Providence, and a more than an ordinary approbation of the churches of Christ, to seek out a place of cohabitation and consortship under a due form of government both civil and ecclesiastical." The forms and institutions under which liberty, civil and religious, is consolidated and assured, were floating vaguely in the musings of that hour. The Arbella arrived at Salem after a passage of nine weeks, and was joined in a few days by three vessels which had sailed in her company. The assistants, Ludlow and Rossiter, with a party from the west country, had landed at Nantasket a fortnight before, and some of the Leyden people, on their way to Plymouth, had reached Salem a little earlier yet. Seven vessels from Southampton made their voyage three or four weeks later. Seventeen in the whole came before winter, bringing about a thousand passengers. It is desirable to understand how this population, destined to be the germ of a state, was constituted. Of members of the Massachusetts Company, it cannot be ascertained that so many as twenty had come over. That company, as has been explained, was one formed mainly for the furtherance, not of any private interests, but of a great public object. As a corporation, it had obtained the ownership of a large American territory, on which it designed to place a colony which should be a refuge for civil and religious freedom. By combined counsels, it had arranged the method of ordering a settlement, and the liberality of its members had provided the means of transporting those who should compose it. This done, the greater portion were content to remain and await the course of events at home, while a few of their number embarked to attend to the providing of the asylum which very soon might be needed by them all. It may be safely concluded that most of the persons who accompanied the emigrant members of the company to New England sympathized with them in their object. It may be inferred from the common expenditures which were soon incurred, that considerable sums of money were brought over. And almost all the settlers may be presumed to have belonged to one or another of the four following classes: (1) Those who paid for their passage and who were accordingly entitled on their arrival to a grant of as much land as if they had subscribed fifty pounds to the "common stock" of the company; (2) those who, for their exercise of some profession, art, or trade, were to receive specified remuneration from the company in money or land; (3) those who paid a portion of their expenses, and after making up the rest by labor at the rate of three shillings a day, were to receive fifty acres of land; (4) indented servants, for whose conveyance their masters were to be remunerated at the rate of fifty acres of land for each. All Englishmen were eligible to the franchise of the Massachusetts Company; but until elected by a vote of the existing freemen no one had any share in the government of the plantation or in the selection of its governors. The reception of the new-comers was discouraging. More than a quarter part of their predecessors at Salem had died during the previous winter, and many of the survivors were ill or feeble. The faithful Higginson was wasting with a hectic fever, which soon proved fatal. There was a scarcity of all sorts of provisions, and not corn enough for a fortnight's supply after the arrival of the fleet. "The remainder of a hundred eighty servants," who, in the two preceding years, had been conveyed over at heavy cost, were discharged from their indentures, to escape the expense of their maintenance. Sickness soon began to spread, and before the close of autumn had proved fatal to two hundred of this year's emigration. Death aimed at the "shining mark" he is said to love. Lady Arbella Johnson, coming "from a paradise of plenty and pleasure, which she enjoyed in the family of a noble earldom, into a wilderness of wants," survived her arrival only a month; and her husband, singularly esteemed and beloved by the colonists, died of grief a few weeks after. He was a holy man and wise and died in sweet peace. Giving less than a week to repose and investigations at Salem, Winthrop proceeded with a party in quest of some more attractive place of settlement. He traced the Mystic River a few miles up from its mouth, and, after a three days' exploration, returned to Salem to keep the Sabbath. When ten or eleven vessels had arrived, a day of public thanksgiving was observed in acknowledgment of the divine goodness which had so far prospered the enterprise. After a sufficient pause for deliberation and conference concerning the forms of organization of the new society, the subject of an ecclesiastical settlement was the first matter to receive attention. On a day solemnized with prayer and fasting, the Reverend Mr. Wilson, after the manner of proceeding in the year before at Salem, entered into a church covenant with Winthrop, Dudley, and Johnson. Two days after, on Sunday, they associated with them three of the assistants, Mr. Nowell, Mr. Sharpe, and Mr. Bradstreet, and two other persons, Mr. Gager and Mr. Colburn. Others were presently added; and the church, so constituted, elected Mr. Wilson to be its teacher, and ordained him to that charge at Mishawum. At the same time Mr. Nowell was chosen to be ruling elder, and Mr. Gager and Mr. Aspinwall to be deacons. From the promptness of these measures, it is natural to infer that they had been the subject of consideration and concert before the landing. But there was some lingering scruple respecting the innovation on accustomed forms; and either for the general satisfaction or to appease some doubters, "the imposition of hands" was accompanied with "this protestation by all, that it was only as a sign of election and confirmation." In the choice of a capital town, attention was turned to Mishawum, now Charlestown. Here, ten weeks after the landing, the first court of assistants on this side of the water was convened. The assistants present were Saltonstall, Ludlow, Rossiter, Nowell, Sharpe, Pynchon, and Bradstreet. Three others were in the country: Johnson, Endicott, and Coddington. The question first considered was that of provision for the ministers. It was "ordered that houses be built for them with convenient speed at the public charge. Sir Richard Saltonstall undertook to see it done at his plantation (Watertown) for Mr. Phillips, and the Governor at the other plantation for Mr. Wilson." Allowances of thirty pounds a year to each of these gentlemen were to be made at the common charge of the settlements, "those of Mattapan and Salem exempted," as being already provided with a ministry. Provision was also made for Mr. Gager as engineer, and Mr. Penn as beadle. It was ordained "that carpenters, joiners, bricklayers, sawers, and thatchers should not take above two shillings a day, nor any man should give more, under pain of ten shillings to taker and giver"; and "sawers" were restricted as to the price they might take for boards. The use or removal of boats or canoes, without the owner's leave, was prohibited, under penalty of fine and imprisonment. Saltonstall, Johnson, Endicott, and Ludlow were appointed to be justices of the peace, besides the Governor and deputy-governor, who were always to have that trust by virtue of their higher office. And "it was ordered that Morton, of Mount Woolison, should presently be sent for by process." Morton had lately been brought back to Plymouth by Allerton--who incurred much censure on that account--and, repairing to Mount Wollaston, had resumed his old courses. A recital of the action of the board of assistants at their first meetings on this continent will explain the early exigencies of their administration, and the view entertained by them of their duties and powers. At a second court, held at Charlestown, the following business was transacted. It was agreed "that every third Tuesday there should be a court of assistants held at the Governor's house." It was "ordered that Thomas Norton, of Mount Wollaston, should presently be set into the bilboes, and after sent prisoner to England by the ship called the Gift, now returning thither; that all his goods should be seized upon to defray the charge of his transportation, payment of his debts, and to give satisfaction to the Indians for a canoe he unjustly took away from them; and that his house should be burned down to the ground, in sight of the Indians, for their satisfaction for many wrongs he had done them from time to time." Mr. Clarke was directed to pay to John Baker the sum of thirty-eight shillings, for cheating him in a sale of cloth. A stipend was granted to Mr. Patrick and Mr. Underhill, as military instructors and officers. The names of Boston, Dorchester, and Watertown were assigned to the places which still bear them. And it was ordered that no plantation should be made within the limits of the patent, without permission from a majority of the Board of Governor and Assistants, and that "a warrant should presently be sent to Agawam (Ipswich) to command those that are planted there forthwith to come away." At a third court, also held at Charlestown, regulations were enacted against allowing the Indians the use of firearms, and against parting with corn to them, or sending it out of the jurisdiction, without a license. Constables were appointed for Salem and Dorchester. The wages of common laborers were fixed at sixpence a day, and those of mechanics who were employed in building at sixteen pence, in addition to "meat and drink." Order was given for the seizure of "Richard Clough's strong water, for his selling great quantity thereof to several men's servants, which was the occasion of much disorder, drunkenness, and misdemeanor." The execution of a contract between certain parties for the keeping of cattle was defined and enforced. Sir Richard Saltonstall was fined four bushels of malt for absenting himself from the meeting. Thomas Gray, for "divers things objected against him," was ordered "to remove himself out of the limits of this patent before the end of March next." "For the felony committed by him, whereof he was convicted by his own confession," John Gouldburn, as principal, and three other persons, as accessories, were sentenced "to be whipped, and afterward set in the stocks." Servants, "either man or maid," were forbidden to "give, sell, or truck any commodity whatsoever, without license from their master, during the time of their service." An allowance was made to Captains Underhill and Patrick for quarters and rations; and, for their maintenance, a rate of fifty pounds was levied, of which sum Boston and Watertown were assessed eleven pounds each, and Charlestown and Dorchester seven pounds each, Roxbury five pounds, and Salem and Mystic each only three pounds--a sort of indication of the estimated wealth of those settlements respectively. The public business proceeded at the next two courts after the same manner. A restriction, which it seems had existed under Endicott's administration, on the price of beaver, was removed. A bounty was offered for the killing of wolves, to be paid by the owners of domestic animals in sums proportioned to the amount of their stock. Encouragement was given, by a legal rate of toll, to the setting up of a ferry between Charlestown and Boston. A servant of Sir Richard Saltonstall was sentenced to "be whipped for his misdemeanor toward his master"; and bonds were taken for good behavior in a case of "strong suspicion of incontinency." Sir Richard Saltonstall was fined five pounds for whipping two persons without the presence of another assistant. A man was ordered to be whipped for fowling on the Sabbath-day; another for stealing a loaf of bread; and another for breaking an engagement to pilot a vessel, with the privilege, however of buying off the punishment with forty shillings. The employers of one Knapp, who was indebted to Sir Richard Saltonstall, and of his son, were directed to apply half of their wages to the discharge of the debt. An assessment of sixty pounds was laid on six settlements for the maintenance of Mr. Wilson and Mr. Phillips, of which sum Boston and Watertown were to pay twenty pounds each, and Charlestown half as much; and Roxbury, Mystic, and Winnisimmet were charged with six pounds, three pounds, and one pound respectively. An epidemic sickness at Charlestown was ascribed to the want of good water. An ample supply of it being found in Boston, a portion of the people removed to that peninsula; and there for the first time after their arrival on this continent, was held one of those quarterly general courts of the Company of Massachusetts Bay, which were prescribed in a provision of the charter. TRIUMPH AND DEATH OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS AT LUETZEN A.D. 1632 BENJAMIN CHAPMAN No actor in the Thirty Years' War left a more brilliant name than Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden. His military reputation, which rests on solid achievement, was much enhanced by the victory at Luetzen, although the King early fell on the field. That triumph, which was won largely through the inspiration of his spirit and the shock of its untimely departure, contributed to the remarkable advancement of Sweden which his reign had already inaugurated. Before the interference of Gustavus in the war, the Catholic party had defeated the Protestants in almost every engagement. The Protestant leaders, Christian IV of Denmark, Count Mansfeld, and Christian of Anhalt, had been no match for Tilly, commanding the force of the Holy League, and Wallenstein, leader of the Imperial army. When Gustavus joined in the conflict, Wallenstein had quitted the service of the Emperor Ferdinand II, and the great Swede's first opponent was Tilly, the imperial generalissimo. Tilly's ruthless sack of Magdeburg, in 1631, brought many hesitating Protestants to the side of Gustavus, and on the field of Leipsic or Breitenfeld, September 7, 1631, he completely overcame his strong enemy. In April following, Tilly, the victor in thirty-six battles, fell in another conflict with Gustavus. The Swedish King continued his campaign in Germany, and November 16, 1632, he met Wallenstein, who again commanded the Imperial forces, and his lieutenant, Count Pappenheim, on the fatal but glorious field of Luetzen. The King had gathered his forces at Erfurt, and there he bade farewell to his Queen, tenderly commending her to the care of the city magistrates. On October 30th Gustavus sent Bernhard, Duke of Saxe-Weimar, forward with eleven thousand men to observe Pappenheim. The Duke took the road by Buttstadt to Freiburg, and from thence, after crossing the Saale, to Naumburg, where he arrived just in time to anticipate the enemy. The next day the King gave the military command at Erfurt to Dupadel, and proceeded himself to Naumburg. Here the joy and confidence which his presence inspired, "as if he had been a god," far from elating him, awakened only in his mind a feeling of humility and a sorrowful presentiment that some disaster to himself would soon convince the Naumburgers of the frailty of the idol in whom they trusted. On Sunday, November 14th, he learned, by an intercepted letter, that Pappenheim had been sent to Halle, and that the next day the Imperial army was to leave Weissenfels. He would now have attacked Wallenstein at once; but the dissuasions of Kniphausen--it is said--prevailed, and he agreed to defer the hazard of a battle until he should have been reënforced by Duke George of Luneburg and the Elector of Saxony. Accordingly, having written to the Elector, who lay at Torgau, to meet him at Eilenburg, he was himself marching to Pegau, in that direction, when some gentlemen and peasants of the neighborhood brought him word that Wallenstein's troops were still quartered in the villages around Luetzen, and that he was not aware of the King's army being on the march. "Then," exclaimed Gustavus, "I verily believe the Lord has delivered him into my hand," and instantly darted toward his prey. Luetzen was now in sight; the peasants said it was close at hand. But it proved more distant than this indefinite expression, or the measure of their own eager gaze, had led the Swedes to calculate. Moreover, a small river, the Rippart, that lay between the King and Luetzen, whose narrow bridge could be only passed by one or two at a time, impeded the advance full two hours--a skirmish with Isolani's cavalry, who were quartered at a village near the bridge, may also have occasioned some little loss of time--so that when the Swedish army had reached the fatal field it was nightfall, and too late to begin the battle. Wallenstein made good use of the delay. On the first intelligence of the King's approach he had written to Pappenheim--the letter is still preserved in the archives of Vienna, stained with Pappenheim's blood--apprising him of the danger, and requiring him to join at daybreak, with every man and gun. During the night and early in the morning, which proved very misty, he mustered his troops, and made his dispositions, deepening the drains by the highroads to form intrenchments for his musketeers. The King passed the night in his carriage, chiefly in conversation with his generals. Early in the morning he had prayers read to himself by his chaplain, Frabricius. The rest of the army sang Luther's hymn, "Our God is a strong tower"; and Gustavus himself led another hymn--"Jesus Christ our Saviour, he overcame death." The King mounted his horse without having broken his fast. He wore a plain buff coat, without armor; replying, it is said, to some remark upon this deficiency, that "God was his harness." He addressed a few words of encouragement, first to the Swedes, then to Germans of his army, and to this effect: "My brave and beloved subjects!" he said to the Swedish regiments, "now is the time to prove your discipline and courage, confirmed in many a fight. Yonder is the enemy you have sought so long, not now sheltered by strong ramparts nor posted on inaccessible heights, but ranged in fair and open field. Advance, then, by God's help, not so much to fight as to conquer. Spare not your blood, your lives, for your king, your country, your God; and the present and eternal blessing of the Almighty, and an illustrious name throughout the Christian world, await you. But if, which God forbid, you prove cowards, I swear that not a bone of you shall return to Sweden. The Lord preserve you all!" To the Germans he said: "My brave allies and fellow-soldiers, I adjure you by your fame, your honor, and your conscience; by the interests temporal and eternal now at stake; by your former exploits, by the remembrance of Tilly and the Breitenfeld--bear yourselves bravely to-day. Let the field before you become illustrious by a similar slaughter. Forward! I will this day not only be your general, but your comrade. I will not only command you, I will lead you on. Add your efforts to mine. Extort from the enemy, by God's help, that victory, of which the chief fruits will be to you and to your children. But if you shrink from the contest, remember that religion, liberty--all will be lost, and that by your remissness." Having finished his addresses, to which both Swedes and Germans responded by hearty cheers and acclamations, the King cast up his eyes to heaven and said, "O my Lord Jesus! Son of God, bless these our arms, and this day's battle, for thine own glory and holy name's sake." Then, drawing his sword, and waving it over his head, advanced, the foremost of all his army. The numbers of the two armies at this moment were probably nearly equal. Diodati, indeed, who carried to the Emperor from Wallenstein a verbal report of the battle, which by Ferdinand's order he afterward drew up in writing, stated the Swedish army to have been 25,000 strong, the Imperial 12,000 only. This is to be understood as referring to the beginning of the engagement, before Pappenheim had come up, at which time, on the other hand, Harte and Mauvillon estimate the Imperial force at from 28,000 to 30,000 men, Gfrorer at 25,000--estimates which are as certainly exaggerations as Diodati's diminution of the truth. Gustavus would not only have departed from his avowed maxims and previous practice, he would have run counter to every sound strategical principle, had he attacked without necessity an army numerically so superior. For that the Swedish force amounted in all to not more than 18,000 men there is as much proof almost as it is possible to attain in such a matter. A rough calculation would make Wallenstein and Pappenheim's whole united force not more than 27,000, unless any reënforcements took place which have not been recorded, or which have escaped my notice. If we estimate Pappenheim's division at 10,000, this will give 17,000 Imperialists on the field before he joined again on the day of the battle. But the _Swedish Intelligencer_, whose information was derived from English officers about the person of Gustavus, conceives that Wallenstein must have had at this time full 20,000, or, as he afterward modifies his opinion, that he must have had 30,000 in all, of whom 10,000 or 12,000 were with Pappenheim. According to these estimates, then, we may conclude that there were in the Imperial camp at Luetzen, on November 5th, from 15,000 to 18,000, or perhaps even 20,000, men. Such numbers offered to Gustavus, especially under the circumstances, a strong temptation to attack them; and, the Imperial army being so divided, he had a reasonable hope--a hope by which he was justified in forcing the engagement--that he should be able to defeat successively both divisions. Even as it was, Pappenheim's foot not arriving soon enough to support contributed in no small degree to the loss of the battle. The field, which was intersected by a canal that unites the Saale and the Elster, called the Flossgraben, was almost a level; but of all the accidents afforded by such ground Wallenstein had taken advantage. Luetzen lay to his right a little in front. Between it and three windmills close to his right wing intervened some mud-walled gardens. These he made use of as forts, throwing into them little garrisons, and loopholing the walls. The mill hills he converted into batteries, and the dry ditches by the roadside into breastworks for his musketeers. The fog having cleared off for a season, at ten o'clock the battle began. The wind and sun were in the King's favor; but Wallenstein had the advantage in weight of artillery and position. Gustavus did not long sustain the cannonade of the enemy before he gave the order to charge toward the highway and dislodge the musketeers who occupied the ditches on the side of it. This being effected, the whole line continued to advance, and the three infantry brigades of the centre took the batteries on the other side of the highroad, but, not being supported in time by their cavalry, who had been impeded by the wayside ditches, lost them again and were compelled to fall back. When the King knew that the first battery was taken, he uncovered his head and thanked God, but soon after, learning that the centre had been repulsed, he put himself at the head of the Smaland cavalry and charged the Imperial cuirassiers, the "black lads," with whom he had just before told Stalhaske to grapple. Piccolomini hastened to support the cuirassiers; and the Swedes, being overmatched, retreated without perceiving--the fog having again come over--that they had left the King in the midst of the enemy. A pistol-ball now broke his arm; and as the Duke of Lauenburg was supporting him out of the battle, an Imperial cuirassier came behind him and shot him in the back. He then fell from his horse; and, other cuirassiers coming up, one of them completed the work of death. It is added on the testimony of a young gentleman named Leubelfing, the son of Colonel Leubelfing, of Nuremberg, and page to the Lord Marshal Crailsham, that being near when the King fell, and seeing that his charger, wounded in the neck, had galloped away, he dismounted and offered him his own horse. Gustavus stretched out his hands to accept the offer; and the page attempted to lift him from the ground, but was unable. In the mean time some cuirassiers, attracted to the spot, demanded who the wounded man was. Leubelfing evaded the question or refused to answer; but the King himself exclaimed, "I am the King of Sweden," when he received four gunshot wounds and two stabs, which quickly released him from the agony of his broken arm, the bone of which had pierced the flesh and protruded. The Imperialist soldiers about the King, each anxious to possess some trophy, had stripped the body to the shirt, and were about to carry it off when a body of Swedish cavalry, charging toward the spot, dispersed them. His death was immediately communicated, by one of the few who were about his person when he fell, to the Swedish generals. His charger, galloping loose and bloody about the field, announced to many more that some disaster had befallen him. The whole extent of the calamity, however, was not generally known; but a burning desire ran through the ranks to rescue him, if living; to avenge him, if dead. The noble Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar sustained and animated the enthusiasm. Having whispered to Kniphausen that Gustavus was dead, he asked him what was to be done? Kniphausen answered that his troops were in good order, and that retreat was practicable; to which the fiery Duke answered that it was not a question of retreat, but of vengeance in victory. This said, he assumed the command, and, upon Stenbock's lieutenant-colonel hesitating to advance when he ordered him, passed his sword through his body, and led on to the attack three other regiments, after a few words which gave fresh fuel to their ardor. Again the lost ground is won, the lost batteries are recovered. Wallenstein's ammunition explodes, and seven of his guns are captured. Stalhanske rallies his Finlanders, drives back the Imperial cuirassiers, and bears away the King's body--easily distinguished from the rest of the slain by its heroic stature. But many still are the vicissitudes of that memorable day. Pappenheim brings fresh masses and fresh courage into the field. He is slain; content to die, since Gustavus, the foe of the Emperor and of his faith, breathes no longer; but Piccolomini and Tershy have inherited his spirit. The Swedes are beaten back; several standards and royal banners are won by the Imperialists. Count Brahé is mortally wounded; and of his division--the flower of all the army, the brave veterans "who have been so long accustomed to conquer that they knew not how to yield"--there remains but an inconsiderable fraction. During all these vicissitudes the cool intrepidity of Kniphausen had kept the second line of the centre unbroken; and when, between three and four o'clock, the fog cleared off, and Duke Bernhard, who had expected a very different appearance, saw it standing firm and in good order, he raised his voice once more to renew the assault. This charge again changed the aspect of the battle; but the mist again spreading, again the Swedes are baffled when within a grasp of victory. The fifth and decisive charge was made just before sunset, when the arrival of Pappenheim's foot encouraged the Imperialists to make a final and desperate struggle. Kniphausen's fresh troops were now brought into action. The sharp ring of the musketry, the shouts of those full of life and hope, stifled once more the groans of the wounded comrades, in whom life was expiring and hope was dead. Both sides fought bravely, admirably; and, had strength and courage alone determined this last agony, doubtful indeed would have been its issue. But the Swedish cannon now again opened their flaming mouths upon the right flank and front of the Imperialists; and the effect was terrible: rank upon rank and file upon file fell beneath that crushing fire; so that when darkness thickened around the still contending armies, taking advantage of its cover, and leaving behind him the guns which had not been already captured, Wallenstein gave the signal to retreat, and drew off from the field. Thus ended this day of mingled glory and sadness, the mists and confusion of which have in a great measure obscured its history. The numbers engaged, the order of battle on the side of the Imperialists, the number of the slain, the period of Pappenheim's arrival, what part of his forces were actually engaged; above all, the circumstances of the King's death, are perplexed amid the contrariety of contemporary narrations, representing partly the imperfection of human testimony and partly the different interests, jealousies, and suspicions of the times. Among the last may be mentioned the imputation cast upon the Duke Francis Albert of Lauenburg, of having, according to previous compact with the Imperialists, murdered the King on the field of battle. This he is said to have effected as he was leading him away wounded, by placing a pistol behind him, and shooting him in the back. The Duke, who was now about thirty-two years of age, had served during the Mantuan war in the Imperial army, but, from some impression that he had been neglected, joined Gustavus two or three weeks before the battle of Luetzen, as a volunteer. After the King had fallen, supposing that all was lost, he ran away to Weissenfels, and did not appear again among the Swedish ranks until next morning, when the cool reception he received from the generals induced him probably to leave and go to Dresden, where he obtained from his relation, the Elector of Saxony, the rank of field-marshal under Arnim. Wallenstein courted his friendship by restoring to him without ransom some of his attendants captured at Luetzen. The Duke was not ungrateful, and took a zealous part in the negotiations between Wallenstein and the Elector of Saxony, and Duke Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar in January and February, 1634. On the night of Wallenstein's assassination he was arrested by Gordon and sent to Vienna, where he remained a year in imprisonment, but, at the expiration of that time, by embracing the Roman Catholic faith, obtained at once his freedom and a command in the Imperial army in Silesia. In the battle of Sweidnitz, May 30, 1642, he was wounded and taken prisoner. Torstenson rescued him with difficulty from the vengeance of the Swedish soldiers; and the next day he died of his wounds. The story that he had murdered the King had at one time taken such a hold upon the Swedes that no historian of that nation could venture to treat it as a fable. But a full examination of the facts by Forster shows upon how slight a foundation the charge has rested. The motive of personal animosity arising out of a blow given by the King to the Duke is destroyed by the fact that the quarrel in which the insult is supposed to have been given was not with Duke Francis, but with his brother. The corroboration of his guilt, that he wore the device of Wallenstein's officers in the field, a green scarf, is annihilated by the answer that Wallenstein's officers did not wear green scarfs, but crimson. And the only direct evidence of his crime falls to pieces against counter-evidence of still greater weight. Even the Swedes themselves, if they still retain the convictions of their forefathers, have grown tolerant of opposite convictions; and Geijer has not scrupled to intimate, with tolerable plainness, that he considers the charge against the Duke of Saxe Lauenburg unproved. Gustavus' body was brought on a powder-wagon to the hamlet of Meuchen, where it was placed for the night in the church, before the altar. The next day it was carried to the schoolmaster's house, until he, being joiner of the village also, constructed the simple shell in which it was conveyed to Weissenfels. There the body was embalmed by the King's apothecary, Caspar, who counted in it nine wounds. The heart, which was uncommonly large, was preserved by the Queen in a golden casket. A trooper, who had been wounded at the King's side, who remained at Meuchen until his wound was healed, assisted by some peasants, rolled a large stone toward the spot where he fell. They were unable, however, to bring the stone, now called the "Swede's Stone," to the exact spot, from which it stands some thirty or forty paces distant. The death of Gustavus Adolphus cast a gloom over the whole of Europe. Even foes could lament the fall of so noble an enemy. To his subjects, to his allies, to the bondmen who looked to him for redress and deliverance, his loss was a heartrending sorrow. Grave and aged senators wrung their hands and sobbed aloud when intelligence reached Stockholm. In the unfortunate Frederick of Bohemia it produced, as we have seen, a depression that contributed probably to this death. Nor was the grief shown by the many merely political or selfish, excited because the public or individual hopes centred in the King seemed to have perished with him. A heartfelt loyalty, a strong personal admiration and attachment, intermingled with other sources of regret and dignified the sorrow. It would have been strange had it been otherwise. There were in Gustavus most of the advantages and amenities of person and character which make a popular king, a man admired and beloved. In his latter years, indeed, he no longer possessed the graceful form that had belonged to him when he was an ardent and favored suitor of Ebba Brahé; but the slight inclination to corpulency that grew with him as he advanced toward middle age detracted probably little, if at all, from the commanding dignity of his person. His countenance to the last retained its captivating sweetness and expressive variety. It was a countenance of which the most accomplished pencil could give in one effort only an inadequate idea, and which Vandyke--to whose portrait of the King none of the engravings which I have seen, probably, do justice--has represented only in repose. But in the varying play of Gustavus' features men could read his kindness of heart, his large powers of sympathy, his quick intelligence, his noble, chivalrous nature. And these were infinitely attractive. There, too--it must not be concealed--they could often discern the flash of anger, to be followed quickly by the rough speech which gave pain and offence where a little self-control and consideration might have spared a pang and prevented a quarrel. This propensity to anger diminished in some degree both the popularity and merit of Gustavus; yet he rarely permitted his anger to rage beyond a harsh expression, and with generous instinct he knew how to open the door of reconciliation, not only by frankly confessing his irritability, and by conferring fresh favors, but also by demanding fresh services from those noble natures which in his heat and rashness he had injured or pained. In the field he shared the dangers of his soldiers with a courage liable, doubtless, to the charge of temerity, but to which, no less than to his participation in their hardships, his sympathy with their feelings, and his great military talents, he owed, under God, his success and renown. That his military fame was well founded, that no series of accidents could have produced success, at once so splendid and so uniform, we must have believed, though all professional authorities had been silent; but the special merit of no other commander has been more generally acknowledged by those of his own craft. His most celebrated living rival and the greatest conqueror of modern times have both set their seals to it. Wallenstein on two separate occasions pronounced him the greatest captain of his age; and among the eight best generals whom, in his judgment, the world had ever seen, Napoleon gave a place to Gustavus Adolphus. RECANTATION OF GALILEO A.D. 1633 SIR OLIVER LODGE From Socrates to Galileo, as from the Church's early martyrs to its latest victims, runs the same story of conflict between the free human spirit and the repressive environment of custom acting through personal will or through constituted power. When in 1633 Galileo, standing before the Inquisition at Rome, denied his own great work and swore that earth stood still, science staggered under the heavy blow. Galileo was being punished, not directly for the great astronomical discoveries he had made with his telescope, but for asserting that they proved, or that he believed in, the Copernican system. This declared that the earth moved, while the churchmen had interpreted the Bible to mean that it did not. Thus science, threatened in the person of its greatest leader, terrified by his sufferings, no longer dared proclaim the thing it saw. Descartes and many another thinker, though throbbing with the eagerness of the new dawning light, hushed their voices, hid their views. They were philosophers, not martyrs. What this newly roused vigor of thought might have accomplished except for the repressive hand of the Church we cannot tell. As it was, the supremacy of intellect passed away from Catholic Italy, turned from the South to the North, from Galileo to Newton and Leibnitz. The forced recantation of the great astronomer thus stands out as one of the events which have changed the course of destiny. In 1615 Pope Paul V wrote requesting Galileo to come to Rome to explain his views. He went, was well received, made a special friend of Cardinal Barberino--an accomplished man in high position, who became, in fact, the next Pope. Galileo showed cardinals and others his telescope, and to as many as would look through it he showed Jupiter's satellites and his other discoveries. He had a most successful visit. He talked, he harangued, he held forth in the midst of fifteen or twenty disputants at once, confounding his opponents and putting them to shame. His method was to let the opposite arguments be stated as fully and completely as possible, himself aiding, and often adducing, the most forcible and plausible arguments against his own views; and then, all having been well stated, he would proceed to utterly undermine and demolish the whole fabric, and bring out the truth in such a way as to convince all honest minds. It was this habit that made him such a formidable antagonist. He never shrank from meeting an opposing argument, never sought to ignore it or cloak it in a cloud of words. Every hostile argument he seemed to delight in, as a foe to be crushed, and the better and stronger they sounded the more he liked them. He knew many of them well, he invented a number more, and, had he chosen, could have out-argued the stoutest Aristotelian on his own grounds. Thus did he lead his adversaries on, almost like Socrates, only to ultimately overwhelm them in a more hopeless rout. All this in Rome, too, in the heart of the Catholic world. Had he been worldly-wise, he would certainly have kept silent and unobtrusive till he had leave to go away again. But he felt like an apostle of the new doctrines, whose mission it was to proclaim them even in this centre of the world and of the Church. Well, he had an audience with the Pope--a chat an hour long--and the two parted good friends, mutually pleased with each other. He writes that he is all right now, and might return home when he liked. But the question began to be agitated whether the whole system of Copernicus ought not to be condemned as impious and heretical. This view was persistently urged upon the Pope and college of cardinals, and it was soon to be decided upon. Had Galileo been unfaithful to the Church he could have left them to stultify themselves in any way they thought proper, and himself had gone; but he felt supremely interested in the result, and he stayed. He writes: "So far as concerns the clearing of my own character, I might return home immediately; but although this new question regards me no more than all those who for the last eighty years have supported those opinions both in public and private, yet, as perhaps I may be of some assistance in that part of the discussion which depends on the knowledge of truths ascertained by means of the sciences which I profess, I, as a zealous and Catholic Christian, neither can nor ought to withhold that assistance which my knowledge affords, and this business keeps me sufficiently employed." It is possible that his stay was the worst thing for the cause he had at heart. Anyhow, the result was that the system was condemned, and both the book of Copernicus and the epitome of it by Kepler were placed on the forbidden list,[33] and Galileo himself was formally ordered never to teach or to believe the motion of the earth. He quitted Rome in disgust, which before long broke out in satire. The only way in which he could safely speak of these views now was as if they were hypothetical and uncertain, and so we find him writing to the Archduke Leopold, with a presentation copy of his book on the tides, the following: "This theory occurred to me when in Rome while the theologians were debating on the prohibition of Copernicus' book, and of the opinion maintained in it of the motion of the earth, which I at that time believed: until it pleased those gentlemen to suspend the book, and declare the opinion false and repugnant to the Holy Scriptures. Now, as I know how well it becomes me to obey and believe the decisions of my superiors, which proceed out of more knowledge than the weakness of my intellect can attain to, this theory which I send you, which is founded on the motion of the earth, I now look upon as a fiction and a dream, and beg your highness to receive it as such. But as poets often learn to prize the creations of their fancy, so in like manner do I set some value on this absurdity of mine. It is true that when I sketched this little work I did hope that Copernicus would not, after eighty years, be convicted of error; and I had intended to develop and amplify it further, but a voice from heaven suddenly awakened me, and at once annihilated all my confused and entangled fancies." This sarcasm, if it had been in print, would probably have been dangerous. It was safe in a private letter, but it shows us his real feelings. However, he was left comparatively quiet for a time. He was getting an old man now, and passed the time studiously enough, partly at his house in Florence, partly at his villa in Arcetri, a mile or so out of the town. Here was a convent, and in it his two daughters were nuns. One of them, who passed under the name of Sister Maria Celeste, seems to have been a woman of considerable capacity--certainly she was of a most affectionate disposition--and loved and honored her father in the most dutiful way. This was a quiet period of his life, spoiled only by occasional fits of illness and severe rheumatic pains, to which the old man was always liable. Many little circumstances are known of this peaceful time. For instance, the convent clock won't go, and Galileo mends it for them. He is always doing little things for them, and sending presents to the lady superior and his two daughters. He was occupied now with problems in hydrostatics and on other matters unconnected with astronomy: a large piece of work which I must pass over. Most interesting and acute it is, however. In 1623, when the old Pope died, there was elected to the papal throne, as Urban VIII, Cardinal Barberino, a man of very considerable enlightenment, and a personal friend of Galileo's, so that both he and his daughters rejoice greatly, and hope that things will come all right, and the forbidding edict be withdrawn. The year after this election he manages to make another journey to Rome to compliment his friend on his elevation to the pontifical chair. He had many talks with Urban, and made himself very agreeable. Encouraged, doubtless, by marks of approbation, and reposing too much confidence in the individual good-will of the Pope, without heeding the crowd of half-declared enemies who were seeking to undermine his reputation, he set about, after his return to Florence, his greatest literary and most popular work, _Dialogues on the Ptolemaic and Copernican Systems_. This purports to be a series of four conversations between three characters. Salviati, a Copernican philosopher; Sagredo, a wit and scholar, not specially learned, but keen and critical, and who lightens the talk with chaff; Simplicio, an Aristotelian philosopher, who propounds the stock absurdities which served instead of arguments to the majority of men. The Aristotelians were furious, and represented to the Pope that he himself was the character intended by Simplicio, the philosopher whose opinions get alternately refuted and ridiculed by the other two, till he is reduced to an abject state of impotence. The infirm old man was instantly summoned to Rome. His friends pleaded his age--he was now seventy--his ill-health, the time of year, the state of the roads, the quarantine existing on account of the plague. It was all of no avail; to Rome he must go, and on February 14th he arrived. His daughter at Arcetri was in despair; and anxiety and fastings and penances self-inflicted on his account dangerously reduced her health. At Rome he was not imprisoned, but he was told to keep indoors and show himself as little as possible. He was allowed, however, to stay at the house of the Tuscan ambassador instead of in jail. By April he was removed to the chambers of the Inquisition and examined several times. Here, however, the anxiety was too much, and his health began to give way seriously; so, before long, he was allowed to return to the ambassador's house; and, after application had been made, was allowed to drive in the public garden in a half-closed carriage. Thus in every way the Inquisition dealt with him as leniently as they could. He was now their prisoner, and they might have cast him into their dungeons, as many another had been cast. By whatever they were influenced--perhaps the Pope's old friendship, perhaps his advanced age and infirmities--he was not so cruelly used. Still, they had their rules; he _must_ be made to recant and abjure his heresy; and, if necessary, torture must be applied. This he knew well enough, and his daughter knew it, and her distress may be imagined. Moreover, it is not as if they had really been heretics, as if they hated or despised the Church of Rome. On the contrary, they loved and honored the Church. They were sincere and devout worshippers, and only on a few scientific matters did Galileo presume to differ from his ecclesiastical superiors: his disagreement with them occasioned him real sorrow; and his dearest hope was that they could be brought to his way of thinking and embrace the truth. This condition of things could not go on. From February to June the suspense lasted. On June 20th he was summoned again, and told he would be wanted all next day for a rigorous examination. Early in the morning of the 21st he repaired thither, and the doors were shut. Out of those chambers of horror he did not reappear till the 24th. What went on all those three days no one knows. He himself was bound to secrecy. No outsider was present. The records of the Inquisition are jealously guarded. That he was technically tortured is certain; that he actually underwent the torment of the rack is doubtful. Much learning has been expended upon the question, especially in Germany. Several eminent scholars have held the fact of actual torture to be indisputable--geometrically certain, one says--and they confirm it by the hernia from which he afterward suffered, this being a well-known and frequent consequence. Other equally learned commentators, however, deny that the last stage was reached. For there are five stages all laid down in the rules of the Inquisition, and steadily adhered to in a rigorous examination, at each stage an opportunity being given for recantation, every utterance, groan, or sigh being strictly recorded. The recantation so given has to be confirmed a day or two later, under pain of a precisely similar ordeal. The five stages are: (1) The official threat in the court; (2) the taking to the door of the torture-chamber and renewing the official threat; (3) the taking inside and showing the instruments; (4) undressing and binding upon the rack; (5) _territio realis_. Through how many of these ghastly acts Galileo passed I do not know. I hope and believe not the last. There are those who lament that he did not hold out, and accept the crown of martyrdom thus offered to him. Had he done so we know his fate--a few years' languishing in the dungeons, and then the flames. Whatever he ought to have done, he did not hold out--he gave way. At one stage or another of the dread ordeal he said: "I am in your hands. I will say whatever you wish." Then was he removed to a cell while his special form of perjury was drawn up. The next day, clothed as a penitent, the venerable old man was taken to the convent of Minerva, where the cardinals and prelates were assembled for the purpose of passing judgment upon him. The judgment sentences him: (1) To the abjuration, (2) to formal imprisonment for life, (3) to recite the seven penitential psalms every week. Ten cardinals were present; but, to their honor, be it said, three refused to sign; and this blasphemous record of intolerance and bigoted folly goes down the ages with the names of seven cardinals immortalized upon it. This having been read, he next had to read word for word the abjuration which had been drawn up for him, and then sign it. THE ABJURATION OF GALILEO "I, Galileo Galilei, son of the late Vincenzo Galilei, of Florence, aged seventy years, being brought personally to judgment, and kneeling before your Most Eminent and Most Reverend Lords Cardinals, General Inquisitors of the universal Christian republic against heretical depravity, having before my eyes the Holy Gospels, which I touch with my own hands, swear that I have always believed, and now believe, and with the help of God will in future believe, every article which the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of Rome holds, teaches, and preaches. But because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office altogether to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the sun is the centre and immovable, and forbidden to hold, defend, or teach the said false doctrine in any manner, and after it hath been signified to me that the said doctrine is repugnant with the Holy Scripture, I have written and printed a book, in which I treat of the same doctrine now condemned, and adduce reasons with great force in support of the same, without giving any solution, and therefore have been judged grievously suspected of heresy; that is to say, that I held and believed that the sun is the centre of the universe and is immovable, and that the earth is not the centre and is movable; willing, therefore, to remove from the minds of your Eminences, and of every Catholic Christian, this vehement suspicion rightfully entertained toward me, with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith, I abjure, curse, and detest the said errors and heresies, and generally every other error and sect contrary to Holy Church; and I swear that I will never more in future say or assert anything verbally, or in writing, which may give rise to a similar suspicion of me; but if I shall know any heretic, or anyone suspected of heresy, that I will denounce him to this Holy Office, or to the Inquisitor or Ordinary of the place where I may be; I swear, moreover, and promise, that I will fulfil and observe fully, all the penances which have been or shall be laid on me by this Holy Office. But if it shall happen that I violate any of my said promises, oaths, and protestations (which God avert!), I subject myself to all the pains and punishments which have been decreed and promulgated by the sacred canons, and other general and particular constitutions, against delinquents of this description. So may God help me, and his Holy Gospels which I touch with my own hands. I, the above-named Galileo Galilei, have abjured, sworn, promised, and bound myself as above, and in witness thereof with my own hand have subscribed this present writing of my abjuration, which I have recited word for word. At Rome, in the Convent of Minerva, June 22, 1633. I, Galileo Galilei, have abjured as above with my own hand." * * * * * Those who believe the story about his muttering to a friend, as he rose from his knees, "_E pur si muove_" ("And yet it does move"), do not realize the scene. There was no friend in the place. It would have been fatally dangerous to mutter anything before such an assemblage. He was by this time an utterly broken and disgraced old man; wishful, of all things, to get away and hide himself and his miseries from the public gaze; probably with his senses deadened and stupefied by the mental sufferings he had undergone, and no longer able to think or care about anything--except perhaps his daughter--certainly not about any motion of this wretched earth. Far and wide the news of the recantation spread. Copies of the abjuration were immediately sent to all universities, with instructions to the professors to read it publicly. At Florence, his home, it was read out in the cathedral church, all his friends and adherents being specially summoned to hear it. For a short time more he was imprisoned in Rome, but at length was permitted to depart, nevermore of his own will to return. FOOTNOTES: [33] They remained there till 1835, when they were dropped. EDUCATIONAL REFORM OF COMENIUS A.D. 1638 S. S. LAURIE John Amos Comenius (1592-1671) is now generally recognized as the founder of modern education. Just what his work has been is best left to Mr. Laurie, the leading authority upon his life. What the schools were before his time is almost too dreary a picture to attempt to draw. Everything was hopelessly haphazard, almost hopelessly uninteresting. Only in the schools of the Jesuits was anything approaching skill employed to stimulate the learner. If a child did not advance, the teacher held himself no way responsible. The lad was adjudged a dullard and left to remain in his stupidity with the rest of the blockhead world. The chief work of Comenius, the _Didactica Magna_, was probably finished about 1638, and was shown in manuscript to many persons at that time. Its ideas as to education were widely accepted, and its influence and that of its author spread rapidly over much of Europe. The publication of his works was delayed until 1657. In the history of education it is important to recognize the existence of the two parallel streams of intellectual and spiritual regeneration. The leaders of both, like the leaders of all great social changes, at once bethought themselves of the schools. Their hope was in the young, and hence the reform of education early engaged their attention. The improvements made in the grammar-schools under the influence of Melanchthon and Sturm, and in England of Colet and Ascham, did not endure, save in a very limited sense. Pure classical literature was now read--a great gain certainly, but this was all. There was no tradition of method, as was the case in the Jesuit order. During the latter half of the sixteenth century, the complaints made of the state of the schools, the waste of time, the barbarous and intricate grammar rules, the cruel discipline, were loud and long, and proceeded from men of the highest intellectual standing. To unity in the Reformed churches they looked, but looked in vain, for a settlement of opinion, and to the school they looked as the sole hope of the future. The school, as it actually existed, might have well filled them with despair. Even in the universities Aristotelian physics and metaphysics, and with them the scholastic philosophy, still held their own. The reforms initiated mainly by Melanchthon had not, indeed, contemplated the overthrow of Aristotelianism. He and the other humanists merely desired to substitute Aristotle himself in the original for the Latin translation from the Arabic, necessarily misleading, and the Greek and Latin classics for barbarous epitomes. These very reforms, however, perpetuated the reign of Aristotle, when the spirit that actuated the Reformers was dead, and there had been a relapse into the old scholasticism. The Jesuit reaction, also, which recovered France and South Germany for the papal see, was powerful enough to preserve a footing for the metaphysical theology of St. Thomas Aquinas and the schoolmen. In England, Milton was of opinion that the youth of the universities were, even so late as his time, still presented with an "asinine feast of sow-thistles." These retrogressions in school and university serve to show how exceedingly difficult it is to contrive any system of education, middle or upper, which will work itself when the contrivers pass from the scene. Hence the importance, it seems to us, of having in every university, as part of the philosophical faculty, a department for the exposition of this very question of education--surely a very important subject in itself as an academic study, and in its practical relations transcending perhaps all others. How are the best traditions of educational theory and practice to be preserved and handed down if those who are to instruct the youth of the country are to be sent forth to their work from our universities with minds absolutely vacant as to the principles and history of their profession--if they have never been taught to ask themselves the question, "What am I going to do?" "Why?" and "How?" This subject is one worthy of consideration both by the universities and the state. It was the want of method that led to the decline of schools after the Reformation period; it was the study of method which gave the Jesuits the superiority that on many parts of the Continent they still retain.[34] In 1605 there appeared a book which was destined to place educational method on a scientific foundation, although its mission is not yet, it is true, accomplished. This was Francis Bacon's _Advancement of Learning_, which was followed some years later by the _Organum_. For some time the thoughts of men had been turning to the study of nature. Bacon represented this movement, and gave it the necessary impulse by his masterly survey of the domain of human knowledge, his pregnant suggestions, and his formulation of scientific method. Bacon was not aware of his relations to the science and art of education; he praises the Jesuit schools, not knowing that he was subverting their very foundations. We know inductively: that was the sum of Bacon's teaching. In the sphere of outer nature, the scholastic saying, "_Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu_," was accepted, but with this addition, that the impressions on our senses were not themselves to be trusted. The mode of verifying sense-impressions, and the grounds of valid and necessary inference, had to be investigated and applied. It is manifest that if we can tell how it is we know, it follows that the method of intellectual instruction is scientifically settled. But Bacon not only represented the urgent longing for a coördination of the sciences and for a new method, he also represented the weariness of words, phrases, and vain subtleties which had been gradually growing in strength since the time of Montaigne, Ludovicus Vives, and Erasmus. The poets, also, had been placing nature before the minds of men in a new aspect. The humanists, as we have said, while unquestionably improving the aims and procedure of education, had been powerless to prevent the tendency to fall once more under the dominion of words, and to revert to mere form. The realism of human life and thought, which constituted their _raison d'être_, had been unable to sustain itself as a principle of action, because there was no school of method. It was the study of the realities of sense that was finally to place education on a scientific basis, and make reaction, as to method at least, impossible. The thought of any age determines the education of the age which is to succeed it. Education follows; it does not lead. The school and the church alike march in the wake of science, philosophy, and political ideas. We see this illustrated in every epoch of human history, and in none so conspicuously as in the changes which occurred in the philosophy and education of ancient Rome during the lifetime of the elder Cato, and in modern times during the revival of letters and the subsequent rise of the Baconian induction. It is impossible, indeed, for any great movement of thought to find acceptance without its telling to some extent on every department of the body politic. Its influence on the ideas entertained as to the education of the rising generation must be, above all, distinct and emphatic. Every philosophical writer on political science has recognized this, and has felt the vast significance of the educational system of a country both as an effect--the consequence of a revolution in thought--and as a cause, a moving force of incalculable power in the future life of a commonwealth. Thus it was that the humanistic movement which preceded and accompanied the Reformation of religion shook to its centre the mediæval school system of Europe; and that subsequently the silent rise of the inductive spirit subverted its foundations. Bacon, though not himself a realist in the modern and abused sense of that term, was the father of realism. It was this side of his teaching which was greedily seized upon, and even exaggerated. Educational zeal now ran in this channel. The conviction of the churches of the time, that one can make men what one pleases--by fair means or foul--was shared by the innovators. By education, rightly conceived and rightly applied, the enthusiasts dreamed that they could manufacture men, and, in truth, the Jesuits had shown that a good deal could be done in this direction. The new enthusiasts failed to see that the genius of Protestantism is the genius of freedom, and that man refuses to be manufactured except on suicidal terms. He must first sacrifice that which is his distinctive title to manhood--his individuality and will. That the prophets of educational realism should have failed to see this is not to be laid at their door as a fault; it merely shows that they belonged to their own time, and not to ours. They failed then, as some fail now, to understand man and his education, because they break with the past. The record of the past is with them merely a record of blunders. The modern humanist more wisely accepts it as the storehouse of the thoughts and life of human reason. In the life of man each individual of the race best finds his own true life. This is modern humanism--the realism of thought. Yet it is to the sense-realists of the earlier half of the seventeenth century that we owe the scientific foundations of educational method, and the only indication of the true line of answer to the complaints of the time. In their hands sense-realism became allied with Protestant theology, and pure humanism disappeared. They were represented first by Wolfgang von Ratich, a native of Holstein, born in 1571. Ratich was a man of considerable learning. The distractions of Europe, and the want of harmony, especially among the churches of the Reformation, led him to consider how a remedy might be found for many existing evils. He thought that the remedy was to be found in an improved school system--improved in respect both of the substance and method of teaching. In 1612, accordingly, he laid before the Diet of the German empire at Frankfort a memorial, in which he promised, "with the help of God, to give instruction for the service and welfare of all Christendom." The torch that fell from Ratich's hand was seized, ere it touched the ground, by John Amos Comenius, who became the head, and still continues the head, of the sense-realistic school. His works have a present and practical, and not merely a historical and speculative, significance. Not only had the general question of education engaged many minds for a century and more before Comenius arose, but the apparently subsidiary, yet all-important, question of method, in special relation to the teaching of the Latin tongue, had occupied the thoughts and pens of many of the leading scholars of Europe. The whole field of what we now call secondary instruction was occupied with the one subject of Latin; Greek, and occasionally Hebrew, having been admitted only in the beginning of the sixteenth century, and then only to a subordinate place. This of necessity. Latin was the one key to universal learning. To give to boys the possession of this key was all that teachers aimed at until their pupils were old enough to study rhetoric and logic. Of these writers on the teaching of Latin, the most eminent were Sturm, Erasmus, Melanchthon, Lubinus, Vossius, Sanctius (the author of the _Minerva_), Ritter, Helvicus, Bodinus, Valentinus Andreæ, and, among Frenchmen, Coecilius Frey. Nor were Ascham and Mulcaster in England the least significant of the critics of method. Comenius was acquainted with almost all previous writers on education, except probably Ascham and Mulcaster, to whom he never alludes. He read everything that he could hear of with a view to find a method, and he does not appear ever to have been desirous to supersede the work of others. If he had found what he wanted, he would, we believe, have promulgated it, and advocated it as a loyal pupil. That he owed much to the previous writers is certain; but the prime characteristic of his work on Latin was his own. Especially does he introduce a new epoch in education, by constructing a general methodology which should go beyond mere Latin, and be equally applicable to all subjects of instruction. Before bringing his thoughts into definite shape, he wrote to all the distinguished men to whom he could obtain access. He addressed Ratich, among others, but received no answer; many of his letters also were returned, because the persons addressed could not be found. Valentinus Andreæ wrote to him in encouraging terms, saying that he gladly passed on the torch to him. His mind became now much agitated by the importance of the question and by the excitement of discovery. He saw his whole scheme assuming shape under his pen, and was filled, like other zealous men, before and since, with the highest hopes of the benefits which he would confer on the whole human race by his discoveries. He resolved to call his treatise _Didactica Magna_, or _Omnes omnia docendi Artificium_. He found a consolation for his misfortunes in the work of invention, and even saw the hand of Providence in the coincidence of the overthrow of schools, through persecutions and wars, and those ideas of a new method which had been vouchsafed to him, and which he was elaborating. Everything might now be begun anew, and untrammelled by the errors and prejudices of the past. Some scruples as to a theologian and pastor being so entirely preoccupied with educational questions he had, however, to overcome. "Suffer, I pray, Christian friends, that I speak confidentially with you for a moment. Those who know me intimately know that I am a man of moderate ability and of almost no learning, but one who, bewailing the evils of his time, is eager to remedy them, if this in any be granted me to do, either by my own discoveries or by those of another--none of which things can come save from a gracious God. If, then, anything be here found well done, it is not mine, but his, who from the mouths of babes and sucklings hath perfected praise, and who, that he may in verity show himself faithful, true, and gracious, gives to those who ask, opens to those who knock, and offers to those who seek. Christ my Lord knows that my heart is so simple that it matters not to me whether I teach or be taught, act the part of teacher of teachers or disciple of disciples. What the Lord has given me I send forth for the common good." His deepest conviction was that the sole hope of healing the dissensions of both church and state lay in the proper education of youth. When he had completed his _Great Didactic_, he did not publish it, for he was still hoping to be restored to his native Moravia, where he proposed to execute all his philanthropic schemes; indeed, the treatise was first written in his native Slav or Czech tongue. In 1632 there was convened a synod of the Moravian Brethren at Lissa, at which Comenius, now forty years of age, was elected to succeed his father-in-law, Cyrillus, as bishop of the scattered brethren--a position which enabled him to be of great service, by means of correspondence, to the members of the community, who were dispersed in various parts of Europe. Throughout the whole of his long life he continued this fatherly charge, and seemed never quite to abandon the hope of being restored, along with his fellow-exiles, to his native land--a hope doomed to disappointment. In his capacity of pastor-bishop he wrote several treatises, such as a _History of the Persecutions of the Brotherhood_, an account of the Moravian Church discipline and order, and polemical tracts against a contemporary Socinian. Meanwhile his great didactic treatise, which had been written in his native Czech tongue, was yet unpublished. He was, it would appear, stimulated to the publication of it by an invitation he received in 1638, from the authorities in Sweden, to visit their country and undertake the reformation of their schools. He replied that he was unwilling to undertake a task at once so onerous and so invidious, but that he would gladly give the benefit of his advice to anyone of their own nation whom they might select for the duty. These communications led him to resume his labor on the _Great Didactic_, and to translate it into Latin, in which form it finally appeared. Humanism, which had practically failed in the school, had, apart from this fact, no attractions for Comenius, and still less had the worldly wisdom of Montaigne. He was a leading Protestant theologian--a pastor and bishop of a small but earnest and devoted sect--and it was as such that he wrote on education. The best results of humanism could, after all, be only culture, and this not necessarily accompanied by moral earnestness or personal piety: on the contrary, probably dissociated from these, and leaning rather to scepticism and intellectual self-indulgence. At the same time it must be noted that he never fairly faced the humanistic question; he rather gave it the cold shoulder from the first. His whole nature pointed in another direction. When he has to speak of the great instruments of humanistic education--ancient classical writers--he exhibits great distrust of them, and, if he does not banish them from the school altogether, it is simply because the higher instruction in the Latin and Greek tongues is seen to be impossible without them. Even in the universities, as his pansophic scheme shows, he would have Plato and Aristotle taught chiefly by means of analyses and epitomes. It might be urged in opposition to this view of the anti-humanism of Comenius, that he contemplated the acquisition of a good style in Latin in the higher stages of instruction: true, but in so far as he did so, it was merely with a practical aim--the more effective, and, if need be, oratorical, enforcement of moral and religious truth. The beauties and subtleties of artistic expression had little charm for him, nor did he set much store by the graces. The most conspicuous illustration of the absence of all idea of art in Comenius is to be found in his school drama. The unprofitable dreariness of that production would make a reader sick were he not relieved by a feeling of its absurdity. The educational spirit of the Reformers, the conviction that all--even the humblest--must be taught to know God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent, was inherited by Comenius in its completeness. In this way, and in this way only, could the ills of Europe be remedied and the progress of humanity assured. While, therefore, he sums up the educational aim under the three-fold heads of Knowledge, Virtue, and Piety or Godliness, he in truth has mainly in view the last two. Knowledge is of value only in so far as it forms the only sound basis, in the eyes of a Protestant theologian, of virtue and godliness. We have to train for a hereafter. In virtue and godliness Comenius did not propose to teach anything save what the Reformed religion taught. His characteristic merits in this department of instruction were: 1. Morality and godliness were to be taught from the first. Parents and teachers were to begin to train at the beginning of the child's conscious life. 2. Parents and teachers were to give milk to babes, and reserve the stronger meat for the adolescent and adult mind. They were to be content to proceed gradually, step by step. 3. The method of procedure was not only to be adapted to the growing mind, but the mode of enforcement was to be mild, and the manner of it kind and patient. Had Comenius done nothing more than put forth and press home these truths he would have deserved our gratitude as an educationalist. But he did more than this. He related virtue and godliness to knowledge. By knowledge Comenius meant knowledge of nature and of man's relation to nature. It is this important characteristic of Comenius' educational system that reveals the direct influence of Bacon and his school. To the great Verulam he pays reverence for what he owed him, but he owed him even more than he knew. In this field of knowledge, the leading characteristic of the educational system of Comenius is his realism. We have pointed out, in contradiction of the assumptions of the modern sensationalist school, that the humanists were in truth realists, and it may be safely said that there can be no question among competent judges as to the realism which ought to characterize all rational and sound instruction. The question rather is as to the field in which the real is to be sought--in the mind of man, or in external nature. As the former may be called humanistic-realism, so the latter may be called sense- or naturalistic-realism. Of the latter, Comenius is the true founder, although his indebtedness to Ratich was great. Mere acquisition of the ordered facts of nature, and man's relation to them, was with him the great aim--if not the sole aim--of all purely intellectual instruction. And here there necessarily entered the governing idea, encyclopædism or pansophism. Let all the sciences, he said, be taught in their elements in all schools, and more fully at each successive stage of the pupil's progress. It is by knowledge that we are what we are, and the necessary conclusion from this must be, let all things be taught to all. It is at this point that many will part company with Comenius. The mind stored with facts, even if these be ordered facts, will not necessarily be much raised in the scale of humanity as an intelligence. The natural powers may be simply overweighted by the process, and the natural channels of spontaneous reason choked. In education, while our main business is to promote the growth of moral purpose and of a strong sense of duty, we have to support these by the discipline of intelligence, and by training to power and work rather than by information. On the other hand, only those who are ignorant of the history and the recognized results of education will wholly abjure realism in the Comenian sense; but it has to be assigned its own place, and nothing more than this, in the education of a human being. The sum of the matter seems to be this, that while a due place in all education is to be assigned to sense-realistic studies, especially in the earlier years of family and school life, the humanistic agencies must always remain the most potent in the making of a man. Comenius and his followers again confound knowledge with wisdom. He affirms that "all authors are to be banished from school except those that give a knowledge of useful things." Wisdom is certainly not to be opposed to knowledge, but it depends more on a man's power of discrimination, combination, and imagination than on the extent of his mental store of facts. Were it not so, our whole secondary education, and all the purely disciplinal part of our university instruction would be very far astray. If the ancient tongues are to be learned simply with a view to the sum of knowledge they contain, it would be absurd to waste the time of our youth over them. It would be better to impose on our universities the duty of furnishing guaranteed translations for the use of the public. We shall not, however, involve ourselves in controversy here, as our object is merely to point out, generally, the strong and weak points of our author. Next in importance to pansophy or encyclopædism, and closely connected with it, is the principle that a knowledge of words and of things should go hand in hand. Words are to be learned through things. Properly interpreted, and under due limitations, this principle will, we presume, be now generally accepted. We say, under due limitations, because it is manifest that the converse preposition, that "things are learned through words," is easily capable of proof, and is indeed, in our opinion, the stronghold of humanistic teaching in its earlier or school stages. It is in the department of method, however, that we recognize the chief contribution of Comenius to education. The mere attempt to systematize was a great advance. In seeking, however, for foundations on which to erect a coherent system, he had had to content himself with first principles which were vague and unscientific. Modern psychology was in its infancy, and Comenius had little more than the generalizations of Plato and Aristotle, and those not strictly investigated by him, for his guide. In training to virtue, moral truth and the various moralities were assumed as if they emerged full-blown in the consciousness of man. In training to godliness, again, Christian dogma was ready to his hand. In the department of knowledge, that is to say, knowledge of the outer world, Comenius rested his method on the scholastic maxim, _"Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu_." This maxim he enriched with the Baconian induction, comprehended by him, however, only in a general way. It was chiefly, however, the imagined harmony of physical and mental process that yielded his method. He believed that the process of the growth of external things had a close resemblance to the growth of the mind. Had he lived in these days he would doubtless have endeavored to work out the details of his method on a purely psychological basis; but in the then state of psychology he had to find another thread through the labyrinth. The mode of demonstration which he adopted was thus, as he himself called it, the syncretic or analogical. Whatever may be said of the harmony that exists between the growth of nature and of mind, there can be no doubt that the observation of the former is capable of suggesting, if it does not furnish, many of the rules of educational method. From the simple to the complex, from the particular to the general, the concrete before the abstract, and all, step by step, and even by insensible degrees--these were among his leading principles of method. But the most important of all his principles was derived from the scholastic maxim quoted above. As all is from sense, let the thing to be known be itself presented to the senses, and let every sense be engaged in the perception of it. When it is impossible, from the nature of the case, to present the object itself, place a vivid picture of it before the pupil. The mere enumeration of these few principles, even if we drop out of view all his other contributions to method and school-management, will satisfy any man familiar with all the more recent treatises on education, that Comenius, even after giving his precursors their due, is to be regarded as the true founder of modern method, and that he anticipates Pestalozzi and all of the same school. When we come to consider Comenius' method as applied specially to language, we recognize its general truth, and the teachers of Europe and America will now be prepared to pay it the homage of theoretical approval at least. To admire, however, his own attempt at working out his linguistic method is impossible, unless we first accept his encyclopædism. The very faults with which he charged the school practices of the time are simply repeated by himself in a new form. The boy's mind is overloaded with a mass of words--the name and qualities of everything in heaven, on the earth, and under the earth. It was impossible that all these things, or even pictures of them, could be presented to sense, and hence his books must have inflicted a heavy burden on the merely verbal memory of boys. We want children to grow into knowledge, not to swallow numberless facts made up into boluses. Again, the amount that was to be acquired within a given time was beyond the youthful capacity. Any teacher will satisfy himself of this who will simply count the words and sentences in the _Janua_ and _Orbis_ of Comenius, and then try to distribute these over the schooltime allowed them. Like all reformers, Comenius was oversanguine. I do not overlook the fact that command over the Latin tongue as a vehicle of expression was necessary to those who meant to devote themselves to professions and to learning, and that Comenius had his justification for introducing a mass of vocables now wholly useless to the student of Latin. But even for his own time, Comenius, under the influence of his encyclopædic passion, overdid his task. His real merits in language-teaching lie in the introduction of the principle of graduated reading-books, in the simplification of Latin grammar, in his founding instruction in foreign tongues on the vernacular, and in his insisting on method in instruction. But these were great merits, too soon forgotten by the dull race of schoolmasters, if, indeed, they were ever fully recognized by them till quite recent times. Finally, Comenius' views as to the inner organization of a school were original, and have proved themselves in all essential respects correct. The same may be said of his scheme for the organization of a state system--a scheme which is substantially, _mutatis mutandis_, at this moment embodied in the highly developed system of Germany. When we consider, then, that Comenius first formally and fully developed educational method, that he introduced important reforms into the teaching of languages, that he introduced into schools the study of nature, that he advocated with intelligence, and not on purely sentimental grounds, a milder discipline, we are justified in assigning to him a high, if not the highest, place among modern educational writers. The voluminousness of his treatises, their prolixity, their repetitions, and their defects of styles have all operated to prevent men studying him. The substance of what he has written has been, I believe, faithfully given by me, but it has not been possible to transfer to these pages the fervor, the glow, and the pious aspirations of the good old bishop. FOOTNOTES: [34] Mr. Laurie's work was written in 1881. Considerable changes have since been made along the lines which he suggests. FIRST WRITTEN FREE CONSTITUTION IN THE WORLD EARLIEST UNION AMONG AMERICAN COLONIES A.D. 1639-1643 G. H. HOLLISTER JOHN MARSHALL That a colonizing people should, almost at the moment of their arrival in a new home, proceed to enact the fundamental law of a civil state is a remarkable fact in history. The manner in which this was done in Connecticut, and the character of the constitution there made in 1639, six years after the first English settlement, render it a memorable event in the development of American government. As the Connecticut Constitution was not only the first instrument of its kind, but also formed, in many respects, a pattern for others which became the organic laws of American States, so the first union of colonies, in 1643, is important not alone as being the first, but also as foreshadowing the later confederation and the final union of the States themselves. This model of an American union, following so closely upon the earliest creation of an American civil constitution, is concisely described by the great Chief Justice Marshall. G. H. HOLLISTER We read, in treatises upon elementary law, of a time antecedent to all law, when men theoretically are said to have met together and surrendered a part of their rights for a more secure enjoyment of the remainder. Hence, we are told, human governments date their origin. This dream of the enthusiast as applied to ages past, in Connecticut for the first time and upon the American soil became a recorded verity. Here at last we are permitted to look on and see the foundations of a political structure laid. We can count the workmen, and we have become familiar with the features of the master-builders. We see that they are most of them men of a new type. Bold men they are, who have cut loose from old associations, old prejudices, old forms; men who will take the opinions of no man unless he can back them up with strong reasons; clear-sighted, sinewy men, in whom the intellect and the moral nature predominate over the more delicate traits that mark an advanced stage of social life. Such men as these will not, however, in their zeal to cast off old dominions, be solicitous to free themselves and their posterity from all restraint; for no people are less given up to the sway of unbridled passions. Indeed, they have made it a main part of their business in life to subdue their passions. Laws, therefore, they must and will have, and laws that, whatever else they lack, will not want the merit of being fresh and original. As it has been, and still is, a much debated question, what kind of men they were--some having overpraised and others rashly blamed them--let us, without bigotry, try if we cannot look at them through a medium that shall render them to us in all their essential characteristics as they were. That medium is afforded us by the written constitution that they made of their own free will for their own government. This is said to give the best portrait of any people; though in a nation that has been long maturing, the compromise between the past and present, written upon almost every page of its history, cannot have failed in some degree to make the likeness dim. Yet, of such a people as we are describing, who may be said to have no past, who live not so much in the present as in the future, and who forge as with one stroke the constitution that is to be a basis of their laws--are we not provided with a mirror that reflects every lineament with the true disposition of light and shade? If it is a stern, it is yet a truthful, mirror. It flatters neither those who made it nor those blear-eyed maskers, who, forgetful of their own distorted visages, look in askance, and are able to see nothing to admire in the sober, bright-eyed faces of their fathers who gaze down upon them from the olden time. The preamble of this constitution begins by reciting the fact that its authors are, "under Almighty God, inhabitants and residents of Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield, upon the river of Connecticut." It also states that, in consonance with the word of God, in order to maintain the peace and union of such a people, it is necessary that "there should be an orderly and decent government established," that shall "dispose of the affairs of _the people_ at all seasons." "We do therefore," say they, "associate and conjoin ourselves to be as one public state or commonwealth." They add, further, that the first object aimed at by them is to preserve the liberty and the purity of the gospel and the discipline of their own churches; and, in the second place, to govern their _civil affairs_ by such rules as their written constitution and the laws enacted under its authority shall prescribe. To provide for these two objects--the liberty of the Gospel, as they understood it, and the regulation of their own civil affairs, they sought to embody in the form of distinct decrees, substantially the following provisions: 1. That there shall be every year two general assemblies or courts, one on the second Thursday of April, the other on the second Thursday of September; that the one held in April shall be called the court of election, wherein shall be annually chosen the magistrates--one of whom shall be the governor--and other public officers, who are to administer justice according to the laws here established; where there are no laws provided to do it in accordance with the laws of God; and that these rulers shall be elected by all the freemen within the limits of the commonwealth, who have been admitted inhabitants of the towns where they severally live, and who have taken the oath of fidelity to the new state; and that they shall all meet at one place to hold this election. 2. It is provided that after the voters have all met and are ready to proceed to an election, the first officer to be chosen shall be a governor, and after him a body of magistrates and other officers. Every voter is to bring in, to those who are appointed to receive it, a piece of paper with the name of him whom he would have for governor written upon it, and he that has the greatest number of papers with his name written upon them was to be governor for that year. The other magistrates were elected in the following manner. The names of all the candidates were first given to the secretary for the time being, and written down by him, in the order in which they were given; the secretary was then to read the list over aloud and severally nominate each person whose name was so written down, in its order, in a distinct voice, so that all the citizen voters could hear it. As each name was read, they were to vote by ballot, either for or against it, as they liked; those who voted in favor of the nominee did it by writing his name upon the ballot--those who voted against him simply gave in a blank ballot; and those only were elected whose names were written upon a majority of all the paper ballots handed in under each nomination. These papers were to be received and counted by sworn officers appointed by the court for that purpose. Six magistrates, besides the governor, were to be elected in this way. If they failed to elect so many by a majority vote, then the requisite number was to be filled up by taking the names of those who had received the highest number of votes. 3. The men thus to be nominated and balloted for were to be propounded at some general court held before the court of election, the deputies of each town having the privilege of nominating any two whom they chose. Other nominations might be made by the court. 4. No person could be chosen governor oftener than once in two years. It was requisite that this officer should be a member of an approved congregation, and that he should be taken from the magistrates of the commonwealth. But no qualification was required in a candidate for the magistracy, except that he should be chosen from the freemen. Both governor and magistrates were required to take a solemn oath of office. 5. To this court of election the several towns were to send their deputies, and after the elections were over the court was to proceed, as at other courts, to make laws or do whatever was necessary to further the interests of the commonwealth. 6. These two regular courts were to be convened by the governor himself, or by his secretary, by sending out a warrant to the constables of every town, a month at least before the day of session. In times of danger or public exigency the governor and a majority of the magistrates might order the secretary to summon a court, with fourteen days' notice, or even less, if the case required it, taking care to state their reasons for so doing to the deputies when they met. If, on the other hand, the governor should neglect to call the regular courts, or, with the major part of the magistrates, should fail to convene such special ones as were needed, then the freemen, or a major part of them, were required to petition them to do it. If this did not serve, then the freemen, or a majority of them, were clothed with the power to order the constables to summon the court, after which they might meet, choose a moderator, and do any act that it was lawful for the regular courts to do. 7. On receiving the warrants for these general courts the constables of each town were to give immediate notice to the freemen, either at a public gathering or by going from house to house, that at a given place and time they should meet to elect deputies to the general court, about to convene, and "to agitate the affairs of the commonwealth." These deputies were to be chosen by vote of the electors of the town who had taken the oath of fidelity; and no man not a freeman was eligible to the office of deputy. The deputies were to be chosen by a major vote of all the freemen present, who were to make their choice by written paper ballots--each voter giving in as many papers as there were deputies to be chosen, with a single name written on each paper. The names of the deputies when chosen were indorsed by the constables, on the back of their respective warrants, and returned into court. 8. The three towns of the commonwealth were each to have the privilege of sending four deputies to the general court. If other towns were afterward added to the jurisdiction, the number of their deputies was to be fixed by the court. The deputies represented the towns, and could bind them by their votes in all legislative matters. 9. The deputies had power to meet after they were chosen and before the session of the general court, to consult for the public good, and to examine whether those who had been returned as members of their own body were legally elected. If they found any who were not so elected, they might seclude them from their assembly, and return their names to the court, with their reasons for so doing. The court, on finding these reasons valid, could issue orders for a new election, and impose a fine upon such men as had falsely thrust themselves upon the towns as candidates. 10. Every regular general court was to consist of the governor and at least four other magistrates, with the major part of the deputies chosen from the several towns. But if any court happened to be called by the freemen, through the default of the governor and magistrates, that court was to consist of a majority of the freemen present, or their deputies, and a _moderator_, chosen by them. In the general court was lodged the "_supreme power of the commonwealth_." In this court the governor or moderator had power to command liberty of speech, to silence all disorders, and to put all questions that were to be made the subject of legislative action, but not to vote himself unless the court was equally divided, when he was to give the casting vote. But he could not adjourn or dissolve the court without the major vote of the members. Taxes also were to be ordered by the court; and when they had agreed upon the sum to be raised, a committee was to be appointed of an equal number of men from each town to decide what part of that sum each town should pay. This first constitution of the New World was simple in its terms, comprehensive in its policy, methodical in its arrangement, beautiful in its adaptation of parts to a whole, of means to an end. Compare it with any of the constitutions of the Old World then existing. I say nothing of those libels upon human nature, the so-called constitutions of the Continent of Europe--compare it reverently, as children speak of a father's roof, with that venerated structure, the British Constitution. How complex is the architecture of the latter! here exhibiting the clumsy work of the Saxon, there the more graceful touch of later conquerors; the whole colossal pile, magnificent with turrets and towers, and decorated with armorial devices and inscriptions, written in a language not only dead, but never native to the island; all eloquent, indeed, with the spirit of ages past, yet haunted with the cry of suffering humanity and the clanking of chains that come up from its subterranean dungeons. Mark, too, the rifts and seams in its gray walls--traces of convulsion and revolution. Proud as it is, its very splendor shows the marks of a barbarous age. Its tapestry speaks a language dissonant to the ears of freemen. It tells of exclusive privileges, of divine rights, not in the people, but in the king, of primogeniture, of conformities, of prescriptions, of serfs and lords, of attainder that dries up like a leprosy the fountains of inheritable blood; and, lastly, it discourses of the rights of British subjects, in eloquent language, but sometimes with qualifications that startle the ears of men who have tasted the sweets of a more enlarged liberty. Such was the spirit of the British Constitution, and code of the seventeenth century. I do not blame it that it was not better; perhaps it could not then have been improved without risk. Improvement in an old state is the work of time. But I have a right to speak with pride of the more advanced freedom of our own. The Constitution of Connecticut sets out with the practical recognition of the doctrine that all ultimate power is lodged with the people. The body of the people is the body politic. From the people flow the fountains of law and justice. The governor and the other magistrates, the deputies themselves, are but a kind of committee, with delegated powers to act for the free planters. Elected from their number, they must spend their short official term in the discharge of the trust, and then descend to their old level of citizen voters. Here are to be no interminable parliaments. The majority of the general court can adjourn it at will. Nor is there to be an indefinite prorogation of the Legislature at the will of a single man. Let the governor and the magistrates look to it. If they do not call a general court, the planters will take the matter into their own hands and meet in a body to take care of their neglected interests. One of the most striking features in this new and at the same time strange document is that it will tolerate no rotten-borough system. Every deputy who goes to the Legislature is to go from his own town, and is to be a free planter of that town. In this way he will know what is the will of his constituents and what their wants are. This paper has another remarkable trait. There is to be no taxation without representation in Connecticut. The towns, too, are recognized as independent municipalities. They are the primary centres of power older than the constitution--the makers and builders of the State. They have given up to the State a part of their corporate powers, as they received them from the free planters, that they may have a safer guarantee for the keeping of the rest. Whatever they have not given up they hold in absolute right. How strange, too, that in defining so carefully and astutely the limits of the government, these constitution-makers should have forgotten the King. One would but suppose that those who indited this paper were even aware of the existence of titled majesty beyond what belonged to the King of kings. They mention no supreme power save that of the commonwealth, which speaks and acts through the general court. Such was the Constitution of Connecticut. I have said it was the oldest of the American constitutions. More than this, I might say, it is the mother of them all. It has been modified in different States to suit the circumstances of the people and the size of their respective territories; but the representative system peculiar to the American republics was first unfolded by Ludlow--who probably drafted the Constitution of Connecticut--and by Hooker, Haynes, Wolcott, Steele, Sherman, Stone, and the other far-sighted men of the colony, who must have advised and counselled to do what they and all the people in the three towns met together in a mass to sanction and adopt as their own. Let me not be understood to say that I consider the framers of this paper perfect legislators or in all respects free from bigotry and intolerance. How could they throw off in a moment the shackles of custom and old opinion? They saw more than two centuries beyond their own era. England herself at this day has only approximated, without reaching, the elevated table-land of constitutional freedom, whose pure air was breathed by the earliest planters of Connecticut. Under this constitution they passed, it is true, some quaint laws, that sometimes provoke a smile, and, in those who are unmindful of the age in which they lived, sometimes a sneer. I shall speak of these laws in order, I hope with honesty and not too much partiality. It may be proper to say here, however, that for one law that has been passed in Connecticut of a bigoted or intolerant character, a diligent explorer into the English court records or statute-books for evidences of bigotry and revolting cruelty could find twenty in England. "Kings have been dethroned," says Bancroft, the eloquent American historian, "recalled, dethroned again, and so many constitutions framed or formed, stifled or subverted, that memory may despair of a complete catalogue; but the people of Connecticut have found no reason to deviate essentially from the government as established by their fathers. History has ever celebrated the commanders of armies on which victory has been entailed, the heroes who have won laurels in scenes of carnage and rapine. Has it no place for the founders of states, the wise legislators who struck the rock in the wilderness, and the waters of liberty gushed forth in copious and perennial fountains?" JOHN MARSHALL About this period many evidences were given of a general combination of the neighboring Indians against the settlements of New England; and apprehensions were also entertained of hostility from the Dutch of Manhadoes. A sense of impending danger suggested the policy of forming a confederacy of the sister-colonies for their mutual defence. And so confirmed had the habit of self-government become since the attention of England was absorbed in her domestic dissensions that it was not thought necessary to consult the parent state on this important measure. After mature deliberation articles of confederation were digested; and in May, 1643, they were conclusively adopted. By them "The United Colonies of New England"--Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven--entered into a firm and perpetual league, offensive and defensive. Each colony retained a distinct and separate jurisdiction; no two colonies could join in one jurisdiction without the consent of the whole; and no other colony could be received into the confederacy without the like consent. The charge of all wars was to be borne by the colonies respectively, in proportion to the male inhabitants of each between sixteen and sixty years of age. On notice of an invasion given by three magistrates of any colony, the confederates were immediately to furnish their respective quotas. These were fixed at one hundred from Massachusetts, and forty-five from each of the other parties to the agreement. If a larger armament should be found necessary, commissioners were to meet and ascertain the number of men to be required. Two commissioners from each government, being church members, were to meet annually on the first Monday in September. Six possessed the power of binding the whole. Any measure approved by a majority of less than six was to be referred to the general court of each colony, and the consent of all was necessary to its adoption. They were to choose annually a president from their own body, and had power to frame laws or rules of a civil nature and of general concern. Of this description were rules which respected their conduct toward the Indians, and measures to be taken with fugitives from one colony to another. No colony was permitted, without the general consent, to engage in war, but in sudden and inevitable cases. If, on any extraordinary meeting of the commissioners, their whole number should not assemble, any four who should meet were empowered to determine on a war, and to call for the respective quotas of the several colonies, but not less than six could determine on the justice of the war or settle the expenses or levy the money for its support. If any colony should be charged with breaking an article of the agreement, or with doing an injury to another colony, the complaint was to be submitted to the consideration and determination of the commissioners of such colonies as should be disinterested. This union, the result of good-sense and of a judicious consideration of the real interests of the colonies, remained in force until their charters were dissolved. Rhode Island, at the instance of Massachusetts, was excluded; and her commissioners were not admitted into the congress of deputies, which formed the confederation. ABOLITION OF THE COURT OF STAR-CHAMBER POPULAR REVOLT AGAINST CHARLES I A.D. 1641 HENRY HALLAM LORD MACAULAY Before the accession of Charles I, in 1625, the separation between the Church of England and the Puritans, which had been slowly widening for half a century, had become so serious as to be a menace to the peaceful stability of the kingdom. Charles began his reign with repressive measures against the Puritan influences. His use of the Star-chamber and similar tribunals is an important subject of study in connection with the preliminary steps on both sides which led at last to the great civil war. From the first, Charles aimed at despotic power, which he was wont to seek in "dark and crooked ways." The House of Commons stood against him on the popular side. He dissolved his first Parliament and levied taxes by his own will; dissolved another Parliament, and did the same, adding other acts of usurpation and oppression. His third Parliament showed increased opposition to his methods, and accordingly he decided to change them. The Parliament passed (1628) the Petition of Right, the second English Magna Charta, and Charles ratified it. By this act the King was bound to raise no more moneys without consent of Parliament, not to imprison anyone contrary to law, not to billet the military in private houses, and to subject none to martial law. From 1629 to 1640 Charles governed without a parliament, replenishing his exchequer by various extraordinary means. In the following accounts of the previous workings of the Star-chamber, Charles' star-chamber methods, his illegal procedures, his violations of the Petition of Rights, and of the consequent changes in the relations of his person and government to the people, a very significant period of transition in English history is summarized by the ablest hands. HENRY HALLAM The levies of tonnage and poundage without authority of Parliament; the exaction of monopolies; the extension of the forests; the arbitrary restraints of proclamations; above all, the general exaction of ship-money, form the principal articles of charge against the government of Charles, so far as relates to its inroads on the subject's property. These were maintained by a vigilant and unsparing exercise of jurisdiction in the Court of Star-chamber. It was the great weapon of executive power under Elizabeth and James; nor can we reproach the present reign with innovation in this respect, though in no former period had the proceedings of this court been accompanied with so much violence and tyranny. But this will require some fuller explication. I hardly need remind the reader that the jurisdiction of the ancient Concilium Regis Ordinarium, or Court of Star-chamber, continued to be exercised, more or less frequently, notwithstanding the various statutes enacted to repress it; and that it neither was supported by the act erecting a new court in the 3d of Henry VII nor originated at that time. The records show the Star-chamber to have taken cognizance both of civil suits and of offences throughout the time of the Tudors. But precedents of usurped power cannot establish a legal authority in defiance of the acknowledged law. It appears that the lawyers did not admit any jurisdiction in the council, except so far as the statute of Henry VII was supposed to have given it. "The famous Plowden put his hand to a demurrer to a bill," says Hudson, "because the matter was not within the statute; and, although it was then overruled, yet Mr. Sergeant Richardson, thirty years after, fell again upon the same rock, and was sharply rebuked for it." The chancellor, who was the standing president of the Court of Star-chamber, would always find pretences to elude the existing statutes, and justify the usurpation of this tribunal. The civil jurisdiction claimed and exerted by the Star-chamber was only in particular cases, as disputes between alien merchants and Englishmen, questions of prize or unlawful detention of ships, and, in general, such as now belong to the court of admiralty; some testamentary matters, in order to prevent appeals to Rome, which might have been brought from the ecclesiastical courts; suits between corporations, "of which," says Hudson, "I dare undertake to show above a hundred in the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII, or sometimes between men of great power and interest, which could not be tried with fairness by the common law"; for the corruption of sheriffs and juries furnished an apology for the irregular, but necessary, interference of a controlling authority. The ancient remedy, by means of attaint, which renders a jury responsible for an unjust verdict, was almost gone into disuse, and, depending on the integrity of a second jury, not always easy to be obtained; so that in many parts of the kingdom, and especially in Wales, it was impossible to find a jury who would return a verdict against a man of good family, either in a civil or criminal proceeding. The statutes, however, restraining the council's jurisdiction, and the strong prepossession of the people as to the sacredness of freehold rights, made the Star-chamber cautious of determining questions of inheritance, which they commonly remitted to the judges; and from the early part of Elizabeth's reign they took a direct cognizance of any civil suits less frequently than before, partly, I suppose, from the increased business of the court of chancery and the admiralty court, which took away much wherein they had been wont to meddle, partly from their own occupation as a court of criminal judicature, which became more conspicuous as the other went into disuse. This criminal jurisdiction is that which rendered the Star-chamber so potent and so odious an auxiliary of a despotic administration. The offences principally cognizable in this court were forgery, perjury, riot, maintenance, fraud, libel, and conspiracy. But, besides these, every misdemeanor came within the proper scope of its inquiry; those especially of public importance, and for which the law, as then understood, had provided no sufficient punishment; for the judges interpreted the law in early times with too great narrowness and timidity, defects which, on the one hand, raised up the overruling authority of the court of chancery as the necessary means of redress to the civil suitor who found the gates of justice barred against him by technical pedantry, and on the other, brought this usurpation and tyranny of the Star-chamber upon the kingdom by an absurd scrupulosity about punishing manifest offences against the public good. Thus corruption, breach of trust and malfeasance in public affairs, attempts to commit felony, seem to have been reckoned not indictable at common law, and came, in consequence, under the cognizance of the Star-chamber. In other cases its jurisdiction was merely concurrent; but the greater certainty of conviction and the greater severity of punishment rendered it incomparably more formidable than the ordinary benches of justice. The law of libel grew up in this unwholesome atmosphere, and was moulded by the plastic hands of successive judges and attorneys-general. Prosecutions of this kind, according to Hudson, began to be more frequent from the last years of Elizabeth, when Coke was attorney-general; and it is easy to conjecture what kind of interpretation they received. To hear a libel sung or read, says that writer, and to laugh at it and make merriment with it, have ever been held a publication in law. The gross error that it is not a libel if it be true, has long since, he adds, been exploded out of this court. Among the exertions of authority practised in the Star-chamber which no positive law could be brought to warrant he enumerates "punishments of breach of proclamations before they have the strength of an act of Parliament; which this court hath stretched as far as ever any act of Parliament did. As in the 41st of Elizabeth, builders of houses in London were sentenced, and their houses ordered to be pulled down, and the materials to be distributed to the benefit of the parish where the building was; which disposition of the goods soundeth as a great extremity, and beyond the warrant of our laws; and yet, surely, very necessary, if anything would deter men from that horrible mischief of increasing that head which is swollen to a great hugeness already." The mode of process was sometimes of a summary nature; the accused person being privately examined, and his examination read in court, if he was thought to have confessed sufficient to deserve sentence, it was immediately awarded without any formal trial or written process. But the more regular course was by information filed at the suit of the attorney-general or, in certain cases, of a private relator. The party was brought before the court by writ of subpoena, and, having given bond, with sureties not to depart without leave, was to put in his answer upon oath, as well to the matters contained in the information as to special interrogatories. Witnesses were examined upon interrogatories, and their depositions read in court. The course of proceeding, on the whole, seems to have nearly resembled that of the chancery. It was held competent for the court to adjudge any punishment short of death. Fine and imprisonment were of course the most usual. The pillory, whipping, branding, and cutting off the ears grew into use by degrees. In the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII, we are told by Hudson, the fines were not so ruinous as they have been since, which he ascribes to the number of bishops who sat in the court, and inclined to mercy, "and I can well remember," says he, "that the most reverend Archbishop Whitgift did ever constantly maintain the liberty of the free charter, that men ought to be fined, _salvo contenemento_. But they have been of late imposed according to the nature of the offence, and not the estate of the person. The slavish punishment of whipping," he proceeds to observe, "was not introduced till a great man of the common law, and otherwise a worthy justice, forgot his place of session, and brought it in this place too much in use." It would be difficult to find precedents for the aggravated cruelties inflicted on Leighton, Lilburne, and others; but instances of cutting off the ears may be found under Elizabeth. The reproach, therefore, of arbitrary and illegal jurisdiction does not wholly fall on the government of Charles. They found themselves in possession of this almost unlimited authority. But doubtless, as far as the history of proceedings in the Star-chamber are recorded, they seem much more numerous and violent in the present reign than in the two preceding. Rushworth has preserved a copious selection of cases determined before this tribunal. They consist principally of misdemeanors, rather of an aggravated nature, such as disturbances of the public peace, assaults accompanied with a good deal of violence, conspiracies, and libels. The necessity, however, for such a paramount court to restrain the excesses of powerful men no longer existed, since it can hardly be doubted that the common administration of the law was sufficient to give redress in the time of Charles I, though we certainly do find several instances of violence and outrage by men of a superior station in life, which speak unfavorably for the state of manners in the kingdom. But the object of drawing so large a number of criminal cases into the Star-chamber seems to have been twofold: first, to inure men's minds to an authority more immediately connected with the crown than the ordinary courts of law and less tied down to any rules of pleading or evidence; secondly, to eke out a scanty revenue by penalties and forfeitures. Absolutely regardless of the provision of the Great Charter, that no man shall be amerced even to the full extent of his means, the counsellors of the Star-chamber inflicted such fines as no court of justice, even in the present reduced value of money, would think of imposing. Little objection, indeed, seems to lie, in a free country, and with a well-regulated administration of justice, against the imposition of weighty pecuniary penalties, due consideration being had of the offence and the criminal. But, adjudged by such a tribunal as the Star-chamber, where those who inflicted the punishment reaped the gain, and sat, like famished birds of prey, with keen eyes and bended talons, eager to supply for a moment by some wretch's ruin, the craving emptiness of the exchequer, this scheme of enormous penalties, became more dangerous and subversive of justice, though not more odious, than corporal punishment. A gentleman of the name of Allington was fined twelve thousand pounds for marrying his niece. One, who had sent a challenge to the Earl of Northumberland, was fined five thousand pounds; another for saying the Earl of Suffolk was a base lord, four thousand pounds to him, and a like sum to the King. Sir David Forbes, for opprobrious words against Lord Wentworth, incurred five thousand pounds to the King and three thousand pounds to the party. On some soap-boilers, who had not complied with the requisitions of the newly incorporated company, mulcts were imposed of one thousand five hundred pounds and one thousand pounds. One man was fined and set in the pillory for engrossing corn, though he only kept what grew on his own land, asking more in a season of dearth than the overseers of the poor thought proper to give. Some arbitrary regulations with respect to prices may be excused by a well-intentioned though mistaken policy. The charges of inns and taverns were fixed by the judges; but even in those a corrupt motive was sometimes blended. The company of vintners, or victuallers, having refused to pay a demand of the lord-treasurer, one penny a quart for all wine drunk in their houses, the Star-chamber, without information filed or defence made, interdicted them from selling or dressing victuals till they submitted to pay forty shillings for each tun of wine to the King. It is evident that the strong interest of the court in these fines must not only have had a tendency to aggravate the punishment, but to induce sentences of condemnation on inadequate proof. From all that remains of proceedings in the Star-chamber, they seem to have been very frequently as iniquitous as they were severe. In many celebrated instances, the accused party suffered less on the score of any imputed offence than for having provoked the malice of a powerful adversary, or for notorious dissatisfaction with the existing government. Thus Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, once lord-keeper the favorite of King James, the possessor for a season of the power that was turned against him, experienced the rancorous and ungrateful malignity of Laud, who, having been brought forward by Williams into the favor of the court, not only supplanted by his intrigues, and incensed the King's mind against his benefactor, but harassed his retirement by repeated persecutions. It will sufficiently illustrate the spirit of these times to mention that the sole offence imputed to the Bishop of Lincoln in the last information against him in the Star-chamber was that he had received certain letters from one Osbaldiston, master of Westminster school, wherein some contemptuous nickname was used to denote Laud. It did not appear that Williams had ever divulged these letters; but it was held that the concealment of a libellous letter was a high misdemeanor. Williams was therefore adjudged to pay five thousand pounds to the King and three thousand to the Archbishop, to be imprisoned during pleasure, and to make a submission; Osbaldiston to pay a still heavier fine, to be deprived of all his benefices, to be imprisoned and make submission, and, moreover, to stand in the pillory before his school in Dean's yard, with his ears nailed to it. This man had the good fortune to conceal himself; but the Bishop of Lincoln, refusing to make the required apology, lay about three years in the Tower, till released at the beginning of the Long Parliament. It might detain me too long to dwell particularly on the punishments inflicted by the Court of Star-chamber in this reign. Such historians as have not written in order to palliate the tyranny of Charles, and especially Rushworth, will furnish abundant details, with all those circumstances that portray the barbarous and tyrannical spirit of those who composed that tribunal. Two or three instances are so celebrated that I cannot pass them over. Leighton, a Scots divine, having published an angry libel against the hierarchy, was sentenced to be publicly whipped at Westminster and set in the pillory, to have one side of his nose slit, one ear cut off, and one side of his cheek branded with a hot iron; to have the whole of this repeated the next week at Cheapside, and to suffer perpetual imprisonment in the Fleet. Lilburne, for dispersing pamphlets against the bishops, was whipped from the Fleet prison to Westminster, there set in the pillory, and treated afterward with great cruelty. Prynne, a lawyer of uncommon erudition and a zealous Puritan, had printed a bulky volume, called _Histriomastix_, full of invectives against the theatre, which he sustained by a profusion of learning. In the course of this he adverted to the appearance of courtesans on the Roman stage, and, by a satirical reference in his index, seemed to range all female actors in the class. The Queen, unfortunately, six weeks after the publication of Prynne's book, had performed a part in a mask at court. This passage was accordingly dragged to light by the malice of Peter Heylin, a chaplain of Laud, on whom the Archbishop devolved the burden of reading this heavy volume in order to detect its offences. Heylin, a bigoted enemy of everything Puritanical, and not scrupulous as to veracity, may be suspected of having aggravated, if not misrepresented, the tendency of a book much more tiresome than seditious. Prynne, however, was already obnoxious, and the Star-chamber adjudged him to stand twice in the pillory, to be branded in the forehead, to lose both his ears, to pay a fine of five thousand pounds, and to suffer perpetual imprisonment. The dogged Puritan employed the leisure of a jail in writing a fresh libel against the hierarchy. For this, with two other delinquents of the same class, Burton a divine, and Bastwick a physician, he stood again at the bar of that terrible tribunal. Their demeanor was what the court deemed intolerably contumacious, arising, in fact, from the despair of men who knew that no humiliation would procure them mercy. Prynne lost the remainder of his ears in the pillory; and the punishment was inflicted on them all with extreme and designed cruelty, which they endured, as martyrs always endure suffering, so heroically as to excite a deep impression of sympathy and resentment in the assembled multitude. They were sentenced to perpetual confinement in distant prisons. But their departure from London and their reception on the road were marked by signal expressions of popular regard; and their friends resorting to them even in Launceston, Chester, and Carnarvon castles, whither they were sent, an order of council was made to transport them to the isles of the Channel. It was the very first act of the Long Parliament to restore these victims of tyranny to their families. Punishments by mutilation, though not quite unknown to the English law, had been of rare occurrence; and thus inflicted on men whose station appeared to render the ignominy of whipping and branding more intolerable, they produced much the same effect as the still greater cruelties of Mary's reign, in exciting a detestation of that ecclesiastical dominion which protected itself by means so atrocious. THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY Now commenced a new era. Many English kings had occasionally committed unconstitutional acts; but none had ever systematically attempted to make himself a despot, and to reduce the Parliament to a nullity. Such was the end which Charles distinctly proposed to himself. From March, 1629, to April, 1640, the Houses were not convoked. Never in our history had there been an interval of eleven years between Parliament and Parliament. Only once had there been an interval of even half that length. This fact alone is sufficient to refute those who represent Charles as having merely trodden in the footsteps of the Plantagenets and Tudors. It is proved, by the testimony of the King's most strenuous supporters, that, during this part of his reign, the provisions of the Petition of Right were violated by him, not occasionally, but constantly, and on system; that a large part of the revenue was raised without any legal authority; and that persons obnoxious to the government languished for years in prison, without being ever called upon to plead before any tribunal. For these things history must hold the King himself chiefly responsible. From the time of his third Parliament he was his own prime minister. Several persons, however, whose temper and talents were suited to his purposes, were at the head of different departments of the administration. Thomas Wentworth, successively created Lord Wentworth and Earl of Strafford, a man of great abilities, eloquence, and courage, but of a cruel and imperious nature, was the counsellor most trusted in political and military affairs. He had been one of the most distinguished members of the opposition, and felt toward those whom he had deserted that peculiar malignity which has, in all ages, been characteristic of apostates. He perfectly understood the feelings, the resources, and the policy of the party to which he had lately belonged, and had formed a vast and deeply meditated scheme which very nearly confounded even the able tactics of the statesmen by whom the House of Commons had been directed. To this scheme, in his confidential correspondence, he gave the expressive name of Thorough. His object was to do in England all, and more than all, that Richelieu was doing in France: to make Charles a monarch as absolute as any on the Continent; to put the estates and the personal liberty of the whole people at the disposal of the crown; to deprive the courts of law of all independent authority, even in ordinary questions of civil right between man and man; and to punish with merciless rigor all who murmured at the acts of the government, or who applied, even in the most decent and regular manner, to any tribunal for relief against those acts. This was his end; and he distinctly saw in what manner alone this end could be attained. There was, in truth, about all his notions a clearness, a coherence, a precision, which, if he had not been pursuing an object pernicious to his country and to his kind, would have justly entitled him to high admiration. He saw that there was one instrument, and only one, by which his vast and daring projects could be carried into execution. That instrument was a standing army. To the forming of such an army, therefore, he directed all the energy of his strong mind. In Ireland, where he was viceroy, he actually succeeded in establishing a military despotism, not only over the aboriginal population, but also over the English colonists, and was able to boast that, in that island, the King was as absolute as any prince in the whole world could be. The ecclesiastical administration was, in the mean time, principally directed by William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury. Of all the prelates of the Anglican Church, Laud had departed furthest from the principles of the Reformation and had drawn nearest to Rome. His theology was more remote than even that of the Dutch Arminians from the theology of the Calvinists. His passion for ceremonies, his reverence for holidays, vigils, and sacred places, his ill-concealed dislike of the marriage of ecclesiastics, the ardent and not altogether disinterested zeal with which he asserted the claims of the clergy to the reverence of the laity, would have made him an object of aversion to the Puritans, even if he had used only legal and gentle means for the attainment of his ends. But his understanding was narrow; and his commerce with the world had been small. He was by nature rash, irritable, quick to feel for his own dignity, slow to sympathize with the sufferings of others, and prone to the error, common in superstitious men, of mistaking his own peevish and malignant moods for emotions of pious zeal. Under his direction every corner of the realm was subjected to a constant and minute inspection. Every little congregation of Separatists was tracked out and broken up. Even the devotions of private families could not escape the vigilance of his spies. Such fear did his rigor inspire that the deadly hatred of the Church, which festered in innumerable bosoms, was generally disguised under an outward show of conformity. On the very eve of troubles, fatal to himself and to his order, the bishops of several extensive dioceses were able to report to him that not a single dissenter was to be found within their jurisdiction. The tribunals afforded no protection to the subject against the civil and ecclesiastical tyranny of that period. The judges of the common law, holding their situations during the pleasure of the King, were scandalously obsequious. Yet, obsequious as they were, they were less ready and less efficient instruments of arbitrary power than a class of courts the memory of which is still, after the lapse of more than two centuries, held in deep abhorrence by the nation. Foremost among these courts in power and in infamy were the Star-chamber and the High Commission, the former a political, the latter a religious, inquisition. Neither was a part of the old constitution of England. The Star-chamber had been remodelled, and the High Commission created, by the Tudors. The power which these boards had possessed before the accession of Charles had been extensive and formidable, but had been small indeed when compared with that which they now usurped. Guided chiefly by the violent spirit of the primate, and freed from the control of Parliament, they displayed a rapacity, a violence, a malignant energy, which had been unknown to any former age. The government was able through their instrumentality, to fine, imprison, pillory, and mutilate without restraint. A separate council which sat at York, under the presidency of Wentworth, was armed, in defiance of law, by a pure act of prerogative, with almost boundless power over the northern counties. All these tribunals insulted and defied the authority of Westminster hall, and daily committed excesses which the most distinguished royalists have warmly condemned. We are informed by Clarendon that there was hardly a man of note in the realm who had not personal experience of the harshness and greediness of the Star-chamber, that the High Commission had so conducted itself that it had scarce a friend left in the kingdom, and that the tyranny of the Council of York had made the Great Charter a dead letter on the north of the Trent. The government of England was now, in all points but one, as despotic as that of France. But that one point was all-important. There was still no standing army. There was therefore no security that the whole fabric of tyranny might not be subverted in a single day; and if taxes were imposed by the royal authority for the support of an army, it was probable that there would be an immediate and irresistible explosion. This was the difficulty which more than any other perplexed Wentworth. The Lord Keeper Finch, in concert with other lawyers who were employed by the government, recommended an expedient which was eagerly adopted. The ancient princes of England, as they called on the inhabitants of the counties near Scotland to arm and array themselves for the defence of the border, had sometimes called on the maritime counties to furnish ships for the defence of the coast. In the room of ships, money had sometimes been accepted. This old practice it was now determined, after a long interval, not only to revive, but to extend. Former princes had raised ship-money only in time of war: it was now exacted in a time of profound peace. Former princes, even in the most perilous wars, had raised ship-money only along the coasts: it was now exacted from the inland shires. Former princes had raised ship-money only for the maritime defence of the country: it was now exacted, by the admission of the royalists themselves, with the object, not of maintaining a navy, but of furnishing the King with supplies which might be increased at his discretion to any amount, and expended at his discretion for any purpose. The whole nation was alarmed and incensed. John Hampden, an opulent and well-born gentleman of Buckinghamshire, highly considered in his own neighborhood, but as yet little known to the kingdom generally, had the courage to step forward, to confront the whole power of the government, and take on himself the cost and the risk of disputing the prerogative to which the King laid claim. The case was argued before the judges in the exchequer chamber. So strong were the arguments against the pretensions of the crown that, dependent and servile as the judges were, the majority against Hampden was the smallest possible. Still there was a majority. The interpreters of the law had pronounced that one great and productive tax might be imposed by the royal authority. Wentworth justly observed that it was impossible to vindicate their judgment except by reasons directly leading to a conclusion which they had not ventured to draw. If money might legally be raised without the consent of Parliament for the support of a fleet, it was not easy to deny that money might, without consent of Parliament, be legally raised for the support of an army. The decision of the judges increased the irritation of the people. A century earlier, irritation less serious would have produced a general rising. But discontent did not now so readily, as in an earlier age, take the form of rebellion. The nation had been long steadily advancing in wealth and in civilization. Since the great northern earls took up arms against Elizabeth seventy years had elapsed; and during those seventy years there had been no civil war. Never, during the whole existence of the English nation, had so long a period passed without intestine hostilities. Men had become accustomed to the pursuits of peaceful industry, and, exasperated as they were, hesitated long before they drew the sword. This was the conjuncture at which the liberties of the nation were in the greatest peril. The opponents of the government began to despair of the destiny of their country; and many looked to the American wilderness as the only asylum in which they could enjoy civil and spiritual freedom. There a few resolute Puritans, who, in the cause of their religion, feared neither the rage of the ocean nor the hardships of uncivilized life, neither the fangs of savage beasts nor the tomahawks of more savage men, had built, amid the primeval forests, villages which are now great and opulent cities, but which have, through every change, retained some trace of the character derived from their founders. The government regarded these infant colonies with aversion, and attempted violently to stop the stream of emigration, but could not prevent the population of New England from being largely recruited by stout-hearted and God-fearing men from every part of the old England. And now Wentworth exulted in the near prospect of Thorough. A few years might probably suffice for the execution of his great design. If strict economy were observed, if all collision with foreign powers were carefully avoided, the debts of the crown would be cleared off: there would be funds available for the support of a large military force; and that force would soon break the refractory spirit of the nation. At this crisis an act of insane bigotry suddenly changed the whole face of public affairs. Had the King been wise, he would have pursued a cautious and soothing policy toward Scotland till he was master in the South. For Scotland was of all his kingdoms that in which there was the greatest risk that a spark might produce a flame, and that a flame might become a conflagration. The government had long wished to extend the Anglican system over the whole island, and had already, with this view, made several changes highly distasteful to every Presbyterian. One innovation, however, the most hazardous of all, because it was directly cognizable by the senses of the common people, had not yet been attempted. The public worship of God was still conducted in the manner acceptable to the nation. Now, however, Charles and Laud determined to force on the Scots the English liturgy, or rather a liturgy which, wherever it differed from that of England, differed, in the judgment of all rigid Protestants, for the worse. To this step, taken in the mere wantonness of tyranny, and in criminal ignorance or more criminal contempt of public feeling, England owes her freedom. The first performance of the foreign ceremonies produced a riot. The riot rapidly became a revolution. Ambition, patriotism, fanaticism, were mingled in one headlong torrent. The whole nation was in arms. The power of England was, indeed, as appeared some years later, sufficient to coerce Scotland; but a large part of the English people sympathized with the religious feelings of the insurgents, and many Englishmen who had no scruple about antiphonies and genuflexions, altars and surplices, saw with pleasure the progress of a rebellion which seemed likely to confound the arbitrary projects of the court and to make the calling of a parliament necessary. For the senseless freak which had produced these effects Wentworth is not responsible. It had, in fact, thrown all his plans into confusion. To counsel submission, however, was not in his nature. An attempt was made to put down the insurrection by the sword; but the King's military means and military talents were unequal to the task. To impose fresh taxes on England in defiance of law would, at this conjuncture, have been madness. No resource was left but a Parliament; and in the spring of 1640 a parliament was convoked. The nation had been put into good humor by the prospect of seeing constitutional government restored and grievances redressed. The new House of Commons was more temperate and more respectful to the throne than any which had sat since the death of Elizabeth. The moderation of this assembly has been highly extolled by the most distinguished royalists, and seems to have caused no small vexation and disappointment to the chiefs of the opposition; but it was the uniform practice of Charles--a practice equally impolitic and ungenerous--to refuse all compliances with the desires of his people, till those desires were expressed in a menacing tone. As soon as the Commons showed a disposition to take into consideration the grievances under which the country had suffered during eleven years, the King dissolved the Parliament with every mark of displeasure. Between the dissolution of this short-lived assembly and the meeting of that ever-memorable body known by the name of the Long Parliament, intervened a few months, during which the yoke was pressed down more severely than ever on the nation, while the spirit of the nation rose up more angrily than ever against the yoke. Members of the House of Commons were questioned by the privy council touching their parliamentary conduct, and thrown into prison for refusing to reply. Ship-money was levied with increased rigor. The lord mayor and the sheriffs of London were threatened with imprisonment for remissness in collecting the payments. Soldiers were enlisted by force. Money for their support was exacted from their counties. Torture, which had always been illegal, and which had recently been declared illegal even by the servile judges of that age, was inflicted for the last time in England in the month of May, 1640. Everything now depended on the event of the King's military operations against the Scots. Among his troops there was little of that feeling which separates professional soldiers from the mass of a nation and attaches them to their leaders. His army, composed for the most part of recruits, who regretted the plough from which they had been violently taken, and who were imbued with the religious and political sentiments then prevalent throughout the country, was more formidable to himself than to the enemy. The Scots, encouraged by the heads of the English opposition, and feebly resisted by the English forces, marched across the Tweed and the Tyne, and encamped on the borders of Yorkshire. And now the murmurs of discontent swelled into an uproar by which all spirits save one were overawed. But the voice of Strafford was still for Thorough; and he even, in this extremity, showed a nature so cruel and despotic that his own pikemen were ready to tear him in pieces. There was yet one last expedient which, as the King flattered himself, might save him from the misery of facing another House of Commons. To the House of Lords he was less averse. The bishops were devoted to him; and though the temporal peers were generally dissatisfied with his administration, they were, as a class, so deeply interested in the maintenance of order and in the stability of ancient institutions that they were not likely to call for extensive reforms. Departing from the uninterrupted practice of centuries, he called a great council consisting of lords alone. But the lords were too prudent to assume the unconstitutional functions with which he wished to invest them. Without money, without credit, without authority even in his own camp, he yielded to the pressure of necessity. In November, 1640, met that renowned Parliament which, in spite of many errors and disasters, is justly entitled to the reverence and gratitude of all who, in any part of the world, enjoy the blessings of constitutional government. During the year which followed, no very important division of opinion appeared in the Houses. The civil and ecclesiastical administration had, through a period of nearly twelve years, been so oppressive and so unconstitutional that even those classes of which the inclinations are generally on the side of order and authority were eager to promote popular reforms and to bring the instruments of tyranny to justice. It was enacted that no interval of more than three years should ever elapse between Parliament and Parliament, and that, if writs under the great seal were not issued at the proper time, the returning officers should, without such writs, call the constituent bodies together for the choice of representatives. The Star-chamber, the High Commission, the Council of York were swept away. Men who, after suffering cruel mutilations, had been confined in remote dungeons regained their liberty. On the chief ministers of the crown the vengeance of the nation was unsparingly wreaked. The lord keeper, the primate, the lord lieutenant were impeached. Finch saved himself by flight. Laud was flung into the Tower. Strafford was put to death, beheaded by act of attainder. On the day on which this act passed, the King gave his assent to a law by which he bound himself not to adjourn, prorogue, or dissolve the existing Parliament without its own consent. FOUNDING OF MONTREAL A.D. 1642 ALFRED SANDHAM The history of Montreal dates back to October, 1535, when Jacques Cartier first landed on the island. An Indian village, called Hochelaga, existed here at this time. Its outline was circular; and it was encompassed by three rows of palisades, or rather picket fences, one within the other, well secured and put together. A single entrance was left in this rude fortification, but guarded with pikes and stakes, and every precaution taken against siege or attack. Cartier named the place Mount Royal, from the elevation that rose in rear of the site, a little way back from the river St. Lawrence. It first began to be settled by Europeans in 1542, and exactly one century afterward the spot destined for the city was, with due solemnities, consecrated at the era of Maissoneuve and named Ville Marie, a designation which it retained for a long period. In 1760 it was taken by the English. Since then it has taken great leaps in the way of progress until to-day it is the chief commercial city in Canada and the largest city in the Dominion. Montreal has the further advantage, in its natural situation, of being at the head of ocean navigation. Its population to-day, including suburbs, is in the neighborhood of 350,000. On the death of Champlain (on December 25, 1635), M. de Montmagny was appointed governor of New France; but so little attention was paid to the wants of the colony that its prosperity was much retarded, the fur trade alone being conducted with any spirit. But great vigor was manifested in religious matters and several institutions were erected. In 1630 the Hôtel Dieu, at Quebec, was founded by three nuns sent out by the Duchesse d'Aiguillon, and Madame de la Peltrie brought out from France at her own charge another body of nuns, who established the Ursuline convent. The peopling and fortifying of the island of Montreal, with the view of repressing the incursions of the Iroquois and the conversion of the Indians, had occupied the entire attention of the first missionaries, and in 1640 the whole of this domain was ceded to a company for that purpose. Jerome le Royer de la Dauversière, a collector of taxes at La Flêche, in Anjou, and a young priest of Paris, Jean Jacques Olier by name, having met each other, formed the idea of establishing at Montreal three religious communities: one of priests to convert the Indians, one of nuns to nurse the sick, and one of nuns to teach the children of the Indians and of the colonists. It was an easy matter to talk over these plans; but, in order to carry them out, they must first raise some money. For this purpose Olier laid the matter before some of his wealthy penitents, while Dauversière succeeded in securing the Baron de Fanchamp, a devout Christian and a wealthy man, who, considering the enterprise as one calculated to further his spiritual interests, was eager to take part in it. Shortly afterward three others were secured, and the six together formed the germ of the "Société de Notre Dame de Montréal." Among them they raised seventy-five thousand livres. Previous to this the island of Montreal had been granted to M. de Lauson, a former president of the Company of One Hundred Associates, and his son possessed the exclusive monopoly of the fisheries on the St. Lawrence. After much persuasion Dauversière and Fanchamp succeeded in securing from him a transfer of his title to them; and to make the matter more secure they obtained, in addition, a grant of the island from its former owners, the Hundred Associates. That company, however, reserved the western extremity of the island for themselves, as a site for a fort and stores. The younger Lauzon also gave Dauversière and his company the right of fishery within two leagues of the shores of the island, which favor they were to acknowledge by a yearly donation of ten pounds of fish. These grants were afterward confirmed by the King, and thus Dauversière and his companions became "Lords of the Isle of Montreal." They now proceeded to mature their plan, which was to send out forty men to take possession of Montreal, intrench themselves, and raise crops, after which they would build houses for the priests and convents for the nuns. It was necessary, however, that some competent person should be secured who should take command of the expedition and act as governor of the newly acquired isle. To fill this important position it was desirable that to the qualities of the statesman should be added the courage of the soldier. One in whom these were combined was found in the person of Paul de Chomedey, Sieur de Maisonneuve, a devout Christian, an able statesman, and a valiant soldier. Maisonneuve at once accepted the position, while many wealthy ladies contributed toward defraying the expense of the undertaking and also became members of the "Association of Montreal." In February, 1641, the Associates, with Olier at their head, assembled in the Church of Notre Dame at Paris, and before the altar of the Virgin "solemnly consecrated Montreal to the Holy Family" and to be called "Ville-Marie de Montréal." Maisonneuve with his party, forty-five in number, reached Quebec too late to ascend the river. On their arrival at that place they were received with jealousy and distrust. The agents of the Company of One Hundred Associates looked on them with suspicion, and Montmagny, the Governor, feared a rival in Maisonneuve. Every opposition was thrown in their way, and Montmagny tried to persuade Maisonneuve to exchange the island of Montreal for that of Orleans. But Maisonneuve was not to be deceived, and he expressed his determination to found a colony at Montreal, "even if every tree on the island was an Iroquois." During the winter Maisonneuve employed his men in various labors for the future benefit of the colony, but principally in building a boat in which to ascend the river. While staying at Quebec the party gained an unexpected addition to their numbers in the person of Madame de la Peltrie, who joined them, and took with her all the furniture she had lent the Ursulines. On May 8, 1642, Maisonneuve embarked from St. Michael, and on the 17th his little flotilla, a pinnace, a flat-bottomed craft moved by sails, and two row-boats, approached Montreal, and all on board raised in unison a hymn of praise. Montmagny was there to deliver the island, on behalf of the Company of One Hundred Associates; while here, too, was Father Vimont, superior of the missions. On the following day they glided along the green and solitary shores, now thronged with the life of a busy city, and landed on the spot which Champlain, thirty-one years before, had chosen as the fit site of a settlement. It was a tongue or triangle of land, formed by the junction of a rivulet with the St. Lawrence. This rivulet was bordered by a meadow, and beyond rose the forest with its vanguard of scattered trees. Early spring flowers were blooming in the young grass, and the birds flitted among the boughs. Maisonneuve sprang ashore and fell on his knees. His followers imitated his example; and all joined their voices in songs of thanksgiving. Tents, baggage, arms, and stores were landed. Here were the ladies with their servants; Montmagny, no willing spectator; and Maisonneuve, a warlike figure, erect and tall, his men clustering around him--soldiers, sailors, artisans, and laborers--all alike soldiers at need. They kneeled in reverent silence as the host was raised aloft; and when the rite was over the priest turned and addressed them: "You are a grain of mustard-seed that shall rise and grow until its branches overshadow the land. You are few, but your work is the work of God. His smile is on you, and your children shall fill the land." Then they pitched their tents, lighted their fires, stationed their guards, and lay down to rest. Such was the birthnight of Montreal. The following morning they proceeded to form their encampment, the first tree being felled by Maisonneuve. They worked with such energy that by the evening they erected a strong palisade, and had covered their altar with a roof formed of bark. It was some time after their arrival before their enemies, the Indians, were made aware of it, and they improved the time by building some substantial houses and in strengthening their fortifications. The activity and zeal of Maisonneuve induced him to make a voyage to France to obtain assistance for his settlement. Though his difficulties were great, he yet was enabled to induce one hundred men to join his little establishment on the island. Notwithstanding this addition to his force, the progress of the colony was greatly retarded by the frequent attacks of the Indians. These enemies soon became a cause of great trouble to the colonists, and it was dangerous to pass beyond the palisades, as the Indians would hide for days, waiting to assail any unfortunate straggler. Although Maisonneuve was brave as man could be, he knew that his company was no match for the wily enemy, owing to their ignorance of the mode of Indian warfare; therefore he kept his men as near the fort as possible. They, however, failed to appreciate his care of them, and imputed it to cowardice. This led him to determine that such a feeling should not exist if he could possibly remove it. He therefore ordered his men to prepare to attack the Indians, at the same time signifying his intention to lead them himself. He sallied forth at the head of thirty men, leaving D'Aillebout with the remainder to hold the fort. After they had waded through the snow for some distance they were attacked by the Iroquois, who killed three of his men and wounded several others. Maisonneuve and his party held their ground until their ammunition began to fail, and then he gave orders to retreat, he himself remaining till the last. The men struggled on for some time facing the enemy, but finally they broke their ranks and retreated in great disorder toward the fort. Maisonneuve, with a pistol in each hand, held the Iroquois in check for some time. They might have killed him, but they wished to take him prisoner. Their chief, desiring this honor, rushed forward, but just as he was about to grasp him Maisonneuve fired and he fell dead. The Indians, fearing that the body of their chief would fall into the hands of the French, rushed forward to secure it, and Maisonneuve passed safely into the fort. From that day his men never dared to impute cowardice to him. In 1644 the island of Montreal was made over to the Sulpicians of Paris, and was destined for the support of that religious order. In 1658 Viscount d'Argenson was appointed governor of Canada, but the day he landed the Iroquois murdered some Algonquin Indians under the very guns of Quebec. The Indians seemed determined to exterminate the French. In addition to keeping Quebec in a state little short of actual siege, they massacred a large number of the settlers at Montreal. D'Argenson having resigned, the Baron d'Avagnon was appointed governor (1661), and on his arrival visited the several settlements throughout the country. He was surprised to find them in such a deplorable condition, and made such representation to the King, as to the neglect of the Company of One Hundred Associates, that M. de Monts, the King's commissioner, was ordered to visit Canada and report on its condition. At the same time four hundred more troops were added to the colonial garrison. The arrival of these troops gave life and confidence to the colonists and relieved Montreal from its dangers. The representations made by M. de Monts, as well as those of the Bishop of Quebec, determined Louis XIV to demand their charter from the Company of One Hundred Associates and to place the colony in immediate connection with the crown. As the profits of the fur trade had been much diminished by the hostility of the Iroquois, the company readily surrendered its privileges. As soon as the transfer was completed, D'Avagnon was recalled and M. de Mesy was appointed governor for three years. Canada was thus changed into a royal government, and a council of state was nominated to coöperate with the Governor in the administration of affairs. This council consisted of the Governor, the Bishop of Quebec, and the intendant, together with four others to be named by them, one of whom was to act as attorney-general. PRESBYTERIANISM ESTABLISHED MEETING OF THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY A.D. 1643 DAVID MASSON Official recognition of Presbyterianism in Great Britain marked a distinct departure in ecclesiastical affairs. The Westminster Assembly, whose confession and catechisms, while not accepted in England, became, and still remain, the doctrinal standards of the Scotch and American Presbyterian churches, was one of the most important religious convocations ever held. The Presbyterian form of church government has been adopted by various sects, whose representatives are found in many parts of the world. The great object of the Westminster Assembly was to dictate, dogmatically, articles of faith and a form of worship that should be compulsory. It was mainly owing to the influence of Oliver Cromwell, who stood for toleration and independence, within limits, that the assembly did not have its way. Masson, the great authority on this subject, gives in the following pages a clear and comprehensive account of the religious situation in Great Britain at the time, of the composition of the assembly, and of its labors during the five years and more of its continuance. At the time of the meeting of the Westminster Assembly there was a tradition in the Puritan mind of England of two varieties of opinions as to the form of church government or discipline that should be substituted for episcopacy. In the first place there was a tradition of the system of views known as Presbyterianism. From the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, if not earlier, there had been Nonconformists who held that some form of the consistorial model which Calvin had set up in Geneva, and which Knox enlarged for Scotland, was the best for England, too. Thus Fuller, who dates the use of the term "Puritans," as a nickname for the English Nonconformists generally, from the year 1564, and who goes on to say that within a few years after that date the chief of those to whom that term was first applied were either dead or very aged, adds: "Behold, another generation of active and zealous Nonconformists succeeded them: of these Coleman, Button, Halingham, and Benson (whose Christian names I cannot recover) were the chief; inveighing against the established church discipline, accounting everything from Rome that was not from Geneva, endeavoring in all things to conform the government of the English Church to the Presbyterian Reformation." Actually, in 1572, Fuller proceeds to tell us, a presbytery, the first in England, was set up at Wandsworth in Surrey; _i.e._, in that year a certain number of ministers of the Church of England organized themselves privately, without reference to bishops or other authorities, into a kind of presbyterial consistory, or classical court, for the management of the church business of their neighborhood. The heads of this Presbyterian movement, which gradually extended itself to London, were Mr. Field, lecturer at Wandsworth, Mr. Smith of Mitcham, Mr. Crane of Roehampton, Messrs. Wilcox, Standen, Jackson, Bonham, Saintloe, Travers, Charke, Barber, Gardiner, Crook, and Egerton; with whom were associated a good many laymen. A summary of their views on the subject of church government was drawn out in Latin, under the title _Disciplina Ecclesiæ sacra ex Dei Verbo descripta_, and, though it had to be printed at Geneva, became so well known that, according to Fuller, "_Secundum usum Wandsworth_ was as much honored by some as _secundum usum Sarum_ by others." The English Presbyterianism thus asserting itself and spreading found its ablest and most energetic leader in the famous Thomas Cartwright (1535-1603). No less by practical ingenuity than by the pen, he labored for presbytery; and under his direction Presbyterianism attained such dimensions that between 1580 and 1590 there were no fewer than five hundred beneficed clergymen of the Church of England, most of them Cambridge men, all pledged to general agreement in a revised form of the Wandsworth Directory of Discipline, all in private intercommunication among themselves, and all meeting occasionally, or at appointed times, in local conferences, or even in provincial and general synods. In addition to London, the parts of the country thus most leavened with Presbyterianism were the shires of Warwick, Northampton, Rutland, Leicester, Cambridge, and Essex. Of course such an anomaly, of a Presbyterian organization of ministers existing within the body of the prelatic system established by law, and to the detriment or disintegration of that system, could not be tolerated; and, when Whitgift had procured sufficient information to enable him to seize and prosecute the chiefs, it was, in fact, stamped out. But the recollection of Cartwright and of Presbyterian principles remained in the English mind through the reigns of James and Charles, and characterized the main mass of the more effective and respectable Puritanism of those reigns. In other words, most of those Puritans, whether ministers or of the laity, who still continued members of the Church, only protesting against some of its rules and ceremonies, conjoined with this nonconformity in points of worship a dissatisfaction with the prelatic constitution of the Church, and a willingness to see the order of bishops removed, and the government of the Church remodelled on the Presbyterian system of parochial courts, classical or district meetings, provincial synods, and national assemblies. During the supremacy of Laud, indeed, when any such wholesale revolution seemed hopeless, it is possible that English Puritanism within the Church had abandoned in some degree its dreamings over the Presbyterian theory, and had sunk, through exhaustion, into mere sighings after a relaxation of the established episcopacy. But the success of the Presbyterian revolt of the Scots in 1638, and their continued triumph in the two following years, had worked wonders. All the remains of native Presbyterian tradition in England had been kindled afresh, and new masses of English Puritan feeling, till then acquiescent in episcopacy, had been whirled into a passion for presbytery and nothing else. When the Long Parliament, at its first meeting (November, 1640), addressed itself to the question of a reform of the English Church, the force that beat against its doors most strongly from the outside world of English opinion consisted no longer of mere sighings after a limitation of episcopacy, but of a formed determination of myriads to have done with episcopacy root and branch, and to see a church government substituted somewhat after the Scottish pattern. Two years more of discussion in and out of Parliament had vastly enlarged the dimensions of this revived and newly created English Presbyterianism. The passion for presbytery among the English laity had pervaded all the counties; and scores and hundreds of parish ministers who had kept as long as they could within the limits of mere Low-church Anglicanism, and had stood out, in their private reasonings, for the lawfulness and expediency of an order of officers in the Church superior to that of simple presbyters, if less lordly than the bishops, had been swept out of their scruples, and had joined themselves, even heartily, to the Presbyterian current. Thus, when the Westminster Assembly met (July, 1643), to consider, among other things, what form of church government the Parliament should be advised to establish in England in lieu of the episcopacy which it had been resolved to abolish, the injunction almost universally laid upon them by already formed opinion among the parliamentarians of England, whether laity or clergy out of the assembly, seemed to be that they should recommend conformity with Scottish presbytery. All the citizenship, all the respectability of London, for example, was resolutely Presbyterian, and of the one hundred twenty parish ministers of the city, surrounding the assembly, only three, so far as could be ascertained, were not of strict Presbyterian principles. Nevertheless, amid all this apparent prevalence of Presbyterianism, there was a stubborn tradition in England of another set of antiprelatic views, long stigmatized by the nickname of Brownism, but known latterly as Independency or Congregationalism. Independents and Presbyterians are quite agreed in maintaining that the terms "bishop" or overseer, and "presbyter" or elder, were synonymous in the pure or primitive Church, and applied indifferently to the same persons, and that prelacy and all its developments were subsequent corruptions. The peculiar tenet of independency, distinguishing it from Presbyterianism, consists in something else. It consists in the belief that the only organization recognized in the primitive Church was that of the voluntary association of believers into local congregations, each choosing its own office-bearers and managing its own affairs, independently of neighboring congregations, though willing occasionally to hold friendly conferences with such neighboring congregations, and to profit by the collective advice. Gradually, it is asserted, this right or habit of occasional friendly conference between neighboring congregations had been mismanaged and abused, until the true independency of each voluntary society of Christians was forgotten, and authority came to be vested in synods or councils of the office-bearers of the churches of a district or province. This usurpation of power by synods or councils, it is said, was as much a corruption of the primitive-church discipline as was prelacy itself, or the usurpation of power by eminent individual presbyters, assuming the name of "bishops" in a new sense. Nay, the one usurpation had prepared the way for the other; and, especially after the establishment of Christianity in the Roman Empire by the civil power, the two usurpations had gone on together, until the church became a vast political machinery of councils, smaller or larger, regulated by a hierarchy of bishops, archbishops, and patriarchs, all pointing to the popedom. The error of the Presbyterians, it is maintained, lies in their not perceiving this natural and historical connection of the two usurpations, and so retaining the synodical tyranny while they would throw off the prelatic. Not having recovered the true original idea of an _ecclesia_ as consisting simply of a society of individual Christians meeting together periodically and united by a voluntary compact, while the great invisible church of a nation or of the world consists of the whole multitude of such mutually independent societies harmoniously moved by the unseen Spirit present in all, Presbyterians, it is said, substitute the more mechanical image of a visible collective church for each community or nation, try to perfect that image by devices borrowed from civil polity, and find the perfection they seek in a system of national assemblies, provincial synods, and district courts of presbyters, superintending and controlling individual congregations. Independency, on the other hand, would purify the aggregate Church to the utmost, by throwing off the synodical tyranny as well as the prelatic, and restoring the complete power of discipline to each particular church or society of Christians formed in any one place. So, I believe, though with varieties of expression, English Independents argue now. But, while they thus seek the original warrant for their views in the New Testament and in the practice of the primitive Church, and while they maintain also that the essence of these views was rightly revived in old English Wycliffism, and perhaps in some of the speculations which accompanied Luther's Reformation on the Continent, they admit that the theory of Independency had to be worked out afresh by a new process of the English mind in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and they are content, I believe, that the crude, immediate beginning of that process should be sought in the opinions propagated, between 1580 and 1590, by the erratic Robert Brown, a Rutlandshire man, bred at Cambridge, who had become a preacher at Norwich. Here and there in England by his tongue during those ten years, and sometimes by pamphlets in exile, Brown, who could boast that he had been "committed to thirty-two prisons, in some of which he could not see his hand at noon-day," and who escaped the gallows only through some family connection he had with the all-powerful Lord Burghley, had preached doctrines far more violently schismatic than those of Cartwright and the majority of the Puritans. His attacks on bishops and episcopacy were boundlessly fierce; and the duty of separation _in toto_ from the Church of England, the right of any number of persons to form themselves into a distinct congregation, the mutual independence of congregations so formed, and the liberty of any member of a congregation to preach or exhort in it, were among his leading tenets. At length, tiring of the tempest he had raised around him, he accepted a living in Northamptonshire; and, though he is not known to have ever formally recanted any of his opinions, he lived on in his parsonage till as late as 1630, when Fuller knew him as a passionate and rather disreputable old man of eighty, employing a curate to do his work, quarrelling with everybody, and refusing to pay his rates. Meanwhile the opinions which he had propagated fifty years before had passed through a singular history in the minds and lives of men of steadier and more persevering character. For, though Brown himself had vanished from public view since 1590, the Brownists, or Separatists, as they were called, had persisted in their course, through execration and persecution, as a sect of outlaws beyond the pale of ordinary Puritanism, and with whom moderate Puritans disowned connection or sympathy. One hears of considerable numbers of them in the shires of Norfolk and Essex and throughout Wales; and there was a central association of them in London, holding conventicles in the fields, or shifting from meeting-house to meeting-house in the suburbs, so as to elude Whitgift's ecclesiastical police. At length, in 1592, the police broke in upon one of the meetings of the London Brownists at Islington; fifty-six of these were thrown into divers jails; and, some of the Separatist leaders having been otherwise arrested, there ensued a vengeance far more ruthless than the government dared against Puritans in general. Six of the leaders were brought to the scaffold, including Henry Barrowe, a Gray's Inn lawyer--of such note among those early Brownists by his writings that they were also called Barrowists--John Greenwood, a preacher, and the poor young Welshman, John Penry, whose brave and simple words on his own hard case, addressed before his death to Lord Burghley, thrill one's nerves yet. All these were of Cambridge training, though Penry had also been at Oxford. Others died in prison; and of the remainder many were banished. Among the observers of these severities was Francis Bacon, then rising into eminence as a politician and lawyer. His feeling on the subject was thus expressed at the time: "As for those which we call Brownists, being, when they were at the most, a very small number of very silly and base people here and there in corners dispersed, they are now--thanks be to God--by the good remedies that have been used, suppressed and worn out, so as there is scarce any news of them." Bacon, doubtless, here expressed the feeling of all that was respectable in English society. For not only was it the theory of Brownism intrinsically that the Church of England was a false church, an institution of anti-christ, from which all Christians were bound to separate themselves; but the scurrilities against the bishops that had been vented anonymously by some particular nest of Brownists, or their allies, in the famous series of _Martin Marprelate Tracts_ (1589), had disgusted and enraged many who would have tolerated moderate Nonconformity. With respect to the theory of church government called Independency or Congregationalism, the state of the case in 1640 may be thus summed up: There was an unknown amount of traditional affection for the theory, even where it could not be articulately stated, in the native and popular antiprelacy of England itself. This vague and diffused Independency had also a few champions in known Separatist ministers, who had managed to remain in England through all difficulties, and perhaps it had well-wishers in a private opinionist or two, like John Goodwin, regularly in orders in the Church of England; but the effective mass of English-born Independency lay wholly without the bounds of England, partly in little curdlings of Separatists or Semiseparatists among the English exiles in some of the towns of Holland, but chiefly, and in most assured completeness both of bulk and of detail, in the incipient transatlantic commonwealth of New England. One thing, however, was certain all the while. These two effective aggregations of English-born Independency beyond the bounds of England--the small Dutch scattering and the massive American extension--were not dissociated from England, had not learned to be foreign to her, but were in correspondence with her, in constant survey of her concerns, and attached to her by such homeward yearnings that, on the least opportunity, the least signal given, they would leap back upon her shores. The opportunity came, and the signal was given, in November, 1640, when the Long Parliament met. It was as if England then proclaimed to all her exiles for opinion, "Ye need be exiles no more." Accordingly, between that date and the meeting of the Westminster Assembly in July, 1643, we have the interesting phenomenon of a return of some of the conspicuous representatives of Independency both from Holland and from New England. The necessity of an ecclesiastical synod or convocation, to coöperate with the Parliament, had been long felt. Among the articles of the Grand Remonstrance of December, 1641, had been one desiring a convention of "a general synod of the most grave, pious, learned, and judicious divines of this island, assisted by some from foreign parts," to consider of all things relating to the Church and report thereon to Parliament. It is clear, from the wording of this article, that it was contemplated that the synod should contain representatives from the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Indeed, by that time, the establishment of a uniformity of doctrine, discipline, and worship between the churches of England and Scotland was the fixed idea of those who chiefly desired a synod. There had been express communications on the subject between the leading English Puritan ministers and the chiefs of the Scottish Kirk. Henderson[35] had strongly taken the matter to heart, and in connection with it he had made a "notable motion" in the Scottish General Assembly of August, 1641. Might it not be well, he had urged, that the Scottish Church should employ itself in "drawing up a confession of faith, a catechism, a directory for all the parts of the public worship, and a platform of government, wherein possibly England and we might agree"? Henderson's notion was that, if such an authoritative exposition of the whole theory and practice of the Kirk of Scotland could be drawn up for the study of the English, and especially if care were taken in it not to be ultra-Scottish in mere minutiæ, the effect would be to facilitate the religious union of the two nations. The Scottish assembly, at any rate, had warmly entertained the notion, and had deputed the difficult and delicate work to Henderson himself. Henderson, however, had, on more mature thoughts, abandoned the project. He had done so for reasons creditable to his considerateness and good-sense. It had occurred to him that the English might like to think out the details of their church reformation for themselves, that it might do more harm than good to thrust an elaborated Scottish system upon them as a perfection already consummate, and that it might even be becoming in the Scots to hold themselves prepared, in the interests of the conformity they desired, to gravitate toward what might be the English conclusions on nonessential points. At all events, he had come to see that the work was too great for the responsibility of any one man. Possibly, too, he knew by that time (April, 1642) that a general synod of English divines would very soon be called. Actually, in April, 1642, just when Henderson gave up the business as too great for one man's strength, the English House of Commons were making arrangements for a synod of divines. On the 19th of that month it was ordered by the House, in pursuance of previous resolutions on the subject, "that the names of such divines as shall be thought fit to be consulted with concerning the matter of the Church be brought in to-morrow morning," the understood rule being that the knights and burgesses of each English county should name to the House _two_ divines, and those of each Welsh county _one_ divine, for approval. Accordingly, on the 20th, the names were given in; on that day the divines proposed for nine of the English counties were approved of in pairs; and on following days the rest of the English counties--London and the two universities coming in for separate representation--were gone over, pretty much in their alphabetical order, the Welsh counties and the Channel islands coming last, till, on April 25th, the tale of the divines "thought fit to be consulted with" was complete. It included one hundred two divines, generally from the counties for which they were severally named; but by no means always so, for in not a few cases the knights and burgesses of distant counties nominated divines living in London or near it. In almost all cases the divines named by the knights and burgesses for their several counties were approved of by the House unanimously; but a vote was taken on the eligibility of one of the divines named for Yorkshire, and he was carried by a bare majority of one hundred three to ninety-nine, and exceptions having been taken on the 25th to the two appointed for Cumberland on the 20th, their appointment was cancelled and others were substituted. On the same day on which the list of divines was completed, a committee of twenty-seven members of the House, including Hampden, Selden, and Lord Falkland, was appointed "to consider of the readiest way to put in execution the resolutions of this House in consulting with such divines as they have named." The result was that on May 9th there was brought in a "bill for calling an assembly of godly and learned divines to be consulted with by the Parliament, for the settling of the government and liturgy of the Church, and for the vindicating and clearing of the doctrine of the Church of England from false aspersions and interpretations." On that day the bill was read twice in the Commons and committed; and on the 19th it was read a third time and passed. The Lords, having then taken the bill into consideration, proposed (May 26, 1642) the addition of _fourteen_ divines of their own choice to those named by the Commons; and, the Commons having agreed to this amendment, the bill passed both Houses, June 1st, and waited only the King's assent. It was intended that the assembly should meet the next month. The King had other things to do at that moment than assent to a bill for an assembly of divines. He was at York, gathering his forces for the civil war; and by the time when it was expected the assembly should have been at work the civil war had begun. Nevertheless, the Parliament persevered in their design. Twice again, while the war was in its first stage, bills were introduced to the same effect as that which had been stopped. Bill the second for calling an assembly of divines was in October, and bill the third in December, 1642. In these bills the two houses kept to the one hundred sixteen divines agreed upon under the first bill, with--as far as I have been able to trace the matter through their journals--only one deletion, two substitutions, and three proposed additions. Still, by the stress of the war, the assembly was postponed. At last, hopeless of a bill that should pass in the regular way by the King's consent, the houses resorted, in this as in other things, to their peremptory plan of ordinance by their own authority. On May 13, 1643, an ordinance for calling an assembly was introduced in the Commons; which ordinance, after due going and coming between the two Houses, came to maturity June 12th, when it was entered at full length in the Lords Journals. "Whereas, among the infinite blessings of Almighty God upon this nation"--so runs the preamble of the ordinance--"none is, or can be, more dear to us than the purity of our religion; and forasmuch as many things yet remain in the discipline, liturgy, and government of the Church which necessarily require a more perfect reformation: and whereas it has been declared and resolved, by the Lords and Commons assembled in parliament, that the present church government by archbishops, bishops, their chancellors, commissaries, deans, deans and chapters, arch-deacons, and other ecclesiastical officers depending on the hierarchy, is evil, and justly offensive and burdensome to the kingdom, and a great impediment to reformation and growth of religion, and very prejudicial to the state and government of this kingdom, and that therefore they are resolved the same shall be taken away, and that such a government shall be settled in the Church as may be agreeable to God's Holy Word, and most apt to procure and preserve the peace of the Church at home, and nearer agreement with the Church of Scotland, and other reformed churches abroad. Be it therefore ordained," etc. What is ordained is that one hundred forty-nine persons, enumerated by name in the ordinance--ten of them being members of the Lords House, twenty members of the Commons House, and the other one hundred nineteen mainly the divines that had already been fixed upon, most of them a year before--shall meet on July 1st next in King Henry VII's chapel at Westminster; and that these persons, and such others as shall be added to them by Parliament from time to time, shall have power to continue their sittings as long as Parliament may see fit, and "to confer and treat among themselves of _such matters and things_ concerning the liturgy, discipline, and government of the Church of England, or the vindicating and clearing of the doctrine of the same from all false aspersions and misconstructions, _as shall be proposed by either or both houses of Parliament, and no other_." The words in Italics are important. The assembly was not to be an independent national council ranging at its will and settling things by its own authority. It was to be a body advising Parliament on matters referred to it, and on these alone, and its conclusions were to have no validity until they should be reported to Parliament and confirmed there. Forty members of the assembly were to constitute a quorum, and the proceedings were not to be divulged without consent of Parliament. Four shillings a day were to be allowed to each clerical member for his expenses, with immunity for non-residence in his parish or any neglect of his ordinary duties that might be entailed by his presence at Westminster. William Twisse, D.D., of Newbury, was to be prolocutor, or chairman, of the assembly; and he was to have two "assessors," to supply his place in case of necessary absence. There were to be two "scribes," who should be divines, but not members of the assembly, to take minutes of the proceedings. Every member of the assembly, on his first entrance, was to make solemn protestation that he would not maintain anything but what he believed to be the truth; no resolution on any question was to be come to on the same day on which it was first propounded; whatever any speaker maintained to be necessary he was to prove out of the Scriptures; all decisions of the major part of the assembly were to be reported to Parliament as the decisions of the assembly; but the dissents of individual members were to be duly registered, if they required it, and also reported to Parliament. The Lords wanted to regulate also that no long speeches should be permitted in the assembly, so that matters might not be carried by "impertinent flourishes"; but the Commons, for reasons that are not far to seek, did not agree to this regulation. Notwithstanding a royal proclamation from Oxford, dated June 22d, forbidding the assembly and threatening consequences, the first meeting duly took place on the day appointed--Saturday, July 1, 1643; and from that date till February 22, 1648-1649, or for more than five years and a half, the Westminster Assembly is to be borne in mind as a power of institution in the English realm, existing side by side with the Long Parliament, and in constant conference and coöperation with it. The number of its sittings during these five years and a half was one thousand one hundred sixty-three in all; which is at the rate of about four sittings every week for the whole time. The earliest years of the assembly were the most important. All in all, it was an assembly which left remarkable and permanent effects in the British islands, and the history of which ought to be more interesting, in some homely respects, to Britons now, than the history of the Council of Basel, the Council of Trent, or any other of the great ecclesiastical councils, more ancient and ecumenical, about which we hear so much. Such was the famous Westminster Assembly, called together by the Parliament of England to consider the entire state of the country in matters of religion. The business intrusted to it was vast and complex. It was to revise and redefine the national creed, after its long lapse into so-called Arminianism and semi-popish error, and to advise also as to the new system of church government and the new forms of worship that should come in place of rejected episcopacy and the condemned liturgy. For it was still, be it remembered, the universal notion among English politicians that there must be a national church, and that no man, woman, or child within the land should be permitted to be out of the pale of that church. It was still the notion that it was possible to frame a certain number of propositions respecting God, heaven, angels, hell, devils, the creation of the universe, the soul of man, sin and its remedy, a life beyond death, and all the other most tremendous subjects of human contemplation, that should be absolutely true, or at least so just and sure a compendium of truth that the nation must be tied up to it, and it would be wrong to allow any man, woman, or child, subject to the law of England, to be astray from it in any item. This was the notion, and those one hundred forty-nine persons were appointed to frame the all-important propositions, or find them out by a due revision of the old articles, and to report to Parliament on that subject, as well as on the subjects of church organization and forms of worship. The appointment, among the original one hundred forty-nine or one hundred fifty members of assembly, of such persons as Archbishop Usher, Bishops Brownrigge and Westfield, Featley, Hacket, Hammond, Holdsworth, Morley, Nicolson, Saunderson, and Samuel Ward--all of them defenders of an episcopacy of some kind--seems hardly reconcilable with the very terms of the ordinance calling the assembly. That ordinance implied that episcopacy was condemned and done with, and it convoked the assembly for the express purpose of considering, among other things, what should be put in its stead. It may have been thought, however, that it would impart a more liberal and eclectic character to the assembly to send a sprinkling of known Anglicans into it; or it may have been thought right to give some of the most respected of these an opportunity of retrieving themselves by acquiescing in what they could not prevent. As it chanced, however, the refusal of most of these to appear in the assembly at all, and the all but immediate dropping-off of the one or two who did appear at first, saved the assembly much trouble. It became thus a compact body, fit for its work, and in the main of one mind and way of thinking on some of the problems submitted to it. In respect of theological doctrine, for example, the assembly, as it was then left, was practically unanimous. They were, almost to a man, Calvinists, or anti-Arminians, pledged by their antecedents to such a revision of the articles as should make the national creed more distinctly Calvinistic than before. Moreover, they were agreed as to their method for determining doctrine. It was to be the rigid application of the Protestant principle that the Bible is the sole rule of faith. The careful interpretation of Scripture--_i.e._, the collecting on any occasion of discussion of all the texts in the Old and New Testaments bearing on the point discussed, and the examination of these texts singly and in their connection and in the original tongues when necessary, so as to ascertain their exact sense--this was the understood rule with them all. Learning was, indeed, in demand, and the chief scholars, especially the chief Hebraists and rabbinists, of the assembly, were much looked up to: there might be references also to the fathers and to councils; no kind of historical lore but would be welcome: only all must subserve the one purpose of interpreting Scripture; and fathers, councils, and whatnot, could be cited, not as authorities, but only as witnesses. This understanding as to the determination of doctrine by the Bible alone, accompanied as it was by a nearly unanimous preconviction that it was the Calvinistic body of doctrines alone that could be reasoned out of the Bible, was to keep the assembly, I repeat, pretty much together from the first in matters of creed and theology. For perplexing questions as to the extent and limits of the inspiration of the Bible had not yet publicly arisen to invalidate the accepted method. FOOTNOTES: [35] Alexander Henderson, the Scottish ecclesiastic and diplomatist, was at this time most prominent among the Presbyterian leaders. MASANIELLO'S REVOLT AT NAPLES A.D. 1647 ALFRED VON REUMONT Among the various popular insurrections of which Naples has been the scene, the most memorable in violence and in effective results is that which Masaniello headed. Naples, with Sicily, was then subject to Spain, and a Spanish viceroy governed there. Popular discontent had already shown itself in tumults. These were provoked by various acts of oppression, but especially by burdensome taxation and the draining of the province of men for the Spanish service. At the same time Naples was subject to French intrigue. It was the aim of Cardinal Mazarin, the successor of Richelieu as prime minister of France, to seize the rich Spanish possessions, Naples and Sicily. He foresaw the coming insurrection, and prepared to take advantage of it. Although his schemes added to the Neapolitan complications, he was not to profit by them as he hoped. Finally, in Naples the half-smothered spirit of revolt broke out when Spain imposed a duty on fruits, raising the cost of productions upon which the majority of the people depended for subsistence. Reumont, whose mastery in the field of Italian history is well known, brings out in full light the circumstances and consequences of Masaniello's rising. In May, 1647, a rebellion broke out in Palermo among the lower class of people, which the viceroy, Don Pedro Fajardo Marquis de Los Veles, was not in a condition to resist. The constant increase of the taxes on articles of food, which, especially in the manner in which they were then raised, were the most felt and the most burdensome kind of taxation for the people, excited a tumult which lasted for many months, occasioned serious dissensions between the nobility and the people, and was only subdued by a mixture of firmness and clemency on the part of the Cardinal Trivulzio, the successor of Los Veles. The news of the disturbances in Sicily reached Naples, when everything there was ripe for an insurrection, which had for a long time been fermenting, and agitating men's minds. On all sides the threatening indications increased. Notices posted upon the walls announced that the people of Naples would follow the example of the inhabitants of Palermo if the _gabelles_ were not taken off, especially the fruit tax, which pressed the hardest upon the populace; the better the season was, the more the poor felt themselves debarred from the enjoyment of a cheap and cooling food. The Viceroy was stopped by a troop of people as he was going to mass at the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine; he extricated himself from his difficulty as well as he could, laid the blame on the nobility who had ordered the tax, and promised what he never intended to perform. The associations of nobles assembled, but they could not agree. Some were of opinion that the tax should be kept, because the change would interfere with their pecuniary interests; others because the money asked for by the government could not otherwise be procured. Notwithstanding these unfavorable circumstances the Duke of Arcos, the Spanish Viceroy of Naples, allowed most of the Spanish and German troops to march into Lombardy; he was deliberating how to meet the attack of the French in the North of Italy without considering that he was stripping the country of armed forces at a moment when the continuance of the Spanish rule was more than ever in jeopardy. On the great market-place at Naples, the scene of so many tragedies and so many disturbances, stood a miserable cottage, with nothing to distinguish it from the others but the name and arms of Charles V, which were placed on the front wall. Here a poor fisherman lived, Tommaso Aniello, generally called by the abbreviated name of Masaniello. His father, Francesco or Cicco, came from the coast of Amalfi, and had married in 1620 Antonia Gargano, a Neapolitan woman. In the Vico Rotto, by the great market, which is only inhabited by the poorest people, and where the pestilence began in the year 1656, four months later, the son was born who was destined to act so remarkable a part. Tommaso Aniello was baptized in the parish church of Sta. Catherina in Foro on June 20, 1620. On April 25, 1641, he married Bernardina Pisa, a maiden from the neighborhood of that town. Their poverty was so great that often Masaniello could not even follow up his trade of a fisherman, but earned a scanty livelihood by selling paper for the fish to be carried in. He was of middle height, well made and active; his brilliant dark, black eyes and his sunburnt face contrasted singularly with his long, curly, fair hair hanging down his back. Thus his cheerful, lively conversation agreed but little with his grave countenance. His dress was that of a fisherman, but as he is, in general, considered a remarkable person--whatever may be thought of the part he performed--so he understood, in spite of the meanness of his attire, by his arrangement and his choice of colors, to give it a peculiarity that stamped it in the memory of his contemporaries. The life of this remarkable man--a nine-days' history--clearly shows us that he possessed wonderful presence of mind and a spirit that knew not fear. It happened, once, in the midst of the discontent which was everywhere excited by the exorbitant increase of taxation, that Masaniello's wife was detained by the keepers of the gate while she was endeavoring to creep into the town with a bundle of flour done up in cloths to look like a child in swaddling-clothes. She was imprisoned, and her husband, who loved her much, only succeeded in obtaining her liberation after eight days. Almost the whole of his miserable goods went to pay the fine which had been imposed upon her. Thus hatred was smouldering in the mind of Masaniello, and the flame was stirred when he--it is not known how--quarrelled with the Duke of Maddaloni's people and was ill used by them in an unusual manner. Then the idea seems to have occurred to him to avenge himself by the aid of the people. Many have related that instigators were not wanting. Giulio Genuino is named, formerly the favorite of the Duke of Ossuna, who, after he had encountered the strangest fate, and after wearing the chain of a galley slave at Oran on the coast of Barbary, had returned an aged man, in the habit of an ecclesiastic to his native country, meditating upon new intrigues as the old ones had failed; also a captain of banditti and a lay brother of the Carmine, who gave Masaniello money, were among the conspirators. Perhaps all this was only an attempt to explain the extraordinary fact. This much only is known with certainty, that Masaniello sought to collect a troop of boys and young people, who, among the numerous vagrant population, thronged the market and its neighborhood from the adjacent districts, as whose leader he intended to appear, as had often been done before, at the feast of the Madonna of Carmel, which takes place in the middle of July. At that festival it was the custom to build a castle of wood and canvas in the middle of the market-place, close to which, as already has been described, was the church and convent of the Carmelites, and this castle was besieged and defended by troops of the people. The great mass of the assailants was formed out of a band of lads of the lowest class, about four hundred in number, who painted the greatest part of their bodies and their faces black and red; their tattered clothes gave them an oriental appearance. They were armed with sticks, and called the company of the Alarbes, perhaps an Arabian name. They were drilled by Masaniello, and considered him as their chief. It is easy to conceive how ill the people spoke of the tax-gatherers, who, by their severity and roughness in their daily treatment, kept up perpetual quarrels and ill-will with the equally rough populace, who therefore tried to deceive them. On one beautiful summer night the custom-house in the great market-place flew up into the air. A quantity of powder had been conveyed into it by unknown hands, and in the morning nothing remained but the blackened ruins. It had been intended by this action to oblige the Viceroy to take off the taxes; but, without loss of time, in an opposite building, a new custom-house was established. The collectors were only the more angry and unmerciful, and every day seemed to bring the outbreak nearer. Thus the morning of July 7, 1647, approached. It was Sunday, and a number of fruit-sellers, with carts and donkeys and full baskets, came into the town very early from Pozzuoli, and went as usual to the great market. Scarcely had they reached it when the dispute began. The question was not so much whether the tax should be paid, as who was to pay it. The men of Pozzuoli maintained that the Neapolitan dealers in fruit were to pay five _carlins_ on a hundredweight; the others said it was not their business: thus the disturbance began. Some respectable people who foresaw the evil hastened to the Viceroy, who commissioned Andrea Naclerio, the deputy of the people, to go immediately to the market-place and restore peace. Naclerio was getting into a boat to sail to Posilipo, where he intended to spend the day with his colleagues belonging to the association of nobles, when he received the order. He turned back, coasted along the shore of the Marinella, and got out by the tanner's gate, near the fort which takes its name from the church of the Carmelites. Here a different Sunday scene awaited him from that which he had promised himself in the fragrant and shady gardens. The market was filled with riotous people, and the uproar was so much the worse because Masaniello, with his troop of Alarbes, had met them in the morning for a grand review. The people of Pozzuoli, of bad fame since the days of Don Pedro de Toledo, quarrelled and protested; the Neapolitans were not a whit behind them in fluency of speech. The tax-gatherers would listen to no remonstrances and insisted upon the payment. Andrea Naclerio tried in all ways to obtain a hearing and to appease the tumult. He said to the Pozzuolans that they ought to pay, that the money would be returned to them. They would not. He demanded to have the fruit weighed; he would pay the tax out of his own purse: this also they refused. The tax-gatherers and _sbirri_ now lost all patience. They fetched the great scales, and wanted to weigh the fruit by force. Then the venders pushed down the baskets, so that the fruit rolled along the ground, and called out to the people: "Take what you can get, and taste it; it is the last time that we shall come here to the market." From all sides boys and men flung themselves upon the baskets and the fruit. The signal was given for an insurrection. The tax-gatherers drove the people back; the people made use of the fruit as their weapons. Andrea Naclerio rushed into the thickest of the crowd; the captain of the sbirri and some of the respectable inhabitants of the adjacent tan quarter hastened hither, and bore him in their arms out of the knot of men who in one moment had increased to a large mass; for idle people had flocked thither from the neighboring street, from the dirty and populous Lavinaro, as well as from the coast. The deputy was rejoiced to reach his boat, and made the rowers ply vigorously that he might bring the noise of the tumult to the palace. But the populace proceeded from fruit to stones, put to flight the tax-gatherers and sbirri, crowded into the custom-house, destroyed the table and chairs, set fire to the ruins as well as the account-books, so that soon a bright flame rose up amid the loud rejoicings of the bystanders. Meanwhile Andrea Naclerio had reached the palace. He related the whole proceeding to the Viceroy, and pointed out to him at the same time that only the abolition of the fruit tax could appease the people. The Duke of Arcos resolved to try mildness. Two men of illustrious birth, who were more beloved by the crowd than the others, Tiberio Carafa, Prince of Bisignano, and Ettore Ravaschieri, Prince of Satriano, repaired to the market-place as peacemakers. Naclerio was not satisfied with this; he feared that Don Tiberio would, in his kindness, promise more than could be performed, and so only make matters worse. What he had foreseen happened. When Bisignano reached the market and found the crowd still wild with rage, he announced that the Viceroy would not only abolish the fruit tax, but all the other gabelles: they might make merry and be satisfied. The rioters listened. A promise from the viceroy of the abolition of all the gabelles--that was worth hearing. Masaniello had kept quiet during the assault upon the deputy and tax-gatherers, and to a certain degree had acted as mediator. "Now," he exclaimed, "we will march to the palace." The great mass of the people followed him; another troop surrounded Bisignano, who would gladly have freed himself from his wild escort, and trotted his horse when he came to the King's gate; but they soon reached him again, and so much forgot the respect due to his rank that they laid their hands on him and compelled him to accompany them to San Lorenzo, the residence of the superior town magistrate. Arrived here, they cried out for the privileges of Charles V, an idea instilled into them by Giulio Genuino, who, disguised and with a long beard, made one of the procession, and was the soul of all the intrigues that were hidden under the wild impulses of the masses. Don Tiberio Carafa esteemed himself fortunate to escape from his oppressors; he crept into a cell and went to Castelnuovo, from whence he repaired to Rome, so exhausted from the scene he had witnessed that he died mad not long afterward. Meanwhile, the far more numerous band was on its way to the palace. Drummers marched in advance. Masaniello had mounted a horse and held up a banner, some of his followers were provided with sticks, and others armed with poles. They had, in their haste, seized upon any implements that they could find; numerous lads, old guards of the leader, accompanied the strange procession. Whistling and making a blustering noise, most of them in rags and barefooted--a genuine mob, who soon became aware how much was left to their will and discretion. The Duke was in the palace, and with him many of the nobles belonging to the town, who advised him to strengthen his Spanish guard immediately, but he would not, whether from fear of irritating the people, or because he did not consider the danger so imminent. The grand master of the horse, Don Carlo Caracciolo, with Don Luis Ponce de Leone, a cousin of the Viceroy's, and governor of the vicarial court, were standing on one of the balconies at the moment when the crowd reached the square before the palace, and Masaniello, waving his banner three times before the guard, called out, "Long life to the King of Spain! Down with the gabelles!"--a cry which was repeated by thousands of the people. Caracciolo went down and began to talk to the people. They remained standing; they complained of the oppressive taxes; they complained of the bad bread; they held him out pieces of it; he might judge himself whether it was food for men or dogs. They urged upon all the deposition of the _Eletto_, on whom, as usual, the blame was laid that things were not more prosperous. At first affairs went on tolerably well. With great dexterity Don Carlo kept the crowd away from the entrances, while he corresponded by means of his vassals with the Viceroy, who consented to Naclerio's deposition--to the abolition of the duties on fruit and on wine. Now the audacity of the crowd increased. Why not ask for more when everything was granted to them? The flour tax also! Caracciolo objected; things could not go on so. But in the same moment new masses of many thousand men crowded into the square, uttering wild noises. The negotiator was obliged to give way, and had only time to inform the Viceroy that he might withdraw into Castelnuovo. When the people found the outer gate of the palace unguarded, they rushed into the court and forced their way up the great stairs. At the end of it, at the entrance of the hall, stood the German bodyguard. They crossed their halberds to ward off the crowd, but the pressure was too violent. After a short struggle their arms were wrenched from them; ill-treated and bleeding, they could no longer defend the entrance against the assailants. Meanwhile the Duke of Arcos had made his appearance at one of the balconies, and told the crowd in the Spanish language to compose themselves; he would do their will. But they did not understand him, and cried out that he must keep to what he had promised them by the Prince of Bisignano. The Viceroy saw that he was losing time. Already the foremost of the assailants stormed at the doors of the first saloon, which had been locked in haste. Now every moment was precious. In vain did Don Carlo Caracciolo try once more to appease the people: a blow from an iron staff wounded him in the arm, and he was hit by two stones. The doors of the first saloon fell with a loud crash to the ground. Now the crowd saw no further impediment. Everything remaining in the palace was torn asunder. The Viceroy, causing the various doors to be bolted behind him, hastened to the gallery, that he might reach the spiral staircase leading into the court-yard. Now he repented that he had not followed Caracciolo's advice, who had desired him to make his escape to the castle. Andrea Naclerio concealed himself in the apartments of the Vice-queen, let himself down by a rope into the garden, and fortunately reached the fortress. But the mob broke everything that they found in the royal apartments, the panes of the high windows clattered upon the ground, and in the midst of wild rejoicings and laughter all the valuable household furniture was flung down from the balconies into the streets, including the chairs, the great parasol of the governor of the Collateral Council, and the mangled papers of the secretary. Even the balustrades of the balconies did not escape the vandal fury of the populace, and with heavy iron poles and hammers they dashed in pieces the beautifully polished works of sculpture. The Duke of Arcos had descended the spiral staircase, when he perceived that the bridges of the castle were already drawn up, the portcullis let down. He believed that he could save himself by crossing the square to the opposite convent of the Minimi, as he imagined that the rebels were too much occupied with plundering the palace to attend to him. But he miscalculated. Scarcely had he reached the square when he was recognized and surrounded. A knight of St. Jago, Don Antonio Taboada, was accidentally passing by; he succeeded in penetrating through the crowd to the Viceroy and lifted him into his carriage. The rescue of the Duke of Arcos turned upon a hair. One of the people, it is said Masaniello himself, wanted to thrust his sword into him, but the blow was parried by Don Emanuel Vaez. A runaway Augustinian monk seized him by the hair and screamed, "Abolish the taxes!" The carriage could not go on. The horses pranced; some of the people seized the reins; the coachman was on the ground. Then many of the nobles pressed through the crowd, making themselves a passage partly by violence, partly by fair words--the Count of Conversano, the Marquises of Torrecuso and Brienza, the Duke of Castile Airola, the prior of Rocella Carafa, Don Antonio Enriquez, and Carlo Caracciolo. The Viceroy was indebted to them for his rescue. They surrounded the carriage with drawn swords. The rebels had already taken the harness off the horses; two noblemen took possession of it, put it on as well as they could, and Caracciolo jumped upon the coach-box, fastened in the loose horses, while the other nobles remained at the door. But there was no getting further--the cries, the uproar, the mass of men increased every instant. So few against so many--if there was any delay no exit would remain. Don Carlos' mind was quickly made up; he opened the doors of the carriage, dragged out the half-dead Viceroy, seized him by the arm, while the rest of the nobles surrounded them, raising high their swords and warding off the pressure of the mob. With the cry, "Make room for the King!" they got through the crowd. Thus they reached the gates of the convent; it was shut up. The populace yelled and threatened the monks with a thousand maledictions if they opened it. The general and the provincial of the order were present, both Spaniards. They ordered the gate to be half opened to admit the Viceroy. Thus it was accomplished. Caracciolo gave the Duke a push, and he was saved. But the noblemen to whom he was indebted for his safety remained without, exposed to the fury of the mob, now become so much the more savage as they saw that their victim had escaped. Carlo Caracciolo saved himself with difficulty. A stone wounded the Marquis of Brienza in the neck. The people tried to break open the gates of the convent, which the monks had barricaded in haste. "Long life to the King of Spain! Down with the bad government!" This was the cry, echoed from a thousand voices. The Duke of Arcos showed himself at the window--he repeated that he would grant what was desired--he threw down a declaration signed by himself. Nothing was of any avail. The rebels tried to get into the convent through the church; they threatened to drag the Viceroy to the market. The alarm spread through the town. The night came--what a night! A hundred thousand men marched with loud cries through the town. The churches were open, and resounded with prayers for the restoration of peace. The Theatines and Jesuits left their convents and arranged themselves in processions, singing litanies to the Madonna and the saints, but the _Ora pro nobis_ was overpowered by the fury of the crowd. Although the first forced their way down the Toledo to the palace, and the others penetrated to the great market-place, they were obliged nevertheless to withdraw without having accomplished their object. All the highwaymen and murderers, of which Naples was full, left their hiding-places. The first thing done was to break open the prisons and set the prisoners at liberty--all, excepting those confined in the prisons of the vicarial court, for the castle of Capuano inspired the rebels with respect, whether because of a very large imperial eagle of Charles V fixed over the portal, or because the garrison of the old fortress, together with the sbirri, stood with lighted matches behind the crossbars, and threatened the assailants with a bloody welcome. The prisoners in the vicarial court now sought to set themselves free, and began by destroying the crossbars with heavy beams; but some shots, which laid two of them dead on the ground, warned them to desist from their attempt. All the other prisons were cleared, and the archives and everything that could be found in them was burned; the toll-booths throughout the town were demolished. The mob went from one gate to another. Everywhere the toll-gatherers had escaped--nobody thought of making any resistance, and as there were no more prisons to be broken open, no more custom-houses to be destroyed, the populace began to attack the houses of those who they knew had, by farming tolls or in any other way, become rich at the expense of the people. There was no mention of defence--the proprietors were glad to save their bare lives. Many rewarded with gold the services of the rowers who conveyed them to a villa at Posilipo or to any other place beyond the town. But the houses were emptied; first that of the cashier of taxes, Alphonso Vagliano. Beautiful household furniture, plate, pictures, everything that could be found was dragged into the streets, thrown together in a heap and burned; and when one of the people wanted to conceal a jewel, he was violently upbraided by the rest. Hitherto but few, comparatively, of the rebels had been armed; they felt this deficiency and wanted to procure themselves arms and artillery. With this view they attacked the convent and belfry of San Lorenzo, but the small Spanish garrison received them with sharp firing, and they were obliged to retire; they only committed the more acts of wanton cruelty. The most fearful confusion prevailed; first in one place and then in another the sky was red with the conflagration. Suddenly a lurid light illumined the towers and projecting buildings. The market-place was the principal quarter of the insurgents, who still wanted a leader. There, toward midnight, four men, masked, wearing the habit of one of the holy brotherhoods, entered a circle of men composed of the dregs of the populace--among them was Masaniello. Giulio Genuino, one of the four men, took off his mask. He had excited and fanned the flame the whole day, and now he sought, in the darkness of the night, to complete what he had begun. They had done right, he said, to let the King of Spain live, for it was not a question of taking the crown of Spain off his head, but to put an end to the oppression of the people by his covetous ministers. They must not rest till they had obtained this; but to obtain it, it was necessary above all things to procure themselves arms, and, by the choice of a leader, to give union and steadiness to their undertaking. They all agreed with him, and that very same night they followed his advice and provided themselves with arms. They stormed the shops of the sword-cutlers, and took possession of five pieces of light artillery belonging to the proprietor of a ship, and even during this first night the name of Masaniello passed from mouth to mouth. The morning came, but it brought neither assistance nor repose. When the day dawned there was a beating of drums, a ringing of bells, and country people pouring in from all sides. The discontented vassals of the barons in the neighborhood, the banditti, and vagabonds of all kinds increased the masses of the populace of the capital, who were augmented by troops of horrible women, and children more than half naked, making the most dreadful uproar. Arms of all kinds were in the hands of the insurgents; some of them made use of household and agricultural implements both for attack and defence. Unfortunately, various powder-magazines fell into their hands. At Little Molo they stormed a house in which ammunition had been placed; it caught fire and blew up; about forty persons were killed and double the number wounded, most of them severely. The exasperation only increased. It was soon observed that it was not blind fury alone which conducted the rebellion--clever management was evident. The Count of Monterey had given the people a sort of military constitution, as he divided them into companies according to the quarters of the town, which resembled those _Hermandades_ which the Archbishop of Tortosa, afterward Pope Adrian VI, formed in the time of Charles V in Spain, and that afterward caused an insurrection of the Communeros. This practice in the forms of war was now of use to the insurgents, and when on the second morning some of the working classes and mechanics, and persons indeed that belonged to a higher class of citizens, joined themselves to the actual mob, thinking to obtain a better government in consequence of the insurrection, the danger increased. The two principal leaders were Domenico Perrone, formerly a captain of sbirri, and Masaniello, whom the people about the market-place and the Lavinaro and its vicinity had chosen: but Giulio Genuino conducted the whole affair by his counsel. A formal council of war was held in Castelnuovo. The Viceroy was quite aware that the utmost he could do with his few troops would be to defend these fortresses of the town against the people, but that he could not subdue them. He was, moreover, reluctant to make use of fire-arms, as the insurgents proclaimed aloud everywhere their loyalty to the King. So he resolved to open a negotiation, to regain his lost ground, or at least to gain time. The Duke of Arcos has been accused of having, even in these early moments, conceived the plan to push the nobles forward, with the view to make them more hateful than ever to the populace, and thus to annihilate their influence completely, a policy that was so much the more knavish the more faithfully the nobles had stood by him during these last eventful twenty-four hours, at the peril of their own lives. Whatever his plan may have been, the result was the same; whether the idea proceeded from the Duke of Arcos, or his successor, the Count of Onate, the insurrection of 1647 caused the ruin of the aristocracy. The Prince of Montesarchio was the first whom the Viceroy sent as a messenger of peace. The name of D'Avalos was through Pescara and Del Vasto closely associated with the warlike fame of the times of Charles V. His reputation had been brilliant from the period of the Moorish wars until now. Great possessions secured him great influence in many parts of the kingdom. Montesarchio rode to the market-place provided with a written promise of the Viceroy's touching the abolition of the taxes. He took an oath in the church of the Carmelites that the promise should be kept; the people refused to believe him. Then the Duke of Arcos resolved upon sending others. The general of the Franciscans, Fra Giovanni Mistanza, who was in the castle, directed his attention to the Duke of Maddaloni. Diomed Carafa had been for some time again a prisoner in Castelnuovo. Transactions with the banditti and arbitrary conduct toward the people had brought him to captivity, which was shared by his brother Don Giuseppe. For what reason he was selected for this work of peace, who had so heavily oppressed the lower classes, and had committed such acts of violence that he had the credit of being the leader of the most licentious cavaliers, is uncertain. It was said to be because he, as a patrician of the Seggio del Nido, had most counteracted the mischief of the tax, and therefore the populace was better inclined toward him than the members of the other _sedeles_. But others said, and indeed with more justice, that the acquaintance which he had with Domenico Perrone was the real cause of it; for this man had been first a leader of sbirri and then of banditti, and Diomed Carafa had had a great deal to do with both. However this might be, the Viceroy summoned him: he was to go to the great market-place and try to conclude a peace with the leaders of the people. There should be no further mention of his crimes or of punishment: Don Giuseppe Carafa was also received again into favor. The Duke mounted his horse and rode with several noblemen to the market-place. Arrived there, he employed all his eloquence. In the name of the Viceroy he promised free trade in all articles of food, and a general pardon. At first Maddaloni was well received. He was but too well known to many of the insurgents, and his mad conduct had procured him followers as well as enemies; but as he only repeated the same promises which had been made by the others, the crowd were out of humor. "No deceitful promises!" screamed a thousand voices; "the privileges, the privileges of Charles V." These privileges had long possessed the minds of the people. During the disturbances under the Duke of Ossuna many fabulous tales had been told about them. Genuino had then, as now, brought them forward. Not only freedom from taxes was contained in them, but an equality of power between the people and the nobility in the affairs of the town, by increasing the votes of the first, and by conceding a right of veto on resolutions affecting the people through the intervention of their deputies. This privilege they would have. This the Viceroy should confirm to them. They all screamed at the same time, but at last Maddaloni obtained a hearing. He promised to bring them the document--he would ask the Viceroy for it without delay. He was glad to escape the crowd, who prevented either himself or his horse from moving. Negotiations for peace could not check the fury of the people or its mania for destruction. As on the day before they had demolished the custom-houses, now the houses of all who had lately become rich were destroyed. They had already begun on the previous evening, but this was only a prelude. Masaniello, who had not left the market-place the whole day, drew up a catalogue, in concert with his associates, of all the houses and palaces the effects of which were to be destroyed. Many noblemen who believed that they might have some influence with the mob, had ridden and driven to the market-place, but they returned home without accomplishing anything, or went again to Castelnuovo, where numbers of them took refuge from the pressure of necessity. In the evening the flames burst forth in all parts of the town; much valuable property was sacrificed amid the rejoicings of the frantic populace, who screamed: "That is our blood; so may those burn in hell who have sucked it out of us!" As on Sunday the Jesuits and Theatines, now the Dominicans tried to appease the people. Their long processions were to be seen in the square of the obelisk, moving on to the houses of Sangro, Saluzzo, and Carafa, with burning torches; but the populace interrupted their prayers and litanies with angry words and many reproaches, and sent them home. Till late in the night the brilliantly lighted churches were filled with agonized supplicants. Early on the morning of July 9th, a more dreadful scene took place than on either of the earlier days. The destruction began at daybreak. All the property of the counsellor Antonio Miroballo, in the Borgo de' Vergini, was burning before his palace. Andrea Naclerio had caused the best furniture to be removed. The people traced it, destroyed it, dashed to pieces everything in the house and in the adjoining beautiful garden. At Alphonso Valenzano's everything that he possessed was ruined. In a place of concealment two small casks were found full of sequins, a box containing precious pearls, and a small packet of bills of exchange--it was all thrown into the fire. All the rich and noble persons who were concerned in the farming of tolls, as well as all members of the government, saw their houses demolished. Five palaces of the secretary-general of the kingdom, the Duke of Caivano, together with those of his sons, were burned. In one of them at Santa Chiara the valuable pictures which that noble, a lover of the fine arts, had collected, were destroyed--the carpets of silk-stuff interwoven with gold, the sumptuous silver vessels, and every sort of work of art, the worth of which was valued at more than fifty thousand ducats. The mob had already become so brutal that they stabbed the beautiful horses in their stalls and threw the lapdogs into the flames, while they trampled down the rare plants in the gardens and heaped up the trees for funeral piles. Above forty palaces and houses were consumed by the flames on this day, or were razed to the ground, while the unhappy possessors looked on from the forts and watchtowers of Castelnuovo upon the rapid conflagration, heard the threatening of the alarm-bells and drums, and the howlings of the unbridled populace, among which many thieves were pursuing their business and filling their pockets with plunder. News came out of the neighborhood that the peasants were rising on all sides, and that many beautiful castles belonging to illustrious noblemen were already in flames. Stupefied by the uproar, by the advice of a hundred counsellors, by a two-days' insurrection, the Duke of Arcos did not nevertheless give up the attempt at a reconciliation. Certainly he risked nothing by it, for he had no other means in his power; but the hazard to the noblemen who delivered his messages was so much the greater. With great difficulty Montesarchio and Satriano escaped the rage of the populace. Six cavaliers were enclosed by barricades, and only regained their freedom by promising to obtain the transmission of their privileges. To oblige the Viceroy the Duke of Maddaloni rode once more into the market-place, carrying with him a manifesto according to which all the gabelles which had been introduced since the time of Charles V were abolished, and a general amnesty granted for the crimes already committed. Scarcely had Diomed Carafa read the paper when the tumult began again worse than before. The bystanders screamed out that this was not what they wanted; he was deceiving them in concert with the Viceroy. In vain he sought to appease them. The tumult increased. Suddenly Masaniello sprang upon the Duke. It was said that he had once received blows instead of gold from one of his servants when he had sold fish at his palace. Perhaps it is only one of the many fables that are attached to the name of the fisherman of Amalfi. Amid wild imprecations he seized the reins of his horse, took hold of the knight by his belt and long hair, tore him from the saddle with the assistance of his followers, and caused his hands to be tightly bound together by a rope; then he delivered the prisoner to Domenico Perrone and his associate Bernardino Grasso, to be strictly guarded. The last remnant of personal respect for the nobility which the populace had preserved on earlier occasions in the midst of all their disturbances, had now quite disappeared. The hand of Masaniello had torn asunder the tie of centuries of habit. The Viceroy was dreadfully shocked when he knew the danger into which Maddaloni had fallen for his sake. He sent the prior of the Johannites, Fra Gregorio Carafa, brother of the Prince of Roccella, and afterward grand master of Malta to try and obtain the freedom of the Duke. The sensible and placable words of the prior were as useless as his promises: the populace only answered him by screaming for the privileges of Charles V; for the privileges, in gold characters, which Giulio Genuino affirmed that he had seen. Gregorio Carafa felt himself in the same danger as Maddaloni, and returned to the castle without having accomplished anything; but the populace swore that they would allow no parliament which did not deliver up the document. Masaniello's prisoner did not remain long in confinement. The man into whose charge he had been committed was under old obligations to him. He conducted him into the convent of the Carmelites and confined him in one of the cells; but when the night came he favored his flight. Diomed Carafa escaped out of the convent in disguise--the fearful tumult and the drunkenness of the people were favorable to him. Unrecognized he gained his liberty; he ascended to the foot of the heights of Capo di Monte, which overlook Naples and its gulf. He wandered to the farmhouse of Chiajano, a considerable distance from the town; here he met a physician who was riding home after visiting a rich man, and he borrowed his horse. Thus, toward the dawn of day, crossing the streets that were known to him, he reached Cardito, a place on the road leading from the capital to Caserta. Maria Loffredo, to whom the place belonged, received him, and procured him the means of escape from the imminent peril of his life by forwarding him to La Torella in Principato, where the day before the uncle of his wife, Don Giuseppe Caracciolo, had retired with his family. Here the Duke found his wife and children, who, upon the news of his imprisonment, had placed themselves under the protection of their relations. The nobility fled on all sides when they not only saw their property, but even their lives, in danger. But we must return to Naples, where one event followed another in rapid succession. When the Viceroy saw that the efforts of his messengers proved ineffectual, he resolved to invoke the aid of the Archbishop. He did it unwillingly, for the Spanish rulers never trusted the spiritual superior pastors of Naples, with whom they had perpetual disputes about jurisdiction. Moreover, Cardinal Filomarino endeavored to stand as high in the favor of the people as he was low in that of his fellow-nobles. But the Duke of Arcos had no choice, and so he followed the advice of the papal nuncio, Monsignor Emilio Altieri, afterward Pope Clement X, and sent to the Archbishop to request him to come to the castle. Asconio Filomarino declared, in the presence of the members of the Collateral Council, that without producing the old document and the ratification of its contents any negotiation was useless, and he would only undertake it under this condition. Then an eager search was instituted, and the charter of privileges was found among the archives of the town in the monastery of San Paolo. Armed with this the Archbishop went to the Carmine, where he was received with rejoicings. The adjacent market was now the head-quarters of the leaders of the people. Here business was transacted, from here orders were issued; here Masaniello, Genuino, and their adherents took counsel together, as did the Duke of Arcos and his faithful followers in the castle. None thought of returning home this fine summer evening. The Archbishop soon perceived that he had deceived himself in fancying that he could still the waves of this stormy sea. He became conscious that it was not this or that privilege which the tumultuous populace desired; that their minds were chiefly bent upon destruction and murder, and after that upon obtaining quite different rights. While he read to them the old charter, and announced the new concessions of the Viceroy, he perceived how orders were issued and arrangements made that were in direct contradiction to his mission of peace. He saw the mischief spreading rapidly, that every moment was precious, and that the ruin of the city was no spectral illusion. He resolved not to leave the convent that night; indeed, to remain in it until the peace was entirely concluded. The apprehensions of the prelate were but too well founded. Another fearful evening ensued. The rebellion had gained new strength from the successes of the afternoon. The people had stormed the convent of St. Lorenzo, and thereby got possession of the artillery of the town. Masaniello, with his troops, had made prisoners of war two divisions of troops which the Viceroy wished to gather round him out of Pozzuoli and Torre del Greco. All this only excited men's minds the more. The proscription-list of the day before did not appear long enough to the people; they desired the destruction of thirty-six palaces of the nobility, and many were consumed by the flames. Houses were burning in the principal streets of the town, and the squares blazed with gigantic piles of furniture, pictures, books, and manuscripts--everything that was found was cast into the flames. The mothers ran to and fro with their children, whose little hands dragged after them what they could. As if around charcoal piles the charcoal-burners, those half-naked, half-savage inhabitants of the caves and alleys of the poisonous quarters of the poor in Naples, hovered with a fearful activity about these holocausts to the fury of the people, in perpetual motion and with unceasing cries and howlings. The entrances to the principal streets were secured by artillery; the bells were ringing incessantly, during which they carried about in procession effigies of Philip IV, proclaiming, "Long life to the King of Spain!" and planted the royal banner to wave together with that of the people, upon the lofty steeple of San Lorenzo. In this manner passed the night. Cardinal Filomarino remained in the convent of the Carmelites in active negotiation with the heads of the people. Many were the difficulties. The insurgents went as far as to demand that the castle of St. Elmo should be delivered up to them, and a wild storm burst out when the words of pardon and rebellion were mentioned in the concessions of the Viceroy. "We are no rebels!" they roared confusedly; "we want and need no pardon." The Archbishop was exhausted when the morning came and still no result. As the former day had ended in fire and desolation, so the present one--it was Wednesday, July 10th--commenced with desolation and fire. The news of Maddaloni's flight was like pouring oil upon the flames. If he had escaped, his effects should atone for it. Already the day before they had wanted to set fire to his palace, as well as those of many of the Carafas, that of Don Giuseppe, of the Prince and of the prior of Roccella, of the Prince of Stigliano, and others belonging to the family. Now a dense multitude moved toward the Borgo de' Vergini, where, by the Church of Santa Maria della Stella, without the then city walls, Diomed Carafa resided. But the affair turned out differently from what they had expected. Armed servants occupied the house, numerous arquebuses glittered from the windows; and the people from the market and from Lavinaro, who knew Masaniello's bravos only too well, contented themselves for the present with smashing some of the panes of glass, by flinging stones, and reserved their vengeance for a better opportunity, which did not fail them. Masaniello had meanwhile, with a presence of mind and a dexterity to which our admiration cannot be denied, profited by the time to extend and strengthen the authority so rapidly acquired over his contemporaries and superiors. He held counsel and issued decrees with his associates--with Genuino, who continued the soul of the insurrection; with the new deputy of the citizens, Francesco Antonio Arpajo, Genuino's old accomplice in his intrigues--and some insignificant persons. If during the first three days everything had been done in wild confusion, now the insurrection was formally organized. The people were informed that they were to assemble according to their quarters in the town, and meet in the market-place. The companies were formed immediately; more than one of them consisted of women belonging to the lowest class. It may be imagined what a band they formed when we consider the horrid race of women belonging to this class at Naples, in which corrupt blood struggles for preëminence with dirt and rags. Masaniello now placed himself at the head of this troop of people, and marched with them in procession through the town. They were one hundred fourteen thousand in number, most of them provided with fire-arms; for all the shops and magazines for arms, as well as the houses of the nobility, had been ransacked. Those among the citizens who would not march with them were obliged to stand armed before their own dwellings at the command of a fisherman, and in the name "of the most faithful people of the most faithful town of Naples, and in those who, by the grace of God and our Lord Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary, hold in their hands the government of the same." Oppressive decrees were issued; on one side were the royal arms, and on the other those of the people. "This Masaniello," writes Cardinal Filomarino, "has risen in a few days to such a height of authority and influence, and has known how to acquire so much respect and obedience, that he makes the whole town tremble by his decrees, which are executed by his followers with all punctuality and obedience. He shows discretion, wisdom, and moderation; in short, he has become a king in this town, and the most glorious and triumphant in the world. He who has not seen him cannot imagine him; and he who has cannot describe him exactly to others. All his clothing consists of a shirt and stockings of white linen, such as the fishermen are accustomed to wear; moreover, he walks about barefooted and with his head uncovered. His confidence in me and respect for me are a real miracle of God's, whereby alone the attainment of an end or understanding in these perplexing events is possible." How the pious Archbishop deceived himself in thinking that he had obtained his aim! Still he subdued the first storm which interrupted the negotiation, but the following one neither he nor anyone else could get the mastery over. He had been to Castelnuovo to obtain from the Viceroy the ratification of the conditions stipulated for by the leaders of the people, and was on the point of concluding the agreement in the Carmelite monastery when in an instant the most dreadful tumult began. Domenico Perrone, who had remained near Masaniello, had showed himself but little since the flight of the Duke of Maddaloni, because the suspicion was abroad that he had favored his escape. The church was full of men, who prevented the termination of the conferences, when this Perrone stepped up to the Fisherman and took his place by his side, as if he had something to tell him. At this moment a shot was fired; Masaniello hastened to the gates and cried out, "Treason!" Many shots were fired behind him, none hit him. Things went on wildly in the market-place. From two to three hundred banditti attacked the populace, who quickly recovered themselves and easily defeated the assailants. The most horrible carnage followed. "The people," relates Filomarino, "thronged with great violence to the convent, in the belief that there banditti or their adherents were concealed. They ransacked everything, but found nothing excepting six barrels of powder. Your holiness may imagine the state of indescribable confusion of the town, while thirty thousand armed men, breathing rage and vengeance, rushed about, murdering all suspicious persons. The worst part went on in the church and convent of the Carmine, where I was staying. In my room I gave many dying persons the absolution; among them a tailor, who was shot down at my side. "When the carnage came to an end it was suddenly rumored that the banditti had poisoned the springs at Poggio Reale, which supply the greater part of the town with water. The fury of the people was again roused. I caused a pitcher of water to be brought, and drank it in the presence of many persons, which silenced the suspicion; and as your holiness is much respected in this town, and even from the time in which you were a nuncio here, they have a pleasant recollection of you, so in the time of utmost need I bless the people in your name, and admonish them to be quiet for the love of you, which also does not fail of its effect." The Viceroy was so much the further from coming to any agreement, the more Masaniello's power and authority increased and the more uncomfortable and dangerous the position of the Viceroy became, in the midst of a rebellious city, in the confined space in the castle, and a scarcity of provisions. He therefore thought himself obliged to discover in writing a knowledge of the unsuccessful plan of Diomed Carafa, and pressed the Archbishop to hasten the business. This was not easy, owing to the savage excitement of the victorious and drunken populace, and the intrigues of the artful advisers of the Fisherman, who were pursuing, at the same time, their own selfish aims. The streets were become to such a degree the theatre for deeds of violence that Masaniello issued an order that each person was obliged to keep a lamp or torch burning before his own dwelling. The assaults made with daggers, pocket pistols, and other short weapons were so frequent that, after the leader of the people had been twice shot at, a prohibition was issued against wearing cloaks and long clothes that could conceal such weapons. Even women were no longer allowed to wear certain articles of clothing, which on account of their size were called _guard infante_, and even Cardinals Filomarino and Trivulzio laid aside their robes. In the most important positions of the city barricades were built with baskets full of earth and heavy planks for the double purpose of repelling the sallies of the Spaniards from the castle, and preventing them from receiving supplies from without. The people were masters of the whole town, with the exception of Castelnuovo, the park, and the adjoining artillery, and of the castles dell' Uovo, Sant' Elmo, and Pizzofalcone, positions which placed it in the power of the Spaniards to turn Naples into a heap of ruins if they made use of the artillery. But the Duke of Arcos wished to spare the town as long as possible, and the castles were weakly garrisoned, and still less stocked with provisions. At length on Thursday, July 11th, on the fifth day of the insurrection, an agreement was concluded. In the church of the Carmelites it was solemnly announced that the Viceroy had formally confirmed the old privileges of the town, and increased them by new ones, which were immediately made known. As a proof and seal of the reconciliation, Masaniello, who had now, besides the power, the title also, of a captain-general of the most faithful people, was to have a conference with the Viceroy. It was difficult to persuade the Fisherman to take this step. He owned that he saw the gallows before him; he would confess thoroughly before he went, and it required all the Archbishop's power of persuasion to decide him. At last he consented, under the condition that the conference should be in the palace, and not in the castle. He previously issued a proclamation through the whole town to know how many armed men could be marched out. The answer was a hundred forty thousand, but three hundred thousand if there were arms ready for them. A number of men indeed poured forth from the environs, but it is easy to perceive the exaggeration of the numbers. When everything was arranged, Masaniello began to dress himself; he had fasted the whole day, excepting some white bread dipped in wine after the cardinal's physician had tasted it, for he was possessed with the idea of being poisoned, and almost starved himself. His dress was of silver brocade; he wore at his side a richly ornamented sword; his head was covered with a hat with a white plume in it. In such pomp he is represented in a remarkable picture by the hand of Domenico Garguilo--called Micco Spadone--whose paintings have represented to us many of the scenes of this revolution. The Fisherman of Amalfi is riding at the head of a tumultuous crowd, surrounded by adults and boys; his white horse is made to gallop; upon his breast is to be seen a medallion with a picture of the Madonna of Carmel. In the middle of the market-place, where the scene opens opposite to the church of the Carmelites, there are bloody heads ranged in a double row round a marble pedestal on which no statue is any longer to be seen, and the gibbet and the wheel await the new victims among those who are persecuted, or have already been dragged thither by the populace. The afternoon was already advanced when Cardinal Filomarino got into his carriage, before the church, with his house-steward, Giulio Genuino, and two persons of his suite. Masaniello rode at his right hand, and at his left Arpaja, the deputy of the people. In the streets through which the procession passed, from the market-place to the square of the castle, the people were armed, and formed into bands of six thousand companies, who lowered their colors before the cardinal and the captain-general. Thousands and thousands had hastened thither to witness so remarkable a spectacle. In the square of the castle were placed over the gate of the palace of the Prince of Cellamare the effigies of Charles V and Philip IV under a canopy. Masaniello stopped, drew out the charter of the old privileges, together with the new, that he carried before him on his saddle, and spoke to the assembled crowd, to whom he announced that everything was settled. The people replied that what he had done was well done, and so the procession marched on, preceded by a trumpeter, proclaiming, "Long life to the King, and the most faithful people of Naples!" The Viceroy had repaired to the palace, which had been hastily prepared. He received the deputation of the people in the saloon of Alva, where the frescoes recalled the most glorious times of Spain. Masaniello flung himself down before him; the Viceroy raised him up, with friendly words, embraced him, went with him and the cardinal into the adjoining royal saloon, and when the throng of people filled the square and the uproar continued to increase, he entreated him to show himself on the balcony. Masaniello did it; but when he reëntered the saloon he was so overpowered by the sensations of the day that he sank unconscious on the ground. Now the Viceroy became uneasy when he thought of the vengeance of the people if anything happened to their idol. But Masaniello recovered, and the actual conference began. The articles of the treaty were confirmed, and their publication was to take place two days afterward. Masaniello was recognized in his office as captain-general of the people, received a golden chain, and was conducted by the proud Duke to the stairs, and publicly called a faithful servant of the King and a glorious defender of the people. He kissed the hand of the Viceroy, and was dismissed by him with another embrace. The peace was concluded, though not yet solemnly ratified; but how little did the state of the town correspond to it! In the same night, while Masaniello was entertained by Cardinal Filomarino, a cry was again raised of treason and banditti; watch-fires were kindled, and the clatter of arms heard. The captain-general of the people governed, as there was no magistrate in Naples. In the obscurity of the night he caused the heads of fourteen persons to be cut off, without trial or judgment, upon the accusation of their being banditti. He had a wooden scaffold erected before his house of the same sort as the booths of the mountebanks. Here he issued his orders, and printed decrees appeared: "By the command of the illustrious Lord, Maso Aniello of Amalfi, Captain-general of the Most Faithful People." He had memorials and petitions brought to him on the point of a halberd, and read to him by his secretary, upon which he issued his orders like an absolute ruler. The price of oil and of corn was fixed. It was forbidden to show one's self in the streets after the second hour in the night, excepting to minister the last rites of the Church, or to visit the sick and women in labor. All priests were to present themselves, that it might be investigated whether they were real ecclesiastics or banditti in disguise. A number of burdensome directions about costume were published. There was a rich harvest for spies and accusers. What had been at the first a defence against tyranny and arbitrariness became now only worse tyranny. No families of noble rank could remain. None could trust or even order about their servants, for Masaniello summoned the domestics to arms and rewarded their treachery to their lords. Armed bands, under known leaders, had formed themselves, and went their own ways unchecked. Five days were sufficient to put an end to all discipline and order. During these wild doings no privacy could be had. If the errors of the nobility had been borne hitherto, now began the saturnalia of the populace, and they were far more bloody and horrible than those of the nobles. This was the condition of the town of Naples at the time when King Philip's Viceroy and the Captain-general of the Most Faithful People met in the cathedral on July 17th to publish solemnly the new treaty. The venerable church had witnessed many changes in the relations and destinies of the kingdom proclaimed in her vaulted halls, with the history of which it had, so to speak, grown up; but never had it been the theatre for such a degradation of the royal power. Before the ceremony took place, the Duke of Arcos was obliged to submit to many humiliations. No cavalier was allowed to accompany him in the procession, because Masaniello had forbidden it. The Fisherman had disarmed all persons of rank, but armed _popolans_ stood in double rows along the streets, which were necessarily cleansed from dirt and rubbish, and the balconies were hung with tapestry. The Cardinal-archbishop, in pontifical attire, took his seat under the _baldachin_, while at some distance from him sat the Viceroy and Masaniello. The Knight of Alcantara, Donato Cappola, Duke of Canzano, read the articles instead of the secretary of the kingdom. The principal contents were the confirmation of the old privileges of Ferdinand of Aragon till the time of Charles V; a remission of all guilt and punishment for crimes of _lese-majesté_, and, on account of the disturbances, an equality of the nobility and the people with reference to the number of votes in affairs of the town; the abolition of all gabelles and taxes which had been introduced since the time of the emperor Charles V, with the exception of those upon which private persons had rights; liberty of the market, and remission of punishment for the excesses committed in the destruction of houses and property. The ratification of the treaty from Madrid was to follow within the three months; till that time the people were to continue in arms. During the reading of these articles Masaniello had been very uneasy, and had made observations first on one point and then on another. When Donato Cappola had finished reading he wanted to take off his sumptuous dress of silver brocade in the middle of the church, because he declared that he was now nobody. When he was hindered from doing this, he flung himself upon the ground and kissed the feet of the cardinal. The Duke of Arcos swore to the contract, with his hand upon the Gospels. The Archbishop sang the _Te Deum_, and the people shouted "Long life to the King of Spain!" The companies fired their rifles; the Viceroy returned through the streets, swarming with men, to the castle, and everywhere resounded the cry, "Long life to the King and the Duke of Arcos!" Then, as Masaniello returned home, the companies all lowered their colors as he passed. The power of the Fisherman of Amalfi was at its height; but already he was near his ruin. The unusual way of life, the always increasing excitement, the constant speaking and watching, the small quantity of nourishment which he took from dread of poison--all this, in the most fearful heat of summer, affected him bodily and completely turned his head. His actions can only be explained by their being the beginning of insanity. If a crowd of people did not please him, he attacked and wounded them right and left. All the persons, amounting to a thousand, that lived near his cottage on the market-place he expelled from their dwellings, that these might be destroyed and he might build a large palace for himself. He lavished gold and silver with prodigality, and gave a number of prostitutes rich dowries; he distributed the titles of princes and dukes, gave great banquets at Poggio Reale and at Posilipo, to which he invited the Viceroy, and sent his wife and mother in magnificent dresses to visit the Duchess of Arcos. "If your excellency is the vice-queen of the ladies," said the Fisherman's wife, "I am the vice-queen of the women of the people." But fear of the Duke of Maddaloni haunted him like a spectre. He ordered his beautiful villa at Posilipo to be destroyed, and made his people ransack once more his pillaged palace at Santa Maria della Stella. The barber of the Duke and a Moorish slave bought their lives, the first by giving him various jewels that had been concealed, and the other told him that it was Diomed Carafa who had caused the admiral's ship to be set on fire, which had been blown into the air the preceding May. The Moor, for this lie, obtained the command of four companies of the people. The Fisherman put to death many poor musicians merely because they had been in the service of Maddaloni. The Duke's correspondence was intercepted, but as it was written in cipher it only increased the suspicion. The new master of Naples repaired himself to the palace of Carafa, and wanted to dine there; but he changed his mind, and had a dinner served up with great pomp at a neighboring convent. While he was eating there, some of his people dragged thither two portraits of the Duke and his father, Don Marzio. Upon them he vented his childish rage; smashed the frames; cut out the heads, which he put on pikes, which he commanded to be placed on the table before him. On his return from the market he put on a suit of Carafa's clothes, of blue silk embroidered with silver; he hung on his neck a gold chain, and fastened in his hat a diamond clasp, all the property of his enemy who had escaped. Then he flung himself on a horse, drew forth his pistols with both hands, and threatened to shoot anyone who approached him, or who showed himself at the windows, galloped to the sea, where was the gondola of the Viceroy, undressed himself in it, was dried with fine Dutch linen, and put on a shirt of Maddaloni's trimmed with lace; and hearing that Maddaloni had gone toward Piedimonte d'Alife, he ordered a troop of two thousand men to march thither and seize him. But as these men, undisciplined in arms, as usual played their parts as heroes better in the streets than in the open field, they fared wretchedly. The Prince of Colobrano, a cousin of the Duke's, with some other friends, surprised them suddenly in the mountains with not more than a hundred men. Many perished in battle, others of their exertions and hunger, and, when the intelligence of Masaniello's unfortunate end reached them, the wretched remainder of the troops returned to Naples. Masaniello's supremacy was approaching its termination--madness and cruelty strove within him. It was the worst kind of mob rule. At the entrance of the Toledo, not far from the royal palace, a high gallows was erected. Every complaint was listened to, and no defence; no one felt secure in his home or in his family; the houses of the nobility all stood empty, and the most sensible of the people saw that the continuation of this state of things could only lead to universal ruin; the churches were profaned under the pretext that treasure or banditti were concealed in them; the terrible decorations of the great market-place were increased by above two hundred heads, and spread a real plague under the scorching rays of the sun. Cardinal Filomarino had either lost his influence or else the dread of losing his popularity made him impotent. Yet he wrote to the Pope: "The wisdom, the acuteness, and the moderation first shown by this man are entirely gone since the signature of the capitulation, and are changed into audacity, rage, and tyranny, so that even the people, his followers, hate him." Among these followers, before all, were Genuino and Arpajo; but when they saw that they could do nothing with this hare-brained man, that everything was going to ruin, and that their own ill-acquired position was therefore in the greatest danger, they came to an understanding with the Viceroy and his Collateral Council. The Viceroy, in his own person, conferred with common murderers, and the Feast of Our Lady of Carmel, on Thursday, July 16th, was fixed for the execution of the plan. During the night all the military posts were strengthened, soldiers were concealed in different houses, and the galleys were brought near the shore. Silently and gloomily the masses filled the streets; a dull mood seemed to have taken possession of everyone. The Archbishop was celebrating high mass in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine. Scarcely was it ended and the prelate gone when Masaniello, with a crucifix in his hand, mounted the pulpit. His speech was a mixture of truth and madness; he complained of the inconstancy of the people, enumerated his services, described the oppressions that would fall upon them if they deserted him; he confessed his sins, and admonished the others to do the same before the Holy Virgin, that they might obtain the mercy of God, and as he raised the crucifix to bless the people a woman called to him to be silent, that the Mother of God would not listen to such nonsense. He began to undress himself in the pulpit, to show how emaciated he was by labor and sleepless nights. A Carmelite monk then sprang upon the lunatic, compelled him to descend the steps, and dragged him, with the assistance of the rest of the monks, into the convent, where, in a complete state of exhaustion, he flung himself upon a bed in one of the cells and fell asleep. The mercenaries hired by the Duke of Arcos and nine men belonging to the people had been for a long while in the church, armed with daggers and pistols. Scarcely was the divine service ended, which had been interrupted by this scandalous scene, when these men hastened to the convent and inquired for Masaniello. The monks wanted to defend him; an uproar took place. The sleeper awoke, believed that they were some of his followers, and hastened to the gates. At the same moment the murderers pressed into the passage and perceived their victim. Five shots were fired. Mortally wounded by one of them, he fell to the ground, while he covered his face with his hand, uttering the cry, "Ah, ye vagabonds!" Salvatore Cattaneo cut off his head with a blunt knife, seized hold of it by the hair, and hastened out with the cry, "Long life to the King of Spain!" The populace stood there thunderstruck; no sound was heard, but none detained the murderers, who hurried off. They soon met some small bands of Spanish soldiers, whom they joined, and exclaiming "Long life to Spain!" they went on. The Viceroy, accompanied by numerous noblemen, had just left the castle to go into the park when the news of the accomplishment of the deed reached him. It is said that he showed his joy in a way unbecoming his high rank; but Don Francesco Capecelatro, who was present, only remarks that the news arrived at the moment that the Duke of Arcos had said he would pay ten thousand ducats to any person who would bring him Masaniello dead or alive. The tumult began immediately afterward. The murderers came, bearing the head upon a pike; boys seized the corpse, dragged it through the streets, and buried it outside the city walls by the gate which leads to the market-place. Many best known as partisans of the murdered man atoned by their lives for their short day of power. His relations were secured. But still the humor of the people was so little to be trusted that the Viceroy caused the fortifications to be hastily put in repair. The news of the deed reached Cardinal Filomarino while on his way from the Carmine to his own house; he went directly to the palace, and then rode with the Duke of Arcos and many of the principal nobles to the cathedral, and from thence through the streets to the market. The armed troops of people still stood everywhere; they lowered their colors with the cry, "Long life to the King and the Duke of Arcos!" The privileges were confirmed and a general pardon proclaimed, from which only Masaniello's brother and brother-in-law were excluded. Francesco Antonio continued to be deputy of the people; Giulio Genuino entered upon his promised office as one of the presidents of the chamber; on the very same day many of the nobles returned to their deserted mansions. The populace was still as if stunned; but as soon as the following morning, when the price of bread was raised because the commissary-general of provisions and the bakers declared that it was quite impossible to subsist upon the hitherto low prices, the humor of the people suddenly changed. The mob complained that its hero and deliverer had been given up; they hastened to dig up the corpse; they sewed the head to the body, washed it, put on it some sumptuous clothes, and laid it with his bare sword and staff of command upon a bier covered with white silk; which was borne by the captains Masaniello had appointed. About four thousand priests conducted the procession by the order of the Archbishop, who wavered incessantly between the two parties, and excited more evil than good. The standard-bearers dragged their banners upon the ground, the soldiers lowered their arms, the dull sound of muffled drums was heard. Above forty thousand men and women followed the coffin, some singing litanies, the others telling their beads. The bells pealed from all the steeples, lights were burning in all the windows. The procession had left the Carmine at the twenty-second hour of the day; it did not return till the third hour of the night. The corpse was lowered into the earth with the usual ceremonies in the vicinity of the church doors. Never had a viceroy or a great prince been borne to the grave as was Tomaso Aniello of Amalfi. PEACE OF WESTPHALIA WAR OF THE FRONDE A.D. 1648 ARTHUR HASSALL By the arbitrary impositions of the minister, Cardinal Mazarin, an insurrection was provoked in France whereby Mazarin was temporarily driven from power. This struggle is sometimes called the "War of the Fronde," and as an episode in French history, although productive of little definite result, it has a dramatic as well as a political interest. It shows the higher French nobility and the representatives of the people arrayed against the party of the court during the early minority of Louis XIV. "The Fronde" is the name that was given to the anticourt party. The word _fronde_ means a sling, and the origin of its use as a party name is attributed to an epigram. Someone is said to have compared the _Frondeurs_, as the members of the party were called, to children with slings, who let fly stones and then hide or run away. This outbreak followed closely upon the conclusion of the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years' War. To Mazarin the great advantages gained by France through that treaty were mainly due. The whole period is remarkable for its antagonisms and cross-purposes, and these are brought to view by Hassall with much subtlety of insight and felicity of observation. The Peace of Westphalia constitutes an important epoch in the history of Europe. It marked the close of the struggle in Central and Northern Europe between the Reformation and Counter-reformation movements, and the failure of the attempts of Emperor Ferdinand III to form all Germany into an Austrian and Roman Catholic empire. After the Peace of Westphalia, commercial rather than religious motives regulated the policy of the chief states of Europe. But the peace did not merely mark a revolution in men's ways of thought; it also signalized a remarkable change in the balance of forces on the Continent. For upward of a century the Hapsburgs, supreme in Vienna and Madrid, and closely united by family ties, had threatened to impose their will upon Europe. After 1648 the danger ceased. The weakness of the Emperor and the strength and independence of the German princes rendered any close union with Spain impossible, while Spain herself, though she struggled till 1659 against her impending fate, was already a declining power. From another point of view, the Peace of Westphalia had a special interest. It affords an admirable illustration of a successful effort on the part of the German princes to strengthen their own position at the expense of the central power. All over Europe the monarchical principle was being assailed. In Holland the power of the stadtholder depended entirely on the will of the merchant aristocracy; in England a republic was shortly to be established; in Italy the revolt of Masaniello seemed at one time likely to lead to the formation of a Neapolitan government independent of Spain; and even in Russia aristocratic discontent against the Czar existed. Thus the movement in France against Mazarin, which shortly developed into the Fronde struggle, was but one of many similar manifestations of a general tendency all over Europe to attack monarchical institutions. Mazarin was well aware of the impossibility of checking the general disaffection in France till Austria had been humbled, and therefore he devoted all his efforts to bringing the war to a successful conclusion. The actual congress was not opened at Munster till April 10, 1644, and it was not till the end of 1645 that the negotiations seriously began. The questions to be settled were many and complicated. France and Sweden demanded compensations either in land or money; the Elector of Brandenburg wished to occupy all Pomerania, which the Swedes had seized; the Elector Palatine demanded restoration to his dominions. Then there were innumerable questions dealing with the religious situation, the United Provinces, Italy, Catalonia, Portugal, the constitution of the empire, and the position of the German princes. Early in the proceedings Mazarin brought forward France as the protector of the ancient German liberties, and so secured the friendship of the imperial towns and the German princes. The Landgrave of Hesse, the Elector of Trèves, and the Duke of Neuburg readily accepted the protection of France. It proved impossible to gain the fickle Duke of Lorraine; it was equally difficult to win over the powerful Elector of Bavaria. Maximilian I of Bavaria had played an important part in the Thirty Years' War, but from June, 1644, he began to enter into periodical negotiations with Mazarin. The cardinal placed no reliance on these negotiations, which he recognized were meant to sow discord between France and her allies. Consequently it was not till after the battle of Nordlingen, followed later by the devastation of his territory by Turenne, that Maximilian made serious overtures to France. In an atmosphere of intrigue such as existed at Munster, Mazarin did wisely in pressing on military operations. There is no doubt that the continuation of the war had completely disorganized the financial administration. Various devices such as the _toisé_ had been employed by the government to raise funds, but each attempt had been met by fresh opposition. In 1647 recourse was had to a tax known as the _édit du tarif_, which modified the existing regulations upon the entry of provisions into Paris. Great opposition was raised by the Parliament, which still more violently opposed in January, 1648, a tax upon all possessors of lands. A _lit de justice_ was necessary to provide for the requirements of the government. The operation of the unpopular tax, or _rachat_, as it was termed, was postponed, and the creation of many new _maîtres de requêtes_ provided a certain amount of money. At the lit de justice, Omer Talon, the intrepid _avocat-général_, delivered an eloquent oration on the condition of the French peasants. "For ten years, sire," he said, "the country has been ruined, the peasants reduced to sleep upon straw, their furniture sold to pay taxes. To minister to the luxury of Paris, millions of innocent people are obliged to live upon rye and oat bread, and their only protection is their poverty." The creation of new maîtres de requêtes was stoutly opposed, but in vain, Broussel distinguishing himself by his attack upon the government. Thus, while victory was being prepared by Turenne, Condé, and Schomberg, a revolution was breaking out in Paris, and in many other parts of the kingdom resistance to the government was the order of the day. Brittany and Toulouse showed especial audacity in their attacks on government officials. At his wits' end for money, Emery resolved to demand as a condition of the renewal of the _paulette_--a tax paid by those officials whose offices were hereditary--a fine of four years' salary. In the hope of conciliating the Parliament of Paris, the fine was not imposed on that body. The Parliament, however, placed itself at the head of the opposition, and on May 13, 1648, it and the sovereign courts--the _chambre des comptes_, the _cour des aides_, and the _grand conseil_--signed a bond in union, and the courts decided to send representatives to a conference in the chamber of St. Louis. Like Louis XVI, in 1789, the Queen mother endeavored to prevent the meeting of the deputies. Like Louis, she failed in her object, and the court was forced to yield. The Spaniards had taken Courtrai, and it was well to temporize. Money was urgently needed, and Mazarin hoped, by appealing to the patriotism of the Parliament, to obtain the requisite supplies. He represented that the conduct of the Parliament strengthened the cause of Spain and ruined the credit of France. Unless money was forthcoming it would be impossible to keep up the French armies or to maintain order at home. Catalonia would have to be abandoned, the alliance with Sweden and Hesse would be broken off; in a word, all would be lost. The Parliament, however, was dead to all sense of patriotism, and was prepared to sacrifice the nation to its own petty interests. Orléans, who had joined the malcontents, promised that the deputies who had been imprisoned or exiled by Mazarin should be restored. Mazarin, hoping for some striking success on the frontier, determined to temporize, and on June 30, 1648, in open defiance of the orders of the government, the chamber of St. Louis was constituted as a permanent political body to carry out reforms. With its establishment the First or Parliamentary Fronde began its stormy career. In appearance the Parliament of Paris was like the English Parliament, bent on securing valuable constitutional rights. Its members demanded proper control of the taxes, liberty for the individual, the abolition of _lettres de cachet_. But in doing so they were encroaching on the rights of the States-General, which was the only representative assembly of the French nation. And, moreover, it was soon evident that the Parliament aimed primarily at securing its own privileges. Each step in the struggle between the Parliament and the Crown brings out more conclusively the selfishness of the lawyers and their lack of statesmanship. In the New or Second Fronde the nobles made no pretence of securing for the nation constitutional rights. They openly demanded provincial governments, pensions, and gifts of money. Thus the principal cause of the failure of the Fronde movement was apparent from the first. The Parliament had no constitutional basis; its opposition to Mazarin, which was in many respects justified, was tainted by the egoism and selfishness of its members. It had in reality no great aims; it had no hold on the people. As time went on the movement was rapidly wrecked by the intervention of the nobles and court ladies. De Retz was under the influence of the Duchess of Chevreuse; the Duke of Beaufort was governed by the Duchess of Montbazon; Condé revealed all his plans to the Duchess of Châtillon, who conveyed them to Mazarin; Turenne was encouraged in disloyalty by the Duchess of Longueville. There was no lack of ability on the side of the opposition; Molé and De Retz represented talents of different qualities, and the latter remained the most brilliant pamphleteer of the period. Rochefoucauld, who at one time was under the sway of the Duchess of Longueville, gives ample evidence in his _Maximes_ of consummate ability and of a profound knowledge of human nature; while Turenne and Condé, who at the period were united against the crown, were the two ablest generals of the day. Among other conspicuous men of the day who opposed Mazarin, Chavigny and Châteauneuf were perhaps the most dangerous. But the association of most of these heroes of the Fronde with the court ladies ruined all chances of success. Love-affairs and politics became hopelessly intermingled, and the New Fronde has remained a ridiculous episode in French history. Though the Old Fronde was narrow-minded and selfish, and the New Fronde absurd, the movements were fraught with great danger to the monarchy. In 1648 Mazarin at first failed to recognize the gravity of the situation, and he thought that he had only to combat the intrigues of some of the nobles. In the later phases of the struggle he often erred through his belief in diplomacy and his tendency to follow moderate counsels. But he never faltered in his determination to preserve the rights of the French monarchy; he easily outmatched his opponents in intrigue; and eventually, supported by the _bourgeoisie_ and the mass of the nation, he triumphed over both the Parliament and the nobles. Throughout the early months of 1648 the opposition of the Parliament was intensified by the folly and unpopularity of Emery, the superintendent of the finances, and by the failure of Mazarin to master the details of the French administrative system. Moreover, he had given some justification for the attacks made upon him by the favors which he showered upon his own relations, and by the means employed in order to secure for his brother the title of cardinal. The truth is Mazarin cared little for home affairs, and gave no thought to matters connected with the commerce and agriculture of France. Unlike Henry IV and Richelieu, he made no attempt to open up new sources of prosperity for France by founding colonies, encouraging trade, introducing manufactures, or protecting agriculture. His neglect of the internal administration was largely answerable for the financial embarrassments of France, for the misery of the people, and to a large extent for the outbreak of the First Fronde. At the same time it must be remembered that his predecessor was in some measure responsible for the troubles which ensued after his death. Richelieu had made no efforts to reform the financial administration of France, and both the direct and indirect taxes were levied unfairly and oppressively. The financiers who farmed the indirect taxes made enormous fortunes out of the taxpayers; fraud and peculation were common; the provinces were in a state of wretchedness. The sale of offices, the system of farming the taxes, and the _gabelle_ or tax on salt were left untouched; the enormous and harmful concessions given to the nobles during the minority of Louis XIII had not been revoked or diminished. On his accession to office Mazarin found that the revenues of the next three years had been spent. Moreover, on Richelieu's death few men of marked capacity were to be found in France. Like Frederick the Great in the next century, Richelieu was jealous of any initiative on the part of his colleagues. He gradually concentrated in his own hands all the threads of the administration and controlled the generals in the field. His system produced useful agents, but neither statesmen nor able commanders. The concentration of all authority in his own hands checked reforms in the government departments, and one writer has stated that "the Fronde would never have taken place if Richelieu had thought more of securing efficiency in those departments to which he could not give sufficient personal attention, and less on concentrating all authority in his own hands." After Richelieu's death a policy of firmness, if not severity, was required. The easy rule of Anne of Austria, with its pardons and concessions, resulted in an increase of independence on the part of the nobles, and led ultimately to the Fronde. The policy of leniency brought numerous difficulties and dangers which Mazarin in the end succeeded in overcoming. That he was able to do so was probably due partly to his own perseverance, partly to the policy of Richelieu, who had weakened the nobles and the Parliament and deprived them of all substantial power. Had Richelieu lived the Fronde could never have occurred; that it did occur "was due to Mazarin's inability to rule with the same iron hand as his more illustrious predecessor." Rarely had a minister, occupied in carrying on a prolonged war, been so involved in internal difficulties as was Mazarin. He had to superintend the movements of French generals in Flanders, Germany, Italy, and Spain, and at the same time to keep in constant communication with his agents at Munster, who carried on complicated peace negotiations under his instructions. During the earlier part of his ministry successes abroad strengthened the government at home and enabled it to take up a firm attitude toward its opponents. In 1643 the victory of Rocroi had aided in the establishment of Anne of Austria's regency; in 1645 the triumph at Nordlingen had enabled Mazarin to suppress the rising opposition of the Parliament of Paris; and in 1646 the capture of Mardyke, Dunkirk, Piombino, and Porto Longone had effaced the recollection of the failure at Orbitello. But in 1648 the situation at home was more critical and political passions ran high. Mazarin's neglect of the internal administration had led to the revival of the cabals suppressed in 1643, while the Parliament of Paris found in the general misery and misgovernment of the country some justification for its opposition to the court and the minister. Turenne's victory of Zusmarshausen in May, 1648, passed almost unnoticed in Paris, which was then seething with discontent. Mazarin, however, hoped that a victory won by the popular Condé in Flanders would at any rate arrest attention, strike the imagination of the Parisians, and enable the Court to deal a telling blow at its opponents. That the opposition had any real ground of complaint Mazarin never seems to have acknowledged, and he certainly at this time failed to grasp the gravity of the situation. The leaders of the Parliamentary Fronde were to a great extent men who "represented the highest type of citizen life" and who had the welfare of France at heart. In attacking a wasteful administration and a ruinous system of taxation, the Fronde movement is deserving of respect. There was much to urge against the frauds of contractors, unjust imprisonments, and the creation of new offices, and many of the suggested reforms of the chamber of St. Louis were excellent. On May 15, 1648, delegates from the four sovereign courts--the parliament, the grand conseil, the chambre des comptes, the cour des aides--had met in the chamber of St. Louis "to reform the abuses which had crept into the state." The thirty-two delegates who sat in that chamber formulated their demands, and practically claimed a share in the legislative authority. Their principal demands were: (1) That no tax should be levied unless previously voted by the Parliament of Paris; (2) that no one should be kept in prison for more than twenty-four hours without being tried; (3) that an investigation into the extortions of the farmers of the taxes should be made; (4) that a quarter of the _taille_ should be remitted, and that money gained from that source should be strictly appropriated to the wars; (5) that the intendants should be abolished; (6) that no new office should be created without the agreement of the Parliament of Paris. The Parliament of Paris thus proposed to take up a position similar to that occupied by the English Parliament. But the Parliament of Paris was unfitted to be a legislative body. It was merely a close corporation of hereditary lawyers, whose claim to political functions had been summarily dismissed by Richelieu. The demand for the abolition of the intendants at once testifies to its want of statesmanship. Among Richelieu's beneficial measures none was more valuable than the appointment of the intendants. By abolishing them the Parliament of Paris was threatening the unity of the whole internal administration. Without the intendants the provinces would once again fall into the incapable hands of the nobles, feudalism would again be rampant, and general confusion and anarchy would ensue. The Parliament no doubt attacked the intendants in the hope of succeeding to their functions and thus securing a considerable voice in the administration of the provinces. The intendants, too, whose full title was "intendants of justice, police, and finance," had often infringed upon the jurisdiction of the Parliament, which was always jealous of any invasion of its judicial powers. The proposals of the chamber of St. Louis constituted a distinct attack on the royal power; they also implied on the part of the sovereign courts an invasion of the rights of the nation. The King alone had legislative power, and the States-General alone had the right to present to him their grievances. At this crisis it is evident that the Parliament wished to supersede the States-General and to take their place. Such a usurpation on the part of a body of lawyers could not be tolerated either by the government or by the nation, and the resistance of the former eventually received the full support of the French people. Anne of Austria, in her determination to preserve for her son all the royal prerogatives intact, was furious at the demands of the sovereign courts, and was prepared to enter upon a contest with them without delay. Mazarin, however, persuaded her to temporize. Orléans, on July 7th, presided over a conference in his palace, and certain concessions were made by Mazarin to the opposition. The superintendent, Emery, was dismissed, and the incapable Marshal de la Meilleraye substituted. A chamber of justice was set up, to deal with all abuses connected with the financial administration. Over the abolition of the intendants there was much angry discussion. Eventually Anne gave a reluctant consent to the suppression of all except those in Languedoc, Provence, the Lyonnais, Picardy, and Champagne. During these conferences Orléans showed a sympathy with the Frondeurs and it was evident that he would not uphold the royal cause. Being determined at the first opportunity to resist the pretensions of the Parliament, and being desirous to sound the loyalty of Condé, Anne and Mazarin summoned the Prince to Paris. It was probably arranged at some interviews which took place on July 19th and the following day that the Prince should first crush the Archduke Leopold and then return to aid the government in overcoming the resistance of the Parliament. Till Condé had won a decisive victory the government thought it well to continue to temporize, and Anne of Austria simulated a desire to satisfy all the demands of the Frondeurs. On July 31st a royal declaration agreed to the majority of the claims made by the sovereign courts in the chamber of St. Louis. No satisfactory guarantee was, however, given with regard to the personal liberty of the subject, and Broussel and other extremists continued to agitate. The situation, which in many respects resembled that of 1792, remained critical, the Frondeurs desiring further radical changes, while the court anxiously awaited developments on the frontier. At last, on August 22, 1648, arrived the news of Condé's victory at Lens. "Heaven has at last declared in our favor," wrote Mazarin, "in the Low Countries no less than in other places." The victories of Zusmarshausen, Tortosa, and Prague had now been crowned by the victory of Lens. The superiority of the French arms was proved, and the courts prepared to crush the opposition of the Parliament. The success at Lens would in Mazarin's opinion enable him to force Spain to make peace, and to triumph over the Parliament. By the advice of the Count of Chavigny, the King's council--which included, besides the Queen Regent and Mazarin, the Dukes of Orléans and Longueville, the chancellor, Seguier, and Meilleraye, the superintendent of the finances--decided, like the court of Louis XVI in July, 1789, to carry out a _coup d'état_ and to arrest three members of the Parliament--Broussel, Blancmesnil, and Charton. The arrests were to take effect in August. On August 26th, the day on which a _Te Deum_ was being sung in Notre Dame in honor of the victory at Lens, the attempt to carry out the coup d'état was made. Unlike Charles I in his attempt to arrest the five members, the action of the French government was partially successful. Charton indeed escaped, but Broussel and Blancmesnil were seized. The populace of Paris at once rose and erected barricades. The whole city was in an uproar. The news that Masaniello had headed a rising in Naples against the tax-gatherers helped to excite the mob, just as the victories of the English Parliament had encouraged the aspirations of the French Parliament. At this point Paul de Gondi, better known as the Cardinal de Retz, the intriguing coadjutor of the Archbishop of Paris, became prominent. He appeared at the Palais Royal and advised the Queen Regent to yield to the popular wish and release Broussel and Blancmesnil. Having failed in his object, he set to work to inflame still more the passions of the multitude. On August 27th the situation became yet more serious, and the chancellor, Seguier, attacked by the mob, nearly lost his life. The Parliament endeavored, at first without success, to induce Anne to release the prisoners; but at length, yielding to the advice of Orléans and Mazarin, she consented to a compromise. The Parliament agreed not to interfere in political matters, and Broussel and Blancmesnil were released. The barricades disappeared and outwardly Paris was pacified. But all danger was by no means over. The Duke of Longueville had during the troubles held a very ambiguous attitude, and it was evident that he and other nobles were not loyal to the court. The troops had shown signs of mutiny; the days of the League seemed likely to return. On August 29th Mazarin made certain suggestions to the Regent which testified to his foresight and determination. He was resolved to restore the royal authority and to subdue the Parliament. He was determined to enforce the supremacy of the King in Paris, and till that had been accomplished the reputation of France would suffer abroad, trade would languish, the conclusion of the war would be deferred. Like Mirabeau, Mazarin recognized the necessity of removing the King and court from the influence of the capital. He therefore advised the departure of the court to Rueil, Conflans, or St. Maur, where the return of Condé could be awaited. On that general's arrival Paris could, if necessary, be coerced by force of arms. Meanwhile he urged the adoption of temporizing measures and of a policy of conciliation, with the object of dividing the enemies of the royal authority. Many of the bourgeoisie were opposed to the late seditious conduct of Paris, and the older members of the Parliament were disposed to peace. But a powerful party in the Parliament was determined to regain its political powers, and on the instigation of De Retz held meetings in order to consult upon the necessary measures to be taken. Moreover, the Count of Chavigny had deserted the cause of the court and urged the Parliament to resist Mazarin to the uttermost. It was obvious that a further collision between the royal authority and the Parliament was inevitable. Mazarin's mind was made up. On September 13th the court moved to Rueil, where it was joined by Orléans, Seguier, Meilleraye, and Condé. Two of the Cardinal's opponents, the Marquis of Châteauneuf and the Count of Chavigny, at once felt the heavy hand of the minister. The former was exiled; the latter was placed under arrest. The attempt of a deputation of the Parliament, headed by its president, Matthieu Molé, to secure the release of Chavigny and to induce the Queen Regent to return to Paris, failed, and the King's council annulled the decree of the Parliament itself. The Parliament prepared to take defensive measures, but the outbreak of hostilities was averted by the temporary triumph of a pacific spirit in the court. It is difficult to account for this sudden change; it was probably due to the fact that Mazarin could not depend upon the whole-hearted support of Condé in carrying out an energetic policy. Condé indeed stood apart from De Retz and looked with contempt upon the "long-robed" Parliament as much as he did upon the _canaille_. Like Napoleon he scorned mob rule and disorder. But for years he had been alienated from Mazarin, and hated him as much as he despised the Frondeurs. Yielding to the persuasions of De Retz, Condé advocated the assembling of a conference, hoping to bring about Mazarin's exclusion from its meetings. The conference first met at St. Germain on September 25th, the royal authority being represented by Orléans, Condé, Conti, and Longueville; and it lasted ten days, till October 4th. After long discussions the members agreed to an ordinance, which was published on October 22, 1648, and known as the Declaration of St. Germain. Most of the demands of the chamber of St. Louis were conceded. The financial, judicial, and commercial administration of the kingdom was regulated, and measures were taken to check arbitrary arrests and to reform the methods of taxation. This ordinance was the most important act of the First or Parliamentary Fronde, and represents the high-water mark of constitutional advance made by the Parliament and its supporters. It almost seemed that constitutional life was at last to begin in France. But if examined closely the Declaration of October 22d bears full evidence as to the selfish and narrow aims of the Parliament, and shows how every so-called constitutional effort on its part was tainted by its determination to secure its own privileges. In the declaration it is specially stated that the charges and privileges of the Parliament should be guaranteed. Though the regular payment of the _rentes_ of the Hôtel de Ville--a matter in which the bourgeoisie was interested--was enforced, and though there was a reference in general terms to the amelioration of the lot of the mass of the people, the declaration was principally concerned with securing and confirming the privileges of the Parliament. So far Mazarin and Anne had been forced to yield, and the Parliament had apparently won the day. But Mazarin had only simulated a yielding spirit; in reality, he was more determined than ever to establish the royal authority, to crush all opposition in Paris by a concentration of troops under a trusted commander. By his advice Anne had made promises which she never intended to keep, and Mazarin was simply biding his time. One of his most striking characteristics was his perseverance in carrying out his plans. Having fixed upon a policy, he carried it through in the end, though compelled to adopt various and unexpected methods before success was attained. It is noteworthy that the treaty of Westphalia and the treaty with the Frondeurs were signed on the same day. It is equally noteworthy that, while the Frondeurs were seemingly triumphant, Mazarin was making careful preparations for the civil war which he regarded as inevitable. On October 24, 1658, the Peace of Westphalia was signed between France and Sweden on the one hand and the representatives of the Emperor and the empire on the other. France secured Upper and Lower Alsace, the Sundgau, and the prefecture of ten imperial towns; in other words, the practical ownership of Alsace, though the rights of the imperial princes were for a long time a matter of difficulty. She also obtained recognition of her possession of (1) Metz, Toul, and Verdun, the three bishoprics conquered by Henry III, with their districts; (2) of Old Brisach, situated on the right bank of the Rhine; while the privilege of keeping a garrison in Philippsburg was also granted to France. Further, no fortress was to be placed on the right bank of the Rhine between Basel and Philippsburg. Indirectly France gained enormously. Her ally, Sweden, secured a foothold in Northern Germany, together with a vote in the Diet; and the practical independence of the princes of the empire was recognized. Mazarin had successfully carried on the foreign policy of Richelieu, and the situation of the great European states in 1648 speaks volumes for his skill and energy. The power of the house of Hapsburg was in many respects seriously curtailed. The Austrian branch could no longer aim at establishing a universal monarchy, and came out of the war with its resources much weakened. The Spanish branch had lost its preponderance in Italy, Portugal had regained her independence, Catalonia was in revolt. Though Spain continued the war till 1659, she only lost by doing so, and her defeats and losses strengthened the position of France. French influence remained supreme in Germany for some thirty years, and was only destroyed by the ambition and shortsightedness of Louis XIV. Mazarin had not merely advanced the boundary of France toward the Rhine; he had established French preponderance in Europe, and had insisted on the recognition of the balance of power. The Peace of the Pyrenees in 1659 completed the work of the pacification of Westphalia. The conclusion of the war between France and the Emperor was hardly noticed in Paris, and this fact in itself is a striking illustration of the want of patriotism of the Frondeurs. Moreover, De Retz, in October, 1648, was actually considering the advisability of inviting the Spaniards to march on Paris. His plan was to send St. Ibal, his friend and relation, to Brussels to engage Fuensaldaña to advance. Already the Parliamentary Fronde was falling into the hands of plotters and traitors. On October 30th the court returned to Paris, and two months of anxiety followed. Orléans was with difficulty induced to forego his feelings of resentment toward Mazarin and to remain faithful to the royal cause. His support was all the more valuable as the Parliament was disposed to harass the government at every opportunity. It complained that the promises in the Declaration of October 22d were not carried out; that the grievances of the taxpayers had not been remedied; moreover, like the National Assembly in 1789, it was much agitated at the gradual concentration of troops around Paris. Though Orléans and Condé visited the Parliament in December and promised that the Declaration of October 22d should be loyally executed, the attacks on the government, and especially on Mazarin, increased in violence. Countless pamphlets styled _mazarinades_ were published containing abuse of the Cardinal. "It was the fashion to hate Mazarin," is the declaration of a court lady, and the hatred was shared by the nobles and the workmen of Paris. He gained no thanks for the conclusion of the Peace of Westphalia, but was attacked for not bringing the war with Spain to a close. These attacks on the Cardinal were intensified by the support which they gained from De Retz. In the existing complications lay his chance of securing at least notoriety. Utterly unprincipled, and absolutely devoid of any patriotic feelings, De Retz hoped during the coming troubles to become the practical ruler of Paris. For five years Paris read little else but mazarinades, which, with very rare exceptions, were utterly devoid of literary merit. These attacks on his authority and position implied, in Mazarin's opinion, the growth of revolutionary views, and he warned the Queen-mother that the situation in France resembled that in England at the opening of the civil war. He thought that his own position was like Strafford's, and he was prepared to act vigorously. The encroachments on the royal power increased, and the Cardinal advocated a fresh retirement from Paris. On January 5, 1649, the court, under circumstances of haste and secrecy, moved suddenly to St. Germain, and the Parisians the following morning "saw war, siege, and famine at their gates." The civil war had begun, and continued from January 6 to April 1, 1649. Mazarin hoped, by means of the troops, to cut Paris off from all supplies and to starve it into surrender. But the army of fifteen thousand was not large enough for carrying out so elaborate a scheme, and Mazarin had to be content with occupying the principal posts outside the city. Under Condé the military operations were efficiently performed, and the Parisians, with their hastily raised army, could do little but defend themselves. Though risings took place in the North and Southeast, the war of the First Fronde concentrated itself round the capital. At first Paris adopted a bold attitude. Under the influence of the Duchess of Longueville, who now "sank to the level of a mere adventuress," the Frondeurs were joined by many princes, such as her brother the Prince of Conti, her husband the Duke of Longueville, the Marshal de la Mothe, the Duke of Bouillon, and the Duke of Beaufort. The latter, together with De Retz, became the real leaders of the resistance to the court, and were the last to be reconciled to the government. While De Retz headed the Parliamentary movement, Beaufort, "the idol of the markets," led the mob. Hoping to stir up the provinces, the Duke of Longueville proceeded to Normandy; but Mazarin at once sent the Count of Harcourt to suppress all rebellious movements. In spite of this danger, and of small risings in the Southwest, the war of the First Fronde was mainly an attempt on the part of the Parliament of Paris to remedy certain existing evils in the government, though De Retz hoped to win a decisive success by means of the treason of Turenne. The treason of Turenne was more serious than possible rebellions in the provinces. That general, perhaps beguiled by the Duchess of Longueville, proposed to lead his army, composed mainly of Germans, to Paris. Fortunately, the German auxiliaries refused to follow him, and Turenne was compelled later to retire to Heilbronn, and thence to Holland. Freed from all fear of any serious risings in the provinces, and for the moment from any hostile movement on the part of Turenne, Mazarin was able to devote his energies to the task of subduing Paris. There, on January 12th, the mob had seized the Arsenal, and had secured possession of the Bastille. Two days later, on January 14th, Beaufort occupied Charenton, important as facilitating the entry of provisions into Paris. Possessed of Charenton and of the town of Brie-Comte-Robert, the Parisians could feel secure from all danger of being starved into surrender. In spite, however, of these successes, and of the continual efforts of De Retz and Beaufort, the Parisian levies proved no match for Condé's regular troops, before whom they fled on January 23d and again on January 29th. These reverses, together with the loss of Charenton on February 8th, encouraged the party of moderation among the clergy and the members of the Parliament to raise their voices in favor of peace. The people in Paris were becoming weary of the war, resented the sufferings to which they were subject, and complained of the conduct of their generals. From being a determined stand for liberties and reforms, the war was already showing signs of degenerating into a mere selfish struggle on the part of the nobles against the centralization of the royal power, and especially against Mazarin. In many respects the siege of 1649 foreshadowed that of 1870. There were the same levity and anarchy, the same endurance and courage. Condé and Moltke both experienced similar difficulties in their attempts to subdue the French capital. Through the influence of De Retz negotiations were entered into with Spain, and a Spanish envoy arrived in Paris. But a reaction had begun, and the moderate party in the Parliament protested against dealings with Spain. The clergy favored a settlement, and the news of the execution of Charles I shocked the consciences of the more reasonable men on both sides. The loss, too, on February 25th, of the town of Brie-Comte-Robert increased enormously the difficulty of securing supplies. Though De Retz remained master of the Parisian populace, and intractable, and though the nobles of the Fronde stood aloof, moderate counsels prevailed, and on February 28th the Parliament decided to send deputies, who should treat, not with Mazarin, but with the courts. The interests of the royal cause demanded a settlement, even though of a temporary character. Turenne was still anxious to march to the aid of Paris, the Archduke Leopold was ready to invade France, and some of the French governors of frontier towns were intriguing with the Spaniards. Concessions were therefore advisable. On March 11th a compromise was patched up, known as the Treaty of Rueil. But in Paris the terms were refused. The extreme members of the Parliament were furious when they realized that Mazarin was to remain in power, and that, till the end of 1649, the Parliament was not to discuss political questions. It was not till April 2d that the treaty, slightly modified, was accepted, and the twelve-weeks' war came to an end. The right of the Parliament to take some part in state affairs was reluctantly allowed by Mazarin, and the treaty was registered; the Parisian troops were then disbanded. But the main object of the Frondeurs, the expulsion of Mazarin from France, remained unfulfilled, and the people and nobles regarded the treaty with no enthusiasm. RELIGIOUS TOLERATION PROCLAIMED IN MARYLAND A.D. 1649 G. L. DAVIS Whatever peculiar credit may belong to the first colonists in other parts of North America for their services to human rights and liberty, it remains the signal glory of the Maryland founders to have established, almost at the beginning of their enterprise, the principle and practice of religious tolerance, at least within the limits of Christian faith. From the planting of the colony by Cecilius Calvert, an English Roman Catholic, in 1633, to the formal enactment of "Toleration" was only sixteen years, but the colonists were fully ripened for the step when it was taken. Their new settlement had, in fact, begun "with Catholic and Protestant dwelling together in harmony, neither attempting to interfere with the religious rights of the other, 'and religious liberty obtained a home, its only home in the wide world, at the humble village which bore the name of St. Mary's.'" The charter of Maryland was a compact between a member of the English and a disciple of the Roman Church; between an Anglo-Catholic king and a Roman Catholic noble; between Charles I of England and Cecilius, the second Baron of Baltimore, and the First Lord Proprietary of Maryland. To the confessors of each faith it was the pledge of religious freedom. If not the form, it had the spirit and substance, of a _concordat_, in a sense quite as strong as any of those earlier charters of the English crown, to which the chief priest of Rome was, in any respect, a party. This is the inference faithfully drawn from a view of the instrument itself; from a consideration of the facts and circumstances attending the grant; and from a study of the various interpretations, essays, and histories of the many discourses and other publications which have appeared upon this prolific theme. It accounts for the prohibition of any construction of the charter inconsistent with the "true Christian religion."[36] This in a grant to the Roman Catholic Proprietary is intended doubtless as a simple security for the members of the English Church. It suggests the reason, also, why the obligation to establish the religion of Englishmen was omitted in the case of Maryland, but expressly or tacitly imposed, either by the charters or by the orders given to most, if not all, of the other Anglo-American colonies. It is not less in harmony with the supposition of King Charles' regard for the rights of his Anglo-Catholic brethren, who subsequently came to St. Mary's, than with that generally admitted sincerity of Lord Baltimore, which cannot be reconciled to the notion of his accepting a grant directly opposed to the principles or to the practice of his own faith. It is supported by the fact that the object of the Calverts, in asking for the charter, was to found a colony, including the members respectively of the English and of the Roman Church--an object which, we cannot doubt, was known to the King who signed the instrument. And it is fully confirmed by the action of the provincial Legislature--the best commentary upon the spirit of the charter--and by one of the first judicial decisions still preserved upon the records. Such is the meaning of the charter historically interpreted, and such the earliest principle and practice of the government--freedom to the Anglican and freedom to the Roman Catholic--a freedom of conscience, not allowed, but exacted. A freedom, however, of a wider sort springs forth at the birth of the colony--not demanded by that instrument, but permitted by it--not graven upon the tables of stone, or written upon the pages of the statute-book, but conceived in the very bosom of the Proprietary and of the original pilgrims--not a formal or constructive, but a living, freedom--a freedom of the most practical sort. It is the freedom which it remained for them, and for them alone, either to grant or to deny--a freedom embracing within its range, and protecting under its banner, all those who were believers in Jesus Christ. And the grant of this freedom is that which has placed the Proprietary among the first law-reformers of the world, and Maryland in advance of every State upon the continent. Our ancestors had seen the evils of intolerance; they had tasted the bitter cup of persecution. Happy is he whose moral sense has not been corrupted by bigotry, whose heart is not hardened by misfortune, whose soul--the spring of generous impulse--has never been dried up by the parching adversities of life! The founders of Maryland brought with them, in the Ark and the Dove, the elements of that liberty they had so much desired, themselves, in the Old World, and which to others in the New, of a different faith, they were too good and too just to deny. Upon the banks of the St. Mary's, in the soil of Maryland, amid the wilderness of America, they planted that seed which has since become a tree of life to the nation, extending its branches and casting its shadows across a whole continent. The records have been carefully searched. No case of persecution occurred during the administration of Governor Leonard Calvert, from the foundation of the settlement of St. Mary's to the year 1647. His policy included the humblest as well as the most exalted; and his maxim was, "Peace to all--proscription of none." Religious liberty was a vital part of the earliest common law of the province. At the date of the charter (1632) toleration existed in the heart of the Proprietary; and it appeared in the earliest administration of the affairs of the province. But an oath was soon prepared by him, including a pledge from the Governor and the privy counsellors, "directly or indirectly," to "trouble, molest, or discountenance" no "person whatever," in the province, "professing to believe in Jesus Christ." Its date is still an open question; some writers supposing it was imposed in 1637, and others in 1648. I am inclined to think the oath of the latter was but "an augmented edition" of the one in the former year. The grant of the charter marks the era of a special toleration. But the earliest practice of the government presents the first; the official oath, the second; the action of the Assembly in 1649, the third, and, to advocates of a republican government, the most important _phasis_, in the history of the general toleration. The oath of 1648 is worthy of attention in another particular. It contained a special pledge in favor of the Roman Catholics--a feature which might have been deemed requisite, in consideration of the fact that the Proprietary had appointed a Protestant gentleman for the post of lieutenant-general or governor. Some also of the privy counsellors were of the same faith. The little provincial Parliament of Maryland assembled at St. Mary's, in the month of April, during the year 1649. This was about fifteen years after the landing of the Pilgrims, under Governor Calvert; about thirty years later than the settlement of the Puritans at Plymouth; and more than forty subsequently to the arrival of the Anglo-Catholics at Jamestown, in Virginia. The members of the assembly at St. Mary's met in a spirit of moderation, but seldom the characteristic of a dominant party. The province was at peace with the aboriginal tribes within its limits. The unhappy contest with Colonel William Clayborne had been virtually terminated; the rebellions of Captain Richard Ingle and other Protestant enemies effectively suppressed; the reins of government recovered, and the principles of order once more established. Governor Calvert, the chief of the Maryland Pilgrims, after a trying but heroic and honorable administration, had died, amid the prayers and blessings of his friends, without a stain upon his memory. Thomas Green had also for a short period been the governor; and the principal key of authority was then held by Captain William Stone. The assembly was composed of the Governor, the privy counsellors and the burgesses. In many particulars its model was not unlike that of the primitive parliaments of England. The governor and the privy counsellors were appointed by Cecilius, the feudal prince or proprietary of the province; the burgesses, who were chosen by the freemen, represented the democratic element in the original constitution of Maryland. The delegates were sent by Kent and by St. Mary's, the only two counties at that time within the limits of the principality; the former upon the east, the latter upon the west, side of "the Great Bay." And while there is no reason for asserting the want of harmony upon the business of this assembly, it is a remarkable fact that for more than two centuries the most strongly marked differences have existed between the shores of the Chesapeake, not only of a geographical, but also of a political, character. Kent, in the midst of many sad reverses, had grown out of a settlement founded as early as 1630, by Colonel Clayborne, in the spirit of a truly heroic adventure, under the jurisdiction established at Jamestown, and during the administration--it is supposed--of Governor Harvey, upon an island of the Chesapeake called Kent, but then the "Isle of Kent"; a purchase--to quote the Colonel's own words--from "the kings of that country"; and the original centre of the country represented at St. Mary's, though now included within the limits of Queen Anne's--an island still noted for the beauty of its scenery and the wealth of its waters in fish and fowl; and the only dwelling-place of the colonists upon the eastern shore at the time of this assembly; the seat, also, of opulence and elegance at a period anterior to the American Revolution, and presented in the Virginia House of Burgesses before the settlement of St. Mary's;[37] but above all, distinguished as the first focal point of Anglo-American civilization within the present boundaries of the State[38] of Maryland. St. Mary's, which also had been purchased from the Indians--how honorable to the memory of those who took part in that transaction!--and which had borne the appellation of Augusta-Carolina, included a territory of thirty miles, extending toward the mouth of the Potomac, and embracing the St. Mary's, which flows into that river. Within this country was also the small city, which had been founded upon the site of an aboriginal village, and which, like the river upon which it stood, derived its beautiful name from the Blessed Virgin. It was the chief star in a constellation of little settlements and plantations, and for a period of about sixty years was the provincial capital of Maryland; a city of which nothing now remains deserving the dignity of ruins; a few relics only are preserved, the records and everything belonging to the government having long since been removed to Annapolis, but a spot still consecrated in the affections of the country. Judging from the number of wholesome laws enacted in 1649, as well as the shortness of their session--for it did not include twenty-five days--it would seem, the assemblymen of this year were certainly not very fond of talking or speechmaking. It appears, also, that some of them, like our Saxon forefathers, could neither read nor write. It can be proved from the records that two of them, at least, were in the habit of making a signet mark. But did they not leave a mark also upon the country and upon the world? The "Act Concerning Religion"--for that is the title of the law--forms so important a link in the aim of this narrative that its leading provisions should be stated. The design was five-fold: To guard by an express penalty "the most sacred things of God"; to inculcate the principle of religious decency and order; to establish, upon a firmer basis, the harmony already existing between the colonists; to secure in the fullest sense freedom, as well as protection, to all believers in Christianity; and to protect quiet disbelievers against every sort of reproach or ignominy. In determining the different lines and landmarks, a regard, of course, must be had to the spirit of the charter, to the theological notions of the age, and to the character of the elements which then composed the population of the province. 1. The proprietary had the right, upon all doubtful points, to construe the charter in that manner which was most favorable to himself. But no interpretation was allowed inconsistent with the "Sacrosancta Dei" and the "Vera Christiana Religio"--the former implying a prohibition of the most wicked kind of blasphemy, as well as the desecration of the most holy institutions; the latter defining or bounding the pledge of religious freedom to the Roman Catholic by securing the same liberty for the English churchman. And there cannot be reasonable doubt that among statesmen, as well as ecclesiastics, two centuries ago, the Lord's Day and the Trinity, or fundamental article of revealed religion, were two of the "most sacred" things of God. This fact accounts for the penalty against those who were guilty of violating the sanctity of the "Sabbath," or of "cursing" God; that is, denying the great doctrine of the Athanasian Creed. 2. A history is not an argument. In any other place a dispute indeed upon a question of religious decency would be quite as useless as one upon a point of taste. But the world, either Roman Catholic or Protestant, is hardly yet so wise as to be prepared to condemn Lord Baltimore and the assembly of Maryland for the imposition of a fine of five pounds upon the man who should dare to speak reproachfully of "the Blessed Virgin," or of the heroic evangelists and apostolic martyrs of the primitive Church. 3. There is a striking difference between religious uniformity and social harmony. And it was an object of the law to tolerate the want of the one and to promote the growth of the other. In this particular it was but the development of the policy which had been adopted under the first governor's administration. Bounded by the preceding explanations, the law throughout breathes the spirit of peace and charity as well as harmony. 4. Freedom in the fullest sense was secured to all believers in Christianity: to Roman Catholics and Protestants; to Episcopalians and Puritans; to Calvinists and Arminians; and to Christians of every other name coming within the meaning of the assembly. A Christian was a believer in Jesus Christ. The belief in Christ was synonymous with a faith in his divinity. And the recognition of his godhead was equivalent--such is the clear intention of the act--to a confession of that article in the apostolic creed which teaches the great doctrine of the Trinity. The act of the assembly also fully explains the oath which had been imposed upon the governor and the privy counsellors. And the believer enjoyed, not only a freedom, but also a protection. He who "troubled, molested, or discountenanced" him was, according to the law, fined for his offence. 5. From the language of the act, as well as the subsequent practice of the government, it is evident that the quiet disbeliever also was protected. A case can easily be given. But it is enough for the reader to look at that section of the law which forbids the application, in a reproachful sense, to "any person or persons whatsoever," of any "name or term" "relating to matter of religion." The act, it will be observed, covers a very broad ground. It is true, it did not embrace every class of subsequent religionists. A Jew, without peril to his life, could not call the Saviour of the world a "magician" or a "necromancer." A Quaker, under the order of the government, was required to take off his hat in court, or go immediately to the whipping-post. The Mormon, who dignifies polygamy with the notion of a sacrament, who disseminates the Gospel in the propagation of his species, would not have been allowed, we may suppose, to marry more than one woman. But as early as 1659 a well-known nonbeliever in the Trinity lived here, transacted his business, and instituted without objection his suits in the civil courts. Nor were the Jewish disabilities entirely removed till a period long after the American Revolution; and this feature of the law, all things considered, was not more of a reproach to the legislators of 1649 than the constitution of the State to the reformers of 1774. We have no evidence, indeed, that any Quakers were in Maryland at the passage of the law; and when they came, their case was misunderstood; for the dislike toward them arose from their supposed want of respect for the constituted authorities, and their refusal to take the oath of submission. A constitutional difficulty might also readily occur to anyone, as it certainly did to the Proprietary, who was bound by the charter to maintain the fundamental principles of Anglo-Saxon law, which had always regarded the instrumentality of the oath in the administration of practical justice as the corner-stone of a system. But every disposition was manifested to render them comfortable; and they soon became a flourishing and influential denomination. Notwithstanding the imperfection which ever marks human legislation, it is wonderful to think how far our ancestors went in the march of religious freedom. The earliest policy of Maryland was in striking contrast with that of every other colony. The toleration which prevailed from the first, and fifteen years later was formally ratified by the voice of the people, must, therefore, be regarded as the living embodiment of a great idea; the introduction of a new element into the civilization of Anglo-American humanity; the beginning of another movement in the progress of the human mind. FOOTNOTES: [36] The words in the English copy of the charter are "God's holy and true Christian religion"; in the Latin, "_Sacrosancta Dei et vera Christiana religio_." [37] "The Virginians," says Chalmers, "boasted, with their wonted pride, that the colonists of Kent sent burgesses to their assembly, and were subjected to their jurisdiction, before Maryland had a name." Nor was the boast without foundation. Their early legislative journals show conclusively that the island was represented by Captain Nicholas Martin. [38] The date of the settlement cannot be accurately given. Ethan Allen supposes it was during the year 1629. GREAT CIVIL WAR IN ENGLAND EXECUTION OF CHARLES I A.D. 1649 LORD MACAULAY CHARLES KNIGHT No period of English history is more crowded with important events than that of the civil war. The intolerant reign of James I had brought him into conflict, not only with the religious elements in the kingdom, but also with Parliament. Like James, his son and successor, Charles I, was a stubborn believer in the divine right of the monarch; and as James had shown throughout his reign a flagrant disregard of law, so Charles from the outset betrayed the same disposition. He surrounded himself with advisers who supported his favorite views. In the first fifteen months of his reign he summoned two parliaments only to dissolve them in anger. Next he raised money by forced loans and other expedients which were odious to many of his subjects. For the first time England was now divided between two great parties. Matters proceeded with constantly increasing friction, and at last the struggle developed into civil war. Macaulay's summary of it, and Knight's picture of its culmination in that most melancholy tragedy, the execution of the King, cover the subject in its essential aspects, without unnecessary dealing with minor details. LORD MACAULAY In August, 1642, the sword was at length drawn; and soon, in almost every shire of the kingdom, two hostile factions appeared in arms against each other. It is not easy to say which of the contending parties was at first the more formidable. The Houses commanded London and the counties round London, the fleet, the navigation of the Thames, and most of the large towns and seaports. They had at their disposal almost all the military stores of the kingdom, and were able to raise duties, both on goods imported from foreign countries and on some important products of domestic industry. King Charles was ill provided with artillery and ammunition. The taxes which he laid on the rural districts occupied by his troops produced, it is probable, a sum far less than that which the Parliament drew from the city of London alone. He relied, indeed, chiefly, for pecuniary aid on the munificence of his opulent adherents. Many of these mortgaged their land, pawned their jewels, and broke up their silver chargers and christening-bowls in order to assist him. But experience has fully proved that the voluntary liberality of individuals, even in times of the greatest excitement, is a poor financial resource when compared with severe and methodical taxation, which presses on the willing and unwilling alike. Charles, however, had one advantage, which, if he had used it well, would have more than compensated for the want of stores and money, and which, notwithstanding his mismanagement, gave him, during some months, a superiority in the war. His troops at first fought much better than those of the Parliament. Both armies, it is true, were almost entirely composed of men who had never seen a field of battle. Nevertheless, the difference was great. The Parliamentary ranks were filled with hirelings whom want and idleness had induced to enlist. Hampden's regiment was regarded as one of the best; and even Hampden's regiment was described by Cromwell as a mere rabble of tapsters and serving-men out of place. The royal army, on the other hand, consisted in great part of gentlemen, high-spirited, ardent, accustomed to consider dishonor as more terrible than death, accustomed to fencing, to the use of fire-arms, to bold riding, and to manly and perilous sport, which has been well called the image of war. Such gentlemen, mounted on their favorite horses, and commanding little bands composed of their younger brothers, grooms, gamekeepers, and huntsmen, were, from the very first day on which they took the field, qualified to play their part with credit in a skirmish. The steadiness, the prompt obedience, the mechanical precision of movement, which are characteristic of the regular soldier, these gallant volunteers never attained. But they were at first opposed to enemies as undisciplined as themselves, and far less active, athletic, and daring. For a time, therefore, the Cavaliers were successful in almost every encounter. The Houses had also been unfortunate in the choice of a general. The rank and wealth of the Earl of Essex made him one of the most important members of the Parliamentary party. He had borne arms on the Continent with credit, and, when the war began, had as high a military reputation as any man in the country. But it soon appeared that he was unfit for the post of commander-in-chief. He had little energy and no originality. The methodical tactics which he had learned in the war of the Palatinate did not save him from the disgrace of being surprised and baffled by such a captain as Rupert, who could claim no higher fame than that of an enterprising partisan. Nor were the officers who held the chief commissions under Essex qualified to supply what was wanting in him. For this, indeed, the Houses are scarcely to be blamed. In a country which had not, within the memory of the oldest person living, made war on a great scale by land, generals of tried skill and valor were not to be found. It was necessary, therefore, in the first instance, to trust untried men; and the preference was naturally given to men distinguished either by their station or by the abilities which they had displayed in Parliament. In scarcely a single instance, however, was the selection fortunate. Neither the grandees nor the orators proved good soldiers. The Earl of Stamford, one of the greatest nobles of England, was routed by the Royalists at Stratton. Nathaniel Fiennes, inferior to none of his contemporaries in talents for civil business, disgraced himself by the pusillanimous surrender of Bristol. Indeed, of all the statesmen who at this juncture accepted high military commands, Hampden alone appears to have carried into the camp the capacity and strength of mind which had made him eminent in politics. When the war had lasted a year, the advantage was decidedly with the Royalists. They were victorious, both in the western and in the northern counties. They had wrested Bristol, the second city in the kingdom, from the Parliament. They had won several battles, and had not sustained a single serious or ignominious defeat. Among the Roundheads adversity had begun to produce dissension and discontent. The Parliament was kept in alarm, sometimes by plots and sometimes by riots. It was thought necessary to fortify London against the royal army, and to hang some disaffected citizens at their own doors. Several of the most distinguished peers who had hitherto remained at Westminster fled to the court at Oxford; nor can it be doubted that if the operations of the Cavaliers had at this season been directed by a sagacious and powerful mind, Charles would soon have marched in triumph to Whitehall. But the King suffered the auspicious moment to pass away; and it never returned. In August, 1643, he sat down before the city of Gloucester. That city was defended by the inhabitants and by the garrison, with a determination such as had not, since the commencement of the war, been shown by the adherents of the Parliament. The emulation of London was excited. The train-bands of the city volunteered to march wherever their services might be required. A great force was speedily collected and began to move westward. The siege of Gloucester was raised; the Royalists in every part of the kingdom were disheartened; the spirit of the Parliamentary party revived; and the apostate lords, who had lately fled from Westminster to Oxford, hastened back from Oxford to Westminster. And now a new and alarming class of symptoms began to appear in the distempered body politic. There had been, from the first, in the Parliamentary party, some men whose minds were set on objects from which the majority of that party would have shrunk with horror. These men were, in religion Independents. They conceived that every Christian congregation had, under Christ, supreme jurisdiction in things spiritual; that appeals to provincial and national synods were scarcely less unscriptural than appeals to the court of arches or to the Vatican; and that popery, prelacy, and Presbyterianism were merely three forms of one great apostasy. In politics, the Independents were, to use the phrase of their time, root and branch men, or, to use the kindred phrase of our own time, radicals. Not content with limiting the power of the monarch, they were desirous to erect a commonwealth on the ruins of the old English polity. At first they had been inconsiderable, both in numbers and in weight; but before the war had lasted two years they became, not indeed the largest, but the most powerful, faction in the country. Some of the old Parliamentary leaders had been removed by death; and others had forfeited the public confidence. Pym had been borne, with princely honors, to a grave among the Plantagenets. Hampden had fallen, as became him, while vainly endeavoring, by his heroic example, to inspire his followers with courage to face the fiery cavalry of Rupert. Bedford had been untrue to the cause. Northumberland was known to be lukewarm. Essex and his lieutenants had shown little vigor and ability in the conduct of military operations. At such a conjuncture it was that the Independent party, ardent, resolute, and uncompromising, began to raise its head, both in the camp and in the House of Commons. The soul of that party was Oliver Cromwell. Bred to peaceful occupations, he had, at more than forty years of age, accepted a commission in the Parliamentary army. No sooner had he become a soldier than he discerned, with the keen glance of genius, what Essex, and men like Essex, with all their experience, were unable to perceive. He saw precisely where the strength of the Royalists lay, and by what means alone that strength could be overpowered. He saw that it was necessary to reconstruct the army of the Parliament. He saw also that there were abundant and excellent materials for the purpose, materials less showy, indeed, but more solid, than those of which the gallant squadrons of the King were composed. It was necessary to look for recruits who were not mere mercenaries, for recruits of decent station and grave character, fearing God and zealous for public liberty. With such men he filled his own regiment, and, while he subjected them to a discipline more rigid than had ever before been known in England, he administered to their intellectual and moral nature stimulants of fearful potency. The events of the year 1644 fully proved the superiority of his abilities. In the South, where Essex held the command, the Parliamentary forces underwent a succession of shameful disasters; but in the North the victory of Marston Moor fully compensated for all that had been lost elsewhere. That victory was not a more serious blow to the Royalists than to the party which had hitherto been dominant at Westminster; for it was notorious that the day, disgracefully lost by the Presbyterians, had been retrieved by the energy of Cromwell and by the steady valor of the warriors whom he had trained. These events produced the "Self-denying Ordinance" and the new model of the army. Under decorous pretexts, and with every mark of respect, Essex and most of those who had held high posts under him were removed; and the conduct of the war was intrusted to very different hands. Fairfax, a brave soldier, but of mean understanding and irresolute temper, was the nominal lord-general of the forces; but Cromwell was their real head. Cromwell made haste to organize the whole army on the same principles on which he had organized his own regiment. As soon as this process was complete, the event of the war was decided. The Cavaliers had now to encounter natural courage equal to their own, enthusiasm stronger than their own, and discipline such as was utterly wanting to them. It soon became a proverb that the soldiers of Fairfax and Cromwell were men of a different breed from the soldiers of Essex. At Naseby took place the first great encounter between the Royalists and the remodelled army of the Houses. The victory of the Roundheads was complete and decisive. It was followed by other triumphs in rapid succession. In a few months the authority of the Parliament was fully established over the whole kingdom. Charles fled to the Scots, and was by them, in a manner which did not much exalt their national character, delivered up to his English subjects. While the event of the war was still doubtful, the Houses had put the primate to death, had interdicted, within the sphere of their authority, the use of the liturgy, and had required all men to subscribe that renowned instrument known by the name of the "Solemn League and Covenant." Covenanting work, as it was called, went on fast. Hundreds of thousands affixed their names to the rolls, and, with hands lifted up toward heaven, swore to endeavor, without respect of persons, the extirpation of popery and prelacy, heresy and schism, and to bring to public trial and condign punishment all who should hinder the reformation of religion. When the struggle was over, the work of innovation and revenge was pushed on with increased ardor. The ecclesiastical polity of the kingdom was remodelled. Most of the old clergy were ejected from their benefices. Fines, often of ruinous amount, were laid on the Royalists, already impoverished by large aids furnished to the King. Many estates were confiscated. Many proscribed Cavaliers found it expedient to purchase, at an enormous cost, the protection of eminent members of the victorious party. Large domains, belonging to the crown, to the bishops, and to the chapters, were seized, and either granted away or put up to auction. In consequence of these spoliations, a great part of the soil of England was at once offered for sale. As money was scarce, as the market was glutted, as the title was insecure, and as the awe inspired by powerful bidders prevented free competition, the prices were often merely nominal. Thus many old and honorable families disappeared and were heard of no more; and many new men rose rapidly to affluence. But, while the Houses were employing their authority thus, it suddenly passed out of their hands. It had been obtained by calling into existence a power which could not be controlled. In the summer of 1647, about twelve months after the last fortress of the Cavaliers had submitted to the Parliament, the Parliament was compelled to submit to its own soldiers. Thirteen years followed, during which England was, under various names and forms, really governed by the sword. Never before that time, or since that time, was the civil power in our country subjected to military dictation. The army which now became supreme in the state was an army very different from any that has since been seen among us. At present the pay of the common soldier is not such as can seduce any but the humblest class of English laborers from their calling. A barrier almost impassable separates him from the commissioned officer. The great majority of those who rise high in the service rise by purchase. So numerous and extensive are the remote dependencies of England that every man who enlists in the line must expect to pass many years in exile, and some years in climates unfavorable to the health and vigor of the European race. The army of the Long Parliament was raised for home service. The pay of the private soldier was much above the wages earned by the great body of the people; and, if he distinguished himself by intelligence and courage, he might hope to attain high commands. The ranks were accordingly composed of persons superior in station and education to the multitude. These persons, sober, moral, diligent, and accustomed to reflect, had been induced to take up arms, not by the pressure of want, not by the love of novelty and license, not by the arts of recruiting-officers, but by religious and political zeal, mingled with the desire of distinction and promotion. The boast of the soldiers, as we find it recorded in their solemn resolutions, was that they had not been forced into the service, nor had enlisted chiefly for the sake of lucre, that they were no janizaries, but freeborn Englishmen, who had, of their own accord, put their lives in jeopardy for the liberties and religion of England, and whose right and duty it was to watch over the welfare of the nation which they had saved. A force thus composed might, without injury to its efficiency, be indulged in some liberties which, if allowed to any other troops, would have proved subversive of all discipline. In general, soldiers who should form themselves into political clubs, elect delegates, and pass resolutions on high questions of state, would soon break loose from all control, would cease to form an army, and would become the worst and most dangerous of mobs. Nor would it be safe in our time to tolerate in any regiment religious meetings, at which a corporal versed in Scripture should lead the devotions of his less gifted colonel, and admonish a backsliding major. But such was the intelligence, the gravity, and the self-command of the warriors whom Cromwell had trained that in their camp a political organization and a religious organization could exist without destroying military organization. The same men, who, off duty, were noted as demagogues and field preachers were distinguished by steadiness, by the spirit of order, and by prompt obedience on watch, on drill, and on the field of battle. In war this strange force was irresistible. The stubborn courage characteristic of the English people was, by the system of Cromwell, at once regulated and stimulated. Other leaders have maintained order as strict. Other leaders have inspired their followers with zeal as ardent. But in his camp alone the most rigid discipline was found in company with the fiercest enthusiasm. His troops moved to victory with the precision of machines, while burning with the wildest fanaticism of crusaders. From the time when the army was remodelled to the time when it was disbanded, it never found, either in the British Islands or on the Continent, an enemy who could stand its onset. In England, Scotland, Ireland, Flanders, the Puritan warriors, often surrounded by difficulties, sometimes contending against three-fold odds, not only never failed to conquer, but never failed to destroy and break in pieces whatever force was opposed to them. They at length came to regard the day of battle as a day of certain triumph, and marched against the most renowned battalions of Europe with disdainful confidence. Turenne was startled by the shout of stern exultation with which his English allies advanced to the combat, and expressed the delight of a true soldier when he learned that it was ever the fashion of Cromwell's pikemen to rejoice greatly when they beheld the enemy; and the banished Cavaliers felt an emotion of national pride when they saw a brigade of their countrymen, outnumbered by foes and abandoned by friends, drive before it in headlong rout the finest infantry of Spain, and force a passage into a counter-scarp which had just been pronounced impregnable by the ablest of the marshals of France. But that which chiefly distinguished the army of Cromwell from other armies was the austere morality and the fear of God which pervaded all ranks. It is acknowledged by the most zealous Royalists that, in that singular camp, no oath was heard, no drunkenness or gambling was seen, and that, during the long dominion of the soldiery, the property of the peaceable citizen and the honor of woman were held sacred. If outrages were committed, they were outrages of a very different kind from those of which a victorious army is generally guilty. No servant girl complained of the rough gallantry of the redcoats. Not an ounce of plate was taken from the shops of the goldsmiths. But a Pelagian sermon, or a window on which the Virgin and Child were painted, produced in the Puritan ranks an excitement which it required the utmost exertions of the officers to quell. One of Cromwell's chief difficulties was to restrain his musketeers and dragoons from invading by main force the pulpits of ministers whose discourses, to use the language of that time, were not savory; and too many of our cathedrals still bear the marks of the hatred with which those stern spirits regarded every vestige of popery. To keep down the English people was no light task even for that army. No sooner was the first pressure of military tyranny felt than the nation, unbroken to such servitude, began to struggle fiercely. Insurrections broke out even in those counties which, during the recent war, had been the most submissive to the Parliament. Indeed, the Parliament itself abhorred its old defenders more than its old enemies, and was desirous to come to terms of accommodation with Charles at the expense of the troops. In Scotland, at the same time, a coalition was formed between the Royalists and a large body of Presbyterians who regarded the doctrines of the Independents with detestation. At length the storm burst. There were risings in Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Kent, Wales. The fleet in the Thames suddenly hoisted the royal colors, stood out to sea, and menaced the southern coast. A great Scottish force crossed the frontier and advanced into Lancashire. It might well be suspected that these movements were contemplated with secret complacency by a majority both of the Lords and of the Commons. But the yoke of the army was not to be so shaken off. While Fairfax suppressed the risings in the neighborhood of the capital, Oliver routed the Welsh insurgents, and, leaving their castles in ruins, marched against the Scots. His troops were few, when compared with the invaders; but he was little in the habit of counting his enemies. The Scottish army was utterly destroyed. A change in the Scottish government followed. An administration, hostile to the King, was formed at Edinburgh; and Cromwell, more than ever the darling of his soldiers, returned in triumph to London. And now a design, to which, at the commencement of the civil war, no man would have dared to allude, and which was not less inconsistent with the Solemn League and Covenant than with the old law of England, began to take a distinct form. The austere warriors who ruled the nation had, during some months, meditated a fearful vengeance on the captive King. When and how the scheme originated, whether it spread from the general to the ranks or from the ranks to the general, whether it is to be ascribed to policy using fanaticism as a tool or to fanaticism bearing down policy with headlong impulse, are questions which, even at this day, cannot be answered with perfect confidence. It seems, however, on the whole, probable that he who seemed to lead was really forced to follow, and that, on this occasion, as on another great occasion a few years later, he sacrificed his own judgment and his own inclinations to the wishes of the army. For the power which he had called into existence was a power which even he could not always control; and, that he might ordinarily command, it was necessary that he should sometimes obey. He publicly protested that he was no mover in the matter, that the first steps had been taken without his privity, that he could not advise the Parliament to strike the blow, but that he submitted his own feelings to the force of circumstances which seemed to him to indicate the purposes of Providence. It has been the fashion to consider these professions as instances of the hypocrisy which is vulgarly imputed to him. But even those who pronounce him a hypocrite will scarcely venture to call him a fool. They are therefore bound to show that he had some purpose to serve by secretly stimulating the army to take that course which he did not venture openly to recommend. It would be absurd to suppose that he who was never by his respectable enemies represented as wantonly cruel or implacably vindictive, would have taken the most important step of his life under the influence of mere malevolence. He was far too wise a man not to know, when he consented to shed that august blood, that he was doing a deed which was inexpiable, and which would move the grief and horror, not only of the Royalists, but of nine-tenths of those who had stood by the Parliament. Whatever visions may have deluded others, he was assuredly dreaming neither of a republic on the antique pattern nor of the millennial reign of the saints. If he already aspired to be himself the founder of a new dynasty, it was plain that Charles I was a less formidable competitor than Charles II would be. At the moment of the death of Charles I the loyalty of every Cavalier would be transferred, unimpaired, to Charles II. Charles I was a captive: Charles II would be at liberty. Charles I was an object of suspicion and dislike to a large proportion of those who yet shuddered at the thought of slaying him: Charles II would excite all the interest which belongs to distressed youth and innocence. It is impossible to believe that considerations so obvious and so important escaped the most profound politician of that age. The truth is that Cromwell had at one time meant to mediate between the throne and the Parliament, and to reorganize the distracted state by the power of the sword, under the sanction of the royal name. In this design he persisted till he was compelled to abandon it by the refractory temper of the soldiers and by the incurable duplicity of the King. A party in the camp began to clamor for the head of the traitor, who was for treating with Agag. Conspiracies were formed. Threats of impeachment were loudly uttered. A mutiny broke out, which all the vigor and resolution of Oliver could hardly quell. And though, by a judicious mixture of severity and kindness, he succeeded in restoring order, he saw that it would be in the highest degree difficult and perilous to contend against the rage of warriors, who regarded the fallen tyrant as their foe and as the foe of their God. At the same time it became more evident than ever that the King could not be trusted. The vices of Charles had grown upon him. They were, indeed, vices which difficulties and perplexities generally bring out in the strongest light. Cunning is the natural defence of the weak. A prince, therefore, who is habitually a deceiver when at the height of power, is not likely to learn frankness in the midst of embarrassments and distresses. Charles was not only a most unscrupulous but a most unlucky dissembler. There never was a politician to whom so many frauds and falsehoods were brought home by undeniable evidence. He publicly recognized the Houses at Westminster as a legal Parliament, and at the same time made a private minute in council declaring the recognition null. He publicly disclaimed all thought of calling in foreign aid against his people; he privately solicited aid from France, from Denmark, and from Lorraine. He publicly denied that he employed papists: at the same time he privately sent to his generals directions to employ every papist that would serve. He publicly took the sacrament at Oxford as a pledge that he never would even connive at popery. He privately assured his wife that he intended to tolerate popery in England; and he authorized Lord Glamorgan to promise that popery should be established in Ireland. Then he attempted to clear himself at his agent's expense. Glamorgan received, in the royal handwriting, reprimands intended to be read by others, and eulogies which were to be seen only by himself. To such an extent, indeed, had insincerity now tainted the King's whole nature, that his most devoted friends could not refrain from complaining to each other, with bitter grief and shame, of his crooked politics. His defeats, they said, gave them less pain than his intrigues. Since he had been a prisoner, there was no section of the victorious party which had not been the object both of his flatteries and of his machinations; but never was he more unfortunate than when he attempted at once to cajole and to undermine Cromwell. Cromwell had to determine whether he would put to hazard the attachment of his party, the attachment of his army, his own greatness, nay, his own life, in an attempt which would probably have been vain, to save a prince whom no engagement could bind. With many struggles and misgivings, and probably not without many prayers, the decision was made. Charles was left to his fate. The military saints resolved that, in defiance of the old laws of the realm, and of the almost universal sentiment of the nation, the King should expiate his crimes with his blood. He for a time expected a death like that of his unhappy predecessors, Edward II and Richard II. But he was in no danger of such treason. Those who had him in their grip were not midnight stabbers. What they did they did in order that it might be a spectacle to heaven and earth, and that it might be held in everlasting remembrance. They enjoyed keenly the very scandal which they gave. That the ancient constitution and the public opinion of England were directly opposed to regicide made regicide seem strangely fascinating to a party bent on effecting a complete political and social revolution. In order to accomplish their purpose, it was necessary that they should first break in pieces every part of the machinery of the government; and this necessity was rather agreeable than painful to them. The Commons passed a vote tending to accommodation with the King. The soldiers excluded the majority by force. The Lords unanimously rejected the proposition that the King should be brought to trial. Their house was instantly closed. No court known to the law would take on itself the office of judging the fountain of justice. A revolutionary tribunal was created. That tribunal pronounced Charles a tyrant, a traitor, a murderer, and a public enemy; and his head was severed from his shoulders, before thousands of spectators, in front of the banqueting-hall of his own palace. In no long time it became manifest that those political and religious zealots to whom this deed is to be ascribed had committed, not only a crime, but an error. They had given to a prince, hitherto known to his people chiefly by his faults, an opportunity of displaying, on a great theatre, before the eyes of all nations and all ages, some qualities which irresistibly call forth the admiration and love of mankind, the high spirit of a gallant gentleman, the patience and meekness of a penitent Christian. Nay, they had so contrived their revenge that the very man whose life had been a series of attacks on the liberties of England now seemed to die a martyr in the cause of those liberties. No demagogue ever produced such an impression on the public mind as the captive King, who, retaining in that extremity all his regal dignity, and confronting death with dauntless courage, gave utterance to the feelings of his oppressed people, manfully refused to plead before a court unknown to the law, appealed from military violence to the principles of the constitution, asked by what right the House of Commons had been purged of its most respectable members and the House of Lords deprived of its legislative functions, and told his weeping hearers that he was defending, not only his own cause, but theirs. His long misgovernment, his innumerable perfidies, were forgotten. His memory was, in the minds of the great majority of his subjects, associated with those free institutions which he had during many years labored to destroy; for those free institutions had perished with him, and, amid the mournful silence of a community kept down by arms, had been defended by his voice alone. From that day began a reaction in favor of monarchy and of the exiled house, a reaction which never ceased till the throne had again been set up in all its old dignity. CHARLES KNIGHT The drawbridge of Hurst castle[39] is lowered during the night, December 17, 1648, and the tramp of a troop of horse is heard by the wakeful prisoner. He calls for his attendant Herbert, who is sent to ascertain the cause of this midnight commotion. Major Harrison is arrived. The King is agitated. He has been warned that Harrison is a man chosen to assassinate him. He is reassured in the morning, in being informed that the major and his troop are to conduct him to Windsor. Two days after, the King sets out, under the escort of Lieutenant-Colonel Cobbett. At Winchester he is received in state by the mayor and aldermen; but they retire alarmed on being told that the House has voted all to be traitors who should address the King. The troop commanded by Cobbett has been relieved on the route by another troop, of which Harrison has the command. They rest at Farnham. Charles expresses to Harrison, with whose soldierly appearance he is struck, the suspicions which had been hinted regarding him. The major, in his new buff coat and fringed scarf of crimson silk, told the King "that he needed not to entertain any such imagination or apprehension; that the Parliament had too much honor and justice to cherish so foul an intention; and assured him that whatever the Parliament resolved to do would be very public, and in a way of justice to which the world should be witness, and would never endure a thought of secret violence." This, adds Clarendon, "his majesty could not persuade himself to believe; nor did imagine that they durst ever produce him in the sight of the people, under any form whatsoever of a public trial." The next day the journey was pursued toward Windsor. The King urged his desire to stop at Bagshot, and dine in the forest at the house of Lord Newburgh. He had been apprised that his friend would have ready for him a horse of extraordinary fleetness, with which he might make one more effort to escape. The horse had been kicked by another horse the day before and was useless. That last faint hope was gone. On the night of December 23d the King slept, a prisoner surrounded with hostile guards, in the noble castle which in the days of his youth had rung with Jonson's lyrics and ribaldry; and the "Gipsy of the Masque" had prophesied that his "name in peace or wars, nought should bound." But even here he continued to cherish some of the delusions which he had indulged in situations of far less danger. He was still surrounded with something of regal pomp. He dined, as the ancient sovereigns had dined, in public--as Elizabeth, and his father, and he himself had dined--seated under a canopy, the cup presented to him on the knee, the dishes solemnly tasted before he ate. These manifestations of respect he held to be indicative of an altered feeling. But he also had an undoubting confidence that he should be righted, by aid from Ireland, from Denmark, from other kingdoms--"I have three more cards to play, the worst of which will give me back everything." After three weeks of comparative comfort, the etiquette observed toward him was laid aside; and with a fearful sense of approaching calamity in the absence of "respect and honor, according to the ancient practice," is there anything more contemptible than a despised prince? During the month in which Charles had remained at Windsor there had been proceedings in Parliament of which he was imperfectly informed. On the day he arrived there it was resolved by the Commons that he should be brought to trial. On January 2, 1649, it was voted that, in making war against the Parliament, he had been guilty of treason; and a high court was appointed to try him. One hundred fifty commissioners were to compose the court--peers, members of the Commons, aldermen of London. The ordinance was sent to the Upper House and was rejected. On the 6th a fresh ordinance, declaring that the people being, after God, the source of all just power, the representatives of the people are the supreme power in the nation; and that whatsoever is enacted or declared for law by the Commons in Parliament hath the force of a law, and the people are concluded thereby, though the consent of king or peers be not had thereto. Asserting this power, so utterly opposed either to the ancient constitution of the monarchy or to the possible working of a republic, there was no hesitation in constituting the high court of justice in the name of the Commons alone. The number of members of the court was now reduced to one hundred thirty-five. They had seven preparatory meetings, at which only fifty-eight members attended. "All men," says Mrs. Hutchinson, "were left to their free liberty of acting, neither persuaded nor compelled; and as there were some nominated in the commission who never sat, and others who sat at first but durst not hold on, so all the rest might have declined it if they would when it is apparent they should have suffered nothing by so doing." Algernon Sidney, although bent upon a republic, opposed the trial, apprehending that the project of a commonwealth would fail if the King's life were touched. It is related that Cromwell, irritated by these scruples, exclaimed: "No one will stir. I tell you, we will cut his head off with the crown upon it." Such daring may appear the result of ambition or fear or revenge or innate cruelty in a few men who had obtained a temporary ascendency. These men were, on the contrary, the organs of a widespread determination among thousands throughout the country, who had long preached and argued and prophesied about vengeance on "the great delinquent"; and who had ever in their mouths the text that "blood defileth the land, and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it."[40] They had visions of a theocracy, and were impatient of an earthly king. Do we believe, as some, not without reasonable grounds, may believe, that the members of the high court of justice expressed such convictions upon a simulated religious confidence? Do we think that, in the clear line of action which Cromwell especially had laid down for his guidance, he cloaked his worldly ambition under the guise of being moved by some higher impulse than that of taking the lead in a political revolution? Certainly we do not. The infinite mischiefs of assuming that the finger of God directly points out the way to believers when they are walking in dangerous and devious paths may be perfectly clear to us who calmly look back upon the instant events which followed upon Cromwell's confidence in his solemn call to a fearful duty. But we are not the more to believe, because the events have a character of guilt in the views of most persons, that such a declared conviction was altogether, or in any degree, a lie. Those were times in which, more for good than for evil, men believed in the immediate direction of a special providence in great undertakings. The words "God hath given us the victory" were not with them a mere form. If we trace amid these solemn impulses the workings of a deep sagacity--the union of the fierce resolves of a terrible enthusiasm with the foresight and energy of an ever-present common-sense--we are not the more to conclude that their spiritualism or fanaticism or whatever we please to call their ruling principle was less sincere by being mixed up with the ordinary motives through which the affairs of the world are carried on. Indeed, when we look to the future course of English history, and see--as those who have no belief in a higher direction of the destiny of nations than that of human wisdom can alone turn away from seeing--that the inscrutable workings of a supreme power led our country in the fulness of time to internal peace and security after these storms, and in a great degree in consequence of them, can we refuse our belief that the tragical events of those days were ordered for our good? Acknowledging that the overthrow of a rotten throne was necessary for the building up of a throne that should have its sole stable foundation in the welfare of the people, can we affirm that the men who did the mightier portion of that work--sternly, unflinchingly, illegally, yet ever professing to "seek to know the mind of God in all that chain of Providence"--are quite correctly described, in the statute for their attainder, as "a party of wretched men, desperately wicked, and hardened in their impiety"? On January 19th Major Harrison appeared again at Windsor with his troop. There was a coach with six horses in the court-yard, in which the King took his seat; and, once more, he entered London, and was lodged at St. James' palace. The next day the high court of justice was opened in Westminster hall. The King came from St. James' in a sedan; and after the names of the members of the court had been called, sixty-nine being present, Bradshaw, the president, ordered the sergeant to bring in the prisoner. Silently the King sat down in the chair prepared for him. He moved not his hat, as he looked sternly and contemptuously around. The sixty-nine rose not from their seats and remained covered. It is scarcely eight years since he was a spectator of the last solemn trial in this hall--that of Strafford. What mighty events have happened since that time! There are memorials hanging from the roof which tell such a history as his saddest fears in the hour of Strafford's death could scarcely have shaped out. The tattered banners taken from his Cavaliers at Marston Moor and Naseby are floating above his head. There, too, are the same memorials of Preston. But still he looks around him proudly and severely. Who are the men that are to judge him, the King, who "united in his person every possible claim by hereditary right to the English as well as the Scottish throne, being the heir both of Egbert and William the Conqueror"? These men are, in his view, traitors and rebels, from Bradshaw, the lawyer, who sits in the foremost chair, calling himself lord-president, to Cromwell and Marten in the back seat, over whose heads are the red cross of England and the harp of Ireland, painted on an escutcheon, while the proud bearings of a line of kings are nowhere visible. Under what law does this insolent president address him as "Charles Stuart, King of England," and say: "The Commons of England being deeply sensible of the calamities that have been brought upon this nation, which are fixed upon you as the principal author of them, have resolved to make inquisition for blood"? He will defy their authority. The clerk reads the charge, and when he is accused therein of being tyrant and traitor he laughs in the face of the court. "Though his tongue usually hesitated, yet it was very free at this time, for he was never discomposed in mind," writes Warwick. "And yet," it is added, "as he confessed himself to the Bishop of London that attended him, one action shocked him very much; for while he was leaning in the court upon his staff, which had a head of gold, the head broke off on a sudden. He took it up, but seemed unconcerned, yet told the Bishop it really made a great impression upon him." It was the symbol of the treacherous hopes upon which he had rested--golden dreams that vanished in this solemn hour. Again and again contending against the authority of the court, the King was removed, and the sitting was adjourned to the 22d. On that day the same scene was renewed; and again on the 23d. A growing sympathy for the monarch became apparent. The cries of "Justice, justice!" which were heard at first were now mingled with "God save the King!" He had refused to plead; but the court nevertheless employed the 24th and 25th of January in collecting evidence to prove the charge of his levying war against the Parliament. Coke, the solicitor-general, then demanded whether the court would proceed to pronouncing sentence; and the members adjourned to the Painted Chamber. On the 27th the public sitting was resumed. When the name of Fairfax was called, a voice was heard from the gallery, "He has too much wit to be here." The King was brought in; and, when the president addressed the commissioners, and said that the prisoner was before the court to answer a charge of high treason and other crimes brought against him in the name of the people of England, the voice from the gallery was again heard, "It's a lie--not one-half of them." The voice came from Lady Fairfax. The court, Bradshaw then stated, had agreed upon the sentence. Ludlow records that the King "desired to make one proposition before they proceeded to sentence; which he earnestly pressing, as that which he thought would lead to the reconciling of all parties, and to the peace of the three kingdoms, they permitted him to offer it: the effect of which was that he might meet the two Houses in the Painted Chamber, to whom he doubted not to offer that which should satisfy and secure all interests." Ludlow goes on to say, "Designing, as I have been since informed, to propose his own resignation, and the admission of his son to the throne upon such terms as should have been agreed upon." The commissioners retired to deliberate, "and being satisfied, upon debate, that nothing but loss of time would be the consequence of it, they returned into the court with a negative to his demand." Bradshaw then delivered a solemn speech to the King, declaring how he had through his reign endeavored to subvert the laws and introduce arbitrary government; how he had attempted, from the beginning, either to destroy parliaments or to render them subservient to his own designs; how he had levied war against the Parliament, by the terror of his power to discourage forever such assemblies from doing their duty, and that in this war many thousands of the good people of England had lost their lives. The clerk was lastly commanded to read the sentence, that his head should be severed from his body; "and the commissioners," says Ludlow, "testified their unanimous assent by standing up." The King attempted to speak, "but, being accounted dead in law, was not permitted." On January 29th the court met to sign the sentence of execution, addressed to "Colonel Francis Hacker, Colonel Huncks, and Lieutenant-Colonel Phayr, and to every one of them." This is the memorable document: "Whereas Charles Stuart, king of England, is and standeth convicted, attainted and condemned of High Treason and other high Crimes: and Sentence upon Saturday last was pronounced against him by this Court, to be put to death by the severing of his head from his body; of which Sentence execution remaineth to be done: "These are therefore to will and require you to see the said Sentence executed, in the open street before Whitehall, upon the morrow, being the thirtieth day of this instant month of January, between the hours of ten in the morning and five in the afternoon with full effect. And for so doing, this shall be your warrant. "And these are to require all Officers and Soldiers, and others the good people of this Nation of England, to be assisting unto you in this service. "Given under our hands and seals. "JOHN BRADSHAW. "THOMAS GREY. "OLIVER CROMWELL." And fifty-six others. The statements of the heartless buffoonery, and the daring violence of Cromwell, at the time of signing the warrant, must be received with some suspicion. He smeared Henry Marten's face with the ink of his pen, and Marten in return smeared his, say the narratives. Probably so. With reference to this anecdote it has been wisely observed, "Such 'toys of desperation' commonly bubble up from a deep flowing stream below." Another anecdote is told by Clarendon; that Colonel Ingoldsby, one who signed the warrant, was forced to do so with great violence, by Cromwell and others; "and Cromwell, with a loud laughter, taking his hand in his, and putting the pen between his fingers, with his own hand writ 'Richard Ingoldsby,' he making all the resistance he could." Ingoldsby gave this relation, in the desire to obtain a pardon after the Restoration; and to confirm his story he said, "if his name there were compared with what he had ever writ himself, it could never be looked upon as his own hand." Warburton, in a note upon this passage, says, "The original warrant is still extant, and Ingoldsby's name has no such mark of its being wrote in that manner." The King knew his fate. He resigned himself to it with calmness and dignity; with one exceptional touch of natural human passion, when he said to Bishop Juxon, although resigning himself to meet his God: "We will not talk of these rogues, in whose hands I am; they thirst for my blood, and they will have it, and God's will be done. I thank God, I heartily forgive them, and I will talk of them no more." He took an affectionate leave of his daughter, the Princess Elizabeth, twelve years old; and of his son, the Duke of Gloucester, of the age of eight. To him he said: "Mark, child, what I say: they will cut off my head, and perhaps make thee king; but thou must not be king so long as thy brothers Charles and James live." And the child said, "I will be torn in pieces first." There were some attempts to save him. The Dutch ambassador made vigorous efforts to procure a reprieve, while the French and Spanish ambassadors were inert. The ambassadors from the states nevertheless persevered, and early in the day of the 30th obtained some glimmering of hope from Fairfax. "But we found," they say in their despatch, "in front of the house in which we had just spoken with the general, about two hundred horsemen; and we learned, as well on our way as on reaching home, that all the streets, passages, and squares of London were occupied by troops, so that no one could pass, and that the approaches of the city were covered with cavalry, so as to prevent anyone from coming in or going out. The same day, between two and three o'clock, the King was taken to a scaffold covered with black, erected before Whitehall." To that scaffold before Whitehall Charles walked, surrounded by soldiers, through the leafless avenues of St. James' Park. It was a bitterly cold morning. Evelyn records that the Thames was frozen over. The season was so sharp that the King asked to have a shirt more than ordinary when he carefully dressed himself. He left St. James' at ten o'clock. He remained in his chamber at Whitehall for about three hours in prayer, and then received the sacrament. He was pressed to dine, but refused, taking a piece of bread and a glass of wine. His purposed address to the people was delivered only to the hearing of those upon the scaffold, but its purport was that the people "mistook the nature of government; for people are free under a government, not by being sharers in it, but by due administration of the laws of it." His theory of government was a consistent one. He had the misfortune not to understand that the time had been fast passing away for its assertion. The headsman did his office; and a deep groan went up from the surrounding multitude. It is scarcely necessary that we should offer any opinion upon this tremendous event. The world had never before seen an act so daring conducted with such a calm determination; and the few moderate men of that time balanced the illegality and also the impolicy of the execution of Charles, by the fact that "it was not done in a corner," and that those who directed or sanctioned the act offered no apology, but maintained its absolute necessity and justice. "That horrible sentence upon the most innocent person in the world; the execution of that sentence by the most execrable murder that was ever committed since that of our blessed Saviour," forms the text which Clarendon gave for the rhapsodies of party during two centuries. On the other hand, the eloquent address of Milton to the people of England has been in the hearts and mouths of many who have known that the establishment of the liberties of their country, duly subordinated by the laws of a free monarchy, may be dated from this event: "God has endued you with greatness of mind to be the first of mankind, who, after having conquered their own king, and having had him delivered into their hands, have not scrupled to condemn him judicially, and, pursuant to that sentence of condemnation, to put him to death." In these times in England, when the welfare of the throne and the people are identical, we can, on the one hand, afford to refuse our assent to the blasphemous comparison of Clarendon--blasphemy more offensively repeated in the church service for January 30th; and at the same time affirm that the judicial condemnation which Milton so admires was illegal, unconstitutional, and in its immediate results dangerous to liberty. But feeling that far greater dangers would have been incurred if "the caged tiger had been let loose," and knowing that out of the errors and anomalies of those times a wiser revolution grew, for which the first more terrible revolution was a preparation, we may cease to examine this great historical question in any bitterness of spirit, and even acknowledge that the death of Charles, a bad king, though in some respects a good man, was necessary for the life of England, and for her "teaching other nations how to live." We must accept as just and true Milton's admonition to his countrymen in reference to this event, which he terms "so glorious an action," with many reasonable qualifications as to its glory; and yet apply even to ourselves his majestic words: "After the performing so glorious an action as this, you ought to do nothing that is mean and little, not so much as to think of, much less to do, anything but what is great and sublime. Which to attain to, this is your only way: as you have subdued your enemies in the field, so to make appear, that unarmed, and in the highest outward peace and tranquillity, you of all mankind are best able to subdue ambition, avarice, the love of riches, and can best avoid the corruptions that prosperity is apt to introduce--which generally subdue and triumph over other nations--to show as great justice, temperance, and moderation in the maintaining your liberty, as you have shown courage in freeing yourselves from slavery." FOOTNOTES: [39] Charles I had been confined here for nearly three weeks. [40] Ludlow uses this text, from Numbers xxxv, in explaining his convictions. CROMWELL'S CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND A.D. 1649 FREDERIC HARRISON Alike on account of its effect upon the Irish people and by reason of the historical debate of which it has continued to be the subject, Cromwell's Irish campaign is a matter of much moment to students of British policy and conquest. Cromwell had already won a complete victory for the Parliamentary forces over the Royalists of England and Scotland, and had suppressed an insurrection in Wales. As a member of the High Court he had signed the death-warrant of Charles I, and on the establishment of the Commonwealth, early in 1649, his preëminence in both military and political leadership gave him almost absolute control of the English government. In 1641 there had been a Catholic uprising in Ireland which was attended with considerable success, won at the cost of slaughter often characterized as massacre. Although Charles I made peace with the insurrectionists in 1643, and soon afterward most of them became Royalists, disorders in Ireland still continued. At last the English Parliament resolved to put an end to these tumults, and in March, 1649, Cromwell was appointed to the supreme command in Ireland. Among the many able writers on Oliver Cromwell none has treated this portion of his career with greater clearness and impartiality than Frederic Harrison, whose history of the campaign in Ireland has been selected, particularly for the sake of these merits, for presentation here. The reconquest of Ireland was by all felt to be the most urgent interest of the young commonwealth; there was almost as much agreement to intrust Cromwell with the task; and after some consideration, and prayerful consultations in the army, he accepted the duty. The condition of England was precarious indeed; service in Ireland was not popular in the army; and an ambitious adventurer would have been loath to quit England while the first place was still unoccupied. It was at great risk to the cause, and at much personal sacrifice, that Cromwell accepted the difficult post in Ireland as his first duty to his country and to religion. His campaign and the subsequent settlement in Ireland are among those things which weigh heaviest on Cromwell's memory, and which of his stoutest admirers one only has heartily approved. Fortunately, there is no part of his policy where his conduct is more simple and his motives are more plain. The Irish policy of Cromwell was the traditional policy of all Englishmen of his creed and party, and was distinguished from theirs only by his personal vigor and thoroughness. He was neither better nor worse than the English Puritans, or rather all English statesmen for many generations: he was only keener and stronger. When he, with Vane, Fairfax, Whitelocke, and other commissioners, went to the Guildhall to obtain a loan for the campaign, they told the common council that this was a struggle not between Independent and Presbyterian, but between papist and Protestant; that papacy or popery was not to be endured in that kingdom; and they cited the maxim of James I: "Plant Ireland with Puritans, root out papists, and then secure it." To Cromwell, as to all English Puritans, it seemed a self-evident truth that one of the three realms could not be suffered to become Catholic; as little could it be suffered to become independent, or the open practice of the Catholic religion allowed there, any more than in England; finally, that peace and prosperity could never be secured in Ireland without a dominant and preponderating order of English birth and Protestant belief. By Cromwell, as by the whole Puritan body--we may fairly say by the whole body of Protestants--the Irish rebellion of 1641 was believed to have opened with a barbarous, treacherous, and wholesale massacre, followed during nine years by one prolonged scene of confusion and bloodshed, ending in an almost complete extinction of the Protestant faith and English interests. The victorious party, and Cromwell more deeply than others, entered on the recovery of Ireland in the spirit of a religious war, to restore to the Protestant cause one of the three realms which had revolted to the powers of darkness. Such was for centuries the spirit of Protestant England. Five months were occupied in the preparations for this distant and difficult campaign. Cromwell's nomination was on March 15, 1649. On the same day Milton was appointed Latin secretary to the council. During April Cromwell arranged the marriage of his eldest son with the daughter of a very quiet, unambitious squire. On July 10th he set forth from London with much military state. His lifeguard was a body of gentlemen "as is hardly to be paralleled in the world." He still waited a month in the West, his wife and family around him; and thence wrote his beautiful letter to Mayor about his son, and the letter to "my beloved daughter Dorothy Cromwell, at Hursley." At length all was ready, and he set sail on August 13th with nine thousand men in about one hundred ships. He was invested with supreme civil, as well as military, command in Ireland; amply supplied with material and a fleet. Ireton, his son-in-law, was his second in command. On landing in Dublin, the general made a speech to the people, in which he spoke of his purpose as "the great work against the barbarous and bloodthirsty Irish, and all their adherents and confederates, for the propagating of the gospel of Christ, the establishing of truth and peace, and restoring that bleeding nation to its former happiness and tranquillity." His first act was to remodel the Irish army, making "a huge purge of the army which we found here: it was an army made up of dissolute and debauched men"; and the general issued a proclamation against swearing and drunkenness, and another against the "wickedness" that had been taken by the soldiery "to abuse, rob, and pillage, and too often to execute cruelties upon the country people," promising to protect all peaceable inhabitants, and to pay them in ready money for all goods. Two soldiers were shortly hanged for disobeying these orders. Having made a general muster of his forces in Dublin, and formed a complete body of fifteen thousand horse and foot, he selected a force of ten thousand stout, resolute men, and advanced on Drogheda (in English, Tredagh). Drogheda is a seaport town on the Boyne, about twenty-three miles due north of Dublin. It was strongly fortified, and Ormonde,[41] as Clarendon tells us, had put into it "the flower of his army, both of soldiers and officers, _most of them English_, to the number of three thousand foot, and two or three good troops of horse, provided with all things." Sir Arthur Ashton, an English Catholic, an officer "of great name and experience, and who at that time made little doubt of defending it against all the power of Cromwell," was in chief command. Cromwell's horse reached Drogheda on September 3d, his memorable day; some skirmishes followed, and on the 10th the batteries opened in earnest, after formal summons to the garrison to surrender. A steeple and a tower were beaten down the first day; all through the 11th the batteries continued, and at length effected "two reasonable breaches." About five in the evening of the second day the storm began. "After some hot dispute we entered, about seven or eight hundred men; the enemy disputing it very stiffly with us." But a tremendous rally of the garrison--wherein Colonel Castle and other officers were killed--drove out the column, which retreated disheartened and baffled. Then the general did that which as commander he was seldom wont to do, and which he passes in silence in his despatches. "Resolved," says Ludlow, "to put all upon it, he went down to the breach; and calling out a fresh reserve of Colonel Ewer's men, he put himself at their head, and with the word 'our Lord God,' led them up again with courage and resolution, though they met with a hot dispute." Thus encouraged to recover their loss, they got ground of the enemy, forced him to quit his intrenchments, and poured into the town. There many retreated to the Millmount, a place very strong and difficult of access; "exceedingly high and strongly palisaded." This place commanded the whole town: thither Sir Arthur Ashton and other important officers had betaken themselves. But the storming party burst in, and were ordered by Cromwell to put them all to the sword. The rest of the garrison fled over the bridge to the northern side of the town; but the Ironsides followed them hotly, both horse and foot, and drove them into St. Peter's Church and the towers of the ramparts. St. Peter's Church was set on fire by Cromwell's order. He writes to the speaker: "Indeed, being in the heat of action, I forbade them to spare any that were in arms in the town: and I think that night they put to the sword about two thousand men." Next day the other towers were summoned, and the work of slaughter was renewed for two days, until the entire garrison was annihilated. It was unquestionably a massacre. "That night they put to the sword about two thousand men." In St. Peter's Church "near a thousand of them were put to the sword, fleeing thither for safety." "Their friars were knocked on the head promiscuously." "I do not think we lost a hundred men upon the place." Such are a few passages from Cromwell's own despatches. The slaughter was indeed prodigious. The general writes: "I believe we put to the sword the whole number of the defendants. I do not think thirty of the whole number escaped with their lives." "The enemy were about three thousand strong in the town." "I do not believe, neither do I hear, that any officer escaped with his life, save only one lieutenant." He subsequently gives a detailed list of the slain, amounting to about three thousand. Hugh Peters, the chaplain, reports as follows: "Sir, the truth is, Drogheda is taken, three thousand five hundred fifty-two of the enemy slain, and sixty-four of ours. Ashton the governor, killed, none spared." It is also certain that quarter was refused. "I forbade them to spare any that were in arms in the town." It is expressly told us that all officers and all priests taken were killed. From the days of Clarendon it has been repeated by historians that men, women, and children were indiscriminately slaughtered, and there is evidence of an eye-witness to that effect; but this is not believed to have been done by the order, or even with the knowledge, of the general. The Royalist accounts insist that quarter was promised at first; and that the butchery of men in cold blood was carried on for days. Here again the act must have been exceptional and without authority. To Cromwell himself this fearful slaughter was a signal triumph of the truth. "It hath pleased God to bless our endeavors." "This hath been a marvellous great mercy." "I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches, who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood; and that it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future. Which are the satisfactory grounds to such actions, which otherwise cannot but work remorse and regret." "It was set upon some of our hearts, That a great thing should be done, not by power or might, but by the Spirit of God." In the same sense it was received by Parliament and council of state, by some of the noblest spirits of their age. Ludlow says simply that this "extraordinary severity was used to discourage others from making opposition." It had always been the policy of Cromwell in battle to inflict a crushing defeat; at Marston, at Naseby, and at Preston he had "taken execution of the enemy" for hours and over miles of country. At Basing and elsewhere, after a summons and a storm, he had slaughtered hundreds without mercy. And such was the law of war in that age, practised on both sides without hesitation. But the item of numbers and of time tells very heavily here. The killing of hundreds in hot blood differs from the massacre of thousands during days. There was no such act in the whole civil war as the massacre--prolonged for days--of three thousand men enclosed in walls entirely at the mercy of their captors, to say nothing of the promiscuous slaughter of priests, if not of women and unarmed men. In England such a deed could not have been done; and not in Ireland, but that they were Catholics fighting in defence of their faith. The fact that the garrison were Catholics, fighting on Irish soil, placed them, to the Puritan Englishman, out of the pale. No admiration for Cromwell, for his genius, courage, and earnestness--no sympathy with the cause that he upheld in England--can blind us to the truth, that the lurid light of this great crime burns still after centuries across the history of England and of Ireland; that it is one of those damning charges which the Puritan theology has yet to answer at the bar of humanity. The tremendous blow at Drogheda struck terror into Ormonde's forces. Dundalk and Trim were abandoned in haste. O'Neil swore a great oath that as Cromwell had stormed Drogheda, if he should storm hell he should take it. One fort after another yielded; and in a fortnight from the taking of Drogheda Cromwell was master of the country north of Dublin. Marching from Dublin south, on September 23d, his army took forts in Wicklow, Arklow, and Enniscorthy; and on October 1st the general encamped before Wexford, an important seaport at the southeastern corner of the island. The town was strong, with a rampart fifteen feet thick, a garrison of over two thousand men, one hundred cannon, and in the harbor two ships armed with fifty-four guns. Cromwell summoned the governor to surrender, not obscurely threatening him with the fate of Drogheda. "It will clearly appear," he said, "where the guilt will lie if innocent persons should come to suffer with the nocent." His terms were quarter and prison to the officers, quarter and freedom to the soldiers, protection from plunder to the town. These terms were refused, and both sides continued the fight. Suddenly, some breaches being made in the castle, the captain surrendered it, and by a surprise the whole army of the Commonwealth poured into the town. The townsmen took part in the defence; and townsmen and garrison together were forced into the market-place. There, as at Drogheda, a promiscuous massacre ensued. Upward of two thousand were slain, and with them not a few of the citizens; and the town was delivered over to pillage. It is asserted by the Catholic writers that a body of women, who had taken refuge round the cross, were deliberately slaughtered, and that a general massacre took place without regard to sex or age. Priests were killed at once, and in the sack and pillage undoubtedly some noncombatants, it may be some women and children. But these things were incidents of such a storm, and were not done by design or order of the general. This is his own story: "While I was preparing of it; studying to preserve the Town from plunder, that it might be of the more use to you and your Army--the Captain, who was one of the Commissioners, being fairly treated, yielded up the Castle to us. Upon the top of which our men no sooner appeared, but the Enemy quitted the Walls of the Town; which our men perceiving, ran violently upon the Town with their ladders, and stormed it. And when they were come into the market-place, the Enemy making a stiff resistance, our forces brake them; and then put all to the sword that came in their way. Two boatfuls of the Enemy attempting to escape, being overprest with numbers, sank; whereby were drowned near three hundred of them. I believe, in all, there was lost of the Enemy not many less than Two-thousand; and I believe not Twenty of yours from first to last of the Siege. And indeed it hath, not without cause, been deeply set upon our hearts, That, we intending better to this place than so great a ruin, hoping the Town might be of more use to you and your Army, yet God would not have it so; but by an unexpected providence, in His righteous justice, brought a just judgment upon them; causing them to become a prey to the Soldier--who in their piracies had made preys of so many families, and now with their bloods to answer the cruelties which they have exercised upon the lives of divers poor Protestants! "This Town is now so in your power, that of the former inhabitants, I believe scarce one in twenty can challenge any property in their houses. Most of them are run away, and many of them killed in this service. And it were to be wished that an honest people would come and plant here." The blow that had desolated Drogheda and Wexford did not need to be repeated. Ross was taken; the Munster garrisons--Cork, Kinsale, and others--joined the Commonwealth. And within three months of Cromwell's march from Dublin, the whole of the towns on the eastern and southern sides of Ireland, except Waterford and some others, were reduced to the Parliament. Waterford resisted them; a wet winter set in; and with the wet, dysentery and fever. Cromwell fell ill; many officers sickened; General Jones died. "What England lost hereby is above me to speak," wrote the general. "I am sure I lost a noble friend and companion in labors. You see how God mingles out the cup to us. Indeed we are at this time a crazy company: yet we live in His sight; and shall work the time that is appointed us, and shall rest after that in peace." After a short rest, on January 29th Cromwell was again in the field. He passed into the heart of the island--into Kilkenny and Tipperary; Clogheen, Castletown, Fethard, Callan, Cashel, Cahir, Kilkenny, Carrick, were taken after a short defence; and Clonmel at last surrendered after a desperate attempt at storm, which cost Cromwell, it is said, two thousand men. This was his last great fight in Ireland. He had now crushed opposition in the whole east and south of the island; the north had returned to the Protestant cause; Waterford fell soon after; and except Limerick, Galway, and a few fortresses, the Parliament's forces were masters of the island. Cromwell had been nine months in Ireland, and at no time possessed an army of more than fifteen thousand men. Within that time he had taken a score of strong places, and in a series of bloody encounters had dispersed or annihilated armies of far greater number than his own. An official summons to England had been sent in January; and it was not till the end of May that he actually obeyed it. As Cromwell's practice in warfare in Ireland differed somewhat from what he observed elsewhere, and as from that day to this it has been the subject of furious invective, a few words thereon are plainly needed. Cromwell had gone to Ireland, at imminent risk to his cause, to recover it to the Parliament in the shortest possible time, and with a relatively small army. He had gone there first to punish, as was believed, a wholesale massacre and a social revolution, to restore the Irish soil to England, and to replace the Protestant ascendency. In the view of the Commonwealth government, the mass was by law a crime, Catholic priests were legally outlaws, and all who resisted the Parliament were constructively guilty of murder and rebellion. Such were the accepted axioms of the whole Puritan party, and of Cromwell as much as any man. In such a war he held that where a place was stormed after summons, all in arms might justly be put to the sword, though no longer capable of resistance, and though they amounted to thousands. "They," he writes, "refusing conditions seasonably offered, were all put to the sword." Repeatedly he shot all officers who surrendered at discretion. Officers who had once served the Parliament he hanged. Priests, taken alive, were hanged. "As for your clergymen, as you call them," wrote Oliver to the governor of Kilkenny, "in case you agree for a surrender, they shall march away safely; but if they fall otherwise into my hands, I believe they know what to expect from me." At Gowran the castle surrendered. "The next day the colonel, the major, and the rest of the commission officers were shot to death. In the same castle also he took a popish priest, who was chaplain to the Catholics in this regiment; who was caused to be hanged." The Bishop of Ross, marching to save Clonmel with five thousand men, was defeated by Broghill, captured, and hanged in sight of his own men. The Bishop of Clogher was routed by Coote and Venables and shared the same fate. "All their friars were knocked on the head promiscuously," Cromwell wrote at Drogheda--as the Catholic martyrologies assert, with torture. Peaceable inhabitants were not to be molested. But all who had taken part in or supported the rebellion of 1641 were liable to justice. For soldiers he found a new career. By a stroke of profound policy he encouraged foreign embassies to enlist Irish volunteers, giving them a free pass abroad. And thus it is said some forty thousand Irishmen ultimately passed into the service of foreign sovereigns. With great energy and skill the Lord-Lieutenant set about the reorganization of government in Ireland. A leading feature of this was the Cromwellian settlement afterward carried out under the Protectorate, by which immense tracts of land in the provinces of Ulster, Leinster, and Munster were allotted to English settlers, and the landowners of Irish birth removed into Connaught. Cromwell has left on record his own principles of action in the famous declaration which he issued in January in reply to the Irish bishops: "Ireland," he says, "was once united to England. Englishmen had inheritances and leases which they had purchased: and they lived peaceably. You broke this Union. You, unprovoked, put the English to the most unheard-of and most barbarous massacre (without respect of sex or age) that ever the sun beheld. It is a fig-leaf of pretence that they fight for their king: really it is for men guilty of blood--_helium prelaticum et religiosum_--as you say. You are a part of Anti-Christ, whose kingdom the Scripture so expressly speaks should be laid in blood, yea, in the blood of the saints. "You quote my own words at Ross," he says, "that where the Parliament of England have power, the exercise of the mass will not be allowed of; and you say that this is a design to extirpate the Catholic religion. I cannot extirpate what has never been rooted. These are my intentions. I shall not, where I have power, suffer the exercise of the mass. Nor shall I suffer any Papists, where I find them seducing the people, or by overt act violating the laws. As for the people, what thoughts they have in matters of religion in their own breasts I cannot reach." But as to the charge of massacre, destruction, or banishment he says: "Give us an instance of one man since my coming into Ireland, not in arms, massacred, destroyed or banished; concerning the massacre or the destruction of whom justice hath not been done, or endeavored to be done." This very pointed and daring challenge could hardly have been publicly made by such a man as Cromwell, if, to his knowledge, a slaughter of women and unarmed men had occurred. On the other hand, it is certain that priests and others had been killed in cold blood; and a general who delivers over a city to pillage, and forbids quarter, can hardly say where outrage and massacre will cease. As to banishment, the "Cromwellian settlement" was necessarily based on the banishment of those whom the settlers displaced. With regard to the policy of confiscation and resettlement, Cromwell warmly justifies it. It is the just way of meeting rebellion, he says. You have forfeited your estates, and it is just to raise money by escheating your lands. But apart from the land forfeited, which is but a part of the account, if ever men were engaged in a just and righteous cause it was this, he asserts: "We are come to ask an account of the innocent blood that hath been shed; and to endeavor to bring to an account--by the presence and blessing of the Almighty, in whom alone is our hope and strength--all who, by appearing in arms, seek to justify the same. We come to break the power of lawless Rebels, who having cast off the Authority of England, live as enemies to Human Society; whose principles, the world hath experience, are, To destroy and subjugate all men not complying with them. We come, by the assistance of God, to hold forth and maintain the lustre and glory of English Liberty in a Nation where we have an undoubted right to do it;--wherein the people of Ireland (if they listen not to such seducers as you are) may equally participate in all benefits; to use liberty and fortune equally with Englishmen, if they keep out of arms." Such was the basis of the famous "Cromwellian settlement"--by far the most thorough act in the long history of the conquest of Ireland; by far the most wholesale effort to impose on Ireland the Protestant faith and English ascendency. Wholesale and thorough, but not enough for its purpose. It failed like all the others; did more, perhaps, than any other to bind Ireland to the Catholic Church, and to alienate Irishmen from the English rule. On the Irish race it has left undying memories and a legend of tyranny which is summed up in the peasants' saying of the "Curse of Cromwell." Cromwell, not worse than the Puritans and English of his age, but nobler and more just, must yet for generations to come bear the weight of the legendary "curse." He was the incarnation of Puritan passion, the instrument of English ambition; the official authority by whom the whole work was carried out, the one man ultimately responsible for the rest; and it is thus that on him lies chiefly the weight of this secular national quarrel. FOOTNOTES: [41] James Butler, first Duke of Ormonde, was now head of the Irish Royalists.--ED. MOLIÈRE CREATES MODERN COMEDY A.D. 1659 HENRI VAN LAUN The seventeenth century was the period of a very remarkable literary outburst in France, an outburst which has done much to mould French genius of more recent times. The latter part of the century, which has been called the Augustan age of France, the age of Louis XIV, has certainly been but seldom equalled in the number and variety of the writers who adorned it. Yet it owes much of its brilliancy, much of its rapid development, to the training of the decades previous to 1650, and especially to the enthusiastic patronage of that great statesman Richelieu. Were a Frenchman seeking for a single event, a single date to mark the most striking moment of this literary era, he would probably select the foundation of the French Academy by Richelieu, in 1635. Or perhaps he might turn to the production of Corneille's most famous tragedy, _Le Cid_, in 1633. Neither of these events, however, has quite what we would recognize as a world-wide significance. The Academy has done much for France, but it has always remained a French academy, and the forty "immortal" Frenchmen who constitute its membership have not always owed their election solely to literary eminence. Neither have Corneille's tragedies been accepted as models by the world at large. But under Corneille's influence the French stage developed from a state of buffoonery and wooden imitation of the ancients to a state where a greater artist than Corneille gave it really world-wide prominence. Molière is not only the most celebrated of French actor-managers; he is the greatest of all character-comedy writers, the teacher of all future generations, and the satiric scourge of his own. When in 1659 his comedy _Les précieuses Ridicules_ took Paris by storm, it did more than make a reformation of the manners of its own. It taught the world what true comedy should be, and it sent ringing through the universe forever a mighty trumpet-note against hypocrisy and folly. The drama attained its highest excellence and repute in the age of Louis XIV, and we should not be making a very hazardous assertion if we were to say that the literature of that epoch in France attained its height of glory in the drama. No French dramatist has excelled Molière, Corneille, and Racine; no group of authors in the seventeenth century were more brilliant, more powerful, more originative. When we turn our eyes upon the stage for which these three wrote, we find ourselves in the full splendor of the Augustan age, in all its refinement and culture, its luxury and elegance, its strength of wit and justness of expression, its social polish and gorgeous display. Great as was the advance made by the audience of Jodelle upon the audience of the "moralities" and "sotties," the advance of the court and society under the Valois was equally great. The Grand Monarque, listening to a masterpiece of Corneille, Molière, or Racine, surrounded by his brilliant circle of lords and ladies, represented an almost incalculable development of ceremonious culture, in idea, in apparel, and in general surroundings, since the day when, about a hundred years before, while the blossom of the Renaissance was barely expanded, the popinjay King Henry II looked on at the first crude sketch of a French classical play. Stage, scenery, appointments, audience, critic, music, actors, and authors, all now bore witness to and adorned, as they were in fact the most elaborate product of, an Augustan age. Paris up to this time had had little opportunity of knowing what true comedy was. It had had farces in abundance, not only of home growth, but imported, and from Italy in particular. When Molière came before the public with his homogeneous and well-trained company, and his repertory of excellent character-sketches and comic situations, the prevailing sentiment was expressed by a member of the audience which listened to the first production of his _Précieuses Ridicules_: "Courage, Molière; this is genuine comedy!" France had long been waiting for genuine comedy; waiting rather by an instinctive requirement of the national genius, and with an aptitude to appreciate the highest comic art as soon as it might be manifested, than with any definite conception of the exact thing that was lacking on the stage. The French nature was precisely fitted to produce and to enjoy the loftiest style of character-comedy, but no modern literature had hitherto exhibited that which Molière was to provide. The author of the _Précieuses Ridicules_ and _Tartuffe_ was essentially the outcome of his age, the dramatist of drawing-room life, whose genius enabled him to web the foibles of the salon with elegant phraseology, and scenic effect with admirable poetic expression; and the contrast between his lofty and conscientious work and the puerilities and license of the Spanish and Italian models was as marked as it was readily recognized. Yet it was no easy matter to acclimatize in France even the high style of comedy introduced by Molière, and he had to inter-mix it with a good many farces to make it go down. For twelve long years, leading the life of a strolling player, Molière observed and studied character; and when at last he thought himself safe from opposition, under the powerful patronage of Louis XIV, the Church, the University, the Sorbonne, and the bigotry of the statesmen--once more united as in the age of Francis I--conspired to cast stumbling-blocks in the way of literary freedom. It was the authorities of the Church which, shocked and jealous at the enthusiasm which greeted the appearance of _Tartuffe_, brought the veto of the King to bear against the company of the Palais Royal; and though Molière believed that his private intercession had obtained the removal of this veto, his enemies were bold and powerful enough during the absence of Louis, on the further representation of the play, to prevent its production a second time. Molière was able to cope with his adversaries; yet it is a noteworthy fact that the decree of excommunication passed against comedians in France was not absolutely rescinded until the present century. We do not forget that Corneille wrote comedies before Molière; and indeed there is no doubt that the younger of the two dramatists owed something, even in comedy, to the older. Molière began by adapting from and imitating the Italian and Spanish comedy-writers, upon whom many of his first farces were founded, and it is not at all unlikely that he even remodelled some of the earlier sotties. It was perhaps due to Corneille's influence as much as to anything else that his genius at last discovered its true level. He confessed to Boileau his great indebtedness to _Le Menteur_. "When it was first performed," he says, "I had already a wish to write, but was in doubt as to what it should be. My ideas were still confused, but this piece determined them. In short, but for the appearance of _Le Menteur_, though I should no doubt have written comedies of intrigue, like _L'Etourdi_, or _Le Dépit Amoureux_, I should perhaps never have written the _Misanthrope_." Eliminate the generosity from this confession, and no doubt the truth remains that Molière did form his best style of comedy upon the master of French tragedy. Jean Baptiste Poquelin, who subsequently assumed the name of Molière, was born in the year that François de Sales died, one year after the birth of La Fontaine, four years before the birth of his friend Chapelle and of Madame de Sévigné. When _Le Cid_ was first performed he was fourteen years old, and twenty-two at the time of the first representation of _Le Menteur_. The son of a _valet-de-chambre tapissier_ of Louis XIII, he succeeded in due course to the emoluments and honors, such as they were, of his father; but he had early conceived a passion for the stage, and in 1643 he attached himself to the Illustre Théâtre of Madeleine Béjart, a woman four years his senior. With her were already associated her brother Joseph, her sister Geneviève, about two years younger than Molière, and eight others, most of whom had dropped out of the company before its final settlement in Paris. For a year or two the Illustre Théâtre tempted fortune in the capital without success, and in 1646 they commenced a tour through the provinces which was destined to continue for twelve years. The debts which they had incurred weighed upon them during the whole of this time, and principally upon Molière, who was once imprisoned and several times arrested at the suit of the company's creditors. No doubt these latter had discovered that the young actor had friends who would rescue him from durance, which was done on several occasions, but as late as 1660 we read of Molière's discharging probably the last of the debts for which at this period he made himself responsible. The plays first acted by Molière and his friends were, of course, the farces then most in vogue; among others the comedies of Scarron and the yet inferior productions of Denis Beys and Desfontaines. The former had written a ridiculous piece called _L'Hôpital des Fous_. The latter was the author of _Eurymédon ou l'Illustre Pirate, l'Illustre Comédien ou le Martyre de Saint-Genes_, and of several other inflated pieces. It would be difficult to fix the exact date at which Molière's earliest plays were produced, but it is probable that he began to write for his company as soon as he had enlisted in it. He seems, like Shakespeare, to have, in part at least, adapted the plays of others; but in 1653, if not earlier, he had produced _L'Etourdi_, and in 1656 _Le Dépit Amoureux_. The Illustre Théâtre is heard of at Nantes, Limoges, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Narbonne, and Lyons, where Molière produced his first serious attempt at high comedy in verse, _L'Etourdi_. In 1653 they played by invitation at the country seat of the Prince de Conti, the schoolfellow of Molière. Three years later they played the _Dépit Amoureux_ at Béziers during the meeting in that town of the Parliament of Languedoc. At Grenoble, in 1658, the painter Mignard, with other of his admirers, persuaded him to take his company--for he was joint manager with Madeleine Béjart--to Paris; and this he did, after a concluding trip to Rouen. In Paris they began by playing before Philippe, Duke of Anjou, the brother of Louis XIV, who took them under his protection and introduced them to the court. At this time the company was considerably stronger, as well as richer, than when it left Paris. There were now four ladies, Madeleine Béjart, Geneviève Béjart, Duparc, and Debrie; the two brothers Béjart--the youngest, Louis, had joined at Lyons--Duparc, Debrie, Dufresne, and Croisac making, with Molière himself, eleven persons. It may be concluded that their tour, or, at all events, that part of it which dated from Lyons, had been very successful; for we find that Joseph Béjart, who died early in 1659, left behind him a fortune of twenty-four thousand golden crowns. So at least we are told by the physician Guy-Patin in a letter dated May 27, 1659; and he adds, "Is it not enough to make one believe that Peru is no longer in America, but in Paris?" The condition of the drama in Paris at the time when Molière returned to the capital was anything but satisfactory. There were in 1658 five theatres in Paris: One at the Hôtel de Bourgogne; one at the Marais; one under the patronage of Mademoiselle, daughter of Gaston, Duke of Orléans; a Spanish company; and an Italian company at the Petit Bourbon, under the managership of Torelli. It was with the first and last of these that Molière came chiefly into conflict; and it is probable that the other three were of no great account, at all events as competitors for the favor of the general public. Torelli soon found that the newcomer commanded his hundreds where he himself could only count by scores, and he gave up the Petit Bourbon to Molière in 1659. Molière's company called themselves "Comédiens de Monsieur"; and after Torelli had left them full possession of the Petit Bourbon, their greatest rivals in public favor were the company at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, who played Corneille, Scudéry, Scarron, and other authors of less note. In 1659 Molière took the town by storm with his _Précieuses Ridicules_, a satire in one act on the exaggerations of the Hôtel de Rambouillet. This was followed in the succeeding year by _Sganarelle ou le Cocu Imaginaire_; in the beginning of 1661 appeared _Don Garcie de Navarre_, a heroic piece in five acts, intended to delineate the evils of passionate jealousy; and in the same year were produced _L'École des Maris_, a satire on unreasonable jealousy, and _Les Fâcheux_, a court sketch of several kinds of bores; in 1662 _L'École des Femmes_--an attempt to show the danger of bringing girls up in too strict a manner--with its sequel, the _Critique de l'École des Femmes_, in the year after. Boursault, an amiable man but a mediocre playwright, envious of Molière's growing fame, wrote for the Hôtel de Bourgogne, which eagerly accepted, if it did not bespeak, his piece, _Le Portrait du Peintre ou la Contrecritique de l'École des Femmes_, in which he attempted to bring his brother-author into ridicule; but Molière took ample revenge in his _Impromptu de Versailles_, in which he soundly lashed his rivals, though it may be mentioned to his honor that it was never printed during his lifetime. In 1664 he wrote the _Mariage Forcé_, a one-act piece with eight _entrées de ballet_, specially designed for court representation, in which the King himself was pleased to dance, and, a month or two later, the _Princesse d'Elide_, a cumbrous and comparatively inferior production, done in great haste at the command of Louis XIV, who had determined upon an eight-days' festival in honor of Louise de la Vallière. It was during these festivities that for the first time was represented the first three acts of Molière's masterpiece, _Tartuffe ou l'Imposteur_, a play well worthy of the best and most legitimate subject which satire can have to deal with. Nothing can be fairer or more appropriate than that the art which consists in feigning a representation of real life on the stage should take, as the butt of its ridicule and the object of its skill, the man whose whole life and character are engaged in feigning the possession of virtue and seeming to be that which he is not. The earliest satirists and dramatists have seized on the topic with avidity; and to go no further out of our way than Molière's predecessors in France, we may mention the authors of the romance of _Reynard the Fox_, Ruteboeuf; Jean de Meung, the author of the _Farce des Brus_, Regnier, Scarron, even Pascal. Very various, no doubt, are the hypocritical types encountered in the works of these and other satirists; but all must necessarily have a certain amount of family likeness, and many a hereditary trait is recognized as common to at least two, if not to all, of the race. "Molière gives us the hypocrite by nature, the man who would be a canting scoundrel even if it did not 'pay'; who cannot help being so; who is a human being, and therefore not perfect; who is a man, and thus sensually inclined; who employs certain means to subdue his passions and to become a 'whited sepulchre,' but who gives way all the more to them when he imagines that he can do so with impunity." Tartuffe, who ought to be bound to Orgon by the strongest ties of gratitude, allows the son to be turned out of the house by his father, because the latter will not believe the accusations brought against the hypocrite--tries to seduce his benefactor's wife, to marry his daughter by a first marriage; and finally, after having obtained all his dupe's property, betrays him to the king as a criminal against the state. The _dénouement_ of the play is that Tartuffe himself is led to prison, and that vice is for the nonce punished on the stage as it deserves to be. _Tartuffe_ made many enemies for Molière, especially among the clergy, who were not afraid of being twitted with their too ready application to themselves of the moral of the play. It was prohibited in 1664; and some zealous clergymen even went so far as to write treatises which they hoped would counteract the effects of the dramatist's works. For their own sakes we may hope that they did not succeed. The King was not strong enough to withstand the influence of the clergy, and did not venture at once to remove the interdict. The relaxation did not take place until five years later. But it was at this time that Louis XIV bestowed on Molière's company the name of "Comédiens du Roi"; and the troop was subsidied by a yearly pension of seven thousand livres. _Don Juan ou le Festin de Pierre_, a piece in which a nobleman--who is a libertine as well as a sceptic and a hypocrite--is brought upon the stage, was first acted in February, 1665, and raised such an outcry that it was also forbidden to be played. In spite of failing health and serious depression of spirits, Molière continued to produce play after play; and some of his best and most admired were the fruits of his most unhappy moments. Early in 1662 he had married Armande Béjart, the youngest sister of Madeleine Béjart, who was about twenty years younger than her husband. It was apparently a marriage of mutual affection, but it can hardly be said to have been a fortunate one for either. Armande loved admiration from whatever source, and indulged in pleasures which her husband could not share. The breach between them gradually widened, and it was not till 1671 that their friends brought about a better understanding between them. Meanwhile, in September, 1665, appeared _L'Amour Médecin_, a comedy in three acts, in which a lover appears disguised as a physician, to cure the object of his love, pretends to be dumb, and in which Molière makes his first serious attack against the doctors. It was acted only a few times when the theatre had to be closed on account of the author's illness; and the death of Anne of Austria, in the spring of 1666, delayed its reopening until June of that year. It was then that the _Misanthrope_ was introduced to the public--a play which has been ranked as high in comedy as _Athalie_ is ranked in French tragedy. The circumstances under which it was written were such as might almost warrant us in calling it a tragedy; for the great satirist, who had spent his life in copying the eccentricities of others, had now employed the season of his illness to commit to paper a drama in which he was himself the principal actor. The misanthrope Alceste loves the coquette Célimène, almost against his will; and we can imagine the feelings with which Molière himself took the _rôle_ of Alceste to his wife's Célimène. In 1669 the King, growing more independent of his advisers, sanctioned the production of _Tartuffe_; but this strengthening of his repertory did not prevent Molière producing _Monsieur de Pourceaudnac_, a farcical comedy in three acts, in which there is a masterly and not exaggerated sketch of a consultation of doctors in Molière's time; and, in 1670, the _Bourgeois Gentilhomme_, in which the folly of aping noblemen is delineated, as well as the _Amants Magnifiques_, a comedy-ballet for the particular behoof of the court. In 1671 he combined with Corneille and Quinault in the production of _Psyche_, a tragedy-ballet, and wrote, or rather, perhaps, remodelled from among his earlier efforts, the _Fourberies de Scapin_ and the _Comtesse d'Escarbagnas_. His two last works were among the highest and happiest creations of his genius--the _Femmes Savantes_, a sort of sequel to the _Précieuses Ridicules_, though of a more general application--and the _Malade Imaginaire_. In the latter, he insisted on playing the part of Argan upon the first representation, February 10, 1673; but it was the crowning act of his energetic mind. He became ill during the fourth representation of the play, and died that same evening, February 17th, exactly one year after Madeleine Béjart, with whom, seven-and-twenty years ago, he had set out from Paris with little more ambition than that of earning a livelihood by the pursuit of a congenial career. Molière placed upon the stage nearly all human passions which lend themselves to comedy or farce. Sordid avarice, lavish prodigality, shameless vice, womanly resignation, artless coquetry, greed for money, downright hypocrisy, would-be gentility, self-sufficient vanity, fashionable swindling, misanthropy, heartlessness, plain common-sense, knowledge of the world, coarse jealousy, irresolution, impudence, pride of birth, egotism, self-conceit, pusillanimity, ingenuity, roguery, affectations, homeliness, thoughtlessness, pedantry, arrogance, and many more faults and vices, find their representatives. The language which they employ is always natural to them, and is neither too gross nor over-refined. His verse has none of the stiffness of the ordinary French rhyme, and becomes in his hands, as well as his prose, a delightful medium for sparkling sallies, bitter sarcasms, and well-sustained and sprightly conversations. And how remarkable and delicate is the nuance between his different characters, though they may represent the same profession or an identical personage. None of his doctors are alike; his male and female scholars are all dissimilar. Mascarille is not Gros-Réné, Scapin is not Sbrigani, Don Juan is not Dorante, Alceste is not Philinte, Isabelle is not Agnes, Sganarelle is not always the same, Ariste is not Béralde nor Chrysalde; while even his servants, Nicole, Dorine, Martine, Marotte, Toinette, Claudine, and Lisette; his boobies, such as Alain and Lubin, and his intriguants in petticoats, such as Nérine, Lucette, Frosine, vary in character, expression, and conduct. They exemplify the saying, "Like master, like man." A remarkable characteristic of Molière is that he does not exaggerate; his fools are never overwitty, his buffoons too grotesque, his men of wit too anxious to display their smartness, nor his fine gentlemen too fond of immodest and ribald talk. His satire is always kept within bounds, his repartees are never out of place, his plots are but seldom intricate, and the moral of his plays is not obtruded, but follows as a natural consequence of the whole. He rarely rises to those lofty realms of poetry where Shakespeare so often soars, for he wrote not idealistic, but character, comedies; which is, perhaps, the reason that some of his would-be admirers consider him rather commonplace. His claim to distinction is based only on strong common-sense, good manners, sound morality, real wit, true humor, a great, facile, and accurate command of language, and a photographic delineation of nature. It cannot be denied that there is little action in his plays, but there is a great deal of natural conversation; his personages show that he was a most attentive observer of men, even at court, where a certain varnish of overrefinement conceals nearly all individual features. He generally makes vice appear in its most ridiculous aspect, in order to let his audience laugh and despise it; his aim is to correct the follies of the age by exposing them to ridicule. CROMWELL'S RULE IN ENGLAND THE RESTORATION A.D. 1660 THOMAS CARLYLE JOHN R. GREEN SAMUEL PEPYS Brief as was the duration of the Protectorate under Oliver Cromwell, it was one of the most extraordinary periods in English history. It is now commonly admitted that Cromwell was England's greatest ruler. After his first appearance in Charles' third parliament (1628), at the age of twenty-nine, Cromwell returned to the obscurity of his Huntingdon home. Not until he entered the Long Parliament (1640) did he really begin his marvellous career. However variously judged by his contemporaries and by later generations, Cromwell's part in the world's affairs was of unquestioned magnitude. The very greatness of his career, the power and extent of his influence, and the combination of various elements in his character have made adequate judgment of him difficult, and general agreement concerning him wellnigh impossible. But that he was, at all events, "the most typical Englishman of his time" is now generally acknowledged. In the three views here presented, Cromwell's character and career and the Restoration are set forth from quite different points of view. Carlyle shows us in Cromwell one of his most admired heroes; Green gives us the modern historian's dispassionate conclusions; while the contemporary narrative of the old diarist, Pepys, preserves the personal observations of a participator in the scenes which he describes. Charles II had spent years in exile on the Continent. He was finally proclaimed King of England at Westminster, May 8, 1660. Pepys describes his convoy from Holland to Dover, and his reception by the people who had invited him to return to his country and his throne. THOMAS CARLYLE We have had many civil-wars in England; wars of Red and White Roses, wars of Simon de Montfort; wars enough which are not very memorable. But that war of the Puritans has a significance which belongs to no one of the others. Trusting to your candor, which will suggest on the other side what I have not room to say, I will call it a section once more of that great universal war which alone makes-up the true History of the World,--the war of Belief against Unbelief! The struggle of men intent on the real essence of things, against men intent on the semblances and forms of things. The Puritans, to many, seem mere savage Iconoclasts, fierce destroyers of Forms; but it were more just to call them haters of _untrue_ Forms. I hope we know how to respect Laud and his King as well as them. Poor Laud seems to me to have been weak and ill-starred, not dishonest; an unfortunate Pedant rather than anything worse. His "Dreams" and superstitions, at which they laugh so, have an affectionate, lovable kind of character. He is like a College-Tutor, whose whole world is forms, College-rules; whose notion is that these are the life and safety of the world. He is placed suddenly, with that unalterable, luckless notion of his, at the head not of a College but of a Nation, to regulate the most complex, deep-reaching interests of men. He thinks they ought to go by the old decent regulations; nay, that their salvation will lie in extending and improving these. Like a weak man, he drives with spasmodic vehemence toward his purpose; cramps himself to it, heeding no voice of prudence, no cry of pity: He will have his College-rules obeyed by his Collegians; that first; and till that, nothing. He is an ill-starred Pedant, as I said. He would have it the world was a College of that kind, and the world _was not_ that. Alas! was not his doom stern enough? Whatever wrongs he did, were they not all frightfully avenged on him? It is meritorious to insist on forms; Religion and all else naturally clothes itself in forms. Everywhere the _formed_ world is the only habitable one. The naked formlessness of Puritanism is not the thing I praise in the Puritans; it is the thing I pity--praising only the spirit which had rendered that inevitable! All substances clothe themselves in forms: but there are suitable true forms, and then there are untrue unsuitable. As the briefest definition, one might say, Forms which _grow_ round a substance, if we rightly understand that, will correspond to the real nature and purport of it, will be true, good; forms which are consciously _put_ round a substance, bad. I invite you to reflect on this. It distinguishes true from false in Ceremonial Form, earnest solemnity from empty pageant, in all human things. There must be a veracity, a natural spontaneity in forms. In the commonest meeting of men, a person making what we call "set speeches," is not he an offence? In the mere drawing-room, whatsoever courtesies you see to be grimaces, prompted by no spontaneous reality within, are a thing you wish to get away from. But suppose now it were some matter of vital concernment, some transcendent matter (as Divine Worship is), about which your whole soul, struck dumb with its excess of feeling, knew not how to _form_ itself into utterance at all, and preferred formless silence to any utterance there possible--what should we say of a man coming forward to represent or utter it for you in the way of upholsterer-mummery? Such a man--let him depart swiftly, if he love himself! You have lost your only son; are mute, struck down, without even tears: an importunate man importunately offers to celebrate Funeral Games for him in the manner of the Greeks! Such mummery is not only not to be accepted--it is hateful, unendurable. It is what the old Prophets called "Idolatry," worshipping of hollow _shows_; what all earnest men do and will reject. We can partly understand what these poor Puritans meant. Laud dedicating that St. Catherine Creed's Church in the manner we have it described, with his multiplied ceremonial bowings, gesticulations, exclamations: surely it is rather the rigorous formal _Pedant_, intent on his "College-rules," than the earnest Prophet, intent on the essence of the matter! Puritanism found _such_ forms insupportable; trampled on such forms;--we have to excuse it for saying, No form at all rather than such! It stood preaching in its bare pulpit, with nothing but the Bible in its hand. Nay, a man preaching from his earnest _soul_ into the earnest _souls_ of men: is not this virtually the essence of all Churches whatsoever? The nakedest, savagest reality, I say, is preferable to any semblance, however dignified. Besides, it will clothe itself with _due_ semblance by and by, if it be real. No fear of that; actually no fear at all. Given the living _man_, there will be found _clothes_ for him; he will find himself clothes. But the suit-of-clothes pretending that _it_ is both clothes and man--!--We cannot "fight the French" by three-hundred-thousand red uniforms; there must be _men_ in the inside of them! Semblance, I assert, must actually _not_ divorce itself from Reality. If Semblance do--why, then there must be men found to rebel against Semblance, for it has become a lie! These two Antagonisms at war here, in the case of Laud and the Puritans, are as old nearly as the world. They went to fierce battle over England in that age; and fought-out their confused controversy to a certain length, with many results for all of us. In the age which directly followed that of the Puritans, their cause or themselves were little likely to have justice done them. Charles Second and his Rochesters were not the kind of men you would set to judge what the worth or meaning of such men might have been. That there could be any faith or truth in the life of a man, was what these poor Rochesters, and the age they ushered-in, had forgotten. Puritanism was hung on gibbets--like the bones of the leading Puritans. Its work nevertheless went on accomplishing itself. All true work of a man, hang the author of it on what gibbet you like, must and will accomplish itself. We have our _Habeas-Corpus_, our free Representation of the People; acknowledgment, wide as the world, that all men are, or else must, shall, and will become, what we call _free_ men;--men with their life grounded on reality and justice, not on tradition, which has become unjust and a chimera! This in part, and much besides this, was the work of the Puritans. And indeed, as these things became gradually manifest, the character of the Puritans began to clear itself. Their memories were, one after another, taken _down_ from the gibbet; nay a certain portion of them are now, in these days, as good as canonized. Eliot, Hampden, Pym, nay Ludlow, Hutchinson, Vane himself, are admitted to be a kind of Heroes; political Conscript Fathers, to whom in no small degree we owe what makes us a free England: it would not be safe for anybody to designate these men as wicked now. Few Puritans of note but find their apologists somewhere, and have a certain reverence paid them by earnest men. One Puritan, I think, and almost he alone, our poor Cromwell, seems to hang yet on the gibbet, and find no hearty apologist anywhere. Him neither saint nor sinner will acquit of great wickedness. A man of ability, infinite talent, courage, and so forth; but he betrayed the Cause. Selfish ambition, dishonesty, duplicity; a fierce, coarse, hypocritical _Tartuffe_; turning all that noble Struggle for constitutional Liberty into a sorry farce played for his own benefit: this and worse is the character they give of Cromwell. And then there come contrasts with Washington and others; above all, with these noble Pyms and Hampdens, whose noble work he stole for himself, and ruined into a futility and deformity. From of old, I will confess, this theory of Cromwell's falsity has been incredible to me. Nay I cannot believe the like, of any Great Man whatever. Multitudes of Great Men figure in History as false selfish men; but if we will consider it, they are but _figures_ for us, unintelligible shadows; we do not see into them as men that could have existed at all. A superficial, unbelieving generation only, with no eye but for the surfaces and semblances of things, could form such notions of Great Men. Can a great soul be possible without a _conscience_ in it, the essence of all _real_ souls, great or small? No, we cannot figure Cromwell as a Falsity and Fatuity; the longer I study him and his career, I believe this the less. Why should we? There is no evidence of it. Is it not strange that, after all the mountains of calumny this man has been subject to, after being represented as the very prince of liars, who never, or hardly ever, spoke truth, but always some cunning counterfeit of truth, there should not yet have been one falsehood brought clearly home to him? A prince of liars, and no lie spoken by him. Not one that I could yet get sight of. It is like Pococke asking Grotius, Where is your _proof_ of Mahomet's Pigeon? No proof!--Let us leave all these calumnious chimeras, as chimeras ought to be left. They are not portraits of the man; they are distracted phantasms of him, the joint product of hatred and darkness. Looking at the man's life with our own eyes, it seems to me, a very different hypothesis suggests itself. What little we know of his earlier obscure years, distorted as it has come down to us, does it not all betoken an earnest, affectionate, sincere kind of man? His nervous melancholic temperament indicates rather a seriousness _too_ deep for him. Of those stories of "Spectres;" of the white Spectre in broad daylight, predicting that he should be King of England, we are not bound to believe much--probably no more than of the other black Spectre, or Devil in person, to whom the Officer _saw_ him sell himself before Worcester Fight! But the mournful, over-sensitive, hypochondriac humor of Oliver, in his young years, is otherwise indisputably known. The Huntingdon Physician told Sir Philip Warwick himself, He had often been sent for at midnight; Mr. Cromwell was full of hypochondria, thought himself near dying, and "had fancies about the Town-cross." These things are significant. Such an excitable, deep-feeling nature, in that rugged stubborn strength of his, is not the symptom of falsehood; it is the symptom and promise of quite other than falsehood! The young Oliver is sent to study Law; falls, or is said to have fallen, for a little period, into some of the dissipations of youth; but if so, speedily repents, abandons all this: not much above twenty, he is married, settled as an altogether grave and quiet man. "He pays-back what money he had won at gambling," says the story;--he does not think any gain of that kind could be really _his_. It is very interesting, very natural, this "conversion," as they well name it; this awakening of a great true soul from the worldly slough, to see into the awful _truth_ of things;--to see that Time and its shows all rested on Eternity, and this poor Earth of ours was the threshold either of Heaven or of Hell! Oliver's life at St. Ives and Ely, as a sober industrious Farmer, is it not altogether as that of a true and devout man? He has renounced the world and its ways: _its_ prizes are not the thing that can enrich him. He tills the earth; he reads his Bible; daily assembles his servants round him to worship God. He comforts persecuted ministers, is fond of preachers; nay, can himself preach,--exhorts his neighbors to be wise, to redeem the time. In all this what "hypocrisy," "ambition," "cant," or other falsity? The man's hopes, I do believe, were fixed on the other Higher World; his aim to get well _thither_ by walking well through his humble course in _this_ world. He courts no notice: what could notice here do for him? "Ever in his great Taskmaster's eye." It is striking, too, how he comes-out into public view; he, since no other is willing to come: in resistance to a public grievance. I mean, in that matter of the Bedford Fens. No one else will go to law with Authority; therefore he will. That matter once settled, he returns back into obscurity, to his Bible and his Plough. "Gain influence?" His influence is the most legitimate; derived from personal knowledge of him, as a just, religious, reasonable, and determined man. In this way he has lived till past forty; old age is now in view of him, and the earnest portal of Death and Eternity; it was at this point that he suddenly became "ambitious"! I do not interpret his Parliamentary mission in that way! His successes in Parliament, his successes through the war, are honest successes of a brave man; who has more resolution in the heart of him, more light in the head of him, than other men. His prayers to God; his spoken thanks to the God of Victory, who had preserved him safe, and carried him forward so far, through the furious clash of a world all set in conflict, through desperate-looking envelopments at Dunbar; through the death-hail of so many battles; mercy after mercy; to the "crowning mercy" of Worcester fight: all this is good and genuine for a deep-hearted Calvinistic Cromwell. Only to vain unbelieving Cavaliers, worshipping not God but their own "lovelocks," frivolities, and formalities, living quite apart from contemplations of God, living _without_ God in the world, need it seem hypocritical. Nor will his participation in the King's death involve him in condemnation with us. It is a stern business killing of a King! But if you once go to war with him, it lies _there_; this and all else lie there. Once at war, you have made wager of battle with him: it is he to die, or else you. Reconciliation is problematic; may be possible, or, far more likely, is impossible. It is now pretty generally admitted that the Parliament, having vanquished Charles First, had no way of making any tenable arrangement with him. The large Presbyterian party, apprehensive now of the Independents, were most anxious to do so; anxious indeed as for their own existence; but it could not be. The unhappy Charles, in those final Hampton-Court negotiations, shows himself as a man fatally incapable of being dealt with. A man who, once for all, could not and would not _understand_:--whose thought did not in any measure represent to him the real fact of the matter; nay worse, whose _word_ did not at all represent his thought. We may say this of him without cruelty, with deep pity rather: but it is true and undeniable. Forsaken there of all but the _name_ of Kingship, he still, finding himself treated with outward respect as a King, fancied that he might play-off party against party, and smuggle himself into his old power by deceiving both. Alas, they both _discovered_ that he was deceiving them. A man whose _word_ will not inform you at all what he means or will do, is not a man you can bargain with. You must get out of that man's way, or put him out of yours! The Presbyterians, in their despair, were still for believing Charles, though found false, unbelievable again and again. Not so Cromwell: "For all our fighting," says he, "we are to have a little bit of paper?" No!-- In fact, everywhere we have to note the decisive practical _eye_ of this man; how he drives toward the practical and practicable; has a genuine insight into what _is_ fact. Such an intellect, I maintain, does not belong to a false man: the false man sees false shows, plausibilities, expediences: the true man is needed to discern even practical truth. Cromwell's advice about the Parliament's Army, early in the contest, How they were to dismiss their city-tapsters, flimsy riotous persons, and choose substantial yeomen, whose heart was in the work, to be soldiers for them: this is advice by a man who _saw_. Fact answers, if you see into Fact! Cromwell's _Ironsides_ were the embodiment of this insight of his; men fearing God; and without any other fear. No more conclusively genuine set of fighters ever trod the soil of England, or of any other land. Neither will we blame greatly that word of Cromwell's to them; which was so blamed: "If the King should meet me in battle, I would kill the King." Why not? These words were spoken to men who stood as before a Higher than Kings. They had set more than their own lives on the cast. The Parliament may call it, in official language, a fighting "_for_ the King;" but we, for our share, cannot understand that. To us it is no dilettante work, no sleek officiality; it is sheer rough death and earnest. They have brought it to the calling forth of _War_; horrid internecine fight, man grappling with man in fire-eyed rage--the _infernal_ element in man called forth, to try it by that! _Do_ that therefore; since that is the thing to be done.--The successes of Cromwell seem to me a very natural thing! Since he was not shot in battle, they were an inevitable thing. That such a man, with the eye to see, with the heart to dare, should advance, from post to post, from victory to victory, till the Huntingdon farmer became, by whatever name you might call him, the acknowledged Strongest Man in England, virtually the King of England, requires no magic to explain it!-- Precisely here, however, lies the rub for Cromwell. His other proceedings have all found advocates, and stand generally justified; but this dismissal of the Rump Parliament and assumption of the Protectorship, is what no one can pardon him. He had fairly grown to be King in England; Chief Man of the victorious party in England: but it seems he could not do without the King's Cloak, and sold himself to perdition in order to get it. Let us see a little how this was. England, Scotland, Ireland, all lying now subdued at the feet of the Puritan Parliament, the practical question arose, What was to be done with it? How will you govern these Nations, which Providence in a wondrous way has given-up to your disposal? Clearly those hundred surviving members of the Long Parliament, who sit there as supreme authority, cannot continue forever to sit. What is to be done?--It was a question which theoretical constitution-builders may find easy to answer; but to Cromwell, looking there into the real practical facts of it, there could be none more complicated. He asked of the Parliament, What it was they would decide upon? It was for the Parliament to say. Yet the Soldiers too, however contrary to Formula, they who had purchased this victory with their blood, it seemed to them that they also should have something to say in it! We will not "For all our fighting have nothing but a little piece of paper." We understand that the Law of God's Gospel, to which He through us has given the victory, shall establish itself, or try to establish itself, in this land! For three years, Cromwell says, this question had been sounded in the ears of the Parliament. They could make no answer; nothing but talk, talk. Perhaps it lies in the nature of parliamentary bodies; perhaps no Parliament could in such case make any answer but even that of talk, talk! Nevertheless the question must and shall be answered. You sixty men there, becoming fast odious, even despicable, to the whole nation, whom the nation already calls "Rump" Parliament, _you_ cannot continue to sit there; who or what, then, is to follow? "Free Parliament," right of election, constitutional formulas of one sort or the other--the thing is a hungry fact coming on us, which we must answer or be devoured by it! And who are you that prate of constitutional formulas, rights of Parliament? You have had to kill your king, to make pride's purges, to expel and banish by the law of the stronger whosoever would not let your cause prosper: there are but fifty or threescore of you left there, debating in these days. Tell us what we shall do; not in the way of formula, but of practicable fact! How they did finally answer, remains obscure to this day. The diligent Godwin himself admits that he cannot make it out. The likeliest is, that this poor Parliament still would not, and indeed could not, dissolve and disperse; that when it came to the point of actually dispersing, they again, for the tenth or twentieth time, adjourned it--and Cromwell's patience failed him. But we will take the favorablest hypothesis ever started for the Parliament; the favorablest, though I believe it is not the true one, but too favorable. According to this version: At the uttermost crisis, when Cromwell and his officers were met on the one hand, and the fifty or sixty Rump Members on the other, it was suddenly told Cromwell that the Rump in its despair _was_ answering in a very singular way; that in their splenetic, envious despair, to keep-out the Army at least, these men were hurrying through the House a kind of Reform Bill--Parliament to be chosen by the whole of England; equable electoral division into districts; free suffrage, and the rest of it! A very questionable, or indeed for _them_ an unquestionable, thing. Reform Bill, free suffrage of Englishmen? Why, the Royalists, themselves, silenced indeed but not exterminated, perhaps out_number_ us; the great numerical majority of England was always indifferent to our cause, merely looked at it and submitted to it. It is in weight and force, not by counting of heads, that we are the majority! And now with your Formulas and Reform Bills, the whole matter sorely won by our swords, shall again launch itself to sea; become a mere hope, and likelihood, _small_ even as a likelihood? And it is not a likelihood; it is a certainty, which we have won, by God's strength and our own right hands, and do now hold _here_. Cromwell walked down to these refractory Members; interrupted them in that rapid speed of their Reform Bill;--ordered them to begone, and talk there no more.--Can we not forgive him? Can we not understand him? John Milton, who looked on it all near at hand, could applaud him. The Reality had swept the Formulas away before it. I fancy, most men who were realities in England might see into the necessity of that. The strong daring man, therefore, has set all manner of Formulas and logical superficialities against him; has dared appeal to the genuine Fact of this England, Whether it will support him or not? It is curious to see how he struggles to govern in some constitutional way; find some Parliament to support him; but cannot. His first Parliament, the one they call "Barebones' Parliament," is, so to speak, a _Convocation of the Notables_. From all quarters of England the leading Ministers and chief Puritan Officials nominate the men most distinguished by religious reputation, influence, and attachment to the true cause: these are assembled to shape-out a plan. They sanctioned what was past; shaped as they could what was to come. They were scornfully called _Barebones' Parliament_, the man's name, it seems, was not _Barebones_, but Barbone--a good enough man. Nor was it a jest, their work; it was a most serious reality--a trial on the part of these Puritan Notables how far the Law of Christ could become the Law of this England. There were men of sense among them, men of some quality; men of deep piety I suppose the most of them were. They failed, it seems, and broke-down, endeavoring to reform the Court of Chancery! They dissolved themselves, as incompetent; delivered up their power again into the hands of the Lord-General Cromwell, to do with it what he liked and could. What _will_ he do with it? The Lord-General Cromwell, "Commander-in-chief of all the Forces raised and to be raised"; he hereby sees himself, at this unexampled juncture, as it were the one available Authority left in England, nothing between England and utter Anarchy but him alone. Such is the undeniable Fact of his position and England's, there and then. What will he do with it? After deliberation, he decides that he will _accept_ it; will formally, with public solemnity, say and vow before God and men, "Yes, the Fact is so, and I will do the best I can with it!" Protectorship, _Instrument of Government_;--these are the external forms of the thing; worked out and sanctioned as they could in the circumstances be, by the Judges, by the leading Official people, "Council of Officers and persons of interest in the Nation": and as for the thing itself, undeniably enough, at the pass matters had now come to, there was no alternative but Anarchy or that. Puritan England might accept it or not; but Puritan England was, in real truth, saved from suicide thereby!--I believe the Puritan People did, in an inarticulate, grumbling, yet on the whole grateful and real way, accept this anomalous act of Oliver's; at least, he and they together made it good, and always better to the last. But in their Parliamentary _articulate_ way, they had their difficulties, and never knew fully what to say to it!-- Oliver's second Parliament, properly his _first_ regular Parliament, chosen by the rule laid-down in the _Instrument of Government_, did assemble, and worked;--but got, before long, into bottomless questions as to the Protector's _right_, as to "usurpation," and so forth; and had at the earliest legal day to be dismissed. Cromwell's concluding Speech to these men is a remarkable one. So likewise to his third Parliament, in similar rebuke for their pedantries and obstinacies. Most rude, chaotic, all these Speeches are; but most earnest-looking. You would say, it was a sincere, helpless man; not used to _speak_ the great inorganic thought of him, but to act it rather! A helplessness of utterance, in such bursting fulness of meaning. He talks much about "births of Providence": All these changes, so many victories and events, were not forethoughts, and theatrical contrivances of men, of _me_ or of men; it is blind blasphemers that will persist in calling them so! He insists with a heavy sulphurous, wrathful emphasis on this. As he well might. As if a Cromwell in that dark, huge game he had been playing, the world wholly thrown into chaos round him, had _foreseen_ it all, and played it all off like a precontrived puppet-show by wood and wire! These things were foreseen by no man, he says; no man could tell what a day would bring forth: they were "births of Providence." God's finger guided us on, and we came at last to clear height of victory, God's Cause triumphant in these Nations; and you as a Parliament could assemble together, and say in what manner all this could be _organized_, reduced into rational feasibility among the affairs of men. You were to help with your wise counsel in doing that. "You have had such an opportunity as no Parliament in England ever had." "Christ's Law, the Right and True, was to be in some measure made the Law of this land. In place of that, you have got into your idle pedantries, constitutionalities, bottomless cavillings and questionings about written laws for _my_ coming here;--and would send the whole matter in Chaos again, because I have no Notary's parchment, but only God's voice from the battle-whirlwind, for being President among you! That opportunity is gone; and we know not when it will return. You have had your constitutional Logic; and Mammon's Law, not Christ's Law, rules yet in this land. "God be judge between you and me!" These are his final words to them: Take you your constitution-formulas in your hand; and I my _in_formal struggles, purposes, realities, and acts; and "God be judge between you and me!"" We said above what shapeless, involved chaotic things the printed Speeches of Cromwell are. _Wilfully_ ambiguous, unintelligible, say the most: a hypocrite shrouding himself in confused Jesuitic jargon! To me they do not seem so. I will say, rather, they afforded the first glimpses I could ever get into the reality of this Cromwell, nay into the possibility of him. Try to believe that he means something, search lovingly what that may be: you will find a real _speech_ lying imprisoned in these broken, rude tortuous utterances; a meaning in the great heart of this inarticulate man! You will, for the first time, begin to see that he was a man; not an enigmatic chimera, unintelligible to you, incredible to you. The Histories and Biographies written of this Cromwell, written in shallow, sceptical generations that could not know or conceive of a deep, believing man, are far more _obscure_ than Cromwell's Speeches. You look through them only into the infinite vague of Black and the Inane. "Heats and jealousies," says Lord Clarendon himself: "heats and jealousies," mere crabbed whims, theories, and crotchets; these induced slow, sober, quiet Englishmen to lay down their ploughs and work; and fly into red fury of confused war against the best-conditioned of Kings! _Try_ if you can find that true. Scepticism writing about Belief may have great gifts; but it is really _ultra vires_ there. It is Blindness laying-down the Laws of Optics.-- Cromwell's third Parliament split on the same rock as his second. Ever the constitutional Formula: How came _you_ there? Show us some Notary parchment! Blind pedants:--"Why, surely the same power which makes you a Parliament, that, and something more, made me a Protector!" If my Protectorship is nothing, what in the name of wonder is your Parliamenteership, a reflex and creation of that?-- Parliaments having failed, there remained nothing but the way of Despotism. Military Dictators, each with his district to _coerce_ the Royalist and other gainsayers, to govern them, if not by act of Parliament, then by the sword. Formula shall _not_ carry it, while the Realty is here! I will go on protecting oppressed Protestants abroad, appointing just judges, wise managers, at home, cherishing true Gospel ministers; doing the best I can to make England a Christian England, greater than old Rome, the Queen of Protestant Christianity; I, since you will not help me; I while God leaves me life!--Why did he not give it up; retire into obscurity again, since the Law would not acknowledge him? cry several. That is where they mistake. For him there was no giving of it up! Prime Ministers have governed countries, Pitt, Bombal, Choiseul; and their word was a law while it held: but this Prime Minister was one that _could not get resigned_. Let him once resign, Charles Stuart and the Cavaliers waited to kill him; to kill the Cause _and_ him. Once embarked, there is no retreat, no return. This Prime Minister could _retire_ no-whither except into his tomb. One is sorry for Cromwell in his old days. His complaint is incessant of the heavy burden Providence has laid on him. Heavy; which he must bear till death. Old Colonel Hutchinson, as his wife relates it, Hutchinson, his old battle-mate, coming to see him on some indispensable business, much against his will--Cromwell "follows him to the door," in a most fraternal, domestic, conciliatory style; begs that he would be reconciled to him, his old brother-in-arms; says how much it grieves him to be misunderstood, deserted by true fellow-soldiers, dear to him from of old: the rigorous Hutchinson, cased in his Republican formula, sullenly goes his way.--And the man's head now white; his strong arm growing weary with its long work! I think always, too, of his poor Mother, now very old, living in that Palace of his; a right brave woman; as indeed they lived all an honest God-fearing Household there: if she heard a shot go-off, she thought it was her son killed. He had come to her at least once a day, that she might see with her own eyes that he was yet living. The poor old mother!--What had this man gained; what had he gained? He had a life of sore strife and toil to his last day. Fame, ambition, place in History? His dead body was hung in chains; his "place in History"--place in History, forsooth!--has been a place of ignominy, accusation, blackness, and disgrace; and here, this day, who knows if it is not rash in me to be among the first that ever ventured to pronounce him not a knave and liar, but a genuinely honest man! Peace to him. Did he not, in spite of all, accomplish much for us? _We_ walk smoothly over his great rough heroic life; step-over his body sunk in the ditch there. We need not _spurn_ it, as we step on it!--Let the Hero rest. It was not to _men's_ judgment that he appealed: nor have men judged him very well. JOHN RICHARD GREEN Cromwell saw that Puritanism had missed its aim. He saw that the attempt to secure spiritual results by material force had failed, as it always fails. It had broken down before the indifference and resentment of the great mass of the people, of men who were neither lawless nor enthusiasts, but who clung to the older traditions of social order, and whose humor and good-sense revolted alike from the artificial conception of human life which Puritanism had formed, and from its effort to force such a conception on a people by law. It broke down, too, before the corruption of the Puritans themselves. It was impossible to distinguish between the saint and the hypocrite as soon as godliness became profitable. Ashley Cooper, a sceptic in religion and a profligate in morals, was among "the loudest bagpipes of the squeaking train." Even among the really earnest Puritans prosperity disclosed a pride, a worldliness, a selfish hardness which had been hidden in the hour of persecution. What was yet more significant was the irreligious and sceptical temper of the younger generation which had grown up amid the storms of the civil war. The children even of the leading Puritans stood aloof from Puritanism. The eldest of Cromwell's sons made small pretensions to religion. Milton's nephews, though reared in his house, were writing satires against Puritan hypocrisy and contributing to collections of filthy songs. The two daughters of the great preacher, Stephen Marshall, were to figure as actresses on the infamous stage of the Restoration. The tone of the Protector's later speeches shows his consciousness that the ground was slipping from under his feet. He no longer dwells on the dream of a Puritan England, of a nation rising as a whole into a people of God. He falls back on the phrases of his youth, and the saints become again a "peculiar people," a remnant, a fragment among the nation at large. But with the consciousness of failure in realizing his ideal of government the charm of government was gone; and now to the weariness of power was added the weakness and feverish impatience of disease. Vigorous and energetic as Cromwell's life had seemed, his health was by no mean as strong as his will; he had been struck down by intermittent fever in the midst of his triumphs both in Scotland and in Ireland, and during the past year he had suffered from repeated attacks of it. "I have some infirmities upon me," he owned twice over in his speech at the reopening of the Parliament in January, 1658, after an adjournment of six months; and his feverish irritability was quickened by the public danger. No supplies had been voted, and the pay of the army was heavily in arrear, while its temper grew more and more sullen at the appearance of the new constitution and the reawakening of the royalist intrigues. Cromwell had believed that his military successes would secure compliance with his demands; but the temper of the Commons was even more irritable than his own. Under the terms of the new constitution the members excluded in the preceding year took their places again in the House; and it was soon clear that the Parliament reflected the general mood of the nation. The tone of the Commons became captious and quarrelsome. They still delayed the grant for supplies. Meanwhile, a hasty act of the Protector in giving to his nominees in "the other House," as the new second chamber he had devised was called, the title of "Lords," kindled a strife between the two Houses which was busily fanned by Haselrig and other opponents of the government. It was contended that the "other House" had under the new constitution simply judicial, and not legislative, powers. Such a contention struck at once at Cromwell's work of restoring the old political forms of English life: and the reappearance of parliamentary strife threw him at last, says an observer at his court, "into a rage and passion like unto madness." What gave weight to it was the growing strength of the Royalist party, and its hopes of a coming rising. Such a rising had in fact been carefully prepared; and Charles, with a large body of Spanish troops, drew to the coast of Flanders to take advantage of it. His hopes were above all encouraged by the strife in the Commons, and their manifest dislike of the system of the Protectorate. It was this that drove Cromwell to action. Summoning his coach, by a sudden impulse, the Protector drove on, February 4th, with a few guards to Westminster; and, setting aside the remonstrance of Fleetwood, summoned the two Houses to his presence. "I do dissolve this Parliament," he ended a speech of angry rebuke, "and let God be judge between you and me." Fatal as was the error, for the moment all went well. The army was reconciled by the blow levelled at its opponents, and a few murmurers who appeared in its ranks were weeded out by a careful remodelling. The triumphant officers avowed to stand or fall with his highness. The danger of a Royalist rising vanished before a host of addresses from the counties. Great news, too, came from abroad, where victory in Flanders, and the cession of Dunkirk in June, set the seal on Cromwell's glory. But the fever crept steadily on, and his looks told the tale of death to the Quaker, Fox, who met him riding in Hampton Court Park. "Before I came to him," he says, "as he rode at the head of his lifeguards, I saw and felt a waft of death go forth against him, and when I came to him he looked like a dead man." In the midst of his triumph Cromwell's heart was heavy in fact with the sense of failure. He had no desire to play the tyrant; nor had he any belief in the permanence of a mere tyranny. He clung desperately to the hope of bringing over the country to his side. He had hardly dissolved the Parliament before he was planning the summons of another, and angry at the opposition which his council offered to the project. "I will take my own resolutions," he said gloomily to his household; "I can no longer satisfy myself to sit still, and make myself guilty of the loss of all the honest party and of the nation itself." But before his plans could be realized the overtaxed strength of the Protector suddenly gave way. Early in August, 1658, his sickness took a more serious form. He saw too clearly the chaos into which his death would plunge England to be willing to die. "Do not think I shall die," he burst out with feverish energy to the physicians who gathered round him; "say not I have lost my reason! I tell you the truth. I know it from better authority than any you can have from Galen or Hippocrates. It is the answer of God himself to our prayers!" Prayer indeed rose from every side for his recovery, but death grew steadily nearer, till even Cromwell felt that his hour was come. "I would be willing to live," the dying man murmured, "to be further serviceable to God and his people, but my work is done! Yet God will be with his people!" A storm which tore roofs from houses, and levelled huge trees in every forest, seemed a fitting prelude to the passing away of his mighty spirit. Three days later, on September 3d, the day which had witnessed his victories of Worcester and Dunbar, Cromwell quietly breathed his last. So absolute even in death was his sway over the minds of men, that, to the wonder of the excited Royalists, even a doubtful nomination on his death-bed was enough to secure the peaceful succession of his son, Richard Cromwell. Many in fact who had rejected the authority of his father submitted peaceably to the new Protector. Their motives were explained by Baxter, the most eminent among the Presbyterian ministers, in an address to Richard which announced his adhesion. "I observe," he says, "that the nation generally rejoice in your peaceable entrance upon the government. Many are persuaded that you have been strangely kept from participating in any of our late bloody contentions, that God might make you the healer of our breaches, and employ you in that Temple work which David himself might not be honored with, though it was in his mind, because he shed blood abundantly and made great wars." The new Protector was a weak and worthless man; but the bulk of the nation were content to be ruled by one who was at any rate no soldier, no Puritan, and no innovator. Richard was known to be lax and worldly in his conduct, and he was believed to be conservative and even Royalist in heart. The tide of reaction was felt even in his council. Their first act was to throw aside one of the greatest of Cromwell's reforms and to fall back in the summons which they issued for a new Parliament on the old system of election. It was felt far more keenly in the tone of the new House of Commons when it met in January, 1659. The republicans under Vane, backed adroitly by the members who were secretly Royalists, fell hotly on Cromwell's system. The fiercest attack of all came from Sir Ashley Cooper, a Dorsetshire gentleman who had changed sides in the civil war, had fought for the King and then for the Parliament, had been a member of Cromwell's council, and had of late ceased to be a member of it. His virulent invective on "his highness of deplorable memory, who with fraud and force deprived you of your liberty when living and entailed slavery on you at his death," was followed by an equally virulent invective against the army. "They have not only subdued their enemies," said Cooper, "but the masters who raised and maintained them! They have not only conquered Scotland and Ireland, but rebellious England too; and there suppressed a malignant party of magistrates and laws." The army was quick with its reply. Already in the preceding November it had shown its suspicion of the new government by demanding the appointment of a soldier as general in the place of the new Protector, who had assumed the command. The tone of the council of officers now became so menacing that the Commons ordered the dismissal of all officers who refused to engage "not to disturb or interrupt the free meetings of Parliament." Richard ordered the council of officers to dissolve. Their reply was a demand for the dissolution of the Parliament; and with this demand, on April 22d, Richard was forced to comply. The purpose of the army, however, was still to secure a settled government; and setting aside the new Protector, whose weakness was now evident, they resolved to come to a reconciliation with the republican party, and to recall the fragment of the Commons whom they had expelled from St. Stephen's in 1653. The arrangement was quickly brought about; and in May, of the one hundred sixty members who had continued to sit after the King's death, about ninety returned to their seats and resumed the administration of affairs. The continued exclusion of the members who had been "purged" from the House in 1648, proved that no real intention existed of restoring a legal rule; and the soldiers trusted that the "Rump" which they had restored to power would be bound to them by the growing danger both to republicanism and to religious liberty. But not even their passion for these "causes" could make men endure the rule of the sword. The House was soon at strife with the soldiers. In spite of Vane's counsels, it proposed a reform of the officers and though a Royalist rising in Cheshire during August threw the disputants for a moment together, the struggle revived as the danger passed away. A new hope indeed filled men's minds. Not only was the nation sick of military rule, but the army, unconquerable so long as it held together, at last showed signs of division. In Ireland and Scotland the troops protested against the attitude of their English comrades; and Monk, the commander of the Scottish army, threatened to march on London and free the Parliament from their pressure. The knowledge of these divisions encouraged Haselrig and his coadjutors in the Commons to demand the dismissal of Fleetwood and Lambert from their commands. They answered in October by driving the Parliament again from Westminster, and by marching under Lambert to the north to meet the army under Monk. Lambert, however, suffered himself to be lured into inaction by negotiations, while Monk gathered a convention at Edinburgh, and strengthened himself with money and recruits. His attitude was enough to rouse England to action. Portsmouth closed its gates against the delegates of the soldiers. The fleet declared against them. So rapidly did the tide of feeling rise throughout the country that the army at the close of December was driven to undo the work by recalling the Rump. But the concession only aided the force of resistance by showing the weakness of the tyranny which England was resolute to throw off. Lambert's men fell from him, and finding his path clear, Monk, without revealing his purport, advanced rapidly to Coldstream, and crossed the border in the first days of 1660. His action broke the spell of terror which had weighed upon the country. The cry of "A free Parliament" ran like fire through the country. Not only Fairfax, who appeared in arms in Yorkshire, but the ships on the Thames and the mobs which thronged the streets of London, caught up the cry. Still steadily advancing, but lavishing protestations of loyalty to the Rump, while he accepted petitions for a "Free Parliament," Monk on February 3d entered London unopposed. From the moment of his entry the restoration of the Stuarts became inevitable. The army, resolute as it still remained for the maintenance of "the cause," was deceived by Monk's declarations of loyalty to it, and rendered powerless by his adroit dispersion of the troops over the country. At the instigation of Ashley Cooper, those who remained of the members who had been excluded from the House of Commons in 1648 again forced their way into Parliament, and at once resolved on a dissolution and the election of a new House of Commons. The dissolution in March was followed by a last struggle of the army for its old supremacy. Lambert escaped from the Tower and called his fellow-soldiers to arms; but he was hotly pursued, overtaken, and routed near Daventry; and on April 25th the new House, which bears the name of the "Convention," assembled at Westminster. It had hardly taken the solemn "league and covenant" which showed its Presbyterian temper, and its leaders had only begun to draw up terms on which the King's restoration might be assented to, when they found that Monk was in negotiation with the exiled court. All exaction of terms was now impossible; a declaration from Breda, in which Charles promised a general pardon, religious toleration, and satisfaction to the army, was received with a burst of national enthusiasm; and the old constitution was restored by a solemn vote of the convention, "that according to the ancient and fundamental laws of this kingdom, the government is, and ought to be, by King, Lords, and Commons." The King was at once invited to hasten to his realm; and on May 25th Charles landed at Dover, and made his way amid the shouts of a great multitude to Whitehall. "It is my own fault," laughed the new King with characteristic irony, "that I had not come back sooner; for I find nobody who does not tell me he has always longed for my return." In his progress to the capital Charles passed in review the soldiers assembled on Blackheath. Betrayed by their general, abandoned by their leaders, surrounded as they were by a nation in arms, the gloomy silence of their ranks awed even the careless King with a sense of danger. But none of the victories of the "new model" were so glorious as the victory which it won over itself. Quietly and without a struggle, as men who bowed to the inscrutable will of God, the farmers and traders who had dashed Rupert's chivalry to pieces on Naseby field, who had scattered at Worcester the "army of the aliens," and driven into helpless flight the sovereign that now came "to enjoy his own again," who had renewed beyond sea the glories of Cressy and Agincourt, had mastered the Parliament, had brought a king to justice and the block, had given laws to England, and held even Cromwell in awe, became farmers and traders again, and were known among their fellow-men by no other sign than their greater soberness and industry. And, with them, Puritanism laid down the sword. It ceased from the long attempt to build up a kingdom of God by force and violence, and fell back on its truer work of building up a kingdom of righteousness in the hearts and consciences of men. It was from the moment of its seeming fall that its real victory began. As soon as the wild orgy of the Restoration was over, men began to see that nothing that was really worthy in the work of Puritanism had been undone. The revels of Whitehall, the scepticism and debauchery of courtiers, the corruption of statesmen, left the mass of Englishmen what Puritanism had made them--serious, earnest, sober in life and conduct, firm in their love of Protestantism and of freedom. In the Revolution of 1688 Puritanism did the work of civil liberty which it had failed to do in that of 1642. It wrought out, through Wesley and the revival of the eighteenth century, the work of religious reform which its earlier efforts had only thrown back for a hundred years. Slowly but steadily it introduced its own seriousness and purity into English society, English literature, English politics. The history of English progress since the Restoration, on its moral and spiritual sides, has been the history of Puritanism. SAMUEL PEPYS May 22, 1660. News brought that the two dukes are coming on board which, by and by, they did, in a Dutch boat, the Duke of York in yellow trimmings, the Duke of Gloucester in gray and red. My Lord[42] went in a boat to meet them, the captain, myself, and others standing at the entering port. So soon as they were entered we shot the guns off round the fleet. After that they went to view the ship all over, and were most exceedingly pleased with it. They seem to be very fine gentlemen. After that done, upon the quarter-deck table, under the awning, the Duke of York and my Lord, Mr. Coventry, and I, spent an hour at allotting to every ship their service, in their return to England; which being done, they went to dinner, where the table was very full; the two dukes at the upper end, my Lord Opdam neat on one side, and my Lord on the other. Two guns given to every man while he was drinking the King's health, and so likewise to the Duke's health. I took down Monsieur d'Esquier to the great cabin below, and dined with him in state along with only one or two friends of his. All dinner the harper belonging to Captain Sparling played to the dukes. After dinner, the dukes and my Lord to sea, the vice and rear admirals and I in a boat after them. After that done, they made to the shore in the Dutch boat that brought them, and I got into the boat with them; but the shore was full of people to expect their coming. When we came near the shore, my Lord left them and come into his own boat, and Pen and I with him; my Lord being very well pleased with this day's work. By the time we came on board again, news is sent us that the King is on shore; so my Lord fired all his guns round twice, and all the fleet after him. The gun over against my cabin I fired myself to the King, which was the first time that he had been saluted by his own ships since this change; but holding my head too much over the gun, I had almost spoiled my right eye. Nothing in the world but giving of guns almost all this day. In the evening we began to remove cabins; I to the carpenter's cabin, and Dr. Clerke with me. Many of the King's servants came on board to-night; and so many Dutch of all sorts came to see the ship till it was quite dark, that we could not pass by one another, which was a great trouble to us all. This afternoon Mr. Downing (who was knighted yesterday by the King) was here on board, and had a ship for his passage into England, with his lady and servants. By the same token he called me to him when I was going to write the order, to tell me that I must write him Sir G. Downing. My Lord lay in the roundhouse to-night. This evening I was late writing a French letter by my Lord's order to Monsieur Wragh, Ambassador de Denmarke à la Haye, which my Lord signed in bed. 23d. In the morning come infinity of people on board from the King to go along with him. My Lord, Mr. Crewe, and others go on shore to meet the King as he comes off from shore, where Sir R. Stayner, bringing his majesty into the boat, I hear that his majesty did with a great deal of affection kiss my Lord upon his first meeting. The King, with the two dukes and Queen of Bohemia, Princess Royal, and Prince of Orange, come on board, where I in their coming in kissed the King's, Queen's, and Princess' hands, having done the other before. Infinite shooting off of the guns, and that in a disorder on purpose, which was better than if it had been otherwise. All day nothing but lords and persons of honor on board, that we were exceeding full. Dined in a great deal of state, the royal company by themselves in the coach, which was a blessed sight to see. After dinner the King and Duke altered the name of some of the ships, viz., the Nazeby, into Charles; the Richard, James; the Speaker, Mary. That done, the Queen, Princess Royal, and Prince of Orange took leave of the King, and the Duke of York went on board the London, and the Duke of Gloucester the Swiftsure. Which done, we weighed anchor, and with a fresh gale and most happy weather we set sail for England. All the afternoon the King walked here and there, up and down (quite contrary to what I thought him to have been) very active and stirring. Upon the quarter-deck he fell into discourse of his escape from Worcester, where it made me ready to weep to hear the stories that he told of his difficulties that he had passed through, as his travelling four days and three nights on foot, every step up to his knees in dirt, with nothing but a green coat and a pair of country breeches on, and a pair of country shoes that made him so sore all over his feet that he could scarce stir. Yet he was forced to run away from a miller and other company, that took them for rogues. His sitting at table at one place, where the master of the house that had not seen him in eight years, did know him, but kept it private; when at the same table there was one that had been of his own regiment at Worcester, could not know him, but made him drink the King's health, and said that the King was at least four fingers higher than he. At another place he was by some servants of the house made to drink, that they might know that he was not a Roundhead, which they swore he was. In another place at his inn, the master of the house, as the King was standing with his hands upon the back of a chair by the fireside, kneeled down and kissed his hand, privately, saying, that he would not ask him who he was, but bid God bless him whither he was going. Then the difficulties in getting a boat to get into France, where he was fain to plot with the master thereof to keep his design from the foreman and a boy (which was all the ship's company), and so get to Fecamp in France. At Rouen he looked so poorly, that the people went into the rooms before he went away to see whether he had not stole something or other. In the evening I went up to my Lord to write letters for England, which we sent away, with word of our coming, by Mr. Edw. Pickering. The King supped alone in the coach; after that I got a dish, and we four supped in my cabin, as at noon. About bedtime my Lord Bartlett (who I had offered my service to before) sent for me to get him a bed, who with much ado I did get to bed to my Lord Middlesex in the great cabin below, but I was truly troubled before I could dispose of him, and quit myself of him. So to my cabin again, where the company still was, and were talking more of the King's difficulties: as how he was fain to eat a piece of bread and cheese out of a poor body's pocket; how, at a Catholic house, he was fain to lie in the priest's hole a good while in the house for his privacy. After that our company broke up. We have the lords commissioners on board us, and many others. Under sail all night, and most glorious weather. 24th. Up, and made myself as fine as I could, with the linen stockings on and wide canons that I bought the other day at Hague. Extraordinary press of noble company, and great mirth all the day. There dined with me in my cabin (that is, the carpenter's) Dr. Earle, and Mr. Hollis, the King's Chaplains, Dr. Scarborough, Dr. Quarterman, and Dr. Clerke, Physicians, Mr. Daray, and Mr. Fox (both very fine gentlemen), the King's servants, where we have brave discourse. Walking upon the decks, were persons of honor all the afternoon, among others, Thomas Killigrew (a merry droll, but a gentleman of great esteem with the King), who told us many merry stories. At supper the three doctors of physic again at my cabin; where I put Dr. Scarborough in mind of what I heard him say, that children do, in every day's experience, look several ways with both their eyes, till custom teaches them otherwise. And that we do now see but with one eye, our eyes looking in parallel lines. After this discourse I was called to write a pass for my Lord Mandeville to take up horses to London, which I wrote in the King's name, and carried it to him to sign, which was the first and only one that ever he signed in the ship Charles. To bed, coming in sight of land a little before night. 25th. By the morning we were come close to the land, and everybody made ready to get on shore. The King and the two dukes did eat their breakfast before they went, and there being set some ship's diet they ate of nothing else but pease and pork, and boiled beef. Dr. Clerke, who ate with me, told me how the King had given fifty pounds to Mr. Shepley for my Lord's servants, and five hundred pounds among the officers and common men of the ship. I spoke to the Duke of York about business, who called me Pepys by name, and upon my desire did promise me his future favor. Great expectation of the King's making some knights, but there was none. About noon (though the brigantine that Beale made was there ready to carry him), yet he would go in my Lord's barge with the two dukes. Our captain steered, and my Lord went along bare with him. I went, and Mr. Mansell, and one of the King's footmen, and a dog that the King loved, in a boat by ourselves, and so got on shore when the King did, who was received by General Monk with all imaginable love and respect at his entrance upon the land of Dover. Infinite the crowd of people and the horsemen, citizens, and noblemen of all sorts. The mayor of the town came and gave him his white staff, the badge of his place, which the King did give him again. The mayor also presented him from the town a very rich Bible, which he took, and said it was the thing that he loved above all things in the world. A canopy was provided for him to stand under, which he did, and talked awhile with General Monk and others, and so into a stately coach there set for him, and so away through the town toward Canterbury, without making any stay at Dover. The shouting and joy expressed by all is past imagination. Seeing that my Lord did not stir out of his barge, I got into a boat and so into his barge. My Lord almost transported with joy that he had done all this without any the least blur or obstruction in the world, that could give offence to any, and with the great honor he thought it would be to him. FOOTNOTES: [42] Sir Edward Montagu, afterward Earl of Sandwich, Pepys' patron. He was in command of the English fleet. CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY EMBRACING THE PERIOD COVERED IN THIS VOLUME A.D. 1609-1660 JOHN RUDD, LL.D. Events treated at length are here indicated in large type; the numerals following give volume and page. Separate chronologies of the various nations, and of the careers of famous persons, will be found in the INDEX VOLUME, with volume and page references showing where the several events are fully treated. A.D. 1609. Settlement of Somers on the Bermudas; the English give them his name. The Catholic League in Germany formed. Twelve years' truce arranged between Spain and the Netherlands. Discovery by Samuel Champlain of the lake bearing his name. Ascent of the Hudson River by Henry Hudson. See "HENRY HUDSON EXPLORES THE HUDSON RIVER," xi, 1. Publication of the English version of the Bible at Douai. Galileo constructs the first telescope. (Date uncertain.) Another false Demetrius appears in Russia; Sigismund, King of Poland, and the Cossacks support him. Copper coin first issued in England. 1610. Assassination of Henry IV of France; his son, Louis XIII, succeeds; regency of Marie de' Medici. Discovery and exploration of Hudson Bay. Shakespeare's _Macbeth_ first acted. Discovery by Galileo of the Satellites of Jupiter. See "GALILEO OVERTHROWS ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY," xi, 14. 1611. Settlement of English and Scotch Protestants in Ulster Province, Ireland. Completion and publication of the King James version of the Bible. 1612. Liberation of Russia from its Polish invaders. First settlement of the English in India. See "BEGINNING OF BRITISH POWER IN INDIA," xi, 30. 1613. Founding of the Romanoff, the present, dynasty in Russia, by the accession of Michael II. Argall, of Virginia, destroys the French colony at Port Royal, Acadia. 1614. Erection, by the Dutch, of a fort on Manhattan Island. See "DUTCH SETTLEMENT OF NEW YORK," xi, 44. Last convocation of the States-General in France before the Revolution. Invention of logarithms by Lord Napier, England. 1615. Marriage of Louis XIII with Anne of Austria, daughter of Philip III of Spain. At Frankfort-on-the-Main is published the first known weekly newspaper. 1616. Beginning of war between Sweden and Poland. Discovery of the circulation of the blood by Harvey. See "HARVEY DISCOVERS THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD," xi, 50. Exploration of the bay, to which his name has been given, by Baffin. Death of Shakespeare and Cervantes. 1617. Assassination of Maréschal d'Ancre, favorite of Marie de' Medici; Marie is exiled. Peace of Stolbova between Russia and Sweden; territory on the Baltic ceded to Sweden. 1618. Execution of Raleigh. Beginning of the Thirty Years' War. See "THE DEFENESTRATION AT PRAGUE," xi, 62. Union of the Duchy of Prussia with the Electorate of Brandenburg. Arminianism condemned by the Synod of Dort. 1619. Death of Emperor Matthias; succession of his cousin, Ferdinand II, for some years his imperial colleague, and also King of Hungary and Bohemia. The Bohemians depose him and elect Frederick to the throne. Colonial Assembly at Jamestown, Virginia. See "FIRST AMERICAN LEGISLATURE," xi, 76. Foundation of Batavia by the Dutch as the seat of their power in the East Indies. "INTRODUCTION OF NEGROES INTO VIRGINIA." See xi, 81. 1620. Battle of the White Mountain; decisive defeat of the Protestants of Bohemia; flight of Frederick, the newly elected king. Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth, New England. See "ENGLISH PILGRIMS SETTLE AT PLYMOUTH," xi, 93. Massacre of Protestants in the Valtelline; occupation of the territory by the Spaniards. Publication of Bacon's _Novum Organum_ See "BIRTH OF MODERN SCIENTIFIC METHODS," xi, 116. 1621. Bacon, Lord Chancellor of England, confesses his acceptance of bribes; his downfall. Dissolution of the Evangelical Union; continuation by Mansfield of the war for the Elector Frederick V. Introduction of cotton culture in Virginia. Institution of Thanksgiving Day in New England. War of the Huguenots, led by Rohan and Soubise, against Louis XIII. 1622. Founding of the Propaganda by Pope Gregory XV. Publication of the first known regularly issued newspaper, _The Weekly Newes_, in England. Grant of a province containing parts of New Hampshire and Maine, to Sir Ferdinando Gorges and John Mason. New Netherland taken possession of by the Dutch West India Company. Indian massacre in Virginia. 1623. Conquest and transfer of the Palatinate to the Duke of Bavaria, Maximilian. Building by the Dutch of Fort Orange, on the present site of Albany. 1624. Discordant factions in the French court prepare the way for Richelieu to become prime minister to Louis XIII. England, Holland, and Denmark form an alliance to support the Protestants of Germany. Massacre of the English in Amboyna by the Dutch. 1625. English settlers occupy the islands of Barbados and St. Kitts. Charles I of England succeeds his father, James I; he prorogues his first Parliament. See "ABOLITION OF THE COURT OF STAR CHAMBER," xi, 215. Renewal of insurrection by the French Huguenots. See "SIEGE OF LA ROCHELLE," xi, 129. 1626. Purchase of Manhattan Island from the Indians by the Dutch. Impeachment of the Duke of Buckingham; Charles I dissolves his second Parliament. Peace of Louis XIII and the Huguenots. 1627. A part of Brazil seized by the Dutch. Accession to the Mogul throne of Shah Jahan, builder of the Taj Mahal, Agra, India. Alliance of England with the Huguenots; renewal of the war; siege of La Rochelle; Buckingham makes an unsuccessful attempt on the Isle of Ré. 1628. Compulsion of Charles I to assent to the Petition of Right, limiting the abuse of the royal authority. Buckingham assassinated. Unsuccessful siege by Wallenstein of Straslund. Fall of La Rochelle. See "SIEGE OF LA ROCHELLE," xi, 129. 1629. End of the Huguenot wars. Richelieu becomes prime minister of Louis XIII. See "SIEGE OF LA ROCHELLE," xi, 129. Quebec captured by the English. Edict of Restitution by Ferdinand II demanding the surrender to the Catholic Church of all sees and secularized property in the possession of Protestants. He concludes peace with Denmark. 1630. Foundation of Boston, Massachusetts. See "GREAT PURITAN EXODUS TO NEW ENGLAND," xi, 153. Dismissal of Wallenstein by Emperor Ferdinand II. Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden wages war on behalf of the Protestants in Germany. 1631. Escape from France of Marie de' Medici, after being imprisoned for intrigues against Richelieu. Magdeburg captured and sacked by Tilly, the imperial general. Gustavus Adolphus advances to the Rhine; the Elector of Saxony, John George, occupies Prague with his forces. Settlement of Kent Island, Maryland, by William Clayborne. First newspaper printed in France, _Gazette de France_; still existing. Reform of education by Comenius. See "THE EDUCATIONAL REFORM OF COMENIUS," xi, 192. 1632. Charles I of England grants a charter to Cecilius Calvert, second Lord Baltimore, for a colony in Maryland. Forcing of the passage of the Lech by Gustavus Adolphus; Tilly defeated and slain; Munich occupied by the Swedes. Battle of Luetzen; victory of the Swedes over Wallenstein by Gustavus Adolphus, who is slain. His daughter, Christina, succeeds. See "TRIUMPH AND DEATH OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS AT LUETZEN," xi, 174. Restoration of Canada and Nova Scotia to France by England. 1633. Union of Heilbronn; consolidation of the Protestant interests by Oxenstierna. Wentworth appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Laud becomes Archbishop of Canterbury. Richelieu fails in his attempt to unite the Italian states in a confederacy. Under compulsion Galileo rejects the Copernican system. See "RECANTATION OF GALILEO," xi, 184. 1634. Assassination of Wallenstein, the result of a conspiracy. Battle of Noerdlingen; the German and Swede Protestant army annihilated. Writ for the levying of ship money in England. Arbitrary proceedings of the Star-chamber. A windmill for sawing timber prohibited in England. Leonard Calvert settles St. Mary's, Maryland. The town on Manhattan Island is named New Amsterdam. Connecticut settled by the English. 1635. Partition of New England territory, following the dissolution of the Council. Under Richelieu France actively engages in a contest against Austria and Spain in Italy. Richelieu takes a hand in the Thirty Years' War. Foundation of the French Academy. 1636. France invaded by the Imperialists, Spaniards, and Charles of Lorraine. Banishment of Roger Williams from Massachusetts; he makes a settlement at Providence. Hartford, Connecticut, founded. Establishment of Harvard College. John Hampden resists the payment of ship-money; the judges of England declare the impost to be lawful. 1637. Continued severities of the Star chamber in England; Prynne a second time its victim, together with Burton, Bastwick, and Lilburne. Resistance of the Scots against the introduction of the English liturgy. War of the New England colonies with the Pequots. 1638. Publication of the National Covenant by the Scots; they declare Episcopacy abolished. John Harvard, Cambridge, England, bequeaths his library and the half of his fortune to Harvard College, which takes his name. Alsace occupied by the French. A settlement made on the island of Aquidneck (Rhode Island) by William Coddington. Founding of New Haven colony. Settlement of Swedes and Finns in Delaware. Bagdad besieged and captured by the Turks; a horrible massacre of the inhabitants follows. 1639. In Scotland the Covenanters take up arms; Pacification of Berwick. Capture and destruction of two Spanish fleets by Van Tromp, the Dutch admiral, in the English Channel. In Connecticut the people adopt a constitution. See "FIRST WRITTEN FREE CONSTITUTION IN THE WORLD," xi, 205. First observance of the transit of Venus, by Jeremiah Horrox. 1640. Invasion of England by the Scots. Meeting of the Long Parliament; impeachment of Strafford; Laud is impeached. Iniquities of the Star chamber. Death of George William, Elector of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia; his son, Frederick William, succeeds; he regains his states by an alliance with Sweden, and prepares the eminence of Prussia. Madras, India, settled by the English. Portugal recovers independence; John, Duke of Braganza, proclaimed king as John IV. 1641. Archbishop Laud committed to the Tower of London; execution of Strafford. See "ABOLITION OF THE COURT OF STAR-CHAMBER," ix, 215. Alleged massacre of Protestants in a rising of Catholics in Ireland. The title of Roundheads given to the popular party in England. 1642. Conspiracy of Cinq Mars in France; he and De Thou are executed. Revolt against Charles I in England. He raises his standard at Nottingham. Battle of Breitenfeld; the Swedes are victorious. Condemnation of Jansen's work on the doctrine of Augustine, by Pope Urban VIII. Tasman, the Dutch navigator, discovers Tasmania (Van Diemen's Land) and New Zealand. "FOUNDING OF MONTREAL." See xi, 232. 1643. Convention of the Westminster Assembly of divines. See "PRESBYTERIANISM ESTABLISHED," xi, 238. Establishment of a confederacy by the United Colonies of New England. Death of Louis XIII; succession of Louis XIV to the French throne; Anne of Austria regent; Mazarin prime-minister. Battle of Rocroy; defeat of the Spaniards by the Duc d'Enghien. The French are defeated by the Imperialists at Tuttlingen. Invention, by Torricelli, of the barometer. 1644. Battle of Marston Moor. Denmark overrun by Torstenson; battle at Freiburg between French and Germans; at Jueterbog Torstenson defeats Gallas. Establishment of the Manchu dynasty in China; end of the Ming line. A patent obtained from the English Parliament by Roger Williams for the united government of the settlements of Rhode Island. 1645. Execution of Laud; Battle of Naseby in England, defeat of the Royalists. Death of Michael, Emperor of Russia; Alexis succeeds. 1646. Charles I delivers himself to the Scots; the Marquis of Montrose, who had been operating in Scotland against the Covenanters, capitulates to the Roundheads. Battle of Jankau; victory of Torstenson; Hatzfeld, the Imperial general, captured. The Duc d'Enghien and Turenne near Noerdlingen. 1647. Insurrection of Masaniello in Naples. See "MASANIELLO'S REVOLT AT NAPLES," xi, 253. Charles I, being handed over to the Parliamentarians by the Scots, imprisoned. A truce arranged between the Elector of Bavaria and the Swedes and French. Peter Stuyvesant appointed governor of New Amsterdam. Huygens invents and applies the pendulum to clocks. Founding of the Society of Friends, or Quakers, by George Fox, England. 1648. Rising of the Royalists in England; the Scots, who had taken up arms for Charles, are defeated by Cromwell. The Long Parliament driven from its chambers by Cromwell. Recognition of the independence of Holland by Spain. End of Thirty Years' War. See "PEACE OF WESTPHALIA," xi, 285. Insurrection in Paris against Prime-Minister Mazarin: Day of the Barricades. 1649. Execution of Charles I. His son Charles proclaimed king in Scotland. England becomes a commonwealth; Cromwell Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. See "GREAT CIVIL WAR IN ENGLAND," xi, 311. Imprisonment of George Fox, founder of the Society of Friends, at Nottingham. Civil war of the Fronde; the Treaty of Reuil ends it. "CROMWELL'S CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND." See xi, 335. Passage of the Act of Toleration in Maryland. See "RELIGIOUS TOLERATION PROCLAIMED IN MARYLAND," xi, 303. 1650. Montrose lands in Scotland to aid the Scot forces of Charles II; he is defeated, taken prisoner, and hanged. Cromwell passes the Tweed; Battle of Dunbar, victory of Cromwell. Mazarin orders the princes of Condé and Conti and the Duke of Longueville to be imprisoned. Invention of the air-pump by Otto von Guericke. (Date uncertain.) Possession of the Cape of Good Hope taken by the Dutch. Settlement of North Carolina. 1651. Battle of Worcester; defeat of Charles II; flight of the King. See "GREAT CIVIL WAR IN ENGLAND," xi, 311. Passage of the Navigation Act, which was disastrous to the trade of England's American colonies. Mazarin banished France; peace ensues. Massachusetts adopts the Cambridge Platform, a declaration of principles respecting church government. 1652. War between the two republics of England and Holland; Blake, commanding the English fleet, defeats De Witt and De Ruyter; he is in turn surprised by Van Tromp, who captures six English ships, drives the others up the Thames, and sails the Channel with a broom at the masthead. Complete suppression of the Irish rebellion. Rhode Island legislates to restrict slavery in the Province. 1653. A three-days' naval engagement between the English fleet, under Blake, and that of the Dutch, under Van Tromp; great victory of the former. Cromwell expels the Rump Parliament; assembling of the Barebones Parliament. Cromwell becomes Protector of the English Commonwealth. 1654. Peace between England and Holland. Scotland incorporated with the English Commonwealth. Revolt of the Cossacks against Poland; their leader, Chmielnicki, places himself under the Russian crown; war ensues between Russia and Poland. First meeting in London of the Society of Friends. Nova Scotia conquered by the New England colonists. Abdication of Queen Christina of Sweden in favor of her cousin, Charles X. 1655. Dispossession of the Swedish settlers on the Delaware by Peter Stuyvesant. The island of Jamaica captured from the Spaniards by the English. 1656. First persecution of Quakers in Massachusetts. Charles X is joined by Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg, against the Poles; the Cossacks resume their allegiance to Poland. Battle of Warsaw, overthrow of the Poles. An end put to the Portuguese power in Ceylon by the Dutch. 1657. Declination of the English crown by Oliver Cromwell. Alliance between Austria and Poland against Sweden. Death of Emperor Ferdinand III; his son, Leopold, inherits Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary. 1658. Battle of the Dunes; defeat of the Spaniards by the English and French; Dunkirk, captured from the Spaniards by the French, is secured to England. Aurungzebe the Great seizes the Mogul throne in India. Death of Cromwell; his son Richard becomes Protector. Election of Leopold I as Emperor of Germany. 1659. Production of Molière's first comedy. See "MOLIÈRE CREATES MODERN COMEDY," xi, 347. Resignation of Richard Cromwell; formation of a provisional government by the army in England. Peace of the Pyrenees between France and Spain. Conventions of The Hague between England, Holland, and France. 1660. End of Puritan rule in England; restoration of the Stuarts. See "CROMWELL'S RULE IN ENGLAND," xi, 357. Death of Charles X; Charles XI succeeds to the Swedish throne. Foundation of the Royal Society, London, for the promotion of mathematical and physical science. Marriage of Louis XIV of France with Maria Theresa, daughter of Philip IV of Spain. END OF VOLUME XI 
15345	----	THE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS VOLUME IV A COMPREHENSIVE AND READABLE ACCOUNT OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY, EMPHASIZING THE MORE IMPORTANT EVENTS, AND PRESENTING THESE AS COMPLETE NARRATIVES IN THE MASTER-WORDS OF THE MOST EMINENT HISTORIANS NON-SECTARIAN NON-PARTISAN NON-SECTIONAL ON THE PLAN EVOLVED FROM A CONSENSUS OF OPINIONS GATHERED FROM THE MOST DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARS OF AMERICA AND EUROPE, INCLUDING BRIEF INTRODUCTIONS BY SPECIALISTS TO CONNECT AND EXPLAIN THE CELEBRATED NARRATIVES. ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY. WITH THOROUGH INDICES, BIBLIOGRAPHIES, CHRONOLOGIES, AND COURSES OF READING EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ROSSITER JOHNSON, LL.D. ASSOCIATE EDITORS CHARLES F. HORNE, Ph.D. JOHN RUDD, LL.D. With a staff of specialists VOLUME IV The National Alumni 1905 CONTENTS VOLUME IV An Outline Narrative of the Great Events, CHARLES F. HORNE Visigoths Pillage Rome (A.D. 410), EDWARD GIBBON Huns Invade the Eastern Roman Empire Attila Dictates a Treaty of Peace (A.D. 441), EDWARD GIBBON The English Conquest of Britain (A.D. 449-579), JOHN R. GREEN CHARLES KNIGHT Attila Invades Western Europe Battle of Châlons (A.D. 451), SIR EDWARD S. CREASY EDWARD GIBBON Foundation of Venice (A.D. 452), THOMAS HODGKIN JOHN RUSKIN Clovis Founds the Kingdom of the Franks It Becomes Christian (A.D. 486-511), FRANÇOIS P.G. GUIZOT Publication of the Justinian Code (A.D. 529-534), EDWARD GIBBON Augustine's Missionary Work in England (A.D. 597), THE VENERABLE BEDE JOHN R. GREEN The Hegira: Career of Mahomet The Koran: and Mahometan Creed (A.D. 622), WASHINGTON IRVING SIMON OCKLEY The Saracen Conquest of Syria (A.D. 636), SIMON OCKLEY Saracens Conquer Egypt Destruction of the Library at Alexandria (A.D. 640), WASHINGTON IRVING Evolution of the Dogeship in Venice (A.D. 697), WILLIAM C. HAZLITT Saracens in Spain Battle of the Guadalete (A.D. 711), AHMED IBN MAHOMET AL-MAKKARI Battle of Tours (A.D. 732), SIR EDWARD S. CREASY Founding of the Carlovingian Dynasty Pépin the Short Usurps the Frankish Crown (A.D. 751), FRANÇOIS P.G. GUIZOT Career of Charlemagne (A.D. 772-814), FRANÇOIS P.G. GUIZOT Egbert Becomes King of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy (A.D. 827), DAVID HUME Universal Chronology (A.D. 410-842), JOHN RUDD LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS VOLUME IV A captive's wife pleads with the barbarian chief for the life of her husband, Frontispiece Painting by R. Peacock. Mahomet, preaching the unity of God, enters Mecca at the head of his victorious followers, Painting by A. Mueller. [Illustration: A captive's wife pleads with the barbarian chief for the life of her husband Painting by R. Peacock.] AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, CONNECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE GREAT EVENTS (FROM THE FALL OF ROME TO THE EMPIRE OF CHARLEMAGNE) CHARLES F. HORNE Our modern civilization is built up on three great corner-stones, three inestimably valuable heritages from the past. The Græco-Roman civilization gave us our arts and our philosophies, the bases of intellectual power. The Hebrews bequeathed to us the religious idea, which has saved man from despair, has been the potent stimulus to two thousand years of endurance and hope. The Teutons gave us a healthy, sturdy, uncontaminated physique, honest bodies and clean minds, the lack of which had made further progress impossible to the ancient world. This last is what made necessary the barbarian overthrow of Rome, if the world was still to advance. The slowly progressing knowledge of the arts and handicrafts which we have seen passed down from Egypt to Babylonia, to Persia, Greece, and Rome, had not been acquired without heavy loss. The system of slavery which allowed the few to think, while the many were constrained to toil as beasts, had eaten like a canker into the heart of society. The Roman world was repeating the oft-told tale of the past, and sinking into the lifeless formalism of which Egypt was the type. Man had become wise, but worthless. As though on purpose to prove to future generations how utterly worthless, the Roman civilization was allowed to continue uninterrupted in one unneeded corner of its former domains. For over a thousand years the successors of Theodosius and of Constantine held unbroken sway in the capital which the latter had founded. They only succeeded in emphasizing how futile their culture had become. The entire ten centuries that followed the overthrow of Rome have long been spoken of as the "Dark Ages," but, considering how infinitely darker those same ages must have become without the intervention of the Teutons, present criticism begins to protest against the term. All that was lost with the ancient world was something of intellectual keenness, something of artistic culture, quickly regained when man was once more ripe for them. What the Teutons had to offer of infinitely greater worth, what they had developed in their cold, northern forests, was their sense of liberty and equality, their love of honesty, their respect for womankind. It is not too much to say that, without these, any higher progress was, and always will be, impossible. In short, the Roman and Grecian races had become impotent and decrepit. The high destiny of man lay not with them, but with the younger race, for whom all earlier civilizations had but prepared the way. Who were these Teutons? Rome knew them only vaguely as wild tribes dwelling in the gloom of the great forest wilderness. In reality they were but the vanguard of vast races of human beings who through ages had been slowly populating all Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. Beyond the Teutons were other Aryans, the Slavs. Beyond these were vague non-Aryan races like the Huns, content to direct their careers of slaughter against one another, and only occasionally and for a moment flaring with red-fire beacons of ruin along the edge of the Aryan world. Some at least of the Teutonic tribes had grown partly civilized. The Germans along the Rhine, and the Goths along the Danube, had been from the time of Augustus in more or less close contact with Rome. Germanicus had once subdued almost the whole of Germany; later emperors had held temporarily the broad province of Dacia, beyond the Danube. The barbarians were eagerly enlisted in the Roman army. During the closing centuries of decadence they became its main support; they rose to high commands; there were even barbarian emperors at last. The intermingling of the two worlds thus became extensive, and the Teutons learned much of Rome. The Goths whom Theodosius permitted to settle within its dominions were already partly Christian. THE PERIOD OF INVASION It was these same Goths who became the immediate cause of Rome's downfall. Theodosius had kept them in restraint; his feeble sons scarce even attempted it. The intruders found a famous leader in Alaric, and, after plundering most of the Grecian peninsula, they ravaged Italy, ending in 410 with the sack of Rome itself.[1] This seems to us, perhaps, a greater event than it did to its own generation. The "Emperor of the West," the degenerate son of Theodosius, was not within the city when it fell; and the story is told that, on hearing the news, he expressed relief, because he had at first understood that the evil tidings referred to the death of a favorite hen named Rome. The tale emphasizes the disgrace of the famous capital; it had sunk to be but one city among many. Alaric's Goths had been nominally an army belonging to the Emperor of the East; their invasion was regarded as only one more civil war. Besides, the Roman world might yet have proved itself big enough to assimilate and engulf the entire mass of this already half-civilized people. Its name was still a spell on them. Ataulf, the successor of Alaric, was proud to accept a Roman title and become a defender of the Empire. He marched his followers into Gaul under a commission to chastise the "barbarians" who were desolating it. These later comers were the instruments of that more overwhelming destruction for which the Goths had but prepared the way. To resist Alaric, the Roman legions had been withdrawn from all the western frontiers, and thus more distant and far more savage tribes of the Teutons beheld the glittering empire unprotected, its pathways most alluringly left open. They began streaming across the undefended Rhine and Danube. Their bands were often small and feeble, such as earlier emperors would have turned back with ease; but now all this fascinating world of wealth, so dimly known and doubtless fiercely coveted, lay helpless, open to their plundering. The Vandals ravaged Gaul and Spain, and, being defeated by the Goths, passed on into Africa. The Saxons and Angles penetrated England[2] and fought there for centuries against the desperate Britons, whom the Roman legions had perforce abandoned to their fate. The Franks and Burgundians plundered Gaul. Fortunately the invading tribes were on the whole a kindly race. When they joyously whirled their huge battle-axes against iron helmets, smashing down through bone and brain beneath, their delight was not in the scream of the unlucky wretch within, but in their own vigorous sweep of muscle, in the conscious power of the blow. Fierce they were, but not coldly cruel like the ancients. The condition of the lower classes certainly became no worse for their invasion; it probably improved. Much the new-comers undoubtedly destroyed in pure wantonness. But there was much more that they admired, half understood, and sought to save. Behind them, however, came a conqueror of far more terrible mood. We have seen that when the Goths first entered Roman territory they were driven on by a vast migration of the Asiatic Huns. These wild and hideous tribes then spent half a century roaming through central Europe, ere they were gathered into one huge body by their great chief, Attila, and in their turn approached the shattered regions of the Mediterranean.[3] Their invasion, if we are to trust the tales of their enemies, from whom alone we know of them, was incalculably more destructive than all those of the Teutons combined. The Huns delighted in suffering; they slew for the sake of slaughter. Where they passed they left naught but an empty desert, burned and blackened and devoid of life. Crossing the Danube, they ravaged the Roman Empire of the East almost without opposition. Only the impregnable walls of Constantinople resisted the destruction. A few years later the savage horde appeared upon the Rhine, and in enormous numbers penetrated Gaul. No people had yet understood them, none had even checked their career. The white races seemed helpless against this "yellow peril," this "Scourge of God," as Attila was called. Goths and Romans and all the varied tribes which were ranging in perturbed whirl through unhappy Gaul laid aside their lesser enmities and met in common cause against this terrible invader. The battle of Châlons, 451,[4] was the most tremendous struggle in which Turanian was ever matched against Aryan, the one huge bid of the stagnant, unprogressive races, for earth's mastery. Old chronicles rise into poetry at thought of that immeasurable battle. They figure the slain by hundred thousands; they describe the souls of the dead as rising above the bodies and continuing their furious struggle in the air. Attila was checked and drew back. Defeated we can scarce call him, for only a year or so later we find him ravaging Italy. Fugitives fleeing before him to the marshes lay the first stones of Venice.[5] Leo, the great Pope, pleads with him for Rome. His forces, however, are obviously weaker than they were. He retreats; and after his death his irresponsible followers disappear forever in the wilderness. THE PERIOD OF SETTLEMENT Toward the close of this tumultuous fifth century, the various Teutonic tribes show distinct tendencies toward settling down and forming kingdoms amid the various lands they have overrun. The Vandals build a state in Africa, and from the old site of Carthage send their ships to the second sack of Rome. The Visigoths form a Spanish kingdom, which lasts over two hundred years. The Ostrogoths construct an empire in Italy (493-554), and, under the wise rule of their chieftain Theodoric, men joyfully proclaim that peace and happiness and prosperity have returned to earth. Most important of all in its bearing upon later history, the Franks under Clovis begin the building of France.[6] Encouraged by these milder days, the Roman emperors of Constantinople attempt to reclaim their old domain. The reign of Justinian begins (527-565), and his great general Belisarius temporarily wins back for him both Africa and Italy. This was a comparatively unimportant detail, a mere momentary reversal of the historic tide. Justinian did for the future a far more noted service. If there was one subject which Roman officials had learned thoroughly through their many generations of rule, it was the set of principles by which judges must be guided in their endeavor to do justice. Long practical experience of administration made the Romans the great law-givers of antiquity. And now Justinian set his lawyers to work to gather into a single code, or "digest," all the scattered and elaborate rules and decisions which had place in their gigantic system.[7] It is this Code of Justinian which, handed down through the ages, stands as the basis of much of our law to-day. It shapes our social world, it governs the fundamental relations between man and man. There are not wanting those who believe its principles are wrong, who aver that man's true attitude toward his fellows should be wholly different from its present artificial pose. But whether for better or for worse we live to-day by Roman law. This law the Teutons were slowly absorbing. They accepted the general structure of the world into which they had thrust themselves; they continued its style of building and many of its rougher arts; they even adopted its language, though in such confused and awkward fashion that Italy, France, and Spain grew each to have a dialect of its own. And most important of all, they accepted the religion, the Christian religion of Rome. Missionaries venture forth again. Augustine preaches in England.[8] Boniface penetrates the German wilds. It must not be supposed that the moment a Teuton accepted baptism he became filled with a pure Christian spirit of meekness and of love. On the contrary, he probably remained much the same drunken, roistering heathen as before. But he was brought in contact with noble examples in the lives of some of the Christian bishops around him; great truths began to touch his mobile nature; he was impressed, softened; he began to think and feel. Given a couple of centuries of this, we really begin to see some very encouraging results. We realize that for once we are being allowed to study a civilization in its earlier stages, to be present almost at its birth, to watch the methods of the Master-builder in the making of a race. Gazing at similar developments in the days of Egypt and Babylon, we guessed vaguely that they must have been of slowest growth. Here at last one takes place under our eyes, and it does not need so many ages after all. There is no study more fascinating than to trace the slow changes stamping themselves ineradicably upon the Teutonic mind and soul during these misty far-off centuries of turmoil. On the whole, of course, the sixth, seventh, and even the eighth centuries form a period of strife. The Teutons had spent too many ages warring against one another in petty strife to abandon the pleasure in a single generation. Men fought because they liked fighting, much as they play football to-day. Then, too, there came another great outburst of Semite religious enthusiasm. Mahomet[9] started the Arabs on their remarkable career of conquest. THE MAHOMETAN OUTBURST Mahomet himself died (632) before he had fully established his influence even over Arabia: his successors had practically to reconquer it. Yet within five years of his death the Arabs had mastered Syria.[10] They spread like some sudden, unexpected, immeasurable whirlwind. Ancient Persia went down before them. By 640 they had trampled Egypt under foot, and destroyed the celebrated Alexandrian library.[11] They swept over all Africa, completely obliterating every trace of Vandal or of Roman. Their dominion reached farther east than that of Alexander. They wrested most of its Asiatic possessions from the pretentious Empire at Constantinople, and reduced that exhausted State to a condition of weakness from which it never arose. Then, passing on through their African possessions, they entered Spain and overthrew the kingdom of the Visigoths.[12] It was a storm whose end no man could measure, whose coming none could have foreseen. And then, just a century after Mahomet's death, the Arabs, pressing on through Spain, encountered the Franks on the plains of France. A thousand years had passed since Semitic Carthage had fallen before Aryan Rome. Now once again the Semites, far more dangerous because in the full tide of the religious frenzy of their race, threatened to engulf the Aryan world. They were repulsed by the still sturdy Franks under their great leader, Charles Martel, at Tours. The battle of Tours[13] was only less momentous to the human race than that of Châlons. What the Arab domination of Europe would have meant we can partly guess by looking at the lax and lawless states of Northern Africa to-day. These fair lands, under both Roman and Vandal, had long been sharing the lot of Aryan Europe; they seemed destined to follow in its growth and fortune. But the Arab conquest restored them to Semitism, made Asia the seat from which they were to have their training, attached them to the chariot of sloth instead of that of effort. What they are to-day, all Europe might have been. Yet with the picture of these fifth and sixth and seventh centuries of battle full before us, we are not tempted to glory overmuch even in such victories as Tours and Châlons. We see war for what it has ever been--the curse of man, the hugest hinderance to our civilization. While men fight they have small time for thought or art or any soft or kindly sentiment. The survivors may with good luck develop into a stronger breed; they are inevitably more brutal. We thus begin to recognize just how necessary for human progress was the work Rome had been engaged in. By holding the world at peace, she had given humankind at least the opportunity to grow. The moment her restraining hand was shaken off, war sprang up everywhere. Not only do we find the inheritors of her territory fighting among themselves, they are exposed to the savagery of Attila, the fury of the Arabs. New bands of more distant Teutons come, ever pushing in amid their half-settled brethren, overthrowing them in turn. The Lombards capture Northern Italy, only Venice remaining safe amid her marshes.[14] The East-Franks--that is, the semi-barbarians still remaining in the wilderness--master the more cultured West-Franks, who hold Gaul. No sooner does civilization start up than it is trodden on. THE EMPIRE OF CHARLEMAGNE At length there arose among the Franks a series of stalwart rulers, keen-eyed, penetrating somewhat at least into the meaning of their world, determined to have peace if they must fight for it. Charles Martel was one of these. Then came his son Pépin,[15] who held out his hand to the bishops of Rome, acknowledged their vast civilizing influence, saved them from the Lombards, and joined church and state once more in harmony. After Pépin came his son, Charlemagne, whose reign marks an epoch of the world. The peace his fathers had striven for, he won at last, though only, as they had done, by constant fighting. He attacked the Arabs and reduced them to permanent feebleness in Spain. He turned backward the Teutonic movement, marching his Franks into the German forests, and in campaign after campaign defeating the wild tribes that still remained there. The strongest of them, the Saxons, accepted an enforced Christianity. Even the vague races beyond the German borders were so harried, so weakened, that they ceased to be a serious menace. Charlemagne[16] had thus in very truth created a new empire. He had established at least one central spot, so hedged round by border dependencies that no later wave of barbarians ever quite succeeded in submerging it. The bones of the great Emperor, in their cathedral sepulchre at Aix, have never been disturbed by an unfriendly hand, Paris submitted to no new conquest until over a thousand years later, when the nineteenth century had stolen the barbarity from war. It was then no more than a just acknowledgment of Charlemagne's work when, on Christmas Day of the year 800, as he rose from kneeling at the cathedral altar in Rome, he was crowned by the Pope whom he had defended, and hailed by an enthusiastic people as lord of a re-created "Holy Roman Empire." In England, also, the centuries of warfare among the Britons and the various antagonistic Teutonic tribes seemed drawing to an end. Egbert established the "heptarchy";[17] that is, became overlord of all the lesser kings. Truly for a moment civilization seemed reëstablished. The arts returned to prominence. England could send so noteworthy a scholar as Alcuin to the aid of the great Emperor. Charlemagne encouraged learning; Alcuin established schools. Once more men sowed and reaped in security. The "Roman peace" seemed come again. [FOR THE NEXT SECTION OF THIS GENERAL SURVEY SEE VOLUME V.] FOOTNOTES: [1] See _Visigoths Pillage Rome_, page 1. [2] See _The English Conquest of Britain_, page 55. [3] See _Huns Invade the Eastern Roman Empire_, page 28. [4] See _Attila Invades Western Europe_, page 72. [5] See _Foundation of Venice_, page 95. [6] See _Clovis Founds the Kingdom of the Franks_, page 113. [7] See _Publication of the Justinian Code_, page 138. [8] See _Augustine's Missionary Work in England_, page 182. [9] See _The Hegira_, page 198. [10] See _The Saracen Conquest of Syria_, page 247. [11] See _Saracens Conquer Egypt_, page 278. [12] See _Saracens in Spain_, page 301. [13] See _Battle of Tours_, page 313. [14] See _Evolution of the Dogeship in Venice_, page 292. [15] See _Founding of the Carlovingian Dynasty_, page 324. [16] See _Career of Charlemagne_, page 334. [17] See _Egbert Becomes King of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy_, page 372. VISIGOTHS PILLAGE ROME A.D. 410 EDWARD GIBBON Of the two great historical divisions of the Gothic race the Visigoths or West Goths were admitted into the Roman Empire in A.D. 376, when they sought protection from the pursuing Huns, and were transported across the Danube to the Moesian shore. The story of their gradual progress in civilization and growth in military power, which at last enabled them to descend with overwhelming force upon Rome itself, forms one of the romances of history. From their first reception into Lower Moesia the Visigoths were subjected to the most contemptuous and oppressive treatment by the Romans who had admitted them into their domains. At last the outraged colonists were provoked to revolt, and a stubborn war ensued, which was ended at Adrianople, August 9, A.D. 378, by the defeat of the emperor Valens and the destruction of his army, two-thirds of his soldiers perishing with Valens himself, whose body was never found. In 382 a treaty was made which restored peace to the Eastern Empire, the Visigoths nominally owning the sovereignty of Rome, but living in virtual independence. They continued to increase in numbers and in power, and in A.D. 395, under Alaric, their King, they invaded Greece, but were compelled by Stilicho, in 397, to retire into Epirus. Stilicho was the commander-in-chief of the Roman army, and the guardian of the young emperor Honorius. Alaric soon afterward became commander-in-chief of the Roman forces in Eastern Illyricum and held that office for four years. During that time he remained quiet, arming and drilling his followers, and waiting for the opportunity to make a bold stroke for a wider and more secure dominion. In the autumn of A.D. 400, while Stilicho was campaigning in Gaul, Alaric made his first invasion of Italy, and for more than a year he ranged at will over the northern part of the peninsula. Rome was made ready for defence, and Honorius, the weak Emperor of the Western Empire, prepared for flight into Gaul; but on March 19th of the year 402, Stilicho surprised the camp of Alaric, near Pollentia, while most of his followers were at worship, and after a desperate battle they were beaten. Alaric made a safe retreat, and soon afterward crossed the Po, intending to march against Rome, but desertions from his ranks caused him to abandon that purpose. In 403 he was overtaken and again defeated by Stilicho at Verona, Alaric himself barely escaping capture. Stilicho, however, permitted him--some historians say, bribed him--to withdraw to Illyricum, and he was made prefect of Western Illyricum by Honorius. Such is the prelude, followed in history by the amazing exploits of Alaric's second invasion of Italy. His troops having revolted at Pavia, Stilicho fled to Ravenna, where the ungrateful Emperor had him put to death August 23, 408. In October of that year Alaric crossed the Alps, advancing without resistance until he reached Ravenna; after threatening Ravenna he marched upon Rome and began the preparations that ended in the sack of the city. The incapacity of a weak and distracted government may often assume the appearance, and produce the effects, of a treasonable correspondence with the public enemy. If Alaric himself had been introduced into the council of Ravenna, he would probably have advised the same measures which were actually pursued by the ministers of Honorius. The King of the Goths would have conspired, perhaps with some reluctance, to destroy the formidable adversary, by whose arms, in Italy as well as in Greece, he had been twice overthrown. Their active and interested hatred laboriously accomplished the disgrace and ruin of the great Stilicho. The valor of Sarus, his fame in arms, and his personal, or hereditary, influence over the confederate Barbarians, could recommend him only to the friends of their country, who despised, or detested, the worthless characters of Turpilio, Varanes, and Vigilantius. By the pressing instances of the new favorites, these generals, unworthy as they had shown themselves of the names of soldiers, were promoted to the command of the cavalry, of the infantry, and of the domestic troops. The Gothic prince would have subscribed with pleasure the edict which the fanaticism of Olympius dictated to the simple and devout Emperor. Honorius excluded all persons who were adverse to the Catholic Church from holding any office in the State; obstinately rejected the service of all those who dissented from his religion; and rashly disqualified many of his bravest and most skilful officers who adhered to the pagan worship or who had imbibed the opinions of Arianism. These measures, so advantageous to an enemy, Alaric would have approved, and might perhaps have suggested; but it may seem doubtful whether the Barbarian would have promoted his interest at the expense of the inhuman and absurd cruelty which was perpetrated by the direction, or at least with the connivance, of the imperial ministers. The foreign auxiliaries who had been attached to the person of Stilicho lamented his death; but the desire of revenge was checked by a natural apprehension for the safety of their wives and children, who were detained as hostages in the strong cities of Italy, where they had likewise deposited their most valuable effects. At the same hour, and as if by a common signal, the cities of Italy were polluted by the same horrid scenes of universal massacre and pillage which involved in promiscuous destruction the families and fortunes of the Barbarians. Exasperated by such an injury, which might have awakened the tamest and most servile spirit, they cast a look of indignation and hope toward the camp of Alaric, and unanimously swore to pursue, with just and implacable war, the perfidious nation that had so basely violated the laws of hospitality. By the imprudent conduct of the ministers of Honorius the republic lost the assistance, and deserved the enmity, of thirty thousand of her bravest soldiers; and the weight of that formidable army, which alone might have determined the event of the war, was transferred from the scale of the Romans into that of the Goths. In the arts of negotiation, as well as in those of war, the Gothic King maintained his superior ascendant over an enemy, whose seeming changes proceeded from the total want of counsel and design. From his camp, on the confines of Italy, Alaric attentively observed the revolutions of the palace, watched the progress of faction and discontent, disguised the hostile aspect of a Barbarian invader, and assumed the more popular appearance of the friend and ally of the great Stilicho; to whose virtues, when they were no longer formidable, he could pay a just tribute of sincere praise and regret. The pressing invitation of the malcontents, who urged the King of the Goths to invade Italy, was enforced by a lively sense of his personal injuries; and he might speciously complain that the Imperial ministers still delayed and eluded the payment of the four thousand pounds of gold which had been granted by the Roman senate, either to reward his services or to appease his fury. His decent firmness was supported by an artful moderation, which contributed to the success of his designs. He required a fair and reasonable satisfaction; but he gave the strongest assurances that, as soon as he had obtained it, he would immediately retire. He refused to trust the faith of the Romans, unless Aetius and Jason, the sons of two great officers of state, were sent as hostages to his camp; but he offered to deliver, in exchange, several of the noblest youths of the Gothic nation. The modesty of Alaric was interpreted, by the ministers of Ravenna, as a sure evidence of his weakness and fear. They disdained either to negotiate a treaty or to assemble an army; and with a rash confidence, derived only from their ignorance of the extreme danger, irretrievably wasted the decisive moments of peace and war. While they expected, in sullen silence, that the Barbarians should evacuate the confines of Italy, Alaric, with bold and rapid marches, passed the Alps and the Po; hastily pillaged the cities of Aquileia, Altinum, Concordia, and Cremona, which yielded to his arms; increased his forces by the accession of thirty thousand auxiliaries; and, without meeting a single enemy in the field, advanced as far as the edge of the morass which protected the impregnable residence of the Emperor of the West. Instead of attempting the hopeless siege of Ravenna, the prudent leader of the Goths proceeded to Rimini, stretched his ravages along the sea-coast of the Adriatic, and meditated the conquest of the ancient mistress of the world. An Italian hermit, whose zeal and sanctity were respected by the Barbarians themselves, encountered the victorious monarch, and boldly denounced the indignation of heaven against the oppressors of the earth; but the saint himself was confounded by the solemn asseveration of Alaric, that he felt a secret and preternatural impulse, which directed, and even compelled, his march to the gates of Rome. He felt that his genius and his fortune were equal to the most arduous enterprises; and the enthusiasm which he communicated to the Goths insensibly removed the popular, and almost superstitious, reverence of the nations for the majesty of the Roman name. His troops, animated by the hopes of spoil, followed the course of the Flaminian way, occupied the unguarded passes of the Apennine, descended into the rich plains of Umbria; and, as they lay encamped on the banks of the Clitumnus, might wantonly slaughter and devour the milk-white oxen, which had been so long reserved for the use of Roman triumphs. A lofty situation, and a seasonable tempest of thunder and lightning, preserved the little city of Narni; but the King of the Goths, despising the ignoble prey, still advanced with unabated vigor; and after he had passed through the stately arches, adorned with the spoils of Barbaric victories, he pitched his camp under the walls of Rome. By a skilful disposition of his numerous forces, who impatiently watched the moment of an assault, Alaric encompassed the walls, commanded the twelve principal gates, intercepted all communication with the adjacent country, and vigilantly guarded the navigation of the Tiber, from which the Romans derived the surest and most plentiful supply of provisions. The first emotions of the nobles and of the people were those of surprise and indignation that a vile Barbarian should dare to insult the capital of the world; but their arrogance was soon humbled by misfortune; and their unmanly rage, instead of being directed against an enemy in arms, was meanly exercised on a defenceless and innocent victim. Perhaps in the person of Serena, the Romans might have respected the niece of Theodosius, the aunt, nay, even the adoptive mother, of the reigning Emperor; but they abhorred the widow of Stilicho; and they listened with credulous passion to the tale of calumny, which accused her of maintaining a secret and criminal correspondence with the Gothic invader. Actuated or overawed by the same popular frenzy, the senate, without requiring any evidence of her guilt, pronounced the sentence of her death. Serena was ignominiously strangled; and the infatuated multitude were astonished to find that this cruel act of injustice did not immediately produce the retreat of the Barbarians and the deliverance of the city. That unfortunate city gradually experienced the distress of scarcity, and at length the horrid calamities of famine. The daily allowance of three pounds of bread was reduced to one-half, to one-third, to nothing; and the price of corn still continued to rise in a rapid and extravagant proportion. The poorer citizens, who were unable to purchase the necessaries of life, solicited the precarious charity of the rich; and for a while the public misery was alleviated by the humanity of Læta, the widow of the emperor Gratian, who had fixed her residence at Rome, and consecrated to the use of the indigent the princely revenue which she annually received from the grateful successors of her husband. But these private and temporary donatives were insufficient to appease the hunger of a numerous people; and the progress of famine invaded the marble palaces of the senators themselves. The persons of both sexes, who had been educated in the enjoyment of ease and luxury, discovered how little is requisite to supply the demands of nature, and lavished their unavailing treasures of gold and silver to obtain the coarse and scanty sustenance which they would formerly have rejected with disdain. The food the most repugnant to sense or imagination, the aliments the most unwholesome and pernicious to the constitution, were eagerly devoured, and fiercely disputed, by the rage of hunger. A dark suspicion was entertained that some desperate wretches fed on the bodies of their fellow-creature, whom they had secretly murdered; and even mothers--such was the horrid conflict of the two most powerful instincts implanted by nature in the human breast--even mothers are said to have tasted the flesh of their slaughtered infants! Many thousands of the inhabitants of Rome expired in their houses or in the streets for want of sustenance; and as the public sepulchres without the walls were in the power of the enemy, the stench which arose from so many putrid and unburied carcasses infected the air; and the miseries of famine were succeeded and aggravated by the contagion of a pestilential disease. The assurances of speedy and effectual relief, which were repeatedly transmitted from the court of Ravenna, supported for some time the fainting resolution of the Romans, till at length the despair of any human aid tempted them to accept the offers of a preternatural deliverance. Pompeianus, prefect of the city, had been persuaded, by the art or fanaticism of some Tuscan diviners, that, by the mysterious force of spells and sacrifices, they could extract the lightning from the clouds, and point those celestial fires against the camp of the Barbarians. The important secret was communicated to Innocent, the Bishop of Rome; and the successor of St. Peter is accused, perhaps with foundation, of preferring the safety of the republic to the rigid severity of the Christian worship. But when the question was agitated in the senate; when it was proposed, as an essential condition, that those sacrifices should be performed in the Capitol, by the authority, and in the presence, of the magistrates, the majority of that respectable assembly, apprehensive either of the divine or of the Imperial displeasure, refused to join in an act which appeared almost equivalent to the public restoration of paganism. The last resource of the Romans was in the clemency, or at least in the moderation, of the King of the Goths. The senate, who in this emergency assumed the supreme powers of government, appointed two ambassadors to negotiate with the enemy. This important trust was delegated to Basilius, a senator of Spanish extraction, and already conspicuous in the administration of provinces; and to John, the first tribune of the notaries, who was peculiarly qualified by his dexterity in business, as well as by his former intimacy with the Gothic prince. When they were introduced into his presence, they declared, perhaps in a more lofty style than became their abject condition, that the Romans were resolved to maintain their dignity, either in peace or war; and that, if Alaric refused them a fair and honorable capitulation, he might sound his trumpets, and prepare to give battle to an innumerable people, exercised in arms, and animated by despair. "The thicker the hay, the easier it is mowed," was the concise reply of the Barbarian; and this rustic metaphor was accompanied by a loud and insulting laugh, expressive of his contempt for the menaces of an unwarlike populace, enervated by luxury before they were emaciated by famine. He then condescended to fix the ransom which he would accept as the price of his retreat from the walls of Rome: _all_ the gold and silver in the city, whether it were the property of the State or of individuals; _all_ the rich and precious movables; and _all_ the slaves who could prove their title to the name of _Barbarians_. The ministers of the senate presumed to ask, in a modest and suppliant tone, "If such, O king, are your demands, what do you intend to leave us?" "_Your lives_!" replied the haughty conqueror. They trembled and retired. Yet, before they retired, a short suspension of arms was granted, which allowed some time for a more temperate negotiation. The stern features of Alaric were insensibly relaxed; he abated much of the rigor of his terms; and at length consented to raise the siege on the immediate payment of five thousand pounds of gold, of thirty thousand pounds of silver, of four thousand robes of silk, of three thousand pieces of fine scarlet cloth, and of three thousand pounds weight of pepper. But the public treasury was exhausted; the annual rents of the great estates in Italy and the provinces were intercepted by the calamities of war; the gold and gems had been exchanged, during the famine, for the vilest sustenance; the hoards of secret wealth were still concealed by the obstinacy of avarice; and some remains of consecrated spoils afforded the only resource that could avert the impending ruin of the city. As soon as the Romans had satisfied the rapacious demands of Alaric, they were restored, in some measure, to the enjoyment of peace and plenty. Several of the gates were cautiously opened; the importation of provisions from the river and the adjacent country was no longer obstructed by the Goths; the citizens resorted in crowds to the free market, which was held during three days in the suburbs; and while the merchants who undertook this gainful trade made a considerable profit, the future subsistence of the city was secured by the ample magazines which were deposited in the public and private granaries. A more regular discipline than could have been expected was maintained in the camp of Alaric; and the wise Barbarian justified his regard for the faith of treaties by the just severity with which he chastised a party of licentious Goths who had insulted some Roman citizens on the road to Ostia. His army, enriched by the contributions of the capital, slowly advanced into the fair and fruitful province of Tuscany, where he proposed to establish his winter quarters; and the Gothic standard became the refuge of forty thousand Barbarian slaves, who had broken their chains, and aspired, under the command of their great deliverer, to revenge the injuries and the disgrace of their cruel servitude. About the same time he received a more honorable reinforcement of Goths and Huns, whom Adolphus, the brother of his wife, had conducted, at his pressing invitation, from the banks of the Danube to those of the Tiber; and who had cut their way, with some difficulty and loss, through the superior numbers of the Imperial troops. A victorious leader, who united the daring spirit of a Barbarian with the art and discipline of a Roman general, was at the head of a hundred thousand fighting men; and Italy pronounced, with terror and respect, the formidable name of Alaric. At the distance of fourteen centuries, we may be satisfied with relating the military exploits of the conquerors of Rome, without presuming to investigate the motives of their political conduct. In the midst of his apparent prosperity, Alaric was conscious, perhaps, of some secret weakness, some internal defect; or perhaps the moderation which he displayed was intended only to deceive and disarm the easy credulity of the ministers of Honorius. The King of the Goths repeatedly declared that it was his desire to be considered as the friend of peace and of the Romans. Three senators, at his earnest request, were sent ambassadors to the court of Ravenna, to solicit the exchange of hostages and the conclusion of the treaty; and the proposals, which he more clearly expressed during the course of the negotiations, could only inspire a doubt of his sincerity as they might seem inadequate to the state of his fortune. The Barbarian still aspired to the rank of master-general of the armies of the West; he stipulated an annual subsidy of corn and money; and he chose the provinces of Dalmatia, Noricum, and Venetia for the seat of his new kingdom, which would have commanded the important communication between Italy and the Danube. If these modest terms should be rejected, Alaric showed a disposition to relinquish his pecuniary demands, and even to content himself with the possession of Noricum; an exhausted and impoverished country perpetually exposed to the inroads of the Barbarians of Germany. But the hopes of peace were disappointed by the weak obstinacy, or interested views, of the minister Olympius. Without listening to the salutary remonstrances of the senate, he dismissed their ambassadors under the conduct of a military escort, too numerous for a retinue of honor and too feeble for an army of defence. Six thousand Dalmatians, the flower of the Imperial legions, were ordered to march from Ravenna to Rome, through an open country which was occupied by the formidable myriads of the Barbarians. These brave legionaries, encompassed and betrayed, fell a sacrifice to ministerial folly; their general, Valens, with a hundred soldiers, escaped from the field of battle; and one of the ambassadors, who could no longer claim the protection of the law of nations, was obliged to purchase his freedom with a ransom of thirty thousand pieces of gold. Yet Alarie, instead of resenting this act of impotent hostility, immediately renewed his proposals of peace; and the second embassy of the Roman senate, which derived weight and dignity from the presence of Innocent, bishop of the city, was guarded from the dangers of the road by a detachment of Gothic soldiers. Olympius might have continued to insult the just resentment of a people who loudly accused him as the author of the public calamities; but his power was undermined by the secret intrigues of the palace. The favorite eunuchs transferred the government of Honorius, and the Empire, to Jovius, the prætorian prefect; an unworthy servant, who did not atone, by the merit of personal attachment, for the errors and misfortunes of his administration. The exile, or escape, of the guilty Olympius, reserved him for more vicissitudes of fortune: he experienced the adventure of an obscure and wandering life; he again rose to power; he fell a second time into disgrace; his ears were cut off; he expired under the lash; and his ignominious death afforded a grateful spectacle to the friends of Stilicho. After the removal of Olympius, whose character was deeply tainted with religious fanaticism, the pagans and heretics were delivered from the impolitic proscription which excluded them from the dignities of the State. The brave Gennerid, a soldier of Barbarian origin, who still adhered to the worship of his ancestors, had been obliged to lay aside the military belt; and though he was repeatedly assured by the Emperor himself that laws were not made for persons of his rank or merit, he refused to accept any partial dispensation, and persevered in honorable disgrace till he had extorted a general act of justice from the distress of the Roman Government. The conduct of Gennerid, in the important station to which he was promoted or restored, of master-general of Dalmatia, Pannonia, Noricum, and Rhætia, seemed to revive the discipline and spirit of the republic. From a life of idleness and want, his troops were soon habituated to severe exercise and plentiful subsistence; and his private generosity often supplied the rewards which were denied by the avarice, or poverty, of the court of Ravenna. The valor of Gennerid, formidable to the adjacent Barbarians, was the firmest bulwark of the Illyrian frontier; and his vigilant care assisted the Empire with a reinforcement of ten thousand Huns, who arrived on the confines of Italy, attended by such a convoy of provisions, and such a numerous train of sheep and oxen, as might have been sufficient, not only for the march of an army, but for the settlement of a colony. But the court and councils of Honorius still remained a scene of weakness and distraction, of corruption and anarchy. Instigated by the prefect Jovius, the guards rose in furious mutiny, and demanded the heads of two generals and of the two principal eunuchs. The generals, under a perfidious promise of safety, were sent on shipboard and privately executed; while the favor of the eunuchs procured them a mild and secure exile at Milan and Constantinople. Eusebius the eunuch, and the Barbarian Allobich, succeeded to the command of the bed-chamber and of the guards; and the mutual jealousy of these subordinate ministers was the cause of their mutual destruction. By the insolent order of the count of the domestics, the great chamberlain was shamefully beaten to death with sticks, before the eyes of the astonished Emperor; and the subsequent assassination of Allobich, in the midst of a public procession, is the only circumstance of his life in which Honorius discovered the faintest symptom of courage or resentment. Yet before they fell, Eusebius and Allobich had contributed their part to the ruin of the Empire, by opposing the conclusion of a treaty which Jovius, from a selfish, and perhaps a criminal, motive, had negotiated with Alaric, in a personal interview under the walls of Rimini. During the absence of Jovius, the Emperor was persuaded to assume a lofty tone of inflexible dignity, such as neither his situation nor his character could enable him to support; and a letter, signed with the name of Honorius, was immediately despatched to the prætorian prefect, granting him a free permission to dispose of the public money, but sternly refusing to prostitute the military honors of Rome to the proud demands of a Barbarian. This letter was imprudently communicated to Alaric himself; and the Goth, who in the whole transaction had behaved with temper and decency, expressed, in the most outrageous language, his lively sense of the insult so wantonly offered to his person and to his nation. The conference of Rimini was hastily interrupted; and the prefect Jovius, on his return to Ravenna, was compelled to adopt, and even to encourage, the fashionable opinions of the court. By his advice and example, the principal officers of the State and army were obliged to swear that, without listening, in any circumstances, to any conditions of peace, they would still persevere in perpetual and implacable war against the enemy of the republic. This rash engagement opposed an insuperable bar to all future negotiation. The ministers of Honorius were heard to declare that if they had only invoked the name of the Deity they would consult the public safety, and trust their souls to the mercy of heaven; but they had sworn by the sacred head of the Emperor himself; they had touched, in solemn ceremony, that august seat of majesty and wisdom; and the violation of their oath would expose them, to the temporal penalties of sacrilege and rebellion. While the Emperor and his court enjoyed, with sullen pride, the security of the marshes and fortifications of Ravenna, they abandoned Rome, almost without defence, to the resentment of Alaric. Yet such was the moderation which he still preserved, or affected, that, as he moved with his army along the Flaminian way, he successively despatched the bishops of the towns of Italy to reiterate his offers of peace and to conjure the Emperor that he would save the city and its inhabitants from hostile fire and the sword of the Barbarians. These impending calamities were, however, averted, not indeed by the wisdom of Honorius, but by the prudence or humanity of the Gothic King; who employed a milder, though not less effectual, method of conquest. Instead of assaulting the capital, he successfully directed his efforts against the port of Ostia, one of the boldest and most stupendous works of Roman magnificence. The accidents to which the precarious subsistence of the city was continually exposed in a winter navigation and an open road, had suggested to the genius of the first Cæsar the useful design which was executed under the reign of Claudius. The artificial moles, which formed the narrow entrance, advanced far into the sea, and firmly repelled the fury of the waves, while the largest vessels securely rode at anchor within three deep and capacious basins, which received the northern branch of the Tiber, about two miles from the ancient colony of Ostia. The Roman port insensibly swelled to the size of an episcopal city, where the corn of Africa was deposited in spacious granaries for the use of the capital. As soon as Alaric was in possession of that important place, he summoned the city to surrender at discretion; and his demands were enforced by the positive declaration that a refusal, or even a delay, should be instantly followed by the destruction of the magazines, on which the life of the Roman people depended. The clamors of that people, and the terror of famine, subdued the pride of the senate; they listened, without reluctance, to the proposal of placing a new emperor on the throne of the unworthy Honorius; and the suffrage of the Gothic conqueror bestowed the purple on Attalus, prefect of the city. The grateful monarch immediately acknowledged his protector as master-general of the armies of the West; Adolphus, with the rank of count of the domestics, obtained the custody of the person of Attalus; and the two hostile nations seemed to be united in the closest bands of friendship and alliance. The gates of the city were thrown open, and the new Emperor of the Romans, encompassed on every side by the Gothic arms, was conducted, in tumultuous procession, to the palace of Augustus and Trajan. After he had distributed the civil and military dignities among his favorites and followers, Attalus convened an assembly of the senate; before whom, in a formal and florid speech, he asserted his resolution of restoring the majesty of the republic, and of uniting to the Empire the provinces of Egypt and the East which had once acknowledged the sovereignty of Rome. Such extravagant promises inspired every reasonable citizen with a just contempt for the character of an unwarlike usurper, whose elevation was the deepest and most ignominious wound which the republic had yet sustained from the insolence of the Barbarians. But the populace, with their usual levity, applauded the change of masters. The public discontent was favorable to the rival of Honorius; and the sectaries, oppressed by his persecuting edicts, expected some degree of countenance, or at least of toleration, from a prince who, in his native country of Ionia, had been educated in the pagan superstition, and who had since received the sacrament of baptism from the hands of an Arian bishop. The first days of the reign of Attains were fair and prosperous. An officer of confidence was sent with an inconsiderable body of troops to secure the obedience of Africa; the greatest part of Italy submitted to the terror of the Gothic powers; and though the city of Bologna made a vigorous and effectual resistance, the people of Milan, dissatisfied perhaps with the absence of Honorius, accepted, with loud acclamations, the choice of the Roman senate. At the head of a formidable army, Alaric conducted his royal captive almost to the gates of Ravenna; and a solemn embassy of the principal ministers, of Jovius, the prætorian prefect, of Valens, master of the cavalry and infantry, of the quæstor Potamius, and of Julian, the first of the notaries, was introduced, with martial pomp, into the Gothic camp. In the name of their sovereign, they consented to acknowledge the lawful election of his competitor, and to divide the provinces of Italy and the West between the two emperors. Their proposals were rejected with disdain; and the refusal was aggravated by the insulting clemency of Attalus, who condescended to promise that, if Honorius would instantly resign the purple, he should be permitted to pass the remainder of his life in the peaceful exile of some remote island. So desperate indeed did the situation of the son of Theodosius appear, to those who were the best acquainted with his strength and resources, that Jovius and Valens, his minister and his general, betrayed their trust, infamously deserted the sinking cause of their benefactor, and devoted their treacherous allegiance to the service of his more fortunate rival. Astonished by such examples of domestic treason, Honorius trembled at the approach of every servant, at the arrival of every messenger. He dreaded the secret enemies who might lurk in his capital, his palace, his bed-chamber; and some ships lay ready in the harbor of Ravenna to transport the abdicated monarch to the dominions of his infant nephew, the Emperor of the East. But there is a Providence--such at least was the opinion of the historian Procopius--that watches over innocence and folly; and the pretensions of Honorius to its peculiar care cannot reasonably be disputed. At the moment when his despair, incapable of any wise or manly resolution, meditated a shameful flight, a seasonable reinforcement of four thousand veterans unexpectedly landed in the port of Ravenna. To these valiant strangers, whose fidelity had not been corrupted by the factions of the court, he committed the walls and gates of the city; and the slumbers of the Emperor were no longer disturbed by the apprehension of imminent and internal danger. The favorable intelligence which was received from Africa suddenly changed the opinions of men and the state of public affairs. The troops and officers whom Attalus had sent into that province were defeated and slain; and the active zeal of Heraclian maintained his own allegiance and that of his people. The faithful Count of Africa transmitted a large sum of money, which fixed the attachment of the Imperial guards; and his vigilance in preventing the exportation of corn and oil introduced famine, tumult, and discontent into the walls of Rome. The failure of the African expedition was the source of mutual complaint and recrimination in the party of Attalus; and the mind of his protector was insensibly alienated from the interest of a prince who wanted spirit to command, or docility to obey. The most imprudent measures were adopted, without the knowledge, or against the advice, of Alaric; and the obstinate refusal of the senate to allow, in the embarkation, the mixture even of five hundred Goths, betrayed a suspicious and distrustful temper, which, in their situation, was neither generous nor prudent. The resentment of the Gothic King was exasperated by the malicious arts of Jovius, who had been raised to the rank of patrician, and who afterward excused his double perfidy, by declaring, without a blush, that he had only _seemed_ to abandon the service of Honorius, more effectually to ruin the cause of the usurper. In a large plain near Rimini, and in the presence of an innumerable multitude of Romans and Barbarians, the wretched Attalus was publicly despoiled of the diadem and purple; and those ensigns of royalty were sent by Alaric, as the pledge of peace and friendship, to the son of Theodosius. The officers who returned to their duty were reinstated in their employments, and even the merit of a tardy repentance was graciously allowed; but the degraded Emperor of the Romans, desirous of life and insensible of disgrace, implored the permission of following the Gothic camp, in the train of a haughty and capricious Barbarian. The degradation of Attalus removed the only real obstacle to the conclusion of the peace; and Alaric advanced within three miles of Ravenna, to press the irresolution of the Imperial ministers, whose insolence soon returned with the return of fortune. His indignation was kindled by the report that a rival chieftain, that Sarus, the personal enemy of Adolphus, and the hereditary foe of the house of Balti, had been received into the palace. At the head of three hundred followers, that fearless Barbarian immediately sallied from the gates of Ravenna; surprised, and cut in pieces, a considerable body of Goths; reëntered the city in triumph; and was permitted to insult his adversary by the voice of a herald, who publicly declared that the guilt of Alaric had forever excluded him from the friendship and alliance of the Emperor. The crime and folly of the court of Ravenna were expiated a third time by the calamities of Rome. The King of the Goths, who no longer dissembled his appetite for plunder and revenge, appeared in arms under the walls of the capital; and the trembling senate, without any hopes of relief, prepared, by a desperate resistance, to delay the ruin of their country. But they were unable to guard against the secret conspiracy of their slaves and domestics; who, either from birth or interest, were attached to the cause of the enemy. At the hour of midnight the Salarian gate was silently opened, and the inhabitants were awakened by the tremendous sound of the Gothic trumpet. Eleven hundred and sixty-three years after the foundation of Rome, the Imperial city, which had subdued and civilized so considerable a part of mankind, was delivered to the licentious fury of the tribes of Germany and Scythia. The proclamation of Alaric, when he forced his entrance into a vanquished city, discovered, however, some regard for the laws of humanity and religion. He encouraged his troops boldly to seize the rewards of valor, and to enrich themselves with the spoils of a wealthy and effeminate people; but he exhorted them, at the same time, to spare the lives of the unresisting citizens, and to respect the churches of the apostles St. Peter and St. Paul as holy and inviolable sanctuaries. Amid the horrors of a nocturnal tumult, several of the Christian Goths displayed the fervor of a recent conversion; and some instances of their uncommon piety and moderation are related, and perhaps adorned, by the zeal of ecclesiastical writers. While the Barbarians roamed through the city in quest of prey, the humble dwelling of an aged virgin, who had devoted her life to the service of the altar, was forced open by one of the powerful Goths. He immediately demanded, though in civil language, all the gold and silver in her possession; and was astonished at the readiness with which she conducted him to a splendid hoard of massy plate, of the richest materials and the most curious workmanship. The Barbarian viewed with wonder and delight this valuable acquisition, till he was interrupted by a serious admonition, addressed to him in the following words: "These," said she, "are the consecrated vessels belonging to St. Peter; if you presume to touch them, the sacrilegious deed will remain on your conscience. For my part, I dare not keep what I am unable to defend." The Gothic captain, struck with reverential awe, despatched a messenger to inform the King of the treasure which he had discovered; and received a peremptory order from Alaric, that all the consecrated plate and ornaments should be transported, without damage or delay, to the church of the apostle. From the extremity, perhaps, of the Quirinal hill, to the distant quarter of the Vatican, a numerous detachment of Goths, marching in order of battle through the principal streets, protected, with glittering arms, the long train of their devout companions, who bore aloft on their heads the sacred vessels of gold and silver; and the martial shouts of the Barbarians were mingled with the sound of religious psalmody. From all the adjacent houses a crowd of Christians hastened to join this edifying procession; and a multitude of fugitives, without distinction of age, or rank, or even of sect, had the good fortune to escape to the secure and hospitable sanctuary of the Vatican. The learned work, concerning the _City of God_, was professedly composed by St. Augustine, to justify the ways of Providence in the destruction of the Roman greatness. He celebrates, with peculiar satisfaction, this memorable triumph of Christ; and insults his adversaries by challenging them to produce some similar example of a town taken by storm, in which the fabulous gods of antiquity had been able to protect either themselves or their deluded votaries. In the sack of Rome, some rare and extraordinary examples of Barbarian virtue have been deservedly applauded. But the holy precincts of the Vatican, and the apostolic churches, could receive a very small proportion of the Roman people; many thousand warriors, more especially of the Huns, who served under the standard of Alaric, were strangers to the name, or at least to the faith, of Christ; and we may suspect, without any breach of charity or candor, that in the hour of savage license, when every passion was inflamed, and every restraint was removed, the precepts of the Gospel seldom influenced the behavior of the Gothic Christians. The writers the best disposed to exaggerate their clemency have freely confessed that a cruel slaughter was made of the Romans; and that the streets of the city were filled with dead bodies, which remained without burial during the general consternation. The despair of the citizens was sometimes converted into fury; and whenever the Barbarians were provoked by opposition, they extended the promiscuous massacre to the feeble, the innocent, and the helpless. The private revenge of forty thousand slaves was exercised without pity or remorse; and the ignominious lashes which they had formerly received were washed away in the blood of the guilty or obnoxious families. The matrons and virgins of Rome were exposed to injuries more dreadful, in the apprehension of chastity, than death itself; and the ecclesiastical historian has selected an example of female virtue for the admiration of future ages. A Roman lady, of singular beauty and orthodox faith, had excited the impatient desires of a young Goth, who, according to the sagacious remark of Sozomen, was attached to the Arian heresy. Exasperated by her obstinate resistance, he drew his sword, and, with the anger of a lover, slightly wounded her neck. The bleeding heroine still continued to brave his resentment and to repel his love, till the ravisher desisted from his unavailing efforts, respectfully conducted her to the sanctuary of the Vatican, and gave six pieces of gold to the guards of the church, on condition that they should restore her inviolate to the arms of her husband. Such instances of courage and generosity were not extremely common. Avarice is an insatiate and universal passion; since the enjoyment of almost every object that can afford pleasure to the different tastes and tempers of mankind may be procured by the possession of wealth. In the pillage of Rome a just preference was given to gold and jewels, which contain the greatest value in the smallest compass and weight; but after these portable riches had been removed by the more diligent robbers, the palaces of Rome were rudely stripped of their splendid and costly furniture. The sideboards of massy plate, and the variegated wardrobes of silk and purple, were irregularly piled in the wagons, that always followed the march of a Gothic army. The most exquisite works of art were roughly handled or wantonly destroyed; many a statue was melted for the sake of the precious materials; and many a vase, in the division of the spoil, was shivered into fragments by the stroke of a battle-axe. The acquisition of riches served only to stimulate the avarice of the rapacious Barbarians, who proceeded, by threats, by blows, and by tortures, to force from their prisoners the confession of hidden treasure. Visible splendor and expense were alleged as the proof of a plentiful fortune; the appearance of poverty was imputed to a parsimonious disposition; and the obstinacy of some misers, who endured the most cruel torments before they would discover the secret object of their affection, was fatal to many unhappy wretches, who expired under the lash for refusing to reveal their imaginary treasures. The edifices of Rome--though the damage has been much exaggerated--received some injury from the violence of the Goths. At their entrance through the Salarian gate they fired the adjacent houses to guide their march, and to distract the attention of the citizens; the flames, which encountered no obstacle in the disorder of the night, consumed many private and public buildings; and the ruins of the palace of Sallust remained, in the age of Justinian, a stately monument of the Gothic conflagration. Yet a contemporary historian has observed that fire could scarcely consume the enormous beams of solid brass, and that the strength of man was insufficient to subvert the foundations of ancient structures. Some truth may possibly be concealed in his devout assertion that the wrath of heaven supplied the imperfections of hostile rage; and that the proud Forum of Rome, decorated with the statues of so many gods and heroes, was levelled in the dust by the stroke of lightning. Whatever might be the number of equestrian or plebeian rank who perished in the massacre of Rome, it is confidently affirmed that only one senator lost his life by the sword of the enemy. But it was not easy to compute the multitudes who, from an honorable station and a prosperous fortune, were suddenly reduced to the miserable condition of captives and exiles. As the Barbarians had more occasion for money than for slaves, they fixed a moderate price for the redemption of their indigent prisoners; and the ransom was often paid by the benevolence of their friends or the charity of strangers. The captives, who were regularly sold either in open market or by private contract, would have legally regained their native freedom, which it was impossible for a citizen to lose or to alienate. But as it was soon discovered that the vindication of their liberty would endanger their lives; and that the Goths, unless they were tempted to sell, might be provoked to murder their useless prisoners; the civil jurisprudence had been already qualified by a wise regulation that they should be obliged to serve the moderate term of five years, till they had discharged by their labor the price of their redemption. The nations who invaded the Roman Empire had driven before them, into Italy, whole troops of hungry and affrighted provincials, less apprehensive of servitude than of famine. The calamities of Rome and Italy dispersed the inhabitants to the most lonely, the most secure, the most distant places of refuge. While the Gothic cavalry spread terror and desolation along the sea-coast of Campania and Tuscany, the little island of Igilium, separated by a narrow channel from the Argentarian promontory, repulsed, or eluded, their hostile attempts; and at so small a distance from Rome, great numbers of citizens were securely concealed in the thick woods of that sequestered spot. The ample patrimonies, which many senatorian families possessed in Africa, invited them, if they had time, and prudence, to escape from the ruin of their country, to embrace the shelter of that hospitable province. The most illustrious of these fugitives was the noble and pious Proba, the widow of the prefect Petronius. After the death of her husband, the most powerful subject of Rome, she had remained at the head of the Anician family, and successively supplied, from her private fortune, the expense of the consulships of her three sons. When the city was besieged and taken by the Goths, Proba supported, with Christian resignation, the loss of immense riches; embarked in a small vessel, from whence she beheld, at sea, the flames of her burning palace, and fled with her daughter Læta, and her granddaughter, the celebrated virgin Demetrias, to the coast of Africa. The benevolent profusion with which the matron distributed the fruits, or the price, of her estates, contributed to alleviate the misfortunes of exile and captivity. But even the family of Proba herself was not exempt from the rapacious oppression of Count Heraclian, who basely sold, in matrimonial prostitution, the noblest maidens of Rome to the lust or avarice of the Syrian merchants. The Italian fugitives were dispersed through the provinces, along the coast of Egypt and Asia, as far as Constantinople and Jerusalem; and the village of Bethlehem, the solitary residence of St. Jerome and his female converts, was crowded with illustrious beggars of either sex, and every age, who excited the public compassion by the remembrance of their past fortune. This awful catastrophe of Rome filled the astonished Empire with grief and terror. So interesting a contrast of greatness and ruin disposed the fond credulity of the people to deplore, and even to exaggerate, the afflictions of the queen of cities. The clergy, who applied to recent events the lofty metaphors of oriental prophecy, were sometimes tempted to confound the destruction of the capital and the dissolution of the globe. There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify the evils, of the present times. Yet, when the first emotions had subsided, and a fair estimate was made of the real damage, the more learned and judicious contemporaries were forced to confess that infant Rome had formerly received more essential injury from the Gauls than she had now sustained from the Goths in her declining age. The experience of eleven centuries has enabled posterity to produce a much more singular parallel, and to affirm with confidence that the ravages of the Barbarians, whom Alaric had led from the banks of the Danube, were less destructive than the hostilities exercised by the troops of Charles V, a Catholic prince, who styled himself Emperor of the Romans. The Goths evacuated the city at the end of six days, but Rome remained above nine months in the possession of the Imperialists, and every hour was stained by some atrocious act of cruelty, lust, and rapine. The authority of Alaric preserved some order and moderation among the ferocious multitude which acknowledged him for their leader and king; but the constable of Bourbon had gloriously fallen in the attack of the walls; and the death of the general removed every restraint of discipline from an army which consisted of three independent nations, the Italians, the Spaniards, and the Germans. The retreat of the victorious Goths, who evacuated Rome on the sixth day, might be the result of prudence; but it was not surely the effect of fear. At the head of an army encumbered with rich and weighty spoils, their intrepid leader advanced along the Appian way into the southern provinces of Italy, destroying whatever dared to oppose his passage, and contenting himself with the plunder of the unresisting country. Above four years elapsed from the successful invasion of Italy by the arms of Alaric to the voluntary retreat of the Goths under the conduct of his successor Adolphus; and during the whole time they reigned without control over a country which, in the opinion of the ancients, had united all the various excellences of nature and art. The prosperity, indeed, which Italy had attained in the auspicious age of the Antonines had gradually declined with the decline of the Empire. The fruits of a long peace perished under the rude grasp of the Barbarians; and they themselves were incapable of tasting the more elegant refinements of luxury which had been prepared for the use of the soft and polished Italians. Each soldier, however, claimed an ample portion of the substantial plenty, the corn and cattle, oil and wine that was daily collected and consumed in the Gothic camp; and the principal warriors insulted the villas and gardens, once inhabited by Lucullus and Cicero, along the beauteous coast of Campania. Their trembling captives, the sons and daughters of Roman senators, presented, in goblets of gold and gems, large draughts of Falernian wine to the haughty victors, who stretched their huge limbs under the shade of plane trees, artificially disposed to exclude the scorching rays and to admit the genial warmth of the sun. These delights were enhanced by the memory of past hardships; the comparison of their native soil, the bleak and barren hills of Scythia, and the frozen banks of the Elbe and Danube added new charms to the felicity of the Italian climate.[18] Whether fame or conquest or riches were the object of Alaric, he pursued that object with an indefatigable ardor which could neither be quelled by adversity nor satiated by success. No sooner had he reached the extreme land of Italy than he was attracted by the neighboring prospect of a fertile and peaceful island. Yet even the possession of Sicily he considered only as an intermediate step to the important expedition which he already meditated against the continent of Africa. The whole design was defeated by the premature death of Alaric, which fixed, after a short illness, the fatal term of his conquests. The ferocious character of the Barbarians was displayed in the funeral of a hero whose valor and fortune they celebrated with mournful applause. By the labor of a captive multitude, they forcibly diverted the course of the Busentinus, a small river that washes the walls of Consentia. The royal sepulchre, adorned with the splendid spoils and trophies of Rome, was constructed in the vacant bed; the waters were then restored to their natural channel, and the secret spot where the remains of Alaric had been deposited was forever concealed by the inhuman massacre of the prisoners who had been employed to execute the work. The personal animosities and hereditary feuds of the Barbarians were suspended by the strong necessity of their affairs, and the brave Adolphus, the brother-in-law of the deceased monarch, was unanimously elected to succeed to his throne. The character and political system of the new King of the Goths may be best understood from his own conversation with an illustrious citizen of Narbonne; who afterward, in a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, related it to St. Jerome, in the presence of the historian Orosius. "In the full confidence of valor and victory, I once aspired (said. Adolphus) to change the face of the universe; to obliterate the name of Rome; to erect on its ruins the dominion of the Goths; and to acquire, like Augustus, the immortal fame of the founder of a new empire. By repeated experiments I was gradually convinced that laws are essentially necessary to maintain and regulate a well-constituted state; and that the fierce, untractable humor of the Goths was incapable of bearing the salutary yoke of laws and civil government. From that moment I proposed to myself a different object of glory and ambition; and it is now my sincere wish that the gratitude of future ages should acknowledge the merit of a stranger who employed the sword of the Goths, not to subvert, but to restore and maintain, the prosperity of the Roman Empire." With these pacific views, the successor of Alaric suspended the operations of war, and seriously negotiated with the Imperial court a treaty of friendship and alliance. It was the interest of the ministers of Honorius, who were now released from, the obligation of their extravagant oath, to deliver Italy from the intolerable weight of the Gothic powers; and they readily accepted their service against the tyrants and Barbarians who infested the provinces beyond the Alps. Adolphus, assuming the character of a Roman general, directed his march from the extremity of Campania to the southern provinces of Gaul. His troops, either by force or agreement, immediately occupied the cities of Narbonne, Toulouse, and Bordeaux; and though they were repulsed by Count Boniface from the walls of Marseilles, they soon extended their quarters from the Mediterranean to the ocean. The oppressed provincials might exclaim that the miserable remnant which the enemy had spared was cruelly ravished by their pretended allies; yet some specious colors were not wanting to palliate, or justify, the violence of the Goths. The cities of Gaul, which they attacked, might perhaps be considered as in a state of rebellion against the government of Honorius; the articles of the treaty or the secret instructions of the court might sometimes be alleged in favor of the seeming usurpations of Adolphus; and the guilt of any irregular, unsuccessful act of hostility might always be imputed, with an appearance of truth, to the ungovernable spirit of a Barbarian host, impatient of peace or discipline. The luxury of Italy had been less effectual to soften the temper than to relax the courage of the Goths; and they had imbibed the vices, without imitating the arts and institutions, of civilized society. The professions of Adolphus were probably sincere, and his attachment to the cause of the republic was secured by the ascendant which a Roman princess had acquired over the heart and understanding of the Barbarian king. Placidia, the daughter of the great Theodosius, and of Galla, his second wife, had received a royal education in the palace of Constantinople; but the eventful story of her life is connected with the revolutions which agitated the Western Empire under the reign of her brother Honorius. When Rome was first invested by the arms of Alaric, Placidia, who was then about twenty years of age, resided in the city; and her ready consent to the death of her cousin Serena has a cruel and ungrateful appearance, which, according to the circumstances of the action, may be aggravated, or excused, by the consideration of her tender age. The victorious Barbarians detained, either as a hostage or a captive, the sister of Honorius; but, while she was exposed to the disgrace of following round Italy the motions of a Gothic camp, she experienced, however, a decent and respectful treatment. The authority of Jornandes, who praises the beauty of Placidia, may perhaps be counterbalanced by the silence, the expressive silence, of her flatterers; yet the splendor of her birth, the bloom of youth, the elegance of manners, and the dexterous insinuation which she condescended to employ, made a deep impression on the mind of Adolphus, and the Gothic King aspired to call himself the brother of the Emperor. The ministers of Honorius rejected with disdain the proposal of an alliance so injurious to every sentiment of Roman pride, and repeatedly urged the restitution of Placidia as an indispensable condition of the treaty of peace. But the daughter of Theodosius submitted, without reluctance, to the desires of the conqueror, a young and valiant prince, who yielded to Alaric in loftiness of stature, but who excelled in the more attractive qualities of grace and beauty. The marriage of Adolphus and Placidia was consummated before the Goths retired from Italy; and the solemn, perhaps the anniversary, day of their nuptials was afterward celebrated in the house of Ingenuus, one of the most illustrious citizens of Narbonne in Gaul. The bride, attired and adorned like a Roman empress, was placed on a throne of state; and the King of the Goths, who assumed, on this occasion, the Roman habit, contented himself with a less honorable seat by her side. The nuptial gift which, according to the custom of his nation, was offered to Placidia, consisted of the rare and magnificent spoils of her country. Fifty beautiful youths, in silken robes, carried a basin in each hand; and one of these basins was filled with pieces of gold, the other with precious stones of an inestimable value. Attalus, so long the sport of fortune and of the Goths, was appointed to lead the chorus of the hymeneal song; and the degraded Emperor might aspire to the praise of a skilful musician. The Barbarians enjoyed the insolence of their triumph; and the provincials rejoiced in this alliance, which tempered, by the mild influence of love and reason, the fierce spirit of their Gothic lord. After the deliverance of Italy from the oppression of the Goths, some secret counsellor was permitted, amid the factions of the palace, to heal the wounds of that afflicted country. By a wise and humane regulation the eight provinces which had been the most deeply injured, Campania, Tuscany, Picenum, Samnium, Apulia, Calabria, Bruttium, and Lucania, obtained an indulgence of five years; the ordinary tribute was reduced to one-fifth, and even that fifth was destined to restore and support the useful institution of the public posts. By another law, the lands which had been left without inhabitants or cultivation were granted, with some diminution of taxes, to the neighbors who should occupy or the strangers who should solicit them; and the new possessors were secured against the future claims of the fugitive proprietors. About the same time a general amnesty was published in the name of Honorius, to abolish the guilt and memory of all the _involuntary_ offences which had been committed by his unhappy subjects during the term of the public disorder and calamity. A decent and respectful attention was paid to the restoration of the capital; the citizens were encouraged to rebuild the edifices which had been destroyed or damaged by hostile fire; and extraordinary supplies of corn were imported from the coast of Africa. The crowds that so lately fled before the sword of the Barbarians were soon recalled by the hopes of plenty and pleasure; and Albinus, prefect of Rome, informed the Court, with some anxiety and surprise, that in a single day he had taken an account of the arrival of fourteen thousand strangers. In less than seven years the vestiges of the Gothic invasion were almost obliterated, and the city appeared to resume its former splendor and tranquillity. The venerable matron replaced her crown of laurel, which had been ruffled by the storms of war; and was still amused, in the last moment of her decay, with the prophecies of revenge, of victory, and of eternal dominion. FOOTNOTE: [18] "The prostrate South to the destroyer yields Her boasted titles and her golden fields; With grim delight the brood of winter view A brighter day and skies of azure hue; Scent the new fragrance of the opening rose, And quaff the pendent vintage as it grows." See Gray's _Poems_, published by Mr. Mason, p. 197. HUNS INVADE THE EASTERN ROMAN EMPIRE ATTILA DICTATES A TREATY OF PEACE A.D. 441 EDWARD GIBBON Beyond the Great Wall of China, erected to secure the empire from their encroachments, were numerous tribes of troublesome Hiongnou who, becoming united under one head, were successful in an invasion of that country. These confederated tribes became known as the Huns. Until the advent of M. Deguignes all was dark concerning them. That learned and laborious scholar conceived the idea that the Huns might be thus identified, and has written the history from Chinese sources, of those who since that time have poured down upon the civilized countries of Asia and Europe and wasted them. Boulger also identifies these tribes with the Huns of Attila. After driving the Alani across the Danube and compelling them to seek an asylum within the borders of the Roman Empire, the terrible Huns had halted in their march westward for something more than a generation. They were hovering, meantime, on the eastern frontiers of the empire, "taking part like other barbarians in its disturbances and alliances." Emperors paid them tribute, and Roman generals kept up a politic or a questionable correspondence with them. Stilicho had detachments of Huns in the armies which fought against Alaric, King of the Goths, the greatest Roman soldier after Stilicho--and, like Stilicho, of barbarian parentage--Aetius, who was to be their most formidable antagonist, had been a hostage and messmate in their camps. All historians agree that the influx of these barbaric peoples hastened, more than any other cause, the rapid decline of the great empire which the Romans had built up. About A.D. 433 Attila, equally famous in history and legend, became the King of the Huns. The attraction of his daring character, and of his genius for the war which nomadic tribes delight in, gave him absolute ascendency over his nation, and over the Teutonic and Slavonic tribes near him. Like other conquerors of his race he imagined and attempted an empire of ravage and desolation, a vast hunting ground and preserve, in which men and their works should supply the objects and zest of the chase. The gradual encroachments of the Huns on the northern frontiers of the Roman domain led to a terrific war in 441. Attila was king. His first assault upon the Roman power was directed against the Eastern Empire. The court at Constantinople had been duly obsequious to him, but he found a pretext for war. The dreadful ravages of his hordes and the shameful treaty which he forced upon the empire form a thrilling yet terrible chapter in the history of the world. The western world was oppressed by the Goths and Vandals, who fled before the Huns; but the achievements of the Huns themselves were not adequate to their power and prosperity. Their victorious hordes had spread from the Volga to the Danube; but the public force was exhausted by the discord of independent chieftains; their valor was idly consumed in obscure and predatory excursions; and they often degraded their national dignity by condescending, for the hopes of spoil, to enlist under the banners of their fugitive enemies. In the reign of Attila the Huns again became the terror of the world; and I shall now describe the character and actions of that formidable Barbarian; who alternately insulted and invaded the East and the West, and urged the rapid downfall of the Roman Empire. In the tide of emigration which impetuously rolled from the confines of China to those of Germany, the most powerful and populous tribes may commonly be found on the verge of the Roman provinces. The accumulated weight was sustained for a while by artificial barriers; and the easy condescension of the emperors invited, without satisfying, the insolent demands of the Barbarians, who had acquired an eager appetite for the luxuries of civilized life. The Hungarians, who ambitiously insert the name of Attila among their native kings, may affirm with truth that the hordes, which were subject to his uncle Roas, or Rugilas, had formed their encampments within the limits of modern Hungary,[19] in a fertile country, which liberally supplied the wants of a nation of hunters and shepherds. In this advantageous situation, Rugilas and his valiant brothers, who continually added to their power and reputation, commanded the alternative of peace or war with the two empires. His alliance with the Romans of the West was cemented by his personal friendship for the great Aetius, who was always secure of finding, in the Barbarian camp, a hospitable reception and a powerful support. At his solicitation, and in the name of John the Usurper, sixty thousand Huns advanced to the confines of Italy; their march and their retreat were alike expensive to the State; and the grateful policy of Aetius abandoned the possession of Pannonia to his faithful confederates. The Romans of the East were not less apprehensive of the arms of Rugilas, which threatened the provinces, or even the capital. Some ecclesiastical historians have destroyed the Barbarians with lightning and pestilence; but Theodosius was reduced to the more humble expedient of stipulating an annual payment of three hundred and fifty pounds of gold, and of disguising this dishonorable tribute by the title of general, which the King of the Huns condescended to accept. The public tranquillity was frequently interrupted by the fierce impatience of the Barbarians and the perfidious intrigues of the Byzantine court. Four dependent nations, among whom we may distinguish the Bavarians, disclaimed the sovereignty of the Huns; and their revolt was encouraged and protected by a Roman alliance, till the just claims and formidable power of Rugilas were effectually urged by the voice of Eslaw his ambassador. Peace was the unanimous wish of the senate: their decree was ratified by the Emperor; and two ambassadors were named, Plinthas, a general of Scythian extraction, but of consular rank; and the quæstor Epigenes, a wise and experienced statesman, who was recommended to that office by his ambitious colleague. The death of Rugilas suspended the progress of the treaty. His two nephews, Attila and Bleda, who succeeded to the throne of their uncle, consented to a personal interview with the ambassadors of Constantinople; but as they proudly refused to dismount, the business was transacted on horseback, in a spacious plain near the city of Margus, in the Upper Mæsia. The kings of the Huns assumed the solid benefits, as well as the vain honors, of the negotiation. They dictated the conditions of peace, and each condition was an insult on the majesty of the empire. Besides the freedom of a safe and plentiful market on the banks of the Danube, they required that the annual contribution should be augmented from three hundred and fifty to seven hundred pounds of gold; that a fine or ransom of eight pieces of gold should be paid for every Roman captive who had escaped from his Barbarian master; that the Emperor should renounce all treaties and engagements with the enemies of the Huns; and that all the fugitives who had taken refuge in the court or provinces of Theodosius should be delivered to the justice of their offended sovereign. This justice was rigorously inflicted on some unfortunate youths of a royal race. They were crucified on the territories of the empire, by the command of Attila: and as soon as the King of the Huns had impressed the Romans with the terror of his name, he indulged them in a short and arbitrary respite, while he subdued the rebellious or independent nations of Scythia and Germany. Attila, the son of Mundzuk, deduced his noble, perhaps his regal, descent from the ancient Huns, who had formerly contended with the monarchs of China. His features, according to the observation of a Gothic historian, bore the stamp of his national origin; and the portrait of Attila exhibits the genuine deformity of a modern Calmuk; a large head, a swarthy complexion, small, deep-seated eyes, a flat nose, a few hairs in the place of a beard, broad shoulders, and a short square body, of nervous strength, though of a disproportioned form. The haughty step and demeanor of the King of the Huns expressed the consciousness of his superiority above the rest of mankind; and he had a custom of fiercely rolling his eyes, as if he wished to enjoy the terror which he inspired. Yet this savage hero was not inaccessible to pity; his suppliant enemies might confide in the assurance of peace or pardon; and Attila was considered by his subjects as a just and indulgent master. He delighted in war; but, after he had ascended the throne in a mature age, his head, rather than his hand, achieved the conquest of the North; and the fame of an adventurous soldier was usefully exchanged for that of a prudent and successful general. The effects of personal valor are so inconsiderable, except in poetry or romance, that victory, even among Barbarians, must depend on the degree of skill with which the passions of the multitude are combined and guided for the service of a single man. The Scythian conquerors, Attila and Zingis, surpassed their rude countrymen in art rather than in courage; and it may be observed that the monarchies, both of the Huns and of the Moguls, were erected by their founders on the basis of popular superstition. The miraculous conception, which fraud and credulity ascribed to the virgin-mother of Zingis, raised him above the level of human nature; and the naked prophet, who in the name of the Deity invested him with the empire of the earth, pointed the valor of the Moguls with irresistible enthusiasm. The religious arts of Attila were not less skilfully adapted to the character of his age and country. It was natural enough that the Scythians should adore, with peculiar devotion, the god of war; but as they were incapable of forming either an abstract idea or a corporeal representation, they worshipped their tutelar deity under the symbol of an iron cimeter. One of the shepherds of the Huns perceived, that a heifer, who was grazing, had wounded herself in the foot, and curiously followed the track of the blood, till he discovered, among the long grass, the point of an ancient sword, which he dug out of the ground and presented to Attila. That magnanimous, or rather that artful, prince accepted, with pious gratitude, this celestial favor, and, as the rightful possessor of the _sword of Mars,_ asserted his divine and indefeasible claim to the dominion of the earth. If the rites of Scythia were practised on this solemn occasion, a lofty altar, or rather pile of fagots, three hundred yards in length and in breadth, was raised in a spacious plain; and the sword of Mars was placed erect on the summit of this rustic altar, which was annually consecrated by the blood of sheep, horses, and of the hundredth captive. Whether human sacrifices formed any part of the worship of Attila, or whether he propitiated the god of war with the victims which he continually offered in the field of battle, the favorite of Mars soon acquired a sacred character, which rendered his conquests more easy and more permanent; and the Barbarian princes confessed, in the language of devotion or flattery, that they could not presume to gaze, with a steady eye, on the divine majesty of the King of the Huns. His brother Bleda, who reigned over a considerable part of the nation, was compelled to resign his sceptre and his life. Yet even this cruel act was attributed to a supernatural impulse; and the vigor with which Attila wielded the sword of Mars convinced the world that it had been reserved alone for his invincible arm. But the extent of his empire affords the only remaining evidence of the number and importance of his victories; and the Scythian monarch, however ignorant of the value of science and philosophy, might perhaps lament that his illiterate subjects were destitute of the art which could perpetuate the memory of his exploits. If a line of separation were drawn between the civilized and the savage climates of the globe; between the inhabitants of cities, who cultivated the earth, and the hunters and shepherds, who dwelt in tents, Attila might aspire to the title of supreme and sole monarch of the Barbarians. He alone, among the conquerors of ancient and modern times, united the two mighty kingdoms of Germany and Scythia; and those vague appellations, when they are applied to his reign, may be understood with an ample latitude. Thuringia, which stretched beyond its actual limits as far as the Danube, was in the number of his provinces; he interposed, with the weight of a powerful neighbor, in the domestic affairs of the Franks; and one of his lieutenants chastised, and almost exterminated, the Burgundians of the Rhine. He subdued the islands of the ocean, the kingdoms of Scandinavia, encompassed and divided by the waters of the Baltic; and the Huns might derive a tribute of furs from that northern region, which has been protected from all other conquerors by the severity of the climate and the courage of the natives. Toward the east, it is difficult to circumscribe the dominion of Attila over the Scythian deserts: yet we may be assured that he reigned on the banks of the Volga; that the King of the Huns was dreaded, not only as a warrior, but as a magician; that he insulted and vanquished the khan of the formidable Geougen; and that he sent ambassadors to negotiate an equal alliance with the empire of China. In the proud review of the nations who acknowledged the sovereignty of Attila, and who never entertained, during his lifetime, the thought of a revolt, the Gepidæ and the Ostrogoths were distinguished by their numbers, their bravery, and the personal merit of their chiefs. The renowned Ardaric, King of the Gepidæ, was the faithful and sagacious counsellor of the monarch, who esteemed his intrepid genius, while he loved the mild and discreet virtues of the noble Walamir, King of the Ostrogoths. The crowd of vulgar kings, the leaders of so many martial tribes, who served under the standard of Attila, were ranged in the submissive order of guards and domestics round the person of their master. They watched his nod; they trembled at his frown; and at the first signal of his will they executed, without murmur or hesitation, his stern and absolute commands. In time of peace the dependent princes, with their national troops, attended the royal camp in regular succession; but when Attila collected his military force he was able to bring into the field an army of five or, according to another account, of seven hundred thousand Barbarians. The ambassadors of the Huns might awaken the attention of Theodosius, by reminding him that they were his neighbors both in Europe and Asia; since they touched the Danube on one hand, and reached, with the other, as far as the Tanais. In the reign of his father Arcadius, a band of adventurous Huns had ravaged the provinces of the East, from whence they brought away rich spoils and innumerable captives. They advanced, by a secret path, along the shores of the Caspian Sea; traversed the snowy mountains of Armenia; passed the Tigris, the Euphrates, and the Halys; recruited their weary cavalry with the generous breed of Cappadocian horses: occupied the hilly country of Cilicia, and disturbed the festal songs and dances of the citizens of Antioch. Egypt trembled at their approach; and the monks and pilgrims of the Holy Land prepared to escape their fury by a speedy embarkation. The memory of this invasion was still recent in the minds of the orientals. The subjects of Attila might execute, with superior forces, the design which these adventurers had so boldly attempted; and it soon became the subject of anxious conjecture whether the tempest would fall on the dominions of Rome or of Persia. Some of the great vassals of the King of the Huns, who were themselves in the rank of powerful princes, had been sent to ratify an alliance and society of arms with the Emperor, or rather with the general, of the West. They related, during their residence at Rome, the circumstances of an expedition which they had lately made into the East. After passing a desert and a morass, supposed by the Romans to be the lake Mæotis, they penetrated through the mountains, and arrived, at the end of fifteen days' march, on the confines of Media; where they advanced as far as the unknown cities of Basic and Cursic. They encountered the Persian army in the plains of Media; and the air, according to their own expression, was darkened by a cloud of arrows. But the Huns were obliged to retire before the numbers of the enemy. Their laborious retreat was effected by a different road; they lost the greater part of their booty; and at length returned to the royal camp, with some knowledge of the country, and an impatient desire of revenge. In the free conversation of the imperial ambassadors, who discussed, at the court of Attila, the character and designs of their formidable enemy, the ministers of Constantinople expressed their hope that his strength might be diverted and employed in a long and doubtful contest with the princes of the house of Sassan. The more sagacious Italians admonished their eastern brethren of the folly and danger of such a hope; and convinced them, that the Medes and Persians were incapable of resisting the arms of the Huns; and that the easy and important acquisition would exalt the pride, as well as power, of the conqueror. Instead of contenting himself with a moderate contribution and a military title, which equalled him only to the generals of Theodosius, Attila would proceed to impose a disgraceful and intolerable yoke on the necks of the prostrate and captive Romans, who would then be encompassed, on all sides, by the empire of the Huns. While the powers of Europe and Asia were solicitous to avert the impending danger, the alliance of Attila maintained the Vandals in the possession of Africa. An enterprise had been concerted between the courts of Ravenna and Constantinople for the recovery of that valuable province; and the ports of Sicily were already filled with the military and naval forces of Theodosius. But the subtle Genseric, who spread his negotiations round the world, prevented their designs, by exciting the King of the Huns to invade the Eastern Empire; and a trifling incident soon became the motive, or pretence, of a destructive war. Under the faith of the treaty of Margus, a free market was held on the northern side of the Danube, which was protected by a Roman fortress surnamed Constantia. A troop of Barbarians violated the commercial security, killed or dispersed the unsuspecting traders, and levelled the fortress with the ground. The Huns justified this outrage as an act of reprisal, alleged that the Bishop of Margus had entered their territories to discover and steal a secret treasure of their kings, and sternly demanded the guilty prelate, the sacrilegious spoil, and the fugitive subjects who had escaped from the justice of Attila. The refusal of the Byzantine court was the signal of war; and the Mæsians at first applauded the generous firmness of their sovereign. But they were soon intimidated by the destruction of Viminiacum and the adjacent towns; and the people were persuaded to adopt the convenient maxim that a private citizen, however innocent or respectable, may be justly sacrificed to the safety of his country. The Bishop of Margus, who did not possess the spirit of a martyr, resolved to prevent the designs which he suspected. He boldly treated with the princes of the Huns; secured, by solemn oaths, his pardon and reward; posted a numerous detachment of Barbarians, in silent ambush, on the banks of the Danube; and, at the appointed hour, opened, with his own hand, the gates of his episcopal city. This advantage, which had been obtained by treachery, served as a prelude to more honorable and decisive victories. The Illyrian frontier was covered by a line of castles and fortresses; and though the greatest part of them consisted only of a single tower, with a small garrison, they were commonly sufficient to repel or to intercept the inroads of an enemy who was ignorant of the art and impatient of the delay of a regular siege. But these slight obstacles were instantly swept away by the inundation of the Huns. They destroyed, with fire and sword, the populous cities of Sirmium and Singidunum, of Ratiaria and Marcianopolis, of Naissus and Sardica; where every circumstance of the discipline of the people and the construction of the buildings had been gradually adapted to the sole purpose of defence. The whole breadth of Europe, as it extends above five hundred miles from the Euxine to the Hadriatic, was at once invaded and occupied and desolated by the myriads of Barbarians whom Attila led into the field. The public danger and distress could not, however, provoke Theodosius to interrupt his amusements and devotion or to appear in person at the head of the Roman legions. But the troops which had been sent against Genseric were hastily recalled from Sicily; the garrisons on the side of Persia were exhausted; and a military force was collected in Europe, formidable by their arms and numbers, if the generals had understood the science of command and their soldiers the duty of obedience. The armies of the Eastern Empire were vanquished in three successive engagements; and the progress of Attila may be traced by the fields of battle. The two former, on the banks of the Utus and under the walls of Marcianapolis, were fought in the extensive plains between the Danube and Mount Hæmus. As the Romans were pressed by a victorious enemy, they gradually and unskilfully retired toward the Chersonesus of Thrace; and that narrow peninsula, the last extremity of the land, was marked by their third, and irreparable, defeat. By the destruction of this army Attila acquired the indisputable possession of the field. From the Hellespont to Thermopylæ, and the suburbs of Constantinople, he ravaged, without resistance and without mercy, the provinces of Thrace and Macedonia. Heraclea and Hadrianople might, perhaps, escape this dreadful irruption of the Huns; but the words, the most expressive of total extirpation and erasure, are applied to the calamities which they inflicted on seventy cities of the Eastern Empire. Theodosius, his court, and the unwarlike people were protected by the walls of Constantinople; but those waits had been shaken by a recent earthquake, and the fall of fifty-eight towers had opened a large and tremendous breach. The damage indeed was speedily repaired; but this accident was aggravated by a superstitious fear, that heaven itself had delivered the imperial city to the shepherds of Scythia, who were strangers to the laws, the language, and the religion of the Romans. In all their invasions of the civilized empires of the South, the Scythian shepherds have been uniformly actuated by a savage and destructive spirit. The laws of war, that restrain the exercise of national rapine and murder, are founded on two principles of substantial interest: the knowledge of the permanent benefits which may be obtained by a moderate use of conquest; and a just apprehension, lest the desolation which we inflict on the enemy's country may be retaliated on our own. But these considerations of hope and fear are almost unknown in the pastoral state of nations. The Huns of Attila may, without injustice, be compared to the Moguls and Tartars, before their primitive manners were changed by religion and luxury. After the Moguls had subdued the northern provinces of China, it was seriously proposed, not in the hour of victory and passion, but in calm deliberate council, to exterminate all the inhabitants of that populous country, that the vacant land might be converted to the pasture of cattle. The firmness of a Chinese mandarin, who insinuated some principles of rational policy into the mind of Genghis, diverted him from the execution of this horrid design. But in the cities of Asia, which yielded to the Moguls, the inhuman abuse of the rights of war was exercised with a regular form of discipline, which may, with equal reason, though not with equal authority, be imputed to the victorious Huns. The inhabitants, who had submitted to their discretion, were ordered to evacuate their houses, and to assemble in some plain adjacent to the city; where a division was made of the vanquished into three parts. The first class consisted of the soldiers of the garrison, and of the young men capable of bearing arms; and their fate was instantly decided; they were either enlisted among the Moguls, or they were massacred on the spot by the troops, who, with pointed spears and bended bows, had formed a circle round-the captive multitude. The second class, composed of the young and beautiful women, of the artificers of every rank and profession, and of the more wealthy or honorable citizens, from whom a private ransom might be expected, was distributed in equal or proportionable lots. The remainder, whose life or death was alike useless to the conquerors, were permitted to return to the city; which, in the mean while, had been stripped of its valuable furniture; and a tax was imposed on those wretched inhabitants for the indulgence of breathing their native air. Such was the behavior of the Moguls, when they were not conscious of any extraordinary rigor. But the most casual provocation, the slightest motive of caprice or convenience, often provoked them to involve a whole people in an indiscriminate massacre; and the ruin of some flourishing cities was executed with such unrelenting perseverance that, according to their own expression, horses might run, without stumbling, over the ground where they had once stood. The three great capitals of Khorassan, and Maru, Neisabour, and Herat, were destroyed by the armies of Genghis, and the exact account which was taken of the slain amounted to four million three hundred and forty-seven thousand persons. Timur, or Tamerlane, was educated in a less barbarous age, and in the profession of the Mahometan religion; yet, if Attila equalled the hostile ravages of Tamerlane,[20] either the Tartar or the Hun might deserve the epithet of the "Scourge of God." It may be affirmed, with bolder assurance, that the Huns depopulated the provinces of the Empire, by the murder of Roman subjects whom they led away into captivity. In the hands of a wise legislator, such an industrious colony might have contributed to diffuse through the deserts of Scythia the rudiments of the useful and ornamental arts; but these captives, who had been taken in war, were accidentally dispersed among the hordes that obeyed the empire of Attila. The estimate of their respective value was formed by the simple judgment of unenlightened and unprejudiced Barbarians. Perhaps they might not understand the merit of a theologian, profoundly skilled in the controversies of the Trinity and the Incarnation; yet they respected the ministers of every religion; ind the active zeal of the Christian missionaries, without approaching the person or the palace of the monarch, successfully labored in the propagation of the Gospel. The pastoral tribes, who were ignorant of the distinction of landed property, must have disregarded the use, as well as the abuse, of civil jurisprudence; and the skill of an eloquent lawyer could excite only their contempt or their abhorrence. The perpetual intercourse of the Huns and the Goths had communicated the familiar knowledge of the two national dialects; and the Barbarians were ambitious of conversing in Latin, the military idiom even of the Eastern Empire. But they disdained the language and the sciences of the Greeks; and the vain sophist, or grave philosopher, who had enjoyed the flattering applause of the schools, was mortified to find that his robust servant was a captive of more value and importance than himself. The mechanic arts were encouraged and esteemed, as they tended to satisfy the wants of the Huns. An architect in the service of Onegesius, one of the favorites of Attila, was employed to construct a bath; but this work was a rare example of private luxury; and the trades of the smith, the carpenter, the armorer, were much more adapted to supply a wandering people with the useful instruments of peace and war. But the merit of the physician was received with universal favor and respect: the Barbarians, who despised death, might be apprehensive of disease; and the haughty conqueror trembled in the presence of a captive to whom he ascribed perhaps an imaginary power of prolonging or preserving his life. The Huns might be provoked to insult the misery of their slaves, over whom they exercised a despotic command; but their manners were not susceptible of a refined system of oppression; and the efforts of courage and diligence were often recompensed by the gift of freedom. The historian Priscus, whose embassy is a source of curious instruction, was accosted in the camp of Attila by a stranger, who saluted him in the Greek language, but whose dress and figure displayed the appearance of a wealthy Scythian. In the siege of Viminiacum he had lost, according to his own account, his fortune and liberty; he became the slave of Onegesius; but his faithful services, against the Romans and the Acatzires, had gradually raised him to the rank of the native Huns; to whom he was attached by the domestic pledges of a new wife and several children. The spoils of war had restored and improved his private property; he was admitted to the table of his former lord; and the apostate Greek blessed the hour of his captivity, since it had been the introduction to a happy and independent state, which he held by the honorable tenure of military service. This reflection naturally produced a dispute on the advantages and defects of the Roman government, which was severely arraigned by the apostate, and defended by Priscus in a prolix and feeble declamation. The freedman of Onegesius exposed, in true and lively colors, the vices of a declining empire, of which he had so long been the victim; the cruel absurdity of the Roman princes, unable to protect their subjects against the public enemy, unwilling to trust them with arms for their own defence; the intolerable weight of taxes, rendered still more oppressive by the intricate or arbitrary modes of collection; the obscurity of numerous and contradictory laws; the tedious and expensive forms of judicial proceedings; the partial administration of justice; and the universal corruption, which increased the influence of the rich and aggravated the misfortunes of the poor. A sentiment of patriotic sympathy was at length revived in the breast of the fortunate exile: and he lamented, with a flood of tears, the guilt or weakness of those magistrates who had perverted the wisest and most salutary institutions. The timid or selfish policy of the Western Romans had abandoned the Eastern Empire to the Huns. The loss of armies, and the want of discipline or virtue, were not supplied by the personal character of the monarch. Theodosius might still affect the style, as well as the title, of "Invincible Augustus"; but he was reduced to solicit the clemency of Attila, who imperiously dictated these harsh and humiliating conditions of peace: I. The Emperor of the East resigned, by an express or tacit convention, an extensive and important territory, which stretched along the southern banks of the Danube, from Singidunum, or Belgrade, as far as Novæ, in the diocese of Thrace. The breadth was defined by the vague computation of fifteen days' journey; but, from the proposal of Attila to remove the situation of the national market, it soon appeared that he comprehended the ruined city of Naissus within the limits of his dominions. II. The King of the Huns required and obtained that his tribute or subsidy should be augmented from seven hundred pounds of gold to the annual sum of two thousand one hundred; and he stipulated the immediate payment of six thousand pounds of gold to defray the expenses or to expiate the guilt of the war. One might imagine that such a demand, which scarcely equalled the measure of private wealth, would have been readily discharged by the opulent Empire of the East; and the public distress affords a remarkable proof of the impoverished, or at least of the disorderly, state of the finances. A large proportion of the taxes extorted from the people was detained and intercepted in their passage, through the foulest channels, to the treasury of Constantinople. The revenue was dissipated by Theodosius and his favorites in wasteful and profuse luxury, which was disguised by the name of imperial magnificence or Christian charity. The immediate supplies had been exhausted by the unforeseen necessity of military preparations. A personal contribution, rigorously but capriciously imposed on the members of the senatorian order, was the only expedient that could disarm, without loss of time, the impatient avarice of Attila; and the poverty of the nobles compelled them to adopt the scandalous resource of exposing to public auction the jewels of their wives and the hereditary ornaments of their palaces. III. The King of the Huns appears to have established, as a principle of national jurisprudence, that he could never lose the property, which he had once acquired, in the persons who had yielded either a voluntary or reluctant submission to his authority. From this principle he concluded, and the conclusions of Attila were irrevocable laws, that the Huns, who had been, taken prisoners in war, should be released without delay and without ransom; that every Roman captive who had presumed to escape should purchase his right to freedom at the price of twelve pieces of gold; and that all the Barbarians who had deserted the standard of Attila should be restored, with out any promise or stipulation of pardon. In the execution of this cruel and ignominious treaty the imperial officers were forced to massacre several loyal and noble deserters who refused to devote themselves to certain death; and the Romans forfeited all reasonable claims to the friendship of any Scythian people, by this public confession, that they were destitute either of faith or power to protect the suppliant who had embraced the throne of Theodosius. It would have been strange, indeed, if Theodosius had purchased, by the loss of honor, a secure and solid tranquillity, or if his tameness had not invited the repetition of injuries. The Byzantine court was insulted by five or six successive embassies, and the ministers of Attila were uniformly instructed to press the tardy or imperfect execution of the last treaty; to produce the names of fugitives and deserters, who were still protected by the Empire; and to declare, with seeming moderation, that, unless their sovereign obtained complete and immediate satisfaction, it would be impossible for him, were it even his wish, to check the resentment of his warlike tribes. Besides the motives of pride and interest, which might prompt the King of the Huns to continue this train of negotiation, he was influenced by the less honorable view of enriching his favorites at the expense of his enemies. The imperial treasury was exhausted to procure the friendly offices of the ambassadors and their principal attendants, whose favorable report might conduce to the maintenance of peace. The Barbarian monarch was flattered by the liberal reception of his ministers; he computed, with pleasure, the value and splendor of their gifts, rigorously exacted the performance of every promise which would contribute to their private emolument, and treated as an important business of state the marriage of his secretary Constantius. That Gallic adventurer, who was recommended by Aetius to the King of the Huns, had engaged his service to the ministers of Constantinople, for the stipulated reward of a wealthy and noble wife; and the daughter of Count Saturninus was chosen to discharge the obligations of her country. The reluctance of the victim, some domestic troubles, and the unjust confiscation of her fortune cooled the ardor of her interested lover; but he still demanded, in the name of Attila, an equivalent alliance; and, after many ambiguous delays and excuses, the Byzantine court was compelled to sacrifice to this insolent stranger the widow of Armatius, whose birth, opulence, and beauty placed her in the most illustrious rank of the Roman matrons. For these importunate and oppressive embassies Attila claimed a suitable return: he weighed, with suspicious pride, the character and station of the imperial envoys; but he condescended to promise that he would advance as far as Sardica to receive any ministers who had been invested with the consular dignity. The council of Theodosius eluded this proposal, by representing the desolate and ruined condition of Sardica, and even ventured to insinuate that every officer of the army or household was qualified to treat with the most powerful princes of Scythia. Maximin, a respectable courtier, whose abilities had been long exercised in civil and military employments, accepted, with reluctance, the troublesome, and perhaps dangerous, commission of reconciling the angry spirit of the King of the Huns. His friend, the historian Priscus, embraced the opportunity of observing the Barbarian hero in the peaceful and domestic scenes of life: but the secret of the embassy, a fatal and guilty secret, was intrusted only to the interpreter Vigilius. The two last ambassadors of the Huns, Orestes, a noble subject of the Pannonian province, and Edecon, a valiant chieftain of the tribe of the Scyrri, returned at the same time from Constantinople to the royal camp. Their obscure names were afterward illustrated by the extraordinary fortune and the contrast of their sons: the two servants of Attila became the fathers of the last Roman Emperor of the West, and of the first Barbarian King of Italy. The ambassadors, who were followed by a numerous train of men and horses, made their first halt at Sardica, at the distance of three hundred and fifty miles, or thirteen days' journey, from Constantinople. As the remains of Sardica were still included within the limits of the Empire, it was incumbent on the Romans to exercise the duties of hospitality. They provided, with the assistance of the provincials, a sufficient number of sheep and oxen, and invited the Huns to a splendid, or, at least, a plentiful supper. But the harmony of the entertainment was soon disturbed by mutual prejudice and indiscretion. The greatness of the Emperor and the empire was warmly maintained by their ministers; the Huns, with equal ardor, asserted the superiority of their victorious monarch: the dispute was inflamed by the rash and unseasonable flattery of Vigilius, who passionately rejected the comparison of a mere mortal with the divine Theodosius; and it was with extreme difficulty that Maximin and Priscus were able to divert the conversation, or to soothe the angry minds, of the Barbarians. When they rose from the table, the Imperial ambassador presented Edecon and Orestes with rich gifts of silk robes and Indian pearls, which they thankfully accepted. Yet Orestes could not forbear insinuating that _he_ had not always been treated with such respect and liberality; and the offensive distinction which was implied, between his civil office and the hereditary rank of his colleague seems to have made Edecon a doubtful friend and Orestes an irreconcilable enemy. After this entertainment they travelled about one hundred miles from Sardica to Naissus. That flourishing city, which had given birth to the great Constantine, was levelled with the ground; the inhabitants were destroyed or dispersed; and the appearance of some sick persons, who were still permitted to exist among the ruins of the churches, served only to increase the horror of the prospect. The surface of the country was covered with the bones of the slain; and the ambassadors, who directed their course to the northwest, were obliged to pass the hills of modern Servia before they descended into the flat and marshy grounds which are terminated by the Danube. The Huns were masters of the great river: their navigation was performed in large canoes, hollowed out of the trunk of a single tree; the ministers of Theodosius were safely landed on the opposite bank; and their Barbarian associates immediately hastened to the camp of Attila, which was equally prepared for the amusements of hunting or of war. No sooner had Maximin advanced about two miles from the Danube than he began to experience the fastidious insolence of the conqueror. He was sternly forbidden to pitch his tents in a pleasant valley, lest he should infringe the distant awe that was due to the royal mansion. The ministers of Attila pressed him to communicate the business, and the instructions, which he reserved for the ear of their sovereign. When Maximin temperately urged the contrary practice of nations, he was still more confounded to find that the resolutions of the Sacred Consistory, those secrets (says Priscus) which should not be revealed to the gods themselves, had been treacherously disclosed to the public enemy. On his refusal to comply with such ignominious terms, the Imperial envoy was commanded instantly to depart; the order was recalled; it was again repeated; and the Huns renewed their ineffectual attempts to subdue the patient firmness of Maximin. At length, by the intercession of Scotta, the brother of Onegesius, whose friendship had been purchased by a liberal gift, he was admitted to the royal presence; but, instead of obtaining a decisive answer, he was compelled to undertake a remote journey toward the north, that Attila might enjoy the proud satisfaction of receiving, in the same camp, the ambassadors of the Eastern and Western empires. His journey was regulated by the guides, who obliged him to halt, to hasten his march, or to deviate from the common road, as it best suited the convenience of the King. The Romans, who traversed the plains of Hungary, suppose that they passed _several_ navigable rivers, either in canoes or portable boats; but there is reason to suspect that the winding stream of the Teyss, or Tibiscus, might present itself in different places under different names. From the contiguous villages they received a plentiful and regular supply of provisions; mead instead of wine, millet in the place of bread, and a certain liquor named _camus_, which, according to the report of Priscus, was distilled from barley.[21] Such fare might appear coarse and indelicate to men who had tasted the luxury of Constantinople; but, in their accidental distress, they were relieved by the gentleness and hospitality of the same Barbarians, so terrible and so merciless in war. The ambassadors had encamped on the edge of a large morass. A violent tempest of wind and rain, of thunder and lightning, overturned their tents, immersed their baggage and furniture in the water, and scattered their retinue, who wandered in the darkness of the night, uncertain of their road, and apprehensive of some unknown danger, till they awakened by their cries the inhabitants of a neighboring village, the property of the widow of Bleda. A bright illumination, and, in a few moments, a comfortable fire of reeds, was kindled by their officious benevolence; the wants, and even the desires, of the Romans were liberally satisfied; and they seem to have been embarrassed by the singular politeness of Bleda's widow, who added to her other favors the gift, or at least the loan, of a sufficient number of beautiful and obsequious damsels. The sunshine of the succeeding day was dedicated to repose, to collect and dry the baggage, and to the refreshment of the men and horses; but, in the evening, before they pursued their journey, the ambassadors expressed their gratitude to the bounteous lady of the village, by a very acceptable present of silver cups, red fleeces, dried fruits, and Indian pepper. Soon after this adventure, they rejoined the march of Attila, from whom they had been separated about six days, and slowly proceeded to the capital of an empire, which did not contain, in the space of several thousand miles, a single city. As far as we may ascertain the vague and obscure geography of Priscus, this capital appears to have been seated between the Danube, the Teyss, and the Carpathian hills, in the plains of Upper Hungary, and most probably in the neighborhood of Jezberin, Agria, or Tokay. In its origin it could be no more than an accidental camp, which, by the long and frequent residence of Attila, had insensibly swelled into a huge village, for the reception of his court, of the troops who followed his person, and of the various multitude of idle or industrious slaves and retainers. The baths, constructed by Onegesius, were the only edifice of stone; the materials had been transported from Pannonia; and since the adjacent country was destitute even of large timber, it may be presumed that the meaner habitations of the royal village consisted of straw, or mud, or of canvas. The wooden houses of the more illustrious Huns were built and adorned with rude magnificence, according to the rank, the fortune, or the taste of the proprietors. They seemed to have been distributed with some degree of order and symmetry; and each spot became more honorable as it approached the person of the sovereign. The palace of Attila, which surpassed all other houses in his dominions, was built entirely of wood, and covered an ample space of ground. The outward enclosure was a lofty wall, or palisade, of smooth square timber, intersected with high towers, but intended rather for ornament than defence. This wall, which seems to have encircled the declivity of the hill, comprehended a great variety of wooden edifices, adapted to the uses of royalty. A separate house was assigned to each of the numerous wives of Attila; and, instead of the rigid and illiberal confinement imposed by Asiatic jealousy, they politely admitted the Roman ambassadors to their presence, their table, and even to the freedom of an innocent embrace. When Maximin offered his presents to Cerce, the principal Queen, he admired the singular architecture of her mansion, the height of the round columns, the size and beauty of the wood, which was curiously shaped or turned, or polished or carved; and his attentive eye was able to discover some taste in the ornaments and some regularity in the proportions. After passing through the guards, who watched before the gate, the ambassadors were introduced into the private apartment of Cerce. The wife of Attila received their visit sitting, or rather lying, on a soft couch; the floor was covered with a carpet; the domestics formed a circle round the Queen; and her damsels, seated on the ground, where employed in working the variegated embroidery which adorned the dress of the Barbaric warriors. The Huns were ambitious of displaying those riches which were the fruit and evidence of their victories; the trappings of their horses, their swords, and even their shoes were studded with gold and precious stones; and their tables were profusely spread with plates, and goblets, and vases of gold and silver, which had been fashioned by the labor of Grecian artists. The monarch alone assumed the superior pride of still adhering to the simplicity of his Scythian ancestors. The dress of Attila, his arms, and the furniture of his horse were plain, without ornament, and of a single color. The royal table was served in wooden cups and platters; flesh was his only food; and the conqueror of the North never tasted the luxury of bread. When Attila first gave audience to the Roman ambassadors on the banks of the Danube, his tent was encompassed with a formidable guard. The monarch himself was seated in a wooden chair. His stern countenance, angry gestures, and impatient tone, astonished the firmness of Maximin; but Vigilius had more reason to tremble, since he distinctly understood the menace, that if Attila did not respect the law of nations, he would nail the deceitful interpreter to the cross, and leave his body to the vultures. The Barbarian condescended, by producing an accurate list, to expose the bold falsehood of Vigilius, who had affirmed that no more than seventeen deserters could be found. But he arrogantly declared that he apprehended only the disgrace of contending with his fugitive slaves; since he despised their impotent efforts to defend the provinces which Theodosius had intrusted to their arms: "For what fortress," added Attila, "what city, in the wide extent of the Roman Empire, can hope to exist, secure and impregnable, if it is our pleasure that it should be erased from the earth?" He dismissed, however, the interpreter, who returned to Constantinople with his peremptory demand of more complete restitution and a more splendid embassy. His anger gradually subsided, and his domestic satisfaction in a marriage which he celebrated on the road with the daughter of Eslam, might perhaps contribute to mollify the native fierceness of his temper. The entrance of Attila into the royal village was marked by a very singular ceremony. A numerous troop of women came out to meet their hero and their King. They marched before him, distributed into long and regular files; the intervals between the files were filled by white veils of thin linen, which the women on either side bore aloft in their hands, and which formed a canopy for a chorus of young virgins, who chanted hymns and songs in the Scythian language. The wife of his favorite Onegesius, with a train of female attendants, saluted Attila at the door of her own house, on his way to the palace; and offered, according to the custom of the country, her respectful homage, by entreating him to taste the wine and meat which she had prepared for his reception. As soon as the monarch had graciously accepted her hospitable gift, his domestics lifted a small silver table to a convenient height, as he sat on horseback; and Attila, when he had touched the goblet with his lips, again saluted the wife of Onegesius, and continued his march. During his residence at the seat of empire, his hours were not wasted in the recluse idleness of a seraglio; and the King of the Huns could maintain his superior dignity, without concealing his person from the public view. He frequently assembled his council, and gave audience to the ambassadors of the nations; and his people might appeal to the supreme tribunal, which he held at stated times, and, according to the Eastern custom, before the principal gate of his wooden palace. The Romans, both of the East and of the West, were twice invited to the banquets, where Attila feasted with the princes and nobles of Scythia. Maximin and his colleagues were stopped on the threshold, till they had made a devout libation to the health and prosperity of the King of the Huns, and were conducted, after this ceremony, to their respective seats in a spacious hall. The royal table and couch, covered with carpets and fine linen, was raised by several steps in the midst of the hall; and a son, an uncle, or perhaps a favorite king were admitted to share the simple and homely repast of Attila. Two lines of small tables, each of which contained three or four guests, were ranged in order on either hand; the right was esteemed the most honorable, but the Romans ingenuously confess that they were placed on the left; and that Beric, an unknown chieftain, most probably of the Gothic race, preceded the representatives of Theodosius and Valentinian. The Barbarian monarch received from his cup-bearer a goblet filled with wine, and courteously drank to the health of the most distinguished guest, who rose from his seat and expressed in the same manner his loyal and respectful vows. This ceremony was successively performed for all, or at least, for the illustrious persons of the assembly; and a considerable time must have been consumed, since it was thrice repeated as each course or service was placed on the table. But the wine still remained after the meat had been removed; and the Huns continued to indulge their intemperance long after the sober and decent ambassadors of the two empires had withdrawn themselves from the nocturnal banquet. Yet before they retired, they enjoyed a singular opportunity of observing the manners of the nation in their convivial amusements. Two Scythians stood before the couch of Attila, and recited the verses which they had composed, to celebrate his valor and his victories. A profound silence prevailed in the hall; and the attention of the guests was captivated by the vocal harmony, which revived and perpetuated the memory of their own exploits; a martial ardor flashed from the eyes of the warriors, who were impatient for battle; and the tears of the old men expressed their generous despair, that they could no longer partake the danger and glory of the field. This entertainment, which might be considered as a school of military virtue, was succeeded by a farce, that debased the dignity of human nature. A Moorish and a Scythian buffoon successively excited the mirth of the rude spectators, by their deformed figure, ridiculous dress, antic gestures, absurd speeches, and the strange, unintelligible confusion of the Latin, the Gothic, and the Hunnic languages; and the hall resounded with loud and licentious peals of laughter. In the midst of this intemperate riot, Attila alone, without a change of countenance, maintained his steadfast and inflexible gravity; which was never relaxed, except on the entrance of Irnac, the youngest of his sons: he embraced the boy with a smile of paternal tenderness, gently pinched him by the cheek, and betrayed a partial affection, which was justified by the assurance of his prophets that Irnac would be the future support of his family and empire. Two days afterward, the ambassadors received a second invitation: and they had reason to praise the politeness, as well as the hospitality, of Attila. The King of the Huns held a long and familiar conversation with Maximin; but his civility was interrupted by rude expressions and haughty reproaches; and he was provoked, by a motive of interest, to support, with unbecoming zeal, the private claims of his secretary Constantius. "The Emperor," said Attila, "has long promised him a rich wife: Constantius must not be disappointed; nor should a Roman emperor deserve the name of liar." On the third day the ambassadors were dismissed: the freedom of several captives was granted, for a moderate ransom, to their pressing entreaties; and, besides the royal presents, they were permitted to accept from each of the Scythian nobles the honorable and useful gift of a horse. Maximin returned, by the same road, to Constantinople; and though he was involved in an accidental dispute with Beric, the new ambassador of Attila, he flattered himself that he had contributed, by the laborious journey, to confirm the peace and alliance of the two nations.[22] But the Roman ambassador was ignorant of the treacherous design which had been concealed under the mask of the public faith. The surprise and satisfaction of Edecon, when he contemplated the splendor of Constantinople, had encouraged the interpreter Vigilius to procure for him a secret interview with the eunuch Chrysaphius,[23] who governed the Emperor and the empire. After some previous conversation, and a mutual oath of secrecy, the eunuch, who had not from his own feelings or experience imbibed any exalted notions of ministerial virtue, ventured to propose the death of Attila as an important service, by which Edecon might deserve a liberal share of the wealth and luxury which he admired. The ambassador of the Huns listened to the tempting offer; and professed, with apparent zeal, his ability, as well as readiness, to execute the bloody deed: the design was communicated to the master of the offices, and the devout Theodosius consented to the assassination of his invincible enemy. But this perfidious conspiracy was defeated by the dissimulation, or the repentance, of Edecon; and though he might exaggerate his inward abhorrence for the treason, which he seemed to approve, he dexterously assumed the merit of an early and voluntary confession. If we _now_ review the embassy of Maximin and the behavior of Attila, we must applaud the Barbarian, who respected the laws of hospitality, and generously entertained and dismissed the minister of a prince who had conspired against his life. But the rashness of Vigilius will appear still more extraordinary, since he returned, conscious of his guilt and danger, to the royal camp, accompanied by his son, and carrying with him a weighty purse of gold, which the favorite eunuch had furnished, to satisfy the demands of Edecon and to corrupt the fidelity of the guards. The interpreter was instantly seized, and dragged before the tribunal of Attila, where he asserted his innocence with specious firmness, till the threat of inflicting instant death on his son extorted from him a sincere discovery of the criminal transaction. Under the name of ransom, or confiscation, the rapacious King of the Huns accepted two hundred pounds of gold for the life of a traitor whom he disdained to punish. He pointed his just indignation against a nobler object. His ambassadors, Eslaw and Orestes, were immediately despatched to Constantinople, with a peremptory instruction, which it was much safer for them to execute than to disobey. They boldly entered the Imperial presence, with the fatal purse hanging down from the neck of Orestes, who interrogated the eunuch Chrysaphius, as he stood beside the throne, whether he recognized the evidence of his guilt. But the office of reproof was reserved for the superior dignity of his colleague, Eslaw, who gravely addressed the Emperor of the East in the following words: "Theodosius is the son of an illustrious and respectable parent: Attila likewise is descended from a noble race; and _he_ has supported, by his actions, the dignity which he inherited from his father Mundzuk. But Theodosius has forfeited his paternal honors, and, by consenting to pay tribute, has degraded himself to the condition of a slave. It is therefore just, that he should reverence the man whom fortune and merit have placed above him, instead of attempting, like a wicked slave, clandestinely to conspire against his master." The son of Arcadius, who was accustomed only to the voice of flattery, heard with astonishment the severe language of truth: he blushed and trembled, nor did he presume directly to refuse the head of Chrysaphius, which Eslaw and Orestes were instructed to demand. A solemn embassy, armed with full powers and magnificent gifts, was hastily sent to deprecate the wrath of Attila; and his pride was gratified by the choice of Nomius and Anatolius, two ministers of consular or patrician rank, of whom the one was great treasurer, and the other was master-general of the armies of the East. He condescended to meet these ambassadors on the banks of the river Drenco; and though he at first affected a stern and haughty demeanor, his anger was insensibly mollified by their eloquence and liberality. He condescended to pardon the Emperor, the eunuch, and the interpreter; bound himself by an oath to observe the conditions of peace; released a great number of captives; abandoned the fugitives and deserters to their fate; and resigned a large territory, to the south of the Danube, which he had already exhausted of its wealth and inhabitants. But this treaty was purchased at an expense which might have supported a vigorous and successful war: and the subjects of Theodosius were compelled to redeem the safety of a worthless favorite by oppressive taxes, which they would more cheerfully have paid for his destruction. FOOTNOTES: [19] Hungary has been successively occupied by three Scythian colonies: 1. The Huns of Attila; 2. The Abares, in the sixth century; and, 3. The Turks or Magyars, A.D. 889, the immediate and genuine ancestors of the modern Hungarians, whose connection with the two former is extremely faint and remote. [20] Cherefeddin Ali, his servile panegyrist, would afford us many horrid examples. In his camp before Delhi, Timur massacred one hundred thousand Indian prisoners who had _smiled_ when the army of their countrymen appeared in sight. The people of Ispahan supplied seventy thousand human skulls for the structure of several lofty towers. A similar tax was levied on the revolt of Bagdad; and the exact account, which Cherefeddin was not able to procure from the proper officers, is stated by another historian (Ahmed Arabsiada) at ninety thousand heads. [21] The Huns themselves still continued to despise the labors of agriculture: they abused the privilege of a victorious nation; and the Goths, their industrious subjects, who cultivated the earth, dreaded their neighborhood, like that of so many ravenous wolves. [22] The curious narrative of this embassy, which required few observations, and was not susceptible of any collateral evidence, may be found in Priscus. But I have not confined myself to the same order; and I had previously extracted the historical circumstances, which were less intimately connected with the journey, and business, of the Roman ambassadors. [23] M. de Tillemont has very properly given the succession of chamberlains who reigned in the name of Theodosius. Chrysaphius was the last, and, according to the unanimous evidence of history, the worst of these favorites. His partiality for his godfather, the heresiarch Eutyches, engaged him to persecute the orthodox party. THE ENGLISH CONQUEST OF BRITAIN A.D. 449-579 JOHN R. GREEN CHARLES KNIGHT If we look for the fatherland of the English race, we must, as modern historians have clearly shown, direct our search "far away from England herself." In the fifth century of the Christian era a region in what is now called Schleswig was known by the name of Anglen (England). But the inhabitants of this district are believed to have comprised only a small detached portion of the Engle (English), while the great body of this people probably dwelt within the limits of the present Oldenburg and lower Hanover. On several sides of Anglen were the homes of various tribes of Saxons and Jutes, and these peoples were all kindred, being members of one branch (Low German) of the Teutonic family. History first finds them becoming united through community of blood, of language, institutions, and customs, although it was too early yet to justify the historian in giving to them the inclusive name of Englishmen. They all, however, had part in the conquest of England, and it was their union in that land that gave birth to the English people. Little is known of the actual character and life of these people who made the earliest England, but their Germanic inheritance is traceable in their social and political framework, which already prefigured the national organization that through centuries of gradual development became modern England. Out of their early modes grew the forms of English citizenship and legislation, and the individual and public freedom which has slowly broadened down from generation to generation. Later came the modifying, if not transforming, influence of Christianity, replacing the ancient nature-worship which they took with them to their new home. On these foundations the English race, as it has grown up in the land they made their own, and in other lands to which like men and institutions have been carried, has reared its various structures of nationality. JOHN R. GREEN Of the three English tribes the Saxons lay nearest to the empire, and they were naturally the first to touch the Roman world; before the close of the third century indeed their boats appeared in such force in the English Channel as to call for a special fleet to resist them. The piracy of our fathers had thus brought them to the shores of a land which, dear as it is now to Englishmen, had not as yet been trodden by English feet. This land was Britain. When the Saxon boats touched its coast the island was the westernmost province of the Roman Empire. In the fifty-fifth year before Christ a descent of Julius Cæsar revealed it to the Roman world; and a century after Cæsar's landing the emperor Claudius undertook its conquest. The work was swiftly carried out. Before thirty years were over the bulk of the island had passed beneath the Roman sway, and the Roman frontier had been carried to the firths of Forth and of Clyde. The work of civilization followed fast on the work of the sword. To the last indeed the distance of the island from the seat of empire left her less Romanized than any other province of the west. The bulk of the population scattered over the country seem in spite of imperial edicts to have clung to their old law as to their old language, and to have retained some traditional allegiance to their native chiefs. But Roman civilisation rested mainly on city life, and in Britain as elsewhere the city was thoroughly Roman. In towns such as Lincoln or York, governed by their own municipal officers, guarded by massive walls, and linked together by a network of magnificent roads which reached from one end of the island to the other, manners, language, political life, all were of Rome. For three hundred years the Roman sword secured order and peace without Britain and within, and with peace and order came a wide and rapid prosperity. Commerce sprang up in ports among which London held the first rank; agriculture flourished till Britain became one of the corn-exporting countries of the world; the mineral resources of the province were explored in the tin mines of Cornwall, the lead mines of Somerset or Northumberland, and the iron mines of the Forest of Dean. But evils which sapped the strength of the whole empire told at last, on the province of Britain. Wealth and population alike declined under a crushing system of taxation, under restrictions which fettered industry, under a despotism which crushed out all local independence. And with decay within came danger from without. For centuries past the Roman frontier had held back the Barbaric world beyond it--the Parthian of the Euphrates, the Numidian of the African desert, the German of the Danube or the Rhine. In Britain a wall drawn from Newcastle to Carlisle bridled the British tribes, the Picts as they were called, who had been sheltered from Roman conquest by the fastnesses of the Highlands. It was this mass of savage barbarism which broke upon the empire as it sank into decay. In its western dominions the triumph of these assailants was complete. The Franks conquered and colonized Gaul. The West Goths conquered and colonized Spain. The Vandals founded a kingdom in Africa. The Burgundians encamped in the borderland between Italy and the Rhone. The East Goths ruled at last in Italy itself. It was to defend Italy against the Goths that Rome in the opening of the fifth century withdrew her legions from Britain, and from that moment the province was left to struggle unaided against the Picts. Nor were these its only enemies. While marauders from Ireland, whose inhabitants then bore the name of Scots, harried the west, the boats of Saxon pirates, as we have seen, were swarming off its eastern and southern coasts. For forty years Britain held bravely out against these assailants; but civil strife broke its powers of resistance, and its rulers fell back at last on the fatal policy by which the empire invited its doom while striving to avert it, the policy of matching barbarian against barbarian. By the usual promises of land and pay a band of warriors was drawn for this purpose from Jutland in 449 with two ealdormen, Hengist and Horsa, at their head. If by English history we mean the history of Englishmen in the land which from that time they made their own, it is with this landing of Hengist's war band that English history begins. They landed on the shores of the Isle of Thanet at a spot known since as Ebbsfleet. No spot can be so sacred to Englishmen as the spot which first felt the tread of English feet. There is little to catch the eye in Ebbsfleet itself, a mere lift of ground with a few gray cottages dotted over it, cut off nowadays from the sea by a reclaimed meadow and a sea-wall. But taken as a whole the scene has a wild beauty of its own. To the right the white curve of Ramsgate cliffs looks down on the crescent of Pegwell Bay; far away to the left across gray marsh levels where smoke wreaths mark the site of Richborough and Sandwich the coast line trends dimly toward Deal. Everything in the character of the spot confirms the national tradition which fixed here the landing-place of our fathers; for the physical changes of the country since the fifth century have told little on its main features. At the time of Hengist's landing a broad inlet of sea parted Thanet from the mainland of Britain; and through this inlet the pirate boats would naturally come sailing with a fair wind to what was then the gravel spit of Ebbsfleet. The work for which the mercenaries had been hired was quickly done; and the Picts are said to have been scattered to the winds in a battle fought on the eastern coast of Britain. But danger from the Pict was hardly over when danger came from the jutes themselves. Their fellow-pirates must have flocked from the channel to their settlement in Thanet; the inlet between Thanet and the mainland was crossed, and the Englishmen won their first victory over the Britons in forcing their passage of the Medway at the village of Aylesford. A second defeat at the passage of the Cray drove the British forces in terror upon London; but the ground was soon won back again, and it was not till 465 that a series of petty conflicts which had gone on along the shores of Thanet made way for a decisive struggle at Wippedsfleet. Here however the overthrow was so terrible that from this moment all hope of saving northern Kent seems to have been abandoned, and it was only on its southern shore that the Britons held their ground. Ten years later, in 475, the long contest was over, and with the fall of Lymne, whose broken walls look from the slope to which they cling over the great flat of Romney Marsh, the work of the first English conqueror was done. The warriors of Hengist had been drawn from the Jutes, the smallest of the three tribes who were to blend in the English people. But the greed of plunder now told on the great tribe which stretched from the Elbe to the Rhine, and in 477 Saxon invaders were seen pushing slowly along the strip of land which lay westward of Kent between the weald and the sea. Nowhere has the physical aspect of the country more utterly changed. A vast sheet of scrub, woodland, and waste which then bore the name of the Andredsweald stretched for more than a hundred miles from the borders of Kent to the Hampshire Downs, extending northward almost to the Thames and leaving only a thin strip of coast which now bears the name of Sussex between its southern edge and the sea. This coast was guarded by a fortress which occupied the spot now called Pevensey, the future landing-place of the Norman Conqueror; and the fall of this fortress of Anderida in 491 established the kingdom of the South Saxons. "Ælle and Cissa beset Anderida," so ran the pitiless record of the conquerors, "and slew all that were therein, nor was there afterward one Briton left." But Hengist and Ælle's men had touched hardly more than the coast, and the true conquest of Southern Britain was reserved for a fresh band of Saxons, a tribe known as the Gewissas, who landed under Cerdic and Cynric on the shores of the Southampton Water, and pushed in 495 to the great downs or Gwent where Winchester offered so rich a prize. Nowhere was the strife fiercer than here; and it was not till 519 that a decisive victory at Charford ended the struggle for the "Gwent" and set the crown of the West Saxons on the head of Cerdic. But the forest belt around it checked any further advance; and only a year after Charford the Britons rallied under a new leader, Arthur, and threw back the invaders as they pressed westward through the Dorsetshire woodlands in a great overthrow at Badbury or Mount Badon. The defeat was followed by a long pause in the Saxon advance from the southern coast, but while the Gewissas rested, a series of victories whose history is lost was giving to men of the same Saxon tribe the coast district north of the mouth of the Thames. It is probable, however, that the strength of Camulodunum, the predecessor of our modern Colchester, made the progress of these assailants a slow and doubtful one; and even when its reduction enabled the East Saxons to occupy the territory to which they have given their name of Essex a line of woodland which has left its traces in Epping and Hainault forests checked their farther advance into the island. Though seventy years had passed since the victory of Aylesford only the outskirts of Britain were won. The invaders were masters as yet but of Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, and Essex. From London to St. David's Head, from the Andredsweald to the Firth of Forth the country still remained unconquered, and there was little in the years which followed Arthur's triumph to herald that onset of the invaders which was soon to make Britain England. Till now its assailants had been drawn from two only of the three tribes whom we saw dwelling by the northern sea, from the Saxons and the jutes. But the main work of conquest was to be done by the third, by the tribe which bore that name of Engle or Englishmen which was to absorb that of Saxon or Jute and to stamp itself on the people which sprang from the union of the conquerors as on the land that they won. The Engle had probably been settling for years along the coast of Northumbria and in the great district which was cut off from the rest of Britain by the Wash and the Fens, the later East Anglia. But it was not till the moment we have reached that the line of defences which had hitherto held the invaders at bay was turned by their appearance in the Humber and the Trent. This great river line led like a highway into the heart of Britain; and civil strife seems to have broken the strength of British resistance. But of the incidents of this final struggle we know nothing. One part of the English force marched from the Humber over the Yorkshire wolds to found what was called the kingdom of the Deirans. Under the empire political power had centred in the district between the Humber and the Roman wall; York was the capital of Roman Britain; villas of rich land-owners studded the valley of the Ouse; and the bulk of the garrison maintained in the island lay camped along its northern border. But no record tells us how Yorkshire was won, or how the Engle made themselves masters of the uplands about Lincoln. It is only by their later settlements that we follow their march into the heart of Britain. Seizing the valley of the Don and whatever breaks there were in the woodland that then filled the space between the Humber and the Trent, the Engle followed the curve of the latter river, and struck along the line of its tributary the Soar. Here round the Roman Ratæ, the predecessor of our Leicester, settled a tribe known as the Middle English, while a small body pushed farther southward, and under the name of "South Engle" occupied the oölitic upland that forms our present Northamptonshire. But the mass of the invaders seem to have held to the line of the Trent and to have pushed westward to its head-waters. Repton, Lichfield, and Tamworth mark the country of these western Englishmen, whose older name was soon lost in that of Mercians, or Men of the March. Their settlement was in fact a new march or borderland between conqueror and conquered; for here the impenetrable fastness of the Peak, the mass of Cannock Chase, and the broken country of Staffordshire enabled the Briton to make a fresh and desperate stand. It was probably this conquest of Mid-Britain by the Engle that roused the West Saxons to a new advance. For thirty years they had rested inactive within the limits of the Gwent, but in 552 their capture of the hill fort of Old Sarum threw open the reaches of the Wiltshire downs, and a march of King Cuthwulf on the Thames made them masters in 571 of the districts which now form Oxfordshire and Berkshire. Pushing along the upper valley of Avon to a new battle at Barbury Hill they swooped at last from their uplands on the rich prey that lay along the Severn. Gloucester, Cirencester, and Bath, cities which had leagued under their British kings to resist this onset, became in 577 the spoil of an English victory at Deorham, and the line of the great western river lay open to the arms of the conquerors. Once the West Saxons penetrated to the borders of Chester, and Uriconium, a town beside the Wrekin which has been recently brought again to light, went up in flames. The raid ended in a crushing defeat which broke the West-Saxon strength, but a British poet in verses still left to us sings piteously the death song of Uriconium, "the white town in the valley," the town of white stone gleaming among the green woodlands. The torch of the foe had left it a heap of blackened ruins where the singer wandered through halls he had known in happier days, the halls of its chief Kyndylan, "without fire, without light, without song," their stillness broken only by the eagle's scream, the eagle who "has swallowed fresh drink, heart's blood of Kyndylan the fair." With the victory of Deorham the conquest of the bulk of Britain was complete. Eastward of a line which may be roughly drawn along the moorlands of Northumberland and Yorkshire through Derbyshire and the Forest of Arden to the Lower Severn, and thence by Mendip to the sea, the island had passed into English hands. Britain had in the main become England. And within this new England a Teutonic society was settled on the wreck of Rome. So far as the conquest had yet gone it had been complete. Not a Briton remained as subject or slave on English ground. Sullenly, inch by inch, the beaten men drew back from the land which their conquerors had won; and eastward of the border line which the English sword had drawn all was now purely English. CHARLES KNIGHT "They" [the Romans], says Bede, "resided within the rampart that Severus made across the island, on the south side of it; as the cities, temples, bridges, and paved ways do testify to this day." On the north of the wall were the nations that no severity had reduced to subjection, and no resistance could restrain from plunder. At the extreme west of England were the people of Cornwall, or little Wales, as it was called; having the most intimate relations with the people of Britannia Secunda, or Wales; and both connected with the colony of Armorica. The inhabitants of Cornwall and Wales, we may assume, were almost exclusively of the old British stock. The abandonment of the country by the Romans had affected them far less than that change affected the more cultivated country, that had been the earliest subdued, and for nearly four centuries had received the Roman institutions and adopted the Roman customs. But in the chief portion of the island, from the southern and eastern coasts to the Tyne and the Solway, there was a mixed population, among whom it would be difficult to trace that common bond which would constitute nationality. The British families of the interior had become mingled with the settlers of Rome and its tributaries to whom grants of land had been assigned as the rewards of military service; and the coasts from the Humber to the Exe had been here and there peopled with northern settlers, who had gradually planted themselves among the Romanized British; and were, we may well believe, among the most active of those who carried forward the commercial intercourse of Britain with Gaul and Italy. When, therefore, we approach the period of what is termed the Saxon invasion, and hear of the decay, the feebleness, the cowardice, and the misery of the Britons--all which attributes have been somewhat too readily bestowed upon the population which the Romans had left behind--it would be well to consider what these so-called Britons really were, to enable us properly to understand the transition state through which the country passed. Our first native historian is Gildas, who lived in the middle of the sixth century. "From the early part of the fifth century, when the Greek and Roman writers cease to notice the affairs of Britain, his narrative, on whatever authority it may have been founded, has been adopted without question by Bede and succeeding authors, and accepted, notwithstanding its barrenness of facts and pompous obscurity, by all but general consent, as the basis of early English history." Gibbon has justly pointed out his inconsistencies, his florid descriptions of the flourishing condition of agriculture and commerce after the departure of the Romans, and his denunciations of the luxury of the people; when he, at the same time, describes a race who were ignorant of the arts, incapable of building walls of defence, or of arming themselves with proper weapons. When "this monk," as Gibbon calls him, "who, in the profound ignorance of human life, presumes to exercise the office of historian," tells us that the Romans, who were occasionally called in to aid against the Picts and Scots, "give energetic counsel to the timorous natives, and leave them patterns by which to manufacture arms," we seem to be reading an account of some remote tribe, to whom the Roman sword and buckler were as unfamiliar as the musket was to the Otaheitans when Cook first went among them. When Gildas describes the soldiers on the wall as "equally slow to fight and ill-adapted to run away"; and tells the remarkable incident which forms part of every schoolboy's belief, that the defenders of the wall were pulled down by great hooked weapons and dashed against the ground, we feel a pity akin to contempt for a people so stupid and passive, and are not altogether sorry that the Picts and Scots, "differing one from another in manners, but inspired with the same avidity for blood," had come with their bushy beards and their half-clothed bodies, to supplant so effeminate a race. When he makes this feeble people send an embassy to a Roman in Gaul to say, "The barbarians drive us to the sea; the sea throws us back on the barbarians: thus two modes of death await us; we are either slain or drowned," we must wonder at the very straitened limits in which this unhappy people were shut up. Surely much of this is little more than the tumid rhetoric of the cloister; for all the assumptions that have been raised of the physical degeneracy of the people are quite unsupported by any real historical evidence. M. Guizot considers it unjust and cruel to view their humble supplications, so declared by Gildas, to Rome for aid, as evidences of the effeminacy of that nation, whose resistance to the Saxons has given a chapter to history at a time when history has few traces of Italians, Spaniards, and Gauls. That the representations of Gildas could only be partially true, as applied to some particular districts, is sufficiently proved, by the undoubted fact that within little more than twenty years from the date of these cowardly demonstrations Anthemius, the Emperor, solicited the aid of the Britons against the Visigoths; and twelve thousand men from this island, under one of the native chieftains, Rhiothimus, sailed up the Loire, and fought under the Roman command. They are described by a contemporary Roman writer as quick, well-armed; turbulent and contumacious from their bravery, their numbers, and their common agreement. These were not the people who were likely to have stood upon a wall to be pulled down by hooked weapons. They might have been the people who had clung, more than the other inhabitants of the Roman provinces, to their original language and customs; but it is not improbable that they would have been of the mixed races with whom Rome had been in more intimate relations, and to whom she continued to render offices of friendship after the separation of the island province from her empire. Amid all this conflict of testimony there is the undoubted fact that out of the Roman municipal institutions had risen the establishment of separate sovereignties, as Procopius relates. Britain, according to St. Jerome, was "a province fertile in tyrants." The Roman municipal government was kept compact and uniform under a great centralizing power. It fell to pieces here, as in Gaul, when that power was withdrawn. It resolved itself into a number of local governments without any principle of cohesion. The vicar of the municipium became an independent ruler and head of a little republic; and that his authority was contested by some who had partaken of his delegated dignity may be reasonably inferred. The difference of races would also promote the contests for command. If East Anglia contained a preponderance of one race of settlers, and Kent and Sussex of another, they might well quarrel for supremacy. But when all the settlers on the Saxon shore had lost the control and protection of the Count who once governed them, it may also be imagined that the more exclusively British districts would not readily coöperate for defence with those who were more strange to their kindred even than the Roman. All the European Continent was in a state of political dislocation; and we may safely conclude that when the great power was shattered that had so long held the government of the world, the more distant and subordinate branch of its empire would resolve itself into some of the separate elements of authority and of imperfect obedience by which a clan is distinguished from a nation. Nor was the power of the Christian Church in Britain of a more united character than that of the civil rulers. No doubt a church had been formed and organized. There were bishops, so called, in the several cities; but their authority was little concentrated and their tenets were discordant. Pilgrimages were even made to the sacred places of Palestine; and at a very early period monasteries were founded. That of Bangor, or the Great Circle, seems to have had some relation to the ancient Druidical worship, upon which it was probably engrafted in that region where Druidism had long flourished. There were British versions of the Bible. But that the church had no sustaining power at the period when civil society was so wholly disorganized, may be inferred from circumstances which preceded the complete overthrow of Christian rites by Saxon heathendom. Bede devotes several chapters of his _Ecclesiastical History_ to the actions of St. Germanus, who came expressly to Britain to put down the Pelagian heresy; and, amid the multitude of miraculous circumstances, records how "the authors of the perverse notions lay hid, and, like the evil spirits, grieved for the loss of the people that was rescued from them. At length, after mature deliberation, they had the boldness to enter the lists, and appeared, being conspicuous for riches, glittering in apparel, and supported by the flatteries of many." The people, according to Bede, were the judges of this great controversy, and gave their voices for the orthodox belief. Whether the Pelagians were expelled from Britain by reason or by force, it is evident that, in the middle of the fifth century, there was a strong element of religious disunion very generally prevailing; and that at a period when the congregations were in a great degree independent of each other, and therefore difficult of subjection to a common authority, the rich and the powerful had adopted a creed which was opposed to the centralizing rule of the Roman Church, and were arguing about points of faith as strongly as they were contesting for worldly supremacy. Dr. Lappenberg justly points out this celebrated controversy in our country as "indicating the weakness of that religious connection which was so soon to be totally annihilated." We may, in some degree, account for the reception of the doctrine of Pelagius by knowing that he was a Briton, whose plain unlatinized name was Morgan. Macaulay has startled many a reader of the most familiar histories of England, in saying, "Hengist and Horsa, Vortigern and Rowena, Arthur and Mordred, are mythical persons, whose very existence may be questioned, and whose adventures must be classed with those of Hercules and Romulus." It is difficult to write of a period of which the same writer has said, "an age of fable completely separates two ages of truth." Yet no one knew better than this accomplished historian himself that an age of fable and an age of truth cannot be distinguished with absolute precision. It is not that what is presented to us through the haze of tradition must necessarily be unreal, any more than that what comes to us in an age of literature must be absolutely true. An historical fact, a real personage, may be handed down from a remote age in the songs of bards; but it is not therefore to be inferred that these national lyrics are founded upon pure invention. It is curious to observe that, wandering amid these traces of events and persons that have been shaped into history, how ready we are to walk in the footsteps of some half-fabulous records, and wholly to turn away from others which seem as strongly impressed upon the shifting sands of national existence. We derive Hengist and Horsa from the old Anglo-Saxon authorities; and modern history generally adopts them. Arthur and Mordred have a Celtic origin, and they are as generally rejected as "mythical persons." It appears to us that it is as precipitate wholly to renounce the one as the other, because they are both surrounded with an atmosphere of the fabulous. Hengist and Horsa come to us encompassed with Gothic traditions that belong to other nations. Arthur presents himself with his attributes of the magician Merlin, and the knights of the Round Table. But are we therefore to deny altogether their historical existence? In following the _ignis fatuus_ of tradition, the credulous annalists of the monastic age were lost in the treacherous ground over which it led them. The more patient research of a critical age sees in that doubtful light a friendly warning of what to avoid, and hence a guide to more stable pathways. Hengist and Horsa--who, according to the Anglo-Saxon historians, landed in the year 449 on the shore which is called Ebbsfleet--were personages of more than common mark. "They were the sons of Wihtgils; Wihtgils son of Witta, Witta of Wecta, Wecta of Woden." So says the _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_, and adds, "From this Woden sprang all our royal families." These descendants, in the third generation from the great Saxon divinity, came over in three boats. They came by invitation of Wyrtgeone--Vortigern--King of the Britons. The King gave them land in the southeast of the country, on condition that they should fight against the Picts; and they did fight, and had the victory wheresoever they came. And then they sent for the Angles, and told them of the worthlessness of the people and the excellences of the land. This is the Saxon narrative. The seductive graces of Rowena, the daughter of Horsa, who corrupted the King of the Britons by love and wine, is an embellishment of the British traditions. Then came the great battles for possession of the land. At Aylesford and Crayford the Kentish Britons were overthrown. Before the Angles the Welsh fled like fire. These events occupy a quarter of a century. While they are going on, the Roman Emperor, as we have mentioned upon indubitable authority, receives an auxiliary force of twelve thousand men from Britain. We cannot rely upon narratives that tell us of _the_ king of the Britons, when we learn from no suspicious sources that the land was governed by many separate chiefs; and which represent a petty band of fugitives as gaining mighty triumphs for a great ruler, and then subduing him themselves in a wonderfully short time. The pretensions of Hengist and Horsa to be the immediate descendants of Woden would seem to imply their mythical origin. But many Saxon chiefs of undoubted reality rested their pretensions upon a similar genealogy. The myth was as flattering to the Anglo-Saxon pride of descent as the corresponding myth that the ancient inhabitants of the island were descended from the Trojan Brute was acceptable to the British race. But amid much of fable there is the undoubted fact that Germanic tribes were gradually possessing themselves of the fairest parts of Britain--a progressive usurpation, far different from a sudden conquest. Amid the wreck of the social institutions left by Rome, when all that remained of a governing power was centred in the towns, it may be readily conceived that the rich districts of the eastern and southern coasts would be eagerly peopled by new settlers, whose bond of society was founded upon the occupation of the land; and who, extending the area of their occupation, would eventually come into hostile conflict with the previous possessors. For a century and a half a thick darkness seems to overspread the history of our country. In the Anglo-Saxon writers we can trace little, with any distinctness, beyond the brief and monotonous records of victories and slaughters. Hengist and Æsc slew four troops of Britons with the edge of the sword. Hengist then vanishes, and Ælla comes with his three sons. In 491 they besieged Andres-cester, "and slew all that dwelt therein, so that not a single Briton was there left." Then come Cerdic and Cynric his son; then Port and his two sons, and land at Portsmouth; and so we reach the sixth century. Cerdic and Cynric now stand foremost among the slaughterers, and they establish the kingdom of the West Saxons and conquer the Isle of Wight. In the middle of the century Ida begins to reign, from whom arose the royal race of North-humbria. In 565 Ethelbert succeeded to the kingdom of the Kentish-men, and held it fifty-three years. The war goes on in the south-midland counties, where Cuthwulf is fighting; and it reaches the districts of the Severn, where Cuthwine and Ceawlin slay great kings, and take Gloucester and Cirencester and Bath. One of these fierce brethren is killed at last, and Ceawlin, "having taken many spoils and towns innumerable, wrathful returned to his own." Where "his own" was we are not informed. We reach, at length, the year 596, when "Pope Gregory sent Augustin to Britain, with a great many monks, who preached the word of God to the nation of the Angles." Bede very judiciously omits all such details. He tells us that "they carried on the conflagration from the eastern to the western sea, without any opposition, and almost covered all the superfices of the perishing island. Public as well as private structures were overturned; the priests were everywhere slain before the altars; the prelates and the people, without any respect of persons, were destroyed with fire and sword." There is little to add to these impressive words, which no doubt contain the general truth. But if we open the British history of Geoffrey of Monmouth, we find ourselves relieved from the thick darkness of the Anglo-Saxon records, by the blue lights and red lights of the most wondrous romance. Rowena comes with her golden wine-cup. Merlin instructs Vortigern how to discover the two sleeping dragons who hindered the foundation of his tower. Aurelius, the Christian King, burns Vortigern in his Cambrian city of refuge. Eldol fights a duel with Hengist, cuts off his head, and destroys the Saxons without mercy. Merlin the magician, and Uther Pendragon, with fifteen thousand men, bring over "the Giant's Dance" from Ireland, and set it up in Salisbury Plain. Uther Pendragon is made the Christian king over all Britain. At length we arrive at Arthur, the son of Uther. To him the entire monarchy of Britain belonged by hereditary right. Hoel sends him fifteen thousand men from Armorica, and he makes the Saxons his tributaries; and with his own hand kills four hundred and seventy in one battle. He not only conquers the Saxons, but subdues Gaul, among other countries, and holds his court in Paris. His coronation at the City of the Legions (Caer-Leon) is gorgeous beyond all recorded magnificence; and the general state of the country, in these days of Arthur, before the middle of the sixth century, is thus described: "At that time, Britain had arrived at such a pitch of grandeur that in abundance of riches, luxury of ornaments, and politeness of inhabitants, it far surpassed all other kingdoms." Mordred, the wicked traitor, at length disturbs all this tranquillity and grandeur, and brings over barbarous people from different countries. Arthur falls in battle. The Saxons prevail, and the Britons retire into Cornwall and Wales. Amid the bewildering mass of the obscure and the fabulous which our history presents of the first century and a half of the Saxon colonization, there are some well-established facts which are borne out by subsequent investigations. Such is Bede's account of the country of the invaders, and the parts in which they settled. This account, compared with other authorities, gives us the following results. They consisted of "the three most powerful nations of Germany--Saxons, Angles, and Jutes." The Saxons came from the parts which, in Bede's time, were called the country of the Old Saxons. That country is now known as the duchy of Holstein. These, under Ella, founded the kingdom of the South Saxons--our present Sussex. Later in the fifth century, the same people, under Cerdic, established themselves in the district extending from Sussex to Devonshire and Cornwall, which was the kingdom of the West Saxons. Other Saxons settled in Essex and Middlesex. The Angles, says Bede, came from "the country called Angelland, and it is said from that time to remain desert to this day." There is a part of the duchy of Schleswig, to the north of Holstein, which still bears the name of Anglen. These people gave their name to the whole country, Engla-land, or Angla-land, from the greater extent of territory which they permanently occupied. As the Saxons possessed themselves of the southern coasts, the Angles established themselves on the northeastern. Their kingdom of East Anglia comprised Norfolk and Suffolk, as well as part of Cambridgeshire; and they extended themselves to the north of the Humber, forming the powerful state of Northumbria, and carrying their dominion even to the Forth and the Clyde. The Jutes came from the country north of the Angles, which is in the upper part of the present Schleswig; and they occupied Kent and the Isle of Wight, with that part of Hampshire which is opposite the island. Sir Francis Palgrave is of opinion that "the tribes by whom Britain was invaded appear principally to have proceeded from the country now called Friesland; for of all the continental dialects the ancient Frisick is the one which approaches most nearly to the Anglo-Saxon of our ancestors." Mr. Craik has pointed out that "the modern kingdom of Denmark comprehends all the districts from which issued, according to the old accounts, the several tribes who invaded Britain upon the fall of the Roman Empire. And the Danes proper (who may be considered to represent the Jutes); the Angles, who live between the Bight of Flensborg and the river Schley on the Baltic; the Frisons, who inhabit the islands along the west coast of Jutland, with a part of the bailiwick of Husum in Schleswig; and the Germans of Holstein (Bede's Old Saxons) are still all recognized by geographers and ethnographers as distinct races." ATTILA INVADES WESTERN ROME BATTLE OF CHÂLONS A.D. 451 CREASY GIBBON After Attila had conquered and laid waste the provinces of the Eastern Empire south of the Danube and exacted heavy tribute from Theodosius II, he turned his attention to the subjugation of the Slavic and Germanic tribes who still remained independent. These, with one exception, he overcame and placed under the sovereignty of his son. He laid claim to one-half of the Western Empire, as the betrothed husband of Valentinian's sister Honoria, from whom he had years before received the offer of her hand in marriage. In 451, with Genseric, King of the Vandals, for his ally, he invaded Gaul. Before his advance the cities hastened to capitulate, and so complete was his devastation of the country that it came to be a saying that the grass never grew where his horses had trod. But in Aetius, their commander-in-chief under Valentinian III, the Romans had an able general, who was aided by the West Gothic king Theodoric. The West Goths and the Franks, the former from the South, the latter from the North of Gaul, joined him in large numbers, and the allied forces drove the Huns from the walls of Orleans, which he had besieged. From there he retreated to Châlons, where his westward movement was to receive its final check. This decisive event was, in the words of Herbert, "the discomfiture of the mighty attempt of Attila to found a new anti-Christian dynasty upon the wreck of the temporal power of Rome, at the end of the term of twelve hundred years, to which its duration had been limited by the forebodings of the heathen." SIR EDWARD SHEPHERD CREASY A broad expanse of plains, the Campi Catalaunici of the ancients, spreads far and wide around the city of Châlons, in the northeast of France. The long rows of poplars, through which the river Marne winds its way, and a few thinly scattered villages, are almost the only objects that vary the monotonous aspect of the greater part of this region. But about five miles from Châlons, near the little hamlets of Chape and Cuperly, the ground is indented and heaped up in ranges of grassy mounds and trenches, which attest the work of man's hands in ages past, and which, to the practised eye, demonstrate that this quiet spot has once been the fortified position of a huge military host. Local tradition gives to these ancient earthworks the name of Attila's Camp. Nor is there any reason to question the correctness of the title, or to doubt that behind these very ramparts it was that fourteen hundred years ago the most powerful heathen king that ever ruled in Europe mustered the remnants of his vast army, which had striven on these plains against the Christian soldiery of Toulouse and Rome. Here it was that Attila prepared to resist to the death his victors in the field; and here he heaped up the treasures of his camp in one vast pile, which was to be his funeral pyre should his camp be stormed. It was here that the Gothic and Italian forces watched, but dared not assail their enemy in his despair, after that great and terrible day of battle when "The sound Of conflict was o'erpast, the shout of all Whom earth could send from her remotest bounds, Heathen or faithful; from thy hundred mouths, That feed the Caspian with Riphean snows. Huge Volga! from famed Hypanis, which once Cradled the Hun; from all the countless realms Between Imaus and that utmost strand Where columns of Herculean rock confront The blown Altantic; Roman, Goth, and Hun, And Scythian strength of chivalry, that tread The cold Codanian shore or what far lands Inhospitable drink Cimmerian floods, Franks, Saxons, Suevic, and Sarmatian chiefs, And who from green Armorica or Spain Flocked to the work of death." The victory which the Roman general Aetius, with his Gothic allies, had then gained over the Huns, was the last victory of imperial Rome. But among the long fasti of her triumphs, few can be found that, for their importance and ultimate benefit to mankind, are comparable with this expiring effort of her arms. It did not, indeed, open to her any new career of conquest--it did not consolidate the relics of her power--it did not turn the rapid ebb of her fortunes. The mission of imperial Rome was, in truth, already accomplished. She had received and transmitted through her once ample dominion the civilization of Greece. She had broken up the barriers of narrow nationalities among the various states and tribes that dwelt around the coasts of the Mediterranean. She had fused these and many other races into one organized empire, bound together by a community of laws, of government and institutions. Under the shelter of her full power the true faith had arisen in the earth, and during the years of her decline it had been nourished to maturity, it had overspread all the provinces that ever obeyed her sway. For no beneficial purpose to mankind could the dominion of the seven-hilled city have been restored or prolonged. But it was all-important to mankind what nations should divide among them Rome's rich inheritance of empire. Whether the Germanic and Gothic warriors should form states and kingdoms out of the fragments of her dominions, and become the free members of the Commonwealth of Christian Europe, or whether pagan savages, from the wilds of central Asia, should crush the relics of classic civilization and the early institutions of the Christianized Germans in one hopeless chaos of barbaric conquest. The Christian Visigoths of King Theodoric fought and triumphed at Châlons side by side with the legions of Aetius. Their joint victory over the Hunnish host not only rescued for a time from destruction the old age of Rome, but preserved for centuries of power and glory the Germanic element in the civilization of modern Europe. In order to estimate the full importance to mankind of the battle of Châlons we must keep steadily in mind who and what the Germans were, and the important distinctions between them and the numerous other races that assailed the Roman Empire; and it is to be understood that the Gothic and Scandinavian nations are included in the German race. Now, "in two remarkable traits the Germans differed from the Sarmatic as well as from the Slavic nations, and, indeed, from all those other races to whom the Greeks and Romans gave the designation of barbarians. I allude to their personal freedom and regard for the rights of men; secondly, to the respect paid by them to the female sex, and the chastity for which the latter were celebrated among the people of the North. These were the foundations of that probity of character, self-respect, and purity of manners which may be traced among the Germans and Goths even during pagan times, and which, when their sentiments were enlightened by Christianity, brought out those splendid traits of character which distinguish the age of chivalry and romance." What the intermixture of the German stock with the classic, at the fall of the Western Empire, has done for mankind may be best felt by watching, with Arnold, over how large a portion of the earth the influence of the German element is now extended. "It affects, more or less, the whole west of Europe, from the head of the Gulf of Bothnia to the most southern promontory of Sicily, from the Oder and the Adriatic to the Hebrides and to Lisbon. It is true that the language spoken over a large portion of this place is not predominantly German; but even in France and Italy, and Spain, the influence of the Franks, Burgundians, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, and Lombards while it has colored even the language, has in blood and institutions left its mark legibly and indelibly. Germany, the Low Countries, Switzerland, for the most part Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, and our own islands are all in language, in blood, and in institutions German most decidedly. But all South America is peopled with Spaniards and Portuguese; all North America and all Australia with Englishmen. I say nothing of the prospects and influence of the German race in Africa and in India; it is enough to say that half of Europe and all America and Australia are German, more or less completely, in race, in language, or in institutions, or in all." By the middle of the fifth century Germanic nations had settled themselves in many of the fairest regions of the Roman Empire, had imposed their yoke on the provincials, and had undergone, to a considerable extent, that moral conquest which the arts and refinements of the vanquished in arms have so often achieved over the rough victor. The Visigoths held the North of Spain, and Gaul south of the Loire. Franks, Alemanni, Alans, and Burgundians had established themselves in other Gallic provinces, and the Suevi were masters of a large southern portion of the Spanish peninsula. A king of the Vandals reigned in North Africa; and the Ostrogoths had firmly planted themselves in the provinces north of Italy. Of these powers and principalities, that of the Visigoths, under their king Theodoric, son of Alaric, was by far the first in power and in civilization. The pressure of the Huns upon Europe had first been felt in the fourth century of our era. They had long been formidable to the Chinese empire, but the ascendency in arms which another nomadic tribe of Central Asia, the Sienpi, gained over them, drove the Huns from their Chinese conquest westward; and this movement once being communicated to the whole chain of barbaric nations that dwelt northward of the Black Sea and the Roman Empire, tribe after tribe of savage warriors broke in upon the barriers of civilized Europe. The Huns crossed the Tanais into Europe in 375, and rapidly reduced to subjection the Alans, the Ostrogoths, and other tribes that were then dwelling along the course of the Danube. The armies of the Roman Emperor that tried to check their progress were cut to pieces by them, and Pannonia and other provinces south of the Danube were speedily occupied by the victorious cavalry of these new invaders. Not merely the degenerate Romans, but the bold and hardy warriors of Germany and Scandinavia, were appalled at the number, the ferocity, the ghastly appearance, and the lightning-like rapidity of the Huns. Strange and loathsome legends were coined and credited, which attributed their origin to the union of "Secret, black, and midnight hags" with the evil spirits of the wilderness. Tribe after tribe and city after city fell before them. Then came a pause in their career of conquest in Southwestern Europe, caused probably by dissensions among their chiefs, and also by their arms being employed in attacks upon the Scandinavian nations. But when Attila--or Atzel, as he is called in the Hungarian language--became their ruler, the torrent of their arms was directed with augmented terrors upon the West and the South, and their myriads marched beneath the guidance of one master-mind to the overthrow both of the new and the old powers of the earth. Recent events have thrown such a strong interest over everything connected with the Hungarian name that even the terrible renown of Attila now impresses us the more vividly through our sympathizing admiration of the exploits of those who claim to be descended from his warriors, and "ambitiously insert the name of Attila among their native kings." The authenticity of this martial genealogy is denied by some writers and questioned by more. But it is at least certain that the Magyars of Arpad, who are the immediate ancestors of the bulk of the modern Hungarians, and who conquered the country which bears the name of Hungary in A.D. 889, were of the same stock of mankind as were the Huns of Attila, even if they did not belong to the same subdivision of that stock. Nor is there any improbability in the tradition that after Attila's death many of his warriors remained in Hungary, and that their descendants afterward joined the Huns of Arpad in their career of conquest. It is certain that Attila made Hungary the seat of his empire. It seems also susceptible of clear proof that the territory was then called Hungvar, and Attila's soldiers Hungvari. Both the Huns of Attila and those of Arpad came from the family of nomadic nations whose primitive regions were those vast wildernesses of High Asia which are included between the Altaic and the Himalayan mountain chains. The inroads of these tribes upon the lower regions of Asia and into Europe have caused many of the most remarkable revolutions in the history of the world. There is every reason to believe that swarms of these nations made their way into distant parts of the earth at periods long before the date of the Scythian invasion of Asia, which is the earliest inroad of the nomadic race that history records. The first, as far as we can conjecture, in respect to the time of their descent, were the Finnish and Ugrian tribes, who appear to have come down from the Altaic border of High Asia toward the northwest, in which direction they advanced to the Uralian Mountains. There they established themselves; and that mountain chain, with its valleys and pasture lands, became to them a new country, whence they sent out colonies on every side; but the Ugrian colony which under Arpad occupied Hungary and became the ancestors of the bulk of the present Hungarian nation did not quit their settlements on the Uralian Mountains till a very late period, and not until four centuries after the time when Attila led from the primary seats of the nomadic races in High Asia the host with which he advanced into the heart of France. That host was Turkish, but closely allied in origin, language, and habits with the Finno-Ugrian settlers on the Ural. Attila's fame has not come down to us through the partial and suspicious medium of chroniclers and poets of his own race. It is not from Hunnish authorities that we learn the extent of his might: it is from his enemies, from the literature and the legends of the nations whom he afflicted with his arms, that we draw the unquestionable evidence of his greatness. Besides the express narratives of Byzantine, Latin, and Gothic writers, we have the strongest proof of the stern reality of Attila's conquests in the extent to which he and his Huns have been the themes of the earliest German and Scandinavian lays. Wild as many of those legends are, they bear concurrent and certain testimony to the awe with which the memory of Attila was regarded by the bold warriors who composed and delighted in them. Attila's exploits, and the wonders of his unearthly steed and magic sword, repeatedly occur in the sagas of Norway and Iceland; and the celebrated _Nibelungenlied_, the most ancient of Germanic poetry, is full of them. There Etsel, or Attila, is described as the wearer of twelve mighty crowns, and as promising to his bride the lands of thirty kings whom his irresistible sword had subdued. He is, in fact, the hero of the latter part of this remarkable poem; and it is at his capital city, Etselenburg, which evidently corresponds to the modern Buda, that much of its action takes place. When we turn from the legendary to the historic Attila, we see clearly that he was not one of the vulgar herd of barbaric conquerors. Consummate military skill may be traced in his campaigns; and he relied far less on the brute force of armies for the aggrandizement of his empire than on the unbounded influence over the affections of friends and the fears of foes which his genius enabled him to acquire. Austerely sober in his private life--severely just on the judgment seat--conspicuous among a nation of warriors for hardihood, strength, and skill in every martial exercise--grave and deliberate in counsel, but rapid and remorseless in execution, he gave safety and security to all who were under his dominion, while he waged a warfare of extermination against all who opposed or sought to escape from it. He watched the national passions, the prejudices, the creeds, and the superstitions of the varied nations over which he ruled and of those which he sought to reduce beneath his sway: all these feelings he had the skill to turn to his own account. His own warriors believed him to be the inspired favorite of their deities, and followed him with fanatic zeal; his enemies looked on him as the preappointed minister of heaven's wrath against themselves; and though they believed not in his creed, their own made them tremble before him. In one of his early campaigns he appeared before his troops with an ancient iron sword in his grasp, which he told them was the god of war whom their ancestors had worshipped. It is certain that the nomadic tribes of Northern Asia, whom Herodotus described under the name of Scythians, from the earliest times worshipped as their god a bare sword. That sword-god was supposed, in Attila's time, to have disappeared from earth; but the Hunnish King now claimed to have received it by special revelation. It was said that a herdsman, who was tracking in the desert a wounded heifer by the drops of blood, found the mysterious sword standing fixed in the ground, as if it had darted down from heaven. The herdsman bore it to Attila, who thenceforth was believed by the Huns to wield the Spirit of Death in battle, and their seers prophesied that that sword was to destroy the world. A Roman, who was on an embassy to the Hunnish camp, recorded in his memoirs Attila's acquisition of this supernatural weapon, and the immense influence over the minds of the barbaric tribes which its possession gave him. In the title which he assumed we shall see the skill with which he availed himself of the legends and creeds of other nations as well as of his own. He designated himself "ATTILA, Descendant of the Great Nimrod. Nurtured in Engaddi. By the grace of God, King of the Huns, the Goths, the Danes, and the Medes. The Dread of the World." Herbert states that Attila is represented on an old medallion with a teraph, or a head, on his breast; and the same writer adds: "We know, from the _Hamartigenea_ of Prudentius, that Nimrod, with a snaky-haired head, was the object of adoration of the heretical followers of Marcion; and the same head was the palladium set up by Antiochus Epiphanes over the gates of Antioch, though it has been called the visage of Charon. The memory of Nimrod was certainly regarded with mystic veneration by many; and by asserting himself to be the heir of that mighty hunter before the Lord, he vindicated to himself at least the whole Babylonian kingdom. "The singular assertion in his style, that he was nurtured in Engaddi, where he certainly had never been, will be more easily understood on reference to the twelfth chapter of the Book of Revelation, concerning the woman clothed with the sun, who was to bring forth in the wilderness--'where she hath a place prepared of God'--a man-child, who was to contend with the dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and rule all nations with a rod of iron. This prophecy was at that time understood universally by the sincere Christians to refer to the birth of Constantine, who was to overwhelm the paganism of the city on the seven hills, and it is still so explained; but it is evident that the heathens must have looked on it in a different light, and have regarded it as a foretelling of the birth of that Great one who should master the temporal power of Rome. The assertion, therefore, that he was nurtured in Engaddi, is a claim to be looked upon as that man-child who was to be brought forth in a place prepared of God in the wilderness. Engaddi means a place of palms and vines in the desert; it was hard by Zoar, the city of refuge, which was saved in the Vale of Siddim, or Demons, when the rest were destroyed by fire and brimstone from the Lord in heaven, and might, therefore, be especially called a place prepared of God in the wilderness." It is obvious enough why he styled himself "By the Grace of God, King of the Huns and Goths," and it seems far from difficult to see why he added the names of the Medes and the Danes. His armies had been engaged in warfare against the Persian kingdom of the Sassanidæ, and it is certain that he meditated the invasion and overthrow of the Medo-Persian power. Probably some of the northern provinces of that kingdom had been compelled to pay him tribute; and this would account for his styling himself king of the Medes, they being his remotest subjects to the south. From a similar cause he may have called himself king of the Danes, as his power may well have extended northward as far as the nearest of the Scandinavian nations, and this mention of Medes and Danes as his subjects would serve at once to indicate the vast extent of his dominion.[24] The immense territory north of the Danube and Black Sea and eastward of Caucasus, over which Attila ruled, first in conjunction with his brother Bleda, and afterward alone, cannot be very accurately defined, but it must have comprised within it, besides the Huns, many nations of Slavic, Gothic, Teutonic, and Finnish origin. South also of the Danube, the country, from the river Sau as far as Novi in Thrace, was a Hunnish province. Such was the empire of the Huns in A.D. 445; a memorable year, in which Attila founded Buda on the Danube as his capital city, and rid himself of his brother by a crime which seems to have been prompted not only by selfish ambition, but also by a desire of turning to his purpose the legends and forebodings which then were universally spread throughout the Roman Empire, and must have been well known to the watchful and ruthless Hun. The year 445 of our era completed the twelfth century from the foundation of Rome, according to the best chronologers. It had always been believed among the Romans that the twelve vultures, which were said to have appeared to Romulus when he founded the city, signified the time during which the Roman power should endure. The twelve vultures denoted twelve centuries. This interpretation of the vision of the birds of destiny was current among learned Romans, even when there were yet many of the twelve centuries to run, and while the imperial city was at the zenith of its power. But as the allotted time drew nearer and nearer to its conclusion, and as Rome grew weaker and weaker beneath the blows of barbaric invaders, the terrible omen was more and more talked and thought of; and in Attila's time, men watched for the momentary extinction of the Roman State with the last beat of the last vulture's wing. Moreover, among the numerous legends connected with the foundation of the city, and the fratricidal death of Remus, there was one most terrible one, which told that Romulus did not put his brother to death in accident or in hasty quarrel, but that "He slew his gallant twin With inexpiable sin," deliberately and in compliance with the warnings of supernatural powers. The shedding of a brother's blood was believed to have been the price at which the founder of Rome had purchased from destiny her twelve centuries of existence. We may imagine, therefore, with what terror in this the twelve hundredth year after the foundation of Rome the inhabitants of the Roman Empire must have heard the tidings that the royal brethren Attila and Bleda had founded a new capital on the Danube, which was designed to rule over the ancient capital on the Tiber; and that Attila, like Romulus, had consecrated the foundations of his new city by murdering his brother; so that for the new cycle of centuries then about to commence, dominion had been bought from the gloomy spirits of destiny in favor of the Hun by a sacrifice of equal awe and value with that which had formerly obtained it for the Roman. It is to be remembered that not only the pagans but also the Christians of that age knew and believed in these legends and omens, however they might differ as to the nature of the superhuman agency by which such mysteries had been made known to mankind. And we may observe with Herbert, a modern learned dignitary of our Church, how remarkably this augury was fulfilled; for "if to the twelve centuries denoted by the twelve vultures that appeared to Romulus we add, for the six birds that appeared to Remus, six _lustra_ or periods of five years each, by which the Romans were wont to number their time, it brings us precisely to the year 476, in which the Roman Empire was finally extinguished by Odoacer." An attempt to assassinate Attila, made, or supposed to have been made, at the instigation of Theodoric the Younger, the emperor of Constantinople, drew the Hunnish armies, in 445, upon the Eastern Empire, and delayed for a time the destined blow against Rome. Probably a more important cause of delay was the revolt of some of the Hunnish tribes to the north of the Black Sea against Attila, which broke out about this period, and is cursorily mentioned by the Byzantine writers. Attila quelled this revolt, and having thus consolidated his power, and having punished the presumption of the Eastern Roman Emperor by fearful ravages of his fairest provinces, Attila, in 450 A.D., prepared to set his vast forces in motion for the conquest of Western Europe. He sought unsuccessfully by diplomatic intrigues to detach the king of the Visigoths from his alliance with Rome, and he resolved first to crush the power of Theodoric, and then to advance with overwhelming power to trample out the last sparks of the doomed Roman Empire. A strange invitation from a Roman princess gave him a pretext for the war, and threw an air of chivalric enterprise over his invasion. Honoria, sister of Valentinian III, the emperor of the West, had sent to Attila to offer him her hand and her supposed right to share in the imperial power. This had been discovered by the Romans, and Honoria had been forthwith closely imprisoned. Attila now pretended to take up arms in behalf of his self-promised bride, and proclaimed that he was about to march to Rome to redress Honoria's wrongs. Ambition and spite against her brother must have been the sole motives that led the lady to woo the royal Hun; for Attila's face and person had all the natural ugliness of his race, and the description given of him by a Byzantine ambassador must have been well known in the imperial courts. Herbert has well versified the portrait drawn by Priscus of the great enemy of both Byzantium and Rome: "Terrific was his semblance, in no mould Of beautiful proportion cast; his limbs Nothing exalted, but with sinews braced Of Chalybean temper, agile, lithe, And swifter than the roe; his ample chest Was overbrow'd by a gigantic head, With eyes keen, deeply sunk, and small, that gleam'd Strangely in wrath as though some spirit unclean Within that corporal tenement install'd Look'd from its windows, but with temper'd fire Beam'd mildly on the unresisting. Thin His beard and hoary; his flat nostrils crown'd A cicatrized, swart visage; but, withal, That questionable shape such glory wore That mortals quail'd beneath him." Two chiefs of the Franks, who were then settled on the Lower Rhine, were at this period engaged in a feud with each other, and while one of them appealed to the Romans for aid, the other invoked the assistance and protection of the Huns. Attila thus obtained an ally whose coöperation secured for him the passage of the Rhine, and it was this circumstance which caused him to take a northward route from Hungary for his attack upon Gaul. The muster of the Hunnish hosts was swollen by warriors of every tribe that they had subjugated; nor is there any reason to suspect the old chroniclers of wilful exaggeration in estimating Attila's army as seven hundred thousand strong. Having crossed the Rhine probably a little below Coblentz, he defeated the king of the Burgundians, who endeavored to bar his progress. He then divided his vast forces into two armies, one of which marched northwest upon Tongres and Arras and the other cities of that part of France, while the main body, under Attila himself, advanced up the Moselle, and destroyed Besançon and other towns in the country of the Burgundians. One of the latest and best biographers of Attila well observes that, "having thus conquered the eastern part of France, Attila prepared for an invasion of the West-Gothic territories beyond the Loire. He marched upon Orleans, where he intended to force the passage of that river, and only a little attention is requisite to enable us to perceive that he proceeded on a systematic plan: he had his right wing on the north for the protection of his Frank allies; his left wing on the south for the purpose of preventing the Burgundians from rallying and of menacing the passes of the Alps from Italy; and he led his centre toward the chief object of the campaign--the conquest of Orleans, and an easy passage into the West-Gothic dominion. The whole plan is very like that of the allied powers in 1814, with this difference, that their left wing entered France through the defiles of the Jura, in the direction of Lyons, and that the military object of the campaign was the capture of Paris." It was not until the year 451 that the Huns commenced the siege of Orleans; and during their campaign in Eastern Gaul, the Roman general Aetius had strenuously exerted himself in collecting and organizing such an army as might, when united to the soldiery of the Visigoths, be fit to face the Huns in the field. He enlisted every subject of the Roman Empire whom patriotism, courage, or compulsion could collect beneath the standards; and round these troops, which assumed the once proud title of the legions of Rome he arrayed the large forces of barbaric auxiliaries, whom pay, persuasion, or the general hate and dread of the Huns brought to the camp of the last of the Roman generals. King Theodoric exerted himself with equal energy. Orleans resisted her besiegers bravely as in after-times. The passage of the Loire was skilfully defended against the Huns; and Aetius and Theodoric, after much manoeuvring and difficulty, effected a junction of their armies to the south of that important river. On the advance of the allies upon Orleans, Attila instantly broke up the siege of that city and retreated toward the Marne. He did not choose to risk a decisive battle with only the central corps of his army against the combined power of his enemies, and he therefore fell back upon his base of operations, calling in his wings from Arras and Besançon, and concentrating the whole of the Hunnish forces on the vast plains of Châlons-sur-Marne. A glance at the map will show how scientifically this place was chosen by the Hunnish general as the point for his scattered forces to converge upon; and the nature of the ground was eminently favorable for the operations of cavalry, the arm in which Attila's strength peculiarly lay. It was during the retreat from Orleans that a Christian hermit is reported to have approached the Hunnish King and said to him, "Thou art the Scourge of God for the chastisement of the Christians." Attila instantly assumed this new title of terror, which thenceforth became the appellation by which he was most widely and most fearfully known. The confederate armies of Romans and Visigoths at last met their great adversary face to face on the ample battleground of the Châlons plains. Aetius commanded on the right of the allies; King Theodoric on the left; and Sangipan, King of the Alans, whose fidelity was suspected, was placed purposely in the centre, and in the very front of the battle. Attila commanded his centre in person, at the head of his own countrymen, while the Ostrogoths, the Gepidæ, and the other subject allies of the Huns were drawn up on the wings. Some manoeuvring appears to have occurred before the engagement, in which Aetius had the advantage, inasmuch as he succeeded in occupying a sloping hill which commanded the left flank of the Huns. Attila saw the importance of the position taken by Aetius on the high ground, and commenced the battle by a furious attack on this part of the Roman line, in which he seems to have detached some of his best troops from his centre to aid his left. The Romans, having the advantage of the ground, repulsed the Huns, and while the allies gained this advantage on their right, their left, under King Theodoric, assailed the Ostrogoths, who formed the right of Attila's army. The gallant King was himself struck down by a javelin as he rode onward at the head of his men; and his own cavalry, charging over him, trampled him to death in the confusion. But the Visigoths, infuriated, not dispirited, by their monarch's fall, routed the enemies opposed to them, and then wheeled upon the flank of the Hunnish centre, which had been engaged in a sanguinary and indecisive contest with the Alans. In this peril Attila made his centre fall back upon his camp; and when the shelter of its intrenchments and wagons had once been gained, the Hunnish archers repulsed, without difficulty, the charges of the vengeful Gothic cavalry. Aetius had not pressed the advantage which he gained on his side of the field, and when night fell over the wild scene of havoc Attila's left was still undefeated, but his right had been routed and his centre forced back upon his camp. Expecting an assault on the morrow, Attila stationed his best archers in front of the cars and wagons, which were drawn up as a fortification along his lines, and made every preparation for a desperate resistance. But the "Scourge of God" resolved that no man should boast of the honor of having either captured or slain him, and he caused to be raised in the centre of his encampment a huge pyramid of the wooden saddles of his cavalry; round it he heaped the spoils and the wealth that he had won; on it he stationed his wives who had accompanied him in the campaign; and on the summit Attila placed himself, ready to perish in the flames and balk the victorious foe of their choicest booty should they succeed in storming his defences. But when the morning broke and revealed the extent of the carnage with which the plains were heaped for miles, the successful allies saw also and respected the resolute attitude of their antagonist. Neither were any measures taken to blockade him in his camp, and so to extort by famine that submission which it was too plainly perilous to enforce with the sword. Attila was allowed to march back the remnants of his army without molestation, and even with the semblance of success. It is probable that the crafty Aetius was unwilling to be too victorious. He dreaded the glory which his allies the Visigoths had acquired, and feared that Rome might find a second Alaric in Prince Torismund, who had signalized himself in the battle, and had been chosen on the field to succeed his father Theodoric. He persuaded the young King to return at once to his capital, and thus relieved himself at the same time of the presence of a dangerous friend as well as of a formidable though beaten foe. Attila's attacks on the Western Empire were soon renewed, but never with such peril to the civilized world as had menaced it before his defeat at Châlons; and on his death, two years after that battle, the vast empire which his genius had founded was soon dissevered by the successful revolts of the subject nations. The name of the Huns ceased for some centuries to inspire terror in Western Europe, and their ascendency passed away with the life of the great King by whom it had been so fearfully augmented.[25] EDWARD GIBBON The facility with which Attila had penetrated into the heart of Gaul may be ascribed to his insidious policy as well as to the terror of his arms. His public declarations were skilfully mitigated by his private assurances; he alternately soothed and threatened the Romans and the Goths; and the courts of Ravenna and Toulouse, mutually suspicious of each other's intentions, beheld with supine indifference the approach of their common enemy. Aetius was the sole guardian of the public safety; but his wisest measures were embarrassed by a faction which, since the death of Placidia, infested the imperial palace; the youth of Italy trembled at the sound of the trumpet; and the barbarians, who, from fear or affection, were inclined to the cause of Attila, awaited with doubtful and venal faith the event of the war. The patrician passed the Alps at the head of some troops, whose strength and numbers scarcely deserved the name of an army. But on his arrival at Aries, or Lyons, he was confounded by the intelligence that the Visigoths, refusing to embrace the defence of Gaul, had determined to expect, within their own territories, the formidable invader, whom they professed to despise. The senator Avitus, who, after the honorable exercise of the prætorian prefecture, had retired to his estate in Auvergne, was persuaded to accept the important embassy, which he executed with ability and success. He represented to Theodoric that an ambitious conqueror, who aspired to the dominion of the earth, could be resisted only by the firm and unanimous alliance of the powers whom he labored to oppress. The lively eloquence of Avitus inflamed the Gothic warriors by the description of the injuries which their ancestors had suffered from the Huns, whose implacable fury still pursued them from the Danube to the foot of the Pyrenees. He strenuously urged that it was the duty of every Christian to save from sacrilegious violation the churches of God and the relics of the saints; that it was the interest of every barbarian who had acquired a settlement in Gaul, to defend the fields and vineyards, which were cultivated for his use, against the desolation of the Scythian shepherds. Theodoric yielded to the evidence of truth, adopted the measure at once the most prudent and the most honorable, and declared that, as the faithful ally of Aetius and the Romans, he was ready to expose his life and kingdom for the common safety of Gaul. The Visigoths, who at that time were in the mature vigor of their fame and power, obeyed with alacrity the signal of war, prepared their arms and horses, and assembled under the standard of their aged King, who was resolved, with his two eldest sons, Torismond and Theodoric, to command in person his numerous and valiant people. The example of the Goths determined several tribes or nations that seemed to fluctuate between the Huns and the Romans. The indefatigable diligence of the patrician gradually collected the troops of Gaul and Germany, who had formerly acknowledged themselves the subjects or soldiers of the republic, but who now claimed the rewards of voluntary service and the rank of independent allies; the Læti, the Armoricans, the Breones, the Saxons, the Burgundians, the Sarmatians or Alani, the Ripuarians, and the Franks who followed Meroveus as their lawful prince. Such was the various army which, under the conduct of Aetius and Theodoric, advanced, by rapid marches, to relieve Orleans and to give battle to the innumerable host of Attila. On their approach, the king of the Huns immediately raised the siege, and sounded a retreat to recall the foremost of his troops from the pillage of a city which they had already entered. The valor of Attila was always guided by his prudence; and as he foresaw the fatal consequences of a defeat in the heart of Gaul, he repassed the Seine, and expected the enemy in the plains of Châlons, whose smooth and level surface was adapted to the operations of his Scythian cavalry. But in this tumultuary retreat, the vanguard of the Romans and their allies continually pressed, and sometimes engaged, the troops whom Attila had posted in the rear; the hostile columns, in the darkness of the night and the perplexity of the roads, might encounter each other without design; and the bloody conflict of the Franks and Gepidæ, in which fifteen thousand barbarians were slain, was a prelude to a more general and decisive action. The Catalaunian fields spread themselves round Châlons, and extend, according to the vague measurement of Jornandes, to the length of one hundred and fifty and the breadth of one hundred miles, over the whole province, which is entitled to the appellation of a _champaign_ country. This spacious plain was distinguished, however, by some inequalities of ground; and the importance of a height which commanded the camp of Attila was understood and disputed by the two generals. The young and valiant Torismond first occupied the summit; the Goths rushed with irresistible weight on the Huns, who labored to ascend from the opposite side; and the possession of this advantageous post inspired both the troops and their leaders with a fair assurance of victory. The anxiety of Attila prompted him to consult his priests and haruspices. It was reported that, after scrutinizing the entrails of victims and scraping their bones, they revealed, in mysterious language, his own defeat, with the death of his principal adversary; and that the barbarian, by accepting the equivalent, expressed his involuntary esteem for the superior merit of Aetius. But the unusual despondency, which seemed to prevail among the Huns, engaged Attila to use the expedient, so familiar to the generals of antiquity, of animating his troops by a military oration; and his language was that of a king who had often fought and conquered at their head. He pressed them to consider their past glory, their actual danger, and their future hopes. The same fortune which opened the deserts and morasses of Scythia to their unarmed valor, which had laid so many warlike nations prostrate at their feet, had reserved the _joys_ of this memorable field for the consummation of their victories. The cautious steps of their enemies, their strict alliance, and their advantageous posts he artfully represented as the effects, not of prudence, but of fear. The Visigoths alone were the strength and nerves of the opposite army; and the Huns might securely trample on the degenerate Romans, whose close and compact order betrayed their apprehensions, and who were equally incapable of supporting the dangers or the fatigues of a day of battle. The doctrine of predestination, so favorable to martial virtue, was carefully inculcated by the king of the Huns, who assured his subjects that the warriors, protected by heaven, were safe and invulnerable amid the darts of the enemy, but that the unerring Fates would strike their victims in the bosom of inglorious peace. "I myself," continued Attila, "will throw the first javelin, and the wretch who refuses to imitate the example of his sovereign is devoted to inevitable death." The spirit of the barbarians was rekindled by the presence, the voice, and the example of their intrepid leader; and Attila, yielding to their impatience, immediately formed his order of battle. At the head of his brave and faithful Huns, he occupied in person the centre of the line. The nations subject to his empire, the Rugians, the Heruli, the Thuringians, the Franks, the Burgundians, were extended on either hand, over the ample space of the Catalaunian fields; the right wing was commanded by Ardaric, king of the Gepidæ; and the three valiant brothers who reigned over the Ostrogoths were posted on the left to oppose the kindred tribes of the Visigoths. The disposition of the allies was regulated by a different principle. Sangiban, the faithless King of the Alani, was placed in the centre, where his motions might be strictly watched, and his treachery might be instantly punished. Aetius assumed the command of the left, and Theodoric of the right wing; while Torismond still continued to occupy the heights which appear to have stretched on the flank, and perhaps the rear, of the Scythian army. The nations from the Volga to the Atlantic were assembled on the plain of Châlons; but many of these nations had been divided by faction or conquest or emigration; and the appearance of similar arms and ensigns, which threatened each other, presented the image of a civil war. The discipline and tactics of the Greeks and Romans form an interesting part of their national manners. The attentive study of the military operations of Xenophon or Cæsar or Frederic, when they are described by the same genius which conceived and executed them, may tend to improve--if such improvement can be wished--the art of destroying the human species. But the battle of Châlons can only excite our curiosity by the magnitude of the object; since it was decided by the blind impetuosity of barbarians, and has been related by partial writers, whose civil or ecclesiastical profession secluded them from the knowledge of military affairs. Cassiodorus, however, had familiarly conversed with many Gothic warriors who served in that memorable engagement; "a conflict," as they informed him, "fierce, various, obstinate, and bloody; such as could not be paralleled either in the present or in past ages." The number of the slain amounted to one hundred and sixty-two thousand, or, according to another account, three hundred thousand persons; and these incredible exaggerations suppose a real and effective loss sufficient to justify the historian's remark that whole generations may be swept away, by the madness of kings, in the space of a single hour. After the mutual and repeated discharge of missile weapons, in which the archers of Scythia might signalize their superior dexterity, the cavalry and infantry of the two armies were furiously mingled in closer combat. The Huns, who fought under the eyes of their King, pierced through the feeble and doubtful centre of the allies, separated their wings from each other, and wheeling, with a rapid effort, to the left, directed their whole force against the Visigoths. As Theodoric rode along the ranks to animate his troops, he received a mortal stroke from the javelin of Andages, a noble Ostrogoth, and immediately fell from his horse. The wounded King was oppressed in the general disorder and trampled under the feet of his own cavalry; and this important death served to explain the ambiguous prophecy of the haruspices. Attila already exulted in the confidence of victory, when the valiant Torismund descended from the hills and verified the remainder of the prediction. The Visigoths, who had been thrown into confusion by the flight or defection of the Alani, gradually restored their order of battle; and the Huns were undoubtedly vanquished, since Attila was compelled to retreat. He had exposed his person with the rashness of a private soldier; but the intrepid troops of the centre had pushed forward beyond the rest of the line; their attack was faintly supported; their flanks were unguarded; and the conquerors of Scythia and Germany were saved by the approach of the night from a total defeat. They retired within the circle of wagons that fortified their camp; and the dismounted squadrons prepared, themselves for a defence, to which neither their arms nor their temper was adapted. The event was doubtful: but Attila had secured a last and honorable resource. The saddles and rich furniture of the cavalry were collected, by his order, into a funeral pile; and the magnanimous barbarian had resolved, if his intrenchments should be forced, to rush headlong into the flames, and to deprive his enemies of the glory which they might have acquired by the death or captivity of Attila. But his enemies had passed the night in equal disorder and anxiety. The inconsiderate courage of Torismund was tempted to urge the pursuit, till he unexpectedly found himself, with a few followers, in the midst of the Scythian wagons. In the confusion of a nocturnal combat he was thrown from his horse; and the Gothic prince must have perished like his father, if his youthful strength, and the intrepid zeal of his companions, had not rescued him from this dangerous situation. In the same manner, but on the left of the line, Aetius himself, separated from his allies, ignorant of their victory and anxious for their fate, encountered and escaped the hostile troops that were scattered over the plains of Châlons, and at length reached the camp of the Goths, which he could only fortify with a slight rampart of shields till the dawn of day. The imperial general was soon satisfied of the defeat of Attila, who still remained inactive within his intrenchments; and when he contemplated the bloody scene, he observed, with secret satisfaction, that the loss had principally fallen on the barbarians. The body of Theodoric, pierced with honorable wounds, was discovered under a heap of the slain; his subjects bewailed the death of their king and father; but their tears were mingled with songs and acclamations, and his funeral rites were performed in the face of a vanquished enemy. The Goths, clashing their arms, elevated on a buckler his eldest son Torismund, to whom they justly ascribed the glory of their success; and the new King accepted the obligation of revenge as a sacred portion of his paternal inheritance. Yet the Goths themselves were astonished by the fierce and undaunted aspect of their formidable antagonist; and their historian has compared Attila to a lion encompassed in his den and threatening his hunters with redoubled fury. The kings and nations who might have deserted his standard in the hour of distress were made sensible that the displeasure of their monarch was the most imminent and inevitable danger. All his instruments of martial music incessantly sounded a loud and animating strain of defiance; and the foremost troops who advanced to the assault were checked or destroyed by showers of arrows from every side of the intrenchments. It was determined, in a general council of war, to besiege the King of the Huns in his camp, to intercept his provisions, and to reduce him to the alternative of a disgraceful treaty or an unequal combat. But the impatience of the barbarians soon disdained these cautious and dilatory measures; and the mature policy of Aetius was apprehensive that, after the extirpation of the Huns, the republic would be oppressed by the pride and power of the Gothic nation. The patrician exerted the superior ascendants of authority and reason to calm the passions, which the son of Theodoric considered as a duty; represented, with seeming affection and real truth, the dangers of absence and delay; and persuaded Torismond to disappoint, by his speedy return, the ambitious designs of his brothers, who might occupy the throne and treasures of Toulouse. After the departure of the Goths and the separation of the allied army, Attila was surprised at the vast silence that reigned over the plains of Châlons: the suspicion of some hostile stratagem detained him several days within the circle of his wagons, and his retreat beyond the Rhine confessed the last victory which was achieved in the name of the Western Empire. Meroveus and his Franks, observing a prudent distance, and magnifying the opinion of their strength by the numerous fires which they kindled every night, continued to follow the rear of the Huns till they reached the confines of Thuringia. The Thuringians served in the army of Attila: they traversed, both in their march and in their return, the territories of the Franks; and it was perhaps in this war that they exercised the cruelties which, about fourscore years afterward, were revenged by the son of Clovis. They massacred their hostages, as well as their captives: two hundred young maidens were tortured with exquisite and unrelenting rage; their bodies were torn asunder by wild horses or their bones were crushed under the weight of rolling wagons, and their unburied limbs were abandoned on the public roads as a prey to dogs and vultures. Such were those savage ancestors whose imaginary virtues have sometimes excited the praise and envy of civilized ages! FOOTNOTES: [24] In the _Nibelungenlied_, the old poet who describes the reception of the heroine Chrimhild by Attila [Etsel], says that Attila's dominions were so vast that among his subject warriors there were Russian, Greek, Wallachian, Polish, _and even Danish knights_. [25] If I seem to have given fewer of the details of the battle itself than its importance would warrant, my excuse must be that Gibbon has enriched our language with a description of it too long for quotation and too splendidly for rivalry. I have not, however, taken altogether the same view of it that he has. FOUNDATION OF VENICE A.D. 452 THOMAS HODGKIN JOHN RUSKIN The foundation of Venice (Venetia) is an incident in the history of Attila's incursions, at the head of his Huns, into Italy after his defeat at the battle of Châlons-sur-Marne. Venetia was then a large and fertile province of Northern Italy, and fifty Venetian cities flourished in peace and safety under the protection of the Empire. After Attila's remorseless hordes had taken and destroyed Aquileia, near the head of the Adriatic, they swept, with resistless fury, through Venetia, whose cities were so utterly destroyed that their very sites could henceforth scarcely be identified. The inhabitants fled in large numbers to the shores of the Adriatic, where, at the extremity of the gulf, a group of a hundred islets is separated by shallows from the mainland of Italy. Here the Venetians built their city on what had hitherto been uncultivated and almost uninhabited sand-banks. Under such unfavorable circumstances was started the career of that wonderful city which afterward became "Queen of the Adriatic" and mother of art, science, and learning. The two greatest authorities on Venice are Thomas Hodgkin, who made a life study of Italy and her invaders, and the immortal Ruskin, whose grandly descriptive articles were written in the atmosphere of Venice and the Adriatic Sea. THOMAS HODGKIN The terrible invaders, made wrathful and terrible by the resistance of Aquileia, streamed through the trembling cities of Venetia. Each earlier stage in the itinerary shows a town blotted out by their truly Tartar genius for destruction. At the distance of thirty-one miles from Aquileia stood the flourishing colony of Tulia Concordia, so named, probably, in commemoration of the universal peace which, four hundred and eighty years before, Augustus had established in the world. Concordia was destroyed, and only an insignificant little village now remains to show where it once stood. At another interval of thirty-one miles stood Altinum, with its white villas clustering round the curves of its lagoons, and rivalling Baiæ in its luxurious charms. Altinum was effaced as Concordia and as Aquileia. Yet another march of thirty-two miles brought the squalid invaders to Patavium, proud of its imagined Trojan origin, and, with better reason, proud of having given birth to Livy. Patavium, too, was levelled with the ground. True, it has not like its sister towns remained in the nothingness to which Attila reduced it. It is now "Many-domed Padua proud," but all its great buildings date from the Middle Ages. Only a few broken friezes and a few inscriptions in its museum exist as memorials of the classical Patavium. As the Huns marched on Vicenza, Verona, Brescia, Bergamo, all opened their gates at their approach, for the terror which they inspired was on every heart. In these towns, and in Milan and Pavia (Ticinum), which followed their example, the Huns enjoyed doubtless to the full their wild revel of lust and spoliation, but they left the buildings unharmed, and they carried captive the inhabitants instead of murdering them. The valley of the Po was now wasted to the heart's content of the invaders. Should they cross the Apennines and blot out Rome as they had blotted out Aquileia from among the cities of the world? This was the great question that was being debated in the Hunnish camp, and, strange to say, the voices were not all for war. Already Italy began to strike that strange awe into the hearts of her northern conquerors which so often in later ages has been her best defence. The remembrance of Alaric, cut off by a mysterious death immediately after his capture of Rome, was present in the mind of Attila, and was frequently insisted upon by his counsellors, who seem to have had a foreboding that only while he lived would they be great and prosperous. While this discussion was going forward in the barbarian camp, all voices were hushed, and the attention of all was aroused by the news of the arrival of an embassy from Rome. What had been going on in that city it is not easy to ascertain. The Emperor seems to have been dwelling there, not at Ravenna. Aetius shows a strange lack of courage or of resource, and we find it difficult to recognize in him the victor of the Mauriac plains. He appears to have been even meditating flight from Italy, and to have thought of persuading Valentinian to share his exile. But counsels a shade less timorous prevailed. Some one suggested that possibly even the Hun might be satiated with havoc, and that an embassy might assist to mitigate the remainder of his resentment. Accordingly ambassadors were sent in the once mighty name of "the Emperor and the Senate and People of Rome" to crave for peace, and these were the men who were now ushered into the camp of Attila. The envoys had been well chosen to satisfy that punctilious pride which insisted that only men of the highest dignity among the Romans should be sent to treat with the lord of Scythia and Germany. Avienus, who had, two years before, worn the robes of consul, was one of the ambassadors. Trigetius, who had wielded the powers of a prefect, and who, seventeen years before, had been despatched upon a similar mission to Genseric the Vandal, was another. But it was not upon these men, but upon their greater colleague, that the eyes of all the barbarian warriors and statesmen were fixed. Leo, bishop of Rome, had come, on behalf of his flock, to sue for peace from the idolater. The two men who had thus at last met by the banks of the Mincio are certainly the grandest figures whom the fifth century can show to us, at any rate since Alaric vanished from the scene. Attila we by this time know well enough; adequately to describe Pope Leo I, we should have to travel too far into the region of ecclesiastical history. Chosen pope in the year 440, he was now about half way through his long pontificate, one of the few which have nearly rivalled the twenty-five years traditionally assigned to St. Peter. A firm disciplinarian, not to say a persecutor, he had caused the Priscillianists of Spain and the Manichees of Rome to feel his heavy hand. A powerful rather than subtle theologian, he had asserted the claims of Christian common-sense as against the endless refinements of oriental speculation concerning the nature of the Son of God. Like an able Roman general he had traced, in his letters on the Eutychian controversy, the lines of the fortress in which the defenders of the Catholic verity were thenceforward to intrench themselves and from which they were to repel the assaults of Monophysites on the one hand and of Nestorians on the other. These lines had been enthusiastically accepted by the great council of Chalcedon--held in the year of Attila's Gaulish campaign--and remain from that day to this the authoritative utterance of the Church concerning the mysterious union of the Godhead and the manhood in the person of Jesus Christ. And all these gifts of will, of intellect, and of soul were employed by Leo with undeviating constancy, with untired energy, in furthering his great aim, the exaltation of the dignity of the popedom, the conversion of the admitted primacy of the bishops of Rome into an absolute and world-wide spiritual monarchy. Whatever our opinions may be as to the influence of this spiritual monarchy on the happiness of the world, or its congruity with the character of the Teacher in whose words it professed to root itself, we cannot withhold a tribute of admiration for the high temper of this Roman bishop, who in the ever-deepening degradation of his country still despaired not, but had the courage and endurance to work for a far-distant future, who, when the Roman was becoming the common drudge and footstool of all nations, still remembered the proud words "_Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento!_" and under the very shadow of Attila and Genseric prepared for the city of Romulus a new and spiritual dominion, vaster and more enduring than any which had been won for her by Julius or by Hadrian. Such were the two men who stood face to face in the summer of 452 upon the plains of Lombardy. The barbarian King had all the material power in his hand, and he was working but for a twelvemonth. The pontiff had no power but in the world of intellect, and his fabric was to last fourteen centuries. They met, as has been said, by the banks of the Mincio. Jordanes tells us that it was "where the river is crossed by many wayfarers coming and going." Some writers think that these words point to the ground now occupied by the celebrated fortress of Peschiera, close to the point where the Mincio issues from the Lake of Garda. Others place the interview at Governolo, a little village hard by the junction of the Mincio and the Po. If the latter theory be true, and it seems to fit well with the route which would probably be taken by Attila, the meeting took place in Vergil's country, and almost in sight of the very farm where Tityrus and Meliboeus chatted at evening under the beech-tree. Leo's success as an ambassador was complete. Attila laid aside all the fierceness of his anger and promised to return across the Danube, and to live thenceforward at peace with the Romans. But in his usual style, in the midst of reconciliation he left a loophole for a future wrath, for "he insisted still on this point above all, that Honoria, the sister of the Emperor, and the daughter of the Augusta Placidia, should be sent to him with the portion of the royal wealth which was her due; and he threatened that unless this was done he would lay upon Italy a far heavier punishment than any which it had yet borne." But for the present, at any rate, the tide of devastation was turned, and few events more powerfully impressed the imagination of that new and blended world which was now standing at the threshold of the dying empire than this retreat of Attila, the dreaded king of kings, before the unarmed successor of St. Peter. Attila was already predisposed to moderation by the counsels of his ministers. The awe of Rome was upon him and upon them, and he was forced incessantly to ponder the question, "What if I conquer like Alaric, to die like him?" Upon these doubts and ponderings of his supervened the stately presence of Leo, a man of holy life, firm will, dauntless courage--that, be sure, Attila perceived in the first moments of their interview--and, besides this, holding an office honored and venerated through all the civilized world. The barbarian yielded to his spell as he had yielded to that of Lupus of Troyes, and, according to a tradition, which, it must be admitted, is not very well authenticated, he jocularly excused his unaccustomed gentleness by saying that "he knew how to conquer men, but the lion and the wolf (Leo and Lupus) had learned how to conquer him." The tradition which asserts that the republic of Venice and its neighbor cities in the lagoons were peopled by fugitives from the Hunnish invasion of 452, is so constant and in itself so probable that we seem bound to accept it as substantially true, though contemporary or nearly contemporary evidence to the fact is utterly wanting. The thought of "the glorious city in the sea" so dazzles our imaginations when we turn our thoughts toward Venice that we must take a little pains to free ourselves from the spell and reproduce the aspect of the desolate islands and far-stretching wastes of sand and sea to which the fear of Attila drove the delicately nurtured Roman provincials for a habitation. If we examine on the map the well-known and deep recess of the Adriatic Sea, we shall at once be struck by one marked difference between its eastern and its northern shores. For three hundred miles down the Dalmatian coast not one large river, scarcely a considerable stream, descends from the too closely towering Dinaric mountains to the sea. If we turn now to the northwestern angle which formed the shore of the Roman province of Venetia, we find the coast line broken by at least seven streams, two of which are great rivers. These seven streams, whose mouths are crowded into less than eighty miles of coast, drain an area which, reckoning from Monte Viso to the Terglon Alps--the source of the Ysonzo--must be four hundred and fifty miles in length, and may average two hundred miles in breadth, and this area is bordered on one side by the highest mountains in Europe, snow-covered, glacier-strewn, wrinkled and twisted into a thousand valleys and narrow defiles, each of which sends down its river or its rivulet to swell the great outpour. For our present purpose, and as a worker out of Venetian history, Po, notwithstanding the far greater volume of his waters, is of less importance than the six other small streams which bear him company. He, carrying down the fine alluvial soil of Lombardy, goes on lazily adding, foot by foot, to the depth of his delta, and mile by mile to its extent. They, swiftly hurrying over their shorter course from mountain to sea, scatter indeed many fragments, detached from their native rocks, over the first meadows which they meet with in the plain, but carry some also far out to sea, and then, behind the bulwark which they thus have made, deposit the finer alluvial particles with which they, too, are laden. Thus we get the two characteristic features of the ever-changing coast line, the Lido and the Laguna. The Lido, founded upon the masses of rock, is a long, thin slip of the _terra firma_, which form a sort of advance guard of the land. The Laguna, occupying the interval between the Lido and the true shore, is a wide expanse of waters, generally very few feet in depth, with a bottom of fine sand, and with a few channels of deeper water, the representatives of the forming rivers winding intricately among them. In such a configuration of land and water the state of the tide makes a striking difference in the scene. And unlike the rest of the Mediterranean, the Adriatic does possess a tide, small, it is true, in comparison with the great tides of ocean--for the whole difference between high and low water at the flood is not more than six feet, and the average flow is said not to amount to more than two feet six inches--but even this flux is sufficient to produce large tracts of sea which the reflux converts into square miles of oozy sand. Here, between sea and land, upon this detritus of the rivers, settled the detritus of humanity. The Gothic and the Lombard invasions contributed probably their share of fugitives, but fear of the Hunnish world-waster--whose very name, according to some, was derived from one of the mighty rivers of Russia--was the great "degrading" influence that carried down the fragments of Roman civilization and strewed them over the desolate lagoons. The inhabitants of Aquileia, or at least the feeble remnants that escaped the sword of Attila, took refuge at Grado. Concordia migrated to Caprularia (now Caorle). The inhabitants of Altinum, abandoning their ruined villas, founded their new habitations upon seven islands at the mouth of the Piave, which, according to tradition, they named from the seven gates of their old city--Torcellus, Maiurbius, Boreana, Ammiana, Constantiacum, and Anianum. The representatives of some of these names, Torcello, Mazzorbo, Burano, are familiar sounds to the Venetian at the present day. From Padua came the largest stream of emigrants. They left the tomb of their mythical ancestor, Antenor, and built their humble dwellings upon the islands of the rivers Altus and Methamaucus, better known to us as Rialto and Malamocco. This Paduan settlement was one day to be known to the world by the name of Venice. But let us not suppose that the future "Queen of the Adriatic" sprang into existence at a single bound like Constantinople or Alexandria. For two hundred and fifty years, that is to say for eight generations, the refugees on the islands of the Adriatic prolonged an obscure and squalid existence--fishing, salt manufacturing, damming out the waves with wattled vine-branches, driving piles into the sand-banks, and thus gradually extending the area of their villages. Still these were but fishing villages, loosely confederated together, loosely governed, poor and insignificant, so that the anonymous geographer of Ravenna, writing in the seventh century, can only say of them, "In the country of Venetia there are some few islands which are inhabited by men." This seems to have been their condition, though perhaps gradually growing in commercial importance, until at the beginning of the eighth century the concentration of political authority in the hands of the first doge, and the recognition of the Rialto cluster of islands as the capital of the confederacy, started the republic on a career of success and victory, in which for seven centuries she met no lasting check. But this lies far beyond the limit of our present subject. It must be again said that we have not to think of "the pleasant place of all festivity," but of a few huts among the sand-banks, inhabited by Roman provincials, who mournfully recall their charred and ruined habitations by the Brenta and the Piave. The sea alone does not constitute their safety. If that were all, the pirate ships of the Vandal Genseric might repeat upon their poor dwellings all the terror of Attila. But it is in their amphibious life, in that strange blending of land and sea which is exhibited by the lagunes, that their safety lies. Only experienced pilots can guide a vessel of any considerable draught through the mazy channels of deep water which intersect these lagoons; and should they seem to be in imminent peril from the approach of an enemy, they will defend themselves not like the Dutch by cutting the dikes which barricade them from the ocean, but by pulling up the poles which even those pilots need to indicate their pathway through the waters. There, then, engaged in their humble, beaver-like labors, we leave for the present the Venetian refugees from the rage of Attila. But even while protesting, it is impossible not to let into our minds some thought of what those desolate fishing villages will one day become. The dim religious light, half revealing the slowly gathered glories of St. Mark's; the Ducal Palace, that history in stone; the Rialto, with the babble of many languages; the Piazza, with its flock of fearless pigeons; the Brazen Horses, the Winged Lion, the Bucentaur, all that the artists of Venice did to make her beautiful, her ambassadors to make her wise, her secret tribunals to make her terrible; memories of these things must come thronging upon the mind at the mere mention of her spell-like name. Now, with these pictures glowing vividly before you, wrench the mind away with sudden effort to the dreary plains of Pannonia. Think of the moody Tartar, sitting in his log-hut, surrounded by his barbarous guests; of Zercon, gabbling his uncouth mixture of Hunnish and Latin; of the bath-man of Onégesh, and the wool-work of Kreka, and the reed candles in the village of Bleda's widow; and say if cause and effect were ever more strangely meted in history than the rude and brutal might of Attila with the stately and gorgeous and subtle republic of Venice. One more consideration is suggested to us by that which was the noblest part of the work of Venice, the struggle which she maintained for centuries, really in behalf of all Europe, against the Turk. Attila's power was soon to pass away, but, in the ages that were to come, another Turanian race was to arise, as brutal as the Huns, but with their fierceness sharp-pointed and hardened into a far more fearful weapon of offence by the fanaticism of Islam. These descendants of the kinsfolk of Attila were the Ottomans, and but for the barrier which, like their own _murazzi_ against the waves, the Venetians interposed against the Ottomans, it is scarcely too much to say that half Europe would have undergone the misery of subjection to the organized anarchy of the Turkish pachas. The Tartar Attila, when he gave up Aquileia and her neighbor cities to the tender mercies of his myrmidons, little thought that he was but the instrument in an unseen Hand for hammering out the shield which should one day defend Europe from Tartar robbers such as he was. The Turanian poison secreted the future antidote to itself, and the name of that antidote was Venice. JOHN RUSKIN In the olden days of travelling, now to return no more, in which distance could not be vanquished without toil, but in which that toil was rewarded, partly by the power of deliberate survey of the countries through which the journey lay, and partly by the happiness of the evening hours, when, from the top of the last hill he had surmounted, the traveller beheld the quiet village where he was to rest, scattered among the meadows beside its valley stream; or, from the long-hoped-for turn in the dusty perspective of the causeway, saw, for the first time, the towers of some famed city, faint in the rays of sunset--hours of peaceful and thoughtful pleasure, for which the rush of the arrival in the railway station is perhaps not always, or to all men, an equivalent--in those days, I say, when there was something more to be anticipated and remembered in the first aspect of each successive halting-place, than a new arrangement of glass roofing and iron girder, there were few moments of which the recollection was more fondly cherished by the traveller than that which brought him within sight of Venice, as his gondola shot into the open Lagoon from the canal of Mestre. Not but that the aspect of the city itself was generally the source of some slight disappointment, for, seen in this direction, its buildings are far less characteristic than those of the other great towns of Italy; but this inferiority was partly disguised by distance, and more than atoned for by the strange rising of its walls and towers, out of the midst, as it seemed, of the deep sea, for it was impossible that the mind or the eye could at once comprehend the shallowness of the vast sheet of water which stretched away in leagues of rippling lustre to the north and south, or trace the narrow line of islets bounding it to the east. The salt breeze, the white moaning sea-birds, the masses of black weed separating and disappearing gradually, in knots of heaving shoal, under the advance of the steady tide, all proclaimed it to be indeed the ocean on whose bosom the great city rested so calmly; not such blue, soft, lake-like ocean as bathes the Neapolitan promontories or sleeps beneath the marble rocks of Genoa, but a sea with the bleak power of our own northern waves, yet subdued into a strange spacious rest, and changed from its angry pallor into a field of burnished gold, as the sun declined behind the belfry tower of the lonely island church, fitly named "St. George of the Sea-weed." As the boat drew nearer to the city, the coast which the traveller had just left sank behind him into one long, low, sad-colored line, tufted irregularly with brushwood and willows: but, at what seemed its northern extremity, the hills of Arqua rose in a dark cluster of purple pyramids, balanced on the bright mirage of the Lagoon; two or three smooth surges of inferior hill extended themselves about their roots, and beyond these, beginning with the craggy peaks above Vicenza, the chain of the Alps girded the whole horizon to the north--a wall of jagged blue, here and there showing through its clefts a wilderness of misty precipices, fading far back into the recesses of Cadore, and itself rising and breaking away eastward, where the sun struck opposite upon its snow, into mighty fragments of peaked light, standing up behind the barred clouds of evening, one after another, countless, the crown of the Adrian Sea, until the eye turned back from pursuing them, to rest upon the nearer burning of the campaniles of Murano, and on the great city, where it magnified itself along the waves, as the quick silent pacing of the gondola drew nearer and nearer. And at last, when its walls were reached, and the outmost of its untrodden streets was entered, not through towered gate or guarded rampart, but as a deep inlet between two rocks of coral in the Indian sea; when first upon the traveller's sight opened the long ranges of columned palaces--each with its black boat moored at the portal--each with its image cast down, beneath its feet, upon that green pavement which every breeze broke into new fantasies of rich tessellation; when first, at the extremity of the bright vista, the shadowy Rialto threw its colossal curve slowly forth from behind the palace of the Camerlenghi; that strange curve, so delicate, so adamantine, strong as a mountain cavern, graceful as a bow just bent; when first, before its moonlike circumference was all risen, the gondolier's cry, "Ah! Stali," struck sharp upon the ear, and the prow turned aside under the mighty cornices that half met over the narrow canal, where the plash of the water followed close and loud, ringing along the marble by the boat's side; and when at last that boat darted forth upon the breadth of silver sea, across which the front of the Ducal Palace, flushed with its sanguine veins, looks to the snowy dome of Our Lady of Salvation, it was no marvel that the mind should be so deeply entranced by the visionary charm of a scene so beautiful and so strange as to forget the darker truths of its history and its being. Well might it seem that such a city had owed her existence rather to the rod of the enchanter than the fear of the fugitive; that the waters which encircled her had been chosen for the mirror of her state rather than the shelter of her nakedness; and that all which in nature was wild or merciless--Time and Decay, as well as the waves and tempests--had been won to adorn her instead of to destroy, and might still spare, for ages to come, that beauty which seemed to have fixed for its throne the sands of the hour-glass as well as of the sea. And although the last few eventful years, fraught with change to the face of the whole earth, have been more fatal in their influence on Venice than the five hundred that preceded them; though the noble landscape of approach to her can now be seen no more, or seen only by a glance, as the engine slackens its rushing on the iron line; and though many of her palaces are forever defaced and many in desecrated ruins, there is still so much of magic in her aspect that the hurried traveller, who must leave her before the wonder of that first aspect has been worn away, may still be led to forget the humility of her origin and to shut his eyes to the depth of her desolation. They, at least, are little to be envied in whose hearts the great charities of the imagination lie dead, and for whom the fancy has no power to repress the importunity of painful impressions or to raise what is ignoble and disguise what is discordant in a scene so rich in its remembrances, so surpassing in its beauty. But for this work of the imagination there must be no permission during the task which is before us. The impotent feelings of romance, so singularly characteristic of this century, may indeed gild, but never save, the remains of those mightier ages to which they are attached like climbing flowers; and they must be torn away from the magnificent fragments, if we would see them as they stood in their own strength. Those feelings, always as fruitless as they are fond, are in Venice not only incapable of protecting, but even of discerning, the objects to which they ought to have been attached. The Venice of modern fiction and drama is a thing of yesterday, a mere efflorescence of decay, a stage dream which the first ray of daylight must dissipate into dust. No prisoner, whose name is worth remembering, or whose sorrow deserved sympathy, ever crossed that "Bridge of Sighs," which is the centre of the Byronic ideal of Venice; no great merchant of Venice ever saw that Rialto under which the traveller now passes with breathless interest: the statue which Byron makes Faliero address as of one of his great ancestors was erected to a soldier of fortune a hundred and fifty years after Faliero's death; and the most conspicuous parts of the city have been so entirely altered in the course of the last three centuries that if Henry Dandolo or Francis Foscari could be summoned from his tomb, and stood each on the deck of his galley at the entrance of the Grand Canal, that renowned entrance, the painter's favorite subject, the novelist's favorite scene, where the water first narrows by the steps of the Church of La Salute--the mighty doges would not know in what spot of the world they stood, would literally not recognize one stone of the great city, for whose sake, and by whose ingratitude, their gray hairs had been brought down with bitterness to the grave. The remains of _their_ Venice lie hidden behind the cumbrous masses which were the delight of the nation in its dotage; hidden in many a grass-grown court and silent pathway and lightless canal, where the slow waves have sapped their foundations for five hundred years, and must soon prevail over them forever. It must be our task to glean and gather them forth, and restore out of them some faint image of the lost city, more gorgeous a thousandfold than that which now exists, yet not created in the day-dream of the prince nor by the ostentation of the noble, but built by iron hands and patient hearts, contending against the adversity of nature and the fury of man, so that its wonderfulness cannot be grasped by the indolence of imagination, but only after frank inquiry into the true nature of that wild and solitary scene whose restless tides and trembling sands did indeed shelter the birth of the city, but long denied her dominion. When the eye falls casually on a map of Europe, there is no feature by which it is more likely to be arrested than the strange sweeping loop formed by the junction of the Alps and Apennines, and enclosing the great basin of Lombardy. This return of the mountain chain upon itself causes a vast difference in the character of the distribution of its _débris_ on its opposite sides. The rock fragments and sediment which the torrents on the north side of the Alps bear into the plains are distributed over a vast extent of country, and, though here and there lodged in beds of enormous thickness, soon permit the firm substrata to appear from underneath them; but all the torrents which descend from the southern side of the High Alps and from the northern slope of the Apennines meet concentrically in the recess or mountain-bay which the two ridges enclose; every fragment which thunder breaks out of their battlements, and every grain of dust which the summer rain washes from their pastures, is at last laid at rest in the blue sweep of the Lombardic plain; and that plain must have risen within its rocky barriers as a cup fills with wine, but for two contrary influences which continually depress, or disperse from its surface, the accumulation of the ruins of ages. I will not tax the reader's faith in modern science by insisting on this singular depression of the surface of Lombardy, which appears for many centuries to have taken place steadily and continually; the main fact with which we have to do is the gradual transport, by the Po and its great collateral rivers, of vast masses of the finer sediment to the sea. The character of the Lombardic plains is most strikingly expressed by the ancient walls of its cities, composed for the most part of large rounded Alpine pebbles alternating with narrow courses of brick, and was curiously illustrated in 1848 by the ramparts of these same pebbles thrown up four or five feet high round every field, to check the Austrian cavalry in the battle under the walls of Verona. The finer dust among which these pebbles are dispersed is taken up by the rivers, fed into continual strength by the Alpine snow, so that, however pure their waters may be when they issue from the lakes at the foot of the great chain, they become of the color and opacity of clay before they reach the Adriatic; the sediment which they bear is at once thrown down as they enter the sea, forming a vast belt of low land along the eastern coast of Italy. The powerful stream of the Po of course builds forward the fastest; on each side of it, north and south, there is a tract of marsh, fed by more feeble streams, and less liable to rapid change than the delta of the central river. In one of these tracts is built Ravenna, and in the other Venice. What circumstances directed the peculiar arrangement of this great belt of sediment in the earliest times, it is not here the place to inquire. It is enough for us to know that from the mouths of the Adige to those of the Piave there stretches, at a variable distance of from three to five miles from the actual shore, a bank of sand, divided into long islands by narrow channels of sea. The space between this bank and the true shore consists of the sedimentary deposits from these and other rivers, a great plain of calcareous mud, covered, in the neighborhood of Venice, by the sea at high water, to the depth in most places of a foot or a foot and a half, and nearly everywhere exposed at low tide, but divided by an intricate network of narrow and winding channels, from which the sea never retires. In some places, according to the run of the currents, the land has risen into marshy islets, consolidated, some by art, and some by time, into ground firm enough to be built upon or fruitful enough to be cultivated: in others, on the contrary, it has not reached the sea-level; so that, at the average low water, shallow lakelets glitter among its irregularly exposed fields of seaweed. In the midst of the largest of these, increased in importance by the confluence of several large river channels toward one of the openings in the sea-bank, the city of Venice itself is built, on a crowded cluster of islands; the various plots of higher ground which appear to the north and south of this central cluster have at different periods been also thickly inhabited, and now bear, according to their size, the remains of cities, villages, or isolated convents and churches, scattered among spaces of open ground, partly waste and encumbered by ruins, partly under cultivation for the supply of the metropolis. The average rise and fall of the tide are about three feet--varying considerably with the seasons--but this fall, on so flat a shore, is enough to cause continual movement in the waters, and in the main canals to produce a reflux which frequently runs like a mill-stream. At high water no land is visible for many miles to the north or south of Venice, except in the form of small islands crowned with towers or gleaming with villages; there is a channel, some three miles wide, between the city and the mainland, and some mile and a half wide between it and the sandy breakwater called the Lido, which divides the Lagoon from the Adriatic, but which is so low as hardly to disturb the impression of the city's having been built in the midst of the ocean, although the secret of its true position is partly, yet not painfully, betrayed by the clusters of piles set to mark the deep-water channels, which undulate far away in spotty chains like the studded backs of huge sea-snakes, and by the quick glittering of the crisped and crowded waves that flicker and dance before the strong winds upon the unlifted level of the shallow sea. But the scene is widely different at low tide. A fall of eighteen or twenty inches is enough to show ground over the greater part of the Lagoon; and at the complete ebb the city is seen standing in the midst of a dark plain of sea-weed, of gloomy green, except only where the larger branches of the Brenta and its associated streams converge toward the port of the Lido. Through this salt and sombre plain the gondola and the fishing-boat advance by tortuous channels, seldom more than four or five feet deep, and often so choked with slime that the heavier keels furrow the bottom till their crossing tracks are seen through the clear sea-water like the ruts upon a wintry road, and the oar leaves blue gashes upon the ground at every stroke, or is entangled among the thick weed that fringes the banks with the weight of its sullen waves, leaning to and fro upon the uncertain sway of the exhausted tide. The scene is often profoundly oppressive, even at this day, when every plot of higher ground bears some fragment of fair building: but, in order to know what it was once, let the traveller follow in his boat at evening the windings of some unfrequented channel far into the midst of the melancholy plain; let him remove, in his imagination, the brightness of the great city that still extends itself in the distance, and the walls and towers from the islands that are near; and so wait, until the bright investiture and sweet warmth of the sunset are withdrawn from the waters, and the black desert of their shore lies in its nakedness beneath the night, pathless, comfortless, infirm, lost in dark languor and fearful silence, except where the salt runlets plash into the tideless pools, or the sea-birds flit from their margins with a questioning cry; and he will be enabled to enter in some sort into the horror of heart with which this solitude was anciently chosen by man for his habitation. They little thought, who first drove the stakes into the sand, and strewed the ocean reeds for their rest, that their children were to be the princes of that ocean, and their palaces its pride; and yet, in the great natural laws that rule that sorrowful wilderness, let it be remembered what strange preparation had been made for the things which no human imagination could have foretold, and how the whole existence and fortune of the Venetian nation were anticipated or compelled, by the setting of those bars and doors to the rivers and the sea. Had deeper currents divided their islands, hostile navies would again and again have reduced the rising city into servitude; had stronger surges beaten their shores, all the richness and refinement of the Venetian architecture must have been exchanged for the walls and bulwarks of an ordinary seaport. Had there been no tide, as in other parts of the Mediterranean, the narrow canals of the city would have become noisome, and the marsh in which it was built pestiferous. Had the tide been only a foot or eighteen inches higher in its rise, the water access to the doors of the palaces would have been impossible; even as it is, there is sometimes a little difficulty, at the ebb, in landing without setting foot upon the lower and slippery steps: and the highest tides sometimes enter the court-yards, and overflow the entrance halls. Eighteen inches more of difference between the level of the flood and ebb would have rendered the doorsteps of every palace, at low water, a treacherous mass of weeds and limpets, and the entire system of water-carriage for the higher classes, in their easy and daily intercourse, must have been done away with. The streets of the city would have been widened, its network of canals filled up, and all the peculiar character of the place and the people destroyed. The reader may perhaps have felt some pain in the contrast between this faithful view of the site of the Venetian throne, and the romantic conception of it which we ordinarily form; but this pain, if he have felt it, ought to be more than counterbalanced by the value of the instance thus afforded to us at once of the inscrutableness and the wisdom of the ways of God. If, two thousand years ago, we had been permitted to watch the slow settling of the slime of those turbid rivers into the polluted sea, and the gaining upon its deep and fresh waters of the lifeless, impassable, unvoyageable plain, how little could we have understood the purpose with which those islands were shaped out of the void, and the torpid waters enclosed with their desolate walls of sand! How little could we have known, any more than of what now seems to us most distressful, dark, and objectless, the glorious aim which was then in the mind of Him in whose hand are all the corners of the earth! How little imagined that in the laws which were stretching forth the gloomy margins of those fruitless banks, and feeding the bitter grass among their shallows, there was indeed a preparation, and _the only preparation possible_, for the founding of a city which was to be set like a golden clasp on the girdle of the earth, to write her history on the white scrolls of the sea-surges, and to word it in their thunder, and to gather and give forth, in world-wide pulsation, the glory of the West and of the East, from the burning heart of her Fortitude and Splendor. CLOVIS FOUNDS THE KINGDOM OF THE FRANKS: IT BECOMES CHRISTIAN A.D. 486-511 FRANÇOIS P.G. GUIZOT Clovis, the sturdy Frank, wrought marvellous changes in Gaul. His marriage to the Christian princess Clotilde was followed by the conversion of himself and, gradually, that of his people. With a well-disciplined army he pulled down and swept away the last pillars of Roman power out of Gaul. Guizot gives a graphic account of the transition of the Franks, during two hundred and fifty years, from being isolated wandering tribes, each constantly warring against the other, to a well-ordered Christian kingdom, which led to the establishment of the French monarchy. The climax of this period of transition came in the reign of Clovis, with whom commences the real history of France. Under his strong hand the various tribes were gradually brought under his sole rule. When Clovis, at the age of fifteen, succeeded his father, Childeric, as king of the Salian tribe, his people were mainly pagans; the Salian domain was very limited, the treasury empty, and there was no store of either grain or wine. But these difficulties were overcome by him; he subjugated the neighboring tribes, and made Christianity the state religion. The new faith was accorded great privileges and means of influence, in many cases favorable to humanity and showing respect to the rights of individuals. So great an advance in civilization is an early milestone on the path of progress. About A.D. 241 or 242 the Sixth Roman legion, commanded by Aurelian, at that time military tribune, and thirty years later emperor, had just finished a campaign on the Rhine, undertaken for the purpose of driving the Germans from Gaul, and was preparing for eastern service, to make war on the Persians. The soldiers sang: "We have slain a thousand Franks and a thousand Sarmatians; we want a thousand, thousand, Thousand Persians." That was, apparently, a popular burthen at the time, for on the days of military festivals, at Rome and in Gaul, the children sang, as they danced: "We have cut off the heads of a thousand, thousand, thousand Thousand; One man hath cut off the heads of a thousand, thousand, thousand, Thousand thousand; May he live a thousand thousand years, he who Hath slain a thousand thousand! Nobody hath so much of wine as he Hath of blood poured out." Aurelian, the hero of these ditties, was indeed much given to the pouring out of blood, for at the approach of a fresh war he wrote to the senate: "I marvel, conscript fathers, that ye have so much misgiving about opening the Sibylline books, as if ye were deliberating in an assembly of Christians, and not in the temple of all the gods. Let inquiry be made of the sacred books, and let celebration take place of the ceremonies that ought to be fulfilled. Far from refusing, I offer, with zeal, to satisfy all expenditure required with _captives of every nationality_, victims of royal rank. It is no shame to conquer with the aid of the gods; it is thus that our ancestors began and ended many a war." Human sacrifices, then, were not yet foreign to pagan festivals, and probably the blood of more than one Frankish captive on that occasion flowed in the temple of all the gods. It is the first time the name of _Franks_ appears in history; and it indicated no particular, single people, but a confederation of Germanic peoplets, settled or roving on the right bank of the Rhine, from the Main to the ocean. The number and the names of the tribes united in this confederation are uncertain. A chart of the Roman Empire, prepared apparently at the end of the fourth century, in the reign of the emperor Honorius--which chart, called _tabula Peutingeri_, was found among the ancient MSS. collected by Conrad Peutinger, a learned German philosopher, in the fifteenth century--bears, over a large territory on the right bank of the Rhine, the word _Francia_, and the following enumeration: "The Chaucians, the Ampsuarians, the Cheruscans, and the Chamavians, who are also called Franks;" and to these tribes divers chroniclers added several others, "the Attuarians, the Bructerians, the Cattians, and the Sicambrians." Whatever may have been the specific names of these peoplets, they were all of German race, called themselves Franks, that is "freemen," and made, sometimes separately, sometimes collectively, continued incursions into Gaul--especially Belgica and the northern portions of Lyonness--at one time plundering and ravaging, at another occupying forcibly, or demanding of the Roman emperors lands whereon to settle. From the middle of the third to the beginning of the fifth century the history of the Western Empire presents an almost uninterrupted series of these invasions on the part of the Franks, together with the different relationships established between them and the imperial government. At one time whole tribes settled on Roman soil, submitted to the emperors, entered their service, and fought for them even against their own German compatriots. At another, isolated individuals, such and such warriors of German race, put themselves at the command of the emperors, and became of importance. At the middle of the third century the emperor Valerian, on committing a command to Aurelian, wrote, "Thou wilt have with thee Hartmund, Haldegast, Hildmund, and Carioviscus." Some Frankish tribes allied themselves more or less fleetingly with the imperial government, at the same time that they preserved their independence; others pursued, throughout the empire, their life of incursion and adventure. From A.D. 260 to 268, under the reign of Gallienus, a band of Franks threw itself upon Gaul, scoured it from northeast to southeast, plundering and devastating on its way; then it passed from Aquitania into Spain, took and burned Tarragona, gained possession of certain vessels, sailed away, and disappeared in Africa, after having wandered about for twelve years at its own will and pleasure. There was no lack of valiant emperors, precarious and ephemeral as their power may have been, to defend the empire, and especially Gaul, against those enemies, themselves ephemeral, but forever recurring; Decius, Valerian, Gallienus, Claudius Gothicus, Aurelian, and Probus gallantly withstood those repeated attacks of German hordes. Sometimes they flattered themselves they had gained a definitive victory, and then the old Roman pride exhibited itself in their patriotic confidence. About A.D. 278, the emperor Probus, after gaining several victories in Gaul over the Franks, wrote to the senate: "I render thanks to the immortal gods, conscript fathers, for that they have confirmed your judgment as regards me. Germany is subdued throughout its whole extent; nine kings of different nations have come and cast themselves at my feet, or rather at yours, as suppliants with their foreheads in the dust. Already all those barbarians are tilling for you, sowing for you, and fighting for you against the most distant nations. Order ye, therefore, according to your custom, prayers of thanksgiving, for we have slain four thousand of the enemy; we have had offered to us sixteen thousand men ready armed; and we have wrested from the enemy the seventy most important towns. The Gauls, in fact, are completely delivered. The crowns offered to me by all the cities of Gaul I have submitted, conscript fathers, to your grace; dedicate ye them with your own hands to Jupiter, all-bountiful, all-powerful, and to the other immortal gods and goddesses. All the booty is retaken, and, further, we have made fresh captures, more considerable than our first losses; the fields of Gaul are tilled by the oxen of the barbarians, and German teams bend their necks in slavery to our husbandmen; divers nations raise cattle for our consumption, and horses to remount our cavalry; our stores are full of the corn of the barbarians--in one word, we have left to the vanquished naught but the soil; all their other possessions are ours. We had at first thought it necessary, conscript fathers, to appoint a new governor of Germany; but we have put off this measure to the time when our ambition shall be more completely satisfied, which will be, as it seems to us, when it shall have pleased divine Providence to increase and multiply the forces of our armies." Probus had good reason to wish that "divine Providence might be pleased to increase the forces of the Roman armies," for even after his victories, exaggerated as they probably were, they did not suffice for their task, and it was not long before the vanquished recommenced war. He had dispersed over the territory of the empire the majority of the prisoners he had taken. A band of Franks, who had been transported and established as a military colony on the European shore of the Black Sea, could not make up their minds to remain there. They obtained possession of some vessels, traversed the Propontis, the Hellespont, and the Archipelago, ravaged the coasts of Greece, Asia Minor, and Africa, plundered Syracuse, scoured the whole of the Mediterranean, entered the ocean by the Straits of Gibraltar, and, making their way up again along the coasts of Gaul, arrived at last at the mouths of the Rhine, where they once more found themselves at home among the vines which Probus, in his victorious progress, had been the first to have planted, and with probably their old taste for adventure and plunder. After the commencement of the fifth century, from A.D. 406 to 409, it was no longer by incursions limited to certain points, and sometimes repelled with success, that the Germans harassed the Roman provinces; a veritable deluge of divers nations forced, one upon another, from Asia, into Europe, by wars and migration in mass, inundated the empire and gave the decisive signal for its fall. St. Jerome did not exaggerate when he wrote to Ageruchia: "Nations, countless in number and exceeding fierce, have occupied all the Gauls; Quadians, Vandals, Sarmatians, Alans, Gepidians, Herulians, Saxons, Burgundians, Allemannians, Pannonians, and even Assyrians have laid waste all that there is between the Alps and the Pyrenees, the ocean and the Rhine. Sad destiny of the Commonwealth! Mayence, once a noble city, hath been taken and destroyed; thousands of men were slaughtered in the church. Worms hath fallen after a long siege. The inhabitants of Rheims, a powerful city, and those of Amiens, Arras, Térouanne, at the extremity of Gaul, Tournay, Spires, and Strasburg have been carried away to Germany. All hath been ravaged in Aquitania (Novempopulania), Lyonness, and Narbonensis; the towns, save a few, are dispeopled; the sword pursueth them abroad and famine at home. I cannot speak without tears of Toulouse; if she be not reduced to equal ruin, it is to the merits of her holy bishop Exuperus that she oweth it." Then took place throughout the Roman Empire, in the East as well as in the West, in Asia and Africa as well as in Europe, the last grand struggle between the Roman armies and barbaric nations. _Armies_ is the proper term; for, to tell the truth, there was no longer a Roman nation, and very seldom a Roman emperor with some little capacity for government or war. The long continuance of despotism and slavery had enervated equally the ruling power and the people; everything depended on the soldiers and their generals. It was in Gaul that the struggle was most obstinate and most promptly brought to a decisive issue, and the confusion there was as great as the obstinacy. Barbaric peoplets served in the ranks and barbaric leaders held the command of the Roman armies; Stilicho was a Goth; Arbogastes and Mellobaudes were Franks; Ricimer was a Suevian. The Roman generals, Bonifacius, Aetius, Ægidius, Syagrius, at one time fought the barbarians, at another negotiated with such and such of them, either to entice them to take service against other barbarians, or to promote the objects of personal ambition; for the Roman generals also, under the titles of patrician, consul, or proconsul, aspired to and attained a sort of political independence, and contributed to the dismemberment of the empire in the very act of defending it. No later than A.D. 412 two German nations, the Visigoths and the Burgundians, took their stand definitively in Gaul, and founded there two new kingdoms: the Visigoths, under their kings Ataulph and Wallia, in Aquitania and Narbonensis; the Burgundians, under their kings Gundichaire and Gundioch, in Lyonnais, from the southern point of Alsatia right into Provence, along the two banks of the Saône and the left bank of the Rhone, and also in Switzerland. In 451 the arrival in Gaul of the Huns and their king Attila--already famous, both king and nation, for their wild habits, their fierce valor, and their successes against the Eastern Empire--gravely complicated the situation. The common interest of resistance against the most barbarous of barbarians, and the renown and energy of Aetius, united, for the moment, the old and new masters of Gaul; Romans, Gauls, Visigoths, Burgundians, Franks, Alans, Saxons, and Britons formed the army led by Aetius against that of Attila, who also had in his ranks Goths, Burgundians, Gepidians, Alans, and beyond-Rhine Franks, gathered together and enlisted on his road. It was a chaos and a conflict of barbarians, of every name and race, disputing one with another, pell-mell, the remnants of the Roman Empire torn asunder and in dissolution. Attila had already arrived before Orleans, and was laying siege to it. The bishop, St. Anianus, sustained awhile the courage of the besieged by promising them aid from Aetius and his allies. The aid was slow to come; and the bishop sent to Aetius a message: "If thou be not here this very day, my son, it will be too late." Still Aetius came not. The people of Orleans determined to surrender; the gates flew open; the Huns entered; the plundering began without much disorder; "wagons were stationed to receive the booty as it was taken from the houses, and the captives, arranged in groups, were divided by lot between the victorious chieftains." Suddenly a shout reëchoed through the streets: it was Aetius, Theodoric, and Torismund, his son, who were coming with the eagles of the Roman legions and with the banners of the Visigoths. A fight took place between them and the Huns, at first on the banks of the Loire, and then in the streets of the city. The people of Orleans joined their liberators; the danger was great for the Huns, and Attila ordered a retreat. It was the 14th of June, 451, and that day was for a long while celebrated in the church of Orleans as the date of a signal deliverance. The Huns retired toward Champagne, which they had already crossed at their coming into Gaul; and when they were before Troyes, the bishop, St. Lupus, repaired to Attila's camp, and besought him to spare a defenceless city, which had neither walls nor garrison. "So be it," answered Attila; "but thou shalt come with me and see the Rhine; I promise then to send thee back again." With mingled prudence and superstition the barbarian meant to keep the holy man as a hostage. The Huns arrived at the plains hard by Châlons-sur-Marne; Aetius and all his allies had followed them; and Attila, perceiving that a battle was inevitable, halted in a position for delivering it. The Gothic historian Jornandès says that he consulted his priests, who answered that the Huns would be beaten, but that _the general of the enemy_ would fall in the fight. In this prophecy Attila saw predicted the death of Aetius, his most formidable enemy; and the struggle commenced. There is no precise information about the date; but "it was," says Jornandès, "a battle which for atrocity, multitude, horror, and stubbornness has not the like in the records of antiquity." Historians vary in their exaggerations of the numbers engaged and killed: according to some, three hundred thousand, according to others one hundred and sixty-two thousand, were left on the field of battle. Theodoric, king of the Visigoths, was killed. Some chroniclers name Meroveus as king of the Franks, settled in Belgica, near Tongres, who formed part of the army of Aetius. They even attribute to him a brilliant attack made on the eve of the battle upon the Gepidians, allies of the Huns, when ninety thousand men fell according to some, and only fifteen thousand according to others. The numbers are purely imaginary, and even the fact is doubtful. However, the battle of Châlons drove the Huns out of Gaul, and was the last victory in Gaul, gained still in the name of the Roman Empire, but in reality for the advantage of the German nations which had already conquered it. Twenty-four years afterward the very name of Roman Empire disappeared with Augustulus, the last of the emperors of the West. Thirty years after the battle of Châlons the Franks settled in Gaul were not yet united as one nation; several tribes with this name, independent one of another, were planted between the Rhine and the Somme; there were some in the environs of Cologne, Calais, Cambrai, even beyond the Seine and as far as Le Mans, on the confines of the Britons. This is one of the reasons of the confusion that prevails in the ancient chronicles about the chieftains or kings of these tribes, their names and dates, and the extent and site of their possessions. Pharamond, Clodion, Meroveus, and Childeric cannot be considered as kings of France and placed at the beginning of her history. If they are met with in connection with historical facts, fabulous legends or fanciful traditions are mingled with them; Priam appears as a predecessor of Pharamond; Clodion, who passes for having been the first to bear and transmit to the Frankish kings the title of "long-haired," is represented as the son, at one time of Pharamond, at another of another chieftain named Théodemer; romantic adventures, spoilt by geographical mistakes, adorn the life of Childeric. All that can be distinctly affirmed is that, from A.D. 450 to 480, the two principal Frankish tribes were those of the Salian Franks and the Ripuarian Franks, settled, the latter in the east of Belgica, on the banks of the Moselle and the Rhine; the former toward the west, between the Meuse, the ocean, and the Somme. Meroveus, whose name was perpetuated in his line, was one of the principal chieftains of the Salian Franks; and his son Childeric, who resided at Tournai, where his tomb was discovered in 1655, was the father of Clovis, who succeeded him in 481, and with whom really commenced the kingdom and history of France. Clovis was fifteen or sixteen years old when he became king of the Salian Franks of Tournai. Five years afterward his ruling passion, ambition, exhibited itself, together with that mixture of boldness and craft which was to characterize his whole life. He had two neighbors: one, hostile to the Franks, the Roman patrician Syagrius, who was left master at Soissons after the death of his father Ægidius, and whom Gregory of Tours calls "king of the Romans"; the other, a Salian-Frankish chieftain, just as Clovis was, and related to him, Ragnacaire, who was settled at Cambrai. Clovis induced Ragnacaire to join him in a campaign against Syagrius. They fought, and Syagrius was driven to take refuge in Southern Gaul, with Alaric, king of the Visigoths. Clovis, not content with taking possession of Soissons, and anxious to prevent any troublesome return, demanded of Alaric to send Syagrius back to him, threatening war if the request were refused. The Goth, less bellicose than the Frank, delivered up Syagrius to the envoys of Clovis, who immediately had him secretly put to death, settled himself at Soissons, and from thence set on foot, in the country between the Aisne and the Loire, plundering and subjugating expeditions which speedily increased his domains and his wealth, and extended far and wide his fame as well as his ambition. The Franks who accompanied him were not long before they also felt the growth of his power; like him they were pagans, and the treasures of the Christian churches counted for a great deal in the booty they had to divide. On one of their expeditions they had taken in the church of Rheims, among other things, a vase "of marvellous size and beauty." The bishop of Rheims, St. Remi, was not quite a stranger to Clovis. Some years before, when he had heard that the son of Childeric had become king of the Franks of Tournai, he had written to congratulate him. "We are informed," said he, "that thou hast undertaken the conduct of affairs; it is no marvel that thou beginnest to be what thy fathers ever were;" and, while taking care to put himself on good terms with the young pagan chieftain, the bishop added to his felicitations some pious Christian counsel, without letting any attempt at conversion be mixed up with his moral exhortations. The bishop, informed of the removal of the vase, sent to Clovis a messenger begging the return, if not of all his church's ornaments, at any rate of that. "Follow us as far as Soissons," said Clovis to the messenger; "it is there the partition is to take place of what we have captured; when the lots shall have given me the vase, I will do what the bishop demands." When Soissons was reached, and all the booty had been placed in the midst of the host, the king said: "Valiant warriors, I pray you not to refuse me, over and above my share, this vase here." At these words of the king, those who were of sound mind among the assembly answered: "Glorious king, everything we see here is thine, and we ourselves are submissive to thy commands. Do thou as seemeth good to thee, for there is none that can resist thy power." When they had thus spoken, a certain Frank, light-minded, jealous, and vain, cried out aloud as he struck the vase with his battle-axe, "Thou shalt have naught of all this save what the lots shall truly give thee." At these words all were astounded; but the king bore the insult with sweet patience, and, accepting the vase, he gave it to the messenger, hiding his wound in the recesses of his heart. At the end of a year he ordered all his host to assemble fully equipped at the March parade, to have their arms inspected. After having passed in review all the other warriors, he came to him who had struck the vase. "None," said he, "hath brought hither arms so ill-kept as thine; nor lance, nor sword, nor battle-axe are in condition for service." And wresting from him his axe he flung it on the ground. The man stooped down a little to pick it up, and forthwith the King, raising with both hands his own battle-axe, drove it into his skull, saying, "Thus didst thou to the vase of Soissons!" On the death of this fellow he bade the rest begone, and by this act made himself greatly feared. A bold and unexpected deed has always a great effect on men: with his Frankish warriors, as well as with his Roman and Gothic foes, Clovis had at command the instincts of patience and brutality in turn; he could bear a mortification and take vengeance in due season. While prosecuting his course of plunder and war in Eastern Belgica, on the banks of the Meuse, Clovis was inspired with a wish to get married. He had heard tell of a young girl, like himself of the Germanic royal line, Clotilde, niece of Gondebaud, at that time king of the Burgundians. She was dubbed beautiful, wise, and well-informed; but her situation was melancholy and perilous. Ambition and fraternal hatred had devastated her family. Her father, Chilperic, and her two brothers, had been put to death by her uncle Gondebaud, who had caused her mother, Agrippina, to be thrown into the Rhone, with a stone round her neck, and drowned. Two sisters alone had survived this slaughter: the elder, Chrona, had taken religious vows; the other, Clotilde, was living almost in exile at Geneva, absorbed in works of piety and charity. The principal historian of this epoch, Gregory of Tours, an almost contemporary authority, for he was elected bishop sixty-two years after the death of Clovis, says simply: "Clovis at once sent a deputation to Gondebaud to ask Clotilde in marriage. Gondebaud, not daring to refuse, put her into the hands of the envoys, who took her promptly to the King. Clovis at sight of her was transported with joy, and married her." But to this short account other chroniclers, among them Frédégaire, who wrote a commentary upon and a continuation of Gregory of Tours' work, added details which deserve reproduction, first as a picture of manners, next for the better understanding of history. "As he was not allowed to see Clotilde," says Frédégaire, "Clovis charged a certain Roman, named Aurelian, to use all his wit to come nigh her. Aurelian repaired alone to the spot, clothed in rags and with his wallet upon his back, like a mendicant. To insure confidence in himself he took with him the ring of Clovis. On his arrival at Geneva, Clotilde received him as a pilgrim charitably, and while she was washing his feet Aurelian, bending toward her, said, under his breath, 'Lady, I have great matters to announce to thee if thou deign to permit me secret revelation.' She, consenting, replied, 'Say on.' 'Clovis, king of the Franks,' said he, 'hath sent me to thee: if it be the will of God, he would fain raise thee to his high rank by marriage; and that thou mayest be certified thereof, he sendeth thee this ring.' She accepted the ring with great joy, and said to Aurelian, 'Take for recompense of thy pains these hundred sous in gold and this ring of mine. Return promptly to thy lord; if he would fain unite me to him by marriage, let him send without delay messengers to demand me of my uncle Gondebaud, and let the messengers who shall come take me away in haste, so soon as they shall have obtained permission; if they haste not I fear lest a certain sage, one Aridius, may return from Constantinople, and, if he arrive beforehand, all this matter will by his counsel come to naught.' "Aurelian returned in the same disguise under which he had come. On approaching the territory of Orleans, and at no great distance from his house, he had taken as travelling companion a certain poor mendicant, by whom he, having fallen asleep from sheer fatigue, and thinking himself safe, was robbed of his wallet and the hundred sous in gold that it contained. On awakening, Aurelian was sorely vexed, ran swiftly home, and sent his servants in all directions in search of the mendicant who had stolen his wallet. He was found and brought to Aurelian, who, after drubbing him soundly for three days, let him go his way. He afterward told Clovis all that had passed and what Clotilde suggested. Clovis, pleased with his success and with Clotilde's notion, at once sent a deputation to Gondebaud to demand his niece in marriage. Gondebaud, not daring to refuse, and flattered at the idea of making a friend of Clovis, promised to give her to him. Then the deputation, having offered the denier and the sou, according to the custom of the Franks, espoused Clotilde in the name of Clovis, and demanded that she be given up to them to be married. "Without any delay the council was assembled at Châlons, and preparations made for the nuptials. The Franks, having arrived with all speed, received her from the hands of Gondebaud, put her into a covered carriage, and escorted her to Clovis, together with much treasure. She, however, having already learned that Aridius was on his way back, said to the Frankish lords, 'If ye would take me into the presence of your lord, let me descend from this carriage, mount me on horseback, and get you hence as fast as ye may; for never in this carriage shall I reach the presence of your lord.' "Aridius, in fact, returned very speedily from Marseilles, and Gondebaud, on seeing him, said to him, 'Thou knowest that we have made friends with the Franks, and that I have given my niece to Clovis to wife.' 'This,' answered Aridius, 'is no bond of friendship, but the beginning of perpetual strife. Thou shouldst have remembered, my lord, that thou didst slay Clotilde's father, thy brother Chilperic, that thou didst drown her mother, and that thou didst cut off her brothers' heads and cast their bodies into a well. If Clotilde become powerful she will avenge the wrongs of her relatives. Send thou forthwith a troop in chase, and have her brought back to thee. It will be easier for thee to bear the wrath of one person than to be perpetually at strife, thyself and thine, with all the Franks.' And Gondebaud did send forthwith a troop in chase to fetch back Clotilde with the carriage and all the treasure; but she, on approaching Villers, where Clovis was waiting for her, in the territory of the Troyes, and before passing the Burgundian frontier, urged them who escorted her to disperse right and left over a space of twelve leagues in the country whence she was departing, to plunder and burn; and that having been done with the permission of Clovis, she cried aloud, 'I thank thee, God omnipotent, for that I see the commencement of vengeance for my parents and my brethren!'" The majority of the learned have regarded this account of Frédégaire as a romantic fable, and have declined to give it a place in history. M. Fauriel, one of the most learned associates of the Academy of Inscriptions, has given much the same opinion, but he nevertheless adds: "Whatever may be their authorship, the fables in question are historic in the sense that they relate to real facts of which they are a poetical expression, a romantic development, conceived with the idea of popularizing the Frankish kings among the Gallo-Roman subjects." It cannot, however, be admitted that a desire to popularize the Frankish kings is a sufficient and truth-like explanation of these tales of the Gallo-Roman chroniclers, or that they are no more than "a poetical expression, a romantic development" of the real facts briefly noted by Gregory of Tours; the tales have a graver origin and contain more truth than would be presumed from some of the anecdotes and sayings mixed up with them. In the condition of minds and parties in Gaul at the end of the fifth century the marriage of Clovis and Clotilde was, for the public of the period, for the barbarians and for the Gallo-Romans, a great matter. Clovis and the Franks were still pagans; Gondebaud and the Burgundians were Christians, but Arians; Clotilde was a Catholic Christian. To which of the two, Catholics or Arians, would Clovis ally himself? To whom, Arian, pagan, or Catholic, would Clotilde be married? Assuredly the bishops, priests, and all the Gallo-Roman clergy, for the most part Catholics, desired to see Clovis, that young and audacious Frankish chieftain, take to wife a Catholic rather than an Arian or a pagan, and hoped to convert the pagan Clovis to Christianity much more easily than an Arian to orthodoxy. The question between Catholic orthodoxy and Arianism was, at that time, a vital question for Christianity in its entirety, and St. Athanasius was not wrong in attributing to it supreme importance. It may be presumed that the Catholic clergy, the bishop of Rheims, or the bishop of Langres was no stranger to the repeated praises which turned the thoughts of the Frankish King toward the Burgundian princess, and the idea of their marriage once set afloat, the Catholics, priesthood or laity, labored undoubtedly to push it forward, while the Burgundian Arians exerted themselves to prevent it. Thus there took place between opposing influences, religious and national, a most animated struggle. No astonishment can be felt, then, at the obstacles the marriage encountered, at the complications mingled with it, and at the indirect means employed on both sides to cause its success or failure. The account of Frédégaire is but a picture of this struggle and its incidents, a little amplified or altered by imagination or the credulity of the period; but the essential features of the picture, the disguise of Aurelian, the hurry of Clotilde, the prudent recollection of Aridius, Gondebaud's alternations of fear and violence, and Clotilde's vindictive passion when she is once out of danger--there is nothing in all this out of keeping with the manners of the time or the position of the actors. Let it be added that Aurelian and Aridius are real personages who are met with elsewhere in history, and whose parts as played on the occasion of Clotilde's marriage are in harmony with the other traces that remain of their lives. The consequences of the marriage justified before long the importance which had on all sides been attached to it. Clotilde had a son; she was anxious to have him baptized, and urged her husband to consent. "The gods you worship," said she, "are naught, and can do naught for themselves or others; they are of wood or stone or metal." Clovis resisted, saying: "It is by the command of our gods that all things are created and brought forth. It is plain that your God hath no power; there is no proof even that he is of the race of the gods." But Clotilde prevailed; and she had her son baptized solemnly, hoping that the striking nature of the ceremony might win to the faith the father whom her words and prayers had been powerless to touch. The child soon died, and Clovis bitterly reproached the Queen, saying: "Had the child been dedicated to my gods he would be alive; he was baptized in the name of your God, and he could not live." Clotilde defended her God and prayed. She had a second son who was also baptized, and fell sick. "It cannot be otherwise with him than with his brother," said Clovis; "baptized in the name of your Christ, he is going to die." But the child was cured, and lived; and Clovis was pacified and less incredulous of Christ. An event then came to pass which affected him still more than the sickness or cure of his children. In 496 the Alemannians, a Germanic confederation like the Franks, who also had been, for some time past, assailing the Roman Empire on the banks of the Rhine or the frontiers of Switzerland, crossed the river and invaded the settlements of the Franks on the left bank. Clovis went to the aid of his confederation and attacked the Alemannians at Tolbiac, near Cologne. He had with him Aurelian, who had been his messenger to Clotilde, whom he had made duke of Melun, and who commanded the forces of Sens. The battle was going ill; the Franks were wavering and Clovis was anxious. Before setting out he had, according to Frédégaire, promised his wife that if he were victorious he would turn Christian. Other chroniclers say that Aurelian, seeing the battle in danger of being lost, said to Clovis, "My lord King, believe only on the Lord of heaven whom the Queen, my mistress, preacheth." Clovis cried out with emotion: "Christ Jesus, thou whom my queen Clotilde calleth the Son of the living God, I have invoked my own gods, and they have withdrawn from me; I believe that they have no power, since they aid not those who call upon them. Thee, very God and Lord, I invoke; if thou give me victory over these foes, if I find in thee the power that the people proclaim of thee, I will believe on thee, and will be baptized in thy name." The tide of battle turned; the Franks recovered confidence and courage; and the Allemannians, beaten and seeing their King slain, surrendered themselves to Clovis, saying: "Cease, of thy grace, to cause any more of our people to perish; for we are thine." On the return of Clovis, Clotilde, fearing he should forget his victory and his promise, "secretly sent," says Gregory of Tours, "to St. Remi, bishop of Rheims, and prayed him to penetrate the King's heart with the words of salvation." St. Remi was a fervent Christian and able bishop; and "I will listen to thee, most holy father," said Clovis, "willingly; but there is a difficulty. The people that follow me will not give up their gods. But I am about to assemble them, and will speak to them according to thy word." The King found the people more docile or better prepared than he had represented to the bishop. Even before he opened his mouth the greater part of those present cried out: "We abjure the mortal gods; we are ready to follow the immortal God whom Remi preacheth." About three thousand Frankish warriors, however, persisted in their intention of remaining pagans, and deserting Clovis betook themselves to Ragnacaire, the Frankish king of Cambrai, who was destined ere long to pay dearly for this acquisition. So soon as St. Remi was informed of this good disposition on the part of king and people, he fixed Christmas Day of this year, 496, for the ceremony of the baptism of these grand neophytes. The description of it is borrowed from the historian of the church of Rheims, Frodoard by name, born at the close of the ninth century. He gathered together the essential points of it from the _Life of Saint Remi_, written, shortly before that period, by the saint's celebrated successor at Rheims, Archbishop Hincmar. "The bishop," says he, "went in search of the King at early morn in his bed-chamber, in order that, taking him at the moment of freedom from secular cares, he might more freely communicate to him the mysteries of the holy word. The King's chamber-people receive him with great respect, and the King himself runs forward to meet him. Thereupon they pass together into an oratory dedicated to St. Peter, chief of the apostles, and adjoining the King's apartment. "When the bishop, the King, and the Queen had taken their places on the seats prepared for them, and admission had been given to some clerics and also some friends and household servants of the King, the venerable bishop began his instructions on the subject of salvation. "Meanwhile preparations are being made along the road from the palace to the baptistery; curtains and valuable stuffs are hung up; the houses on either side of the street are dressed out; the baptistery is sprinkled with balm and all manner of perfume. The procession moves from the palace; the clergy lead the way with the holy gospels, the cross, and standards, singing hymns and spiritual songs; then comes the bishop, leading the King by the hand; after him the Queen, lastly the people. On the road, it is said that the King asked the bishop if that were the kingdom promised him. 'No,' answered the prelate, 'but it is the entrance to the road that leads to it.' "At the moment when the King bent his head over the fountain of life, 'Lower thy head with humility, Sicambrian,' cried the eloquent bishop; 'adore what thou hast burned; burn what thou hast adored.' The King's two sisters, Alboflède and Lantéchilde, likewise received baptism; and so at the same time did three thousand of the Frankish army, besides a large number of women and children." When it was known that Clovis had been baptized by St. Remi, and with what striking circumstance, great was the satisfaction among the Catholics. The chief Burgundian prelate, Avitus, bishop of Vienne, wrote to the Frankish King: "Your faith is our victory; in choosing for you and yours, you have pronounced for all; divine Providence hath given you as arbiter to our age. Greece can boast of having a sovereign of our persuasion; but she is no longer alone in possession of this precious gift; the rest of the world doth share her light." Pope Anastasius hastened to express his joy to Clovis. "The Church, our common mother," he wrote, "rejoiceth to have born unto God so great a king. Continue, glorious and illustrious son, to cheer the heart of this tender mother; be a column of iron to support her, and she in her turn will give thee victory over all thine enemies." Clovis was not a man to omit turning his Catholic popularity to the account of his ambition. At the very time when he was receiving these testimonies of good-will from the heads of the Church he learned that Gondebaud, disquieted, no doubt, at the conversion of his powerful neighbor, had just made a vain attempt, at a conference held at Lyons, to reconcile in his kingdom the Catholics and the Arians. Clovis considered the moment favorable to his projects of aggrandizement at the expense of the Burgundian King; he fomented the dissensions which already prevailed between Gondebaud and his brother Godegisile, assured to himself the latter's complicity, and suddenly entered Burgundy with his army. Gondebaud, betrayed and beaten at the first encounter at Dijon, fled to the south of his kingdom, and went and shut himself up in Avignon. Clovis pursued, and besieged him there. Gondebaud in great alarm asked counsel of his Roman confidant Aridius, who had but lately foretold to him what the marriage of his niece Clotilde would bring upon him. "On every side," said the King, "I am encompassed by perils, and I know not what to do. Lo! here be these barbarians come upon us to slay us and destroy the land." "To escape death," answered Aridius, "thou must appease the ferocity of this man. Now, if it please thee, I will feign to fly from thee and go over to him. So soon as I shall be with him, I will so do that he ruin neither thee nor the land. Only have thou care to perform whatsoever I shall ask of thee, until the Lord in his goodness deign to make thy cause triumph." "All that thou shalt bid will I do," said Gondebaud. So Aridius left Gondebaud and went his way to Clovis, and said: "Most pious King, I am thy humble servant; I give up this wretched Gondebaud and come unto thy mightiness. If thy goodness deign to cast a glance upon me, thou and thy descendants will find in me a servant of integrity and fidelity." Clovis received him very kindly and kept him by him, for Aridius was agreeable in conversation, wise in counsel, just in judgment, and faithful in whatever was committed to his care. As the siege continued Aridius said to Clovis: "O King, if the glory of thy greatness would suffer thee to listen to the words of my feebleness, though thou needest not counsel, I would submit them to thee in all fidelity, and they might be of use to thee, whether for thyself or for the towns by the which thou dost propose to pass. Wherefore keepest thou here thine army whilst thine enemy doth hide himself in a well-fortified place? Thou ravagest the fields, thou pillagest the corn, thou cuttest down the vines, thou fellest the olive-trees, thou destroyest all the produce of the land, and yet thou succeedest not in destroying thine adversary. Rather send thou unto him deputies, and lay on him a tribute to be paid to thee every year. Thus the land will be preserved, and thou wilt be lord forever over him who owes thee tribute. If he refuse, thou shalt then do what pleaseth thee." Clovis found the counsel good, ordered his army to return home, sent deputies to Gondebaud, and called upon him to undertake the payment every year of a fixed tribute. Gondebaud paid for the time, and promised to pay punctually for the future. And peace appeared made between the two barbarians. Pleased with his campaign against the Burgundians, Clovis kept on good terms with Gondebaud, who was to be henceforth a simple tributary, and transferred to the Visigoths of Aquitania and their King, Alaric II, his views of conquest. He had there the same pretexts for attack and the same means of success. Alaric and his Visigoths were Arians, and between them and the bishops of Southern Gaul, nearly all orthodox Catholics, there were permanent ill-will and distrust. Alaric attempted to conciliate their good-will: in 506 a council met at Agde; the thirty-four bishops of Aquitania attended in person or by delegate; the King protested that he had no design of persecuting the Catholics; the bishops, at the opening of the council, offered prayers for the King; but Alaric did not forget that immediately after the conversion of Clovis, Volusian, bishop of Tours, had conspired in favor of the Frankish King, and the bishops of Aquitania regarded Volusian as a martyr, for he had been deposed, without trial, from his see, and taken as a prisoner first to Toulouse, and afterward into Spain, where in a short time he had been put to death. In vain did the glorious chief of the race of Goths, Theodoric the Great, king of Italy, father-in-law of Alaric, and brother-in-law of Clovis, exert himself to prevent any outbreak between the two kings. In 498 Alaric, no doubt at his father-in-law's solicitation, wrote to Clovis, "If my brother consent thereto, I would, following my desires and by the grace of God, have an interview with him." The interview took place at a small island in the Loire, called the Ile d'Or or de St. Jean, near Amboise. "The two kings," says Gregory of Tours, "conversed, ate, and drank together, and separated with mutual promises of friendship." The positions and passions of each soon made the promises of no effect. In 505 Clovis was seriously ill; the bishops of Aquitania testified warm interest in him; and one of them, Quintian, bishop of Rodez, being on this account persecuted by the Visigoths, had to seek refuge at Clermont, in Auvergne. Clovis no longer concealed his designs. In 507 he assembled his principal chieftains; and "It displeaseth me greatly," said he, "that these Arians should possess a portion of the Gauls; march we forth with the help of God, drive we them from that land, for it is very goodly, and bring we it under our own power." The Franks applauded their King; and the army set out on the march in the direction of Poitiers, where Alaric happened at that time to be. "As a portion of the troops was crossing the territory of Tours," says Gregory, who was shortly afterward its bishop, "Clovis forbade, out of respect for St. Martin, anything to be taken, save grass and water. One of the army, however, having found some hay belonging to a poor man, said, 'This is grass; we do not break the King's commands by taking it'; and, in spite of the poor man's resistance, he robbed him of his hay. Clovis, informed of the fact, slew the soldier on the spot with one sweep of his sword, saying, 'What will become of our hopes of victory, if we offend St. Martin?'" Alaric had prepared for the struggle; and the two armies met in the plain of Vouillé, on the banks of the little river Clain, a few leagues from Poitiers. The battle was very severe. "The Goths," says Gregory of Tours, "fought with missiles; the Franks sword in hand. Clovis met and with his own hand slew Alaric in the fray; at the moment of striking his blow two Goths fell suddenly upon Clovis, and attacked him with their pikes on either side, but he escaped death, thanks to his cuirass and the agility of his horse." Beaten and kingless, the Goths retreated in great disorder; and Clovis, pursuing his march, arrived without opposition at Bordeaux, where he settled down with his Franks for the winter. When the war season returned he marched on Toulouse, the capital of the Visigoths, which he likewise occupied without resistance, and where he seized a portion of the treasure of the Visigothic kings. He quitted it to lay siege to Carcassonne, which had been made by the Romans into the stronghold of Septimania. There his course of conquest was destined to end. After the battle of Vouillé he had sent his eldest son, Theodoric, in command of a division, with orders to cross Central Gaul from west to east, to go and join the Burgundians of Gondebaud, who had promised his assistance, and in conjunction with them to attack the Visigoths on the banks of the Rhone and in Narbonensis. The young Frank boldly executed his father's orders, but the intervention of Theodoric the Great, king of Italy, prevented the success of the operation. He sent an army into Gaul to the aid of his son-in-law Alaric; and the united Franks and Burgundians failed in their attacks upon the Visigoths of the eastern provinces. Clovis had no idea of compromising by his obstinacy the conquests already accomplished; he therefore raised the siege of Carcassonne, returned first to Toulouse, and then to Bordeaux, took Angoulême, the only town of importance he did not possess in Aquitania; and feeling reasonably sure that the Visigoths, who, even with the aid that had come from Italy, had great difficulty in defending what remained to them of Southern Gaul, would not come and dispute with him what he had already conquered, he halted at Tours, and stayed there some time, to enjoy on the very spot the fruits of his victory and to establish his power in his new possessions. It appears that even the Britons of Armorica tendered to him at that time, through the interposition of Melanius, bishop of Rennes, if not their actual submission, at any rate their subordination and homage. Clovis at the same time had his self-respect flattered in a manner to which barbaric conquerors always attach great importance. Anastasius, emperor of the East, with whom he had already had some communication, sent to him at Tours a solemn embassy, bringing him the titles and insignia of patrician and consul. "Clovis," says Gregory of Tours, "put on the tunic of purple and the chlamys and the diadem; then mounting his horse, he scattered with his own hand and with much bounty gold and silver among the people, on the road which lies between the gate of the court belonging to the basilica of St. Martin and the church of the city. From that day he was called consul and augustus. On leaving the city of Tours he repaired to Paris, where he fixed the seat of his government." Paris was certainly the political centre of his dominions, the intermediate point between the early settlements of his race and himself in Gaul and his new Gallic conquests; but he lacked some of the possessions nearest to him and most naturally, in his own opinion, his. To the east, north, and south-west of Paris were settled some independent Frankish tribes, governed by chieftains with the name of kings. So soon as he had settled at Paris, it was the one fixed idea of Clovis to reduce them all to subjection. He had conquered the Burgundians and the Visigoths; it remained for him to conquer and unite together all the Franks. The barbarian showed himself in his true colors, during this new enterprise, with his violence, his craft, his cruelty, and his perfidy. He began with the most powerful of the tribes, the Ripuarian Franks. He sent secretly to Cloderic, son of Sigebert, their King, saying: "Thy father hath become old, and his wound maketh him to limp o' one foot; if he should die, his kingdom will come to thee of right, together with our friendship." Cloderic had his father assassinated while asleep in his tent, and sent messengers to Clovis, saying: "My father is dead, and I have in my power his kingdom and his treasures. Send thou unto me certain of thy people, and I will gladly give into their hands whatsoever among these treasures shall seem like to please thee." The envoys of Clovis came, and, as they were examining in detail the treasures of Sigebert, Cloderic said to them, "This is the coffer wherein my father was wont to pile up his gold pieces." "Plunge," said they, "thy hand right to the bottom, that none escape thee." Cloderic bent forward, and one of the envoys lifted his battle-axe and cleft his skull. Clovis went to Cologne and convoked the Franks of the canton. "Learn," said he, "that which hath happened. As I was sailing on the river Scheldt, Cloderic, son of my relative, did vex his father, saying I was minded to slay him; and as Sigebert was flying across the forest of Buchaw, his son himself sent bandits, who fell upon him and slew him. Cloderic also is dead, smitten I know not by whom as he was opening his father's treasures. I am altogether unconcerned in it all, and I could not shed the blood of my relatives, for it is a crime. But since it hath so happened, I give unto you counsel, which ye shall follow if it seem to you good; turn ye toward me, and live under my protection." And they who were present hoisted him on a huge buckler and hailed him king. After Sigebert and the Ripuarian Franks came the Franks of Térouanne, and Chararic, their King. He had refused, twenty years before, to march with Clovis against the Roman Syagrius. Clovis, who had not forgotten it, attacked him, took him and his son prisoners, and had them both shorn, ordering that Chararic should be ordained priest and his son deacon. Chararic was much grieved. Then said his son to him: "Here be branches which were cut from a green tree, and are not yet wholly dried up: soon they will sprout forth again. May it please God that he who hath wrought all this shall die as quickly!" Clovis considered these words as a menace, had both father and son beheaded, and took possession of their dominions. Ragnacaire, king of the Franks of Cambrai, was the third to be attacked. He had served Clovis against Syagrius, but Clovis took no account of that. Ragnacaire, being beaten, was preparing for flight, when he was seized by his own soldiers, who tied his hands behind his back, and took him to Clovis along with his brother Riquier. "Wherefore hast thou dishonored our race," said Clovis, "by letting thyself wear bonds? 'Twere better to have died," and cleft his skull with one stroke of his battle-axe; then turning to Riquier, "Hadst thou succored thy brother," said he, "he had assuredly not been bound," and felled him likewise at his feet. Rignomer, king of the Franks of Le Mans, met the same fate, but not at the hands, only by the order, of Clovis. So Clovis remained sole king of the Franks, for all the independent chieftains had disappeared. It is said that one day, after all these murders, Clovis, surrounded by his trusted servants, cried: "Woe is me! who am left as a traveller among strangers, and who have no longer relatives to lend me support in the day of adversity!" Thus do the most shameless take pleasure in exhibiting sham sorrow after crimes they cannot disavow. It cannot be known whether Clovis ever felt in his soul any scruple or regret for his many acts of ferocity and perfidy, or if he looked as sufficient expiation upon the favor he had bestowed on the churches and their bishops, upon the gifts he lavished on them, and upon the absolutions he demanded of them. In times of mingled barbarism and faith there are strange cases of credulity in the way of bargains made with divine justice. We read in the life of St. Eleutherus, bishop of Tournai, the native land of Clovis, that at one of those periods when the conscience of the Frankish King must have been most heavily laden, he presented himself one day at the church. "My lord King," said the bishop, "I know wherefore thou art come to me." "I have nothing special to say unto thee," rejoined Clovis, "Say not so, O King," replied the bishop; "thou hast sinned, and darest not avow it." The King was moved, and ended by confessing that he had deeply sinned and had need of large pardon. St. Eleutherus betook himself to prayer; the King came back the next day, and the bishop gave him a paper on which was written by a divine hand, he said, "the pardon granted to royal offences which might not be revealed." Clovis accepted this absolution, and loaded the church of Tournai with his gifts. In 511, the very year of his death, his last act in life was the convocation at Orleans of a council, which was attended by thirty bishops from the different parts of his kingdom, and at which were adopted thirty-one canons that, while granting to the Church great privileges and means of influence, in many cases favorable to humanity and respect for the rights of individuals, bound the Church closely to the state, and gave to royalty, even in ecclesiastical matters, great power. The bishops, on breaking up, sent these canons to Clovis, praying him to give them the sanction of his adhesion, which he did. A few months afterward, on the 27th of November, 511, Clovis died at Paris, and was buried in the church of St. Peter and St. Paul, nowadays St. Geneviève, built by his wife, Queen Clotilde, who survived him. It was but right to make the reader intimately acquainted with that great barbarian who, with all his vices and all his crimes, brought about, or rather began, two great matters which have already endured through fourteen centuries and still endure; for he founded the French monarchy and Christian France. Such men and such facts have a right to be closely studied and set in a clear light by history. Nothing similar will be seen for two centuries, under the descendants of Clovis, the Merovingians; among them will be encountered none but those personages whom death reduces to insignificance, whatever may have been their rank in the world, and of whom Vergil thus speaks to Dante: "Waste we no words on them: one glance and pass thou on." PUBLICATION OF THE JUSTINIAN CODE A.D. 529-534 EDWARD GIBBON The richest legacy ever left by one civilization to another was the Justinian Code. This compilation of the entire body of the Roman civil law (_Corpus Juris Civilis_), as evolved during the thousand years after the Decemvirate legislation of the Twelve Tables, comprises perhaps the most valuable historical data preserved from ancient times. It presents a vivid and authentic picture of the domestic life of the Romans and the rules which governed their relations to each other. This phase of history is considered by modern historians as of far greater importance than the chronicles of battles and court intrigues. The importance of the Justinian Code, however, is not that of mere history. Its influence as a living force is what compels the admiration and gratitude of mankind. It forms the basis of the systems of law in all the civilized nations of the world, with the exception of those of the English-speaking peoples, and even in these the principles of the civil law--as the Roman law is called in contradistinction to the common and statute law of these nations--form the most important part of the regulations concerning personal property. For this monumental work the world is indebted to Justinian I (Flavius Anicius Justinianus), the most famous of the emperors of the Eastern Empire since Constantine. He was born a Slavonian peasant. Uprawda, his original name, was Latinized into Justinian when he became an officer in the Imperial Guard. He was adopted, educated, and trained by Justin I, whom he succeeded as emperor. His long reign (527-565) was disturbed by the sanguinary factions of the Circus--the Greens and the Blues, so named from the colors of the competing charioteers in the games--the suppression of the schools of philosophy at Athens, and by various wars. Nevertheless it was marked by magnificent works, the administrative organization of the empire, and the great buildings at Constantinople. The Church of Santa-Sophia, the first great Christian church, although used as a Mahometan mosque since 1459, still stands at Constantinople, with its plain exterior but impressive interior, a monument of Justinian's reign. His two great masters of war, foreigners in origin like himself, were Belisarius the Thracian and Narses the Armenian. Africa was wrested from the Vandals; Italy from the successors of Theodoric; and much of Spain from the Western Goths. Under Justinian the Byzantine or Eastern Empire resumed much of the majesty and power of ancient Rome. But the crowning glory of his career was the Code. One of the greatest historians says of his reign: "Its most instructive lesson has been drawn from the influence which its legislation has exercised on foreign nations. The unerring instinct of mankind has fixed on this period as one of the greatest eras in man's annals." The Code was a digest of the whole mass of Roman law literature, compiled and annotated at the command of Justinian, under the supervision of the great lawyer Tribonian, who, with his helpers, reduced the chaotic mass to a logical system containing the essence of Roman law. The first part of the _Codex Constitutionem_, prepared in less than a year, was published in April, 529. The second part, the _Digest_ or _Pandects,_ appeared in December, 533. To insure conformity, both were revised and issued in November, 534, the Institutiones, an _elementary_ text-book, founded on the _Institutiones_ of Gaius, who lived A.D. 110-180, being added, and the whole, as a complete body of law, given to the law schools at Constantinople, Rome, Alexandria, Berytus, and Cæsarea, for use in their graduate course. Later the _Novellæ Constitutione_, or _Novels,_ most of them in Greek, comprising statutes of Justinian arranged chronologically, completed the Code. Forgotten or ignored during the lawless days of the Dark Ages, an entire copy of this famous code was discovered when Amalphi was taken by the Pisans in 1137. Its publication immediately attracted the attention of the learned world. Gratian, a monk of Bologna, compiled a digest of the canon law on the model of that work, and soon afterward, incorporating with his writings the collections of prior authors, gave his "decretum" to the public in 1151. From that time the two codes, the civil and canon laws, were deemed the principal repositories of legal knowledge, and the study of each was considered necessary to throw light on the other. Justinian's example in the codification of laws was followed by almost every European nation after the eighteenth century; the Code Napoleon (1803-04), regulating all that pertains "to the civil rights of citizens and of property," being the most brilliant parallel to the Justinian Code. The reader familiar with the life of Napoleon will recall that all of his historians quote his frequent allusion to the Code Napoleon as the one great work which would be a living monument of his career, when the glory of all his other achievements would be dimmed by time or forgotten. Gibbon's examination of the Justinian Code is justly regarded as one of the most important features of the historian's great work, and in several of the leading universities of Europe has long been used as a text-work on civil law. When Justinian ascended the throne, the reformation of the Roman jurisprudence was an arduous but indispensable task. In the space of ten centuries, the infinite variety of laws and legal opinions had filled many thousand volumes, which no fortune could purchase and no capacity could digest. Books could not easily be found; and the judges, poor in the midst of riches, were reduced to the exercise of their illiterate discretion. The subjects of the Greek provinces were ignorant of the language that disposed of their lives and properties; and the _barbarous_ dialect of the Latins was imperfectly studied in the academies of Berytus and Constantinople. As an Illyrian soldier, that idiom was familiar to the infancy of Justinian; his youth had been instructed by the lessons of jurisprudence, and his imperial choice selected the most learned civilians of the East, to labor with their sovereign in the work of reformation. The theory of professors was assisted by the practice of advocates and the experience of magistrates, and the whole undertaking was animated by the spirit of Tribonian. This extraordinary man, the object of so much praise and censure, was a native of Side in Pamphylia; and his genius, like that of Bacon, embraced as his own all the business and knowledge of the age. Tribonian composed, both in prose and verse, on a strange diversity of curious and abstruse subjects; a double panegyric of Justinian and the life of the philosopher Theodotus; the nature of happiness and the duties of government; Homer's catalogue and the four-and-twenty sorts of metre; the astronomical canon of Ptolemy; the changes of the months; the houses of the planets; and the harmonic system of the world. To the literature of Greece he added the use of the Latin tongue; the Roman civilians were deposited in his library and in his mind; and he most assiduously cultivated those arts which opened the road of wealth and preferment. From the bar of the prætorian prefects he raised himself to the honors of quæstor, of consul, and of master of the offices: the council of Justinian listened to his eloquence and wisdom, and envy was mitigated by the gentleness and affability of his manners. The reproaches of impiety and avarice have stained the virtues or the reputation of Tribonian. In a bigoted and persecuting court the principal minister was accused of a secret aversion to the Christian faith, and was supposed to entertain the sentiments of an atheist and a pagan, which have been imputed, inconsistently enough, to the last philosophers of Greece. His avarice was more clearly proved and more sensibly felt. If he were swayed by gifts in the administration of justice, the example of Bacon will again occur: nor can the merit of Tribonian atone for his baseness, if he degraded the sanctity of his profession; and if laws were every day enacted, modified, or repealed, for the base consideration of his private emolument. In the sedition of Constantinople his removal was granted to the clamors, perhaps to the just indignation, of the people; but the quæstor was speedily restored, and, till the hour of his death, he possessed above twenty years the favor and confidence of the Emperor. His passive and dutiful submission has been honored with the praise of Justinian himself, whose vanity was incapable of discerning how often that submission degenerated into the grossest adulation. Tribonian adored the virtues of his gracious master: the earth was unworthy of such a prince; and he affected a pious fear, that Justinian, like Elijah or Romulus, would be snatched into the air and translated alive to the mansions of celestial glory. If Cæsar had achieved the reformation of the Roman law, his creative genius, enlightened by reflection and study, would have given to the world a pure and original system of jurisprudence. Whatever flattery might suggest, the Emperor of the East was afraid to establish his private judgment as the standard of equity; in the possession of legislative power, he borrowed the aid of time and opinion; and his laborious compilations are guarded by the sages and legislators of past times. Instead of a statue cast in a simple mould by the hand of an artist, the works of Justinian represent a tessellated pavement of antique and costly, but too often of incoherent, fragments. In the first year of his reign he directed the faithful Tribonian and nine learned associates to revise the ordinances of his predecessors, as they were contained, since the time of Adrian, in the Gregorian, Hermogenian, and Theodosian codes; to purge the errors and contradictions, to retrench whatever was obsolete or superfluous, and to select the wise and salutary laws best adapted to the practice of the tribunals and the use of his subjects. The work was accomplished in fourteen months; and the _Twelve_ books or _Tables_, which the new decemvirs produced, might be designed to imitate the labors of their Roman predecessors. The new _Code_ of Justinian was honored with his name and confirmed by his royal signature: authentic transcripts were multiplied by the pens of notaries and scribes; they were transmitted to the magistrates of the European, the Asiatic, and afterward the African provinces; and the law of the empire was proclaimed on solemn festivals at the doors of churches. A more arduous operation was still behind--to extract the spirit of jurisprudence from the decisions and conjectures, the questions and disputes of the Roman civilians. Seventeen lawyers, with Tribonian at their head, were appointed by the Emperor to exercise an absolute jurisdiction over the works of their predecessors. If they had obeyed his commands in ten years, Justinian would have been satisfied with their diligence; and the rapid composition of the _Digest_ or _Pandects_ in three years will deserve praise or censure, according to the merit of the execution. From the library of Tribonian they chose forty, the most eminent civilians of former times: two thousand treatises were comprised in an abridgment of fifty books; and it has been carefully re-reduced in this abstract to the moderate number of one hundred and fifty thousand. The edition of this great work was delayed a month after that of the _Institutes_, and it seemed reasonable that the elements should precede the digest of the Roman law. As soon as the Emperor had approved their labors, he ratified by his legislative power the speculations of these private citizens: their commentaries on the _Twelve Tables_, the perpetual edict, the laws of the people, and the decrees of the senate succeeded to the authority of the text; and the text was abandoned as a useless, though venerable, relic of antiquity. The _Code_, the _Pandects_, and the _Institutes_ were declared to be the legitimate system of civil jurisprudence; they alone were admitted in the tribunals, and they alone were taught in the academies of Rome, Constantinople, and Berytus. Justinian addressed to the senate and provinces his _eternal oracles_; and his pride, under the mask of piety, ascribed the consummation of this great design to the support and inspiration of the Deity. Since the Emperor declined the fame and envy of original composition, we can only require at his hands method, choice, and fidelity, the humble, though indispensable, virtues of a compiler. Among the various combinations of ideas it is difficult to assign any reasonable preference; but as the order of Justinian is different in his three works, it is possible that all may be wrong; and it is certain that two cannot be right. In the selection of ancient laws he seems to have viewed his predecessors without jealousy and with equal regard: the series could not ascend above the reign of Adrian; and the narrow distinction of paganism and Christianity, introduced by the superstition of Theodosius, had been abolished by the consent of mankind. But the jurisprudence of the _Pandects_ is circumscribed within a period of a hundred years, from the perpetual edict to the death of Severus Alexander: the civilians who lived under the first Cæsars are seldom permitted to speak, and only three names can be attributed to the age of the republic. The favorite of Justinian (it has been fiercely urged) was fearful of encountering the light of freedom and the gravity of Roman sages. Tribonian condemned to oblivion the genuine and native wisdom of Cato, the Scævolas, and Sulpicius; while he invoked spirits more congenial to his own, the Syrians, Greeks, and Africans, who flocked to the imperial court to study Latin as a foreign tongue and jurisprudence as a lucrative profession. But the ministers of Justinian were instructed to labor, not for the curiosity of antiquarians, but for the immediate benefit of his subjects. It was their duty to select the useful and practical parts of the Roman law; and the writings of the old republicans, however curious or excellent, were no longer suited to the new system of manners, religion, and government. Perhaps, if the preceptors and friends of Cicero were still alive, our candor would acknowledge that, except in purity of language, their intrinsic merit was excelled by the school of Papinian and Ulpian. The science of the laws is the slow growth of time and experience, and the advantage both of method and materials is naturally assumed by the most recent authors. The civilians of the reign of the Antonines had studied the works of their predecessors: their philosophic spirit had mitigated the rigor of antiquity, simplified the forms of proceeding, and emerged from the jealousy and prejudice of the rival sects. The choice of the authorities that compose the _Pandects_ depended on the judgment of Tribonian; but the power of his sovereign could not absolve him from the sacred obligations of truth and fidelity. As the legislator of the empire, Justinian might repeal the acts of the Antonines, or condemn as seditious the free principles which were maintained by the last of the _Roman_ lawyers. But the existence of past facts is placed beyond the reach of despotism; and the Emperor was guilty of fraud and forgery when he corrupted the integrity of their text, inscribed with their venerable names the words and ideas of his servile reign, and suppressed by the hand of power the pure and authentic copies of their sentiments. The changes and interpolations of Tribonian and his colleagues are excused by the pretence of uniformity: but their cares have been insufficient, and the antinomies, or contradictions, of the _Code_ and _Pandects_ still exercise the patience and subtlety of modern civilians. A rumor devoid of evidence has been propagated by the enemies of Justinian, that the jurisprudence of ancient Rome was reduced to ashes by the author of the _Pandects_, from the vain persuasion that it was now either false or superfluous. Without usurping an office so invidious, the Emperor might safely commit to ignorance and time the accomplishment of this destructive wish. Before the invention of printing and paper, the labor and the materials of writing could be purchased only by the rich; and it may reasonably be computed that the price of books was a hundredfold their present value. Copies were slowly multiplied and cautiously renewed: the hopes of profit tempted the sacrilegious scribes to erase the characters of antiquity,[26] and Sophocles or Tacitus were obliged to resign the parchment to missals, homilies, and the _Golden Legend_. If such was the fate of the most beautiful compositions of genius, what stability could be expected for the dull and barren works of an obsolete science? The books of jurisprudence were interesting to few and entertaining to none: their value was connected with present use, and they sunk forever as soon as that use was superseded by the innovations of fashion, superior merit, or public authority. In the age of peace and learning, between Cicero and the last of the Antonines, many losses had been already sustained, and some luminaries of the school or Forum were known only to the curious by tradition and report. Three hundred and sixty years of disorder and decay accelerated the progress of oblivion; and it may fairly be presumed that of the writings which Justinian is accused of neglecting many were no longer to be found in the libraries of the East. The copies of Papinian or Ulpian, which the reformer had proscribed, were deemed unworthy of future notice; the _Twelve Tables_ and prætorian edicts insensibly vanished, and the monuments of ancient Rome were neglected or destroyed by the envy and ignorance of the Greeks. Even the _Pandects_ themselves have escaped with difficulty and danger from the common shipwreck, and criticism has pronounced that _all_ the editions and manuscripts of the West are derived from _one_ original. It was transcribed at Constantinople in the beginning of the seventh century, was successfully transported by the accidents of war and commerce to Amalphi, Pisa, and Florence,[27] and is now deposited as a sacred relic in the ancient palace of the republic.[28] It is the first care of a reformer to prevent any future reformation. To maintain the text of the _Pandects_, the _Institutes,_ and the _Code_, the use of ciphers and abbreviations was rigorously proscribed; and as Justinian recollected, that the perpetual edict had been buried under the weight of commentators, he denounced the punishment of forgery against the rash civilians who should presume to interpret or pervert the will of their sovereign. The scholars of Accursius, of Bartolus, of Cujacius, should blush for their accumulated guilt, unless they dare to dispute his right of binding the authority of his successors and the native freedom of the mind. But the Emperor was unable to fix his own inconstancy; and while he boasted of renewing the exchange of Diomede, of transmuting brass into gold, discovered the necessity of purifying his gold from the mixture of baser alloy. Six years had not elapsed from the publication of the _Code_ before he condemned the imperfect attempt by a new and more accurate edition of the same work, which he enriched with two hundred of his own laws and fifty decisions of the darkest and most intricate points of jurisprudence. Every year or, according to Procopius, each day of his long reign was marked by some legal innovation. Many of his acts were rescinded by himself; many were rejected by his successors; many have been obliterated by time; but the number of sixteen _Edicts_ and one hundred and sixty-eight _Novels_ has been admitted into the authentic body of the civil jurisprudence. In the opinion of a philosopher superior to the prejudices of his profession, these incessant and, for the most part, trifling alterations, can be only explained by the venal spirit of a prince who sold without shame his judgments and his laws. Monarchs seldom condescend to become the preceptors of their subjects; and some praise is due to Justinian, by whose command an ample system was reduced to a short and elementary treatise. Among the various institutes of the Roman law those of Caius were the most popular in the East and West; and their use may be considered as an evidence of their merit. They were selected by the imperial delegates, Tribonian, Theophilus, and Dorotheus, and the freedom and purity of the Antonines were incrusted with the coarser materials of a degenerate age. The same volume which introduced the youth of Rome, Constantinople, and Berytus to the gradual study of the _Code_ and _Pandects_ is still precious to the historian, the philosopher, and the magistrate. The _Institutes_ of Justinian are divided into four books: they proceed, with no contemptible method, from (1), _Persons_, to (2) _Things_, and from things to (3) _Actions_; and the Article IV of _Private Wrongs_ is terminated by the principles of _Criminal Law_.[29] I. The distinction of ranks and _persons_ is the firmest basis of a mixed and limited government. The perfect equality of men is the point in which the extremes of democracy and despotism are confounded; since the majesty of the prince or people would be offended, if any heads were exalted above the level of their fellow-slaves or fellow-citizens. In the decline of the Roman Empire, the proud distinctions of the republic were gradually abolished, and the reason or instinct of Justinian completed the simple form of an absolute monarchy. The Emperor could not eradicate the popular reverence which always waits on the possession of hereditary wealth or the memory of famous ancestors. He delighted to honor with titles and emoluments his generals, magistrates, and senators; and his precarious indulgence communicated some rays of their glory to the persons of their wives and children. But in the eye of the law all Roman citizens were equal, and all subjects of the empire were citizens of Rome. That inestimable character was degraded to an obsolete and empty name. The voice of a Roman could no longer enact his laws or create the annual ministers of his power: his constitutional rights might have checked the arbitrary will of a master, and the bold adventurer from Germany or Arabia was admitted, with equal favor, to the civil and military command which the citizen alone had been once entitled to assume over the conquests of his fathers. The first Cæsars had scrupulously guarded the distinction of _ingenuous_ and _servile_ birth, which was decided by the condition of the mother; and the candor of the laws was satisfied if _her_ freedom could be ascertained during a single moment between the conception and the delivery. The slaves who were liberated by a generous master immediately entered into the middle class of _libertines_ or freedmen; but they could never be enfranchised from the duties of obedience and gratitude: whatever were the fruits of their industry, their patron and his family inherited the third part, or even the whole of their fortune if they died without children and without a testament. Justinian respected the rights of patrons, but his indulgence removed the badge of disgrace from the two inferior orders of freedmen: whoever ceased to be a slave obtained without reserve or delay the station of a citizen; and at length the dignity of an ingenuous birth, which nature had refused, was created or supposed by the omnipotence of the Emperor. Whatever restraints of age, or forms, or numbers had been formerly introduced to check the abuse of manumissions and the too rapid increase of vile and indigent Romans, he finally abolished; and the spirit of his laws promoted the extinction of domestic servitude. Yet the eastern provinces were filled in the time of Justinian with multitudes of slaves, either born or purchased for the use of their masters; and the price, from ten to seventy pieces of gold, was determined by their age, their strength, and their education. But the hardships of this dependent state were continually diminished by the influence of government and religion, and the pride of a subject was no longer elated by his absolute dominion over the life and happiness of his bondsman. The law of nature instructs most animals to cherish and educate their infant progeny. The law of reason inculcates to the human species the return of filial piety. But the exclusive, absolute, and perpetual dominion of the father over his children is peculiar to the Roman jurisprudence and seems to be coeval with the foundation of the city. The paternal power was instituted or confirmed by Romulus himself; and after the practice of three centuries it was inscribed on the fourth table of the decemvirs. In the Forum, the senate, or the camp the adult son of a Roman citizen enjoyed the public and private rights of a _person_: in his father's house he was a mere _thing_;[30] confounded by the laws with the movables, the cattle, and the slaves, whom the capricious master might alienate or destroy without being responsible to any earthly tribunal. The hand which bestowed the daily sustenance might resume the voluntary gift, and whatever was acquired, by the labor or fortune of the son was immediately lost in the property of the father. His stolen goods (his oxen or his children) might be recovered by the same action of theft; and if either had been guilty of a trespass, it was in his own option to compensate the damage or resign to the injured party the obnoxious animal. At the call of indigence or avarice the master of a family could dispose of his children or his slaves. But the condition of the slave was far more advantageous, since he regained by the first manumission his alienated freedom: the son was again restored to his unnatural father; he might be condemned to servitude a second and a third time, and it was not till after the third sale and deliverance that he was enfranchised from the domestic power which had been so repeatedly abused. According to his discretion, a father might chastise the real or imaginary faults of his children by stripes, by imprisonment, by exile, by sending them to the country to work in chains among the meanest of his servants. The majesty of a parent was armed with the power of life and death; and the examples of such bloody executions, which were sometimes praised and never punished, may be traced in the annals of Rome beyond the times of Pompey and Augustus. Neither age nor rank, nor the consular office, nor the honors of a triumph could exempt the most illustrious citizen from the bonds of filial subjection: his own descendants were included in the family of their common ancestor; and the claims of adoption were not less sacred or less rigorous than those of nature. Without fear, though not without danger of abuse, the Roman legislators had reposed an unbounded confidence in the sentiments of paternal love, and the oppression was tempered by the assurance that each generation must succeed in its turn to the awful dignity of parent and master. The first limitation of paternal power is ascribed to the justice and humanity of Numa, and the maid who, with _his_ father's consent, had espoused a freeman, was protected from the disgrace of becoming the wife of a slave. In the first ages, when the city was pressed and often famished by her Latin and Tuscan neighbors, the sale of children might be a frequent practice; but as a Roman could not legally purchase the liberty of his fellow-citizen, the market must gradually fail, and the trade would be destroyed by the conquests of the republic. An imperfect right of property was at length communicated to sons; and the threefold distinction of _profectitious_, _adventitious_, and _professional_ was ascertained by the jurisprudence of the _Code_ and _Pandects_. Of all that proceeded from the father, he imparted only the use, and reserved the absolute dominion; yet if his goods were sold, the filial portion was excepted by a favorable interpretation from the demands of the creditors. In whatever accrued by marriage, gift, or collateral succession, the property was secured to the son; but the father, unless he had been specially excluded, enjoyed the usufruct during his life. As a just and prudent reward of military virtue, the spoils of the enemy were acquired, possessed, and bequeathed by the soldier alone; and the fair analogy was extended to the emoluments of any liberal profession, the salary of public service, and the sacred liberality of the emperor or empress. The life of a citizen was less exposed than his fortune to the abuse of paternal power. Yet his life might be adverse to the interest or passions of an unworthy father: the same crimes that flowed from the corruption were more sensibly felt by the humanity of the Augustan age; and the cruel Erixo, who whipped his son till he expired, was saved by the Emperor from the just fury of the multitude. The Roman father, from the license of servile dominion, was reduced to the gravity and moderation of a judge. The presence and opinion of Augustus confirmed the sentence of exile pronounced against an intentional parricide by the domestic tribunal of Arius. Adrian transported to an island the jealous parent who, like a robber, had seized the opportunity of hunting to assassinate a youth, the incestuous lover of his step-mother. A private jurisdiction is repugnant to the spirit of monarchy; the parent was again reduced from a judge to an accuser, and the magistrates were enjoined by Severus Alexander to hear his complaints and execute his sentence. He could no longer take the life of a son without incurring the guilt and punishment of murder; and the pains of parricide, from which he had been excepted by the Pompeian law, were finally inflicted by the justice of Constantine. The same protection was due to every period of existence; and reason must applaud the humanity of Paulus for imputing the crime of murder to the father who strangles, or starves, or abandons his new-born infant; or exposes him in a public place to find the mercy which he himself had denied. But the exposition of children was the prevailing and stubborn vice of antiquity: it was sometimes prescribed, often permitted, almost always practised with impunity by the nations who never entertained the Roman ideas of paternal power; and the dramatic poets who appeal to the human heart represent with indifference a popular custom which was palliated by the motives of economy and compassion. If the father could subdue his own feelings, he might escape, though not the censure, at least the chastisement of the laws; and the Roman Empire was stained with the blood of infants, till such murders were included by Valentinian and his colleagues in the letter and spirit of the Cornelian law. The lessons of jurisprudence and Christianity had been insufficient to eradicate this inhuman practice, till their gentle influence was fortified by the terrors of capital punishment. Experience has proved that savage are the tyrants of the female sex, and that the condition of women is usually softened by the refinements of social life. In the hope of a robust progeny, Lycurgus had delayed the season of marriage: it was fixed by Numa at the tender age of twelve years, that the Roman husband might educate to his will a pure and obedient virgin. According to the custom of antiquity, he bought his bride of her parents, and she fulfilled the _coemption_ by purchasing, with three pieces of copper, a just introduction to his house and household deities. A sacrifice of fruits was offered by the pontiffs in the presence of ten witnesses; the contracting parties were seated on the same sheepskin; they tasted a salt-cake of _far_ or rice; and this confarreation, which denoted the ancient food of Italy, served as an emblem of their mystic union of mind and body. But this union on the side of the woman was rigorous and unequal; and she renounced the name and worship of her father's house to embrace a new servitude, decorated only by the title of adoption: a fiction of the law, neither rational nor elegant, bestowed on the mother of a family (her proper appellation) the strange characters of sister to her own children, and of daughter to her husband or master, who was invested with the plenitude of paternal power. By his judgment or caprice her behavior was approved or censured or chastised; he exercised the jurisdiction of life and death, and it was allowed that in the cases of adultery or drunkenness the sentence might be properly inflicted. She acquired and inherited for the sole profit of her lord; and so clearly was woman defined, not as a _person_, but as a _thing_, that if the original title were deficient, she might be claimed, like other movables, by the _use_ and possession of an entire year. The inclination of the Roman husband discharged or withheld the conjugal debt, so scrupulously exacted by the Athenian and Jewish laws; but as polygamy was unknown, he could never admit to his bed a fairer or more favored partner. After the Punic triumphs the matrons of Rome aspired to the common benefits of a free and opulent republic; their wishes were gratified by the indulgence of fathers and lovers, and their ambition was unsuccessfully resisted by the gravity of Cato the Censor. They declined the solemnities of the old nuptials; defeated the annual prescription by an absence of three days; and, without losing their name or independence, subscribed the liberal and definite terms of a marriage contract. Of their private fortunes they communicated the use and secured the property; the estates of a wife could neither be alienated nor mortgaged by a prodigal husband; their mutual gifts were prohibited by the jealousy of the laws; and the misconduct of either party might afford under another name a future subject for an action of theft. To this loose and voluntary compact religious and civil rights were no longer essential; and between persons of similar rank, the apparent community of life was allowed as sufficient evidence of their nuptials. The dignity of marriage was restored by the Christians, who derived all spiritual grace from the prayers of the faithful and the benediction of the priest or bishop. The origin, validity, and duties of the holy institution were regulated by the tradition of the synagogue, the precepts of the gospel, and the canons of general or provincial synods; and the conscience of the Christians was awed by the decrees and censures of their ecclesiastical rulers. Yet the magistrates of Justinian were not subject to the authority of the Church; the Emperor consulted the unbelieving civilians of antiquity, and the choice of matrimonial laws in the _Code_ and _Pandects_ is directed by the earthly motives of justice, policy, and the natural freedom of both sexes. Besides the agreement of the parties, the essence of every rational contract, the Roman marriage required the previous approbation of the parents. A father might be forced by some recent laws to supply the wants of a mature daughter; but even his insanity was not generally allowed to supersede the necessity of his consent. The causes of the dissolution of matrimony have varied among the Romans; but the most solemn sacrament, the confarreation itself, might always be done away by rites of a contrary tendency. In the first ages the father of a family might sell his children, and his wife was reckoned in the number of his children; the domestic judge might pronounce the death of the offender, or his mercy might expel her from his bed and house; but the slavery of the wretched female was hopeless and perpetual, unless he asserted for his own convenience the manly prerogative of divorce. The warmest applause has been lavished on the virtue of the Romans, who abstained from the exercise of this tempting privilege above five hundred years; but the same fact evinces the unequal terms of a connection in which the slave was unable to renounce her tyrant, and the tyrant was unwilling to relinquish his slave. When the Roman matrons became the equal and voluntary companions of their lords, a new jurisprudence was introduced, that marriage, like other partnerships, might be dissolved by the abdication of one of the associates. In three centuries of prosperity and corruption this principle was enlarged to frequent practice and pernicious abuse. Passion, interest, or caprice suggested daily motives for the dissolution of marriage; a word, a sign, a message, a letter, the mandate of a freedman declared the separation; the most tender of human connections was degraded to a transient society of profit or pleasure. According to the various conditions of life, both sexes alternately felt the disgrace and injury; an inconstant spouse transferred her wealth to a new family, abandoning a numerous, perhaps a spurious progeny to the paternal authority and care of her late husband; a beautiful virgin might be dismissed to the world, old, indigent, and friendless; but the reluctance of the Romans, when they were pressed to marriage by Augustus, sufficiently marks that the prevailing institutions were least favorable to the males. A specious theory is confuted by this free and perfect experiment, which demonstrates that the liberty of divorce does not contribute to happiness and virtue. The facility of separation would destroy all mutual confidence, and inflame every trifling dispute; the minute difference between a husband and a stranger, which might so easily be removed, might still more easily be forgotten; and the matron, who in five years can submit to the embraces of eight husbands, must cease to reverence the chastity of her own person. Insufficient remedies followed with distant and tardy steps the rapid progress of the evil. The ancient worship of the Romans afforded a peculiar goddess to hear and reconcile the complaints of a married life; but her epithet of _viriplaca_, the appeaser of husbands, too clearly indicates on which side submission and repentance were always expected. Every act of a citizen was subject to the judgment of the censors; the first who used the privilege of divorce assigned at their command the motives of his conduct; and a senator was expelled for dismissing his virgin spouse without the knowledge or advice of his friends. Whenever an action was instituted for the recovery of a marriage portion, the prætor, as the guardian of equity, examined the cause and the characters, and gently inclined the scale in favor of the guiltless and injured party. Augustus, who united the powers of both magistrates, adopted their different modes of repressing or chastising the license of divorce. The presence of seven Roman witnesses was required for the validity of this solemn and deliberate act: if any adequate provocation had been given by the husband, instead of the delay of two years, he was compelled to refund immediately, or in the space of six months; but if he could arraign the manners of his wife, her guilt or levity was expiated by the loss of the sixth or eighth part of her marriage portion. The Christian princes were the first who specified the just causes of a private divorce; their institutions, from Constantine to Justinian, appear to fluctuate between the custom of the empire and the wishes of the Church, and the author of the _Novels_ too frequently reforms the jurisprudence of the _Code_ and _Pandects_. In the most rigorous laws, a wife was condemned to support a gamester, a drunkard, or a libertine, unless he were guilty of homicide, poison, or sacrilege, in which cases the marriage, as it should seem, might have been dissolved by the hand of the executioner. But the sacred right of the husband was invariably maintained, to deliver his name and family from the disgrace of adultery: the list of _mortal_ sins, either male or female, was curtailed and enlarged by successive regulations, and the obstacles of incurable impotence, long absence, and monastic profession were allowed to rescind the matrimonial obligation. Whoever transgressed the permission of the law was subject to various and heavy penalties. The woman was stripped of her wealth and ornaments, without excepting the bodkin of her hair: if the man introduced a new bride into his bed, _her_ fortune might be lawfully seized by the vengeance of his exiled wife. Forfeiture was sometimes commuted to a fine; the fine was sometimes aggravated by transportation to an island or imprisonment in a monastery; the injured party was released from the bonds of marriage; but the offender during life or a term of years was disabled from the repetition of nuptials. The successor of Justinian yielded to the prayers of his unhappy subjects, and restored the liberty of divorce by mutual consent: the civilians were unanimous, the theologians were divided, and the ambiguous word, which contains the precept of Christ, is flexible to any interpretation that the wisdom of a legislator can demand. The freedom of love and marriage was restrained among the Romans by natural and civil impediments. An instinct, almost innate and universal, appears to prohibit the incestuous commerce of parents and children in the infinite series of ascending and descending generations. Concerning the oblique and collateral branches nature is indifferent, reason mute, and custom various and arbitrary. In Egypt the marriage of brothers and sisters was admitted without scruple or exception: a Spartan might espouse the daughter of his father, an Athenian that of his mother; and the nuptials of an uncle with his niece were applauded at Athens as a happy union of the dearest relations. The profane law-givers of Rome were never tempted by interest or superstition to multiply the forbidden degrees: but they inflexibly condemned the marriage of sisters and brothers, hesitated whether first cousins should be touched by the same interdict; revered the parental character of aunts and uncles, and treated affinity and adoption as a just imitation of the ties of blood. According to the proud maxims of the republic, a legal marriage could only be contracted by free citizens; an honorable, at least an ingenuous birth, was required for the spouse of a senator: but the blood of kings could never mingle in legitimate nuptials with the blood of a Roman; and the name of Stranger degraded Cleopatra and Berenice to live the _concubines_ of Mark Antony and Titus. This appellation, indeed, so injurious to the majesty, cannot without indulgence be applied to the manners of these oriental queens. A concubine, in the strict sense of the civilian, was a woman of servile or plebeian extraction, the sole and faithful companion of a Roman citizen, who continued in a state of celibacy. Her modest station, below the honors of a wife, above the infamy of a prostitute, was acknowledged and approved by the laws: from the age of Augustus to the tenth century, the use of this secondary marriage prevailed both in the West and East; and the humble virtues of a concubine were often preferred to the pomp and insolence of a noble matron. In this connection the two Antonines, the best of princes and of men, enjoyed the comforts of domestic love; the example was imitated by many citizens impatient of celibacy, but regardful of their families. If at any time they desired to legitimate their natural children, the conversion was instantly performed by the celebration of their nuptials with a partner whose fruitfulness and fidelity they had already tried.[31] By this epithet of _natural_, the offspring of the concubine were distinguished from the spurious brood of adultery, prostitution, and incest, to whom Justinian reluctantly grants the necessary aliments of life; and these natural children alone were capable of succeeding to a sixth part of the inheritance of their reputed father. According to the rigor of law, bastards were entitled to the name and condition of their mother, from whom they might derive the character of a slave, a stranger, or a citizen. The outcasts of every family were adopted without reproach as the children of the State. The relation of guardian and ward, or in Roman words of _tutor_ and _pupil_, which covers so many titles of the _Institutes_ and _Pandects_, is of a very simple and uniform nature. The person and property of an orphan must always be trusted to the custody of some discreet friend. If the deceased father had not signified his choice, the _agnats_, or paternal kindred of the nearest degree, were compelled to act as the natural guardians: the Athenians were apprehensive of exposing the infant to the power of those most interested in his death; but an axiom of Roman jurisprudence has pronounced that the charge of tutelage should constantly attend the emolument of succession. If the choice of the father and the line of consanguinity afforded no efficient guardian, the failure was supplied by the nomination of the prætor of the city or the president of the province. But the person whom they named to this _public_ office might be legally excused by insanity or blindness, by ignorance or inability, by previous enmity or adverse interest, by the number of children or guardianships with which he was already burdened and by the immunities which were granted to the useful labors of magistrates, lawyers, physicians, and professors. Till the infant could speak and think he was represented by the tutor, whose authority was finally determined by the age of puberty. Without his consent no act of the pupil could bind himself to his own prejudice, though it might oblige others for his personal benefit. It is needless to observe that the tutor often gave security, and always rendered an account, and that the want of diligence or integrity exposed him to a civil and almost criminal action for the violation of his sacred trust. The age of puberty had been rashly fixed by the civilians at fourteen; but as the faculties of the mind ripen more slowly than those of the body, a _curator_ was interposed to guard the fortunes of a Roman youth from his own inexperience and headstrong passions. Such a trustee had been first instituted by the prætor, to save a family from the blind havoc of a prodigal or madman; and the minor was compelled by the laws to solicit the same protection, to give validity to his acts till he accomplished the full period of twenty-five years. Women were condemned to the perpetual tutelage of parents, husbands, or guardians; a sex created to please and obey was never supposed to have attained the age of reason and experience. Such, at least, was the stern and haughty spirit of the law, which had been insensibly mollified before the time of Justinian. II. The original right of property can only be justified by the accident or merit of prior occupancy; and on this foundation it is wisely established by the philosophy of the civilians. The savage who hollows a tree, inserts a sharp stone into a wooden handle, or applies a string to an elastic branch becomes in a state of nature the just proprietor of the canoe, the bow, or the hatchet. The materials were common to all, the new form, the produce of his time and simple industry, belong solely to himself. His hungry brethren cannot, without a sense of their own injustice, extort from the hunter the game of the forest overtaken or slain by his personal strength and dexterity. If his provident care preserves and multiplies the tame animals, whose nature is tractable to the arts of education, he acquires a perpetual title to the use and service of their numerous progeny, which derives its existence from him alone. If he encloses and cultivates a field for their sustenance and his own, a barren waste is converted into a fertile soil; the seed, the manure, the labor, create a new value, and the rewards of harvest are painfully earned by the fatigues of the revolving year. In the successive states of society the hunter, the shepherd, the husbandman, may defend their possessions by two reasons which forcibly appeal to the feelings of the human mind: that whatever they enjoy is the fruit of their own industry; and that every man who envies their felicity may purchase similar acquisitions by the exercise of similar diligence. Such, in truth, may be the freedom and plenty of a small colony cast on a fruitful island. But the colony multiplies, while the space still continues the same; the common rights, the equal inheritance of mankind, are engrossed by the bold and crafty; each field and forest is circumscribed by the landmarks of a jealous master; and it is the peculiar praise of the Roman jurisprudence that it asserts the claim of the first occupant to the wild animals of the earth, the air, and the waters. In the progress from primitive equity to final injustice, the steps are silent, the shades are almost imperceptible, and the absolute monopoly is guarded by positive laws and artificial reason. The active, insatiable principle of self-love can alone supply the arts of life and the wages of industry; and as soon as civil government and exclusive property have been introduced, they become necessary to the existence of the human race. Except in the singular institutions of Sparta, the wisest legislators have disapproved an agrarian law as a false and dangerous innovation. Among the Romans the enormous disproportion of wealth surmounted the ideal restraints of a doubtful tradition and an obsolete statute; a tradition that the poorest follower of Romulus had been endowed with the perpetual inheritance of two jugera; a statute which confined the richest citizen to the measure of five hundred jugera, or three hundred and twelve acres of land. The original territory of Rome consisted only of some miles of wood and meadow along the banks of the Tiber, and domestic exchange could add nothing to the national stock. But the goods of an alien or enemy were lawfully exposed to the first hostile occupier; the city was enriched by the profitable trade of war, and the blood of her sons was the only price that was paid for the Volscian sheep, the slaves of Britain, to the gems and gold of Asiatic kingdoms. In the language of ancient jurisprudence, which was corrupted and forgotten before the age of Justinian, these spoils were distinguished by the name of manceps or mancipium, taken with the hand; and whenever they were sold or emancipated, the purchaser required some assurance that they had been the property of an enemy and not of a fellow-citizen. A citizen could only forfeit his rights by apparent dereliction, and such dereliction of a valuable interest could not easily be presumed. Yet, according to the _Twelve Tables_, a prescription of one year for movables, and of two years for immovables, abolished the claim of the ancient master, if the actual possessor had acquired them by a fair transaction from the person whom he believed to be the lawful proprietor.[32] Such conscientious injustice, without any mixture of fraud or force could seldom injure the members of a small republic; but the various periods of three, of ten, or of twenty years, determined by Justinian, are more suitable to the latitude of a great empire. It is only in the term of prescription that the distinction of real and personal fortune has been remarked by the civilians; and their general idea of property is that of simple, uniform, and absolute dominion. The subordinate exceptions of use, of usufruct, of servitudes, imposed for the benefit of a neighbor on lands and houses, are abundantly explained by the professors of jurisprudence. The claims of property, as far as they are altered by the mixture, the division, or the transformation of substances, are investigated with metaphysical subtlety by the same civilians. The personal title of the first proprietor must be determined by his death: but the possession, without any appearance of change, is peaceably continued in his children, the associates of his toil and the partners of his wealth. This natural inheritance has been protected by the legislators of every climate and age, and the father is encouraged to persevere in slow and distant improvements, by the tender hope that a long posterity will enjoy the fruits of his labor. The _principle_ of hereditary succession is universal; but the _order_ has been variously established by convenience or caprice, by the spirit of national institutions, or by some partial example which was originally decided by fraud or violence. The jurisprudence of the Romans appears to have deviated from the equality of nature much less than the Jewish, the Athenian, or the English institutions. On the death of a citizen all his descendants, unless they were already freed from his paternal power, were called to the inheritance of his possessions. The insolent prerogative of primogeniture was unknown; the two sexes were placed on a just level; all the sons and daughters were entitled to an equal portion of the patrimonial estate; and if any of the sons had been intercepted by a premature death, his person was represented and his share was divided by his surviving children. On the failure of the direct line, the right of succession must diverge to the collateral branches. The degrees of kindred are numbered by the civilians, ascending from the last possessor to a common parent, and descending from the common parent to the next heir: my father stands in the first degree, my brother in the second, his children in the third, and the remainder of the series may be conceived by fancy, or pictured in a genealogical table. In this computation a distinction was made, essential to the laws and even the constitution of Rome; the _agnats_, or persons connected by a line of males, were called, as they stood in the nearest degree, to an equal partition; but a female was incapable of transmitting any legal claims; and the _cognats_ of every rank, without excepting the dear relation of a mother and a son, were disinherited by the _Twelve Tables_, as strangers and aliens. Among the Romans a _gens_ or lineage was united by a common _name_ and domestic rites; the various _cognomens_ or _surnames_ of Scipio or Marcellus distinguished from each other the subordinate branches or families of the Cornelian or Claudian race: the default of the _agnats_, of the same surname, was supplied by the larger denomination of _gentiles_; and the vigilance of the laws maintained in the same name the perpetual descent of religion and property. A similar principle dictated the Voconian law, which abolished the right of female inheritance. As long as virgins were given or sold in marriage, the adoption of the wife extinguished the hopes of the daughter. But the equal succession of independent matrons supported their pride and luxury, and might transport into a foreign house the riches of their fathers. While the maxims of Cato were revered, they tended to perpetuate in each family a just and virtuous mediocrity: till female blandishments insensibly triumphed, and every salutary restraint was lost in the dissolute greatness of the republic. The rigor of the decemvirs was tempered by the equity of the prætors. Their edicts restored and emancipated posthumous children to the rights of nature; and upon the failure of the _agnats_ they preferred the blood of the _cognats_ to the name of the _gentiles,_ whose title and character were insensibly covered with oblivion. The reciprocal inheritance of mothers and sons was established in the Tertullian and Orphitian decrees by the humanity of the senate. A new and more impartial order was introduced by the _Novels_ of Justinian, who affected to revive the jurisprudence of the _Twelve Tables_. The lines of masculine and female kindred were confounded: the descending, ascending, and collateral series was accurately defined; and each degree, according to the proximity of blood and affection, succeeded the vacant possessions of a Roman citizen. The order of succession is regulated by nature, or at least by the general and permanent reason of the law-giver: but this order is frequently violated by the arbitrary and partial wills, which prolong the dominion of the testator beyond the grave. In the simple state of society this last use or abuse of the right of property is seldom indulged; it was introduced at Athens by the laws of Solon; and the private testaments of a father of a family are authorized by the _Twelve Tables_. Before the time of the decemvirs a Roman citizen exposed his wishes and motives to the assembly of the thirty curiæ or parishes, and the general law of inheritance was suspended by an occasional act of the legislature. After the permission of the decemvirs, each private law-giver promulgated his verbal or written testament in the presence of five citizens, who represented the five classes of the Roman people; a sixth witness attested their concurrence; a seventh weighed the copper money, which was paid by an imaginary purchaser, and the estate was emancipated by a fictitious sale and immediate release. This singular ceremony, which excited the wonder of the Greeks, was still practised in the age of Severus, but the prætor had already approved a more simple testament, for which they required the seals and signatures of seven witnesses, free from all legal exception and purposely summoned for the execution of that important act. A domestic monarch, who reigned over the lives and fortunes of his children, might distribute their respective shares according to the degrees of their merit or his affection; his arbitrary displeasure chastised an unworthy son by the loss of his inheritance, and the mortifying preference of a stranger. But the experience of unnatural parents recommended some limitations of their testamentary powers. A son or, by the laws of Justinian, even a daughter, could no longer be disinherited by their silence; they were compelled to name the criminal and to specify the offence; and the justice of the Emperor enumerated the sole causes that could justify such a violation of the first principles of nature and society. Unless a legitimate portion, a fourth part, had been reserved for the children, they were entitled to institute an action or complaint of _inofficious_ testament; to suppose that their father's understanding was impaired by sickness or age, and respectfully to appeal from his rigorous sentence to the deliberate wisdom of the magistrate. In the Roman jurisprudence an essential distinction was admitted between the inheritance and the legacies. The heirs who succeeded to the entire unity, or to any of the twelve fractions of the substance of the testator, represented his civil and religious character, asserted his rights, fulfilled his obligations, and discharged the gifts of friendship or liberality, which his last will had bequeathed under the name of legacies. But as the imprudence or prodigality of a dying man might exhaust the inheritance and leave only risk and labor to his successor, he was empowered to retain the Falcidian portion; to deduct, before the payment of the legacies, a clear fourth for his own emolument. A reasonable time was allowed to examine the proportion between the debts and the estate, to decide whether he should accept or refuse the testament; and if he used the benefit of an inventory, the demands of the creditors could not exceed the valuation of the effects. The last will of a citizen might be altered during his life or rescinded after his death; the persons whom he named might die before him, or reject the inheritance, or be exposed to some legal disqualification. In the contemplation of these events he was permitted to substitute second and third heirs, to replace each other according to the order of the testament; and the incapacity of a madman or an infant to bequeath his property might be supplied by a similar substitution. But the power of the testator expired with the acceptance of the testament; each Roman of mature age and discretion acquired the absolute dominion of his inheritance, and the simplicity of the civil law was never clouded by the long and intricate entails which confine the happiness and freedom of unborn generations. Conquest and the formalities of law established the use of codicils. If a Roman was surprised by death in a remote province of the empire he addressed a short epistle to his legitimate or testamentary heir, who fulfilled with honor, or neglected with impunity, this last request, which the judges before the age of Augustus were not authorized to enforce. A codicil might be expressed in any mode, or in any language; but the subscription of five witnesses must declare that it was the genuine composition of the author. His intention, however laudable, was sometimes illegal; and the invention of _fidei-commissa_, or trusts, arose from the struggle between natural justice and positive jurisprudence. A stranger of Greece or Africa might be the friend or benefactor of a childless Roman, but none, except a fellow-citizen, could act as his heir. The Voconian law, which abolished female succession, restrained the legacy or inheritance of a woman to the sum of one hundred thousand sesterces, and an only daughter was condemned almost as an alien in her father's house. The zeal of friendship and parental affection suggested a liberal artifice: a qualified citizen was named in the testament, with a prayer or injunction that he would restore the inheritance to the person for whom it was truly intended. Various was the conduct of the trustees in this painful situation; they had sworn to observe the laws of their country, but honor prompted them to violate their oath; and if they preferred their interest under the mask of patriotism, they forfeited the esteem of every virtuous mind. The declaration of Augustus relieved their doubts, gave a legal sanction to confidential testaments and codicils, and gently unravelled the forms and restraints of the republican jurisprudence. But as the new practice of trusts degenerated into some abuse, the trustee was enabled, by the Trebellian and Pegasian decrees, to reserve one-fourth of the estate, or to transfer on the head of the real heir all the debts and actions of the succession. The interpretation of testaments was strict and literal; but the language of trusts and codicils was delivered from the minute and technical accuracy of the civilians. III. The general duties of mankind are imposed by their public and private relations: but their specific _obligations_ to each other can only be the effect of (1) a promise, (2) a benefit, or (3) an injury; and when these obligations are ratified by law, the interested party may compel the performance by a judicial action. On this principle the civilians of every country have erected a similar jurisprudence, the fair conclusion of universal reason and justice. 1. The goddess of faith (of human and social faith) was worshipped, not only in her temples, but in the lives of the Romans; and if that nation was deficient in the more amiable qualities of benevolence and generosity, they astonished the Greeks by their sincere and simple performance of the most burdensome engagements. Yet among the same people, according to the rigid maxims of the patricians and decemvirs, a naked pact, a promise, or even an oath, did not create any civil obligation, unless it was confirmed by the legal form of a stipulation. Whatever might be the etymology of the Latin word, it conveyed the idea of a firm and irrevocable contract, which was always expressed in the mode of a question and answer. Do you promise to pay me one hundred pieces of gold? was the solemn interrogation of Seius. I do promise, was the reply of Sempronius. The friends of Sempronius, who answered for his ability and inclination, might be separately sued at the option of Seius; and the benefit of partition, or order of reciprocal actions, insensibly deviated from the strict theory of stipulation. The most cautious and deliberate consent was justly required to sustain the validity of a gratuitous promise; and the citizen who might have obtained a legal security, incurred the suspicion of fraud and paid the forfeit of his neglect. But the ingenuity of the civilians successfully labored to convert simple engagements into the form of solemn stipulations. The prætors, as the guardians of social faith, admitted every rational evidence of a voluntary and deliberate act, which in their tribunal produced an equitable obligation, and for which they gave an action and a remedy. 2. The obligations of the second class, as they were contracted by the delivery of a thing, are marked by the civilians with the epithet of real. A grateful return is due to the author of a benefit; and whoever is intrusted with the property of another has bound himself to the sacred duty of restitution. In the case of a friendly loan, the merit of generosity is on the side of the lender only; in a deposit, on the side of the receiver; but in a pledge, and the rest of the selfish commerce of ordinary life, the benefit is compensated by an equivalent, and the obligation to restore is variously modified by the nature of the transaction. The Latin language very happily expresses the fundamental difference between the _commodatum_ and the _mutuum_, which our poverty is reduced to confound under the vague and common appellation of a loan. In the former, the borrower was obliged to restore the same individual thing with which he had been accommodated for the temporary supply of his wants; in the latter it was destined for his use and consumption, and he discharged this mutual engagement by substituting the same specific value according to a just estimation of number, of weight, and of measure. In the contract of sale, the absolute dominion is transferred to the purchaser, and he repays the benefit with an adequate sum of gold or silver, the price and universal standard of all earthly possessions. The obligation of another contract, that of location, is of a more complicated kind. Lands or houses, labor or talents, may be hired for a definite term; at the expiration of the time the thing itself must be restored to the owner, with the additional reward for the beneficial occupation and employment. In these lucrative contracts, to which may be added those of partnership and commissions, the civilians sometimes imagine the delivery of the object, and sometimes presume the consent of the parties. The substantial pledge has been refined into the invisible rights of a mortgage or _hypotheca_; and the agreement of sale, for a certain price, imputes from that moment the chances of gain or loss to the account of the purchaser. It may be fairly supposed that every man will obey the dictates of his interest; and if he accepts the benefit, he is obliged to sustain the expense of the transaction. In this boundless subject, the historian will observe the _location_ of land and money, the rent of the one and the interest of the other, as they materially affect the prosperity of agriculture and commerce. The landlord was often obliged to advance the stock and instruments of husbandry, and to content himself with a partition of the fruits. If the feeble tenant was oppressed by accident, contagion, or hostile violence, he claimed a proportionable relief from the equity of the laws; five years were the customary term, and no solid or costly improvements could be expected from a farmer who at each moment might be ejected by the sale of the estate. Usury, the inveterate grievance of the city, had been discouraged by the _Twelve Tables_, and abolished by the clamors of the people. It was revived by their wants and idleness, tolerated by the discretion of the prætors, and finally determined by the _Code_ of Justinian. Persons of illustrious rank were confined to the moderate profit of 4 per cent. 6 was pronounced to be the ordinary and legal standard of interest; 8 was allowed for the convenience of manufacturers and merchants; 12 was granted to nautical insurance, which the wiser ancients had not attempted to define; but, except in this perilous adventure, the practice of exorbitant usury was severely restrained.[33] The most simple interest was condemned by the clergy of the East and West; but the sense of mutual benefit, which had triumphed over the laws of the republic, had resisted with equal firmness the decrees of the Church, and even the prejudices of mankind.[34] 3. Nature and society impose the strict obligation of repairing an injury; and the sufferer by private injustice acquires a personal right and a legitimate action. If the property of another be intrusted to our care, the requisite degree of care may rise and fall according to the benefit which we derive from such temporary possession; we are seldom made responsible for inevitable accident, but the consequences of a voluntary fault must always be imputed to the author. A Roman pursued and recovered his stolen goods by a civil action of theft; they might pass through a succession of pure and innocent hands, but nothing less than a prescription of thirty years could extinguish his original claim. They were restored by the sentence of the prætor, and the injury was compensated by double, or threefold, or even quadruple damages, as the deed had been perpetrated by secret fraud or open rapine, as the robber had been surprised in the fact or detected by a subsequent research. The Aquilian law defended the living property of a citizen, his slaves and cattle, from the stroke of malice or negligence: the highest price was allowed that could be ascribed to the domestic animal at any moment of the year preceding his death; a similar latitude of thirty days was granted on the destruction of any other valuable effects. A personal injury is blunted or sharpened by the manners of the times and the sensibility of the individual: the pain or the disgrace of a word or blow cannot easily be appreciated by a pecuniary equivalent. The rude jurisprudence of the decemvirs had confounded all hasty insults, which did not amount to the fracture of a limb by condemning the aggressor to the common penalty of twenty-five _asses_. But the same denomination of money was reduced in three centuries from a pound to the weight of half an ounce: and the insolence of a wealthy Roman indulged himself in the cheap amusement of breaking and satisfying the law of the _Twelve Tables_. Veratius ran through the streets striking on the face the inoffensive passengers, and his attendant purse-bearer immediately silenced their clamors by the legal tender of twenty-five pieces of copper, about the value of one shilling. The equity of the prætors examined and estimated the distinct merits of each particular complaint. In the adjudication of civil damages the magistrate assumed the right to consider the various circumstances of time and place, of age and dignity, which may aggravate the shame and sufferings of the injured person: but if he admitted the idea of a fine, a punishment, an example, he invaded the province, though, perhaps, he supplied the defects of the criminal law. IV. The execution of the Alban dictator, who was dismembered by eight horses, is represented by Livy as the first and the last instance of Roman cruelty in the punishment of the most atrocious crimes. But this act of justice, or revenge, was inflicted on a foreign enemy in the heat of victory and at the command of a single man. The _Twelve Tables_ afford a more decisive proof of the national spirit, since they were framed by the wisest of the senate, and accepted by the free voices of the people; yet these laws, like the statutes of Draco, are written in characters of blood. They approve the inhuman and unequal principle of retaliation; and the forfeit of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a limb for a limb, is rigorously exacted, unless the offender can redeem his pardon by a fine of three hundred pounds of copper. The decemvirs distributed with much liberality the slighter chastisements of flagellation and servitude; and nine crimes of a very different complexion are adjudged worthy of death. 1. Any act of treason against the state, or of correspondence with the public enemy. The mode of execution was painful and ignominious: the head of the degenerate Roman was shrouded in a veil, his hands were tied behind his back, and after he had been scourged by the lictor, he was suspended in the midst of the Forum on a cross or inauspicious tree. 2. Nocturnal meetings in the city; whatever might be the pretence, of pleasure, or religion, or the public good. 3. The murder of a citizen; for which the common feelings of mankind demand the blood of the murderer. Poison is still more odious than the sword or dagger; and we are surprised to discover in two flagitious events how early such subtle wickedness has infected the simplicity of the republic, and the chaste virtues of the Roman matrons.[35] The parricide, who violated the duties of nature and gratitude, was cast into the river or the sea, enclosed in a sack; and a cock, a viper, a dog, and a monkey were successively added as the most suitable companions. Italy produces no monkeys; but the want could never be felt till the middle of the sixth century first revealed the guilt of a parricide.[36] 4. The malice of an incendiary. After the previous ceremony of whipping, he himself was delivered to the flames; and in this example alone our reason is tempted to applaud the justice of retaliation. 5. Judicial perjury. The corrupt or malicious witness was thrown headlong from the Tarpeian Rock to expiate his falsehood, which was rendered still more fatal by the severity of the penal laws and the deficiency of written evidence. 6. The corruption of a judge who accepted bribes to pronounce an iniquitous sentence. 7. Libels and satires, whose rude strains sometimes disturbed the peace of an illiterate city. The author was beaten with clubs, a worthy chastisement, but it is not certain that he was left to expire under the blows of the executioner. 8. The nocturnal mischief of damaging or destroying a neighbor's corn. The criminal was suspended as a grateful victim to Ceres. But the sylvan deities were less implacable, and the extirpation of a more valuable tree was compensated by the moderate fine of twenty-five pounds of copper. 9. Magical incantations; which had power, in the opinion of the Latian shepherds, to exhaust the strength of an enemy, to extinguish his life, and to remove from their seats his deep-rooted plantations. The cruelty of the _Twelve Tables_ against insolvent debtors still remains to be told; and I shall dare to prefer the literal sense of antiquity to the specious refinements of modern criticism. After the judicial proof or confession of the debt, thirty days of grace were allowed before a Roman was delivered into the power of his fellow-citizen. In this private prison twelve ounces of rice were his daily food; he might be bound with a chain of fifteen pounds weight, and his misery was thrice exposed in the market-place, to solicit the compassion of his friends and countrymen. At the expiration of sixty days the debt was discharged by the loss of liberty or life; the insolvent debtor was either put to death or sold in foreign slavery beyond the Tiber; but, if several creditors were alike obstinate and unrelenting, they might legally dismember his body and satiate their revenge by this horrid partition. The advocates for this savage law have insisted that it must strongly operate in deterring idleness and fraud from contracting debts which they were unable to discharge; but experience would dissipate this salutary terror by proving that no creditor could be found to exact this unprofitable penalty of life or limb. As the manners of Rome were insensibly polished, the criminal code of the decemvirs was abolished by the humanity of accusers, witnesses, and judges; and impunity became the consequence of immoderate rigor. The Porcian and Valerian laws prohibited the magistrates from inflicting on a free citizen any capital, or even corporal, punishment, and the obsolete statutes of blood were artfully, and perhaps truly, ascribed to the spirit, not of patrician but of regal tyranny. In the absence of penal laws and the insufficiency of civil actions, the peace and justice of the city were imperfectly maintained by the private jurisdiction of the citizens. The malefactors who replenish our jails are the outcasts of society, and the crimes for which they suffer may be commonly ascribed to ignorance, poverty, and brutal appetite. For the perpetration of similar enormities, a vile plebeian might claim and abuse the sacred character of a member of the republic; but on the proof or suspicion of guilt, the slave or the stranger was nailed to a cross: and this strict and summary justice might be exercised without restraint over the greatest part of the populace of Rome. Each family contained a domestic tribunal, which was not confined, like that of the prætor, to the cognizance of external actions; virtuous principles and habits were inculcated by the discipline of education, and the Roman father was accountable to the State for the manners of his children, since he disposed, without appeal, of their life, their liberty, and their inheritance. In some pressing emergencies the citizen was authorized to avenge his private or public wrongs. The consent of the Jewish, the Athenian, and the Roman laws approved the slaughter of the nocturnal thief; though in open daylight a robber could not be slain without some previous evidence of danger and complaint. Whoever surprised an adulterer in his nuptial bed might freely exercise his revenge; the most bloody and wanton outrage was excused by the provocation; nor was it before the reign of Augustus that the husband was reduced to weigh the rank of the offender, or that the parent was condemned to sacrifice his daughter with her guilty seducer. After the expulsion of the kings the ambitious Roman who should dare to assume their title or imitate their tyranny, was devoted to the infernal gods; each of his fellow-citizens was armed with the sword of justice; and the act of Brutus, however repugnant to gratitude or prudence, had been already sanctified by the judgment of his country. The barbarous practice of wearing arms in the midst of peace, and the bloody maxims of honor were unknown to the Romans; and during the two purest ages, from the establishment of equal freedom to the end of the Punic wars, the city was never disturbed by sedition, and rarely polluted with atrocious crimes. The failure of penal laws was more sensibly felt, when every vice was inflamed by faction at home and dominion abroad. In the time of Cicero each private citizen enjoyed the privilege of anarchy; each minister of the republic was exalted to the temptations of regal power, and their virtues are entitled to the warmest praise, as the spontaneous fruits of nature or philosophy. After a triennial indulgence of lust, rapine, and cruelty, Verres, the tyrant of Sicily, could only be sued for the pecuniary restitution of three hundred thousand pounds sterling; and such was the temper of the laws, the judges, and perhaps the accuser himself, that on refunding a thirteenth part of his plunder Verres could retire to an easy and luxurious exile.[37] The first imperfect attempt to restore the proportion of crimes and punishments was made by the dictator Sylla, who, in the midst of his sanguinary triumph, aspired to restrain the license rather than to oppress the liberty of the Romans. He gloried in the arbitrary proscription of four thousand seven hundred citizens. But in the character of a legislator he respected the prejudices of the times; and instead of pronouncing a sentence of death against the robber or assassin, the general who betrayed an army, or the magistrate who ruined a province, Sylla was content to aggravate the pecuniary damages by the penalty of exile, or, in more constitutional language, by the interdiction of fire and water. The Cornelian and afterward the Pompeian and Julian laws introduced a new system of criminal jurisprudence; and the emperors, from Augustus to Justinian, disguised their increasing rigor under the names of the original authors. But the invention and frequent use of _extraordinary pains_ proceeded from the desire to extend and conceal the progress of despotism. In the condemnation of illustrious Romans the senate was always prepared to confound, at the will of their masters, the judicial and legislative powers. It was the duty of the governors to maintain the peace of their province by the arbitrary and rigid administration of justice; the freedom of the city evaporated in the extent of empire, and the Spanish malefactor, who claimed the privilege of a Roman, was elevated by the command of Galba on a fairer and more lofty cross. Occasional rescripts issued from the throne to decide the questions which, by their novelty or importance, appeared to surpass the authority and discernment of a proconsul. Transportation and beheading were reserved for honorable persons; meaner criminals were either hanged, or burned, or buried in the mines, or exposed to the wild beasts of the amphitheatre. Armed robbers were pursued and extirpated as the enemies of society; the driving away of horses or cattle was made a capital offence, but simple theft was uniformly considered as a mere civil and private injury. The degrees of guilt and the modes of punishment were too often determined by the discretion of the rulers, and the subject was left in ignorance of the legal danger which he might incur by every action of his life. A sin, a vice, a crime, are the objects of theology, ethics, and jurisprudence. Whenever their judgments agree, they corroborate each other; but as often as they differ a prudent legislator appreciates the guilt and punishment according to the measure of social injury. On this principle the most daring attack on the life and property of a private citizen is judged less atrocious than the crime of treason or rebellion, which invades the _majesty_ of the republic; the obsequious civilians unanimously pronounced that the republic is contained in the person of its chief; and the edge of the Julian law was sharpened by the incessant diligence of the emperors. The licentious commerce of the sexes may be tolerated as an impulse of nature, or forbidden as a source of disorder and corruption; but the fame, the fortunes, the family of the husband, are seriously injured by the adultery of the wife. The wisdom of Augustus, after curbing the freedom of revenge, applied to this domestic offence the animadversion of the laws; and the guilty parties, after the payment of heavy forfeitures and fines, were condemned to long or perpetual exile in two separate islands. Religion pronounces an equal censure against the infidelity of the husband; but, as it is not accompanied by the same civil effects, the wife was never permitted to vindicate her wrong; and the distinction of simple or double adultery, so familiar and so important in the canon law, is unknown to the jurisprudence of the _Code_ and the _Pandects_. I touch with reluctance and despatch with impatience a more odious vice, of which modesty rejects the name, and nature abominates the idea. The primitive Romans were infected by the example of the Etruscans and Greeks; in the mad abuse of prosperity and power, every pleasure that is innocent was deemed insipid; and the Scatinian law, which had been extorted by an act of violence, was insensibly abolished by the lapse of time and the multitude of criminals. By this law the rape, perhaps the seduction, of an ingenuous youth was compensated as a personal injury by the poor damages of ten thousand sesterces, or fourscore pounds; the ravisher might be slain by the resistance or revenge of chastity; and I wish to believe that at Rome, as in Athens, the voluntary and effeminate deserter of his sex was degraded from the honors and the rights of a citizen. But the practice of vice was not discouraged by the severity of opinion; the indelible stain of manhood was confounded with the more venial transgressions of fornication and adultery, nor was the licentious lover exposed to the same dishonor which he impressed on the male or female partner of his guilt. From Catullus to Juvenal the poets accuse and celebrate the degeneracy of the times; and the reformation of manners was feebly attempted by the reason and authority of the civilians till the most virtuous of the Cæsars proscribed the sin against nature as a crime against society. A new spirit of legislation, respectable even in its error, arose in the empire with the religion of Constantine. The laws of Moses were received as the divine original of justice, and the Christian princes adapted their penal statutes to the degrees of moral and religious turpitude. Adultery was first declared to be a capital offence: the frailty of the sexes was assimilated to poison or assassination, to sorcery or parricide; the same penalties were inflicted on the passive and active guilt of pederasty, and all criminals of free or servile condition were either drowned or beheaded, or cast alive into the avenging flames. The adulterers were spared by the common sympathy of mankind; but the lovers of their own sex were pursued by general and pious indignation: the impure manners of Greece still prevailed in the cities of Asia, and every vice was fomented by the celibacy of the monks and clergy. Justinian relaxed the punishment at least of female infidelity: the guilty spouse was only condemned to solitude and penance, and at the end of two years she might be recalled to the arms of a forgiving husband. But the same Emperor declared himself the implacable enemy of unmanly lust, and the cruelty of his persecution can scarcely be excused by the purity of his motives. In defiance of every principle of justice he stretched to past as well as future offences the operations of his edicts, with the previous allowance of a short respite for confession and pardon. A painful death was inflicted by the amputation of the sinful instrument, or the insertion of sharp reeds into the pores and tubes of most exquisite sensibility; and Justinian defended the propriety of the execution, since the criminals would have lost their hands had they been convicted of sacrilege. In this state of disgrace and agony two bishops, Isaiah of Rhodes and Alexander of Diospolis, were dragged through the streets of Constantinople, while their brethren were admonished by the voice of a crier to observe this awful lesson, and not to pollute the sanctity of their character. Perhaps these prelates were innocent. A sentence of death and infamy was often founded on the slight and suspicious evidence of a child or a servant; the guilt of the green faction, of the rich, and of the enemies of Theodora was presumed by the judges, and pederasty became the crime of those to whom no crime could be imputed. A French philosopher[38] has dared to remark that whatever is secret must be doubtful, and that our natural horror of vice may be abused as an engine of tyranny. But the favorable persuasion of the same writer, that a legislator may confide in the taste and reason of mankind, is impeached by the unwelcome discovery of the antiquity and extent of the disease. V. The free citizens of Athens and Rome enjoyed in all criminal cases the invaluable privilege of being tried by their country. 1. The administration of justice is the most ancient office of a prince: it was exercised by the Roman kings and abused by Tarquin, who alone, without law or council, pronounced his arbitrary judgments. The first consuls succeeded to this regal prerogative; but the sacred right of appeal soon abolished the jurisdiction of the magistrates, and all public causes were decided by the supreme tribunal of the people. But a wild democracy, superior to the forms, too often disdains the essential principles of justice: the pride of despotism was envenomed by plebeian envy, and the heroes of Athens might sometimes applaud the happiness of the Persian, whose fate depended on the caprice of a _single_ tyrant. Some salutary restraints, imposed by the people on their own passions, were at once the cause and effect of the gravity and temperance of the Romans. The right of accusation was confined to the magistrates. A vote of the thirty-five tribes could inflict a fine; but the cognizance of all capital crimes was reserved by a fundamental law to the assembly of the centuries, in which the weight of influence and property was sure to preponderate. Repeated proclamations and adjournments were interposed to allow time for prejudice and resentment to subside: the whole proceeding might be annulled by a seasonable omen or the opposition of a tribune; and such popular trials were commonly less formidable to innocence than they were favorable to guilt. But this union of the judicial and legislative powers left it doubtful whether the accused party was pardoned or acquitted; and in the defence of an illustrious client the orators of Rome and Athens address their arguments to the policy and benevolence, as well as to the justice, of their sovereign. 2. The task of convening the citizens for the trial of each offender became more difficult as the citizens and the offenders continually multiplied, and the ready expedient was adopted of delegating the jurisdiction of the people to the ordinary magistrates or to extraordinary inquisitors. In the first ages these questions were rare and occasional. In the beginning of the seventh century of Rome they were made perpetual: four prætors were annually empowered to sit in judgment on the state offences of treason, extortion, peculation, and bribery; and Sylla added new prætors and new questions for those crimes which more directly injure the safety of individuals. By these inquisitors the trial was prepared and directed; but they could only pronounce the sentence of the majority of judges. To discharge this important though burdensome office, an annual list of ancient and respectable citizens was formed by the prætor. After many constitutional struggles they were chosen in equal numbers from the senate, the equestrian order, and the people; four hundred and fifty were appointed for single questions, and the various rolls or _decuries_ of judges must have contained the names of some thousand Romans who represented the judicial authority of the State. In each particular cause a sufficient number was drawn from the urn; their integrity was guarded by an oath; the mode of ballot secured their independence; the suspicion of partiality was removed by the mutual challenges of the accuser and defendant; and the judges of Milo, by the retrenchment of fifteen on each side, were reduced to fifty-one voices or tablets of acquittal, of condemnation, or of favorable doubt.[39] 3. In his civil jurisdiction the prætor of the city was truly a judge, and almost a legislator; but as soon as he had prescribed the action of law he often referred to a delegate the determination of the fact. With the increase of legal proceedings, the tribunal of the centumvirs in which he presided acquired more weight and reputation. But whether he acted alone, or with the advice of his council, the most absolute powers might be trusted to a magistrate who was annually chosen by the votes of the people. The rules and precautions of freedom have required some explanation; the order of despotism is simple and inanimate. Before the age of Justinian, or perhaps of Diocletian, the decuries of Roman judges had sunk to an empty title: the humble advice of the assessors might be accepted or despised, and in each tribunal the civil and criminal jurisdiction was administered by a single magistrate, who was raised and disgraced by the will of the emperor. A Roman accused of any capital crime might prevent the sentence of the law by voluntary exile or death. Till his guilt had been legally proved his innocence was presumed, and his person was free: till the votes of the last _century_ had been counted and declared, he might peaceably secede to any of the allied cities of Italy, or Greece, or Asia.[40] His fame and fortunes were preserved, at least to his children, by this civil death; and he might still be happy in every rational and sensual enjoyment, if a mind accustomed to the ambitious tumult of Rome could support the uniformity and silence of Rhodes or Athens. A bolder effort was required to escape from the tyranny of the Cæsars; but this effort was rendered familiar by the maxims of the Stoics, the example of the bravest Romans, and the legal encouragements of suicide. The bodies of condemned criminals were exposed to public ignominy, and their children, a more serious evil, were reduced to poverty by the confiscation of their fortunes. But if the victims of Tiberius and Nero anticipated the decree of the prince or senate, their courage and despatch were recompensed by the applause of the public, the decent honors of burial, and the validity of their testaments. The exquisite avarice and cruelty of Domitian appear to have deprived the unfortunate of this last consolation, and it was still denied even by the clemency of the Antonines. A voluntary death which, in the case of a capital offence, intervened between the accusation and the sentence, was admitted as a confession of guilt, and the spoils of the deceased were seized by the inhuman claims of the treasury. Yet the civilians have always respected the natural right of a citizen to dispose of his life; and the posthumous disgrace invented by Tarquin,[41] to check the despair of his subjects, was never revived or imitated by succeeding tyrants. The powers of this world have indeed lost their dominion over him who is resolved on death, and his arm can only be restrained by the religious apprehension of a future state. Suicides are enumerated by Vergil among the unfortunate rather than the guilty;[42] and the poetical fables of the infernal shades could not seriously influence the faith or practice of mankind. But the precepts of the gospel, or the Church, have at length imposed a pious servitude on the minds of Christians, and condemn them to expect, without a murmur, the last stroke of disease or the executioner. The penal statutes form a very small proportion of the sixty-two books of the _Code_ and _Pandects_; and in all judicial proceeding the life or death of a citizen is determined with less caution or delay than the most ordinary question of covenant or inheritance. This singular distinction, though something may be allowed for the urgent necessity of defending the peace of society, is derived from the nature of criminal and civil jurisprudence. Our duties to the state are simple and uniform: the law by which he is condemned is inscribed not only on brass or marble, but on the conscience of the offender, and his guilt is commonly proved by the testimony of a single fact. But our relations to each other are various and infinite; our obligations are created, annulled, and modified by injuries, benefits, and promises; and the interpretation of voluntary contracts and testaments, which are often dictated by fraud or ignorance, affords a long and laborious exercise to the sagacity of the judge. The business of life is multiplied by the extent of commerce and dominion, and the residence of the parties in the distant provinces of an empire is productive of doubt, delay, and inevitable appeals from the local to the supreme magistrate. Justinian, the Greek emperor of Constantinople and the East, was the legal successor of the Latian shepherd who had planted a colony on the banks of the Tiber. In a period of thirteen hundred years the laws had reluctantly followed the changes of government and manners, and the laudable desire of conciliating ancient names with recent institutions destroyed the harmony and swelled the magnitude of the obscure and irregular system. The laws which excuse on any occasions the ignorance of their subjects confess their own imperfections. The civil jurisprudence, as it was abridged by Justinian, still continued a mysterious science and a profitable trade, and the innate perplexity of the study was involved in tenfold darkness by the private industry of the practitioners. The expense of the pursuit sometimes exceeded the value of the prize, and the fairest rights were abandoned by the poverty or prudence of the claimants. Such costly justice might tend to abate the spirit of litigation, but the unequal pressure serves only to increase the influence of the rich, and to aggravate the misery of the poor. By these dilatory and expensive proceedings, the wealthy pleader obtains a more certain advantage than he could hope from the accidental corruption of his judge. The experience of an abuse, from which our own age and country are not perfectly exempt, may sometimes provoke a generous indignation, and extort the hasty wish of exchanging our elaborate jurisprudence for the simple and summary decrees of a Turkish cadi. Our calmer reflection will suggest that such forms and delays are necessary to guard the person and property of the citizen; that the discretion of the judge is the first engine of tyranny, and that the laws of a free people should foresee and determine every question that may probably arise in the exercise of power and the transactions of industry. But the government of Justinian united the evils of liberty and servitude; and the Romans were oppressed at the same time by the multiplicity of their laws and the arbitrary will of their master. FOOTNOTES: [26] Among the works which have been recovered, by the persevering and successful endeavors of M. Mai and his followers to trace the imperfectly erased characters of the ancient writers on these palimpsests, Gibbon at this period of his labors would have hailed with delight the recovery of the _Institutes_ of Gaius, and the fragments of the Theodosian _Code_, published by M. Peyron of Turin. [27] Pisa was taken by the Florentines in the year 1406; and in 1411 the _Pandects_ were transported to the capital. These events are authentic and famous. [28] They were new bound in purple, deposited in a rich casket, and shown to curious travellers by the monks and magistrates bareheaded and with lighted tapers. [29] Gibbon, dividing the _Institutes_ into four parts, considers the appendix of the criminal law in the last title as a fourth part. [30] This parental power was strictly confined to the Roman citizen. The foreigner, or he who had only _jus Latii_, did not possess it. If a Roman citizen unknowingly married a Latin or a foreign wife, he did not possess this power over his son, because the son, following the legal condition of the mother, was not a Roman citizen. A man, however, alleging sufficient cause for his ignorance, might raise both mother and child to the rights of citizenship. [31] The edict of Constantine first conferred this right; for Augustus had prohibited the taking as a concubine a woman who might be taken as a wife; and if marriage took place afterward, this marriage made no change in the rights of the children born before it; recourse was then had to adoption, properly called arrogation. [32] The Roman laws protected all property acquired in a lawful manner. They imposed on those who had invaded it, the obligation of making restitution and reparation of all damage caused by that invasion; they punished it moreover, in many cases, by a pecuniary fine. But they did not always grant a recovery against the third person, who had become _bona fide_ possessed of the property. He who had obtained possession of a thing belonging to another, knowing nothing of the prior rights of that person, maintained the possession. The law had expressly determined those cases, in which it permitted property to be reclaimed from an innocent possessor. In these cases possession had the characters of absolute proprietorship. To possess this right, it was not sufficient to have entered into possession of the thing _in any manner_; the acquisition was bound to have that character of publicity, which was given by the observation of solemn forms, prescribed by the laws, or the uninterrupted exercise of proprietorship during a certain time: the Roman citizen alone could acquire this proprietorship. Every other kind of possession, which might be named imperfect proprietorship, was called _in bonis habere_. It was not till after the time of Cicero that the general name of _dominium_ was given to all proprietorship. [33] Justinian has not condescended to give usury a place in his _Institutes_; but the necessary rules and restrictions are inserted in the _Pandects_ and the _Code_. [34] Cato, Seneca, Plutarch, have loudly condemned the practice or abuse of usury. According to etymology, the principal is supposed to _generate_ the interest: "A breed for barren metal," exclaims Shakspeare--and the stage is an echo of the public voice. [35] Livy mentions two remarkable and flagitious eras, of three thousand persons accused, and of one hundred and ninety noble matrons convicted, of the crime of poisoning. Hume discriminates the ages of private and public virtue. Rather say that such ebullitions of mischief (as in France in the year 1680) are accidents and prodigies which leave no marks on the manners of a nation. [36] The first parricide at Rome was L. Ostius, after the Second Punic War. During the Cimbric, P. Malleolus was guilty of the first matricide. [37] Verres lived near thirty years after his trial, till the Second Triumvirate, when he was proscribed by the taste of Mark Antony for the sake of his Corinthian plate. [38] Montesquieu, that eloquent philosopher, conciliates the rights of liberty and of nature, which should never be placed in opposition to each other. [39] We are indebted for this interesting fact to a fragment of Asconius Pedianus, who flourished under the reign of Tiberius. The loss of his _Commentaries on the Orations of Cicero_ has deprived us of a valuable fund of historical and legal knowledge. [40] The extension of the Empire and _city_ of Rome obliged the exile to seek a more distant place of retirement. [41] When he fatigued his subjects in building the Capitol, many of the laborers were provoked to despatch themselves: he nailed their dead bodies to crosses. [42] The sole resemblance of a violent and premature death has engaged Vergil to confound suicides with infants, lovers, and persons unjustly condemned. Some of his editors are at a loss to deduce the idea or ascertain the jurisprudence of the Roman poet. AUGUSTINE'S MISSIONARY WORK IN ENGLAND A.D. 597 THE VENERABLE BEDE[43] JOHN RICHARD GREEN St. Augustine was the first archbishop of Canterbury. He was educated in Rome under Pope Gregory I, by whom he was sent to Britain with forty monks of the Benedictine order, for the purpose of converting the English to Christianity. Bertha, wife of Ethelbert, king of Kent, was a Christian. She was a daughter of Charibert, king of Paris, and had brought her chaplain with her, who held services in the ruined church of St. Martin, near Canterbury. There seemed little prospect, however, of the faith spreading among the wild islanders until Augustine arrived on the Isle of Thanet A.D. 596. The occasion of his being sent on this missionary errand is said to have been connected with an incident which has often been related, wherein it appears that Gregory, while yet a monk, struck with the beauty of some heathen Anglo-Saxon youths exposed for sale in the slave market at Rome, inquired concerning their nationality. Being told that they were Angles, he said: "_Non Angli sed angeli_ ['Not Angles, but angels'], and well may, for their angel-like faces it becometh such to be coheirs with the angels in heaven. In what province of England do they live?" "Deira" was the reply. "From _Dei ira_ ['God's wrath'] are they to be freed?" answered Gregory. "How call ye the king of that country?" "Ælla." "Then Alleluia surely ought to be sung in his kingdom to the praise of that God who created all things," said the gracious and clever monk. "The conversion of the English to Christianity," says Freeman, "at once altered their whole position in the world. Hitherto our history had been almost wholly insular; our heathen forefathers had had but little to do, either in war or peace, with any nations beyond their own four seas. We hear little of any connection being kept up between the Angles and Saxons who settled in Britain, and their kinsfolk who abode in their original country. By its conversion England was first brought, not only within the pale of the Christian Church, but within the pale of the general political society of Europe. But our insular position, combined with the events of our earlier history, was not without its effect on the peculiar character of Christianity as established in England. England was the first great territorial conquest of the spiritual power, beyond the limits of the Roman Empire, beyond the influence of Greek and Roman civilization." The following account from the _Ecclesiastical History_ of the Venerable Bede, the "father of English history," and foremost scholar of England in his age, is in the modern English rendering by Thomson, of King Alfred's famous translation, made for the instruction of the English people as the best work of that period on their own history. As a contrast John Richard Green's treatment of the same episode is appended. THE VENERABLE BEDE When according to forthrunning time [it] was about five hundred and ninety-two years from Christ's hithercoming, Mauricius, the Emperor, took to the government, and had it two-and-twenty years. He was the fifty-fourth from Augustus. In the tenth year of that Emperor's reign, Gregory, the holy man, who was in lore and deed the highest, took to the bishophood of the Roman Church, and of the apostolic seat, and held and governed it thirteen years and six months and ten days. In the fourteenth year of the same Emperor, about a hundred and fifty years from the English nation's hithercoming into Britain, he was admonished by a divine impulse that he should send God's servant Augustine, and many other monks with him, fearing the Lord, to preach God's word to the English nation. When they obeyed the bishop's commands, and began to go to the mentioned work, and had gone some deal of the way, then began they to fear and dread the journey, and thought that it was wiser and safer for them that they should rather return home than seek the barbarous people, and the fierce and the unbelieving, even whose speech they knew not; and in common chose this advice to themselves; and then straightway sent Augustine (whom they had chosen for their bishop if their doctrines should be received) to the Pope, that he might humbly intercede for them, that they might not need to go upon a journey so perilous and so toilsome, and a pilgrimage so unknown. Then St. Gregory sent a letter to them, and exhorted and advised them in that letter: that they should humbly go into the work of God's word, and trust in God's help; and that they should not fear the toil of the journey, nor dread the tongues of evil-speaking men; but that, with all earnestness, and with the love of God, they should perform the good things which they by God's help had begun to do; and that they should know that the great toil would be followed by the greater glory of everlasting life; and he prayed Almighty God that he would shield them by his grace; and that he would grant to himself that he might see the fruit of their labor in the heavenly kingdom's glory, because he was ready to be in the same labor with them, if leave had been given him. Then Augustine was strengthened by the exhortation of the blessed father Gregory, and with Christ's servants who were with him returned to the work of God's word, and came into Britain. Then was at that time Ethelbert king in Kent, and a mighty one, who had rule as far as the boundary of the river Humber, which sheds asunder the south folk of the English nation and the north folk. Then [there] is on the eastward of Kent a great island [Thanet by name], which is six hundred hides large, after the English nation's reckoning. The isle is shed away from the continuous land by the stream Wantsum, which is three furlongs broad, and in two places is fordable, and either end lies in the sea. On this isle came up Christ's servant Augustine and his fellows--he was one of forty. They likewise took with them interpreters from Frankland [France], as St. Gregory bade them; and he sent messengers to Ethelbert, and let him know that he came from Rome, and brought the best errand, and whosoever would be obedient to him, he promised him everlasting gladness in heaven, and a kingdom hereafter without end, with the true and living God. When [he then] the King heard these words, then ordered he them to abide in the isle on which they had come up; and their necessaries to be there given them until he should see what he would do to them. Likewise before that a report of the Christian religion had come to him, for he had a Christian wife, who was given to him from the royal kin of the Franks--Bertha was her name; which woman he received from her parents on condition that she should have his leave that she might hold the manner of the Christian belief, and of her religion, unspotted, with the bishop whom they gave her for the help of that faith; whose name was Luidhard. Then [it] was after many days that the King came to the isle, and ordered to make a seat for him out [of doors], and ordered Augustine with his fellows to come to his speech (a _conference_). He guarded himself lest they should go into any house to him; he used the old greeting, in case they had any magic whereby they should overcome and deceive him. But they came endowed--not with devil-craft, but with divine might. They bore Christ's rood-token--a silvern cross of Christ and a likeness of the Lord Jesus colored and delineated on a board; and were crying the names of holy men; and singing prayers together, made supplication to the Lord for the everlasting health of themselves and of those to whom they come. Then the King bade them sit, and they did so; and they soon preached and taught the word of life to him, together with all his peers who were there present. Then answered the King, and thus said: Fair words and promises are these which ye have brought and say to us; but because they are new and unknown, we cannot yet agree that we should forsake the things which we for a long time, with all the English nation, have held. But because ye have come hither as pilgrims from afar, and since it seems and is evident to me that ye wished to communicate to us also the things which ye believed true and best, we will not therefore be heavy to you, but will kindly receive you in hospitality, and give you a livelihood, and supply your needs. Nor will we hinder you from joining and adding to the religion of your belief all whom you can through your lore. Then the King gave them a dwelling and a place in Canterbury, which was the chief city of all his kingdom, and as he had promised to give them a livelihood and their worldly needs, he likewise gave them leave that they might preach and teach the Christian faith. It is said that when they went and drew nigh to the city, as their custom was, with Christ's holy cross, and with the likeness of the great King our Lord Jesus Christ, they sung with a harmonious voice this Litany and Antiphony: _Deprecamur te_, etc. "We beseech thee, Lord, in all thy mercy, that thy fury and thy wrath be taken off from this city and [from] thy holy house, because we have sinned. Alleluia." Then it was soon after they had entered into the dwelling place which had been granted to them in the royal city, when they began to imitate the apostolic life of the primitive church--that is, served the Lord in constant prayers, and waking and fasting, and preached and taught God's word to whom they might, and slighted all things of this world as foreign; but those things only which were seen [to be] needful for their livelihood they received from those whom they taught; according to that which they taught, they [themselves] through everything lived; and they had a ready mind to suffer adversity, yea likewise death [it] self, for the truth which they preached and taught. Then was no delay that many believed and were baptized. They also wondered at the simplicity of [their] harmless life and the sweetness of their heavenly lore. There was by east well-nigh the city a church built in honor of St. Martin long ago, while the Romans yet dwelt in Britain [in which church the Queen (was) wont to pray, of whom we said before that she was a Christian]. In this church at first the holy teachers began to meet and sing and pray, and do mass-song, and teach men and baptize, until the King was converted to the faith, and they obtained more leave to teach everywhere, and to build and repair churches. Then came it about through the grace of God that the King likewise among others began to delight in the cleanest life of holy [men] and their sweetest promises, and they also gave confirmation that those were true by the showing of many wonders; and he then, being glad, was baptized. Then began many daily to hasten and flock together to hear God's word, and to forsake the manner of heathenism, and joined themselves, through belief, to the oneness of Christ's holy Church. Of their belief and conversion [it] is said that the King was so evenly glad that he, however, forced none to the Christian manner [of worship], but that those who turned to belief and to baptism he more inwardly loved, as they were fellow-citizens of the heavenly kingdom. For he had learnt from his teachers and from the authors of his health that Christ's service should be of good will, not of compulsion. And he then, the King, gave and granted to his teachers a place and settlement suitable to their condition, in his chief city, and thereto gave their needful supplies in various possessions. During these things the holy man Augustine fared over sea, and came to the city Arles, and by Ætherius, archbishop of the said city, according to the behest and commandment of the blessed father St. Gregory, was hallowed archbishop of the English people, and returned and fared into Britain, and soon sent messengers to Rome, that was Laurence a mass-priest and Peter a monk, that they should say and make known to the blessed St. Gregory that the English nation had received Christ's belief, and that he had been consecrated as bishop. He likewise requested his advice about many causes and questions which were seen by him [to be] needful; and he soon sent suitable answers of them. Asked by St. Augustine, bishop of the church of Canterbury: First, of bishops, how they shall behave and live with their fellows. Next, on the gifts of the faithful which they bring to holy tables and to God's churches--how many doles of them shall be? Answered by Pope St. Gregory: Holy writ makes it known, quoth he, which I have no doubt thou knowest, and sunderly the blessed Paul's epistle, which he wrote to Timothy, in which he earnestly trained and taught him how he should behave and do in God's house. For it is the manner of the apostolic seat, when they hallow bishops, that they give them commandments, and that of all the livelihood which comes in to them there shall be four doles. One, in the first place, to the bishop and his family for food, and entertainment of guests and comers; a second dole to God's servants; a third to the needy; the fourth to renewing and repair of God's church. But because thy brotherliness has been trained and taught in monastic rules, thou shalt not, however, be asunder from thy fellows in the English church, which now yet is newly come and led to the faith of God. This behavior and this life thou shalt set up, which our fathers had in the beginning of the new-born church, when none of them said aught of that which they owned was his in sunder; but they all had all things common. If, then, any priests or God's servants are settled without holy orders, let those who cannot withhold themselves from women take them wives, and receive their livelihood outside. For of the same fathers, of whom we spoke before, [it] is written that they dealt their worldly goods to sundry men as every [one] had need. Likewise concerning their livelihood it is to be thought and foreseen (_i.e., provided_) that they live in good manners under ecclesiastical rules, and sing psalms and keep wakes and hold their hearts and tongues and bodies clean from all forbidden [things] to Almighty God. But, as to those living in common life, what have we to say how they deal their alms, or exercise hospitality, and fulfil mercy? since all that is left over in their worldly substance is to be reached and given to the pious and good, as the master of all, our Lord Christ, taught and said: _Quod superest_, etc. "What is over and left, give alms, and to you are all [things] clean." Asked by St. Augustine: Since there is one faith, and are various customs of churches, there is one custom of mass-song in the holy Roman Church, and another is had in the kingdom of Gaul. Answered by Pope St. Gregory: Thou thyself knowest the manner and custom of the Roman Church, in which thou wert reared; but now it seems good, and is more agreeable to me, that whatsoever thou hast found either in the Roman Church or in Gaul, or in any other [church], that was more pleasing to Almighty God, thou should carefully choose that, and set it to be held fast in the Church of the English nation, which now yet is new in the faith. For the things are not to be loved for places; but the places for good things. Therefore what things thou choosest as pious, good, and right from each of sundry churches, these gather thou together, and settle into a custom in the mind of the English nation. Asked by Augustine: I pray thee, what punishment shall he suffer--whosoever takes away anything by stealth from a church? Answered by Gregory: This may thy brotherliness determine from the thief's condition, how he may be corrected. For there are some who have worldly wealth, and yet commit theft; there are some who are in this wise guilty through poverty. Therefore need is that some be corrected by waning of their worldly goods, some by stripes; some more sternly, some more mildly. And though the punishment be inflicted a little harder or sterner, yet it is to be done of love, not of wrath nor of fury; because through the throes of this is procured to the man that he be not given to the everlasting fires of hell-torments. For in this manner we ought to punish men, as the good fathers are wont [to do] their fleshly children, whom they chide and swinge for their sins; and yet those same whom they chide and chastise by these pains they also love, and wish to have for their heirs, and for them hold their worldly goods which they possess, whom they seem in anger to persecute and torment. For love is ever to be held in the mind, and it dictates and determines the measure of the chastisement, so that the mind does nothing at all beside the right rule. Thou likewise addest in thy inquiry, how those things should be compensated which have been taken away from a church by theft. But, oh! far be it that God's Church should receive with increase what she seems to let alone of earthly things, and seek worldly gain by vain things. Asked by Bishop St. Augustine: At what generation shall Christian people be joined among themselves in marriage with their kinsfolk?... Answered by St. Gregory: ... But because there are many in the English nation [who], while they were then yet in unbelief, are said to have been joined together in this sinful marriage,[44] now they are to be admonished, since they have come to the faith, that they hold themselves off from such iniquities, and understand that it is a heavy sin, and dread the awful doom of God, lest they for fleshly love receive the torments of everlasting death. They are not, however, for this cause to be deprived of the communion of Christ's body and blood, lest this thing may seem to be revenged on them, in which they through unwittingness sinned before the bath of baptism. For at this time the Holy Church corrects some things through zeal, bears with some through mildness, overlooks some through consideration, and so bears and overlooks that often by bearing and overlooking she checks the opposing evil. All those who come to the faith of Christ are to be reminded that they may not dare to commit any such thing. But, if any shall commit them, then are they to be deprived of Christ's body and blood; for, as some little is to be borne with in regard to those men who through unwittingness commit sin, so on the other hand it is to be strongly pursued in those who dread not to sin wittingly. Asked by Bishop St. Augustine: If a great distance of journey lies between, so that bishops may not easily come, whether may a bishop be hallowed without the presence of other bishops. Answered by Gregory: In the English Church, indeed, in which thou alone as yet art found a bishop, thou canst not hallow a bishop otherwise than without other bishops; but bishops must come to thee out of the kingdom of Gaul, that they may stand as witness at the bishop's hallowing, for the hallowing of bishops must not be otherwise than in the assembling and witnessing of three or four bishops, that they may send [up] and pour [forth] their petitions and prayers to the Almighty God for his favor. Asked by Augustine: How must we do with the bishops of Gaul and Britain? Answered by Pope Gregory: Over the bishops of Gaul we give thee no authority, because from the earlier times of my predecessors the bishop of the city Arles received the pallium, whom we ought not to degrade nor to deprive of the received authority. But, if thou happen to go into the province of Gaul, have thou a conference and consultation with the said bishop what is to be done, or, if any vices are found in bishops, how they shall be corrected and reformed; and if there be a supposition that he is too lukewarm in the vigor of his discipline and chastisement, then is he to be inflamed and abetted by thy brotherliness's love,[45] that he may ward off those things which are contrary to the behest and commands of our Maker, from the manners of the bishops. Thou mayest not judge the bishops of Gaul without their own authority; but thou shalt mildly admonish them, and show them the imitation of thy good works. All the bishops of Britain we commend to thy brotherliness, in order that the unlearned may be taught, the weak strengthened by thy exhortation, and the perverse corrected by thy authority.[46] Augustine likewise bade [his messengers] acquaint him that a great harvest was here present and few workmen. And he then sent with the aforesaid messengers more help to him for divine learning, among whom the first and greatest were Mellitus and Justus and Paulinus and Rufinianus, and by them generally all those things which were needful for the worship and service of the Church--communion vessels, altar-cloth, and church ornaments, and bishops' robes, and deacons' robes, as also reliques of the apostles and holy martyrs, and many books. He likewise sent to Augustine the bishop a pallium, and a letter in which he intimated how he should hallow other bishops, and in what places [he should] set them in Britain. The blessed Pope Gregory likewise at the same time sent a letter to King Ethelbert, and along with it many worldly gifts of diverse sorts. He wished likewise by these temporal honors to glorify the King, to whom he had, by his labor and by his diligence in teaching, opened and made known the glory of the heavenly kingdom. And then St. Augustine, as soon as he received the bishop-seat in the royal city, renewed and wrought, with the King's help, the church which he had learnt was wrought long before by old Roman work, and hallowed it in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; and he there set a dwelling-place for himself and all his after-followers. He likewise built a monastery by east of the city, in which Ethelbert the King, by his exhortation and advice, ordered to build a church worthy of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, and he enriched it with various gifts, in which church the body of Augustine, and of all the Canterbury bishops together, and of their kings, might be laid. The church, however, not Augustine, but Bishop Laurentius, his after-follower, hallowed. The first abbot at the same monastery was a mass-priest named Peter, who was sent back as a messenger into the kingdom of Gaul, and then was drowned in a bay of the sea, which was called Amfleet, and was laid in an unbecoming grave by the inhabitants of the place. But the Almighty God would show of what merit the holy man was, and every night a heavenly light was made to shine over his grave, until the neighbors, who saw it, understood that it was a great and holy man who was buried there; and they then asked who and whence he was: they then took his body, and laid and buried it in a church in the city of Boulogne, with the honor befitting so great and so holy a man. Then it was that Augustine, with the help of King Ethelbert, invited to his speech the bishops and teachers of the Britons, in the place which is yet named Augustine's Oak, on the borders of the Hwiccii and West Saxons. And he then began, with brotherly love, to advise and teach them, that they should have right love and peace between them, and undertake, for the Lord, the common labor of teaching divine lore in the English nation. And they would not hear him, nor keep Easter at its right tide, and also had many other things unlike and contrary to ecclesiastical unity. When they had held a long conference and strife about those things, and they would not yield any things to Augustine's instructions, nor to his prayers, nor to his threats, and [those] of his companions, but thought their own customs and institutions better than [that] they should agree with all Christ's churches throughout the world; then the holy father Augustine put an end to this troublesome strife, and thus spoke: "Let us pray Almighty God, who makes the one-minded to dwell in his Father's house, that he vouchsafe to signify to us by heavenly wonders which institution we ought to follow, by what ways to hasten to the entrance of his kingdom. Let an infirm man be brought hither to us, and, through whose prayer soever he be healed, let his belief and practice be believed acceptable to God, and to be followed by all." When his adversaries had hardly granted that, a blind man of English kin was led forth: he was first led to the bishops of the Britons, and he received no health nor comfort through their ministry. Then at last Augustine was constrained by righteous need, arose and bowed his knees, [and] prayed God the Almighty Father that he would give sight to the blind man, that he through one man's bodily enlightening might kindle the gift of ghostly light in the hearts of many faithful Then soon, without delay, the blind man was enlightened, and received sight; and the true preacher of the heavenly light, Augustine, was proclaimed and praised by all. Then the Britons also acknowledged with shame that they understood that it was the way of truth which Augustine preached; they said, however, that they could not, without consent and leave of their people, shun and forsake their old customs. They begged that again another synod should be [assembled], and they then would attend it with more counsellors. When that accordingly was set, seven bishops of the Britons came, and all the most learned men, who were chiefly from the city Bangor: at that time the abbot of that monastery was named Dinoth. When they then were going to the meeting, they first came to a [certain] hermit, who was with them holy and wise. They interrogated and asked him whether they should for Augustine's lore forsake their own institutions and customs. Then answered he them, "If he be a man of God, follow him." Quoth they to him, "How may we know whether he be so?" Quoth he: "[Our] Lord himself hath said in his gospel, Take ye my yoke upon you, and learn from me that I am mild and of lowly heart. And now if Augustine is mild and of lowly heart, then it is [to be] believed that he bears Christ's yoke and teaches you to bear it. If he then is unmild and haughty, then it is known that he is not from God, nor [should] ye mind his words." Quoth they again, "How may we know that distinctly?" Quoth he, "See ye that he come first to the synod with his fellows, and sit; and, if he rises toward you when ye come, then wit ye that he is Christ's servant, and ye shall humbly hear his words and his lore. But if he despise you, and will not rise toward you since there are more of you, be he then despised by you." Well, they did so as he said. When they had come to the synod-place, the archbishop Augustine was sitting on his seat. When they saw that he rose not for them, they quickly became angry, and upbraided him [as being] haughty, and gainsaid and withstood all his words. The archbishop said to them: "In many things ye are contrary to our customs and so to [those] of all God's churches; and yet if ye will be obedient to me in these three things--that first ye celebrate Easter at the right tide; that ye fulfil the ministry of baptism, through which we are born as God's children, after the manner of the holy Roman and apostolic Church; and that, thirdly, ye preach the word of the Lord to the English people together with us--we will patiently bear with all other things which ye do that are contrary to our customs." They said that they would do none of these things, nor would have him for an archbishop; they said among themselves, "If he would not now rise for us, much more, if we shall be subjected to him, will he contemn us for naught." It is said that the man of God, St. Augustine, in a threatening manner foretold, "if they would not receive peace with men of God, that they should receive unpeace and war from their foes; and, if they would not preach among the English race the word of life, they should through their hands suffer the vengeance of death." And through everything, as the man of God had foretold, by the righteous doom of God it came to pass; and very soon after this Ethelfrith, king of the English, collected a great army, and led it to Legcaster, and there fought against the Britons, and made the greatest slaughter of the faithless people. While he was beginning the battle, King Ethelfrith saw their priests and bishops and monks standing aloof in a safer place, that they should pray and make intercession to God for their warriors: he inquired and asked what that host was, and what they were doing there. When he understood the cause of their coming, then said he, "So! I wot if they cry to their God against us, though they bear not a weapon, they fight against us, for they pursue us with their hostile prayers and curses." He then straightway ordered to turn upon them first, and slay them. Men say that there were twelve hundred of this host, and fifty of them escaped by flight; and he so then destroyed and blotted out the other host of the sinful nation, not without great waning of his [own] host; and so was fulfilled the prophecy of the holy bishop Augustine, that they should for their trowlessness suffer the vengeance of temporal perdition, because they despised the skilful counsel of their eternal salvation. After these things Augustine, bishop [of Britain], hallowed two bishops: the one was named Mellitus, the other Justus. Mellitus he sent to preach divine lore to the East Saxons, who are shed off from Kentland by the river Thames, and joined to the east sea. Their chief city is called Lundencaster (_now London_), standing on the bank of the foresaid river; and it is the market-place of land and sea comers. The King in the nation at that time was Seabright (_or Sabert_), Ethelbert's sister-son, and his vassal. Then he and the nation of the East Saxons received the word of truth and the faith of Christ through Mellitus, the bishop's lore. Then King Ethelbert ordered to build a church in London, and to hallow it to St. Paul the apostle, that he and his after-followers might have their bishop-seat in that place. Justus he hallowed as bishop in Kent itself at Rochester, which is four-and-twenty miles right west from Canterbury, in which city likewise King Ethelbert ordered to build a church, and to hallow it to St. Andrew the apostle; and to each of these bishops the King gave his gifts and bookland and possessions for them to brook with their fellows. After these things, then, Father Augustine, beloved of God, departed [this life], and his body was buried without [doors], nigh the church of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, which we mentioned before, because it was not then yet fully built nor hallowed. As soon as it was hallowed, then his body was put into it, and becomingly buried in the north porch of the church, in which likewise the bodies of all the after-following archbishops are buried but two; that is, Theodorus and Berhtwald, whose bodies are laid in the church itself, because no more might [be so] in the foresaid porch. Well-nigh in the middle of the church is an altar set and hallowed in name of St. Gregory, on which every Saturday their memory and decease are celebrated with mass-song by the mass-priest of that place. On St. Augustine's tomb is written an inscription of this sort: Here resteth Sir[47] Augustine, the first archbishop of Canterbury, who was formerly sent hither by the blessed Gregory, bishop of the Roman city; and was upheld by God with working of wonders. King Ethelbert and his people he led from the worship of idols to the faith of Christ, and, having fulfilled the days of his ministry in peace, departed on the 26th day of May in the same King's reign. JOHN RICHARD GREEN Years had passed by since Gregory pitied the English slaves in the market-place of Rome. As bishop of the imperial city he at last found himself in a position to carry out his dream of winning Britain to the faith, and an opening was given him by Ethelbert's marriage with Bertha, a daughter of the Frankish king Charibert of Paris. Bertha, like her Frankish kindred, was a Christian; a Christian bishop accompanied her from Gaul; and a ruined Christian church, the church of St. Martin beside the royal city of Canterbury, was given them for their worship. The King himself remained true to the gods of his fathers; but his marriage no doubt encouraged Gregory to send a Roman abbot, Augustine, at the head of a band of monks to preach the Gospel, to the English people. The missionaries landed in 597 in the Isle of Thanet, at the spot where Hengist had landed more than a century before; and Ethelbert received them sitting in the open air, on the chalk-down above Minster where the eye nowadays catches miles away over the marshes the dim tower of Canterbury. The King listened patiently to the long sermon of Augustine as the interpreters the abbot had brought with him from Gaul rendered it in the English tongue. "Your words are fair," Ethelbert replied at last with English good sense, "but they are new and of doubtful meaning." For himself, he said, he refused to forsake the gods of his fathers, but with the usual religious tolerance of his race he promised shelter and protection to the strangers. The band of monks entered Canterbury bearing before them a silver cross with a picture of Christ, and singing in concert the strains of the litany of their church. "Turn from this city, O Lord," they sang, "thine anger and wrath, and turn it from thy holy house, for we have sinned." And then in strange contrast came the jubilant cry of the older Hebrew worship, the cry which Gregory had wrested in prophetic earnestness from the name of the Yorkshire king in the Roman market-place, "Alleluia!"[48] It was thus that the spot which witnessed the landing of Hengist became yet better known as the landing-place of Augustine. But the second landing at Ebbsfleet was in no small measure a reversal and undoing of the first. "Strangers from Rome" was the title with which the missionaries first fronted the English King. The march of the monks as they chanted their solemn litany was in one sense a return of the Roman legions who withdrew at the trumpet-call of Alaric. It was to the tongue and the thought not of Gregory only, but of the men whom his Jutish fathers had slaughtered or driven out that Ethelbert listened in the preaching of Augustine. Canterbury, the earliest royal city of German England, became a centre of Latin influence. The Roman tongue became again one of the tongues of Britain, the language of its worship, its correspondence, its literature. But more than the tongue of Rome returned with Augustine. Practically his landing renewed that union with the western world which the landing of Hengist had destroyed. The new England was admitted into the older commonwealth of nations. The civilization, art, letters, which had fled before the sword of the English conquerors returned with the Christian faith. The great fabric of the Roman law indeed never took root in England, but it is impossible not to recognize the result of the influence of the Roman missionaries in the fact that codes of the customary English law began to be put in writing soon after their arrival. A year passed before Ethelbert yielded to the preaching of Augustine. But from the moment of his conversion the new faith advanced rapidly and the Kentish men crowded to baptism in the train of their King. The new religion was carried beyond the bounds of Kent by the supremacy which Ethelbert wielded over the neighboring kingdoms. Sebert, king of the East Saxons, received a bishop sent from Kent, and suffered him to build up again a Christian church in what was now his subject city of London, while the East Anglian king Redwald resolved to serve Christ and the older gods together. FOOTNOTES: [43] Translated by King Alfred the Great. [44] That is, with their near kinsfolk. [45] A brother is here styled "his brotherliness," as a pope "his holiness." [46] The remainder of this is not translated here. [47] "Sir" in English (_Schir_, Scottish) equal to _Dominus_, Latin, was five or six centuries ago prefixed to the name of every ordained priest. [48] See introduction to _Augustine's Missionary Work in England_. THE HEGIRA CAREER OF MAHOMET: THE KORAN: AND MAHOMETAN CREED A.D. 622 IRVING OCKLEY The flight of Mahomet from Mecca to Medina occurred June 20, 622, and was called the _hegira_, or departure of the prophet. That event marks the commencement of the Mahometan era, which is called there-from the _Hegira_. According to the civil calculation it is fixed at Friday, July 16th, the date of the Mahometans, although astronomers and some historians assign it to the day preceding. While primarily referring to the flight of Mahomet, the term is applied also to the emigration to Medina, prior to the capture of Mecca (630) of those of Mahomet's disciples, who henceforth were known as Mohajerins--Emigrants or Refugees--which became a title of honor. A scion of the family of Hashem and of the tribe of Koreish, the noblest race in Arabia, and the guardians of the ancient temple and idols of the Kaaba, Mahomet was born at Mecca, August 20, A.D. 570. He acquired wealth and influence by his marriage with Kadijah, a rich widow, but, about his fortieth year, by announcing himself as an apostle of God, sent to extirpate idolatry and to restore the true faith of the prophets Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, he and his converts were exposed to contumely and persecution. It was, as Irving's recital shows, necessary for the preservation of his life--which was threatened by his own tribe, the Koreishites--that Mahomet should leave Mecca, and he escaped none too soon. It must also be observed that by this going out he found ampler means for the spread of his doctrine and the increase of his followers. His very presence among strangers drew multitudes to the support of his cause, and the enthusiasm aroused by the prophet at Medina made that city the centre of his first great propaganda. There Mahomet died; in the Great Mosque is his tomb, and Medina is sometimes called the "City of the Prophet." From this centre began the development and spread of Islam into a world-religion, which has flourished to the present day, when its followers are estimated at nearly two hundred millions, having large empire and still wider influence among some of the most important races of the East. WASHINGTON IRVING The fortunes of Mahomet were becoming darker and darker in his native place. Kadijah, his original benefactress, the devoted companion of his solitude and seclusion, the zealous believer in his doctrines, was in her grave; so also was Abu-Taleb, once his faithful and efficient protector. Deprived of the sheltering influence of the latter, Mahomet had become, in a manner, an outlaw in Mecca; obliged to conceal himself, and remain a burden on the hospitality of those whom his own doctrines had involved in persecution. If worldly advantage had been his object, how had it been attained? Upward of ten years had elapsed since first he announced his prophetic mission; ten long years of enmity, trouble, and misfortune. Still he persevered, and now, at a period of life when men seek to enjoy in repose the fruition of the past, rather than risk all in new schemes for the future, we find him, after having sacrificed ease, fortune, and friends, prepared to give up home and country also, rather than his religious creed. As soon as the privileged time of pilgrimage arrived, he emerged once more from his concealment, and mingled with the multitude assembled from all parts of Arabia. His earnest desire was to find some powerful tribe, or the inhabitants of some important city, capable and willing to receive him as a guest, and protect him in the enjoyment and propagation of his faith. His quest was for a time unsuccessful. Those who had come to worship at the Kaaba[49] drew back from a man stigmatized as an apostate; and the worldly-minded were unwilling to befriend one proscribed by the powerful of his native place. At length, as he was one day preaching on the hill Al Akaba, a little to the north of Mecca, he drew the attention of certain pilgrims from the city of Yathreb. This city, since called Medina, was about two hundred and seventy miles north of Mecca. Many of its inhabitants were Jews and heretical Christians. The pilgrims in question were pure Arabs of the ancient and powerful tribe of Khazradites, and in habits of friendly intercourse with the Keneedites and Naderites, two Jewish tribes inhabiting Mecca, who claimed to be of the sacerdotal line of Aaron. The pilgrims had often heard their Jewish friends explain the mysteries of their faith and talk of an expected messiah. They were moved by the eloquence of Mahomet, and struck with the resemblance of his doctrines to those of the Jewish law; insomuch that when they heard him proclaim himself a prophet, sent by heaven to restore the ancient faith, they said, one to another, "Surely this must be the promised messiah of which we have been told." The more they listened, the stronger became their persuasion of the fact, until in the end they avowed their conviction, and made a final profession of their faith. As the Khazradites belonged to one of the most powerful tribes of Yathreb, Mahomet sought to secure their protection, and proposed to accompany them on their return; but they informed him that they were at deadly feud with the Awsites, another powerful tribe of that city, and advised him to defer his coming until they should be at peace. He consented; but on the return home of the pilgrims, he sent with them Musab Ibn Omeir, one of the most learned and able of his disciples, with instructions to strengthen them in the faith, and to preach it to their townsmen. Thus were the seeds of Islamism first sown in the city of Medina. For a time they thrived but slowly. Musab was opposed by the idolaters, and his life threatened; but he persisted in his exertions and gradually made converts among the principal inhabitants. Among these were Saad Ibn Maads, a prince or chief of the Awsites, and Osaid Ibn Hodheir, a man of great authority in the city. Numbers of the Moslems of Mecca also, driven away by persecution, took refuge in Medina, and aided in propagating the new faith among its inhabitants, until it found its way into almost every household. Feeling now assured of being able to give Mahomet an asylum in the city, upward of seventy of the converts of Medina, led by Musab Ibn Omeir, repaired to Mecca with the pilgrims in the holy month of the thirteenth year of "the mission," to invite him to take up his abode in their city. Mahomet gave them a midnight meeting on the hill Al Akaba. His uncle Al Abbas, who, like the deceased Abu-Taleb, took an affectionate interest in his welfare, though no convert to his doctrines, accompanied him to this secret conference, which he feared might lead him into danger. He entreated the pilgrims from Medina not to entice his nephew to their city until more able to protect him; warning them that their open adoption of the new faith would bring all Arabia in arms against them. His warnings and entreaties were in vain; a solemn compact was made between the parties. Mahomet demanded that they should abjure idolatry, and worship the one true God openly and fearlessly. For himself he exacted obedience in weal and woe; and for the disciples who might accompany him, protection; even such as they would render to their own wives and children. On these terms he offered to bind himself to remain among them, to be the friend of their friends, the enemy of their enemies. "But, should we perish in your cause," asked they, "what will be our reward?" "Paradise," replied the prophet. The terms were accepted; the emissaries from Medina placed their hands in the hands of Mahomet, and swore to abide by their compact. The latter then singled out twelve from among them, whom he designated as his apostles; in imitation, it is supposed, of the example of our Saviour. Just then a voice was heard from the summit of the hill, denouncing them as apostates and menacing them with punishment. The sound of this voice, heard in the darkness of the night, inspired temporary dismay. "It is the voice of the fiend Iblis," said Mahomet scornfully; "he is the foe of God; fear him not." It was probably the voice of some spy or eavesdropper of the Koreishites; for the very next morning they manifested a knowledge of what had taken place in the night, and treated the new confederates with great harshness as they were departing from the city. It was this early accession to the faith, and this timely aid proffered and subsequently afforded to Mahomet and his disciples, which procured for the Moslems of Medina the appellation of Ansarians, or auxiliaries, by which they were afterward distinguished. After the departure of the Ansarians, and the expiration of the holy month, the persecutions of the Moslems were resumed with increased virulence, insomuch that Mahomet, seeing a crisis was at hand, and being resolved to leave the city, advised his adherents generally to provide for their safety. For himself he still lingered in Mecca with a few devoted followers. Abu Sofian, his implacable foe, was at this time governor of the city. He was both incensed and alarmed at the spreading growth of the new faith, and held a meeting of the chief of the Koreishites to devise some means of effectually putting a stop to it. Some advised that Mahomet should be banished the city; but it was objected that he might gain other tribes to his interest, or perhaps the people of Medina, and return at their head to take his revenge. Others proposed to wall him up in a dungeon, and supply him with food until he died; but it was surmised that his friends might effect his escape. All these objections were raised by a violent and pragmatical old man, a stranger from the province of Nedja, who, say the Moslem writers, was no other than the devil in disguise, breathing his malignant spirit into those present. At length it was declared by Abu-Jahl that the only effectual check on the growing evil was to put Mahomet to death. To this all agreed, and as a means of sharing the odium of the deed, and withstanding the vengeance it might awaken among the relatives of the victim, it was arranged that a member of each family should plunge his sword into the body of Mahomet. It is to this conspiracy that allusion is made in the eighth chapter of the _Koran_: "And call to mind how the unbelievers plotted against thee, that they might either detain thee in bonds, or put thee to death, or expel thee the city; but God laid a plot against them; and God is the best layer of plots." In fact, by the time the murderers arrived before the dwelling of Mahomet, he was apprised of the impending danger. As usual, the warning is attributed to the angel Gabriel, but it is probable it was given by some Koreishite, less bloody-minded than his confederates. It came just in time to save Mahomet from the hands of his enemies. They paused at his door, but hesitated to enter. Looking through a crevice they beheld, as they thought, Mahomet wrapped in his green mantle, and lying asleep on his couch. They waited for a while, consulting whether to fall on him while sleeping or wait until he should go forth. At length they burst open the door and rushed toward the couch. The sleeper started up; but, instead of Mahomet, Ali stood before them. Amazed and confounded they demanded, "Where is Mahomet?" "I know not," replied Ali sternly, and walked forth; nor did anyone venture to molest him. Enraged at the escape of their victim, however, the Koreishites proclaimed a reward of a hundred camels to anyone who should bring them Mahomet alive or dead. Divers accounts are given of the mode in which Mahomet made his escape from the house after the faithful Ali had wrapped himself in his mantle and taken his place upon the couch. The most miraculous account is, that he opened the door silently, as the Koreishites stood before it, and, scattering a handful of dust in the air, cast such blindness upon them that he walked through the midst of them without being perceived. This, it is added, is confirmed by the verse of the thirtieth chapter of the _Koran_: "We have thrown blindness upon them, that they shall not see." The most probable account is that he clambered over the wall in the rear of the house, by the help of a servant, who bent his back for him to step upon it.[50] He repaired immediately to the house of Abu-Bekr, and they arranged for instant flight. It was agreed that they should take refuge in a cave in Mount Thor, about an hour's distance from Mecca, and wait there until they could proceed safely to Medina; and in the mean time the children of Abu-Bekr should secretly bring them food. They left Mecca while it was yet dark, making their way on foot by the light of the stars, and the day dawned as they found themselves at the foot of Mount Thor. Scarce were they within the cave when they heard the sound of pursuit. Abu-Bekr, though a brave man, quaked with fear. "Our pursuers," said he, "are many, and we are but two." "Nay," replied Mahomet, "there is a third; God is with us!" And here the Moslem writers relate a miracle, dear to the minds of all true believers. By the time, say they, that the Koreishites reached the mouth of the cavern, an acacia-tree had sprung up before it, in the spreading branches of which a pigeon had made its nest and laid its eggs, and over the whole a spider had woven its web. When the Koreishites beheld these signs of undisturbed quiet, they concluded that no one could recently have entered the cavern; so they turned away, and pursued their search in another direction. Whether protected by miracle or not, the fugitives remained for three days undiscovered in the cave, and Asama, the daughter of Abu-Bekr, brought them food in the dusk of the evenings. On the fourth day, when they presumed the ardor of pursuit had abated, the fugitives ventured forth, and set out for Medina, on camels which a servant of Abu-Bekr had brought in the night for them. Avoiding the main road usually taken by the caravans, they bent their course nearer to the coast of the Red Sea. They had not proceeded far, however, before they were overtaken by a troop of horse headed by Soraka Ibn Malec. Abu-Bekr was again dismayed by the number of their pursuers; but Mahomet repeated the assurance, "Be not troubled; Allah is with us." Soraka was a grim warrior, with shagged iron-gray locks and naked sinewy arms rough with hair. As he overtook Mahomet, his horse reared and fell with him. His superstitious mind was struck with it as an evil sign. Mahomet perceived the state of his feeling, and by an eloquent appeal wrought upon him to such a degree that Soraka, filled with awe, entreated his forgiveness, and turning back with his troop suffered him to proceed on his way unmolested. The fugitives continued their journey without further interruption, until they arrived at Kobe, a hill about two miles from Medina. It was a favorite resort of the inhabitants of the city, and a place to which they sent their sick and infirm, for the air was pure and salubrious. Hence, too, the city was supplied with fruit; the hill and its environs being covered with vineyards and with groves of the date and lotus; with gardens producing citrons, oranges, pomegranates, figs, peaches, and apricots, and being irrigated with limpid streams. On arriving at this fruitful spot Al Kaswa, the camel of Mahomet, crouched on her knees, and would go no farther. The prophet interpreted it as a favorable sign, and determined to remain at Koba, and prepare for entering the city. The place where his camel knelt is still pointed out by pious Moslems, a mosque named Al Takwa having been built there to commemorate the circumstance. Some affirm that it was actually founded by the prophet. A deep well[51] is also shown in the vicinity, beside which Mahomet reposed under the shade of the trees, and into which he dropped his seal ring. It is believed still to remain there, and has given sanctity to the well, the waters of which are conducted by subterraneous conduits to Medina. At Koba he remained four days, residing in the house of an Awsite named Colthum Ibn Hadem. While at this village he was joined by a distinguished chief, Boreida Ibn al Hoseib, with seventy followers, all of the tribe of Saham. These made profession of faith between the hands of Mahomet. Another renowned proselyte who repaired to the prophet at this village was Salman al Parsi--or the Persian. He is said to have been a native of a small place near Ispahan, and that, on passing one day by a Christian church, he was so much struck by the devotion of the people, and the solemnity of the worship, that he became disgusted with the idolatrous faith in which he had been brought up. He afterward wandered about the East, from city to city and convent to convent, in quest of a religion, until an ancient monk, full of years and infirmities, told him of a prophet who had arisen in Arabia to restore the pure faith of Abraham. This Salman rose to power in after years, and was reputed by the unbelievers of Mecca to have assisted Mahomet in compiling his doctrine. This is alluded to in the sixteenth chapter of the _Koran_: "Verily, the idolaters say, that a certain man assisted to compose the _Koran_; but the language of this man is Ajami--or Persian--and the _Koran_ is indited in the pure Arabian tongue." The Moslems of Mecca, who had taken refuge some time before in Medina, hearing that Mahomet was at hand, came forth to meet him at Koba; among these were the early convert Talha, and Zobeir, the nephew of Kadijah. These, seeing the travel-stained garments of Mahomet and Abu-Bekr, gave them white mantles, with which to make their entrance into Medina. Numbers of the Ansarians, or auxiliaries, of Medina, who had made their compact with Mahomet in the preceding year, now hastened to renew their vow of fidelity. Learning from them that the number of proselytes in the city was rapidly augmenting, and that there was a general disposition to receive him favorably, he appointed Friday, the Moslem Sabbath,[52] the sixteenth day of the month Rabi, for his public entrance. Accordingly on the morning of that day he assembled all his followers to prayer; and after a sermon, in which he expounded the main principles of his faith, he mounted his camel Al Kaswa, and set forth for that city, which was to become renowned in after ages as his city of refuge. Boreida Ibn al Hoseib, with his seventy horsemen of the tribe of Saham, accompanied him as a guard. Some of the disciples took turns to hold a canopy of palm leaves over his head, and by his side rode Abu-Bekr. "O apostle of God!" cried Boreida, "thou shalt not enter Medina without a standard"; so saying, he unfolded his turban, and tying one end of it to the point of his lance, bore it aloft before the prophet. The city of Medina was fair to approach, being extolled for beauty of situation, salubrity of climate, and fertility of soil; for the luxuriance of its palm-trees, and the fragrance of its shrubs and flowers. At a short distance from the city a crowd of new proselytes to the faith came forth in sun and dust to meet the cavalcade. Most of them had never seen Mahomet, and paid reverence to Abu-Bekr through mistake; but the latter put aside the screen of palm leaves, and pointed out the real object of homage, who was greeted with loud acclamations. In this way did Mahomet, so recently a fugitive from his native city, with a price upon his head, enter Medina, more as a conqueror in triumph than an exile seeking an asylum. He alighted at the house of a Khazradite, named Abu-Ayub, a devout Moslem, to whom moreover he was distantly related; here he was hospitably received, and took up his abode in the basement story. Shortly after his arrival he was joined by the faithful Ali,[53] who had fled from Mecca, and journeyed on foot, hiding himself in the day and travelling only at night, lest he should fall into the hands of the Koreishites. He arrived weary and way-worn, his feet bleeding with the roughness of the journey. Within a few days more came Ayesha, and the rest of Abu-Bekr's household, together with the family of Mahomet, conducted by his faithful freedman Zeid, and by Abu-Bekr's servant Abdallah. SIMON OCKLEY Mahomet had hitherto propagated his religion by fair means only. During his stay at Mecca he had declared his business was only to preach and admonish; and that whether people believed or not was none of his concern. He had hitherto confined himself to the arts of persuasion, promising, on the one hand, the joys of paradise to all who should believe in him, and who should, for the hopes of them, disregard the things of this world, and even bear persecution with patience and resignation; and, on the other, deterring his hearers from what he called infidelity, by setting before them both the punishments inflicted in this world upon Pharaoh and others, who despised the warnings of the prophets sent to reclaim them; and also the torments of hell, which would be their portion in the world to come. Now, however, when he had got a considerable town at his command, and a good number of followers firmly attached to him, he began to sing another note. Gabriel now brings him messages from heaven to the effect that, whereas other prophets had come with miracles and been rejected, he was to take different measures, and propagate Islamism by the sword. And accordingly, within a year after his arrival at Medina he began what was called the holy war. For this purpose he first of all instituted a brotherhood, joining his Ansars or helpers, and his Mohajerins or refugees together in pairs; he himself taking Ali for his brother. It was in allusion to this that Ali, afterward when preaching at Cufa, said, "I am the servant of God, and brother to his apostle." In the second year of the Hegira, Mahomet changed the Kebla of the Mussulman, which before this time had been toward Jerusalem, ordering them henceforth to turn toward Mecca when they prayed. In the same year he also appointed the fast of the month Ramadan. Mahomet having now a pretty large congregation at Medina found it necessary to have some means of calling them to prayers; for this purpose he was thinking of employing a horn, or some instrument of wood, which should be made to emit a loud sound by being struck upon. But his doubts were settled this year by a dream of one of his disciples, in which a man appearing to him in a green vest recommended as a better way, that the people should be summoned to prayers by a crier calling out, "Allah acbar, Allah acbar," etc.; "God is great, God is great, there is but one God, Mahomet is his prophet;[54] come to prayers, come to prayers." Mahomet approved of the scheme, and this is the very form in use to this day among the Mussulmans; who, however, in the call to morning prayers, add the words, "Prayer is better than sleep, prayer is better than sleep"--a sentiment not unworthy the consideration of those who are professors of a better religion. The same year the apostle sent some of his people to plunder a caravan going to Mecca; which they did, and brought back two prisoners to Medina. This was the first act of hostility committed by the Mussulmans against the idolaters. The second was the battle of Beder. The history of the battle is thus given by Abulfeda: "The apostle, hearing that a caravan of the Meccans was coming home from Syria, escorted by Abu Sofian at the head of thirty men, placed a number of soldiers in ambuscade to intercept it. Abu Sofian, being informed thereof by his spies, sent word immediately to Mecca, whereupon all the principal men except Abu Laheb--who, however, sent Al Asum son of Hesham in his stead--marched out to his assistance, making in all nine hundred and fifty men, whereof two hundred were cavalry. The apostle of God went out against them with three hundred and thirteen men, of whom seventy-seven were refugees from Mecca, the rest being helpers from Medina; they had with them only two horses and seventy camels, upon which they rode by turns. The apostle encamped near a well called Beder, from the name of the person who was owner of it, and had a hut made where he and Abu-Bekr sat. As soon as the armies were in sight of each other, three champions came out from among the idolaters, Otha son of Rabia, his brother Shaiba, and Al Walid son of Otha; against the first of these, the prophet sent Obeidah son of Hareth, Hamza against the second, and Ali against the third: Hamza and Ali slew each his man and then went to the assistance of Obeidah, and having killed his adversary, brought off Obeidah, who, however, soon after died of a wound in his foot. "All this while the apostle continued in his hut in prayer, beating his breast so violently that his cloak fell off his shoulders, and he was suddenly taken with a palpitation of the heart; soon recovering, however, he comforted Abu-Bekr, telling him God's help was come. Having uttered these words, he forthwith ran out of his hut and encouraged his men, and taking a handful of dust threw it toward the Koreishites, and said, 'May their faces be confounded,' and immediately they fled. After the battle, Abdallah, the son of Masud, brought the head of Abu Jehel to the apostle, who gave thanks to God; Al As, brother to Abu Jehel, was also killed; Al Abbas also, the prophet's uncle, and Ocail son of Abu Taleb, were taken prisoners. Upon the news of this defeat Abu Laheb died of grief within a week." Of the Mussulmans died fourteen martyrs (for so they call all such as die fighting for Islamism). The number of idolaters slain was seventy; among whom my author names some of chief note, Hantala son of Abu Sofian, and Nawfal, brother to Kadijah. Ali slew six of the enemy with his own hand. The prophet ordered the dead bodies of the enemy to be thrown into a pit, and remained three days upon the field of battle dividing the spoil; on occasion of which a quarrel arose between the helpers and the refugees, and to quiet them the eighth chapter of the _Koran_ was brought from heaven. It begins thus, "They will ask thee concerning the spoils: say, The spoils belong to God and his apostle": and again in the same chapter, "And know that whenever ye gain any, a fifth part belongeth to God, and to the apostle, and his kindred, and the orphans, and the poor." The other four-fifths are to be divided among those who are present at the action. The apostle, when he returned to Safra in his way to Medina, ordered Ali to behead two of his prisoners. The victory at Beder was of great importance to Mahomet; to encourage his men, and to increase the number of his followers, he pretended that two miracles were wrought in his favor, in this, as also in several subsequent battles: first, that God sent his angels to fight on his side; and second, made his army appear to the enemy much greater than it really was. Both these miracles are mentioned in the _Koran_, chapter viii. Al Abbas said he was taken prisoner by a man of a prodigious size (an angel, of course); no wonder, then, he became a convert. As soon as the Mussulmans returned to Medina the Koreishites sent to offer a ransom for their prisoners, which was accepted, and distributed among those who had taken them, according to the quality of the prisoners. Some had one thousand drachms for their share. Those who had only a small or no part of the ransom Mahomet rewarded with donations, so as to content them all. The Jews had many a treaty with Mahomet, and lived peaceably at Medina; till a Jew, having affronted an Arabian milk-woman, was killed by a Mussulman. In revenge for this the Jews killed the Mussulman, whereupon a general quarrel ensued. The Jews fled to their castles; but after a siege of fifteen days were forced to surrender at discretion. Mahomet ordered their hands to be tied behind them, determined to put them all to the sword, and was with great difficulty prevailed upon to spare their lives and take all their property. Kaab, son of Ashraf, was one of the most violent among the Jews against Mahomet. He had been at Mecca, and, with some pathetic verses upon the unhappy fate of those who had fallen at Beder, excited the Meccans to take up arms. Upon his return to Medina he rehearsed the same verses among the lower sort of people and the women. Mahomet, being told of these underhand practices, said, one day, "Who will rid me of the son of Ashraf?" when Mahomet, son of Mosalama, one of the helpers, answered, "I am the man, O apostle of God, that will do it," and immediately took with him Salcan son of Salama, and some other Moslems, who were to lie in ambush. In order to decoy Kaab out of his castle, which was a very strong one, Salcan, his foster-brother, went alone to visit him in the dusk of the evening; and, entering into conversation, told him some little stories of Mahomet, which he knew would please him. When he got up to take his leave, Kaab, as he expected, attended him to the gate; and, continuing the conversation, went on with him till he came near the ambuscade, where Mahomet and his companions fell upon him and stabbed him. Abu Sofian, meditating revenge for the defeat at Beder, swore he would neither anoint himself nor come near his women till he was even with Mahomet. Setting out toward Medina with two hundred horse, he posted a party of them near the town, where one of the helpers fell into their hands and was killed. Mahomet, being informed of it, went out against them, but they all fled; and, for the greater expedition, threw away some sacks of meal, part of their provision. From which circumstance this was called the meal-war. Abu Sofian, resolving to make another and more effectual effort, got together a body of three thousand men, whereof seven hundred were cuirassiers and two hundred cavalry; his wife Henda, with a number of women, followed in the rear, beating drums, and lamenting the fate of those slain at Beder, and exciting the idolaters to fight courageously. The apostle would have waited for them in the town, but as his people were eager to advance against the enemy, he set out at once with one thousand men; but of these one hundred turned back, disheartened by the superior numbers of the enemy. He encamped at the foot of Mount Ohud, having the mountain in his rear. Of his nine hundred men only one hundred had armor on; and as for horses, there was only one besides that on which he himself rode. Mosaab carried the prophet's standard; Kaled, son of Al Walid, led the right wing of the idolaters; Acrema, son of Abu Jehel, the left; the women kept in the rear, beating their drums. Henda cried out to them: "Courage, ye sons of Abdal Dari; courage! smite with all your swords." Mahomet placed fifty archers in his rear, and ordered them to keep their post. Then Hamza fought stoutly, and killed Arta, the standard-bearer of the idolaters; and as Seba, son of Abdal Uzza, came near him, Hamza struck off his head also; but was himself immediately after run through with a spear by Wabsha, a slave, who lurked behind a rock with that intent. Then Ebn Kamia slew Mosaab, the apostle's standard-bearer; and taking him for the prophet cried out, "I have killed Mahomet!" When Mosaab was slain the standard was given to Ali. At the beginning of the action the Mussulmans attacked the idolaters so furiously that they gave ground, fell back upon their rear, and threw it into disorder. The archers seeing this, and expecting a complete victory, left their posts, contrary to the express orders that had been given them, and came forward from fear of losing their share of the plunder. In the mean time Kaled, advancing with his cavalry, fell furiously upon the rear of the Mussulmans, crying aloud at the same time that Mahomet was slain. This cry, and the finding themselves attacked on all sides, threw the Mussulmans into such consternation that the idolaters made great havoc among them, and were able to press on so near the apostle as to beat him down with a shower of stones and arrows. He was wounded in the lip, and two arrow-heads stuck in his face. Abu Obeidah pulled out first one and then the other; at each operation one of the apostle's teeth came out. As Sonan Abu Said wiped the blood from off his face, the apostle exclaimed, "He that touches my blood, and handles it tenderly, shall not have his blood spilt in the fire" (of hell). In this action, it is said, Telhah, while he was putting a breast-plate upon Mahomet, received a wound upon his hand, which maimed it forever. Omar and Abu-Bekr were also wounded. When the Mussulmans saw Mahomet fall, they concluded he was killed and took to flight; and even Othman was hurried along by the press of those that fled. In a little time, however, finding Mahomet was alive, a great number of his men returned to the field; and, after a very obstinate fight, brought him off, and carried him to a neighboring village. The Mussulmans had seventy men killed, the idolaters lost only twenty-two. The Koreishites had no other fruit of their victory but the gratification of a poor spirit of revenge. Henda, and the women who had fled with her upon the first disorder of the idolaters, now returned, and committed great barbarities upon the dead bodies of the apostle's friends. They cut off their ears and noses, and made bracelets and necklaces of them; Henda pulled Hamza's liver out of his body, and chewed and swallowed some of it. Abu Sofian, having cut pieces off the cheeks of Hamza, put them upon the end of his spear, and cried out aloud, "The success of war is uncertain; after the battle of Beder comes the battle of Ohud; now, Hobal,[55] thy religion is victorious!" Notwithstanding this boasting, he decamped the same day. Jannabi ascribes his retreat to a panic; however that may have been, Abu Sofian sent to propose a truce for a year, which was agreed to. When the enemy were retreated toward Mecca, Mahomet went to the field of battle to look for the body of Hamza. Finding it shamefully mangled, in the manner already related, he ordered it to be wrapped in a black cloak, and then prayed over it, repeating seven times, "Allah acbar," etc. ("God is great," etc.). In the same manner he prayed over every one of the martyrs, naming Hamza again with every one of them; so that Hamza had the prayers said over him seventy-two times. But, as if this were not enough, he declared that Gabriel had told him he had been received into the seventh heaven, and welcomed with this eulogium, "Hamza, the lion of God, and the lion of his prophet." The Mussulmans were much chagrined at this defeat. Some expressed a doubt of the prophet being as high in the divine favor as he pretended, since he had suffered such an overthrow by infidels. Others murmured at the loss of their friends and relations. To pacify them he used various arguments, telling them the sins of some had been the cause of disgrace to all; that they had been disobedient to orders, in quitting their post for the sake of plunder; that the devil put it into the minds of those who turned back; their flight, however, was forgiven, because God is merciful; that their defeat was intended to try them, and to show them who were believers and who not; that the event of war is uncertain; that the enemy had suffered as well as they; that other prophets before him had been defeated in battle; that death is unavoidable. And here Mahomet's doctrine of fate was of as great service to him as it was afterward to his successors, tending as it did to make his people fearless and desperate in fight. For he taught them that the time of every man's death is so unalterably fixed that he cannot die before the appointed hour; and, when that is come, no caution whatever can prolong his life one moment;[56] so that they who were slain in battle would certainly have died at the same time, if they had been at home in their houses; but, as they now died fighting for the faith, they had thereby gained a crown of martyrdom, and entered immediately into paradise, where they were in perfect bliss with their Lord. In the beginning of the next year the prophet had a revelation, commanding him to prohibit wine and games of chance. Some say the prohibition was owing to a quarrel occasioned by these things among his followers.[57] In the fifth year of the Hegira, Mahomet, informed by his spies of a design against Medina, surrounded it with a ditch, which was no sooner finished than the Meccans, with several tribes of Arabs, sat down before it, to the number of ten thousand men. The appearance of so great a force threw the Mussulmans into a consternation. Some were ready to revolt; and one of them exclaimed aloud, "Yesterday the prophet promised us the wealth of Khusrau (Cosroes) and Cæsar, and now he is forced to hide himself behind a nasty ditch." In the mean time Mahomet, skilfully concealing his real concern, and setting as good a face upon the matter as he could, marched out with three thousand Mussulmans, and formed his army at a little distance behind the intrenchment. The two armies continued facing each other for twenty days, without any action, except a discharge of arrows on both sides. At length some champions of the Koreishites, Amru son of Abdud, Acrema son of Abu Jehel, and Nawfal son of Abdallah, coming to the ditch leaped over it; and, wheeling about between the ditch and the Moslem army, challenged them to fight. Ali readily accepted the challenge, and came forward against his uncle Amru, who said to him, "Nephew, what a pleasure am I now going to have in killing you." Ali replied, "No; it is I that am to have a much greater pleasure in killing you." Amru immediately alighted, and, having hamstrung his horse, advanced toward Ali, who had also dismounted and was ready to receive him. They immediately engaged, and, in turning about to flank each other, raised such a dust that they could not be distinguished, only the strokes of their swords might be heard. At last, the dust being laid, Ali was seen with his knee upon the breast of his adversary, cutting his throat. Upon this, the other two champions went back as fast as they came. Nawfal, however, in leaping the ditch, got a fall, and being overwhelmed with a shower of stones, cried out, "I had rather die by the sword than thus." Ali hearing him, leaped into the ditch and despatched him. He then pursued after Acrema, and having wounded him with a spear, drove him and his companions back to the army. Here they related what had happened; which put the rest in such fear that they were ready to retreat; and when some of their tents had been overthrown by a storm, and discord had arisen among the allies, the Koreishites, finding themselves forsaken by their auxiliaries, returned to Mecca. Mahomet made a miracle of this retreat; and published upon it this verse of the _Koran_, "God sent a storm and legions of angels, which you did not see." Upon the prophet's return into the town, while he was laying by his armor and washing himself, Gabriel came and asked him, "Have you laid by your arms? we have not laid by ours; go and attack them," pointing to the Koraidites, a Jewish tribe confederated against him. Whereupon Mahomet went immediately, and besieged them so closely in their castles that after twenty-five days they surrendered at discretion. He referred the settlement of the conditions to Saad, son of Moad; who being wounded by an arrow at the ditch, had wished he might only live to be revenged. Accordingly, he decreed that all the men, in number between six and seven hundred, should be put to the sword, the women and children sold for slaves, and their goods given to the soldiers for a prey. Mahomet extolled the justice of this sentence, as a divine direction sent down from the seventh heaven, and had it punctually executed. Saad, dying of his wound presently after, Mahomet performed his funeral obsequies, and made a harangue in praise of him. One Salam, a Jew, having been very strenuous in stirring up the people against the prophet, some zealous Casregites desired leave to go and assassinate him. Permission being readily granted, away they went to the Jew's house, and being let in by his wife, upon their pretending they were come to buy provisions, they murdered him in his bed, and made their escape. Toward the end of this year Mahomet, going into the house of Zaid, did not find him at home, but happened to espy his wife Zainab so much in dishabille as to discover beauties enough to touch a heart so amorous as his was. He could not conceal the impression made upon him, but cried out, "Praised be God, who turneth men's hearts as he pleases!" Zainab heard him, and told it to her husband when he came home. Zaid, who had been greatly obliged to Mahomet, was very desirous to gratify him, and offered to divorce his wife. Mahomet pretended to dissuade him from it, but Zaid easily perceiving how little he was in earnest, actually divorced her. Mahomet thereupon took her to wife, and celebrated the nuptials with extraordinary magnificence, keeping open house upon the occasion. Notwithstanding, this step gave great offence to many who could not bring themselves to brook that a prophet should marry his son's wife; for he had before adopted Zaid for his son. To salve the affair, therefore, he had recourse to his usual expedient: Gabriel brought him a revelation from heaven, in which God commands him to take the wife of his adopted son, on purpose that forever after believers might have no scruple in marrying the divorced wives or widows of their adopted sons; which the Arabs had before looked upon as unlawful. The apostle is even reproved for fearing men in this affair, whereas he ought to fear God. (_Koran_, chapter xxxiii.) In the sixth year he subdued several tribes of the Arabs. Among the captives was a woman of great beauty, named Juweira, whom Mahomet took to wife and, by way of dowry, released all her kindred that were taken prisoners. When Mahomet went upon any expedition, it was generally determined by lots which of his wives should go with him; at this time it fell to Ayesha's lot to accompany him. Upon their return to Medina, Ayesha was accused of intriguing with one of the officers of the army, and was in great disgrace for about a month. The prophet was exceedingly chagrined to have his best-beloved wife accused of adultery; but his fondness for her prevailed over his resentment, and she was restored to his favor, upon her own protestation of her innocence. This, however, did not quite satisfy the world, nor, indeed, was the prophet's mind perfectly at ease on the subject, until Gabriel brought him a revelation, wherein Ayesha is declared innocent of the crime laid to her charge; while those who accuse believers of any crime, without proof, are severely reproved, and a command given, that whosoever accuses chaste women, and cannot produce four eye-witnesses in support of the charge, shall receive eighty stripes. (_Koran_, chapter xxiv.) In obedience to this command, all those who had raised this report upon Ayesha were publicly scourged, except Abdallah, son of Abu Solul, who was too considerable a man to be so dealt with, notwithstanding he had been particularly industrious in spreading the scandal.[58] Mahomet, being now increased in power, marched his army against Mecca, and a battle being fought on the march, wherein neither side gaining the advantage, a truce was agreed upon for ten years, on the following conditions: All within Mecca, who were disposed, were to be at liberty to join Mahomet; and those who had a mind to leave him and return to Mecca, were to be equally free to do so; but, for the future, if any Meccans deserted to him, they should be sent back upon demand; and that Mahomet or any of the Mussulmans might come to Mecca, provided they came unarmed, and tarried not above three days at a time. Mahomet was now so well confirmed in his power that he took upon himself the authority of a king, and was, by the chief men of his army, inaugurated under a tree near Medina; and having, by the truce obtained for his followers, free access to Mecca, he ordained they should henceforward make their pilgrimages thither.[59] Among the Arabs it had been an ancient usage to visit the Kaaba once a year, to worship there the heathen deities. Mahomet, therefore, thought it expedient to comply with a custom with which they were pleased, and which, besides, was so beneficial to his native place, by bringing a great concourse of pilgrims to it, that when he afterward came to be master of Mecca, he enforced the pilgrimage with most of the old ceremonies belonging to it, only taking away the idols and abolishing this worship. Though he now took upon himself the sovereign command and the insignia of royalty, he still retained the sacred character of chief pontiff of his religion, and transmitted both these powers to his caliphs or successors, who, for some time, not only ordered all matters of religion, but used, especially upon public occasions, to officiate in praying and preaching in their mosques. In process of time this came to be all the authority the caliphs had left, for, about the year of the Hegira 325, the governors of provinces seized the regal authority and made themselves kings of their several governments. They continued, indeed, to pay a show of deference to the caliph, who usually resided at Bagdad, whom, however, they occasionally deposed. At this present time most Mahometan princes have a person in their respective dominions who bears this sacred character, and is called the _mufti_ in Turkey, and in Persia the _sadre_. He is often appealed to as the interpreter of the law; but, as a tool of state, usually gives such judgment as he knows will be most acceptable to his prince. Mahomet used at first, when preaching in his mosque at Medina, to lean upon a post of a palm-tree driven into the ground; but being now invested with greater dignity, by the advice of one of his wives he had a pulpit built, which had two steps up to it and a seat within. When Othman was caliph he hung it with tapestry, and Moawiyah raised it six steps higher, that he might be heard when he sat down, as he was forced to do, being very fat and heavy; whereas his predecessors all used to stand. Mahomet had now a dream that he held in his hand the key of the Kaaba, and that he and his men made the circuits round it and performed all the ceremonies of the pilgrimage. Having told his dream next morning, he and his followers were all in high spirits upon it, taking it for an omen that they should shortly be masters of Mecca. Accordingly, great preparations were made for an expedition to this city. The prophet gave it out that his only intent was to make the pilgrimage. He provided seventy camels for the sacrifice, which were conducted by seven hundred men, ten to each camel; as, however, he apprehended opposition from the Koreishites, he took with him his best troops, to the number of fourteen hundred men, besides an incredible number of wandering Arabs from all parts. The Koreishites, alarmed at the march of the Mussulmans, got together a considerable force and encamped about six miles from Mecca. Mahomet continued his march, but finding, by his spies, the enemy had posted their men so as to stop the passes in his feints and counter-marches, came to a place where his camel fell upon her knees. The people said she was restive, but the prophet took it for a divine intimation that he should not proceed any farther in his intended expedition, but wait with resignation till the appointed time. He therefore turned back, and encamped without the sacred territory, at Hodaibia. The Koreishites sent three several messengers, the two last men of consequence, to demand what was his intention in coming thither. He answered that it was purely out of a devout wish to visit the sacred house, and not with any hostile design. Mahomet also sent one of his own men to give them the same assurance; but the Koreishites cut the legs of his camel, and would also have killed the man had not the Ahabishites interposed and helped him to escape. Upon this he wished Omar to go upon the same errand; but he excused himself, as not being upon good terms with the Koreishites. At last Othman was sent; who delivered his message, and was coming away, when they told him he might, if he wished, make his circuits round the Kaaba. But upon his replying he would not do so until the apostle of God had first performed his vow to make the holy circuits, they were so greatly provoked that they laid him in irons. In the Mussulman army it was reported that he was killed, at which Mahomet was much afflicted and said aloud, "We will not stir from hence till we have given battle to the enemy." Thereupon the whole army took an oath of obedience and fealty to the prophet, who, on his part, by the ceremony of clapping his hands one against the other, took an oath to stand by them as long as there was one of them left. The Koreishites sent a party of eighty men toward the camp of the Mussulmans to beat up their quarters. Being discovered, by the sentinels, they were surrounded, taken prisoners, and brought before Mahomet; who, thinking it proper at that time to be generous, released them. In return, Sohail son of Amru was sent to him with proposals of peace, which he agreed to accept. Mahomet, pretending he had a divine promise of a great booty, returned to Medina and, having concluded a peace for ten years with the Koreishites, was the better enabled to attack the Jews, his irreconcilable enemies. Accordingly, he went to Khaibar, a strong town about six days' journey northeast of Medina, and took that and several other strong places, whereto the Jews had retired, and carried a vast deal of treasure; this all fell into the hands of the Mussulmans. Being entertained at Khaibar, a young Jewess, to try, as she afterward said, whether he were a prophet or not, poisoned a shoulder of mutton, a joint Mahomet was particularly fond of. One of those who partook of it at the table, named Basher, died upon the spot; but Mahomet, finding it taste disagreeable, spat it out, saying, "This mutton tells me it is poisoned." The miracle-mongers improve this story, by making the shoulder of mutton speak to him; but if it did, it spoke too late, for he had already swallowed some of it; and of the effects of that morsel he complained in his last illness, of which he died three years after. In this year, Jannabi mentions Mahomet's being bewitched by the Jews. Having made a waxen image of him, they hid it in a well, together with a comb and a tuft of hair tied in eleven knots. The prophet fell into a very wasting condition, till he had a dream that informed him where these implements of witchcraft were, and accordingly had them taken away. In order to untie the knots Gabriel read to him the two last chapters of the _Koran_, consisting of eleven verses; each verse untied a knot, and, when all were untied, he recovered.[60] This year Mahomet had a seal made with this inscription, "Mahomet, the apostle of God." This was to seal his letters, which he now took upon him to write to divers princes, inviting them to Islamism. His first letter to this effect was sent to Badham, viceroy of Yemen, to be forwarded to Khusrau, king of Persia. Khusrau tore the letter, and ordered Badham to restore the prophet to his right mind or send him his head. Khusrau was presently after murdered by his son Siroes; Badham with his people turned Mussulmans, and Mahomet continued him in his government. He also sent a letter of the same purport to the Roman emperor Heraclius. Heraclius received the letter respectfully, and made some valuable presents to the messenger. He sent another to Makawkas, viceroy of Egypt, who returned in answer he would consider of the proposals, and sent, among other presents, two young maidens. One of these, named Mary, of fifteen years of age, Mahomet debauched. This greatly offended two of his wives, Hafsa and Ayesha, and to pacify them he promised, upon oath, to do so no more. But he was soon taken again by them transgressing in the same way. And now, that he might not stand in awe of his wives any longer, down comes a revelation which is recorded in the sixty-sixth chapter of the _Koran_, releasing the prophet from his oath, and allowing him to have concubines, if he wished.[61] And the two wives of Mahomet, who, upon the quarrel about Mary, had gone home to their fathers, being threatened in the same chapter with a divorce, were glad to send their fathers to him to make their peace with him, and obtain his permission for their return. They were fain to come and submit to live with him upon his own terms. [Illustration: Mahomet, preaching the unity of God, enters Mecca at the head of his victorious followers Painting by A. Mueller.] Mahomet sent letters at the same time to the king of Ethiopia, who had before professed Islamism, and now in his answer repeated his profession of it. He wrote to two other Arabian princes, who sent him disagreeable answers, which provoked him to curse them. He sent also to Al Mondar, king of Bahrain, who came into his religion, and afterward routed the Persians and made a great slaughter of them. And now all the Arabians of Bahrain had become converts to his religion. Among the captives taken at Khaibar was Safia, betrothed to the son of Kenana, the king of the Jews. Mahomet took the former to wife, and put Kenana to the torture to make him discover his treasure. In the action at Khaibar, it is said, Ali, having his buckler struck out of his hand, took one of the gates off its hinges, and used it for a buckler till the place was taken. The narrator of this story asserts that he and seven men tried to stir the gate, and were not able. One of the articles of the peace being, that any Mussulman might be permitted to perform his pilgrimage at Mecca, the prophet went to that city to complete the visitation of the holy places, which he could not do as he intended when at Hodaiba. Hearing, upon this occasion, the Meccans talking of his being weakened by the long marches he had made, to show the contrary, in going round the Kaaba seven times, he went the first three rounds in a brisk trot, shaking his shoulders the while, but performed the four last circuits in a common walking pace. This is the reason why Mussulmans always perform seven circuits round the Kaaba in a similar manner. In the eighth year of the Hegira, Kaled son of Al Walid, Amru son of Al As, and Othman son of Telha, who presided over the Kaaba, became Mussulmans; this was a considerable addition to Mahomet's power and interest. The same year Mahomet, having sent a letter to the governor of Bostra in Syria, as he had to others, and his messenger being slain there, sent Zaid, son of Hareth, with three thousand men to Muta in Syria, against the Roman army, which, with their allies, made a body of nearly one hundred thousand men. Zaid being slain, the command fell to Jaafar, and, upon his death, to Abdallah son of Rawahas, who was also killed.[62] Thereupon the Mussulmans unanimously chose Kaled for their leader, who defeated the enemy, and returned to Medina with a considerable booty, on which account Mahomet gave him the title of the "Sword of God." The same year the Koreishites assisted some of their allies against the Kozaites, who were in alliance with Mahomet. This the latter resented as an infraction of the peace. Abu Sofian was sent to try to make up matters, but Mahomet would not vouchsafe to receive his explanation. But having made his preparation to fall upon them before they could be prepared to receive him, he advanced upon Mecca with about ten thousand men. Abu Sofian having come out of the town in the evening to reconnoitre, he fell in with Al Abbas, who, out of friendship to his countrymen, had ridden from the army with the hope of meeting some straggling Meccans whom he might send back with the news of Mahomet's approach, and advise the Meccans to surrender. Al Abbas, recognizing Abu Sofian's voice, called to him, and advised him to get up behind him, and go with him, and in all haste make his submission to Mahomet. This he did, and, to save his life, professed Islamism, and was afterward as zealous in propagating as he had hitherto been in opposing it. Mahomet had given orders to his men to enter Mecca peaceably, but Kaled meeting with a party who discharged some arrows at him, fell upon them, and slew twenty-eight of them. Mahomet sent one of his helpers to bid him desist from the slaughter; but the messenger delivered quite the contrary order, commanding him to show them no mercy. Afterward, when Mahomet said to the helper, "Did not I bid you tell Kaled not to kill anybody in Mecca?" "It is true," said the helper, "and I would have done as you directed me, but God would have it otherwise, and God's will was done." When all was quiet, Mahomet went to the Kaaba, and rode round it upon his camel seven times, and touched with his cane a corner of the black stone with great reverence. Having alighted, he went into the Kaaba, where he found images of angels, and a figure of Abraham holding in his hand a bundle of arrows, which had been made use of for deciding things by lot. All these, as well as three hundred and sixty idols which stood on the outside of the Kaaba, he caused to be thrown down and broken in pieces. As he entered the Kaaba, he cried with a loud voice, "Allah acbar," seven times, turning round to all the sides of the Kaaba. He also appointed it to be the Kebla, or place toward which the Mussulmans should turn themselves when they pray. Remounting his camel, he now rode once more seven times round the Kaaba, and again alighting, bowed himself twice before it. He next visited the well Zem-zem, and from thence passed to the station of Abraham. Here he stopped awhile, and ordering a pail of water to be brought from the Zem-zem, he drank several large draughts, and then made the holy washing called _wodhu_. Immediately all his followers imitated his example, purifying themselves and washing their faces. After this, Mahomet, standing at the door of the Kaaba, made a harangue to the following effect: "There is no other god but God, who has fulfilled his promise to his servant, and who alone has put to flight his enemies, and put under my feet everything that is visible, men, animals, goods, riches, except only the government of the Kaaba and the keeping of the cup for the pilgrims to drink out of. As for you, O ye Koreishites, God hath taken from you the pride of paganism, which caused you to worship as deities our fathers Abraham and Ishmael, though they were men descended from Adam, who was created out of the earth." Having a mind to bestow on one of his own friends the prefecture of the Kaaba, he took the keys of it from Othman the son of Telha, and was about to give them to Al Abbas, who had asked for them, when a direction came to him from heaven, in these words, "Give the charge to whom it belongs." Whereupon he returned the keys by Ali to Othman, who, being agreeably surprised, thanked Mahomet, and made a new profession of his faith. The pilgrim's cup, however, he consigned to the care of Al Abbas, in whose family it became hereditary. The people of Mecca were next summoned to the hill Al Safa, to witness Mahomet's inauguration. The prophet having first taken an oath to them, the men first, and then the women, bound themselves by oath to be faithful and obedient to whatsoever he should command them. After this he summoned an extraordinary assembly, in which it was decreed that Mecca should be henceforward an asylum or inviolable sanctuary, within which it should be unlawful to shed the blood of man, or even to fell a tree. After telling the Meccans they were his slaves by conquest, he pardoned and declared them free, with the exception of eleven men and six women, whom, as his most inveterate enemies, he proscribed, ordering his followers to kill them wherever they should find them. Most of them obtained their pardon by embracing Islamism, and were ever after the most zealous of Mussulmans. One of these, Abdallah, who had greatly offended Mahomet, was brought to him by Othman, upon whose intercession Mahomet pardoned him. Before he granted his pardon, he maintained a long silence, in expectation, as he afterward owned, that some of those about him would fall upon Abdallah and kill him. Of the women, three embraced Islamism and were pardoned, the rest were put to death, one being crucified. Mahomet now sent out Kaled and others to destroy the idols which were still retained by some of the tribes, and to invite them to Islamism. Kaled executed his commission with great brutality. The Jodhamites had formerly robbed and murdered Kaled's uncle as he journeyed from Arabia Felix. Kaled having proposed Islamism to them, they cried out, "they professed Sabæism." This was what he wanted. He immediately fell upon them, killing some, and making others prisoners: of these, he distributed some among his men, and reserved others for himself. As for the latter, having tied their hands behind them, he put them all to the sword. On hearing of this slaughter Mahomet lifted up his eyes and protested his innocence of this murder, and immediately sent Ali with a sum of money to make satisfaction for the bloodshed, and to restore the plunder. Ali paid to the surviving Jodhamites as much as they demanded, and generously divided the overplus among them. This action Mahomet applauded and afterward reproved Kaled for his cruelty. Upon the conquest of Mecca, many of the tribes of the Arabs came and submitted to Mahomet; but the Hawazanites, the Thakishites, and part of the Saadites, assembled to the number of four thousand effective men, besides women and children, to oppose him. He went against them at the head of twelve thousand fighting men. At the first onset the Mussulmans, being received with a thick shower of arrows, were put to flight; but Mahomet, with great courage, rallied his men, and finally obtained the victory. The next considerable action was the siege of Taif, a town sixty miles east from Mecca. The Mussulmans set down before it and, having made several breaches with their engines, marched resolutely up to them, but were vigorously repulsed by the besieged. Mahomet, having by a herald proclaimed liberty to all the slaves who should come over to him, twenty-three deserted, to each of whom he assigned a Mussulman for a comrade. So inconsiderable a defection did not in the least abate the courage of the besieged; so that the prophet began to despair of reducing the place, and, after a dream, which Abu-Bekr interpreted unfavorably to the attempt, determined to raise the siege. His men, however, on being ordered to prepare for a retreat, began to murmur; whereupon he commanded them to be ready for an assault the next day. The assault being made the assailants were beaten back with great loss. To console them in their retreat, the prophet smiled, and said, "We will come here again, if it please God." When the army reached Jesana, where all the booty taken from the Hawazanites had been left, a deputation arrived from that tribe to beg it might be restored. The prophet having given them their option between the captives or their goods, they chose to have their wives and children again. Their goods being divided among the Mussulmans, Mahomet, in order to indemnify those who had been obliged to give up their slaves, gave up his own share of the plunder and divided it among them. To Malec, however, son of Awf, the general of the Hawazanites, he intimated that if he would embrace Islamism he should have all his goods as well as his family, and a present of one hundred camels besides. By this promise Malec was brought over to be so good a Mussulman that he had the command given him of all his countrymen who should at any time be converts, and was very serviceable against the Thakishites. The prophet, after this, made a holy visit to Mecca, where he appointed Otab, son of Osaid, governor, though not quite twenty years of age; Maad, son of Jabal, _imam_, or chief priest, to teach the people Islamism, and direct them in solemnizing the pilgrimage. Upon his return to Medina his concubine, Mary, brought him a son, whom he named Ibrahim, celebrating his birth with a great feast. The child, however, lived but fifteen months. In the ninth year of the Hegira envoys from all parts of Arabia came to Mahomet at Medina, to declare the readiness of their several tribes to profess his religion. The same year Mahomet, with an army of thirty thousand men, marched toward Syria, to a place called Tobuc, against the Romans and Syrians, who were making preparation against him, but, upon his approach, retreated. The Mussulmans, in their march back toward Medina, took several forts of the Christian Arabs, and made them tributaries. Upon his return to Medina the Thakishites, having been blockaded in the Taif by the Mussulman tribes, sent deputies offering to embrace Islamism, upon condition of being allowed to retain a little longer an idol to which their people were bigotedly attached. When Mahomet insisted upon its being immediately demolished, they desired to be at least excused from using the Mussulmans' prayers, but to this he answered very justly, "That a religion without prayers was good for nothing." At last they submitted absolutely. During the same year Mahomet sent Abu-Bekr to Mecca, to perform the pilgrimage, and sacrifice in his behalf twenty camels. Presently afterward he sent Ali to publish the ninth chapter of the _Koran_, which, though so placed in the present confused copy, is generally supposed to have been the last that was revealed. It is called "Barat," or Immunity; the purport of it is that the associators with whom Mahomet had made a treaty must, after four months' liberty of conscience, either embrace Islamism or pay tribute. The command runs thus: "When those holy months are expired, kill the idolaters wherever ye shall find them." Afterward come these words, "If they repent, and observe the times of prayer and give alms, they are to be looked upon as your brethren in religion." The same chapter also orders, "That nobody should, not having on the sacred habit, perform the holy circuits round the Kaaba; and that no idolater should make the pilgrimage to Mecca." In consequence, no person except a Mahometan may approach the Kaaba, on pain of death. The following account of Mahomet's farewell pilgrimage is from Jaber, son of Abdallah, who was one of the company: "The apostle of God had not made the pilgrimage for nine years (for when he conquered Mecca he only made a visitation). In the tenth year of the Hegira, he publicly proclaimed his intention to perform the pilgrimage, whereupon a prodigious multitude of people (some make the number near one hundred thousand) flocked from all parts to Medina. Our chief desire was to follow the apostle of God, and imitate him. When we came to Dhul Holaifa, the apostle of God prayed in the mosque there; then mounting his camel he rode hastily to the plain Baida, where he began to praise God in the form that professes his unity, saying, 'Here I am, O God, ready to obey thee; thou hast no partner,' etc. When he came to the Kaaba, he kissed the corner of the black stone, went seven times round--three times in a trot, four times walking--then went to the station of Abraham, and coming again to the black stone, reverently kissed it. Afterward he went through the gate of the sons of Madhumi to the hill Safa, and went up it till he could see the Kaaba; when, turning toward the Kebla, he professed again the unity of God, saying, 'There is no God but one, his is the kingdom, to him be praises, he is powerful above everything,' etc. After this profession he went down toward the hill Merwan, I following him all the way through the valley; he then ascended the hill slowly till he came to the top of Merwan; from thence he ascended Mount Arafa. It being toward the going down of the sun, he preached here till sunset; then going to Mosdalefa, between Arafa and the valley of Mena, he made the evening and the late prayers, with two calls to prayer, and two risings up. Then he lay down till the dawn, and, having made the morning prayer, went to the enclosure of the Kaaba, where he remained standing till it grew very light. Hence he proceeded hastily, before the sun was up, to the valley of Mena; where, throwing up seven stones, he repeated at each throw, 'God is great,' etc. Leaving now the valley, he went to the place of sacrifice. Having made free sixty-three slaves, he slew sixty-three victims[63] with his own hand, being then sixty-three years old, and then ordered Ali to sacrifice as many more victims as would make up the number to one hundred. The next thing the apostle did was to shave his head, beginning on the right side of it, and finishing it on the left. His hair, as he cut it off, he cast upon a tree, that the wind might scatter it among the people. Kaled was fortunate enough to catch a part of the fore-lock, which he fixed upon his turban; the virtue whereof he experienced in every battle he afterward fought. The limbs of the victims being now boiled, the apostle sat down with no other companion but Ali to eat some of the flesh and drink some of the broth. The repast being over, he mounted his camel again and rode to the Kaaba; where he made the noon-tide prayer, and drank seven large draughts of the well Zem-zem, made seven circuits round the Kaaba, and concluded his career between the hills Safa and Merwan. "The ninth day of the feast he went to perform his devotions on Mount Arafa. This hill, situated about a mile from Mecca, is held in great veneration by the Mussulmans as a place very proper for penitence. Its fitness in this respect is accounted for by a tradition that Adam and Eve, on being banished out of paradise, in order to do penance for their transgression were parted from each other, and after a separation of sixscore years met again upon this mountain." At the conclusion of this farewell pilgrimage, as it was called, being the last he ever made, Mahomet reformed the calendar in two points: In the first place, he appointed the year to be exactly lunar, consisting of twelve lunar months; whereas before, in order to reduce the lunar to the solar year, they used to make every third year consist of thirteen months. And secondly, whereas the ancient Arabians held four months sacred, wherein it was unlawful to commit any act of hostility, he took away that prohibition, by this command, "Attack the idolaters in all the months of the year, as they attack you in all." (_Koran_, ix.) In the eleventh year of the Hegira there arrived an embassy from Arabia Felix, consisting of about one hundred who had embraced Islamism. The same year Mahomet ordered Osama to go to the place where Zaid his father was slain at the battle of Muta, to revenge his death. This was the last expedition he ever ordered, for, being taken ill two days after, he died within thirteen days. The beginning of his sickness was a slow fever, which made him delirious. In his frenzy he called for pen, ink, and paper, and said he "would write a book that should keep them from erring after his death." But Omar opposed it, saying the _Koran_ is sufficient, and that the prophet, through the greatness of his malady, knew not what he said. Others, however, expressing a desire that he would write, a contention arose, which so disturbed Mahomet that he bade them all begone. During his illness he complained of the poisoned meat he had swallowed at Khaibar. Some say, when he was dying, Gabriel told him the angel of death, who never before had been, nor would ever again be, so ceremonious toward anybody, was waiting for his permission to come in. As soon as Mahomet had answered, "I give him leave," the angel of death entered and complimented the prophet, telling him God was very desirous to have him, but had commanded he should take his soul or leave it, just as he himself should please to order. Mahomet replied, "Take it, then." [According to the testimony of all the Eastern authors Mahomet died on Monday the 12th Reby 1st, in the year 11 of the Hegira, which answers in reality to the 8th of June, A.D. 632.] His grave was dug under the bed whereon he lay, in the chamber of Ayesha. The Arabian writers are very particular to tell us everything about the washing and embalming his body; who dug his grave, who put him in, etc.[64] The person of Mahomet is minutely described by Arabian writers. He was of a middle stature, had a large head, thick beard, black eyes, hooked nose, wide mouth, a thick neck, flowing hair. They also tell us that what was called the seal of his apostleship, a hairy mole between his shoulders, as large as a pigeon's egg, disappeared at his death. Its disappearance seems to have convinced those who would not before believe it that he was really dead. His intimate companion Abu Horaira said he never saw a more beautiful man than the prophet. He was so reverenced by his bigoted disciples they would gather his spittle up and swallow it. The same writers extol Mahomet as a man of fine parts and a strong memory, of few words, of a cheerful aspect, affable and complaisant in his behavior. They also celebrate his justice, clemency, generosity, modesty, abstinence, and humility. As an instance of the last virtue, they tell us he mended his own clothes and shoes. However, to judge of him by his actions as related by these same writers, we cannot help concluding that he was a very subtle and crafty man, who put on the appearance only of those good qualities, while the governing principles of his soul were ambition and lust. For we see him, as soon as he found himself strong enough to act upon the offensive, plundering caravans, and, under a pretence of fighting for the true religion, attacking, murdering, enslaving, and making tributaries of his neighbors, in order to aggrandize and enrich himself and his greedy followers, and without scruple making use of assassination to cut off those who opposed him. Of his lustful disposition we have a sufficient proof, in the peculiar privileges he claimed to himself of having as many wives as he pleased, and of whom he chose, even though they were within forbidden degrees of affinity. The authors who give him the smallest number of wives own that he had fifteen; whereas the _Koran_ allows no Mussulman more than four. As for himself, Mahomet had no shame in avowing that his chief pleasures were perfumes and women. THE KORAN The _Koran_ is held by the Mahometans in the greatest veneration. The book must not be touched by anybody but a Mussulman, nor even by a believer except he be free from pollution. Whether the _Koran_ be created or uncreated has been the subject of a controversy fruitful of the most violent persecutions. The orthodox opinion is that the original has been written from all eternity on the preserved table. Of this they believe a complete transcript was brought down to the lower heaven (that of the moon) by the angel Gabriel, and thence taken and shown to Mahomet, once every year of his mission, and twice in the last year of his life. They assert, however, that it was only piecemeal, that the several parts were _revealed_ by the angel to the prophet, and that he immediately dictated what had been revealed to his secretary, who wrote it down. Each part, as soon as it was thus copied out, was communicated to his disciples, to get by heart, and was afterward deposited in what he called the chest of his apostleship. This chest the prophet left in the custody of his wife Hafsa. When we consider the way in which the _Koran_ was compiled, we cannot wonder that it is so incoherent a piece as we find it. The book is divided into chapters; of these some are very long; others again, especially a few toward the end, very short. Each chapter has a title prefixed, taken from the first word, or from some one particular thing mentioned in it, rarely from the subject-matter of it; for if a chapter be of any length, it usually runs into various subjects that have no connection with each other. A celebrated commentator divides the contents of the _Koran_ into three general heads: 1. Precepts or directions, relating either to religion, as prayers, fasting, pilgrimages, or to civil polity, as marriages, inheritances, judicatures. 2. Histories--whereof some are taken from the Scriptures, but falsified with fabulous additions; others are wholly false, having no foundation in fact. 3. Admonitions: under which head are comprised exhortations to receive Islamism; to fight for it, to practise its precepts, prayers, alms, etc.; the moral duties, such as justice, temperance, etc., promises of everlasting felicity to the obedient, dissuasives from sin, threatenings of the punishments of hell to the unbelieving and disobedient. Many of the threatenings are levelled against particular persons, and those sometimes of Mahomet's own family, who had opposed him in propagating his religion. In the _Koran_ God is brought in saying, "We have given you a book." By this it appears that the impostor published early, in writing, some of his principal doctrines, as also some of his historical relations. Thus, in his life of himself we find his disciples reading the twentieth chapter of the _Koran_, before his flight from Mecca; after which he pretended many of the revelations in other chapters were brought to him. Undoubtedly, all those said to be revealed at Medina must be posterior to what he had then published at Mecca; because he had not yet been at Medina. Many parts of the _Koran_ he declared were brought to him by the angel Gabriel, on special occasions, of which we have already met with several instances in his biography. Accordingly, the commentators on the _Koran_ often explain passages in it by relating the occasion on which they were first revealed. Without such a key many of them would be perfectly unintelligible. There are several contradictions in the _Koran_. To reconcile these, the Mussulman doctors have invented the doctrine of abrogation, _i.e._, that what was revealed at one time was revoked by a new revelation. A great deal of it is so absurd, trifling, and full of tautology that it requires no little patience to read much of it at a time. Notwithstanding, the _Koran_ is cried up by the Mussulmans as inimitable; and in the seventeenth chapter of the _Koran_ Mahomet is commanded to say, "Verily if men and genii were purposely assembled, that they might produce anything like the _Koran_, they could not produce anything like unto it, though they assisted one another." Accordingly, when the impostor was called upon, as he often was, to work miracles in proof of his divine mission, he excused himself by various pretences, and appealed to the _Koran_ as a standing miracle.[65] Each chapter of the _Koran_ is divided into verses, that is, lines of different length, terminated with the same letter, so as to make a different rhyme, but without any regard to the measure of the syllables. The Mahometan religion consists of two parts, faith and practice. Faith they divide into six articles: 1. A belief in the unity of God, in opposition to those whom they call associators; by which name they mean not only those who, besides the true God, worship idols or inferior gods or goddesses, but the Christians also, who hold our blessed Saviour's divinity and the doctrine of the Trinity. 2. A belief of angels, to whom they attribute various shapes, names, and offices, borrowed from the Jews and Persians. 3. The Scriptures. 4. The prophets: on this head the _Koran_ teaches that God revealed his will to various prophets, in divers ages of the world, and gave it in writing to Adam, Seth, Enoch, Abraham, etc.; but these books are lost: that afterward he gave the Pentateuch to Moses, the Psalms to David, the Gospel to Jesus, and the _Koran_ to Mahomet. The _Koran_ speaks with great reverence of Moses and Jesus, but says the Scriptures left by them have been greatly mutilated and corrupted. Under this pretence it adds a great many fabulous relations to the history contained in those sacred books, and charges the Jews and Christians with suppressing many prophecies concerning Mahomet (a calumny easily refuted, the Scriptures having been translated into various languages long before Mahomet was born). 5. The fifth article of belief is the resurrection and day of judgment, while about the intermediate state Mahometan divines have various opinions. The happiness promised to the Mussulmans in paradise is wholly sensual, consisting of fine gardens, rich furniture sparkling with gems and gold, delicious fruits, and wines that neither cloy nor intoxicate; but above all, affording the fruition of all the delights of love in the society of women having large black eyes and every trait of exquisite beauty, who shall ever continue young and perfect. Some of their writers speak of these females of paradise in very lofty strains; telling us, for instance, that if one of them were to look down from heaven in the night she would illuminate the earth as the sun does; and if she did but spit into the ocean, it would be immediately turned as sweet as honey. These delights of paradise were certainly, at first, understood literally; however Mahometan divines may have since allegorized them into a spiritual sense. As to the punishments threatened to the wicked, they are hell-fire, breathing hot winds, the drinking of boiling and stinking water, eating briers and thorns, and the bitter fruit of the tree Zacom, which in their bellies will feel like boiling pitch. These punishments are to be everlasting to all except those who embrace Islamism; for the latter, after suffering a number of years, in proportion to their demerits, will then, if they have had but so much faith as is equal to the weight of an ant, be released by the mercy of God, and, upon the intercession of Mahomet, admitted into paradise. The sixth article of belief is that God decrees everything that is to happen, not only all events, but the actions and thoughts of men, their belief or infidelity; that everything that has or will come to pass has been, from eternity, written in the preserved or secret table, which is a white stone of an immense size, preserved in heaven, near the throne of God. Agreeable to this notion one of their poets thus expresses himself: "Whatever is written against thee will come to pass; what is written for thee shall not fail; resign thyself to God, and know thy Lord to be powerful; his decrees will certainly take place; his servants ought to be silent." Of their four fundamental points of practice, the first is prayer. This duty is to be performed five times in the twenty-four hours: 1. In the morning before sunrise. 2. When noon is past. 3. A little before sunset. 4. A little after sunset. 5. Before the first watch of the night. Previous to prayer they are to purify themselves by washing. Some kinds of pollution require the whole body to be immersed in water, but commonly it is enough to wash some parts only--the head, the face and neck, hands and feet. In the latter ablution, called _wodhu_, fine sand or dust may be used when water cannot be had; in such case the palm of the hand, being first laid upon the sand, is then to be drawn over the part required to be washed. The Mahometans, out of respect to the divine Majesty before whom they are to appear, are required to be clean and decent when they go to public prayers in their mosques; but are yet forbidden to appear there in sumptuous apparel, particularly clothes trimmed with gold or silver, lest they should make them vain and arrogant. The women are not allowed to be in their mosques at the same time with the men; this they think would make their thoughts wander from their proper business there. On this account they reproach the Christians with the impropriety of the contrary usage. The next point of practice is alms-giving, which is frequently enjoined in the _Koran_ and looked upon as highly meritorious. Many of them have been very exemplary in the performance of this duty. The third point of practical religion is fasting the whole month Ramadan, during which they are every day to abstain from eating or drinking, or touching a woman, from daybreak to sunset; after that they are at liberty to enjoy themselves as at other times. From this fast an exception is made in favor of old persons and children. Those also that are sick or on a journey, and women pregnant or nursing, are also excused in this month. But then, the person making use of this dispensation must expiate the omission by fasting an equal number of days in some other month and by giving alms to the poor. There are also some other days of fasting, which are, by the more religious, observed in the manner above described. The last practical duty is going the pilgrimage to Mecca, which every man who is able is obliged to perform once in his life. In the ceremonies of it they strictly copy those observed by Mahomet. A pilgrimage can be made only in the month Dulhagha; but a visitation to Mecca may be made at any other time of the year. THE MAHOMETAN CREED As an illustration of the Mahometan creed and practice I have thought it advisable to insert their famous Dr. Al-Gazali's interpretation of the two articles of their faith, viz., "There is no God but God; Mahomet is the apostle of God": "Praise be to God the Creator and Restorer of all things: who does whatsoever he pleases, who is master of the glorious throne and mighty force, and directs his sincere servants into the right way and the straight path; who favoreth them who have once borne testimony to the unity, by preserving their confessions from the darkness of doubt and hesitation; who directs them to follow his chosen apostle, upon whom be the blessing and peace of God; and to go after his most honorable companions, to whom he hath vouchsafed his assistance and direction which is revealed to them in his essence and operations by the excellences of his attributes, to the knowledge whereof no man attains but he that hath been taught by hearing. To these, as touching his essence, he maketh known that he is one, and hath no partner: singular, without anything like him: uniform, having no contrary: separate, having no equal. He is ancient, having no first: eternal, having no beginning: remaining forever, having no end: continuing to eternity, without any termination. He persists, without ceasing to be, remains without failing, and never did cease, nor ever shall cease, to be described by glorious attributes, nor is subject to any decree so as to be determined by any precise limits or set times, but is the First and the Last, and is within and without. "_What God is not_.] He (glorified be his name) is not a body endued with form, nor a substance circumscribed with limits or determined by measure; neither does he resemble bodies, as they are capable of being measured or divided. Neither is he a substance, neither do substances exist in him; neither is he an accident, nor do accidents exist in him. Neither is he like to anything that exists, neither is anything like to him; nor is he determinate in quantity nor comprehended by bounds, nor circumscribed by the differences of situation nor contained in the heavens. He sits upon the throne, after that manner which he himself hath described, and in that same sense which he himself means, which is a sitting far removed from any notion of contact, or resting upon, or local situation; but both the throne itself, and whatsoever is upon it, are sustained by the goodness of his power, and are subject to the grasp of his hand. But he is above the throne, and above all things, even to the utmost ends of the earth; but so above as at the same time not to be a whit nearer the throne and the heaven; since he is exalted by (infinite) degrees above the throne no less than he is exalted above the earth, and at the same time is near to everything that hath a being; nay, nearer to men than their jugular veins, and is witness to everything; though his nearness is not like the nearness of bodies, as neither is his essence like the essence of bodies. Neither doth he exist in anything, neither doth anything exist in him; but he is too high to be contained in any place, and too holy to be determined by time; for he was before time and place were created, and is now after the same manner as he always was. He is also distinct from the creatures by his attributes, neither is there anything besides himself in his essence, nor is his essence in any other besides him. He is too holy to be subject to change, or any local motion; neither do any accidents dwell in him nor any contingencies befall him, but he abides through all generations with his glorious attributes, free from all danger of dissolution. As to the attribute of perfection, he wants no addition of his perfection. As to being, he is known to exist by the apprehension of the understanding; and he is seen as he is by an ocular intuition, which will be vouchsafed out of his mercy and grace to the holy in the eternal mansion, completing their joy by the vision of his glorious presence. "_His Power_.] He, praised be his name, is living, powerful, mighty, omnipotent, not liable to any defect or impotence, neither slumbering nor sleeping, nor being obnoxious to decay or death. To him belong the kingdom, and the power, and the might. His is the dominion, and the excellency, and the creation, and the command thereof. The heavens are folded up in his right hand, and all creatures are crouched within his grasp. His excellency consists in his creating and producing, and his unity in communicating existence and a beginning of being. He created men and their works, and measured out their maintenance and their determined times. Nothing that is possible can escape his grasp, nor can the vicissitudes of things elude his power. The effects of his might are innumerable, and the objects of his knowledge infinite. "_His Knowledge_.] He, praised be his name, knows all things that can be understood, and comprehends whatsoever comes to pass, from the extremities of the earth to the highest heavens, even the weight of a pismire could not escape him either in earth or heaven; but he would perceive the creeping of the black pismire in the dark night upon the hard stone, and discern the motion of an atom in the open air. He knows what is secret and conceals it, and views the conceptions of the minds, and the motions of the thoughts, and the inmost recesses of secrets, by a knowledge ancient and eternal, that never ceased to be his attribute from eternal eternity, and not by any new knowledge, superadded to his essence, either inhering or adventitious. "_His Will_.] He, praised be his name, doth will those things to be that are, and disposes of all accidents. Nothing passes in the empire, nor the kingdom, neither little nor much, nor small nor great, nor good nor evil, nor profitable nor hurtful, nor faith nor infidelity, nor knowledge nor ignorance, nor prosperity nor adversity, nor increase nor decrease, nor obedience nor rebellion, but by his determinate counsel and decree, and his definite sense and will. Nor doth the wink of him that seeth, nor the subtlety of him that thinketh, exceed the bounds of his will: but it is he who gave all things their beginning; he is the creator and restorer, the sole operator of what he pleases; there is no reversing his decree nor delaying what he hath determined, nor is there any refuge to man from his rebellion against him, but only his help and mercy; nor hath any man any power to perform any duty toward him, but through his love and will. Though men and genii, angels and devils, should conspire together either to put one single atom in motion, or cause it to cease its motion, without his will and approbation they would not be able to do it. His will subsists in his essence among the rest of his attributes, and was from eternity one of his eternal attributes, by which he willed from eternity the existence of those things that he had decreed, which were produced in their proper seasons according to his eternal will, without any before or after, and in agreement both with his knowledge and will, and not by methodizing of thoughts, nor waiting for a proper time, for which reason no one thing is in him a hinderance from another. "_His Hearing and Sight_.] And he, praised be his name, is hearing and seeing, and heareth and seeth. No audible object, how still soever, escapeth his hearing; nor is anything visible so small as to escape his sight; for distance is no hinderance to his hearing, nor darkness to his sight. He sees without pupil or eyelids, and hears without any passage or ear, even as he knoweth without a heart, and performs his actions without the assistance of any corporeal limb, and creates without any instrument, for his attributes (or properties) are not like those of men, any more than his essence is like theirs. "_His Word_.] Furthermore, he doth speak, command, forbid, promise, and threaten by an eternal, ancient word subsisting in his essence. Neither is it like to the word of the creatures, nor doth it consist in a voice arising from the commotion of the air and the collision of bodies, nor letters which are separated by the joining together of the lips or the motion of the tongue. The _Koran_, the Law, the Gospel, and the Psalter, are books sent down by him to his apostles, and the _Koran_, indeed, is read with tongues, written in books, and kept in hearts; yet as subsisting in the essence of God, it doth not become liable to separation and division while it is transferred into the hearts and the papers. Thus Moses also heard the word of God without voice or letter, even as the saints behold the essence of God without substance or accident. And that since these are his attributes, he liveth and knoweth, is powerful and willeth and operateth, and seeth and speaketh, by life and knowledge, and will and hearing, and sight and word, not by his simple essence. "_His Works_.] He, praised be his name, exists after such a manner that nothing besides him hath any being but what is produced by his operation, and floweth from his justice after the best, most excellent, most perfect, and most just model. He is, moreover, wise in his works and just in his decrees. But his justice is not to be compared with the justice of men. For a man may be supposed to act unjustly by invading the possession of another; but no injustice can be conceived of God, inasmuch as there is nothing that belongs to any other besides himself, so that wrong is not imputable to him as meddling with things not appertaining to him. All things, himself only excepted, genii, men, the devil, angels, heaven, earth, animals, plants, substance, accident, intelligible, sensible, were all created originally by him. He created them by his power out of mere privation, and brought them into light, when as yet they were nothing at all, but he alone existing from eternity, neither was there any other with him. Now he created all things in the beginning for the manifestation of his power, and his will, and the confirmation of his word, which was true from all eternity. Not that he stood in need of them, nor wanted them; but he manifestly declared his glory in creating, and producing, and commanding, without being under any obligation, nor out of necessity. Loving-kindness, and to show favor, and grace, and beneficence, belong to him; whereas it is in his power to pour forth upon men a variety of torments, and afflict them with various kinds of sorrows and diseases, which, if he were to do, his justice could not be arraigned, nor would he be chargeable with injustice. Yet he rewards those that worship him for their obedience on account of his promise and beneficence, not of their merit nor of necessity, since there is nothing which he can be tied to perform; nor can any injustice be supposed in him, nor can he be under any obligation to any person whatsoever. That his creatures, however, should be bound to serve him, ariseth from his having declared by the tongues of the prophets that it was due to him from them. The worship of him is not simply the dictate of the understanding, but he sent messengers to carry to men his commands, and promises, and threats, whose veracity he proved by manifest miracles, whereby men are obliged to give credit to them in those things that they relate. "_The signification of the second article; that is, the testimony concerning the Apostle_.] He, the Most High, sent Mahomet, the illiterate prophet of the family of the Koreish, to deliver his message to all the Arabians and barbarians and genii and men; and abrogated by his religion all other religions, except in those things which he confirmed; and gave him the preëminence over all the rest of the prophets, and made him lord over all mortal men. Neither is the faith, according to his will, complete by the testimony of the unity alone; that is, by simply saying, There is but one God, without the addition of the testimony of the apostle; _i.e._, without the further testimony, Mahomet is the apostle of God. And he hath made it necessary to men to give credit to Mahomet in those things which he hath related, both with regard to this present world and the life to come. For a man's faith is not accepted till he is fully persuaded of those things which the prophet hath affirmed shall be after death. The first of these is the examination of Munkir and Nakir. These are two angels, of a most terrible and fearful aspect, who shall place [every] man upright in his grave, consisting again both of soul and body, and ask him concerning the unity and the mission [of the apostle], saying, Who is thy Lord? and, What is thy religion? and, Who is thy prophet? For these are the searchers of the grave, and their examination the first trial after death. Everyone must also believe the torment of the sepulchre, and that it is due and right and just, both upon the body and the soul, being according to the will of God. "He shall also believe in the balance with two scales and a beam, that shall equal the extent of the heavens and the earth; wherein the works [of men] shall be weighed by the power of God. At which time weights not heavier than atoms, or mustard-seeds, shall be brought out, that things may be balanced with the utmost exactness, and perfect justice administered. Then the books of the good works, beautiful to behold, shall be cast into the balance of light, by which the balance shall be depressed according to their degrees, out of the favor of God. But the books of evil deeds, nasty to look upon, shall be cast into the balance of darkness, with which the scale shall lightly ascend by the justice of the most high God. "He must also believe that there is a real way, extended over the middle of hell, which is sharper than a sword and finer than a hair, over which all must pass. In this passage of it, while the feet of the infidels, by the decree of God, shall slip, so as they shall fall into hell-fire, the feet of the faithful shall never stumble, but they shall arrive safely into the eternal habitation. "He shall also believe the pond where they go down to be watered, that is the pond of Mahomet (upon whom be the blessing and peace of God), out of which the faithful, after they have passed the way, drink before they enter into paradise; and out of which whosoever once drinketh shall thirst no more forever. Its breadth is a month's journey, it is whiter than milk and sweeter than honey. Round about it stand cups as innumerable as the stars, and it hath two canals, by which the waters of the [river] Cauthar flow into it. "He shall also believe the [last] account, in which men shall be divided into those that shall be reckoned withal with the utmost strictness, and those that shall be dealt withal more favorably, and those that shall be admitted into paradise without any manner of examination at all; namely, those whom God shall cause to approach near to himself. Moreover, he shall believe that God will ask any of his apostles, whomsoever he shall please, concerning their mission; of the infidels, and whomsoever he shall please, what was the reason why, by their unbelief, they accused those that were sent to them of lying. He will also examine the heretics concerning tradition, and the faithful concerning their good works. "He shall also believe that all who confess one God shall, upon the intercession of the prophets, next of the doctors, then of the martyrs, and finally of the rest of the faithful--that is, everyone according to his excellency and degree--at length go out of the fire after they have undergone the punishment due to their sins. "And if besides these remain any of the faithful, having no intercessor, they shall go out by the grace of God; neither shall any one of the faithful remain forever in hell, but shall go out from thence though he had but so much faith in his heart as the weight of an atom. And thus, by the favorable mercy of God, no person shall remain in hell who in life acknowledge the unity of the Godhead. "It is also necessary that every true believer acknowledge the excellency of the companions [of Mahomet] and their degrees; and that the most excellent of men, next to Mahomet, is Abu-Bekr, then Omar, then Othman, and then Ali. Moreover, he must entertain a good opinion of all the companions, and celebrate their memories, according as God and his apostles hath celebrated them. And all these things are received by tradition, and evinced by evident tokens; and he that confesseth all these things, and surely believeth them, is to be reckoned among the number of those that embrace truth, and of the congregation of those that walk in the received way, separated from the congregation of those that err, and the company of heretics. "These are the things that everyone is obliged to believe and confess that would be accounted worthy of the name of a Mussulman; and that, according to the literal meaning of the words, not as they may be made capable of any sounder sense; for, says the author of this exposition, some pretending to go deeper have put an interpretation upon those things that are delivered concerning the world to come, such as the balance, and the way, and some other things besides, but it is heresy." FOOTNOTES: [49] This famous structure (in the Arabic, _Kef'bah_--a square building) for over twelve hundred years has been the cynosure of the Moslem peoples. It is undoubtedly of great antiquity, being mentioned by Diodorus the historian in the latter part of the first century, at which time its sanctity was acknowledged and its idols venerated by the Arabians and kindred tribes who paid yearly visits to the shrine to offer their devotions. According to the Arabian legend Adam, after his expulsion from the Garden, worshipped Allah on this spot. A tent was then sent down from heaven, but Seth substituted a hut for the tent. After the Flood, Abraham and Ishmael rebuilt the Kaaba. At present it is a cube-shaped, flat-roofed building of stone in the Great Mosque at Mecca. In its southeast corner next to the silver door is the famous black stone "_hajar al aswud_," dropped from paradise. It was said to have been originally a white stone (by other accounts a ruby), but the tears--or more probably the kisses--of pilgrims have turned it quite black. [50] Palmer has it: "In the mean time Mahomet and Abu-Bekr escaped by a back window in the house of the latter." [51] _Zem-sem_, the name of this well, is said by the Moslems to be the spring which Hagar had revealed to her when driven into the wilderness with her son, Ishmael. [52] Friday remains the Sabbath of the Moslems. [53] His nephew and son-in-law, surnamed "the Lion-hearted." [54] The Persians add these words, "and Ali is the friend of God." Kouli Khan, having a mind to unite the two different sects, ordered them to be omitted.--_Fraser's Life of Kouli Khan_, p. 124. [55] An Arab of Kossay, named Ammer Ibn Lahay, is said to have first introduced idolatry among his countrymen; he brought the idol called Hobal, from Hyt in Mesopotamia, and set it up in the Kaaba. It was the Jupiter of the Arabians, and was made of red agate in the form of a man holding in his hand seven arrows without heads or feathers, such as the Arabs use in divination. At a subsequent period the Kaaba was adorned with three hundred and sixty idols, corresponding probably to the days of the Arabian year.--_Burckhardt's Arabia_, pp. 163, 164. [56] An opinion as ancient as Homer.--_Iliad_, vi. 487. [57] Several stories have been told as the occasion of Mahomet's prohibiting the drinking of wine. Busbequius says: "Mahomet, making a journey to a friend at noon, entered into his house, where there was a marriage feast; and sitting down with the guests, he observed them to be very merry and jovial, kissing and embracing one another, which was attributed to the cheerfulness of their spirits raised by the wine; so that he blessed it as a sacred thing in being thus an instrument of much love among men. But returning to the same house the next day, he beheld another face of things, as gore-blood on the ground, a hand cut off, an arm, foot, and other limbs dismembered, which he was told was the effect of the brawls and fightings occasioned by the wine, which made them mad, and inflamed them into a fury, thus to destroy one another. Whereon he changed his mind, and turned his former blessing into a curse, and forbade wine ever after to all his disciples." (Epist. 3.) "This prohibition of wine hindered many of the prophet's contemporaries from embracing his religion. Yet several of the most respectable of the pagan Arabs, like certain of the Jews and early Christians, abstained totally from wine, from a feeling of its injurious effects upon morals, and, in their climate, upon health; or, more especially, from the fear of being led by it into the commission of foolish and degrading actions. Thus Keys, the son of Asim, being one night overcome with wine, attempted to grasp the moon, and swore that he would not quit the spot where he stood until he had laid hold of it. After leaping several times with the view of doing so, he fell flat upon his face; and when he recovered his senses, and was acquainted with the cause of his face being bruised, he made a solemn vow to abstain from wine ever after."--_Lane's Arab. Nights_, vol. i. pp. 217, 218. [58] The following elucidation of the above circumstance is given by Sale: "Mahomet having undertaken an expedition against the tribe of Mostalek, in the sixth year of the Hegira, took his wife Ayesha with him. On their return, when they were not far from Medina, the army removing by night, Ayesha, on the road, alighted from her camel, and stepped aside on a private occasion; but on her return, perceiving she had dropped her necklace, which was of onyxes of Dhafar, she went back to look for it; and in the mean time her attendants, taking it for granted that she was got into her pavilion, set it again on the camel, and led it away. When she came back to the road and saw her camel was gone, she sat down there, expecting that when she was missed some would be sent back to fetch her; and in a little time she fell asleep. Early in the morning, Safwan Ebu al Moattel, who had stayed behind to rest himself, coming by, perceived somebody asleep, and found it was Ayesha; upon which he awoke her, by twice pronouncing with a low voice these words, 'We are God's, and unto him must we return.' Ayesha immediately covered herself with her veil; and Safwan set her on his own camel, and led her after the army, which they overtook by noon, as they were resting. This accident had like to have ruined Ayesha, whose reputation was publicly called in question, as if she had been guilty of adultery with Safwan."--_Sale's Koran_, xxiv. _note_. [59] He once thought to have ordered the pilgrimage to Jerusalem; but finding the Jews so inveterate against him, thought it more advisable to oblige the Arabs. [60] "An implicit belief in magic is entertained by almost all Mussulmans. Babil, or Babel, is regarded by the Mussulmans as the fountain-head of the science of magic, which was, and, as most think, still is, taught there to mankind by two fallen angels, named Haroot and Maroot, who are there suspended by the feet in a great pit closed by a mass of rock."--_Lane's Arab. Nights_, vol. i. pp. 66, 218. "From another fable of these two magicians, we are told that the angels in heaven, expressing their surprise at the wickedness of the sons of Adam, after prophets had been sent to them with divine commissions, God bid them choose two out of their own number, to be sent down to be judges on earth. Whereupon they pitched upon Haroot and Maroot, who executed their office with integrity for some time, in the province of Babylon; but while they were there, Zohara, or the planet Venus, descended, and appeared before them in the shape of a beautiful woman, bringing a complaint against her husband. As soon as they saw her they fell in love with her, whereupon she invited them to dinner, and set wine before them, which God had forbidden them to drink. At length, being tempted by the liquor to transgress the divine command, they became drunk, and endeavored to prevail on her to satisfy their desires; to which she promised to consent upon condition that one of them should first carry her to heaven, and the other bring her back again. They immediately agreed to do so, but directly the woman reached heaven she declared to God the whole matter, and as a reward for her chastity she was made the morning star. The guilty angels were allowed to choose whether they would be punished in this life or in the other; and upon their choosing the former, they were hung up by the feet by an iron chain in a certain pit near Babylon, where they are to continue suffering the punishment of their transgression until the day of judgment. By the same tradition we also learn that if a man has a fancy to learn magic, he may go to them and hear their voice, but cannot see them."--_Sale's Koran_, ii. and _notes_ [61] Moore thus alludes to the circumstance in _Lalla Rookh_:-- "And here Mahomet, born for love and guile, Forgets the _Koran_ in his Mary's smile, Then beckons some kind angel from above, With a new text to consecrate their love!" --_Veiled Prophet of Khorassan_. [62] "The death of Jaafar was heroic and memorable; he lost his right hand, he shifted the standard to his left, the left was severed from his body, he embraced the standard with his bleeding stumps, till he was transfixed to the ground with fifty honorable wounds. 'Advance,' cried Abdallah, who stepped into the vacant place, 'advance with confidence; either victory or paradise is our own.' The lance of a Roman decided the alternative; but the falling standard was rescued by Kaled, the proselyte of Mecca; nine swords were broken in his hand; and his valor withstood and repulsed the superior numbers of the Christians. To console the afflicted relatives of his kinsman Jaafar, Mahomet represented that, in paradise, in exchange for the arms he had lost, he had been furnished with a pair of wings, resplendent with the blushing glories of the ruby, and with which he was become the inseparable companion of the archangel Gabriel, in his volitations through the regions of eternal bliss. Hence, in the catalogue of the martyrs he has been denominated _Jaaffer teyaur_ ('the winged Jaaffer')."--_Milman's Gibbon_, 1. [63] Mahomet's victims were camels; they may, however, be sheep or goats, but in this case they must be male; if camels or kine, female.--_Sale, Prelim. Dis._, p. 120. [64] There are many ridiculous stories told of Mahomet, which, being notoriously fabulous, are not introduced here. Two of the most popular are: That a tame pigeon used to whisper in his ear the commands of God. [The pigeon is said to have been taught to come and peck some grains of rice out of Mahomet's ear, to induce people to think that he then received by the ministry of an angel the several articles of the _Koran_.] The other is that after his death he was buried at Medina, and his coffin suspended, by divine agency or magnetic power, between the ceiling and floor of the temple. [65] Mirza Ibrahim (translated by Lee) states, however, that the miracles recorded of Mahomet almost exceed enumeration. "Some of the doctors of Islamism have computed them at four thousand four hundred and fifty, while others have held that the more remarkable ones were not fewer than a thousand, some of which are almost universally accredited: as his dividing the moon into two parts; the singing of the gravel in his hand; the flowing of the water from between his fingers; the animals addressing him, and complaining before him; his satisfying a great multitude with a small quantity of food, and many others. The miracle of the speaking of the moon is thus related by Gagnier: On one occasion Mahomet accepted a challenge to bring the moon from heaven in presence of the whole assembly. Upon uttering his command, that luminary, full-orbed, though but five days old, leaped from the firmament, and, bounding through the air, alighted on the top of the Kaaba, after having encircled it by seven distinct evolutions. It is said to have paid reverence to the prophet, addressing him in elegant Arabic, in set phrase of encomium, and concluding with the formula of the Mussulman faith. This done, the moon is said to have descended from the Kaaba, to have entered the right sleeve of Mahomet's mantle, and made its exit by the left. After having traversed every part of his flowing robe, the planet separated into two parts, as it mounted to the air. Then these parts reunited in one round and luminous orb as before." THE SARACEN CONQUEST OF SYRIA A.D. 636 SIMON OCKLEY Abu-Bekr was chosen caliph, or _khalif_ (signifying successor) to Mahomet, but died after a reign of two years. His successor, Caliph Omar, continued with unabated ardor the efforts for the spread of Islam which Abu-Bekr had initiated by sending an invading expedition into Persia, and another into the Roman provinces of Syria. The victorious armies of the Crescent were by this time far advanced beyond the frontiers of Arabia, and with fanatic zeal endeavoring to obey the prophet's injunction to Islamize mankind. "_Allah il Allah!_" ("God is God!") was their inspiring war-cry, and "Mahomet is the prophet of God" their watchword. With cimeter and _Koran_ in either hand they offered the conquered "Infidels" "Islam or the sword." The Oxus, which alone separated Saracen territory from that of Syria, was easily passed. Damascus was conquered, and the impetuous spirit of the Moslems led them rapidly on to Heliopolis, then to Hems or Emesa. In subtlety they were no less practised than they were well proved in courage, and by many arts they succeeded in creating diversions among their adversaries, and often in enlisting them under the Saracen standard. By making the Syrians understand something of their language, customs, and religion, they prepared them for assimilation when once subjected. In some cases dissensions among the Syrians led them to invoke the intervention of those who came to subjugate them. In less than two years the Saracens had conquered the Syrian plain and valley, but still they reproached themselves for loss of time, and with redoubled zeal pressed on to new victories. The forces arrayed against them were greatly augmented both from Asia and Europe, but the disciplined veterans of the Roman emperor Heraclius, and the recruits from the provinces, vainly confronted the Arabs, whose valor was of the nature of religious frenzy, which no assault could cause to quail. They won, at fearful cost to themselves, but with greater loss to their enemies at the battle of Yermouk, and there caused the Roman army to abandon active warfare against them. It was then open to the victors to select their own objective among the Syrian cities, and following the counsel of Ali, they entered at once upon the siege of Jerusalem, although they held that city next to Mecca and Medina in veneration. After a siege of four months Jerusalem capitulated, her defenders having no rest from the ceaseless assaults of the besiegers. Hard work still lay before the Saracens in Syria; but after the reduction of Aleppo, which cost several months' siege, with great loss of lives to the invaders, they passed on to Antioch and other strongholds, until, one by one, all had been subdued; the surrender of Cæsarea completing the great conquest and the subjection of Syria to the rule of the Caliph. Heraclius, wearied with a constant and uninterrupted succession of ill news, which like those of Job came every day treading upon the heels of each other, grieved at the heart to see the Roman Empire, once the mistress of the world, now become the scorn and spoil of barbarian insolence, resolved, if possible, to put an end to the outrages of the Saracens once for all. With this view he raised troops in all parts of his dominions, and collected so considerable an army as since the first invasion of the Saracens had never appeared in Syria--not much unlike one engaged in single combat who, distrustful of his own abilities and fearing the worst, summons together his whole strength in hopes of ending the dispute with one decisive blow. Troops were sent to every tenable place which this inundation of the Saracens had not as yet reached, particularly to Cæsarea and all the sea-coast of Syria, as Tyre and Sidon, Accah, Joppa, Tripolis, Beyrout, and Tiberias, besides another army to defend Jerusalem. The main body, which was designed to give battle to the whole force of the Saracens, was commanded by one Mahan, an Armenian, whom I take to be the very same that the Greek historians call Manuel. To his generals the Emperor gave the best advice, charging them to behave themselves like men, and especially to take care to avoid all differences or dissensions. Afterward, when he had expressed his astonishment at this extraordinary success of the Arabs, who were inferior to the Greeks, in number, strength, arms, and discipline, after a short silence a grave man stood up and told him that the reason of it was that the Greeks had walked unworthily of their Christian profession, and changed their religion from what it was when Jesus Christ first delivered it to them, injuring and oppressing one another, taking usury, committing fornication, and fomenting all manner of strife and variance among themselves. The Emperor answered, that he was "too sensible of it." He then told them that he had thoughts of continuing no longer in Syria, but, leaving his army to their management, he purposed to withdraw to Constantinople. In answer to which they represented to him how much his departure would reflect upon his honor, what a lessening it would be to him in the eyes of his own subjects, and what occasion of triumph it would afford to his enemies the Saracens. Upon this they took their leave and prepared for their march. Besides a vast army of Asiatics and Europeans, Mahan was joined by Al Jabalah Ebn Al Ayham, King of the Christian Arabs, who had under him sixty thousand men. These Mahan commanded to march always in the front, saying that there was nothing like diamond to cut diamond. This great army, raised for the defence of Christian people, was little less insupportable than the Saracens themselves, committing all manner of disorder and outrage as they passed along; especially when they came to any of those places which had made any agreement with the Saracens, or surrendered to them, they swore and cursed and reviled the inhabitants with reproachful language, and compelled them by force to bear them company. The poor people excused their submission to the Saracens by their inability to defend themselves, and told the soldiers that if they did not approve of what they had done, they ought themselves to have come sooner to their relief. The news of this great army having reached the Saracens while they were at Hems, filled them full of apprehensions, and put them to a very great strait as to the best course to pursue in this critical juncture. Some of them would very willingly have shrunk back and returned to Arabia. This course, they urged, presented a double advantage: on the one hand they would be sure of speedy assistance from their friends; and on the other, in that barren country the numerous army of the enemy must needs be reduced to great scarcity. But Abu Obeidah, fearing lest such a retreat might by the Caliph be interpreted cowardice in him, durst not approve of this advice. Others would rather die in the defence of those stately buildings, fruitful fields, and pleasant meadows they had won by the sword, than voluntarily to return to their former starving condition. They proposed therefore to remain where they were and wait the approach of the enemy. But Kaled disapproved of their remaining in their present position, as it was too near Cæsarea, where Constantine, the Emperor's son, lay with forty thousand men; and recommended that they should march to Yermouk, where they might reckon on assistance from the Caliph. As soon as Constantine heard of their departure, he sent a chiding letter to Mahan, and bade him mend his pace. Mahan advanced, but made no haste to give the Saracens battle, having received orders from the Emperor to make overtures of peace, which were no sooner proposed than rejected by Abu Obeidah. Several messages passed between them. The Saracens, endeavoring to bring their countryman Jabalah Ebn Al Ayham, with his Christian Arabs, to a neutrality, were answered that they were obliged to serve the Emperor, and resolved to fight. Upon this Kaled, contrary to the general advice, prepared to give him battle before Mahan should come up, although the number of his men--who, however, were the _élite_ of the whole army--was very inconsiderable, urging that the Christians, being the army of the devil, had no advantage by their numbers against the Saracens, the army of God. In choosing his men, Kaled had called out more Ansers[66] than Mohajerins,[67] which, when it was observed, occasioned some grumbling, as it then was doubted whether it was because he respected them most or because he had a mind to expose them to the greater danger, that he might favor the others. Kaled told them that he had chosen them without any such regard, only because they were persons he could depend upon, whose valor he had proved, and who had the faith rooted in their hearts. One Cathib, happening to be called after his brother Sahal, and looking upon himself to be the better man, resented it as a high affront, and roundly abused Kaled. The latter, however, gave him very gentle and modest answers, to the great satisfaction of all, especially of Abu Obeidah, who, after a short contention, made them shake hands. Kaled, indeed, was admirable in this respect, that he knew no less how to govern his passions than to command the army; though, to most great generals, the latter frequently proves the easier task of the two. In this hazardous enterprise his success was beyond all expectation, for he threw Jabalah's Arabs into disorder and killed a great many, losing very few of his own men on the field, besides five prisoners, three of whom were Yezid Ebn Abu Sofian, Rafi Ebn Omeira, and Derar Ebn Al Alzwar, all men of great note. Abu Obeidah sent Abdallah Ebn Kort with an express to Omar, acquainting him with their circumstances, begging his prayers and some fresh recruits of Unitarians, a title they glory in, as reckoning themselves the only asserters of the unity of the Deity. Omar and the whole court were extremely surprised, but comforted themselves with the promises made to them in the _Koran_, which seemed now to be all they had left to trust to. To encourage the people, he went into the pulpit and showed them the excellency of fighting for the cause of God, and afterward returned an answer to Abu Obeidah, full of such spiritual consolation as the _Koran_ could afford. Omar commanded Abdallah, as soon as ever he came near the camp and before he delivered the letter, to cry out, "Good news!" in order to comfort the Mussulmans and ease them in some measure of the perplexing apprehensions they labored under. As soon as he received this letter and message, together with Omar's blessing, he prepared to set out on his return to the army; but suddenly he remembered that he had omitted to pay his respects at Mahomet's tomb, which it was very uncertain whether he should ever see again. Upon this he hastened to Ayesha's house (the place where Mahomet was buried), and found her sitting by the tomb with Ali and Abbas, and Ali's two sons, Hasan and Hosein, one sitting upon Ali's lap, the other upon Abbas'. Ali was reading the chapter of beasts, being the sixth of the _Koran_, and Abbas the chapter of Hud, which is the eleventh. Abdallah, having paid his respects to Mahomet, Ali asked him whether he did not think of going? He answered, "Yes," but he feared he should not get to the army before the battle, which yet he greatly wished to do, if possible. "If you desired a speedy journey," answered Ali, "why did not you ask Omar to pray for you? Don't you know that the prayers of Omar will not be turned back? Because the apostle of God said of him: 'If there were a prophet to be expected after me, it would be Omar, whose judgment agrees with the book of God.' The prophet said of him besides, 'If an [universal] calamity were to come from heaven upon mankind, Omar would escape from it.' Wherefore, if Omar prayed for thee, thou shalt not stay long for an answer from God." Abdallah told him that he had not spoken one word in praise of Omar but what he was very sensible of before. Only he desired to have not only his prayers but also those of all the Mussulmans, and especially of those who were at the tomb of the prophet. At these words all present lifted up their hands to heaven, and Ali said, "O God, I beseech thee, for the sake of this chosen apostle, in whose name Adam prayed, and thou answeredst his petition and forgavest his sins, that thou wouldst grant to Abdallah Ebn Kort a safe and speedy return, and assist the followers of thy prophet with help, O thou who alone art great and munificent!" Abdallah set out immediately, and afterward returned to the camp with such incredible speed that the Saracens were surprised. But their admiration ceased when he informed them of Omar's blessing and Ali's prayers at Mahomet's tomb. Recruits were instantly raised in every part of Arabia to send to the army. Said Ebn Amir commanded them, having received a flag of red silk at the hands of Omar, who told him that he gave him that commission in hopes of his behaving himself well in it; advising him, among other things, not to follow his appetites, and not forgetting to put him in hopes of further advancement if he should deserve it. Said thanked him for his advice, adding that if he followed it he should be saved. "And now," said Said, "as you have advised me, so let me advise you." "Speak on," said Omar. "I bid you then [added the other] fear God more than men, and not the contrary; and love all the Mussulmans as yourself and your family, as well those at a distance as those near you. And command that which is praiseworthy, and forbid that which is otherwise." Omar, all the while he spoke, stood looking steadfastly upon the ground, leaning his forehead upon his staff. Then he lifted up his head, and the tears ran down his cheeks, and he said, "Who is able to do this without the divine assistance?" Ali bade Said make good use of the Caliph's advice and dismissed him. Said, as he marched toward the army, lost his way, which turned out very unfortunate for the Christians, for by that means he fell in with the prefect of Amman with five thousand men. Said having cut all the foot to pieces, the prefect fled with the horse, but was intercepted by a party which had been sent out under Zobeir from the Saracen camp to forage. Said at first thought they had fallen together by the ears, and were fighting among themselves, but when he came up and heard the _techir_, he was well satisfied. Zobeir ran the prefect through with a lance; of the rest not a single man escaped. The Saracens cut off all their heads, then flayed them, and so carried them upon the points of their lances, presenting a most horrible spectacle to all that part of the country, till they came to the army, which received fresh courage by the accession of this reinforcement, consisting of eight thousand men. However, their satisfaction was greatly lessened by the loss of the five prisoners whom Jabalah Ebn Al Ayham had taken. Now it happened that Mahan desired Abu Obeidah to send one of his officers to him for a conference. This being complied with, Kaled proffered his services, and being accepted by Abu Obeidah, by his advice he took along with him a hundred men, chosen out of the best soldiers in the army. Being met and examined by the out-guards, the chief of whom was Jabalah Ebn Al Ayham, they were ordered to wait till the general's pleasure should be known. Mahan would have had Kaled come to him alone and leave his men behind him. But as Kaled refused to hear of this, they were commanded as soon as they came near the general's tent to alight from their horses and deliver their swords; and when they would not submit to this either, they were at last permitted to enter as they pleased. They found Mahan sitting upon a throne, and seats prepared for themselves. But they refused to make use of them, and, removing them, sat down upon the ground. Mahan asked them the reason of their doing so, and taxed them with want of breeding. To which Kaled answered that that was the best breeding which was from God, and what God has prepared for us to sit down upon is purer than your tapestries, defending their practice from a sentence of their prophet Mahomet, backed with this text of the _Koran_, "Out of it [meaning the earth] we have created you, and to it we shall return you, and out of it we shall bring you another time." Mahan began then to expostulate with Kaled concerning their coming into Syria, and all those hostilities which they had committed there. Mahan seemed satisfied with Kaled's way of talking, and said that he had before that time entertained a quite different opinion of the Arabs, having been informed that they were a foolish, ignorant people. Kaled confessed that that was the condition of most of them till God sent their prophet Mahomet to lead them into the right way, and teach them to distinguish good from evil, and truth from error. During this conference they would argue very coolly for a while, and then again fly into a violent passion. At last it happened that Kaled told Mahan that he should one day see him led with a rope about his neck to Omar to be beheaded. Upon this Mahan told him that the received law of all nations secured ambassadors from violence, which he supposed had encouraged him to take that indecent freedom; however, he was resolved to chastise his insolence in the persons of his friends, the five prisoners, who should instantly be beheaded. At this threat Kaled, bidding Mahan attend to what he was about to say, swore by God, by Mahomet, and the holy temple of Mecca, that if he killed them he should die by his hands, and that every Saracen present should kill his man, be the consequences what they might, and immediately rose from his place and drew his sword. The same was done by the rest of the Saracens. But when Mahan told him that he would not meddle with him for the aforesaid reasons, they sheathed their swords and talked calmly again. And then Mahan made Kaled a present of the prisoners, and begged of him his scarlet tent, which Kaled had brought with him, and pitched hard by. Kaled freely gave it him, and refused to take anything in return (though Mahan gave him his choice of whatever he liked best), thinking his own gift abundantly repaid by the liberation of the prisoners. Both sides now prepared for that fight which was to determine the fate of Syria. The particulars are too tedious to be related, for they continued fighting for several days. Abu Obeidah resigned the whole command of the army to Kaled, standing himself in the rear, under the yellow flag which Abu-Bekr had given him at his first setting forth into Syria, being the same which Mahomet himself had fought under at the battle of Khaibar. Kaled judged this the most proper place for Abu Obeidah, not only because he was no extraordinary soldier, but because he hoped that the reverence for him would prevent the flight of the Saracens, who were now like to be as hard put to it as at any time since they first bore arms. For the same reason the women were placed in the rear. The Greeks charged so courageously and with such vast numbers that the right wing of the Saracen horse was quite borne down and cut off from the main body of the army. But no sooner did they turn their backs than they were attacked by the women, who used them so ill and loaded them with such plenty of reproaches that they were glad to return every man to his post, and chose rather to face the enemy than endure the storm of the women. However, they with much difficulty bore up, and were so hard pressed by the Greeks that occasionally they were fain to forget what their generals had said a little before the fight, who told them that paradise was before them and the devil and hell-fire behind them. Even Abu Sofian, who had himself used that very expression, was forced to retreat, and was received by one of the women with a hearty blow over the face with a tent-pole. Night at last parted the two armies at the very time when the victory began to incline to the Saracens, who had been thrice beaten back, and as often forced to return by the women. Then Abu Obeidah said at once those prayers which belonged to two several hours. His reason for this was, I suppose, a wish that his men, of whom he was very tender, should have the more time to rest. Accordingly, walking about the camp he looked after the wounded men, oftentimes binding up their wounds with his own hands, telling them that their enemies suffered the same pain that they did, but had not that reward to expect from God which they had. Among other single combats, of which several were fought between the two armies, it chanced that Serjabil Ebn Shahhnah was engaged with an officer of the Christians, who was much too strong for him. The reason which our author assigns for this is, because Serjabil was wholly given up to watching and fasting. Derar, thinking he ought not to stand still and see the prophet's secretary killed, drew his dagger, and while the combatants were over head and ears in dust, came behind the Christian and stabbed him to the heart. The Saracens gave Derar thanks for his service, but he said that he would receive no thanks but from God alone. Upon this a dispute arose between Serjabil and Derar concerning the spoil of this officer. Derar claimed it as being the person that killed him; Serjabil as having engaged him and tired him out first. The matter being referred to Abu Obeidah, he proposed the case to the Caliph, concealing the names of the persons concerned, who sent him word that the spoil of any enemy was due to him that killed him. Upon which Abu Obeidah took it from Serjabil and adjudged it to Derar. Another day the Christian archers did such execution that besides those Saracens which were killed and wounded in other parts there were seven hundred which lost each of them one or both of their eyes, upon which account the day in which that battle was fought is called Yaumo'ttewir, "The Day of Blinding." And if any of those who lost their eyes that day were afterward asked by what mischance he was blinded, he would answer that it was not a mischance, but a token of favor from God, for they gloried as much in those wounds they received in the defence of their superstition as our enthusiasts do in what they call persecution, and with much the same reason. Abdallah Ebn Kort, who was present in all the wars in Syria, says that he never saw so hard a battle as that which was fought on that day at Yermouk; and though the generals fought most desperately, yet after all they would have been beaten if the fight had not been renewed by the women. Caulah, Derar's sister, being wounded, fell down; but Opheirah revenged her quarrel and struck off the man's head that did it. Upon Opheirah asking her how she did, she answered, "Very well with God, but a dying woman." However, she proved to be mistaken, for in the evening she was able to walk about as if nothing had happened, and to look after the wounded men. In the night the Greeks had another calamity added to their misfortune of losing the victory in the day. It was drawn upon them by their own inhuman barbarity. There was at Yermouk a gentleman of a very ample fortune, who had removed thither from Hems for the sake of the sweet salubrity of its air. When Mahan's army came to Yermouk this gentleman used to entertain the officers and treat them nobly. To requite him for his courtesy, while they were this day revelling at his house, they bade him bring out his wife to them, and upon his refusing they took her by force and abused her all night, and to aggravate their barbarity they seized his little son and cut his head off. The poor lady took her child's head and carried it to Mahan, and having given him an account of the outrages committed by his officers, demanded satisfaction. He took but little notice of the affair, and put her off with a slight answer; upon which her husband, resolved to take the first opportunity of being revenged, went privately over to the Saracens and acquainted them with his design. Returning back to the Greeks, he told them it was in his power to do them singular service. He therefore takes a great number of them, and brings them to a great stream, which was very deep, and only fordable at one place. By his instructions five hundred of the Saracen horse had crossed over where the water was shallow, and after attacking the Greeks, in a very little time returned in excellent order by the same way they came. The injured gentleman calls out and encourages the Greeks to pursue, who, not at all acquainted with the place, plunged into the water confusedly and perished in great numbers. In the subsequent engagements before Yermouk (all of which were in November, 636), the Christians invariably were defeated, till at last, Mahan's vast army being broken and dispersed, he was forced to flee, thus leaving the Saracens masters of the field, and wholly delivered from those terrible apprehensions with which the news of his great preparations had filled them. A short time after Abu Obeidah wrote to the Caliph the following letter: "In the name of the most merciful God, etc. "This is to acquaint thee that I encamped at Yermouk, where Mahan was near us with such an army as that the Mussulmans never beheld a greater. But God, of his abundant grace and goodness, overthrew this multitude and gave us the victory over them. We killed of them about a hundred and fifty thousand, and took forty thousand prisoners. Of the Mussulmans were killed four thousand and thirty, to whom God had decreed the honor of martyrdom. Finding some heads cut off, and not knowing whether they belonged to the Mussulmans or Christians, I prayed over them and buried them. Mahan was afterward killed at Damascus by Nooman Ebn Alkamah. There was one Abu Joaid that before the battle had belonged to them, having come from Hems; he drowned of them a great number unknown to any but God. As for those that fled into the deserts and mountains, we have destroyed them all, and stopped all the roads and passages, and God has made us masters of their country, and wealth, and children. Written after the victory from Damascus, where I stay expecting thy orders concerning the division of the spoil. Fare thee well, and the mercy and blessing of God be upon thee and all the Mussulmans." Omar, in a short letter, expressed his satisfaction, and gave the Saracens thanks for their perseverance and diligence, commanding Abu Obeidah to continue where he was till further orders. As Omar had mentioned nothing concerning the spoil, Abu Obeidah regarded it as left to his own discretion and divided it without waiting for fresh instructions. To a horseman he gave thrice as much as to a footman, and made a further difference between those horses which were of the right Arabian breed (which they looked upon to be far the best) and those that were not, allowing twice as much to the former as to the latter. And when they were not satisfied with this distribution, Abu Obeidah told them that the prophet had done the same after the battle of Khaibar; which, upon appeal made to Omar, was by him confirmed. Zobeir had at the battle of Yermouk two horses, which he used to ride by turns. He received five lots, three for himself and two for his horses. If any slaves had run away from their masters before the battle, and were afterward retaken, they were restored to their masters, who nevertheless received an equal share of the spoil with the rest. The Saracens having rested a month at Damascus, and refreshed themselves, Abu Obeidah sent to Omar to know whether he should go to Cæsarea or Jerusalem. Ali being present when Omar was deliberating, said, to Jerusalem first, adding that he had heard the prophet say as much. This city they had a great longing after, as being the seat and burying place of a great many of the ancient prophets, in whom they reckoned none to have so deep an interest as themselves. Abu Obeidah having received orders to besiege it, sent Yezid Ebn Abu Sofian thither first with five thousand men; and for five days together sent after him considerable numbers of men under his most experienced and trustworthy officers. The Ierosolymites expressed no signs of fear, nor would they vouchsafe so much as to send out a messenger to parley; but, planting their engines upon the walls, made preparation for a vigorous defence. Yezid at last went near the walls with an interpreter, to know their minds, and to propose the usual terms. When these were rejected, the Saracens would willingly have assaulted the town forthwith, had not Yezid told them that the general had not commanded them to make any assault, but only to sit down before the city; and thereupon sent to Abu Obeidah, who forthwith gave them order to fight. The next morning the generals having said the morning prayer, each at the head of his respective division, they all, as it were with one consent, quoted this versicle out of the _Koran_, as being very apposite and pertinent to their present purpose: "O people! enter ye into the holy land which God hath decreed for you," being the twenty-fourth verse of the fifth chapter of the _Koran_, where the impostor introduces Moses speaking to the children of Israel, and which words the Saracens dexterously interpreted as belonging no less to themselves than to their predecessors, the Israelites. Nor have our own parts of the world been altogether destitute of such able expositors, who apply to themselves, without limitation or exception, whatever in Scripture is graciously expressed in favor of the people of God; while whatever is said of the wicked and ungodly, and of all the terrors and judgments denounced against them, they bestow with a liberal hand upon their neighbors. After their prayers were over, the Saracens began their assault. The Ierosolymites never flinched, but sent them showers of arrows from the walls, and maintained the fight with undaunted courage till the evening. Thus they continued fighting ten days, and on the eleventh Abu Obeidah came up with the remainder of the army. He had not been there long before he sent the besieged the following letter: "In the name of the most merciful God. "From Abu Obeidah Ebn Aljerahh, to the chief commanders of the people of Ælia and the inhabitants thereof, health and happiness to everyone that follows the right way and believes in God and the apostle. We require of you to testify that there is but one God, and Mahomet is his apostle, and that there shall be a day of judgment, when God shall raise the dead out of their sepulchres; and when you have borne witness to this, it is unlawful for us either to shed your blood or meddle with your sustenance or children. If you refuse this, consent to pay tribute and be under us forthwith; otherwise I shall bring men against you who love death better than you do the drinking of wine, or eating hogs' flesh: nor will I ever stir from you, if it please God, till I have destroyed those that fight for you and made slaves of your children." The eating swine's flesh and drinking wine are both forbidden in the _Koran_, which occasioned that reflection of Abu Obeidah upon the practice of the Christians. The besieged, not a whit daunted, held out four whole months entire, during all which time not one day passed without fighting; and it being winter time, the Saracens suffered a great deal of hardships through the extremity of the weather. At last, when the besieged had well considered the obstinacy of the Saracens; who, they had good reason to believe, would never raise the siege till they had taken the city, whatever time it took up or whatever pains it might cost them, Sophronius the patriarch went to the wall, and by an interpreter discoursed with Abu Obeidah, telling him that Jerusalem was the holy city, and whoever came into the Holy Land with any hostile intent would render himself obnoxious to the divine displeasure. To which Abu Obeidah answered: "We know that it is a noble city, and that our prophet Mahomet went from it in one night to heaven, and approached within two bows' shot of his Lord, or nearer; and that it is the mine of the prophets, and their sepulchres are in it. But we are more worthy to have possession of it than you are; neither will we leave besieging it till God delivers it up to us, as he hath done other places before it." At last the patriarch consented that the city should be surrendered upon condition that the inhabitants received the articles of their security and protection from the Caliph's own hands, and not by proxy. Accordingly, Abu Obeidah wrote to Omar to come, whereupon he advised with his friends. Othman, who afterward succeeded him in the government, dissuaded him from going, in order that the Ierosolymites might see that they were despised and beneath his notice. Ali was of a very different opinion, urging that the Mussulmans had endured great hardship in so long a siege, and suffered much from the extremity of the cold; that the presence of the Caliph would be a great refreshment and encouragement to them, and adding that the great respect which the Christians had for Jerusalem, as being the place to which they went on pilgrimage, ought to be considered; that it ought not to be supposed that they would easily part with it, but that it would soon be reinforced with fresh supplies. This advice of Ali being preferred to Othman's, the Caliph resolved upon his journey; which, according to his frugal style of living, required no great expense or equipage. When he had said his prayers in the mosque and paid his respects at Mahomet's tomb, he appointed Ali his substitute, and set forward with a small retinue, the greatest part of which, having kept him company a little way, returned back to Medina. Omar, having all the way he went set things aright that were amiss, and distributed justice impartially, for which he was singularly eminent among the Saracens, came at last into the confines of Syria; and when he drew near Jerusalem he was met by Abu Obeidah, and conducted to the Saracen camp, where he was welcomed with the liveliest demonstrations of joy. As soon as he came within sight of the city he cried out, "Allah acbar [O God], give us an easy conquest." Pitching his tent, which was made of hair, he sat down in it upon the ground. The Christians hearing that Omar was come, from whose hands they were to receive their articles, desired to confer with him personally; upon which the Mussulmans would have persuaded him not to expose his person for fear of some treachery. But Omar resolutely answered, in the words of the _Koran_: "Say, 'There shall nothing befall us but what God hath decreed for us; he is our Lord, and in God let all the believers put their trust.'" After a brief parley the besieged capitulated, and those articles of agreement made by Omar with the Ierosolymites are, as it were, the pattern which the Mahometan princes have chiefly imitated. The articles were these: "1. The Christians shall build no new churches, either in the city or the adjacent territory. 2. They shall not refuse the Mussulmans entrance into their churches, either by night or day. 3. They should set open the doors of them to all passengers and travellers. 4. If any Mussulman should be upon a journey, they shall be obliged to entertain him gratis for the space of three days. 5. They should not teach their children the _Koran_, nor talk openly of their religion, nor persuade anyone to be of it; neither should they hinder any of their relations from becoming Mahometans, if they had an inclination to it. 6. They shall pay respect to the Mussulmans, and if they were sitting rise up to them. 7. They should not go like the Mussulmans in their dress, nor wear the same caps, shoes, nor turbans, nor part their hair as they do, nor speak after the same manner, nor be called by the names used by the Mussulmans. 8. They shall not ride upon saddles, nor bear any sort of arms, nor use the Arabic tongue in the inscriptions of their seals. 9. They shall not sell any wine. 10. They shall be obliged to keep to the same sort of habit wheresoever they went, and always wear girdles upon their waists. 11. They shall set no crosses upon their churches, nor show their crosses nor their books openly in the streets of the Mussulmans. 12. They shall not ring, but only toll their bells; nor shall they take any servant that had once belonged to the Mussulmans. 13. They shall not overlook the Mussulmans in their houses: and some say that Omar commanded the inhabitants of Jerusalem to have the foreparts of their heads shaved, and obliged them to ride upon their pannels sideways, and not like the Mussulmans." Upon these terms the Christians had liberty of conscience, paying such tribute as their masters thought fit to impose upon them; and Jerusalem, once the glory of the East, was forced to submit to a heavier yoke than ever it had borne before. For though the number of the slain and the calamities of the besieged were greater when it was taken by the Romans, yet the servitude of those that survived was nothing comparable to this, either in respect of the circumstances or the duration. For however it might seem to be utterly ruined and destroyed by Titus, yet by Hadrian's time it had greatly recovered itself. Now it fell, as it were, once for all, into the hands of the most mortal enemies of the Christian religion, and has continued so ever since, with the exception of a brief interval of about ninety years, during which it was held by the Christians in the holy war. The Christians having submitted on these terms, Omar gave them the following writing under his hand: "In the name of the most merciful God. "From Omar Ebn Al Khattab, to the inhabitants of Ælia. They shall be protected and secured both in their lives and fortunes, and their churches shall neither be pulled down nor made use of by any but themselves." Upon this the gates were immediately opened, and the Caliph and those that were with him marched in. The Patriarch kept them company, and the Caliph talked with him familiarly, and asked him many questions concerning the antiquities of the place. Among other places which they visited, they went into the Temple of the Resurrection, and Omar sat down in the midst of it. When the time of prayers was come (the Mahometans have five set times of prayer in a day), Omar told the patriarch that he had a mind to pray, and desired him to show him a place where he might perform his devotion. The Patriarch bade him pray where he was; but this he positively refused. Then taking him out from thence, the Patriarch went with him into Constantine's Church, and laid a mat for him to pray there, but he would not. At last he went alone to the steps which were at the east gate of St. Constantine's Church, and kneeled by himself upon one of them. Having ended his prayers, he sat down and asked the Patriarch if he knew why he had refused to pray in the church. The Patriarch confessed that he could not tell what were his reasons. "Why, then," says Omar, "I will tell you. You know I promised you that none of your churches should be taken away from you, but that you should possess them quietly yourselves. Now If I had prayed in any one of these churches, the Mussulmans would infallibly take it away from you as soon as I had departed homeward. And notwithstanding all you might allege, they would say, This is the place where Omar prayed, and we will pray here, too. And so you would have been turned out of your church, contrary both to my intention and your expectation. But because my praying even on the steps of one may perhaps give some occasion to the Mussulmans to cause you disturbance on this account, I shall take what care I can to prevent that." So calling for pen, ink, and paper, he expressly commanded that none of the Mussulmans should pray upon the steps in any multitudes, but one by one. That they should never meet there to go to prayers; and that the muezzin, or crier, that calls the people to prayers (for the Mahometans never use bells), should not stand there. This paper he gave to the patriarch for a security, lest his praying upon the steps of the church should have set such an example to the Mussulmans as might occasion any inconvenience to the Christians--a noble instance of singular fidelity and the religious observance of a promise. This Caliph did not think it enough to perform what he engaged himself, but used all possible diligence to oblige others to do so too. And when the unwary patriarch had desired him to pray in the church, little considering what might be the consequence, the Caliph, well knowing how apt men are to be superstitious in the imitation of their princes and great men, especially such as they look upon to be successors of a prophet, made the best provision he could, that no pretended imitation of him might lead to the infringement of the security he had already given. In the same year that Jerusalem was taken, Said Ebn Abi Wakkas, one of Omar's captains, was making fearful havoc in the territories of Persia. He took Madayen, formerly the treasury and magazine of Khusrau (Cosroes), King of Persia; where he found money and rich furniture of all sorts, inestimable. El-makin says that they found there no less than three thousand million of ducats, besides Khusrau's crown and wardrobe, which was exceedingly rich, his clothes being all adorned with gold and jewels of great value. Then they opened the roof of Khusrau's porch, where they found another considerable sum. They also plundered his armory, which was well stored with all sorts of weapons. Among other things they brought to Omar a piece of silk hangings, sixty cubits square, all curiously wrought with needle-work. That it was of great value appears from the price which Ali had for that part of it which fell to his share when Omar divided it; which, though it was none of the best, yielded him twenty thousand pieces of silver. After this, in the same year, the Persians were defeated by the Saracens in a great battle near Jaloulah. Omar, having taken Jerusalem, continued there about ten days to put things in order. Omar now thought of returning to Medina, having first disposed his affairs after the following manner: Syria he divided into two parts, and committed all that lies between Hauran and Aleppo to Abu Obeidah, with orders to make war upon it till he had completely subdued it. Yezid Ebn Abu Sofian was to take the charge of all Palestine and the sea-shore. Amrou Ebn Al Aas was sent to invade Egypt, no inconsiderable part of the Emperor's dominions, which were now continually mouldering away. The Saracens at Medina had almost given Omar over, and began to conclude that he would never stir from Jerusalem, but be won to stay there from the richness of the country and the sweetness of the air; but especially by the thought that it was the country of the prophets and the Holy Land, and the place where we must all be summoned together at the resurrection. At last he came, the more welcome the less he had been expected. Abu Obeidah, in the mean time, reduced Kinnisrin and Alhadir, the inhabitants paying down five thousand ounces of gold, and as many of silver, two thousand suits of clothes of several sorts of silk, and five hundred asses' loads of figs and olives. Yezid marched against Cæsarea in vain, that place being too well fortified to be taken by his little army, especially since it had been reinforced by the Emperor, who had sent a store of all sorts of provision by sea, and a reinforcement to the garrison of two thousand men. The inhabitants of Aleppo were much disheartened by the loss of Kinnisrin and Alhadir, well knowing that it would not be long before their turn would come to experience themselves what, till then, they had known only by report. They had two governors, brothers, who dwelt in the castle (the strongest in all Syria), which was not at that time encompassed by the town, but stood out of it, at a little distance. The name of one of these brethren, if my author mistakes not, was Youkinna, the other John. Their father held of the emperor Heraclius all the territory between Aleppo and Euphrates, after whose decease Youkinna managed the affairs; John, not troubling himself with secular employments, did not meddle with the government, but led a monkish life, spending his time in retirement, reading, and deeds of charity. He tried to persuade his brother to secure himself, by compounding with the Arabs for a good round sum of money; but he told him that he talked like a monk, and did not understand what belonged to a soldier; that he had provisions and warlike means enough, and was resolved to make the best resistance he could. Accordingly the next day he called his men together, among whom there were several Christian Arabs, and having armed them, and for their encouragement distributed some money among them, told them that he was fully purposed to act offensively, and, if possible, give the Saracens battle before they should come too near Aleppo. He was informed that the Saracen army was divided and weakened, a part being gone to Cæsarea, another to Damascus, and a third into Egypt. Having thus inspirited his men, he marched forward with twelve thousand. Abu Obeidah had sent before him Kaab Ebn Damarah with one thousand men, but with express orders not to fight till he had received information of the strength of the enemy. Youkinna's spies found Kaab and his men resting themselves and watering their horses, quite secure and free from all apprehension of danger; upon which Youkinna laid an ambuscade, and then, with the rest of his men, fell upon the Saracens. The engagement was sharp, and the Saracens had the best of it at first; but the ambuscade breaking in upon them, they were in great danger of being overpowered with numbers; one hundred and seventy of them being slain, and most of the rest being grievously wounded that they were upon the very brink of despair, and cried out, "_Ya Mahomet! Ya Mahomet!_" ("O Mahomet! O Mahomet!") However, with much difficulty they made shift to hold up till night parted them, earnestly expecting the coming of Abu Obeidah. In the mean time while Youkinna was going out with his forces to engage the Saracens, the wealthy and trading people of Aleppo, knowing very well how hard it would go with them if they should stand it out obstinately to the last and be taken by storm, resolved upon debate to go and make terms with Abu Obeidah, that, let Youkinna's success be what it would, they might be secure. As they were going back they chanced to meet with one of Youkinna's officers, to whom they gave an account of the whole transaction. Upon this he hastened with all possible speed to his master, who was waiting with impatience for the morning, that he might despatch Kaab and his men, whom the coming of the night had preserved; but hearing this news he began to fear lest an attempt should be made upon the castle in his absence, and thought it safest to make the best of his way homeward. In the morning the Saracens were surprised to see no enemy, and wondered what was the matter with them. Kaab would have pursued them, but none of his men had any inclination to go with him; so they rested themselves, and in a little time Kaled and Abu Obeidah came up with the rest of the army. Abu Obeidah reminded Kaled of the obligation they were under to protect the Aleppians, now their confederates, who were likely to be exposed to the outrage and cruelty of Youkinna, for, in all probability, he would severely resent their defection. They therefore marched as fast as they could, and when they drew near Aleppo found that they had not been at all wrong in their apprehensions. Youkinna had drawn up his soldiers with the design to fall upon the townsmen, and threatened them with present death unless they would break their covenant with the Arabs and go out with him to fight them, and unless they brought out to him the first contriver and proposer of the convention. At last he fell upon them in good earnest and killed about three hundred of them. His brother John, who was in the castle, hearing a piteous outcry and lamentation, came down from the castle and entreated his brother to spare the people, representing to him that Jesus Christ had commanded us not to contend with our enemies, much less with those of our own religion. Youkinna told him that they had agreed with the Arabs and assisted them; which John excused, telling him, "That what they did was only for their own security, because they were no fighting men." In short, he took their part so long till he provoked his brother to that degree that he charged him with being the chief contriver and manager of the whole business; and at last, in a great passion, cut his head off. While he was murdering the unhappy Aleppians, Kaled (better late than never) came to their relief. Youkinna, perceiving his arrival, retired with a considerable number of soldiers into the castle. The Saracens killed that day three thousand of his men. However, he prepared himself to sustain a siege, and planted engines upon the castle walls. Abu Obeidah next deliberated in a council of war what measures were most proper to be taken. Some were of opinion that the best way would be to besiege the castle with some part of the army, and let the rest be sent out to forage. Kaled would not hear of it, but was for attacking the castle at once with their whole force; that, if possible, it might be taken before fresh supplies could arrive from the Emperor. This plan being adopted, they made a vigorous assault, in which they had as hard fighting as any in all the wars of Syria. The besieged made a noble defence, and threw stones from the walls in such plenty that a great many of the Saracens were killed and a great many more maimed. Youkinna, encouraged with his success, determined to act on the offensive and turn everything to advantage. The Saracens looked upon all the country as their own, and knowing that there was no army of the enemy near them, and fearing nothing less than an attack from the besieged, kept guard negligently. In the dead of night, therefore, Youkinna sent out a party who, as soon as the fires were out in the camp, fell upon the Saracens, and having killed about sixty, carried off fifty prisoners. Kaled pursued and cut off about a hundred of them, but the rest escaped to the castle with the prisoners, who by the command of Youkinna were the next day beheaded in the sight of the Saracen army. Upon this Youkinna ventured once more to send out another party, having received information from one of his spies (most of which were Christian Arabs) that some of the Mussulmans were gone out to forage. They fell upon the Mussulmans, killed a hundred and thirty of them, and seized all their camels, mules, and horses, which they either killed or hamstrung, and then they retired into the mountains, in hopes of lying hid during the day and returning to the castle in the silence of the night. In the mean time some that had escaped brought the news to Abu Obeidah, who sent Kaled and Derar to pursue the Christians. Coming to the place of the fight, they found their men and camels dead, and the country people making great lamentation, for they were afraid lest the Saracens should suspect them of treachery, and revenge upon them their loss. Falling down before Kaled, they told him they were altogether innocent, and had not in any way, either directly or indirectly, been instrumental in the attack; but that it was made solely by a party of horse that sallied from the castle. Kaled, having made them swear that they knew nothing more, and taking some of them for guides, closely watched the only passage by which the sallying party could return to the castle. When about a fourth part of the night was passed, they perceived Youkinna's men approaching, and, falling upon them, took three hundred prisoners and killed the rest. The prisoners begged to be allowed to ransom themselves, but they were all beheaded the next morning in front of the castle. The Saracens pressed the siege for a while very closely, but perceiving that they made no way, Abu Obeidah removed the camp about a mile's distance from the castle, hoping by this means to tempt the besieged to security and negligence in their watch, which might eventually afford him an opportunity of taking the castle by surprise. But all would not do, for Youkinna kept a very strict watch and suffered not a man to stir out. The siege continued four months, and some say five. In the mean time Omar was very much concerned, having heard nothing from the camp in Syria. He wrote, therefore, to Abu Obeidah, letting him know how tender he was over the Mussulmans, and what a great grief it was to him to hear no news of them for so long a time. Abu Obeidah answered that Kinnisrin, Hader, and Aleppo were surrendered to him, only the castle of Aleppo held out, and that they had lost a considerable number of men before it; that he had some thoughts of raising the siege, and passing forward into that part of the country which lies between Aleppo and Antioch; but only he stayed for his answer. About the time that Abu Obeidah's messengers reached Medina, there also arrived a considerable number of men out of the several tribes of the Arabs, to proffer their service to the Caliph. Omar ordered seventy camels to help their foot, and despatched them into Syria, with a letter to Abu Obeidah, in which he acquainted him "that he was variously affected, according to the different success they had met, but charged them by no means to raise the siege of the castle, for that would make them look little, and encourage their enemies to fall upon them on all sides. Wherefore," adds he, "continue besieging it till God shall determine the event, and forage with your horse round about the country." Among those fresh supplies which Omar had just sent to the Saracen camp, there was a very remarkable man, whose name was Dames, of a gigantic size, and an admirable soldier. When he had been in the camp forty-seven days, and all the force and cunning of the Saracens availed nothing toward taking the castle, he desired Abu Obeidah to let him have the command of thirty men, and he would try his best against it. Kaled had heard much of the man, and told Abu Obeidah a long story of a wonderful performance of this Dames in Arabia, and that he looked upon him as a very proper person for such an undertaking. Abu Obeidah selected thirty men to go with him, and bade them not to despise their commander because of the meanness of his condition, he being a slave, and swore that, but for the care of the whole army which lay upon him, he would be the first man that should go under him upon such an enterprise. To which they answered with entire submission and profound respect. Dames, who lay hid at no great distance, went out several times, and brought in with him five or six Greeks, but never a man of them understood one word of Arabic, which made him angry and say: "God curse these dogs! What a strange, barbarous language they use." At last he went out again, and seeing a man descend from the wall, he took him prisoner, and by the help of a Christian Arab, whom he captured shortly afterward, examined him. He learned from him that immediately upon the departure of the Saracens, Youkinna began to ill use the townsmen who had made the convention with the Arabs, and to exact large sums of money of them; that he being one of them had endeavored to make his escape from the oppression and tyranny of Youkinna, by leaping down from the wall. Upon this the Saracens let him go, as being under their protection by virtue of the articles made between Abu Obeidah and the Aleppians, but beheaded all the rest. In the evening, after having sent two of his men to Abu Obeidah, requesting him to order a body of horse to move forward to his support about sunrise, Dames has recourse to the following stratagem: Taking out of a knapsack a goat's skin, he covered with it his back and shoulders, and holding a dry crust in his hand, he crept on all-fours as near to the castle as he could. When he heard a noise, or suspected anyone to be near, to prevent his being discovered he began to make a noise with his crust, as a dog does when gnawing a bone; the rest of his company came after him, sometimes skulking and creeping along, at other times walking. When they came near to the castle, it appeared almost inaccessible. However Dames was resolved to make an attempt upon it. Having found a place where the walls seemed easier to scale than elsewhere, he sat down upon the ground, and ordered another to sit upon his shoulders; and so on till seven of them had mounted up, each sitting upon the other's shoulders, and all leaning against the wall, so as to throw as much of their weight as possible upon it. Then he that was uppermost of all stood upright upon the shoulders of the second, next the second raised himself, and so on, all in order, till at last Dames himself stood up, bearing the weight of all the rest upon his shoulders, who however did all they could to relieve him by bearing against the wall. By this means the uppermost man could just make a shift to reach the top of the wall, while in an undertone they all cried, "O apostle of God, help us and deliver us!" When this man had got up on the wall, he found a watchman drunk and asleep. Seizing him hand and foot, he threw him down among the Saracens, who immediately cut him to pieces. Two other sentinels, whom he found in the same condition, he stabbed with his dagger and threw down from the wall. He then let down his turban, and drew up the second, they two the third, till at last Dames was drawn up, who enjoined them to wait there in silence while he went and looked about him. In this expedition he gained a sight of Youkinna, richly dressed, sitting upon a tapestry of scarlet silk flowered with gold, and a large company with him, eating and drinking, and very merry. On his return he told his men that because of the great inequality of their numbers, he did not think it advisable to fall upon them then, but had rather wait till break of day, at which time they might look for help from the main body. In the mean time he went alone, and privately stabbing the sentinels, and setting open the gates, came back to his men, and bade them hasten to take possession of the gates. This was not done so quietly, but they were at last taken notice of and the castle alarmed. There was no hope of escape for them, but everyone expected to perish. Dames behaved himself bravely, but, overpowered by superior numbers, he and his men were no longer able to hold up, when, as the morning began to dawn, Kaled came to their relief. As soon as the besieged perceived the Saracens rushing in upon them, they threw down their arms, and cried, "Quarter!" Abu Obeidah was not far behind with the rest of the army. Having taken the castle, he proposed Mohametanism to the Christians. The first that embraced it was Youkinna, and his example was followed by some of the chief men with him, who immediately had their wives and children and all their wealth restored to them. Abu Obeidah set the old and impotent people at liberty, and having set apart the fifth of the spoil (which was of great value), divided the rest among the Mussulmans. Dames was talked of and admired by all, and Abu Obeidah, in order to pay him marked respect, commanded the army to continue in their present quarters till he and his men should be perfectly cured of their wounds. Obeidah's next thoughts, after the capture of the castle of Aleppo, were to march to Antioch, then the seat of the Grecian Emperor. But Youkinna, the late governor of the castle of Aleppo, having, with the changing of his religion, become a deadly enemy of the Christians, persuaded him to defer his march to Antioch, till they had first taken the castle of Aazaz. The armies before Antioch were drawn out in battle array in front of each other. The Christian general, whose name was Nestorius, went forward and challenged any Saracen to single combat. Dames was the first to answer him; but in the engagement, his horse stumbling, he was seized before he could recover himself, and, being taken prisoner, was conveyed by Nestorius to his tent and there bound. Nestorius, returning to the army and offering himself a second time, was answered by one Dehac. The combatants behaved themselves bravely, and, the victory being doubtful, the soldiers were desirous of being spectators, and pressed eagerly forward. In the jostling and thronging both of horse and foot to see this engagement, the tent of Nestorius, with his chair of state, was thrown down. Three servants had been left in the tent, who, fearing they should be beaten when their master came back, and having nobody else to help them, told Dames that if he would lend them a hand to set up the tent and put things in order they would unbind him, upon condition that he should voluntarily return to his bonds again till their master came home, at which time they promised to speak a good word for him. He readily accepted the terms; but as soon as he was at liberty he immediately seized two of them, one in his right hand, the other in his left, and dashed their two heads so violently against the third man's that they all three fell down dead upon the spot. Then opening a chest and taking out a rich suit of clothes, he mounted a good horse of Nestorius', and having wrapped up his face as well as he could he made toward the Christian Arabs, where Jabalah, with the chief of his tribe, stood on the left hand of Heraclius. In the mean time Dehac and Nestorius, being equally matched, continued fighting till both their horses were quite tired out and they were obliged to part by consent to rest themselves. Nestorius, returning to his tent, and finding things in such confusion, easily guessed that Dames must be the cause of it. The news flew instantly through all the army, and everyone was surprised at the strangeness of the action. Dames, in the mean time, had gotten among the Christian Arabs, and striking off at one blow the man's head that stood next him, made a speedy escape to the Saracens. Antioch was not lost without a set battle; but through the treachery of Youkinna and several other persons of note, together with the assistance of Derar and his company, who were mixed with Youkinna's men, the Christians were beaten entirely. The people of the town, perceiving the battle lost, made agreement and surrendered, paying down three hundred thousand ducats; upon which Abu Obeidah entered into Antioch on Tuesday, being the 21st day of August, A.D. 638. Thus did that ancient and famous city, the seat of so many kings and princes, fall into the hands of the infidels. The beauty of the site and abundance of all things contributing to delight and luxury were so great that Abu Obeidah, fearing his Saracens should be effeminated with the delicacies of that place, and remit their wonted vigor and bravery, durst not let them continue there long. After a short halt of three days to refresh his men, he again marched out of it. Then he wrote a letter to the Caliph, in which he gave him an account of his great success in taking the metropolis of Syria, and of the flight of Heraclius to Constantinople, telling him withal what was the reason why he stayed no longer there, adding that the Saracens were desirous of marrying the Grecian women, which he had forbidden. He was afraid, he said, lest the love of the things of this world should take possession of their hearts and draw them off from their obedience to God. Constantine, the emperor Heraclius' son, guarded that part of the country where Amrou lay, with a considerable army. The weather was very cold, and the Christians were quite disheartened, having been frequently beaten and discouraged with the daily increasing power of the Saracens, so that a great many grew weary of the service and withdrew from the army. Constantine, having no hopes of victory, and fearing lest the Saracens should seize Cæsarea, took the opportunity of a tempestuous night to move off, and left his camp to the Saracens. Amrou, acquainting Abu Obeidah with all that had happened, received express orders to march directly to Cæsarea, where he promised to join him speedily, in order to go against Tripoli, Acre, and Tyre. A short time after this, Tripoli was surprised by the treachery of Youkinna, who succeeded in getting possession of it on a sudden, and without any noise. Within a few days of its capture there arrived in the harbor about fifty ships from Cyprus and Crete, with provisions and arms which were to go to Constantine. The officers, not knowing that Tripoli was fallen into the hands of new masters, made no scruple of landing there, where they were courteously received by Youkinna, who proffered the utmost of his service, and promised to go along with them, but immediately seized both them and their ships, and delivered the town into the hands of Kaled, who was just come. With these ships the traitor Youkinna sailed to Tyre, where he told the inhabitants that he had brought arms and provisions for Constantine's army; upon which he was kindly received, and, landing, he was liberally entertained with nine hundred of his men. But being betrayed by one of his own soldiers, he and his crew were seized and bound, receiving all the while such treatment from the soldiers as their villanous practices well deserved. In the mean time Yezid Ebn Abu Sofian, being detached by Abu Obeidah from the camp before Cæsarea, came within sight of Tyre. The governor upon this caused Youkinna and his men to be conveyed to the castle, and there secured, and prepared for the defence of the town. Perceiving that Yezid had with him but two thousand men in all, he resolved to make a sally. In the mean time the rest of the inhabitants ran up to the walls to see the engagement. While they were fighting, Youkinna and his men were set at liberty by one Basil, of whom they give the following account, viz.: That this Basil going one day to pay a visit to Bahira the monk, the caravan of the Koreishites came by, with which were Kadija's camels, under the care of Mahomet. As he looked toward the caravan, he beheld Mahomet in the middle of it, and above him there was a cloud to keep him from the sun. Then the caravan having halted, as Mahomet leaned against an old, withered tree, it immediately brought forth leaves. Bahira, perceiving this, made an entertainment for the caravan, and invited them into the monastery. They all went, leaving Mahomet behind with the camels. Bahira, missing him, asked if they were all present. "Yes," they said, "all but a little boy we have left to look after their things and feed the camels." "What is his name?" says Bahira. They told him, "Mahomet Ebn Abdallah." Bahira asked if his father and mother were not both dead, and if he was not brought up by his grandfather and his uncle. Being informed that it was so, he said: "O Koreish! Set a high value upon him, for he is your lord, and by him will your power be great both in this world and that to come; for he is your ornament and glory." When they asked him how he knew that, Bahira answered, "Because as you were coming, there was never a tree nor stone nor clod but bowed itself and worshipped God." Moreover, Bahira told this Basil that a great many prophets had leaned against this tree and sat under it since it was first withered, but that it never bore any leaves before. And I heard him say, says this same Basil: "This is the prophet concerning whom Isa (Jesus) spake. Happy is he that believes in him and follows him and gives credit to his mission." This Basil, after the visit to Bahira, had gone to Constantinople and other parts of the Greek Emperor's territories, and upon information of the great success of the followers of this prophet was abundantly convinced of the truth of his mission. This inclined him, having so fair an opportunity offered, to release Youkinna and his men; who, sending word to the ships, the rest of their forces landed and joined them. In the mean time a messenger in disguise was sent to acquaint Yezid with what was done. As soon as he returned, Youkinna was for falling upon the townsmen upon the wall; but Basil said, "Perhaps God might lead some of them into the right way," and persuaded him to place the men so as to prevent their coming down from the wall. This done, they cried out, "La Ilaha," etc. The people, perceiving themselves betrayed and the prisoners at liberty, were in the utmost confusion, none of them being able to stir a step or lift up a hand. The Saracens in the camp, hearing the noise in the city, knew what it meant, and, marching up, Youkinna opened the gates and let them in. Those that were in the city fled, some one way and some another, and were pursued by the Saracens and put to the sword. Those upon the wall cried, "Quarter!" but Yezid told them that since they had not surrendered, but the city was taken by force, they were all slaves. "However," said he, "we of our own accord set you free, upon condition you pay tribute; and if any of you has a mind to change his religion, he shall fare as well as we do." The greatest part of them turned Mahometans. When Constantine heard of the loss of Tripoli and Tyre his heart failed him, and taking shipping with his family and the greater part of his wealth he departed for Constantinople. All this while Amrou ben-el-Ass lay before Cæsarea. In the morning when the people came to inquire after Constantine, and could hear no tidings of him nor his family, they consulted together, and with one consent surrendered the city to Amrou, paying down for their security two thousand pieces of silver, and delivering into his hands all that Constantine had been obliged to leave behind him of his property. Thus was Cæsarea lost in the year of our Lord 638, being the seventeenth year of the Hegira and the fifth of Omar's reign, which answers to the twenty-ninth year of the emperor Heraclius. After the taking of Cæsarea all the other places in Syria which as yet held out, namely, Ramlah, Acre, Joppa, Ascalon, Gaza, Sichem (or Nablos), and Tiberias, surrendered, and in a little time after the people of Beiro Zidon, Jabalah, and Laodicea followed their example; so that there remained nothing more for the Saracens to do in Syria, who, in little more than six years from the time of their first expedition in Abu-Beker's reign, had succeeded in subduing the whole of that large, wealthy, and populous country. Syria did not remain long in the possession of those persons who had the chief hand in subduing it, for in the eighteenth year of the Hegira the mortality in Syria, both among men and beasts, was so terrible, particularly at Emaus and the adjacent territory, that the Arabs called that year the year of destruction. By that pestilence the Saracens lost five-and-twenty thousand men, among whom were Abu Obeidah, who was then fifty-eight years old; Serjabil Ebn Hasanah, formerly Mahomet's secretary; and Yezid Ebn Abu Sofian, with several other officers of note. Kaled survived them about three years, and then died; but the place of his burial--consequently of his death, for they did not use in those days to carry them far--is uncertain; some say at Hems, others at Medina. FOOTNOTES: [66] Those of Medina are called by that name because they helped Mahomet in his flight from Mecca. [67] Those that fled with him are called Mohajerins; by these names the inhabitants of Mecca and Medina are often distinguished. SARACENS CONQUER EGYPT DESTRUCTION OF THE LIBRARY AT ALEXANDRIA A.D. 640 WASHINGTON IRVING Who shall estimate the loss to civilization and the world that has been caused by the destruction of accumulated stores of books, through the crass ignorance or stupid bigotry of benighted rulers? The chronicles record a number of such vandal acts. Hwangti, one of China's greatest monarchs, he who built the Great Wall of China, attempted the complete extinction of literature in that country, B.C. 213. That prince, being at one time strongly opposed by certain men of letters, expressed his hatred and contempt, not only of the literary class, but of literature itself, and resorted to extreme measures of coercion. All books were proscribed, and orders issued to burn every work except those relating to medicine, agriculture, and science. The destruction was carried out with terrible completeness. The burning of the books was accompanied by the execution of five hundred of the _literati_ and by the banishment of many thousands. The destruction of the Alexandrian Library, by command of Omar, was as complete as the extinction of literature in China by Hwangti, as head of the Moslem religion. Omar, using the intrepid Amru, was vicariously proselyting in true Mahometan style--in one hand offering the _Koran_, the while the other extended the sword. After a successful campaign in Palestine, Omar's victorious banners were planted in the historic soil of the Pharaohs. A protracted siege of seven months found Amru master of the royal city of Alexandria. The library there was famed as the greatest magazine of literature. But this availed nothing with the ruthless Omar, for he doomed it to annihilation. Prof. Thomas Smith says: "The library had been collected at fabulous expense of labor and money, from all countries of the world. Its destruction was a wanton act; but its perpetrator showed, like the loving spouse 'of another noted personage, that 'though on pleasure he was bent, he had a frugal mind.' He did not consume the books on their shelves, or in whatever repositories contained them, although doubtless they would have made a beautiful blaze. He utilized them as fuel for heating the baths of the city; and we are told that they sufficed to heat the water for four thousand such baths for six months. With an average share of persuasibility, when it is not against our will to be convinced, we stagger at the statement that seven hundred and thirty thousand furnaces could have been supplied with fuel from the contents of even that magnificent palace, and therefore venture to suggest that the papyri and palm-leaf manuscripts were used rather as fire-lighters than as fuel. Even this is a rather large order; but undoubtedly the collection was enormous. The reason tradition ascribes to Omar for this act has never, so far as we know, been disputed till quite recently, when 'historical criticism' has taken it in hand. 'The contents of these books are either in accordance with the teaching of the _Koran_ or they are opposed to it. If in accord, then they are useless, since the _Koran_ itself is sufficient; and if in opposition, they are pernicious and must be destroyed.' "But the piecemeal destruction of many hundreds of thousands of manuscripts was no trifling task, even for a despotic caliph. A few escaped their doom; how, we do not know. Perhaps some officer annexed for himself some manuscript that struck him as specially beautiful; or perhaps some stoker at some bath rejected one as slow of ignition. At all events a few--probably very few--were preserved, and among them must have been copies of the writings of Euclid and Ptolemy, the _Elements_ of the one, the _Almagest_ of the other." A proof of the religious infatuation, or the blind confidence in destiny, which hurried the Moslem commanders of those days into the most extravagant enterprises, is furnished in the invasion of the once proud empire of the Pharaohs, the mighty, the mysterious Egypt, with an army of merely five thousand men. The caliph Omar himself, though he had suggested this expedition, seems to have been conscious of its rashness, or rather to have been chilled by the doubts of his prime counsellor Othman; for, while Amru was on the march, he despatched missives after him to the following effect: "If this epistle reach thee before thou hast crossed the boundary of Egypt, come instantly back; but if it find thee within the Egyptian territory, march on with the blessing of Allah, and be assured I will send thee all necessary aid." The bearer of the letter overtook Amru while yet within the bounds of Syria; that wary general either had secret information or made a shrewd surmise as to the purport of his errand, and continued his march across the border without admitting him to an audience. Having encamped at the Egyptian village of Arish, he received the courier with all due respect, and read the letter aloud in the presence of his officers. When he had finished, he demanded of those about him whether they were in Syria or Egypt. "In Egypt," was the reply. "Then," said Amru, "we will proceed, with the blessing of Allah, and fulfil the commands of the Caliph." The first place to which he laid siege was Farwak, or Pelusium, situated on the shores of the Mediterranean, on the isthmus which separates that sea from the Arabian Gulf, and connects Egypt with Syria and Arabia. It was therefore considered the key to Egypt. A month's siege put Amru in possession of the place; he then examined the surrounding country with more forethought than was generally manifested by the Moslem conquerors, and projected a canal across the isthmus, to connect the waters of the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. His plan, however, was condemned by the Caliph as calculated to throw open Arabia to a maritime invasion of the Christians. Amru now proceeded to Misrah, the Memphis of the ancients, and residence of the early Egyptian kings. This city was at that time the strongest fortress in Egypt, except Alexandria, and still retained much of its ancient magnificence. It stood on the western bank of the Nile, above the Delta, and a little east of the pyramids. The citadel was of great strength and well garrisoned, and had recently been surrounded with a deep ditch, into which nails and spikes had been thrown, to impede assailants. The Arab armies, rarely provided with the engines necessary for the attack of fortified places, generally beleaguered them, cut off all supplies, attacked all foraging parties that sallied forth, and thus destroyed the garrison in detail or starved it to a surrender. This was the reason of the long duration of their sieges. This of Misrah, or Memphis, lasted seven months, in the course of which the little army of Amru was much reduced by frequent skirmishings. At the end of this time he received a reinforcement of four thousand men, sent to him at his urgent entreaties by the Caliph. Still his force would have been insufficient for the capture of the place had he not been aided by the treachery of its governor, Mokawkas. This man, an original Egyptian, or Copt, by birth, and of noble rank, was a profound hypocrite. Like most of the Copts, he was of the Jacobite sect, who denied the double nature of Christ. He had dissembled his sectarian creed, however, and deceived the emperor Heraclius by a show of loyalty, so as to be made prefect of his native province and governor of the city. Most of the inhabitants of Memphis were Copts and Jacobite Christians, and held their Greek fellow-citizens, who were of the regular Catholic Church of Constantinople, in great antipathy. Mokawkas, in the course of his administration, had collected, by taxes and tribute, an immense amount of treasure, which he had deposited in the citadel. He saw that the power of the Emperor was coming to an end in this quarter, and thought the present a good opportunity to provide for his own fortune. Carrying on a secret correspondence with the Moslem general, he agreed to betray the place into his hands on condition of receiving the treasure as a reward for his treason. He accordingly, at an appointed time, removed the greater part of the garrison from the citadel to an island in the Nile. The fortress was immediately assailed by Amru, at the head of his fresh troops, and was easily carried by assault, the Copts rendering no assistance. The Greek soldiery, on the Moslem standard being hoisted on the citadel, saw through the treachery, and, giving up all as lost, escaped in their ships to the mainland; upon which the prefect surrendered the place by capitulation. An annual tribute of two ducats a head was levied on all the inhabitants of the district, with the exception of old men, women, and boys under the age of sixteen years. It was further conditioned that the Moslem army should be furnished with provisions, for which they would pay, and that the inhabitants of the country should forthwith build bridges over all the streams on the way to Alexandria. It was also agreed that every Mussulman travelling through the country should be entitled to three days' hospitality, free of charge. The traitor Mokawkas was put in possession of his ill-gotten wealth. He begged of Amru to be taxed with the Copts and always to be enrolled among them, declaring his abhorrence of the Greeks and their doctrines; urging Amru to persecute them with unremitting violence. He extended his sectarian bigotry even into the grave, stipulating that at his death he should be buried in the Christian Jacobite church of St. John at Alexandria. Amru, who was politic as well as brave, seeing the irreconcilable hatred of the Coptic or Jacobite Christians to the Greeks, showed some favor to that sect, in order to make use of them in his conquest of the country. He even prevailed upon their patriarch Benjamin to emerge from his desert and hold a conference with him, and subsequently declared that "he had never conversed with a Christian priest of more innocent manners or venerable aspect." This piece of diplomacy had its effect, for we are told that all the Copts above and below Memphis swore allegiance to the Caliph. Amru now pressed on for the city of Alexandria, distant about one hundred and twenty-five miles. According to stipulation, the people of the country repaired the roads and erected bridges to facilitate his march; the Greeks, however, driven from various quarters by the progress of their invaders, had collected at different posts on the island of the Delta and the channels of the Nile, and disputed with desperate but fruitless obstinacy the onward course of the conquerors. The severest check was given at Keram al Shoraik, by the late garrison of Memphis, who had fortified themselves there after retreating from the island of the Nile. For three days did they maintain a gallant conflict with the Moslems, and then retired in good order to Alexandria. With all the facilities furnished to them on their march, it cost the Moslems two-and-twenty days to fight their way to that great city. Alexandria now lay before them, the metropolis of wealthy Egypt, the emporium of the East, a place strongly fortified, stored with all the munitions of war, open by sea to all kinds of supplies and reinforcements, and garrisoned by Greeks, aggregated from various quarters, who here were to make the last stand for their Egyptian empire. It would seem that nothing short of an enthusiasm bordering on madness could have led Amru and his host on an enterprise against this powerful city. The Moslem leader, on planting his standard before the place, summoned it to surrender on the usual terms, which being promptly refused, he prepared for a vigorous siege. The garrison did not wait to be attacked, but made repeated sallies and fought with desperate valor. Those who gave greatest annoyance to the Moslems were their old enemies, the Greek troops from Memphis. Amru, seeing that the greatest defence was from a main tower, or citadel, made a gallant assault upon it and carried it, sword in hand. The Greek troops, however, rallied to that point from all parts of the city; the Moslems, after a furious struggle, gave way, and Amru, his faithful slave Werdan, and one of his generals, named Moslema Ibn al Mokalled, fighting to the last, were surrounded, overpowered, and taken prisoners. The Greeks, unaware of the importance of their captives, led them before the governor. He demanded of them, haughtily, what was their object in thus overrunning the world and disturbing the quiet of peaceable neighbors. Amru made the usual reply that they came to spread the faith of Islam; and that it was their intention, before they laid by the sword, to make the Egyptians either converts or tributaries. The boldness of his answer and the loftiness of his demeanor awakened the suspicions of the governor, who, supposing him to be a warrior of note among the Arabs, ordered one of his guards to strike off his head. Upon this Werdan, the slave, understanding the Greek language, seized his master by the collar, and, giving him a buffet on the cheek, called him an impudent dog, and ordered him to hold his peace, and let his superiors speak. Moslema, perceiving the meaning of the slave, now interposed, and made a plausible speech to the governor, telling him that Amru had thoughts of raising the siege, having received a letter to that effect from the Caliph, who intended to send ambassadors to treat for peace, and assuring the governor that, if permitted to depart, they would make a favorable report to Amru. The governor, who, if Arabian chronicles may be believed on this point, must have been a man of easy faith, ordered the prisoners to be set at liberty; but the shouts of the besieging army on the safe return of their general soon showed him how completely he had been duped. But scanty details of the siege of Alexandria have reached the Christian reader, yet it was one of the longest, most obstinately contested, and sanguinary in the whole course of the Moslem wars. It endured fourteen months with various success; the Moslem army was repeatedly reinforced and lost twenty-three thousand men. At length their irresistible ardor and perseverance prevailed; the capital of Egypt was conquered and the Greek inhabitants were dispersed in all directions. Some retreated in considerable bodies into the interior of the country, and fortified themselves in strongholds; others took refuge in the ships and put to sea. Amru, on taking possession of the city, found it nearly abandoned; he prohibited his troops from plundering, and, leaving a small garrison to guard the place, hastened with his main army in pursuit of the fugitive Greeks. In the mean time the ships, which had taken off a part of the garrison, were still lingering on the coast, and tidings reached them that the Moslem general had departed and had left the captured city nearly defenceless. They immediately made sail back for Alexandria, and entered the port in the night. The Greek soldiers surprised the sentinels, got possession of the city, and put most of the Moslems they found there to the sword. Amru was in full pursuit of the Greek fugitives when he heard of the recapture of the city. Mortified at his own negligence in leaving so rich a conquest with so slight a guard, he returned in all haste, resolved to retake it by storm. The Greeks, however, had fortified themselves strongly in the castle and made stout resistance. Amru was obliged, therefore, to besiege it a second time, but the siege was short. The castle was carried by assault; many of the Greeks were cut to pieces, the rest escaped once more to their ships and now gave up the capital as lost. All this occurred in the nineteenth year of the Hegira, and the year 640 of the Christian era. On this second capture of the city by force of arms, and without capitulation, the troops were clamorous to be permitted to plunder. Amru again checked their rapacity, and commanded that all persons and property in the place should remain inviolate, until the will of the Caliph could be known. So perfect was his command over his troops that not the most trivial article was taken. His letter to the Caliph shows what must have been the population and splendor of Alexandria, and the luxury and effeminacy of its inhabitants at the time of the Moslem conquest. It states the city to have contained four thousand palaces, five thousand baths, four hundred theatres and places of amusement, twelve thousand gardeners which supply it with vegetables, and forty thousand tributary Jews. It was impossible, he said, to do justice to its riches and magnificence. He had hitherto held it sacred from plunder, but his troops, having won it by force of arms, considered themselves entitled to the spoils of victory. The caliph Omar, in reply, expressed a high sense of his important services, but reproved him for even mentioning the desire of the soldiery to plunder so rich a city, one of the greatest emporiums of the East. He charged him, therefore, most rigidly to watch over the rapacious propensities of his men; to prevent all pillage, violence, and waste; to collect and make out an account of all moneys, jewels, household furniture, and everything else that was valuable, to be appropriated toward defraying the expenses of this war of the faith. He ordered the tribute also, collected in the conquered country, to be treasured up at Alexandria for the supplies of the Moslem troops. The surrender of all Egypt followed the capture of its capital. A tribute of two ducats was laid on every male of mature age, besides a tax on all lands in proportion to their value, and the revenue which resulted to the Caliph is estimated at twelve millions of ducats. It is well known that Amru was a poet in his youth; and throughout all his campaigns he manifested an intelligent and inquiring spirit, if not more highly informed, at least more liberal and extended in its views than was usual among the early Moslem conquerors. He delighted, in his hours of leisure, to converse with learned men, and acquire through their means such knowledge as had been denied to him by the deficiency of his education. Such a companion he found at Alexandria in a native of the place, a Christian of the sect of the Jacobites, eminent for his philological researches, his commentaries on Moses and Aristotle, and his laborious treatises of various kinds, surnamed Philoponus, from his love of study, but commonly known by the name of John the Grammarian. An intimacy soon arose between the Arab conqueror and the Christian philologist; an intimacy honorable to Amru, but destined to be lamentable in its result to the cause of letters. In an evil hour, John the Grammarian, being encouraged by the favor shown him by the Arab general, revealed to him a treasure hitherto unnoticed, or rather unvalued, by the Moslem conquerors. This was a vast collection of books or manuscripts, since renowned in history as the Alexandrian Library. Perceiving that in taking an account of everything valuable in the city, and sealing up all its treasures, Amru had taken no notice of the books, John solicited that they might be given to him. Unfortunately the learned zeal of the Grammarian gave a consequence to the books in the eyes of Amru, and made him scrupulous of giving them away without permission of the Caliph. He forthwith wrote to Omar, stating the merits of John, and requesting to know whether the books might be given to him. The reply of Omar was laconic, but fatal. "The contents of those books," said he, "are in conformity with the _Koran_, or they are not. If they are, the _Koran_ is sufficient without them; if they are not, they are pernicious. Let them, therefore, be destroyed." Amru, it is said, obeyed the order punctually. The books and manuscripts were distributed as fuel among the five thousand baths of the city; but so numerous were they that it took six months to consume them. This act of barbarism, recorded by Abulpharagius, is considered somewhat doubtful by Gibbon, in consequence of its not being mentioned by two of the most ancient chroniclers, Elmacin in his Saracenic history, and Eutychius in his annals, the latter of whom was patriarch of Alexandria and has detailed the conquest of that city. It is inconsistent, too, with the character of Amru as a poet and a man of superior intelligence; and it has recently been reported, we know not on what authority, that many of the literary treasures thus said to have been destroyed do actually exist in Constantinople. Their destruction, however, is generally credited and deeply deplored by historians. Amru, as a man of genius and intelligence, may have grieved at the order of the Caliph, while, as a loyal subject and faithful soldier, he felt bound to obey it. The fall of Alexandria decided the fate of Egypt and likewise that of the emperor Heraclius. He was already afflicted with a dropsy, and took the loss of his Syrian and now that of his Egyptian dominions so much to heart that he underwent a paroxysm, which ended in his death, about seven weeks after the loss of his Egyptian capital. He was succeeded by his son Constantine. While Amru was successfully extending his conquests, a great dearth and famine fell upon all Arabia, insomuch that the caliph Omar had to call upon him for supplies from the fertile plains of Egypt; whereupon Amru despatched such a train of camels laden with grain that it is said, when the first of the line had reached the city of Medina, the last had not yet left the land of Egypt. But this mode of conveyance proving too tardy, at the command of the Caliph he dug a canal of communication from the Nile to the Red Sea, a distance of eighty miles, by which provisions might be conveyed to the Arabian shores. This canal had been commenced by Trajan, the Roman emperor. The able and indefatigable Amru went on in this manner, executing the commands and fulfilling the wishes of the Caliph, and governed the country he had conquered with such sagacity and justice that he rendered himself one of the most worthily renowned among the Moslem generals. The life and reign of the caliph Omar, distinguished by such great and striking events, were at length brought to a sudden and sanguinary end. Among the Persians who had been brought as slaves to Medina, was one named Firuz, of the sect of the Magi, or fire-worshippers. Being taxed daily by his master two pieces of silver out of his earnings, he complained of it to Omar as an extortion. The Caliph inquired into his condition, and, finding that he was a carpenter, and expert in the construction of windmills, replied that the man who excelled in such a handicraft could well afford to pay two _dirhems_ a day. "Then," muttered Firuz, "I'll construct a windmill for you that shall keep grinding until the day of judgment." Omar was struck with his menacing air. "The slave threatens me," said he, calmly. "If I were disposed to punish anyone on suspicion, I should take off his head"; he suffered him, however, to depart without further notice. Three days afterward, as he was praying in the mosque, Firuz entered suddenly and stabbed him thrice with a dagger. The attendants rushed upon the assassin. He made furious resistance, slew some and wounded others, until one of his assailants threw his vest over him and seized him, upon which he stabbed himself to the heart and expired. Religion may have had some share in prompting this act of violence; perhaps revenge for the ruin brought upon his native country. "God be thanked," said Omar, "that he by whose hand it was decreed I should fall was not a Moslem!" The Caliph gathered strength sufficient to finish the prayer in which he had been interrupted; "for he who deserts his prayers," said he, "is not in Islam." Being taken to his house, he languished three days without hope of recovery, but could not be prevailed upon to nominate a successor. "I cannot presume to do that," said he, "which the prophet himself did not do." Some suggested that he should nominate his son Abdallah. "Omar's family," said he, "has had enough in Omar, and needs no more." He appointed a council of six persons to determine as to the succession after his decease, all of whom he considered worthy of the caliphate; though he gave it as his opinion that the choice would be either Ali or Othman. "Shouldst thou become caliph," said he to Ali, "do not favor thy relatives above all others, nor place the house of Haschem on the neck of all mankind "; and he gave the same caution to Othman in respect to the family of Omeya. Ibn Abbas and Ali now spoke to him in words of comfort, setting forth the blessings of Islam, which had crowned his administration, and that he would leave no one behind him who could charge him with injustice. "Testify this for me," said he, earnestly, "at the day of judgment." They gave him their hands in promise; but he exacted that they should give him a written testimonial, and that it should be buried with him in the grave. Having settled all his worldly affairs, and given directions about his sepulture, he expired, the seventh day after his assassination, in the sixty-third year of his age, after a triumphant reign of ten years and six months. Three days after the death of Omar, Othman Ibn Affan was elected as his successor. He was seventy years of age at the time of his election. He was tall and swarthy, and his long gray beard was tinged with henna. He was strict in his religious duties, but prone to expense and lavish of his riches. "In the conquests of Syria, Persia, and Egypt," says a modern writer, "the fresh and vigorous enthusiasm of the personal companions and proselytes of Mahomet was exercised and expended, and the generation of warriors whose simple fanaticism had been inflamed by the preaching of the pseudo-prophet was in a great measure consumed in the sanguinary and perpetual toils of ten arduous campaigns." We shall now see the effect of those conquests on the national character and habits; the avidity of place and power and wealth superseding religious enthusiasm; and the enervating luxury and soft voluptuousness of Syria and Persia sapping the rude but masculine simplicity of the Arabian desert. Above all, the single-mindedness of Mahomet and his two immediate successors is at an end. Other objects besides the mere advancement of Islamism distract the attention of its leading professors; and the struggle for worldly wealth and worldly sway, for the advancement of private ends, and the aggrandizement of particular tribes and families, destroy the unity of the empire, and beset the caliphate with intrigue, treason, and bloodshed. It was a great matter of reproach against the caliph Othman that he was injudicious in his appointments, and had an inveterate propensity to consult the interests of his relatives and friends before that of the public. One of his greatest errors in this respect was the removal of Amrou ben-el-Ass from the government of Egypt, and the appointment of his own foster-brother, Abdallah Ibn Saad, in his place. This was the same Abdallah who, in acting as amanuensis to Mahomet, and writing down his revelations, had interpolated passages of his own, sometimes of a ludicrous nature. For this and for his apostasy he had been pardoned by Mahomet at the solicitation of Othman, and had ever since acted with apparent zeal, his interest coinciding with his duty. He was of a courageous spirit, and one of the most expert horsemen of Arabia; but what might have fitted him to command a horde of the desert was insufficient for the government of a conquered province. He was new and inexperienced in his present situation; whereas Amru had distinguished himself as a legislator as well as a conqueror, and had already won the affections of the Egyptians by his attention to their interests, and his respect for their customs and habitudes. His dismission was, therefore, resented by the people, and a disposition was manifested to revolt against the new governor. The emperor Constantine, who had succeeded to his father Heraclius, hastened to take advantage of these circumstances. A fleet and army were sent against Alexandria under a prefect named Manuel. The Greeks in the city secretly cooperated with him, and the metropolis was, partly by force of arms, partly by treachery, recaptured by the imperialists without much bloodshed. Othman, made painfully sensible of the error he had committed, hastened to revoke the appointment of his foster-brother, and reinstated Amru in the command in Egypt. That able general went instantly against Alexandria with an army, in which were many Copts, irreconcilable enemies of the Greeks. Among these was the traitor Mokawkas, who, from his knowledge of the country and his influence among its inhabitants, was able to procure abundant supplies for the army. The Greek garrison defended the city bravely and obstinately. Amru, enraged at having thus again to lay siege to a place which he had twice already taken, swore, by Allah, that if he should master it a third time, he would render it as easy of access as a brothel. He kept his word, for when he took the city he threw down the walls and demolished all the fortifications. He was merciful, however, to the inhabitants, and checked the fury of the Saracens, who were slaughtering all they met. A mosque was afterward erected on the spot at which he stayed the carnage, called the Mosque of Mercy. Manuel, the Greek general, found it expedient to embark with all speed with such of his troops as he could save, and make sail for Constantinople. Scarce, however, had Amru quelled every insurrection and secured the Moslem domination in Egypt, when he was again displaced from the government, and Abdallah Ibn Saad appointed a second time in his stead. Abdallah had been deeply mortified by the loss of Alexandria, which had been ascribed to his incapacity; he was emulous, too, of the renown of Amru, and felt the necessity of vindicating his claims to command by some brilliant achievement. The north of Africa presented a new field for Moslem enterprise. We allude to that vast tract extending west from the desert of Libya or Barca to Cape Non, embracing more than two thousand miles of sea-coast; comprehending the ancient divisions of Mamarica, Cyrenaica, Carthage, Numidia, and Mauritania; or, according to modern geographical designations, Barca, Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco. Toward this rich land of promise, yet virgin of Islamitish seed, Abdallah, at the head of the victorious Saracens, now hopefully bent his ambitious steps. EVOLUTION OF THE DOGESHIP IN VENICE A.D. 697 WILLIAM CAREW HAZLITT The early authentic history of Venice is intimately connected with that of the Lombards, of whom the first mention is made by Paterculus, the Roman historian, who wrote during the first quarter of the first century of our era. He speaks of the Langobardi[68] (Lombards) as dwelling on the west bank of the Elbe. Tacitus also mentions them in his _Germany_. From the Elbe they wandered to the Danube, and there encountered the Gepidæ, a branch of the Goths. The Lombards subdued this tribe, after a contest of thirty years. By this victory Alboin, the young Lombard King, rose to great power and fame. His beauty and renown were sung by German peasants even in the days of Charlemagne. His name "crossed the Alps and fell, with a foreboding sound, upon the startled ears of the Italians," and toward Italy he turned for conquest. From Scythia and Germany adventurous youth flocked to his standard. Many clans and various religions were represented in his ranks, but these diversities were overshadowed by a common devotion to the hero-leader. In 568 the Lombards marched from Pannonia into Italy, conquered the northern part, still called Lombardy, and founded the kingdom of that name, which was afterward greatly extended, and existed until overthrown by Charlemagne in 774. Before the invading hosts of Alboin, wealthy inhabitants of the larger cities of the province of Venetia fled to the islands of Venice, where earlier fugitives had sought shelter from King Attila and his Huns. A thriving maritime community had been established, which about this time had developed into a semi-independent protectorate of the Byzantine or Eastern Empire, attached to the exarchate of Ravenna. Afterward Venice underwent many political changes, among which one of the most interesting to students of history is that of the institution of the dogeship, as hereafter related. This step was taken for more than one reason of internal organization and policy, and it was also made urgent by the encroachments of the Lombards, which had become a menace to Venetian territory and commerce. The republic (Venetian) on her part contemplated with inquietude the rise of one monarchy after another on the skirts of the Lagoon, for the Venetians not unnaturally feared that as soon as these fresh usurpers had established themselves, they might form the design of adding the islands of the Adriatic to their dominion, and of acquiring possession of the commercial advantages which belonged to the situation held by the settlers. For the Lombards, though not ranking among maritime communities, were not absolutely strangers to the laws of navigation, or to the use of ships, which might place them in a position to reduce to their control a small, feeble, and thinly peopled area, separated from their own territories only by a narrow and terraqueous strait. Moreover, the predatory visits of Leupus, duke of Friuli, whose followers traversed the canals at low tide on horseback, and despoiled the churches of Heraclia, Equilo, and Grado, soon afforded sufficient proof that the equestrian skill of the strangers was capable of supplying to some extent any deficiency in nautical knowledge. Venice at present formed a federative state, united by the memory of a common origin and the sense of a common interest; the _arrengo_, which met at Heraclia, the parent capital, at irregular intervals to deliberate on matters of public concern, was too numerous and too schismatical to exercise immediate control over the nation; and each island was consequently governed, after the abolition of the primeval consulate, in the name of the people, by a _gastaldo_ or tribune, whose power, nominally limited, was virtually absolute. This administration had lasted nearly two centuries and a half, during which period the republic passed through a cruel ordeal of anarchy, oppression, and bloodshed. The tribunes conspired against each other; the people rebelled against the tribunes. Family rose against family, clan against clan. Sanguinary affrays were of constant occurrence on the thinly peopled _lidi_, and amid the pine-woods, with which much of the surface was covered; and it is related that in one instance at least the bodies of the dead were left to be devoured by beasts and birds of prey, which then haunted the more thickly afforested parts. Jealousy and intolerance of the pretensions of Heraclia to a paramount voice in the policy of the community may be securely assigned as the principal and permanent source of friction and disagreement; but the predominance of that township seems to have resisted every effort of the others to supplant its central authority and wide sphere of influence; and during centuries it preserved its power, through its ostensible choice as the residence of the most capable and influential citizens. The scandalous and destructive outrages attendant on the rule of the tribunes had become a vast constitutional evil. They sapped the general prosperity; they obstructed trade and industries; they made havoc on public and private property; they banished safety and repose, and they impoverished and scandalized the Church. The depredations of the Lombards, which grew in the course of time bolder and more systematic in their character, certainly indicated great weakness on the part of the government. Yet it was equally certain that the weakness proceeded less from the want than from the division of strength. The sacrilegious inroads were not without their beneficial result; for they afforded those who might be disposed to institute reforms an admirable ground not only for bringing the matter more closely and immediately under the public observation, but they enlisted in the cause the foremost ecclesiastics, who might recognize in this internal disunion a danger of interminable attacks and depredations from without, if not an eventual loss of political independence; and, accordingly, in the course of the spring of 697-698, the patriarch of Grado himself submitted to the arrengo at Heraclia a scheme, which had been devised by him and his friends, for changing the government. The proposal of the metropolitan was to divest the tribunes of the sovereignty, and to have once more a magistrate (_capo dei tribuni_), in whom all power might be concentrated. His title was to be duke. His office was to be for life. With him was to rest the whole executive machinery. He was to preside over the synod as well as the arrengo, either of which it was competent for him to convoke or dissolve at pleasure; merely spiritual matters of a minor nature were alone, in future, to be intrusted to the clergy; and all acts of convocations, the ordination of a priest or deacon, the election of a patriarch or bishop, were to be subject to the final sanction of the ducal throne. In fact, the latter became virtually, and in all material respects, autocrat of Venice, not merely the tribunes, but even the hierarchy, which was so directly instrumental in creating the dignity, having now no higher function than that of advisers and administrators under his direction; and it was in matters of general or momentous concern only that the republic expected her First Magistrate to seek the concurrence or advice of the national convention. In a newly formed society, placed in the difficult situation in which the republic found herself at the close of the seventh century, and where also a superstitious reverence for the pontiff might at present exist, apart from considerations of interest, it ought to create no surprise that the patriarch and his supporters should have formed a unanimous determination, and have taken immediate steps to procure the adhesion of the Holy See, before the resolutions of the popular assembly were definitively carried into effect. This measure simply indicates the character of the opinions which were received at the time in Europe, as well as the strong consciousness on the part of the patriarch, and those who acted with him, of the expediency of throwing the voice and countenance of the Church into the scale alike against the tribunitial oligarchy and against local jealousies and prejudices. There was perhaps in this case the additional inducement that the proposal to invest the doge with supreme power and jurisdiction over the Church, as well as over the state, might seem to involve an indirect surrender, either now or hereafter, on the part of the Holy See of some of its power, as a high-priest or grand pontiff, who was also a secular prince, might prove less pliant than an ordinary liegeman of the Church. But the men of 697 acted, as we must allow, sagaciously enough, when they presented their young country to the consideration of the papacy as possessing a party of order, into which the Church entered, and from which it now stood conspicuously and courageously out to take this very momentous initiative. The creation of an ecclesiastical system had been one of the foremost aims of the first founders, who discerned in the transplantation of the churches of the _terra firma_, and their familiar pastors to the islands the most persuasive reconcilement of the fugitives to a hard and precarious lot; and after all the intervening years it was the elders of the Church who once more stepped forward and delivered their views on the best plan for healing discord, and making life in the lagoons tolerable for all. They sought some system of rule, after trying several, which would enable them to live in peace at home, and to gain strength to protect themselves from enemies. They would have been the most far-seeing of human beings if they had formed a suspicion of what kind of superstructure they were laying on the foundation. The nearest model for their adoption or imitation was the Lombard type of government almost under their very eyes; and so far as the difference of local postulates suffered, it was that to which they had recourse, when they vested in their new chieftain undivided jurisdiction, but primarily military attributes and a title then recognized as having, above all, a military significance. On the receipt of the desired reply, the patriarch lost no time in calling on the national assembly to follow up their late vote to its legitimate consequences; and the choice of the people fell on Pauluccio Anafesto, a native of Heraclia, whose name occurs here for the first time, but who may be supposed to have had some prominent share in promoting the late revolution. Anafesto was conducted to a chair which had been prepared for him in his parish church, and solemnly invested by the metropolitan with the insignia of authority, one of which is said to have been an ivory sceptre--a symbol and a material borrowed from the Romans. It is not an unusual misconception that this organic change in the government involved the simultaneous extinction of the tribunitial office and title. But the truth is that the tribunes continued to exercise municipal and subordinate functions many generations after the revolution of 697; each island of importance, such as Malamocco and Equilo, had its own tribune, while of the smaller islands several contributed to form a tribunate or governorship; and office, though neither strictly nor properly hereditary, still preserved its tendency to perpetuate itself in a limited number of families. It is only subsequently to the twelfth century that less is heard of the tribunes; and the progress of administrative reform led to the gradual disappearance of this old feudal element in the constitution. In the time of Anafesto, the larger islands of the _dogado_ formed the seats of powerful factions; the disproportion in point of influence between the Crown and the tribune of Malamocco or the tribune of Equilo was but slightly marked; and the abolition of that magistracy was a much more sweeping measure than the first makers of a doge would have dared to propose. The military complexion of the ducal authority was not confined to the personal character of the supreme officer of state, for under him, not as a novel element in the constitution, but as one which preëxisted side by side with the tribunitial system, served a _master of the soldiers_, whom there is a fairly solid ground for regarding as second to the doge or duke in precedence, and above the civil tribunes of the respective townships. To find in so small and imperfectly developed a state the two leading functionaries or ingredients deriving their appellations from a command and control over the rude feudal militia, might alone warrant the conclusion that the most essential requirement of Venice, even when it had so far modified the form of administration, was felt to be the possession, under responsible direction, of a means of securing internal order and withstanding external aggression, if it were not the case that from the Gothic era onward we hear of _scholæ militiæ cum patronis_, manifestly the schools of instruction for the body over which the _magister militum_ presided. These seminaries existed in the days of the exarch Narses, generations before a doge was given to Venice. Yet, through all the time which has now elapsed since the first erection of a separate political jurisdiction, not only the Church, on which such stress was at the very outset laid, but a civil government, and regulations for trade and shipping, must have been active forces, always tending to grow in strength and coherence. The Venetians, in constructing by degrees, and even somewhat at random, a constitutional fabric, very naturally followed the precedents and models which they found in the regions which bordered on them, and from which their forefathers had emigrated. The Lombard system, which was of far longer duration than its predecessors on the same soil, borrowed as much as possible from that which the invaders saw in use and favor among the conquered; and the earliest institutions of the only community not subjugated by their arms were counterparts either of the Lombard, the Roman, or the Greek customary law. The doge, in some respects, enjoyed an authority similar to that which the Romans had vested in their ancient kings; but, while he was clothed with full ecclesiastical jurisdiction, he did not personally discharge the sacerdotal functions or assume a sacerdotal title. The Latins had had their _magistri populi_; and in the Middle Ages they recognized at Naples and at Amalfi a _master of the soldiers_; at Lucca, Verona, and elsewhere, a _captain of the people_. But all these magistrates were in possession of the supreme power, were kings in everything save the name; and the interesting suggestion presents itself that in the case of Venice the _master of the soldiers_ had been part of the tribunitial organization, if not of the consular one, and that one of the tribunes officiated by rotation, bearing to the republic the same sort of relationship as the _bretwalda_ bore to the other Anglo-Saxon _reguli_. There can be no doubt that Venice kept in view the prototypes transmitted by Rome, and learned at last to draw a comparison between the two empires; and down to the fifteenth century the odor of the Conscript Fathers lingered in the Venetian fancy. Subsequently to the entrance of the _dux_, _duke_, or _doge_ on the scene, and the shrinkage of the tribunitial power to more departmental or municipal proportions, the _master of the soldiers_, whatever he may have been before, became a subordinate element in the administration. His duties must have certainly embraced the management of the militia and the maintenance of the doge's peace within the always widening pale of the ducal abode. He was next in rank to the crown or throne. Thus we perceive that, after a series of trials, the Venetians eventually reverted to the form of government which appeared to be most agreeable, on the whole, to their conditions and genius. The consular _triumviri_, not perhaps quite independent of external influences, were originally adopted as a temporary expedient. The tribunes, who next succeeded, had a duration of two hundred and fifty years. Their common _fasti_ are scanty and obscure; and we gain only occasional glimpses of a barbarous federal administration, which barely sufficed to fulfil the most elementary wants of a rising society of traders. They were alike, more or less, a machinery of primitive type, deficient in central force, and without any safeguards against the abuse of authority, without any definite theory of legislation and police. The century and a half which intervened between the abrogation of monarchy in the person of a tribune, and its revival in the person of a doge (574-697), beheld the republic laboring under the feeble and enervating sway of rival aristocratic houses, on which the sole check was the urban body subsequently to emerge into importance and value as the militia of the six wards, and its commandant, the _master of the soldiers_. But while the institution of the dogeship brought with it a certain measure of equilibrium and security, it left the political framework in almost every other respect untouched. The work of reform and consolidation had merely commenced. The first stone only had been laid of a great and enduring edifice. The first permanent step had been taken toward the unification of a group of insular clanships into a homogeneous society, with a sense of common interests. The late tribunitial ministry has transmitted to us as its monument little beyond the disclosure of a chronic disposition to tyranny and periodical fluctuations of preponderance. The so-called chair of Attila at Torcello is supposed to have been the seat where the officer presiding over that district long held his court _sub dio_. The doge Anafesto appears to have pacified, by his energy and tact, the intestine discord by which his country had suffered so much and so long, and the Equilese, especially--who had risen in open revolt, and had refused to pay their proportion of tithes--were persuaded, after some fierce struggles in the _pineto_ or pine woods, which still covered much of the soil, to return to obedience. The civil war which had lately broken out between Equilo and Heraclia was terminated by the influential mediation of one of the tribunes, and the Lombards now condescended to ratify a treaty assigning to the Venetians the whole of the territory lying between the greater and lesser Piave, empowering the republic to erect boundary lines, and prohibiting either of the contracting parties from building a stronghold within ten miles of those lines. A settlement of confines between two such close neighbors was of the highest importance and utility. But a still more momentous principle was here involved. The republic had exercised a clear act of sovereign independence. It had made its first Italian treaty. This was a proud step and a quotable precedent. FOOTNOTE: [68] Some modern writers question the etymology which in the name of the Langobardi finds a reference to the length of their beards. Sheppard thinks that "long-spears," rather than "long-beards" was the original signification. Since, on the banks of the Elbe, _Börde_ or _Bord_ still means "a fertile plain beside a river," others derive their name from the district they inhabited. Langobardi would thus signify "people of the long bord of the river." SARACENS IN SPAIN: BATTLE OF THE GUADALETE A.D. 711 AHMED IBN MAHOMET AL-MAKKARI When assailed by the Saracen power, the Gothic kingdom in Spain, which had endured for three centuries, had long been suffering a decline. Political disorders and social demoralization had made its condition such as might well invite the Moslem armies, flushed with victories on the African side, to cross the narrow Strait of Gibraltar for new conquests. The final subjection of North Africa had been accomplished by the Arab general, Musa Ibn Nosseyr, only the fortress of Ceuta, on the shore of the strait, still remaining in possession of the Goths. The Saracens knew that a fresh revolution in Spain had placed on the throne Roderic--who proved to be the last of the Gothic kings. At Ceuta the commandant, Count Ilyan (Julian), when he was attacked, made a feeble defence, virtually betraying the post into the hands of the Moslems. The reason, according to some authorities, for the defection of Ilyan was his desire to avenge an injury inflicted upon him by Roderic, who is said to have dishonored Ilyan's daughter, the Lady Florinda. Others attribute the treason of Ilyan to his real loyalty to the rivals of Roderic, the latter being regarded by him as a usurper. It is recorded that Ilyan proposed to Musa the conquest of Andalusia, whose wealth in productiveness and other natural attractions he glowingly described. The people, Ilyan declared, were enervated by reason of prolonged peace, and were destitute of arms. He was induced entirely to desert the Gothic cause and join the Moslems, and made a successful incursion into the country of his former friends, returning to Africa loaded with spoil. From this time Ilyan served under the Moslem standard. Another invasion was made by the Saracens with like results, and then Musa, having received authority from the Caliph, prepared to enter upon the conquest of Spain. The events which followed were not only of great moment in the affairs of that country, but foreshadowed others which seemed to involve the fate of Europe and of Christendom in the outcome of the Mahometan advance. Musa strengthened himself in his intention of invading Andalusia; to this effect he called a freed slave of his, to whom he had on different occasions intrusted important commands in his armies, and whose name was Tarik Ibn Zeyad Ibn Abdillah, a native of Hamdan, in Persia, although some pretend that he was not a freedman of Musa Ibn Nosseyr, but a free-born man of the tribe of Sadf, while others make him a _mauli_ of Lahm. It is even asserted that some of his posterity, who lived in Andalusia, rejected with indignation the supposition of their ancestor having ever been a liberated slave of Musa Ibn Nosseyr. Some authors, and they are the greatest number, say that he was a Berber. To this Tarik, therefore, the Arabian governor of Africa committed the important trust of conquering the kingdom of Andalusia, for which end he gave him the command of an army of seven thousand men, chiefly Berbers and slaves, very few only being genuine Arabs. To accompany and guide Tarik in this expedition, Musa sent Ilyan, who provided four vessels from the ports under his command, the only places on the coast where vessels were at that time built. Everything being got ready, a division of the army crossed that arm of the sea which divides Andalusia from Africa, and landed with Tarik at the foot of the mountain, which afterward received his name, on a Saturday, in the month of Shaban, of the year [of the Hegira] 92 (July, 711), answering to the month of Agosht (August); and the four vessels were sent back, and crossed and recrossed until the rest of Tarik's men were safely put on shore. It is otherwise said that Tarik landed on the 24th of Rejeb (June 19th, A.D. 711), in the same year. Another account makes the number of men embarked on this occasion amount to twelve thousand, all but sixteen, a number consisting almost entirely of Berbers, there being but few Arabs among them; but the same writer agrees that Ilyan transported this force at various times to the coast of Andalusia in merchant vessels--whence collected, it is not known--and that Tarik was the last man on board. Various historians have recorded two circumstances concerning Tarik's passage, and his landing on the coast of Andalusia, which we consider worthy of being transcribed. They say that while he was sailing across that arm of the sea which separates Africa from Andalusia, he saw in a dream the prophet Mahomet, surrounded by Arabs of the Muhajirm and Anssar, who with unsheathed swords and bended bows stood close by him, and that he heard the prophet say: "Take courage, O Tarik! and accomplish what thou art destined to perform"; and that having looked round him he saw the messenger of God, who with his companions was entering Andalusia. Tarik then awoke from his sleep, and, delighted with this good omen, hastened to communicate the miraculous circumstance to his followers, who were much pleased and strengthened. Tarik himself was so much struck by the apparition that from that moment he never doubted of victory. The same writers have preserved another anecdote, which sufficiently proves the mediation of the Almighty in permitting that the conquest of Andalusia should be achieved by Tarik. Directly after his landing on the rock Musa's freedman brought his forces upon the plain, and began to overrun and lay waste the neighboring country. While he was thus employed, an old woman from Algesiras presented herself to him, and among other things told him what follows: "Thou must know, O stranger! that I had once a husband, who had the knowledge of future events; and I have repeatedly heard him say to the people of this country that a foreign general would come to this island and subject it to his arms. He described him to me as a man of prominent forehead, and such, I see, is thine; he told me also that the individual designated by the prophecy would have a black mole covered with hair on his left shoulder. Now, if thou hast such a mark on thy body, thou art undoubtedly the person intended." When Tarik heard the old woman's reasoning, he immediately laid his shoulder bare, and the mark being found, as predicted, upon the left one, both he and his companions were filled with delight at the good omen. Ibnu Hayyan's account does not materially differ from those of the historians from whom we have quoted. He agrees in saying that Ilyan, lord of Ceuta, incited Musa Ibn Nosseyr to make the conquest of Andalusia; and that this he did out of revenge, and moved by the personal enmity and hatred he had conceived against Roderic. He makes Tarik's army amount only to seven thousand, mostly Berbers, which, he says, crossed in four vessels provided by Ilyan. According to his account, Tarik landed on a Saturday, in the month of Shaban, of the year 92, and the vessels that brought him and his men on shore were immediately sent back to Africa, and never ceased going backward and forward until the whole of the army was safely landed on the shores of Andalusia. On the other side, Ibnu Khaldun reckons the army under the orders of Tarik at three hundred Arabs and ten thousand Berbers. He says that before starting on his expedition, Tarik divided his army into two corps, he himself taking the command of one, and placing the other under the immediate orders of Tarif An-najai. Tarik, with his men, landed at the foot of the rock now called _Jebalu-l-fatah_, "the mountain of the entrance," and which then received his name, and was called _Jebal-Tarik_, "the mountain of Tarik"; while his companion, Tarif, landed on the island afterward called after him _Jezirah-Tarif_, "the island of Tarif." In order to provide for the security of their respective armies, both generals selected, soon after their landing, a good encampment, which they surrounded with walls and trenches, for no sooner had the news of their landing spread than the armies of the Goths began to march against them from all quarters. No sooner did Tarik set his foot in Andalusia than he was attacked by a Goth named Tudmir (Theodomir), to whom Roderic had intrusted the defence of that frontier. Theodomir, who is the same general who afterward gave his name to a province of Andalusia, called _Belad Tudmir_, "the country of Theodomir," having tried, although in vain, to stop the impetuous career of Tarik's men, despatched immediately a messenger to his master, apprising him how Tarik and his followers had landed in Andalusia. He also wrote him a letter thus conceived: "This our land has been invaded by people whose name, country, and origin are unknown to me. I cannot even tell whence they came--whether they fell from the skies or sprang from the earth." When this news reached Roderic, who was then in the country of the Bashkans (Basques), making war in the territory of Banbilonah (Pamplona), where serious disturbances had occurred, he guessed directly that the blow came from Ilyan. Sensible, however, of the importance of this attack made upon his dominions, he left what he had in hand, and, moving toward the south with the whole of his powerful army, arrived in Cordova, which is placed in the centre of Andalusia. There he took up his abode in the royal castle, which the Arabs called after him Roderic's castle. In this palace Roderic took up his residence for a few days, to await the arrival of the numerous troops which he had summoned from the different provinces of his kingdom. They say that while he was staying in Cordova he wrote to the sons of Wittiza to come and join him against the common enemy; for, although it is true that Roderic had usurped the throne of their father, and persecuted the sons, yet he had spared their lives; since these two sons of Wittiza are the same who, when Tarik attacked the forces of King Roderic on the plains of Guadalete, near the sea, turned back and deserted their ranks, owing to a promise made them by Tarik to restore them to the throne of their father, if they helped him against Roderic. However, when Roderic arrived in Cordova, the sons of Wittiza were busily engaged in some distant province collecting troops to march against the invaders, and he wrote to them to come and join him with their forces, in order to march against the Arabs; and, cautioning them against the inconvenience and danger of private feuds at that moment, engaged them to join him and attack the Arabs in one mass. The sons of Wittiza readily agreed to Roderic's proposition, and collecting all their forces, came to meet him, and encamped not far from the village of Shakandah, on the opposite side of the river, and on the south of the palace of Cordova. There they remained for some time, not daring to enter the capital or to trust Roderic, until at last, having ascertained the truth of the preparations, and seeing the army march out of the city and him with it, they entered Cordova, united their forces to his, and marched with him against the enemy, although, as will be seen presently, they were already planning the treachery which they afterward committed. Others say that the sons of Wittiza did not obey the summons sent them by the usurper Roderic; on the contrary, that they joined Tarik with all their forces. When Tarik received the news of the approach of Roderic's army, which is said to have amounted to nearly one hundred thousand men, provided with all kinds of weapons and military stores, he wrote to Musa for assistance, saying that he had taken Algesiras, a port of Andalusia, thus becoming, by its possession, the master of the passage into that country; that he had subdued its districts as far as the bay; but that Roderic was now advancing against him with a force which it was not in his power to resist, except it was God Almighty's will that it should be so. Musa, who since Tarik's departure for this expedition had been employed in building ships, and had by this time collected a great many, sent by them a reinforcement of five thousand Moslems, which, added to the seven thousand of the first expedition, made the whole forces amount to twelve thousand men, eager for plunder and anxious for battle. Ilyan was also sent with his army and the people of his states to accompany this expedition, and to guide it through the passes in the country, and gather intelligence for them. In the mean while Roderic was drawing nearer to the Moslems, with all the forces of the barbarians, their lords, their knights, and their bishops; but the hearts of the great people of the kingdom being against him, they used to see each other frequently, and in their private conversations they uttered their sentiments about Roderic in the following manner: "This wretch has by force taken possession of the throne to which he is not justly entitled, for not only he does not belong to the royal family, but he was once one of our meanest menials; we do not know how far he may carry his wicked intentions against us. There is no doubt but that Tarik's followers do not intend to settle in this country; their only wish is to fill their hands with spoil, and then return. Let us then, as soon as the battle is engaged, give way, and leave the usurper alone to fight the strangers, who will soon deliver us from him; and, when they shall be gone, we can place on the throne him who most deserves it." In these sentiments all agreed, and it was decided that the proposed plan should be put into execution; the two sons of Wittiza, whom Roderic had appointed to the command of the right and left wings of his army, being at the head of the conspiracy, in the hope of gaining the throne of their father. When the armies drew nearer to each other, the princes began to spin the web of their treason; and for this purpose a messenger was sent by them to Tarik, informing him how Roderic, who had been a mere menial and servant to their father, had, after his death, usurped the throne; that the princes had by no means relinquished their rights, and that they implored protection and security for themselves. They offered to desert, and pass over to Tarik with the troops under their command, on condition that the Arab general would, after subduing the whole of Andalusia, secure to them all their father's possessions, amounting to three thousand valuable and chosen farms, the same that received after this the name of _Safaya-l-moluk_, "the royal portion." This offer Tarik accepted; and, having agreed to the conditions, on the next day the sons of Wittiza deserted the ranks of the Gothic army in the midst of battle, and passed over to Tarik, this being, no doubt, one of the principal causes of the conquest. Roderic arrived on the banks of the Guadalete with a formidable army, which most historians compute at one hundred thousand cavalry; although Ibnu Khaldun makes it amount to forty thousand men only. Roderic brought all his treasures and military stores in carts: he himself came in a litter placed between two mules, having over his head an awning richly set with pearls, rubies, and emeralds. On the approach of this formidable host the Moslems did not lose courage, but prepared to meet their adversary. Tarik assembled his men, comforted them by his words, and after rendering the due praises to the Almighty God, and returning thanks for what had already been accomplished, proceeded to implore his mighty help for the future. He then encouraged the Moslems, and kindled their enthusiasm with the following address: "Whither can you fly?--the enemy is in your front, the sea at your back. By Allah! there is no salvation for you but in your courage and perseverance. Consider your situation: here you are on this island, like so many orphans cast upon the world; you will soon be met by a powerful enemy, surrounding you on all sides like the infuriated billows of a tempestuous sea, and sending against you his countless warriors, drowned in steel, and provided with every store and description of arms. What can you oppose to them? You have no other weapons than your swords, no provisions but those that you may snatch from the hands of your enemies; you must therefore attack them immediately, or otherwise your wants will increase; the gales of victory may no longer blow in your favor, and perchance the fear that lurks in the hearts of your enemies may be changed into indomitable courage. "Banish all fear from your hearts, trust that victory shall be ours, and that the barbarian king will not be able to withstand the shock of our arms. Here he comes to make us the master of his cities and castles, and to deliver into our hands his countless treasures; and if you only seize the opportunity now presented, it may perhaps be the means of your becoming the owners of them, besides saving yourselves from certain death. Do not think that I impose upon you a task from which I shrink myself, or that I try to conceal from you the dangers attending this our expedition. No; you have certainly a great deal to encounter, but know that if you only suffer for a while, you will reap in the end an abundant harvest of pleasures and enjoyments. And do not imagine that while I speak to you I mean not to act as I speak; for as my interest in this affair is greater, so will my behavior on this occasion surpass yours. You must have heard numerous accounts of this island, you must know how the Grecian maidens, as handsome as houris, their necks glittering with innumerable pearls and jewels, their bodies clothed with tunics of costly silks, sprinkled with gold, are waiting your arrival, reclining on soft couches in the sumptuous palaces of crowned lords and princes. "You know well that the caliph Abdu-l-Malek Ibnu-l-walid has chosen you, like so many heroes, from among the brave; you know that the great lords of this island are willing to make you their sons and brethren by marriage, if you only rush on like so many brave men to the fight, and behave like true champions and valiant knights; you know that the recompenses of God await you if you are prepared to uphold his words, and proclaim his religion in this island; and, lastly, that all the spoil shall be yours, and of such Moslems as may be with you. "Bear in mind that God Almighty will select, according to this promise, those that distinguish themselves most among you, and grant them due reward, both in this world and in the future; and know likewise that I shall be the first to set you the example, and to put in practice what I recommend you to do; for it is my intention, on the meeting of the two hosts, to attack the Christian tyrant Roderic, and kill him with my own hand, if God be pleased. When you see me bearing against him, charge along with me; if I kill him, the victory is ours; if I am killed before I reach him, do not trouble yourselves about me, but fight as if I were still alive and among you, and follow up my purpose; for the moment they see their King fall, these barbarians are sure to disperse. If, however, I should be killed, after inflicting death upon their King, appoint a man from among you who unites both courage and experience and may command you in this emergency and follow up the success. If you attend to my instructions, we are sure of the victory." When Tarik had thus addressed his soldiers and exhorted them to fight with courage and to face the dangers of war with a stout heart--when he had thus recommended them to make a simultaneous attack upon Roderic's men, and promised them abundant reward if they routed their enemies--their countenances were suddenly expanded with joy their hopes were strengthened, the gales of victory began to blow on their side, and they all unanimously answered him: "We are ready to follow thee, O Tarik! We shall all, to one man, stand by thee and fight for thee; nor could we avoid it were we otherwise disposed--victory is our only hope of salvation." After this Tarik mounted his horse, and his men did the same; and they all passed that night in constant watch for fear of the enemy. On the following morning, when day dawned, both armies prepared for battle; each general formed his cavalry and his infantry, and, the signal being given, the armies met with a shock, similar to that of two mountains dashing against each other. King Roderic came, borne on a throne, and having over his head an awning of variegated silk to guard him from the rays of the sun, surrounded by warriors, cased in bright steel, with fluttering pennons and a profusion of banners and standards. Tarik's men were differently arrayed; their breasts were covered with mail armor; they wore white turbans on their heads, the Arabian bow slung across their backs, their swords suspended in their girdles, and their long spears firmly grasped in their hands. They say that when the two armies were advancing upon each other, and the eyes of Roderic fell upon the men in the first ranks, he was horror-stricken, and was heard to exclaim: "By the faith of the Messiah! These are the very men I saw painted on the scroll found in the mansion of science at Toledo;" and from that moment fear entered his heart; and when Tarik perceived Roderic, he said to his followers, "This is the King of the Christians," and he charged with his men, the warriors who surrounded Roderic being on all sides scattered and dispersed; seeing which, Tarik plunged into the ranks of the enemy until he reached the King, and wounded him with his sword on the head and killed him on his throne; and when Rodericks men saw their King fall, and his bodyguard dispersed, the rout became general, and victory remained with the Moslems. The rout of the Christians was complete, for instead of rallying on one spot, they fled in all directions, and, their panic being communicated to their countrymen, cities opened their gates, and castles surrendered without resistance. The preceding account we have borrowed from a writer of great note, but we deem it necessary to warn the readers that the assertion that Roderic died by the hands of Tarik has been contradicted by several historians, since his body, although diligently sought on the field of battle, could nowhere be found. We shall proceed to recount in detail that memorable battle, when Almighty God was pleased to put King Roderic's army to flight and grant the Moslems a most complete victory. Several authors who have described at large this famous engagement state that Tarik encamped near Roderic, toward the middle of the month of Ramadan of the year 92 (September, A.D. 711), and although there is some difference as to the dates, all agree that the battle was fought on the banks of the Guadalete. They say also that while both armies were encamped in front of each other, the barbarian King, wishing to ascertain the exact amount of Tarik's forces, sent one of his men, whose valor and strength he knew, and in whose fidelity he placed unbounded confidence, with instructions to penetrate into Tarik's camp, and bring him an account of their number, arms, accoutrements, and vessels. The Christian proceeded to execute his commission, and reached a small elevation, whence he had a commanding view of the whole camp. However, he had not remained long in his place of observation before he was discovered by some Moslems, who pursued him; but the Christian fled before them, and escaped through the swiftness of his horse. Arrived at the Christian camp, he addressed Roderic in the following words: "These people, O King! are the same that thou sawest painted on the scroll of the enchanted palace. Beware of them! for the greatest part of them have bound themselves by oath to reach thee or die in the attempt; they have set fire to their vessels, to destroy their last hope of escape; they are encamped along the sea-shore, determined to die or to vanquish, for they know well that there is not in this country a place whither they can fly." On hearing this account, King Roderic was much disheartened, and he trembled with fear. However, the two armies engaged near the lake or gulf; they fought resolutely on both sides till the right and left wings of Roderic's army, under the command of the sons of Wittiza, gave way. The centre, in which Roderic was, still held firm for a while, and made the fate of the battle uncertain for some time; they fled at last, and Roderic before them. From that moment the rout became general, and the Moslems followed with ardor the pursuit of the scattered bands, inflicting death wherever they went. Roderic disappeared in the midst of the battle, and no certain intelligence was afterward received of him. It is true that some Moslems found his favorite steed, a milk-white horse, bearing a saddle of gold, sparkling with rubies, plunged in the mud of the river, as also one of his sandals, adorned with rubies and emeralds, but the other was never found; nor was Roderic, although diligently searched for, ever discovered either dead or alive, a circumstance which led the Moslems to believe that he perished in the stream, the weight of his armor preventing him from struggling against the current, and he was drowned; but God only knows what became of him. According to Ar-razi, the contest began on Sunday, two days before the end of Ramadan, and continued till Sunday, the 5th of Shawal; namely, eight whole days; at the end of which God Almighty was pleased to put the idolaters to flight, and grant the victory to the Moslems; and he adds that so great was the number of the Goths who perished in the battle that for a long time after the victory the bones of the slain were to be seen covering the field of action. They say also that the spoil found by the Moslems in the camp of the Christians surpassed all computation, for the princes and great men of the Goths who had fallen were distinguished by the rings of gold they wore on their fingers, those of an inferior class by similar ornaments of silver, while those of the slaves were made of brass. Tarik collected all the spoil and divided it into five shares or portions, when, after deducting one-fifth, he distributed the rest among nine thousand Moslems, besides the slaves and followers. When the people on the other side of the straits heard of this success of Tarik, and of the plentiful spoils he had acquired, they flocked to him from all quarters, and crossed the sea on every vessel or bark they could lay hold of. Tank's army being so considerably reinforced, the Christians were obliged to shut themselves up in their castles and fortresses, and, quitting the flat country, betake themselves to their mountains. BATTLE OF TOURS A.D. 732 SIR EDWARD SHEPHERD CREASY When the Saracens had completed the conquest of Spain and all that country was wholly under their dominion, they determined to extend their authority over the neighboring country of the Franks. Having crossed the Pyrenees they met with but slight opposition and soon succeeded in making themselves masters of Southern France, thereby furthering and encouraging their boastful ambition to conquer and Islamize the whole world. Already had Africa, Asia Minor, and Eastern Europe acknowledged their rule, and the final subjugation of all Christendom by the Mahometan sword seemed certain and imminent. Their long and uninterrupted career of success had fed their arrogance and filled them with a proud confidence in the invincibility of their arms, and their farther advance into the heart of Europe seemed, in the eyes of Christian and pagan alike, to be the irresistible march of destiny. The Saracen host had not penetrated far into the Frankish territory when they encountered "a lion in the path," in the person of Charles (or Karl), the great palace-mayor--so called, but who was in reality the _defacto_ sovereign of the Frankish kingdoms. To Charles, famous for his military skill and prestige, came the recently defeated Eudes, the count of Aquitaine, and the remnant of his force, craving his protection and leadership against the advancing Saracen horde. Charles' signal victory over the Saracen invaders proved to be the turning-point in the Moslem career of conquest. The question whether the _Koran_ or the Bible, the Crescent or the Cross, Mahomet or Christ, should rule Europe and the western world was decided forever upon the bloody field of Tours. The broad tract of champaign country which intervenes between the cities of Poitiers and Tours is principally composed of a succession of rich pasture lands, which are traversed and fertilized by the Cher, the Creuse, the Vienne, the Claine, the Indre, and other tributaries of the river Loire. Here and there the ground swells into picturesque eminences, and occasionally a belt of forest land, a brown heath, or a clustering series of vineyards breaks the monotony of the widespread meadows; but the general character of the land is that of a grassy plain, and it seems naturally adapted for the evolutions of numerous armies, especially of those vast bodies of cavalry which principally decided the fate of nations during the centuries that followed the downfall of Rome and preceded the consolidation of the modern European powers. This region has been signalized by more than one memorable conflict; but it is principally interesting to the historian by having been the scene of the great victory won by Charles Martel over the Saracens, A.D. 732, which gave a decisive check to the career of Arab conquest in Western Europe, rescued Christendom from Islam, preserved the relics of ancient and the germs of modern civilization, and reëstablished the old superiority of the Indo-European over the Semitic family of mankind. Sismondi and Michelet have underrated the enduring interest of this great Appeal of Battle between the champions of the Crescent and the Cross. But, if French writers have slighted the exploits of their national hero, the Saracenic trophies of Charles Martel have had full justice done to them by English and German historians. Gibbon devotes several pages of his great work[69] to the narrative of the battle of Tours, and to the consideration of the consequences which probably would have resulted if Abderrahman's enterprise had not been crushed by the Frankish chief. Schlegel speaks of this "mighty victory" in terms of fervent gratitude, and tells how "the arm of Charles Martel saved and delivered the Christian nations of the West from the deadly grasp of all-destroying Islam"; and Ranke points out, as "one of the most important epochs in the history of the world, the commencement of the eighth century, when on the one side Mahometanism threatened to overspread Italy and Gaul, and on the other the ancient idolatry of Saxony and Friesland once more forced its way across the Rhine. In this peril of Christian institutions, a youthful prince of Germanic race, Charles (or Karl) Martel, arose as their champion, maintained them with all the energy which the necessity for self-defence calls forth, and finally extended them into new regions." Arnold ranks the victory of Charles Martel even higher than the victory of Arminius, "among those signal deliverances which have affected for centuries the happiness of mankind." In fact, the more we test its importance, the higher we shall be led to estimate it; and, though all authentic details which we possess of its circumstances and its heroes are but meagre, we can trace enough of its general character to make us watch with deep interest this encounter between the rival conquerors of the decaying Roman Empire. That old classic world, the history of which occupies so large a portion of our early studies, lay, in the eighth century of our era, utterly exanimate and overthrown. On the north the German, on the south the Arab, was rending away its provinces. At last the spoilers encountered one another, each striving for the full mastery of the prey. Their conflict brought back upon the memory of Gibbon the old Homeric simile, where the strife of Hector and Patroclus over the dead body of Cebriones is compared to the combat of two lions, that in their hate and hunger fight together on the mountain tops over the carcass of a slaughtered stag; and the reluctant yielding of the Saracen power to the superior might of the northern warriors might not inaptly recall those other lines of the same book of the _Iliad_, where the downfall of Patroclus beneath Hector is likened to the forced yielding of the panting and exhausted wild boar, that had long and furiously fought with a superior beast of prey for the possession of the scanty fountain among the rocks at which each burned to drink. Although three centuries had passed away since the Germanic conquerors of Rome had crossed the Rhine, never to repass that frontier stream, no settled system of institutions or government, no amalgamation of the various races into one people, no uniformity of language or habits had been established in the country at the time when Charles Martel was called to repel the menacing tide of Saracenic invasion from the south. Gaul was not yet France. In that, as in other provinces of the Roman Empire of the West, the dominion of the Cæsars had been shattered as early as the fifth century, and barbaric kingdoms and principalities had promptly arisen on the ruins of the Roman power. But few of these had any permanency, and none of them consolidated the rest, or any considerable number of the rest, into one coherent and organized civil and political society. The great bulk of the population still consisted of the conquered provincials, that is to say, of Romanized Celts, of a Gallic race which had long been under the dominion of the Cæsars, and had acquired, together with no slight infusion of Roman blood, the language, the literature, the laws, and the civilization of Latium. Among these, and dominant over them, roved or dwelt the German victors; some retaining nearly all the rude independence of their primitive national character, others softened and disciplined by the aspect and contact of the manners and institutions of civilized life; for it is to be borne in mind that the Roman Empire in the West was not crushed by any sudden avalanche of barbaric invasion. The German conquerors came across the Rhine, not in enormous hosts, but in bands of a few thousand warriors at a time. The conquest of a province was the result of an infinite series of partial local invasions, carried on by little armies of this description. The victorious warriors either retired with their booty or fixed themselves in the invaded district, taking care to keep sufficiently concentrated for military purposes, and ever ready for some fresh foray, either against a rival Teutonic band or some hitherto unassailed city of the provincials. Gradually, however, the conquerors acquired a desire for permanent landed possessions. They lost somewhat of the restless thirst for novelty and adventure which had first made them throng beneath the banner of the boldest captains of their tribe, and leave their native forests for a roving military life on the left bank of the Rhine. They were converted to the Christian faith, and gave up with their old creed much of the coarse ferocity which must have been fostered in the spirits of the ancient warriors of the North by a mythology which promised, as the reward of the brave on earth, an eternal cycle of fighting and drunkenness in heaven. But, although their conversion and other civilizing influences operated powerfully upon the Germans in Gaul, and although the Franks--who were originally a confederation of the Teutonic tribes that dwelt between the Rhine, the Maine, and the Weser--established a decisive superiority over the other conquerors of the province, as well as over the conquered provincials, the country long remained a chaos of uncombined and shifting elements. The early princes of the Merovingian dynasty were generally occupied in wars against other princes of their house, occasioned by the frequent subdivisions of the Frank monarchy; and the ablest and best of them had found all their energies tasked to the utmost to defend the barrier of the Rhine against the pagan Germans who strove to pass that river and gather their share of the spoils of the Empire. The conquests which the Saracens effected over the southern and eastern provinces of Rome were far more rapid than those achieved by the Germans in the North, and the new organizations of society which the Moslems introduced were summarily and uniformly enforced. Exactly a century passed between the death of Mahomet and the date of the battle of Tours. During that century the followers of the prophet had torn away half the Roman Empire; and besides their conquests over Persia, the Saracens had overrun Syria, Egypt, Africa, and Spain, in an unchecked and apparently irresistible career of victory. Nor, at the commencement of the eighth century of our era, was the Mahometan world divided against itself, as it subsequently became. All these vast regions obeyed the Caliph; throughout them all, from the Pyrenees to the Oxus, the name of Mahomet was invoked in prayer and the _Koran_ revered as the book of the law. It was under one of their ablest and most renowned commanders, with a veteran army, and with every apparent advantage of time, place, and circumstance, that the Arabs made their great effort at the conquest of Europe north of the Pyrenees. The victorious Moslem soldiery in Spain, "A countless multitude, Syrian, Moor, Saracen, Greek renegade, Persian, and Copt, and Tartar, in one bond Of erring faith conjoined--strong in the youth And heat of zeal--a dreadful brotherhood," were eager for the plunder of more Christian cities and shrines, and full of fanatic confidence in the invincibility of their arms. "Nor were the chiefs Of victory less assured, by long success Elate, and proud of that o'erwhelming strength Which, surely they believed, as it had rolled Thus far unchecked, would roll victorious on, Till, like the Orient, the subjected West Should bow in reverence at Mahomet's name; And pilgrims from remotest arctic shores Tread with religious feet the burning sands Of Araby and Mecca's stony soil." --_Southey's Roderick_, It is not only by the modern Christian poet, but by the old Arabian chroniclers also, that these feelings of ambition and arrogance are attributed to the Moslems who had overthrown the Visigoth power in Spain. And their eager expectations of new wars were excited to the utmost on the reappointment by the Caliph of Abderrahman Ibn Abdillah Alghafeki to the government of that country, A.D. 729, which restored them a general who had signalized his skill and prowess during the conquests of Africa and Spain, whose ready valor and generosity had made him the idol of the troops, who had already been engaged in several expeditions into Gaul, so as to be well acquainted with the national character and tactics of the Franks, and who was known to thirst, like a good Moslem, for revenge for the slaughter of some detachments of the "true believers," which had been cut off on the north of the Pyrenees. In addition to his cardinal military virtues Abderrahman is described by the Arab writers as a model of integrity and justice. The first two years of his second administration in Spain were occupied in severe reforms of the abuses which under his predecessors had crept into the system of government, and in extensive preparations for his intended conquest in Gaul. Besides the troops which he collected from his province, he obtained from Africa a large body of chosen Berber cavalry, officered by Arabs of proved skill and valor; and in the summer of 732 he crossed the Pyrenees at the head of an army which some Arab writers rate at eighty thousand strong, while some of the Christian chroniclers swell its numbers to many hundreds of thousands more. Probably the Arab account diminishes, but of the two keeps nearer to the truth. It was from this formidable host, after Eudes, the count of Aquitaine, had vainly striven to check it, after many strong cities had fallen before it, and half the land had been overrun, that Gaul and Christendom were at last rescued by the strong arm of Prince Charles, who acquired a surname (_Martel_, the "Hammer") like that of the war-god of his forefathers' creed, from the might with which he broke and shattered his enemies in the battle. The Merovingian kings had sunk into absolute insignificance, and had become mere puppets of royalty before the eighth century. Charles Martel, like his father, Pépin Héristal, was duke of the Austrasian Franks, the bravest and most thoroughly Germanic part of the nation, and exercised, in the name of the titular king, what little paramount authority the turbulent minor rulers of districts and towns could be persuaded or compelled to acknowledge. Engaged with his national competitors in perpetual conflicts for power, and in more serious struggles for safety against the fierce tribes of the unconverted Frisians, Bavarians, Saxons, and Thuringians, who at that epoch assailed with peculiar ferocity the Christianized Germans on the left bank of the Rhine, Charles Martel added experienced skill to his natural courage, and he had also formed a militia of veterans among the Franks. Hallam has thrown out a doubt whether, in our admiration of his victory at Tours, we do not judge a little too much by the event, and whether there was not rashness in his risking the fate of France on the result of a general battle with the invaders. But when we remember that Charles had no standing army, and the independent spirit of the Frank warriors who followed his standard, it seems most probable that it was not in his power to adopt the cautious policy of watching the invaders, and wearing out their strength by delay. So dreadful and so widespread were the ravages of the Saracenic light cavalry throughout Gaul that it must have been impossible to restrain for any length of time the indignant ardor of the Franks. And, even if Charles could have persuaded his men to look tamely on while the Arabs stormed more towns and desolated more districts, he could not have kept an army together when the usual period of a military expedition had expired. If, indeed, the Arab account of the disorganization of the Moslem forces be correct, the battle was as well timed on the part of Charles as it was, beyond all question, well fought. The monkish chroniclers, from whom we are obliged to glean a narrative of this memorable campaign, bear full evidence to the terror which the Saracen invasion inspired, and to the agony of that great struggle. The Saracens, say they, and their King, who was called Abdirames, came out of Spain, with all their wives, and their children, and their substance, in such great multitudes that no man could reckon or estimate them. They brought with them all their armor, and whatever they had, as if they were thenceforth always to dwell in France. "Then Abderrahman, seeing the land filled with the multitude of his army, pierces through the mountains, tramples over rough and level ground, plunders far into the country of the Franks, and smites all with the sword, insomuch that when Eudes came to battle with him at the river Garonne, and fled before him, God alone knows the number of the slain. Then Abderrahman pursued after Count Eudes, and while he strives to spoil and burn the holy shrine at Tours he encounters the chief of the Austrasian Franks, Charles, a man of war from his youth up, to whom Eudes had sent warning. There for nearly seven days they strive intensely, and at last they set themselves in battle array, and the nations of the North, standing firm as a wall and impenetrable as a zone of ice, utterly slay the Arabs with the edge of the sword." The European writers all concur in speaking of the fall of Abderrahman as one of the principal causes of the defeat of the Arabs; who, according to one writer, after finding that their leader was slain, dispersed in the night, to the agreeable surprise of the Christians, who expected the next morning to see them issue from their tents and renew the combat. One monkish chronicler puts the loss of the Arabs at three hundred and seventy-five thousand men, while he says that only one thousand and seven Christians fell; a disparity of loss which he feels bound to account for by a special interposition of Providence. I have translated above some of the most spirited passages of these writers; but it is impossible to collect from them anything like a full or authentic description of the great battle itself, or of the operations which preceded and followed it. Though, however, we may have cause to regret the meagreness and doubtful character of these narratives, we have the great advantage of being able to compare the accounts given of Abderrahman's expedition by the national writers of each side. This is a benefit which the inquirer into antiquity so seldom can obtain that the fact of possessing it, in the case of the battle of Tours, makes us think the historical testimony respecting that great event more certain and satisfactory than is the case in many other instances, where we possess abundant details respecting military exploits, but where those details come to us from the annalist of one nation only, and where we have, consequently, no safeguard against the exaggerations, the distortions, and the fictions which national vanity has so often put forth in the garb and under the title of history. The Arabian writers who recorded the conquests and wars of their countrymen in Spain have narrated also the expedition into Gaul of their great Emir, and his defeat and death near Tours, in battle with the host of the Franks under "King Caldus," the name into which they metamorphose Charles Martel. They tell us how there was war between the count of the Frankish frontier and the Moslems, and how the count gathered together all his people, and fought for a time with doubtful success. "But," say the Arabian chroniclers, "Abderrahman drove them back; and the men of Abderrahman were puffed up in spirit by their repeated successes, and they were full of trust in the valor and the practice in war of their Emir. So the Moslems smote their enemies, and passed the river Garonne, and laid waste the country, and took captives without number. And that army went through all places like a desolating storm. Prosperity made these warriors insatiable. At the passage of the river Abderrahman overthrew the count, and the count retired into his stronghold, but the Moslems fought against it, and entered it by force and slew the count; for everything gave way to their cimeters, which were the robbers of lives. "All the nations of the Franks trembled at that terrible army, and they betook them to their king 'Caldus,' and told him of the havoc made by the Moslem horsemen, and how they rode at their will through all the land of Narbonne, Toulouse, and Bordeaux, and they told the King of the death of their count. Then the King bade them be of good cheer, and offered to aid them. And in the 114th year[70] he mounted his horse, and he took with him a host that could not be numbered, and went against the Moslems. And he came upon them at the great city of Tours. And Abderrahman and other prudent cavaliers saw the disorder of the Moslem troops, who were loaded with spoil; but they did not venture to displease the soldiers by ordering them to abandon everything except their arms and war-horses. And Abderrahman trusted in the valor of his soldiers, and in the good fortune which had ever attended him. But, the Arab writer remarks, such defect of discipline always is fatal to armies. "So Abderrahman and his host attacked Tours to gain still more spoil, and they fought against it so fiercely that they stormed the city almost before the eyes of the army that came to save it, and the fury and the cruelty of the Moslems toward the inhabitants of the city were like the fury and cruelty of raging tigers. It was manifest," adds the Arab, "that God's chastisement was sure to follow such excesses, and Fortune thereupon turned her back upon the Moslems. "Near the river Owar,[71] the two great hosts of the two languages and the two creeds were set in array against each other. The hearts of Abderrahman, his captains, and his men, were filled with wrath and pride, and they were the first to begin the fight. The Moslem horsemen dashed fierce and frequent forward against the battalions of the Franks, who resisted man-fully, and many fell dead on either side, until the going down of the sun. Night parted the two armies, but in the gray of the morning the Moslems returned to the battle. Their cavaliers had soon hewn their way into the centre of the Christian host. But many of the Moslems were fearful for the safety of the spoil which they had stored in their tents, and a false cry arose in their ranks that some of the enemy were plundering the camp; whereupon several squadrons of the Moslem horsemen rode off to protect their tents. But it seemed as if they fled, and all the host was troubled. "And while Abderrahman strove to check their tumult and to lead them back to battle, the warriors of the Franks came around him, and he was pierced through with many spears, so that he died. Then all the host fled before the enemy and many died in the flight. This deadly defeat of the Moslems, and the loss of the great leader and good cavalier Abderrahman, took place in the hundred and fifteenth year."[72] It would be difficult to expect from an adversary a more explicit confession of having been thoroughly vanquished than the Arabs here accord to the Europeans. The points on which their narrative differs from those of the Christians--as to how many days the conflict lasted, whether the assailed city was actually rescued or not, and the like--are of little moment compared with the admitted great fact that there was a decisive trial of strength between Frank and Saracen, in which the former conquered. The enduring importance of the battle of Tours in the eyes of the Moslems is attested not only by the expressions of "the deadly battle" and "the disgraceful overthrow" which their writers constantly employ when referring to it, but also by the fact that no more serious attempts at conquest beyond the Pyrenees were made by the Saracens. Charles Martel and his son and grandson were left at leisure to consolidate and extend their power. The new Christian Roman Empire of the West, which the genius of Charlemagne founded, and throughout which his iron will imposed peace on the old anarchy of creeds and races, did not indeed retain its integrity after its great ruler's death. Fresh troubles came over Europe, but Christendom, though disunited, was safe. The progress of civilization, and the development of the nationalities and governments of modern Europe, from that time forth went forward in not uninterrupted, but ultimately certain, career. FOOTNOTES: [69] Gibbon remarks that if the Saracen conquests had not then been checked, "perhaps the interpretation of the _Koran_ would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet." [70] Of the Hegira. [71] Probably the Loire. [72] An. Heg. FOUNDING OF THE CARLOVINGIAN DYNASTY PÉPIN THE SHORT USURPS THE FRANKISH CROWN A.D. 751 FRANÇOIS P.G. GUIZOT The Merovingians, the first dynasty of the Frankish kings in Gaul, was founded by the greatest of their kings, Clovis, who in 486 overthrew the Gallo-Roman sway under Syagrius, near Soissons. After his death in 511 his kingdom was divided among four sons who were mere boys ranging from twelve to eighteen years of age. The young princes extended the conquests of their father until they had secured from the emperor Justinian title to the whole of Gaul. The last survivor of the brother-kings was Clotaire I. Under his rule the whole Frankish empire had been united in one; but on his decease it was again divided among sons. This division cut the kingdom into three separate sovereignties. The reign of these brothers was one of horrible cruelty and bloodshed. A second Clotaire survived them and brought the monarchy under one sceptre. But power slipped fast from this royal representative of the Merovingian race, and the mayor of the palace (_major-domus)_ began to exercise an authority which in time resulted in supremacy. When Pépin of Héristal, the greatest territorial lord of Austrasia, took upon himself the office of major-domus, he compelled the Merovingian King, at the battle of Testry in 687, to invest him with the powers of that office in the three Frankish states, Neustria, Austrasia, and Burgundy. This being accomplished Pépin was practically dictator, and the Merovingians, though allowed to remain on the throne, were simply figure-heads from that time forth. Charles Martel was a son worthy of Pépin of Héristal. His most notable achievement was the defeat of the Saracen invaders at the battle of Tours, A.D. 732, which ended the advance of Mahometanism through Western Europe. Charles Martel died October 22, 741, at Kiersey-sur-Oise, aged fifty-two years, and his last act was the least wise of his life. He had spent it entirely in two great works: the reëstablishment throughout the whole of Gaul of the Franco-Gallo-Roman Empire, and the driving back, from the frontiers of his empire, of the Germans in the North and the Arabs in the South. The consequence, as also the condition, of this double success was the victory of Christianity over paganism and Islamism. Charles Martel endangered these results by falling back into the groove of those Merovingian kings whose shadow he had allowed to remain on the throne. He divided between his two legitimate sons, Pépin, called the Short, from his small stature, and Carloman, this sole dominion which he had with so much toil reconstituted and defended. Pépin had Neustria, Burgundy, Provence, and the suzerainty of Aquitaine; Carloman, Austrasia, Thuringia, and Alemannia. They both, at their father's death, took only the title of mayor of the palace, and, perhaps, of duke. The last but one of the Merovingians, Thierry IV, had died in 737. For four years there had been no king at all. But when the works of men are wise and true, that is, in conformity with the lasting wants of peoples and the natural tendency of social facts, they get over even the mistakes of their authors. Immediately after the death of Charles Martel, the consequences of dividing his empire became manifest. In the North, the Saxons, the Bavarians, and the Alamannians renewed their insurrections. In the South, the Arabs of Septimania recovered their hopes of effecting an invasion; and Hunald, duke of Aquitaine, who had succeeded his father Eudes after his death in 735, made a fresh attempt to break away from Frankish sovereignty and win his independence. Charles Martel had left a young son, Grippo, whose legitimacy had been disputed, but who was not slow to set up pretensions and to commence intriguing against his brothers. Everywhere there burst out that reactionary movement which arises against grand and difficult works when the strong hand that undertook them is no longer by to maintain them; but this movement was of short duration and to little purpose. Brought up in the school and in the fear of their father, his two sons, Pépin and Carloman, were inoculated with his ideas and example; they remained united in spite of the division of dominions, and labored together, successfully, to keep down, in the North the Saxons and Bavarians, in the South the Arabs and Aquitanians, supplying want of unity by union, and pursuing with one accord the constant aim of Charles Martel--abroad the security and grandeur of the Frankish dominion, at home the cohesion of all its parts and the efficacy of its government. Events came to the aid of this wise conduct. Five years after the death of Charles Martel, in 746 in fact, Carloman, already weary of the burden of power, and seized with a fit of religious zeal, abdicated his share of sovereignty, left his dominions to his brother Pépin, had himself shorn by the hands of Pope Zachary, and withdrew into Italy to the monastery of Monte Cassino. The preceding year, in 745, Hunald, duke of Aquitaine, with more patriotic and equally pious views, also abdicated in favor of his son Waifre, whom he thought more capable than himself of winning the independence of Aquitaine, and went and shut himself up in a monastery in the island of Rhé, where was the tomb of his father Eudes. In the course of divers attempts at conspiracy and insurrection, the Frankish princes' young brother, Grippo, was killed in combat while crossing the Alps. The furious internal dissensions among the Arabs of Spain, and their incessant wars with the Berbers, did not allow them to pursue any great enterprise in Gaul. Thanks to all these circumstances, Pépin found himself, in 747, sole master of the heritage of Clovis, and with the sole charge of pursuing, in state and church, his father's work, which was the unity and grandeur of Christian France. Pépin, less enterprising than his father, but judicious, persevering, and capable of discerning what was at the same time necessary and possible, was well fitted to continue and consolidate what he would, probably, never have begun and created. Like his father, he, on arriving at power, showed pretensions to moderation or, it might be said, modesty. He did not take the title of king; and, in concert with his brother Carloman, he went to seek, heaven knows in what obscure asylum, a forgotten Merovingian, son of Childéric II, the last but one of the sluggard kings, and made him king, the last of his line, with the title of Childéric III, himself, as well as his brother, taking only the style of mayor of the palace. But at the end of ten years, and when he saw himself alone at the head of the Frankish dominion, Pépin considered the moment arrived for putting an end to this fiction. In 751 he sent to Pope Zachary at Rome Burchard, bishop of Wuerzburg, and Fulrad, abbot of St. Denis, "to consult the pontiff," says Eginhard, "on the subject of the kings then existing among the Franks, and who bore only the name of king without enjoying a tittle of royal authority." The Pope, whom St. Boniface, the great missionary of Germany, had prepared for the question, answered that "it was better to give the title of king to him who exercised the sovereign power "; and next year, in March, 752, in the presence and with the assent of the general assembly of "leudes" and bishops gathered together at Soissons, Pépin was proclaimed king of the Franks, and received from the hand of St. Boniface the sacred anointment. They cut off the hair of the last Merovingian phantom, Childéric III, and put him away in the monastery of St. Sithiu, at St. Omer. Two years later, July 28, 754, Pope Stephen II, having come to France to claim Pépin's support against the Lombards, after receiving from him assurance of it, "anointed him afresh with the holy oil in the church of St. Denis, to do honor in his person to the dignity of royalty," and conferred the same honor on the king's two sons, Charles and Carloman. The new Gallo-Frankish kingship and the papacy, in the name of their common faith and common interests, thus contracted an intimate alliance. The young Charles was hereafter to become Charlemagne. The same year, Boniface, whom six years before Pope Zachary had made archbishop of Mayence, gave up one day the episcopal dignity to his disciple Lullus, charging him to carry on the different works himself had commenced among the churches of Germany, and to uphold the faith of the people. "As for me," he added, "I will put myself on my road, for the time of my passing away approacheth. I have longed for this departure, and none can turn me from it; wherefore, my son, get all things ready, and place in the chest with my books the winding-sheet to wrap up my old body." And so he departed with some of his priests and servants to go and evangelize the Frisons, the majority of whom were still pagans and barbarians. He pitched his tent on their territory, and was arranging to celebrate their Lord's supper, when a band of natives came down and rushed upon the archbishop's retinue. The servitors surrounded him, to defend him and themselves, and a battle began. "Hold, hold, my children!" cried the archbishop; "Scripture biddeth us return good for evil. This is the day I have long desired, and the hour of our deliverance is at hand. Be strong in the Lord: hope in him, and he will save your souls." The barbarians slew the holy man and the majority of his company. A little while after, the Christians of the neighborhood came in arms and recovered the body of St. Boniface. Near him was a book which was stained with blood and seemed to have dropped from his hands; it contained several works of the fathers, and among others a writing of St. Ambrose, _On the Blessing of Death_. The death of the pious missionary was as powerful as his preaching in converting Friesland. It was a mode of conquest worthy of the Christian faith, and one of which the history of Christianity had already proved the effectiveness. St. Boniface did not confine himself to the evangelization of the pagans; he labored ardently in the Christian Gallo-Frankish Church to reform the manners and ecclesiastical discipline, and to assure, while justifying, the moral influence of the clergy by example as well as precept. The councils, which had almost fallen into desuetude in Gaul, became once more frequent and active there: from 742 to 753 there may be counted seven, presided over by St. Boniface, which exercised within the Church a salutary action. King Pépin, recognizing the services which the archbishop of Mayence had rendered him, seconded his reformatory efforts at one time by giving the support of his royal authority to the canons of the councils, held often simultaneously with and almost confounded with the laic assemblies of the Franks; at another by doing justice to the protests of the churches against the violence and spoliation to which they were subjected. "There was an important point," says M. Fauriel, "in respect of which the position of Charles Martel's sons turned out to be pretty nearly the same as that of their father: it was touching the necessity of assigning warriors a portion of the ecclesiastical revenues. But they, being more religious, perhaps, than Charles Martel, or more impressed with the importance of humoring the priestly power, were more vexed and more anxious about the necessity under which they found themselves of continuing to despoil the churches and of persisting in a system which was putting the finishing stroke to the ruin of all ecclesiastical discipline. They were more eager to mitigate the evil and to offer the Church compensation for their share in this evil to which it was not in their power to put a stop. Accordingly, at the March parade, held at Leptines in 743, it was decided, in reference to ecclesiastical lands applied to the military service: 1st, that the churches having the ownership of those lands should share the revenue with the lay holder; 2d, that on the death of a warrior in enjoyment of an ecclesiastical benefice, the benefice should revert to the Church; 3d, that every benefice, by deprivation whereof any church would be reduced to poverty, should be at once restored to her. "That this capitular was carried out, or even capable of being carried out, is very doubtful; but the less Carloman and Pépin succeeded in repairing the material losses incurred by the Church since the accession of the Carlovingians, the more zealous they were in promoting the growth of her moral power and the restoration of her discipline ... That was the time at which there began to be seen the spectacle of the national assemblies of the Franks, the gatherings at the March parades transformed into ecclesiastical synods under the presidency of the titular legate of the Roman pontiff, and dictating, by the mouth of the political authority, regulations and laws with the direct and formal aim of restoring divine worship and ecclesiastical discipline, and of assuring the spiritual welfare of the people." Pépin, after he had been proclaimed king and had settled matters with the Church as well as the warlike questions remaining for him to solve permitted, directed all his efforts toward the two countries which, after his father's example, he longed to reunite to the Gallo-Frankish monarchy, that is, Septimania, still occupied by the Arabs, and Aquitaine, the independence of which was stoutly and ably defended by Duke Eudes' grandson, Duke Waifre. The conquest of Septimania was rather tedious than difficult. The Franks, after having victoriously scoured the open country of the district, kept invested during three years its capital, Narbonne, where the Arabs of Spain, much weakened by their dissensions, vainly tried to throw in reinforcements. Besides the Mussulman Arabs, the population of the town numbered many Christian Goths, who were tired of suffering for the defence of their oppressors, and who entered into secret negotiations with the chiefs of Pépin's army, the end of which was that they opened the gates of the town. In 759, then, after forty years of Arab rule, Narbonne passed definitively under that of the Franks, who guaranteed to the inhabitants free enjoyment of their Gothic or Roman law and of their local institutions. It even appears that, in the province of Spain bordering on Septimania, an Arab chief, called Soliman, who was in command at Gerona and Barcelona, between the Ebro and the Pyrenees, submitted to Pépin, himself and the country under him. This was an important event, indeed, in the reign of Pépin, for here was the point at which Islamism, but lately aggressive and victorious in Southern Europe, began to feel definitively beaten and to recoil before Christianity. The conquest of Aquitaine and Vasconia was much more keenly disputed and for a much longer time uncertain. Duke Waif re was as able in negotiation as in war; at one time he seemed to accept the pacific overtures of Pépin, or, perhaps, himself made similar, without bringing about any result; at another, he went to seek and found even in Germany allies who caused Pépin much embarrassment and peril. The population of Aquitaine hated the Franks; and the war, which for their duke was a question of independent sovereignty, was for themselves a question of passionate national feeling. Pépin, who was naturally more humane and even more generous, it may be said, in war than his predecessors had usually been, was nevertheless induced, in his struggle against the Duke of Aquitaine, to ravage without mercy the countries he scoured, and to treat the vanquished with great harshness. It was only after nine years' war and seven campaigns full of vicissitudes that he succeeded, not in conquering his enemy in a decisive battle, but in gaining over some servants who betrayed their master. In the month of July, 759, "Duke Waifre was slain by his own folk, by the King's advice," says Frédégaire; and the conquest of all Southern Gaul carried the extent and power of the Gallo-Frankish monarchy farther and higher than it had ever yet been, even under Clovis. In 753 Pépin had made an expedition against the Britons of Armorica, had taken Vannes and "subjugated," add certain chroniclers, "the whole of Brittany." In point of fact, Brittany was no more subjugated by Pépin than by his predecessors; all that can be said is that the Franks resumed under him an aggressive attitude toward the Britons, as if to vindicate a right of sovereignty. Exactly at this epoch Pépin was engaging in a matter which did not allow him to scatter his forces hither and thither. It has been stated already, that in 741 Pope Gregory III had asked aid of the Franks against the Lombards who were threatening Rome, and that, while fully entertaining the Pope's wishes, Charles Martel had been in no hurry to interfere by deed in the quarrel. Twelve years later, in 753, Pope Stephen, in his turn threatened by Astolphus, King of the Lombards, after vain attempts to obtain guarantees of peace, repaired to Paris, and renewed to Pépin the entreaties used by Zachary. It was difficult for Pépin to turn a deaf ear; it was Zachary who had declared that he ought to be made king; Stephen showed readiness to anoint him a second time, himself and his sons; and it was the eldest of these sons, Charles, scarcely twelve years old, whom Pépin, on learning the near arrival of the Pope, had sent to meet him and give brilliancy to his reception. Stephen passed the winter at St. Denis, and gained the favor of the people as well as that of the King. Astolphus peremptorily refused to listen to the remonstrances of Pépin, who called upon him to evacuate the towns in the exarchate of Ravenna, and to leave the Pope unmolested in the environs of Rome as well as in Rome itself. At the March parade held at Braine, in the spring of 754, the Franks approved of the war against the Lombards; and at the end of the summer Pépin and his army descended into Italy by Mount Cenis, the Lombards trying in vain to stop them as they debouched into the valley of Suza. Astolphus, beaten, and, before long, shut up in Pavia, promised all that was demanded of him; and Pépin and his warriors, laden with booty, returned to France, leaving at Rome the Pope, who conjured them to remain awhile in Italy, for to a certainty, he said, King Astolphus would not keep his promises. The pope was right. So soon as the Franks had gone, the King of the Lombards continued occupying the places in the exarchate and molesting the neighborhood of Rome. The Pope, in despair and doubtful of his auxiliaries' return, conceived the idea of sending "to the King, the chiefs, and the people of the Franks, a letter written, he said, by Peter, apostle of Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, to announce to them that, if they came in haste, he would aid them as if he were alive according to the flesh among them, that they would conquer all their enemies and make themselves sure of eternal life!" The plan was perfectly successful: the Franks once more crossed the Alps with enthusiasm, once more succeeded in beating the Lombards, and once more shut up in Pavia King Astolphus, who was eager to purchase peace at any price. He obtained it on two principal conditions: (1) That he would not again make a hostile attack on Roman territory, or wage war against the Pope or people of Rome; (2) that he would henceforth recognize the sovereignty of the Franks, pay them tribute, and cede forthwith to Pépin the towns and all the lands belonging to the jurisdiction of the Roman Empire, which were at that time occupied by the Lombards. By virtue of these conditions Ravenna, Rimini, Pesaro, that is to say, the Romagna, the duchy of Urbino, and a portion of the Marches of Ancona, were at once given up to Pépin, who, regarding them as his own direct conquest, the fruit of victory, disposed of them forthwith in favor of the popes, by that famous deed of gift which comprehended pretty nearly what has since formed the Roman States, and which founded the temporal independence of the papacy, the guarantee of its independence in the exercise of the spiritual power. At the head of the Franks as mayor of the palace from 741, and as king from 752, Pépin had completed in France and extended in Italy the work which his father, Charles Martel, had begun and carried on, from 714 to 741, in state and church. He left France reunited in one and placed at the head of Christian Europe. He died at the monastery of St. Denis, September 18, 768, leaving his kingdom and his dynasty thus ready to the hands of his son, whom history has dubbed Charlemagne. CAREER OF CHARLEMAGNE A.D. 772-814 FRANÇOIS P.G. GUIZOT In Charles, the son of Pépin the Short, later known as Charlemagne, or Charles the Great, the Carlovingians saw the culminating glory of their line, while in French history the splendor of his name outshines that of all other rulers. It seemed an act of fate that his brother and joint heir to the Frankish kingdom should die and leave the monarchy wholly in his hands, for his genius was to prove equal to its field of action. The kingdom which Charlemagne inherited was great in extent, lying mainly between the Loire and the Rhine, including Alemannia and Burgundy, while his sphere of influence--to use the modern phrase--covered many provinces and districts over which his rule was wholly or in part acknowledged--Aquitaine, Bavaria, Brittany, Frisia, Thuringia, and others. To enlarge still further the bounds of his kingdom was the task to which the young monarch at once addressed himself, and upon which he entered with all the advantages of family prestige, a commanding and engaging personality, proven courage and skill in war, as well as talent and accomplishments in civil affairs. The central purpose of Charlemagne, to the service of which all his policies and his conduct were directed, was the maintenance of the Christian religion as embodied in the Western Church, whose great champion he became, and in that character occupies his lofty place in the history of Europe and of the world. At this period the two great powers in the Christian world were the Roman pontiff and the Frankish king; and when, on Christmas Day, A.D. 800, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne emperor of the Romans, and in the Holy Roman Empire restored the Western Empire, extinct since 476, he welded church and state in what long proved to be indissoluble bonds, somewhat--it must be added--to the chagrin of the Byzantine emperors of the Eastern Roman Empire at Constantinople. This was an event the significance of which only later times could learn to estimate. The Holy Roman Empire henceforth held a leading part in the world's affairs, the influence of which is still active in the survivals of its power among nations. Charlemagne served the Church and fulfilled his own purposes through the military subjugation of all whom he could overcome among the barbarians and heathens of his time. And the powers which he gained as conqueror he exercised with equal ability and steadfastness of purpose in his capacity as foremost secular ruler in the world. By the union of the Teutonic with the Roman interests, and of northern vigor with the culture of the South, it is considered by the historians of our own day that Charlemagne proved himself the beginner of a new era--in fact, as Bryce declares, of modern history itself. Gibbon has said that of all the heroes to whom the title of "the Great" has been given, Charlemagne alone has retained it as a permanent addition to his name. The most judicious minds are sometimes led blindly by tradition and habit, rather than enlightened by reflection and experience. Pépin the Short committed at his death the same mistake that his father, Charles Martel, had committed: he divided his dominions between his two sons, Charles and Carloman, thus destroying again that unity of the Gallo-Frankish monarchy which his father and he had been at so much pains to establish. But, just as had already happened in 746 through the abdication of Pépin's brother, events discharged the duty of repairing the mistake of men. After the death of Pépin, and notwithstanding that of Duke Waifre, insurrection broke out once more in Aquitaine; and the old duke, Hunald, issued from his monastery in the island of Rhé to try and recover power and independence. Charles and Carloman marched against him; but, on the march, Carloman, who was jealous and thoughtless, fell out with his brother, and suddenly quitted the expedition, taking away his troops. Charles was obliged to continue it alone, which he did with complete success. At the end of this first campaign, Pépin's widow, the queen-mother Bertha, reconciled her two sons; but an unexpected incident, the death of Carloman two years afterward in 771, reëstablished unity more surely than the reconciliation had reëstablished harmony. For, although Carloman left sons, the grandees of his dominions, whether laic or ecclesiastical, assembled at Corbény, between Laon and Rheims, and proclaimed in his stead his brother Charles, who thus became sole king of the Gallo-Franco-Germanic monarchy. And as ambition and manners had become less tinged with ferocity than they had been under the Merovingians, the sons of Carloman were not killed or shorn or even shut up in a monastery: they retired with their mother, Gerberge, to the court of Didier, King of the Lombards. "King Charles," says Eginhard, "took their departure patiently, regarding it as of no importance." Thus commenced the reign of Charlemagne. The original and dominant characteristic of the hero of this reign, that which won for him, and keeps for him after more than ten centuries, the name of great, is the striking variety of his ambition, his faculties, and his deeds. Charlemagne aspired to and attained to every sort of greatness--military greatness, political greatness, and intellectual greatness; he was an able warrior, an energetic legislator, a hero of poetry. And he united, he displayed all these merits in a time of general and monotonous barbarism when, save in the church, the minds of men were dull and barren. Those men, few in number, who made themselves a name at that epoch, rallied round Charlemagne and were developed under his patronage. To know him well and appreciate him justly, he must be examined under those various grand aspects, abroad and at home, in his wars and in his government. From 769 to 813, in Germany and Western and Northern Europe, Charlemagne conducted thirty-one campaigns against the Saxons, Frisians, Bavarians, Avars, Slavons, and Danes; in Italy, five against the Lombards; in Spain, Corsica, and Sardinia, twelve against the Arabs; two against the Greeks; and three in Gaul itself, against the Aquitanians and the Britons; in all, fifty-three expeditions; among which those he undertook against the Saxons, the Lombards, and the Arabs were long and difficult wars. It were undesirable to recount them in detail, for the relation would be monotonous and useless; but it is obligatory to make fully known their causes, their characteristic incidents, and their results. Under the last Merovingian kings, the Saxons were, on the right bank of the Rhine, in frequent collision with the Franks, especially with the Austrasian Franks, whose territory they were continually threatening and often invading. Pépin the Short had more than once hurled them back far from the very uncertain frontiers of Germanic Austrasia; and, on becoming king, he dealt his blows still farther, and entered, in his turn, Saxony itself. "In spite of the Saxon's stout resistance," says Eginhard, "he pierced through the points they had fortified to bar entrance into their country, and, after having fought here and there battles wherein fell many Saxons, he forced them to promise that they would submit to his rule; and that every year, to do him honor, they would send to the general assembly of Franks a present of three hundred horses. When these conventions were once settled, he insisted, to insure their performance, upon placing them under the guarantee of rites peculiar to the Saxons; then he returned with his army to Gaul." Charlemagne did not confine himself to resuming his father's work; he before long changed its character and its scope. In 772, being left sole master of France after the death of his brother Carloman, he convoked at Worms the general assembly of the Franks, "and took," says Eginhard, "the resolution of going and carrying war into Saxony. He invaded it without delay, laid it waste with fire and sword, made himself master of the fort of Ehresburg, and threw down the idol that the Saxons called _Irminsul_." And in what place was this first victory of Charlemagne won? Near the sources of the Lippe, just where, more than seven centuries before, the German Arminius (Herman) had destroyed the legions of Varus, and whither Germanicus had come to avenge the disaster of Varus. This ground belonged to Saxon territory; and this idol, called _Irminsul_, which was thrown down by Charlemagne, was probably a monument raised in honor of Arminius (_Hermann-Seule,_ or _Herman's pillar_), whose name it called to mind. The patriotic and hereditary pride of the Saxons was passionately roused by this blow; and, the following year, "thinking to find in the absence of the King the most favorable opportunity," says Eginhard, they entered the lands of the Franks, laid them waste in their turn, and, paying back outrage for outrage, set fire to the church not long since built at Fritzlar, by Boniface, martyr. From that time the question changed its aspect; it was no longer the repression of Saxon invasions of France, but the conquest of Saxony by the Franks that was to be dealt with; it was between the Christianity of the Franks and the national paganism of the Saxons that the struggle was to take place. For thirty years such was its character. Charlemagne regarded the conquest of Saxony as indispensable for putting a stop to the incursions of the Saxons, and the conversion of the Saxons to Christianity as indispensable for assuring the conquest of Saxony. The Saxons were defending at one and the same time the independence of their country and the gods of their fathers. Here was wherewithal to stir up and foment, on both sides, the profoundest passions; and they burst forth, on both sides, with equal fury. Whithersoever Charlemagne penetrated he built strong castles and churches; and, at his departure, left garrisons and missionaries. When he was gone the Saxons returned, attacked the forts, and massacred the garrisons and the missionaries. At the commencement of the struggle, a priest of Anglo-Saxon origin, whom St. Willibrod, bishop of Utrecht, had but lately consecrated--St. Liebwin, in fact--undertook to go and preach the Christian religion in the very heart of Saxony, on the banks of the Weser, amid the general assembly of the Saxons. "What do ye?" said he, cross in hand; "the idols ye worship live not, neither do they perceive: they are the work of men's hands; they can do naught either for themselves or for others. Wherefore the one God, good and just, having compassion on your errors, hath sent me unto you. If ye put not away your iniquity, I foretell unto you a trouble that ye do not expect, and that the King of Heaven hath ordained aforetime: there shall come a prince, strong and wise and indefatigable, not from afar, but from nigh at hand, to fall upon you like a torrent, in order to soften your hard hearts and bow down your proud heads. At one rush he shall invade the country; he shall lay it waste with fire and sword, and carry away your wives and children into captivity." A thrill of rage ran through the assembly; and already many of those present had begun to cut, in the neighboring woods, stakes sharpened to a point to pierce the priest, when one of the chieftains, named Buto, cried aloud: "Listen, ye who are the most wise. There have often come unto us ambassadors from neighboring peoples, Northmen, Slavons, or Frisians; we have received them in peace, and when their messages had been heard, they have been sent away with a present. Here is an ambassador from a great God, and ye would slay him!" Whether it were from sentiment or from prudence, the multitude was calmed, or, at any rate, restrained; and for this time the priest retired safe and sound. Just as the pious zeal of the missionaries was of service to Charlemagne, so did the power of Charlemagne support and sometimes preserve the missionaries. The mob, even in the midst of its passions, is not throughout or at all times inaccessible to fear. The Saxons were not one and the same nation, constantly united in one and the same assembly, and governed by a single chieftain. Three populations of the same race, distinguished by names borrowed from their geographical situation, just as had happened among the Franks in the case of the Austrasians and Neustrians, to wit, Eastphalian or Eastern Saxons, Westphalian or Western, and Angrians, formed the Saxon confederation. And to them was often added a fourth people of the same origin, closer to the Danes, and called North-Albingians, inhabitants of the northern district of the Elbe. These four principal Saxon populations were subdivided into a large number of tribes, who had their own particular chieftains, and who often decided, each for itself, their conduct and their fate. Charlemagne, knowing how to profit by this want of cohesion and unity among his foes, attacked now one and now another of the large Saxon peoplets or the small Saxon tribes, and dealt separately with each of them, according as he found them inclined to submission or resistance. After having, in four or five successive expeditions, gained victories and sustained checks, he thought himself sufficiently advanced in his conquest to put his relations with the Saxons to a grand trial. In 777, he resolved, says Eginhard, "to go and hold, at the place called Paderborn (close to Saxony) the general assembly of this people. On his arrival he found there assembled the senate and people of this perfidious nation, who, conformably to his orders, had repaired thither, seeking to deceive him by a false show of submission and devotion.... They earned their pardon, but on this condition, however, that, if hereafter they broke their engagements, they would be deprived of country and liberty. A great number among them had themselves baptized on this occasion; but it was with far from sincere intentions that they had testified a desire to become Christians." There had been absent from this great meeting a Saxon chieftain, called Wittikind, son of Wernekind, King of the Saxons at the north of the Elbe. He had espoused the sister of Siegfried, King of the Danes; and he was the friend of Ratbod, King of the Frisians. A true chieftain at heart as well as by descent, he was made to be the hero of the Saxons just as, seven centuries before, the Cheruscan Herman (Arminius) had been the hero of the Germans. Instead of repairing to Paderborn, Wittikind had left Saxony, and taken refuge with his brother-in-law, the King of the Danes. Thence he encouraged his Saxon compatriots, some to persevere in their resistance, others to repent them of their show of submission. War began again; and Wittikind hastened back to take part in it. In 778 the Saxons advanced as far as the Rhine; but, "not having been able to cross this river," says Eginhard, "they set themselves to lay waste with fire and sword all the towns and all the villages from the city of Duitz (opposite Cologne) as far as the confluence of the Moselle. The churches as well as the houses were laid in ruins from top to bottom. The enemy, in his frenzy, spared neither age nor sex, wishing to show thereby that he had invaded the territory of the Franks, not for plunder, but for revenge!" For three years the struggle continued, more confined in area, but more and more obstinate. Many of the Saxon tribes submitted; many Saxons were baptized; and Siegfried, King of the Danes, sent to Charlemagne a deputation, as if to treat for peace. Wittikind had left Denmark; but he had gone across to her neighbors, the Northmen; and, thence reëntering Saxony, he kindled there an insurrection as fierce as it was unexpected. In 782 two of Charlemagne's lieutenants were beaten on the banks of the Weser, and killed in the battle, "together with four counts and twenty leaders, the noblest in the army; indeed, the Franks were nearly all exterminated. At news of this disaster," says Eginhard, "Charlemagne, without losing a moment, reassembled an army and set out for Saxony. He summoned into his presence all the chieftains of the Saxons, and demanded of them who had been the promoters of the revolt. All agreed in denouncing Wittikind as the author of this treason. But as they could not deliver him up, because immediately after his sudden attack he had taken refuge with the Northmen, those who, at his instigation, had been accomplices in the crime, were placed, to the number of four thousand five hundred, in the hands of the King; and, by his order, all had their heads cut off the same day, at a place called Werden, on the river Aller. After this deed of vengeance the King retired to Thionville to pass the winter there." But the vengeance did not put an end to the war. For three years Charlemagne had to redouble his efforts to accomplish in Saxony, at the cost of Frankish as well as Saxon blood, his work of conquest and conversion: "Saxony," he often repeated, "must be Christianized or wiped out." At last, in 785, after several victories which seemed decisive, he went and settled down in his strong castle of Ehresburg, "whither he made his wife and children come, being resolved to remain there all the bad season," says Eginhard, and applying himself without cessation to scouring the country of the Saxons and wearing them out by his strong and indomitable determination. But determination did not blind him to prudence and policy. "Having learned that Wittikind and Abbio, another great Saxon chieftain, were abiding in the part of Saxony situated on the other side of the Elbe, he sent to them Saxon envoys to prevail upon them to renounce their perfidy, and come, without hesitation, and trust themselves to him. They, conscious of what they had attempted, dared not at first trust to the King's word; but having obtained from him the promise they desired of impunity, and, besides, the hostages they demanded as guarantee of their safety, and who were brought to them, on the King's behalf, by Amalwin, one of the officers of his court, they came with the said lord and presented themselves before the King in his palace of Attigny [Attigny-sur-Aisne, whither Charlemagne had now returned], and there received baptism." Charlemagne did more than amnesty Wittikind; he named him Duke of Saxony, but without attaching to the title any right of sovereignty. Wittikind, on his side, did more than come to Attigny and get baptized there; he gave up the struggle, remained faithful to his new engagements, and led, they say, so Christian a life that some chroniclers have placed him on the list of saints. He was killed in 807, in a battle against Gérold, Duke of Suabia, and his tomb is still to be seen at Ratisbon. Several families of Germany hold him for their ancestor; and some French genealogists have, without solid ground, discovered in him the grandfather of Robert the Strong, great-grandfather of Hugh Capet. However that may be, after making peace with Wittikind, Charlemagne had still, for several years, many insurrections to repress and much rigor to exercise in Saxony, including the removal of certain Saxon peoplets out of their country, and the establishment of foreign colonists in the territories thus become vacant; but the great war was at an end, and Charlemagne might consider Saxony incorporated in his dominions. He had still, in Germany and all around, many enemies to fight and many campaigns to reopen. Even among the Germanic populations, which were regarded as reduced under the sway of the King of the Franks, some, the Frisians and Saxons, as well as others, were continually agitating for the recovery of their independence. Farther off, toward the north, east, and south, people differing in origin and language--Avars, Huns, Slavons, Bulgarians, Danes, and Northmen--were still pressing or beginning to press upon the frontiers of the Frankish dominion, for the purpose of either penetrating within or settling at the threshold as powerful and formidable neighbors. Charlemagne had plenty to do, with the view at one time of checking their incursions, and at another of destroying or hurling back to a distance their settlements; and he brought his usual vigor and perseverance to bear on this second struggle. But by the conquest of Saxony he had attained his direct national object: the great flood of population from east to west came, and broke against the Gallo-Franco-Germanic dominion as against an insurmountable rampart. This was not, however, Charlemagne's only great enterprise at this epoch, nor the only great struggle he had to maintain. While he was incessantly fighting in Germany, the work of policy commenced by his father Pépin in Italy called for his care and his exertions. The new King of the Lombards, Didier, and the new Pope, Adrian I, had entered upon a new war; and Didier was besieging Rome, which was energetically defended by the Pope and its inhabitants. In 773, Adrian invoked the aid of the King of the Franks, whom his envoys succeeded, not without difficulty, in finding at Thionville. Charlemagne could not abandon the grand position left him by his father as protector of the papacy and as patrician of Rome. The possessions, moreover, wrested by Didier from the Pope were exactly those which Pépin had won by conquest from King Astolphus, and had presented to the Papacy. Charlemagne was besides, on his own account, on bad terms with the King of the Lombards, whose daughter, Désirée, he had married, and afterward repudiated and sent home to her father, in order to marry Hildegarde, a Suabian by nation. Didier, in dudgeon, had given an asylum to Carloman's widow and sons, on whose intrigues Charlemagne kept a watchful eye. Being prudent and careful of appearances, even when he was preparing to strike a heavy blow, Charlemagne tried, by means of special envoys, to obtain from the King of the Lombards what the Pope demanded. On Didier's refusal he at once set to work, convoked the general meeting of the Franks, at Geneva, in the autumn of 773, gained them over, not without encountering some objections, to the projected Italian expedition, and forthwith commenced the campaign with two armies. One was to cross the Valais and descend upon Lombardy by Mount St. Bernard; Charlemagne in person led the other, by Mount Cenis. The Lombards, at the outlet of the passes of the Alps, offered a vigorous resistance; but when the second army had penetrated into Italy by Mount St. Bernard, Didier, threatened in his rear, retired precipitately, and, driven from position to position, was obliged to go and shut himself up in Pavia, the strongest place in his kingdom, whither Charlemagne, having received on the march the submission of the principal counts and nearly all the towns of Lombardy, came promptly to besiege him. To place textually before the reader a fragment of an old chronicle will serve better than any modern description to show the impression of admiration and fear produced upon his contemporaries by Charlemagne, his person and his power. At the close of this ninth century a monk of the abbey of St. Gall, in Switzerland, had collected, direct from the mouth of one of Charlemagne's warriors, Adalbert, numerous stories of his campaigns and his life. These stories are full of fabulous legends, puerile anecdotes, distorted reminiscences and chronological errors, and they are written sometimes with a credulity and exaggeration of language which raise a smile; but they reveal the state of men's minds and fancies within the circle of Charlemagne's influence and at the sight of him. This monk gives a naïve account of Charlemagne's arrival before Pavia, and of the King of the Lombard's disquietude at his approach. Didier had with him at that time one of Charlemagne's most famous comrades, Ogier the Dane, who fills a prominent place in the romances and _epopæias_, relating to chivalry, of that age. Ogier had quarrelled with his great chief and taken refuge with the King of the Lombards. It is probable that his Danish origin and his relations with the King of the Danes, Gottfried, for a long time an enemy of the Franks, had something to do with his misunderstanding with Charlemagne. However that may have been, "when Didier and Ogger (for so the monk calls him) heard that the dread monarch was coming, they ascended a tower of vast height whence they could watch his arrival from afar off and from every quarter. They saw, first of all, engines of war such as must have been necessary for the armies of Darius or Julius Cæsar. 'Is not Charles,' asked Didier of Ogger, 'with his great army?' But the other answered, 'No.' The Lombard, seeing afterward an immense body of soldiery gathered from all quarters of the vast empire, said to Ogger, 'Certes, Charles advanceth in triumph in the midst of this throng.' 'No, not yet; he will not appear so soon,' was the answer. 'What should we do, then,' rejoined Didier, who began to be perturbed, 'should he come accompanied by a larger band of warriors?' 'You will see what he is when he comes,' replied Ogger, 'but as to what will become of us, I know nothing.' As they were thus parleying appeared the body of guards that knew no repose; and at this sight the Lombard, overcome with dread, cried, 'This time 'tis surely Charles.' 'No,' answered Ogger, 'not yet.' In their wake came the bishops, the abbots, the ordinaries of the chapels royal, and the counts; and then Didier, no longer able to bear the light of day or to face death, cried out with groans, 'Let us descend and hide ourselves in the bowels of the earth, far from the face and the fury of so terrible a foe.' Trembling the while, Ogger, who knew by experience what were the power and might of Charles, and who had learned the lesson by long consuetude in better days, then said, 'When ye shall behold the crops shaking for fear in the fields, and the gloomy Po and the Ticino overflowing the walls of the city with their waves blackened with steel (iron), then may ye think that Charles is coming.' He had not ended these words when there began to be seen in the west, as it were a black cloud, raised by the northwest wind or by Boreas, which turned the brightest day into awful shadows. But as the Emperor drew nearer and nearer, the gleam of arms caused to shine on the people shut up within the city a day more gloomy than any kind of night. And then appeared Charles himself, that man of steel, with his head encased in a helmet of steel, his hands garnished with gauntlets of steel, his heart of steel and his shoulders of marble protected by a cuirass of steel, and his left hand armed with a lance of steel which he held aloft in the air, for as to his right hand he kept that continually on the hilt of his invincible sword. The outside of his thighs, which the rest, for their greater ease in mounting a-horseback, were wont to leave unshackled even by straps, he wore encircled by plates of steel. What shall I say concerning his boots? All the army were wont to have them invariably of steel; on his buckler there was naught to be seen but steel; his horse was of the color and the strength of steel. All those who went before the monarch, all those who marched at his side, all those who followed after, even the whole mass of the army had armor of the like sort, so far as the means of each permitted. The fields and the high-ways were covered with steel: the points of steel reflected the rays of the sun; and this steel, so hard, was borne by a people with hearts still harder. The flash of steel spread terror throughout the streets of the city. 'What steel! alack, what steel!' Such were the bewildered cries the citizens raised. The firmness of manhood and of youth gave way at sight of the steel; and the steel paralyzed the wisdom of graybeards. That which I, poor tale-teller, mumbling and toothless, have attempted to depict in a long description, Ogger perceived at one rapid glance, and said to Didier, 'Here is what ye have so anxiously sought': and while uttering these words he fell down almost lifeless." The monk of St. Gall does King Didier and his people wrong. They showed more firmness and valor than he ascribes to them; they resisted Charlemagne obstinately, and repulsed his first assaults so well that he changed the siege into an investment, and settled down before Pavia, as if making up his mind for a long operation. His camp became a town; he sent for Queen Hildegarde and her court; and he had a chapel built where he celebrated the festival of Christmas. But on the arrival of spring, close upon the festival of Easter, 774, wearied with the duration of the investment, he left to his lieutenants the duty of keeping it up, and, attended by a numerous and brilliant following, set off for Rome, whither the Pope was urgently pressing him to come. On Holy Saturday, April 1, 774, Charlemagne found, at three miles from Rome, the magistrates and the banner of the city, sent forward by the Pope to meet him; at one mile all the municipal bodies and the pupils of the schools carrying palm branches and singing hymns; and at the gate of the city, the cross, which was never taken out save for exarchs and patricians. At sight of the cross Charlemagne dismounted, entered Rome on foot, ascended the steps of the ancient basilica of St. Peter, repeating at each step a sign of respectful piety, and was received at the top by the Pope himself. All around him and in the streets a chant was sung, "Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord!" At his entry and during his sojourn at Rome, Charlemagne gave the most striking proofs of Christian faith and respect for the head of the Church. According to the custom of pilgrims he visited all the basilicas, and in that of Sta. Maria Maggiore he performed his solemn devotions. Then, passing to temporal matters, he caused to be brought and read over, in his private conferences with the Pope, the deed of territorial gift made by his father Pépin to Stephen II, and with his own lips dictated the confirmation of it, adding thereto a new gift of certain territories which he was in course of wresting by conquest from the Lombards. Pope Adrian, on his side, rendered to him, with a mixture of affection and dignity, all the honors and all the services which could at one and the same time satisfy and exalt the King and the priest, the protector and the protected. He presented to Charlemagne a book containing a collection of the canons written by the pontiffs from the origin of the Church, and he put at the beginning of the book, which was dedicated to Charlemagne, an address in forty-five irregular verses, written with his own hand, which formed an anagram: "Pope Adrian to his most excellent son, Charlemagne, king" (_Domino excellentissimo filio Carolo Magno regi, Hadrianus papa_). At the same time he encouraged him to push his victory to the utmost and make himself king of the Lombards, advising him, however, not to incorporate his conquest with the Frankish dominions, as it would wound the pride of the conquered people to be thus absorbed by the conquerors, and to take merely the title of "King of the Franks and Lombards." Charlemagne appreciated and accepted this wise advice; for he could preserve proper limits in his ambition and in the hour of victory. Three years afterward he even did more than Pope Adrian had advised. In 777 Queen Hildegarde bore him a son, Pépin, whom in 781 Charlemagne had baptized and anointed King of Italy at Rome by the Pope, thus separating not only the two titles, but also the two kingdoms, and restoring to the Lombards a national existence, feeling quite sure that so long as he lived the unity of his different dominions would not be imperilled. Having thus regulated at Rome his own affairs and those of the Church, he returned to his camp, took Pavia, received the submission of all the Lombard dukes and counts, save one only, Aregisius, Duke of Beneventum, and entered France again, taking with him, as prisoner, King Didier, whom he banished to a monastery, first at Liège and then at Corbie, where the dethroned Lombard, say the chroniclers, ended his days in saintly fashion. The prompt success of this war in Italy, undertaken at the appeal of the head of the Church, this first sojourn of Charlemagne at Rome, the spectacles he had witnessed and the homage he had received, exercised over him, his plans and his deeds, a powerful influence. This rough Frankish warrior, chief of a people who were beginning to make a brilliant appearance upon the stage of the world, and issue himself of a new line, had a taste for what was grand, splendid, ancient, and consecrated by time and public respect; he understood and estimated at its full worth the moral force and importance of such allies. He departed from Rome in 774, more determined than ever to subdue Saxony, to the advantage of the Church as well as of his own power, and to promote, in the South as in the North, the triumph of the Frankish Christian dominion. Three years afterward, in 777, he had convoked at Paderborn, in Westphalia, that general assembly of his different peoples at which Wittikind did not attend, and which was destined to bring upon the Saxons a more and more obstinate war. "The Saracen Ibn-al-Arabi," says Eginhard, "came to this town, to present himself before the King. He had arrived from Spain, together with other Saracens in his train, to surrender to the King of the Franks himself and all the towns which the King of the Saracens had confided to his keeping." For a long time past the Christians of the West had given the Mussulmans, Arab or other, the name of _Saracens_. Ibn-al-Arabi was governor of Saragossa, and one of the Spanish-Arab chieftains in league against Abdel-Rhaman, the last offshoot of the Ommiad caliphs, who, with the assistance of the Berbers, had seized the government of Spain. Amid the troubles of his country and his nation, Ibn-al-Arabi summoned to his aid, against Abdel-Rhaman, the Franks and the Christians, just as, but lately, Maurontius, Duke of Arles, had summoned to Provence, against Charles Martel, the Arabs and the Mussulmans. Charlemagne accepted the summons with alacrity. With the coming of spring in the following year, 778, and with the full assent of his chief warriors, he began his march toward the Pyrenees, crossed the Loire, and halted at Casseneuil, at the confluence of the Lot and the Garonne, to celebrate there the festival of Easter, and to make preparations for his expedition thence. As he had but lately done for his campaign in Italy against the Lombards, he divided his forces into two armies: one composed of Austrasians, Neustrians, Burgundians, and divers German contingents, and commanded by Charlemagne in person, was to enter Spain by the valley of Roncesvalles, in the western Pyrenees, and make for Pampeluna; the other, consisting of Provençals, Septimanians, Lombards, and other populations of the South, under the command of Duke Bernard, who had already distinguished himself in Italy, had orders to penetrate into Spain by the eastern Pyrenees, to receive on the march the submission of Gerona and Barcelona, and not to halt till they were before Saragossa, where the two armies were to form a junction, and which Ibn-al-Arabi had promised to give up to the King of the Franks. According to this plan, Charlemagne had to traverse the territories of Aquitaine and Vasconia, domains of Duke Lupus II, son of Duke Waifre, so long the foe of Pépin the Short, a Merovingian by descent, and, in all these qualities, little disposed to favor Charlemagne. However, the march was accomplished without difficulty. The King of the Franks treated his powerful vassal well; and Duke Lupus swore to him afresh, "or for the first time," says M. Fauriel, "submission and fidelity; but the event soon proved that it was not without umbrage or without all the feelings of a true son of Waifre that he saw the Franks and the son of Pépin so close to him." The aggressive campaign was an easy and a brilliant one. Charles with his army entered Spain by the valley of Roncesvalles without encountering any obstacle. On his arrival before Pampeluna the Arab governor surrendered the place to him, and Charlemagne pushed forward vigorously to Saragossa. But there fortune changed. The presence of foreigners and Christians on the soil of Spain caused a suspension of interior quarrels among the Arabs, who rose in mass, at all points, to succor Saragossa. The besieged defended themselves with obstinacy; there was more scarcity of provisions among the besiegers than inside the place; sickness broke out among them; they were incessantly harassed from without; and rumors of a fresh rising among the Saxons reached Charlemagne. The Arabs demanded negotiation. To decide the King of the Franks upon an abandonment of the siege, they offered him "an immense quantity of gold," say the chroniclers, hostages, and promises of homage and fidelity. Appearances had been saved; Charlemagne could say, and even perhaps believe, that he had pushed his conquests as far as the Ebro; he decided on retreat, and all the army was set in motion to recross the Pyrenees. On arriving before Pampeluna Charlemagne had its walls completely razed to the ground, "in order that," as he said, "that city might not be able to revolt." The troops entered those same passes of Roncesvalles which they had traversed without obstacle a few weeks before; and the advance-guard and the main body of the army were already clear of them. The account of what happened shall be given in the words of Eginhard, the only contemporary historian whose account, free from all exaggeration, can be considered authentic. "The King," he says, "brought back his army without experiencing any loss, save that at the summit of the Pyrenees he suffered somewhat from the perfidy of the Vascons (Basques). While the army of the Franks, embarrassed in a narrow defile, was forced by the nature of the ground to advance in one long close line, the Basques, who were in ambush on the crest of the mountain--for the thickness of the forest with which these parts are covered is favorable to ambuscade--descend and fall suddenly on the baggage-train and on the troops of the rear-guard, whose duty it was to cover all in their front, and precipitate them to the bottom of the valley. There took place a fight in which the Franks were killed to a man. The Basques, after having plundered the baggage-train, profited by the night which had come on to disperse rapidly. They owed all their success in this engagement to the lightness of their equipment and to the nature of the spot where the action took place; the Franks, on the contrary, being heavily armed and in an unfavorable position, struggled against too many disadvantages. Eginhard, master of the household of the King; Anselm, count of the palace; and Roland, prefect of the marches of Brittany, fell in this engagement. There were no means, at the time, of taking revenge for this check; for, after their sudden attack, the enemy dispersed to such good purpose that there was no gaining any trace of the direction in which they should be sought for." History says no more; but in the poetry of the people there is a longer and a more faithful memory than in the court of kings. The disaster of Roncesvalles and the heroism of the warriors who perished there, became in France the object of popular sympathy and the favorite topic for the exercise of the popular fancy. _The Song of Roland_, a real Homeric poem in its great beauty, and yet rude and simple as became its national character, bears witness to the prolonged importance attained in Europe by this incident in the history of Charlemagne. Four centuries later the comrades of William the Conqueror, marching to battle at Hastings for the possession of England, struck up _The Song of Roland_, "to prepare themselves for victory or death," says M. Vitel in his vivid estimate and able translation of this poetical monument of the manners and first impulses toward chivalry of the Middle Ages. There is no determining how far history must be made to participate in these reminiscences of national feeling; but, assuredly, the figures of Roland and Oliver, and Archbishop Turpin, and the pious, unsophisticated, and tender character of their heroism are not pure fables invented by the fancy of a poet or the credulity of a monk. If the accuracy of historical narrative must not be looked for in them, their moral truth must be recognized in their portrayal of a people and an age. The politic genius of Charlemagne comprehended more fully than would be imagined from his panegyrist's brief and dry account all the gravity of the affair of Roncesvalles. Not only did he take immediate vengeance by hanging Duke Lupus of Aquitaine, whose treason had brought down this mishap, and by reducing his two sons, Adalric and Sancho, to a more feeble and precarious condition; but he resolved to treat Aquitaine as he had but lately treated Italy, that is to say, to make of it, according to the correct definition of M. Fauriel, "a special kingdom, an integral portion, indeed, of the Frankish empire, but with an especial destination, which was that of resisting the invasions of the Andalusian Arabs, and confining them as much as possible to the soil of the peninsula." This was, in some sort, giving back to the country its primary task as an independent duchy; and it was the most natural and most certain way of making the Aquitanians useful subjects, by giving play to their national vanity, to their pretensions of forming a separate people, and to their hopes of once more becoming, sooner or later, an independent nation. Queen Hildegarde, during her husband's sojourn at Casseneuil, in 778, had borne him a son whom he called Louis, and who was afterward Louis the Debonair. Charlemagne, summoned a second time to Rome, in 781, by the quarrels of Pope Adrian I with the imperial court of Constantinople, brought with him his two sons, Pépin, aged only four years, and Louis, only three years, and had them anointed by the Pope--the former King of Italy, and the latter King of Aquitaine. On returning from Rome to Austrasia, Charlemagne sent Louis at once to take possession of his kingdom. From the banks of the Meuse to Orleans the little prince was carried in his cradle; but once on the Loire, this manner of travelling beseemed him no longer; his conductors would that his entry into his dominions should have a manly and warrior-like appearance; they clad him in arms proportioned to his height and age; they put him and held him on horseback; and it was in such guise that he entered Aquitaine. He came thither accompanied by the officers who were to form his council of guardians, men chosen by Charlemagne, with care, among the Frankish _Leudes_, distinguished not only for bravery and firmness, but also for adroitness, and such as they should be to be neither deceived nor scared by the cunning, fickle, and turbulent populations with whom they would have to deal. From this period to the death of Charlemagne, and by his sovereign influence, though all the while under his son's name, the government of Aquitaine was a series of continued efforts to hurl back the Arabs of Spain beyond the Ebro, to extend to that river the dominion of the Franks, to divert to that end the forces as well as the feelings of the populations of Southern Gaul, and thus to pursue, in the South as in the North, against the Arabs as well as against the Saxons and Huns, the grand design, of Charlemagne, which was the repression of foreign invasions and the triumph of Christian France over Asiatic paganism and Islamism. Although continually obliged to watch, and often still to fight, Charlemagne might well believe that he had nearly gained his end. He had everywhere greatly extended the frontiers of the Frankish dominions and subjugated the populations comprised in his conquests. He had proved that his new frontiers would be vigorously defended against new invasions or dangerous neighbors. He had pursued the Huns and the Slavons to the confines of the Empire of the East, and the Saracens to the islands of Corsica and Sardinia. The centre of the dominion was no longer in ancient Gaul; he had transferred it to a point not far from the Rhine, in the midst and within reach of the Germanic populations, at the town of Aix-la-Chapelle, which he had founded, and which was his favorite residence; but the principal parts of the Gallo-Frankish kingdom, Austrasia, Neustria, and Burgundy, were effectually welded in one single mass. What he had done with Southern Gaul has just been pointed out; how he had both separated it from his own kingdom, and still retained it under his control. Two expeditions into Armorica, without taking entirely from the Britons their independence, had taught them real deference, and the great warrior Roland, installed as count upon their frontier, warned them of the peril any rising would encounter. The moral influence of Charlemagne was on a par with his material power; he had everywhere protected the missionaries of Christianity; he had twice entered Rome, also in the character of protector, and he could count on the faithful support of the Pope at least as much as the Pope could count on him. He had received embassies and presents from the sovereigns of the East, Christian and Mussulman, from the emperors of Constantinople and the caliphs of Bagdad. Everywhere, in Europe, in Africa, and in Asia, he was feared and respected by kings and people. Such, at the close of the eighth century, were, so far as he was concerned, the results of his wars, of the superior capacity he had displayed, and of the successes he had won and kept. In 799 he received, at Aix-la-Chapelle, news of serious disturbances which had broken out at Rome; that Pope Leo III had been attacked by conspirators, who, after pulling out, it was said, his eyes and his tongue, had shut him up in the monastery of St. Erasmus, whence he had with great difficulty escaped, and that he had taken refuge with Winigisius, Duke of Spoleto, announcing his intention of repairing thence to the Frankish King. Leo was already known to Charlemagne; at his accession to the pontificate, in 795, he had sent to him, as to the patrician and defender of Rome, the keys of the prison of St. Peter, and the banner of the city. Charlemagne showed a disposition to receive him with equal kindness and respect. The Pope arrived, in fact, at Paderborn, passed some days there, according to Eginhard, and returned to Rome on the 30th of November, 799, at ease regarding his future, but without knowledge on the part of anyone of what had been settled between the King of the Franks and him. Charlemagne remained all the winter at Aix-la-Chapelle, spent the first months of the year 800 on affairs connected with Western France, at Rouen, Tours, Orleans, and Paris, and, returning to Mayence in the month of August, then for the first time announced to the general assembly of Franks his design of making a journey to Italy. He repaired thither, in fact, and arrived on the 23d of November, 800, at the gates of Rome. The Pope "received him there as he was dismounting; then, the next day, standing on the steps of the basilica of St. Peter and amid general hallelujahs, he introduced the King into the sanctuary of the blessed apostle, glorifying and thanking the Lord for this happy event." Some days were spent in examining into the grievances which had been set down to the Pope's account, and in receiving two monks arrived from Jerusalem to present to the King, with the patriarch's blessing, the keys of the Holy Sepulchre and Calvary, as well as the sacred standard. Lastly, on the 25th of December, 800, "the day of the Nativity of our Lord," says Eginhard, "the King came into the basilica of the blessed St. Peter, apostle, to attend the celebration of mass. At the moment when, in his place before the altar, he was bowing down to pray, Pope Leo placed on his head a crown, and all the Roman people shouted, 'Long life and victory to Charles Augustus, crowned by God, the great and pacific Emperor of the Romans!' After this proclamation the Pontiff prostrated himself before him and paid him adoration, according to the custom established in the days of the old emperors; and thenceforward Charles, giving up the title of patrician, bore that of emperor and augustus." Eginhard adds, in his _Life of Charlemagne_: "The King at first testified great aversion for this dignity, for he declared that, notwithstanding the importance of the festival, he would not on that day have entered the church if he could have foreseen the intentions of the sovereign Pontiff. However, this event excited the jealousy of the Roman emperors (of Constantinople), who showed great vexation at it; but Charles met their bad graces with nothing but great patience, and thanks to this magnanimity which raised him so far above them, he managed, by sending to them frequent embassies and giving them in his letters the name of brother, to triumph over their conceit." No one, probably, believed, in the ninth century, and no one, assuredly, will nowadays believe that Charlemagne was innocent beforehand of what took place on the 25th of December, 300, in the basilica of St. Peter. It is doubtful, also, if he were seriously concerned about the ill-temper of the emperors of the East. He had wit enough to understand the value which always remains attached to old traditions, and he might have taken some pains to secure their countenance to his title of emperor; but all his contemporaries believed, and he also undoubtedly believed, that he had on that day really won and set up again the Roman Empire. What, then, was the government of this empire of which Charlemagne was proud to assume the old title? How did this German warrior govern that vast dominion which, thanks to his conquests, extended from the Elbe to the Ebro, from the North Sea to the Mediterranean; which comprised nearly all Germany, Belgium, France, Switzerland, and the north of Italy and of Spain, and which, sooth to say, was still, when Charlemagne caused himself to be made emperor, scarce more than the hunting-ground and the battle-field of all the swarms of barbarians who tried to settle on the ruins of the Roman world they had invaded and broken to pieces? The government of Charlemagne in the midst of this chaos is the striking, complicated, and transitory fact which is now to be passed in review. A word of warning must be first of all given touching this word _government_ with which it is impossible to dispense. For a long time past the word has entailed ideas of national unity, general organization, and regular and efficient power. There has been no lack of revolutions which have changed dynasties and the principles and forms of the supreme power in the State; but they have always left existing, under different names, the practical machinery whereby the supreme power makes itself felt and exercises its various functions over the whole country. Open the _Almanac_, whether it be called the Imperial, the Royal, or the National, and you will find there always the working system of the government of France; all the powers and their agents, from the lowest to the highest, are there indicated and classed according to their prerogatives and relations. Nor have we there a mere empty nomenclature, a phantom of theory; things go on actually as they are described--the book is the reflex of the reality. It were easy to construct, for the empire of Charlemagne, a similar list of officers; there might be set down in it dukes, counts, vicars, centeniers, and sheriffs (_scabini_), and they might be distributed, in regular gradation, over the whole territory; but it would be one huge lie, for most frequently, in the majority of places, these magistracies were utterly powerless and themselves in complete disorder. The efforts of Charlemagne, either to establish them on a firm footing or to make them act with regularity, were continual but unavailing. In spite of the fixity of his purpose and the energy of his action the disorder around him was measureless and insurmountable. He might check it for a moment at one point; but the evil existed wherever his terrible will did not reach, and wherever it did the evil broke out again as soon as it had been withdrawn. How could it be otherwise? Charlemagne had not to grapple with one single nation or with one single system of institutions; he had to deal with different nations, without cohesion, and foreign one to another. The authority belonged, at one and the same time, to assemblies of free men, to landholders over the dwellers on their domains, and to the king over the leudes and their following. These three powers appeared and acted side by side in every locality as well as in the totality of the State. Their relations and their prerogatives were not governed by any generally recognized principle, and none of the three was invested with sufficient might to habitually prevail against the independence or resistance of its rivals. Force alone, varying according to circumstances and always uncertain, decided matters between them. Such was France at the accession of the second line. The coexistence of and the struggle between the three systems of institutions and the three powers just alluded to had as yet had no other result. Out of this chaos Charlemagne caused to issue a monarchy, strong through him alone and so long as he was by, but powerless and gone like a shadow when the man was lost to the institution. Whoever is astonished either at this triumph of absolute monarchy through the personal movement of Charlemagne, or at the speedy fall of the fabric on the disappearance of the moving spirit, understands neither what can be done by a great man, when, without him, society sees itself given over to deadly peril, nor how unsubstantial and frail is absolute power when the great man is no longer by, or when society has no longer need of him. It has just been shown how Charlemagne by his wars, which had for their object and result permanent and well-secured conquests, had stopped the fresh incursions of barbarians, that is, had stopped disorder coming from without. An attempt will now be made to show by what means he set about suppressing disorder from within and putting his own rule in the place of the anarchy that prevailed in the Roman world which lay in ruins, and in the barbaric world which was a prey to blind and ill-regulated force. A distinction must be drawn between the local and central governments. Far from the centre of the State, in what have since been called the provinces, the power of the Emperor was exercised by the medium of two classes of agents, one local and permanent, the other despatched from the centre and transitory. In the first class we find: 1st. The dukes, counts, vicars of counts, centeniers, sheriffs (scabini), officers or magistrates residing on the spot, nominated by the Emperor himself or by his delegates, and charged with the duty of acting in his name for the levying of troops, rendering of justice, maintenance of order, and receipt of imposts. 2d. The beneficiaries or vassals of the Emperor, who held of him, sometimes as hereditaments, more often for life, and more often still without fixed rule or stipulation, lands; domains, throughout the extent of which they exercised, a little bit in their own name and a little bit in the name of the Emperor, a certain jurisdiction and nearly all the rights of sovereignty. There was nothing very fixed or clear in the position of the beneficiaries and in the nature of their power; they were at one and the same time delegates and independent owners and enjoyers of usufruct, and the former or the latter character prevailed among them according to circumstances. But, altogether, they were closely bound to Charlemagne, who, in a great number of cases, charged them with the execution of his orders in the lands they occupied. Above these agents, local and resident, magistrates or beneficiaries, were the _missi dominici_, temporary commissioners, charged to inspect, in the Emperor's name, the condition of the provinces; authorized to penetrate into the interior of the free lands as well as of the domains granted with the title of benefices; having the right to reform certain abuses, and bound to render an account of all to their master. The missi dominici were the principal instruments Charlemagne had, throughout the vast territory of his empire, of order and administration. As to the central government, setting aside for a moment the personal action of Charlemagne and of his counsellors, the general assemblies, to judge by appearances and to believe nearly all the modern historians, occupied a prominent place in it. They were, in fact, during his reign, numerous and active; from the year 770 to the year 813 we may count thirty-five of these national assemblies, March-parades and May-parades, held at Worms, Valenciennes, Geneva, Paderborn, Aix-la-Chapelle, Thionville, and several other towns, the majority situated round about the two banks of the Rhine. The number and periodical nature of these great political reunions are undoubtedly a noticeable fact. What, then, went on in their midst? What character and weight must be attached to their intervention in the government of the State? It is important to sift this matter thoroughly. There is extant, touching this subject, a very curious document. A contemporary and counsellor of Charlemagne, his cousin-german Adalbert, abbot of Corbie, had written a treatise entitled "Of the Ordering of the Palace" _(de Ordine Palatii),_ and designed to give an insight into the government of Charlemagne, with especial reference to the national assemblies. This treatise was lost; but toward the close of the ninth century Hincmar, the celebrated archbishop of Rheims, reproduced it almost in its entirety, in the form of a letter of instructions, written at the request of certain grandees of the kingdom who had asked counsel of him with respect to the government of Carloman, one of the sons of Charles the Stutterer. We read therein: "It was the custom at this time to hold two assemblies every year.... In both, that they might not seem to have been convoked without motive, there was submitted to the examination and deliberation of the grandees ... and by virtue of orders from the King, the fragments of law called _capitula_, which the King himself had drawn up under the inspiration of God or the necessity for which had been made manifest to him in the intervals between the meetings." Two striking facts are to be gathered from these words: the first, that the majority of the members composing these assemblies probably regarded as a burden the necessity for being present at them, since Charlemagne took care to explain their convocation by declaring to them the motive for it, and by always giving them something to do; the second, that the proposal of the capitularies, or, in modern phrase, the initiative, proceeded from the Emperor. The initiative is naturally exercised by him who wishes to regulate or reform, and, in his time, it was especially Charlemagne who conceived this design. There is no doubt, however, but that the members of the assembly might make on their side such proposals as appeared to them suitable; the constitutional distrusts and artifices of our time were assuredly unknown to Charlemagne, who saw in these assemblies a means of government rather than a barrier to his authority. To resume the text of Hincmar: "After having received these communications, they deliberated on them two or three days or more, according to the importance of the business. Palace messengers, going and coming, took their questions and carried back the answers. No stranger came near the place of their meeting until the result of their deliberations had been able to be submitted to the scrutiny of the great prince, who then, with the wisdom he had received from God, adopted a resolution which all obeyed." The definite resolution, therefore, depended upon Charlemagne alone; the assembly contributed only information and counsel. Hincmar continues, and supplies details worthy of reproduction, for they give an insight into the imperial government and the action of Charlemagne himself amid those most ancient of the national assemblies: "Things went on thus for one or two capitularies, or a greater number, until, with God's help, all the necessities of the occasion were regulated. "While these matters were thus proceeding out of the King's presence, the prince himself, in the midst of the multitude, came to the general assembly, was occupied in receiving the presents, saluting the men of most note, conversing with those he saw seldom, showing toward the elder a tender interest, disporting himself with the youngsters, and doing the same thing, or something like it, with the ecclesiastics as well as the seculars. However, if those who were deliberating about the matter submitted to their examination showed a desire for it, the King repaired to them and remained with them as long as they wished; and then they reported to him, with perfect familiarity, what they thought about all matters, and what were the friendly discussions that had arisen among them. I must not forget to say that, if the weather were fine, everything took place in the open air; otherwise, in several distinct buildings, where those who had to deliberate on the King's proposals were separated from the multitude of persons come to the assembly, and then the men of greater note were admitted. The places appointed for the meeting of the lords were divided into two parts, in such sort that the bishops, the abbots, and the clerics of high rank might meet without mixture with the laity. In the same way the counts and other chiefs of the State underwent separation, in the morning, until, whether the King was present or absent, all were gathered together; then the lords above specified, the clerics on their side, and the laics on theirs, repaired to the hall which had been assigned to them, and where seats had been with due honor prepared for them. When the lords laical and ecclesiastical were thus separated from the multitude, it remained in their power to sit separately or together, according to the nature of the business they had to deal with, ecclesiastical, secular, or mixed. In the same way, if they wished to send for anyone, either to demand refreshment or to put any question, and to dismiss him after getting what they wanted, it was at their option. Thus took place the examination of affairs proposed to them by the King for deliberation. "The second business of the King was to ask of each what there was to report to him or enlighten him touching the part of the kingdom each had come from. Not only was this permitted to all, but they were strictly enjoined to make inquiries during the interval between the assemblies, about what happened within or without the kingdom; and they were bound to seek knowledge from foreigners as well as natives, enemies as well as friends, sometimes by employing emissaries, and without troubling themselves much about the manner in which they acquired their information. The King wished to know whether in any part, in any corner, of the kingdom, the people were restless, and what was the cause of their restlessness; or whether there had happened any disturbance to which it was necessary to draw the attention of the council-general, and other similar matters. He sought also to know whether any of the subjugated nations were inclined to revolt; whether any of those who had revolted seemed disposed toward submission; and whether those that were still independent were threatening the kingdom with any attack. On all these subjects, whenever there was any manifestation of disorder or danger, he demanded chiefly what were the motives or occasion of them." There is need of no great reflection to recognize the true character of these assemblies: it is clearly imprinted upon the sketch drawn by Hincmar. The figure of Charlemagne alone fills the picture: he is the centre-piece of it and the soul of everything. 'Tis he who wills that the national assemblies should meet and deliberate; 'tis he who inquires into the state of the country; 'tis he who proposes and approves of, or rejects the laws; with him rest will and motive, initiative and decision. He has a mind sufficiently judicious, unshackled, and elevated to understand that the nation ought not to be left in darkness about its affairs and that he himself has need of communicating with it, of gathering information from it, and of learning its opinions. But we have here no exhibition of great political liberties, no people discussing its interests and its business, interfering effectually in the adoption of resolutions, and, in fact, taking in its government so active and decisive a part as to have a right to say that it is self-governing, or, in other words, a free people. It is Charlemagne and he alone who governs; it is absolute government marked by prudence, ability, and grandeur. When the mind dwells upon the state of Gallo-Frankish society in the eighth century, there is nothing astonishing in such a fact. Whether it be civilized or barbarian, that which every society needs, that which it seeks or demands first of all in its government, is a certain degree of good sense and strong will, of intelligence and innate influence, so far as the public interests are concerned; qualities, in fact, which suffice to keep social order maintained or make it realized, and to promote respect for individual rights and the progress of the general well-being. This is the essential aim of every community of men; and the institutions and guarantees of free government are the means of attaining it. It is clear that, in the eighth century, on the ruins of the Roman and beneath the blows of the barbaric world, the Gallo-Frankish nation, vast and without cohesion, brutish and ignorant, was incapable of bringing forth, so to speak, from its own womb, with the aid of its own wisdom and virtue, a government of the kind. A host of different forces, without enlightenment and without restraint, were everywhere and incessantly struggling for dominion, or, in other words, were ever troubling and endangering the social condition. Let there but arise, in the midst of this chaos of unruly forces and selfish passions, a great man, one of those elevated minds and strong characters that can understand the essential aim of society, and then urge it forward, and at the same time keep it well in hand on the roads that lead thereto, and such a man will soon seize and exercise the personal power almost of a despot, and people will not only make him welcome, but even celebrate his praises, for they do not quit the substance for the shadow, or sacrifice the end to the means. Such was the empire of Charlemagne. Among annalists and historians, some, treating him as a mere conqueror and despot, have ignored his merits and his glory; others, that they might admire him without scruple, have made of him a founder of free institutions, a constitutional monarch. Both are equally mistaken: Charlemagne was, indeed, a conqueror and a despot; but by his conquests and his personal power he, so long as he was by, that is, for six-and-forty years, saved Gallo-Frankish society from barbaric invasion without and anarchy within. That is the characteristic of his government and his title to glory. What he was in his wars and his general relations with his nation has just been seen; he shall now be exhibited in all his administrative activity and his intellectual life, as a legislator and as a friend to the human mind. The same man will be recognized in every case; he will grow in greatness, without changing, as he appears under his various aspects. There are often joined together, under the title of _Capitularies_ (_capitula_--small chapters, articles) a mass of acts, very different in point of dates and objects, which are attributed indiscriminately to Charlemagne. This is a mistake. The Capitularies are the laws or legislative measures of the Frankish kings, Merovingian as well as Carlovingian. Those of the Merovingians are few in number, and of slight importance, and among those of the Carlovingians, which amount to 152, 65 only are due to Charlemagne. When an attempt is made to classify these last according to their object, it is impossible not to be struck with their incoherent variety; and several of them are such as we should nowadays be surprised to meet with in a code or in a special law. Among Charlemagne's 65 Capitularies, which contain I,151 articles, may be counted 87 of moral, 293 of political, 130 of penal, no of civil, 85 of religious, 305 of canonical, 73 of domestic, and 12 of incidental legislation. And it must not be supposed that all these articles are really acts of legislation, laws properly so called; we find among them the texts of ancient national laws revised and promulgated afresh; extracts from and additions to these same ancient laws, Salic, Lombard, and Bavarian; extracts from acts of councils; instructions given by Charlemagne to his envoys in the provinces; questions that he proposed to put to the bishops or counts when they came to the national assembly; answers given by Charlemagne to questions addressed to him by the bishops, counts, or commissioners (missi dominici); judgments, decrees, royal pardons, and simple notes that Charlemagne seems to have had written down for himself alone, to remind him of what he proposed to do; in a word, nearly all the various acts which could possibly have to be framed by an earnest, far-sighted, and active government. Often, indeed, these Capitularies have no imperative or prohibitive character; they are simple counsels, purely moral precepts. We read therein, for example: "Covetousness doth consist in desiring that which others possess, and in giving away naught of that which oneself possesseth; according to the apostle, it is the root of all evil." And, "Hospitality must be practised." The Capitularies which have been classed under the heads of _political, penal_, and _canonical legislation_ are the most numerous, and are those which bear most decidedly an imperative of prohibitive stamp; among them a prominent place is held by measures of political economy, administration, and police; you will find therein an attempt to put a fixed price on provisions, a real trial of a _maximum_ for cereals, and a prohibition of mendicity, with the following clause: "If such mendicants be met with, and they labor not with their hands, let none take thought about giving unto them." The interior police of the palace was regulated thereby, as well as that of the empire: "We do will and decree that none of those who serve in our palace shall take leave to receive therein any man who seeketh refuge there and cometh to hide there, by reason of theft, homicide, adultery, or any other crime. That if any free man do break through our interdicts and hide such malefactor in our palace, he shall be bound to carry him on his shoulders to the public quarter, and be there tied to the same stake as the malefactor." Certain Capitularies have been termed _religious legislation,_ in contradistinction to canonical legislation, because they are really admonitions, religious exhortations, addressed not to ecclesiastics alone, but to the faithful, the Christian people in general, and notably characterized by good sense and, one might almost say, freedom of thought. For example: "Beware of venerating the names of martyrs falsely so called, and the memory of dubious saints." "Let none suppose that prayer cannot be made to God save in three tongues [probably Latin, Greek, and Germanic, or perhaps the vulgar tongue; for the last was really beginning to take form], for God is adored in all tongues, and man is heard if he do but ask for the things that be right." These details are put forward that a proper idea may be obtained of Charlemagne as a legislator, and of what are called his laws. We have here, it will be seen, no ordinary legislator and no ordinary laws: we see the work, with infinite variations and in disconnected form, of a prodigiously energetic and watchful master, who had to think and provide for everything, who had to be everywhere the moving and the regulating spirit. This universal and untiring energy is the grand characteristic of Charlemagne's government, and was, perhaps, what made his superiority most incontestable and his power most efficient. It is noticeable that the majority of Charlemagne's Capitularies belong to that epoch of his reign when he was Emperor of the West, when he was invested with all the splendor of sovereign power. Of the 65 Capitularies classed under different heads, 13 only are previous to the 25th of December, 800, the date of his coronation as Emperor at Rome; 52 are comprised between the years 801 and 804. The energy of Charlemagne as a warrior and a politician having thus been exhibited, it remains to say a few words about his intellectual energy. For that is by no means the least original or least grand feature of his character and his influence. Modern times and civilized society have more than once seen despotic sovereigns filled with distrust toward scholars of exalted intellect, especially such as cultivated the moral and political sciences, and little inclined to admit them to their favor or to public office. There is no knowing whether, in our days, with our freedom of thought and of the press, Charlemagne would have been a stranger to this feeling of antipathy; but what is certain is that in his day, in the midst of a barbaric society, there was no inducement to it, and that, by nature, he was not disposed to it. His power was not in any respect questioned; distinguished intellects were very rare; Charlemagne had too much need of their services to fear their criticisms, and they, on their part, were more anxious to second his efforts than to show, toward him, anything like exaction or independence. He gave rein, therefore, without any embarrassment or misgiving, to his spontaneous inclination toward them, their studies, their labors, and their influence. He drew them into the management of affairs. In Guizot's _History of Civilization in France_ there is a list of the names and works of twenty-three men of the eighth and ninth centuries who have escaped oblivion, and they are all found grouped about Charlemagne as his own habitual advisers, or assigned by him as advisers to his sons Pépin and Louis in Italy and Aquitaine, or sent by him to all points of his empire as his commissioners, or charged in his name with important negotiations. And those whom he did not employ at a distance formed, in his immediate neighborhood, a learned and industrious society, a _school of the palace,_ according to some modern commentators, but an _academy_ and not a _school_, according to others, devoted rather to conversation than to teaching. It probably fulfilled both missions; it attended Charlemagne at his various residences, at one time working for him at questions he invited them to deal with, at another giving to the regular components of his court, to his children, and to himself lessons in the different sciences called liberal: grammar, rhetoric, logic, astronomy, geometry, and even theology, and the great religious problems it was beginning to discuss. Two men, Alcuin and Eginhard, have remained justly celebrated in the literary history of the age. Alcuin was the principal director of the school of the palace, and the favorite, the confidant, the learned adviser of Charlemagne. "If your zeal were imitated," said he one day to the Emperor, "perchance one might see arise in France a new Athens, far more glorious than the ancient--the Athens of Christ." Eginhard, who was younger, received his scientific education in the school of the palace, and was head of the public works to Charlemagne, before becoming his biographer, and, at a later period, the intimate adviser of his son Louis the Debonair. Other scholars of the school of the palace, Angilbert, Leidrade, Adalhard, Agobard, Theodulph, were abbots of St. Riquier or Corbie, archbishops of Lyons, and bishops of Orleans. They had all assumed, in the school itself, names illustrious in pagan antiquity: Alcuin called himself _Flaccus_; Angilbert, _Homer_; Theodulph, _Pindar_. Charlemagne himself had been pleased to take, in their society, a great name of old, but he had borrowed from the history of the Hebrews--he called himself _David_; and Eginhard, animated, no doubt, by the same sentiments, was _Bezaleel_, that nephew of Moses to whom God had granted the gift of knowing how to work skilfully in wood and all the materials which served for the construction of the ark and the tabernacle. Either in the lifetime of their royal patron or after his death all these scholars became great dignitaries of the Church, or ended their lives in monasteries of note; but, so long as they lived, they served Charlemagne or his sons not only with the devotion of faithful advisers, but also as followers proud of the master who had known how to do them honor by making use of them. It was without effort and by natural sympathy that Charlemagne had inspired them with such sentiments; for he, too, really loved sciences, literature, and such studies as were then possible, and he cultivated them on his own account and for his own pleasure, as a sort of conquest. It has been doubted whether he could write, and an expression of Eginhard's might authorize such a doubt; but, according to other evidence, and even according to the passage in Eginhard, one is inclined to believe merely that Charlemagne strove painfully, and without much success, to write a good hand. He had learned Latin, and he understood Greek. He caused to be commenced, and, perhaps, himself commenced the drawing up of the first Germanic grammar. He ordered that the old barbaric poems, in which the deeds and wars of the ancient kings were celebrated, should be collected for posterity. He gave Germanic names to the twelve months of the year. He distinguished the winds by twelve special terms, whereas before his time they had but four designations. He paid great attention to astronomy. Being troubled one day at no longer seeing in the firmament one of the known planets, he wrote to Alcuin: "What thinkest thou of this _Mars_, which, last year, being concealed in the sign of Cancer, was intercepted from the sight of men by the light of the sun? Is it the regular course of his revolution? Is it the influence of the sun? Is it a miracle? Could he have been two years about performing the course of a single one?" In theological studies and discussions he exhibited a particular and grave interest. "It is to him," say Ampere and Hauréau, "that we must refer the honor of the decision taken in 794 by the council of Frankfort in the great dispute about images; a temperate decision which is as far removed from the infatuation of the image-worshippers as from the frenzy of the image-breakers." And at the same time that he thus took part in the great ecclesiastical questions, Charlemagne paid zealous attention to the instruction of the clergy whose ignorance he deplored. "Ah," said he one day, "if only I had about me a dozen clerics learned in all the sciences, as Jerome and Augustin were!" With all his puissance it was not in his power to make Jeromes and Augustins; but he laid the foundation, in the cathedral churches and the great monasteries, of episcopal and cloistral schools for the education of ecclesiastics, and, carrying his solicitude still further, he recommended to the bishops and abbots that, in those schools, "they should take care to make no difference between the sons of serfs and of free men, so that they might come and sit on the same benches to study grammar, music, and arithmetic." Thus, in the eighth century, he foreshadowed the extension which, in the nineteenth, was to be accorded to primary instruction, to the advantage and honor not only of the clergy, but also of the whole people. After so much of war and toil at a distance, Charlemagne was now at Aix-la-Chapelle, finding rest in this work of peaceful civilization. He was embellishing the capital which he had founded, and which was called the king's court. He had built there a grand basilica, magnificently adorned. He was completing his own palace there. He fetched from Italy clerics skilled in church music, a pious joyance to which he was much devoted, and which he recommended to the bishops of his empire. In the outskirts of Aix-la-Chapelle "he gave full scope," says Eginhard, "to his delight in riding and hunting. Baths of naturally tepid water gave him great pleasure. Being passionately fond of swimming, he became so dexterous that none could be compared with him. He invited not only his sons, but also his friends, the grandees of his court, and sometimes even the soldiers of his guard, to bathe with him, insomuch that there were often a hundred and more persons bathing at a time." When age arrived, he made no alteration in his bodily habits; but, at the same time, instead of putting away from him the thought of death, he was much taken up with it, and prepared himself for it with stern severity. He drew up, modified, and completed his will several times over. Three years before his death he made out the distribution of his treasures, his money, his wardrobe, and all his furniture, in the presence of his friends and his officers, in order that their voice might insure, after his death, the execution of this partition, and he set down his intentions in this respect in a written summary, in which he massed all his riches in three grand lots. The first two were divided into twenty-one portions, which were to be distributed among the twenty-one metropolitan churches of his empire. After having put these first two lots under seal, he willed to preserve to himself his usual enjoyment of the third so long as he lived. But after his death, or voluntary renunciation of the things of this world, this same lot was to be subdivided into four portions. His intention was that the first should be added to the twenty-one portions which were to go to the metropolitan churches; the second set aside for his sons and daughters, and for the sons and daughters of his sons, and redivided among them in a just and proportionate manner; the third dedicated, according to the usage of Christians, to the necessities of the poor; and, lastly, the fourth distributed in the same way, under the name of alms, among the servants, of both sexes, of the palace for their lifetime. As for the books which he had amassed, a large number in his library, he decided that those who wished to have them might buy them at their proper value, and that the money which they produced should be distributed among the poor. Having thus carefully regulated his own private affairs and bounty, he, two years later, in 813, took the measures necessary for the regulation, after his death, of public affairs. He had lost, in 811, his oldest son, Charles, who had been his constant companion in his wars, and, in 810, his second son, Pépin, whom he had made King of Italy; and he summoned to his side his third son, Louis, King of Aquitaine, who was destined to succeed him. He ordered the convocation of five local councils which were to assemble at Mayence, Rheims, Châlons, Tours, and Aries, for the purpose of bringing about, subject to the King's ratification, the reforms necessary in the Church. Passing from the affairs of the Church to those of the State, he convoked at Aix-la-Chapelle a general assembly of bishops, abbots, counts, laic grandees, and of the entire people, and, holding council in his palace with the chief among them, "he invited them to make his son Louis king-emperor; whereto all assented, saying that it was very expedient, and pleasing, also, to the people. On Sunday in the next month, August, 813, Charlemagne repaired, crown on head, with his son Louis to the cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle, laid upon the altar another crown, and, after praying, addressed to his son a solemn exhortation respecting all his duties as king toward God and the Church, toward his family and his people, asked him if he were fully resolved to fulfil them, and, at the answer that he was, bade him take the crown that lay upon the altar, and place it with his own hands upon his head, which Louis did amid the acclamations of all present, who cried, 'Long live the emperor Louis!' Charlemagne then declared his son emperor jointly with him, and ended the solemnity with these words: 'Blessed be thou, O Lord God, who hast granted me grace to see with mine own eyes my son seated on my throne!'" And Louis set out again immediately for Aquitaine. He was never to see his father again. Charlemagne, after his son's departure, went out hunting, according to his custom, in the forest of Ardenne, and continued during the whole autumn his usual mode of life. "But in January, 814, he was taken ill," says Eginhard, "of a violent fever, which kept him to his bed. Recurring forthwith to the remedy he ordinarily employed against fever, he abstained from all nourishment, persuaded that this diet would suffice to drive away or at the least assuage the malady; but added to the fever came that pain in the side which the Greeks call _pleurisy_; nevertheless the Emperor persisted in his abstinence, supporting his body only by drinks taken at long intervals; and on the seventh day after that he had taken to his bed, having received the holy communion," he expired about 9 A.M., on Saturday, the 28th of January, 814, in his seventy-first year. "After performance of ablutions and funeral duties, the corpse was carried away and buried, amid the profound mourning of all the people, in the church he had himself had built; and above his tomb there was put up a gilded arcade with his image and this superscription: 'In this tomb reposeth the body of Charles, great and orthodox Emperor, who did gloriously extend the kingdom of the Franks, and did govern it happily for forty-seven years. He died at the age of seventy years, in the year of the Lord 814, in the seventh year of the Indiction, on the 5th of the Kalends of February.'" If we sum up his designs and his achievements, we find an admirably sound idea and a vain dream, a great success and a great failure. Charlemagne took in hand the work of placing upon a solid foundation the Frankish Christian dominion by stopping, in the North and South, the flood of barbarians and Arabs, paganism and Islamism. In that he succeeded; the inundations of Asiatic populations spent their force in vain against the Gallic frontier. Western and Christian Europe was placed, territorially, beyond reach of attacks from the foreigner and infidel. No sovereign, no human being, perhaps, ever rendered greater service to the civilization of the world. Charlemagne formed another conception and made another attempt. Like more than one great barbaric warrior, he admired the Roman Empire that had fallen, its vastness all in one, and its powerful organization under the hand of a single master. He thought he could resuscitate it, durably, through the victory of a new people and a new faith, by the hand of Franks and Christians. With this view he labored to conquer, convert, and govern. He tried to be, at one and the same time, Cæsar, Augustus, and Constantine. And for a moment he appeared to have succeeded; but the appearance passed away with himself. The unity of the empire and the absolute power of the emperor were buried in his grave. The Christian religion and human liberty set to work to prepare for Europe other governments and other destinies. EGBERT BECOMES KING OF THE ANGLO-SAXON HEPTARCHY A.D. 827 DAVID HUME From the time that the Britons called upon the Saxons to assist them against the Picts and Scots, about A.D. 410, the domination of the hardy Teutonic people in England was a foregone conclusion. The Britons had become exhausted through their long exposure to Roman influences, and in their state of enfeeblement were unable to resist the attacks of the rude highland tribes. The Saxons rescued the Britons from their plight, but themselves became masters of the country which they had delivered. They were joined by the Angles and Jutes, and divided the territory into the kingdoms known in history as the Saxon Heptarchy,[73] which had an existence of about two hundred and fifty years. The various members were involved in endless controversies with each other, often breaking out into savage wars, and the Saxons were also exposed to conflicts with their common enemies, the Britons. Their power was greatly impaired by the civil strifes which distracted them. This condition continued until it became essential that under a strong hand a more solid union of the Saxons should be formed. And it was to Egbert, King of the West Saxons, the son of Ealhmund, King of Kent, that this great constructive task was committed. He took the throne of Wessex in 802, for twelve years enjoyed a peaceful reign, then became involved in wars, first with the Cornish and afterward with the Mercians. His victories in these wars resulted in the final establishment of his authority over the entire heptarchy, and this made him in fact, though not in name, the first real king of England. When Brithric obtained possession of the government of Wessex, he enjoyed not that dignity without inquietude. Eoppa, nephew to King Ina, by his brother Ingild, who died, before that prince, had begot Eata, father to Alchmond, from whom sprung Egbert, a young man of the most promising hopes, who gave great jealousy to Brithric, the reigning prince, both because he seemed by his birth better entitled to the crown and because he had acquired, to an eminent degree, the affections of the people. Egbert, sensible of his danger from the suspicions of Brithric, secretly withdrew into France, where he was well received by Charlemagne. By living in the court, and serving in the armies of that prince, the most able and most generous that had appeared in Europe during several ages, he acquired those accomplishments which afterward enabled him to make such a shining figure on the throne. And familiarizing himself to the manners of the French, who, as Malmesbury observes, were eminent both for valor and civility above all the western nations, he learned to polish the rudeness and barbarity of the Saxon character; his early misfortunes thus proved of singular advantage to him. It was not long ere Egbert had opportunities of displaying his natural and acquired talents. Brithric, King of Wessex, had married Eadburga, natural daughter of Offa, King of Mercia, a profligate woman, equally infamous for cruelty and for incontinence. Having great influence over her husband, she often instigated him to destroy such of the nobility as were obnoxious to her; and where this expedient failed, she scrupled not being herself active in traitorous attempts against them. She had mixed a cup of poison for a young nobleman, who had acquired her husband's friendship, and had on that account become the object of her jealousy; but unfortunately the King drank of the fatal cup along with his favorite, and soon after expired. This tragical incident, joined to her other crimes, rendered Eadburga so odious that she was obliged to fly into France; whence Egbert was at the same time recalled by the nobility, in order to ascend the throne of his ancestors. He attained that dignity in the last year of the eighth century. In the kingdoms of the heptarchy, an exact rule of succession was either unknown or not strictly observed; and thence the reigning prince was continually agitated with jealousy against all the princes of the blood, whom he still considered as rivals, and whose death alone could give him entire security in his possession of the throne. From this fatal cause, together with the admiration of the monastic life, and the opinion of merit attending the preservation of chastity even in a married state, the royal families had been entirely extinguished in all the kingdoms except that of Wessex; and the emulations, suspicions, and conspiracies, which had formerly been confined to the princes of the blood alone, were now diffused among all the nobility in the several Saxon states. Egbert was the sole descendant of those first conquerors who subdued Britain, and who enhanced their authority by claiming a pedigree from Woden, the supreme divinity of their ancestors. But that prince, though invited by this favorable circumstance to make attempts on the neighboring Saxons, gave them for some time no disturbance, and rather chose to turn his arms against the Britons in Cornwall, whom he defeated in several battles. He was recalled from the conquest of that country by an invasion made upon his dominions by Bernulf, King of Mercia. The Mercians, before the accession of Egbert, had very nearly attained the absolute sovereignty in the heptarchy: they had reduced the East Angles under subjection, and established tributary princes in the kingdoms of Kent and Essex. Northumberland was involved in anarchy; and no state of any consequence remained but that of Wessex, which, much inferior in extent to Mercia, was supported solely by the great qualities of its sovereign. Egbert led his army against the invaders; and encountering them at Ellandun, in Wiltshire, obtained a complete victory, and, by the great slaughter which he made of them in their flight, gave a mortal blow to the power of the Mercians. While he himself, in prosecution of his victory, entered their country on the side of Oxfordshire, and threatened the heart of their dominions, he sent an army into Kent, commanded by Ethelwulf, his eldest son, and, expelling Baldred, the tributary King, soon made himself master of that country. The kingdom of Essex was conquered with equal facility, and the East Angles, from their hatred of the Mercian government, which had been established over them by treachery and violence, and probably exercised with tyranny, immediately rose in arms and craved the protection of Egbert. Bernulf, the Mercian King, who marched against them, was defeated and slain; and two years after, Ludican, his successor, met with the same fate. These insurrections and calamities facilitated the enterprises of Egbert, who advanced into the centre of the Mercian territories and made easy conquests over a dispirited and divided people. In order to engage them more easily to submission, he allowed Wiglef, their countryman, to retain the title of king, while he himself exercised the real powers of sovereignty. The anarchy which prevailed in Northumberland tempted him to carry still further his victorious arms; and the inhabitants, unable to resist his power, and desirous of possessing some established form of government, were forward, on his first appearance, to send deputies, who submitted to his authority and swore allegiance to him as their sovereign. Egbert, however, still allowed to Northumberland, as he had done to Mercia and East Anglia, the power of electing a king, who paid him tribute and was dependent on him. Thus were united all the kingdoms of the heptarchy in one great state, near four hundred years after the first arrival of the Saxons in Britain; and the fortunate arms and prudent policy of Egbert at last effected what had been so often attempted in vain by so many princes. Kent, Northumberland, and Mercia, which had successfully aspired to general dominion, were now incorporated in his empire; and the other subordinate kingdoms seemed willingly to share the same fate. His territories were nearly of the same extent with what is now properly called England; and a favorable prospect was afforded to the Anglo-Saxons of establishing a civilized monarchy, possessed of tranquillity within itself, and secure against foreign invasion. This great event happened in the year 827. The Saxons, though they had been so long settled in the island, seem not as yet to have been much improved beyond their German ancestors, either in arts, civility, knowledge, humanity, justice, or obedience to the laws. Even Christianity, though it opened the way to connections between them and the more polished states of Europe, had not hitherto been very effectual in banishing their ignorance or softening their barbarous manners. As they received that doctrine through the corrupted channels of Rome, it carried along with it a great mixture of credulity and superstition, equally destructive to the understanding and to morals. The reverence toward saints and relics seems to have almost supplanted the adoration of the Supreme Being; monastic observances were esteemed more meritorious than the active virtues; the knowledge of natural causes was neglected, from the universal belief of miraculous interpositions and judgments; bounty to the Church atoned for every violence against society; and the remorses for cruelty, murder, treachery, assassination, and the more robust vices, were appeased, not by amendment of life, but by penances, servility to the monks, and an abject and illiberal devotion.[74] The reverence for the clergy had been carried to such a height that wherever a person appeared in a sacerdotal habit, though on the highway, the people flocked around him, and, showing him all marks of profound respect, received every word he uttered as the most sacred oracle. Even the military virtues, so inherent in all the Saxon tribes, began to be neglected; and the nobility, preferring the security and sloth of the cloister to the tumults and glory of war, valued themselves chiefly on endowing monasteries, of which they assumed the government. The several kings, too, being extremely impoverished by continual benefactions to the Church, to which the states of their kingdoms had weakly assented, could bestow no rewards on valor or military services, and retained not even sufficient influence to support their government. Another inconvenience which attended this corrupt species of Christianity was the superstitious attachment to Rome, and the gradual subjection of the kingdom to a foreign jurisdiction. The Britons, having never acknowledged any subordination to the Roman pontiff, had conducted all ecclesiastical government by their domestic synods and councils; but the Saxons, receiving their religion from Roman monks, were taught at the same time a profound reverence for that see, and were naturally led to regard it as the capital of their religion. Pilgrimages to Rome were represented as the most meritorious acts of devotion. Not only noblemen and ladies of rank undertook this tedious journey, but kings themselves, abdicating their crowns, sought for a secure passport to heaven at the feet of the Roman pontiff. New relics, perpetually sent from that inexhaustible mint of superstition, and magnified by lying miracles, invented in convents, operated on the astonished minds of the multitude. And every prince has attained the eulogies of the monks, the only historians of those ages, not in proportion to his civil and military virtues, but to his devoted attachment toward their order, and his superstitious reverence for Rome. The sovereign pontiff, encouraged by this blindness and submissive disposition of the people, advanced every day in his encroachments on the independence of the English churches. Wilfrid, bishop of Lindisferne, the sole prelate of the Northumbrian kingdom, increased this subjection in the eighth century, by his making an appeal to Rome against the decisions of an English synod, which had abridged his diocese by the erection of some new bishoprics. Agatho, the pope, readily embraced this precedent of an appeal to his court; and Wilfrid, though the haughtiest and most luxurious prelate of his age, having obtained with the people the character of sanctity, was, thus able to lay the foundation of this papal pretension. The great topic by which Wilfrid confounded the imaginations of men was that St. Peter, to whose custody the keys of heaven were intrusted, would certainly refuse admittance to everyone who should be wanting in respect to his successor. This conceit, well suited to vulgar conceptions, made great impression on the people during several ages, and has not even at present lost all influence in the Catholic countries. Had this abject superstition produced general peace and tranquillity, it had made some atonement for the ills attending it; but besides the usual avidity of men for power and riches, frivolous controversies in theology were engendered by it, which were so much the more fatal as they admitted not, like the others, of any final determination from established possession. The disputes, excited in Britain, were of the most ridiculous kind, and entirely worthy of those ignorant and barbarous ages. There were some intricacies, observed by all the Christian churches, in adjusting the day of keeping Easter, which depended on a complicated consideration of the course of the sun and moon; and it happened that the missionaries who had converted the Scots and Britons had followed a different calendar from that which was observed at Rome, in the age when Augustine converted the Saxons. The priests also of all the Christian churches were accustomed to shave part of their head; but the form given to this tonsure was different in the former from what was practised in the latter. The Scots and Britons pleaded the antiquity of _their_ usages; the Romans and their disciples, the Saxons, insisted on the universality of _theirs_. That Easter must necessarily be kept by a rule which comprehended both the day of the year and age of the moon, was agreed by all; that the tonsure of a priest could not be omitted without the utmost impiety was a point undisputed; but the Romans and Saxons called their antagonists schismatics, because they celebrated Easter on the very day of the full moon in March, if that day fell on a Sunday, instead of waiting till the Sunday following; and because they shaved the fore part of their head from ear to ear, instead of making that tonsure on the crown of the head, and in a circular form. In order to render their antagonists odious they affirmed that once in seven years they concurred with the Jews in the time of celebrating that festival: and that they might recommend their own form of tonsure they maintained that it imitated symbolically the crown of thorns worn by Christ in his passion; whereas the other form was invented by Simon Magus, without any regard to that representation. These controversies had from the beginning excited such animosity between the British and Romish priests that, instead of concurring in their endeavors to convert the idolatrous Saxons, they refused all communion together, and each regarded his opponent as no better than a pagan. The dispute lasted more than a century, and was at last finished, not by men's discovering the folly of it, which would have been too great an effort for human reason to accomplish, but by the entire prevalence of the Romish ritual over the Scotch and British. Wilfrid, bishop of Lindisferne, acquired great merit, both with the court of Rome and with all the southern Saxons, by expelling the "quartodeciman" schism, as it was called, from the Northumbrian kingdom, into which the neighborhood of the Scots had formerly introduced it. Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, called, in the year 680, a synod at Hatfield, consisting of all the bishops in Britain, where was accepted and ratified the decree of the Lateran council, summoned by Martin, against the heresy of the Monothelites. The council and synod maintained, in opposition to these heretics, that, though the divine and human nature in Christ made but one person, yet had they different inclinations, wills, acts, and sentiments, and that the unity of the person implied not any unity in the consciousness. This opinion it seems somewhat difficult to comprehend; and no one, unacquainted with the ecclesiastical history of those ages, could imagine the height of zeal and violence with which it was then inculcated. The decree of the Lateran council calls the Monothelites impious, execrable, wicked, abominable, and even diabolical, and curses and anathematizes them to all eternity. The Saxons, from the first introduction of Christianity among them, had admitted the use of images; and perhaps that religion, without some of those exterior ornaments, had not made so quick a progress with these idolaters; but they had not paid any species of worship or address to images; and this abuse never prevailed among Christians till it received the sanction of the second council of Nice. The kingdoms of the heptarchy, though united by so recent a conquest, seemed to be firmly cemented into one state under Egbert; and the inhabitants of the several provinces had lost all desire of revolting from that monarch or of restoring their former independent governments. Their language was everywhere nearly the same, their customs, laws, institutions, civil and religious; and as the race of the ancient kings was totally extinct in all the subjected states, the people readily transferred their allegiance to a prince who seemed to merit it by the splendor of his victories, the vigor of his administration, and the superior nobility of his birth. A union also in government opened to them the agreeable prospect of future tranquillity; and it appeared more probable that they would thenceforth become formidable to their neighbors than be exposed to their inroads and devastations. But these flattering views were soon overcast by the appearance of the Danes, who, during some centuries, kept the Anglo-Saxons in perpetual inquietude, committed the most barbarous ravages upon them, and at last reduced them to grievous servitude. FOOTNOTES: [73] The seven kingdoms founded in England by seven different Saxon invaders. They were Kent, Sussex, Wessex, Essex, Northumbria, East Anglia, and Mercia. [74] These abuses were common to all the European churches; but the priests in Italy, Spain, and Gaul made some atonement for them by other advantages which they rendered society. For several ages they were almost all Romans, or, in other words, the ancient natives; and they preserved the Roman language and laws, with some remains of the former civility. But the priests in the heptarchy, after the first missionaries, were wholly Saxons, and almost as ignorant and barbarous as the laity. They contributed, therefore, little to the improvement of society in knowledge or the arts. CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY EMBRACING THE PERIOD COVERED IN THIS VOLUME A.D. 410-842 JOHN RUDD, LL.D. Events treated at length are here indicated in large type; the numerals following give volume and page. Separate chronologies of the various nations, and of the careers of famous persons, will be found in the INDEX VOLUME, with volume and page references showing where the several events are fully treated. A.D. 410. Britain is abandoned by the Roman Empire. Franks join in the Barbarian attack on Gaul. Siege, capture, and pillage of Rome by Alaric; he dies and is succeeded by Adolphus. See "VISIGOTHS PILLAGE ROME," iv, I. 411. Count Gerontius makes Constans prisoner and slays him; he besieges Constantine in Aries, where he, is put to flight by Constantius, Honorius' general, and, after being deserted by his soldiers, he stabs himself. Constantine surrenders to Constantius, is sent to Ravenna and beheaded. Jovinus revolts at Mainz. Conference between Catholics and Donatists at Carthage, after which more severe laws are enacted against the latter. 412. Jovinus makes his brother Sebastian his colleague. The Visigoths enter Gaul. 413. Adolphus overcomes Jovinus and Sebastian and sends their heads to Honorius. Title of augusta taken by Pulcheria at Constantinople; she governs in the East in the name of her brother Theodosius. 415. Adolphus lays the foundation of the Visigoth dominion in Spain. Brutal murder of Hypatia, a lovely woman and a Neo-Platonic philosopher of Alexandria. Persecution of Jews at Alexandria. Adolphus assassinated at Barcelona by Sigeric, who usurps the throne, but is killed seven days afterward, and Wallia chosen king by the Visigoths. 418. Wallia relinquishes a part of his conquests in Spain to Honorius, and receives the province of Aquitaine in Gaul. 420. St. Jerome dies in Palestine. A persecution of the Christians in Persia leads to war between that nation and the Eastern Empire. 422. Peace concluded with Persia. Incursion of the Huns into Thrace. 423. Death of Honorius; usurpation of Joannes the Notary. 425. Joannes is beheaded. The young Valentinian is proclaimed emperor, and his mother, Placidia, regent. A synod at Carthage forbids appeals to the Bishop of Rome. The revenues of the Church are become very large. 428. Conquests of the Vandals in Spain. Nestorius, Bishop of Constantinople, founds the sect of Nestorians, which still subsists in Persia and Turkey. 429. Wild Moors join the Vandals who have invaded Africa. 430. Bonifacius unsuccessfully opposes the Vandals in Africa; they besiege Hippo Regius. St. Augustine dies there in the third month of the siege. 431. Hippo Regius falls. Third general council of the Church, held at Ephesus; one of the most turbulent in history. 432. Bonifacius, although victorious, perishes in the conflict with his rival Aetius. 433. Attila, King of the Huns, begins his reign.[75] St. Patrick preaches in Ireland. 435. Nestorius exiled to the Libyan desert. 439. The Vandals, under Genseric, take Carthage. 440. Leo the Great elected pope. 441. Attila and his Huns pass the Danube; they invade Illyricum. See "HUNS INVADE THE EASTERN ROMAN EMPIRE," iv, 28. 442. Valentinian by a treaty of peace cedes Africa to Genseric. A comet is visible. 444. Attila murders his brother, Bleda, and rules alone over the Huns. 446. Britons in vain apply to Aetius for aid against the Picts and Scots. Thermopylæ passed by the Huns; the Eastern Emperor makes humiliating terms of peace with Attila. See "HUNS INVADE THE EASTERN ROMAN EMPIRE," iv, 28. Pope Leo assumes a tone of high authority, and asserts the supremacy of the Roman Pontiff over all other bishops. 449. Landing of the Jutes under Hengist and Horsa in Britain, called there to repel the Picts and Scots. See "THE ENGLISH CONQUEST OF BRITAIN," iv, 55. The "Robber Synod" meets at Ephesus. It reinstates Eutyches in the office of priest and archimandrite, from which he had been expelled, and exposes Flavian, Patriarch of Constantinople, who is so roughly attacked that he dies soon afterward of his injuries. A synod at Rome reverses the acts at Ephesus. 450. Death of Theodosius II; by a nominal marriage his sister Pulcheria raises Marcian to the throne. Attila demands the princess Honoria in marriage. 451. Gaul invaded by Attila; battle of Châlons. See "ATTILA INVADES WESTERN EUROPE," iv, 72. Fourth general council of the Church, held at Chalcedon; the acts of the "Robber Synod" are annulled. 452. Attila, after withdrawing from Gaul, ravages Italy; he besieges and destroys Aquileia; its inhabitants flee to the marshes; Rome is saved by its Bishop, Leo the Great. Venice is founded. See "FOUNDATION OF VENICE," iv, 95. 453. Death of Attila; dissolution of his empire. Death of the empress Pulcheria. 454. Hengist founds the kingdom of Kent. 455. Maximus murders Valentinian III and usurps the throne of the Western Empire; at the end of three months Maximus is killed by the people. The Vandals pillage Rome. Avitus is proclaimed emperor of the West. 456. Ricimer, commander of the Barbarian mercenaries in the West, destroys a Vandal fleet near Corsica; he declares against Avitus, who abdicates. 457. Majorian placed on the throne of the West by Ricimer and the senate. Leo I ascends the throne in the East. 460. Genseric destroys Majorian's fleet at Carthagena. Peace is made between them. 461. Majorian is assassinated by Ricimer, who places his puppet Severus on the throne, exercising the Imperial power himself. 465. Death of Severus; Ricimer still wields the supreme power in Rome. 467. Anthemius made emperor of the West. The Vandals ravage the coasts of Italy and Sicily. 468. Leo I, Emperor of the East, aided by the Western Empire, makes an earnest but ineffectual effort against the Vandals under Genseric. 472. Ricimer besieges and storms Rome; death of Ricimer and of Anthemius; Olybrius and Glycerius are emperors successively. 473. Invasion of Italy by the Ostrogoths diverted to Gaul. Glycerius emperor of the West. 474. Julius Nepos becomes emperor of the West. Zeno rules the Eastern Empire. 475. Romulus Augustulus emperor of the West. Zeno and his wife flee to Isauria. 476. Odoacer, a leader of German mercenaries, dethrones Augustulus and puts an end to the Western Empire for three centuries. The title of king of Italy assumed by Odoacer. 486. Clovis founds the kingdom of the Franks. He defeats Syagrius at Soissons, and thus puts an end to Roman dominion in Gaul. See "CLOVIS FOUNDS THE KINGDOM OF THE FRANKS," iv, 113. 488. The Eastern Emperor commissions Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, to invade Italy. 489. Theodoric defeats Odoacer at Verona. 490. Odoacer is again defeated; he retires to Ravenna. 491. Anastasius becomes emperor of the East by marrying the widow of Zeno, who had recently died. The South Saxons capture Anderida. 492. Anastasius grants liberty of conscience and remits oppressive taxes. 493. Theodoric besieges Odoacer in Ravenna; he is captured and murdered; Theodoric becomes king of the whole of Italy. 494. An earthquake overthrows the cities of Laodicea, Hierapolis, and Tripolis. Pope Gelasius makes the distinction between the canonical and apocryphal books of the Scriptures. He asserts his divine right, as Bishop of Rome, to universal supremacy. 495.[76] Cerdic and his band of Saxons, who sail in five ships, land in Britain. 496. Clovis vanquishes the Alemanni; he is baptized. See "CLOVIS FOUNDS THE KINGDOM OF THE FRANKS," iv, 113. 497. The Arabs (Saracens) invade Syria; they are repulsed by Eugenius. Many Athanasian bishops are banished from Africa to Sardinia. 498. Publication of the _Babylonian Talmud_ or _Gemaras_. Violent contest between Symmachus and Laurentius for the episcopal throne at Rome, decided by Theodoric in favor of the former. 500. Clovis, King of the Franks, defeats the Burgundians near Dijon. 502. Syria and Palestine ravaged by the Saracens. The Bulgarians again devastate Thrace. 504. Expulsion by the Franks of the Alemanni from the Middle Rhine. Theodoric defeats the Bulgarians and retakes Sirmium, which they had captured. 505. Peace is declared between the Eastern Empire and Persia, ending desultory conflicts that had continued some years. 507. Clovis overthrows the Visigoths near Poitiers; he becomes master of nearly the whole of Aquitania. See "CLOVIS FOUNDS THE KINGDOM OF THE FRANKS," iv, 113. Amalarich, Alaric's infant son, and Giselich, his natural son, are proclaimed joint kings of the Visigoths by Theodoric; he preserves for them all Spain and a part of Gaul. 508. Natanleod, a British prince, is defeated and slain, in a desperate battle, by Cerdic the Saxon. 510. Clovis adds the territory of certain minor Frank princes to his own territory; he makes Paris his capital. See "CLOVIS FOUNDS THE KINGDOM OF THE FRANKS," iv, 113. 511. Death of Clovis; the Frankish kingdom is divided equally among his four sons: Theodoric I (Thierry), Metz; Clodomir, Orleans; Childebert I, Paris; and Clotair, Soissons. Monophysite riot at Constantinople, caused by the controversy respecting the nature of Christ. 512. Second Monophysite riot at Constantinople. 515. A body of Huns breaks through the Caspian gates and invades Cappadocia. Publication of St. Benedict's monastic rule. 518. Death of Anastasius, the Eastern Emperor, and accession of Justin I. 519. Cerdic gives the name of Wessex to that part of Britain conquered by him; he assumes the title of king; Cynric is his coadjutor. 523. Sigismund, the Burgundian King, assumes the monastic habit, but is betrayed into the hands of the Franks, who throw him, with his wife and children, into a well at Orleans. His brother, Gondemar, is elected king. 525. Theodoric, King of Italy, orders the execution of Boethius and Symmachus. 526. Death of Theodoric and accession of Athalaric. Great earthquake at Antioch, which destroys the city; 250,000 persons perish. The Eastern Empire begins war with Persia. 527. Justinian proclaimed joint augustus, soon after which, by the death of Justin, he becomes sole emperor. Use of the Christian era introduced by Dionysius Exiguus. 528. Thuringia conquered by the Franks. 529. Julian, leader of a Jewish and Samaritan revolt, is made prisoner and beheaded. Justinian issues edicts against philosophers, heretics, and pagans. See "PUBLICATION OF THE JUSTINIAN CODE," iv, 138. Closing of the schools at Athens. 530. Benedict founds his new monastic order; the principal seat is Monte Casino, Campania.[77] Belisarius, the greatest general of the Byzantine empire, defeats the Persians at Dara. 531. Alamundarus, at the head of the Persians and Saracens, defeats Belisarius, who maintains his ground against their nearly overwhelming force. Accession of Khusrau to the throne of Persia. 532. End of the war between the Eastern Empire and Persia. 533. Justinian's general, Belisarius, destroys the Vandal kingdom in Africa. Publication of the _Pandects_ and _Institutes_ of Justinian. See "PUBLICATION OF THE JUSTINIAN CODE," iv, 138. Philosophers, who were driven from Constantinople by Justinian's orders, return disappointed from Persia. 534. Overthrow of the Burgundian kingdom by the Franks, who divide the dominions between the three Frankish kings. Solomon, left by Belisarius to command in Africa, defeats the Moors. 535. Belisarius is sent by Justinian to recover Italy from the Ostrogoths; he occupies Sicily. 536. Rome is occupied by Belisarius. 537. Vitiges unsuccessfully besieges Belisarius in Rome; great distress in the city. 538. Vitiges retreats from before Rome and takes shelter in Ravenna. 539. The Franks, under Theodebert, invade Italy and plunder Genoa; attacked by disease they return into Gaul. 540. Vitiges surrenders Ravenna and is sent a prisoner to Constantinople. Justinian recalls Belisarius from Italy. Khusrau, King of Persia, invades Syria and takes Antioch. A total eclipse of the sun, June 20th. Justinian makes a formal relinquishment of Gaul to the Franks. 541. Belisarius takes the command of the Roman forces against the Persians; he defeats Khusrau. Totila, King of the Ostrogoths, is successful in Italy. End of the succession of Roman consuls. 542. Belisarius compels the Persians to recross the Euphrates. The great plague spreads from Egypt and rages for many years in Asia and Europe. 543. Naples surrenders to Totila, who then advances against Rome. Belisarius recalled from the East, after which the Persians again advance and defeat the Romans. Moors renew the war in Africa; Solomon is slain in battle against them; Sergius, his successor, is incompetent. Spain invaded by the Franks. 544. Again Belisarius is sent into Italy, but without supplies and with very inadequate forces. Stotzas, leader of the Moors, defeats the Romans, but is slain in the battle. 545. While Belisarius awaits reinforcements Totila takes Asculum and Spoletum, and lays siege to Rome. 546. Rome is betrayed to Totila; Belisarius is joined by fresh troops, but arrives too late to prevent the capture and pillage. 547. Rome is utterly deserted for six weeks; it is retaken by Belisarius, who repairs the walls. Ida founds the kingdom of Bernicia, in Northumberland, and builds Bamborough. Bavaria becomes subject to the Franks. 548. Death of Theodora, Empress of the East. Crotona and Tarentum are captured by Belisarius, after which he is recalled to the East. 549. Second siege and capture of Rome by Totila. The Lazic War begins--a contest of Rome and Persia on the Phasis; called Lazic from the Lazi, a tribe which still subsists. 550. Vigilius, at Constantinople, urges Justinian to rescue Italy from the dominion of Arians. Illyrium is freed of the Slavonians. 551. Totila restores the senate at Rome. Silkworms said to have been first reared in Europe from eggs brought out of the East. 552. Totila defeated and slain by Narses, Belisarius' successor, to whom the greater part of Italy submits. Teias is appointed their king by the Ostrogoths. Cyric puts the Britons to flight at the battle of Searobyrig (Sarum). 553. Narses puts an end to the power of the Ostrogoths in Italy, and annexes it to the Eastern Empire. Fifth general council of the Church at Constantinople. The exarch is established at Ravenna, representing the Emperor of the East. 554. Italy is invaded by the Franks and Alemanni; they are defeated by Narses. 555. Tzathes declared king of the Lazi; the Persians are defeated by the Romans at Phasis. War between Clotaire and the Saxons. 558. Death of Childebert; the Salic Law prevents his daughters reigning; their brother, Clotaire, becomes sole king of the Franks. 559. Belisarius' last achievement is to expel the Bulgarians, who advanced to within twenty miles of Constantinople. 561. Death of Clotaire; the Frankish kingdom again divided. The services of Belisarius excite the jealousy of Justinian and his courtiers. 562. Conspiracy of Marcellus and Sergius against Justinian; Belisarius unjustly accused of having taken part in the plot. 563. Belisarius is acquitted of the charges brought against him; he is restored to his honors. St. Columba founds the monastery of Iona in Scotland. 565. Death of Belisarius, also of the emperor Justinian. Justin II succeeds to the throne. 566.[78] Alboin, at the head of the Lombards, and aided by the Avars, destroys the kingdom of the Gepidæ in Pannonia. War in Britain between the kings of Kent and Wessex. 567. Austrasia, Neustria, and Burgundy formed by the division of the Frankish kingdom. 568. Invasion of Italy by the Lombards; Pavia besieged. Longinus, the successor of Narses, is styled the exarch of Ravenna by the Byzantines. 570.[79] Birth of Mahomet. See "THE HEGIRA," iv, 198. Death of Narses. 571. Khusrau persecuting the Armenians, they place themselves under the protection of Justin; this leads to war between the Persians and Romans. Uffa founds the kingdom of East Anglia in Britain. 572. Marcianus is sent by Rome to conduct the war against the Persians. Alboin, Lombardy, grants allotments of territory to his chief captains, with titles of princes or dukes, for which they are to render military service. 573. Alboin, King of the Lombards, is murdered by Rosamond, his wife; she flees to Ravenna with her lover Helmichis, where she poisons him; before he dies he compels her to drain the cup. Cleoph is elected king of Lombardy. The Visigoths subjugate the Suevi in Spain. 574. Tiberius is appointed Cæsar at Rome; he concludes a peace with the Persians. He is defeated by the Avars on the Danube. Cleoph, the Lombard King, is slain; his son being a child, many of the dukes assume royal power and great anarchy prevails. 575. Justinian, son of Germanus, defeats the Persians and advances to the Araxes. 576. Armenia is occupied by the Persians; Justinian arrives too late to prevent it. 578. Death of Justin. Accession of the emperor Tiberius Constantinus in the East. 579. Maurice, commanding the Romans, is victorious over the Persians. 580. Further successes of Maurice in Mesopotamia. 582. Death of Tiberius and accession of Maurice, Emperor in the East. 584. Many native Gauls retire into Armorica, where they preserve their Celtic tongue. 586. Cridda founds the last Saxon kingdom of Mercia. The Britons retire to the western side of the island, unite in a general league, and call themselves Cymri. 588. Northumberland is founded by the union of the kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira, under Ethelric. 589. Arianism is abandoned by the Visigoths in Spain. 591. Peace between Persia and the Eastern Empire. 597. Augustine sent by Gregory the Great to preach Christianity to the Anglo-Saxons. See "AUGUSTINE'S MISSIONARY WORK IN ENGLAND," iv, 182. 602. Revolt in Constantinople; Phocas is proclaimed emperor; flight of Maurice with his family; they are taken and put to death. 603. Khusrau, the Persian ruler, declares war against Phocas to revenge the death of his benefactor, Maurice. 605. Phocas begins his cruelties; Constantina, the widow of Maurice, is tortured and afterward beheaded with her daughters; Narses is decoyed to Constantinople and there burned alive. The hippodrome is defaced by the heads and mangled remains of the tyrant's victims. 607. Phocas concedes to Boniface III the supremacy of Rome over all Christian churches. 608. Boniface IV consecrates the Pantheon--built by Agrippa to the memory of his divine ancestors B.C. 27--as the Church of Santa Maria Rotunda. Khusrau II, King of Persia, invades Asia Minor. 610. Phocas is given up to Heraclius and beheaded; Heraclius declared emperor of the East. Venetia has an incursion of the Avars. 612. Cæsarea, Cappadocia, taken by the Persians. Syria is invaded by the Saracens. 613. Clotaire unites under his rule all the territories of the Franks. The youthful Ali becomes Mahomet's vizier. 614. Damascus and Jerusalem are taken by the Persians under Khusrau II. 616. Alexandria and Egypt conquered by the Persians; another army encamps at Chalcedon. Their general, Saen, introduces to Khusrau an embassy from Heraclius, for which he is flayed alive, and the ambassador imprisoned. Death of Ethelbert; his son Eadbald succeeds him and restores the pagan worship to England; he is afterward converted to Christianity. First expulsion of the Jews from Spain. 619. Heraclius, while holding a conference with Baian, is treacherously attacked by the Avars; he escapes with difficulty. 622. Roused from his apathy, Heraclius leaves Constantinople and lands at Alexandria; he defeats the Persians, recovers Cilicia, and places his army in secure winter quarters. Flight of Mahomet from Mecca to Medina: the era of the Hegira commences, July 16th. See "THE HEGIRA," iv, 198. 623. Heraclius occupies Armenia, takes Thebarma (Ooramiah), the birthplace of Zoroaster, reconquers Colchis and Iberia, and winters in Albania, having released 50,000 captives. Suintilla takes the few remaining places in Spain that were still held by the Greek empire. 624. Ispahan, Persia, is taken by Heraclius; he defeats Sarbaraza at Salban. 625. Heraclius carries away an immense booty from Persia; he recovers Amida and Samosata. 626. Constantinople is besieged by the Persians and Avars; the siege fails. The emperor Heraclius contracts an alliance with the Turks, who, passing the Caspian gates, invade Persia. 627. Khusrau II is overwhelmed by Heraclius and his Turkish allies. King Edwin, of Northumberland, embraces Christianity and builds the first minster of wood, at York. 628. Recovery of Jerusalem and of the presumed true Cross by Heraclius from the Persians. Khusrau 11 deposed and slain; by treaty all the possessions captured by the Persians are restored to Rome. 630 (629). Mecca surrenders to Mahomet; he invades Palestine. 631. After many revolutions in Persia, Cesra is made king. Dagobert I reunites the Frankish empire. 632. Death of Mahomet; his successor, Abu-Bekr, sends an army into Syria. See "THE SARACEN CONQUEST OF SYRIA," iv, 247. Oswald builds the first minster of stone at York. 634. Death of Abu-Bekr; accession of Omar as head of the Saracens. 635. Defeat of the Welsh by the English at Heavenfield. 636. The Roman army is overcome by the Saracens. See "THE SARACEN CONQUEST OF SYRIA," iv, 247. 637. Emesa, Balbec, and Jerusalem taken by the Saracens. 638. Heraclius, unable to resist the Mahometans, retires to Constantinople, where he publishes his _Ecthesis_. Death of Dagobert; his two sons succeed, Clovis to Neustria and Burgundy, Sigebert to Austrasia. 640. Capture of Cæsarea. Invasion of Egypt by Amru, the general of Omar. See "SARACENS CONQUER EGYPT," iv, 278. 641. Death of Heraclius, Emperor of the East; three rival emperors succeed; accession of Constans II. The Sassanian kingdom ends. 642. Victory at Nehavend by the Saracens; this places Persia in their power. Istria and Dalmatia invaded by the Slavonians. 643. Rotharis publishes the Lombard code of laws. 644. Assassination of Omar; Othman succeeds. See "SARACENS CONQUER EGYPT," iv, 278. 646. Alexandria recaptured by the Greeks and again lost. 647. Abdallah advances, at the head of the Saracens, from Egypt to Roman Africa. 648. Constans II issues his _Type_, or model of faith. 649. Constans II orders the new exarch Olympius to enforce the adoption of his _Type_ by the Western Church; it is rejected by the First Lateran Council. 650. The Moslems conquer Merv, Balkh, and Herat.[80] Many orthodox churches are plundered by Constans II. 651. Death of Yezdejerd and end of the Persian kingdom. 652. Conversion of the East Saxons in England. 653. Pope Martin I is seized and banished by Constans II. 654. Martin, in Constantinople, is stripped of his pontifical robes and imprisoned; after long hesitation Eugenius is elected pope in his stead. 656. Assassination of Caliph Othman; Ali succeeds; Moawiyah revolts against him; he is supported by Ayesha the widow of Mahomet, Amru, Telhar, and Zobeir. These dissensions suspend the conquests of the Saracens. Ali is victorious on "the Day of the Camel"; Telhar and Zobeir are slain; Ayesha is made prisoner and sent to Medina. 657. Kufa is made the seat of government by Caliph Ali. 658. Constans takes the field against the Slavonians and repulses them. Amru is sent by Moawiyah into Egypt and expels Ali's partisans. The two caliphs publicly pray for each other while waging fierce war. 660. Ali is assassinated; Hasan, his eldest son, is elected caliph. 661. Hasan resigns the caliphate; Moawiyah, the first of the Ommiads, becomes undisputed ruler of the Moslems; he makes Damascus his capital. Death of Aribert; Lombardy is divided between his two sons. Constans, detested by all classes, leaves Constantinople and goes to Italy; the senate detains the Empress and his sons. 663. Constans visits Rome and carries away much spoil and retires to Syracuse. 664. Caliph Moawiyah appoints as his lieutenant in Persia, India, and the East his half-brother, Ziyad, "the greatest man of the age." 668. Constans is assassinated in a bath at Syracuse; Constans IV succeeds to the throne of the Eastern Empire. The Sicilians set up Mecezius as emperor. Constantinople is first besieged by the Saracens. 669. Sicily is invaded by the Saracens, who capture Syracuse. 670. Kairwan, or Kayrawan, a holy Mahometan city in Northern Africa, founded. Death of Clotaire III; Theodoric, or Thierry III, becomes king of Neustria and Burgundy. 671. Ebroin and Thierry are compelled by the Franks to retire into a monastery; Childeric for a time reigns alone. 672. Death of Ziyad; his son, appointed by Caliph Moawiyah lieutenant of Khorassan, penetrates into Bokhara and defeats the Turks. 673. First council of the Anglo-Saxon Church, at Hereford. Year after year the Saracens repeat their attacks on Constantinople; Callinicus invents the Greek fire used successfully in its defence. Thierry III and Ebroin leave their monastery and resume the government of Neustria. Birth of the Venerable Bede.[81] 674. Revolts of the Gascons and Duke Paulus repressed by Wamba, King of the Visigoths in Spain. The Bavarians, Thuringians, and other German subjects of Austrasia regain their independence. 677. Siege of Constantinople raised by the Mahometans; peace concluded.[82] Domnus restores the authority of Rome over the Church at Ravenna. 678. Bulgarians establish themselves in the north of Thrace. Egfrid expels Wilfrid from York and divides his diocese; Wilfrid goes to Rome and obtains from Pope Agatho an order for his restoration. Egfrid resists the papal interference. A large comet visible for three months. 679. A council held at Rome for the reunion of the Greek and Latin churches. 680. Sixth general council of the Church, at Constantinople; Monothelite heresy condemned. Establishment of a kingdom in Mæsia (modern Bulgaria) by the Bulgarians.[83] Hoseyn, son of Ali, and his followers massacred at Kerbela. Murder of Dagobert II, after which Pépin of Héristal and Martin rule Austrasia with the title of dukes. Attempt to poison Wamba; he resigns his crown and retires into a monastery; Ervigius succeeds him as king of the Visigoths. 683. For twelve months the papacy is vacant after the death of Leo II. 684. Constantine sends to Rome locks of the hair of his two sons, in token of their adoption by the Church. Egfrid sends Beort with an army into Ireland and lays waste the country. 685. Justinian II becomes emperor of the East on the death of Constantine IV. The Picts defeat the Angles of Northumbria under King Ecgfrith, at Nactansmere. 687. Battle of Testri; the victory of Pépin of Héristal gives him the sway over the whole Frankish empire. 688. Cædwalla resigns the crown of Wessex to Ina and goes to Rome; he dies there one year later. 690. On the death of Theodore, Berthwald becomes the first archbishop of Canterbury. Two Anglo-Saxon bishops, Kilian and Wilbrord, preach in Germany. Pépin allows Clovis III to succeed Thierry III as nominal ruler of Neustria. 691. Council of Constantinople, called "Quinisextum in Trullo"; not acknowledged by the Western Church. 692. The Mahometans defeat the army collected by Justinian at Sebastopolis. Armenia is conquered by the Mahometans. 694. Justinian's two ministers provoke his subjects by their oppressions; Leontius imprisoned. 695. Leontius, released from prison, is proclaimed emperor of the East; Justinian, with his nose cut off, is banished. 696. Pépin favors the preaching of the Anglo-Saxon missionaries among the Franks and Frisians; he appoints Wilbrord, under the name of Clemens, bishop of Utrecht. 697. Election of the first doge, with a council of tribunes and judges, in Venice. See "EVOLUTION OF THE DOGESHIP IN VENICE," iv, 292. 698. Hasan, at the head of the Saracens, storms and destroys Carthage. 699. At Mount Atlas the Berbers, or wild shepherds, successfully resist the advance of the Mahometans. 705. An army of Bulgarians, under Terbelis, restores Justinian to his throne; he inflicts bloody vengeance for his expulsion. Accession of Caliph Welid. 706. Pope John VII refuses to accept, or even revise, the acts of the Council of Constantinople, A.D. 691, which Justinian requires him to adopt. 707. The Mahometans, under Musa, overcome the Berbers and are masters of all Northern Africa; they establish themselves in the valley of the Indus and conquer Karisme, Bokhara, and Samarkand, whence they introduce the manufacture of paper. 708. Justinian, unmindful of his obligations to Terbelis, attacks the Bulgarians, but is defeated. 709. Roderic ascends the Gothic throne in Spain. Theodorus, by order of the Emperor Justinian, plunders Ravenna and sends the principal inhabitants to Constantinople, where they are cruelly murdered. 711. Tarik, with a large force of Arab-Moors, lands in Spain. See "SARACENS IN SPAIN," iv, 301. Justinian's continued cruelties provoke a revolt at Ravenna; he sends a fleet and army to destroy Cherson and massacre its inhabitants. The citizens of Cherson proclaim Bardanes emperor, under the name of Philippicus; his cause is espoused by both the fleet and army, which conduct him to Constantinople, where he is acknowledged, and Justinian is put to death. 713. Musa, at the head of the Saracens, crosses the Pyrenees. 715. Charles Martel gains the ascendency in Austrasia; he contends against Chilperic II, the successor of Dagobert in Neustria. 717. Leo the Isaurian ascends the throne of the Eastern Empire. Constantinople is again besieged by the Moslems. The Saracens suffer a disastrous defeat at the Cave of Covadonga, Spain. 718. Charles Martel is victorious at Soissons; both Frankish kingdoms acknowledge him. 719. Narbonne is captured and occupied by the Saracens under Zana. 721. Zana defeated and slain at the battle of Toulouse. Egbert, Abbot of Iona, translates the four gospels into Anglo-Saxon. 726. Iconoclastic edicts by Leo the Isaurian, against the worship of images, causes tumult and insurrection in Constantinople. 730. Image worship prohibited throughout the Eastern Empire. 731. Last confirmation of a papal election by the Eastern Emperor, the occasion being the election of Gregory III. 732. Battle of Tours, when Charles Martel utterly routs the Saracens and saves the empire of the Franks. See "BATTLE OF TOURS," iv, 313. Pope Gregory III calls a council at Rome; an edict is issued against the iconoclasts. 733. Emperor Leo marries his son Constantine to a Tartar or Turkish princess, who at her baptism takes the name of Irene. 740. The Saracens are expelled from the greater part of France by Charles Martel and his ally, Lieutprand. Death of Leo the Isaurian; accession of Constantine V as emperor of the East. 742. Birth of Charlemagne. 744. Carloman defeats the Saxons; they are forced into baptism. 746. King Carloman relinquishes the throne of the Franks, and retires into a monastery. See "FOUNDING OF THE CARLOVINGIAN DYNASTY," iv, 324. 747. Great plague in Constantinople. 748. Venetian merchants having purchased slaves to be sold in Africa to the Saracens, Pope Zachary forbids the traffic. Virgilius, a priest, convicted of heresy for believing in the existence of the antipodes. 750. End of the Ommiad and rise of the Abbasside dynasty of caliphs; all the family of the former, except Abderrahman, put to death. 751. Pépin the Short founds the Carlovingian dynasty of the Franks. See "FOUNDING OF THE CARLOVINGIAN DYNASTY," iv, 324. 752. Extinction of the exarchate of Ravenna by the Lombards under Astolphus. 753. Pope Stephen II journeys to France. 754. Pépin the Short is crowned by Stephen II. See "FOUNDING OF THE CARLOVINGIAN DYNASTY," iv, 324. 755. Pépin the Short defeats Astolphus, King of the Lombards, and invests Pope Stephen II with Ravenna, and other places taken from the Lombards. The Papal States founded. St. Boniface is martyred in Germany. 756. Abderrahman founds the kingdom of the Ommiads at Cordova. 757. Emperor Constantine courts the favor of Pépin; among other presents he sends him the first organ known in France. 759. Pépin conquers Narbonne and expels the last Saracens from France. 762.[84] Founding of Bagdad, the capital of the eastern caliphs. 767. Death of Pope Paul I; usurpation of Constantine, antipope. 768. Pépin dies and is succeeded by his sons Charles (Charlemagne) and Carloman. See "CAREER OF CHARLEMAGNE," iv, 334. 769. Council of Rome annuls all acts of the deposed pope Constantine; he, although blinded by the populace, is led into the assembly, insulted, and beaten. Laymen are declared incapable of being made bishops. 771. Death of Carloman; Charlemagne becomes sole king of the Franks. See "CAREER OF CHARLEMAGNE," iv, 334. 772. Charlemagne begins his long war against the Saxons. 774. Charlemagne visits Rome; he captures Pavia after a siege of eight months; and also puts an end to the kingdom of Lombardy. The papal temporalities are increased by Charlemagne. Forgery of the "Donation of Constantine" used as a plea to urge Charlemagne still more to aggrandize the see of Rome. 778. Spain is invaded by Charlemagne; on his return to repel the Saxons his rear-guard is surprised; there ensues the "Dolorous Rout" of Roncesvalles. See "CAREER OF CHARLEMAGNE," iv, 334. 780. The government of the Eastern Empire is assumed by Irene in the name of her son, Constantine VI. 781. Charlemagne visits Rome; his two sons are crowned by the Pope--one king of Italy, the other of Aquitaine. 785. Irene proposes a general council to establish the worship of images. Fierce struggle of the Saxons against Charlemagne; Wittikind and Alboin submit and profess Christianity. 786. On the death of Al Hadi, the famous Harun-al-Rashid succeeds to the eastern caliphate. 787. Second Council of Nice--the seventh general council of the Church; it decrees the worship of images. 788. Bavaria is brought completely under the sway of Charlemagne. 789.[85] The first recorded inroad of the Northmen (Danes) into England. 790.[86] Publication of the _Caroline Books_, being the judgments of the general council of the bishops of the West on certain religious dogmas. 791. First campaign of Charlemagne against the Avars or Huns; they are defeated. 792. King Offa murders Ethelbert and annexes East Anglia to Mercia; in atonement for his crime he levies a tax on his subjects to support the school founded at Rome by Ina; this is afterward converted into "Peter's pence." 797. Irene deposes and puts out the eyes of her son, Emperor Constantine VI of the Eastern Empire. 799. Charlemagne finally conquers the Avars or Huns. 800. Pope Leo III presides at the coronation of Charlemagne as emperor of the West. See "CAREER OF CHARLEMAGNE," iv, 334. Egbert is recalled from France by the West Saxons, who make him their king; the name of England is given to his dominions. 801. Barcelona is conquered from the Moors by the Franks. 802. Harun-al-Rashid murders the Barmecides, a powerful Persian family of high renown. 807. Harun-al-Rashid founds public schools; he sends an embassy to Charlemagne with rich presents, among which is a curious clock of brass. The Saracens of Spain repulsed in their attempt on Sardinia and Corsica. 812. Civil war ensues between the sons of Harun-al-Rashid, who had died three years previously. 813. Constantinople menaced by the Bulgarian khan Krumn. 814. Death of Charlemagne; Louis _le Débonnaire_, his only surviving son, succeeds. 815. Louis exacts an apology from Pope Leo for having exercised civil judicial power at Rome. 817. Partition of the Frankish empire by Louis _le Débonnaire_. 826. Harold of South Jutland baptized; he receives from Louis a grant of land in Friesland. 827. The Saxon heptarchy founded by Egbert, King of Wessex. See "EGBERT BECOMES KING OF THE ANGLO-SAXON HEPTARCHY," iv, 372. Beginning of the Saracen conquest of Sicily. 828. Syracuse and a great part of Catalonia captured by the Saracens. 829. North Wales submits to Egbert. Dungallo, a monk who had written a book in defence of image-worship, is placed over the school of Pavia. 830. First rebellion of the sons of Louis _le Débonnaire_. 832. Danes land on the Isle of Sheppey, England. 833. Louis is a prisoner in the hands of his son Lothair, who assumes full imperial power after the "Field of Lies." Danes land in Wessex from thirty-five ships, and defeat Egbert. The regular succession of Scottish kings begins with Alpine. 834. Continuance of the differences between the Anglo-Saxon and Roman clergy in England. See "EGBERT BECOMES KING OF THE ANGLO-SAXON HEPTARCHY," iv, 372. Lothair compelled by his brother to restore their father, Louis, to his throne. 835. Egbert defeats a combined army of Danes and Cornish Britons at Hengston. Danes invade the Netherlands and sack Utrecht. 836. Antwerp is burned and Flanders ravaged by the Danes. Death of the first English king, Egbert. 837. First incursion of the Danes up the Rhine. 838. The Danes sail up the Loire and ravage the country as far as Tours. Caliph Montassem invades Asia Minor. 839. Venetians repress the piracy of the Dalmatians, but lose their ships in an attack on the Saracens at Tarento. 840. Death of Louis _le Débonnaire_ at Ingelheim; his empire divided into three separate states: Lothair (Emperor), taking Italy; Charles, France; Louis, Bavaria or Germany. Disputes follow. 841. Louis and Charles unite to resist the pretensions of Lothair; he is defeated at the battle of Fontenailles (Fontenay). Rouen plundered by the Danes under Hastings. 842. A final sanction to image-worship is given by the Council of Constantinople. The "Oath of Strasburg," a valuable matter of philology and history, which shows that in 841 the distinctions of race and language were beginning to make themselves felt. It sealed the pact made between Louis of Austrasia and Charles of Neustria. FOOTNOTES: [75] Date uncertain. [76] Date uncertain. [77] Date uncertain. [78] Date uncertain. [79] Date uncertain. [80] Date uncertain. [81] Date uncertain. [82] Date uncertain. [83] Date uncertain. [84] Date uncertain. [85] Date uncertain. [86] Date uncertain. END OF VOLUME IV 
754	----	THE STORY OF MANKIND By Hendrik Van Loon, Ph.D. Professor of the Social Sciences in Antioch College. Author of The Fall of the Dutch Republic, The Rise of the Dutch Kingdom, The Golden Book of the Dutch Navigators, A Short Story of Discovery, Ancient Man. Frontispiece caption= THE SCENE OF OUR HISTORY IS LAID UPON A LITTLE PLANET, LOST IN THE VASTNESS OF THE UNIVERSE. To JIMMIE "What is the use of a book without pictures?" said Alice. FOREWORD For Hansje and Willem: WHEN I was twelve or thirteen years old, an uncle of mine who gave me my love for books and pictures promised to take me upon a memorable expedition. I was to go with him to the top of the tower of Old Saint Lawrence in Rotterdam. And so, one fine day, a sexton with a key as large as that of Saint Peter opened a mysterious door. "Ring the bell," he said, "when you come back and want to get out," and with a great grinding of rusty old hinges he separated us from the noise of the busy street and locked us into a world of new and strange experiences. For the first time in my life I was confronted by the phenomenon of audible silence. When we had climbed the first flight of stairs, I added another discovery to my limited knowledge of natural phenomena--that of tangible darkness. A match showed us where the upward road continued. We went to the next floor and then to the next and the next until I had lost count and then there came still another floor, and suddenly we had plenty of light. This floor was on an even height with the roof of the church, and it was used as a storeroom. Covered with many inches of dust, there lay the abandoned symbols of a venerable faith which had been discarded by the good people of the city many years ago. That which had meant life and death to our ancestors was here reduced to junk and rubbish. The industrious rat had built his nest among the carved images and the ever watchful spider had opened up shop between the outspread arms of a kindly saint. The next floor showed us from where we had derived our light. Enormous open windows with heavy iron bars made the high and barren room the roosting place of hundreds of pigeons. The wind blew through the iron bars and the air was filled with a weird and pleasing music. It was the noise of the town below us, but a noise which had been purified and cleansed by the distance. The rumbling of heavy carts and the clinking of horses' hoofs, the winding of cranes and pulleys, the hissing sound of the patient steam which had been set to do the work of man in a thousand different ways--they had all been blended into a softly rustling whisper which provided a beautiful background for the trembling cooing of the pigeons. Here the stairs came to an end and the ladders began. And after the first ladder (a slippery old thing which made one feel his way with a cautious foot) there was a new and even greater wonder, the town-clock. I saw the heart of time. I could hear the heavy pulsebeats of the rapid seconds--one--two--three--up to sixty. Then a sudden quivering noise when all the wheels seemed to stop and another minute had been chopped off eternity. Without pause it began again--one--two--three--until at last after a warning rumble and the scraping of many wheels a thunderous voice, high above us, told the world that it was the hour of noon. On the next floor were the bells. The nice little bells and their terrible sisters. In the centre the big bell, which made me turn stiff with fright when I heard it in the middle of the night telling a story of fire or flood. In solitary grandeur it seemed to reflect upon those six hundred years during which it had shared the joys and the sorrows of the good people of Rotterdam. Around it, neatly arranged like the blue jars in an old-fashioned apothecary shop, hung the little fellows, who twice each week played a merry tune for the benefit of the country-folk who had come to market to buy and sell and hear what the big world had been doing. But in a corner--all alone and shunned by the others--a big black bell, silent and stern, the bell of death. Then darkness once more and other ladders, steeper and even more dangerous than those we had climbed before, and suddenly the fresh air of the wide heavens. We had reached the highest gallery. Above us the sky. Below us the city--a little toy-town, where busy ants were hastily crawling hither and thither, each one intent upon his or her particular business, and beyond the jumble of stones, the wide greenness of the open country. It was my first glimpse of the big world. Since then, whenever I have had the opportunity, I have gone to the top of the tower and enjoyed myself. It was hard work, but it repaid in full the mere physical exertion of climbing a few stairs. Besides, I knew what my reward would be. I would see the land and the sky, and I would listen to the stories of my kind friend the watchman, who lived in a small shack, built in a sheltered corner of the gallery. He looked after the clock and was a father to the bells, and he warned of fires, but he enjoyed many free hours and then he smoked a pipe and thought his own peaceful thoughts. He had gone to school almost fifty years before and he had rarely read a book, but he had lived on the top of his tower for so many years that he had absorbed the wisdom of that wide world which surrounded him on all sides. History he knew well, for it was a living thing with him. "There," he would say, pointing to a bend of the river, "there, my boy, do you see those trees? That is where the Prince of Orange cut the dikes to drown the land and save Leyden." Or he would tell me the tale of the old Meuse, until the broad river ceased to be a convenient harbour and became a wonderful highroad, carrying the ships of De Ruyter and Tromp upon that famous last voyage, when they gave their lives that the sea might be free to all. Then there were the little villages, clustering around the protecting church which once, many years ago, had been the home of their Patron Saints. In the distance we could see the leaning tower of Delft. Within sight of its high arches, William the Silent had been murdered and there Grotius had learned to construe his first Latin sentences. And still further away, the long low body of the church of Gouda, the early home of the man whose wit had proved mightier than the armies of many an emperor, the charity-boy whom the world came to know as Erasmus. Finally the silver line of the endless sea and as a contrast, immediately below us, the patchwork of roofs and chimneys and houses and gardens and hospitals and schools and railways, which we called our home. But the tower showed us the old home in a new light. The confused commotion of the streets and the market-place, of the factories and the workshop, became the well-ordered expression of human energy and purpose. Best of all, the wide view of the glorious past, which surrounded us on all sides, gave us new courage to face the problems of the future when we had gone back to our daily tasks. History is the mighty Tower of Experience, which Time has built amidst the endless fields of bygone ages. It is no easy task to reach the top of this ancient structure and get the benefit of the full view. There is no elevator, but young feet are strong and it can be done. Here I give you the key that will open the door. When you return, you too will understand the reason for my enthusiasm. HENDRIK WILLEM VAN LOON. CONTENTS 1. THE SETTING OF THE STAGE 2. OUR EARLIEST ANCESTORS 3. PREHISTORIC MAX BEGINS TO MAKE THINGS FOR HIMSELF 4. THE EGYPTIANS INVENT THE ART OF WRITING AND THE RECORD OF HISTORY BEGINS 5. THE BEGINNING OF CIVILISATION IN THE VALLEY OF THE NILE 6. THE RISE AND FALL OF EGYPT 7. MESOPOTAMIA, THE SECOND CENTRE OF EASTERN CIVILISATION 8. THE SUMERIAN NAIL WRITERS, WHOSE CLAY TABLETS TELL US THE STORY OF ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA, THE GREAT SEMITIC MELTING-POT 9. THE STORY OF MOSES, THE LEADER OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE 10. THE PHOENICIANS, WHO GAVE US OUR ALPHABET 11. THE INDO-EUROPEAN PERSIANS CONQUER THE SEMITIC AND THE EGYPTIAN WORLD 12. THE PEOPLE OF THE AEGEAN SEA CARRIED THE CIVILISATION OF OLD ASIA INTO THE WILDERNESS OF EUROPE 13. MEANWHILE THE INDO-EUROPEAN TRIBE OF THE HELLENES WAS TAKING POSSESSION OF GREECE 14. THE GREEK CITIES THAT WERE REALLY STATES 15. THE GREEKS WERE THE FIRST PEOPLE TO TRY THE DIFFICULT EXPERIMENT OF SELF-GOVERNMENT 16. HOW THE GREEKS LIVED 17. THE ORIGINS OF THE THEATRE, THE FIRST FORM OF PUBLIC AMUSEMENT 18. HOW THE GREEKS DEFENDED EUROPE AGAINST AN ASIATIC INVASION AND DROVE THE PERSIANS BACK ACROSS THE AEGEAN SEA 19. HOW ATHENS AND SPARTA FOUGHT A LONG AND DISASTROUS WAR FOR THE LEADERSHIP OF GREECE 20. ALEXANDER THE MACEDONIAN ESTABLISHES A GREEK WORLD EMPIRE, AND WHAT BECAME OF THIS HIGH AMBITION 21. A SHORT SUMMARY OF CHAPTERS 1 TO 20 22. THE SEMITIC COLONY OF CARTHAGE ON THE NORTHERN COAST OF AFRICA AND THE INDO-EUROPEAN CITY OF ROME ON THE WEST COAST OF ITALY FOUGHT EACH OTHER FOR THE POSSESSION OF THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN AND CARTHAGE WAS DESTROYED 23. HOW ROME HAPPENED 24. HOW THE REPUBLIC OF ROME, AFTER CENTURIES OF UNREST AND REVOLUTION, BECAME AN EMPIRE 25. THE STORY OF JOSHUA OF NAZARETH, WHOM THE GREEKS CALLED JESUS 26. THE TWILIGHT OF ROME 27. HOW ROME BECAME THE CENTRE OF THE CHRISTIAN WORLD 28. AHMED, THE CAMEL DRIVER, WHO BECAME THE PROPHET OF THE ARABIAN DESERT, AND WHOSE FOLLOWERS ALMOST CONQUERED THE ENTIRE KNOWN WORLD FOR THE GREATER GLORY OF ALLAH, THE "ONLY TRUE GOD" 29. HOW CHARLEMAGNE, THE KING OF THE RANKS, CAME TO BEAR THE TITLE OF EMPEROR AND TRIED TO REVIVE THE OLD IDEAL OF WORLD-EMPIRE 30. WHY THE PEOPLE OF THE TENTH CENTURY PRAYED THE LORD TO PROTECT THEM FROM THE FURY OF THE NORSEMEN 31. HOW CENTRAL EUROPE, ATTACKED FROM THREE SIDES, BECAME AN ARMED CAMP AND WHY EUROPE WOULD HAVE PERISHED WITHOUT THOSE PROFESSIONAL SOLDIERS AND ADMINISTRATORS WHO WERE PART OF THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 32. CHIVALRY 33. THE STRANGE DOUBLE LOYALTY OF THE PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE AGES, AND HOW IT LED TO ENDLESS QUARRELS BETWEEN THE POPES AND THE HOLY ROMAN EMPERORS 34. BUT ALL THESE DIFFERENT QUARRELS WERE FORGOTTEN WHEN THE TURKS TOOK THE HOLY LAND, DESECRATED THE HOLY PLACES AND INTERFERED SERIOUSLY WITH THE TRADE FROM EAST TO WEST. EUROPE WENT CRUSADING 35. WHY THE PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE AGES SAID THAT CITY AIR IS FREE AIR 36. HOW THE PEOPLE OF THE CITIES ASSERTED THEIR RIGHT TO BE HEARD IN THE ROYAL COUNCILS OF THEIR COUNTRY 37. WHAT THE PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE AGES THOUGHT OF THE WORLD IN WHICH THEY HAPPENED TO LIVE 38. HOW THE CRUSADES ONCE MORE MADE THE MEDITERRANEAN A BUSY CENTRE OF TRADE AND HOW THE CITIES OF THE ITALIAN PENINSULA BECAME THE GREAT DISTRIBUTING CENTRE FOR THE COMMERCE WITH ASIA AND AFRICA 39. PEOPLE ONCE MORE DARED TO BE HAPPY JUST BECAUSE THEY WERE ALIVE. THEY TRIED TO SAVE THE REMAINS OF THE OLDER AND MORE AGREEABLE CIVILISATION OF ROME AND GREECE AND THEY WERE 80 PROUD OF THEIR ACHIEVEMENTS THAT THEY SPOKE OF A RENAISSANCE OR RE-BIRTH OF CIVILISATION 40. THE PEOPLE BEGAN TO FEEL THE NEED OF GIVING EXPRESSION TO THEIR NEWLY DISCOVERED JOY OF LIVING. THEY EXPRESSED THEIR HAPPINESS IN POETRY AND IN SCULPTURE AND IN ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING, AND IN THE BOOKS THEY PRINTED 41. BUT NOW THAT PEOPLE HAD BROKEN THROUGH THE BONDS OF THEIR NARROW MEDIEVAL LIMITATIONS, THEY HAD TO HAVE MORE ROOM FOR THEIR WANDERINGS. THE EUROPEAN WORLD HAD GROWN TOO SMALL FOR THEIR AMBITIONS. IT WAS THE TIME OF THE GREAT VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY 42. CONCERNING BUDDHA AND CONFUCIUS 43. THE PROGRESS OF THE HUMAN RACE IS BEST COMPARED TO A GIGANTIC PENDULUM WHICH FOREVER SWINGS FORWARD AND BACKWARD. THE RELIGIOUS INDIFFERENCE AND THE ARTISTIC AND LITERARY ENTHUSIASM OF THE RENAISSANCE WERE FOLLOWED BY THE ARTISTIC AND LITERARY INDIFFERENCE AND THE RELIGIOUS ENTHUSIASM OF THE REFORMATION 44. THE AGE OF THE GREAT RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSIES 45. HOW THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS AND THE LESS DIVINE BUT MORE REASONABLE RIGHT OF PARLIAMENT ENDED DISASTROUSLY FOR KING CHARLES II 46. IN FRANCE, ON THE OTHER HAND, THE DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS CONTINUED WITH GREATER POMP AND SPLENDOR THAN EVER BEFORE AND THE AMBITION OF THE RULER WAS ONLY TEMPERED BY THE NEWLY INVENTED LAW OF THE BALANCE OF POWER 47. THE STORY OF THE MYSTERIOUS MUSCOVITE EMPIRE WHICH SUDDENLY BURST UPON THE GRAND POLITICAL STAGE OF EUROPE 48. RUSSIA AND SWEDEN FOUGHT MANY WARS TO DECIDE WHO SHALL BE THE LEADING POWER OF NORTHEASTERN EUROPE 49. THE EXTRAORDINARY RISE OF A LITTLE STATE IN A DREARY PART OF NORTHERN GERMANY, CALLED PRUSSIA 50. HOW THE NEWLY FOUNDED NATIONAL OR DYNASTIC STATES OF EUROPE TRIED TO MAKE THEMSELVES RICH AND WHAT WAS MEANT BY THE MERCANTILE SYSTEM 51. AT THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EUROPE HEARD STRANGE REPORTS OF SOMETHING WHICH HAD HAPPENED IN THE WILDERNESS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN CONTINENT. THE DESCENDANTS OF THE MEN WHO HAD PUNISHED KING CHARLES FOR HIS INSISTENCE UPON HIS DIVINE RIGHTS ADDED A NEW CHAPTER TO THE OLD STORY OF THE STRUGGLE FOR SELF-GOVERNMENT 62. THE GREAT FRENCH REVOLUTION PROCLAIMS THE PRINCIPLES OF LIBERTY, FRATERNITY AND EQUALITY UNTO All THE PEOPLE OF THE EARTH 53. NAPOLEON 54. AS SOON AS NAPOLEON HAD BEEN SENT TO ST. HELENA, THE RULERS WHO SO OFTEN HAD BEEN DEFEATED BY THE HATED CORSICAN MET AT VIENNA AND TRIED TO UNDO THE MANY CHANCES WHICH HAD BEEN BROUGHT ABOUT BY THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 55. THEY TRIED TO ASSURE THE WORLD AN ERA OF UNDISTURBED PEACE BY SUPPRESSING ALL NEW IDEAS. THEY MADE THE POLICE-SPY THE HIGHEST FUNCTIONARY IN THE STATE AND SOON THE PRISONS OF ALL COUNTRIES WERE FILLED WITH THOSE WHO CLAIMED THAT PEOPLE HAVE THE RIGHT TO GOVERN THEMSELVES AS THEY SEE FIT 56. THE LOVE OF NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE, HOWEVER, WAS TOO STRONG TO BE DESTROYED IN THIS WAY. THE SOUTH AMERICANS WERE THE FIRST TO REBEL AGAINST THE REACTIONARY MEASURES OF THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA. GREECE AND BELGIUM AND SPAIN AND A LARGE NUMBER OF OTHER COUNTRIES OF THE EUROPEAN CONTINENT FOLLOWED SUIT AND THE NINETEENTH CENTURY WAS FILLED WITH THE RUMOR OF MANY WARS OF INDEPENDENCE 57. BUT WHITE THE PEOPLE OF EUROPE WERE FIGHTING FOR THEIR NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE, THE WORLD IN WHICH THEY LIVED HAD BEEN ENTIRELY CHANGED BY A SERIES OF INVENTIONS, WHICH HAD MADE THE CLUMSY OLD STEAM-ENGINE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY THE MOST FAITHFUL AND EFFICIENT STAVE OF MAN 58. THE NEW ENGINES WERE VERY EXPENSIVE AND ONLY PEOPLE OF WEALTH COULD AFFORD THEM. THE OLD CARPENTER OR SHOEMAKER WHO HAD BEEN HIS OWN MASTER IN HIS LITTLE WORKSHOP WAS OBLIGED TO HIRE HIMSELF OUT TO THE OWNERS OF THE BIG MECHANICAL TOOLS, AND WHITE HE MADE MORE MONEY THAN BEFORE, HE LOST HIS FORMER INDEPENDENCE AND HE DID NOT LIKE THAT 59. THE GENERAL INTRODUCTION OF MACHINERY DID NOT BRING ABOUT THE ERA OF HAPPINESS AND PROSPERITY WHICH HAD BEEN PREDICTED BY THE GENERATION WHICH SAW THE STAGE COACH REPLACED BY THE RAILROAD. SEVERAL REMEDIES WERE SUGGESTED, BUT NONE OF THESE QUITE SOLVED THE PROBLEM 60. BUT THE WORLD HAD UNDERGONE ANOTHER CHANGE WHICH WAS OF GREATER IMPORTANCE THAN EITHER THE POLITICAL OR THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTIONS. AFTER GENERATIONS OF OPPRESSION AND PERSECUTION, THE SCIENTIST HAD AT LAST GAINED LIBERTY OF ACTION AND HE WAS NOW TRYING TO DISCOVER THE FUNDAMENTAL LAWS WHICH GOVERN THE UNIVERSE 61. A CHAPTER OF ART 62. THE LAST FIFTY YEARS, INCLUDING SEVERAL EXPLANATIONS AND A FEW APOLOGIES 63. THE GREAT WAR, WHICH WAS REALLY THE STRUGGLE FOR A NEW AND BETTER WORLD 64.ANIMATED CHRONOLOGY 65.CONCERNING THE PICTURES 66.AN HISTORICAL READING LIST FOR CHILDREN 67.INDEX THE STORY OF MANKIND HIGH Up in the North in the land called Svithjod, there stands a rock. It is a hundred miles high and a hundred miles wide. Once every thousand years a little bird comes to this rock to sharpen its beak. When the rock has thus been worn away, then a single day of eternity will have gone by. THE SETTING OF THE STAGE WE live under the shadow of a gigantic question mark. Who are we? Where do we come from? Whither are we bound? Slowly, but with persistent courage, we have been pushing this question mark further and further towards that distant line, beyond the horizon, where we hope to find our answer. We have not gone very far. We still know very little but we have reached the point where (with a fair degree of accuracy) we can guess at many things. In this chapter I shall tell you how (according to our best belief) the stage was set for the first appearance of man. If we represent the time during which it has been possible for animal life to exist upon our planet by a line of this length, then the tiny line just below indicates the age during which man (or a creature more or less resembling man) has lived upon this earth. Man was the last to come but the first to use his brain for the purpose of conquering the forces of nature. That is the reason why we are going to study him, rather than cats or dogs or horses or any of the other animals, who, all in their own way, have a very interesting historical development behind them. In the beginning, the planet upon which we live was (as far as we now know) a large ball of flaming matter, a tiny cloud of smoke in the endless ocean of space. Gradually, in the course of millions of years, the surface burned itself out, and was covered with a thin layer of rocks. Upon these lifeless rocks the rain descended in endless torrents, wearing out the hard granite and carrying the dust to the valleys that lay hidden between the high cliffs of the steaming earth. Finally the hour came when the sun broke through the clouds and saw how this little planet was covered with a few small puddles which were to develop into the mighty oceans of the eastern and western hemispheres. Then one day the great wonder happened. What had been dead, gave birth to life. The first living cell floated upon the waters of the sea. For millions of years it drifted aimlessly with the currents. But during all that time it was developing certain habits that it might survive more easily upon the inhospitable earth. Some of these cells were happiest in the dark depths of the lakes and the pools. They took root in the slimy sediments which had been carried down from the tops of the hills and they became plants. Others preferred to move about and they grew strange jointed legs, like scorpions and began to crawl along the bottom of the sea amidst the plants and the pale green things that looked like jelly-fishes. Still others (covered with scales) depended upon a swimming motion to go from place to place in their search for food, and gradually they populated the ocean with myriads of fishes. Meanwhile the plants had increased in number and they had to search for new dwelling places. There was no more room for them at the bottom of the sea. Reluctantly they left the water and made a new home in the marshes and on the mud-banks that lay at the foot of the mountains. Twice a day the tides of the ocean covered them with their brine. For the rest of the time, the plants made the best of their uncomfortable situation and tried to survive in the thin air which surrounded the surface of the planet. After centuries of training, they learned how to live as comfortably in the air as they had done in the water. They increased in size and became shrubs and trees and at last they learned how to grow lovely flowers which attracted the attention of the busy big bumble-bees and the birds who carried the seeds far and wide until the whole earth had become covered with green pastures, or lay dark under the shadow of the big trees. But some of the fishes too had begun to leave the sea, and they had learned how to breathe with lungs as well as with gills. We call such creatures amphibious, which means that they are able to live with equal ease on the land and in the water. The first frog who crosses your path can tell you all about the pleasures of the double existence of the amphibian. Once outside of the water, these animals gradually adapted themselves more and more to life on land. Some became reptiles (creatures who crawl like lizards) and they shared the silence of the forests with the insects. That they might move faster through the soft soil, they improved upon their legs and their size increased until the world was populated with gigantic forms (which the hand-books of biology list under the names of Ichthyosaurus and Megalosaurus and Brontosaurus) who grew to be thirty to forty feet long and who could have played with elephants as a full grown cat plays with her kittens. Some of the members of this reptilian family began to live in the tops of the trees, which were then often more than a hundred feet high. They no longer needed their legs for the purpose of walking, but it was necessary for them to move quickly from branch to branch. And so they changed a part of their skin into a sort of parachute, which stretched between the sides of their bodies and the small toes of their fore-feet, and gradually they covered this skinny parachute with feathers and made their tails into a steering gear and flew from tree to tree and developed into true birds. Then a strange thing happened. All the gigantic reptiles died within a short time. We do not know the reason. Perhaps it was due to a sudden change in climate. Perhaps they had grown so large that they could neither swim nor walk nor crawl, and they starved to death within sight but not within reach of the big ferns and trees. Whatever the cause, the million year old world-empire of the big reptiles was over. The world now began to be occupied by very different creatures. They were the descendants of the reptiles but they were quite unlike these because they fed their young from the "mammae" or the breasts of the mother. Wherefore modern science calls these animals "mammals." They had shed the scales of the fish. They did not adopt the feathers of the bird, but they covered their bodies with hair. The mammals however developed other habits which gave their race a great advantage over the other animals. The female of the species carried the eggs of the young inside her body until they were hatched and while all other living beings, up to that time, had left their children exposed to the dangers of cold and heat, and the attacks of wild beasts, the mammals kept their young with them for a long time and sheltered them while they were still too weak to fight their enemies. In this way the young mammals were given a much better chance to survive, because they learned many things from their mothers, as you will know if you have ever watched a cat teaching her kittens to take care of themselves and how to wash their faces and how to catch mice. But of these mammals I need not tell you much for you know them well. They surround you on all sides. They are your daily companions in the streets and in your home, and you can see your less familiar cousins behind the bars of the zoological garden. And now we come to the parting of the ways when man suddenly leaves the endless procession of dumbly living and dying creatures and begins to use his reason to shape the destiny of his race. One mammal in particular seemed to surpass all others in its ability to find food and shelter. It had learned to use its fore-feet for the purpose of holding its prey, and by dint of practice it had developed a hand-like claw. After innumerable attempts it had learned how to balance the whole of the body upon the hind legs. (This is a difficult act, which every child has to learn anew although the human race has been doing it for over a million years.) This creature, half ape and half monkey but superior to both, became the most successful hunter and could make a living in every clime. For greater safety, it usually moved about in groups. It learned how to make strange grunts to warn its young of approaching danger and after many hundreds of thousands of years it began to use these throaty noises for the purpose of talking. This creature, though you may hardly believe it, was your first "man-like" ancestor. OUR EARLIEST ANCESTORS WE know very little about the first "true" men. We have never seen their pictures. In the deepest layer of clay of an ancient soil we have sometimes found pieces of their bones. These lay buried amidst the broken skeletons of other animals that have long since disappeared from the face of the earth. Anthropologists (learned scientists who devote their lives to the study of man as a member of the animal kingdom) have taken these bones and they have been able to reconstruct our earliest ancestors with a fair degree of accuracy. The great-great-grandfather of the human race was a very ugly and unattractive mammal. He was quite small, much smaller than the people of today. The heat of the sun and the biting wind of the cold winter had coloured his skin a dark brown. His head and most of his body, his arms and legs too, were covered with long, coarse hair. He had very thin but strong fingers which made his hands look like those of a monkey. His forehead was low and his jaw was like the jaw of a wild animal which uses its teeth both as fork and knife. He wore no clothes. He had seen no fire except the flames of the rumbling volcanoes which filled the earth with their smoke and their lava. He lived in the damp blackness of vast forests, as the pygmies of Africa do to this very day. When he felt the pangs of hunger he ate raw leaves and the roots of plants or he took the eggs away from an angry bird and fed them to his own young. Once in a while, after a long and patient chase, he would catch a sparrow or a small wild dog or perhaps a rabbit. These he would eat raw for he had never discovered that food tasted better when it was cooked. During the hours of day, this primitive human being prowled about looking for things to eat. When night descended upon the earth, he hid his wife and his children in a hollow tree or behind some heavy boulders, for he was surrounded on all sides by ferocious animals and when it was dark these animals began to prowl about, looking for something to eat for their mates and their own young, and they liked the taste of human beings. It was a world where you must either eat or be eaten, and life was very unhappy because it was full of fear and misery. In summer, man was exposed to the scorching rays of the sun, and during the winter his children would freeze to death in his arms. When such a creature hurt itself, (and hunting animals are forever breaking their bones or spraining their ankles) he had no one to take care of him and he must die a horrible death. Like many of the animals who fill the Zoo with their strange noises, early man liked to jabber. That is to say, he endlessly repeated the same unintelligible gibberish because it pleased him to hear the sound of his voice. In due time he learned that he could use this guttural noise to warn his fellow beings whenever danger threatened and he gave certain little shrieks which came to mean "there is a tiger!" or "here come five elephants." Then the others grunted something back at him and their growl meant, "I see them," or "let us run away and hide." And this was probably the origin of all language. But, as I have said before, of these beginnings we know so very little. Early man had no tools and he built himself no houses. He lived and died and left no trace of his existence except a few collar-bones and a few pieces of his skull. These tell us that many thousands of years ago the world was inhabited by certain mammals who were quite different from all the other animals--who had probably developed from another unknown ape-like animal which had learned to walk on its hind-legs and use its fore-paws as hands--and who were most probably connected with the creatures who happen to be our own immediate ancestors. It is little enough we know and the rest is darkness. PREHISTORIC MAN PREHISTORIC MAN BEGINS TO MAKE THINGS FOR HIMSELF. EARLY man did not know what time meant. He kept no records of birthdays or wedding anniversaries or the hour of death. He had no idea of days or weeks or even years. But in a general way he kept track of the seasons for he had noticed that the cold winter was invariably followed by the mild spring--that spring grew into the hot summer when fruits ripened and the wild ears of corn were ready to be eaten and that summer ended when sudden gusts of wind swept the leaves from the trees and a number of animals were getting ready for the long hibernal sleep. But now, something unusual and rather frightening had happened. Something was the matter with the weather. The warm days of summer had come very late. The fruits had not ripened. The tops of the mountains which used to be covered with grass now lay deeply hidden underneath a heavy burden of snow. Then, one morning, a number of wild people, different from the other creatures who lived in that neighbourhood, came wandering down from the region of the high peaks. They looked lean and appeared to be starving. They uttered sounds which no one could understand. They seemed to say that they were hungry. There was not food enough for both the old inhabitants and the newcomers. When they tried to stay more than a few days there was a terrible battle with claw-like hands and feet and whole families were killed. The others fled back to their mountain slopes and died in the next blizzard. But the people in the forest were greatly frightened. All the time the days grew shorter and the nights grew colder than they ought to have been. Finally, in a gap between two high hills, there appeared a tiny speck of greenish ice. Rapidly it increased in size. A gigantic glacier came sliding downhill. Huge stones were being pushed into the valley. With the noise of a dozen thunderstorms torrents of ice and mud and blocks of granite suddenly tumbled among the people of the forest and killed them while they slept. Century old trees were crushed into kindling wood. And then it began to snow. It snowed for months and months. All the plants died and the animals fled in search of the southern sun. Man hoisted his young upon his back and followed them. But he could not travel as fast as the wilder creatures and he was forced to choose between quick thinking or quick dying. He seems to have preferred the former for he has managed to survive the terrible glacial periods which upon four different occasions threatened to kill every human being on the face of the earth. In the first place it was necessary that man clothe himself lest he freeze to death. He learned how to dig holes and cover them with branches and leaves and in these traps he caught bears and hyenas, which he then killed with heavy stones and whose skins he used as coats for himself and his family. Next came the housing problem. This was simple. Many animals were in the habit of sleeping in dark caves. Man now followed their example, drove the animals out of their warm homes and claimed them for his own. Even so, the climate was too severe for most people and the old and the young died at a terrible rate. Then a genius bethought himself of the use of fire. Once, while out hunting, he had been caught in a forest-fire. He remembered that he had been almost roasted to death by the flames. Thus far fire had been an enemy. Now it became a friend. A dead tree was dragged into the cave and lighted by means of smouldering branches from a burning wood. This turned the cave into a cozy little room. And then one evening a dead chicken fell into the fire. It was not rescued until it had been well roasted. Man discovered that meat tasted better when cooked and he then and there discarded one of the old habits which he had shared with the other animals and began to prepare his food. In this way thousands of years passed. Only the people with the cleverest brains survived. They had to struggle day and night against cold and hunger. They were forced to invent tools. They learned how to sharpen stones into axes and how to make hammers. They were obliged to put up large stores of food for the endless days of the winter and they found that clay could be made into bowls and jars and hardened in the rays of the sun. And so the glacial period, which had threatened to destroy the human race, became its greatest teacher because it forced man to use his brain. HIEROGLYPHICS THE EGYPTIANS INVENT THE ART OF WRITING AND THE RECORD OF HISTORY BEGINS THESE earliest ancestors of ours who lived in the great European wilderness were rapidly learning many new things. It is safe to say that in due course of time they would have given up the ways of savages and would have developed a civilisation of their own. But suddenly there came an end to their isolation. They were discovered. A traveller from an unknown southland who had dared to cross the sea and the high mountain passes had found his way to the wild people of the European continent. He came from Africa. His home was in Egypt. The valley of the Nile had developed a high stage of civilisation thousands of years before the people of the west had dreamed of the possibilities of a fork or a wheel or a house. And we shall therefore leave our great-great-grandfathers in their caves, while we visit the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean, where stood the earliest school of the human race. The Egyptians have taught us many things. They were excellent farmers. They knew all about irrigation. They built temples which were afterwards copied by the Greeks and which served as the earliest models for the churches in which we worship nowadays. They had invented a calendar which proved such a useful instrument for the purpose of measuring time that it has survived with a few changes until today. But most important of all, the Egyptians had learned how to preserve speech for the benefit of future generations. They had invented the art of writing. We are so accustomed to newspapers and books and magazines that we take it for granted that the world has always been able to read and write. As a matter of fact, writing, the most important of all inventions, is quite new. Without written documents we would be like cats and dogs, who can only teach their kittens and their puppies a few simple things and who, because they cannot write, possess no way in which they can make use of the experience of those generations of cats and dogs that have gone before. In the first century before our era, when the Romans came to Egypt, they found the valley full of strange little pictures which seemed to have something to do with the history of the country. But the Romans were not interested in "anything foreign" and did not inquire into the origin of these queer figures which covered the walls of the temples and the walls of the palaces and endless reams of flat sheets made out of the papyrus reed. The last of the Egyptian priests who had understood the holy art of making such pictures had died several years before. Egypt deprived of its independence had become a store-house filled with important historical documents which no one could decipher and which were of no earthly use to either man or beast. Seventeen centuries went by and Egypt remained a land of mystery. But in the year 1798 a French general by the name of Bonaparte happened to visit eastern Africa to prepare for an attack upon the British Indian Colonies. He did not get beyond the Nile, and his campaign was a failure. But, quite accidentally, the famous French expedition solved the problem of the ancient Egyptian picture-language. One day a young French officer, much bored by the dreary life of his little fortress on the Rosetta river (a mouth of the Nile) decided to spend a few idle hours rummaging among the ruins of the Nile Delta. And behold! he found a stone which greatly puzzled him. Like everything else in Egypt it was covered with little figures. But this particular slab of black basalt was different from anything that had ever been discovered. It carried three inscriptions. One of these was in Greek. The Greek language was known. "All that is necessary," so he reasoned, "is to compare the Greek text with the Egyptian figures, and they will at once tell their secrets." The plan sounded simple enough but it took more than twenty years to solve the riddle. In the year 1802 a French professor by the name of Champollion began to compare the Greek and the Egyptian texts of the famous Rosetta stone. In the year 1823 he announced that he had discovered the meaning of fourteen little figures. A short time later he died from overwork, but the main principles of Egyptian writing had become known. Today the story of the valley of the Nile is better known to us than the story of the Mississippi River. We possess a written record which covers four thousand years of chronicled history. As the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics (the word means "sacred writing") have played such a very great role in history, (a few of them in modified form have even found their way into our own alphabet,) you ought to know something about the ingenious system which was used fifty centuries ago to preserve the spoken word for the benefit of the coming generations. Of course, you know what a sign language is. Every Indian story of our western plains has a chapter devoted to strange messages writter{sic} in the form of little pictures which tell how many buffaloes were killed and how many hunters there were in a certain party. As a rule it is not difficult to understand the meaning of such messages. Ancient Egyptian, however, was not a sign language. The clever people of the Nile had passed beyond that stage long before. Their pictures meant a great deal more than the object which they represented, as I shall try to explain to you now. Suppose that you were Champollion, and that you were examining a stack of papyrus sheets, all covered with hieroglyphics. Suddenly you came across a picture of a man with a saw. "Very well," you would say, "that means of course that a farmer went out to cut down a tree." Then you take another papyrus. It tells the story of a queen who had died at the age of eighty-two. In the midst of a sentence appears the picture of the man with the saw. Queens of eighty-two do not handle saws. The picture therefore must mean something else. But what? That is the riddle which the Frenchman finally solved. He discovered that the Egyptians were the first to use what we now call "phonetic writing"--a system of characters which reproduce the "sound" (or phone) of the spoken word and which make it possible for us to translate all our spoken words into a written form, with the help of only a few dots and dashes and pothooks. Let us return for a moment to the little fellow with the saw. The word "saw" either means a certain tool which you will find in a carpenter's shop, or it means the past tense of the verb "to see." This is what had happened to the word during the course of centuries. First of all it had meant only the particular tool which it represented. Then that meaning had been lost and it had become the past participle of a verb. After several hundred years, the Egyptians lost sight of both these meanings and the picture {illust.} came to stand for a single letter, the letter S. A short sentence will show you what I mean. Here is a modern English sentence as it would have been written in hieroglyphics. {illust.} The {illust.} either means one of these two round objects in your head, which allow you to see or it means "I," the person who is talking. A {illust.} is either an insect which gathers honey, or it represents the verb "to be" which means to exist. Again, it may be the first part of a verb like "be-come" or "be-have." In this particular instance it is followed by {illust.} which means a "leaf" or "leave" or "lieve" (the sound of all three words is the same). The "eye" you know all about. Finally you get the picture of a {illust.}. It is a giraffe It is part of the old sign-language out of which the hieroglyphics developed. You can now read that sentence without much difficulty. "I believe I saw a giraffe." Having invented this system the Egyptians developed it during thousands of years until they could write anything they wanted, and they used these "canned words" to send messages to friends, to keep business accounts and to keep a record of the history of their country, that future generations might benefit by the mistakes of the past. THE NILE VALLEY THE BEGINNING OF CIVILISATION IN THE VALLEY OF THE NILE THE history of man is the record of a hungry creature in search of food. Wherever food was plentiful, thither man has travelled to make his home. The fame of the Valley of the Nile must have spread at an early date. From the interior of Africa and from the desert of Arabia and from the western part of Asia people had flocked to Egypt to claim their share of the rich farms. Together these invaders had formed a new race which called itself "Remi" or "the Men" just as we sometimes call America "God's own country." They had good reason to be grateful to a Fate which had carried them to this narrow strip of land. In the summer of each year the Nile turned the valley into a shallow lake and when the waters receded all the grainfields and the pastures were covered with several inches of the most fertile clay. In Egypt a kindly river did the work of a million men and made it possible to feed the teeming population of the first large cities of which we have any record. It is true that all the arable land was not in the valley. But a complicated system of small canals and well-sweeps carried water from the river-level to the top of the highest banks and an even more intricate system of irrigation trenches spread it throughout the land. While man of the prehistoric age had been obliged to spend sixteen hours out of every twenty-four gathering food for himself and the members of his tribe, the Egyptian peasant or the inhabitant of the Egyptian city found himself possessed of a certain leisure. He used this spare time to make himself many things that were merely ornamental and not in the least bit useful. More than that. One day he discovered that his brain was capable of thinking all kinds of thoughts which had nothing to do with the problems of eating and sleeping and finding a home for the children. The Egyptian began to speculate upon many strange problems that confronted him. Where did the stars come from? Who made the noise of the thunder which frightened him so terribly? Who made the River Nile rise with such regularity that it was possible to base the calendar upon the appearance and the disappearance of the annual floods? Who was he, himself, a strange little creature surrounded on all sides by death and sickness and yet happy and full of laughter? He asked these many questions and certain people obligingly stepped forward to answer these inquiries to the best of their ability. The Egyptians called them "priests" and they became the guardians of his thoughts and gained great respect in the community. They were highly learned men who were entrusted with the sacred task of keeping the written records. They understood that it is not good for man to think only of his immediate advantage in this world and they drew his attention to the days of the future when his soul would dwell beyond the mountains of the west and must give an account of his deeds to Osiris, the mighty God who was the Ruler of the Living and the Dead and who judged the acts of men according to their merits. Indeed, the priests made so much of that future day in the realm of Isis and Osiris that the Egyptians began to regard life merely as a short preparation for the Hereafter and turned the teeming valley of the Nile into a land devoted to the Dead. In a strange way, the Egyptians had come to believe that no soul could enter the realm of Osiris without the possession of the body which had been its place of residence in this world. Therefore as soon as a man was dead his relatives took his corpse and had it embalmed. For weeks it was soaked in a solution of natron and then it was filled with pitch. The Persian word for pitch was "Mumiai" and the embalmed body was called a "Mummy." It was wrapped in yards and yards of specially prepared linen and it was placed in a specially prepared coffin ready to be removed to its final home. But an Egyptian grave was a real home where the body was surrounded by pieces of furniture and musical instruments (to while away the dreary hours of waiting) and by little statues of cooks and bakers and barbers (that the occupant of this dark home might be decently provided with food and need not go about unshaven). Originally these graves had been dug into the rocks of the western mountains but as the Egyptians moved northward they were obliged to build their cemeteries in the desert. The desert however is full of wild animals and equally wild robbers and they broke into the graves and disturbed the mummy or stole the jewelry that had been buried with the body. To prevent such unholy desecration the Egyptians used to build small mounds of stones on top of the graves. These little mounds gradually grew in size, because the rich people built higher mounds than the poor and there was a good deal of competition to see who could make the highest hill of stones. The record was made by King Khufu, whom the Greeks called Cheops and who lived thirty centuries before our era. His mound, which the Greeks called a pyramid (because the Egyptian word for high was pir-em-us) was over five hundred feet high. It covered more than thirteen acres of desert which is three times as much space as that occupied by the church of St. Peter, the largest edifice of the Christian world. During twenty years, over a hundred thousand men were busy carrying the necessary stones from the other side of the river--ferrying them across the Nile (how they ever managed to do this, we do not understand), dragging them in many instances a long distance across the desert and finally hoisting them into their correct position. But so well did the King's architects and engineers perform their task that the narrow passage-way which leads to the royal tomb in the heart of the stone monster has never yet been pushed out of shape by the weight of those thousands of tons of stone which press upon it from all sides. THE STORY OF EGYPT THE RISE AND FALL OF EGYPT THE river Nile was a kind friend but occasionally it was a hard taskmaster. It taught the people who lived along its banks the noble art of "team-work." They depended upon each other to build their irrigation trenches and keep their dikes in repair. In this way they learned how to get along with their neighbours and their mutual-benefit-association quite easily developed into an organised state. Then one man grew more powerful than most of his neighbours and he became the leader of the community and their commander-in-chief when the envious neighbours of western Asia invaded the prosperous valley. In due course of time he became their King and ruled all the land from the Mediterranean to the mountains of the west. But these political adventures of the old Pharaohs (the word meant "the Man who lived in the Big House") rarely interested the patient and toiling peasant of the grain fields. Provided he was not obliged to pay more taxes to his King than he thought just, he accepted the rule of Pharaoh as he accepted the rule of Mighty Osiris. It was different however when a foreign invader came and robbed him of his possessions. After twenty centuries of independent life, a savage Arab tribe of shepherds, called the Hyksos, attacked Egypt and for five hundred years they were the masters of the valley of the Nile. They were highly un-popular and great hate was also felt for the Hebrews who came to the land of Goshen to find a shelter after their long wandering through the desert and who helped the foreign usurper by acting as his tax-gatherers and his civil servants. But shortly after the year 1700 B.C. the people of Thebes began a revolution and after a long struggle the Hyksos were driven out of the country and Egypt was free once more. A thousand years later, when Assyria conquered all of western Asia, Egypt became part of the empire of Sardanapalus. In the seventh century B.C. it became once more an independent state which obeyed the rule of a king who lived in the city of Sais in the Delta of the Nile. But in the year 525 B.C., Cambyses, the king of the Persians, took possession of Egypt and in the fourth century B.C., when Persia was conquered by Alexander the Great, Egypt too became a Macedonian province. It regained a semblance of independence when one of Alexander's generals set himself up as king of a new Egyptian state and founded the dynasty of the Ptolemies, who resided in the newly built city of Alexandria. Finally, in the year 89 B.C., the Romans came. The last Egyptian queen, Cleopatra, tried her best to save the country. Her beauty and charm were more dangerous to the Roman generals than half a dozen Egyptian army corps. Twice she was successful in her attacks upon the hearts of her Roman conquerors. But in the year 30 B.C., Augustus, the nephew and heir of Caesar, landed in Alexandria. He did not share his late uncle's admiration for the lovely princess. He destroyed her armies, but spared her life that he might make her march in his triumph as part of the spoils of war. When Cleopatra heard of this plan, she killed herself by taking poison. And Egypt became a Roman province. MESOPOTAMIA MESOPOTAMIA--THE SECOND CENTRE OF EASTERN CIVILISATION I AM going to take you to the top of the highest pyramid and I am going to ask that you imagine yourself possessed of the eyes of a hawk. Way, way off, in the distance, far beyond the yellow sands of the desert, you will see something green and shimmering. It is a valley situated between two rivers. It is the Paradise of the Old Testament. It is the land of mystery and wonder which the Greeks called Mesopotamia--the "country between the rivers." The names of the two rivers are the Euphrates (which the Babylonians called the Purattu) and the Tigris (which was known as the Diklat). They begin their course amidst the snows of the mountains of Armenia where Noah's Ark found a resting place and slowly they flow through the southern plain until they reach the muddy banks of the Persian gulf. They perform a very useful service. They turn the arid regions of western Asia into a fertile garden. The valley of the Nile had attracted people because it had offered them food upon fairly easy terms. The "land between the rivers" was popular for the same reason. It was a country full of promise and both the inhabitants of the northern mountains and the tribes which roamed through the southern deserts tried to claim this territory as their own and most exclusive possession. The constant rivalry between the mountaineers and the desert-nomads led to endless warfare. Only the strongest and the bravest could hope to survive and that will explain why Mesopotamia became the home of a very strong race of men who were capable of creating a civilisation which was in every respect as important as that of Egypt. THE SUMERIANS THE SUMERIAN NAIL WRITERS, WHOSE CLAY TABLETS TELL US THE STORY OF ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA, THE GREAT SEMITIC MELTING-POT THE fifteenth century was an age of great discoveries. Columbus tried to find a way to the island of Kathay and stumbled upon a new and unsuspected continent. An Austrian bishop equipped an expedition which was to travel eastward and find the home of the Grand Duke of Muscovy, a voyage which led to complete failure, for Moscow was not visited by western men until a generation later. Meanwhile a certain Venetian by the name of Barbero had explored the ruins of western Asia and had brought back reports of a most curious language which he had found carved in the rocks of the temples of Shiraz and engraved upon endless pieces of baked clay. But Europe was busy with many other things and it was not until the end of the eighteenth century that the first "cuneiform inscriptions" (so-called because the letters were wedge-shaped and wedge is called "Cuneus" in Latin) were brought to Europe by a Danish surveyor, named Niebuhr. Then it took thirty years before a patient German school-master by the name of Grotefend had deciphered the first four letters, the D, the A, the R and the SH, the name of the Persian King Darius. And another twenty years had to go by until a British officer, Henry Rawlinson, who found the famous inscription of Behistun, gave us a workable key to the nail-writing of western Asia. Compared to the problem of deciphering these nail-writings, the job of Champollion had been an easy one. The Egyptians used pictures. But the Sumerians, the earliest inhabitants of Mesopotamia, who had hit upon the idea of scratching their words in tablets of clay, had discarded pictures entirely and had evolved a system of V-shaped figures which showed little connection with the pictures out of which they had been developed. A few examples will show you what I mean. In the beginning a star, when drawn with a nail into a brick looked as follows: {illust.} This sign however was too cumbersome and after a short while when the meaning of "heaven" was added to that of star the picture was simplified in this way {illust.} which made it even more of a puzzle. In the same way an ox changed from {illust} into {illust.} and a fish changed from {illust.} into {illust.} The sun was originally a plain circle {illust.} and became {illust.} If we were using the Sumerian script today we would make an {illust.} look like {illust.}. This system of writing down our ideas looks rather complicated but for more than thirty centuries it was used by the Sumerians and the Babylonians and the Assyrians and the Persians and all the different races which forced their way into the fertile valley. The story of Mesopotamia is one of endless warfare and conquest. First the Sumerians came from the North. They were a white People who had lived in the mountains. They had been accustomed to worship their Gods on the tops of hills. After they had entered the plain they constructed artificial little hills on top of which they built their altars. They did not know how to build stairs and they therefore surrounded their towers with sloping galleries. Our engineers have borrowed this idea, as you may see in our big railroad stations where ascending galleries lead from one floor to another. We may have borrowed other ideas from the Sumerians but we do not know it. The Sumerians were entirely ab-sorbed by those races that entered the fertile valley at a later date. Their towers however still stand amidst the ruins of Mesopotamia. The Jews saw them when they went into exile in the land of Babylon and they called them towers of Babillli, or towers of Babel. In the fortieth century before our era, the Sumerians had entered Mesopotamia. They were soon afterwards over-powered by the Akkadians, one of the many tribes from the desert of Arabia who speak a common dialect and who are known as the "Semites," because in the olden days people believed them to be the direct descendants of Shem, one of the three sons of Noah. A thousand years later, the Akkadians were forced to submit to the rule of the Amorites, another Semitic desert tribe whose great King Hammurabi built himself a magnificent palace in the holy city of Babylon and who gave his people a set of laws which made the Babylonian state the best administered empire of the ancient world. Next the Hittites, whom you will also meet in the Old Testament, over-ran the Fertile Valley and destroyed whatever they could not carry away. They in turn were vanquished by the followers of the great desert God, Ashur, who called themselves Assyrians and who made the city of Nineveh the center of a vast and terrible empire which conquered all of western Asia and Egypt and gathered taxes from countless subject races until the end of the seventh century before the birth of Christ when the Chaldeans, also a Semitic tribe, re-established Babylon and made that city the most important capital of that day. Nebuchadnezzar, the best known of their Kings, encouraged the study of science, and our modern knowledge of astronomy and mathematics is all based upon certain first principles which were discovered by the Chaldeans. In the year 538 B.C. a crude tribe of Persian shepherds invaded this old land and overthrew the empire of the Chaldeans. Two hundred years later, they in turn were overthrown by Alexander the Great, who turned the Fertile Valley, the old melting-pot of so many Semitic races, into a Greek province. Next came the Romans and after the Romans, the Turks, and Mesopotamia, the second centre of the world's civilisation, became a vast wilderness where huge mounds of earth told a story of ancient glory. MOSES THE STORY OF MOSES, THE LEADER OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE SOME time during the twentieth century before our era, a small and unimportant tribe of Semitic shepherds had left its old home, which was situated in the land of Ur on the mouth of the Euphrates, and had tried to find new pastures within the domain of the Kings of Babylonia. They had been driven away by the royal soldiers and they had moved westward looking for a little piece of unoccupied territory where they might set up their tents. This tribe of shepherds was known as the Hebrews or, as we call them, the Jews. They had wandered far and wide, and after many years of dreary peregrinations they had been given shelter in Egypt. For more than five centuries they had dwelt among the Egyptians and when their adopted country had been overrun by the Hyksos marauders (as I told you in the story of Egypt) they had managed to make themselves useful to the foreign invader and had been left in the undisturbed possession of their grazing fields. But after a long war of independence the Egyptians had driven the Hyksos out of the valley of the Nile and then the Jews had come upon evil times for they had been degraded to the rank of common slaves and they had been forced to work on the royal roads and on the Pyramids. And as the frontiers were guarded by the Egyptian soldiers it had been impossible for the Jews to escape. After many years of suffering they were saved from their miserable fate by a young Jew, called Moses, who for a long time had dwelt in the desert and there had learned to appreciate the simple virtues of his earliest ancestors, who had kept away from cities and city-life and had refused to let themselves be corrupted by the ease and the luxury of a foreign civilisation. Moses decided to bring his people back to a love of the ways of the patriarchs. He succeeded in evading the Egyptian troops that were sent after him and led his fellow tribesmen into the heart of the plain at the foot of Mount Sinai. During his long and lonely life in the desert, he had learned to revere the strength of the great God of the Thunder and the Storm, who ruled the high heavens and upon whom the shepherds depended for life and light and breath. This God, one of the many divinities who were widely worshipped in western Asia, was called Jehovah, and through the teaching of Moses, he became the sole Master of the Hebrew race. One day, Moses disappeared from the camp of the Jews. It was whispered that he had gone away carrying two tablets of rough-hewn stone. That afternoon, the top of the mountain was lost to sight. The darkness of a terrible storm hid it from the eye of man. But when Moses returned, behold! there stood engraved upon the tablets the words which Jehovah had spoken unto the people of Israel amidst the crash of his thunder and the blinding flashes of his lightning. And from that moment, Jehovah was recognised by all the Jews as the Highest Master of their Fate, the only True God, who had taught them how to live holy lives when he bade them to follow the wise lessons of his Ten Commandments. They followed Moses when he bade them continue their journey through the desert. They obeyed him when he told them what to eat and drink and what to avoid that they might keep well in the hot climate. And finally after many years of wandering they came to a land which seemed pleasant and prosperous. It was called Palestine, which means the country of the "Pilistu" the Philistines, a small tribe of Cretans who had settled along the coast after they had been driven away from their own island. Unfortunately, the mainland, Palestine, was already inhabited by another Semitic race, called the Canaanites. But the Jews forced their way into the valleys and built themselves cities and constructed a mighty temple in a town which they named Jerusalem, the Home of Peace. As for Moses, he was no longer the leader of his people. He had been allowed to see the mountain ridges of Palestine from afar. Then he had closed his tired eyes for all time. He had worked faithfully and hard to please Jehovah. Not only had he guided his brethren out of foreign slavery into the free and independent life of a new home but he had also made the Jews the first of all nations to worship a single God. THE PHOENICIANS THE PHOENICIANS WHO GAVE US OUR ALPHABET THE Phoenicians, who were the neighbours of the Jews, were a Semitic tribe which at a very early age had settled along the shores of the Mediterranean. They had built themselves two well-fortified towns, Tyre and Sidon, and within a short time they had gained a monopoly of the trade of the western seas. Their ships went regularly to Greece and Italy and Spain and they even ventured beyond the straits of Gibraltar to visit the Scilly islands where they could buy tin. Wherever they went, they built themselves small trading stations, which they called colonies. Many of these were the origin of modern cities, such as Cadiz and Marseilles. They bought and sold whatever promised to bring them a good profit. They were not troubled by a conscience. If we are to believe all their neighbours they did not know what the words honesty or integrity meant. They regarded a well-filled treasure chest the highest ideal of all good citizens. Indeed they were very unpleasant people and did not have a single friend. Nevertheless they have rendered all coming generations one service of the greatest possible value. They gave us our alphabet. The Phoenicians had been familiar with the art of writing, invented by the Sumerians. But they regarded these pothooks as a clumsy waste of time. They were practical business men and could not spend hours engraving two or three letters. They set to work and invented a new system of writing which was greatly superior to the old one. They borrowed a few pictures from the Egyptians and they simplified a number of the wedge-shaped figures of the Sumerians. They sacrificed the pretty looks of the older system for the advantage of speed and they reduced the thousands of different images to a short and handy alphabet of twenty-two letters. In due course of time, this alphabet travelled across the AEgean Sea and entered Greece. The Greeks added a few letters of their own and carried the improved system to Italy. The Romans modified the figures somewhat and in turn taught them to the wild barbarians of western Europe. Those wild barbarians were our own ancestors, and that is the reason why this book is written in characters that are of Phoenician origin and not in the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians or in the nail-script of the Sumerians. THE INDO-EUROPEANS THE INDO-EUROPEAN PERSIANS CONQUER THE SEMITIC AND THE EGYPTIAN WORLD THE world of Egypt and Babylon and Assyria and Phoenicia had existed almost thirty centuries and the venerable races of the Fertile Valley were getting old and tired. Their doom was sealed when a new and more energetic race appeared upon the horizon. We call this race the Indo-European race, because it conquered not only Europe but also made itself the ruling class in the country which is now known as British India. These Indo-Europeans were white men like the Semites but they spoke a different language which is regarded as the common ancestor of all European tongues with the exception of Hungarian and Finnish and the Basque dialects of Northern Spain. When we first hear of them, they had been living along the shores of the Caspian Sea for many centuries. But one day they had packed their tents and they had wandered forth in search of a new home. Some of them had moved into the mountains of Central Asia and for many centuries they had lived among the peaks which surround the plateau of Iran and that is why we call them Aryans. Others had followed the setting sun and they had taken possession of the plains of Europe as I shall tell you when I give you the story of Greece and Rome. For the moment we must follow the Aryans. Under the leadership of Zarathustra (or Zoroaster) who was their great teacher many of them had left their mountain homes to follow the swiftly flowing Indus river on its way to the sea. Others had preferred to stay among the hills of western Asia and there they had founded the half-independent communities of the Medes and the Persians, two peoples whose names we have copied from the old Greek history-books. In the seventh century before the birth of Christ, the Medes had established a kingdom of their own called Media, but this perished when Cyrus, the chief of a clan known as the Anshan, made himself king of all the Persian tribes and started upon a career of conquest which soon made him and his children the undisputed masters of the whole of western Asia and of Egypt. Indeed, with such energy did these Indo-European Persians push their triumphant campaigns in the west that they soon found themselves in serious difficulties with certain other Indo-European tribes which centuries before had moved into Europe and had taken possession of the Greek peninsula and the islands of the AEgean Sea. These difficulties led to the three famous wars between Greece and Persia during which King Darius and King Xerxes of Persia invaded the northern part of the peninsula. They ravaged the lands of the Greeks and tried very hard to get a foothold upon the European continent. But in this they did not succeed. The navy of Athens proved unconquerable. By cutting off the lines of supplies of the Persian armies, the Greek sailors invariably forced the Asiatic rulers to return to their base. It was the first encounter between Asia, the ancient teacher, and Europe, the young and eager pupil. A great many of the other chapters of this book will tell you how the struggle between east and west has continued until this very day. THE AEGEAN SEA THE PEOPLE OF THE AEGEAN SEA CARRIED THE CIVILISATION OF OLD ASIA INTO THE WILDERNESS OF EUROPE WHEN Heinrich Schliemann was a little boy his father told him the story of Troy. He liked that story better than anything else he had ever heard and he made up his mind, that as soon as he was big enough to leave home, he would travel to Greece and "find Troy." That he was the son of a poor country parson in a Mecklenburg village did not bother him. He knew that he would need money but he decided to gather a fortune first and do the digging afterwards. As a matter of fact, he managed to get a large fortune within a very short time, and as soon as he had enough money to equip an expedition, he went to the northwest corner of Asia Minor, where he supposed that Troy had been situated. In that particular nook of old Asia Minor, stood a high mound covered with grainfields. According to tradition it had been the home of Priamus the king of Troy. Schliemann, whose enthusiasm was somewhat greater than his knowledge, wasted no time in preliminary explorations. At once he began to dig. And he dug with such zeal and such speed that his trench went straight through the heart of the city for which he was looking and carried him to the ruins of another buried town which was at least a thousand years older than the Troy of which Homer had written. Then something very interesting occurred. If Schliemann had found a few polished stone hammers and perhaps a few pieces of crude pottery, no one would have been surprised. Instead of discovering such objects, which people had generally associated with the prehistoric men who had lived in these regions before the coming of the Greeks, Schliemann found beautiful statuettes and very costly jewelry and ornamented vases of a pattern that was unknown to the Greeks. He ventured the suggestion that fully ten centuries before the great Trojan war, the coast of the AEgean had been inhabited by a mysterious race of men who in many ways had been the superiors of the wild Greek tribes who had invaded their country and had destroyed their civilisation or absorbed it until it had lost all trace of originality. And this proved to be the case. In the late seventies of the last century, Schliemann visited the ruins of Mycenae, ruins which were so old that Roman guide-books marvelled at their antiquity. There again, beneath the flat slabs of stone of a small round enclosure, Schliemann stumbled upon a wonderful treasure-trove, which had been left behind by those mysterious people who had covered the Greek coast with their cities and who had built walls, so big and so heavy and so strong, that the Greeks called them the work of the Titans, those god-like giants who in very olden days had used to play ball with mountain peaks. A very careful study of these many relics has done away with some of the romantic features of the story. The makers of these early works of art and the builders of these strong fortresses were no sorcerers, but simple sailors and traders. They had lived in Crete, and on the many small islands of the AEgean Sea. They had been hardy mariners and they had turned the AEgean into a center of commerce for the exchange of goods between the highly civilised east and the slowly developing wilderness of the European mainland. For more than a thousand years they had maintained an island empire which had developed a very high form of art. Indeed their most important city, Cnossus, on the northern coast of Crete, had been entirely modern in its insistence upon hygiene and comfort. The palace had been properly drained and the houses had been provided with stoves and the Cnossians had been the first people to make a daily use of the hitherto unknown bathtub. The palace of their King had been famous for its winding staircases and its large banqueting hall. The cellars underneath this palace, where the wine and the grain and the olive-oil were stored, had been so vast and had so greatly impressed the first Greek visitors, that they had given rise to the story of the "labyrinth," the name which we give to a structure with so many complicated passages that it is almost impossible to find our way out, once the front door has closed upon our frightened selves. But what finally became of this great AEgean Empire and what caused its sudden downfall, that I can not tell. The Cretans were familiar with the art of writing, but no one has yet been able to decipher their inscriptions. Their history therefore is unknown to us. We have to reconstruct the record of their adventures from the ruins which the AEgeans have left behind. These ruins make it clear that the AEgean world was suddenly conquered by a less civilised race which had recently come from the plains of northern Europe. Unless we are very much mistaken, the savages who were responsible for the destruction of the Cretan and the AEgean civilisation were none other than certain tribes of wandering shepherds who had just taken possession of the rocky peninsula between the Adriatic and the AEgean seas and who are known to us as Greeks. THE GREEKS MEANWHILE THE INDO-EUROPEAN TRIBE OF THE HELLENES WAS TAKING POSSESSION OF GREECE THE Pyramids were a thousand years old and were beginning to show the first signs of decay, and Hammurabi, the wise king of Babylon, had been dead and buried several centuries, when a small tribe of shepherds left their homes along the banks of the River Danube and wandered southward in search of fresh pastures. They called themselves Hellenes, after Hellen, the son of Deucalion and Pyrrha. According to the old myths these were the only two human beings who had escaped the great flood, which countless years before had destroyed all the people of the world, when they had grown so wicked that they disgusted Zeus, the mighty God, who lived on Mount Olympus. Of these early Hellenes we know nothing. Thucydides, the historian of the fall of Athens, describing his earliest ancestors, said that they "did not amount to very much," and this was probably true. They were very ill-mannered. They lived like pigs and threw the bodies of their enemies to the wild dogs who guarded their sheep. They had very little respect for other people's rights, and they killed the natives of the Greek peninsula (who were called the Pelasgians) and stole their farms and took their cattle and made their wives and daughters slaves and wrote endless songs praising the courage of the clan of the Achaeans, who had led the Hellenic advance-guard into the mountains of Thessaly and the Peloponnesus. But here and there, on the tops of high rocks, they saw the castles of the AEgeans and those they did not attack for they feared the metal swords and the spears of the AEgean soldiers and knew that they could not hope to defeat them with their clumsy stone axes. For many centuries they continued to wander from valley to valley and from mountain side to mountain side Then the whole of the land had been occupied and the migration had come to an end. That moment was the beginning of Greek civilisation. The Greek farmer, living within sight of the AEgean colonies, was finally driven by curiosity to visit his haughty neighbours. He discovered that he could learn many useful things from the men who dwelt behind the high stone walls of Mycenae, and Tiryns. He was a clever pupil. Within a short time he mastered the art of handling those strange iron weapons which the AEgeans had brought from Babylon and from Thebes. He came to understand the mysteries of navigation. He began to build little boats for his own use. And when he had learned everything the AEgeans could teach him he turned upon his teachers and drove them back to their islands. Soon afterwards he ventured forth upon the sea and conquered all the cities of the AEgean. Finally in the fifteenth century before our era he plundered and ravaged Cnossus and ten centuries after their first appearance upon the scene the Hellenes were the undisputed rulers of Greece, of the AEgean and of the coastal regions of Asia Minor. Troy, the last great commercial stronghold of the older civilisation, was destroyed in the eleventh century B.C. European history was to begin in all seriousness. THE GREEK CITIES THE GREEK CITIES THAT WERE REALLY STATES WE modern people love the sound of the word "big." We pride ourselves upon the fact that we belong to the "biggest" country in the world and possess the "biggest" navy and grow the "biggest" oranges and potatoes, and we love to live in cities of "millions" of inhabitants and when we are dead we are buried in the "biggest cemetery of the whole state." A citizen of ancient Greece, could he have heard us talk, would not have known what we meant. "Moderation in all things" was the ideal of his life and mere bulk did not impress him at all. And this love of moderation was not merely a hollow phrase used upon special occasions: it influenced the life of the Greeks from the day of their birth to the hour of their death. It was part of their literature and it made them build small but perfect temples. It found expression in the clothes which the men wore and in the rings and the bracelets of their wives. It followed the crowds that went to the theatre and made them hoot down any playwright who dared to sin against the iron law of good taste or good sense. The Greeks even insisted upon this quality in their politicians and in their most popular athletes. When a powerful runner came to Sparta and boasted that he could stand longer on one foot than any other man in Hellas the people drove him from the city because he prided himself upon an accomplishment at which he could be beaten by any common goose. "That is all very well," you will say, "and no doubt it is a great virtue to care so much for moderation and perfection, but why should the Greeks have been the only people to develop this quality in olden times?" For an answer I shall point to the way in which the Greeks lived. The people of Egypt or Mesopotamia had been the "subjects" of a mysterious Supreme Ruler who lived miles and miles away in a dark palace and who was rarely seen by the masses of the population. The Greeks on the other hand, were "free citizens" of a hundred independent little "cities" the largest of which counted fewer inhabitants than a large modern village. When a peasant who lived in Ur said that he was a Babylonian he meant that he was one of millions of other people who paid tribute to the king who at that particular moment happened to be master of western Asia. But when a Greek said proudly that he was an Athenian or a Theban he spoke of a small town, which was both his home and his country and which recognised no master but the will of the people in the market-place. To the Greek, his fatherland was the place where he was born; where he had spent his earliest years playing hide and seek amidst the forbidden rocks of the Acropolis; where he had grown into manhood with a thousand other boys and girls, whose nicknames were as familiar to him as those of your own schoolmates. His Fatherland was the holy soil where his father and mother lay buried. It was the small house within the high city-walls where his wife and children lived in safety. It was a complete world which covered no more than four or five acres of rocky land. Don't you see how these surroundings must have influenced a man in everything he did and said and thought? The people of Babylon and Assyria and Egypt had been part of a vast mob. They had been lost in the multitude. The Greek on the other hand had never lost touch with his immediate surroundings. He never ceased to be part of a little town where everybody knew every one else. He felt that his intelligent neighbours were watching him. Whatever he did, whether he wrote plays or made statues out of marble or composed songs, he remembered that his efforts were going to be judged by all the free-born citizens of his home-town who knew about such things. This knowledge forced him to strive after perfection, and perfection, as he had been taught from childhood, was not possible without moderation. In this hard school, the Greeks learned to excel in many things. They created new forms of government and new forms of literature and new ideals in art which we have never been able to surpass. They performed these miracles in little villages that covered less ground than four or five modern city blocks. And look, what finally happened! In the fourth century before our era, Alexander of Macedonia conquered the world. As soon as he had done with fighting, Alexander decided that he must bestow the benefits of the true Greek genius upon all mankind. He took it away from the little cities and the little villages and tried to make it blossom and bear fruit amidst the vast royal residences of his newly acquired Empire. But the Greeks, removed from the familiar sight of their own temples, removed from the well-known sounds and smells of their own crooked streets, at once lost the cheerful joy and the marvellous sense of moderation which had inspired the work of their hands and brains while they laboured for the glory of their old city-states. They became cheap artisans, content with second-rate work. The day the little city-states of old Hellas lost their independence and were forced to become part of a big nation, the old Greek spirit died. And it has been dead ever since. GREEK SELF-GOVERNMENT THE GREEKS WERE THE FIRST PEOPLE TO TRY THE DIFFICULT EXPERIMENT OF SELF-GOVERNMENT IN the beginning, all the Greeks had been equally rich and equally poor. Every man had owned a certain number of cows and sheep. His mud-hut had been his castle. He had been free to come and go as he wished. Whenever it was necessary to discuss matters of public importance, all the citizens had gathered in the market-place. One of the older men of the village was elected chairman and it was his duty to see that everybody had a chance to express his views. In case of war, a particularly energetic and self-confident villager was chosen commander-in-chief, but the same people who had voluntarily given this man the right to be their leader, claimed an equal right to deprive him of his job, once the danger had been averted. But gradually the village had grown into a city. Some people had worked hard and others had been lazy. A few had been unlucky and still others had been just plain dishonest in dealing with their neighbours and had gathered wealth. As a result, the city no longer consisted of a number of men who were equally well-off. On the contrary it was inhabited by a small class of very rich people and a large class of very poor ones. There had been another change. The old commander-in-chief who had been willingly recognised as "headman" or "King" because he knew how to lead his men to victory, had disappeared from the scene. His place had been taken by the nobles--a class of rich people who during the course of time had got hold of an undue share of the farms and estates. These nobles enjoyed many advantages over the common crowd of freemen. They were able to buy the best weapons which were to be found on the market of the eastern Mediterranean. They had much spare time in which they could practise the art of fighting. They lived in strongly built houses and they could hire soldiers to fight for them. They were constantly quarrelling among each other to decide who should rule the city. The victorious nobleman then assumed a sort of Kingship over all his neighbours and governed the town until he in turn was killed or driven away by still another ambitious nobleman. Such a King, by the grace of his soldiers, was called a "Tyrant" and during the seventh and sixth centuries before our era every Greek city was for a time ruled by such Tyrants, many of whom, by the way, happened to be exceedingly capa-ble men. But in the long run, this state of affairs became unbearable. Then attempts were made to bring about reforms and out of these reforms grew the first democratic government of which the world has a record. It was early in the seventh century that the people of Athens decided to do some housecleaning and give the large number of freemen once more a voice in the government as they were supposed to have had in the days of their Achaean ancestors. They asked a man by the name of Draco to provide them with a set of laws that would protect the poor against the aggressions of the rich. Draco set to work. Unfortunately he was a professional lawyer and very much out of touch with ordinary life. In his eyes a crime was a crime and when he had finished his code, the people of Athens discovered that these Draconian laws were so severe that they could not possibly be put into effect. There would not have been rope enough to hang all the criminals under their new system of jurisprudence which made the stealing of an apple a capital offence. The Athenians looked about for a more humane reformer. At last they found some one who could do that sort of thing better than anybody else. His name was Solon. He belonged to a noble family and he had travelled all over the world and had studied the forms of government of many other countries. After a careful study of the subject, Solon gave Athens a set of laws which bore testimony to that wonderful principle of moderation which was part of the Greek character. He tried to improve the condition of the peasant without however destroying the prosperity of the nobles who were (or rather who could be) of such great service to the state as soldiers. To protect the poorer classes against abuse on the part of the judges (who were always elected from the class of the nobles because they received no salary) Solon made a provision whereby a citizen with a grievance had the right to state his case before a jury of thirty of his fellow Athenians. Most important of all, Solon forced the average freeman to take a direct and personal interest in the affairs of the city. No longer could he stay at home and say "oh, I am too busy today" or "it is raining and I had better stay indoors." He was expected to do his share; to be at the meeting of the town council; and carry part of the responsibility for the safety and the prosperity of the state. This government by the "demos," the people, was often far from successful. There was too much idle talk. There were too many hateful and spiteful scenes between rivals for official honor. But it taught the Greek people to be independent and to rely upon themselves for their salvation and that was a very good thing. GREEK LIFE HOW THE GREEKS LIVED BUT how, you will ask, did the ancient Greeks have time to look after their families and their business if they were forever running to the market-place to discuss affairs of state? In this chapter I shall tell you. In all matters of government, the Greek democracy recognised only one class of citizens--the freemen. Every Greek city was composed of a small number of free born citizens, a large number of slaves and a sprinkling of foreigners. At rare intervals (usually during a war, when men were needed for the army) the Greeks showed themselves willing to confer the rights of citizenship upon the "barbarians" as they called the foreigners. But this was an exception. Citizenship was a matter of birth. You were an Athenian because your father and your grandfather had been Athenians before you. But however great your merits as a trader or a soldier, if you were born of non-Athenian parents, you remained a "foreigner" until the end of time. The Greek city, therefore, whenever it was not ruled by a king or a tyrant, was run by and for the freemen, and this would not have been possible without a large army of slaves who outnumbered the free citizens at the rate of six or five to one and who performed those tasks to which we modern people must devote most of our time and energy if we wish to provide for our families and pay the rent of our apartments. The slaves did all the cooking and baking and candlestick making of the entire city. They were the tailors and the carpenters and the jewelers and the school-teachers and the bookkeepers and they tended the store and looked after the factory while the master went to the public meeting to discuss questions of war and peace or visited the theatre to see the latest play of AEschylus or hear a discussion of the revolutionary ideas of Euripides, who had dared to express certain doubts upon the omnipotence of the great god Zeus. Indeed, ancient Athens resembled a modern club. All the freeborn citizens were hereditary members and all the slaves were hereditary servants, and waited upon the needs of their masters, and it was very pleasant to be a member of the organisation. But when we talk about slaves, we do not mean the sort of people about whom you have read in the pages of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." It is true that the position of those slaves who tilled the fields was a very unpleasant one, but the average freeman who had come down in the world and who had been obliged to hire himself out as a farm hand led just as miserable a life. In the cities, furthermore, many of the slaves were more prosperous than the poorer classes of the freemen. For the Greeks, who loved moderation in all things, did not like to treat their slaves after the fashion which afterward was so common in Rome, where a slave had as few rights as an engine in a modern factory and could be thrown to the wild animals upon the smallest pretext. The Greeks accepted slavery as a necessary institution, without which no city could possibly become the home of a truly civilised people. The slaves also took care of those tasks which nowadays are performed by the business men and the professional men. As for those household duties which take up so much of the time of your mother and which worry your father when he comes home from his office, the Greeks, who understood the value of leisure, had reduced such duties to the smallest possible minimum by living amidst surroundings of extreme simplicity. To begin with, their homes were very plain. Even the rich nobles spent their lives in a sort of adobe barn, which lacked all the comforts which a modern workman expects as his natural right. A Greek home consisted of four walls and a roof. There was a door which led into the street but there were no windows. The kitchen, the living rooms and the sleeping quarters were built around an open courtyard in which there was a small fountain, or a statue and a few plants to make it look bright. Within this courtyard the family lived when it did not rain or when it was not too cold. In one corner of the yard the cook (who was a slave) prepared the meal and in another corner, the teacher (who was also a slave) taught the children the alpha beta gamma and the tables of multiplication and in still another corner the lady of the house, who rarely left her domain (since it was not considered good form for a married woman to be seen on the street too often) was repairing her husband's coat with her seamstresses (who were slaves,) and in the little office, right off the door, the master was inspecting the accounts which the overseer of his farm (who was a slave) had just brought to him. When dinner was ready the family came together but the meal was a very simple one and did not take much time. The Greeks seem to have regarded eating as an unavoidable evil and not a pastime, which kills many dreary hours and eventually kills many dreary people. They lived on bread and on wine, with a little meat and some green vegetables. They drank water only when nothing else was available because they did not think it very healthy. They loved to call on each other for dinner, but our idea of a festive meal, where everybody is supposed to eat much more than is good for him, would have disgusted them. They came together at the table for the purpose of a good talk and a good glass of wine and water, but as they were moderate people they despised those who drank too much. The same simplicity which prevailed in the dining room also dominated their choice of clothes. They liked to be clean and well groomed, to have their hair and beards neatly cut, to feel their bodies strong with the exercise and the swimming of the gymnasium, but they never followed the Asiatic fashion which prescribed loud colours and strange patterns. They wore a long white coat and they managed to look as smart as a modern Italian officer in his long blue cape. They loved to see their wives wear ornaments but they thought it very vulgar to display their wealth (or their wives) in public and whenever the women left their home they were as inconspicuous as possible. In short, the story of Greek life is a story not only of moderation but also of simplicity. "Things," chairs and tables and books and houses and carriages, are apt to take up a great deal of their owner's time. In the end they invariably make him their slave and his hours are spent looking after their wants, keeping them polished and brushed and painted. The Greeks, before everything else, wanted to be "free," both in mind and in body. That they might maintain their liberty, and be truly free in spirit, they reduced their daily needs to the lowest possible point. THE GREEK THEATRE THE ORIGINS OF THE THEATRE, THE FIRST FORM OF PUBLIC AMUSEMENT AT a very early stage of their history the Greeks had begun to collect the poems, which had been written in honor of their brave ancestors who had driven the Pelasgians out of Hellas and had destroyed the power of Troy. These poems were recited in public and everybody came to listen to them. But the theatre, the form of entertainment which has become almost a necessary part of our own lives, did not grow out of these recited heroic tales. It had such a curious origin that I must tell you something about it in a separate chapter The Greeks had always been fond of parades. Every year they held solemn processions in honor of Dionysos the God of the wine. As everybody in Greece drank wine (the Greeks thought water only useful for the purpose of swimming and sailing) this particular Divinity was as popular as a God of the Soda-Fountain would be in our own land. And because the Wine-God was supposed to live in the vineyards, amidst a merry mob of Satyrs (strange creatures who were half man and half goat), the crowd that joined the procession used to wear goat-skins and to hee-haw like real billy-goats. The Greek word for goat is "tragos" and the Greek word for singer is "oidos." The singer who meh-mehed like a goat therefore was called a "tragos-oidos" or goat singer, and it is this strange name which developed into the modern word "Tragedy," which means in the theatrical sense a piece with an unhappy ending, just as Comedy (which really means the singing of something "comos" or gay) is the name given to a play which ends happily. But how, you will ask, did this noisy chorus of masqueraders, stamping around like wild goats, ever develop into the noble tragedies which have filled the theatres of the world for almost two thousand years? The connecting link between the goat-singer and Hamlet is really very simple as I shall show you in a moment. The singing chorus was very amusing in the beginning and attracted large crowds of spectators who stood along the side of the road and laughed. But soon this business of tree-hawing grew tiresome and the Greeks thought dullness an evil only comparable to ugliness or sickness. They asked for something more entertaining. Then an inventive young poet from the village of Icaria in Attica hit upon a new idea which proved a tremendous success. He made one of the members of the goat-chorus step forward and engage in conversation with the leader of the musicians who marched at the head of the parade playing upon their pipes of Pan. This individual was allowed to step out of line. He waved his arms and gesticulated while he spoke (that is to say he "acted" while the others merely stood by and sang) and he asked a lot of questions, which the bandmaster answered according to the roll of papyrus upon which the poet had written down these answers before the show began. This rough and ready conversation--the dialogue--which told the story of Dionysos or one of the other Gods, became at once popular with the crowd. Henceforth every Dionysian procession had an "acted scene" and very soon the "acting" was considered more important than the procession and the meh-mehing. AEschylus, the most successful of all "tragedians" who wrote no less than eighty plays during his long life (from 526 to 455) made a bold step forward when he introduced two "actors" instead of one. A generation later Sophocles increased the number of actors to three. When Euripides began to write his terrible tragedies in the middle of the fifth century, B.C., he was allowed as many actors as he liked and when Aristophanes wrote those famous comedies in which he poked fun at everybody and everything, including the Gods of Mount Olympus, the chorus had been reduced to the role of mere bystanders who were lined up behind the principal performers and who sang "this is a terrible world" while the hero in the foreground committed a crime against the will of the Gods. This new form of dramatic entertainment demanded a proper setting, and soon every Greek city owned a theatre, cut out of the rock of a nearby hill. The spectators sat upon wooden benches and faced a wide circle (our present orchestra where you pay three dollars and thirty cents for a seat). Upon this half-circle, which was the stage, the actors and the chorus took their stand. Behind them there was a tent where they made up with large clay masks which hid their faces and which showed the spectators whether the actors were supposed to be happy and smiling or unhappy and weeping. The Greek word for tent is "skene" and that is the reason why we talk of the "scenery" of the stage. When once the tragedy had become part of Greek life, the people took it very seriously and never went to the theatre to give their minds a vacation. A new play became as important an event as an election and a successful playwright was received with greater honors than those bestowed upon a general who had just returned from a famous victory. THE PERSIAN WARS HOW THE GREEKS DEFENDED EUROPE AGAINST ASIATIC INVASION AND DROVE THE PERSIANS BACK ACROSS THE AEGEAN SEA THE Greeks had learned the art of trading from the AEgeans who had been the pupils of the Phoenicians. They had founded colonies after the Phoenician pattern. They had even improved upon the Phoenician methods by a more general use of money in dealing with foreign customers. In the sixth century before our era they had established themselves firmly along the coast of Asia Minor and they were taking away trade from the Phoenicians at a fast rate. This the Phoenicians of course did not like but they were not strong enough to risk a war with their Greek competitors. They sat and waited nor did they wait in vain. In a former chapter, I have told you how a humble tribe of Persian shepherds had suddenly gone upon the warpath and had conquered the greater part of western Asia. The Persians were too civilised to plunder their new subjects. They contented themselves with a yearly tribute. When they reached the coast of Asia Minor they insisted that the Greek colonies of Lydia recognize the Persian Kings as their over-Lords and pay them a stipulated tax. The Greek colonies objected. The Persians insisted. Then the Greek colonies appealed to the home-country and the stage was set for a quarrel. For if the truth be told, the Persian Kings regarded the Greek city-states as very dangerous political institutions and bad examples for all other people who were supposed to be the patient slaves of the mighty Persian Kings. Of course, the Greeks enjoyed a certain degree of safety because their country lay hidden beyond the deep waters of the AEgean. But here their old enemies, the Phoenicians, stepped forward with offers of help and advice to the Persians. If the Persian King would provide the soldiers, the Phoenicians would guarantee to deliver the necessary ships to carry them to Europe. It was the year 492 before the birth of Christ, and Asia made ready to destroy the rising power of Europe. As a final warning the King of Persia sent messengers to the Greeks asking for "earth and water" as a token of their submission. The Greeks promptly threw the messengers into the nearest well where they would find both "earth and water" in large abundance and thereafter of course peace was impossible. But the Gods of High Olympus watched over their children and when the Phoenician fleet carrying the Persian troops was near Mount Athos, the Storm-God blew his cheeks until he almost burst the veins of his brow, and the fleet was destroyed by a terrible hurricane and the Persians were all drowned. Two years later they returned. This time they sailed straight across the AEgean Sea and landed near the village of Marathon. As soon as the Athenians heard this they sent their army of ten thousand men to guard the hills that surrounded the Marathonian plain. At the same time they despatched a fast runner to Sparta to ask for help. But Sparta was envious of the fame of Athens and refused to come to her assistance. The other Greek cities followed her example with the exception of tiny Plataea which sent a thousand men. On the twelfth of September of the year 490, Miltiades, the Athenian commander, threw this little army against the hordes of the Persians. The Greeks broke through the Persian barrage of arrows and their spears caused terrible havoc among the disorganised Asiatic troops who had never been called upon to resist such an enemy. That night the people of Athens watched the sky grow red with the flames of burning ships. Anxiously they waited for news. At last a little cloud of dust appeared upon the road that led to the North. It was Pheidippides, the runner. He stumbled and gasped for his end was near. Only a few days before had he returned from his errand to Sparta. He had hastened to join Miltiades. That morning he had taken part in the attack and later he had volunteered to carry the news of victory to his beloved city. The people saw him fall and they rushed forward to support him. "We have won," he whispered and then he died, a glorious death which made him envied of all men. As for the Persians, they tried, after this defeat, to land near Athens but they found the coast guarded and disappeared, and once more the land of Hellas was at peace. Eight years they waited and during this time the Greeks were not idle. They knew that a final attack was to be expected but they did not agree upon the best way to avert the danger. Some people wanted to increase the army. Others said that a strong fleet was necessary for success. The two parties led by Aristides (for the army) and Themistocles (the leader of the bigger-navy men) fought each other bitterly and nothing was done until Aristides was exiled. Then Themistocles had his chance and he built all the ships he could and turned the Piraeus into a strong naval base. In the year 481 B.C. a tremendous Persian army appeared in Thessaly, a province of northern Greece. In this hour of danger, Sparta, the great military city of Greece, was elected commander-in-chief. But the Spartans cared little what happened to northern Greece provided their own country was not invaded, They neglected to fortify the passes that led into Greece. A small detachment of Spartans under Leonidas had been told to guard the narrow road between the high mountains and the sea which connected Thessaly with the southern provinces. Leonidas obeyed his orders. He fought and held the pass with unequalled bravery. But a traitor by the name of Ephialtes who knew the little byways of Malis guided a regiment of Persians through the hills and made it possible for them to attack Leonidas in the rear. Near the Warm Wells--the Thermopylae--a terrible battle was fought. When night came Leonidas and his faithful soldiers lay dead under the corpses of their enemies. But the pass had been lost and the greater part of Greece fell into the hands of the Persians. They marched upon Athens, threw the garrison from the rocks of the Acropolis and burned the city. The people fled to the Island of Salamis. All seemed lost. But on the 20th of September of the year 480 Themistocles forced the Persian fleet to give battle within the narrow straits which separated the Island of Salamis from the mainland and within a few hours he destroyed three quarters of the Persian ships. In this way the victory of Thermopylae came to naught. Xerxes was forced to retire. The next year, so he decreed, would bring a final decision. He took his troops to Thessaly and there he waited for spring. But this time the Spartans understood the seriousness of the hour. They left the safe shelter of the wall which they had built across the isthmus of Corinth and under the leadership of Pausanias they marched against Mardonius the Persian general. The united Greeks (some one hundred thousand men from a dozen different cities) attacked the three hundred thou-sand men of the enemy near Plataea. Once more the heavy Greek infantry broke through the Persian barrage of arrows. The Persians were defeated, as they had been at Marathon, and this time they left for good. By a strange coincidence, the same day that the Greek armies won their victory near Plataea, the Athenian ships destroyed the enemy's fleet near Cape Mycale in Asia Minor. Thus did the first encounter between Asia and Europe end. Athens had covered herself with glory and Sparta had fought bravely and well. If these two cities had been able to come to an agreement, if they had been willing to forget their little jealousies, they might have become the leaders of a strong and united Hellas. But alas, they allowed the hour of victory and enthusiasm to slip by, and the same opportunity never returned. ATHENS vs. SPARTA HOW ATHENS AND SPARTA FOUGHT A LONG AND DISASTROUS WAR FOR THE LEADERSHIP OF GREECE ATHENS and Sparta were both Greek cities and their people spoke a common language. In every other respect they were different. Athens rose high from the plain. It was a city exposed to the fresh breezes from the sea, willing to look at the world with the eyes of a happy child. Sparta, on the other hand, was built at the bottom of a deep valley, and used the surrounding mountains as a barrier against foreign thought. Athens was a city of busy trade. Sparta was an armed camp where people were soldiers for the sake of being soldiers. The people of Athens loved to sit in the sun and discuss poetry or listen to the wise words of a philosopher. The Spartans, on the other hand, never wrote a single line that was considered literature, but they knew how to fight, they liked to fight, and they sacrificed all human emotions to their ideal of military preparedness. No wonder that these sombre Spartans viewed the success of Athens with malicious hate. The energy which the defence of the common home had developed in Athens was now used for purposes of a more peaceful nature. The Acropolis was rebuilt and was made into a marble shrine to the Goddess Athena. Pericles, the leader of the Athenian democracy, sent far and wide to find famous sculptors and painters and scientists to make the city more beautiful and the young Athenians more worthy of their home. At the same time he kept a watchful eye on Sparta and built high walls which connected Athens with the sea and made her the strongest fortress of that day. An insignificant quarrel between two little Greek cities led to the final conflict. For thirty years the war between Athens and Sparta continued. It ended in a terrible disaster for Athens. During the third year of the war the plague had entered the city. More than half of the people and Pericles, the great leader, had been killed. The plague was followed by a period of bad and untrustworthy leadership. A brilliant young fellow by the name of Alcibiades had gained the favor of the popular assembly. He suggested a raid upon the Spartan colony of Syracuse in Sicily. An expedition was equipped and everything was ready. But Alcibiades got mixed up in a street brawl and was forced to flee. The general who succeeded him was a bungler. First he lost his ships and then he lost his army, and the few surviving Athenians were thrown into the stone-quarries of Syracuse, where they died from hunger and thirst. The expedition had killed all the young men of Athens. The city was doomed. After a long siege the town surrendered in April of the year 404. The high walls were demolished. The navy was taken away by the Spartans. Athens ceased to exist as the center of the great colonial empire which it had conquered during the days of its prosperity. But that wonderful desire to learn and to know and to investigate which had distinguished her free citizens during the days of greatness and prosperity did not perish with the walls and the ships. It continued to live. It became even more brilliant. Athens no longer shaped the destinies of the land of Greece. But now, as the home of the first great university the city began to influence the minds of intelligent people far beyond the narrow frontiers of Hellas. ALEXANDER THE GREAT ALEXANDER THE MACEDONIAN ESTABLISHES A GREEK WORLD-EMPIRE, AND WHAT BECAME OF THIS HIGH AMBITION WHEN the Achaeans had left their homes along the banks of the Danube to look for pastures new, they had spent some time among the mountains of Macedonia. Ever since, the Greeks had maintained certain more or less formal relations with the people of this northern country. The Macedonians from their side had kept themselves well informed about conditions in Greece. Now it happened, just when Sparta and Athens had finished their disastrous war for the leadership of Hellas, that Macedonia was ruled by an extraordinarily clever man by the name of Philip. He admired the Greek spirit in letters and art but he despised the Greek lack of self-control in political affairs. It irritated him to see a perfectly good people waste its men and money upon fruitless quarrels. So he settled the difficulty by making himself the master of all Greece and then he asked his new subjects to join him on a voyage which he meant to pay to Persia in return for the visit which Xerxes had paid the Greeks one hundred and fifty years before. Unfortunately Philip was murdered before he could start upon this well-prepared expedition. The task of avenging the destruction of Athens was left to Philip's son Alexander, the beloved pupil of Aristotle, wisest of all Greek teachers. Alexander bade farewell to Europe in the spring of the year 334 B.C. Seven years later he reached India. In the meantime he had destroyed Phoenicia, the old rival of the Greek merchants. He had conquered Egypt and had been worshipped by the people of the Nile valley as the son and heir of the Pharaohs. He had defeated the last Persian king--he had overthrown the Persian empire he had given orders to rebuild Babylon--he had led his troops into the heart of the Himalayan mountains and had made the entire world a Macedonian province and dependency. Then he stopped and announced even more ambitious plans. The newly formed Empire must be brought under the influence of the Greek mind. The people must be taught the Greek language--they must live in cities built after a Greek model. The Alexandrian soldier now turned school-master. The military camps of yesterday became the peaceful centres of the newly imported Greek civilisation. Higher and higher did the flood of Greek manners and Greek customs rise, when suddenly Alexander was stricken with a fever and died in the old palace of King Hammurabi of Babylon in the year 323. Then the waters receded. But they left behind the fertile clay of a higher civilisation and Alexander, with all his childish ambitions and his silly vanities, had performed a most valuable service. His Empire did not long survive him. A number of ambitious generals divided the territory among themselves. But they too remained faithful to the dream of a great world brotherhood of Greek and Asiatic ideas and knowledge. They maintained their independence until the Romans added western Asia and Egypt to their other domains. The strange inheritance of this Hellenistic civilisation (part Greek, part Persian, part Egyptian and Babylonian) fell to the Roman conquerors. During the following centuries, it got such a firm hold upon the Roman world, that we feel its influence in our own lives this very day. A SUMMARY A SHORT SUMMARY OF CHAPTERS 1 to 20 THUS far, from the top of our high tower we have been looking eastward. But from this time on, the history of Egypt and Mesopotamia is going to grow less interesting and I must take you to study the western landscape. Before we do this, let us stop a moment and make clear to ourselves what we have seen. First of all I showed you prehistoric man--a creature very simple in his habits and very unattractive in his manners. I told you how he was the most defenceless of the many animals that roamed through the early wilderness of the five continents, but being possessed of a larger and better brain, he managed to hold his own. Then came the glaciers and the many centuries of cold weather, and life on this planet became so difficult that man was obliged to think three times as hard as ever before if he wished to survive. Since, however, that "wish to survive" was (and is) the mainspring which keeps every living being going full tilt to the last gasp of its breath, the brain of glacial man was set to work in all earnestness. Not only did these hardy people manage to exist through the long cold spells which killed many ferocious animals, but when the earth became warm and comfortable once more, prehistoric man had learned a number of things which gave him such great advantages over his less intelligent neighbors that the danger of extinction (a very serious one during the first half million years of man's residence upon this planet) became a very remote one. I told you how these earliest ancestors of ours were slowly plodding along when suddenly (and for reasons that are not well understood) the people who lived in the valley of the Nile rushed ahead and almost over night, created the first centre of civilisation. Then I showed you Mesopotamia, "the land between the rivers," which was the second great school of the human race. And I made you a map of the little island bridges of the AEgean Sea, which carried the knowledge and the science of the old east to the young west, where lived the Greeks. Next I told you of an Indo-European tribe, called the Hellenes, who thousands of years before had left the heart of Asia and who had in the eleventh century before our era pushed their way into the rocky peninsula of Greece and who, since then, have been known to us as the Greeks. And I told you the story of the little Greek cities that were really states, where the civilisation of old Egypt and Asia was transfigured (that is a big word, but you can "figure out" what it means) into something quite new, something that was much nobler and finer than anything that had gone before. When you look at the map you will see how by this time civilisation has described a semi-circle. It begins in Egypt, and by way of Mesopotamia and the AEgean Islands it moves westward until it reaches the European continent. The first four thousand years, Egyptians and Babylonians and Phoenicians and a large number of Semitic tribes (please remember that the Jews were but one of a large number of Semitic peoples) have carried the torch that was to illuminate the world. They now hand it over to the Indo-European Greeks, who become the teachers of another Indo-European tribe, called the Romans. But meanwhile the Semites have pushed westward along the northern coast of Africa and have made themselves the rulers of the western half of the Mediterranean just when the eastern half has become a Greek (or Indo-European) possession. This, as you shall see in a moment, leads to a terrible conflict between the two rival races, and out of their struggle arises the victorious Roman Empire, which is to take this Egyptian-Mesopotamian-Greek civilisation to the furthermost corners of the European continent, where it serves as the foundation upon which our modern society is based. I know all this sounds very complicated, but if you get hold of these few principles, the rest of our history will become a great deal simpler. The maps will make clear what the words fail to tell. And after this short intermission, we go back to our story and give you an account of the famous war between Carthage and Rome. ROME AND CARTHAGE THE SEMITIC COLONY OF CARTHAGE ON THE NORTHERN COAST OF AFRICA AND THE INDO-EUROPEAN CITY OF ROME ON THE WEST COAST OF ITALY FOUGHT EACH OTHER FOR THE POSSESSION OF THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN AND CARTHAGE WAS DESTROYED THE little Phoenician trading post of Kart-hadshat stood on a low hill which overlooked the African Sea, a stretch of water ninety miles wide which separates Africa from Europe. It was an ideal spot for a commercial centre. Almost too ideal. It grew too fast and became too rich. When in the sixth century before our era, Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon destroyed Tyre, Carthage broke off all further relations with the Mother Country and became an independent state--the great western advance-post of the Semitic races. Unfortunately the city had inherited many of the traits which for a thousand years had been characteristic of the Phoenicians. It was a vast business-house, protected by a strong navy, indifferent to most of the finer aspects of life. The city and the surrounding country and the distant colonies were all ruled by a small but exceedingly powerful group of rich men, The Greek word for rich is "ploutos" and the Greeks called such a government by "rich men" a "Plutocracy." Carthage was a plutocracy and the real power of the state lay in the hands of a dozen big ship-owners and mine-owners and merchants who met in the back room of an office and regarded their common Fatherland as a business enterprise which ought to yield them a decent profit. They were however wide awake and full of energy and worked very hard. As the years went by the influence of Carthage upon her neighbours increased until the greater part of the African coast, Spain and certain regions of France were Carthaginian possessions, and paid tribute, taxes and dividends to the mighty city on the African Sea. Of course, such a "plutocracy" was forever at the mercy of the crowd. As long as there was plenty of work and wages were high, the majority of the citizens were quite contented, allowed their "betters" to rule them and asked no embarrassing questions. But when no ships left the harbor, when no ore was brought to the smelting-ovens, when dockworkers and stevedores were thrown out of employment, then there were grumblings and there was a demand that the popular assembly be called together as in the olden days when Carthage had been a self-governing republic. To prevent such an occurrence the plutocracy was obliged to keep the business of the town going at full speed. They had managed to do this very successfully for almost five hun-dred years when they were greatly disturbed by certain rumors which reached them from the western coast of Italy. It was said that a little village on the banks of the Tiber had suddenly risen to great power and was making itself the acknowledged leader of all the Latin tribes who inhabited central Italy. It was also said that this village, which by the way was called Rome, intended to build ships and go after the commerce of Sicily and the southern coast of France. Carthage could not possibly tolerate such competition. The young rival must be destroyed lest the Carthaginian rulers lose their prestige as the absolute rulers of the western Mediterranean. The rumors were duly investigated and in a general way these were the facts that came to light. The west coast of Italy had long been neglected by civilisation. Whereas in Greece all the good harbours faced eastward and enjoyed a full view of the busy islands of the AEgean, the west coast of Italy contemplated nothing more exciting than the desolate waves of the Mediterranean. The country was poor. It was therefore rarely visited by foreign merchants and the natives were allowed to live in undisturbed possession of their hills and their marshy plains. The first serious invasion of this land came from the north. At an unknown date certain Indo-European tribes had managed to find their way through the passes of the Alps and had pushed southward until they had filled the heel and the toe of the famous Italian boot with their villages and their flocks. Of these early conquerors we know nothing. No Homer sang their glory. Their own accounts of the foundation of Rome (written eight hundred years later when the little city had become the centre of an Empire) are fairy stories and do not belong in a history. Romulus and Remus jumping across each other's walls (I always forget who jumped across whose wall) make entertaining reading, but the foundation of the City of Rome was a much more prosaic affair. Rome began as a thousand American cities have done, by being a convenient place for barter and horse-trading. It lay in the heart of the plains of central Italy The Tiber provided direct access to the sea. The land-road from north to south found here a convenient ford which could be used all the year around. And seven little hills along the banks of the river offered the inhabitants a safe shelter against their enemies who lived in the mountains and those who lived beyond the horizon of the nearby sea. The mountaineers were called the Sabines. They were a rough crowd with an unholy desire for easy plunder. But they were very backward. They used stone axes and wooden shields and were no match for the Romans with their steel swords. The sea-people on the other hand were dangerous foes. They were called the Etruscans and they were (and still are) one of the great mysteries of history. Nobody knew (or knows) whence they came; who they were; what had driven them away from their original homes. We have found the remains of their cities and their cemeteries and their waterworks all along the Italian coast. We are familiar with their inscriptions. But as no one has ever been able to decipher the Etruscan alphabet, these written messages are, so far, merely annoying and not at all useful. Our best guess is that the Etruscans came originally from Asia Minor and that a great war or a pestilence in that country had forced them to go away and seek a new home elsewhere. Whatever the reason for their coming, the Etruscans played a great role in history. They carried the pollen of the ancient civilisation from the east to the west and they taught the Romans who, as we know, came from the north, the first principles of architecture and street-building and fighting and art and cookery and medicine and astronomy. But just as the Greeks had not loved their AEgean teachers, in this same way did the Romans hate their Etruscan masters. They got rid of them as soon as they could and the opportunity offered itself when Greek merchants discovered the commercial possibilities of Italy and when the first Greek vessels reached Rome. The Greeks came to trade, but they stayed to instruct. They found the tribes who inhabited the Roman country-side (and who were called the Latins) quite willing to learn such things as might be of practical use. At once they understood the great benefit that could be derived from a written alphabet and they copied that of the Greeks. They also understood the commercial advantages of a well-regulated system of coins and measures and weights. Eventually the Romans swallowed Greek civilisation hook, line and sinker. They even welcomed the Gods of the Greeks to their country. Zeus was taken to Rome where he became known as Jupiter and the other divinities followed him. The Roman Gods however never were quite like their cheerful cousins who had accompanied the Greeks on their road through life and through history. The Roman Gods were State Functionaries. Each one managed his own department with great prudence and a deep sense of justice, but in turn he was exact in demanding the obedience of his worshippers. This obedience the Romans rendered with scrupulous care. But they never established the cordial personal relations and that charming friendship which had existed between the old Hellenes and the mighty residents of the high Olympian peak. The Romans did not imitate the Greek form of government, but being of the same Indo-European stock as the people of Hellas, the early history of Rome resembles that of Athens and the other Greek cities. They did not find it difficult to get rid of their kings, the descendants of the ancient tribal chieftains. But once the kings had been driven from the city, the Romans were forced to bridle the power of the nobles, and it took many centuries before they managed to establish a system which gave every free citizen of Rome a chance to take a personal interest in the affairs of his town. Thereafter the Romans enjoyed one great advantage over the Greeks. They managed the affairs of their country without making too many speeches. They were less imaginative than the Greeks and they preferred an ounce of action to a pound of words. They understood the tendency of the multitude (the "plebe," as the assemblage of free citizens was called) only too well to waste valuable time upon mere talk. They therefore placed the actual business of running the city into the hands of two "consuls" who were assisted by a council of Elders, called the Senate (because the word "senex" means an old man). As a matter of custom and practical advantage the senators were elected from the nobility. But their power had been strictly defined. Rome at one time had passed through the same sort of struggle between the poor and the rich which had forced Athens to adopt the laws of Draco and Solon. In Rome this conflict had occurred in the fifth century B. C. As a result the freemen had obtained a written code of laws which protected them against the despotism of the aristocratic judges by the institution of the "Tribune." These Tribunes were city-magistrates, elected by the freemen. They had the right to protect any citizen against those actions of the government officials which were thought to be unjust. A consul had the right to condemn a man to death, but if the case had not been absolutely proved the Tribune could interfere and save the poor fellow's life. But when I use the word Rome, I seem to refer to a little city of a few thousand inhabitants. And the real strength of Rome lay in the country districts outside her walls. And it was in the government of these outlying provinces that Rome at an early age showed her wonderful gift as a colonising power. In very early times Rome had been the only strongly fortified city in central Italy, but it had always offered a hospitable refuge to other Latin tribes who happened to be in danger of attack. The Latin neighbours had recognised the advantages of a close union with such a powerful friend and they had tried to find a basis for some sort of defensive and offensive alliance. Other nations, Egyptians, Babylonians, Phoenicians, even Greeks, would have insisted upon a treaty of submission on the part of the "barbarians," The Romans did nothing of the sort. They gave the "outsider" a chance to become partners in a common "res publica"--or common-wealth. "You want to join us," they said. "Very well, go ahead and join. We shall treat you as if you were full-fledged citizens of Rome. In return for this privilege we expect you to fight for our city, the mother of us all, whenever it shall be necessary." The "outsider" appreciated this generosity and he showed his gratitude by his unswerving loyalty. Whenever a Greek city had been attacked, the foreign residents had moved out as quickly as they could. Why defend something which meant nothing to them but a temporary boarding house in which they were tolerated as long as they paid their bills? But when the enemy was before the gates of Rome, all the Latins rushed to her defence. It was their Mother who was in danger. It was their true "home" even if they lived a hundred miles away and had never seen the walls of the sacred Hills. No defeat and no disaster could change this sentiment. In the beginning of the fourth century B.C. the wild Gauls forced their way into Italy. They had defeated the Roman army near the River Allia and had marched upon the city. They had taken Rome and then they expected that the people would come and sue for peace. They waited, but nothing happened. After a short time the Gauls found themselves surrounded by a hostile population which made it impossible for them to obtain supplies. After seven months, hunger forced them to withdraw. The policy of Rome to treat the "foreigner" on equal terms had proved a great success and Rome stood stronger than ever before. This short account of the early history of Rome shows you the enormous difference between the Roman ideal of a healthy state, and that of the ancient world which was embodied in the town of Carthage. The Romans counted upon the cheerful and hearty co-operation between a number of "equal citizens." The Carthaginians, following the example of Egypt and western Asia, insisted upon the unreasoning (and therefore unwilling) obedience of "Subjects" and when these failed they hired professional soldiers to do their fighting for them. You will now understand why Carthage was bound to fear such a clever and powerful enemy and why the plutocracy of Carthage was only too willing to pick a quarrel that they might destroy the dangerous rival before it was too late. But the Carthaginians, being good business men, knew that it never pays to rush matters. They proposed to the Romans that their respective cities draw two circles on the map and that each town claim one of these circles as her own "sphere of influence" and promise to keep out of the other fellow's circle. The agreement was promptly made and was broken just as promptly when both sides thought it wise to send their armies to Sicily where a rich soil and a bad government invited foreign interference. The war which followed (the so-called first Punic War) lasted twenty-four years. It was fought out on the high seas and in the beginning it seemed that the experienced Carthaginian navy would defeat the newly created Roman fleet. Following their ancient tactics, the Carthaginian ships would either ram the enemy vessels or by a bold attack from the side they would break their oars and would then kill the sailors of the helpless vessel with their arrows and with fire balls. But Roman engineers invented a new craft which carried a boarding bridge across which the Roman infantrymen stormed the hostile ship. Then there was a sudden end to Carthaginian victories. At the battle of Mylae their fleet was badly defeated. Carthage was obliged to sue for peace, and Sicily became part of the Roman domains. Twenty-three years later new trouble arose. Rome (in quest of copper) had taken the island of Sardinia. Carthage (in quest of silver) thereupon occupied all of southern Spain. This made Carthage a direct neighbour of the Romans. The latter did not like this at all and they ordered their troops to cross the Pyrenees and watch the Carthaginian army of occupation. The stage was set for the second outbreak between the two rivals. Once more a Greek colony was the pretext for a war. The Carthaginians were besieging Saguntum on the east coast of Spain. The Saguntians appealed to Rome and Rome, as usual, was willing to help. The Senate promised the help of the Latin armies, but the preparation for this expedition took some time, and meanwhile Saguntum had been taken and had been destroyed. This had been done in direct opposition to the will of Rome. The Senate decided upon war. One Roman army was to cross the African sea and make a landing on Carthaginian soil. A second division was to keep the Carthaginian armies occupied in Spain to prevent them from rushing to the aid of the home town. It was an excellent plan and everybody expected a great victory. But the Gods had decided otherwise. It was the fall of the year 218 before the birth of Christ and the Roman army which was to attack the Carthaginians in Spain had left Italy. People were eagerly waiting for news of an easy and complete victory when a terrible rumour began to spread through the plain of the Po. Wild mountaineers, their lips trembling with fear, told of hundreds of thousands of brown men accompanied by strange beasts "each one as big as a house," who had suddenly emerged from the clouds of snow which surrounded the old Graian pass through which Hercules, thousands of years before, had driven the oxen of Geryon on his way from Spain to Greece. Soon an endless stream of bedraggled refugees appeared before the gates of Rome, with more complete details. Hannibal, the son of Hamilcar, with fifty thousand soldiers, nine thousand horsemen and thirty-seven fighting elephants, had crossed the Pyrenees. He had defeated the Roman army of Scipio on the banks of the Rhone and he had guided his army safely across the mountain passes of the Alps although it was October and the roads were thickly covered with snow and ice. Then he had joined forces with the Gauls and together they had defeated a second Roman army just before they crossed the Trebia and laid siege to Placentia, the northern terminus of the road which connected Rome with the province of the Alpine districts. The Senate, surprised but calm and energetic as usual, hushed up the news of these many defeats and sent two fresh armies to stop the invader. Hannibal managed to surprise these troops on a narrow road along the shores of the Trasimene Lake and there he killed all the Roman officers and most of their men. This time there was a panic among the people of Rome, but the Senate kept its nerve. A third army was organised and the command was given to Quintus Fabius Maximus with full power to act "as was necessary to save the state." Fabius knew that he must be very careful lest all be lost. His raw and untrained men, the last available soldiers, were no match for Hannibal's veterans. He refused to accept battle but forever he followed Hannibal, destroyed everything eatable, destroyed the roads, attacked small detachments and generally weakened the morale of the Carthaginian troops by a most distressing and annoying form of guerilla warfare. Such methods however did not satisfy the fearsome crowds who had found safety behind the walls of Rome. They wanted "action." Something must be done and must be done quickly. A popular hero by the name of Varro, the sort of man who went about the city telling everybody how much better he could do things than slow old Fabius, the "Delayer," was made commander-in-chief by popular acclamation. At the battle of Cannae (216) he suffered the most terrible defeat of Roman history. More than seventy thousand men were killed. Hannibal was master of all Italy. He marched from one end of the peninsula to the other, proclaiming himself the "deliverer from the yoke of Rome" and asking the different provinces to join him in warfare upon the mother city. Then once more the wisdom of Rome bore noble fruit. With the exceptions of Capua and Syracuse, all Roman cities remained loyal. Hannibal, the deliverer, found himself opposed by the people whose friend he pretended to be. He was far away from home and did not like the situation. He sent messengers to Carthage to ask for fresh supplies and new men. Alas, Carthage could not send him either. The Romans with their boarding-bridges, were the masters of the sea. Hannibal must help himself as best he could. He continued to defeat the Roman armies that were sent out against him, but his own numbers were decreasing rapidly and the Italian peasants held aloof from this self-appointed "deliverer." After many years of uninterrupted victories, Hannibal found himself besieged in the country which he had just conquered. For a moment, the luck seemed to turn. Hasdrubal, his brother, had defeated the Roman armies in Spain. He had crossed the Alps to come to Hannibal's assistance. He sent messengers to the south to tell of his arrival and ask the other army to meet him in the plain of the Tiber. Unfortunately the messengers fell into the hands of the Romans and Hannibal waited in vain for further news until his brother's head, neatly packed in a basket, came rolling into his camp and told him of the fate of the last of the Carthaginian troops. With Hasdrubal out of the way, young Publius Scipio easily reconquered Spain and four years later the Romans were ready for a final attack upon Carthage. Hannibal was called back. He crossed the African Sea and tried to organise the defences of his home-city. In the year 202 at the battle of Zama, the Carthaginians were defeated. Hannibal fled to Tyre. From there he went to Asia Minor to stir up the Syrians and the Macedonians against Rome. He accomplished very little but his activities among these Asiatic powers gave the Romans an excuse to carry their warfare into the territory of the east and annex the greater part of the AEgean world. Driven from one city to another, a fugitive without a home, Hannibal at last knew that the end of his ambitious dream had come. His beloved city of Carthage had been ruined by the war. She had been forced to sign a terrible peace. Her navy had been sunk. She had been forbidden to make war without Roman permission. She had been condemned to pay the Romans millions of dollars for endless years to come. Life offered no hope of a better future. In the year 190 B.C. Hannibal took poison and killed himself. Forty years later, the Romans forced their last war upon Carthage. Three long years the inhabitants of the old Phoenician colony held out against the power of the new republic. Hunger forced them to surrender. The few men and women who had survived the siege were sold as slaves. The city was set on fire. For two whole weeks the store-houses and the pal-aces and the great arsenal burned. Then a terrible curse was pronounced upon the blackened ruins and the Roman legions returned to Italy to enjoy their victory. For the next thousand years, the Mediterranean remained a European sea. But as soon as the Roman Empire had been destroyed, Asia made another attempt to dominate this great inland sea, as you will learn when I tell you about Mohammed. THE RISE OF ROME HOW ROME HAPPENED THE Roman Empire was an accident. No one planned it. It "happened." No famous general or statesman or cut-throat ever got up and said "Friends, Romans, Citizens, we must found an Empire. Follow me and together we shall conquer all the land from the Gates of Hercules to Mount Taurus." Rome produced famous generals and equally distinguished statesmen and cut-throats, and Roman armies fought all over the world. But the Roman empire-making was done without a preconceived plan. The average Roman was a very matter-of-fact citizen. He disliked theories about government. When someone began to recite "eastward the course of Roman Empire, etc., etc.," he hastily left the forum. He just continued to take more and more land because circumstances forced him to do so. He was not driven by ambition or by greed. Both by nature and inclination he was a farmer and wanted to stay at home. But when he was attacked he was obliged to defend himself and when the enemy happened to cross the sea to ask for aid in a distant country then the patient Roman marched many dreary miles to defeat this dangerous foe and when this had been accomplished, he stayed behind to adminster{sic} his newly conquered provinces lest they fall into the hands of wandering Barbarians and become themselves a menace to Roman safety. It sounds rather complicated and yet to the contemporaries it was so very simple, as you shall see in a moment. In the year 203 B.C. Scipio had crossed the African Sea and had carried the war into Africa. Carthage had called Hannibal back. Badly supported by his mercenaries, Hannibal had been defeated near Zama. The Romans had asked for his surrender and Hannibal had fled to get aid from the kings of Macedonia and Syria, as I told you in my last chapter. The rulers of these two countries (remnants of the Empire of Alexander the Great) just then were contemplating an expedition against Egypt. They hoped to divide the rich Nile valley between themselves. The king of Egypt had heard of this and he had asked Rome to come to his support. The stage was set for a number of highly interesting plots and counter-plots. But the Romans, with their lack of imagination, rang the curtain down before the play had been fairly started. Their legions completely defeated the heavy Greek phalanx which was still used by the Macedonians as their battle formation. That happened in the year 197 B.C. at the battle in the plains of Cynoscephalae, or "Dogs' Heads," in central Thessaly. The Romans then marched southward to Attica and informed the Greeks that they had come to "deliver the Hellenes from the Macedonian yoke." The Greeks, having learned nothing in their years of semi-slavery, used their new freedom in a most unfortunate way. All the little city-states once more began to quarrel with each other as they had done in the good old days. The Romans, who had little understanding and less love for these silly bickerings of a race which they rather despised, showed great forebearance. But tiring of these endless dissensions they lost patience, invaded Greece, burned down Corinth (to "encourage the other Greeks") and sent a Roman governor to Athens to rule this turbulent province. In this way, Macedonia and Greece became buffer states which protected Rome's eastern frontier. Meanwhile right across the Hellespont lay the Kingdom of Syria, and Antiochus III, who ruled that vast land, had shown great eagerness when his distinguished guest, General Hannibal, explained to him how easy it would be to invade Italy and sack the city of Rome. Lucius Scipio, a brother of Scipio the African fighter who had defeated Hannibal and his Carthaginians at Zama, was sent to Asia Minor. He destroyed the armies of the Syrian king near Magnesia (in the year 190 B.C.) Shortly afterwards, Antiochus was lynched by his own people. Asia Minor became a Roman protectorate and the small City-Republic of Rome was mistress of most of the lands which bordered upon the Mediterranean. THE ROMAN EMPIRE HOW THE REPUBLIC OF ROME AFTER CENTURIES OF UNREST AND REVOLUTION BECAME AN EMPIRE WHEN the Roman armies returned from these many victorious campaigns, they were received with great jubilation. Alas and alack! this sudden glory did not make the country any happier. On the contrary. The endless campaigns had ruined the farmers who had been obliged to do the hard work of Empire making. It had placed too much power in the hands of the successful generals (and their private friends) who had used the war as an excuse for wholesale robbery. The old Roman Republic had been proud of the simplicity which had characterised the lives of her famous men. The new Republic felt ashamed of the shabby coats and the high principles which had been fashionable in the days of its grandfathers. It became a land of rich people ruled by rich people for the benefit of rich people. As such it was doomed to disastrous failure, as I shall now tell you. Within less than a century and a half. Rome had become the mistress of practically all the land around the Mediterranean. In those early days of history a prisoner of war lost his freedom and became a slave. The Roman regarded war as a very serious business and he showed no mercy to a conquered foe. After the fall of Carthage, the Carthaginian women and children were sold into bondage together with their own slaves. And a like fate awaited the obstinate inhabitants of Greece and Macedonia and Spain and Syria when they dared to revolt against the Roman power. Two thousand years ago a slave was merely a piece of machinery. Nowadays a rich man invests his money in factories. The rich people of Rome (senators, generals and war-profiteers) invested theirs in land and in slaves. The land they bought or took in the newly-acquired provinces. The slaves they bought in open market wherever they happened to be cheapest. During most of the third and second centuries before Christ there was a plentiful supply, and as a result the landowners worked their slaves until they dropped dead in their tracks, when they bought new ones at the nearest bargain-counter of Corinthian or Carthaginian captives. And now behold the fate of the freeborn farmer! He had done his duty toward Rome and he had fought her battles without complaint. But when he came home after ten, fifteen or twenty years, his lands were covered with weeds and his family had been ruined. But he was a strong man and willing to begin life anew. He sowed and planted and waited for the harvest. He carried his grain to the market together with his cattle and his poultry, to find that the large landowners who worked their estates with slaves could underbid him all along the line. For a couple of years he tried to hold his own. Then he gave up in despair. He left the country and he went to the nearest city. In the city he was as hungry as he had been before on the land. But he shared his misery with thousands of other disinherited beings. They crouched together in filthy hovels in the suburbs of the large cities. They were apt to get sick and die from terrible epidemics. They were all profoundly discontented. They had fought for their country and this was their reward. They were always willing to listen to those plausible spell-binders who gather around a public grievance like so many hungry vultures, and soon they became a grave menace to the safety of the state. But the class of the newly-rich shrugged its shoulders. "We have our army and our policemen," they argued, "they will keep the mob in order." And they hid themselves behind the high walls of their pleasant villas and cultivated their gardens and read the poems of a certain Homer which a Greek slave had just translated into very pleasing Latin hexameters. In a few families however the old tradition of unselfish service to the Commonwealth continued. Cornelia, the daughter of Scipio Africanus, had been married to a Roman by the name of Gracchus. She had two sons, Tiberius and Gaius. When the boys grew up they entered politics and tried to bring about certain much-needed reforms. A census had shown that most of the land of the Italian peninsula was owned by two thousand noble families. Tiberius Gracchus, having been elected a Tribune, tried to help the freemen. He revived two ancient laws which restricted the number of acres which a single owner might possess. In this way he hoped to revive the valuable old class of small and independent freeholders. The newly-rich called him a robber and an enemy of the state. There were street riots. A party of thugs was hired to kill the popular Tribune. Tiberius Gracchus was attacked when he entered the assembly and was beaten to death. Ten years later his brother Gaius tried the experiment of reforming a nation against the expressed wishes of a strong privileged class. He passed a "poor law" which was meant to help the destitute farmers. Eventually it made the greater part of the Roman citizens into professional beggars. He established colonies of destitute people in distant parts of the empire, but these settlements failed to attract the right sort of people. Before Gaius Gracchus could do more harm he too was murdered and his followers were either killed or exiled. The first two reformers had been gentlemen. The two who came after were of a very different stamp. They were professional soldiers. One was called Marius. The name of the other was Sulla. Both enjoyed a large personal following. Sulla was the leader of the landowners. Marius, the victor in a great battle at the foot of the Alps when the Teutons and the Cimbri had been annihilated, was the popular hero of the disinherited freemen. Now it happened in the year 88 B.C. that the Senate of Rome was greatly disturbed by rumours that came from Asia. Mithridates, king of a country along the shores of the Black Sea, and a Greek on his mother's side, had seen the possibility of establishing a second Alexandrian Empire. He began his campaign for world-domination with the murder of all Roman citizens who happened to be in Asia Minor, men, women and children. Such an act, of course, meant war. The Senate equipped an army to march against the King of Pontus and punish him for his crime. But who was to be commander-in-chief? "Sulla," said the Senate, "because he is Consul." "Marius," said the mob, "because he has been Consul five times and because he is the champion of our rights." Possession is nine points of the law. Sulla happened to be in actual command of the army. He went west to defeat Mithridates and Marius fled to Africa. There he waited until he heard that Sulla had crossed into Asia. He then returned to Italy, gathered a motley crew of malcontents, marched on Rome and entered the city with his professional highwaymen, spent five days and five nights, slaughtering the enemies of the Senatorial party, got himself elected Consul and promptly died from the excitement of the last fortnight. There followed four years of disorder. Then Sulla, having defeated Mithridates, announced that he was ready to return to Rome and settle a few old scores of his own. He was as good as his word. For weeks his soldiers were busy executing those of their fellow citizens who were suspected of democratic sympathies. One day they got hold of a young fellow who had been often seen in the company of Marius. They were going to hang him when some one interfered. "The boy is too young," he said, and they let him go. His name was Julius Caesar. You shall meet him again on the next page. As for Sulla, he became "Dictator," which meant sole and supreme ruler of all the Roman possessions. He ruled Rome for four years, and he died quietly in his bed, having spent the last year of his life tenderly raising his cabbages, as was the custom of so many Romans who had spent a lifetime killing their fellow-men. But conditions did not grow better. On the contrary, they grew worse. Another general, Gnaeus Pompeius, or Pompey, a close friend of Sulla, went east to renew the war against the ever troublesome Mithridates. He drove that energetic potentate into the mountains where Mithridates took poison and killed himself, well knowing what fate awaited him as a Roman captive. Next he re-established the authority of Rome over Syria, destroyed Jerusalem, roamed through western Asia, trying to revive the myth of Alexander the Great, and at last (in the year 62) returned to Rome with a dozen ship-loads of defeated Kings and Princes and Generals, all of whom were forced to march in the triumphal procession of this enormously popular Roman who presented his city with the sum of forty million dollars in plunder. It was necessary that the government of Rome be placed in the hands of a strong man. Only a few months before, the town had almost fallen into the hands of a good-for-nothing young aristocrat by the name of Catiline, who had gambled away his money and hoped to reimburse himself for his losses by a little plundering. Cicero, a public-spirited lawyer, had discovered the plot, had warned the Senate, and had forced Catiline to flee. But there were other young men with similar ambitions and it was no time for idle talk. Pompey organised a triumvirate which was to take charge of affairs. He became the leader of this Vigilante Committee. Gaius Julius Caesar, who had made a reputation for himself as governor of Spain, was the second in command. The third was an indifferent sort of person by the name of Crassus. He had been elected because he was incredibly rich, having been a successful contractor of war supplies. He soon went upon an expedition against the Parthians and was killed. As for Caesar, who was by far the ablest of the three, he decided that he needed a little more military glory to become a popular hero. He crossed the Alps and conquered that part of the world which is now called France. Then he hammered a solid wooden bridge across the Rhine and invaded the land of the wild Teutons. Finally he took ship and visited England. Heaven knows where he might have ended if he had not been forced to return to Italy. Pompey, so he was informed, had been appointed dictator for life. This of course meant that Caesar was to be placed on the list of the "retired officers," and the idea did not appeal to him. He remembered that he had begun life as a follower of Marius. He decided to teach the Senators and their "dictator" another lesson. He crossed the Rubicon River which separated the province of Cis-alpine Gaul from Italy. Everywhere he was received as the "friend of the people." Without difficulty Caesar entered Rome and Pompey fled to Greece Caesar followed him and defeated his followers near Pharsalus. Pompey sailed across the Mediterranean and escaped to Egypt. When he landed he was murdered by order of young king Ptolemy. A few days later Caesar arrived. He found himself caught in a trap. Both the Egyptians and the Roman garrison which had remained faithful to Pompey, attacked his camp. Fortune was with Caesar. He succeeded in setting fire to the Egyptian fleet. Incidentally the sparks of the burning vessels fell on the roof of the famous library of Alexandria (which was just off the water front,) and destroyed it. Next he attacked the Egyptian army, drove the soldiers into the Nile, drowned Ptolemy, and established a new government under Cleopatra, the sister of the late king. Just then word reached him that Pharnaces, the son and heir of Mithridates, had gone on the war-path. Caesar marched northward, defeated Pharnaces in a war which lasted five days, sent word of his victory to Rome in the famous sentence "veni, vidi, vici," which is Latin for "I came, I saw, I conquered," and returned to Egypt where he fell desperately in love with Cleopatra, who followed him to Rome when he returned to take charge of the government, in the year 46. He marched at the head of not less than four different victory-parades, having won four different campaigns. Then Caesar appeared in the Senate to report upon his adventures, and the grateful Senate made him "dictator" for ten years. It was a fatal step. The new dictator made serious attempts to reform the Roman state. He made it possible for freemen to become members of the Senate. He conferred the rights of citizenship upon distant communities as had been done in the early days of Roman history. He permitted "foreigners" to exercise influence upon the government. He reformed the administration of the distant provinces which certain aristocratic families had come to regard as their private possessions. In short he did many things for the good of the majority of the people but which made him thoroughly unpopular with the most powerful men in the state. Half a hundred young aristocrats formed a plot "to save the Republic." On the Ides of March (the fifteenth of March according to that new calendar which Caesar had brought with him from Egypt) Caesar was murdered when he entered the Senate. Once more Rome was without a master. There were two men who tried to continue the tradition of Caesar's glory. One was Antony, his former secretary. The other was Octavian, Caesar's grand-nephew and heir to his estate. Octavian remained in Rome, but Antony went to Egypt to be near Cleopatra with whom he too had fallen in love, as seems to have been the habit of Roman generals. A war broke out between the two. In the battle of Actium, Octavian defeated Antony. Antony killed himself and Cleopatra was left alone to face the enemy. She tried very hard to make Octavian her third Roman conquest. When she saw that she could make no impression upon this very proud aristocrat, she killed herself, and Egypt became a Roman province. As for Octavian, he was a very wise young man and he did not repeat the mistake of his famous uncle. He knew how people will shy at words. He was very modest in his demands when he returned to Rome. He did not want to be a "dictator." He would be entirely satisfied with the title of "the Honourable." But when the Senate, a few years later, addressed him as Augustus--the Illustrious--he did not object and a few years later the man in the street called him Caesar, or Kaiser, while the soldiers, accustomed to regard Octavian as their Commander-in-chief referred to him as the Chief, the Imperator or Emperor. The Republic had become an Empire, but the average Roman was hardly aware of the fact. In 14 A.D. his position as the Absolute Ruler of the Roman people had become so well established that he was made an object of that divine worship which hitherto had been reserved for the Gods. And his successors were true "Emperors"--the absolute rulers of the greatest empire the world had ever seen. If the truth be told, the average citizen was sick and tired of anarchy and disorder. He did not care who ruled him provided the new master gave him a chance to live quietly and without the noise of eternal street riots. Octavian assured his subjects forty years of peace. He had no desire to extend the frontiers of his domains, In the year 9 A.D. he had contem-plated an invasion of the northwestern wilderness which was inhabited by the Teutons. But Varrus, his general, had been killed with all his men in the Teutoburg Woods, and after that the Romans made no further attempts to civilise these wild people. They concentrated their efforts upon the gigantic problem of internal reform. But it was too late to do much good. Two centuries of revolution and foreign war had repeatedly killed the best men among the younger generations. It had ruined the class of the free farmers. It had introduced slave labor, against which no freeman could hope to compete. It had turned the cities into beehives inhabited by pauperized and unhealthy mobs of runaway peasants. It had created a large bureaucracy--petty officials who were underpaid and who were forced to take graft in order to buy bread and clothing for their families. Worst of all, it had accustomed people to violence, to blood-shed, to a barbarous pleasure in the pain and suffering of others. Outwardly, the Roman state during the first century of our era was a magnificent political structure, so large that Alexander's empire became one of its minor provinces. Underneath this glory there lived millions upon millions of poor and tired human beings, toiling like ants who have built a nest underneath a heavy stone. They worked for the benefit of some one else. They shared their food with the animals of the fields. They lived in stables. They died without hope. It was the seven hundred and fifty-third year since the founding of Rome. Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus Augustus was living in the palace of the Palatine Hill, busily engaged upon the task of ruling his empire. In a little village of distant Syria, Mary, the wife of Joseph the Carpenter, was tending her little boy, born in a stable of Bethlehem. This is a strange world. Before long, the palace and the stable were to meet in open combat. And the stable was to emerge victorious. JOSHUA OF NAZARETH THE STORY OF JOSHUA OF NAZARETH, WHOM THE GREEKS CALLED JESUS IN the autumn of the year of the city 783 (which would be 62 A.D., in our way of counting time) AEsculapius Cultellus, a Roman physician, wrote to his nephew who was with the army in Syria as follows: My dear Nephew, A few days ago I was called in to prescribe for a sick man named Paul. He appeared to be a Roman citizen of Jewish parentage, well educated and of agreeable manners. I had been told that he was here in connection with a law-suit, an appeal from one of our provincial courts, Caesarea or some such place in the eastern Mediterranean. He had been described to me as a "wild and violent" fellow who had been making speeches against the People and against the Law. I found him very intelligent and of great honesty. A friend of mine who used to be with the army in Asia Minor tells me that he heard something about him in Ephesus where he was preaching sermons about a strange new God. I asked my patient if this were true and whether he had told the people to rebel against the will of our beloved Emperor. Paul answered me that the Kingdom of which he had spoken was not of this world and he added many strange utterances which I did not understand, but which were probably due to his fever. His personality made a great impression upon me and I was sorry to hear that he was killed on the Ostian Road a few days ago. Therefore I am writing this letter to you. When next you visit Jerusalem, I want you to find out something about my friend Paul and the strange Jewish prophet, who seems to have been his teacher. Our slaves are getting much excited about this so-called Messiah, and a few of them, who openly talked of the new kingdom (whatever that means) have been crucified. I would like to know the truth about all these rumours and I am Your devoted Uncle, AESCULAPIUS CULTELLUS. Six weeks later, Gladius Ensa, the nephew, a captain of the VII Gallic Infantry, answered as follows: My dear Uncle, I received your letter and I have obeyed your instructions. Two weeks ago our brigade was sent to Jerusalem. There have been several revolutions during the last century and there is not much left of the old city. We have been here now for a month and to-morrow we shall continue our march to Petra, where there has been trouble with some of the Arab tribes. I shall use this evening to answer your questions, but pray do not expect a detailed report. I have talked with most of the older men in this city but few have been able to give me any definite information. A few days ago a pedler came to the camp. I bought some of his olives and I asked him whether he had ever heard of the famous Messiah who was killed when he was young. He said that he remembered it very clearly, because his father had taken him to Golgotha (a hill just outside the city) to see the execution, and to show him what became of the enemies of the laws of the people of Judaea. He gave me the address of one Joseph, who had been a personal friend of the Messiah and told me that I had better go and see him if I wanted to know more. This morning I went to call on Joseph. He was quite an old man. He had been a fisherman on one of the fresh-water lakes. His memory was clear, and from him at last I got a fairly definite account of what had happened during the troublesome days before I was born. Tiberius, our great and glorious emperor, was on the throne, and an officer of the name of Pontius Pilatus was governor of Judaea and Samaria. Joseph knew little about this Pilatus. He seemed to have been an honest enough official who left a decent reputation as procurator of the province. In the year 755 or 756 (Joseph had forgotten when) Pilatus was called to Jerusalem on account of a riot. A certain young man (the son of a carpenter of Nazareth) was said to be planning a revolution against the Roman government. Strangely enough our own intelligence officers, who are usually well informed, appear to have heard nothing about it, and when they investigated the matter they reported that the carpenter was an excellent citizen and that there was no reason to proceed against him. But the old-fashioned leaders of the Jewish faith, according to Joseph, were much upset. They greatly disliked his popularity with the masses of the poorer Hebrews. The "Nazarene" (so they told Pilatus) had publicly claimed that a Greek or a Roman or even a Philistine, who tried to live a decent and honourable life, was quite as good as a Jew who spent his days studying the ancient laws of Moses. Pilatus does not seem to have been impressed by this argument, but when the crowds around the temple threatened to lynch Jesus, and kill all his followers, he decided to take the carpenter into custody to save his life. He does not appear to have understood the real nature of the quarrel. Whenever he asked the Jewish priests to explain their grievances, they shouted "heresy" and "treason" and got terribly excited. Finally, so Joseph told me, Pilatus sent for Joshua (that was the name of the Nazarene, but the Greeks who live in this part of the world always refer to him as Jesus) to examine him personally. He talked to him for several hours. He asked him about the "dangerous doctrines" which he was said to have preached on the shores of the sea of Galilee. But Jesus answered that he never referred to politics. He was not so much interested in the bodies of men as in Man's soul. He wanted all people to regard their neighbours as their brothers and to love one single God, who was the father of all living beings. Pilatus, who seems to have been well versed in the doctrines of the Stoics and the other Greek philosophers, does not appear to have discovered anything seditious in the talk of Jesus. According to my informant he made another attempt to save the life of the kindly prophet. He kept putting the execution off. Meanwhile the Jewish people, lashed into fury by their priests, got frantic with rage. There had been many riots in Jerusalem before this and there were only a few Roman soldiers within calling distance. Reports were being sent to the Roman authorities in Caesarea that Pilatus had "fallen a victim to the teachings of the Nazarene." Petitions were being circulated all through the city to have Pilatus recalled, because he was an enemy of the Emperor. You know that our governors have strict instructions to avoid an open break with their foreign subjects. To save the country from civil war, Pilatus finally sacrificed his prisoner, Joshua, who behaved with great dignity and who forgave all those who hated him. He was crucified amidst the howls and the laughter of the Jerusalem mob. That is what Joseph told me, with tears running down his old cheeks. I gave him a gold piece when I left him, but he refused it and asked me to hand it to one poorer than himself. I also asked him a few questions about your friend Paul. He had known him slightly. He seems to have been a tent maker who gave up his profession that he might preach the words of a loving and forgiving God, who was so very different from that Jehovah of whom the Jewish priests are telling us all the time. Afterwards, Paul appears to have travelled much in Asia Minor and in Greece, telling the slaves that they were all children of one loving Father and that happiness awaits all, both rich and poor, who have tried to live honest lives and have done good to those who were suffering and miserable. I hope that I have answered your questions to your satisfaction. The whole story seems very harmless to me as far as the safety of the state is concerned. But then, we Romans never have been able to understand the people of this province. I am sorry that they have killed your friend Paul. I wish that I were at home again, and I am, as ever, Your dutiful nephew, GLADIUS ENSA. THE FALL OF ROME THE TWILIGHT OF ROME THE text-books of ancient History give the date 476 as the year in which Rome fell, because in that year the last emperor was driven off his throne. But Rome, which was not built in a day, took a long time falling. The process was so slow and so gradual that most Romans did not realise how their old world was coming to an end. They complained about the unrest of the times--they grumbled about the high prices of food and about the low wages of the workmen--they cursed the profiteers who had a monopoly of the grain and the wool and the gold coin. Occasionally they rebelled against an unusually rapacious governor. But the majority of the people during the first four centuries of our era ate and drank (whatever their purse allowed them to buy) and hated or loved (according to their nature) and went to the theatre (whenever there was a free show of fighting gladiators) or starved in the slums of the big cities, utterly ignorant of the fact that their empire had outlived its usefulness and was doomed to perish. How could they realise the threatened danger? Rome made a fine showing of outward glory. Well-paved roads connected the different provinces, the imperial police were active and showed little tenderness for highwaymen. The frontier was closely guarded against the savage tribes who seemed to be occupying the waste lands of northern Europe. The whole world was paying tribute to the mighty city of Rome, and a score of able men were working day and night to undo the mistakes of the past and bring about a return to the happier conditions of the early Republic. But the underlying causes of the decay of the State, of which I have told you in a former chapter, had not been removed and reform therefore was impossible. Rome was, first and last and all the time, a city-state as Athens and Corinth had been city-states in ancient Hellas. It had been able to dominate the Italian peninsula. But Rome as the ruler of the entire civilised world was a political impossibility and could not endure. Her young men were killed in her endless wars. Her farmers were ruined by long military service and by taxation. They either became professional beggars or hired themselves out to rich landowners who gave them board and lodging in exchange for their services and made them "serfs," those unfortunate human beings who are neither slaves nor freemen, but who have become part of the soil upon which they work, like so many cows, and the trees. The Empire, the State, had become everything. The common citizen had dwindled down to less than nothing. As for the slaves, they had heard the words that were spoken by Paul. They had accepted the message of the humble carpenter of Nazareth. They did not rebel against their masters. On the contrary, they had been taught to be meek and they obeyed their superiors. But they had lost all interest in the affairs of this world which had proved such a miserable place of abode. They were willing to fight the good fight that they might enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. But they were not willing to engage in warfare for the benefit of an ambitious emperor who aspired to glory by way of a foreign campaign in the land of the Parthians or the Numidians or the Scots. And so conditions grew worse as the centuries went by. The first Emperors had continued the tradition of "leadership" which had given the old tribal chieftains such a hold upon their subjects. But the Emperors of the second and third centuries were Barrack-Emperors, professional soldiers, who existed by the grace of their body-guards, the so-called Praetorians. They succeeded each other with terrifying rapidity, murdering their way into the palace and being murdered out of it as soon as their successors had become rich enough to bribe the guards into a new rebellion. Meanwhile the barbarians were hammering at the gates of the northern frontier. As there were no longer any native Roman armies to stop their progress, foreign mercenaries had to be hired to fight the invader. As the foreign soldier happened to be of the same blood as his supposed enemy, he was apt to be quite lenient when he engaged in battle. Finally, by way of experiment, a few tribes were allowed to settle within the confines of the Empire. Others followed. Soon these tribes complained bitterly of the greedy Roman tax-gatherers, who took away their last penny. When they got no redress they marched to Rome and loudly demanded that they be heard. This made Rome very uncomfortable as an Imperial residence. Constantine (who ruled from 323 to 337) looked for a new capital. He chose Byzantium, the gate-way for the commerce between Europe and Asia. The city was renamed Constantinople, and the court moved eastward. When Constantine died, his two sons, for the sake of a more efficient administration, divided the Empire between them. The elder lived in Rome and ruled in the west. The younger stayed in Constantinople and was master of the east. Then came the fourth century and the terrible visitation of the Huns, those mysterious Asiatic horsemen who for more than two centuries maintained themselves in Northern Europe and continued their career of bloodshed until they were defeated near Chalons-sur-Marne in France in the year 451. As soon as the Huns had reached the Danube they had begun to press hard upon the Goths. The Goths, in order to save themselves, were thereupon obliged to invade Rome. The Emperor Valens tried to stop them, but was killed near Adrianople in the year 378. Twenty-two years later, under their king, Alaric, these same West Goths marched westward and attacked Rome. They did not plunder, and destroyed only a few palaces. Next came the Vandals, and showed less respect for the venerable traditions of the city. Then the Burgundians. Then the East Goths. Then the Alemanni. Then the Franks. There was no end to the invasions. Rome at last was at the mercy of every ambitious highway robber who could gather a few followers. In the year 402 the Emperor fled to Ravenna, which was a sea-port and strongly fortified, and there, in the year 475, Odoacer, commander of a regiment of the German mercenaries, who wanted the farms of Italy to be divided among themselves, gently but effectively pushed Romulus Augustulus, the last of the emperors who ruled the western division, from his throne, and proclaimed himself Patriarch or ruler of Rome. The eastern Emperor, who was very busy with his own affairs, recognised him, and for ten years Odoacer ruled what was left of the western provinces. A few years later, Theodoric, King of the East Goths, invaded the newly formed Patriciat, took Ravenna, murdered Odoacer at his own dinner table, and established a Gothic Kingdom amidst the ruins of the western part of the Empire. This Patriciate state did not last long. In the sixth century a motley crowd of Longobards and Saxons and Slavs and Avars invaded Italy, destroyed the Gothic kingdom, and established a new state of which Pavia became the capital. Then at last the imperial city sank into a state of utter neglect and despair. The ancient palaces had been plundered time and again. The schools had been burned down. The teachers had been starved to death. The rich people had been thrown out of their villas which were now inhabited by evil-smelling and hairy barbarians. The roads had fallen into decay. The old bridges were gone and commerce had come to a standstill. Civilisation--the product of thousands of years of patient labor on the part of Egyptians and Babylonians and Greeks and Romans, which had lifted man high above the most daring dreams of his earliest ancestors, threatened to perish from the western continent. It is true that in the far east, Constantinople continued to be the centre of an Empire for another thousand years. But it hardly counted as a part of the European continent. Its interests lay in the east. It began to forget its western origin. Gradually the Roman language was given up for the Greek. The Roman alphabet was discarded and Roman law was written in Greek characters and explained by Greek judges. The Emperor became an Asiatic despot, worshipped as the god-like kings of Thebes had been worshipped in the valley of the Nile, three thousand years before. When missionaries of the Byzantine church looked for fresh fields of activity, they went eastward and carried the civilisation of Byzantium into the vast wilderness of Russia. As for the west, it was left to the mercies of the Barbarians. For twelve generations, murder, war, arson, plundering were the order of the day. One thing--and one thing alone--saved Europe from complete destruction, from a return to the days of cave-men and the hyena. This was the church--the flock of humble men and women who for many centuries had confessed themselves the followers of Jesus, the carpenter of Nazareth, who had been killed that the mighty Roman Empire might be saved the trouble of a street-riot in a little city somewhere along the Syrian frontier. RISE OF THE CHURCH HOW ROME BECAME THE CENTRE OF THE CHRISTIAN WORLD THE average intelligent Roman who lived under the Empire had taken very little interest in the gods of his fathers. A few times a year he went to the temple, but merely as a matter of custom. He looked on patiently when the people celebrated a religious festival with a solemn procession. But he regarded the worship of Jupiter and Minerva and Neptune as something rather childish, a survival from the crude days of the early republic and not a fit subject of study for a man who had mastered the works of the Stoics and the Epicureans and the other great philosophers of Athens. This attitude made the Roman a very tolerant man. The government insisted that all people, Romans, foreigners, Greeks, Babylonians, Jews, should pay a certain outward respect to the image of the Emperor which was supposed to stand in every temple, just as a picture of the President of the United States is apt to hang in an American Post Office. But this was a formality without any deeper meaning. Generally speaking everybody could honour, revere and adore whatever gods he pleased, and as a result, Rome was filled with all sorts of queer little temples and synagogues, dedicated to the worship of Egyptian and African and Asiatic divinities. When the first disciples of Jesus reached Rome and began to preach their new doctrine of a universal brotherhood of man, nobody objected. The man in the street stopped and listened Rome, the capital of the world, had always been full of wandering preachers, each proclaiming his own "mystery." Most of the self-appointed priests appealed to the senses--promised golden rewards and endless pleasure to the followers of their own particular god. Soon the crowd in the street noticed that the so-called Christians (the followers of the Christ or "anointed") spoke a very different language. They did not appear to be impressed by great riches or a noble position. They extolled the beauties of poverty and humility and meekness. These were not exactly the virtues which had made Rome the mistress of the world. It was rather interesting to listen to a "mystery" which told people in the hey-day of their glory that their worldly success could not possibly bring them lasting happiness. Besides, the preachers of the Christian mystery told dreadful stories of the fate that awaited those who refused to listen to the words of the true God. It was never wise to take chances. Of course the old Roman gods still existed, but were they strong enough to protect their friends against the powers of this new deity who had been brought to Europe from distant Asia? People began to have doubts. They returned to listen to further explanations of the new creed. After a while they began to meet the men and women who preached the words of Jesus. They found them very different from the average Roman priests. They were all dreadfully poor. They were kind to slaves and to animals. They did not try to gain riches, but gave away whatever they had. The example of their unselfish lives forced many Romans to forsake the old religion. They joined the small communities of Christians who met in the back rooms of private houses or somewhere in an open field, and the temples were deserted. This went on year after year and the number of Christians continued to increase. Presbyters or priests (the original Greek meant "elder") were elected to guard the interests of the small churches. A bishop was made the head of all the communities within a single province. Peter, who had fol-lowed Paul to Rome, was the first Bishop of Rome. In due time his successors (who were addressed as Father or Papa) came to be known as Popes. The church became a powerful institution within the Empire. The Christian doctrines appealed to those who despaired of this world. They also attracted many strong men who found it impossible to make a career under the Imperial government, but who could exercise their gifts of leadership among the humble followers of the Nazarene teacher. At last the state was obliged to take notice. The Roman Empire (I have said this before) was tolerant through indifference. It allowed everybody to seek salvation after his or her own fashion. But it insisted that the different sects keep the peace among themselves and obey the wise rule of "live and let live." The Christian communities however, refused to practice any sort of tolerance. They publicly declared that their God, and their God alone, was the true ruler of Heaven and Earth, and that all other gods were imposters. This seemed unfair to the other sects and the police discouraged such utterances. The Christians persisted. Soon there were further difficulties. The Christians refused to go through the formalities of paying homage to the emperor. They refused to appear when they were called upon to join the army. The Roman magistrates threatened to punish them. The Christians answered that this miserable world was only the ante-room to a very pleasant Heaven and that they were more than willing to suffer death for their principles. The Romans, puzzled by such conduct, sometimes killed the offenders, but more often they did not. There was a certain amount of lynching during the earliest years of the church, but this was the work of that part of the mob which accused their meek Christian neighbours of every conceivable crime, (such as slaughtering and eating babies, bringing about sickness and pestilence, betraying the country in times of danger) because it was a harmless sport and devoid of danger, as the Christians refused to fight back. Meanwhile, Rome continued to be invaded by the Barbarians and when her armies failed, Christian missionaries went forth to preach their gospel of peace to the wild Teutons. They were strong men without fear of death. They spoke a language which left no doubt as to the future of unrepentant sinners. The Teutons were deeply impressed. They still had a deep respect for the wisdom of the ancient city of Rome. Those men were Romans. They probably spoke the truth. Soon the Christian missionary became a power in the savage regions of the Teutons and the Franks. Half a dozen missionaries were as valuable as a whole regiment of soldiers. The Emperors began to understand that the Christian might be of great use to them. In some of the provinces they were given equal rights with those who remained faithful to the old gods. The great change however came during the last half of the fourth century. Constantine, sometimes (Heaven knows why) called Constantine the Great, was emperor. He was a terrible ruffian, but people of tender qualities could hardly hope to survive in that hard-fighting age. During a long and checkered career, Constantine had experienced many ups and downs. Once, when almost defeated by his enemies, he thought that he would try the power of this new Asiatic deity of whom everybody was talking. He promised that he too would become a Christian if he were successful in the coming battle. He won the victory and thereafter he was convinced of the power of the Christian God and allowed himself to be baptised. From that moment on, the Christian church was officially recognised and this greatly strengthened the position of the new faith. But the Christians still formed a very small minority of all the people, (not more than five or six percent,) and in order to win, they were forced to refuse all compromise. The old gods must be destroyed. For a short spell the emperor Julian, a lover of Greek wisdom, managed to save the pagan Gods from further destruction. But Julian died of his wounds during a campaign in Persia and his successor Jovian re-established the church in all its glory. One after the other the doors of the ancient temples were then closed. Then came the emperor Justinian (who built the church of Saint Sophia in Constantinople), who discontinued the school of philosophy at Athens which had been founded by Plato. That was the end of the old Greek world, in which man had been allowed to think his own thoughts and dream his own dreams according to his desires. The somewhat vague rules of conduct of the philosophers had proved a poor compass by which to steer the ship of life after a deluge of savagery and ignorance had swept away the established order of things. There was need of something more positive and more definite. This the Church provided. During an age when nothing was certain, the church stood like a rock and never receded from those principles which it held to be true and sacred. This steadfast courage gained the admiration of the multitudes and carried the church of Rome safely through the difficulties which destroyed the Roman state. There was however, a certain element of luck in the final success of the Christian faith. After the disappearance of Theodoric's Roman-Gothic kingdom, in the fifth century, Italy was comparatively free from foreign invasion. The Lombards and Saxons and Slavs who succeeded the Goths were weak and backward tribes. Under those circumstances it was possible for the bishops of Rome to maintain the independence of their city. Soon the remnants of the empire, scattered throughout the peninsula, recognised the Dukes of Rome (or bishops) as their political and spiritual rulers. The stage was set for the appearance of a strong man. He came in the year 590 and his name was Gregory. He belonged to the ruling classes of ancient Rome, and he had been "prefect" or mayor of the city. Then he had become a monk and a bishop and finally, and much against his will, (for he wanted to be a missionary and preach Christianity to the heathen of England,) he had been dragged to the Church of Saint Peter to be made Pope. He ruled only fourteen years but when he died the Christian world of western Europe had officially recognised the bishops of Rome, the Popes, as the head of the entire church. This power, however, did not extend to the east. In Constantinople the Emperors continued the old custom which had recognised the successors of Augustus and Tiberius both as head of the government and as High Priest of the Established Religion. In the year 1453 the eastern Roman Empire was conquered by the Turks. Constantinople was taken, and Constantine Paleologue, the last Roman Emperor, was killed on the steps of the Church of the Holy Sophia. A few years before, Zoe, the daughter of his brother Thomas, had married Ivan III of Russia. In this way did the grand-dukes of Moscow fall heir to the traditions of Constantinople. The double-eagle of old Byzantium (reminiscent of the days when Rome had been divided into an eastern and a western part) became the coat of arms of modern Russia. The Tsar who had been merely the first of the Russian nobles, assumed the aloofness and the dignity of a Roman emperor before whom all subjects, both high and low, were inconsiderable slaves. The court was refashioned after the oriental pattern which the eastern Emperors had imported from Asia and from Egypt and which (so they flattered themselves) resembled the court of Alexander the Great. This strange inheritance which the dying Byzantine Empire bequeathed to an unsuspecting world continued to live with great vigour for six more centuries, amidst the vast plains of Russia. The last man to wear the crown with the double eagle of Constantinople, Tsar Nicholas, was murdered only the other day, so to speak. His body was thrown into a well. His son and his daughters were all killed. All his ancient rights and prerogatives were abolished, and the church was reduced to the position which it had held in Rome before the days of Constantine. The eastern church however fared very differently, as we shall see in the next chapter when the whole Christian world is going to be threatened with destruction by the rival creed of an Arab camel-driver. MOHAMMED AHMED, THE CAMEL-DRIVER, WHO BECAME THE PROPHET OF THE ARABIAN DESERT AND WHOSE FOLLOWERS ALMOST CONQUERED THE ENTIRE KNOWN WORLD FOR THE GREATER GLORY OF ALLAH, THE ONLY TRUE GOD SINCE the days of Carthage and Hannibal we have said nothing of the Semitic people. You will remember how they filled all the chapters devoted to the story of the Ancient World. The Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Phoenicians, the Jews, the Arameans, the Chaldeans, all of them Semites, had been the rulers of western Asia for thirty or forty centuries. They had been conquered by the Indo-European Persians who had come from the east and by the Indo-European Greeks who had come from the west. A hundred years after the death of Alexander the Great, Carthage, a colony of Semitic Phoenicians, had fought the Indo-European Romans for the mastery of the Mediterranean. Carthage had been defeated and destroyed and for eight hundred years the Romans had been masters of the world. In the seventh century, however, another Semitic tribe appeared upon the scene and challenged the power of the west. They were the Arabs, peaceful shepherds who had roamed through the desert since the beginning of time without showing any signs of imperial ambitions. Then they listened to Mohammed, mounted their horses and in less than a century they had pushed to the heart of Europe and proclaimed the glories of Allah, "the only God," and Mohammed, "the prophet of the only God," to the frightened peasants of France. The story of Ahmed, the son of Abdallah and Aminah (usually known as Mohammed, or "he who will be praised,"); reads like a chapter in the "Thousand and One Nights." He was a camel-driver, born in Mecca. He seems to have been an epileptic and he suffered from spells of unconsciousness when he dreamed strange dreams and heard the voice of the angel Gabriel, whose words were afterwards written down in a book called the Koran. His work as a caravan leader carried him all over Arabia and he was constantly falling in with Jewish merchants and with Christian traders, and he came to see that the worship of a single God was a very excellent thing. His own people, the Arabs, still revered queer stones and trunks of trees as their ancestors had done, tens of thousands of years before. In Mecca, their holy city, stood a little square building, the Kaaba, full of idols and strange odds and ends of Hoo-doo worship. Mohammed decided to be the Moses of the Arab people. He could not well be a prophet and a camel-driver at the same time. So he made himself independent by marrying his employer, the rich widow Chadija. Then he told his neighbours in Mecca that he was the long-expected prophet sent by Allah to save the world. The neighbours laughed most heartily and when Mohammed continued to annoy them with his speeches they decided to kill him. They regarded him as a lunatic and a public bore who deserved no mercy. Mohammed heard of the plot and in the dark of night he fled to Medina together with Abu Bekr, his trusted pupil. This happened in the year 622. It is the most important date in Mohammedan history and is known as the Hegira--the year of the Great Flight. In Medina, Mohammed, who was a stranger, found it easier to proclaim himself a prophet than in his home city, where every one had known him as a simple camel-driver. Soon he was surrounded by an increasing number of followers, or Moslems, who accepted the Islam, "the submission to the will of God," which Mohammed praised as the highest of all virtues. For seven years he preached to the people of Medina. Then he believed himself strong enough to begin a campaign against his former neighbours who had dared to sneer at him and his Holy Mission in his old camel-driving days. At the head of an army of Medinese he marched across the desert. His followers took Mecca without great difficulty, and having slaughtered a number of the inhabitants, they found it quite easy to convince the others that Mohammed was really a great prophet. From that time on until the year of his death, Mohammed was fortunate in everything he undertook. There are two reasons for the success of Islam. In the first place, the creed which Mohammed taught to his followers was very simple. The disciples were told that they must love Allah, the Ruler of the World, the Merciful and Compassionate. They must honour and obey their parents. They were warned against dishonesty in dealing with their neighbours and were admonished to be humble and charitable, to the poor and to the sick. Finally they were ordered to abstain from strong drink and to be very frugal in what they ate. That was all. There were no priests, who acted as shepherds of their flocks and asked that they be supported at the common expense. The Mohammedan churches or mosques were merely large stone halls without benches or pictures, where the faithful could gather (if they felt so inclined) to read and discuss chapters from the Koran, the Holy Book. But the average Mohammedan carried his religion with him and never felt himself hemmed in by the restrictions and regulations of an established church. Five times a day he turned his face towards Mecca, the Holy City, and said a simple prayer. For the rest of the time he let Allah rule the world as he saw fit and accepted whatever fate brought him with patient resignation. Of course such an attitude towards life did not encourage the Faithful to go forth and invent electrical machinery or bother about railroads and steamship lines. But it gave every Mohammedan a certain amount of contentment. It bade him be at peace with himself and with the world in which he lived and that was a very good thing. The second reason which explains the success of the Moslems in their warfare upon the Christians, had to do with the conduct of those Mohammedan soldiers who went forth to do battle for the true faith. The Prophet promised that those who fell, facing the enemy, would go directly to Heaven. This made sudden death in the field preferable to a long but dreary existence upon this earth. It gave the Mohammedans an enormous advantage over the Crusaders who were in constant dread of a dark hereafter, and who stuck to the good things of this world as long as they possibly could. Incidentally it explains why even to-day Moslem soldiers will charge into the fire of European machine guns quite indifferent to the fate that awaits them and why they are such dangerous and persistent enemies. Having put his religious house in order, Mohammed now began to enjoy his power as the undisputed ruler of a large number of Arab tribes. But success has been the undoing of a large number of men who were great in the days of adversity. He tried to gain the good will of the rich people by a number of regulations which could appeal to those of wealth. He allowed the Faithful to have four wives. As one wife was a costly investment in those olden days when brides were bought directly from the parents, four wives became a positive luxury except to those who possessed camels and dromedaries and date orchards beyond the dreams of avarice. A religion which at first had been meant for the hardy hunters of the high skied desert was gradually transformed to suit the needs of the smug merchants who lived in the bazaars of the cities. It was a regrettable change from the original program and it did very little good to the cause of Mohammedanism. As for the prophet himself, he went on preaching the truth of Allah and proclaiming new rules of conduct until he died, quite suddenly, of a fever on June the seventh of the year 632. His successor as Caliph (or leader) of the Moslems was his father-in-law, Abu-Bekr, who had shared the early dangers of the prophet's life. Two years later, Abu-Bekr died and Omar ibn Al-Khattab followed him. In less than ten years he conquered Egypt, Persia, Phoenicia, Syria and Palestine and made Damascus the capital of the first Mohammedan world empire. Omar was succeeded by Ali, the husband of Mohammed's daughter, Fatima, but a quarrel broke out upon a point of Moslem doctrine and Ali was murdered. After his death, the caliphate was made hereditary and the leaders of the faithful who had begun their career as the spiritual head of a religious sect became the rulers of a vast empire. They built a new city on the shores of the Euphrates, near the ruins of Babylon and called it Bagdad, and organising the Arab horsemen into regiments of cavalry, they set forth to bring the happiness of their Moslem faith to all unbelievers. In the year 700 A.D. a Mohammedan general by the name of Tarik crossed the old gates of Hercules and reached the high rock on the European side which he called the Gibel-al-tarik, the Hill of Tarik or Gibraltar. Eleven years later in the battle of Xeres de la Frontera, he defeated the king of the Visigoths and then the Moslem army moved northward and following the route of Hannibal, they crossed the passes of the Pyrenees. They defeated the Duke of Aquitania, who tried to halt them near Bordeaux, and marched upon Paris. But in the year 732 (one hundred years after the death of the prophet,) they were beaten in a battle between Tours and Poitiers. On that day, Charles Martel (Charles with the Hammer) the Frankish chieftain, saved Europe from a Mohammedan con-quest. He drove the Moslems out of France, but they maintained themselves in Spain where Abd-ar-Rahman founded the Caliphate of Cordova, which became the greatest centre of science and art of mediaeval Europe. This Moorish kingdom, so-called because the people came from Mauretania in Morocco, lasted seven centuries. It was only after the capture of Granada, the last Moslem stronghold, in the year 1492, that Columbus received the royal grant which allowed him to go upon a voyage of discovery. The Mohammedans soon regained their strength in the new conquests which they made in Asia and Africa and to-day there are as many followers of Mohammed as there are of Christ. CHARLEMAGNE HOW CHARLEMAGNE, THE KING OF THE FRANKS, CAME TO BEAR THE TITLE OF EMPEROR AND TRIED TO REVIVE THE OLD IDEAL OF WORLD-EMPIRE THE battle of Poitiers had saved Europe from the Mohammedans. But the enemy within--the hopeless disorder which had followed the disappearance of the Roman police officer--that enemy remained. It is true that the new converts of the Christian faith in Northern Europe felt a deep respect for the mighty Bishop of Rome. But that poor bishop did not feel any too safe when he looked toward the distant mountains. Heaven knew what fresh hordes of barbarians were ready to cross the Alps and begin a new attack on Rome. It was necessary--very necessary--for the spiritual head of the world to find an ally with a strong sword and a powerful fist who was willing to defend His Holiness in case of danger. And so the Popes, who were not only very holy but also very practical, cast about for a friend, and presently they made overtures to the most promising of the Germanic tribes who had occupied north-western Europe after the fall of Rome. They were called the Franks. One of their earliest kings, called Merovech, had helped the Romans in the battle of the Catalaunian fields in the year 451 when they defeated the Huns. His descendants, the Merovingians, had continued to take little bits of imperial territory until the year 486 when king Clovis (the old French word for "Louis") felt himself strong enough to beat the Romans in the open. But his descendants were weak men who left the affairs of state to their Prime minister, the "Major Domus" or Master of the Palace. Pepin the Short, the son of the famous Charles Martel, who succeeded his father as Master of the Palace, hardly knew how to handle the situation. His royal master was a devout theologian, without any interest in politics. Pepin asked the Pope for advice. The Pope who was a practical person answered that the "power in the state belonged to him who was actually possessed of it." Pepin took the hint. He persuaded Childeric, the last of the Merovingians to become a monk and then made himself king with the approval of the other Germanic chieftains. But this did not satisfy the shrewd Pepin. He wanted to be something more than a barbarian chieftain. He staged an elaborate ceremony at which Boniface, the great missionary of the European northwest, anointed him and made him a "King by the grace of God." It was easy to slip those words, "Del gratia," into the coronation service. It took almost fifteen hundred years to get them out again. Pepin was sincerely grateful for this kindness on the part of the church. He made two expeditions to Italy to defend the Pope against his enemies. He took Ravenna and several other cities away from the Longobards and presented them to His Holiness, who incorporated these new domains into the so-called Papal State, which remained an independent country until half a century ago. After Pepin's death, the relations between Rome and Aix-la-Chapelle or Nymwegen or Ingelheim, (the Frankish Kings did not have one official residence, but travelled from place to place with all their ministers and court officers,) became more and more cordial. Finally the Pope and the King took a step which was to influence the history of Europe in a most profound way. Charles, commonly known as Carolus Magnus or Charlemagne, succeeded Pepin in the year 768. He had conquered the land of the Saxons in eastern Germany and had built towns and monasteries all over the greater part of northern Europe. At the request of certain enemies of Abd-ar-Rahman, he had invaded Spain to fight the Moors. But in the Pyrenees he had been attacked by the wild Basques and had been forced to retire. It was upon this occasion that Roland, the great Margrave of Breton, showed what a Frankish chieftain of those early days meant when he promised to be faithful to his King, and gave his life and that of his trusted followers to safeguard the retreat of the royal army. During the last ten years of the eighth century, however, Charles was obliged to devote himself exclusively to affairs of the South. The Pope, Leo III, had been attacked by a band of Roman rowdies and had been left for dead in the street. Some kind people had bandaged his wounds and had helped him to escape to the camp of Charles, where he asked for help. An army of Franks soon restored quiet and carried Leo back to the Lateran Palace which ever since the days of Constantine, had been the home of the Pope. That was in December of the year 799. On Christmas day of the next year, Charlemagne, who was staying in Rome, attended the service in the ancient church of St. Peter. When he arose from prayer, the Pope placed a crown upon his head, called him Emperor of the Romans and hailed him once more with the title of "Augustus" which had not been heard for hundreds of years. Once more Northern Europe was part of a Roman Empire, but the dignity was held by a German chieftain who could read just a little and never learned to write. But he could fight and for a short while there was order and even the rival emperor in Constantinople sent a letter of approval to his "dear Brother." Unfortunately this splendid old man died in the year 814. His sons and his grandsons at once began to fight for the largest share of the imperial inheritance. Twice the Carolingian lands were divided, by the treaties of Verdun in the year 843 and by the treaty of Mersen-on-the-Meuse in the year 870. The latter treaty divided the entire Frankish Kingdom into two parts. Charles the Bold received the western half. It contained the old Roman province called Gaul where the language of the people had become thoroughly romanized. The Franks soon learned to speak this language and this accounts for the strange fact that a purely Germanic land like France should speak a Latin tongue. The other grandson got the eastern part, the land which the Romans had called Germania. Those inhospitable regions had never been part of the old Empire. Augustus had tried to conquer this "far east," but his legions had been annihilated in the Teutoburg Wood in the year 9 and the people had never been influenced by the higher Roman civilisation. They spoke the popular Germanic tongue. The Teuton word for "people" was "thiot." The Christian missionaries therefore called the German language the "lingua theotisca" or the "lingua teutisca," the "popular dialect" and this word "teutisca" was changed into "Deutsch" which accounts for the name "Deutschland." As for the famous Imperial Crown, it very soon slipped off the heads of the Carolingian successors and rolled back onto the Italian plain, where it became a sort of plaything of a number of little potentates who stole the crown from each other amidst much bloodshed and wore it (with or without the permission of the Pope) until it was the turn of some more ambitious neighbour. The Pope, once more sorely beset by his enemies, sent north for help. He did not appeal to the ruler of the west-Frankish kingdom, this time. His messengers crossed the Alps and addressed themselves to Otto, a Saxon Prince who was recognised as the greatest chieftain of the different Germanic tribes. Otto, who shared his people's affection for the blue skies and the gay and beautiful people of the Italian peninsula, hastened to the rescue. In return for his services, the Pope, Leo VIII, made Otto "Emperor," and the eastern half of Charles' old kingdom was henceforth known as the "Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation." This strange political creation managed to live to the ripe old age of eight hundred and thirty-nine years. In the year 1801, (during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson,) it was most unceremoniously relegated to the historical scrapheap. The brutal fellow who destroyed the old Germanic Empire was the son of a Corsican notary-public who had made a brilliant career in the service of the French Republic. He was ruler of Europe by the grace of his famous Guard Regiments, but he desired to be something more. He sent to Rome for the Pope and the Pope came and stood by while General Napoleon placed the imperial crown upon his own head and proclaimed himself heir to the tradition of Charlemagne. For history is like life. The more things change, the more they remain the same. THE NORSEMEN WHY THE PEOPLE OF THE TENTH CENTURY PRAYED THE LORD TO PROTECT THEM FROM THE FURY OF THE NORSEMEN IN the third and fourth centuries, the Germanic tribes of central Europe had broken through the defences of the Empire that they might plunder Rome and live on the fat of the land. In the eighth century it became the turn of the Germans to be the "plundered-ones." They did not like this at all, even if their enemies were their first cousins, the Norsemen, who lived in Denmark and Sweden and Norway. What forced these hardy sailors to turn pirate we do not know, but once they had discovered the advantages and pleasures of a buccaneering career there was no one who could stop them. They would suddenly descend upon a peaceful Frankish or Frisian village, situated on the mouth of a river. They would kill all the men and steal all the women. Then they would sail away in their fast-sailing ships and when the soldiers of the king or emperor arrived upon the scene, the robbers were gone and nothing remained but a few smouldering ruins. During the days of disorder which followed the death of Charlemagne, the Northmen developed great activity. Their fleets made raids upon every country and their sailors established small independent kingdoms along the coast of Holland and France and England and Germany, and they even found their way into Italy. The Northmen were very intelligent They soon learned to speak the language of their subjects and gave up the uncivilised ways of the early Vikings (or Sea-Kings) who had been very picturesque but also very unwashed and terribly cruel. Early in the tenth century a Viking by the name of Rollo had repeatedly attacked the coast of France. The king of France, too weak to resist these northern robbers, tried to bribe them into "being good." He offered them the province of Normandy, if they would promise to stop bothering the rest of his domains. Rollo accepted this bargain and became "Duke of Normandy." But the passion of conquest was strong in the blood of his children. Across the channel, only a few hours away from the European mainland, they could see the white cliffs and the green fields of England. Poor England had passed through difficult days. For two hundred years it had been a Roman colony. After the Romans left, it had been conquered by the Angles and the Saxons, two German tribes from Schleswig. Next the Danes had taken the greater part of the country and had established the kingdom of Cnut. The Danes had been driven away and now (it was early in the eleventh century) another Saxon king, Edward the Confessor, was on the throne. But Edward was not expected to live long and he had no children. The circumstances favoured the ambitious dukes of Normandy. In 1066 Edward died. Immediately William of Normandy crossed the channel, defeated and killed Harold of Wessex (who had taken the crown) at the battle of Hastings, and proclaimed himself king of England. In another chapter I have told you how in the year 800 a German chieftain had become a Roman Emperor. Now in the year 1066 the grandson of a Norse pirate was recognised as King of England. Why should we ever read fairy stories, when the truth of history is so much more interesting and entertaining? FEUDALISM HOW CENTRAL EUROPE, ATTACKED FROM THREE SIDES, BECAME AN ARMED CAMP AND WHY EUROPE WOULD HAVE PERISHED WITHOUT THOSE PROFESSIONAL SOLDIERS AND ADMINISTRATORS WHO WERE PART OF THE FEUDAL SYSTEM THE following, then, is the state of Europe in the year one thousand, when most people were so unhappy that they welcomed the prophecy foretelling the approaching end of the world and rushed to the monasteries, that the Day of Judgement might find them engaged upon devout duties. At an unknown date, the Germanic tribes had left their old home in Asia and had moved westward into Europe. By sheer pressure of numbers they had forced their way into the Roman Empire. They had destroyed the great western empire, but the eastern part, being off the main route of the great migrations, had managed to survive and feebly continued the traditions of Rome's ancient glory. During the days of disorder which had followed, (the true "dark ages" of history, the sixth and seventh centuries of our era,) the German tribes had been persuaded to accept the Christian religion and had recognised the Bishop of Rome as the Pope or spiritual head of the world. In the ninth century, the organising genius of Charlemagne had revived the Roman Empire and had united the greater part of western Europe into a single state. During the tenth century this empire had gone to pieces. The western part had become a separate kingdom, France. The eastern half was known as the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation, and the rulers of this federation of states then pretended that they were the direct heirs of Caesar and Augustus. Unfortunately the power of the kings of France did not stretch beyond the moat of their royal residence, while the Holy Roman Emperor was openly defied by his powerful subjects whenever it suited their fancy or their profit. To increase the misery of the masses of the people, the triangle of western Europe (look at page 128, please) was for ever exposed to attacks from three sides. On the south lived the ever dangerous Mohammedans. The western coast was ravaged by the Northmen. The eastern frontier (defenceless except for the short stretch of the Carpathian mountains) was at the mercy of hordes of Huns, Hungarians, Slavs and Tartars. The peace of Rome was a thing of the remote past, a dream of the "Good Old Days" that were gone for ever. It was a question of "fight or die," and quite naturally people preferred to fight. Forced by circumstances, Europe became an armed camp and there was a demand for strong leadership. Both King and Emperor were far away. The frontiersmen (and most of Europe in the year 1000 was "frontier") must help themselves. They willingly submitted to the representatives of the king who were sent to administer the outlying districts, PROVIDED THEY COULD PROTECT THEM AGAINST THEIR ENEMIES. Soon central Europe was dotted with small principalities, each one ruled by a duke or a count or a baron or a bishop, as the case might be, and organised as a fighting unit. These dukes and counts and barons had sworn to be faithful to the king who had given them their "feudum" (hence our word "feudal,") in return for their loyal services and a certain amount of taxes. But travel in those days was slow and the means of communication were exceedingly poor. The royal or imperial administrators therefore enjoyed great independence, and within the boundaries of their own province they assumed most of the rights which in truth belonged to the king. But you would make a mistake if you supposed that the people of the eleventh century objected to this form of government. They supported Feudalism because it was a very practical and necessary institution. Their Lord and Master usually lived in a big stone house erected on the top of a steep rock or built between deep moats, but within sight of his subjects. In case of danger the subjects found shelter behind the walls of the baronial stronghold. That is why they tried to live as near the castle as possible and it accounts for the many European cities which began their career around a feudal fortress. But the knight of the early middle ages was much more than a professional soldier. He was the civil servant of that day. He was the judge of his community and he was the chief of police. He caught the highwaymen and protected the wandering pedlars who were the merchants of the eleventh century. He looked after the dikes so that the countryside should not be flooded (just as the first noblemen had done in the valley of the Nile four thousand years before). He encouraged the Troubadours who wandered from place to place telling the stories of the ancient heroes who had fought in the great wars of the migrations. Besides, he protected the churches and the monasteries within his territory, and although he could neither read nor write, (it was considered unmanly to know such things,) he employed a number of priests who kept his accounts and who registered the marriages and the births and the deaths which occurred within the baronial or ducal domains. In the fifteenth century the kings once more became strong enough to exercise those powers which belonged to them because they were "anointed of God." Then the feudal knights lost their former independence. Reduced to the rank of country squires, they no longer filled a need and soon they became a nuisance. But Europe would have perished without the "feudal system" of the dark ages. There were many bad knights as there are many bad people to-day. But generally speaking, the rough-fisted barons of the twelfth and thirteenth century were hard-working administrators who rendered a most useful service to the cause of progress. During that era the noble torch of learning and art which had illuminated the world of the Egyptians and the Greeks and the Romans was burning very low. Without the knights and their good friends, the monks, civilisation would have been extinguished entirely, and the human race would have been forced to begin once more where the cave-man had left off. CHIVALRY CHIVALRY IT was quite natural that the professional fighting-men of the Middle Ages should try to establish some sort of organisation for their mutual benefit and protection. Out of this need for close organisation, Knighthood or Chivalry was born. We know very little about the origins of Knighthood. But as the system developed, it gave the world something which it needed very badly--a definite rule of conduct which softened the barbarous customs of that day and made life more livable than it had been during the five hundred years of the Dark Ages. It was not an easy task to civilise the rough frontiersmen who had spent most of their time fighting Mohammedans and Huns and Norsemen. Often they were guilty of backsliding, and having vowed all sorts of oaths about mercy and charity in the morning, they would murder all their prisoners before evening. But progress is ever the result of slow and ceaseless labour, and finally the most unscrupulous of knights was forced to obey the rules of his "class" or suffer the consequences. These rules were different in the various parts of Europe, but they all made much of "service" and "loyalty to duty." The Middle Ages regarded service as something very noble and beautiful. It was no disgrace to be a servant, provided you were a good servant and did not slacken on the job. As for loyalty, at a time when life depended upon the faithful per-formance of many unpleasant duties, it was the chief virtue of the fighting man. A young knight therefore was asked to swear that he would be faithful as a servant to God and as a servant to his King. Furthermore, he promised to be generous to those whose need was greater than his own. He pledged his word that he would be humble in his personal behaviour and would never boast of his own accomplishments and that he would be a friend of all those who suffered, (with the exception of the Mohammedans, whom he was expected to kill on sight). Around these vows, which were merely the Ten Commandments expressed in terms which the people of the Middle Ages could understand, there developed a complicated system of manners and outward behaviour. The knights tried to model their own lives after the example of those heroes of Arthur's Round Table and Charlemagne's court of whom the Troubadours had told them and of whom you may read in many delightful books which are enumerated at the end of this volume. They hoped that they might prove as brave as Lancelot and as faithful as Roland. They carried themselves with dignity and they spoke careful and gracious words that they might be known as True Knights, however humble the cut of their coat or the size of their purse. In this way the order of Knighthood became a school of those good manners which are the oil of the social machinery. Chivalry came to mean courtesy and the feudal castle showed the rest of the world what clothes to wear, how to eat, how to ask a lady for a dance and the thousand and one little things of every-day behaviour which help to make life interesting and agreeable. Like all human institutions, Knighthood was doomed to perish as soon as it had outlived its usefulness. The crusades, about which one of the next chapters tells, were followed by a great revival of trade. Cities grew overnight. The townspeople became rich, hired good school teachers and soon were the equals of the knights. The invention of gun-powder deprived the heavily armed "Chevalier" of his former advantage and the use of mercenaries made it impossible to conduct a battle with the delicate niceties of a chess tournament. The knight became superfluous. Soon he became a ridiculous figure, with his devotion to ideals that had no longer any practical value. It was said that the noble Don Quixote de la Mancha had been the last of the true knights. After his death, his trusted sword and his armour were sold to pay his debts. But somehow or other that sword seems to have fallen into the hands of a number of men. Washington carried it during the hopeless days of Valley Forge. It was the only defence of Gordon, when he had refused to desert the people who had been entrusted to his care, and stayed to meet his death in the besieged fortress of Khartoum. And I am not quite sure but that it proved of invaluable strength in winning the Great War. POPE vs. EMPEROR THE STRANGE DOUBLE LOYALTY OF THE PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE AGES AND HOW IT LED TO ENDLESS QUARRELS BETWEEN THE POPES AND THE HOLY ROMAN EMPERORS IT is very difficult to understand the people of by-gone ages. Your own grandfather, whom you see every day, is a mysterious being who lives in a different world of ideas and clothes and manners. I am now telling you the story of some of your grandfathers who are twenty-five generations removed, and I do not expect you to catch the meaning of what I write without re-reading this chapter a number of times. The average man of the Middle Ages lived a very simple and uneventful life. Even if he was a free citizen, able to come and go at will, he rarely left his own neighbourhood. There were no printed books and only a few manuscripts. Here and there, a small band of industrious monks taught reading and writing and some arithmetic. But science and history and geography lay buried beneath the ruins of Greece and Rome. Whatever people knew about the past they had learned by listening to stories and legends. Such information, which goes from father to son, is often slightly incorrect in details, but it will preserve the main facts of history with astonishing accuracy. After more than two thousand years, the mothers of India still frighten their naughty children by telling them that "Iskander will get them," and Iskander is none other than Alexander the Great, who visited India in the year 330 before the birth of Christ, but whose story has lived through all these ages. The people of the early Middle Ages never saw a textbook of Roman history. They were ignorant of many things which every school-boy to-day knows before he has entered the third grade. But the Roman Empire, which is merely a name to you, was to them something very much alive. They felt it. They willingly recognised the Pope as their spiritual leader because he lived in Rome and represented the idea of the Roman super-power. And they were profoundly grateful when Charlemagne, and afterwards Otto the Great, revived the idea of a world-empire and created the Holy Roman Empire, that the world might again be as it always had been. But the fact that there were two different heirs to the Roman tradition placed the faithful burghers of the Middle Ages in a difficult position. The theory behind the mediaeval political system was both sound and simple. While the worldly master (the emperor) looked after the physical well-being of his subjects, the spiritual master (the Pope) guarded their souls. In practice, however, the system worked very badly. The Emperor invariably tried to interfere with the affairs of the church and the Pope retaliated and told the Emperor how he should rule his domains. Then they told each other to mind their own business in very unceremonious language and the inevitable end was war. Under those circumstances, what were the people to do, A good Christian obeyed both the Pope and his King. But the Pope and the Emperor were enemies. Which side should a dutiful subject and an equally dutiful Christian take? It was never easy to give the correct answer. When the Emperor happened to be a man of energy and was sufficiently well provided with money to organise an army, he was very apt to cross the Alps and march on Rome, besiege the Pope in his own palace if need be, and force His Holiness to obey the imperial instructions or suffer the consequences. But more frequently the Pope was the stronger. Then the Emperor or the King together with all his subjects was excommunicated. This meant that all churches were closed, that no one could be baptised, that no dying man could be given absolution--in short, that half of the functions of mediaeval government came to an end. More than that, the people were absolved from their oath of loyalty to their sovereign and were urged to rebel against their master. But if they followed this advice of the distant Pope and were caught, they were hanged by their near-by Lege Lord and that too was very unpleasant. Indeed, the poor fellows were in a difficult position and none fared worse than those who lived during the latter half of the eleventh century, when the Emperor Henry IV of Germany and Pope Gregory VII fought a two-round battle which decided nothing and upset the peace of Europe for almost fifty years. In the middle of the eleventh century there had been a strong movement for reform in the church. The election of the Popes, thus far, had been a most irregular affair. It was to the advantage of the Holy Roman Emperors to have a well-disposed priest elected to the Holy See. They frequently came to Rome at the time of election and used their influence for the benefit of one of their friends. In the year 1059 this had been changed. By a decree of Pope Nicholas II the principal priests and deacons of the churches in and around Rome were organised into the so-called College of Cardinals, and this gathering of prominent churchmen (the word "Cardinal" meant principal) was given the exclusive power of electing the future Popes. In the year 1073 the College of Cardinals elected a priest by the name of Hildebrand, the son of very simple parents in Tuscany, as Pope, and he took the name of Gregory VII. His energy was unbounded. His belief in the supreme powers of his Holy Office was built upon a granite rock of conviction and courage. In the mind of Gregory, the Pope was not only the absolute head of the Christian church, but also the highest Court of Appeal in all worldly matters. The Pope who had elevated simple German princes to the dignity of Emperor could depose them at will. He could veto any law passed by duke or king or emperor, but whosoever should question a papal decree, let him beware, for the punishment would be swift and merciless. Gregory sent ambassadors to all the European courts to inform the potentates of Europe of his new laws and asked them to take due notice of their contents. William the Conqueror promised to be good, but Henry IV, who since the age of six had been fighting with his subjects, had no intention of submitting to the Papal will. He called together a college of German bishops, accused Gregory of every crime under the sun and then had him deposed by the council of Worms. The Pope answered with excommunication and a demand that the German princes rid themselves of their unworthy ruler. The German princes, only too happy to be rid of Henry, asked the Pope to come to Augsburg and help them elect a new Emperor. Gregory left Rome and travelled northward. Henry, who was no fool, appreciated the danger of his position. At all costs he must make peace with the Pope, and he must do it at once. In the midst of winter he crossed the Alps and hastened to Canossa where the Pope had stopped for a short rest. Three long days, from the 25th to the 28th of January of the year 1077, Henry, dressed as a penitent pilgrim (but with a warm sweater underneath his monkish garb), waited outside the gates of the castle of Canossa. Then he was allowed to enter and was pardoned for his sins. But the repentance did not last long. As soon as Henry had returned to Germany, he behaved exactly as before. Again he was excommunicated. For the second time a council of German bishops deposed Gregory, but this time, when Henry crossed the Alps he was at the head of a large army, besieged Rome and forced Gregory to retire to Salerno, where he died in exile. This first violent outbreak decided nothing. As soon as Henry was back in Germany, the struggle between Pope and Emperor was continued. The Hohenstaufen family which got hold of the Imperial German Throne shortly afterwards, were even more independent than their predecessors. Gregory had claimed that the Popes were superior to all kings because they (the Popes) at the Day of Judgement would be responsible for the behaviour of all the sheep of their flock, and in the eyes of God, a king was one of that faithful herd. Frederick of Hohenstaufen, commonly known as Barbarossa or Red Beard, set up the counter-claim that the Empire had been bestowed upon his predecessor "by God himself" and as the Empire included Italy and Rome, he began a campaign which was to add these "lost provinces" to the northern country. Barbarossa was accidentally drowned in Asia Minor during the second Crusade, but his son Frederick II, a brilliant young man who in his youth had been exposed to the civilisation of the Mohammedans of Sicily, continued the war. The Popes accused him of heresy. It is true that Frederick seems to have felt a deep and serious contempt for the rough Christian world of the North, for the boorish German Knights and the intriguing Italian priests. But he held his tongue, went on a Crusade and took Jerusalem from the infidel and was duly crowned as King of the Holy City. Even this act did not placate the Popes. They deposed Frederick and gave his Italian possessions to Charles of Anjou, the brother of that King Louis of France who became famous as Saint Louis. This led to more warfare. Conrad V, the son of Conrad IV, and the last of the Hohenstaufens, tried to regain the kingdom, and was defeated and decapitated at Naples. But twenty years later, the French who had made themselves thoroughly unpopular in Sicily were all murdered during the so-called Sicilian Vespers, and so it went. The quarrel between the Popes and the Emperors was never settled, but after a while the two enemies learned to leave each other alone. In the year 1278, Rudolph of Hapsburg was elected Emperor. He did not take the trouble to go to Rome to be crowned. The Popes did not object and in turn they kept away from Germany. This meant peace but two entire centuries which might have been used for the purpose of internal organisation had been wasted in useless warfare. It is an ill wind however that bloweth no good to some one. The little cities of Italy, by a process of careful balancing, had managed to increase their power and their independence at the expense of both Emperors and Popes. When the rush for the Holy Land began, they were able to handle the transportation problem of the thousands of eager pilgrims who were clamoring for passage, and at the end of the Crusades they had built themselves such strong defences of brick and of gold that they could defy Pope and Emperor with equal indifference. Church and State fought each other and a third party--the mediaeval city--ran away with the spoils. THE CRUSADES BUT ALL THESE DIFFERENT QUARRELS WERE FORGOTTEN WHEN THE TURKS TOOK THE HOLY LAND, DESECRATED THE HOLY PLACES AND INTERFERED SERIOUSLY WITH THE TRADE FROM EAST TO WEST. EUROPE WENT CRUSADING DURING three centuries there had been peace between Christians and Moslems except in Spain and in the eastern Roman Empire, the two states defending the gateways of Europe. The Mohammedans having conquered Syria in the seventh century were in possession of the Holy Land. But they regarded Jesus as a great prophet (though not quite as great as Mohammed), and they did not interfere with the pilgrims who wished to pray in the church which Saint Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine, had built on the spot of the Holy Grave. But early in the eleventh century, a Tartar tribe from the wilds of Asia, called the Seljuks or Turks, became masters of the Mohammedan state in western Asia and then the period of tolerance came to an end. The Turks took all of Asia Minor away from the eastern Roman Emperors and they made an end to the trade between east and west. Alexis, the Emperor, who rarely saw anything of his Christian neighbours of the west, appealed for help and pointed to the danger which threatened Europe should the Turks take Constantinople. The Italian cities which had established colonies along the coast of Asia Minor and Palestine, in fear for their possessions, reported terrible stories of Turkish atrocities and Christian suffering. All Europe got excited. Pope Urban II, a Frenchman from Reims, who had been educated at the same famous cloister of Cluny which had trained Gregory VII, thought that the time had come for action. The general state of Europe was far from satisfactory. The primitive agricultural methods of that day (unchanged since Roman times) caused a constant scarcity of food. There was unemployment and hunger and these are apt to lead to discontent and riots. Western Asia in older days had fed millions. It was an excellent field for the purpose of immigration. Therefore at the council of Clermont in France in the year 1095 the Pope arose, described the terrible horrors which the infidels had inflicted upon the Holy Land, gave a glowing description of this country which ever since the days of Moses had been overflowing with milk and honey, and exhorted the knights of France and the people of Europe in general to leave wife and child and deliver Palestine from the Turks. A wave of religious hysteria swept across the continent. All reason stopped. Men would drop their hammer and saw, walk out of their shop and take the nearest road to the east to go and kill Turks. Children would leave their homes to "go to Palestine" and bring the terrible Turks to their knees by the mere appeal of their youthful zeal and Christian piety. Fully ninety percent of those enthusiasts never got within sight of the Holy Land. They had no money. They were forced to beg or steal to keep alive. They became a danger to the safety of the highroads and they were killed by the angry country people. The first Crusade, a wild mob of honest Christians, defaulting bankrupts, penniless noblemen and fugitives from justice, following the lead of half-crazy Peter the Hermit and Walter-without-a-Cent, began their campaign against the Infidels by murdering all the Jews whom they met by the way. They got as far as Hungary and then they were all killed. This experience taught the Church a lesson. Enthusiasm alone would not set the Holy Land free. Organisation was as necessary as good-will and courage. A year was spent in training and equipping an army of 200,000 men. They were placed under command of Godfrey of Bouillon, Robert, duke of Normandy, Robert, count of Flanders, and a number of other noblemen, all experienced in the art of war. In the year 1096 this second crusade started upon its long voyage. At Constantinople the knights did homage to the Emperor. (For as I have told you, traditions die hard, and a Roman Emperor, however poor and powerless, was still held in great respect). Then they crossed into Asia, killed all the Moslems who fell into their hands, stormed Jerusalem, massacred the Mohammedan population, and marched to the Holy Sepulchre to give praise and thanks amidst tears of piety and gratitude. But soon the Turks were strengthened by the arrival of fresh troops. Then they retook Jerusalem and in turn killed the faithful followers of the Cross. During the next two centuries, seven other crusades took place. Gradually the Crusaders learned the technique of the trip. The land voyage was too tedious and too dangerous. They preferred to cross the Alps and go to Genoa or Venice where they took ship for the east. The Genoese and the Venetians made this trans-Mediterranean passenger service a very profitable business. They charged exorbitant rates, and when the Crusaders (most of whom had very little money) could not pay the price, these Italian "profiteers" kindly allowed them to "work their way across." In return for a fare from Venice to Acre, the Crusader undertook to do a stated amount of fighting for the owners of his vessel. In this way Venice greatly increased her territory along the coast of the Adriatic and in Greece, where Athens became a Venetian colony, and in the islands of Cyprus and Crete and Rhodes. All this, however, helped little in settling the question of the Holy Land. After the first enthusiasm had worn off, a short crusading trip became part of the liberal education of every well-bred young man, and there never was any lack of candidates for service in Palestine. But the old zeal was gone. The Crusaders, who had begun their warfare with deep hatred for the Mohammedans and great love for the Christian people of the eastern Roman Empire and Armenia, suffered a complete change of heart. They came to despise the Greeks of Byzantium, who cheated them and frequently betrayed the cause of the Cross, and the Armenians and all the other Levantine races, and they began to appreciate the virtues of their enemies who proved to be generous and fair opponents. Of course, it would never do to say this openly. But when the Crusader returned home, he was likely to imitate the manners which he had learned from his heathenish foe, compared to whom the average western knight was still a good deal of a country bumpkin. He also brought with him several new food-stuffs, such as peaches and spinach which he planted in his garden and grew for his own benefit. He gave up the barbarous custom of wearing a load of heavy armour and appeared in the flowing robes of silk or cotton which were the traditional habit of the followers of the Prophet and were originally worn by the Turks. Indeed the Crusades, which had begun as a punitive expedition against the Heathen, became a course of general instruction in civilisation for millions of young Europeans. From a military and political point of view the Crusades were a failure. Jerusalem and a number of cities were taken and lost. A dozen little kingdoms were established in Syria and Palestine and Asia Minor, but they were re-conquered by the Turks and after the year 1244 (when Jerusalem became definitely Turkish) the status of the Holy Land was the same as it had been before 1095. But Europe had undergone a great change. The people of the west had been allowed a glimpse of the light and the sunshine and the beauty of the east. Their dreary castles no longer satisfied them. They wanted a broader life. Neither Church nor State could give this to them. They found it in the cities. THE MEDIAEVAL CITY WHY THE PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE AGES SAID THAT "CITY AIR IS FREE AIR" THE early part of the Middle Ages had been an era of pioneering and of settlement. A new people, who thus far had lived outside the wild range of forest, mountains and marshes which protected the north-eastern frontier of the Roman Empire, had forced its way into the plains of western Europe and had taken possession of most of the land. They were restless, as all pioneers have been since the beginning of time. They liked to be "on the go." They cut down the forests and they cut each other's throats with equal energy. Few of them wanted to live in cities. They insisted upon being "free," they loved to feel the fresh air of the hillsides fill their lungs while they drove their herds across the wind-swept pastures. When they no longer liked their old homes, they pulled up stakes and went away in search of fresh adventures. The weaker ones died. The hardy fighters and the courageous women who had followed their men into the wilderness survived. In this way they developed a strong race of men. They cared little for the graces of life. They were too busy to play the fiddle or write pieces of poetry. They had little love for discussions. The priest, "the learned man" of the village (and before the middle of the thirteenth century, a layman who could read and write was regarded as a "sissy") was supposed to settle all questions which had no direct practical value. Meanwhile the German chieftain, the Frankish Baron, the Northman Duke (or whatever their names and titles) occupied their share of the territory which once had been part of the great Roman Empire and among the ruins of past glory, they built a world of their own which pleased them mightily and which they considered quite perfect. They managed the affairs of their castle and the surrounding country to the best of their ability. They were as faithful to the commandments of the Church as any weak mortal could hope to be. They were sufficiently loyal to their king or emperor to keep on good terms with those distant but always dangerous potentates. In short, they tried to do right and to be fair to their neighbours without being exactly unfair to their own interests. It was not an ideal world in which they found themselves. The greater part of the people were serfs or "villains," farm-hands who were as much a part of the soil upon which they lived as the cows and sheep whose stables they shared. Their fate was not particularly happy nor was it particularly unhappy. But what was one to do? The good Lord who ruled the world of the Middle Ages had undoubtedly ordered everything for the best. If He, in his wisdom, had decided that there must be both knights and serfs, it was not the duty of these faithful sons of the church to question the arrangement. The serfs therefore did not complain but when they were too hard driven, they would die off like cattle which are not fed and stabled in the right way, and then something would be hastily done to better their condition. But if the progress of the world had been left to the serf and his feudal master, we would still be living after the fashion of the twelfth century, saying "abracadabra" when we tried to stop a tooth-ache, and feeling a deep contempt and hatred for the dentist who offered to help us with his "science," which most likely was of Mohammedan or heathenish origin and therefore both wicked and useless. When you grow up you will discover that many people do not believe in "progress" and they will prove to you by the terrible deeds of some of our own contemporaries that "the world does not change." But I hope that you will not pay much attention to such talk. You see, it took our ancestors almost a million years to learn how to walk on their hind legs. Other centuries had to go by before their animal-like grunts developed into an understandable language. Writing--the art of preserving our ideas for the benefit of future generations, without which no progress is possible was invented only four thousand years ago. The idea of turning the forces of nature into the obedient servants of man was quite new in the days of your own grandfather. It seems to me, therefore, that we are making progress at an unheard-of rate of speed. Perhaps we have paid a little too much attention to the mere physical comforts of life. That will change in due course of time and we shall then attack the problems which are not related to health and to wages and plumbing and machinery in general. But please do not be too sentimental about the "good old days." Many people who only see the beautiful churches and the great works of art which the Middle Ages have left behind grow quite eloquent when they compare our own ugly civilisation with its hurry and its noise and the evil smells of backfiring motor trucks with the cities of a thousand years ago. But these mediaeval churches were invariably surrounded by miserable hovels compared to which a modern tenement house stands forth as a luxurious palace. It is true that the noble Lancelot and the equally noble Parsifal, the pure young hero who went in search of the Holy Grail, were not bothered by the odor of gasoline. But there were other smells of the barnyard variety--odors of decaying refuse which had been thrown into the street--of pig-sties surrounding the Bishop's palace--of unwashed people who had inherited their coats and hats from their grandfathers and who had never learned the blessing of soap. I do not want to paint too unpleasant a picture. But when you read in the ancient chronicles that the King of France, looking out of the windows of his palace, fainted at the stench caused by the pigs rooting in the streets of Paris, when an ancient manuscript recounts a few details of an epidemic of the plague or of small-pox, then you begin to under-stand that "progress" is something more than a catchword used by modern advertising men. No, the progress of the last six hundred years would not have been possible without the existence of cities. I shall, therefore, have to make this chapter a little longer than many of the others. It is too important to be reduced to three or four pages, devoted to mere political events. The ancient world of Egypt and Babylonia and Assyria had been a world of cities. Greece had been a country of City-States. The history of Phoenicia was the history of two cities called Sidon and Tyre. The Roman Empire was the "hinterland" of a single town. Writing, art, science, astronomy, architecture, literature, the theatre--the list is endless--have all been products of the city. For almost four thousand years the wooden bee-hive which we call a town had been the workshop of the world. Then came the great migrations. The Roman Empire was destroyed. The cities were burned down and Europe once more became a land of pastures and little agricultural villages. During the Dark Ages the fields of civilisation had lain fallow. The Crusades had prepared the soil for a new crop. It was time for the harvest, but the fruit was plucked by the burghers of the free cities. I have told you the story of the castles and the monasteries, with their heavy stone enclosures--the homes of the knights and the monks, who guarded men's bodies and their souls. You have seen how a few artisans (butchers and bakers and an occasional candle-stick maker) came to live near the castle to tend to the wants of their masters and to find protection in case of danger. Sometimes the feudal lord allowed these people to surround their houses with a stockade. But they were dependent for their living upon the good-will of the mighty Seigneur of the castle. When he went about they knelt before him and kissed his hand. Then came the Crusades and many things changed. The migrations had driven people from the north-east to the west. The Crusades made millions of people travel from the west to the highly civilised regions of the south-east. They discovered that the world was not bounded by the four walls of their little settlement. They came to appreciate better clothes, more comfortable houses, new dishes, products of the mysterious Orient. After their return to their old homes, they insisted that they be supplied with those articles. The peddler with his pack upon his back--the only merchant of the Dark Ages--added these goods to his old merchandise, bought a cart, hired a few ex-crusaders to protect him against the crime wave which followed this great international war, and went forth to do business upon a more modern and larger scale. His career was not an easy one. Every time he entered the domains of another Lord he had to pay tolls and taxes. But the business was profitable all the same and the peddler continued to make his rounds. Soon certain energetic merchants discovered that the goods which they had always imported from afar could be made at home. They turned part of their homes into a workgshop.{sic} They ceased to be merchants and became manufacturers. They sold their products not only to the lord of the castle and to the abbot in his monastery, but they exported them to nearby towns. The lord and the abbot paid them with products of their farms, eggs and wines, and with honey, which in those early days was used as sugar. But the citizens of distant towns were obliged to pay in cash and the manufacturer and the merchant began to own little pieces of gold, which entirely changed their position in the society of the early Middle Ages. It is difficult for you to imagine a world without money. In a modern city one cannot possible live without money. All day long you carry a pocket full of small discs of metal to "pay your way." You need a nickel for the street-car, a dollar for a dinner, three cents for an evening paper. But many people of the early Middle Ages never saw a piece of coined money from the time they were born to the day of their death. The gold and silver of Greece and Rome lay buried beneath the ruins of their cities. The world of the migrations, which had succeeded the Empire, was an agricultural world. Every farmer raised enough grain and enough sheep and enough cows for his own use. The mediaeval knight was a country squire and was rarely forced to pay for materials in money. His estates produced everything that he and his family ate and drank and wore on their backs. The bricks for his house were made along the banks of the nearest river. Wood for the rafters of the hall was cut from the baronial forest. The few articles that had to come from abroad were paid for in goods--in honey--in eggs--in fagots. But the Crusades upset the routine of the old agricultural life in a very drastic fashion. Suppose that the Duke of Hildesheim was going to the Holy Land. He must travel thousands of miles and he must pay his passage and his hotel-bills. At home he could pay with products of his farm. But he could not well take a hundred dozen eggs and a cart-load of hams with him to satisfy the greed of the shipping agent of Venice or the inn-keeper of the Brenner Pass. These gentlemen insisted upon cash. His Lordship therefore was obliged to take a small quantity of gold with him upon his voyage. Where could he find this gold? He could borrow it from the Lombards, the descendants of the old Longobards, who had turned professional money-lenders, who seated behind their exchange-table (commonly known as "banco" or bank) were glad to let his Grace have a few hundred gold pieces in exchange for a mortgage upon his estates, that they might be repaid in case His Lordship should die at the hands of the Turks. That was dangerous business for the borrower. In the end, the Lombards invariably owned the estates and the Knight became a bankrupt, who hired himself out as a fighting man to a more powerful and more careful neighbour. His Grace could also go to that part of the town where the Jews were forced to live. There he could borrow money at a rate of fifty or sixty percent. interest. That, too, was bad business. But was there a way out? Some of the people of the little city which surrounded the castle were said to have money. They had known the young lord all his life. His father and their fathers had been good friends. They would not be unreasonable in their demands. Very well. His Lordship's clerk, a monk who could write and keep accounts, sent a note to the best known merchants and asked for a small loan. The townspeople met in the work-room of the jeweller who made chalices for the nearby churches and discussed this demand. They could not well refuse. It would serve no purpose to ask for "interest." In the first place, it was against the religious principles of most people to take interest and in the second place, it would never be paid except in agricultural products and of these the people had enough and to spare. "But," suggested the tailor who spent his days quietly sitting upon his table and who was somewhat of a philosopher, "suppose that we ask some favour in return for our money. We are all fond of fishing. But his Lordship won't let us fish in his brook. Suppose that we let him have a hundred ducats and that he give us in return a written guarantee allowing us to fish all we want in all of his rivers. Then he gets the hundred which he needs, but we get the fish and it will be good business all around." The day his Lordship accepted this proposition (it seemed such an easy way of getting a hundred gold pieces) he signed the death-warrant of his own power. His clerk drew up the agreement. His Lordship made his mark (for he could not sign his name) and departed for the East. Two years later he came back, dead broke. The townspeople were fishing in the castle pond. The sight of this silent row of anglers annoyed his Lordship. He told his equerry to go and chase the crowd away. They went, but that night a delegation of merchants visited the castle. They were very polite. They congratulated his Lordship upon his safe return. They were sorry his Lordship had been annoyed by the fishermen, but as his Lordship might perhaps remember he had given them permission to do so himself, and the tailor produced the Charter which had been kept in the safe of the jeweller ever since the master had gone to the Holy Land. His Lordship was much annoyed. But once more he was in dire need of some money. In Italy he had signed his name to certain documents which were now in the possession of Salvestro dei Medici, the well-known banker. These documents were "promissory notes" and they were due two months from date. Their total amount came to three hundred and forty pounds, Flemish gold. Under these circumstances, the noble knight could not well show the rage which filled his heart and his proud soul. Instead, he suggested another little loan. The merchants retired to discuss the matter. After three days they came back and said "yes." They were only too happy to be able to help their master in his difficulties, but in return for the 345 golden pounds would he give them another written promise (another charter) that they, the townspeople, might establish a council of their own to be elected by all the merchants and free citizens of the city, said council to manage civic affairs without interference from the side of the castle? His Lordship was confoundedly angry. But again, he needed the money. He said yes, and signed the charter. Next week, he repented. He called his soldiers and went to the house of the jeweller and asked for the documents which his crafty subjects had cajoled out of him under the pressure of circumstances. He took them away and burned them. The townspeople stood by and said nothing. But when next his Lordship needed money to pay for the dowry of his daughter, he was unable to get a single penny. After that little affair at the jeweller's his credit was not considered good. He was forced to eat humble-pie and offer to make certain reparations. Before his Lordship got the first installment of the stipulated sum, the townspeople were once more in possession of all their old charters and a brand new one which permitted them to build a "city-hall" and a strong tower where all the charters might be kept protected against fire and theft, which really meant protected against future violence on the part of the Lord and his armed followers. This, in a very general way, is what happened during the centuries which followed the Crusades. It was a slow process, this gradual shifting of power from the castle to the city. There was some fighting. A few tailors and jewellers were killed and a few castles went up in smoke. But such occurrences were not common. Almost imperceptibly the towns grew richer and the feudal lords grew poorer. To maintain themselves they were for ever forced to exchange charters of civic liberty in return for ready cash. The cities grew. They offered an asylum to run-away serfs who gained their liberty after they had lived a number of years behind the city walls. They came to be the home of the more energetic elements of the surrounding country districts. They were proud of their new importance and expressed their power in the churches and public buildings which they erected around the old market place, where centuries before the barter of eggs and sheep and honey and salt had taken place. They wanted their children to have a better chance in life than they had enjoyed themselves. They hired monks to come to their city and be school teachers. When they heard of a man who could paint pictures upon boards of wood, they offered him a pension if he would come and cover the walls of their chapels and their town hall with scenes from the Holy Scriptures. Meanwhile his Lordship, in the dreary and drafty halls of his castle, saw all this up-start splendour and regretted the day when first he had signed away a single one of his sovereign rights and prerogatives. But he was helpless. The townspeople with their well-filled strong-boxes snapped their fingers at him. They were free men, fully prepared to hold what they had gained by the sweat of their brow and after a struggle which had lasted for more than ten generations. MEDIAEVAL SELF-GOVERNMENT HOW THE PEOPLE OF THE CITIES ASSERTED THEIR RIGHT TO BE HEARD IN THE ROYAL COUNCILS OF THEIR COUNTRY As long as people were "nomads," wandering tribes of shepherds, all men had been equal and had been responsible for the welfare and safety of the entire community. But after they had settled down and some had become rich and others had grown poor, the government was apt to fall into the hands of those who were not obliged to work for their living and who could devote themselves to politics. I have told you how this had happened in Egypt and in Mesopotamia and in Greece and in Rome. It occurred among the Germanic population of western Europe as soon as order had been restored. The western European world was ruled in the first place by an emperor who was elected by the seven or eight most important kings of the vast Roman Empire of the German nation and who enjoyed a great deal of imaginary and very little actual power. It was ruled by a number of kings who sat upon shaky thrones. The every-day government was in the hands of thousands of feudal princelets. Their subjects were peasants or serfs. There were few cities. There was hardly any middle class. But during the thirteenth century (after an absence of almost a thousand years) the middle class--the merchant class--once more appeared upon the historical stage and its rise in power, as we saw in the last chapter, had meant a decrease in the influence of the castle folk. Thus far, the king, in ruling his domains, had only paid attention to the wishes of his noblemen and his bishops. But the new world of trade and commerce which grew out of the Crusades forced him to recognise the middle class or suffer from an ever-increasing emptiness of his exchequer. Their majesties (if they had followed their hidden wishes) would have as lief consulted their cows and their pigs as the good burghers of their cities. But they could not help themselves. They swallowed the bitter pill because it was gilded, but not without a struggle. In England, during the absence of Richard the Lion Hearted (who had gone to the Holy Land, but who was spending the greater part of his crusading voyage in an Austrian jail) the government of the country had been placed in the hands of John, a brother of Richard, who was his inferior in the art of war, but his equal as a bad administrator. John had begun his career as a regent by losing Normandy and the greater part of the French possessions. Next, he had managed to get into a quarrel with Pope Innocent III, the famous enemy of the Hohenstaufens. The Pope had excommunicated John (as Gregory VII had excommunicated the Emperor Henry IV two centuries before). In the year 1213 John had been obliged to make an ignominious peace just as Henry IV had been obliged to do in the year 1077. Undismayed by his lack of success, John continued to abuse his royal power until his disgruntled vassals made a prisoner of their anointed ruler and forced him to promise that he would be good and would never again interfere with the ancient rights of his subjects. All this happened on a little island in the Thames, near the village of Runnymede, on the 15th of June of the year 1215. The document to which John signed his name was called the Big Charter--the Magna Carta. It contained very little that was new. It re-stated in short and direct sentences the ancient duties of the king and enumerated the privileges of his vassals. It paid little attention to the rights (if any) of the vast majority of the people, the peasants, but it offered certain securities to the rising class of the merchants. It was a charter of great importance because it defined the powers of the king with more precision than had ever been done before. But it was still a purely mediaeval document. It did not refer to common human beings, unless they happened to be the property of the vassal, which must be safe-guarded against royal tyranny just as the Baronial woods and cows were protected against an excess of zeal on the part of the royal foresters. A few years later, however, we begin to hear a very different note in the councils of His Majesty. John, who was bad, both by birth and inclination, solemnly had promised to obey the great charter and then had broken every one of its many stipulations. Fortunately, he soon died and was succeeded by his son Henry III, who was forced to recognise the charter anew. Meanwhile, Uncle Richard, the Crusader, had cost the country a great deal of money and the king was obliged to ask for a few loans that he might pay his obligations to the Jewish money-lenders. The large land-owners and the bishops who acted as councillors to the king could not provide him with the necessary gold and silver. The king then gave orders that a few representatives of the cities be called upon to attend the sessions of his Great Council. They made their first appearance in the year 1265. They were supposed to act only as financial experts who were not supposed to take a part in the general discussion of matters of state, but to give advice exclusively upon the question of taxation. Gradually, however, these representatives of the "commons" were consulted upon many of the problems and the meeting of noblemen, bishops and city delegates developed into a regular Parliament, a place "ou l'on parfait," which means in English where people talked, before important affairs of state were decided upon. But the institution of such a general advisory-board with certain executive powers was not an English invention, as seems to ke the general belief, and government by a "king and his parliament" was by no means restricted to the British Isles. You will find it in every part of Europe. In some countries, like France, the rapid increase of the Royal power after the Middle Ages reduced the influence of the "parliament" to nothing. In the year 1302 representatives of the cities had been admitted to the meeting of the French Parliament, but five centuries had to pass before this "Parliament" was strong enough to assert the rights of the middle class, the so-called Third Estate, and break the power of the king. Then they made up for lost time and during the French Revolution, abolished the king, the clergy and the nobles and made the representatives of the common people the rulers of the land. In Spain the "cortex" (the king's council) had been opened to the commoners as early as the first half of the twelfth century. In the Germain Empire, a number of important cities had obtained the rank of "imperial cities" whose representatives must be heard in the imperial diet. In Sweden, representatives of the people attended the sessions of the Riksdag at the first meeting of the year 1359. In Denmark the Daneholf, the ancient national assembly, was re-established in 1314, and, although the nobles often regained control of the country at the expense of the king and the people, the representatives of the cities were never completely deprived of their power. In the Scandinavian country, the story of representative government is particularly interesting. In Iceland, the "Althing," the assembly of all free landowners, who managed the affairs of the island, began to hold regular meetings in the ninth century and continued to do so for more than a thousand years. In Switzerland, the freemen of the different cantons defended their assemblies against the attempts of a number of feudal neighbours with great success. Finally, in the Low Countries, in Holland, the councils of the different duchies and counties were attended by representatives of the third estate as early as the thirteenth century. In the sixteenth century a number of these small provinces rebelled against their king, abjured his majesty in a solemn meeting of the "Estates General," removed the clergy from the discussions, broke the power of the nobles and assumed full executive authority over the newly-established Republic of the United Seven Netherlands. For two centuries, the representatives of the town-councils ruled the country without a king, without bishops and without noblemen. The city had become supreme and the good burghers had become the rulers of the land. THE MEDIAEVAL WORLD WHAT THE PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE AGES THOUGHT OF THE WORLD IN WHICH THEY HAPPENED TO LIVE DATES are a very useful invention. We could not do without them but unless we are very careful, they will play tricks with us. They are apt to make history too precise. For example, when I talk of the point-of-view of mediaeval man, I do not mean that on the 31st of December of the year 476, suddenly all the people of Europe said, "Ah, now the Roman Empire has come to an end and we are living in the Middle Ages. How interesting!" You could have found men at the Frankish court of Charlemagne who were Romans in their habits, in their manners, in their out-look upon life. On the other hand, when you grow up you will discover that some of the people in this world have never passed beyond the stage of the cave-man. All times and all ages overlap, and the ideas of succeeding generations play tag with each other. But it is possible to study the minds of a good many true representatives of the Middle Ages and then give you an idea of the average man's attitude toward life and the many difficult problems of living. First of all, remember that the people of the Middle Ages never thought of themselves as free-born citizens, who could come and go at will and shape their fate according to their ability or energy or luck. On the contrary, they all considered themselves part of the general scheme of things, which included emperors and serfs, popes and heretics, heroes and swashbucklers, rich men, poor men, beggar men and thieves. They accepted this divine ordinance and asked no questions. In this, of course, they differed radically from modern people who accept nothing and who are forever trying to improve their own financial and political situation. To the man and woman of the thirteenth century, the world hereafter--a Heaven of wonderful delights and a Hell of brimstone and suffering--meant something more than empty words or vague theological phrases. It was an actual fact and the mediaeval burghers and knights spent the greater part of their time preparing for it. We modern people regard a noble death after a well-spent life with the quiet calm of the ancient Greeks and Romans. After three score years of work and effort, we go to sleep with the feeling that all will be well. But during the Middle Ages, the King of Terrors with his grinning skull and his rattling bones was man's steady companion. He woke his victims up with terrible tunes on his scratchy fiddle he sat down with them at dinner--he smiled at them from behind trees and shrubs when they took a girl out for a walk. If you had heard nothing but hair-raising yarns about cemeteries and coffins and fearful diseases when you were very young, instead of listening to the fairy stories of Anderson and Grimm, you, too, would have lived all your days in a dread of the final hour and the gruesome day of Judgment. That is exactly what happened to the children of the Middle Ages. They moved in a world of devils and spooks and only a few occasional angels. Sometimes, their fear of the future filled their souls with humility and piety, but often it influenced them the other way and made them cruel and sentimental. They would first of all murder all the women and children of a captured city and then they would devoutly march to a holy spot and with their hands gory with the blood of innocent victims, they would pray that a merciful heaven forgive them their sins. Yea, they would do more than pray, they would weep bitter tears and would confess themselves the most wicked of sinners. But the next day, they would once more butcher a camp of Saracen enemies without a spark of mercy in their hearts. Of course, the Crusaders were Knights and obeyed a somewhat different code of manners from the common men. But in such respects the common man was just the same as his master. He, too, resembled a shy horse, easily frightened by a shadow or a silly piece of paper, capable of excellent and faithful service but liable to run away and do terrible damage when his feverish imagination saw a ghost. In judging these good people, however, it is wise to remember the terrible disadvantages under which they lived. They were really barbarians who posed as civilised people. Charlemagne and Otto the Great were called "Roman Emperors," but they had as little resemblance to a real Roman Emperor (say Augustus or Marcus Aurelius) as "King" Wumba Wumba of the upper Congo has to the highly educated rulers of Sweden or Denmark. They were savages who lived amidst glorious ruins but who did not share the benefits of the civilisation which their fathers and grandfathers had destroyed. They knew nothing. They were ignorant of almost every fact which a boy of twelve knows to-day. They were obliged to go to one single book for all their information. That was the Bible. But those parts of the Bible which have influenced the history of the human race for the better are those chapters of the New Testament which teach us the great moral lessons of love, charity and forgiveness. As a handbook of astronomy, zoology, botany, geometry and all the other sciences, the venerable book is not entirely reliable. In the twelfth century, a second book was added to the mediaeval library, the great encyclopaedia of useful knowledge, compiled by Aristotle, the Greek philosopher of the fourth century before Christ. Why the Christian church should have been willing to accord such high honors to the teacher of Alexander the Great, whereas they condemned all other Greek philosophers on account of their heathenish doctrines, I really do not know. But next to the Bible, Aristotle was recognized as the only reliable teacher whose works could be safely placed into the hands of true Christians. His works had reached Europe in a somewhat roundabout way. They had gone from Greece to Alexandria. They had then been translated from the Greek into the Arabic language by the Mohammedans who conquered Egypt in the seventh century. They had followed the Moslem armies into Spain and the philosophy of the great Stagirite (Aristotle was a native of Stagira in Macedonia) was taught in the Moorish universities of Cordova. The Arabic text was then translated into Latin by the Christian students who had crossed the Pyrenees to get a liberal education and this much travelled version of the famous books was at last taught at the different schools of northwestern Europe. It was not very clear, but that made it all the more interesting. With the help of the Bible and Aristotle, the most brilliant men of the Middle Ages now set to work to explain all things between Heaven and Earth in their relation to the expressed will of God. These brilliant men, the so-called Scholasts or Schoolmen, were really very intelligent, but they had obtained their information exclusively from books, and never from actual observation. If they wanted to lecture on the sturgeon or on caterpillars, they read the Old and New Testaments and Aristotle, and told their students everything these good books had to say upon the subject of caterpillars and sturgeons. They did not go out to the nearest river to catch a sturgeon. They did not leave their libraries and repair to the backyard to catch a few caterpillars and look at these animals and study them in their native haunts. Even such famous scholars as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas did not inquire whether the sturgeons in the land of Palestine and the caterpillars of Macedonia might not have been different from the sturgeons and the caterpillars of western Europe. When occasionally an exceptionally curious person like Roger Bacon appeared in the council of the learned and began to experiment with magnifying glasses and funny little telescopes and actually dragged the sturgen and the caterpillar into the lecturing room and proved that they were different from the creatures described by the Old Testament and by Aristotle, the Schoolmen shook their dignified heads. Bacon was going too far. When he dared to suggest that an hour of actual observation was worth more than ten years with Aristotle and that the works of that famous Greek might as well have remained untranslated for all the good they had ever done, the scholasts went to the police and said, "This man is a danger to the safety of the state. He wants us to study Greek that we may read Aristotle in the original. Why should he not be contented with our Latin-Arabic translation which has satisfied our faithful people for so many hundred years? Why is he so curious about the insides of fishes and the insides of insects? He is probably a wicked magician trying to upset the established order of things by his Black Magic." And so well did they plead their cause that the frightened guardians of the peace forbade Bacon to write a single word for more than ten years. When he resumed his studies he had learned a lesson. He wrote his books in a queer cipher which made it impossible for his contemporaries to read them, a trick which became common as the Church became more desperate in its attempts to prevent people from asking questions which would lead to doubts and infidelity. This, however, was not done out of any wicked desire to keep people ignorant. The feeling which prompted the heretic hunters of that day was really a very kindly one. They firmly believed--nay, they knew--that this life was but the preparation for our real existence in the next world. They felt convinced that too much knowledge made people uncomfortable, filled their minds with dangerous opinions and led to doubt and hence to perdition. A mediaeval Schoolman who saw one of his pupils stray away from the revealed authority of the Bible and Aristotle, that he might study things for himself, felt as uncomfortable as a loving mother who sees her young child approach a hot stove. She knows that he will burn his little fingers if he is allowed to touch it and she tries to keep him back, if necessary she will use force. But she really loves the child and if he will only obey her, she will be as good to him as she possibly can be. In the same way the mediaeval guardians of people's souls, while they were strict in all matters pertaining to the Faith, slaved day and night to render the greatest possible service to the members of their flock. They held out a helping hand whenever they could and the society of that day shows the influence of thousands of good men and pious women who tried to make the fate of the average mortal as bearable as possible. A serf was a serf and his position would never change. But the Good Lord of the Middle Ages who allowed the serf to remain a slave all his life had bestowed an immortal soul upon this humble creature and therefore he must be protected in his rights, that he might live and die as a good Christian. When he grew too old or too weak to work he must be taken care of by the feudal master for whom he had worked. The serf, therefore, who led a monotonous and dreary life, was never haunted by fear of to-morrow. He knew that he was "safe"--that he could not be thrown out of employment, that he would always have a roof over his head (a leaky roof, perhaps, but roof all the same), and that he would always have something to eat. This feeling of "stability" and of "safety" was found in all classes of society. In the towns the merchants and the artisans established guilds which assured every member of a steady income. It did not encourage the ambitious to do better than their neighbours. Too often the guilds gave protection to the "slacker" who managed to "get by." But they established a general feeling of content and assurance among the labouring classes which no longer exists in our day of general competition. The Middle Ages were familiar with the dangers of what we modern people call "corners," when a single rich man gets hold of all the available grain or soap or pickled herring, and then forces the world to buy from him at his own price. The authorities, therefore, discouraged wholesale trading and regulated the price at which merchants were allowed to sell their goods. The Middle Ages disliked competition. Why compete and fill the world with hurry and rivalry and a multitude of pushing men, when the Day of Judgement was near at hand, when riches would count for nothing and when the good serf would enter the golden gates of Heaven while the bad knight was sent to do penance in the deepest pit of Inferno? In short, the people of the Middle Ages were asked to surrender part of their liberty of thought and action, that they might enjoy greater safety from poverty of the body and poverty of the soul. And with a very few exceptions, they did not object. They firmly believed that they were mere visitors upon this planet--that they were here to be prepared for a greater and more important life. Deliberately they turned their backs upon a world which was filled with suffering and wickedness and injustice. They pulled down the blinds that the rays of the sun might not distract their attention from that chapter in the Apocalypse which told them of that heavenly light which was to illumine their happiness in all eternity. They tried to close their eyes to most of the joys of the world in which they lived that they might enjoy those which awaited them in the near future. They accepted life as a necessary evil and welcomed death as the beginning of a glorious day. The Greeks and the Romans had never bothered about the future but had tried to establish their Paradise right here upon this earth. They had succeeded in making life extremely pleasant for those of their fellow men who did not happen to be slaves. Then came the other extreme of the Middle Ages, when man built himself a Paradise beyond the highest clouds and turned this world into a vale of tears for high and low, for rich and poor, for the intelligent and the dumb. It was time for the pendulum to swing back in the other direction, as I shall tell you in my next chapter. MEDIAEVAL TRADE HOW THE CRUSADES ONCE MORE MADE THE MEDITERRANEAN A BUSY CENTRE OF TRADE AND HOW THE CITIES OF THE ITALIAN PENINSULA BECAME THE GREAT DISTRIBUTING CENTRE FOR THE COMMERCE WITH ASIA AND AFRICA THERE were three good reasons why the Italian cities should have been the first to regain a position of great importance during the late Middle Ages. The Italian peninsula had been settled by Rome at a very early date. There had been more roads and more towns and more schools than anywhere else in Europe. The barbarians had burned as lustily in Italy as elsewhere, but there had been so much to destroy that more had been able to survive. In the second place, the Pope lived in Italy and as the head of a vast political machine, which owned land and serfs and buildings and forests and rivers and conducted courts of law, he was in constant receipt of a great deal of money. The Papal authorities had to be paid in gold and silver as did the merchants and ship-owners of Venice and Genoa. The cows and the eggs and the horses and all the other agricultural products of the north and the west must be changed into actual cash before the debt could be paid in the distant city of Rome. This made Italy the one country where there was a comparative abundance of gold and silver. Finally, during the Crusades, the Italian cities had become the point of embarkation for the Crusaders and had profiteered to an almost unbelievable extent. And after the Crusades had come to an end, these same Italian cities remained the distributing centres for those Oriental goods upon which the people of Europe had come to depend during the time they had spent in the near east. Of these towns, few were as famous as Venice. Venice was a republic built upon a mud bank. Thither people from the mainland had fled during the invasions of the barbarians in the fourth century. Surrounded on all sides by the sea they had engaged in the business of salt-making. Salt had been very scarce during the Middle Ages, and the price had been high. For hundreds of years Venice had enjoyed a monopoly of this indispensable table commodity (I say indispensable, because people, like sheep, fall ill unless they get a certain amount of salt in their food). The people had used this monopoly to increase the power of their city. At times they had even dared to defy the power of the Popes. The town had grown rich and had begun to build ships, which engaged in trade with the Orient. During the Crusades, these ships were used to carry passengers to the Holy Land, and when the passengers could not pay for their tickets in cash, they were obliged to help the Venetians who were for ever increasing their colonies in the AEgean Sea, in Asia Minor and in Egypt. By the end of the fourteenth century, the population had grown to two hundred thousand, which made Venice the biggest city of the Middle Ages. The people were without influence upon the government which was the private affair of a small number of rich merchant families. They elected a senate and a Doge (or Duke), but the actual rulers of the city were the members of the famous Council of Ten,--who maintained themselves with the help of a highly organised system of secret service men and professional murderers, who kept watch upon all citizens and quietly removed those who might be dangerous to the safety of their high-handed and unscrupulous Committee of Public Safety. The other extreme of government, a democracy of very turbulent habits, was to be found in Florence. This city controlled the main road from northern Europe to Rome and used the money which it had derived from this fortunate economic position to engage in manufacturing. The Florentines tried to follow the example of Athens. Noblemen, priests and members of the guilds all took part in the discussions of civic affairs. This led to great civic upheaval. People were forever being divided into political parties and these parties fought each other with intense bitterness and exiled their enemies and confiscated their possessions as soon as they had gained a victory in the council. After several centuries of this rule by organised mobs, the inevitable happened. A powerful family made itself master of the city and governed the town and the surrounding country after the fashion of the old Greek "tyrants." They were called the Medici. The earliest Medici had been physicians (medicus is Latin for physician, hence their name), but later they had turned banker. Their banks and their pawnshops were to be found in all the more important centres of trade. Even today our American pawn-shops display the three golden balls which were part of the coat of arms of the mighty house of the Medici, who became rulers of Florence and married their daughters to the kings of France and were buried in graves worthy of a Roman Caesar. Then there was Genoa, the great rival of Venice, where the merchants specialised in trade with Tunis in Africa and the grain depots of the Black Sea. Then there were more than two hundred other cities, some large and some small, each a perfect commercial unit, all of them fighting their neighbours and rivals with the undying hatred of neighbours who are depriving each other of their profits. Once the products of the Orient and Africa had been brought to these distributing centres, they must be prepared for the voyage to the west and the north. Genoa carried her goods by water to Marseilles, from where they were reshipped to the cities along the Rhone, which in turn served as the market places of northern and western France. Venice used the land route to northern Europe. This ancient road led across the Brenner pass, the old gateway for the barbarians who had invaded Italy. Past Innsbruck, the merchandise was carried to Basel. From there it drifted down the Rhine to the North Sea and England, or it was taken to Augsburg where the Fugger family (who were both bankers and manufacturers and who prospered greatly by "shaving" the coins with which they paid their workmen), looked after the further distribution to Nuremberg and Leipzig and the cities of the Baltic and to Wisby (on the Island of Gotland) which looked after the needs of the Northern Baltic and dealt directly with the Republic of Novgorod, the old commercial centre of Russia which was destroyed by Ivan the Terrible in the middle of the sixteenth century. The little cities on the coast of north-western Europe had an interesting story of their own. The mediaeval world ate a great deal of fish. There were many fast days and then people were not permitted to eat meat. For those who lived away from the coast and from the rivers, this meant a diet of eggs or nothing at all. But early in the thirteenth century a Dutch fisherman had discovered a way of curing herring, so that it could be transported to distant points. The herring fisheries of the North Sea then became of great importance. But some time during the thirteenth century, this useful little fish (for reasons of its own) moved from the North Sea to the Baltic and the cities of that inland sea began to make money. All the world now sailed to the Baltic to catch herring and as that fish could only be caught during a few months each year (the rest of the time it spends in deep water, raising large families of little herrings) the ships would have been idle during the rest of the time unless they had found another occupation. They were then used to carry the wheat of northern and central Russia to southern and western Europe. On the return voyage they brought spices and silks and carpets and Oriental rugs from Venice and Genoa to Bruges and Hamburg and Bremen. Out of such simple beginnings there developed an important system of international trade which reached from the manufacturing cities of Bruges and Ghent (where the almighty guilds fought pitched battles with the kings of France and England and established a labour tyranny which completely ruined both the employers and the workmen) to the Republic of Novgorod in northern Russia, which was a mighty city until Tsar Ivan, who distrusted all merchants, took the town and killed sixty thousand people in less than a month's time and reduced the survivors to beggary. That they might protect themselves against pirates and excessive tolls and annoying legislation, the merchants of the north founded a protective league which was called the "Hansa." The Hansa, which had its headquarters in Lubeck, was a voluntary association of more than one hundred cities. The association maintained a navy of its own which patrolled the seas and fought and defeated the Kings of England and Denmark when they dared to interfere with the rights and the privileges of the mighty Hanseatic merchants. I wish that I had more space to tell you some of the wonderful stories of this strange commerce which was carried on across the high mountains and across the deep seas amidst such dangers that every voyage became a glorious adventure. But it would take several volumes and it cannot be done here. Besides, I hope that I have told you enough about the Middle Ages to make you curious to read more in the excellent books of which I shall give you a list at the end of this volume. The Middle Ages, as I have tried to show you, had been a period of very slow progress. The people who were in power believed that "progress" was a very undesirable invention of the Evil One and ought to be discouraged, and as they hap-pened to occupy the seats of the mighty, it was easy to enforce their will upon the patient serfs and the illiterate knights. Here and there a few brave souls sometimes ventured forth into the forbidden region of science, but they fared badly and were considered lucky when they escaped with their lives and a jail sentence of twenty years. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the flood of international commerce swept over western Europe as the Nile had swept across the valley of ancient Egypt. It left behind a fertile sediment of prosperity. Prosperity meant leisure hours and these leisure hours gave both men and women a chance to buy manuscripts and take an interest in literature and art and music. Then once more was the world filled with that divine curiosity which has elevated man from the ranks of those other mammals who are his distant cousins but who have remained dumb, and the cities, of whose growth and development I have told you in my last chapter, offered a safe shelter to these brave pioneers who dared to leave the very narrow domain of the established order of things. They set to work. They opened the windows of their cloistered and studious cells. A flood of sunlight entered the dusty rooms and showed them the cobwebs which had gathered during the long period of semi-darkness. They began to clean house. Next they cleaned their gardens. Then they went out into the open fields, outside the crumbling town walls, and said, "This is a good world. We are glad that we live in it." At that moment, the Middle Ages came to an end and a new world began. THE RENAISSANCE PEOPLE ONCE MORE DARED TO BE HAPPY JUST BECAUSE THEY WERE ALIVE. THEY TRIED TO SAVE THE REMAINS OF THE OLDER AND MORE AGREEABLE CIVILISATION OF ROME AND GREECE AND THEY WERE SO PROUD OF THEIR ACHIEVEMENTS THAT THEY SPOKE OF A RENAISSANCE OR RE-BIRTH OF CIVILISATION THE Renaissance was not a political or religious movement. It was a state of mind. The men of the Renaissance continued to be the obedient sons of the mother church. They were subjects of kings and emperors and dukes and murmured not. But their outlook upon life was changed. They began to wear different clothes--to speak a different language--to live different lives in different houses. They no longer concentrated all their thoughts and their efforts upon the blessed existence that awaited them in Heaven. They tried to establish their Paradise upon this planet, and, truth to tell, they succeeded in a remarkable degree. I have quite often warned you against the danger that lies in historical dates. People take them too literally. They think of the Middle Ages as a period of darkness and ignorance. "Click," says the clock, and the Renaissance begins and cities and palaces are flooded with the bright sunlight of an eager intellectual curiosity. As a matter of fact, it is quite impossible to draw such sharp lines. The thirteenth century belonged most decidedly to the Middle Ages. All historians agree upon that. But was it a time of darkness and stagnation merely? By no means. People were tremendously alive. Great states were being founded. Large centres of commerce were being developed. High above the turretted towers of the castle and the peaked roof of the town-hall, rose the slender spire of the newly built Gothic cathedral. Everywhere the world was in motion. The high and mighty gentlemen of the city-hall, who had just become conscious of their own strength (by way of their recently acquired riches) were struggling for more power with their feudal masters. The members of the guilds who had just become aware of the important fact that "numbers count" were fighting the high and mighty gentlemen of the city-hall. The king and his shrewd advisers went fishing in these troubled waters and caught many a shining bass of profit which they proceeded to cook and eat before the noses of the surprised and disappointed councillors and guild brethren. To enliven the scenery during the long hours of evening when the badly lighted streets did not invite further political and economic dispute, the Troubadours and Minnesingers told their stories and sang their songs of romance and adventure and heroism and loyalty to all fair women. Meanwhile youth, impatient of the slowness of progress, flocked to the universities, and thereby hangs a story. The Middle Ages were "internationally minded." That sounds difficult, but wait until I explain it to you. We modern people are "nationally minded." We are Americans or Englishmen or Frenchmen or Italians and speak English or French or Italian and go to English and French and Italian universities, unless we want to specialise in some particular branch of learning which is only taught elsewhere, and then we learn another language and go to Munich or Madrid or Moscow. But the people of the thirteenth or fourteenth century rarely talked of themselves as Englishmen or Frenchmen or Italians. They said, "I am a citizen of Sheffield or Bordeaux or Genoa." Because they all belonged to one and the same church they felt a certain bond of brotherhood. And as all educated men could speak Latin, they possessed an international language which removed the stupid language barriers which have grown up in modern Europe and which place the small nations at such an enormous disadvantage. Just as an example, take the case of Erasmus, the great preacher of tolerance and laughter, who wrote his books in the sixteenth century. He was the native of a small Dutch village. He wrote in Latin and all the world was his audience. If he were alive to-day, he would write in Dutch. Then only five or six million people would be able to read him. To be understood by the rest of Europe and America, his publishers would be obliged to translate his books into twenty different languages. That would cost a lot of money and most likely the publishers would never take the trouble or the risk. Six hundred years ago that could not happen. The greater part of the people were still very ignorant and could not read or write at all. But those who had mastered the difficult art of handling the goose-quill belonged to an international republic of letters which spread across the entire continent and which knew of no boundaries and respected no limitations of language or nationality. The universities were the strongholds of this republic. Unlike modern fortifications, they did not follow the frontier. They were to be found wherever a teacher and a few pupils happened to find themselves together. There again the Middle Ages and the Renaissance differed from our own time. Nowadays, when a new university is built, the process (almost invariably) is as follows: Some rich man wants to do something for the community in which he lives or a particular religious sect wants to build a school to keep its faithful children under decent supervision, or a state needs doc-tors and lawyers and teachers. The university begins as a large sum of money which is deposited in a bank. This money is then used to construct buildings and laboratories and dormitories. Finally professional teachers are hired, entrance examinations are held and the university is on the way. But in the Middle Ages things were done differently. A wise man said to himself, "I have discovered a great truth. I must impart my knowledge to others." And he began to preach his wisdom wherever and whenever he could get a few people to listen to him, like a modern soap-box orator. If he was an interesting speaker, the crowd came and stayed. If he was dull, they shrugged their shoulders and continued their way. By and by certain young men began to come regularly to hear the words of wisdom of this great teacher. They brought copybooks with them and a little bottle of ink and a goose quill and wrote down what seemed to be important. One day it rained. The teacher and his pupils retired to an empty basement or the room of the "Professor." The learned man sat in his chair and the boys sat on the floor. That was the beginning of the University, the "universitas," a corporation of professors and students during the Middle Ages, when the "teacher" counted for everything and the building in which he taught counted for very little. As an example, let me tell you of something that happened in the ninth century. In the town of Salerno near Naples there were a number of excellent physicians. They attracted people desirous of learning the medical profession and for almost a thousand years (until 1817) there was a university of Salerno which taught the wisdom of Hippocrates, the great Greek doctor who had practiced his art in ancient Hellas in the fifth century before the birth of Christ. Then there was Abelard, the young priest from Brittany, who early in the twelfth century began to lecture on theology and logic in Paris. Thousands of eager young men flocked to the French city to hear him. Other priests who disagreed with him stepped forward to explain their point of view. Paris was soon filled with a clamouring multitude of Englishmen and Germans and Italians and students from Sweden and Hungary and around the old cathedral which stood on a little island in the Seine there grew the famous University of Paris. In Bologna in Italy, a monk by the name of Gratian had compiled a text-book for those whose business it was to know the laws of the church. Young priests and many laymen then came from all over Europe to hear Gratian explain his ideas. To protect themselves against the landlords and the innkeepers and the boarding-house ladies of the city, they formed a corporation (or University) and behold the beginning of the university of Bologna. Next there was a quarrel in the University of Paris. We do not know what caused it, but a number of disgruntled teachers together with their pupils crossed the channel and found a hospitable home in a little village on the Thames called Oxford, and in this way the famous University of Oxford came into being. In the same way, in the year 1222, there had been a split in the University of Bologna. The discontented teachers (again followed by their pupils) had moved to Padua and their proud city thenceforward boasted of a university of its own. And so it went from Valladolid in Spain to Cracow in distant Poland and from Poitiers in France to Rostock in Germany. It is quite true that much of the teaching done by these early professors would sound absurd to our ears, trained to listen to logarithms and geometrical theorems. The point however, which I want to make is this--the Middle Ages and especially the thirteenth century were not a time when the world stood entirely still. Among the younger generation, there was life, there was enthusiasm, and there was a restless if somewhat bashful asking of questions. And out of this turmoil grew the Renaissance. But just before the curtain went down upon the last scene of the Mediaeval world, a solitary figure crossed the stage, of whom you ought to know more than his mere name. This man was called Dante. He was the son of a Florentine lawyer who belonged to the Alighieri family and he saw the light of day in the year 1265. He grew up in the city of his ancestors while Giotto was painting his stories of the life of St. Francis of Assisi upon the walls of the Church of the Holy Cross, but often when he went to school, his frightened eyes would see the puddles of blood which told of the terrible and endless warfare that raged forever between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, the followers of the Pope and the adherents of the Emperors. When he grew up, he became a Guelph, because his father had been one before him, just as an American boy might become a Democrat or a Republican, simply because his father had happened to be a Democrat or a Republican. But after a few years, Dante saw that Italy, unless united under a single head, threatened to perish as a victim of the disordered jealousies of a thousand little cities. Then he became a Ghilbeiline. He looked for help beyond the Alps. He hoped that a mighty emperor might come and re-establish unity and order. Alas! he hoped in vain. The Ghibellines were driven out of Florence in the year 1802. From that time on until the day of his death amidst the dreary ruins of Ravenna, in the year 1321, Dante was a homeless wanderer, eating the bread of charity at the table of rich patrons whose names would have sunk into the deepest pit of oblivion but for this single fact, that they had been kind to a poet in his misery. During the many years of exile, Dante felt compelled to justify himself and his actions when he had been a political leader in his home-town, and when he had spent his days walking along the banks of the Arno that he might catch a glimpse of the lovely Beatrice Portinari, who died the wife of another man, a dozen years before the Ghibelline disaster. He had failed in the ambitions of his career. He had faithfully served the town of is birth and before a corrupt court he had been accused of stealing the public funds and had been condemned to be burned alive should he venture back within the realm of the city of Florence. To clear himself before his own conscience and before his contemporaries, Dante then created an Imaginary World and with great detail he described the circumstances which had led to his defeat and depicted the hopeless condition of greed and lust and hatred which had turned his fair and beloved Italy into a battlefield for the pitiless mercenaries of wicked and selfish tyrants. He tells us how on the Thursday before Easter of the year 1300 he had lost his way in a dense forest and how he found his path barred by a leopard and a lion and a wolf. He gave himself up for lost when a white figure appeared amidst the trees. It was Virgil, the Roman poet and philosopher, sent upon his errand of mercy by the Blessed Virgin and by Beatrice, who from high Heaven watched over the fate of her true lover. Virgil then takes Dante through Purgatory and through Hell. Deeper and deeper the path leads them until they reach the lowest pit where Lucifer himself stands frozen into the eternal ice surrounded by the most terrible of sinners, traitors and liars and those who have achieved fame and success by lies and by deceit. But before the two wanderers have reached this terrible spot, Dante has met all those who in some way or other have played a role in the history of his beloved city. Emperors and Popes, dashing knights and whining usurers, they are all there, doomed to eternal punishment or awaiting the day of deliverance, when they shall leave Purgatory for Heaven. It is a curious story. It is a handbook of everything the people of the thirteenth century did and felt and feared and prayed for. Through it all moves the figure of the lonely Florentine exile, forever followed by the shadow of his own despair. And behold! when the gates of death were closing upon the sad poet of the Middle Ages, the portals of life swung open to the child who was to be the first of the men of the Renaissance. That was Francesco Petrarca, the son of the notary public of the little town of Arezzo. Francesco's father had belonged to the same political party as Dante. He too had been exiled and thus it happened that Petrarca (or Petrarch, as we call him) was born away from Florence. At the age of fifteen he was sent to Montpellier in France that he might become a lawyer like his father. But the boy did not want to be a jurist. He hated the law. He wanted to be a scholar and a poet--and because he wanted to be a scholar and a poet beyond everything else, he became one, as people of a strong will are apt to do. He made long voyages, copying manuscripts in Flanders and in the cloisters along the Rhine and in Paris and Liege and finally in Rome. Then he went to live in a lonely valley of the wild mountains of Vaucluse, and there he studied and wrote and soon he had become so famous for his verse and for his learning that both the University of Paris and the king of Naples invited him to come and teach their students and subjects. On the way to his new job, he was obliged to pass through Rome. The people had heard of his fame as an editor of half-forgotten Roman authors. They decided to honour him and in the ancient forum of the Imperial City, Petrarch was crowned with the laurel wreath of the Poet. From that moment on, his life was an endless career of honour and appreciation. He wrote the things which people wanted most to hear. They were tired of theological disputations. Poor Dante could wander through hell as much as he wanted. But Petrarch wrote of love and of nature and the sun and never mentioned those gloomy things which seemed to have been the stock in trade of the last generation. And when Petrarch came to a city, all the people flocked out to meet him and he was received like a conquering hero. If he happened to bring his young friend Boccaccio, the story teller, with him, so much the better. They were both men of their time, full of curiosity, willing to read everything once, digging in forgotten and musty libraries that they might find still another manuscript of Virgil or Ovid or Lucrece or any of the other old Latin poets. They were good Christians. Of course they were! Everyone was. But no need of going around with a long face and wearing a dirty coat just because some day or other you were going to die. Life was good. People were meant to be happy. You desired proof of this? Very well. Take a spade and dig into the soil. What did you find? Beautiful old statues. Beautiful old vases. Ruins of ancient buildings. All these things were made by the people of the greatest empire that ever existed. They ruled all the world for a thousand years. They were strong and rich and handsome (just look at that bust of the Emperor Augustus!). Of course, they were not Christians and they would never be able to enter Heaven. At best they would spend their days in purgatory, where Dante had just paid them a visit. But who cared? To have lived in a world like that of ancient Rome was heaven enough for any mortal being. And anyway, we live but once. Let us be happy and cheerful for the mere joy of existence. Such, in short, was the spirit that had begun to fill the narrow and crooked streets of the many little Italian cities. You know what we mean by the "bicycle craze" or the "automobile craze." Some one invents a bicycle. People who for hundreds of thousands of years have moved slowly and painfully from one place to another go "crazy" over the prospect of rolling rapidly and easily over hill and dale. Then a clever mechanic makes the first automobile. No longer is it necessary to pedal and pedal and pedal. You just sit and let little drops of gasoline do the work for you. Then everybody wants an automobile. Everybody talks about Rolls-Royces and Flivvers and carburetors and mileage and oil. Explorers penetrate into the hearts of unknown countries that they may find new supplies of gas. Forests arise in Sumatra and in the Congo to supply us with rubber. Rubber and oil become so valuable that people fight wars for their possession. The whole world is "automobile mad" and little children can say "car" before they learn to whisper "papa" and "mamma." In the fourteenth century, the Italian people went crazy about the newly discovered beauties of the buried world of Rome. Soon their enthusiasm was shared by all the people of western Europe. The finding of an unknown manuscript became the excuse for a civic holiday. The man who wrote a grammar became as popular as the fellow who nowadays invents a new spark-plug. The humanist, the scholar who devoted his time and his energies to a study of "homo" or mankind (instead of wasting his hours upon fruitless theological investigations), that man was regarded with greater honour and a deeper respect than was ever bestowed upon a hero who had just conquered all the Cannibal Islands. In the midst of this intellectual upheaval, an event occurred which greatly favoured the study of the ancient philosophers and authors. The Turks were renewing their attacks upon Europe. Constantinople, capital of the last remnant of the original Roman Empire, was hard pressed. In the year 1393 the Emperor, Manuel Paleologue, sent Emmanuel Chrysoloras to western Europe to explain the desperate state of old Byzantium and to ask for aid. This aid never came. The Roman Catholic world was more than willing to see the Greek Catholic world go to the punishment that awaited such wicked heretics. But however indifferent western Europe might be to the fate of the Byzantines, they were greatly interested in the ancient Greeks whose colonists had founded the city on the Bosphorus ten centuries after the Trojan war. They wanted to learn Greek that they might read Aristotle and Homer and Plato. They wanted to learn it very badly, but they had no books and no grammars and no teachers. The magistrates of Florence heard of the visit of Chrysoloras. The people of their city were "crazy to learn Greek." Would he please come and teach them? He would, and behold! the first professor of Greek teaching alpha, beta, gamma to hundreds of eager young men, begging their way to the city of the Arno, living in stables and in dingy attics that they night learn how to decline the verb [gr paidenw paideneis paidenei] and enter into the companionship of Sophocles and Homer. Meanwhile in the universities, the old schoolmen, teaching their ancient theology and their antiquated logic; explaining the hidden mysteries of the old Testament and discussing the strange science of their Greek-Arabic-Spanish-Latin edition of Aristotle, looked on in dismay and horror. Next, they turned angry. This thing was going too far. The young men were deserting the lecture halls of the established universities to go and listen to some wild-eyed "humanist" with his newfangled notions about a "reborn civilization." They went to the authorities. They complained. But one cannot force an unwilling horse to drink and one cannot make unwilling ears listen to something which does not really interest them. The schoolmen were losing ground rapidly. Here and there they scored a short victory. They combined forces with those fanatics who hated to see other people enjoy a happiness which was foreign to their own souls. In Florence, the centre of the Great Rebirth, a terrible fight was fought between the old order and the new. A Dominican monk, sour of face and bitter in his hatred of beauty, was the leader of the mediaeval rear-guard. He fought a valiant battle. Day after day he thundered his warnings of God's holy wrath through the wide halls of Santa Maria del Fiore. "Repent," he cried, "repent of your godlessness, of your joy in things that are not holy!" He began to hear voices and to see flaming swords that flashed through the sky. He preached to the little children that they might not fall into the errors of these ways which were leading their fathers to perdition. He organised companies of boy-scouts, devoted to the service of the great God whose prophet he claimed to be. In a sudden moment of frenzy, the frightened people promised to do penance for their wicked love of beauty and pleasure. They carried their books and their statues and their paintings to the market place and celebrated a wild "carnival of the vanities" with holy singing and most unholy dancing, while Savonarola applied his torch to the accumulated treasures. But when the ashes cooled down, the people began to realise what they had lost. This terrible fanatic had made them destroy that which they had come to love above all things. They turned against him, Savonarola was thrown into jail. He was tortured. But he refused to repent for anything he had done. He was an honest man. He had tried to live a holy life. He had willingly destroyed those who deliberately refused to share his own point of view. It had been his duty to eradicate evil wherever he found it. A love of heathenish books and heathenish beauty in the eyes of this faithful son of the Church, had been an evil. But he stood alone. He had fought the battle of a time that was dead and gone. The Pope in Rome never moved a finger to save him. On the contrary, he approved of his "faithful Florentines" when they dragged Savonarola to the gallows, hanged him and burned his body amidst the cheerful howling and yelling of the mob. It was a sad ending, but quite inevitable. Savonarola would have been a great man in the eleventh century. In the fifteenth century he was merely the leader of a lost cause. For better or worse, the Middle Ages had come to an end when the Pope had turned humanist and when the Vatican became the most important museum of Roman and Greek antiquities. THE AGE OF EXPRESSION THE PEOPLE BEGAN TO FEEL THE NEED OF GIVING EXPRESSION TO THEIR NEWLY DISCOVERED JOY OF LIVING. THEY EXPRESSED THEIR HAPPINESS IN POETRY AND IN SCULPTURE AND IN ARCHITECTURE AND IN PAINTING AND IN THE BOOKS THEY PRINTED IN the year 1471 there died a pious old man who had spent seventy-two of his ninety-one years behind the sheltering walls of the cloister of Mount St. Agnes near the good town of Zwolle, the old Dutch Hanseatic city on the river Ysel. He was known as Brother Thomas and because he had been born in the village of Kempen, he was called Thomas a Kempis. At the age of twelve he had been sent to Deventer, where Gerhard Groot, a brilliant graduate of the universities of Paris, Cologne and Prague, and famous as a wandering preacher, had founded the Society of the Brothers of the Common Life. The good brothers were humble laymen who tried to live the simple life of the early Apostles of Christ while working at their regular jobs as carpenters and house-painters and stone masons. They maintained an excellent school, that deserving boys of poor parents might be taught the wisdom of the Fathers of the church. At this school, little Thomas had learned how to conjugate Latin verbs and how to copy manuscripts. Then he had taken his vows, had put his little bundle of books upon his back, had wandered to Zwolle and with a sigh of relief he had closed the door upon a turbulent world which did not attract him. Thomas lived in an age of turmoil, pestilence and sudden death. In central Europe, in Bohemia, the devoted disciples of Johannus Huss, the friend and follower of John Wycliffe, the English reformer, were avenging with a terrible warfare the death of their beloved leader who had been burned at the stake by order of that same Council of Constance, which had promised him a safe-conduct if he would come to Switzerland and explain his doctrines to the Pope, the Emperor, twenty-three cardinals, thirty-three archbishops and bishops, one hundred and fifty abbots and more than a hundred princes and dukes who had gathered together to reform their church. In the west, France had been fighting for a hundred years that she might drive the English from her territories and just then was saved from utter defeat by the fortunate appearance of Joan of Arc. And no sooner had this struggle come to an end than France and Burgundy were at each other's throats, engaged upon a struggle of life and death for the supremacy of western Europe. In the south, a Pope at Rome was calling the curses of Heaven down upon a second Pope who resided at Avignon, in southern France, and who retaliated in kind. In the far east the Turks were destroying the last remnants of the Roman Empire and the Russians had started upon a final crusade to crush the power of their Tartar masters. But of all this, Brother Thomas in his quiet cell never heard. He had his manuscripts and his own thoughts and he was contented. He poured his love of God into a little volume. He called it the Imitation of Christ. It has since been translated into more languages than any other book save the Bible. It has been read by quite as many people as ever studied the Holy Scriptures. It has influenced the lives of countless millions. And it was the work of a man whose highest ideal of existence was expressed in the simple wish that "he might quietly spend his days sitting in a little corner with a little book." Good Brother Thomas represented the purest ideals of the Middle Ages. Surrounded on all sides by the forces of the victorious Renaissance, with the humanists loudly proclaiming the coming of modern times, the Middle Ages gathered strength for a last sally. Monasteries were reformed. Monks gave up the habits of riches and vice. Simple, straightforward and honest men, by the example of their blameless and devout lives, tried to bring the people back to the ways of righteousness and humble resignation to the will of God. But all to no avail. The new world rushed past these good people. The days of quiet meditation were gone. The great era of "expression" had begun. Here and now let me say that I am sorry that I must use so many "big words." I wish that I could write this history in words of one syllable. But it cannot be done. You cannot write a text-book of geometry without reference to a hypotenuse and triangles and a rectangular parallelopiped. You simply have to learn what those words mean or do without mathematics. In history (and in all life) you will eventually be obliged to learn the meaning of many strange words of Latin and Greek origin. Why not do it now? When I say that the Renaissance was an era of expression, I mean this: People were no longer contented to be the audience and sit still while the emperor and the pope told them what to do and what to think. They wanted to be actors upon the stage of life. They insisted upon giving "expression" to their own individual ideas. If a man happened to be interested in statesmanship like the Florentine historian, Niccolo Macchiavelli, then he "expressed" himself in his books which revealed his own idea of a successful state and an efficient ruler. If on the other hand he had a liking for painting, he "expressed" his love for beautiful lines and lovely colours in the pictures which have made the names of Giotto, Fra Angelico, Rafael and a thousand others household words wherever people have learned to care for those things which express a true and lasting beauty. If this love for colour and line happened to be combined with an interest in mechanics and hydraulics, the result was a Leonardo da Vinci, who painted his pictures, experimented with his balloons and flying machines, drained the marshes of the Lombardian plains and "expressed" his joy and interest in all things between Heaven and Earth in prose, in painting, in sculpture and in curiously conceived engines. When a man of gigantic strength, like Michael Angelo, found the brush and the palette too soft for his strong hands, he turned to sculpture and to architecture, and hacked the most terrific creatures out of heavy blocks of marble and drew the plans for the church of St. Peter, the most concrete "expression" of the glories of the triumphant church. And so it went. All Italy (and very soon all of Europe) was filled with men and women who lived that they might add their mite to the sum total of our accumulated treasures of knowledge and beauty and wisdom. In Germany, in the city of Mainz, Johann zum Gansefleisch, commonly known as Johann Gutenberg, had just invented a new method of copying books. He had studied the old woodcuts and had perfected a system by which individual letters of soft lead could be placed in such a way that they formed words and whole pages. It is true, he soon lost all his money in a law-suit which had to do with the original invention of the press. He died in poverty, but the "expression" of his particular inventive genius lived after him. Soon Aldus in Venice and Etienne in Paris and Plantin in Antwerp and Froben in Basel were flooding the world with carefully edited editions of the classics printed in the Gothic letters of the Gutenberg Bible, or printed in the Italian type which we use in this book, or printed in Greek letters, or in Hebrew. Then the whole world became the eager audience of those who had something to say. The day when learning had been a monopoly of a privileged few came to an end. And the last excuse for ignorance was removed from this world, when Elzevier of Haarlem began to print his cheap and popular editions. Then Aristotle and Plato, Virgil and Horace and Pliny, all the goodly company of the ancient authors and philosophers and scientists, offered to become man's faithful friend in exchange for a few paltry pennies. Humanism had made all men free and equal before the printed word. THE GREAT DISCOVERIES BUT NOW THAT PEOPLE HAD BROKEN THROUGH THE BONDS OF THEIR NARROW MEDIAEVAL LIMITATIONS, THEY HAD TO HAVE MORE ROOM FOR THEIR WANDERINGS. THE EUROPEAN WORLD HAD GROWN TOO SMALL FOR THEIR AMBITIONS. IT WAS THE TIME OF THE GREAT VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY THE Crusades had been a lesson in the liberal art of travelling. But very few people had ever ventured beyond the well-known beaten track which led from Venice to Jaffe. In the thirteenth century the Polo brothers, merchants of Venice, had wandered across the great Mongolian desert and after climbing mountains as high as the moon, they had found their way to the court of the great Khan of Cathay, the mighty emperor of China. The son of one of the Polos, by the name of Marco, had written a book about their adventures, which covered a period of more than twenty years. The astonished world had gaped at his descriptions of the golden towers of the strange island of Zipangu, which was his Italian way of spelling Japan. Many people had wanted to go east, that they might find this gold-land and grow rich. But the trip was too far and too dangerous and so they stayed at home. Of course, there was always the possibility of making the voyage by sea. But the sea was very unpopular in the Middle Ages and for many very good reasons. In the first place, ships were very small. The vessels on which Magellan made his famous trip around the world, which lasted many years, were not as large as a modern ferryboat. They carried from twenty to fifty men, who lived in dingy quarters (too low to allow any of them to stand up straight) and the sailors were obliged to eat poorly cooked food as the kitchen arrangements were very bad and no fire could be made whenever the weather was the least bit rough. The mediaeval world knew how to pickle herring and how to dry fish. But there were no canned goods and fresh vegetables were never seen on the bill of fare as soon as the coast had been left behind. Water was carried in small barrels. It soon became stale and then tasted of rotten wood and iron rust and was full of slimy growing things. As the people of the Middle Ages knew nothing about microbes (Roger Bacon, the learned monk of the thirteenth century seems to have suspected their existence, but he wisely kept his discovery to himself) they often drank unclean water and sometimes the whole crew died of typhoid fever. Indeed the mortality on board the ships of the earliest navigators was terrible. Of the two hundred sailors who in the year 1519 left Seville to accompany Magellan on his famous voyage around the world, only eighteen returned. As late as the seventeenth century when there was a brisk trade between western Europe and the Indies, a mortality of 40 percent was nothing unusual for a trip from Amsterdam to Batavia and back. The greater part of these victims died of scurvy, a disease which is caused by lack of fresh vegetables and which affects the gums and poisons the blood until the patient dies of sheer exhaustion. Under those circumstances you will understand that the sea did not attract the best elements of the population. Famous discoverers like Magellan and Columbus and Vasco da Gama travelled at the head of crews that were almost entirely composed of ex-jailbirds, future murderers and pickpockets out of a Job. These navigators certainly deserve our admiration for the courage and the pluck with which they accomplished their hopeless tasks in the face of difficulties of which the people of our own comfortable world can have no conception. Their ships were leaky. The rigging was clumsy. Since the middle of the thirteenth century they had possessed some sort of a compass (which had come to Europe from China by way of Arabia and the Crusades) but they had very bad and incorrect maps. They set their course by God and by guess. If luck was with them they returned after one or two or three years. In the other case, their bleeched bones remained behind on some lonely beach. But they were true pioneers. They gambled with luck. Life to them was a glorious adventure. And all the suffering, the thirst and the hunger and the pain were forgotten when their eyes beheld the dim outlines of a new coast or the placid waters of an ocean that had lain forgotten since the beginning of time. Again I wish that I could make this book a thousand pages long. The subject of the early discoveries is so fascinating. But history, to give you a true idea of past times, should be like those etchings which Rembrandt used to make. It should cast a vivid light on certain important causes, on those which are best and greatest. All the rest should be left in the shadow or should be indicated by a few lines. And in this chapter I can only give you a short list of the most important discoveries. Keep in mind that all during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the navigators were trying to accomplish just ONE THING--they wanted to find a comfortable and safe road to the empire of Cathay (China), to the island of Zipangu (Japan) and to those mysterious islands, where grew the spices which the mediaeval world had come to like since the days of the Crusades, and which people needed in those days before the introduction of cold storage, when meat and fish spoiled very quickly and could only be eaten after a liberal sprinkling of pepper or nutmeg. The Venetians and the Genoese had been the great navigators of the Mediterranean, but the honour for exploring the coast of the Atlantic goes to the Portuguese. Spain and Portugal were full of that patriotic energy which their age-old struggle against the Moorish invaders had developed. Such energy, once it exists, can easily be forced into new channels. In the thirteenth century, King Alphonso III had conquered the kingdom of Algarve in the southwestern corner of the Spanish peninsula and had added it to his dominions. In the next century, the Portuguese had turned the tables on the Mohammedans, had crossed the straits of Gibraltar and had taken possession of Ceuta, opposite the Arabic city of Ta'Rifa (a word which in Arabic means "inventory" and which by way of the Spanish language has come down to us as "tariff,") and Tangiers, which became the capital of an African addition to Algarve. They were ready to begin their career as explorers. In the year 1415, Prince Henry, known as Henry the Navigator, the son of John I of Portugal and Philippa, the daughter of John of Gaunt (about whom you can read in Richard II, a play by William Shakespeare) began to make preparations for the systematic exploration of northwestern Africa. Before this, that hot and sandy coast had been visited by the Phoenicians and by the Norsemen, who remembered it as the home of the hairy "wild man" whom we have come to know as the gorilla. One after another, Prince Henry and his captains discovered the Canary Islands--re-discovered the island of Madeira which a century before had been visited by a Genoese ship, carefully charted the Azores which had been vaguely known to both the Portuguese and the Spaniards, and caught a glimpse of the mouth of the Senegal River on the west coast of Africa, which they supposed to be the western mouth of the Nile. At last, by the middle of the Fifteenth Century, they saw Cape Verde, or the Green Cape, and the Cape Verde Islands, which lie almost halfway between the coast of Africa and Brazil. But Henry did not restrict himself in his investigations to the waters of the Ocean. He was Grand Master of the Order of Christ. This was a Portuguese continuation of the crusading order of the Templars which had been abolished by Pope Clement V in the year 1312 at the request of King Philip the Fair of France, who had improved the occasion by burning his own Templars at the stake and stealing all their possessions. Prince Henry used the revenues of the domains of his religious order to equip several expeditions which explored the hinterland of the Sahara and of the coast of Guinea. But he was still very much a son of the Middle Ages and spent a great deal of time and wasted a lot of money upon a search for the mysterious "Presser John," the mythical Christian Priest who was said to be the Emperor of a vast empire "situated somewhere in the east." The story of this strange potentate had first been told in Europe in the middle of the twelfth century. For three hundred years people had tried to find "Presser John" and his descendants Henry took part in the search. Thirty years after his death, the riddle was solved. In the year 1486 Bartholomew Diaz, trying to find the land of Prester John by sea, had reached the southernmost point of Africa. At first he called it the Storm Cape, on account of the strong winds which had prevented him from continuing his voyage toward the east, but the Lisbon pilots who understood the importance of this discovery in their quest for the India water route, changed the name into that of the Cape of Good Hope. One year later, Pedro de Covilham, provided with letters of credit on the house of Medici, started upon a similar mission by land. He crossed the Mediterranean and after leaving Egypt, he travelled southward. He reached Aden, and from there, travelling through the waters of the Persian Gulf which few white men had seen since the days of Alexander the Great, eighteen centuries before, he visited Goa and Calicut on the coast of India where he got a great deal of news about the island of the Moon (Madagascar) which was supposed to lie halfway between Africa and India. Then he returned, paid a secret visit to Mecca and to Medina, crossed the Red Sea once more and in the year 1490 he discovered the realm of Prester John, who was no one less than the Black Negus (or King) of Abyssinia, whose ancestors had adopted Christianity in the fourth century, seven hundred years before the Christian missionaries had found their way to Scandinavia. These many voyages had convinced the Portuguese geographers and cartographers that while the voyage to the Indies by an eastern sea-route was possible, it was by no means easy. Then there arose a great debate. Some people wanted to continue the explorations east of the Cape of Good Hope. Others said, "No, we must sail west across the Atlantic and then we shall reach Cathay." Let us state right here that most intelligent people of that day were firmly convinced that the earth was not as flat as a pancake but was round. The Ptolemean system of the universe, invented and duly described by Claudius Ptolemy, the great Egyptian geographer, who had lived in the second century of our era, which had served the simple needs of the men of the Middle Ages, had long been discarded by the scientists of the Renaissance. They had accepted the doctrine of the Polish mathematician, Nicolaus Copernicus, whose studies had convinced him that the earth was one of a number of round planets which turned around the sun, a discovery which he did not venture to publish for thirty-six years (it was printed in 1548, the year of his death) from fear of the Holy Inquisition, a Papal court which had been established in the thirteenth century when the heresies of the Albigenses and the Waldenses in France and in Italy (very mild heresies of devoutly pious people who did not believe in private property and preferred to live in Christ-like poverty) had for a moment threatened the absolute power of the bishops of Rome. But the belief in the roundness of the earth was common among the nautical experts and, as I said, they were now debating the respective advantages of the eastern and the western routes. Among the advocates of the western route was a Genoese mariner by the name of Cristoforo Colombo. He was the son of a wool merchant. He seems to have been a student at the University of Pavia where he specialised in mathematics and geometry. Then he took up his father's trade but soon we find him in Chios in the eastern Mediterranean travelling on business. Thereafter we hear of voyages to England but whether he went north in search of wool or as the captain of a ship we do not know. In February of the year 1477, Colombo (if we are to believe his own words) visited Iceland, but very likely he only got as far as the Faroe Islands which are cold enough in February to be mistaken for Iceland by any one. Here Colombo met the descendants of those brave Norsemen who in the tenth century had settled in Greenland and who had visited America in the eleventh century, when Leif's vessel had been blown to the coast of Vineland, or Labrador. What had become of those far western colonies no one knew. The American colony of Thorfinn Karlsefne, the husband of the widow of Leif's brother Thorstein, founded in the year 1003, had been discontinued three years later on account of the hostility of the Esquimaux. As for Greenland, not a word had been heard from the settlers since the year 1440. Very likely the Greenlanders had all died of the Black Death, which had just killed half the people of Norway. However that might be, the tradition of a "vast land in the distant west" still survived among the people of the Faroe and Iceland, and Colombo must have heard of it. He gathered further information among the fishermen of the northern Scottish islands and then went to Portugal where he married the daughter of one of the captains who had served under Prince Henry the Navigator. From that moment on (the year 1478) he devoted himself to the quest of the western route to the Indies. He sent his plans for such a voyage to the courts of Portugal and Spain. The Portuguese, who felt certain that they possessed a monopoly of the eastern route, would not listen to his plans. In Spain, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, whose marriage in 1469 had made Spain into a single kingdom, were busy driving the Moors from their last stronghold, Granada. They had no money for risky expeditions. They needed every peseta for their soldiers. Few people were ever forced to fight as desperately for their ideas as this brave Italian. But the story of Colombo (or Colon or Columbus, as we call him,) is too well known to bear repeating. The Moors surrendered Granada on the second of January of the year 1492. In the month of April of the same year, Columbus signed a contract with the King and Queen of Spain. On Friday, the 3rd of August, he left Palos with three little ships and a crew of 88 men, many of whom were criminals who had been offered indemnity of punishment if they joined the expedition. At two o'clock in the morning of Friday, the 12th of October, Columbus discovered land. On the fourth of January of the year 1493, Columbus waved farewell to the 44 men of the little fortress of La Navidad (none of whom was ever again seen alive) and returned homeward. By the middle of February he reached the Azores where the Portuguese threatened to throw him into gaol. On the fifteenth of March, 1493, the admiral reached Palos and together with his Indians (for he was convinced that he had discovered some outlying islands of the Indies and called the natives red Indians) he hastened to Barcelona to tell his faithful patrons that he had been successful and that the road to the gold and the silver of Cathay and Zipangu was at the disposal of their most Catholic Majesties. Alas, Columbus never knew the truth. Towards the end of his life, on his fourth voyage, when he had touched the mainland of South America, he may have suspected that all was not well with his discovery. But he died in the firm belief that there was no solid continent between Europe and Asia and that he had found the direct route to China. Meanwhile, the Portuguese, sticking to their eastern route, had been more fortunate. In the year 1498, Vasco da Gama had been able to reach the coast of Malabar and return safely to Lisbon with a cargo of spice. In the year 1502 he had repeated the visit. But along the western route, the work of exploration had been most disappointing. In 1497 and 1498 John and Sebastian Cabot had tried to find a passage to Japan but they had seen nothing but the snowbound coasts and the rocks of Newfoundland, which had first been sighted by the Northmen, five centuries before. Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine who became the Pilot Major of Spain, and who gave his name to our continent, had explored the coast of Brazil, but had found not a trace of the Indies. In the year 1513, seven years after the death of Columbus, the truth at last began to dawn upon the geographers of Europe. Vasco Nunez de Balboa had crossed the Isthmus of Panama, had climbed the famous peak in Darien, and had looked down upon a vast expanse of water which seemed to suggest the existence of another ocean. Finally in the year 1519 a fleet of five small Spanish ships under command of the Portuguese navigator, Ferdinand de Magellan, sailed westward (and not eastward since that route, was absolutely in the hands of the Portuguese who allowed no competition) in search of the Spice Islands. Magellan crossed the Atlantic between Africa and Brazil and sailed southward. He reached a narrow channel between the southernmost point of Patagonia, the "land of the people with the big feet," and the Fire Island (so named on account of a fire, the only sign of the existence of natives, which the sailors watched one night). For almost five weeks the ships of Magellan were at the mercy of the terrible storms and blizzards which swept through the straits. A mutiny broke out among the sailors. Magellan suppressed it with terrible severity and sent two of his men on shore where they were left to repent of their sins at leisure. At last the storms quieted down, the channel broadened, and Magellan entered a new ocean. Its waves were quiet and placid. He called it the Peaceful Sea, the Mare Pacifico. Then he continued in a western direction. He sailed for ninety-eight days without seeing land. His people almost perished from hunger and thirst and ate the rats that infested the ships, and when these were all gone they chewed pieces of sail to still their gnawing hunger. In March of the year 1521 they saw land. Magellan called it the land of the Ladrones (which means robbers) because the natives stole everything they could lay hands on. Then further westward to the Spice Islands! Again land was sighted. A group of lonely islands. Magellan called them the Philippines, after Philip, the son of his master Charles V, the Philip II of unpleasant historical memory. At first Magellan was well received, but when he used the guns of his ships to make Christian converts he was killed by the aborigines, together with a number of his captains and sailors. The survivors burned one of the three remaining ships and continued their voyage. They found the Moluccas, the famous Spice Islands; they sighted Borneo and reached Tidor. There, one of the two ships, too leaky to be of further use, remained behind with her crew. The "Vittoria," under Sebastian del Cano, crossed the Indian Ocean, missed seeing the northern coast of Australia (which was not discovered until the first half of the seventeenth century when ships of the Dutch East India Company explored this flat and inhospitable land), and after great hardships reached Spain. This was the most notable of all voyages. It had taken three years. It had been accomplished at a great cost both of men and money. But it had established the fact that the earth was round and that the new lands discovered by Columbus were not a part of the Indies but a separate continent. From that time on, Spain and Portugal devoted all their energies to the development of their Indian and American trade. To prevent an armed conflict between the rivals, Pope Alexander VI (the only avowed heathen who was ever elected to this most holy office) had obligingly divided the world into two equal parts by a line of demarcation which followed the 50th degree of longitude west of Greenwich, the so-called division of Tordesillas of 1494. The Portuguese were to establish their colonies to the east of this line, the Spaniards were to have theirs to the west. This accounts for the fact that the entire American continent with the exception of Brazil became Spanish and that all of the Indies and most of Africa became Portuguese until the English and the Dutch colonists (who had no respect for Papal decisions) took these possessions away in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. When news of the discovery of Columbus reached the Rialto of Venice, the Wall street of the Middle Ages, there was a terrible panic. Stocks and bonds went down 40 and 50 percent. After a short while, when it appeared that Columbus had failed to find the road to Cathay, the Venetian merchants recovered from their fright. But the voyages of da Gama and Magellan proved the practical possibilities of an eastern water-route to the Indies. Then the rulers of Genoa and Venice, the two great commercial centres of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, began to be sorry that they had refused to listen to Columbus. But it was too late. Their Mediterranean became an inland sea. The overland trade to the Indies and China dwindled to insignificant proportions. The old days of Italian glory were gone. The Atlantic became the new centre of commerce and therefore the centre of civilisation. It has remained so ever since. See how strangely civilisation has progressed since those early days, fifty centuries before, when the inhabitants of the Valley of the Nile began to keep a written record of history, From the river Nile, it went to Mesopotamia, the land between the rivers. Then came the turn of Crete and Greece and Rome. An inland sea became the centre of trade and the cities along the Mediterranean were the home of art and science and philosophy and learning. In the sixteenth century it moved westward once more and made the countries that border upon the Atlantic become the masters of the earth. There are those who say that the world war and the suicide of the great European nations has greatly diminished the importance of the Atlantic Ocean. They expect to see civilisation cross the American continent and find a new home in the Pacific. But I doubt this. The westward trip was accompanied by a steady increase in the size of ships and a broadening of the knowledge of the navigators. The flat-bottomed vessels of the Nile and the Euphrates were replaced by the sailing vessels of the Phoenicians, the AEgeans, the Greeks, the Carthaginians and the Romans. These in turn were discarded for the square rigged vessels of the Portuguese and the Spaniards. And the latter were driven from the ocean by the full-rigged craft of the English and the Dutch. At present, however, civilisation no longer depends upon ships. Aircraft has taken and will continue to take the place of the sailing vessel and the steamer. The next centre of civilisation will depend upon the development of aircraft and water power. And the sea once more shall be the undisturbed home of the little fishes, who once upon a time shared their deep residence with the earliest ancestors of the human race. BUDDHA AND CONFUCIUS CONCERNING BUDDHA AND CONFUCIUS THE discoveries of the Portuguese and the Spaniards had brought the Christians of western Europe into close contact with the people of India and of China. They knew of course that Christianity was not the only religion on this earth. There were the Mohammedans and the heathenish tribes of northern Africa who worshipped sticks and stones and dead trees. But in India and in China the Christian conquerors found new millions who had never heard of Christ and who did not want to hear of Him, because they thought their own religion, which was thousands of years old, much better than that of the West. As this is a story of mankind and not an exclusive history of the people of Europe and our western hemisphere, you ought to know something of two men whose teaching and whose example continue to influence the actions and the thoughts of the majority of our fellow-travellers on this earth. In India, Buddha was recognised as the great religious teacher. His history is an interesting one. He was born in the Sixth Century before the birth of Christ, within sight of the mighty Himalaya Mountains, where four hundred years before Zarathustra (or Zoroaster), the first of the great leaders of the Aryan race (the name which the Eastern branch of the Indo-European race had given to itself), had taught his people to regard life as a continuous struggle between Ahriman, and Ormuzd, the Gods of Evil and Good. Buddha's father was Suddhodana, a mighty chief among the tribe of the Sakiyas. His mother, Maha Maya, was the daughter of a neighbouring king. She had been married when she was a very young girl. But many moons had passed beyond the distant ridge of hills and still her husband was without an heir who should rule his lands after him. At last, when she was fifty years old, her day came and she went forth that she might be among her own people when her baby should come into this world. It was a long trip to the land of the Koliyans, where Maha Maya had spent her earliest years. One night she was resting among the cool trees of the garden of Lumbini. There her son was born. He was given the name of Siddhartha, but we know him as Buddha, which means the Enlightened One. In due time, Siddhartha grew up to be a handsome young prince and when he was nineteen years old, he was married to his cousin Yasodhara. During the next ten years he lived far away from all pain and all suffering, behind the protecting walls of the royal palace, awaiting the day when he should succeed his father as King of the Sakiyas. But it happened that when he was thirty years old, he drove outside of the palace gates and saw a man who was old and worn out with labour and whose weak limbs could hardly carry the burden of life. Siddhartha pointed him out to his coachman, Channa, but Channa answered that there were lots of poor people in this world and that one more or less did not matter. The young prince was very sad but he did not say anything and went back to live with his wife and his father and his mother and tried to be happy. A little while later he left the palace a second time. His carriage met a man who suffered from a terrible disease. Siddhartha asked Channa what had been the cause of this man's suffering, but the coachman answered that there were many sick people in this world and that such things could not be helped and did not matter very much. The young prince was very sad when he heard this but again he returned to his people. A few weeks passed. One evening Siddhartha ordered his carriage in order to go to the river and bathe. Suddenly his horses were frightened by the sight of a dead man whose rotting body lay sprawling in the ditch beside the road. The young prince, who had never been allowed to see such things, was frightened, but Channa told him not to mind such trifles. The world was full of dead people. It was the rule of life that all things must come to an end. Nothing was eternal. The grave awaited us all and there was no escape. That evening, when Siddhartha returned to his home, he was received with music. While he was away his wife had given birth to a son. The people were delighted because now they knew that there was an heir to the throne and they celebrated the event by the beating of many drums. Siddhartha, however, did not share their joy. The curtain of life had been lifted and he had learned the horror of man's existence. The sight of death and suffering followed him like a terrible dream. That night the moon was shining brightly. Siddhartha woke up and began to think of many things. Never again could he be happy until he should have found a solution to the riddle of existence. He decided to find it far away from all those whom he loved. Softly he went into the room where Yasodhara was sleeping with her baby. Then he called for his faithful Channa and told him to follow. Together the two men went into the darkness of the night, one to find rest for his soul, the other to be a faithful servant unto a beloved master. The people of India among whom Siddhartha wandered for many years were just then in a state of change. Their ancestors, the native Indians, had been conquered without great difficulty by the war-like Aryans (our distant cousins) and thereafter the Aryans had been the rulers and masters of tens of millions of docile little brown men. To maintain themselves in the seat of the mighty, they had divided the population into different classes and gradually a system of "caste" of the most rigid sort had been enforced upon the natives. The descendants of the Indo-European conquerors belonged to the highest "caste," the class of warriors and nobles. Next came the caste of the priests. Below these followed the peasants and the business men. The ancient natives, however, who were called Pariahs, formed a class of despised and miserable slaves and never could hope to be anything else. Even the religion of the people was a matter of caste. The old Indo-Europeans, during their thousands of years of wandering, had met with many strange adventures. These had been collected in a book called the Veda. The language of this book was called Sanskrit, and it was closely related to the different languages of the European continent, to Greek and Latin and Russian and German and two-score others. The three highest castes were allowed to read these holy scriptures. The Pariah, however, the despised member of the lowest caste, was not permitted to know its contents. Woe to the man of noble or priestly caste who should teach a Pariah to study the sacred volume! The majority of the Indian people, therefore, lived in misery. Since this planet offered them very little joy, salvation from suffering must be found elsewhere. They tried to derive a little consolation from meditation upon the bliss of their future existence. Brahma, the all-creator who was regarded by the Indian people as the supreme ruler of life and death, was worshipped as the highest ideal of perfection. To become like Brahma, to lose all desires for riches and power, was recognised as the most exalted purpose of existence. Holy thoughts were regarded as more important than holy deeds, and many people went into the desert and lived upon the leaves of trees and starved their bodies that they might feed their souls with the glorious contemplation of the splendours of Brahma, the Wise, the Good and the Merciful. Siddhartha, who had often observed these solitary wanderers who were seeking the truth far away from the turmoil of the cities and the villages, decided to follow their example. He cut his hair. He took his pearls and his rubies and sent them back to his family with a message of farewell, which the ever faithful Channa carried. Without a single follower, the young prince then moved into the wilderness. Soon the fame of his holy conduct spread among the mountains. Five young men came to him and asked that they might be allowed to listen to his words of wisdom. He agreed to be their master if they would follow him. They consented, and he took them into the hills and for six years he taught them all he knew amidst the lonely peaks of the Vindhya Mountains. But at the end of this period of study, he felt that he was still far from perfection. The world that he had left continued to tempt him. He now asked that his pupils leave him and then he fasted for forty-nine days and nights, sitting upon the roots of an old tree. At last he received his reward. In the dusk of the fiftieth evening, Brahma revealed himself to his faithful servant. From that moment on, Siddhartha was called Buddha and he was revered as the Enlightened One who had come to save men from their unhappy mortal fate. The last forty-five years of his life, Buddha spent within the valley of the Ganges River, teaching his simple lesson of submission and meekness unto all men. In the year 488 before our era, he died, full of years and beloved by millions of people. He had not preached his doctrines for the benefit of a single class. Even the lowest Pariah might call himself his disciple. This, however, did not please the nobles and the priests and the merchants who did their best to destroy a creed which recognised the equality of all living creatures and offered men the hope of a second life (a reincarnation) under happier circumstances. As soon as they could, they encouraged the people of India to return to the ancient doctrines of the Brahmin creed with its fasting and its tortures of the sinful body. But Buddhism could not be destroyed. Slowly the disciples of the Enlightened One wandered across the valleys of the Himalayas, and moved into China. They crossed the Yellow Sea and preached the wisdom of their master unto the people of Japan, and they faithfully obeyed the will of their great master, who had forbidden them to use force. To-day more people recognise Buddha as their teacher than ever before and their number surpasses that of the combined followers of Christ and Mohammed. As for Confucius, the wise old man of the Chinese, his story is a simple one. He was born in the year 550 B.C. He led a quiet, dignified and uneventful life at a time when China was without a strong central government and when the Chinese people were at the mercy of bandits and robber-barons who went from city to city, pillaging and stealing and murdering and turning the busy plains of northern and central China into a wilderness of starving people. Confucius, who loved his people, tried to save them. He did not have much faith in the use of violence. He was a very peaceful person. He did not think that he could make people over by giving them a lot of new laws. He knew that the only possible salvation would come from a change of heart, and he set out upon the seemingly hopeless task of changing the character of his millions of fellow men who inhabited the wide plains of eastern Asia. The Chinese had never been much interested in religion as we understand that word. They believed in devils and spooks as most primitive people do. But they had no prophets and recognised no "revealed truth." Confucius is almost the only one among the great moral leaders who did not see visions, who did not proclaim himself as the messenger of a divine power; who did not, at some time or another, claim that he was inspired by voices from above. He was just a very sensible and kindly man, rather given to lonely wanderings and melancholy tunes upon his faithful flute. He asked for no recognition. He did not demand that any one should follow him or worship him. He reminds us of the ancient Greek philosophers, especially those of the Stoic School, men who believed in right living and righteous thinking without the hope of a reward but simply for the peace of the soul that comes with a good conscience. Confucius was a very tolerant man. He went out of his way to visit Lao-Tse, the other great Chinese leader and the founder of a philosophic system called "Taoism," which was merely an early Chinese version of the Golden Rule. Confucius bore no hatred to any one. He taught the virtue of supreme self-possession. A person of real worth, according to the teaching of Confucius, did not allow himself to be ruffled by anger and suffered whatever fate brought him with the resignation of those sages who understand that everything which happens, in one way or another, is meant for the best. At first he had only a few students. Gradually the number increased. Before his death, in the year 478 B.C., several of the kings and the princes of China confessed themselves his disciples. When Christ was born in Bethlehem, the philosophy of Confucius had already become a part of the mental make-up of most Chinamen. It has continued to influence their lives ever since. Not however in its pure, original form. Most religions change as time goes on. Christ preached humility and meekness and absence from worldly ambitions, but fifteen centuries after Golgotha, the head of the Christian church was spending millions upon the erection of a building that bore little relation to the lonely stable of Bethlehem. Lao-Tse taught the Golden Rule, and in less than three centuries the ignorant masses had made him into a real and very cruel God and had buried his wise commandments under a rubbish-heap of superstition which made the lives of the average Chinese one long series of frights and fears and horrors. Confucius had shown his students the beauties of honouring their Father and their Mother. They soon began to be more interested in the memory of their departed parents than in the happiness of their children and their grandchildren. Deliberately they turned their backs upon the future and tried to peer into the vast darkness of the past. The worship of the ancestors became a positive religious system. Rather than disturb a cemetery situated upon the sunny and fertile side of a mountain, they would plant their rice and wheat upon the barren rocks of the other slope where nothing could possibly grow. And they preferred hunger and famine to the desecration of the ancestral grave. At the same time the wise words of Confucius never quite lost their hold upon the increasing millions of eastern Asia. Confucianism, with its profound sayings and shrewd observations, added a touch of common-sense philosophy to the soul of every Chinaman and influenced his entire life, whether he was a simple laundry man in a steaming basement or the ruler of vast provinces who dwelt behind the high walls of a secluded palace. In the sixteenth century the enthusiastic but rather uncivilised Christians of the western world came face to face with the older creeds of the East. The early Spaniards and Portuguese looked upon the peaceful statues of Buddha and contemplated the venerable pictures of Confucius and did not in the least know what to make of those worthy prophets with their far-away smile. They came to the easy conclusion that these strange divinities were just plain devils who represented something idolatrous and heretical and did not deserve the respect of the true sons of the Church. Whenever the spirit of Buddha or Confucius seemed to interfere with the trade in spices and silks, the Europeans attacked the "evil influence" with bullets and grape-shot. That system had certain very definite disadvantages. It has left us an unpleasant heritage of ill-will which promises little good for the immediate future. THE REFORMATION THE PROGRESS OF THE HUMAN RACE IS BEST COMPARED TO A GIGANTIC PENDULUM WHICH FOREVER SWINGS FORWARD AND BACKWARD. THE RELIGIOUS INDIFFERENCE AND THE ARTISTIC AND LITERARY ENTHUSIASM OF THE RENAISSANCE WERE FOLLOWED BY THE ARTISTIC AND LITERARY INDIFFERENCE AND THE RELIGIOUS ENTHUSIASM OF THE REFORMATION OF course you have heard of the Reformation. You think of a small but courageous group of pilgrims who crossed the ocean to have "freedom of religious worship." Vaguely in the course of time (and more especially in our Protestant countries) the Reformation has come to stand for the idea of "liberty of thought." Martin Luther is represented as the leader of the vanguard of progress. But when history is something more than a series of flattering speeches addressed to our own glorious ancestors, when to use the words of the German historian Ranke, we try to discover what "actually happened," then much of the past is seen in a very different light. Few things in human life are either entirely good or entirely bad. Few things are either black or white. It is the duty of the honest chronicler to give a true account of all the good and bad sides of every historical event. It is very difficult to do this because we all have our personal likes and dislikes. But we ought to try and be as fair as we can be, and must not allow our prejudices to influence us too much. Take my own case as an example. I grew up in the very Protestant centre of a very Protestant country. I never saw any Catholics until I was about twelve years old. Then I felt very uncomfortable when I met them. I was a little bit afraid. I knew the story of the many thousand people who had been burned and hanged and quartered by the Spanish Inquisition when the Duke of Alba tried to cure the Dutch people of their Lutheran and Calvinistic heresies. All that was very real to me. It seemed to have happened only the day before. It might occur again. There might be another Saint Bartholomew's night, and poor little me would be slaughtered in my nightie and my body would be thrown out of the window, as had happened to the noble Admiral de Coligny. Much later I went to live for a number of years in a Catholic country. I found the people much pleasanter and much more tolerant and quite as intelligent as my former countrymen. To my great surprise, I began to discover that there was a Catholic side to the Reformation, quite as much as a Protestant. Of course the good people of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who actually lived through the Reformation, did not see things that way. They were always right and their enemy was always wrong. It was a question of hang or be hanged, and both sides preferred to do the hanging. Which was no more than human and for which they deserve no blame. When we look at the world as it appeared in the year 1500, an easy date to remember, and the year in which the Emperor Charles V was born, this is what we see. The feudal disorder of the Middle Ages has given way before the order of a number of highly centralised kingdoms. The most powerful of all sovereigns is the great Charles, then a baby in a cradle. He is the grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella and of Maximilian of Habsburg, the last of the mediaeval knights, and of his wife Mary, the daughter of Charles the Bold, the ambitious Burgundian duke who had made successful war upon France but had been killed by the independent Swiss peasants. The child Charles, therefore, has fallen heir to the greater part of the map, to all the lands of his parents, grandparents, uncles, cousins and aunts in Germany, in Austria, in Holland, in Belgium, in Italy, and in Spain, together with all their colonies in Asia, Africa and America. By a strange irony of fate, he has been born in Ghent, in that same castle of the counts of Flanders, which the Germans used as a prison during their recent occupation of Belgium, and although a Spanish king and a German emperor, he receives the training of a Fleming. As his father is dead (poisoned, so people say, but this is never proved), and his mother has lost her mind (she is travelling through her domains with the coffin containing the body of her departed husband), the child is left to the strict discipline of his Aunt Margaret. Forced to rule Germans and Italians and Spaniards and a hundred strange races, Charles grows up a Fleming, a faithful son of the Catholic Church, but quite averse to religious intolerance. He is rather lazy, both as a boy and as a man. But fate condemns him to rule the world when the world is in a turmoil of religious fervour. Forever he is speeding from Madrid to Innsbruck and from Bruges to Vienna. He loves peace and quiet and he is always at war. At the age of fifty-five, we see him turn his back upon the human race in utter disgust at so much hate and so much stupidity. Three years later he dies, a very tired and disappointed man. So much for Charles the Emperor. How about the Church, the second great power in the world? The Church has changed greatly since the early days of the Middle Ages, when it started out to conquer the heathen and show them the advantages of a pious and righteous life. In the first place, the Church has grown too rich. The Pope is no longer the shepherd of a flock of humble Christians. He lives in a vast palace and surrounds himself with artists and musicians and famous literary men. His churches and chapels are covered with new pictures in which the saints look more like Greek Gods than is strictly necessary. He divides his time unevenly between affairs of state and art. The affairs of state take ten percent of his time. The other ninety percent goes to an active interest in Roman statues, recently discovered Greek vases, plans for a new summer home, the rehearsal of a new play. The Archbishops and the Cardinals follow the example of their Pope. The Bishops try to imitate the Archbishops. The village priests, however, have remained faithful to their duties. They keep themselves aloof from the wicked world and the heathenish love of beauty and pleasure. They stay away from the monasteries where the monks seem to have forgotten their ancient vows of simplicity and poverty and live as happily as they dare without causing too much of a public scandal. Finally, there are the common people. They are much better off than they have ever been before. They are more prosperous, they live in better houses, their children go to better schools, their cities are more beautiful than before, their firearms have made them the equal of their old enemies, the robber-barons, who for centuries have levied such heavy taxes upon their trade. So much for the chief actors in the Reformation. Now let us see what the Renaissance has done to Europe, and then you will understand how the revival of learning and art was bound to be followed by a revival of religious interests. The Renaissance began in Italy. From there it spread to France. It was not quite successful in Spain, where five hundred years of warfare with the Moors had made the people very narrow minded and very fanatical in all religious matters. The circle had grown wider and wider, but once the Alps had been crossed, the Renaissance had suffered a change. The people of northern Europe, living in a very different climate, had an outlook upon life which contrasted strangely with that of their southern neighbours. The Italians lived out in the open, under a sunny sky. It was easy for them to laugh and to sing and to be happy. The Germans, the Dutch, the English, the Swedes, spent most of their time indoors, listening to the rain beating on the closed windows of their comfortable little houses. They did not laugh quite so much. They took everything more seriously. They were forever conscious of their immortal souls and they did not like to be funny about matters which they considered holy and sacred. The "humanistic" part of the Renaissance, the books, the studies of ancient authors, the grammar and the text-books, interested them greatly. But the general return to the old pagan civilisation of Greece and Rome, which was one of the chief results of the Renaissance in Italy, filled their hearts with horror. But the Papacy and the College of Cardinals was almost entirely composed of Italians and they had turned the Church into a pleasant club where people discussed art and music and the theatre, but rarely mentioned religion. Hence the split between the serious north and the more civilised but easy-going and indifferent south was growing wider and wider all the time and nobody seemed to be aware of the danger that threatened the Church. There were a few minor reasons which will explain why the Reformation took place in Germany rather than in Sweden or England. The Germans bore an ancient grudge against Rome. The endless quarrels between Emperor and Pope had caused much mutual bitterness. In the other European countries where the government rested in the hands of a strong king, the ruler had often been able to protect his subjects against the greed of the priests. In Germany, where a shadowy emperor ruled a turbulent crowd of little princelings, the good burghers were more directly at the mercy of their bishops and prelates. These dignitaries were trying to collect large sums of money for the benefit of those enormous churches which were a hobby of the Popes of the Renaissance. The Germans felt that they were being mulcted and quite naturally they did not like it. And then there is the rarely mentioned fact that Germany was the home of the printing press. In northern Europe books were cheap and the Bible was no longer a mysterious manu-script owned and explained by the priest. It was a household book of many families where Latin was understood by the father and by the children. Whole families began to read it, which was against the law of the Church. They discovered that the priests were telling them many things which, according to the original text of the Holy Scriptures, were somewhat different. This caused doubt. People began to ask questions. And questions, when they cannot be answered, often cause a great deal of trouble. The attack began when the humanists of the North opened fire upon the monks. In their heart of hearts they still had too much respect and reverence for the Pope to direct their sallies against his Most Holy Person. But the lazy, ignorant monks, living behind the sheltering walls of their rich monasteries, offered rare sport. The leader in this warfare, curiously enough, was a very faithful son of the church Gerard Gerardzoon, or Desiderius Erasmus, as he is usually called, was a poor boy, born in Rotterdam in Holland, and educated at the same Latin school of Deventer from which Thomas a Kempis had graduated. He had become a priest and for a time he had lived in a monastery. He had travelled a great deal and knew whereof he wrote, When he began his career as a public pamphleteer (he would have been called an editorial writer in our day) the world was greatly amused at an anonymous series of letters which had just appeared under the title of "Letters of Obscure Men." In these letters, the general stupidity and arrogance of the monks of the late Middle Ages was exposed in a strange German-Latin doggerel which reminds one of our modern limericks. Erasmus himself was a very learned and serious scholar, who knew both Latin and Greek and gave us the first reliable version of the New Testament, which he translated into Latin together with a corrected edition of the original Greek text. But he believed with Sallust, the Roman poet, that nothing prevents us from "stating the truth with a smile upon our lips." In the year 1500, while visiting Sir Thomas More in Eng-land, he took a few weeks off and wrote a funny little book, called the "Praise of Folly," in which he attacked the monks and their credulous followers with that most dangerous of all weapons, humor. The booklet was the best seller of the sixteenth century. It was translated into almost every language and it made people pay attention to those other books of Erasmus in which he advocated reform of the many abuses of the church and appealed to his fellow humanists to help him in his task of bringing about a great rebirth of the Christian faith. But nothing came of these excellent plans. Erasmus was too reasonable and too tolerant to please most of the enemies of the church. They were waiting for a leader of a more robust nature. He came, and his name was Martin Luther. Luther was a North-German peasant with a first-class brain and possessed of great personal courage. He was a university man, a master of arts of the University of Erfurt; afterwards he joined a Dominican monastery. Then he became a college professor at the theological school of Wittenberg and began to explain the scriptures to the indifferent ploughboys of his Saxon home. He had a lot of spare time and this he used to study the original texts of the Old and New Testaments. Soon he began to see the great difference which existed between the words of Christ and those that were preached by the Popes and the Bishops. In the year 1511, he visited Rome on official business. Alexander VI, of the family of Borgia, who had enriched himself for the benefit of his son and daughter, was dead. But his successor, Julius II, a man of irreproachable personal character, was spending most of his time fighting and building and did not impress this serious minded German theologian with his piety. Luther returned to Wittenberg a much disappointed man. But worse was to follow. The gigantic church of St. Peter which Pope Julius had wished upon his innocent successors, although only half begun, was already in need of repair. Alexander VI had spent every penny of the Papal treasury. Leo X, who succeeded Julius in the year 1513, was on the verge of bankruptcy. He reverted to an old method of raising ready cash. He began to sell "indulgences." An indulgence was a piece of parchment which in return for a certain sum of money, promised a sinner a decrease of the time which he would have to spend in purgatory. It was a perfectly correct thing according to the creed of the late Middle Ages. Since the church had the power to forgive the sins of those who truly repented before they died, the church also had the right to shorten, through its intercession with the Saints, the time during which the soul must be purified in the shadowy realms of Purgatory. It was unfortunate that these Indulgences must be sold for money. But they offered an easy form of revenue and besides, those who were too poor to pay, received theirs for nothing. Now it happened in the year 1517 that the exclusive territory for the sale of indulgences in Saxony was given to a Dominican monk by the name of Johan Tetzel. Brother Johan was a hustling salesman. To tell the truth he was a little too eager. His business methods outraged the pious people of the little duchy. And Luther, who was an honest fellow, got so angry that he did a rash thing. On the 31st of October of the year 1517, he went to the court church and upon the doors thereof he posted a sheet of paper with ninety-five statements (or theses), attacking the sale of indulgences. These statements had been written in Latin. Luther had no intention of starting a riot. He was not a revolutionist. He objected to the institution of the Indulgences and he wanted his fellow professors to know what he thought about them. But this was still a private affair of the clerical and professorial world and there was no appeal to the prejudices of the community of laymen. Unfortunately, at that moment when the whole world had begun to take an interest in the religious affairs of the day it was utterly impossible to discuss anything, without at once creating a serious mental disturbance. In less than two months, all Europe was discussing the ninety-five theses of the Saxon monk. Every one must take sides. Every obscure little theologian must print his own opinion. The papal authorities began to be alarmed. They ordered the Wittenberg professor to proceed to Rome and give an account of his action. Luther wisely remembered what had happened to Huss. He stayed in Germany and he was punished with excommunication. Luther burned the papal bull in the presence of an admiring multitude and from that moment, peace between himself and the Pope was no longer possible. Without any desire on his part, Luther had become the leader of a vast army of discontented Christians. German patriots like Ulrich von Hutten, rushed to his defence. The students of Wittenberg and Erfurt and Leipzig offered to defend him should the authorities try to imprison him. The Elector of Saxony reassured the eager young men. No harm would befall Luther as long as he stayed on Saxon ground. All this happened in the year 1520. Charles V was twenty years old and as the ruler of half the world, was forced to remain on pleasant terms with the Pope. He sent out calls for a Diet or general assembly in the good city of Worms on the Rhine and commanded Luther to be present and give an account of his extraordinary behaviour. Luther, who now was the national hero of the Germans, went. He refused to take back a single word of what he had ever written or said. His conscience was controlled only by the word of God. He would live and die for his conscience The Diet of Worms, after due deliberation, declared Luther an outlaw before God and man, and forbade all Germans to give him shelter or food or drink, or to read a single word of the books which the dastardly heretic had written. But the great reformer was in no danger. By the majority of the Germans of the north the edict was denounced as a most unjust and outrageous document. For greater safety, Luther was hidden in the Wartburg, a castle belonging to the Elector of Saxony, and there he defied all papal authority by translating the entire Bible into the German language, that all the people might read and know the word of God for themselves. By this time, the Reformation was no longer a spiritual and religious affair. Those who hated the beauty of the modern church building used this period of unrest to attack and destroy what they did not like because they did not understand it. Impoverished knights tried to make up for past losses by grabbing the territory which belonged to the monasteries. Discontented princes made use of the absence of the Emperor to increase their own power. The starving peasants, following the leadership of half-crazy agitators, made the best of the opportunity and attacked the castles of their masters and plundered and murdered and burned with the zeal of the old Crusaders. A veritable reign of disorder broke loose throughout the Empire. Some princes became Protestants (as the "protesting" adherents of Luther were called) and persecuted their Catholic subjects. Others remained Catholic and hanged their Protestant subjects. The Diet of Speyer of the year 1526 tried to settle this difficult question of allegiance by ordering that "the subjects should all be of the same religious denomination as their princes." This turned Germany into a checkerboard of a thousand hostile little duchies and principalities and created a situation which prevented the normal political growth for hundreds of years. In February of the year 1546 Luther died and was put to rest in the same church where twenty-nine years before he had proclaimed his famous objections to the sale of Indulgences. In less than thirty years, the indifferent, joking and laughing world of the Renaissance had been transformed into the arguing, quarrelling, back-biting, debating-society of the Reformation. The universal spiritual empire of the Popes came to a sudden end and the whole Western Europe was turned into a battle-field, where Protestants and Catholics killed each other for the greater glory of certain theological doctrines which are as incomprehensible to the present generation as the mysterious inscriptions of the ancient Etruscans. RELIGIOUS WARFARE THE AGE OF THE GREAT RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSIES THE sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the age of religious controversy. If you will notice you will find that almost everybody around you is forever "talking economics" and discussing wages and hours of labor and strikes in their relation to the life of the community, for that is the main topic of interest of our own time. The poor little children of the year 1600 or 1650 fared worse. They never heard anything but "religion." Their heads were filled with "predestination," "transubstantition," "free will," and a hundred other queer words, expressing obscure points of "the true faith," whether Catholic or Protestant. According to the desire of their parents they were baptised Catholics or Lutherans or Calvinists or Zwinglians or Anabaptists. They learned their theology from the Augsburg catechism, composed by Luther, or from the "institutes of Christianity," written by Calvin, or they mumbled the Thirty-Nine Articles of Faith which were printed in the English Book of Common Prayer, and they were told that these alone represented the "True Faith." They heard of the wholesale theft of church property perpetrated by King Henry VIII, the much-married monarch of England, who made himself the supreme head of the English church, and assumed the old papal rights of appointing bishops and priests. They had a nightmare whenever some one mentioned the Holy Inquisition, with its dungeons and its many torture chambers, and they were treated to equally horrible stories of how a mob of outraged Dutch Protestants had got hold of a dozen defenceless old priests and hanged them for the sheer pleasure of killing those who professed a different faith. It was unfortunate that the two contending parties were so equally matched. Otherwise the struggle would have come to a quick solution. Now it dragged on for eight generations, and it grew so complicated that I can only tell you the most important details, and must ask you to get the rest from one of the many histories of the Reformation. The great reform movement of the Protestants had been followed by a thoroughgoing reform within the bosom of the Church. Those popes who had been merely amateur humanists and dealers in Roman and Greek antiquities, disappeared from the scene and their place was taken by serious men who spent twenty hours a day administering those holy duties which had been placed in their hands. The long and rather disgraceful happiness of the monasteries came to an end. Monks and nuns were forced to be up at sunrise, to study the Church Fathers, to tend the sick and console the dying. The Holy Inquisition watched day and night that no dangerous doctrines should be spread by way of the printing press. Here it is customary to mention poor Galileo, who was locked up because he had been a little too indiscreet in explaining the heavens with his funny little telescope and had muttered certain opinions about the behaviour of the planets which were entirely opposed to the official views of the church. But in all fairness to the Pope, the clergy and the Inquisition, it ought to be stated that the Protestants were quite as much the enemies of science and medicine as the Catholics and with equal manifestations of ignorance and intolerance regarded the men who investigated things for themselves as the most dangerous enemies of mankind. And Calvin, the great French reformer and the tyrant (both political and spiritual) of Geneva, not only assisted the French authorities when they tried to hang Michael Servetus (the Spanish theologian and physician who had become famous as the assistant of Vesalius, the first great anatomist), but when Servetus had managed to escape from his French jail and had fled to Geneva, Calvin threw this brilliant man into prison and after a prolonged trial, allowed him to be burned at the stake on account of his heresies, totally indifferent to his fame as a scientist. And so it went. We have few reliable statistics upon the subject, but on the whole, the Protestants tired of this game long before the Catholics, and the greater part of honest men and women who were burned and hanged and decapitated on account of their religious beliefs fell as victims of the very energetic but also very drastic church of Rome. For tolerance (and please remember this when you grow older), is of very recent origin and even the people of our own so-called "modern world" are apt to be tolerant only upon such matters as do not interest them very much. They are tolerant towards a native of Africa, and do not care whether he becomes a Buddhist or a Mohammedan, because neither Buddhism nor Mohammedanism means anything to them. But when they hear that their neighbour who was a Republican and believed in a high protective tariff, has joined the Socialist party and now wants to repeal all tariff laws, their tolerance ceases and they use almost the same words as those employed by a kindly Catholic (or Protestant) of the seventeenth century, who was informed that his best friend whom he had always respected and loved had fallen a victim to the terrible heresies of the Protestant (or Catholic) church. "Heresy" until a very short time ago was regarded as a disease. Nowadays when we see a man neglecting the personal cleanliness of his body and his home and exposing himself and his children to the dangers of typhoid fever or another preventable disease, we send for the board-of-health and the health officer calls upon the police to aid him in removing this person who is a danger to the safety of the entire community. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a heretic, a man or a woman who openly doubted the fundamental principles upon which his Protestant or Catholic religion had been founded, was considered a more terrible menace than a typhoid carrier. Typhoid fever might (very likely would) destroy the body. But heresy, according to them, would positively destroy the immortal soul. It was therefore the duty of all good and logical citizens to warn the police against the enemies of the established order of things and those who failed to do so were as culpable as a modern man who does not telephone to the nearest doctor when he discovers that his fellow-tenants are suffering from cholera or small-pox. In the years to come you will hear a great deal about preventive medicine. Preventive medicine simply means that our doctors do not wait until their patients are sick, then step forward and cure them. On the contrary, they study the patient and the conditions under which he lives when he (the patient) is perfectly well and they remove every possible cause of illness by cleaning up rubbish, by teaching him what to eat and what to avoid, and by giving him a few simple ideas of personal hygiene. They go even further than that, and these good doctors enter the schools and teach the children how to use tooth-brushes and how to avoid catching colds. The sixteenth century which regarded (as I have tried to show you) bodily illness as much less important than sickness which threatened the soul, organised a system of spiritual preventive medicine. As soon as a child was old enough to spell his first words, he was educated in the true (and the "only true") principles of the Faith. Indirectly this proved to be a good thing for the general progress of the people of Europe. The Protestant lands were soon dotted with schools. They used a great deal of very valuable time to explain the Catechism, but they gave instruction in other things besides theology. They encouraged reading and they were responsible for the great prosperity of the printing trade. But the Catholics did not lag behind. They too devoted much time and thought to education. The Church, in this matter, found an invaluable friend and ally in the newly-founded order of the Society of Jesus. The founder of this remarkable organisation was a Spanish soldier who after a life of unholy adventures had been converted and thereupon felt himself bound to serve the church just as many former sinners, who have been shown the errors of their way by the Salvation Army, devote the remaining years of their lives to the task of aiding and consoling those who are less fortunate. The name of this Spaniard was Ignatius de Loyola. He was born in the year before the discovery of America. He had been wounded and lamed for life and while he was in the hospital he had seen a vision of the Holy Virgin and her Son, who bade him give up the wickedness of his former life. He decided to go to the Holy Land and finish the task of the Crusades. But a visit to Jerusalem had shown him the impossibility of the task and he returned west to help in the warfare upon the heresies of the Lutherans. In the year 1534 he was studying in Paris at the Sorbonne. Together with seven other students he founded a fraternity. The eight men promised each other that they would lead holy lives, that they would not strive after riches but after righteousness, and would devote themselves, body and soul, to the service of the Church. A few years later this small fraternity had grown into a regular organisation and was recognised by Pope Paul III as the Society of Jesus. Loyola had been a military man. He believed in discipline, and absolute obedience to the orders of the superior dignitaries became one of the main causes for the enormous success of the Jesuits. They specialised in education. They gave their teachers a most thorough-going education before they allowed them to talk to a single pupil. They lived with their students and they entered into their games. They watched them with tender care. And as a result they raised a new generation of faithful Catholics who took their religious duties as seriously as the people of the early Middle Ages. The shrewd Jesuits, however, did not waste all their efforts upon the education of the poor. They entered the palaces of the mighty and became the private tutors of future emperors and kings. And what this meant you will see for yourself when I tell you about the Thirty Years War. But before this terrible and final outbreak of religious fanaticism, a great many other things had happened. Charles V was dead. Germany and Austria had been left to his brother Ferdinand. All his other possessions, Spain and the Netherlands and the Indies and America had gone to his son Philip. Philip was the son of Charles and a Portuguese princess who had been first cousin to her own husband. The children that are born of such a union are apt to be rather queer. The son of Philip, the unfortunate Don Carlos, (murdered afterwards with his own father's consent,) was crazy. Philip was not quite crazy, but his zeal for the Church bordered closely upon religious insanity. He believed that Heaven had appointed him as one of the saviours of mankind. Therefore, whosoever was obstinate and refused to share his Majesty's views, proclaimed himself an enemy of the human race and must be exterminated lest his example corrupt the souls of his pious neighbours. Spain, of course, was a very rich country. All the gold and silver of the new world flowed into the Castilian and Aragonian treasuries. But Spain suffered from a curious economic disease. Her peasants were hard working men and even harder working women. But the better classes maintained a supreme contempt for any form of labour, outside of employment in the army or navy or the civil service. As for the Moors, who had been very industrious artisans, they had been driven out of the country long before. As a result, Spain, the treasure chest of the world, remained a poor country because all her money had to be sent abroad in exchange for the wheat and the other necessities of life which the Spaniards neglected to raise for themselves. Philip, ruler of the most powerful nation of the sixteenth century, depended for his revenue upon the taxes which were gathered in the busy commercial bee-hive of the Netherlands. But these Flemings and Dutchmen were devoted followers of the doctrines of Luther and Calvin and they had cleansed their churches of all images and holy paintings and they had informed the Pope that they no longer regarded him as their shepherd but intended to follow the dictates of their consciences and the commands of their newly translated Bible. This placed the king in a very difficult position. He could not possibly tolerate the heresies of his Dutch subjects, but he needed their money. If he allowed them to be Protestants and took no measures to save their souls he was deficient in his duty toward God. If he sent the Inquisition to the Netherlands and burned his subjects at the stake, he would lose the greater part of his income. Being a man of uncertain will-power he hesitated a long time. He tried kindness and sternness and promises and threats. The Hollanders remained obstinate, and continued to sing psalms and listen to the sermons of their Lutheran and Calvinist preachers. Philip in his despair sent his "man of iron," the Duke of Alba, to bring these hardened sinners to terms. Alba began by decapitating those leaders who had not wisely left the country before his arrival. In the year 1572 (the same year that the French Protestant leaders were all killed during the terrible night of Saint Bartholomew), he attacked a number of Dutch cities and massacred the inhabitants as an example for the others. The next year he laid siege to the town of Leyden, the manufacturing center of Holland. Meanwhile, the seven small provinces of the northern Netherlands had formed a defensive union, the so-called union of Utrecht, and had recognised William of Orange, a German prince who had been the private secretary of the Emperor Charles V, as the leader of their army and as commander of their freebooting sailors, who were known as the Beggars of the Sea. William, to save Leyden, cut the dykes, created a shallow inland sea, and delivered the town with the help of a strangely equipped navy consisting of scows and flat-bottomed barges which were rowed and pushed and pulled through the mud until they reached the city walls. It was the first time that an army of the invincible Spanish king had suffered such a humiliating defeat. It surprised the world just as the Japanese victory of Mukden, in the Russian-Japanese war, surprised our own generation. The Protestant powers took fresh courage and Philip devised new means for the purpose of conquering his rebellious subjects. He hired a poor half-witted fanatic to go and murder William of Orange. But the sight of their dead leader did not bring the Seven Provinces to their knees. On the contrary it made them furiously angry. In the year 1581, the Estates General (the meeting of the representatives of the Seven Provinces) came together at the Hague and most solemnly abjured their "wicked king Philip" and themselves assumed the burden of sovereignty which thus far had been invested in their "King by the Grace of God." This is a very important event in the history of the great struggle for political liberty. It was a step which reached much further than the uprising of the nobles which ended with the signing of the Magna Carta. These good burghers said "Between a king and his subjects there is a silent understanding that both sides shall perform certain services and shall recognise certain definite duties. If either party fails to live up to this contract, the other has the right to consider it terminated." The American subjects of King George III in the year 1776 came to a similar conclusion. But they had three thousand miles of ocean between themselves and their ruler and the Estates General took their decision (which meant a slow death in case of defeat) within hearing of the Spanish guns and although in constant fear of an avenging Spanish fleet. The stories about a mysterious Spanish fleet that was to conquer both Holland and England, when Protestant Queen Elizabeth had succeeded Catholic "Bloody Mary" was an old one. For years the sailors of the waterfront had talked about it. In the eighties of the sixteenth century, the rumour took a definite shape. According to pilots who had been in Lisbon, all the Spanish and Portuguese wharves were building ships. And in the southern Netherlands (in Belgium) the Duke of Parma was collecting a large expeditionary force to be carried from Ostend to London and Amsterdam as soon as the fleet should arrive. In the year 1586 the Great Armada set sail for the north. But the harbours of the Flemish coast were blockaded by a Dutch fleet and the Channel was guarded by the English, and the Spaniards, accustomed to the quieter seas of the south, did not know how to navigate in this squally and bleak northern climate. What happened to the Armada once it was attacked by ships and by storms I need not tell you. A few ships, by sailing around Ireland, escaped to tell the terrible story of defeat. The others perished and lie at the bottom of the North Sea. Turn about is fair play. The British nod the Dutch Protestants now carried the war into the territory of the enemy. Before the end of the century, Houtman, with the help of a booklet written by Linschoten (a Hollander who had been in the Portuguese service), had at last discovered the route to the Indies. As a result the great Dutch East India Company was founded and a systematic war upon the Portuguese and Spanish colonies in Asia and Africa was begun in all seriousness. It was during this early era of colonial conquest that a curious lawsuit was fought out in the Dutch courts. Early in the seventeenth century a Dutch Captain by the name of van Heemskerk, a man who had made himself famous as the head of an expedition which had tried to discover the North Eastern Passage to the Indies and who had spent a winter on the frozen shores of the island of Nova Zembla, had captured a Portuguese ship in the straits of Malacca. You will remember that the Pope had divided the world into two equal shares, one of which had been given to the Spaniards and the other to the Portuguese. The Portuguese quite naturally regarded the water which surrounded their Indian islands as part of their own property and since, for the moment, they were not at war with the United Seven Netherlands, they claimed that the captain of a private Dutch trading company had no right to enter their private domain and steal their ships. And they brought suit. The directors of the Dutch East India Company hired a bright young lawyer, by the name of De Groot or Grotius, to defend their case. He made the astonishing plea that the ocean is free to all comers. Once outside the distance which a cannon ball fired from the land can reach, the sea is or (according to Grotius) ought to be, a free and open highway to all the ships of all nations. It was the first time that this startling doctrine had been publicly pronounced in a court of law. It was opposed by all the other seafaring people. To counteract the effect of Grotius' famous plea for the "Mare Liberum," or "Open Sea," John Selden, the Englishman, wrote his famous treatise upon the "Mare Clausum" or "Closed Sea" which treated of the natural right of a sovereign to regard the seas which surrounded his country as belonging to his territory. I mention this here because the question had not yet been decided and during the last war caused all sorts of difficulties and complications. To return to the warfare between Spaniard and Hollander and Englishman, before twenty years were over the most valuable colonies of the Indies and the Cape of Good Hope and Ceylon and those along the coast of China and even Japan were in Protestant hands. In 1621 a West Indian Company was founded which conquered Brazil and in North America built a fortress called Nieuw Amsterdam at the mouth of the river which Henry Hudson had discovered in the year 1609 These new colonies enriched both England and the Dutch Republic to such an extent that they could hire foreign soldiers to do their fighting on land while they devoted themselves to commerce and trade. To them the Protestant revolt meant independence and prosperity. But in many other parts of Europe it meant a succession of horrors compared to which the last war was a mild excursion of kindly Sunday-school boys. The Thirty Years War which broke out in the year 1618 and which ended with the famous treaty of Westphalia in 1648 was the perfectly natural result of a century of ever increasing religious hatred. It was, as I have said, a terrible war. Everybody fought everybody else and the struggle ended only when all parties had been thoroughly exhausted and could fight no longer. In less than a generation it turned many parts of central Europe into a wilderness, where the hungry peasants fought for the carcass of a dead horse with the even hungrier wolf. Five-sixths of all the German towns and villages were destroyed. The Palatinate, in western Germany, was plundered twenty-eight times. And a population of eighteen million people was reduced to four million. The hostilities began almost as soon as Ferdinand II of the House of Habsburg had been elected Emperor. He was the product of a most careful Jesuit training and was a most obedient and devout son of the Church. The vow which he had made as a young man, that he would eradicate all sects and all heresies from his domains, Ferdinand kept to the best of his ability. Two days before his election, his chief opponent, Frederick, the Protestant Elector of the Palatinate and a son-in-law of James I of England, had been made King of Bohemia, in direct violation of Ferdinand's wishes. At once the Habsburg armies marched into Bohemia. The young king looked in vain for assistance against this formidable enemy. The Dutch Republic was willing to help, but, engaged in a desperate war of its own with the Spanish branch of the Habsburgs, it could do little. The Stuarts in England were more interested in strengthening their own absolute power at home than spending money and men upon a forlorn adventure in far away Bohemia. After a struggle of a few months, the Elector of the Palatinate was driven away and his domains were given to the Catholic house of Bavaria. This was the beginning of the great war. Then the Habsburg armies, under Tilly and Wallenstein, fought their way through the Protestant part of Germany until they had reached the shores of the Baltic. A Catholic neighbour meant serious danger to the Protestant king of Denmark. Christian IV tried to defend himself by attacking his enemies before they had become too strong for him. The Danish armies marched into Germany but were defeated. Wallenstein followed up his victory with such energy and violence that Denmark was forced to sue for peace. Only one town of the Baltic then remained in the hands of the Protestants. That was Stralsund. There, in the early summer of the year 1630, landed King Gustavus Adolphus of the house of Vasa, king of Sweden, and famous as the man who had defended his country against the Russians. A Protestant prince of unlimited ambition, desirous of making Sweden the centre of a great Northern Empire, Gustavus Adolphus was welcomed by the Protestant princes of Europe as the saviour of the Lutheran cause. He defeated Tilly, who had just successfully butchered the Protestant inhabitants of Magdeburg. Then his troops began their great march through the heart of Germany in an attempt to reach the Habsburg possessions in Italy. Threatened in the rear by the Catholics, Gustavus suddenly veered around and defeated the main Habsburg army in the battle of Lutzen. Unfortunately the Swedish king was killed when he strayed away from his troops. But the Habsburg power had been broken. Ferdinand, who was a suspicious sort of person, at once began to distrust his own servants. Wallenstein, his commander-in-chief, was murdered at his instigation. When the Catholic Bourbons, who ruled France and hated their Habsburg rivals, heard of this, they joined the Protestant Swedes. The armies of Louis XIII invaded the eastern part of Germany, and Turenne and Conde added their fame to that of Baner and Weimar, the Swedish generals, by murdering, pillaging and burning Habsburg property. This brought great fame and riches to the Swedes and caused the Danes to become envious. The Protestant Danes thereupon declared war upon the Protestant Swedes who were the allies of the Catholic French, whose political leader, the Cardinal de Richelieu, had just deprived the Huguenots (or French Protestants) of those rights of public worship which the Edict of Nantes of the year 1598 had guaranteed them. The war, after the habit of such encounters, did not decide anything, when it came to an end with the treaty of Westphalia in 1648. The Catholic powers remained Catholic and the Protestant powers stayed faithful to the doctrines of Luther and Calvin and Zwingli. The Swiss and Dutch Protestants were recognised as independent republics. France kept the cities of Metz and Toul and Verdun and a part of the Alsace. The Holy Roman Empire continued to exist as a sort of scare-crow state, without men, without money, without hope and without courage. The only good the Thirty Years War accomplished was a negative one. It discouraged both Catholics and Protestants from ever trying it again. Henceforth they left each other in peace. This however did not mean that religious feeling and theological hatred had been removed from this earth. On the contrary. The quarrels between Catholic and Protestant came to an end, but the disputes between the different Protestant sects continued as bitterly as ever before. In Holland a difference of opinion as to the true nature of predestination (a very obscure point of theology, but exceedingly important the eyes of your great-grandfather) caused a quarrel which ended with the decapitation of John of Oldenbarneveldt, the Dutch statesman, who had been responsible for the success of the Republic during the first twenty years of its independence, and who was the great organising genius of her Indian trading company. In England, the feud led to civil war. But before I tell you of this outbreak which led to the first execution by process-of-law of a European king, I ought to say something about the previous history of England. In this book I am trying to give you only those events of the past which can throw a light upon the conditions of the present world. If I do not mention certain countries, the cause is not to be found in any secret dislike on my part. I wish that I could tell you what happened to Norway and Switzerland and Serbia and China. But these lands exercised no great influence upon the development of Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I therefore pass them by with a polite and very respectful bow. England however is in a different position. What the people of that small island have done during the last five hundred years has shaped the course of history in every corner of the world. Without a proper knowledge of the background of English history, you cannot understand what you read in the newspapers. And it is therefore necessary that you know how England happened to develop a parliamentary form of government while the rest of the European continent was still ruled by absolute monarchs. THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION HOW THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE "DIVINE RIGHT" OF KINGS AND THE LESS DIVINE BUT MORE REASONABLE "RIGHT OF PARLIAMENT" ENDED DISASTROUSLY FOR KING CHARLES II CAESAR, the earliest explorer of north-western Europe, had crossed the Channel in the year 55 B.C. and had conquered England. During four centuries the country then remained a Roman province. But when the Barbarians began to threaten Rome, the garrisons were called back from the frontier that they might defend the home country and Britannia was left without a government and without protection. As soon as this became known among the hungry Saxon tribes of northern Germany, they sailed across the North Sea and made themselves at home in the prosperous island. They founded a number of independent Anglo-Saxon kingdoms (so called after the original Angles or English and the Saxon invaders) but these small states were for ever quarrelling with each other and no King was strong enough to establish himself as the head of a united country. For more than five hundred years, Mercia and Northumbria and Wessex and Sussex and Kent and East Anglia, or whatever their names, were exposed to attacks from various Scandinavian pirates. Finally in the eleventh century, England, together with Norway and northern Germany became part of the large Danish Empire of Canute the Great and the last vestiges of independence disappeared. The Danes, in the course of time, were driven away but no sooner was England free, than it was conquered for the fourth time. The new enemies were the descendants of another tribe of Norsemen who early in the tenth century had invaded France and had founded the Duchy of Normandy. William, Duke of Normandy, who for a long time had looked across the water with an envious eye, crossed the Channel in October of the year 1066. At the battle of Hastings, on October the fourteenth of that year, he destroyed the weak forces of Harold of Wessex, the last of the Anglo-Saxon Kings and established himself as King of England. But neither William nor his successors of the House of Anjou and Plantagenet regarded England as their true home. To them the island was merely a part of their great inheritance on the continent--a sort of colony inhabited by rather backward people upon whom they forced their own language and civilisation. Gradually however the "colony" of England gained upon the "Mother country" of Normandy. At the same time the Kings of France were trying desperately to get rid of the powerful Norman-English neighbours who were in truth no more than disobedient servants of the French crown. After a century of war fare the French people, under the leadership of a young girl by the name of Joan of Arc, drove the "foreigners" from their soil. Joan herself, taken a prisoner at the battle of Compiegne in the year 1430 and sold by her Burgundian captors to the English soldiers, was burned as a witch. But the English never gained foothold upon the continent and their Kings were at last able to devote all their time to their British possessions. As the feudal nobility of the island had been engaged in one of those strange feuds which were as common in the middle ages as measles and small-pox, and as the greater part of the old landed proprietors had been killed during these so-called Wars of the Roses, it was quite easy for the Kings to increase their royal power. And by the end of the fifteenth century, England was a strongly centralised country, ruled by Henry VII of the House of Tudor, whose famous Court of Justice, the "Star Chamber" of terrible memory, suppressed all attempts on the part of the surviving nobles to regain their old influence upon the government of the country with the utmost severity. In the year 1509 Henry VII was succeeded by his son Henry VIII, and from that moment on the history of England gained a new importance for the country ceased to be a mediaeval island and became a modern state. Henry had no deep interest in religion. He gladly used a private disagreement with the Pope about one of his many divorces to declare himself independent of Rome and make the church of England the first of those "nationalistic churches" in which the worldly ruler also acts as the spiritual head of his subjects. This peaceful reformation of 1034 not only gave the house of Tudor the support of the English clergy, who for a long time had been exposed to the violent attacks of many Lutheran propagandists, but it also increased the Royal power through the confiscation of the former possessions of the monasteries. At the same time it made Henry popular with the merchants and tradespeople, who as the proud and prosperous inhabitants of an island which was separated from the rest of Europe by a wide and deep channel, had a great dislike for everything "foreign" and did not want an Italian bishop to rule their honest British souls. In 1517 Henry died. He left the throne to his small son, aged ten. The guardians of the child, favoring the modern Lutheran doctrines, did their best to help the cause of Protestantism. But the boy died before he was sixteen, and was succeeded by his sister Mary, the wife of Philip II of Spain, who burned the bishops of the new "national church" and in other ways followed the example of her royal Spanish husband Fortunately she died, in the year 1558, and was succeeded by Elizabeth, the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, the second of his six wives, whom he had decapitated when she no longer pleased him. Elizabeth, who had spent some time in prison, and who had been released only at the request of the Holy Roman Emperor, was a most cordial enemy of everything Catholic and Spanish. She shared her father's indifference in the matter of religion but she inherited his ability as a very shrewd judge of character, and spent the forty-five years of her reign in strengthening the power of the dynasty and in increasing the revenue and possessions of her merry islands. In this she was most ably assisted by a number of men who gathered around her throne and made the Elizabethan age a period of such importance that you ought to study it in detail in one of the special books of which I shall tell you in the bibliography at the end of this volume. Elizabeth, however, did not feel entirely safe upon her throne. She had a rival and a very dangerous one. Mary, of the house of Stuart, daughter of a French duchess and a Scottish father, widow of king Francis II of France and daughter-in-law of Catherine of Medici (who had organised the murders of Saint Bartholomew's night), was the mother of a little boy who was afterwards to become the first Stuart king of England. She was an ardent Catholic and a willing friend to those who were the enemies of Elizabeth. Her own lack of political ability and the violent methods which she employed to punish her Calvinistic subjects, caused a revolution in Scotland and forced Mary to take refuge on English territory. For eighteen years she remained in England, plotting forever and a day against the woman who had given her shelter and who was at last obliged to follow the advice of her trusted councilors "to cutte off the Scottish Queen's heade." The head was duly "cutte off" in the year 1587 and caused a war with Spain. But the combined navies of England and Holland defeated Philip's Invincible Armada, as we have already seen, and the blow which had been meant to destroy the power of the two great anti-Catholic leaders was turned into a profitable business adventure. For now at last, after many years of hesitation, the English as well as the Dutch thought it their good right to invade the Indies and America and avenge the ills which their Protestant brethren had suffered at the hands of the Spaniards. The English had been among the earliest successors of Columbus. British ships, commanded by the Venetian pilot Giovanni Caboto (or Cabot), had been the first to discover and explore the northern American continent in 1496. Labrador and Newfoundland were of little importance as a possible colony. But the banks of Newfoundland offered a rich reward to the English fishing fleet. A year later, in 1497, the same Cabot had explored the coast of Florida. Then had come the busy years of Henry VII and Henry VIII when there had been no money for foreign explorations. But under Elizabeth, with the country at peace and Mary Stuart in prison, the sailors could leave their harbour without fear for the fate of those whom they left behind. While Elizabeth was still a child, Willoughby had ventured to sail past the North Cape and one of his captains, Richard Chancellor, pushing further eastward in his quest of a possible road to the Indies, had reached Archangel, Russia, where he had established diplomatic and commercial relations with the mysterious rulers of this distant Muscovite Empire. During the first years of Elizabeth's rule this voyage had been followed up by many others. Merchant adventurers, working for the benefit of a "joint stock Company" had laid the foundations of trading companies which in later centuries were to become colonies. Half pirate, half diplomat, willing to stake everything on a single lucky voyage, smugglers of everything that could be loaded into the hold of a vessel, dealers in men and merchandise with equal indifference to everything except their profit, the sailors of Elizabeth had carried the English flag and the fame of their Virgin Queen to the four corners of the Seven Seas. Meanwhile William Shakespeare kept her Majesty amused at home, and the best brains and the best wit of England co-operated with the queen in her attempt to change the feudal inheritance of Henry VIII into a modern national state. In the year 1603 the old lady died at the age of seventy. Her cousin, the great-grandson of her own grandfather Henry VII and son of Mary Stuart, her rival and enemy, succeeded her as James I. By the Grace of God, he found himself the ruler of a country which had escaped the fate of its continental rivals. While the European Protestants and Catholics were killing each other in a hopeless attempt to break the power of their adversaries and establish the exclusive rule of their own particular creed, England was at peace and "reformed" at leisure without going to the extremes of either Luther or Loyola. It gave the island kingdom an enormous advantage in the coming struggle for colonial possessions. It assured England a leadership in international affairs which that country has maintained until the present day. Not even the disastrous adventure with the Stuarts was able to stop this normal development. The Stuarts, who succeeded the Tudors, were "foreigners" in England. They do not seem to have appreciated or understood this fact. The native house of Tudor could steal a horse, but the "foreign" Stuarts were not allowed to look at the bridle without causing great popular disapproval. Old Queen Bess had ruled her domains very much as she pleased. In general however, she had always followed a policy which meant money in the pocket of the honest (and otherwise) British merchants. Hence the Queen had been always assured of the wholehearted support of her grateful people. And small liberties taken with some of the rights and prerogatives of Parliament were gladly overlooked for the ulterior benefits which were derived from her Majesty's strong and successful foreign policies. Outwardly King James continued the same policy. But he lacked that personal enthusiasm which had been so very typical of his great predecessor. Foreign commerce continued to be encouraged. The Catholics were not granted any liberties. But when Spain smiled pleasantly upon England in an effort to establish peaceful relations, James was seen to smile back. The majority of the English people did not like this, but James was their King and they kept quiet. Soon there were other causes of friction. King James and his son, Charles I, who succeeded him in the year 1625 both firmly believed in the principle of their "divine right" to administer their realm as they thought fit without consulting the wishes of their subjects. The idea was not new. The Popes, who in more than one way had been the successors of the Roman Emperors (or rather of the Roman Imperial ideal of a single and undivided state covering the entire known world), had always regarded themselves and had been publicly recognised as the "Vice-Regents of Christ upon Earth." No one questioned the right of God to rule the world as He saw fit. As a natural result, few ventured to doubt the right of the divine "Vice-Regent" to do the same thing and to demand the obedience of the masses because he was the direct representative of the Absolute Ruler of the Universe and responsible only to Almighty God. When the Lutheran Reformation proved successful, those rights which formerly had been invested in the Papacy were taken over by the many European sovereigns who became Protestants. As head of their own national or dynastic churches they insisted upon being "Christ's Vice-Regents" within the limit of their own territory. The people did not question the right of their rulers to take such a step. They accepted it, just as we in our own day accept the idea of a representative system which to us seems the only reasonable and just form of government. It is unfair therefore to state that either Lutheranism or Calvinism caused the particular feeling of irritation which greeted King-James's oft and loudly repeated assertion of his "Divine Right." There must have been other grounds for the genuine English disbelief in the Divine Right of Kings. The first positive denial of the "Divine Right" of sovereigns had been heard in the Netherlands when the Estates General abjured their lawful sovereign King Philip II of Spain, in the year 1581. "The King," so they said, "has broken his contract and the King therefore is dismissed like any other unfaithful servant." Since then, this particular idea of a king's responsibilities towards his subjects had spread among many of the nations who inhabited the shores of the North Sea. They were in a very favourable position. They were rich. The poor people in the heart of central Europe, at the mercy of their Ruler's body-guard, could not afford to discuss a problem which would at once land them in the deepest dungeon of the nearest castle. But the merchants of Holland and England who possessed the capital necessary for the maintenance of great armies and navies, who knew how to handle the almighty weapon called "credit," had no such fear. They were willing to pit the "Divine Right" of their own good money against the "Divine Right" of any Habsburg or Bourbon or Stuart. They knew that their guilders and shillings could beat the clumsy feudal armies which were the only weapons of the King. They dared to act, where others were condemned to suffer in silence or run the risk of the scaffold. When the Stuarts began to annoy the people of England with their claim that they had a right to do what they pleased and never mind the responsibility, the English middle classes used the House of Commons as their first line of defence against this abuse of the Royal Power. The Crown refused to give in and the King sent Parliament about its own business. Eleven long years, Charles I ruled alone. He levied taxes which most people regarded as illegal and he managed his British kingdom as if it had been his own country estate. He had capable assistants and we must say that he had the courage of his convictions. Unfortunately, instead of assuring himself of the support of his faithful Scottish subjects, Charles became involved in a quarrel with the Scotch Presbyterians. Much against his will, but forced by his need for ready cash, Charles was at last obliged to call Parliament together once more. It met in April of 1640 and showed an ugly temper. It was dissolved a few weeks later. A new Parliament convened in November. This one was even less pliable than the first one. The members understood that the question of "Government by Divine Right" or "Government by Parliament" must be fought out for good and all. They attacked the King in his chief councillors and executed half a dozen of them. They announced that they would not allow themselves to be dissolved without their own approval. Finally on December 1, 1641, they presented to the King a "Grand Remonstrance" which gave a detailed account of the many grievances of the people against their Ruler. Charles, hoping to derive some support for his own policy in the country districts, left London in January of 1642. Each side organised an army and prepared for open warfare between the absolute power of the crown and the absolute power of Parliament. During this struggle, the most powerful religious element of England, called the Puritans, (they were Anglicans who had tried to purify their doctrines to the most absolute limits), came quickly to the front. The regiments of "Godly men," commanded by Oliver Cromwell, with their iron discipline and their profound confidence in the holiness of their aims, soon became the model for the entire army of the opposition. Twice Charles was defeated. After the battle of Naseby, in 1645, he fled to Scotland. The Scotch sold him to the English. There followed a period of intrigue and an uprising of the Scotch Presbyterians against the English Puritan. In August of the year 1648 after the three-days' battle of Preston Pans, Cromwell made an end to this second civil war, and took Edinburgh. Meanwhile his soldiers, tired of further talk and wasted hours of religious debate, had decided to act on their own initiative. They removed from Parliament all those who did not agree with their own Puritan views. Thereupon the "Rump," which was what was left of the old Parliament, accused the King of high treason. The House of Lords refused to sit as a tribunal. A special tribunal was appointed and it condemned the King to death. On the 30th of January of the year 1649, King Charles walked quietly out of a window of White Hall onto the scaffold. That day, the Sovereign People, acting through their chosen representatives, for the first time executed a ruler who had failed to understand his own position in the modern state. The period which followed the death of Charles is usually called after Oliver Cromwell. At first the unofficial Dictator of England, he was officially made Lord Protector in the year 1653. He ruled five years. He used this period to continue the policies of Elizabeth. Spain once more became the arch enemy of England and war upon the Spaniard was made a national and sacred issue. The commerce of England and the interests of the traders were placed before everything else, and the Protestant creed of the strictest nature was rigourously maintained. In maintaining England's position abroad, Cromwell was successful. As a social reformer, however, he failed very badly. The world is made up of a number of people and they rarely think alike. In the long run, this seems a very wise provision. A government of and by and for one single part of the entire community cannot possibly survive. The Puritans had been a great force for good when they tried to correct the abuse of the royal power. As the absolute Rulers of England they became intolerable. When Cromwell died in 1658, it was an easy matter for the Stuarts to return to their old kingdom. Indeed, they were welcomed as "deliverers" by the people who had found the yoke of the meek Puritans quite as hard to bear as that of autocratic King Charles. Provided the Stuarts were willing to forget about the Divine Right of their late and lamented father and were willing to recognise the superiority of Parliament, the people promised that they would be loyal and faithful subjects. Two generations tried to make a success of this new arrangement. But the Stuarts apparently had not learned their lesson and were unable to drop their bad habits. Charles II, who came back in the year 1660, was an amiable but worthless person. His indolence and his constitutional insistence upon following the easiest course, together with his conspicuous success as a liar, prevented an open outbreak between himself and his people. By the act of Uniformity in 1662 he broke the power of the Puritan clergy by banishing all dissenting clergymen from their parishes. By the so-called Conventicle Act of 1664 he tried to prevent the Dissenters from attending religious meetings by a threat of deportation to the West Indies. This looked too much like the good old days of Divine Right. People began to show the old and well-known signs of impatience, and Parliament suddenly experienced difficulty in providing the King with funds. Since he could not get money from an unwilling Parliament, Charles borrowed it secretly from his neighbour and cousin King Louis of France. He betrayed his Protestant allies in return for 200,000 pounds per year, and laughed at the poor simpletons of Parliament. Economic independence suddenly gave the King great faith in his own strength. He had spent many years of exile among his Catholic relations and he had a secret liking for their religion. Perhaps he could bring England back to Rome! He passed a Declaration of Indulgence which suspended the old laws against the Catholics and Dissenters. This happened just when Charles' younger brother James was said to have become a Catholic. All this looked suspicious to the man in the street People began to fear some terrible Popish plot. A new spirit of unrest entered the land. Most of the people wanted to prevent another outbreak of civil war. To them Royal Oppression and a Catholic King--yea, even Divine Right,--were preferable to a new struggle between members of the same race. Others however were less lenient. They were the much-feared Dissenters, who invariably had the courage of their convictions. They were led by several great noblemen who did not want to see a return of the old days of absolute royal power. For almost ten years, these two great parties, the Whigs (the middle class element, called by this derisive name be-cause in the year 1640 a lot of Scottish Whiggamores or horse-drovers headed by the Presbyterian clergy, had marched to Edinburgh to oppose the King) and the Tories (an epithet originally used against the Royalist Irish adherents but now applied to the supporters of the King) opposed each other, but neither wished to bring about a crisis. They allowed Charles to die peacefully in his bed and permitted the Catholic James II to succeed his brother in 1685. But when James, after threatening the country with the terrible foreign invention of a "standing army" (which was to be commanded by Catholic Frenchmen), issued a second Declaration of Indulgence in 1688, and ordered it to be read in all Anglican churches, he went just a trifle beyond that line of sensible demarcation which can only be transgressed by the most popular of rulers under very exceptional circumstances. Seven bishops refused to comply with the Royal Command. They were accused of "seditious libel." They were brought before a court. The jury which pronounced the verdict of "not guilty" reaped a rich harvest of popular approval. At this unfortunate moment, James (who in a second marriage had taken to wife Maria of the Catholic house of Modena-Este) became the father of a son. This meant that the throne was to go to a Catholic boy rather than to his older sisters, Mary and Anne, who were Protestants. The man in the street again grew suspicious. Maria of Modena was too old to have children! It was all part of a plot! A strange baby had been brought into the palace by some Jesuit priest that England might have a Catholic monarch. And so on. It looked as if another civil war would break out. Then seven well-known men, both Whigs and Tories, wrote a letter asking the husband of James's oldest daughter Mary, William III the Stadtholder or head of the Dutch Republic, to come to England and deliver the country from its lawful but entirely undesirable sovereign. On the fifth of November of the year 1688, William landed at Torbay. As he did not wish to make a martyr out of his father-in-law, he helped him to escape safely to France. On the 22nd of January of 1689 he summoned Parliament. On the 13th of February of the same year he and his wife Mary were proclaimed joint sovereigns of England and the country was saved for the Protestant cause. Parliament, having undertaken to be something more than a mere advisory body to the King, made the best of its opportunities. The old Petition of Rights of the year 1628 was fished out of a forgotten nook of the archives. A second and more drastic Bill of Rights demanded that the sovereign of England should belong to the Anglican church. Furthermore it stated that the king had no right to suspend the laws or permit certain privileged citizens to disobey certain laws. It stipulated that "without consent of Parliament no taxes could be levied and no army could be maintained." Thus in the year 1689 did England acquire an amount of liberty unknown in any other country of Europe. But it is not only on account of this great liberal measure that the rule of William in England is still remembered. During his lifetime, government by a "responsible" ministry first developed. No king of course can rule alone. He needs a few trusted advisors. The Tudors had their Great Council which was composed of Nobles and Clergy. This body grew too large. It was restricted to the small "Privy Council." In the course of time it became the custom of these councillors to meet the king in a cabinet in the palace. Hence they were called the "Cabinet Council." After a short while they were known as the "Cabinet." William, like most English sovereigns before him, had chosen his advisors from among all parties. But with the increased strength of Parliament, he had found it impossible to direct the politics of the country with the help of the Tories while the Whigs had a majority in the house of Commons. Therefore the Tories had been dismissed and the Cabinet Council had been composed entirely of Whigs. A few years later when the Whigs lost their power in the House of Commons, the king, for the sake of convenience, was obliged to look for his support among the leading Tories. Until his death in 1702, William was too busy fighting Louis of France to bother much about the government of England. Practically all important affairs had been left to his Cabinet Council. When William's sister-in-law, Anne, succeeded him in 1702 this condition of affairs continued. When she died in 1714 (and unfortunately not a single one of her seventeen children survived her) the throne went to George I of the House of Hanover, the son of Sophie, grand-daughter of James I. This somewhat rustic monarch, who never learned a word of English, was entirely lost in the complicated mazes of England's political arrangements. He left everything to his Cabinet Council and kept away from their meetings, which bored him as he did not understand a single sentence. In this way the Cabinet got into the habit of ruling England and Scotland (whose Parliament had been joined to that of England in 1707) without bothering the King, who was apt to spend a great deal of his time on the continent. During the reign of George I and George II, a succession of great Whigs (of whom one, Sir Robert Walpole, held office for twenty-one years) formed the Cabinet Council of the King. Their leader was finally recognised as the official leader not only of the actual Cabinet but also of the majority party in power in Parliament. The attempts of George III to take matters into his own hands and not to leave the actual business of government to his Cabinet were so disastrous that they were never repeated. And from the earliest years of the eighteenth century on, England enjoyed representative government, with a responsible ministry which conducted the affairs of the land. To be quite true, this government did not represent all classes of society. Less than one man in a dozen had the right to vote. But it was the foundation for the modern representative form of government. In a quiet and orderly fashion it took the power away from the King and placed it in the hands of an ever increasing number of popular representatives. It did not bring the millenium to England, but it saved that country from most of the revolutionary outbreaks which proved so disastrous to the European continent in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. THE BALANCE OF POWER IN FRANCE ON THE OTHER HAND THE "DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS" CONTINUED WITH GREATER POMP AND SPLENDOUR THAN EVER BEFORE AND THE AMBITION OF THE RULER WAS ONLY TEMPERED BY THE NEWLY INVENTED LAW OF THE "BALANCE OF POWER" As a contrast to the previous chapter, let me tell you what happened in France during the years when the English people were fighting for their liberty. The happy combination of the right man in the right country at the right moment is very rare in History. Louis XIV was a realisation of this ideal, as far as France was concerned, but the rest of Europe would have been happier without him. The country over which the young king was called to rule was the most populous and the most brilliant nation of that day. Louis came to the throne when Mazarin and Richelieu, the two great Cardinals, had just hammered the ancient French Kingdom into the most strongly centralised state of the seventeenth century. He was himself a man of extraordinary ability. We, the people of the twentieth century, are still surrounded by the memories of the glorious age of the Sun King. Our social life is based upon the perfection of manners and the elegance of expression attained at the court of Louis. In international and diplomatic relations, French is still the official language of diplomacy and international gatherings because two centuries ago it reached a polished elegance and a purity of expression which no other tongue had as yet been able to equal. The theatre of King Louis still teaches us lessons which we are only too slow in learning. During his reign the French Academy (an invention of Richelieu) came to occupy a position in the world of letters which other countries have flattered by their imitation. We might continue this list for many pages. It is no matter of mere chance that our modern bill-of-fare is printed in French. The very difficult art of decent cooking, one of the highest expressions of civilisation, was first practiced for the benefit of the great Monarch. The age of Louis XIV was a time of splendour and grace which can still teach us a lot. Unfortunately this brilliant picture has another side which was far less encouraging. Glory abroad too often means misery at home, and France was no exception to this rule Louis XIV succeeded his father in the year 1643. He died in the year 1715. That means that the government of France was in the hands of one single man for seventy-two years, almost two whole generations. It will be well to get a firm grasp of this idea, "one single man." Louis was the first of a long list of monarchs who in many countries established that particular form of highly efficient autocracy which we call "enlightened despotism." He did not like kings who merely played at being rulers and turned official affairs into a pleasant picnic. The Kings of that enlightened age worked harder than any of their subjects. They got up earlier and went to bed later than anybody else, and felt their "divine responsibility" quite as strongly as their "divine right" which allowed them to rule without consulting their subjects. Of course, the king could not attend to everything in person. He was obliged to surround himself with a few helpers and councillors. One or two generals, some experts upon foreign politics, a few clever financiers and economists would do for this purpose. But these dignitaries could act only through their Sovereign. They had no individual existence. To the mass of the people, the Sovereign actually represented in his own sacred person the government of their country. The glory of the common fatherland became the glory of a single dynasty. It meant the exact opposite of our own American ideal. France was ruled of and by and for the House of Bourbon. The disadvantages of such a system are clear. The King grew to be everything. Everybody else grew to be nothing at all. The old and useful nobility was gradually forced to give up its former shares in the government of the provinces. A little Royal bureaucrat, his fingers splashed with ink, sitting behind the greenish windows of a government building in faraway Paris, now performed the task which a hundred years before had been the duty of the feudal Lord. The feudal Lord, deprived of all work, moved to Paris to amuse himself as best he could at the court. Soon his estates began to suffer from that very dangerous economic sickness, known as "Absentee Landlordism." Within a single generation, the industrious and useful feudal administrators had become the well-mannered but quite useless loafers of the court of Versailles. Louis was ten years old when the peace of Westphalia was concluded and the House of Habsburg, as a result of the Thirty Years War, lost its predominant position in Europe. It was inevitable that a man with his ambition should use so favourable a moment to gain for his own dynasty the honours which had formerly been held by the Habsburgs. In the year 1660 Louis had married Maria Theresa, daughter of the King of Spain. Soon afterward, his father-in-law, Philip IV, one of the half-witted Spanish Habsburgs, died. At once Louis claimed the Spanish Netherlands (Belgium) as part of his wife's dowry. Such an acquisition would have been disastrous to the peace of Europe, and would have threatened the safety of the Protestant states. Under the leadership of Jan de Witt, Raadpensionaris or Foreign Minister of the United Seven Netherlands, the first great international alliance, the Triple Alliance of Sweden, England and Holland, of the year 1661, was concluded. It did not last long. With money and fair promises Louis bought up both King Charles and the Swedish Estates. Holland was betrayed by her allies and was left to her own fate. In the year 1672 the French invaded the low countries. They marched to the heart of the country. For a second time the dikes were opened and the Royal Sun of France set amidst the mud of the Dutch marshes. The peace of Nimwegen which was concluded in 1678 settled nothing but merely anticipated another war. A second war of aggression from 1689 to 1697, ending with the Peace of Ryswick, also failed to give Louis that position in the affairs of Europe to which he aspired. His old enemy, Jan de Witt, had been murdered by the Dutch rabble, but his successor, William III (whom you met in the last chapter), had checkmated all efforts of Louis to make France the ruler of Europe. The great war for the Spanish succession, begun in the year 1701, immediately after the death of Charles II, the last of the Spanish Habsburgs, and ended in 1713 by the Peace of Utrecht, remained equally undecided, but it had ruined the treasury of Louis. On land the French king had been victorious, but the navies of England and Holland had spoiled all hope for an ultimate French victory; besides the long struggle had given birth to a new and fundamental principle of international politics, which thereafter made it impossible for one single nation to rule the whole of Europe or the whole of the world for any length of time. That was the so-called "balance of power." It was not a written law but for three centuries it has been obeyed as closely as are the laws of nature. The people who originated the idea maintained that Europe, in its nationalistic stage of development, could only survive when there should be an absolute balance of the many conflicting interests of the entire continent. No single power or single dynasty must ever be allowed to dominate the others. During the Thirty Years War, the Habsburgs had been the victims of the application of this law. They, however, had been unconscious victims. The issues during that struggle were so clouded in a haze of religious strife that we do not get a very clear view of the main tendencies of that great conflict. But from that time on, we begin to see how cold, economic considerations and calculations prevail in all matters of international importance. We discover the development of a new type of statesman, the statesman with the personal feelings of the slide-rule and the cash-register. Jan de Witt was the first successful exponent of this new school of politics. William III was the first great pupil. And Louis XIV with all his fame and glory, was the first conscious victim. There have been many others since. THE RISE OF RUSSIA THE STORY OF THE MYSTERIOUS MOSCOVITE EMPIRE WHICH SUDDENLY BURST UPON THE GRAND POLITICAL STAGE OF EUROPE IN the year 1492, as you know, Columbus discovered America. Early in the year, a Tyrolese by the name of Schnups, travelling as the head of a scientific expedition for the Archbishop of Tyrol, and provided with the best letters of introduction and excellent credit tried to reach the mythical town of Moscow. He did not succeed. When he reached the frontiers of this vast Moscovite state which was vaguely supposed to exist in the extreme Eastern part of Europe, he was firmly turned back. No foreigners were wanted. And Schnups went to visit the heathen Turk in Constantinople, in order that he might have something to report to his clerical master when he came back from his explorations. Sixty-one years later, Richard Chancellor, trying to discover the North-eastern passage to the Indies, and blown by an ill wind into the White Sea, reached the mouth of the Dwina and found the Moscovite village of Kholmogory, a few hours from the spot where in 1584 the town of Archangel was founded. This time the foreign visitors were requested to come to Moscow and show themselves to the Grand Duke. They went and returned to England with the first commercial treaty ever concluded between Russia and the western world. Other nations soon followed and something became known of this mysterious land. Geographically, Russia is a vast plain. The Ural mountains are low and form no barrier against invaders. The rivers are broad but often shallow. It was an ideal territory for nomads. While the Roman Empire was founded, grew in power and disappeared again, Slavic tribes, who had long since left their homes in Central Asia, wandered aimlessly through the forests and plains of the region between the Dniester and Dnieper rivers. The Greeks had sometimes met these Slavs and a few travellers of the third and fourth centuries mention them. Otherwise they were as little known as were the Nevada Indians in the year 1800. Unfortunately for the peace of these primitive peoples, a very convenient trade-route ran through their country. This was the main road from northern Europe to Constantinople. It followed the coast of the Baltic until the Neva was reached. Then it crossed Lake Ladoga and went southward along the Volkhov river. Then through Lake Ilmen and up the small Lovat river. Then there was a short portage until the Dnieper was reached. Then down the Dnieper into the Black Sea. The Norsemen knew of this road at a very early date. In the ninth century they began to settle in northern Russia, just as other Norsemen were laying the foundation for independent states in Germany and France. But in the year 862, three Norsemen, brothers, crossed the Baltic and founded three small dynasties. Of the three brothers, only one, Rurik, lived for a number of years. He took possession of the territory of his brothers, and twenty years after the arrival of this first Norseman, a Slavic state had been established with Kiev as its capital. From Kiev to the Black Sea is a short distance. Soon the existence of an organised Slavic State became known in Constantinople. This meant a new field for the zealous missionaries of the Christian faith. Byzantine monks followed the Dnieper on their way northward and soon reached the heart of Russia. They found the people worshipping strange gods who were supposed to dwell in woods and rivers and in mountain caves. They taught them the story of Jesus. There was no competition from the side of Roman missionaries. These good men were too busy educating the heathen Teutons to bother about the distant Slavs. Hence Russia received its religion and its alphabet and its first ideas of art and architecture from the Byzantine monks and as the Byzantine empire (a relic of the eastern Roman empire) had become very oriental and had lost many of its European traits, the Russians suffered in consequence. Politically speaking these new states of the great Russian plains did not fare well. It was the Norse habit to divide every inheritance equally among all the sons. No sooner had a small state been founded but it was broken up among eight or nine heirs who in turn left their territory to an ever increasing number of descendants. It was inevitable that these small competing states should quarrel among themselves. Anarchy was the order of the day. And when the red glow of the eastern horizon told the people of the threatened invasion of a savage Asiatic tribe, the little states were too weak and too divided to render any sort of defence against this terrible enemy. It was in the year 1224 that the first great Tartar invasion took place and that the hordes of Jenghiz Khan, the conqueror of China, Bokhara, Tashkent and Turkestan made their first appearance in the west. The Slavic armies were beaten near the Kalka river and Russia was at the mercy of the Mongolians. Just as suddenly as they had come they disappeared. Thirteen years later, in 1237, however, they returned. In less than five years they conquered every part of the vast Russian plains. Until the year 1380 when Dmitry Donskoi, Grand Duke of Moscow, beat them on the plains of Kulikovo, the Tartars were the masters of the Russian people. All in all, it took the Russians two centuries to deliver themselves from this yoke. For a yoke it was and a most offensive and objectionable one. It turned the Slavic peasants into miserable slaves. No Russian could hope to survive un-less he was willing to creep before a dirty little yellow man who sat in a tent somewhere in the heart of the steppes of southern Russia and spat at him. It deprived the mass of the people of all feeling of honour and independence. It made hunger and misery and maltreatment and personal abuse the normal state of human existence. Until at last the average Russian, were he peasant or nobleman, went about his business like a neglected dog who has been beaten so often that his spirit has been broken and he dare not wag his tail without permission. There was no escape. The horsemen of the Tartar Khan were fast and merciless. The endless prairie did not give a man a chance to cross into the safe territory of his neighbour. He must keep quiet and bear what his yellow master decided to inflict upon him or run the risk of death. Of course, Europe might have interfered. But Europe was engaged upon business of its own, fighting the quarrels between the Pope and the emperor or suppressing this or that or the other heresy. And so Europe left the Slav to his fate, and forced him to work out his own salvation. The final saviour of Russia was one of the many small states, founded by the early Norse rulers. It was situated in the heart of the Russian plain. Its capital, Moscow, was upon a steep hill on the banks of the Moskwa river. This little principality, by dint of pleasing the Tartar (when it was necessary to please), and opposing him (when it was safe to do so), had, during the middle of the fourteenth century made itself the leader of a new national life. It must be remembered that the Tartars were wholly deficient in constructive political ability. They could only destroy. Their chief aim in conquering new territories was to obtain revenue. To get this revenue in the form of taxes, it was necessary to allow certain remnants of the old political organization to continue. Hence there were many little towns, surviving by the grace of the Great Khan, that they might act as tax-gatherers and rob their neighbours for the benefit of the Tartar treasury. The state of Moscow, growing fat at the expense of the surrounding territory, finally became strong enough to risk open rebellion against its masters, the Tartars. It was successful and its fame as the leader in the cause of Russian independence made Moscow the natural centre for all those who still believed in a better future for the Slavic race. In the year 1458, Constantinople was taken by the Turks. Ten years later, under the rule of Ivan III, Moscow informed the western world that the Slavic state laid claim to the worldly and spiritual inheritance of the lost Byzantine Empire, and such traditions of the Roman empire as had survived in Constantinople. A generation afterwards, under Ivan the Terrible, the grand dukes of Moscow were strong enough to adopt the title of Caesar, or Tsar, and to demand recognition by the western powers of Europe. In the year 1598, with Feodor the First, the old Muscovite dynasty, descendants of the original Norseman Rurik, came to an end. For the next seven years, a Tartar half-breed, by the name of Boris Godunow, reigned as Tsar. It was during this period that the future destiny of the large masses of the Russian people was decided. This Empire was rich in land but very poor in money. There was no trade and there were no factories. Its few cities were dirty villages. It was composed of a strong central government and a vast number of illiterate peasants. This government, a mixture of Slavic, Norse, Byzantine and Tartar influences, recognised nothing beyond the interest of the state. To defend this state, it needed an army. To gather the taxes, which were necessary to pay the soldiers, it needed civil servants. To pay these many officials it needed land. In the vast wilderness on the east and west there was a sufficient supply of this commodity. But land without a few labourers to till the fields and tend the cattle, has no value. Therefore the old nomadic peasants were robbed of one privilege after the other, until finally, during the first year of the sixteenth century, they were formally made a part of the soil upon which they lived. The Russian peasants ceased to be free men. They became serfs or slaves and they remained serfs until the year 1861, when their fate had become so terrible that they were beginning to die out. In the seventeenth century, this new state with its growing territory which was spreading quickly into Siberia, had become a force with which the rest of Europe was obliged to reckon. In 1618, after the death of Boris Godunow, the Russian nobles had elected one of their own number to be Tsar. He was Michael, the son of Feodor, of the Moscow family of Romanow who lived in a little house just outside the Kremlin. In the year 1672 his great-grandson, Peter, the son of another Feodor, was born. When the child was ten years old, his step-sister Sophia took possession of the Russian throne. The little boy was allowed to spend his days in the suburbs of the national capital, where the foreigners lived. Surrounded by Scotch barkeepers, Dutch traders, Swiss apothecaries, Italian barbers, French dancing teachers and German school-masters, the young prince obtained a first but rather extraordinary impression of that far-away and mysterious Europe where things were done differently. When he was seventeen years old, he suddenly pushed Sister Sophia from the throne. Peter himself became the ruler of Russia. He was not contented with being the Tsar of a semi-barbarous and half-Asiatic people. He must be the sovereign head of a civilised nation. To change Russia overnight from a Byzantine-Tartar state into a European empire was no small undertaking. It needed strong hands and a capable head. Peter possessed both. In the year 1698, the great operation of grafting Modern Europe upon Ancient Russia was performed. The patient did not die. But he never got over the shock, as the events of the last five years have shown very plainly. RUSSIA vs. SWEDEN RUSSIA AND SWEDEN FIGHT MANY WARS TO DECIDE WHO SHALL BE THE LEADING POWER OF NORTH-EASTERN EUROPE IN the year 1698, Tsar Peter set forth upon his first voyage to western Europe. He travelled by way of Berlin and went to Holland and to England. As a child he had almost been drowned sailing a homemade boat in the duck pond of his father's country home. This passion for water remained with him to the end of his life. In a practical way it showed itself in his wish to give his land-locked domains access to the open sea. While the unpopular and harsh young ruler was away from home, the friends of the old Russian ways in Moscow set to work to undo all his reforms. A sudden rebellion among his life-guards, the Streltsi regiment, forced Peter to hasten home by the fast mail. He appointed himself executioner-in-chief and the Streltsi were hanged and quartered and killed to the last man. Sister Sophia, who had been the head of the rebellion, was locked up in a cloister and the rule of Peter be-gan in earnest. This scene was repeated in the year 1716 when Peter had gone on his second western trip. That time the reactionaries followed the leadership of Peter's half-witted son, Alexis. Again the Tsar returned in great haste. Alexis was beaten to death in his prison cell and the friends of the old fashioned Byzantine ways marched thousands of dreary miles to their final destination in the Siberian lead mines. After that, no further outbreaks of popular discontent took place. Until the time of his death, Peter could reform in peace. It is not easy to give you a list of his reforms in chronological order. The Tsar worked with furious haste. He followed no system. He issued his decrees with such rapidity that it is difficult to keep count. Peter seemed to feel that everything that had ever happened before was entirely wrong. The whole of Russia therefore must be changed within the shortest possible time. When he died he left behind a well-trained army of 200,000 men and a navy of fifty ships. The old system of government had been abolished over night. The Duma, or convention of Nobles, had been dismissed and in its stead, the Tsar had surrounded himself with an advisory board of state officials, called the Senate. Russia was divided into eight large "governments" or provinces. Roads were constructed. Towns were built. Industries were created wherever it pleased the Tsar, without any regard for the presence of raw material. Canals were dug and mines were opened in the mountains of the east. In this land of illiterates, schools were founded and establishments of higher learning, together with Universities and hospitals and professional schools. Dutch naval engineers and tradesmen and artisans from all over the world were encouraged to move to Russia. Printing shops were established, but all books must be first read by the imperial censors. The duties of each class of society were carefully written down in a new law and the entire system of civil and criminal laws was gathered into a series of printed volumes. The old Russian costumes were abolished by Imperial decree, and policemen, armed with scissors, watching all the country roads, changed the long-haired Russian mou-jiks suddenly into a pleasing imitation of smooth-shaven west. Europeans. In religious matters, the Tsar tolerated no division of power. There must be no chance of a rivalry between an Emperor and a Pope as had happened in Europe. In the year 1721, Peter made himself head of the Russian Church. The Patriarchate of Moscow was abolished and the Holy Synod made its appearance as the highest source of authority in all matters of the Established Church. Since, however, these many reforms could not be success-ful while the old Russian elements had a rallying point in the town of Moscow, Peter decided to move his government to a new capital. Amidst the unhealthy marshes of the Baltic Sea the Tsar built this new city. He began to reclaim the land in the year 1703. Forty thousand peasants worked for years to lay the foundations for this Imperial city. The Swedes attacked Peter and tried to destroy his town and illness and misery killed tens of thousands of the peasants. But the work was continued, winter and summer, and the ready-made town soon began to grow. In the year 1712, it was officially de-clared to be the "Imperial Residence." A dozen years later it had 75,000 inhabitants. Twice a year the whole city was flooded by the Neva. But the terrific will-power of the Tsar created dykes and canals and the floods ceased to do harm. When Peter died in 1725 he was the owner of the largest city in northern Europe. Of course, this sudden growth of so dangerous a rival had been a source of great worry to all the neighbours. From his side, Peter had watched with interest the many adventures of his Baltic rival, the kingdom of Sweden. In the year 1654, Christina, the only daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, the hero of the Thirty Years War, had renounced the throne and had gone to Rome to end her days as a devout Catholic. A Protestant nephew of Gustavus Adolphus had succeeded the last Queen of the House of Vasa. Under Charles X and Charles XI, the new dynasty had brought Sweden to its highest point of development. But in 1697, Charles XI died suddenly and was succeeded by a boy of fifteen, Charles XII. This was the moment for which many of the northern states had waited. During the great religious wars of the seventeenth century, Sweden had grown at the expense of her neighbours. The time had come, so the owners thought, to balance the account. At once war broke out between Russia, Poland, Denmark and Saxony on the one side, and Sweden on the other. The raw and untrained armies of Peter were disastrously beaten by Charles in the famous battle of Narva in November of the year 1700. Then Charles, one of the most interesting military geniuses of that century, turned against his other enemies and for nine years he hacked and burned his way through the villages and cities of Poland, Saxony, Denmark and the Baltic provinces, while Peter drilled and trained his soldiers in distant Russia. As a result, in the year 1709, in the battle of Poltawa, the Moscovites destroyed the exhausted armies of Sweden. Charles continued to be a highly picturesque figure, a wonderful hero of romance, but in his vain attempt to have his revenge, he ruined his own country. In the year 1718, he was accidentally killed or assassinated (we do not know which) and when peace was made in 1721, in the town of Nystadt, Sweden had lost all of her former Baltic possessions except Finland. The new Russian state, created by Peter, had become the leading power of northern Europe. But already a new rival was on the way. The Prussian state was taking shape. THE RISE OF PRUSSIA THE EXTRAORDINARY RISE OF A LITTLE STATE IN A DREARY PART OF NORTHERN GERMANY, CALLED PRUSSIA THE history of Prussia is the history of a frontier district. In the ninth century, Charlemagne had transferred the old centre of civilisation from the Mediterranean to the wild regions of northwestern Europe. His Frankish soldiers had pushed the frontier of Europe further and further towards the east. They had conquered many lands from the heathenish Slavs and Lithuanians who were living in the plain between the Baltic Sea and the Carpathian Mountains, and the Franks administered those outlying districts just as the United States used to administer her territories before they achieved the dignity of statehood. The frontier state of Brandenburg had been originally founded by Charlemagne to defend his eastern possessions against raids of the wild Saxon tribes. The Wends, a Slavic tribe which inhabited that region, were subjugated during the tenth century and their market-place, by the name of Brennabor, became the centre of and gave its name to the new province of Brandenburg. During the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a succession of noble families exercised the functions of imperial governor in this frontier state. Finally in the fifteenth century, the House of Hohenzollern made its appear-ance, and as Electors of Brandenburg, commenced to change a sandy and forlorn frontier territory into one of the most efficient empires of the modern world. These Hohenzollerns, who have just been removed from the historical stage by the combined forces of Europe and America, came originally from southern Germany. They were of very humble origin. In the twelfth century a certain Frederick of Hohenzollern had made a lucky marriage and had been appointed keeper of the castle of Nuremberg. His descendants had used every chance and every opportunity to improve their power and after several centuries of watchful grabbing, they had been appointed to the dignity of Elector, the name given to those sovereign princes who were supposed to elect the Emperors of the old German Empire. During the Reformation, they had taken the side of the Protestants and the early seventeenth century found them among the most powerful of the north German princes. During the Thirty Years War, both Protestants and Catholics had plundered Brandenburg and Prussia with equal zeal. But under Frederick William, the Great Elector, the damage was quickly repaired and by a wise and careful use of all the economic and intellectual forces of the country, a state was founded in which there was practically no waste. Modern Prussia, a state in which the individual and his wishes and aspirations have been entirely absorbed by the interests of the community as a whole this Prussia dates back to the father of Frederick the Great. Frederick William I was a hard working, parsimonious Prussian sergeant, with a great love for bar-room stories and strong Dutch tobacco, an intense dislike of all frills and feathers, (especially if they were of French origin,) and possessed of but one idea. That idea was Duty. Severe with himself, he tolerated no weakness in his subjects, whether they be generals or common soldiers. The relation between himself and his son Frederick was never cordial, to say the least. The boorish manners of the father offended the finer spirit of the son. The son's love for French manners, literature, philosophy and music was rejected by the father as a manifestation of sissy-ness. There followed a terrible outbreak between these two strange temperaments. Frederick tried to escape to England. He was caught and court-martialed and forced to witness the decapitation of his best friend who had tried to help him. Thereupon as part of his punishment, the young prince was sent to a little fortress somewhere in the provinces to be taught the details of his future business of being a king. It proved a blessing in disguise. When Frederick came to the throne in 1740, he knew how his country was managed from the birth certificate of a pauper's son to the minutest detail of a complicated annual Budget. As an author, especially in his book called the "Anti-Macchiavelli," Frederick had expressed his contempt for the political creed of the ancient Florentine historian, who had advised his princely pupils to lie and cheat whenever it was necessary to do so for the benefit of their country. The ideal ruler in Frederick's volume was the first servant of his people, the enlightened despot after the example of Louis XIV. In practice, however, Frederick, while working for his people twenty hours a day, tolerated no one to be near him as a counsellor. His ministers were superior clerks. Prussia was his private possession, to be treated according to his own wishes. And nothing was allowed to interfere with the interest of the state. In the year 1740 the Emperor Charles VI, of Austria, died. He had tried to make the position of his only daughter, Maria Theresa, secure through a solemn treaty, written black on white, upon a large piece of parchment. But no sooner had the old emperor been deposited in the ancestral crypt of the Habsburg family, than the armies of Frederick were marching towards the Austrian frontier to occupy that part of Silesia for which (together with almost everything else in central Europe) Prussia clamored, on account of some ancient and very doubtful rights of claim. In a number of wars, Frederick conquered all of Silesia, and although he was often very near defeat, he maintained himself in his newly acquired territories against all Austrian counter-attacks. Europe took due notice of this sudden appearance of a very powerful new state. In the eighteenth century, the Germans were a people who had been ruined by the great religious wars and who were not held in high esteem by any one. Frederick, by an effort as sudden and quite as terrific as that of Peter of Russia, changed this attitude of contempt into one of fear. The internal affairs of Prussia were arranged so skillfully that the subjects had less reason for complaint than elsewhere. The treasury showed an annual surplus instead of a deficit. Torture was abolished. The judiciary system was improved. Good roads and good schools and good universities, together with a scrupulously honest administration, made the people feel that whatever services were demanded of them, they (to speak the vernacular) got their money's worth. After having been for several centuries the battle field of the French and the Austrians and the Swedes and the Danes and the Poles, Germany, encouraged by the example of Prussia, began to regain self-confidence. And this was the work of the little old man, with his hook-nose and his old uniforms covered with snuff, who said very funny but very unpleasant things about his neighbours, and who played the scandalous game of eighteenth century diplomacy without any regard for the truth, provided he could gain something by his lies. This in spite of his book, "Anti-Macchiavelli." In the year 1786 the end came. His friends were all gone. Children he had never had. He died alone, tended by a single servant and his faithful dogs, whom he loved better than human beings because, as he said, they were never ungrateful and remained true to their friends. THE MERCANTILE SYSTEM HOW THE NEWLY FOUNDED NATIONAL OR DYNASTIC STATES OF EUROPE TRIED TO MAKE THEMSELVES RICH AND WHAT WAS MEANT BY THE MERCANTILE SYSTEM WE have seen how, during the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, the states of our modern world began to take shape. Their origins were different in almost every case. Some had been the result of the deliberate effort of a single king. Others had happened by chance. Still others had been the result of favourable natural geographic boundaries. But once they had been founded, they had all of them tried to strengthen their internal administration and to exert the greatest possible influence upon foreign affairs. All this of course had cost a great deal of money. The mediaeval state with its lack of centralised power did not depend upon a rich treasury. The king got his revenues from the crown domains and his civil service paid for itself. The modern centralised state was a more complicated affair. The old knights disappeared and hired government officials or bureaucrats took their place. Army, navy, and internal administration demanded millions. The question then became where was this money to be found? Gold and silver had been a rare commodity in the middle ages. The average man, as I have told you, never saw a gold piece as long as he lived. Only the inhabitants of the large cities were familiar with silver coin. The discovery of America and the exploitation of the Peruvian mines changed all this. The centre of trade was transferred from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic seaboard. The old "commercial cities" of Italy lost their financial importance. New "commercial nations" took their place and gold and silver were no longer a curiosity. Through Spain and Portugal and Holland and England, precious metals began to find their way to Europe The sixteenth century had its own writers on the subject of political economy and they evolved a theory of national wealth which seemed to them entirely sound and of the greatest possible benefit to their respective countries. They reasoned that both gold and silver were actual wealth. Therefore they believed that the country with the largest supply of actual cash in the vaults of its treasury and its banks was at the same time the richest country. And since money meant armies, it followed that the richest country was also the most powerful and could rule the rest of the world. We call this system the "mercantile system," and it was accepted with the same unquestioning faith with which the early Christians believed in Miracles and many of the present-day American business men believe in the Tariff. In practice, the Mercantile system worked out as follows: To get the largest surplus of precious metals a country must have a favourable balance of export trade. If you can export more to your neighbour than he exports to your own country, he will owe you money and will be obliged to send you some of his gold. Hence you gain and he loses. As a result of this creed, the economic program of almost every seventeenth century state was as follows: 1. Try to get possession of as many precious metals as you can. 2. Encourage foreign trade in preference to domestic trade. 3. Encourage those industries which change raw materials into exportable finished products. 4. Encourage a large population, for you will need workmen for your factories and an agricultural community does not raise enough workmen. 5. Let the State watch this process and interfere whenever it is necessary to do so. Instead of regarding International Trade as something akin to a force of nature which would always obey certain natural laws regardless of man's interference, the people of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries tried to regulate their commerce by the help of official decrees and royal laws and financial help on the part of the government. In the sixteenth century Charles V adopted this Mercantile System (which was then something entirely new) and introduced it into his many possessions. Elizabeth of England flattered him by her imitation. The Bourbons, especially King Louis XIV, were fanatical adherents of this doctrine and Colbert, his great minister of finance, became the prophet of Mercantilism to whom all Europe looked for guidance. The entire foreign policy of Cromwell was a practical application of the Mercantile System. It was invariably directed against the rich rival Republic of Holland. For the Dutch shippers, as the common-carriers of the merchandise of Europe, had certain leanings towards free-trade and therefore had to be destroyed at all cost. It will be easily understood how such a system must affect the colonies. A colony under the Mercantile System became merely a reservoir of gold and silver and spices, which was to be tapped for the benefit of the home country. The Asiatic, American and African supply of precious metals and the raw materials of these tropical countries became a monopoly of the state which happened to own that particular colony. No outsider was ever allowed within the precincts and no native was permitted to trade with a merchant whose ship flew a foreign flag. Undoubtedly the Mercantile System encouraged the development of young industries in certain countries where there never had been any manufacturing before. It built roads and dug canals and made for better means of transportation. It demanded greater skill among the workmen and gave the merchant a better social position, while it weakened the power of the landed aristocracy. On the other hand, it caused very great misery. It made the natives in the colonies the victims of a most shameless exploitation. It exposed the citizens of the home country to an even more terrible fate. It helped in a great measure to turn every land into an armed camp and divided the world into little bits of territory, each working for its own direct benefit, while striving at all times to destroy the power of its neighbours and get hold of their treasures. It laid so much stress upon the importance of owning wealth that "being rich" came to be regarded as the sole virtue of the average citizen. Economic systems come and go like the fashions in surgery and in the clothes of women, and during the nineteenth century the Mercantile System was discarded in favor of a system of free and open competition. At least, so I have been told. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION AT THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EUROPE HEARD STRANGE REPORTS OF SOMETHING WHICH HAD HAPPENED IN THE WILDERNESS; OF THE NORTH AMERICAN CONTINENT. THE DESCENDANTS OF THE MEN WHO HAD PUNISHED KING CHARLES FOR HIS INSISTENCE UPON HIS "DIVINE RIGHTS" ADDED A NEW CHAPTER TO THE OLD STORY OF THE STRUGGLE FOR SELF-GOVERNMENT FOR the sake of convenience, we ought to go back a few centuries and repeat the early history of the great struggle for colonial possessions. As soon as a number of European nations had been created upon the new basis of national or dynastic interests, that is to say, during and immediately after the Thirty Years War, their rulers, backed up by the capital of their merchants and the ships of their trading companies, continued the fight for more territory in Asia, Africa and America. The Spaniards and the Portuguese had been exploring the Indian Sea and the Pacific Ocean for more than a century ere Holland and England appeared upon the stage. This proved an advantage to the latter. The first rough work had already been done. What is more, the earliest navigators had so often made themselves unpopular with the Asiatic and American and African natives that both the English and the Dutch were welcomed as friends and deliverers. We cannot claim any superior virtues for either of these two races. But they were merchants before everything else. They never allowed religious considerations to interfere with their practical common sense. During their first relations with weaker races, all European nations have behaved with shocking brutality. The English and the Dutch, however, knew better where to draw the dine. Provided they got their spices and their gold and silver and their taxes, they were willing to let the native live as it best pleased him. It was not very difficult for them therefore to establish themselves in the richest parts of the world. But as soon as this had been accomplished, they began to fight each other for still further possessions. Strangely enough, the colonial wars were never settled in the colonies themselves. They were decided three thousand miles away by the navies of the contending countries. It is one of the most interesting principles of ancient and modern warfare (one of the few reliable laws of history) that "the nation which commands the sea is also the nation which commands the land." So far this law has never failed to work, but the modern airplane may have changed it. In the eighteenth century, however, there were no flying machines and it was the British navy which gained for England her vast American and Indian and African colonies. The series of naval wars between England and Holland in the seventeenth century does not interest us here. It ended as all such encounters between hopelessly ill-matched powers will end. But the warfare between England and France (her other rival) is of greater importance to us, for while the superior British fleet in the end defeated the French navy, a great deal of the preliminary fighting was done on our own American continent. In this vast country, both France and England claimed everything which had been discovered and a lot more which the eye of no white man had ever seen. In 1497 Cabot had landed in the northern part of America and twenty-seven years later, Giovanni Verrazano had visited these coasts. Cabot had flown the English flag. Verrazano had sailed under the French flag. Hence both England and France proclaimed themselves the owners of the entire continent. During the seventeenth century, some ten small English colonies had been founded between Maine and the Carolinas. They were usually a haven of refuge for some particular sect of English dissenters, such as the Puritans, who in the year 1620 went to New England, or the Quakers, who settled in Pennsylvania in 1681. They were small frontier communities, nestling close to the shores of the ocean, where people had gathered to make a new home and begin life among happier surroundings, far away from royal supervision and interference. The French colonies, on the other hand, always remained a possession of the crown. No Huguenots or Protestants were allowed in these colonies for fear that they might contaminate the Indians with their dangerous Protestant doctrines and would perhaps interfere with the missionary work of the Jesuit fathers. The English colonies, therefore, had been founded upon a much healthier basis than their French neighbours and rivals. They were an expression of the commercial energy of the English middle classes, while the French settlements were inhabited by people who had crossed the ocean as servants of the king and who expected to return to Paris at the first possible chance. Politically, however, the position of the English colonies was far from satisfactory. The French had discovered the mouth of the Saint Lawrence in the sixteenth century. From the region of the Great Lakes they had worked their way southward, had descended the Mississippi and had built several fortifications along the Gulf of Mexico. After a century of exploration, a line of sixty French forts cut off the English settlements along the Atlantic seaboard from the interior. The English land grants, made to the different colonial companies had given them "all land from sea to sea." This sounded well on paper, but in practice, British territory ended where the line of French fortifications began. To break through this barrier was possible but it took both men and money and caused a series of horrible border wars in which both sides murdered their white neighbours, with the help of the Indian tribes. As long as the Stuarts had ruled England there had been no danger of war with France. The Stuarts needed the Bourbons in their attempt to establish an autocratic form of government and to break the power of Parliament. But in 1689 the last of the Stuarts had disappeared from British soil and Dutch William, the great enemy of Louis XIV succeeded him. From that time on, until the Treaty of Paris of 1763, France and England fought for the possession of India and North America. During these wars, as I have said before, the English navies invariably beat the French. Cut off from her colonies, France lost most of her possessions, and when peace was declared, the entire North American continent had fallen into British hands and the great work of exploration of Cartier, Champlain, La Salle, Marquette and a score of others was lost to France. Only a very small part of this vast domain was inhabited. From Massachusetts in the north, where the Pilgrims (a sect of Puritans who were very intolerant and who therefore had found no happiness either in Anglican England or Calvinist Holland) had landed in the year 1620, to the Carolinas and Virginia (the tobacco-raising provinces which had been founded entirely for the sake of profit), stretched a thin line of sparsely populated territory. But the men who lived in this new land of fresh air and high skies were very different from their brethren of the mother country. In the wilderness they had learned independence and self-reliance. They were the sons of hardy and energetic ancestors. Lazy and timourous people did not cross the ocean in those days. The American colonists hated the restraint and the lack of breathing space which had made their lives in the old country so very unhappy. They meant to be their own masters. This the ruling classes of England did not seem to understand. The government annoyed the colonists and the colonists, who hated to be bothered in this way, began to annoy the British government. Bad feeling caused more bad feeling. It is not necessary to repeat here in detail what actually happened and what might have been avoided if the British king had been more intelligent than George III or less given to drowsiness and indifference than his minister, Lord North. The British colonists, when they understood that peaceful arguments would not settle the difficulties, took to arms. From being loyal subjects, they turned rebels, who exposed themselves to the punishment of death when they were captured by the German soldiers, whom George hired to do his fighting after the pleasant custom of that day, when Teutonic princes sold whole regiments to the highest bidder. The war between England and her American colonies lasted seven years. During most of that time, the final success of the rebels seemed very doubtful. A great number of the people, especially in the cities, had remained loyal to their king. They were in favour of a compromise, and would have been willing to sue for peace. But the great figure of Washington stood guard over the cause of the colonists. Ably assisted by a handful of brave men, he used his steadfast but badly equipped armies to weaken the forces of the king. Time and again when defeat seemed unavoidable, his strategy turned the tide of battle. Often his men were ill-fed. During the winter they lacked shoes and coats and were forced to live in unhealthy dug-outs. But their trust in their great leader was absolute and they stuck it out until the final hour of victory. But more interesting than the campaigns of Washington or the diplomatic triumphs of Benjamin Franklin who was in Europe getting money from the French government and the Amsterdam bankers, was an event which occurred early in the revolution. The representatives of the different colonies had gathered in Philadelphia to discuss matters of common importance. It was the first year of the Revolution. Most of the big towns of the sea coast were still in the hands of the British. Reinforcements from England were arriving by the ship load. Only men who were deeply convinced of the righteousness of their cause would have found the courage to take the momentous decision of the months of June and July of the year 1776. In June, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia proposed a motion to the Continental Congress that "these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is and ought to be, totally dissolved." The motion was seconded by John Adams of Massachusetts. It was carried on July the second and on July fourth, it was followed by an official Declaration of Independence, which was the work of Thomas Jefferson, a serious and exceedingly capable student of both politics and government and destined to be one of the most famous of out American presidents. When news of this event reached Europe, and was followed by the final victory of the colonists and the adoption of the famous Constitution of the year 1787 (the first of all written constitutions) it caused great interest. The dynastic system of the highly centralised states which had been developed after the great religious wars of the seventeenth century had reached the height of its power. Everywhere the palace of the king had grown to enormous proportions, while the cities of the royal realm were being surrounded by rapidly growing acres of slums. The inhabitants of those slums were showing signs of restlessness. They were quite helpless. But the higher classes, the nobles and the professional men, they too were beginning to have certain doubts about the economic and political conditions under which they lived. The success of the American colonists showed them that many things were possible which had been held impossible only a short time before. According to the poet, the shot which opened the battle of Lexington was "heard around the world." That was a bit of an exaggeration. The Chinese and the Japanese and the Russians (not to speak of the Australians, who had just been re-discovered by Captain Cook, whom they killed for his trouble,) never heard of it at all. But it carried across the Atlantic Ocean. It landed in the powder house of European discontent and in France it caused an explosion which rocked the entire continent from Petrograd to Madrid and buried the representatives of the old statecraft and the old diplomacy under several tons of democratic bricks. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION THE GREAT FRENCH REVOLUTION PROCLAIMS THE PRINCIPLES OF LIBERTY, FRATERNITY AND EQUALITY UNTO ALL THE PEOPLE OF THE EARTH BEFORE we talk about a revolution it is just as well that we explain just what this word means. In the terms of a great Russian writer (and Russians ought to know what they are talking about in this field) a revolution is "a swift overthrow, in a few years, of institutions which have taken centuries to root in the soil, and seem so fixed and immovable that even the most ardent reformers hardly dare to attack them in their writings. It is the fall, the crumbling away in a brief period, of all that up to that time has composed the essence of social, religious, political and economic life in a nation." Such a revolution took place in France in the eighteenth century when the old civilisation of the country had grown stale. The king in the days of Louis XIV had become EVERYTHING and was the state. The Nobility, formerly the civil servant of the federal state, found itself without any duties and became a social ornament of the royal court. This French state of the eighteenth century, however, cost incredible sums of money. This money had to be produced in the form of taxes. Unfortunately the kings of France had not been strong enough to force the nobility and the clergy to pay their share of these taxes. Hence the taxes were paid entirely by the agricultural population. But the peasants living in dreary hovels, no longer in intimate contact with their former landlords, but victims of cruel and incompetent land agents, were going from bad to worse. Why should they work and exert themselves? Increased returns upon their land merely meant more taxes and nothing for themselves and therefore they neglected their fields as much as they dared. Hence we have a king who wanders in empty splendour through the vast halls of his palaces, habitually followed by hungry office seekers, all of whom live upon the revenue obtained from peasants who are no better than the beasts of the fields. It is not a pleasant picture, but it is not exaggerated. There was, however, another side to the so-called "Ancien Regime" which we must keep in mind. A wealthy middle class, closely connected with the nobility (by the usual process of the rich banker's daughter marrying the poor baron's son) and a court composed of all the most entertaining people of France, had brought the polite art of graceful living to its highest development. As the best brains of the country were not allowed to occupy themselves with questions of political economics, they spent their idle hours upon the discussion of abstract ideas. As fashions in modes of thought and personal behaviour are quite as likely to run to extremes as fashion in dress, it was natural that the most artificial society of that day should take a tremendous interest in what they considered "the simple life." The king and the queen, the absolute and unquestioned proprietors of this country galled France, together with all its colonies and dependencies, went to live in funny little country houses all dressed up as milk-maids and stable-boys and played at being shepherds in a happy vale of ancient Hellas. Around them, their courtiers danced attendance, their court-musicians composed lovely minuets, their court barbers devised more and more elaborate and costly headgear, until from sheer boredom and lack of real jobs, this whole artificial world of Versailles (the great show place which Louis XIV had built far away from his noisy and restless city) talked of nothing but those subjects which were furthest removed from their own lives, just as a man who is starving will talk of nothing except food. When Voltaire, the courageous old philosopher, playwright, historian and novelist, and the great enemy of all religious and political tyranny, began to throw his bombs of criticism at everything connected with the Established Order of Things, the whole French world applauded him and his theatrical pieces played to standing room only. When Jean Jacques Rousseau waxed sentimental about primitive man and gave his contemporaries delightful descriptions of the happiness of the original inhabitants of this planet, (about whom he knew as little as he did about the children, upon whose education he was the recognised authority,) all France read his "Social Contract" and this society in which the king and the state were one, wept bitter tears when they heard Rousseau's appeal for a return to the blessed days when the real sovereignty had lain in the hands of the people and when the king had been merely the servant of his people. When Montesquieu published his "Persian Letters" in which two distinguished Persian travellers turn the whole existing society of France topsy-turvy and poke fun at everything from the king down to the lowest of his six hundred pastry cooks, the book immediately went through four editions and assured the writer thousands of readers for his famous discussion of the "Spirit of the Laws" in which the noble Baron compared the excellent English system with the backward system of France and advocated instead of an absolute monarchy the establishment of a state in which the Executive, the Legislative and the Judicial powers should be in separate hands and should work independently of each other. When Lebreton, the Parisian book-seller, announced that Messieurs Diderot, d'Alembert, Turgot and a score of other distinguished writers were going to publish an Encyclopaedia which was to contain "all the new ideas and the new science and the new knowledge," the response from the side of the public was most satisfactory, and when after twenty-two years the last of the twenty-eight volumes had been finished, the somewhat belated interference of the police could not repress the enthusiasm with which French society received this most important but very dangerous contribution to the discussions of the day. Here, let me give you a little warning. When you read a novel about the French revolution or see a play or a movie, you will easily get the impression that the Revolution was the work of the rabble from the Paris slums. It was nothing of the kind. The mob appears often upon the revolutionary stage, but invariably at the instigation and under the leadership of those middle-class professional men who used the hungry multitude as an efficient ally in their warfare upon the king and his court. But the fundamental ideas which caused the revolution were invented by a few brilliant minds, and they were at first introduced into the charming drawing-rooms of the "Ancien Regime" to provide amiable diversion for the much-bored ladies and gentlemen of his Majesty's court. These pleasant but careless people played with the dangerous fireworks of social criticism until the sparks fell through the cracks of the floor, which was old and rotten just like the rest of the building. Those sparks unfortunately landed in the basement where age-old rubbish lay in great confusion. Then there was a cry of fire. But the owner of the house who was interested in everything except the management of his property, did not know how to put the small blaze out. The flame spread rapidly and the entire edifice was consumed by the conflagration, which we call the Great French Revolution. For the sake of convenience, we can divide the French Revolution into two parts. From 1789 to 1791 there was a more or less orderly attempt to introduce a constitutional monarchy. This failed, partly through lack of good faith and stupidity on the part of the monarch himself, partly through circumstances over which nobody had any control. From 1792 to 1799 there was a Republic and a first effort to establish a democratic form of government. But the actual outbreak of violence had been preceded by many years of unrest and many sincere but ineffectual attempts at reform. When France had a debt of 4000 million francs and the treasury was always empty and there was not a single thing upon which new taxes could be levied, even good King Louis (who was an expert locksmith and a great hunter but a very poor statesman) felt vaguely that something ought to be done. Therefore he called for Turgot, to be his Minister of Finance. Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de l'Aulne, a man in the early sixties, a splendid representative of the fast disappearing class of landed gentry, had been a successful governor of a province and was an amateur political economist of great ability. He did his best. Unfortunately, he could not perform miracles. As it was impossible to squeeze more taxes out of the ragged peasants, it was necessary to get the necessary funds from the nobility and clergy who had never paid a centime. This made Turgot the best hated man at the court of Versailles. Furthermore he was obliged to face the enmity of Marie Antoinette, the queen, who was against everybody who dared to mention the word "economy" within her hearing. Soon Turgot was called an "unpractical visionary" and a "theoretical-professor" and then of course his position became untenable. In the year 1776 he was forced to resign. After the "professor" there came a man of Practical Business Sense. He was an industrious Swiss by the name of Necker who had made himself rich as a grain speculator and the partner in an international banking house. His ambitious wife had pushed him into the government service that she might establish a position for her daughter who afterwards as the wife of the Swedish minister in Paris, Baron de Stael, became a famous literary figure of the early nineteenth century. Necker set to work with a fine display of zeal just as Turgot had done. In 1781 he published a careful review of the French finances. The king understood nothing of this "Compte Rendu." He had just sent troops to America to help the colonists against their common enemies, the English. This expedition proved to be unexpectedly expensive and Necker was asked to find the necessary funds. When instead of producing revenue, he published more figures and made statistics and began to use the dreary warning about "necessary economies" his days were numbered. In the year 1781 he was dismissed as an incompetent servant. After the Professor and the Practical Business Man came the delightful type of financier who will guarantee everybody 100 per cent. per month on their money if only they will trust his own infallible system. He was Charles Alexandre de Calonne, a pushing official, who had made his career both by his industry and his complete lack of honesty and scruples. He found the country heavily indebted, but he was a clever man, willing to oblige everybody, and he invented a quick remedy. He paid the old debts by contracting new ones. This method is not new. The result since time immemorial has been disastrous. In less than three years more than 800,000,000 francs had been added to the French debt by this charming Minister of Finance who never worried and smilingly signed his name to every demand that was made by His Majesty and by his lovely Queen, who had learned the habit of spending during the days of her youth in Vienna. At last even the Parliament of Paris (a high court of justice and not a legislative body) although by no means lacking in loyalty to their sovereign, decided that something must be done. Calonne wanted to borrow another 80,000,000 francs. It had been a bad year for the crops and the misery and hunger in the country districts were terrible. Unless something sensible were done, France would go bankrupt. The King as always was unaware of the seriousness of the situation. Would it not be a good idea to consult the representatives of the people? Since 1614 no Estates General had been called together. In view of the threatening panic there was a demand that the Estates be convened. Louis XVI however, who never could take a decision, refused to go as far as that. To pacify the popular clamour he called together a meeting of the Notables in the year 1787. This merely meant a gathering of the best families who discussed what could and should be done, without touching their feudal and clerical privilege of tax-exemption. It is unreasonable to expect that a certain class of society shall commit political and economic suicide for the benefit of another group of fellow-citizens. The 127 Notables obstinately refused to surrender a single one of their ancient rights. The crowd in the street, being now exceedingly hungry, demanded that Necker, in whom they had confidence, be reappointed. The Notables said "No." The crowd in the street began to smash windows and do other unseemly things. The Notables fled. Calonne was dismissed. A new colourless Minister of Finance, the Cardinal Lomenie de Brienne, was appointed and Louis, driven by the violent threats of his starving subjects, agreed to call together the old Estates General as "soon as practicable." This vague promise of course satisfied no one. No such severe winter had been experienced for almost a century. The crops had been either destroyed by floods or had been frozen to death in the fields. All the olive trees of the Provence had been killed. Private charity tried to do some-thing but could accomplish little for eighteen million starving people. Everywhere bread riots occurred. A generation before these would have been put down by the army. But the work of the new philosophical school had begun to bear fruit. People began to understand that a shotgun is no effective remedy for a hungry stomach and even the soldiers (who came from among the people) were no longer to be depended upon. It was absolutely necessary that the king should do something definite to regain the popular goodwill, but again he hesitated. Here and there in the provinces, little independent Republics were established by followers of the new school. The cry of "no taxation without representation" (the slogan of the American rebels a quarter of a century before) was heard among the faithful middle classes. France was threatened with general anarchy. To appease the people and to increase the royal popularity, the government unexpectedly suspended the former very strict form of censorship of books. At once a flood of ink descended upon France. Everybody, high or low, criticised and was criticised. More than 2000 pamphlets were published. Lomenie de Brienne was swept away by a storm of abuse. Necker was hastily called back to placate, as best he could, the nation-wide unrest. Immediately the stock market went up thirty per cent. And by common consent, people suspended judgment for a little while longer. In May of 1789 the Estates General were to assemble and then the wisdom of the entire nation would speedily solve the difficult problem of recreating the kingdom of France into a healthy and happy state. This prevailing idea, that the combined wisdom of the people would be able to solve all difficulties, proved disastrous. It lamed all personal effort during many important months. Instead of keeping the government in his own hands at this critical moment, Necker allowed everything to drift. Hence there was a new outbreak of the acrimonious debate upon the best ways to reform the old kingdom. Everywhere the power of the police weakened. The people of the Paris suburbs, under the leadership of professional agitators, gradually began to discover their strength, and commenced to play the role which was to be theirs all through the years of the great unrest, when they acted as the brute force which was used by the actual leaders of the Revolution to secure those things which could not be obtained in a legitimate fashion. As a sop to the peasants and the middle class, Necker de-cided that they should be allowed a double representation in the Estates General. Upon this subject, the Abbe Sieyes then wrote a famous pamphlet, "To what does the Third Estate Amount?" in which he came to the conclusion that the Third Estate (a name given to the middle class) ought to amount to everything, that it had not amounted to anything in the past, and that it now desired to amount to something. He expressed the sentiment of the great majority of the people who had the best interests of the country at heart. Finally the elections took place under the worst conditions imaginable. When they were over, 308 clergymen, 285 noblemen and 621 representatives of the Third Estate packed their trunks to go to Versailles. The Third Estate was obliged to carry additional luggage. This consisted of voluminous reports called "cahiers" in which the many complaints and grievances of their constituents had been written down. The stage was set for the great final act that was to save France. The Estates General came together on May 5th, 1789. The king was in a bad humour. The Clergy and the Nobility let it be known that they were unwilling to give up a single one of their privileges. The king ordered the three groups of representatives to meet in different rooms and discuss their grievances separately. The Third Estate refused to obey the royal command. They took a solemn oath to that effect in a squash court (hastily put in order for the purpose of this illegal meeting) on the 20th of June, 1789. They insisted that all three Estates, Nobility, Clergy and Third Estate, should meet together and so informed His Majesty. The king gave in. As the "National Assembly," the Estates General began to discuss the state of the French kingdom. The King got angry. Then again he hesitated. He said that he would never surrender his absolute power. Then he went hunting, forgot all about the cares of the state and when he returned from the chase he gave in. For it was the royal habit to do the right thing at the wrong time in the wrong way. When the people clamoured for A, the king scolded them and gave them nothing. Then, when the Palace was surrounded by a howling multitude of poor people, the king surrendered and gave his subjects what they had asked for. By this time, however, the people wanted A plus B. The comedy was repeated. When the king signed his name to the Royal Decree which granted his beloved subjects A and B they were threatening to kill the entire royal family unless they received A plus B plus C. And so on, through the whole alphabet and up to the scaffold. Unfortunately the king was always just one letter behind. He never understood this. Even when he laid his head under the guillotine, he felt that he was a much-abused man who had received a most unwarrantable treatment at the hands of people whom he had loved to the best of his limited ability. Historical "ifs," as I have often warned you, are never of any value. It is very easy for us to say that the monarchy might have been saved "if" Louis had been a man of greater energy and less kindness of heart. But the king was not alone. Even "if" he had possessed the ruthless strength of Napoleon, his career during these difficult days might have been easily ruined by his wife who was the daughter of Maria Theresa of Austria and who possessed all the characteristic virtues and vices of a young girl who had been brought up at the most autocratic and mediaeval court of that age. She decided that some action must be taken and planned a counter-revolution. Necker was suddenly dismissed and loyal troops were called to Paris. The people, when they heard of this, stormed the fortress of the Bastille prison, and on the fourteenth of July of the year 1789, they destroyed this familiar but much-hated symbol of Autocratic Power which had long since ceased to be a political prison and was now used as the city lock-up for pickpockets and second-story men. Many of the nobles took the hint and left the country. But the king as usual did nothing. He had been hunting on the day of the fall of the Bastille and he had shot several deer and felt very much pleased. The National Assembly now set to work and on the 4th of August, with the noise of the Parisian multitude in their ears, they abolished all privileges. This was followed on the 27th of August by the "Declaration of the Rights of Man," the famous preamble to the first French constitution. So far so good, but the court had apparently not yet learned its lesson. There was a wide-spread suspicion that the king was again trying to interfere with these reforms and as a result, on the 5th of October, there was a second riot in Paris. It spread to Versailles and the people were not pacified until they had brought the king back to his palace in Paris. They did not trust him in Versailles. They liked to have him where they could watch him and control his correspondence with his relatives in Vienna and Madrid and the other courts of Europe. In the Assembly meanwhile, Mirabeau, a nobleman who had become leader of the Third Estate, was beginning to put order into chaos. But before he could save the position of the king he died, on the 2nd of April of the year 1791. The king, who now began to fear for his own life, tried to escape on the 21st of June. He was recognised from his picture on a coin, was stopped near the village of Varennes by members of the National Guard, and was brought back to Paris. In September of 1791, the first constitution of France was accepted, and the members of the National Assembly went home. On the first of October of 1791, the legislative assembly came together to continue the work of the National Assembly. In this new gathering of popular representatives there were many extremely revolutionary elements. The boldest among these were known as the Jacobins, after the old Jacobin cloister in which they held their political meetings. These young men (most of them belonging to the professional classes) made very violent speeches and when the newspapers carried these orations to Berlin and Vienna, the King of Prussia and the Emperor decided that they must do something to save their good brother and sister. They were very busy just then dividing the kingdom of Poland, where rival political factions had caused such a state of disorder that the country was at the mercy of anybody who wanted to take a couple of provinces. But they managed to send an army to invade France and deliver the king. Then a terrible panic of fear swept throughout the land of France. All the pent-up hatred of years of hunger and suffering came to a horrible climax. The mob of Paris stormed the palace of the Tuilleries. The faithful Swiss bodyguards tried to defend their master, but Louis, unable to make up his mind, gave order to "cease firing" just when the crowd was retiring. The people, drunk with blood and noise and cheap wine, murdered the Swiss to the last man, then invaded the palace, and went after Louis who had escaped into the meeting hall of the Assembly, where he was immediately suspended of his office, and from where he was taken as a prisoner to the old castle of the Temple. But the armies of Austria and Prussia continued their advance and the panic changed into hysteria and turned men and women into wild beasts. In the first week of September of the year 1792, the crowd broke into the jails and murdered all the prisoners. The government did not interfere. The Jacobins, headed by Danton, knew that this crisis meant either the success or the failure of the revolution, and that only the most brutal audacity could save them. The Legislative Assembly was closed and on the 21st of September of the year 1792, a new National Convention came together. It was a body composed almost entirely of extreme revolutionists. The king was formally accused of high treason and was brought before the Convention. He was found guilty and by a vote of 361 to 360 (the extra vote being that of his cousin the Duke of Orleans) he was condemned to death. On the 21st of January of the year 1793, he quietly and with much dignity suffered himself to be taken to the scaffold. He had never understood what all the shooting and the fuss had been about. And he had been too proud to ask questions. Then the Jacobins turned against the more moderate element in the convention, the Girondists, called after their southern district, the Gironde. A special revolutionary tribunal was instituted and twenty-one of the leading Girondists were condemned to death. The others committed suicide. They were capable and honest men but too philosophical and too moderate to survive during these frightful years. In October of the year 1793 the Constitution was suspended by the Jacobins "until peace should have been declared." All power was placed in the hands of a small committee of Public Safety, with Danton and Robespierre as its leaders. The Christian religion and the old chronology were abolished. The "Age of Reason" (of which Thomas Paine had written so eloquently during the American Revolution) had come and with it the "Terror" which for more than a year killed good and bad and indifferent people at the rate of seventy or eighty a day. The autocratic rule of the King had been destroyed. It was succeeded by the tyranny of a few people who had such a passionate love for democratic virtue that they felt compelled to kill all those who disagreed with them. France was turned into a slaughter house. Everybody suspected everybody else. No one felt safe. Out of sheer fear, a few members of the old Convention, who knew that they were the next candidates for the scaffold, finally turned against Robespierre, who had already decapitated most of his former colleagues. Robespierre, "the only true and pure Democrat," tried to kill himself but failed His shattered jaw was hastily bandaged and he was dragged to the guillotine. On the 27th of July, of the year 1794 (the 9th Thermidor of the year II, according to the strange chronology of the revolution), the reign of Terror came to an end, and all Paris danced with joy. The dangerous position of France, however, made it necessary that the government remain in the hands of a few strong men, until the many enemies of the revolution should have been driven from the soil of the French fatherland. While the half-clad and half-starved revolutionary armies fought their desperate battles of the Rhine and Italy and Belgium and Egypt, and defeated every one of the enemies of the Great Revolution, five Directors were appointed, and they ruled France for four years. Then the power was vested in the hands of a successful general by the name of Napoleon Bonaparte, who became "First Consul" of France in the year 1799. And during the next fifteen years, the old European continent became the laboratory of a number of political experiments, the like of which the world had never seen before. NAPOLEON NAPOLEON NAPOLEON was born in the year 1769, the third son of Carlo Maria Buonaparte, an honest notary public of the city of Ajaccio in the island of Corsica, and his good wife, Letizia Ramolino. He therefore was not a Frenchman, but an Italian whose native island (an old Greek, Carthaginian and Roman colony in the Mediterranean Sea) had for years been struggling to regain its independence, first of all from the Genoese, and after the middle of the eighteenth century from the French, who had kindly offered to help the Corsicans in their struggle for freedom and had then occupied the island for their own benefit. During the first twenty years of his life, young Napoleon was a professional Corsican patriot--a Corsican Sinn Feiner, who hoped to deliver his beloved country from the yoke of the bitterly hated French enemy. But the French revolution had unexpectedly recognised the claims of the Corsicans and gradually Napoleon, who had received a good training at the military school of Brienne, drifted into the service of his adopted country. Although he never learned to spell French correctly or to speak it without a broad Italian accent, he became a Frenchman. In due time he came to stand as the highest expression of all French virtues. At present he is regarded as the symbol of the Gallic genius. Napoleon was what is called a fast worker. His career does not cover more than twenty years. In that short span of time he fought more wars and gained more victories and marched more miles and conquered more square kilometers and killed more people and brought about more reforms and generally upset Europe to a greater extent than anybody (including Alexander the Great and Jenghis Khan) had ever managed to do. He was a little fellow and during the first years of his life his health was not very good. He never impressed anybody by his good looks and he remained to the end of his days very clumsy whenever he was obliged to appear at a social function. He did not enjoy a single advantage of breeding or birth or riches. For the greater part of his youth he was desperately poor and often he had to go without a meal or was obliged to make a few extra pennies in curious ways. He gave little promise as a literary genius. When he competed for a prize offered by the Academy of Lyons, his essay was found to be next to the last and he was number 15 out of 16 candidates. But he overcame all these difficulties through his absolute and unshakable belief in his own destiny, and in his own glorious future. Ambition was the main-spring of his life. The thought of self, the worship of that capital letter "N" with which he signed all his letters, and which recurred forever in the ornaments of his hastily constructed palaces, the absolute will to make the name Napoleon the most important thing in the world next to the name of God, these desires carried Napoleon to a pinnacle of fame which no other man has ever reached. When he was a half-pay lieutenant, young Bonaparte was very fond of the "Lives of Famous Men" which Plutarch, the Roman historian, had written. But he never tried to live up to the high standard of character set by these heroes of the older days. Napoleon seems to have been devoid of all those considerate and thoughtful sentiments which make men different from the animals. It will be very difficult to decide with any degree of accuracy whether he ever loved anyone besides himself. He kept a civil tongue to his mother, but Letizia had the air and manners of a great lady and after the fashion of Italian mothers, she knew how to rule her brood of children and command their respect. For a few years he was fond of Josephine, his pretty Creole wife, who was the daughter of a French officer of Martinique and the widow of the Vicomte de Beauharnais, who had been executed by Robespierre when he lost a battle against the Prussians. But the Emperor divorced her when she failed to give him a son and heir and married the daughter of the Austrian Emperor, because it seemed good policy. During the siege of Toulon, where he gained great fame as commander of a battery, Napoleon studied Macchiavelli with industrious care. He followed the advice of the Florentine statesman and never kept his word when it was to his advantage to break it. The word "gratitude" did not occur in his personal dictionary. Neither, to be quite fair, did he expect it from others. He was totally indifferent to human suffering. He executed prisoners of war (in Egypt in 1798) who had been promised their lives, and he quietly allowed his wounded in Syria to be chloroformed when he found it impossible to transport them to his ships. He ordered the Duke of Enghien to be condemned to death by a prejudiced court-martial and to be shot contrary to all law on the sole ground that the "Bourbons needed a warning." He decreed that those German officers who were made prisoner while fighting for their country's independence should be shot against the nearest wall, and when Andreas Hofer, the Tyrolese hero, fell into his hands after a most heroic resistance, he was executed like a common traitor. In short, when we study the character of the Emperor, we begin to understand those anxious British mothers who used to drive their children to bed with the threat that "Bonaparte, who ate little boys and girls for breakfast, would come and get them if they were not very good." And yet, having said these many unpleasant things about this strange tyrant, who looked after every other department of his army with the utmost care, but neglected the medical service, and who ruined his uniforms with Eau de Cologne because he could not stand the smell of his poor sweating soldiers; having said all these unpleasant things and being fully prepared to add many more, I must confess to a certain lurking feeling of doubt. Here I am sitting at a comfortable table loaded heavily with books, with one eye on my typewriter and the other on Licorice the cat, who has a great fondness for carbon paper, and I am telling you that the Emperor Napoleon was a most contemptible person. But should I happen to look out of the window, down upon Seventh Avenue, and should the endless procession of trucks and carts come to a sudden halt, and should I hear the sound of the heavy drums and see the little man on his white horse in his old and much-worn green uniform, then I don't know, but I am afraid that I would leave my books and the kitten and my home and everything else to follow him wherever he cared to lead. My own grandfather did this and Heaven knows he was not born to be a hero. Millions of other people's grandfathers did it. They received no reward, but they expected none. They cheerfully gave legs and arms and lives to serve this foreigner, who took them a thousand miles away from their homes and marched them into a barrage of Russian or English or Spanish or Italian or Austrian cannon and stared quietly into space while they were rolling in the agony of death. If you ask me for an explanation, I must answer that I have none. I can only guess at one of the reasons. Napoleon was the greatest of actors and the whole European continent was his stage. At all times and under all circumstances he knew the precise attitude that would impress the spectators most and he understood what words would make the deepest impression. Whether he spoke in the Egyptian desert, before the backdrop of the Sphinx and the pyramids, or addressed his shivering men on the dew-soaked plains of Italy, made no difference. At all times he was master of the situation. Even at the end, an exile on a little rock in the middle of the Atlantic, a sick man at the mercy of a dull and intolerable British governor, he held the centre of the stage. After the defeat of Waterloo, no one outside of a few trusted friends ever saw the great Emperor. The people of Europe knew that he was living on the island of St. Helena--they knew that a British garrison guarded him day and night--they knew that the British fleet guarded the garrison which guarded the Emperor on his farm at Longwood. But he was never out of the mind of either friend or enemy. When illness and despair had at last taken him away, his silent eyes continued to haunt the world. Even to-day he is as much of a force in the life of France as a hundred years ago when people fainted at the mere sight of this sallow-faced man who stabled his horses in the holiest temples of the Russian Kremlin, and who treated the Pope and the mighty ones of this earth as if they were his lackeys. To give you a mere outline of his life would demand couple of volumes. To tell you of his great political reform of the French state, of his new codes of laws which were adopted in most European countries, of his activities in every field of public activity, would take thousands of pages. But I can explain in a few words why he was so successful during the first part of his career and why he failed during the last ten years. From the year 1789 until the year 1804, Napoleon was the great leader of the French revolution. He was not merely fighting for the glory of his own name. He defeated Austria and Italy and England and Russia because he, himself, and his soldiers were the apostles of the new creed of "Liberty, Fraternity and Equality" and were the enemies of the courts while they were the friends of the people. But in the year 1804, Napoleon made himself Hereditary Emperor of the French and sent for Pope Pius VII to come and crown him, even as Leo III, in the year 800 had crowned that other great King of the Franks, Charlemagne, whose example was constantly before Napoleon's eyes. Once upon the throne, the old revolutionary chieftain became an unsuccessful imitation of a Habsburg monarch. He forgot his spiritual Mother, the Political Club of the Jacobins. He ceased to be the defender of the oppressed. He became the chief of all the oppressors and kept his shooting squads ready to execute those who dared to oppose his imperial will. No one had shed a tear when in the year 1806 the sad remains of the Holy Roman Empire were carted to the historical dustbin and when the last relic of ancient Roman glory was destroyed by the grandson of an Italian peasant. But when the Napoleonic armies had invaded Spain, had forced the Spaniards to recognise a king whom they detested, had massacred the poor Madrilenes who remained faithful to their old rulers, then public opinion turned against the former hero of Marengo and Austerlitz and a hundred other revolutionary battles. Then and only then, when Napoleon was no longer the hero of the revolution but the personification of all the bad traits of the Old Regime, was it possible for England to give direction to the fast-spreading sentiment of hatred which was turning all honest men into enemies of the French Emperor. The English people from the very beginning had felt deeply disgusted when their newspapers told them the gruesome details of the Terror. They had staged their own great revolution (during the reign of Charles I) a century before. It had been a very simple affair compared to the upheaval of Paris. In the eyes of the average Englishman a Jacobin was a monster to be shot at sight and Napoleon was the Chief Devil. The British fleet had blockaded France ever since the year 1798. It had spoiled Napoleon's plan to invade India by way of Egypt and had forced him to beat an ignominious retreat, after his victories along the banks of the Nile. And finally, in the year 1805, England got the chance it had waited for so long. Near Cape Trafalgar on the southwestern coast of Spain, Nelson annihilated the Napoleonic fleet, beyond a possible chance of recovery. From that moment on, the Emperor was landlocked. Even so, he would have been able to maintain himself as the recognised ruler of the continent had he understood the signs of the times and accepted the honourable peace which the powers offered him. But Napoleon had been blinded by the blaze of his own glory. He would recognise no equals. He could tolerate no rivals. And his hatred turned against Russia, the mysterious land of the endless plains with its inexhaustible supply of cannon-fodder. As long as Russia was ruled by Paul I, the half-witted son of Catherine the Great, Napoleon had known how to deal with the situation. But Paul grew more and more irresponsible until his exasperated subjects were obliged to murder him (lest they all be sent to the Siberian lead-mines) and the son of Paul, the Emperor Alexander, did not share his father's affection for the usurper whom he regarded as the enemy of mankind, the eternal disturber of the peace. He was a pious man who believed that he had been chosen by God to deliver the world from the Corsican curse. He joined Prussia and England and Austria and he was defeated. He tried five times and five times he failed. In the year 1812 he once more taunted Napoleon until the French Emperor, in a blind rage, vowed that he would dictate peace in Moscow. Then, from far and wide, from Spain and Germany and Holland and Italy and Portugal, unwilling regiments were driven northward, that the wounded pride of the great Emperor might be duly avenged. The rest of the story is common knowledge. After a march of two months, Napoleon reached the Russian capital and established his headquarters in the holy Kremlin. On the night of September 15 of the year 1812, Moscow caught fire. The town burned four days. When the evening of the fifth day came, Napoleon gave the order for the retreat. Two weeks later it began to snow. The army trudged through mud and sleet until November the 26th when the river Berezina was reached. Then the Russian attacks began in all seriousness. The Cossacks swarmed around the "Grande Armee" which was no longer an army but a mob. In the middle of December the first of the survivors began to be seen in the German cities of the East. Then there were many rumours of an impending revolt. "The time has come," the people of Europe said, "to free ourselves from this insufferable yoke." And they began to look for old shotguns which had escaped the eye of the ever-present French spies. But ere they knew what had happened, Napoleon was back with a new army. He had left his defeated soldiers and in his little sleigh had rushed ahead to Paris, making a final appeal for more troops that he might defend the sacred soil of France against foreign invasion. Children of sixteen and seventeen followed him when he moved eastward to meet the allied powers. On October 16, 18, and 19 of the year 1813, the terrible battle of Leipzig took place where for three days boys in green and boys in blue fought each other until the Elbe ran red with blood. On the afternoon of the 17th of October, the massed reserves of Russian infantry broke through the French lines and Napoleon fled. Back to Paris he went. He abdicated in favour of his small son, but the allied powers insisted that Louis XVIII, the brother of the late king Louis XVI, should occupy the French throne, and surrounded by Cossacks and Uhlans, the dull-eyed Bourbon prince made his triumphal entry into Paris. As for Napoleon he was made the sovereign ruler of the little island of Elba in the Mediterranean where he organised his stable boys into a miniature army and fought battles on a chess board. But no sooner had he left France than the people began to realise what they had lost. The last twenty years, however costly, had been a period of great glory. Paris had been the capital of the world. The fat Bourbon king who had learned nothing and had forgotten nothing during the days of his exile disgusted everybody by his indolence. On the first of March of the year 1815, when the representatives of the allies were ready to begin the work of unscrambling the map of Europe, Napoleon suddenly landed near Cannes. In less than a week the French army had deserted the Bourbons and had rushed southward to offer their swords and bayonets to the "little Corporal." Napoleon marched straight to Paris where he arrived on the twentieth of March. This time he was more cautious. He offered peace, but the allies insisted upon war. The whole of Europe arose against the "perfidious Corsican." Rapidly the Emperor marched northward that he might crush his enemies before they should be able to unite their forces. But Napoleon was no longer his old self. He felt sick. He got tired easily. He slept when he ought to have been up directing the attack of his advance-guard. Besides, he missed many of his faithful old generals. They were dead. Early in June his armies entered Belgium. On the 16th of that month he defeated the Prussians under Blucher. But a subordinate commander failed to destroy the retreating army as he had been ordered to do. Two days later, Napoleon met Wellington near Waterloo. It was the 18th of June, a Sunday. At two o'clock of the afternoon, the battle seemed won for the French. At three a speck of dust appeared upon the eastern horizon. Napoleon believed that this meant the approach of his own cavalry who would now turn the English defeat into a rout. At four o'clock he knew better. Cursing and swearing, old Blucher drove his deathly tired troops into the heart of the fray. The shock broke the ranks of the guards. Napoleon had no further reserves. He told his men to save themselves as best they could, and he fled. For a second time, he abdicated in favor of his son. Just one hundred days after his escape from Elba, he was making for the coast. He intended to go to America. In the year 1803, for a mere song, he had sold the French colony of Louisiana (which was in great danger of being captured by the English) to the young American Republic. "The Americans," so he said, "will be grateful and will give me a little bit of land and a house where I may spend the last days of my life in peace and quiet." But the English fleet was watching all French harbours. Caught between the armies of the Allies and the ships of the British, Napoleon had no choice. The Prussians intended to shoot him. The English might be more generous. At Rochefort he waited in the hope that something might turn up. One month after Waterloo, he received orders from the new French government to leave French soil inside of twenty-four hours. Always the tragedian, he wrote a letter to the Prince Regent of England (George IV, the king, was in an insane asylum) informing His Royal Highness of his intention to "throw himself upon the mercy of his enemies and like Themistocles, to look for a welcome at the fireside of his foes..." On the 15th of July he went on board the "Bellerophon," and surrendered his sword to Admiral Hotham. At Plymouth he was transferred to the "Northumberland" which carried him to St. Helena. There he spent the last seven years of his life. He tried to write his memoirs, he quarrelled with his keepers and he dreamed of past times. Curiously enough he returned (at least in his imagination) to his original point of departure. He remembered the days when he had fought the battles of the Revolution. He tried to convince himself that he had always been the true friend of those great principles of "Liberty, Fraternity and Equality" which the ragged soldiers of the convention had carried to the ends of the earth. He liked to dwell upon his career as Commander-in-Chief and Consul. He rarely spoke of the Empire. Sometimes he thought of his son, the Duke of Reichstadt, the little eagle, who lived in Vienna, where he was treated as a "poor relation" by his young Habsburg cousins, whose fathers had trembled at the very mention of the name of Him. When the end came, he was leading his troops to victory. He ordered Ney to attack with the guards. Then he died. But if you want an explanation of this strange career, if you really wish to know how one man could possibly rule so many people for so many years by the sheer force of his will, do not read the books that have been written about him. Their authors either hated the Emperor or loved him. You will learn many facts, but it is more important to "feel history" than to know it. Don't read, but wait until you have a chance to hear a good artist sing the song called "The Two Grenadiers." The words were written by Heine, the great German poet who lived through the Napoleonic era. The music was composed by Schumann, a German who saw the Emperor, the enemy of his country, whenever he came to visit his imperial father-in-law. The song therefore is the work of two men who had every reason to hate the tyrant. Go and hear it. Then you will understand what a thousand volumes could not possibly tell you. THE HOLY ALLIANCE AS SOON AS NAPOLEON HAD BEEN SENT TO ST. HELENA THE RULERS WHO SO OFTEN HAD BEEN DEFEATED BY THE HATED "CORSICAN" MET AT VIENNA AND TRIED TO UNDO THE MANY CHANGES THAT HAD BEEN BROUGHT ABOUT BY THE FRENCH REVOLUTION THE Imperial Highnesses, the Royal Highnesses, their Graces the Dukes, the Ministers Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, together with the plain Excellencies and their army of secretaries, servants and hangers-on, whose labours had been so rudely interrupted by the sudden return of the terrible Corsican (now sweltering under the hot sun of St. Helena) went back to their jobs. The victory was duly celebrated with dinners, garden parties and balls at which the new and very shocking "waltz" was danced to the great scandal of the ladies and gentlemen who remembered the minuet of the old Regime. For almost a generation they had lived in retirement. At last the danger was over. They were very eloquent upon the subject of the terrible hardships which they had suffered. And they expected to be recompensed for every penny they had lost at the hands of the unspeakable Jacobins who had dared to kill their anointed king, who had abolished wigs and who had discarded the short trousers of the court of Versailles for the ragged pantaloons of the Parisian slums. You may think it absurd that I should mention such a detail. But, if you please, the Congress of Vienna was one long succession of such absurdities and for many months the question of "short trousers vs. long trousers" interested the delegates more than the future settlement of the Saxon or Spanish problems. His Majesty the King of Prussia went so far as to order a pair of short ones, that he might give public evidence of his contempt for everything revolutionary. Another German potentate, not to be outdone in this noble hatred for the revolution, decreed that all taxes which his subjects had paid to the French usurper should be paid a second time to the legitimate ruler who had loved his people from afar while they were at the mercy of the Corsican ogre. And so on. From one blunder to another, until one gasps and exclaims "but why in the name of High Heaven did not the people object?" Why not indeed? Because the people were utterly exhausted, were desperate, did not care what happened or how or where or by whom they were ruled, provided there was peace. They were sick and tired of war and revolution and reform. In the eighties of the previous century they had all danced around the tree of liberty. Princes had embraced their cooks and Duchesses had danced the Carmagnole with their lackeys in the honest belief that the Millennium of Equality and Fraternity had at last dawned upon this wicked world. Instead of the Millennium they had been visited by the Revolutionary commissary who had lodged a dozen dirty soldiers in their parlor and had stolen the family plate when he returned to Paris to report to his government upon the enthusiasm with which the "liberated country" had received the Constitution, which the French people had presented to their good neighbours. When they had heard how the last outbreak of revolutionary disorder in Paris had been suppressed by a young officer, called Bonaparte, or Buonaparte, who had turned his guns upon the mob, they gave a sigh of relief. A little less liberty, fraternity and equality seemed a very desirable thing. But ere long, the young officer called Buonaparte or Bonaparte became one of the three consuls of the French Republic, then sole consul and finally Emperor. As he was much more efficient than any ruler that had ever been seen before, his hand pressed heavily upon his poor subjects. He showed them no mercy. He impressed their sons into his armies, he married their daughters to his generals and he took their pictures and their statues to enrich his own museums. He turned the whole of Europe into an armed camp and killed almost an entire generation of men. Now he was gone, and the people (except a few professional military men) had but one wish. They wanted to be let alone. For awhile they had been allowed to rule themselves, to vote for mayors and aldermen and judges. The system had been a terrible failure. The new rulers had been inexperienced and extravagant. From sheer despair the people turned to the representative men of the old Regime. "You rule us," they said, "as you used to do. Tell us what we owe you for taxes and leave us alone. We are busy repairing the damage of the age of liberty." The men who stage-managed the famous congress certainly did their best to satisfy this longing for rest and quiet. The Holy Alliance, the main result of the Congress, made the policeman the most important dignitary of the State and held out the most terrible punishment to those who dared criticise a single official act. Europe had peace, but it was the peace of the cemetery. The three most important men at Vienna were the Emperor Alexander of Russia, Metternich, who represented the interests of the Austrian house of Habsburg, and Talleyrand, the erstwhile bishop of Autun, who had managed to live through the different changes in the French government by the sheer force of his cunning and his intelligence and who now travelled to the Austrian capital to save for his country whatever could be saved from the Napoleonic ruin. Like the gay young man of the limerick, who never knew when he was slighted, this unbidden guest came to the party and ate just as heartily as if he had been really invited. Indeed, before long, he was sitting at the head of the table entertaining everybody with his amusing stories and gaining the company's good will by the charm of his manner. Before he had been in Vienna twenty-four hours he knew that the allies were divided into two hostile camps. On the one side were Russia, who wanted to take Poland, and Prussia, who wanted to annex Saxony; and on the other side were Austria and England, who were trying to prevent this grab because it was against their own interest that either Prussia or Russia should be able to dominate Europe. Talleyrand played the two sides against each other with great skill and it was due to his efforts that the French people were not made to suffer for the ten years of oppression which Europe had endured at the hands of the Imperial officials. He argued that the French people had been given no choice in the matter. Napoleon had forced them to act at his bidding. But Napoleon was gone and Louis XVIII was on the throne. "Give him a chance," Talleyrand pleaded. And the Allies, glad to see a legitimate king upon the throne of a revolutionary country, obligingly yielded and the Bourbons were given their chance, of which they made such use that they were driven out after fifteen years. The second man of the triumvirate of Vienna was Metternich, the Austrian prime minister, the leader of the foreign policy of the house of Habsburg. Wenzel Lothar, Prince of Metternich-Winneburg, was exactly what the name suggests. He was a Grand Seigneur, a very handsome gentleman with very fine manners, immensely rich, and very able, but the product of a society which lived a thousand miles away from the sweating multitudes who worked and slaved in the cities and on the farms. As a young man, Metternich had been studying at the University of Strassburg when the French Revolution broke out. Strassburg, the city which gave birth to the Marseillaise, had been a centre of Jacobin activities. Metternich remembered that his pleasant social life had been sadly interrupted, that a lot of incompetent citizens had suddenly been called forth to perform tasks for which they were not fit, that the mob had celebrated the dawn of the new liberty by the murder of perfectly innocent persons. He had failed to see the honest enthusiasm of the masses, the ray of hope in the eyes of women and children who carried bread and water to the ragged troops of the Convention, marching through the city on their way to the front and a glorious death for the French Fatherland. The whole thing had filled the young Austrian with disgust. It was uncivilised. If there were any fighting to be done it must be done by dashing young men in lovely uniforms, charging across the green fields on well-groomed horses. But to turn an entire country into an evil-smelling armed camp where tramps were overnight promoted to be generals, that was both wicked and senseless. "See what came of all your fine ideas," he would say to the French diplomats whom he met at a quiet little dinner given by one of the innumerable Austrian grand-dukes. "You wanted liberty, equality and fraternity and you got Napoleon. How much better it would have been if you had been contented with the existing order of things." And he would explain his system of "stability." He would advocate a return to the normalcy of the good old days before the war, when everybody was happy and nobody talked nonsense about "everybody being as good as everybody else." In this attitude he was entirely sincere and as he was an able man of great strength of will and a tremendous power of persuasion, he was one of the most dangerous enemies of the Revolutionary ideas. He did not die until the year 1859, and he therefore lived long enough to see the complete failure of all his policies when they were swept aside by the revolution of the year 1848. He then found himself the most hated man of Europe and more than once ran the risk of being lynched by angry crowds of outraged citizens. But until the very last, he remained steadfast in his belief that he had done the right thing. He had always been convinced that people preferred peace to liberty and he had tried to give them what was best for them. And in all fairness, it ought to be said that his efforts to establish universal peace were fairly successful. The great powers did not fly at each other's throat for almost forty years, indeed not until the Crimean war between Russia and England, France and Italy and Turkey, in the year 1854. That means a record for the European continent. The third hero of this waltzing congress was the Emperor Alexander. He had been brought up at the court of his grand-mother, the famous Catherine the Great. Between the lessons of this shrewd old woman, who taught him to regard the glory of Russia as the most important thing in life, and those of his private tutor, a Swiss admirer of Voltaire and Rousseau, who filled his mind with a general love of humanity, the boy grew up to be a strange mixture of a selfish tyrant and a sentimental revolutionist. He had suffered great indignities during the life of his crazy father, Paul I. He had been obliged to wit-ness the wholesale slaughter of the Napoleonic battle-fields. Then the tide had turned. His armies had won the day for the Allies. Russia had become the saviour of Europe and the Tsar of this mighty people was acclaimed as a half-god who would cure the world of its many ills. But Alexander was not very clever. He did not know men and women as Talleyrand and Metternich knew them. He did not understand the strange game of diplomacy. He was vain (who would not be under the circumstances?) and loved to hear the applause of the multitude and soon he had become the main "attraction" of the Congress while Metternich and Talleyrand and Castlereagh (the very able British representative) sat around a table and drank a bottle of Tokay and decided what was actually going to be done. They needed Russia and therefore they were very polite to Alexander, but the less he had personally to do with the actual work of the Congress, the better they were pleased. They even encouraged his plans for a Holy Alliance that he might be fully occupied while they were engaged upon the work at hand. Alexander was a sociable person who liked to go to parties and meet people. Upon such occasions he was happy and gay but there was a very different element in his character. He tried to forget something which he could not forget. On the night of the 23rd of March of the year 1801 he had been sitting in a room of the St. Michael Palace in Petersburg, waiting for the news of his father's abdication. But Paul had refused to sign the document which the drunken officers had placed before him on the table, and in their rage they had put a scarf around his neck and had strangled him to death. Then they had gone downstairs to tell Alexander that he was Emperor of all the Russian lands. The memory of this terrible night stayed with the Tsar who was a very sensitive person. He had been educated in the school of the great French philosophers who did not believe in God but in Human Reason. But Reason alone could not satisfy the Emperor in his predicament. He began to hear voices and see things. He tried to find a way by which he could square himself with his conscience. He became very pious and began to take an interest in mysticism, that strange love of the mysterious and the unknown which is as old as the temples of Thebes and Babylon. The tremendous emotion of the great revolutionary era had influenced the character of the people of that day in a strange way. Men and women who had lived through twenty years of anxiety and fear were no longer quite normal. They jumped whenever the door-bell rang. It might mean the news of the "death on the field of honour" of an only son. The phrases about "brotherly love" and "liberty" of the Revolution were hollow words in the ears of sorely stricken peasants. They clung to anything that might give them a new hold on the terrible problems of life. In their grief and misery they were easily imposed upon by a large number of imposters who posed as prophets and preached a strange new doctrine which they dug out of the more obscure passages of the Book of Revelations. In the year 1814, Alexander, who had already consulted a large number of wonder-doctors, heard of a new seeress who was foretelling the coming doom of the world and was exhorting people to repent ere it be too late. The Baroness von Krudener, the lady in question, was a Russian woman of uncertain age and similar reputation who had been the wife of a Russian diplomat in the days of the Emperor Paul. She had squandered her husband's money and had disgraced him by her strange love affairs. She had lived a very dissolute life until her nerves had given way and for a while she was not in her right mind. Then she had been converted by the sight of the sudden death of a friend. Thereafter she despised all gaiety. She confessed her former sins to her shoemaker, a pious Moravian brother, a follower of the old reformer John Huss, who had been burned for his heresies by the Council of Constance in the year 1415. The next ten years the Baroness spent in Germany making a specialty of the "conversion" of kings and princes. To convince Alexander, the Saviour of Europe, of the error of his ways was the greatest ambition of her life. And as Alexander, in his misery, was willing to listen to anybody who brought him a ray of hope, the interview was easily arranged. On the evening of the fourth of June of the year 1815, she was admitted to the tent of the Emperor. She found him reading his Bible. We do not know what she said to Alexander, but when she left him three hours later, he was bathed in tears, and vowed that "at last his soul had found peace." From that day on the Baroness was his faithful companion and his spiritual adviser. She followed him to Paris and then to Vienna and the time which Alexander did not spend dancing he spent at the Krudener prayer-meetings. You may ask why I tell you this story in such great detail? Are not the social changes of the nineteenth century of greater importance than the career of an ill-balanced woman who had better be forgotten? Of course they are, but there exist any number of books which will tell you of these other things with great accuracy and in great detail. I want you to learn something more from this history than a mere succession of facts. I want you to approach all historical events in a frame of mind that will take nothing for granted. Don't be satisfied with the mere statement that "such and such a thing happened then and there." Try to discover the hidden motives behind every action and then you will understand the world around you much better and you will have a greater chance to help others, which (when all is said and done) is the only truly satisfactory way of living. I do not want you to think of the Holy Alliance as a piece of paper which was signed in the year 1815 and lies dead and forgotten somewhere in the archives of state. It may be forgotten but it is by no means dead. The Holy Alliance was directly responsible for the promulgation of the Monroe Doctrine, and the Monroe Doctrine of America for the Americans has a very distinct bearing upon your own life. That is the reason why I want you to know exactly how this document happened to come into existence and what the real motives were underlying this outward manifestation of piety and Christian devotion to duty. The Holy Alliance was the joint labour of an unfortunate man who had suffered a terrible mental shock and who was trying to pacify his much-disturbed soul, and of an ambitious woman who after a wasted life had lost her beauty and her attraction and who satisfied her vanity and her desire for notoriety by assuming the role of self-appointed Messiah of a new and strange creed. I am not giving away any secrets when I tell you these details. Such sober minded people as Castlereagh, Metternich and Talleyrand fully understood the limited abilities of the sentimental Baroness. It would have been easy for Metternich to send her back to her German estates. A few lines to the almighty commander of the imperial police and the thing was done. But France and England and Austria depended upon the good-will of Russia. They could not afford to offend Alexander. And they tolerated the silly old Baroness because they had to. And while they regarded the Holy Alliance as utter rubbish and not worth the paper upon which it was written, they listened patiently to the Tsar when he read them the first rough draft of this attempt to create the Brotherhood of Men upon a basis of the Holy Scriptures. For this is what the Holy Alliance tried to do, and the signers of the document solemnly declared that they would "in the administration of their respective states and in their political relations with every other government take for their sole guide the precepts of that Holy Religion, namely the precepts of Justice, Christian Charity and Peace, which far from being applicable only to private concerns must have an immediate influence on the councils of princes, and must guide all their steps as being the only means of consolidating human institutions and remedying their imperfections." They then proceeded to promise each other that they would remain united "by the bonds of a true and indissoluble fraternity, and considering each other as fellow-countrymen, they would on all occasions and in all places lend each other aid and assistance." And more words to the same effect. Eventually the Holy Alliance was signed by the Emperor of Austria, who did not understand a word of it. It was signed by the Bourbons who needed the friendship of Napoleon's old enemies. It was signed by the King of Prussia, who hoped to gain Alexander for his plans for a "greater Prussia," and by all the little nations of Europe who were at the mercy of Russia. England never signed, because Castlereagh thought the whole thing buncombe. The Pope did not sign because he resented this interference in his business by a Greek-Orthodox and a Protestant. And the Sultan did not sign because he never heard of it. The general mass of the European people, however, soon were forced to take notice. Behind the hollow phrases of the Holy Alliance stood the armies of the Quintuple Alliance which Metternich had created among the great powers. These armies meant business. They let it be known that the peace of Europe must not be disturbed by the so-called liberals who were in reality nothing but disguised Jacobins, and hoped for a return of the revolutionary days. The enthusiasm for the great wars of liberation of the years 1812, 1818, 1814 and 1815 had begun to wear off. It had been followed by a sincere belief in the coming of a happier day. The soldiers who had borne the brunt of the battle wanted peace and they said so. But they did not want the sort of peace which the Holy Alliance and the Council of the European powers had now bestowed upon them. They cried that they had been betrayed. But they were careful lest they be heard by a secret-police spy. The reaction was victorious. It was a reaction caused by men who sincerely believed that their methods were necessary for the good of humanity. But it was just as hard to bear as if their intentions had been less kind. And it caused a great deal of unnecessary suffering and greatly retarded the orderly progress of political development. THE GREAT REACTION THEY TRIED TO ASSURE THE WORLD AN ERA OF UNDISTURBED PEACE BY SUPPRESSING ALL NEW IDEAS. THEY MADE THE POLICE-SPY THE HIGHEST FUNCTIONARY IN THE STATE AND SOON THE PRISONS OF ALL COUNTRIES WERE FILLED WITH THOSE WHO CLAIMED THAT PEOPLE HAVE THE RIGHT TO GOVERN THEMSELVES AS THEY SEE FIT To undo the damage done by the great Napoleonic flood was almost impossible. Age-old fences had been washed away. The palaces of two score dynasties had been damaged to such an extent that they had to be condemned as uninhabitable. Other royal residences had been greatly enlarged at the expense of less fortunate neighbours. Strange odds and ends of revolutionary doctrine had been left behind by the receding waters and could not be dislodged without danger to the entire community. But the political engineers of the Congress did the best they could and this is what they accomplished. France had disturbed the peace of the world for so many years that people had come to fear that country almost instinctively. The Bourbons, through the mouth of Talleyrand, had promised to be good, but the Hundred Days had taught Europe what to expect should Napoleon manage to escape for a second time. The Dutch Republic, therefore, was changed into a Kingdom, and Belgium (which had not joined the Dutch struggle for independence in the sixteenth century and since then had been part of the Habsburg domains, firs t under Spanish rule and thereafter under Austrian rule) was made part of this new kingdom of the Netherlands. Nobody wanted this union either in the Protestant North or in the Catholic South, but no questions were asked. It seemed good for the peace of Europe and that was the main consideration. Poland had hoped for great things because a Pole, Prince Adam Czartoryski, was one of the most intimate friends of Tsar Alexander and had been his constant advisor during the war and at the Congress of Vienna. But Poland was made a semi-independent part of Russia with Alexander as her king. This solution pleased no one and caused much bitter feeling and three revolutions. Denmark, which had remained a faithful ally of Napoleon until the end, was severely punished. Seven years before, an English fleet had sailed down the Kattegat and without a declaration of war or any warning had bombarded Copenhagen and had taken away the Danish fleet, lest it be of value to Napoleon. The Congress of Vienna went one step further. It took Norway (which since the union of Calmar of the year 1397 had been united with Denmark) away from Denmark and gave it to Charles XIV of Sweden as a reward for his betrayal of Napoleon, who had set him up in the king business. This Swedish king, curiously enough, was a former French general by the name of Bernadotte, who had come to Sweden as one of Napolean's{sic} adjutants, and had been invited to the throne of that good country when the last of the rulers of the house of Hollstein-Gottorp had died without leaving either son or daughter. From 1815 until 1844 he ruled his adopted country (the language of which he never learned) width great ability. He was a clever man and enjoyed the respect of both his Swedish and his Norwegian subjects, but he did not succeed in joining two countries which nature and history had put asunder. The dual Scandinavian state was never a success and in 1905, Norway, in a most peaceful and orderly manner, set up as an independent kingdom and the Swedes bade her "good speed" and very wisely let her go her own way. The Italians, who since the days of the Renaissance had been at the mercy of a long series of invaders, also had put great hopes in General Bonaparte. The Emperor Napoleon, however, had grievously disappointed them. Instead of the United Italy which the people wanted, they had been divided into a number of little principalities, duchies, republics and the Papal State, which (next to Naples) was the worst governed and most miserable region of the entire peninsula. The Congress of Vienna abolished a few of the Napoleonic republics and in their place resurrected several old principalities which were given to deserving members, both male and female, of the Habsburg family. The poor Spaniards, who had started the great nationalistic revolt against Napoleon, and who had sacrificed the best blood of the country for their king, were punished severely when the Congress allowed His Majesty to return to his domains. This vicious creature, known as Ferdinand VII, had spent the last four years of his life as a prisoner of Napoleon. He had improved his days by knitting garments for the statues of his favourite patron saints. He celebrated his return by re-introducing the Inquisition and the torture-chamber, both of which had been abolished by the Revolution. He was a disgusting person, despised as much by his subjects as by his four wives, but the Holy Alliance maintained him upon his legitimate throne and all efforts of the decent Spaniards to get rid of this curse and make Spain a constitutional kingdom ended in bloodshed and executions. Portugal had been without a king since the year 1807 when the royal family had fled to the colonies in Brazil. The country had been used as a base of supply for the armies of Wellington during the Peninsula war, which lasted from 1808 until 1814. After 1815 Portugal continued to be a sort of British province until the house of Braganza returned to the throne, leaving one of its members behind in Rio de Janeiro as Emperor of Brazil, the only American Empire which lasted for more than a few years, and which came to an end in 1889 when the country became a republic. In the east, nothing was done to improve the terrible conditions of both the Slavs and the Greeks who were still subjects of the Sultan. In the year 1804 Black George, a Servian swineherd, (the founder of the Karageorgevich dynasty) had started a revolt against the Turks, but he had been defeated by his enemies and had been murdered by one of his supposed friends, the rival Servian leader, called Milosh Obrenovich, (who became the founder of the Obrenovich dynasty) and the Turks had continued to be the undisputed masters of the Balkans. The Greeks, who since the loss of their independence, two thousand years before, had been subjects of the Macedonians, the Romans, the Venetians and the Turks, had hoped that their countryman, Capo d'Istria, a native of Corfu and together with Czartoryski, the most intimate personal friends of Alexander, would do something for them. But the Congress of Vienna was not interested in Greeks, but was very much interested in keeping all "legitimate" monarchs, Christian, Moslem and otherwise, upon their respective thrones. Therefore nothing was done. The last, but perhaps the greatest blunder of the Congress was the treatment of Germany. The Reformation and the Thirty Years War had not only destroyed the prosperity of the country, but had turned it into a hopeless political rubbish heap, consisting of a couple of kingdoms, a few grand-duchies, a large number of duchies and hundreds of margravates, principalities, baronies, electorates, free cities and free villages, ruled by the strangest assortment of potentates that was ever seen off the comic opera stage. Frederick the Great had changed this when he created a strong Prussia, but this state had not survived him by many years. Napoleon had blue-penciled the demand for independence of most of these little countries, and only fifty-two out of a total of more than three hundred had survived the year 1806. During the years of the great struggle for independence, many a young soldier had dreamed of a new Fatherland that should be strong and united. But there can be no union without a strong leadership, and who was to be this leader? There were five kingdoms in the German speaking lands. The rulers of two of these, Austria and Prussia, were kings by the Grace of God. The rulers of three others, Bavaria, Saxony and Wurtemberg, were kings by the Grace of Napoleon, and as they had been the faithful henchmen of the Emperor, their patriotic credit with the other Germans was therefore not very good. The Congress had established a new German Confederation, a league of thirty-eight sovereign states, under the chairmanship of the King of Austria, who was now known as the Emperor of Austria. It was the sort of make-shift arrangement which satisfied no one. It is true that a German Diet, which met in the old coronation city of Frankfort, had been created to discuss matters of "common policy and importance." But in this Diet, thirty-eight delegates represented thirty-eight different interests and as no decision could be taken without a unanimous vote (a parliamentary rule which had in previous centuries ruined the mighty kingdom of Poland), the famous German Confederation became very soon the laughing stock of Europe and the politics of the old Empire began to resemble those of our Central American neighbours in the forties and the fifties of the last century. It was terribly humiliating to the people who had sacrificed everything for a national ideal. But the Congress was not interested in the private feelings of "subjects," and the debate was closed. Did anybody object? Most assuredly. As soon as the first feeling of hatred against Napoleon had quieted down--as soon as the enthusiasm of the great war had subsided--as soon as the people came to a full realisation of the crime that had been committed in the name of "peace and stability" they began to murmur. They even made threats of open revolt. But what could they do? They were powerless. They were at the mercy of the most pitiless and efficient police system the world had ever seen. The members of the Congress of Vienna honestly and sincerely believed that "the Revolutionary Principle had led to the criminal usurpation of the throne by the former emperor Napoleon." They felt that they were called upon to eradicate the adherents of the so-called "French ideas" just as Philip II had only followed the voice of his conscience when he burned Protestants or hanged Moors. In the beginning of the sixteenth century a man who did not believe in the divine right of the Pope to rule his subjects as he saw fit was a "heretic" and it was the duty of all loyal citizens to kill him. In the beginning of the nineteenth century, on the continent of Europe, a man who did not believe in the divine right of his king to rule him as he or his Prime Minister saw fit, was a "heretic," and it was the duty of all loyal citizens to denounce him to the nearest policeman and see that he got punished. But the rulers of the year 1815 had learned efficiency in the school of Napoleon and they performed their task much better than it had been done in the year 1517. The period between the year 1815 and the year 1860 was the great era of the political spy. Spies were everywhere. They lived in palaces and they were to be found in the lowest gin-shops. They peeped through the key-holes of the ministerial cabinet and they listened to the conversations of the people who were taking the air on the benches of the Municipal Park. They guarded the frontier so that no one might leave without a duly viseed passport and they inspected all packages, that no books with dangerous "French ideas" should enter the realm of their Royal masters. They sat among the students in the lecture hall and woe to the Professor who uttered a word against the existing order of things. They followed the little boys and girls on their way to church lest they play hookey. In many of these tasks they were assisted by the clergy. The church had suffered greatly during the days of the revolution. The church property had been confiscated. Several priests had been killed and the generation that had learned its cathechism from Voltaire and Rousseau and the other French philosophers had danced around the Altar of Reason when the Committee of Public Safety had abolished the worship of God in October of the year 1793. The priests had followed the "emigres" into their long exile. Now they returned in the wake of the allied armies and they set to work with a vengeance. Even the Jesuits came back in 1814 and resumed their former labours of educating the young. Their order had been a little too successful in its fight against the enemies of the church. It had established "provinces" in every part of the world, to teach the natives the blessings of Christianity, but soon it had developed into a regular trading company which was for ever interfering with the civil authorities. During the reign of the Marquis de Pombal, the great reforming minister of Portugal, they had been driven out of the Portuguese lands and in the year 1773 at the request of most of the Catholic powers of Europe, the order had been suppressed by Pope Clement XIV. Now they were back on the job, and preached the principles of "obedience" and "love for the legitimate dynasty" to children whose parents had hired shopwindows that they might laugh at Marie Antoinette driving to the scaffold which was to end her misery. But in the Protestant countries like Prussia, things were not a whit better. The great patriotic leaders of the year 1812, the poets and the writers who had preached a holy war upon the usurper, were now branded as dangerous "demagogues." Their houses were searched. Their letters were read. They were obliged to report to the police at regular intervals and give an account of themselves. The Prussian drill master was let loose in all his fury upon the younger generation. When a party of students celebrated the tercentenary of the Reformation with noisy but harmless festivities on the old Wartburg, the Prussian bureaucrats had visions of an imminent revolution. When a theological student, more honest than intelligent, killed a Russian government spy who was operating in Germany, the universities were placed under police-supervision and professors were jailed or dismissed without any form of trial. Russia, of course, was even more absurd in these anti-revolutionary activities. Alexander had recovered from his attack of piety. He was gradually drifting toward melancholia. He well knew his own limited abilities and understood how at Vienna he had been the victim both of Metternich and the Krudener woman. More and more he turned his back upon the west and became a truly Russian ruler whose interests lay in Constantinople, the old holy city that had been the first teacher of the Slavs. The older he grew, the harder he worked and the less he was able to accomplish. And while he sat in his study, his ministers turned the whole of Russia into a land of military barracks. It is not a pretty picture. Perhaps I might have shortened this description of the Great Reaction. But it is just as well that you should have a thorough knowledge of this era. It was not the first time that an attempt had been made to set the clock of history back. The result was the usual one. NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE THE LOVE OF NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE, HOWEVER WAS TOO STRONG TO BE DESTROYED IN THIS WAY. THE SOUTH AMERICANS WERE THE FIRST TO REBEL AGAINST THE REACTIONARY MEASURES OF THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA, GREECE AND BELGIUM AND SPAIN AND A LARGE NUMBER OF OTHER COUNTRIES OF THE EUROPEAN CONTINENT FOLLOWED SUIT AND THE NINETEENTH CENTURY WAS FILLED WITH THE RUMOUR OF MANY WARS OF INDEPENDENCE IT will serve no good purpose to say "if only the Congress of Vienna had done such and such a thing instead of taking such and such a course, the history of Europe in the nineteenth century would have been different." The Congress of Vienna was a gathering of men who had just passed through a great revolution and through twenty years of terrible and almost continuous warfare. They came together for the purpose of giving Europe that "peace and stability" which they thought that the people needed and wanted. They were what we call reactionaries. They sincerely believed in the inability of the mass of the people to rule themselves. They re-arranged the map of Europe in such a way as seemed to promise the greatest possibility of a lasting success. They failed, but not through any premeditated wickedness on their part. They were, for the greater part, men of the old school who remembered the happier days of their quiet youth and ardently wished a return of that blessed period. They failed to recognise the strong hold which many of the revolutionary principles had gained upon the people of the European continent. That was a misfortune but hardly a sin. But one of the things which the French Revolution had taught not only Europe but America as well, was the right of people to their own "nationality." Napoleon, who respected nothing and nobody, was utterly ruthless in his dealing with national and patriotic aspirations. But the early revolutionary generals had proclaimed the new doctrine that "nationality was not a matter of political frontiers or round skulls and broad noses, but a matter of the heart and soul." While they were teaching the French children the greatness of the French nation, they encouraged Spaniards and Hollanders and Italians to do the same thing. Soon these people, who all shared Rousseau's belief in the superior virtues of Original Man, began to dig into their past and found, buried beneath the ruins of the feudal system, the bones of the mighty races of which they supposed themselves the feeble descendants. The first half of the nineteenth century was the era of the great historical discoveries. Everywhere historians were busy publishing mediaeval charters and early mediaeval chronicles and in every country the result was a new pride in the old fatherland. A great deal of this sentiment was based upon the wrong interpretation of historical facts. But in practical politics, it does not matter what is true, but everything depends upon what the people believe to be true. And in most countries both the kings and their subjects firmly believed in the glory and fame of their ancestors. The Congress of Vienna was not inclined to be sentimental. Their Excellencies divided the map of Europe according to the best interests of half a dozen dynasties and put "national aspirations" upon the Index, or list of forbidden books, together with all other dangerous "French doctrines." But history is no respecter of Congresses. For some reason or other (it may be an historical law, which thus far has escaped the attention of the scholars) "nations" seemed to be necessary for the orderly development of human society and the attempt to stem this tide was quite as unsuccessful as the Metternichian effort to prevent people from thinking. Curiously enough the first trouble began in a very distant part of the world, in South America. The Spanish colonies of that continent had been enjoying a period of relative independence during the many years of the great Napoleonic wars. They had even remained faithful to their king when he was taken prisoner by the French Emperor and they had refused to recognise Joseph Bonaparte, who had in the year 1808 been made King of Spain by order of his brother. Indeed, the only part of America to get very much upset by the Revolution was the island of Haiti, the Espagnola of Columbus' first trip. Here in the year 1791 the French Convention, in a sudden outburst of love and human brotherhood, had bestowed upon their black brethren all the privileges hitherto enjoyed by their white masters. Just as suddenly they had repented of this step, but the attempt to undo the original promise led to many years of terrible warfare between General Leclerc, the brother-in-law of Napoleon, and Toussaint l'Ouverture, the negro chieftain. In the year 1801, Toussaint was asked to visit Leclerc and discuss terms of peace. He received the solemn promise that he would not be molested. He trusted his white adversaries, was put on board a ship and shortly afterwards died in a French prison. But the negroes gained their independence all the same and founded a Republic. Incidentally they were of great help to the first great South American patriot in his efforts to deliver his native country from the Spanish yoke. Simon Bolivar, a native of Caracas in Venezuela, born in the year 1783, had been educated in Spain, had visited Paris where he had seen the Revolutionary government at work, had lived for a while in the United States and had returned to his native land where the widespread discontent against Spain, the mother country, was beginning to take a definite form. In the year 1811, Venezuela declared its independence and Bolivar became one of the revolutionary generals. Within two months, the rebels were defeated and Bolivar fled. For the next five years he was the leader of an apparently lost cause. He sacrificed all his wealth and he would not have been able to begin his final and successful expedition without the support of the President of Haiti. Thereafter the revolt spread all over South America and soon it appeared that Spain was not able to suppress the rebellion unaided. She asked for the support of the Holy Alliance. This step greatly worried England. The British shippers had succeeded the Dutch as the Common Carriers of the world and they expected to reap heavy profits from a declaration of independence on the part of all South America. They had hopes that the United States of America would interfere but the Senate had no such plans and in the House, too, there were many voices which declared that Spain ought to be given a free hand. Just then, there was a change of ministers in England. The Whigs went out and the Tories came in. George Canning became secretary of State. He dropped a hint that England would gladly back up the American government with all the might of her fleet, if said government would declare its disapproval of the plans of the Holy Alliance in regard to the rebellious colonies of the southern continent. President Monroe thereupon, on the 2nd of December of the year 1823, addressed Congress and stated that: "America would consider any attempt on the part of the allied powers to extend their system to any portion of this western hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety," and gave warning that "the American government would consider such action on the part of the Holy Alliance as a manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States." Four weeks later, the text of the "Monroe Doctrine" was printed in the English newspapers and the members of the Holy Alliance were forced to make their choice. Metternich hesitated. Personally he would have been willing to risk the displeasure of the United States (which had allowed both its army and navy to fall into neglect since the end of the Anglo-American war of the year 1812.) But Canning's threatening attitude and trouble on the continent forced him to be careful. The expedition never took place and South America and Mexico gained their independence. As for the troubles on the continent of Europe, they were coming fast and furious. The Holy Alliance had sent French troops to Spain to act as guardians of the peace in the year 1820. Austrian troops had been used for a similar purpose in Italy when the "Carbonari" (the secret society of the Charcoal Burners) were making propaganda for a united Italy and had caused a rebellion against the unspeakable Ferdinand of Naples. Bad news also came from Russia where the death of Alexander had been the sign for a revolutionary outbreak in St. Petersburg, a short but bloody upheaval, the so-called Dekaberist revolt (because it took place in December,) which ended with the hanging of a large number of good patriots who had been disgusted by the reaction of Alexander's last years and had tried to give Russia a constitutional form of government. But worse was to follow. Metternich had tried to assure himself of the continued support of the European courts by a series of conferences at Aix-la-Chapelle at Troppau at Laibach and finally at Verona. The delegates from the different powers duly travelled to these agreeable watering places where the Austrian prime minister used to spend his summers. They always promised to do their best to suppress revolt but they were none too certain of their success. The spirit of the people was beginning to be ugly and especially in France the position of the king was by no means satisfactory. The real trouble however began in the Balkans, the gateway to western Europe through which the invaders of that continent had passed since the beginning of time. The first outbreak was in Moldavia, the ancient Roman province of Dacia which had been cut off from the Empire in the third century. Since then, it had been a lost land, a sort of Atlantis, where the people had continued to speak the old Roman tongue and still called themselves Romans and their country Roumania. Here in the year 1821, a young Greek, Prince Alexander Ypsilanti, began a revolt against the Turks. He told his followers that they could count upon the support of Russia. But Metternich's fast couriers were soon on their way to St Petersburg and the Tsar, entirely persuaded by the Austrian arguments in favor of "peace and stability," refused to help. Ypsilanti was forced to flee to Austria where he spent the next seven years in prison. In the same year, 1821, trouble began in Greece. Since 1815 a secret society of Greek patriots had been preparing the way for a revolt. Suddenly they hoisted the flag of independence in the Morea (the ancient Peloponnesus) and drove the Turkish garrisons away. The Turks answered in the usual fashion. They took the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople, who was regarded as their Pope both by the Greeks and by many Russians, and they hanged him on Easter Sunday of the year 1821, together with a number of his bishops. The Greeks came back with a massacre of all the Mohammedans in Tripolitsa, the capital of the Morea and the Turks retaliated by an attack upon the island of Chios, where they murdered 25,000 Christians and sold 45,000 others as slaves into Asia and Egypt. Then the Greeks appealed to the European courts, but Metternich told them in so many words that they could "stew in their own grease," (I am not trying to make a pun, but I am quoting His Serene Highness who informed the Tsar that this "fire of revolt ought to burn itself out beyond the pale of civilisation" and the frontiers were closed to those volunteers who wished to go to the rescue of the patriotic Hellenes. Their cause seemed lost. At the request of Turkey, an Egyptian army was landed in the Morea and soon the Turkish flag was again flying from the Acropolis, the ancient stronghold of Athens. The Egyptian army then pacified the country "a la Turque," and Metternich followed the proceedings with quiet interest, awaiting the day when this "attempt against the peace of Europe" should be a thing of the past. Once more it was England which upset his plans. The greatest glory of England does not lie in her vast colonial possessions, in her wealth or her navy, but in the quiet heroism and independence of her average citizen. The Englishman obeys the law because he knows that respect for the rights of others marks the difference between a dog-kennel and civilised society. But he does not recognize the right of others to interfere with his freedom of thought. If his country does something which he believes to be wrong, he gets up and says so and the government which he attacks will respect him and will give him full protection against the mob which to-day, as in the time of Socrates, often loves to destroy those who surpass it in courage or intelligence. There never has been a good cause, however unpopular or however distant, which has not counted a number of Englishmen among its staunchest adherents. The mass of the English people are not different from those in other lands. They stick to the business at hand and have no time for unpractical "sporting ventures." But they rather admire their eccentric neighbour who drops everything to go and fight for some obscure people in Asia or Africa and when he has been killed they give him a fine public funeral and hold him up to their children as an example of valor and chivalry. Even the police spies of the Holy Alliance were powerless against this national characteristic. In the year 1824, Lord Byron, a rich young Englishman who wrote the poetry over which all Europe wept, hoisted the sails of his yacht and started south to help the Greeks. Three months later the news spread through Europe that their hero lay dead in Missolonghi, the last of the Greek strongholds. His lonely death caught the imagination of the people. In all countries, societies were formed to help the Greeks. Lafayette, the grand old man of the American revolution, pleaded their cause in France. The king of Bavaria sent hundreds of his officers. Money and supplies poured in upon the starving men of Missolonghi. In England, George Canning, who had defeated the plans of the Holy Alliance in South America, was now prime minis-ter. He saw his chance to checkmate Metternich for a second time. The English and Russian fleets were already in the Mediterranean. They were sent by governments which dared no longer suppress the popular enthusiasm for the cause of the Greek patriots. The French navy appeared because France, since the end of the Crusades, had assumed the role of the defender of the Christian faith in Mohammedan lands. On October 20 of the year 1827, the ships of the three nations attacked the Turkish fleet in the bay of Navarino and destroyed it. Rarely has the news of a battle been received with such general rejoicing. The people of western Europe and Russia who enjoyed no freedom at home consoled themselves by fighting an imaginary war of liberty on behalf of the oppressed Greeks. In the year 1829 they had their reward. Greece became an independent nation and the policy of reaction and stability suffered its second great defeat. It would be absurd were I to try, in this short volume, to give you a detailed account of the struggle for national independence in all other countries. There are a large number of excellent books devoted to such subjects. I have described the struggle for the independence of Greece because it was the first successful attack upon the bulwark of reaction which the Congress of Vienna had erected to "maintain the stability of Europe." That mighty fortress of suppression still held out and Metternich continued to be in command. But the end was near. In France the Bourbons had established an almost unbearable rule of police officials who were trying to undo the work of the French revolution, with an absolute disregard of the regulations and laws of civilised warfare. When Louis XVIII died in the year 1824, the people had enjoyed nine years of "peace" which had proved even more unhappy than the ten years of war of the Empire. Louis was succeeded by his brother, Charles X. Louis had belonged to that famous Bourbon family which, although it never learned anything, never forgot anything. The recollection of that morning in the town of Hamm, when news had reached him of the decapitation of his brother, remained a constant warning of what might happen to those kings who did not read the signs of the times aright. Charles, on the other hand, who had managed to run up private debts of fifty million francs before he was twenty years of age, knew nothing, remembered nothing and firmly intended to learn nothing. As soon as he had succeeded his brother, he established a government "by priests, through priests and for priests," and while the Duke of Wellington, who made this remark, cannot be called a violent liberal, Charles ruled in such a way that he disgusted even that trusted friend of law and order. When he tried to suppress the newspapers which dared to criticise his government, and dismissed the Parliament because it supported the Press, his days were numbered. On the night of the 27th of July of the year 1830, a revolution took place in Paris. On the 30th of the same month, the king fled to the coast and set sail for England. In this way the "famous farce of fifteen years" came to an end and the Bourbons were at last removed from the throne of France. They were too hopelessly incompetent. France then might have returned to a Republican form of government, but such a step would not have been tolerated by Metternich. The situation was dangerous enough. The spark of rebellion had leaped beyond the French frontier and had set fire to another powder house filled with national grievances. The new kingdom of the Netherlands had not been a success. The Belgian and the Dutch people had nothing in common and their king, William of Orange (the descendant of an uncle of William the Silent), while a hard worker and a good business man, was too much lacking in tact and pliability to keep the peace among his uncongenial subjects. Besides, the horde of priests which had descended upon France, had at once found its way into Belgium and whatever Protestant William tried to do was howled down by large crowds of excited citizens as a fresh attempt upon the "freedom of the Catholic church." On the 25th of August there was a popular outbreak against the Dutch authorities in Brussels. Two months later, the Belgians declared themselves independent and elected Leopold of Coburg, the uncle of Queen Victoria of England, to the throne. That was an excellent solution of the difficulty. The two countries, which never ought to have been united, parted their ways and thereafter lived in peace and harmony and behaved like decent neighbours. News in those days when there were only a few short railroads, travelled slowly, but when the success of the French and the Belgian revolutionists became known in Poland there was an immediate clash between the Poles and their Russian rulers which led to a year of terrible warfare and ended with a complete victory for the Russians who "established order along the banks of the Vistula" in the well-known Russian fashion Nicholas the first, who had succeeded his brother Alexander in 1825, firmly believed in the Divine Right of his own family, and the thousands of Polish refugees who had found shelter in western Europe bore witness to the fact that the principles of the Holy Alliance were still more than a hollow phrase in Holy Russia. In Italy too there was a moment of unrest. Marie Louise Duchess of Parma and wife of the former Emperor Napoleon, whom she had deserted after the defeat of Waterloo, was driven away from her country, and in the Papal state the exasperated people tried to establish an independent Republic. But the armies of Austria marched to Rome and soon every thing was as of old. Metternich continued to reside at the Ball Platz, the home of the foreign minister of the Habsburg dynasty, the police spies returned to their job, and peace reigned supreme. Eighteen more years were to pass before a second and more successful attempt could be made to deliver Europe from the terrible inheritance of the Vienna Congress. Again it was France, the revolutionary weather-cock of Europe, which gave the signal of revolt. Charles X had been succeeded by Louis Philippe, the son of that famous Duke of Orleans who had turned Jacobin, had voted for the death of his cousin the king, and had played a role during the early days of the revolution under the name of "Philippe Egalite" or "Equality Philip." Eventually he had been killed when Robespierre tried to purge the nation of all "traitors," (by which name he indicated those people who did not share his own views) and his son had been forced to run away from the revolutionary army. Young Louis Philippe thereupon had wandered far and wide. He had taught school in Switzerland and had spent a couple of years exploring the unknown "far west" of America. After the fall of Napoleon he had returned to Paris. He was much more intelligent than his Bourbon cousins. He was a simple man who went about in the public parks with a red cotton umbrella under his arm, followed by a brood of children like any good housefather. But France had outgrown the king business and Louis did not know this until the morning of the 24th of February, of the year 1848, when a crowd stormed the Tuilleries and drove his Majesty away and proclaimed the Republic. When the news of this event reached Vienna, Metternich expressed the casual opinion that this was only a repetition of the year 1793 and that the Allies would once more be obliged to march upon Paris and make an end to this very unseemly democratic row. But two weeks later his own Austrian capital was in open revolt. Metternich escaped from the mob through the back door of his palace, and the Emperor Ferdinand was forced to give his subjects a constitution which embodied most of the revolutionary principles which his Prime Minister had tried to suppress for the last thirty-three years. This time all Europe felt the shock. Hungary declared itself independent, and commenced a war against the Habsburgs under the leadership of Louis Kossuth. The unequal struggle lasted more than a year. It was finally suppressed by the armies of Tsar Nicholas who marched across the Carpathian mountains and made Hungary once more safe for autocracy. The Habsburgs thereupon established extraordinary court-martials and hanged the greater part of the Hungarian patriots whom they had not been able to defeat in open battle. As for Italy, the island of Sicily declared itself independent from Naples and drove its Bourbon king away. In the Papal states the prime minister, Rossi, was murdered and the Pope was forced to flee. He returned the next year at the head of a French army which remained in Rome to protect His Holiness against his subjects until the year 1870. Then it was called back to defend France against the Prussians, and Rome became the capital of Italy. In the north, Milan and Venice rose against their Austrian masters. They were supported by king Albert of Sardinia, but a strong Austrian army under old Radetzky marched into the valley of the Po, defeated the Sardinians near Custozza and Novara and forced Albert to abdicate in favour of his son, Victor Emanuel, who a few years later was to be the first king of a united Italy. In Germany the unrest of the year 1848 took the form of a great national demonstration in favour of political unity and a representative form of government. In Bavaria, the king who had wasted his time and money upon an Irish lady who posed as a Spanish dancer--(she was called Lola Montez and lies buried in New York's Potter's Field)--was driven away by the enraged students of the university. In Prussia, the king was forced to stand with uncovered head before the coffins of those who had been killed during the street fighting and to promise a constitutional form of government. And in March of the year 1849, a German parliament, consisting of 550 delegates from all parts of the country came together in Frankfort and proposed that king Frederick William of Prussia should be the Emperor of a United Germany. Then, however, the tide began to turn. Incompetent Ferdinand had abdicated in favour of his nephew Francis Joseph. The well-drilled Austrian army had remained faithful to their war-lord. The hangman was given plenty of work and the Habsburgs, after the nature of that strangely cat-like family, once more landed upon their feet and rapidly strengthened their position as the masters of eastern and western Europe. They played the game of politics very adroitly and used the jealousies of the other German states to prevent the elevation of the Prussian king to the Imperial dignity. Their long train-ing in the art of suffering defeat had taught them the value of patience. They knew how to wait. They bided their time and while the liberals, utterly untrained in practical politics, talked and talked and talked and got intoxicated by their own fine speeches, the Austrians quietly gathered their forces, dismissed the Parliament of Frankfort and re-established the old and impossible German confederation which the Congress of Vienna had wished upon an unsuspecting world. But among the men who had attended this strange Parliament of unpractical enthusiasts, there was a Prussian country squire by the name of Bismarck, who had made good use of his eyes and ears. He had a deep contempt for oratory. He knew (what every man of action has always known) that nothing is ever accomplished by talk. In his own way he was a sincere patriot. He had been trained in the old school of diplomacy and he could outlie his opponents just as he could outwalk them and outdrink them and outride them. Bismarck felt convinced that the loose confederation of little states must be changed into a strong united country if it would hold its own against the other European powers. Brought up amidst feudal ideas of loyalty, he decided that the house of Hohenzollern, of which he was the most faithful servant, should rule the new state, rather than the incompetent Habsburgs. For this purpose he must first get rid of the Austrian influence, and he began to make the necessary preparations for this painful operation. Italy in the meantime had solved her own problem, and had rid herself of her hated Austrian master. The unity of Italy was the work of three men, Cavour, Mazzini and Garibaldi. Of these three, Cavour, the civil-engineer with the short-sighted eyes and the steel-rimmed glasses, played the part of the careful political pilot. Mazzini, who had spent most of his days in different European garrets, hiding from the Austrian police, was the public agitator, while Garibaldi, with his band of red-shirted rough-riders, appealed to the popular imagination. Mazzini and Garibaldi were both believers in the Republican form of government. Cavour, however, was a monarchist, and the others who recognised his superior ability in such matters of practical statecraft, accepted his decision and sacrificed their own ambitions for the greater good of their beloved Fatherland. Cavour felt towards the House of Sardinia as Bismarck did towards the Hohenzollern family. With infinite care and great shrewdness he set to work to jockey the Sardinian King into a position from which His Majesty would be able to assume the leadership of the entire Italian people. The unsettled political conditions in the rest of Europe greatly helped him in his plans and no country contributed more to the independence of Italy than her old and trusted (and often distrusted) neighbour, France. In that turbulent country, in November of the year 1852, the Republic had come to a sudden but not unexpected end. Napoleon III the son of Louis Bonaparte the former King of Holland, and the small nephew of a great uncle, had re-established an Empire and had made himself Emperor "by the Grace of God and the Will of the People." This young man, who had been educated in Germany and who mixed his French with harsh Teutonic gutturals (just as the first Napoleon had always spoken the language of his adopted country with a strong Italian accent) was trying very hard to use the Napoleonic tradition for his own benefit. But he had many enemies and did not feel very certain of his hold upon his ready-made throne. He had gained the friendship of Queen Victoria but this had not been a difficult task, as the good Queen was not particularly brilliant and was very susceptible to flattery. As for the other European sovereigns, they treated the French Emperor with insulting haughtiness and sat up nights devising new ways in which they could show their upstart "Good Brother" how sincerely they despised him. Napoleon was obliged to find a way in which he could break this opposition, either through love or through fear. He well knew the fascination which the word "glory" still held for his subjects. Since he was forced to gamble for his throne he decided to play the game of Empire for high stakes. He used an attack of Russia upon Turkey as an excuse for bringing about the Crimean war in which England and France combined against the Tsar on behalf of the Sultan. It was a very costly and exceedingly unprofitable enterprise. Neither France nor England nor Russia reaped much glory. But the Crimean war did one good thing. It gave Sardinia a chance to volunteer on the winning side and when peace was declared it gave Cavour the opportunity to lay claim to the gratitude of both England and France. Having made use of the international situation to get Sardinia recognised as one of the more important powers of Europe, the clever Italian then provoked a war between Sardinia and Austria in June of the year 1859. He assured himself of the support of Napoleon in exchange for the provinces of Savoy and the city of Nice, which was really an Italian town. The Franco-Italian armies defeated the Austrians at Magenta and Solferino, and the former Austrian provinces and duchies were united into a single Italian kingdom. Florence became the capital of this new Italy until the year 1870 when the French recalled their troops from Home to defend France against the Germans. As soon as they were gone, the Italian troops entered the eternal city and the House of Sardinia took up its residence in the old Palace of the Quirinal which an ancient Pope had built on the ruins of the baths of the Emperor Constantine. The Pope, however, moved across the river Tiber and hid behind the walls of the Vatican, which had been the home of many of his predecessors since their return from the exile of Avignon in the year 1377. He protested loudly against this high-handed theft of his domains and addressed letters of appeal to those faithful Catholics who were inclined to sympathise with him in his loss. Their number, however, was small, and it has been steadily decreasing. For, once delivered from the cares of state, the Pope was able to devote all his time to questions of a spiritual nature. Standing high above the petty quarrels of the European politicians, the Papacy assumed a new dignity which proved of great benefit to the church and made it an international power for social and religious progress which has shown a much more intelligent appreciation of modern economic problems than most Protestant sects. In this way, the attempt of the Congress of Vienna to settle the Italian question by making the peninsula an Austrian province was at last undone. The German problem however remained as yet unsolved. It proved the most difficult of all. The failure of the revolution of the year 1848 had led to the wholesale migration of the more energetic and liberal elements among the German people. These young fellows had moved to the United States of America, to Brazil, to the new colonies in Asia and America. Their work was continued in Germany but by a different sort of men. In the new Diet which met at Frankfort, after the collapse of the German Parliament and the failure of the Liberals to establish a united country, the Kingdom of Prussia was represented by that same Otto von Bismarck from whom we parted a few pages ago. Bismarck by now had managed to gain the complete confidence of the king of Prussia. That was all he asked for. The opinion of the Prussian parliament or of the Prussian people interested him not at all. With his own eyes he had seen the defeat of the Liberals. He knew that he would not be able to get rid of Austria without a war and he began by strengthening the Prussian army. The Landtag, exasperated at his high-handed methods, refused to give him the necessary credits. Bismarck did not even bother to discuss the matter. He went ahead and increased his army with the help of funds which the Prussian house of Peers and the king placed at his disposal. Then he looked for a national cause which could be used for the purpose of creating a great wave of patriotism among all the German people. In the north of Germany there were the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein which ever since the middle ages had been a source of trouble. Both countries were inhabited by a certain number of Danes and a certain number of Germans, but although they were governed by the King of Denmark, they were not an integral part of the Danish State and this led to endless difficulties. Heaven forbid that I should revive this forgotten question which now seems settled by the acts of the recent Congress of Versailles. But the Germans in Holstein were very loud in their abuse of the Danes and the Danes in Schleswig made a great ado of their Danishness, and all Europe was discussing the problem and German Mannerchors and Turnvereins listened to sentimental speeches about the "lost brethren" and the different chancelleries were trying to discover what it was all about, when Prussia mobilised her armies to "save the lost provinces." As Austria, the official head of the German Confederation, could not allow Prussia to act alone in such an important matter, the Habsburg troops were mobilised too and the combined armies of the two great powers crossed the Danish frontiers and after a very brave resistance on the part of the Danes, occupied the two duchies. The Danes appealed to Europe, but Europe was otherwise engaged and the poor Danes were left to their fate. Bismarck then prepared the scene for the second number upon his Imperial programme. He used the division of the spoils to pick a quarrel with Austria. The Habsburgs fell into the trap. The new Prussian army, the creation of Bismarck and his faithful generals, invaded Bohemia and in less than six weeks, the last of the Austrian troops had been destroyed at Koniggratz and Sadowa and the road to Vienna lay open. But Bismarck did not want to go too far. He knew that he would need a few friends in Europe. He offered the defeated Habsburgs very decent terms of peace, provided they would resign their chairmanship of the Confederation. He was less merciful to many of the smaller German states who had taken the side of the Austrians, and annexed them to Prussia. The greater part of the northern states then formed a new organisation, the so-called North German Confederacy, and victorious Prussia assumed the unofficial leadership of the German people. Europe stood aghast at the rapidity with which the work of consolidation had been done. England was quite indifferent but France showed signs of disapproval. Napoleon's hold upon the French people was steadily diminishing. The Crimean war had been costly and had accomplished nothing. A second adventure in the year 1863, when a French army had tried to force an Austrian Grand-Duke by the name of Maximilian upon the Mexican people as their Emperor, had come to a disastrous end as soon as the American Civil War had been won by the North. For the Government at Washington had forced the French to withdraw their troops and this had given the Mexicans a chance to clear their country of the enemy and shoot the unwelcome Emperor. It was necessary to give the Napoleonic throne a new coat of glory-paint. Within a few years the North German Confederation would be a serious rival of France. Napoleon decided that a war with Germany would be a good thing for his dynasty. He looked for an excuse and Spain, the poor victim of endless revolutions, gave him one. Just then the Spanish throne happened to be vacant. It had been offered to the Catholic branch of the house of Hohenzollern. The French government had objected and the Hohenzollerns had politely refused to accept the crown. But Napoleon, who was showing signs of illness, was very much under the influence of his beautiful wife, Eugenie de Montijo, the daughter of a Spanish gentleman and the grand-daughter of William Kirkpatrick, an American consul at Malaga, where the grapes come from. Eugenie, although shrewd enough, was as badly educated as most Spanish women of that day. She was at the mercy of her spiritual advisers and these worthy gentlemen felt no love for the Protestant King of Prussia. "Be bold," was the advice of the Empress to her husband, but she omitted to add the second half of that famous Persian proverb which admonishes the hero to "be bold but not too bold." Napoleon, convinced of the strength of his army, addressed himself to the king of Prussia and insisted that the king give him assurances that "he would never permit another candidature of a Hohenzollern prince to the Spanish crown." As the Hohenzollerns had just declined the honour, the demand was superfluous, and Bismarck so informed the French government. But Napoleon was not satisfied. It was the year 1870 and King William was taking the waters at Ems. There one day he was approached by the French minister who tried to re-open the discussion. The king answered very pleasantly that it was a fine day and that the Spanish question was now closed and that nothing more remained to be said upon the subject. As a matter of routine, a report of this interview was telegraphed to Bismarck, who handled all foreign affairs. Bismarck edited the dispatch for the benefit of the Prussian and French press. Many people have called him names for doing this. Bismarck however could plead the excuse that the doctoring of official news, since time immemorial, had been one of the privileges of all civilised governments. When the "edited" telegram was printed, the good people in Berlin felt that their old and venerable king with his nice white whiskers had been insulted by an arrogant little Frenchman and the equally good people of Paris flew into a rage because their perfectly courteous minister had been shown the door by a Royal Prussian flunkey. And so they both went to war and in less than two months, Napoleon and the greater part of his army were prisoners of the Germans. The Second Empire had come to an end and the Third Republic was making ready to defend Paris against the German invaders. Paris held out for five long months. Ten days before the surrender of the city, in the nearby palace of Versailles, built by that same King Louis XIV who had been such a dangerous enemy to the Germans, the King of Prussia was publicly proclaimed German Emperor and a loud booming of guns told the hungry Parisians that a new German Empire had taken the place of the old harmless Confederation of Teutonic states and stateless. In this rough way, the German question was finally settled. By the end of the year 1871, fifty-six years after the memorable gathering at Vienna, the work of the Congress had been entirely undone. Metternich and Alexander and Talleyrand had tried to give the people of Europe a lasting peace. The methods they had employed had caused endless wars and revolutions and the feeling of a common brotherhood of the eighteenth century was followed by an era of exaggerated nationalism which has not yet come to an end. THE AGE OF THE ENGINE BUT WHILE THE PEOPLE OF EUROPE WERE FIGHTING FOR THEIR NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE, THE WORLD IN WHICH THEY LIVED HAD BEEN ENTIRELY CHANGED BY A SERIES OF INVENTIONS, WHICH HAD MADE THE CLUMSY OLD STEAM ENGINE OF THE 18TH CENTURY THE MOST FAITHFUL AND EFFICIENT SLAVE OF MAN THE greatest benefactor of the human race died more than half a million years ago. He was a hairy creature with a low brow and sunken eyes, a heavy jaw and strong tiger-like teeth. He would not have looked well in a gathering of modern scientists, but they would have honoured him as their master. For he had used a stone to break a nut and a stick to lift up a heavy boulder. He was the inventor of the hammer and the lever, our first tools, and he did more than any human being who came after him to give man his enormous advantage over the other animals with whom he shares this planet. Ever since, man has tried to make his life easier by the use of a greater number of tools. The first wheel (a round disc made out of an old tree) created as much stir in the communities of 100,000 B.C. as the flying machine did only a few years ago. In Washington, the story is told of a director of the Patent Office who in the early thirties of the last century suggested that the Patent Office be abolished, because "everything that possibly could be invented had been invented." A similar feeling must have spread through the prehistoric world when the first sail was hoisted on a raft and the people were able to move from place to place without rowing or punting or pulling from the shore. Indeed one of the most interesting chapters of history is the effort of man to let some one else or something else do his work for him, while he enjoyed his leisure, sitting in the sun or painting pictures on rocks, or training young wolves and little tigers to behave like peaceful domestic animals. Of course in the very olden days; it was always possible to enslave a weaker neighbour and force him to do the unpleasant tasks of life. One of the reasons why the Greeks and Romans, who were quite as intelligent as we are, failed to devise more interesting machinery, was to be found in the wide-spread existence of slavery. Why should a great mathematician waste his time upon wires and pulleys and cogs and fill the air with noise and smoke when he could go to the marketplace and buy all the slaves he needed at a very small expense? And during the middle-ages, although slavery had been abolished and only a mild form of serfdom survived, the guilds discouraged the idea of using machinery because they thought this would throw a large number of their brethren out of work. Besides, the Middle-Ages were not at all interested in producing large quantities of goods. Their tailors and butchers and carpenters worked for the immediate needs of the small community in which they lived and had no desire to compete with their neighbours, or to produce more than was strictly necessary. During the Renaissance, when the prejudices of the Church against scientific investigations could no longer be enforced as rigidly as before, a large number of men began to devote their lives to mathematics and astronomy and physics and chemistry. Two years before the beginning of the Thirty Years War, John Napier, a Scotchman, had published his little book which described the new invention of logarithms. During the war it-self, Gottfried Leibnitz of Leipzig had perfected the system of infinitesimal calculus. Eight years before the peace of Westphalia, Newton, the great English natural philosopher, was born, and in that same year Galileo, the Italian astronomer, died. Meanwhile the Thirty Years War had destroyed the prosperity of central Europe and there was a sudden but very general interest in "alchemy," the strange pseudo-science of the middle-ages by which people hoped to turn base metals into gold. This proved to be impossible but the alchemists in their laboratories stumbled upon many new ideas and greatly helped the work of the chemists who were their successors. The work of all these men provided the world with a solid scientific foundation upon which it was possible to build even the most complicated of engines, and a number of practical men made good use of it. The Middle-Ages had used wood for the few bits of necessary machinery. But wood wore out easily. Iron was a much better material but iron was scarce except in England. In England therefore most of the smelting was done. To smelt iron, huge fires were needed. In the beginning, these fires had been made of wood, but gradually the forests had been used up. Then "stone coal" (the petrified trees of prehistoric times) was used. But coal as you know has to be dug out of the ground and it has to be transported to the smelting ovens and the mines have to be kept dry from the ever invading waters. These were two problems which had to be solved at once. For the time being, horses could still be used to haul the coal-wagons, but the pumping question demanded the application of special machinery. Several inventors were busy trying to solve the difficulty. They all knew that steam would have to be used in their new engine. The idea of the steam engine was very old. Hero of Alexandria, who lived in the first century before Christ, has described to us several bits of machinery which were driven by steam. The people of the Renaissance had played with the notion of steam-driven war chariots. The Marquis of Worcester, a contemporary of Newton, in his book of inventions, tells of a steam engine. A little later, in the year 1698, Thomas Savery of London applied for a patent for a pumping engine. At the same time, a Hollander, Christian Huygens, was trying to perfect an engine in which gun-powder was used to cause regular explosions in much the same way as we use gasoline in our motors. All over Europe, people were busy with the idea. Denis Papin, a Frenchman, friend and assistant of Huygens, was making experiments with steam engines in several countries. He invented a little wagon that was driven by steam, and a paddle-wheel boat. But when he tried to take a trip in his vessel, it was confiscated by the authorities on a complaint of the boatmen's union, who feared that such a craft would deprive them of their livelihood. Papin finally died in London in great poverty, having wasted all his money on his inventions. But at the time of his death, another mechanical enthusiast, Thomas Newcomen, was working on the problem of a new steam-pump. Fifty years later his engine was improved upon by James Watt, a Glasgow instrument maker. In the year 1777, he gave the world the first steam engine that proved of real practical value. But during the centuries of experiments with a "heat-engine," the political world had greatly changed. The British people had succeeded the Dutch as the common-carriers of the world's trade. They had opened up new colonies. They took the raw materials which the colonies produced to England, and there they turned them into finished products, and then they exported the finished goods to the four corners of the world. During the seventeenth century, the people of Georgia and the Carolinas had begun to grow a new shrub which gave a strange sort of woolly substance, the so-called "cotton wool." After this had been plucked, it was sent to England and there the people of Lancastershire wove it into cloth. This weaving was done by hand and in the homes of the workmen. Very soon a number of improvements were made in the process of weaving. In the year 1730, John Kay invented the "fly shuttle." In 1770, James Hargreaves got a patent on his "spinning jenny." Eli Whitney, an American, invented the cotton-gin, which separated the cotton from its seeds, a job which had previously been done by hand at the rate of only a pound a day. Finally Richard Arkwright and the Reverend Edmund Cartwright invented large weaving machines, which were driven by water power. And then, in the eighties of the eighteenth century, just when the Estates General of France had begun those famous meetings which were to revolutionise the political system of Europe, the engines of Watt were arranged in such a way that they could drive the weaving machines of Arkwright, and this created an economic and social revolution which has changed human relationship in almost every part of the world. As soon as the stationary engine had proved a success, the inventors turned their attention to the problem of propelling boats and carts with the help of a mechanical contrivance. Watt himself designed plans for a "steam locomotive," but ere he had perfected his ideas, in the year 1804, a locomotive made by Richard Trevithick carried a load of twenty tons at Pen-y-darran in the Wales mining district. At the same time an American jeweller and portrait-painter by the name of Robert Fulton was in Paris, trying to convince Napoleon that with the use of his submarine boat, the "Nautilus," and his "steam-boat," the French might be able to destroy the naval supremacy of England. Fulton's idea of a steamboat was not original. He had undoubtedly copied it from John Fitch, a mechanical genius of Connecticut whose cleverly constructed steamer had first navigated the Delaware river as early as the year 1787. But Napoleon and his scientific advisers did not believe in the practical possibility of a self-propelled boat, and although the Scotch-built engine of the little craft puffed merrily on the Seine, the great Emperor neglected to avail himself of this formidable weapon which might have given him his revenge for Trafalgar. As for Fulton, he returned to the United States and, being a practical man of business, he organised a successful steamboat company together with Robert R. Livingston, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, who was American Minister to France when Fulton was in Paris, trying to sell his invention. The first steamer of this new company, the "Clermont," which was given a monopoly of all the waters of New York State, equipped with an engine built by Boulton and Watt of Birmingham in England, began a regular service between New York and Albany in the year 1807. As for poor John Fitch, the man who long before any one else had used the "steam-boat" for commercial purposes, he came to a sad death. Broken in health and empty of purse, he had come to the end of his resources when his fifth boat, which was propelled by means of a screw-propeller, had been destroyed. His neighbours jeered at him as they were to laugh a hundred years later when Professor Langley constructed his funny flying machines. Fitch had hoped to give his country an easy access to the broad rivers of the west and his countrymen preferred to travel in flat-boats or go on foot. In the year 1798, in utter despair and misery, Fitch killed himself by taking poison. But twenty years later, the "Savannah," a steamer of 1850 tons and making six knots an hour, (the Mauretania goes just four times as fast,) crossed the ocean from Savannah to Liverpool in the record time of twenty-five days. Then there was an end to the derision of the multitude and in their enthusiasm the people gave the credit for the invention to the wrong man. Six years later, George Stephenson, a Scotchman, who had been building locomotives for the purpose of hauling coal from the mine-pit to smelting ovens and cotton factories, built his famous "travelling engine" which reduced the price of coal by almost seventy per cent and which made it possible to establish the first regular passenger service between Manchester and Liverpool, when people were whisked from city to city at the unheard-of speed of fifteen miles per hour. A dozen years later, this speed had been increased to twenty miles per hour. At the present time, any well-behaved flivver (the direct descendant of the puny little motor-driven machines of Daimler and Levassor of the eighties of the last century) can do better than these early "Puffing Billies." But while these practically-minded engineers were improving upon their rattling "heat engines," a group of "pure" scientists (men who devote fourteen hours of each day to the study of those "theoretical" scientific phenomena without which no mechanical progress would be possible) were following a new scent which promised to lead them into the most secret and hidden domains of Nature. Two thousand years ago, a number of Greek and Roman philosophers (notably Thales of Miletus and Pliny who was killed while trying to study the eruption of Vesuvius of the year 79 when Pompeii and Herculaneum were buried beneath the ashes) had noticed the strange antics of bits of straw and of feather which were held near a piece of amber which was being rubbed with a bit of wool. The schoolmen of the Middle Ages had not been interested in this mysterious "electric" power. But immediately after the Renaissance, William Gilbert, the private physician of Queen Elizabeth, wrote his famous treatise on the character and behaviour of Magnets. During the Thirty Years War Otto von Guericke, the burgomaster of Magdeburg and the inventor of the air-pump, constructed the first electrical machine. During the next century a large number of scientists devoted themselves to the study of electricity. Not less than three professors invented the famous Leyden Jar in the year 1795. At the same time, Benjamin Franklin, the most universal genius of America next to Benjamin Thomson (who after his flight from New Hampshire on account of his pro-British sympathies became known as Count Rumford) was devoting his attention to this subject. He discovered that lightning and the electric spark were manifestations of the same electric power and continued his electric studies until the end of his busy and useful life. Then came Volta with his famous "electric pile" and Galvani and Day and the Danish professor Hans Christian Oersted and Ampere and Arago and Faraday, all of them diligent searchers after the true nature of the electric forces. They freely gave their discoveries to the world and Samuel Morse (who like Fulton began his career as an artist) thought that he could use this new electric current to transmit messages from one city to another. He intended to use copper wire and a little machine which he had invented. People laughed at him. Morse therefore was obliged to finance his own experiments and soon he had spent all his money and then he was very poor and people laughed even louder. He then asked Congress to help him and a special Committee on Commerce promised him their support. But the members of Congress were not at all interested and Morse had to wait twelve years before he was given a small congressional appropriation. He then built a "telegraph" between Baltimore and Washington. In the year 1887 he had shown his first successful "telegraph" in one of the lecture halls of New York University. Finally, on the 24th of May of the year 1844 the first long-distance message was sent from Washington to Baltimore and to-day the whole world is covered with telegraph wires and we can send news from Europe to Asia in a few seconds. Twenty-three years later Alexander Graham Bell used the electric current for his telephone. And half a century afterwards Marconi improved upon these ideas by inventing a system of sending messages which did away entirely with the old-fashioned wires. While Morse, the New Englander, was working on his "telegraph," Michael Faraday, the Yorkshire-man, had constructed the first "dynamo." This tiny little machine was completed in the year 1881 when Europe was still trembling as a result of the great July revolutions which had so severely upset the plans of the Congress of Vienna. The first dynamo grew and grew and grew and to-day it provides us with heat and with light (you know the little incandescent bulbs which Edison, building upon French and English experiments of the forties and fifties, first made in 1878) and with power for all sorts of machines. If I am not mistaken the electric-engine will soon entirely drive out the "heat engine" just as in the olden days the more highly-organised prehistoric animals drove out their less efficient neighbours. Personally (but I know nothing about machinery) this will make me very happy. For the electric engine which can be run by waterpower is a clean and companionable servant of mankind but the "heat-engine," the marvel of the eighteenth century, is a noisy and dirty creature for ever filling the world with ridiculous smoke-stacks and with dust and soot and asking that it be fed with coal which has to be dug out of mines at great inconvenience and risk to thousands of people. And if I were a novelist and not a historian, who must stick to facts and may not use his imagination, I would describe the happy day when the last steam locomotive shall be taken to the Museum of Natural History to be placed next to the skeleton of the Dynosaur and the Pteredactyl and the other extinct creatures of a by-gone age. THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION BUT THE NEW ENGINES WERE VERY EXPENSIVE AND ONLY PEOPLE OF WEALTH COULD AFFORD THEM. THE OLD CARPENTER OR SHOEMAKER WHO HAD BEEN HIS OWN MASTER IN HIS LITTLE WORKSHOP WAS OBLIGED TO HIRE HIMSELF OUT TO THE OWNERS OF THE BIG MECHANICAL TOOLS, AND WHILE HE MADE MORE MONEY THAN BEFORE, HE LOST HIS FORMER INDEPENDENCE AND HE DID NOT LIKE THAT IN the olden days the work of the world had been done by independent workmen who sat in their own little workshops in the front of their houses, who owned their tools, who boxed the ears of their own apprentices and who, within the limits prescribed by their guilds, conducted their business as it pleased them. They lived simple lives, and were obliged to work very long hours, but they were their own masters. If they got up and saw that it was a fine day to go fishing, they went fishing and there was no one to say "no." But the introduction of machinery changed this. A machine is really nothing but a greatly enlarged tool. A railroad train which carries you at the speed of a mile a minute is in reality a pair of very fast legs, and a steam hammer which flattens heavy plates of iron is just a terrible big fist, made of steel. But whereas we can all afford a pair of good legs and a good strong fist, a railroad train and a steam hammer and a cotton factory are very expensive pieces of machinery and they are not owned by a single man, but usually by a company of people who all contribute a certain sum and then divide the profits of their railroad or cotton mill according to the amount of money which they have invested. Therefore, when machines had been improved until they were really practicable and profitable, the builders of those large tools, the machine manufacturers, began to look for customers who could afford to pay for them in cash. During the early middle ages, when land had been almost the only form of wealth, the nobility were the only people who were considered wealthy. But as I have told you in a previous chapter, the gold and silver which they possessed was quite insignificant and they used the old system of barter, exchanging cows for horses and eggs for honey. During the crusades, the burghers of the cities had been able to gather riches from the reviving trade between the east and the west, and they had been serious rivals of the lords and the knights. The French revolution had entirely destroyed the wealth of the nobility and had enormously increased that of the middle class or "bourgeoisie." The years of unrest which followed the Great Revolution had offered many middle-class people a chance to get more than their share of this world's goods. The estates of the church had been confiscated by the French Convention and had been sold at auction. There had been a terrific amount of graft. Land speculators had stolen thousands of square miles of valuable land, and during the Napoleonic wars, they had used their capital to "profiteer" in grain and gun-powder, and now they possessed more wealth than they needed for the actual expenses of their households, and they could afford to build themselves factories and to hire men and women to work the machines. This caused a very abrupt change in the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Within a few years, many cities doubled the number of their inhabitants and the old civic centre which had been the real "home" of the citizens was surrounded with ugly and cheaply built suburbs where the workmen slept after their eleven or twelve hours, or thirteen hours, spent in the factories and from where they returned to the factory as soon as the whistle blew. Far and wide through the countryside there was talk of the fabulous sums of money that could be made in the towns. The peasant boy, accustomed to a life in the open, went to the city. He rapidly lost his old health amidst the smoke and dust and dirt of those early and badly ventilated workshops, and the end, very often, was death in the poor-house or in the hospital. Of course the change from the farm to the factory on the part of so many people was not accomplished without a certain amount of opposition. Since one engine could do as much work as a hundred men, the ninety-nine others who were thrown out of employment did not like it. Frequently they attacked the factory-buildings and set fire to the machines, but Insurance Companies had been organised as early as the 17th century and as a rule the owners were well protected against loss. Soon, newer and better machines were installed, the factory was surrounded with a high wall and then there was an end to the rioting. The ancient guilds could not possibly survive in this new world of steam and iron. They went out of existence and then the workmen tried to organise regular labour unions. But the factory-owners, who through their wealth could exercise great influence upon the politicians of the different countries, went to the Legislature and had laws passed which forbade the forming of such trade unions because they interfered with the "liberty of action" of the working man. Please do not think that the good members of Parliament who passed these laws were wicked tyrants. They were the true sons of the revolutionary period when everybody talked of "liberty" and when people often killed their neighbours because they were not quite as liberty-loving as they ought to have been. Since "liberty" was the foremost virtue of man, it was not right that labour-unions should dictate to their members the hours during which they could work and the wages which they must demand. The workman must at all times, be "free to sell his services in the open market," and the employer must be equally "free" to conduct his business as he saw fit. The days of the Mercantile System, when the state had regulated the industrial life of the entire community, were coming to an end. The new idea of "freedom" insisted that the state stand entirely aside and let commerce take its course. The last half of the 18th century had not merely been a time of intellectual and political doubt, but the old economic ideas, too, had been replaced by new ones which better suited the need of the hour. Several years before the French revolution, Turgot, who had been one of the unsuccessful ministers of finance of Louis XVI, had preached the novel doctrine of "economic liberty." Turgot lived in a country which had suffered from too much red-tape, too many regulations, too many officials trying to enforce too many laws. "Remove this official supervision," he wrote, "let the people do as they please, and everything will be all right." Soon his famous advice of "laissez faire" became the battle-cry around which the economists of that period rallied. At the same time in England, Adam Smith was working on his mighty volumes on the "Wealth of Nations," which made another plea for "liberty" and the "natural rights of trade." Thirty years later, after the fall of Napoleon, when the reactionary powers of Europe had gained their victory at Vienna, that same freedom which was denied to the people in their political relations was forced upon them in their industrial life. The general use of machinery, as I have said at the beginning of this chapter, proved to be of great advantage to the state. Wealth increased rapidly. The machine made it possible for a single country, like England, to carry all the burdens of the great Napoleonic wars. The capitalists (the people who provided the money with which machines were bought) reaped enormous profits. They became ambitious and began to take an interest in politics. They tried to compete with the landed aristocracy which still exercised great influence upon the government of most European countries. In England, where the members of Parliament were still elected according to a Royal Decree of the year 1265, and where a large number of recently created industrial centres were without representation, they brought about the passing of the Reform Bill of the year 1882, which changed the electoral system and gave the class of the factory-owners more influence upon the legislative body. This however caused great discontent among the millions of factory workers, who were left without any voice in the government. They too began an agitation for the right to vote. They put their demands down in a document which came to be known as the "People's Charter." The debates about this charter grew more and more violent. They had not yet come to an end when the revolutions of the year 1848 broke out. Frightened by the threat of a new outbreak or Jacobinism and violence, the English government placed the Duke of Wellington, who was now in his eightieth year, at the head of the army, and called for Volunteers. London was placed in a state of siege and preparations were made to suppress the coming revolution. But the Chartist movement killed itself through bad leadership and no acts of violence took place. The new class of wealthy factory owners, (I dislike the word "bourgeoisie" which has been used to death by the apostles of a new social order,) slowly increased its hold upon the government, and the conditions of industrial life in the large cities continued to transform vast acres of pasture and wheat-land into dreary slums, which guard the approach of every modern European town. EMANCIPATION THE GENERAL INTRODUCTION OF MACHINERY DID NOT BRING ABOUT THE ERA OF HAPPINESS AND PROSPERITY WHICH HAD BEEN PREDICTED BY THE GENERATION WHICH SAW THE STAGE COACH REPLACED BY THE RAILROAD. SEVERAL REMEDIES WERE SUGGESTED BUT NONE OF THESE QUITE SOLVED THE PROBLEM IN the year 1831, just before the passing of the first Reform Bill Jeremy Bentham, the great English student of legislative methods and the most practical political reformer of that day, wrote to a friend: "The way to be comfortable is to make others comfortable. The way to make others comfortable is to appear to love them. The way to appear to love them is to love them in reality." Jeremy was an honest man. He said what he believed to be true. His opinions were shared by thousands of his countrymen. They felt responsible for the happiness of their less fortunate neighbours and they tried their very best to help them. And Heaven knows it was time that something be done! The ideal of "economic freedom" (the "laissez faire" of Turgot) had been necessary in the old society where mediaeval restrictions lamed all industrial effort. But this "liberty of action" which had been the highest law of the land had led to a terrible, yea, a frightful condition. The hours in the fac-tory were limited only by the physical strength of the workers. As long as a woman could sit before her loom, without fainting from fatigue, she was supposed to work. Children of five and six were taken to the cotton mills, to save them from the dangers of the street and a life of idleness. A law had been passed which forced the children of paupers to go to work or be punished by being chained to their machines. In return for their services they got enough bad food to keep them alive and a sort of pigsty in which they could rest at night. Often they were so tired that they fell asleep at their job. To keep them awake a foreman with a whip made the rounds and beat them on the knuckles when it was necessary to bring them back to their duties. Of course, under these circumstances thousands of little children died. This was regrettable and the employers, who after all were human beings and not without a heart, sincerely wished that they could abolish "child labour." But since man was "free" it followed that children were "free" too. Besides, if Mr. Jones had tried to work his factory without the use of children of five and six, his rival, Mr. Stone, would have hired an extra supply of little boys and Jones would have been forced into bankruptcy. It was therefore impossible for Jones to do without child labour until such time as an act of Parliament should forbid it for all employers. But as Parliament was no longer dominated by the old landed aristocracy (which had despised the upstart factory-owners with their money bags and had treated them with open contempt), but was under control of the representatives from the industrial centres, and as long as the law did not allow workmen to combine in labour-unions, very little was accomplished. Of course the intelligent and decent people of that time were not blind to these terrible conditions. They were just helpless. Machinery had conquered the world by surprise and it took a great many years and the efforts of thousands of noble men and women to make the machine what it ought to be, man's servant, and not his master. Curiously enough, the first attack upon the outrageous system of employment which was then common in all parts of the world, was made on behalf of the black slaves of Africa and America. Slavery had been introduced into the American continent by the Spaniards. They had tried to use the Indians as labourers in the fields and in the mines, but the Indians, when taken away from a life in the open, had lain down and died and to save them from extinction a kind-hearted priest had suggested that negroes be brought from Africa to do the work. The negroes were strong and could stand rough treatment. Besides, association with the white man would give them a chance to learn Christianity and in this way, they would be able to save their souls, and so from every possible point of view, it would be an excellent arrangement both for the kindly white man and for his ignorant black brother. But with the introduction of machinery there had been a greater demand for cotton and the negroes were forced to work harder than ever before, and they too, like the Indians, began to die under the treatment which they received at the hands of the overseers. Stories of incredible cruelty constantly found their way to Europe and in all countries men and women began to agitate for the abolition of slavery. In England, William Wilberforce and Zachary Macaulay, (the father of the great historian whose history of England you must read if you want to know how wonderfully interesting a history-book can be,) organised a society for the suppression of slavery. First of all they got a law passed which made "slave trading" illegal. And after the year 1840 there was not a single slave in any of the British colonies. The revolution of 1848 put an end to slavery in the French possessions. The Portuguese passed a law in the year 1858 which promised all slaves their liberty in twenty years from date. The Dutch abolished slavery in 1863 and in the same year Tsar Alexander II returned to his serfs that liberty which had been taken away from them more than two centuries before. In the United States of America the question led to grave difficulties and a prolonged war. Although the Declaration of Independence had laid down the principle that "all men were created free and equal," an exception had been made for those men and women whose skins were dark and who worked on the plantations of the southern states. As time went on, the dislike of the people of the North for the institution of slavery increased and they made no secret of their feelings. The southerners however claimed that they could not grow their cotton without slave-labour, and for almost fifty years a mighty debate raged in both the Congress and the Senate. The North remained obdurate and the South would not give in. When it appeared impossible to reach a compromise, the southern states threatened to leave the Union. It was a most dangerous point in the history of the Union. Many things "might" have happened. That they did not happen was the work of a very great and very good man. On the sixth of November of the year 1860, Abraham Lincoln, an Illinois lawyer, and a man who had made his own intellectual fortune, had been elected president by the Republicans who were very strong in the anti-slavery states. He knew the evils of human bondage at first hand and his shrewd common-sense told him that there was no room on the northern continent for two rival nations. When a number of southern states seceded and formed the "Confederate States of America," Lincoln accepted the challenge. The Northern states were called upon for volunteers. Hundreds of thousands of young men responded with eager enthusiasm and there followed four years of bitter civil war. The South, better prepared and following the brilliant leadership of Lee and Jackson, repeatedly defeated the armies of the North. Then the economic strength of New England and the West began to tell. An unknown officer by the name of Grant arose from obscurity and became the Charles Martel of the great slave war. Without interruption he hammered his mighty blows upon the crumbling defences of the South. Early in the year 1863, President Lincoln issued his "Emancipation Proclamation" which set all slaves free. In April of the year 1865 Lee surrendered the last of his brave armies at Appomattox. A few days later, President Lincoln was murdered by a lunatic. But his work was done. With the exception of Cuba which was still under Spanish domination, slavery had come to an end in every part of the civilised world. But while the black man was enjoying an increasing amount of liberty, the "free" workmen of Europe did not fare quite so well. Indeed, it is a matter of surprise to many contemporary writers and observers that the masses of workmen (the so-called proletariat) did not die out from sheer misery. They lived in dirty houses situated in miserable parts of the slums. They ate bad food. They received just enough schooling to fit them for their tasks. In case of death or an accident, their families were not provided for. But the brewery and distillery interests, (who could exercise great influence upon the Legislature,) encouraged them to forget their woes by offering them unlimited quantities of whisky and gin at very cheap rates. The enormous improvement which has taken place since the thirties and the forties of the last century is not due to the efforts of a single man. The best brains of two generations devoted themselves to the task of saving the world from the disastrous results of the all-too-sudden introduction of machinery. They did not try to destroy the capitalistic system. This would have been very foolish, for the accumulated wealth of other people, when intelligently used, may be of very great benefit to all mankind. But they tried to combat the notion that true equality can exist between the man who has wealth and owns the factories and can close their doors at will without the risk of going hungry, and the labourer who must take whatever job is offered, at whatever wage he can get, or face the risk of starvation for himself, his wife and his children. They endeavoured to introduce a number of laws which regulated the relations between the factory owners and the factory workers. In this, the reformers have been increasingly successful in all countries. To-day, the majority of the labourers are well protected; their hours are being reduced to the excellent average of eight, and their children are sent to the schools instead of to the mine pit and to the carding-room of the cotton mills. But there were other men who also contemplated the sight of all the belching smoke-stacks, who heard the rattle of the railroad trains, who saw the store-houses filled with a surplus of all sorts of materials, and who wondered to what ultimate goal this tremendous activity would lead in the years to come. They remembered that the human race had lived for hundreds of thousands of years without commercial and industrial competition. Could they change the existing order of things and do away with a system of rivalry which so often sacrificed human happiness to profits? This idea--this vague hope for a better day--was not restricted to a single country. In England, Robert Owen, the owner of many cotton mills, established a so-called "socialistic community" which was a success. But when he died, the prosperity of New Lanark came to an end and an attempt of Louis Blanc, a French journalist, to establish "social workshops" all over France fared no better. Indeed, the increasing number of socialistic writers soon began to see that little individual communities which remained outside of the regular industrial life, would never be able to accomplish anything at all. It was necessary to study the fundamental principles underlying the whole industrial and capitalistic society before useful remedies could be suggested. The practical socialists like Robert Owen and Louis Blanc and Francois Fournier were succeeded by theoretical students of socialism like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Of these two, Marx is the best known. He was a very brilliant Jew whose family had for a long time lived in Germany. He had heard of the experiments of Owen and Blanc and he began to interest himself in questions of labour and wages and unemployment. But his liberal views made him very unpopular with the police authorities of Germany, and he was forced to flee to Brussels and then to London, where he lived a poor and shabby life as the correspondent of the New York Tribune. No one, thus far, had paid much attention to his books on economic subjects. But in the year 1864 he organised the first international association of working men and three years later in 1867, he published the first volume of his well-known treatise called "Capital." Marx believed that all history was a long struggle between those who "have" and those who "don't have." The introduction and general use of machinery had created a new class in society, that of the capitalists who used their surplus wealth to buy the tools which were then used by the labourers to produce still more wealth, which was again used to build more factories and so on, until the end of time. Meanwhile, according to Marx, the third estate (the bourgeoisie) was growing richer and richer and the fourth estate (the proletariat) was growing poorer and poorer, and he predicted that in the end, one man would possess all the wealth of the world while the others would be his employees and dependent upon his good will. To prevent such a state of affairs, Marx advised working men of all countries to unite and to fight for a number of political and economic measures which he had enumerated in a Manifesto in the year 1848, the year of the last great European revolution. These views of course were very unpopular with the governments of Europe, many countries, especially Prussia, passed severe laws against the Socialists and policemen were ordered to break up the Socialist meetings and to arrest the speakers. But that sort of persecution never does any good. Martyrs are the best possible advertisements for an unpopular cause. In Europe the number of socialists steadily increased and it was soon clear that the Socialists did not contemplate a violent revolution but were using their increasing power in the different Parliaments to promote the interests of the labouring classes. Socialists were even called upon to act as Cabinet Ministers, and they co-operated with progressive Catholics and Protestants to undo the damage that had been caused by the Industrial Revolution and to bring about a fairer division of the many benefits which had followed the introduction of machinery and the increased production of wealth. THE AGE OF SCIENCE BUT THE WORLD HAD UNDERGONE ANOTHER CHANGE WHICH WAS OF GREATER IMPORTANCE THAN EITHER THE POLITICAL OR THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTIONS. AFTER GENERATIONS OF OPPRESSION AND PERSECUTION, THE SCIENTIST HAD AT LAST GAINED LIBERTY OF ACTION AND HE WAS NOW TRYING TO DISCOVER THE FUNDAMENTAL LAWS WHICH GOVERN THE UNIVERSE THE Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Chaldeans, the Greeks and the Romans, had all contributed something to the first vague notions of science and scientific investigation. But the great migrations of the fourth century had destroyed the classical world of the Mediterranean, and the Christian Church, which was more interested in the life of the soul than in the life of the body, had regarded science as a manifestation of that human arrogance which wanted to pry into divine affairs which belonged to the realm of Almighty God, and which therefore was closely related to the seven deadly sins. The Renaissance to a certain but limited extent had broken through this wall of Mediaeval prejudices. The Reformation, however, which had overtaken the Renaissance in the early 16th century, had been hostile to the ideals of the "new civilisation," and once more the men of science were threatened with severe punishment, should they try to pass beyond the narrow limits of knowledge which had been laid down in Holy Writ. Our world is filled with the statues of great generals, atop of prancing horses, leading their cheering soldiers to glorious victory. Here and there, a modest slab of marble announces that a man of science has found his final resting place. A thousand years from now we shall probably do these things differently, and the children of that happy generation shall know of the splendid courage and the almost inconceivable devotion to duty of the men who were the pioneers of that abstract knowledge, which alone has made our modern world a practical possibility. Many of these scientific pioneers suffered poverty and contempt and humiliation. They lived in garrets and died in dungeons. They dared not print their names on the title-pages of their books and they dared not print their conclusions in the land of their birth, but smuggled the manuscripts to some secret printing shop in Amsterdam or Haarlem. They were exposed to the bitter enmity of the Church, both Protestant and Catholic, and were the subjects of endless sermons, inciting the parishioners to violence against the "heretics." Here and there they found an asylum. In Holland, where the spirit of tolerance was strongest, the authorities, while regarding these scientific investigations with little favour, yet refused to interfere with people's freedom of thought. It became a little asylum for intellectual liberty where French and English and German philosophers and mathematicians and physicians could go to enjoy a short spell of rest and get a breath of free air. In another chapter I have told you how Roger Bacon, the great genius of the thirteenth century, was prevented for years from writing a single word, lest he get into new troubles with the authorities of the church. And five hundred years later, the contributors to the great philosophic "Encyclopaedia" were under the constant supervision of the French gendarmerie. Half a century afterwards, Darwin, who dared to question the story of the creation of man, as revealed in the Bible, was denounced from every pulpit as an enemy of the human race. Even to-day, the persecution of those who venture into the unknown realm of science has not entirely come to an end. And while I am writing this Mr. Bryan is addressing a vast multitude on the "Menace of Darwinism," warning his hearers against the errors of the great English naturalist. All this, however, is a mere detail. The work that has to be done invariably gets done, and the ultimate profit of the discoveries and the inventions goes to the mass of those same people who have always decried the man of vision as an unpractical idealist. The seventeenth century had still preferred to investigate the far off heavens and to study the position of our planet in relation to the solar system. Even so, the Church had disapproved of this unseemly curiosity, and Copernicus who first of all had proved that the sun was the centre of the universe, did not publish his work until the day of his death. Galileo spent the greater part of his life under the supervision of the clerical authorities, but he continued to use his telescope and provided Isaac Newton with a mass of practical observations, which greatly helped the English mathematician when he dis-covered the existence of that interesting habit of falling objects which came to be known as the Law of Gravitation. That, for the moment at least, exhausted the interest in the Heavens, and man began to study the earth. The invention of a workable microscope, (a strange and clumsy little thing,) by Anthony van Leeuwenhoek during the last half of the 17th century, gave man a chance to study the "microscopic" creatures who are responsible for so many of his ailments. It laid the foundations of the science of "bacteriology" which in the last forty years has delivered the world from a great number of diseases by discovering the tiny organisms which cause the complaint. It also allowed the geologists to make a more careful study of different rocks and of the fossils (the petrified prehistoric plants) which they found deep below the surface of the earth. These investigations convinced them that the earth must be a great deal older than was stated in the book of Genesis and in the year 1830, Sir Charles Lyell published his "Principles of Geology" which denied the story of creation as related in the Bible and gave a far more wonderful description of slow growth and gradual development. At the same time, the Marquis de Laplace was working on a new theory of creation, which made the earth a little blotch in the nebulous sea out of which the planetary system had been formed and Bunsen and Kirchhoff, by the use of the spectroscope, were investigating the chemical composition of the stars and of our good neighbour, the sun, whose curious spots had first been noticed by Galileo. Meanwhile after a most bitter and relentless warfare with the clerical authorities of Catholic and Protestant lands, the anatomists and physiologists had at last obtained permission to dissect bodies and to substitute a positive knowledge of our organs and their habits for the guesswork of the mediaeval quack. Within a single generation (between 1810 and 1840) more progress was made in every branch of science than in all the hundreds of thousands of years that had passed since man first looked at the stars and wondered why they were there. It must have been a very sad age for the people who had been educated under the old system. And we can understand their feeling of hatred for such men as Lamarck and Darwin, who did not exactly tell them that they were "descended from monkeys," (an accusation which our grandfathers seemed to regard as a personal insult,) but who suggested that the proud human race had evolved from a long series of ancestors who could trace the family-tree back to the little jelly-fishes who were the first inhabitants of our planet. The dignified world of the well-to-do middle class, which dominated the nineteenth century, was willing to make use of the gas or the electric light, of all the many practical applications of the great scientific discoveries, but the mere investigator, the man of the "scientific theory" without whom no progress would be possible, continued to be distrusted until very recently. Then, at last, his services were recognised. Today the rich people who in past ages donated their wealth for the building of a cathedral, construct vast laboratories where silent men do battle upon the hidden enemies of mankind and often sacrifice their lives that coming generations may enjoy greater happiness and health. Indeed it has come to pass that many of the ills of this world, which our ancestors regarded as inevitable "acts of God," have been exposed as manifestations of our own ignorance and neglect. Every child nowadays knows that he can keep from getting typhoid fever by a little care in the choice of his drinking water. But it took years and years of hard work before the doctors could convince the people of this fact. Few of us now fear the dentist chair. A study of the microbes that live in our mouth has made it possible to keep our teeth from decay. Must perchance a tooth be pulled, then we take a sniff of gas, and go our way rejoicing. When the newspapers of the year 1846 brought the story of the "painless operation" which had been performed in America with the help of ether, the good people of Europe shook their heads. To them it seemed against the will of God that man should escape the pain which was the share of all mortals, and it took a long time before the practice of taking ether and chloroform for operations became general. But the battle of progress had been won. The breach in the old walls of prejudice was growing larger and larger, and as time went by, the ancient stones of ignorance came crumbling down. The eager crusaders of a new and happier social order rushed forward. Suddenly they found themselves facing a new obstacle. Out of the ruins of a long-gone past, another citadel of reaction had been erected, and millions of men had to give their lives before this last bulwark was destroyed. ART A CHAPTER OF ART WHEN a baby is perfectly healthy and has had enough to eat and has slept all it wants, then it hums a little tune to show how happy it is. To grown-ups this humming means nothing. It sounds like "goo-zum, goo-zum, goo-o-o-o-o," but to the baby it is perfect music. It is his first contribution to art. As soon as he (or she) gets a little older and is able to sit up, the period of mud-pie making begins. These mud-pies do not interest the outside world. There are too many million babies, making too many million mud-pies at the same time. But to the small infant they represent another expedition into the pleasant realm of art. The baby is now a sculptor. At the age of three or four, when the hands begin to obey the brain, the child becomes a painter. His fond mother gives him a box of coloured chalks and every loose bit of paper is rapidly covered with strange pothooks and scrawls which represent houses and horses and terrible naval battles. Soon however this happiness of just "making things" comes to an end. School begins and the greater part of the day is filled up with work. The business of living, or rather the business of "making a living," becomes the most important event in the life of every boy and girl. There is little time left for "art" between learning the tables of multiplication and the past participles of the irregular French verbs. And unless the desire for making certain things for the mere pleasure of creating them without any hope of a practical return be very strong, the child grows into manhood and forgets that the first five years of his life were mainly devoted to art. Nations are not different from children. As soon as the cave-man had escaped the threatening dangers of the long and shivering ice-period, and had put his house in order, he began to make certain things which he thought beautiful, although they were of no earthly use to him in his fight with the wild animals of the jungle. He covered the walls of his grotto with pictures of the elephants and the deer which he hunted, and out of a piece of stone, he hacked the rough figures of those women he thought most attractive. As soon as the Egyptians and the Babylonians and the Persians and all the other people of the east had founded their little countries along the Nile and the Euphrates, they began to build magnificent palaces for their kings, invented bright pieces of jewellery for their women and planted gardens which sang happy songs of colour with their many bright flowers. Our own ancestors, the wandering nomads from the distant Asiatic prairies, enjoying a free and easy existence as fighters and hunters, composed songs which celebrated the mighty deeds of their great leaders and invented a form of poetry which has survived until our own day. A thousand years later, when they had established themselves on the Greek mainland, and had built their "city-states," they expressed their joy (and their sorrows) in magnificent temples, in statues, in comedies and in tragedies, and in every conceivable form of art. The Romans, like their Carthaginian rivals, were too busy administering other people and making money to have much love for "useless and unprofitable" adventures of the spirit. They conquered the world and built roads and bridges but they borrowed their art wholesale from the Greeks. They invented certain practical forms of architecture which answered the demands of their day and age. But their statues and their histories and their mosaics and their poems were mere Latin imitations of Greek originals. Without that vague and hard-to-define something which the world calls "personality," there can be no art and the Roman world distrusted that particular sort of personality. The Empire needed efficient soldiers and tradesmen. The business of writing poetry or making pictures was left to foreigners. Then came the Dark Ages. The barbarian was the proverbial bull in the china-shop of western Europe. He had no use for what he did not understand. Speaking in terms of the year 1921, he liked the magazine covers of pretty ladies, but threw the Rembrandt etchings which he had inherited into the ash-can. Soon he came to learn better. Then he tried to undo the damage which he had created a few years before. But the ash-cans were gone and so were the pictures. But by this time, his own art, which he had brought with him from the east, had developed into something very beautiful and he made up for his past neglect and indifference by the so-called "art of the Middle Ages" which as far as northern Europe is concerned was a product of the Germanic mind and had borrowed but little from the Greeks and the Latins and nothing at all from the older forms of art of Egypt and Assyria, not to speak of India and China, which simply did not exist, as far as the people of that time were concerned. Indeed, so little had the northern races been influenced by their southern neighbours that their own architectural products were completely misunderstood by the people of Italy and were treated by them with downright and unmitigated contempt. You have all heard the word Gothic. You probably associate it with the picture of a lovely old cathedral, lifting its slender spires towards high heaven. But what does the word really mean? It means something "uncouth" and "barbaric"--something which one might expect from an "uncivilised Goth," a rough backwoods-man who had no respect for the established rules of classical art and who built his "modern horrors" to please his own low tastes without a decent regard for the examples of the Forum and the Acropolis. And yet for several centuries this form of Gothic architecture was the highest expression of the sincere feeling for art which inspired the whole northern continent. From a previous chapter, you will remember how the people of the late Middle Ages lived. Unless they were peasants and dwelt in villages, they were citizens of a "city" or "civitas," the old Latin name for a tribe. And indeed, behind their high walls and their deep moats, these good burghers were true tribesmen who shared the common dangers and enjoyed the common safety and prosperity which they derived from their system of mutual protection. In the old Greek and Roman cities the market-place, where the temple stood, had been the centre of civic life. During the Middle Ages, the Church, the House of God, became such a centre. We modern Protestant people, who go to our church only once a week, and then for a few hours only, hardly know what a mediaeval church meant to the community. Then, before you were a week old, you were taken to the Church to be baptised. As a child, you visited the Church to learn the holy stories of the Scriptures. Later on you became a member of the congregation, and if you were rich enough you built yourself a separate little chapel sacred to the memory of the Patron Saint of your own family. As for the sacred edifice, it was open at all hours of the day and many of the night. In a certain sense it resembled a modern club, dedicated to all the inhabitants of the town. In the church you very likely caught a first glimpse of the girl who was to become your bride at a great ceremony before the High Altar. And finally, when the end of the journey had come, you were buried beneath the stones of this familiar building, that all your children and their grandchildren might pass over your grave until the Day of Judgement. Because the Church was not only the House of God but also the true centre of all common life, the building had to be different from anything that had ever been constructed by the hands of man. The temples of the Egyptians and the Greeks and the Romans had been merely the shrine of a local divinity. As no sermons were preached before the images of Osiris or Zeus or Jupiter, it was not necessary that the interior offer space for a great multitude. All the religious processions of the old Mediterranean peoples took place in the open. But in the north, where the weather was usually bad, most functions were held under the roof of the church. During many centuries the architects struggled with this problem of constructing a building that was large enough. The Roman tradition taught them how to build heavy stone walls with very small windows lest the walls lose their strength. On the top of this they then placed a heavy stone roof. But in the twelfth century, after the beginning of the Crusades, when the architects had seen the pointed arches of the Mohammedan builders, the western builders discovered a new style which gave them their first chance to make the sort of building which those days of an intense religious life demanded. And then they developed this strange style upon which the Italians bestowed the contemptuous name of "Gothic" or barbaric. They achieved their purpose by inventing a vaulted roof which was supported by "ribs." But such a roof, if it became too heavy, was apt to break the walls, just as a man of three hundred pounds sitting down upon a child's chair will force it to collapse. To overcome this difficulty, certain French architects then began to re-enforce the walls with "buttresses" which were merely heavy masses of stone against which the walls could lean while they supported the roof. And to assure the further safety of the roof they supported the ribs of the roof by so-called "flying buttresses," a very simple method of construction which you will understand at once when you look at our picture. This new method of construction allowed the introduction of enormous windows. In the twelfth century, glass was still an expensive curiosity, and very few private buildings possessed glass windows. Even the castles of the nobles were without protection and this accounts for the eternal drafts and explains why people of that day wore furs in-doors as well as out. Fortunately, the art of making coloured glass, with which the ancient people of the Mediterranean had been familiar, had not been entirely lost. There was a revival of stained glass-making and soon the windows of the Gothic churches told the stories of the Holy Book in little bits of brilliantly coloured window-pane, which were caught in a long framework of lead. Behold, therefore, the new and glorious house of God, filled with an eager multitude, "living" its religion as no people have ever done either before or since! Nothing is considered too good or too costly or too wondrous for this House of God and Home of Man. The sculptors, who since the destruction of the Roman Empire have been out of employment, haltingly return to their noble art. Portals and pillars and buttresses and cornices are all covered with carven images of Our Lord and the blessed Saints. The embroiderers too are set to work to make tapestries for the walls. The jewellers offer their highest art that the shrine of the altar may be worthy of complete adoration. Even the painter does his best. Poor man, he is greatly handicapped by lack of a suitable medium. And thereby hangs a story. The Romans of the early Christian period had covered the floors and the walls of their temples and houses with mosaics; pictures made of coloured bits of glass. But this art had been exceedingly difficult. It gave the painter no chance to express all he wanted to say, as all children know who have ever tried to make figures out of coloured blocks of wood. The art of mosaic painting therefore died out during the late Middle Ages except in Russia, where the Byzantine mosaic painters had found a refuge after the fall of Constantinople and continued to ornament the walls of the orthodox churches until the day of the Bolsheviki, when there was an end to the building of churches. Of course, the mediaeval painter could mix his colours with the water of the wet plaster which was put upon the walls of the churches. This method of painting upon "fresh plaster" (which was generally called "fresco" or "fresh" painting) was very popular for many centuries. To-day, it is as rare as the art of painting miniatures in manuscripts and among the hundreds of artists of our modern cities there is perhaps one who can handle this medium successfully. But during the Middle Ages there was no other way and the artists were "fresco" workers for lack of something better. The method however had certain great disadvantages. Very often the plaster came off the walls after only a few years, or dampness spoiled the pictures, just as dampness will spoil the pattern of our wall paper. People tried every imaginable expedient to get away from this plaster background. They tried to mix their colours with wine and vinegar and with honey and with the sticky white of egg, but none of these methods were satisfactory. For more than a thousand years these experiments continued. In painting pictures upon the parchment leaves of manuscripts the mediaeval artists were very successful. But when it came to covering large spaces of wood or stone with paint which would stick, they did not succeed very well. At last, during the first half of the fifteenth century, the problem was solved in the southern Netherlands by Jan and Hubert van Eyck. The famous Flemish brothers mixed their paint with specially prepared oils and this allowed them to use wood and canvas or stone or anything else as a background for their pictures. But by this time the religious ardour of the early Middle Ages was a thing of the past. The rich burghers of the cities were succeeding the bishops as patrons of the arts. And as art invariably follows the full dinner-pail, the artists now began to work for these worldly employers and painted pictures for kings, for grand-dukes and for rich bankers. Within a very short time, the new method of painting with oil spread through Europe and in every country there developed a school of special painting which showed the characteristic tastes of the people for whom these portraits and landscapes were made. In Spain, for example, Velasquez painted court-dwarfs and the weavers of the royal tapestry-factories, and all sorts of persons and subjects connected with the king and his court. But in Holland, Rembrandt and Frans Hals and Vermeer painted the barnyard of the merchant's house, and they painted his rather dowdy wife and his healthy but bumptious children and the ships which had brought him his wealth. In Italy on the other hand, where the Pope remained the largest patron of the arts, Michelangelo and Correggio continued to paint Madonnas and Saints, while in England, where the aristocracy was very rich and powerful and in France where the kings had become uppermost in the state, the artists painted distinguished gentlemen who were members of the government, and very lovely ladies who were friends of His Majesty. The great change in painting, which came about with the neglect of the old church and the rise of a new class in society, was reflected in all other forms of art. The invention of printing had made it possible for authors to win fame and reputation by writing books for the multitudes. In this way arose the profession of the novelist and the illustrator. But the people who had money enough to buy the new books were not the sort who liked to sit at home of nights, looking at the ceiling or just sitting. They wanted to be amused. The few minstrels of the Middle Ages were not sufficient to cover the demand for entertainment. For the first time since the early Greek city-states of two thousand years before, the professional playwright had a chance to ply his trade. The Middle Ages had known the theatre merely as part of certain church celebrations. The tragedies of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries had told the story of the suffering of our Lord. But during the sixteenth century the worldly theatre made its reappearance. It is true that, at first, the position of the professional playwright and actor was not a very high one. William Shakespeare was regarded as a sort of circus-fellow who amused his neighbours with his tragedies and comedies. But when he died in the year 1616 he had begun to enjoy the respect of his neighbours and actors were no longer subjects of police supervision. William's contemporary, Lope de Vega, the incredible Spaniard who wrote no less than 1800 worldly and 400 religious plays, was a person of rank who received the papal approval upon his work. A century later, Moliere, the Frenchman, was deemed worthy of the companionship of none less than King Louis XIV. Since then, the theatre has enjoyed an ever increasing affection on the part of the people. To-day a "theatre" is part of every well-regulated city, and the "silent drama" of the movies has penetrated to the tiniest of our prairie hamlets. Another art, however, was to become the most popular of all. That was music. Most of the old art-forms demanded a great deal of technical skill. It takes years and years of practice before our clumsy hand is able to follow the commands of the brain and reproduce our vision upon canvas or in marble. It takes a life-time to learn how to act or how to write a good novel. And it takes a great deal of training on the part of the public to appreciate the best in painting and writing and sculpture. But almost any one, not entirely tone-deaf, can follow a tune and almost everybody can get enjoyment out of some sort of music. The Middle Ages had heard a little music but it had been entirely the music of the church. The holy chants were subject to very severe laws of rhythm and harmony and soon these became monotonous. Besides, they could not well be sung in the street or in the market-place. The Renaissance changed this. Music once more came into its own as the best friend of man, both in his happiness and in his sorrows. The Egyptians and the Babylonians and the ancient Jews had all been great lovers of music. They had even combined different instruments into regular orchestras. But the Greeks had frowned upon this barbaric foreign noise. They liked to hear a man recite the stately poetry of Homer and Pindar. They allowed him to accompany himself upon the lyre (the poorest of all stringed instruments). That was as far as any one could go without incurring the risk of popular disapproval. The Romans on the other hand had loved orchestral music at their dinners and parties and they had invented most of the instruments which (in VERY modified form) we use to-day. The early church had despised this music which smacked too much of the wicked pagan world which had just been destroyed. A few songs rendered by the entire congregation were all the bishops of the third and fourth centuries would tolerate. As the congregation was apt to sing dreadfully out of key without the guidance of an instrument, the church had afterwards allowed the use of an organ, an invention of the second century of our era which consisted of a combination of the old pipes of Pan and a pair of bellows. Then came the great migrations. The last of the Roman musicians were either killed or became tramp-fiddlers going from city to city and playing in the street, and begging for pennies like the harpist on a modern ferry-boat. But the revival of a more worldly civilisation in the cities of the late Middle Ages had created a new demand for musicians. Instruments like the horn, which had been used only as signal-instruments for hunting and fighting, were remodelled until they could reproduce sounds which were agreeable in the dance-hall and in the banqueting room. A bow strung with horse-hair was used to play the old-fashioned guitar and before the end of the Middle Ages this six-stringed instrument (the most ancient of all string-instruments which dates back to Egypt and Assyria) had grown into our modern four-stringed fiddle which Stradivarius and the other Italian violin-makers of the eighteenth century brought to the height of perfection. And finally the modern piano was invented, the most wide-spread of all musical instruments, which has followed man into the wilderness of the jungle and the ice-fields of Greenland. The organ had been the first of all keyed instruments but the performer always depended upon the co-operation of some one who worked the bellows, a job which nowadays is done by electricity. The musicians therefore looked for a handier and less circumstantial instrument to assist them in training the pupils of the many church choirs. During the great eleventh century, Guido, a Benedictine monk of the town of Arezzo (the birthplace of the poet Petrarch) gave us our modern system of musical annotation. Some time during that century, when there was a great deal of popular interest in music, the first instrument with both keys and strings was built. It must have sounded as tinkly as one of those tiny children's pianos which you can buy at every toy-shop. In the city of Vienna, the town where the strolling musicians of the Middle Ages (who had been classed with jugglers and card sharps) had formed the first separate Guild of Musicians in the year 1288, the little monochord was developed into something which we can recognise as the direct ancestor of our modern Steinway. From Austria the "clavichord" as it was usually called in those days (because it had "craves" or keys) went to Italy. There it was perfected into the "spinet" which was so called after the inventor, Giovanni Spinetti of Venice. At last during the eighteenth century, some time between 1709 and 1720, Bartolomeo Cristofori made a "clavier" which allowed the performer to play both loudly and softly or as it was said in Italian, "piano" and "forte." This instrument with certain changes became our "pianoforte" or piano. Then for the first time the world possessed an easy and convenient instrument which could be mastered in a couple of years and did not need the eternal tuning of harps and fiddles and was much pleasanter to the ears than the mediaeval tubas, clarinets, trombones and oboes. Just as the phonograph has given millions of modern people their first love of music so did the early "pianoforte" carry the knowledge of music into much wider circles. Music became part of the education of every well-bred man and woman. Princes and rich merchants maintained private orchestras. The musician ceased to be a wandering "jongleur" and became a highly valued member of the community. Music was added to the dramatic performances of the theatre and out of this practice, grew our modern Opera. Originally only a few very rich princes could afford the expenses of an "opera troupe." But as the taste for this sort of entertainment grew, many cities built their own theatres where Italian and afterwards German operas were given to the unlimited joy of the whole community with the exception of a few sects of very strict Christians who still regarded music with deep suspicion as something which was too lovely to be entirely good for the soul. By the middle of the eighteenth century the musical life of Europe was in full swing. Then there came forward a man who was greater than all others, a simple organist of the Thomas Church of Leipzig, by the name of Johann Sebastian Bach. In his compositions for every known instrument, from comic songs and popular dances to the most stately of sacred hymns and oratorios, he laid the foundation for all our modern music. When he died in the year 1750 he was succeeded by Mozart, who created musical fabrics of sheer loveliness which remind us of lace that has been woven out of harmony and rhythm. Then came Ludwig van Beethoven, the most tragic of men, who gave us our modern orchestra, yet heard none of his greatest compositions because he was deaf, as the result of a cold contracted during his years of poverty. Beethoven lived through the period of the great French Revolution. Full of hope for a new and glorious day, he had dedicated one of his symphonies to Napoleon. But he lived to regret the hour. When he died in the year 1827, Napoleon was gone and the French Revolution was gone, but the steam engine had come and was filling the world with a sound that had nothing in common with the dreams of the Third Symphony. Indeed, the new order of steam and iron and coal and large factories had little use for art, for painting and sculpture and poetry and music. The old protectors of the arts, the Church and the princes and the merchants of the Middle Ages and the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries no longer existed. The leaders of the new industrial world were too busy and had too little education to bother about etchings and sonatas and bits of carved ivory, not to speak of the men who created those things, and who were of no practical use to the community in which they lived. And the workmen in the factories listened to the drone of their engines until they too had lost all taste for the melody of the flute or fiddle of their peasant ancestry. The arts became the step-children of the new industrial era. Art and Life became entirely separated. Whatever paintings had been left, were dying a slow death in the museums. And music became a monopoly of a few "virtuosi" who took the music away from the home and carried it to the concert-hall. But steadily, although slowly, the arts are coming back into their own. People begin to understand that Rembrandt and Beethoven and Rodin are the true prophets and leaders of their race and that a world without art and happiness resembles a nursery without laughter. COLONIAL EXPANSION AND WAR A CHAPTER WHICH OUGHT TO GIVE YOU A GREAT DEAL OF POLITICAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE LAST FIFTY YEARS, BUT WHICH REALLY CONTAINS SEVERAL EXPLANATIONS AND A FEW APOLOGIES IF I had known how difficult it was to write a History of the World, I should never have undertaken the task. Of course, any one possessed of enough industry to lose himself for half a dozen years in the musty stacks of a library, can compile a ponderous tome which gives an account of the events in every land during every century. But that was not the purpose of the present book. The publishers wanted to print a history that should have rhythm--a story which galloped rather than walked. And now that I have almost finished I discover that certain chapters gallop, that others wade slowly through the dreary sands of long forgotten ages--that a few parts do not make any progress at all, while still others indulge in a veritable jazz of action and romance. I did not like this and I suggested that we destroy the whole manuscript and begin once more from the beginning. This, however, the publishers would not allow. As the next best solution of my difficulties, I took the type-written pages to a number of charitable friends and asked them to read what I had said, and give me the benefit of their advice. The experience was rather disheartening. Each and every man had his own prejudices and his own hobbies and preferences. They all wanted to know why, where and how I dared to omit their pet nation, their pet statesman, or even their most beloved criminal. With some of them, Napoleon and Jenghiz Khan were candidates for high honours. I explained that I had tried very hard to be fair to Napoleon, but that in my estimation he was greatly inferior to such men as George Washington, Gustavus Wasa, Augustus, Hammurabi or Lincoln, and a score of others all of whom were obliged to content themselves with a few paragraphs, from sheer lack of space. As for Jenghiz Khan, I only recognise his superior ability in the field of wholesale murder and I did not intend to give him any more publicity than I could help. "This is very well as far as it goes," said the next critic, "but how about the Puritans? We are celebrating the tercentenary of their arrival at Plymouth. They ought to have more space." My answer was that if I were writing a history of America, the Puritans would get fully one half of the first twelve chapters; that however this was a history of mankind and that the event on Plymouth rock was not a matter of far-reaching international importance until many centuries later; that the United States had been founded by thirteen colonies and not by a single one; that the most prominent leaders of the first twenty years of our history had been from Virginia, from Pennsylvania, and from the island of Nevis, rather than from Massachusetts; and that therefore the Puritans ought to content themselves with a page of print and a special map. Next came the prehistoric specialist. Why in the name of the great Tyrannosaur had I not devoted more space to the wonderful race of Cro-Magnon men, who had developed such a high stage of civilisation 10,000 years ago? Indeed, and why not? The reason is simple. I do not take as much stock in the perfection of these early races as some of our most noted anthropologists seem to do. Rousseau and the philosophers of the eighteenth century created the "noble savage" who was supposed to have dwelt in a state of perfect happiness during the beginning of time. Our modern scientists have discarded the "noble savage," so dearly beloved by our grandfathers, and they have replaced him by the "splendid savage" of the French Valleys who 35,000 years ago made an end to the universal rule of the low-browed and low-living brutes of the Neanderthal and other Germanic neighbourhoods. They have shown us the elephants the Cro-Magnon painted and the statues he carved and they have surrounded him with much glory. I do not mean to say that they are wrong. But I hold that we know by far too little of this entire period to re-construct that early west-European society with any degree (however humble) of accuracy. And I would rather not state certain things than run the risk of stating certain things that were not so. Then there were other critics, who accused me of direct unfairness. Why did I leave out such countries as Ireland and Bulgaria and Siam while I dragged in such other countries as Holland and Iceland and Switzerland? My answer was that I did not drag in any countries. They pushed themselves in by main force of circumstances, and I simply could not keep them out. And in order that my point may be understood, let me state the basis upon which active membership to this book of history was considered. There was but one rule. "Did the country or the person in question produce a new idea or perform an original act without which the history of the entire human race would have been different?" It was not a question of personal taste. It was a matter of cool, almost mathematical judgment. No race ever played a more picturesque role in history than the Mongolians, and no race, from the point of view of achievement or intelligent progress, was of less value to the rest of mankind. The career of Tiglath-Pileser, the Assyrian, is full of dramatic episodes. But as far as we are concerned, he might just as well never have existed at all. In the same way, the history of the Dutch Republic is not interesting because once upon a time the sailors of de Ruyter went fishing in the river Thames, but rather because of the fact that this small mud-bank along the shores of the North Sea offered a hospitable asylum to all sorts of strange people who had all sorts of queer ideas upon all sorts of very unpopular subjects. It is quite true that Athens or Florence, during the hey-day of their glory, had only one tenth of the population of Kansas City. But our present civilisation would be very different had neither of these two little cities of the Mediterranean basin existed. And the same (with due apologies to the good people of Wyandotte County) can hardly be said of this busy metropolis on the Missouri River. And since I am being very personal, allow me to state one other fact. When we visit a doctor, we find out before hand whether he is a surgeon or a diagnostician or a homeopath or a faith healer, for we want to know from what angle he will look at our complaint. We ought to be as careful in the choice of our historians as we are in the selection of our physicians. We think, "Oh well, history is history," and let it go at that. But the writer who was educated in a strictly Presbyterian household somewhere in the backwoods of Scotland will look differently upon every question of human relationships from his neighbour who as a child, was dragged to listen to the brilliant exhortations of Robert Ingersoll, the enemy of all revealed Devils. In due course of time, both men may forget their early training and never again visit either church or lecture hall. But the influence of these impressionable years stays with them and they cannot escape showing it in whatever they write or say or do. In the preface to this book, I told you that I should not be an infallible guide and now that we have almost reached the end, I repeat the warning. I was born and educated in an atmosphere of the old-fashioned liberalism which had followed the discoveries of Darwin and the other pioneers of the nineteenth century. As a child, I happened to spend most of my waking hours with an uncle who was a great collector of the books written by Montaigne, the great French essayist of the sixteenth century. Because I was born in Rotterdam and educated in the city of Gouda, I ran continually across Erasmus and for some unknown reason this great exponent of tolerance took hold of my intolerant self. Later I discovered Anatole France and my first experience with the English language came about through an accidental encounter with Thackeray's "Henry Esmond," a story which made more impression upon me than any other book in the English language. If I had been born in a pleasant middle western city I probably should have a certain affection for the hymns which I had heard in my childhood. But my earliest recollection of music goes back to the afternoon when my Mother took me to hear nothing less than a Bach fugue. And the mathematical perfection of the great Protestant master influenced me to such an extent that I cannot hear the usual hymns of our prayer-meetings without a feeling of intense agony and direct pain. Again, if I had been born in Italy and had been warmed by the sunshine of the happy valley of the Arno, I might love many colourful and sunny pictures which now leave me indifferent because I got my first artistic impressions in a country where the rare sun beats down upon the rain-soaked land with almost cruel brutality and throws everything into violent contrasts of dark and light. I state these few facts deliberately that you may know the personal bias of the man who wrote this history and may understand his point-of-view. The bibliography at the end of this book, which represents all sorts of opinions and views, will allow you to compare my ideas with those of other people. And in this way, you will be able to reach your own final conclusions with a greater degree of fairness than would otherwise be possible. After this short but necessary excursion, we return to the history of the last fifty years. Many things happened during this period but very little occurred which at the time seemed to be of paramount importance. The majority of the greater powers ceased to be mere political agencies and became large business enterprises. They built railroads. They founded and subsidized steam-ship lines to all parts of the world. They connected their different possessions with telegraph wires. And they steadily increased their holdings in other continents. Every available bit of African or Asiatic territory was claimed by one of the rival powers. France became a colonial nation with interests in Algiers and Madagascar and Annam and Tonkin (in eastern Asia). Germany claimed parts of southwest and east Africa, built settlements in Kameroon on the west coast of Africa and in New Guinea and many of the islands of the Pacific, and used the murder of a few missionaries as a welcome excuse to take the harbour of Kisochau on the Yellow Sea in China. Italy tried her luck in Abyssinia, was disastrously defeated by the soldiers of the Negus, and consoled herself by occupying the Turkish possessions in Tripoli in northern Africa. Russia, having occupied all of Siberia, took Port Arthur away from China. Japan, having defeated China in the war of 1895, occupied the island of Formosa and in the year 1905 began to lay claim to the entire empire of Corea. In the year 1883 England, the largest colonial empire the world has ever seen, undertook to "protect" Egypt. She performed this task most efficiently and to the great material benefit of that much neglected country, which ever since the opening of the Suez canal in 1868 had been threatened with a foreign invasion. During the next thirty years she fought a number of colonial wars in different parts of the world and in 1902 (after three years of bitter fighting) she conquered the independent Boer republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. Meanwhile she had encouraged Cecil Rhodes to lay the foundations for a great African state, which reached from the Cape almost to the mouth of the Nile, and had faithfully picked up such islands or provinces as had been left without a European owner. The shrewd king of Belgium, by name Leopold, used the discoveries of Henry Stanley to found the Congo Free State in the year 1885. Originally this gigantic tropical empire was an "absolute monarchy." But after many years of scandalous mismanagement, it was annexed by the Belgian people who made it a colony (in the year 1908) and abolished the terrible abuses which had been tolerated by this very unscrupulous Majesty, who cared nothing for the fate of the natives as long as he got his ivory and rubber. As for the United States, they had so much land that they desired no further territory. But the terrible misrule of Cuba, one of the last of the Spanish possessions in the western hemisphere, practically forced the Washington government to take action. After a short and rather uneventful war, the Spaniards were driven out of Cuba and Puerto Rico and the Philippines, and the two latter became colonies of the United States. This economic development of the world was perfectly natural. The increasing number of factories in England and France and Germany needed an ever increasing amount of raw materials and the equally increasing number of European workers needed an ever increasing amount of food. Everywhere the cry was for more and for richer markets, for more easily accessible coal mines and iron mines and rubber plantations and oil-wells, for greater supplies of wheat and grain. The purely political events of the European continent dwindled to mere insignificance in the eyes of men who were making plans for steamboat lines on Victoria Nyanza or for railroads through the interior of Shantung. They knew that many European questions still remained to be settled, but they did not bother, and through sheer indifference and carelessness they bestowed upon their descendants a terrible inheritance of hate and misery. For untold centuries the south-eastern corner of Europe had been the scene of rebellion and bloodshed. During the seventies of the last century the people of Serbia and Bulgaria and Montenegro and Roumania were once more trying to gain their freedom and the Turks (with the support of many of the western powers), were trying to prevent this. After a period of particularly atrocious massacres in Bulgaria in the year 1876, the Russian people lost all patience. The Government was forced to intervene just as President McKinley was obliged to go to Cuba and stop the shooting-squads of General Weyler in Havana. In April of the year 1877 the Russian armies crossed the Danube, stormed the Shipka pass, and after the capture of Plevna, marched southward until they reached the gates of Constantinople. Turkey appealed for help to England. There were many English people who denounced their government when it took the side of the Sultan. But Disraeli (who had just made Queen Victoria Empress of India and who loved the picturesque Turks while he hated the Russians who were brutally cruel to the Jewish people within their frontiers) decided to interfere. Russia was forced to conclude the peace of San Stefano (1878) and the question of the Balkans was left to a Congress which convened at Berlin in June and July of the same year. This famous conference was entirely dominated by the personality of Disraeli. Even Bismarck feared the clever old man with his well-oiled curly hair and his supreme arrogance, tempered by a cynical sense of humor and a marvellous gift for flattery. At Berlin the British prime-minister carefully watched over the fate of his friends the Turks. Montenegro, Serbia and Roumania were recognised as independent kingdoms. The principality of Bulgaria was given a semi-independent status under Prince Alexander of Battenberg, a nephew of Tsar Alexander II. But none of those countries were given the chance to develop their powers and their resources as they would have been able to do, had England been less anxious about the fate of the Sultan, whose domains were necessary to the safety of the British Empire as a bulwark against further Russian aggression. To make matters worse, the congress allowed Austria to take Bosnia and Herzegovina away from the Turks to be "administered" as part of the Habsburg domains. It is true that Austria made an excellent job of it. The neglected provinces were as well managed as the best of the British colonies, and that is saying a great deal. But they were inhabited by many Serbians. In older days they had been part of the great Serbian empire of Stephan Dushan, who early in the fourteenth century had defended western Europe against the invasions of the Turks and whose capital of Uskub had been a centre of civilisation one hundred and fifty years before Columbus discovered the new lands of the west. The Serbians remembered their ancient glory as who would not? They resented the presence of the Austrians in two provinces, which, so they felt, were theirs by every right of tradition. And it was in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, that the archduke Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, was murdered on June 28 of the year 1914. The assassin was a Serbian student who had acted from purely patriotic motives. But the blame for this terrible catastrophe which was the immediate, though not the only cause of the Great World War did not lie with the half-crazy Serbian boy or his Austrian victim. It must be traced back to the days of the famous Berlin Conference when Europe was too busy building a material civilisation to care about the aspirations and the dreams of a forgotten race in a dreary corner of the old Balkan peninsula. A NEW WORLD THE GREAT WAR WHICH WAS REALLY THE STRUGGLE FOR A NEW AND BETTER WORLD THE Marquis de Condorcet was one of the noblest characters among the small group of honest enthusiasts who were responsible for the outbreak of the great French Revolution. He had devoted his life to the cause of the poor and the unfortunate. He had been one of the assistants of d'Alembert and Diderot when they wrote their famous Encyclopedie. During the first years of the Revolution he had been the leader of the Moderate wing of the Convention. His tolerance, his kindliness, his stout common sense, had made him an object of suspicion when the treason of the king and the court clique had given the extreme radicals their chance to get hold of the government and kill their opponents. Condorcet was declared "hors de loi," or outlawed, an outcast who was henceforth at the mercy of every true patriot. His friends offered to hide him at their own peril. Condorcet refused to accept their sacrifice. He escaped and tried to reach his home, where he might be safe. After three nights in the open, torn and bleeding, he entered an inn and asked for some food. The suspicious yokels searched him and in his pockets they found a copy of Horace, the Latin poet. This showed that their prisoner was a man of gentle breeding and had no business upon the highroads at a time when every educated person was regarded as an enemy of the Revolutionary state. They took Condorcet and they bound him and they gagged him and they threw him into the village lock-up, but in the morning when the soldiers came to drag him back to Paris and cut his head off, behold! he was dead. This man who had given all and had received nothing had good reason to despair of the human race. But he has written a few sentences which ring as true to-day as they did one hundred and thirty years ago. I repeat them here for your benefit. "Nature has set no limits to our hopes," he wrote, "and the picture of the human race, now freed from its chains and marching with a firm tread on the road of truth and virtue and happiness, offers to the philosopher a spectacle which consoles him for the errors, for the crimes and the injustices which still pollute and afflict this earth." The world has just passed through an agony of pain compared to which the French Revolution was a mere incident. The shock has been so great that it has killed the last spark of hope in the breasts of millions of men. They were chanting a hymn of progress, and four years of slaughter followed their prayers for peace. "Is it worth while," so they ask, "to work and slave for the benefit of creatures who have not yet passed beyond the stage of the earliest cave men?" There is but one answer. That answer is "Yes!" The World War was a terrible calamity. But it did not mean the end of things. On the contrary it brought about the coming of a new day. It is easy to write a history of Greece and Rome or the Middle Ages. The actors who played their parts upon that long-forgotten stage are all dead. We can criticize them with a cool head. The audience that applauded their efforts has dispersed. Our remarks cannot possibly hurt their feelings. But it is very difficult to give a true account of contemporary events. The problems that fill the minds of the people with whom we pass through life, are our own problems, and they hurt us too much or they please us too well to be described with that fairness which is necessary when we are writing history and not blowing the trumpet of propaganda. All the same I shall endeavour to tell you why I agree with poor Condorcet when he expressed his firm faith in a better future. Often before have I warned you against the false impression which is created by the use of our so-called historical epochs which divide the story of man into four parts, the ancient world, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Reformation, and Modern Time. The last of these terms is the most dangerous. The word "modern" implies that we, the people of the twentieth century, are at the top of human achievement. Fifty years ago the liberals of England who followed the leadership of Gladstone felt that the problem of a truly representative and democratic form of government had been solved forever by the second great Reform Bill, which gave workmen an equal share in the government with their employers. When Disraeli and his conservative friends talked of a dangerous "leap in the dark" they answered "No." They felt certain of their cause and trusted that henceforth all classes of society would co-operate to make the government of their common country a success. Since then many things have happened, and the few liberals who are still alive begin to understand that they were mistaken. There is no definite answer to any historical problem. Every generation must fight the good fight anew or perish as those sluggish animals of the prehistoric world have perished. If you once get hold of this great truth you will get a new and much broader view of life. Then, go one step further and try to imagine yourself in the position of your own great-great-grandchildren who will take your place in the year 10,000. They too will learn history. But what will they think of those short four thousand years during which we have kept a written record of our actions and of our thoughts? They will think of Napoleon as a contemporary of Tiglath Pileser, the Assyrian conqueror. Perhaps they will confuse him with Jenghiz Khan or Alexander the Macedonian. The great war which has just come to an end will appear in the light of that long commercial conflict which settled the supremacy of the Mediterranean when Rome and Carthage fought during one hundred and twenty-eight years for the mastery of the sea. The Balkan troubles of the 19th century (the struggle for freedom of Serbia and Greece and Bulgaria and Montenegro) to them will seem a continuation of the disordered conditions caused by the Great Migrations. They will look at pictures of the Rheims cathedral which only yesterday was destroyed by German guns as we look upon a photograph of the Acropolis ruined two hundred and fifty years ago during a war between the Turks and the Venetians. They will regard the fear of death, which is still common among many people, as a childish superstition which was perhaps natural in a race of men who had burned witches as late as the year 1692. Even our hospitals and our laboratories and our operating rooms of which we are so proud will look like slightly improved workshops of alchemists and mediaeval surgeons. And the reason for all this is simple. We modern men and women are not "modern" at all. On the contrary we still belong to the last generations of the cave-dwellers. The foundation for a new era was laid but yesterday. The human race was given its first chance to become truly civilised when it took courage to question all things and made "knowledge and understanding" the foundation upon which to create a more reasonable and sensible society of human beings. The Great War was the "growing-pain" of this new world. For a long time to come people will write mighty books to prove that this or that or the other person brought about the war. The Socialists will publish volumes in which they will accuse the "capitalists" of having brought about the war for "commercial gain." The capitalists will answer that they lost infinitely more through the war than they made--that their children were among the first to go and fight and be killed--and they will show how in every country the bankers tried their very best to avert the outbreak of hostilities. French historians will go through the register of German sins from the days of Charlemagne until the days of William of Hohenzollern and German historians will return the compliment and will go through the list of French horrors from the days of Charlemagne until the days of President Poincare. And then they will establish to their own satisfaction that the other fellow was guilty of "causing the war." Statesmen, dead and not yet dead, in all countries will take to their typewriters and they will explain how they tried to avert hostilities and how their wicked opponents forced them into it. The historian, a hundred years hence, will not bother about these apologies and vindications. He will understand the real nature of the underlying causes and he will know that personal ambitions and personal wickedness and personal greed had very little to do with the final outburst. The original mistake, which was responsible for all this misery, was committed when our scientists began to create a new world of steel and iron and chemistry and electricity and forgot that the human mind is slower than the proverbial turtle, is lazier than the well-known sloth, and marches from one hundred to three hundred years behind the small group of courageous leaders. A Zulu in a frock coat is still a Zulu. A dog trained to ride a bicycle and smoke a pipe is still a dog. And a human being with the mind of a sixteenth century tradesman driving a 1921 Rolls-Royce is still a human being with the mind of a sixteenth century tradesman. If you do not understand this at first, read it again. It will become clearer to you in a moment and it will explain many things that have happened these last six years. Perhaps I may give you another, more familiar, example, to show you what I mean. In the movie theatres, jokes and funny remarks are often thrown upon the screen. Watch the audience the next time you have a chance. A few people seem almost to inhale the words. It takes them but a second to read the lines. Others are a bit slower. Still others take from twenty to thirty seconds. Finally those men and women who do not read any more than they can help, get the point when the brighter ones among the audience have already begun to decipher the next cut-in. It is not different in human life, as I shall now show you. In a former chapter I have told you how the idea of the Roman Empire continued to live for a thousand years after the death of the last Roman Emperor. It caused the establishment of a large number of "imitation empires." It gave the Bishops of Rome a chance to make themselves the head of the entire church, because they represented the idea of Roman world-supremacy. It drove a number of perfectly harmless barbarian chieftains into a career of crime and endless warfare because they were for ever under the spell of this magic word "Rome." All these people, Popes, Emperors and plain fighting men were not very different from you or me. But they lived in a world where the Roman tradition was a vital issue something living--something which was remembered clearly both by the father and the son and the grandson. And so they struggled and sacrificed themselves for a cause which to-day would not find a dozen recruits. In still another chapter I have told you how the great religious wars took place more than a century after the first open act of the Reformation and if you will compare the chapter on the Thirty Years War with that on Inventions, you will see that this ghastly butchery took place at a time when the first clumsy steam engines were already puffing in the laboratories of a number of French and German and English scientists. But the world at large took no interest in these strange contraptions, and went on with a grand theological discussion which to-day causes yawns, but no anger. And so it goes. A thousand years from now, the historian will use the same words about Europe of the out-going nineteenth century, and he will see how men were engaged upon terrific nationalistic struggles while the laboratories all around them were filled with serious folk who cared not one whit for politics as long as they could force nature to surrender a few more of her million secrets. You will gradually begin to understand what I am driving at. The engineer and the scientist and the chemist, within a single generation, filled Europe and America and Asia with their vast machines, with their telegraphs, their flying machines, their coal-tar products. They created a new world in which time and space were reduced to complete insignificance. They invented new products and they made these so cheap that almost every one could buy them. I have told you all this before but it certainly will bear repeating. To keep the ever increasing number of factories going, the owners, who had also become the rulers of the land, needed raw materials and coal. Especially coal. Meanwhile the mass of the people were still thinking in terms of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and clinging to the old notions of the state as a dynastic or political organisation. This clumsy mediaeval institution was then suddenly called upon to handle the highly modern problems of a mechanical and industrial world. It did its best, according to the rules of the game which had been laid down centuries before. The different states created enormous armies and gigantic navies which were used for the purpose of acquiring new possessions in distant lands. Whereever{sic} there was a tiny bit of land left, there arose an English or a French or a German or a Russian colony. If the natives objected, they were killed. In most cases they did not object, and were allowed to live peacefully, provided they did not interfere with the diamond mines or the coal mines or the oil mines or the gold mines or the rubber plantations, and they derived many benefits from the foreign occupation. Sometimes it happened that two states in search of raw materials wanted the same piece of land at the same time. Then there was a war. This occurred fifteen years ago when Russia and Japan fought for the possession of certain terri-tories which belonged to the Chinese people. Such conflicts, however, were the exception. No one really desired to fight. Indeed, the idea of fighting with armies and battleships and submarines began to seem absurd to the men of the early 20th century. They associated the idea of violence with the long-ago age of unlimited monarchies and intriguing dynasties. Every day they read in their papers of still further inventions, of groups of English and American and German scientists who were working together in perfect friendship for the purpose of an advance in medicine or in astronomy. They lived in a busy world of trade and of commerce and factories. But only a few noticed that the development of the state, (of the gigantic community of people who recognise certain common ideals,) was lagging several hundred years behind. They tried to warn the others. But the others were occupied with their own affairs. I have used so many similes that I must apologise for bringing in one more. The Ship of State (that old and trusted expression which is ever new and always picturesque,) of the Egyptians and the Greeks and the Romans and the Venetians and the merchant adventurers of the seventeenth century had been a sturdy craft, constructed of well-seasoned wood, and commanded by officers who knew both their crew and their vessel and who understood the limitations of the art of navigating which had been handed down to them by their ancestors. Then came the new age of iron and steel and machinery. First one part, then another of the old ship of state was changed. Her dimensions were increased. The sails were discarded for steam. Better living quarters were established, but more people were forced to go down into the stoke-hole, and while the work was safe and fairly remunerative, they did not like it as well as their old and more dangerous job in the rigging. Finally, and almost imperceptibly, the old wooden square-rigger had been transformed into a modern ocean liner. But the captain and the mates remained the same. They were appointed or elected in the same way as a hundred years before. They were taught the same system of navigation which had served the mariners of the fifteenth century. In their cabins hung the same charts and signal flags which had done service in the days of Louis XIV and Frederick the Great. In short, they were (through no fault of their own) completely incompetent. The sea of international politics is not very broad. When those Imperial and Colonial liners began to try and outrun each other, accidents were bound to happen. They did happen. You can still see the wreckage if you venture to pass through that part of the ocean. And the moral of the story is a simple one. The world is in dreadful need of men who will assume the new leadership--who will have the courage of their own visions and who will recognise clearly that we are only at the beginning of the voyage, and have to learn an entirely new system of seamanship. They will have to serve for years as mere apprentices. They will have to fight their way to the top against every possible form of opposition. When they reach the bridge, mutiny of an envious crew may cause their death. But some day, a man will arise who will bring the vessel safely to port, and he shall be the hero of the ages. AS IT EVER SHALL BE "The more I think of the problems of our lives, the more I am persuaded that we ought to choose Irony and Pity for our "assessors and judges" as the ancient Egyptians called upon "the Goddess Isis and the Goddess Nephtys" on behalf of their dead. "Irony and Pity" are both of good counsel; the first with her "smiles" makes life agreeable; the other sanctifies it with her tears." "The Irony which I invoke is no cruel Deity. She mocks neither love nor beauty. She is gentle and kindly disposed. Her mirth disarms and it is she who teaches us to laugh at rogues and fools, whom but for her we might be so weak as to despise and hate." And with these wise words of a very great Frenchman I bid you farewell. 8 Barrow Street, New York. Saturday, June 26, xxi. AN ANIMATED CHRONOLOGY, 500,000 B.C.--A.D. 1922 THE END CONCERNING THE PICTURES CONCERNING THE PICTURES OF THIS BOOK AND A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE BIBLIOGRAPHY. The day of the historical textbook without illustrations has gone. Pictures and photographs of famous personages and equally famous occurrences cover the pages of Breasted and Robinson and Beard. In this volume the photographs have been omitted to make room for a series of home-made drawings which represent ideas rather than events. While the author lays no claim to great artistic excellence (being possessed of a decided leaning towards drawing as a child, he was taught to play the violin as a matter of discipline,) he prefers to make his own maps and sketches because he knows exactly what he wants to say and cannot possibly explain this meaning to his more proficient brethren in the field of art. Besides, the pictures were all drawn for children and their ideas of art are very different from those of their parents. To all teachers the author would give this advice--let your boys and girls draw their history after their own desire just as often as you have a chance. You can show a class a photograph of a Greek temple or a mediaeval castle and the class will dutifully say, "Yes, Ma'am," and proceed to forget all about it. But make the Greek temple or the Roman castle the centre of an event, tell the boys to make their own picture of "the building of a temple," or "the storming of the castle," and they will stay after school-hours to finish the job. Most children, before they are taught how to draw from plaster casts, can draw after a fashion, and often they can draw remarkably well. The product of their pencil may look a bit prehistoric. It may even resemble the work of certain native tribes from the upper Congo. But the child is quite frequently prehistoric or upper-Congoish in his or her own tastes, and expresses these primitive instincts with a most astonishing accuracy. The main thing in teaching history, is that the pupil shall remember certain events "in their proper sequence." The experiments of many years in the Children's School of New York has convinced the author that few children will ever forget what they have drawn, while very few will ever remember what they have merely read. It is the same with the maps. Give the child an ordinary conventional map with dots and lines and green seas and tell him to revaluate that geographic scene in his or her own terms. The mountains will be a bit out of gear and the cities will look astonishingly mediaeval. The outlines will be often very imperfect, but the general effect will be quite as truthful as that of our conventional maps, which ever since the days of good Gerardus Mercator have told a strangely erroneous story. Most important of all, it will give the child a feeling of intimacy with historical and geographic facts which cannot be obtained in any other way. Neither the publishers nor the author claim that "The Story of Mankind" is the last word to be said upon the subject of history for children. It is an appetizer. The book tries to present the subject in such a fashion that the average child shall get a taste for History and shall ask for more. To facilitate the work of both parents and teachers, the publishers have asked Miss Leonore St. John Power (who knows more upon this particular subject than any one else they could discover) to compile a list of readable and instructive books. The list was made and was duly printed. The parents who live near our big cities will experience no difficulty in ordering these volumes from their booksellers. Those who for the sake of fresh air and quiet, dwell in more remote spots, may not find it convenient to go to a book-store. In that case, Boni and Liveright will be happy to act as middle-man and obtain the books that are desired. They want it to be distinctly understood that they have not gone into the retail book business, but they are quite willing to do their share towards a better and more general historical education, and all orders will receive their immediate attention. AN HISTORICAL READING LIST FOR CHILDREN "Don't stop (I say) to explain that Hebe was (for once) the legitimate daughter of Zeus and, as such, had the privilege to draw wine for the Gods. Don't even stop, just yet, to explain who the Gods were. Don't discourse on amber, otherwise ambergris; don't explain that 'gris' in this connection doesn't mean 'grease'; don't trace it through the Arabic into Noah's Ark; don't prove its electrical properties by tearing up paper into little bits and attracting them with the mouth-piece of your pipe rubbed on your sleeve. Don't insist philologically that when every shepherd 'tells his tale' he is not relating an anecdote but simply keeping 'tally' of his flock. Just go on reading, as well as you can, and be sure that when the children get the thrill of the story, for which you wait, they will be asking more questions, and pertinent ones, than you are able to answer."--("On the Art of Reading for Children," by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch.) The Days Before History "How the Present Came From the Past," by Margaret E. Wells, Volume I. How earliest man learned to make tools and build homes, and the stories he told about the fire-makers, the sun and the frost. A simple, illustrated account of these things for children. "The Story of Ab," by Stanley Waterloo. A romantic tale of the time of the cave-man. (A much simplified edition of this for little children is "Ab, the Cave Man" adapted by William Lewis Nida.) "Industrial and Social History Series," by Katharine E. Dopp. "The Tree Dwellers--The Age of Fear" "The Early Cave-Men--The Age of Combat" "The Later Cave-Men--The Age of the Chase" "The Early Sea People--First Steps in the Conquest of the Waters" "The Tent-Dwellers--The Early Fishing Men" Very simple stories of the way in which man learned how to make pottery, how to weave and spin, and how to conquer land and sea. "Ancient Man," written and drawn and done into colour by Hendrik Willem van Loon. The beginning of civilisations pictured and written in a new and fascinating fashion, with story maps showing exactly what happened in all parts of the world. A book for children of all ages. The Dawn of History "The Civilisation of the Ancient Egyptians," by A. Bothwell Gosse. "No country possesses so many wonders, and has such a number of works which defy description." An excellent, profusely illustrated account of the domestic life, amusements, art, religion and occupations of these wonderful people. "How the Present Came From the Past," by Margaret E. Wells, Volume II. What the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Assyrians and the Persians contributed to civilisation. This is brief and simple and may be used as a first book on the subject. "Stories of Egyptian Gods and Heroes," by F. H. Brooksbank. The beliefs of the Egyptians, the legend of Isis and Osiris, the builders of the Pyramids and the Temples, the Riddle of the Sphinx, all add to the fascination of this romantic picture of Egypt. "Wonder Tales of the Ancient World," by Rev. James Baikie. Tales of the Wizards, Tales of Travel and Adventure, and Legends of the Gods all gathered from ancient Egyptian literature. "Ancient Assyria," by Rev. James Baikie. Which tells of a city 2800 years ago with a street lined with beautiful enamelled reliefs, and with libraries of clay. "The Bible for Young People," arranged from the King James version, with twenty-four full page illustrations from old masters. "Old, Old Tales From the Old, Old Book," by Nora Archibald Smith. "Written in the East these characters live forever in the West--they pervade the world." A good rendering of the Old Testament. "The Jewish Fairy Book," translated and adapted by Gerald Friedlander. Stories of great nobility and beauty from the Talmud and the old Jewish chap-books. "Eastern Stories and Legends," by Marie L. Shedlock. "The soldiers of Alexander who had settled in the East, wandering merchants of many nations and climes, crusading knights and hermits brought these Buddha Stories from the East to the West." Stories of Greece and Rome "The Story of the Golden Age," by James Baldwin. Some of the most beautiful of the old Greek myths woven into the story of the Odyssey make this book a good introduction to the glories of the Golden Age. "A Wonder Book and Tanglewood Tales," by Nathaniel Hawthorne, with pictures by Maxfield Parrish. "The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tale of Troy," by Padraic Colum, presented by Willy Pogany. An attractive, poetically rendered account of "the world's greatest story." "The Story of Rome," by Mary Macgregor, with twenty plates in colour. Attractively illustrated and simply presented story of Rome from the earliest times to the death of Augustus. "Plutarch's Lives for Boys and Girls," retold by W. H. Weston. "The Lays of Ancient Rome," by Lord Macaulay. "The early history of Rome is indeed far more poetical than anything else in Latin Literature." "Children of the Dawn," by Elsie Finnemore Buckley. Old Greek tales of love, adventure, heroism, skill, achievement, or defeat exceptionally well told. Especially recommended for girls. "The Heroes; or, Greek Fairy Tales for My Children," by Charles Kingsley. "The Story of Greece," by Mary Macgregor, with nineteen plates in colour by Walter Crane. Attractively illustrated and simply presented--a good book to begin on. Christianity "The Story of Jesus," pictures from paintings by Giotto, Fra Angelico, Duccio, Ghirlandais, and Barnja-da-Siena. Descriptive text from the New Testament, selected and arranged by Ethel Natalie Dana. A beautiful book and a beautiful way to present the Christ Story. "A Child's Book of Saints," by William Canton. Sympathetically told and charmingly written stories of men and women whose faith brought about strange miracles, and whose goodness to man and beast set the world wondering. "The Seven Champions of Christendom," edited by F. J. H. Darton. How the knights of old--St. George of England, St. Denis of France, St. James of Spain, and others--fought with enchanters and evil spirits to preserve the Kingdom of God. Fine old romances interestingly told for children. "Stories From the Christian East," by Stephen Gaselee. Unusual stories which have been translated from the Coptic, the Greek, the Latin and the Ethiopic. "Jerusalem and the Crusades," by Estelle Blyth, with eight plates in colour. Historical stories telling how children and priests, hermits and knights all strove to keep the Cross in the East. Stories of Legend and Chivalry "Stories of Norse Heroes From the Eddas and Sagas," retold by E. M. Wilmot-Buxton. These are tales which the Northmen tell concerning the wisdom of All-Father Odin, and how all things began and how they ended. A good book for all children, and for story-tellers. "The Story of Siegfried," by James Baldwin. A good introduction to this Northern hero whose strange and daring deeds fill the pages of the old sagas. "The Story of King Arthur and His Knights," written and illustrated by Howard Pyle. This, and the companion volumes, "The Story of the Champions of the Round Table," "The Story of Sir Launcelot and His Companions," "The Story of the Grail and the Passing of Arthur," form an incomparable collection for children. "The Boy's King Arthur," edited by Sidney Lanier, illustrated by N. C. Wyeth. A very good rendering of Malory's King Arthur, made especially attractive by the coloured illustrations. "Irish Fairy Tales," by James Stephens, illustrated by Arthur Rackham. Beautifully pictured and poetically told legends of Ireland's epic hero Fionn. A book for the boy or girl who loves the old romances, and a book for story-telling or reading aloud. "Stories of Charlemagne and the Twelve Peers of France," by A. J. Church. Stories from the old French and English chronicles showing the romantic glamour surrounding the great Charlemagne and his crusading knights. "The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood," written and illustrated by Howard Pyle. Both in picture and in story this book holds first place in the hearts of children. "A Book of Ballad Stories," by Mary Macleod. Good prose versions of some of the famous old ballads sung by the minstrels of England and Scotland. "The Story of Roland," by James Baldwin. "There is, in short, no country in Europe, and no language, in which the exploits of Charlemagne and Roland have not at some time been recounted and sung." This book will serve as a good introduction to a fine heroic character. "The Boy's Froissart," being Sir John Froissart's Chronicles of Adventure, Battle, and Custom in England, France, Spain. "Froissart sets the boy's mind upon manhood and the man's mind upon boyhood." An invaluable background for the future study of history. "The Boy's Percy," being old ballads of War, Adventure and Love from Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, edited by Sidney Lanier. "He who walks in the way these following ballads point, will be manful in necessary fight, loyal in love, generous to the poor, tender in the household, prudent in living, merry upon occasion, and honest in all things." "Tales of the Canterbury Pilgrims," retold from Chaucer and others by E. J H. Darton. "Sometimes a pilgrimage seemed nothing but an excuse for a lively and pleasant holiday, and the travellers often made themselves very merry on the road, with their jests and songs, and their flutes and fiddles and bagpipes." A good prose version much enjoyed by boys and girls. "Joan of Arc," written and illustrated by M. Boutet de Monvel. A very fine interpretation of the life of this great heroine. A book to be owned by every boy and girl. "When Knights Were Bold," by Eva March Tappan. Telling of the training of a knight, of the daily life in a castle, of pilgrimages and crusades, of merchant guilds, of schools and literature, in short, a full picture of life in the days of chivalry. A good book to supplement the romantic stories of the time. Adventurers in New Worlds "A Book of Discovery," by M. B. Synge, fully illustrated from authentic sources and with maps. A thoroughly fascinating book about the world's exploration from the earliest times to the discovery of the South Pole. A book to be owned by older boys and girls who like true tales of adventure. "A Short History of Discovery From the Earliest Times to the Founding of the Colonies on the American Continent," written and done into colour by Hendrik Willem van Loon. "Dear Children: History is the most fascinating and entertaining and instructive of arts." A book to delight children of all ages. "The Story of Marco Polo," by Noah Brooks. "Olaf the Glorious," by Robert Leighton. An historical story of the Viking age. "The Conquerors of Mexico," retold from Prescott's "Conquest of Mexico," by Henry Gilbert. "The Conquerors of Peru," retold from Prescott's "Conquest of Peru," by Henry Gilbert. "Vikings of the Pacific," by A. C. Laut. Adventures of Bering the Dane; the outlaw hunters of Russia; Benyowsky, the Polish pirate; Cook and Vancouver; Drake, and other soldiers of fortune on the West Coast of America. "The Argonauts of Faith," by Basil Mathews. The Adventures of the "Mayflower" Pilgrims. "Pathfinders of the West," by A. C. Laut. The thrilling story of the adventures of the men who discovered the great Northwest. "Beyond the Old Frontier," by George Bird Grinnell. Adventures of Indian Fighters, Hunters, and Fur-Traders on the Pacific Coast. "A History of Travel in America," by Seymour Dunbar, illustrated from old woodcuts and engravings. 4 volumes. An interesting book for children who wish to understand the problems and difficulties their grandfathers had in the conquest of the West. This is a standard book upon the subject of early travel, but is so readable as to be of interest to older children. "The Golden Book of the Dutch Navigators," by Hendrik Willem van Loon. Fully illustrated from old prints. The World's Progress in Invention--Art--Music. "Gabriel and the Hour Book," by Evaleen Stein. How a boy learned from the monks how to grind and mix the colours for illuminating the beautiful hand-printed books of the time and how he himself made books that are now treasured in the museums of France and England. "Historic Inventions," by Rupert S. Holland. Stories of the invention of printing, the steam-engine, the spinning-jenny, the safety-lamp, the sewing machine, electric light, and other wonders of mechanism. "A History of Everyday Things in England," written and illustrated by Marjorie and C. V. B. Quennell. 2 Volumes. A most fascinating book, profusely illustrated in black and white and in colour, giving a vivid picture of life in England from 1066-1799. It tells of wars and of home-life, of amusements and occupations, of art and literature, of science and invention. A book to be owned by every boy and girl. "First Steps in the Enjoyment of Pictures," by Maude I. G. Oliver. A book designed to help children in their appreciation of art by giving them technical knowledge of the media, the draughtsmanship, the composition and the technique of well-known American pictures. "Knights of Art," by Amy Steedman. Stories of Italian Painters. Attractively illustrated in colour from old masters. "Masters of Music," by Anna Alice Chapin. "Story Lives of Men of Science," by F. J. Rowbotham. "All About Treasures of the Earth," by Frederick A. Talbot. A book that tells many interesting things about coal, salt, iron, rare metals and precious stones. "The Boys' Book of New Inventions," by Harry E. Maule. An account of the machines and mechancial{sic} processes that are making the history of our time more dramatic than that of any other age since the world began. "Masters of Space," by Walter Kellogg Towers. Stories of the wonders of telegraphing through the air and beneath the sea with signals, and of speaking across continents. "All About Railways," by F. S. Hartnell. "The Man-of-War, What She Has Done and What She Is Doing," by Commander E. Hamilton Currey. True stories about galleys and pirate ships, about the Spanish Main and famous frigates, and about slave-hunting expeditions in the days of old. The Democracy of To-Day. "The Land of Fair Play," by Geoffrey Parsons. "This book aims to make clear the great, unseen services that America renders each of us, and the active devotion each of us must yield in return for America to endure." An excellent book on our government for boys and girls. "The American Idea as Expounded by American Statesmen," compiled by Joseph B. Gilder. A good collection, including The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution of the United States, the Monroe Doctrine, and the famous speeches of Washington, Lincoln, Webster and Roosevelt. "The Making of an American," by Jacob A. Riis. The true story of a Danish boy who became one of America's finest citizens. "The Promised Land," by Mary Antin. A true story about a little immigrant. "Before we came, the New World knew not the Old; but since we have begun to come, the Young World has taken the Old by the hand, and the two are learning to march side by side, seeking a common destiny." Illustrated Histories in French. (The colourful and graphic pictures make these histories beloved by all children whether they read the text or not.) "Voyages et Glorieuses Decouvertes des Grands Navigateurs et Explorateurs Francais, illustre par Edy Segrand." "Collection d'Albums Historiques." Louis XI, texte de Georges Montorgueil, aquarelles de Job. Francois I, texte de G. Gustave Toudouze, aquarelles de Job. Henri IV, texte de Georges Montorgueil, aquarelles de H. Yogel. Richelieu, texte de Th. Cahu, aquarelles de Maurice Leloir. Le Roy Soleil, texte de Gustave Toudouze, aquarelles de Mauriae Leloir. Bonaparte, texte de Georges Montorgueil, aquarelles de Job. "Fabliaux et Contes du Moyen-Age"; illustrations de A. Robida INDEX {Not included} 
10128	----	VOL. XVII THE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS A comprehensive and readable account of the world's history, emphasizing the more important events, and presenting these as complete narratives in the master-words of the most eminent historians. Non-sectarian, non-partisan and non-sectional. On the plan evolved from a consensus of opinions gathered from the most distinguished scholars of America and Europe, including brief introductions by specialists to connect and explain the celebrated narratives, arranged chronologically, with thorough indices, bibliographies, chronologies, and courses of reading. Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson, LL.D. Associate Editors: Charles F. Horne, Ph.D. and John Rudd, LL.D. With a staff of specialists CONTENTS of VOLUME XVII AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF THE GREAT EVENTS, Charles F. Horne (1844) THE INVENTION OF THE TELEGRAPH, Alonzo B. Cornell (1846) REPEAL OF THE ENGLISH CORN LAWS, Justin McCarthy (1846) THE DISCOVERY OF NEPTUNE, Sir Oliver Lodge (1846) THE ACQUISITION OF CALIFORNIA, Henry B. Dawson (1847) THE FALL OF ABD-EL-KADER, Edgar Sanderson (1847) THE MEXICAN WAR, John Bonner (1847) FAMINE IN IRELAND, Sir Charles Gavan Duffy (1848) MIGRATIONS OF THE MORMONS, Thomas L. Kane (1848) THE REFORMS OF PIUS IX; HIS FLIGHT FROM ROME, Francis Bowen (1848) THE REVOLUTION OF FEBRUARY IN FRANCE, François P.G. Guizot and Mme. Guizot de Witt (1848) REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENTS IN GERMAN, C. Edmund Maurice (1848) THE REVOLT IN HUNGARY, Arminius Vembery (1848) THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA, John S. Hittell (1849) THE RISE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC, Jessie White Mario (1849) LIVINGSTONE'S AFRICAN DISCOVERIES, David Livingstone and Thomas Hughes (1851) THE COUP D'ETAT OF LOUIS NAPOLEON, Alexis de Tocqueville (1851) THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN AUSTRALIA, Edward Jenks (1854) THE RISE OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, Abraham Lincoln (1854) THE OPENING OF JAPAN, Matthew C. Perry (1855) THE CAPTURE OF SEBASTOPOL, Sir Edward B. Hamley and Sir Evelyn Wood (1857) THE INDIAN MUTINY, J. Talboys Wheeler (1859) THE BATTLES OF MAGENTA and SOLFERINO, Pietro Orsi (1859) DARWIN PUBLISHES HIS ORIGIN OF SPECIES, Charles Robert Darwin (1860) THE KINGDOM OF ITALY ESTABLISHED, Giuseppe Garibaldi and John Webb Probyn (1861) THE EMANCIPATION OF RUSSIAN SERFS, Andrew D. White and Nikolai Turgenieff (1844-1861) UNIVERSAL CHRONOLOGY, Daniel Edwin Wheeler ILLUSTRATIONS: The mutinous Sepoys blown from the mouths of cannon by the English at Cawnpore, Painting by Basil Verestchagin. Charge of the Six Hundred at Balaklava, Painting by Stanley Berkeley. AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE (Tracing briefly the causes, connections, and consequences of the great events.) THE TRIUMPH OF DEMOCRACY, Charles F. Horne In the year 1844 electricity, last and mightiest of the servants of man, was seized and harnessed and made to do practical work. A telegraph line was erected between Washington and Baltimore. [Footnote: See _Invention of the Telegraph_.] In 1846 mathematics achieved perhaps the greatest triumph of abstract science. It pointed out where in the heavens there should be a planet, never before known by man. Strong telescopes were directed to the spot and the planet was discovered. [Footnote: See _The Discovery of Neptune_.] Man had found guides more subtle and more accurate than his own five ancient senses. The age of figures, the age of electricity, began. The changes were symbolic, perhaps, of the more rapid rate at which the forces of society were soon to move. Over all Europe and America great events were shaping themselves with lightning speed. Tremendous changes political and economic, social and scientific, were hurrying to an issue. THE MEXICAN WAR In America the Mexican War, vast in its territorial results, still more so in its effect upon society, broke out in 1846 over the admission of Texas to the United States. The superior fighting strength of the more northern race was at once made evident. Small bodies of United States troops repeatedly defeated far larger numbers of the Mexican militia. The entire northern half of Mexico was soon occupied by the enemy. Expeditions, half of conquest, half of exploration, seized New Mexico, California, and all the vast region which now composes the southwestern quarter of the United States. [Footnote: See _The Acquisition of California_.] Farther south, however, the more populous region wherein lay the chief Mexican cities remained resolute in its defiance; and the Washington Government despatched against it that truly marvellous expedition under General Scott. The heroisms and the triumphs of Scott's spectacular campaign deserve to be sung in epic form. The dubious justice of the war was forgotten in its overwhelming success. From the captured Mexican capital the conquerors dictated such peace terms as added to the United States almost half the territory of her helpless neighbor. Europe at last awoke to the fact that there was but one Power on the American continent, a power with which even the mightiest monarch could ill afford to quarrel. [Footnote: See _The Mexican War_.] The very year in which the final treaty of peace was signed (1848) the Mormons, a religious sect, finding themselves unwelcome and out of place in Illinois, moved westward in a body. Enduring every hardship, every privation, perishing by hundreds in the trackless deserts, captured and put to torture by the Indians, they still persevered in their migration, and, halting at last in the valleys of Utah, began the settlement of the Central West. [Footnote: See _Migrations of the Mormons_.] Also in that same year, gold was discovered in California. Thousands of eager adventurers flocked thither, and thus the vast wilderness that Mexico had lightly surrendered had hardly become United States territory ere it was filled with people, not listless semi-savages, but eager, energetic men, resolute and resourceful. The West joined the march of progress; it doubled the wealth and prowess of the East. [Footnote: See _Discovery of Gold in California_.] THE UPRISING OF THE PEOPLES Important indeed was that year of 1848, noteworthy above most in the story of mankind. In Europe it witnessed the greatest of all the outbursts of democracy. The common people, easily suppressed by the armies of the Holy Alliance in 1820, had been subdued with difficulty in 1830. Now in 1848 they rose again. Their gradual accumulation of power and passion would soon be irresistible. Even the petted armies of autocracy became possessed with the new belief in mankind's brotherhood. This time the outburst began in Italy. Mazzini, the celebrated founder of the political society "Young Italy," inspired his countrymen with something of his own ardent devotion to the cause of liberty and Italian union. Then in 1846 Pius IX, last of the heads of the Roman Church to possess a temporal authority as well, ascended the throne of the Papal dominions. The new Pope was in sympathy with the democratic spirit of the times, and he established in his own States a constitutional government, granting to his people more and more of power as he judged them fitted for it. Soon, however, the most radical elements asserted themselves in the new Government. All that the Pope could find it in his heart to grant, seemed to them not half enough. The mighty spirit which he had let loose broke from his control. Before the close of 1848 there were riots, fighting in the streets; the Pope's chief counsellor was murdered, and he himself had to flee by night in secrecy, a fugitive from Rome. [Footnote: See _The Reforms of Pius IX: His Flight from Rome_.] Ere matters had reached this pass, the sudden impulse given by Rome to democratic government had spread like wildfire over the whole of Europe. Thrones everywhere seemed crumbling to the dust. In January, 1848, the people of Sicily revolted against their tyrant king and formed a republic. Southern Italy, which had been part of the same kingdom, compelled the sovereign to grant a constitution. Other Italian States followed the example of rebellion. All Europe apparently had been but waiting for the spark. In France, dissatisfaction with the "tradesman-King," Louis Philippe, had long been bitter. In February, 1848, there was an open rebellion, Louis abdicated, and a provisional government was formed, which proclaimed the land a republic. [Footnote: See _The Revolution of February in France_.] There was no fear now lest the other Powers interfere. Each Continental monarch was over-busy at home. Rebellion was everywhere. Every one of the lesser German States secured a constitution; and the inhabitants summoned those of Prussia and Austria to join them in establishing a single central government, either republic or empire, a "United Germany." On March 18th the Prussian capital, Berlin, was the seat of a savage street battle between citizens and the royal troops. Not until it had raged all day and upward of two hundred persons had been slain did the Prussian monarch, Frederick William IV, weaken and proclaim a constitution. [Footnote: See _Revolutionary Movements in Germany_.] Austria, the stronghold of autocracy, the land of Prince Metternich, high-priest of repression, had proven as little ready as her neighbors to withstand the sudden storm. On March 13th the people of Vienna rose in most unexpected revolt, and Metternich, escaping from the city in a washerwoman's cart, fled to England. "We were prepared for everything," he lamented, "but a democratic pope." The whole heterogeneous empire of Austria seemed to fall apart at once. The Hungarians rose in arms to fight for independence. The Bohemians expelled the Austrian troops from Prague. In Italy the Northern Provinces followed the example set them in the South. The people of Milan attacked the Austrian garrison and expelled it after four days of fighting. Venice reasserted her ancient independence. The King of Piedmont and Sardinia, declaring himself the champion of Italian unity, ordered the Austrian armies to leave the country, and marched his forces against them. The other little States hastened to accept his leadership and add their troops to his. Yet against all these difficulties the military power of the Austrian Government began to make determined headway. The Bohemians were crushed by force of arms. In Italy the Austrian general-in-chief withdrew slowly before his many foes, until his Government could reënforce him. Then he turned on them, completely defeated the Sardinian King at Custozza and the next year at Novara, and therby restored Austrian supremacy in Northern Italy. Meanwhile Rome, from which Pius IX had fled in horror, proclaimed itself a republic. Mazzini, the earliest hero of Italian unity, and Garibaldi, its greatest champion, were both members of the Government. The Austrians marched against them; but French troops had also been despatched to defend the Pope, and it was the French who, first reaching Rome, stormed and captured it. The republic was overthrown by a republic. [Footnote: See _Rise and Fall of the Roman Republic_.] Venice was the last Italian city to hold out, and surrendered to the Austrians only after a siege of many months had reduced it to starvation. The Austrian revolution had also collapsed at home. In October, 1848, Government troops stormed the city of Vienna as if it had been a foreign capital, and defeated the students and citizens, who fought the soldiers from street to street. Only in Hungary were the royal armies baffled. There a regular republican government was established under Louis Kossuth. Hungarian armies were raised, and, defeating the Austrians in pitched battles, drove them from the land. The Austrian Emperor in despair appealed to Russia for aid; and the Czar having just trampled out an incipient Polish rebellion of his own, came willingly to the aid of his brother autocrat. Just as Austrian troops had so often done in Italy, so now a huge Russian horde poured over Hungary, beat down all resistance, and having reduced the land to helplessness returned it to the angry grip of its insulted sovereign. [Footnote: See _The Revolt of Hungary_.] Yet Hungary did not wholly fail of her revenge. She had brought about the downfall of Austria as a great political Power. The once haughty empire had been compelled to cry for help, to be protected, even as were Italy and Spain, against her own people. Her weakness was made manifest to the world. Never again could she pose as the leader of European councils. Thus it was only in France and Germany that the results of the upheaval of 1848-1849 remained evident upon the surface. Prussia and the lesser German States became and continued constitutional kingdoms. Germany was united in a closer though still vague union, in which Austria and Prussia struggled for a dominant influence. But democracy had in many places committed such excesses that the huge body of the middle classes feared it and turned against it. Such citizens as had property to preserve concluded that, after all, their ancient kings had been less tyrannic than King Mob. In France, too, this reaction was strongly felt. The revolution of 1848 had not been accomplished without an outburst from socialism or communism, which raised its red flag in the streets of Paris and was put down only after days of bloody battle with the more moderate elements. So the French middle classes wanted peace, and they elected as president of the republic Louis Napoleon, nephew of their once famous Emperor. In 1851 the President by a sudden _coup d'etat_ overturned his own Government. He declared the land an empire under himself as Napoleon III. Enthusiastic patriots protested in burning words, but most of France appeared content. Property-owners welcomed the return of any government that was strong enough to govern. [Footnote: See _The Coup d'Etat_.] Despite temporary setbacks, however, the advance of the power of the people in 1848 had been enormous. The dullest tyrant could hardly believe longer in the permanence of personal despotism. Even England, the stronghold of conservatism as well as of personal independence, was shifting her aristocratic institutions slowly toward democracy. The Reform Bill of 1832 had been only a small step in the direction of popular government; but it opened the way for further reform. Almost immediately upon its granting, began what was known as the Chartist movement, an agitation kept up among the lower classes for a "charter" or more liberal constitution. This soon became associated with a demand for freer trade. The importation into England of bread-stuffs, especially corn, was heavily taxed, and thus the poorer classes were driven almost to the point of famine. The failure of the potato crop did at last produce actual and awful famine in Ireland. Her peasants still speak of 1847 as "the black year" of death. [Footnote: See _Famine in Ireland_.] Hundreds of thousands of the poorer classes starved. Then began a stream of emigration to America. Under pressure of such facts as these, the English "Corn Laws" were repealed, and gradually Great Britain assumed more and more positively the attitude of "free trade." [Footnote: See _Repeal of the English Corn Laws_.] EXPANSION OF EUROPEAN INFLUENCE Yet despite all the internal difficulties that thus convulsed Europe in the middle of the nineteenth century, the period is also notable for the rapid expansion of European influence over the other continents of the Eastern Hemisphere. "Earth-hunger," the same passion that had swayed the United States in its Mexican contest, plunged the Powers of Europe also into repeated war. France extended her authority over the nearer African States of the Mediterranean. Indeed, one of the main causes for the rebellion of 1848 against Louis Philippe was the enormous cost in men and money of these African campaigns, undertaken against the truly remarkable Mahometan leader and patriot Abd-el-Kader. [Footnote: See _The Fall of Abd-el-Kader_.] England tightened her grip on India, and extended her authority over the broader lands around it. The hopelessness of Asiatic resistance to European aggressiveness and military force was once more made evident in the widespread rebellion of the Indian natives in 1857. In quick succession, over vast and populous regions, both the people and the rajas rose against British rule. In the triumph of their first momentary victories they committed savage excesses which made pardon hopeless. Yet neither their numbers nor the desperation to which they were driven enabled them to hold their own against the mere handfuls of resolute Englishmen, who soon subdued them. [Footnote: See _The Indian Mutiny_.] England's influence was also extended over Afghanistan and Southern Africa. Livingstone, most famous of missionaries and explorers, crossed the "dark continent" from coast to coast in 1851. [Footnote: See _Livingstone's African Discoveries_.] In that same year gold was discovered in Australia, and English adventurers flocked thither. The world grew small to European eyes. [Footnote: See _Discovery of Gold in Australia_.] Even the extremest East was brought in contact with the West. As a result of the Opium War of 1840, China was compelled to open her doors to foreign trade. She was also compelled to surrender territory to England. Japan, which for more than two centuries had jealously excluded Europeans from her shores, received her memorable awakening from the friendly American expedition of Commodore Perry. [Footnote: See _The Opening of Japan_.] THE CRIMEAN WAR Russia sought to have her share also in the appropriation of territory and "spheres of influence." She and England were the only two European Powers which had not been seriously shaken by the upheavals of 1848. It seemed that they might almost divide between them the helpless Eastern world. England having already begun operations, Russia assumed a sort of protectorate over the Christians in Turkish lands, and proposed to England that the entire Turkish Empire should be divided between the two despoilers. The British Government refused the plan, mainly because it would give Russia a broad highway to the sea and make her a dangerous commercial rival. So Russia attempted to carry out her scheme single-handed, and began seizing Turkish provinces. She destroyed the Turkish fleet. Once before in 1828 the threat of a general European alliance had checked the Russian bear at this same game; but Europe was weaker now, the Czar stronger, and England far off and undecided. Thus perhaps the Czar might have had his way but for Napoleon III. This new Emperor had been permitted by Frenchmen to usurp his power largely because of the military repute of his great namesake; and he felt that to hold his place he must justify his reputation. Frenchmen resented exceedingly the Czar's haughty assumption that only England was able to oppose Russia; and Napoleon III promptly asserted himself in the _role_ of the former Napoleon as "dictator of Europe." The title so pleased the insulted pride of his people that they followed him eagerly, and remained blind to many failings through more wars than one. The self-constituted dictator insisted that his whole desire was for peace and the artistic beautifying of his country; yet if Russia persisted in extending her power and ignoring France--. In 1854 he joined England in the war of the Crimea against Russia. It cannot be said that the allies achieved any great success against their huge antagonist. Their fleets bombarded the Baltic fortresses with small result. Their armies, hastening to protect Turkey, attacked the Russians in the Crimea, gained the Battle of the Alma, and then for an entire year besieged the fortifications of Sebastopol. [Footnote: See _The Capture of Sebastopol_.] But distance and changeful climate proved Russia's aids as they had in 1812. The allies' commissary and sanitary departments could hardly be managed at all; their troops died by thousands, and, though they finally stormed and captured Sebastopol, it was a barren victory. Russia, not so much overcome as convinced of the practical lack of profit in persistency, made terms of peace by which she once more drew back from her feeble prey. English statesmen were satisfied with the check administered to their great rival; and the French were delighted at the successful interference of their "dictator of Europe." He had rehabilitated the nation in its own eyes. UNION OF ITALY Ambition grows by what it feeds on. Napoleon determined to assert himself again. The bitterness of Italy against its Austrian masters offered an excellent opportunity, and in 1859 he encouraged the King of Sardinia to try once more the contest which had proved so disastrous eleven years before. The King, Victor Emmanuel II, prepared for war against Austria. The French joined him, so did the little North Italian States, and their combined forces were victorious at Magenta and Solferino. [Footnote: See _Battles of Magenta and Solferino_.] Napoleon had declared that the combat should not cease until the Austrians were driven entirely out of Italy. As the price of his alliance he secured Nice and Savoy from Sardinia; and then, immediately after the bloody Battle of Solferino he suddenly changed front and declared that the war must cease. Austria yielded Lombardy, but kept Venice, the last of the possessions for which during more than three hundred years she had been battling in Italy. The Kingdom of Sardinia became the Kingdom of Northern Italy. The next year (1860) Garibaldi, the lion-like fighter, the enthusiastic lover of Italy, gathering round him a thousand followers, made an unexpected attack on Sicily, which was held by the tyrant King of Naples. With his celebrated "Thousand" he won two remarkable victories. The Sicilians joined him; the Neapolitans were driven from the island. Not giving them time to recover, Garibaldi followed to the mainland, defeated them again, and was master of all Southern Italy. Meanwhile Victor Emmanuel, marching his troops southward, seized what was left of the States of the Church. The two conquerors met midway in Italy, and Garibaldi, grasping his sovereign by the hand, saluted him as King at last of a united Italy. Only Rome and Venice remained outside the pale, Rome protected by being in actual possession of the Pope, and, since France was still Catholic, guarded by French troops from the eager Italians. The year 1860 had been second only to 1848 in its importance in changing the outlines of modern Europe. [Footnote: See _The Kingdom of Italy Established_.] Another change, immeasurably vast and still unmeasured in its consequences, may be dated from 1859, when Charles Darwin gave to the world his book, the _Origin of Species_. In this he proclaimed the doctrine of the evolution of all the more complicated forms of life from simpler forms. The idea, at first resolutely combated on religious grounds, has gradually received more or less acceptance into the entire religious fabric, even as were the discoveries of Galileo. [Footnote: See _Darwin Publishes His Origin of Species_.] DISUNION IN AMERICA Yet each and all of these events, important as they were, grew little in men's minds as the year 1860 drew to its close and revealed in America the coming of a mightier quarrel. The slavery question, once supposed to have been settled by the Missouri Compromise, had proved itself incapable of such settlement. The forward march of democracy had in fact made slavery an anachronism, outgrown and impossible. Even the Emperor of Russia saw that, and in 1861 liberated all the serfs within his territories. [Footnote: See _Emancipation of Russian Serfs_.] In the United States alone among the great Powers of the world, did slavery persist. In 1854 a new political party, calling itself the Republican, was formed, having for its main principle opposition to the extension of slavery into the Territories. [Footnote: See _The Rise of the Republican Party_.] Other issues might and did complicate the central question, but it was the slavery issue that inflamed men's minds, made Kansas a "battle-ground" between settlers from North and South, and sent John Brown upon his reckless raid. Watching the increasing success of the Republicans, Southern leaders began to reassert the doctrine of the right of secession. They said openly that if a Republican president were elected they would leave the Union. And in 1860 a Republican president was elected. Was the long-predicted, and to most of Europe eagerly desired, disruption of the United States at hand? Was the break to be accomplished peacefully or in flame and wrath? The fading year of 1860 left the advancing world of democracy in panic over the danger to what had been its most successful stronghold. [For the next section of this general survey, see volume XVIII.] (1844) INVENTION OF THE TELEGRAPH, Alonzo B. Cornell After the experiments of Franklin that did so much to advance the study of electrical phenomena, and to suggest practical applications of electricity, physicists in all countries occupied themselves with investigations along lines marked out by the American philosopher. In 1749 Franklin devised the lightning-rod. But notwithstanding the labors of many investigators, it was more than fifty years before any other practical discovery or invention in electricity was brought into general use. The first great achievement of the kind was Morse's improvement of the electric telegraph. That Morse's fellow-countryman, Joseph Henry, chiefly prepared the way for that triumph, the following account, with just emphasis, demonstrates. Among the European scientists and inventors to whom both Henry and Morse were indebted was the French electrician, André Marie Ampère (1775-1836), whose name (ampère) has been given to the practical unit of electric-current strength. Ampère was the first and is the most famous investigator in electrodynamics. He also invented a telegraphic arrangement in which he used the magnetic needle and coil and the galvanic battery. Others, in the latter part of the eighteenth century and the earlier years of the nineteenth, devised similar arrangements. But no strictly electromagnetic apparatus for telegraphic signalling was put to successful use until 1836, when, in England, Charles Wheatstone, who is commonly regarded as the first inventor of practical electric telegraphy, constructed an apparatus whereby thirty signals were transmitted through nearly four miles of wire. From 1837 to 1843 he had as an associate William Fothergill Cooke, and the two worked together to develop the electric telegraph. They afterward quarrelled over their respective claims to credit, but in 1838-1841 telegraph lines secured by their patents were set up on the Great Western and two other English railways. Meanwhile other inventors were still working for the same results, in many parts of the world, and it has been significantly said that "the electric telegraph had, properly speaking, no inventor; it grew up little by little." Nevertheless with respect to the distinctive character of Morse's improvements, and his title to a peculiar place among those through whose labors the electric telegraph "grew," there can be no question. Alonzo B. Cornell, son of the founder of Cornell University, at one time Governor of New York, was intimately connected with electrical and telegraphic affairs for many years; therefore on the subject here presented he speaks with professional authority. His father was the first builder of the Morse telegraphs. * * * * * During the early years of the nineteenth century but slight advance was made in the development of electrical science, although there were many persons both here and abroad engaged in experimental work, and there was considerable increase of literature bearing upon the subject. It was reserved for another illustrious American to accomplish the next important and decisive step in the pathway of progress. In 1828 Joseph Henry, then professor of physics at the Albany Academy, afterward a professor at Princeton, and subsequently for many years secretary of the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, made the highly important discovery that by winding a plain iron core with many layers of insulated wire, through which the electric current was passed, he could at pleasure charge and discharge the iron core with magnetic power. Thus Henry produced the electromagnet which was the beginning of the mastery by man of the subtle fluid. He also discovered that the intensity and power of the electric current were materially augmented by increasing the number of the series of battery plates without increasing the quantity of metal used in their construction. These discoveries of Henry were, beyond all question, the most important in real and intrinsic value ever made in the progress of electric science, as they form the solid basis upon which all subsequent inventors have been enabled to accomplish successful results in their various fields of endeavor. It is conceded by all familiar with the history of electrical progress that the name of Professor Joseph Henry is to be honored and cherished as one of the very foremost of scientific discoverers of any age or country, and it must remain a cause of sincere and permanent regret that of all the fabulous wealth that has resulted from the advancement of electrical science, this modest and unselfish inventor should have passed hence without ever having realized any substantial reward for his great work. Not only so, but he was never awarded the appropriate acknowledgment to which he was so eminently entitled for the inestimable benefits his discoveries conferred upon his countrymen and upon the world at large. The possibility of utilizing Professor Henry's electromagnet for the purpose of transmitting intelligence to a distant point was conceived by still another American, Professor Samuel Finley Breese Morse, of New York, [Footnote: He was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, April 27, 1791.--ED.] during his passage on board the packet-ship Sully, from Havre to New York, in the winter of 1832. Incidental discussions between himself and Doctor Jackson, a fellow-passenger, in reference to recent electrical improvements on both sides of the Atlantic, led Morse to the conclusion that intelligence might be instantaneously transmitted over a metallic circuit to a distant point, and he thereupon determined to devote himself to the solution of the problem involved. The following day he exhibited a rough sketch of a plan for recording electric impulses necessary to convey and express intelligence. He pursued the subject with great devotion during the remainder of the voyage, and after arrival in New York began the construction of the necessary apparatus to accomplish his purpose. Morse was by profession a portrait painter of more than ordinary merit, and was obliged to continue his artistic labors for a livelihood. He was a graduate of Yale College, where his attention had first been attracted to electrical experiments. He was thus, in a measure, prepared for carrying forward the important work he had undertaken, and pursued his labors with great assiduity. Devoting every spare moment to the pursuit of his object, which was attained but slowly by reason of his lack of mechanical skill and ingenuity, not until 1837 had he so far succeeded in his efforts as to be prepared to make application for letters-patent to enable him to secure and protect his rights of invention in the electromagnetic telegraph. In explanation of the slow progress of his experimental work, Professor Morse, in writing to a friend, said: "Up to the autumn of 1837 my telegraphic apparatus existed in so rude a form that I felt reluctance to have it seen. My means were very limited, so limited as to preclude the possibility of constructing an apparatus of such mechanical finish as to warrant my success in venturing upon its public exhibition. I had no wish to expose to ridicule the representative of so many hours of laborious thought. Prior to the summer of 1837 I depended upon my pencil for subsistence. Indeed, so straitened were my circumstances that in order to save time to carry out my invention and to economize my scanty means I had for months lodged and eaten in my studio, procuring food in small quantities from some grocery, and preparing it myself. To conceal from my friends the stinted manner in which I lived, I was in the habit of bringing food to my room in the evenings; and this was my mode of life for many years." After the continuance of this heroic struggle for more than five years, Morse found himself compelled to seek the aid of more accomplished mechanical skill than he possessed, to perfect his apparatus, and was obliged to surrender a quarter interest in his invention in order to obtain pecuniary aid for this purpose. Having thus succeeded in obtaining, at such serious sacrifice, the requisite financial assistance to enable him to perfect the mechanism necessary to demonstrate his invention, Professor Morse lost no time in completing his apparatus and presenting it for public inspection. On January 6, 1838, he first operated his system successfully, over a wire three miles long, in the presence of a number of personal friends, at Morristown, New Jersey. In the following month he made a similar exhibition before the faculty of the New York University, which was an occasion of much interest among the scientists of the metropolis. Shortly thereafter the apparatus was taken to Philadelphia and exhibited at the Franklin Institute, where he received the highest commendation from the committee of science and arts, with a strong expression in favor of government aid for the purpose of demonstrating the practical usefulness of the system. From Philadelphia, Morse removed his apparatus to Washington, where he was permitted to demonstrate its operation before President Van Buren and his Cabinet. Foreign ministers and members of both Houses of Congress, as well, also, as prominent citizens, were invited to attend the exhibition, and manifested much interest in the novelty of the invention. A bill was introduced in Congress making an appropriation of thirty thousand dollars for the purpose of providing for the erection of an experimental line of telegraph between Washington and Baltimore, to illustrate, by practical use, its general utility. The bill was in good time favorably reported from the committee on commerce, but made no further progress in that Congress. Similar bills were subsequently introduced and diligently supported in each succeeding Congress, but it was not until the very closing hour of the expiring session of 1843 that the necessary enactment was effected and the appropriation secured. The plan of construction devised by Professor Morse for the experimental line of telegraph to be erected between Washington and Baltimore, under the Congressional appropriation, provided for placing insulated wires in a lead pipe underground. This was to be accomplished by the use of a specially devised plough of peculiar construction, to be drawn by a powerful team, by which means the pipe containing the electric conductors was to be automatically deposited in the earth. This apparatus was entirely successful in operation, and the pipe was thus buried to the complete satisfaction of all concerned, at a cost very much lower than the work could have been accomplished in any other manner. Two wires were to be used to form a complete metallic circuit, for at that time it was not known, as was shortly afterward discovered, that the earth could be used to form one-half of the circuit. For purposes of insulation the wires were neatly covered with cotton-yarn and then saturated in a bath of hot gum-shellac, but this treatment proved defective in insulating properties, for when ten miles of line had been completed the wires were found to be wholly useless for electric conduction. No mode had been devised for the treatment of india-rubber to make it available for purposes of insulation, and gutta-percha was wholly unknown as an article of use or commerce in this country. Twenty-three thousand dollars of the Government appropriation had been expended, and the work thus far accomplished was an acknowledged failure. Only seven thousand dollars of the available fund remained unexpended, and this was regarded as inadequate to complete the undertaking under any other plan. The friends of the enterprise were in despair, and for some time saw no other alternative than to apply to Congress for an additional appropriation. This, however, was regarded as almost hopeless, and the difficulty of the situation was extremely embarrassing. An amusing incident was related of the means used to keep from public knowledge the desperate situation. Professor Morse finally visited the scene of activity where the pipe-laying was proceeding, and, calling the superintendent aside, confided to him the fact that the work must be stopped without the newspapers finding out the true reason of its suspension. The quick-witted superintendent was equal to the occasion, and, starting the ponderous machine, soon managed to run foul of a protruding rock and break the plough. The newspapers published sensational accounts of the accident and announced that it would require several weeks to repair damages. Thus the real trouble was kept from the public until new plans could be determined upon. After long and careful consideration, Professor Morse very reluctantly decided to erect the wires on poles. This plan was, at first, considered wholly objectionable, under the apprehension that the structure would be disturbed by evil-minded persons. It had, however, become manifest that this was the only mode of construction that could be accomplished within the remainder of the appropriation, and, finally, upon ascertaining that pole lines had already been adopted in England, it was determined to proceed in this manner. The line was thus completed between Washington and Baltimore about May 1, 1844, and proved to be successful and in every way satisfactory in its operation. Shortly after the completion of the line the National Democratic Convention, which nominated Polk and Dallas for President and Vice-President, assembled in Baltimore [May, 1844]. Reports of the convention proceedings were promptly telegraphed to the capital city, where the telegraph office was thronged with Members of Congress interested in the news. These reports created an immense sensation in Washington and speedily removed all doubts as to the practical success of the new system of communication. A despatch from the Honorable Silas Wright, then United States Senator from New York, refusing to accept the nomination for Vice-President, was read in the National Convention and produced an extraordinary interest from the fact that very few of the delegates had ever heard of the telegraph, and it required much explanation to satisfy them of the genuineness of the alleged communication. Having thus established beyond all reasonable question the practical utility of the telegraph as a superior means of public and private communication, Professor Morse and his associates offered their patents to the United States Government for the very moderate price of one hundred thousand dollars, with a view of having the system adopted for general use in connection with the postal establishment. This proposition was referred to the Postmaster-General for consideration and report. After due deliberation that officer reported that "Although the invention is an agent vastly superior to any other ever devised by the genius of man, yet the operation between Washington and Baltimore has not satisfied me that, under any rate of postage that can be adopted, its revenues can be made to cover its expenditures." Under the influence of this report Congress very naturally declined the offer of the patentees, and the telegraph was thereupon relegated to the domain of private enterprise. The result was that the patentees finally realized for their interests many times the amount of their offer to the Government. During the autumn of 1844 short exhibition lines were erected in Boston and New York, for the purpose of familiarizing business men of those cities with the characteristics of the new invention, but they attracted little attention and the promoters had much cause of discouragement on account of public indifference. For the purpose of arousing more attention to the system, appeals were made to the public press for favorable notice, which were also generally declined. The proprietor of one of the most prominent and enterprising of the New York daily papers distinctly refused to encourage the establishment of telegraph lines, for the reason, as he freely acknowledged, that if the new method of transmitting intelligence were to come into general use his competitors could use it as well as himself, and he would therefore be deprived of his present advantage over them for procuring early news by the use of an expensive system of special despatch then maintained by his paper. Two years later he refused to join other papers in receiving the Governor's message by telegraph from Albany, and was so badly beaten by his rivals in this instance that his paper was thenceforward one of the most generous patrons of the telegraph. Early in the year 1845 a corporate organization was effected for the extension of the telegraph from Baltimore to Philadelphia and New York, under the name of the Magnetic Telegraph Company, for which a special act of incorporation was obtained from the Legislature of the State of Maryland. Nearly all of the capital of this company was subscribed by Washington people. Baltimore and Philadelphia furnished only a few hundred dollars, while New York contributed nothing. Slow progress was made toward the construction of the line on account of the difficulty of obtaining the right of way either upon railways or highways, and it was not until January, 1846, that the line was completed to the west side of the Hudson River, which formed an impassable barrier to further progress for a considerable period. No method of insulation had yet been devised that would permit the operation of an electric conductor under water, and it was doubted whether a wire could be maintained for a span sufficient to cross the river overhead. Finally however high masts were erected on the Palisades near Fort Lee, and on the heights at Fort Washington on the New York side, and a steel wire was suspended upon them. This plan was successful, except that occasionally the wire was broken by an extraordinary burden of sleet in the winter season. This method of crossing the lower Hudson was continued for more than ten years, when it was superseded by submarine cables. During the year 1846 incorporated companies were formed, under which telegraph lines were extended from New York to Boston, Buffalo, and Pittsburg, and within the next three years nearly every important town in the United States and Canada, from St. Louis and New Orleans to Montreal and Halifax, was brought into telegraphic communication. Thus, after fifteen years of struggle with all the pains of poverty, often lacking even the common necessaries of life, Professor Morse and his faithful colaborers had the supreme satisfaction, in 1847, of knowing and realizing that the telegraph system had finally achieved, not only scientific success, for this had been proven years before, but that financial success, ample and complete, had come to pay them richly for all the dark days and wearisome years through which they had passed. Once generally established, the telegraph won its way to popular appreciation very rapidly. It was in harmony with the spirit of the age, and it was not long before every town of any considerable importance regarded telegraphic facilities as an indispensable necessity. The small cost soon induced the construction of rival lines, regardless of the rights of the patentees, and within a very few years unwise competition began to bring many lines to a condition of bankruptcy. The weaker concerns soon passed through the sheriff's hands and found purchasers only at an extreme sacrifice, at the bidding of the more provident and conservative proprietors of competing lines. Instead of inducing a more prudent course, these disastrous results only served to feed the spirit of rivalry, and general insolvency seemed to threaten the permanent prosperity of the telegraph business, in consequence of the wild and reckless competition which appeared to be inherent in its nature. This extremely unsatisfactory condition of telegraph rivalry drifted on from bad to worse until 1854, when, from dire necessity of self-preservation, a few of the more prudent and far-sighted proprietors of telegraph property were induced to combine their interests with some of their competitors and thus avoid the ruinous policy which had been so rapidly exhausting their vitality. Accordingly the principal telegraph lines in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and some of the neighboring States were brought into fraternal relations and formed the nucleus of the Western Union Telegraph Company. The new policy soon brought prosperity in place of waste and improvidence. Profits were devoted to the purchase of additional lines, thus enlarging their domain and strengthening their position. Prosperity increased with rapid strides; and the beneficial effects of extirpating wasteful rivalry and building up a substantial system with superior facilities and provident management gave the new organization a dominating influence among the telegraph companies of America. The same general policy has been pursued to the present time [1894], and has resulted in the establishment of a prosperous corporation of magnificent proportions, carrying on a useful and beneficent business under a greater number of governmental jurisdictions, great and small, than any other corporate organization in existence. For the development of the telegraph enterprise in America no thanks are due to the wealthy capitalists. As a rule they would not listen to suggestions of investing their money in what was contemptuously termed rotten poles and rusty wires. They wanted something more substantial and conservative as the basis of their investments. An early pioneer and builder of telegraph lines, whose name is now held in grateful memory for deeds of philanthropic beneficence visited the city of Chicago in 1847 to solicit subscriptions to the capital stock of a company then engaged in construction of the first line of telegraph between that place and the city of Buffalo. He presented a carefully prepared prospectus showing an estimated earning capacity of the projected line of one hundred dollars per day. The merits of the contemplated enterprise were freely canvassed at a meeting of bankers, at which one of the most prominent declared that any man who ever expected to see one hundred dollars per day paid for telegraphing west of Buffalo must be crazy and unworthy of belief. This oracular declaration prevailed, and the project was ignominiously rejected by the wise men of Chicago. Fortunately, citizens of smaller towns, like Ypsilanti, Kalamazoo, South Bend, Kenosha, and Racine, took a more sensible view of the proposed enterprise, and the line was built despite the contempt of Chicago capitalists. Now, however, the men of Chicago pay more than five thousand dollars a day for telegraphing at rates far lower than would have been thought possible in that early day. The true spirit of enterprise, which has so grandly developed the resources of our imperial domain, has generally been found to prevail among people of modest means. Thus, nearly every dollar of capital contributed toward the establishment of telegraph lines in this country came from the offerings of people in very moderate circumstances. In this connection, therefore, it is extremely gratifying to state that very few enterprises of any kind have returned such generous recompense for the amount of capital invested as the telegraph and telephone lines in America. Considering the apparently temporary and short-lived character of the structures erected for these purposes, it seems difficult to comprehend the truth of this statement. The method of telegraphic communication devised by Professor Morse has been continued in general use in this country, but instead of requiring separate wire for each circuit as formerly, six independent circuits are now operated simultaneously over a single wire by the use of the sextuplex apparatus. (1846) REPEAL OF THE ENGLISH CORN LAWS, Justin McCarthy After the repeal of the corn laws the tariff legislation of Great Britain was guided by a new policy, that of free trade, and it has been followed ever since. The reactionary tendencies of Continental Europe after the fall of Napoleon reached also to England, where they controlled the conduct of political affairs until Canning, in 1822, became Secretary for Foreign Affairs. His policy was liberal and did much in forming the public opinion that at length found voice in Catholic emancipation (1829), in the Reform Bill (1832), and in the abolition of slavery in the English colonies (1833). Then followed important amendments of the poor-laws, extension of local governmental powers in the towns, improvement of popular education, and other reforms. Through all this gradual progress in liberal government and public amelioration, the need of another reform had been pointed out by some thinkers and statesmen, and at last the condition of the country favored the views of its advocates. The corn laws protected the English producers by imposing heavy duties on imported grain. At one time these duties practically prohibited such importation. McCarthy shows how the laws operated upon the people, and his story of the memorable agitation for their repeal and of the accomplishment of that object could not have been better told. In 1815 the celebrated Corn Law was passed, which was itself moulded on the Corn Law of 1670. By the Act of 1815 wheat might be exported upon a payment of one shilling per quarter customs duty, but the importation of foreign grain was practically prohibited until the price of wheat in England had reached eighty shillings a quarter, that is to say, until a certain price had been secured for the grower of grain at the expense of all the consumers in this country. It was not permitted to Englishmen to obtain their supplies from any foreign land, unless on conditions that suited the English corn-grower's pocket. We may perhaps make this principle a little more clear, if it be necessary, by illustrating its working on a small scale and within narrow limits. In a particular street in London, let us say, a law is passed declaring that no one must buy a loaf of bread out of that street, or even round the corner, until the price of bread has risen so high in the street itself as to secure to its two or three bakers a certain enormous scale of profit on their loaves. When the price of bread has been forced up so high as to pass this scale of profit, then it would be permissible for those who stood in need of bread to go round the corner and buy their loaves of the baker in the next street; but the moment that their continuing to do this caused the price of the baker's bread in their own street to fall below the prescribed limit, they must instantly take to buying bread within their own bounds and of their own bakers again. This is a fair illustration of the principle on which the corn laws were moulded. The Corn Law of 1815 was passed in order to enable the landowners and farmers to recover from the depression caused by the long era of foreign war. It was "rushed through" Parliament, if we may use an American expression; petitions of the most urgent nature poured in against it from all the commercial and manufacturing classes, and in vain. Popular disturbances broke out in many places. The poor everywhere saw the bread of their family threatened, saw the food of their children almost taken out of their mouths, and they naturally broke into wild extremes of anger. In London there were serious riots, and the houses of some of the most prominent supporters of the bill were attacked. The incendiary went to work in many parts of the country. At that time it was still the way in England, as it is now in Russia and other countries, for popular indignation to express itself in the frequent incendiary fire. At one place near London a riot lasted for two days and nights; the soldiers had to be called out to put it down, and five men were hanged for taking part in it. After the passing of the Corn Law of 1815, and when it had worked for some time, there were sliding-scale acts introduced, which established a varying system of duty, so that when the price of home-grown grain rose above a certain figure, the duty on imported wheat was to sink in proportion. The principle of all these measures was the same. How, it may be asked, could any sane legislator adopt such measures? As well might it be asked, How can any civilized nation still, as some still do, believe in such a principle? The truth is that the principle is one which has a strong fascination for most persons, the charm of which it is difficult for any class in its turn wholly to shake off. The idea is that if our typical baker be paid more than the market price for a loaf, he will be able in turn to pay more to the butcher than the fair price for his beef; the butcher thus benefited will be enabled to deal on more liberal terms with the tailor; the tailor so favored by legislation will be able in his turn to order a better kind of beer from the publican and pay a higher price for it. Thus, by some extraordinary process, everybody pays too much for everything, and nevertheless all are enriched in turn. The absurdity of this is easily kept out of sight where the protective duties affect a number of varying and complicated interests, manufacturing, commercial, and productive. In the United States, for example, where the manufacturers are benefited in one place and the producers are benefited in another, and where the country always produces food abundant to supply its own wants, men are not brought so directly face to face with the fallacy of the principle as they were in England at the time of the Anti-Corn Law League. In America "protection" affects manufacturers for the most part, and there is no such popular craving for cheap manufactures as to bring the protective principle into collision with the daily wants of the people. But in England, during the reign of the Corn Law, the food which the people put into their mouths was the article mainly taxed, and made cruelly costly by the working of protection. Nevertheless, the country put up with this system down to the close of the year 1836. At that time there was a stagnation of trade and a general depression of business. Severe poverty prevailed in many districts. Inevitably, therefore, the question arose in the minds of most men, in distressed or depressed places, whether it could be a good thing for the country in general to have the price of bread kept high by factitious means when wages had sunk and work become scarce. An Anti-Corn-Law association was formed in London, It began pretentiously enough, but it brought about no result. London is not a place where popular agitation finds a fitting centre. In 1838, however, Bolton, in Lancashire, suffered from a serious commercial crisis. Three-fifths of its manufacturing activity became paralyzed at once. Many houses of business were actually closed and abandoned, and thousands of workmen were left without the means of life. Lancashire suddenly roused itself into the resolve to agitate against the corn laws, and Manchester became the headquarters of the movement which afterward accomplished so much. The Anti-Corn-Law League was formed, and a Free-Trade Hall was built in Manchester on the scene of that disturbance which was called the "massacre of Peterloo." The leaders of the Anti-Corn-Law movement were Richard Cobden, John Bright, and Charles Villiers. Cobden was not a Manchester man. He was the son of a Sussex farmer. After the death of his father he was taken by his uncle and employed in his wholesale warehouse in the city of London. He afterward became a partner in a Manchester cotton-factory, and sometimes travelled on the commercial business of the establishment. He became what would then have been considered a great traveller, distinct, of course, from the class of explorers; that is, he made himself thoroughly familiar with most or all of the countries of Europe, with various parts of the East, and with the United States and Canada. He had had a fair, homely education, and he improved it wherever he went by experience, by observation, and by conversation with all manner of men. He became one of the most effective and persuasive popular speakers ever known in English agitation. He was not an orator in the highest sense. He had no imagination and little poetic feeling, nor did genuine passion ever inflame into fervor of declamation his quiet, argumentative style. But he had humor; he spoke simple, clear, strong English; he used no unnecessary words. He always made his meaning plain and intelligible, and he had an admirable faculty for illustrating every argument by something drawn from reading or from observation or from experience. He was, in fact, the very perfection of a common-sense talker, a man fit to deal with men by fair, straightforward argument, to expose complicated sophistries, and to make clear the most perplexed parts of an intricate question. He was exactly the man for that time, for that question, and for the persuasive and argumentative part of the great controversy which he had undertaken. Cobden's chief companion in the struggle was John Bright, whose name has been completely identified with that of Cobden in the repeal of the Corn Laws. Bright was an orator of the highest order. He had all the qualifications that make a master of eloquence. His presence was commanding; his voice was singularly strong and clear, and had peculiar tones and shades in it which gave indescribable meaning to passages of anger, of pity, or of contempt. His manner was quiet, composed, serene. He indulged in little or no gesticulation, he had a rich gift of genuine Saxon humor. These two men, one belonging to the middle class of the North, one sprung from the yeomanry of Southern England, had as a colleague Charles Villiers, a man of high aristocratic family, of marked ability, and of indomitable loyalty to any cause he undertook. Villiers for some years represented the free-trade cause in Parliament, and Bright and Cobden did its work on the platform. Cobden first, and Bright after him, became members of the House of Commons, and they were further assisted there by Milner Gibson, a man of position and family, an effective debater, who had been at first a Conservative, but who passed over to the ranks of the Free Traders, and through them to the ranks of the Liberals or Radicals. Every year Villiers brought on a motion in the House in favor of free trade. For a long time this motion was only one of the annual performances which, by an apparently inevitable necessity, have to prelude for many years the practical movement of any great parliamentary question. Villiers might have brought on his annual motion all his life, without getting much nearer to his object, if Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield, Leeds, and other great northern towns had not taken the matter vigorously in hand; if Cobden and Bright had not stirred up the energies of the whole country, and brought clearly home to the mind of every man the plain fact that reason, argument, and arithmetic, as well as freedom and justice, were distinctly on their side. The Anti-Corn-Law League showered pamphlets, tracts, letters, newspapers, all over the country. They sent lecturers into every town, preaching the same doctrine, and proving by scientific facts the justice of the cause they advocated. These lecturers were enjoined to avoid as much as possible any appeals to sentiment or to passion. The cause they had in hand was one which could best be served by the clear statement of rigorous facts, by the simple explanation of economical truths which no sophism could darken, and which no opposing eloquence could charm away. The Melbourne Ministry fell in 1841. It died of inanition: its force was spent. Sir Robert Peel came into office. Cobden, who then entered the House of Commons for the first time, seemed to have good hope that even Peel, strong Conservative though he was, might prove to be a man from whom the Free Traders could expect substantial assistance. Sir Robert Peel had, in fact, in those later years expressed again and again his conviction as to the general truth of the principles of free trade. "All agree," he said in 1842, "in the general rule that we should buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market." But he contended that while such was the general rule, yet various economical and social conditions made it necessary that there should be some distinct exceptions, and he regarded the corn laws and sugar duties as such exceptions. It may be mentioned, perhaps, that the corn laws had, in fact, been treated as a necessary exception by many of the leading exponents of the principles of free trade. Thus we have to notice the curious fact that while Sir Robert Peel's own party looked upon his accession to power as a certain guarantee against any concession to the Free Traders, the Free Traders themselves were, for the most part, convinced that their cause had better hope from him than from a Whig Ministry. The Free Traders went on debating and dividing in the House, agitating and lecturing all over the country, for some years without any marked Parliamentary success following their endeavors. An immense and overwhelming majority always voted against them in the House of Commons. They were making progress, and very great progress, but it was not that kind of advance which had yet come to be decided by a Parliamentary vote. Probably a keen and experienced eye might have noted clearly enough the progress they were making. The Whig party were coming more and more round to the principles of free trade. Day after day some Whig leader was admitting that the theories of the past would not do for the present, and, as we have said, the Tory leader had himself gone so far as to admit the justice of the general principles of free trade. At one point the main difference between Sir Robert Peel, the leader of the House of Commons, and Lord John Russell, the leader of the opposition, seems to have been nothing more than this, that Peel still regarded grain as a necessary exception to the principle of free trade, and Lord John Russell was not clear that the time had come when it could be treated otherwise than as an exception. An event, however, over which no parties and no leaders had any control, suddenly intervened to hasten the action and spur the convictions of the leaders on both sides, and especially of the Prime Minister. This was the great famine which broke out in Ireland in the autumn of 1845. The vast majority of the Irish people had long depended for their food on the potato alone. The summer of 1845 had been a long season of wet and cold and sunlessness. In the autumn the news went abroad that the whole potato crop of Ireland was in danger of destruction, if not already actually destroyed. Before attention had well been awakened to the crisis, it was officially announced that more than one-third of the entire potato crop had been swept away by the disease, and that it had not ceased its ravages, but, on the contrary, was spreading more and more every day. The general impression of those who could form an opinion was that the whole of the crop must perish. The Anti-Corn-Law League cried out for the opening of the ports and the admission of grain and food from all places. Sir Robert Peel was decidedly in favor of such a course. The Duke of Wellington and Lord Stanley opposed the idea, and the proposition was given up. Only three members of the Cabinet supported Sir Robert Peel's proposals--Lord Aberdeen, Sir James Graham, Mr. Sidney Herbert. All the others objected, some because they opposed the principle of the measure, and were convinced that if the ports were once opened they would never be closed again, which indeed was probably Peel's own conviction; and others on the ground that no sufficient proof had yet been given that such a measure was necessary. Lord John Russell, almost immediately after, wrote a letter from Edinburgh to his constituents, the electors of the city of London, in which he declared that something must immediately be done, that it was "no longer worth while to contend for a fixed duty," and that an end must be put to the whole system of protection, as "the blight of commerce, the bane of agriculture, the source of bitter division among classes, the cause of penury, fever, and crime among the people." This letter produced a decisive effect on Peel. He saw that the Whigs were prepared to unite with the Anti-Corn-Law League in agitating for the total repeal of the corn laws, and he therefore made up his mind to recommend to the Cabinet an early meeting of Parliament, with the view to anticipate the agitation which he saw must succeed in the end, and to bring forward, as a Government measure, some scheme which should at least prepare the way for the speedy repeal of the corn laws. A Cabinet council was held almost immediately after the publication of Lord John Russell's letter, and Peel recommended the summoning of Parliament in order to take instant measures to cope with the distress in Ireland, and also to introduce legislation distinctly intended to prepare the way for the repeal of the corn laws. Lord Stanley could not accept the proposition. The Duke of Wellington was himself of opinion that the corn laws ought to be maintained, but at the same time he declared that he considered good government for the country more important than corn laws or any other considerations, and that he was therefore ready to support Sir Robert Peel's Administration through thick and thin. Lord Stanley and the Duke of Buccleuch, however, declared that they could not be parties to any legislation which tended toward the repeal of the corn-laws. Sir Robert Peel did not feel himself strong enough to carry out his project in the face of such opposition in the Cabinet itself, and he tendered his resignation to the Queen. The Queen sent for Lord John Russell, but Russell's party were not very strong in the country and they had not a majority in the House of Commons. Lord John tried, however, to form a ministry without a Parliamentary majority, and even although Sir Robert Peel would not give any pledge to support a measure for the immediate and complete repeal of the corn laws, Lord John Russell was not successful. Lord Grey, son of the Lord Grey of the Reform Bill, objected to the foreign policy of Lord Palmerston, and thought a seat in the Cabinet ought to be offered to Cobden. Lord John Russell had nothing to do but to announce to the Queen that he found it impossible to form a ministry. The Queen sent for Sir Robert Peel again and asked him to withdraw his resignation. Peel complied, and almost immediately resumed the functions of First Minister of the Crown. The Duke of Buccleuch consented to go on with him, but Lord Stanley held to his resolution and had no place in the Ministry. His position as Secretary of State for the Colonies was taken by William E. Gladstone. Gladstone, however, did not sit in Parliament during the eventful session when the corn laws were repealed. He had sat for the borough of Newark, which was under the influence of the Duke of Newcastle; and as the Duke of Newcastle had withdrawn his support from the Ministry, Gladstone did not seek re-election for Newark, and remained without a seat in the House of Commons for some months. Parliament met on January 22, 1846. The "speech from the throne," delivered by the Queen in person, recommended the legislature to take into consideration the necessity of still further applying the principle on which it had formerly acted, when measures were presented "to extend commerce and to stimulate domestic skill and industry, by the repeal of prohibitive and the relaxation of protective duties." In the debate on the "address" Sir Robert Peel rose, after the mover and seconder had spoken and the question had been put from the Chair, and at once proceeded to explain the policy which he intended to adopt. His speech was long and labored, and somewhat wearied the audience by the elaborate manner in which he explained how his opinions had been brought into gradual change with regard to free trade and protection. He made it, however, perfectly clear that he was now a convert to Cobden's opinions, and that he intended to introduce some measure which should practically amount to the abolition of protection. It was in this debate, and immediately after Peel had spoken, that Benjamin Disraeli made his first great impression on Parliament. He had been in the House for many years, and had made many attempts, had sometimes been laughed at, had sometimes been disliked, and occasionally for a moment admired. But it was when he rose immediately after Sir Robert Peel, and denounced Peel as one who had betrayed his party and his principles, that he made the first deep impression on the House of Commons, and came to be considered as a serious and influential Parliamentary personage. "I am not one of the converts," Disraeli said, "I am perhaps a member of a fallen party." A new Protection party was formed almost immediately under the leadership of George Lord Bentinck, a man of great energy and tenacity of purpose, who had hitherto spent his life almost altogether on the turf, who had had almost no previous preparation for leadership or even for debate, but who certainly, when he did accept the responsible position offered to him, showed a considerable capacity for leadership and an unwearying attention to his duties. On January 27th Sir Robert Peel explained his financial policy. His intention was to abandon the sliding scale altogether, to impose for the present a duty of ten shillings a quarter on corn when the price of it was under forty-eight shillings a quarter, to reduce that duty by one shilling for every shilling of rise in price until it reached fifty-three shillings a quarter, when the duty should fall to four shillings. This, however, was to be only a temporary arrangement. It was to last but three years, and at the end of that time protective duties on grain were to be wholly abandoned. We need not go at any length into the history of the long debates on Peel's propositions. The discussion of one amendment, which was in substance a motion to reject the scheme altogether, lasted for twelve nights. The third reading of the bill passed the House of Commons on May 15th, by a majority of ninety-eight. The bill went up at once to the House of Lords, and at the urgent pressure of the Duke of Wellington was carried through that House without any serious opposition. The Duke made no secret of his own opinions. He assured many of his brother peers that he disliked the measure just as much as anyone could do, but he insisted that they had all better vote for it nevertheless. Sir Robert Peel had triumphed, but he found himself deserted by a large and influential section of the party he once had led. Most of the great landowners and country gentlemen of the Conservative party abandoned him. Some of them felt the bitterest resentment toward him. They believed he had betrayed them, although nothing could be more clear than that for years he had distinctly been making it known to the House that his principles inclined him toward free trade, and thereby leaving it to be understood that, if opportunity or emergency should compel him, he would be glad to declare himself a Free Trader, even in the matter of grain. Strange to say, the day when the bill was read in the House of Lords for the third time saw the fall of Peel's Ministry. The fall was due to the state of Ireland. The Government had been bringing in a coercion bill for Ireland. It was introduced while the Corn Bill was yet passing through the House of Commons. The situation was critical. All the Irish followers of Daniel O'Connell would be sure to oppose the Coercion Bill. The Liberal party, at least when out of office, had usually made it their principle to oppose coercion bills if they were not attended with some promises of legislative reform. The English Radical members, led by Cobden and Bright, were certain to oppose coercion. If the Protectionists should join with these other opponents of the Coercion Bill the fate of the measure was assured, and with it the fate of the Government. This was exactly what happened. Eighty Protectionists followed Lord George Bentinck into the lobby against the bill, in combination with the Free Traders, the Whigs, and the Irish Catholic and national members. The division took place on the second reading of the bill on Thursday, June 25th, and there was a majority of seventy-three against the Ministry. The moment after Sir Robert Peel succeeded in passing his great measure of free trade he himself fell from power. His political epitaph, perhaps, could not be better written than in the words with which he closed the speech that just preceded his fall: "It may be that I shall leave a name sometimes remembered with expressions of good-will in those places which are the abode of men whose lot it is to labor and to earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brow--a name remembered with expressions of good-will when they shall recreate their exhausted strength with abundant and untaxed food, the sweeter because it is no longer leavened with a sense of injustice." With the fall of the principle of the protection in corn may be said to have practically fallen the principle of protection in that country altogether. That principle was a little complicated in regard to the sugar duties and to the navigation laws. The sugar produced in the West Indian colonies was allowed to enter that country at rates of duty much lower than those imposed upon the sugar grown in foreign lands. The abolition of slavery in the colonies had made labor there somewhat costly and difficult to obtain continuously, and the impression was that if the duties on foreign sugar were reduced it would tend to enable those countries which still maintained the slave trade to compete at great advantage with the sugar grown in the colonies by that free labor to establish which England had but just paid so large a pecuniary fine. Therefore the question of free trade became involved with that of free labor; at least, so it seemed to the eyes of many a man who was not inclined to support the protective principle in itself. When it was put to him, whether he was willing to push the free-trade principle so far as to allow countries growing sugar by slave labor to drive our free-grown sugar out of the market, he was often inclined to give way before this mode of putting the question, and to imagine that there really was a collision between free trade and free labor. Therefore a certain sentimental plea came in to aid the Protectionists in regard to the sugar duties. Many of the old Antislavery party found themselves deceived by this fallacy, and inclined to join the agitation against the reduction of the duty on foreign sugar. On the other hand, it was made tolerably clear that the labor was not so scarce or so dear in the colonies as had been represented, and that colonial sugar grown by free labor really suffered from no inconvenience except the fact that it was still manufactured on the most crude, old-fashioned, and uneconomical methods. Besides, the time had gone by when the majority of the English people could be convinced that a lesson on the beauty of freedom was to be conveyed to foreign sugar-growers and slave-owners by the means of a tax upon the products of their plantations. Therefore, after a long and somewhat eager struggle, the principle of free trade was allowed to prevail in regard to sugar. The duties on sugar were made equal. The growth of the sugar plantations was admitted on the same terms into that country, without any reference either to the soil from which it had sprung or to the conditions under which it was grown. It had for a long time been stoutly proclaimed that the abolition of slavery must be the destruction of our West Indian colonies. Years had elapsed and the West Indian colonies still survived. Now the cry of alarm was taken up again, and it was prophesied that although they had got over the abolition of slavery they never could survive the equalization of the sugar duties. Jamaica certainly had fallen greatly away from her period of temporary and factitious prosperity. Jamaica was owned and managed by a class of proprietors who resembled in many ways some of the planters of the States of America farthest south--of the States toward the mouth of the Mississippi. They lived in a kind of careless luxury, mortgaging their estates as deeply as they possibly could, throwing over to the coming year the superabundant debts of the last, and only managing to keep their heads above water so long as the people of England, by favoring them with a highly protective system, enabled them still to compete against those who grew sugar on better and more economical plans. The whole island was given over to neglect and mismanagement. The emancipated negroes took but little trouble to cultivate the plots of ground they had obtained, and were quite content if they could scratch enough from the soil to enable them barely to live. Therefore Jamaica did at a certain time fall far below the level of her former seeming prosperity. The other islands had been better managed. Their estates were less encumbered by debt, and they passed through each successive crisis without sustaining any noticeable injury. In most of these islands the product increased steadily after the emancipation of the slaves. The negroes then began to work earnestly, and education grew not greatly but distinctly among all classes. Jamaica, the most unfortunate among the islands, has been constantly the scene of little outbursts of more or less serious rebellion. As the late Lord Chief Justice of England observed in a charge on a famous occasion, "The soil of the island might seem to have been drenched in blood." But these disturbances, or insurrections, or whatever they may be called, did not increase in number after the abolition of slavery and after the equalization of the sugar duties, but, on the contrary, decreased. During our time only one considerable disturbance has taken place in Jamaica, and in former years such tumult was of frequent recurrence. In the West Indies we have, therefore, the most severe test to which the principle of free trade could well be subjected. It is not too much to say that in the more fortunate of these islands it has established its claim, and that even in the least fortunate no evidence whatever has been given that the people would have been in any way the better off if the old system had been retained. The navigation laws had, too, a certain external attraction about them which induced many men, not actually Protectionists, to believe in their necessity. The principle of the navigation laws was to impose such restrictions of tariff and otherwise as to exclude foreign vessels from taking any considerable part in our carrying trade. The law was first enacted in Oliver Cromwell's day, at a time when the Dutch were rivals on the sea, and when it was thought desirable to repress, by protective legislation, the energy of such experienced seamen and pushing traders. The navigation law was modified by Mr. Huskisson in 1823, but only so far as to establish that which we now know so well as the principle of reciprocity. Any nation which removed restrictions from British merchant marine was favored with a similar concession. The idea also was that these navigation laws, keeping foreigners out of England's carrying trade, enabled her to maintain always a supply of sailors who could at any time be transferred from the merchant marine to the royal navy, and thus be made to assist in the defence of the country. Of course, the ship-owners themselves upheld the navigation laws, on the plea that, if the trade were thrown open by the withdrawal of protection, their chances would be gone; that they could not contend against the foreigners upon equal terms; that their interests must suffer, and that Great Britain would in the end be a still severer sufferer, because, from the lack of encouragement given to the native traders and the sailors, England would one day or another be left at the mercy of some strong power which, with wiser regulations, would keep up her protective system and with it her naval strength. Nevertheless, the ship-owners and the Protectionists and those who raised the alarm-cry about England's naval defences were unable to maintain their sophisms in the face of growing education and of the impulse given by the adoption of free trade. In 1849 the navigation laws were abolished. We believe there are very few ship-owners who will not now admit that the prosperity of their trade has grown immensely, in place of suffering, from the introduction of the free-trade principle in navigation as well as in com and sugar. (1846) THE DISCOVERY OF NEPTUNE, Sir Oliver Lodge Among modern astronomical discoveries none has been regarded as more important than that of Neptune, the outermost known planet of the solar system. It was a rich reward to the watchers of the sky when this new planet swam into their ken. This discovery was hailed by astronomers as "the most conspicuous triumph of the theory of gravitation." Long after Copernicus even, the genius of philosophers was slow to grasp the full conception of a spherical earth and its relations with the heavenly bodies as presented by him. So it was also with the final acceptance of Newton's demonstration of the universal law of gravitation (1685), whereby he showed that "the motions of the solar system were due to the action of a central force directed to the body at the centre of the system, and varying inversely with the square of the distance from it." After making this discovery, Newton himself, with the aid of others, especially of the French mathematician Picard, labored for years to verify it, and still further verification was necessary before it could be fully comprehended and accepted by the scientific world. The discovery of the asteroids or small planets revolving in orbits between those of Mars and Jupiter, aided in confirming the Newtonian theory, which the discovery of Uranus, by Sir William Herschel (1781), had done much to establish. From the time of Sir William Herschel the science of stellar astronomy, revealing the enormous distances of the stars--none of them really fixed, but all having real or apparent motions--was rapidly developed. The discovery of stellar planets, at almost incalculable distances, still further changed the aspect of the heavens as viewed by astronomers, and when the capital discovery of Neptune was made those men of science were well prepared for studying its nature and importance. These matters, as well as the simultaneous calculation of the place of Neptune by Adams and Leverrier, and its actual discovery by Galle, are set forth by Sir Oliver Lodge in a manner as charming for simplicity as it is valuable in its summary of scientific learning. The explanation by Newton of the observed facts of the motion of the moon, the way he accounted for precession and nutation and for the tides; the way in which Laplace explained every detail of the planetary motions--these achievements may seem to the professional astronomer equally, if not more, striking and wonderful; but of the facts to be explained in these cases the general public is necessarily more or less ignorant, and so no beauty or thoroughness of treatment appeals to it or excites its imagination. But to predict in the solitude of the study, with no weapons other than pen, ink, and paper, an unknown and enormously distant world, to calculate its orbit when as yet it had never been seen, and to be able to say to a practical astronomer, "Point your telescope in such a direction at such a time, and you will see a new planet hitherto unknown to man"--this must always appeal to the imagination with dramatic intensity, and must awaken some interest in the dullest. Prediction is no novelty in science; and in astronomy least of all is it a novelty. Thousands of years ago Thales, and others whose very names we have forgotten, could predict eclipses, but not without a certain degree of inaccuracy. And many other phenomena were capable of prediction by accumulated experience. A gap between Mars and Jupiter caused a missing planet to be suspected and looked for, and to be found in a hundred pieces. The abnormal proper-motion of Sirius suggested to Bessel the existence of an unseen companion. And these last instances seem to approach very near the same class of prediction as that of the discovery of Neptune. Wherein, then, lies the difference? How comes it that some classes of prediction--such as that if you put your finger in fire it will be burned--are childishly easy and commonplace, while others excite in the keenest intellects the highest feelings of admiration? Mainly, the difference lies, first, in the grounds on which the prediction is based; second, in the difficulty of the investigation whereby it is accomplished; third, in the completeness and the accuracy with which it can be verified. In all these points, the discovery of Neptune stands out as one among the many verified predictions of science, and the circumstances surrounding it are of singular interest. Three distinct observations suffice to determine the orbit of a planet completely, but it is well to have the three observations as far apart as possible so as to minimize the effects of minute but necessary errors of observation. When Uranus was found old records of stellar observations were ransacked with the object of discovering whether it had ever been unwittingly seen before. If seen, it had been thought, of course, to be a star--for it shines like a star of the sixth magnitude, and can therefore be just seen without a telescope if one knows precisely where to look for it and if one has good sight--but if it had been seen and catalogued as a star it would have moved from its place, and the catalogue would by that entry be wrong. The thing to do, therefore, was to examine all the catalogues for errors, to see whether the stars entered there actually existed, or whether any were missing. If a wrong entry were discovered, it might of course have been due to some clerical error, though that is hardly probable considering the care spent in making these records, or it might have been a tailless comet, or possibly the newly found planet. The next thing to do was to calculate backward, to see whether by any possibility the planet could have been in that place at that time. Examined in this way the tabulated observations of Flamsteed showed that he had unwittingly observed Uranus five distinct times; the first time in 1690, nearly a century before Herschel discovered its true nature. But more remarkable still, Le Monnier, of Paris, had observed it eight times in one month, cataloguing it each time as a different star. If only he had reduced and compared his observations, he would have anticipated Herschel by twelve years. As it was, he missed it. It was seen once by Bradley also. Altogether it had been seen twenty times. These old observations of Flamsteed and those of Le Monnier, combined with those made after Herschel's discovery, were very useful in determining an exact orbit for the new planet, and its motion was considered thoroughly known. For a time Uranus seemed to travel regularly, and as expected, in the orbit which had been calculated for it; but early in the present century it began to be slightly refractory, and by 1820 its actual place showed quite a distinct discrepancy from its position as calculated with the aid of the old observations. It was thought at first that this discrepancy must be due to inaccuracies in the older observations, and they were accordingly rejected, and tables prepared for the planet based on the newer and more accurate observations only. But by 1830 it became apparent that it did not coincide with even these. The error amounted to about 20". By 1840 it was as much as 90", or a minute and a half. This discrepancy is quite distinct, but still it is very small; and had two objects been in the heavens at once, the actual Uranus and the theoretical Uranus, no unaided eye could possibly have distinguished them or detected that they were other than a single star. The errors of Uranus, though small, were enormously greater than other things which had certainly been observed; there was an unmistakable discrepancy between theory and observation. Some cause was evidently at work on this distant planet, causing it to disagree with its motion as calculated according to the law of gravitation. If the law of gravitation held exactly at so great a distance from the sun, there must be some perturbing force acting on it besides all the known forces that had been fully taken into account. Could it be an outer planet? The question occurred to several, and one or two tried to solve the problem, but were soon stopped by the tremendous difficulties of calculation. The ordinary problem of perturbation is difficult enough: Given a disturbing planet in such and such a position, to find the perturbations it produces. This was the problem that Laplace worked out in the _Mécanique Céleste_. But the inverse problem--given the perturbations, to find the planet that causes them--such a problem had never yet been attacked, and by only a few had its possibility been conceived. Friedrich Bessel made preparations for solving this mystery in 1840, but he was prevented by fatal illness. In 1841 the difficulties of the problem presented by these residual perturbations of Uranus excited the imagination of a young student, an undergraduate of Cambridge--John Couch Adams by name--and he determined to make a study of them as soon as he was through his _tripos_. In January, 1843, he was graduated as senior wrangler, and shortly afterward he set to work. In less than two years he reached a definite conclusion; and in October, 1845, he wrote to the astronomer-royal, at Greenwich, Professor Airy, saying that the perturbations of Uranus could be explained by assuming the existence of an outer planet, which he reckoned was now situated in a specified latitude and longitude. We know now that had the astronomer-royal put sufficient faith in this result to point his big telescope at the spot indicated and begin sweeping for a planet, he would have detected it within 1-3/4º of the place assigned to it by Adams. But anyone in the situation of the astronomer-royal knows that almost every post brings absurd letters from ambitious correspondents, some of them having just discovered perpetual motion, or squared the circle, or proved the earth flat, or discovered the constitution of the moon or of ether or of electricity; and in this mass of rubbish it requires great skill and patience to detect such gems of value as may exist. Now this letter of Adams's was indeed a jewel of the first water, and no doubt bore on its face a very different appearance from the chaff of which I have spoken; but still Adams was unknown: he had been graduated as senior wrangler, it is true, but somebody must be graduated as senior wrangler every year, and a first-rate mathematician is not produced every year. Those behind the scenes--as Professor Airy of course was, having been a senior wrangler himself--knew perfectly well that the labeling of a young man on his taking his degree is much more worthless as a testimony to his genius and ability than the general public is apt to suppose. Was it likely that a young and unknown man should have solved so extremely difficult a problem? It was altogether unlikely. Still, he should be tested: he should be asked for explanations concerning some of the perturbations which Professor Airy had noticed, and see whether he could explain these also by his hypothesis. If he could, there might be something in his theory. If he failed--well, there was an end of it. The questions were not difficult. They concerned the error of the radius vector. Adams could have answered them with perfect ease; but sad to say, though a brilliant mathematician, he was not a man of business. He did not answer Professor Airy's letter. It may seem a pity to many that the Greenwich equatorial was not pointed at the place, just to see whether any foreign object did happen to be in that neighborhood; but it is no light matter to derange the work of an observatory, and alter the plans laid out for the staff, into a sudden sweep for a new planet on the strength of a mathematical investigation just received by post. If observatories were conducted on these unsystematic and spasmodic principles they would not be the calm, accurate, satisfactory places they are. Of course, if anyone had known that a new planet was to be found for the looking, _any_ course would have been justified; but no one could know this. I do not suppose that Adams himself felt an absolute confidence in his attempted prediction. So there the matter dropped. Adams's communication was pigeonholed, and remained in seclusion eight or nine months. Meanwhile, and quite independently, something of the same sort was going on in France. A brilliant young mathematician, Urban Jean Joseph Leverrier, born in Normandy in 1811, held the post of astronomical professor at the École Polytechnique, founded by Napoleon. His first published papers directed attention to his wonderful powers; and the official head of astronomy in France, the famous Arago, suggested to him the unexplained perturbations of Uranus as a worthy object for his fresh and well-armed vigor. At once he set to work in a thorough and systematic way. He first considered whether the discrepancies could be due to errors in the tables or errors in the old observations. He discussed them with minute care, and came to the conclusion that they were not thus to be explained away. This part of the work he published in November, 1845. He then set to work to consider the perturbations produced by Jupiter and Saturn to see whether they had been accurately allowed for, or whether some minute improvements could be made sufficient to destroy the irregularities. He introduced several fresh terms into these calculations, but none of them of sufficient importance to do more than partly explain the mysterious perturbations. He next examined the various hypotheses that had been suggested to account for them. Were they caused by a failure in the law of gravitation or by the presence of a resisting medium? Were they due to some large but unseen satellite or to a collision with some comet? All these theories he examined and dismissed for various reasons. The perturbations were due to some continuous cause--for instance, some unknown planet. Could this planet be inside the orbit of Uranus? No, for then it would perturb Saturn and Jupiter also, and they were not perturbed by it. It must, therefore, be some planet outside the orbit of Uranus, and in all probability, according to Bode's empirical law, at nearly double the distance from the sun that Uranus is. Finally he proceeded to determine where this planet was, and what its orbit must be to produce the observed disturbances. Not without failures and disheartening complications was this part of the process completed. This was, after all, the real tug of war. Many unknown quantities existed: its mass, its distance, its eccentricity, the obliquity of its orbit, its position--nothing was known, in fact, about the planet except the microscopic disturbance it caused in Uranus, several thousand million miles away from it. Without going into further detail, suffice it to say that in June, 1846, he published his last paper, and in it announced to the world his theory as to the situation of the planet. Professor Airy received a copy of this paper before the end of the month, and was astonished to find that Leverrier's theoretical place for the planet was within 1° of the place Adams had assigned to it eight months before. So striking a coincidence seemed sufficient to justify a Herschelian sweep for a week or two. But a sweep for so distant a planet would be no easy matter. When seen through a large telescope it would still only look like a star, and it would require considerable labor and watching to sift it out from the other stars surrounding it. We know that Uranus had been seen twenty times, and thought to be a star, before its true nature was discovered by Herschel; and Uranus is only about half as far away as Neptune. Neither at Paris nor at Greenwich was any optical search undertaken; but Professor Airy wrote to ask M. Leverrier the same old question that he had fruitlessly put to Adams: Did the new theory explain the errors of the radius vector or not? The reply of Leverrier was both prompt and satisfactory--these errors were explained, as well as all the others. The existence of the object was then for the first time officially believed in. The British Association met that year at Southampton, and Sir John Herschel was one of its sectional presidents. In his inaugural address, on September 10, 1846, he called attention to the researches of Leverrier and Adams in these memorable words: "The past year has given to us the new [minor] planet Astræa; it has done more--it has given us the probable prospect of another. We see it as Columbus saw America from the shores of Spain. Its movements have been felt trembling along the far-reaching line of our analysis with a certainty hardly inferior to ocular demonstration." It was nearly time to begin to look for it. So the astronomer-royal thought on reading Leverrier's paper. But as the national telescope at Greenwich was otherwise occupied, he wrote to Professor Challis, at Cambridge, to know whether he would permit a search to be made for it with the Northumberland equatorial, the large telescope at Cambridge University, presented to it by one of the Dukes of Northumberland. Professor Challis said he would conduct the search himself, and shortly began a leisurely and dignified series of sweeps around the place designated by theory, cataloguing all the stars he observed, intending afterward to sort out his observations, compare one with another, and find out whether any one star had changed its position; because if it had it must be the planet. Thus, without giving an excessive time to the business, he accumulated a host of observations. Professor Challis thus actually saw the planet twice--on August 4 and August 12, 1846--without knowing it. If he had had a map of the heavens containing telescopic stars down to the tenth magnitude, and if he had compared his observations with this map as they were made, the process would have been easy and the discovery quick. But he had no such map. Nevertheless one was in existence. It had just been completed in that country of enlightened method and industry--Germany. Doctor Bremiker had not indeed completed his great work--a chart of the whole zodiac down to stars of the tenth magnitude--but portions of it were completed, and the special region where the new planet was expected to appear happened to be among the portions finished. But in England this was not known. Meanwhile Adams wrote to the astronomer-royal several additional communications, making improvements in his theory, and giving what he considered nearer and nearer approximations for the place of the planet. He also now answered quite satisfactorily, but too late, the question about the radius vector sent to him months before. Leverrier was likewise engaged in improving this theory and in considering how best the optical search could be conducted. Actuated probably by the knowledge that in such matters as cataloguing and mapping Germany was then, as now, far ahead of all the other nations, he wrote in September (the same year that Sir John Herschel delivered his eloquent address at Southampton) to Berlin. Leverrier wrote to Doctor Galle, head of the observatory at Berlin, saying to him, clearly and decidedly, that the new planet was now in or close to such and such a position, and that if he would point his telescope to that part of the heavens he would see it; and moreover that he would be able to tell it from a star by its having a sensible magnitude, or disk, instead of being a mere point. Galle got the letter on September 23, 1846. That same evening he pointed his telescope to the place Leverrier told him, and saw the planet. He recognized it first by its appearance. To his practised eye it did seem to have a small disk, and not quite the same aspect as an ordinary star. He then consulted Bremiker's great star-chart, the part just engraved and finished, and, sure enough, no such star was there. Undoubtedly it was the planet. The news flashed over Europe at the maximum speed with which news could travel at that date (which was not very fast); and by October 1st Professor Challis and Mr. Adams heard it at Cambridge, and realized that in so far as there was competition in such a matter England was out of the race. It was an unconscious race to all concerned, however. The French scientists knew nothing of the search in England. Adams's papers had never been published; and very annoyed the French were when a claim was set up in his behalf to a share in this magnificent discovery. As for Adams himself, we are told that by no word did he show resentment at the loss of the practical consummation of his discovery. His part in any controversy that arose was calm and dignified; but for a time his friends fought a public battle for his fame. It so happened that the public took a keener interest than it usually takes in scientific predictions; but the discussion has now settled down. All the world honors the bright genius and mathematical skill of John Couch Adams, and recognizes that he first solved the problem by calculation. All the world, too, perceives clearly the no less eminent mathematical talents of M. Leverrier, but it recognizes in him something more than the mere mathematician--the man of energy, decision, and character. (1846) THE ACQUISITION OF CALIFORNIA, Henry B. Dawson In the history of the United States, the acquisition of California, carrying with it that of New Mexico, was a peculiar and unusual event, and one of immense significance in the expansion and development of the Republic. Together with the annexation of Texas, it was the most important result of the Mexican War. The California country, formerly an indeterminate territory of vast extent, was settled by Spanish missionaries in the seventeenth century. Their settlements within the present limits of the State of California date from the first foundation of San Diego in 1769. In 1822 the entire region called California became a part of the Mexican Republic, and it remained a possession of Mexico until the time of the transfer described below. At the beginning of 1846 the population of California included, with about two hundred thousand Indians, six thousand Mexicans and perhaps two hundred Americans. War against Mexico had been declared in May, 1845, and already General Taylor had won the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, and had compelled the surrender of Monterey. While these operations were leading the United States forces to the rapid accomplishment of their work in Mexico proper, other movements were undertaken, the execution and outcome of which form the subject of Mr. Dawson's narrative. In 1848 California and New Mexico were ceded to the United States. Immediately after the opening of hostilities in the valley of the Rio Grande (March, 1846), among the expeditions which were organized by the Federal authorities was one to move against and take possession of California and New Mexico, two provinces in the northern part of the enemy's country. The command of this expedition had been vested in General Stephen W. Kearney, and the force under his command had rendezvoused at Fort Leavenworth; and the most energetic measures had been adopted to insure its early departure and its ultimate success. Having completed all the arrangements, on June 26th the main body of this expedition had moved from the fort; and after a rapid but interesting march of eight hundred seventy-three miles, on August 18th it entered and took possession of Santa Fé, the capital of New Mexico, the Mexican forces, numbering four thousand, which had been collected to defend the town, having dispersed, without offering the least opposition, as it approached. While these operations in New Mexico and on the western frontier of the United States were taking place, Brevet-Captain John C. Frémont, who had been engaged in explorations on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains, had also revolutionized the Province of California, and, to some extent at least, had anticipated the movements of the expedition commanded by General Kearney. The character of his mission being scientific and peaceful rather than warlike, he had not had an officer or soldier of the regular army in his company; and his whole force had consisted of sixty-two men employed by himself for security against the Indians and for procuring subsistence in the wilderness and desert country through which he had passed. For the purpose of obtaining game for his men and grass for his horses, in an uninhabited part of California, he had, during the winter of 1845-1846, solicited and obtained permission from the Mexican authorities to winter in the Valley of San Joaquin; but he had scarcely established himself before he received advices that the Mexican commander was preparing to attack him under the pretext that under the cover of a scientific mission he was exciting the American settlers in that vicinity to revolt. In view of this threatened attack, and for the purpose of repelling it, Lieutenant Frémont immediately occupied a mountain which overlooked Monterey--although it was thirty miles from that city--and having intrenched it and raised the flag of the United States he waited the approach of the enemy. After remaining there until March 10, 1846, he retired to the northward, intending to march, by way of Oregon, to the United States; but about the middle of May, after he had quietly passed into Oregon, he had received information through Samuel Neal and Levi Sigler, two hunters who had been sent after him from Lassen's _rancho_, that the Mexican Governor of California was pursuing him, while the Indians, by whom he was surrounded, instigated by the enemy, had shown signs of hostility, and had killed or wounded five of his men. Under these circumstances, on June 6, 1846, Lieutenant Frémont had resolved to turn on his pursuers with the little party under his command, and to seek safety, not merely in the overthrow of his pursuers, but in that of the entire Government of Mexico in the Province of California. Accordingly, on June 11th, Lieutenant Frémont, assisted by Captain Merritt and fourteen of the settlers, had attacked and captured an escort of horses destined for General Castro's troops--Lieutenant Arce, fourteen men, and two hundred horses remaining in his hands as the trophies of his victory. On the 15th the military post of Sonoma was surprised, and General Vallejo, Captain Vallejo, Colonel Greuxdon and several other officers, nine pieces of brass cannon, two hundred fifty stands of muskets, and other stores and arms were taken; and on the 25th the military commandant of the Province, who had moved toward the post with a heavy force to retake it, was attacked by Lieutenant Frémont and twenty men, and completely routed. Having thus cleared that part of the Province north of the Bay of San Francisco of the enemy, it is said that on July 5th Captain Frémont had assembled the American settlers at Sonoma, addressed them upon the dangers of their situation, and recommended a declaration of independence and war on Mexico as the only remedy; and that the hardy frontiersmen promptly accepted the proposal and raised the flag of independent California--a bear and a star on a red ground. While these revolutionary movements were destroying the power of Mexico in the interior of the Province of California, and the expedition under General Kearney--ignorant of the fact that the work had been done already--was approaching its eastern borders for the same purpose, the naval force of the United States in the Pacific, under Commodore Sloat, had been assisting in the work of conquest. Having heard of the opening of hostilities on the Rio Grande, the Commodore--then at Mazatlan--hastened with the Savannah to Monterey in California, where he arrived on July 2d, and on the 7th he took possession of the town without opposition; the custom-house was seized, the American flag raised, and California declared to be "henceforward a part of the United States." Within a few days intelligence of the action of Commodore Sloat was received by the revolutionary leaders at Sonoma; and a battalion of mounted riflemen which had been organized among them was immediately moved to Monterey, the flag of the United States was substituted for the "bear and star," and the authority of the Commodore was immediately recognized. This battalion of mounted riflemen on its arrival at Monterey, July 23, 1846, was mustered into the service of the United States by Commodore Stockton, who had succeeded Commodore Sloat in command of the squadron--Captain Frémont being appointed its commandant, and Lieutenant A. H. Gillespie, of the Marines, its second officer--and it was immediately despatched on the sloop-of-war Cyane to San Diego for the purpose of cutting off the retreat of General Castro, of the Mexican service, who had encamped and fortified his position near Ciudad de los Angeles, while the Commodore with his sailors--who landed from the Congress at San Pedro--moved against him in front. The expedition was eminently successful, as the Mexicans on the approach of the Commodore immediately evacuated their camp and fled in the greatest confusion--although most of the principal officers were subsequently captured--and, on August 13th, the Ciudad de los Angeles was occupied, again without opposition, by the American troops and seamen, and the conquest of California was apparently completed. A short time afterward Commodore Stockton appointed Captain Frémont Governor of the Territory into which, by the proclamation of Commodore Sloat, the Province had been transformed; while Captain Gillespie was left, with nineteen men, in possession of Los Angeles; Lieutenant Talbot, of the Topographical Engineers, with nine men, was left at Santa Barbara; and, with his squadron, Commodore Stockton proceeded to San Francisco; while Governor Frémont, on September 8th, also moved to Monterey. The main body had no sooner left Los Angeles than the Californians--who before the departure of the Commodore and the Governor had held secret meetings for the purpose--rose in arms for the expulsion of the invaders of their country. Indeed an attempt appears to have been intended before the Governor left the city; but, by timely precautions, it had been prevented; although the purpose and determination still continued and were called into requisition at a more convenient season. The necessary preparations having been made for that purpose under the directions of José Antonio Carrillo, a professed conspirator of that vicinity, at an early hour on the morning of September 23d, the quarters of Captain Gillespie were attacked by Cerbulo Varela--a metamorphosed captain under Governor Frémont--at the head of sixty-five men, under cover of a thick fog. The morning was auspicious for such purposes, yet the Captain was not surprised; and the twenty-one rifles which he controlled were quickly brought to bear on the assailants, who retired soon afterward with three of their number killed and several wounded; and at daylight the remainder were driven from the town, with the loss of several taken prisoners, by a few men under Lieutenant Hensley, and Doctor Gilchrist, of the navy. The insurgents who were thus expelled from the city formed a nucleus around which the disaffected gathered; and as the party gained strength day by day, it harassed the little garrison and killed one of its number. There was but little concert of action in its ranks, however; and as the rival aspirants to power struggled for authority, while the numbers rapidly increased, the efficiency of the insurgents was but slightly increased. At length, in a spirit of compromise, Captain Antonio Flores was urged to take the command of the party, and reluctantly accepted it; and he soon found himself at the head of six hundred men armed with lances, _escopetas_, and a brass six-pounder, light and well mounted. In the mean time the little garrison had found an old honeycombed iron six-pounder, and had drilled out the spike, cleaned and mounted it, and by melting the lead pipes of a distillery had provided--unknown to the insurgents--thirty rounds of ball and grape for it. Two other pieces having been added to this, on the following day, the little garrison and its gallant commander resolved to die rather than surrender, notwithstanding the extreme efforts which had been made to strengthen its position, and the great fatigue which was incident thereto. To render his little party still more secure, however, on September 27th Captain Gillespie withdrew his command from his quarters in the city and occupied a height which commanded it, when he strengthened his position and prepared for an obstinate defence. No sooner had this movement been effected than Captain Flores sent Don Eulogeo Celis to inquire "on what terms Captain Gillespie would surrender the city"; and that officer, after consulting with his subordinates, answered that if the enemy would consent that he should march out of the city with the honors of war, colors flying and drums beating; that he should take everything with him; that he should be furnished with means for transporting his baggage and provisions, at his own expense; and that the enemy should not come within a league of his party while on its line of march to San Pedro, he would accept those terms, and no others would be considered; and Captain Flores should be held responsible for any damage which might ensue, in case they were rejected. After some negotiations these terms were offered by Captain Flores and accepted by Captain Gillespie; and, on September 29th, the garrison began its march; reached San Pedro on the same evening, and on October 4th embarked on the Vandalia, after spiking its three old guns--an exploit which, when the circumstances under which Captain Gillespie's force, the strength of his opponent, and the temper of the people among whom he moved are taken into consideration, may well be ranked as one of the most brilliant feats of that remarkable campaign. While these difficulties were surrounding Captain Gillespie at Los Angeles, Lieutenant Talbot, at Santa Barbara with his nine men, was not less dangerously situated; and when the former had made terms with the insurgents, Manuel Garpio with two hundred men moved against Lieutenant Talbot, surrounded the town, and demanded his surrender, offering two hours for his deliberation. As the men had resolved that they would not give up their arms, and as the barracks were untenable with so small a force, the Lieutenant resolved to abandon the town and push for the hills; and, strange to say, he marshalled his men and marched out of the town without opposition--"those who lay on the road retreated to the main force, which was on the lower side of the town." Having reached the hills, he encamped, and remained there eight days, when the Californians endeavored to rout him out, but were repulsed with the loss of a horse. The insurgents then offered him his arms and freedom if he would engage to remain neutral in the anticipated hostilities, but "he sent word back that he preferred to fight." They next built fires about him and burned him out; but in doing so they did not capture or injure him, and he pushed through the mountains for Monterey; and after a month's travel, in which he endured unheard-of hardships and suffering, he reached that place in safety. Intelligence of the insurrection having reached Commodore Stockton at San Francisco and Lieutenant-Colonel Frémont at Sacramento, both took immediate steps to check its progress and to punish the offenders. In conformity with the Commodore's orders Lieutenant-Colonel Fremont hastened to San Francisco, whence he embarked, with one hundred sixty men, on the ship Sterling, for Santa Barbara, to which port the frigate Savannah (Captain Mervine) had previously been ordered; while, on the same day, the Commodore in person sailed for the same port in the Congress. The latter vessel reached San Pedro on October 6th, and at sunrise on the 7th Captain Mervine landed with his seamen and marines; and after being joined by Captain Gillespie and his brave-hearted little party, he found himself at the head of three hundred ten men, "as brave and as valiant as ever were led to battle upon any field." At eight o'clock the party commenced its march toward Los Angeles, Captain Gillespie being in advance, and when the column reached the hills of Palo Verde the insurgents showed themselves and opened a fire with their _escopetas_. The march was rapid; and the jolly tars, unused to such extended journeys, appear to have suffered from its effects; in consequence of which, although the enemy gradually fell back before the advancing column, between one and two o'clock, when near the Rancho de los Domingos, fourteen miles from San Pedro, it became necessary to halt and encamp for the night. As may have been expected, the sailors and marines were ashore, and the strict discipline which "the deck" had inculcated appears to have been left on board the frigate. As a necessary consequence the camp displayed but little of the order which such a locality should have insured; and many and marvellous were the adventures of that night; while, on the other hand, the enemy profited by the delay, by the moral effect of the disorder with which the march had been conducted, and by the entire absence of any artillery. On the following morning at daylight the column was again put in motion; and with Captain Gillespie's men in front, in still greater disorder than on the preceding day, it moved toward Los Angeles, twelve miles distant. It had marched only three miles, when, posted behind a small stream which intersected the line of march, the advance of the insurgents--seventy-six men, with a small fieldpiece, under José Antonio Carrillo--was discovered in front; and, as the column approached, a fire was opened on it, which was answered with a characteristic shout. The volunteers--Captain Gillespie's command--pressed forward; and by taking advantage of the neighboring shelter they drove the enemy and compelled him to abandon his fieldpiece; but before it could be reached and taken possession of, Captain Mervine gave orders to withdraw. With great indignation, therefore, the volunteers discontinued the action, and after picking up his killed and wounded--harassed by the enemy who pressed after the column, and covered by the volunteers and sixteen marines, under Captain Gillespie--Captain Mervine slowly and sadly fell back to San Pedro, where he arrived about dark on the same day, "Thirteen noble tars were buried on the island in front of San Pedro," the victims of this badly managed expedition. On October 23d the Commodore reached San Pedro--Lieutenant-Colonel Frémont meanwhile having returned to Monterey--and on the 31st he sailed for San Diego, which had been invested by the insurgents and needed assistance. He reached that port a few days afterward; and, with the assistance of Captain Gillespie's command, the besiegers were repelled, and a fort was erected to protect the town from similar troubles in future. Strenuous efforts were made to obtain horses for the use of the troops, with some degree of success; and Commodore Stockton sailed toward San Pedro again. During this temporary absence of the Commodore the insurgents appear (on November 18, 1846) to have moved against San Diego a second time, and were again driven back by Captain Gillespie and the volunteers and marines under his command; and on December 3d a messenger came into the town bearing a letter from General Kearney, apprising the Commodore of his approach, and expressing a wish that a communication might be opened with him that he might be informed of the state of affairs in California. It appeared that after the General had taken Santa Fé (on October 1st) he had moved from that city with the regular cavalry which he had brought there. Soon afterward (October 7th) he had reduced his force to one hundred men--sending the remainder back to Santa Fé--and after an interesting march overland, on December 3, 1846, he had reached Warner's _rancheria_, the outpost of civilization in California. From there a letter had been despatched to San Diego by Mr. Stokes, an Englishman who lived in a neighboring _rancheria_; and on the 4th the command had moved fifteen miles nearer to the city. On the receipt of General Kearney's letter, Commodore Stockton despatched Captain Gillespie to meet him, with a letter of welcome. The Captain was accompanied by Lieutenant Beale, Midshipman Duncan, ten seamen, Captain Gibson's company of riflemen (twenty-five men), and a fieldpiece; and on the 5th he reached the General's camp; when, having learned on his way that the insurgents were encamped at San Pasqual, nine miles from the camp, Lieutenant Hammond was sent out by General Kearney to reconnoitre the enemy's position. At a very early hour on the 6th the troops were put in motion, Captain Johnston, with twelve dragoons, forming the advance-guard; the main body of the General's party, under Captain Moore, following next; after which moved Captain Gillespie, with Captain Gibson and his small company; and Lieutenant Davidson, with the General's howitzers brought up the rear. When the column had reached a hill which overlooked the valley of the San Pasqual, the insurgents' encampment, it was halted, and the General gave the final orders to his command: "One thrust of the sabre is worth a dozen cuts; and depend upon them more than upon the carbines and rifles." Without further delay the column advanced down the hill; and as soon as Captain Johnston had struck the plain with his twelve dragoons, having mistaken the purport of an order from the General, he uttered a yell, and, without waiting for the support of the main body, dashed on the heavy ranks of the enemy, falling a victim of his own indiscretion. The main body hastened, by a flank movement down the hill, to support the charge of the advance, and received the enemy's fire from an Indian village on its right flank; but the enemy waited to do no further mischief, and fled from the charge of the advance before the line could be formed. Perceiving the defection of the enemy, Captain Moore, with a portion of his command, pursued the fugitives down the right of the valley, while Captain Gillespie, with his volunteers, did the same on the left side--the latter taking prisoner Pablo Beja, the insurgents' second officer. In this pursuit, however, the ranks of the Americans were greatly broken; and as the Mexicans far outnumbered them, they soon afterward made a stand, using their lances with good effect. Captain Moore fell, pierced in the breast by nine lances; the General was severely wounded, and his life was saved, from an attack on his rear, by a ball from Lieutenant Emory. Captain Gillespie was attacked by seven Californians, received three wounds, and saved himself with great difficulty; Captain Gibson received two wounds; Lieutenant Hammond received nine lance wounds in the breast, and many others were severely injured. For five minutes the enemy held the ground; when, the main body of the Americans having come up, he again turned and fled. In this spirited affair about eighty Americans were engaged; while of the Californians there is said to have been one hundred sixty, under Andreas Pico. Of the former, Captains Moore and Johnston, Lieutenant Hammond, and sixteen men were killed; and General Kearney, Captains Gillespie and Gibson, Lieutenant Warner, and eleven men were wounded; while of the latter it is said twenty-eight were killed and wounded. The dead were buried as soon as night closed in; the wounded were properly attended to by the single surgeon who was with the party; and ambulances were prepared for their conveyance to San Diego, thirty-nine miles distant; and on the morning of the 7th the order to march was given--the column taking the right-hand road over the hills, and leaving the River San Bernardo to the left--the enemy retiring as it advanced. A proper regard for the comfort of the wounded compelled the column to move slowly, and it was afternoon before it reached the San Bernardo _rancheria_ (Mr. Snook's). After a short halt at that place the column moved down into the valley; and immediately afterward the hills on the rear of the column (around the _rancheria_) were covered with Californian horsemen, a portion of whom dashed at full speed past the Americans to occupy a hill which commanded the route of the latter, while the remainder of the party threatened the rear of the column. Thirty or forty of the enemy quickly occupied the hill referred to; and as the column came up six or eight Americans filed off to the left, and, under Lieutenant Emory, charged up the hill, when the Californians delivered their fire and fled, five of their number having been killed or wounded by the rifles of the assailants. The wounded having been removed with great difficulty, the cattle having been lost, and the danger of losing the sick and the packs being great, the General determined to halt at that place and await the arrival of reinforcements, for which messengers had been sent to San Diego on the morning of the 6th. Accordingly the Americans occupied the high ground on which the action had been fought, bored holes for water, killed their fattest mules for meat, and awaited the arrival of their friends, until the morning of the 11th, when they were joined by one hundred seamen and eighty marines, under Lieutenant Gray, who had been sent out to meet them by Commodore Stockton; and, on the afternoon of the 12th, the combined parties entered the town in safety. At this time commenced that memorable conflict between the two commanders--General Kearney and Commodore Stockton--respecting the chief command, which subsequently created so much trouble in the American ranks and throughout the country. Commodore Stockton appears, however, to have retained the authority; and, having organized a force sufficiently strong to warrant the undertaking, and General Kearney having accepted an invitation to accompany the expedition, on December 29th he marched from San Diego, with two officers and fifty-five privates (dragoons, two officers and forty-five seamen acting as artillerymen; eighteen officers and three hundred seventy-nine seamen and marines acting as infantry; six officers, and fifty-four privates), volunteers, and six pieces of artillery, against the main body of the insurgents, near Los Angeles. The command appears to have been given, at his own request, to General Kearney; and as the wagon train was heavily laden, the progress of the column was very slow--the expedition reaching the Rio San Gabriel on January 8, 1847--although the enemy had offered no opposition to its progress even in passes where a small force could have effectively kept it back. At this place, however, he had made a stand to dispute the passage of the river; and here the second action was fought between the Americans and the Californians. The Rio San Gabriel, at the spot where this action was fought, is about one hundred yards wide, the current about knee-deep, flowing over a quicksand bottom. The left bank, by which the Americans approached, is level; that on the right is also level for a short distance back, but beyond this narrow plain a bank fifty feet in height commands the ford and the intervening flat, while both banks are fringed with a thick undergrowth. On this bank, directly in front of the ford, four pieces of artillery were posted, supported on either flank by strong bodies of cavalry, while on the slope of the hill and the flat in front were posted the sharpshooters. Against this position the American column moved; the second division in front, with the first and third divisions on the right and left flanks; the cattle and the wagon train moved next; the volunteer riflemen and the fourth division brought up the rear. As the head of the column approached the bank of the river the enemy's sharpshooters opened a scattering fire; and the second division was ordered to deploy as skirmishers, cross the river, and drive the former from the thicket; while the first and third divisions covered the flanks of the train, and, with it, followed in the rear. When this line of skirmishers had reached the middle of the stream and was pressing forward toward the opposite bank, the enemy brought his artillery to bear, "and made the water fly with grape and round shot"; and the American fieldpieces were immediately dragged across the river and placed in counter-battery on the right bank in opposition to those of the enemy. The fire of the Americans appears to have caused considerable confusion in the ranks of the insurgents; and under its cover the wagon train and cattle, with their guard, passed the river, during which time the enemy attacked its rear and was repelled. Having safely crossed the river the American column appears to have deployed under cover of the high ground--the Californian grape and round shot rattling over the heads of the men--and the enemy immediately charged on both its flanks simultaneously, dashing down the slope with great spirit. With great coolness the second division was thrown into squares, and after a round or two drove off the enemy from the left flank; the first division received a similar order, but as the assailants on the right hesitated and did not come down as far as their associates on the opposite flank, the order was countermanded, and the division was ordered to charge up the hill, where the enemy's main body was supposed to be posted. With great coolness this movement was executed and the heights were gained, but there was no enemy in sight. He had abandoned his position, and although he pitched his camp on the hills in view of the Americans, when morning came he had moved still farther back. The strength of the Americans in this action (the action of the Rio San Gabriel) had been shown already; that of the Californians was about six hundred, with four pieces of artillery. The loss of the former was one man killed and nine men wounded; that of the enemy is not known. On the following morning (January 9, 1847) the American column resumed its march over the Mesa--a wide plain which extends from the Rio San Gabriel to the Rio San Fernando--surrounded by reconnoitring parties from the enemy; and when about four miles from Los Angeles the enemy was discovered on the right of the line of march, awaiting its approach. When the column had come abreast of the enemy the latter opened fire from his artillery on its right flank, and soon afterward deployed his force, making a horseshoe in front of the American column, and opening with two pieces of artillery on its front while two nine-pounders continued their fire on the right. After stopping about fifteen minutes to silence the enemy's nine-pounders the column again moved forward; when, by a movement similar to that employed on the Rio San Gabriel the day before, two charges were made simultaneously on its left flank and on its right and rear. Contrary to the positive instructions of the officers, in the former of these charges the enemy was met with a fire at long distance; yet, although he had not come within a hundred yards of the column, several of his men were knocked out of their saddles, and a round of grape, which was immediately sent after him, completely scattered his right wing. The charge on the right and the rear of the column fared little better; and the entire force of the insurgents was withdrawn. The strength of both parties was probably as on the preceding day at the Rio San Gabriel; the loss of the Californians is not known; that of the Americans was Captain Gillespie, Lieutenant Rowan, and three men wounded. The troops encamped near the field of battle; and on the following morning (January 10, 1847), the enemy surrendered, when the city of Los Angeles was occupied by the Americans without further opposition. "This was the last exertion made by the sons of California for the liberty and independence of their country," say the Mexican historians, "and its defence will always do them honor; since, without supplies, without means or instructions, they rushed into an unequal contest, in which they more than once taught the invaders what a people can do who fight in defence of their rights. The city of Los Angeles was occupied by the American forces on January 10th, and the loss of that rich, vast, and precious part of the Mexican territory was consummated." (1847) THE FALL OF ABD-EL-KADER, Edgar Sanderson This great Mahometan was an Arab chief whose heroic conduct as leader of the Arabs in their wars against the French in Algeria (1832-1847) gave him a place among the eminent patriot-soldiers and statesmen of the nineteenth century. In 1843 Marshal Soult declared that Abd-el-Kader was one of the three great men then living; the two others also being Mahometans. The final course and fall of this man, whose name means "Servant of the Mighty God," is itself an important concern of history, without regard to its effect upon the relations of empire. After the French, provoked by the conduct of Hasan, Dey of Algeria, had occupied Algiers, his capital, in 1830, a new government was set up in France, Louis Philippe ascending the throne in place of the expelled Charles X. At the time of this revolution in France the soldiers of Charles had already overrun a great part of Algeria; but they had not subdued the country, and their absolute dominion extended only a little beyond the capital itself. The French commander fortified his territory, but had to recruit his garrisons from among the natives. In 1833 Abd-el-Kader raised the standard of the Prophet, the Arabs rallied to his call, and for several years he carried on a stubborn war against the French, whom in 1835 he signally defeated. In 1836 the Arab leader, now Sultan, again fought the invaders in several severe engagements on the Tafna River. In these affairs the advantage lay with the Arab. In June, 1836, General Bugeaud was sent to command the French forces, and he proved to be the strongest opponent that Abd-el-Kader had met. There was more fighting on the Tafna; it was indecisive, and in May, 1837, a treaty, known as the Treaty of the Tafna, was concluded, General Bugeaud having received instructions either to make peace with Abd-el-Kader or to subdue him. The story of the Arab hero from this point in his career is told by Sanderson, the faithful commemorator of great nineteenth-century patriots, a high authority on modern Africa. The famous Treaty of the Tafna, concluded between Abd-el-Kader and Bugeaud, was a triumph for the Arab Sultan. With the consent of all the great sheiks, the leaders of cavalry contingents, the venerable Marabouts, and the most distinguished warriors of the Province of Oran, the Sultan, not acknowledging the sovereignty of France, but ceding to her a limited portion of the Provinces of Oran and Algiers, reserved the free exercise of their religion for all Arabs dwelling on French territory. He undertook to supply the French army with a large quantity of corn and oxen and to confine the commerce of the Regency to French ports. In return he received the administration of the larger part of the Provinces of Oran and Algiers, and the whole of Tittery; the important right of buying powder, sulphur, and weapons in France; and freedom of trade between the Arabs and the French. In ceding the Province of Tittery, Bugeaud had violated the strict orders of the French Government, alleging in excuse to the Minister of War that any other arrangement was "impossible." The treaty, in fact, confined the French to a few towns on the seacoast, with small adjacent territories. All the fortresses and strongholds in the interior were left in the hands of Abd-el-Kader. He was the possessor of two-thirds of Algeria, and he appeared before the world as the friend and ally of France. The treaty was held by the French Government to be a high stroke of policy, converting an enemy into an ally. The French people regarded it as a humiliating surrender of French territory to a rival power. It was the culminating point of Abd-el-Kader's career. During the year 1839 the Sultan was engaged in the work of a statesman, legislator, administrator, and reformer, displaying wonderful activity, enterprise, vigor, and intellectual power as the founder of an empire which, for the happiness of Algeria, was to be too short-lived. After the Tafna Treaty he had received a magnificent present of arms from Louis Philippe, King of the French, and, as a man who had subdued, either by arms or by persuasive eloquence, the hardy, high-spirited Kabyles he stood high in the estimation of his Moslem fellow-rulers in Morocco and Egypt, Tripoli and Tunis, and of the _ulemas_, or bodies of learned doctors in divinity and law, at Alexandria and Mecca, who watched with joy, and with ardent expectation of yet higher things, the career of one who seemed destined to revive the pristine glories of Islam. The great Sultan, in order to consolidate his power both against the French and over the Arabs, constructed a number of forts on the limits of the Tell at Sebdou, on the west; at Saida, south of Tlemsen; at Tekedemt, south of Mascara; at Boghar, south of Miliana; to the south of Medea, and to the southeast of Algiers. Tekedemt, an old Roman town about sixty miles southeast of Oran, was designed to be the capital, as a great centre of commerce between the Tell and the Sahara. The first stone of the new city and fortress had been laid by the Sultan in May, 1836; and as the place grew, a population of settlers from Mascara, Mostaganem, and other towns poured in. Large stores of warlike munitions were formed, and a factory, worked by mechanics from Paris on liberal wages, turned out eight new muskets a day. A mint of silver and copper coins was established. The defences carried twelve cannon and six mortars. A French observer, who was a prisoner at the time when the Sultan was personally directing the works at Tekedemt, describes his simple costume, like that of a laborer; his large tall hat, plaited with palm-leaves; his "incomparable grace" and "fascinating smile" as he saluted the man who was rather a guest than a captive. The reforms of Abd-el-Kader included a regular police, schools, and local tribunals of justice. All the chief towns had factories conducted by Europeans, working in brass and iron, cotton and wool. The army contained the finest irregular cavalry in the world, amounting, with all the contingents from the tribes, to about sixty thousand men, only a third of whom, however, were ever assembled for any single military operation. His regular force comprised eight thousand infantry, two thousand cavalry, twenty field-guns, and two hundred forty artillerymen. His great ideal embraced the making the Arabs into one nation; the recall of the whole people to a strict observance of religious duties; the inspiring them with true patriotism; the calling forth of all their capabilities for war, for commerce, for agriculture, and for mental improvement; and the crowning of the whole by the impress of European civilization. In laying the foundation for this mighty work, he had already overcome vast difficulties by means of wonderful enterprise, activity, and vigor. His intellectual greatness had caused him to shine as a warrior, diplomatist, orator, and statesman. The Provinces of Oran and Tittery and the plains of the Northern Sahara had been won by his military prowess. A still nobler triumph in the exhibition of moral power was beheld in his dealings with the region called Great Kabylia, the superb range of the Djurjura Mountains extending eastward from Algiers. The hardy Kabyles of that territory had remained unsubdued amid the changing governments which had risen and fallen around them. As independent little republics, bound together by the most exalted spirit of freedom, they had ever preserved their usages, customs, and laws. In September, 1839, Abd-el-Kader, attended by only fifty horsemen, suddenly appeared among them. Thousands gathered around his tent from the valleys and fastnesses. He addressed them in a stirring and argumentative harangue, pointing out union under his standard as the only safeguard against French conquest. With loud shouts they accepted his faithful caliph, Ben Salem, as their chief in war, and agreed to pay the regular imposts and to go forth to the Djehad. For thirty days the Sultan made a progress through the country, everywhere received with joy and enthusiasm as a venerated _hadji_ and marabout, as a teacher of the law, as a man of pious life, as a renowned warrior and an eloquent preacher. We cannot dwell here on his educational and moral reforms, his earnest efforts to enforce the teaching of the _Koran_, which was his guide in his public and private life. His beneficent intentions were all to be frustrated by the ambition of a European nation which was to signally fail, not in the work of conquering Abd-el-Kader, but in turning her conquest to good account. Hastily drawn treaties are a prolific source of war. The Treaty of the Tafna was a flagrant example of this class of diplomatic documents. There were two drafts: one in Arabic, with the Sultan's seal; the other in French, with Bugeaud's. The drafts were not carefully compared. The limits of territory assigned to each of the parties were not made clear. One instance of the lack of identity in the two forms of the instrument will suffice. The French form declared that Abd-el-Kader acknowledged the sovereignty of France. The Sultan had never dreamed of making an admission which, in its effect on the tribes, would have cost him his throne. What he had written, in Arabic, in the article which he subscribed, was, properly translated, "The Emir Abd-el-Kader acknowledges that there is a French Sultan, and that he is great." A new Governor-General, Marshal Valée, had assumed his functions at Algiers in November, 1837. Disputes arose as to the territorial rights of the Sultan under the Tafna Treaty, and after vain negotiations and missions to and fro matters were brought to a head by Marshal Valée in the despatch of an expedition to march over some disputed ground as a demonstration of French power and an assertion of French rights. A column under the Duc d'Orléans started from Milah, in the Province of Constantine, lately conquered by the French, to march across the disputed territory and thence onward. A way was gained through a formidable pass called the "Iron Gates," in October, 1839, by a simple process. The defile was one which a few hundred men could have held against any force, but the Kabyle sheiks were shown passports bearing Abd-el-Kader's seal and authorizing the passage of French troops. The seal of the Sultan had been forged. On November 1st Valée and the French Prince made a triumphant entry into Algiers, after this despicable piece of treachery, and were saluted as the heroes of the "Iron Gates." The news reached Abd-el-Kader at Tekedemt. He sprang on his horse, and in forty-eight hours, riding night and day, was at Medea, whence he despatched a reproachful and defiant letter to the French Governor. He called the tribesmen to arms, formally declared war, swept down on the plains, destroyed the French cantonments, agricultural establishments, and outposts; slew many colonists, burned the villages and drove panic-stricken fugitives headlong into the city of Algiers. The French Government then ostentatiously declared the adoption of a firm policy and announced Algeria to be "henceforth and forever a French province." Reënforcements were rapidly sent to Algiers, and the effective army of Valée was soon raised to thirty thousand men. The Sultan headed about the same number of cavalry, regular and irregular, and six thousand regular infantry. A fair trial of strength, Frenchman against Arab, was now to be made. Concentrating his army at Blidah, at the foot of the lesser Atlas range, the French Marshal marched on Medea and Millana. The river Chiffa was passed on April 27, 1840. The Sultan's cavalry appeared in large numbers. By a feigned movement, Abd-el-Kader induced his enemy to enter the mountains by the gorges of the Monzaia, which he had spent months in fortifying. Every eminence useful for the purpose was cut into intrenchments. A redoubt with heavy batteries crowned the highest peak. Near this were placed his regular infantry, officered by French deserters. Arabs and Kabyles swarmed in all directions, and, crouching in nooks, were ready to open fire on the French army as it wound its way with steady march along the narrow causeway which hung midway on the mountain slopes. Valée had divided his force into three columns, one of which was led by Lamoricière, a man to become famous in Algerian warfare. The Sultan was now to see the value of French infantry. To the astonishment of the Arabs, the enemy, leaving the road, came darting over the steeps. Ravines, woods, and rocks were all mastered in the rush. Slowly but surely they were reaching the intrenchments, when a thick veil came over the scene from the smoke of incessant fire. The mist rolled away before the breeze sweeping through the pass, and the combatants met and fought hand to hand. The Arabs and Kabyles clung desperately to their places of shelter, but the French clambered up, grasping at shrubs and branches, ever winning their way. Abd-el-Kader made a last stand in person at the great redoubt, while his regulars and masses of Kabyles gathered round him. The converging columns of the French came creeping on amid the roll of drums and the blare of trumpets. The Arabs, bewildered by foes attacking them both in front and rear, wavered, broke, and fled. Lamoricière and his Zouaves, Changarnier and the Second Light Infantry, burst over the intrenchments, and the tricolor waved on the summit of the Atlas. Abd-el-Kader retreated on Miliana, while the conqueror, entering Medea, found it abandoned and half burned. The Sultan had made his last attempt to fight the French on the principles of European warfare. His caliphs and chiefs were ordered never again to meet the enemy in masses, but to harass them in hanging on their flanks and rear, cutting their communications, attacking baggage and transports, and waging a contest of feigned retreats, ambuscades, and sudden sallies in order to bewilder and weary the foe. Miliana was evacuated by Abd-el-Kader on Valée's approach, but the chance of Arab warfare came when the French entered the mountain passes. Unceasing attacks, day and night, caused severe loss to the lately victorious French, with the capture of baggage and the abandonment of all wounded men. The French garrisons in Medea and Miliana were soon reduced to want by blockade of the surrounding country, and by October, 1840, the garrison of Miliana had almost disappeared, from the effects of fever and famine. Out of fifteen hundred men, the half had perished; five hundred were in hospital and the remainder were haggard wretches who could hardly hold their muskets. Such was the warfare in the mountains of the Province of Tittery, and Abd-el-Kader by his swift movements kept the enemy ever on the alert, and often in trouble, from the frontiers of Morocco to those of Tunis. The real and decisive struggle began early in 1841. The right man was at last found by the French to deal with the hitherto indomitable Sultan of Tittery and Oran. The Government at Paris had begun in some sort to understand the power of their formidable adversary, and a serious effort was to be made. On February 22, 1841, General Bugeaud assumed office as Governor-General of Algeria. He had now come, not in the mood and with the policy of the day when he concluded the Treaty of the Tafna, but as one whose task it was to crush every rival power in Algeria. For this end, eighty-five thousand men were placed under his command. Thomas Bugeaud was a man of great ability, and he has the credit of devising the only method by which such an antagonist as Abd-el-Kader, in such a country, could be subdued. Against an adversary so mobile, so full of expedients and resource, mobility and incessantly offensive movements offered the only chance of success. The French Commander knew that it was no mere army, but a people in arms, that he was to encounter. His forces were at once organized in many small, compact columns, each composed of a few infantry battalions and two squadrons of horse, with a little transport train of mules and camels and two mountain howitzers. Picked men alone, acclimatized and used to toil, were employed, and they carried nothing but their muskets and ammunition, with a little food. These columns were placed under the command of such energetic leaders as Changarnier and Cavaignac, Canrobert and Pélissier, Bedeau and Lamoricière, St. Arnaud and the Duc d'Aumale. The campaign opened with the revictualling of Medea and Miliana, with great losses to the French, as Abd-el-Kader disputed every inch of the ground. Bugeaud, personally operating in Oran, reached Tekedemt on May 25th, and found it deserted and in flames. Boghar, Saida, and other fortresses were successively destroyed. The enemies of the Sultan were paying a heavy price for success. At the end of 1841 Bugeaud, out of sixty thousand men in the field, had only four thousand fit for duty. The rest had perished or were invalided for the time, from the toil of marches, incessant fighting, and the heat of the climate. The French Government's proposals of peace, on certain terms, only confirmed Abd-el-Kader in his resolve to try the extremities of war. Bugeaud's main object was to establish permanent centres of action in the very heart of the Arab confederation of tribes, and, by rapidly consecutive expeditions radiating from these centres, to give his troops the ubiquity of Abd-el-Kader's forces. The chief seat of the Sultan's power was the Province of Oran, and this was made the principal scene of operations. Mascara was held by Lamoricière, Tlemsen by Bedeau. Changarnier was in observation on the western frontier of the plain of Algiers; Tittery was menaced by D'Aumale. From Oran and Mostaganem three columns were sent forth against the tribes occupying the large expanse of territory lying between the Atlas Mountains and the Mediterranean, and the tribes extending toward the Sahara. The first force, headed by Bugeaud in person, marched along the valley of the Chéliff, and then joined the second column under Changarnier, coming from Blida. The third body, under Lamoricière, aimed at pushing Abd-el-Kader back to the south in order to separate him from the tribes assailed by Changarnier and Bugeaud. The plan of campaign was formidable for the Arabs, but it was encountered by the Sultan with wonderful skill and daring in a struggle which involved some thrilling episodes, Lamoricière, in his efforts to overtake the foe, was constantly baffled. Hearing that Abd-el-Kader was before Mascara, he hurried thither by forced marches, only to find that his enemy had passed by his rear and was raiding a tribe friendly to the French. Pursuing in the new direction, the French leader was outmaneuvre by the Sultan's bold and rapid dash across the Chéliff, placing his Arabs between Bugeaud and the sea, and recovering his ascendency over the tribes in that region. Abd-el-Kader then swept in a _razzia_ to the south of Miliana, and soon appeared in full force in the Sahara as the bewildered French pursuers returned to their cantonments in despair of reaching him. This is a sample of the evolutions by which genius made amends for inferiority of force. The ablest military combinations were rendered abortive by an enemy that was ever slipping between columns, flitting in the front, hovering on the flanks, assailing the rear, and, with perfect knowledge of the country, was sometimes in the mountains and again in the plains, ubiquitous, unattainable for serious conflict. Abd-el-Kader, leaving his caliphs to maintain this exasperating species of warfare in the Province of Oran, made for the frontiers of Morocco. There many tribes had submitted under the influence of Bedeau's military and diplomatic skill. The Sultan's communications with the country whence he drew his weapons, clothing, and ammunition were seriously threatened. His appearance at once brought back the Kabyles of Nedrouma to their allegiance, and their example was followed by other tribes, with the result that his army was increased to the number of three thousand cavalry and five thousand infantry. Able now to confront the enemy, Abd-el-Kader during the months of March and April, 1842, had frequent encounters with Bedeau, The issue was yet indecisive when the Sultan was called away to Mascara to deal with Lamoricière, who had been gaining ground and winning over tribes, including even a large part of Abd-el-Kader's own people, the Hashems. Lamoricière, believing the Sultan to be still engaged with Bedeau, had marched toward the Sahara, and Abd-el-Kader, by a mingling of severe punishment and mild treatment, regained most of his old authority. Lamoricière, on receiving the news of his presence, hastened back to find his recent work undone and to be assailed by the tribes who had so lately joined him. Fighting his way bravely on to an encounter with the great leader of the Arabs, the French general heard of him as in force at Tekedemt. When he reached that place he found that Abd-el-Kader had fallen on Changarnier toward Miliana. That general, knowing nothing of the Sultan's approach, found himself enveloped by a vast force of Arabs and Kabyles, regulars and irregulars, horse and foot, led on by Abd-el-Kader in person and charging furiously on all sides. After two days and nights of incessant battle, in which men closed fiercely with pistols, swords, bayonets, and yataghans, the Sultan vanished with his force, leaving the French too exhausted and crippled by their losses for pursuit. Two days later tidings reached them that he was in the Metidja, ravaging the plain and carrying terror to the very gates of Algiers. Abd-el-Kader then bore away to the Atlas, ascended the mountains, penetrated beyond Tittery and reached the Sahara, everywhere inspiriting the tribes and raising fresh forces. After sweeping over three hundred leagues of ground he returned, in recruited strength and new energy, to press upon Lamoricière and his garrison at Mascara with all the rigors of a winter blockade. In spite of his wonderful efforts, the Sultan could not but feel that he was struggling with adverse fortune. The enemy by the seizure of his fixed establishments had gained possession of a large part of his territory and of the strongholds that had contained his stores of war. His regular army had almost disappeared, and much of his credit among the Arabs had departed. The _ketna_, which was his ancestral abode, had been laid waste. He could not protect the families of his most faithful adherents from constant exposure, in spite of his vigilant activity, to the outrages of the detested infidels. In this position, he resolved to remove from the scene of warfare those whom it was impossible for him to desert with any regard to feelings of religion and humanity. He formed his famous _smala_, a new and remarkable organization consisting of a gathering of private families. To this moving asylum of refuge and safety the Arab tribes sent their treasure, their herds, their women and children, their sick and aged persons. The smala was a great travelling capital, containing at first more than twenty thousand souls, following the Sultan's movements; sometimes in advance to the more cultivated regions, or in retreat to the Sahara, according to the fluctuations of the contest which he was so bravely waging. In the Sahara, the tents of the smala spread to the distant horizon. In the Tell, they filled the valley and rose up the slopes of the hills. All the arrangements were of military regularity. The different _deiras_, or households, with tents varying in number with their dwellers, were distributed into four great encampments. Each deira knew its appointed place. Each chief had his station marked and his special duties assigned. Four tribes were set apart to protect and guide the smala in its wanderings, and the guard was composed of regular troops. The existence of this organization, ever growing in extent, became a powerful check on the disaffection of the tribes. When the French leaders tempted them with fair promises, the warriors bethought them of the pledges: the women, the children, the flocks and herds, which were in the Sultan's hands. The genius of Abd-el-Kader had created a new and widely extended political engine. When the French leaders had learned to appreciate the importance of the smala its capture or dispersal became a chief object with all officers from the generals of corps to the colonels in charge of detachments. The campaign of 1843 was opened by Lamoricière, who occupied Tekedemt. Abd-el-Kader with about fifteen hundred horsemen watched his movements from some neighboring woods. He knew that the French commander's object was the smala, and he remained in ambush for twenty days. He and his men lived on acorns; the horses were fed on leaves. One day a stray sheep was found. The Sultan would have none of it, and said, "Take it to my starving soldiers," as he turned to his meal of acorns. Twice was Lamoricière repulsed in his search, and then a traitor revealed the exact place of the smala encampment. Lamoricière remained to occupy the attention of Abd-el-Kader, and the French column stationed at Medea was selected for the attack. The leadership was intrusted to the Duc d'Aumale, and on May 10, 1843, he started from Boghar with thirteen hundred infantry, six hundred horse, and two field-guns. The indicated place of encampment was found empty, and the French column wandered about in uncertain fashion. At break of day on May 16th the traitor made known the new spot of the smala's halt, and D'Aumale at once daringly advanced with his cavalry alone. The surprise created a panic among the people. The guard of five hundred regulars fired a volley and fled. A handful of the Hashem tribe bravely strove to stem the torrent, but they were swept away in the rout, and in an hour all was over. The smala was broken up amid scenes of terrible confusion and despair, including the extraordinary sight of a promiscuous mass of camels, dromedaries, horses, mules, oxen, and sheep careering and plunging on the plain. There was little bloodshed, but the French victors were in possession of hostages of the utmost value in the families of Abd-el-Ka-der's most influential chiefs. His own family had escaped. The booty taken was immense, comprising thousands of animals; the Sultan's valuable library of rare Arabic manuscripts; the military chest containing some millions of francs, and the chests of his caliphs and other high officers, filled with gold and silver coins and costly jewellery. The French soldiers baled out dollars and doubloons in their shakos, and helped themselves to diamonds and pearls. This dreadful blow, when the news reached him in the woods where he watched near Lamoricière's command, almost overwhelmed, for a time, even the exalted and undaunted spirit of the Sultan. He spent some hours alone in his tent, in meditation and prayer. He came forth with a smile and addressed his chiefs, his officers, and men as they stood outside in groups, some downcast and silent, some bitterly cursing their foe and fate. He reminded them that the dear objects now lost had impeded the movements of the holy war against the infidels, and that those who had fallen were now in paradise. The next day he wrote to his caliphs, bidding them not to be discouraged; they would thenceforth be lighter and in better order for war. In fact at the time of the Duc d'Aumale's attack, the population of the smala amounted to not less than sixty thousand. Not more than three thousand prisoners were taken; the rest of the Arabs were dispersed in all directions. Some fell among Arab tribes who plundered them; others were overtaken by Lamoricière. The blow was, on the whole, irreparable in its effects upon the influence of the Sultan. Every day brought tidings of the defection of some great tribe. The ranks of his enemies were swelled by large contingents of Arabs. Worse things were in store for the brave man contending with ill-fortune. His ablest caliphs were removed by captivity or death in action; the distant provinces fell a prey to the foe. The Province of Oran became the scene of a desperate struggle. With a chosen and devoted band of five thousand men Abd-el-Kader made his presence felt at all points. Now he fell on recreant tribes; now he made head against the French columns. Ever in the van, leading on the charge, plunging into the thickest of the fight, by his example he encouraged and inspired his followers. His bravest warriors fell around him; his horses were slain under him; his burnoose was torn with bullets; but still he fought on. The world's record can show no more brilliant instance of almost superhuman heroism. Once he was taken unawares. On September 23, 1843, he was encamped near Sidi Yusuf with a battalion of infantry and five hundred irregular horse. A spy made known his position to Lamoricière, who was at a distance of six leagues. The French General at once led out in person the Second Chasseurs d'Afrique. A night's march covered the intervening space and the spot was reached in the gray of dawn. The Sultan was aroused from sleep by cries of "The French! the French!" He had barely time to mount. He might have escaped, but he preferred the risk of death to the double stain of surprise and flight. His infantry seized their arms and fired a volley; his cavalry rallied at his voice. Then as the smoke slowly rolled away he dashed into the French chasseurs, dispersed them by the sudden shock, and after a few minutes' hard fighting drew off his whole force in perfect order. The Beni-Amers, the men whose four thousand sabres had waved in exultation around the young leader of the Djehad; the men whose splendid courage had opened before him the path of glory and of empire, had gone over to the French. Abd-el-Kader resolved to attack them. Suddenly descending upon them he swept through their encampments, slew numbers, and carried off a great booty. A French battalion stationed among them vainly strove to arrest his progress. An Arab chief, one of his old followers, boldly singled him out, rode up, and fired at him point-blank. The ball missed, and Abd-el-Kader shot the traitor dead with his pistol. The Sultan knew that all was lost unless he could obtain external aid. The smala was now reduced to his own deira, a bare thousand souls, wandering about in miserable fashion. After another desperate engagement with Lamoricière during which the Arab women cheered on the warriors, and Abd-el-Kader and his men fighting in the presence of their wives and children performed new prodigies of valor, he succeeded in safely establishing the noncombatants on the territory of Morocco. Bugeaud, now become a marshal, wrote to his Government declaring that all serious warfare was finished. In the summer of 1844, the violation of Abderrahman's territory by French troops under Lamoricière and Bedeau led to some warfare, in which the Moroccan troops were twice defeated. The people of the country were strongly in favor of Abd-el-Kader; and when their Sultan, after a French bombardment of Tangiers and Mogador, made a treaty with France by which the Algerian hero was "placed beyond the pale of the law throughout the Empire of Morocco, as well as in Algeria," and was to be "pursued by main force by the Moroccans on their own territory," the Moorish population was filled with resentment. Letters reached Abd-el-Kader from Fez, the capital, dictated and signed by the first grandees in the State, both civil and military, and from the commercial classes, inviting him to ascend the throne of his ancestors. Had he been a mere adventurer or usurper he might have lived henceforth, and died, Emperor of Morocco, But his whole soul was patriotically bent on one object, the freedom and independence of Algeria. He disdained to wear a borrowed crown. As he afterward declared, "His religion forbade him to injure a sovereign chosen and appointed by God." During the year 1844 the Sultan had made a rapid incursion into the Tell, everywhere appealing to the tribes; but he found the national spirit overawed by the presence of French detachments in all directions, and he returned to his deira in despondent spirit. He now received appeals from some of his devoted caliphs to undertake a fresh campaign, especially from the loyal and chivalrous Ben Salem, who dwelt in the gorges of the Djur jura Mountains. To him Abd-el-Kader replied, promising to come "as soon as affairs in the west were settled." Months passed away and the Arab tribes who had submitted began to feel the pressure of French domination and to resent the supercilious conduct of French officials. In the spring of 1845 their former Sultan reappeared. He swept down into the valley of the Tafna and routed and cut to pieces a French detachment. In this action the lower part of his right ear was carried away by a musket-ball, the only wound which he ever received. Another detachment of six hundred men laid down their arms without firing a shot. Some stir was made among the Arabs by these successes, and the French commanders took alarm. Lamoricière, Cavaignac, and Bedeau wrote pressing letters for reinforcements, and urged the return of Bugeaud. The most formidable foe of Abd-el-Kader reached the scene of action in October, 1845, bringing fresh forces, and in a week he took the field at the head of a hundred twenty thousand men. This fact is the highest eulogy that can be accorded to the military prowess of a man who so long defied the power of France. The end of the great career was rapidly coming. After another vain appeal to the Moorish ruler even Abd-el-Kader felt that all was lost. A French writer in the _Biographie générale_ truly declares: "The greatness of the man was strikingly displayed in the very hour of his downfall. Destitute of resources, surrounded by foes, at open enmity with the Emperor of Morocco, wandering like a hunted lion, with hardly any comrade but his horse, no shelter except his tent, Abd-el-Kader still inspired a terror which forced his enemies to keep a great army on foot in Algeria for protection against possible attacks at his hand." In his deira, at this time, all was despondency and grief. His own brothers had abandoned him. Ben Salem, the faithful, long-tried, devoted friend and follower, was a voluntary prisoner in the French camp. Abd-el-Kader's whole force was fewer than two thousand men, but among these were twelve hundred horsemen, the flower of the Algerian cavalry. Most of them had been his inseparable comrades, partakers in all his hardships and dangers, throughout his career. During a short period of rest he summoned them daily around him and aroused new enthusiasm among the bronzed veterans by his eloquent words. On December 9, 1847, the deira was stationed on Moorish territory, at Agueddin, on the left bank of the Melouia. It comprised in all about five thousand souls. The next day news arrived that a great Moorish host under the Sultan's two sons was only three hours' march away. On January 11th, Abd-el-Kader gathered his armed force, marched at dead of night and fell furiously on the first division of the Moors and Arabs. The slumbering foe awoke to see the thick darkness illumined by flashes of light from muskets. Seized with panic, the men rushed away in all directions, abandoning arms, tents, and baggage. In the mean time Abd-el-Kader and his men swept onward and attacked the second division, which was also defeated and dispersed. In half an hour the third division was reached. This force had time to prepare for defence, and the assailants withdrew before a steady fire of infantry and artillery to an adjacent hill. At midday five thousand Moorish cavalry moved out against Abd-el-Kader's little army. At charging distance he led on his men, swept through the foe, and by a skilful combination of assault and retreat regained his deira by the river Melouia, before sunset. The deira had nearly effected its passage across the river, with the baggage and the spoils taken from the enemy, when the Moorish army was seen cautiously advancing. The situation was full of peril. The deira had never been so exposed. The ammunition was expended and the infantry was thus counted out of the fight. Abd-el-Kader could only depend on his "Old Guard"--his matchless cavalry. At length the Melouia was passed, and, although the foe was pressing on, he would not leave its bank until the noncombatants had gained a full hour in advance. Then the deira crossed another stream and reached a place of safety, for the time, on French territory. Not a life had been lost nor a beast of burden of all that crowd of men, women, children, and animals. Coolness, intrepidity, and skill had been their protectors. Of the fighting men, however, more than two hundred had been slain, and nearly all the rest were suffering from wounds. Abd-el-Kader now turned toward the hills inhabited by a tribe which still, in part, adhered to him. His horsemen followed him in anxious silence, suffering and exhausted. The rain fell in torrents. Their chief was tormented by conflicting thoughts. A French camp was visible in the distance, three hours' march away, occupying a pass. He and his cavalry might yet escape by narrow defiles into the Sahara. But what of his aged mother, his wife and children, his helpless followers in the deira? All would become captives to the foe. He called his men around him and reminded them of the oath which, eight years before on the renewal of the war, they had taken at Medea that they would never forsake him in any danger or suffering. All declared themselves ready still to adhere to it. He set before them the peril of the people in the deira and suggested submission. All the warriors cried: "Perish women and children so long as you are safe and able to renew the battles of God. You are our head, our Sultan; fight or surrender, as you will, we will follow you wherever you choose to lead." After a few moments' pause Abd-el-Kader declared that the struggle was over. The tribes were tired of the war and there was nothing left but submission. He would ask the French for a safe-conduct for himself and his family, and for all who chose to follow him, to another Mussulman country. The universal answer was, "Sultan, let your will be done!" The incessant rain rendered it impossible to write down any terms. Abd-el-Kader therefore affixed his seal to a piece of paper, and despatched it in charge of two horsemen to the French general as a sign of authorization on his part for demands to be verbally made. It was Lamoricière who received the two emissaries; and he sent a verbal reply, acceding to all proposals. Abd-el-Kader then sent a letter, and received in reply a written promise and stipulation that the Sultan and his family should be conducted to St. Jean d'Acre or Alexandria. The new Governor-General, the Duc d'Aumale, was close at hand, and on the evening of December 23, 1847, the fallen hero, attended by some of his chiefs and men, escorted by five hundred French cavalry, who showed great respect and sympathy for the captives, arrived at headquarters. Abd-el-Kader, attended by Lamoricière and Cavaignac, was presented to the son of Louis Philippe. The Prince pledged himself that Lamoricière's promise and stipulation should be strictly observed. He knew little that his father's throne was about to fall, and that the decision as to Abd-el-Kader's fate would, within a few weeks, rest in far different hands. The ex-Sultan then withdrew to his deira, which had now joined the French encampment. On the next morning, December 24th, the Governor-General held a review. His honored prisoner and guest, riding a splendid black charger of the purest Arab breed, and surrounded by his chiefs, awaited his return from the field. When the Prince approached, Abd-el-Kader dismounted and offered his steed as a present in testimony of his gratitude, and expressed the hope that he might always bear his new master in safety and happiness. The Duc d'Aumale replied, "I accept it as a homage rendered to France, the protection of which country will henceforth be ever extended toward you, and as a sign that the past is forgotten." On December 25th the Algerian hero embarked with his family and followers in a French frigate for Toulon. He had seen the last of his native land. Lamoricière accompanied him on board and supplemented his poor resources with a present of four thousand francs, receiving Abd-el-Kader's sword in return. The _Moniteur_ of January 3, 1848, paid a high tribute to the genius and ascendency of the captive in these words: "The subjugation of Abd-el-Kader is an event of immense importance to France. It assures the tranquillity of our conquest. To-day France can, if necessary, transport to other quarters the hundred thousand men who hold the conquered populations under her yoke." (1847) THE MEXICAN WAR, John Bonner When President Polk began his Administration, the United States Government had become involved in two boundary disputes--one relating to Oregon, the other to Texas and Mexico. Out of the latter came the Mexican War, concerning the political causes and merits of which there were then and ever since have been wide differences of opinion among the American people. Polk's election by the Democrats in 1844 had turned mainly upon the question of annexing Texas. Just before he came into office the annexation was made. Texas claimed as her western boundary the Rio Grande. Mexico held that the western limit was the Nueces. Between the two rivers there was a large area of disputed territory. The Texan claim was opposed by many American statesmen and publicists, and by some was denounced--as the annexation of Texas had been--as an aggressive move against Mexico. But the United States Government supported the cause of Texas. General Zachary Taylor, who had served in the War of 1812, and afterward in several Indian wars, took command of the army in Texas in 1845. In January, 1846, he was ordered to occupy positions on or near the left bank of the Rio Grande del Norte. This order and its execution have been held by some writers to constitute an act of war, but war was not formally declared by the United States till May 11th. Taylor, with a small force, had several slight encounters with Mexican troops, after which he won the battle of Palo Alto (May 8, 1846), near the southern extremity of Texas; and that of Resaca de la Palma (May 9th), also in Texas, four miles north of Matamoros, Mexico. He took possession of Matamoros May 18th. With six thousand men, against about ten thousand Mexicans under Ampudia, Taylor captured Monterey, Mexico (September 24th), and at Buena Vista, February 22-23, 1847, with five thousand troops, he defeated fifteen thousand Mexicans under Santa Anna, then President of Mexico and commander of her army. The war was now transferred to the district between Vera Cruz and the City of Mexico, the capital, and was henceforth conducted for the United States by General Winfield Scott, whose previous military career had been much the same as General Taylor's. Scott had been made Major-General and Commander-in-Chief of the Army in 1841. His first operation in Mexico was the taking of Vera Cruz, the principal Mexican seaport, on the Gulf of Mexico. With the aid of a fleet he besieged the city in March, 1847, and on the 27th received its surrender. At Cerro Gordo (April 17th and 18th) he won an important victory that opened his way through the mountains toward his objective, the city of Mexico. Reënforcements gradually reached him, and by the first of August he was ready to move on the valley of Mexico with about eleven thousand men. From this stage to the fall of the capital, completing the conquest of the country, Bonner's account gives a graphic recital of events. The city was held by Americans from September 14, 1847, the day they entered it, until the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo (February 2, 1848), which ended the war. With the energy that characterized Santa Anna throughout the Mexican War, he had prepared for a desperate defence. Civil strife had been silenced, funds raised, an army of twenty-five thousand men mustered, and every precaution taken which genius could suggest or science indicate. Nature had done much for him. Directly in front of the invading army lay the large lakes of Xochimilco and Chalco. These turned, vast marshes, intersected by ditches and for the most part impassable, surrounded the city on the east and the south--on which side Scott was advancing--for several miles. The only approaches were by causeways; and these Santa Anna had taken prodigious pains to guard. The national road to Vera Cruz--which Scott must have taken had he marched on the north side of the lakes--was commanded by a fort mounting fifty-one guns on an impregnable hill called El Peñon. Should he turn the southern side of the lakes, a field of lava, deemed almost impassable for troops, interposed a primary obstacle; and fortified positions at San Antonio, San Angel, and Churubusco, with an intrenched camp at Contreras, were likewise to be surmounted before the southern causeways could be reached. Beyond these there yet remained the formidable castle of Chapultepec and the strong enclosure of Molino del Rey, to be stormed before the city gates could be reached. Powerful batteries had been mounted at all these points, and ample garrisons detailed to serve them. The bone and muscle of Mexico were there. Goaded by defeat, Santa Anna never showed so much vigor; ambition fired Valencia; patriotism stirred the soul of Alvarez; Canalizo, maddened by the odium into which he had fallen, was boiling to regain his soubriquet of the "Lion of Mexico." With a constancy equal to anything recorded of the Roman Senate, the Mexican Congress, on learning of the defeat at Cerro Gordo, had voted unanimously that anyone opening negotiations with the enemy should be deemed a traitor; and the citizens with one accord had ratified the vote. Within six months Mexico had lost two splendid armies in two pitched battles against the troops now advancing against the capital; but she never lost heart, and her spirit quailed not. The engineers reporting that the fortress on El Peñon could not be carried without a loss of one-third the army, Scott decided to move by the south of the lakes; and Worth accordingly advanced, leading the van, as far as San Augustin, nine miles from the city of Mexico. There a large field of lava, known as the Pedregal, barred the way. On the one side, two miles from San Augustin, the fortified works at San Antonio commanded the passage between the field and the lake; on the other, the ground was so much broken that infantry alone could advance, and General Valencia occupied an intrenched camp, with a heavy battery, near the village of Contreras, three miles distant. Scott determined to attack on both sides, and sent forward General William J. Worth on the east, and General Gideon J. Pillow and General David E. Twiggs on the west. The latter advanced as fast as possible over the masses of lava on the morning of the 19th, and by 2 P.M. a couple of light batteries were placed in position and opened fire on the Mexican camp. At the same time General Persifor Smith conceived the plan of turning Valencia's left, and hastened along the path through the Pedregal in the direction of a village called San Jeronimo. Colonel Riley followed. Pillow sent Cadwallader's brigade on the same line, and later in the day Morgan's regiment was likewise despatched toward that point. They drove in the Mexican pickets and skirmishers, dispersed a few parties of lancers, and occupied the village without loss. Seeing the movement, Santa Anna hastened to Valencia's support with twelve thousand men. He was discovered by Cadwallader just as the latter gained the village road; and appreciating the vast importance of preventing a junction between the two Mexican generals, that gallant officer did not hesitate to draw up his brigade in order of battle. So broken was the ground that Santa Anna could not see the amount of force opposed to him, and declined the combat. This was all Cadwallader wanted. Shields's brigade was advancing through the Pedregal, and the troops which had already crossed were rapidly moving to the rear of Valencia's camp. Night too was close at hand. When it fell, Smith's, Riley's, and Cadwallader's commands had gained the point they sought. Shields joined them at ten o'clock; and at midnight Captain Lee crossed the Pedregal, with a message from General Smith to General Scott, to say that he would begin the attack at daybreak next morning. It rained all night and the men lay in the mud without fires. At three in the morning (August 20th) the word was passed to march. Such pitchy darkness covered the face of the plain that Smith ordered every man to touch his front file as he marched. Now and then a flash of lightning lighted the narrow ravine; occasionally a straggling moonbeam pierced the clouds and shed an uncertain glimmer on the heights; but these flitting guides served only to make the darkness seem darker. The soldiers groped their way, stumbling over stones and brushwood, and did not gain the rear of the camp till day broke. Then Riley bade his men look to the priming of their guns, and reload those which the rain had wet. With the first ray of daylight the firing had begun again between the Mexican camp and Ransom's corps stationed in front and Shields's brigade at San Jeronimo. Almost at the same moment Riley began to ascend the height in the rear. Before he reached the crest, his engineers, who had gone forward to reconnoitre, came running back to say that his advance had been detected, that two guns were being pointed against him, and a body of infantry were sallying from the camp, The news braced the men's nerves. They gained the ridge, and stood a tremendous volley from the Mexicans without flinching. Hanson of the Seventh--a gallant officer and an excellent man--was shot down with many others; but the Mexicans had done their worst. With steady aim the volley was returned; and ere the smoke rose a cheer rang through the ravine, and Riley fell with a swoop on the intrenchments. With bayonet and butt of musket, the Second and Seventh drove the enemy from his guns, leaping into his camp and slaughtering all before them. Up rushed Smith's own brigade on the left, driving a party of Mexicans before them, and charging with the bayonet straight at Torrejon's cavalry, which was drawn up in order of battle. Defeat was marked on their faces. Valencia was nowhere to be found. Salas strove vainly to rouse his men to defend themselves with energy; Torrejon's horse, smitten with panic, broke and fled at the advance of our infantry. Riley hurled the Mexicans from their camp after a struggle of a quarter of an hour; and as they rushed down the ravine, their own cavalry rode over them, trampling down more men than the bayonet and ball had laid low. On the right, as they fled, Cadwallader's brigade poured in a destructive volley; and Shields, throwing his party across the road, obstructed their retreat and compelled the fugitives to yield themselves prisoners of war. The only fight of any moment had taken place within the camp. There, for a few minutes, the Mexicans had fought desperately; two of our regimental colors had been shot down, but finally Anglo-Saxon bone and sinew had triumphed. To the exquisite delight of the assailants, the first prize of victory was the guns O'Brien had abandoned at Buena Vista, which were regained by his own regiment. Twenty other guns and more than a thousand prisoners, including eighty-eight officers and four generals, were likewise captured, and about fifteen hundred Mexicans killed and wounded. The American loss in killed, wounded, and missing was about one hundred men. Barely taking time to breathe his troops, Smith followed in pursuit toward the city. By ten o'clock in the morning he reached San Angel, which Santa Anna evacuated as he approached. The General-in-Chief and the generals of division had by this time relieved Smith of his command. Scott rode to the front, and in a few brief words told the men there was more work to be done that day. A loud cheer from the ranks was the reply. The whole force then advanced to Coyacan, within a mile of Churubusco, and prepared to assault the place. Santa Anna considered it the key to the city, and awaited the attack in perfect confidence with thirty thousand men. The defences were simple. On the west, in the direction of Coyacan, stood the large stone convent of San Pablo, which, as well as the wall and breastworks in front, was filled with infantry, and which contained seven heavy guns. A breastwork connected San Pablo with the _tête de pont_ over the Churubusco River, four hundred yards distant. This was the easternmost point of defence, and formed part of the San Antonio causeway leading to the city. It was a work constructed with the greatest skill--bastions, curtain, and wet ditch, everything was complete and perfect--four guns were mounted in embrasure and barbette, and as many men as the place would hold were stationed there. The reserves occupied the causeway behind Churubusco. Independently of his defences, Santa Anna's numbers--nearly five to one--should have insured the repulse of the assailants. By eleven--hardly seven hours having elapsed since the Contreras camp had been stormed, five miles away--Twiggs and Pillow were in motion toward the San Antonio causeway. Nothing had been heard of Worth, who had been directed to move along the east side of the Pedregal on San Antonio, but it was taken for granted he had carried the point, and Scott wished to cut off the retreat of the garrison. Twiggs was advancing cautiously toward the convent when a heavy firing was heard in advance. Supposing that a reconnoitring party had been attacked, he hastily sent forward the First Artillery, under Dimmick, through a field of tall corn, to support them. No sooner had they separated from the main body than a terrific discharge of grape, canister, and musketry assailed them from the convent. In the teeth of the storm they advanced to within one hundred yards of that building, and a light battery under Taylor was brought up on their right, and opened on the convent. More than an hour the gunners stood firm to their pieces under afire as terrible as troops ever endured; one-third of the command had fallen before they were withdrawn. Colonel Riley meanwhile, with the stormers of Contreras, had been despatched to assail San Pablo on the west, and, like Dimmick, was met by a murderous rain of shot. Whole heads of companies were mowed down at once. Thus Captain Smith fell, twice wounded, with every man beside him; and a single discharge from the Mexican guns swept down Lieutenant Easley and the division he led. It was the second time that day the gallant Second had served as targets for the Mexicans, but not a man fell back. General Smith ordered up the Third in support, and these, protecting themselves as best they could behind a few huts, kept up a steady fire on the convent. Sallies from the works were continually made, and as continually repelled, but not a step could the assailants make in advance. By this time the battle was raging at three different points. Worth had marched on San Antonio that morning, found it evacuated, and given chase to the Mexicans with the Fifth and Sixth Infantry. The causeway leading from San Antonio to the _tête de pont_ of Churubusco was thronged with flying horse and foot; our troops dashed headlong after them, never halting till the advance corps--the Sixth--were within short range of the Mexican batteries. A tremendous volley from the _tête de pont_ in front, and the convent on the flank, then forced them to await the arrival of the rest of the division. This was the fire which Twiggs heard when he sent Dimmick against the convent. Worth came up almost immediately; and directing the Sixth to advance as best they could along the causeway in the teeth of the _tête de pont_, despatched Garland's and Clarke's brigades through the fields on the right to attack it in flank. Every gun was instantly directed against the assailants; and though the day was bright and clear, the clouds of smoke actually darkened the air. Hoffman, waving his sword, cheered on the Sixth; but the shot tore and ripped up their ranks to such a degree that in a few minutes they had lost ninety-seven men. The brigades on the right suffered as severely. One hundred men fell within the space of an acre. Still they pressed on, till the Eighth (of Clarke's brigade) reached the ditch. In they plunged, Lieutenant Longstreet bearing the colors in advance; he scrambled out on the other side, dashed at the walls without ladders or scaling implements, and bayoneted the defenders as they took aim. At last, officers and men mixed pell-mell, some through the embrasures, some over the walls, rushed or leaped in and drove the garrison helter-skelter upon their reserves. The _tête de pont_ gained, its guns were turned on the convent, whence the Mexicans were still slaughtering our gallant Second and Third. Duncan's battery, too, hitherto in reserve, was brought up and opened with such rapidity that a bystander estimated the intervals between the reports at three seconds! Stunned by this novel attack, the garrison of San Pablo slackened fire. In an instant the Third, followed by Dimmick's artillery, dashed forward with the bayonet to storm the nearest bastion. With a run they carried it, the artillery bursting over the curtain; but at that moment a dozen white flags waved in their faces. The whole fortified position of Churubusco was taken. Meantime, however, a conflict as deadly as either of these was raging behind the Mexican fortifications. Soon after the battle commenced, Scott sent Pierce's and Shields's brigades by the left, through the fields, to attack the enemy in the rear. On the causeway, opposed to them, were planted Santa Anna's reserves--four thousand foot and three thousand horse--in a measure protected by a dense growth of maguey. Shields advanced intrepidly with his force of sixteen hundred. The ground was marshy, and for a long distance--having vainly endeavored to outflank the enemy--his advance was exposed to their whole fire. Morgan, of the Fifteenth, fell wounded. The New York regiment suffered fearfully, and their leader, Colonel Burnett, was disabled. The Palmettos of South Carolina, and the Ninth under Ransom, were as severely cut up; and after a while all sought shelter in and about a large barn near the causeway. Shields, in an agony at the failure of his movement, cried imploringly for volunteers to follow him. The appeal was instantly answered by Colonel Butler, of the Palmettos: "Every South Carolinian will follow you to the death!" The cry was contagious, and most of the New Yorkers took it up. Forming at angles to the causeway, Shields led these brave men, under an incessant hail of shot, against the village of Portales, where the Mexican reserves were posted. Not a trigger was pulled till they stood at a hundred fifty yards from the enemy. Then the little band poured in their volley, fatally answered by the Mexican host. Butler, already wounded, was shot through the head and died instantly. Calling to the Palmettos to avenge his death, Shields gives the word to charge. They charge--not four hundred in all--over the plain and down upon four thousand Mexicans securely posted under cover. At every step their ranks are thinned. Dickenson, who succeeded Butler in command of the Palmettos, seizes the colors as the bearer falls dead; the next moment he is down himself, mortally wounded, and Major Gladden snatches them from his hand. Adams, Moragne, and nearly half the gallant band are prostrate. A very few minutes more and there will be no one left to bear the glorious flag. But at this very moment a deafening roar is heard in the direction of the _tête de pont_. Round shot and grape, rifle-balls and canister, come crashing down the causeway into the Mexican ranks from their own battery. Worth is there, the gallant fellow, just in time. Down the road and over the ditch, through the field and hedge and swamp, in tumult and panic the Mexicans are flying from the bayonets of the Sixth and Garland's brigade. A shout, louder than the cannon's peal; Worth is on their heels with his men. Before Shields reaches the causeway he is by his side driving the Mexican horse into their infantry, and Ayres is galloping up with a captured Mexican gun. Captain Kearny, with a few dragoons, dashes past, rides straight into the flying host, scatters them right and left, sabres all he can reach, and halts before the gate of Mexico. Not till then does he perceive that he is alone with his little party, nearly all of whom are wounded; but, despite the hundreds of _escopetas_ that are levelled at him, he gallops back in safety to headquarters. The sun, which rose that morning on a proud army and a defiant metropolis, set at even on a shattered, haggard band, and a city full of woe-stricken wretches who did nothing all night but quake with terror, and cry, at every noise, "_Aqui viene los Yanquies_!" ("Here come the Yankees!") All along the causeway, and in the fields and swamps on either side, heaps of dead men and cattle intermingled with broken ammunition-carts, marked where the American shot had told. A gory track leading to the _tête de pont_, groups of dead in the fields on the west of Churubusco, over whose pale faces some stalks of tattered corn still waved; red blotches in the marsh next the causeway, where the rich blood of Carolina and New York soaked the earth, showed where the fire of the heavy Mexican guns and the countless _escopetas_ of the infantry had been most murderous. Scott had lost, in that day's work, more than a thousand men in killed and wounded, seventy-nine of whom were officers. The Mexican loss, according to Santa Anna, was one-third of his army, equal probably to ten thousand men, one-fourth of whom were prisoners, the rest killed and wounded. As the sun went down the troops were recalled to headquarters; but all night long the battlefield swarmed with straggling parties seeking some lost comrade in the cold and rain, and surgeons hurrying from place to place and offering succor to the wounded. It would have been easy for Scott to march on the city that night, or next morning, and seize it before the Mexicans recovered from the shock of their defeat. Anxious to shorten the war, and assured that Santa Anna was desirous of negotiating; warned, moreover, by neutrals and others, that the hostile occupation of the capital would destroy the last chance of peaceable accommodation and rouse the Mexican spirit to resistance all over the country, the American general consented, too generously perhaps, to offer an armistice to his vanquished foe. It was eagerly accepted, and negotiations were commenced which lasted over a fortnight. In the mean time General Scott had the satisfaction of hanging several of the Irishmen who had deserted to the Mexicans, and, serving as the battalion of San Patricio, had shot down so many of their old comrades at Buena Vista and Churubusco. This act of justice was approved by the army and the nation. Early in September the treachery of the Mexicans became apparent. No progress had been made in the negotiations; and, in defiance of the armistice, an American wagon, proceeding to the city for provisions, had been attacked by the mob and one man killed and others wounded. Scott wrote to Santa Anna, demanding an apology, and threatening to terminate the armistice on the 7th if it were not tendered. The reply was insulting in the extreme; Santa Anna had repaired his losses and was ready for another fight. On the evening of September 7th Worth and his officers were gathered in his quarters at Tacubaya. On a table lay a hastily sketched map showing the position of the fortified works at Molino del Rey, with the Casa Mata on one side and the castle of Chapultepec on the other. The Molino was occupied by the enemy; there was reason to believe it contained a foundry in full operation, and Worth had been directed to storm it next morning. Over that table bent Garland and Clarke, eager to repeat the glorious deeds of August 20th at the _tête de pont_ of Churubusco; Duncan and Smith, already veterans; Wright, the leader of the forlorn hope, joyfully thinking of the morrow; famous Martin Scott, and dauntless Graham, little dreaming that a few hours would see their livid corpses stretched upon the plain; fierce old M'Intosh, covered with scars; Worth himself, his manly brow clouded, and his cheek paled by sickness and anxiety. Each officer had his place assigned to him in the conflict; and they parted to seek a few hours' rest. At half-past two on the morning of the 8th the division was astir. 'Twas a bright starlight night whose silence was unbroken as the troops moved thoughtfully toward the battlefield. In front, on the right, about a mile from the encampment, the hewn-stone walls of the Molino del Rey--a range of buildings five hundred yards long, and well adapted for defence--were distinctly visible, with drowsy lights twinkling through the windows. A little farther off, on the left, stood the black pile of the Casa Mata, the arsenal, crenelled for musketry, and surrounded by a quadrangular field work. Beyond the Casa Mata lay a ravine, and from this a ditch and hedge ran, passing in front of both works, to the Tacubaya road. Far on the right the grim old castle of Chapultepec loomed up darkly against the sky. Sleep wrapped the whole Mexican line, and but few words were spoken in the American ranks as the troops took up their respective positions: Garland, with Dunn's battery and Huger's 24-pounders, on the right, against the Molino; Wright, at the head of the stormers, and followed by the light division under Captain Kirby Smith, in the centre; M'Intosh, with Duncan's battery, on the left, near the ravine looking toward the Casa Mata; and Cadwallader, with his brigade, in reserve. Night still overhung the east when the Mexicans were roused from their slumbers by the roar of Huger's 24-pounders, and the crashing of the balls through the roof and walls of the Molino. A shout arose within their lines, spreading from the ravine to the castle; lights flashed in every direction, bugles sounded, the clank of arms rang from right to left, and every man girded himself for the fray. With the first ray of daylight Major Wright advanced with the forlorn hope down the slope. A few seconds elapsed; then a sheet of flame burst from the batteries, and round shot, canister, and grape hurtled through the air. "Charge!" shouted the leader, and down they went, with double-quick step, over the ditch and hedge, and into the line, sweeping everything before them. The Mexicans fell from their guns, but soon, seeing the smallness of the force opposed to them and reassured by the galling fire poured from the _azoteas_ and Molino on the stormers, they rallied, charged furiously, and drove our men back into the plain. Here eleven out of the fourteen officers of Wright's party, and the bulk of his men, fell killed or wounded. All of the latter who could not fly were bayoneted where they lay by the Mexicans. Captain Walker, of the Sixth, badly shot, was left for dead; he saw the enemy murdering every man who showed signs of life, but the agony of thirst was so insupportable that he could not resist raising his canteen to his lips. A dozen balls instantly tore up the ground around him; several Mexicans rushed at him with the bayonet, but at that moment the light division, under Kirby Smith, came charging over the ditch into the Mexican line and diverted their attention. Garland meanwhile moved down rapidly on the right with Dunn's guns, which were drawn by hand, all the horses having been wounded and become unmanageable. These soon opened an enfilading fire on the Mexican battery; and some of the gunners flying, the light division charged, under a hot fire, and carried the guns for the second time. Their gallant leader was shot dead in the charge. But the enemy could afford to lose the battery. From the tops of the _azoteas_, from the Casa Mata and the Molino, a deadly shower of balls was rained crosswise upon the assailants. Part of the reserve was brought up; and Dunn's guns and the Mexican battery were served upon the buildings without much effect at first. Lieutenant-Colonel Graham led a party of the Eleventh against the latter; when within pistol-shot a terrific volley assailed him, wounding him in ten places. The gallant soldier quietly dismounted, pointed with his sword to the building, cried "Charge!" and sank dead on the field. As fiercely raged the battle at the other wing where Duncan and M'Intosh had driven in the enemy's right toward the Casa Mata. M'Intosh started to storm that fort, and, in the teeth of a tremendous hail of musketry, advanced to the ditch, only twenty-five yards from the work. There a ball knocked him down; it was his luck to be shot or bayoneted in every battle. Martin Scott took the command, but as he ordered the men forward he rolled lifeless into the ditch. Major Waite, the next in rank, had hardly seen him fall before he too was disabled. By whole companies the men were mowed down by the Mexican shot; but they stood their ground. At length some one gave the word to fall back, and the remnants of the brigade obeyed. Many wounded were left on the ground; among others Lieutenant Burnell, shot in the leg, whom the Mexicans murdered when his comrades abandoned him. After the battle his body was found, and beside it his dog, moaning piteously and licking his dead master's face. At the head of four thousand cavalry, Alvarez now menaced our left. Duncan watched them come, driving a cloud of dust before them, till they were within close range; then opening with his wonderful rapidity, he shattered whole platoons at a discharge. Worth sent him word to be sure to keep the lancers in check. "Tell General Worth," was his reply, "to make himself perfectly easy; I can whip twenty thousand of them." So far as Alvarez was concerned, he kept his word. On the American right the fight had reached a crisis. Mixed confusedly together, men of all arms furiously attacked the Molino, firing into every aperture, climbing to the roof, and striving to batter in the doors and gates with their muskets. The garrison never slackened their terrible fire for an instant. At length Major Buchanan, of the Fourth, succeeded in bursting open the southern gate; and almost at the same moment Anderson and Ayres, of the artillery, forced their way into the buildings at the northwestern angle. Ayres leaped down alone into a crowd of Mexicans--he had done the same at Monterey--and fell covered with wounds. Our men rushed in on both sides, stabbing, firing, and felling the Mexicans with their muskets. From room to room and house to house a hand-to-hand encounter was kept up. Here a stalwart Mexican hurled down man after man as they advanced; there Buchanan and the Fourth levelled all before them. But the Mexicans never withstood the cold steel. One by one the defenders escaped by the rear toward Chapultepec, and those who remained hung out a white flag. Under Duncan's fire the Casa Mata had been evacuated, and the enemy was everywhere in full retreat. Twice he rallied and charged the Molino; but each time the artillery drove him back toward Chapultepec, and parties of the light infantry pursued him down the road. Before ten in the morning the whole field was won; and, having blown up the Casa Mata, Worth, by Scott's order, fell back to Tacubaya. With gloomy face and averted eye the gallant soldier received the thanks of his chief for the exploits of the morning. His heart was with the brave men he had lost--nearly eight hundred out of less than thirty-five hundred and among them fifty-eight officers, many of whom were his dearest friends. All had fallen in advance of their men, with sword in hand and noble words on their lips. 'Twas a poor price for these to have stormed Molino del Rey, and cut down nearly a fifth of Santa Anna's fourteen thousand men. Sadly the General returned to his quarters. The end was now close at hand. Reconnoissances were carefully made, and, the enemy's strength being gathered on the southern front of the city, General Scott determined to assail Chapultepec on the west. By the morning of the 12th the batteries were completed, and opened a brisk fire on the castle, without, however, doing any more serious damage than annoying the garrison and killing a few men. The fire was kept up all day; and at night preparations were made for the assault, which was ordered to be made next morning. At daybreak on the 13th the cannonade began again, as well from the batteries planted against Chapultepec as from Steptoe's guns, which were served against the southern defences of the city in order to divert the attention of the enemy. At 8 A.M. the firing from the former ceased, and the attack commenced. Quitman advanced along the Tacubaya road, Pillow from the Molino del Rey, which he had occupied on the evening before. Between the Molino and the castle lay first an open space, then a grove thickly planted with trees; in the latter, Mexican sharpshooters had been posted, protected by an intrenchment on the border of the grove. Pillow sent Lieutenant-Colonel Johnston with a party of _voltigeurs_ to turn this work by a flank movement; it was handsomely accomplished; and just as the _voltigeurs_ broke through the redan, Pillow, with the main body, charged it in front and drove back the Mexicans. The grove gained, Pillow pressed forward to the front of the rock; for the Mexican shot from the castle batteries, crashing through the trees, seemed even more terrible than it really was, and the troops were becoming restless. The Mexicans had retreated to a redoubt half way up the hill; the _voltigeurs_ sprang up from rock to rock, firing as they advanced, and followed by Hooker, Chase, and others, with parties of infantry. In a very few minutes the redoubt was gained, the garrison driven up the hill, and the _voltigeurs_, Ninth, and Fifteenth were in hot pursuit after them. The firing from the castle was very severe. Colonel Ransom, of the Ninth, was killed, and Pillow himself was wounded. Still the troops pressed on till the crest of the hill was gained. There some moments were lost owing to the delay in the arrival of scaling-ladders, during which two of Quitman's regiments and Clarke's brigade reenforced the storming party. When the ladders came, numbers of men rushed forward with them, leaped into the ditch, and planted them for the assault. Lieutenant Selden was the first man to mount. But the Mexicans collected all their energies for this last moment. A tremendous fire dashed the foremost of the stormers into the ditch, killing Lieutenants Rogers and Smith and clearing the ladders. Fresh men instantly manned them, and, after a brief struggle, Captain Howard, of the _voltigeurs_, gained a foothold on the parapet. M'Kenzie, of the forlorn hope, followed; and a crowd of _voltigeurs_ and infantry, shouting and cheering, pressed after him, and swept down upon the garrison with the bayonet. Almost at the same moment, Johnston, of the _voltigeurs_, who had led a small party round to the gate of the castle, broke it open and effected an entrance in spite of a fierce fire from the southern walls. The two parties uniting, a deadly conflict ensued within the building. Maddened by the recollection of the murder of their wounded comrades at Molino del Rey, the stormers at first showed no quarter. On every side the Mexicans were stabbed or shot down without mercy. Many flung themselves over the parapet and down the hillside and were dashed in pieces against the rocks. More fought like fiends, expending their breath in a malediction, and expiring in the act of aiming a treacherous blow as they lay on the ground. Streams of blood flowed through the doors of the college, and every room and passage was the theatre of some deadly struggle. At length the officers succeeded in putting an end to the carnage; and the remaining Mexicans having surrendered, the Stars and Stripes were hoisted over the castle of Chapultepec by Major Seymour. Meanwhile Quitman had stormed the batteries on the causeway to the east of the castle, after a desperate struggle in which Major Twiggs, who commanded the stormers, was shot dead at the head of his men. The Mexicans fell back toward the city. General Scott, coming up at this moment, ordered a simultaneous advance to be made on the city, along the two roads leading from Chapultepec to the gates of San Cosme and Belen, respectively. Worth was to command that on San Cosme, Quitman that on Belen. Both were prepared for defence by barricades, behind which the enemy were posted in great numbers. Fortunately for the assailants an aqueduct, supported by arches of solid masonry, ran along the centre of each causeway. By keeping under cover of these arches, and springing rapidly from one to another, Smith's rifles and the South Carolina regiment were enabled to advance close to the first barricade on the Belen road, and pour in a destructive fire on the gunners. A flank discharge from Duncan's guns completed the work; the barricade was carried; and without a moment's rest Quitman advanced in the same manner on the _garita_ San Belen, which was held by General Torres with a strong garrison. It too was stormed, though under a fearful hail of grape and canister; and the rifles moved forward toward the citadel. But at this moment Santa Anna rode furiously down to the point of attack. Boiling with rage at the success of the invaders, he smote General Torres in the face, threw a host of infantry into the houses commanding the _garita_ and the road, ordered the batteries in the citadel to open fire, planted fresh guns on the Paseo, and infused such spirit into the Mexicans that Quitman's advance was stopped at once. A terrific storm of shot, shell, and grape assailed the _garita_, where Captain Dunn had planted an 8-pounder. Twice the gunners were shot down, and fresh men sent to take their places. Then Dunn himself fell, and immediately afterward Lieutenant Benjamin and his first sergeant met the same fate. The riflemen in the arches repelled sallies; but Quitman's position was precarious, till night terminated the conflict. Worth meanwhile had advanced in like manner along the San Cosme causeway, driving the Mexicans from barricade to barricade, till within two hundred fifty yards of the _garita_ of San Cosme. There he encountered as severe a fire as that which stopped Quitman. But Scott had ordered him to take the _garita_, and take it he would. Throwing Garland's brigade out to the right and Clarke's to the left, he ordered them to break into the houses, burst through the walls, and bore their way to the flanks of the _garita_. The plan had succeeded perfectly at Monterey, nor did it fail here. Slowly but surely the sappers passed from house to house, until at sunset they reached the point desired. Then Worth ordered the attack. Lieutenant Hunt brought up a light gun at a gallop, and fired it through the embrasure of the enemy's battery, almost muzzle to muzzle; the infantry at the same moment opened a most deadly and unexpected fire from the roofs of the houses, and M'Kenzie, at the head of the stormers, dashed at the battery and carried it almost without loss. The Mexicans fled precipitately into the city. At one that night two parties left the citadel and issued forth from the city. One was the remnant of the Mexican army, which slunk silently and noiselessly through the northern gate, and fled to Guadalupe-Hidalgo; the other was a body of officers who came under a white flag, to propose terms of capitulation. The sun shone brightly on the morning of September 14th. Scores of neutral flags float from the windows on the Calle de Plateros, and in their shade beautiful women gaze curiously on the scene beneath. Gayly dressed groups throng the balconies, and at the street-corners dark-faced men scowl, mutter deep curses, and clutch their knives. The street resounds with the heavy tramp of infantry, the rattle of gun-carriages, and the clatter of horses' hoofs. "_Los Yanquies_!" is the cry, and every neck is stretched to obtain a glimpse of the six thousand bemired and begrimed soldiers who are marching proudly to the Grand Plaza. On him especially is every eye intently fixed, whose martial form is half concealed by a splendid staff and a squadron of dragoons, as he rides, with flashing eye and beating heart, to the National Palace of Mexico. But six months before, Winfield Scott had landed on the Mexican coast; since then he had stormed the two strongest places in the country, won four battles in the field against armies double, treble, and quadruple his own, and marched without reverse from Vera Cruz to the City of Mexico; losing fewer men, making fewer mistakes, and creating less devastation, in proportion to his victories, than any invading general of former times. Well might the Mexicans gaze upon his face! (1847) FAMINE IN IRELAND, Sir Charles Gavan Duffy From the fact that its immediate cause was the almost complete failure of the potato crop, due to the rot, the great Irish famine is known as the "potato famine." The crop that suffered so was that of 1845, and the famine began in the following year and reached its climax in 1847. It is estimated that by this calamity two hundred thousand persons perished. Many compensating features in connection with this appalling distress have been pointed out. Some writers friendly toward Ireland have declared that the famine proved one of the greatest blessings to the country; that it hastened free trade, better drainage of the island, and the passage of the Land Improvement Act; that it relieved the overcrowded labor market, led to more scientific farming, and in other ways produced changes that have been of lasting benefit. But though all this be true, the misfortune itself gave to modern history one of its most harrowing chapters. The population of Ireland in 1845 is supposed to have been nearly nine millions. The manufactures were small, and the people depended on the potato crop, and had no other resource in time of scarcity. For several years the potato yield had been abundant, the country was comparatively prosperous, and the temperance movement led by Father Mathew promised a happier future. A great harvest was expected in 1845, but almost at a single stroke this expectation was blasted; for although the crop was large the greater part of it was destroyed in the ground, and the potatoes that were gathered "rotted in pit and storehouse." The farmers taxed all their means and energies to secure even a larger crop in 1846, but the blight of that year was even more fatal than the last. To pinching want was added discouragement, and the people sat in the shadow of a frightful catastrophe. In vain the British Government was called upon to give relief through Parliament, until, in the autumn of 1846, parliamentary authority was obtained to grant baronial loans. But these and every local endeavor to mitigate the suffering failed, and the destructive work of the famine continued, the number of victims increasing, to the end of that fatal year. The horrors of 1846 were more than equalled by those of the year that followed, and the woful picture presented by Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, the distinguished Irish patriot, statesman, and historian, is but too amply justified by the accepted records of the time. The condition of Ireland at the opening of the year 1847 is one of the most painful chapters in the annals of mankind. An industrious and hospitable race were in the pangs of a devouring famine. Deaths of individuals, of husband and wife, of entire families, were becoming common. The potato-blight had spread from the Atlantic to the Caspian; but there was more suffering in one parish of Mayo than in all the rest of Europe. From Connaught, where distress was greatest, came batches of inquests with the horrible verdict "died of starvation." In some instances the victims were buried "wrapped in a coarse coverlet," a coffin being too costly a luxury. The living awaited death with a listlessness that was at once tragic and revolting. Women with dead children in their arms were seen begging for a coffin to bury them. Béranger has touched a thousand hearts by the picture of _Pauvre Jacques_, who, when the tax-gatherer came in the King's name, was discovered dead on his miserable pallet. But at Skibbereen, in the fruitful County Cork whose seaports were thronged with vessels laden with corn, cattle, and butter for England, the rate collector told a more tragic tale. Some houses he found deserted; the owners had been carried to their graves. In one cabin there was no other occupant than three corpses; in a once prosperous home a woman and her children had lain dead and unburied for a week; in the fields a man was discovered so fearfully mangled by dogs that identification was impossible. The relief committee of the Society of Friends described the state of the town in language which it was hard to read with dry eyes. The people were dying of the unaccustomed food which mocked their prayer for daily bread, and were carried to the graveyard in a coffin from which the benevolent strangers who had come to their relief had to drop them, like dead dogs, that there might be a covering for the next corpse in its turn. "This place is one mass of famine, disease, and death. The poor creatures, hitherto trying to exist on one meal a day, are now sinking under fever and bowel complaints, unable to come for their soup, which is not fit for them. Rice is what their whole cry is for, but we cannot manage this well, nor can we get the food carried to the houses, from dread of infection. I have got a coffin constructed with movable sides, to convey the bodies to the churchyard, in calico bags prepared, in which the remains are wrapped up. I have just sent it to bring the remains of a poor creature to the grave, who having been turned out of the only shelter she had, a miserable hut, perished the night before last in a quarry." The people saw the harvest they had reared carried away to another country without an effort, for the most part, to retain it. The sole food of the distressed class was Indian-meal, which had paid freight and storage in England, and had been obtained in exchange for English manufactures. Under a recent law a peasant who accepted public relief forfeited his holding, and thousands were ejected under this cruel provision. But landowners were not content with one process alone; they closed on the people with ejectments, turned them out on the roads, and plucked down their rooftrees. In more than one county rents falling due in November for land that no longer yielded food to the cultivator, were enforced in January. In the southwest the peasantry had made some frantic efforts to clutch their harvest and to retaliate for their sufferings in blind vengeance, but the law carried a sharp sword. Eight counties, or parts of counties, were proclaimed, and a special commission, after a brief sitting in Clare and Limerick, left eleven peasants for the gallows. Chief Justice Blackburn took occasion to note that "The state of things in 1847 was exactly that described by an act passed in 1776." The disease was permanent, so were the symptoms. One well-head of Irish discontent was English prejudice, which refuses to listen to any complaint till it threatens to become dangerous. It was a fearful time for men who loved their country, not only with deep affection, but with a wise and forecasting interest. A revolution of the worst type was in progress. Not the present alone, but the future, was being laid waste. The marvellous reform accomplished by Father Mathew, the self-reliance which had grown up in the era of monster meetings, and the moral teachings of Davis and his friends were being fast swallowed up by this calamity. The youth and manhood of the middle classes were scrambling for pauper places from the Board of Works, and the peasants were being transformed into mendicants by process of law. These calamities, related of a distant and savage tribe, would move a generous heart; but seeing them befall our own people, the children of the same mother, and foreseeing all the black, unfathomable misery they foreshadowed, it was hard to preserve the sober rule of reason. The gentry, who were responsible in the first place for the protection of the people from whom they drew their income, insisted that the calamity was an imperial one and ought to be borne out of the exchequer of the empire. It was an equitable claim. If there was no irresistible title of brotherhood, at lowest the stronger nation had snatched away from the weaker the power of helping itself, and still drew away during this terrible era half a million pounds every month in the shape of absentee rents. The demand was put aside contemptuously. The claim of the Nationalists to reënter on the management of their own affairs, since it was plain England could not manage them successfully, was treated as sedition. We were proffered, instead of our own resources, which were ample-- "Alms from scornful hands, to hands in chains, Bitterer to taste than death." All the nations of the earth were appealed to and they gave generously; but the result was far from being proportionate to the need. During the year 1846 the contributions fell short of two thousand pounds a week. And it was not forgotten that after the great fire of London, when the citizens were in deep distress, the Irish contributed twenty thousand fat cattle for their relief, which at their present value would amount to a sum greater than England and Europe sent to the aid of Ireland in 1846. To lie down and die, like cattle in a murrain, was base. No people are bound to starve while their soil produces food cultivated by their own hands. No other people in Europe would have submitted to such a fate. But the leader whom they were accustomed to follow had involved himself in a tangle of false doctrines by his unhappy "Peace Resolutions," and he exhorted them to endure all with patience and submission. His son had the amazing assurance to add that if they starved with complete resignation the repeal of the union was near at hand. On the relief committees, doctors, clergymen, and country gentlemen bore the burden of the work, but a multitude of the gentry stood apart as if the transaction did not concern them. They were busy in transferring the harvest to England or clearing the population off their estates. The English officials in Ireland accused them of jobbing in public works, or quartering their relations and dependents on the Relief Fund, as overseers, and, in some extreme cases, of obtaining grants for their own families of money designed for the suffering poor on their estates. The benevolence of the minority could not counterbalance these odious offences, and deadly hatred was sown, which has since borne an abundant harvest. The state of the country grew worse from day to day. It is difficult now to realize the condition of the western population in the autumn of 1847; but a witness of unexceptionable impartiality has painted it in permanent colors. A young Englishman representing the Society of Friends, who in that tragic time did work worthy of the Good Samaritan, reported what he saw in Mayo and Galway in language which for plain vigor rivals the narratives of Defoe. This is what he saw in Westport: "The town of Westport was in itself a strange and fearful sight, like what we read of in beleaguered cities; its streets crowded with gaunt wanderers, sauntering to and fro with hopeless air and hunger-stricken look; a mob of starved, almost naked women around the poorhouse clamoring for soup tickets; our inn, the headquarters of the road-engineer and pay-clerks, beset by a crowd begging for work." As he approached Galway, the rural population were found to be in a more miserable condition: "Some of the women and children that we saw on the road were abject cases of poverty and almost naked. The few rags they had on were with the greatest difficulty held together, and in a few weeks, as they are utterly unable to provide themselves with fresh clothes unless they be given them, they must become absolutely naked." And in another district: "As we went along our wonder was not that the people died, but that they lived; and I have no doubt whatever that in any other country the mortality would have been far greater; that many lives have been prolonged, perhaps saved, by the long apprenticeship to want in which the Irish peasant has been trained, and by that lovely, touching charity which prompts him to share his scanty meal with his starving neighbor." The fishermen of the Cladagh, who were induced to send the Whig Attorney-General to Parliament a few months before, had to pledge the implements of their calling for a little daily bread. "Even the very nets and tackle of these poor fishermen, I heard, were pawned, and, unless they be assisted to redeem them, they will be unable to take advantage of the herring shoals, even when they approach their coast. In order to ascertain the truth of this statement, I went into two or three of the largest pawnshops, the owners of which fully confirmed it and said they had in pledge at least a thousand pounds' worth of such property and saw no likelihood of its being redeemed." In a rural district which he revisited after an interval, he paints a scene which can scarcely be matched in the annals of a mediaeval plague: "One poor woman whose cabin I visited said, 'There will be nothing for us but to lie down and die.' I tried to give her hope of English aid, but alas! her prophecy has been too true. Out of a population of two hundred forty I found thirteen already dead from want. The survivors were like walking skeletons; the men gaunt and haggard, stamped with the livid mark of hunger; the children crying with pain; the women in some of the cabins too weak to stand. When there before I had seen cows at almost every cabin, and there were besides many sheep and pigs owned in the village. But now all the sheep were gone, all the cows, all the poultry killed, only one pig left; the very dogs which had barked at me before had disappeared; no potatoes; no oats." The young man pointed the moral, which these horrible spectacles suggested, with laudable courage: "I would not now discuss the causes of this condition, nor attempt to apportion blame to its authors; but of this one fact there can be no question: that the result of our social system is that vast numbers of our fellow-countrymen--of the peasantry of one of the richest nations the world ever knew--have not leave to live. Surely such a social result as this is not only a national misfortune but a national sin crying loudly to every Christian citizen to do his utmost to remove it. No one of us can have a right to enjoy either riches or repose until to the extent of his ability he strive to wash himself of all share in the guilt of this fearful inequality, which will be a blot in the history of our country and make her a byword among the nations." The weekly returns of the dead were like the bulletins of a fierce campaign. As the end of the year approached, villages and rural districts, which had been prosperous and populous a year before, were desolate. In some places the loss amounted to half the resident population. Even the poorhouses shut up, and paupers did not escape. More than one in six perished of the unaccustomed food. The people did not everywhere consent to die patiently. In Armagh and Down groups of men went from house to house in the rural districts and insisted on being fed. In Tipperary and Waterford corn stores and bakers' shops were sacked. In Donegal the people seized upon a flour-mill and pillaged it. In Limerick five thousand men assembled on Tory Hill and declared that they would not starve. A local clergyman restrained them by the promise of speedy relief. "If the Government did not act promptly, he himself would show them where food could be had." In a few cases crops were carried away from farms. The offences which spring from suffering and fear were heard of in many districts, but they were encountered with instant resistance. There were thirty thousand men in red jackets, carefully fed, clothed, and lodged, ready to maintain the law. Four prisoners were convicted at the Galway assizes of stealing a filly, which they killed and ate to preserve their own lives. In Enniskillen two boys under twelve years of age were convicted of stealing one pint of Indian-meal cooked into "stirabout," and Chief Justice Blackburn vindicated the outraged law by transporting them for seven years. Other children committed larcenies that they might be sent to jail where there was still daily bread to be had. In Mayo the people were eating carrion wherever it could be procured, and the coroner could not keep pace with the inquests; for the law sometimes spent more to ascertain the cause of a pauper's death than would suffice to preserve his life. The social disorganization was a spectacle as afflicting as the waste of life; it was the waste of whatever makes life worth possessing. All the institutions which civilize and elevate the people were disappearing, one after another. The churches were half empty; the temperance reading-rooms were shut up; the Mechanics' Institute no longer got support; only the jails and the poorhouses were crowded. A new generation, born in disease and reared in destitution, pitiless and imbecile, threatened to drag down the nation to hopeless slavery. Trade was paralyzed; no one bought anything which was not indispensable at the hour. The loss of the farmers in potatoes was estimated at more than twenty millions sterling; and with the potatoes the pigs, which fed on them, disappeared. The seed, procured at a high price in spring, again failed; time, money, and labor were lost, and another year of famine was certain. All who depended on the farmer had sunk with him; shopkeepers were beggared; tradesmen were starving; the priests living on voluntary offerings were sometimes in fearful distress when the people had no longer anything to offer. The poor-rate was quite inadequate to support the burden thrown upon it by the suspension of public works, but there was another claim upon it which could not wait. When the elections were over and the Government majority secure, the Treasury called on the poor-law guardians to levy immediately a special rate for the repayment of a million and a quarter lent by the State in a previous year. They were warned that, if they refused, their boards would be dissolved and the rates levied by the authority of the Commissioners. The guardians in many districts declared that an additional rate could not be collected. All that could be got would be too little to support the distressed class. But the Treasury would listen to no excuse, and a dozen boards were dissolved and paid guardians put in their place. The Treasury had lent seven millions sterling in 1846; five millions of it had been spent in making roads which were not needed nor desired, and one million was diverted from the wages fund to purchase land for this experiment. The aid which the stronger country proposed to give to the weaker, from the Treasury to which both contributed, was the remission of one-third of this debt. A blunder in foreign policy, the escapade of an ambitious minister in India or Africa, has cost the British taxpayer more in a month than he spent to save millions of fellow-subjects beyond the Irish Sea. When the increased mortality was pressed on the attention of the Government, Lord John Russell replied that the owners of property in Ireland ought to support the poor born on their estates. It was a perfectly just proposition if the ratepayers were empowered to determine the object and method of the expenditure; but prohibiting productive work, and forcing them to turn strong men into paupers and keep them sweltering in workhouses instead of laboring to reclaim the waste lands--this was not justice. The _Times_, commenting on the new policy, declared that Ireland was as well able to help herself as France or Belgium, and that the whole earth was doing duty for inhuman Irish landlords. An unanswerable case, if Ireland, like France and Belgium, had the power of collecting and applying her own revenue; otherwise not difficult to answer. The people fled before the famine to England, America, and the British colonies. They carried with them the seed of disease and death. In England a bishop and more than twenty priests died of typhus, caught in attendance on the sick and dying. The English people clamored against such an infliction, which it cannot be denied would be altogether intolerable if these fugitives were not made exiles and paupers by English law. They were ordered home again, that they might be supported on the resources of their own country; for though we had no country for the purpose of self-government and self-protection, we were acknowledged to have a country when the necessity of bearing burdens arose. More than a hundred thousand souls fled to the United States and Canada. The United States maintained sanitary regulations on shipboard which were effectual to a certain extent. But the emigration to Canada was left to the individual greed of shipowners, and the emigrant-ships rivalled the cabins of Mayo or the fever-sheds of Skibbereen. Crowded and filthy, carrying double the legal number of passengers, who were ill-fed and imperfectly clothed, and having no doctor on board, the holds, says an eyewitness, were like the Black Hole of Calcutta, and deaths occurred in myriads. The survivors, on their arrival in the new country, continued to die and to scatter death around them. At Montreal, during nine weeks, eight hundred emigrants perished, and over nine hundred residents died of diseases caught from emigrants. During six months the deaths of the new arrivals exceeded three thousand. No preparations were made by the British Government for the reception or the employment of these helpless multitudes. The _Times_ pronounced the neglect to be an eternal disgrace to the British name. Ships carrying German emigrants and English emigrants arrived in Canada at the same time in a perfectly healthy state. The Chief Secretary for Ireland was able to inform the House of Commons that of a hundred thousand Irishmen who fled to Canada in a year, six thousand one hundred perished on the voyage, four thousand one hundred on their arrival, five thousand two hundred in the hospitals, and one thousand nine hundred in the towns to which they repaired. The Emigrant Society of Montreal paints the result during the whole period of the famine in language not easily to be forgotten: "From Grosse Island up to Port Sarnia, along the borders of our great river, on the shores of Lakes Ontario and Erie, wherever the tide of immigration has extended are to be found one unbroken chain of graves where repose fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, in a commingled heap--no stone marking the spot. Twenty thousand and upward have gone down to their graves!" This was the fate which was befalling our race at home and abroad as the year 1847 closed. There were not many of us who would not have given our lives cheerfully to arrest this ruin, if we could only see a possible way--but no way was visible. (1848) MIGRATIONS OF THE MORMONS, Thomas L. Kane Among the numerous religious bodies that have grown up in the United States, the sect of Mormons, officially called "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints," is perhaps the most unique in its origin and organization, and the most singular in its history. The sect was founded in 1830 by Joseph Smith, of Vermont. He declared that he had discovered one of its authoritative writings, the _Book of Mormon_, at Cumorah, New York. This book, he said, was found by him buried in the earth at a place revealed to him by an angel. According to the Mormons, the book, written in mystic characters on golden plates, is a record of certain ancient people---"the long-lost tribes of Israel," Smith declared--inhabiting North America. This book is said to have been abridged by the prophet Mormon, and translated by Smith. By anti-Mormons it is supposed to be based on a manuscript romance written by Solomon Spaulding. The Mormon Church is governed by a hierarchy with two orders of priesthood, a president, two counsellors, twelve apostles, and elders and other officers. Peculiar as their polity appears, it has proved remarkably successful in the development of their church and community, notwithstanding stern hostility and widespread disapproval. They present an impressive example of shrewdness, thrift, and administrative skill, resulting in great material prosperity. Besides their separate books, they accept the Bible as authoritative, and many of their doctrines and rites resemble those common to the Christian sects. More than anything else, their teaching and their practice of polygamy have brought them into collision with "Gentiles" and with the United States Government. The first Mormon settlement was at Kirtland, Ohio, the next was in Missouri. From those States they were expelled, and in 1840 they founded Nauvoo in Illinois. Their later experience, up to their permanent establishment in Utah, is recounted in the following narrative of the hardships endured and surmounted by this extraordinary people. But it should be added that the cause of the exodus was not, as is generally supposed, religious persecution. The leaders of the sect at Nauvoo had set up a bank without capital and passed thousands of its worthless notes upon the unsuspecting farmers and traders; and it was this and other crimes that exasperated the inhabitants of that region to the point of driving away the whole community of Mormons. Once, while ascending the upper Mississippi in the autumn, when its waters were low, I was compelled to travel by land past the region of the rapids. My road lay through the "Half-Breed Tract," a fine section of Iowa, which the unsettled state of its land titles had appropriated as a sanctuary for coiners, horse thieves, and other outlaws. I had left my steamer at Keokuk, at the foot of the Lower Fall, to hire a carriage, and to contend for some fragments of a dirty meal with the swarming flies, the only scavengers of the locality. From this place to where the deep water of the river returns, my eye wearied to see everywhere sordid, vagabond, and idle settlers, and a country marred, without being improved, by their careless hands. I was descending the last hillside upon my journey, when a landscape in delightful contrast broke upon my view. Half encircled by a bend of the river, a beautiful city lay glittering in the fresh morning sun; its bright new dwellings set in cool green gardens ranging up around a stately dome-shaped hill which was crowned by a noble marble edifice whose high tapering spire was radiant with white and gold. The city appeared to cover several miles; and beyond it, in the background, spread a fair rolling country, checkered by symmetrical lines of fruitful husbandry. The unmistakable evidences of industry, enterprise, and educated wealth, everywhere, made the scene one of singular and most striking beauty. It was a natural impulse to visit this inviting region. I procured a skiff and rowing across the river landed at the principal wharf of the city. No one met me there. I looked, and saw no one: I heard no movement: though the stillness everywhere was such that I heard the flies buzz, and the ripples break against the shallows of the beach. I walked through the solitary streets. The town lay as in a dream, under some deadening spell of loneliness from which I almost feared to wake it. Plainly it had not slept long. There was no grass growing in the paved ways and rain had not washed away the prints of footsteps in the dust. Yet I went about unchecked. I went into empty ropewalks, workshops, and smithies. The spinner's wheel was idle; the carpenter had gone from his workbench and left his sash and casing unfinished. Fresh bark was in the tanner's vat, and the fresh chopped lightwood stood piled against the baker's oven. The blacksmith's shop was cold; but his coal-heap and ladling-pool and crooked water-horn were all there, as if he had just gone off for a holiday. No workpeople, anywhere, looked to know my errand. If I went into the gardens, clinking the wicket latch loudly after me, to pull the marigolds, heartsease, and lady's-slippers, and draw a drink with the water-sodden well-bucket and its noisy chain; or, knocking off with my stick the tall, heavy-headed dahlias and sunflowers, hunting among the beds for cucumbers and love-apples--no one called out to me from any opened window; no dog sprang forward to bark an alarm. I could have supposed the people hidden in the houses, but the doors were unfastened; and when at last I timidly entered, I found dead ashes cold upon the hearth, and had to tread on tiptoe, as if walking down the aisle of a country church, to avoid rousing irreverent echoes from the naked floors. On the outskirts of the town was the city graveyard. But there was no record of plague there, nor did it in any wise differ much from other Protestant American cemeteries. Some of the mounds were not long sodded; some of the stones were newly set, their dates recent, and their black inscriptions glossy in the hardly dried lettering-ink. Beyond the graveyard, out in the fields, I saw, in one spot hard by where the fruited boughs of a young orchard had been torn down, the still smoldering embers of a barbecue fire that had been constructed of rails from the fencing around it. It was the latest sign of life there. Fields upon fields of heavy-headed grain lay rotting ungathered upon the ground. No one was at hand to take in their rich harvest. As far as the eye could reach, they stretched away--they, sleeping too in the hazy air of autumn. Only two portions of the city seemed to suggest the import of this mysterious solitude. In the southern suburb the houses looking out upon the country showed, by their splintered woodwork and walls battered to the foundation, that they had lately been the mark of a destructive cannonade. And in and around the splendid temple, which had been the chief object of my admiration, armed men were barracked, surrounded by their stacks of musketry and pieces of heavy ordnance. These challenged me to render an account of myself, and to tell the reason why I had had the temerity to cross the water without a written permit from a leader of their band. Though these men were generally more or less under the influence of ardent spirits, after I had explained myself as a passing stranger they seemed anxious to gain my good opinion. They told me the story of the "dead city": that it had been a notable manufacturing and commercial mart, sheltering over twenty thousand persons; that they had waged war with its inhabitants for several years, and had been finally successful only a few days before my visit, in an action fought in the ruined suburb; after which, they had driven them forth at the point of the sword. The defence, they said, had been obstinate, but gave way on the third day's bombardment. They also conducted me inside the massive sculptured walls of the curious temple, in which they said the banished inhabitants were accustomed to celebrate the mystic rites of an unhallowed worship. They particularly pointed out to me certain features of the building, which, having been the peculiar objects of a former superstitious regard, they had as matter of duty sedulously defiled and defaced. The reputed sites of certain shrines they had thus particularly noticed, and various sheltered chambers, in one of which was a deep well constructed, they believed, with a dreadful design. Besides these, they led me to see a large and deeply chiselled marble vase, or basin, supported upon twelve oxen, also of marble and of life size, and of which they told some romantic stories. They said the deluded persons, most of whom were emigrants from a great distance, believed their deity countenanced their reception here of a baptism of regeneration as proxies for whomsoever they held in warm affection in the countries from which they had come: that here parents "went into the water" for their lost children, children for their parents, widows for their spouses, and young persons for their lovers: that thus the great vase came to be associated with all their most cherished memories, and was therefore the chief object of all others in the building, upon which they bestowed the greatest degree of their idolatrous affection. On this account, the victors had so diligently desecrated it as to render the apartment in which it was contained too noisome to abide in. They permitted me also to ascend into the steeple to see where it had been struck by lightning on the Sabbath before; and to look out, east and south, on wasted farms--like those I had seen near the city--extending till they were lost in the distance. Close to the scar left by the thunderbolt were fragments of food, cruses of liquor and broken drinking-vessels, with a bass-drum and a steamboat signal-bell, of which, with pain, I learned the use. It was after nightfall when I was ready to cross the river on my return. The wind had freshened since sunset and, the water beating roughly into my little boat, I headed higher up the stream than the point I had left in the morning, and landed where a faint glimmering light invited me to steer. Among the rushes--sheltered only by the darkness, without roof between them and the sky--I came upon a crowd of several hundred human creatures whom my movements roused from uneasy slumber. Dreadful indeed was the suffering of these forsaken beings. Cowed and cramped by cold and sunburn alternating as each weary day and night dragged on, they were, almost all of them, the crippled victims of disease. They were there because they had no homes, nor hospital, nor poorhouse, nor friends to offer them any. They could not minister to the needs of their sick; they had no bread to quiet the fractious, hungry cries of their children. Mothers and babes, daughters and grandparents, all alike were clothed in tatters, lacking even sufficient covering for the fever-stricken sufferers. These were the Mormons, famishing, in Lee County, Iowa, in the fourth week of the month of September, 1846. The deserted city was Nauvoo, Illinois. The Mormons were the owners of that city and the smiling country around it. And those who had stopped their ploughs, who had silenced their hammers, their axes, their shuttles and the wheels of their workshops; those who had put out their fires, who had eaten their food, spoiled their orchards, and trampled under foot their thousands of acres of unharvested grain--these were the keepers of their dwellings, the carousers in their temple, the noise of whose drunken rioting insulted the ears of the dying. They were, all told, not more than six hundred forty persons who were thus lying on the river-flats. But the Mormons in Nauvoo and its environs had been numbered the year before at over twenty thousand. Where were they? They had last been seen, carrying in mournful trains their sick and wounded, halt and blind, to disappear behind the western horizon, pursuing the phantom of another home. Hardly anything else was known of them; and people asked with curiosity, "What had been their fate--what their fortunes?" The party encountered by me at the river shore were the last of the Mormons that left the city. They had all of them engaged the year before that they would vacate their homes and seek some other place of refuge. It had been the condition of a truce between them and their assailants; and, as an earnest of their good faith, the chief elders, and some others of obnoxious standing, with their families, were to set out for the West in the spring of 1846. It had been stipulated in return that the rest of the Mormons might remain behind, in the peaceful enjoyment of their Illinois abode, until their leaders, with their exploring party, could, with all diligence, select for them a new place of settlement beyond the Rocky Mountains, in California, or elsewhere, and until they had opportunity to dispose to the best advantage of the property which they were then to leave. Some renewed symptoms of hostile feeling had however determined the pioneer party to begin their work before the spring. It was of course anticipated that this would be a perilous service; but it was regarded as a matter of self-denying duty. The ardor and emulation of many, particularly the devout and the young, were stimulated by the difficulties it involved; and the ranks of the party were therefore filled up with volunteers from among the most effective and responsible members of the sect. They began their march in midwinter; and by the beginning of February nearly all of them were on the road, many of their wagons having crossed the Mississippi on the ice. Under the most favoring circumstances, an expedition of this sort, undertaken at such a season of the year, could scarcely fail to be disastrous. But the pioneer company had to set out in haste, and were very imperfectly supplied with necessaries. The cold was intense. They moved in the teeth of keen-edged northwest winds, such as sweep down the Iowa peninsula from the icebound regions of the timber-shaded Slave Lake and Lake of the Woods. Along the scattered watercourses, where they broke the thick ice to give their cattle drink, the annual autumn fires had left but little firewood. To men, insufficiently furnished with tents and other appliances of shelter, wood was almost a necessary of life. After days of fatigue their nights were often passed in restless efforts to prevent themselves from freezing. Their stock of food also proved inadequate; and as their constitutions became more debilitated their suffering from cold increased. Afflicted with catarrhal affections, manacled by the fetters of dreadfully acute rheumatism, some contrived for a while to get over the shortening day's march and drag along some others. But the sign of an impaired circulation soon began to show itself in the liability of all to be dreadfully frost-bitten. The hardiest and strongest became helplessly crippled. About the same time the strength of their draught animals began to fail. The small supply of provender they could carry with them had given out. The winter-bleached prairie straw proved devoid of nourishment; and they could only keep them from starving by seeking for the "browse," as it is called, this being the green bark and tender buds and branches of the cottonwood and other stunted growths in the hollows. To return to Nauvoo was apparently the only escape; but this would have been to give occasion for fresh mistrust and so to bring new trouble to those they had left there behind them. They resolved at least to hold their ground, and to advance as they might, were it only by limping through the deep snows a few slow miles a day. They found a sort of comfort in comparing themselves to the exiles of Siberia, and sought consolation in earnest prayers for the spring. The spring came at last. It overtook them in the Sac and Fox country, still on the naked prairie, not yet half way over the trail they were following between the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. But it brought its own share of troubles with it. The months with which it opened proved nearly as trying as the worst of winter. The snow and sleet and rain which fell, as it appeared to them, without intermission, made the road over the rich prairie soil as impassable as one vast bog of heavy black mud. Sometimes they would fasten the horses and oxen of four or five wagons to one, and attempt to get ahead in this way, taking turns; but at the close of a day of hard toil for themselves and their cattle, they would find themselves a quarter or a half a mile from the place they left in the morning. The heavy rains raised all the watercourses; the most trifling streams were impassable. Wood, fit for bridging, was often not to be had, and in such cases the only resource was to halt for the freshets to subside--a matter in the case of the headwaters of the Chariton, for instance, of over three weeks' delay. These were dreary waitings upon Providence. The most spirited and sturdy murmured most at their forced inactivity. And even the women, whose heroic spirits had been proof against the severest cold, confessed their tempers fluctuated with the ceaseless variations of the barometer. They complained too that the health of their children suffered more. It was the fact that the damp winds of March and April brought with them more mortal sickness than the sharpest freezing weather. The frequent burials discouraged and depressed the hardiest spirits; but the general hopefulness of human nature was well illustrated by the fact that even the most provident were found unfurnished with burial necessaries, and as a result they were often driven to the most melancholy makeshifts. The usual expedient adopted was to cut a log of some eight or nine feet long, and slitting the bark longitudinally, strip it off in two half-cylinders. These, placed around the body of the deceased and bound firmly together with withs made of alburnum, formed a rough sort of tubular coffin, which surviving relatives and friends, with a little show of black crape, could follow to the hole or bit of ditch dug to receive it in the wet ground of the prairie. The name of the deceased, his age, the date of his death, and the surrounding landmarks were all registered with care. His party was then ready to move on. Such graves mark all the line of the first years of Mormon travel--dispiriting milestones to failing stragglers in the rear. The hardships and trials which they had suffered developed a spirit of self-sacrifice among these indomitable people. Hale young men gave up their own food and shelter to the old and helpless, and worked their way back to parts of the frontier States, chiefly Missouri and Iowa where they were not recognized, and hired themselves out for wages, to purchase more. Others were sent there to exchange for meal and flour, or wheat and corn, the table-and bed-furniture and other remaining articles of personal property which a few had still retained. In a kindred spirit of fraternity, others laid out great farms in the wilds and planted the grain saved for their own bread; that there might be harvests for those who should follow them. Two of these, in the Sac and Fox country and beyond it, Garden Grove and Mount Pisgah, included within their fences about two miles of land each, carefully planted with grain, with a hamlet of comfortable log cabins in the neighborhood of each. Through all this the pioneers found comfort in the thought that their own suffering was the price of immunity from similar hardships their friends at home, in following their trail, would otherwise have had to pay. But the arrival of spring proved this a delusion. Before the warm weather had made the earth dry enough for easy travel, messengers came in from Nauvoo to overtake the party with fear-exaggerated tales of outrage, and to urge the chief men to hurry back to the city that they might give counsel and assistance there. The enemy had only waited until the emigrants were supposed to be gone on their road too far to return to interfere with them, and then renewed their aggressions. The Mormons outside Nauvoo were indeed hard pressed, but inside the city they maintained themselves very well for two or three months longer. Strange to say, the chief part of this respite was devoted to completing the structure of their quaintly devised but beautiful temple. Since the dispersion of Jewry, probably, history affords us no parallel to the attachment of the Mormons for this edifice. Every architectural element, every most fantastic emblem it embodied, was associated, for them, with some cherished feature of their religion. Its erection had been enjoined upon them as a most sacred duty: they were proud of the honor it conferred upon their city, when it grew up in its splendor to become the chief object of the admiration of strangers upon the upper Mississippi. Besides, they had built it as a labor of love; they could count up to half a million the value of their tithings and freewill offerings laid upon it. Hardly a Mormon woman had not given up to it some trinket or pin-money; the poorest Mormon man had at least served the tenth part of his year on its walls; and the coarsest artisan could turn to it with something of the ennobling attachment an artist has for his own creation. Therefore, though their enemies drove on them ruthlessly, they succeeded in parrying the last sword-thrust, till they had completed even the gilding of the angel and trumpet on the summit of its lofty spire. As a closing work, they placed on the entablature of the front, like a baptismal mark on the forehead, these words: THE HOUSE OF THE LORD: BUILT BY THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS. HOLINESS TO THE LORD! Then, at high noon, under the bright sunshine of May, the next after its completion, they consecrated it to divine service. There was a carefully studied ceremonial for the occasion. It was said the high elders of the sect travelled furtively from the camp of Israel in the wilderness, and, throwing off ingenious disguises, appeared in their own robes of office to give it splendor. For that one day the temple stood resplendent in all its typical glories of sun, moon and stars, and other abounding figured and lettered signs, hieroglyphs, and symbols; but that day only. The sacred rites of consecration ended, the work of removing the _sacrosancta_ proceeded with the rapidity of magic. It went on through the night, and when the morning of the next day dawned all the ornaments and furniture, everything that could provoke a sneer, had been carried off; and except some fixtures that would not bear removal, the building was dismantled. This day saw the departure of the last of the elders, and the largest band that moved in one company together. The people of Iowa have told me that from morning to night they passed westward like an endless procession. They did not seem greatly out of heart, they said; but, at the top of every hill, before they disappeared, they were to be seen looking back, like banished Moors, on their abandoned homes and the distant temple and its glittering spire. After this consecration, which was construed to indicate an insincerity on the part of the Mormons as to their stipulated departure, or at least a hope of return, their foes set upon them with renewed bitterness. As many fled as were at all prepared; but by the very fact of their so decreasing the already diminished forces of the city's defenders, they encouraged the enemy to greater boldness. It soon became apparent that nothing short of an immediate emigration could save the remnant. From this time onward the energies of those already on the road were engrossed by the duty of providing for the fugitives who came crowding in after them. At a last general meeting of the sect in Nauvoo, there had been passed a unanimous resolution that they would sustain one another, whatever their circumstances, upon the march; and this, though made in view of no such appalling exigency, they now with one accord set themselves together to carry out. The host again moved on. The tents which had gathered on the hill summits, like white birds hesitating to venture on the long flight over the river, were struck one after another, and the dwellers in them and their wagons and their cattle hastened down to cross it at a ferry in the valley, which they made by night and day. A little beyond the landing they formed their companies and made their preparations for the last and longest stage of their journey. Though the season was late, when they first crossed the Missouri, some of them moved forward with great hopefulness, full of the notion of viewing and choosing their new homes that year. But the van had only reached Grand Island and the Pawnee villages, when they were overtaken by more ill news from Nauvoo. Before the summer closed, their enemies set upon the last remnant of those who were left behind in Illinois. They were a few lingerers, who could not be persuaded but there might yet be time for them to gather up their worldly goods before removing. Some weakly mothers and their infants, a few delicate young girls, and many cripples and bereaved and sick people--these had remained under shelter, according to the Mormon statement at least, by virtue of an express covenant in their behalf. If there was such a covenant, it was broken. A vindictive war was waged upon them, from which the weakest fled in scattered parties, leaving the rest to make a reluctant and almost ludicrously unavailing defence, till September 17th, when one thousand six hundred twenty-five troops entered Nauvoo and drove all forth who had not retreated before that time. Like the wounded birds of a flock fired into toward nightfall, they came straggling on with faltering steps, many of them without bag or baggage, beast or barrow, all asking shelter or burial, and forcing a fresh repartition of the already divided rations of their friends. It was plain now that every energy must be taxed to prevent the entire expedition from perishing. Further emigration for the time was out of the question, and the whole people prepared themselves for encountering another winter on the prairie. Happily for the main body, they found themselves at this juncture among Indians who were amicably disposed. The lands on both sides of the Missouri in particular were owned by the Pottawottomis and Omahas, two tribes whom unjust treatment by our United States Government had the effect of rendering most hospitable to strangers whom they regarded as persecuted like themselves. They were pleased with the Mormons. They would have been pleased with any whites who would not cheat them, nor sell them whiskey, nor whip them for their poor gypsy habits, nor conduct themselves indecently toward their women, many of whom among the Pottawottomis--especially those of nearly unmixed French descent--are singularly comely, and some of them educated. But all Indians have something like a sentiment of reverence for the insane, and admire those who sacrifice, without apparent motive, their worldly welfare to the triumph of an idea. They understand the meaning of what they call a great vow, and think it the duty of the right-minded to lighten the votary's penance under it. To this feeling they united the sympathy of fellow-sufferers for those who could talk to them of their own Illinois, and tell the story of how they also had been ruthlessly expelled from it. Their hospitality was sincere, almost delicate. Fanny le Clerc, the spoiled child of the great brave Pied Riche, interpreter of the nation, would have the paleface Miss Devine learn duets with her on the guitar; and the daughter of substantial Joseph la Framboise, the United States interpreter for the tribe (she died of the fever that summer) welcomed all the nicest young Mormon women to a party at her father's house, which was probably the best cabin in that village. They made the Mormons at home, there and elsewhere. Upon all their lands they formally gave them leave to remain as long as suited their own good pleasure. The affair, of course, furnished material for a solemn council. Under the auspices of an officer of the United States their chiefs were summoned, in the form befitting great occasions, to meet in the yard of a Mr. P.A. Sarpy's log trading-house. They came in grand costume, moving in their fantastic attire with so much _aplomb_ and genteel measure that the stranger found it difficult not to believe them high-born gentlemen, attending a fancy-dress ball. Their aristocratically thin legs, of which they displayed fully the usual Indian proportion, aided this illusion. There is something too at all times very mock-Indian in the theatrical French millinery tie of the Pottawottomi turban; while it is next to impossible for a sober white man, at first sight, to believe that the red, green, black, blue, and yellow cosmetics, with which he sees such grave personages so variously dotted, diapered, cancelled, and arabesqued are worn by them in any mood but one of the deepest and most desperate quizzing. From the time of their first squat upon the ground to the final breaking up of the council circle they sustained their characters with equal self-possession and address. I will not take it upon myself to describe their order of ceremonies; indeed, I ought not, since I have never been able to view the habits and customs of our aborigines in any other light than that of a sorrowful subject of jest. Besides, in this instance, the powwow and the expected flow of turgid eloquence were both moderated probably by the conduct of the entire transaction on temperance principles. I therefore content myself with observing generally that the proceedings were such as in every way became the dignity of the parties interested, and the magnitude of the interests involved. When the red men had indulged to satiety in tobacco-smoke from their peace-pipes, and in what they love still better--their peculiar metaphoric rhodomontade, which, beginning with the celestial bodies, and coursing downward over the grandest sublunary objects, always managed to alight at last on their "Great Father," Polk, and the tenderness with which his affectionate red children regarded him. All the solemn funny fellows present, who played the part of chiefs, signed formal articles of convention with their unpronounceable names. The renowned chief Pied Riche--he was surnamed Le Clerc on account of his remarkable scholarship--then rose and said: "My Mormon brethren, the Pottawottomi came, sad and tired, into this unhealthy Missouri bottom, not many years back, when he was taken from his beautiful country, beyond the Mississippi, which had abundant game and timber and clear water everywhere. Now you are driven away, the same, from your lodges and lands and the graves of your people. So we have both suffered. We must help one another, and the Great Spirit will help us both. You are now free to cut and use all the wood you may wish. You can make all your improvements, and live on any part of our actual land not occupied by us. Because one suffers, and does not deserve it, is no reason he shall suffer always: I say, we may live to see all right yet. However, if we do not, our children will. _Bon jour!_" And thus ended the powwow. I give this speech as a morsel of real Indian. It was recited to me after the treaty by the Pottawottomi orator in French, which language he spoke with elegance. _Bon jour_ ["good day"] is the French, Indian, and English hail, and farewell of the Pottawottomis. Upon the Pottawotomi lands, scattered through the border regions of Missouri and Iowa, in the Sac and Fox country, a few among the Ioways, among the Poncas, in a great company upon the banks of the l'Eau qui Coulée (or Running Water) River, and at the Omaha winter quarters, the Mormons sustained themselves through the heavy winter of 1846-1847. It was the severest of their trials. This winter was the turning-point of the Mormon fortunes. Those who lived through it were spared to witness the gradual return of better times; and they now liken it to the passing of a dreary night, since which they have watched the coming of a steadily brightening day. In the spring of 1847, a body of one hundred forty-three picked men, with seventy wagons, drawn by their best horses, left the Omaha quarters, under the command of the members of the high council who had wintered there. They carried with them little but seed and farming implements, their aim being to plant spring crops at their ultimate destination. They relied on their rifles to give them food, but rarely left their road in search of game. They made long marches, and moved as rapidly as possible. Against the season when ordinary emigration passes the Missouri, they were already through the South Pass, and after a couple of short days' travel beyond it entered upon the more arduous part of their journey, which now lay through the Rocky Mountains. They passed Fremont's Peak, Long's Peak, The Twins, and other summits, but had great difficulties to overcome in forcing their way over other mountains of the rugged Utah range, sometimes following the stony bed of torrents, the headwaters of some of the mightiest rivers of our continent, and sometimes literally cutting their road through heavy and ragged timber. They arrived at the grand basin of the Great Salt Lake, much exhausted, but without losing a man, and in time to plant for a partial autumn harvest. Another party started after these pioneers from the Omaha winter quarters, in the summer. They had five hundred sixty-six wagons, and carried large quantities of grain, which they were able to sow before it froze. The same season these were joined by a part of the battalion and other members of the Church who came eastward from California and the Sandwich Islands. Together they fortified themselves strongly with sun-dried brick walls and blockhouses, and, living safely through the winter, were able to reap crops that yielded ample provision for the ensuing year. In 1848, nearly all the remaining members of the Church left the Missouri country in a succession of powerful bands, invigorated and enriched by their abundant harvests there; and that year saw fully established their commonwealth of the "New Covenant," the future State of "Deseret." [Footnote: The Mormons repeatedly tried to secure the admission of Deseret into the Union as a State under that name--said to mean "virtue and industry."] When Utah was organized as a Territory (1850), the Mormon leader, Brigham Young, was made governor. In 1857 President Buchanan appointed a non-Mormon to succeed Young. This act led the Mormons to rebel, but after a display of military force by the Government they acknowledged allegiance. In 1896, polygamy having been prohibited by Congress, Utah was admitted to the Union. Since the settlement of the Mormons upon the Great Salt Lake there has been a large immigration into Utah. [The Mormons have spread beyond that State into Arizona, Idaho, Wyoming, and other parts of the West and Southwest--ED.] (1848) THE REFORMS OF PIUS IX, Francis Bowen In the long roll of pontiffs the name of Pius IX stands conspicuous among those of popes, who have greatly exerted their power for effect upon the papacy itself. But the influence of Pius IX was not less marked in Italian and European politics. An account of the reforms which he undertook and of the obstacles he had to confront, cannot fail to convey, directly or by implication, matters of much importance in modern history. That a pope who signalized the beginning of his official career by a series of liberal reforms should soon have been driven from his see by revolutionists is one of the historical paradoxes for which even the "philosophy of history" finds it difficult to account. But, as one writer tells us, "The revolutionary fever of 1848 spread too fast for a reforming pope, and his refusal to make war upon the Austrians finally cost him the affections of the Romans." Pope Pius IX (Giovanni Maria Mastai Ferretti) who at the age of fifty-four brought the power of his papal throne to advance the cause of Young Italy--led by Mazzini and other patriots--was born at Sinigaglia May 13, 1792. He was descended from a noble family, and his early education was received at the College of Volterra. Throughout the years of his youth he suffered from infirm health, but before reaching thirty he gained much in strength, and in 1827 became Archbishop of Spoleto. In 1840 he was made cardinal by Pope Gregory XVI. Gregory died June 1, 1846, and after being two days in conclave the cardinals elected their colleague Ferretti to succeed him. The cardinals felt the advisability of choosing for pope a native of the Papal States, a man not too far advanced in years, and one "who would see the necessity of correcting abuses and making some reforms." Francis Bowen, whose review of Pope Pius's career, from his entrance upon the papal office until his temporary withdrawal from Rome, is here presented, is a well-known authority in this as also in other fields of history, and his recital is based upon the best contemporary accounts. When Pius IX was elected Pope his course did not long remain doubtful. He limited the expenses of the court at once, dispensed alms in abundance, set aside one day of each week for giving audiences, and commanded that political inquisitions should be stopped immediately. These few steps, taken before he had had time to consult with others, afford perhaps a better indication of the mild and kind character of the new pontiff than the grave political acts which were subsequently performed. These show us the man, the others reveal only the sovereign. Just one month after his election, a manifesto of amnesty for all political offenders was published at Rome, including the exiles, those awaiting trial, and those undergoing sentence. The only conditions imposed were that the individuals pardoned should give their word of honor never to abuse the indulgence, and would fulfil every duty of a good citizen. The news of this act flew like the wind through the Papal States, and caused everywhere a burst of exultation and gratitude toward the new sovereign. It carried joy to thousands of households, bringing back to them the long-separated brother or parent, and it was a token of future peace and contentment. In the city, says Farini, [Footnote: Luigi Carlo Farini, who is freely quoted by Bowen, was an Italian historian and statesman. His principal work is _Storia dello stato Romano dall' anno 1814 al 1830_.--ED.] the hosannas were countless; each citizen embraced his neighbor like a brother; thousands of torches blazed in the evening; the multitude ran to the palace of the Pope, called for him, threw themselves prostrate on the earth before him, and received his blessing in devout silence. Many of the pardoned offenders were still more extravagant in their demonstrations of joy and thankfulness. Among them was Galletti, of Bologna, afterward one of the Pope's ministers, and most active in those measures which ended in the assassination of Rossi and in driving Pius into exile. He had been sentenced to imprisonment for life, and was kept in the castle of Sant' Angelo. When released, he threw himself at the Pope's feet, and swore, by his own heart's blood and that of his children, that he would be grateful and faithful. Some of the exiles, however, among whom was Mamiani, refused to subscribe the proposed engagement, simple as it was; but they returned after a time to their homes, merely promising allegiance. Every time that the Pope left his palace he was surrounded by a sort of triumphal procession. The whole length of the Corso was decorated when he passed through it, and hundreds of likenesses of him, and of panegyrical compositions, covered the walls. Foremost in getting up these popular celebrations was Angelo Brunetti, afterward so well known by his nickname of "Ciceruacchio." "He was a person of single mind, rustic in manners, proud and at the same time generous, as is common with Romans of the lower class." By his industry he had acquired considerable property, and by his liberal use of it had become a leader of the populace, whom he now fired with his own enthusiasm for Pius IX. The Pope would have been more than man if his head had not been a little turned with all this adulation, which came to him from many foreign lands as well as from Italy. But his simple and modest character bore the trial well; he manifested no undue elation, and formed his plans tranquilly and without hurry for the improvement of his people. Cardinal Gizzi, well known as a friend to reform, and much attached to the Pope, was named Secretary of State; and he wrote letters to the presidents of the provinces, inviting them, the municipal magistrates, ecclesiastics, and all respectable citizens, to prepare and offer schemes for promoting popular education, and especially for the moral, religious, and industrial instruction of the children of the poor. Commissions were appointed to deliberate and advise upon many subjects of proposed reform. Great, indeed, was the need of change in the institutions of the Pontifical States; but the Government had a delicate part to play in amending them, and it wisely determined not to be precipitate in its measures. "Already the Liberals had conceived boundless desires, and the Retrogradists were haunted with unreasonable fears. The Government had, to-day, to moderate on the left, circulate despatches, wellnigh to scold men for hoping too much." But the friends of change, says Farini, were for the most part measured in their wishes and cautious in their proceedings; for all prudent men were exerting themselves strenuously to keep the impatient in hand, with excellent effect. We cannot follow in detail the Pope's measures down to March, 1848, till which period the movement may be considered as all his own, emanating from his free choice and not from the pressure of outward circumstances or from revolutions in foreign States. He did enough during these twenty months to establish his character as a wise, humane, and liberal sovereign, eager to promote the temporal and religious interests of his people, and prompt to give political power into their hands as fast as they showed themselves capable of using, and not abusing, it. He instituted a civic guard throughout his dominions, modelled on the French National Guard, and disbanded the Gregorian Centurions and volunteers. All his court was opposed to this measure as premature and dangerous; and even Cardinal Gizzi resigned his place in consequence of it. But the Pope persevered, and Cardinal Ferretti, still more inclined to liberalism, was appointed in his place. He conceived the idea of an Italian customs league, after the model of the German one, and pressed it with so much earnestness that in November, 1847, it was instituted for the Roman, Tuscan, and Sardinian dominions, and every effort was made to render it acceptable to the other powers of Italy. He established a municipal government for the city of Rome, which had hitherto remained without one; and he created a Council of State for all his dominions, to consist chiefly of the laity, one person being chosen for each Province by the sovereign, out of a list of three, nominated by the provincial authorities. This Council was to sit in Rome, and aid the Government with its advice in putting the various departments in order, in constituting municipalities, and in other public concerns. He created, also, a Council of Ministers, which Farini calls the most important act of his reign, "As being that by which the executive power acquired an organization worthy of a civilized state, and altogether novel in that of Rome." There were to be nine departments, and, with the exception of the president of the Council and its secretary, the ministers need not be cardinals. All those first appointed, however, were cardinals or prelates. A body of _Uditori_ was attached to this Council, consisting of twelve ecclesiastics and twelve laymen, all appointed by the sovereign. The laws respecting the censorship of the press were much relaxed, and numerous political journals were established at Rome, which before had nothing that deserved the name of a newspaper. "Our infant journalism," says Farini, "had its infant passions and caprices; instead of meditating, it gambolled, and every day it smashed its toys of the day before, as children do; it instituted a school of declamation, not of political knowledge; it ran and plunged about, blindfold; it made boast of an independent spirit, and was a mean slave to out-of-doors influence." These measures of reform, and the enthusiasm which they created, were not without effect on surrounding nations. Considering the place whence they came, and the sovereign who conducted them, they were adapted to have a vast influence. Rome, the "Eternal City," was regenerated, and a new life bounded through her old limbs; and the August head of the Catholic Church, the greatest religious potentate of the civilized world, the infallible, the object of veneration to half Christendom, and hitherto the most despotic and conservative sovereign in Europe, was now the daring innovator, the radical, the idol of the populace. Austria looked on with distrust and dismay, and tried to pick a quarrel and thus find a pretext for invasion by ordering its troops, who had as yet only garrisoned the fortress, to occupy the city of Ferrara and patrol its streets--a measure almost sure to lead to a collision with its citizens. The Pope protested in a firm but temperate tone, and his indignant people would fain have hurried him into a war; but he bridled their impatience and the matter ended in a compromise. Tuscany caught the generous flame of freedom; and though there was not so much to be accomplished there, as the Government had long been mild and discreet, the good Archduke [Leopold II] professed the utmost admiration for Pius, and began to imitate his measures. The King of Sardinia was moved to enthusiasm; during the difficulty with Austria about Ferrara he offered the Pope whatever succor of ships or men he might need, and an asylum in his dominions if he should be compelled to leave Rome. He did more; he relaxed the bonds of the press, improved the administration of justice, deprived the police of their discretionary power, enlarged and amended the Council of State, emancipated the communes, and allowed their officers to be chosen by popular vote. The character and example of Pius seemed likely to effect as great and as beneficial changes out of his dominions as within them. Those of the Italian sovereigns who were not willing to follow his lead of their own accord, were obliged to yield in dismay before the spirit which he had awakened in their subjects. The silly Duke of Lucca, a fanatic, a prodigal, and a despot, after attempting in vain to cudgel his people into submission, fled in terror from their aroused wrath, and consented to the annexation of his dominions to Tuscany, whereby they shared in the reforms instituted by Leopold. But in Sicily and Naples were developed the most striking results of the fire which had been kindled by a reforming pope. The cruel and imbecile Bourbon who reigned there became only more harsh and obstinate, while the other princes of Italy deemed it necessary to reform their institutions and conciliate their people. His subjects petitioned him, and shouted for Pius in the streets; but the soldiery were turned against them, and the King showed himself alike inaccessible to their caresses and their prayers. "One king only," said Thiers from the tribune, speaking of Italy, "he of Naples, presented the sword's point to the people who were flocking around him, and that people fell on it." The impulsive Sicilians fixed January 12, 1848, as the day beyond which their patience would not extend. The King made no concessions, the day came, and the island was revolutionized, the troops everywhere giving way before the excited populace. Within a fortnight the inhabitants of Naples followed their example; and before the fight began, the King's heart failed him, and he granted all that they asked. The Ministry was changed, a constitution was resolved upon, and its fundamental principles were announced on January 29th, while the Administration pledged themselves to publish it complete within twelve days. The King came out to meet the crowd, who were cheering him, and intimated his purpose to surpass the other sovereigns of Italy in the magnitude of his concessions. How sincere his promises were, the lapse of a few months fully showed; but at present everything wore a cheerful aspect. The Pope had now reached the climax of his fortunes, the furthest limit of the good which he was permitted to accomplish by his own free will, and the sky began to be overcast. The enthusiasm of his people became unmanageable, and the volcanic force of another French revolution was soon to burst and to prostrate half the governments in Europe by the explosion. Constant excitement for twenty months had made Rome noisy and turbulent, and the populace had been gratified so often that they now expected everything to succumb to their wishes. Busy agitators were in the midst of them, intent upon prosecuting the plans of Mazzini and Young Italy, and turning reform into revolution. The people were mad for a declaration of war against Austria, though the military strength of the Roman States was grossly inadequate for such a conflict, and the head of the Catholic Church was naturally reluctant to come to extremities with a Catholic power which had long been the firmest support of the papacy. Then a cry was raised to exclude all ecclesiastics from office, or at least to admit so large a portion of the laity into the Administration that Rome would be secularized and lose its distinctive character as an appanage for the head of the Church. The people would not consider, or were reckless of the fact, that Pius was a devout Catholic as well as a liberal sovereign, and could not be expected to lend his aid to a project for stripping the papacy of all temporal power, if not for razing it to its foundations. The cries of expulsion and death to the Jesuits were also raised; and as that body, however obnoxious elsewhere, had given no offence at Rome, the Pope's sense of justice inclined him to protect them and to resist the clamor of the mob. The news from Sicily and Naples caused a great popular demonstration at Rome, the aspect of which was so threatening that Pius issued a proclamation, on February 10th, announcing that he had taken measures for reorganizing and enlarging the army, and for augmenting the lay portion of the Council of Ministers; but appealing to his people in affecting terms, by the proofs already given of his solicitude in their behalf, that they should cease from agitation and not make demands which could not be granted consistently with his duty and their own well-being. This paper caused another effusion of popular gratitude; an immense multitude collected in the Piazza del Papolo, and, accompanied by the Civic Guard and bearing banners, they set out for the Pope's palace. When they came to the Quirinal Pius showed himself at the balcony and made signs that he wished to speak. "There was a profound silence, not broken even by the trickling of the fountains, which had been stopped some days before." The Pope said: "'Before the benediction of God descends upon you, on the rest of my people, and, I say it again, on all Italy, I pray you to be of one mind, and to keep the faith which you have sworn to me, the Pontiff.' "At these words the silence of deep feeling was broken by a sudden thunder of acclamation, 'Yes, I swear,' and Pius proceeded: "'I warn you, however, against the raising of certain cries, that are not of the people, but of a few individuals, and against making any such requests to me as are incompatible with the sanctity of the Church; for these I cannot, I may not, and I will not grant. This being understood, with my whole soul, I bless you.'" Deeds followed words; the Ministry was changed; five laymen were admitted into it, and it was intimated that a constitution would be granted resembling those in other States. Then came the news of the disasters at Paris, and everything was precipitated. On March 10th the Ministry was again changed, only three ecclesiastics being now admitted into it; and on the 14th the new constitution, or "Fundamental Statute," was proclaimed. It instituted a Legislature in two branches, the High Council and the Council of Deputies, the members of the former being appointed by the Pope, and those of the latter being chosen by popular vote in the ratio, as nearly as might be, of one to every thirty thousand souls. All citizens were voters who paid twelve crowns a year in direct taxes or had property amounting to three hundred crowns; to these were added all members of colleges and honorary graduates, and all persons holding office in the communes and municipalities. The Legislature was to be convoked every year, both Councils were to choose their own officers, and their sessions were to be public, except on extraordinary occasions when they might of their own accord prefer secrecy. Freedom of debate and vote was guaranteed, and the members of both Houses were protected from arrest, even for notoriously criminal acts, during the session, except by consent of the Council to which they belonged. They were to have authority to make laws on all subjects, excepting ecclesiastical matters and the canons and discipline of the Church, but including the imposition of taxes; the Pope, however, like most monarchs, reserved to himself the right of negativing a law. All discussions, also, of the diplomatico-religious relations of the Holy See with foreign powers were forbidden. Money bills were to originate in the lower house, and direct taxes could be granted for only a year. The Deputies had a right to impeach ministers, who, if they were laymen, were to be tried by the High Council; if ecclesiastics, by the Sacred College. The unlimited right of petition to the lower house was assured and ministers were responsible for every ministerial act; they had the right of sitting and debating, but not of voting, in both Councils. A portion of the revenue of the State, for the support of the cardinals, the ecclesiastical congregations, and generally for the transaction of purely ecclesiastical business, was to be secured to the Pope, and to be borne on the estimates every year. The judges were to be irremovable after they had held office for three years; and all persons were declared equal in the sight of the law. Extraordinary commissions or tribunals for the trial of offences were abolished. All property, whether of individuals or corporations, whether civil or ecclesiastical, was to be held subject to its equal part of the burdens of the State; and to all bills imposing taxes, the Pope would annex, of his own authority, a special waiver of the ecclesiastical exemption. The administrations of the Provinces and the communes were placed in the hands of their respective inhabitants. The Government (or political) censorship was abolished, but the ecclesiastical censorship was retained. Such is a general outline of the Roman Constitution spontaneously granted to his subjects by Pius IX. Its merits, in all civil or political matters, are certainly equal, if not superior, to those of the English Constitution, from which in great part it was borrowed; its faults are precisely those which resulted necessarily from the Pope's double character, as temporal sovereign of the Roman States and as head of the Catholic Church throughout the world. It was not within the province or at the discretion of Pius to alter the tenure by which he held his throne, to change the fundamental principles of the Church or to abolish his ecclesiastical dominion. He granted to his subjects all that was in his power to grant as their temporal sovereign. His purely ecclesiastical relations and duties did not concern them, or concerned them only so far as they were members of the great body of Catholic believers in all lands. The College of Cardinals _must_ choose the Pope, and _must_ choose one of their own number; this is not a law of the Roman States, but a law of the Catholic Church. Pius could not abrogate it; and if he had been inclined to grant everything to his people by divesting himself of the last rag of his sovereignty, the only consequence would have been that the cardinals must have chosen another pope in his place, who might undo all that Pius had accomplished. These are obvious and necessary considerations; and the Pope expressly recognizes them in the ordinance accompanying the grant of the constitution. "We intend," he says, "to maintain intact our authority in matters that by their nature are related to the Catholic religion and its rule of morals. And this is due from us as a guaranty to the whole of Christendom, that, in the States of the Church reorganized in this new form, nothing shall be derogated from the liberties and rights of the Church herself, and of the Holy See, nor any precedent be established for violating the sacredness of the religion which it is our duty and mission to preach to the whole world, as the only scheme of covenant between God and man, the only pledge of that heavenly benediction by which states subsist and nations flourish." Now, it is worthy of note that neither this constitution nor any of the acts of Pius under it was ever complained of by any party among the Pope's subjects except in regard to these ecclesiastical reservations which were forced from him by the very nature of the office that he held. The constitutionalists, indeed the moderate reformers, the party of Balbo and Gioberti and D'Azeglio, which comprised most of the educated and reflecting persons in the State, seem to have been entirely satisfied with it as a whole, or as it was. So also were the unthinking populace, who received it with shouts of exultation, so long as they were not moved by the arts of a party who would not be satisfied with having a good pope, but were bent upon having no pope at all. This was the party of Mazzini, the revolutionists as distinguished from the reformers--not strong at first either in numbers or credit, as we have seen, but who made up for all deficiencies by their zeal and activity--who were determined to establish a republic, and who cared nothing for the embarrassments of the Pope's situation as head of the Church, of indeed for the Church itself. They complained--and with reason, too, upon their principles--of these ecclesiastical reservations; and they made out of them their chief weapon of attack upon the Pope's government, though they did not profit so much by the use of it as by the evident unwillingness of Pius to rush into a war with Austria for the purpose of giving the sovereignty of Lombardy to Charles Albert, a measure to which he was averse, because he thought such a conflict would be detrimental to the interests of the Church over which he presided. The world's future judgment of Pius will depend upon its belief of the sincerity with which he acted in thus allowing nothing but his religious duties and his position as the head of the Church to limit his concessions of political privileges to his subjects. On this point, it is well to hear the opinion of Farini, who, as one of the Mamiani Ministry and as employed to mediate between them and the Pope, because much loved and trusted by him, seems peculiarly qualified to form one without undue bias on either side: "Pius IX had applied himself to political reform, not so much for the reason that his conscience as an honorable man and a most pious sovereign enjoined it, as because his high view of the papal office prompted him to employ the temporal power for the benefit of his spiritual authority. A meek man and a benevolent prince, Pius IX was, as a pontiff, lofty even to sternness. With a soul not only devout, but mystical, he referred everything to God, and respected and venerated his own person as standing in God's place. He thought it his duty to guard with jealousy the temporal sovereignty of the Church, because he thought it essential to the safe-keeping and the apostleship of the faith. "Aware of the numerous vices of that temporal government, and hostile to all vice and all its agents, he had sought, on mounting the throne, to effect those reforms which justice, public opinion, and the times required. He hoped to give lustre to the papacy by their means, and so to extend and to consolidate the faith. He hoped to acquire for the clergy that credit, which is a great part of the decorum of religion and an efficient cause of reverence and devotion in the people. His first efforts were successful in such a degree that no pontiff ever got greater praise. "By this he was greatly stimulated and encouraged, and perhaps he gave in to the seduction of applause and the temptations of popularity more than is fitting for a man of decision or for a prudent prince. But when, after a little, Europe was shaken by universal revolution, the work he had commenced was, in his view, marred; he then retired within himself and took alarm. "In his heart, the pontiff always came before the prince, the priest before the citizen; in the secret struggles of his mind, pontifical and priestly conference always outweighed the conscience of the prince and citizen. And as his conscience was a very timid one, it followed that his inward conflicts were frequent; that hesitation was a matter of course, and that he often took resolutions even about temporal affairs, more from religious intuition or impulse than from his judgment as a man. Added to this, his health was weak and susceptible of nervous excitement--the dregs of his old complaint. From this he suffered most when his mind was most troubled and uneasy; another cause of wavering and changefulness. "Under the pressure of the extraordinary occurrences throughout Europe early in the spring of 1848, the Pope's new Ministry under the constitution proceeded vigorously and rapidly to give full development and efficiency to that instrument. They also expressed the wish for a firm union of the constitutional thrones of Italy with one another with a view to insuring her independence; and they ordered the papal banners to be decorated with pennons of the Italian tricolor. On March 21st the news of the revolution at Vienna, much magnified by report, arrived, and the excitement of the Roman populace knew no bounds. "Every bell in the city pealed for joy; from palace and from hovel, from magazine and workshop, the townspeople poured in throngs into the streets and squares; some took to letting off firearms, some to strewing flowers; some hoisted flags on the towers, some decked with them their balconies; everybody was shouting '_Italia! Italia!_' and cursing the Empire. In an access of fury, the Austrian arms were torn down, dashed to pieces, and befouled amid the applause of the crowd in spite of the dissuasion of the public functionaries and of prudent persons." The hostility to the Jesuits now threatened to break out into violence; and for the double purpose of protecting them and appeasing the passions of the mob the Pope consented that the schools which they had superintended should be given into other hands, that their associations should be disbanded and they should be exiled. "The Government perhaps had no choice, so swiftly and impetuously did the torrent of popular commotion roll. I will not affirm that the Pope and the Government ought to have exposed to the last hazard the security of the State for an ineffectual defence of the fraternity. What I wish to observe is that if there were among the Jesuits men stained with guilt, and mischievous plotters, they ought to have been watched and punished as bad citizens; but it was incompatible with propriety or justice to condemn and punish a religious association, as such, in a place where the Pope held both his own seat and the supreme authority of the Church. None but the Pope had the power to condemn the society as a whole, and no condemnation but his could be just or valid in the opinion and conscience of the Catholics, or produce the desired political effects." On the same day that the Jesuits were expelled, the Pope issued a noble proclamation, breathing the best spirit of religion. The following excerpt is a portion of it: "_Pius Papa IX to the People of the States of Italy--Health and Apostolic Benediction_: "The events which the last two months have witnessed, following and thronging one another in such rapid succession, are no work of man. Woe to him that does not discern the Lord's voice in this blast that agitates, uproots, and rends the cedar and the oak. Woe to the pride of man if he shall refer, these marvellous changes to any human merit or any human fault; if instead of adoring the hidden designs of Providence, whether manifested in the paths of his justice or of his mercy, or of that Providence in whose hands are all the ends of the earth. And we, who are endowed with speech in order to interpret the dumb eloquence of the works of God--we cannot be mute amid the longings, the fears, and the hopes which agitate the minds of our children. "And first, it is our duty to make known to you that if our hearts had been moved at hearing how, in a part of Italy, the consolations of religion have preceded the perils of battle, and nobleness of mind has been displayed in works of charity, we nevertheless could not and cannot but greatly grieve over the injuries which, in other places, have been done to the ministers of that same religion--injuries, even if contrary to our duty we were silent concerning them, our silence could not hinder from impairing the efficacy of our benedictions. "Neither can we refrain from telling you that to use victory well is a greater and more difficult achievement than to be victorious. If the present day recalls to you any other period of your history, let the children profit by the errors of their forefathers. Remember that all stability and all prosperity has its main earthly ground in concord; that it is God alone who maketh of one mind them that dwell in a house; that he grants this reward only to the humble and the meek, to those who respect his laws, in the liberty of his church, in the order of society, in charity toward all mankind." * * * * * Shortly afterward another measure, emanating entirely from the Pope, and opposed by the prejudices of the mob, showed that his humane and liberal disposition and enlightened understanding waited for no impulse from without, and for no hope of increased popularity, before doing justice to a long oppressed race. "The friends of social progress were highly gratified by the decision of Pius IX to raze in Rome the walls and gates which shut up the Jews in the Ghetto. He had already, at the commencement of his pontificate, softened some of the rigors with which they were afflicted, and had directed that they might spread beyond that ignominious precinct; nor, however great was the outcry about it among the mob, did he forego the idea of bettering the condition of the followers of the Mosaic law." He was disposed to give them civil rights; and if he did not think of extending his concessions even to political privileges, yet he would give this as the main reason for it, that, in a constitutional country, everyone who enjoys them may rise to the highest stages of power; whereas a pope could not have any save Catholic ministers. In the mean time he raised them out of the abjectness of their isolation, although the Roman vulgar censured him for it bitterly, most of all because it took effect in Holy Week. When it was known in the city that the walls and fastenings of the Ghetto were to be pulled down at night, by order of the Cardinal Vicar, Ciceruacchio hastened with his companions, or subjects, to share in the work; and they shared in it so largely that it seemed as though the thing were effected more as their boon than by the will of the Pope. Pius IX was vexed at this; whether because noise had been made about what he wanted done quietly, or because it was brought about in such a manner that it might seem the popular party had had more to say to it than the authority of the head of religion. Rome fully shared the enthusiasm which was awakened throughout Italy by the entrance of the Piedmontese troops into Lombardy, and by the announcement by Charles Albert that he had drawn the sword in the sacred cause of Italian independence. His proclamation, in the stilted phrase common to such state papers, declared that he relied upon "the assistance of that God who is visibly with us; of that God who has given Pius IX to Italy; of that God who, by such wondrous impulses, has placed her in a condition to act for herself." And if she acted for herself, if her deeds had been commensurate with her glorious words, the Austrian would never again have trodden any portion of the peninsula with the step of a master. But the zeal of the Italians for independence seemed all to evaporate in high-sounding manifestoes, and in a few excesses of the populace in the great cities. The inactivity of the Italian sovereigns may be explained by their imputed treachery or lukewarmness in the cause. But what prevented the people themselves from crowding the camp of Charles Albert with volunteers at a time when not a crowned head in Italy dared offer the least open opposition to such a movement? The King of Naples, sorely against his will, sent his regular army, consisting of about fourteen thousand men, to fight for the cause, and withdrew them in about six weeks, as soon as a base act of treachery had given him the victory at home. General Pepe, their commander, wished to disobey the order and move forward; but "nearly the whole army turned its back on the Po and on him, and moved backward in the direction of the Neapolitan Kingdom." Two hundred volunteers had previously set out from Naples for Upper Italy, under the guidance and at the expense of an enthusiastic woman, the Princess Belgioioso. "She had lived as an exile in France, and was at first enthusiastic for the _Giovine Italia_; she afterward became averse to it, and sided with Guizot, Duchâtel, and Mignet, her intimate friend. She was well versed--or mixed herself much--in literature, politics, the study of theology, and journalism; a woman that had some of the feelings and anxieties of men, together with all those of her own sex, and who was now travelling through Italy intent upon manly business, but after woman's fashion. Other volunteers afterward started, and a vessel set sail for Leghorn, which carried them, along with the Tenth Regiment of the line." The Sicilians at the same time determined to separate entirely from Naples and the rest of the peninsula; "and thus all the ability and spirit, the arms and wealth, of that powerful island were applied to the effort for insular independence, and drawn off from that for the independence of the nation." From Tuscany there went to this national war "about three thousand volunteers, and perhaps as many more regulars"--a number so small that Farini apologizes for it, and endeavors to prove that it ought "not to be imputed to any lukewarmness in the affection for Italy." The army from the Roman States, which the Pope had set on foot, but hoped to retain as a defensive force within the northern boundary of his dominions, numbered about sixteen thousand, of whom more than half were volunteers. The conduct of the people of Lombardy, who though the conflict raged on their own soil, and their own freedom was immediately at stake, wasted their strength in quarrelling with one another instead of succoring Charles Albert, has long been a topic of wonder and censure. In short, all Italy did not furnish for this sacred war, so long the object of her aspirations and her prayers, a body of volunteers one-fourth as large as the army which the King of Sardinia brought into the field, though it was probable that he was moved from the first only by the hope of personal aggrandizement. He invaded Lombardy with an army of fifty-five thousand men, expecting thereby to win, with the aid of the national enthusiasm, the sceptre of all Italy for himself and his descendants. A terrible disappointment awaited him; instead of glory, shame and defeat were his portion; and having abdicated his paternal throne in despair he died in exile, literally of a broken heart. Pius IX was hardly more fortunate; to him also this fatal war brought dishonor and exile, the loss of the affection of his subjects, and of the admiration of the civilized world. The reluctance of the Pope to engage, when unprovoked, in a war with Austria is no cause for wonder. He earnestly desired the welfare of his people and the independence of his native land; but all his desires were subject to the interests of the Church, of which he was the recognized head throughout Christendom. The republicans in his dominions, including Mazzini and his party, were aware of this reluctance, and determined to make use of it and of the passions of the people in order to get rid of him altogether. No opportunity was lost to compromise him in the war, both in his temporal and ecclesiastical character; and the misfortune of his twofold position did not allow him to resist these machinations with success. General Durando, the commander of the papal forces, issued a flaming proclamation to his army when they passed the Po, announcing to them that their swords were blessed by the venerable head of the Church, and that they should all wear the cross on their bosoms, as beseemed those who were engaged in a holy war. This act naturally gave great uneasiness to the Pope, and Farini censures it as an unwise attempt to obtain the sanctions of religion for merely political objects--the very conduct which the Liberal party had previously censured in their opponents. If Italian minds, he argues, "were not capable of warming with the simple fire of patriotism for the noble and even holy enterprise of liberating Italy from the stranger, it was vain to hope that hearts so frozen up in indifference could kindle with religious faith." In the mean time the Germans, who were speculating about the unity of their own stock and nation and were straining every nerve in that difficult enterprise, could not excuse the desire of independence in the Italians, and contended for the boasted rights of Austria and Germany over the lands and the coasts of Italy, with the people that inhabited them. When it became known in Germany that the pontifical troops were hastening to the legitimate defence of Italy it affected the public feeling generally, and the name of Pius IX was branded with censure, not by laymen only, but by some bishops and high ecclesiastics. Monsignor Viale, nuncio at Vienna, and Monsignor Sacconi, nuncio at Munich, were assiduous and eager in detailing the sinister reports touching Rome and the Pope, and colored them in such a way as to create an apprehension of schism, the most serious one that could rise for a pope--and that pope, too, Pius IX. He had before this been greatly troubled by the proclamation of General Durando; still he had hoped that the Italian League would be shortly concluded, and that, when he had furnished the quota of troops that might be due from him as a temporal sovereign, he would then have been able, in the capacity of pontiff, to use those good offices which he considered requisite to assure the consciences of Catholics. Even the news of some reverses to the Italian arms in Lombardy failed to awaken a proper feeling among the inhabitants of Central and Southern Italy, and Farini thus censures the slothfulness and vanity of his countrymen: "Few gave credit or importance at the time to this and other sinister intelligence; the greater part of those who beheld the first marvellous smiles of fortune relied upon the star of Italy, and thought the Empire was dismembered. We Italians are too susceptible to the impulses of passion, and of heat in the imagination; with a small matter we are drunken and think to leap over the moon. Deadly intoxication, most deadly fault, that of undervaluing an enemy, which lets our enthusiasm too easily evaporate, and gives him every facility for showing that he is as gallant as we are, and more resolute; that he has much of perseverance and of discipline--qualities more effectual and valuable than simple courage. It comes to this; we must either send about their business the dreams of poets, and educate ourselves in severe and masculine virtues, or must yet remain long in a position to chant many more elegies, to assuage our sorrow, than hymns of triumph; we must either rest assured that with the tenacious, the disciplined, and the resolute only the tenacious, disciplined, and resolute can cope, and must therefore leave off despising the Austrians, and imitate them in their steadiness and their attention to the military spirit; or else we must be doomed to the disgrace of seeing them masters of our country. A stern truth; but the only one that an Italian freeman can utter to Italians free in mind. He who wants compliments and adulation may fling these warning words from him." The Ministry at Rome, driven onward by the popular clamor, represented to the Pope in strong terms the necessity of sending orders to his army to take an active part in the war; for they had not yet commenced hostilities with the Austrians. A consistory of the cardinals was to be held on April 29th; and it was feared that Pius would take that occasion for declaring that he was averse to the war, thus pacifying the minds of the Catholics in Germany. The allocution of the Pope realized these fears, though it expressed only his wish to remain neutral, "and to embrace all kindreds, peoples, and nations with equal solicitude of paternal affection." But the Ministry resigned in consequence, and great disturbances arose in the city; the populace were not willing themselves to volunteer for the war, but they were determined that the Pope should not continue a man of peace. The Civic Guard was placed under arms, but it was soon found that the soldiers shared the feelings of the people, and no reliance could be placed upon them. Threats were uttered of assassinating the cardinals, and others cried out "to make short work--as they called it--with the government of the priests, those traitors to Italy, and to place Rome under popular sway." To avert bloodshed, the Pope consented to a compromise; he gave up the entire direction of his troops to Charles Albert, and published, of his own accord, and without the knowledge of his ministers, an affecting remonstrance to his people. Pius also wrote an earnest letter to the Emperor of Austria, entreating him to put a stop to the war by acknowledging the independence of Venetia and Lombardy. "Let not the generous German nation take it ill," he said, "if we invite them to lay resentment aside, and to convert into the beneficial relations of friendly neighborhood a domination which could never be prosperous or noble while it depended solely on the sword." But the prayers of the Pope had now little influence either with the Emperor or with his own subjects; he had long ago forfeited the favor of the Absolutists by his political reforms, and he had now lost the love of his people by his reluctance to gratify their passion for sway. Yet if he had basely yielded to their wishes, against his judgment and his conscience, he would have injured only the cause of the papacy in foreign lands, and the issue of the war would not have been changed. As it was, his troops were actively engaged in the contest till the time of their capture at Vicenza by the Austrians. The fatal blow was given to the hopes of Italy by the King of Naples withdrawing his troops at a critical moment, when their loss could not be replaced. Their departure, and the consequent capture of the papal army under Durando at Vicenza, enabled the Austrians to turn their whole force against the Piedmontese, who were then defeated and driven back. The disgraceful capitulation at Milan followed, and the cause of United Italy was lost forever. Brilliant as its promise had been at the outset, the Revolution of 1848 terminated as pitifully as did those of 1820 and 1831; and for its disastrous issue the Italians have none to blame but themselves. Misfortunes and defeat had their usual effect in inflaming the rage of parties. The personal influence of the Pope could no longer keep the passions of the citizens in check, and the clubs now governed Rome with absolute sway. The party of Mazzini, bent on trying the experiment of a republic at all hazards, began to show its head after a long period of inefficiency and discouragement, and every day acquired new adherents and stronger influence. One Ministry after another tried in vain to steer the ship of state on an even course, between the opposite perils of the domination of a mob and the rigorous enforcement of the laws. The Pope tried for some months the experiment of a popular administration, under Mamiani, of whom our author says, "He seemed to play the part of a tribune of the people more than of the Pope's minister." Still he was an honest man, opposed to violence, to tumult, and to all excesses, though he paid too much deference to the clubs, which were now as turbulent and mischievous as their Parisian prototypes. The acts of his Ministry were not numerous, Farini says, for the character of the times would not admit of dispassionate inquiries and solid reforms. In truth, the energies of Government were exhausted in a vain attempt to keep the peace in the city, which was now a constant scene of turbulence and disorder. Bologna also, having successfully repelled an unauthorized attack made upon it by the Austrians under Welden, had become a prey to the wildest confusion, owing to the continuance there of the irregular bands of armed men who had contributed to its defence. At the urgent request of the Bolognese Deputies, the Ministry determined to send thither one of their own number to aid in restoring order; and Farini was deputed for this purpose. The following is a portion of his account of what he saw there and what he accomplished: "In the streets and open places of the city, for two days, the brigands had been slaughtering every man his enemy among the Government officers, some of them indeed disreputable and sorry fellows, others respectable. They killed with musket-shot, and if the fallen gave signs of life they reloaded their arms in the sight of the people and the soldiers and fired them afresh, or else put an end to their victims with their knives. They hunted men down like wild beasts, entered their houses, and dragged them forth to slaughter. One Bianchi, an inspector of police, was lying in bed, reduced to agony by consumption; they came in, set upon him and cut his throat in the presence of his wife and children; the corpse, a frightful spectacle, remained in the public streets. I saw it, saw death dealt about, and the abominable chase. Cardinal Amat, who had given notice of his arrival, came the day after; and the armed commons escorted him to the palace at the very time when the villains were perpetrating their murders. "There were no longer any judges, or any officers of the police; those who had escaped death either had fled or had hidden themselves; the Civic Guard was disarmed, the citizens killed, the few soldiers of the line either mixed with the insurgents or were wholly without spirit; the carbineers and dragoons in hesitation, the volunteer legions and free corps a support to the rioters, not to the authority of Government. We sent to Rome for leave to declare Bologna in a state of siege; but the answer was that the Ministry having taken the opinion of the Council of State considered that order might be restored without recourse to this extreme measure. "All our best exertions were made to draw to the side of Government the carbineers and dragoons, as also Bellezzi and the honest leaders of the people, but with little success. It was reported that Bellezzi himself had given leave to kill those whom they called the spies; one Masina came before us, proposing by way of compromise to banish those whose lives were threatened; armed men were in the very palace of government, and we ourselves at their mercy. Accident, however, effected at a stroke what we could have done only slowly and with difficulty. An assassin attempted the life of a carbineer; his companions, inflamed with anger, pursued him and caught him in a church. They then volunteered their most resolute efforts at repression. They were ordered to sally forth, arrest and disarm the ruffians. The dragoons seconded them; young Pepoli, commandant of the Civic Guard, mustered a few companies; Bianchetti and the respected citizens of the Committee of Public Safety drew close around us, and we hurried in the Swiss from Forli. The population began to regain its courage and to applaud the carbineers as they arrested the assassins; the Swiss entered amid cheers." The disturbances at Bologna were quelled; but the bonds of law and order throughout the Papal States were now loosened, and it became evident that a more determined minister must be placed at the helm, or the experiment of the existing form of government must be abandoned in despair. A republic or a return to the old principles of despotism would then be inevitable. In this emergency the eyes of the Pope and of all prudent persons at Rome were turned to Rossi, who, since the fall of Louis Philippe's Government, from which he had been ambassador to the Roman States, had resided there as a private citizen, taking no active share in politics, but often consulted by both parties, owing to his high reputation for sagacity and firmness. Exiled on account of his liberal opinions by Gregory, he had laid the foundation of his fame at Paris, where he successively became professor, peer, and ambassador, and was highly esteemed by all parties as a writer and a statesman. Once before, Pius had solicited him to form a ministry; but he had declined, because conscious that the affections of the populace were not with him, and he judged that the minds even of the better portion of the citizens were not yet prepared for a resolute attempt to carry on a constitutional government by firm measures. He suggested to the Pope that he was probably odious to the court on account of his previous employments and his writings; that some would perhaps look very coldly on a minister who had married a Protestant wife; and that the French Republic might be displeased if he should hold a high post at Rome. But in the middle of September the solicitations of the Pope and of many respectable persons in the State became so urgent that Rossi consented to serve; the opinion was universal that no other person possessed the requisite abilities, character, and experience to carry on the Government at this perilous crisis; and that, if he failed, all indeed was lost. He selected for his colleagues men of liberal politics, but temperate in their opinions. He announced his intention to carry into effect the Fundamental Statute, in all its parts, according to constitutional usage; to counteract and repress both parties opposed to that instrument; to abolish exemptions, restore the finances, and reorganize the army; to conclude a league with Piedmont and Tuscany, even if it should be impossible with Naples; and to fix the contingent of troops which the Pope was to supply, so that he need not in any way mingle in the war. The turbulent and the presumptuous, "the magistrates accustomed to fatten upon abuses, the Sanfedists who made a livelihood of disorder, and the clergy, greedy of gold and honors, could ill bear that Pellegrino Rossi should have the authority of a minister." But those who knew the real condition of affairs, and that, unless the finances were improved and public discipline and order restored, all would go to wreck, counted it great gain that he should take charge of the debilitated State. "The dissatisfied were more numerous and noisy in the capital; the contented stronger in the Provinces, especially at Bologna, where an educated community wished for a liberal system, with a government strong in the strength of the law; where the recent terrible events had filled every mind with horror; and where Rossi, the proscribed of 1815, was dear to memory, and rooted in public esteem." The Roman Legislature was to meet again in the middle of November, so that the new minister was chiefly occupied with maturing the measures which were to be laid before it for adoption. His public acts therefore were few; but they were enough to show that new wisdom and vigor directed the course of affairs. He obtained the Pope's consent that the clergy should make a new contribution of two millions of crowns to the State, on the strength of which he obtained a new loan and punctually paid the interest on the public debt. He invited General Zucchi home from Switzerland to take the command of the army, which rapidly improved in discipline under his energetic guidance. He distributed medals to those who had been wounded and to the families of the slain at Vicenza. He established two lines of telegraph, one to Ferrara by the way of Bologna, and another to Civita Vecchia. The negotiations with Sardinia and Tuscany for an Italian league were advanced nearly to completion. Chairs of political economy and commercial law were founded in the universities at Rome and Bologna. Toward the close of October the mob rose in Rome, on occasion of a squabble between a Jew and a Catholic, and threatened to sack the Ghetto and maltreat its inhabitants. Rossi hurried the Civic Guard and the carbineers to the spot, allayed the tumult, arrested and imprisoned some of its ringleaders, and published an energetic proclamation to warn the turbulent that the laws would be enforced. "All these proceedings excited the anger of Rossi's enemies, the journalists, the captains of the people, and the Roman clubs." There was no opprobrium that was not heaped upon him, no charge that was not levelled at the Government. But these declamations seemed to have little effect on the body of the people. On the morning of November 15th, when the Legislature was to commence its session, though knots of persons were seen talking in the streets with excited countenances, there was no outbreak or popular tumult. Rossi had received many anonymous letters in which his life was threatened, but he scorned to take any notice of them. This morning one came which directly affirmed that he would be assassinated in the course of the day; and he threw it into the fire. The regulation of the police, now that the day of the session had arrived, belonged to the President of the Council of Deputies; and Rossi, punctilious in the observance of the constitution, refused to give them any orders. Several of his friends came and remonstrated with him against such an exposure of his life. "To all this he answered that he had taken the measures which he thought suitable for keeping the seditious in order, and that he could not, on account of risk that he might personally run, forego repairing to the Council according to his duty; that perhaps these were idle menaces; but if anyone thirsted for his blood, he would have the means of shedding it elsewhere on some other day, even if, on that day, he should lose his opportunity. He would therefore go." He was elated by the confidence which the Pope had in him, and expected both trust and aid from the Parliament, to which he was so soon to explain his ideas and intentions. "When the ordinary hour of the parliamentary sitting, which was about noon, arrived, the people began to gather in the square of the Cancellaria, and by degrees in the courtyard and then in the public galleries of the hall. Soon these were all full. A battalion of the Civic Guard was drawn up in the square; in the court and hall there was no guard greater than ordinary. There were, however, not a few individuals, armed with their daggers, in the dress of the volunteers returned from Vicenza, and wearing the medals with which the municipality of Rome had decorated them. They stood together and formed a line from the gate up to the staircase of the palace. Sullen visages were to be seen and ferocious imprecations heard among them. During the time when the Deputies were slowly assembling, and business could not commence because there was not yet a quorum present, a cry for help suddenly proceeded from the extremity of the public gallery, on which everyone turned thither a curious eye; but nothing more was heard or seen, and those who went to get some explanation of the circumstances returned without success. "In the mean time Rossi's carriage entered the court of the palace. He sat on the right, and Righetti, Deputy Minister of Finance, on the left. A howl was raised in the court and yard, which echoed even into the hall of the Council. Rossi got out first, and moved briskly, as was his habit in walking, across the short space which leads from the centre of the court to the staircase on the left hand. Righetti, who descended after him, remained behind, because the persons were in the way who caused the outcry, and who, brandishing their cutlasses, had surrounded Rossi and were loading him with opprobrium. At this moment there was seen amid the throng the flash of a poniard, and then Rossi losing his feet and sinking to the ground. Alas! he was spouting blood from a broad gash in the neck. He was raised by Righetti, but could hardly hold himself up, and did not articulate a syllable; his eyes grew clouded, and his blood spurted forth in a copious jet. Some of those, whom I named as clad in military uniform, were above upon the stairs; they came down, and formed a ring about the unhappy man; and when they saw him shedding blood and half lifeless, they all turned and rejoined their companions. He was borne, amid his death-struggle, into the apartments of Cardinal Gazzoli, at the head of the stairs on the left side; and there, after a few moments, he breathed his last. "In leaving the palace of the Cancellaria, one met some faces gleaming with a hellish joy, others pallid with alarm; many townspeople standing as if petrified; agitators, running this way and that, carbineers the same; one kind of men might be heard muttering imprecations on the assassin, but the generality faltered in broken and doubtful accents; some, horrible to relate, cursed the murdered man. Yes, I have still before my eyes the livid countenance of one who, as he saw me, shouted, 'So fare the betrayers of the people!' But the city was in the depths of gloom, as under the hand of calamity and the scourge of God; and wherever there were respectable persons, though of liberal and Italian principles, they were horror-struck, and called for the resolute exertions of the authorities." When the terrible news came to the Pope, he was struck with horror and dismay, but yet strove to rally the other members of the Government around him and preserve the State from anarchy. But his efforts were miserably seconded; one person after another declined taking office or continuing in it; and even when the presidents of the two Councils were summoned, they had little advice to give. On the morrow the tidings came that a mob was on its way toward the Quirinal, some of the carbineers having fraternized with them, to enforce the appointment of a democratic ministry, and a declaration in favor of a constituent assembly for all Italy. Only a few Swiss, the ordinary guard of honor, were on duty; but they shut the gates of the palace, and nobly declared that their own bodies should be piled up behind them before the rioters should enter. Galletti, the former minister of police, acted as spokesman of the mob, and when admitted to an audience he stated their demands. The Pope indignantly declared that he would not yield to violence, but must deliberate in freedom. This answer only inspired the insurgents with fresh fury, so that they pressed forward to the gates, set one of them on fire, and, mounting upon the roofs of the neighboring houses, opened a fire upon the walls and windows of the Quirinal. The few Swiss fired in return; and then the cry ran through the city that the Pope's guards were butchering the people, and already there were many slain. Within the palace many advised Pius to yield, a few still spoke of resistance, and the foreign ministers, who were collected there, had no scheme to offer. "The scuffle continues; the worthy prelate, Monsignor Palma, falls dead by the window of his own apartment; balls reach the ante-chamber of the Pope." At last Pius turned to the diplomatic body who stood around him, and said: "There is no further hope in resistance. Already a prelate is slain in my very palace, shots are aimed at it, artillery levelled. To avoid fruitless bloodshed and increased enormities, we give way; but it is, as you see, only to force. Therefore we protest; let the courts, let your governments, know it. We give way to violence alone, and all we concede is null and void." Galletti was then asked to propose his list of ministers, from which the Pope indignantly struck out the name of the Neapolitan Salicetti, but admitted without a word the names of Sterbini, Lunati, and Galletti. Their appointment was signed on the spot, and the news being told to the insurgents "they fired muskets in token of joy, and went off with hymns for Italy and cheers for the Italian Constituent Assembly and the democratic Ministry." The next day the club desired that the Swiss should be deprived of their arms and dismissed from the Quirinal; the Pope complied. The club then asked that Galletti should be named general of the carbineers; and he was appointed. "Such was the poltroonery or such the depravity of consciences that no journal would or dared denounce the murder. But why do I speak of denouncing? The murder was honored with illuminations and festivities in numerous cities, and not in these States only, but beyond them, especially at Leghorn." The Councils met on the 18th and 20th, but not a word was said of the murder, and even a proposition for giving assurance to the Pope "of the devotion and unalterable affection of the Deputies" was voted down. Three of the Bolognese Deputies and a few others then indignantly resigned their seats, and assigned their reasons for this step in addresses to their constituents. Early on the night of the 25th the Pope secretly left the Quirinal, entered a carriage prepared for him by the wife of the Bavarian ambassador, and went into exile from that city which, within two years and a half, had worshipped, scorned, and assailed him. (1848) THE REVOLUTION OF FEBRUARY IN FRANCE, François P.G. Guizot and Mme. Guizot de Witt This outbreak marked one of the many transitions in French history, leading to the establishment of the short-lived Second Republic, so soon to be followed by the _coup d'état_ of Louis Napoleon and the setting up of the Second Empire. When France passed from the rule of the Bourbons, represented by Charles X, to that of the Orleanists, in the hands of Louis Philippe, the "Citizen King" (July, 1830), great hopes were entertained by the constitutional party that this renewal of the monarchy through the "July Revolution" would result in permanent benefits. At first the new King enjoyed great popularity. In some respects his government, compared with that of Charles X, was liberal, and one of its early acts was an extension of the suffrage by decreasing the amount of the property qualification for voters. The demand for still further enlargement of popular rights became emphatic. The people were divided mainly into three parties, and the difficulties confronting the King were formidable. The Conservatives, who had placed him in power, wished to prevent further changes in the State; the Moderates asked for new reforms, especially for a still more extended suffrage; the Radical party desired a republic. The attitude of the Radicals caused Louis Philippe to halt in his progressive policy. More than once his life was attempted, and in consequence of such acts the liberty of the press and other privileges were restricted. The greater part of the French people wished to have the King intervene in behalf of Poland--which at that period was in a state of almost chronic insurrection--as he had aided the Belgians against Holland. In her Eastern policy France was defeated by the Quadruple Alliance, formed by England, Prussia, Austria, and Russia, and in consequence of this failure the King's prestige suffered. But the question of extending the suffrage was kept always before the people, and when the King refused to go further with that reform its advocates urged their demands more strongly than ever. Lamartine founded a journal in which he agitated for universal suffrage, and in this agitation many other newspapers joined. Even Thiers, the leading statesman of the Moderate party, asked for suffrage reform. Failing to control the Legislative Assembly, the reformers at last appealed to the people. The King, relying on his majority in the Assembly, was undisturbed by the popular ferment. Guizot, whose account of the "February Revolution" is here given, was the chief minister of Louis Philippe; and however partisan the author's narrative may seem, it rests upon an intimate knowledge of the events recorded. I come with profound repugnance and sorrow to those painful days by the faults and misfortunes of which France was launched into dangerous enterprises, such that men of the greatest foresight could not discern their end. Our country has paid very dearly for the fatal error which overthrew the throne of the King who had for eighteen years governed it with a wisdom, prudence, and moderation acknowledged even by his enemies when attacking him. "The Cabinet of October 29, 1847, and its political friends, had a clearly defined idea and purpose. They aspired to bring to a close the French era of revolutions by establishing the free government which France had in 1789 promised herself as the consequence and political guarantee of the social revolution which she was completing." This policy, formerly the object of their youthful hopes, had become theirs, whether in power or in the opposition. "It was in fact both liberal and antirevolutionary--antirevolutionary both in home and foreign affairs, since it wished to maintain the peace of Europe abroad, and the constitutional monarchy at home; liberal, since it fully accepted and respected the essential conditions of free government; the decisive intervention of the country in its affairs, with a constant and well-sustained discussion, in public as well as in the Chambers, of the ideas and acts of the Government. In fact, this twofold object was attained from 1830 to 1848. "Abroad, peace was maintained without any loss to the influence or reputation of France in Europe. At home, from 1830 to 1848, political liberty was great and powerful; from 1840 to 1848, in particular, it was displayed without any new legal limit being imposed. It was this policy that the opposition--all the oppositions, monarchical and dynastic as well as republican--blindly or knowingly attacked, and tried to change. It was to change it that they demanded electoral and parliamentary reforms. In principle, the Government had no absolute or permanent objections whatever to such reforms; the extension of the right of suffrage, and the incompatibility of certain functions with the office of Deputy, might and must be the natural and legitimate consequences of the upward movement of society and political liberty. They did not think the reforms necessary or well-timed, and were therefore justified in delaying them as much as possible, provided they should one day allow to be accomplished by others what they thought themselves still strong enough to refuse." "We have too much and too long maintained a good policy," said Guizot afterward. A frequent and formidable sign that men's minds are secretly agitated is the anxiety by which they are seized with reference to intrigues and vices which they suppose around them. It would be a serious error to see always a symptom of moral improvement in the clamors against electoral or parliamentary corruption. Immediately after the ministerial success in the general elections of 1846, this precursory indication of storms appeared on the horizon. Guizot raised the question to its proper point of view. "Leave to countries which are not free," said he, "leave to absolute governments, that explanation of great results by small, feeble, or dishonorable human acts. In free countries, when great results are produced it is from great causes that they spring. A great fact has been shown in the elections just completed; the country has given its adhesion, its earnest and free adhesion, to the policy presented before it. Do not attribute this fact to several pretended electoral manoeuvres. You have no right to come to explain, or qualify by wretched suppositions, a grand idea of the country thus grandly and freely manifested." The rumors of electoral corruptions were soon followed by rumors of parliamentary corruptions; but the majority of the Chamber declared themselves "content" with the ministerial explanations. The "Contents" figured in the opposition attacks by the side of the "Pritchardists." Several improper abuses of long standing existed in certain branches of the Administration; some posts in the Treasury had been the object of pecuniary transactions between those who held the posts and were resigning, and the candidates who presented themselves to replace them. A bill proposed on January 20, 1848, by Hébert, who had become keeper of the seals, formally forbade any such transaction, under assigned penalties. Several months previously (June, 1847) M. Teste, formerly Minister of Public Works, and then president of the Cour de Cassation, was seriously compromised in the scandalous trial of General Cubières and Pellapra. Convicted of having received a large sum of money in connection with the mining concession, he was brought before the Peers, and being led from question to question and from discussion to discussion, soon made a confession of his crime. He, as well as his accomplices, underwent the just penalty. "It was, on the part of the Cabinet, one of those acts the merit of which is only perceived afterward, and in which the Government bears the weight of the evil at the moment when it is trying most sincerely and courageously to repress it. There were several deplorable incidents--the shocking murder of the Duchess of Praslin, some scandalous trials and violent deaths following hard one upon another, and aggravating the momentary depression and the excited state of the popular imagination. The air seemed infected with moral disorder and unlooked-for misfortunes, coming to join in party attacks and the false accusations which the Cabinet were subjected to. It was one of those unhealthy hurricanes often met in the lives of governments." It was certainly culpable on the part of the opposition to try to take advantage of this disturbed state of men's minds to gain the end they were pursuing. Seven times was parliamentary reform, and three times was electoral reform, refused by the Chambers, from February 20, 1841, to April 8, 1847; the question being then displaced, it changed its ground. The opposition made an appeal to popular passion; and parliamentary discussions were succeeded by the banquets. From the close of the session of 1847 to the opening of that of 1848 they kept France in a state of constant fever--an artificial and deceptive fever in this sense, that it was not the natural and spontaneous result of the actual wishes and wants of the country; but true and serious in this sense, that the political parties who took the initiative in it found among some of the middle classes and the lower orders a prompt and keen adhesion to their proposals. The first banquet took place in Paris at the Château-Rouge Hôtel on July 9, 1847. Garnier-Pagès has himself told how the Royalist opposition and the Republican opposition concluded their alliance for that purpose. On leaving the house of Odilon Barrot, the Radical members of the meeting walked together for some time. On reaching that part of the Boulevard opposite the Foreign Office, at the moment they were about to separate, Pagnerre said: "Well, really, I did not expect for our proposals so speedy and complete success. Do those gentlemen see what that may lead to? For my part, I confess I do not see it clearly; but it is not for us Radicals to be alarmed about it." "You see that tree," replied Garnier-Pagès; "engrave on its bark a mark in memory of this day, for what we have just decided upon is a revolution." Garnier-Pagès did not foresee that the Republic of 1848, as well as the monarchy of 1830, should in its turn speedily perish in that revolution, so long big with so many storms. For six months banquets were renewed in most of the departments--at Colmar, Strasburg, St. Quentin, Lille, Avesnes, Cosne, Châlons, Mâcon, Lyons, Montpellier, Rouen, etc. In many parts there was a great display of feelings and intentions most hostile to royalty and the dynasty. On several occasions--at Lille, for example--the keenest members of the parliamentary opposition, Odilon Barrot and his friends, withdrew, soon after taking their places at table, because the others absolutely refused to dissemble their hostility to the Crown and the King. At other banquets, notably at Dijon, the ideas and passions of 1793 unblushingly reappeared. They defended Robespierre and the Reign of Terror. The "Red Republic" openly flaunted its colors and hopes. The attack upon monarchy and the dynasty ranged itself, it is true, behind the parliamentary opposition, but like Galatea running away: "_Et se cupit ante videri_." It had succeeded well enough in making itself seen. The Government could no longer shut their eyes. They had tolerated the banquets so long as they could believe, or seem to believe, that the parliamentary opposition directed, or at least ruled, the movement. When it became evident that the anarchical impulse was more and more gaining upon the parliamentary opposition, and that the latter was becoming the instrument instead of remaining the master, then only they forbade the banquets. It was their duty. It was also their right, in the opinion of the most competent legal authorities, as well as according to the recent practice of other free governments, in presence of a situation full of certain danger. This right, however, was disputed by the opposition. The Government, pushing the principle of legality to its furthest limit, arranged with several leading men of the opposition for the purpose of enabling the question of right to be brought speedily and methodically before competent tribunals. Just before the opening of the new session, in order to close the campaign, a new and formal banquet was being prepared in Paris, to which all the Deputies and Peers who had taken part in any of the preceding banquets were to be invited. This manifestation was to take place in the Twelfth Arrondissement of Paris. It was therefore agreed between the opposition delegates and those of the ministerial majority that the Deputies invited should go to the place appointed for the meeting and take their places, so as to avoid any disturbance in the streets or the hall, and that on the police commissary declaring that there was an order against it the guests should protest and withdraw, to lay the question before the tribunals. The agreement thus concluded was communicated by Duchâtel to the council, which approved of it. Meanwhile the Chamber met, the session was opened, and from the very first the Government could perceive a wavering in the majority. Even among those who blamed and feared the agitation out-of-doors, several believed in the urgent necessity of a concession to remove all pretext for clamors and intrigues. On the ministers being informed of it Guizot said: "Withdraw the question from the hands of those who now hold it, and let it be brought back to the Chamber. Let the majority take a step in the direction of the concessions indicated; however small it be, I am certain it will be understood, and that you will have a new Cabinet, which will do what you think necessary." It was in the same spirit that the Ministry, during the discussion on the address, rejected an amendment tending to impose upon them immediate engagements with reference to reform. "The maintenance of the unity of the Conservative party," said Guizot, "the maintenance of conservative policy and power, will be the fixed idea and rule of conduct in the Cabinet. They will make sincere efforts to maintain or restore the unity of the Conservative party upon that question, in order that it may be the Conservative party itself in its entirety that undertakes and gives to the country its solution. If such an operation in the midst of the Conservative party is possible, it will take place. If that is not possible--if by the question of reforms the Conservative party cannot succeed in making a common arrangement and maintaining the power of the Conservative policy, the Cabinet will leave to others the sad task of presiding over the disorganization of the Conservative party and the ruin of its policy." The question was not destined to be taken up again by the Chambers, having escaped from the weak hands that aspired to direct it. The courtesy of the Conservative reformers had no result except disquieting the Government, a sort of precursory sign of the tempest. Even the parliamentary opposition found themselves baffled in their prudent efforts. A manifesto published in the _National_ newspaper organized a noisy demonstration in the streets, though forbidden in the banquet-hall, the National Guard being called to arms by the insurrection, and their services arranged beforehand. The convention was clearly violated, and the legal appeal to the tribunals therefore abandoned: the Revolution itself declared it would decide the question. In such a situation, sorrowfully admitted by those who had negotiated the evening before, the Government officially forbade the banquet. The evening papers announced that the Deputies of the opposition had given up the intention of being present, and therefore the proposed manifestation was deprived of all importance. The revolutionary leaders in their turn declared that the banquet would not take place. Disappointment increasing their irritation, the parliamentary opposition, in a momentary resistance, employed the remainder of their strength. On February 22d fifty-two Deputies of the Left laid before the Chamber a bill of impeachment against the Ministry, on account of their home and foreign policy during the whole course of their Administration. "What would you have them do?" said to Guizot an old member of the opposition who had no share whatever in this act. "They have just rendered the banquet abortive by declaring they would not attend it, and felt compelled to do something to compensate for and to some extent redeem that refusal." Weakness has a constraining power difficult to understand, which is not foreseen even by those who give way to it; and of this the history of the Revolution of 1848 offers an eloquent and melancholy example. The King, as well as his ministers, still hoped that the crisis had passed, and that the disorder avoided on the occasion of the banquet should not reappear under any pretext. The display of military forces which had been agreed upon and prepared was ordered to be suspended; instructions to arrest the Republican leaders were issued slowly and in but few instances. Yet a secret agitation was indicated in several parts of the capital; there were numerous crowds; on the morning of the 23rd several _corps-de-garde_ were attacked. As the fermentation increased, the streets were crowded with idle workmen; people collected in knots from curiosity, or stood at their doors. The storm was in the air, evident both to those who dreaded it and those who were preparing to make use of it. Meanwhile the appeal of the revolutionary leaders to the National Guard had been listened to. Many of the Parisian shopkeepers took part in the "reform movement," without well understanding it, and marched under the orders of their dangerous allies. Several detachments of the Seventh, Third, Second, and Tenth Legions appeared in the streets, some in the Faubourg St. Antoine, others marching to the Palais Royal, or the office of the _National_ in the Rue le Peletier, and others in the students' quarter shouting "Long live reform!" in every street. When General Jacqueminot, the Commander-in-Chief of the National Guard, ordered a general muster of the legions, a large number of the guards, respectable and law-abiding men, did not answer to the summons. They had no desire for a revolution or reform forced from the legal powers by insurrection, but they shrunk from entering upon a struggle with soldiers wearing their own uniform and influenced apparently by reasonable motives. They remained in their homes dejected and anxious. The King was as dejected as the Parisian citizens, and still more anxious. For several months he had frequently fallen into very low spirits, which was attributed to his grief at the death of his only sister, Madame Adelaide of Orleans, whose life had been always intimately associated with his, and who had just expired (December, 1847). His most intimate friends urged him to charm away the crisis by changing his Ministry. He still resisted, but every hour less vigorously. The Cabinet was not even informed of his perplexities. "Concessions forced by violence from all the legal powers are not a means of safety," said Duchâtel; "one defeat would quickly bring a second. In the Revolution there was not much time between that of June 20th and August 10th, and to-day things advance more quickly than in those times. Events, like travellers, now go by steam." The truth, however, was now becoming manifest, both in the King's mind as to the tendency of his ideas, and in the eyes of his ministers as to the determination now being formed in the palace. By the very statement of the question it was resolved upon. Guizot and Duchâtel thus expressed it to the King: "It is for your Majesty to decide. The Cabinet is ready either to defend to the last the King and conservative policy which we profess, or to accept without a murmur the King's determination to call other men to power. At present, more than ever, in order to continue the struggle successfully, the Cabinet has need of the King's decided support. As soon as the public should learn, as they inevitably must, that the King hesitates, the Cabinet would lose all moral influence and be unable to accomplish their task." The King seemed still in perplexity, and said he should prefer to abdicate. "You cannot say that, my dear," replied the Queen, who was present at the interview with the Dukes of Nemours and Montpensier; "you belong to France, and not to yourself." "That is true," said the King, as Louis XVI had formerly said to Malesherbes; "I am more unfortunate than the ministers, I cannot resign." The ministers then in King Louis Philippe's Cabinet had not resigned. The King, having made his decision, said, "It is with the keenest regret that I separate myself from you, but necessity and the safety of the monarchy demand this sacrifice. My will gives way; much time will be needed to regain the ground I am about to lose." There were tears in many eyes. The King sent for Molé, and Guizot himself announced to the Chamber of Deputies the change of the Ministry. There was much of astonishment and sorrow in the parliamentary majority, always strongly attached to the leaders they had so long followed in spite of occasional vagaries and good-natured weakness. The imminence of a great danger engrossed their minds, together with the consciousness of a great defeat. The anxiety of the Chambers was reechoed in the Tuileries; and for the last time the ministers assembled there, anxious at that last moment of their power to maintain order, now everywhere threatened. Count Molé was laboriously occupied in the formation of a cabinet. "To think that this resolution was formed in a quarter of an hour!" exclaimed the King when engaged with Jayr in some administrative details. The excitement was great in the palace, but still greater in the streets, being skilfully kept up by several insurrectionist leaders, and spontaneously arising among the reckless portion of the populace, who are easily influenced by revolutionary clamors. Increased by those assembling from curiosity or idleness, the crowds in the squares and boulevards assumed alarming proportions. All at once, opposite the Foreign Office, there was heard, about nine o'clock in the evening, one of those fatal explosions, whether accidental or premeditated, which history often records as the origin of great popular risings. The soldiers, who till then had remained motionless and patient, thought they were attacked, and fired in their turn. Several persons fell, some dead, others wounded, and some were knocked down and trodden under foot. The greatest disorder, caused both by alarm and indignation, broke out in the whole neighborhood. Then was the moment of action for the keen and determined insurgents. A cart which happened to be there was immediately loaded with the corpses and drawn through the streets, from one newspaper office to another, in the most populous quarters, with shouts of "Vengeance! To arms! Down with Guizot! The head of Guizot!" By daybreak Paris was covered with barricades. Molé having failed in his efforts to form a Cabinet, the King sent for Thiers. For the last time he claimed the devotion of his old ministers. "I must have immediately a military chief--an experienced chief," he said. "I have sent for Bugeaud, but I wish M. Thiers to find him appointed. Will you grant me this further service?" Duchâtel, and General Trézel, on the previous evening still Minister of War, signed without hesitation Marshal Bugeaud's appointment as Commander-in-Chief of the National Guard and the Army. It was three o'clock in the morning. "It is somewhat late to set to work," said the Marshal; "but I have never been beaten, and shall not make a beginning to-morrow. Let me act, and fire the cannon; there will be some bloodshed, but to-morrow evening the strength will be on the side of law, and the factious will have had their account settled." The day had not yet dawned when the Marshal was reviewing his forces. He found them demoralized, having for sixty hours remained motionless before the mob, with their feet in the mud, and their knapsacks on their backs, allowing the rioters to attack the Municipal Guard, burn the sentry-boxes, cut down the trees, break the street-lamps, and harangue the soldiers. They were moreover badly supplied with provisions and ammunition. The energetic language of their new commander, and the precise orders which he gave for the march of the columns, inspired the soldiers with fresh life and courage. The movements indicated had already begun to be executed, and the troops were taking position; but the crowds again filled the streets, and at several points the soldiers were prevented from marching. One of the generals at the head of a column sent to tell Bugeaud that he was face to face with an enormous body of men, badly armed, who made no attack upon him, but only shouted, "Long live reform! Long live the army! Down with Guizot!" "Order them to disperse," replied the Marshal; "if they do not obey, use force, and act with resolution." There was no fighting on either side. The staff were besieged by the entreaties of a crowd of respectable men, who in terror and consternation conjured Bugeaud to withdraw the troops because they excited the anger of the populace, and leave to the National Guard the duty of appeasing the insurrection. The danger of such counsel was obvious, and the Marshal paid no attention to it, till Thiers and Odilon Barrot, who had just accepted office, came to the staff with the same advice, and it therefore became an order. The Marshal at first refused the ministers as he had done the citizens, and then the same order was sent by the King. "I must have a government," the Marshal had recently said; and, as he was now without the government, which thus relaxed the resistance agreed upon, he in his turn gave way. His instructions for retreat were thus given to his officers: "By order of the King and ministers, you will fall back upon the Tuileries. Make your retreat with an imposing attitude, and if you are attacked, turn round, take the offensive, and act according to my instructions given this morning." Meanwhile the formation of the Ministry was posted up everywhere. A mixed crowd carried Odilon Barrot in triumph to the Home Office, which Guizot and Duchâtel had just left. Those round him shouted, "Long live the father of the people!" but most of the notices posted up were torn. At the moment when the new ministers were about to leave Bugeaud's staff on horseback in order to pass through the city, Horace Vernet, the artist, arrived out of breath. "Don't let M. Thiers go," said he to the Marshal. "I have just passed through the mob, and they are so furious against him that I am certain they would cut him in pieces!" Odilon Barrot presented himself alone to the crowd, but was powerless to calm the fury he had assisted in unchaining. "Thiers is no longer possible, and I am scarcely so," said he on his return to the staff. The King on one occasion showed himself in the court of the Tuileries, when reviewing several battalions of the National Guard. There were some shouts of "Long live the King!" but the most numerous were "Long live reform! Down with Guizot!" "You have the reform; and M. Guizot is no longer a minister!" said the King; and on the shouts being again repeated, he returned to the palace. The palace also was thronged with a confused crowd, animated by various feelings and agitated by evident fears or secret hopes. Some urged the King to abdicate in favor of the Comte de Paris; others vigorously opposed such a relinquishment of power in presence of the insurrection. The great mind of Queen Marie-Amélie was displayed in all the simplicity of its heroism. "Mount on horseback, sire," said she, "and I shall give you my blessing." She had recently urged the King to change his Cabinet; a very kind message, intrusted for Guizot to one of his most intimate friends, at the same time proved her regret. The King sat at his writing-table, agitated and perplexed. He had begun to write his abdication, when Marshal Bugeaud entered, having just learned what was taking place in the Tuileries, and excited by the sound of some shooting which had already begun. "It is too late, sire," said he; "your abdication would complete the demoralization of the troops. Your Majesty can hear the shooting. There is nothing left but to fight." The Queen seconded this advice, and Piscatory and several others were of the same opinion. The King rose without finishing his writing, and then other voices were raised to insist upon the King's promise. He sat down again, wrote and signed his abdication. By this time the troops had received orders to fall back, and Marshal Gérard took the place of Bugeaud as commandant-general. The columns were marched toward the barracks, and there was no detachment around the Palais-Bourbon, where the same disorder reigned, and the same efforts were made in vain. The Duchesse d'Orléans presented herself before the Chamber of Deputies as soon as the abdication of the King was known. The Duc de Nemours accompanied her, leading the Comte de Paris by the hand; and the Duc de Chartres, who was weak and ill, was wrapped up in a mantle and leaned on Ary Scheffer's arm. Before joining the Princess at the gate of the Chamber the Duc de Nemours had, with his brother the Duc de Montpensier, seen the King, their father, take his melancholy departure, to escape the insurrection, against which he could not make up his mind to use force. The Duchesse d'Orléans already knew that depriving the King of the crown was not giving it to her son. Her natural courage, however, and her maternal affection induced her to make every effort to secure the throne for the prince of nine years whom the nation had already intrusted to her keeping. She had seen the Tuileries invaded before leaving that hall where her husband's portrait by Ingres seemed to preside over her son's destinies. "It is here one ought to die," she said, when Dupin and Grammont came to conduct her to the Chamber. Odilon Barret had gone to bring her, and succeeded in finding her in the Palais-Bourbon. The crowd showed sympathy for her, and made room respectfully, though she and her small retinue had difficulty in getting within the palace, every passage being crowded. The Duchess stood near the tribune holding her two boys close to her. After Dupin announced the King's abdication, Barrot, after presenting the legal instrument, asked the Chamber to proclaim at once the young King and the regency of Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans. Shouts of protest were heard on several benches. "It is too late!" exclaimed Lamartine, as he went to the tribune, eager to urge this difficulty, reject the regency, and demand a provisional government so that the bloodshed might be stopped. Some others were already mentioning the word "Republic." The crowd were gradually pouring into the Chamber from the corriders, and Sauzet, the President, requested strangers to withdraw, and made a special appeal to the Duchess herself. "Sir, this is a royal sitting!" she replied; and when her friends urged her, "If I leave this Chamber, my son will no more return to it." A few minutes before her arrival, Thiers had entered the Chamber in the greatest agitation. "The tide is rising, rising, rising!" he said to those who crowded round him, and then disappeared. Several voices were heard together in confusion; among the speakers were La Rochejacquelein, Ledru-Rollin, Marie, and Berryer. The Duchess had been conducted to a gallery, on account of the threats of the insurgent battalions, who burst open the doors after General Gourgaud had in vain tried to stop them. Armand Marrast, one of the editors of the _National_, after looking at the invaders, said: "These are the sham public; I shall call the real!" A few minutes afterward shots were heard in the court of the palace; the posts in the hands of the National Guard opened before the triumphant mob, who, after sacking the Tuileries, hurried up against the expiring remnants of the monarchy. The Duchesse d'Orléans had already twice offered to speak, but her voice was drowned in the tumult. The newcomers, stained with blood and blackened with gunpowder, with dishevelled hair and bare arms, climbed on the benches, stairs, and galleries; and in every part were shouts of "Down with the regency! Long live the Republic! Turn out the 'Contents'!" Sauzet put on his hat, but a workman knocked it off, and then the President disappeared. Several of the Deputies rushed to the gallery, where the Duchess was still exposed to the looks and threats of the insurgents. "There is nothing more to be done here, madam," they urged: "we must go to the President's house, to form a new chamber." She took the arm of Jules de Lasteyrie; and on her sons being separated from her in the narrow passages, she showed the greatest anxiety, crying, "My boys! my boys!" At one time the Comte de Paris was seized by a workman in a blouse; but one of the National Guard took him out of his hands, and the child was passed from one to another till he rejoined his mother. No one knew what had become of the Duc de Chartres; but he was brought to the Invalides, where the Princess went for refuge; and in the evening, after nightfall, the mother and sons withdrew from Paris, and soon after from France. "To-morrow, or ten years hence," said the Duchesse d'Orléans as she left the Invalides, "a word, a sign will bring me back." Afterward in exile she frequently said, "When the thought crosses my mind that I may never again see France, I feel my heart breaking." Wanderers and fugitives across their kingdom, after kneeling for the last time beside the tomb of their children at Dreux, and asking the hospitality of some friends who were still faithful, and without a single attempt to recover the crown they had lost, King Louis Philippe and Queen Marie-Amélie at last reached the seacoast, and set sail toward England, that safe and well-known refuge of unfortunate princes. Thunderstruck like them, and at their wits' end, the most faithful of their servants and partisans waited for some sign authorizing them to protest against the unparalleled surprise to which France had been subjected. The fugitive King made no protest. His sons quietly followed him into exile. Those who were serving France abroad learned at the same time the news of their fall and the rise of a new power, and thought it their duty to bow to the national will, resolving that not a single drop of French blood should be shed in their cause. (1848) REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENTS IN GERMANY, C. Edmund Maurice Popular demonstrations in various parts of Germany in the great revolutionary year 1848 were no doubt partly due to the outbreaks in France and elsewhere, but it is also apparent that discontent at home had been long turning the people toward revolt. The agitation that began in March--the month following the "February Revolution" and the declaration of a republic in France--was the work of a patriotic party that cherished not only aspirations for extending popular rights in the several States, but also a prophetic desire for German unity. The Congress of Vienna (1815) attempted to adjust the balance of power in Europe. Some sort of union for the States was imperatively required by the general situation, but there was fear of making Germany too strong. The Congress created the German Confederation, constituted by a union of independent States, under the hegemony or political headship of Austria. This confederation (_bund_) lacked strength in the Central Government, and although it reduced the number of States from more than three hundred to thirty-nine, it still perpetuated elements of unwieldiness and discord. At the head of the Austrian Government, as chief minister of the Emperor Ferdinand I, was Metternich, who for many years had been the great reactionary leader of Europe. He was compelled now to face conditions such as, in his long and varied career of statecraft and diplomacy, he never had confronted. Ferdinand himself, always a weak ruler, succumbed to the revolution provoked by his minister, whose downfall was followed by the Emperor's abdication (December 2, 1848) in favor of his nephew, Francis Joseph, the present ruler of Austria. The most interesting of the German struggles of 1848 was that in Saxony. Robert Blum [Footnote: Blum, born at Cologne in 1807, was a writer and an agitator, leader of the Liberal party in Saxony. He was executed in November, 1848.--ED.] was present at a ball in Leipsic when the news arrived of the French revolution. He at once hastened to consult his friends; and they agreed to act through the Town Council of Leipsic, and sketched out the demands that they desired should be laid before the King. These were: "A reorganization of the constitution of the German Bund in the spirit and in accordance with the needs of the times, for which the way is to be prepared by the unfettering of the press, and the summoning of representatives of all German peoples to the Assembly of the Bund." The Town Council adopted this address on March 1st, and sent a deputation with it to Dresden; and, on the 3d, the people gathered to meet the deputation on its return. The following is the account given by the son of Robert Blum: "By anonymous placards on the wall the population of Leipsic was summoned on the evening of March 3d to meet at the railway station the deputation returning from Dresden. Since the space was too narrow in this place, the innumerable mass marched to the market-place, which, as well as the neighboring streets, they completely filled. In perfect silence the thousands awaited here the arrival of the deputation, which, at last, toward nine o'clock, arrived and was greeted with unceasing applause. Town Councillor Seeburg spoke first of the deep emotion of the King; after him spoke Biedermann. But the crowd uproariously demanded Robert Blum. "At last Blum appeared on the balcony of the Town Council House. His voice alone controlled the whole market-place, and was even heard in the neighboring streets. He too sought, by trying to quiet them, to turn them away from the subject of the address and of the King's answer. But the people broke uproariously into his speech with the demand, 'The answer! The answer!' It could no longer be concealed that the petitions of the town had received harsh rejection. Then came a loud and passionate murmur. The masses had firmly hoped that the deputation would bring with them from Dresden the news of the dismissal of the hated ministers. "But Blum continued his speech, and they renewed their attention to him. 'In constitutional countries,' said he, 'it is not the King, but the ministers who are responsible. They, too, bear the responsibility of the rejection of the Leipsic proposals. The people must press for their removal.' He added that he would bring forward in the next meeting of the town representatives the proposal that the King should dismiss the Ministry, 'which does not possess the confidence of the people.' Amid shouts of exultation and applause, the appeased assembly dispersed." Blum was as successful with his colleagues as with the crowd; and the Town Council now demanded from the King the dismissal of his ministers, the meeting of the Assembly, and freedom of the press. The King tried to resist the last of these three proposals, pleading his duty to the Bund. But even the Bundestag had felt the spirit of the times, and on March 1st had passed a resolution giving leave to every government to abolish the censorship of the press. The King seemed to yield, and promised to fulfil all that was wished; but the reactionary party in Dresden had become alarmed at the action of the men of Leipsic; and so, on March 11th, when the men of Leipsic supposed that all was granted, General von Carlowitz entered their city at the head of a strong force, and demanded that the Town Council should abstain from exciting speeches; that the Elocution Union should give up all political discussion; that the processions of people should cease; and above all, that the march from Leipsic to Dresden, which was believed to be then intended, should be given up. These demands were met by Blum with an indignant protest. "Five men," said he, "who manage the army cannot understand that, though their bullets may kill men, they cannot make a single hole in the idea that rules the world." The town councillors of Leipsic were equally firm. Carlowitz abandoned his attempt as hopeless; and on March 13th the King summoned a Liberal Ministry which abolished press censorship, granted publicity of legal proceedings, trial by jury, and a wider basis for the Saxon Parliament, and promised to assist in the reform of the Bund. In the mean time the success of the French revolution had awakened new hopes in Vienna. Soon after the arrival of the news, a placard appeared on one of the city gates bearing the words: "In a month Prince Metternich will be overthrown! Long live Constitutional Austria!" Metternich himself was greatly alarmed, and began to listen to proposals for extending the power of the Lower Austrian Estates. Yet he still hoped by talking over and discussing these matters to delay the execution of reforms till a more favorable turn in affairs should render them either harmless or unnecessary. But great as was the alarm caused by the South German risings, and great as were the hopes which they kindled in the Viennese, the word that was to give definiteness and importance to the impulses that were stirring in Vienna could not come from Bavaria or Saxony. Much as they might wish to connect themselves with a German movement, the Viennese could not get rid of the fact that they were, for the present, bound up with a different political system. Nor was it wholly clear that the German movement was as yet completely successful. The King of Prussia seemed to be meditating a reactionary policy and had even threatened to despatch troops to put down the Saxon Liberals; and the King of Hanover also was disposed to resist the movement for a German Parliament. It was from a country more closely bound up with the Viennese Government, and yet enjoying traditions of more deeply rooted liberty, that the utterance was to come which was eventually to rouse the Viennese to action. The readiness of the nobles to accept the purely verbal concession offered by Metternich in the matter of the "Administrators" had shown Kossuth [Footnote: Louis Kossuth, the famous leader of the Hungarian insurrection of 1848, was at this time about forty-six years of age. The sovereignty of Hungary had been in the hands of the Hapsburgs since 1687.--ED.] that there could be no further peace. But he still knew how and when to strike the blow; and it was not by armed insurrection so much as by the declaration of a policy that he shook the rule of Metternich. On March 3d a Conservative member of the Presburg Assembly brought forward a motion for inquiry into the Austrian bank-notes. Kossuth answered that the confusion in the affairs of Austrian commerce produced an evil effect on Hungarian finances; and he showed the need of an independent Finance Ministry for Hungary. Then he went on to point out that this same confusion extended to other parts of the monarchy. "The actual cause of the breaking up of peace in the monarchy, and of all the evils which may possibly follow from it, lies in the system of government." He admitted that it was hard for those who had been brought up under this system to consent to its destruction. "But," he went on, "the people lasts forever, and we wish also that the country of the people should last forever. Forever too should last the splendor of that dynasty whose representatives we reckon as our rulers. In a few days the men of the past will descend into their graves; but for that scion of the House of Hapsburg who excites such great hopes, for the Archduke Francis Joseph, who at his first coming forward earned the love of the nation--for him there waits the inheritance of a splendid throne which derives its strength from freedom. Toward a dynasty which bases itself on the freedoms of its people's enthusiasm will always be roused; for it is only the freeman who can be faithful from his heart; for a bureaucracy there can be no enthusiasm." He then urged that the future of the dynasty depended on the hearty union between the nations which lived under it. "This union," he said, "can be brought about only by respecting the nationalities, and by that bond of constitutionalism which can produce a kindred feeling. The bureau and the bayonet are miserable bonds." He then went on to apologize for not examining the difficulties between Hungary and Croatia. The solution of the difficulties of the empire would, he held, solve the Croatian question too. If it did not, he promised to consider that question with sympathy, and examine it in all its details. He concluded by proposing an address to the Emperor which should point out that it was the want of constitutional life in the whole empire which hindered the progress of Hungary; and that, while an independent government and a separate responsible ministry were absolutely essential to Hungary, it was also necessary that the Emperor should surround his throne, in all matters of the Government, with such constitutional arrangements as were indispensably demanded by the needs of the time. This utterance has been called the "Baptismal Speech of the Revolution." Coming as it did directly after the news of the French revolution, it gave a definiteness to the growing demands for freedom; but it did more than this. Metternich had cherished a growing hope that the demand for constitutional government in Vienna might be gradually used to crush out the independent position of Hungary, by absorbing the Hungarians in a common Austrian parliament; and he had looked upon a Croatian question as a means for still further weakening the power of the Hungarian Diet. Kossuth's speech struck a blow at these hopes by declaring that freedom for any part of the empire could be obtained only by working for the freedom of the whole; he swept aside for the moment those national and provincial jealousies which were the great strength of the Austrian despotism, and appealed to all the Liberals of the empire to unite against the system which was oppressing them all. Had Kossuth remained true to the faith which he proclaimed in this speech, it is within the limits of probability that the whole Revolution of 1848-1849 might have had a different result. The Hungarian chancellor, Mailath, was so alarmed at Kossuth's speech that he hindered the setting out of the deputation which was to have presented the address to the Emperor. But he could not prevent the speech from producing its effect. Although Presburg was only six hours' journey from Vienna, the route had been made so difficult that the news of anything done in the Hungarian Diet had hitherto reached Vienna in a roundabout manner, and had sometimes been a week on its way. The news of this speech, however, arrived on the very next day; and Kossuth's friend Pulszky immediately translated it into German and circulated it among the Viennese. A rumor of its contents had spread before the actual speech. It was said that Kossuth had declared war against the system of government, and that he had said state bankruptcy was inevitable. But as the news became more definite the minds of the Viennese fixed upon two points--the denunciation of the men of the past, and the demand for a constitution for Austria. So alarmed did the Government become at the effect of this speech that they undertook to answer it in an official paper. The writer of this answer called attention to the terrible scenes which he said were being enacted in Paris, which proved according to him that the only safety for the governed was in rallying round the government. This utterance naturally excited only contempt and disgust; and the ever-arriving news of new constitutions granted in Germany swelled the enthusiasm which had been roused by Kossuth's speech. The movement still centred in the professors of the University. On March 1st Doctor Loehner had proposed, at one of the meetings of the Reading and Debating Society, that negotiations should be opened with the Estates, and that they should be urged to declare their Assembly permanent, the country in danger, and Metternich a public enemy. This proposal marked a definite step in constitutional progress. The Estates of Lower Austria, which met in Vienna, had indeed from time to time expressed their opinions on certain public grievances; but these opinions had been generally disregarded by Francis and Metternich; and, though the latter had of late talked of enlarging the powers of the Estates, he had evidently intended such words partly as mere talk in order to delay any efficient action, and partly as a bid against the concessions which had been made by the King of Prussia. That the leaders of a popular movement should suggest an appeal to the Estates of Lower Austria was therefore an unexpected sign of a desire to find any legal centre for action, however weak in power, and however aristocratic that centre might be. Doctor Loehner's proposal, however, does not seem to have been generally adopted; and, instead of the suggested appeal to the Estates, a programme of eleven points was circulated by the debating society. When we consider that the revolution broke out in less than a fortnight after this petition, we cannot but be struck with the extreme moderation of the demands now made. Most of the eleven points were concerned with proposals for the removal either of forms of corruption, or of restraints on personal liberty, and they were directed chiefly against those interferences with the life and teaching of the universities which were causing so much bitterness in Vienna. Such demands for constitutional reforms as were contained in this programme were certainly not of an alarming character. The petitioners asked that the right of election to the Assembly of Estates should be extended to citizens and peasants; that the deliberative powers of the Estates should be enlarged; and that the whole empire should be represented in an assembly, for which, however, the petitioners asked only a consultative power. Perhaps the three demands in this petition which would have excited the widest sympathy were those in favor of the universal arming of the people, the universal right of petition, and the abolition of the censorship. The expression of desire for reform now became much more general and even some members of the Estates prepared an appeal to their colleagues against the bureaucratic system. But the character and tone of the utterances of these new reformers somewhat weakened the effect which had been produced by the bolder complaints of the earlier leaders of the movement, for while the students of the University and some of their professors still showed a desire for bold and independent action, the merchants caught eagerly at the sympathy of the Archduke Francis Charles, while the booksellers addressed to the Emperor a petition in which servility passes into blasphemy. These signs of weakness were no doubt observed by the Government; and it was not wonderful that, under these circumstances, Metternich and Kolowrat should have been able to persuade themselves that they could still play with the Viennese, and put them off with promises which need never be fulfilled. Archduke Louis alone seems to have foreseen the coming storm, but was unable to persuade his colleagues to make military preparations to meet it. In the mean time the movement among the students was assuming more decided proportions; and their demands related as usual to the great questions of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of teaching; and to these were added the demand for popular representation, the justifications for which they drew from Kossuth's speech of March 3d. But, while Hungary supplied the model of constitutional government, the hope for a wider national life connected itself more and more with the idea of a united Germany. Two days after the delivery of Kossuth's speech an impulse had been given to this latter feeling by the meeting at Heidelberg of the leading supporters of German unity; and they had elected a committee of seven to prepare the way for a constituent assembly at Frankfort. Of these seven, two came from Baden, one from Wurtemberg, one from Hesse-Darmstadt, one from Prussia, one from Bavaria, and one from Frankfort. Thus it will be seen that South Germany still kept the lead in the movement for German unity; and the president of the committee was that Izstein, of Baden, who had been known to Germany chiefly by his ill-timed expulsion from Berlin. But, though this distribution of power augured ill for the relations between the leaders of the German movement and the King of Prussia, the meeting at Heidelberg was not prepared to adopt the complete programme of the Baden leaders, nor to commit itself to that Republican movement which would probably have repelled the North German Liberals. The chief leader of the more moderate party in the meeting was Heinrich von Gagern, the representative of Hesse-Darmstadt. Gagern was the son of a former minister of the Grand Duke of Nassau, who had left that State to take service in Austria, and who had acted with the Archduke John in planning a popular rising in the Tyrol in 1813. Heinrich had been trained at a military school in Munich. He had steadily opposed the policy of Metternich, had done his best to induce the universities to co-operate in a common German movement, and had tried to secure internal liberties for Hesse-Darmstadt, while he had urged his countrymen to look for the model of a free constitution rather to England and Hungary than to France. During the constitutional movement of 1848 he had become Prime Minister of Hesse-Darmstadt; and he seems to have had considerable power of winning popular confidence. Although he was not able to commit the meeting to a definitely monarchical policy, he had influence enough to counteract the attempts of Struve and Hecker to carry a proposal for the proclamation of a republic; and his influence increased during the later phases of the movement. It was obvious that, in the state of Viennese feeling, a movement in favor of German unity, at once so determined and so moderate in its character, would give new impulse to the hopes for freedom already excited by Kossuth's speech; and the action of the reformers now became more vigorous because the students rather than the professors were guiding the movement. Some of the latter, and particularly Professor Hye, were beginning to be alarmed, and were attempting to hold their pupils in check. This roused the distrust and suspicion of the students; and it was with great difficulty that Professors Hye and Endlicher could prevail on the younger leaders of the movement to abstain from action until the professors had laid before the Emperor the desire of the university for the removal of Metternich. This deputation waited on the Emperor on March 12th, but it proved of little avail; and when the professors returned with the answer that the Emperor would consider their wishes, the students received them with laughter and resolved to take the matter into their own hands. The next day was to be the opening of the Assembly of the Estates of Lower Austria; and the students of Vienna resolved to march from the University to the Landhaus. In the great hall of the University, now hidden away in an obscure part of Vienna but still retaining traces of the paintings which then decorated it, the students gathered in large numbers on March 13th. Various rumors of a discouraging kind had been circulated; this and that leading citizen were mentioned as having been arrested; nay, it was even said that members of the Estates had themselves been seized, and that the sitting of the Assembly would not be allowed to take place. To these rumors were added the warnings of the professors. Fuester, who had recently preached on the duty of devotion to the cause of the country, now endeavored, by praises of the Emperor, to check the desire of the students for immediate action; but he was shouted down. Hye then appealed to them to wait a few days, in hopes of a further answer from the Emperor. They answered with a shout that they would not wait an hour; and then they raised the cry of "Landhaus!" Breaking loose from all further restraint they set out on their march, and as they went numbers gathered round them. The people of Vienna had already been appealed to, by a placard on St. Stephen's Church, to free the good Emperor Ferdinand from his enemies; and the placard further declared that he who wished for the rise of Austria must wish for the fall of the present ministers of state. The appeal produced its effect; and the crowd grew dense as the students marched into the narrow Herren Gasse. They passed under the archway which led into the courtyard of the Landhaus; there, in front of the very building where the Assembly was sitting, they came to a dead halt; and, with the strange hesitation which sometimes comes over crowds, no man seemed to know what was next to be done. Suddenly in the pause which followed, the words "_Meine Herren_" were heard from a corner of the crowd. It was evident that some one was trying to address them; and the students nearest to the speaker hoisted him upon their shoulders. Then the crowd saw a quiet-looking man, with a round, strong head, short-cropped hair, and a thick beard. Each man eagerly asked his neighbor who this could be; and, as the speech proceeded, the news went round that this was Doctor Fischhof, a man who had been very little known beyond medical circles and hitherto looked upon as quite outside political movements. Such was the speaker who now uttered what is still remembered as the "first free word" in Vienna. He began by dwelling on the importance of the day and on the need of "encouraging the men who sit there," pointing to the Landhaus, "by our appeal to them, of strengthening them by our adherence, and leading them to the desired end by our coöperation in action. He," exclaimed Fischhof, "who has no courage on such a day as this is only fit for the nursery." He then proceeded to dwell at some length on the need for freedom of the press and trial by jury. Then, catching, as it were, the note of Kossuth's speech of March 3d, he went on to speak of the greatness which Austria might attain by combining together "the idealist Germans, the steady, industrious, and persevering Slavs, the knightly and enthusiastic Magyars, the clever and sharp-sighted Italians." Finally he called upon them to demand freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of teaching and learning, a responsible ministry, representation of the people, arming of the people, and connection with Germany. In the mean time the Estates were sitting within. They had gathered in unusually large numbers, being persuaded by their President that they were bound to resist the stream of opinion. Representatives as they were of the privileged classes, they had little sympathy with the movement that was going on in Vienna. Nor does it appear that there was anyone among them who was disposed to play the part of a Confalonieri or Szechenyi, much less of a Mirabeau or a Lafayette. Many of them had heard rumors of the coming deputation; but Montecuccoli, their President, refused to begin the proceedings before the regular hour. While they were still debating this point they heard the rush of the crowd outside; then the sudden silence, and then Fischhof's voice. Several members were seized with a panic and desired to adjourn. Again Montecuccoli refused to yield, and one of their Liberal members urged them to take courage from the fact of this deputation to make stronger demands on the Government. But before the Assembly could decide to act the crowd outside had taken sterner measures. The speakers who immediately followed Fischhof had made little impression; then another doctor, named Goldmark, sprang up and urged the people to break into the Landhaus. So, before the leaders of the Estates had decided what action to take, the doors were suddenly burst open, and Fischhof entered at the head of the crowd. He announced that he had come to encourage the Estates in their deliberations, and to ask them to sanction the demands embodied in the petition of the people. Montecuccoli assured the deputation that the Emperor had already promised to summon the Provincial Assemblies to Vienna, and that, for their part, the Estates of Lower Austria were in favor of progress. "But," he added, "they must have room and opportunity to deliberate." Fischhof assented to this suggestion, and persuaded his followers to withdraw to the courtyard. But those who had remained behind had been seized with a fear of treachery, and a cry arose that Fischhof had been arrested. Thereupon Fischhof showed himself, with Montecuccoli, on the balcony; and the President promised that the Estates would send a deputation of their own to the Emperor to express to him the wishes of the people. He therefore invited the crowd to choose twelve men, to be present at the deliberations of the Estates during the drawing up of the petition. While the election of these twelve was still going on, a Hungarian student appeared with the German translation of Kossuth's speech. The Hungarian's voice being too weak to make itself heard, he handed the speech to a Tyrolese student, who read it to the crowd. The allusion to the need of a constitution was received with loud applause, and so also was the expression of the hopes for good from the Archduke Francis Joseph. But however much the reading of the speech had encouraged the hopes of the crowd, it had also given time for the Estates to decide on a course without waiting for the twelve representatives of the people; and, before the crowd had heard the end of Kossuth's speech the reading was interrupted by a message from the Estates announcing the contents of their proposed petition. The petition had shrunk to the meagre demand that a report on the condition of the state bank should be laid before the Estates, and that a committee should be chosen from Provincial Assemblies to consider timely reforms and to take a share in legislation. The feeble character of the proposed compromise roused a storm of scorn and rage; and a Moravian student tore the message of the Estates into pieces. The conclusion of Kossuth's speech roused the people to still further excitement; and, with cries for a free constitution, for union with Germany, and against alliance with Russia, the crowd once more broke into the Assembly. One of the leading students then demanded of Montecuccoli whether this was the whole of the petition they intended to send to the Emperor. Montecuccoli answered that the Estates had been so disturbed in their deliberations that they had not been able to come to a final decision. But he declared that they desired to lay before the Emperor all the wishes of the people. Again the leaders of the crowd repeated, in slightly altered form, the demands originally formulated by Fischhof. At last, after considerable discussion, Montecuccoli was preparing to start for the Castle at the head of the Estates when a regiment of soldiers arrived, but they were unable to make their way through the crowd, and were even pressed back out of the Herren Gasse. The desire now arose for better protection for the people; and a deputation tried to persuade the burgomaster of Vienna to call out the City Guard. Czapka, the burgomaster, was, however, a mere tool of the Government; and he declared that the Archduke Albert, as Commander-in-Chief of the Army, had alone the power of calling out the guard. The Archduke Albert was, perhaps next to Louis, the most unpopular of the royal house. He indignantly refused to listen to any demands of the people, and, hastening to the spot, rallied the soldiers and led them to the open space at the corner of the Herren Gasse, which is known as the "Freyung." The inner circle of Vienna was at this time surrounded with walls, outside of which were the large suburbs in which chiefly workmen lived. The students seem already to have gained some sympathy with the workmen; and for the previous two years the discontent caused by the sufferings of the poorer classes had been taking a more directly political turn. Several of the workmen had pressed in with the students in the morning into the inner town, and some big men, with rough darned coats and dirty caps over their ears, were seen clenching their fists for the fight. The news quickly spread to the suburbs that the soldiers were about to attack the people. Seizing long poles and any iron tools which came to hand, the workmen rushed forward to the gates of the inner town. In one district they found the town gates closed against them, and cannon placed on the bastion near; but in others the authorities were unprepared; and the workmen burst into the inner town, tearing down stones and plaster to throw at the soldiers. In the mean time the representatives of the Estates had reached the Castle, and were trying to persuade the authorities to yield to the demands of the people. Metternich persisted in believing that the whole affair was moved by foreign influence, and particularly by Italians and Swiss; and he desired that the soldiers should gather in the Castle, and that Prince Windischgraetz should be appointed commandant of the city. Alfred Windischgraetz was a Bohemian nobleman who had previously been known chiefly for his strong aristocratic feeling, which he was said to have embodied in the expression "Human beings begin at barons." But he had been marked out by Metternich as a man of vigor and decision who might be trusted to act in an emergency. Latour, who had been the previous commandant of the Castle in Vienna, showed signs of hesitation at this crisis; and this gave Metternich the excuse for dismissing Latour and appointing Windischgraetz in his place. To this arrangement all the ruling council consented; but, when Archduke Louis and Metternich proposed to make Windischgraetz military dictator of the city, and to allow him to bring out cannon for firing on the people, great opposition arose. The Archduke John was perhaps one of the few councillors who really sympathized with Liberal ideas; but several of the Archdukes, and particularly Francis Charles, heartily desired the fall of Metternich; and Kolowrat shared their wish. This combined opposition of sincere reformers and jealous courtiers hindered Metternich's policy; and it was decided that the City Guard should first be called out, and that the dictatorship of Windischgraetz should be kept in reserve as a last resource. In the mean time the struggle on the streets was raging fiercely. Archduke Albert had found to his cost that the insurrection was not, as he had supposed, the work of a few discontented men. The students fought gallantly; but a still fiercer element was contributed to the insurrection by the workmen who had come in from the suburbs. One workman was wounded in his head, his arm, and his foot; but he continued to encourage his friends, and cried out that he cared nothing for life; either he would die that day, or else "the high gentlemen should be overthrown." Another who had had no food since the morning entreated for a little refreshment that he might be able to fight the better; and he quickly returned to the struggle. In those suburbs from which the workmen had not been able to break into the inner town, the insurrection threatened to assume the form of an attack on the employers. Machines were destroyed, and the houses of those employers who had lowered wages were set on fire. It was this aspect of the insurrection which encouraged the nobles to believe that, by calling out the guard, they would induce the richer citizens to take arms against the workmen; and this policy was carried still further when, on the application of the rector of the University, the students also were allowed the privilege of bearing arms. But the ruse entirely failed; the people recognized the City Guard as their friends, and refused to attack them; and the rumor soon spread that the police had fired on the City Guard. It was now evident that the citizen soldiers were on the side of the people; and the richer citizens sent a deputation to entreat that Metternich should be dismissed. But the Archduke Maximilian was resolved that, as the first expedient proposed by the Council had failed, he would now apply some of those more violent remedies which had been postponed at first. He therefore ordered that the cannon should be brought down from the Castle to the Michaelerplatz. From this point the cannon would have commanded, on the one side the Herren Gasse, where the crowd had gathered in the morning, and in front the Kohlmarkt, which led to the wide street of Amgraben. Had the cannon been fired then and there, the course of the insurrection must, in one way or other, have been changed. That change might have been as Maximilian hoped, the complete collapse of the insurrection; or, as Latour held, the cannon might have swept away the last vestige of loyalty to the Emperor, and the republic might have been instantly proclaimed. But in any case the result must have been most disastrous to the cause both of order and liberty; for the passions which had already been roused, especially among the workmen, could hardly have failed to produce one of those savage struggles which may overthrow one tyranny, but which usually end in the establishment of another. Fortunately, however, the Archduke Maximilian seems to have had no official authority in this matter; and, when he gave the order to fire, the master-gunner, a Bohemian named Pollett, declared that he would not obey the order, unless it was given by the commander of the forces or the commander of the town. The Archduke then appealed to the subordinates to fire, in spite of this opposition; but Pollett placed himself in front of the cannon and exclaimed: "The cannon are under my command; until there comes an order from my commander, and until necessity obliges it, let no one fire on friendly unarmed citizens. Only over my body shall you fire." The Archduke retired in despair. In the mean time the deputation of citizens had reached the Castle. At first the officials were disposed to treat them angrily, and even tried to detain them by force; but the news of the concession of arms to the students, the urgent pressure of Archduke John, and the accounts of the growing fury of the people finally decided Metternich to yield; and, advancing into the room where the civic deputation was assembled, he declared that as they had said his resignation would bring peace to Austria he now resigned his office, and wished good luck to the new government. Many of the royal family and of the other members of the Council flattered themselves that they had got rid of a formidable enemy without making any definite concession to the people. Windischgraetz alone protested against the abandonment of Metternich by the rulers of Austria. Metternich had hoped to retire quietly to his own villa, but it had been already burned in the insurrection; and he soon found that it was safer to fly from Vienna and eventually to take refuge in England. He had, however, one consolation in all his misfortunes. In the memoir written four years later he expressed his certainty that he at least had done no wrong, and that if he had to begin his career again, he would follow the same course he took before, and would not deviate from it for an instant. When, at half-past eight in the evening of March 13th, men went through the streets of Vienna, crying out "Metternich is fallen!" it seemed as if the march of the students and the petition of Fischhof had produced in one day all the results desired. But neither the suspicions of the people nor the violent intentions of the princes were at an end. The archdukes still talked of making Windischgraetz dictator of Vienna. The workmen still raged in the suburbs; and the students refused to leave the University for fear an attack should be made upon it. But in spite of the violence of the workmen the leaders of the richer citizens were more and more determined to make common cause with reformers. Indeed both they and the students hoped to check the violence of the riots, while they prevented any reactionary movement. The Emperor also was on the side of concession. He refused to let the people be fired on, and announced on the 14th the freedom of the press. But unfortunately he was seized with one of his epileptic fits; and the intriguers, who were already consolidating themselves into the secret council known as the "Camarilla," published the news of Windischgraetz's dictatorship, and resolved to place Vienna under a state of siege while the Emperor was incapable of giving directions. The news of Windischgraetz's accession to power so alarmed the people that they at once decided to march upon the Castle; but one of the leading citizens, named Arthaber, persuaded them to abandon their intention, and instead to send him and another friend to ask for a constitution from the Emperor. A struggle was evidently going on between Ferdinand and his courtiers. Whenever he was strong and able to hold his own, he was ready to make concessions. Whenever he was either ill or still suffering from the mental effects of his illness, the Government fell into the hands of Windischgraetz and the archdukes, and violent measures were proposed. Thus, though Arthaber and his friends were received courteously and assured of the constitutional intentions of the Emperor, at eleven o'clock on the same night there appeared a public notice declaring Vienna in a state of siege. But even Windischgraetz seems to have been somewhat frightened by the undaunted attitude of the people; and when he found that his notice was torn down from the walls, and that a new insurrection was about to break out, he sent for Professor Hye and entreated him to preserve order. In the mean time the Emperor had to some extent recovered his senses; and he speedily issued a promise to summon the Estates of the German and Slavonic Provinces and the congregations of Lombardo-Venetia. But the people had had enough of sham constitutions; and the Emperor's proclamation was torn down. This act, however, did not imply any personal hostility to Ferdinand; for the belief that the Austrian ministers were thwarting the good intentions of their master was as deeply rooted at this time in the minds of the Viennese as was a similar belief with regard to Pius IX and his cardinals in the minds of the Romans; and when the Emperor drove out on March 15th, he was received with loud cheers. But as Ferdinand listened to these cheers he must have noticed that, louder than the "_Es lebe der Kaiser_" of his German subjects and the "_Slawa_" of the Bohemians, rose the sound of the Hungarian "_Eljen_." For mingling in the crowd with the ordinary inhabitants of Vienna was the Hungarian deputation, which had at last been permitted by the Count Palatine to leave Presburg, and which had arrived in Vienna to demand both freedoms that had been granted to the Germans and also a separate responsible ministry for Hungary. They arrived in the full glory of recent successes in the Presburg Diet; for, strengthened by the news of the Viennese rising, Kossuth had carried, in one day, many of the reforms for which his party had so long been contending. The last remnants of the dependent condition of the peasantry had been swept away; taxation had been made universal; and freedom of the press and universal military service had been promised. Szechenyi alone had ventured to raise a note of warning, and it had fallen unheeded. In Vienna Kossuth was welcomed almost as cordially as in Presburg; for the German movement in Vienna had tended to produce in its supporters a willingness to lose the eastern half of the empire in order to obtain the union of the western half with Germany. So the notes of Arndt's "_Deutsches Vaterland_" were mingled with the cry of "_Batthyanyi Lajos, Minister Praesident!_" Before such a combination as this, Ferdinand had no desire, Windischgraetz no power, to maintain an obstinate resistance; and, on March 16th, Sedlnitzky, the hated head of the police, was dismissed from office. On the 18th a responsible ministry was appointed; and on the 22d Windischgraetz announced that national affairs would now be guided on the path of progress. In the mean time that German movement from which the Viennese derived so much of their impulse had been gaining a new accession of force in the north of Germany. In Berlin the order of the Viennese movements had been to some extent reversed. There the artisans, instead of taking their tone from the students, had given the first impulse to reform. The King indeed had begun his concessions by granting freedom of the press on March 7th; but it seemed very unlikely that this concession would be accompanied by any securities that would make it a reality. The King even refused to fulfil his promise of summoning the Assembly; and it was in consequence of this refusal that the artisans presented to the Town Council of Berlin a petition for the redress of their special grievances. The same kind of misery which prevailed in Vienna had shown itself, though in less degree, in Berlin; and committees had been formed for the relief of the poor. The Town Council refused to present the petition of the workmen, and, in order to take the movement out of their hands, presented a petition of their own in favor of freedom of the press, trial by jury, representation of the German people in the Bundestag, and the summoning of all the Provincial Assemblies of the kingdom. This petition was rejected by the King; and thereupon, on March 13th, the people gathered in large numbers in the streets. General Pfuel fired on them; but instead of yielding, they threw up barricades, and a fierce struggle ensued. On the 14th the cry for complete freedom of the press became louder and more prominent; and the insurgents were encouraged by the first news of the Vienna rising. The other parts of the kingdom now joined in the movement. On the 14th came deputations from the Rhine Province, who demanded in a threatening manner the extension of popular liberties. On the 16th came the more important news that Posen and Silesia were in revolt. Mieroslawsky, who had been one of the leaders of the Polish movement of 1846, had gained much popularity in Berlin; and he seemed fully disposed to combine the movement for the independence of Posen with that for the freedom of Prussia, much in the same way as Kossuth had combined the cause of Hungarian liberty with the demand for an Austrian constitution. In Silesia, no doubt, the terrible famine of the previous year, and the remains of feudal oppression, had sharpened the desire for liberty; and closely following on the news of these two revolts came clearer accounts of the Viennese rising and the happy tidings of the fall of Metternich. The King of Prussia promised, on the arrival of this news, to summon the Assembly for April 2d; and two days later he appeared on the balcony of his palace and declared his desire to change Germany from an alliance of states into a federal state. But the suspicions of the people had now been thoroughly aroused; and on March 18th, the very day on which the King made this declaration, fresh deputations came to demand liberties from him; and when he appealed to them to go home his request was not complied with. The threatening attitude of the soldiers, and the recollection of their violence on the preceding days, had convinced the people that until part at least of the military force was removed they could have no security for liberty. The events of the day justified their belief; for, while some one was reading aloud to the people the account of the concessions recently made by the King, the soldiers suddenly fired upon them, and the crowd fled in every direction. They fled, however, soon to rally again; barricades were once more thrown up; the Poles of Posen flocked in to help their friends, and the black, red, and gold flag of Germany was displayed. Women joined the fight at the barricades; and on the 19th some of the riflemen whom the King had brought from Neuchâtel refused to fire upon the people. Then the King suddenly yielded, dismissed his ministers, and promised to withdraw the troops and allow the arming of the people. The victory of the popular cause seemed now complete; but the bitterness which still remained in the hearts of the citizens was shown by a public funeral procession through Berlin in honor of those who had fallen in the struggle. The King stood bare-headed on the balcony as the procession passed the palace; and on March 21st he came forward in public waving the black, red, and gold flag of Germany. (1848) THE REVOLT OF HUNGARY, Arminius Vambery Deep interest throughout the civilized world was aroused by the unavailing struggle of Hungary, in 1848, for national independence. The name of Louis Kossuth, the Hungarian patriot and famous orator, became celebrated in many lands; and in the various countries where he sojourned as an exile from his own--especially in the United States (1851-1852) and in England--his eloquent appeals awakened profound sympathy for his people's cause. Vambery, however, regards Kossuth's compatriot, Count Stephen Szechenyi (born in 1791) as "the greatest Hungarian of the nineteenth century." He was descended from a distinguished family, which had given to its country many champions of liberty. The great aim of his life was to revive the drooping energies of the nation. As a youth he served in the army. Entering the famous Diet of 1825, in which, by right of birth, he took his seat in the Upper House, he distinguished himself by his liberal leadership, and as a writer and an advocate of public endowments accomplished much for the education of his people. Up to the time at which Vambery, the celebrated historian of Hungary, begins the present narrative, the growth of the national spirit had been more and more evident each year since the end of the Napoleonic wars. For more than two centuries Hungary had been under the oppressive rule of Austria. Hungary had furnished soldiers to Austria in her struggle against Bonaparte, and the Austrian Emperor had repeatedly promised to redress Hungarian grievances; but after the fall of Napoleon these promises were repudiated. Hungary so emphatically showed her indignation that the Emperor was compelled to convoke the Diet in which Szechenyi distinguished himself. The subsequent career of this leader, the character and aims of Kossuth, and the insurrection they did so much to incite are powerfully described by Vambery, who writes not only as an author fully versed in his country's annals, but also as a patriot jealous of her liberties, proud of her heroic sons, and loyal to her fame. For fifteen years, up to 1840, the popularity of Szechenyi extended over Hungary, and his name was cherished by every patriot in the land. About this time, however, the great statesman was destined to come into collision with a man who was his peer in genius and abilities. The two patriots were representatives of different methods, and in the contest produced by the shock of antagonistic tendencies Szechenyi was compelled to yield to Louis Kossuth, his younger rival. Although there was no material difference between their aims--for both wished to see their country great, free, constitutionally governed, prosperous, and advanced in civilization--yet in the ways and means employed by them to attain that aim they were diametrically opposed to each other. Szechenyi, who descended from a family of ancient and aristocratic lineage, and presented himself to the nation with connections reaching up into the highest circles of the court, with the lustre of his ancient name, and with his immense fortune, wished to secure the happiness of his country by quite different methods from those adopted by Louis Kossuth, a child of the people, who, although he was a nobleman by birth, yet belonged to that poorer class of gentry who support themselves by their own exertions, and who, in Hungary, are destined to fulfil the mission of the citizen-classes of other countries. It is from this class of the gentry, for the most part, that are recruited the trades-people, the smaller landowners, professional men, writers, subordinate officials, lawyers, physicians, clergymen, teachers, and professors. By virtue of their nobility, it is true, they belonged to the privileged class of the country, and were not subjected to the humiliations of the oppressed peasantry, yet they had to earn a living by their own work, and were therefore not only accessible to, but were ready enthusiastically to receive, the lofty message of liberty and equality which the French Revolution of 1830 began to proclaim anew throughout Europe. These doctrines formed a sharp contrast to the views of Count Stephen Szechenyi, views which, owing to the social position of the man who held them, were not devoid of a certain aristocratic tinge, and according to which the most important part in the regeneration of the Hungarian nation was assigned to the aristocracy. It was a part, however, which the Hungarian aristocracy was itself by no means disposed to assume. Among its younger members, indeed, could be found, here and there, enthusiastic men who were devotedly attached to the person of the lordly reformer, but the great majority of his class were hostilely arrayed against Szechenyi's aims, and, obstructing the granting of even the most inoffensive demands of the nation, supported the Viennese Government; which was rigidly opposed to political reforms and to any changes in the public institutions of the country. This attitude of the aristocracy compelled Szechenyi to avoid as much as possible all questions concerning constitutionality and liberty, and to confine the work of reform chiefly to the sphere of internal improvements. The only way in which he could hope to obtain the support of the court of Vienna and of the majority of the Upper House for his politico-economical measures, was to remain as neutral as possible in politics. The idea which chiefly governed his actions was that the country should be first strengthened internally, and that afterward it would be easy for the nation to bring about the triumph of her national and political aspirations. After 1840, however, the bulk of the nation, and especially the small gentry whose preponderating influence was making itself continually felt, were unwilling to follow Szechenyi in his one-sided policy. The reformatory work of Szechenyi during the preceding fifteen years had educated public opinion up to new and great ideas, but the leaders of that public opinion were now to be found in the House of Representatives in the persons of Francis Deak and Louis Kossuth. They wished to obtain for their country both political liberty and material prosperity. They knew the effect of political institutions upon the material well-being and civilization of a nation, and they no longer deemed it possible to attain these objects without a modern constitutional government. Louis Kossuth, who was born in 1802, was the very incarnation of the great democratic ideas of his age. He was entirely a man of work and entered the legal profession, after he had completed his studies with great distinction, for the purpose of supporting himself by it. Kossuth was present at the Diet of 1832, when the Government, which conducted itself most brutally and arbitrarily toward the press, refused to allow the newspapers to print reports of the deliberations of the Diet in spite of the repeated urgings by the Deputies for such an authorization, and it was owing to his ingenuity that this prohibition was evaded. The censorship was exercised on printed matter only and did not extend to manuscripts. Kossuth wrote out the reports of the Diet himself, had numerous copies made of them in writing, and circulated them, for a slight fee, in every part of the country, where they were looked for with feverish expectation, and, owing to the spirit of opposition with which they were colored, were read with the greatest eagerness. This manuscript newspaper produced quite a revolutionary movement among the people, frightening even the Austrian Government. The latter now attempted to silence Kossuth by gentle means, promising him high offices and a pension, but he refused the enticing offers and continued his work for the benefit of the nation. Foiled in the attempt to lure Kossuth from his duty, the Government resorted to violence, seized the lithographic apparatus by means of which Kossuth planned to multiply his manuscript newspaper, and gave directions to the postmasters to detain and open all those sealed packages which were supposed to contain the reports. But these arbitrary proceedings of the Government could not put an end to the circulation of the newspaper; the country gentlemen, by their own servants, continued to send each other single copies, and the matter was given up only when the Diet ceased to be in session. Then Kossuth, at the urgent request of his friends and, one might say, of the whole country, started a new manuscript newspaper at Budapest, which reported the deliberations of the county assemblies. The effect produced by this new paper was fraught with even greater consequences than the first had created, for it was instrumental in bringing the counties into contact with one another, thus giving them an opportunity to combine against the Government. The latter, however, soon prohibited its publication, but the prohibition gave rise to a storm of indignation throughout the whole country. The counties in solid array addressed protests to the Government against the illegal act and in behalf of Kossuth, who continued to publish the paper in spite of the inhibition. The Government at last resorted to the most barefaced brutality. Kossuth, the brave champion of liberty, its eloquent pen and herald, was dragged to a damp and dark subterranean prison-cell in the castle of Buda, and detained there, while his father and mother and his family, who were looking to him solely for their support, were robbed of the aid of their natural protector. Although at that period lawlessness was the order of the day, yet this last cruel and illegal act of the Government greatly exasperated the public mind, which was already in a ferment of excitement. But while the excited passions raged throughout the country, the Government, nothing loth, caused Kossuth to be prosecuted for high treason, and, having obtained his conviction, had him sentenced to an imprisonment of three years. Kossuth applied himself during his detention to serious studies, and acquired also, while in prison, the English language to such an extent that he was enabled to address in that language, during his exile, with great effect and impressiveness, large audiences both in England and in the United States of America. His imprisonment lasted two long years, after the lapse of which he obtained, in 1840, a pardon in consequence of the repeated and urgent representations of the Diet. Kossuth returned to the scene of his former activity as the martyr of free speech and the victim to the cause of the nation. He very soon found a new field in which to labor. The Government perceived at last that violence was of little avail, and that those questions which were occupying the minds to such a degree could no longer be kept from being publicly discussed by the press. Kossuth now obtained permission to edit a political daily paper. Its publication was commenced under the title of _Pesti Hirlap_ ("Newspaper of Pest") in 1841, and may be said to have created the political daily press of Hungary. It disseminated new ideas among the masses, stirred up the indifferent to feel an interest in the affairs of the country, and gave a purpose to the national aspirations. It proclaimed democratic reforms in every department; the abolition of the privileges of the nobility and of their exemption from taxation, equal rights and equal burdens for all the citizens of the State, and the extension of public instruction, and it endeavored to restore the Hungarian nationality to the place it was entitled to claim in the organism of the State. The wealth of ideas thus daily communicated to the country appeared in the most attractive garb, for Kossuth possessed a masterly style, and his leaders and shorter articles showed off to advantage so many unexpected beauties of the Hungarian language that his readers were fairly enchanted and carried away by them. His articles were a happy compound of poetical elevation and oratorical power, gratifying common-sense and the imagination at the same time, appealing by their lucid exposition to the reader's intelligence, and exciting and warming his fancy by their fervor. Kossuth always rightly guessed what questions most interested the nation, and the daily press became, in his hands, a power in Hungary, electrifying the masses, who were always ready to give their unconditional support to his bold and far-reaching schemes. The extraordinary influence obtained by Kossuth through his paper frightened Szechenyi, and, to even a greater degree, those whose prejudices were shocked or ancient privileges and interests were endangered by the democratic agitations for reform. Kossuth was attacked in books, pamphlets, and newspapers, but he came out victorious from all contests. In vain did Szechenyi himself, backed by his great authority in the land, assail him, declaring that he did not object to Kossuth's ideas, but that his manner and his tactics were reprehensible, and that the latter were sure to lead to a revolution. The great mass of the people felt instinctively that revolution had become a necessity and was unavoidable if Hungary was to pass from the old mediaeval order to the establishment of modern institutions and was to become a state where equality before the law should be the ruling standard. The masses were strengthened in this conviction by the unreasonable, short-sighted, and violent policy pursued by the Government of Vienna, which obstructed the slightest reforms in the ancient institutions and opposed every national aspiration, and under whose protecting wing the reactionary elements of the Upper House were constantly paralyzing the noblest and best efforts made by the Lower House for the public weal, while the same Government arbitrarily supported claims of the Catholic clergy, in flat contradiction to the rights and liberties of the various denominations inhabiting the country. The Government, in its antipathy to the national movement, went even further. It secretly incited the other nationalities, especially the Croats, against the Hungarians, and thus planted the seeds from which sprang the subsequent great civil war. In observing the dangerous symptoms preceding the last-mentioned movement, and the bloody scenes and fights provoked at every election by the hirelings of the Government, in order to intimidate the adherents of reform, the friends of progress became more and more convinced that the period of moderation, such as preached by Szechenyi, had passed by, and must give way to that resolute policy, advocated by Kossuth, which recoiled from no consequences. Numerous magnates, all the chief leaders of the gentry boasting of enlightenment and patriotism, and imbued with European culture, rallied around Kossuth, until finally the public opinion of the country and the enthusiasm of which he was the centre caused him to be returned, in 1847, together with Count Louis Batthyanyi, as Deputy from the foremost county of the country, the county of Pest. During the first months of the Diet of 1847-1848, which was to raise Hungary to the rank of those countries that proclaimed equal rights and possessed a responsible parliamentary government, it differed very little from the one preceding it. The opposition initiated great reforms, as before, but there was no one who believed that their realization was near at hand. Kossuth repeatedly addressed the House, and soon convinced his audience that he was as irresistible an orator as he had proved powerful as a writer. But there was nothing to indicate that the country was on the eve of a great transformation. The revolution of February, 1848, which broke out in Paris, changed, as if by magic, the relative positions of Austria and Hungary. Metternich's system of government, which was opposed to granting liberty to the people, collapsed at once. The storm of popular indignation swept it away like a house built of cards. At the first news of the occurrences in Paris, Kossuth asked in the Lower House for the creation of a responsible ministry. The motion was favorably received, but in the Upper House it was rejected, the Government not being yet alive to the real state of affairs, and still hoping by a system of negation to frustrate the wishes of the people. But very soon the revolution reared its head in Vienna itself, and the wishes of the Hungarian people, uttered at Budapest, received thereby a new and powerful advocate. At that time the Hungarian Diet still met at Presburg, but the two sister-cities of Buda and Pest formed the real capital of the country and were the centre of commerce, industry, science, and literature. Michael Vorosmarty, the poet laureate of the nation, lived in Pest, and there the twin stars of literature, Alexander Petofi and Maurice Jokai, shone on the national horizon. Jokai, who is still living (1886) and enjoys a world-wide fame as a novelist, and Petofi, the eminent poet, who was destined to become the Tyrtaeus of his nation, were then both young men, full of enthusiasm and intrepid energy, and teeming with great ideas. About these two gathered the other writers and youth of the University, and all of them, helping one another, contrived, on hearing the news of the sudden revolutions in Paris and Vienna, to enact in Budapest the bloodless revolution of March 15, 1848, which obtained the liberty of the press for the nation, and at the same time, in a solemn manifesto, gave expression to the wishes of the Hungarians in the matter of reform. The only act of violence these revolutionary heroes were guilty of was the entering of a printing establishment, whose proprietor, afraid of the Government, had refused to print the admirable poem of Petofi entitled _Talpra Magyar_ ("Up, Magyar"), and doing the printing there themselves. The first stanza of this poem, later the war-song of the national movement, runs, in a literal translation, thus: "Arise, O Magyar! thy country calls. Here is the time, now or never. Shall we be slaves or free? That is the question--choose! We swear by the God of the Magyars, We swear, to be slaves no longer!" This soul-stirring poem was improvised by Petofi under the inspiration of the moment, and at the same establishment where it was first printed was also printed a proclamation which contained twelve articles setting forth the wishes of the people. While the capital was resounding with the rejoicings and triumphant shouts of her exulting inhabitants, the proper department of the Government for the carrying through of these movements, the Diet, assembled at Presburg, lost no time, and set to work with great energy to reform the institutions of Hungary, constitutionally, and to put into the form of law the ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity. The salutary legislation met now with no opposition, either from the Upper House or from the court at Vienna, and in a short time the Diet passed the celebrated acts of 1848, which, having received the royal sanction, were proclaimed as laws on April 11th, at Presburg, amid the wildest enthusiasm, in the presence of King Ferdinand V. By these laws Hungary became a modern state, possessing a constitutional government. The Government was vested in a ministry responsible to the Parliament, all the inhabitants of the country were declared equal before the law, the privileges of the nobility were abolished, the soil was declared free, and the right of free worship accorded to all. The institution of national guards was introduced, the utmost liberty of the press was secured, Transylvania became a part of the mother-country--in a word, the national and political condition of the country was reorganized, in every particular, in harmony with the spirit, the demands, and aspirations of our age. At the same time the men placed at the head of the Government were such as possessed the fullest confidence of the people. The first ministry was composed of the most distinguished patriots. Count Louis Batthyanyi was the President; and acting in conjunction with him were Francis Deak, as Minister of Justice; Count Stephen Szechenyi, as Minister of Home Affairs; and Louis Kossuth, as Minister of Finance. The great mass of the people hailed with boundless enthusiasm the new Government and the magnificent reforms. The transformation, however, had been so sudden and unexpected, and the old aristocratic world, with all its institutions and its ancient organization, had been swept away with such vehement precipitation that even under ordinary circumstances, in the absence of all opposition, the new ideas and tendencies could have hardly entered into the political life of the nation without causing some confusion and disorder. But, in addition to these natural drawbacks, the new order of things had to contend with certain national elements in the population, which, feeling themselves injured in their real or imaginary interests, were bent on mischief, hoping to be able to rob the nation, in the midst of the ensuing troubles, of the great political prize she had won. Certain circles of the court and classes of the people strove equally hard to surround with difficulties the practical introduction of the Constitution of 1848. The court and the standing army, the party of the soldier class, feared that their commanding position would be impaired by the predominating influence of the people. The non-Hungarian portion of the inhabitants, choosing to ignore the fact that the new laws secured, without distinction of nationality, equal rights to every citizen of the State, were apprehensive lest the liberal constitution would benefit chiefly the Hungarian element of the nation. They, therefore, encouraged by the secret machinations of the Government of Vienna, took up arms, in order to drag the country, which was preparing to take possession of her new liberties, into a civil war. The Croatians, under the lead of Ban Jellachich, and the Wallachs and Serbs, led by other imperial officers, and yielding to their persuasions, rose in rebellion against Hungary, and began to persecute, plunder, and murder the Hungarians living among them. Dreadful atrocities were committed in the southern and eastern portions of Hungary, hundreds and hundreds of families were massacred in cold blood, and entire villages and cities were deserted by their inhabitants, just as had previously happened at the approach of the Turks, and thousands were compelled to abandon their all to the rebels, in order to escape with their bare lives. In the course of a few weeks, the flames of rebellion had spread over a large part of the country, and the Hungarian element, instead of enjoying the liberties won for the whole nation after a bitter struggle of many decades, was under the sad necessity of resorting to armed force in order to reëstablish the internal peace. The Hungarians now had to prove on the battlefield and in bloody engagements that they were worthy of liberty and capable of defending it. The Government, which, by virtue of the new laws, had meanwhile transferred its seat to Budapest, displayed extraordinary energy in the face of the sad difficulties besetting it. As it was impossible to rely upon the Austrian soldiers who were still in the country, it exerted itself to create and to organize a national army. A portion of the National Guard entered the national army under the name of _honveds_ ("defenders of the country"), a name which became before long famous throughout the civilized world for the brilliant military achievements connected with it. The Hungarian soldiers garrisoning the Austrian principalities hastened home, braving the greatest dangers, partly accompanied by their officers and partly without them. The famous Hungarian hussars, especially, returned in great number to offer their services to their imperilled country. But all this proved insufficient, and as soon as the National Assembly, elected under the new constitution, met, Kossuth, who had been the life and soul of the Government during this trying and critical period, called upon the nation to raise large armies for the defence of the country. The session of July 11th, during which Kossuth introduced in the House of Representatives his motions relating to the subject, presented a scene which beggars all description. Kossuth ascended the tribune pale and haggard with illness, but the long-continued applause that greeted him after the first few sentences soon gave him back his strength and his marvellous oratorical power. When he had concluded his speech and submitted to the House his request for two hundred thousand soldiers and the necessary money, a momentary pause of deep silence ensued. Suddenly Paul Nyary, the leader of the opposition, arose, and lifting his right arm toward heaven, exclaimed: "We grant it!" The House was in a fever of patriotic excitement; all the Deputies rose from their seats, shouting, "We grant it; we grant it!" Kossuth, with tears in his eyes, bowed to the representatives of the people and said, "You have risen like one man, and I bow down before the greatness of the nation." These sacrifices on the part of the country had become a matter of urgent necessity. The Serb and Wallach insurrection assumed every day larger proportions, while the Croats, under the leadership of Jellachich, entered Hungarian territory with the fixed determination of depriving the nation of her constitutional liberties. But the Hungarian Government was already able to send an army against the Croatians, who were marching on Budapest, plundering and laying waste everything before them. They were surrounded by the Hungarian forces, and a part of their army, nine thousand men strong, was compelled to lay down its arms, while Jellachich, with his remaining forces, precipitately fled from the country. The young Hungarian army had thus proved itself equal to the task of repelling the attack of the Croats, but the recent events were nevertheless fraught with the gravest consequences. The news of the Croatian invasion filled the Hungarians with deep anxiety, and the extraordinary excitement caused by it cast a permanent cloud over the soul of that great and noble man, Count Szechenyi. The mind of the great patriot who had initiated the national movement gave way under the strain of the frightful rumors coming from the Croatian frontier. He had been ailing for some time, and his nervousness increased so greatly under the pressure of the great events following one another in rapid succession, that when the news came that the enemy had invaded the country he thought Hungary was lost. His despair darkened his mind and he sought death in the waves of the Danube. His family removed him to a private asylum near Vienna, where he recovered his mental faculties, and even wrote several books. But he was never entirely cured of his hallucination, and, exasperated by the vexations he was subjected to by the Viennese Government, even in the asylum, the great patriot put an end to his own life on April 8, 1860, by a pistol-shot. Jellachich's incursion had other important political consequences. The attack on Hungary had been made by Jellachich in the name of the Viennese Government, and the intimate connection between the domestic disorders and the court of Vienna became more and more apparent. This state of things rendered inevitable a struggle between Hungary and the unconstitutional action of the court. The Austrian forces were arming against Hungary on every side. Vienna, too, rose in rebellion against the court, and now the Hungarians hastened to assist the revolutionists in the Austrian capital. Unfortunately the young national army was not ripe yet for so great a military enterprise, and Prince Windischgraetz, having crushed the revolution in Vienna, invaded Hungary. A last attempt was now made by the Hungarians to negotiate peace with the court, but it failed, Windischgraetz being so elated with his success that nothing short of unconditional submission on the part of the country would satisfy him. To accept such terms would have been both cowardly and suicidal, and the nation, therefore, driven to the sad alternative of war, determined rather to perish gloriously than pusillanimously to submit to be enslaved by the court. They followed the lead of Kossuth, who was now at the head of the Government, while Gorgei was the Commander-in-Chief of the Hungarian Army. The two names of Kossuth and Gorgei soon constituted the glory of the nation. While these two acted in harmony they achieved brilliant triumphs, but their personal antagonism greatly contributed, at a subsequent period, to the calamities of the country. Windischgraetz took possession of Buda in January, 1849, thus compelling Kossuth to transfer the seat of Government to Debreczin, while Gorgei withdrew with his army to the northern part of Hungary; but the national army fought victoriously against the Serbs and Wallachs, and the situation of the Hungarians had, in the course of the winter, become more favorable all over the country. The genius of Kossuth brought again and again, as if by magic, fresh armies into the field, and he was indefatigable in organizing the defence of the country. Distinguished generals like Gorgei, Klapka, Damjanics, and Bem transformed the raw recruits, in a wonderfully short time, into properly disciplined troops, who were able to hold their own and bravely contend against the old and tried imperial forces whom they put to flight at every point. The fortunes of war changed in favor of the Hungarians in the latter part of January, 1849. Klapka achieved the first triumph, which was followed by the brilliant victory won by one of Gorgei's divisions commanded by Guyon in the Battle of Branyiszko, and very soon the Hungarian armies acted on the offensive at all points. In the course of a few weeks they achieved, chiefly under Gorgei's leadership, great and complete victories over the enemy near Szolnok, Hatvan, Bicske, Waitzen, Isaszegh, Nagy Sarlo, and Komarom. Windischgraetz lost both the campaign and his office as commander-in-chief. Toward the close of the spring of 1849, after besieged Komorn had been relieved by the Hungarians, and Bem had driven from Transylvania not only the Austrians, but the Russians who had come to their assistance, the country was almost freed from her enemies, and only two cities, Buda and Temesvar, remained in the hands of the Austrians. The glorious efforts made by the nation were attended at last by splendid successes, and the civilized world spoke with sympathy and respect of the Hungarian people, who had signally shown their ability to defend their liberties, constitution, and national existence. It should have been the mission of diplomacy, at this conjuncture, to turn to advantage the recent military successes by negotiating an honorable peace with the humbled dynasty, as had been done before in the history of the country, after similar military achievements by the ancient national leaders, Bocskay and Bethlen. Gorgei, at the head of the army, was disposed to conclude peace. But the Hungarian Parliament sitting in Debreczin, led by Kossuth and under the influence of the recent victories, was determined to pursue a different course. The royal house at Hapsburg, whose dynasty had ruled over Hungary for three centuries, was declared to have forfeited its right to the throne by instigating and bringing upon the country the calamities of a great war. This act had a bad effect, especially on the army, tending also to heighten the personal antagonism between Kossuth and Gorgei. But its worst consequence was that it gave Russia a pretext for armed intervention. The Emperor Francis Joseph entered into an alliance with the Czar of Russia, the purpose of which was to reconquer seceded Hungary and ultimately to crush her liberty. One more brilliant victory was achieved by the Hungarian arms before the fatal blow was aimed at the country. The fortress of Buda was taken after a gallant assault, in the course of which the Austrian commandant bombarded the defenceless city of Pest on the opposite bank of the Danube, and thus the capital, too, was restored to the country. Yet after this last glorious feat of war, good fortune deserted the national banners. The grand heroic epoch was hastening to its tragic end. Two hundred thousand Russians crossed the borders of Hungary, and were there reënforced by sixty thousand to seventy thousand Austrians, whom the Viennese Government had succeeded in collecting for a last great effort. It was easy to foresee that the exhausted Hungarian army could not long resist the superior numbers opposed to them. For months they continued the gallant fight, and in one of these fierce engagements Petofi, the beloved poet of the nation, lost his life; but in the month of August the Russians had already succeeded in surrounding Gorgei's army. Gorgei, who was now invested with the supreme power, perceiving that all further effusion of blood was useless, surrendered, in the sight of the Russian army, the sword he had so gloriously worn in many a battle, near Vilagos, on August 13, 1849. The remaining Hungarian armies followed his example, and either capitulated or disbanded. The brave army of the _honveds_ was no more, and the gallant struggle for liberty was put an end to by the Russian forces. Kossuth and many other Hungarians sought refuge in Turkey. Above Komorn, the largest fortress in the country, alone the Hungarian colors were still floating. General Klapka, its commandant, bravely defended it, and continued to hold it for six weeks after the sad catastrophe of Vilagos. The brave defender, seeing at last that further resistance served no purpose, as the Hungarian army had ceased to exist, and the whole country had passed into the hands of the Austrians, capitulated upon the most honorable terms. This was the concluding act of the heroic struggle of the Hungarian people, the brave attitude of the garrison and their commander adding another bright page to the honorable record of the military achievements of 1848 and 1849. As soon as the Imperialists had obtained possession of Komorn, their commander-in-chief, Baron Haynau, began to persecute the patriots, and to commit the most cruel atrocities against them. Those who had taken part in the national war were brought before a court-martial and summarily executed. The bloody work of the executioner began on October 6th. Count Louis Batthyanyi was shot at Pest, and thirteen gallant generals, belonging to Gorgei's army, met their deaths at Arad. Wholesale massacres were committed throughout the country, until at last the conscience of Europe rose up against these cruel butcheries, and the court itself removed the sanguinary Baron from the scene of his inhuman exploits. The best men in the country were thrown into prison, and thousands of families had to mourn for dear ones who had fallen victims to the implacable vindictiveness of the Austrian Government. Once more the gloom of oppression settled upon the unhappy country. Many of the patriots had accompanied Kossuth to Turkey or found a refuge in other foreign countries, and for ten years a great number of distinguished Hungarians were compelled to taste the bitterness of exile. Kossuth himself went subsequently to England, and visited also the United States. In the latter country he was enthusiastically received by the great and free American people, who took delight in his lofty eloquence. During the Crimean War, and the War of 1859 in Italy, Kossuth and the Hungarian exiles were zealously laboring to free their country, by foreign aid, from the thraldom of oppression. At last, however, the Hungarian nation succeeded in reconquering, without any aid from abroad, by her own exertions, her national and political rights, and made her peace with the ruling dynasty. But the Hungarian exiles had their full share in the work of reconciliation, for it was owing to their exertions that the nations of Europe remembered that, in spite of Vilagos, Hungary still existed, and that again, at home, the people of Hungary were not permitted to lose their faith in a better and brighter future. Kossuth, the Nestor of the struggle for liberty, lives at present [1886] in retirement in Turin, [Footnote: Kossuth died at Turin, Italy, March 20, 1894.--ED.] and, although separated from his people by diverging political theories, his countrymen will forever cherish in him the great genius who gave liberty to millions of the oppressed peasantry, and who inscribed indelibly on the pages of the national legislation the immortal principles of liberty and equality of rights. (1848) DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA, John S. Hittell Before the time of the great gold discovery of 1848, the metal had been found in California, but the mines from which it was taken were poor and yielded small returns for years of working. The discovery in 1848 influenced the whole world, giving new life to trade and industry everywhere. The first published report of gold in California appeared in Hakluyt's account of Sir Francis Drake's visit to the coast in 1579. The observations of Drake's men are supposed by some to have been made at a point not far from San Francisco. The Hakluyt statement, however, is disbelieved by many historians. The Spaniards and Mexicans who later visited the coast are known to have found gold at many places, and especially near the Colorado River, but they discovered no mines worth working. Reports of great mineral wealth in California were repeated up to the time of the American conquest, but they commanded little confidence among mining experts. Although gold was found in what is now San Diego County in 1828, Alexander Forbes, the historian of California, wrote in 1835 that no minerals of particular importance had been discovered in Upper California, nor any ores of metals. About 1838 a gold placer was discovered in the ca±on of San Francisquito, forty-five miles northwest of Los Angeles, and this was the first California mine that produced any considerable amount of metal. It was worked for ten years and then abandoned for richer diggings in the Sacramento Valley. The average yield for the ten years was probably about six thousand dollars. After the return of the Wilkes exploring expedition of 1842, James D. Dana, its mineralogist, mentioned places in California at which he had observed or inferred the existence of gold. But his report led to no gold-hunting, and had only a scientific interest. The great discovery of 1848, and its world-wide effects, are described in the following account by Hittell, which forms a part of Hubert H. Bancroft's voluminous _History of the Pacific States_. As Edmund Hammond Hargraves is the hero of the Australian, so is James W. Marshall of the Californian, gold discovery. Before giving the account of his discovery, however, I will quote the following passage from a letter written on May 4, 1846, by Thomas O. Larkin, then United States consul at Monterey, California, to James Buchanan, Secretary of State: "There is said to be black lead in the country of San Fernando, near San Pedro [now Los Angeles County]. By washing the sand in a plate, any person can obtain from one dollar to five dollars per day of gold that brings seventeen dollars per ounce in Boston; the gold has been gathered for two or three years, though but few have the patience to look for it. On the southeast end of the island of Catalina there is a silver mine from which silver has been extracted. There is no doubt but that gold, silver, quick-silver, copper, lead, sulphur, and coal mines are to be found all over California, and it is equally doubtful whether, under their present owners, they will ever be worked." James W. Marshall, in a letter dated January 28, 1856, and addressed to Charles E. Pickett, gave the following account of the gold discovery: "Toward the end of August, 1847, Captain Sutter and I formed a copartnership to build and run a sawmill upon a site selected by myself (since known as Coloma). We employed P.L. Weimer and family to remove from the Fort (Sutter's Fort) to the mill-site, to cook and labor for us. Nearly the first work done was the building of a double log cabin, about half a mile from the mill-site. We commenced the mill about Christmas. Some of the mill-hands wanted a cabin near the mill. This was built, and I went to the Fort to superintend the construction of the mill-irons, leaving orders to cut a narrow ditch where the race was to be made. Upon my return, in January, 1848, I found the ditch cut as directed, and those who were working on the same were doing so at a great disadvantage, expending their labor upon the head of the race instead of the foot. "I immediately changed the course of things, and upon the 19th of the same month of January discovered the gold near the lower end of the race, about two hundred yards below the mill. William Scott was the second man to see the metal. He was at work at a carpenter's bench near the mill. I showed the gold to him. Alexander Stephens, James Brown, Henry Bigler, and William Johnston were likewise working in front of the mill, framing the upper story. They were called up next, and, of course, saw the precious metal. P.L. Weimer and Charles Bennett were at the old double log cabin (where Hastings and Company afterward kept a store). "In the mean time we put in some wheat and peas, nearly five acres, across the river. In February the Captain (Captain Sutter) came to the mountains for the first time. Then we consummated a treaty with the Indians, which had been previously negotiated. The tenor of this was that we were to pay them two hundred dollars yearly in goods, at Yerba Buena prices, for the joint possession and occupation of the land with them; they agreeing not to kill our stock, viz., horses, cattle, hogs, or sheep, nor burn the grass within the limits fixed by the treaty. At the same time Captain Sutter, myself, and Isaac Humphrey entered into a copartnership to dig gold. A short time afterward, P.L. Weimer moved away from the mill, and was away two or three months, when he returned. With all the events that subsequently occurred, you and the public are well informed." This is the most precise and is generally considered to be the most correct account of the gold discovery. Other versions of the story have been published, however, and the following, from an article published in the Coloma _Argus_, in the latter part of the year 1855, is one of them. The statement was evidently derived from Weimer, who lives at Coloma: "That James W. Marshall picked up the first piece of gold is beyond doubt. Peter L. Weimer, who resides in this place, states positively that Marshall picked up the gold in his presence; they both saw it and each spoke at the same time, 'What's that yellow stuff?' Marshall, being a step in advance, picked it up. This first piece of gold is now in the possession of Mrs. Weimer, and weighs six pennyweights eleven grains. The piece was given to her by Marshall himself. The dam was finished early in January, the frame for the mill also erected, and the flume and bulkhead completed. It was at this time that Marshall and Weimer adopted the plan of raising the gate during the night to wash out sand from the mill-race, closing it during the day, when work would be continued with shovels, etc. "Early in February--the exact day is not remembered--in the morning, after shutting off the water, Marshall and Weimer walked down the race together to see what the water had accomplished during the night. Having gone about twenty yards below the mill, they both saw the piece of gold before mentioned, and Marshall picked it up. After an examination, the gold was taken to the cabin of Weimer, and Mrs. Weimer instructed to boil it in saleratus-water; but she, being engaged in making soap, pitched the piece into the soap-kettle, where it was boiled all day and all night. The following morning the strange piece of stuff was fished out of the soap, all the brighter for the boiling. "Discussion now commenced, and all expressed the opinion that perhaps the yellow substance might be gold. Little was said on the subject; but everyone each morning searched in the race for more, and every day found several small scales. The Indians also picked up many small thin pieces, and carried them always to Mrs. Weimer. About three weeks after the first piece was obtained, Marshall took the fine gold, amounting to between two and three ounces, and went to San Francisco to have the strange metal tested. On his return he informed Weimer that the stuff was gold. "All hands now began to search for the 'root of all evil.' Shortly after, Captain Sutter came to Coloma, and he and Marshall assembled the Indians and bought of them a large tract of country about Coloma, in exchange for a lot of beads and a few cotton handkerchiefs. They, under color of this Indian title, required one-third of all the gold dug on their domain, and collected at this rate until the fall of 1848, when a mining party from Oregon declined paying 'tithes' as they called it. "During February, 1848, Marshall and Weimer went down the river to Mormon Island, and there found scales of gold on the rocks. Some weeks later they sent Mr. Henderson, Sydney Willis and Mr. Fifield, Mormons, down there to dig, telling them that that place was better than Coloma. These were the first miners at Mormon Island." Marshall was a man of an active, enthusiastic mind, and he at once attached great importance to his discovery. His ideas, however, were vague; he knew nothing about gold-mining; he did not know how to take advantage of what he had found. Only an experienced gold-miner could understand the importance of the discovery and make it of practical value to all the world. That gold-miner, fortunately, was near at hand; his name was Isaac Humphrey. He was residing in the town of San Francisco, in the month of February, when a Mr. Bennett, one of the party employed at Marshall's mill, went down to that place with some of the dust to have it tested; for it was still a matter of doubt whether this yellow metal really was gold. Bennett told his errand to a friend whom he met in San Francisco, and this friend introduced him to Humphrey, who had been a gold-miner in Georgia, and was therefore competent to pass an opinion. Humphrey looked at the dust, pronounced it gold at the first glance, and expressed a belief that the diggings must be rich. He made inquiries about the place where the gold was found, and subsequent inquiries about the trustworthiness of Mr. Bennett, and on March 7th he was at the mill. He tried to induce several of his friends in San Francisco to go with him; they all thought his expedition a foolish one, and he had to go alone. He found that there was some talk about the gold, and persons would occasionally go about looking for pieces of it; but no one was engaged in mining, and the work of the mill was going on as usual. On the 8th he went out prospecting with a pan, and satisfied himself that the country in that vicinity was rich in gold. He then made a rocker and commenced the business of washing gold, and thus began the business of mining in California. Others saw how he did it, followed his example, found that the work was profitable, and abandoned all other occupations. The news of their success spread; people flocked to the place, learned how to use the rocker, discovered new diggings, and in the course of a few months the country had been overturned by a social and industrial revolution. Mr. Humphrey had not been at work more than three or four days before a Frenchman, called Baptiste, who had been a gold-miner in Mexico for many years, came to the mill, and he agreed with Humphrey that California was very rich in gold. He, too, went to work, and, being an excellent prospector, he was of great service in teaching the newcomers the principles of prospecting and mining for gold--principles not abstruse, yet not likely to suggest themselves at first thought to men entirely ignorant of the business. Baptiste had been employed by Captain Sutter to saw lumber with a whipsaw, and had been at work for two years at a place, since called Weber, about ten miles eastward from Coloma. When he saw the diggings at the latter place, he at once said there were rich mines where he had been sawing, and he expressed surprise that it had never occurred to him before, so experienced in gold-mining as he was; but he afterward said it had been so ordered by Providence, that the gold might not be discovered until California should be in the hands of the Americans. About the middle of March, P.B. Reading, an American, now a prominent and wealthy citizen of the State, then the owner of a large ranch on the western bank of the Sacramento River, near where it issues from the mountains, came to Coloma, and after looking about at the diggings, said that if similarity in the appearance of the country could be taken as a guide there must be gold in the hills near his ranch; and he went off, declaring his intention to go back and make an examination of them. John Bidwell, another American, now a wealthy and influential citizen, then residing on his ranch on the bank of Feather River, came to Coloma about a week later, and he said there must be gold near his ranch, and he went off with expressions similar to those used by Reading. In a few weeks news came that Reading had found diggings near Clear Creek, at the head of the Sacramento Valley, and was at work there with his Indians; and not long after, it was reported that Bidwell was at work with his Indians on a rich bar of Feather River, since called "Bidwell's Bar." Although Bennett had arrived at San Francisco in February with some of the dust, the editors of the town--for two papers were published in the place at the time--did not hear of the discovery till some weeks later. The first published notice of the gold appeared in the _Californian_ (published in San Francisco) on March 15th, as follows: "In the newly made raceway of the sawmill recently erected by Captain Sutter, on the American Fork, gold has been found in considerable quantities. One person brought thirty dollars' worth to New Helvetia, gathered there in a short time. California, no doubt, is rich in mineral wealth; great chances here for scientific capitalists. Gold has been found in almost every part of the country." Three days later the _California Star_, the rival paper, gave the following account of the discovery: "We were informed a few days since that a very valuable silver-mine was situated in the vicinity of this place, and, again, that its locality was known. Mines of quicksilver are being found all over the country. Gold has been discovered in the northern Sacramento districts, about forty miles above Sutter's Fort. Rich mines of copper are said to exist north of these bays." Although these articles were written two months after the discovery, it is evident that the editors had heard only vague rumors, and attached little importance to them. The _Star_ of March 25th says: "So great is the quantity of gold taken from the new mine recently found at New Helvetia that it has become an article of traffic in that vicinity." None of the gold had been seen in San Francisco; but at Sutter's Fort men had begun to buy and sell with it. The next number of the _Star_, bearing date April 1, 1848, contained an article several columns long, written by Doctor V.J. Fourgeaud, on the resources of California. He devoted about a column to the minerals, and in the course of his remarks said: "It would be utterly impossible at present to make a correct estimate of the mineral wealth of California. Popular attention has been but lately directed to it. But the discoveries that have already been made will warrant us in the assertion that California is one of the richest mineral countries in the world. Gold, silver, quicksilver, iron, copper, lead, sulphur, saltpetre, and other mines of great value have already been found. We saw a few days ago a beautiful specimen of gold from the mine newly discovered on the American Fork. From all accounts the mine is immensely rich, and already we learn the gold from it collected at random and without any trouble has become an article of trade at the upper settlements. This precious metal abounds in this country. We have heard of several other newly discovered mines of gold, but as these reports are not yet authenticated we shall pass over them. However, it is well known that there is a placer of gold a few miles from Los Angeles, and another on the San Joaquin." It was not until more than three months after Marshall's discovery that the San Francisco papers stated that gold-mining had become a regular and profitable business in the new placers. The _Californian_ of April 26th said: "From a gentleman just from the gold region we learn that many new discoveries of gold have very recently been made, and it is fully ascertained that a large extent of country abounds with that precious mineral. Seven men, with picks and spades, gathered one thousand six hundred dollars worth in fifteen days. Many persons are settling on the lands with the view of holding preëmptions, but as yet every person takes the right to gather all he can without any regard to claims. The largest piece yet found is worth six dollars." The news spread, men came from all the settled parts of the territory, and as they came they went to work mining, and gradually they moved farther and farther from Coloma, and before the rainy reason had commenced (in December) miners were washing rich auriferous dirt all along the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, from the Feather to the Tuolumne River, a distance of one hundred fifty miles; and also over a space of about fifteen miles square, near the place now known as the town of Shasta, in the Coast Mountains, at the head of the Sacramento Valley. The whole country had been turned topsy-turvy; towns had been deserted, or left only to the women and children; fields had been left unreaped; herds of cattle went without anyone to care for them. But gold-mining, which had become the great interest of the country, was not neglected. The people learned rapidly and worked hard. In the latter part of 1848 adventurers began to arrive from Oregon, the Sandwich Islands, and Mexico. The winter found the miners with very little preparation, but most of them were accustomed to a rough manner of life in the Western wilds, and they considered their large profits an abundant compensation for their privations and hardships. The weather was so mild in December and January that they could work almost as well as in the summer, and the rain gave them facilities for washing such as they could not have in the dry season. In September, 1848, the first rumors of the gold discovery began to reach New York; in October they attracted attention; in November people looked with interest for new reports; in December the news gained general credence and a great excitement arose. Preparations were made for a migration to California by somebody in nearly every town in the United States. The great body of the emigrants went either across the plains with ox or mule teams or round Cape Horn in sailing-vessels. A few took passage in the steamer by way of Panama. Not fewer than one hundred thousand men, representing in their nativity every State in the Union, went to California that year. Of these, twenty thousand crossed the continent by way of the South Pass; and nearly all of them started from the Missouri River between Independence and St. Joseph, in the month of May. They formed an army; in daytime their trains filled up the roads for miles, and at night their camp-fires glittered in every direction about the places blessed with grass and water. The excitement continued from 1850 to 1853; emigrants continued to come by land and sea, from Europe and America, and in the last named year from China also. In 1854 the migration fell off, and since that time until the completion of the Union Pacific Railroad California received the chief accessions to her white population by the Panama steamers. The whole world felt a beneficent influence from the great gold yield of the Sacramento Basin. Labor rose in value, and industry was stimulated from St. Louis to Constantinople. The news, however, was not welcome to all classes. Many of the capitalists feared that gold would soon be so abundant as to be worthless, and European statesmen feared the power to be gained by the arrogant and turbulent democracy of the New World. The author of a book entitled _Notes on the Gold District_, published in London in 1853, thus speaks of the fears excited in Europe on the first great influx of gold from the Californian mines: "Among the many extraordinary incidents connected with the Californian discoveries was the alarm communicated to many classes and which was not confined to individuals but invaded governments. The first announcement spread alarm; but as the cargoes of gold rose from one hundred thousand dollars to one million dollars, bankers and financiers began seriously to prepare for an expected crisis. In England and the United States the panic was confined to a few; but on the Continent of Europe every government, rich or poor, thought it needful to make provision against the threatened evils. An immediate alteration in prices was looked for; money was to become so abundant that all ordinary commodities were to rise, but more especially the proportion between gold and silver was to be disturbed, some thinking that the latter might become the dearer metal. The Governments of France, Holland, and Russia, in particular, turned their attention to the monetary question, and in 1850 the Government of Holland availed themselves of a law, which had not before been put in operation, to take immediate steps for selling off the gold in the Bank of Amsterdam, at what they supposed to be the highest prices, and to stock themselves with silver. "Palladium, which is likewise a superior white metal, was held more firmly, and expectations were entertained that it would become available for plating. The stock, however, was small. The silver operation was carried on concurrent with a supply of bullion to Russia for a loan, a demand for silver in Austria, and for shipment to India, and it did really produce an effect on the silver market, which many mistook for the influence of Californian gold. The particular way in which the Netherlands operations were carried on was especially calculated to produce the greatest disturbance of prices. The ten-florin pieces were sent to Paris, coined there into Napoleons, and silver five-franc pieces drawn out in their place. "At Paris the premium on gold in a few months fell from nearly 2 per cent. to a discount, and at Hamburg a like fall took place. In London, the great silver market, silver rose, between the autumn and the new year, from five shillings per ounce to five shillings one and five-eighths pence per ounce, and Mexican dollars from four shillings ten and one-half pence to four shillings eleven and five-eighths pence per ounce; nor did prices recover until toward the end of the year 1851, when the fall was as sudden as the rise." In the spring of 1849 Reading crossed the Coast Range with a party of his Indians, and discovered rich diggings in the valley of the Trinity. In the summer of the same year Colonel Frémont discovered the mines on his ranch, in the valley of the Mariposa. (1849) RISE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC, Jessie White Mario When "Young Italy," the association of republican agitators led by Giuseppe Mazzini, began its activities (about 1834), hatred of the Austrian government, which ruled in several of the Italian States, was kept alive through this determined organization. Aspirations for liberty and self-government were requickened. The endeavors of the reforming Pope, Pius IX (1846), to harmonize his policy with the aims of this party, in order to promote a confederation of the Italian States under papal supremacy, at first seemed to promise the dawn of a new era. Soon after the outbreak of the revolution of 1848 in France, revolt against the Austrian power began in various parts of Italy. The Austrian troops were driven out of Lombardy; Venice compelled the Austrian forces in her territory to surrender, and became a free republic; in a short time Italy appeared to have delivered herself from the rule of Austria; but almost immediately the foreign power began to regain its ascendency, and this, through the events here related, was fully recovered. After the flight of Pius IX from Rome (November, 1848), Mazzini and his followers pursued their own course. A constituent assembly was summoned, and on February 5, 1849, it declared the temporal power of the Pope abolished. The Italian soldier who now becomes the chief figure of this movement has enjoyed a popular renown unsurpassed by that of any of his countrymen. Giuseppe Garibaldi, a sailor's son, was born in Nice, July 4, 1807. In youth he went to sea. In 1834 he took part with Mazzini in the Young Italy demonstrations, and for aiding in an attempt to seize Genoa he was condemned to death. Escaping to South America, he won distinction as a guerilla leader and a privateer in the service of the Rio Grande rebels against Brazil. After further military adventures in South America, he returned to Italy, and in 1847 offered his services to Pope Pius IX, but they were not accepted. In 1848 he received indifferent treatment at the hands of Charles Albert of Sardinia, who was besieging the Austrians in Mantua. After the failure of Charles Albert, Garibaldi collected his own followers and acted against the Austrians with such effect as to bring him into prominence in the ranks of Italian patriots. The following account of the siege and defence of Rome, which admiringly presents him to view, is from the author's supplement to Garibaldi's _Autobiography_, and is a valuable contribution to the history of the events in which he was so conspicuous. Of the many sublime pages traced in the blood of Italian patriots, the sublimest in our eyes is that of the defence of Rome. No writer of genius has yet been inspired to narrate the heroic deeds enacted, the pain, privation, anguish, borne joyfully to save "that city of the Italian soul" from desecration by the foreigner. Mazzini's beloved disciple, Mameli, the soldier-poet, died with the flower of the student youth; the survivors, exiled, dispersed, heartbroken, or intent only on preparing for the next campaign, have left us but fugitive records, partial episodes, or dull military chronicles. Margaret Fuller Ossoli, competent by love and genius to be the historian and who had collected the materials day by day, lived the life of the combatants hour by hour, was wrecked with "Ossoli, Angelo" and her manuscript, in sight of her native shore. From details that reached him Garibaldi always maintained that there was a priest among the wreckers who secured and destroyed the treasure! Guerrazzi's _Siege of Rome_ is inferior to all his other writings. The entry of the Italian army into Rome by the breach in Porta Pia has cast the grand defence of 1849 into the background of rash attempts and futile failures. In these brief pages we give merely the outline of the drama in which Garibaldi was one of the leading actors. The men who desired a republic did not exist as a party in Rome previous to the flight of the Pope. But there existed a strong national anti-Austrian party, who, as they had worshipped Pio Nono (Pius IX) when he "blessed Italy" and the banners that the Romans bore upward to the "Holy War," now execrated him inasmuch as he had withdrawn his sanction to that war and had blessed the Croats and the Austrians who were butchering the Italians in the north. Convinced of the impossibility of favoring the independence and unity of Italy, and remaining at the same time the supreme head of the Universal Church, Pio Nono fled for protection to the King of Naples; there he declined to accept from the King of Piedmont his repeated offers of protection or mediation, and appealed to Austria alone to restore him pope-king absolute in Rome. Very soon afterward the Archduke of Tuscany revoked the Constituent Assembly which he had granted, and followed the saintly example of the Holy Father, so that Tuscany and Rome were alike left sheep without a shepherd. In the Roman States an appeal was made to universal suffrage, and the people sent up deputies, known chiefly for their honesty and bravery, to decide on the form of government, to assist Piedmont in her second war against Austria. When the Constituent Assembly met to decide on the form of government, Mamiani warned them that only two rulers were possible in Rome--the Pope or Cola di Rienzi; the Papacy or the Republic. Garibaldi, who had organized his legion at Rieti, was elected member of the Constituent Assembly, and on February 7th put in his appearance and in language more soldierlike than parliamentary urged the immediate proclamation of the republic. But the debate was carried on with all due respect for the "rights of the minority." Finally, on February 9th, of the one hundred fifty-four Deputies present, all but five voted for the downfall of the temporal power of the Pope, all but eleven for the proclamation of the republic. These, with the exception of General Garibaldi and General Ferrari, were all Romans. G. Filopanti, who undertook to explain the state of affairs to the Roman people, won shouts of applause by his concluding words, "We are no longer mere Romans, but Italians." This sentence sums up the sentiments of all: of Garibaldi, who, after recording his vote, returned to his troops at Rieti and drew up an admirable plan for attacking the Austrians bent on subjugating the Roman Provinces and for carrying revolution into the Kingdom of Naples; of Mazzini, who, so far from having imposed on the Romans a republic by the force of his tyrannical will, was--during its proclamation--in Tuscany, striving to induce Guerrazzi and his fellow-triumvirs to unite with Rome and organize a strong army for the renewal of the Lombard War. True, the Romans, mindful of all they owed to the great apostle of Italian unity and independence, proclaimed him Roman citizen on February 12th, and on the 25th of the same month the Roman people, with nine thousand votes, elected him member of the Constituent Assembly; but it was not until March 5th that he entered Rome, when, in one of his most splendid speeches, rising above parties and politics, he called upon the "Rome of the People" to send up combatants against Austria, the only enemy that then menaced Italy. Suiting the action to the word, he induced the Assembly to nominate a commission for the thorough organization of the army; and ten thousand men had quitted Rome and were marching up to the frontier to place themselves at the orders of Piedmont, when, alas! their march was arrested by the news of the total defeat at Novara, of the abdication of Charles Albert and the reinauguration of Austrian rule in Lombardy. Genoa, whose generous inhabitants arose in protest against the disastrous but inevitable treaty of peace, was bombarded and reduced to submission by La Marmora; and now, while to Rome and to Venice flocked all the volunteers who preferred death to submission, the new Holy Alliance of Continental Europe took for its watchword: "The restoration of the Pope; the extinction of the two Republics of Venice and of Rome." Austria crossed the Po and occupied Ferrara, marching thence on Bologna; the Neapolitan troops from the south marched upward to the Roman frontier; even Spain sent her contingent to Fiumicino. But only when it was known that the French Republic had voted an expedition, with the specious object of guaranteeing the independence of the supreme Pontiff, did the Romans and their rulers realize that the existence of Rome and her newborn liberties was seriously menaced. Garibaldi wrote from Rieti, in April, an enthusiastic letter worth recording here: "BROTHER MAZZINI: I feel that I must write you one line with my own hand. May Providence sustain you in your brilliant but arduous career [Mazzini had just been elected, with Armellini and Saffi, Triumvir of Rome], and may you be enabled to carry out all the noble designs in your mind for the welfare of our country. Remember that Rieti is full of your brethren in the faith, and that immutably yours is "JOSEPH GARIBALDI." At the same time he sent a plan, proposing to march along the Via Emilia, to collect arms and volunteers, proclaim the levy in mass, and with a division stationed in the Bolognese territory, operate in the duchies, unite Tuscan, Ligurian, and Piedmontese forces, and once more assail the Austrians. But the news of Piedmont defeated, Genoa bombarded and vanquished, convinced him that it would be difficult to re-arouse the disheartened population of Northern Italy. Hence he next proposed to cross the Neapolitan frontier, fling himself upon the royal troops, and seize the Abruzzi. A sensible project this, to take the offensive against the Pope's defenders. But before the Triumvirate could come to a definite decision, it was known that the French troops, by a disgraceful stratagem, had landed and taken possession of Civita Vecchia, General Oudinot entwining the French flag with the Roman tricolor and assuring the Romans that they only came to secure perfect freedom for the people to effect a reconciliation with Pius IX. But the people had no desire for such reconciliation; the Assembly decreed that Rome should have no garrison but the National Roman Guard: that if the Republic were invaded by force, the invaders by force should be repelled. A commission of barricades established, the people flocked to erect and remained to man them. The National Guard summoned by Mazzini all answered, "Present," and served enthusiastically throughout the siege; all the troops dispersed in the Provinces were summoned to the capital, and Garibaldi and his volunteers marched into the city amid the acclamations of the populace, too thankful to welcome them to demur at the strange appearance they presented. Now that Garibaldi's military and naval genius is fully recognized, and the extraordinary fascination he exercised over officers and men, the enthusiasm with which he filled whole populations whom others failed to stir, are undisputed, many historians and critics have expressed their astonishment that he was not made at once commander-in-chief of the Roman forces, and have blamed the Triumvirate for having failed to recognize in the hero of Montevideo the good genius of Rome. Such critics must be simply ignorant of the actual condition of Rome and her Government. There existed, in the first place, the regular Roman army, which would have served under none save regular generals; then there was the Lombard battalion under Manara, whose members, after fifteen months of regular campaigning, were thoroughly drilled and disciplined, who insisted on retaining the cross of Savoy on their belts, and, until their prowess made them the idols of the Romans, were nicknamed the "corps of aristocrats." Little did they imagine, when they kept aloof from the legion, that before three months were over their young hero chief would resign his command of them to assume the delicate post of head of Garibaldi's staff. Carlo Pisacane--educated in the military college of the Nunziatella, who had served as captain in the foreign legion in Algiers, destined later to become the pioneer of Garibaldi and his "Thousand" and to lose his life in the attempt--while recognizing Garibaldi's prowess and talents as a guerilla chief, in his military history of 1849, severely criticises his tactics, and blames his sending up "a handful of boys against masses of the enemy" and censures, unhesitatingly, "his indiscipline at Velletri." One of the Deputies of the Roman Constituent wrote to the Triumvirate begging them to "Send Garibaldi with his motley crew to a terrible spot, called For del Diavolo, between Civita Vecchia and Rome; on no account to allow them to enter the city, as they are quite too disorderly." Now, they had committed no "disorders" save that of carrying off the mules and horses of the convents; but when we think of the wild, free, peril-scorning life led in the backwoods of America, of how they recognized no law save their commander's orders, how little used he had been to receive command from any, it will be easily understood how this wild, tanned, quaintly dressed band filled the inhabitants of the towns through which they passed with terror and dismay. Garibaldi's violent tirades against priests and priestcraft; the liberation of a gang of miscreants arrested by order of the Roman Government, had not prepossessed men of order and of discipline in his favor; and although personal contact dispelled all unfavorable prepossessions, one sees how impossible it was for Mazzini to place him in the position which he would himself have assigned to him. Garibaldi altered in nothing his South American modes of warfare. He and his staff, in red shirts and ponchos, with hats of every form and color, no distinctions of rank or military accoutrements, rode on their American saddles, which when unrolled served each as a small tent. When their troops halted and the soldiers piled their arms, the General and all his staff attended each to the wants of his own horse, then to securing provisions for their men. When these were not at hand, the officers, springing on their barebacked horses, lasso on wrists, dashed full speed along the Campagna, till oxen, sheep, pigs, kids, or poultry in sufficient quantities were secured and paid for; then, dividing their spoil among the companies, officers and men fell to killing, quartering, and roasting before huge fires in the open air. Garibaldi, when no battle was raging or danger near--if in the city, selected some lofty belfry-tower; if in the country, climbed the loftiest peak; and, with brief minutes of repose under his saddle-tent, literally lived on horseback, posting his own pickets, making his own observations, sometimes passing hours in perfect silence, scanning the most distant and minute objects through his telescope. Ever a man of the fewest words, a look, a gesture, a brief sentence sufficed to convey his orders to his officers. When his trumpet signalled departure, the lassos served to catch the horses grazing in the fields, the men fell into order and marched, none knowing nor caring whither, save to follow their chief. Councils of war he never held; he ordered, and was implicitly obeyed. To his original legion were added some of the finest and bravest of the Lombard volunteers, who had learned his worth "after the armistice"; while boys from ten to fourteen, who were his pride and delight, formed his "band of hope." To-day for an act of courage a man would be raised from the ranks, and, sword in hand, command his company; but woe to him if he failed in shouldering a musket or brandishing a bayonet at need. To onlookers this legion, composed at first of but one thousand men, seemed a wild, unruly set; but this was not the case. Drunkenness and insubordination were unknown among the ranks. Woe to a soldier who wronged a civilian. Three were shot for petty theft during the brief Roman campaign. Still, while Garibaldi felt within himself his own superiority to those around, Mazzini, who also felt it, might as well have proposed an Indian chief to command the Roman Army as this man, whom, in later years, no soldier in Europe but would have been proud to call _dux_. Again, it must not be forgotten that the grounds on which France explained her interference was the imposition by "foreigners" of a republic on the Roman people, desirous only to receive the Pope with open arms; that Austria, Piedmont, and the Ultramontane faction in England represented the Roman States as handed over to the demagogues, to the riffraff of European revolutionists. Hence the absolute necessity that presented itself to the minds of the Triumvirs for filling the civil and military offices as far as possible with citizens of Rome or the Roman States. Unfortunately, no capable Roman commander-in-chief existed. Rosselli was chosen as the least incapable; but throughout, Garibaldi was regarded as the soul, the genius of the defence. A very short time had sufficed for Mazzini and the Romans to come to so perfect an understanding that no exercise of authority, no police force, was necessary to keep order in the city, as the French, English, and American residents, and as the respective consuls repeatedly affirmed in public and in private letters. Oudinot too had warning from his own consul, from his own friends within the city, of all the preparations, of the resolute determination of the inhabitants, of the known valor of many of the combatants in past campaigns; yet to all such remonstrances he answered with French impertinence, "_Les Italiens ne se battent pas_," and clearly he had imbued his officers with this belief. At dawn on April 30th, starting from Castel di Guido, leaving their knapsacks at Magnianella, the officers in white gloves and sheathed swords advanced on Rome, taking the road to Porta Cavallaggieri, sending sharpshooters through the woodlands on the right, the Chasseurs de Vincennes on the heights to the left. Avezzana, war minister, from the top of the cupola of San Pietro in Montori, on seeing the first sentinel advance, gave the signal for the ringing of the tocsin, which brought the entire populace to the walls, the Roman matrons clustering there to encourage their husbands, sons, and brothers to the fight. When the army arrived within a hundred seventy yards from the wall, the artillerymen from the bastions of San Marto fired their first salute, to which the Chasseurs de Vincennes responded so well that the Roman Narducci, Major Pallini, and several of his men fell mortally wounded at their guns. Finding themselves under a cross-fire from the walls and from the Vatican, the enemy placed a counter-battery, which did deadly mischief to the besieged, who lost at once six officers, numerous soldiers, and had a cannon dismounted to boot. Not the slightest confusion occurred; women and boys carried off the wounded; fresh soldiers took the place of the fallen; compelling Oudinot to summon both his brigades and plant two other pieces of cannon. But he now had to cope with an enemy whom Frenchmen in Montevideo envied and calumniated; who to himself and his followers was as yet an unknown quantity. Garibaldi, who had had but two days to organize his men and take up position, had at once perceived the importance of the scattered buildings outside the gates, and occupied them all--villas, woods, and the walls surrounding them. As the enemy fell back from the first assault, he flung his men upon them as stones from a sling. At the head of the first company was Captain Montaldi, who in a short time was crippled with nineteen bullets, yet still fought on his knees with his broken sword; and only when the French retreated did his men carry him dead from the field. As fought his company, so fought all under the eyes of Garibaldi, who directed the fight from Villa Pamphilli. Then summoning his reserve, himself heading the students who had never seen fire but who had given each to the other the consign, "If I attempt to run away, shoot me through the head," he led them into the open field, and there gave them their first lesson to the cry of, "To the bayonet! to the bayonet!"--a lesson oft repeated since, a cry never after raised in vain. Numbers of his best officers and soldiers fell, but never a halt or panic made a pause in that eventful charge, until in full open fight the French were compelled to retreat, leaving Garibaldi absolute master of the field. Numbers of the French were killed and wounded, others hid themselves in the woods and vineyards round; a general retreat ensued, while a portion continued the fire to protect it. The guns had to be carried off by hand, as four horses had been killed; and at this retreat up to Castel di Guido, General Oudinot was forced to assist in person. Summing up his losses, he found that he had left four hundred dead upon the field; five hundred thirty wounded, and two hundred sixty prisoners. He had, besides, the glory of depriving the Roman Republic of two hundred fourteen killed and wounded, twenty-five officers among them, and of carrying off one prisoner, Ugo Bassi, the chaplain, who had remained behind to assist a dying man, his only weapon being the cross, of which the French were the knightly protectors. Garibaldi's first thought was naturally to pursue the fugitives to Castel di Guido, to Pali, and Civita Vecchia; "To drive them," in his own forcible language, "back to their ships or into the sea." For this he demanded strong reënforcements of fresh troops. But the Government of Rome--believing that it sufficed for Republican France to know that Republican Rome did not desire the return of the Pope; that it was not governed by a faction--was resolved unanimously to resist all invasion; decided against pursuit; sent back the French prisoners to the French camp; accorded Oudinot's demand for an armistice, and entered into negotiations with the French plenipotentiary, Ferdinand de Lesseps, for the evacuation of the Roman territory. The refusal was never forgotten, never forgiven by Garibaldi, and has always been a "burning question" between the exclusive partisans of Mazzini and Garibaldi, in whose eyes to scotch and not to kill the snake was the essence of unwisdom. It is also maintained by many Garibaldians that an out-and-out victory could not have been concealed from the French Assembly as the President and his accomplices did manage to conceal the affair of April 30th, and that had the people and the army in France known what a humiliation had been inflicted on their comrades they would have insisted on the recall of Oudinot, and that thus the President's own position would have been endangered. On the other hand, Mazzini's partisans say, granting--what remains unproven--that Garibaldi could have succeeded in driving every Frenchman back to his ships or into the sea, there can be no doubt that Louis Napoleon, bent on restoring the Pope and thus gaining the clergy to his side, would have sent reënforcements upon reënforcements, until Rome should be vanquished. The disputants must agree to differ on this point, though all surely must allow that it was necessary that the small forces at the disposal of the Republic should be husbanded for the repulse of others besides France, who claimed to be defenders of the Pope--Austria, the King of Naples, and even Spain! And, in fact, a Neapolitan army, with the King at their head, had crossed the Roman frontier, and had taken up positions at Albano and Frascati, whence Garibaldi was sent to oust them, the Lombard brigade being added to his legion. This Neapolitan king-hunt formed one of the characteristic episodes of the Roman campaign. Garibaldi usually lodged his men in convents, to the terror and horror of their inmates, sending them thence to reconnoitre the enemy's positions, and harass them by deeds of daredevil courage. The King was indeed at Albano, whence from Palestrina Garibaldi marched to the attack; which would probably have been successful had he not been suddenly summoned back to Rome, as the movements of the French were by no means reassuring. However, a fresh truce being proclaimed, General Rosselli, with Garibaldi under his orders, was sent out again in full force against the Neapolitans. Not a wise arrangement this, as the volunteers and the regulars--unless at different posts within the city--had not yet united in harmonious action. Garibaldi, sent by Rosselli merely to explore the enemy's movements, finding that they were retreating from Albano, gave battle to a strong column about two miles from Velletri without giving time to Rosselli to come up with the main body. So the Neapolitans got into Velletri, barricaded themselves there, and, escaping during the night by the southern gate, recrossed the Neapolitan frontier, the King foremost in the van. Rosselli and the regulars complained loudly that this disobedience to orders had prevented them from making the King of Naples prisoner, the Garibaldians maintaining on their side that this would have been effected had the regulars thought less about their rations and come to the rescue when first they heard the distant shots. Messengers sent by the generals to the Triumvirate bore the complaints of each. Rosselli was recalled, and Garibaldi left with full liberty of action. But when the French Government disavowed their envoy-extraordinary--the patriotic, able, straightforward De Lesseps--instructing Oudinot to enter Rome by fair means or by foul, sending enormous reënforcements, promising to follow up with the entire French army if necessary, what could they do but recall Garibaldi with all possible despatch? Was it not a proof of their confidence in him? Moreover, on Garibaldi's return to Rome, Mazzini made a last effort to induce him to unburden his mind, at least to himself, by asking him in writing to tell him frankly what were his wishes. Here is the laconic answer, characteristic of the writer; frank and unabashed as the round, clear handwriting of the original, from which we copy: "ROME, June 2d, 1849. "MAZZINI: Since you ask me what I wish, I will tell you. Here I cannot avail anything for the good of the Republic, save in two ways: as dictator with unlimited plenary powers, or as a simple soldier. Choose! "Unchangingly yours, "GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI." Again, Garibaldi disapproved the conduct of Mazzini and the Triumvirate because they refused to allow any acts of violence against religion or the professors of religion. They had abolished the Inquisition, and used the edifice to house the people driven from their homes by the siege; had invited and aided monks and nuns to return to their homes and to lead the life of citizens. But they had not allowed the confessionals to be burned in the public market-place. A wretch named Zambianchi, who ill-treated some inoffending priests, was severely punished "for thus dishonoring the Republic and humanity." Moreover, the Easter ceremonies were celebrated as usual; the Triumvirate and the Assembly stood among the people in the church and in the square to receive the blessing from the outer balcony of St. Peter's. All this gave umbrage to Garibaldi, but no hypocrisy and much wisdom inspired these acts. In the first place, the Triumvirate, and especially Mazzini, the most religious man we have ever known, were well aware that, while the temporal power of the papacy might be destroyed by fire and sword, the spiritual power of the Roman Catholic hierarchy could be extinguished only in the name of a moral law recognized and accepted as being higher and more authoritative than any other intermediary between God and the people--they knew that ideas can be vanquished only by ideas. Again, as the responsible heads of the Roman Republic, the Triumvirs were wisely careful not to offend the hearts and consciences of Catholics abroad. Finally, the very fact that, with four armies at their gates, life, its feasts and fasts, its workdays and holidays, could go on as usual, was one highly calculated to strengthen the Romans' faith in and affection for the new Government. No crimes were committed; the people came to the Triumvirs as children to their fathers, and--for Italians a very remarkable thing--they not only paid down current taxes, but they paid up arrears. From Garibaldi's brief account, it would almost seem that the Triumvirate and the Assembly surrendered Rome before absolute necessity constrained them so to do. He does not tell us how, when the French had actually entered Rome by the breach, he alone of all the civil and military commanders refused to head the troops to attack the invaders in possession. He gave his own reasons, very wise ones it seems to us, in writing many years later, but in his _Memoirs_ he seems to have forgotten them. The terrible tidings that the seventh bastion and the curtain uniting it to the sixth had fallen into the hands of the French spread through the city. The Triumvirate had the tocsins rung. All the houses were opened at that sound; in the twinkling of an eye all the inhabitants were in the streets. General Rosselli and the Minister of War, all the officers of the staff, Mazzini himself, came to the Janiculum. "The people in arms massed around us," writes Garibaldi in a short record of the siege of Rome, "clamored to drive the French off the walls. General Rosselli and the Minister of War consented. I opposed the attempt. I feared the confusion into which our troops would have been thrown by those new combatants and their irregular movements, the panic that would be likely by night to seize on troops unaccustomed to fire, and which actually had assailed our bravest ones on the night of the 16th. I insisted on waiting for the daylight." He here narrates the daring but unsuccessful attempt of the Lombard students, who flung themselves on the assailants, and who had gained the terrace of Casa Barberini, and continues: "But at daylight I had counted the forces with which we had to contend. I realized that another June 3d would bereave me of half of the youths left to me, whom I loved as my sons. I had not the least hope of dislodging the French from their positions, hence only a useless butchery could have ensued. Rome was doomed, but after a marvellous and a splendid defence. The fall of Rome, after such a siege, was the triumph of democracy in Europe. The idea of preserving four or five thousand devoted combatants who knew me, who would answer at any time to my call, prevailed. I ordered the retreat, promising that at five in the evening they should again advance; but I resolved that no assault should be made." From this and other writings of Garibaldi it is clear that from the night of June 21st he considered any further attempt to prevent the French from entering Rome as worse than useless--that hence he refused to lead the remnants of his army "to butchery" on the breach. How, then, was it possible for Mazzini to have retarded the catastrophe indefinitely, and reserved to Rome "the glory of falling last," _i.e._, after Venice and Hungary? Mazzini, beside himself with grief that the armed people had not been allowed to rush on to the bastions and drive the French from the walls, wrote a reproachful letter to Manara, then chief of Garibaldi's staff, and this patriot here seems to have kept the peace, as on the 25th we find a friendly letter from Garibaldi to the Triumvirate in which he proposes to leave Manara in Rome, and to conduct, himself, a considerable number of his men out of Rome to take up position between the French and Civita Vecchia, to harass them in the rear. And on the same day, evidently after a meeting and the acceptance by Mazzini of Garibaldi's project, the latter writes: "June 26th, 8 P.M. "MAZZINI: I propose, therefore (_dunque_), to go out to-morrow evening. Send me to-morrow morning the chief who is to assume the command here. Order the general-in-chief to prepare one hundred fifty mounted dragoons, who, with the fifty lancers, will make up two hundred horse. I shall take eight hundred of the legion, and to-morrow shall send them to change their shirts [_i.e._, doff their 'red' for 'gray']. Answer at once, and keep the plan a profound secret." The attempt was not made, probably because it was impossible to march out secretly from any gate, and Manara writes from Villa Spada, 1 P.M. on the same day: "CITIZEN TRIUMVIR: I have received your letter. I am somewhat better and at my post. I have spoken with Pisacane [chief of Rosselli's staff]; we are perfectly agreed. Both animated by the same spirit, it is impossible for petty jealousies to come between us. Be assured of this. I have begged General Garibaldi to return to San Pancrazio, so as not to deprive that post at this moment of his legion and his efficacious power. He promises me that before dawn all will be here. Everything is quiet. "MANARA." This was Manara's last letter to Mazzini; at that same Villa Spada the yearned-for bullet pierced his heroic heart. Manara died as the barbarians entered Rome. And here, to all appearances, is Garibaldi's last letter written in Rome to Mazzini: "We have retaken our positions outside San Pancrazio. Let General Rosselli send me orders; this is now no time for change. Yours, "G. GARIBALDI." No time for anything but one last desperate onslaught at the point of the bayonet, Garibaldi in the foremost ranks with sword unsheathed, while Medici from Villa Savorelli renewed the wonders of the Vascello. Twice the assailants were driven back to their second lines; thrice they returned in overpowering numbers; but, gaining the gate, they were received with volleys of musketry from the barricades at the ingress to Villa Spada and Savorelli. There fell the flower of the Lombards; boys of the "band of hope"; Garibaldi's giant negro, faithful, brave Anghiar; six hundred added to the three thousand four hundred corpses on which the soldiers of _La Grande Nation_ reconstructed the throne of the supreme Pontiff, and guarded it with their bayonets until the sword of their self-chosen master fell from his trembling hands at Sedan. (1849) LIVINGSTONE'S AFRICAN DISCOVERIES, David Livinstone and Thomas Hughes Although Africa, the second largest grand division of the earth, has figured in history from ancient times, still it has been rightly named, and until recently was called with good reason, the "Dark Continent." But though it has been thus designated, as the least known of the world's grand divisions, the progress of discovery and settlement is rapidly dispelling the ignorance and mystery to which the designation was due. The ancient seats of African civilization were confined to the northern parts of the continent. The Phoenicians are said to have circumnavigated Africa as early as the seventh century before Christ. In the middle of the fifteenth century of the present era the Portuguese explored much of the coastline, and in 1497 Vasco da Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope. But no modern explorations of the interior are known to have been made until the latter part of the eighteenth century. Since James Bruce, the Scottish traveller, explored the Nile Valley in 1768, more than thirty others have distinguished themselves by their discoveries on the African continent. None of Livingstone's predecessors equalled the achievements of this Scottish missionary and explorer, who combined with his zeal in the cause of religion and humanity a spirit of investigation and adventure that made him also the servant of science, the "advance-agent" of discovery, settlement, and civilization. These are at last bringing the "Dark Continent" into the light of a new day that begins to dawn in the remotest corners of the earth. David Livingstone was born near Glasgow, Scotland, March 19, 1813, and he died in Central Africa April 30, 1873. After he had been admitted to the medical profession and had studied theology, he decided to join Robert Moffat, the celebrated missionary, in Africa. Livingstone arrived at Cape Town in 1840, and soon moved toward the interior. He spent sixteen years in Africa, engaged in medical and missionary labors and in making his famous and most useful explorations of the country. His own account of the beginnings of his work, taken from his _Missionary Travels_, shows the sincere and simple spirit of the man, and his natural powers of observation and description are seen in his own story of his first important discovery, that of Lake Ngami. The narrative of Thomas Hughes, the well-known English author, whose favorite subjects were manly men and their characteristic deeds, follows the explorer on the first of his famous journeys in the Zambesi Basin. DAVID LIVINGSTONE I embarked for Africa in 1840, and, after a voyage of three months, reached Cape Town. Spending but a short time there, I started for the interior by going round to Algoa Bay, and soon proceeded inland, and spent the following sixteen years of my life, namely, from 1840 to 1856, in medical and missionary labors there without cost to the inhabitants. The general instructions I received from the directors of the London Missionary Society led me, as soon as I reached Kuruman or Lattakoo, then their farthest inland station from the Cape, to turn my attention to the north. Without waiting longer at Kuruman than was necessary to recruit the oxen, which were pretty well tired by the long journey from Algoa Bay, I proceeded, in company with another missionary, to the Bechuana or Bakwain country, and found Sechele, with his tribe, located at Shokuane. We shortly afterward retraced our steps to Kuruman; but as the objects in view were by no means to be attained by a temporary excursion of this sort, I determined to make a fresh start into the interior as soon as possible. Accordingly, after resting three months at Kuruman, which is a kind of head station in the country, I returned to a spot about fifteen miles south of Shokuane, called Lepelole (now Litubaruba). Here, in order to obtain an accurate knowledge of the language, I cut myself off from all European society for about six months, and gained by this ordeal an insight into the habits, ways of thinking, laws, and language of that section of the Bechuanas called Bakwains, which has proved of incalculable advantage in my intercourse with them ever since. In this second journey to Lepelole--so called from a cavern of that name--I began preparations for a settlement by making a canal to irrigate gardens from a stream, then flowing copiously, but now quite dry. When these preparations were well advanced I went northward to visit the Bakaa and Bamangwato, and the Makalaka, living between 22° and 23° south latitude. The Bakaa Mountains had been visited before by a trader, who, with his people, all perished from fever. In going round the northern part of these basaltic hills, near Letloche, I was only ten days distant from the lower part of the Zouga, which passed by the same name as Lake Ngami; and I might then (in 1842) have discovered that lake, had discovery alone been my object. Most of this journey beyond Shokuane was performed on foot, in consequence of the draught oxen having become sick. Some of my companions who had recently joined us, and did not know that I understood a little of their speech, were overheard by me discussing my appearance and powers: "He is not strong; he is quite slim, and only appears stout because he puts himself into those bags [trousers]; he will soon knock up." This caused my Highland blood to rise, and made me despise the fatigue of keeping them all at the top of their speed for days together, till I heard them expressing proper opinions of my pedestrian powers. Returning to Kuruman, in order to bring my luggage to our proposed settlement, I was followed by the news that the tribe of Bakwains, who had shown themselves so friendly toward me, had been driven from Lepelole by the Barolongs, so that my prospects for the time of forming a settlement there were at an end. One of those periodical outbreaks of war, which seem to have occurred from time immemorial, for the possession of cattle, had burst forth in the land, and had so changed the relations of the tribes to each other that I was obliged to set out anew to look for a suitable locality for a mission-station. In going north again a comet blazed on our sight, exciting the wonder of every tribe we visited. That of 1816 had been followed by an irruption of the Matabele, the most cruel enemies the Bechuanas ever knew, and this they thought might portend something as bad, or it might only foreshadow the death of some great chief. On this subject of comets I knew little more than they did themselves, but I had that confidence in a kind overruling Providence which makes such a difference between Christians and both the ancient and modern heathen. As some of the Bamangwato people had accompanied me to Kuruman, I was obliged to restore them and their goods to their chief Sekomi. This made a journey to the residence of that chief again necessary, and, for the first time, I performed a distance of some hundred miles on oxback. Returning toward Kuruman, I selected the beautiful valley of Mabotsa (latitude 25° 14' south, longitude 26° 30') as the site of a missionary-station, and thither I removed in 1843. Here an occurrence took place concerning which I have frequently been questioned in England, and which, but for the importunities of friends, I meant to have kept in store to tell my children when in my dotage. The Bakatla of the village Mabotsa were much troubled by lions, which leaped into the cattle-pens by night and destroyed their cows. They even attacked the herds in open day. This was so unusual an occurrence that the people believed they were bewitched--"given," as they said, "into the power of the lions by a neighboring tribe." They went at once to attack the animals, but, being rather a cowardly people compared to Bechuanas in general on such occasions, they returned without killing any. It is well known that if one of a troop of lions is killed, the others take the hint and leave that part of the country. So the next time the herds were attacked I went with the people in order to encourage them to rid themselves of the annoyance by destroying one of the marauders. We found the lions on a small hill about a quarter of a mile in length and covered with trees. A circle of men was formed round it, and they gradually closed up, ascending pretty near to each other. Being down below on the plain with a native schoolmaster, named Mebalwe, a most excellent man, I saw one of the lions sitting on a piece of rock within the now closed circle of men. Mebalwe fired at him before I could, and the ball struck the rock on which the animal was sitting. He bit at the spot struck, as a dog does at a stick or stone thrown at him; then leaping away, broke through the opening circle and escaped unhurt. The men were afraid to attack him, perhaps on account of their belief in witchcraft. When the circle was re-formed we saw two other lions in it; but we were afraid to fire lest we should strike the men, and they allowed the beasts to burst through also. If the Bakatla had acted according to the custom of the country, they would have speared the lions in their attempt to get out. Seeing we could not get them to kill one of the lions, we bent our footsteps toward the village; in going round the end of the hill, however, I saw one of the beasts sitting on a piece of rock as before, but this time he had a little bush in front. Being about thirty yards off, I took a good aim at his body through the bush, and fired both barrels into it. The men then called out, "He is shot! He is shot!" Others cried: "He has been shot by another man too; let us go to him!" I did not see anyone else shoot at him, but I saw the lion's tail erected in anger behind the bush, and, turning to the people said, "Stop a little, till I load again." When in the act of ramming down the bullets I heard a shout. Starting, and looking half round, I saw the lion just in the act of springing upon me. I was upon a little height; he caught my shoulder as he sprang, and we both came to the ground below together. Growling horribly close to my ear, he shook me as a terrier dog does a rat. The shock produced a stupor similar to that which seems to be felt by a mouse after the first shake of the cat. It caused a sort of dreaminess, in which there was no sense of pain nor feeling of terror, though quite conscious of all that was happening. It was like what patients partially under the influence of chloroform describe, who see all the operation, but feel not the knife. This singular condition was not the result of any mental process. The shake annihilated fear, and allowed no sense of horror in looking round at the beast. This peculiar state is probably produced in all animals killed by the carnivora; and if so, is a merciful provision by our benevolent Creator for lessening the pain of death. Turning round to relieve myself of the weight, as he had one paw on the back of my head, I saw his eyes directed to Mabalwe, who was trying to shoot him at a distance of ten or fifteen yards. His gun, a flint one, missed fire in both barrels; the lion immediately left me, and, attacking Mebalwe, bit his thigh. Another man--whose life I had saved before, after he had been tossed by a buffalo--attempted to spear the lion while he was biting Mebalwe. He left Mebalwe and caught this man by the shoulder, but at that moment the bullets he had received took effect, and he fell down dead. The whole was the work of a few moments, and must have been his paroxysms of dying rage. In order to take out the charm from him, the Bakatla on the following day made a huge bonfire over the carcass, which was declared to be that of the largest lion they had ever seen. Besides crunching the bone into splinters, he left eleven teeth wounds on the upper part of my arm. It was a long time in healing. The exact position of Lake Ngami had, for half a century at least, been correctly pointed out by the natives, who had visited it when rains were more copious in the desert than in more recent times, and many attempts had been made to reach it by passing through the desert in the direction indicated; but it was found impossible, even for Griquas, who, having some Bushman blood in them, may be supposed more capable of enduring thirst than Europeans. It was clear, then, that our only chance of success was by going round, instead of through, the desert. On July 4, 1849, we went forward on horseback toward what we supposed to be the lake, and again and again did we seem to see it; but at last we came to the veritable water of the Zouga, and found it to be a river running to the northeast. A village of Bakurutse lay on the opposite bank; these live among Batletli, a tribe having a click in their language, and who were found by Sebituane to possess large herds of the great horned cattle. They seem allied to the Hottentot family. Mr. Oswell, in trying to cross the river, got his horse bogged in the swampy bank. Two Bakwains and I managed to get over by wading beside a fishing-weir. The people were friendly, and informed us that this water came out of the Ngami. This news gladdened all our hearts, for we now felt certain of reaching our goal. We might, they said, be a moon on the way; but we had the River Zouga at our feet, and by following it we should at last reach the broad water. When we had gone up the bank of this beautiful river about ninety-six miles from the point where we first struck it, and understood that we were still a considerable distance from the Ngami, we left all the oxen and wagons, except Mr. Oswell's, which was the smallest, and one team, at Ngabisane, in the hope that they would be recruited for the home journey, while we made a push for the lake. Twelve days after our departure from the wagons at Ngabisane we came to the northeast end of Lake Ngami; and on August 1, 1849, we went down together to the broad part, and for the first time this fine-looking sheet of water was beheld by Europeans. The direction of the lake seemed to be north-northeast and south-southwest by compass. The southern portion is said to bend round to the west, and to receive the Teoughe from the north at its northwest extremity. We could detect no horizon where we stood looking south-south west, nor could we form any idea of the extent of the lake, except from the reports of the inhabitants of the district; and, as they professed to go round it in three days, allowing twenty-five miles a day would make it seventy-five, or less than seventy geographical miles in circumference. Other guesses have been made since as to its circumference, ranging between seventy and one hundred miles. It is shallow, for I subsequently saw a native punting his canoe over seven or eight miles of the northeast end; it can never therefore be of much value as a commercial highway. In fact, during the months preceding the annual supply of water from the north, the lake is so shallow that it is with difficulty cattle can approach the water through the boggy, reedy banks. These are low on all sides, but on the west there is a space devoid of trees, showing that the waters have retired thence at no very ancient date. This is another of the proofs of desiccation met with so abundantly throughout the whole country. A number of dead trees lie on this space, some of them imbedded in the mud right in the water. We were informed by the Bayeiye, who live on the lake, that when the annual inundation begins, not only trees of great size, but antelopes, as the springbuck and _tsessebe_ (_Acronotus lunata_,) are swept down by its rushing waters; the trees are gradually driven by the winds to the opposite side, and become imbedded in mud. When the lake is full, the water is perfectly fresh, but brackish when low; and that coming down the Tamunak'le we found to be so clear, cold, and soft, the higher we ascended, that the idea of melting snow was suggested to our minds. We found this region, with regard to that from which we had come, to be clearly a hollow, the lowest point being Lake Kumadau; the point of the ebullition of water as shown by one of Newman's barometric thermometers, was only between 207-1/2° and 206°, giving an elevation of not much more than two thousand feet above the level of the sea. We had descended above two thousand feet in coming to it from Kolobeng. It is the southern and lowest part of the great river system beyond, in which large tracts of country are inundated annually by tropical rains. A little of that water, which in the countries farther north produces inundation, comes as far south as 20° 20', the latitude of the upper end of the lake, and instead of flooding the country, falls into the lake as into a reservoir. It begins to flow down the Embarrah, which divides into the Rivers Tzo and Teoughe. The Tzo divides into the Tamunak'le and Mababe; the Tamunak'le discharges itself into the Zouga, and the Teoughe into the lake. The flow begins in either March or April, and the descending waters find the channels of all these rivers dried out, except in certain pools in their beds, which have long dry spaces between them. The lake itself is very low. The Zouga is but a prolongation of the Tamunak'le, and an arm of the lake reaches up to the point where the one ends and the other begins. The last is narrow and shallow, while the Zouga is broad and deep. The narrow arm of the lake, which on the map looks like a continuation of the Zouga, has never been observed to flow either way. THOMAS HUGHES Before the middle of 1852 Livingstone was ready to start on the journey which resulted in the opening of routes from Central Africa to the West and East coasts; but the way was still beset with difficulties. The missionary societies were regarded as "unpatriotic" by the authorities at the Cape; and he, as the most outspoken of critics, and the most uncompromising denouncer of the slave-trade and champion of the natives, came in for a double share of their suspicion. On the other hand, his brethren gave him only a half-hearted support and doubted his orthodoxy. He found great difficulty even in procuring ammunition. A country postmaster whom he had accused of overcharging, threatened an action at the last moment, which he compromised rather than be detained. As it was, he had anticipated his meagre salary by more than a year, and had to be content with very inferior oxen, and a wagon which required constant mending throughout the journey. On June 8, 1852, he at last got away, taking with him a Mr. Fleming, the agent of his friend Mr. Rutherford, a Cape merchant, in the hope of by degrees substituting legitimate traffic for that in slaves. The heavy Cape wagon with its ten poor oxen dragged heavily onward. Livingstone had so loaded himself with parcels for stations up-country, and his wagon and team were so inferior, that he did not reach Kuruman until September. Here he was detained by the breaking of a wheel. The journey to Linyanti by the new route was very trying. Part of the country was flooded, and they were wading all day, and forcing their way through reeds with sharp edges "with hands all raw and bloody." "On emerging from the swamps," says Livingstone, "when walking before the wagon in the morning twilight, I observed a lioness about fifty yards from me in the squatting way they walk when going to spring. She was followed by a very large lion, but seeing the wagon she turned back." It required all his tact to prevent guides and servants from deserting. Everyone but himself was attacked by fever. "I would like," says his journal, "to devote a portion of my life to the discovery of a remedy for that terrible disease, the African fever. I would go into the parts where it prevails most and try to discover if the natives have a remedy for it. I must make many inquiries of the river people in this quarter." Again in another key: "Am I on my way to die in Sebituane's country? Have I seen the last of my wife and children, leaving this fair world and knowing so little of it?" February 4, 1853: "I am spared in health while all the company have been attacked by fever. If God has accepted my service, my life is charmed till my work is done. When that is finished, some simple thing will give me my quietus. Death is a glorious event to one going to Jesus." Their progress was tedious beyond all precedent. "We dug out several wells, and each time had to wait a day or two till enough water flowed in for our cattle to quench their thirst." At last, however, at the end of May, he reached the Chobe River and was again among his favorite Makololo. "He has dropped from the clouds," the first of them said. They took the wagon to pieces and carried it across on canoes lashed together, while they themselves swam and dived among the oxen "more like alligators than men." Sekeletu, son of Sebituane, was now chief, his elder sister Mamochishane having resigned in disgust at the number of husbands she had to maintain as chieftainess. Poor Mamochishane! After a short reign of a few months she had risen in the assembly and "addressed her brother with a womanly gush of tears. 'I have been a chief only because my father wished it. I would always have preferred to be married and have a family like other women. You, Sekeletu, must be chief, and build up our father's house.'" On November 11, 1853, he left Linyanti, and arrived at Loanda on May 31, 1854. The first stages of the journey were to be by water, and Sekeletu accompanied him to the Chobe, where he was to embark. They crossed five branches before reaching the main stream, a wide and deep river full of hippopotami. "The chief lent me his own canoe, and as it was broader than usual I could turn about in it with ease. I had three muskets for my people, and a rifle and double-barrelled shotgun for myself. My ammunition was distributed through the luggage, that we might not be left without a supply. Our chief hopes for food were in our guns. I carried twenty pounds of beads worth forty shillings, a few biscuits, a few pounds of tea and sugar, and about twenty pounds of coffee. One small tin canister, about fifteen inches square, was filled with spare shirts, trousers, and shoes, to be used when we reached civilized life, another of the same size was stored with medicines, a third with books, and a fourth with a magic lantern, which we found of much service. The sextant and other instruments were carried apart. A bag contained the clothes we expected to wear out in the journey, which, with a small tent just sufficient to sleep in, a sheepskin mantle as a blanket, and a horse rug as a bed, completed my equipment. An array of baggage would have probably excited the cupidity of the tribes through whose country we wished to pass." The voyage up the Chobe, and the Zambesi after the junction of those rivers, was prosperous but slow, in consequence of stoppages opposite villages. "My man Pitsane knew of the generous orders of Sekeletu, and was not disposed to allow them remain a dead letter." In the rapids, "the men leaped into the water without the least hesitation to save the canoes from being dashed against the obstructions or caught in eddies. They must never be allowed to come broadside to the stream, for being flat-bottomed they would at once be capsized and everything in them lost." When free from fever he was delighted to note the numbers of birds, several of them unknown, which swarmed on the river and its banks, all carefully noted in his journal. One extract must suffice here: "Whenever we step on shore a species of plover, a plaguy sort of public-spirited individual, follows, flying overhead, and is most persevering in its attempts to give warning to all animals to flee from the approaching danger." But he was already weak with fever; was seized with giddiness whenever he looked up quickly, and, if he could not catch hold of some support, fell heavily--a bad omen for his chance of passing through the unknown country ahead--but his purpose never faltered for a moment. On January 1, 1854, he was still on the river, but getting beyond Sekeletu's territory and allies, to a region of dense forest, in the open glades of which dwelt the Balonda, a powerful tribe, whose relations with the Makololo were precarious. Each was inclined to raid on the other since the Mambari and Portuguese half-castes had appeared with Manchester goods. These excited the intense wonder and cupidity of both nations. They listened to the story of cotton-mills as fairy dreams, exclaiming: "How can iron spin, weave, and print? Truly ye are gods!" and were already inclined to steal their neighbors' children--those of their own tribe they never sold at this time--to obtain these wonders out of the sea. Happily Livingstone had brought back with him several Balonda children who had been carried off by the Makololo. This, and his speeches to Manenko, the chieftainess of the district and niece of Shinte, the head chief of the Balonda, gained them a welcome. This Amazon was a strapping young woman of twenty, who led their party through the forest at a pace which tried the best walkers. She seems to have been the only native whose will ever prevailed against Livingstone's. He intended to proceed up to her uncle Shinte's town in canoes: she insisted that they should march by land, and ordered her people to shoulder his baggage in spite of him. "My men succumbed, and left me powerless. I was moving off in high dudgeon to the canoes, when she kindly placed her hand on my shoulder, and with a motherly look said, 'Now, my little man, just do as the rest have done.' My feeling of annoyance of course vanished, and I went out to try for some meat. My men, in admiration of her pedestrian powers, kept remarking, 'Manenko is a soldier,' and we were all glad when she proposed a halt for the night." Shinte received them in his town, the largest and best laid out that Livingstone had seen in Central Africa, on a sort of throne covered with leopard-skin. The _kotla_, or place of audience, was one hundred yards square. Though in the sweating stage of an intermittent fever, Livingstone held his own with the chief, gave him an ox as "his mouth was bitter from want of flesh," advised him to open a trade in cattle with the Makololo, and to put down the slave-trade; and, after spending more than a week with him, left amid the warmest professions of friendship. Shinte found him a guide of his tribe, Intemese by name, who was to stay by them till they reached the sea, and at a last interview hung round his neck a conical shell of such value that two of them, so his men assured him, would purchase a slave. Soon they were out of Shinte's territory, and Intemese became the plague of the party, though unluckily they could not dispense with him altogether in crossing the great flooded plains of Lebala. They camped at night on mounds, where they had to trench round each hut and use the earth to raise their sleeping places. "My men turned out to work most willingly, and I could not but contrast their conduct with that of Intemese, who was thoroughly imbued with the slave spirit, and lied on all occasions to save himself trouble." He lost the pontoon, too, thereby adding greatly to their troubles. They now came to the territory of another great chief, Katema, who received them hospitably, sending food and giving them solemn audience in his kotla surrounded by his tribe. A tall man of forty, dressed in a snuff-brown coat with a broad band of tinsel down the arms, and a helmet of beads and feathers. He carried a large fan with charms attached, which he waved constantly during the audience, often laughing heartily--"a good sign, for a man who shakes his sides with mirth is seldom difficult to deal with." "I am the great Moene Katema!" was his address; "I and my fathers have always lived here, and there is my father's house. I never killed any of the traders; they all come to me. I am the great Moene Katema, of whom you have heard." On hearing Livingstone's object, he gave him three guides, who would take him by a northern route, along which no traders had passed, to avoid the plains, impassable from the floods. He accepted Livingstone's present of a shawl, a razor, some beads and buttons, and a powder-horn graciously, laughing at his apologies for its smallness, and asking him to bring a coat from Loanda, as the one he was wearing was old. From this point troubles multiplied, and they began to be seriously pressed for food. The big game had disappeared, and they were glad to catch moles and mice. Every chief demanded a present for allowing them to pass, and the people of the villages charged exorbitantly for all supplies. On they floundered, however, through flooded forests. In crossing the river Loka, Livingstone's ox got away from him, and he had to strike out for the farther bank. "My poor fellows were dreadfully alarmed, and about twenty of them made a simultaneous rush into the water for my rescue, and just as I reached the opposite bank one seized me by the arms and another clasped me round the body. When I stood up it was most gratifying to see them all struggling toward me. Part of my goods were brought up from the bottom when I was safe. Great was their pleasure when they found I could swim like themselves, and I felt most grateful to those poor heathens for the promptitude with which they dashed in to my rescue." Farther on, the people tried to frighten them with the account of the deep rivers they had yet to cross, but his men laughed. "'We can all swim,' they said; 'who carried the white man across the river but himself?' I felt proud of their praise." On March 4th they reached the country of the Chiboques, a tribe in constant contact with the slave-dealers. Next day their camp was surrounded by the nearest chief and his warriors, evidently bent on plunder. They paused when they saw Livingstone seated on his camp-stool, with his double-barrelled gun across his knees, and his Makololos ready with their javelins. The chief and his principal men sat down in front at Livingstone's invitation to talk over the matter, and a palaver began as to the fine claimed by the Chiboque. "The more I yielded, the more unreasonable they became, and at every fresh demand a shout was raised, and a rush made round us with brandished weapons. One young man even made a charge at my head from behind, but I quickly brought round the muzzle of my gun to his mouth and he retreated. My men behaved with admirable coolness. The chief and his counsellors, by accepting my invitation to be seated, had placed themselves in a trap, for my men had quietly surrounded them and made them feel that there was no chance of escaping their spears. I then said that as everything had failed to satisfy them they evidently meant to fight; and if so, they must begin, and bear the blame before God. I then sat silent for some time. It was certainly rather trying, but I was careful not to seem flurried, and, having four barrels ready for instant action, looked quietly at the savage scene around." The palaver began again, and ended in the exchange of an ox for a promise of food, in which he was wofully cheated. "It was impossible to help laughing, but I was truly thankful that we had so far gained our point as to be allowed to pass without shedding blood." He now struck north to avoid the Chiboque, and made for the Portuguese settlement of Cassange through dense forest and constant wet. Here another fever fit came on, so violent that "I could scarcely, after some hours' trial, get a lunar observation in which I could repose confidence. Those who know the difficulties of making observations and committing them all to paper will sympathize with me in this and many similar instances." At this crisis, when the goal was all but at hand, obstacles multiplied till it seemed that after all it would never be reached. First his riding ox, Sindbad--a beast "blessed with a most intractable temper," and a habit of bolting into the bush to get his rider combed off by a climber, and then kicking at him--achieved a triumph in his weak state, "when the bridle broke, and down I came backward on the crown of my head, receiving as I fell a kick on the thigh. This last attack of fever reduced me almost to a skeleton. The blanket which I used as a saddle, being pretty constantly wet, caused extensive abrasion of the skin, which was continually healing and getting sore again." Then the guides missed their way and led them back into Chiboque territory, where the demands of the chief of every village for "a man, an ox, or a tusk," for permission to pass, began again. Worst of all, signs of mutiny began to show themselves among the Batoka men of his party, who threatened to turn back. He appeased them by giving them a tired ox to be killed at the Sunday's halt. "Having thus, as I thought, silenced their murmurs, I sank into a state of torpor, and was oblivious of all their noise. On Sunday the mutineers were making a terrible din in preparing the skin. I requested them twice to be more quiet as the noise pained me, but, as they paid no attention to this civil request, I put out my head and, repeating it, was answered by an impudent laugh. Knowing that discipline would be at an end if this mutiny was not quelled, and that our lives depended on vigorously upholding authority, I seized a double-barrelled pistol and darted out with such a savage aspect as to put them to precipitate flight. They gave no further trouble." Every night now they had to build a stockade, and by day to march in a compact body, knowing the forest to be full of enemies dogging their path, for now they had nothing to give as presents, the men having even divested themselves of all their copper ornaments to appease the Chiboque harpies. "Nothing, however, disturbed us, and for my part I was too ill to care much whether we were attacked or not." They struggled on, the Chiboque natives, now joined by bodies of traders, opposing at every ford, Livingstone no longer wondering why expeditions from the interior failed to reach the coast. "Some of my men proposed to return home, and the prospect of being obliged to turn back from the threshold of the Portuguese settlements distressed me exceedingly. After using all my powers of persuasion, I declared that if they now returned, I should go on alone, and returning into my little tent, I lifted up my heart to Him who hears the sighing of the soul. Presently the head man came in. 'Do not be disheartened,' he said, 'we will never leave you. Wherever you lead, we will follow. Our remarks were only made on account of the injustice of these people.' Others followed, and with the most artless simplicity of manner told me to be comforted. 'They were all my children; they knew no one but Sekeletu and me, and would die for me: they had spoken in bitterness of spirit, feeling they could do nothing.'" On April 1st they gained the ridge which overlooks the valley of the Quango and the Portuguese settlements on the farther bank. "The descent is so steep that I was obliged to dismount, though so weak that I had to be supported. Below us, at a depth of one thousand feet, lay the magnificent valley of the Quango. The view of the Vale of Clyde, from the spot where Mary witnessed the Battle of Langside, resembles in miniature the glorious sight which was here presented to our view." On the 4th they were close to the Quango, here one hundred fifty yards broad, when they were stopped for the last time by a village chief and surrounded by his men. The usual altercation ensued; Livingstone refusing to give up his blanket--the last article he possessed except his watch and instruments and Sekeletu's tusks, which had been faithfully guarded--until on board the canoes in which they were to cross. "I was trying to persuade my people to move on to the bank in spite of them, when a young half-caste Portuguese sergeant of militia, Cypriano di Abren, who had come across in search of beeswax, made his appearance and gave the same advice." They marched to the bank--the chief's men opening fire on them, but without doing any damage--made terms with the ferrymen, with Cypriano's help, crossed the Quango, and were at the end of their troubles. Four days they stopped with Cypriano, who treated them royally, killing an ox and stripping his garden to feast them, and sending them on to Cassange with provisions of meal ground by his mother and her maids. "I carried letters from the Chevalier du Prat of Cape Town, but I am inclined to believe that my friend Cypriano was influenced by feelings of genuine kindness excited by my wretched appearance." At Cassange they were again most hospitably treated, and here, before starting for Loanda, three hundred miles, they disposed of Sekeletu's tusks, which sold for much higher prices than those given by Cape traders. "Two muskets, three small barrels of powder, and English calico and baize enough to clothe my whole party, with large bunches of beads, were given for one tusk, to the great delight of my Makololos, who had been used to get only one gun for two tusks. With another tusk we purchased calico--the chief currency here--to pay our way to the coast. The remaining two were sold for money to purchase a horse for Sekeletu at Loanda." Livingstone was much struck both by the country he passed through and the terms on which the Portuguese lived with the natives. Most of them had families by native women, who were treated as European children and provided for by their fathers. Half-caste clerks sat at table with the whites, and he came to the conclusion that "nowhere in Africa is there so much good-will between Europeans and natives as here." The dizziness produced by his twenty-seven attacks of fever on the road made it all he could do to stick on Sindbad, who managed to give him a last ducking in the Lombe. "The weakening effects of the fever were most extraordinary. For instance, in attempting to take lunar observations I could not avoid confusion of time and distance, neither could I hold the instrument steady, nor perform a simple calculation." He rallied a little in crossing a mountain range. As they drew near Loanda the hearts of his men began to fail, and they hinted their doubts to him. "If you suspect me you can return," he told them, "for I am as ignorant of Loanda as you; but nothing will happen to you but what happens to me. We have stood by one another hitherto, and will do so till the last." The first view of the sea staggered the Makololo. "We were marching along with our father," they said, "believing what the ancients had told us, that the world had no end; but all at once the world said to us: 'I am finished; there is no more for me.'" The fever had produced chronic dysentery, which was so depressing that Livingstone entered Loanda in deep melancholy, doubting the reception he might get from the one English gentleman, Mr. Gabriel, the commissioner for the suppression of the slave-trade. He was soon undeceived. Mr. Gabriel received him most kindly, and, seeing the condition he was in, gave up to him his own bed. "Never shall I forget the luxurious pleasure I enjoyed in feeling myself again on a good English bed after six months' sleeping on the ground. I was soon asleep; and Mr. Gabriel coming in almost immediately after, rejoiced in the soundness of my repose." (1851) THE COUP D'ÉTAT OF LOUIS NAPOLEON, Alexis de Tocqueville By his astounding act of December 2, 1851, known as the _coup d'état_, Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, commonly called Louis Napoleon, practically assumed imperial power, and on the first anniversary of that _coup d'état_ he was officially proclaimed Emperor of the French under the title of Napoleon III. He was the son of Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland--a brother of Napoleon I--and was born in Paris, April 20, 1808. From 1815 to 1830 he lived in exile. In 1836 he made an unsuccessful attempt to organize a revolution among the French soldiers at Strasburg. Four years later he tried to seize the throne of France; but failing in this attempt, he was imprisoned in the fortress of Ham until 1846, when he escaped to England. During his confinement he continued in his writings a Bonapartist propaganda. He had addressed himself particularly to the workingmen, and this class won a victory in the Revolution of February, 1848. After the fall of Louis Philippe in that year, Napoleon was elected to the National Assembly, largely by the votes of the working classes, and on June 13, 1848, took his seat. In December he was elected President of the Republic by an immense majority. Although he was regarded as possessing a rather dull intellect, and as being, partly for that reason, a "safe" man for the presidential office, Napoleon soon proved his capacity for intrigue and for cajoling the people. By intervening in behalf of Pope Pius IX, whom revolutionists had driven from Rome, he gained the support of the clergy. Napoleon's troops restored Pius IX (1850) to the papal throne. The President's aims at supremacy were approved by the French monarchists, and he used all means to increase his popularity, placing only his adherents in office. When the Assembly, composed of seven hundred sixty members, undertook to restrict the suffrage, which was "universal," Napoleon opposed the change. He thus appeared to be the champion of the people against the legislative body. As his term was to expire on May 2, 1852, and as he was ineligible for a second term, although he knew that a majority of the people favored his continuance in office, he saw no way to accomplish that except by force. He therefore determined to use force, and the method he adopted was that of the _coup d'état_. The success of that stroke insured all that he aimed at. In December, 1851, by an almost unanimous vote he was elected President for ten years. All his "ideas" and purposes were embodied in a new constitution, and before the end of 1852 the question of restoring the empire was submitted to the people; and by the plebiscite of November, in that year, an enormous majority of the voters elected him Emperor. No account of the _coup d'état_,--the most striking and effective in this series of dramatic events--surpasses in authenticity or interest that of De Tocqueville. The famous author of _Democracy in America_, and of equally celebrated works of French history, became Vice-President of the National Assembly in 1849. As a member of that body he was justified in saying of his story of the _coup d'état_, "I merely relate, as an actual witness, the things I saw with my eyes and heard with my ears." The first step taken by Napoleon in this affair was the arrest of the opposition leaders of the Assembly in their beds, on the pretext of a conspiracy against him in that body. De Tocqueville describes what followed. When the representatives of the people learned on the morning of December 2, 1851, that several of their colleagues were arrested, they ran to the Assembly. The doors were guarded by the Chasseurs de Vincennes, a corps of troops recently returned from Africa and long accustomed to the violence of Algerine dominion, and, moreover, stimulated by a donation of five francs distributed to every soldier who was in Paris that day. The Representatives, nevertheless, presented themselves to go in, having at their head one of their Vice-Presidents, M. Daru. This gentleman was violently struck by the soldiers, and the Representatives who accompanied him were driven back at the point of the bayonet. Three of them, M. de Talhouet, Étienne, and Duparc, were slightly wounded. Several others had their clothes pierced. Such was the beginning. Driven from the doors of the Assembly, the Deputies retired to the _mairie_ of the Tenth Arrondissement. They were already assembled to the number of about three hundred when the troops arrived, blocked up the approaches, and prevented a greater number of Representatives from entering the apartment, though no one at that time was prevented from leaving it. Who then were those Representatives assembled at the _mairie_ of the Tenth Arrondissement, and what did they do there? Every shade of opinion was represented in this extemporaneous Assembly. But four-fifths of its members belonged to the different conservative parties which had constituted the majority. This Assembly was presided over by two of its Vice-Presidents, M. Vitet and M. Benoist d'Azy. M. Daru was arrested in his own house; the Fourth Vice-President, the illustrious General Bedeau, had been seized that morning in his bed, and handcuffed like a robber. As for the President, M. Dupin, he was absent, which surprised no one. Besides its Vice-Presidents, the Assembly was accompanied by its secretaries, its ushers, and even its phonographer who preserved for posterity the records of this last and memorable sitting. The Assembly, thus constituted, began by voting a decree in the following terms: "In pursuance of article sixty-eight of the constitution, viz., the President of the Republic, the ministers, the agents, and depositaries of public authority are responsible, each in what concerns himself respectively, for all the acts of the Government and the Administration: any measure by which the President of the Republic dissolves the National Assembly, prorogues it, or places obstacles in the exercise of its powers is a crime of high treason. "By this act alone, the President is deprived of all authority; the citizens are bound to withhold their obedience, the executive power passes in full right to the National Assembly. The judges of the High Court of Justice will meet immediately, under pain of forfeiture; they will convoke the juries in the place which they will select to proceed to the judgment of the President and his accomplices; they will nominate the magistrates charged to fulfil the duties of public ministers. "And seeing that the National Assembly is prevented by violence from exercising its powers, it decrees as follows, viz.: Louis Napoleon Bonaparte is deprived of all authority as President of the Republic. The citizens are enjoined to withhold their obedience. The executive power has passed in full right to the National Assembly. The judges of the High Court of Justice are enjoined to meet immediately, under pain of forfeiture, to proceed to the judgment of the President and his accomplices; consequently, all the officers and functionaries of power and of public authority are bound to obey all requisitions made in the name of the National Assembly, under pain of forfeiture and of high treason. "Done and decreed unanimously in public sitting, this second day of December, 1851." After this first decree was voted, another was unanimously passed, naming General Oudinot commander of the public forces, and M. Tamisier was joined with him as chief of the staff. The choice of these two officers, each having distinct shades of political opinion, showed that the Assembly was animated by one common spirit. These decrees had hardly been signed by all the members present, and deposited in a place of safety, when a band of soldiers, headed by their officers, sword in hand, appeared at the door, without, however, daring to enter the apartment. The Assembly awaited them in perfect silence. The President alone raised his voice, read the decrees which had just been passed to the soldiers, and ordered them to retire. The poor fellows, ashamed of the part they were compelled to play, hesitated. The officers, pale and undecided, declared that they should go for further orders. They retired, contenting themselves with blockading the passages leading to the apartment. The Assembly, not being able to go out, ordered the windows to be opened, and caused the decrees to be read to the people and the troops in the street below, especially that decree which, in pursuance of the sixty-eighth article of the constitution, declared the deposition and impeachment of Louis Napoleon. Soon, however, the soldiers reappeared at the door, preceded this time by two _commissaires de police_. These men entered the room and, amid the unbroken silence and total immobility of the Assembly, summoned the Representatives to disperse. The President ordered them to retire themselves. One of the _commissaires_ was agitated and faltered; the other broke out in invectives. The President said to him: "Sir, we are here the lawful authority and sole representatives of law and of right. We know that we cannot oppose to you material force, but we will leave this chamber only under constraint. We will not disperse. Seize us and convey us to prison." "All, all!" exclaimed the members of the Assembly. After much hesitation the _commissaires de police_ decided to act. They caused each of the two Presidents to be seized by the collar. The whole body then rose, and, arm in arm, two and two, they followed the Presidents, who were led off. In this order they reached the street, and were marched across the city, without knowing whither they were going. Care had been taken to circulate a report among the crowd and the troops that a meeting of Socialist and Red Republican Deputies had been arrested. But when the people beheld among those who were thus dragged through the mud of Paris on foot, like a gang of malefactors, men the most illustrious by their talents and their virtues--ex-ministers, ex-ambassadors, generals, admirals, great orators, great writers, surrounded by the bayonets of the line--a shout was raised, "_Vive l'Assemblée nationale!_" The Representatives were attended by these shouts until they reached the barracks of the Quai d'Orsay, where they were shut up. Night was coming on, and it was wet and cold. Yet the Assembly was left two hours in the open air, as if the Government did not deign to remember its existence. The Representatives here made their last roll-call in presence of their phonographer, who had followed them. The number present was two hundred eighteen, to whom were added about twenty more in the course of the evening, consisting of members who had voluntarily caused themselves to be arrested. Almost all the men known to France and to Europe, who formed the majority of the Legislative Assembly, were gathered in this place. Few were wanting, except those who, like M. Molé, had not been suffered to reach their colleagues. There were present, among others, the Duc de Broglie, who had come, though ill; the father of the House, the venerable Kératry, whose physical strength was inferior to his moral courage, and whom it was necessary to seat in a straw chair in the barrack yard; Odilon Barrot, Dufaure, Berryer, Rémusat, Duvergier de Hauranne, Gustave de Beaumont, De Tocqueville, De Falloux, Lanjuinais, Admiral Lainé and Admiral Cécille, Generals Oudinot and Lauriston, the Due de Luynes, the Due de Montebello; twelve ex-ministers, nine of whom had served under Louis Napoleon himself; eight members of the Institute--all men who had struggled for three years to defend society and to resist the demagogic faction. When two hours had elapsed this assemblage was driven into barrack-rooms upstairs, where most of them spent the night, without fire and almost without food, stretched upon the boards. It only remained to carry off to prison these honorable men, guilty of no crime but the defence of the laws of their country. For this purpose the most distressing and ignominious means were selected. The cellular vans, in which convicts are conveyed to prison, were brought up. In these vehicles were shut up the men who had served and honored their country, and they were conveyed like three bands of criminals, some to the fortress of Mont Valerien, some to the prison Mazas in Paris, and the remainder to Vincennes. The indignation of the public compelled the Government two days afterward to release the greater number of them; some remained in confinement, unable to obtain either their liberty or a trial. The treatment inflicted upon the generals arrested in the morning of December 2d was still more disgraceful. Cavaignac, Lamoricière, Bedeau, Changarnier, the conquerors of Africa, were shut up in these infamous cellular vans, which are always inconvenient and become almost intolerable on a lengthened journey. In this manner they were conveyed to Ham--that is, they were made to perform more than a day's journey. Cavaignac, who had saved Paris and France in the days of June--Cavaignac, the competitor of Louis Napoleon at the last elections, shut up for a day and a night in the cell of a felon! I leave it to every honest man and every generous heart to comment on such facts. Such were the indignities offered to eminent men. Let me now review the series of general crimes. The liberty of the press is destroyed to an extent unheard of even in the time of the empire. Most of the journals are suppressed, those which appear cannot say a word on politics or even publish any news. But this is by no means all. The Government has stuck up a list of persons who are formed into a "consultative commission." Its object is to induce France to believe that the Executive is not abandoned by every man of respectability and consideration among us. More than half the persons on this list have refused to belong to the commission; most of them regard the insertion of their names as dishonor. I may quote, among others, M. Léon Faucher, M. Portalis, First President of the Court of Cassation, and the Duc de Albuféra, as those best known. Not only does the Government decline to publish the letters in which these gentlemen refuse their consent, but even their names are not withdrawn from the list which dishonors them. The names are still retained in spite of their repeated remonstrances. A day or two ago, one of them, M. Joseph Perier, driven to desperation by this excess of tyranny, rushed into the street to strike out his own name, with his own hands, from the public placards, taking the passers-by to witness that it had been placed there by a lie. Such is the state of the public journals. Let us now see the condition of personal liberty. I say again that personal liberty is more trampled on than ever it was in the time of the empire. A decree of the new power gives the _préfets_ the right to arrest, in their respective departments, whomsoever they please; and the _préfets_, in their turn, send blank warrants of arrest, which are literally _lettres de cachet_, to the _sobs-préfets_ under their orders. The Provisional Government of the Republic never went so far. Human life is as little respected as human liberty. I know that war has its dreadful necessities, but the disturbances which have recently occurred in Paris have been put down with a barbarity unprecedented in our civil contests; and when we remember that this torrent of blood has been shed to consummate the violation of all law, we cannot but think that sooner or later it will fall back upon the heads of those who shed it. As for the appeal of the people, to whom Louis Napoleon affects to submit his claims, never was a more odious mockery offered to a nation. The people is called upon to express its opinion, yet not only is public discussion suppressed, but even the knowledge of facts. The people is asked its opinion, but the first measure taken to obtain it is to establish military terrorism throughout the country, and to threaten with deprivation every public agent that does not approve in writing what has been done. Such is the condition in which we stand. Force overturning law, trampling on the liberty of the press and of the person, deriding the popular will, in whose name the Government pretends to act. France torn from the alliance of free nations to be classed with the despotic monarchies of the Continent--such is the result of this _coup d'état_. The army refused to submit to the decree of the captive Assembly impeaching the President of the Republic; but the High Court of Justice obeyed it. The five judges composing it, sitting in the midst of Paris enslaved and in the face of martial law, dared to assemble at the Palace of Justice, and to issue a process beginning criminal proceedings against Louis Napoleon, charged with high treason by the law, though already triumphant in the streets. I subjoin the text of this memorable edict: "The High Court of Justice, considering the sixty-eighth article of the constitution, considering that printed placards, beginning with the words 'The President of the Republic,' and bearing at the end the signatures of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte and De Moony, Minister of the Interior, which placards announce among other things, the dissolution of the National Assembly, have this day been affixed to the walls of Paris; that this fact of the dissolution of the Assembly by the President of the Republic would fall under the case provided for by the sixty-eighth article of the constitution, and render the convocation of the High Court of Justice imperative, by the terms of that article declares that the High Court is constituted, and names M. Renouard, counsellor of the Court of Cassation, to fill the duties of public accuser; and to fill those of _greffier_, M. Bernard, _Greffier-en-chef_ of the Court of Cassation; and, to proceed further in pursuance of the terms of the said sixty-eighth article of the constitution, adjourns until to-morrow, December 3d, at the hour of noon. "Done and deliberated in the Council Chamber. Present, M. Hardouin, President; M. Pataille, M. Moreau, M. de la Palme, and M. Cauchy, judges, this second day of December, 1851." After this textual extract from the minutes of the High Court of Justice there is the following entry: "(1) A _procès-verbal_ announcing the arrival of a _commissaire de police_, who called upon the High Court to separate. (2) A _procès-verbal_ of a second sitting held on the morrow, the third day of December (when the Assembly was in prison), at which M. Renouard accepts the functions of public prosecutor, charged to proceed against Louis Napoleon, after which the High Court, being no longer able to sit, adjourned to a day to be fixed hereafter." (1851) DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN AUSTRALIA, Edward Jenks EDWARD JENKS It was a remarkable sequence in successful enterprise that brought to light and developed the vast gold deposits in Australia within three years after the great discovery in California. This event "was to change, if not the entire character, at least the rate, of Australian progress." The date of Captain James Cook's exploration of the eastern coast (1770) marks the beginning of a new era in the history of Australia. Cook took possession of the country for Great Britain. From the resemblance of its coasts to the southern shores of Wales, he called it New South Wales, and this name is still retained by one of the States of the Commonwealth of Australia (inaugurated January 1, 1901). The first English settlement (1788) was a convict colony at Port Jackson (Sydney). From the establishment of this colony the development of Australia as a British possession was gradual, but progressive, up to the discovery of the gold-fields, by which it was so greatly accelerated. At first a few pastoral groups occupied the lands near the coast. Many of the newcomers were mere squatters, bent on making money and then returning to England. But gradually small towns and settled industries grew up. Increasing numbers of farmers immigrated, squatters were pushed toward the interior, and a state of social organization began. Up to 1850, however, this nucleus of a new commonwealth had reached no great development. As in the case of California, long before the great discovery of gold in Australia there had been rumors of its existence in that country. Most of the early stories told by persons said to have found specimens of the metal were scouted. In 1844 the distinguished geologist, Sir Roderick Impey Murchison, having compared specimens of Australian rocks brought to him with other specimens from gold-bearing lands, declared that he found in the former no trace of gold. Two years later, however, Sir Roderick declared his belief in the existence of gold in Australia, and in 1848 he announced that he had seen specimens of gold from New South Wales, and recommended a government mineral survey there. Little attention might have been given to the matter then but for the discovery of gold in California. From the excitement caused by that the "gold fever" spread over the world. Nothing was done in the way of discovery of the metal in Australia until many months had elapsed; but finally results of the utmost importance were obtained. The story of the great Australian gold discovery is here told in an authentic and highly interesting manner by the historian of the Australasian colonies. In the year 1851 Edmund Hammond Hargraves, an old settler in New South Wales, returned thither from California, where he had spent about eighteen months in the search for gold. His efforts in California resulted in no immediate prosperity, but he gained much useful practical experience. More than this, as he looked at the natural features of the California gold-fields, a great idea grew up in his mind. Though not a geologist, he appears to have had a quick eye for stratiform resemblances; and the more he studied the peculiarities of rocks and soil in California, the more he became convinced that he knew, in his own colony, a district which presented the same features and which, therefore, might be expected to produce the same results. Remaining in California only long enough to verify his observations, he returned to Sydney at the beginning of the year 1851. Seldom has such absolute confidence in unverified observation proved so completely justified. According to Hargraves's own account he went without hesitation to a spot on the banks of a little stream known as Lewes Pond Creek, a tributary of Summer Hill Creek, itself a tributary of the Macquarie River, and there at once, on February 12, 1851, found alluvial gold. In April he had so far advanced as to be able to write to the Government offering to disclose his treasures for five hundred pounds. But he subsequently decided to trust to the liberality of the Government, and offered at once to show his workings to the government geologist, an official recently sent out from England to report upon gold prospects. On May 19th Mr. Stutchbury officially reported the discovery of gold in workable quantities at Summer Hill Creek, and by the end of the same month the immigration to the diggings had begun. Hargraves himself took no part in the digging, merely pointing out to others, without reserve, the places in which his experience led him to predict discovery, and instructing them in the processes of washing and cleaning. He was soon made a commissioner of Crown lands, and received a reward of ten thousand pounds. Now began a period which can have no complete parallel in earlier history, save the almost contemporaneous parallel of California. For in days when news travelled slowly, and travelling for ordinary men was still slower, in days when governments jealously prohibited the expatriation of their subjects, and only allowed the immigration of aliens under strict limitations, nothing like the Australian gold-rush could have taken place. As it was, everything favored the stampede. The Australian colonies themselves were anxious for immigrants. The European disturbances of 1848 had led many Continental rulers to the conclusion that it was wiser to allow turbulent spirits to go than to attempt to keep them. The new era of industry had completely unsettled the old relationships and awakened a spirit of restlessness. Finally, the recent application of steam to sea-going ships had rendered a rapid decrease in the length of the voyage from Europe a practical certainty. From the moment that the genuineness of Hargraves's discoveries was placed beyond doubt a swarm of pilgrims from all parts of the world set their faces toward the diggings. Many, perhaps the majority, of the arrivals were totally unsuited for the actual work of mining. Some of these turned to other pursuits in the neighborhood, and, in no small number of cases, did far better than the diggers whose gold they received. But thousands turned back in despair after a few days' experience of the hardships of the life; so that, almost from the first, there was an enormous traffic to and fro, and strong division of parties upon the gold question. An extreme view of the effect upon population may be obtained from a comparison of the statistics of Victoria at the close of the years 1850 and 1855 respectively. At the former date the population was under seventy thousand; at the latter, it was upward of three hundred thousand. But no other colony increased to anything like this extent during the gold rush. The first care of the Government at Sydney, on receiving the official report of the existence of gold, was to decide upon the attitude to be assumed toward the diggers. It was abundantly clear that the establishment of mining industries would mean a great increase of expense to the Government. It was equally clear that, as the law had been declared over and over again in the colony, unauthorized digging on Crown land constituted a trespass, for which the digger was legally responsible. But the Governor was wise enough to see that no threats of prosecution would deter men bent on digging in unoccupied lands, even if it were possible to preserve the lands of private owners from forcible intrusion. The "squatting" question had demonstrated that, beyond a certain point, the theory of Crown occupation of waste lands was liable to break down. So the government advisers suggested a compromise. Falling back on a still older feudal doctrine, they asserted the indefeasible right of the Crown to all gold found either on private or public lands, but recommended that licenses to dig should be granted on easy terms, which would have the double effect of providing a revenue and of preserving an acknowledgment of the Crown's title. Acting on this advice, Governor Fitzroy, on May 22, 1851, issued a proclamation forbidding all persons to dig for gold on any lands without license, but expressing the willingness of the Government to grant licenses at a fee of thirty shillings a month to diggers on Crown lands. For the present, the Governor refused to allow digging on private lands without the owner's consent. The proclamation also announced that no license would be given to any laborer or servant unless he could produce a certificate of discharge from his last service. At the same time the Governor established the practice of appointing special commissioners for the gold-fields, charged with the administration of the licensing system and the general maintenance of order in their respective districts. He also strengthened the police force by every means in his power, and then awaited developments. He had not long to wait. Almost immediately after the issue of the proclamation another gold-field was discovered on the Turon River, also a feeder of the Macquarie, only a few miles from Lewes Pond; and shortly afterward a third was opened up on the Abercrombie, a tributary of the Murrumbidgee, which takes its rise in the Cordillera, south of Bathurst. By the beginning of June, gold began to pour into Bathurst; but Mr. Hardy, the chief commissioner, was able to report an almost idyllic peace and plenty at the diggings. In the middle of July an event occurred which at once produced a violent attack of gold fever. This was the discovery of an enormous mass of virgin gold, weighing upward of one hundred pounds, by Doctor Kerr, a squatter on the Meroo Creek. Doctor Kerr had been guided to the spot by an aboriginal who had been in his service several years; and, in his excitement, he broke the matrix in which the nugget was imbedded, and thus spoiled what would have been the most magnificent specimen of gold quartz hitherto discovered. Even as it was, the display in Bathurst of a single find of gold worth four thousand pounds was enough to excite the feelings of the inhabitants to a pitch inconsistent with steady industry. But Doctor Kerr's find raised a point of some interest to the Government. In framing the licensing regulations, the advisers of the Crown had thought only of the possibilities of alluvial mining. Had they even directed their thoughts toward rock gold, they would probably have considered it highly improbable that any explorer should be able to extract the metal without an amount of preparation which he would hardly undertake upon the security of a bare license. But, as it happened, Doctor Kerr had not even a license when he discovered the gold, though he took one out as soon as possible afterward. To strengthen its position, the Government seized the gold in the hands of a firm of shippers who were about to send it to England; but, on the firm's representation, it was released, security being given for the payment of a royalty of 10 per cent, if the Crown should see fit to demand it. Early in August, 1851, the Governor announced that, for the future, licenses would be held to cover only alluvial gold, and that for rock gold found on Crown land the Government would demand a royalty of 10 per cent., half that amount if the working was on private land. A fortnight later the Government undertook the escort of gold from the diggings to Sydney, thereby adding considerably to the Crown revenue and at the same time obtaining additional power over the gold districts. By the end of August, gold to the value of seventy thousand pounds had been exported from the colony. But these figures were soon eclipsed by those which followed. The news of the gold discoveries near Bathurst had soon spread through the Australian colonies. The more adventurous of the colonists started at once for the diggings. Others, often encouraged by their governments, who foresaw a constant drain of population in favor of the gold colony, endeavored to find gold within their own limits. Rumors of discoveries were constantly arising. Gold was found at Echuca in South Australia, in the Fingal district of Tasmania, and in the Curumandel ranges of New Zealand. But none of these discoveries could compare for a moment with those which took place within the newly constituted colony of Victoria. Even so early as August, 1851, gold had been worked at a place called "Deep Creek" (or "Anderson's Creek"), not far from Melbourne, but this was soon abandoned in favor of the diggings at Clunes, on the headwaters of the streams which flow north from the great dividing range to the Murray River. A month later, these again were temporarily deserted in favor of the rich Buninyong district, just south of the range, whose chief centre was Ballarat. Finally, at the beginning of October, 1851, the wonderful finds at Mount Alexander, a spur of the Macedon range to the north of Melbourne, were eclipsing all previous discoveries. Before the end of the year the export of gold from Victoria alone had very nearly reached half a million in value. In two years the population of the Victorian gold-fields almost equalled the whole population of the colony at the close of 1850. Most of the diggers lived in tents, and had absolutely no interest in the colony beyond the mere hope of profit from the diggings. If a more profitable field had opened elsewhere, they would have left at once. By the end of the year 1851 the probable area of future discoveries was pretty well recognized. The gold-fields, with few exceptions, were found to lie on one side or the other of the eastern Cordillera or chain of mountains which, beginning with Mount Elliot in Northern Queensland, follows the coast with remarkable precision till it reaches Port Phillip Bay. But all the more northerly part of this chain was unexplored in 1851, and of course there was room for almost any development within such wide limits. Warned by events in New South Wales, the governments of the other Australian colonies had made preparations for the crisis. Western Australia was too remote to be much affected; and her newly arrived supply of convict labor rendered her contented. But South Australia and Tasmania suffered severely from the drain of population, which set in toward the diggings. In South Australia, the effect was in some districts almost as if a pestilence had swept away the men, leaving the women and children untouched. Some of the emigrants really deserted their families, but the bulk were honorable men, and remittances of gold soon began to find their way to Adelaide for distribution among relatives in the colony. After the comparative failure of the gold-diggings in South Australia, the Government had wisely set itself to secure some part of the prosperity of the gold discoveries for its colony by establishing both land and river traffic routes. In these efforts it was highly successful. Many South Australians made handsome fortunes by sending provisions to the Buninyong and Mount Alexander districts, and the new steamers on the Murray proved a source of profit to the colony which lasted until the development of the railroad system. Unfortunately, this prosperity could hardly be realized at the time, owing to the great scarcity of coined money in the colony. In 1851 the privilege of coining was still jealously monopolized by the mint in London; while the rapid expansion of business in the latter part of that year had rendered the supply of coin in Australia totally inadequate to the demand. Very soon after the discoveries, Governor Fitzroy had sent home a memorial from the Legislative Council at Sydney, praying for the establishment of a branch mint in that city, and similar applications soon followed from the other colonies. On March 22, 1853, a Treasury minute sanctioned the applications, and colonial mints were shortly afterward established by order in council. But in the mean while the South Australians had got over their difficulty by passing a colonial act authorizing the issue by the Colonial Government of gold ingots, of slightly higher intrinsic value than the coins they were supposed to represent, stamped with an authentic mark. These ingots were not made legal tender, and the only object of the government mark was to guarantee quality and weight. But they were generally accepted in official and commercial transactions, they tided over the crisis of scarcity, and the Home Government, though with due official caution, approved the action of Governor Young. In Tasmania, the main difficulty arose from the drain of emigrants. In August, 1851, Sir William Denison wrote home urging the transportation of more convicts or "probationers," on the ground that there would be a great demand for foodstuffs by the neighboring colonies, while the supply of agricultural laborers would be shorter than ever. Both Tasmania and South Australia united in deciding upon the continuance of the system by which free emigrants were sent out at the expense of the land fund of each colony, notwithstanding that such emigrants would probably leave for Victoria immediately after their arrival. Of the existence of this contingency there could be little doubt. On January 16, 1852, the Governor of Tasmania wrote: "I have a number of men who have come back from Mount Alexander after an absence from this colony of not more than eight weeks, with gold to the value of one hundred twenty pounds to one thousand pounds." During the five months which followed the writing of this letter, four thousand persons (most of them wage-earners in the prime of life) left Tasmania for Victoria. As the whole population of Tasmania was at this time only about fifty thousand, the matter was serious. Nevertheless, Tasmania tided safely over the difficulties of the gold period, and even was able to help her sorely tried sister. For it was upon the newly established Government at Melbourne that the strain of the new era most severely fell. The Government at Sydney was an old and tried institution, with traditions of more than half a century, and a staff of experienced officials under an exceptionally able chief. When Hargraves made his discoveries in 1851, the population of the mother-colony was nearly a quarter of a million, exclusive of the Port Phillip district, and such a population meant a government organization of corresponding magnitude. Moreover, the people of New South Wales had always, from circumstances, been accustomed to much governmental control, and did not resent it; while Victoria had been started as a colony whose people were too prosperous and contented to require more than a minimum of guidance. When the gold discoveries suddenly drew into the colony, not merely the most turbulent characters of Australia, but the crews of deserted ships and the general offscourings of the civilized world, and when, overcome by the contagion, the government officials threw up their posts, one and all, and started for the diggings, it became evident that the Lieutenant-Governor had his hands full. Even so early as November, 1851, he began to anticipate trouble from the preemptive clauses of the Crown Lands Leasing Act of 1847, by which the squatters had a right to purchase land in the neighborhood of the gold-fields. The claims of the squatters barred the way, and the squatters themselves looked with small favor upon a class of men whom they regarded as troublesome intruders, and whose proceedings rendered it almost impossible for the pastoralists to procure sufficient labor to carry on their operations. The squatters chose to overlook two important facts; viz., that they had themselves originally acquired their position precisely as the digger acquired his, and that the presence of the digger, if it raised the price of labor, also enormously increased the prices of the squatter's produce. But more immediate financial troubles began to press upon the Government. It had been necessary, not merely to add largely to the number of the official staff--to provide additional police, commissioners, magistrates, customs officers, etc.--but also to increase their pay in some proportion to the greatly increased cost of living. Even with an increase in their salaries of 50 or 100 per cent, the subordinate officials would not stay. The sight of the reckless and prosperous diggers who came down to Melbourne to spend the Christmas of 1851, and who flung their gold about recklessly, was too much for the feelings of the civilians. They deserted in troops. On January 12, 1852, Lieutenant-Governor Latrobe wrote: "The police in town and country have almost entirely abandoned duty," and he begged of the Secretary of State to send military aid. In May, 1852, Sir John Pakington replied, promising six companies of the Fifty-ninth Regiment from China, but subsequently decided to send a whole regiment direct from England. A man-of-war was also to be stationed in Australian waters. A still more welcome assistance came in the early part of the year from the Governor of Tasmania, who sent, at Latrobe's earnest request, a body of two hundred pensioners, who had been serving as convict guards, and who might be expected to resist those temptations which, if yielded to, would result in the loss of their pensions. But all this assistance meant money, and the Government soon fell into sore straits. It is true that at first the revenue rose substantially. Comparing the income for the quarters ending December 31, 1850, and December 31, 1851, respectively, we find, on general account, an increase of eleven thousand pounds, or about 30 per cent., and, on the Territorial account, or Land Fund, an increase of seventy-three thousand pounds, about 100 per cent. Three months later the increase was about 200 per cent. on the general revenue, while the Territorial revenue was about the same. But the latter fact may be accounted for by the transferrence of the fees for gold licenses to the general revenue. It is more important, however, to notice that, though the revenue was rising, expenses were increasing still faster. Not only had the staff to be doubled, or trebled, at a very large increase of pay, but government contracts for public buildings, printing, stores, fittings, and other necessaries could be placed, if at all, only at extravagantly high prices. "No tenders can be obtained for supplies of boots and shoes; orders have been sent to neighboring colonies for them. Old furniture sells at about 75 per cent. advance on the former prices of new; scarcely any mechanics will work." Latrobe estimated the deficit in the revenue of the year 1853 as nearly four hundred thousand pounds, notwithstanding that he reckoned the whole gold revenue of six hundred thousand pounds as available for general expenses. In his anxiety the Lieutenant-Governor had at first (December, 1851) proposed to double the license fee of thirty shillings a month; but the proposal had provoked such a storm of opposition that he withdrew it. The revenue from licenses was the source of much contention. The Government alleged that it was not taxation, but rent, of Crown lands, and at first devoted it exclusively to the service of the gold-fields. The diggers denounced it as taxation without representation; and the Legislative Council, almost necessarily in opposition to the Government while the latter was administered by nominees of the Colonial Office, refused to make up deficiencies out of the general revenue. Thus the Lieutenant-Governor was placed between two fires. If he enforced the license fees he angered what was rapidly becoming the largest part of the population; if he relinquished them, he left himself without means to carry on the government of the gold-fields. From this dilemma he was saved by the receipt of a general permission from the Colonial Office, toward the close of 1852, to deal with the gold revenue in the same manner as ordinary revenue. By placing this fund at the disposal of the Colonial Legislature, the Home Government not only removed a great grievance and relieved the hands of the Lieutenant-Governor from the shackles previously laid upon them by the Colonial Office, but it took a substantial step toward the end that was now acknowledged on all sides to be the ultimate outcome of the new discoveries; viz., the introduction of responsible government. The same despatch contained a still more important concession, authorizing the Lieutenant-Governor to devote the remaining part of the land revenue--viz., that arising from sales and pastoral licenses--"to the purposes rendered urgent by the present crisis." As this fund was jealously reserved by the existing constitutions of the Australian colonies, and devoted, under the provisions of the Crown Land Sales Act, exclusively to the purposes of emigration and public works, it will be seen that the Colonial Office took a strong step in sanctioning its diversion. But it must be observed that the expenditure of this additional fund was placed exclusively in the hands of the Lieutenant-Governor and his Executive Council, acting independently of the Colonial Legislature. With this assistance, the Lieutenant-Governor struggled on amid increasing difficulties till the spring of the year 1853. By this time the agitation against the license fee had reached an alarming height, for the first successes of the new discoveries had passed away, and, although the export of gold continued to increase, it was by no means at its former rate nor in proportion to the increase of population. At the beginning of September, 1853, there were said to be nearly seventy thousand persons living at the Victorian gold-fields, and many of these, in all probability, earned very little more than mechanics employed in settled work. Hence there was a fair ground for an orderly agitation against the amount of the fee; but, unfortunately, the diggers preferred violent measures. There was some excuse for them. They were not represented in the Legislative Council, for they had sprung into existence as a body since the passing of the Act of 1850, and, though a measure had been introduced with a view to giving them the franchise, it had not yet received the assent of the Home Government. In the mean time, therefore, they could not, through their representatives in the Council, effectively criticise either the existing law or its administration. With regard to the latter, there was obviously room for complaint, for the immense increase of business had compelled the Government to appoint an inferior class of officials, and some of these, at least, succumbed to the strong temptations of their positions. At the beginning of August, 1853, a petition had been presented by the Bendigo diggers, in which they urged the reduction of the license fee and the grant of representation to the diggers. The Lieutenant-Governor returned a pacific reply, but the delegates in charge of the petition were evidently bent on arousing strong feelings, and they held meetings in Melbourne which went the extreme length permissible to loyal subjects. Still, the Lieutenant-Governor shrank from strong measures, and endeavored to remove one ground of complaint by appointing, as a nominee member of the Legislative Council, a gentleman who was believed to possess the confidence of the diggers. The nomination was at once repudiated by the delegates of the latter, and at the end of August an organized attempt was made to resist the renewal of licenses on the old terms. Hundreds of diggers pledged themselves to pay no more than a third of the sum previously demanded, and those who were inclined to yield to the Government's demands were warned that the agitators would not "be responsible for their safety" if they remained at the diggings. The license system had by this time extended, beyond the diggers, to the storekeepers and other tradesmen at the gold-fields, who were making enormous profits out of the diggers, and these, for the most part, unhesitatingly complied with the demands of the agitators, willing rather to pay the fines for breach of the government regulations than to offend their customers. A daring attack on a private escort of gold near Bendigo, which occurred about this time, showed that the colony was on the verge of civil war. Just at this moment an event occurred which rendered it impossible for the Government to maintain its position unimpaired with the scanty forces at its disposal. In the middle of September, 1853, the total abolition of the license fee was seriously proposed in the Legislative Council of New South Wales. The news flew like wildfire to Victoria, where the diggers had hitherto looked upon the colonial legislatures--in which, it will be remembered, they were not yet represented--as their natural enemies. It seemed to them now that they had everything in their own hands, and it became clearly impossible for the Government, in the existing temper of the diggers, to exact the full amount of the license fee. A proclamation, hastily published with a view to allay excitement, by an unfortunate omission in the printed copies led the public to believe that the total abolition of the license system was contemplated by the Victorian Government. A select committee of the Legislative Council reported unfavorably upon the system. The Government made the best of a bad bargain, and accepted a fee of forty shillings for the three months ending November 30, 1853; and, on the following day, the Legislative Council passed a new Gold-fields Act, which greatly reduced the fees for diggers' licenses, while it substantially increased those demanded for permission to open stores at the gold-fields. It also provided for the grant of leases of auriferous lands, at a royalty of not less than 5 per cent., and gave legal sanction to the customs regarding the "claims" of diggers, which had gradually grown up to regulate the rival interests of neighboring miners. Offences against the act were to be decided upon by the magistrates; but the accused might demand a court of at least two members, and there was to be an appeal to General Sessions. These measures were partly successful in restoring order, but it was obvious that the gold-fields contained men who were averse to a peaceable settlement. Notwithstanding that the number of the elective members of the Legislative Council was more than once increased; that, with the full consent of the Home Government, a bill was being prepared for the introduction of responsible government; and that the material condition of the diggers was being rapidly improved, the Lieutenant-Governor had, in January, 1854, to report the formation of a "diggers' congress," which obviously had for its object the supersession of the ordinary government. Latrobe retired from office in May of the same year, and one of the first points noticed by his successor, Sir Charles Hotham, was the existence of an agitation against the Chinese at the Bendigo diggings. Notwithstanding the enthusiastic character of his reception in his progress through the gold-fields in September, the new Governor soon had to face serious disturbances. The events of the next few months formed a crisis in the history, not only of Victoria, but of Australia. Naturally there is much dispute concerning them, and, as the following account is taken chiefly from Sir Charles Hotham's reports, it is possible that the acts of his opponents may not obtain strict justice. But it is admitted on all sides that Sir Charles acted with the most perfect good faith; and the accounts given by the insurgents are far too contradictory and prejudiced to receive much credit. On the night of October 16, 1854, a miner named Scobie was murdered, or at least killed, at the Eureka Hotel, near Ballarat. The Eureka Hotel was a place of no good repute, kept by a man named Bentley, who, as well as his wife, was (it is said) an ex-convict from Tasmania. Suspicion fell upon the couple, and they, with a second man (named Farrell), were arrested by the magistrates, but almost immediately released for alleged default of evidence. The dismissal of the charge excited a storm of indignation in the camp, and a body of diggers at once proceeded to wreck the hotel and lynch the accused. In the latter object they, fortunately, did not succeed, and so rendered themselves liable only to charges of riot and arson, instead of the more serious charge of murder. Four of the ringleaders were, through the prompt measures of Sir Charles Hotham, shortly afterward arrested, and committed for trial. But the accusations of partiality against the officials were too strong to be resisted, and a board of inquiry hastily instituted by the Governor disclosed the ugly facts that Dewes, the magistrate who presided at the hearing of the charge against the Bentleys, had been in the habit of borrowing money from residents, and that Sergeant-Major Milne, of the police force, had been guilty of receiving bribes. The officials implicated were at once dismissed, and the Bentleys and Farrell rearrested and convicted. But the Governor very properly declined to release the arrested rioters, who, shortly before Christmas, 1854, were convicted and sentenced to short terms of imprisonment. Meanwhile, more disturbances had occurred. Though a commission upon the general condition of the gold-fields was holding its inquiries, in November many diggers again refused to pay the reduced license fees, and, on the 30th of the month, a serious riot took place. The military were called out, the Riot Act was read, and there was some shooting. Eight captures were made, but the lesson had not been severe enough, and a state of open war ensued. The diggers intrenched themselves in a fortified camp known as the "Eureka Stockade," openly drilled their forces in the presence of the authorities, and levied horses and rations from unwilling miners in the name of a "commander-in-chief." At the same time they issued a long political manifesto, which, while it did not avowedly disclaim allegiance to the Crown, contained proposals to which no regularly constituted government could ever have assented. The Governor at once ordered all the available military force to Ballarat; but, before reinforcements arrived, the coolness and promptitude of Captain Thomas--the officer in command of the troops on the Ballarat gold-field when the riot of November 30th took place--had nipped the insurrection in the bud. Captain Thomas saw that, while the Eureka Stockade threatened to become a serious obstacle to the Government if its completion were allowed, in its uncompleted state it was really a source of weakness to the insurgents. By collecting their forces in one spot, and thus rendering them more exposed to a crushing attack, and by drawing off the men who threatened the government camp, it really left the commander of the troops free to act with decision. Accordingly, Captain Thomas at once determined to attack the position. Assembling his forces (somewhat fewer than two hundred men) at three o'clock on the morning of December 3d, he moved toward the stockade. At about one hundred fifty yards from the intrenchments he was perceived by the scouts of the insurgents, who promptly fired on the advancing troops. Thomas himself, Pasley (his aide-de-camp), Rede (the resident commissioner), and Racket (the stipendiary magistrate), all of whom were present at the attack, positively assert that the insurgents fired before a shot was discharged by the troops. Upon this reception Captain Thomas gave the order to fire, and the intrenchments were carried with a rush after about ten minutes of sharp fighting. Captain Wise was fatally wounded, and three privates were killed outright; one officer and eleven privates were wounded. Of the insurgents, about thirty were known to have been killed, and many more wounded. Nearly one hundred twenty prisoners were taken. The effect of the victory was, so far as local disturbances were concerned, instantaneous. Even before the reinforcements under General Nickle appeared, all resistance to the authorities had died away; and, though the Governor at once proclaimed a state of martial law, he was able to recall the proclamation in less than a week. In other districts of the colony the effect was, for a while, doubtful. The extreme reluctance of Englishmen to admit the necessity for military interference by the Government told strongly in favor of the rioters. There was some danger that Melbourne and Geelong, left almost entirely unprotected by the concentration of troops and police at Ballarat, would be taken possession of by rioters from the country districts, and Sir Charles Hotham made hasty application to Sir William Denison, the Governor of Tasmania, for military assistance. Very soon, however, the feelings of orderly citizens asserted themselves. Special constables were sworn in at Melbourne and Geelong, marines from two men-of-war stationed at Port Phillip guarded the prisons and the powder stores, wealthy men volunteered to serve as mounted police, and the arrival of the Ninety-ninth Regiment from Tasmania on December 10th dealt a final blow to the hopes of the insurgents. Even before this event, all the respectable classes in the community had rallied round the Governor, and he felt himself in a position to defy further outbreaks. But the ugliest feature of the whole affair was yet to be revealed. Out of the large number of prisoners taken at the capture of the stockade, only thirteen were committed for trial, the magistrates being instructed to commit only when the evidence was of the clearest nature. It being considered impossible to obtain an impartial trial by a local jury, the prisoners were brought down to Melbourne, and, after various delays, the charges were proceeded with on February 20, 1855. A Boston negro, named John Joseph, and a reporter for the Ballarat _Times_, named Manning, were first tried. The latter may have been merely led away by professional ardor in the pursuit of "copy," though the fact that he had been openly drilled and instructed in the use of a pike by the insurgents would seem to show that his zeal was somewhat excessive. In the case of Joseph, the evidence was overwhelming; he had actually been seen to fire upon the troops, and he was captured in a tent which had been used as a guard-room by the insurgents. No counter-evidence was offered, the prisoners' counsel relying entirely on the alleged absence of treasonable intention. Nevertheless both prisoners were speedily acquitted, and, although the Government wisely withdrew the remaining cases for the time, subsequent trials produced similar results. Ultimately, however, the difficulties of the situation were allayed by the reforms introduced on the recommendation of the commission appointed to consider the whole subject of the gold-fields. This body presented, on March 27, 1855, an extremely able report, in which it recommended the abolition of the license fee and the substitution therefor of a "miners' right" or Crown permission, lasting for a year, and granted for a nominal fee of one pound, to occupy for mining purposes a specific piece of Crown land. The deficiency in revenue anticipated from the abolition of license fees was to be met by the imposition of an export duty upon gold at the rate of a half-crown an ounce. The commission strongly recommended the granting of the political franchise to holders of "miners' rights," and the provision of liberal facilities for the acquisition of land by the miners. It also advocated the simplification of the existing complex system of government in the mining districts, whereby commissioners, police authorities, commissariat officials, and magistrates all worked independently of each other, and suggested the substitution therefor of experienced "wardens" at the head of elective boards, who should not only dispose, with the aid of skilled assessors, of disputes specially connected with mining operations, but who should have power to issue by-laws adapted to the special requirements of each district. These recommendations were for the most part carried out by legislation of the same year (1855), and, before his lamented death in December, 1855, Sir Charles Hotham had the happiness being able to report to the Home Government the almost perfect tranquillity of the gold-fields. Moreover, the revenue had not suffered by the substitution of the export duty for the license fees; but the collector of customs was of opinion that the result of the change had been to throw the entire burden of the tax upon the importers of the colony instead of upon the mining population. The Government was not, however, disposed to concern itself with considerations of abstract justice so long as it could collect a sufficient revenue without serious opposition. (1854) THE RISE OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, Abraham Lincoln The election of 1852 virtually destroyed the Whig party, and Franklin Pierce, the candidate of the Democratic party, was elected by great majorities. If the Whig party had perished because it had no distinct position upon the one overshadowing question of the day, so neither did the new President comprehend the nature and condition of that issue. In his first message he complacently congratulated the country that the slavery question had been settled peacefully and forever by the compromise measures of 1850. He little knew how ineffective were those compromises; he never dreamed that it was a question that no compromise could settle permanently, and probably had no conception of the new force that was to be given to it during his own term of office. Stephen A. Douglas, an acknowledged aspirant to the Presidency, being Chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, introduced and carried through Congress a measure called the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, which, in providing for the admission of those Territories as States, embodied his doctrine of "Popular Sovereignty" in that it permitted the inhabitants to determine by popular vote whether they should come into the Union as free States or as slave States, and abolished the Missouri Compromise, which for thirty-four years had forbidden the acquisition of any slave territory north of the parallel of 36° 30'. The abrogation of this compromise, which had been looked upon as a sacred compact, convinced a majority of the Northern people that the system of slavery was filled with the spirit of aggressiveness and determined to spread itself into all the Territories. Consequently there arose for the first time a powerful anti-slavery party, which, while denying that it had any purpose of meddling with that institution in the States where it already existed, declared that it should never be extended into any more of the national domain. At the same time this was a stronger party in favor of the protective tariff than had ever before existed. This organization, which gave itself the name "Republican party," came into existence in 1854, the same year in which Senator Douglas's bill abrogated the Missouri Compromise. There are several claimants for the honor of first proposing it; but as a fact, it sprang into existence with virtual simultaneousness in several of the Northern States. If there was a priority, it was in Massachusetts, where Robert Carter acted as Secretary of the Convention and wrote the resolutions. Two years later this party entered the Presidential contest with John C. Frémont as its candidate. It cast an enormous vote, but was not successful, mainly for the reason that the short-lived American (or Know-Nothing) party was then at its best, and had its own ticket, headed by Millard Fillmore. Four years later still, it nominated and elected Abraham Lincoln as President, and the clearest argument for its existence that ever has been put forth is in Lincoln's first speech in his famous debate with Senator Douglas, which was delivered in Springfield, Illinois, June 17, 1858. The full text of that speech follows herewith. If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this Government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South. Have we no tendency to the latter condition? Let anyone who doubts, carefully contemplate that now almost complete legal combination--piece of machinery, so to speak--compounded of the Nebraska doctrine and the Dred Scott decision. Let him consider, not only what work the machinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted, but also let him study the history of its construction, and trace, if he can, or rather fail, if he can, to trace the evidences of design, and concert of action, among its chief architects, from the beginning. The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than half the States by State constitutions, and from most of the national territory by Congressional prohibition. Four days later commenced the struggle which ended in repealing that Congressional prohibition. This opened all the national territory to slavery, and was the first point gained. But, so far, Congress only had acted, and an indorsement by the people, real or apparent, was indispensable to save the point already gained, and give chance for more. This necessity had not been overlooked, but had been provided for, as well as might be, in the notable argument of "squatter sovereignty," otherwise called "sacred right of self-government," which latter phrase, though expressive of the only rightful basis of any government, was so perverted in this attempted use of it as to amount to just this: That if any _one_ man choose to enslave _another_, no _third_ man shall be allowed to object. That argument was incorporated into the Nebraska Bill itself, in the language which follows: "It being the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States." Then opened the roar of loose declamation in favor of "squatter sovereignty" and "sacred right of self-government." "But," said opposition members, "let us amend the bill so as to expressly declare that the people of the Territory may exclude slavery." "Not we," said the friends of the measure; and down they voted the amendment. While the Nebraska Bill was passing through Congress, a _law case,_ involving the question of a negro's freedom, by reason of his owner having voluntarily taken him first into a free State, and then into a Territory covered by the Congressional prohibition, and held him as a slave for a long time in each, was passing through the United States Circuit Court for the District of Missouri; and both Nebraska Bill and lawsuit were brought to a decision in the same month of May, 1854. The negro's name was "Dred Scott," which name now designates the decision finally made in the case. Before the then next Presidential election, the law case came to and was argued in the Supreme Court of the United States; but the decision of it was deferred until after the election. Still, before the election, Senator Trumbull, on the floor of the Senate, requested the leading advocate of the Nebraska Bill to state _his opinion_ whether the people of a Territory can constitutionally exclude slavery from their limits; and the latter answers, "That is a question for the Supreme Court." The election came. Buchanan was elected, and the indorsement, such as it was, secured. That was the second point gained. The indorsement, however, fell short of a clear popular majority by nearly four hundred thousand votes, and so, perhaps, was not overwhelmingly reliable and satisfactory. The outgoing President, in his last annual message, as impressively as possible echoed back upon the people the weight and authority of the indorsement. The Supreme Court met again, did not announce their decision, but ordered a reargument. The Presidential inauguration came, and still no decision of the court; but the incoming President, in his inaugural address, fervently exhorted the people to abide by the forthcoming decision, whatever it might be. Then, in a few days, came the decision. The reputed author of the Nebraska Bill finds an early occasion to make a speech at this capital indorsing the Dred Scott decision, and vehemently denouncing all opposition to it. The new President, too, seizes the early occasion of the Silliman letter to indorse and strongly construe that decision, and to express his astonishment that any different view had ever been entertained! At length a squabble springs up between the President and the author of the Nebraska Bill, on the mere question of _fact_, whether the Lecompton Constitution was or was not in any just sense made by the people of Kansas; and in that quarrel the latter declares that all he wants is a fair vote for the people, and that he cares not whether slavery be voted _down_ or voted _up_. I do not understand his declaration, that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up, to be intended by him other than as an apt definition of the policy he would impress upon the public mind--the principle for which he declares he has suffered so much, and is ready to suffer to the end. And well may he cling to that principle! If he has any parental feeling, well may he cling to it. That principle is the only shred left of his original Nebraska doctrine. Under the Dred Scott decision "squatter sovereignty" squatted out of existence, tumbled down like temporary scaffolding; like the mould at the foundry, served through one blast, and fell back into loose sand; helped to carry an election, and then was kicked to the winds. His late joint struggle with the Republicans, against the Lecompton Constitution, involves nothing of the original Nebraska doctrine. That struggle was made on a point--the right of a people to make their own constitution--upon which he and the Republicans have never differed. The several points of the Dred Scott decision, in connection with Senator Douglas's "care not" policy, constitute the piece of machinery, in its present state of advancement. This was the third point gained. The points of that machinery are: Firstly. That no negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and no descendant of such slave, can ever be a citizen of any State, in the sense of that term as used in the Constitution of the United States. This point is made in order to deprive the negro, in every possible event, of the benefit of that provision of the United States Constitution which declares that "The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States." Secondly. That, "subject to the Constitution of the United States," neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislature can exclude slavery from any United States Territory. This point is made in order that individual men may fill up the Territories with slaves, without danger of losing them as property, and thus to enhance the chances of permanency to the institution through all the future. Thirdly. That whether the holding a negro in actual slavery in a free State makes him free, as against the holder, the United States courts will not decide, but will leave to be decided by the courts of any slave State the negro may be forced into by the master. This point is made, not to be pressed immediately; but, if acquiesced in for a while, and apparently indorsed by the people at an election, then to sustain the logical conclusion that what Dred Scott's master might lawfully do with Dred Scott in the free State of Illinois, every other master may lawfully do with any other one, or one thousand slaves, in Illinois, or in any other free State. Auxiliary to all this, and working hand in hand with it, the Nebraska doctrine, or what is left of it, is to educate and mould public opinion, at least Northern public opinion, not to care whether slavery is voted down or voted up. This shows exactly where we now are, and partially, also, whither we are tending. It will throw additional light on the latter to go back and run the mind over the string of historical facts already stated. Several things will now appear less dark and mysterious than they did when they were transpiring. The people were to be left "perfectly free," "subject only to the Constitution." What the Constitution had to do with it outsiders could not then see. Plainly enough now, it was an exactly fitted niche for the Dred Scott decision to come in afterward, and declare the perfect freedom of the people to be just no freedom at all. Why was the amendment, expressly declaring the right of the people, voted down? Plainly enough now, the adoption of it would have spoiled the niche for the Dred Scott decision. Why was the court decision held up? Why even a Senator's individual opinion withheld, till after the Presidential election? Plainly enough now, the speaking out then would have damaged the perfectly free argument upon which the election was to be carried. Why the outgoing President's felicitation on the indorsement? Why the delay of a reargument? Why the incoming President's advance exhortation in favor of the decision? These things look like the cautious patting and petting of a spirited horse preparatory to mounting him, when it is dreaded that he may give the rider a fall. And why the hasty after-indorsement of the decision by the President and others? We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places and by different workmen--Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James, for instance--and when we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortises exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few--not omitting even scaffolding--or, if a single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared yet to bring such piece in--in such a case we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first blow was struck. It should not be overlooked that by the Nebraska Bill the people of a _State_ as well as Territory were to be left "perfectly free," "subject only to the Constitution." Why mention a State? They were legislating for Territories, and not for or about States. Certainly the people of a State are and ought to be subject to the Constitution of the United States; but why is mention of this lugged into this merely Territorial law? Why are the people of a Territory and the people of a State therein lumped together, and their relation to the Constitution therein treated as being precisely the same? While the opinion of the court, by Chief Justice Taney, in the Dred Scott case, and the separate opinions of all the concurring judges expressly declare that the Constitution of the United States neither permits Congress nor a Territorial Legislature to exclude slavery from any United States Territory, they all omit to declare whether or not the same Constitution permits a State, or the people of a State, to exclude it. _Possibly_, this is a mere omission; but who can be quite sure, if McLean or Curtis had sought to get into the opinion a declaration of unlimited power in the people of a State to exclude slavery from their limits, just as Chase and Mace sought to get such declaration, in behalf of the people of a Territory, into the Nebraska Bill--I ask, who can be quite sure that it would not have been voted down in the one case as it had been in the other? The nearest approach to the point of declaring the power of a State over slavery, is made by Judge Nelson. He approaches it more than once, using the precise idea, and almost the language, too, of the Nebraska Act. On one occasion, his exact language is, "Except in cases where the power is restrained by the Constitution of the United States, the law of the State is supreme over the subject of slavery within its jurisdiction." In what cases the power of the States is so restrained by the United States Constitution is left an open question, precisely as the same question, as to the restraint on the power of the Territories, was left open in the Nebraska Act. Put this and that together, and we have another nice little niche, which we may, ere long, see filled with another Supreme Court decision, declaring that the Constitution of the United States does not permit a _State_ to exclude slavery from its limits. And this may especially be expected if the doctrine of "care not whether slavery be voted down or voted up" shall gain upon the public mind sufficiently to give promise that such a decision can be maintained when made. Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being alike lawful in all the States. Welcome or unwelcome, such decision is probably coming, and will soon be upon us, unless the power of the present political dynasty shall be met and overthrown. We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free, and we shall awake to the reality instead that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State. To meet and overthrow the power of that dynasty is the work now before all who would prevent that consummation. That is what we have to do. How can we best do it? There are those who denounce us openly to their own friends, and yet whisper us softly that Senator Douglas is the aptest instrument there is with which to effect that object. They wish us to _infer_ all, from the fact that he now has a little quarrel with the present head of the dynasty, and that he has regularly voted with us on a single point, upon which he and we have never differed. They remind us that he is a great man, and that the largest of us are very small ones. Let this be granted. But "a living dog is better than a dead lion." Judge Douglas, if not a dead lion, for this work is at least a caged and toothless one. How can he oppose the advances of slavery? He don't care anything about it. His avowed mission is impressing the "public heart" to _care nothing about it_. A leading Douglas Democratic newspaper thinks Douglas's superior talent will be needed to resist the revival of the African slave-trade. Does Douglas believe an effort to revive that trade is approaching? He has not said so. Does he really think so? But if it is, how can he resist it? For years he has labored to prove it a sacred right of white men to take negro slaves into the new Territories. Can he possibly show that it is less a sacred right to buy them where they can be bought cheapest? And unquestionably they can be bought cheaper in Africa than in Virginia. He has done all in his power to reduce the whole question of slavery to one of a mere right of property; and, as such, how can he oppose the foreign slave-trade--how can he refuse that trade in that "property" shall be "perfectly free"--unless he does it as a protection to the home production? And as the home producers will probably not ask the protection, he will be wholly without a ground of opposition. Senator Douglas holds, we know, that a man may rightfully be wiser to-day than he was yesterday; that he may rightfully change when he finds himself wrong. But can we, for that reason, run ahead, and infer that he will make any particular change, of which he himself has given no intimation? Can we safely base our action upon any such vague inference? Now, as ever, I wish not to misrepresent Judge Douglas's position, question his motives, or do aught that can be personally offensive to him. Whenever, if ever, he and we can come together on principle so that our cause may have assistance from his great ability, I hope to have interposed no adventitious obstacle. But clearly he is not now with us; he does not pretend to be--he does not promise ever to be. Our cause, then, must be intrusted to and conducted by its own undoubted friends--those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the work, who _do care_ for the result. Two years ago the Republicans of the nation mustered over thirteen hundred thousand strong. We did this under the single impulse of resistance to a common danger, with every external circumstance against us. Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and pampered enemy. Did we brave all then, to falter now---now, when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered, and belligerent? The result is not doubtful. We shall not fail; if we stand firm, we _shall not fail_. Wise counsels may accelerate or mistakes delay it, but sooner or later the victory is sure to come. (1854) THE OPENING OF JAPAN, Matthew C. Perry In view of the events that have followed, the ending of Japan's self-isolation and the opening of that country, first to American commerce, and later to world-wide intercourse, must now be regarded as an achievement of momentous consequence, far exceeding in importance all that even the most prophetic statesmanship of the time could foresee. Under the shoguns (or military chiefs) who after the seventh century overshadowed the hereditary rulers, the Mikados, there grew up in Japan a feudal system whereby the generals, recognized as overlords, increased and perpetuated their power. The attempts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to introduce Christianity were met with resistance and persecution, and ended in failure. In the same centuries Japan traded with the Portuguese, but excluded them in 1638. After this the Japanese isolation was complete, except for restricted trade with the Dutch, until the conclusion of Commodore Perry's treaty. About the middle of the nineteenth century a large amount of American capital was invested in the whaling industry in Japanese and Chinese waters, and one motive for the sending of Perry's expedition to Japan was the protection of the whalers. Other things leading to that step were: the discovery of gold in California; the growth of industrial and commercial centres on the Pacific Coast of the United States; increasing trade with China; and the development of steam-navigation, necessitating coaling-stations and ports for shelter in the Orient. At the same time progressive minds in Japan were advancing in knowledge of Western science and political affairs; thus the East and the West were almost prepared for a change in their mutual relations. In 1851 the United States Government empowered Commodore John H. Aulick to negotiate and sign commercial treaties with Japan. On the eve of his intended departure he was prevented from sailing, and in the following year Commodore Matthew C. Perry, brother of Oliver Hazard Perry, the hero of Lake Erie, succeeded to his mission. He was invested with extraordinary naval and diplomatic powers, his immediate object being to establish a coaling-station in Japan. On November 24, 1852, he sailed from Norfolk with the Mississippi, leaving other ships to follow as soon as ready. With his squadron he entered the Bay of Tokio (then called Yedo) in July, 1853, causing great commotion among the inhabitants of the Japanese capital, who mistook his appearance for a hostile approach. It required both firmness and tact on Perry's part to open friendly communication and present his proposals; but he succeeded in doing so much, and then, saying that in the following spring he would come for an answer, he withdrew to China. In February, 1854, he returned to Tokio with a fleet of eight vessels. After some parley, the Japanese authorities agreed to a conference at Kanagawa, a seaport adjoining Yokohama. Of the negotiations that followed and the treaty in which they resulted, the following pages tell, and Commodore Perry's own account is the best record of his distinguished service not only to his own country and Japan, but likewise to the civilized world. After concessions made by the Japanese, the greatest good feeling prevailed on both sides, and there seemed every prospect of establishing those national relations which had been the purpose of Commodore Perry's mission. In accordance with the harmony and friendship that existed, there was an interchange of those courtesies by which mutual good feeling seeks an outward expression. The Japanese had acknowledged with courtly thanks the presents that had been bestowed in behalf of the Government, and now, on March 24th, invited the Commodore to receive the various gifts that had been ordered by the Emperor in return, as a public recognition of the courtesy of the United States. The Commodore, accordingly, landed at Yokohama, with a suite of officers and his interpreters, and was received at the treaty-house with the usual ceremonies by the high commissioners. The large reception-room was crowded with the presents. The objects were of Japanese manufacture, and consisted of specimens of rich brocades and silks; of their famous lacquered ware, such as _chow-chow_ boxes, tables, trays, and goblets, all skilfully wrought and finished with an exquisite polish; of porcelain cups of wonderful lightness and transparency, adorned with figures and flowers in gold and variegated colors, and exhibiting a workmanship that surpassed even that of the ware for which the Chinese are remarkable. Fans, pipe-cases, and articles of apparel in ordinary use, of no great value but of exceeding interest, were scattered among the more luxurious and costly objects. With the usual order and neatness that seem almost instinctive with the Japanese, the various presents had been arranged in lots, and classified in accordance with the rank of those for whom they were respectively intended. The commissioners took their positions at the farther end of the room, and when the Commodore and his suite entered, the ordinary compliments having been interchanged, the Prince Hayashi read aloud, in Japanese, the list of presents and the names of the persons to whom they were to be given. This was then translated by Yenoske into Dutch, and by Mr. Portman into English. This ceremony being over, the Commodore was invited by the commissioners into the inner room, where he was presented with two complete sets of Japanese coins, three matchlocks, and two swords. These gifts, though of no great intrinsic value, were significant evidences of the desire of the Japanese to express their respect for the representative of the United States. The mere bestowal of the coins, in direct opposition to the Japanese laws which absolutely forbid all issue of their money beyond the Kingdom, was an act of marked favor. As the Commodore prepared to depart, the commissioners said there was one article intended for the President, which had not yet been exhibited. They accordingly conducted the Commodore and his officers to the beach, where one or two hundred sacks of rice were pointed out, heaped up in readiness to be sent on board the ships. As that immense supply of substantial food seemed to excite some wonder on the part of the Americans, Yenoske the interpreter remarked that it was always customary with the Japanese, when bestowing royal presents, to include a certain quantity of rice, although he did not say whether the quantity always amounted, as on the present occasion, to hundreds of sacks. While contemplating these substantial evidences of Japanese generosity, the attention of all was suddenly riveted upon twenty-five monstrous fellows who tramped down the beach like so many huge elephants. They were professional wrestlers and formed part of the retinue of the princes, who kept them for their private amusement and for public entertainment. They were enormously tall, and tremendously heavy. Their scant costume, which was merely a colored cloth about the loins, adorned with fringes and emblazoned with the armorial bearings of the prince to whom each belonged, revealed their gigantic proportions in all the bloated fulness of fat and extent of muscle. Two or three of these huge monsters were the most famous wrestlers in Japan and ranked as the champion Tom Cribbs and Sayers of the country. Koyanagi, the reputed bully of the capital, was one of them, and paraded himself with the conscious pride of superior size and strength. He was especially brought to the Commodore that he might examine his massive form. The commissioners insisted that the monstrous fellow should be minutely inspected, that the hardness of his well-rounded muscle should be felt, and that the fatness of his cushioned frame should be tested by the touch. The Commodore accordingly attempted to grasp his arm, which he found as solid as it was huge, and then passed his hand over the monstrous neck, which fell in folds of massive flesh, like the dewlap of a prize ox. As some surprise was naturally expressed at this wondrous exhibition of animal development the monster himself gave a grunt expressive of his flattered vanity. They were so enormously big that they appeared to have lost their distinctive features, and seemed to be only twenty-five masses of fat. Their eyes were barely visible through a long perspective of socket, the prominence of their noses was lost in the puffiness of their bloated cheeks, and their heads were set almost directly on their bodies with merely folds of flesh where the neck and chin are usually found. Their great size, however, was more owing to development of muscle than to deposition of fat; for, although they were evidently well fed, they were not less well exercised, and capable of great feats of strength. As a preliminary exhibition of the power of these men, the princes set them to removing the sacks of rice to a convenient place on the shore for shipping. Each of the sacks weighed not less than one hundred twenty-five pounds, and there were only two of the wrestlers who did not carry each two sacks at a time. They bore the sacks on the right shoulder, lifting the first from the ground and adjusting it without help, but obtaining aid for the raising of the second. One man carried a sack suspended by his teeth, and another, taking one in his arms, turned repeated somersaults as he held it, apparently with as much ease as if his weight of flesh had been only so much gossamer and his load a feather. After this preliminary display, the commissioners proposed that the Commodore and his party should retire to the treaty-house, where they would have an opportunity of seeing the wrestlers exhibit their professional feats. From the brutal performance of these wrestlers, the Americans turned with pride to the exhibition--to which the Japanese commissioners were now in their turn invited--of the telegraph and the railroad. It was a happy contrast, which a higher civilization presented, to the disgusting display on the part of the Japanese officials. In place of the show of brute animal force there was a triumphant revelation, to a partially enlightened people, of the success of science and enterprise. The Japanese took great delight in seeing the rapid movement of the Liliputian locomotive; and one of the scribes of the commissioners took his seat upon the car, while the engineer stood upon the tender, feeding the furnace with one hand, and directing the diminutive engine with the other. Crowds of the Japanese gathered round and looked on the repeated circlings of the train with unabated pleasure and surprise, unable to repress a shout of delight at each blast of the steam-whistle. The telegraph, with its wonders, though before witnessed, still created renewed interest, and all the beholders were unceasing in their expressions of curiosity and astonishment. The agricultural instruments having been explained to the commissioners by Doctor Morrow, a formal delivery of the telegraph, the railway, and other articles, which made up the list of American presents, ensued. The Prince of Mamasaki had been delegated by his coadjutors ceremoniously to accept, and Captain Adams was appointed by the Commodore to deliver, the gifts; and each performed his functions by an interchange of compliments and a half-dozen stately bows. After this, a detachment of marines from the squadron were put through their various evolutions, while the bands furnished martial music. The Japanese commissioners seemed to take a very great interest in this military display, and expressed themselves much gratified at the soldierly air and excellent discipline of the men. This closed the performances of the day. The next day (March 25th), Yenoske, accompanied by Kenzeiro, his fellow-interpreter, came on board the Powhatan to acknowledge formally, in behalf of the commissioners, their gratitude for the exhibition of the marines, the locomotive, and the telegraph, with all which they declared themselves highly delighted. Yenoske and his coadjutor were invited to seat themselves in the cabin of the Commodore, and, after some expressions of courtesy which the Japanese officials were careful never to intermit, proposed to talk over some points in connection with the projected treaty. The Commodore said he had no objections to the discussion of the matters informally; but he protested against considering the interpreters as the official representatives of the commissioners, with the latter of whom only, he declared, could he treat authoritatively. Monday, March 27th, was the day appointed for the entertainment to which the Commodore had invited the commissioners and their attendants. Accordingly, great arrangements were made in the flagship preparatory to the occasion. The quarterdeck was adorned with a great variety of flags, and all parts of the steamer were in perfect order, while the officers, marines, and men dressed themselves in their uniforms and prepared to do honor in every respect to their expected visitors. As it was known that the strictness of Japanese etiquette would not allow the high commissioners to sit at the same table with their subordinates, the Commodore ordered two banquets, one to be spread in his cabin for the chief dignitaries, and another on the quarter-deck. Previous to coming on board the Powhatan, the commissioners visited the sloop-of-war Macedonian, being saluted as they stepped on her deck by seventeen guns from the Mississippi lying near. The great guns and boarders having been exercised for their entertainment, the commissioners, with their numerous attendants, left for the Powhatan, the Macedonian firing a salvo in their honor as they took their departure. On arriving on board the flagship, they were first conducted through the different departments of the steamer, and examined with minute interest the guns and the machinery. A boat was lowered, with a howitzer in its bows, and this was repeatedly discharged, much to their amusement, for they evidently had a great fondness for martial exercise and display. The engines were next put in motion, and they evinced the usual intelligence of the higher class of Japanese in their inquiries and remarks. The Commodore had invited the four captains of the squadron, his interpreter, Mr. Williams, and his secretary, to join the commissioners at his table. Yenoske, the Japanese interpreter, was allowed the privilege, as a special condescension on the part of his superiors, to sit at a side-table in the cabin, where his humble position did not seem to disturb either his equanimity or his appetite. Hayashi, who always preserved his grave and dignified bearing, ate and drank sparingly, but tasted of every dish, and sipped of every kind of wine. He was the only one, in fact, whose sobriety was proof against the unrestrained conviviality that prevailed among his bacchanalian coadjutors. The Japanese party upon deck, who were entertained by a large body of officers from the various ships, became quite uproarious under the influence of overflowing supplies of champagne, Madeira, and punch, which they seemed greatly to relish. The Japanese took the lead in proposing healths and toasts, and were by no means the most backward in drinking them. They kept shouting at the top of their voices, and were heard far above the music of the bands that enlivened the entertainment by a succession of brisk and cheerful tunes. In the eagerness of the Japanese appetite there was but little discrimination in the choice of dishes and in the order of courses, and the most startling heterodoxy was exhibited in the confused commingling of fish, flesh, and fowl, soups and syrups, fruits, fricassees, roast and boiled, pickles and preserves. As a most generous supply had been provided, there were still some remnants of the feast left after the guests had satisfied their voracity, which most of these Japanese, in accordance with their custom, stowed away about their persons to carry off. The Japanese always have an abundant supply of paper within the left bosom of their loose robes, in a capacious pocket. This is used for various purposes; one species, as soft as our cotton cloth, and withal exceedingly tough, is used for a handkerchief; another furnishes the material for taking notes, or for wrapping up what is left after a feast. On the present occasion, when the dinner was over, all the Japanese guests simultaneously spread out their long folds of paper, and gathering what scraps they could lay their hands on, without regard to the kind of food, made up an envelope of conglomerate eatables in which there was such a confusion of the sour and sweet, the albuminous, oleaginous, and saccharine, that the chemistry of Liebig or the practised taste of the Commodore's Parisian cook would never have reached a satisfactory analysis. They not only always followed this practice themselves, but insisted that their American guests, when entertained at a Japanese feast, should adopt it also. Whenever the Commodore and his officers were feasted on shore, paper parcels of the remnants were thrust into their hands on leaving. After the banquet the Japanese were entertained by an exhibition of negro minstrelsy, got up by some of the sailors. The gravity of the saturnine Hayashi was not proof against the grotesque exhibition, and even he joined in the general hilarity. It was now sunset and the Japanese prepared to depart, with quite as much wine in them as they could well bear. The jovial Matsusaki threw his arms about the Commodore's neck, crushing in his tipsy embrace a pair of new epaulettes, and repeating, in Japanese, with maudlin affection, these words, as interpreted into English: "Nippon and America, all the same heart." He then went toddling into his boat, supported by some of his more steady companions, and soon all the happy party had left the ships and were making rapidly for the shore. The Saratoga fired the salute of seventeen guns as the last boat pulled off from the Powhatan, and the squadron was once more left in the usual quiet of ordinary ship's duty. The following day the Commodore landed to have a conference in regard to the remaining points of the treaty, previous to signing. He was met at the treaty-house by the commissioners. As soon as the Commodore had taken his seat, a letter was handed to him, which the Japanese said they had just received from Simoda. It was from Commander Pope, and had been transmitted through the authorities overland. Its contents gave a satisfactory report of Simoda, and the Commodore at once said he accepted that port, but declared that it must be opened without delay. Hakodate, he added, would do for the other, and Napha, in Riu Kiu [Loo Choo Islands], could be retained for the third. In regard to the other two he was willing, he said, to postpone their consideration to some other time. The Commodore now proposed to sign the agreement in regard to the three ports, and directed his interpreter to read it in Dutch. When the document had been thus read and afterward carefully perused by the Japanese, they said they were prepared to concur in everything except as to the _immediate_ opening of Simoda. After discussion, it was finally settled that, though the port might be opened, the Japanese would address a note to the Commodore, saying that not everything which might be wanting by ships would be furnished there before the expiration of ten months, but that wood and water and whatever else the place possessed would be supplied immediately; and to this note the Commodore promised to reply and express his satisfaction with such an arrangement. The question now came up with respect to the extent of privileges to be granted to Americans who might visit Simoda, in the discussion of which it was plain that the Japanese meant to be distinctly understood as prohibiting absolutely, at least for the present, the permanent residence of Americans, with their families, in Japan. The distance, also, to which Americans might extend their excursions into the country around the ports of Simoda and Hakodate was settled; and it is observable that, at the special request of the Japanese, the Commodore named the distance, they assenting at once to that which he mentioned. The proposition to have consular agents residing in Japan evidently gave great anxiety to the commissioners. The Commodore was firm in saying there must be such agents, for the sake of the Japanese themselves as well as for that of his own countrymen, and it was finally conceded that there should be one, to live at Simoda, and that he should not be appointed until a year and eighteen months from the date of the treaty. Two more articles, including the new points that had been discussed, were now added to the transcript of the proposed treaty; the Japanese promised to bring on board the Powhatan next day a copy in Dutch of their understanding of the agreement as far as concurred in, and the Commodore departed. In the next two days several notes passed between the Commodore and the Japanese commissioners, in the course of which various questions that had been already considered were definitely settled; and the American interpreters were occupied, in cooperation with the Japanese, in drawing up the treaty in the Chinese, Dutch, and Japanese languages. On the 29th the ships Vandalia and Southampton arrived from Simoda with the confirmation of what Commander Pope had already said in his despatch--which had been transmitted by the Japanese authorities, overland, to the Commodore--namely, that the harbor and town of Simoda had been found, on examination, suitable in every respect for the purposes of the Americans. All was now in readiness for the final signing of the treaty. Accordingly, on Friday, March 31, 1854, the Commodore went to the treaty-house with his usual attendants, and immediately on his arrival signed three several drafts of the treaty written in the English language, and delivered them to the commissioners, together with three copies of the same in the Dutch and Chinese languages, certified by the interpreters, Messrs. Williams and Portman, for the United States. At the same time the Japanese commissioners, in behalf of their Government, handed to the Commodore three drafts of the treaty written respectively in the Japanese, Chinese, and Dutch languages, and signed by the four of their body delegated by the Emperor for that purpose. Immediately on the signing and exchange of the copies of the treaty, the Commodore presented the first commissioner, Prince Hayashi, with an American flag, remarking that he considered it the highest expression of national courtesy and friendship he could offer. The Prince was evidently deeply impressed with this significant mark of amity, and returned his thanks for it with indications of great feeling. The Commodore then presented the other dignitaries with the various gifts he had especially reserved for them. All formal business being now concluded, to the satisfaction of both parties, the Japanese commissioners invited the Commodore and his officers to partake of an entertainment prepared for the occasion. The tables were spread in the large reception hall. These were wide divans, such as were used for seats, and of the same height. They were covered with a red-colored crape, and arranged in order according to the rank of the guests and their hosts, an upper table raised somewhat above the rest being appropriated to the Commodore, his superior officers, and the commissioners. When all were seated the servitors brought in a rapid succession of courses, consisting chiefly of thick soups, or rather stews, in most of which fresh fish was a component part. These were served in small earthen bowls or cups, and were brought in upon lacquered stands, about fourteen inches square and ten inches high, and placed, one before each guest, upon the tables. Together with each dish was a supply of soy or some other condiment, while throughout there was an abundant quantity, served in peculiar vessels, of the Japanese national liquor, the _sake_, a sort of whiskey distilled from rice. Various sweetened confections and a multiplicity of cakes were liberally interspersed among the other articles on the tables. Toward the close of the feast, a plate containing a broiled crawfish, a piece of fried fish of some kind, two or three boiled shrimps, and a small square pudding with something of the consistence of blancmange, was placed before each, with a hint that they were to follow the guests on their return to the ships, and they were accordingly sent and duly received afterward. After the feast, which passed pleasantly and convivially, compliments being freely exchanged, and healths drunk in Liliputian cups of sake, the commissioners expressed great anxiety about the proposed visit of the Commodore to Yedo. They earnestly urged him not to take his ships any farther up the bay, as they said it would lead to trouble by which the populace might be disturbed and their own lives perhaps jeoparded. The Commodore argued the matter with them for some time, and, as they still pertinaciously urged their objections to his visit to the capital, it was agreed that the subject should be further discussed by an interchange of notes. The meeting then broke up. When it was determined by our Government to send an expedition to Japan, those in authority were not unmindful of the peculiar characteristics of that singular nation. Unlike all other civilized peoples, it was in a state of voluntary, long-continued, and determined isolation. It neither desired nor sought communication with the rest of the world, but, on the contrary, strove to the uttermost to prevent it. It was comparatively an easy task to propose, to any Power the ports of which were freely visited by ships from every part of the world, the terms of a commercial treaty. But not so when, by any Power, commerce itself was interdicted. Before general conditions of commerce could be proposed to such a Power, it was necessary to settle the great preliminary that commerce would be allowed at all. Again, if that preliminary was settled affirmatively, a second point of great moment remained to be discussed, viz., to what degree shall intercourse for trading be extended? Among nations accustomed to the usages of Christendom, the principles and extent of national comity in the interchanges of commercial transactions have been so long and so well defined and understood that, as between them, the term "commercial treaty" needs no explanation; its meaning is comprehended alike by all, and in its stipulations it may cover the very broad extent that includes everything involved in the operations of commerce between two maritime nations. But in a kingdom which, in its polity, expressly ignored commerce and repudiated it as an evil instead of a good, it was necessary to lay the very foundation as well as to adjust the terms. Hence the instructions to Commodore Perry covered broad ground, and his letters of credence conformed to his instructions. If he found the Japanese disposed to abandon, at once and forever, their deliberately adopted plan of non-intercourse with foreigners (an event most unlikely), his powers were ample to make with them a commercial treaty as wide and general as any we have with the nations of Europe. If they were disposed to relax but in part their jealous and suspicious system, formally to profess relations of friendship, and, opening some only of their ports to our vessels, to allow a trade in those ports between their people and ours, he was authorized to negotiate for this purpose, and secure for his country such privileges as he could, not inconsistent with the self-respect which, as a nation, we owed to ourselves. It must not be forgotten, in the contemplation of what was accomplished, that our representative went to a people who, at the time of his arrival among them, had, both by positive law and usage of more than two hundred years, allowed but one of their harbors, Nagasaki, to be opened to foreigners at all; had permitted no trade with such foreigners when they did come, except, under stringent regulations, with the Dutch and the Chinese; were in the habit of communicating with the world outside of them at second-hand only, through the medium of the Dutch who were imprisoned at Dezima; and a people who, as far as we know, never made a formal treaty with a civilized nation in the whole course of their history. There were but two points on which the Commodore's instructions did not allow him a large discretion to be exercised according to circumstances. These were, first, that if happily any arrangements for trade, either general or special, were made, it was to be distinctly stipulated that, under no circumstances and in no degree, would the Americans submit to the humiliating treatment so long borne by the Dutch in carrying on their trade. The citizens of our country must be dealt with as freemen, or there should be no dealings at all. The second point was that, in the event of any of our countrymen being cast, in God's providence, as shipwrecked men on the coast of Japan, they should not be treated as prisoners, confined in cages, or subjected to inhuman treatment, but should be received with kindness and hospitably cared for until they could leave the country. The nearest approach to a precedent was to be found in our treaty with China, made in 1844. This therefore was carefully studied by the Commodore. Its purport was "a treaty or general convention of peace, amity, and commerce," and to settle the rules to "be mutually observed in the intercourse of the respective countries." So far as "commerce" is concerned, it permitted "the citizens of the United States to frequent" five ports in China "and to reside with their families and trade there, and to proceed at pleasure with their vessels and merchandise to or from any foreign port, and from either of the said five ports to enter any other of them." As to duties on articles imported, they were to pay according to a tariff that was made part of the treaty, and in no case were to be subjected to higher duties than those paid, under similar circumstances, by the people of other nations. Consuls were provided for, to reside at the five open ports, and those trading there were "permitted to import from their own or any other ports into China, and sell there and purchase therein, and export to their own or any other ports, all manner of merchandise of which the importation or exportation was not prohibited by the treaty." In short, so far as the five ports were concerned, there existed between us and China a general treaty of commerce. The Commodore caused to be prepared, in the Chinese characters, a transcript of the treaty, with such verbal alterations as would make it applicable to Japan, with the view of exhibiting it to the Imperial commissioners of that country should he be so successful as to open negotiations. He was not sanguine enough to hope that he could procure an entire adoption of the Chinese treaty by the Japanese. He was not ignorant of the difference in national characteristics between the inhabitants of China and the more independent, self-reliant, and sturdy natives of the Japanese islands. He knew that the latter held the former in some degree of contempt and treated them in the matter of trade very much as they treated the Dutch. He was also aware that the Chinese, when they made their treaty, did know something of the advantages that might result from intercourse with the rest of the world; while as to the Japanese, in their long-continued isolation, either they neither knew nor desired such advantages, or, if they knew them, feared they might be purchased at too high a price in the introduction of foreigners, who, as in the case of the Portuguese, centuries before, might seek to overturn the empire. It was too much, therefore, to expect that the Japanese would in all the particulars of a treaty imitate the Chinese. Of the difficulties encountered, even after the Japanese had consented to negotiate, the best account may be given from the conferences and discussions between the negotiators, of all which most accurate reports were kept on both sides, in the form of dialogue. At the first meeting of the Commodore with the Imperial commissioners, on March 8th, he acted on the plan he had proposed to himself with respect to the treaty with China, and thus addressed them: _Commodore Perry_. I think it would be better for the two nations that a treaty similar to the one between my country and the Chinese should be made between us. I have prepared the draft of one almost identical with our treaty with China. I have been sent here by my Government to make a treaty with yours; if I do not succeed now, my Government will probably send more ships here; but I hope we shall soon settle matters amicably. _Japanese_. We wish for time to have the document translated into the Japanese language. This was but one among a hundred proofs of their extreme suspicion and caution; for there was not one of the Imperial commissioners, probably, who could not have read, without the least difficulty, the document as furnished by the Commodore; and certain it is that their interpreters could have read it off into Japanese at once. The Commodore, who wished to do as far as possible everything that might conciliate, of course made no objection to a request so seemingly reasonable, though he knew it to be needless, and was content to wait patiently for their reply. In one week that reply came in writing, and was very explicit: "As to opening a trade, such as is now carried on by China with your country, we certainly cannot yet bring it about. The feelings and manners of our people are very unlike those of other nations, and it will be exceedingly difficult, even if you wish it, to change immediately the old regulations for those of other countries. Moreover, the Chinese have long had intercourse with Western nations, while we have had dealings at Nagasaki with only the people of Holland and China." This answer was not entirely unexpected, and put an end to all prospect of negotiating a "commercial treaty" in the European sense of that phrase. It only remained therefore to secure, for the present, admission into the kingdom, and so much of trade as Japanese jealousy could be brought to concede. At length, after much and oft-repeated discussion, the point was yielded that certain ports might be opened to our vessels; and then, in the interview of March 25th, came up the subject of consuls. _Japanese_. About the appointment of consuls or agents, the commissioners desire a delay of four or five years, to see how the intercourse works. The governor of the town and the official interpreter will be able to carry on all the business of supplying provisions, coal, and needed articles, with the captain, without the intervention of a consul. _Perry_. The duties of a consul are to report all difficulties that arise between American citizens and Japanese to his Government in an authentic manner, assist the Japanese in carrying out their laws and the provisions of the treaty and recovering debts made by the Americans; and also communicating to the Government at Washington whatever the Japanese wish, as no letters can be received after this through the Dutch; and if no consuls are received, then a ship-of-war must remain in Japan constantly, and her captain must do the duties of a consul. _Japanese_. If we had not felt great confidence in you, we should not have consented to open our ports at all. Consuls may be accepted by and by, after experience has shown their need; and we hope that all American citizens obey the laws of their country and behave properly. _Perry_. True, and I hope no difficulty will arise; and this appointment of consuls in Japan, as they are in China, Hawaii, and everywhere else, is to prevent and provide for difficulties. No American will report his own misdeeds to his own Government, nor can the Japanese bring them to our notice except through a government agent. This provision must be in the treaty, though I will stipulate for only one, to reside at Simoda, and he will not be sent probably for a year or two from this time. And thus it was that the Commodore had to explain everything and feel his way, step by step, in the progress of the whole negotiation. _Japanese_. The commissioners wish every point desired by the Admiral to be stated clearly, for the Japanese are not equal to the Americans, and have not much to give in exchange. _Perry_. I have already stated all my views as regards our intercourse, in the draft of the treaty you have. [This was one prepared by the Commodore after the rejection of the transcript of the Chinese treaty.] Let the commissioners state their objections to it. This treaty now to be made is only a beginning; and as the nations know each other, the Japanese will permit Americans to go anywhere, to Fujiyama--all over the country. _Japanese_. We have found restrictions necessary against the Portuguese and the English. Then followed observations by the Japanese on Pellew's entry into Nagasaki harbor, which showed how much dislike of the English that event had occasioned. A strong proof of their remarkable caution was furnished by the Japanese at the conference held on March 28th when most of the terms of the treaty had been agreed upon. _Perry_. I am prepared now to sign the treaty about these three harbors. Mr. Portman, interpreter, then read in Dutch that portion of the treaty which contained such points as had been already agreed upon. _Japanese_. It is all correct except that we have objection to opening the port of Simoda immediately; if any vessels were to go there in distress, we should be glad to furnish them with provisions, wood, and water. _Perry_. You have already consented, in one of your letters to me, to open that port immediately. I am very desirous of settling that matter now, as I wish to despatch the Saratoga home to inform the Government, before Congress adjourns, how matters are advancing; that will take some time, and there is no probability that any ships will come here before ten or twelve months have expired; so that it will make no difference to you whether you put it in the treaty to be opened now or in ten months. _Japanese_. We are willing to put it in the treaty "to be opened now," if you will give us a letter or promise that no ships will come here before the President gives his permission. _Perry_. I cannot do that very well, but I am willing to put it off ninety days; that will be about the time I shall return from Hakodate; it was your own proposition, yesterday, to open that port immediately. I consent to this, however, to show you how desirous I am to do what I can to please you. I cannot consent to a longer time. _Japanese_. If we put it in the treaty to be opened now, we would like you to give us an order that no ships shall enter that port before ten months. _Perry_. I cannot do that. But there is no probability that any ships will come here before that time, as I shall not leave here for three months, and they will not hear of it before that time; and when they do hear of it, it will take several months for ships to make the voyage here. If you choose I will keep one of the ships at Simoda for several months. _Japanese_. If ships go there before that time we shall not be able to give them other than provisions, wood, and water. _Perry_. The ships that may go there will want such things only as you may have; if you have them not, of course you cannot and will not be expected to furnish them; but, as I said before, there is no probability that ships will go there before the expiration of ten months. _Japanese_. When you come back from Matsumai, we shall have plenty of provisions at Simoda for the whole squadron; but to other ships we cannot furnish more than wood, water, etc. _Perry_. When we return from Matsumai we shall not want many provisions, as we shall be going to a place where we shall get plenty. It is only the principle I wish settled now. I have come here as a peacemaker, and I desire to settle everything now, and thus prevent trouble hereafter; I wish to write home to my Government that the Japanese are friends. _Japanese_. We will write you a letter stating that we cannot furnish you anything before ten months, but that we can furnish wood and water immediately, and that we will furnish such other things as we possibly can. This letter we should like you to answer. _Perry_. Very well; I will. _Japanese_. [Entering on another part of the terms agreed on.] We will not confine Americans, or prevent them from walking around; but we should like to place a limit to the distance they may walk. _Perry_. I am prepared to settle that matter now, but they must not be confined to any particular house or street. Suppose we make the distance they may walk, the same distance that a man can go and come in a day. Or, if you choose, the number of _lis_ or _ris_ may be agreed upon. _Japanese_. We are willing that they shall walk as far as they can go and come in a day. _Perry_. There is no probability that sailors would wish to go on shore more than once from curiosity; besides, they will have their daily duties to attend to on board ship and will not be able to go on shore. _Japanese_. We do not wish any women to come and remain at Simoda. _Perry_. The probability is that few women will go there, and they only the wives of the officers of the ships. _Japanese_. When you come back from Matsumai we should like _you_ to settle the distance that Americans are to walk. It is difficult for _us_ to settle the distance. _Perry_. Say the distance of seven Japanese miles in any direction from the centre of the city of Simoda. _Japanese_. Very well. A few miles will make no difference. You are requested not to leave agents until after you have experienced that it is necessary. _Perry_. I am willing to defer the appointment of a consul or an agent one year or eighteen months from the date of the signing the treaty; and then, if my Government think it necessary, it will send one. In fact, not an article of the treaty was made without the most serious deliberation by the Japanese. In answer to a question from Captain Adams, in the very first stages of the negotiation, they replied: "The Japanese are unlike the Chinese; they are adverse to change; and when they make a compact of any kind they intend that it shall endure for a thousand years. For this reason it will be best to deliberate and examine well the facilities for trade and the suitableness of the port before any one is determined on." Probably nothing but the exercise of the most perfect truthfulness and patience would ever have succeeded in making a treaty with them at all; and from the language of one of their communications, it is obvious that, with characteristic caution, they meant that their present action should be but a beginning of intercourse, which might or might not be afterward made more extensive, according to the results of what they deemed the experiment. This, it must be remembered, was the first formal treaty they ever made on the subject of foreign trade, at least since the expulsion of the Portuguese, and they evidently meant to proceed cautiously by single steps. There is observable throughout the negotiations the predominating influence of the national prejudice against the permanent introduction of foreigners among them. The word "reside" is but once used in the whole treaty, and that in the article relative to consuls. The details of conferences, already given, show how anxiously they sought to avoid having consuls at all. Indeed, Commodore Perry says, "I could only induce the commissioners to agree to this article, by endeavoring to convince them that it would save the Japanese Government much trouble if an American agent were to reside at one or both of the ports opened by the treaty, to whom complaints might be made of any malpractice of the United States citizens who might visit the Japanese dominions." They wanted no permanent foreign residents among them, official or unofficial. This was shown most unequivocally in the remark already recorded in one of the conferences--"We do not wish any women to come and remain at Simoda." Simoda was one of the ports open for trade with us; they knew that our people had wives and daughters, and that a man's family were ordinarily resident with him in his permanent abode, and that if the head of the family lived in Simoda as a Japanese would live, there would certainly be women who would "come and remain at Simoda." But more than this. It will be remembered that the Commodore had submitted to them our treaty with China, and they had held it under consideration for a week, at the end of which time they said: "As to opening a trade, such as is now carried on by China with your country, we certainly cannot yet bring it about. The Chinese have long had intercourse with Western nations, while we have had dealings at Nagasaki with only the people of Holland and China." Now what was "such a trade" as we carried on with China? The Japanese read in our treaty that five ports were open to us, that permission was given "to the citizens of the United States to frequent" them; and further, "to reside with their families and trade there." This they deliberately declined assenting to when they refused to make a treaty similar to that with China. They surely would not afterward knowingly insert it in any treaty they might make with us. The only permanent residence to which they gave assent, and that most reluctantly, was the residence of a consul. Temporary residence was allowed to our shipwrecked citizens, as well as to those who went to Simoda or Hakodate on commercial business. They are allowed to land, to walk where they please within certain limits, to enter shops and temples without restriction, to purchase in the shops, and have the articles sent to the proper public office duly marked, where they will pay for them, to resort to public-houses or inns that are to be built for their refreshment "when on shore" at Simoda and Hakodate; and until built, a temple, at each place, is assigned "as a resting-place for persons in their walks." They may accept invitations to partake of the hospitality of any of the Japanese; but they are not permitted to enter "military establishments or private houses without leave." Without leave, our citizens cannot enter them within the territories of any nation with which we have a treaty. In short, the whole treaty shows that the purpose of the Japanese was to make the experiment of intercourse with us before they made it as extensive or as intimate as it was between us and the Chinese. It was all they could do at the time, and much, very much, was obtained on the part of our negotiator in procuring a concession even to this extent. But, as he knew that our success would be but the forerunner of that of other powers, and as he believed that new relations of trade once commenced, not only with ourselves, but with England, France, Holland, and Russia, could not fail, in the progress of events, to break up the old restrictive policy, effectually and forever, and open Japan to the world; and must also lead gradually to liberal commercial treaties, he wisely, in the ninth article, secured to the United States and their citizens, without "consultation or delay," all privileges and advantages which Japan might hereafter "grant to any other nation or nations." And the Commodore's comments on this article conclusively show that _he_, at least, did not suppose he had made a "commercial treaty": "Article IX. This is a most important article, as there can be little doubt that, on hearing of the success of this mission, the English, French, and Russians will follow our example; and it may be reasonable to suppose that each will gain some additional advantage, until a commercial treaty is accomplished. Article IX will give to Americans, without further consultation, all these advantages." All other powers were forced to be content in obtaining just what we, as pioneers, obtained. Their treaties were like ours. That of Russia was copied from ours, with no change but that of the substitution of the port of Nagasaki for Napha in Riu Kiu. We respectfully submit, therefore, that all, and indeed more than all, under the circumstances, that could have been reasonably expected has been accomplished. (1855) THE CAPTURE OF SEBASTOPOL, Sir Edward B. Hamely and Sir Evelyn Wood This is the most famous event of the Crimean War, in which Russian power was pitted against the allied forces of Turkey, France, Great Britain, and Sardinia. The war grew out of rival demands concerning a protectorate in Turkey. In 1852 Napoleon III asked for the restoration of the protectorate of the Holy Places in the Ottoman Empire to the Latin Church. Supported by Russia, the Greek Church had virtually supplanted the Latin Church in Turkish dominions, and Russia now put forward a demand for a protectorate over the Greek subjects of the Sultan. Turkey had no interest in the religious questions at issue, and she pursued a wavering course between the disputing powers, fearing to offend either of them. Russia at last began openly to threaten Turkey, and, finding vacillation and diplomacy no longer availing for a postponement of the conflict, the Sultan declared war, October 4, 1853. In the early engagements of the war the Turks gained some successes over Russian troops, but the first important event was the destruction of a part of the Turkish fleet at Sinope, November 30, 1853. This, being regarded by England as an act of treachery on the part of Russia, brought Great Britain into the conflict. The Russians occupied the Danubian principalities, and the Battle of the Alma, in which the allies first confronted Russia, was won by the former, with greatly superior numbers, September 20, 1854. The siege of Sebastopol began in October, and during its progress important battles occurred--that of Balaklava, that of Inkerman, November 5th, in which the Russians were defeated by the English and the French; that of Tchernaya, August 16, 1855, a victory for the Russians; and the storming of the Malakoff, described below. The capture of Sebastopol was followed by the taking of Kars by the Russians, November 28, 1855, and the war ended. In accordance with the Treaty of Paris, March 30, 1856, Russia abandoned her claim to a protectorate over Christians in Turkey, and the Sultan agreed to grant them more favorable terms. Sir Edward Bruce Hamley and Sir Henry Evelyn Wood, British generals who served in the Crimean War, give us the best accounts of the siege and capture of Sebastopol, in which they were active participants. The siege had continued through many weeks without decisive developments, when on June 18, 1855, the French made a strong but unsuccessful assault on the Malakoff, which, like the Redan, formed one of the main defences. The following narratives describe the British assault on the Redan and the final storming of the Malakoff by the French. SIR EDWARD BRUCE HAMLEY Seeing how desperate was the condition of the fortress, Prince Gortschakoff had resolved, after the Battle of the Tchernaya, to abandon Sebastopol. In letters to the Minister of War, of August 18 and 24, 1855, he expressed this intention, saying there was not a man in the army who would not call it folly to continue the defence longer. With a view to conducting a retreat he pressed forward rapidly the construction of the bridge across the harbor, which was to have a roadway of sixteen feet and to bear heavy vehicles. He also conferred with Todleben on other measures to protect the withdrawal, and accordingly barricades were built across the streets and formed into armed and defensible works which were intended, as a last resort, to hold in check the assailants. Preparations were also made for blowing up the principal forts and magazines. Another great cannonade had begun on August 17th. The French lines had now approached so close to the place that new additions to them were immediately destroyed or rendered untenable by the fire from the Malakoff and Little Redan; and the shower of small shells, easily cast into the trenches from the ramparts, and called by the French "bouquets," greatly increased their losses. For the silencing of the artillery, which thus hindered the French sappers, the allied batteries opened in full force against the part of the enemy's lines from the Redan to the great harbor. But the town front was not included, and the English batteries suffered greatly from want of support by the works on their left. On August 20th Gortschakoff entered the fortress, and went round the lines of defence, upon which the fire of the allies was just then at its height. What he saw might well confirm him in his resolution to retreat. There was no longer either a city or a suburb to defend, for both were heaps of rubbish and cinders. The parapets of the works, dried in the heats of summer and split in huge fragments by the shot, were crumbling into the ditches. The interior space was honeycombed with holes made by the shells. Gabions and sandbags could not be procured to repair the embrasures, which remained in ruins. Many of the dismounted guns could no longer be replaced, not because there were not plenty in the arsenals, but because to mount them by night, under the deadly fire of the mortars, entailed such frightful sacrifices of men. The defenders of the works were packed in caves under the parapets; the gunners lay dead in heaps on the batteries; the wounded could not be removed by day, because the communications with the rear were now searched throughout by the fire of the allies, and so lay where they fell, in torment in the sun beside the more fortunate slain. On landing, the Prince had passed the hospitals, full to overflowing, and the ambulances with the wounded crowding what had been the squares. There was nothing to relieve the horrible monotony of destruction and devastation except the bridge, which promised retreat from this misery, and which was approaching completion. Yet it was after this visit that the Russian General changed his mind in the direction of what he had before termed folly. "I am resolved," he wrote to the Minister of War, on September 1st, "to defend the south side to the last extremity, for it is the only honorable course which remains to us." Calculating that the daily loss of the garrison was from eight hundred to nine hundred, and that he could bring twenty-five thousand men from the army outside to reenforce it, by leaving only twenty thousand to guard the Mackenzie Heights, he considered he might still prolong the defence for a month. Everything was against such a cruel determination; but he proceeded to execute it so far as in him lay. Yet it did not rest with him to determine the end. The cannonade once more reduced the Malakoff, its dependencies and neighbors, to absolute silence, and enabled the French to push their works yet closer. The soil between the Mamelon and Malakoff could be cut into like a cheese, and the trenches were more easily made and better constructed here than elsewhere. The English trenches before the Redan had been stopped by solid rock; the French approaches to the Little Redan, now only forty yards from it, had also got into soil so stony as no longer to afford cover. The most advanced approach to the Malakoff was separated from it by only twenty-five yards; in the soft soil the trenches might have been pushed to the very edge of the ditch, but only with great loss, and, besides, the facility of mining below them would increase as the distance lessened. It was therefore deemed that the time for assault had come, and it only remained to determine the details. Accordingly, a council of war considered the matter. After the members had delivered their opinions, Pélissier expressed himself thus: "I too have my plan, but I will not breathe it to my pillow." There is, however, no need to be so reticent with the reader. The French commander had learned that the relief of the troops in the works before him took place at noon, and that in order to avoid the great additional loss which would be caused by introducing the new garrisons before the old ones moved out, the contrary course was followed of marching out most of the occupants before replacing them. Thus noon was the time when the Malakoff would be found most destitute of defenders, and noon was to be the hour of the assault. Also another advantage was offered to the French. The salient of the Malakoff had been adapted to the form of the tower which it covered, and was therefore circular; consequently there was a space in it which could not be seen or fired on from the flanks; that was the space upon which the troops were to be directed. Roadways twenty yards wide were made through the trenches, and then masked by gabions, easily thrown down, by which the reserves could be brought up in the shortest time. The Malakoff, the curtain, and the Little Redan were each to be attacked by a division, supported by a brigade; and four divisions, with other troops, were destined to attack the central bastion and works near it, and break thence by the rear, into the flagstaff bastion. But first the cannonade was to be renewed. It began on September 5th, and this time it encircled the whole fortress, the French batteries before the town opening no less vigorously than the rest. At night a frigate in the harbor was set on fire by a shell, and the conflagration for hours lighted up the surrounding scenery. On the 6th and 7th the _feu d'enfer_ went on, the Russians replying but feebly; on the night of the 7th a line-of-battle ship was set on fire by a mortar, and burned nearly all night; it contained a large supply of spirits, the blue flames from which cast a lugubrious light on the ramparts from the harbor to the Malakoff, producing, says Todleben, "a painful impression on the souls of the defenders of Sebastopol." Daylight on the 8th found the Russian defences completely manned, the guns loaded with grape, and the reserves brought close up. But the assault was not yet begun, and the result of these preparations to receive it was increased havoc in the exposed ranks of the defenders. The attack on the Redan was to be directed by General Codrington. His division, and the Second, under General Markham, were to supply the column of attack, of which the covering party, the ladder party, the working party (to fill up the ditch and convert what works we might gain to our own purpose), and the main body were to number seventeen hundred, and the supports fifteen hundred. The remainder of these two divisions, numbering three thousand, was to be in reserve in the third parallel. Also, in the last reserve, were the Third and Fourth Divisions. No attack on the Redan would have been undertaken by the English as an isolated operation. Our compulsory distance from that work, the want of a place of arms (that is to say, a covered space in the advanced trenches of sufficient extent to harbor large bodies of troops), the construction of which was forbidden by the rocky soil, and the still unsubdued fire from the ramparts, all condemned an assault. But it was deemed necessary as a distraction in aid of the French, and it fulfilled the purpose. The portion of Codrington's troops destined to head the attack on the Redan moved rapidly and steadily across the open space, though suffering much loss from the heavy fire of round-shot, grape, case, and musketry now directed on them from every available point, and those in front passed with ease over the battered rampart and entered the work. But the rest, with too strong a reminiscence of their mode of action in the trenches, lay down at the edge of the ditch and began firing, alongside of the covering troops, who alone should have performed this duty. The supports also reached the ditch, and some of them entered the work. But the great reserves, in moving through the inches toward the point of issue, were obstructed and discouraged by meeting the numbers of wounded men and their bearers, who were of necessity brought back by the same narrow route, a difficulty which also hindered some of the French attacks. Colonel Windham, the leader of the attacking troops, finding that his messages for support produced no result, took the ill-advised step of going back himself to procure reënforcements. It was not surprising that before he returned his men also had withdrawn. It is probably in reference to this that the _Engineer Journal_ said, in excusing the troops, that "they retired when they found themselves without any officer of rank." They had been overwhelmed by the numbers which the Russians brought into the open work; and as they hurried back they suffered not less heavily than in their advance. It was unfortunate for them that the French had spiked the guns in the Malakoff instead of turning them on the enemy moving into the Redan, as they ought to have done. With the immense increase of difficulties in making way through the crowded trenches, and renewing the attack against works now fully armed and manned, the attempt was postponed till next day, when fresh troops, headed by the Highlanders, were to renew it. SIR HENRY EVELYN WOOD It may render my narrative of the final assault more readily comprehensible if I begin by saying that, the Malakoff being now considered the key of the Russian position, it was determined that all other attacks should be considered subsidiary to that which was to be directed against it. General Bosquet had command of all the French troops employed on the right of the English attack. MacMahon's division was to assault the Malakoff itself, having De Wimpffen's brigade with Camou's division in reserve, and with it two battalions of Zouaves of the Guard. On MacMahon's right La Motterouge's division, composed of the brigades of Bourbaki and Picard, was to attack the curtain. It was supported by four regiments, two of grenadiers and two of Voltigeurs of the Guard. Still farther north was Dulac's division, supported by Marolle's brigade of Camou's division and one battalion of Chasseurs of the Guard. These were to attack the Little Redan. Pélissier himself took up his position in the Mamelon, and to avoid giving warning to the enemy by any system of a general signal, the watches of the staff and the generals were carefully compared in order that the assault might be begun at twelve o'clock. This hour was chosen by Pélissier in consequence of his having ascertained that the troops on duty in the Russian trenches were relieved at that hour, and owing to the works being cramped from the number of traverses and blindages erected to cover their garrisons from fire, it had become the habit for the old guard of the works to march out before the relief marched in, and it was thus anticipated that at twelve o'clock the works would be nearly empty. This surmise proved to be accurate. The French had taken great trouble to screen the concentration of their troops from the sight of the enemy. Each division had a separate access to the advanced trenches in which the storming parties were to assemble. In places where the parapets, having sunk, might have disclosed to the view of the enemy the troops moving into position, they had been carefully raised. Cuts had been made through parapets to admit of the supports moving forward in bodies, and to allow field-artillery batteries, which were stationed at the Victoria redoubt and the old Lancaster battery, to pass through to the front. These apertures had been filled up with gabions, and carefully concealed, so that their position remained unknown to the enemy. General Herbillon, still encamped on the Tchernaya, was directed to cause his force (less Camou's division called up to support La Motterouge, and Dulac) to stand to arms at twelve o'clock, and his command was reenforced by a brigade of cuirassiers under General De Forton. The morning was dull and gloomy, with a cold wind which drove clouds of dust into the air. A little before twelve o'clock all the French storming parties were crouching ready for the order. Bosquet himself was in the sixth parallel; MacMahon, surrounded by his staff, was standing in the front trench with his watch in his hand. No one spoke in this group, in which the calm faces showed no sign of the excitement visible in the zouaves on either side of them, who, though silent, were trembling with impatience. Close at hand there was a corporal holding a little tricolor. Two minutes before twelve o'clock the word was passed in an undertone, "Ready," and as the hands indicated it was twelve o'clock, on a command from MacMahon a shout arose of "_Vive l'Empereur_!" bugles and drums sounded the charge, and the zouaves dashed straight at the Malakoff. MacMahon allowed two sections to pass him, and then, followed by his staff, climbed over the parapet, following the advanced guard. It placed one ladder, by which the General descended into the ditch, and was, it is said, the first up the escarp of the work. A friend of mine described to me how he watched the tricolor on the parapet being carried slowly along, thus indicating exactly how our allies in the body of the work were gaining ground. The zouaves who crossed the ditch on the proper left of the Malakoff had some difficulty in climbing up, from the height and steepness of the escarp. MacMahon's leading brigade crossed the short intervening space without a shot being fired. The enemy's working parties and gunners who were repairing damages fought bravely with picks, shovels, and hand-spikes, but were eventually driven back. The very few Russians in the salient were completely surprised, so much so that some of the superior officers were found at dinner in an underground chamber of the Malakoff, and the French without difficulty obtained absolute possession of the south end of the work. Although the enclosure covered an area of about four hundred yards by one hundred fifty, there was but very little open space within it, for behind the remnants of the stone tower were rows of traverses stretching from side to side of the work. Behind these the Russians took post as they came up from their bombproof shelters. Every separate parapet was fought for, hand to hand, and it was not till Vinoy's brigade, which, entering by the Gervais battery, got behind the traverses, turning out the regiment Grand Duke Michel, that the enemy was finally driven from this part of the work. The leading brigades of Motterouge's and Dulac's divisions, headed by their chiefs, seized the curtain and the Little Redan, the latter falling first, as St. Pol's brigade was nearer to it than Bourbaki's brigade was to the curtain. Once inside these works from which the Russians were easily driven, the French pressed on to the intrenchment then being built across the rear. General PÉLISSIER now gave General Simpson the signal to attack the Redan. At the same time the French attacked the Malakoff, and there the fate of Sebastopol was really decided. The possession of this fort was strongly contested, the Russians bringing up field-batteries; the French were also fired on heavily by three steamers, which, circling round, fired broadsides into them, and batteries sent shells from the north side of the harbor into the French support. Eventually after a prolonged struggle, in which the French captured four field-guns, St. Pol's brigade was beaten back, losing its brigadier, and with him fell the chief staff officer of the division and two colonels. The Russians followed up closely, and Bisson's brigade, which for want of space in the trenches had been stationed in the Careenage Ravine, was too far behind to afford effective aid. Bourbaki's right being thus uncovered, he also was driven back, although supported by Motterouge's other brigade. After Bourbaki and St. Pol had been repulsed, the Voltigeurs and Grenadiers of the Guard and Marolle's brigade were sent against the curtain and Redan respectively. These they carried, but were once more expelled from the Little Redan, Marolle and De Pontevès falling dead at the head of their brigades, and Mellinet, Bisson, and Bourbaki being wounded. The French still held the curtain, and Bosquet now ordered up the two field-batteries then standing behind the Victoria redoubt. They descended the ridge at the trot, unlimbered in front of the sixth parallel, and, coming into action, fired with great effect on the Russian infantry, which offered a broad target. Yet the batteries suffered terribly; the commanding officer (Souty) was killed, and out of the one hundred fifty men he brought down, only fifty-five returned when the guns were dragged back by hand because they lost all their horses except nineteen. Bosquet, surrounded by several Russian officers, who were prisoners, and their guards, was interrogating the captives when a shell burst over them, killing or wounding both them and the guard--the General only escaping. Later, when leaning on the parapet watching the progress of the fight, he was struck in the face by a fragment of a shell. He had just strength to send word to General Dulac to take his place, when he fainted. The struggle in and around the Malakoff was continued till three o'clock, when Gortschakoff withdrew his troops from the work which they had defended with such marvellous endurance for eleven months. The prize was now won, but at heavy cost. MacMahon's division, which assaulted with forty-five hundred bayonets and two hundred officers, lost in killed and wounded just half its strength. Soon after the Russians had been driven from the salient of the Malakoff, the French troops occupying it were fired on from the lower part of the old masonry tower, which was loopholed, and inside which five officers and sixty Russian soldiers had taken refuge. It was impossible to dislodge them, as the only entrance was strongly blocked on the inside. After a time some gabions were collected, and having been placed in position close to the loopholes, were lighted, but before the defenders could be smoked out, a mortar fired against the door blew it away, and the Russians surrendered. The gabions burning fiercely, the officers became alarmed lest the fire should be communicated to some of the surrounding magazines, and an attempt was made to extinguish the blazing fragments. As this was difficult, sappers were set to work to dig a trench and throw the excavated earth on the fire. While the men were digging, four wires, communicating with mines, were found and cut. While the Russian officers were surrendering, a desperate struggle was carried on at the far end of the Malakoff enclosure, the Russians coming over the parapets in three heavy columns. Khrouleff, the "fighting general," being wounded, had been replaced by General Martinau. The combatants fought hand to hand till, Martinau, losing an arm, and his men being out of ammunition, Gortschakoff ordered them to give up the struggle and fall back. Between three and four o'clock a magazine blew up near the point where the curtain joined the Malakoff, and the division at once ran back to the French advanced trenches. This occurred at a moment when General La Motterouge was wounded, but his men were rallied and got back into position ere the smoke and dust of the explosion cleared away. The flag of the Ninety-first Regiment was buried so deep that it was not found till next day, when it was recovered still grasped tightly in the hands of the lifeless officer who was carrying it when the explosion took place. When the Russians withdrew, General MacMahon, contemplating the possibility of further explosions from undiscovered mines, in order to minimize possible loss of life, sent back the brigade under Colonel Decaen, whom he ordered to hold himself in readiness, and, if Vinoy's brigade should be blown into the air, to come forward immediately and replace it. Then, turning to General Vinoy, MacMahon observed, "It is possible, General, that your brigade will be blown up, but Decaen will replace you immediately, so we shall still hold our position." MacMahon himself remained in the Malakoff with Vinoy's brigade. During the afternoon it was reported to General Pélissier that large numbers of Russian troops were crossing by the floating bridge to the north side of the harbor, but the allies did not yet feel confident that the end had quite come. About midnight one of the maritime forts was blown up, and explosions continued at intervals throughout the night, fires bursting out wherever any inflammable substance remained. At 3 A.M. on the 9th Corporal Ross, Royal Engineers, who was employed in the advanced sap, being struck by the unusual silence within the Redan, crept across the ditch, and, climbing over the parapet, found that the enemy had evacuated the work. At daylight all the Russian fleet except the Vladimir had disappeared under water, and the last of this heroic garrison was seen forming up on the north side of the floating bridge, which was then cut, leaving on the southern side two hundred or three hundred men, who had remained behind, setting fire to the houses. This was the last of the active operations. Gortschakoff withdrew his troops, and, placing the cavalry on the Belbeck, extended the infantry along the Mackenzie Farm heights position, which he proceeded to fortify. The allies were now in possession of the bloodstained ruins of Sebastopol, and the last of the Black Sea fleet was at the bottom of the harbor. Perhaps it was well that peace ensued. Although we might have dislodged the Russians from their position on the heights, it would have been difficult to obtain any further material advantage in the Crimea. (1857) THE INDIAN MUTINY, J. Talboys Wheeler From the time when Warren Hastings, the first English Governor-General of India, was sent to rule there (1774), the British power in that country grew steadily, and many annexations were made to the territory under its control. There were frequent wars with the French, England's rivals in India, and with the natives in different Provinces that one after another were absorbed into the British possessions. The first serious menace against this growing power appeared in a native movement, the culmination of which is known as the Indian or Sepoy Mutiny. The causes of this rising are traced to distrust and hatred of the British rulers--feelings that caused a ferment among the Hindus and Mahometans of India, who suspected a design for suppressing their religions. The natives also became alarmed at the introduction of Western ideas and improvements--new methods of education, the steam-engine, the telegraph, etc.--portending to the Indian peoples the substitution of a foreign civilization for their own. The truth is that in attempting to abolish suttee and other ancient native customs, and to introduce more enlightened practices, the British Government was acting in the interest of general humanity. The immediate provocation of the great mutiny among the sepoys or native troops in the British East-Indian service is well shown, and the entire story of the revolt is equally well told, by Mr. Wheeler. This author, while a secretary to the Government of India in the latter part of the nineteenth century, enjoyed peculiar advantages for study and research. These advantages he turned to account by writing an authoritative and interesting history of the land of his official residence. Early in the year 1857, it is said, there were rumors of a coming danger to British rule in India. In some parts of the country _chupatties_, or cakes, were circulated in a mysterious manner from village to village. [Footnote: The form of the cake conveyed information that an insurrection was in preparation--an old custom--understood by the natives.--ED.] Prophecies were also rife that in 1857 the East India Company's _raj_ [rule] would come to an end. Lord Canning has been blamed for not taking alarm at these proceedings; but something of the kind always had been going on in India. Cakes of cocoanuts are given away in solemn fashion; and as the villagers were afraid to keep them or eat them, the circulation went on to the end of the chapter. Then, again, holy men and prophets have always been common in India. They foretell pestilence and famine: the downfall of British rule, or the destruction of the whole world. They are often supposed to be endowed with supernatural powers and to be impervious to bullets; but these phenomena invariably disappear whenever they come in contact with Europeans, especially as all such characters are liable to be treated as vagrants without visible means of subsistence. One dangerous story, however, got abroad in the early part of 1857, which ought to have been stopped at once, and for which the military authorities were wholly and solely to blame. The Enfield rifle was being introduced; it required new cartridges, which in England were greased with the fat of beef or pork. The military authorities in India, with strange indifference to the prejudices of sepoys, ordered the cartridges to be prepared at Calcutta in like manner; forgetting that the fat of pigs was hateful to the Mahometans, while the fat of cows was still more horrible in the eyes of the Hindus. The excitement began at Barrackpur, sixteen miles from Calcutta. At this station there were four regiments of sepoys, and no Europeans except the regimental officers. One day a low-caste native, known as a lascar, asked a Brahmin sepoy for a drink of water from his brass pot. The Brahmin refused, as it would defile his pot. The lascar retorted that the Brahmin was already defiled by biting cartridges which had been greased with cow's fat. This vindictive taunt was based on truth. Lascars had been employed at Calcutta in preparing the new cartridges, and the man was possibly one of them. The taunt created a wild panic at Barrackpur. Strange to say, however, none of the new cartridges had been issued to the sepoys; and had this been promptly explained to the men, and the sepoys left to grease their own cartridges, the alarm might have died out. But the explanation was delayed until the whole of the Bengal army was smitten with the groundless fear; and then, when it was too late, the authorities protested too much, and the terror-stricken sepoys refused to believe them. The sepoys had proved themselves brave under fire, and loyal to their salt in sharp extremities; but they are the most credulous and excitable soldiery in the world. They regarded steam and electricity as so much magic; and they fully believed that the British Government was binding India with chains, when it was only laying down railway lines and telegraph wires. The Enfield rifle was a new mystery; and the busy brains of the sepoys were soon at work to divine the motive of the English in greasing cartridges with cow's fat. They had always taken to themselves the sole credit of having conquered India for the company; and they now imagined that the English wanted them to conquer Persia and China. Accordingly, they suspected that Lord Canning was going to make them as strong as Europeans by destroying caste, forcing them to become Christians, and making them eat beef and drink beer. The story of the greased cartridges, with all its absurd embellishments, ran up the Ganges and Jumna to Benares, Allahabad, Agra, Delhi, and the great cantonment at Meerut; while another current of lies ran back again from Meerut to Barrackpur. It was noised abroad that the bones of cows and pigs had been ground into powder, and thrown into wells and mingled with flour and butter, in order to destroy the caste of the masses and convert them to Christianity. For a brief interval it was hoped that the disaffection was suppressed. Excitement manifested itself in various ways at different stations throughout the length of Hindustan and the Punjab--at Benares, Lucknow, Agra, Ambala, and Sealkote. In some stations there were incendiary fires; in others the sepoys were wanting in their usual respect to their European officers. But it was believed that the storm was spending itself, and that the dark clouds were passing away. Suddenly on May 3d there was an explosion at Lucknow. A regiment of Oudh Irregular Infantry, previously in the service of the Mogul, broke out in mutiny and began to threaten their European officers. Sir Henry Lawrence, the new Chief Commissioner, had a European regiment at his disposal, namely the Thirty-second Foot. That same evening he ordered out the regiment, and a battery of eight guns manned by Europeans, together with four sepoy regiments, three of infantry and one of cavalry. With this force he proceeded to the lines of the mutineers, about seven miles off. The Oudh Irregulars were taken by surprise; they saw infantry and cavalry on either side, and the European guns in front. They were ordered to lay down their arms, and they obeyed. At this moment the artillery lighted their port fires. The mutineers were seized with a panic, and rushed away in the darkness; but the leaders and most of their followers were pursued and arrested by the native infantry and cavalry, and confined pending trial. Subsequently it transpired that the native regiments sympathized with the mutineers, and would have shown it but for their dread of Sir Henry Lawrence and the Europeans. The energetic action of Lawrence sufficed to maintain order for another month in Oudh. Meanwhile the Thirty-fourth Native Infantry was disbanded at Barrackpur, and again it was hoped that the disaffection was stayed. The demon of mutiny was only scotched. Within a week of the outbreak at Lucknow, the great military station of Meerut was in a blaze. Meerut was only forty miles from Delhi, and the largest cantonment in India. There were three regiments of sepoys, two of infantry and one of cavalry; but there were enough Europeans to scatter four times the number; namely, a battalion of the Sixtieth Rifles, a regiment of Dragoon Guards known as the "Carabineers," two troops of horse-artillery, and a light field-battery. In spite of the presence of Europeans there were more indications of excitement at Meerut than at any other station in the northwest. At Meerut the story of the greased cartridges had been capped by the story of the bonedust; and there were the same kind of incendiary fires, the same lack of respect toward European officers, and the same whispered resolve not to touch the cartridges, as at Barrackpur. The station was commanded by General Hewitt, whose advancing years unfitted him to cope with the storm which was bursting upon Hindustan. The regiment of sepoy cavalry at Meerut was strongly suspected of disaffection; accordingly it was resolved to put the men to the test. On May 6th it was paraded in the presence of the European force, and cartridges were served out; not the greased abominations from Calcutta, but the old ones which had been used times innumerable by the sepoys and their fathers. But the men were terrified and obstinate, and eighty-five stood out and refused to take the cartridges. The offenders were at once arrested, and tried by a court-martial of native officers; they were found guilty, and sentenced to various periods of imprisonment, but recommended for mercy. General Hewitt saw no grounds for mercy, excepting in the case of eleven young troopers; and on Saturday, May 9th, the sentences were carried out. The men were brought on parade, stripped of their uniforms, and loaded with irons. They implored the General for mercy, and, finding it hopeless, began to reproach their comrades; but no one dared to strike a blow in the presence of loaded cannon and rifles. At last the prisoners were carried off and placed in a jail, not under European soldiers, but a native guard. The military authorities at Meerut seem to have been under a spell. The next day was Sunday, May 10th, and the hot sun rose with its usual glare in the Indian sky. The European barracks were at a considerable distance from the native lines, and the intervening space was covered with shops and houses surrounded by trees and gardens. Consequently the Europeans in the barracks knew nothing of what was going on in the native quarter. Meanwhile there were commotions in the sepoy lines and neighboring bazaars. The sepoys were taunted by the loose women of the place with permitting their comrades to be imprisoned and fettered. At the same time they were smitten with a mad fear that the European soldiers were to be let loose upon them. The Europeans at Meerut saw and heard nothing. Nothing was noted on that Sunday morning except the absence of native servants from many of the houses, and that was supposed to be accidental. Morning service was followed by the midday heats, and at five o'clock in the afternoon the Europeans were again preparing for church. Suddenly there was an alarm of fire, followed by a volley of musketry, discordant yells, the clattering of cavalry, and the bugle sounding an alarm. The sepoys had worked themselves up to a frenzy of excitement; the prisoners were released with a host of jailbirds; the native infantry joined the native cavalry, and the colonel of one of the regiments was shot by the sepoys of the other. Inspired by a wild fear and fury, the sepoys ran about murdering or wounding every European they met, and setting houses on fire, amid deafening shouts and uproar. Meanwhile there were fatal delays in turning out the Europeans. The Rifles were paraded for church, and time was lost in getting arms and serving out ball cartridges. The Carabineers were absurdly put through a roll-call, and then lost their way among the shops and gardens. Meanwhile European officers were being butchered by the infuriated sepoys. Men and women were fired at or sabred while hurrying back in a panic from church. Flaming houses and crashing timbers were filling all hearts with terror, and the shades of evening were falling upon the general havoc and turmoil, when the Europeans reached the native lines and found that the sepoys had gone, no one knew whither. The truth was soon told. The mutiny had become a revolt; the sepoys were on the way to Delhi to proclaim the old Mogul as sovereign of Hindustan; and there was no Gillespie to gallop after them and crush the revolt at its outset, as had been done at Vellore half a century before. One thing, however, was done. There were no European regiments at Delhi; nothing but three regiments of sepoy infantry and a battery of native artillery. The station was commanded by Brigadier Graves; and there were no Europeans under his orders excepting the officers and sergeants attached to the three native corps. Accordingly telegrams were sent to Brigadier Graves to tell him that the mutineers were on their way to Delhi. Monday at Delhi was worse than the Sunday at Meerut. The British cantonment was situated on a rising ground about two miles from the city, which was known as the "Ridge." The great magazine, containing immense stores of ammunition, was situated in the heart of the city. One of the three sepoy regiments was on duty in the city; the other two remained in the cantonment on the Ridge. The approach to Delhi from Meerut was defended by the little river Hindun, which was spanned by a small bridge. It was proposed to procure two cannon from the magazine and place them on the bridge; but before this could be done the rebel cavalry from Meerut were seen crossing the river, and were subsequently followed by the rebel infantry. The magazine remained in charge of Lieutenant Willoughby of the Bengal Artillery. He was associated with two other officers and six conductors and sergeants; the rest of the establishment was composed entirely of natives. Brigadier Graves did his best to protect the city and cantonment until the arrival of the expected Europeans from Meerut. Indeed, throughout the morning and greater part of the afternoon everyone in Delhi was expecting the arrival of the Europeans. Brigadier Graves ordered all the non-military residents, including women and children, to repair to Flagstaff Tower--a round building of solid brickwork at some distance from the city. Late detachments of sepoys were sent from the Ridge to the Cashmere gate, under the command of their European officers, to help the sepoys on duty to maintain order in the city. Presently the rebel troops from Meerut came up, accompanied by the insurgent rabble of Delhi. The English officers prepared to charge them, and gave the order to fire, but some of the sepoys refused to obey or only fired into the air. The English officers held on, expecting the European soldiers from Meerut. The sepoys hesitated to join the rebels, out of dread of the coming Europeans. At last the Delhi sepoys threw in their lot with the rebels and shot down their own officers. The revolt spread throughout the whole city; and the suspense of the English on the Ridge and at Flagstaff Tower began to give way to the agony of despair. Suddenly, at four o'clock in the afternoon, a column of white smoke arose from the city, and an explosion was heard far and wide. Willoughby and his eight associates had held out to the last, waiting and hoping for the coming of the Europeans. They had closed and barricaded the gates of the magazine; and they had posted six-pounders at the gates, loaded with double charges of grape, and laid a train to the powder-magazine. Messengers came in the name of Bahadur Shah to demand the surrender of the magazine, but no answer was returned. The enemy approached and raised ladders against the walls; while the native establishment escaped over some sheds and joined the rebels. At this crisis the guns opened fire. Round after round of grape made fearful havoc on the mass of humanity that was heaving and surging round the gates. At last the ammunition was exhausted. No one could leave the guns to bring up more shot. The mutineers were pouring in on all sides. Lieutenant Willoughby gave the signal. Conductor Scully fired the train; and with one tremendous upheaval the magazine was blown into the air, together with fifteen hundred rebels. Not one of the gallant nine had expected to escape. Willoughby and three others got away, scorched, maimed, bruised, and nearly insensible; but Scully and his comrades were never seen again. Willoughby died of his injuries six weeks afterward, while India and Europe were ringing with his name. Still more terrible and treacherous were the tragedies enacted at Cawnpore, a city situated on the Ganges about fifty-five miles to the southwest of Lucknow. Cawnpore had been in the possession of the English ever since the beginning of the century, and for many years was one of the most important military stations in India; but the extension of the British Empire over the Punjab had diminished the importance of Cawnpore; and the last European regiment quartered there had been removed to the northwest at the close of the previous year. In May, 1857, there were four native regiments at Cawnpore, numbering thirty-five hundred sepoys. There were no Europeans whatever, excepting the regimental officers and sixty-one artillerymen. To these were added small detachments of European soldiers, which had been sent in the hour of peril from Lucknow and Benares during the month of May. The station of Cawnpore was commanded by Sir Hugh Wheeler, a distinguished general in the company's service, who was verging on his seventieth year. He had spent fifty-four years in India, and had served only with native troops. He must have known the sepoys better than any other European in India. He had led them against their own countrymen under Lord Lake; against foreigners during the Afghan War, and against Sikhs during both campaigns in the Punjab. The news of the revolt at Meerut threw the sepoys into a ferment at every military station in Hindustan. Rumors of mutiny or coming mutiny formed almost the only topic of conversation; yet in nearly every sepoy regiment the European officers put faith in their men, and fondly believed that, though the rest of the army might revolt, yet their own corps would prove faithful. Such was eminently the case at Cawnpore, yet General Wheeler seems to have known better. While the European officers continued to sleep every night in the sepoy lines, the veteran made his preparations for meeting the coming storm. European combatants were very few at Cawnpore, but European _impedimenta_ were very heavy. Besides the wives and families of the regimental officers of the sepoy regiments, there was a large European mercantile community. Moreover, while the Thirty-second Foot was quartered at Lucknow, the wives, families, and invalids of the regiment were living at Cawnpore. It was thus necessary to secure a place of refuge for this miscellaneous multitude of Europeans in the event of a rising of the sepoys. Accordingly General Wheeler pitched upon some old barracks which had once belonged to a European regiment; and he ordered earthworks to be thrown up, and supplies of all kinds to be stored, in order to stand a siege. Unfortunately there was fatal neglect somewhere; for when the crisis came the defences were found to be worthless, while the supplies were insufficient for the besieged. All this while the adopted son of the former _peshwa_ [Footnote: Formerly a chief of the Mahrattas.--Ed.] was living at Bithoor, about six miles from Cawnpore. His real name was Dandhu Panth, but he is better known as Nana Sahib. The British Government had refused to award him the absurd life pension of eighty thousand pounds sterling, which had been granted to his nominal father; but he had inherited at least half a million from the ex-peshwa; and he was allowed to keep six guns, to entertain as many followers as he pleased, and to live in half royal state in a castellated palace at Bithoor. He continued to nurse his grievance with all the pertinacity of a Mahratta; but at the same time he professed a great love for European society, and was profuse in his hospitalities to English officers. He was popularly known as the Raja of Bithoor. When the news arrived of the revolt at Meerut on May 10th, Nana was loud in his professions of attachment to the English. He engaged to organize fifteen hundred fighting men to act against the sepoys in the event of an outbreak. On May 21st there was an alarm. European women and families, with all European non-combatants, were removed into the barracks, and General Wheeler actually accepted from Nana the help of two hundred Mahrattas and two guns to guard the treasury. The alarm, however, soon blew over, and Nana took up his abode at the civil station of Cawnpore, as a proof of the sincerity of his professions. At last, on the night of June 4th, the sepoy regiments at Cawnpore broke out in mutiny. They were driven to action by the same mad terror which had been manifested elsewhere. They cared nothing for the Mogul, nothing for the pageant King at Delhi; but they had been panic-stricken by extravagant stories of coming destruction. It was whispered among them that the parade-ground was undermined with powder, and that Hindus and Mahometans were to be assembled on a given day and blown into the air. Intoxicated with fear and _bhang_, they rushed out in the darkness, yelling, shooting, and burning according to their wont; and when their excitement was somewhat spent, they marched off toward Delhi. Sir Hugh Wheeler could do nothing. He might have retreated with the whole body of Europeans from Cawnpore to Allahabad; but there had been a mutiny at Allahabad, and, moreover, he had no means of transport. Subsequently he heard that the mutineers had reached the first stage on the road to Delhi, and consequently he saw no ground for alarm. Meanwhile the brain of Nana Sahib had been turned by wild dreams of vengeance and sovereignty. He thought not only to wreak his malice upon the English, but to restore the extinct Mahratta Empire, and reign over Hindustan as the representative of the forgotten peshwas. The stampede of the sepoys to Delhi was fatal to his mad ambition. He overtook the mutineers, dazzled them with fables of the treasures in Wheeler's intrenchment, and brought them back to Cawnpore to carry out his vindictive and visionary schemes. At early morning on Saturday, June 6th, General Wheeler received from Nana a letter announcing that he was about to attack the intrenchment. The veteran was taken by surprise, but at once ordered all the European officers to join the party in the barracks and prepare for the defence. But the mutineers were in no hurry for the advance. They preferred booty to battle, and turned aside to plunder the cantonment and city, murdering every Christian that came in their way, not sparing the houses of their own countrymen. They appropriated all the cannon and ammunition in the magazine by way of preparation for the siege; but some were wise enough to desert the rebel army and steal to their homes with their ill-gotten spoil. About noon the main body of the mutineers, swelled by the numerous retainers of Nana, got their guns into position, and opened fire on the intrenchment. For nineteen days--from June 6th to the 25th--the garrison struggled manfully against a raking fire and fearful odds, amid scenes of suffering and bloodshed that cannot be recalled without a shudder. It was the height of the hot weather in Hindustan. A blazing sun was burning over the heads of the besieged; and to add to their misery, one of the barracks containing the sick and wounded was destroyed by fire. The besiegers, however, in spite of their overwhelming numbers, were utterly unable to carry the intrenchment by storm, but continued to pour in a raking fire. Meanwhile the garrison was starving from want of provisions, and hampered by a multitude of helpless women and children. Indeed, but for the latter contingency, the gallant band would have rushed out of the intrenchment and cut a way through the mob of sepoys or perished in the attempt. As it was, they could only fight on, waiting for reinforcements that never came, until fever, sunstroke, hunger, madness, or the enemy's fire delivered them from their suffering and despair. On June 25th a woman brought a slip of writing from Nana, promising to give a safe passage to Allahabad to all who were willing to lay down their arms. Had there been no women or children, the garrison would never have dreamed of surrender. The massacre at Patna a century before had taught a lesson to Englishmen which ought never to have been forgotten. As it was, there were some who wished to fight on till the bitter end. But the majority saw that there was no hope for the women or the children, the sick or the wounded, except by accepting the proffered terms. Accordingly the pride of Englishmen gave way, and an armistice was proclaimed. Next morning the terms were negotiated. The English garrison were to surrender their position, their guns, and their treasure, but to march out with their arms, and with sixty rounds of ammunition in the pouch of every man. Nana Sahib on his part was to afford a safe-conduct to the river-bank, about a mile off; to provide carriage for the conveyance of the women and children, the sick and the wounded; and to furnish boats for carrying the whole party, numbering some four hundred fifty individuals, down the river Ganges to Allahabad. Nana accepted the terms, but demanded the evacuation of the intrenchment that very night. General Wheeler protested against this proviso. Nana began to bully and to threaten that he would open fire. He was told that he might carry the intrenchment if he could, but that the English had enough powder left to blow both armies into the air. Accordingly Nana agreed to wait until the morrow. At early morning on June 27th the garrison began to move from the intrenchment to the place of embarkation. The men marched on foot; the women and children were carried on elephants and in bullock-carts, while the wounded were mostly conveyed in palanquins. Forty boats with thatched roofs, known as _budgerows_, were moored in shallow water at a little distance from the bank; and the crowd of fugitives were forced to wade through the river to the boats. By nine o'clock the whole four hundred fifty were huddled on board, and the boats prepared to leave Cawnpore. Suddenly a bugle was sounded, and a murderous fire of grape-shot and musketry was opened upon the wretched passengers from both sides of the river. At the same time the thatching of many of the budgerows was found to be on fire, and the flames began to spread from boat to boat. Numbers were murdered in the river, but at last the firing ceased. A few escaped down the river, but only four men survived to tell the story of the massacre. A mass of fugitives were dragged ashore; the women and children, to the number of a hundred twenty-five, were carried off and lodged in a house near the headquarters of Nana. The men were ordered to immediate execution. One of them had preserved a prayer-book, and was permitted to read a few sentences of the liturgy to his doomed companions. Then the fatal order was given; the sepoys poured in a volley of musketry, and all was over. On July 1st Nana Sahib went off to his palace at Bithoor and was proclaimed peshwa. He took his seat upon the throne, and was installed with all the ceremonies of sovereignty, while the cannon roared out a salute in his honor. At night the whole place was illuminated, and the hours of darkness were wiled away with feasting and fireworks. But his triumph was short-lived. The Mahometans were plotting against him at Cawnpore. The people were leaving the city to escape the coming storm, and were taking refuge in the villages. English reënforcements were at last coming up from Allahabad, while the greedy sepoys were clamoring for money and gold bangles. Accordingly Nana hastened back to Cawnpore and scattered wealth with a lavish hand; and sought to hide his fears by boastful proclamations, and to drown his anxieties in drink and debauchery. Within a few days more the number of helpless prisoners was increased to two hundred. There had been a mutiny at Fathigarh, higher up the river, and the fugitives had fled in boats to Cawnpore, a distance of eighty miles. They knew nothing of what had happened, and were all taken prisoners by the rebels, and brought on shore. The men were all butchered in the presence of Nana; the women and children, eighty in number, were sent to join the wretched sufferers in the house near Nana's headquarters. Meanwhile Colonel Neill, commanding the Madras Fusiliers, was pushing up from Calcutta. He was bent on the relief of Cawnpore and Lucknow, but was delayed on the way by the mutinies at Benares and Allahabad. In July he was joined at Allahabad by a column under General Havelock, who was destined within a few weeks to win a lasting name in history. General Havelock was a Queen's officer of forty years' standing; but he had seen more service in India than perhaps any other officer in Her Majesty's Army. He had fought in the first Burma War, the Kabul War, the Gwalior campaign of 1843, and the Punjab campaign of 1845-1846. He was a pale, thin, thoughtful man; small in stature, but burning with the aspirations of a Puritan hero. Religion was the ruling principle of his life, and military glory was his master passion. He had just returned to India after commanding a division in the Persian War. Abstemious to a fault, he was able, in spite of his advancing years, to bear up against the heat and rain of Hindustan during the deadliest season of the year. On July 7th General Havelock left Allahabad for Cawnpore. The force at his disposal did not exceed two thousand men, Europeans and Sikhs. He had heard of the massacre at Cawnpore on June 27th, and burned to avenge it. On July 12th he defeated a large force of mutineers and Mahrattas at Fathipur. On the 15th he inflicted two more defeats on the enemy. Havelock was now within twenty-two miles of Cawnpore, and he halted his men to rest for the night. But news arrived that the women and children were still alive at Cawnpore, and that Nana had taken the field with a large force to oppose his advance. Accordingly Havelock marched fourteen miles that same night, and on the following morning, within eight miles of Cawnpore, the troops bivouacked beneath some trees. On that same night, July 15th, the crowning atrocity was committed at Cawnpore. The rebels, who had been defeated by Havelock, returned to Nana with the tidings of their disaster. In revenge Nana ordered the slaughter of the two hundred women and children. The poor victims were literally hacked to death, or almost to death, with swords, bayonets, knives, and axús. Next morning the bleeding remains of dead and dying were dragged to a neighboring well and thrown in. At two o'clock in the afternoon after the massacre the force under Havelock was again upon the march for Cawnpore. The heat was fearful; many of the troops were struck down by the sun, and the cries for water were continuous. But for two miles the column toiled on, and then came in sight of the enemy. Havelock had only one thousand Europeans and three hundred Sikhs; he had no cavalry, and his artillery was inferior. The enemy numbered five thousand men, armed and trained by British officers, strongly intrenched, with two batteries of guns of heavy calibre. Havelock's artillery failed to silence the batteries, and he ordered the Europeans to charge with the bayonet. On they went in the face of a shower of grape, but the bayonet charge was as irresistible at Cawnpore as at Assaye. The enemy fought for a while like men in a death struggle. Nana Sahib was with them, but nothing is known of his exploits. At last they fled, and there was no cavalry to pursue them. As yet nothing was known of the butchery of the women and children. Havelock halted for the night, and next morning marched his force into the station at Cawnpore. The men beheld the scene of the massacre, and saw the bleeding remains in the well. But the murderers had vanished, no one knew whither. Havelock advanced to Bithoor, and destroyed the palace of the Mahratta. Subsequently he was joined by General Neill, with reinforcements from Allahabad; and on July 20th he set on for the relief of Lucknow, leaving Cawnpore in charge of General Neill. The defence of Lucknow against fifty-two thousand rebels was, next to the siege of Delhi, the greatest event in the mutiny. The whole Province of Oudh was in a blaze of insurrection. The _talukdars_ were exasperated at the hard measure dealt out to them before the appointment of Sir Henry Lawrence as Chief Commissioner. Disbanded sepoys, returning to their homes in Oudh, swelled the tide of disaffection. Bandits that had been suppressed under British administration returned to their old work of robbery and brigandage. All classes took advantage of the anarchy to murder the money-lenders. Meanwhile the country was bristling with the fortresses of the talukdars; and the cultivators, deprived of the protection of the English, naturally flocked for refuge to the strongholds of their old masters. The English, who had been lords of Hindustan ever since the beginning of the century, had been closely besieged in the residency at Lucknow ever since the final outbreak of May 30th. For nearly two months the garrison had held out with a dauntless intrepidity, while confidently waiting for reinforcements that seemed never to come. "Never surrender" had been from the first the passionate conviction of Sir Henry Lawrence; and the massacre at Cawnpore on June 27th impressed every soldier in the garrison with a like resolution. On July 2d the Muchi Bawen was abandoned, and the garrison and stores were removed to the residency. On July 4th Sir Henry Lawrence was killed by the bursting of a shell in a room where he lay wounded; and his dying counsel to those around him was, "Never surrender!" On July 20th the rebel force round Lucknow heard of the advance of General Havelock to Cawnpore, and attacked the residency in overwhelming force. They kept up a continual fire of musketry while pounding away with their heavy guns; but the garrison held their ground against shot and shell, and before the day was over the dense masses of assailants were forced to retire from the walls. Between July 20th and 25th General Havelock began to cross the Ganges and make his way into Oudh territory; but he was unable to relieve Lucknow. His small force was weakened by heat and fever and reduced by cholera and dysentery; while the enemy occupied strong positions on both flanks. In the middle of August he fell back upon Cawnpore. During the four months that followed the revolt at Delhi on May 11th, all political interest was centred at the ancient capital of the sovereigns of Hindustan. The public mind was occasionally distracted by the current of events at Cawnpore and Lucknow, as well as at other stations which need not be particularized; but so long as Delhi remained in the hands of the rebels the native princes were bewildered and alarmed; and its prompt recapture was deemed of vital importance to the prestige of the British Government and the reestablishment of British sovereignty in Hindustan. The Great Mogul had been little better than a mummy for more than half a century; and Bahadur Shah was a mere tool and puppet in the hands of rebel sepoys; nevertheless the British Government had to deal with the astounding fact that the rebels were fighting under his name and standard, just as Afghans and Mahrattas had done in the days of Ahmed Shah Durani and Mahadaji Sindhia. To make matters worse, the roads to Delhi were open from the south and east; and nearly every outbreak in Hindustan was followed by a stampede of mutineers to the old capital of the Moguls. Meanwhile, in the absence of railways, there were unfortunate delays in bringing up troops and guns to stamp out the fires of rebellion at the head centre. The highway from Calcutta to Delhi was blocked up by mutiny and insurrection; and every European soldier sent up from Calcutta was stopped for the relief of Benares, Allahabad, Cawnpore, or Lucknow. But the possession of the Punjab at this crisis proved to be the salvation of the empire. Sir John Lawrence, Chief Commissioner in the Punjab, was called upon for almost superhuman work; to maintain order in a conquered province; to suppress mutiny and disaffection among the very sepoy regiments from Bengal that were supposed to garrison the country; and to send reënforcements of troops and guns, and supplies of all descriptions, to the siege of Delhi. Fortunately the Sikhs had been only a few short years under British administration; they had not forgotten the miseries that prevailed under the native Government, and could appreciate the many blessings they enjoyed under British rule. They were stanch to the British Government, and eager to be led against the rebels. In some cases terrible punishment was meted out to mutinous Bengal sepoys within the Punjab, but the Imperial interests at stake were sufficient to justify every severity, although all must regret the painful necessity that called for such extreme measures. On June 8th, about a month after the revolt at Delhi, Sir Henry Barnard took the field at Alipur, about ten miles from the rebel capital. He defeated an advance division of the enemy, and then marched to the Ridge and reoccupied the old cantonment which had been abandoned on May 11th. So far it was clear that the rebels were unable to do anything in the open field, although they might fight bravely under cover. They numbered about thirty thousand strong; they had a very powerful artillery and ample stores of ammunition, while there was an abundance of provisions within the city throughout the siege. In the middle of August, Brigadier John Nicholson, one of the most distinguished officers of the time, came up from the Punjab with a brigade and siege-train. On September 4th a heavy train of artillery was brought in from Firozpur. The British force on the Ridge now exceeded eight thousand men. Hitherto the artillery had been too weak to attempt to breach the city walls; but now fifty-four heavy guns were brought into position and the siege began in earnest. From September 8th to 12th four batteries poured in a constant storm of shot and shell; number one was directed against the Cashmere bastion, number two against the right flank of the Cashmere bastion, number three against the Water bastion, and number four against the Cashmere and Water gates and bastions. On September 13th the breaches were declared to be practicable, and the following morning was fixed for the final assault upon the doomed city. At three o'clock in the morning of September 14th three assaulting columns were formed in the trenches, while a fourth was kept in reserve. The first column was led by Brigadier Nicholson; the second by Brigadier Jones; the third by Colonel Campbell; and the fourth, or reserve, by Brigadier Longfield. The powder-bags were laid at the Cashmere gate by Lieutenants Home and Salkeld. The explosion followed, and the third column rushed in, and pushed toward the Jumna Musjid. Meanwhile the first column under Nicholson escaladed the breaches near the Cashmere gate, and pushed along the ramparts toward the Kabul gate, carrying the several bastions in the way. Here it was met by the second column under Brigadier Jones, who had escaladed the breach at the Water bastion. The advancing columns were met by a ceaseless fire from terraced houses, mosques, and other buildings; and John Nicholson, the hero of the day, while attempting to storm a narrow street near the Kabul gate, was struck down by a shot and mortally wounded. Then followed six days of desperate warfare. No quarter was given to men with arms in their hands; but women and children were spared, and only a few of the peaceable inhabitants were sacrificed during the storm. On September 20th the gates of the old fortified palace of the Moguls were broken open, but the royal inmates had fled. No one was left but a few wounded sepoys and fugitive fanatics. The old King, Bahadur Shah, had gone off to the great mausoleum without the city, known as the tomb of Humayun. It was a vast quadrangle raised on terraces and enclosed with walls. It contained towers, buildings, and monumental marbles in memory of different members of the once distinguished family, as well as extensive gardens, surrounded with cloistered cells for the accommodation of pilgrims. On September 21st Captain Hodson rode to the tomb, arrested the King, and brought him back to Delhi with other members of the family, and lodged them in the palace. The next day he went again, with one hundred horsemen, and arrested two sons of the King in the midst of a crowd of armed retainers, and brought them away in a native carriage. Near the city the carriage was surrounded by a tumultuous crowd; and Hodson, who was afraid of a rescue, shot both princes with his pistol, and placed their bodies in a public place for all men to see. Thus fell the imperial city; captured by the army under Brigadier Wilson before the arrival of any of the reënforcements from England. The losses were heavy. From the beginning of the siege to the close, the British army at Delhi had nearly four thousand killed and wounded. The casualties on the side of the rebels were never estimated. Two bodies of sepoys broke away from the city and fled down the valleys of the Jumna and Ganges, followed by two flying columns under Brigadiers Greathed and Showers. But the great mutiny and revolt at Delhi had been stamped out, and the flag of England waved triumphantly over the capital of Hindustan. The capture of Delhi, in September, 1857, was the turning-point in the sepoy mutinies. The revolt was crushed beyond redemption; the rebels were deprived of their head centre; and the Mogul King was a prisoner at the mercy of the power whom he had defied. But there were still troubles in India. Lucknow was still beleaguered by a rebel army, and insurrections still ran riot in Oudh and Rohilkhand. In the middle of August General Havelock had fallen back on Cawnpore, after the failure of his first campaign for the relief of Lucknow. Five weeks afterward Havelock made a second attempt under better auspices. Sir Colin Campbell had arrived at Calcutta as Commander-in-Chief. Sir James Outram had come up to Allahabad. On September 16th, while the British troops were storming the streets of Delhi, Outram joined Havelock and Neill at Cawnpore with fourteen hundred men. As senior officer he might have assumed the command; but with generous chivalry the "Bayard of India" waived his rank in honor of Havelock. On September 20th General Havelock crossed the Ganges into Oudh at the head of twenty-five hundred men. The next day he defeated a rebel army and put it to flight, while four of the enemy's guns were captured by Outram at the head of a body of volunteer cavalry. On the 23d Havelock routed a still larger rebel force which was strongly posted at a garden in the suburbs of Lucknow, known as the "Alumbagh." He then halted to give his soldiers a day's rest. On the 25th he was cutting his way through the streets and lanes of the city of Lucknow--running the gauntlet of a deadly and unremitting fire from the houses en both sides of the streets, and also from guns which commanded them. On the evening of the same day he entered the British intrenchments; but in the moment of victory a chance shot carried off the gallant Neill. The defence of the British residency at Lucknow is a glorious episode in the national annals. The fortitude of the beleaguered garrison was the admiration of the world. The women nursed the wounded and performed every womanly duty with self-sacrificing heroism; and when the fight was over they received the well-merited thanks of Her Majesty Queen Victoria. During four long months the garrison had known nothing of what was going on in the outer world. They were aware of the advance and retreat of Havelock, and that was all. At last, on September 23d, they heard the booming of the guns at the Alumbagh. On the morning of the 25th they could see something of the growing excitement in the city; the people abandoning their houses and flying across the river. Still the guns of the rebels kept up a heavy cannonade upon the residency, and volleys of musketry continued to pour upon the besieged from the loopholes of the besiegers. But soon the firing was heard from the city; the welcome sounds came nearer and nearer. The excitement of the garrison grew beyond control. Presently the relieving force was seen fighting its way toward the residency. Then the pent-up feelings of the garrison burst forth in deafening cheers; and wounded men in hospital crawled out to join in the chorus of welcome. Then followed personal greetings as officers and men came pouring in. Hands were frantically shaken on all sides. Rough-bearded soldiers took the children from their mothers' arms, kissed them with tears rolling down their cheeks, and thanked God that they had come in time to save them from the fate of the sufferers at Cawnpore. Thus after a siege of nearly four months Havelock succeeded in relieving Lucknow. But it was a reenforcement rather than a relief, and was confined to the British residency. The siege was not raised; and the city of Lucknow remained two months longer in the hands of the rebels. Sir James Outram assumed the command, but was compelled to keep on the defensive. Meanwhile reinforcements were arriving from England. In November Sir Colin Campbell reached Cawnpore at the head of a considerable army. He left General Windham with two thousand men to take charge of the intrenchment at Cawnpore, and then advanced against Lucknow with five thousand men and thirty guns. He carried several of the enemy's positions, cut his way to the residency, and at last brought away the beleaguered garrison, with all the women and children. But not even then could he disperse the rebels and reoccupy the city. Accordingly he left Outram at the head of four thousand men in the neighborhood of Lucknow, and then returned to Cawnpore. On November 24th, the day after leaving Lucknow, General Havelock was carried off by dysentery, and buried in the Alumbagh. His death spread a gloom over India, but by this time his name had become a household word wherever the English language was spoken. In the hour of surprise and panic, as successive stories of mutiny and rebellion reached England, and culminated in the revolt at Delhi and massacre at Cawnpore, the victories of Havelock revived the drooping spirits of the British nation, and stirred up all hearts to glorify the hero who had stemmed the tide of disaffection and disaster. The death of Havelock, following the story of the capture of Delhi, and told with the same breath that proclaimed the deliverance at Lucknow, was received in England with a universal sorrow that will never be forgotten so long as men are living who can recall the memory of the "Mutiny of Fifty-seven." The subsequent history of the sepoy revolt is little more than a detail of the military operations of British troops for the dispersion of the rebels and restoration of order and law. Sir Colin Campbell [Footnote: Died at Chatham, England, August 14, 1863.--ED.]--later made Baron Clyde of Clydesdale--undertook a general campaign against the rebels in Oudh and Rohilkhand, and restored order and law in those disaffected Provinces; while Sir James Outram drove the rebels out of Lucknow, and reëstablished British sovereignty in the capital of Oudh. (1859) BATTLES OF MAGENTA AND SOLFERINO, Pietro Orsi During the Crimean War (1853-1856) Austria remained neutral, while the Italian Kingdom of Sardinia joined Great Britain, France, and Turkey against Russia. The power of Austria still kept despotic sway over the States of Italy, and it was the aim of Victor Emmanuel, King of Sardinia, to throw off this hinderance to Italian liberty and union. It was the opinion of Count Cavour, Victor Emmanuel's minister, that, by acting with the allies against Russia, Sardinia would increase her prestige with the European Powers, and thereby promote the movement for independence. The success of the allies in the Crimean War confirmed the prescience of Cavour. Napoleon III wished to secure for France supremacy in southern Europe. In 1855 he inquired of the Sardinian minister, "What can I do for Italy?" The Crimean War ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1856. At the congress which concluded that peace Cavour presented the case of Italy against Austria. Not long after this it became evident that Napoleon was prepared to espouse the Italian cause. In 1858 it was agreed that he should do this. Sardinia now prepared for war. Austria sent an ultimatum demanding a reduction of the Sardinian army to a peace footing, This demand was refused. In January, 1859, Austria mobilized fresh troops on the Italian frontier, and Cavour requested Garibaldi to organize a volunteer corps to be called _Cacciatori delle Alpi_ ("Hunters of the Alps"). Still Cavour disclaimed a warlike policy, denying that the hostile initiative was taken by Sardinia, although in this position he was opposed by some members of his own Parliament. Nevertheless Cavour declared: "I believe I am justified in proclaiming aloud, in the presence of Parliament, of the nation, and of Europe, that if there has been provocation it was offered by Austria." As shown by Orsi, the Italian historian, the great minister maintained this attitude as long as it was possible to hold back from the actual conflict. Cavour insisted that Austria must be the aggressive party, for in the treaty with Napoleon III it had been stipulated that France would come to the help of Sardinia only in case of the latter being attacked by Austria. Hence Cavour was obliged to seek every means of putting his country into the attitude of the provoked party. How many disappointments, uncertainties, and anxieties crowded those days, from February to the end of April, 1859! In order to understand the enormous difficulties overcome by Cavour it would be necessary to follow literally, day by day, the history of that period. In March he repaired to Paris to ascertain Napoleon's action: it was too evident, however, that French public opinion was unfavorable to war, and the Emperor was wavering. Russia and England suggested that the question should be solved by a congress, to which proposal Napoleon III acceded: Cavour now believed all was lost, since Sardinia could not refuse without putting herself in the wrong. Fortunately, the difficulty was solved by Austria boldly insisting that Sardinia should disarm before being represented at the congress, and on April 23d this demand was enforced by an ultimatum, to be answered within three days. Now ensued a genuine declaration of hostilities, and most joyfully did Victor Emmanuel make the following announcement to his troops: "Soldiers! Austria, who masses her armies on our frontiers and threatens to invade our country because liberty and order rule there; because concord and affection between sovereign and people--and not force--sway the State; because there the anguished cry of oppressed Italy is listened to--Austria dares to tell us, who are armed only in our own defence, to lay down those arms and put ourselves in her power. Such an outrageous suggestion surely merits a condign response, and I have indignantly refused her request. I announce this to you in the certainty that you will make the wrong done to your King and to your nation your own. Hence mine is a proclamation of war: arm yourselves therefore in readiness for it! "You will be confronted by an ancient enemy who is both valiant and disciplined, but against whom you need not fear to measure your strength, for you may remember with pride Goito, Pastrengo, Santa Lucia, Sommacampagna, and, above all, Custozza, where four brigades fought for three days against the enemy's five _corps d'armée_. I will be your leader. Your prowess in action has already been tested in the past, and when fighting under my magnanimous father I myself proudly recognized your valor. I am convinced that on the field of honor and glory you will know how to justify, as well as to augment, your military renown. "You will have as comrades those intrepid French troops--the conquerors in so many distinguished campaigns--with whom you fought side by side at Tchernaya, whom Napoleon III, always prompt to further the defence of a righteous cause and the victory of civilization, generously sends in great numbers to our aid. March then, confident of success, and wreathe with fresh laurels that standard which, rallying from all quarters the flower of Italian youth to its threefold colors, points out your task of accomplishing that righteous and sacred enterprise--the independence of Italy, wherein we find our war-cry." The Austrian army to the number of one hundred seventy thousand men--besides those remaining in the Lombardo-Venetian fortresses--was commanded by General Gyulai, the successor of Radetzky, who had died the year before, at the age of ninety-one. Gyulai meant to attack and rout the Sardinian army before it could join its French allies. On April 29th he crossed the Ticino; then spreading out his forces along the Sesia, he reconnoitred as far as Chivasso. These districts abound in cultivated rice-fields and are intersected by many canals: it was therefore easy, by flooding the ground, to hinder the march of the Austrian troops on Turin. Meanwhile, the Sardinian army, composed of sixty thousand men, awaited the arrival of the French forces on the right bank of the Po. On May 12th Napoleon III, already preceded into Italy by one hundred twenty thousand of his men, debarked at Genoa, and on the 14th was at Alessandria, where, near the mouth of the Tanaro, the allied armies met. The Austrian troops covered a long tract, from Novara to Vercelli, then extended down the line of the Sesia as far as the Po, and thence reached the mouth of the Tanaro. Gyulai, seeing the enemy concentrated on the right bank of the Po, believed that Napoleon. III intended crossing that river in the direction of Piacenza--as Napoleon I had crossed in 1796--and so massed his troops to the south. At this juncture a portion of his army encountered the French and Sardinians at Montebello, where the extreme right wing of the allies was posted. The Austrian General met with such a determined resistance that he imagined this must be the centre of the enemy, and felt convinced that he had guessed the latter's intention; he therefore caused his army to pursue its march southward. By this movement Vercelli was abandoned by the Austrians and it was immediately reoccupied by the Sardinians. Napoleon now prepared a bold flank movement, by leaving the Po for the Ticino, and to mask this manoeuvre ordered the Sardinians to make an advance. Thus, while Victor Emmanuel, at the head of his men, flung himself from Vercelli on Palestro--meriting, by the skill of his military tactics, the acclamations of a regiment of zouaves whom he headed as corporal--the French, taking ad vantage of the Alessandria, Casale, and Novara Railway, made for the bridge of Buffalora over the Ticino. Only then did Gyulai perceive this clever stratagem which threw Lombardy open to the allies, and he was consequently obliged to cross the Ticino to block the enemy's way to Milan. On June 4th, at Magenta, nearly the whole of the Austrian army engaged the French forces; the battle, which was most desperate, lasted all day, and was remarkable for the prodigies of valor performed. The Austrians, driven back into Magenta itself, maintained, even in that village, such a stout resistance that they had to be dislodged by house-to-house fighting. On June 8th Victor Emmanuel and Napoleon III made their triumphal entry into Milan--now freed from the Austrian yoke. On the same day a French corps repulsed the Austrians at Melegnano, while Garibaldi entered Bergamo from the other side. Garibaldi, who had been the last to leave Lombardy in 1848, was now the first to set foot in its territory in 1859. Since May 23d he had led his own Cacciatori to the Lombard shores of Lake Maggiore, had defeated the Austrians at Varese, entered Como, routed the enemy afresh at San Fermo, and was now proceeding to Bergamo and Brescia, with the intention of reaching the Trentine Alps, to cut off the enemy's retreat. After the Battle of Magenta, Gyulai had been dismissed from the command, and his post was assumed by the Emperor Francis Joseph himself, assisted by the aged Marshal Hess. On the night of June 23d the retreating Austrians crossed the Mincio, but a few hours after retraced their steps and took up their position on the hills to the south of the Lake of Garda. On the morning of the 24th the Franco-Sardinian army began their march at dawn, and shortly afterward, to their great amazement, encountered the Austrians, who they imagined had crossed the Mincio the night before. The struggle was terrible; in fact, the line covered by the fighting extended a distance of five leagues. A series of hills, dominated by Solferino and San Martino, formed the positions the Franco-Sardinian army had to assail. The French contested Solferino with the Austrians, and, after a hotly disputed battle of more than twelve hours, succeeded in occupying it. The Sardinians, led by Victor Emmanuel, made a violent assault on San Martino; four times in succession did they take it, only to lose it again, but the fifth time they made themselves masters of it for good and all. By six o'clock in the evening the strength of the Austrian army was everywhere broken. Just then a frightful hurricane, heralded by clouds of dust and accompanied by torrents of rain, burst over the two armies and thus favored the flight of the Austrian battalions. Napoleon III now fixed his headquarters at Cavriana, in the same house that Francis Joseph had tenanted during the action. On that vast battlefield the combatants had numbered three hundred thousand men--one hundred sixty thousand Austrians and one hundred forty thousand French and Sardinians--of all these, after that sanguinary struggle, twenty-five thousand were left dead or wounded. After a few days' rest the Franco-Sardinian army crossed the Mincio and besieged Peschiera. Now there seemed a chance of the Italians fulfilling the hope they had so long cherished, of expelling the foreigners. They confidently awaited news of fresh feats of arms in the Quadrilateral and of the success of the fleet sent by France and Sardinia into Adriatic waters, but instead came the most unexpected tidings imaginable. On July 8th Napoleon III had met Francis Joseph, and three days later the preliminaries of peace were signed at Villafranca. By this treaty Austria was to cede Lombardy to Napoleon, who was to relegate it to Sardinia; the Italian States were to be amalgamated into a confederation, under the Presidency of the Pope, but Venice, though forming part of this same confederation, was to remain under Austrian rule. Great indeed was the mortification of all Italy on hearing such terms of peace announced. Cavour, who had devoted all his marvellous talents to realizing the ideal of national redemption and had believed his ends so nearly attained, hastened to his Prince, and, in a melancholy interview, advised him not to accept such conditions. But Victor Emmanuel, although it caused his very heart to bleed, signed the treaty, adding these words: "I approve as far as I myself am concerned," whereupon Cavour sent in his resignation. What was the motive that had induced Napoleon to break his lately made promise of freeing Italy from the Alps to the Adriatic? There were many reasons which influenced him: the sight of that immense battlefield, strewn with the bodies of the slain, the determined resistance of the Austrian soldiers, the difficulties which would have to be faced in the Quadrilateral, the hostile attitude of Prussia, were all motives which combined to sway the French Emperor's mind. But there was also another reason which counted for much. Napoleon had been drawn into this campaign without really knowing the state of Italian public opinion; he wished Italy to be free "from the Alps to the Adriatic," but did not want Italian unity; rather did he desire the formation of a confederacy wherein France could always make her own predominance felt in the peninsula. Scarcely had he arrived in Italy when he was forced to see that Italian ideals were very different from what he had imagined them to be. Trials had but ripened the virtues of prudence and wisdom in men's minds: in 1859 the people were little likely to repeat the blunders of 1848 or 1849, and there were now no longer discussions over forms of government, but everywhere a unanimous resolve to rally round the liberal monarchy of Savoy. On the first proclamation of the war the Grand Duke of Tuscany had been compelled to fly from his States (April 27th). Napoleon had imagined that in this Province--the ancient stronghold of Italian municipalism--it would be easy to form a new kingdom with a Bonaparte to wear its crown. With this aim in view the fifth French army corps, commanded by Prince Jerome Napoleon, had debarked at Leghorn, under the pretext of organizing the military forces of Central Italy and harassing the Austrians on the extreme left. But the Tuscans soon divined the real intention of the French, and the Provisional Government in Florence, previously instituted under Bettino Ricasoli, suddenly avowed its intention of uniting Tuscany to Sardinia, whereupon Prince Napoleon, seeing the true attitude of the country, found it advisable to affect to promote the annexation. The duchies of Parma and Modena had also been deserted by their dukes, and the papal legates had to quit Romagna, whose inhabitants now suddenly announced their fusion with Sardinia. Indeed this impulse for annexation now began to spread, and to the cry of "Victor Emmanuel" the Marches and Umbria revolted against the Pontiff, but in these regions the movement was sanguinarily suppressed by the Swiss troops. Napoleon III was displeased to note how all Italian aspirations tended to unity, and thus it was that he had signed the Treaty of Villafranca. Peace was concluded at Zurich in the November following, and there the idea of an Italian confederation was mooted afresh. The fugitive princes ought to have returned to their States, but how was it possible? They certainly could not hope to be recalled by their subjects, for the latter had expelled them; occupying their kingdoms with troops of their own was out of the question, because they had none; foreign aid, moreover, was not to be looked for, since Napoleon III had established the principle of non-intervention. Then the people of Central Italy showed themselves capable of a bold political _coup:_ under the leadership of Bettino Ricasoli, dictator in Tuscany, and Luigi Carlo Farini--who held a similar office in Emilia and Romagna--they declared, by means of their assembled Deputies, their earnest desire to be incorporated with Sardinia. The new Ministry formed at Turin, after Cavour's resignation, had pursued its way timidly, fearing to rouse the suspicion and displeasure of the European Powers, but at this momentous and difficult juncture Cavour again accepted the premiership (January 20, 1860). He immediately gave a bolder impetus to King Victor Emmanuel's policy by sending a note to all the Powers, in which he asserted it to be now impossible for Sardinia to offer any resistance to the inevitable course of events. Cavour imagined that since Napoleon III had obtained the imperial throne by a plebiscite, he would not deny the validity of such a claim in Italy, and forthwith submitted this idea to the Emperor, who was bound to approve of it. But the French nation was discontented, imagining that the blood it had shed for Italy had profited nothing, and was, moreover, very averse to the formation of a powerful kingdom beyond the Alps. Now it was that Cavour determined on a great sacrifice. In the convention of Plombières it had been agreed that, in the event of a kingdom of eleven million inhabitants being established from the Alps to the Adriatic, Sardinia would cede Savoy to France. As, however, by the Treaty of Villafranca, Venetia had remained under the Austrian yoke, no more had been said about cession of territory, but by the annexation of Central Italy the number of Victor Emmanuel's subjects was now augmented to eleven millions. In order to induce Napoleon III to approve of such an annexation Cavour offered him Savoy, but the Emperor claimed Nice as well, and the Minister was obliged to accede to his demands. On March 24, 1860, Savoy, the cradle of the reigning dynasty, and Nice, Garibaldi's native Province, were ceded to France. Garibaldi, deeply wounded in his tenderest feelings, violently abused Cavour in Parliament, but the Chamber, although it respected the hero's emotion, ratified the treaty which was at this crisis a necessary concession. At the same time Parma, Modena, Romagna, and Tuscany expressed by universal suffrage their cordial desire for union with Sardinia, and a few days later the fusion of these provinces with the dominions of the house of Savoy was an accomplished fact. On April 2, 1860, at the opening of the new Parliament, Victor Emmanuel could thus sum up the results already obtained by the nationalist party: "In a very short space of time an invasion repulsed, Lombardy liberated by valiant feats of arms, Central Italy freed by her people's wonderful strength, and to-day, assembled around me here, the representatives of the rights and hopes of the nation." (1859) DARWIN PUBLISHES HIS ORIGIN OF SPECIES, Charles Robert Darwin Whatever may be said of the credit due to other scientists for investigation or discovery in natural selection, the preeminence of Darwin in this field is undisputed. If of any scientific book it can be said that its appearance was "epoch-making" it is true of Darwin's work _On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life_. Not only did it command the earnest attention of the scientific and literary world, but it awakened the interest of thoughtful persons everywhere. Later research and criticism have modified the effect of his conclusions and led to new results, but the "Darwinian theory" or "Darwinism" still holds and seems likely long to maintain a central place in the history of modern scientific development. Charles Robert Darwin was born at Shrewsbury, England, February 12, 1809. He was the grandson of Erasmus Darwin, an eminent physician, naturalist, and poet, who in 1794-1796 published an important work entitled _Zoönomia, or the Laws of Organic Life_. Charles Darwin was heir to a fortune, and in youth the possession of ample means prevented him from taking any deep interest in studying for a profession, although he did study medicine and, later, for the church. But before reaching his majority he turned to natural history. At Cambridge he enjoyed an intimacy with the distinguished botanist Professor John S. Henslow, who quickened the young man's enthusiasm for scientific investigation. In his twenty-third year Darwin went as naturalist with a government expedition to Patagonia. The voyage, in the Beagle (1831-1836), was continued round the world. Darwin's journals of the expedition served him in his later work, and also furnished much material for popular information. From 1842, when he went to reside at Down, in Kent, he devoted himself wholly to a life of scientific research and writing. Since it is not an uncommon error to confound natural selection with evolution, it may be well to point out that, while based on evolution, Darwinism is distinct from it. Evolution is the development of new organisms through heredity, variation, and adaptation. Darwinism, or the doctrine of natural selection, as best defined in these pages by Darwin himself, is seen to involve quite different factors from those of evolution as thus restricted. For candor and childlike simplicity, the writings of Darwin are especially noteworthy among the modest utterances of great men, and nowhere are these qualities more strikingly revealed than in the following account of the production of his principal work. From September, 1854, I devoted my whole time to arranging my huge pile of notes, to observing, and to experimenting in relation to the transmutation of species. During the voyage of the Beagle I had been deeply impressed by discovering in the pampean formation great fossil animals covered with armor like that on the existing armadillos; secondly, by the manner in which closely allied animals replace one another in proceeding southward over the continent; and thirdly, by the South American character of most of the productions of the Galapagos Archipelago, and more especially by the manner in which they differ slightly on each island of the group, none of the islands appearing to be very ancient, in a geological sense. It was evident that such facts as these, as well as many others, could be explained only on the supposition that species gradually become modified; and the subject haunted me. But it was equally evident that neither the action of the surrounding conditions nor the will of the organisms (especially in the case of plants) could account for the innumerable cases in which organisms of every kind are beautifully adapted to their habits of life--for instance, a woodpecker or a tree-frog to climb trees, or a seed for dispersal by hooks or plumes. I had always been much struck by such adaptations, and until these could be explained it seemed to me almost useless to endeavor to prove by indirect evidence that species have been modified. After my return to England it appeared to me that by following the example of Lyell in geology, and by collecting all facts which bore in any way on the variation of animals and plants under domestication and nature, some light might perhaps be thrown on the whole subject. My first note-book was opened in July, 1837. I worked on true Baconian principles, and without any theory collected facts on a wholesale scale, more especially with respect to domesticated productions, by printed inquiries, by conversation with skilful breeders and gardeners, and by extensive reading. When I see the list of books of all kinds which I read and abstracted, including whole series of journals and transactions, I am surprised at my industry. I soon perceived that selection was the keystone of man's success in making useful races of animals and plants. But how selection could be applied to organisms living in a state of nature remained for some time a mystery to me. In October, 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus's _Essay on the Principle of Population_, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on, from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favorable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavorable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species. Here then I had at last got a theory by which to work; but I was so anxious to avoid prejudice that I determined not for some time to write even the briefest sketch of it. In June, 1842, I first allowed myself the satisfaction of writing a very brief abstract of my theory in pencil in thirty-five pages; and this was enlarged during the summer of 1844 into one of two hundred thirty pages, which I had fairly copied out and still possess. But at that time I overlooked one problem of great importance; and it is astonishing to me, except on the principle of Columbus and his egg, how I could have overlooked it and its solution. This problem is the tendency in organic beings descended from the same stock to diverge in character as they become modified. That they have diverged greatly is obvious from the manner in which species of all kinds can be classed under genera, genera under families, families under sub-orders and so on; and I can remember the very spot in the road, while riding in my carriage, that, to my joy, the solution occurred to me; and this was long after I had come to Down. The solution, as I believe, is that the modified offspring of all dominant and increasing forms tend to become adapted to many and highly diversified places in the economy of nature. Early in 1856 Lyell advised me to write out my views fully, and I began at once to do so on a scale three or four times as extensive as that which was afterward followed in my _Origin of Species_; yet it was only an abstract of the materials which I had collected, and I got through about half the work on this scale. But my plans were overthrown, for early in the summer of 1858 Alfred Russel Wallace, who was then in the Malay Archipelago, sent me an essay _On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type_, and this essay contained exactly the same theory as mine. Mr. Wallace expressed the wish that if I thought well of his essay, I should send it to Lyell for perusal. The circumstances under which I consented, at the request of Lyell and Hooker, to allow of an abstract from my manuscript, together with a letter to Asa Gray, dated September 5, 1857, to be published at the same time with Wallace's essay, are given in the _Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society_, 1858. I was at first very unwilling to consent, as I thought Mr. Wallace might consider my doing so unjustifiable, for I did not then know how generous and noble was his disposition. Neither the extract from my manuscript nor the letter to Gray had been intended for publication, and they were badly written. Mr. Wallace's essay, on the other hand, was admirably expressed and quite clear. Nevertheless, our joint productions excited very little attention, and the only published notice of them which I can remember was by Professor Haughton, of Dublin, whose verdict was that all that was new in them was false, and what was true was old. This shows how necessary it is that any new view should be explained at considerable length in order to arouse public attention. In September, 1858, I set to work by the strong advice of Lyell and Hooker to prepare a volume on the transmutation of species, but was often interrupted by ill-health and short visits to Doctor Lane's delightful hydropathic establishment at Moor Park. I abstracted the manuscript begun on a much larger scale in 1856, and completed the volume on the same reduced scale. It cost me thirteen months and ten days' hard labor. It was published under the title of the _Origin of Species_, in November, 1859. Though considerably added to and corrected in the later editions, it has remained substantially the same book. It is no doubt the chief work of my life. It was from the first highly successful. The first small edition of twelve hundred fifty copies was sold on the day of publication, and a second edition of three thousand copies soon afterward. Sixteen thousand copies have now (1876) been sold in England; and considering how stiff a book it is, this is a large number. It has been translated into almost every European tongue, even into such languages as Spanish, Bohemian, Polish, and Russian. It has also, according to Miss Bird, been translated into Japanese, and is much studied in that country. Even an essay on it has appeared in Hebrew, showing that the theory is contained in the Old Testament! The reviews were very numerous; for some time I collected all that appeared on the _Origin_ and on my related books, and these amount (excluding newspaper reviews) to two hundred sixty-five; but after a time I gave up the attempt in despair. Many separate essays and books on the subject have appeared; and in Germany a catalogue, or bibliography, on "Darwinismus" has appeared every year or two. The success of the _Origin_ may, I think, be attributed in large part to my having long before written two condensed sketches, and to my having finally abstracted a much larger manuscript, which was itself an abstract. By this means I was enabled to select the more striking facts and conclusions. I had also during many years followed a golden rule, namely, whenever a published fact, a new observation or thought, came across me which was opposed to my general results, to make a memorandum of it without fail and at once; for I had found by experience that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape from the memory than favorable ones. Owing to this habit, very few objections were raised against my views which I had not at least noticed and attempted to answer. It has sometimes been said that the success of the _Origin_ proved "that the subject was in the air," or "that men's minds were prepared for it." I do not think that this is strictly true, for I occasionally sounded not a few naturalists, and never happened to come across a single one who seemed to doubt about the permanence of species. Even Lyell and Hooker, though they would listen with interest to me, never seemed to agree. I tried once or twice to explain to able men what I meant by "natural selection," but signally failed. What I believe was strictly true is that innumerable well-observed facts were stored in the minds of naturalists ready to take their proper places as soon as any theory that would receive them was sufficiently explained. Another element in the success of the book was its moderate size; and this I owe to the appearance of Mr. Wallace's essay; had I published on the scale in which I began to write in 1856, the book would have been four or five times as large as the _Origin_, and very few would have had the patience to read it. I gained much by my delay in publishing from about 1839, when the theory was clearly conceived, to 1859; and I lost nothing by it, for I cared very little whether men attributed more originality to me or to Wallace; and his essay no doubt aided in the reception of the theory. I was forestalled in only one important point, which my vanity has always made me regret, namely, the explanation, by means of the Glacial period, of the presence of the same species of plants and of some few animals on distant mountain summits and in the arctic regions. This view pleased me so much that I wrote it out _in extenso_, and I believe that it was read by Hooker some years before Edward Forbes published his celebrated memoir on the subject. In the very few points in which we differed I still think that I was in the right. I have never, of course, alluded in print to my having independently worked out this view. Hardly any point gave me so much satisfaction, when I was at work on the _Origin_, as the explanation of the wide difference in many classes between the embryo and the adult animal, and of the close resemblance of the embryos within the same class. No notice of this point was taken, as far as I remember, in the early reviews of the _Origin_, and I recollect expressing my surprise on this head in a letter to Asa Gray. Within late years several reviewers have given the whole credit to Fritz Mueller and Haeckel, who undoubtedly have worked it out much more fully and in some respects more correctly than I did. I had materials for a whole chapter on the subject, and I ought to have made the discussion longer; for it is clear that I failed to impress my readers; and he who succeeds in doing so deserves, in my opinion, all the credit. This leads me to remark that I have almost without exception been treated honestly by my reviewers, passing over those without scientific knowledge as not worthy of notice. My views have often been grossly misrepresented, bitterly opposed and ridiculed, but this has been generally done, as I believe, in good faith. On the whole I do not doubt that my works have been repeatedly and greatly overpraised. I rejoice that I have avoided controversies, and this I owe to Lyell, who many years ago, in reference to my geological works, strongly advised me never to get entangled in a controversy, as it rarely did any good and caused a miserable loss of time and temper. Whenever I have found out that I have blundered, or that my work has been imperfect, and when I have been contemptuously criticised, and even when I have been overpraised, so that I have felt mortified, it has been my greatest comfort to say hundreds of times to myself that "I have worked as hard and as well as I could, and no man can do more than this." I remember when in Good Success Bay, in Terra del Fuego, thinking (and I believe that I wrote home to that effect) that I could not employ my life better than in adding a little to natural science. This I have done to the best of my abilities, and critics may say what they like, but they cannot destroy this conviction. During the last two months of 1859 I was fully occupied in preparing a second edition of the _Origin_, and by an enormous correspondence. On January 1, 1860, I began arranging my notes for my work on the _Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication,_ but it was not published until the beginning of 1868, the delay having been caused partly by frequent periods of illness, one of which lasted seven months, and partly by being tempted to publish on other subjects which at the time interested me more. My _Descent of Man_ was published in February, 1871. As soon as I had become, in the year 1837 or 1838, convinced that species were mutable productions, I could not avoid the belief that man must come under the same law. Accordingly I collected notes on the subject for my own satisfaction, but not, for a long time, with any intention of publishing. Although in the _Origin of Species_ the derivation of any particular species is never discussed, yet I thought it best, in order that no honorable man should accuse me of concealing my views, to add that by the work "light would be thrown on the origin of man and his history." It would have been useless and injurious to the success of the book to parade, without giving any evidence, my conviction with respect to his origin. But when I found that many naturalists fully accepted the doctrine of the evolution of species, it seemed to me advisable to work up such notes as I possessed, and to publish a special treatise on the origin of man. I was the more glad to do so as it gave me an opportunity of fully discussing sexual selection--a subject which had always greatly interested me. This subject, and that of the variation of our domestic productions, together with the causes and laws of variation, inheritance, and the intercrossing of plants, are the sole subjects which I have been able to write about in full, so as to use all the materials which I have collected. The _Descent of Man_ took me three years to write, but then, as usual, some of this time was lost by ill-health and some was consumed by preparing new editions and other minor works. A second and largely corrected edition of the _Descent_ appeared in 1874. (1860) THE KINGDOM OF ITALY ESTABLISHED, Giuseppe Garibaldi and John Webb Probyn After the suppression of the Italian Revolution, by Austria, in 1849, and the restoration of Austrian power in Italy, Charles Albert, King of Sardinia, who had headed the movement for Italian independence and had been defeated, abdicated in favor of his son, Victor Emmanuel. The new King, as Victor Emmanuel II, succeeded to the throne March 23, 1849, the day of his father's defeat at Novara. He was a liberal sovereign and zealous for the cause of his country. With the aid of his great minister, Count Cavour, he proceeded with the work of securing the unity and freedom of Italy. In 1859 Sardinia and France, in alliance, defeated Austria. In this war were made the substantial beginnings from which a new Italian nationality was to be realized. Italian unity was not the object of Napoleon III in his alliance with Italy against Austria, but he did much to advance its prospects. He even promised the complete liberation of Italy, but this promise he failed to fulfil, to the great disappointment of Italian statesmen. Napoleon wished to see an Italian confederation, with the Pope at its head, but this plan was rejected. Sicily and Naples, in Southern Italy, were still governed by a Bourbon prince. It was necessary to get rid of him, but Victor Emmanuel did not desire another war. The matter was decided through the action of Garibaldi, whose first step toward ending the last remnant of Bourbon rule in Italy was a bold descend upon Sicily. This movement he made against the wishes of Cavour and in furtherance of the plans of "Young Italy." His own account of his landing at Marsala and of the Battle of Calatafimi--regarded by him as one of the most memorable in his military experience--is as characteristic of Garibaldi the man and writer as were his exploits characteristic of Garibaldi the soldier. The events that quickly followed Garibaldi's descent upon Sicily marked the beginning of a new era in Italian history. After his victory at Calatafimi Garibaldi moved toward Palermo, the capital. On May 24th the Bourbon troops of Francis II, king of the Two Sicilies, marched out of the city to meet him. By shrewd tactics Garibaldi outmaneuvre them. On the 26th he marched on Palermo with about three thousand men, and attacked the city on the 27th. The battle was a confused struggle of military and civilians, many citizens of Palermo, armed with "daggers, knives, spits, and iron instruments of any kind," taking part, in favor of Garibaldi, in the street-fighting that accompanied the more regular conflict. The city fell through revolt of the people and defection of the King's troops rather than by the assaults of Garibaldi's men, "twenty thousand soldiers of despotism" capitulating "before a handful of citizens" self-devoted in the cause of freedom. By June 6th Garibaldi had complete possession of Palermo; other successes in his famous campaign of liberation followed rapidly; and his final triumph was achieved in the later events so eloquently described by Probyn, the historian of Italy's progress through her most important transformations in the nineteenth century. GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI As we approached the western coast of Sicily we began to discover sailing-vessels and steamers. On the roadstead of Marsala two men-of-war were anchored, which turned out to be English. Having decided on landing at Marsala, we approached that port, and reached it about noon. On entering the harbor we found it full of merchant-vessels of different nations. Fortune had indeed favored us and so guided our expedition that we could not have arrived at a more propitious moment. The Bourbon cruisers had left the harbor of Marsala that morning, sailing eastward, while we were arriving from the west; indeed, they were still in sight toward Cape San Marco as we entered, so that by the time they came within cannon-shot we had already landed all the men out of the Piemonte and were beginning to debark those on board the Lombardo. The presence of the two English men-of-war in some degree influenced the determination of the Bourbon commanders, who were naturally impatient to open fire on us, and this circumstance gave us time to get our whole force on shore. The noble English flag once more helped to prevent bloodshed, and I, the Benjamin of these lords of the ocean, was for the hundredth time protected by them. The assertion, however, made by our enemies, that the English had directly favored and assisted our landing at Marsala, was inaccurate. The British colors, flying from the two men-of-war and the English consulate, made the Bourbon mercenaries hesitate, and, I might even say, impressed them with a sense of shame at pouring the fire of their imposing batteries into a handful of men armed only with the kind of muskets usually supplied by the Government to Italian volunteers. Notwithstanding this, three-fourths of the volunteers were still on the quay when the Bourbons began firing on them with shells and grape-shot--happily, without injury to anyone. The Piemonte, abandoned by us, was carried off by the enemy, who left the Lombardo, which had grounded on a sand-bank. The population of Marsala, thunderstruck at this unexpected event, received us pretty well, all things considered. The common people, indeed, were delighted; the magnates welcomed us under protest. I thought all this very natural. Those who are accustomed to calculate everything at so much per cent, are not likely to be reassured by the sight of a few desperadoes, who wish to ameliorate a corrupt society by eradicating from it the cancer of privilege and falsehood, especially when these desperadoes, few as they are, and with neither three-hundred-pounders nor ironclads, fling themselves against a power believed to be gigantic, like that of the Bourbon. Men of high rank--that is, the privileged class--before risking anything in an enterprise wish to assure themselves which way the wind of fortune blows and where the large battalions are; and then the victorious force may be certain of finding them compliant, cordial, and even enthusiastic if need be. Is not this the history of human selfishness in every country? The poor people, on the other hand, welcomed us with applause and with unmistakable tokens of affection. They thought of nothing but the sacredness of the sacrifice, the difficult and noble task undertaken by that handful of gallant young fellows, who had come from such a distance to the succor of their brethren. We passed the remainder of the day and the following night at Marsala, where I began to profit by the services of Crispi, an honest and capable Sicilian, who was of the greatest use to me in government business, and in making all necessary arrangements which my want of local knowledge prevented my doing myself. A dictatorship was spoken of, and I accepted it without hesitation, having always believed it the plank of safety in urgent cases, amid the breakers in which nations often find themselves. On the morning of the 12th the "Thousand" [Footnote: Garibaldi landed with a force of one thousand volunteers.--Ed.] left for Salemi, but, the distance being too great for one _étape_, we stopped at the farm of Mistretta, where we passed the night. We did not find the proprietor at home, but a young man, his brother, did the honors with kindly and liberal hospitality. At Mistretta we formed a new company under Griziotti. On the 13th we marched to Salemi, where we were well received by the people and were joined by the companies of Sant' Anna d'Alcamo and some other volunteers of the island. On the 14th we occupied Vita, or San Vito, and on the 15th came in sight of the enemy, who, occupying Calatafimi and knowing of our approach in that direction, had spread out the great part of their forces on the heights called _Il Pianto dei Romani_. The dawn of May 15th found us in good order on the heights of Vita; and a little later the enemy, whom I knew to be at Calatafimi, left the city in column, marching toward us. The hills of Vita are confronted by the heights of the Pianto dei Romani, where the enemy deployed his columns. On the Calatafimi side these heights have a gentle slope, easily ascended by the enemy, who covered all the highest points, while on the Vita side they are steep and precipitous. Occupying the opposite and southern heights, I had been able to perceive exactly all the positions held by the Bourbonists, while the latter could scarcely see the line of sharpshooters formed by the Genoese carbineers under Mosto, who covered our front, all the other companies being drawn up _en échelon_ behind them. Our scanty artillery was stationed on our left, on the highroad, under Orsini, who succeeded, in spite of the poverty of his resources, in making a few good shots. In this way both we and the enemy occupied strong positions, fronting each other, and separated by a wide space of undulating ground, broken by a few farmsteadings. Our advantage therefore clearly lay in awaiting the enemy in our own position. The Bourbon forces, to the number of about two thousand, with some cannon, discovering a few of our men without distinguishing uniform and mingled with peasants, boldly advanced a few lines of bersaglieri, with sufficient support and two guns. Arrived within firing distance, they opened with carbines and cannon while advancing on us. The order given to the Thousand was to wait without firing for the enemy to come up, though the gallant Ligurians already had one man killed and several wounded. The blare of the bugles, sounding an American _reveille_, brought the enemy to a halt as if by magic. They understood that it was not the Picciotti alone they had to deal with, and their lines, with the artillery, gave the signal for a retrograde movement. This was the first time that the soldiers of despotism had quailed before the filibusters--for such was the title with which our enemies honored us. The Thousand then sounded a charge--the Genoese carbineers in the van, followed by a chosen band of youths impatient to come to close quarters. The intention of the charge was to put to flight the enemy's vanguard and get possession of the two guns--a manoeuvre that was executed with a spirit worthy of the champions of Italian liberty; but I had no intention of a front attack on a formidable position occupied by a strong force of Bourbon troops. But who could stop those fiery and impetuous volunteers in their rush on the foe? In vain the trumpets sounded a halt; our men did not hear, or imitated Nelson's conduct at the Battle of Copenhagen. They turned a deaf ear to the order to halt sounded by the trumpets, and with their bayonets drove the enemy's van back on their main body. There was not a moment to be lost, or that gallant handful would have perished. Immediately a general charge was sounded, and the entire corps of the Thousand, accompanied by some courageous Sicilians and Calabrese, marched at a quick pace to the rescue. The enemy had abandoned the plain, but, falling back on the heights where their reserve was, held firm and defended their position with a dogged valor worthy of a better cause. The most dangerous part of the ground we had to cross was the level valley separating us from the enemy, where we had to face a storm of cannon- and musket-balls which wounded a good many of our men. Arrived at the foot of Monte Romano, we were almost sheltered from attack; and at this point the Thousand, somewhat diminished in number, closed up to the vanguard. The situation was supreme; we were bound to win. In this determination we began to ascend the first ledge of the mountain, under a hail of bullets. I do not remember how many, but there were certainly several terraces to be gained before reaching the crest of the heights, and every time we climbed from one terrace to the next--during which operation we were totally unprotected--we were under a tremendous fire. The orders given to our men to fire but few shots were well adapted to the wretched weapons presented to us by the Sardinian Government, which nearly always missed fire. On this occasion, too, great service was rendered by the gallant Genoese, who, being excellent shots and armed with good carbines, sustained the honor of our cause. This ought to be an encouragement to all young Italians to exercise themselves in the use of arms, in the conviction that valor alone is not enough on modern battlefields; great dexterity in the use of weapons is also necessary. Calatafimi! The survivor of a hundred battles, if in my last moments my friends see me smile once more with pride, it will be at the recollection of that fight--for I remember none more glorious. The Thousand, attired just as at home, worthy representatives of their people, attacked--with heroic coolness, fighting their way from one formidable position to another--the soldiers of tyranny, brilliant in gaudily trimmed uniforms, gold lace, and epaulettes, and completely routed them. How can I forget that knot of youths who, fearing to see me wounded, surrounded me, pressing themselves closely together and sheltering me with their bodies? If, while I write, I am deeply touched at the recollection, I have good reason. Is it not my duty at least to remind Italy of those brave sons of hers who fell there?--Montanari, Schiaffino, Sertorio, Nullo, Vigo, Tukery, Taddei, and many more whose names I grieve to say I cannot remember. As I have already said, the southern slope of Monte Romano, which we had to ascend, was formed of those ledges or narrow terraces used by the cultivators of the soil in mountainous countries. We made all possible haste to reach the bank of each terrace, driving the enemy before us, and then halting under cover of the bank to take breath and prepare for the attack. Proceeding thus, we gained one ledge after another, till we reached the top, where the Bourbon troops made a last effort, defending their position with great intrepidity; many of their chasseurs, who had come to the end of their ammunition, even throwing down stones on us. At last we gave the final charge. The bravest of the Thousand, massed together under the last bank, after taking breath and measuring with their eye the space yet to be traversed before crossing swords with the enemy, rushed on like lions, confident of victory and trusting in their sacred cause. The Bourbon force could not resist the terrible onset of men fighting for freedom; they fled, and never stopped till they reached the town of Calatafimi, several miles from the battlefield. We ceased our pursuit a short distance from the entrance to the town, which is very strongly situated. If one gives battle, one ought to be sure of victory; this axiom is very true under all circumstances, but especially at the beginning of a campaign. The victory of Calatafimi, though of slight importance as regards acquisitions--for we took only one cannon, a few rifles, and a few prisoners--had an immeasurable moral result in encouraging the population and demoralizing the hostile army. The handful of filibusters, without gold lace or epaulettes, who were spoken of with such solemn contempt, had routed several thousand of the Bourbon's best troops, artillery and all, commanded by one of those generals who, like Lucullus, are ready to spend the revenue of a province on one night's supper. One corps of citizens--not to say filibusters--animated by love of their country, can therefore gain a victory unaided by all this needless splendor. The first important result was the enemy's retreat from Calatafimi, which town we occupied on the following morning, May 16, 1860. The second result, and one abundantly noteworthy, was the attack made by the population of Partinicio, Borgetto, Montelepre, and other places, on the retreating army. In every place volunteer companies were formed which speedily joined us, and the enthusiasm in the surrounding villages reached its height. The disbanded troops of the enemy did not stop till they reached Palermo, where they brought terror to the Bourbon party and confidence to the patriots. Our wounded, and those of the enemy, were brought in to Vita and Calatafimi. Among ours were some men who could ill be spared. Montanari, my comrade at Rome and in Lombardy, was dangerously wounded and died a few days after. He was one of those whom doctrinaires call demagogues, because they are impatient of servitude, love their country, and refuse to bow the knee to the caprices and vices of the great. Montanari was a Modenese. Schiaffino, a young Ligurian from Camogli, who had also served in the Cacciatori delle Alpi and in the Guides, was among the first to fall on the field, bereaving Italy of one of her bravest soldiers. He worked hard on the night of our start from Genoa, and greatly assisted Bixio in that delicate undertaking. De Amici, also of the Cacciatori and Guides, was another who fell at the beginning of the battle. Not a few of the chosen band of the Thousand fell at Calatafimi as our Roman forefathers fell--rushing on the enemy with cold steel, cut down in front without a complaint, without a cry, except that of _"Viva L'Italia!"_ I may have seen battles more desperate and more obstinately contested, but in none have I seen finer soldiers than my citizen filibusters of Calatafimi. The victory of Calatafimi was indisputably the decisive battle in the brilliant campaign of 1860. It was absolutely necessary to begin the expedition with some striking engagement such as this, which so demoralized the enemy that their fervent southern imaginations even exaggerated the valor of the Thousand. There were some among them who declared they had seen the bullets of their carbines rebound from the breasts of the soldiers of liberty as if from a plate of bronze. Far more men were killed and wounded at Palermo, Milazzo, and the Volturno, but still I believe Calatafimi to have been the decisive battle. After a fight like that, our men knew they were bound to win; and the gallant Sicilians, whose courage had been previously shaken by the imposing numbers and superior equipment of the Bourbon force, were encouraged. When a battle begins with such prestige, with omens drawn from such a precedent, victory is sure. JOHN WEBB PROBYN On June 27, 1860, about three weeks after Garibaldi had taken possession of Palermo, Francis II solemnly announced his intention to give a constitution to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, adopt the Italian flag, and ally himself with Sardinia. These promises only provoked the cry of "Too late!" They did but recall how often the Neapolitan Bourbons had promised in the hour of danger, and proved faithless to every promise when the danger was passed. Victor Emmanuel and his Government were now both unable and unwilling to agree to any such terms with a sovereign who had rejected similar offers at the beginning of his reign when such a settlement was possible. Every friend of freedom felt that the time had gone by for any common action between the houses of Savoy and Bourbon. Each had taken its own line of action, and each was now to abide by the result. Garibaldi had overthrown the Neapolitan rule in Sicily, and raised the cry of "Italy and Victor Emmanuel!" which found a hearty response. Having been so successful he now determined, despite the warnings of friendly advisers and the hostility of enemies, to carry his forces from Sicily to the mainland, and take possession of Naples itself. He was at the head of about twenty thousand men under the command of Generals Medici, Bixio, Cosenz, and Turr. He had also the prestige of victory mingled with a kind of legendary fame which continually increased. These were formidable aids to further success, especially when brought to bear on the fervid feelings and imagination of a southern people. Francis of Naples still possessed an army of eighty thousand men, of which he despatched more than twenty thousand to arrest, if possible, the progress of his formidable opponent. Victor Emmanuel sought to dissuade Garibaldi from an enterprise so full of danger as that of marching upon Naples against the wishes of the united cabinets of Continental Europe. The King desired that matters should proceed by negotiation, the basis of which should be that Neapolitans and Sicilians should be allowed to decide their future destinies for themselves. Garibaldi, who loved and trusted the honest King, replied that the actual state of Italy compelled him to disobey his majesty. "When," said the noble-hearted patriot, "I shall have delivered the populations from the yoke that weighs them down, I will throw my sword at your feet, and will then obey you for the rest of my life." In truth, Italians of all ranks were now so roused that neither Victor Emmanuel, Cavour, nor even Garibaldi himself could have stayed the movement. The overpowering strength of foreign armies could alone have put it down. Circumstances, however, happily prevented so gross an abuse of mere force. For once Italians were allowed to do as they wished in their own country instead of being compelled by foreign powers to do as those powers commanded. Many things concurred to bring about this result. The French Emperor had just received Savoy and Nice; he had been spending the blood and treasure of France in giving the first blow to the old despotisms of Italy; how could he now fly in the face of his own principle of the national will in order to save the worst of those despotisms? He could not declare that Sicilians and Neapolitans should not dare have the opportunity of doing what he had at last permitted in Central Italy and profited by in Nice and Savoy. To have allowed Austria to do so would be to stultify himself in the eyes of Europe, to enrage Italians, and to lead France to ask what was the use of calling on her to make sacrifices for the overthrow of Austrian domination in the Peninsula if within a few months that domination was to be in a large measure restored. Austria too had her own difficulties to encounter, and they were both numerous and complicated. Her military and priestly despotism had suffered defeat; her people disliked its rule and desired freer institutions; her finances were terribly disordered. The Emperor was beginning to see the necessity of a change of system--a change by no means easy to effect--for the Hungarians were demanding the restoration of their ancient constitutional rights. Russia and Prussia contented themselves with protests which had, it may be, some diplomatic value, but were wholly without practical effect. England was favorable to the extension of Italian liberties, and France was her ally in Syria and in China. So it was that Garibaldi, having only to encounter the naval and military forces of Francis II, crossed the Straits of Messina, landed in Calabria, and marched on Reggio. On August 21st the town was occupied, and the citadel, with its commander and soldiers, capitulated. Another victory was gained on the 23d, dispersing the forces of the Neapolitan Generals Melendez and Briganti. Some of their soldiers joined Garibaldi; the rest returned to their homes and increased both his real and his legendary fame by their account of his victories. The insurrection against the Bourbon dynasty was now rapidly spreading. At Cosenza in Calabria, and at Potenza in the Basilicata, provisional governments were proclaimed and were hailing with delight the progress of Garibaldi. The forces of Francis were disappearing from those provinces and leaving the road to Naples unprotected. The fleet was as little to be counted on as the army. In Naples itself all was confusion and contradiction in the Government. None of its members trusted the others or believed in the duration of the Bourbon dynasty. Years of corruption, tyranny, falsehood, and cruelty had undermined the whole system, and it fell before the storm as if by magic. Francis II determined to leave his capital. When he ordered the troops which still remained faithful to him to retreat upon Capua and Gaeta, two-thirds of the staff sent in their resignation, as did many of the officers of the Neapolitan fleet. The King addressed a protest to the foreign powers in which he declared he only quitted his capital to save it from the horrors of a siege. He issued a proclamation to his people in which he expressed his wishes for their happiness, and declared that when restored to his throne it would be all the more splendid from the institutions he had now irrevocably given. On September 6, 1860, he left the capital on board a steamer accompanied by two Spanish frigates, and was taken to Gaeta. On September 7th Garibaldi entered Naples at midday in an open carriage, accompanied by some of his staff. For long hours he received a welcome such as has seldom if ever been given to any other man. Again and again he had to appear on the balcony of the Palazzo d'Angri, where he had taken up his quarters, to receive the applause of the multitude. At eight o'clock that evening it was at length announced that, worn out with fatigue and emotion, he had retired to rest. A sudden quiet fell upon the vast crowds, and repeating to one another "Our father sleeps," they dispersed to their homes, their right hands raised above their heads, with the first finger alone extended, a sign expressive of the cry reiterated again and again that day, "_Italia Una_!" ("One Italy"). On September 10th Garibaldi issued a proclamation to his soldiers, headed "Italy and Victor Emmanuel." In it the General called upon them to aid him in carrying to a successful termination the work so well begun. Nor did he hesitate to declare that Rome must be Italian, and the line of the Alps the frontier of Italy. He addressed another proclamation to the people in which he especially called on them to be united: "The first need of Italy is concord in order to realize the union of the great Italian family; to-day Providence has given us this concord, since all the provinces are unanimous and labor with magnanimous zeal at the national reconstruction. As to unity, Providence has further given us Victor Emmanuel--a model sovereign who will inculcate in his descendants the duties which they should fulfil for the happiness of a people who have chosen him as their chief with enthusiastic homage." The proclamation went on to speak with kindly warmth of those Italian priests who had sided with the national cause, and declared that such conduct was a sure means of gaining respect for their mission and work. Repeating again the demand for concord, the concluding words justly protested against all foreign interference: "Finally (be it known) we respect the houses of others; but we insist upon being masters in our own whether it please or displease the rulers of the earth." Garibaldi united the Neapolitan to the Sardinian fleet, so forming an Italian naval force. He appointed a ministry comprising Liborio Romano (who had served under Francis II), Scialoia, Cosenz, and Pisanelli; he then proceeded to promulgate the Sardinian Constitution throughout the Neapolitan Provinces. But the Bourbon forces were still in possession of Capua and Gaeta. It became necessary, therefore, to undertake military operations against them. Meanwhile the agitation in the Papal Provinces was increasing. The Pope's Government had refused to modify its policy or agree to any reduction of its territory. It accepted the protection of France in Rome and its immediate neighborhood, but declined further aid, as it was raising forces of its own under a French general, Lamoricière. These soldiers were men of various European nationalities belonging to that Roman Catholic party which was determined to maintain intact the temporal rule of the Pope as against the wishes of the vast majority of Italians, themselves Roman Catholics, who desired to substitute for that rule the constitutional sovereignty of King Victor Emmanuel. The Italians were willing enough to remain under the spiritual headship of the Roman Pontiff, but they would not have a temporal power upheld by foreign soldiers. The moment was, like many others, a very critical one in the history of Italy. Garibaldi was victorious in Naples. The Papal forces, composed chiefly of Germans and French, under Lamoricière, were holding the inhabitants of Umbria and the Marches who were longing to join the national movement. Indeed, some of the most influential men of those provinces, among others Marquis Filippo Gualterio of Orvieto, had already come to Turin to obtain the intervention of its Government and protection from the Papal troops, whose foreign extraction rendered them odious to the people. On September 7th Count Delia Minerva was sent to Rome to demand, on the part of Victor Emmanuel, the disbandment of the foreign troops which the Papal Government had got together under the command of General Lamoricière. The demand was refused. This refusal the Papal Government was quite competent to give, but whether its policy in upholding its temporal power by the aid of foreign mercenaries was wise or not was another matter. It was hardly to be expected that Italians, any more than Frenchmen, Germans, or English, would endure such a state of things if they could prevent it. The Government of Turin now ordered its troops to enter the Papal Provinces of Umbria and the Marches. On September **nth General Fanti crossed the frontier, easily took possession of Perugia with the aid of the inhabitants, and obliged Colonel Schmidt, the Papal commander, to capitulate. The General advanced with equal success against Spoleto, and in a few days was master of all the upper valley of the Tiber. At the same time General Cialdini, operating on the eastern side of the Apennines, marched rapidly to meet General Lamoricière's forces, which he encountered and defeated completely at Castelfidardo, compelling the French General to fly to Ancona, which he entered in company with only a few horsemen who had escaped with him from the rout of the Papal army. The Italian fleet was off Ancona, before which General Cialdini's troops now appeared, thus completely preventing the escape of Lamoricière, who was obliged to surrender. In less than three weeks the campaign was over. The Sardinian troops having thus occupied Umbria and the Marches, proceeded to cross into the Neapolitan Provinces and march upon Capua and Gaeta. Austria, Prussia, and Russia protested against the course thus pursued by the Government of Victor Emmanuel. The Pope excommunicated all who had participated in the invasion of his territory. Francis II protested with no less earnestness. The Emperor of the French withdrew his minister from Turin and blamed the proceedings of Victor Emmanuel's Government; but in other respects Napoleon remained a passive spectator of all that occurred, and maintained the principle of non-intervention--at least as regarded Umbria and the Marches, Sicily and Naples--excepting at Gaeta, where his fleet prevented for a time any attack being made against that fortress from the sea. He also raised the number of his troops in Rome and the province in which it is situated, called the Patrimony of St. Peter, to twenty-two thousand men. This was now all the territory left to the temporal power of the Pope. Napoleon determined to preserve that much to the Roman See, defending it from the attacks of Garibaldi, and forbidding its annexation to the kingdom of Italy. The English Government, however, decidedly vindicated the course taken under the circumstances by Victor Emmanuel and his advisers. Lord Russell, who was Secretary of Foreign Affairs under Lord Palmerston, wrote, on October 27, 1860, an admirable despatch to Sir James Hudson, the English minister at Turin, who was allowed to give a copy of it to Count Cavour. In that despatch Lord Russell gives good reasons for dissenting from the views expressed by the Governments of Austria, Prussia, Russia, and France; he justifies the action of the Government of Turin, admits that Italians themselves are the best judges of their own interests, shows how in times past they vainly attempted regularly and temperately to reform their governments, says such attempts were put down by foreign powers, and concludes by declaring that "Her Majesty's Government will turn their eyes rather to the gratifying prospect of a people building up the edifice of their liberties and consolidating the work of their independence amid the sympathies and good wishes of Europe." It is gratifying to remember that at this very critical juncture in the cause of Italian unity and independence, the English Government gave its very cordial support to that cause, and ably defended the course pursued by King Victor Emmanuel, his ministers, and his people. The cause of Italian unity and independence had indeed made prodigious strides, due not only to the marvellous victories of Garibaldi, which had brought him in four months from Marsala to Naples, but also to the skilful campaigns of Generals Fanti and Cialdini in Umbria and the Marches. Cavour now followed up these successes by advising a course calculated to give them consistency and endurance. He counselled the immediate assembling of Parliament, the acceptance by Victor Emmanuel of the sovereignty of the Papal, Neapolitan, and Sicilian Provinces, if such were the will of their inhabitants, and the departure of the King from Turin to take the command of his troops now advancing toward Capua. Victor Emmanuel entirely agreed with his minister's advice. On October 2, 1860, Cavour asked Parliament for full powers to annex all the new provinces of Central and Southern Italy if they desired it. He contended that the events which had taken place were due to the initiative of the people, the noble audacity of General Garibaldi, and the constitutional rule of Victor Emmanuel, united to his devotion to the cause of Italian freedom. Even those deputies who represented the views of the extreme Left, some of whose members avowed a preference for Republicanism--in theory at any rate--supported the Government. One of them, Signor Bertani, declared he would not now raise any point of difference, and frankly acknowledged that in reality all Italians wished the same thing--"Italy one and free, under Victor Emmanuel." Cavour further satisfied the Chamber by saying that Rome and Venice must in the end be united to the mother country, though the questions involved in such union must, out of deference to Europe and France, be postponed for the present. A vote of two hundred ninety against six confirmed the policy of the Government and gave full expression to the wishes of the country. Garibaldi had in the mean time pushed on his forces from Naples toward Capua and the line of the River Volturno. On September 19th his troops took Caiazzo, from which, however, they were dislodged on the 23d of the month. After this success Francis II determined to take the offensive and attack in force the Garibaldian lines with the object of driving them back to Naples or cutting them off from that city. This attempt was well planned and conducted on October 1, 1860. The struggle was hotly maintained on both sides throughout the day. Some companies of bersaglieri arrived from Naples and united in resisting the attacks of the Bourbon troops, who were in the end repelled and compelled to retire. But though beaten they had fought well and still held the fortresses of Gaeta and Capua, to which they had retreated. The army of Victor Emmanuel, however, led by the King in person, was now rapidly advancing, easily overcoming whatever resistance the Bourbon troops were able to offer. Francis II, unable to prevent the junction of the King's forces with those of Garibaldi, withdrew with the bulk of his soldiers to Gaeta, leaving four thousand men in Capua, who were soon obliged to capitulate. On October 26th Victor Emmanuel and Garibaldi met near the little town of Teano. They greeted each other with great cordiality, for though Garibaldi had little faith in ministers or diplomatists, and could not forgive their cession of Nice to France, he felt the utmost confidence in the King himself. Victor Emmanuel on his part had the greatest regard for the heroic patriot who had ever been so devoted to his country's cause and whose marvellous exploits had now given freedom to Sicily and Naples. As they grasped each other's hands Garibaldi cried, "Behold the King of Italy! Long live the King!" The soldiers of both leaders shouted, "Long live Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy!" On November 7th the King entered Naples with Garibaldi at his side. The reception was enthusiastic in the extreme; it reached its culminating point as Victor Emmanuel entered the royal palace. Long had it been the abode of those who hated and betrayed both constitutional liberty and national freedom; now it was taken possession of by one who had risked life and crown in their cause. The King issued a proclamation, in which he called to mind the increased responsibilities which fell henceforth upon himself and his people alike; nor did he fail to remind them of the necessity for union and abnegation: "All parties must bow before the majesty of Italy which God has raised up. We must establish a government which gives guarantees of liberty to the people and of severe probity to the public at large." In the succeeding days his majesty received the deputations of the newly acquired Provinces of Umbria, the Marches, Naples, and Sicily, which came to present to him officially the result of the plebiscite by which the inhabitants of those provinces declared their wish to be united to the rest of the King's dominions and so form a single Kingdom of Italy. Many other receptions there were of societies belonging to several ranks and classes of men. Particularly impressive was the welcome given to the deputation which came from the Senate and Chamber at Turin in honor of so great an event as the union of Southern with Northern Italy under the constitutional rule of one sovereign. On December 1st Victor Emmanuel embarked for Palermo, where he was received with an enthusiasm at least as great as that which marked his arrival in Naples. In the capital of Sicily all orders of citizens pressed forward to pay him their willing homage. These great results were not, however, achieved without difficulty, for there was considerable diversity of opinion and not a little jealousy between those that surrounded Garibaldi and those that followed the lead of Cavour in Parliament and in the country. Nor can it be denied that faults and mistakes may fairly be laid to the charge of both those parties, despite their sincere attachment to the cause of their common fatherland. A mistake was made by Garibaldi himself when he wished to postpone the immediate annexation of the Southern Provinces to the Northern Kingdom, and asked to be named Dictator of Naples for two years by Victor Emmanuel, whom he further requested to dismiss Cavour and his actual advisers. The King rightly refused to agree to a course so subversive of all constitutional proceedings and liberties. He could not even entertain the idea of dismissing ministers at the request of any citizen, however illustrious, or however great the services he had rendered his country. It was for the national representatives alone to decide to what minister the King should give his confidence, and what course should be taken as to the annexation of Naples and Sicily. Garibaldi's good sense and honesty of purpose led him to give in to the King's judgment. Victor Emmanuel took the right view of the course to be pursued in this matter, just as he had taken the right view of the course to be pursued at the moment of the Peace of Villafranca. In the one case he showed himself wiser than Cavour, and in the other wiser than Garibaldi. The single-minded patriotism of the latter, and the statesmanship of the former, combined with the remarkably sure judgment and unfailing honesty of the King, gradually overcame all the difficulties of the situation. Victor Emmanuel ever kept aloof from political coteries, while deferring to the advice of his responsible ministers so long as they had the confidence of Parliament. He ever showed himself to be the head of the nation, not the head of a party. His unswerving determination to be guided by the nation's will as expressed by the nation's chosen representatives, though nothing new in his career, won for him the absolute confidence of all Italians, not one of whom avowed it more frankly than Garibaldi himself. But what shall be said of the popular hero, sprung from the ranks of the people, who had given a kingdom to his sovereign? Rarely, if ever, has history recorded nobler conduct than that of the conqueror of Sicily and Naples when, having liberated those provinces, he laid down all power, refused all honors, turned away alike wealth and titles, to betake himself to his island home of Caprera, there to work with his own hands, to rejoice as he thought of how greatly he had advanced the independence of Italy, and to pray for the hour of its completion. Whatever defects may be found in the character or judgment of this heroic patriot, his name will assuredly be held in grateful remembrance wherever men are found who love freedom and rejoice as they see its blessings spread more and more among the nations of the earth. As Garibaldi retired to his quiet abode in Caprera, Victor Emmanuel returned to his duties in Turin. But neither the one nor the other forgot Rome and Venice. The siege of Gaeta was now being carried forward with great determination. The place was defended with courage and endurance by Francis II and his Queen. For a time the French fleet prevented the Italians from attacking Gaeta by sea, but when Napoleon withdrew his ships further resistance became hopeless. On February 13, 1861, Gaeta surrendered after a defence of which those who took part in it had a right to be proud. The garrison marched out with the honors of war, the officers retained their rank. Francis and his wife embarked for Terracina, and went thence to Rome, where they were received by the Pope and lodged in the Quirinal palace. The citadels of Messina and of Civitella del Tronto surrendered soon after, and so passed away forever the rule of the Neapolitan Bourbons over the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. No less than twenty-two million of Italians were now united under the sceptre of Victor Emmanuel, who, in accordance with the advice of his Prime Minister, Count Cavour, dissolved the Parliament. The new election took place at the end of January, 1861. The constitution as established in Sardinia was put in force from Turin to Palermo. At the same time the King nominated, as suggested by his responsible advisers, sixty new Senators or Members of the Upper House. They were selected chiefly among the most prominent and influential men of the Provinces of Central and Southern Italy. The elections were everywhere favorable to the new order of things; namely, the formation of the single Kingdom of Italy under the constitutional rule of Victor Emmanuel. The majority of the new Chamber gave a hearty support to Count Cavour. On February 18, 1861, the first Italian Parliament, representing all the Provinces of Italy--Venetia and the Roman patrimony alone excepted--assembled in the Palazzo Carignano at Turin. The title assumed by the King in concert with his ministers and Parliament was "Victor Emmanuel II, by the grace of God and the will of the nation, King of Italy." [Footnote: It was almost ten years later--when Victor Emmanuel entered Rome, September 20, 1870--that the emancipation and union of Italy were made complete.--ED.] (1861) EMANCIPATION OF RUSSIAN SERFS, Andrew D. White and Nikolai Turgenieff By the act that freed the serfs in Russia, Alexander II, to whom it was in great measure due, obtained a place of unusual honor among the sovereigns that have ruled his nation. It was the grand achievement of Alexander's reign, and caused him to be hailed as one of the world's liberators. The importance of this event in Russian history is not diminished by the fact that its practical benefits have not as yet been realized to the full extent anticipated. In 1888 Stepniak, the Russian author and reformer, declared that emancipation had utterly failed to realize the ardent expectations of its advocates and promoters, had failed to improve the material condition of the former serfs, who on the whole were worse off than before emancipation. The same assertion has been made with respect to the emancipation of slaves in the United States, but in neither case does the objection invalidate the historical significance of an act that formally liberated millions of human beings from hereditary and legalized bondage. In the two views here presented, the subject of the emancipation in Russia is considered in various aspects. Andrew D. White's account, being that of an American scholar and diplomatist familiar with the history and people of Russia through his residence at St. Petersburg, is of peculiar value, embodying the most intelligent foreign judgment. White's synopsis covers the entire subject of the serf system from its beginning to its overthrow. Nikolai Turgenieff, the Russian historian, writing while the emancipation act was bearing its first fruits, describes its workings and effects as observed by one intimately connected with the serfs and the movement that resulted in their freedom. ANDREW D. WHITE Close upon the end of the fifteenth century the Muscovite ideas of right were subjected to the strong mind of Ivan the Great and compressed into a code. Therein were embodied the best processes known to his land and time: for discovering crime, torture and trial by battle; for punishing crime, the knout and death. But hidden in this tough mass was one law of greater import than others. Thereby were all peasants forbidden to leave the lands they were then tilling, except during the eight days before and after St. George's Day. This provision sprang from Ivan's highest views of justice and broadest views of political economy; the nobles received it with plaudits, which have found echoes even in these days; the peasants received it with no murmurs which history has found any trouble in drowning. Just one hundred years later upon the Muscovite throne, as nominal Czar, sat the weakling Feodor I; but behind the throne stood, as real Czar, hard, strong Boris Godunoff. Looking forward to Feodor's death, Boris made ready to mount the throne; and he saw--what all other "Mayors of the Palace" climbing into the places of _faineant_ kings have seen--that he must link to his fortunes the fortunes of some strong body in the nation; he broke, however, from the general rule among usurpers--bribing the church--and determined to bribe the nobility. The greatest grief of the Muscovite nobles seemed to be that the peasants could escape from their oppression by the emigration allowed on St. George's Day. Boris saw his opportunity: he cut off the privilege of St. George's Day, and the peasant was fixed to the soil forever. No Russian law ever directly enslaved the peasantry, but, through this decree of Boris, the lord who owned the soil came to own the peasants, just as he owned its immovable boulders and ledges. To this the peasants submitted; but history has not been able to drown their sighs over this wrong; their proverbs and ballads make St. George's Day representative of all ill-luck and disappointment. A few years later Boris made another bid for oligarchic favor. He issued a rigorous fugitive-serf law, and even wrenched liberty from certain free peasants who had entered service for wages before his edicts. This completed the work, and Russia, which never had had the benefits of feudalism, had now fastened upon her feudalism's worst curse, a serf caste, bound to the glebe. The great good things done by Peter the world knows by heart. The world knows well how he tore his way out of the fetichism of his time; how, despite ignorance and unreason, he dragged his nation after him; how he dowered the nation with things and thoughts that transformed it from a petty Asiatic horde to a great European Power. We were present a few years since when one of those lesser triumphs of his genius was first unfolded. It was in that room at the Hermitage--adjoining the Winter Palace--set apart for the relics of Peter. Our companions were two men noted as leaders in American industry--one famed as an inventor, the other famed as a champion of inventors' rights. Suddenly from the inventor, pulling over some old dust-covered machines in a corner, came loud cries of surprise. The cries were natural indeed. In that heap of rubbish he had found a lathe for turning irregular forms, and a screw-cutting engine once used by Peter himself: specimens of his unfinished work were still in them. They had lain there unheeded a hundred fifty years; their principle had died with Peter and his workmen; and not many years since, they were reinvented in America, and gave their inventors fame and fortune. At the late Paris Universal Exposition crowds flocked about an American lathe for copying statuary; and that lathe was, in principle, identical with this old, forgotten machine of Peter's. Yet, though Peter fought so well and thought so well, he made some mistakes which hang to this day over his country as bitter curses. For in all his plan and work to advance the mass of men was one supreme lack--lack of any account of the worth and right of the individual man. Lesser examples of this are seen in his grim jest at Westminster Hall--"What use of so many lawyers? I have but two lawyers in Russia, and one of those I mean to hang as soon as I return;" or when at Berlin, having been shown a new gibbet, he ordered one of his servants to be hanged in order to test it; or in his review of parade fights, when he ordered his men to use ball, and to take the buttons off their bayonets. Greater examples are seen in his Battle of Narva, when he threw away an army to learn his opponent's game; in his building of St. Petersburg, where, in draining marshes, he sacrificed a hundred thousand men the first year. But the greatest proof of this great lack was shown in his dealings with the serf system. Serfage was already recognized in Peter's time as an evil. Peter himself once stormed forth in protestations and invectives against what he stigmatized as "selling men like beasts; separating parents from children, husbands from wives; which takes place nowhere else in the world, and which causes many tears to flow." He declared that a law should be made against it. Yet it was by his misguided hand that serfage was compacted into its final black mass of foulness. For Peter saw other nations spinning and weaving, and he determined that Russia should at once spin and weave; he saw other nations forging iron, and he determined that Russia should at once forge iron. He never stopped to consider that what might cost little in other lands as a natural growth, might cost far too much in Russia as a forced growth. In lack, then, of quick brain and sturdy spine and strong arm of paid workmen, he forced into his manufactories the flaccid muscle of serfs. These, thus lifted from the earth, lost even the little force in the State they had before; great bodies of serfs thus became slaves; worse than that, the idea of a serf developed toward the idea of a slave. And Peter, misguided, dealt one blow more. Cold-blooded officials were set at taking the census. These adopted easy classifications; free peasants, serfs, and slaves were often huddled into the lists under a single denomination. So serfage became still more difficult to be distinguished from slavery. As this base of hideous wrong was thus widened and deepened the nobles built higher and stronger their superstructure of arrogance and pretension. Not many years after Peter's death, they so overawed the Empress Anne that she thrust into the codes of the empire statutes which allowed the nobles to sell serfs apart from the soil. So did serfage bloom fully into slavery. But in the latter half of the eighteenth century Russia gained a ruler from whom the world came to expect much. To mount the throne, Catharine II had murdered her husband; to keep the throne she had murdered two claimants whose title was better than her own. She then became, with her agents in these horrors, a second Messalina. To set herself right in the eyes of Europe, she paid eager court to that hierarchy of scepticism which in that age made or marred European reputations. She flattered the fierce deists by owning fealty to "_Le Roi_" Voltaire; she flattered the mild deists by calling in La Harpe as the tutor of her grandson; she flattered the atheists by calling in Diderot as a tutor for herself. Her murders and orgies were soon forgotten in the new hopes for Russian regeneration. Her dealings with Russia strengthened these hopes. The official style required that all persons presenting petitions should subscribe themselves "Your Majesty's humble serf." This formula she abolished, and boasted that she had cast out the word serf from the Russian language. Poets and philosophers echoed this boast over Europe--and the serfs waited. The great Empress spurred hope by another movement. She proposed to an academy the question of serf emancipation as a subject for their prize essay. The essay was written and crowned. It was filled with beautiful things about liberty, practical things about moderation, flattering things about the "Great Catharine"--and the serfs waited. Again she aroused hope. It was given out that her most intense delight came from the sight of happy serfs and prosperous villages. Accordingly, in her journey to the Crimea, Potemkin squandered millions on millions in rearing pasteboard villages, in dragging forth thousands of wretched peasants to fill them, in costuming them to look thrifty, in training them to look happy. Catharine was rejoiced, Europe sang paeans--the serfs waited. She seemed to go further: she issued a decree prohibiting the enslavement of serfs. But unfortunately the palace intrigues, and the correspondence with the philosophers, and the destruction of Polish nationality left her no time to see the edict carried out. But Europe applauded--and the serfs waited. Two years after this came a deed which put an end to all this uncertainty. An edict was prepared ordering the peasants of Little Russia to remain forever on the estates where the day of publication should find them. This was vile; but what followed was diabolic. Court pets were let into the secret. These, by good promises, enticed hosts of peasants to their estates. The edict was now sprung; in an hour the courtiers were made rich, the peasants were made serfs, and Catharine II was made infamous forever. So, about a century after Peter, a wave of wrong rolled over Russia that not only drowned honor in the nobility, but drowned hope in the people. As Russia entered the nineteenth century, the hearts of earnest men must have sunk within them. For Paul I, Catharine's son and successor, was infinitely more despotic than Catharine, and infinitely less restrained by public opinion. He had been born with savage instincts, and educated into ferocity. Tyranny was written on his features in his childhood. If he remained in Russia his mother sneered and showed hatred of him; if he journeyed in Western Europe crowds gathered about his coach to jeer at his ugliness. Most of those who have seen Gillray's caricature of him, issued in the height of English spite at Paul's homage to Bonaparte, have thought it hideously overdrawn; but those who have seen the portrait of Paul in the Cadet-Corps of St. Petersburg know well that Gillray did not exaggerate Paul's ugliness, for he could not. And Paul's face was but a mirror of his character. Tyranny was wrought into his every fibre. He demanded an oriental homage. As his carriage whirled by, it was held the duty of all others in carriages to stop, descend into the mud, and bow themselves. Himself threw his despotism into this formula: "Know, Sir Ambassador, that in Russia there is no one noble or powerful except the man to whom I speak, and while I speak." And yet within that hideous mass glowed sparks of reverence for right. When the nobles tried to get Paul's assent to more open arrangements for selling serfs apart from the soil, he utterly refused; and when they overtasked their human chattels Paul made a law that no serf should be required to give more than three days in the week to the tillage of his master's domain. But, within five years after his accession, Paul had developed into such a ravenous wild beast that it became necessary to murder him. This duty done, there came a change in the spirit of Russian sovereignty as from March to May; but, sadly for humanity, there came at the same time a change in the spirit of European politics, as from May to March. For, although the new Czar, Alexander I, was mild and liberal, the storm of French ideas and armies had generally destroyed in monarchs' minds any poor germs of philanthropy which had ever found lodgement there. Still Alexander breasted this storm; found time to plan for his serfs, and in 1803 put his hand to the work of helping them toward freedom. His first edict was for the creation of the class of "free laborers." By this, masters and serfs were encouraged to enter into an arrangement which was to put the serf into immediate possession of himself, of a homestead and of a few acres, giving him time to indemnify his master by a series of payments. Alexander threw his heart into this scheme; and in his kindliness he supposed that the pretended willingness of the nobles meant something; but the serf-owning caste, without openly opposing, twisted up bad consequences with good, braided impossibilities into possibilities; the whole plan became a tangle, and was thrown aside. The Czar now sought to foster other good efforts, especially those made by some earnest nobles to free their serfs by will. But this plan also the serf-owning caste entangled and thwarted. At last the storm of war set in with such fury that all internal reforms must be lost sight of. Russia had to make ready for those campaigns in which Napoleon gained every battle. Then came that peaceful meeting on the raft at Tilsit--worse for Russia than any warlike meeting; for thereby Napoleon seduced Alexander, for years, from plans of bettering his empire into dreams of extending it. Coming out of these dreams, Alexander had to deal with such realities as the burning of Moscow, the Battle of Leipsic, and the occupation of France; yet, in the midst of those fearful times--when the grapple of the emperors was at the fiercest; in the very year of the burning of Moscow--Alexander rose in calm statesmanship, and admitted Bessarabia into the empire under a proviso which excluded serfage forever. Hardly was the great European tragedy ended, when Alexander again turned sorrowfully toward the wronged millions of his empire. He found that progress in civilization had but made the condition of the serfs worse. The newly ennobled _parvenus_ were worse than the old _boyars_; they hugged the serf system more lovingly and the serfs more hatefully. The sight of these wrongs roused him. He seized a cross, and swore that the serf system should be abolished. Straightway a great and good plan was prepared. Its main features were: a period of transition from serfage to personal liberty, extending through twelve or fourteen years; the arrival of the serf at personal freedom, with ownership of his cabin and the bit of land attached to it; the gradual reimbursement of masters by serfs; and after this advance to personal liberty, an advance by easy steps to a sort of political liberty. Favorable as was this plan to the serf-owners, they attacked it in various ways; but they could not kill it utterly. Esthonia, Livonia, and Courland became free. Having failed to arrest the growth of freedom, the serf-holding caste made every effort to blast the good fruits of freedom. In Courland they were thwarted; in Esthonia and Livonia they succeeded during many years; but the eternal laws were too strong for them, and the fruitage of liberty had grown richer and better. After these good efforts, Alexander stopped, discouraged. A few patriotic nobles stood apart from their caste, and strengthened his hands, as Lafayette and Lincourt strengthened Louis XVI. They even drew up a plan of voluntary emancipation; formed an association for the purpose and gained many signatures; but the great weight of that besotted serf-owning caste was thrown against them, and all came to naught. Alexander was at last walled in from the great object of his ambition. Pretended theologians built, between him and emancipation, walls of Scriptural interpretation; pretended philosophers built walls of false political economy; pretended statesmen built walls of sham common-sense. If the Czar could but have mustered courage to cut the knot! Alas for Russia and for him, he wasted himself in efforts to untie it. His heart sickened at it; he welcomed death, which alone could remove him from it. Alexander's successor, Nicholas I, had been known before his accession as a mere martinet, a good colonel for parade days, wonderful in detecting soiled uniforms, terrible in administering petty punishments. It seems like the story of stupid Brutus over again. Altered circumstances made a new man of him; and few things are more strange than the change wrought in his whole bearing and look by that week of energy in climbing his brother's throne. The great article in Nicholas's creed was a complete, downright faith in despotism, and in himself as despotism's apostle. Hence he hated, above all things, a limited monarchy. He told De Custine that a pure monarchy or pure republic he could understand; but that anything between these he could not understand. Of his former rule of Poland, as constitutional monarch, he spoke with loathing. Of this hate which Nicholas felt for liberal forms of government there yet remain monuments in the great museum of the Kremlin. That museum holds an immense number of interesting things, and masses of jewels and plate which make all other European collections mean. The visitor wanders among clumps of diamonds and sacks of pearls and a nauseating wealth of rubies and sapphires and emeralds. There rise rows upon rows of jewelled cimeters, and vases and salvers of gold, and old saddles studded with diamonds and with stirrups of gold--presents of frightened Asiatic satraps or fawning European allies. There too are the crowns of Muscovy, of Russia, of Kazan, of Astrakhan, of Siberia, of the Crimea, and, pity to say it, of Poland. And next this is an index of despotic hate--for the Polish sceptre is broken and flung aside. Near this stands the full-length portrait of Alexander I, and at his feet are grouped captured flags of Hungary and Poland--some with blood-marks still upon them. But below all, far beneath the feet of the Emperor, in dust and ignominy and on the floor, is flung the _very_ Constitution of Poland--parchment for parchment, ink for ink, good promise for good promise--which Alexander gave with so many smiles, and which Nicholas took away with so much bloodshed. And not far from this monument of the deathless hate Nicholas bore that liberty he had stung to death stands a monument of his admiration for straightforward tyranny, even in the most dreaded enemy his house ever knew. Standing there is a statue in the purest of marble, the only statue in those vast halls. It has the place of honor. It looks proudly over all that glory and keeps ward over all that treasure; and that statue, in full majesty of imperial robes, and bees, and diadem, and face, is of the First Napoleon. Admiration of his tyrannic will has at last made him peaceful sovereign of the Kremlin. This spirit of absolutism took its most offensive form in Nicholas's attitude toward Europe. He was the very incarnation of reaction against revolution, and he became the demigod of that horde of petty despots who infest Central Europe. Whenever, then, any tyrant's lie was to be baptized, he stood its godfather; whenever any God's truth was to be crucified, he led on those who passed by, reviling and wagging their heads. Whenever these oppressors revived some old feudal wrong, Nicholas backed them in the name of religion; whenever their nations struggled to preserve some great right, Nicholas crushed them in the name of law and order. With these pauper princes his children intermarried, and he fed them with his crumbs and clothed them with scraps of his purple. The visitor can see today, in every one of their dwarf palaces, some of his malachite vases or porcelain bowls or porphyry columns. But the people of Western Europe distrusted him as much as their rulers worshipped; and some of these same presents to their rulers have become trifle-monuments of no mean value in showing that popular idea of Russian policy. Foremost among these stand those two bronze masses of statuary in front of the Royal Palace at Berlin, representing fiery horses restrained by strong men. Pompous inscriptions proclaim these presents from Nicholas; but the people, knowing the man and his measures, have fastened upon one of these curbed steeds the name of "Progress Checked," and on the other "Retrogression Encouraged." A few days before Nicholas's self-will brought him to his deathbed we saw him ride through the St. Petersburg streets with no pomp and no attendants, yet in as great pride as ever despotism gave a man. At his approach, nobles uncovered and looked docile, soldiers faced about and became statues, long-bearded peasants bowed to the ground with the air of men on whose vision a miracle flashes. For there was one who could make or mar all fortunes--the absolute owner of street and houses and passers-by--one who owned the patent and dispensed the right to tread that soil, to breathe that air, to be glorified in that sunlight and amid those snow crystals. And he looked it all. Though at that moment his army was entrapped by military stratagem, and he himself was entrapped by diplomatic stratagem, that face and form were proud and confident as ever. There was in this attitude toward Europe--in this standing forth as the representative man of absolutism, and breasting the nineteenth century--something of greatness; but in his attitude toward Russia this greatness was wretchedly diminished. For, as Alexander I was a good man enticed out of goodness by the baits of Napoleon, Nicholas was a great man scared out of greatness by the ever-recurring phantom of the French Revolution. In those first days of his reign, when he enforced loyalty with grape-shot and halter, Nicholas dared much and stood firm; but his character soon showed another side. Fearless as he was before bright bayonets, he was an utter coward before bright ideas. He laughed at the flash of cannon, but he trembled at the flash of a new living thought. Whenever, then, he attempted a great thing for his nation, he was sure to be scared back from its completion by fear of revolution. And so, today, he who looks through Russia for Nicholas's works finds a number of great things he had done, but each is single, insulated, not preceded logically, not followed effectively. Take, as an example of this, his railway-building. His own pride and Russian interest demanded railways. He scanned the world with that keen eye of his, saw that American energy was the best supplement to Russian capital; his will darted quickly, struck afar, and Americans came to build his road from St. Petersburg to Moscow. Nothing can be more complete. It is an air-line road, and so perfect that the traveller finds few places where the rails do not meet, before and behind him, in the horizon. The track is double, the rails very heavy and admirably ballasted; station-houses and engine-houses are splendid in build, perfect in arrangement, and surrounded by neat gardens. The whole work is worthy of the Pyramid builders. The traveller is whirled by culverts, abutments, and walls of dressed granite, through cuttings where the earth on either side is carefully paved or turfed to the summit. Ranges of Greek columns are reared as crossings in the midst of broad marshes, lions' heads in bronzed iron stare out upon vast wastes where never rose even the smoke from a serf's kennel. All this seems good; and a ride of four hundred miles through such glories rarely fails to set the traveller at chanting the praises of the Emperor who conceived them. But when the traveller notes that complete isolation of the work from all conditions necessary to its success, his praises grow fainter. He sees that Nicholas held back from continuing the road to Odessa, though half the money spent in making the road an imperial plaything would have built a good, solid extension to that most important seaport; he sees that Nicholas dared not untie police regulations, and that commerce is wretchedly meagre. Contrary to what would obtain under a free system, this great public work found the country wretched and left it wretched. The traveller flies by no ranges of trim palings and tidy cottages; he sees the same dingy groups of huts here as elsewhere, the same cultivation looking for no morrow, the same tokens that the laborer is not thought worthy of his hire. This same tendency to great single works, this same fear of great connected systems, this same timid isolation of great creations from principles essential to their growth, is seen, too, in Nicholas's church-building. Foremost of all the edifices on which Nicholas lavished the wealth of the empire stands the Isak Church in St. Petersburg. It is one of the largest and certainly the richest cathedral in Christendom. All is polished pink granite and marble and bronze. On all sides are double rows of Titanic columns, each a single block of polished granite with bronze capital. Colossal masses of bronze statuary are grouped over each front; high above the roof and surrounding the great drums of the domes are lines of giant columns in granite bearing giant statues in bronze; and crowning all rises the vast central dome, flanked by its four smaller domes, all heavily plated with gold. The church within is one gorgeous mass of precious marbles and mosaics and silver and gold and jewels. On the tabernacle of the altar, in gold and malachite, on the screen of the altar, with its pilasters of lapis lazuli and its range of malachite columns fifty feet high, were lavished millions on millions. Bulging from the ceilings are massy bosses of Siberian porphyry and jasper. To decorate the walls with unfading pictures, Nicholas founded an establishment for mosaic work, where sixty pictures were commanded, each demanding, after all artistic labor, the mechanical labor of two men for four years. Yet this vast work is not so striking a monument of Nicholas's luxury as of his timidity. For this cathedral and some others almost as grand were, in part at least, results of the deep wish of Nicholas to wean his people from their semi-idolatrous love for dark, confined, filthy sanctuaries, like those of Moscow; but here again is a timid purpose and half result; Nicholas dared set no adequate enginery working at the popular religious training or moral training. There had been such an organization, the Russian Bible Society, favored by Alexander I; but Nicholas swept it away at one stroke of the pen. Evidently, he feared lest Scriptural denunciations of certain sins in ancient politics might be popularly interpreted against certain sins in modern politics. The corruption system in Russia is old, organized, and respectable. Stories told of Russian bribes and thefts exceed belief only until one has been on the ground. Nicholas began well. He made an imperial progress to Odessa, was welcomed in the morning by the governor in full pomp and robes and flow of smooth words; and at noon the same governor was working in the streets with ball and chain as a convict. But against such a chronic moral evil no government is so weak as your so-called "strong" government. Nicholas set out one day for the Kronstadt arsenals to look into the accounts there; but before he reached them, stores, storehouses, and account-books were in ashes. So at last Nicholas folded his arms and wrestled no more. For, apart from the trouble, there came ever in his dealings with thieves that old timid thought of his, that, if he examined too closely their chief tenure, they might examine too closely his despot tenure. We have shown this vague fear in Nicholas's mind thus at length and in different workings, because thereby alone can be grasped the master-key to his dealings with the serf system. Toward his toiling millions Nicholas always showed sympathy. Let news of a single wrong to a serf get through the hedges about the Russian majesty, and woe to the guilty master! Many of these wrongs came to Nicholas's notice; and he came to hate the system, and tried to undermine it. Opposition met him, of course; not so much the ponderous laziness of Peter's time as an opposition, polite and elastic, which never ranted and never stood up--for then Nicholas would have throttled it and stamped upon it. But it did its best to entangle his reason and thwart his action. He was told that the serfs were well-fed, well-housed, well-clothed, well-provided with religion; were contented, and had no wish to leave their owners. Now Nicholas was not strong at spinning sham reasons nor subtle at weaving false conscience; but, to his mind, the very fact that the system had so degraded a man that he could laugh and dance and sing, while other men took his wages, his wife, and homestead, was the crowning argument against the system. Then the political economists beset him, proving that without forced labor Russia must sink into sloth and poverty. Yet all this could not shut out from Nicholas's sight the great black fact in the case. He saw, and winced as he saw, that, while other European nations, even under despots, were comparatively active and energetic, his own people were sluggish and stagnant; that, although great thoughts and great acts were towering in the West, there were in Russia, after all his galvanizing, no great authors, or scholars, or builders, or inventors, but only two main products of Russian civilization, dissolute lords and abject serfs. Nearly twenty years went by in this timid dropping of grains of salt into a putrid sea. But at last, in 1842, Nicholas issued his ukase creating the class of "contracting peasants." Masters and serfs were empowered to enter into contracts, the serf receiving freedom, the master receiving payment in instalments. It was a moderate innovation, very moderate--nothing more than the first failure of the First Alexander. Yet even here that old timidity of Nicholas nearly spoiled what little good was hidden in the ukase. Notice after notice was given to the serf-owners that they were not to be molested, that no emancipation was contemplated, and that the ukase contained "nothing new." The result was as feeble as the policy. A few serfs were emancipated, and Nicholas halted. The revolutions of 1848 increased his fear of innovation; and finally the war in the Crimea took from him the power of innovation. The great man died. We saw his cold dead face, in the midst of crowns and crosses, very pale then, very powerless then. One might stare at him, then, as at a serf's corpse; for he who had scared Europe during thirty years lay before us that day as a poor lump of chilled brain and withered muscle. And we stood by, when, amid chanting and flare of torches and roll of cannon, his sons wrapped him in his shroud of gold thread, and lowered him into the tomb of his fathers. But there was shown in those days far greater tribute than the prayers of bishops or the reverence of ambassadors. Massed about the Winter Palace and the Fortress of Peter and Paul, stood thousands on thousands who, in far-distant serf-huts, had put on their best, had toiled wearily to the capital to give their last mute thanks to one who for years had stood between their welfare and their owners' greed. Sad that he had not done more. Yet they knew that he had wished their freedom and loathed their wrongs; for that came up the tribute of millions. The new Emperor, Alexander II, had never been hoped for as one who could light the nation from his brain; the only hope was that he might warm the nation somewhat from his heart. He was said to be of a weak, silken fibre. The strength of the family was said to be concentrated in his younger brother, Constantine. But soon came a day when the young Czar revealed to Europe not merely kindliness, but strength. While his father's corpse was still lying within his palace, he received the diplomatic body. As the Emperor entered the audience-room he seemed feeble, indeed, for such a crisis. That fearful legacy of war seemed to weigh upon his heart; marks of plenteous tears were upon his face; Nesselrode, though old and bent and shrunk in stature, seemed stronger than his young master. But as he began his speech it was seen that a strong man had mounted the throne. With earnestness he declared that he sorrowed over the existing war; but that, if the Holy Alliance had been broken, it was not through the fault of Russia. With bitterness he turned toward the Austrian minister, Esterhazy, and hinted at Russian services in 1848, and Austrian ingratitude. Calmly then, not as one who spoke a part but as one who announced a determination, he declared: "I am anxious for peace; but if the terms at the approaching congress are incompatible with the honor of my nation, I will put myself at the head of my faithful Russia and die sooner than yield." Strong as Alexander showed himself by these words, he showed himself stronger by acts. A policy properly mingling firmness and conciliation brought peace to Europe and showed him equal to his father; a policy mingling love of liberty with love of order brought the dawn of prosperity to Russia and showed him the superior of his father. The reforms now begun were not stinted as of old, but free and hearty. In rapid succession were swept away restrictions on telegraphic communication, on printing, on the use of the Imperial Library, on strangers entering the country, on Russians leaving the country. A policy in public works was adopted which made Nicholas's greatest efforts seem petty; a vast network of railways was begun. A policy in commercial dealings with Western Europe was adopted, in which Alexander, though not apparently so imposing as Nicholas, was really far greater; he dared advance toward freedom of trade. But soon rose again that great problem of old--that problem ever rising to meet a new autocrat, and, at each appearance, more dire than before--the serf question. The serfs in private hands now numbered more than twenty millions; above them stood more than a hundred thousand owners. The princely strength of the largest owners was best represented by a few men possessing over a hundred thousand serfs each, and, above all, by Count Scheremetieff, who boasted three hundred thousand. The luxury of the large owners was best represented by about four thousand men possessing more than a thousand serfs each. The pinching propensities of the small owners were best represented by fifty thousand men possessing fewer than twenty serfs each. The serfs might be divided into two great classes. The first comprised those working under the old or _corvée_ system, giving usually three days in the week to the tillage of the owner's domain; the second comprised those working under the new or _obrok_ system, receiving a payment fixed by the owner and assessed by the community to which the serfs belonged. The character of the serfs had been moulded by the serf system. They had a simple shrewdness, which, under a better system, had made them enterprising; but this quality soon degenerated into cunning and cheatery--the weapons which the hopelessly oppressed always use. They had a reverence for things sacred, which under a better system might have given the nation a strengthening religion; but they now stood among the most religious peoples on earth and among the least moral. To the picture of Our Lady of Kazan they were ever ready to burn wax and oil; to truth and justice they constantly omitted the tribute of mere common honesty. They kept the Church fasts like saints; they kept the Church feasts like satyrs. They had curiosity, which under a better system would have made them inventive; but their plough, in common use, was behind the plough described by Vergil. They had a love of gain, which under a better system would have made them hardworking; but it took ten serfs to do, languidly and poorly, what two free men in America would do quickly and well. They were naturally a kind people; but let one example show how serfage can transmute kindness. It is a rule, well known in Russia, that when an accident occurs, interference is to be left to the police. Hence you would see a man lying in a fit, and the bystanders giving no aid, but waiting for the authorities. Some years ago, as all the world remembers, a theatre took fire in St. Petersburg, and crowds of people were burned or stifled. The whole story is not so well known. The theatre was but a great temporary wooden shed--such as is run up every year at the holidays, in the public squares. When the fire burst forth, crowds of peasants hurried to the spot; but though they heard the shrieks of the dying, separated from them only by a thin planking, only one man in that multitude dared cut through and rescue some of the sufferers. The serfs, when standing for great ideas, would die rather than yield. Napoleon I learned this at Eylau; Napoleon III learned it at Sebastopol; yet in daily life they were slavish beyond belief. On a certain day, in the year 1855, the most embarrassed man in all Russia was doubtless our excellent American minister. The serf coachman employed at wages was called up to receive his discharge for drunkenness. Coming into the presence of a sound-hearted American democrat, who never had dreamed of one mortal kneeling to another, Ivan throws himself on his knees, presses his forehead to the minister's feet, fawns like a tamed beast, and refuses to move until the minister relieves himself from this nightmare of servility by a full pardon. Time after time we have entered the serf field and serf hut; have seen the simple round of serf toils and sports; have heard the simple chronicles of self joys and sorrows: but whether his livery were filthy sheepskin or gold-laced caftan; whether he lay on carpets at the door of his master, or in filth on the floor of his cabin; whether he gave us cold, stupid stories of his wrongs, or flippant details of his joys; whether he blessed his master or cursed him--we have wondered at the power which a serf system has to degrade and imbrute the image of God. But astonishment was increased a thousand-fold at study of the reflex influence for evil upon the serf-owners themselves, upon the whole free community, upon the very soil of the whole country. On all those broad plains of Russia, on the daily life of that serf-owning aristocracy, on the whole class which was neither of serfs nor serf-owners, the curse of God was written in letters so big and so black that all mankind might read them. Farms were untilled, enterprise deadened, invention crippled, education neglected; life was of little value; labor was the badge of servility, laziness the very badge and passport of gentility. Despite the most specious half-measures, despite all efforts to galvanize it, to coax life into it, to sting life into it, the nation remained stagnant. Not one traveller who does not know that the evils brought on that land by the despotism of the autocrat were as nothing compared to that dark network of curses spread over it by a serf-owning aristocracy. Into the conflict with this evil Alexander II entered manfully. Having been two years upon the throne, having made a plan, having stirred some thought through certain authorized journals, he inspired the nobility in three of the northwestern provinces to memorialize him in regard to emancipation. Straightway an answer was sent conveying the outlines of the Emperor's plan. The period of transition from serfage to freedom was set at twelve years; at the end of that time the serf was to be fully free and possessor of his cabin, with an adjoining piece of land. The provincial nobles were convoked to fill out these outlines with details as to the working out by the serfs of a fair indemnity to their masters. The whole world was stirred; but that province in which the Czar hoped most eagerly for a movement to meet him--the province where beat the old Muscovite heart, Moscow--was stirred least of all. Every earnest throb seemed stifled there by that strong aristocracy. Yet Moscow moved at last. Some nobles who had not yet arrived at the callous period; some professors in the University who had not yet arrived at the heavy period, breathed life into the mass, dragged on the timid, fought off the malignant. The movement had soon a force which the retrograde party at Moscow dared not openly resist. So they sent answers to St. Petersburg, apparently favorable; but wrapped in their phrases were hints of difficulties, reservations, impossibilities. All this studied suggestion of difficulties profited the reactionists nothing. They were immediately informed that the imperial mind was made up, that the business of the Muscovite nobility was now to arrange that the serf be freed in twelve years, and put in possession of homestead and enclosure. The next movement of the retrograde party was to misunderstand everything. The plainest things were found to need a world of debate; the simplest things became entangled; the noble assemblies played solemnly a ludicrous game of cross-purposes. Straightway came a notice from the Emperor which, stripped of official verbiage, said that they must understand. This set all in motion again. Imperial notices were sent to province after province, explanatory documents were issued, good men and strong were set to talk and work. The nobility of Moscow made another move. To scare back the advancing forces of emancipation, they elected, as provincial leaders, three nobles bearing the greatest names of old Russia and haters of the new ideas. To defeat these came a successor of St. Gregory and St. Bavon, one who accepted the thought that when God advances great ideas the Church must marshal them. Philarete, Metropolitan of Moscow, upheld emancipation and condemned its foes; his earnest eloquence carried all. The work progressed unevenly--nobles in different governments differed in plan and aim--an assembly of delegates was brought together at St. Petersburg to combine and perfect a resultant plan under the eye of the Emperor. The Grand Council of the Empire, too, was set at the work. It was a most unpromising body, yet the Emperor's will stirred it. The opposition now made the most brilliant stroke of its campaign. Just as James II of England prated of toleration and planned the enslavement of all thought, so now the bigoted plotters against emancipation began to prate of constitutional liberty. But Alexander held right on. It was even hinted that visions of a constitutional monarchy pleased him. But then came tests of Alexander's strength far more trying. Masses of peasants, hearing vague news of emancipation--learning, doubtless, from their masters' own spiteful lips that the Emperor was endeavoring to tear away property in serfs--took the masters at their word, and determined to help the Emperor. They rose in insurrection. To the bigoted serf-owners this was a godsend. They paraded it in all lights; therewith they threw life into all the old commonplaces on the French Revolution; timid men of good intentions wavered. The Czar would surely now be scared back. Not so. Alexander now hurled his greatest weapon, and stunned reaction in a moment. He freed all the serfs on the Imperial estates without reserve. Now it was seen that he was in earnest; the opponents were disheartened; once more the plan moved and dragged them on. But there came other things to dishearten the Emperor; and not least of these was the attitude of those who moulded popular thought in England. Be it said here, to the credit of France, that from her came constant encouragement in the great work. Wolowski, Mazade, and other true-hearted men sent forth from leading reviews and journals words of sympathy, words of help, words of cheer. Not so England. Just as in the French Revolution of 1789, while yet that Revolution was noble and good, while yet Lafayette and Bailly held it, leaders in English thought, who had quickened the opinions which had caused the Revolution, sent malignant prophecies and prompted foul blows, so in this battle of Alexander against a foul wrong they seized this time of all times to show all the wrongs and absurdities of which Russia ever had been or ever might be guilty--criticised, carped, sent much haughty advice, depressing sympathy, and malignant prophecy. Review articles, based on no real knowledge of Russia, announced a desire for serf-emancipation, and then, in the modern English way, with plentiful pyrotechnics of antithesis and paradox, threw a gloomy light into the skilfully pictured depths of imperial despotism, official corruption, and national bankruptcy. They revived Old World objections, which, to one acquainted with the most every-day workings of serfage, were ridiculous. It was said that if the serfs lost the protection of their owners they might fall a prey to rapacious officials. As well might it have been argued that a mother should never loose her son from her apron-strings. It was said that "Serfism excludes pauperism"--that, if the serf owes work to his owner in the prime of life, the owner owes support to his serf in the decline of life. No lie could be more absurd to one who had seen Russian life. We were first greeted, on entering Russia, by a beggar who knelt in the mud; at Kovno eighteen beggars besieged the coach, and Kovno was hardly worse than scores of other towns; within a day's ride from St. Petersburg a woman begged piteously for means to keep soul and body together, and finished the refutation of that sonorous English theory, for she had been discharged from her master's service in the metropolis as too feeble, and had been sent back to his domain, afar in the country, on foot and without money. It was said that freed peasants would not work. But, despite volleys of predictions that they would not work if freed, despite volleys of assertions that they could not work if freed, the peasants when set free, and not crushed by regulations, have sprung to their work with an earnestness and continued it with a vigor at which the philosophers of the old system stand aghast. The freed peasants of Wologda compare favorably with any in Europe. And when the old tirades had grown stale, English writers drew copiously from a new source--from _La Vérité sur la Russie_--pleasingly indifferent to the fact that the author's praise in a previous work had notoriously been a thing of bargain and sale, and that there was in full process of development a train of facts which led the Parisian courts to find him guilty of demanding in one case a blackmail of fifty thousand rubles. All this argument outside the empire helped the foes of emancipation inside the empire. But the Emperor met the whole body of his opponents with an argument overwhelming. On March 5, 1861, he issued his manifesto making the serfs free! He had struggled long to make some satisfactory previous arrangement; his motto now became: Emancipation first, arrangement afterward. Thus was the result of the great struggle decided. NIKOLAI TURGENIEFF In 1857 the Emperor Alexander II first raised the question of emancipation, and declared it was time for it to be accomplished. As might have been expected, the idea of emancipation met with great opposition from different sides. Yet the opposition was directed not so much against the personal emancipation of the serfs as against the appropriation to them, when liberated, of the land they held. The proprietors, assembled in different committees which were established all over the empire to discuss the matter, ended even by giving up their right of possession in the person of the serf, and, mentioning only their right to the land occupied by the peasants, claimed pecuniary indemnities if that land were delivered to them. The honorable gentlemen whom the Emperor intrusted with this important task, forming a committee _ad hoc_, declared from the first as a principle that the emancipated peasants must have land, about in the same quantity as they had hitherto occupied, on condition of a pecuniary indemnity to be paid to the proprietors. That principle prevailed, thanks to the Emperor's firmness. During the discussion of that question in Russia, I published several writings on the matter. My chief purpose and warmest desire being to secure to the peasants as soon as possible their personal freedom and complete liberty of labor, I proposed a method of emancipation, claiming the entire property of their homes; that is to say, cottages and orchards and a small quantity of arable land, and that without the slightest indemnity from them to their masters, which was to be left to the Government. A sum of about two hundred million dollars, according to my calculation, would have been sufficient for it. Meanwhile I inherited a small landed property, inhabited by about four hundred persons of both sexes. I hastened to put in practice my method. I abandoned one-third of the land, including their houses, to the peasants, and let them the two remaining thirds for a certain sum of money. In my agreement with them it was settled that, if the emancipation which the Government was preparing (1859) turned out more advantageous to them, they were to accept it in preference to mine. It is needless to add that, when the official emancipation was proclaimed, the peasants and I found it more advantageous and adopted it. If I were to compare the two methods, I should say that mine tended chiefly to the liberty of the peasants' person and labor, and that of the Government to give them a quantity of land sufficient for their subsistence. The great inconvenience of this last method was that it obliged the peasants to pay a heavy rent to redeem their land, and that during forty-nine years! Nevertheless, their passion to possess land was so strong that they cheerfully submitted to such hard conditions. The redeeming rent _(rente de rachat_) was to be paid by the peasants, either in money, according to an estimate fixed by law, or by work done for the proprietor, _i.e.,_ by _corvies_. This last mode of payment, sanctioned by law only for a short period, disappeared more and more every day, so that the majority of the peasants no longer worked for the proprietors, but paid their rent in money. I can say more: About two millions of peasants were entirely liberated with regard to the proprietors, thanks to an immediate payment of the redeeming rent. In such cases their annual rent (_redevance_) was capitalized, and the Government gave the proprietor an obligation for the amount of the capital, which bore five per cent, interest, and was to be redeemed in the course of forty-nine years by annual drawings (_tirages_); the peasants then to pay their redeeming rent to Government, and thus become free and independent proprietors. For some time both peasants and proprietors seemed to find this proceeding the most profitable, and agreements of this kind became more and more frequent every day. I can hardly say how happy I was when I saw for the first time my dear, beloved, and deeply respected Russian peasants free at last, and proprietors of the land they had till then cultivated as serfs! What a change! The same creatures, serfs yesterday, became men, conscious of their human dignity; their aspect, their language, are those of free men. In the mean while, in getting rid of their serfdom, they preserved their usual good sense, wisdom, and _bonhomie_; no impertinence, no arrogance whatever can be detected in them; they are full of self-respect, yet polite. I saw them discussing with the authorities some business of theirs. They maintained their new rights, and, when wrong, never hesitated to acknowledge it. Every district and every _chef-lieu_ had every year an assembly of deputies who named a permanent committee for three years. This committee was charged with the municipal administration, under the control of the assembly. Everyone was called by law to the election of the deputies. It happened in many places that the peasants were the more numerous and could therefore dispose of all the places in the administrative committee. They were so informed. "No," was their answer; "we want one or two members of the committee taken from among ourselves; they will watch over our interests. As for defending them, as for action, the nobles we name will do it better than we, for they are more learned than we are." In one of the assemblies the nobles, moved by the tact and moderation of the peasants, insisted and almost forced a peasant to become president of the administrative committee of the district. When the salary of the members of the committee had to be decided, the peasants usually considered it too high for them, and, letting the nobles and the merchants have it, got it diminished by one-half for themselves. All the district assemblies, after voting for the formation of the administrative committee, named the deputies for the larger assembly in the chief town in the province, which in its turn chose among its own members the members for the provincial administrative committee. The central committee seemed to interest the peasants less than those of the districts, and this too is owing to their modesty and moderation. Another field was offered by the new law to the activity of the peasants in the local or municipal tribunals. The law united several rural communes in one canton _(volost)._ Each canton, each commune, chose an _ancient_, assisted by a _conseil_ In every canton was a tribunal to judge the peasants' affairs. Ancients and judges were elected by peasants; noblemen were not submitted to these tribunals, but it has happened that some of them preferred having their difficulties with peasants settled by municipal judges rather than by the usual tribunals. This jurisdiction, established merely for peasants, had great importance, owing chiefly to the privilege of deciding not only according to general law, but also according to local customs. Opportunities were not wanting for the good sense of the peasants to show itself in these municipal tribunals and councils, and the success of the institution was clear to everyone. (1844-1861) CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY, Embracing the period covered in this volume, Daniel Edwin Wheeler Events treated at length are here indicated in large type; the numerals following give volume and page. Separate chronologies or the various nations, and of the careers of famous persons, will be found in the INDEX VOLUME, with references showing where the several events are fully treated. 1844 - "INVENTION OF THE TELEGRAPH." 1845 - Florida and Texas admitted to the United States; beginning of President Folk's Administration. - Sir John Franklin sails on his last search for the Northwest Passage. - England and France war on the Argentine Confederation. 1846 - War between the United States and Mexico; General Taylor captures Monterey; California and New Mexico occupied by United States troops. See "THE ACQUISITION OF CALIFORNIA." - Treaty with England arranges the Oregon boundary. - Elias Howe patents the sewing-machine. - "THE DISCOVERY OF NEPTUNE." - Great Famine begins in Ireland. Corn-Law agitation at its height in England, "REPEAL OF THE ENGLISH CORN LAWS." - Unsuccessful uprising of the Poles. Cracow annexed to Austria. Election of Pope Pius IX; his reforms. See "THE REFORMS OF Pius IX." 1847 - General Taylor conquers Northern Mexico; Battle of Buena Vista. General Scott captures Vera Cruz, marches on the city of Mexico, wins repeated battles, and enters the capital in triumph, September 14th. See "THE MEXICAN WAR." - "FAMINE IN IRELAND." - Tumult occasioned in Italy by the papal reforms; civil war of the _Sonderbund_ in Switzerland; France finally subjugates Morocco. See "THE FALL OF ABD-EL-KADER." 1848 - Peace signed between Mexico and the United States; cession of large territory by Mexico. - "DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA." - The Mormons settle in Utah. See "MIGRATIONS OF THE MORMONS." - Italian uprisings in Milan and Sicily; Sardinia grants a constitution to its subjects. See "THE REVOLUTION OF FEBRUARY IN FRANCE." Gathering of a workingmen's convention in Paris. - Outbreak of revolution in Vienna (March 13th) and in Berlin (March 18th). See "REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENTS IN GERMANY." - Meeting of the German Parliament at Frankfort. - Venice declares itself a republic. Sardinia begins war for the "liberation of Italy"; Battle of Custozza. Bloody outbreak of communists in Paris. Unsuccessful revolts in Poland and Bohemia. - "THE REVOLT OF HUNGARY." - Storming of Vienna by government troops. Flight of Pius IX from Rome. Louis Napoleon elected President of France. - The English crowd back the Boers in Southern Africa; the Boers migrate and form the Transvaal Republic. 1849 - Zachary Taylor inaugurated as President of the United States. - Rome declared a republic. The Sardinian troops defeated by the Austrians at Novara, and the Sardinian King resigns his throne to his son, Victor Emmanuel II. Austria again dominant in Italy. Rome stormed by French troops. See "RISE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC." - Venice surrenders to the Austrians after nearly a year of siege. Hungary declared a republic; her forces crushed by the - Russians in aid of Austria. - Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein at war. A German confederation established. - "LIVINGSTONE'S AFRICAN DISCOVERIES." - The Punjab annexed to British India. 1850 - Death of President Taylor. - Congress passes the Clay compromise measures admitting California as a free State, but compelling the return of fugitive slaves by the North. - Tai-ping rebellion begins in China. 1851 - First great world's fair in the Crystal Palace, London. - "DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN AUSTRALIA." - "THE COUP D'ÉTAT OF LOUIS NAPOLEON." Napoleon dismisses the Assembly, and is elected President of France for ten years. 1852 - Napoleon III proclaimed Emperor of France. 1853 - Franklin Pierce inaugurated as President of the United States. - The Gadsden Purchase made from Mexico, including Southern Arizona and New Mexico. Surveys begin for a transcontinental railroad. - Dr. Kane sets out on his arctic explorations. - Russia quarrels with Turkey, claims a protectorate over all Christians in Turkish dominions; war begun, a Turkish fleet destroyed at Sinope. England and France interfere. - Great successes of the Tai-pings in China. 1854 - Passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill intensifies the slavery agitation in the United States; formation of the Republican party. See "THE RISE OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY." - France and England declare war against Russia; bombardment of Bomarsund; the allies land in the Crimea; battles of the Alma, of Balaklava, of Inkerman, siege of Sebastopol. - "THE OPENING OF JAPAN." 1855 - "THE CAPTURE OF SEBASTOPOL." - Russian successes against the Turks in Asia. - Overthrow of Santa Ana, Dictator of Mexico. - Opening of a railway across the Isthmus of Panama. 1856 - Tumult and bloodshed in Kansas. - Walker, the filibuster, seizes temporary control of Nicaragua. - End of the Crimean War; Russia withdraws from the Danubian Provinces. - Second war between England and China; Persians attack Afghanistan. 1857 - James Buchanan inaugurated as President of the United States. The decision in the Dred Scott case extends slavery into the Territories. - Mormon Revolt in Utah. - "THE INDIAN MUTINY." Nana Sahib heads the insurgents; recapture of Delhi and Cawnpore; relief of Lucknow. - England ends the Persian War. France joins England against China. - The first Atlantic cable laid and broken. 1858 - Jews admitted to share in the government of England. - End of the Indian Mutiny; the East Indian Company transfers its authority to the Crown. 1859 - John Brown's Raid. - Charles Darwin announces the doctrine of evolution. See "DARWIN PUBLISHES His ORIGIN OF SPECIES." - Russia captures Shamyl, and subdues the entire region of the Caucasus. - Cavour, the chief statesman of Sardinia, arranges an alliance with France and begins a war with Austria to establish "United Italy." - "BATTLES OF MAGENTA AND SOLFERINO." - Lombardy added to the Italian Kingdom; Venice remains Austrian. 1860 - Garibaldi and his "Thousand" attack the Neapolitans in Sicily; they capture Naples. Victor Emmanuel seizes the States of the Church. See "THE KINGDOM OF ITALY ESTABLISHED." 1860 - French and English troops seize Peking and dictate peace terms. - Election of Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate, as President of the United States. South Carolina secedes from the Union. 1861 - "EMANCIPATION OF RUSSIAN SERFS." 
32690	----	[Illustration: Charlotte Corday, after the assassination of Marat, apprehended by the Jacobin mob Painting by J. Weerts.] THE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS A COMPREHENSIVE AND READABLE ACCOUNT OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY, EMPHASIZING THE MORE IMPORTANT EVENTS, AND PRESENTING THESE AS COMPLETE NARRATIVES IN THE MASTER-WORDS OF THE MOST EMINENT HISTORIANS NON-SECTARIAN NON-PARTISAN NON-SECTIONAL ON THE PLAN EVOLVED FROM A CONSENSUS OF OPINIONS GATHERED FROM THE MOST DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARS OF AMERICA AND EUROPE, INCLUDING BRIEF INTRODUCTIONS BY SPECIALISTS TO CONNECT AND EXPLAIN THE CELEBRATED NARRATIVES, ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY, WITH THOROUGH INDICES, BIBLIOGRAPHIES, CHRONOLOGIES, AND COURSES OF READING EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ROSSITER JOHNSON, LL.D. ASSOCIATE EDITORS CHARLES F. HORNE, Ph.D. JOHN RUDD, LL.D. _With a staff of specialists_ _VOLUME XIV_ [Illustration] The National Alumni COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY THE NATIONAL ALUMNI CONTENTS VOLUME XIV PAGE _An Outline Narrative of the Great Events_, xiii CHARLES F. HORNE _The Battle of Lexington (A.D. 1775)_, 1 RICHARD FROTHINGHAM _The Battle of Bunker Hill (A.D. 1775)_, 19 JOHN BURGOYNE JOHN HENEAGE JESSE JAMES GRAHAME _Canada Remains Loyal to England_ _Montgomery's Invasion (A.D. 1775)_, 30 JOHN M'MULLEN _Signing of the American Declaration of Independence (A.D. 1776)_, 39 THOMAS JEFFERSON JOHN A. DOYLE _The Defeat of Burgoyne at Saratoga (A.D. 1777)_, 51 SIR EDWARD SHEPHERD CREASY _The First Victory of the American Navy (A.D. 1779)_, 68 ALEXANDER SLIDELL MACKENZIE _Joseph II Attempts Reform in Hungary (A.D. 1780)_, 85 ARMINIUS VAMBERY _Siege and Surrender of Yorktown (A.D. 1781)_, 97 HENRY B. DAWSON LORD CORNWALLIS _British Defence of Gibraltar (A.D. 1782)_, 116 FREDERICK SAYER _Close of the American Revolution (A.D. 1782)_, 137 JOHN ADAMS JOHN JAY BENJAMIN FRANKLIN HENRY LAURENS JOHN M. LUDLOW _Settlement of American Loyalists in Canada (A.D. 1783)_, 156 SIR JOHN G. BOURINOT _The First Balloon Ascension (A.D. 1783)_, 163 HATTON TURNOR _Framing of the Constitution of the United States (A.D. 1787)_, 173 ANDREW W. YOUNG JOSEPH STORY _Inauguration of Washington_ _His Farewell Address (A.D. 1789-1797)_, 197 JAMES K. PAULDING AND GEORGE WASHINGTON _French Revolution: Storming of the Bastille (A.D. 1789)_, 212 WILLIAM HAZLITT Hamilton Establishes the United States Bank (A.D. 1791), 230 ALEXANDER HAMILTON AND LAWRENCE LEWIS, JR. _The Negro Revolution in Haiti (A.D. 1791)_ _Toussaint Louverture Establishes the Dominion of his Race_, 236 CHARLES WYLLYS ELLIOTT _Republican France Defies Europe_ _The Battle of Valmy (A.D. 1792)_, 252 ALPHONSE M. L. LAMARTINE _The Invention of the Cotton-gin (A.D. 1793)_ _Enormous Growth of the Cotton Industry in America_, 271 CHARLES W. DABNEY R. B. HANDY DENISON OLMSTED _The Execution of Louis XVI (A.D. 1793)_ _Murder of Marat: Civil War in France_, 295 THOMAS CARLYLE _The Reign of Terror (A.D. 1794)_, 311 FRANÇOIS P. G. GUIZOT _The Downfall of Poland (A.D. 1794)_, 330 SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON _The Rise of Napoleon_ _The French Conquest of Italy (A.D. 1796)_, 339 SIR WALTER SCOTT _Overthrow of the Mamelukes (A.D. 1798)_ _The Battle of the Nile_, 353 CHARLES KNIGHT _Jenner Introduces Vaccination (A.D. 1798)_, 363 SIR THOMAS J. PETTIGREW _Universal Chronology (A.D. 1775-1799)_, 377 JOHN RUDD LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS VOLUME XIV PAGE _Charlotte Corday, after the assassination of Marat, apprehended by the Jacobin mob (page 305)_, Painting by J. Weerts. Frontispiece _The Siege of Yorktown_, 108 Painting by L. C. A. Couder. AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, CONNECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE GREAT EVENTS (THE EPOCH OF REVOLUTION) CHARLES F. HORNE "After us, the deluge!" said Louis XV of France. He died in 1774, and the remaining quarter of the eighteenth century witnessed social changes the most radical, the most widespread which had convulsed civilization since the fall of Rome. "As soon as our peasants seek education," said Catharine II of Russia to one of her ministers, "neither you nor I will retain our places." Catharine, one of the shrewdest women of her day, judged her own people by the more advanced civilization of Western Europe. She saw that it was the growth of ideas, the intellectual advance, which had made Revolution, world-wide Revolution, inevitable. If we look back to the beginnings of Teutonic Europe, we see that the social system existing among the wild tribes that overthrew Rome, was purely republican. Each man was equal to every other; and they merely conferred upon their sturdiest warrior a temporary authority to lead them in battle. When these Franks (the word itself means freemen) found themselves masters of the imperial, slave-holding world of Rome, the two opposing systems coalesced in vague confusing whirl, from which emerged naturally enough the "feudal system," the rule of a warrior aristocracy. Gradually a few members of this nobility rose above the rest, became centres of authority, kings, ruling over the States of modern Europe. The lesser nobles lost their importance. The kings became absolute in power and began to regard themselves as special beings, divinely appointed to rule over their own country, and to snatch as much of their neighbors' as they could. Secure in their undisputed rank, the monarchs tolerated or even encouraged the intellectual advance of their subjects, until those subjects saw the selfishness of their masters, saw the folly of submission and the ease of revolt, saw the world-old truth of man's equality, to which tyranny and misery had so long blinded them. Of course these ideas still hung nebulous in the air in the year 1775, and Europe at first scarce noted that Britain was having trouble with her distant colonies. Yet to America belongs the honor of having first maintained against force the new or rather the old and now re-arisen principles. England, it is true, had repudiated her Stuart kings still earlier; but she had replaced their rule by that of a narrow aristocracy, and now George III, the German king of the third generation whom she had placed as a figure-head upon her throne, was beginning, apparently with much success, to reassert the royal power. George III was quite as much a tyrant to England as he was to America, and Britons have long since recognized that America was fighting their battle for independence as well as her own. The English Parliament was not in those days a truly representative body. The appointment of a large proportion of its members rested with a few great lords; other members were elected by boards of aldermen and similar small bodies. The large majority of Englishmen had no votes at all, though the plea was advanced that they were "virtually represented," that is, they were able to argue with and influence their more fortunate brethren, and all would probably be actuated by similar sentiments. This plea of "virtual representation" was now extended to America, where its absurdity as applied to a people three thousand miles away and engaged in constant protest against the course of the English Government, became at once manifest, and the cry against "Taxation without representation" became the motto of the Revolution. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION Parliament, finding the Americans most unexpectedly resolute against submitting to taxation, would have drawn back from the dispute; but King George insisted on its continuance. He could not realize the difference between free-born Americans long trained in habits of self-government, and the unfortunate peasantry of Continental Europe, bowed by centuries of suffering and submission. He thought it only necessary to bully the feeble colonists, as Louis XIV had bullied the Huguenots by dragonnades. Soldiers were sent to America to live on the inhabitants; and in Boston, General Gage to complete the terror sent out a force to seize the patriot leaders and destroy their supplies. Then came "the shot heard round the world." Instead of cringing humbly, the Americans resisted. Several were shot down at Lexington, and in return the remainder attacked the soldiers with a resolution and skill which the peasantry of an open country had never before displayed against trained troops. These farmers had learned fighting from the Indians, they had learned self-reliance, and each man acting for himself, seeking what shelter he could find from tree or fence, fired upon the Britons, until the most famous soldiery of Europe fled back to Boston "their tongues hanging out of their mouths like dogs."[1] The astonished Britons clamored that their opponents did not "fight fair," meaning that the peasants did not stand still like sheep to be slaughtered, or rush in bodies to be massacred by the superior weapons and trained manoeuvres of the professional troops. Therein the objection touched the very point of the world's advance: the common people, the country folk of one land at least, had ceased to be mere unthinking cattle; they acted from intellect, not from sheer brute despair. Within a week of Lexington an army of the Americans were gathered round Boston to defend their homes from further invasions by these foreigners. The English tried the issue again, and attacked the Americans at Bunker Hill.[2] The steady valor of the regular troops, engaged on a regular battle-ground, enabled them to drive the poorly armed peasants from their intrenchments. But the victory was won at such frightful expense of life to the British that it was not until forty years had brought forgetfulness, that they tried a similar assault in military form against the Americans at New Orleans. The farmers could shoot as well as think. After Bunker Hill the Revolution was recognized as a serious war, not a mere mad uprising of hopelessness. Washington took control of the destinies of America. Congress proclaimed its Independence.[3] At this period Northern America became unfortunately and apparently permanently divided against itself. Canada, largely from its French origin and language, had always stood apart from the more southern English-speaking colonies. There had been repeated wars between them. But now when England had seized possession of Canada and within fifteen years of that event the southern colonists were fighting England, it did seem probable or at least hopeful that all America might unite against the common foe. So thought the American Congress, and despatched a force, not against the inhabitants of Canada, but against the British troops there, to enable the Canadians to join in the revolt. The Canadians refused; the British forces were brilliantly handled, and the tiny American army, totally unequal to coping single-handed against the enemy and against the gigantic natural difficulties of the expedition, failed--failed gloriously but totally--and only roused anew against the southland the antagonism of the Canadians, mingled now with contempt and a growing admiration and even loyalty toward the Britons.[4] Canada became a depot into which British troops were poured, and when Lord Howe and his army had captured New York, the English Government planned a powerful expedition to descend the Hudson valley, unite with Howe and so isolate New England from the less violently rebellious colonies farther south. On the success or failure of this undertaking hung the fate not only of the new continent, but one seeing the consequences now is almost tempted to say, the fate of the world. The command was intrusted to Burgoyne, an experienced and capable general. Troops were given to him, it was thought, amply sufficient to overbear all opposition. There was no regular army to resist him. But the American farmers of the region rallied in their own defence, they hung like a cloud around Burgoyne's advance, they cut off his supplies, they became ever more numerous in his front, until at last he fought desperate battles against them, could not advance, and was compelled to surrender his entire army.[5] Instantly the war assumed a new aspect. Europe awoke to the fact that England was engaged against a worthy foe. France, humbled in India, driven from America, defeated on her own borders, saw her opportunity for revenge, revenge against her hated rival. Moreover, the spirit of freedom which had been proclaimed by Voltaire, by Rousseau, by a thousand other voices, was awake in France; it saw its own cause, hopeless at home, being triumphantly defended in America; and it cried enthusiastically that the heroes should have aid. Spain, too, had sore causes of complaint against England. So France first and then Spain made alliance with the Americans. George III by his obstinacy had plunged his realm into sore difficulties, had given the final blow to any possible reëstablishment of kingly power in England. The most immediate shock caused the Britons by the changed aspect of the world, was given them by Paul Jones, an American naval officer. He took advantage of the French alliance to secure a little fleet, part American but mostly French; and with it he cruised boldly around Great Britain, bidding defiance to her navy and plundering her shores, in some faint imitation of the depredations her troops had committed in America. The fight of Jones in his flagship against the English frigate Serapis has become world-famous, and the grim resolution with which the American won his way to victory in face of apparent impossibilities, taught the Britons that on sea as well as on land they had met their match.[6] For a time the island kingdom bore up against all her foes. The most famous of the many sieges of Gibraltar occurred; and for three years the French and Spanish fleets sought unavailingly to batter the stubborn rock into surrender.[7] But at last a second British army was trapped and captured at Yorktown by the French and Americans.[8] Then England yielded. It was impossible for her longer to undertake the enormous task of transporting troops across three thousand miles of ocean. She needed them at home; and many of the English people had always protested against the fratricidal war with their brethren in America. American independence was acknowledged, and England was left free to demand a peace of her European foes.[9] The antagonisms roused by this bitter war, in which British troops had repeatedly and cruelly ravaged the American lands and homes, were long in fading. Canada had stood loyally by Great Britain, and the break between the northern land and the other colonies was sharp and final. Even throughout the States which had become independent, a portion of the people had loyally upheld British rule; and on these unfortunates the liberated Americans threatened to wreak vengeance for all that had been endured. Thus came about a vast emigration of the "Tories" or Loyalists from the new States to Canada. They brought with them the bitterness of the expatriated, and Canada became yet more firmly British, more "anti-American" than before.[10] THE FRENCH REVOLUTION Of even greater influence were the consequences of the American Revolution as affecting Continental Europe. Estimates have differed widely as to just how much the French Revolution was caused by that across the ocean. Certain it is that Frenchmen had been enthusiastic in America's cause, that many of their officers fought under Washington, and returned home deeply infused with devotion to liberty. It has long been a popular error, encouraged by historians of a former generation, that the French Revolution arose from a starving peasantry driven to madness by intolerable oppression. We know better now. It was in Paris, not in the provinces, that the revolt began. Judged by modern standards, of course, the French peasantry were oppressed; but if we measure their condition by that of surrounding nations at the time, by the Austrians under kind-hearted Maria Theresa, or even by the Prussians under Frederick the Great, most advanced of the upholders of "benevolent despotism," in whose lands serfs were still "sold with the soil" compared with these, Frenchmen were free, prosperous, and happy. It is even true that the lower classes were unready for change. In Hungary, Joseph II, son of Maria Theresa, attempted a complete and radical reform of all abuses, and the mob rose in fury against his innovations, compelled him to restore their "ancient customs." They had grown familiar with their chains.[11] The French Revolution was an uprising of the middle classes. Its great leaders in the earlier stages were Mirabeau, son of a baron, and America's own friend the Marquis Lafayette. Even the King, Louis XVI, at least partly approved the movement. The States-General was summoned in 1789 after an interval of nearly two centuries, to decide on the best way of relieving the country from its financial embarrassments. This gathering was soon resolved into a National Assembly which insisted on giving France a constitution, making it a limited instead of an absolute monarchy.[12] On the 14th of July the mob of Paris rose in sudden fury and stormed the ancient state prison, the Bastille. The King sent no troops to resist them; and from that time his power was but a shadow. His overthrow, however, was not yet contemplated. The Revolution was still to be one of dignity and intellect. An entire year after the fall of the Bastille, the president of the National Assembly could still say in addressing a deputation of Americans headed by Paul Jones: "It was by helping you to conquer liberty that the French learned to understand and love it. The hands which went to burst your fetters were not made to wear them themselves; but, more fortunate than you, it is our King himself, it is a patriot and citizen king, who has called us to the happiness which we are enjoying that happiness which has cost us merely sacrifices, but which you paid for with torrents of blood Courage broke your chains; reason has made ours fall off." But alas! reason was soon to lose control. The lower classes had wakened to a sense of their power, they began to use it savagely. Hatred of the haughty aristocracy, long smoldering, burst everywhere into flame. Mobs of country peasants plundered isolated chateaux and slew their inmates. Meanwhile the National Assembly had been abolishing all titles of nobility; the vast estates of the clergy were confiscated. The aristocrats began fleeing from France, and the possessions of all who fled were declared forfeited to the new government. Imagine the tumult that this upheaval caused to the rest of Europe. News travelled slowly in those days; but these "_émigrés_," these banished nobles, were palpable evidences of what had occurred. The common folk everywhere, especially along the French borders in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, celebrated the French triumph as their own. Liberty was at hand! For them, too, it would come presently! Murmurings of revolt grew loud. The monarchs of Europe, terrified, took up the cause of the _Émigrés_ as their own. France was threatened with invasion. King Louis threw in his lot with his royal friends and attempted flight from Paris. He was caught and brought back a prisoner. A foreign army marched against France. This invasion was met and repelled in the Battle of Valmy (1792), not an extensive or bloody contest in itself, but one of incalculable importance in human history, because like Bunker Hill it showed that a new force had arisen to upset all the military calculations of the past. Raw troops could now be found to meet on equal terms with veterans. Liberty, hitherto an impalpable idea, a mere phantom in the brains of a few philosophers, proved able to call up armies at a word, able physically to hold its own against embattled despotism. Even the German Goethe wrote of Valmy, "In this place and on this day a new era of the world begins."[13] France however had already gone mad with its success. Even before Valmy wholesale murder had begun in Paris. The prisons were broken open and a thousand "aristocrats" hideously butchered without trial. The day after Valmy, the land was proclaimed a republic. King Louis was put on trial for his life, and in January, 1793, was executed.[14] Frenchmen began fighting among themselves. The reign of "terror" began as that of kings was abolished. Chiefs of each faction accused all others as traitors, and executions by the guillotine rose to fifty a day. "We must have a hundred!" cried Robespierre, the lunatic leader of the moment. The excesses in Paris roused civil war, and through all France men slew one another in the name of liberty. In Brittany the peasants even rose in support of royalty, and refused allegiance to the republic. Never has the most hideous brutality of man been more openly displayed than in those days of vengeance. The intellectual classes of Europe everywhere shrank back, terrified at the spectre they had evoked. The Reign of Terror ended in 1794 with the downfall and execution of its leader, Robespierre.[15] The civil war was trampled out in blood. And with Titanic energy the French Republic defended itself against its foreign foes. All Europe had joined in a coalition against France--all the kings, that is. Their subjects still doubted, still hoped, still looked anxiously to France to see if freedom were in truth a possibility. Then from the ranks of the liberated French arose great generals, aristocrats no longer, but men of the people, fitted to lead the new-born armies of the people. Greatest of these and grimmest of them was Napoleon Bonaparte. He taught the timorous legislative authorities of Paris how to reassert their dominion over "King Mob," who had ruled them and the country for four hideous years. He checked a new uprising by a discharge of well-stationed cannon, aimed to kill. Order being thus established at home, the French began to pour over the border in attack upon those kings who had threatened them. In many places they were still received as the apostles of liberty. Holland, Switzerland, the Rhine lands, became allies or dependents of France. Kings were helpless against them. To the spirit of Republicanism, to the impassioned courage of Frenchmen, was added the genius of Bonaparte. He conquered Italy. He plundered her and sent home priceless treasures to delight his countrymen and fill their exhausted treasury. He became the man of the hour.[16] Far beyond France spread the influence of her example. In Eastern Europe, Poland was roused against the despoilers who had already seized a portion of her territory. She began a rebellion under Kosciuszko, who, like Lafayette, had imbibed the love of freedom in America. But Poland was crushed by the overpowering forces of Russia, Prussia, and Austria. Her remaining provinces were divided among the plunderers and the last fragment of her independence was extinguished.[17] In Haiti also there was a rebellion. The negroes of the island rose against their Spanish masters and drove them into exile. Toussaint Louverture, often regarded as the greatest hero of his race, led the insurgents victoriously against both Spanish and English forces, and finally with French help established the independence of Haiti as a negro republic. He became administrator as well as warrior. After a few successful years he was treacherously seized and held prisoner by Napoleon; but the monument he had erected for himself, the "Black Republic," continued and still continues to exist.[18] In a period so tumultuous as was this quarter-century, one could scarce expect that the world would make much progress in science. Men were too intent on sterner things. There was, however, just before the beginning of the French Revolution, one event which to a future generation may seem more important even than to us. Aërial navigation began. The first successful balloon ascension was made by the Montgolfier brothers, and the sport became for a while a Parisian fad.[19] Still more noteworthy was the employment of vaccination as a preventive against smallpox. The system was introduced in England by Jenner in 1798, and its use spread rapidly over Europe. More recently it has been employed against other diseases as well, and the resultant increase in the general health of mankind is beyond computation.[20] FORMATION OF THE UNITED STATES Meanwhile America, the source or at least the partial source of all this republican tumult, was having difficulties of her own. The peace after Yorktown left her exhausted. The Articles of Confederation which had sufficed to hold the colonies together under the stress of their great necessity, had proven insufficient to give any real unity. Each little colony was jealous of its own power as an independent State: and for a time it seemed as if they must disband, that America must become like Europe, divided into a collection of separate ever-jarring States, devastated by constant wars. That this was not our own country's fate, we owe to Washington. Our saviour in war, he became also our saviour in peace. After watching through some years of this disorganization, he emerged from the peaceful retirement of his country home, to urge that some means be taken to form a more perfect union. It was largely through his instrumentality that the convention of 1787 was called; and he presided over its labors. Again and again it seemed as if the convention would disband in anarchy. The antagonisms between the various delegates appeared irreconcilable. But always there was Washington to control the flaming passions, to insist upon moderation, upon union. And in the end that convention drew up the Constitution of the United States.[21] Even then there remained the task of persuading each State to accept the Constitution; and this also would have been impossible had not all men looked to Washington to act as president of the new republic, to do justice between its differing sections. Relying equally on his wisdom, his caution, and his incorruptibility, the States intrusted to him a power they would have conferred upon no other. Two years were occupied in arranging matters, and then, in 1789, the date so memorable to France as well, the new government was organized, Washington was inaugurated as President, and the United States began its stupendous career as a single nation.[22] There were difficulties, of course. American finances seemed as hopelessly involved as had been those of monarchical France. But this rock upon which the French projects of reform all split, our government escaped by the financial genius of Alexander Hamilton.[23] The natural summons of the French that the Americans should become their allies, should help them to win freedom in their turn, proved another source of danger. A thousand others were not lacking. But Washington's conservatism preserved his government through all. He proclaimed America's well-known policy toward the European States: "Friendship with all, entangling alliances with none." The material prosperity of the country increased rapidly. Eli Whitney invented the cotton-gin, which made cotton cultivation so remunerative that the South grew rich, and also, alas, became wedded to the system of slavery under which it was supposed cotton could best be produced.[24] For eight years Washington guided the destinies of the infant nation, and then resigned his authority to one of his lieutenants. So that really the great leader's influence continued predominant until he died in December, 1799. Already however the more radical of Americans were grown restive under his restraining hand. Federalism, conservatism, was losing its control upon the national counsels, a change toward wider and more radical democracy was at hand. OVERTHROW OF DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE The year of 1799 saw also a great change in France, but in the opposite direction, away from democracy and back toward absolutism. The French government, grown rash with its marvellous victories, had dared to despatch Bonaparte, its ablest general, on an ill-considered and somewhat fanciful expedition to distant Egypt. There his fleet was destroyed by the English admiral, Nelson, in the celebrated Battle of the Nile, and he and his army were left practically prisoners in Egypt.[25] Deprived of his genius at home, French military affairs went badly. Monarchy rallied from its momentary depression. Russian troops drove the French from Switzerland; Germans defeated them along the Rhine. The Constitutional government in Paris was proving impracticable, its members incompetent. Bonaparte saw his opportunity. Leaving his army in Egypt, he escaped the British and returned alone to France. In Paris he summoned the soldiers around him, entered the hall of the assembly, and, much as Cromwell had once done in England, bade the wrangling members disperse. Then he constructed a new government, which he still called a republic. But as he himself was to be First Consul, with almost all power in his own hands, the Government proved in reality as complete an absolutism as that of Richelieu or Louis XIV. The first European attempt at democracy had perished. The new century was to learn what this suddenly risen dictator would establish in its stead. [FOR THE NEXT SECTION OF THIS GENERAL SURVEY SEE VOLUME XV] FOOTNOTES: [1] See _Battle of Lexington_, page 1. [2] See _Battle of Bunker Hill_, page 19. [3] See _Signing of American Declaration of Independence_, page 39. [4] See _Canada Remains Loyal to England_, page 30. [5] See _Defeat of Burgoyne at Saratoga_, page 51. [6] See _First Victory of the American Navy_, page 68. [7] See _British Defence of Gibraltar_, page 116. [8] See _Siege and Surrender of Yorktown_, page 97. [9] See _Close of the American Revolution_, page 137. [10] See _Settlement of American Loyalists in Canada_, page 156. [11] See _Joseph II Attempts Reform in Hungary_, page 85. [12] See _French Revolution: Storming of the Bastille_, page 212. [13] See _Republican France Defies Europe: Battle of Valmy_, page 252. [14] See _Execution of Louis XVI: Murder of Marat: Civil War in France_, page 295. [15] See _The Reign of Terror_, page 311. [16] See _The Rise of Napoleon: The French Conquest of Italy_, page 339. [17] See _The Downfall of Poland_, page 330. [18] See _Negro Revolution in Haiti_, page 236. [19] See _First Balloon Ascension_, page 63. [20] See _Jenner Introduces Vaccination_, page 363. [21] See _Framing of the Constitution of the United States_, page 173. [22] See _Inauguration of Washington: His Farewell Address_, page 197. [23] See _Hamilton Establishes the United States Bank_, page 230. [24] See _Invention of the Cotton-gin_, page 271. [25] See _Overthrow of the Mamelukes: The Battle of the Nile_, page 353. BATTLE OF LEXINGTON A.D. 1775 RICHARD FROTHINGHAM April 19, 1775, is memorable in American history as the day on which occurred the first bloodshed of the Revolution. The two combats of the day--that at Lexington and that at Concord--really constituted one action, which ended in a long running fight. As a single action, it is usually called the Battle of Lexington. The engagement at Concord, separately considered, is called the Battle of Concord, or the Concord Fight. At both places, on that fateful day, "the embattled farmers" faced the troops of their own sovereign, to resist what was felt to be an unwarranted and menacing invasion of American liberties. While the soldiers of King George were doing their own loyal duty, the New England yeomen who "fired the shot heard round the world" obeyed a conviction still more compelling. Hence came the first physical struggle in what was already an "irrepressible conflict" of principle between Englishmen and their kinsmen on the American continent. The Revolutionary War was begun on the part of the Americans for the redress of grievances for which they had exhausted all peaceable endeavors to secure a remedy. It was afterward successfully waged for independence. Repressive measures of Great Britain in the colonies began with the issuance by colonial courts of "writs of assistance." These writs authorized officers to summon assistance in searching certain premises under certain laws. In the first attempt to enforce such a writ--in Massachusetts, 1761--the policy was defeated through popular opposition, brilliantly led by James Otis, who by a single speech produced such an effect that John Adams said of the occasion: "Then and there was the first scene of the first act of opposition to the arbitrary claims of Great Britain. Then and there the child Independence was born." Later grievances were those of the Stamp Act (1765), taxes on paints, glass, etc. (1767), and the Boston Port Bill (1774), ordering the closing of the port on account of the rebellious acts of the citizens, especially in the "tea-party" of December 16, 1773, when they threw into the waters of the harbor from English ships tea valued at eighteen thousand pounds. As early as 1770 had occurred the "Boston Massacre," a collision between citizens and British soldiers, which added to earlier discontents and increased the sensitiveness to later irritations. The first Continental Congress, in 1774, though strongly pacific, favored resistance to aggressions of the Crown. During this year and the next two Provincial Congresses met in Massachusetts, the collection of military stores was authorized, a committee of safety was created, and the "minute-men" were organized. General Gage, the British commander in Boston, denounced these proceedings as treasonable. Parliament vainly sought to adjust the difficulties and enforce its authority. Conciliatory efforts on both sides failing, it soon became evident that a conflict of arms was at hand. By April 4, 1775, it was known in Boston that reënforcements were on their way to General Gage. Soon after their arrival he was ready for the movement with which the narrative of Frothingham, a high authority on these events, begins. General Gage had, in the middle of April, 1775, about four thousand men in Boston. He resolved, by a secret expedition, to destroy the magazines collected at Concord. This measure was neither advised by his council nor by his officers. It was said that he was worried into it by the importunities of the Tories; but it was undoubtedly caused by the energetic measures of the Whigs. His own subsequent justification was that when he saw an assembly of men, unknown to the Constitution, wresting from him the public moneys and collecting warlike stores, it was alike his duty and the dictate of humanity to prevent the calamity of civil war by destroying these magazines. His previous belief was that should the Government show a respectable force in the field, seize the most obnoxious patriot leaders, and proclaim a pardon for others, it would come off victorious. On April 15th the grenadiers and light infantry, on the pretence of learning a new military exercise, were relieved from duty; and at night the boats of the transport ships which had been hauled up to be repaired were launched and moored under the sterns of the men-of-war. These movements looked suspicious to the vigilant patriots, and Dr. Joseph Warren sent intelligence of them to Hancock and Adams, who were in Lexington. It was this timely notice that induced the committee of safety to take additional measures for the security of the stores in Concord, and to order (on the 17th) cannon to be secreted, and a part of the stores to be removed to Sudbury and Groton. On Tuesday, April 18th, General Gage directed several officers to station themselves on the roads leading out of Boston, and prevent any intelligence of his intended expedition that night from reaching the country. A party of them, on that day, dined at Cambridge. The committees of safety and supplies, which usually held their sessions together, also met that day, at Wetherby's Tavern, in Menotomy, now West Cambridge. Elbridge Gerry and Colonels Orne and Lee, of the members, remained to pass the night. Richard Devens and Abraham Watson rode in a chaise toward Charlestown, but, soon meeting a number of British officers on horseback, they returned to inform their friends at the tavern, waited there until the officers rode by, and then rode to Charlestown. Gerry immediately sent an express to Hancock and Adams, that "eight or nine officers were out, suspected of some evil design," which caused precautionary measures to be adopted at Lexington. Richard Devens, an efficient member of the committee of safety, soon received intelligence that the British troops were in motion in Boston, and were certainly preparing to go into the country. Shortly after, the signal agreed upon in this event was given, namely, a lantern hung out from the North Church steeple in Boston, when Devens immediately despatched an express with this intelligence to Menotomy and Lexington. All this while General Gage supposed his movements were a profound secret, and as such in the evening communicated them in confidence to Lord Percy. But as this nobleman was crossing the Common on his way to his quarters he joined a group of men engaged in conversation, when one said, "The British troops have marched, but will miss their aim!" "What aim?" inquired Lord Percy. "Why, the cannon at Concord." He hastened back to General Gage with this information, when orders were immediately issued that no person should leave town. Dr. Warren, however, a few minutes previous, had sent Paul Revere and William Dawes into the country. Revere, about eleven o'clock, rowed across the river to Charlestown, was supplied by Richard Devens with a horse, and started to alarm the country. Just outside of Charlestown Neck he barely escaped capture by British officers; but leaving one of them in a clay-pit, he got to Medford, awoke the captain of the minute-men, gave the alarm on the road, and reached the Rev. Jonas Clark's house in safety, where the evening before a guard of eight men had been stationed to protect Hancock and Adams. It was midnight as Revere rode up and requested admittance. William Monroe, the sergeant, told him that the family, before retiring to rest, had requested that they might not be disturbed by noise about the house. "Noise!" replied Revere; "you'll have noise enough before long--the regulars are coming out!" He was then admitted. Dawes, who went out through Roxbury, soon joined him. Their intelligence was "that a large body of the King's troops, supposed to be a brigade of twelve or fifteen hundred, had embarked in boats from Boston, and gone over to Lechmere's Point, in Cambridge, and it was suspected they were ordered to seize and destroy the stores belonging to the colony, then deposited at Concord." The town of Lexington, Major Phinney writes, is "about twelve miles northwest of Boston and six miles southeast of Concord. It was originally a part of Cambridge, and previous to its separation from that town was called the Cambridge Farms." The act of incorporation bears date March 20, 1712. The inhabitants consist principally of hardy and independent yeomanry. In 1775 the list of enrolled militia bore the names of over one hundred citizens. The road leading from Boston divides near the centre of the village in Lexington. The part leading to Concord passes to the left, and that leading to Bedford to the right, of the meeting-house, and form two sides of a triangular green or common, on the south corner of which stands the meeting-house, facing directly down the road leading to Boston. At the right of the meeting-house, on the opposite side of Bedford road, was Buckman's Tavern. About one o'clock the Lexington alarm-men and militia were summoned to meet at their usual place of parade, on the Common; and messengers were sent toward Cambridge for additional information. When the militia assembled, about two o'clock in the morning, Captain John Parker, its commander, ordered the roll to be called, and the men to load with powder and ball. About one hundred thirty were now assembled with arms. One of the messengers soon returned with the report that there was no appearance of troops on the roads; and the weather being chilly, the men, after being on parade some time, were dismissed with orders to appear again at the beat of the drum. They dispersed into houses near the place of parade--the greater part going into Buckman's Tavern. It was generally supposed that the movements in Boston were only a feint to alarm the people. Revere and Dawes started to give the alarm in Concord, and soon met Dr. Samuel Prescott, a warm patriot, who agreed to assist in arousing the people. While they were thus engaged they were suddenly met by a party of officers, well armed and mounted, when a scuffle ensued, during which Revere was captured; but Prescott, by leaping a stone-wall, made his escape. The same officers had already detained three citizens of Lexington, who had been sent out the preceding evening to watch their movements. All the prisoners, after being questioned closely, were released near Lexington, when Revere rejoined Hancock and Adams, and went with them toward Woburn, two miles from Clark's house. While these things were occurring, the British regulars were marching toward Concord. Lieutenant-Colonel Smith, at the head of about eight hundred troops--grenadiers, light infantry, and marines--embarked about ten o'clock at the foot of Boston Common, in the boats of the ships of war. They landed, just as the moon arose, at Phipps' Farm, now Lechmere Point, took an unfrequented path over the marshes, where in some places they had to wade through water, and entered the old Charlestown and West Cambridge road. No martial sounds enlivened their midnight march; it was silent, stealthy, inglorious. The members of the "Rebel Congress" arose from their beds at the tavern in Menotomy, to view them. They saw the front pass on with the regularity of veteran discipline. But when the centre was opposite the window, an officer and file of men were detached toward the house. Gerry, Orne, and Lee, half-dressed as they were, then took the hint and escaped to an adjoining field, while the British in vain searched the house. Colonel Smith had marched but few miles when the sounds of guns and bells gave the evidence that, notwithstanding the caution of General Gage, the country was alarmed. He detached six companies of light infantry, under the command of Major Pitcairn, with orders to press forward and secure the two bridges at Concord, while he sent a messenger to Boston for a reënforcement. The party of officers who had been out joined the detachment, with the exaggerated report that five hundred men were in arms to oppose the King's forces. Major Pitcairn, as he advanced, succeeded in capturing everyone on the road until he arrived within a mile and a half of Lexington Meeting-house, when Thaddeus Bowman succeeded in eluding the advancing troops, and, galloping to the Common, gave the first certain intelligence to Captain Parker of their approach. It was now about half-past four in the morning. Captain Parker ordered the drum to beat, alarm-guns to be fired, and Sergeant William Monroe to form his company in two ranks a few rods north of the meeting-house. It was a part of "the constitutional army," which was authorized to make a regular and forcible resistance to any open hostility by the British troops; and it was for this purpose that this gallant and devoted band on this memorable morning appeared on the field. Whether it ought to maintain its ground or whether it ought to retreat would depend upon the bearing and numbers of the regulars. It was not long in suspense. At a short distance from the parade-ground the British officers, regarding the American drum as a challenge, ordered their troops to halt, to prime and load, and then to march forward in double-quick time. Meantime sixty or seventy of the militia had collected, and about forty spectators, a few of whom had arms. Captain Parker ordered his men not to fire unless they were fired upon. A part of his company had time to form in a military position facing the regulars; but while some were joining the ranks and others were dispersing, the British troops rushed on, shouting and firing, and their officers--among whom was Major Pitcairn--exclaiming, "Ye villains! ye rebels! disperse!" "Lay down your arms!" "Why don't you lay down your arms?" The militia did not instantly disperse nor did they proceed to lay down their arms. The first guns, few in number, did no execution. A general discharge followed, with fatal results. A few of the militia who had been wounded, or who saw others killed or wounded by their side, no longer hesitated, but returned the fire of the regulars. Jonas Parker, John Monroe, and Ebenezer Monroe, Jr., and others, fired before leaving the line; Solomon Brown and James Brown fired from behind a stone wall; one other person fired from the back door of Buckman's house; Nathan Monroe, Lieutenant Benjamin Tidd and others retreated a short distance and fired. Meantime the regulars continued their fire as long as the militia remained in sight, killing eight and wounding ten. Jonas Parker, who repeatedly said he never would run from the British, was wounded at the second fire, but he still discharged his gun, and was killed by a bayonet. "A truer heart did not bleed at Thermopylæ." Isaac Muzzy, Jonathan Harrington, and Robert Monroe were also killed on or near the place where the line was formed. "Harrington's was a cruel fate. He fell in front of his own house, on the north of the Common. His wife at the window saw him fall and then start up, the blood gushing from his breast. He stretched out his hands toward her as if for assistance, and fell again. Rising once more on his hands and knees, he crawled across the road toward his dwelling. She ran to meet him at the door, but it was to see him expire at her feet." Monroe was the standard-bearer of his company at the capture of Louisburg. Caleb Harrington was killed as he was running from the meeting-house after replenishing his stock of powder; Samuel Hadley and John Brown, after they had left the Common; Asahel Porter, of Woburn, who had been taken prisoner by the British as he was endeavoring to effect his escape. The British suffered but little; a private of the Tenth regiment and probably one other were wounded, and Major Pitcairn's horse was struck. Some of the Provincials retreated up the road leading to Bedford, but most of them across a swamp to a rising ground north of the Common. The British troops formed on the Common, fired a volley, and gave three huzzas in token of victory. Colonel Smith, with the remainder of the troops, soon joined Major Pitcairn, and the whole detachment marched toward Concord, about six miles distant, which it reached without further interruption. After it left Lexington six of the regulars were taken prisoners. Concord was described in 1775, by Ensign Berniere, as follows: "It lies between two hills, that command it entirely. There is a river runs through it, with two bridges over it. In summer it is pretty dry. The town is large, and contains a church, jail, and court-house; but the houses are not close together, but in little groups." The road from Lexington entered Concord from the southeast along the side of a hill, which commences on the right of it about a mile below the village, rises abruptly from thirty to fifty feet above the road, and terminates at the northeasterly part of the square. The top forms a plain, which commands a view of the town. Here was the liberty-pole. The court-house stood near the present county-house. The main branch of the Concord River flows sluggishly, in a serpentine direction, on the westerly and northerly side of the village, about half a mile from its centre. This river was crossed by two bridges--one called the Old South bridge--the other, by the Rev. William Emerson's, called the Old North bridge. The road beyond the North bridge led to Colonel James Barrett's, about two miles from the centre of the town. Dr. Samuel Prescott, whose escape has been related, gave the alarm in Lincoln and Concord. It was between one and two o'clock in the morning when the quiet community of Concord were aroused from their slumbers by the sounds of the church-bell. The committee of safety, the military officers, and prominent citizens assembled for consultation. Messengers were despatched toward Lexington for information; the militia and minute-men were formed on the customary parade-ground near the meeting-house; and the inhabitants, with a portion of the militia, under the able superintendence of Colonel Barrett, zealously labored in removing the military stores into the woods and by-places for safety. These scenes were novel and distressing; and among others, Rev. William Emerson, the patriotic clergyman, mingled with the people, and gave counsel and comfort to the terrified women and children. Reuben Brown, one of the messengers sent to obtain information, returned with the startling intelligence that the British regulars had fired upon his countrymen at Lexington, and were on their march for Concord. It was determined to go out to meet them. A part of the military of Lincoln--the minute-men, under Captain William Smith, and the militia, under Captain Samuel Farrar--had joined the Concord people; and after parading on the Common, some of the companies marched down the Lexington road until they saw the British two miles from the centre of the town. Captain Minot, with the alarm company, remained in town, and took possession of the hill near the liberty-pole. He had no sooner gained it, however, than the companies that had gone down the road returned with the information that the number of the British was treble that of the Americans. The whole then fell back to an eminence about eighty rods distance, back of the town, where they formed in two battalions. Colonel Barrett, the commander, joined them here, having previously been engaged in removing the stores. They had scarcely formed when the British troops appeared in sight at the distance of a quarter of a mile, and advancing with great celerity--their arms glittering in the splendor of early sunshine. But little time remained for deliberation. Some were in favor of resisting the further approach of the troops; while others, more prudent, advised a retreat and a delay until further reënforcements should arrive. Colonel Barrett ordered the militia to retire over the North bridge to a commanding eminence about a mile from the centre of the town. The British troops then marched into Concord in two divisions--one by the main road, and the other on the hill north of it, from which the Americans had just retired. They were posted in the following manner: The grenadiers and light infantry, under the immediate command of Colonel Smith, remained in the centre of the town. Captain Parsons, with six light companies, about two hundred men, was detached to secure the North bridge and to destroy stores, who stationed three companies, under Captain Laurie, at the bridge, and proceeded with the other three companies to the residence of Colonel Barrett, about two miles distant, to destroy the magazines deposited there. Captain Pole, with a party, was sent, for a similar purpose, to the South bridge. The British met with but partial success in the work of destruction, in consequence of the diligent concealment of the stores. In the centre of the town they broke open about sixty barrels of flour, nearly half of which was subsequently saved; knocked off the trunnions of three iron twenty-four-pound cannon, and burned sixteen new carriage-wheels and a few barrels of wooden trenchers and spoons. They cut down the liberty-pole, and set the court-house on fire, which was put out, however, by the exertions of Mrs. Moulton. The parties at the South bridge and at Colonel Barrett's met with poor success. While engaged in this manner the report of guns at the North bridge put a stop to their proceedings. The British troops had been in Concord about two hours. During this time the minute-men from the neighboring towns had been constantly arriving on the high grounds, a short distance from the North bridge, until they numbered about four hundred fifty. They were formed in line by Joseph Hosmer, who acted as adjutant. It is difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain certainly what companies were present thus early in the day. They came from Carlisle, from Chelmsford, from Westford, from Littleton, and from Acton. The minute-men of Acton were commanded by Captain Isaac Davis, a brave and energetic man. Most of the operations of the British troops were visible from this place of rendezvous, and several fires were seen in the middle of the town. Anxious apprehensions were then felt for its fate. A consultation of officers and of prominent citizens was held. It was probably during this conference that Captain William Smith, of Lincoln, volunteered, with his company, to dislodge the British guard at the North bridge. Captain Isaac Davis, as he returned from it to his ranks, also remarked, "I haven't a man that's afraid to go." The result of this council was that it was expedient to dislodge the guard at the North bridge. Colonel Barrett accordingly ordered the militia to march to it, and to pass it, but not to fire on the King's troops unless they were fired upon. He designated Major John Buttrick to lead the companies to effect this object. Lieutenant-Colonel Robinson volunteered to accompany him. On the march Major Buttrick requested Colonel Robinson to act as his superior, but he generously declined. It was nearly ten o'clock in the morning when the Provincials, about three hundred in number, arrived near the river. The company from Acton was in front, and Major Buttrick, Colonel Robinson, and Captain Davis were at their head. Captains David Brown, Charles Miles, Nathan Barrett, and William Smith, with their companies, and also other companies, fell into the line. Their positions, however, are not precisely known. They marched in double file, and with trailed arms. The British guard, under Captain Laurie, about one hundred in number, were then on the west side of the river, but on seeing the Provincials approach they retired over the bridge to the east side of the river, formed as if for a fight, and began to take up the planks of the bridge. Major Buttrick remonstrated against this and ordered his men to hasten their march. When they had arrived within a few rods of the bridge the British began to fire upon them. The first guns, few in number, did no execution; others followed with deadly effect. Luther Blanchard, a fifer in the Acton company, was first wounded; and afterward Captain Isaac Davis and Abner Hosmer, of the same company, were killed. On seeing the fire take effect Major Buttrick exclaimed, "Fire, fellow-soldiers! for God's sake, fire!" The Provincials then fired, and killed one and wounded several of the enemy. The fire lasted but a few minutes. The British immediately retreated in great confusion toward the main body--a detachment from which was soon on its way to meet them. The Provincials pursued them over the bridge, when one of the wounded of the British was cruelly killed by a hatchet. Part of the Provincials soon turned to the left, and ascended the hill on the east of the main road, while another portion returned to the high grounds, carrying with them the remains of the gallant Davis and Hosmer. Military order was broken, and many who had been on duty all the morning and were hungry and fatigued improved the time to take refreshment. Meantime the party under Captain Parsons--who was piloted by Ensign Berniere--returned from Captain Barrett's house, repassed the bridge where the skirmish took place, and saw the bodies of their companions, one of which was mangled. It would have been easy for the Provincials to have cut them off. But war had not been declared; and it is evident that it had not been fully resolved to attack the British troops. Hence this party of about one hundred were allowed, unmolested, to join the main body. Colonel Smith concentrated his force, obtained conveyances for the wounded, and occupied about two hours in making preparations to return to Boston--a delay that nearly proved fatal to the whole detachment. While these great events were occurring at Lexington and Concord, the intelligence of the hostile march of the British troops was spreading rapidly through the country; and hundreds of local communities, animated by the same determined and patriotic spirit, were sending out their representatives to the battle-field. The minute-men, organized and ready for action, promptly obeyed the summons to parade. They might wait in some instances to receive a parting blessing from their minister, or to take leave of weeping friends; but in all the roads leading to Concord, they were hurrying to the scene of action. They carried the firelock that had fought the Indian, and the drum that beat at Louisburg; and they were led by men who had served under Wolfe at Quebec. As they drew near the places of bloodshed and massacre they learned that in both cases the regulars had been the aggressors--"had fired the first"--and they were deeply touched by the slaughter of their brethren. Now the British had fairly passed the Rubicon. If any still counselled forbearance, moderation, peace, the words were thrown away. The assembling bands felt that the hour had come in which to hurl back the insulting charges on their courage that had been repeated for years, and to make good the solemn words of their public bodies. And they determined to attack on their return the invaders of their native soil. Colonel Smith, about twelve o'clock, commenced his march for Boston. His left was covered by a strong flank-guard that kept the height of land that borders the Lexington road, leading to Merriam's Corner; his right was protected by a brook; the main body marched in the road. The British soon saw how thoroughly the country had been alarmed. It seemed, one of them writes, that "men had dropped from the clouds," so full were the hills and roads of the minute-men. The Provincials left the high grounds near the North bridge and went across the pastures known as "the Great Fields," to Bedford road. Here the Reading minute-men, under Major Brooks, afterward Governor Brooks, joined them; and a few minutes after, Colonel William Thompson, with a body of militia from Billerica and vicinity, came up. It is certain, from the diaries and petitions of this period, that minute-men from other towns also came up in season to fire upon the British while leaving Concord. The Reverend Foster, who was with the Reading company, relates the beginning of the afternoon contest in the following manner: "A little before we came to Merriam's hill we discovered the enemy's flank-guard, of about eighty or one hundred men, who, on their retreat from Concord, kept that height of land, the main body in the road. The British troops and the Americans at that time were equally distant from Merriam's Corner. About twenty rods short of that place the Americans made a halt. The British marched down the hill, with very slow but steady step, without music, or a word being spoken that could be heard. Silence reigned on both sides. As soon as the British had gained the main road, and passed a small bridge near that corner, they faced about suddenly and fired a volley of musketry upon us. They overshot; and no one, to my knowledge, was injured by the fire. The fire was immediately returned by the Americans, and two British soldiers fell dead, at a little distance from each other, in the road, near the brook." The battle now began in earnest, and as the British troops retreated a severe fire was poured in upon them from every favorable position. Near Hardy's hill, the Sudbury company, led by Captain Nathaniel Cudworth, attacked them, and there was a severe skirmish below Brooks' Tavern on the old road north of the school-house. The woods lined both sides of the road which the British had to pass, and it was filled with the minute-men. "The enemy," says Mr. Foster, "was now completely between two fires, renewed and briskly kept up. They ordered out a flank-guard on the left to dislodge the Americans from their posts behind large trees, but they only became a better mark to be shot at." A short and sharp battle ensued. And for three or four miles along these woody defiles the British suffered terribly. Woburn had "turned out extraordinary"; it sent out a force one hundred eighty strong, "well armed and resolved in defence of the common cause." Major Loammi Baldwin, afterward Colonel Baldwin, was with this body. At Tanner brook, at Lincoln bridge, they concluded to scatter, make use of the trees and walls as defences, and thus attack the British. And in this way they kept on pursuing and flanking them. In Lincoln, also, Captain Parker's brave Lexington company again appeared in the field, and did efficient service. "The enemy," says Colonel Baldwin, "marched very fast, and left many dead and wounded and a few tired." Eight were buried in Lincoln graveyard. It was at this time that Captain Jonathan Wilson, of Bedford, Nathaniel Wyman, of Billerica, and Daniel Thompson, of Woburn, were killed. In Lexington, at Fiske's hill, an officer on a fine horse, with a drawn sword in his hand, was actively engaged in directing the troops, when a number of the pursuers, from behind a pile of rails, fired at him with effect. The officer fell, and the horse, in affright, leaped the wall, and ran toward those who had fired. It was here that Lieutenant-Colonel Smith was severely wounded in the leg. At the foot of this hill a personal contest between James Hayward, of Acton, and a British soldier took place. The Briton drew up his gun, remarking, "You are a dead man!" "And so are you!" answered Hayward. The former was killed. Hayward was mortally wounded and died the next day. The British troops, when they arrived within a short distance of Lexington Meeting-house, again suffered severely from the close pursuit and the sharp fire of the Provincials. Their ammunition began to fail, while their light companies were so fatigued as to be almost unfitted for service. The large number of wounded created confusion, and many of the troops rather ran than marched in order. For some time the officers in vain tried to restore discipline. They saw the confusion increase under their efforts, until, at last, they placed themselves in front, and threatened the men with death if they advanced. This desperate exertion, made under a heavy fire, partially restored order. The detachment, however, must have soon surrendered had it not in its extreme peril found shelter in the hollow square of a reënforcement sent to their relief. General Gage received, early in the morning, a request from Colonel Smith for a reënforcement. About nine o'clock he detached three regiments of infantry and two divisions of marines, with two field-pieces, under Lord Percy, to support the grenadiers and light infantry. Lord Percy marched through Roxbury, to the tune of _Yankee Doodle_ to the great alarm of the country. To prevent or to impede his march, the select-men of Cambridge had the planks of the Old bridge, over which he was obliged to pass, taken up; but instead of being removed, they were piled on the causeway on the Cambridge side of the river. Hence Lord Percy found no difficulty in replacing them so as to admit his troops to cross. But a convoy of provisions was detained until it was out of the protection of the main body. This was captured at West Cambridge. According to Gordon, Rev. Dr. Payson led this party. David Lamson, a half-Indian, distinguished himself in the affair. Percy's brigade met the harassed and retreating troops about two o'clock, within half a mile of Lexington Meeting-house. "They were so much exhausted with fatigue," the British historian Stedman writes, "that they were obliged to lie down for rest on the ground, their tongues hanging out of their mouths like those of dogs after a chase." The field-pieces from the high ground below Monroe's Tavern played on the Provincials, and for a short period there was, save the discharge of cannon, a cessation of battle. From this time, however, the troops committed the most wanton destruction. Three houses, two shops, and a barn were laid in ashes in Lexington; buildings on the route were defaced and plundered, and individuals were grossly abused. At this time, Dr. Warren and General Heath were active in the field, directing and encouraging the militia. General Heath was one of the generals who were authorized to take the command when the minute-men should be called out. On his way to the scene of action he ordered the militia of Cambridge to make a barricade of the planks of the bridge, take post there, and oppose the retreat of the British in that direction from Boston. At Lexington, when the minute-men were somewhat checked and scattered by Percy's field-pieces, he labored to form them into military order. Dr. Warren, about ten o'clock, rode on horseback through Charlestown. He had received by express intelligence of the events of the morning, and told the citizens of Charlestown that the news of the firing was true. Among others he met Dr. Welsh, who said, "Well, they are gone out." "Yes," replied the doctor, "and we'll be up with them before night." Lord Percy had now under his command about eighteen hundred troops of undoubted bravery and of veteran discipline. He evinced no disposition, however, to turn upon his assailants and make good the insulting boasts of his associates. After a short interval of rest and refreshment the British recommenced their retreat. Then the Provincials renewed their attack. In West Cambridge the skirmishing again became sharp and bloody and the troops increased their atrocities. Jason Russell, an invalid and a noncombatant, was barbarously butchered in his own house. In this town a mother was killed while nursing her child. Others were driven from their dwellings, and their dwellings were pillaged. Here the Danvers company, which marched in advance of the Essex regiment, met the enemy. Some took post in a walled enclosure, and made a breastwork of bundles of shingles; others planted themselves behind trees on the side of the hill west of the meeting-house. The British came along in solid column on their right, while a large flank guard came up on their left. The Danvers men were surrounded, and many were killed and wounded. Here Samuel Whittemore was shot and bayoneted, and left for dead. Here Dr. Eliphalet Downer, in single combat with a soldier, killed him with a bayonet. Here a musket-ball struck a pin out of the hair of Dr. Warren's earlock. The wanton destruction of life and property that marked the course of the invaders added revenge to the natural bravery of the minute-men. "Indignation and outraged humanity struggled on the one hand; veteran discipline and desperation on the other." The British had many struck in West Cambridge, and left an officer wounded in the house still standing at the rail-road depot. The British troops took the road that winds round Prospect hill. When they entered this part of Charlestown their situation was critical. The large numbers of the wounded proved a distressing obstruction to their progress, while they had but few rounds of ammunition left. Their field-pieces had lost their terror. The main body of the Provincials hung closely on their rear; a strong force was advancing upon them from Roxbury, Dorchester, and Milton; while Colonel Pickering, with the Essex militia, seven hundred strong, threatened to cut off their retreat to Charlestown. Near Prospect hill the fire again became sharp and the British again had recourse to their field-pieces. James Miller, of Charlestown, was killed here. Along its base, Lord Percy, it is stated, received the hottest fire he had during his retreat. General Gage, about sunset, might have beheld his harassed troops, almost on the run, coming down the old Cambridge road to Charlestown Neck, anxious to get under the protection of the guns of the ships-of-war. The minute-men closely followed, but, when they reached the Charlestown Common, General Heath ordered them to stop the pursuit. Charlestown, throughout the day, presented a scene of intense excitement and great confusion. It was known early in the morning that the regulars were out. Rumors soon arrived of the events that had occurred at Lexington. The schools were dismissed, and citizens gathered in groups in the streets. After Dr. Warren rode through the town, and gave the certain intelligence of the slaughter at Lexington, a large number went out to the field, and the greater part who remained were women and children. Hon. James Russell received, in the afternoon, a note from General Gage to the effect that he had been informed that citizens had gone out armed to oppose his majesty's troops, and that if a single man more went out armed the most disagreeable consequences might be expected. It was next reported, and correctly, that Cambridge bridge had been taken up, and that hence the regulars would be obliged to return to Boston through the town. Many then prepared to leave, and every vehicle was employed to carry away their most valuable effects. Others, however, still believing the troops would return the way they went out, determined to remain, and in either event to abide the worst. Just before sunset the noise of distant firing was heard, and soon the British troops were seen in the Cambridge road. The inhabitants then rushed toward the neck. Some crossed Mystic River, at Penny Ferry. Some ran along the marsh, toward Medford. The troops, however, soon approached the town, firing as they came along. A lad, Edward Barber, was killed on the neck. The inhabitants then turned back into the town panic-stricken. Word ran through the crowd that "the British were massacring the women and children!" Some remained in the streets, speechless with terror; some ran to the clay-pits, back of Breed's Hill, where they passed the night. The troops, however, offered no injury to the inhabitants. Their officers directed the women and children, half-distracted with fright, to go into their houses, and they would be safe, but requested them to hand out drink to the troops. The main body occupied Bunker Hill, and formed a line opposite the neck. Additional troops also were sent over from Boston. The officers flocked to the tavern in the square, where the cry was for drink. Guards were stationed in various parts of the town. One was placed at the neck, with orders to permit no one to go out. Everything, during the night, was quiet. Some of the wounded were carried over immediately, in the boats of the Somerset, to Boston. General Pigot had the command in Charlestown the next day, when the troops all returned to their quarters. The Americans lost forty-nine killed, thirty-nine wounded, and five missing. A committee of the Provincial Congress estimated the value of the property destroyed by the ravages of the troops to be: In Lexington, £1761 15s. 5d.; in Concord, £274 16s. 7d.; in Cambridge, £1202 8s. 7d. Many petitions of persons who engaged the enemy on this day are on file. They lost guns or horses or suffered other damage. The General Court indemnified such losses. The British lost seventy-three killed, one hundred seventy-four wounded, and twenty-six missing--the most of whom were taken prisoners. Of these, eighteen were officers, ten sergeants, two drummers, and two hundred forty were rank and file. Lieutenant Hall, wounded at the North bridge, was taken prisoner on the retreat, and died the next day. His remains were delivered to General Gage. Lieutenant Gould was wounded at the bridge, and taken prisoner, and was exchanged, May 28th, for Josiah Breed, of Lynn. He had a fortune of one thousand nine hundred pounds a year, and is said to have offered two thousand pounds for his ransom. The prisoners were treated with great humanity, and General Gage was notified that his own surgeons, if he desired it, might dress the wounded. BATTLE OF BUNKER HILL A.D. 1775 JOHN BURGOYNE JOHN H. JESSE JAMES GRAHAME This action, which took place about two months after the Battle of Lexington, though resulting in the physical defeat of the Americans, proved for them a moral victory. As at Lexington and Concord, the colonial soldiers showed that they were prepared to stand their ground in defence of the cause which called them to arms, and Bunker Hill became a watchword of the Revolution. This event also made it clear that the contest must be fought out. Thenceforth the two sides in the war were sharply defined. The immediate occasion of this battle was the necessity, as seen by the British general, Gage, of driving the Americans from an eminence commanding Boston. This elevation was one of several hills on a peninsula just north of the town and running out into the harbor. It was the intention of the Americans to seize and fortify Bunker Hill, but for some unexplained reason they took Breed's Hill, much nearer Boston, and there the battle was mainly fought. Breed's Hill is now usually called Bunker Hill, and upon it stands the Bunker Hill monument. The following accounts of the battle are all from British writers; one is that of the English officer General Burgoyne, who was afterward defeated at Saratoga; another is by the English historical author Jesse, whose best work covers the reign of George III. The third is from James Grahame, a native of Glasgow, Scotland, who died in 1842, of whose _History of America_ a high authority says: "The thoroughly American spirit in which it is written prevented the success of the book in England." The historian Prescott gave it high praise for accuracy and fairness. JOHN BURGOYNE Now ensued one of the greatest scenes of war that can be conceived. If we look to the height, Howe's corps, ascending the hill in face of intrenchments, and in a very disadvantageous ground, was much engaged; to the left the enemy, pouring in fresh troops by thousands over the land; and in the arm of the sea our ships and floating batteries, cannonading them. Straight before us a large and noble town[26] in one great blaze; and the church-steeples, being timber, were great pyramids of fire above the rest. Behind us the church-steeples and heights of our own camp covered with spectators of the rest of our army which was engaged; the hills round the country also covered with spectators; the enemy all in anxious suspense; the roar of cannon, mortars, and musketry; the crash of churches, ships upon the stocks, and whole streets falling together, to fill the ear; the storm of the redoubts, with the objects above described, to fill the eye; and the reflection that perhaps a defeat was a final loss to the British empire of America, to fill the mind, made the whole a picture and a complication of horror and importance beyond anything that ever came to my lot to witness. JOHN HENEAGE JESSE About 11 P.M. on June 16th a detachment of about a thousand men, who had previously joined solemnly together in prayer, ascended silently and stealthily a part of the heights known as Bunker Hill, situated within cannon range of Boston and commanding a view of every part of the town. This brigade was composed chiefly of husbandmen, who wore no uniform, and who were armed with fowling-pieces only, unequipped with bayonets. The person selected to command them on this daring service was one of the lords of the soil of Massachusetts, William Prescott, of Pepperell, the colonel of a Middlesex regiment of militia. "For myself," he said to his men, "I am resolved never to be taken alive." Preceded by two sergeants bearing dark-lanterns, and accompanied by his friends, Colonel Gridley and Judge Winthrop, the gallant Prescott, distinguished by his tall and commanding figure, though simply attired in his ordinary calico smock-frock, calmly and resolutely led the way to the heights. Those who followed him were not unworthy of their leader. It was half-past eleven before the engineers commenced drawing the lines of the redoubt. As the first sod was being upturned, the clocks of Boston struck twelve. More than once during the night--which happened to be a beautifully calm and starry one--Colonel Prescott descended to the shore, where the sound of the British sentinels walking their rounds, and their exclamations of "All's well!" as they relieved guard, continued to satisfy him that they entertained no suspicion of what was passing above their heads. Before daybreak the Americans had thrown up an intrenchment, which extended from the Mystic to a redoubt on their left. The astonishment of Gage, when on the following morning he found this important site in the hands of the enemy, may be readily conceived. Obviously not a moment was to be lost in attempting to dislodge them; and accordingly a detachment, under General Howe, was at once ordered on this critical service. In the mean time a heavy cannonade, first of all from the Lively (sloop-of-war), and afterward from a battery of heavy guns from Copp's hill, in Boston, was opened upon the Americans. Exposed, however, as they were to a storm of shot and shell, unaccustomed, as they also were, to face an enemy's fire, they nevertheless pursued their operations with the calm courage of veteran soldiers. Late in the day, indeed, when the scorching sun rose high in the cloudless heavens, when the continuous labors of so many hours threatened to prostrate them, and when they waited, but waited in vain, for provisions and refreshments, the hearts of a few began to fail them, and the word retreat was suffered to escape from their lips. There was among them, however, a master spirit, whose cheering words and chivalrous example never failed to restore confidence. On the spot--where now a lofty column, overlooking the fair landscape and calm waters, commemorates the events of that momentous day--was then seen, conspicuous above the rest, the form of Prescott of Pepperell, in his calico frock, as he paced the parapet to and fro, instilling resolution into his followers by the contempt which he manifested for danger, and amid the hottest of the British fire delivering his orders with the same serenity as if he had been on parade. "Who is that person?" inquired Governor Gage of a Massachusetts gentleman, as they stood reconnoitring the American works from the opposite side of the river Charles. "My brother-in-law, Colonel Prescott," was the reply. "Will he fight?" asked Gage. "Ay," said the other, "to the last drop of his blood." It was after 3 P.M. when General Howe's detachment, consisting of about two thousand men, landed at Charlestown and formed for the attack. Prescott's instructions to his men, as the British approached, were sufficiently brief. "The red-coats," he said, "will never reach the redoubt if you will but withhold your fire till I give the order, and be careful not to shoot over their heads." In the mean time, ascending the hill under the protection of a heavy cannonade, the British infantry had advanced unmolested to within a few yards of the enemy's works, when Prescott gave the word "Fire!" So promptly and effectually were his orders obeyed that nearly the whole front rank of the British fell. Volley after volley was now opened upon them from behind the intrenchments, till at length even the bravest began to waver and fall back; some of them, in spite of the threats and passionate entreaties of their officers, even retreating to the boats. Minutes, many minutes apparently, elapsed before the British troops were rallied and returned to the attack, exposed to the burning rays of the sun, encumbered with heavy knapsacks containing provisions for three days, compelled to toil up very disadvantageous ground with grass reaching to their knees, clambering over rails and hedges, and led against men who were fighting from behind intrenchments and constantly receiving reënforcements by hundreds--few soldiers, perhaps, but British infantry would have been prevailed upon to renew the conflict. Again, however, they advanced to the charge; again, when within five or six rods of the redoubt, the same tremendous discharge of musketry was opened upon them; and again, in spite of many heroic examples of gallantry set them by their officers, they retreated in the same disorder as before. By this time the grenadiers and light infantry had lost three-fourths of their men; some companies had only eight or nine men left, one or two had even fewer. When the Americans looked forth from their intrenchments the ground was literally covered with the wounded and dead. According to an American who was present, "the dead lay as thick as sheep in a fold." For a few seconds General Howe was left almost alone. Nearly every officer of his staff had been either killed or wounded. The Americans, who have done honorable justice to his gallantry, remarked that, conspicuous as he stood in his general officer's uniform, it was a marvel that he escaped unhurt. He retired, but it was with the stern resolve of a hero to rally his men--to return and vanquish. The third and last attack made by General Howe upon the enemy's intrenchments appears to have taken place after a considerably longer interval than the previous one. This interval was employed by Prescott in addressing words of confidence and exhortation to his followers, to which their cheers returned an enthusiastic response. "If we drive them back once more," he said, "they cannot rally again." General Howe, in the mean time, by disencumbering his men of their knapsacks, and by bringing the British artillery to play so as to rake the interior of the American breastwork, had greatly enhanced his chances of success. Once more, at the word of command, in steady unbroken line, the British infantry mounted to the deadly struggle; once more the cheerful voice of Prescott exhorted his men to reserve their fire till their enemies were close upon them; once more the same deadly fire was poured down upon the advancing royalists. Again on their part there was a struggle, a pause, an indication of wavering; but on this occasion it was only momentary. Onward and headlong against breastwork and against vastly superior numbers dashed the British infantry, with a heroic devotion never surpassed in the annals of chivalry. Almost in a moment of time, in spite of a second volley as destructive as the first, the ditch was leaped and the parapet mounted. In that final charge fell many of the bravest of the brave. Of the Fifty-second regiment alone, three captains, the moment they stood on the parapet, were shot down. Still the English infantry continued to pour forward, flinging themselves among the American militiamen, who met them with a gallantry equal to their own. The powder of the latter having by this time become nearly exhausted, they endeavored to force back their assailants with the butt-ends of their muskets. But the British bayonets carried all before them. Then it was, when further resistance was evidently fruitless, and not till then, that the heroic Prescott gave the order to retire. From the nature of the ground it was necessarily more a flight than a retreat. Many of the Americans, leaping over the walls of the parapet, attempted to fight their way through the British troops; while the majority endeavored to escape by the narrow entrance to the redoubt. In consequence of the fugitives being thus huddled together, the slaughter became terrific. "Nothing," writes a young British officer, who was engaged in the _mêlée_, "could be more shocking than the carnage that followed the storming of this work. We tumbled over the dead to get at the living, who were crowding out of the gap of the redoubt, in order to form under the defences which they had prepared to cover their retreat." Prescott was one of the last to quit the scene of slaughter. Although more than one British bayonet had pierced his clothes, he escaped without a wound. That night the British intrenched themselves on the heights, lying down in front of the recent scene of contest. The loss in killed and wounded was ten hundred fifty-four. According to the American account their loss was one hundred forty-five killed and three hundred four wounded; of their six pieces of artillery, they only succeeded in carrying off one. Such was the result of the famous Battle of Bunker Hill, a contest from which Great Britain derived little advantage beyond the credit of having achieved a brilliant passage of arms, but which, on the other hand, produced the significant effect of manifesting, not only to the Americans themselves, but to Europe, that the colonists could fight with a steadiness and courage which ere long might render them capable of coping with the disciplined troops of the mother-country. JAMES GRAHAME About the latter part of May, a great part of the reënforcements ordered from Great Britain arrived at Boston. Three British generals, Howe, Burgoyne, and Clinton, whose behavior in the preceding war had gained them great reputation, arrived about the same time. General Gage, thus reënforced, prepared for acting with more decision; but before he proceeded to extremities, he conceived it due to ancient forms to issue a proclamation, holding forth to the inhabitants the alternative of peace or war. He therefore offered pardon, in the King's name, to all who should forthwith lay down their arms and return to their respective occupations and peaceable duties: excepting only from the benefit of that pardon "Samuel Adams and John Hancock, whose offences were said to be of too flagitious a nature to admit of any other consideration than that of condign punishment." He also proclaimed that not only the persons above named and excepted, but also all their adherents, associates, and correspondents, should be deemed guilty of treason and rebellion, and treated accordingly. By this proclamation it was also declared "that as the courts of judicature were shut, martial law should take place till a due course of justice should be reëstablished." It was supposed that this proclamation was a prelude to hostilities; and preparations were accordingly made by the Americans. A considerable height, by the name of Bunker Hill, just at the entrance of the peninsula of Charlestown, was so situated as to make the possession of it a matter of great consequence to either of the contending parties. Orders were therefore issued, by the provincial commanders, that a detachment of a thousand men should intrench upon this height. By some mistake, Breed's Hill, high and large like the other, but situated nearer Boston, was marked out for the intrenchments, instead of Bunker Hill. The provincials proceeded to Breed's Hill and worked with so much diligence that between midnight and the dawn of the morning they had thrown up a small redoubt about eight rods square. They kept such a profound silence that they were not heard by the British, on board their vessels, though very near. These having derived their first information of what was going on from the sight of the works, early completed, began an incessant firing upon them. The provincials bore this with firmness, and, though they were only young soldiers, continued to labor till they had thrown up a small breastwork extending from the east side of the redoubt to the bottom of the hill. As this eminence overlooked Boston, General Gage thought it necessary to drive the provincials from it. About noon, therefore, he detached Major-General Howe and Brigadier-General Pigot, with the flower of his army, consisting of four battalions, ten companies of the grenadiers and ten of light infantry, with a proportion of field artillery, to effect this business. These troops landed at Moreton's Point, and formed after landing, but remained in that position till they were reënforced by a second detachment of light infantry and grenadier companies, a battalion of land forces, and a battalion of marines, making in the whole nearly three thousand men. While the troops who first landed were waiting for this reënforcement, the provincials, for their further security, pulled up some adjoining post and rail fences, and set them down in two parallel lines at a small distance from each other, and filled the space between with hay, which, having been lately mowed, was found lying on the adjacent ground. The King's troops formed in two lines, and advanced slowly to give their artillery time to demolish the American works. While the British were advancing to the attack they received orders to burn Charlestown. These were not given because they were fired upon from the houses in that town, but from the military policy of depriving enemies of a cover in their approaches. In a short time this ancient town, consisting of about five hundred buildings, chiefly of wood, was in one great blaze. The lofty steeple of the meeting-house formed a pyramid of fire above the rest, and struck the astonished eyes of numerous beholders with a magnificent but awful spectacle. In Boston the heights of every kind were covered with citizens, and such of the King's troops as were not on duty. The hills around the adjacent country, which afforded a safe and distinct view, were occupied by the inhabitants of the country. Thousands, both within and without Boston, were anxious spectators of the bloody scene. Regard for the honor of the British army caused hearts to beat high in the breasts of many; while others, with keener sensibilities, sorrowed for the liberties of a great and growing country. The British moved on slowly, which gave the provincials a better opportunity for taking aim. The latter, in general, reserved their fire until their adversaries were within ten or twelve rods, and then began a furious discharge of small arms. The stream of the American fire was so incessant, and did so great execution, that the King's troops retreated with precipitation and disorder. Their officers rallied them and pushed them forward with their swords; but they returned to the attack with great reluctance. The Americans again reserved their fire till their adversaries were near, and then put them a second time to flight. General Howe and the officers redoubled their exertions, and were again successful, though the soldiers displayed a great aversion to going on. By this time the powder of the Americans began so far to fail that they were not able to keep up the same brisk fire. The British then brought some cannon to bear, which raked the inside of the breastwork from end to end. The fire from the ships, batteries, and field artillery was redoubled; the soldiers in the rear were goaded on by their officers. The redoubt was attacked on three sides at once. Under these circumstances a retreat from it was ordered, but the provincials delayed so long, and made resistance with their discharged muskets as if they had been clubs, that the King's troops, who had easily mounted the works, half filled the redoubt before it was given up to them. While these operations were going on at the breastwork and redoubt, the British light infantry were attempting to force the left point of the former, that they might take the American line in flank. Though they exhibited the most undaunted courage, they met with an opposition which called for its greatest exertions. The provincials reserved their fire till their adversaries were near, and then discharged it upon the light infantry in such an incessant stream, and with so true an aim, as that it quickly thinned their ranks. The engagement was kept up on both sides with great resolution. The persevering exertions of the King's troops could not compel the Americans to retreat till they observed that their main body had left the hill. This, when begun, exposed them to new dangers; for it could not be effected but by marching over Charlestown Neck, every part of which was raked by the shot of the Glasgow (man-of-war) and of two floating batteries. The incessant fire kept up across the Neck prevented any considerable reënforcement from joining their countrymen who were engaged; but the few who fell on their retreat over the same ground proved that the apprehensions of those provincial officers, who declined passing over to succor their companies, were without any solid foundation. The number of Americans engaged amounted only to fifteen hundred. It was apprehended that the conquerors would push the advantage they had gained, and march immediately to American head-quarters at Cambridge; but they advanced no farther than Bunker Hill. There they threw up works for their own security. The provincials did the same, on Prospect Hill, in front of them. Both were guarding against an attack; and both were in a bad condition to receive one. The loss of the peninsula depressed the spirits of the Americans; and the great loss of men produced the same effect on the British. There have been few battles in modern wars in which, all circumstances considered, there was a greater destruction of men than in this short engagement. The loss of the British, as acknowledged by General Gage, amounted to one thousand fifty-four. Nineteen commissioned officers were killed and seventy more were wounded. The Battle of Quebec, in 1759, which gave Great Britain the colony of Canada, was not so destructive to British officers as this affair of a slight intrenchment, the work only of a few hours. That the officers suffered so much must be imputed to their being aimed at. None of the provincials in this engagement were riflemen, but they were all good marksmen. The whole of their previous military knowledge had been derived from hunting and the ordinary amusements of sportsmen. The dexterity which by long habit they had acquired in hitting beast, birds, and marks, was fatally applied to the destruction of British officers. From their fall, much confusion was expected. They were therefore particularly singled out. Most of those who were near the person of General Howe were either killed or wounded; but the General, though he greatly exposed himself, was unhurt. The light infantry and grenadiers lost three-fourths of their men. Of one company not more than five, and of another not more than fourteen, escaped. The unexpected resistance of the Americans was such as wiped away the reproach of cowardice, which had been cast upon them by their enemies in Britain. The spirited conduct of the British officers merited and obtained great applause; but the provincials were justly entitled to a large share of the glory for having made the utmost exertions of their adversaries necessary to dislodge them from lines which were the work of only a single night. The Americans lost five pieces of cannon. Their killed amounted to one hundred thirty-nine; their wounded and missing, to three hundred fourteen. Thirty of the former fell into the hands of the conquerors. They particularly regretted the death of General Warren. To the purest patriotism and most undaunted bravery he added the virtues of domestic life, the eloquence of an accomplished orator, and the wisdom of an able statesman. Only a regard for the liberty of his country induced him to oppose the measures of Government. He aimed not at a separation from, but a coalition with, the mother-country. The burning of Charlestown, though a place of great trade, did not discourage the provincials. It excited resentment and execration, but not any disposition to submit. Such was the high-strung state of the public mind, and so great the indifference of property when put in competition with liberty, that military conflagrations, though they distressed and impoverished, had no tendency to subdue, the colonists. Such means might suffice in the Old World, but were not effectual in the New, where the war was undertaken, not for a change of masters, but for securing essential rights. The action at Breed's Hill, or Bunker Hill, as it has since been commonly called, produced many and very important consequences. It taught the British so much respect for the Americans, intrenched behind works, that their subsequent operations were retarded with a caution that wasted away a whole campaign to very little purpose. It added to the confidence the Americans began to have in their own abilities. It inspired some of the leading members of Congress with such high ideas of what might be done by militia, or men engaged for a short term of enlistment, that it was long before they assented to the establishment of a permanent army. FOOTNOTES: [26] Charlestown. A body of American riflemen, posted in the houses, galled the left line as it marched; therefore, by Howe's orders, the town was set on fire. CANADA REMAINS LOYAL TO ENGLAND MONTGOMERY'S INVASION A.D. 1775 JOHN McMULLEN At the outbreak of the Revolutionary War there was a belief, or at least a hope, among the thirteen rebellious colonies that Canada would join them and thus enable the entire continent to present a united front against England. Had she done so the course of Canadian and perhaps of American destiny would have been widely changed. The condition of Canada was different from that of the more southern colonies, in that it was a conquered country, guarded by British soldiers. The great majority of the inhabitants were of French descent; until 1760 they had been under French rule; and it was hoped that, especially in the Quebec Province and along the St. Lawrence Valley, the French _habitants_ would seize eagerly on an opportunity for revolt. An expedition was therefore planned under Generals Montgomery and Arnold; and though it failed, so great was the heroism of the men who attempted it that we may leave their story to their foes to tell. The following account is by the standard Canadian historian McMullen. That Canada was saved to England from this, the first and most serious of the invasions of her independent neighbors to the south, was due chiefly to Sir Guy Carleton, the able general then governing the Province and commanding the British forces there. It was due also to the French clergy, who favored British rule and bade their parishioners stand neutral or even urged them to fight against the invaders. The American Congress, in 1775, believed the Canadian people to be favorable to their cause, and resolved to anticipate the British by striking a decided blow in the North. They accordingly despatched a force of nearly two thousand men, under Schuyler and Montgomery, to penetrate into Canada by the Richelieu. After taking the forts along that river, they were next to possess themselves of Montreal, and then descend to Quebec, and form a junction there with Colonel Arnold, who was to proceed up the Kennebec with eleven hundred men and surprise the capital of Canada if possible. On September 5th the American army arrived at the Ileaux-Noix, whence Schuyler and Montgomery scattered a proclamation among the Canadians stating that they came only against the British, and had no design whatever on the lives, the properties, or religion of the inhabitants. General Schuyler being unwell now returned to Albany, and the chief command devolved on Montgomery, who, having received a reënforcement, invested Fort St. John on the 17th, and at the same time sent some troops to attack the fort at Chambly, while Ethan Allan was despatched with a reconnoitring party toward Montreal. Allan accordingly proceeded to the St. Lawrence, and being informed that the town was weakly defended, and believing the inhabitants were favorable to the Americans, he resolved to capture it by surprise, although his force was under two hundred men. General Carleton had already arrived at Montreal to make disposition for the protection of the frontier. Learning on the night of the 24th that a party of Americans had crossed the river and were marching on the town, he promptly drew together two hundred fifty of the local militia, chiefly English and Irish, and with thirty men of the Twenty-sixth regiment, in addition, prepared for its defence. Allan, however, instead of proceeding to attack Montreal, becoming intimidated, took possession of some houses and barns in the neighborhood, where he was surrounded next day and compelled to surrender after a loss of five killed and ten wounded. The British lost their commanding officer, Major Carsden, Alexander Paterson, a merchant of Montreal, and two privates. Allan and his men were sent prisoners to England, where they were confined in Pendennis castle. While these occurrences were transpiring at Montreal, Montgomery was vigorously pressing forward the siege of Fort St. John, which post was gallantly defended by Major Preston of the Twenty-sixth regiment. His conduct was not imitated by Major Stopford, of the Seventh, who commanded at Chambly, and who surrendered, in a cowardly manner, on two hundred Americans appearing before the works with two six-pounders. This was a fortunate event for Montgomery, whose powder was nearly exhausted, and who now procured a most seasonable supply from the captured fort. His fire was again renewed, but was bravely replied to by the garrison, who hoped that General Carleton would advance and raise the siege. This the latter was earnestly desirous to do, and drew together all the militia he could collect and the few troops at his disposal for that purpose, and pushed across the river toward Longueil on one of the last days of October. General Montgomery had foreseen this movement, and detached a force, with two field-pieces, to prevent it. This force took post near the river, and allowed the British to approach within pistol-shot of the shore, when they opened such a hot fire of musketry and cannon that General Carleton was compelled to order a retreat on Montreal. Montgomery duly apprized Major Preston of these occurrences, and the garrison being now short of provisions and ammunition, and without any hope of succor, surrendered on October 31st, and marched out with all the honors of war. With Fort St. John and Chambly a large portion of the regular troops in Canada was captured, and the Governor was in no condition to resist the American army, the main body of which now advanced upon Montreal, while a strong detachment proceeded to Sorel, to cut off the retreat of the British toward Quebec. General Carleton, with Brigadier Prescott and one hundred twenty soldiers, left Montreal, after destroying all the public stores possible, just as the American army was entering it. At Sorel, however, their flight was effectually intercepted by an armed vessel and some floating batteries, and Prescott, finding it impossible to force a passage, was compelled to surrender. The night before, General Carleton fortunately eluded the vigilance of the Americans, and passed down the river in a boat with muffled oars. Montgomery treated the people of Montreal with great consideration, and gained their good-will by the affability of his manners and the nobleness and generosity of his disposition. While the main body of the American invading force had been completely successful thus far, Arnold sailed up the Kennebec, and proceeded through the vast forests lying between it and the St. Lawrence, in the hope of surprising Quebec. The sufferings of his troops from hunger and fatigue were of the most severe description. So great were their necessities that they were obliged to eat dog's flesh, and even the leather of their cartouch-boxes; still, they pressed on with unflagging zeal and wonderful endurance, and arrived at Point Levi on November 9th. But their approach was already known at Quebec. Arnold had enclosed a letter for Schuyler to a friend in that city, and imprudently intrusted its delivery to an Indian, who carried it to the Lieutenant-Governor. The latter immediately began to make defensive preparations, and when the Americans arrived on the opposite side of the river they found all the shipping and boats removed, and a surprise out of the question. On the 12th Colonel M'Clean, who had retreated from Sorel, arrived at Quebec, with a body of Fraser's Highlanders, who had settled in the country, were now reëmbodied, and amounted to one hundred fifty men. In addition to these there were four hundred eighty Canadian militia, five hundred British, and some regular troops and seamen for the defence of the town. The Hunter (sloop-of-war) gave the garrison the command of the river, yet, despite the vigilance exercised by her commander, Arnold crossed over during the night of the 13th, landed at Wolfe's Cove, and next morning appeared on the Plains of Abraham, where he gave his men three cheers, which were promptly responded to by the besieged, who in addition complimented them with a few discharges of grape-shot, which compelled them to retire. Finding he could effect nothing against the city, Arnold retired up the river to Point-aux-Trembles, to await the arrival of Montgomery. On the 19th, to the great joy of the garrison, General Carleton arrived from Montreal, bringing down with him two armed schooners which had been lying at Three Rivers. One of his first measures was to strengthen the hands of the loyalists, by ordering those liable to serve in the militia, and who refused to be enrolled, to quit the city within four days. By this means several disaffected persons were got rid of, and the garrison was speedily raised to eighteen hundred men, who had plenty of provisions for eight months. On December 1st Montgomery joined Arnold at Point-aux-Trembles, when their united forces, amounting to about two thousand men, proceeded to attack Quebec, in the neighborhood of which they arrived on the 4th, and soon after quartered their men in the houses of the suburbs. Montgomery now sent a flag to summon the besieged to surrender, but this was fired upon by order of General Carleton, who refused to hold any intercourse with the American officers. Highly indignant at this treatment, the besiegers proceeded to construct their batteries, although the weather was intensely cold. But their artillery was too light to make any impression on the fortifications, the fire from which cut their fascines to pieces and dismounted their guns; so Montgomery determined to carry the works by escalade. He accordingly assembled his men on December 30th and made them a very imprudent speech, in which he avowed his resolution of attacking the city by storm. A deserter carried intelligence of his intention that very day to General Carleton, who made the necessary preparations for defence. On the night of the 31st the garrison pickets were on the alert. Nothing, however, of importance occurred till next morning, when Captain Fraser, the field officer on duty, on going his rounds, perceived some suspicious signals at St. John's Gate, and immediately turned out the guard, when a brisk fire was opened by a body of the enemy, concealed by a snow-bank. This was a mere feint to draw off attention from the true points of attack, at the southern and northern extremities of the Lower Town. It had, however, the effect of putting the garrison more completely on their guard, and thus was fatal to the plans of the assailants. Montgomery led a column of five hundred men toward the southern side of the town, and halted to reconnoitre at a short distance from the first battery, near the Près de Ville, defended chiefly by Canadian militia, with nine seamen to work the guns, the whole under the command of Captain Barnsfair. The guard were on the alert, and the sailors with lighted matches waited the order to fire, while the strictest silence was preserved. Presently the officer who had made the reconnoissance returned and reported everything still. The Americans now rushed forward to the attack, when Barnsfair gave the command to fire, and the head of the assailing column went instantly down under the unexpected and fatal discharge of guns and musketry. The survivors made a rapid retreat, leaving thirteen of their dead behind to be shrouded in the falling snow, among whom was the gallant Montgomery. Of a good family in the north of Ireland, he had served under Wolfe with credit, married an American lady, Miss Livingston, after the peace, and had joined the cause of the United States with great enthusiasm. At the other end of the Lower Town Arnold at the head of six hundred men had assaulted the first barrier with great impetuosity, meeting with little resistance. He was wounded in the first onset and borne to the rear. But his place was ably supplied by Captain Morgan, who forced the guard and drove them back to a second barrier, two hundred yards nearer the centre of the town. Owing to the prompt arrangements, however, of General Carleton, who soon arrived on the ground, the Americans were speedily surrounded, driven out of a strong building by the bayonet, and compelled to surrender to the number of four hundred twenty-six, including twenty-eight officers. In this action the garrison had ten men killed and thirteen wounded; the American loss in killed and wounded was about one hundred. The besieging force was now reduced to a few hundred men, and they were at a loss whether to retreat toward home or continue the siege. As they were in expectation of soon receiving aid they at length determined to remain in the neighborhood, and elected Arnold as their general, who contented himself with a simple blockade of the besieged, at a considerable distance from the works. Carleton would have now gladly proceeded to attack him, but several of the Canadians outside the city were disaffected, as well as many persons within the defences, and he considered, with his motley force, his wisest course was to run no risk, and wait patiently for the succor which the opening of navigation must give him. During the month of February a small reënforcement from Massachusetts and some troops from Montreal raised Arnold's force to over one thousand men, and he now resumed the siege, but could make no impression on the works. His men had already caught the smallpox, and the country people becoming more and more unwilling to supply provisions, his difficulties increased rather than diminished. When the Americans first came into the country the habitants were disposed to sell them what they required at a fair price, and a few hundred of the latter even joined their army. But they soon provoked the hostility of the bulk of the people by a want of respect for their clergy, by compelling them to furnish articles below the current prices, and by giving them illegal certificates of payment, which were rejected by the American quartermaster-general. In this way the Canadians began gradually to take a deeper interest in the struggle in progress, and to regard the British as their true friends and protectors, while they came to look upon the Americans as a band of armed plunderers, who made promises they had no intention of performing, and refused to pay their just debts. All the Canadians now required was a proper leader and a system of organization to cause them to act vigorously against Arnold. Even in the absence of these requisites they determined to raise the siege, and, led by a gentleman of the name of Beajeau, a force advanced toward Quebec, on March 25th, but was defeated by the Americans, and compelled to retreat. This check, however, did not discourage the Canadians, who now resolved to surprise a detachment of the enemy at Point Levi. By some means their design became known, and they were very roughly handled. The month of April passed without producing any events of importance. The Americans had meanwhile been reënforced to over two thousand men, and Major-General Thomas had arrived to take the command. The smallpox still continued to rage among them; besides they could make no impression on the fortifications, and the hostile attitude of the Canadians disheartened them, so nothing was effected. On May 5th Thomas called a council of war, at which an immediate retreat was determined on. On the following morning, to the great joy of the besieged, the Surprise frigate and a sloop arrived in the harbor, with one hundred seventy men of the Twenty-ninth regiment and some marines, who were speedily landed. Now General Carleton at once resolved on offensive operations, and marched out at noon with one thousand men and a few field-pieces to attack the Americans. But the latter did not await his approach, and fled with the utmost precipitation, leaving all their cannon, stores, ammunition, and even their sick behind. These were treated with the utmost attention by General Carleton, whose humanity won the esteem of all his prisoners, who were loud in his praise on returning home. For his services during the siege the Governor was knighted by his sovereign. The Americans retreated as rapidly as possible for a distance of forty-five miles up the river, but finding they were not pursued they halted for a few days to rest themselves. They then proceeded in a distressed condition to Sorel, where they were joined by some reënforcements, and where, also, their general, Thomas, died of the smallpox, which still continued to afflict them. He was succeeded in the chief command by General Sullivan. Meantime some companies of the Eighth regiment, which were scattered through the frontier posts on the Lakes, had descended to Ogdensburg. From thence Captain Forster was detached, on May 11th, with one hundred twenty-six soldiers and an equal number of Indians, to capture a stockade at the Cedars, garrisoned by three hundred ninety Americans, under the command of Colonel Bedell. The latter surrendered on the 19th, after sustaining only a few hours' fire of musketry, and the following day one hundred men advancing to his assistance were attacked by the Indians and a few Canadians. A smart action ensued which lasted for ten minutes, when the Americans laid down their arms and were marched prisoners to the fort, where they were with difficulty saved from massacre. After providing for the safety of his numerous prisoners, Forster pushed down the river toward Lachine, but, learning that Arnold was advancing to attack him with a force treble his own number, he halted and prepared for action. Placing his men in an advantageous position on the edge of the river, and spreading the Indians out on his flanks, he made such a stout defence that the Americans were compelled to retire to St. Anne's. Forster, encumbered with his prisoners, now proposed a cartel, which Arnold at once assented to, and an exchange was effected, on May 27th, for two majors, nine captains, twenty subalterns, and four hundred forty-three privates. This cartel was broken by Congress, on the ground that the prisoners had been cruelly used, which was not the case. They had been treated with all the humanity possible, when the difficulty of guarding so large a number, with less than three hundred men, is taken into consideration. While these events were in progress above Montreal, a large body of troops had arrived from England, under the command of Major-General Burgoyne. Brigadier Fraser was at once sent on by the Governor with the first division to Three Rivers. While the troops still remained on board their transports off this place, General Thompson advanced with eighteen hundred men to surprise the town, and would have effected his object had not one of his Canadian guides escaped and warned the British of his approach. General Fraser immediately landed his troops, with several field-pieces, and posted them so advantageously that the Americans were speedily defeated, their general, his second in command, and five hundred men made prisoners, while, the retreat of their main body being cut off, they were compelled to take shelter in a wood full of swamps. Here they remained in great distress till the following day, when General Carleton, who had meanwhile come up, humanely drew the guard from the bridge over the Rivière du Loup, and allowed them to escape toward Sorel. Finding themselves unable to oppose the force advancing against them, the American army, under Sullivan, retreated to Crown Point, whither Arnold also retired from Montreal on June 15th. Thus terminated the invasion of Canada, which produced no advantage to the American cause, but on the contrary aroused the hostility of the inhabitants and drew them closer to Great Britain. SIGNING OF AMERICAN DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE A.D. 1776 THOMAS JEFFERSON JOHN A. DOYLE Among historic acts and political deliverances there is none more weighty in significance and results, none more famous in the annals of the world, than the American Declaration of Independence. The document which preserves it to all ages is "a witness to the world that freedom, resting not on institutions, but on the necessities of human nature, is no mere abstract idea, but a vital principle of national life." At the beginning of 1776 the tide of public opinion in the colonies was setting strongly toward national independence. Lexington and Bunker Hill had spoken their message to America and to the British Government. All the other colonies had come into line with New England. The earliest declaration of independence, that of the people of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina (May, 1775), had preluded the general proclamation. The second Continental Congress was at work with growing legislative powers; the New England forces had been adopted as the Continental Army, with Washington as commander-in-chief; that army was besieging the British in Boston; and a movement was in progress against Canada. In March, 1776, Boston was evacuated. On June 28th a British attack on Sullivan's Island, off Charleston, South Carolina, was repulsed by Moultrie. Before the end of 1775 the Continental Congress had ordered the building of several ships--the nucleus of the American navy--and its sea-power was rapidly increased by privateers. Meanwhile King George III and his minister, Lord North, had continued their coercive policy and strengthened their war measures. Thomas Paine's _Common Sense_, published early in 1776, one of the most effective popular appeals that ever "went to the bosoms of a nation," completed the preparation of the public mind for the great step about to be taken by the Congress. Jefferson's account of the proceedings day by day, given in his own _Memoirs_, is the best contemporary record of the momentous deliberations and decision of this body, assembled in Independence Hall, Philadelphia. A quarter of a century before, upon the fillet of the "Liberty Bell," which hung in the steeple of that Old State House, had been cast the words of ancient Hebrew Scripture: "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof." Doyle's reflections, as representing an enlightened English view of the Declaration and the great struggle which it lifted to its climax, is placed as a suggestive commentary after the uncolored narrative of the chief author of the great instrument itself. THOMAS JEFFERSON In Congress, Friday, June 7, 1776, the delegates from Virginia moved, in obedience to instructions from their constituents, that the Congress should declare that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; that measures should be immediately taken for procuring the assistance of foreign powers, and a confederation be formed to bind the colonies more closely together. The House being obliged to attend at that time to some other business, the proposition was referred to the next day, when the members were ordered to attend punctually at ten o'clock. Saturday, June 8th. They proceeded to take it into consideration, and referred it to a committee of the whole, into which they immediately resolved themselves, and passed that day and Monday, the 10th, in debating on the subject. It was argued by Wilson, Robert R. Livingston, E. Rutledge, Dickinson, and others--that, though they were friends to the measures themselves, and saw the impossibility that we should ever again be united with Great Britain, yet they were against adopting them at this time: That the conduct we had formerly observed was wise, and proper now, of deferring to take any capital step till the voice of the people drove us into it: That they were our power, and without them our declarations could not be carried into effect: That the people of the middle colonies (Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, the Jerseys, and New York) were not yet ripe for bidding adieu to British connection, but that they were fast ripening, and, in a short time, would join in the general voice of America: That the resolution, entered into by this House on May 15th, for suppressing the exercise of all powers derived from the Crown, had shown, by the ferment into which it had thrown these middle colonies, that they had not yet accommodated their minds to a separation from the mother-country: That some of them had expressly forbidden their delegates to consent to such a declaration, and others had given no instructions, and consequently no powers to give such consent: That if the delegates of any particular colony had no power to declare such colony independent, certain they were the others could not declare it for them, the colonies being as yet perfectly independent of each other: That the Assembly of Pennsylvania was now sitting above stairs, their convention would sit within a few days, the convention of New York was now sitting, and those of the Jerseys and Delaware counties would meet on the Monday following, and it was probable these bodies would take up the question of Independence, and would declare to their delegates the voice of their State: That if such a declaration should now be agreed to, these delegates must retire, and possibly their colonies might secede from the Union: That such a secession would weaken us more than could be compensated by any foreign alliance: That in the event of such a division, foreign powers would either refuse to join themselves to our fortunes, or, having us so much in their power as that desperate declaration would place us, they would insist on terms proportionately more hard and prejudicial: That we had little reason to expect an alliance with those to whom alone as yet we had cast our eyes: That France and Spain had reason to be jealous of that rising power, which would one day certainly strip them of all their American possessions: That it was more likely they should form a connection with the British court, who, if they should find themselves unable otherwise to extricate themselves from their difficulties, would agree to a partition of our territories, restoring Canada to France, and the Floridas to Spain, to accomplish for themselves a recovery of these colonies: That it would not be long before we should receive certain information of the disposition of the French court, from the agent whom we had sent to Paris for that purpose: That if this disposition should be favorable by waiting the event of the present campaign, which we all hoped would be successful, we should have reason to expect an alliance on better terms: That this would in fact work no delay of any effectual aid from such ally, as, from the advance of the season and distance of our situation, it was impossible we could receive any assistance during this campaign: That it was prudent to fix among ourselves the terms on which we should form alliance, before we declared we would form one at all events: And that if these were agreed on, and our Declaration of Independence ready by the time our ambassador should be prepared to sail, it would be as well as to go into the Declaration at this day. On the other side, it was urged by J. Adams, Lee, Wythe, and others that no gentleman had argued against the policy or the right of separation from Britain, nor had supposed it possible we should ever renew our connection; that they had only opposed its being now declared: That the question was not whether, by a Declaration of Independence, we should make ourselves what we are not; but whether we should declare a fact which already exists: That, as to the people or Parliament of England, we had always been independent of them, their restraints on our trade deriving efficacy from our acquiescence only, and not from any rights they possessed of imposing them, and that so far, our connection had been federal only, and was now dissolved by the commencement of hostilities: That, as to the King, we had been bound to him by allegiance, but that this bond was now dissolved by his assent to the last act of Parliament, by which he declares us out of his protection, and by his levying war on us, a fact which had long ago proved us out of his protection; it being a certain position in law, that allegiance and protection are reciprocal, the one ceasing when the other is withdrawn: That James the II never declared the people of England out of his protection, yet his actions proved it, and the Parliament declared it: No delegates then can be denied, or ever want, a power of declaring an existing truth: That the delegates from the Delaware counties having declared their constituents ready to join, there are only two colonies, Pennsylvania and Maryland, whose delegates are absolutely tied up, and that these had, by their instructions, only reserved a right of confirming or rejecting the measure: That the instructions from Pennsylvania might be accounted for from the times in which they were drawn, near a twelvemonth ago, since which the face of affairs has totally changed: That within that time it had become apparent that Britain was determined to accept nothing less than a _carte-blanche_, and that the King's answer to the lord mayor, aldermen and common-council of London, which had come to hand four days ago, must have satisfied everyone of this point: That the people wait for us to lead the way: That _they_ are in favor of the measure, though the instructions given by some of their _representatives_ are not: That the voice of the representatives is not always consonant with the voice of the people, and that this is remarkably the case in these middle colonies: That the effect of the resolution of May 15th has proved this, which, raising the murmurs of some in the colonies of Pennsylvania and Maryland, called forth the opposing voice of the freer part of the people, and proved them to be the majority even in these colonies: That the backwardness of these two colonies might be ascribed, partly to the influence of proprietary power and connections, and partly to their having not yet been attacked by the enemy: That these causes were not likely to be soon removed, as there seemed no probability that the enemy would make either of these the seat of this summer's war: That it would be vain to wait either weeks or months for perfect unanimity, since it was impossible that all men should ever become of one sentiment on any question: That the conduct of some colonies, from the beginning of this contest, had given reason to suspect it was their settled policy to keep in the rear of the confederacy, that their particular prospect might be better, even in the worst event: That, therefore, it was necessary for those colonies who had thrown themselves forward and hazarded all from the beginning, to come forward now also, and put all again to their own hazard: That the history of the Dutch Revolution, of whom three states only confederated at first, proved that a secession of some colonies would not be so dangerous as some apprehended: That a declaration of independence alone could render it consistent with European delicacy, for European powers to treat with us, or even to receive an ambassador from us: That till this they would not receive our vessels into their ports, nor acknowledge the adjudications of our courts of admirality to be legitimate in cases of capture of British vessels: That though France and Spain may be jealous of our rising power, they must think it will be much more formidable with the addition of Great Britain; and will therefore see it their interest to prevent a coalition; but should they refuse, we shall never know whether they will aid us or not: That the present campaign may be unsuccessful, and therefore we had better propose an alliance while our affairs wear a hopeful aspect: That to wait the event of this campaign will certainly work delay, because, during the summer, France may assist us effectually, by cutting off those supplies of provisions from England and Ireland on which the enemy's armies here are to depend; or by setting in motion the great power they have collected in the West Indies, and calling our enemy to the defence of the possessions they have there: That it would be idle to lose time in settling the terms of alliance, till we had first determined we would enter into alliance: That it is necessary to lose no time in opening a trade for our people, who will want clothes, and will want money too for the payment of taxes: And that the only misfortune is that we did not enter into alliance with France six months sooner, as, besides opening her ports for the vent of our last year's produce, she might have marched an army into Germany, and prevented the petty princes there from selling their unhappy subjects to subdue us. It appearing in the course of these debates that the colonies of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and South Carolina were not yet matured for falling from the parental stem, but that they were fast advancing to that state, it was thought most prudent to wait a while for them, and to postpone the final decision to July 1st; but, that this might occasion as little delay as possible, a committee was appointed to prepare a Declaration of Independence. The committee were John Adams, Dr. Franklin, Roger Sherman, Robert R. Livingston, and myself. Committees were also appointed, at the same time, to prepare a plan of confederation for the colonies, and to state the terms proper to be proposed for foreign alliance. The committee for drawing the Declaration of Independence desired me to do it. It was accordingly done, and, being approved by them, I reported it to the House on Friday, June 28th, when it was read, and ordered to lie on the table. On Monday, July 1st, the House resolved itself into a committee of the whole, and resumed the consideration of the original motion made by the delegates of Virginia, which, being again debated through the day, was carried in the affirmative by the votes of New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia. South Carolina and Pennsylvania voted against it. Delaware had but two members present, and they were divided. The delegates of New York declared they were for it themselves, and were assured their constituents were for it; but that their instructions having been drawn near a twelvemonth before, when reconciliation was still the general object, they were enjoined by them to do nothing which should impede that object. They, therefore, thought themselves not justifiable in voting on either side, and asked leave to withdraw from the question; which was given them. The committee rose and reported their resolution to the House. Mr. Edward Rutledge, of South Carolina, then requested the determination might be put off to the next day, as he believed his colleagues, though they disapproved of the resolution, would then join in it for the sake of unanimity. The ultimate question, whether the House would agree to the resolution of the committee, was accordingly postponed to the next day, when it was again moved, and South Carolina concurred in voting for it. In the mean time a third member had come post from the Delaware counties, and turned the vote of that colony in favor of the resolution. Members of a different sentiment attending that morning from Pennsylvania also, her vote was changed, so that the whole twelve colonies who were authorized to vote at all, gave their voices for it; and, within a few days, the convention of New York approved of it; and thus supplied the void occasioned by the withdrawing of her delegates from the vote. Congress proceeded the same day to consider the Declaration of Independence, which had been reported and laid on the table the Friday preceding, and on Monday referred to a committee of the whole. The pusillanimous idea that we had friends in England worth keeping terms with still haunted the minds of many. For this reason, those passages which conveyed censures on the people of England were struck out, lest they should give them offence. The clause, too, reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, still wished to continue it. Our northern brethren also, I believe, felt a little tender under those censures; for though their people had very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others. The debates, having taken up the greater parts of July 2d, 3d, and 4th, were, on the evening of the last, closed; the Declaration was reported by the committee, agreed to by the House, and signed by every member present except Mr. Dickinson. JOHN ANDREW DOYLE Before this it had become evident that to defer any longer the formation of an independent government was to keep up an unnecessary source of weakness. Already the voice of the nation had protested unmistakably against the longer continuance of anarchy. The first definite step toward such a change had been taken in 1775 by New Hampshire. On October 11th their delegates had petitioned Congress to allow them to establish a government, but Congress, having still hopes of the success of the petition, had deferred answering their appeal. The majority of Congress saw at last that independence was only a question of time. An answer was sent to the Convention of New Hampshire, recommending it to form a government. Similar advice was sent the next day to South Carolina, and a little later to Virginia. Yet New Hampshire shrank from so decisive a step, and coupled the formation of their new government with a studious expression of their allegiance. Virginia showed a nobler spirit. In January the convention passed a motion, instructing their delegates to recommend Congress to throw their ports open to all nations, and thus to cast off the commercial supremacy of England. But the mere establishment of independent State governments was not enough. An imperial government, also independent of England, was essential. To establish independence without confederation would be only doing half the work. In the words of Franklin, "We must all hang together, unless we would all hang separately." About this time Franklin's scheme for a confederation was laid before Congress. The scheme did not include, but it evidently implied, independence. Franklin had been throughout a strenuous advocate of reconciliation, as long as reconciliation was possible, and his opinion ought to have convinced all that the time for separation had come. But the timid counsels of his colleague, Dickinson, overruled the motion, and the scheme of a confederation was not even formally considered. On February 16th the question of opening the ports was formally laid before Congress. In the next month measures were taken which clearly showed that independence was at hand. A private agent was sent to France by the authority of the committee of secret correspondence, and the instructions of the commissioners sent to Canada contained a clause inviting the people of Canada to "set up such a form of government as will be most likely in their judgment to produce their happiness." The clause was objected to as implying independence, and gave rise to a debate, but was ultimately carried. At last, after seven weeks' deliberation, the Congress resolved to emancipate the colonies from all commercial restrictions, and on April 6th the ports of America were thrown open to the world. On March 27th South Carolina proceeded to construct a government. They asserted as their principle of action that the good of the people is the origin and end of all government, and they set forth the misconduct of the King, the Parliament, and the officers of the English Government. At the same time they introduced no change into the system of representation or the qualification of voters. On May 4th the Assembly of Rhode Island passed an act discharging the inhabitants of the colony from allegiance to the King, and at the same time authorized its delegates in Congress to conclude a treaty with any independent power for the security of the colonies. On May 6th the Assembly of Virginia met at Williamsburg. After a declaration that all pacific measures were useless, and that "they had no alternative left but an abject submission to the will of those overbearing tyrants, or a total separation from the Crown and Government of Great Britain," they passed two resolutions; the first empowering their delegates at the convention to propose a declaration of independence and a confederation of the colonies; the second appointing a committee to draw up a declaration of rights and a scheme of government for the colony. On June 12th the Declaration of Rights was laid before the Assembly, and on the 29th a constitution was produced. The Assembly then proceeded to elect a governor. The choice fell on Patrick Henry. Rightly was he, who had first foreseen independence and bidden his countrymen look the danger of it in the face, deemed worthy to be the first to govern the State which he had called into being. All the colonies except Pennsylvania and Maryland followed the example of Virginia, and when, on July 1st, the motion for independence was laid before the Congress, the delegates of nine colonies were pledged to vote in its favor. The delegates of Pennsylvania and Maryland were divided, those of South Carolina unanimously opposed independence. The New York delegates were all in favor of independence, and represented the opinion of the colony, but could not vote, as their convention had not yet been duly elected. When the question came forward for decision next day, Dickinson, who had opposed it on the first day with great earnestness, stayed away, as did one of his colleagues, and the vote of Pennsylvania was altered. Another delegate arrived from Delaware, whose vote turned the scale, and South Carolina, rather than stand alone, withdrew its opposition. New York alone was unable to vote, and on July 2d, by the decision of twelve colonies, without one adverse vote, it was resolved "that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved." Seldom was the irony of history more strikingly illustrated than when Hancock, a rebel specially selected for proscription by the English government, put the question to the vote, and declared the American colonies forever independent. Thomas Jefferson, of Virginia, was selected to draw up the Declaration which had been resolved upon. His pen had already served his country. In 1774 he had published _A Summary View of the Rights of British America_, setting forth the dangers which menaced the country, and encouraging the people in defence of their liberties. He had signalized himself in his own colony by his opposition to slavery. "Wherever he was, there was found a soul devoted to the cause of liberty, power to defend and maintain it, and willingness to incur all its hazards." On July 4th the Declaration was produced. It declared the abstract principles on which their secession was justified; it then drew up an indictment against the King, in eighteen heads, setting forth the various ways in which he had proved himself "a tyrant unfit to be the ruler of a free people." Finally it declared that the united colonies were free and independent states; that the connection with Great Britain was and ought to be totally dissolved, and that as free and independent states, they had full power to "levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do." Seldom in human events do the facts of history carry their own explanation so clearly with them. A people who had grown up gradually, almost unconsciously, under democratic institutions, at last saw those institutions subverted. To preserve the spirit of them, they changed their form. We must not be misled into the error of underrating the importance of the American struggle by any idea of the insignificance of the issue at stake. We must not suppose that it was, as an earnest and eloquent writer has called it, "a war for the vindication of the principle of representative taxation." Its immediate origin, it is true, involved no vital interest, such as often has been at stake when nations have risen against their rulers. But "rebellions may fall out on small occasions; they do not spring from small causes," was said by the first and wisest of political philosophers. Taxation was, as Burke says, that by which the colonists felt the pulse of liberty, "and as they found that beat, they thought themselves sick or sound." The whole key to the American Revolution lies in two facts; it was a democratic and a conservative revolution. It was the work of the people, and its end was to preserve, not to destroy or to construct afresh. The policy of an early father of New England, "In a revolution burn all, and build afresh," was far from being that of his descendants. Throughout the whole War of Independence the colonists had a fixed known end in view. More than that, they had already within themselves the means for effecting that end, and making it enduring, as far as what is human can endure. The future that they proposed to themselves was not independent of their past: it was a fuller development of it. There was no need for beginning with the year one, or for throwing aside as worn out anything that their ancestors had left them. And it was essentially a democratic revolution. Throughout, the movement came from the people. The very blunders made by the hesitation and timidity of Congress were the mistakes of an assembly of delegates, not of representative statesmen. When the final step was taken, the Congress was not the originator of it, but was little more than a mouthpiece giving expression to the declared wishes of the nation. DEFEAT OF BURGOYNE AT SARATOGA A.D. 1777 SIR EDWARD SHEPHERD CREASY Viewed by itself, the victory over Burgoyne might have little appearance of being one of the decisive battles of the world, among which Creasy reckons it. That it acquired such importance was due, as Creasy himself shows, to its direct consequences, especially its influence upon the French. It led them to espouse the American cause, and by their aid the Revolution was brought to a successful ending. Since the Declaration of Independence the American forces had met with varying fortunes. They had been defeated in the Battle of Long Island, August 27, 1776, and at White Plains, October 28th. Forts Washington and Lee, defences of the Hudson, were both lost, and the Americans retreated through New Jersey. By a masterly return movement Washington retrieved the situation, winning the Battle of Trenton, December 26, 1776, and that of Princeton, January 3, 1777. On August 16, 1777, Stark gained the Battle of Bennington, but within a month (September 11th) Washington was beaten by Howe on the Brandywine, and the Americans suffered defeat at Germantown October 4th. In this state of affairs the movements of Burgoyne, who had invaded New York from Canada, were watched with deep concern on both sides. The final operations between the Americans and Burgoyne's forces included two engagements, which are often spoken of as the Battles of Saratoga, also as the Battles of Stillwater or of Bemis' Heights, from the local names. The first of these actions, that of September 19, 1777, in which Gates, with Morgan and Arnold under him, commanded the Americans, was indecisive. Under the same commanders the Americans (October 7th) won the decisive victory which Creasy describes. His opening statement shows the modern English sentiment concerning the American Revolution, and this feeling finds its correlative in the gradual change of tone on the part of American writers. The war which rent away the North American colonies from England is, of all subjects in history, the most painful for an Englishman to dwell on. It was commenced and carried on by the British ministry in iniquity and folly, and it was concluded in disaster and shame. But the contemplation of it cannot be evaded by the historian, however much it may be abhorred. Nor can any military event be said to have exercised more important influence on the future fortunes of mankind than the complete defeat of Burgoyne's expedition in 1777; a defeat which rescued the revolted colonists from certain subjection, and which, by inducing the courts of France and Spain to attack England in their behalf, insured the independence of the United States, and the formation of that transatlantic power which not only America, but both Europe and Asia, now see and feel. Still, in proceeding to describe this "decisive battle of the world," a very brief recapitulation of the earlier events of the war may be sufficient; nor shall I linger unnecessarily on a painful theme. The five Northern colonies of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Vermont, usually classed together as the New England colonies, were the strongholds of the insurrection against the mother-country. The feeling of resistance was less vehement and general in the central settlement of New York, and still less so in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and the other colonies of the South, although everywhere it was formidably strong. But it was among the descendants of the stern Puritans that the spirit of Cromwell and Vane breathed in all its fervor; it was from the New Englanders that the first armed opposition to the British crown had been offered; and it was by them that the most stubborn determination to fight to the last, rather than waive a single right or privilege, had been displayed. In 1775 they had succeeded in forcing the British troops to evacuate Boston; and the events of 1776 had made New York--which the royalists captured in that year--the principal basis of operations for the armies of the mother-country. A glance at the map will show that the Hudson River, which falls into the Atlantic at New York, runs down from the north at the back of the New England States, forming an angle of about forty-five degrees with the line of the coast of the Atlantic, along which the New England States are situate. Northward of the Hudson we see a small chain of lakes communicating with the Canadian frontier. It is necessary to attend closely to these geographical points in order to understand the plan of the operations which the English attempted in 1777, and which the battle of Saratoga defeated. The English had a considerable force in Canada, and in 1776 had completely repulsed an attack which the Americans had made upon that province. The British ministry resolved to avail themselves, in the next year, of the advantage which the occupation of Canada gave them, not merely for the purpose of defence, but for the purpose of striking a vigorous and crushing blow against the revolted colonies. With this view the army in Canada was largely reënforced. Seven thousand veteran troops were sent out from England, with a corps of artillery, abundantly supplied and led by select and experienced officers. Large quantities of military stores were also furnished for the equipment of the Canadian volunteers, who were expected to join the expedition. It was intended that the force thus collected should march southward by the line of the Lakes, and thence along the banks of the Hudson River. The British army from New York--or a large detachment of it--was to make a simultaneous movement northward, up the line of the Hudson, and the two expeditions were to unite at Albany, a town on that river. By these operations, all communication between the Northern colonies and those of the Centre and South would be cut off. An irresistible force would be concentrated, so as to crush all further opposition in New England; and when this was done, it was believed that the other colonies would speedily submit. The Americans had no troops in the field that seemed able to baffle these movements. Their principal army, under Washington, was occupied in watching over Pennsylvania and the South. At any rate, it was believed that, in order to oppose the plan intended for the new campaign, the insurgents must risk a pitched battle, in which the superiority of the royalists in numbers, in discipline, and in equipment seemed to promise to the latter a crowning victory. Without question, the plan was ably formed; and had the success of the execution been equal to the ingenuity of the design, the reconquest or submission of the thirteen United States must in all human probability have followed, and the independence which they proclaimed in 1776 would have been extinguished before it existed a second year. No European power had as yet come forward to aid America. It is true that England was generally regarded with jealousy and ill-will, and was thought to have acquired, at the Treaty of Paris, a preponderance of dominion which was perilous to the balance of power; but, though many were willing to wound, none had yet ventured to strike; and America, if defeated in 1777, would have been suffered to fall unaided. Burgoyne had gained celebrity by some bold and dashing exploits in Portugal during the last war; he was personally as brave an officer as ever headed British troops, he had considerable skill as a tactician; and his general intellectual abilities and acquirements were of a high order. He had several very able and experienced officers under him, among whom were Major-General Philips and Brigadier-General Frazer. His regular troops amounted, exclusively of the corps of artillery, to about seven thousand two hundred men, rank and file. Nearly half of these were Germans. He had also an auxiliary force of from two to three thousand Canadians. He summoned the warriors of several tribes of the red Indians near the Western Lakes to join his army. Much eloquence was poured forth both in America and in England in denouncing the use of these savage auxiliaries. Yet Burgoyne seems to have done no more than Montcalm, Wolfe, and other French, American, and English generals had done before him. But, in truth, the lawless ferocity of the Indians, their unskilfulness in regular action, and the utter impossibility of bringing them under any discipline made their services of little or no value in times of difficulty; while the indignation which their outrages inspired went far to rouse the whole population of the invaded districts into active hostilities against Burgoyne's force. Burgoyne assembled his troops and confederates near the River Bouquet, on the west side of Lake Champlain. He then, on June 21, 1777, gave his red allies a war-feast, and harangued them on the necessity of abstaining from their usual cruel practices against unarmed people and prisoners. At the same time he published a pompous manifesto to the Americans, in which he threatened the refractory with all the horrors of war, Indian as well as European. The army proceeded by water to Crown Point, a fortification which the Americans held at the northern extremity of the inlet, by which the water from Lake George is conveyed to Lake Champlain. He landed here without opposition, but the reduction of Ticonderoga--a fortification about twelve miles to the south of Crown Point--was a more serious matter, and was supposed to be the critical part of the expedition. Ticonderoga commanded the passage along the lakes, and was considered to be the key to the route which Burgoyne wished to follow. The English had been repulsed in an attack on it in the war with the French in 1758, with severe loss. But Burgoyne now invested it with great skill; and the American general, St. Clair, who had only an ill-equipped army of about three thousand men, evacuated it on July 5th. It seems evident that a different course would have caused the destruction or capture of his whole army, which, weak as it was, was the chief force then in the field for the protection of the New England States. When censured by some of his countrymen for abandoning Ticonderoga, St. Clair truly replied "that he had lost a post, but saved a province." Burgoyne's troops pursued the retiring Americans, gained several advantages over them, and took a large part of their artillery and military stores. The loss of the British in these engagements was trifling. The army moved southward along Lake George to Skenesborough, and thence, slowly and with great difficulty, across a broken country, full of creeks and marshes, and clogged by the enemy with felled trees and other obstacles, to Fort Edward, on the Hudson River, the American troops continuing to retire before them. Burgoyne reached the left bank of the Hudson River on July 30th. Hitherto he had overcome every difficulty which the enemy and the nature of the country had placed in his way. His army was in excellent order and in the highest spirits, and the peril of the expedition seemed over when they were once on the bank of the river which was to be the channel of communication between them and the British army in the South. But their feelings, and those of the English nation in general, when their successes were announced, may best be learned from a contemporary writer. Burke, in the _Annual Register_ for 1777, describes them thus: "Such was the rapid torrent of success, which swept everything away before the Northern army in its onset. It is not to be wondered at if both officers and private men were highly elated with their good-fortune, and deemed that and their prowess to be irresistible; if they regarded their enemy with the greatest contempt; considered their own toils to be nearly at an end; Albany to be already in their hands; and the reduction of the Northern provinces to be rather a matter of some time than an arduous task full of difficulty and danger. "At home the joy and exultation were extreme; not only at court, but with all those who hoped or wished the unqualified subjugation and unconditional submission of the colonies. The loss in reputation was greater to the Americans, and capable of more fatal consequences, than even that of ground, of posts, of artillery, or of men. All the contemptuous and most degrading charges which had been made by their enemies, of their wanting the resolution and abilities of men, even in their defence of whatever was dear to them, were now repeated and believed. "Those who still regarded them as men, and who had not yet lost all affection for them as brethren; who also retained hopes that a happy reconciliation upon constitutional principles, without sacrificing the dignity of the just authority of government on the one side or a dereliction of the rights of freedmen on the other, was not even now impossible, notwithstanding their favorable dispositions in general, could not help feeling upon this occasion that the Americans sunk not a little in their estimation. It was not difficult to diffuse an opinion that the war in effect was over, and that any further resistance could serve only to render the terms of their submission the worse. Such were some of the immediate effects of the loss of those grand keys of North America--Ticonderoga and the Lakes." The astonishment and alarm which these events produced among the Americans were naturally great; but in the midst of their disasters, none of the colonists showed any disposition to submit. The local governments of the New England States, as well as the Congress, acted with vigor and firmness in their efforts to repel the enemy. General Gates was sent to take the command of the army at Saratoga; and Arnold, a favorite leader of the Americans, was despatched by Washington to act under him, with reënforcements of troops and guns from the main American army. Burgoyne's employment of the Indians now produced the worst possible effects. Though he labored hard to check the atrocities which they were accustomed to commit, he could not prevent the occurrence of many barbarous outrages, repugnant both to the feelings of humanity and to the laws of civilized warfare. The American commanders took care that the reports of these excesses should be circulated far and wide, well knowing that they would make the stern New Englanders, not droop, but rage. Such was their effect; and though, when each man looked upon his wife, his children, his sisters, or his aged parents, and thought of the merciless Indian "thirsting for the blood of man, woman, and child," of "the cannibal savage torturing, murdering, roasting, and eating the mangled victims of his barbarous battles," might raise terror in the bravest breasts; this very terror produced a directly contrary effect to causing submission to the royal army. It was seen that the few friends of the royal cause, as well as its enemies, were liable to be the victims of the indiscriminate rage of the savages; and thus "the inhabitants of the open and frontier countries had no choice of acting: they had no means of security left but by abandoning their habitations and taking up arms. Every man saw the necessity of becoming a temporary soldier, not only for his own security, but for the protection and defence of those connections which are dearer than life itself. Thus an army was poured forth by the woods, mountains, and marches, which in this part were thickly sown with plantations and villages. The Americans recalled their courage, and, when their regular army seemed to be entirely wasted, the spirit of the country produced a much greater and more formidable force." While resolute recruits, accustomed to the use of fire-arms, and all partially trained by service in the provincial militias, were thus flocking to the standard of Gates and Arnold at Saratoga, and while Burgoyne was engaged at Fort Edward in providing the means of the further advance of the army through the intricate and hostile country that still lay before him, two events occurred, in each of which the British sustained loss and the Americans obtained advantage, the moral effects of which were even more important than the immediate result of the encounters. When Burgoyne left Canada, General St. Leger was detached from that province with a mixed force of about one thousand men and some light field-pieces across Lake Ontario against Fort Stanwix, which the Americans held. After capturing this, he was to march along the Mohawk River to its confluence with the Hudson, between Saratoga and Albany, where his force and that of Burgoyne's were to unite. But, after some successes, St. Leger was obliged to retreat, and to abandon his tents and large quantities of stores to the garrison. At the very time that General Burgoyne heard of this disaster he experienced one still more severe in the defeat of Colonel Baum, with a large detachment of German troops, at Bennington, whither Burgoyne had sent them for the purpose of capturing some magazines of provisions, of which the British army stood greatly in need. The Americans, augmented by continual accessions of strength, succeeded, after many attacks, in breaking this corps, which fled into the woods, and left its commander mortally wounded on the field: they then marched against a force of five hundred grenadiers and light infantry, which was advancing to Colonel Baum's assistance under Lieutenant-Colonel Breyman, who, after a gallant resistance, was obliged to retreat on the main army. The British loss in these two actions exceeded six hundred men; and a party of American loyalists, on their way to join the army, having attached themselves to Colonel Baum's corps, were destroyed with it. Notwithstanding these reverses, which added greatly to the spirit and numbers of the American forces, Burgoyne determined to advance. It was impossible any longer to keep up his communications with Canada by way of the Lakes, so as to supply his army on his southward march; but having, by unremitting exertions, collected provisions for thirty days, he crossed the Hudson by means of a bridge of rafts, and, marching a short distance along its western bank, he encamped on September 14th on the heights of Saratoga, about sixteen miles from Albany. The Americans had fallen back from Saratoga, and were now strongly posted near Stillwater, about half way between Saratoga and Albany, and showed a determination to recede no farther. Meanwhile Lord Howe, with the bulk of the British army that had lain at New York, had sailed away to the Delaware, and there commenced a campaign against Washington, in which the English general took Philadelphia, and gained other showy but unprofitable successes. But Sir Henry Clinton, a brave and skilful officer, was left with a considerable force at New York, and he undertook the task of moving up the Hudson to coöperate with Burgoyne. Clinton was obliged for this purpose to wait for reënforcements which had been promised from England, and these did not arrive till September. As soon as he received them, Clinton embarked about three thousand of his men on a flotilla, convoyed by some ships-of-war under Commander Hotham, and proceeded to force his way up the river. The country between Burgoyne's position at Saratoga and that of the Americans at Stillwater was rugged, and seamed with creeks and water-courses; but, after great labor in making bridges and temporary causeways, the British army moved forward. About four miles from Saratoga, on the afternoon of September 19th, a sharp encounter took place between part of the English right wing, under Burgoyne himself, and a strong body of the enemy, under Gates and Arnold. The conflict lasted till sunset. The British remained masters of the field; but the loss on each side was nearly equal--from five to six hundred men--and the spirits of the Americans were greatly raised by having withstood the best regular troops of the English army. Burgoyne now halted again, and strengthened his position by field-works and redoubts; and the Americans also improved their defences. The two armies remained nearly within cannon-shot of each other for a considerable time, during which Burgoyne was anxiously looking for intelligence of the promised expedition from New York, which, according to the original plan, ought by this time to have been approaching Albany from the south. At last a messenger from Clinton made his way, with great difficulty, to Burgoyne's camp, and brought the information that Clinton was on his way up the Hudson to attack the American forts which barred the passage up that river to Albany. Burgoyne, in reply, stated his hopes that the promised coöperation would be speedy and decisive, and added that, unless he received assistance before October 10th, he would be obliged to retreat to the Lakes through want of provisions. The Indians and Canadians now began to desert Burgoyne, while, on the other hand, Gates' army was continually reënforced by fresh bodies of the militia. An expeditionary force was detached by the Americans, which made a bold though unsuccessful attempt to retake Ticonderoga. And finding the number and spirit of the enemy to increase daily, and his own stores of provisions to diminish, Burgoyne determined on attacking the Americans in front of him, and, by dislodging them from their position, to gain the means of moving upon Albany, or, at least, of relieving his troops from the straitened position in which they were cooped up. Burgoyne's force was now reduced to less than six thousand men. The right of his camp was on high ground a little to the west of the river; thence his intrenchments extended along the lower ground to the bank of the Hudson, their line being nearly at a right angle with the course of the stream. The lines were fortified in the centre and on the left with redoubts and field-works. The numerical force of the Americans was now greater than the British, even in regular troops, and the numbers of the militia and volunteers which had joined Gates and Arnold were greater still. The right of the American position--that is to say, the part of it nearest to the river--was too strong to be assailed with any prospect of success, and Burgoyne therefore determined to endeavor to force their left. For this purpose he formed a column of fifteen hundred regular troops, with two twelve-pounders, two howitzers, and six six-pounders. He headed this in person, having Generals Philips, Reidesel, and Frazer under him. The enemy's force immediately in front of his lines was so strong that he dared not weaken the troops who guarded them by detaching any more to strengthen his column of attack. The right of the camp was commanded by Generals Hamilton and Spaight; the left part of it was committed to the charge of Brigadier Goll. It was on October 7th that Burgoyne led his column on to the attack; and on the preceding day, the 6th, Clinton had successfully executed a brilliant enterprise against the two American forts which barred his progress up the Hudson. He had captured them both, with severe loss to the American forces opposed to him; he had destroyed the fleet which the Americans had been forming on the Hudson, under the protection of their forts; and the upward river was laid open to his squadron. He was now only a hundred fifty-six miles distant from Burgoyne, and a detachment of one thousand seven hundred men actually advanced within forty miles of Albany. Unfortunately, Burgoyne and Clinton were each ignorant of the other's movements; but if Burgoyne had won his battle on the 7th, he must, on advancing, have soon learned the tidings of Clinton's success, and Clinton would have heard of his. A junction would soon have been made of the two victorious armies, and the great objects of the campaign might yet have been accomplished. All depended on the fortune of the column with which Burgoyne, on the eventful October 7, 1777, advanced against the American position. There were brave men, both English and German, in its ranks; and, in particular, it comprised one of the best bodies of grenadiers in the British service. Burgoyne pushed forward some bodies of irregular troops to distract the enemy's attention, and led his column to within three-quarters of a mile from the left of Gates' camp, and then deployed his men into line. The grenadiers under Major Ackland were drawn up on the left, a corps of Germans in the centre, and the English light infantry and the Twenty-fourth regiment on the right. But Gates did not wait to be attacked; and directly the British line was formed and began to advance, the American general, with admirable skill, caused a strong force to make a sudden and vehement rush against its left. The grenadiers under Ackland sustained the charge of superior numbers nobly. But Gates sent more Americans forward, and in a few minutes the action became general along the centre, so as to prevent the Germans from sending any help to the grenadiers. Burgoyne's right was not yet engaged; but a mass of the enemy were observed advancing from their extreme left, with the evident intention of turning the British right and cutting off its retreat. The light infantry and the Twenty-fourth now fell back, and formed an oblique second line which enabled them to baffle this manoeuvre, and also to succor their comrades in the left wing, the gallant grenadiers, who were overpowered by superior numbers, and, but for this aid, must have been cut to pieces. Arnold now came up with three American regiments and attacked the right flanks of the English double line. Burgoyne's whole force was soon compelled to retreat toward their camp; the left and centre were in complete disorder; but the light infantry and the Twenty-fourth checked the fury of the assailants, and the remains of Burgoyne's column with great difficulty effected their return to their camp, leaving six of their guns in the possession of the enemy, and great numbers of killed and wounded on the field; and especially a large proportion of the artillerymen, who had stood to their guns until shot down or bayoneted beside them by the advancing Americans. Burgoyne's column had been defeated, but the action was not yet over. The English had scarcely entered the camp, when the Americans, pursuing their success, assaulted it in several places with uncommon fierceness, rushing to the lines through a severe fire of grape-shot and musketry with the utmost fury. Arnold especially, who on this day appeared maddened with the thirst of combat and carnage, urged on the attack against a part of the intrenchments which was occupied by the light infantry under Lord Balcarras. But the English received him with vigor and spirit. The struggle here was obstinate and sanguinary. At length, as it grew toward evening, Arnold having forced all obstacles, entered the works with some of the most fearless of his followers. But in this critical moment of glory and danger, he received a painful wound in the same leg which had already been injured at the assault on Quebec. To his bitter regret, he was obliged to be carried back. His party still continued the attack; but the English also continued their obstinate resistance and at last night fell, and the assailants withdrew from this quarter of the British intrenchments. But in another part the attack had been more successful. A body of the Americans, under Colonel Brooke, forced their way in through a part of the intrenchments on the extreme right, which was defended by the German reserve under Colonel Breyman. The Germans resisted well, and Breyman died in defence of his post, but the Americans made good the ground which they had won, and captured baggage, tents, artillery, and a store of ammunition, which they were greatly in need of. They had, by establishing themselves on this point, acquired the means of completely turning the right flank of the British and gaining their rear. To prevent this calamity, Burgoyne effected during the night a complete change of position. With great skill he removed his whole army to some heights near the river, a little northward of the former camp, and he there drew up his men, expecting to be attacked on the following day. But Gates was resolved not to risk the certain triumph which his success had already secured for him. He harassed the English with skirmishes, but attempted no regular attack. Meanwhile he detached bodies of troops on both sides of the Hudson to prevent the British from recrossing that river and to bar their retreat. When night fell it became absolutely necessary for Burgoyne to retire again, and, accordingly, the troops were marched through a stormy and rainy night toward Saratoga, abandoning their sick and wounded, and the greater part of their baggage to the enemy. Before the rear-guard quitted the camp, the last sad honors were paid to the brave General Frazer, who had been mortally wounded on the 7th, and expired on the following day. The funeral of this gallant soldier is thus described by the Italian historian Botta: "Toward midnight the body of General Frazer was buried in the British camp. His brother-officers assembled sadly round while the funeral service was read over the remains of their brave comrade, and his body was committed to the hostile earth. The ceremony, always mournful and solemn of itself, was rendered even terrible by the sense of recent losses, of present and future dangers, and of regret for the deceased. Meanwhile the blaze and roar of the American artillery amid the natural darkness and stillness of the night came on the senses with startling awe. The grave had been dug within range of the enemy's batteries, and, while the service was proceeding, a cannon-ball struck the ground close to the coffin, and spattered earth over the face of the officiating chaplain." Burgoyne now took up his last position on the heights near Saratoga; and hemmed in by the enemy, who refused any encounter, and baffled in all his attempts at finding a path of escape, he there lingered until famine compelled him to capitulate. The fortitude of the British army during this melancholy period has been justly eulogized by many native historians, but I prefer quoting the testimony of a foreign writer, as free from all possibility of partiality. Botta says: "It exceeds the power of words to describe the pitiable condition to which the British army was now reduced. The troops were worn down by a series of toil, privation, sickness, and desperate fighting. They were abandoned by the Indians and Canadians, and the effective force of the whole army was now diminished by repeated and heavy losses, which had principally fallen on the best soldiers and the most distinguished officers, from ten thousand combatants to less than one-half that number. Of this remnant little more than three thousand were English. "In these circumstances, and thus weakened, they were invested by an army of four times their own numbers whose position extended three parts of a circle round them, who refused to fight them, as knowing their weakness, and who, from the nature of the ground, could not be attacked in any part. In this helpless condition, obliged to be constantly under arms, while the enemy's cannon played on every part of their camp, and even the American rifle-balls whistled in many parts of the lines, the troops of Burgoyne retained their customary firmness, and, while sinking under a hard necessity, they showed themselves worthy of a better fate. They could not be reproached with an action or a word which betrayed a want of temper or of fortitude." At length October 13th arrived, and as no prospect of assistance appeared, and the provisions were nearly exhausted, Burgoyne, by the unanimous advice of a council of war, sent a messenger to the American camp to treat of a convention. General Gates in the first instance demanded that the royal army should surrender prisoners of war. He also proposed that the British should ground their arms. Burgoyne replied: "This article is inadmissible in every extremity; sooner than this army will consent to ground their arms in their encampment they will rush on the enemy, determined to take no quarter." After various messages, a convention for the surrender of the army was settled, which provided that "the troops under General Burgoyne were to march out of their camp with the honors of war, and the artillery of the intrenchments, to the verge of the river, where the arms and artillery were to be left. The arms to be piled by word of command from their own officers. A free passage was to be granted to the army under Lieutenant-General Burgoyne to Great Britain, under condition of not serving again in North America during the present contest." The articles of capitulation were settled on October 15th, and on that very evening a messenger arrived from Clinton with an account of his successes, and with the tidings that part of his force had penetrated as far as Esopus, within fifty miles of Burgoyne's camp. But it was too late. The public faith was pledged; and the army was indeed too debilitated by fatigue and hunger to resist an attack, if made; and Gates certainly would have made it if the convention had been broken off. Accordingly, on the 17th, the Convention of Saratoga was carried into effect. By this convention five thousand seven hundred ninety men surrendered themselves as prisoners. The sick and wounded left in the camp when the British retreated to Saratoga, together with the numbers of the British, German, and Canadian troops who were killed, wounded, or taken, and who had deserted in the preceding part of the expedition, were reckoned to be four thousand six hundred eighty-nine. The British sick and wounded who had fallen into the hands of the Americans after the battle of the 7th were treated with exemplary humanity: and when the convention was executed, General Gates showed a notable delicacy of feeling, which deserves the highest degree of honor. Every circumstance was avoided which could give the appearance of triumph. The American troops remained within their lines until the British had piled their arms; and when this was done, the vanquished officers and soldiers were received with friendly kindness by their victors, and their immediate wants were promptly and liberally supplied. Discussions and disputes afterward arose as to some of the terms of the convention, and the American Congress refused for a long time to carry into effect the article which provided for the return of Burgoyne's men to Europe; but no blame was imputable to General Gates or his army, who showed themselves to be generous as they had proved themselves to be brave. Gates, after the victory, immediately despatched Colonel Wilkinson to carry the happy tidings to Congress. On being introduced into the hall he said: "The whole British army has laid down its arms at Saratoga; our own, full of vigor and courage, expect your orders. It is for your wisdom to decide where the country may still have need for their service." Honors and rewards were liberally voted by the Congress to their conquering general and his men; and it would be difficult, says the Italian historian, to describe the transports of joy which the news of this event excited among the Americans. They began to flatter themselves with a still more happy future. No one any longer felt any doubt about their achieving their independence. All hoped, and with good reason, that a success of this importance would at length determine France, and the other European powers that waited for her example, to declare themselves in favor of America. "There could no longer be any question respecting the future, since there was no longer the risk of espousing the cause of a people too feeble to defend themselves." The truth of this was soon displayed in the conduct of France. When the news arrived at Paris of the capture of Ticonderoga, and of the victorious march of Burgoyne toward Albany, events which seemed decisive in favor of the English, instructions had been immediately despatched to Nantes and the other ports of the kingdom that no American privateers should be suffered to enter them, except from indispensable necessity; as to repair their vessels, to obtain provisions, or to escape the perils of the sea. The American commissioners at Paris, in their disgust and despair, had almost broken off all negotiations with the French Government; and they even endeavored to open communications with the British Ministry. But the British Government, elated with the first successes of Burgoyne, refused to listen to any overtures for accommodation. But when the news of Saratoga reached Paris the whole scene was changed. Franklin and his brother-commissioners found all their difficulties with the French Government vanish. The time seemed to have arrived for the house of Bourbon to take a full revenge for all its humiliations and losses in previous wars. In December a treaty was arranged, and formally signed in the February following, by which France acknowledged _the Independent United States of America_. This was, of course, tantamount to a declaration of war with England. Spain soon followed France; and, before long, Holland took the same course. Largely aided by French fleets and troops, the Americans vigorously maintained the war against the armies which England, in spite of her European foes, continued to send across the Atlantic. But the struggle was too unequal to be maintained by Great Britain for many years; and when the treaties of 1783 restored peace to the world, the independence of the United States was reluctantly recognized by their ancient parent and recent enemy. FIRST VICTORY OF THE AMERICAN NAVY A.D. 1779 ALEXANDER SLIDELL MACKENZIE American naval officers look back with intensest pride to Paul Jones, their earliest hero, the founder of those high traditions which have done so much to raise the navy to its present standard of efficiency. Decatur, Perry, Farragut, Dewey, these and a thousand others of their kind, have but followed the lead of Paul Jones, have learned their deepest lesson in the thrill that came to each of them in boyhood on hearing that proud defiance hurled at the ancient mistress of the seas, "I have not yet begun to fight." Although much greater sea-battles, in point of numbers of both ships and men engaged, are recorded in history, yet this, the first naval engagement by an American vessel, is counted among the most famous of all on account of its stubbornness. The child was matched against the parent; an American vessel against a British, the latter far the stronger. The combat was mainly between the Bonhomme Richard, Jones' ship, with forty guns, many of them unserviceable, and the British ship, Serapis, of superior armament, as shown below. John Paul Jones, commonly known as Paul Jones, was born in Scotland in 1747, the son of John Paul, a gardener. He emigrated to Virginia, and, assuming the name of Jones, became first lieutenant (1775) in the American navy. When in 1778 France joined the colonies against England, Jones, who had already performed several noteworthy exploits, was in that country. Through the influence of Franklin an old merchant vessel, the Duc de Duras, was converted into a ship-of-war and, with four others, placed under the command of Jones. In honor of Franklin he named the Duras "Poor Richard," and, in compliment to the French language and people, she was called the Bonhomme Richard, the French colloquial equivalent. With a squadron of five ships, each except his own under a French commander and three of them with French crews as well, Jones sailed from L'Orient, France, August 14, 1779. He passed around the west coast of Ireland and around Scotland. There was much discontent among the French officers, and, though four of his ships were still with him when he sighted the Baltic fleet, Jones could not count on loyal service, especially from the Alliance, whose captain had already shown much insubordination. The memorable fight has never been better described than in the following plain and direct account of Mackenzie, himself an officer of the United States navy. The battle between the Bonhomme and the Serapis is invested with a heroic interest of the highest stamp. Jones had been cruising off the mouth of the Humber and along the Yorkshire coast, intercepting the colliers bound to London, many of which he destroyed (1779). On the morning of September 23d he fell in with the Alliance.[27] This rencounter was a real misfortune; as, in the battle which ensued, the former disobedience and mad vagaries of Landais, her commander, were about to be converted into absolute treason. The squadron now consisted of the Richard, the Alliance, the Pallas, and the Vengeance. About noon Jones despatched his second lieutenant, Henry Lunt, with fifteen of his best men, to take possession of a brigantine which he had chased ashore. Soon after, as the squadron was standing to the northward toward Flamborough Head, with a light breeze from south-southwest, chasing a ship, which was seen doubling the cape, in opening the view beyond, they gradually came in sight of a fleet of forty-one sail running down the coast from the northward, very close in with the land. On questioning the pilot, the Commodore discovered that this was the Baltic fleet, with which he had been so anxious to fall in, and that it was under convoy of the Serapis, a new ship, of an improved construction, mounting forty-four guns, and the Countess of Scarborough, of twenty guns. Signal was immediately made to form the line of battle, which the Alliance, as usual, disregarded. The Richard crossed her royal yards, and immediately gave chase to the northward, under all sail, to get between the enemy and the land. At the same time signal of recall was made to the pilot of the boat; but she did not return until after the action. On discovering the American squadron, the headmost ships of the convoy were seen to haul their wind suddenly and go about so as to stretch back under the land toward Scarborough and place themselves under cover of the cruisers; at the same time they fired signal-guns, let fly their topgallant sheets, and showed every symptom of confusion and alarm. Soon afterward the Serapis was seen reaching to windward to get between the convoy and the American ships, which she soon effected. At four o'clock the English cruisers were in sight from deck. The Countess of Scarborough was standing out to join the Serapis, which was lying-to for her, while the convoy continued to run for the fort, in obedience to the signals displayed from the Serapis, which was also seen to fire guns. At half-past five the two ships had joined company, when the Serapis made sail by the wind; at six both vessels tacked, heading up to the westward, across the bows of the Richard, so as to keep their position between her and the convoy. The opposing ships thus continued to approach each other slowly under the light southwesterly air. The weather was beautifully serene, and the breeze, being off the land, which was now close on board, produced no ripple on the water, which lay still and peaceful, offering a fair field to the combatants about to grapple in such deadly strife. The decks of the opposing vessels were long since cleared for action, and ample leisure remained for reflection, as the ships glided toward each other at a rate but little in accordance with the impatience of the opponents. From the projecting promontory of Flamborough Head, which was less than a league distant, thousands of the inhabitants, whom the recent attempt upon Leith had made aware of the character of the American ships, and the reckless daring of their leader, looked down upon the scene, awaiting the result with intense anxiety. The ships also were in sight from Scarborough, the inhabitants of which thronged the piers. The sun had already sunk behind the land before the ships were within gun-shot of each other; but a full harvest-moon rising above the opposite horizon, lighted the combatants in their search for each other, and served to reveal the approaching scene to the spectators on the land with a vague distinctness which rendered it only the more terrible. We have seen that the Alliance had utterly disregarded the signal to form the line of battle when the Baltic fleet was first discovered, and our squadron bore down upon them. She stood for the enemy without reference to her station, and, greatly out-sailing the other vessels, was much sooner in a condition to engage. Captain Landais seemed for once to be actuated by a chivalrous motive and likely to do something to redeem the guilt of his disobedience. The officers of the Richard were watching this new instance of eccentricity, for which Landais' past conduct had not prepared them, with no little surprise; when after getting near to where the Serapis lay, with her courses hauled up, and St. George's ensign--the white cross of England--proudly displayed, he suddenly hauled his wind, leaving the path of honor open to his commander. While the Pallas stood for the Countess of Scarborough, the Alliance sought a position in which she could contemplate the double engagement without risk, as though her commander had been chosen umpire, instead of being a party interested in the approaching battle. Soon afterward the Serapis was seen to hoist the red ensign instead of St. George's, and it was subsequently known that her captain had nailed it to the flag-staff with his own hand. About half-past seven the Bonhomme Richard hauled up her courses and rounded-to on the weather or larboard quarter of the Serapis, and within pistol-shot, and steered a nearly parallel course, though gradually edging down upon her. The Serapis now triced up her lower-deck ports, showing two complete batteries, besides her spar deck, lighted up for action, and making a most formidable appearance. At this moment Captain Pearson, her commander, hailed the Bonhomme Richard and demanded, "What ship is that?" Answer was made, "I can't hear what you say." The hail was repeated: "What ship is that? Answer immediately, or I shall be under the necessity of firing into you!" A shot was fired in reply by the Bonhomme Richard, which was instantly followed by a broadside from each vessel. Two of the three old eighteen-pounders in the Richard's gunroom burst at the first fire, spreading around an awful scene of carnage. Jones immediately gave orders to close the lower-deck ports and abandon that battery during the rest of the action. The Richard, having kept her headway and becalmed the sails of the Serapis, passed across her forefoot, when the Serapis, luffing across the stern of the Richard, came up in turn on the weather or larboard quarter; and, after an exchange of several broadsides from the fresh batteries, which did great damage to the rotten sides of the Richard and caused her to leak badly, the Serapis likewise becalmed the sails of the Richard, passed ahead, and soon after bore up and attempted to cross her forefoot so as to rake her from stem to stern. Finding, however, that he had not room for the evolution, and that the Richard would be on board of him, Captain Pearson put his helm a-lee, which brought the two ships in a line ahead, and, the Serapis having lost her headway by the attempted evolution, the Richard ran into her weather or larboard quarter. While in this position, neither ship being able to use her great guns, Jones attempted to board the Serapis, but was repulsed, when Captain Pearson hailed him and asked, "Has your ship struck?" to which he at once returned the immortal answer: "_I have not yet begun to fight!_" Jones now backed his topsails, and the sails of the Serapis remaining full, the two ships separated. Immediately after, Pearson also laid his topsails back, as he says in his official report, to get square with the Richard again; Jones at the same instant filled away, which brought the two ships once more broadside and broadside. As he had already suffered greatly from the superior force of the Serapis, and from her being more manageable and a faster sailer than the Richard, which had several times given her the advantage in position, Jones now determined to lay his ship athwart the enemy's hawse; he accordingly put his helm up, but, some of his braces being shot away, his sails had not their full power, and, the Serapis having sternway, the Richard fell on board of her farther aft than Jones had intended. The Serapis' jib-boom hung her for a few minutes, when, carrying away, the two ships swung broadside and broadside, the muzzles of the guns touching each other. Jones sent Mr. Stacy, the acting master, to pass up the end of a hawser to lash the two ships together, and, while he was gone on this service, assisted with his own hand in making fast the jib-stay of the Serapis to the Richard's mizzen-mast. Accident, however, unknown for the moment to either party, more effectually secured the two vessels together; for, the anchor of the Serapis having hooked the quarter of the Richard, the two ships lay closely grappled. In order to escape from this close embrace, and recover the advantage of his superior sailing and force, Captain Pearson now let go an anchor, when the two ships tended round to the tide, which was setting toward Scarborough. The Richard being held by the anchor of the Serapis, and the yards being entangled fore and aft, they remained firmly grappled. This happened about half-past eight, the engagement having already continued an hour. Meantime the firing had recommenced with fresh fury from the starboard sides of both vessels. The guns of either ship actually touched the sides of the other, and, some of them being opposite the ports, the rammers entered those of the opposite ship when in the act of loading, and the guns were discharged into the side or into the open decks. The effect of this cannonade was terrible to both ships, and wherever it could be kept up in one ship it was silenced in the other. Occasional skirmishing with pikes and pistols took place through the ports, but there does not appear to have been any concerted effort to board from the lower decks of the Serapis, which had the advantage below. The Richard had already received several eighteen-pound shot between wind and water, causing her to leak badly; the main battery of twelve-pounders was silenced; as for the gunroom battery of six eighteen-pounders, we have seen that two out of the three starboard ones burst at the first fire, killing most of their crews. During the whole action but eight shots were fired from this heavy battery, the use of which was so much favored by the smoothness of the water. The bursting of these guns, and the destruction of the crew, with the partial blowing up of the deck above, so early in the action, were discouraging circumstances, which, with a less resolutely determined commander, might well have been decisive of the fate of the battle. Colonel Chamillard, who was stationed on the poop, with a party of twenty marines, had already been driven from his post, with the loss of a number of his men. The Alliance kept studiously aloof, and, hovering about the Pallas and the Countess of Scarborough, until the latter struck, after half an hour's action, Landais endeavored to get information as to the force of the Serapis. He now ran down, under easy sail, to where the Richard and Serapis grappled. At about half-past nine he ranged up on the larboard quarter of the Richard, of course having the Richard between him and the Serapis, though the brightness of the moonlight, the greater height of the Richard, especially about the poop, and the fact of her being painted entirely black, while the Serapis had a yellow streak, could have left no doubt as to her identity; moreover, the Richard displayed three lights at the larboard bow, gangway, and stern, which was an appointed signal of recognition. Landais now deliberately fired into the Richard's quarter, killing many of her men. Standing on, he ranged past her larboard bow, where he renewed his raking fire, with like fatal effect. To remove the chance of misconception, many voices cried out that the Alliance was firing into the wrong ship; still the raking fire continued from her. Captain Pearson also suffered from this fire, as he states in his report to the Admiralty, but necessarily in a much less degree than the Richard, which lay between them. There is ample evidence of Landais having returned there several times to fire on the Richard, and always on the larboard side, or opposite one to that on which the Richard was grappled with the Serapis. While the fire of the Serapis was continued without intermission from the whole of her lower-deck battery, the only guns that were still fired from the Richard were two nine-pounders on the quarter-deck, commanded by Mr. Mease, the purser. This officer having received a dangerous wound in the head, Jones took his place, and, having collected a few men, succeeded in shifting over one of the larboard guns; so that three guns were now kept playing on the enemy, and these were all that were fired from the Richard during the remainder of the action. One of these guns was served with double-headed shot and directed at the main-mast, by Jones' command, while the other two were loaded with grape and canister, to clear the enemy's deck. In this service great aid was rendered by the men stationed in the tops of the Richard, who, having cleared the tops of the Serapis, committed great havoc among the officers and crew upon her upper deck. Thus, the action was carried on with decided advantage to the Serapis' men on the lower decks, from which they might have boarded the Richard with a good prospect of success, as nearly the whole crew of the latter had been driven from below by the fire of the Serapis and had collected on the upper deck. In addition to the destructive fire from the tops of the Richard, great damage was done by the hand-grenades thrown from her tops and yard-arms. The Serapis was set on fire as often as ten or twelve times in various parts, and the conflagration was only with the greatest exertions kept from becoming general. About a quarter before ten a hand-grenade, thrown by one of the Richard's men from the main-top of the Serapis, struck the combing of the main-hatch, and, glancing inward upon the main deck, set fire to a cartridge of powder. Owing to mismanagement and defective training, the powder-boys on this deck had bought up the cartridges from the magazine faster than they were used, and, instead of waiting for the loaders to receive and charge them, had laid them on the deck, where some of them were broken. The cartridge fired by the grenade now communicated to these, and the explosion spread from the main-mast aft on the starboard side, killing twenty men and disabling every man there stationed at the guns, those who were not killed outright being left stripped of their clothes and scorched frightfully. At this conjuncture, being about ten o'clock, the gunner and the carpenter of the Richard, who had been slightly wounded, became alarmed at the quantity of water which entered the ship through the shot-holes which she had received between wind and water, and which, by her settling, had got below the surface. The carpenter expressed an apprehension that she would speedily sink, which the gunner, mistaking for an assertion that she was actually sinking, ran aft on the poop to haul down the colors. Finding that the ensign was already down in consequence of the staff having been shot away, the gunner set up the cry, "Quarter! for God's sake, quarter! Our ship is sinking!" which he continued until silenced by Jones, who threw at the recreant a pistol he had just discharged at the enemy, which fractured his skull, and sent him headlong down the hatchway. Captain Pearson, hearing the gunner's cry, asked Jones if he called for quarter, to which, according to his own words, he replied "in the most determined negative." Captain Pearson now called away his boarders and sent them on board the Richard, but, when they had reached her rail, they were met by Jones himself, at the head of a party of pikemen, and driven back. They immediately returned to their ship, followed by some of the Richard's men, all of whom were cut off. About the same time that the gunner set up his cry for quarter, the master-at-arms, who had been in consultation with the gunner and the carpenter in regard to the sinking condition of the ship, hearing the cry for quarter, proceeded, without orders from Jones, and either from treachery or the prompting of humane feelings, to release all the prisoners, amounting to more than a hundred. One of these, being the commander of the letter-of-marque Union, taken on August 31st, passed, with generous self-devotion, through the lower ports of the Richard and the Serapis, and, having reached the quarter-deck of the latter, informed Captain Pearson that if he would hold out a little longer the Richard must either strike or sink; he moreover informed him of the large number of prisoners who had been released with himself, in order to save their lives. Thus encouraged, the battle was renewed from the Serapis with fresh ardor. The situation of Jones at this moment was indeed hopeless beyond anything that is recorded in the annals of naval warfare. In a sinking ship, with a battery silenced everywhere, except where he himself fought, more than a hundred prisoners at large in his ship, his consort, the Alliance, sailing round and raking him deliberately, his superior officers counselling surrender, while the inferior ones were setting up disheartening cries of fire and sinking and calling loudly for quarter--the chieftain still stood undismayed. He immediately ordered the prisoners to the pumps, and took advantage of the panic they were in, with regard to the reported sinking of the ship, to keep them from conspiring to overcome the few efficient hands that remained of his crew. Meanwhile the action was continued with the three light quarter-deck guns, under Jones' immediate inspection. In the moonlight, blended with the flames that ascended the rigging of the Serapis, the yellow main-mast presented a palpable mark, against which the guns were directed with double-headed shot. Soon after ten o'clock the fire of the Serapis began to slacken, and at half-past ten she struck. Mr. Dale, the first lieutenant of the Richard, was now ordered on board the Serapis to take charge of her. He was accompanied by Midshipman Mayrant and a party of boarders. Mr. Mayrant was run through the thigh with a boarding-pike as he touched the deck of the Serapis, and three of the Richard's crew were killed, after the Serapis had struck, by some of the crew of the latter who were ignorant of the surrender of their ship. Lieutenant Dale found Captain Pearson on the quarter-deck, and told him he was ordered to send him on board the Richard. It is a remarkable evidence of the strange character of this engagement, and the doubt which attended its result, that the first lieutenant of the Serapis, who came upon deck at this moment, should have asked his commander whether the ship alongside had struck. Lieutenant Dale immediately answered: "No, sir; on the contrary, he has struck to us!" The British lieutenant, like a true officer, then questioned his commander, "Have you struck, sir?" Captain Pearson replied, "Yes, I have!" The lieutenant replied, "I have nothing more to say," and was about to return below, when Mr. Dale informed him that he must accompany Captain Pearson on board the Richard. The lieutenant rejoined, "If you will permit me to go below, I will silence the firing of the lower-deck guns." This offer Mr. Dale very properly declined, and the two officers went on board the Richard and surrendered themselves to Jones. Pearson, who had risen, like Jones, from a humble station by his own bravery, but who was as inferior officer to Jones in courtesy as he had proved himself in obstinacy of resistance, evinced from the first a characteristic surliness, which he maintained throughout the whole of his intercourse with his victor. In surrendering he said that it was painful for him to deliver up his sword to a man who had fought with a halter around his neck. Jones did not forget himself, but replied with a compliment, which, though addressed to Pearson, necessarily reverted to himself, "Sir! you have fought like a hero, and I make no doubt but your sovereign will reward you in a most ample manner." As another evidence of the strange _mêlée_ which attended this engagement, and of the discouraging circumstances under which the Richard fought, it may be mentioned that eight or ten of her crew, who were, of course, Englishmen, got into a boat, which was towing astern of the Serapis, and escaped to Scarborough during the height of the engagement. This defection, together with the absence of the second lieutenant with fifteen of the best men, the loss of twenty-four men on the coast of Ireland, added to the number who had been sent away in prizes, reduced Jones' crew to a very small number, and greatly diminished his chance of success, which was due at length solely to his own indomitable courage. Meantime the fire, which was still kept up from the lower-deck guns of the Serapis, where the seamen were ignorant of the scene of surrender which had taken place above, was arrested by an order from Lieutenant Dale. The action had continued without cessation for three hours and a half. When it at length ceased, Jones got his ship clear of the Serapis and made sail. As the two separated, after being so long locked in deadly struggle, the main-mast of the Serapis, which had been for some time tottering, and which had only been sustained by the interlocking of her yards with those of the Richard, went over the side with a tremendous crash, carrying the mizzen-topmast with it. Soon after, the Serapis cut her cable and followed the Richard. The exertions of captors and captives were now necessary to extinguish the flames which were raging furiously in both vessels. Its violence was greatest in the Richard, where it had been communicated below from the lower-deck guns of the Serapis. Every effort to subdue the flames seemed for a time to be unavailing. In one place they were raging very near the magazine, and Jones at length had all the powder taken out and brought on deck, in readiness to be thrown overboard. In this work the officers of the Serapis voluntarily assisted. While the fire was raging in so terrifying a manner, the water was entering the ship in many places. The rudder had been cut entirely through, the transoms were driven in, and the rotten timbers of the old ship, from the main-mast aft, were shattered and almost entirely separated, as if the ship had been sawn through by ice; so much so that Jones says that toward the close of the action the shot of the Serapis passed completely through the Richard; and the stern-post and a few timbers alone prevented the stern from falling down on the gunroom deck. The water rushed in through all these apertures, so that at the close of the action there were already five feet of water in the hold. The spectacle which the old ship presented the following morning was dreadful beyond description. Jones says in his official report: "A person must have been eye-witness to form a just idea of the tremendous scene of carnage, wreck, and ruin that everywhere appeared. Humanity cannot but recoil from the prospect of such finished horror, and lament that war should produce such fatal consequences." Captain Pearson also notices, in his official letter to the Admiralty, the dreadful spectacle the Richard presented. He says: "On my going on board the Bonhomme Richard I found her to be in the greatest distress; her counters and quarters on the lower deck entirely drove in, and the whole of her lower-deck guns dismounted; she was also on fire in two places, and six or seven feet of water in her hold, which kept increasing all night and the next day till they were obliged to quit her, and she sunk with a great number of her wounded people on board her." The regret which he must, at any rate, have felt in surrendering, must have been much augmented by these observations, and by what he must have seen of the motley composition of the Richard's crew. On the morning after the action a survey was held upon the "Poor Richard," which was now, more than ever, entitled to her name. After a deliberate examination, the carpenters and other surveying officers were unanimously of opinion that the ship could not be kept afloat so as to reach port, if the wind should increase. The task of removing the wounded was now commenced, and completed in the course of the night and following morning. The prisoners who had been taken in merchant-ships were left until the wounded were all removed. Taking advantage of the confusion, and of their superiority in numbers, they took possession of the ship, and got her head in for the land, toward which the wind was now blowing. A contest ensued, and, as the Englishmen had few arms, they were speedily overcome. Two of them were shot dead, several wounded and driven overboard, and thirteen of them got possession of a boat and escaped to the shore. Jones was very anxious to keep the Richard afloat, and, if possible, to bring her into port, doubtless from the very justifiable vanity of showing how desperately he had fought her. In order to effect this object he kept the first lieutenant of the Pallas on board of her with a party of men to work the pumps, having boats in waiting to remove them in the event of her sinking. During the night of the 24th the wind had freshened, and still continued to freshen on the morning of the 25th, when all further efforts to save her were found unavailing. The water was running in and out of her ports and swashing up her hatchways. About nine o'clock it became necessary to abandon her, the water then being up to the lower deck; an hour later, she rolled as if losing her balance, and, settling forward, went down bows first, her stern and mizzen-mast being last seen. "A little after ten," says Jones in his report, "I saw, with inexpressible grief, the last glimpse of the Bonhomme Richard." The grief was a natural one, but, far from being destitute of consolation, the closing scene of the "Poor Richard," like the death of Nelson on board the Victory in the moment of winning a new title to the name, was indeed a glorious one. Her shattered shell afforded an honorable receptacle for the remains of the Americans who had fallen during the action. The Richard was called by Captain Pearson a forty-gun ship, while the Serapis was stated by the pilot, who described her to Jones when she was first made, to have been a forty-four. Jones and Dale also gave her the same rate. The Richard, as we have seen, mounted six eighteen-pounders in her gunroom on her berth deck, where port-holes had been opened near the water; fourteen twelve, and fourteen nine-pounders on her main deck, and eight six-pounders on her quarter-deck, gangways, and forecastle. The weight of shot thrown by her at a single broadside would thus be two hundred and twenty-five pounds. With regard to her crew, she started from L'Orient with three hundred eighty men. She had manned several prizes, which, with the desertion of the barge's crew on the coast of Ireland, and the absence of those who went in pursuit under the master and never returned, together with the fifteen men sent away in the pilot-boat, under the second lieutenant, just before the action, and who did not return until after it was over, reduced the crew, according to Jones' statement, to three hundred forty men at its commencement. This calculation seems a very fair one; for, by taking the statement of those who had landed on the coast of Ireland, as given in a contemporary English paper, at twenty-four, those who were absent in the pilot-boat being sixteen in number, and allowing five of the nine prizes taken by the Richard to have been manned from her, with average crews of five men each, the total reduction from her original crew may be computed to be seventy men. Eight or ten more escaped, during the action, in a boat towing astern of the Serapis. To have had three hundred forty men at the commencement of the action, as Jones states he had, he must have obtained recruits from the crews of his prizes. In the muster-roll of the Richard's crew in the battle, as given by Mr. Sherburne from an official source, we find only two hundred twenty-seven names. This can hardly have been complete; still the document is interesting, inasmuch as it enumerates the killed and wounded by name, there being forty-two killed and forty wounded. It also states the country of most of the crew; by which it appears that there were seventy-one Americans, fifty-seven acknowledged Englishmen, twenty-one Portuguese, and the rest of the motley collection was made up of Swedes, Norwegians, Irish, and East Indians. Many of those not named in this imperfect muster-roll were probably Americans. With regard to the Serapis, her battery consisted of twenty eighteens on the lower gun-deck, twenty nines on the upper gun-deck, and ten sixes on the quarter-deck and forecastle. She had two complete batteries, and her construction was, in all respects, that of a line-of-battle ship. The weight of shot thrown by her single broadside was three hundred pounds, being seventy-five pounds more than that of the Richard. Her crew consisted of three hundred twenty; all Englishmen except fifteen Lascars; and as such, superior to the motley and partially disaffected assemblage of the Richard. The superiority of the Serapis, in size and weight, as well as efficiency of battery, was, moreover, greatly increased by the strength of her construction. She was a new ship, built expressly for a man-of-war, and equipped in the most complete manner by the first of naval powers. The Richard was originally a merchantman, worn out by long use and rotten from age. She was fitted, in a makeshift manner, with whatever refuse guns and materials could be hastily procured, at a small expense, from the limited means appropriated to her armament. The overwhelming superiority thus possessed by the Serapis was evident in the action. Two of the three lower-deck guns of the Richard burst at the first fire, scattering death on every side, while the guns of the Serapis remained serviceable during the whole action, and their effect on the decayed sides of the Richard was literally to tear her to pieces. On the contrary, the few light guns which continued to be used in the Richard, under the immediate direction of her commander, produced little impression on the hull of the Serapis. They were usefully directed to destroy her masts and clear her upper deck, which, with the aid of the destructive and well-sustained fire from the tops, was eventually effected. The achievement of the victory was, however, wholly and solely due to the immovable courage of Paul Jones. The Richard was beaten more than once; but the spirit of Jones could not be overcome. Captain Pearson was a brave man, and well deserved the honor of knighthood which awaited him on his arrival in England; but Paul Jones had a nature which never could have yielded. Had Pearson been equally indomitable, the Richard, if not boarded from below, would, at last, have gone down with her colors still flying in proud defiance. The wounded of the Serapis appear, by the surgeon's report accompanying Captain Pearson's letter to the Admiralty, to have amounted to seventy-five men, eight of whom died of their wounds. Of the wounded, thirty-three are stated to have been "miserably scorched," doubtless by the explosion of the cartridges on the main deck. Captain Pearson states that there were many more, both killed and wounded, than appeared on the list, but that he had been unable to ascertain their names. Jones gave the number of wounded on board the Serapis as more than a hundred, and the killed probably as numerous. The surviving prisoners, taken from the Serapis and the Countess of Scarborough, amounted to three hundred fifty; the whole number of prisoners, including those previously taken from captured merchant-vessels, amounted to near five hundred. During the engagement between the Richard and the Serapis, the Pallas, commanded by Captain Cottineau, seems to have done her duty. She engaged the Countess of Scarborough, and captured her after an hour's close action. The Pallas was a frigate of thirty-two guns, and the Countess of Scarborough a single-decked ship, mounting twenty six-pounders. The Alliance, in the course of the night, also fired into the Pallas and the Countess of Scarborough, while engaged, and killed several of the Pallas' men. Subsequent to the engagement it was attested by the mass of officers in the squadron that, about eight o'clock, the Alliance raked the Bonhomme Richard with grape and cross-bar, killing a number of men and dismounting several guns. He afterward made sail for where the Pallas and the Scarborough were engaged, and after hovering about until the latter struck, communicated by hailing with both vessels, and then stood back to the Richard, and coming up on her larboard quarter, about half-past nine, fired again into her; passing along her larboard beam, he then luffed up on her lee bow, and renewed his raking fire. It was proved that the Alliance never passed on the larboard side of the Serapis, but always kept the Richard between her and the enemy. The officers of the Richard were of opinion that Landais' intention was to kill Jones and disable his ship, so as afterward to have himself an easy victory over the Serapis. As it was, he subsequently claimed the credit of the victory, on the plea of having raked the Serapis. There can be little doubt that he was actuated by jealous and treacherous feelings toward Jones, and by base cowardice. The Vengeance also behaved badly; neither she nor the Alliance made any prizes from among the fleet of merchantmen, and the whole escaped under cover of Flamborough Head and the adjacent harbors. Lieutenant Henry Lunt, who was absent in the pilot-boat with fifteen of the Richard's best men, lay in sight of the Richard during the action, but "thought it not prudent to go alongside in time of action." His conduct at least involved a great error of judgment, which no doubt he lived to repent. The conduct of Jones throughout this battle displayed great skill and the noblest heroism. He carried his ship into action in the most gallant style, and, while he commanded with ability, excited his followers by his personal example. We find him, in the course of the action, himself assisting to lash the ships together, aiding in the service of the only battery from which a fire was still kept up, and, when the Serapis attempted to board, rushing, pike in hand, to meet and repel the assailants. No difficulties or perplexities seemed to appal him or disturb his judgment, and his courage and skill were equalled by his immovable self-composure. The achievement of this victory was solely due to his brilliant display of all the qualities essential to the formation of a great naval commander. FOOTNOTES: [27] The Alliance had deliberately separated from the squadron. As to the other vessels, the Pallas was a French frigate weaker than the Richard, but much stronger than the second English ship, which she captured. The Vengeance was only a sloop of twelve guns, and took no part in the contest.--ED. JOSEPH II ATTEMPTS REFORM IN HUNGARY[28] A.D. 1780 ARMINIUS VAMBERY As King of Hungary and Bohemia, and as Germanic Emperor, Joseph II, a man of ideals, found himself hampered by hereditary institutions and traditions. The attempted reforms of this ruler, though too advanced for their times, are justly deemed worthy of commemoration by historians. Like the work of all leaders who aim at improvement before the world is ready, they were prophetic of a better day. Joseph II, son of Francis I, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, and Maria Theresa, Archduchess of Austria and Queen of Hungary and Bohemia, was born at Vienna in 1741. He succeeded to the possessions of the house of Austria on the death of his mother in 1780. The troubles of his reign, especially in Hungary, were due to his own progressive and technically illegal acts on the one hand, and to the narrow conservatism of the people, and the illiberality of the nobles, on the other. By most of the historians of Hungary and Bohemia the reign of Joseph II is described as disastrous for both countries. But a more philosophical view than those historians often furnish is presented by Vambery, the great Hungarian writer, who gives to the endeavors of Joseph the credit of enduring significance. The royal crown of Hungary has ever been, from the time it encircled the brow of St. Stephen, an object of jealous solicitude and almost superstitious veneration with the nation. It continued to loom up as a brilliant and rallying point in the midst of the vicissitudes and stirring events of the history of the country during all the centuries that followed the coronation of the first king. The people looked upon it as a hallowed relic, the glorious bequest of a long line of generations past and gone, and as the symbol and embodiment of the unity of the state. The different countries composing Hungary were known under the collective name of the "Lands of the Sacred Crown," and, at the period when the privileged nobility was still enjoying exceptional immunities, each noble styled himself _membrum sacræ coronæ_ ("a member of the sacred crown"). In the estimation of the people it had ceased to be a religious symbol, and had become a cherished national and political memorial, to which the followers of every creed and all the classes without distinction might equally do homage. Nor was the crown an every-day ornament to be displayed by royalty on solemn occasions of pageant. The King wore it only once in his life, on the day of his coronation, when he was bound solemnly to swear fidelity to the constitution, before the high dignitaries of the state, first in church, and to repeat afterward in the open air his vow to govern the country within the limits of the law. Thus in Hungary it has ever been the ancient custom, prevailing to this day, that, on the king's accession to the throne, it is he who, on his coronation, takes the oath of fidelity to his people, instead of the latter swearing fealty to the king. The right of succession to the throne is hereditary, but the lawful rule of the king begins with the ceremony of coronation only. It requires this ceremonial, which to this day is characterized by the attributes of mediæval pomp and splendor, to render the acts of the ruler valid and binding upon the people; without it every public act of such ruler is a usurpation. During eight centuries all the kings and queens, without exception, had been eager to place the crown on their heads, in order to come into the full possession of their regal privileges. Joseph II was the first king who refused to be crowned. He felt a reluctance to swear fidelity to the constitution, and to promise, by a solemn oath, to govern the country in accordance with its ancient usages and laws. The people, therefore, never called him their crowned king; he was either styled "Emperor" by them, or nicknamed the _kalapos_ ("hatted") king. His reign was but a series of illegal and unconstitutional acts, and a succession of bitter and envenomed struggles between the nation and her ruler. The contest finally ended with Joseph's defeat. He retracted on his death-bed all his arbitrary measures, and conceded to the people the tardy restoration of their ancient constitution. The conflict, however, had left deep traces in the minds of his Hungarian subjects. It roused them from the dormant state into which they had been lulled by the gentle and maternal absolutism of Maria Theresa. Thus Joseph's schemes not only failed, but, in their effects, they were destined to bring about the triumph of ideas, fraught with important consequences, such as he had hardly anticipated. The nation, waking from her lethargy, gave more prominence than ever to the idea of nationality, an idea which, as time advanced, increased in potency and intensity. Yet this ruler, who on ascending the throne disregarded all constitutional obligations and waged a relentless war against the Hungarian nationality, must be, nevertheless, ranked among the noblest characters of his century. Thoroughly imbued with the enlightened views of the eighteenth century, and those new ideas which had triumphed in the War of Independence across the ocean, he was ever in pursuit of generous and exalted aims. He sincerely desired the welfare of the people, and in engaging in this fruitless conflict he was by no means actuated by sinister intentions or by a despotic disposition. To introduce reforms, called for by the spirit of the age, into the Church, the schools, and every department of his Government, was the lofty task he had imposed upon himself. A champion of the oppressed, he freed the human conscience from its mediæval fetters, granted equal rights to the persecuted creeds, protected the enslaved peasantry against their arbitrary masters, and enlarged the liberty of the press. He endeavored to establish order and honesty in every branch of the public service, being mindful at the same time of all the agencies affecting the prosperity of the people. In a word, his remarkable genius embraced every province of human action where progress, reforms, and ameliorations were desirable. Unhappily for his own peace of mind and for the destinies of the nation he was called upon to rule, he committed a fatal error in the selection of the methods for accomplishing his humane and philanthropic objects. He desired to render Hungary happy, yet he excluded the nation from the direction of her own affairs. He wished to enact salutary laws, yet he reigned as an absolute monarch, unwilling to call the Diet to his aid in the great work of reformation, ignoring and disdaining the constitution and laws of the country. He was impolitic enough to attack a constitution which, thanks to the devotion of the people, had withstood the shock of seven centuries. He was unwise enough to suppose that the people, in whose hearts the love of their ancient constitution had taken deep root, for the defence of which rivers of blood had been shed, could be prevailed upon to relinquish it to satisfy a theory of royalty. The old political organization was eminently an outgrowth of the Hungarian nationality, and all classes of the people, including the very peasantry to whom the ancient constitution meant only oppression, clung to it with devoted fervor. The people were as anxious for reforms as Joseph himself, but they wanted them by lawful methods, and with the coöperation of the nation and their Diet. Joseph might have become the regenerator and benefactor of Hungary if he had availed himself, for the realization of his grand objects, of the national and lawful channels which lay ready to his hand. But he unfortunately preferred attempting to achieve his purpose out of the plenitude of his own power, by imperial edicts and arbitrary measures, thus conjuring up a storm against himself which wellnigh shook his throne, and plunging the nation into a wild ferment of passion bordering on revolution. The people presented a solid phalanx against Joseph's attack upon their nationality and language, which to them were objects dearer than everything else. They little cared for the Emperor's well-intentioned endeavors to make them prosperous and happy as long as he asked, in exchange, for the relinquishment of their nationality. And this, above all, was his most ardent wish. He wanted Hungary to be Hungarian no more, and wished its people to cast off the distinctive marks of their individuality, and to adopt the German language, instead of their own, in the schools, the public administration, and in judicial proceedings. In a word, he made German the official language of the country, and was bent on forcing it upon the people. Henceforth every reform coming from Joseph became hateful to the people. The oppressed classes themselves spurned relief which involved the sacrifice of their sweet mother-tongue. By proclaiming equal rights and equal subjection to the burdens of the state, he arrayed the privileged classes against his person. The Protestants and the peasantry, who had hailed him in the beginning as their new messiah, and fondly saw in his innovations the dawn of brighter days, also turned from him as soon as he attacked them in what they prized even more than liberty and justice. It was not long before the whole country, without distinction of class, social standing, or creed, combined to set at naught the Germanizing efforts of Joseph. The hard-fought struggle roused the people, hitherto divided by antagonisms of class and creed, to a sense of national solidarity. It was during the critical days of these constitutional conflicts that the foundations of the modern homogeneousness of the Hungarian nation and society were laid down. The privileged classes looked upon Joseph, on his advent to the throne, with distrust. They foresaw that he would not allow himself to be crowned, in order to avoid taking the oath of fidelity to the Constitution of Hungary. The first measures of his reign concerned the organization of the various churches of the country. He extended the religious freedom of the Protestant Church. By virtue of the apostolic rights of the Hungarian kings, he introduced signal reforms into the Catholic Church, especially regarding the education of the clergy, which proved, in part, exceedingly salutary. He abolished numerous religious orders, especially those which were not engaged either in teaching or in nursing the sick. One hundred forty monasteries and nunneries were closed by him in Hungary. The ample property of these convents he employed for ecclesiastical and public purposes and for the advancement of instruction. He exerted himself strenuously and successfully in the establishment of public schools and in the interest of popular education. He removed the only university of which the country could then boast from Buda to Pesth, a city which was rapidly increasing, and added a theological department to that seat of learning. All these innovations met with the approval of the enlightened elements of the nation, while the privileged classes and the clergy opposed them with sullen discontent. The opposition was all the more successful, as the Emperor had contrived to insult the moral susceptibilities of the common people by some of his measures. Thus, with a view to economizing the boards required for coffins, he ordered the dead to be sewed up in sacks and to be buried in this apparel. This uncalled-for meddling with the prejudices of the lower classes had the effect of creating a great indignation among them and of driving them into the camp of the opposition. Trifling and thoughtless measures of a similar nature impaired the credit of the most salutary innovations. The people looked with suspicion at every change, and, heedless of the lofty endeavors of the Emperor, everybody, including the officials themselves, rejected the entire governmental system of Joseph. The Emperor also wounded the national feeling of piety by his action concerning the crown he had spurned. According to ancient custom and law the sacred crown was kept in safety in Presburg, in a building provided for that purpose. In 1784 the Emperor ordered the crown to be removed to Vienna, in order to be placed there in the royal treasury side by side with the crowns of his other lands. The nation revolted at this profanation of their hallowed relic, and the highest official authorities throughout the land protested against a measure which, while it created such widespread ill-feeling, was not justified by any necessity. A dreadful storm, accompanied by thunder and lightning, was raging when the crown was removed to Vienna, and the people saw in this a sign that Nature herself rebelled against the sacrilege committed by the Emperor. The counties continued to urge the return of the crown, in addresses which were sometimes humbly suppliant in their tone and sometimes threatening, but Joseph did not yield either to supplications or menaces. When the edict which made German the official language of the country was published, the minds of men all over the country were greatly disturbed. It is true that hitherto the Latin, and not the Hungarian, language had been the medium of communication employed by the state. But the national spirit and the native tongue, which during the first seventy years of the eighteenth century had sadly degenerated, were awakening to new life during Joseph's reign. The literature of the country began to be assiduously cultivated in different spheres. Royal body-guards belonging to distinguished families, gentlemen of refinement, clergymen of modest position, and other sons of the native soil labored with equal zeal and enthusiasm to foster their cherished mother-tongue. It would, therefore, have been an easy matter for Joseph to replace the Latin language, which had become an anachronism, by the Hungarian, and thus to restore the latter to its natural and legal position in the state. He was perfectly right in ridding the country of the mastery of a dead tongue, but he committed a most fatal error in trying to substitute for it the German, an error which avenged itself most bitterly. Joseph entertained a special antipathy to the Hungarian tongue, a dislike which betrayed him into omitting the teaching of the native language from the course of public instruction, and refusing to allow an academy of sciences to be established which had its cultivation for its object. The Emperor's attack upon the language of the nation irremediably broke the last tie between him and the country, and henceforth the relations between them could be only hostile. The counties assumed a threatening attitude, some of them refusing obedience altogether. Thus most of them declined to give their official coöperation to the army officers who had been delegated by the Emperor to take the census. The count, nevertheless, proceeded, but in many places the inhabitants escaped to the woods, and in some there were serious riots in consequence of the opposition to the commissioners of the census. A rising of a different character took place among the Wallachs. The Wallachs, smarting under abuses of long standing, buoyed up by exaggerated expectations consequent upon the Emperor's innovations, and stirred up by evil-minded agitators, took to arms and perpetrated the most outrageous atrocities against their Hungarian landlords. The ignorant common people were assured by their leaders, Hora and Kloska, that the Emperor himself sided with them. The Wallach insurgents assassinated the Government's commissioners sent to them, destroyed sixty villages and one hundred eighty-two gentlemen's mansions, and killed four thousand Hungarians before they could be checked in their bloody work. Although they were finally crushed and punished, a strong belief prevailed in the country that the court of Vienna had been privy to the Wallach rising. Joseph subsequently laid down most humane rules regulating the relations between the bondmen and their landlords. But the country could not be appeased by any boon, especially as the high protective tariff, just then established for the benefit of the Austrian provinces, was seriously damaging the prosperity of the people. Joseph's foreign policy tended to increase the domestic disaffection. In 1788 he declared war against Turkey, but the campaign turned out unsuccessful, and nearly terminated with the Emperor's capture. The nation, emboldened by his defeat, urged now more emphatically her demands, and requested the Emperor to annul his illegal edicts, to submit to be crowned, and to restore the ancient constitution. Joseph continuing to resist her demands, most of the counties refused to contribute in aid of the war either money or produce. In addition to their recalcitrant attitude, they most energetically pressed the Emperor to convoke the Diet at Buda, a few counties going even so far as to insist upon the chief justice's convoking it, if the Emperor failed to do so before May, 1790. The courage of the nation rose still higher when the news of the Revolution in France and the revolt in Belgium reached the country. The people refused to furnish recruits and military aid, and the Emperor was compelled to use violence in order to obtain either. The counties remained firm and continued to remonstrate in addresses characterized by sharp and energetic language. Joseph yielded at last. He was prostrated by a grave illness, and, feeling his end approaching, he wished to die in peace with the exasperated nation he had so deeply wounded. On January 28, 1790, he retracted all his illegal edicts, excepting those that had reference to religious toleration, the peasantry, and the clergy, and reëstablished the ancient constitution of the country. Soon after he sent back the crown to Buda, where its return was celebrated with great pomp, amid the enthusiastic shouts of the people. Before he could yet convoke the Diet death terminated the Emperor's career on February 20th. The world lost in him a great and noble-minded man, a friend to humanity, who, however, had been unable to realize all his lofty intentions. The effect of his reign was to rouse Hungary from the apathy into which it had sunk, and at the time of Joseph's death the minds of the people were a prey to an excitement no less feverish than that which had seized revolutionary France at the same period. But while in Paris democracy was victorious over royalty, the latter had to yield in Hungary to the privileged nobility. The restored constitution was a charter of political privileges for the nobles only, and as such was most jealously guarded by them. This class kept a strict watch over the liberal tendencies of the age, preventing the importation of democratic ideas from France from fear of harm to their exclusive immunities. Joseph was succeeded by his brother, Leopold II, who until now had been Grand Duke of Tuscany. The new ruler was as enlightened as his predecessor, and had as much the welfare of the people at heart; but he respected, at the same time, the laws and the constitution. He immediately convoked the Diet in order to be crowned, and by this act he solemnly sealed the peace with the nation. The people hailed with joy this first step of their new King, and there was nothing in the way of their now obtaining lawfully from the good-will of the King the salutary legislation which Joseph had attempted to force arbitrarily upon them. But the fond hopes in this direction were doomed to disappointment. The national movement had not helped to power those who were in favor of progress, equality of rights, and democracy. No doubt there were people in the country who differed from the men in authority, who were sincerely attached to the doctrines of the French Revolution and eager to supplant the privileges of the nobles by the broader rights belonging to all humanity. The national literature was in the hands of men of this class. They combated the reactionary spirit of the nobility, and contended for the recognition of the civil and political rights of by far the largest portion of the people, the non-nobles. They boldly and with generous enthusiasm wielded the pen in defence of those noble ideas, and indoctrinated the people with them as much as the restraints placed upon the press allowed it at that period. They succeeded in obtaining recruits for their ideas from the very ranks of the privileged classes, and many an enlightened magnate admitted that the time had arrived for modernizing the Constitution of Hungary by an extension of political rights. Their number was swelled also by the more intelligent portion of the inhabitants of the cities, and those educated patriotic people who, although no gentle blood flowed in their veins, had either obtained office under Joseph's reign or had imbibed the political views of that monarch. But all of these men combined formed but an insignificant fraction of the people compared to the numerous nobility, who, after their enforced submission during ten years, were eager to turn to the advantage of their own class the victory they had achieved over Joseph. During the initial preparations for the elections to the Diet, and in the course of the elections, sentiments were publicly uttered and obtained a majority in the county assemblies, which caused a feverish commotion among the common people and the peasantry. The latter especially now eagerly clung to innovations introduced by the Emperor Joseph, so beneficial as regarded their own class, and were reluctant to submit to the restoration of the former arbitrary landlord system. Their remonstrances were answered by the counties to the effect that Providence had willed it so that some men should be kings, others nobles, and others again bondmen. Such cruel reasoning failed to satisfy the aggrieved peasantry. Symptoms of a dangerous revolutionary spirit showed themselves throughout a large portion of the country, and an outbreak could be prevented only by the timely assurance, on the part of the counties, that the matter would be submitted to the Diet about to assemble. The Diet, which had not been convened for twenty-five years, opened in Buda in the beginning of June, 1790. The coronation soon took place. Fifty years had elapsed since the last similar pageant had been enacted in Hungary. After a lengthy and vehement contest extending over ten months, in the course of which the Diet was removed from Buda to Presburg, the laws of 1790-1791, which form part of the fundamental articles of the Hungarian Constitution, were finally passed. By them the independence of Hungary as a state obtained the fullest recognition. The laws, which were the result of the coõperation of the crown and the Estates, declared that Hungary was an independent country, subject to no other country, possessing her own constitution, by which alone she was to be governed. Important concessions were also made to the rights of the citizens of the country. The privileges of the nobility were left intact, but the extreme wing of the reactionary nobles had to rest satisfied with this acquiescence in the former state of things, and were not allowed to push the narrow-minded measures advocated by them. The majority of the Diet was influenced in their wise moderation, partly by the exalted views of the King and to a greater extent yet by the disaffected spirit rife among the people, and especially threatening among the Serb population of the country. The laws secured the liberties of the Protestant and the Greek united churches, remedied the most urgent griefs of the peasantry, and declared those who were not noble capable of holding minor offices. Although the most important measures of reform were put off to a future time by the Diet of 1790-1791, several preparatory royal commissions having been appointed for their consideration, yet the work it accomplished was the salutary beginning of a liberal legislation which culminated, not quite sixty years later, in the declaration of the equal rights of the people as the basis of the Hungarian commonwealth. After the meeting of this Diet, however, very little was done in the direction of reforms. The good work was interrupted, partly by the premature death of Leopold II (March 1, 1792), and partly by the warlike period, extending over twenty-five years, which, in Hungary as throughout all Europe, claimed public attention, and diverted the minds of the leaders of the nation from domestic topics. Francis I, the son and successor of Leopold II, caused himself to be crowned in due form, and much was at first hoped from his reign. But the Jacobin rule of terror in Paris, and the dread of seeing the revolutionary scenes repeated in his own realm, wrought a complete change in his character and policy. He soon stubbornly rejected every innovation, and gradually became a pillar of strength for the European reaction, that extravagant conservatism which expected to efface the effects of the French Revolution by an unquestioning adherence to the old and traditional order of things. This illiberal spirit of the monarch rendered impossible for the time any further reform movement in Hungary. Every question of desirable change met with the most obstinate opposition on the part of the King, and the reforms submitted by the royal commissions were considered by every successive Diet without ever becoming law. The period which now followed was gloomy in the extreme, as well for Hungary as for the Austrian provinces of Francis I. The inhabitants of these countries were constantly called upon by the King in the course of the wars to make sacrifices in treasure and blood, by furnishing recruits and by paying high taxes. At the same time the Government resorted to the most absolute and arbitrary measures to prevent the people from being contaminated with French ideas. The press was crushed by severe penalties. Every enlightened idea was banished from the schools and expunged from the school-books. Only men for whose extreme reactionary spirit the police could vouch were appointed to the professorships or to other offices. A system of universal spying and secret information caused everybody to be suspected and to suffer from private vindictiveness, while those who dared to avow liberal views were the objects of cruel persecution. FOOTNOTES: [28] From Vambery's _Hungary_, in Story of the Nations Series (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons), by permission. SIEGE AND SURRENDER OF YORKTOWN A.D. 1781 HENRY B. DAWSON LORD CORNWALLIS After almost seven years of struggle, the American colonies, with the aid of France, won by the success of their arms that independence which they declared in 1776. The close of the Yorktown campaign with the surrender of Cornwallis virtually ended the Revolutionary War. While the victory of the Americans over Burgoyne at Saratoga (1777) produced a most encouraging effect upon the colonies, their scattered forces still had much arduous work before them. The defeat of Washington at Brandywine and at Germantown (September and October, 1777) left the British, under Howe, in possession of Philadelphia. Being in no condition to keep the field, Washington went into winter quarters at Valley Forge, twenty miles northwest of that city. There, in the most inhospitable surroundings, the army remained from the middle of December, 1777, suffering untold privations, while the British passed a winter of gayety in Philadelphia. The American camp consisted of log huts with windows of oiled paper. The soldiers built the huts in bitter weather, their only food being cakes of flour and water which they baked at the open fires. To the hardships of exposure were added the sufferings of disease; to scarcity of provisions, lack of clothing. The men, said Lafayette, "were in want of everything; they had neither coats, hats, shirts, nor shoes; their feet and their legs froze till they became black, and it was often necessary to amputate them." After such a winter it seems remarkable that Washington could have so strengthened his army as to win the Battle of Monmouth in the following June. The next considerable events of the war were the taking of Stony Point by the British in 1779, and its recapture by Anthony Wayne in the same year. The war went on during the next two years with varying results, but none decisive. The defection of Benedict Arnold deprived the Americans of a capable soldier and gave him to the enemy. The American victory at the Battle of the Cowpens, January 17, 1781, was offset by the triumph of Cornwallis at Guilford Court House, March 15th, but this was that general's last success on American soil. His own account of the surrender of Yorktown, in a letter addressed to Sir Henry Clinton, here follows the complete narrative of Dawson, which covers the final year of the actual War of the American Revolution. HENRY B. DAWSON The seventh year of the War of the Revolution was productive of great events. Opening with the mutiny of the Pennsylvania line of troops, its progress soon developed the disaffection of the New Jersey line also, and all the skill of General Washington was necessary to maintain that discipline in the army on which the salvation of the country depended. The resources of the country, from the long-continued struggle through which it had passed during six years, had become exhausted; its currency had become depreciated beyond precedent; and the people, weary of the contest, were lukewarm as well as enervated. At that time, also, the Federal Congress appeared to lack that nerve and decision which had marked the proceedings of the same body earlier in the war; and contenting itself with "recommendations," without attempting to enforce its requisitions or even to advise the adoption of compulsory measures by the States, it left the troops who were in the field without clothing, provisions, or pay, and indirectly forced upon them those acts of apparent insurrection which, resolved to their first elements, might not improperly have been called "acts of necessity," and been justified, in charity, as essential to their self-preservation. So gloomy, indeed, were the prospects of American independence at that time that the interposition of some foreign government was, by general consent, considered absolutely essential; and never were the good qualities of the Commander-in-Chief more nobly displayed than at this period, when, amid the most pressing discouragements, referred to, he urged the States to strengthen the bonds of the confederacy and to renew their efforts for the great final struggle with their haughty and determined enemy. The enemy, still anxiously seeking to establish his power in the Southern States, had sent General Arnold to Virginia, with a strong detachment of troops, to coöperate with Lord Cornwallis, who was busily engaged, in a series of movements, in measuring his strength and his skill with General Greene; and, soon afterward, a second detachment, under General Phillips, was sent to the same State. Early in May the Count de Barras arrived from Europe with the welcome intelligence of the approach of reënforcements from France; and that a strong fleet from the West Indies, under Count de Grasse, might be expected in the American waters within a few weeks. In view of these facts a conference between General Washington and the Count de Rochambeau was held at Weathersfield soon afterward, and the plans of the campaign were discussed and determined on. Among the principal operations proposed was an attack on the city of New York; and in accordance with these plans the allied forces of America and France moved against that city. Every necessary preparation had been made for the commencement of active operations, when, on August 14th, a letter reached General Washington in which the Count de Grasse informed him that the entire French West Indian fleet, with more than three thousand land forces, would shortly sail from Santo Domingo for the Chesapeake, intimating, however, that he could not remain longer than the middle of October, at which time it would be necessary for him to be on his station again. As the limited period which the Count could spend in the service of the allies was not sufficient to warrant the supposition that he could be useful before New York, the entire plan of the campaign was changed; and it was resolved to proceed to Virginia, with the whole of the French troops and as many of the Americans as could be spared from the defence of the posts on the Hudson; and instead of besieging Sir Henry Clinton, in his head-quarters in New York, a movement against Lord Cornwallis and the powerful detachment under his command was resolved on. At the period in question Lord Cornwallis had moved out of the Carolinas, formed a junction with the force under General Phillips, and had overrun the lower counties of Virginia, until General Lafayette, who had been sent to the State some weeks after, by superior skill and the most active exertions had succeeded in checking his progress. The purpose of the allies was to prevent the escape of Lord Cornwallis from his position near Yorktown; and General Lafayette was ordered to make such a disposition of his army as should be best calculated to effect that purpose. In case this purpose should be defeated, and Lord Cornwallis succeed in effecting a retreat into North Carolina, it was designed to pursue him with sufficient force to overawe him: while the remainder of the armies, at the same time, should proceed, with the French fleet, to Charleston, which was, at the same time, the enemy's head-quarters in the South. The marine force of the allies was composed of two fleets--that of Admiral Count de Grasse, then on its way from the West Indies, composed of twenty-six sail of the line and several frigates; and that of Admiral Count de Barras, then at anchor in Newport, composed of eight sail of the line, besides transports and victuallers: their military force embraced the main bodies of the American and French armies, under Generals Washington and Rochambeau, then near New York; the detachment of American troops, under General Lafayette, then in Virginia; and more than three thousand French troops, under General Saint-Simon, who were then on their way from the West Indies with the Count de Grasse. The main body of the enemy's force, under Sir Henry Clinton, was in the city of New York and its immediate vicinity; Lord Cornwallis, with his own command and that which, under Generals Phillips and Arnold, had overrun some portions of Virginia, numbering in the aggregate about seven thousand three hundred fifty men, exclusive of seamen and Tories, was occupying the neck of land between the James and York rivers, where General Lafayette was holding him in check; while the Southern army, under Lieutenant-Colonel Balfour, through the successful movements of General Greene, was mostly confined to Charleston and its immediate vicinity. Admiral Rodney, with a large naval force, was leisurely spending his time in securing his portion of the spoils in the West Indies; Sir Samuel Hood, with fifteen sail of the line and six smaller vessels, had been detached by Admiral Rodney to intercept Admiral de Grasse, and to maintain an equality of power in the American waters; and Admiral Graves, with part of his fleet in New York and a part before Newport, caused the enemy to feel perfectly secure in the positions he occupied. As has been stated, the intelligence from Admiral de Grasse changed the plans of the allies; and, instead of General Clinton and the main body of the enemy in the city of New York, Lord Cornwallis and the combined forces under his command, then at Yorktown, were made the objects of General Washington's attention. In executing this plan, however, it was necessary to exercise great caution, not only to prevent Sir Henry Clinton from moving to the assistance of Lord Cornwallis, but also to prevent Admiral Graves from joining Sir Samuel Hood, and, by occupying the Chesapeake, keeping open the communication by sea between Yorktown and New York. For this purpose, on August 19th the New Jersey line and Colonel Hazen's regiment were sent to New Jersey, by way of Dobbs Ferry, to protect a large number of "ovens" which were ordered to be erected near Springfield and Chatham in that State; and forage and boats, with some efforts to display the same, were also collected on the west side of the Hudson, by which the enemy was led to suppose that an attack was intended from that quarter. Fictitious letters were also written and put in the way of the enemy, by which the deception was confirmed; and Sir Henry Clinton appears to have supposed that Staten Island, or a position near Sandy Hook, to cover the entrance of the French fleet into the harbor, was the real object of the movements, until the allied forces--which had crossed the Hudson, leaving General Heath, with a respectable force, on its eastern bank--had passed the Delaware, and rendered the true object of the movement a matter of obvious certainty. The body of troops with which General Washington moved to the South embraced all the French auxiliaries, led by Count Rochambeau; the light infantry of the Continental army, led by Colonel Alexander Scammel; detachments of light troops from the Connecticut and New York State troops; the Rhode Island regiment; the regiment known as "Congress' Own," under Colonel Hazen; two New York regiments; a detachment of New Jersey troops; and the artillery, under Colonel John Lamb, numbering in the aggregate about two thousand Americans and a strong body of French. It is said that the American troops, who were mostly from New England and the Middle States, marched with reluctance to the southward, showing "strong symptoms of discontent when they passed through Philadelphia," and becoming reconciled only when an advance of a month's pay, in specie--which was borrowed from Count Rochambeau for that purpose--was paid to them. The allies, having thus successfully eluded the watchfulness of the enemy in New York, pressed forward toward Annapolis and the Head of Elk, whither transports had been despatched from the French fleet to convey them to Virginia; and, on September 25th, the last division reached Williamsburg, where, with General Lafayette and his command, and the auxiliary troops, the entire army had rendezvoused. In the mean time the enemy, as well as the French auxiliaries, had not been inactive. Lord Cornwallis, vainly expecting reënforcements from New York, had concentrated his army at Yorktown and Gloucester, on opposite sides of the York River, and had been busily employed in throwing up strong works of defence, and preparing to sustain a siege. Admiral Graves, after a bootless cruise to the eastward for the purpose of intercepting some French storeships, had returned to New York on August 16th or 17th, and since that time had been employed in refitting, taking in stores, etc., in blissful ignorance of the approach of Admiral de Grasse. Admiral Rodney, advised of the movements of the French fleet, had sent "early notice" to the Admiral commanding in America; but his despatches, which were sent by the Swallow, Captain Wells, never reached Admiral Graves. Sir Samuel Hood's squadron also had been sent to the northward to check the movements of the French fleet or to strengthen the fleet of Admiral Graves, after touching at the Chesapeake, before the French fleet arrived there, had sailed for New York, and on the afternoon of August 28th had reached that port, and communicated to the Admiral the first intelligence of the movements of the French fleet which he had received. On August 31st the Admiral, with five ships belonging to his own command, and the squadron under Sir Samuel Hood, sailed for the Chesapeake, where he found the French fleet, and on September 5th accepted the invitation to fight which the Admiral de Grasse extended to him; but considered it prudent to return to New York immediately afterward. The Admiral Count de Grasse, with a naval force of twenty-six sail of the line and some smaller vessels, had sailed from Santo Domingo on August 5th; on the 30th of the same month he entered the Chesapeake and anchored at Lynn Haven; on the following day he had blockaded the mouths of the James and York rivers, and prevented the retreat of the enemy by water; and, as has been before stated--notwithstanding the absence of about nineteen hundred of his men, besides three ships of the line and two fifties with their crews--had gone out and fought with Admiral Graves and nineteen sail of the line. General the Marquis Saint-Simon, at the head of thirty-three hundred French troops, had been landed from the fleet on September 2d; joined General Lafayette on the 3d; and on the 5th, with the latter officer and his command, had moved down to Williamsburg, fifteen miles from York, and cut off the retreat of the enemy by land. Admiral de Barras, with his squadron and ten transports, having on board the siege-artillery and a large body of French troops under M. de Choisy, sailed from Newport on August 25th, and entered Lynn Haven Bay in safety on September 10th, while Admiral de Grasse was absent in engagement with Admiral Graves. As before mentioned, the different divisions of the allied forces rendezvoused at Williamsburg, in the vicinity of Yorktown, in the latter part of September. At the same time the enemy's fleet, overawed by the superior force of the combined fleets under Admirals de Grasse and de Barras, had returned to New York, leaving General Cornwallis and his army to the fortunes of war; and enabling the naval force of the allies to coöperate with their military in all the operations of the siege. General Heath, with two New Hampshire, ten Massachusetts, and five Connecticut regiments, the corps of invalids, Sheldon's Legion of Dragoons, the Third regiment of artillery, and "all such State troops and militia as were retained in service," remained in the vicinity of New York to protect the passes in the Highlands, and to check any movement which Sir Henry Clinton might make for the relief of Lord Cornwallis. At daybreak on September 28th the entire body of the army moved from Williamsburg, and occupied a position within two miles of the enemy's line; the American troops occupied the right of the line; the French auxiliaries the left. York, the scene of operations referred to, is a small village, the seat of justice of York County, Virginia, and is situated on the southern bank of the York River, eleven miles from its mouth. On the opposite side of the river is Gloucester Point, on which the enemy had also taken a position; and the communication between the two posts was commanded by his land-batteries and by some vessels-of-war which lay at anchor under his guns. On September 29th the besiegers were principally employed in reconnoitring the situation of the enemy and in arranging their plans of attack. The main body of the enemy was found intrenched in the open ground about Yorktown, with the intention of checking the progress of the allies, while an inner line of works, near the village, had been provided for his ultimate defence; Lieutenant-Colonel Simcoe, with his legion, the Eightieth regiment of the line, and the Hereditary Prince's regiment of Hessians, the whole under Lieutenant-Colonel Dundas, being in possession of Gloucester Point. The only movement was an extension of the right wing of the allied armies, and the consequent occupation of the ground east of the Beaver-dam Creek, by the American forces. On the evening of that day Lord Cornwallis received despatches from New York in which Sir Henry Clinton advised his lordship that "at a meeting of the general and flag officers, held this day (September 24, 1781) it is determined that above five thousand men, rank and file, shall be embarked on board the King's ships, and the joint exertions of the navy and army made in a few days to relieve you, and afterward to operate with you. The fleet consists of twenty-three sail of the line, three of which are three-deckers. There is every reason to hope that we start from hence October 5th." Gratified with this promise of assistance, and probably confident of his ability to hold his inner position until he could be relieved, Lord Cornwallis imprudently retired from the outer line of works which he had occupied, and on the same night (September 29th) occupied the town, leaving the outer lines to be occupied by the allies, without resistance, on the next day. On September 30th the allies occupied the deserted positions, and were thereby "enabled to shut up the enemy in a much narrower circle, giving them the greatest advantages." Before the allies moved to the positions which had been thus deserted, Colonel Alexander Scammell, the officer of the day, approached them for the purpose of reconnoitring, when he was attacked by a party of the enemy's horse, which was ambushed in the neighborhood, and, after being mortally wounded, was taken prisoner. On the same day the transports, having on board the battering-train, came up to Trubell's, seven miles from York, whence they were transported to the lines; and the lines were completely and effectively occupied. The French extended from the river above the town, to a morass in the centre, while the Americans continued the lines from the morass to the river, below the town, the whole forming a semicircle, with the river for a chord. On the same day the Duc de Lauzun, with his legion of cavalry, and General Weedon, with a body of Virginian militia, the whole under Sieur de Choisy, invested Gloucester, in the course of which a party of the Queen's Rangers, which had been sent out to observe the movements of the allies, was driven in with considerable loss. On the following day (October 1st) eight hundred marines were landed from the fleet to strengthen the party which was investing Gloucester; and from that time until the 6th both the allies and the enemy vigorously prosecuted their several works of attack or defence, or otherwise prepared for the great struggle which was then inevitable. On the night of October 6th, under the command of General Lincoln, the besiegers opened their trenches within six hundred yards of the enemy's lines, yet with so much silence was it conducted that it appears to have been undiscovered until daylight on the 7th, when the works were so far completed that they afforded ample shelter for the men, and but one officer and sixteen privates were injured. In this attack the enemy appears to have bent his energies chiefly against the French, on the left of the trenches; and the regiments of Bourbonnois, Soissonnois, and Touraine, commanded by the Baron de Viomenil, were most conspicuous in the defence of the lines. The 7th, 8th, and 9th of October were employed in strengthening the first parallel, and in constructing batteries somewhat in advance of it, for the purpose of raking the enemy's works and of battering his shipping. Communications were also made in the rear of the left of the line, in order to secure the greater number of openings. On the night of the 10th the trenches on the left were occupied by the regiments of Agenois and Saintonge, under the Marquis de Chastellux; on that of the 8th by the regiments of Gatinois and Royal-Deux-Ponts, under the Marquis de Saint-Simon. At 5 P.M. of the 9th the American battery on the right of the line opened its fire--General Washington in person firing the first gun--and six eighteen and twenty-four pounders, two mortars, and two howitzers were steadily engaged during the entire night. At an early hour on the morning of the 10th the French battery on the left, with four twelve-pounders and six mortars and howitzers, also opened fire; and on the same day this fire was increased by the fire from two other French and two American batteries--the former mounting ten eighteen and twenty-four pounders, and six mortars and howitzers, and four eighteen-pounders respectively; the latter mounting four eighteen-pounders and two mortars. "The fire now became so excessively heavy that the enemy withdrew their cannon from their embrasures, placed them behind the merlins, and scarcely fired a shot during the whole day." In the evening of the 10th the Charon, a frigate of forty-four guns, and three transports were set on fire by the shells of hot shot and entirely consumed; and the enemy's shipping was warped over the river, as far as possible, to protect it from similar disaster. On the night of the 11th the second parallel was opened within three hundred yards of the enemy's lines; and, as in the former instance, it was so far advanced before morning that the men employed in them were in a great measure protected from injury when the enemy opened fire. The three following days were spent in completing this parallel and the redoubts and batteries belonging to it, during which time the enemy's fire was well sustained and more than usually destructive. Two advanced batteries, three hundred yards in front of the enemy's left, were particularly annoying, inasmuch as they flanked the second parallel of the besiegers; and as the engineers reported that they had been severely injured by the fire of the allies it was resolved to attempt to carry them by assault. Accordingly, in the evening of the 14th, these redoubts were assaulted--that on the extreme right by a detachment embracing the light infantry of the American army, under General Lafayette; the latter by a detachment of grenadiers and chasseurs from the French army, commanded by Baron Viomenil. The attacks were made at 8 P.M., and in that of the Americans the advance was led by Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Hamilton, with his own battalion and that of Colonel Gimat, the latter in the van; while Lieutenant-Colonel John Laurens, at the head of eighty men, took the garrison in reverse and cut off its retreat. Not a single musket was loaded; and the troops rushed forward with the greatest impetuosity--passing over the abatis and palisades--and carrying the work with the bayonet, with the loss of nine killed, and six officers and twenty-six rank and file wounded. The French performed their part of the duty with equal gallantry, although from the greater strength of their opponents it was not done so quickly as that of the Americans. The German grenadier regiment of Deux-Ponts, led by Count William Forback de Deux-Ponts, led the column; and Captain Henry de Kalb, of that regiment, was the first officer who entered the work. The chasseur regiment of Gatinois supported the attack; and, in like manner with that on the right, the redoubt was carried at the point of the bayonet. During the night these redoubts were connected with the second parallel; and during the next day (October 15th) several howitzers were placed on them and a fire opened on the town. These works, important as they had been to the enemy, were no less so to the allies, from the fact that, with them, the entire line of the enemy's works could be enfiladed, and the line of communication between York and Gloucester commanded. The situation of Lord Cornwallis had now become desperate. He "dared not show a gun to the old batteries" of the allies, and their new ones, then about to open fire, threatened to render his position untenable in a few hours. "Experience has shown," he then wrote, "that our fresh earthen works do not resist their powerful artillery, so that we shall soon be exposed to an assault in ruined works, in a bad position, and with weakened numbers." To retard as much as possible what now appeared to be inevitable, at an early hour next morning (October 16th) the garrison made a sortie; when three hundred fifty men, led by Lieutenant-Colonel Abercrombie, attacked two batteries within the second parallel, carried them with inconsiderable loss, and spiked the guns; but the guards and pickets speedily assembled, and drove the assailants back into the town before any other damage was done. About 4 P.M. of the 16th the fire of several batteries in the second parallel were opened on the town, while the entire line was rapidly approaching completion. At this time the situation of the enemy was peculiarly distressing; his defences being in ruins, his guns dismounted, and his ammunition nearly exhausted while an irresistible force was rapidly concentrating its powers to overwhelm and destroy him. At this time Lord Cornwallis entertained the bold and novel design of abandoning his sick and baggage, and by crossing the river to Gloucester and overpowering the force under General de Choisy, which was then guarding that position, to fly for his life, through Virginia, Pennsylvania, and the Jerseys, to New York. As no time could be lost, the attempt was made during the same night, but a violent storm, coming on while the first detachment was still on the river, preventing the landing of part of it, the movement was abandoned; and those troops who had crossed the river returned to York during the next day. [Illustration: The Siege of Yorktown Painting by L. C. A. Couder.] On the morning of the next day (October 17th) the several new batteries, which supported the second parallel, opened fire; when Lord Cornwallis considered it no longer incumbent on him to attempt to hold his position at the cost of his troops, and at 10 A.M. he beat a parley and asked a cessation of hostilities, that commissioners might meet to settle the terms for the surrender of the posts of York and Gloucester. A correspondence ensued between the commanders-in-chief; and on the 18th the Viscount de Noailles and Lieutenant-Colonel John Laurens met Colonel Dundas and Major Ross to arrange the terms of surrender. Without being able to agree on all points, the commissioners separated; when General Washington sent a rough copy of the articles, which had been prepared, to Lord Cornwallis, with a note expressing his expectation that they would be signed by 11 A.M. on the 19th, and that the garrison would be ready to march out of the town within three hours afterward. Finding all attempts to obtain more advantageous terms unavailing, Lord Cornwallis yielded to the necessities of the case and surrendered, with his entire force, military and naval, to the arms of the allies. The army, with all its artillery, stores, military-chest, etc., was surrendered to General Washington; the navy, with its appointments, to Admiral de Grasse. The terms were precisely similar to those which the enemy had granted to the garrison of Charleston in the preceding year; and General Lincoln, the commander of that garrison, on whom the illiberality of the enemy then fell, was designated as the officer to whom the surrender should be made. "At about 12, noon," says an eye-witness, "the combined army was arranged and drawn up in two lines extending more than a mile in length. The Americans were drawn up in a line on the right side of the road, and the French occupied the left. At the head of the former the great American commander, mounted on his noble courser, took his station, attended by his aides. At the head of the latter was posted the excellent Count Rochambeau and his suite. The French troops, in complete uniform, displayed a martial and noble appearance; their band of music, of which the timbrel formed a part, was a delightful novelty, and produced while marching to the ground a most enchanting effect. The Americans, though not all in uniform nor their dress so neat, yet exhibited an erect, soldierly air, and every countenance beamed with satisfaction and joy. The concourse of spectators from the country was prodigious, in point of numbers probably equal to the military, but universal silence and order prevailed. It was about two o'clock when the captive army advanced through the line formed for their reception. Every eye was prepared to gaze on Cornwallis, the object of peculiar interest and solicitation; but he disappointed our anxious expectations; pretending indisposition, he made General O'Hara his substitute as the leader of his army. This officer was followed by the conquered troops in a slow and solemn step, with shouldered arms, colors cased, and drums beating a British march." "Having arrived at the head of the line, General O'Hara, elegantly mounted, advanced to His Excellency the Commander-in-Chief, taking off his hat, and apologizing for the non-appearance of Earl Cornwallis. With his usual dignity and politeness, His Excellency pointed to Major-General Lincoln for directions, by whom the British army was conducted into a spacious field, where it was intended they should ground their arms. The royal troops, while marching through the line formed by the allied army, exhibited a decent and neat appearance as respects arms and clothing, for their commander opened his stores and directed every soldier to be furnished with a new suit complete prior to the capitulation. But in their line of march we remarked a disorderly and unsoldierly conduct, their step was irregular and their ranks frequently broken. But it was in the field, when they came to the last act of the drama, that the spirit and pride of the British soldier was put to the severest test; here their mortification could not be concealed. Some of the platoon officers appeared to be exceedingly chagrined when given the order 'ground arms'; and I am a witness that they performed this duty in a very unofficer-like manner, and that many of the soldiers manifested a sullen temper, throwing their arms on the pile with violence, as if determined to render them useless. This irregularity, however, was checked by the authority of General Lincoln. After having grounded their arms and divested themselves of their accoutrements, the captive troops were conducted back to Yorktown and guarded by our troops till they could be removed to the place of their destination. "The British troops that were stationed at Gloucester surrendered at the same time, and in the same manner, to the command of the French general, De Choisy. This must be a very interesting and gratifying transaction to General Lincoln, who, having himself been obliged to surrender an army to a haughty foe the last year, has now assigned him the pleasing duty of giving laws to a conquered army in return, and of reflecting that the terms which were imposed on him are adopted as a basis of the surrender in the present instance." The General-in-Chief on October 20th issued a "general order" congratulating the army "upon the glorious event of yesterday"; and after thanking the officers and troops of his ally, several of his own officers, and Governor Nelson of Virginia and the militia under his command, he concludes with these words: "To spread the general joy in all hearts, the General commands that those of the army who are now held under arrest be pardoned, set at liberty, and that they join their respective corps. "Divine service shall be performed in the different brigades and divisions. The Commander-in-Chief recommends that all the troops that are not upon duty, to assist at it with a serious deportment, and that sensibility of heart which the recollection of the surprising and particular interposition of Providence in our favor claims." The intelligence of the surrender, as it spread over the country, gave general satisfaction and filled every American heart with joy. Congress went in procession to the Dutch Lutheran Church to return thanks to Almighty God for the victory, and a day was set apart for general thanksgiving and prayer; the thanks of the same body were voted to the forces, both of America and France; and in the plenitude of its good-feeling it "resolved" to do that which it has not yet commenced to perform--to erect a marble column at York, in commemoration of the event.[29] But a greater and more enduring monument than any which the Congress has ever "resolved" to erect, commemorates the capture of Cornwallis: the fall of British dominion in the thirteen colonies on the Atlantic seaboard, the disinterested self-sacrifices of General Washington and the very few who enjoyed his confidence and regard, and the triumph of "the true principles of government." A country which, from small things, has become prosperous, powerful, and happy; a people, whose intelligence and enterprise and independence have astonished the old nations and their rulers; and the homage of admiring millions, freely and voluntarily offered, in every quarter of the globe--these form a monument which will commemorate the fall of Cornwallis, and the patriotism of Washington and Greene, of Wayne and Hamilton, of the honest yeomanry and the devoted "regulars" of that day, long after the resolutions of the Congress--if not the Congress itself--shall have sunk into obscurity and been entirely forgotten. LORD CORNWALLIS I have the mortification to inform your Excellency that I have been forced to give up the posts of York and Gloucester, and to surrender the troops under my command, by capitulation, on the 19th instant, as prisoners of war to the combined forces of America and France. I never saw this post in a very favorable light, but when I found I was to be attacked in it in so unprepared a state, by so powerful an army and artillery, nothing but the hopes of relief would have induced me to attempt its defence, for I would either have endeavored to escape to New York by rapid marches from the Gloucester side, immediately on the arrival of General Washington's troops at Williamsburg, or I would, notwithstanding the disparity of numbers, have attacked them in the open field, where it might have been just possible that fortune would have favored the gallantry of the handful of troops under my command; but being assured by your Excellency's letters that every possible means would be tried by the navy and army to relieve us, I could not think myself at liberty to venture upon either of these desperate attempts; therefore, after remaining for two days in a strong position in front of this place in hopes of being attacked, upon observing that the enemy were taking measures which could not fail of turning my left flank in a short time, and receiving on the second evening your letter of September 24th informing me that the relief would sail about October 5th, I withdrew within the works on the night of September 29th, hoping by the labor and firmness of the soldiers to protract the defence until you could arrive. Everything was to be expected from the spirit of the troops, but every disadvantage attended their labor, as the works were to be continued under the enemy's fire, and our stock of intrenching tools, which did not much exceed four hundred when we began to work in the latter end of August, was now much diminished. The enemy broke ground on the night of the 30th, and constructed on that night, and the two following days and nights, two redoubts, which, with some works that had belonged to our outward position, occupied a gorge between two creeks or ravines which come from the river on each side of the town. On the night of October 6th they made their first parallel, extending from its right on the river to a deep ravine on the left, nearly opposite to the centre of this place, and embracing our whole left at a distance of six hundred yards. Having perfected this parallel, their batteries opened on the evening of the 9th against our left, and other batteries fired at the same time against a redoubt advanced over the creek upon our right, and defended by about a hundred twenty men of the Twenty-third regiment and marines, who maintained that post with uncommon gallantry. The fire continued incessant from heavy cannon, and from mortars and howitzers throwing shells from 8 to 16 inches, until all our guns on the left were silenced, our work much damaged, and our loss of men considerable. On the night of the 11th they began their second parallel, about three hundred yards nearer to us. The troops being much weakened by sickness, as well as by the fire of the besiegers, and observing that the enemy had not only secured their flanks, but proceeded in every respect with the utmost regularity and caution, I could not venture so large sorties as to hope from them any considerable effect, but otherwise I did everything in my power to interrupt this work by opening new embrasures for guns and keeping up a constant fire from all the howitzers and small mortars that we could man. On the evening of the 14th they assaulted and carried two redoubts that had been advanced about three hundred yards for the purpose of delaying their approaches, and covering our left flank, and during the night included them in their second parallel, on which they continued to work with the utmost exertion. Being perfectly sensible that our works could not stand many hours after the opening of the batteries of that parallel, we not only continued a constant fire with all our mortars, and every gun that could be brought to bear upon it, but a little before daybreak on the morning of the 16th I ordered a sortie of about three hundred fifty men, under the direction of Lieutenant-Colonel Abercrombie, to attack two batteries which appeared to be in the greatest forwardness, and to spike the guns. A detachment of guards with the Eightieth company of grenadiers, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Lake, attacked the one, and one of light infantry, under the command of Major Armstrong, attacked the other, and both succeeded in forcing the redoubts that covered them, spiking eleven guns, and killing or wounding about one hundred of the French troops, who had the guard of that part of the trenches, and with little loss on our side. This action, though extremely honorable to the officers and soldiers who executed it, proved of little public advantage, for the cannon, having been spiked in a hurry, were soon rendered fit for service again, and before dark the whole parallel and batteries appeared to be nearly complete. At this time we knew that there was no part of the whole front attacked on which we could show a single gun, and our shells were nearly expended. I therefore had only to choose between preparing to surrender next day or endeavoring to get off with the greatest part of the troops, and I determined to attempt the latter. In this situation, with my little force divided, the enemy's batteries opened at daybreak. The passage between this place and Gloucester was much exposed, but the boats, having now returned, they were ordered to bring back the troops that had passed during the night, and they joined us in the forenoon without much loss. Our works, in the mean time, were going to ruin, and not having been able to strengthen them by an abatis, nor in any other manner but by a slight fraising, which the enemy's artillery were demolishing wherever they fired, my opinion entirely coincided with that of the engineer and principal officers of the army, that they were in many places assailable in the forenoon, and that by the continuance of the same fire for a few hours longer they would be in such a state as to render it desperate, with our numbers, to attempt to maintain them. We at that time could not fire a single gun; only one 8-inch and little more than one hundred Cohorn shells remained. A diversion by the French ships-of-war that lay at the mouth of York River was to be expected. Our numbers had been diminished by the enemy's fire, but particularly by sickness, and the strength and spirits of those in the works were much exhausted by the fatigue of constant watching and unremitting duty. Under all these circumstances I thought it would have been wanton and inhuman to the last degree to sacrifice the lives of this small body of gallant soldiers, who had ever behaved with so much fidelity and courage, by exposing them to an assault which, from the numbers and precautions of the enemy, could not fail to succeed. I therefore proposed to capitulate; and I have the honor to enclose to your excellency the copy of the correspondence between General Washington and me on that subject, and the terms of capitulation agreed upon. I sincerely lament that better could not be obtained, but I have neglected nothing in my power to alleviate the misfortune and distress of both officers and soldiers. The men are well clothed and provided with necessaries, and I trust will be regularly supplied by the means of the officers that are permitted to remain with them. The treatment, in general, that we have received from the enemy since our surrender has been perfectly good and proper, but the kindness and attention that have been shown to us by the French officers in particular--their delicate sensibility of our situation--their generous and pressing offer of money, both public and private, to any amount--has really gone beyond what I can possibly describe, and will, I hope, make an impression in the breast of every British officer, whenever the fortune of war should put any of them into our power. YORKTOWN, Virginia, October 20, 1781. FOOTNOTES: [29] A commemorative column, surmounted by a statue of General Rochambeau, heroic size, was unveiled at Washington May 24, 1902.--ED. BRITISH DEFENCE OF GIBRALTAR A.D. 1782 FREDERICK SAYER To Great Britain it was of the utmost importance that, once having secured possession of Gibraltar, she should keep that famous stronghold. By successfully defending it during the long siege of 1779-1783, she retained it in what has proved a lasting tenure. The fortified promontory and town of Gibraltar, now a British crown colony, have long been objects of historical interest. The Rock of Gibraltar, anciently called Calpe, one of the Pillars of Hercules, is on the southern coast of Spain. Its name has been for centuries a synonyme of strength. Near it in the eighth century landed Tarik, the first Saracen invader of Spain. The Moors mainly held it till 1462, when it was finally taken by the Spaniards. Charles V fortified it; in 1704 it was captured by an English and Dutch force under Sir George Rooke. The Spaniards and French unsuccessfully besieged it in 1704-1705, and the Spaniards again in 1727. No further attempt was made to capture this seemingly impregnable fastness until the great siege here described by Sayer, when once more the Spaniards and French combined against it. England was now somewhat weakened by the war with the American colonies and France. All Europe was unfriendly to her, and Spain, as well as France, was actively hostile. Gibraltar was closely invested in 1779, and so remained for three years, when the final assault was made. In 1782 Alvarez, the Spanish commander, was superseded by the Duc de Crillon, who had just taken Minorca from the British. George Augustus Eliot, afterward Lord Heathfield, Baron of Gibraltar, who made the memorable defence, was appointed governor of Gibraltar in 1775. Lord Howe, who went to his assistance, had conducted the English naval operations in America. He returned to England in 1778, in 1782 was made a viscount of Great Britain, and was sent to relieve Gibraltar, where he arrived too late to assist against the grand attack, but landed welcome troops and supplies. Piqued at the successful defence which for three years had baffled every effort, and burning with the desire to wipe out the stain on the national honor, the Spaniards were urged on in this last struggle by all the impulses of pride, ambition, and revenge. The slow and regular operations of a siege having proved but labor lost against this stubborn rock, rewards were offered to the most skilful engineers in Europe for plans to subdue the fortress. Stimulated by these liberal offers, a thousand schemes had reached Madrid, some bold to extravagance, others too ludicrous to deserve attention. Among them, however, was one, the invention of the Chevalier d'Arçon, of such superior merit that it instantly arrested the attention even of the King himself. His plan consisted of a combined attack by sea and land upon a scale so tremendously formidable, and assisted by such ingenious inventions of art, that it held out a prospect of certain success. After a brief consideration the Court of Madrid announced its unqualified approval of the scheme, and orders were at once issued for its adoption. Not only was the reduction of the fort now considered certain, but so vast were the powers to be employed, and so prodigious the armament to be brought against the walls, that the annihilation of every stone upon the rock was not unexpected. The plan embraced two leading features: first, a bombardment from the isthmus, upon a scale hitherto unknown; secondly, an attack by sea along the whole length of the line-wall. For this purpose floating batteries of such construction that they were to be "at once incombustible and insubmergible," were to be employed. Each battery was clad on its fighting side with three successive layers of squared timber, three feet in thickness; within this wall ran a body of wet sand, and within that again was a line of cork soaked in water and calculated to prevent the effects of splinters, the whole being bound together by strong wooden bolts. To protect the crews from shells or dropping shot, a hanging roof was contrived, composed of strong rope-work netting, covered with wet hides, and shelving sufficiently to prevent the shot from lodging. Not the least remarkable part of these vessels was a plan for the prevention of combustion from red-hot shot. A reservoir was placed beneath the roof from which numerous pipes, like the veins of the human body, circulated through the sides of the ship, giving a constant supply of water to every part, and keeping the wood continually saturated. To form these powerful batteries, ten ships, from six hundred to fourteen hundred tons burden, were cut down to the proper proportions, and upward of two hundred thousand cubic feet of timber were used in their construction. Each battery was armed with from eight to twenty heavy brass cannon of new manufacture, with a reserve of spare pieces. The crews varied in number from seven hundred sixty to two hundred fifty men. One large sail propelled each ship. Besides this tremendous armament which was to annihilate the line of defence from the sea, preparations of no less magnitude were being made for the attack on the northern front. Not fewer than twelve hundred pieces of heavy ordnance were ready for use in the artillery park, enormous quantities of ammunition and warlike stores were in the magazines, and the reserve of gunpowder alone was reported at eighty-three thousand barrels. Immense works were being hurried forward on the isthmus of a grandeur which eclipsed anything that had been previously constructed. In twenty-four hours a flying sap was thrown out with a rapidity of execution unequalled. The parallel extended to a length of two hundred thirty _toises_, with a _boyau_ of six hundred thirty toises from the place where it joined the principal barrier of the lines. The construction of this boyau required one million six hundred thousand bags of sand, and thousands of casks were used in forming the parallel. In a single night this enormous work was raised to the height of twelve feet with eighteen feet of thickness, and it was supposed that during the seven hours in which it was erected ten thousand men were at labor. To assist in the assault by sea, the combined fleets of France and Spain, amounting to fifty sail of the line, with forty gunboats, numerous frigates, and fifty mortar-vessels, were to act in support. Three hundred boats, fitted with hinged platforms at their prows, were to accompany the expedition, and at the proper moment to land the troops. The outline of the attack having been arranged, the plan was drawn out by the Duc de Crillon, and submitted for approval, first to the Court of Madrid, and afterward to the King of France. Subsequently the details were very materially altered, but the principle remained the same. The method originally proposed was as follows: "The plan for taking Gibraltar, presented by Crillon, with the opinion of the minister, was imparted, by order of his majesty, to France, by the hand of Aranda, and, it being approved of, that Court offered twenty-seven auxiliary ships. According to this plan the assault will be conducted in the following manner: Brigadier Don Ventura Moreno will command the fire of the fleet. The vanguard of the combined squadron will be commanded by Señor Cordova, and among the divisions that compose it will be included the third of twelve fireproof ships, which will anchor in Algeciras until Señor Alvarez completes the sixty paces of intrenchment opposite the fortress. Our ships will then attack; four by the Europa Point, two by the New Mole, their fire being supported by that of the gun- and mortar-boats and bomb-ketches, which will hold themselves in readiness to support where it may be required. "At a given signal the fire from our whole line will open with that of the intrenchment, which will not cease until a breach shall have been made at the Europa Point. The battering-ships will not be allowed to quit their respective posts till they require relief, and they will then retire to Algeciras, whence others will proceed to supply their places, taking up the same points. The officer who shall act counter to his orders will be removed from his post without its being referred to the King. The breach having been made, the commander-in-chief, the Duc de Crillon, will notify to the governor the surrender of the fortress; and should he consent to the capitulation, the preliminaries will be arranged, conceding to him military honors; if he persist in the defence, the operations will continue in the following manner: "The fire by sea and land will protect the disembarkation of our troops on the flanks of the advance. The boats conveying them will be covered by large planks on hinges, which on unfolding will fall on the moles on the right, while on the left others will rest on the transports that follow, in order to link them to each other and adjust them to the breach, binding them firmly together, the first boat being attached to the ground by means of grappling-irons, which it will carry for the purpose. The troops will advance along these in the following order: Two companies of grenadiers of about seventy men each, and as many more of chasseurs, with three companies of dragoons, the whole under the command of Señor Cagigal, general of the second column, and his subaltern officers, the brigadier Don Francesco Pacheco, Colonel of Seville, and Señor Aviles, Colonel of Villaviciosa. Two battalions of volunteers of Catalonia will form the flying troops to effect a support where it may be necessary, and to strengthen either flank, or profiting by any opportunity the enemy may offer of attacking him. This corps will be commanded by Brigadier Don Benito Panogo. "The army will be formed into three divisions; its right commanded by Lieutenant-General Buch, its left by the Count of Cifuentes, and its centre by Marshal Burghesi. The best company of grenadiers from each regiment will be detached to cover its respective corps, and when the disembarkation of the troops, or part of them, shall have been executed, the boats carrying the fascines, powder-saucisses, gabions, panniers, pickaxes, etc., will be sent forward in order that they may cover themselves as the disembarkation proceeds, keeping up at the same time a lively fire along with the rest of the army. Detached parties will scour with promptitude the Campo Huevo in order to intercept the advanced guard and to cut off the retreat of the enemy to the mountain; which dispositions being well concerted, the enemy will be reduced to the extremity of either surrendering or being destroyed. "The squadron of Señor Cordova will cover the mouth of the Straits, and the French will place itself as much within as circumstances may require; two hundred _muheletes_ and two hundred artillerymen more have been asked for from the camp, those that are present being required for the intrenchment. These have been sent for from their respective corps." The fame of the siege of Gibraltar had ere this spread to the remotest corners of Europe. The Count d'Artois, brother to the King of France, and the Duc de Bourbon arrived in the camp in August, impatient to witness the fall of the invincible fortress, and they were followed by crowds of the nobility of Spain, eager to join in an enterprise which it was anticipated would result in a victory most glorious to their arms. General Eliot regarded the progress of the tremendous armaments without despondency. He prepared for the coming storm, and made every effort to meet it manfully and with success. An experiment which had lately been tried with red-hot shot produced such effects that he founded his hopes of destroying the enemy's battering-ships almost solely upon that expedient, and great numbers of furnaces for heating the shot were immediately prepared and placed in convenient positions within the principal batteries. The defences too were thoroughly repaired, the Land Port was more carefully protected, and unserviceable guns were laid across the tops of the embrasures in many of the works, as a protection to the artillerymen when under fire. The arrival of the Count d'Artois in the camp gave rise to an interchange of courtesies between the governor and the Duc de Crillon, and though the two chiefs were on the eve of a great struggle for the mastery, letters couched in the most affable and peaceful terms passed between them. The Count having brought with him a packet of letters for some officers of the garrison, the Duc de Crillon took advantage of the opportunity, and, when the parcel was sent into the fortress, accompanied it by a letter from himself to General Eliot, in which he expressed the highest esteem for the governor's person and character, and assured him how anxiously he looked forward to becoming his friend; at the same time he offered a present of a few luxuries for the General's table. In reply to this courteous note the governor returned his sincerest thanks for the gift, but begged that in future no such favor might be heaped upon him, as by accepting the present he had broken through a rule to which he had faithfully adhered since the beginning of the war, never to receive anything for his own private use, but to partake both of plenty and scarcity in common with the lowest of his brave fellow-soldiers. Toward the end of August, 1782, a grand inspection of the floating batteries took place at Algeciras, at which the French princes were present. To exhibit the ease and simplicity with which they could be manoeuvred, the vessels were put through various movements, to the admiration and surprise of the spectators. So satisfactory was this trial considered that it became the popular opinion that twenty-four hours would suffice for the demolition of the fortress, and the Duc de Crillon was made the subject of the greatest ridicule when he cautiously hinted that fourteen days might elapse ere the place fell. Crillon, in fact had no affection for the schemes of the Chevalier d'Arçon, and, as we shall presently see, he attributed his subsequent failure almost entirely to the blind confidence that was placed in the floating batteries. As the time approached, the greatest impatience was manifested not only by the troops, but throughout all Spain, for the commencement of the attack, and so loud was the clamor for immediate action that D'Arçon was ordered to hurry on the completion of the floating batteries with every despatch. Late in August a council of war was held in the camp, at which the French princes were present, and it was then proposed that the command and direction of the floating batteries should be confided to the officer of the navy, Crillon taking upon himself the responsibility of the attack by land. Disputes had already arisen as to the proper dispositions for the bombardment, Crillon claiming an undivided authority over the whole proceeding, while the Minister of Marine was anxious that the Admiral should direct the movements of the batteries and their mode of equipment. When the before-mentioned proposal was conveyed to Crillon he peremptorily refused to accede to it. Nor could any decision be arrived at regarding the most proper point of attack; the Old Mole, which at first appeared the weakest part of the fortress, was found to be covered by the guns of the principal batteries on the Rock, while the New Mole presented even greater difficulties. There was another matter too which became the subject of discussion up to the very moment of the attack, and this was whether it would not be expedient to supply each floating battery with warp-anchors and the double cables, that they might withdraw in case of accident. These unfortunate disputes, which arose at a time when perfect unanimity was most essential, hampered the progress of operations, and destroyed that harmony which should have existed between Crillon and his subordinates. D'Arçon especially was offended and annoyed; he claimed for himself the merit of having invented the machines which were to annihilate the place, and insisted upon his right to have the sole direction of their movements. Crillon, on the other hand, perceived that if the command were divided, and the attack should prove successful, the glory of the triumph would be appropriated by the French engineer. In the many councils of war that preceded the bombardment the Duke did not care to conceal his jealousy of the Chevalier d'Arçon. On one occasion, deriding the propositions of the engineer, he exclaimed: "You have a fatherly love for your batteries, and are only anxious for their preservation. Should the enemy attempt to take possession of them, I will burn them before his face." On another occasion, when in the presence of the French princes, he said: "You were summoned into Spain to execute _my_ plan for the attack of Gibraltar by floating batteries. _Your_ commission is performed: the rest belongs to me." While these discussions and misunderstandings were distracting the councils of the besiegers, a master hand was guiding the preparations for the defence within the fortress. Every emergency that might occur was provided for, every danger that could be foreseen averted, and the garrison itself reënforced by a marine brigade of six hundred men under command of Brigadier Curtis. In the first week of September the land works of the enemy had progressed with gigantic strides, immense batteries, some containing as many as sixty-four guns, only waited to be unmasked, and long strings of mules streamed hourly into the trenches, laden with shot, shell, and ammunition. The advanced works were not, except in some instances, yet armed, and large masses of material which had accumulated in their vicinity cumbered the embrasures and rendered their parapets liable to destruction by fire. Seizing upon the opportunity thus afforded by the negligence of the Spaniards, General Boyd wrote to the governor recommending the use of red-hot shot against these works. Though the distance was great, and the effect of heated shot had not then been thoroughly ascertained, Eliot acquiesced in the proposition, and Major Lewis, commanding the artillery, was ordered to execute the attack. On September 8th the preparations were completed, and at 7 A.M. the guards having been relieved, a tremendous fire was opened from all the northern batteries. Throughout the day this fiery cannonade was kept up with unabated fury. By 10 A.M. the Mahon battery and another work of two guns were in flames and by five in the evening were entirely consumed, with all their gun-carriages, platforms, and magazines. The effect of the red-hot shot exceeded the most sanguine expectations; the damage done was extensive and for a time irreparable; the greater part of the communication to the eastern parallel was destroyed, and the batteries of St. Carlos and St. Martin so much injured that they were no longer serviceable. At one moment the works were on fire in fifty places, and the flames, lifted by the wind, spread with terrible rapidity; but by the prodigious exertions of the enemy's troops, who, notwithstanding the galling fire from the garrison to which they were exposed, displayed a reckless intrepidity, the work of destruction was arrested and many of the batteries saved from ruin. Irritated at this unexpected attack upon works which had cost him so much labor and anxiety, Crillon was precipitated into a premature bombardment, which, while it exposed to view the hitherto masked batteries, and thus gave General Eliot an opportunity of preparing counter-works upon the Rock, at the same time did considerable damage to the unfinished lines. On the morning of September 9th a battery of sixty-four guns opened at daybreak and a tremendous discharge from one hundred seventy pieces of cannon announced the commencement of the final bombardment. At the same time a squadron of seven Spanish and two French line-of-battle ships got under way at Orange Grove, and, dropping slowly past the sea-line wall, delivered several broadsides against the south bastion and Ragged Staff, until they arrived off Europa. Then, having first formed line to eastward of the Rock, they attacked the batteries from the Point as far as the New Mole, with some energy. On the following day this manoeuvre was repeated, and the cannonade from the lines was renewed with all its fierceness, six thousand five hundred shot and two thousand eighty shell being thrown into the fortress every twenty-four hours. Notwithstanding this overwhelming fire the loss in the garrison was exceedingly small. On the 12th the combined fleets of Spain and France, numbering thirty-nine ships of the line, entered the Bay of Algeciras, and having formed a junction with the squadron already at anchor, raised the naval force to fifty ships of the line and two second-rates; nine vessels bore an admiral's flag. General Eliot was conscious that the hour of trial approached, and so ably had he conducted his preparations that during the twenty-four hours preceding the attack not a single alteration had to be made, even in the most minute directions that had been given to the troops. Every man knew his place, each gun was told off for one particular duty, simple and efficient arrangements had been made for a constant supply of ammunition, and every bastion was furnished with its fuel and furnace for the dreaded red-hot shot. It was during the morning of the 12th that the governor received information that the combined attack would commence on the following day. Calmly as this courageous man awaited the hour of trial, he could not but be influenced by the gravest anxiety for the result. He had witnessed the gigantic armaments that were preparing for the assault; and though ignorant of the exact force which was to be brought against him, he was aware that neither France nor Spain had spared labor or expense to accumulate a strength hitherto unknown in the history of sieges. On the land he was threatened by two hundred forty-six pieces of cannon, mortars, and howitzers, and an army of near forty thousand men; while by sea fifty sail of the line, ten floating batteries, of a construction supposed to be indestructible, with countless gun- and mortar-boats, and three hundred smaller craft were waiting only the signal for the attack. To this enormous armament, but seven thousand men and ninety-six guns could be opposed. At a council of war held in the Spanish camp on September 4th the final details for the arrangement of the grand attack had been settled, and it was decided to open the bombardment on the 13th of the month. At this council M. d'Arçon vehemently protested against the precipitate haste with which the preparations of the floating batteries had been hurried on, and vainly pleaded for a few days' further delay, in order that some experiments might be made upon the vessels, and especially that the effectiveness of the water apparatus might be tested. His arguments were met by others equally cogent. Lord Howe with a powerful fleet was known to be on his way to relieve the fortress, and it was of vital importance that his arrival should be anticipated. The season was already far advanced, and the works on the land side, which had only just been repaired, were at any moment exposed to a second partial destruction by red-hot shot. All objections, therefore, were overruled, and the day was named. At about seven o'clock on the morning of September 13th the enemy's fleet was observed to be in motion off the Orange Grove, and shortly afterward the ten floating batteries were under way, and with a crowd of boats standing for the southward with a light northwest breeze. Shortly after ten o'clock they had reached their respective stations off the line-wall, and Admiral Don Buenoventura Moreno, in the Pastora, having taken up a position opposite the capital of the King's Bastion, the others anchored in admirable order on his right and left flanks, at about one thousand yards distance from the walls of the fortress. At this time the enemy's camp and the surrounding hills were covered with countless thousands of spectators, who had hurried from all parts of Spain to witness the fall of Gibraltar. The batteries had no sooner let go their anchors than a tremendous cannonade of hot and cold shot was opened upon them all along the line; at the same instant the ponderous vessels replied from all their guns, supported by the fire of one hundred eighty-six pieces of ordnance from the works on the isthmus. Never before in the annals of war had a spectacle so magnificently grand been witnessed--four hundred cannon belched forth their volleys of fire at the same moment, the whole heaven was obscured by the curling clouds of smoke which clung around the rugged peaks of the rocks, while the misty gloom was fitfully illumined by the flashes of a thousand saucisses and shells. The whole peninsula was overwhelmed with a torrent of shot. For two hours this terrible cannonade continued without intermission, and no impression had been made upon the floating batteries; so well calculated was their construction to withstand the effects of artillery that the heaviest shells rebounded from their roofs and the shot struck harmless on their sides. Upward of two thousand red-hot balls had been thrown against them, and no symptoms of combustion appeared, except here and there a feeble flame, which ere it could spread was quenched. At noon the enemy slackened their fire from the sea for a moment, but seemingly only for the purpose of amending the direction of their guns, which had previously been uncertain and too high; the pause was but for an instant, and the artillery again burst forth with a more powerful and better-directed fire. Showers of every missile swept over the walls, and already the British troops, disappointed with the effects of the red-hot shot, and fatigued with the mid-day sun, began to look gloomily upon the issue of the fight. But about two o'clock slight wreaths of flame were observed issuing from the Admiral's ship, and at the same time a strange confusion was remarked among the men on board the Talla Piedra. On board this battery was the Chevalier d'Arçon, who was present in the action as a volunteer to watch the success of his own inventions. Several red-hot shot had struck this ship, but one alone gave any uneasiness to those on board; to reach the smouldering woodwork the guns were silenced, and the smoke clearing away left the vessel exposed to such a concentrated fire that all efforts to arrest the progress of the flames were in vain. The blaze rapidly spread, the crew were seized with a panic, and, fearful of an explosion, turned the water into the powder-magazines. Thus one battery was rendered useless during the remainder of the action. In the Admiral's ship the flames were for some hours subdued, and her guns continued to play upon the walls until nightfall; but the disorder which was immediately visible in the Talla Piedra and the Pastora soon affected the whole line of attack, and by 7 P.M. the fire from the fortress had gained a commanding superiority. At midnight signals of distress were made from all parts of the bay. The Admiral's ship was in flames from stem to stern, and others had been set on fire. The enemy now determined to abandon all the ships, and those which had hitherto resisted the effects of the red-hot shots were, by order of the Admiral, set in flames. As the gray morning dawned, the scene on the waters of the bay was sublimely terrible; masses of shattered wreck, to which were clinging the drowning crews, floated over the troubled waves; groans and cries for help reached even to the walls, or were drowned in the thunders of the exploding magazines, while the glaring flames of the burning vessels cast a lurid light over the awful spectacle. At two o'clock in the morning Brigadier Curtis, who with his squadron of gunboats lay at the New Mole ready to take advantage of any opportunity to harass the enemy, pushed out to the westward and with great expedition formed line upon the flank of the battering-ships. This sudden movement completely disconcerted the Spaniards, who were engaged in removing the crews from the vessels, and they fled precipitately, abandoning the wounded and leaving them to perish in the flames. As daylight appeared two feluccas, which had not been able before to escape, were discovered endeavoring to get away, but, a shot from one of the gunboats killing five of their men, they both surrendered. Hearing from the prisoners that hundreds of officers and men, some wounded, still remained on board the batteries and must certainly perish, Captain Curtis, at the utmost risk of his own life, made the most heroic efforts to effect their rescue. Careless of danger from the explosions which every instant scattered showers of _débris_ around him, he passed from ship to ship and literally dragged from the burning decks the miserable men who yet remained on board. With the coolest intrepidity he pushed his pinnace close alongside one of the largest batteries at the very moment she blew up, covering the sea with fragments of her wreck. For a time the boat was engulfed amid the falling ruin, and her escape was miraculous. A huge balk of timber fell through her flooring, killing the coxswain, wounding others of the crew, and starting a large hole in her bottom. Through this leak the water rushed so rapidly that little hope was left of reaching the shore, but, the sailors' jackets being stuffed into the aperture, the hole was plugged, and the gallant men got safe to land. By the heroic and humane exertions of Captain Curtis and his boat's crew three hundred fifty-seven persons were saved from a horrible death. While these disasters were occurring in the bay, the land batteries on the isthmus never for an instant slackened the tremendous fire that had been commenced on the previous morning; until at daybreak on the 14th the Spaniards, having become aware of the fate of their comrades on board the vessels, ordered the cannonade to cease. Captain Curtis had scarcely completed his service of humanity before eight of the remaining ships blew up and one only remained unconsumed. At first it was hoped that she might be saved as a trophy of the glorious action, but this was afterward found impossible, and she was set fire to like the rest. The flag of Admiral Moreno remained flying until his battery was totally destroyed. Desperate had been the struggle and great was the victory. During the hottest of the fire General Eliot took his station on the King's Bastion, exposed to the guns of the two most powerful battering-ships. Nothing could exceed the coolness and courage of the troops during this trying day; the steady and incessant fire was never allowed to slacken, the guns were served, says the governor, "with the deliberate coolness and precision of school practice, but the exertions of the men were infinitely superior." The furnaces for heating the shot were found to be too few, and huge fires were kindled in convenient corners of the streets. An immense amount of ammunition was expended on both sides; three hundred twenty of the enemy's cannon were in play throughout the day, and to these were opposed only ninety-six guns from the garrison. Upward of eight thousand shot and seven hundred sixteen barrels of gunpowder were fired away by the garrison. When the unparalleled force of the bombardment is considered, the casualties among the troops were remarkably few: one officer, two sergeants, and thirteen men only were killed, and five officers and sixty-three men wounded. The enemy's losses, on the contrary, were very great; on the floating batteries alone one thousand four hundred seventy-three men were either killed, wounded, or missing. By the evening of the 14th the bay was cleared of the shattered wrecks, and not a vestige of the formidable armament, which the day before had been the hope and pride of Spain, remained. The contest was at an end, and the united strength of two ambitious and powerful nations had been humbled by a straitened garrison of six thousand effective men. With the destruction of the floating batteries the siege was virtually concluded. In Spain the news was received with consternation and despair. The thousands who on the preceding day crowded upon the neighboring hills, and with eager anxiety awaited the anticipated victory, returned to their homes disappointed and chagrined. They had been taught to believe that the attack would be crushing and invincible; that the batteries were indestructible; that the fortress must be annihilated by their overwhelming fire; but instead of these disasters they had seen every ship destroyed or sunk, with all their guns, and two thousand men of their crews either killed, wounded, or taken prisoner. In the first moment of consternation the inventor of those vast machines, upon the success of which the whole attack depended, could not restrain his poignant grief and was led into confessions which he afterward regretted. Writing to the French ambassador, Montmorin, he said: "I have burned the Temple of Ephesus; everything is lost, and through my fault. What comforts me under my misfortune is that the honor of the two kings remains untarnished." At Madrid the news of the disaster was received with dismay; and the King, who was at the palace of Ildefonso, listened to the intelligence in mute despair. The recovery of Gibraltar had been his unswerving aim, and with this repulse almost his last hope was extinguished. In Paris the intelligence was no less unexpected and unwelcome; so certain indeed had the fall of the fortress been considered that a drama illustrative of the destruction of Gibraltar by the floating batteries was acted nightly to applauding thousands. It has been before remarked that the Duc de Crillon never held that blindly confident opinion of the inventions of D'Arçon which had turned the heads of the two Bourbon courts. He had always urged the necessity of a complete attack by sea, in which the whole fleet should engage, and of which the floating batteries would form an integral part. The French engineer ridiculed this idea, and affirmed that the ships would be destroyed before they could inflict any damage upon the walls. The result of the attack showed how completely D'Arçon was mistaken. During the day the assistance of the combined fleet was urgently required; but when its coöperation might have turned the tide of victory, an adverse wind arose, and the vessels could not beat up within range of the Rock. The distinguished part which Captain Curtis had taken in the defence of the fortress ever since he had joined the command drew from General Eliot commendations no less merited than sincere. Writing to Lord Howe on October 15th he says: "Unknown to Brigadier Curtis, I must entreat your lordship to reflect upon the unspeakable assistance he has been in the defence of this place by his advice, and the lead he has taken in every hazardous enterprise. You know him well, my lord, therefore such conduct on his part is no more than you expect; but let me beg of you not to leave him unrewarded for such signal services. You alone can influence his majesty to consider such an officer for what he has, and what he will in future deserve wherever employed. If Gibraltar is of the value intimated to me from office, and to be presumed by the steps adventured to relieve it, Brigadier Curtis is the man to whom the King will be chiefly indebted for its security. Believe me, there is nothing affected in this declaration on my part." Again, when on his return to England he was created Lord Heathfield, he expressed his indignation that Curtis only received the honor of knighthood and a pension of five hundred pounds per annum. "It is a shame," he said, "that I should be overloaded, and so scanty a pittance be the lot of him who bore the greatest share of the burthen." Such was the unaffected modesty of this great man! When the confusion arising from their disastrous defeat had subsided in the enemy's camp, a heavy cannonade was again opened from their lines and advanced works. The firing generally commenced about five or six o'clock in the morning and continued till noon, then for two hours the batteries were silent, but again opened till seven o'clock in the evening, when the mortars took up the fire till daybreak. During the twenty-four hours six hundred shells and about one thousand shots were thrown into the garrison. Notwithstanding the ill-success which had attended the combined attack, and the signal proof the enemy had received of the impregnable strength of the fortress, the Spaniards did not entirely despair of eventually reducing the place by famine, could the arrival of Lord Howe's fleet with the convoy be prevented. In August the English Government, being aware of the vast preparations which had been making in Spain for the siege of Gibraltar, had collected a fleet of thirty-four sail of the line, six frigates, and three fire-ships, under command of Admiral Lord Howe, which was to convoy a flotilla of merchantmen with relief for the garrison. By September 11th the preparations were completed, and on that day Howe set sail from Spithead with one hundred eighty-three sail, including the convoy, under the command of Vice-Admirals Barrington and Milbank, Rear Admirals Hood and Hughes, and Commodore Hotham. Hampered by the difficulty of keeping the merchantmen together, and baffled by contrary winds and violent weather, Howe's passage was unusually slow and tedious. The Spanish Government having gained intelligence of the approach of this powerful force, instantly took measures to attack the expedition before it could arrive at its destination. For this purpose the combined fleets of Spain and France which lay in the harbor of Algeciras were reënforced, and dispositions were made for intercepting the British ships on their passage through the Straits. These arrangements had scarcely been completed when, on the evening of October 10th, a fresh westerly wind sprang up in the bay, and toward night gradually increased in violence till it blew a hurricane. Soon the enemy's vessels were in distress, many were dragging their anchors, and signal-guns were fired for help in rapid succession. Throughout the night the fury of the storm did not abate, and daybreak disclosed the havoc among the squadrons at Algeciras; a ship of the line and a frigate were ashore at Orange Grove, a French liner had suffered great damage to her masts and rigging, and the St. Michael, of seventy-two guns, was discovered close in shore off the Orange Bastion in distress. She was immediately fired at and after having lost four men she was run ashore on the line-wall, and taken possession of by Captain Curtis. Her commander, Admiral Don Juan Moreno, and her crew of six hundred fifty men were landed as prisoners. These misfortunes materially affected the ulterior movements of the combined fleets. In the mean time Lord Howe had on the 8th of the month arrived off Cape St. Vincent, and a frigate was sent on from there to gain information from the consul at Faro of the enemy's dispositions. Two days afterward she returned with the intelligence that the combined fleets, consisting of nearly fifty sail, lay at anchor at Algeciras. Upon the receipt of this news a council of war was held, and clear and stringent orders were afterward issued for the guidance of the masters in charge of the merchantmen, that the convoy might be conducted safely into the harbor of Gibraltar. On the 11th, the fleet passed through the Straits in three divisions, the third and centre squadrons in line of battle ahead, the second squadron in reserve; the Victory led ahead of the third squadron. By sunset the van had arrived off Europa Point, and before nightfall four of the transports had anchored under the guns of the fortress. By an unpardonable inattention to the orders they had received, the masters of the other vessels failed to make the bay and were driven away to the eastward of the Rock. To the astonishment of Howe, who had looked upon an engagement as inevitable, the Spaniards did not attempt to intercept the convoy. During the two following days the British Admiral was engaged in collecting the transports to the eastward, and preparing for action in case the Spaniards should attack. On the 13th the combined fleets, consisting of forty-four ships of the line, five frigates, and twenty-nine xebec-cutters and brigs, got under way and stood to the southward, with the apparent intention of bearing down upon Lord Howe's force. But though the Spanish Admiral had the weather-gauge, and notwithstanding his fleet was greatly superior in numbers to the English, he contented himself with the execution of some harmless manoeuvres, and permitted the whole of the transports to be conducted safely into Gibraltar under the very muzzles of his guns. The stores and provisions were immediately landed, and two regiments of infantry--Twenty-fifth and Twenty-ninth--were disembarked under the superintendence of Lord Mulgrave. Having accomplished his mission and relieved the fortress, Lord Howe prepared to return to England. On October 19th, taking advantage of an easterly wind, he formed his fleet in order of battle and sailed through the Straits. At this time the combined fleets were cruising a few miles north-east of Ceuta, and in view of Howe's squadron, of which they had the weather-gauge. The two fleets remained near each other during the night, and on the following morning, the wind having come round to the northward, the Spaniards still held the advantage and could have closed for action at any moment. It was Lord Howe's desire, if possible, to avoid an engagement in the narrow and dangerous waters of the Straits, and to entice the enemy to accept battle in the open sea; with this object he continued on his course to the westward. At sunset on the 20th the combined fleets, greatly superior to the English in force and numbers, came up with the rear division, under Admiral Barrington, and a partial action commenced, but the enemy remained at such a respectful distance, keeping as near as they could haul to the wind, that the firing was comparatively harmless on both sides. The two admirals De Guichen and Cordova led the enemy's van, and it was apparently their intention to cut off and destroy the rear division of the British fleet; but though they had the superiority in force and the advantage of the wind, they could not be induced to close, and soon after midnight the firing ceased. The next morning the two fleets were still in sight, but as the Spaniards evinced no disposition to renew the engagement, Howe, whose orders did not permit him to provoke the enemy, continued on his homeward voyage. The successful passage of the British fleet through the Straits, in the face of the combined forces, was regarded in Madrid as a glorious victory for the Spanish arms. The despatches of Don Louis de Cordova described the partial engagement as a complete rout, and Howe was made to flee with all press of sail from his brave pursuers. Seizing upon this exaggerated intelligence as a counterpoise to the recent disastrous news from Gibraltar, the Government extolled the valor of the navy, and spread ludicrously bombastic accounts of the "glorious victory" throughout the country. Pamphlets descriptive of the engagement were published and disseminated, in which the casualties of the English were put down in numbers imposingly enormous. Gibraltar having thus been again successfully relieved, the Spanish government relinquished all hope of securing its possession by force of arms; but the King still fondly retained some expectation of succeeding by negotiation. In order to conceal the actual hopelessness of the enterprise, and "to give a reasonable color to the formal prosecution of the siege," private instructions were sent to Crillon to continue the offensive. But the Spanish commander was in truth no less disheartened than the ministers of his government, and with the exception of daily attacks by gun- and mortar-boats, seconded by a warm fire from the isthmus, active operations completely ceased. On February 2, 1783, the news of the signature of the preliminaries of a general peace reached the garrison by a flag of truce, and on March 12th the gates of the fortress, which had been closed for nearly four years, were once more thrown open. The announcement of the peace was received with general joy throughout the garrison, and this feeling was most fully reciprocated by the disheartened and weary enemy. The two chiefs, who, since they had been opposed to each other as antagonists in a struggle which riveted the attention of all Europe, had learned to regret that they were foes, now met with the cordial embrace of friendship, and no opportunity was lost which could tend to obliterate the remembrances of former rivalry. Friendly meetings were interchanged between them, and all memory of previous antagonism was buried in oblivion. Being introduced to the officers of the Royal Artillery, through whose courage and ability his brightest hopes of victory had been destroyed, Crillon met them with praises of their noble conduct, and remarked that "he would rather see them there as friends than on their batteries as enemies, where," he added, "they never spared me." One day when inspecting the immense lines of fortification on the northern face of the Rock, all of which had been constructed during the progress of the siege, lost in astonishment at the magnitude of the works, he exclaimed, "This is indeed worthy of the Romans!" Early in April, the Spanish camp having commenced to break up, and the lines on the isthmus having been dismantled, the Duc de Crillon handed over his command to the Marquis de Saya, and returned to Madrid. Thus after a duration of three years seven months and twelve days ended this memorable siege; a siege which, in the words of Lord North, "was one of those astonishing instances of British valor, discipline, military skill, and humanity that no other age or country could produce an example of." At length the devoted garrison was relieved from a situation of suffering, peril, and privation almost unparalleled in the annals of war. END OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION A.D. 1782 JOHN ADAMS BENJAMIN FRANKLIN JOHN JAY HENRY LAURENS JOHN M. LUDLOW Concerning the momentous consequences of the American Revolution, not only for America herself but for the whole world, history has raised no question of doubt. Regarding its causes and its justification there has been substantial agreement of both learned and popular opinion in all progressive countries. But various and often contradictory are the judgments pronounced upon the course and conduct of the war itself, even among American writers. Until recently it has been impossible that either in the United States or Great Britain a wholly dispassionate view of the War of Independence should be shared by both critical students and general readers. In America it has been the fashion to glorify indiscriminately the actors on the colonial side and all their achievements. The provincial note of national heroics has been transmitted from one generation to another, and the breath of the school children has been carefully laden with it from tenderest years. On the English side, the quite natural early resentment against the lost colonies--mainly confined to official circles and hereditary interests--may be said to have been later softened into "a certain condescension," such as Lowell pointed out in foreigners generally toward America. But that condescension, like the earlier acrimony, is a thing of the past. Here, as elsewhere, history is being rewritten. American self-glorification, as well as wounded English pride, gives way to better teachings, and the larger lessons of humanity, which is more than nationality, are giving to all nations clearer visions of a federated world. The growth of this new historic sense, informed with clearer knowledge and a more discriminating love of justice, is well illustrated in the following critical examination, wherein Ludlow, a living English historian, carefully considers the various factors at work in the Revolution, and the personal forces through which its results were produced. Prefixed to this is the official statement of the American peace commissioners--John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, and Henry Laurens--to Robert R. Livingston, then superintendent of foreign affairs, of the conditions of the preliminary treaty, which ended the war in 1782. This was followed by the definitive Treaty of Paris, September 3, 1783. THE AMERICAN PEACE COMMISSIONERS PARIS, 14 December, 1782. We have the honor to congratulate Congress on the signature of the preliminaries of a peace between the Crown of Great Britain and the United States of America, to be inserted in a definitive treaty so soon as the terms between the crowns of France and Great Britain shall be agreed on. A copy of the articles is here enclosed, and we cannot but flatter ourselves that they will appear to Congress, as they do to all of us, to be consistent with the honor and interest of the United States, and we are persuaded Congress would be more fully of that opinion if they were apprised of all the circumstances and reasons which have influenced the negotiation. Although it is impossible for us to go into that detail, we think it necessary, nevertheless, to make a few remarks on such of the articles as appear most to require elucidation. _Remarks on Article 2d, relative to Boundaries_ The Court of Great Britain insisted on retaining all the territories comprehended within the Province of Quebec, by the act of Parliament respecting it. They contended that Nova Scotia should extend to the river Kennebec; and they claimed not only all the lands in the Western country and on the Mississippi, which were not expressly included in our charters and governments, but also such lands within them as remained ungranted by the King of Great Britain. It would be endless to enumerate all the discussions and arguments on the subject. We knew this Court and Spain to be against our claims to the Western country, and, having no reason to think that lines more favorable could ever have been obtained, we finally agreed to those described in this article; indeed, they appear to leave us little to complain of and not much to desire. Congress will observe that, although our northern line is in a certain part below the latitude of 45°, yet in others it extends above it, divides the Lake Superior, and gives us access to its western and southern waters, from which a line in that latitude would have excluded us. _Remarks on Article 4th, respecting Creditors_ We had been informed that some of the States had confiscated British debts; but although each State has a right to bind its own citizens, yet, in our opinion, it appertains solely to Congress, in whom exclusively are vested the rights of making war and peace, to pass acts against the subjects of a power with which the Confederacy may be at war. It therefore only remained for us to consider whether this article is founded in justice and good policy. In our opinion no acts of government could dissolve the obligations of good faith resulting from lawful contracts between individuals of the two countries prior to the war. We knew that some of the British creditors were making common cause with the refugees and other adversaries of our independence; besides, sacrificing private justice to reasons of state and political convenience is always an odious measure; and the purity of our reputation in this respect, in all foreign commercial countries, is of infinitely more importance to us than all the sums in question. It may also be remarked that American and British creditors are placed on an equal footing. _Remarks on Articles 5th and 6th, respecting Refugees_ These articles were among the first discussed and the last agreed to. And had not the conclusion of this business at the time of its date been particularly important to the British administration, the respect, which both in London and Versailles is supposed to be due to the honor, dignity, and interest of royalty, would probably have forever prevented our bringing this article so near to the views of Congress and the sovereign rights of the States as it now stands. When it is considered that it was utterly impossible to render this article perfectly consistent, both with American and British ideas of honor, we presume that the middle line adopted by this article is as little unfavorable to the former as any that could in reason be expected. As to the separate article, we beg leave to observe that it was our policy to render the navigation of the river Mississippi so important to Britain as that their views might correspond with ours on that subject. Their possessing the country on the river north of the line from the Lake of the Woods affords a foundation for their claiming such navigation. And as the importance of West Florida to Britain was for the same reason rather to be strengthened than otherwise, we thought it advisable to allow them the extent contained in the separate article, especially as before the war it had been annexed by Britain to West Florida, and would operate as an additional inducement to their joining with us in agreeing that the navigation of the river should forever remain open to both. The map used in the course of our negotiations was Mitchell's. As we had reason to imagine that the articles respecting the boundaries, the refugees, and fisheries did not correspond with the policy of this court, we did not communicate the preliminaries to the minister until after they were signed (and not even then the _separate article_). We hope that these considerations will excuse our having so far deviated from the spirit of our instructions. The Count de Vergennes, on perusing the articles, appeared surprised (but not displeased) at their being so favorable to us. We beg leave to add our advice that copies be sent us of the accounts directed to be taken by the different States, of the unnecessary devastations and sufferings sustained by them from the enemy in the course of the war. Should they arrive before the signature of the definitive treaty, they might possibly answer very good purposes. JOHN M. LUDLOW Paradoxical as it may seem, two things must equally surprise the reader on studying the history of the war of American Independence--the first, that England should ever have considered it possible to succeed in subduing her revolted colonies; the second, that she should not have succeeded in doing so. At a time when steam had not yet baffled the winds, to dream of conquering by force of arms on the other side of the Atlantic a people of English race numbering between three millions and four millions with something like twelve hundred miles of seaboard, was surely an act of enormous folly. Horace Walpole had wittily said, at the very commencement of the so-called rebellion, that "if computed by the tract of the country it occupies, we, as so diminutive in comparison, ought rather be called in rebellion to that." We have seen in our own days the difficulties experienced by the far more powerful and populous Northern States in quelling the secession of the Southern, when between the two there was no other frontier than at most a river, very often a mere ideal line, and when armies could be raised by a hundred thousand men at a time. England attempted a far more difficult task with forces which, till 1781, never reached 35,000 men, and never exceeded 42,075, including "provincials," _i.e._, American loyalists. Yet it is impossible to doubt that, not once only, but repeatedly during the course of the struggle, England was on the verge of triumph. The American armies were perpetually melting away before the enemy directly through the practice of short enlistments, and indirectly through desertions. These desertions, if they might be often palliated by the straits to which the men were reduced through arrears in pay and want of supplies, arose in other cases, as after the retreat from New York, from sheer loss of heart in the cause. The main army under Washington was seldom even equal in number to that opposed to him. In the winter of 1776-1777, when his troops were only about four thousand strong, it is difficult to understand how it was that Sir William Howe, with more than double the number, should have failed to annihilate the American army. In the winter of 1777-1778 the "dreadful situation of the army for want of provisions" made Washington "admire" that they should not have been excited to a general mutiny and desertion. In May, 1779, he hardly knew any resource for the American cause except in reënforcements from France, and did not know what might be the consequence if the enemy had it in his power to press the troops hard in the ensuing campaign. In December of that year his forces were "mouldering away daily," and he considered that Sir Henry Clinton, with more than twice his numbers, could "not justify remaining inactive with a force so superior." A year later he was compelled for want of clothing to discharge levies which he had so much trouble in obtaining, and "want of flour would have disbanded the whole army" if he had not adopted this expedient. In March, 1781, again, the crisis was "perilous," and, though he did not doubt the happy issue of the contest, he considered that the period for its accomplishment might be too far distant for a person of his years. In April he wrote: "We cannot transport the provisions from the States in which they are assessed to the army, because we cannot pay the teamsters, who will no longer work for certificates. It is equally certain that our troops are approaching fast to nakedness, and that we have nothing to clothe them with; that our hospitals are without medicines, and our sick without nutriment except such as well men eat; and that our public works are at a stand and the artificers disbanding. It may be declared in a word that we are at the end of our tether, and that now or never our deliverance must come." Six months later, when Yorktown capitulated, the British forces still remaining in North America after the surrender of that garrison were more considerable than they had been as late as February, 1779; and Sir Henry Clinton even then declared that with a reënforcement of ten thousand men he would be responsible for the conquest of America. How shall we explain either puzzle--that England should have so nearly missed success, to fail at last? or that America should have succeeded, after having been almost constantly on the brink of failure? The main hope of success on the English side lay in the idea that the spirit and acts of resistance to the authority of the mother-country were in reality only on the part of a turbulent minority; that the bulk of the people desired to be loyal. It is certain indeed that the struggle was, in America itself, much more of a civil war than the Americans are now generally disposed to admit. In December, 1780, there were eight thousand nine hundred fifty-four provincials among the British forces in America, and on March 7, 1781, a letter from Lord George Germain to Sir H. Clinton, intercepted by the Americans, says, "The American levies in the King's service are more in number than the whole of the enlisted troops in the service of Congress." As late as September 1, 1781, there were seven thousand two hundred forty-one. We hear of "loyal associates" in Massachusetts, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, of "associated loyalists" in New York, of a fort built and maintained by "associated refugees," and everywhere of "Tories," whose arrest Washington is found suggesting to Governor Trumbull, of Connecticut, as early as November 12, 1775. New England may indeed be considered to have been cleared of active opposition to the American cause when more than one thousand refugees left Boston in March, 1776, with the British troops. But New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania remained long full of Tories. By June 28, 1776, the disaffected on Long Island had taken up arms, and after the evacuation of New York by Washington a brigade of loyalists was raised on the island, and companies were formed in two neighboring counties to join the King's troops. During Washington's retreat through New Jersey "the inhabitants, either from fear or disaffection, almost to a man refused to turn out." In Pennsylvania the militia, instead of giving any assistance in repelling the British, exulted at their approach, and over the misfortunes of their countrymen. On the 20th of that month the British were "daily gathering strength from the disaffected." In 1777 the Tories who joined Burgoyne in his invasion from the north are said to have doubled his force. In 1778 Tories joined the Indians in the devastation of Wyoming and Cherry Valley; and although the indiscriminate ravages of the British, or of the Germans in their pay, seem to have roused the three States above mentioned to self-defence, yet, as late as May, 1780, Washington still speaks of sending a small party of cavalry to escort Lafayette "safely through the Tory settlements" of New York. Virginia, as late as the spring of 1776, was "alarmed at the idea of independence." Washington admitted that his countrymen--of that State--"from their form of government, and steady attachment heretofore to royalty," would "come reluctantly" to that idea, but trusted to "time and persecution." In 1781 the ground for transferring the seat of war to the Chesapeake was the number of loyalists in that quarter. In the Southern States the division of feeling was still greater. In the Carolinas, a Loyalist regiment was raised in a few days in 1776, and again in 1779. In Georgia, in South Carolina, the bitterest partisan warfare was carried on between the Whig and Tory bands; and a body of New York Tories contributed powerfully to the fall of Savannah in 1778 by taking the American forces in the rear. On the other hand it is unquestionable that in the extent and quality of the support which they met with, the British generals were cruelly disappointed. Up to May, 1778, General Howe had declared that in thirteen corps raised, with a nominal strength of six thousand five hundred men, the whole number amounted only to three thousand six hundred nine, of whom only a small proportion were Americans, and that "all the force that could be collected in Pennsylvania, after the most indefatigable exertions during eight months," was only nine hundred seventy-four men. Of the far more numerous loyalist levies in the South, Lord Cornwallis speaks in the most disparaging terms. A whole regiment in South Carolina marched off on one occasion in a body. Speaking of the friends to the British cause in North Carolina he wrote, "If they are as dastardly and pusillanimous as our friends to the southward, we must leave them to their fate." At the time of the battle of Guilford Court House (1781) the idea of such friends "rising in any number and to any purpose had totally failed." No "provincial" general ever rose to eminence on the British side, although more than one was appointed, and it is clear that if the struggle was so long protracted it was not through the valor or constancy of the loyalists. The real causes of its protraction--though it may be hard to an American to admit the fact--lay in the incapacity of American politicians, and, it must be added, in the supineness and want of patriotism of the American people. If, indeed, importing into the struggle views of a later date, we look upon it as one between two nations, the mismanagement of the war by the Americans, on all points save one--the retention of Washington in the chief command--is seen to have been so pitiable from first to last as to be in fact almost unintelligible. We only understand the case when we see that there was no such thing as an American nation in existence, but only a number of revolted colonies, jealous of one another, and with no tie but that of a common danger. Even in the army, divisions broke out. Washington, in a general order of August 1, 1776, says: "It is with great concern that the general understands that jealousies have arisen among the troops from the different provinces, and reflections are frequently thrown out which can only tend to irritate each other and injure the noble cause in which we are engaged." It was seldom that much help could be obtained in troops from any State, unless that State were immediately threatened by the enemy; and even then these troops would be raised by that State for its own defence, irrespectively of the general or "Continental Army." "Those at a distance from the seat of War," wrote Washington in April, 1778, "live in such perfect tranquillity that they conceive the dispute to be in a manner at an end; and those near it are so disaffected that they serve only as embarrassments." In January, 1779, we find him remonstrating with the Governor of Rhode Island because that State had "ordered several battalions to be raised for the defence of the State only, and this before proper measures were taken to fill the Continental regiments." The different bounties and rates of pay allowed by the various States were a constant source of annoyance to him. After the first year, the best men were not returned to Congress, or did not return to it. Whole States remained frequently unrepresented. In the winter of 1777-1778 Congress was reduced to twenty-one members. But even with a full representation it could do little. "One State will comply with a requisition of Congress," writes Washington in 1780, "another neglects to do it, a third executes it by halves, and all differ either in the manner, the matter, or so much in point of time that we are always working up-hill." At first Congress was really nothing more than a voluntary committee. When the Confederation was completed--which was only, be it remembered, on March 1, 1781--it was still, as Washington wrote in 1785, "little more than a shadow without the substance, and the Congress a nugatory body"; or, as it was described by a later writer, "powerless for government, and a rope of sand for union." Like politicians, like people. There was no doubt a brilliant display of patriotic ardor at the first flying to arms of the colonists. Lexington and Bunker Hill were actions decidedly creditable to their raw troops. The expedition to Canada, foolhardy though it proved, was pursued up to a certain point with real heroism. But with it the heroic period of the war--individual instances excepted--may be said to have closed. There seems little reason to doubt that the Revolution would never have been commenced if it had been expected to cost so tough a struggle. "A false estimate of the power and perseverance of our enemies," wrote James Duane to Washington, "was friendly to the present revolution, and inspired that confidence of success in all ranks of people which was necessary to unite them in so arduous a cause." As early as November, 1775, Washington wrote, speaking of military arrangements, "Such a dearth of public spirit, and such want of virtue, such stock-jobbing and fertility in all the low arts to obtain advantages of one kind or another, I never saw before, and pray God's mercy that I may never be witness to again." Such "a mercenary spirit" pervaded the whole of the troops, that he should not have been "at all surprised at any disaster." At the same date, besides desertions of thirty or forty soldiers at a time, he speaks of the practice of plundering as so rife that "no man is secure in his effects, and scarcely in his person." People "were frightened out of their houses under pretence of those houses being ordered to be burnt, with a view of seizing the goods"; and to conceal the villainy more effectually some houses were actually burnt down. On February 28, 1777, "the scandalous loss, waste, and private appropriation of public arms during the last campaign" had been "beyond all conception." Officers drew "large sums under pretence of paying their men," and appropriated them. In one case an officer led his men to robbery, offered resistance to a brigade-major who ordered him to return the goods, and was only with difficulty cashiered. "Can we carry on the war much longer?" Washington asks in 1778--after the treaty with France and the appearance of a French fleet off the coast. "Certainly not, unless some measures can be devised and speedily executed to restore the credit of our currency, restrain extortion, and punish forestallers." A few days later, "To make and extort money in every shape that can be devised, and at the same time to decry its value, seem to have become a mere business and an epidemical disease." On December 30, 1778, "speculation, peculation, and an insatiable thirst for riches seem to have got the better of every other consideration, and almost of every order of men; party disputes and personal quarrels are the great business of the day; whilst the momentous concerns of an empire, a great and accumulating debt, ruined finances, depreciated money, and want of credit, which in its consequences is the want of everything, are but secondary considerations." After a first loan had been obtained from France and spent, a further one was granted in 1782. So utterly unpatriotic and selfish was known to be the temper of the people that the loan had to be kept secret, in order not to diminish such efforts as might be made by the Americans themselves. On July 10th, of that year, with New York and Charlestown still in British hands, Washington writes: "That spirit of freedom which at the commencement of this contest would have gladly sacrificed everything to the attainment of its object, has long since subsided, and every selfish passion has taken its place." But indeed the mere fact that from the date of the battle of Monmouth (July 28, 1778), Washington was never supplied with sufficient means, even with the assistance of the French fleets and troops, to strike one blow at the English in New York--though these were but sparingly reënforced during the period--shows an absence of public spirit, one might almost say of national shame, scarcely conceivable, and in singular contrast with the terrible earnestness exhibited on both sides some eighty years later in the Secession War. Why, then, must we ask on the other side, did England fail at last? The English were prone to attribute their ill-success to the incompetency of their generals. Lord North, with his quaint humor, would say, "I do not know whether our generals will frighten the enemy, but I know they frighten me whenever I think of them." When in 1778, Lord Carlisle came out as commissioner, in a letter speaking of the great scale of all things in America, he says: "We have nothing on a great scale with us but our blunders, our misconduct, our ruin, our losses, our disgraces and misfortunes." Pitt, in a speech of 1781, aptly described the war as having been, on the part of England, "a series of ineffective victories or severe defeats." No doubt it is difficult to account for Gage's early blunders; for Howe's repeated failure to follow up his own success or profit by his enemy's weakness; and Cornwallis' movement, justly censured by Sir Henry Clinton, in transferring the bulk of his army from the far south to Virginia, within marching distance of Washington, opened the way to that crowning disaster at Yorktown, without which it is by no means impossible that Georgia and the Carolinas might have remained British. But no allowance for bad generalship can account for the failure of the British. Washington and Greene appear to have been the only two American generals of marked ability, though they unquestionably derived great advantage from the talents of their foreign allies, Lafayette, Pulaski, Steuben, Rochambeau--and Washington was more than once out-manoeuvred. Gates evidently owed his one signal triumph to enormous superiority of numbers on his own ground, and was as signally defeated, under circumstances infinitely less creditable to him than those of Burgoyne's surrender. Lee's vaunted abilities came to nothing. Political incapacity was of course charged upon ministers as another cause of disaster; and no doubt their miscalculation of the severity of the struggle was almost childish. When Parliament met in the autumn of 1776--_i.e._, after the Declaration of Independence had gone forth to the world--it was held out in the King's speech that another campaign would be sufficient to end the war, while in spite of all the warnings of the Opposition, they persisted in blinding themselves to the force of the temptations which must inevitably bring down France, if not Spain, into the lists against them, until the treaties of these powers with America were actually concluded. The forces sent out were miserably inadequate for a war on so large a scale--"too many to make peace, too few to make war," as Lord Chatham told the Ministry. When for once a really considerable force was sent out under Burgoyne, it failed for want of timely coöperation by Howe, and this failure is stated, by Lord Shelburne, to have arisen from Lord George Germain's not having had patience to wait after signing the despatch to Burgoyne, till that to Howe had been fair-copied; so that instead of going out together, the second, owing to further mischances, did not leave till some time later. The English generals complained almost as bitterly as the American of the want of adequate reënforcements, and the best of them, Sir Henry Clinton, is found writing (1779) in a strain which might be mistaken for Washington's of his spirits being "worn out" by the difficulties of his position. But no mistakes in the management of the war by British statesmen can account for their ultimate failure. However great British mismanagement may have been, it was far surpassed by American. Until Robert Morris took the finances in hand, the administration of them was beneath not only contempt but conception. There was nothing on the British side equal to that caricature of a recruiting system, in which different bounties were offered by Congress, by the States, by the separate towns, as to make it the interest of the intending soldier to delay enlistment as long as possible in order to sell himself to the highest bidder; to that caricature of a war establishment the main bulk of which broke up every twelvemonth in front of the enemy, which was only paid, if at all, in worthless paper, and left almost habitually without supplies. To mention one fact only, commissions in British regiments on American soil continued to be sold for large sums, while Washington's officers were daily throwing up theirs, many from sheer starvation. On the whole, no better idea can be had of the nature of the struggle on the American side, after the first heat of it had cooled down, than from the words of Count de Rochambeau, writing to Count de Vergennes, July 10, 1780: "They have neither money nor credit; their means of resistance are only momentary, and called forth when they are attacked in their own homes. They then assemble for the moment of immediate danger and defend themselves." A far more important cause in determining the ultimate failure of the British was the aid afforded by France to America, followed by that of Spain and Holland. It was impossible for England to reconquer a continent, and carry on war at the same time with the three most powerful states of Europe. The instincts of race have tended on both the English and the American sides to depreciate the value of the aid given by France to the colonists. It may be true that Rochambeau's troops which disembarked in Rhode Island in July, 1780, did not march till July, 1781,--that they were blockaded soon after their arrival, threatened with attack from New York, and only disengaged by a feint of Washington's on that city. But more than two years before their arrival, Washington wrote to a member of Congress, "France, by her supplies, has saved us from the yoke thus far." The treaty with France alone was considered to afford a "certain prospect of success"--to "secure" American independence. The arrival of D'Estaing's fleet, although no troops joined the American army, and nothing eventually was done, determined the evacuation of Philadelphia. The discipline of the French troops when they landed in 1780 set an example to the Americans; chickens and pigs walked between the lines without being disturbed. The recruits of 1780 could not have been armed without fifty tons of ammunition supplied by the French. In September of that year, Washington, writing to the French envoy, speaks of the "inability" of the Americans to expel the British from the South "unassisted, or perhaps even to stop their career," and he writes in similar terms to Congress a few days later. To depend "upon the resources of the country, unassisted by foreign loans," he writes to a member of Congress two months later, "will, I am confident, be to lean upon a broken reed." In January, 1781, writing to Colonel Laurens, the American envoy in Paris, he presses for "an immediate, ample, and efficacious succor in money" from France, for the maintenance of the American coasts of "a constant naval superiority," and for "an additional succor in troops." And since the assistance so requested was in fact granted in every shape, and the surrender of Yorktown was obtained by the coöperation both of the French army and fleet, we must hold that Washington's words were justified by the event. The real cause, however, why England yielded in 1782-1783 to her revolted colonies was probably this: The English nation at large had never realized the nature of the struggle; when it did, it refused to carry it on. Enormous ignorance no doubt prevailed at the beginning of the struggle as to the North American colonies. They had been till then entirely overshadowed by the West Indies, which were perhaps at that time the greatest source of English commercial wealth; and the time was not far past when, it is said, they were supposed, like the latter, to be chiefly inhabited by negroes. The prominence of the slave colonies seems to have associated the idea of colonies with that of absolute government. Englishmen did not generally realize the existence in North America of vast countries inhabited by communities of their own race, which enjoyed in general a larger measure of self-government than the mother-country herself. That a colony should resist the mother-country seemed in a manner preposterous. It appears certain, therefore, that when the war at first broke out it was popular, and that the King and Lord North, as has been already stated, were themselves amazed at the loyal addresses which it called forth. But the early resort to the aid of German mercenaries showed that this popularity was only skin-deep--that the heart of the masses was not engaged in the war. The very employment of these mercenaries, as well as of the Indian auxiliaries of the royal forces, tended to lower the character of the war in English eyes. When Chatham, in his scathing invectives, would speak of the Ministers' "traffic and barter with every little pitiful German prince that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles," or of their sending "the infidel savage--against whom? against your Protestant brethren, to lay waste their country, to desolate their dwellings, and extirpate their race and name," he might not carry with him the votes of the House of Lords, but his words would burn their way into English hearts. That the war with the American colonies themselves was repugnant to the deepest feelings of the nation is proved by contrast through the sudden burst of warlike spirit which followed (1778-1779) on the outbreak of war with France and Spain. A few days before the French treaty with America was known, Horace Walpole had written to Mason that the new levies "don't come, consequently they will not go." By July of the same year he writes to Sir Horace Mann, "The country is covered with camps." In 1776 the King had reviewed the Guards on Wimbledon Common, and pulled off his hat to them before their departure for America. He had now (1779) to review volunteers. The passionate interest which is henceforth taken in so much of the struggle as is carried on with foreign foes, Keppel's scarcely deserved popularity, the riotous popular joy on his acquittal, the outburst of universal rejoicing over Rodney's victories, show a totally different temper to that brought out by either victory or defeat in what was now felt to be a dread civil war with our American kinsmen. Hence it was, no doubt, that after the surrender of Yorktown, hostilities were practically at an end with America, while the naval warfare with France and Spain was carried on for another twelvemonth, and that the signing of provisional articles of peace with the United States preceded by two months that of similar articles with France and Spain, the armistice with Holland being of still later date. It may even be conjectured that the outbreak of war with France and Spain, instead of incensing the mind of the English people against the Americans, rather gave different objects to their angry passions, and tended to diminish their bitterness toward the colonists. It must have been a kind of relief to Englishmen to find themselves fighting once more against those whom they considered hereditary enemies, against men who did not speak their own mother-tongue; and the wholly unprovoked character of these foreign hostilities would soften men's feelings toward the stubbornness of those colonists of their own blood, who after all asked only to be left alone. It is moreover observable that when peace came, though it upset the Shelburne ministry, yet that of the coalition which succeeded it was most unpopular, and addresses came pouring in from counties and towns to thank the King for making the peace. Substantially indeed--although colonial independence would no doubt have been achieved sooner or later--the more we look into the events of the war of 1775-1783, the more, perhaps, shall we be convinced that it resolves itself into a duel between two men who never saw each other in the flesh, Washington and George III. Take Washington out of the history on the American side, and it is impossible to conceive of American success. It is barely possible that under Greene--the one general after Washington's own heart, who wrote to him from his command in the South, "We fight, get beaten, and fight again"--the army itself might have been commanded with an ability which would enable it to withstand its British opponents. But neither Greene nor any other general possessed that weight of personal character which fixed the trust of Congress and people on Washington, maintained him in authority through all reverses, and enabled him to criticise with such unflinching frankness the measures of Congress. Take, on the other hand, George III out of the history on the British side, and it is beyond question that if the war had ever broken out, it would have been put a stop to long before its ultimate failure. In him alone is to be found the real centre of resistance to American independence. It is now well known that at least from the beginning of 1778, if not from the end of 1775, Lord North was anxious to resign, and desirous of conciliation, and that it was only through the King's constant appeals to his sense of honor, not to "desert" him, that the minister was prevailed upon to remain in office. "Till I see things change to a more favorable position," the King wrote to Lord North as late as May 19, 1780, "I shall not feel at liberty to grant your resignation"; and it was only on March 20, 1781, that Lord North at last compelled his master to accept it. Three ideas were fixed in the King's mind, the first of which was a delusion, the second a mistake, and the third contrary to all principles of constitutional government. First, he had persuaded himself that the country was radically opposed to American independence. In January, 1778, he opposes conciliatory measures, "lest they should dissatisfy this country, which so cheerfully and handsomely carries on the contest." In the autumn of that year he is certain that "if ministers show that they never will consent to the independence of America, the cry will be strong in their favor." Two years later he "can never suppose this country so far lost to all ideas of self-importance as to be willing to grant American independence." Secondly, he was convinced--and this conviction, it must be admitted, was shared by some of the strongest opponents of the war--that if the independence of the North American colonies were acknowledged, all the others, as well as Ireland, would be lost. If any one branch of the empire is allowed to throw off its dependency, the others will inevitably follow the example. "Should America succeed, the West Indies must follow, not in independence, but dependence on America. Ireland would soon follow, and this island reduce itself to a poor island indeed." Thirdly, he would not allow the Opposition to rule. "He would run any personal risk rather than submit to the Opposition; rather than be shackled by these desperate men he would lose his crown." If he authorizes the attempt at a coalition (1779), it is "provided it be understood that every means are to be employed to keep the empire entire, to prosecute the present just and unprovoked war in all its branches with the utmost vigor, and that his majesty's past measures be treated with proper respect," _i.e._, provided the Opposition are ready to stultify themselves, and do all that the King thinks right, and admit that all for which they have contended is wrong. Before the spectacle of such narrow obstinacy it is difficult not to sympathize with an expression of Fox in one of his letters--"it is intolerable to think that it should be in the power of one blockhead to do so much mischief." Between these two men--it may be conceded, equally sincere, equally resolute--but the one reasoning, like the madman that he was to be, from false premises, self-deluded as to the feelings of his people, anticipating consequences which a century sees yet unrealized and the other with eyes at all times almost morbidly open to all the gloomier features of this cause, void of all self-delusion--the one conceiving himself justified in imposing dictates of his own self-will on every minister whom he might employ, entitled alike to chain an unwilling friend to office, and to shut the door of office to opponents except on terms of surrendering all their principles; the other always ready to accept the inevitable, to make the most use of the least means, to curb himself for the sake of his cause in all things except fearless plain-speaking--the one, finally resolved only to hinder the making of a nation; the other resolved to make one, if anyhow possible--the issue of the contest could not be doubtful, if both lives were prolonged. From that contest the one emerged as the mad king who threw away half a continent from England; the other as the father of the American nation. The common consent of mankind has ranked Washington among its great men; and although the title may have been fully justified by the course of his civil life, whether in or out of office, after the termination of the War of Independence, it is hardly to be doubted that it would freely have been accorded to him had his career been cut short immediately after the resignation of his military command. Yet of those who have enjoyed the title, few, if any, have ever earned it by actions of less brilliancy. The fame of no conspicuous victory is bound up with Washington's name. His one dashing exploit was the surprise of Trenton. His one victory, that of Monmouth, had no results; his most considerable battle, that of Brandywine, was a severe defeat. His greatness as a general consisted in doing much with little means, never missing an opportunity, rising superior to every disaster. When he had recovered Boston he could say, "I have been here months together with not thirty rounds of musket cartridges to a man, and have been obliged to submit to all insults of the enemy's cannon for want of powder, keeping what little we had for pistol-distance. We have maintained our ground against the enemy under this want of powder, and we have disbanded one army and recruited another, within musket-shot of two-and-twenty regiments, the flower of the British Army, while our force has been but little if any superior to theirs, and at last have beaten them into a shameful and precipitate retreat out of a place the strongest by nature on this continent, and strengthened and fortified at an enormous expense." The character of Washington as a commander recalls in various respects that of Wellington. In both we see the same dogged perseverance under all the various phases of fortune; the same strict discipline, hardening readily into sternness, coupled with the same careful consideration for the wants and welfare of the soldier; the same patient, constant attention to every detail of military organization; the same ability in maintaining a defensive warfare against an enemy superior in force, with the same quickness to strike a blow in any unguarded quarter; the same unflinching frankness in exposing the evils of the military administration of the day. Many of Wellington's despatches from the Peninsula might almost have been written by Washington. The difference between them, while the war lasts, is mainly this: that in Wellington the soldier is all, while in Washington the statesman and the patriot are never merged in the soldier. Hence, while in after-life Wellington had to serve his apprenticeship as a statesman after ceasing to be a soldier, and often bungled over his new craft, Washington's after-life was simply that of a statesman who had been called to take up arms and had laid them down again. In short, though England had never a more successful foe than Washington, it is impossible not to feel, in studying his character, that no more typical Englishman ever lived. Let us now cast a final glance at the state of the world at the close of the war. Except that an independent state had grown up for the first time since the downfall of Aztec and Inca empires on the American continent, and that England had been politically lessened, the balance of power had been little affected by the war. France had one West Indian island more, Holland one Indian settlement less. Spain had recovered Minorca and the Floridas. But she was irrevocably shut out from one great object of her ambition, the eastern half of the Mississippi Basin. SETTLEMENT OF AMERICAN LOYALISTS IN CANADA[30] A.D. 1783 SIR JOHN G. BOURINOT In the American Revolutionary War there were many in the then new-born Republic who either refrained from participating or took the loyalist side in the conflict. These were called "United Empire Loyalists," for they clung to the unity of the empire and refused to ally themselves with their fellow-colonists in revolt. When the war was over, those who took up arms on the loyal side found themselves in a hopeless minority, loaded with obloquy, and subjected to indignity at the hands of the victorious republicans. Rather than live under these humiliating conditions, some of the Loyalists returned to England; but most of them, preferring voluntary expatriation in Western wilds to living in a country that had become independent through rebellion, sought new homes for themselves in Acadia and Canada. Their act was not lost upon the home Government, for the latter sent instructions to Canada to make provision for their reception and settlement, and for the mitigation, in some measure, of their trials and privations. This provision consisted of seed, farm implements, tools for building purposes, and food and clothing for a year or two after settling in the country. To make good in part their losses the British Government also voted about three millions sterling to be divided among the incoming settlers, and gave them munificent grants of land, chiefly in the western portion of the country, the then virgin Province of Upper Canada. There, as well as in desirable locations in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, streamed in the Loyalists and their families, to begin their sad experience of exile in the wilderness. By their coming, Western Canada--chiefly on the banks of the St. Lawrence, on the Bay of Quinte, in the Niagara district, and round the shores of Lake Ontario--received that contribution of brawn and muscle so essential to the carving out of a new province and the founding of a strong and enduring community. It was during Governor Haldimand's administration that one of the most important events in the history of Canada occurred as a result of the American War of Independence. This event was the coming to the Provinces of many thousand people, known as United Empire Loyalists, who, during the progress of the war, but chiefly at its close, left their old homes in the thirteen colonies. When the Treaty of 1783 was under consideration, the British representatives made an effort to obtain some practical consideration from the new nation for the claims of this unfortunate people who had been subject to so much loss and obloquy during the war. All that the English envoys could obtain was the insertion of a clause in the treaty to the effect that Congress would recommend to the legislatures of the several States measures of restitution--a provision which turned out, as Franklin intimated at the time, a perfect nullity. The English Government subsequently indemnified these people in a measure for their self-sacrifice, and among other things gave a large number of them valuable tracts of land in the Provinces of British North America. Many of them settled in Nova Scotia, others founded New Brunswick and Upper Canada, now Ontario. Their influence on the political fortunes of Canada has been necessarily very considerable. For years they and their children were animated by a feeling of bitter animosity against the United States, the effects of which could be traced in later times when questions of difference arose between England and her former colonies. They have proved with the French Canadians a barrier to the growth of any annexation party, and as powerful an influence in national and social life as the Puritan element itself in the Eastern and Western States. Among the sad stories of the past the one which tells of the exile of the Loyalists from their homes, of their trials and struggles in the valley of the St. Lawrence, then a wilderness, demands our deepest sympathy. In the history of this continent it can be only compared with the melancholy chapter which relates the removal of the French population from their beloved Acadia. During the Revolution they comprised a very large, intelligent, and important body of people, in all the old colonies, especially in New York and at the South, where they were in the majority until the peace. They were generally known as Tories, while their opponents, who supported independence, were called Whigs. Neighbor was arrayed against neighbor, families were divided, the greatest cruelties were inflicted, as the war went on, upon men and women who believed it was their duty to be faithful to king and country. As soon as the contest was ended, their property was confiscated in several States. Many persons were banished and prohibited from returning to their homes. An American writer, Sabine, tells us that previous to the evacuation of New York, in September, 1783, "upward of twelve thousand men, women, and children embarked at the city, at Long and Staten islands, for Nova Scotia and the Bahamas." Very wrong impressions were held in those days of the climate and resources of the Provinces to which these people fled. Time was to prove that the lot of many of the Loyalists had actually fallen in pleasant places, in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Upper Canada; that the country where most of them settled was superior in many respects to the New England States, and equal to the State of New York, from which so many of them came. It is estimated that between forty and fifty thousand people reached British North America by 1786. They commenced to leave their old homes soon after the breaking out of the war, but the great migration took place in 1783-1784. Many sought the shores of Nova Scotia, and founded the town of Shelburne, which at one time held a population of ten or twelve thousand souls, the majority of whom were entirely unsuited to the conditions of the rough country around them and soon sought homes elsewhere. Not a few settled in more favorable parts of Nova Scotia, and even in Cape Breton. Considerable numbers found rest in the beautiful valley of the St. John River, and founded the Province of New Brunswick. As many more laid the beginnings of Upper Canada, in the present county of Glengarry, in the neighborhood of Kingston and the Bay of Quinte, on the Niagara River, and near the French settlements on the Detroit. A few also settled in the country now known as the Eastern Townships of French Canada. A great proportion of the men were officers and soldiers of the regiments which were formed in several colonies out of the large loyal population. Among them were also men who had occupied positions of influence and responsibility in their respective communities, divines, judges, officials, and landed proprietors, whose names were among the best in the old colonies, as they are certainly in Canada. Many among them gave up valuable estates which had been acquired by the energy of their ancestors. Unlike the Puritans who founded New England, they did not take away with them their valuable property in the shape of money and securities or household goods. A rude log hut by the side of a river or lake, where poverty and wretchedness were their lot for months, and even years in some cases, was the refuge of thousands, all of whom had enjoyed every comfort in well-built houses, and not a few even luxury in stately mansions, some of which have withstood the ravages of time and can still be pointed out in New England. Many of the Loyalists were quite unfitted for the rude experiences of a pioneer life, and years passed before they and their children conquered the wilderness and made a livelihood. The British Government was extremely liberal in its grants of lands to this class of persons in all the Provinces. The Government supplied these pioneers in the majority of cases with food, clothing, and necessary farming implements. For some years they suffered many privations; one was called "the year of famine," when hundreds in Upper Canada had to live on roots and even the buds of trees or anything that might sustain life. Fortunately some lived in favored localities, where pigeons and other birds, and fish of all kinds, were plentiful. In the summer and fall there were quantities of wild fruit and nuts. Maple sugar was a great luxury, when the people once learned to make it from the noble tree, whose symmetrical leaf may well be made the Canadian national emblem. It took the people a long while to accustom themselves to the conditions of their primitive pioneer life, but now the results of the labors of these early settlers and their descendants can be seen far and wide in smiling fields, richly laden orchards, and gardens of old-fashioned flowers throughout the country which they first made to blossom like the rose. The rivers and lakes were the only means of communication in those early times, roads were unknown, and the wayfarer could find his way through the illimitable forests only by the help of the "blazed" trees and the course of streams. Social intercourse was infrequent except in autumn and winter, when the young managed to assemble as they always will. Love and courtship went on even in this wilderness, though marriage was uncertain, as the visits of clergymen were very rare in many places, and magistrates could alone tie the nuptial knot--a very unsatisfactory performance to the cooler lovers who loved their church, its ceremonies and traditions, as dearly as they loved their sovereign. The story of those days of trial has not yet been adequately written; perhaps it never will be, for few of those pioneers have left records behind them. As we wander among the old burying-grounds of those founders of Western Canada and New Brunswick, and stand by the gray, moss-covered tablets, with names effaced by the ravages of years, the thought will come to us, what interesting stories could be told by those who are laid beneath the sod, of sorrows and struggles, of hearts sick with hope deferred, of expectations never realized, of memories of misfortune and disaster in another land where they bore so much for a stubborn and unwise king. Yet these grass-covered mounds are not simply memorials of suffering and privation; each could tell a story of fidelity to principle, of forgetfulness of self-interest, of devotion and self-sacrifice--the grandest story that human annals can tell--a story that should be ever held up to the admiration and emulation of the young men and women of the present times, who enjoy the fruits of the labors of those loyal pioneers. Although no noble monument has yet been raised to the memory of these founders of new provinces--of English-speaking Canada; although the majority lie forgotten in old grave-yards where the grass has grown rank, and common flowers alone nod over their resting-places, yet the names of all are written in imperishable letters in Provincial annals. Those Loyalists, including the children of both sexes, who joined the cause of Great Britain before the Treaty of Peace in 1783, were allowed the distinction of having after their name the letters U. E. to preserve the memory of their fidelity to a United Empire. A Canadian of these modern days, who traces his descent from such a source, is as proud of his lineage as if he were a Derby or a Talbot of Malahide, or inheritor of other noble names famous in the annals of the English peerage. The records of all the provinces show the great influence exercised on their material, political, and intellectual development by this devoted body of immigrants. For more than a century they and their descendants have been distinguished for the useful and important part they have taken in every matter deeply associated with the best interests of the country. In New Brunswick we find among those who did good service in their day and generation the names of Wilmot, Allen, Robinson, Jarvis, Hazen, Burpee, Chandler, Tilley, Fisher, Bliss, Odell, Botsford; in Nova Scotia, Inglis (the first Anglican bishop in the colonies), Wentworth, Brenton, Blowers (Chief Justice), Cunard, Cutler, Howe, Creighton, Chipman, Marshall, Halliburton, Wilkins, Huntingdon, Jones; in Ontario, Cartwright, Robinson, Hagerman, Stuart (the first Anglican clergyman), Gamble, Van Alstine, Fisher, Grass, Butler, Macaulay, Wallbridge, Chrysler, Bethune, Merritt, McNab, Crawford, Kirby, Tisdale, and Ryerson. Among these names stand out prominently those of Wilmot, Howe, and Huntingdon, who were among the fathers of responsible government; those of Tilley, Tupper, Chandler, and Fisher, who were among the fathers of confederation; of Ryerson, who exercised a most important influence on the system of free education which Ontario now enjoys. Among the eminent descendants of U. E. Loyalists are Sir Charles Tupper, long a prominent figure in politics; Christopher Robinson, a distinguished lawyer, who was counsel for Canada at the Bering Sea arbitration; Sir Richard Cartwright, a liberal leader remarkable for his keen, incisive style of debate, and his knowledge of financial questions; Honorable George E. Foster, a former finance minister of Canada. We might extend the list indefinitely did space permit. In all walks of life we see the descendants of the Loyalists, exercising a decided influence over the fortunes of the Dominion. Conspicuous among the people who remained faithful to England during the American Revolution was the famous Iroquois chief Joseph Brant, best known by his Mohawk name of Thayendanegea, who took part in the war, and was for many years wrongly accused of having participated in the massacre and destruction of Wyoming, that beauteous vale of the Susquehanna. It was he whom the poet Campbell would have consigned to eternal infamy in the verse "The mammoth comes--the foe, the monster, Brandt-- With all his howling, desolating band; These eyes have seen their blade and burning pine Awake at once, and silence half your land. Red is the cup they drink, but not with wine-- Awake and watch to-night, or see no morning shine." Posterity has, however, recognized the fact that Joseph Brant was not present at this sad episode of the American War, and the poet in a note to a later edition admitted that the Indian chief in his poem was "a pure and declared character of fiction." He was a sincere friend of English interests, a man of large and statesmanlike views, who might have taken an important part in colonial affairs had he been educated in these later times. When the war was ended, he and his tribe moved into the valley of the St. Lawrence, and received from the Government fine reserves of land on the Bay of Quinte, and on the Grand River in the western part of the Province of Upper Canada, where the prosperous city and county of Brantford and the township of Tyendinaga--a corruption of Thayendanegea--illustrate the fame he has won in Canadian annals. The descendants of his nation live in comfortable homes, till fine farms in a beautiful section of Western Canada, and enjoy all the franchises of white men. It is an interesting fact that the first church built in Ontario was that of the Mohawks, who still preserve the communion service presented to the tribe in 1710 by Queen Anne of England. General Haldimand's administration will always be noted in Canadian history for the coming of the Loyalists, and for the sympathetic interest he took in settling these people on the lands of Canada, and in alleviating their difficulties by all the means in the power of his government. In these and other matters of Canadian interest he proved conclusively that he was not the mere military martinet that some Canadian writers with inadequate information would make him. When he left Canada he was succeeded by Sir Guy Carleton, then elevated to the peerage as Lord Dorchester. FOOTNOTES: [30] From _The Story of Canada_ (New York, 1896: G. P. Putnam's Sons), by permission. FIRST BALLOON ASCENSION A.D. 1783 HATTON TURNOR Few problems of invention have ever engaged more students and experimenters than those which bear upon aërial navigation. The history of early experiments in this direction has a peculiar interest at present, in view of the numerous recent trials by aëronauts in different countries. At the time of the first balloon ascension, described by Turnor, interest in the possibilities of aërostatics was very active and widespread, especially among the scientific mechanicians of Europe. Many experiments with "aërostatical globes" and the like had been made in Great Britain and on the Continent. Leonhard Euler, to whom Turnor refers, was a famous Swiss mathematician who had given much study to these things. He was in Russia, and about to die, when in France the first aërostat, or balloon, was sent up by the inventors, the brothers Joseph and Jacques Montgolfier, French mechanicians, who were made corresponding members of the Academy. This form of air-balloon--the first successful one--is known as the "Montgolfier." A shout of joy rang through Europe, and reached the ear of the aged Euler, on the banks of the Neva, who, between attacks of vertigo, which were soon to carry him from this scene to a better, dictated to his sons the calculations he had made on aërostatical globes. It is said he ceased to calculate and live at the same instant. The cause of so great enthusiasm had better be given in the accurate description that immediately circulated among the peoples: "On Thursday, June 5, 1783, the States of Vivarais being assembled at Annonay (37 miles from Lyons), Messrs. Montgolfier invited them to see their new aërostatic experiment. "Imagine the surprise of the Deputies and spectators on seeing in the public square a ball, 110 feet in circumference, attached at its base to a wooden frame of 16 feet surface. This enormous bag, with frame, weighed 300 lbs., and could contain 22,000 feet of vapor. "Imagine the general astonishment when the inventors announced that, as soon as it should be filled with gas--which they had a simple means of making--it would rise of itself to the clouds. One must here remark that, notwithstanding the general confidence in the knowledge and wisdom of Messrs. Montgolfier, such an experiment appeared so incredible to those who were present, that all doubted of its success. "But Messrs. Montgolfier, taking it in hand, proceed to make the vapors, which gradually swell it out till it assumes a beautiful form. "Strong arms are now required to retain it; at a given signal it is loosed, rises with rapidity, and in ten minutes attains a height of 6000 feet; it proceeds 7668 feet in a horizontal direction, and gently falls to the ground. "Just as the Omnipotent, who turns The system of a world's concerns, From mere minutiæ can educe Events of the most important use; But who can tell how vast the plan, Which this day's incident began?" The effect of this letter in England was to cause a display of jealousy at which we might now blush, if we do not remember that the sagacious and convincing views of Adam Smith on political economy had only just been published and had not yet had time to circulate; for, though we were obliged to admit a discovery had been made in France, yet the periodicals argued that all the experiments that had led to it were made in England. Many were the caricatures which appeared. In a discourse at the Academy of Lyons, Jacques Montgolfier says that a French copy of Priestley's _Experiments relating to the Different Kinds of Air_ came in his way, and was to him like light in darkness; as from that moment he conceived the possibility of navigating the air, but, after some experiments in gas, he again tried smoke and hot air. In Paris this intelligence caused a meeting of savants, who, by the advice of M. Faujas de Saint-Fond, started a public subscription for defraying the expense of making inflammable gas (hydrogen), the materials of which were expensive: one thousand pounds of iron filings and four hundred ninety-eight pounds of sulphuric acid were consumed to fill a globular bag of varnished silk, which, for the first time, was designated a ballon, or balloon, as we call it, meaning a great ball. The filling commenced on August 23d, in the Place des Victoires. Bulletins were published daily of its progress, but, as the crowd was found to be immense, it was moved on the night of the 26th to the Champ-de-Mars, a distance of two miles. It was done secretly and in the dark, to avoid a mob. A description by an eye-witness is as follows: "No more wonderful scene could be imagined than the balloon being thus conveyed, preceded by lighted torches, surrounded by a _cortege_, and escorted by a detachment of foot and horse-guards; the nocturnal march, the form and capacity of the body carried with so much precaution; the silence that reigned, the unseasonable hour, all tended to give a singularity and mystery truly imposing to all those who were unacquainted with the cause. The cab-drivers on the road were so astonished that they were impelled to stop their carriages, and to kneel humbly, hat in hand, while the procession was passing." In the morning the Champ-de-Mars was lined with troops, every house to its very top, and every avenue, was crowded with anxious spectators. The discharge of a cannon at 5 P.M. was the signal for ascent, and the globe rose, to the great surprise of the spectators, to a height of three thousand one hundred twenty-three feet in two minutes, where it entered the clouds. The heavy rain which descended as it rose did not impede, and tended to increase, surprise. The idea that a body leaving the earth was travelling in space was so sublime, and appeared to differ so greatly from ordinary laws, that all the spectators were overwhelmed with enthusiasm. The satisfaction was so great that ladies in the greatest fashions allowed themselves to be drenched with rain, to avoid losing sight of the globe for an instant. The balloon, after remaining in the atmosphere three-quarters of an hour, fell in a field near Gonesse, a village fifteen miles from the Champ-de-Mars. The descent was imputed to a tear in the silk. The effect on the inhabitants of this village well illustrates that the human character with an unawakened intellect is the same in all countries and ages: "For on first sight it is supposed by many to have come from another world; many fly; others, more sensible, think it a monstrous bird. After it has alighted, there is yet motion in it from the gas it still contains. A small crowd gains courage from numbers, and for an hour approaches by gradual steps, hoping meanwhile the monster will take flight. At length one bolder than the rest takes his gun, stalks carefully to within shot, fires, witnesses the monster shrink, gives a shout of triumph, and the crowd rushes in with flails and pitchforks. One tears what he thinks to be the skin, and causes a poisonous stench; again all retire. Shame, no doubt, now urges them on, and they tie the cause of alarm to a horse's tail, who gallops across the country, tearing it to shreds." A similar tale has lately been told me as having occurred in Persia, where a fire-balloon was let off by some French visitors to the Shah's palace at Teheran, when it alighted. No less than three shots were fired at it when on the ground, before anyone would venture nearer. It is no wonder, then, that the paternal government of France deemed it necessary to publish the following "_avertissement_" to the public: "INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE ON THE ASCENT OF BALLOONS, OR GLOBES, IN THE AIR "PARIS, August 27, 1783. "The one in question has been raised in Paris this said day, August 27, 1783, at 5 P.M., in the Champ-de-Mars. "A discovery has been made, which the Government deems it right to make known, so that alarm be not occasioned to the people. "On calculating the different weights of inflammable and common air, it has been found that a balloon filled with inflammable air will rise toward heaven till it is in equilibrium with the surrounding air; which may not happen till it has attained a great height. "The first experiment was made at Annonay, in Vivarais, by Messrs. Montgolfier, the inventors. A globe formed of canvas and paper, 105 feet in circumference, filled with inflammable air, reached an incalculated height. "The same experiment has just been renewed at Paris (August 27th, 5 P.M.), in presence of a great crowd. A globe of taffeta, covered with elastic gum, thirty-six feet in circumference, has risen from the Champ-de-Mars, and been lost to view in the clouds, being borne in a northeasterly direction; one cannot foresee where it will descend. "It is proposed to repeat these experiments on a larger scale. Any one who shall see in the sky such a globe (which resembles the moon in shadow) should be aware that, far from being an alarming phenomenon, it is only a machine, made of taffeta or light canvas, covered with paper, that cannot possibly cause any harm, and which will some day prove serviceable to the wants of society. "Read and approved, September 3, 1783. "DE SAUVIGNY. "Permission for printing. LENOIR." Balloons made of paper and goldbeater's-skin were now sent up by amateurs from all places which this intelligence reached; and in September another important step was made, an account of which, and of the ascents which followed during the next two years, I take from the quaint but graphic _History of Aërostation_, by Tiberius Cavallo. Tiberius Cavallo was an electrician and natural philosopher, born at Naples, 1749. He came to England in 1771, where he devoted his time to science and literature till his death, in 1809. On September 19, 1783, the King, Queen,[31] the court, and innumerable people of every rank and age assembled at Versailles, Jacques Montgolfier being present to explain every particular. About one o'clock the fire was lighted, in consequence of which the machine began to swell, acquired a convex form, soon stretched itself on every side, and in eleven minutes' time, the cords being cut, it ascended, together with a wicker cage, which was fastened to it by a rope. In this cage they had put a sheep, a cock, and a duck, which were the first animals that ever ascended into the atmosphere with an aërostatic machine. When the machine went up, its power of ascension or levity was six hundred ninety-six pounds, allowing for the cage and animals. The machine raised itself to the height of about one thousand four hundred forty feet; and being carried by the wind, it fell gradually in the wood of Vaucresson, at the distance of ten thousand two hundred feet from Versailles, after remaining in the atmosphere only eight minutes. Two game-keepers, who were accidentally in the wood, saw the machine fall very gently, so that it just bent the branches of the trees upon which it alighted. The long rope to which the cage was fastened, striking against the wood, was broken, and the cage came to the ground without hurting in the least the animals that were in it, so that the sheep was even found feeding. The cock, indeed, had its right wing somewhat hurt; but this was the consequence of a kick it had received from the sheep, at least half an hour before, in presence of at least ten witnesses. It has been sufficiently demonstrated by experiments that little or no danger is to be apprehended by a man who ascends with such an aërostatic machine. The steadiness of the aërostat while in the air, its gradual and gentle descent, the safety of the animals that were sent up with it in the last-mentioned experiment, and every other observation that could be deduced from all the experiments hitherto made in this new field of inquiry seem more than sufficient to expel any fear for such an enterprise; but as no man had yet ventured in it, and as most of the attempts at flying, or of ascending into the atmosphere, on the most plausible schemes, had from time immemorial destroyed the reputation or the lives of the adventurers, we may easily imagine and forgive the hesitation that men might express, of going up with one of those machines: and history will probably record, to the remotest posterity, the name of M. Pilâtre de Rozier, who had the courage of first venturing to ascend with a machine, which in a few years hence the most timid woman will perhaps not hesitate to trust herself to. The King, aware of the difficulties, ordered that two men under sentence of death should be sent up; but Pilâtre de Rozier was indignant, saying, "_Eh quoi! de vils criminels auraient les premiers la gloire de s'élever dans les airs! Non, non cela ne sera point!_" ("What! Vile criminals to have the glory of the first aërial ascension! No, not on any account!") He stirs up the city in his behalf, and the King at length yields to the earnest entreaties of the Marquis d'Arlandes, who said that he would accompany him. Scarce ten months had elapsed since M. Montgolfier made his first aërostatic experiment, when M. Pilâtre de Rozier publicly offered himself to be the first adventurer in the newly invented aërial machine. His offer was accepted; his courage remained undaunted; and on October 15, 1783, he actually ascended, to the astonishment of a gazing multitude. The following are the particulars of this experiment: "The accident which happened to the aërostatic machine at Versailles, and its imperfect construction, induced M. Montgolfier to construct another machine, of a larger size and more solid. With this intent, sufficient time was allowed for the work to be properly done; and by October 10th the aërostat was completed, in a garden in the Faubourg St.-Antoine. It had an oval shape; its diameter being about forty-eight feet, and its height about seventy-four. The outside was elegantly painted and decorated with the signs of the zodiac, with the cipher of the King's name in _fleurs-de-lis_, etc. The aperture or lower part of the machine had a wicker gallery about three feet broad, with a balustrade both within and without about three feet high. The inner diameter of this gallery, and of the aperture of the machine, the neck of which passed through it, was near sixteen feet. In the middle of this aperture an iron grate or brazier was supported by chains which came down from the sides of the machine. "In this construction, when the machine was in the air, with a fire lighted in the grate, it was easy for a person who stood in the gallery, and had fuel with him, to keep up the fire in the mouth of the machine, by throwing the fuel on the grate through port-holes made in the neck of the machine. By this means it was expected, as indeed it was found by experience, that the machine might have been kept up as long as the person in its gallery thought proper, or while he had fuel to supply the fire with. The weight of this aërostat was upward of 16,000 pounds. "On Wednesday, October 15th, this memorable experiment was performed. The fire being lighted, and the machine inflated, M. Pilâtre de Rozier placed himself in the gallery, and, after a few trials close to the ground, he desired to ascend to a great height; the machine was accordingly permitted to rise, and it ascended as high as the ropes, which were purposely placed to detain it, would allow, which was about eighty-four feet from the ground. There M. de Rozier kept the machine afloat during four minutes twenty-five seconds, by throwing straw and wool into the grate to keep up the fire; then the machine descended very gently; but such was its tendency to ascend, that after touching the ground, the moment M. de Rozier came out of the gallery, it rebounded again to a considerable height. The intrepid adventurer, returning from the sky, assured his friends, and the multitude that gazed on him with admiration, with wonder, and with fear, that he had not experienced the least inconvenience, either in going up, in remaining there, or in descending; no giddiness, no incommoding motion, no shock whatever. He received the compliments due to his courage and audacity, having shown the world the accomplishment of that which had been for ages desired, but attempted in vain. "On October 17th, M. Pilâtre de Rozier repeated the experiment with nearly the same success as he had two days before. The machine was elevated to about the same height, being still detained by ropes; but the wind being strong, it did not sustain itself so well, and consequently did not afford so fine a spectacle to the concourse of people, which at this time was much greater than at the preceding experiment. "On the Sunday following, which was the 19th, the weather proving favorable, M. Montgolfier employed his machine to make the following experiments. At half past four o'clock the machine was filled, in five minutes' time; then M. Pilâtre de Rozier placed himself in the gallery, a counterpoise of 100 pounds being put in the opposite side of it, to preserve the balance. The size of the gallery had now been diminished. The machine was permitted to ascend to the height of about 210 feet, where it remained during six minutes, not having any fire in the grate; and then it descended very gently. "Soon after, everything remaining as before, except that now a fire was put into the grate, the machine was permitted to ascend to about 262 feet, where it remained stationary during eight minutes and a half. On pulling it down, a gust of wind carried it over some large trees in an adjoining garden, where it would have been in great danger had not M. de Rozier, with great presence of mind and address, increased the fire by throwing some straw upon it; by which means the machine was extricated from so dangerous a situation, and rose majestically to its former situation, among the acclamations of the spectators. On descending, M. de Rozier threw some straw upon the fire, which made the machine ascend once more, remaining up for about the same length of time. "This experiment showed that the aërostat may be made to ascend and descend at the pleasure of those who are in it; to effect which, they have nothing more to do than to increase or diminish the fire in the grate; which was an important point in the subject of aërostation. "After this, the machine was raised again with two persons in its gallery, M. Pilâtre de Rozier and M. Girond de Villette, the latter of whom was therefore the second aërostatic adventurer. The machine ascended to the height of about 300 feet, where it remained perfectly steady for at least nine minutes, hovering over Paris, in sight of its numerous inhabitants, many of whom could plainly distinguish, through telescopes, the aërostatic adventurers, and especially M. de Rozier, who was busy in managing the fire. When the machine came down, the Marquis d'Arlandes, a major of infantry, took the place of M. Villette, and the balloon was sent up once more. This last experiment was attended with the same success as the preceding; which proved that the persons who ascended with the machine did not suffer the least inconvenience, owing to the gradual and gentle ascent and descent of the machine, and to its steadiness or equilibrium while it remained in the air. "If we consider for a moment the sensation which these first aërial adventurers must have felt in their exalted situation, we can almost feel the contagion of their thrilling experience ourselves. Imagine a man elevated to such a height, into immense space, by means altogether new, viewing under his feet, like a map, a vast tract of country, with one of the greatest existing cities--the streets and environs of which were crowded with spectators--attentive to him alone, and all expressing in every possible manner their amazement and anxiety. Reflect on the prospect, the encomiums, and the consequences; then see if your mind remains in a state of quiet indifference. "An instructive observation may be derived from these experiments; which is, that when an aërostatic machine is attached to the earth by ropes--especially when it is at a considerable height--the wind, blowing on it, will drive it in its own horizontal direction; so that the cords which hold the machine must make an angle with the horizon (which is greater when the wind is stronger, and contrariwise); in consequence of which the machine must be severely strained, it being acted on by three forces in three different directions; namely, its power of ascension, the tension of the ropes, which is opposite to the first, and the action of the wind, which is across the other two. It is therefore infinitely more judicious to abandon the machine entirely to the air, because it will then stand perfectly balanced, and, therefore, under no strain whatever." In consequence of the report of the foregoing experiments, signed by the commissaries of the Academy of Sciences, that learned and respectable body ordered: (1) That the said report should be printed and published; and (2) that the annual prize of six hundred livres, from the fund provided by an anonymous citizen, be given to Messrs. Montgolfier, for the year 1783. FOOTNOTES: [31] Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. FRAMING OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES A.D. 1787 ANDREW W. YOUNG JOSEPH STORY It was a "critical period of American history" in which the fundamental or organic law of the United States, the Federal Constitution, was formulated. That instrument has not only commanded the reverence of American patriots--statesmen and people--during a century and more; it has engaged the attentive study and aroused the respect and admiration of foreign students and critics of political institutions. "After all deductions," says Bryce, it "ranks above every other written constitution, for the intrinsic excellence of its scheme, its adaptation to the circumstances of the people, the simplicity, brevity, and precision of its language, its judicious mixture of definiteness in principle with elasticity in details." The story of this Constitution is as plain and simple as any in American annals; yet its real features have sometimes been missed even by friendly commentators. It is a mistake to say, with Gladstone, that "it is the greatest work ever struck off at any one time by the mind and purpose of man," for the true record of its making shows how deliberate and difficult the process was. Equally misleading is the judgment of so profound a master in legal history as Sir Henry Sumner Maine, when he says that the "Constitution of the United States is a modified version of the British Constitution which was in existence between 1760 and 1787." A juster view is held by the critical scholars of America, a view which indeed should be deducible, without need of special scholarship, from the recorded history of the Constitutional period. "The real source of the Constitution," says a living American historian, "is the experience of Americans. They had established and developed admirable little commonwealths in the colonies; since the beginning of the Revolution they had had experience of State governments organized on a different basis from the colonial; and, finally, they had carried on two successive national governments, with which they had been profoundly discontented. The general outline of the new Constitution seems to be English; it was really colonial." From the year 1775 there was a federal union in which each colony regulated its internal affairs by its own constitution, while the general affairs of the union were controlled by the Continental Congress. This mode was substantially continued after the colonies (1776-1779) became States, with new State constitutions. It was not finally superseded until the Articles of Confederation, adopted by the Continental Congress in 1777, had been ratified by all the separate colonies or States. Under the articles a new government went into effect March 1, 1781. The Articles of Confederation proving inadequate to the requirements of the Federal Government, it came to be seen that a general revision of them was needed, and a convention for that purpose was called. This convention went beyond its original purpose, which proved impracticable, and took upon itself the task of framing wholly anew the present Constitution of the United States. The following accounts furnish the reader with the circumstances which directly led to the calling of the convention, and with a clear and concise report of its proceedings and the subsequent action thereon taken by the States. ANDREW W. YOUNG The day appointed for the assembling of the Convention[32] to revise the Articles of Confederation was May 14, 1787. Delegations from a majority of the States did not attend until the 25th, on which day the business of the convention commenced. The delegates from New Hampshire did not arrive until July 23d. Rhode Island did not appoint delegates. A political body combining greater talents, wisdom, and patriotism, or whose labors have produced results more beneficial to the cause of civil and religious liberty, has probably never assembled. The two most distinguished members were Washington and Franklin, to whom the eyes of the convention were directed for a presiding officer. Washington, having been nominated by Lewis Morris, of Pennsylvania, was elected president of the convention. William Jackson was appointed secretary. The rules of proceeding adopted by the convention were chiefly the same as those of Congress. A quorum was to consist of the deputies of at least seven States, and all questions were to be decided by the greater number of those which were fully represented--at least two delegates being necessary to constitute a full representation. Another rule was the injunction of secrecy upon all their proceedings. The first important question determined by the convention was, whether the confederation should be amended or a new government formed? The delegates of some States had been instructed only to amend. And the resolution of Congress sanctioning a call for a convention recommended it "for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation." A majority, however, considering the plan of confederation radically defective, resolved to form "a national government, consisting of a supreme judicial, legislative, and executive." The objection to the new system on the ground of previous instructions was deemed of little weight, as any plan that might be agreed on would necessarily be submitted to the people of the States for ratification. In conformity with this decision Edmund Randolph, of Virginia, on May 29th, offered fifteen resolutions, containing the outlines of a plan of government for the consideration of the convention. These resolutions proposed: That the voice of each State in the National Legislature should be in proportion to its taxes or to its free population; that the Legislature should consist of two branches, the members of the first to be elected by the people of the States, those of the second to be chosen by the members of the first, out of a proper number of persons nominated by the State legislatures; and the National Legislature to be vested with all the powers of "Congress under the Confederation," with the additional power to legislate in all cases to which the separate States were incompetent; to negative all State laws which should, in the opinion of the National Legislature, be repugnant to the Articles of Union or to any treaty subsisting under them; to call out the force of the Union against any State refusing to fulfil its duty: That there should be a national executive, to be chosen by the National Legislature, and to be ineligible a second time. The executive, with a convenient number of the national judiciary, was to constitute a council of revision, with a qualified negative upon all laws, State and national: A national judiciary, the judges to hold their offices during good behavior. In discussing this plan, called the "Virginia plan," the lines of party were distinctly drawn. We have already had occasion to allude to the jealousy, on the part of States, of the power of the General Government. A majority of the peculiar friends of State rights in the convention were from the small States. These States, apprehending danger from the overwhelming power of a strong national government, as well as from the combined power of the large States, represented in proportion to their wealth and population, were unwilling to be deprived of their equal vote in Congress. Not less strenuously did the friends of the national plan insist on a proportional representation. This opposition of sentiment, which divided the convention into parties, did not terminate with the proceedings of that body, but has at times marked the politics of the nation down to the present day. It is worthy of remark, however, that the most jealous regard for State rights now prevails in States in which the plan of a national government then found its ablest and most zealous advocates. The plan suggested by Randolph's resolutions was the subject of deliberation for about two weeks, when, having been in several respects modified in committee, and reduced to form, it was reported to the House. It contained the following provisions: A national legislature to consist of two branches, the first to be elected by the people for three years; the second to be chosen by the State legislatures for seven years, the members of both branches to be apportioned on the basis finally adopted; the Legislature to possess powers nearly the same as those originally proposed by Edmund Randolph. The executive was to consist of a single person to be chosen by the National Legislature for seven years, and limited to a single term, and to have a qualified veto; all bills not approved by him to be passed by a vote of three-fourths of both Houses in order to become laws. A national judiciary to consist of a supreme court, the judges to be appointed by the second branch of the Legislature for the term of good behavior, and of such inferior courts as Congress might think proper to establish. This plan being highly objectionable to the State rights party, a scheme agreeable to their views was submitted by William Paterson, of New Jersey. This scheme, called the "New Jersey plan," proposed no alteration in the constitution of the Legislature, but simply to give it the additional power to raise a revenue by duties on foreign goods imported, and by stamp and postage taxes; to regulate trade with foreign nations and among the States; and, when requisitions made upon the States were not complied with, to collect them by its own authority. The plan proposed a federal executive, to consist of a number of persons selected by Congress; and a federal judiciary, the judges to be appointed by the executive, and to hold their offices during good behavior. The Virginia and New Jersey plans were now (June 19th) referred to a new committee of the whole. Another debate arose, in which the powers of the convention was the principal subject of discussion. It was again urged that their power had been, by express instruction, limited to an amendment of the existing confederation, and that the new system would not be adopted by the States. The vote was taken on the 19th, and the propositions of William Paterson were rejected; only New York, New Jersey, and Delaware voting in the affirmative; seven States in the negative, and the members from Maryland equally divided. Randolph's propositions, as modified and reported by the committee of the whole, were now taken up and considered separately. The division of the Legislature into two branches, a House of Representatives and a Senate, was agreed to almost unanimously, one State only, Pennsylvania, dissenting; but the proposition to apportion the members to the States according to population was violently opposed. The small States insisted strenuously on retaining an equal vote in the Legislature, but at length consented to a proportional representation in the House on condition that they should have an equal vote in the Senate. Accordingly, on June 29th, Oliver Ellsworth, of Connecticut, offered a motion, "that in the second branch, each State shall have an equal vote." This motion gave rise to a protracted and vehement debate. It was supported by Messrs. Ellsworth; Baldwin, of Georgia; Bradford, of Delaware, and others. It was urged on the ground of the necessity of a compromise between the friends of the confederation and those of a national government, and as a measure which would secure tranquillity and meet the objections of the larger States. Equal representation in one branch would make the government partly federal, and a proportional representation in the other would make it partly national. Equality in the second branch would enable the small States to protect themselves against the combined power of the large States. Fears were expressed that without this advantage to the small States, it would be in the power of a few large States to control the rest. The small States, it was said, must possess this power of self-defence, or be ruined. The motion was opposed by Messrs. Madison, Wilson, of Pennsylvania; King, of Massachusetts, and Dr. Franklin. Mr. Madison thought there was no danger from the quarter from which it was apprehended. The great source of danger to the General Government was the opposing interests of the North and the South, as would appear from the votes of Congress, which had been divided by geographical lines, not according to the size of the States. James Wilson objected to State equality; that it would enable one-fourth of the Union to control three-fourths. Respecting the danger of the three larger States combining together to give rise to a monarchy or an aristocracy, he thought it more probable that a rivalship would exist between them than that they would unite in a confederacy. Rufus King said the rights of Scotland were secure from all danger, though in the Parliament she had a small representation. Dr. Franklin, now in his eighty-second year, said, as it was not easy to see what the greater States could gain by swallowing up the smaller, he did not apprehend they would attempt it. In voting by States--the mode then existing--it was equally in the power of the smaller States to swallow up the greater. He thought the number of representatives ought to bear some proportion to the number of the represented. On July 2d the question was taken on Mr. Ellsworth's motion, and lost: Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland voting in the affirmative; Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina in the negative; Georgia divided. It will be remembered that the delegates from New Hampshire were not yet present, and that Rhode Island had appointed none. This has been regarded by some as a fortunate circumstance, as the votes of these two small States would probably have given an equal vote to the States in both Houses, if not have defeated the plan of national government. The excitement now became intense, and the convention seemed to be on the point of dissolution. Luther Martin, of Maryland, who had taken a leading part in advocating the views of the State rights party, said each State must have an equal vote, or the business of the convention was at an end. It having become apparent that this unhappy result could be avoided only by a compromise, Roger Sherman, of Connecticut, moved the appointment of a committee of conference, to consist of one member from each State, and the motion prevailed. The convention then adjourned for three days, thus giving time for consultation, and an opportunity to celebrate the anniversary of independence. The report of this committee, which was made on July 5th, proposed: (1) That in the first branch of the Legislature each State should have one representative for every forty thousand inhabitants (three-fifths of the slaves being counted); that each State not containing that number should be allowed one representative; and that money bills should originate in this branch; (2) that in the second branch each State should have one vote. These propositions were reported, it is said, at the suggestion of Dr. Franklin, one of the committee of conference. The report, of course, met with greater favor from the State rights party than from their opponents. The equal vote in the Senate continued to receive the most determined opposition from the National party. In relation to the rule of representation in the first branch of the Legislature, also, a great diversity of opinion prevailed. The conflicting interests to be reconciled in the settlement of this question, however, were those of the Northern and Southern, commercial and planting, rather than the imaginary interests of small and large States. In settling a rule of apportionment, several questions were to be considered: What should be the number of representatives in the first branch of the Legislature? Ought the number from each State to be fixed, or to increase with the increase of population? Ought population alone to be the basis of apportionment, or should property be taken into account? Whatever rule might be adopted, no apportionment founded upon population could be made until an enumeration of the inhabitants should have been taken. The number of representatives was, therefore, for the time being, fixed at sixty-five, and apportioned as directed by the Constitution. In establishing a rule of future apportionment, great diversity of opinion was expressed. Although slavery then existed in all the States except Massachusetts, the great mass of the slave population was in the Southern States. These States claimed a representation according to numbers, bond and free, while the Northern States were in favor of a representation according to the number of free persons only. This rule was forcibly urged by several of the Northern delegates. Mr. Paterson regarded slaves only as property. They were not represented in the States; why should they be in the General Government? They were not allowed to vote; why should they be represented? It was an encouragement of the slave trade. Said Mr. Wilson: "Are they admitted as citizens? Then why not on an equality with citizens? Are they admitted as property? Then why is not other property admitted into the computation?" A large portion of the members of the convention, from both sections of the Union, aware that neither extreme could be carried, favored the proposition to count the whole number of free citizens and three-fifths of all others. Prior to this discussion, a select committee, to whom this subject had been referred, had reported in favor of a distribution of the members on the basis of wealth and numbers, to be regulated by the Legislature. Before the question was taken on this report, a proviso was moved and agreed to that direct taxes should be in proportion to representation. Subsequently a proposition was moved for reckoning three-fifths of the slaves in estimating taxes, and making taxation the basis of representation, which was adopted, New Jersey and Delaware against it, Massachusetts and South Carolina divided; New York not represented, her three delegates being all absent. Yates and Lansing, both of the State rights party, considering their powers explicitly confined to a revision of the confederation, and being chagrined at the defeat of their attempts to secure an equal vote in the first branch of the Legislature, had left the convention, not to return. From that time (July 11th) New York had no vote in the convention. Alexander Hamilton had left before the others, to be absent six weeks; and though he returned and took part in the deliberations, the State, not having two delegates present, was not entitled to a vote. On the 23d Gilman and Langdon, the delegates from New Hampshire, arrived, when eleven States were again represented. The term of service of members of the first branch was reduced to two years, and of those of the second branch to six years; one-third of the members of the latter to go out of office every two years; the representation in this body to consist of two members from each State, voting individually, as in the other branch, and not by States, as under the confederation. Sundry other modifications were made in the provisions relating to this department. The reported plan of the executive department was next considered. After much discussion, and several attempts to strike out the ineligibility of the executive a second time, and to change the term of office and the mode of election, these provisions were retained. The report of the committee of the whole, as amended, was accepted by the convention, and, together with the New Jersey plan, and a third drawn by Charles Pinckney, of South Carolina, was referred to a committee of detail, consisting of Messrs. Rutledge, Randolph, Gorham, Ellsworth, and Wilson, who, on August 6th, after an adjournment of ten days, reported the Constitution in proper form, having inserted some new provisions and altered certain others. Our prescribed limits forbid a particular account of the subsequent alterations which the Constitution received before it was finally adopted by the convention. There is one provision, however, which, as it forms one of the great "Compromises of the Constitution," deserves notice. To render the Constitution acceptable to the Southern States, which were the principal exporting States, the committee of detail had inserted a clause providing that no duties should be laid on exports, or on slaves imported; and another, that no navigation act might be passed except by a two-thirds vote. By depriving Congress of the power of giving any preference to American over foreign shipping, it was designed to secure cheap transportation to Southern exports. As the shipping was principally owned in the Eastern States, their delegates were equally anxious to prevent any restriction of the power of Congress to pass navigation laws. All the States, except North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, had prohibited the importation of slaves; and North Carolina had proceeded so far as to discourage the importation by heavy duties. The prohibition of duties on the importation of slaves was demanded by the delegates from South Carolina and Georgia, who declared that, without a provision of this kind, the Constitution would not receive the assent of these States. The support which the proposed restriction received from other States was given to it from a disposition to compromise, rather than from an approval of the measure itself. The proposition not only gave rise to a discussion of its own merits, but revived the opposition to the apportionment of representatives according to the three-fifths ratio, and called forth some severe denunciations of slavery. Rufus King, in reference to the admission of slaves as a part of the representative population, remarked: "He had not made a strenuous opposition to it heretofore because he had hoped that this concession would have produced a readiness, which had not been manifested, to strengthen the General Government. The report of the committee put an end to all these hopes. The importation of slaves could not be prohibited; exports could not be taxed. If slaves are to be imported, shall not the exports produced by their labor supply a revenue to help the government defend their masters? There was so much inequality and unreasonableness in all this that the people of the Northern States could never be reconciled to it. He had hoped that some accommodation would have taken place on the subject; that at least a time would have been limited for the importation of slaves. He could never agree to let them be imported without limitation, and then be represented in the National Legislature. Either slaves should not be represented, or exports should be taxable." Gouverneur Morris pronounced slavery "a nefarious institution. It was the curse of Heaven on the States where it prevailed. Compare the free regions of the Middle States, where a rich and noble cultivation marks the prosperity and happiness of the people, with the misery and poverty which overspread the barren wastes of Virginia, Maryland, and the other States having slaves. Travel through the whole continent, and you behold the prospect continually varying with the appearance and disappearance of slavery. The admission of slaves into the representation, when fairly explained, comes to this, that the inhabitant of Georgia and South Carolina, who goes to the coast of Africa in defiance of the most sacred laws of humanity, tears away his fellow-creatures from their dearest connections, and damns them to the most cruel bondage, shall have more votes in a government instituted for the protection of the rights of mankind, than the citizen of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, who views with a laudable horror so nefarious a practice. "And what is the proposed compensation to the Northern States for a sacrifice of every principle of right, every impulse of humanity? They are to bind themselves to march their militia for the defence of the Southern States, against those very slaves of whom they complain. The Legislature will have indefinite power to tax them by excises and duties on imports, both of which will fall heavier on them than on the Southern inhabitants; for the Bohea tea used by a Northern freeman will pay more tax than the whole consumption of the miserable slave, which consists of nothing more than his physical subsistence and the rag which covers his nakedness. On the other side, the Southern States are not to be restrained from importing fresh supplies of wretched Africans, at once to increase the danger of attack and the difficulty of defence; nay, they are to be encouraged to it by an assurance of having their votes in the National Government increased in proportion, and, at the same time, are to have their slaves and their exports exempt from all contributions to the public service." Gouverneur Morris moved to make the free population alone the basis of representation. Roger Sherman, who had on other occasions manifested a disposition to compromise, again favored the Southern side. He "did not regard the admission of the negroes as liable to such insuperable objections. It was the freemen of the Southern States who were to be represented according to the taxes paid by them, and the negroes are only included in the estimate of the taxes." After some further discussion the question was taken upon Morris' motion, and lost, New Jersey only voting for it. With respect to prohibiting any restriction upon the importation of slaves, Luther Martin, of Maryland, who moved to allow a tax upon slaves imported, remarked: "As five slaves in the apportionment of representatives were reckoned as equal to three freemen, such a permission amounted to an encouragement of the slave trade. Slaves weakened the Union which the other parts were bound to protect; the privilege of importing them was therefore unreasonable. Such a feature in the Constitution was inconsistent with the principles of the Revolution, and dishonorable to the American character." John Rutledge "did not see how this section would encourage the importation of slaves. He was not apprehensive of insurrections, and would readily exempt the other States from every obligation to protect the South. Religion and humanity had nothing to do with this question. Interest alone is the governing principle with nations. The true question at present is, whether the Southern States shall or shall not be parties to the Union? If the Northern States consult their interest, they will not oppose the increase of slaves, which will increase the commodities of which they will become the carriers." Oliver Ellsworth said: "Let every State import what it pleases. The morality or wisdom of slavery is a consideration belonging to the States. What enriches a part enriches the whole, and the States are the best judges of their particular interests." Charles Pinckney said: "South Carolina can never receive the plan if it prohibits the slave trade. If the States be left at liberty on this subject, South Carolina may, perhaps, by degrees, do of herself what is wished, as Maryland and Virginia already have done." Roger Sherman concurred with his colleague Mr. Ellsworth. "He disapproved of the slave trade; but as the States now possessed the right, and the public good did not require it to be taken away, and as it was expedient to have as few objections as possible to the proposed scheme of government, he would leave the matter as he found it. The abolition of slavery seemed to be going on, and the good sense of the several States would probably, by degrees, soon complete it." George Mason said: "Slavery discourages arts and manufactures. The poor despise labor when performed by slaves. They prevent the immigration of whites, who really enrich and strengthen a country. They produce a pernicious effect on manners. Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment of Heaven on a country. He lamented that some of our Eastern brethren, from a lust of gain, had embarked in this nefarious traffic. As to the States being in possession of the right to import, that was the case of many other rights now to be given up. He held it essential, in every point of view, that the General Government should have power to prevent the increase of slavery." Ellsworth, not well pleased with this thrust at his slave-trading friends at the North by a slaveholder, tartly replied: "As I have never owned a slave, I cannot judge of the effects of slavery on character; but if slavery is to be considered in a moral light, the convention ought to go further, and free those already in the country." The opposition of Virginia and Maryland to the importation of slaves he attributed to the fact that, on account of their rapid increase in those States, "it was cheaper to raise them there than to import them, while in the sickly rice-swamps foreign supplies were necessary. If we stop short with prohibiting their importation, we shall be unjust to South Carolina and Georgia. Let us not intermeddle. As population increases, poor laborers will be so plenty as to render slaves useless. Slavery, in time, will not be a speck in our country." Delegates from South Carolina and Georgia repeated the declaration that "if the slave trade were prohibited, these States would not adopt the Constitution." "Virginia," it was said, "would gain by stopping the importation, she having slaves to sell; but it would be unjust to South Carolina and Georgia to be deprived of the right of importing. Besides, the importation of slaves would be a benefit to the whole Union: The more slaves, the more produce, the greater carrying trade, the more consumption, the more revenue." The injustice of exempting slaves from duty, while every other import was subject to it, having been urged by several members in the course of the debate, Charles Pinckney expressed his consent to a tax not exceeding the same on other imports, and moved to refer the subject to a committee. The motion was seconded by John Rutledge, and, at the suggestion of Gouverneur Morris, was so modified as to include the clauses relating to navigation laws and taxes on exports. The commitment was opposed by Messrs. Sherman and Ellsworth; the former on the ground that taxes on slaves imported implied that they were property; the latter from the fear of losing two States. Edmund Randolph was in favor of the motion, hoping to find some middle ground upon which they could unite. The motion prevailed, and the subject was referred to a committee of one from each State. The committee retained the prohibition of duties on exports; struck out the restriction on the enactment of navigation laws; and left the importation of slaves unrestricted until the year 1800; permitting Congress, however, to impose a duty upon the importation. The debate upon this report of the "grand committee" is condensed, by Hildreth, into the two following paragraphs: "Williamson declared himself, both in opinion and practice, against slavery; but he thought it more in favor of humanity, from a view of all circumstances, to let in South Carolina and Georgia on these terms, than to exclude them from the Union. Sherman again objected to the tax, as acknowledging men to be property. Gorham replied that the duty ought to be considered, not as implying that men are property, but as a discouragement to their importation. Sherman said the duty was too small to bear that character. Madison thought it 'wrong to admit, in the Constitution, the idea that there could be property in man'; and the phraseology of one clause was subsequently altered to avoid any such implication. Gouverneur Morris objected that the clause gave Congress power to tax freemen imported; to which George Mason replied that such a power was necessary to prevent the importation of convicts. A motion to extend the time from 1800 to 1808, made by Pinckney, and seconded by Gorham, was carried against New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia; Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire voting this time with Georgia and South Carolina. That part of the report which struck out the restriction on the enactment of navigation acts was opposed by Charles Pinckney in a set speech, in which he enumerated five distinct commercial interests: the fisheries and West India trade, belonging to New England; the interest of New York in a free trade; wheat and flour, the staples of New Jersey and Pennsylvania; tobacco, the staple of Maryland and Virginia and partly of North Carolina; rice and indigo, the staples of South Carolina and Georgia. The same ground was taken by Williamson and Mason, and very warmly by Randolph, who declared that an unlimited power in Congress to enact navigation laws would complete the deformity of a system having already so many odious features that he hardly knew if he could agree to it. Any restriction of the power of Congress over commerce was warmly opposed by Gouverneur Morris, Wilson, and Gorham. Madison also took the same side. Charles C. Pinckney did not deny that it was the true interest of the South to have no regulation of commerce; but considering the commercial losses of the Eastern States during the Revolution, their liberal conduct toward the views of South Carolina--in the vote just taken, giving eight years' further extension to the slave trade--and the interest of the weak Southern States in being united with the strong Eastern ones, he should go against any restriction on the power of commercial regulation. 'He had himself prejudices against the Eastern States before he came here, but would acknowledge that he found them as liberal and candid as any men whatever.' Butler and Rutledge took the same ground, and the same report was adopted, against the votes of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia. "Thus, by an understanding, or, as Gouverneur Morris called it, 'a bargain,' between the commercial representatives of the Northern States and the delegates of South Carolina and Georgia, and in spite of the opposition of Maryland and Virginia, the unrestricted power of Congress to pass navigation laws was conceded to the Northern merchants; and to the Carolina rice-planters, as an equivalent, twenty years' continuance of the African slave trade. This was the third 'Great Compromise' of the Constitution. The other two were the concessions to the smaller States of an equal representation in the Senate, and, to the slaveholders, the counting of three-fifths of the slaves in determining the ratio of representation. If this third compromise differed from the other two by involving not only a political but a moral sacrifice, there was this partial compensation about it, that it was not permanent, like the others, but expired at the end of twenty years by its own limitation." Of the important subjects remaining to be disposed of, that of the executive department was, perhaps, the most difficult. The modified plan of Edmund Randolph left the executive to be elected by the Legislature for a single term of seven years. The election was subsequently given to a college of electors, to be chosen in the States in such manner as the legislatures of the States should direct. The term of service was reduced from seven years to four years, and the restriction of the office to a single term was removed. Numerous other amendments and additions were made in going through with the draft. This amended draft was referred, for final revision, to a committee consisting of Messrs. Hamilton, Johnson, G. Morris, Madison, and King. Several amendments were made even after this revision; one of which was the substitution of a two-thirds for the three-fourths majority required to pass bills against the veto of the President. Another was a proposition of Mr. Gorham, to reduce the minimum ratio of representation from forty thousand, as it stood, to thirty thousand, intended to conciliate certain members who thought the House too small. This was offered the day on which the Constitution was signed. General Washington having briefly addressed the convention in favor of the proposed amendment, it was carried almost unanimously. The whole number of delegates who attended the convention was fifty-five, of whom thirty-nine signed the Constitution. Of the remaining sixteen, some had left the convention before its close; others refused to give it their sanction. Several of the absentees were known to be in favor of the Constitution. Some, as has been observed, were opposed to the plan of a national government, contending for the preservation of the confederation, with a mere enlargement of its powers; others, though in favor of the plan adopted, believed too much power had been given to the General Government. Some thought that not only the powers of Congress, but those of the executive, were too extensive; others that the executive was "weak and contemptible," and without sufficient power to defend himself against encroachments by the Legislature; others, still, that the executive power of the nation ought not to be intrusted in a single person. Although some deprecated the extensive powers of the Federal Government as dangerous to the rights of the States, "ultra democracy" seems to have had no representatives in the convention; while, on the other hand, there were not a few who thought it unsafe to trust the people with a direct exercise of power in the General Government. Sherman and Gerry were opposed to the election of the first branch of the Legislature by the people; as were some of the Southern delegates. Others, among whom were Madison, Mason, and Wilson, thought no republican government could be permanent in which the people were denied a direct voice in the election of their representatives. Hamilton, though in favor of making the first branch elective, proposed that the Senate should be chosen by the people, and the executive by electors, _chosen by electors_, who were to be chosen by the people in districts; Senators and the President both to hold their offices during good behavior. He was also, as were a few others, in favor of an absolute executive veto on acts of the Legislature. He, however, signed the Constitution, and urged others to do the same, as the only means of preventing anarchy and confusion. While the proposed Constitution was in every particular satisfactory to none, very few were disposed to jeopardize the Union by the continuance of a system which _all_ admitted to be inadequate to the objects of the Union. To the hope, therefore, of finding the new plan an improvement on the old, and of amending its defects if any should appear, is to be attributed the general sanction which it received. It is indeed remarkable that a plan of government, containing so many provisions to which the most strenuous opposition was maintained to the end, should have received the signatures of so large a majority of the convention. Perhaps there never was another political body in which views and interests more varied and opposite have been represented or a greater diversity of opinion has prevailed. Nor is it less remarkable that a system deemed so imperfect, not only by the mass of its framers, but by a large portion of the eminent men who composed the State conventions that ratified it, should have been found to answer so fully the purpose of its formation as to require, during an experiment of more than sixty years, no essential alteration; and that it should be esteemed as a model form of republican government by the enlightened friends of freedom in all countries. Not a single provision of the Constitution, as it came from the hands of the framers, except that which prescribed the mode of electing a President and Vice-President, has received the slightest amendment. Of the twelve articles styled "amendments," the first eleven are merely additions; some of which were intended to satisfy the scruples of those who objected to the Constitution as incomplete without a bill of rights, supposing their common-law rights would be rendered more secure by an express guarantee; others are explanatory of certain provisions of the Constitution which were considered liable to misconstruction. The twelfth article is the amendment changing the mode of electing the President and Vice-President. In the differences of opinion between the friends and opponents of the Constitution originated the two great political parties into which the people were divided during a period of about thirty years. It is generally supposed that the term "Federalist" was first applied to those who advocated the plan of the present Constitution. This opinion, however, is not correct. Those members of the convention who were in favor of the old plan of union, which was a simple confederation or federal alliance of equal independent States, were called "Federalists," and their opponents "Anti-Federalists." After the new Constitution had been submitted to the people for ratification, its friends, regarding its adoption as indispensable to union, took the name of "Federalists," and bestowed upon the other party that of "Anti-Federalists," intimating that to oppose the adoption of the Constitution was to oppose any union of the States. The new Constitution bears the date September 17, 1787. It was immediately transmitted to Congress, with a recommendation to that body to submit it to State conventions for ratification, which was accordingly done. It was adopted by Delaware, December 7th; by Pennsylvania, December 12th; by New Jersey, December 18th; by Georgia, January 2d, 1788; by Connecticut, January 9th; by Massachusetts, February 7th; by Maryland, April 28th; by South Carolina, May 23d; by New Hampshire, June 21st, which, being the _ninth_ ratifying State, gave effect to the Constitution. Virginia ratified June 27th; New York, July 26th; and North Carolina, conditionally, August 7th. Rhode Island did not call a convention. In Massachusetts, Virginia, and New York the new Constitution encountered a most formidable opposition, which rendered its adoption by these States for a time extremely doubtful. In their conventions were men on both sides who had been members of the national convention, associated with others of distinguished abilities. In Massachusetts there were several adverse influences which would probably have defeated the ratification in that State had it not been accompanied by certain proposed amendments to be submitted by Congress to the several States for ratification. The adoption of these by the convention gained for the Constitution the support of Hancock and Samuel Adams; and the question on ratification was carried by one hundred eighty-seven against one hundred sixty-eight. In the Virginia convention the Constitution was opposed by Patrick Henry, James Monroe, and George Mason, the last of whom had been one of the delegates to the constitutional convention. On the other side were John Marshall, Edmund Pendleton, James Madison, George Wythe, and Edmund Randolph, the three last also having been members of the national convention. Randolph had refused to sign the Constitution, but had since become one of its warmest advocates. In the convention of this State, also, the ratification was aided by the adoption of a bill of rights and certain proposed amendments, and was carried, eighty-eight yeas against eighty nays. In the convention of New York the opposition embraced a majority of its members, among whom were Yates and Lansing, members of the general convention, and George Clinton. The principal advocates of the Constitution were John Jay, Robert R. Livingston, and Alexander Hamilton. Strong efforts were made for a conditional ratification, which were successfully opposed, though not without the previous adoption of a bill of rights and numerous amendments. With these, the absolute ratification was carried, thirty-one to twenty-nine. The ratification of North Carolina was not received by Congress until January, 1790; and that of Rhode Island not until June of the same year. After the ratification of New Hampshire had been received by Congress, the ratifications of the nine States were referred to a committee, who, on July 14, 1788, reported a resolution for carrying the new government into operation. The passage of the resolution, owing to the difficulty of agreeing upon the place for the meeting of the first Congress, was delayed until September 13th. The first Wednesday in January, 1789, was appointed for choosing electors of President, and the first Wednesday in February for the electors to meet in their respective States to vote for President and Vice-President; and the first Wednesday, March 4th, as the time, and New York as the place, to commence proceedings under the new Constitution. JOSEPH STORY Commissioners were appointed by the Legislatures of Virginia and Maryland, early in 1785, to form a compact relative to the navigation of the Potomac and Pocomoke rivers and Chesapeake Bay. The commissioners, having met in March in that year, felt the want of more enlarged powers, and particularly of powers to provide for a local naval force, and a tariff of duties upon imports. Upon receiving their recommendation, the Legislature of Virginia passed a resolution for laying the subject of a tariff before all the States composing the Union. Soon afterward, in January, 1786, the Legislature adopted another resolution, appointing commissioners, "who were to meet such as might be appointed by the other States in the Union, at a time and place to be agreed on, to take into consideration the trade of the United States; to examine the relative situation and trade of the States; to consider how far a uniform system in their commercial relations may be necessary to their common interest and their permanent harmony; and to report to the several States such an act, relative to this great object, as, when unanimously ratified by them, will enable the United States in Congress assembled to provide for the same." These resolutions were communicated to the States, and a convention of commissioners from five States only, viz., New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia, met at Annapolis in September, 1786. After discussing the subject, they deemed more ample powers necessary, and, as well from this consideration as because a small number only of the States was represented, they agreed to come to no decision, but to frame a report to be laid before the several States, as well as before Congress. In this report they recommended the appointment of commissioners from all the States, "to meet at Philadelphia, on the second Monday of May next, to take into consideration the situation of the United States; to devise such further provisions as shall appear to them necessary to render the Constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the Union; and to report such an act for that purpose to the United States in Congress assembled as, when agreed to by them, and afterward confirmed by the legislature of every State, will effectually provide for the same." On receiving this report the Legislature of Virginia passed an act for the appointment of delegates to meet such as might be appointed by other States, at Philadelphia. The report was also received in Congress, but no step was taken until the Legislature of New York instructed its delegation in Congress to move a resolution recommending to the several States to appoint deputies to meet in convention for the purpose of revising and proposing amendments to the Federal Constitution. On February 21, 1787, a resolution was accordingly moved and carried in Congress recommending a convention to meet in Philadelphia, on the second Monday of May ensuing, "For the purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation, and reporting to Congress and the several legislatures, such alterations and provisions therein as shall, when agreed to in Congress and confirmed by the States, render the Federal Constitution adequate to the exigencies of government and the preservation of the Union." The alarming insurrection then existing in Massachusetts, without doubt, had no small share in producing this result. The report of Congress on that subject at once demonstrates their fears and their political weakness. At the time and place appointed the representatives of twelve States assembled. Rhode Island alone declined to appoint any on this momentous occasion. After very protracted deliberations, the convention finally adopted the plan of the present Constitution on September 17, 1787; and by a contemporaneous resolution, directed it to be "laid before the United States in Congress assembled," and declared their opinion "that it should afterward be submitted to a convention of delegates chosen in each State by the people thereof, under a recommendation of its legislature for their assent and ratification"; and that each convention assenting to and ratifying the same should give notice thereof to Congress. The convention, by a further resolution, declared their opinion that as soon as nine States had ratified the Constitution, Congress should fix a day on which electors should be appointed by the States which should have ratified the same, and a day on which the electors should assemble and vote for the President, and the time and place of commencing proceedings under the Constitution; and that after such publication the electors should be appointed, and the Senators and Representatives elected. The same resolution contained further recommendations for the purpose of carrying the Constitution into effect. The convention, at the same time, addressed a letter to Congress, expounding their reasons for their acts, from which the following extract cannot but be interesting: "It is obviously impracticable [says the address] in the federal government of these States, to secure all rights of independent sovereignty to each, and yet provide for the interest and safety of all. Individuals entering into society must give up a share of liberty to preserve the rest. The magnitude of the sacrifice must depend as well on situation and circumstance as on the object to be obtained. It is at all times difficult to draw with precision the line between those rights which must be surrendered and those which may be reserved; and on the present occasion this difficulty was increased by a difference among the several States as to their situation, extent, habits, and particular interests. In all our deliberations on this subject we kept steadily in our view that, which appears to us the greatest interest of every true American, the consolidation of our Union, in which is involved our prosperity, felicity, safety, perhaps our national existence. This important consideration, seriously and deeply impressed on our minds, led each State in the convention to be less rigid on points of inferior magnitude than might have been otherwise expected. And thus the Constitution which we now present is the result of the spirit of amity, and of that mutual deference and concession, which the peculiarity of our political situation rendered indispensable." Congress, having received the report of the convention on September 28, 1787, unanimously resolved "that the said report, with the resolutions and letter accompanying the same, be transmitted to the several legislatures in order to be submitted to a convention of delegates chosen in each State by the people thereof in conformity to the resolves of the convention, made and provided in that case." Conventions in the various States which had been represented in the general convention were accordingly called by their respective legislatures; and the Constitution having been ratified by eleven out of the twelve States, Congress, on September 13, 1788, passed a resolution appointing the first Wednesday in January following for the choice of electors of President; the first Wednesday of February following for the assembling of the electors to vote for a President; and the first Wednesday of March following, at the then seat of Congress (New York) the time and place for commencing proceedings under the Constitution. Electors were accordingly appointed in the several States, who met and gave their votes for a President; and the other elections for Senators and Representatives having been duly made, on Wednesday, March 4, 1789, Congress assembled under the new Constitution and commenced proceedings under it. A quorum of both Houses, however, did not assemble until April 6th, when, the votes for President being counted, it was found that George Washington was unanimously elected President, and John Adams was elected Vice-President. On April 30th President Washington was sworn into office, and the government then went into full operation in all its departments. North Carolina had not, as yet, ratified the Constitution. The first convention called in that State, in August, 1788, refused to ratify it without some previous amendments and a declaration of rights. In a second convention, however, called in November, 1789, this State adopted the Constitution. The State of Rhode Island had declined to call a convention; but finally, by a convention held in May, 1790, its assent was obtained; and thus all the thirteen original States became parties to the new government. Thus was achieved another and still more glorious triumph in the cause of national liberty than even that which separated us from the mother-country. By it we fondly trust that our republican institutions will grow up, and be nurtured into more mature strength and vigor; our independence be secured against foreign usurpation and aggression; our domestic blessings be widely diffused, and generally felt; and our nation, as a people, be perpetuated, as our own truest glory and support, and as a proud example of a wise and beneficent government, entitled to the respect, if not to the admiration, of mankind. Let it not, however, be supposed that a Constitution, which is now looked upon with such general favor and affection by the people, had no difficulties to encounter at its birth. The history of those times is full of melancholy instruction on this subject, at once to admonish us of past dangers, and to awaken us to a lively sense of the necessity of future vigilance. The Constitution was adopted unanimously by Georgia, New Jersey, and Delaware. It was supported by large majorities in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Maryland, and South Carolina. It was carried in the other States by small majorities; and especially in Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia by little more than a preponderating vote. Indeed, it is believed that in each of these States, at the first assembling of the conventions, there was a decided majority opposed to the Constitution. The ability of the debates, the impending evils, and the absolute necessity of the case seem to have reconciled some persons to the adoption of it, whose opinions had been strenuously the other way. "In our endeavors," said Washington, "to establish a new general government, the contest, nationally considered, seems not to have been so much for glory as for existence. It was for a long time doubtful whether we were to survive, as an independent republic, or decline from our federal dignity into insignificant and withered fragments of empire." FOOTNOTES: [32] Called the "Constitutional Convention."--ED. INAUGURATION OF WASHINGTON HIS FAREWELL ADDRESS A.D. 1789-1797 JAMES K. PAULDING and GEORGE WASHINGTON In times when "logical candidates" for the Presidency of the United States are periodically exploited by rival parties, it is a salutary thing, which can never too often be repeated, to look back to the first filling of the chief magistracy of the country. No parallel is seen in history to the unanimity of Washington's election, a call which his modest reluctance could not refuse, for there was no other who could serve his country's need. The tribute of a nation was again paid in his unanimous reëlection to a second term, which nothing except his own will determined for the last. Familiar as is the fame of Washington and of his services to his country and mankind, there is no name in the records of the world which still commands a more universal veneration. Nor is this sentiment diminished, among intelligent people, now that his character and work have been divested of those elements of myth or tradition which formerly enveloped them; rather by the critical process of humanizing is his reputation more endeared to his countrymen and more firmly established in the eyes of the world. To enter here upon the innumerable details of Washington's presidential labors is impossible; they belong to general history. But among the great events of history the civil and political acts of the man who was first in peace as well as in war stand conspicuous, and in Paulding's narrative and appreciation they are fittingly commemorated. The convention which framed the United States Constitution met at Philadelphia, and unanimously chose Washington its president. This situation in some measure precluded him from speaking, if he had been so inclined; but his influence was not the less in producing the results which followed. It is highly probable that but for the exertions he made in private, and the vast authority of his character and services, the objects of the convention might not have been obtained. The great talents of Madison, Hamilton, and Jay, exerted in that celebrated work called _The Federalist_, and the influence of many of the leading men of the different States, aided by the name of Washington, alone, perhaps, secured to the country the great charter of its liberties. Under the new Constitution a chief magistrate became necessary to administer the government. The eyes of the whole people of the United States were at once directed to Washington, and their united voices called upon him who had led their armies in war, to direct their affairs in peace. His old companions came forth and besought him to leave his retirement once more to serve his country. The leading men of all parties wrote letters to the same purport, and on all hands he was assailed by the warmest, most earnest applications. His replies are extant, and those who have ever seen them cannot for a moment question the deep reluctance with which he undertook this new and trying service. Both in its external and internal relations, the country was at this time in a most critical state; and the man who accepted the hard task of administering its government might rationally anticipate little of the sweets and all the bitterness of power. He who already possessed the hearts of the people; he who had already gained the most lofty eminence, the noblest of all rewards, the hallowed title of his country's father, and the gratitude of a nation, would risk everything and gain nothing by embarking again on the troubled ocean of political strife, in a vessel whose qualities for the voyage had never been tried. But Washington thought he might be of service to his country, and once more sacrificed his rural happiness and cherished tastes at that shrine where he had often offered up his life and all its enjoyments. He was unanimously elected President of the United States on March 4, 1789, but owing to some formal or accidental delays this event was not notified to him officially until April 14th following. Referring to this delay he thus expresses himself in a letter to General Knox, who possessed and deserved his friendship to the last moment of his life: "As to myself, the delay may be compared to a reprieve; for in confidence I tell you (with the world it would obtain little credit) that my movements toward the chair of government will be accompanied by feelings not unlike those of a culprit going to the place of execution; so unwilling am I, in the evening of a life consumed in public cares, to quit my peaceful abode for an ocean of difficulties, without the competency of political skill, abilities, and inclination which is necessary to manage the helm. I am sensible that I am embarking with the voice of the people, and a good name of my own, on this voyage, and what returns will be made for them, Heaven alone can foretell. Integrity and firmness are all I can promise. These, be the voyage long or short, shall never forsake me, though I may be deserted by all men; for of the consolations to be derived from these, the world cannot deprive me." Such was the foundation of his modest confidence--firmness and integrity, the true pillars of honest greatness. And these never deserted him. He kept his promise to himself in all times, circumstances, and temptations; and though, on a few rare occasions during the course of a stormy season, in which the hopes, fears, and antipathies of his fellow-citizens were strongly excited, his conduct may have been assailed, his motives were never questioned. None ever doubted his firmness, and the general conviction of his integrity was founded on a rock that could neither be undermined nor overthrown. His progress from Mount Vernon to New York, where Congress was then sitting, was a succession of the most affecting scenes which the sentiment of a grateful people ever presented to the contemplation of the world. His appearance awakened in the bosoms of all an enthusiasm so much the more glorious because so little characteristic of our countrymen. Men, women, and children poured forth and lined the roads in throngs to see him pass and hail his coming. The windows shone with glistening eyes, watching his passing footsteps; the women wept for joy; the children shouted, "God save Washington!" and the iron hearts of the stout husbandmen yearned with inexpressible affection toward him who had caused them to repose in safety under their own vine and fig-tree. His old companions-in-arms came forth to renovate their honest pride, as well as undying affection, by a sight of their general, and a shake of his hand. The pulse of the nation beat high with exultation, for now, when they saw their ancient pilot once more at the helm, they hoped for a prosperous voyage and a quiet haven in the bosom of prosperity. His reception at Trenton was peculiarly touching. It was planned by those females and their daughters whose patriotism and sufferings in the cause of liberty were equal to those of their fathers, husbands, sons, and brothers. It was here, when the hopes of the people lay prostrate on the earth, and the eagle of freedom seemed to flap his wings, as if preparing to forsake the world, that Washington performed those prompt and daring acts which, while they revived the drooping spirits of his country, freed, for a time, the matrons of Trenton from the insults and wrongs of an arrogant soldiery. The female heart is no sanctuary for ingratitude; and when Washington arrived at the bridge over the Assumpink, which here flows close to the borders of the city, he met the sweetest reward that, perhaps, ever crowned his virtues. Over the bridge was thrown an arch of evergreens and flowers bearing this affecting inscription in large letters: "December 26, 1776. "The hero who defended the mothers will protect the daughters." At the other extremity of the bridge were assembled many hundreds of young girls of various ages, arrayed in white, the emblem of truth and innocence, their brows circled with garlands, and baskets of flowers in their hands. Beyond these were disposed the grown-up daughters of the land, clothed and equipped like the others, and behind them the matrons, all of whom remembered the never-to-be-forgotten twenty-sixth of December, 1776. As the good Washington left the bridge, they joined in a chorus, touchingly expressive of his services and their gratitude, strewing, at the same time, flowers as he passed along. That mouth whose muscles of gigantic strength indicated the firmness of his character and the force of his mind, was now observed to quiver with emotion; that eye which looked storms and tempests, enemies and friends, undauntedly in the face, and never quailed in the sight of man, now glistened with tears; and that hand which had not trembled when often life, fame, and the liberty of his country hung on the point of a single moment, now refused its office. His hat dropped from his hand as he drew it across his brow. His reception everywhere was worthy of his services and of a grateful people. At New York the vessels were adorned with flags, and the river alive with boats gayly decked out in like manner, with bands of music on board; the place of his landing was thronged with crowds of citizens, gathered together to welcome his arrival. The roar of cannon and the shouts of the multitude announced his landing, and he was conducted to his lodging by thousands of grateful hearts, who remembered what he had done for them in the days of their trial. It had been arranged that a military escort should attend him; but when the officer in command announced his commission, Washington replied, "I require no guard but the affections of the people," and declined their attendance. At this moment, so calculated to inflate the human heart with vanity, Washington, though grateful for these spontaneous proofs of affectionate veneration, was not elated. In describing the scene in one of his familiar letters, he says: "The display of boats on this occasion with vocal and instrumental music on board, the decorations of the ships, the roar of cannon, and the loud acclamations of the people, as I passed along the wharves, gave me as much pain as pleasure, contemplating the probable reversal of this scene, after all my endeavors to do good." Happily, his anticipations were never realized. Although his policy in relation to the French Revolution, which was as wise as it was happy in its consequences, did not give universal satisfaction, still he remained master of the affections and confidence of the people. The laurels he had won in defence of the liberties of his country continued to flourish on his brow while living, and will grow green on his grave to the end of time. On April 30, 1789, he took the oath and entered on the office of President of the United States, one of the highest as well as most thankless that could be undertaken by man. The head of this free Government is no idle, empty pageant set up to challenge the admiration and coerce the absolute submission of the people; his duties are arduous and his responsibilities great; he is the first servant, not the master, of the state, and is amenable for his conduct, like the humblest citizen. As the executor of the laws, he is bound to see them obeyed; as the first of our citizens, he is equally bound to set an example of obedience. The oath, "to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States," was administered in the balcony of the old Federal Hall in New York, by the chancellor of the State, and the Bible on which it was sworn is still preserved as a sacred relic. At the time Washington assumed the high functions of President of the United States, there was ample room for the exertion of all his firmness, integrity, and talents. A new constitution to be administered, without the aid of experience or precedent, by an authority to which the people were strangers; serious and alarming difficulties to be adjusted with England; the Indian nations all along our frontier brandishing their tomahawks and whetting their scalping-knives; war with Mediterranean pirates; the Spaniards denying our right to navigate the Mississippi, and the people of Kentucky threatening a separation from the Union unless that right was successfully asserted by the Government. Other difficulties stared the new President full in the face. Some of the States still declined to accept the new Constitution, and become members of the Confederation; others nearly equally divided on the subject; and a debt of eighty million dollars; to meet all which there was an army of less than a thousand men and an empty treasury. Here was enough, and more than enough, to call forth all the energies, if not to produce despair in the mind, of an ordinary man. But Washington was not such a man. Conscious of the purity of his purposes, he relied on the protection of that Power which is all purity. His first care was to provide for the civil and judicial administration of the government, by the appointment of men in whose virtue and capacity a long experience had given him confidence. Having done this he took the reins with a firm, steady hand, and commenced the ascent of the rugged steep before him. The next object that called his attention was the situation of the inland frontier, now exposed to the inroads of the savages, who had not been included in the general pacification, although a proposition to that effect had been made by the British commissioners. Although our Government has always treated with the Indians as independent tribes, it has never placed them on the footing of civilized nations, or admitted any mediation on the part of foreign powers. The United States do not recognize them as parties in civilized warfare; they neither avail themselves of their alliance nor acknowledge them as the auxiliaries of other nations. A system was devised for the conduct of those singular relations which alone can subsist between people so different in all respects, moral and political. The wisdom of that system has been exemplified in having uniformly been acted upon to this time, and though it may perhaps be questioned as to its abstract principles, it would be perhaps difficult if not impossible to devise a better. Our ancestors came to this country under the sanction of a principle at that time universally acknowledged among civilized nations, and when once here, the first law of nature, self-defence, furnishes their only justification. While weak, they were obliged to defend themselves, and when they became strong they were probably too apt to remember their former sufferings. The policy of Washington, with regard to these unfortunate people, was successful in quieting, if not conciliating many of the Indian tribes; but others remained refractory and continued their atrocities. After defeating two American armies with great slaughter, they were at length brought to terms by the gallant Wayne, who gave them so severe a beating in a great general action that they sued for peace. This was concluded at Greenville; and the cession of a vast territory not only relieved the frontier from savage inroads, but paved the way for the progress of civilization into a new world of wilderness. He was equally successful at a subsequent period in his negotiations with Spain. His high character for veracity and honor gave him singular advantages in his foreign intercourse. He proceeded in a straightforward, open manner, stated what was wanted, and what would be given in return; relied on justice, and enforced its claims with the arguments of truth. He disdained to purchase advantages by corruption, or to deceive by insincerity. As in private, so in public life, he proceeded inflexibly upon the noble maxim, whose truth is every day verified, that "Honesty is the best policy." The conviction of a man's integrity gives him far greater advantages in his intercourse with the world than he can ever gain by hypocrisy and falsehood. The right of navigating the Mississippi was finally conceded by Spain. The settlement of the controversies growing out of the treaty with England proved even more difficult than those with Spain. The wounds inflicted on both nations by a war of so many years were healed, but the scars remained, to remind the one of what it had suffered, the other of what it had lost. Time and mutual good offices were necessary to allay that spirit which had been excited on one hand by injuries, on the other by successful resistance; and time indeed had passed away, but it had left behind it neither forgiveness nor oblivion. It was accompanied on one hand by new provocations, on the other by additional remonstrances and renewed indignation. Negotiations continued for a long while, without any result but mortification and impatience on the part of the people of the United States; and it was not until the French Revolution threatened the existence of all the established governments of Europe, and England among the rest, that a treaty was concluded, which brought with it an adjustment of the principal points that had so long embroiled the two nations and fostered a spirit of increasing hostility. The most vexing question of all however--that of the right of entering our ships and impressing seamen--was left unsettled, and it became obvious that it would never be adjusted except on the principle of the right of the strongest. About the same time peace was concluded between the United States and the Emperor of Morocco, and thus, for a while, our commerce remained unmolested on that famous sea where, some years afterward, our gallant navy laid the foundation of its present and future glories. It is not my design to enter minutely into the principles or conduct of the two great parties, which, from the period of the adoption of the Constitution down to the present time, have been struggling for ascendency in the Government of the United States. My limits will not permit me, if I wished; but if they did, I should decline the task. My youthful readers will know and feel their excitement soon enough, perhaps too soon; and I wish not to become instrumental in implanting in their tender minds the seeds of social and political antipathies. I am attempting to picture a great and virtuous man; to exhibit a noble moral example for the imitation of the children of my country. My business is with the actions of Washington, not with the imputations of his enemies or the struggles of ambitious politicians. Posterity has placed him far above such puny trifles and triflers, and I will not assist, however humbly, in reviving imputations which have long since sunk into oblivion or insignificance under the weight of his mighty name. The French Revolution, which set the Old World in a blaze, but for the wisdom and firmness of Washington would have involved the United States in the labyrinth of European policy. He it was that prevented their becoming parties in that series of tremendous wars which desolated some of the fairest portions of the earth; caused the rivers to run red with blood; overturned and erected thrones; converted kings into the playthings of fortune; and ended in the creation of a mighty phantom, which, after being the scourge and terror of the world, vanished from our sight on a desolate rock of the ocean. The people of the United States had continued to cherish a strong feeling of gratitude for the good offices of France during their struggle for independence; and in addition to this, their sympathies were deeply engaged in behalf of a contest so similar in many respects to their own. The institution of the French Republic was hailed with an enthusiasm equal to that they felt on the establishment of their own liberties; and, but for the firm and steady hand of Washington, they would have taken the bridle between their teeth and run headlong into the vortex of European revolution. Washington issued his famous Proclamation of Neutrality, from which Mr. Genet, the minister of the French Republic, threatened to appeal to the people, a measure understood to mean nothing less than revolution. From that moment the people began to rally around their beloved chief, like children who will not allow their father to be insulted, although they themselves may think him wrong. They sanctioned the proclamation, and time has ratified their decision. It is believed there is not a rational American who does not now feel that the course of Washington was founded in consummate wisdom, deep feeling, and eternal justice. Having been twice unanimously elected to the highest office in the gift of men; having served his country faithfully eight years in war and eight in peace, having settled the government on a permanent basis, established a series of precedents for the imitation of his successors, and seeing the United States now resting happily in the lap of repose and prosperity; having fulfilled all and more than they had a right to ask of him, and consummated all his public duties, Washington now signified his intention of declining a reëlection. During the arduous services of the preceding term, he had been obliged to retire for a while to the repose of Mount Vernon for the reëstablishment of his health, and he now resolved to relieve himself finally from all the duties and cares of public life. He had earned this privilege by a whole life of arduous patriotism, and without doubt wished to close his public career by one more act of moderation, as a guide to those who might come after him. He believed eight years to be a sufficient term of service in the office of President for any one single man, and determined to establish the precedent by setting the example himself. Feeling on this occasion like a father about to take a final leave of his children, and give them his parting blessing, Washington, at the moment of announcing his intention of retiring from the world, addressed to the people of the United States his last memorable words. These were conveyed in a letter to his "friends and fellow-citizens," fraught with lessons of virtue and patriotism, adorned by the most touching simplicity, the most mature wisdom, the most affectionate and endearing earnestness of paternal solicitude. He was now about to withdraw his long and salutary guardianship from his young and vigorous country, his only offspring, and he left her the noblest legacy in his power, the priceless riches of his precepts and example. "In looking forward," he says, "to the moment which is intended to terminate the career of my public life, my feelings do not permit me to suspend the deep acknowledgment of that debt of gratitude which I owe to my beloved country for the many honors it has conferred upon me, or still more for the steadfast confidence with which it has supported me, and for the opportunities thence enjoyed of manifesting my inviolable attachment by services, useful and persevering, though in usefulness unequal to my zeal. "Profoundly penetrated with this idea, I shall carry it with me to my grave, as a strong incitement to unceasing vows, that Heaven may continue to you the choicest tokens of its beneficence; that your union and brotherly affection may be perpetual; that the free constitution which is the work of your hands may be sacredly maintained; that its administration in every department may be stamped with wisdom and virtue; that in fine, the happiness of these States, under the auspices of liberty, may be made complete by so careful a preservation and so prudent a use of this blessing as will acquire to them the glory of recommending it to the applause, the affection, and the adoption of every nation which is yet a stranger to it. "Here, perhaps, I ought to stop. But solicitude for your welfare, which cannot end but with my life, and the apprehension of danger natural to such solicitude, urge me, on an occasion like the present, to offer to your solemn contemplation, and to recommend to your frequent review, some sentiments which are the result of much reflection, of no inconsiderable observation, and which appear to me all-important to your felicity as a people. These will be offered to you with the more freedom, as you can only see in them the disinterested warnings of a parting friend, who can possibly have no personal motive to bias his counsel. "Interwoven as is the love of liberty with every ligament of your hearts, no recommendation of mine is necessary to fortify the attachment. "The unity of government, which constitutes you one people, is also now dear to you. It is justly so; for it is the main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquillity at home and your peace abroad; of your prosperity, of that liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee that from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed, to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth--as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be constantly and actively, though often covertly and insidiously directed--it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it, accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it may be in any event abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties that now link together the various parts." He then proceeds to caution his fellow-citizens against those geographical distinctions of "North," "South," "East," and "West," which, by fostering ideas of separate interests and character, are calculated to weaken the bonds of our union, and to create prejudices, if not antipathies, dangerous to its existence. He shows, by a simple reference to the great paramount interests of each of the different sections, that they are inseparably intertwined in one common bond; that they are mutually dependent on each other; and that they cannot be rent asunder without deeply wounding our prosperity at home, our character and influence abroad, laying the foundation for perpetual broils among ourselves, and creating a necessity for great standing armies, themselves the most fatal enemies to the liberties of mankind. He earnestly recommends implicit obedience to the laws of the land, as one of the great duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of liberty. "The basis of our political system," he says, "is the right of the people to make and alter their constitutions of government; but the constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government." He denounces "all combinations and associations under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities," as destructive to this fundamental principle and of fatal tendency. He cautions his countrymen against the extreme excitements of party spirit; the factious opposition and pernicious excesses to which they inevitably tend, until by degrees they gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns his disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty. He warns those who are to administer the government after him, "to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, refraining, in the exercise of the powers of one department, to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, real despotism." He inculcates, with the most earnest eloquence, a regard to religion and morality. "Of all the dispositions and habits," he says, "which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it be simply added, where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be attained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to a refined education, or minds of peculiar cast, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in the exclusion of religious principles." He recommends the general diffusion of knowledge among all classes of the people. "Promote, then," he says, "as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened." He recommends the practice of justice and good faith, and the cultivation of the relations of peace with all mankind, as not only enforced by the obligations of religion and morality, but by all the maxims of sound policy. For the purpose of a successful pursuit of this great object, he cautions his fellow-citizens against the indulgence of undue partiality or prejudice in favor or against any nation whatever, as leading to weak sacrifices on one hand, senseless hostility on the other. Most emphatically does he warn them against the wiles of foreign influence, the fatal enemy of all the ancient republics. He enjoins a watchful jealousy of all equally impartial, otherwise it may only lead to the suspicion of visionary dangers on one hand and wilful blindness on the other. Then, after recommending a total abstinence from all political alliances with the nations of Europe; a due regard to the national faith toward public creditors; suitable establishments for the defence of the country, that we may not be tempted to rely on foreign aid, and which will never be afforded, in all probability without the price of great sacrifices on the part of the nation depending on the hollow friendship of jealous rivals, he concludes this admirable address, which ought to be one of the early lessons of every youth of our country, in the following affecting words: "Though in reviewing the incidents of my administration, I am unconscious of international error, I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors. Whatever they may be, I fervently beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils of which they may tend. I shall always carry with me the hope that my country will never cease to view them with indulgence, and that after forty-five years of a life dedicated to its service, with an upright zeal, the faults of incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion, as myself must soon be to the mansions of rest. "Relying on its kindness in this as in all things, and actuated by that fervent love toward it which is so natural to a man who views it as the native soil of himself and his progenitors for several generations, I anticipate with pleasing expectations that retreat in which I promise myself to realize, without alloy, the sweet enjoyment of partaking in the midst of my fellow-citizens the benign influence of good laws under a free government, the ever-favorite object of my heart, and the happy reward, as I trust, of our mutual cares, labors, and dangers." On March 4, 1797, he bade a last farewell to public life. Those who have read in history the struggles of ambitious men for power, and have seen them in every age and country involving whole nations in the horrors of civil strife, only for the worthless privilege of choosing a master, will do well to mark the conduct of Washington on this occasion. He waited only in Philadelphia to congratulate his successor and pay respect to the choice of the people in the person of Mr. Adams. He entered the Senate chamber as a private citizen, and, while every eye glistened at thus seeing him, perhaps for the last time, grasped the hand of the new President, wished that his administration might prove as happy for himself as for his country, and, bowing to the assemblage, retired unattended as he came. As he was hailed with blessings on entering, so was he greeted with blessings when he quitted forever, the Presidential chair. He came from his retirement at Mount Vernon accompanied by joyful acclamations of welcome, and he was followed thither by the love and veneration of millions of grateful people. Blessed, and thrice blessed, is he who closes a life of honest fame in such a dignified and happy repose; fortunate the nation that can boast of such an example, and still more fortunate the children who can call him "Father of their Country." FRENCH REVOLUTION: STORMING OF THE BASTILLE A.D. 1789 WILLIAM HAZLITT In the scenes of blood and terror which accompanied it, and in the dramatic episodes and strange actors appearing upon its stage--in these respects, if not in the calculable effects of the uprising on France and the world, the French Revolution was the most extraordinary outbreak of modern times. Matters in France at this time, or during the next few years, might have taken a very different course had not the Eastern powers of Europe been absorbed in their own quarrels, which culminated in the final "scramble for Polish territory." As it was, France was left through the early years of the Revolution to struggle with her own affairs. Under Louis XV, loved at the beginning of his reign, execrated by his people at its close, France had fallen into bankruptcy and disgrace. The monarchy was weakened through its head. Louis determined that it should live as long as he survived; he cared nothing for its future. The peasantry of France at this time had become keenly alive to the wrongs under which they had long suffered in comparative silence. The disfranchised bourgeois, or middle class, had lately grown in wealth and now thought more about their political rights. The "common" people were staggering under the burden of taxation, from which the privileged nobility and clergy were largely exempt. The intellectual life of France during the second half of the eighteenth century was profoundly affected by the literature of the period, especially by the radical and revolutionary writings of Voltaire, Rousseau, and their followers, and in many things the extreme views of these men seemed to find confirmation in the calmer reasonings of Montesquieu on the powers and limitations of governments. Democratic ideas were in the air, and all except the privileged classes were ready for general revolt. Frenchmen returning from America reported the successful working of the new order of things inaugurated by the Revolution there, and this gave stronger impulse to the revolutionary tendency in France. When the well-meaning but weak-willed Louis XVI came to the throne he found himself confronted with conditions before which a far abler monarch might well have quailed. How the storm broke upon him, and began its sweep over the kingdom which he was set to rule, is told by Hazlitt without the rhetorical flourishes indulged by many writers on this subject, but with clear narration and philosophic judgment of the facts recounted. Louis XVI succeeded to the throne of France in 1774, and soon after married Marie Antoinette, a daughter of the house of Austria. She was young, beautiful, and thoughtless. In her the pride of birth was strengthened and rendered impatient of the least restraint by the pride of sex and beauty; and all three together were instrumental in hastening the downfall of the monarchy. Devoted to the licentious pleasures of a court, she looked both from education and habit on the homely comforts of the people with disgust or indifference, and regarded the distress and poverty which stood in the way of her dissipation with incredulity or loathing.[33] Louis XVI himself, though a man of good intentions, and free, in a remarkable degree, from the common vices of his situation, had not firmness of mind to resist the passions and importunity of others, and, in addition to the extravagance, petulance, and extreme counsels of the Queen, fell a victim to the intrigues and officious interference of those about him, who had neither the wisdom nor spirit to avert those dangers and calamities which they had provoked by their rashness, presumption, and obstinacy. The want of economy in the court, or a maladministration of the finances, first occasioned pecuniary difficulties to the Government, for which a remedy was in vain sought by a succession of ministers, Necker, Calonne, Maupeou, and by the Parliament. Considerable embarrassment and uneasiness began to be felt throughout the kingdom when in 1787 the King undertook to convoke the States-General, as alone competent to meet the emergency, and to confer on other topics of the highest consequence, which were at this time agitated with general anxiety and interest. The necessity of raising the supplies to defray the expenses of government was indeed only made the handle to introduce and enforce other more important and widely extended plans of reform. For some time past the public mind had been growing critical and fastidious with the progress of civilization and letters; the monarchy, as it existed at the period "with all its imperfections on its head," had been weighed in the balance of reason and opinion, and found wanting; and a favorable opportunity was only required, and the first that presented itself was eagerly seized to put in practice what had been already resolved upon in theory by the wits, philosophers, and philanthropists of the eighteenth century. From the first calling together the general council of the nation to deliberate and determine for the public good, in the then prevailing ferment of the popular feeling and with the predisposing causes, not a measure of finance was to be looked to, but a revolution became inevitable. All the _cahiers_, or instructions given to the deputies by the great mass of their constituents, show that the kingdom at large was ripe for a material change in its civil and political institutions, and for the most part point out the individual grievances which were afterward done away with. The States-General met at Versailles on May 5, 1789. They consisted of the representatives of the nobility, of the clergy, and of the _Tiers État_ or people in general, the number of the last having been doubled in order to equal that of the other two. They heard mass the evening before at the Church of St. Louis, in the same dresses, and with the same forms and order of precedence as in 1614, the last time they had ever been assembled. The King opened the sitting with a speech which gave little satisfaction, as it dwelt chiefly on the liquidation of the debt and the unsettled state of the public mind, and did not go into those general measures on which the views of the assembly were bent and from which alone relief was expected. The first question which divided opinion and led to a conflict was that regarding the vote by head or by order. By the first mode, that of counting voices, the commons would be numerically on a par with the privileged classes; by the latter, their opponents would always have the advantage of two to one. In order to keep this advantage, and prevent that reform of abuses which the Third Estate was supposed to have principally at heart, the Court did all it could to separate the different orders, first by adhering to etiquette, afterward by means of intrigue, and in the end by force. On the day following the meeting, the deputies of the three estates were called upon to verify their powers, which the nobles and clergy wished to do apart; but the commons refused to take any steps toward this object, except conjointly, or as a general legislative body. This led to various overtures and discussions, which lasted for several weeks. The Court offered its mediation; but the nobles giving a peremptory refusal to come to any compromise, at the motion of the Abbé Sieyès, the Third Estate, after in vain inviting the two others to join them, constituted themselves into a national assembly. This was the first act of the Revolution, or the first occasion on which a part of a given body of individuals took upon them to decide for the rest, from the urgency and magnitude of the case, without the consent of their coadjutors, and contrary to established rules. It was a stroke of state necessity, to be defended not by the forms but by the essence of justice, and by the great ends of human society. The usurpation of a discretionary and illegal power was clear, but nothing could be done without it, everything with it. Yet so strong and natural is the prejudice against every appearance of what is violent and arbitrary, that serious attempts were made to reconcile the letter with the spirit of justice in this instance, and to prove that the Tiers État, being the representatives of the nation, and the nation being everything, the nobility and clergy were included in it and had nothing to complain of. It is not worth while to answer this sophistry. The truth is that the Third Estate erected themselves from parties concerned into framers of the law and judges of the reason of the case, and must themselves be judged, not by precedent and tradition, but by posterity, to whom, from the scale on which they acted, the benefit or the injury of their departure from common and worn-out forms will reach. Acts that supersede old established rules and create a new era in human affairs are to be approved or condemned by what comes after, not by what has gone before, them. This first independent and spirited step on the part of the commons produced a reaction on the part of the Court. They shut up the place of sitting. The King had been prevailed on to consent to hostile measures against the popular side during an excursion to Marly with the Queen and princes of the blood. Bailly, afterward mayor of Paris, had been chosen president of the new National Assembly, and, arriving with other members, and finding the doors of the hall shut against them, they repaired to the _Jeu de Paumes_ ("Tennis-court") at Versailles, followed by the people and soldiers in crowds, and there, enclosed by bare walls, with heads uncovered, and a strong and spontaneous burst of enthusiasm, made a solemn vow, with the exception of only one person present, never to separate till they had given France a constitution. This memorable and decisive event took place on June 20th. On the 23d the King came to the Church of St. Louis, whither they had been compelled to remove, and where they were joined by a considerable number of the clergy; addressed them in a tone of authority and reprimand, treated them as simply the Tiers État, pointed out certain partial reforms which he approved, and which he enjoined them to effect in conjunction with the other orders, or threatened to dissolve them and take the whole management of the government upon himself, and ended with a command that they should separate. The nobles and the clergy obeyed; the deputies of the people remained firm, immovable, silent. Mirabeau then started from his seat and appealed to the Assembly in that mixed style of the academician and the demagogue which characterized his eloquence. The words are worth repeating here, both as a sample of the unqualified tone of the period and on account of the fierce and personal attack on the King, whom he stigmatizes by a sort of nickname. "Gentlemen, I acknowledge that what you have just heard might be a pledge of the welfare of the country, if the offers of despotism were not always dangerous. What is the meaning of this insolent dictation, the array of arms, the violation of the national temple, merely to command you to be happy? Who gives you this command? your _Mandatory_ ['deputy']. Who imposes his imperious laws? your Mandatory, he who ought to receive them from you; from us, gentlemen, who are invested with an inviolable political priesthood; from us, in short, to whom, and to whom alone, twenty-five millions of men look up for a happiness insured by its being agreed upon, given, and received by all. But the freedom of your deliberations is suspended: a military force surrounds the Assembly! Where are the enemies of the nation, that this outrage should be attempted? Is Catiline at our gates? I demand that in asserting the claims of your insulted dignity, of your legislative power, you arm yourselves with the sanctity of your oath: it does not permit us to separate till we have achieved the constitution." From this unbridled effusion of bombast, affectation, and real passion two things are evident: first, that the designs of the Court were already looked upon as altogether hostile and alien to the patriotic side; secondly, that the Assembly, from the beginning, felt in themselves the strong and undoubted conviction of their being called to the task of removing the abuses of power and regenerating the hopes of a mighty people. The die was cast, the lists were marked out in the opinions and sentiments of the two parties toward each other. The grand master of the ceremonies of this occasion, seeing that the Assembly did not break up, reminded them of the command of the King. "Go tell your master," cried Mirabeau, "that we are here by order of the people; and that we shall not retire but at the point of the bayonet." This was at once an invitation to violence and a defiance of authority. Sieyès added, with his customary coolness: "You are to-day in the same situation that you were yesterday; let us deliberate!" The Assembly immediately confirmed its former resolutions, and, at the instance of Mirabeau, decreed the inviolability of its members. Such was at one time the brilliant, daring, and forward zeal of a man who not long after sold himself to the Court: so little has flashy eloquence or bold pretension to do with steadiness of principle! Indeed, the Revolution, of which he was one of the most prominent leaders, presented too many characters of this kind--dazzling, ardent, wavering, corrupt--a succession of momentary fires, made of light and worthless materials, soon kindled and soon exhausted, and requiring some new fuel to repair them: nothing deep, internal, relying on its own resources--"outliving fortunes outward with a mind that doth renew swifter than blood decays"--but a flame rash and violent, fanned by circumstances, kept alive by vanity, smothered by sordid interest, and wandering from object to object in search of the most contemptible and contradictory excitement! We may also remark, in the debates and proceedings of this early period, the fevered and anxious state of the public mind; while galling and intolerable abuses, called in question for the first time and defended with blind confidence, were exposed in the most naked and flagrant point of view; and the drapery of forms and circumstances was torn from rank and power with sarcastic petulance or a ruthless logic. The resistance of the Assembly alarmed the Court, who did not, however, as yet dare to proceed against it. Necker, who had disapproved of the royal interference, and whose dismission had been determined on in the morning, was the same night entreated both by the King and Queen to stay. On the next meeting of the Assembly a large portion of the clergy again repaired to their place of sitting; and four days after, forty members of the _noblesse_ joined them, with the Duke of Orléans at their head. The conduct of this nobleman, all through the Revolution, was in my opinion uncalled for, indecent, and profligate, and his fate not unmerited. Persons situated as he was cannot take a decided part one way or the other, without doing violence either to the dictates of reason and justice or to all their natural sentiments, unless they are characters of that heroic stamp as to be raised above suspicion or temptation: the only way for all others is to stand aloof from a struggle in which they have no alternative but to commit a parricide on their country or their friends, and to await the issue in silence and at a distance. The people should not ask the aid of their lordly taskmasters to shake off their chains; nor can they ever expect to have it cordial and entire. No confidence can be placed in those excesses of public principle which are founded on the sacrifice of every private affection and of habitual self-esteem! The Court, soon after this reënforcement to the popular party, came forward of its own accord to request the attendance of the dissentient orders, which took place on June 27th; and after some petty ebullitions of jealousy and contests for precedence, the Assembly became general, and all distinctions were lost. The King's secret advisers were, however, by no means reconciled to this new triumph over ancient privilege and existing authority, and meditated a reprisal by removing the Assembly farther from Paris, and there dissolving, if it could not overawe them. For this purpose the troops were collected from all parts; Versailles, where the Assembly sat, was like a camp; Paris looked as if it were in a state of siege. These extensive military preparations, the trains of artillery arriving every hour from the frontier, with the presence of the foreign regiments, occasioned great suspicion and alarm; and on the motion of Mirabeau, the Assembly sent an address to the King, respectfully urging him to remove the troops from the neighborhood of the capital; but this he declined doing, hinting at the same time that they might retire, if they chose, to Noyon or Soissons, thus placing themselves at the disposal of the Crown, and depriving themselves of the aid of the people. Paris was in a state of extreme agitation. This immense city was unanimous in its devotedness to the Assembly. A capital is at all times, and Paris was then more particularly, the natural focus of a revolution. To this many causes contribute. The actual presence of the monarch dissipates the illusions of royalty; and he is no longer, as in the distant province or petty village, an abstraction of power and majesty, another name for all that is great and exalted, but a common mortal, one man among a million of men, perhaps one of the meanest of his race. Pageants and spectacles may impose on the crowd; but a weak or haughty look undoes the effect, and leads to disadvantageous reflections on the title to or the good resulting from all this display of pomp and magnificence. From being the seat of the court, its vices are better known, its meannesses are more talked of.[34] In the number and distraction of passing objects and interests, the present occupies the mind alone--the chain of antiquity is broken, and custom loses its force. Men become "flies of a summer." Opinion has here many ears, many tongues, and many hands to work with. The slightest whisper is rumored abroad, and the roar of the multitude breaks down the prison or the palace gates. They are seldom brought to act together but in extreme cases; nor is it extraordinary that, in such cases, the conduct of the people is violent, from the consciousness of transient power, its impatience of opposition, its unwieldy bulk and loose texture, which cannot be kept within nice bounds or stop at half-measure. Nothing could be more critical or striking than the situation of Paris at this moment. Everything betokened some great and decisive change. Foreign bayonets threatened the inhabitants from without, famine within. The capitalists dreaded a bankruptcy; the enlightened and patriotic the return of absolute power; the common people threw all the blame on the privileged classes. The press inflamed the public mind with innumerable pamphlets and invectives against the government, and the journals regularly reported the proceedings and debates of the Assembly. Everywhere in the open air, particularly in the Palais-Royal, groups were formed, where they read and harangued by turns. It was in consequence of a proposal made by one of the speakers in the Palais-Royal that the prison of the Abbaye was forced open and some grenadiers of the French Guards, who had been confined for refusing to fire upon the people, were set at liberty and led out in triumph. Paris was in this state of excitement and apprehension when the Court, having first stationed a number of troops at Versailles, at Sèvres, at the Champ-de-Mars, and at St. Denis, commenced offensive measures by the complete change of all the ministers and by the banishment of Necker. The latter, on Saturday, July 11th, while he was at dinner, received a note from the King, enjoining him to quit the kingdom without a moment's delay. He calmly finished his dinner, without saying a word of the order he had received, and immediately after got into his carriage with his wife and took the road to Brussels. The next morning the news of his disgrace reached Paris. The whole city was in a tumult: above ten thousand persons were, in a short time, collected in the garden of the Palais-Royal. A young man of the name of Camille Desmoulins, one of the habitual and most enthusiastic haranguers of the crowd, mounted on a table and cried out that "there was not a moment to lose; that the dismission of Necker was the signal for the St. Bartholomew of liberty; that the Swiss and German regiments would presently issue from the Champ-de-Mars to massacre the citizens; and that they had but one resource left, which was to resort to arms." And the crowd, tearing each a green leaf, the color of hope, from the chestnut-trees in the garden, which were nearly laid bare, and wearing it as a badge, traversed the streets of Paris, with the busts of Necker and of the Duke of Orléans, who was also said to be arrested, covered with crape and borne in solemn pomp. They had proceeded in this manner as far as the Place Vendôme, when they were met by a party of the Royal Allemand, whom they put to flight by pelting them with stones; but at the Place Louis XV they were assailed by the dragoons of the Prince of Lambesc; the bearer of one of the busts and a private of the French Guards were killed; the mob fled into the Garden of the Tuileries, whither the Prince followed them at the head of his dragoons, and attacked a number of persons who knew nothing of what was passing, and were walking quietly in the gardens. In the scuffle, an old man was wounded; the confusion as well as the resentment of the people became general; and there was but one cry, "To arms!" to be heard throughout the Tuileries, the Palais-Royal, in the city, and the suburbs. The French Guards had been ordered to their quarters in the Chaussée-d'Antin, where sixty of Lambesc's dragoons were posted opposite to watch them. A dispute arose, and it was with much difficulty they were prevented from coming to blows. But when the former learned that one of their comrades had been slain, their indignation could no longer be restrained; they rushed out, killed two of the foreign soldiers, wounded three others, and the rest were forced to fly. They then proceeded to the Place Louis XV, where they stationed themselves between the people and the troops, and guarded this position the whole of the night. The soldiers in the Champ-de-Mars were then ordered to attack them, but refused to fire, and were remanded back to their quarters. The defection of the French Guards, with the repugnance of the other troops to march against the capital, put a stop for the present to the projects of the Court. In the mean time the populace had assembled at the Hôtel de Ville, and loudly demanded the sounding of the tocsin and the arming of the citizens. Several highly respectable individuals also met here, and did much good in repressing a spirit of violence and mischief. They could not, however, effect everything. A number of disorderly people and of workmen out of employ, without food or place of abode, set fire to the barriers, infested the streets, and pillaged several houses in the night between the 12th and 13th. The departure of Necker, which had excited such a sensation in the capital, produced as deep an impression at Versailles and on the Assembly, who manifested surprise and indignation, but not dejection. Lally Tollendal pronounced a formal eulogium on the exiled minister. After one or two displays of theatrical vehemence, which is inseparable from French enthusiasm and eloquence, they despatched a deputation to the King, informing him of the situation and troubles of Paris, and praying him to dismiss the troops and intrust the defence of the capital to the city militia. The deputation received an answer which amounted to a repulse. The Assembly now perceived that the designs of the Court party were irrevocably fixed, and that it had only itself to rely upon. It instantly voted the responsibility of the ministers and of all the advisers of the Crown, "of whatsoever rank or degree." This last clause was pointed at the Queen, whose influence was greatly dreaded. They then, from an apprehension that the doors might be closed during the night in order to dissolve the Assembly, declared their sittings permanent. A vice-president was chosen, to lessen the fatigue of the Archbishop of Vienne. The choice fell upon Lafayette. In this manner a part of the Assembly sat up all night. It passed without deliberation, the deputies remaining on their seats, silent, but calm and serene. What thoughts must have revolved through the minds of those present on this occasion! Patriotism and philosophy had here taken up their sanctuary. If we consider their situation; the hopes that filled their breasts; the trials they had to encounter; the future destiny of their country, of the world, which hung on their decision as in a balance; the bitter wrongs they were about to sweep away; the good they had it in their power to accomplish--the countenances of the Assembly must have been majestic, and radiant with the light that through them was about to dawn on ages yet unborn. They might foresee a struggle, the last convulsive efforts of pride and power to keep the world in its wonted subjection--but that was nothing--their final triumph over all opposition was assured in the eternal principles of justice and in their own unshaken devotedness to the great cause of mankind! If the result did not altogether correspond to the intentions of those firm and enlightened patriots who so nobly planned it, the fault was not in them, but in others. At Paris the insurrection had taken a more decided turn. Early in the morning the people assembled in large bodies at the Hôtel de Ville; the tocsin sounded from all the churches; the drums beat to summon the citizens together, who formed themselves into different bands of volunteers. All that they wanted was arms. These, except a few at the gunsmiths' shops, were not to be had. They then applied to M. de Flesselles, a provost of the city, who amused them with fair words. "My children," he said, "I am your father!" This paternal style seems to have been the order of the day. A committee sat at the Hôtel de Ville to take measures for the public safety. Meanwhile a granary had been broken open: the Garde-Meuble had been ransacked for old arms; the armorers' shops were plundered; all was a scene of confusion, and the utmost dismay everywhere prevailed. But no private mischief was done. It was a moment of popular frenzy, but one in which the public danger and the public good overruled every other consideration. The grain which had been seized, the carts loaded with provisions, with plate or furniture, and stopped at the barriers, were all taken to the Grève as a public depot. The crowd incessantly repeated the cry for arms, and were pacified by an assurance that thirty thousand muskets would speedily arrive from Charleville. The Duc d'Aumont was invited to take the command of the popular troops; and on hesitating, the Marquis of Salle was nominated in his stead. The green cockade was exchanged for one of red and blue, the colors of the city. A quantity of powder was discovered, as it was about to be conveyed beyond the barriers; and the cases of fire-arms promised from Charleville turned out, on inspection, to be filled with old rags and logs of wood. The rage and impatience of the multitude now became extreme. Such perverse, trifling, and barefaced duplicity would be unaccountable anywhere else; but in France they pay with promises; and the provost, availing himself of the credulity of his audience, promised them still more arms at the Chartreux. To prevent a repetition of the excesses of the mob, Paris was illuminated at night and a patrol paraded the streets. The following day, the people being deceived as to the convoy of arms that was to arrive from Charleville, and having been equally disappointed in those at the Chartreux, broke into the Hospital of Invalids, in spite of the troops stationed in the neighborhood, and carried off a prodigious number of stands of arms concealed in the cellars. An alarm had been spread in the night that the regiment quartered at St. Denis was on its way to Paris, and that the cannon of the Bastille had been pointed in the direction of the street of St. Antoine. This information, the dread which this fortress inspired, the recollection of the horrors which had been perpetrated there, its very name, which appalled all hearts and made the blood run cold, the necessity of wresting it from the hands of its old and feeble possessors, drew the attention of the multitude to this hated spot. From nine in the morning of the memorable July 14th, till two, Paris from one end to the other rang with the same watchword: "To the Bastille! To the Bastille!" The inhabitants poured there in throngs from all quarters, armed with different weapons; the crowd that already surrounded it was considerable; the sentinels were at their posts, and the drawbridges raised as in war-time. A deputy from the district of St. Louis de la Culture, Thuriot de la Rosière, then asked to speak with the governor, M. Delaunay. Being admitted into his presence, he required that the direction of the cannon should be changed. Three guns were pointed against the entrance, though the governor pretended that everything remained in the state in which it had always been. About forty Swiss and eighty Invalids garrisoned the place, from whom he obtained a promise not to fire on the people unless they were themselves attacked. His companions began to be uneasy and called loudly for him. To satisfy them, he showed himself on the ramparts, from whence he could see an immense multitude flocking from all parts, and the Faubourg St. Antoine advancing as it were in a mass. He then returned to his friends and gave them what tidings he had collected. But the crowd, not satisfied, demanded the surrender of the fortress. From time to time the angry cry was repeated: "Down with the Bastille!" Two men, more determined than the rest, pressed forward, attacked a guard-house, and attempted to break down the chains of the bridge with the blows of an axe. The soldiers called out to them to fall back, threatening to fire if they did not. But they repeated their blows, shattered the chains, and lowered the drawbridge, over which they rushed with the crowd. They threw themselves upon the second bridge, in the hopes of making themselves masters of it in the same manner, when the garrison fired and dispersed them for a few minutes. They soon, however, returned to the charge; and for several hours, during a murderous discharge of musketry, and amid heaps of the wounded and dying, renewed the attack with unabated courage and obstinacy, led on by two brave men, Elie and Hulia, their rage and desperation being inflamed to a pitch of madness by the scene of havoc around them. Several deputations arrived from the Hôtel de Ville to offer terms of accommodation; but in the noise and fury of the moment they could not make themselves heard, and the storming continued as before. The assault had been carried on in this manner with inextinguishable rage and great loss of blood to the besiegers, though with little progress made, for above four hours, when the arrival of the French Guards with cannon altered the face of things. The garrison urged the governor to surrender. The wretched Delaunay, dreading the fate which awaited him, wanted to blow up the place and bury himself under the ruins, and was advancing for this purpose with a lighted match in his hand toward the powder-magazine, but was prevented by the soldiers, who planted the white flag on the platform, and reversed their arms in token of submission. This was not enough for those without. They demanded with loud and reiterated cries to have the drawbridges let down; and on an assurance being given that no harm was intended, the bridges were lowered and the assailants tumultuously rushed in. The endeavors of their leaders could not save the governor or a number of the soldiers, who were seized on by the infuriated multitude, and put to death for having fired on their fellow-citizens. Thus fell the Bastille; and the shout that accompanied its downfall was echoed through Europe, and men rejoiced that "the grass grew where the Bastille stood!" Earth was lightened of a load that oppressed it, nor did this ghastly object any longer startle the sight, like an ugly spider lying in wait for its accustomed prey, and brooding in sullen silence over the wrongs which it had the will, though not the power, to inflict. [The Bastille was taken about a quarter before six o'clock in the evening (Tuesday, July 14th), after a four-hours' attack. Only one cannon was fired from the fortress, and only one person was killed among the besieged. The garrison consisted of 82 Invalids, 2 cannoneers, and 32 Swiss. Of the assailants, 83 were killed on the spot, 60 were wounded, of whom 15 died of their wounds, and 13 were disabled. A great many barrels of gunpowder had been conveyed here from the arsenal, in the night between the 12th and 13th. Delaunay, the governor, was killed on the steps of the Hôtel de Ville, as also Delosme, the mayor. Only seven prisoners were found in the Bastille; four of these, Pujade, Bechade, La Roche, and La Caurege, were for forgery. M. de Solages was put in in 1782, at the desire of his father, since which time every communication from without was carefully withheld from him. He did not know the smallest event that had taken place in all that time, and was told by the turnkey, when he heard the firing of the cannon, that it was owing to a riot about the price of bread. M. Tavernier, a bastard son of Paris Duverney, had been confined ever since August 4, 1759. The last prisoner was a Mr. White, who went mad, and it could never be discovered who or what he was: by the name he must have been English. When Lord Albemarle was ambassador at Paris, in the year 1753, he by mere accident caught a sight of the list of persons confined in the Bastille, lying on the table of the French minister, with the name of Gordon at their head. Being struck with the circumstance, he inquired into the meaning of it; but the French minister could give no account of it; and on the prisoner himself being released and sent for, he could only state that he had been confined there thirty years, but had not the slightest knowledge or suspicion of the cause for which he had been arrested. Nor is this wonderful, when we consider that _lettres de cachet_ were sold, with blanks left for the names to be filled up at the pleasure or malice of the purchasers. If it was only to prevent the recurrence of one such instance (with the feeling in society at once shrinking from and tamely acquiescing in it), the Revolution was well purchased. When the crowd gained possession of this loathsome spot, they eagerly poured into every corner and turning of it, went down into the lowest dungeons with a breathless curiosity and horror, knocking with sledge-hammers at their triple portals, and breaking down and destroying everything in their way. The stones and devices on the battlements were torn off and thrown into the ditch, and the papers and documents were at the same time unfortunately destroyed. A low range of dungeons was discovered underground, close to the moat; and so contrived that, if those within had forced a passage through, they would have let in the water of the ditch and been suffocated. In one of these a skeleton was found hanging to an iron cramp in the wall. In reading the accounts of the demolition of this building, one feels that indignation should have melted the stone walls like flax, and that the dungeons should have given up their dead to assist the living! The Bastille was begun in 1370, in Charles V's time, by one Hugh Abriot, provost of the city, who was afterward shut up in it in 1381. It at first consisted only of two towers: two more were added by Charles VI, and four more in 1383. Two days after it was taken, it was ordered by the National Assembly to be razed to the ground, and in May, 1790, not a trace of it was left.--ED.] The stormers of the Bastille arrived at the Place de la Grève, rending the air with shouts of victory. They marched on to the great hall of the Hôtel de Ville, in all the terrific and unusual pomp of a popular triumph. Such of them as had displayed most courage and ardor were borne on the shoulders of the rest, crowned with laurel. They were escorted up the hall by near two thousand of the populace, their eyes flaming, their hair in wild disorder, variously accoutred, pressing tumultuously on each other, and making the heavy floors almost crack beneath their footsteps. One bore the keys and flag of the Bastille, another the regulations of the prison brandished on the point of a bayonet; a third--a thing horrible to relate!--held in his bloody fingers the buckle of the governor's stock. In this order it was that they entered the Hôtel de Ville to announce their victory to the Committee, and to decide on the fate of their remaining prisoners, who, in spite of the impatient cries to give no quarter, were rescued by the exertions of the commandant La Salle, Moreau de St. Mery, and the intrepid Elie. Then came the turn of the despicable Flesselles, that caricature of vapid, frothy impertinence, who thought he could baffle the roaring tiger with grimace and shallow excuses. "To the Palais-Royal with him!" was the word; and he answered with callous indifference, "Well, to the Palais-Royal if you will." He was hemmed in by the crowd and borne along without any violence being offered him to the place of destination; but at the corner of the Quai le Pelletier an unknown hand approached him and stretched him lifeless on the spot with a pistol-shot. During the night succeeding this eventful day Paris was in the greatest agitation, hourly expecting, in consequence of the statements of intercepted letters, an attack from the troops. Every preparation was made to defend the city. Barricades were formed, the streets unpaved, pikes forged, the women piled stones on the tops of houses to hurl them down on the heads of the soldiers, and the National Guard occupied the outposts. While all this was passing, and before it became known at Versailles, the Court was preparing to carry into effect its designs against the Assembly and the capital. The night between the 14th and 15th was fixed upon for their execution. The new minister, Breteuil, had promised to reëstablish the royal authority within three days. Marshal Broglie, who commanded the army round Paris, was invested with unlimited powers. The Assembly, it was agreed upon, were to be dissolved, and forty thousand copies of a proclamation to this effect were ready to be circulated throughout the kingdom. The rising of the populace was supposed to be a temporary evil, and it was thought to the last moment an impossibility that a mob of citizens should resist an army. The Assembly was duly apprised of all these projects. It sat for two days in a state of constant inquietude and alarm. The news from Paris was doubtful. A firing of cannon was supposed to be heard, and persons anxiously placed their ears to the ground to listen. The escape of the King was also expected, as a carriage had been kept in readiness, and the bodyguard had not pulled off their boots for several days. In the orangery belonging to the palace, meat and wine had been distributed among the foreign troops to encourage and spirit them up. The Viscount of Noailles and another deputy, Wimpfen, brought word of the latest events in the capital, and of the increasing violence of the people. Couriers were despatched every half-hour to gather intelligence. Deputations waited on the King to lay before him the progress of the insurrection, but he still gave evasive and unsatisfactory answers. In the night of the 14th the Duke of Liancourt had informed Louis XVI of the taking of the Bastille and the massacre of the garrison on the preceding day. "It is a revolt!" exclaimed the monarch, taken by surprise. "No, sire, it is a revolution," was the answer. FOOTNOTES: [33] Edmund Burke passed a splendid and well-known eulogium on the beauty and accomplishments of the Queen, and it was in part the impression which her youthful charms had left in his mind that threw the casting-weight of his talents and eloquence into the scale of opposition to the French Revolution. I have heard another very competent judge, Mr. Northcote, describe her entering a small anteroom, where he stood, with her large hoop sideways, and gliding by him from one end to the other with a grace and lightness as if borne on a cloud. It was possibly to "this air with which she trod or rather disdained the earth," as if descended from some higher sphere, that she owed the indignity of being conducted to a scaffold. Personal grace and beauty cannot save their possessors from the fury of the multitude, more than from the raging elements, though they may inspire that pride and self-opinion which expose them to it. [34] It was observed that almost all the greatest cruelties of the Reign of Terror were resolved on by committees of persons who had been in the immediate employment of the great, and had suffered by their caprice and insolence. ESTABLISHMENT OF THE UNITED STATES BANK A.D. 1791 ALEXANDER HAMILTON AND LAWRENCE LEWIS, JR. Through the founding of the first Bank of the United States, which existed from 1791 to 1811, and was succeeded by another national bank in 1817, the monetary affairs of the Republic, under Hamilton's able administration, were placed upon a sounder basis, and the transaction of public business was greatly facilitated. During the seventeenth century Indian money (wampum) was much used by the colonists, especially in their trade with the Indians. For a long time it was a legal tender in common with other currencies. The earliest American coinage is said to date from 1612. In Massachusetts, the "pine-tree" money--silver coins bearing the emblem of a pine-tree--was used from 1652 to 1686. Soon began the issue of various paper moneys in the colonies, and the establishment of banks under the colonial governments. The "Continental currency" of the Revolution, first issued in 1775 by authority of the Continental Congress, began to depreciate almost as soon as it appeared, and in 1780 ceased to circulate. In 1780 the Pennsylvania Bank, in Philadelphia, began to assist the Government, and rendered useful service until 1784. But the need of a national bank had already become evident. Robert Morris, Superintendent of Finance for the United States, secured the organization, at Philadelphia, of the Bank of North America, with a capital of four hundred thousand dollars. It was incorporated by Congress in December, 1781, and soon after by the State of Pennsylvania. Its success led to the founding of the Bank of New York in 1784. On the organization of the Government under the Federal Constitution, the genius of Alexander Hamilton was called into service for the work of constructive statesmanship. From 1789 to 1795 he was Secretary of the Treasury; and one of his first acts, as shown by Lewis, was the unfolding of a plan which led to the establishment of the first Bank of the United States. In March, 1789, a great and fortunate change took place in the management of American public affairs. The Constitution of the United States went into operation. A vigorous, responsible executive was conferred upon the country, and an incredible impulse given to all schemes of national importance. Among those now called upon to take part in the administration of public affairs was Alexander Hamilton. Placed in charge of the Department of the Treasury, he found before him the prodigious task of settling the financial affairs of the United States upon a sure and satisfactory basis. Toward the attainment of this end no measure seemed more important to him than his old and favorite one for the establishment of a national bank. Without loss of time he devised a plan for such an institution which seemed to him practicable, and in 1790 spread before Congress the result of his labors. "The establishment of banks in this country," says Hamilton in the course of his report, "seems to be recommended by reasons of a peculiar nature. Previously to the Revolution, circulation was in a great measure carried on by paper emitted by the several local governments. This auxiliary may be said to be now at an end. And it is generally supposed that there has been for some time past a deficiency of circulating medium. "If the supposition of such a deficiency be in any degree founded, and some aid to circulation be desirable, it remains to inquire what ought to be the nature of that aid. "The emitting of paper money by the authority of government is wisely prohibited to the individual States by the national Constitution; and the spirit of that prohibition ought not be disregarded by the Government of the United States. "Among other material differences between a paper currency issued by the mere authority of Government, and one issued by a bank, payable in coin, is this: that in the first case there is no standard to which an appeal can be made, as to the quantity which will only satisfy or which will surcharge the circulation; in the last, that standard results from the demand. If more should be issued than is necessary, it will return upon the bank. Its emissions must always be in a compound ratio to the fund and the demand. Whence it is evident that there is a limitation in the nature of the thing; while the discretion of the Government is the only measure of the extent of the emissions by its own authority. "The payment of the interest of the public debt at thirteen different places is a weighty reason, peculiar to our immediate situation, for desiring a bank circulation. Without a paper, in general currency, equivalent to gold and silver, a considerable proportion of the specie of the country must always be suspended from circulation, and left to accumulate preparatorily to each day of payment; and as often as one approaches, there must in several cases be an actual transportation of the metals at both expense and risk, from their natural and proper reservoirs, to distant places." The report then goes on to explain the practical details of the plan proposed. The measure met generally with popular applause, but there were some who doubted its wisdom. Among other difficulties that were thrown in its path was a suggestion that a new bank was quite unnecessary, since an institution was in existence which owed its origin to national bounty, and which had already, upon more than one occasion, manifested both its readiness and ability to extend a helping hand to the Government. With this objection Hamilton dealt most courteously. "The aid afforded to the United States," said he, "by the Bank of North America during the remaining period of the war was of essential consequence, and its conduct toward them since the peace has not weakened its title to their patronage and favor. So far its pretensions to the character of a national bank are respectable, but there are circumstances which militate against them and considerations which indicate the propriety of an establishment on different principles. "The directors of this bank, on behalf of their constituents, have since acted under a new charter from the State of Pennsylvania, materially variant from their original one, and which so narrows the foundation of the institution as to render it an incompetent basis for the extensive purposes of a national bank. "There is nothing in the acts of Congress which implies an exclusive right in the institution to which they relate, except during the time of the war. There is, therefore, nothing, if the public good require it, which prevents the establishment of another. It may, however, be incidentally remarked that in the general opinion of the citizens of the United States, the Bank of North America has taken the station of a bank of Pennsylvania only. This is a strong argument for a new institution, or for a renovation of the old, to restore it to the situation in which it originally stood in the view of the United States. But--there may be room to allege that the Government of the United States ought not, in point of candor or equity, to establish any rival or interfering institution in prejudice of the one already established, especially as this has, from services rendered, well-founded claims to protection and regard. "The justice of this observation ought, within proper bounds, to be admitted. A new establishment of the sort ought not to be made without cogent and sincere reasons of public good. And in the manner of doing it every facility should be given to a consolidation of the old with the new, upon terms not injurious to the parties concerned. But there is no ground to maintain that in a case in which the Government has made no condition restricting its authority, it ought voluntarily to restrict it, through regard to the interests of a particular institution, when those of the State dictate a different course; especially, too, after such circumstances have intervened as characterize the actual situation of the Bank of North America. "If the objections, which have been stated, to the constitution of the Bank of North America are admitted to be well founded, they, nevertheless, will not derogate from the merit of the main design, or of the services which that bank has rendered, or of the benefits which it has produced. The creation of such an institution, at the time it took place, was a measure dictated by wisdom. Its utility has been amply evinced by its fruits. American independence owes much to it. "The Secretary begs leave to conclude with this general observation, that if the Bank of North America shall come forward with any propositions which have for their object the ingrafting upon that institution the characteristics which shall appear to the Legislature necessary to the due extent and safety of a national bank, there are, in his judgment, weighty inducements to giving every reasonable facility to the measure. Not only the pretensions of that institution, from its original relation to the Government of the United States, and from the services it has rendered, are such as to claim a disposition favorable to it, if those who are interested in it are willing, on their part, to place it on a footing satisfactory to the Government and equal to the purposes of a bank of the United States; but its coöperation would naturally accelerate the accomplishment of the great object, and the collision, which might otherwise arise, might, in a variety of ways, prove equally disagreeable and injurious. The incorporation and union here contemplated may be effected in different modes, under the auspices of an act of the United States, if it shall be desired, by the Bank of North America, upon terms which shall appear expedient to the Government." As far as can be ascertained, however, the management of the bank took no steps in accordance with the suggestions of the report. The quiet and prosperous business in which they were engaged, under State auspices, was to them preferable to the anxieties and hazards which would probably attend the new national undertaking; the scheme of a separate institution was, therefore, rapidly pushed forward, and on February 19, 1791, the first Bank of the United States began its corporate existence. The Bank of North America now sustained a serious loss in the resignation of its president, Mr. Willing, on January 9, 1792, after a term of service extending over a little more than ten years. He had been chosen to preside over the affairs of the Bank of the United States, a station for which it was justly supposed that his talents and experience eminently qualified him. He was succeeded in office by John Nixon, an almost equally well-known and respected citizen. Born in 1733 of Irish parentage, Mr. Nixon for a number of years did a prosperous business in the city of Philadelphia. He was one of the many signers of the Non-importation Resolutions, and upon the breaking out of the Revolution made himself prominent by his strenuous efforts and warm interest in the national cause. He was a member of the Committee of Safety, and had the honor of first proclaiming to the citizens of Philadelphia the Declaration of Independence. During some portion of the war he did active service, with the rank of colonel, in the Continental Army. He was one of the original subscribers to the bank, and had been a director since 1784. He retained the office of president for seventeen years until his death, which occurred on December 24, 1808. Meantime the business of the bank was rapidly increasing as the commerce of the country grew. The profits were so great that annual dividends of 12 per cent. were paid to the various stockholders. Nor did the institution cease to accommodate the public from time to time with loans of considerable extent. During the year 1791 the bank advanced to the Commonwealth, at different times, in all one hundred sixty thousand dollars, and in the following year something over fifty-three thousand dollars. NEGRO REVOLUTION IN HAITI TOUSSAINT LOUVERTURE ESTABLISHES THE DOMINION OF HIS RACE A.D. 1791 CHARLES WYLLYS ELLIOTT Haiti, the Spanish Santo Domingo, earlier called Española, is the largest of the West Indian islands except Cuba. The bloody revolutionary and slave revolts which began in 1791 and ended in the supremacy of the negroes, form the most memorable passages in its history. From 1797 their great leader, Toussaint Louverture, whose achievements are here recounted, was Governor of the whole island, whose independence he proclaimed in 1801. Having afterward opposed Napoleon's attempt to reëstablish slavery, Toussaint was treacherously arrested and sent to France, where, in a dungeon, he died in 1803. But white supremacy was never restored in Haiti. In 1697 France, by treaty, acquired the western part of the island, the eastern portion remaining in the possession of Spain, which had held it ever since its discovery by Columbus. The French found their Haitian lands very profitable in cotton and sugar, and the western region prospered, while the Spanish community was stagnant. At the outbreak of the French Revolution (1789) the whole island was thrown into a ferment, out of which came the changes that Elliott relates. At that time the French portion of Haiti had about half a million inhabitants, of whom some forty thousand were of European blood, thirty thousand free negroes, the rest negro slaves. The free colored people, mostly mulattoes, had no voice in the Government, but in 1790 the French National Assembly decreed to those born of free parents full citizenship. Opposition on the part of the whites caused delay in carrying out the decree. Taking advantage of the ensuing commotion, the slaves rose in revolt (August, 1791), and the conditions which Toussaint at length was called upon to meet were inevitably brought about. This black hero, of whose origin and personality information is given below, has been made the subject of a noble sonnet by Wordsworth, of an equally fine eulogy by Wendell Phillips, of a tragedy by Lamartine, and of a romance, _The Hour and the Man_, by Harriet Martineau. Auguste Comte, the founder of positivism, placed Toussaint in his new calendar among the great modern liberators--Hampden, Cromwell, Algernon Sidney, Washington, and Bolivar. On August 25, 1791, was the feast of St. Louis. For the week preceding, the planters gathered at Cap François[35] to concert measures against the mulattoes; against the National Assembly; and--to dine. The great men, and the rich, and the brave, were there. It was not a time to drive the slaves; and during that week they "danced" more than before. On the evening of August 23d, the best dishes of the cook Henri, a born prince, whose future no one could suspect, tempted the palates of the born whites. In brave counsels, in denunciations of the mulattoes, in songs for Governor Blanchelande and "Liberty," the time passed, the wine flowed, and hearts swelled. So the shadows of the night stole on. Light! More light! was called for; they threw open the jalousies; curious black faces swarmed about the piazzas--but what meant that dull glare which reached the sultry sky? The party was broken up: they rushed to the windows; they could smell the heavy smoke, they could hear the distant tramp of feet. The band, unbidden, struck up the _Marsellaise_; it was caught up in the streets; and from mouth to mouth, toward the rich Plain du Nord, passed along the song: "_Le jour de gloire est arrivé!_ _Aux armes! aux armes! pour Liberté!_" Consternation followed the feast. Each man grasped his arms: into the midst of the company rushed a negro covered with dust; panting with heat. He sought his master. Pale with fear and excited with wine, he received him on the point of his sword. As the life and blood flowed he gasped, "O master! O master!" Murmurs of disapprobation filled the room, but it was too late: the hour had come! The slaves had risen. This poor creature had wished to save the man that owned him. The rebellion broke out on the plantation of Noe, nine miles from Cap François. At midnight the slaves sought the refiner and his apprentice and hewed them in pieces. The overseer they shot. They then proceeded to the house of Mr. Clement: he was killed by his postilion. They proceeded from plantation to plantation murdering the whites; their ranks swelled by crowds of scarred and desperate men who had nothing to lose but life; and life with slavery was not so sweet as revenge. Everywhere they applied the torch to the sugar-mills--those bastilles, consecrated to the rites of the lash and to forced labor, dumb with fear--and to the cane fields, watered with sweat and blood. Toward morning crowds of whites came pouring into Cap François, pale, terror-stricken, blood-stained. Men, women, and children found the day of judgment was come: none knew what to do; all was confusion. The signal-gun boomed through the darkness warning of danger, and every man stood to his arms. The inhabitants of the city were paralyzed with fear. They barred their doors and locked up their house-slaves. The only living objects in the streets were a few soldiers marching to their posts. Panic ruled the hour. The Assembly sat through the night. Touzard was sent out to attack the negroes, but was driven back. Guns were mounted, and the streets barricaded. The morning dawned, and with the rising sun came rising courage. "It is nothing," said some; "burn and hang a few negroes and all will go on as before." The exasperation against the mulattoes, who were charged with having fomented the rising, resulted in hatred, insult, bloodshed and murder in and around Cap François; and a butchery was only stayed by the vigorous opposition of the Governor. Whatever negroes were seized were tortured and massacred. "Frequently," says Lacroix, "did the faithful slave perish by the hands of an irritated master whose confidence he sought." The maddened negroes had tasted blood. They seized Mr. Blen, an officer of police, nailed him alive to one of the gates of his plantation, and chopped off his limbs with an axe. M. Cardineau had two sons by a black woman. He had freed them and shown them much kindness; but they belonged to the hated race, and they joined the revolt. The father remonstrated, and offered them money. They took his money and stabbed him to the heart. If they were bastards, who had made them so? "One's pleasant vices often come home to roost." Horrors were piled on horrors: white women were ravished and murdered; black were broken on the wheel: whites were crucified; blacks were burned alive: long pent-up hatreds were having their riot and revenge. M. Odeluc was wrong, then! The slaves did _not_ seem to love their masters. What could it mean? Pork and bananas: slavery and ignorance; with some, dancing and the free use of the whip seemed to be producing surprising results. The whites could not understand it. Much sugar was raised, and yet the negroes were not satisfied, and now seemed to have gone mad. Destruction hung over the whites, and they concluded to try hanging and burning in their extremity--having no faith in justice and honesty for the blacks. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, owed their safety to the kindness of their house-slaves. Monsieur and Madame Baillou with their daughter, her husband, and two white servants lived about thirty miles from Cap François, among the mountains. A slave gave them notice of the rising: he hid them in the forest and joined the revolt. At night he brought them food and led them to another place of safety. He did this again and again: led them through every danger and difficulty till they escaped to the sea. For nineteen nights they were in the woods, and the negro risked his life to save theirs. Why repeat instances? This was one of hundreds. M. Odeluc was the superintendent of the Gallifet estate, the largest on the Plain. "As happy as one of Gallifet's negroes," was a saying in the district. He was sure of _his_ hands, and regretted the exaggerated terror of the whites. With a friend and three or four soldiers he rode out to the estate and found his negroes in arms with the body of a white child for a standard. Alas! poor Odeluc! He believed the negroes were dogs and would lick the hand that struck the blow. It was too late: he and his attendants were cut down without mercy. Two only escaped to tell the tale. Four thousand negroes were in arms and they were everywhere successful. The Plain was in their possession; the quarters of Morin and Limonade were in flames, and their ravages extended from the shore to the mountains. Their recklessness was succeeded by regular organization and systematic war. In the first moments of their headlong fury all whites were murdered indiscriminately. This did not last: they soon distinguished their enemies; and women and children were saved. The blacks were headed by Jean François and Biassou--generals not to be despised. Brave, rapid, unscrupulous; vain of grandeur, greedy of plunder, they were not far from the marshals of France. This, then, was not a revolt, but a revolution! Success would decide. Never could the whites believe that the blacks were men. Ogé had revealed a widespread conspiracy, headed by well-known slaves. The whites concealed this. They did not believe him; they believed only that the blacks were their born slaves, fit for the whip, incapable of courage or honor or martyrdom. Experience only was to teach them. At first the whites acted upon the defensive. The Assembly was rancorous against France in the midst of this destruction, and effaced from behind the Speaker's chair the motto "_Vive la Nation, la Loi, et le Roi!_" Even when destruction was over them they heeded not: their bickerings continued. The negro generals declared that they were fighting for their King, and against slavery--for a rumor had reached them that Louis favored emancipation. They had the strongest party and the strongest side. At length the whites determined upon a war of extermination. The blacks responded. Heads of whites were stuck on poles around the negro camps. Bodies of negroes swung on gibbets in the white encampments and on trees by the roadside. Within two months two thousand whites and ten thousand blacks perished. _Te Deum_ was sung in both camps and daily thanksgivings were said for what was done. Pale ghosts hovered over them and sighed in the tropical groves; but they could not speak for pity or for justice. The insurrection spread to the southwest, and two thousand mulattoes, headed by Rigaud, rose to revenge the death of some of their comrades; many negroes joined them and they threatened Port au Prince. The colonists were now thoroughly alarmed, and proceeded to try reconciliation. The inhabitants of Port au Prince and Rigaud agreed upon a truce, and the whites admitted that the slaughter of certain mulattoes had been "infamous," and agreed that the civil rights of the mulattoes should be allowed them. At last! Was it not too late? Governor Blanchelande issued a proclamation earnestly entreating the revolted negroes to lay down their arms and return to their duty. It was too late. They laughed in derision at his small request. What! to slavery and work and degradation and cruelty, even! They had burst their fetters and stood with arms in their hands. "Will you," they replied to the Governor, "will you, brave General, that we should, like sheep, throw ourselves into the jaws of the wolf? It is too late. It is for us to conquer or die!" On September 11, 1791, the whites at Port au Prince had consented to the civil rights of the mulattoes. On October 23d the _Concordat_ had been signed; the whites and mulattoes had walked arm in arm through the city and peace seemed possible, when word came that on September 24th the National Assembly at Paris had reversed the decree of May 15th. The mulattoes at once flew to arms, and the struggle between them and the whites went on with increased carnage and cruelty. This continued with varied results through 1792. "You kill mine and I'll kill yours," was the cry. As it had been from the outset, so it continued among the whites: open war between the colonists and the governors; between the people of the North and the South; contention and bitterness, intrigue, treachery. They made head nowhere against the mulattoes; nowhere against the negroes. In December, 1791, three commissioners arrived from France to distract the confusion. They accomplished nothing, and were succeeded in September, 1792, by Santhonax, Polverel, and Ailhaud, ordinary men; not sufficient for so extraordinary a state of things as this. The hour had come, but not the man. The world waited for him, but none knew where to look; for none believed him to be among the degraded negroes. The old custom of master and slave was broken in pieces, and a nation of men, with no cultivation, with no education in self-government, with none of the conservative strength which hangs about privilege and possession and long-honored habit, were now up, inspired only with a hatred of slavery and vague aspirations for that which they knew not how to name. In this chaotic hour the man who could express this longing for freedom, this need of growth, this aspiration for infinite good--not only in words, but in deeds and in life--was needed: without him all would come to nothing, and the struggle of the blacks would be but a spasm, to end in exhaustion and discouragement; for successful revolutions have been secured by developing, from among the unknown, the known man, around whom the elements of the new state could gather for new order. Among the half-million blacks there must be one, and more than one, who could redeem his race; to whom the outcast and despairing might look and take courage and say, "Such as he is, I may try to be." This man was longed for; consciously or not, the blacks yearned for their king, could they but see him. The presentiment existed, for had not the Abbé Raynal long before predicted a vindicator for the race? No man can save another, and no nation. Each race must look for its salvation and its leaders in its own comprehensive soul. The Moses who will lead the blacks out of bondage must be a _black_, and he will come! Let us go back for a moment. On the arrival of the first commissioners, Mirbeck, Roume, and St. Leger, the mulattoes in the West were in arms under Rigaud; the blacks in the North, under Jean François and Biassou. They were a ragged crowd: pikes, muskets, cane-knives, axes, whatever the hand could find, were their arms, and they fought without order or discipline, inspired by revenge and hatred to slavery. Jean François, if vain and ostentatious, was sagacious and full of resource. Biassou was bold, fiery, and vindictive. The blacks had slaughtered and been slaughtered, hanged and been hanged, plundered and been plundered. There seemed no end to it and no object. They heard that the commissioners were placable, so they wished to make terms. But who would dare to venture among the whites? Were not all outcasts, hunted beasts, fugitive slaves? Raynal and Duplessis (mulattoes) at last took the hazard. The Governor sent them to the commissioners, they to the Colonial Assembly. The Assembly that day was in an exalted state: it emulated the gods. It replied loftily: "Emissaries of the revolted negroes, the Assembly, established on the law and by the law, cannot correspond with people armed against the law. The Assembly might extend grace to guilty men, if, being repentant, etc.," and Raynal and Duplessis were ordered sharply to "withdraw." They did withdraw, amid the hooting of the mob. They returned to Grande Rivière. The army and the people came out to meet them, wishing peace: they told their story, and peace was turned to war, love to hatred. Biassou, in a rage, ordered all the white prisoners in the camp to be put to death. "Death to the whites!" went along the lines and among the people. The insane pride of the whites worked its own punishment, and now a hundred more were to be slaughtered. No white was there to save them, and no God to wrest them away. Then a man, black, indifferent in person, unpleasing of visage, meanly dressed, makes his way among the crowd to Biassou swelling with rage. He speaks to him a few words, quietly, calmly; they are to the purpose. The General's face is composed; he listens; he countermands his orders, and the whites are saved. The negro who saves them is Toussaint Breda, afterward called Louverture. The son of an African chief, Gaou-Guinon, with no drop of white blood in his veins. He had been the born slave of the Count de Breda, and had been well treated by his manager, Bayou de Libertas. He was the husband of one wife and the father of children. With religious aspirations, an inflexible integrity, and an inquiring mind, he had been a valuable slave and had been raised from a field-hand to be M. Bayou's coachman. Toussaint was never hungry while a slave; he was not whipped. His hut was comfortable; vines twined around his door. Bananas and potatoes grew in his garden. Toussaint, it seems, was not a beast of burden. To make sugar he was worth no more than a Bozal just stolen; but with these rare virtues--patience, courage, intelligence, fidelity--he might have sold for five hundred dollars and might be trusted to drive horses. When the rebellion broke out he did not join it, but assisted M. Bayou with his family to escape, and shipped a rich cargo to the United States for his maintenance. Toussaint was then fifty years old. None knew the day of his birth; the records of stock then and there were not carefully kept. For fifty years this negro had lived the life of a slave; his only occupation the hoeing of cane and the grooming of horses. What thoughts, what struggles, what hopes had taken shape in that uncultivated brain no man knows--for Toussaint was a man of few words, and he left no writings. It was late in life to begin a new trade; late to begin to find out his own powers and strength; late to trust himself to freedom, he who had always had a master; late to speculate upon the destinies of the black race; late to attempt to shape them. But in revolutionary times men learn fast; great men need only the opportunity; they rise to the emergency. Cromwell was not a born or trained general or ruler, nor was Washington, nor was William Tell. Toussaint had bided his time. This slave was ignorant, knew nothing. He learned to read when approaching his declining years; then he studied: Raynal, Epictetus, Cæsar, Saxe, Herodotus, Plutarch, Nepos--these were the books and lives he knew. He decided to join his race, and having some knowledge of simples was made physician of the forces commanded by Jean François. Here he served well, as he always did, and learned the trade of war. Shocked at the cruelties of whites and blacks he took the side of mercy and saved lives from the sword as well as from disease. He saw the vanity of François, the rashness of Biassou, the cruelty of Jeannot; but he retired disgusted to no stupid monastery; he returned not to the ease and degradation of slavery, but was equal to the facts of life, however hard, and grappled with them and mastered them as a man should. He was then loyal to the King, and he was loyal to the Church, a devout Catholic. In 1792, the three commissioners, sent out from France to "settle" the affairs of the colony, had been thwarted and finally driven away by the whites. In September (1792), Santhonax, Polverel, and Ailhaud had arrived with troops, money, and instructions and a new governor, Desparbes, in place of Blanchelande. He soon became disgusted, alarmed, and he fled. The commissioners bestirred themselves to settle the commotion. The rich planters were for the King; the _Petits Blancs_ were for the Directory; the mulattoes, under Rigaud, ravaged the West: the revolted negroes, under Jean François, Biassou and others, threatened on the North. France herself, that ancient kingdom, was now fermenting; struggling--yet with hope--to realize in the state her unformed faith in democracy, and with the energy of despair striving to beat back the waves of bayonets which beat and bristled on her borders. Thus matters stood in France, thus in Santo Domingo. The slaves in both countries had risen, and rushed to arms. Their remedy was desperate; so was their disease. General Galbaud, a new governor, arrived from France in May (1793). The commissioners were engaged in the west in fighting Rigaud. They returned to Cap François to fight the Governor whose authority they disputed. Galbaud held the ships and the arsenals and determined to assert his authority. His soldiers and sailors entered the town and abandoned themselves to drunkenness, pillage and brutality. The commissioners armed the slaves in the town, promised them freedom, and sent for aid to the negro generals. Jean François and Biassou refused; but a chief, Macayo, at the head of three thousand blacks, entered the town, and the conflict raged. The whites were driven into the sea and slaughtered. Madness ruled, and none fiercer than the mulattoes. Galbaud fled, and half the city was destroyed by fire. At last--for a while--the whites gave up the hope of recovering their slaves. Thousands fled--some suppose nine-tenths--and found refuge along the American coasts. Famine had more than once increased the misery during these three years, yet the island was fruitful, and cultivation, here and there, went on. The sagacious Jean François had initiated cultivation along the mountain-sides, and in the valleys; and thus secured an unfailing magazine of supply. Toussaint, meanwhile, continues his duties with the negro troops. Steadily and surely, if not rapidly, he gains strength and influence and knowledge of war. He has measured himself with Jean and Biassou, and is not wanting. His prudence, patience, silent will, and courage make him useful to them, and his justice and determination and mercy make him the idol of the men. The Marquis Hermona, Governor of the Spanish part of the island, made advances to the negro chiefs. Santhonax, in his extremity after the destruction of Cap François, sent Macayo to propose an alliance, but they distrusted him. Meanwhile Louis XVI was beheaded. They said, "We have lost the King of France, but the King of Spain esteems us and gives us succor." They declined the proposals of the commissioners, and ranged themselves on the side of Spain. Toussaint was loyal to the memory of the King, and followed François and Biassou. Hermona saw that Toussaint was a _man_; and while Jean François was advanced to the first rank, Toussaint was raised to that of colonel in the Spanish army. He at once applied himself to his duties, and what he did was always well done. His troops became, as if by a word, the best disciplined in the army. The reason was plain: he knew what men ought to do and what they can do; and the men knew that he was upright and wise. So these ragged, ignorant, roving hordes became efficient troops. Confidence begat confidence: the commander trusted his men, and they relied on him; together they were strong. Idleness was not Toussaint's policy. The insurgents under Jean François, Biassou, and Toussaint held strong positions in the mountains south of Cap François. Brandicourt, the general of the French troops, was at once trapped and compelled to order his troops to lay down their arms. Grande Rivière, Dondon, Plaisance, Marmalade, and Ennery, the most important places in the north, quickly fell into Toussaint's hands. The French commissioners were getting into straits. The Spanish troops were against them; the blacks were against them. The remaining whites were divided; some wore the black cockade, others the white; the troops, and friends of the commissioners, the tricolor; the mulattoes, the red. War was everywhere, and no man was safe but with arms in his hands and in the strongest party. But this was not enough: some of the planters mounted the English hat and sent to the English for succor. Even "_perfide Albion_" was welcome, if they might but reëstablish slavery and get again their estates. In this extremity, Santhonax decided to make friends with the blacks, and proclaimed at Cap François universal freedom (August 20, 1793). Polverel repeated the proclamation at Port au Prince. The enthusiasm among the negroes was great, but not universal. Their leaders were not moved; they distrusted the commissioners and they doubted the stability of the French Republic--so the war went on. In September, the English landed at Jeremie, in the extreme southwest. They took possession of St. Nicholas, in the extreme northwest, and during the year 1794 the whole western coast was in their possession--St. Nicholas, St. Marc, St. Jacmel, Tiburon, Jeremie; and at last, on June 4th, Port au Prince, the capital, yielded. "Twenty-two topsail vessels," with their cargoes, worth four hundred thousand pounds sterling, were a part of the spoil. The mulatto chief, Rigaud, had taken the side of France. Educated in Bordeaux, he had followed, in Santo Domingo, his trade of a goldsmith, which the whites thought too good for a "nigger." He was a brave man, mild in peace, and terrible in war, and, aided by Pétion, he kept up a harassing fight against the English. Shortly after the fall of Port au Prince, a ship arrived with a requisition for the commissioners to return to France; they must answer for their doings there, and General Laveaux was left as provisional governor. His case, and that of the French, was desperate. Shut up in Port de Paix, the last stronghold of the French, he wrote (May 24, 1794): "For more than six months we have been reduced to six ounces of bread a day, officers as well as men, but from the 13th we have none whatever, the sick only excepted. If we had powder we should have been consoled. We have in our magazines neither shoes, nor shirts, nor clothes, nor soap, nor tobacco. The most of the soldiers mount guard barefoot; we have no flints for the men; but be assured that we will never surrender; be assured too, that after us, the enemy will not find the slightest trace of Port de Paix." Dark was the outlook, but brave was the heart of General Laveaux. The hour was nigh: the hands advanced on the dial of time. Events, which no man could have foreseen or controlled, had gathered for judgment, and at last a great nation had decreed freedom to a poor, debauched, and servile race. But who should lead them, who should now defend them against themselves; give shape and system to their undisciplined wishes, carry them safely through the anarchy of unbounded liberty and crystallize them into a state whose only sure basis is the Rights and Duties of Labor, Thought, Speech, and Worship, the Rights and Duties of Man. The hour has come and the man--Toussaint Breda! from his eyrie near Dondon, sweeps the horizon. In the east he sees the decadent power of Spain: it has spoken no word of freedom for the blacks. In the west he sees the white sails of England: she is hand and glove with the planters to reëstablish slavery. In the north France and Laveaux are nigh death. France only has proclaimed liberty to the blacks. Toussaint sees the "opening" for his race and for himself, and from this day he is Toussaint Louverture--the first of the blacks. Bone of their bone and skin of their skin, he alone knows their needs, their capacities, and their hearts. With the clear glance of inspiration he sees the moment, with the firm grasp of talent he seizes it. General Laveaux saw this, and through the priest, La Haye, made advances to him. Toussaint is wise and he is wary; he keeps his own counsel; he consults not Jean François, who had once cast him into prison; nor Biassou, nor the Marquis Hermona. As usual, he performs his duties; as usual, he partakes of the communion; as usual, his troops look to him, and Hermona said: "There exists on earth no purer soul." He has placed his wife and children in safety; he has ordered his affairs; his horse stands saddled and bridled; then, tearing off his epaulettes he casts them at the feet of the Spanish officers, flings himself on his horse, and rides like the wind out of the camp. The Spaniards are for a moment paralyzed: they pursue him, but neither hoof nor pistol can reach him. Toussaint is not to be caught. On May 4, 1794, he pulls down the Spanish and hoists the French colors. Marmalade, Plaisance, Ennery, Dondon, Acul, and Limbé submit to him. Confusion and fear prevail among the Spaniards; joy exalts the negroes. Laveaux is saved, and the colony not yet lost to France. Toussaint is a power in the state: the negroes everywhere respond to the sound of his voice; they look to him as their hero, defender, guide, and guard. Toussaint sets himself to his work. The whole province of the north soon falls into his hands, and he drives the Spanish ally, Jean François, westward along La Montaigne Noire. Then he hastens into the rich valley of the Artibonite, attacks and beats back the English and besieges the strong fortress of St. Marc; but neither forces nor ammunition is sufficient and he retires to the mountain fastnesses of Marmalade to recruit his troops. On October 9, 1794, he carries the fortress of San Miguel by storm. Toussaint determines to drive away the English, and he falls with fury upon General Brisbane in the Artibonite and compels him to retreat. But Jean François hung over him in the heights of La Grande Rivière. Again he retires to Dondon and organizes his forces to repel the Spaniards. In four days he takes and destroys twenty-eight positions, but Jean François with a superior force threatens his rear while the English are in front; again he is baffled and he returns to Dondon. Toussaint is no longer the leader of marauding bands but the head of an army. His troops are mostly raw and ignorant, badly clothed, armed, and fed, but they trust in him and have courage. He seeks for efficient officers, and finds Dessalines, Desroulaux, Maurepas, Clervaux, Christophe and Lamartinière. These he must command with discretion; his troops he must provide with arms, ammunition, and food. He must watch the forces of the Spaniards, the movements of the English. Intrigues abroad and treacheries at home; henceforth he must organize campaigns. The treaty of Basel had secured the cession of the whole Spanish part of the island to France. Jean François was, therefore, at liberty to retire to Spain, to enjoy his honors. There remained now but the English to distract the plans of Toussaint and the French. One more disturbing element yet existed. The mulattoes felt themselves superior to the blacks, and the rightful successors to the whites in the honors and government of the island. Jealous of Toussaint and the favors shown the blacks, headed by Nillate (Villate), they rose against Laveaux, the Governor of the Cape, and threw him into prison; his danger was extreme. Toussaint descended on the town with ten thousand blacks and saved him. Laveaux appointed him his lieutenant, second in command in the island, and declared that he was the "Spartacus," foretold by Raynal, who should avenge the sufferings of his race. Confidence grew now between the blacks and the whites, and Lacroix--who is in no way friendly to the blacks--admits that "if Santo Domingo still carried the colors of France, it was solely owing to an old negro who seemed to bear a commission from Heaven." The French continued to send commissioners--Santhonax among them--but Toussaint was the moving mind; and when Laveaux, having been elected Delegate to the Assembly, sailed for France, Santhonax finally appointed him commander-in-chief. Toussaint, now "Louverture"; a strong hand and a clear head, though black, now directs the affairs of the island. Daily he gains strength and the confidence of the negroes. They flock to his army; they listen and obey his words. Christophe, in the north, had encouraged cultivation. Toussaint throws his powerful influence into the work. His maxim, "that the liberty of the blacks can never endure without agriculture," passes from mouth to mouth among the negroes, and rouses in them the desire for lands and wealth--for the first time now possible. He wishes that Cape and the towns along the north should be rebuilt. It is done; they rise from their ashes. All hopes are centred in the General-in-Chief: _he_ can restore peace and prosperity; he alone. The English now were sore bestead. The French pressed them in the west; Desfourneaux in the north; Rigaud in the south; Christophe had carried the heights of Vallière--the Vendée of Santo Domingo. Toussaint Louverture again attempts to take St. Marc; thrice he storms it, thrice he deserves success, but again he fails to clutch this strong fortress. He turns now to Mirebelois, an interior Thermopylæ, strongly fortified by the English. His lieutenant, Mornay, intercepted Montalembert, who was advancing with seven hundred men and two pieces of artillery. The next day he drives in all the English troops, invests the village of St. Louis, carries the forts by assault, and in fourteen days totally defeats the English, taking two hundred prisoners, eleven pieces of cannon, and military stores. The efforts of the English are nearly at an end; weak and weary, their strength is spent. Whitlocke, Williamson, Whyte, Horneck, Brisbane, and Markham, have tried to subdue these rebels and to wrest the colony from France: they have bitten a file. Millions of pounds have been wasted; Brisbane and Markham are killed; thousands of soldiers slain; the yellow fever, too, has done its work. General Maitland at last decided to leave the island, and between him and Toussaint there went on a struggle of diplomacy; but Louverture was more than his equal: he accepted his honors, but refused his bribes. They made terms, and Maitland evacuated Port au Prince and St. Nicholas. One incident illustrates Maitland's confidence in Toussaint. Before the disembarkation of his troops, he determined to return Louverture's visit. He proceeded to his camp, through a country full of negroes, with but three attendants. On his way he heard that Roume, the French commissioner, had advised Toussaint to seize him; but he proceeded, and when he reached the camp, after waiting a short time, Toussaint entered, and, handing him two letters--Roume's and his reply--said: "Read; I could not see you until I had written, so that you could see that I am incapable of baseness." General Lacroix has written that he saw, in the archives at Port au Prince, the offers made to Toussaint, securing him in the power and kingship of the island, and liberty to his race, with a sufficient naval force on the part of England, provided he would renounce France and form a commercial treaty with England. The event leads one to regret that Toussaint's ambition was not superior to his loyalty to France. During these proceedings with the English, Santhonax had departed for France, partly at his own request, partly because he was in the way of Toussaint's plans for the restoration of the island. With him, Toussaint sent his two sons to receive some education in France, and to show, as his letter stated, "his confidence in the Directory--at a time when complaints were busy against him." He said, "there exist no longer any internal agitations; and I hold myself responsible for the submission to order and duty of the blacks, my brethren." FOOTNOTES: [35] Now, in English, Cape Haitien. The place is a seaport of northern Haiti.--ED. REPUBLICAN FRANCE DEFIES EUROPE BATTLE OF VALMY A.D. 1792 ALPHONSE M. L. LAMARTINE In the battle of Valmy the French, under Dumouriez and Kellermann, repulsed the Prussians and their allies, commanded by the Duke of Brunswick. Though not in itself a great victory, its results have led some historians to call that action one of the decisive battles of the world. The final withdrawal of the Prussians, owing to Russian intrigues in Poland, left an open way for the French army into the Austrian Netherlands, which at Jemapes (November 6, 1792) were won for France. Other victories for the Revolution quickly followed, greatly advancing its cause. After the fall of the Bastille (July 14, 1789), the National Assembly abolished special privileges, slavery, and serfdom in France and all her territories, and decreed equal taxation. A new constitution was made. These acts heightened popular enthusiasm for the revolt. Political clubs, chief of which was that of the Jacobins, were formed in Paris. They were fiercely uncompromising in their demand for the overthrow of the monarchy. Many of the nobles hastened to quit the country. The King was virtually made prisoner in Paris, whence he attempted to escape, but was captured by insurgents and closely guarded in the city. The National Assembly came to an end and was succeeded (October 1, 1791) by the Legislative Assembly, a still more radical body, which for a year practically ruled France over the head of the King. Such was the state of affairs in France when, notwithstanding the complications in the East, the Emperor Leopold II and King Frederick William II of Prussia issued the Convention of Pillnitz (August, 1791). This was the basis of an alliance for the rescue of Louis XVI from his enemies, and for his full restoration to power. It led a little later to a formidable coalition of sovereigns against the Revolution. Brunswick advanced toward Paris, but while he hesitated in his progress the French army, under Dumouriez, was increased in numbers and discipline. Dumouriez was on the Belgian border, preparing for his "Argonne campaign," the first events of which no one has better described than Lamartine. While the interregnum of royalty and republicanism delivered Paris over to the revolutionists, France, with all its frontiers open, had for security nothing but the small forest of Argonnes and the genius of Dumouriez. On September 2, 1792, this general was shut up with sixteen thousand men in the camp of Grandpré, occupying with weak detachments the intermediate defiles between Sedan and Sainte-Menehould, by which the Duke of Brunswick might attempt to break his line and turn his position. He caused the tocsin to be rung in the villages, hoping to excite the enthusiasm of the inhabitants; but the captures of Longwi and Verdun, the understanding between the gentlemen of the country and the _émigrés_,[36] the hatred of the Revolution, and the disproportionate amounts of the coalesced army, discouraged resistance. Dumouriez, left to himself by the inhabitants, could only rely on his own troops. His sole hope was in forming a junction with Kellermann. If that could be effected behind the forest of Argonne before the troops of the Duke of Brunswick could force the natural rampart, Kellermann and Dumouriez, uniting their troops, would have a body of forty-five thousand soldiers to ninety thousand Prussians, and might then with some hope hazard the fate of France on a battle. Kellermann, who was worthy to understand and second this grand idea, served without jealousy Dumouriez's design, satisfied with his share of the glory if his country should be saved. He marched to Metz, at the extremity of the Argonne, informing Dumouriez of every step he took. But their superior intelligence was a mystery for the majority of officers and soldiery. Provisions were scarce and bad, the general himself eating black bread. Ministers, deputies, Luckner himself--influenced by his correspondents in the camp--wrote perpetually to Dumouriez to abandon his position and retire to Châlons. Slight skirmishes with the advanced guard of the Prussians, in which the French were always victorious, gave the troops patience. Miaczinski, Stengel, and Miranda drove back the Prussians at all points. Dumouriez, in his position, deadened the shock of the one hundred thousand men whom the King of Prussia and the Duke of Brunswick collected at the foot of Argonne. Chance nearly lost all. Overcome by fatigue of body and mind, he had forgotten to reconnoitre with his own eyes, and quite close to him, the defile of Croix-au-Bois, which had been described to him as impracticable for troops, particularly cavalry and artillery. He had placed there, however, a dragoon regiment, two battalions of volunteers, and two pieces of cannon, commanded by a colonel; but in consequence of the recall of the dragoons and the two battalions before the troops ordered to replace them had come up, the defile was for a moment open to the enemy. A great many volunteer spies, whom the émigrés had in the villages of Argonne, hastened to point out this weakness to Clerfayt, the Austrian general, who instantly despatched eight thousand men, under the command of the young Prince de Ligne, who seized on the position. A few hours afterward, Dumouriez, informed of this reverse, placed General Chazot at the head of two brigades, six squadrons of his best troops, four pieces of cannon, besides the artillery belonging to the battalions, and ordered him to attack the place at the bayonet's point, and recover the position at any sacrifice. Every hour the impatient commander despatched aides-de-camp to Chazot to expedite his march and bring him back information. Twenty-four hours passed away thus in doubt. On the 14th Dumouriez heard the sound of firing on his left, and judged by the noise, which receded, that the Imperialists were in retreat and Chazot had gained the forest. In the evening a note from Chazot informed him that he had forced the intrenchments of the Austrians, in spite of their desperate defence; that eight hundred dead lay in the defile, among whom was the Prince de Ligne. Scarcely, however, had this note reached Dumouriez, whose mind had been thereby set at ease, than Clerfayt, burning to avenge the death of the Prince de Ligne and make a decisive attack on this rampart of the French army, advanced all his columns into this defile, gained the heights, rushed headlong down on Chazot's column in front and on both flanks, took his cannon, and compelled Chazot himself to leave the forest for the plain, cutting off his communication with the camp of Grandpré, and driving him in full flight on the road to Vouziers. At the same moment the corps of the émigrés attacked General Dubouquet, in the defile of the Chêne-Populeux. Frenchman against Frenchman, their valor was equal: the one side fighting to save, the other to reconquer, their country. Dubouquet gave way and retreated upon Châlons. These two disasters came upon Dumouriez at the same moment. Chazot and Dubouquet seemed to trace out to him the road. The clamor of his whole army pointed out to him Châlons as a refuge. Clerfayt, with twenty-five thousand men, was about to cut off his communication with Châlons. The Duke of Brunswick, with eighty thousand Prussians, enclosed him on the three other sides in the camp of Grandpré. His detachments cut off reduced his army to fifteen thousand men. A retreat before an enemy, conquering in two partial encounters, was to prostrate the fortune of France before the foreigner. The "audacity" of Danton passed into the mind and tactics of Dumouriez. He conceived a plan even more bold than that of Argonne, and closed his ear to the timid counsels of art. He dictated to his aides-de-camp orders to the following effect: Kellermann was to continue his advance to Sainte-Menehould; Beurnonville was to march instantly for Rhétel, advancing by the river Aisne, taking care not to go too near to Argonne, to save its flanks from Clerfayt's attacks. Dillon was to defend and check the two defiles of Argonne, and to send out troops beyond the forest in order to perplex the Duke of Brunswick's motions, and come as soon as possible into communication with Kellermann's advanced guard. Chazot was to return to Autry. General Sparre, the commandant at Châlons, was desired to form the advanced camp at Châlons. These orders despatched, he prepared his own troops for the manoeuvre which he himself intended to execute during the night. He sent to the heights which cover the left of Grandpré on the side of the Croix-au-Bois, where Clerfayt made him most uneasy, six battalions, six squadrons, six pieces of cannon, as a lookout, in case of any sudden attack on the part of the Austrians. At nightfall he caused the park of artillery to defile in silence by the two bridges which traverse the Aisne, and halt on the heights of Autry. The Prince of Hohenlohe requested an interview with Dumouriez that evening, his motive being to judge of the state of the army. Dumouriez granted this, and substituted for himself in this conference General Duval, whose advanced years, white hair, and commanding stature imposed on the Austrian general. Duval affected an appearance of security, telling the Prince that Beurnonville was expected next day with eighteen thousand men, and Kellermann at the head of thirty thousand troops. Discouraged in his offers of arrangement by Duval, the Austrian chief withdrew, firmly convinced that Dumouriez meant to await the battle in his camp. At midnight Dumouriez left the Château of Grandpré, on horseback, and went to the camp in the pitchy darkness of the night. All was hushed in repose: he forbade drums to beat or trumpets to sound, but sent round in a low voice the order to strike the tents and get under arms. The darkness and confusion were unfavorable to these orders, but before the first dawn of day the army was in full march. The troops passed in double file over the bridges of Senuc and Grand Champ, and ranged themselves in battle array on the eminences of Autry. Thus covered by the Aisne, Dumouriez gazed upon the foe to see if they followed; but the mystery of his movements had disconcerted the Duke of Brunswick and Clerfayt. The army cut down the bridges behind them, and then, advancing four leagues from Grandpré to Dumartin, encamped there; and in the morning General Duval dispersed a host of Prussian hussars. Dumouriez resumed his march next day, and on the 17th entered his camp of Sainte-Menehould. The camp of Sainte-Menehould seemed to have been designed by nature to serve as a citadel for a handful of patriot soldiers, against a vast and victorious army. Protected in the front by a deep valley, on one side by the Aisne, and on the other by marshes, the back of the camp was defended by the shallow branches of the river Auve. Beyond these muddy streamlets and quagmires arose a solid and narrow piece of ground, admirably adapted for the station of a second camp; and here the general intended that Kellermann's division should be placed, then commanding the two routes of Rheims and Châlons. Dumouriez had studied this position during his leisure hours at Grandpré, and took up his quarters with the confidence of a man who knows his ground and seizes on success with certain hand. All his arrangements being made and head-quarters established at Sainte-Menehould, in the centre of the army, Dumouriez, annoyed at the reports, spread by fugitives, of his having been routed, wrote to the assembly: "I have been obliged," he wrote to the President, "to abandon the camp of Grandpré; our retreat was complete, when a panic spread through the army--ten thousand men fled before one thousand five hundred Prussian hussars. All is repaired, and I answer for everything." At the news of the retreat of Grandpré, Kellermann, believing Dumouriez defeated, and fearful of falling himself among the Prussian forces, whom he supposed to be at the extremity of the defile of Argonne, had retreated as far as Vitry. Couriers from Dumouriez reassuring him, he again advanced, but with the slowness of a man who fears an ambush at every step. He hesitated while he obeyed. On the other side, Beurnonville, the friend and confidant of Dumouriez, had met the fugitives of Chazot's corps. Wholly disconcerted by their statements of the complete rout of his general, Beurnonville, with some dragoons, had ascended a hill, whence he perceived Argonne, and the bare heaths which extend from Grandpré to Sainte-Menehould. It was on the morning of the 17th, at the moment when Dumouriez's army was moving from Dammartin to Sainte-Menehould. At the sight of this body of troops, whose uniforms and flags he could not distinguish in the heavy mist, Beurnonville had no doubt but that it was the Prussian army advancing in pursuit of the French. He immediately faced about, and advanced to Châlons by forced marches, in order to join his general. Hearing his mistake at Châlons, Beurnonville gave only twelve hours' rest to his harassed men, and arrived on the 19th with the ten thousand warlike soldiers whom he had led so far to the field of battle. Dumouriez passed them all in review, recognizing all the officers by their names, and the soldiers by their countenances, while they all saluted their leader with the loudest acclamations. The battalions and squadrons which he had carefully formed, disciplined, and accustomed to fire during the dilatory proceedings of Luckner with the army of the North, defiled before him, covered with the dust of their long march, their horses jaded, uniforms torn, shoes in holes, but their arms as perfect and as bright as if they were on parade. Dumouriez had scarcely dismounted when Westermann and Thouvenot, his two confidential staff officers, came to inform him that the Prussian army, _en masse_, had passed the peak of Argonne, and were deploying on the hills of La Lune, on the other side of the Tourbe, opposite to him. At the same instant young Macdonald, his aide-de-camp, who had been sent, on the previous evening, on the road to Vitry, came galloping up, and brought him intelligence of the approach of the long-expected Kellermann, who at the head of twenty thousand men of the army of Metz, and some thousands of volunteers of Lorraine, was only at two hours' distance. Thus the fortune of the Revolution and the genius of Dumouriez, seconding each other, brought at the appointed hour and to the fixed spot, from the two extremities of France and from the depths of Germany, the forces which were to assail and those which were to defend the empire. At the same moment Dumouriez, recalling his isolated detachments, prepared for a struggle, by concentrating all his scattered forces. General Dubouquet had retired to Châlons with three thousand men, where he also expected to find Dumouriez, but had only found in the city ten battalions of _fédérés_ and volunteers, who had arrived from Paris, and, hearing of the retreat of the army, mutinied against their chiefs, cut off the head of one of their officers, taking others with them, plundered the army stores, murdered the colonel of the regiment of Vexin, and then, in confused masses, took the road to Paris, proclaiming everywhere Dumouriez's treason and demanding his head. Dumouriez was alarmed lest these ruffians should come in contact with his army, for such bands sowed sedition wherever they went. General Stengel, after having ravaged the country between Argonne and Sainte-Menehould, in order to cut off all supplies from the Prussians, fell back beyond the Tourbe, and posted himself with the vanguard on the hills of Lyron, opposite the heights of La Lune, where the Duke of Brunswick was posted. Dampierre's camp, separated from that of Dumouriez by the trenches and shallows of the Auve, was assigned to Kellermann, but he passed beyond this spot, and posted his entire army and baggage on the heights of Valmy, in advance of Dampierre, on the left of that of Sainte-Menehould. The line of Kellermann's encampment, nearer to the enemy, on its left, touched on its right the line of Dumouriez, and thus formed with the principal army an angle, against which the enemy could not send forth its attacking columns without being at once overwhelmed by the French artillery in both flanks. Dumouriez, perceiving in a moment that Kellermann, who was too much involved and too much isolated on the plateau of Valmy, might be turned by the Prussian masses, sent General Chazot, at the head of eight battalions and eight squadrons, to post them behind the heights of Gizaucourt, and be under Kellermann's orders. He next desired General Stengel and Beurnonville to advance to the right of Valmy with twenty-six battalions--his rapid _coup d'oeil_ assuring him that this would be the Duke of Brunswick's point of attack. This plan displayed at a glance the intelligence of the warrior and the politician. Defiance was thus cast by forty-five thousand men to one hundred ten thousand soldiers of the coalition. The French army had its right flank and retreat covered by the Argonne, which was impassable by the enemy, and defended by its ravines and forests. The centre, bristling with batteries and natural obstacles, was impregnable. The army faced the country toward Champagne, leaving behind it the road clear to Châlons and Lorraine. "The Prussians," argued Dumouriez, "will either fight or advance on Paris. If the former, they will find the French army in an intrenched camp as a field of battle. Obliged, in order to attack the centre, to pass the Auve, the Tourbe, and the Bionne, under the fire of my redoubts, they will take Kellermann in flank, who will crush their attacking columns between his battalions, charging down from Valmy and the batteries of my _corps d'armée_. If they leave the French army, and cut off its retreat to Paris by marching on Châlons, the army, facing about, will follow them to Paris, increasing in number at every step. The reënforcements of the army of the Rhine and army of the North, which are on the march; the battalions of scattered volunteers, which I shall assemble as I cross the revolted provinces, will swell the amount of my armed troops to sixty thousand or seventy thousand men. The Prussians will march across a hostile country, and make every step with hesitation, while each advance will give me fresh troops. I shall await them under the walls of Paris. An invading army, placed between a capital of six hundred thousand souls, who close their gates, and a national army, which cuts off their retreat, is a destroyed army. France will be saved in the heart of France, instead of on the frontiers; but still she will be saved." Thus reasoned Dumouriez, when the first sounds of the Prussian cannon, resounding from the heights of Valmy, came to announce to him that the Duke of Brunswick, having perceived the danger of advancing, and thus leaving the French army behind him, had attacked Kellermann. It was not the Duke of Brunswick, however, but the young King of Prussia, who had commanded the attack. The Prussian army, which the generalissimo wished to extend gradually from Rheims to Argonne, parallel to the French army, received orders to advance in a body on Kellermann's position. On the 19th it marched to Somme-Tourbe, and remained all night under arms. The report was spread in the head-quarters of the King of Prussia that the French were meditating a retreat on Châlons, and that the movements perceptible in their line were only intended to mask this retrograde march. The King was vexed at a plan of a campaign which always allowed them to escape. He thought he should surprise Dumouriez in the false position of an army which had raised his camp. The Duke of Brunswick, whose military authority began to suffer with the failure of his preceding manoeuvres, in vain sought the intervention of General Koeler to moderate the ardor of the King. The attack was resolved upon. On the 20th, at 6 A.M., the Duke marched at the head of the Prussian advanced guard upon Somme-Bionne, with the intention of attacking Kellermann, and cutting off his retreat by the high road of Châlons. A thick autumnal fog floated over the plain into the marshy grounds where the three rivers flow, in the hollow ravines which separated the two armies, leaving only the points of the precipices and the crests of the hills shining in the light above this ocean of fog. An unexpected shock of the cavalry of the two advanced guards alone revealed, in this darkness, the march of the Prussians to the French. After a rapid _mêlée_ and some firing, the advanced guard of the French fell back upon Valmy, and warned Kellermann of the enemy's approach. The Duke of Brunswick continued to advance, reached the high road to Châlons, crossed it, and then deployed his whole army. At ten o'clock, the mist having suddenly disappeared, showed to the two generals their mutual situation. Kellermann's army was en masse in the plain and behind the mill of Valmy. This bold position projected like a cape into the midst of the lines of the Prussian bayonets. General Chazot had not, as yet, come up with his twenty-six battalions to flank Kellermann's left. General Leveneur, who was to have flanked his right and to unite it with Dumouriez's army, advanced with hesitation and slowly, fearing to draw on his feeble force all the weight of the Prussian body, which he saw in battle array before him. General Valence, who commanded Kellermann's cavalry, deployed into high line with a regiment of carbineers, some squadrons of dragoons, and four battalions of grenadiers, between Gizaucourt and Valmy, thus covering the whole space which Kellermann could fill up, and where that general was expected. Kellermann's lines formed in the centre of the heights. His powerful artillery bristled by the side of the mill of Valmy, the centre and key to the position. Almost surrounded by semicircular lines of the enemy, which were perpetually increasing in numbers, and embarrassed on this very narrow elevation by his twenty-two thousand men, horses, guns, and baggage, Kellermann was unable to extend the wings of his army. From this height Kellermann saw come in succession, from the white mist of the morning, and glitter in the sunshine, the countless Prussian cavalry, which must envelop him, as in a net, if he were driven from his position. About noon the Duke of Brunswick, having formed his whole army into two lines, and decided on his plan of the day, was seen to detach himself from the centre, and advance toward the declivities of Gizaucourt and La Lune, at the head of a body of infantry, cavalry, and three batteries. Fresh troops filled up the space these left. Such was the horizon of tents, bayonets, horses, cannon, and staff which displayed itself on September 20th, in the hollows and ravines of Champagne. At the same hour the convention[37] began its sittings and deliberations as to a monarchy or a republic. Within and without, France and liberty sported with destiny. The exterior aspect of the two armies seemed to declare beforehand the issue of the campaign. On the side of the Prussians, one hundred ten thousand combatants; a system of tactics the inheritance of the Great Frederick; discipline, which converted battalions into machines of war, and which, destroying all personal will in the soldier, made him bend submissively to the thought and voice of his officers; an infantry solid and impenetrable as walls of iron; cavalry mounted on the splendid horses of Mecklenburg, whose docility, well-controlled ardor, and high courage were not alarmed either at the fire of artillery nor the glitter of cold steel; officers trained from their infancy to fighting as a trade, born, as it were, in uniforms, knowing their troops and known to them, exercising over their soldiers the twofold ascendency of nobility and command; as auxiliaries, the picked regiments of the Austrian Army, recently from the banks of the Danube, where they had been fighting against the Turks; the emigrant French nobility, bearing with them all the great names of the monarchy, every soldier of whom fought for his own cause and had his individual injuries to avenge--his King to save, his country to recover at the end of his bayonet or the point of his sabre; Prussian generals, all pupils of a military king, having to maintain the superiority of their renown in Europe; a generalissimo which Germany proclaimed its Agamemnon, and which the genius of Frederick covered with a prestige of invincibility; and, also, a young King, brave, adored by his people, dear to his troops, avenger of the cause of all kings, accompanied by representatives of every court on the field of battle, and supplying the inexperience of war by a personal bravery which forgot its rank in the sole consideration of its honor--such was the Prussian army. In the French camp a numerical inferiority of one against three; regiments reduced to three or four hundred men by the effect of the laws of 1790, which only admitted volunteers; these regiments, deprived of their best officers by emigration, which had induced more than half to go to the enemy's soil, and by the sudden creation of one hundred battalions of volunteers, at the head of which they had placed the officers remaining in France as instructors; these battalions and regiments, without any _esprit de corps_, regarding each other with jealousy or contempt; two feelings in the same army--the spirit of discipline in the old ranks, the spirit of insubordination in the new corps; old officers suspecting their men, soldiers doubtful of their officers; a cavalry ill equipped and badly mounted; an infantry competent and firm in regiments, raw and weak in battalions; pay in arrear and paid in assignats greatly depreciated; insufficiently armed; uniforms various, threadbare, torn, often in tatters; many soldiers without shoes, or substituting handfuls of hay tied round the legs with cord; the troops arriving from different armies and provinces, unknown to each other, and scarcely knowing the name of the generals under whom they had been enlisted--these generals themselves young and rash, passing suddenly from obeying to command, or, old and methodical, unable to make their formal modes comply with the dash required in desperate warfare; and, finally, at the head of this incongruous army, a general-in-chief fifty-three years of age, new to war, whom everybody had a right to doubt, mistrustful of his troops, at variance with his second in command, at issue with his government, whose daring yet dilatory plan was not understood by any, and who had neither services in the past nor the spell of victory on his sword to give authority or confidence to his command--such were the French at Valmy. But the enthusiasm of the country and the Revolution struggled in the heart of this army, and the genius of war inspired the soul of Dumouriez. Uneasy as to Kellermann's position, Dumouriez, on horseback from the dawn of day, visited his line, extended his troops between Sainte-Menehould and Gizaucourt, and galloped toward Valmy in order that he might the better judge himself of the intentions of the Duke of Brunswick and the point on which the Prussians were to concentrate their efforts. He there found Kellermann giving his final orders to the generals, who, on his left and right, were to have the responsibility of the day. One of these was General Valence, and the other the Duc de Chartres. The Duc de Chartres[38] had been welcomed by the old soldiers as a prince, by the new ones as a patriot, by all as a comrade. His intrepidity did not carry him away; he controlled it, and it left him that quickness of perception and that coolness so essential to a general; amid the hottest fire he neither quickened nor slackened his pace, for his ardor was as much the effect of reflection as of calculation, and as grave as duty. His familiarity--martial with the officers, soldierly with the soldiers, patriotic with the citizens--caused them to forgive him for being a prince. But beneath the exterior of a soldier of the people lurked the _arrière pensée_ of a prince of the blood; and he plunged into all the events of the Revolution with the entire yet skilful _abandon_ of a mastermind. Men feared, in spite of his bravery and his exalted enthusiasm for his country, to catch a glimpse of a throne raised upon its own ruins and by the hands of a republic. This presentiment, which invariably precedes great names and destinies, seemed to reveal to the army that, of all the leaders of the Revolution, he might one day be the most useful or the most fatal to liberty. Dumouriez, who had seen the young Duc de Chartres with the army at Luckner, was struck with his intrepidity and coolness during the action, and, perceiving a spark of no ordinary fire in this young man, resolved to attach him to himself. The Prussians held the heights of La Lune, and had commenced descending them in battle array. The veteran troops of Frederick the Great, slow and measured in all their movements, displayed no rash impetuosity and left naught to chance. On their side the French did not behold without a feeling of dread this immense and hitherto invincible army silently advance its first line in columns of attack, and extend its wings to pierce their centre and cut off all retreat, either on Châlons or Dumouriez. The soldiers remained motionless in their position, fearing to expose by a false movement the narrow battle-field on which they could defend themselves, but did not dare manoeuvre. The Prussians descended half-way down the heights of La Lune, and then opened their fire both in front and flank. On this attack Kellermann's artillery moved forward and took up its position in front of the infantry. More than twenty thousand balls were exchanged during two hours from one hundred twenty guns, which thundered from the sides of the opposite hills, as though they strove to batter a breach in the mountains. The Prussians, more exposed than the French, suffered more severely, and their fire began to slacken. Kellermann, who narrowly watched the enemy's movements, fancied he saw some confusion in their ranks, and charged at the head of a column to carry the guns. A Prussian battery, masked by an inequality in the ground, suddenly opened its fire on them, and Kellermann's horse, struck by a ball in the chest, fell on its rider. His aide-de-camp, Lieutenant-Colonel Lormier, was killed, and the head of the column, exposed on three sides to a withering fire, fell back in disorder, while Kellermann, disengaged and carried off by his troops, sought for a fresh charger. The Prussians, witnessing his fall and the retreat of his column, redoubled their fire, and a well-directed volley of shells silenced the French artillery. The Duc de Chartres, who for three hours had supported the fire of the Prussians at the decisive post of Valmy, without drawing a trigger, saw the danger of his general. He hastened to the second line, put himself at the head of the reserve of artillery, advanced to the plateau by the mill, covered the disorder of the centre, rallied the flying caissons, supported the fire, and checked the enemy's onset. The Duke of Brunswick would not give the French time to strengthen their position, but formed three formidable columns of attack, supported by two wings of cavalry. These columns advanced in spite of the fire of the French batteries, and were about to crush beneath their masses the division of the Duc de Chartres, who at the mill of Valmy awaited the onset. Kellermann, who had renewed the line, formed his army into columns by battalions, sprang from his horse, and casting the bridle to his orderly, bade him lead it behind the ranks, showing the soldiers that he was resolved to conquer or die. "Comrades," cried Kellermann, in a voice of thunder, "the moment of victory is at hand. Let us suffer the enemy to advance, and then charge with the bayonet." Then waving his hat on the top of his sword, "_Vive la nation!_" cried he more enthusiastically than before; "let us conquer for her." This cry of the general, repeated by the nearest battalions, and taken up successively by the rest, created an immense clamor like the country herself encouraging her defenders. This shout of the whole army, resounding from one hill to another, and heard above the cannon's roar, reassured the troops, and made the Duke of Brunswick pause, for such hearts promised equally terrible hands. Kellermann still advanced at the head of his column. The Duc de Chartres, his sword in one hand and a tricolored flag in the other, followed the horse artillery with the cavalry. The Duke of Brunswick, with the quick eye of a veteran soldier, and that economy of human life that characterizes an able general, saw that this attack would fail when opposed to such enthusiasm; and he re-formed the head of his columns, sounded the retreat, and slowly retired to his positions unpursued. The fire ceased on both sides and the battle was as it were suspended until four in the evening, when the King of Prussia, indignant at the hesitation of his army, formed in person, and with the flower of his infantry and cavalry, three formidable columns of attack; then riding down the line, he bitterly reproached them with suffering the standard of the monarch to be thus humiliated. At the voice of their sovereign the troops marched to the conflict, and the King, surrounded by the Duke of Brunswick and his principal officers, marched in the first rank, exposed to the fire of the French, which mowed down his staff around him. Intrepid as the blood of Frederick, he commanded as a king jealous of the honor of his nation, and exposed himself like a soldier who holds his life but lightly compared to victory. All was in vain; the Prussian columns, assailed by the fire of twenty-four pieces of cannon, in position on the heights of Valmy, retreated at nightfall, leaving behind them eight hundred dead. Not to have been defeated was to the French army a victory. Kellermann felt this so fully that he assumed the name of Valmy in after-years,[39] and in his will bequeathed his heart to the village of that name, in order that it might repose on the theatre of his greatest renown, and sleep amid the companions of his first field. While the French army fought and triumphed at Valmy, the Convention decreed the Republic at Paris. Dumouriez returned to his camp amid the roar of Kellermann's cannon; but while he congratulated himself on the success of a day that strengthened the patriotic feelings of the army, and that rendered the first attack on the country fatal to her enemies, he was too clear-sighted not to perceive the faults of Kellermann and the temerity of his position. The Duke of Brunswick was on the morrow the same as he was the previous evening, and had, moreover, extended his right wing beyond Gizaucourt and cut off the route to Châlons. Early on the morning of the 21st Dumouriez went to the camp of his colleague, and ordered him to pass the river Auve, and fall back on the camp of Dampierre, in the position previously assigned him. This position, less brilliant, yet more secure, strengthened and united the French army. Kellermann felt this and obeyed without a murmur. The Prussians had lost so much time that they had no longer any to spare. The rainy season had already affected them, and the winter would be sufficient in itself to force them to retreat. The Duke of Brunswick lost ten days in observing the French army; and the rain and fever season surprised him, while yet undecided. The rains cut up the roads from Argonne, by which his convoys arrived from Verdun, while his soldiers, destitute of shelter and provisions, wandered about in the fields, the orchards and vineyards, plucking the unripe grapes which these inhabitants of the North tasted for the first time. Their stomachs, already weakened by bad living, were soon disordered, and they were attacked by that dysentery which is so fatal to the soldier; the contagion spread rapidly through the camp, and thinned the corps. The situation of Dumouriez did not appear, however, less perilous to those who were not in the secret of his intentions. Hemmed in on the one side of Les Evêchés by the Prince de Hohenlohe; on the Paris side by the King of Prussia, the Prussians were within six leagues of Châlons, the émigrés still nearer. The Uhlans, the light cavalry of the Prussians, pillaged at the gates of Rheims, and between Châlons and the capital there was not a position or an army. Paris dreaded to find itself thus exposed. Kellermann, a brave, but susceptible general, shaken by the opinion in Paris, threatened to quit the camp and abandon his colleague to his fate. Dumouriez, employing alternately the ascendency of his rank and the seduction of his genius, passed, in order to detain him, from menace to entreaty, and thus gained day by day his victory of patience. Sometimes he threatened to deprive of their uniform and arms those who complained of the want of provisions, and drive them from the camp as cowards who were unworthy to suffer privations for their country. Eight battalions of fédérés, recently arrived from the camp at Châlons, and intoxicated with massacre and sedition, were those who most threatened the subordination of the camp, saying openly that the ancient officers were traitors, and that it was necessary to purge the army, as they had Paris, of its aristocrats. Dumouriez posted these battalions apart from the others, placed a strong force of cavalry behind them, and two pieces of cannon on their flank. Then, affecting to review them, he halted at the head of the line, surrounded by all his staff and an escort of one hundred hussars. "Fellows," said he--"for I will not call you either citizens or soldiers--you see before you this artillery, behind you this cavalry; you are stained with crimes, and I do not tolerate here assassins or executioners. I know that there are scoundrels among you charged to excite you to crime. Drive them from among you, or denounce them to me, for I shall hold you responsible for their conduct." The battalions trembled and at once assumed the same spirit that pervaded the army. The ancient feelings of honor were associated in the camps with patriotism, and Dumouriez encouraged it among his troops. Every day he received from Paris threats of dismissal, to which he replied in terms of defiance. "I will conceal my dismissal," he wrote, "until the day when I behold the flight of the enemy: I will then show it to my soldiers, and return to Paris, to suffer the punishment my country inflicts on me for having saved her in spite of herself." Three commissioners of the Convention, Sillery, Carra, and Prieur, arrived at the camp on the 24th, to proclaim the Republic, and Dumouriez did not hesitate. Although a royalist, he yet felt that at present it was not a question of government, but of the safety of the country; and besides, his ambition was vast as his genius, vague as the future. A republic agitated at home, threatened from abroad, could not but be favorable to an ambitious soldier at the head of an army who adored him; for when royalty was abolished, there was no one of higher rank in the nation than its generalissimo. The commissioners had also instructions to order the retreat of the army behind the Marne. Dumouriez asked and obtained from them six days' delay; on the seventh, at sunrise, the French videttes beheld the heights of La Lune deserted, and the columns of the Duke of Brunswick slowly defiling between the hills of Champagne, and taking the direction of Grandpré. Fortune had justified perseverance, and genius had baffled numbers. Dumouriez was triumphant, and France was saved. At this intelligence, one general shout of "Vive la nation!" burst from the French army. The commissioners, the generals Beurnonville, Miranda, even Kellermann, threw themselves into the arms of Dumouriez, and acknowledged the superiority of his judgment and the accuracy of his perception--while the soldiers proclaimed him the Fabius of his country. But this name, which he accepted for a day, but ill responded to the ardor of his soul; and he already meditated playing the part of Hannibal, which was more consonant with the activity of his character and the determination of his genius. At home, that of Cæsar might one day tempt him. This ambition of Dumouriez explains the unmolested retreat of the Prussians through an enemy's country, and through defiles which might easily have been converted into Caudine Forks, and under the cannon of seventy thousand French, before which the weakened and enervated army of the Duke of Brunswick had to make a flank movement. While the military genius of Dumouriez triumphed over the Prussian army, his political genius was not asleep; for his camp, during the last days of the campaign, was at once the head-quarters of an army and the centre of diplomatic negotiations. Dumouriez had created a connection, half apparent, half secret, with the Duke of Brunswick and those officers and ministers who had most influence over the King of Prussia. Danton, the only minister who possessed any authority over Dumouriez, was in the secret of these negotiations. The Duke of Brunswick was no less desirous than Dumouriez to negotiate, while fighting at the head-quarters of the King of Prussia were two parties, one of whom wished to retain the King with the army, and the other to remove him from it. The Count de Schulemberg, the King's confidential agent, was the leader of the first, the Duke of Brunswick of the second; Haugwitz, Lucchesini, Lombard, the King's secretary, Kalkreuth, and the Prince de Hohenlohe were of the party of the latter. The King resisted with the firmness of a man who has engaged his honor in a great cause in the eyes of the world, and who wished to come off with credit, or at least without loss of reputation. He remained with the army, and sent the Count de Schulemberg to direct the operations in Poland. From this day the Prince was exposed in his camp to an influence whose interest it was to slacken his march and enervate his resolutions; and from this day everything tended to a retreat. The Duke of Brunswick only sought a pretext for opening negotiations with the French at head-quarters. So long as he was behind the Argonne, within ten leagues of Grandpré, this pretext did not offer itself, for the King of Prussia would look on these advances as a proof of treason or cowardice. The combat of Valmy, in the idea of the Duke of Brunswick, was but a negotiation carried on by the mouth of the cannon. Dumouriez held the fate of the French Revolution in his hands, and he could not believe that this general would become the mere tool of anarchical democracy. "He will cast the weight of his sword," said he, "to weigh down the scale in favor of a constitutional monarchy; he will turn upon the jailers of the King and the murderers of September. Guardian of the frontiers, he has only to threaten to open them to the coalition, to insure obedience from the National Assembly. An arrangement between monarchical France and Prussia, under the auspices of Dumouriez, is a thousand times preferable to a war in which Prussia stakes her army against the despair of a nation." FOOTNOTES: [36] The royalists who left Paris or France in 1789 and after, on account of the Revolution.--ED. [37] The National Convention, which succeeded the Legislative Assembly, actually opened September 21st.--ED. [38] This was Louis Philippe, afterward known as "the Citizen-King." He was the son of Philippe Égalité, Duc d'Orléans, and was at this time about twenty years old.--ED. [39] Kellermann was created Duc de Valmy by Napoleon.--ED. INVENTION OF THE COTTON-GIN GROWTH OF THE COTTON INDUSTRY IN AMERICA A.D. 1793 CHARLES W. DABNEY R. B. HANDY DENISON OLMSTED Lord Macaulay declared that "what Peter the Great did to make Russia dominant, Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton-gin has more than equalled in its relation to the power and progress of the United States." When Macaulay delivered this opinion, "King Cotton" was more absolute in the United States than to-day, for the cultivation of cotton has since been supplemented in this country by other industries of equal importance. Yet, what cotton had done for the United States in Macaulay's day has been far surpassed by its record since, as one of the great industrial and commercial interests of the land; and judged by export values, as estimated by the specialist Dabney, at one time Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, cotton is still king of the American market. The growth of the cotton industry in the United States, traced so minutely by Handy, witnesses from one decade to another to the supreme achievement of the American inventor so highly estimated by Macaulay. Eli Whitney was born at Westboro, Massachusetts, in 1765, and died in 1825. In 1792 he was graduated at Yale College, and that year became a teacher in Georgia, where he invented the cotton-gin. Before he could secure a patent his machine was stolen from his workshop, and others reaped the profits of his ingenuity. It is pleasing to know that he afterward made a fortune by other uses of his inventive skill. His service to the cotton industry in all its departments has not only been vastly influential in the development of his own country, but has also greatly affected the relations of the United States with other industrial nations, especially with Great Britain, the leading cotton-manufacturing country of the world. CHARLES W. DABNEY Cotton is the principal product of eight great States of the American Union, and the most valuable "money crop" of the entire country. Climatic conditions practically restrict its cultivation to a group of States constituting less than one-fourth of the total area of the country, and yet the value of the annual crop is exceeded among cultivated products only by corn, which is grown in every State of the Union, and occasionally by wheat. Cotton furnishes the raw material for one of our most important manufacturing industries and from one-fourth to one-third of our total exports. Considered without reference to any particular country, its economic importance is far beyond numerical expression; for while the total crop of the world is approximately ascertainable, the effect of cotton upon the commercial and social relations of mankind is too far-reaching for estimation. Of the four great staples that provide man with clothing--cotton, silk, wool, and flax--cotton, by reason of its cheapness and its many excellencies, is rapidly superseding its several rivals. Sixty years ago only about two million five hundred thousand bales of cotton, or less than the present production of Texas, were annually converted into clothing; the spindles of the world now use over thirteen million bales per annum. Yet less than half the people of the world are supplied with cotton goods made by modern machinery, and it has been estimated that it would require annually a crop of forty-two million bales of five hundred pounds each to raise the world's standard of consumption to that of the principal nations. Cotton stands preëminent among farm crops in the ease and cheapness of its production, as compared with the variety and value of its products. No crop makes so slight a drain upon the fertility of the soil, and for none has modern enterprise found so many uses for its several parts. The cotton plant yields, in fact, a double crop--a most beautiful fibre and a seed yielding both oil and feed, which, although neglected for a long time, is now esteemed worth one-sixth as much as the fibre. In addition to this, the stems can be made to yield a fibre which waits only for a machine to work it, and the roots yield a drug. It is entirely possible, therefore, that cotton may ultimately be grown as much for these parts as for the lint. The history of cotton production in the United States differs from that of almost every other agricultural product in several important particulars. For nearly three-quarters of a century slave labor was almost exclusively employed in this branch of agricultural industry, and an immense majority of the colored people of to-day look to it for their chief support. Cotton was also the great pioneer crop in the new Southwestern States. Not only has the westward movement of the industry been more rapid than that of any other crop, but the centre of production has always been farther in advance of the centre of population. As long ago as 1839 Mississippi was producing almost one-fourth of the entire crop of the country. Recent years have witnessed an enormous development in the regions to the west, which would have carried the centre of production across the Mississippi River if the cultivation of cotton, unlike that of wheat and corn and other products, had not taken a new lease of life in the older States along the Atlantic seaboard, where the use of manures has both extended the area and increased the production. Probably no equally great industry was ever more completely paralyzed or had its future placed in greater jeopardy than cotton growing in the United States during the war of 1861-1865. So great was the decrease in production which followed the effectual closing of the ports that only one bale of cotton was grown in 1864-1865 for every fifteen bales raised in 1861-1862. The chief menace to the future of cotton production lay in the efforts that were put forth by other cotton-growing countries at this time to produce those particular varieties which had for so long given the United States the monopoly of the European markets; and nothing could more completely demonstrate the remarkable adaptation of our Southern States to the growing of varieties which the experience of generations has proved to be the best for manufacturing purposes than the fact that it took them only thirteen years from the end of the war to regain the primacy of position which they held at its commencement. ROBERT B. HANDY When cotton manufacture was introduced into England is not definitely settled. There is no mention of the manufacture or use of cotton in the celebrated poor-law of Elizabeth (1601), though hemp, flax, and wool are expressly named. The first authentic record is in Roberts' _Treasure of Traffic_, published in 1641; but it is possible, and even probable, that the art was imported from Flanders by the artisans who fled from that country to England in the latter part of the sixteenth century, as it is probable that the manufacture had established itself more or less firmly before it attracted the attention of the author of the above-named pamphlet. We may presume, then, that it was well established in England by 1641, but after that date the spread was not rapid. The crudeness of the machinery for spinning was such that fine yarn could not be made. Both spinning and weaving were done by individuals and families in their own houses on clumsy and heavy machines. These implements were but little better than those in use two thousand years before. The distaff, the earliest of spinning-machines, was still in use, and the best to be had was the one-thread spinning-wheel. The loom used was scarcely an improvement on that which the East Indian had used centuries before, though it was constructed with greater firmness and compactness. Owing to imperfections in their machines, it was impossible for the Europeans to make cotton yarn combining strength and firmness. The yarn when spun was loose and flimsy; to make it strong it had to be heavy. The finished web had often to be carried a long distance to market. It was only in 1760 that Manchester merchants began to furnish the weavers in the neighboring villages with linen yarn and raw cotton and to pay a fixed price for the perfected web, thus relieving the weavers of the necessity of providing themselves with material and seeking a market for their cloth, and enabling them to prosecute their employment with greater regularity. It was also about that time that England began to export her cotton goods, for until then her weavers had not been able to do more than supply the home demand. This foreign trade at once increased the demand for cotton goods, and the increased demand presented a problem which the manufacturers at first found difficult of solution. The procuring of supplies of linen yarn needed for the warp of these textiles was not difficult, but where was the cotton yarn to come from? The spinners were producing already as much as their rude machines would permit, and additional spinners were not to be had. The demand for cotton thread exceeded the supply; the price of yarn rose with the demands of trade and the extension of the manufacture and operated as a check to the further increase of the exports. The trade had reached the point where hand carders, single-thread spinning-wheels, and the hand-loom, requiring a man to each machine, were clearly inadequate to the service, and the cotton trade of Great Britain in the middle of the eighteenth century seemed to have reached its limit. About this time Hargreaves, Arkwright, Crompton, Cartwright, and Watt, men either directly or indirectly engaged in and familiar with the needs of the cotton manufacture, invented machines which raised the trade from an experimental or at least a struggling industry into the most important manufacture of the world. The carding-engine, the spinning-jenny, the spinning-frame, the stocking-frame, the power-loom, and the adaptation of the steam-engine to the propulsion of these machines, at once supplied the means of producing an immense amount of yarn and cloth. These inventions, it is true, were not in themselves perfect, but the principles on which they were built are those on which the most complicated textile machines of this day are based. The supply of raw material to meet the demands of the trade was limited. The West Indies, the Levant, and India were the countries from which this supply was drawn, but they were unable to furnish enough raw cotton to keep the new machines in operation, and it was necessary to look elsewhere. America was the only hope of the cotton manufacturer; but as at that time the United States produced little or no cotton, for a few years all the increased supply came from Brazil. As Great Britain was the last of the European countries to take up cotton manufacture, and has carried it to its fullest development, so the United States was the last to enter the list of cotton-producing countries, and has been for nearly a hundred years the foremost of them all. The powerful influence that the production of cotton has had upon the commerce, industrial development, and civil institutions of the United States can scarcely be realized by one unfamiliar with the subject. It is doubtful whether cotton is indigenous to any part of this country, as we have no authentic record of the precise time of its introduction. Cotton seed was brought in from all quarters of the globe, and the American plant, the result of innumerable crossings, remains, as to its origin, a puzzle to botanists. The beginning of the culture of cotton in the United States occurred about one hundred seventy-five years before the industry became at all important. The first effort to produce cotton on the North American continent was probably made at Jamestown the year of the arrival of the colonists. In a pamphlet entitled _Nova Britannica; Offering Most Excellent Fruits of Planting in Virginia_, published in London in 1609, it is stated that cotton would grow as well in that province as in Italy. In another pamphlet, called _A Declaration of the State of Virginia_, published in London in 1620, the author mentions cotton, wool, and sugar-cane among the "naturall commodities dispersed up and downe the divers parts of the world; all of which may also be had in abundance in Virginia." According to Bancroft, the first experiment in cotton culture in the colonies was made in Virginia during Wyatt's administration of the government. Writing of that period he says: "The first culture of cotton in the United States deserves commemoration. In this year (1621) the seeds were planted as an experiment, and their 'plentiful coming up' was at that early day a subject of interest in America and England." Cotton-wool was listed in that year at eightpence a pound, which shows that it may have been grown earlier, for it is scarcely possible that it could have been grown, cleaned, and received in market in the same year. Seabrook states that the "green-seed," or upland, variety was certainly grown in Virginia to a limited extent at least one hundred thirty years before the Revolution. Some of the early governors of that colony were especially energetic in their efforts to encourage its cultivation. Among these were Sir William Berkeley; Francis Morrison, his deputy, and Sir Edmund Andros. The latter, says one authority, "gave particular marks of his favor toward the propagation of cotton, which since his time has been much neglected." The exports of the Virginia colony during the first thirty years of its existence were confined almost exclusively to tobacco, but there is evidence that in the latter half of the seventeenth century cotton was cultivated and manufactured among the planters for domestic consumption. Burk states that "after the Restoration (1660) their attention was strongly attracted to home manufactures as well by the necessities of their position as by the encouragement of the assembly and the bounty offered by the King. But the zeal displayed in the outset for these products gradually cooled, and if we except the manufacture of coarse cloths and unpainted cotton, nothing remained of the sounding list prepared with so much labor by the King and recommended by legislation, premium, and royal bounty." Among the earliest historical references to cotton in this country is that contained in _A Brief Description of the Province of Carolina, on the Coasts of Florida, and More Particularly of a New Plantation Begun by the English at Cape Feare, on that River, now by them called Georges River_, published in London in 1666. The author of this tract, whose name is not given, says: "In the midst of this fertile province, in the latitude of 34°, there is a colony of English seated, who landed there May 29, 1664." After giving an account of the fertility of the soil and its natural products, he adds: "But they have brought with them most sorts of seeds and roots of the Barbados, which thrive in this most temperate clime. They have indigo, very good tobacco, and cotton-wool." Robert Home mentions cotton among the products of South Carolina in 1666. In Samuel Wilson's _Account of the Province of Carolina in America_, addressed to the Earl of Craven, and published in London in 1682, it is stated that "cotton of the Cyprus and Smyrna sort grows well, and good plenty of the seed is sent thither," and among the instructions given by the proprietors of South Carolina to Mr. West, the first governor, is the following: "You are then to furnish yourself with cotton-seed, indigo, and ginger-roots." He was also instructed to receive the products of the country in payment of rents at certain fixed valuations, among which cotton was priced at three and one-half pence per pound. In 1697, in a memoir addressed to Count de Pontchartrain on the importance of establishing a colony in Louisiana, the author, after describing the natural productions of the country, says: "Such are some of the advantages which may be reasonably expected, without counting those resulting from every day's experience. We might, for example, try the experiment of cultivating long-staple cotton." The presumption is that the short-staple variety had already been tried. In the very beginning of the eighteenth century cotton culture in North Carolina had reached the extent of furnishing one-fifth of the people with their clothing. Lawson, speaking of the prosperity of the country and commending the industry of the women, says: "We have not only provision plentiful, but clothes of our own manufacture, which are made and daily increase; cotton, wool, and flax being of our own growth; and the women are to be highly commended for industry in spinning and ordering their housewifery to so great an advantage as they do." About this time cotton became widely distributed and cotton-patches were common in Carolina. In fact, it is said to have been one of the principal commodities of Carolina as early as 1708, but its culture was only for domestic uses, and the same authority speaks of its being spun by the women. Charlevoix, in 1722, while on his voyage down the Mississippi, saw "very fine cotton on the tree" growing in the garden of Sieur le Noir; and Captain Roman, of the British Army, saw in East Mississippi black-seeded cotton growing on the farm of Mr. Krebs, and also a machine invented by Mr. Krebs for the separation of the seed and lint. This was a roller-gin, and possibly the first ever in operation in this country. Pickett says that in 1728 the colony of Louisiana, which at that date occupied nearly all the southwest part of the United States, including Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, was in a flourishing condition, its fields being cultivated, by more than two thousand slaves, in cotton, indigo, tobacco, and grain. Peter Purry, the founder of Purryville, in South Carolina, in his description of the Province of South Carolina, drawn up in Charleston in 1731, says, "Flax and cotton thrive admirably." In 1734 cotton-seed was planted in Georgia, being sent there by Philip Nutter, of Chelsea, England. Francis Moore, who visited Savannah in 1735, in his description of that place, says: "At the bottom of the hill, well sheltered from the north wind and in the warmest part of the garden, there was a collection of West Indian plants and trees, some coffee, some cocoa-nuts, cotton, etc." About the same time the settlers on the Savannah River, about twenty-one miles north of Savannah, are said to have experimented with cotton, the date being fixed by McCall as 1738. One of the striking features connected with the early culture of cotton in the American colonies is that it was grown as far north as the 39° of latitude. Trench Coxe, of Philadelphia, who contributed so greatly to the early success of the culture and manufacture of cotton in the United States, says: "It is a fact well authenticated to the writer that the cultivation of cotton on the garden scale, though not at all as a planter's crop, was intimately known and thoroughly practised in the vicinity of Easton, in the county of Talbot, on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay, Maryland, as early as 1736." Its cultivation was so well understood in this part of the country that, according to the same authority, the necessities of the Revolutionary War occasioned it to be raised for army use in the counties of Cape May, New Jersey, and Sussex, Delaware, and it continued to be raised, though only in small quantities, for family use. At the time of the Revolution, the home-grown cotton was sufficiently abundant in Pennsylvania to supply the domestic needs of that State. Cotton was also cultivated in Charles, St. Mary's, and Dorchester counties, Maryland, as late as 1826. And at a later date (1861-1864) upland cotton was cultivated, and at the prices current at that date was a most profitable crop on the eastern shore of Maryland. Cotton was grown with very good results in Northampton County, on the eastern shore of Virginia, in those years. The culture and improvement of cotton had received considerable attention by the planters of South Carolina and Georgia as early as 1742. In 1739 Samuel Auspourguer attested under oath that the "climate and soil of Georgia are very fit for raising cotton." William Spicer also certified to the adaptability of the country for cotton production, and that he had "brought over with him (to London) several pods of cotton which grew in Georgia." A tract entitled _A State of the Province of Georgia, Attested Under Oath in the Court of Savannah_, published in 1740, says of cotton that "large quantities had been raised, and it is much planted; but the cotton, which in some parts is perennial, dies here in the winter; nevertheless the annual is not inferior to it in goodness, but requires more trouble in cleansing from the seed." In the same tract it was "proposed that a bounty be settled on every product of the land, viz., corn, peas, potatoes, wine, silk, cotton," etc. In _A Description of Georgia, by a Gentleman who has Resided there Upward of Seven Years and was One of the First Settlers_, published in London in 1741, the author states that "the annual cotton grows well there, and has been by some industrious people made into clothes." Samuel Seabrook, in _An Important Inquiry into the State and Utility of Georgia_, published in 1741, says, "Among other beneficial articles of trade which it is found can be raised there, cotton, of which some has also been brought over as a sample, is mentioned." In his description of St. Simon's Island the same author says: "The country is well cultivated, several parcels of land not far distant from the camp of General Oglethorpe's regiment having been granted in small lots to the soldiers, many of whom are married. The soldiers raise cotton, and their wives spin it and knit it into stockings." A publication in London in 1762 says: "What cotton and silk both the Carolinas send us is excellent and calls aloud for encouragement of its cultivation in a place well adapted to raise both." Captain Robinson, an Englishman who visited the coast of Florida in 1754, says the "cotton-tree was growing in that country." The Florida territory then extended from the Atlantic to the Mississippi River. That it was cultivated in East Florida about ten years after this is evidenced by William Stork, who says, "I am informed of a gentleman living upon the St. John's that the lands on that river below Piccolata are in general good, and that there is growing there now (1765) good wheat, Indian corn, indigo, and cotton." Cotton early attracted the attention of the French colonists in Louisiana. In the year 1752, Michel, in a report to the French minister on the condition of the country, gave interesting details of the cultivation of cotton and the difficulty found in separating the wool from the seed. In 1758 white Siam seed was introduced into Louisiana. Du Prate says, "This East India annual plant has been found to be much better and whiter than what is cultivated in our colonies, which is of the Turkey kind." Letters from Paris to Governor Roman state that there is among the French archives at Paris, Department of Marine and Colonies, a most curious and instructive report on cotton in 1760. It was found to be a very profitable crop in Louisiana, for in the year 1768 the French planters, in a memoir to their Government, complained that the parent Government had turned them over to the Spaniards just "at the time when a new mine had been discovered; when the culture of cotton, improved by experience, promises the planter a recompense of his toils, and furnishes persons engaged in fitting out vessels with the cargoes to load them." In 1762 Captain Bossu, of the French marines, said: "Cotton of this country (Louisiana) is of the species called the 'white cotton of Siam.' It is neither so fine nor so long as the silk cotton, but it is, however, very white and very fine." In 1775 the Provincial Congress of South Carolina recommended the cultivation of cotton, and in the same year a similar enactment was passed by the Virginia Assembly, which declared that "all persons having proper land ought to cultivate and raise a quantity of hemp, flax, and cotton, not only for the use of their own families, but to spare to others on moderate terms." This legislation no doubt was suggested on account of the changed relations of the colonies with Great Britain. In 1786 Thomas Jefferson, in a letter, says: "The four southernmost States make a great deal of cotton. Their poor are almost entirely clothed with it in winter and summer. In winter they wear shirts of it and outer clothing of cotton and wool mixed. In summer their shirts are linen, but the outer clothing cotton. The dress of the women is almost entirely of cotton, manufactured by themselves, except the richer class, and even many of these wear a great deal of homespun cotton. It is as well manufactured as the calicoes of Europe." At the convention at Annapolis in 1786 James Madison expressed the conviction that from the experience already had "from the garden practice in Talbot County, Maryland, and the circumstances of the same kind abounding in Virginia, there was no reason to doubt that the United States would one day become a great cotton-producing country." This year Sea Island cotton-seed was introduced into Georgia, the seed being sent from the Bahama Islands to Governor Tatnall, William Spaulding, Richard Leake, and Alexander Pisset, of that State. The cotton adapted itself to the climate, and every successive year from 1787 saw long-staple cotton extending itself along the shores of South Carolina and Georgia. According to Thomas Spaulding, the first planter who attempted cotton culture on a large scale was Richard Leake, of Savannah, but the editor of _Niles Register_ (1824) says that Nichol Turnbull, a native of Smyrna, was the first planter who cultivated cotton upon a scale for exportation. His residence was at Deptford Hall, three miles from Savannah, where he died in 1824. In a letter dated Savannah, December 11, 1788, to Colonel Thomas Proctor, of Philadelphia, Leake says: "I have been this year an adventurer--and the first that has attempted it on a large scale--in introducing a new staple for the planting interests--the article of cotton--samples of which I beg leave now to send you and request you will lay them before the Philadelphia Society for Encouraging Manufactures, that the quality may be inspected. Several here, as well as in North Carolina, have followed me and tried the experiment, and it is likely to answer our most sanguine expectations. I shall raise about five thousand pounds in the seed from eight acres of land, and next year I intend to plant about fifty to one hundred acres if suitable encouragement is given. The principal difficulty that arises to us is the cleansing it from the seed, which I am told they do with great dexterity and ease in Philadelphia with gins or machines made for the purpose. I am told they make those that will clean thirty to forty pounds clean cotton in a day and upon very simple construction." The first attempt in South Carolina to produce Sea Island cotton was made in 1788 by Mrs. Kinsey Burden at Burden's Island. As early as 1779 the short staple was produced by her husband, whose negroes were clothed in homespun cotton cloth. Mrs. Burden's efforts failed. The plants did not mature, and this was attributed to the seed, which was of the Bourbon variety. The first successful variety appears to have been grown by William Elliot on Hilton Head, near Beaufort, in 1790, with five and one-half bushels of seed, which he bought in Charleston and for which he paid fourteen shillings a bushel. He sold his crop for ten and one-half pence a pound. In 1791 John Scriven, of St. Luke's Parish, planted thirty to forty acres on St. Mary's River. He sold it for from one shilling twopence to one shilling sixpence per pound. It is certain that at this period many planters on the Sea Islands and contiguous mainland experimented with long-staple cotton, and probably it was produced by them for market. One of the earliest reports of export of cotton from the colonies is a bill of lading which certifies that on July 20, 1751, Henry Hansen shipped, "in good order and well conditioned, in and upon the good snow called the Mary, whereof is master under God, for this present voyage, Barnaby Badgers, and now riding in the harbor of New York, and by God's grace bound for London--to say--eighteen bales of cotton-wool, being marked and numbered as in the margin, and are to be delivered in like good order and conditioned, at the aforesaid port of London--the danger of the sea only excepted--unto Messrs. Horke and Champior or their assigns, he or they paying freight for the said goods, three farthings per pound, primage and average accustomed." The feeling regarding the culture and manufacture of cotton in the colonies at this period may be gathered from the following extract from a letter of July 7, 1749, addressed by the Georgia office of London to the Governor of Georgia: "You say, sir, likewise in your letter, that the people of Vernonburgh and Acton are giving visible appearance of revising their industry; that they are propagating large quantities of flax and cotton, and that they are provided with weavers, who have already wove several large pieces of cloth of a useful sort, whereof they sold divers, and some they made use of in their own families. The account of their industry is highly satisfactory to the trustees; but as to manufacturing the produces they raise, they must expect no encouragement from the trustees, for setting up manufactures which may interfere with those of England might occasion complaints here, for which reason you must, as they will, discountenance them; and it is necessary for you to direct the industry of these people into a way which might be more beneficial to themselves and would prove satisfactory to the trustees and the public; that is, to show them what advantages they will reap from the produce of silk, which they will receive immediate pay for, and that this will not interfere with or prevent their raising flax or cotton, or any other produces for exportation, unmanufactured." A pamphlet entitled _A Description of South Carolina_ states that cotton was imported to Carolina from the West Indies, and it is probable that the early shipments from this country were of this West Indian cotton, although English writers mentioned it as an import of Carolina cotton. Donnell says: "The first regular exportation of cotton from Charleston was in 1785, when one bag arrived at Liverpool, per ship Diana, to John and Isaac Teasdale & Co. The exportation of cotton from the United States could not have been much earlier, for we find in 1784 eight bags shipped to England were seized on the ground of fraudulent importation, as it was not believed that so much cotton could be produced in the United States." The exportation during the next six years was successively 6, 14, 109, 389, 842, and 81 bags. Dana gives the following _data_ concerning the export movement from 1739 to 1793: "1739. Samuel Auspourguer, a Swiss living in Georgia, took over to London, at the time of the controversy about the introduction of slaves, a sample of cotton raised by him in Georgia. This we may call, in the absence of a better starting-point, the first export. "1747. During this year several bags of cotton, valued at £3 11s. 5d. per bag, were exported from Charleston. Doubts as to this being of American growth have been expressed, but as cotton had been cultivated in South Carolina for many years there does not seem to be any reason for such doubts. Besides, English writers mention it as an import of Carolina cotton. "1753. 'Some cotton' is mentioned among the exports of Carolina in 1753, and of Charleston in 1757. "1764. Eight (8) bags of cotton imported into Liverpool from the United States. "1770. Three (3) bales shipped to Liverpool from New York; ten (10) bales from Charleston; four (4) from Virginia and Maryland; and three (3) barrels from North Carolina. "1784. About fourteen (14) bales shipped to great Britain, of which eight (8) were seized as improperly entered. [See above.] "1785. Five (5) bags imported at Liverpool. "1786. Nine hundred (900) pounds imported into Liverpool. "1787. Sixteen thousand three hundred fifty (16,350) pounds imported into Liverpool. "1788. Fifty-eight thousand five hundred (58,500) pounds imported into Liverpool. "1789. One hundred twenty-seven thousand five hundred (127,500) pounds imported into Liverpool. "1790. Fourteen thousand (14,000) pounds imported into Liverpool. We can find no reason for this marked decline in the exports except it may be that the crop was a failure that year. Our first supposition was that the cause was one of price, but on examining the quotations in Took's work on 'high and low prices' we do not see any marked decline in the values of other descriptions of cotton, and the American staple is not given in his list until 1793. "1791. One hundred eighty-nine thousand five hundred (189,500) pounds imported into Liverpool, the price averaging here 26 cents. "1792. One hundred thirty-eight thousand three hundred twenty-eight (138,328) pounds imported into Liverpool." Great difficulty was experienced in separating the seed from the lint of upland cotton. The work was done by hand, the task being four pounds of lint cotton per week from each head of a family, in addition to the usual field-work. This would amount to one bale in two years. A French planter of Louisiana (Dubreuil) is said to have invented a machine for separating lint and seed as early as 1742. The demand for such a machine not being very great at that date, no record as to its character has been preserved. The roller-gin, in very much the same form as Nearchus, the admiral of Alexander the Great, found it in India, was still in use. In 1790 Dr. Joseph Eve, originally from the Bahamas, but then a resident of Augusta, Georgia, made great improvements on this ancient machine, and adapted it to be run by horse- or water-power. A correspondent of the American Museum, writing from Charleston, South Carolina, in July of that year, states "that a gentleman well acquainted with the cotton manufacture had already completed and in operation, on the high hills of Santee, near Statesburg, ginning, carding, and other machines driven by water, and also spinning-machines with eighty-five spindles each, with every article necessary for manufacturing cotton." A machine dating anterior to this year, and having a strong resemblance to the above, possessing in fact all the essentials of a modern cotton-gin, was exhibited at the Atlanta Exposition in 1882. It came from the neighborhood of Statesburg, but its history could not be ascertained. In 1793 Eli Whitney petitioned for a patent for the invention of the saw cotton-gin. His claims were disputed, and he defended them in the State and Federal courts for nearly a generation, obtaining at last a verdict in his favor. Meanwhile the saw-gin had become an established fact, and the planter at last had a machine which enabled him to produce cotton at a cost that would leave him a good profit. The first saw-gin to be run by water-power was erected in 1795 by James Kincaid near Monticello, in Fairfield County, South Carolina. Others were put up near Columbia by Wade Hampton, Sr., in 1797, and in the year following he gathered and ginned from six hundred acres six hundred bales of cotton. The cotton exportation from the United States increased from four hundred eighty-seven thousand six hundred pounds in 1793 to one million six hundred thousand pounds in 1794, the year in which Whitney's gin was patented. In 1796, a year after he had improved his machine, the production had risen to ten million pounds. In fact, the increased production was so great that the planters began to fear they would overstock the market, and one of them, upon looking at his newly gathered crop, exclaimed: "Well, I have done with cultivation of cotton; there's enough in that gin-house to make stockings for all the people in America." Yet the production of cotton did not advance with that rapidity to which we are now accustomed. The cotton industry being of secondary importance prior to 1790, information and statistics relative to the amount produced are not available, but within one hundred years, from 1790 to 1890, the production of cotton in the United States increased from five thousand bales to over ten million bales. The first cotton-mill erected in the United States was built at Beverly, Massachusetts, in 1787-1788. This was soon followed by others in various towns along the east border of the country, especially Pawtucket and Providence, Rhode Island; Boston, Massachusetts; New Haven and Norwich, Connecticut; New York City; Paterson, New Jersey; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Statesburg, South Carolina. In them carding and spinning were done by machinery, but the weaving was on hand-looms until 1815, at which date a power-loom mill was started at Waltham, Massachusetts. The use of hand-looms and spinning-wheels for cotton manufacture was common in all parts of the country before the Revolution, especially in the Southern colonies, and these continued to be used by the women in their houses many years after the erection of cotton factories. DENISON OLMSTED Mr. Whitney had scarcely set his foot in Georgia when he was met by a disappointment which was an earnest of that long series of adverse events which, with scarcely an exception, attended all his future negotiations in the same State. On his arrival he was informed that Mr. B. had employed another teacher, leaving Whitney entirely without resources or friends, except those whom he had made in the family of General Greene. In these benevolent people, however, his case excited much interest, and Mrs. Greene kindly said to him: "My young friend, you propose studying the law; make my house your home, your room your castle, and there pursue what studies you please." He accordingly began the study of law under that hospitable roof. Mrs. Greene was engaged in a piece of embroidery in which she employed a peculiar kind of frame called a tambour. She complained that it was badly constructed, and that it tore the delicate threads of her work. Mr. Whitney, eager for an opportunity to oblige his hostess, set himself at work and speedily produced a tambour-frame made on a plan entirely new, which he presented to her. Mrs. Greene and her family were greatly delighted with it, and thought it a wonderful proof of ingenuity. Not long afterward, a large party of gentlemen came from Augusta and the upper country to visit the family of General Greene, consisting principally of officers who had served under the General in the Revolutionary Army. Among the number were Major Bremen, Forsyth, and Pendleton. They fell into conversation upon the state of agriculture among them, and expressed great regret that there was no means of cleaning the green-seed cotton, or separating it from its seed, since all the lands which were unsuitable for the cultivation of rice would yield large crops of cotton. But until ingenuity could devise some machine which would greatly facilitate the process of cleaning, it was in vain to think of raising cotton for market. Separating one pound of the clean staple from the seed was a day's work for a woman; but the time usually devoted to picking cotton was the evening, after the labor of the field was over. Then the slaves, men, women, and children, were collected in circles with one whose duty it was to rouse the dozing and quicken the indolent. While the company were engaged in this conversation, "Gentlemen," said Mrs. Greene, "apply to my young friend, Mr. Whitney--he can make anything." Upon which she conducted them into a neighboring room, and showed them her tambour-frame, and a number of toys which Mr. Whitney had made or repaired for the children. She then introduced the gentlemen to Whitney himself, extolling his genius and commending him to their notice and friendship. He modestly disclaimed all pretensions to mechanical genius; and when they named their object, he replied that he had never seen either cotton or cotton-seed in his life. Mrs. Greene said to one of the gentlemen: "I have accomplished my aim. Mr. Whitney is a very deserving young man, and to bring him into notice was my object. The interest which our friends now feel for him will, I hope, lead to his getting some employment to enable him to prosecute the study of the law." But a new turn that no one of the company dreamed of had been given to Mr. Whitney's views. It being out of season for cotton in the seed, he went to Savannah and searched among the warehouses and boats until he found a small parcel of it. This he carried home, and communicated his intentions to Mr. Miller, who warmly encouraged him, and assigned him a room in the basement of the house, where he set himself at work with such rude materials and instruments as a Georgia plantation afforded. With these resources, however, he made tools better suited to his purpose, and drew his own wire--of which the teeth of the earliest gins were made--an article which was not at that time to be found in the market of Savannah. Mrs. Greene and Mr. Miller were the only persons ever admitted to his workshop, and the only persons who knew in what way he was employing himself. The many hours he spent in his mysterious pursuits afforded matter of great curiosity and often of raillery to the younger members of the family. Near the close of the winter, the machine was so nearly completed as to leave no doubt of its success. Mrs. Greene was eager to communicate to her numerous friends the knowledge of this important invention, peculiarly important at that time, because then the market was glutted with all those articles which were suited to the climate and soil of Georgia, and nothing could be found to give occupation to the negroes, and support to the white inhabitants. This opened suddenly to the planters boundless resources of wealth, and rendered the occupations of the slaves less unhealthy and laborious than they had been before. Mrs. Greene, therefore, invited to her house gentlemen from different parts of the State, and on the first day after they had assembled she conducted them to a temporary building, which had been erected for the machine, and they saw with astonishment and delight that more cotton could be separated from the seed in one day, by the labor of a single hand, than could be done in the usual manner in the space of many months. Mr. Whitney might now have indulged in bright reveries of fortune and of fame; but we shall have various opportunities of seeing that he tempered his inventive genius with an unusual share of the calm, considerate qualities of the financier. Although urged by his friends to secure a patent and devote himself to the manufacture and introduction of his machines, he coolly replied that on account of the great expense and trouble which always attend the introduction of a new invention, and the difficulty of enforcing a law in favor of patentees, in opposition to the individual interests of so large a number of persons as would be concerned in the culture of this article, it was with great reluctance that he should consent to relinquish the hopes of a lucrative profession, for which he had been destined, with an expectation of indemnity either from the justice or the gratitude of his countrymen, even should the invention answer the most sanguine anticipations of his friends. The individual who contributed most to incite him to persevere in the undertaking was Phineas Miller, Esq. Mr. Miller was a native of Connecticut and graduate of Yale College. Like Mr. Whitney, soon after he had completed his education at college, he came to Georgia as a private teacher in the family of General Greene, and after the decease of the general he became the husband of Mrs. Greene. He had qualified himself for the profession of law, and was a gentleman of cultivated mind and superior talents; but he was of an ardent temperament, and therefore well fitted to enter with zeal into the views which the genius of his friend had laid open to him. He had also considerable funds at command, and proposed to Mr. Whitney to become his joint adventurer, and to be at the whole expense of maturing the invention until it should be patented. If the machine should succeed in its intended operation, the parties agreed, under legal formalities, "that the profits and advantages arising therefrom, as well as all privileges and emoluments to be derived from patenting, making, vending, and working the same, should be mutually and equally shared between them." This instrument bears date May 27, 1793, and immediately afterward they began business, under the firm of Miller & Whitney. An invention so important to the agricultural interest, and, as has proved, to every department of human industry, could not long remain a secret. The knowledge of it soon spread through the State, and so great was the excitement on the subject that multitudes of persons came from all quarters of the State to see the machine; but it was not deemed safe to gratify their curiosity until the patent-right had been secured. But so determined were some of the populace to possess this treasure that neither law nor justice could restrain them--they broke open the building by night and carried off the machine. In this way the public became possessed of the invention; and before Mr. Whitney could complete his model and secure his patent, a number of machines were in successful operation, constructed with some slight deviation from the original, with the hope of evading the penalty for violating the patent-right. As soon as the copartnership of Miller & Whitney was formed, Mr. Whitney repaired to Connecticut, where, as far as possible, he was to perfect the machine, obtain a patent, and manufacture and ship for Georgia such a number of machines as would supply the demand. Within three days after the conclusion of the copartnership, Mr. Whitney having set out for the North, Mr. Miller commenced his long correspondence relative to the cotton-gin. The first letter announces that encroachments upon their rights had already commenced. "It will be necessary," says Mr. Miller, "to have a considerable number of gins made, to be in readiness to send out as soon as the patent is obtained, in order to satisfy the absolute demand, and make people's heads easy on the subject; _for I am informed of two other claimants for the honor of the invention of cotton-gins, in addition to those we knew before_." On June 20, 1793, Mr. Whitney presented his petition for a patent to Mr. Jefferson, then Secretary of State; but the prevalence of the yellow fever in Philadelphia--which was then the seat of government--prevented his concluding the business relative to the patent until several months afterward. To prevent being anticipated, he took, however, the precaution to make oath to the invention before the notary public of the city of New Haven, which he did October 28th of the same year. Mr. Jefferson, who had much curiosity in regard to mechanical inventions, took a peculiar interest in this machine, and addressed to the inventor an obliging letter, desiring further particulars respecting it, and expressing a wish to procure one for his own use. Mr. Whitney accordingly sketched the history of the invention, and of the construction and performances of the machine. "It is about a year," says he, "since I first turned my attention to constructing this machine, at which time I was in the State of Georgia. Within about ten days after my first conception of the plan I made a small though imperfect model. Experiments with this encouraged me to make one on a larger scale; but the extreme difficulty of procuring workmen and proper materials in Georgia prevented my completing the larger one until some time in April last. This, though much larger than my first attempt, is not above one-third as large as the machines may be made with convenience. The cylinder is only two feet two inches in length and six inches diameter. It is turned _by hand_, and requires the strength of one man to keep it in constant motion. It is the stated task of one negro to clean fifty weight--I mean fifty pounds after it is separated from the seed--of the green-seed cotton per day." In the same letter Mr. Jefferson assured Mr. Whitney that a patent would be granted as soon as the model was lodged in the Patent Office. In mentioning the favorable notice of Mr. Jefferson to his friend Stebbins, he adds, with characteristic moderation, "_I hope, by perseverance, I shall make something of it yet._" At the close of this year (1793) Mr. Whitney was to return to Georgia with his cotton-gins, and Mr. Miller had made arrangements for commencing business immediately after his arrival. The plan was to erect machines in every part of the cotton district and engross the entire business themselves. This was evidently an unfortunate scheme. It rendered the business very extensive and complicated, and, as it did not at once supply the demands of the cotton-growers, it multiplied the inducements to make the machines in violation of the patent. Had the proprietors confined their views to the manufacture of the machines and to the sale of patent-rights, it is probable they would have avoided some of the difficulties with which they afterward had to contend. The prospect of making suddenly an immense fortune by the business of ginning, where every third pound of cotton (worth at that time from twenty-five to thirty-three cents) was their own, presented great and peculiar attractions. Mr. Whitney's return to Georgia was delayed until the following April. The importunity of Mr. Miller's letters, written during the preceding period, urging him to come on, evinces how eager the Georgia planters were to enter the new field of enterprise which the genius of Whitney had laid open to them. Nor did they at first, _in general_, contemplate availing themselves of the invention unlawfully. But the minds of the more honorable class of planters were afterward deluded by various artifices, set on foot by designing men, with the view of robbing Mr. Whitney of his just right. One of the greatest difficulties experienced by men of enterprise, at the period under review, was the extreme scarcity of money. In order to carry on the manufacture of cotton-gins, and to make advances in the purchase of cotton and establishments for ginning, to an extent in any degree proportioned to their wishes, Miller & Whitney required a much greater capital than they could command; and the sanguine temperament of Mr. Miller was constantly prompting him to advance in hazards much further than the more cautious spirit of Mr. Whitney would follow. But even the latter found it necessary sometimes to borrow money at an enormous interest. The first loan (for $2000) was made on terms which were deemed at that time peculiarly favorable; yet the company were to pay 5 per cent. premium in addition to the lawful interest. This was in 1794. In consequence of the numerous speculations in new lands into which so many of our countrymen were deluded, and the want of confidence created by the very application for a loan, the pressure for money was continually increasing. In 1796 Mr. Whitney applied to a friend in Boston to raise money for him on a loan, and received the following reply: "I applied to one of those vultures called brokers, who are preying on the purse-strings of the industrious, and was informed that he can procure the sum you wish at a premium of 20 per cent. on the following conditions, viz.: You must make over and deposit with him public securities, such as funded stock, bank stock, or any kind of State notes, or Connecticut reservation land certificates, sufficient, at the going prices, fully to secure the debt and premium." In a more embarrassed state of Mr. Miller's private affairs, several years afterward, he paid the enormous interest of 5, 6, and even 7 per cent. _per month_. We have said that the loan contracted by Mr. Whitney, in 1794, at a premium of 5 per cent. in addition to the lawful interest, was regarded as peculiarly favorable; this is evident from the fact that, during the same year, Mr. Miller urges him to contract a new loan, if possible, for $3000, at 12 or 14 per cent. provided it could be extended over a year. In July, 1794, Mr. Whitney was confined by a severe illness, from which he recovered slowly; but his business received a still further interruption from a very fatal sickness, the scarlet fever, which prevailed in New Haven during this year, and which attacked a number of his workmen. Under all these discouragements Mr. Miller was constantly writing the most urgent letters from Georgia, to press forward the manufacture of machines. "Do not let a deficiency of money, do not let anything," says Mr. Miller, "hinder the speedy construction of the gins. The people of the country are almost running mad for them, and much can be said to justify their importunity. When the present crop is harvested, there will be a real property of at least $50,000, yes, of $100,000, lying useless, unless we can enable the holders to bring it to market. Pray remember that we must have from fifty to one hundred gins between this and another fall, if there are any workmen in New England or in the Middle States to make them. In two years we will begin to take long steps up-hill, in the business of patent ginning, fortune favoring." The general resort of the planters to the cultivation of cotton, and its consequent production in vast quantities, the value of which depended entirely upon the chance of getting it cleaned by the gin, created great uneasiness, which first displayed itself in this pressure upon Miller & Whitney, and afterward afforded great encouragement to the marauders upon the patent-right, who were now becoming numerous and audacious. The _roller-gin_ was at first the most formidable competitor with Whitney's machine. It extricated the seeds by means of rollers, crushing them between revolving cylinders, instead of disengaging them by means of teeth. The fragments of seeds which remained in the cotton rendered its execution much inferior in this respect to Whitney's gin, and it was also much slower in its operation. Great efforts were made, however, to create an impression in favor of its superiority in other respects. But a still more formidable rival appeared early in the year 1795, under the name of the _saw-gin_. It was Whitney's gin, except that the teeth were cut in circular rims of iron, instead of being made of wires, as was the case in the earlier forms of the patent gin. The idea of such teeth had early occurred to Mr. Whitney, as he afterward established by legal proof. But they would have been of no use except in connection with the other parts of his machine, and, therefore, this was a palpable attempt to evade the patent-right, and it was principally in reference to this that the lawsuits were afterward held. It would be difficult to estimate the full value of Mr. Whitney's labors, without going into a minuteness of detail inconsistent with our limits. Every cotton garment bears the impress of his genius, and the ships that transported it across the waters were the heralds of his fame, and the cities that have risen to opulence by the cotton trade must attribute no small share of their prosperity to the inventor of the cotton-gin. We have before us the declaration of the late Mr. Fulton, that Arkwright, Watt, and Whitney--we would add Fulton to the number--were the three men who did most for mankind, of any of their contemporaries; and in the sense in which he intended it, the remark is probably true. EXECUTION OF LOUIS XVI MURDER OF MARAT: CIVIL WAR IN FRANCE A.D. 1793 THOMAS CARLYLE In the early days of the French Revolution many moderates who favored reform of the monarchy, but not its abolition, were wholly alienated by the condemnation and execution of Louis XVI, after what has been regarded as a mock trial by the National Convention. It was a still graver effect of this tragedy that it impelled the leading European powers to join in the great coalition against France contemplated in the Convention of Pillnitz (August, 1791). Scarcely less was the influence upon the internal affairs of France from the murder of Marat by Charlotte Corday. Jean Paul Marat, sometimes called, from the name of a paper which he published, the "Friend of the People," was one of the most ultra-revolutionary of the Jacobin leaders in the National Convention. By his murder the "Red Republicans"--the extreme radical party in the Convention, called the "Mountain" because they occupied the higher seats in the hall--were confirmed in their determination to destroy their opponents, the moderate republicans, called Girondists or Girondins. Many of the Girondist leaders, among them some of the most distinguished men in France, were soon sent to the guillotine, and the Reign of Terror was fully inaugurated. Carlyle calls Marat "atrocious," and so most writers regard him, but there are not wanting some to vindicate his character and purposes. These tragic scenes, and the opening of the civil war which followed, known as the War of La Vendée, are depicted by Carlyle in that manner, all his own, which invests his history of the French Revolution at once with the element of realism and an air of romance. Louis XVI was first deposed by the National Convention, and then brought to trial for conspiring with foreign enemies of France, for aiming to subvert French liberties, and for being the cause of the massacre of the Swiss Guards who defended the Tuileries (August 10, 1792) against a mob seeking the King's life. Louis was found "guilty," and, after a long wrangle in the Convention over the question of punishment, a small majority was given (January 20, 1793) for the decree of death. It was voted that there should be no delay of the execution. To this conclusion, then, hast thou come, O hapless Louis! The Son of Sixty Kings is to die on the Scaffold by form of Law. Under Sixty Kings this same form of Law, form of Society, has been fashioning itself together these thousand years; and has become, one way and other, a most strange Machine. Surely, if needful, it is also frightful, this Machine; dead, blind; not what it should be; which, with swift stroke, or by cold slow torture, has wasted the lives and souls of innumerable men. And behold now a King himself, or say rather Kinghood in his person, is to expire here in cruel tortures; like a Phalaris shut in the belly of his own red-heated Brazen Bull! It is ever so; and thou shouldst know it, O haughty tyrannous man: injustice breeds injustice; curses and falsehoods do verily return "always home," wide as they may wander. Innocent Louis bears the sins of many generations: he too experiences that man's tribunal is not in this Earth; that if he had no Higher one, it were not well with him. A King dying by such violence appeals impressively to the imagination; as the like must do, and ought to do. And yet at bottom it is not the King dying, but the man! Kingship is a coat: the grand loss is of the skin. The man from whom you take his Life, to him can the whole combined world do more? Lally went on his hurdle; his mouth filled with a gag. Miserablest mortals, doomed for picking pockets, have a whole five-act Tragedy in them, in that dumb pain, as they go to the gallows, unregarded; they consume the cup of trembling down to the lees. For Kings and for Beggars, for the justly doomed and the unjustly, it is a hard thing to die. Pity them all: thy utmost pity, with all aids and appliances and throne-and-scaffold contrasts, how far short is it of the thing pitied! A Confessor has come; Abbé Edgeworth, of Irish extraction, whom the King knew by good report, has come promptly on this solemn mission. Leave the Earth alone, then, thou hapless King; it with its malice will go its way, thou also canst go thine. A hard scene yet remains: the parting with our loved ones. Kind hearts environed in the same grim peril with us; to be left _here_! Let the Reader look with the eyes of Valet Cléry through these glass doors, where also the Municipality watches, and see the cruelest of scenes: "At half-past eight, the door of the anteroom opened: the Queen appeared first, leading her Son by the hand; then Madame Royale and Madame Elizabeth: they all flung themselves into the arms of the King. Silence reigned for some minutes; interrupted only by sobs. The Queen made a movement to lead his Majesty towards the inner room where M. Edgeworth was waiting unknown to them: 'No,' said the King, 'let us go into the dining-room; it is there only that I can see you.' They entered there; I shut the door of it, which was of glass. The King sat down, the Queen on his left hand, Madame Elizabeth on his right, Madame Royale almost in front; the young Prince remained standing between his Father's legs. They all leaned toward him, and often held him embraced. This scene of woe lasted an hour and three-quarters; during which we could hear nothing; we could see only that always when the King spoke, the sobbings of the Princesses redoubled, continued for some minutes; and that then the King began again to speak." And so our meetings and our partings do now end! The sorrows we gave each other; the poor joys we faithfully shared, and all our lovings and our sufferings, and confused toilings under the earthly Sun, are over. Thou good soul, I shall never, never through all ages of Time, see thee any more! Never! O Reader, knowest thou that hard word? For nearly two hours this agony lasts; then they tear themselves asunder. "Promise that you will see us on the morrow." He promises: Ah yes, yes; yet once; and go now, ye loved ones; cry to God for yourselves and me! It was a hard scene, but it is over. He will not see them on the morrow. The Queen, in passing through the anteroom, glanced at the Cerberus Municipals; and, with woman's vehemence, said through her tears, "_Vous êtes tous des scélérats!_" ("You are all scoundrels!") King Louis slept sound, till five in the morning, when Cléry, as he had been ordered, awoke him. Cléry dressed his hair. While this went forward, Louis took a ring from his watch, and kept trying it on his finger: it was his wedding-ring, which he is now to return to the Queen as a mute farewell. At half-past six, he took the Sacrament; and continued in devotion, and conference with Abbé Edgeworth. He will not see his Family: it were too hard to bear. At eight, the Municipals enter: the King gives them his Will, and messages and effects; which they, at first, brutally refuse to take charge of: he gives them a roll of gold pieces, a hundred and twenty-five louis; these are to be returned to Malesherbes, who had lent them. At nine, Santerre says the hour is come. The King begs yet to retire for three minutes. At the end of three minutes, Santerre again says the hour is come. "Stamping on the ground with his right foot, Louis answers: '_Partons_' ('Let us go')." How the rolling of those drums comes in through the Temple bastions and bulwarks, on the heart of a queenly wife; soon to be a widow! He is gone then, and has not seen us? A Queen weeps bitterly; a King's Sister and Children. Over all these Four does Death also hover: all shall perish miserably save one; she, as Duchesse d'Angoulême, will live--not happily. At the Temple Gate were some faint cries, perhaps from voices of pitiful women: "_Grâce! Grâce!_" Through the rest of the streets there is silence as of the grave. No man not armed is allowed to be there: the armed, did any even pity, dare not express it, each man overawed by all his neighbors. All windows are down, none seen looking through them. All shops are shut. No wheel-carriage rolls, this morning, in these streets but one only. Eighty thousand armed men stand ranked, like armed statues of men; cannons bristle, cannoneers with match burning, but no word or movement: it is as a city enchanted into silence and stone: one carriage with its escort, slowly rumbling, is the only sound. Louis reads, in his Book of Devotion, the Prayers of the Dying: clatter of this death-march falls sharp on the ear, in the great silence; but the thought would fain struggle heavenward, and forget the Earth. As the clocks strike ten, behold the Place de la Révolution, once Place de Louis Quinze: the Guillotine, mounted near the old Pedestal where once stood the Statue of that Louis! Far round, all bristles with cannons and armed men: spectators crowding in the rear; D'Orléans Égalité there in cabriolet. Swift messengers, _hoquetons_, speed to the Town-hall every three minutes: near by is the Convention sitting--vengeful for Lepelletier. Heedless of all, Louis reads his Prayers of the Dying; not till five minutes yet has he finished; then the Carriage opens. What temper he is in? Ten different witnesses will give ten different accounts of it. He is in the collision of all tempers; arrived now at the black Maelstrom and descent of Death: in sorrow, in indignation, in resignation struggling to be resigned. "Take care of M. Edgeworth," he straitly charges the Lieutenant who is sitting with them: then they two descend. The drums are beating: "_Taisez-vous!_" ("Silence!") he cries "in a terrible voice" (_d'une voix terrible_). He mounts the scaffold, not without delay; he is in _puce_ coat, breeches of gray, white stockings. He strips off the coat; stands disclosed in a sleeve-waistcoat of white flannel. The Executioners approach to bind him: he spurns, resists; Abbé Edgeworth has to remind him how the Saviour, in whom men trust, submitted to be bound. His hands are tied, his head bare; the fatal moment is come. He advances to the edge of the Scaffold, "his face very red," and says: "Frenchmen, I die innocent: it is from the Scaffold and near appearing before God that I tell you so. I pardon my enemies; I desire that France----" A General on horseback, Santerre or another, prances out, with uplifted hand: "_Tambours!_" The drums drown the voice. "Executioners, do your duty!" The Executioners, desperate lest themselves be murdered (for Santerre and his Armed Ranks will strike, if they do not), seize the hapless Louis: six of them desperate, him singly desperate, struggling there; and bind him to their plank. Abbé Edgeworth, stooping, bespeaks him: "Son of Saint Louis, ascend to Heaven." The Axe clanks down; a King's Life is shorn away. It is Monday, January 21, 1793. He was aged thirty-eight years four months and twenty-eight days. Executioner Samson shows the Head: fierce shout of "_Vive la République_" rises, and swells; caps raised on bayonets, hats waving: students of the College of Four Nations take it up, on the far Quais; fling it over Paris. D'Orléans drives off in his cabriolet: the Town-hall Councillors rub their hands, saying, "It is done, It is done." There is dipping of handkerchiefs, of pike-points in the blood. Headsman Samson, though he afterward denied it, sells locks of the hair: fractions of the puce coat are long after worn in rings.--And so, in some half-hour it is done and the multitude has all departed. Pastry-cooks, coffee-sellers, milkmen sing out their trivial quotidian cries: the world wags on, as if this were a common day. In the coffee-houses that evening, says Prudhomme, Patriot shook hands with Patriot in a more cordial manner than usual. Not till some days after, according to Mercier, did public men see what a grave thing it was. In the leafy months of June and July, several French Departments germinate a set of rebellious _paper_-leaves, named Proclamations, Resolutions, Journals, or Diurnals, "of the Union for Resistance to Oppression." In particular, the Town of Caen, in Calvados, sees its paper-leaf of _Bulletin de Caen_ suddenly bud, suddenly establish itself as Newspaper there; under the Editorship of Girondin National Representatives! For among the proscribed Girondins are certain of a more desperate humor. Some, as Vergniaud, Valazé, Gensonné, "arrested in their own houses," will await with stoical resignation what the issue may be. Some, as Brissot, Rabaut, will take to flight, to concealment; which, as the Paris Barriers are opened again in a day or two, is not yet difficult. But others there are who will rush, with Buzot, to Calvados; or far over France, to Lyons, Toulon, Nantes and elsewhither, and then rendezvous at Caen: to awaken as with war-trumpet the respectable Departments; and strike down an anarchic "Mountain" Faction; at least not yield without a stroke at it. Of this latter temper we count some score or more, of the Arrested, and of the Not-yet-arrested: a Buzot, a Barbaroux, Louvet, Guadet, Pétion, who have escaped from Arrestment in their own homes; a Salles, a Pythagorean Valady, a Duchâtel, the Duchâtel that came in blanket and nightcap to vote for the life of Louis, who have escaped from danger and likelihood of Arrestment. These, to the number at one time of Twenty-seven, do accordingly lodge here, at the "_Intendance_, or Departmental Mansion," of the town of Caen in Calvados; welcomed by Persons in Authority; welcomed and defrayed, having no money of their own. And the _Bulletin de Caen_ comes forth, with the most animating paragraphs: How the Bordeaux Department, the Lyons Department, this Department after the other is declaring itself; sixty, or say sixty-nine, or seventy-two respectable Departments either declaring, or ready to declare. Nay Marseilles, it seems, will march on Paris by itself, if need be. So has Marseilles Town said, That she will march. But on the other hand, that Montélimart Town has said, No thoroughfare; and means even to "bury herself" under her own stone and mortar first--of this be no mention in _Bulletin de Caen_. Such animating paragraphs we read in this new Newspaper; and fervors and eloquent sarcasm: tirades against the "Mountain," from the pen of Deputy Salles; which resemble, say friends, Pascal's _Provincials_. What is more to the purpose, these Girondins have got a General-in-chief, one Wimpfen, formerly under Dumouriez; also a secondary questionable General Puisaye, and others; and are doing their best to raise a force for war. National Volunteers, whosoever is of right heart: gather in, ye national Volunteers, friends of Liberty; from our Calvados Townships, from the Eure, from Brittany, from far and near: forward to Paris, and extinguish Anarchy! Thus at Caen, in the early July days, there is a drumming and parading, a perorating and consulting: Staff and Army; Council; Club of _Carabots_, Anti-Jacobin friends of Freedom, to denounce atrocious Marat. With all which, and the editing of _Bulletins_, a National Representative has his hands full. At Caen it is most animated; and, as one hopes, more or less animated in the "Seventy-two Departments that adhere to us." And in a France begirt with Cimmerian invading Coalitions, and torn with an internal La Vendée, _this_ is the conclusion we have arrived at: to put down Anarchy by Civil War! _Durum et durum_, the Proverb says, _non faciunt murum_. La Vendée burns: Santerre can do nothing there; he may return home and brew beer. Cimmerian bombshells fly all along the North. That Siege of Mainz is become famed; lovers of the Picturesque (as Goethe will testify), washed country-people of both sexes, stroll thither on Sundays, to see the artillery work and counterwork; "you only duck a little while the shot whizzes past." Condé is capitulating to the Austrians; Royal Highness of York, these several weeks, fiercely batters Valenciennes. For, alas, our fortified Camp of Famars was stormed; General Dampierre was killed; General Custine was blamed--and indeed is now come to Paris to give "explanations." Against all which the Mountain and atrocious Marat must even make head as they can. They, anarchic Convention as they are, publish Decrees, expostulatory, explanatory, yet not without severity; they ray forth Commissioners, singly or in pairs, the olive-branch in one hand, yet the sword in the other. Commissioners come even to Caen; but without effect. Mathematical Romme, and Prieur named of the _Côte d'Or_, venturing thither, with their olive and sword, are packed into prison: there may Romme lie, under lock and key, "for fifty days"; and meditate his New Calendar, if he please. Cimmeria, La Vendée, and Civil War! Never was Republic One and Indivisible at a lower ebb. Amid which dim ferment of Caen and the World, History specially notices one thing: in the lobby of the Mansion de l'Intendance, where busy Deputies are coming and going, a young Lady with an aged valet, taking grave, graceful leave of Deputy Barbaroux. She is of stately Norman figure; in her twenty-fifth year; of beautiful still countenance: her name is Charlotte Corday, heretofore styled D'Armans, while Nobility still was. Barbaroux has given her a Note to Deputy Duperret--he who once drew his sword in the effervescence. Apparently she will to Paris on some errand? "She was a Republican before the Revolution, and never wanted energy." A completeness, a decision is in this fair female Figure: "by energy she means the spirit that will prompt one to sacrifice himself for his country." What if she, this fair young Charlotte, had emerged from her secluded stillness, suddenly like a Star; cruel-lovely, with half-angelic, half-dæmonic splendor; to gleam for a moment, and in a moment be extinguished: to be held in memory, so bright complete was she, through long centuries! Quitting Cimmerian Coalitions without, and the dim-simmering Twenty-five Millions within, History will look fixedly at this one fair Apparition of a Charlotte Corday; will note whither Charlotte moves, how the little Life burns forth so radiant, then vanishes swallowed of the Night. With Barbaroux's Note of Introduction, and slight stock of luggage, we see Charlotte on Tuesday, July 9th, seated in the Caen Diligence, with a place for Paris. None takes farewell of her, wishes her Good-journey: her Father will find a line left, signifying that she has gone to England, that he must pardon her, and forget her. The drowsy Diligence lumbers along; amid drowsy talk of Politics, and praise of the Mountain; in which she mingles not: all night, all day, and again all night. On Thursday, not long before noon, we are at the bridge of Neuilly; here is Paris with her thousand black domes, the goal and purpose of thy journey! Arrived at the Inn de la Providence in the Rue des Vieux Augustins, Charlotte demands a room; hastens to bed; sleeps all afternoon and night, till the morrow morning. On the morrow morning, she delivers her Note to Duperret. It relates to certain Family Papers which are in the Minister of the Interior's hand; which a Nun at Caen, an old Convent-friend of Charlotte's, has need of; which Duperret shall assist her in getting: this then was Charlotte's errand to Paris? She has finished this, in the course of Friday--yet says nothing of returning. She has seen and silently investigated several things. The Convention, in bodily reality, she has seen; what the Mountain is like. The living physiognomy of Marat she could not see; he is sick at present, and confined to home. About eight on the Saturday morning, she purchases a large sheath-knife in the Palais Royal; then straightway, in the Place des Victoires, takes a hackney-coach. "To the Rue de l'École de Médecine, Number 44." It is the residence of the Citoyen Marat! The Citoyen Marat is ill, and cannot be seen; which seems to disappoint her much. Her business is with Marat, then? Hapless beautiful Charlotte; hapless squalid Marat! From Caen in the utmost West, from Neuchâtel in the utmost East, they two are drawing nigh each other; they two have, very strangely, business together. Charlotte, returning to her Inn, despatches a short Note to Marat; signifying that she is from Caen, the seat of rebellion; that she desires earnestly to see him, and "will put it in his power to do France a great service." No answer. Charlotte writes another Note, still more pressing; sets out with it by coach, about seven in the evening, herself. Tired day-laborers have again finished their Week; huge Paris is circling and simmering, manifold, according to its vague wont: this one fair Figure has decision in it; drives straight--toward a purpose. It is a yellow July evening, we say, the thirteenth of the month; eve of the Bastille day, when "M. Marat," four years ago, in the crowd of the Pont Neuf, shrewdly required of that Besenval Hussar-party, which had such friendly dispositions, "to dismount, and give up their arms, then"; and became notable among Patriot men. Four years: what a road he has travelled; and sits now, about half-past seven o'clock, stewing in slipper-bath; sore-afflicted; ill of Revolution Fever--of what other malady this History had rather not name. Excessively sick and worn, poor man; with precisely eleven-pence-halfpenny of ready-money, in paper; with slipper-bath; strong three-footed stool for writing on, the while; and a squalid--Washerwoman, one may call her: that is his civic establishment in Medical-School Street; thither and not elsewhither has his road led him. Not to the reign of Brotherhood and Perfect Felicity; yet surely on the way toward that? Hark, a rap again! A musical woman's voice, refusing to be rejected: it is the Citoyenne who would do France a service. Marat, recognizing from within, cries, "Admit her!" Charlotte Corday is admitted: "Citoyen Marat, I am from Caen the seat of rebellion, and wished to speak with you." "Be seated, _mon enfant_. Now what are the Traitors doing at Caen? What Deputies are at Caen?" Charlotte names some Deputies. "Their heads shall fall within a fortnight," croaks the eager "People's Friend" clutching his tablets to write. "_Barbaroux, Pétion_" writes he with bare shrunk arm, turning aside in the bath: _Pétion_, and _Louvet_, and--Charlotte has drawn her knife from the sheath; plunges it, with one sure stroke, into the writer's heart. "_À moi, chère amie!_" ("Help, dear!") No more could the Death-choked say or shriek. The helpful Washerwoman running in, there is no Friend of the People, or Friend of the Washerwoman left; but his life with a groan gushes out, indignant, to the shades below. And so Marat, "People's Friend" is ended: the lone Stylites has been hurled down suddenly from his Pillar--whitherward? He that made him knows. Patriot Paris may sound triple and tenfold, in dole and wail; reëchoed by Patriot France; and the Convention, "Chabot pale with terror, declaring that they are to be all assassinated," may decree him Pantheon Honors, Public Funeral, Mirabeau's dust making way for him; and Jacobin Societies, in lamentable oratory, summing up his character, parallel him to One, whom they think it honor to call "the good Sansculotte"--whom we name not here; also a Chapel may be made, for the urn that holds his Heart, in the Place du Carrousel; and new-born children be named Marat; and Lago-di-Como Hawkers bake mountains of stucco into unbeautiful Busts; and David paint his Picture, or Death-Scene; and such other Apotheosis take place as the human genius, in these circumstances, can devise: but Marat returns no more to the light of this Sun. One sole circumstance we have read with clear sympathy, in the old _Moniteur_ Newspaper: how Marat's Brother comes from Neuchâtel to ask of the Convention, "that the deceased Jean Paul Marat's musket be given him." For Marat, too, had a brother and natural affections; and was wrapt once in swaddling clothes, and slept safe in a cradle like the rest of us. Ye children of men! A sister of his, they say, lives still to this day in Paris.[40] As for Charlotte Corday, her work is accomplished; the recompense of it is near and sure. The _chère amie_, and neighbors of the house, flying at her, she "overturns some movables," entrenches herself till the gendarmes arrive; then quietly surrenders; goes quietly to the Abbaye Prison: she alone quiet, all Paris sounding, in wonder, in rage or admiration, round her. Duperret is put in arrest, on account of her; his Papers sealed--which may lead to consequences. Fauchet, in like manner; though Fauchet had not so much as heard of her. Charlotte, confronted with these two Deputies, praises the grave firmness of Duperret, censures the dejection of Fauchet. On Wednesday morning, the thronged Palais de Justice and Revolutionary Tribunal can see her face; beautiful and calm: she dates it "Fourth day of the Preparation of Peace." A strange murmur ran through the Hall, at sight of her, you could not say of what character. Tinville has his indictments and tape papers; the cutler of the Palais Royal will testify that he sold her the sheath-knife; "All these details are needless," interrupted Charlotte; "it is I that killed Marat." "By whose instigation?" "By no one's." "What tempted you, then?" "His crimes!" "I killed one man," added she, raising her voice extremely (_extrêmement_), as they went on with their questions, "I killed one man to save a hundred thousand; a villain to save innocents; a savage wild beast to give repose to my country. I was a Republican before the Revolution; I never wanted energy." There is therefore nothing to be said. The public gazes astonished: the hasty limners sketch her features, Charlotte not disapproving: the men of law proceed with their formalities. The doom is Death as a murderess. To her Advocate she gives thanks; in gentle phrase, in high-flown classical spirit. To the Priest they send her she gives thanks; but needs not any shriving, any ghostly or other aid from him. On this same evening, therefore, about half past seven o'clock, from the gate of the Conciergerie, to a City all on tip-toe, the fatal Cart issues; seated on it a fair young creature, sheeted in red smock of Murderess; so beautiful, serene, so full of life; journeying toward death--alone amid the World. Many take off their hats, saluting reverently; for what heart but must be touched? Others growl and howl. Adam Lux, of Mainz, declares that she is greater than Brutus; that it were beautiful to die with her: the head of this young man seems turned. At the Place de la Révolution, the countenance of Charlotte wears the same still smile. The executioners proceed to bind her feet; she resists, thinking it meant as an insult; on a word of explanation, she submits with cheerful apology. As the last act, all being now ready, they take the neckerchief from her neck; a blush of maidenly shame overspreads that fair face and neck; the cheeks were still tinged with it when the executioner lifted the severed head, to show it to the people. "It is most true," says Forster, "that he struck the cheek insultingly; for I saw it with my eyes: the Police imprisoned him for it." But during these same hours, another guillotine is at work on another; Charlotte, for the Girondins, dies at Paris to-day; Chalier, by the Girondins, dies at Lyons to-morrow. From rumbling of cannon along the streets of that City, it has come to firing of them, to rabid fighting: Nièvre Chol and the Girondins triumph; behind whom there is, as everywhere, a Royalist Faction waiting to strike in. Trouble enough at Lyons; and the dominant party carrying it with a high hand! For, indeed, the whole South is astir; incarcerating Jacobins; arming for Girondins: wherefore we have got a "Congress of Lyons"; also a "Revolutionary Tribunal of Lyons," and Anarchists shall tremble. So Chalier was soon found guilty, of Jacobinism, of murderous Plot, "address with drawn dagger on the sixth of February last"; and, on the morrow, he also travels his final road, along the streets of Lyons, "by the side of an ecclesiastic, with whom he seems to speak earnestly"--the axe now glittering nigh. He could weep, in old years, this man, and "fall on his knees on the pavement," blessing Heaven at sight of Federation Programmes or the like; then he pilgrimed to Paris to worship Marat and the Mountain: now Marat and he are both gone--we said he could not end well. Jacobinism groans inwardly, at Lyons, but dare not outwardly. Chalier, when the Tribunal sentenced him, made answer: "My death will cost this City dear." Montélimart Town is not buried under its ruins; yet Marseilles is actually marching, under order of a "Lyons Congress"; is incarcerating Patriots; the very Royalists now showing face. Against which a General Cartaux fights, though in small force, and with him an Artillery Major, of the name of--Napoleon Bonaparte. This Napoleon, to prove that the Marseillese have no chance ultimately, not only fights but writes; publishes his _Supper of Beaucaire_, a Dialogue which has become curious. Unfortunate Cities, with their actions and their reactions! Violence to be paid with violence in geometrical ratio; Royalism and Anarchism both striking in--the final net-amount of which geometrical series, what man shall sum? Is not La Vendée still blazing--alas too literally--rogue Rossignol burning the very corn-mills? General Santerre could do nothing there. General Rossignol in blind fury, often in liquor, can do less than nothing. Rebellion spreads, grows ever madder. Happily those lean Quixote figures, whom we saw retreating out of Mainz, "bound not to serve against the Coalition for a year," have got to Paris. National Convention packs them into post-vehicles and conveyances; sends them swiftly, by post, into La Vendée. There valiantly struggling in obscure battle and skirmish, under rogue Rossignol, let them, unlaurelled, save the Republic and "be cut down gradually to the last man." Does not the Coalition, like a fire-tide, pour in; Prussia through the opened Northeast; Austria, England through the Northwest? General Houchard prospers no better there than General Custine did. Let him look to it! Through the Eastern and the Western Pyrenees Spain has deployed itself; spreads, rustling with Bourbon banners, over the face of the South. Ashes and embers of confused Girondin civil war covered that region already. Marseilles is damped down, not quenched--to be quenched in blood. Toulon, terror-struck, too far gone for turning, has flung itself, ye righteous Powers, into the hands of the English! On Toulon Arsenal there flies a flag--nay not even the Fleur-de-lis of a Louis Pretender; there flies that accursed St. George's Cross of the English and Admiral Hood! What remnant of sea-craft, arsenals, roperies, war navy France had, has given itself to these enemies of human nature, "_ennemis du genre humain_." Beleaguer it, bombard it, ye Commissioners Barras, Fréron, Robespierre Junior; thou General Cartaux, General Dugommier; above all, thou remarkable Artillery-Major, Napoleon Bonaparte! Hood is fortifying himself, victualling himself; means, apparently, to make a new Gibraltar of it. But lo, in the Autumn night, late night, among the last of August, what sudden red sun-blaze is this that has risen over Lyons City; with a noise to deafen the world? It is the Powder-tower of Lyons, nay the Arsenal with Four Powder-towers, which has caught fire in the Bombardment; and sprung into the air, carrying "a hundred and seventeen houses" after it. With a light, one fancies, as of the noon sun; with a roar second only to the Last Trumpet! All living sleepers far and wide it has awakened. What a sight was that, which the eye of History saw, in the sudden nocturnal sun-blaze! The roofs of hapless Lyons, and all its domes and steeples made momentarily clear; Rhone and Saône streams flashing suddenly visible; and height and hollow, hamlet and smooth stubble-field, and all the region round; heights, alas, all scarped and counterscarped, into trenches, curtains, redoubts; blue Artillery-men, little Powder devilkins, plying their hell-trade there through the _not_ ambrosial night! Let the darkness cover it again; for it pains the eye. Of a truth, Chalier's death is costing the City dear. Convention Commissioners, Lyons Congresses have come and gone; and action there was and reaction; bad ever growing worse; till it has come to this; Commissioner Dubois-Crancé, "with seventy thousand men, and all the Artillery of several Provinces," bombarding Lyons day and night. Worse things still are in store. Famine is in Lyons, and ruin and fire. Desperate are the sallies of the besieged; brave Précy, their National Colonel and Commandant, doing what is in man: desperate but ineffectual. Provisions cut off; nothing entering our city but shot and shell! The Arsenal has roared aloft; the very Hospital will be battered down, and the sick buried alive. A black Flag hung on this latter noble Edifice, appealing to the pity of the besiegers; for though maddened, were they not still our brethren? In their blind wrath, they took it for a flag of defiance, and aimed thitherward the more. Bad is growing ever worse here; and how will the worse stop, till it have grown worst of all? Commissioner Dubois will listen to no pleading, to no speech, save this only: "We surrender at discretion." Lyons contains in it subdued Jacobins; dominant Girondins; secret Royalists. And now, mere deaf madness and cannon-shot enveloping them, will not the desperate Municipality fly, at last, into the arms of Royalism itself? Majesty of Sardinia was to bring help, but it failed. Emigrant D'Autichamp, in name of the Two Pretender-Royal-Highnesses, is coming through Switzerland with help; coming, not yet come: Précy hoists the Fleur-de-lis! At sight of which all true Girondins sorrowfully fling down their arms. Let our Tricolor brethren storm us then and slay us in their wrath; with _you_ we conquer not. The famishing women and children are sent forth: deaf Dubois sends them back--rains in more fire and madness. Our "redoubts of cotton-bags" are taken, retaken; Précy under his Fleur-de-lis is valiant as Despair. What will become of Lyons? It is a siege of seventy days. Or see, in these same weeks, far in the Western waters: breasting through the Bay of Biscay, a greasy dingy little Merchant ship, with Scotch skipper; under hatches whereof sit, disconsolate, the last forlorn nucleus of Girondism, the Deputies from Quimper! Several have dissipated themselves, whithersoever they could. Poor Riouffe fell into the talons of Revolutionary Committee and Paris Prison. The rest sit here under hatches; reverend Pétion with his gray hair, angry Buzot, suspicious Louvet, brave young Barbaroux, and others. They have escaped from Quimper, in this sad craft; are now tacking and struggling; in danger from the waves, in danger from the English, in still worse danger from the French--banished by Heaven and Earth to the greasy belly of this Scotch skipper's Merchant vessel, unfruitful Atlantic raving round. They are for Bordeaux, if peradventure hope yet linger there. Enter not Bordeaux, O Friends! Bloody Convention Representatives, Tallien and such like, with their Edicts, with their Guillotine, have arrived there; Respectability is driven under ground; Jacobinism lords it on high. From that Réole landing-place, or "Beak of Ambès," as it were, pale Death, waving his Revolutionary Sword of Sharpness, waves you elsewhither! On one side or the other of that Bec d'Ambès, the Scotch Skipper with difficulty moors, a dexterous greasy man; with difficulty lands his Girondins; who, after reconnoitring, must rapidly burrow in the Earth; and so, in subterranean ways, in friends' back-closets, in cellars, barn-lofts, in caves of Saint-Emilion and Libourne, stave off cruel Death. Unhappiest of all Senators! FOOTNOTES: [40] Written in 1836-1837.--ED. THE REIGN OF TERROR A.D. 1794 FRANÇOIS P. G. GUIZOT By the Reign of Terror, or the "Terror," is meant that period of the first revolution in France during which the ruling faction caused thousands of obnoxious persons to be sent to the guillotine. The Terror is usually considered as beginning in March, 1793, when the Revolutionary Tribunal was established by the National Convention. This tribunal was an extraordinary court empowered to deal with all acts or persons hostile to the Revolution. In July, 1793, Robespierre became a member of the Committee of Public Safety, and, with Saint-Just, was most prominently connected with the Terror. He secured a decree, known as the decree of the 22d Prairial, "to accelerate the movements of the Committee, and open for them a shorter route to the guillotine," whereby persons marked for death might be executed as soon as recognized. Against this bloody decree it is said that even the "Mountain"--the Red Republican party in the Convention--recoiled. It was nevertheless remorselessly carried out, and "caused torrents of blood to flow." The climax of the Terror was reached in 1794, and its end came in July of that year, when Robespierre and his associates were overthrown. It was followed by a reaction against the excesses of the revolutionists, the closing of the radical clubs of the Jacobins and others, and the release of those whom the Revolutionary Tribunal had imprisoned on suspicion. The tribunal itself, together with the Committee of Public Safety, who had executed the fierce will of the Convention, was speedily swept away. It is a hideous spectacle to contemplate the enthusiasm of crime, and see men madly intoxicating themselves with their own atrocities. The Revolutionary Tribunal was in operation from March, 1793; the registry of condemnations had reached the number of five hundred seventy-seven. From 22 Prairial to 9 Thermidor (June 10, to July 27, 1794), two thousand two hundred eighty-five unfortunates perished on the scaffold. Fouquier-Tinville[41] comprehended the thought of Robespierre. For the dock he had substituted benches, upon which he huddled together at one time the crowd of the accused. One day he erected the guillotine in the very hall of the tribunal. The Committee of Public Safety had a moment of fright. "Thou art wishing then to demoralize punishment!" cried Collot d'Herbois. A hundred sixty accused persons had been brought from the Luxembourg under pretence of a conspiracy in prison. The lower class of prisoners were encouraged to act as spies, thus furnishing pretexts for punishment. The judges sat with pistols ready to hand; the President cast his eyes over the lists for the day and called upon the accused. "Dorival, do you know anything of the conspiracy?" "No!" "I expected that you would make that reply; but it won't succeed. Bring another." "Champigny, are you not an ex-noble?" "Yes." "Bring another." "Guidreville, are you a priest?" "Yes, but I have taken the oath." "You have no right to say any more. Another." "Ménil, were you not a domestic of the ex-constitutional Menou?" "Yes." "Another." "Vély, were you not architect for Madame?" "Yes, but I was disgraced in 1789." "Another." "Gondrecourt, is not your father-in-law at the Luxembourg?" "Yes." "Another." "Durfort, were you not in the bodyguard?" "Yes, but I was dismissed in 1789." "Another." So the examination went on. The questions, the answers, the judgment, the condemnation, were all simultaneous. The juries did not leave the hall; they gave their opinions with a word or a look. Sometimes errors were evident in the lists. "I am not accused," exclaimed a prisoner one day. "No matter; what is thy name? See, it is written now. Another." M. de Loizerolles perished under the name of his father. Jokes were mingled with the sentences. The Maréchale de Mouchy was old, and did not reply to the questions of President Dumas. "The _citoyenne_ is deaf" (_sourde_), said the registrar; "Put down that she has conspired secretly" (_sourdement_), replied Dumas. It became necessary to forbid Fouquier-Tinville to send more than sixty victims a day to the scaffold. "Things go well, and see the heads fall like slates with my file-firing; the next decade we shall do better still; I shall want at least four hundred fifty." The lists were prepared in the prison itself, by the class of informers known as _moutons_.[42] The public accuser, like the judges and the jailers, was often ignorant of the names of the human flock crowded in the dungeons. Death recalled them to recollection. In the evening, under the windows of each prison, the list of the victims of the day was shouted out. "These are they who have gained prizes in the lottery of Saint Guillotine." The unfortunates who crowded to the windows thus learned the tidings of the execution of those they loved. The horrors of the unforeseen and unknown were added to the agonies of death and separation. Under the windows of the Conciergerie the names of the Maréchale de Noailles, the Duchesse d'Ayen and the Vicomtesse de Noailles, who died together on the scaffold, were proclaimed. Among the prisoners was Madame la Fayette, herself awaiting death; happily she did not recognize in the coarse accents of the criers the cherished names of her grandmother, mother, and sister. The peasants of the Vendée[43] came to die at Paris, like the Carmelites of Compiègne or the magistrates of Toulouse. It was astonishing that there still remained in the dungeons great lords and noble ladies, bearing the most illustrious names in the history of France; on the 8th and 9th Thermidor the poets Roucher and André Chénier; Baron Trenck, famous for his numerous escapes; the Maréchale d'Armentières, the Princesse de Chimay, the Comtesse de Narbonne, the Duc de Clermont-Tonnerre, the Marquis de Crussol, and the Messieurs de Trudaine, counsellors of the Parliament of Paris, perished upon the scaffold. Insulters always surrounded the scaffold, but their number had decreased; the Committee of Public Safety no longer had recourse to the popular manoeuvres of its early days. Terror was now sufficient to insure the silence and submission of the victims. Paris grew weary of the horrors of which it was witness; the odor of blood had driven away the residents from the houses adjacent to the Place de la Révolution; a new guillotine had been erected upon the Place du Trône. Upon the route along which ran the fatal carts shops were closed, and passers-by endeavored to avoid meeting the procession. A few rare loungers of the lowest class alone walked in the gardens of the Tuileries and the Champs-Élysées. All was silent, but pity was growing in the minds of men. The distant sound of the horrors that were general throughout France redoubled the terror of Paris. The provincial sufferings were not uniform, and the fury of the representative commissioners was unequally distributed. Either by a happy chance, or it might be by an instinctive knowledge of the character of the population, the revolutionary scaffold was never set up in Lower Normandy; the Vendée, on the contrary, expiated its long resistance in its blood, and Carrier filled with terror the city of Nantes, always favorable to revolution. He had tried guillotine and grape-shot, but both were too tardy in their action to suit his zeal. He conceived the idea of crowding the condemned into ships with valves, launched upon the Loire: the beautiful river saw these unfortunates struggling in its waters. Henceforth the executioners tied the prisoners together by one hand and one foot; these "Republican Marriages," as they were called, insured the speedy death of the victims. The waters of the Loire became infected; its shores were covered with corpses; the fishes themselves could no longer serve as nourishment for human beings; fever decimated the inhabitants of Nantes. The fury of Carrier bordered on madness: he caused the little Vendean infants, collected by Breton charity, to be cast into the water. "It is necessary," said he, "to slay the wolves' cubs." The same terror also, and the same atrocities which desolated the West, reigned in the North and the South. In the Department of Vaucluse, Maignet, in the Pas-de-Calais, Joseph Lebon, had obtained the erection of local revolutionary tribunals. "The arrests which I have ordered in the Departments of Vaucluse and the Bouches-du-Rhône amount to twelve or fifteen thousand," wrote Maignet to his friend Couthon. "It would require an army to conduct them to Paris; besides, it is necessary to appal, and the blow is only terrifying when struck in the sight of those who have lived with the guilty." They had felled the tree of liberty in the little town of Bédouin; sixty-three of the inhabitants were executed; the rest fled. "I have wished to give the national vengeance a grand character," wrote Maignet to the Committee of Public Safety, "and I have ordered that the town should be given to the flames. If you think this new measure too rigorous, let me know your wishes, and do not read my letter to the Convention." To the complaints of Rovère, representative of Vaucluse, Robespierre replied, "We are content with Maignet; he knows well how to guillotine." Joseph Lebon established an orchestra close by the guillotine; he caused the _Ça ira_[44] to be sung during the executions, which he witnessed from his balcony. Formerly a priest and well esteemed, he was moderate at the outburst of the Revolution, but his reason had yielded to the dizziness of despotic power; it was of a veritable madman that Barère said: "Lebon has completely beaten the aristocrats, and he has protected Cambrai against the approaches of the enemy; besides, what is there that is not permitted to the hatred of a republican against the aristocracy? The Revolution and revolutionary measures must only be spoken of with respect. Liberty is a virgin whose veil it is culpable to raise." For some time Robespierre had appeared but rarely at the Committee of Public Safety; he reserved himself for the department of general police, that is to say, the direction of the "Terror" throughout France. Underhand dissensions and jealousies began to creep in among these criminals, secretly disquieted by projects of which they were reciprocally suspicious. Billaud-Varennes and Collot d'Herbois dreaded Robespierre and began to conspire against him. Robespierre established himself with the Jacobins, as in an impregnable fortress. The President and Vice-President of the Revolutionary Tribunal, and the commandant of the armed forces, Henriot, awaited his orders. They pressed him to take action against the enemies whom he had himself denounced to the Jacobins. "Formerly," said he, "on the 13th Messidor [July 1st], the underhand faction that has sprung from the remnant of the followers of Danton and Camille Desmoulins attacked the committees _en masse_; now they prefer to attack a few members in particular; in order to succeed in breaking the bundle, they attribute to a single individual that which appertains to the whole Government. They dare not say that the Revolutionary Tribunal has been instituted in order to swallow up the National Convention; they have spoken of a dictator, and named him; it is I who have been thus designated, and you would tremble if I told you in what place." A dictatorship had, in fact, been spoken of, but it was Saint-Just, on returning from the army, who had uttered this terrible word, in a conference of the Committees of Public Safety and General Security expressly convoked by Robespierre. The latter had proposed the institution of four great revolutionary tribunals, in order to forge new weapons for himself; but the conference refused. Robespierre went out irritated and gloomy. "Misfortune has reached a climax," cried Saint-Just. "You are in a state of anarchy. The Convention is inundating France with laws inoperative and often impracticable. The representatives accompanying the armies dispose at their will of the public fortune and our military destinies; the representatives sent as Commissioners to the Provinces usurp all power and amass gold for which they substitute assignats. How can such political and legislative disorder be regulated? I declare upon my honor and my conscience, I see only one means of safety; and that is the concentration of power in the hands of one man who has enough genius, force, patriotism, and generosity to become the embodiment of public authority. It is necessary, above all, to have a man endowed with long practical knowledge of the Revolution, its principles, its phases, its modes of action, and its agents. Finally, he must be a man who has the general good-will and confidence of the people in his favor, and who is at once a virtuous and inflexible as well as an incorruptible citizen. That man is Robespierre; it is he only who can save the State. I ask that he be invested with the dictatorship, and that the committees make a proposition to this effect at the Convention to-morrow." The imprudence of the speech equalled the audacity of the act. The members of the two councils looked at each other, hesitating to accept the declaration of war. A few of them contended for their lives against the vengeance of Robespierre and his friends. "This Robespierre is insatiable," said Barère, with anger. "Let him ask for Tallien, Bourdon de l'Oise, Thuriot, Guffroy, Rovère, Lecointre, Panis, Barras, Fréron, Legendre, Monestier, Dubois Crancé, Fouché, Cambon, and all the Dantonist remnant, well and good; but to Duval, Audouin, Léonard Bourdon, Vadier, Vauland, it is impossible to consent." The two parties waited face to face, shrinking from the blows they were about to exchange, counting on the impatience or temerity of their adversaries. The boldest among the opposition ventured on a circuitous attack by denouncing the sect of mystic dreamers led by a demented woman, Catherine Théot, styled by her followers, Mother of God. Her principal disciple was Gerle, formerly prior of the Chartreuse, and a member of the Constituent Assembly. When the papers of this handful of maniacs were seized, the copy of a letter to Robespierre was found; he was to have been the Messiah of the sect. Vadier denounced at the Convention this elementary school of fanaticism, discovered on a third floor in the Rue Contrescarpe, and who were connected, he said, with the machinations of Pitt; but he dared not speak of the letter to Robespierre. The latter undoubtedly took some interest in Catherine Théot, for he did not allow the affair to be followed up; the prophetess died in prison soon after. Robespierre had said to a deputation from Aisne: "In the situation in which it now is, gangrened by corruption, and without power to remedy it, the Convention can no longer save the Republic: both will perish together. The proscription of patriots is the order of the day. For myself, I have already one foot in the tomb, in a few days I shall place the other there; the rest is in the hands of Providence." Nevertheless he began the attack, urged forward by men who had attached their fortunes to his own, and by the disquietudes which agitated his sour and dissatisfied spirit. He could no longer put up with advice even from his most faithful friends, and the inflexible Saint-Just told him to calm himself; "Empire is for the phlegmatic." A menacing petition from the Jacobins preceded by a few hours a grand discourse from the dictator. He always reckoned on the effect of his discourses, and all the committees, one after another, had suffered from the asperity of his attacks. "The accusations are all concentrated upon me," said he; "if anyone casts patriots into prison in place of shutting up the aristocrats there, it is said that Robespierre wills it. If the numerous agents of the Committee of General Security extend their vexations and rapine in all directions, it is said that Robespierre has sent them; if a new law irritates the property-holders, it is Robespierre who is ruining them; and meanwhile, in what hands are your finances? In the hands of feuillants, of known cheats, of the Cambons, Mallarmés and Ramels. Survey the field of victory, look at Belgium; dissensions have been sown among our generals, the military aristocracy is protected, faithful generals are persecuted, the military administration is enveloped with a suspicious authority; they talk to you of war with academic lightness, as if it cost neither blood nor labor. The truths that I bring you are surely equal to epigrams. "There exists a conspiracy against public liberty; it owes its force to a criminal coalition which intrigues in the very bosom of the Convention. That coalition has its accomplices in the Committee of General Security, and in the _bureaux_, which they control. Some members of the Committee of Public Safety are implicated in this plot; the coalition thus formed seeks to ruin patriots and the country. What is the remedy for this evil? To punish the traitors, to purify the Committee of General Security, and subordinate it to the Committee of Public Safety; to purify this committee itself, and constitute it the Government under the authority of the National Convention, which is the centre of authority and the chief judicial power. Thus would all the factions be crushed by raising on their ruins the power of justice and liberty. If it is impossible to advocate these principles without being set down as ambitious, I shall conclude that tyranny reigns among us, but not that I ought to hold my tongue; for what can be objected to a man who is right, and who knows how to die for his country? I am put here in order to combat crime, not to govern it. The time has not yet come when good men can serve their country with impunity." They listened in silence; no applause, no complaint had interrupted the orator. For a long time the Convention had been unaccustomed to see the masters of their fortunes and their lives making appeal to their supreme authority. Their _rôle_ had long been limited to taking part in oratorical tournaments and voting decrees. They did not yield, however, to the seduction, and their faces remained grave and sombre. No one rose to speak, but they began to exchange a few remarks, and a murmur ran from bench to bench. The glove was thrown down, but as yet no champion advanced to take it up. At length, and as if the courage of all was reanimated at once by the same resolution, Vadier, Cambon, and Billaud-Varennes rose together to mount the tribune. Cambon had been wounded in his just pride as a financier and an honest man; he could scarcely wait his turn. "It is time," cried he, "to speak the entire truth. Is it I who need to be accused of making myself master in any respect? The man who has made himself master of everything, the man who paralyzes our will, is he who has just spoken--Robespierre." At the same moment and from all lips came the same cries. "It is Robespierre," said Billaud-Varennes. "It is Robespierre," repeated Panis and Vadier. "Let him give an account of the crimes of the deputies whose death he demanded from the Jacobins." And as he hesitated, troubled by the vehemence of the attacks, "You who pretend to have the courage of virtue, have the courage of truth," cried Charlier to him; "name, name the individuals." In the midst of a growing confusion the Assembly revoked the order to print the discourse of Robespierre. It was to the two committees, filled with his enemies, that the denunciation of the dictator was referred. Robespierre took refuge with the Jacobins; he was troubled by the opposition he had encountered, without being able to draw from it new forces for the struggle. He redelivered his discourse, this time welcomed with loud applause. "My friends," said he, "that which you have just heard is my dying testament. I have seen to-day that the league of the wicked is too strong for me to hope to escape it. I am ready to drink the hemlock." "I will drink it with thee," cried David. The men of action were less resigned. Henriot spoke of marching on the Convention, but Robespierre still wished to speak; it was the course of May 31st that he wanted to follow. The hall was crowded; people entered without tickets. "Name thy enemies," they shouted to Robespierre; "name them; we will deliver them to thee." Collot d'Herbois arrived, attempting a few protestations of devotion; he was hooted and constrained to retire. Hesitation and doubt still troubled every spirit and paralyzed every hand. Collot and Billaud-Varennes returned to the Committee of Public Safety. There they found Saint-Just, who had to read a report, but he had not brought it with him. The two new-comers apostrophized him with violence. "Thou art the accomplice of Robespierre; the project of your infamous triumvirate is to assassinate us all, but if we succumb you will not long enjoy the fruit of your crimes--the people will tear you in pieces; thy pockets are full of denunciations against us; produce thy lists." They advanced menacingly; Saint-Just shrank back, very pale. As he went out he promised to read his report next day. Neither of the two parties had as yet taken any effectual measure; they had contracted the habit of being very prodigal of words. Tallien had endeavored to gain over all that remained of the Left; three times he was repulsed by Boissy d'Anglas and his friends. As he returned once more to the charge, "Yes," they at length replied, with an ingenuousness almost cynical, "yes, if you are the strongest." Tallien was intrusted to direct the attack in the Convention. Saint-Just had just entered; he had not appeared at the Committee of Public Safety. "You have blighted my heart," he wrote to his colleagues, "I am about to open it at the National Assembly." He presented himself, however, as reporter of the Committee. In seeing him pass, Tallien, occupied in assembling his forces, said loudly, "It is the moment; let us enter." Saint-Just commenced: "I am not of any faction; I fight against all. The course of events has brought it about that this tribune should be perhaps the Tarpeian rock to him who shall come to tell you that the members of the Government--" Tallien did not leave him time to finish; he demanded leave to speak upon a motion of order. "Nor I either; I am not of any faction; I only belong to myself and to liberty. It is I who will make you hear the truth: no good citizen can restrain his tears over the unfortunate condition of public affairs. Yesterday a member of the Government was here alone and denounced his colleagues: to-day another comes to do as much by him; these dissensions aggravate the evils of our country. I demand that the veil be torn away." Applause echoed from all parts of the hall. Saint-Just wished to continue his speech. "Thou art not reporter," shouted the members. He remained motionless in the tribune, while Billaud-Varennes came and stood beside him. He cast his eyes over the hall. "I see here," said he, "one of the men who yesterday, at the Jacobins, promised the massacre of the National Convention; let him be arrested." The officers obeyed. "The Assembly is at the present time in danger of massacre on every hand," continued Billaud; "it will perish if it is feeble." The contagion of courage spread from man to man; all the deputies stood up waving their hats. "Be tranquil," they cried to the orator; "we will not give way." "You will tremble when you see in what hands you are," continued Billaud; "the armed force is confided to parricidal hands. The chief of the National Guard is an infamous conspirator, the accomplice of Hébert; Lavalette was a noble, driven out of the Army of the North and saved by Robespierre, whom he obeys. The Revolutionary Tribunal is in his hands; everywhere he has made his will supreme, and has sought to render himself absolute master; he has dismissed the best Revolutionary Committee of Paris, he has ceased to frequent the Committee of Public Safety since the day after the decree of the 22d Prairial, which has been so disastrous to patriots. He excites the Jacobins against the Assembly." A few feeble protestations were now heard. "There is some murmuring, I think," said the speaker, insolently. He was about to continue the course of his accusations; but beside him in the tribune Robespierre had replaced Saint-Just. His natural pallor had become livid, rage sparkled in his glance. "I demand liberty to speak," he cried. A single shout echoed through the hall. "Down with the tyrant! Down with the tyrant!" "I demand liberty to speak," Robespierre violently repeated. Tallien dashed into the tribune. "I demand that the veil be torn away immediately," he cried; "the work is accomplished, the conspirators are unmasked. Yesterday, at the Jacobins, I saw the army of the new Cromwell formed, and I have come here armed with a poignard to pierce his heart if the Assembly has not the courage to decree his accusation. I demand the arrest of Henriot and his staff. There will be no May 31st, no proscription; national justice alone will strike the miscreants." "I demand that Dumas be arrested," added Billaud-Varennes, "as well as Boulanger [formerly lieutenant of Ronsin in the Vendée]; he was the most ardent yesterday night at the Jacobins." Meanwhile Robespierre was still in the tribune. Several times he strove to begin speaking, but the same cry drowned his voice, "Down with the tyrant!" The little group of those who were faithful to him, close pressed together, followed him with their eyes without speaking, without seconding his efforts; the mass of the Assembly, so docile a few days before, was agitated with a violence that became more and more hostile. Barère hesitated no longer. It is said that he had prepared two statements; one favorable to and the other hostile to Robespierre. He proposed to abolish the grade of commandant-general, and to call to the bar the mayor Fleuriot and the National agent Payan, to answer there for public tranquillity. The decree was voted; on all sides arose accusations against Robespierre, everyone hastening to denounce him. "I demand liberty to speak, to bring back this discussion to its true end and aim," said Tallien. Robespierre raised his head; "I shall know well how to bring it there," said he, in those imperious accents which formerly cowed the Assembly. Tallien continued without noticing the interruption. "The conspiracy is quite complete in the discourse read and reread yesterday. It is there that I find arms to strike down this man, whose virtue and patriotism have been so much vaunted; this man, who appeared three days only after August 10th; this man, who has abandoned his post at the Committee of Public Safety, in order to come and calumniate his colleagues. It is not necessary to discuss in any particular detail of the tyrant's career; his whole life condemns him." Robespierre clutched at the tribune with both hands. He no longer sought aid from the "Mountain," henceforth roused against him; he turned his face toward the "Plain." "It is to you pure and virtuous men that I address myself; I don't talk with scoundrels." "Down with the tyrant!" responded the "Plain." Thuriot, who presided, rang his bell. "President of assassins," cried Robespierre, "yet once more I demand liberty to speak." His voice grew feebler. "The blood of Danton is choking him," cried Gamier de l'Aude. "Will this man long remain master of the Convention?" asked Charles Duval. "Let us make an end! A decree, a decree!" shouted Lasseau, at length. "A tyrant is hard to strike down," said Fréron, in a loud voice. Robespierre remained in the tribune, turning in his hands an open knife, alone, exposed to the vengeful anger of them all. "Send me to death!" he cried to his enemies. And the voices replied: "Thou hast merited it a thousand times. Down with the tyrant!" The decree was voted in the midst of tumult. "I ask to share the lot of my brother," cried the younger Robespierre. "It is understood," said Lanchet, "that we have voted the arrest of the two Robespierres, of Couthon, and Saint-Just." "I ask to be comprised in the decree," protested Lebas, faithfully devoted to Saint-Just. "The triumvirate of Robespierre, Couthon, and Saint-Just," said Fréron, "recalls the proscriptions of Sylla. Couthon is a tiger thirsting for the blood of the National representatives; he has dared to speak at the Jacobins of five or six heads of the Convention; our corpses were to be the steps for him to mount the throne!" The paralytic made a gesture of bitter disdain. "I _mount_ the throne!" said he. Thuriot proclaimed the decree; the acclamations that re-echoed were furious, intoxicated with the joy of triumph. "Long live liberty! Long live the Republic! Down with the tyrants; to the bar with the accused." The officers, still bewildered with such an abrupt and sudden change, had not dared to lay a hand upon the fallen dictator; rage broke forth in the ranks of the Assembly. Robespierre and his brother, Saint-Just, Lebas, descended slowly to the place lately reserved for their enemies. Couthon had just placed himself there. The decree of arrest dispersed them in different prisons; they had set out when the Assembly suspended its sitting for an instant. "Let us go out together," said Robespierre. The crowd, like the Assembly, gazed on them without acclamations and without manifesting any sympathy for them; their army was re-forming elsewhere. The Commune of Paris and the club of the Jacobins had not laid down their arms. An officer was sent to the Hôtel de Ville to announce the decree, which dismissed Henriot and summoned the Mayor to appear at the bar. He naively demanded a receipt for his message. "On a day like this we don't give receipts," replied the Mayor. "Tell Robespierre to have no fear, for we are here." The Commune, in fact, was active, while the Committees of the Convention, stupefied at their own victories, were letting precious time slip past. Already Henriot, half drunk, galloping along the streets, stirred up the people, crying out that their faithful representatives were being massacred, delivering over to insults Merlin de Thionville, and sending to death the convoy of victims for the day. These the inhabitants of the Faubourg St. Antoine set about delivering, from compassion and from a vague instinct that the arrest of Robespierre necessarily brought about a cessation of executions. The General Council had sent to the jailers of the prisons an order to refuse to aid in the incarceration of the accused. Robespierre and his friends were successively brought to the Mairie. They found themselves again free at the head of an insurrection precipitately got up, but directed by desperate men, who felt their lives in danger if power escaped from them. Henriot, arrested for a moment, and conducted to the Committee of General Security, had been delivered by Coffinhal at the head of a handful of men. He was again on horseback, and was menacing in the hall of their sittings the Assembly, which had again come together. The tocsin rang forth a full peal; the gates of Paris were closed. The rising tumult of the insurrection reached the ears of the deputies; each minute some inauspicious news arrived. It was said that the gunners of the National Guard, seduced by Henriot, were coming to direct their artillery against the palace. Collot d'Herbois mounted slowly to the chair and seated himself there. "Representatives," said he, with a firm voice, "the moment has come for us to die at our posts; miscreants have invaded the National palace." All had taken their places; while the spectators fled from the galleries with uproar and confusion. "I propose," said Élie Lacoste with a loud voice, "that Henriot be outlawed." At the same moment the dismissed commandant ordered his men to fire. Fearful and troubled, the gunners still hesitated. A group of representatives went forth from the hall and cried, "What are you doing, soldiers? That man is a rebel, who has just been outlawed." The gunners had already lowered their matches, while Henriot fled at full gallop. Barras had just been named commandant of the forces in his place; seven representatives accompanied him. "Outlaw all those who shall take arms against the Convention or who shall oppose its decrees," said Barère; "as well as those who are eluding a decree of accusation or arrest." The decree was voted; an officer of the Convention boldly accepted the duty of bearing it to the Commune. The National agent, Payan, seized it from him, and for bravado read it with a loud voice before the crowd that was thronging in the hall of the Hôtel de Ville. He added these words which were not in the decree, "and all those found at this moment in the galleries." The spectators disappeared as if struck with terror at the name of the law. Times were changed. The mobile waves of public opinion no longer upheld the tyrants overthrown by the accomplices who had now become their enemies. It was, without saying it, and possibly without knowing it, the feeling of this public abandonment and reprobation which paralyzed the energy of the five accused. Robespierre had arrived pale and trembling in all his limbs; he had been tranquillized with difficulty. When Couthon, who alone was retained for a time in the prison of La Bourbe, was at last brought to the Hôtel de Ville, he found the Council solely occupied with the attack on the Convention, without making any efforts for rousing the populace or for the vigorous resumption of power. "Have the armies been written to?" he asked. "In the name of whom?" said Robespierre, disheartened but calm. "Of the Convention which exists wherever we are; the rest are but a handful of factious men, who are about to be dispersed by armed force." Robespierre reflected; he shook his head. "We must write in the name of the French people," said he. The words "_Au nom du peuple_" were found in his handwriting on a sheet of paper. It was also in the name of the people that Barras and his companions reunited the battalions of the sections which slowly assembled; some had recalled their men from the Hôtel de Ville. The new military school, the École de Mars, had not appeared well disposed toward Lebas, who had written to the Commandant Labretèche to hinder his pupils from ranging themselves under the banners of the Convention; the young men marched willingly at the request of Barras. The gunners collected on the Place de Grève permitted Léonard Bourdon to approach. "Go!" said Tallien to him, "and let the sun when it rises find no more traitors living." The crowd dispersed on hearing the proclamation which outlawed the Commune of Paris. The gunners abandoned their pieces; a few hours later they came to seek them to protect the Convention. "Is it possible," cried Henriot, as he came forth from the Hôtel de Ville, "that these scoundrels of gunners have abandoned me? Presently they will be delivering me to the Tuileries!" He ran to announce the desertion to the assembled Council-General. Coffinhal, indignant at his cowardice, seized him by the shoulder and pushed him out by the window. The agents of the police arrested him in a sewer. Meanwhile the section of the Gravilliers had put itself in marching order, commanded by Léonard Bourdon and by a gendarme named Méda, intelligent and devoted, and who had acquired an ascendency over those around him. He advanced toward the Hôtel de Ville without encountering any obstacle. Méda cried, in mounting the flight of steps, "Long live Robespierre!" He penetrated into the hall, obstructed by the crowd; the club of the Jacobins was deserted, Legendre had had the door closed; all the leaders of the Revolution were assembled round the proscribed representatives. They were discussing and vociferating, without ardor, however, and without any true hope. Robespierre was seated at a table, his head on his left hand, his elbow supported by his knee. Méda advanced toward him, pistols in hand. "Surrender, traitor!" he cried. Robespierre raised his head. "It is thou who art a traitor," he said, "and I will have thee shot." At the same instant the gendarme fired, fracturing the lower jaw of Robespierre. As he fell, his brother opened the window, and, passing along the cornice, leaped out upon the Place. He was dying when they came to pick him up. Saint-Just, leaning over toward Lebas, said, "Kill me." Lebas, looking him in the face, replied: "I have something better to do," pressing the trigger of his pistol. He was dead when a fresh report resounded from the staircase; Méda, who pursued Henriot, had just drawn on Couthon; his bearer fell grievously wounded. The prisoners, formerly all-powerful, now dying or condemned, were collected in the same room; thither Robespierre and Couthon had been brought; the corpse of Lebas lay on the floor; the crowd who besieged the gates wanted to throw the wounded into the river. Couthon had great difficulty in making it understood that he was not dead; Robespierre could not speak, and was carried on a chair to the door of the Convention. A feeling of horror manifested itself in the Assembly, "No, not here! not here!" was the cry. A surgeon came to attend to the wounded man in the hall of the Committee of Public Safety; he recovered from his swoon, and walked alone toward his chair; until then he had been extended upon a table, a little deal box supporting his wounded head. The blood flowed slowly from his mouth, and at times he made a movement to wipe it away; his clothes and his face were smeared with it. Robespierre appeared insensible to the injuries of those who surrounded him; he made no complaint, inaccessible and alone in death as in life. They carried him to the Conciergerie, where Saint-Just and Couthon had just arrived. All had been outlawed; no procedure, no delay, retarded their execution. Saint-Just, looking at a table of the _Rights of Man_ hanging in the hall, said, "It is I, however, who have done that." The Conciergerie slowly filled; with Dumas, Fleuriot, Payan, Lavalette, a large proportion of the members of the Council-General had been arrested. The prisoners already retained here were pressing to the bars of their windows, curious as to the noise that reached their ears, and the vague rumors which had already excited mortal fears among the informers. Before the room where were imprisoned Madame de Beauharnais and Madame de Fontenay (afterward Madame Tallien), a woman appeared, who, in a marked manner, held up a stone (_pierre_), enveloped it in her dress (_robe_), and then made a gesture of beheading. The prisoners comprehended, a thrill of joy pervaded their gloomy abode; all the oppressed believed themselves already delivered. It was five o'clock, and the carts had just drawn up as usual at the gate of the prison, but this time they waited for the executioners. The procession defiled before a dense crowd; all the windows were full of spectators, all the shops were open, and joy sparkled in every countenance. Robespierre and his friends had wearied with executions the people of Paris; the sanguinary emotions to which they had been so long accustomed regained their first relish; it was Robespierre that they were about to see die. He was half stretched out in the cart, livid, and with a blood-stained cloth round his face. When the executioner snatched it from him on the scaffold, a terrible cry was heard, the first sign of suffering the condemned had given. To this shriek cries of joy responded from all around, which were repeated at each stroke from the fatal axe. In two days a hundred three executions violently sealed the vengeance of the Convocation. The justice of God and that of history bide their time. Robespierre had successively vanquished all his enemies; clever and bold, protected and served by his reputation for virtue, seconded by the growing terror which his name inspired, he had usurped the entire power, and confiscated the Revolution for the profit of despotism. He succumbed under the blows of those who had constantly pushed him to the front; wearied or frightened by the tyranny whose vengeance they themselves dreaded. The hands which overthrew the terrible dictator were not pure hands, and revolutionary passions continued to animate many minds, but the public instincts did not err for an instant. The conquerors of the 9th Thermidor could in their turn seize upon power, and the greater number of them had had no other intention; but they might no longer spill blood at their pleasure without hindrance and without control. The culminating point of sufferings and crimes had been attained. Without wishing it and without knowing it, from envy or from fear, the "_Thermidoriens_," as they began to be called, in striking down the triumvirate had changed the course of the Revolution. The nation, always prompt to concentrate upon the name of one man its affections or its hatreds, panting and lacerated as it was, began to breathe; the prisoners ceased to expect death daily; their friends already hoped for their liberty; timid people ventured forth from their hiding-places; the bold loudly manifested their joy. People dared to wear mourning for those who had died on the scaffold; widows came forth from houses in which they had kept themselves shut up; absent ones reappeared in the bosom of their families. Robespierre was no more. The Convention had revolted almost unanimously against the tyrant; scarcely was he struck down, when it found itself again a prey to divisions. Public demonstrations of joy and relief were manifested everywhere, and this disquieted some of the leaders of the conspiracy formerly directed against Robespierre; they had thought to overthrow him in order themselves to occupy his place, and already they perceived that two tendencies were manifesting themselves in the country. The one, feeble as yet in the Convention, and with no other point of support than the remnant of the Right, disposed to retrace the course of events, and even to visit upon their authors the iniquities committed; the other, disquieted and gloomy, determined to defend the Revolution at any hazard, even though it might be at the price of new sacrifices. The small party of the Thermidorians, Tallien at their head, began to form themselves between these two irreconcilable parties. The reaction as yet bore no definite name, it did not and could not exercise any power; desired or dreaded, it was at the bottom of every thought, it influenced all decisions, often rendering them apparently contrary. The terrible glory of Robespierre, and the crushing weight that rests upon his memory, are due to the sudden transformation effected by his death. In outward semblance, and for some time longer, the customary terms were employed, but the character of the situation was radically changed. FOOTNOTES: [41] Public accuser before the Revolutionary Tribunal.--ED. [42] Decoys; literally, sheep.--ED. [43] The royalist War of La Vendée against the Republic was now raging.--ED. [44] "It will go." One of the most popular songs at the beginning of the Revolution (1789), said to have been suggested by Benjamin Franklin, who, in speaking of the progress of the American Revolution, said: "Ça ira" meaning, "It will succeed."--ED. THE DOWNFALL OF POLAND A.D. 1794 SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON That the French Revolution was not more actively interfered with by the powers of Eastern Europe was largely due to the fact that they were all busy with a spoliation of their own. When Kosciuszko, the great Polish patriot and hero, failed in his endeavor to rescue his country from foreign thraldom, the doom of the ancient kingdom was sealed. In the following year (1795) the third and final partition of Poland--between Russia, Austria, and Prussia--was made. This destruction of a heroic nationality was bewailed by the friends of liberty throughout the world, and it was told in passionate regret how "Freedom shrieked, as Kosciuszko fell." Although brave and liberty-loving, the people of Poland had not kept pace with political progress among the more advanced nations. In the fourteenth century Poland had risen to her greatest power. Her political character, from ancient days, was peculiar, being at once monarchical and republican. But she had a feudalism of her own, which survived long after the European feudal system was outgrown by other nations. Her political system was cumbrous and lacking in unity. The first partition, by the powers above named (1772), left her in still worse disorder. A new constitution proved unsatisfactory, one party favoring it, another seeking to overthrow it. Russian interference was invoked, the Polish patriots resisted, but in 1792 they were defeated, and Russia, with Prussia, made the second partition of Poland in 1793. In 1794 Kosciuszko was made commander-in-chief and dictator of Poland. The insurrection began with the murder of the Russians in Warsaw. But the Poles suffered from their own dissensions as before, and met with the disaster that led to their national extinction. There is a certain degree of calamity which overwhelms the courage; but there is another, which, by reducing men to desperation, sometimes leads to the greatest and most glorious enterprises. To this latter state the Poles were now reduced. Abandoned by all the world, distracted with internal divisions, destitute alike of fortresses and resources, crushed in the grasp of gigantic enemies, the patriots of that unhappy country, consulting only their own courage, resolved to make a last effort to deliver it from its enemies. In the midst of their internal convulsions, and through all the prostration of their national strength, the Poles had never lost their individual courage, or the ennobling feelings of civil independence. They were still the redoubtable hussars who broke the Mussulman ranks under the walls of Vienna, and carried the Polish eagles in triumph to the towers of the Kremlin; whose national cry had so often made the Osmanlis tremble, and who had boasted in their hours of triumph that if the heaven itself were to fall they would support it on the points of their lances. A band of patriots at Warsaw resolved at all hazards to attempt the restoration of their independence, and they made choice of Kosciuszko, who was then at Leipsic, to direct their efforts.[45] This illustrious hero, who had received the rudiments of military education in France, had afterward served, not without glory, in the War of Independence in America. Uniting to Polish enthusiasm French ability, the ardent friend of liberty and the enlightened advocate for order, brave, loyal, and generous, he was in every way qualified to head the last struggle of the oldest republic in existence for its national independence. But a nearer approach to the scene of danger convinced him that the hour for action had not yet arrived. The passions, indeed, were awakened; the national enthusiasm was full; but the means of resistance were inconsiderable, and the old divisions of the Republic were not so healed as to afford the prospect of the whole national strength being exerted in its defence. But the public indignation could brook no delay; several regiments stationed at Pultusk revolted, and moved toward Galicia; and Kosciuszko, albeit despairing of success, determined not to be absent in the hour of danger, hastened to Cracow, where on March 3d he closed the gates and proclaimed the insurrection. Having, by means of the regiments which had revolted, and the junction of some bodies of armed peasants--imperfectly armed, indeed, but full of enthusiasm--collected a force of five thousand men, Kosciuszko left Cracow, and boldly advanced into the open country. He encountered a body of three thousand Russians at Raslowice, and, after an obstinate engagement, succeeded in routing it with great slaughter. This action, inconsiderable in itself, had important consequences; the Polish peasants exchanged their scythes for the arms found on the field of battle, and the insurrection, encouraged by this first gleam of success, soon communicated itself to the adjoining provinces. In vain Stanislaus disavowed the acts of his subjects; the flame of independence spread with the rapidity of lightning, and soon all the freemen in Poland were in arms. Warsaw was the first great point where the flame broke out. The intelligence of the success at Raslowice was received there on April 12th and occasioned the most violent agitation. For some days afterward it was evident that an explosion was at hand; and at length, at daybreak on the morning of the 17th, the brigade of Polish guards, under the direction of their officers, attacked the governor's house and the arsenal, and was speedily joined by the populace. The Russian and Prussian troops in the neighborhood of the capital were about seven thousand men; and after a prolonged and obstinate contest in the streets for thirty-six hours, they were driven across the Vistula with the loss of above three thousand men in killed and prisoners, and the flag of independence was hoisted on the towers of Warsaw. One of the most embarrassing circumstances in the situation of the Russians was the presence of above sixteen thousand Poles in their ranks, who were known to sympathize strongly with these heroic efforts of their fellow-citizens. Orders were immediately despatched to Suvaroff to assemble a corps and disarm the Polish troops scattered in Podolia before they could unite in any common measures for their defence. By the energy and activity of this great commander, the Poles were disarmed brigade after brigade, and above twelve thousand men reduced to a state of inaction without much difficulty--a most important operation, not only by destroying the nucleus of a powerful army, but by stifling the commencement of the insurrection in Volhynia and Podolia. How different might have been the fate of Poland and Europe had they been enabled to join the ranks of their countrymen! Kosciuszko and his countrymen did everything that courage or energy could suggest to put on foot a formidable force to resist their adversaries; a provisional government was established and in a short time a force of forty thousand men was raised. But this force, though highly honorable to the patriotism of the Poles, was inconsiderable when compared with the vast armies which Russia and Prussia could bring up for their subjugation. Small as the army was, its maintenance was too great an effort for the resources of the kingdom, which, torn by intestine factions, without commerce, harbors, or manufactures; having no national credit, and no industrious class of citizens but the Jews, now felt the fatal effects of its long career of democratic anarchy. The population of the country, composed entirely of unruly gentlemen and ignorant serfs, was totally unable at that time to furnish those numerous supplies of intelligent officers which are requisite for the formation of an efficient military force; while the nobility, however formidable on horseback in the Hungarian or Turkish wars, were less to be relied on in a contest with regular troops, where infantry and artillery constituted the great strength of the army, and courage was unavailing without the aid of science and military discipline. The central position of Poland, in the midst of its enemies, would have afforded great military advantages, had its inhabitants possessed a force capable of turning it to account; that is, if they had had, like Frederick the Great in the Seven Years' War, a hundred fifty thousand regular troops--which the population of the country could easily have maintained--and a few well-fortified towns, to arrest the enemy in one quarter, while the bulk of the national force was precipitated upon them in another. The glorious stand made by the nation in 1831, with only thirty thousand regular soldiers at the commencement of the insurrection, and no fortifications but those of Warsaw and Modlin, proves what immense advantages this central position affords, and what opportunities it offers to military genius like that of Skrynecki to inflict the most severe wounds even on a superior and well-conducted antagonist. But all these advantages were wanting to Kosciuszko; and it augments our admiration of his talents, and of the heroism of his countrymen, that with such inconsiderable means they made so honorable a stand for their national independence. No sooner was the King of Prussia informed of the revolution at Warsaw than he moved forward at the head of thirty thousand men to besiege that city; while Suvaroff, with forty thousand veterans, was preparing to enter the southeastern parts of the kingdom. Aware of the necessity of striking a blow before the enemy's forces were united, Kosciuszko advanced with twelve thousand men to attack the Russian General, Denisoff; but, upon approaching his corps, he discovered that it had united to the army commanded by the King in person. Unable to face such superior forces, he immediately retired, but was attacked next morning at daybreak near Sekoczyre by the allies, and after a gallant resistance his army was routed, and Cracow fell into the hands of the conquerors. This check was the more severely felt, as about the same time General Zayonscheck was defeated at Chelne and obliged to recross the Vistula, leaving the whole country on the right bank of that river in the hands of the Russians. These disasters produced a great impression at Warsaw; the people as usual ascribed them to treachery, and insisted that the leaders should be brought to punishment; and although the chiefs escaped, several persons in an inferior situation were arrested and thrown into prison. Apprehensive of some subterfuge if the accused were regularly brought to trial, the burghers assembled in tumultuous bodies, forced the prisons, erected scaffolds in the streets, and after the manner of the assassins of September 2d, put above twelve persons to death with their own hands. These excesses affected with the most profound grief the pure heart of Kosciuszko; he flew to the capital, restored order, and delivered over to punishment the leaders of the revolt. But the resources of the country were evidently unequal to the struggle; the paper money, which had been issued in their extremity, was at a frightful discount; and the sacrifices required of the nation were, on that account, the more severely felt, so that hardly a hope of ultimate success remained. The combined Russian and Prussian armies, about thirty-five thousand strong, now advanced against the capital, where Kosciuszko occupied an intrenched camp with twenty-five thousand men. During the whole of July and August the besiegers were engaged in fruitless attempts to drive the Poles into the city; and at length a great convoy, with artillery and stores for a regular siege, which was ascending the Vistula, having been captured by a gentleman named Minewsky at the head of a body of peasants, the King of Prussia raised the siege, leaving a portion of his sick and stores in the hands of the patriots. After this success the insurrection spread immensely and the Poles mustered nearly eighty thousand men under arms. But they were scattered over too extensive a line of country in order to make head against their numerous enemies--a policy tempting by the prospect it holds forth of exciting an extensive insurrection, but ruinous in the end, by exposing the patriotic forces to the risk of being beaten in detail. Scarcely had the Poles recovered from their intoxication at the raising of the siege of Warsaw when intelligence was received of the defeat of Sizakowsky, who commanded a corps of ten thousand men beyond the Bug, by the Russian grand army under Suvaroff. This celebrated General, to whom the principal conduct of the war was now committed, followed up his successes with the utmost vigor. The retreating column was again assailed on the 19th by the victorious Russians, and after a glorious resistance driven into the woods between Janoff and Biala, with the loss of four thousand men and twenty-eight pieces of cannon. Scarcely three thousand Poles, with Sizakowsky at their head, escaped into Siedlice. Upon receiving the accounts of this disaster, Kosciuszko resolved, by drawing together all his detachments, to fall upon Fersen before he joined Suvaroff and the other corps which were advancing against the capital. With this view he ordered General Poninsky to join him, and marched with all his disposable forces to attack the Russian General, who was stationed at Maccowice; but fortune on this occasion cruelly deceived the Poles. Arrived in the neighborhood of Fersen's position he found that Poninsky had not yet come up; and the Russian commander, overjoyed at this circumstance, resolved immediately to attack him. In vain Kosciuszko despatched courier after courier to Poninsky to advance to his relief. The first was intercepted by the Cossacks, and the second did not reach that leader in time to enable him to take a decisive part in the approaching combat. Nevertheless the Polish commander, aware of the danger of retreating with inexperienced troops in presence of a disciplined and superior enemy, determined to give battle on the following day, and drew up his little army with as much skill as the circumstances would admit. The forces on the opposite sides in this action, which decided the fate of Poland, were nearly equal in point of numbers; but the advantages of discipline and equipment were decisively on the side of the Russians. Kosciuszko commanded about ten thousand men, a part of whom were recently raised and imperfectly disciplined; while Fersen was at the head of twelve thousand veterans, including a most formidable body of cavalry. Nevertheless, the Poles in the centre and right wing made a glorious defence; but the left, which Poninsky should have supported, having been overwhelmed by the cavalry under Denisoff, the whole army was, after a severe struggle, thrown into confusion. Kosciuszko, Sizakowsky, and other gallant chiefs in vain made the most heroic efforts to rally the broken troops. They were wounded, struck down, and made prisoners by the Cossacks who swarmed over the field of battle; while the remains of the army, now reduced to seven thousand men, fell back in confusion toward Warsaw. After the fall of Kosciuszko, who sustained in his single person the fortunes of the Republic, nothing but a series of disasters overtook the Poles. The Austrians, taking advantage of the general confusion, entered Galicia, and occupied the palatinates of Lublin and Sandomir; while Suvaroff, pressing forward toward the capital, defeated Mokronowsky, who, at the head of twelve thousand men, strove to retard the advance of that redoubtable commander. In vain the Poles made the utmost efforts; they were routed with the loss of four thousand men; and the patriots, though now despairing of success, resolved to sell their lives dearly, and shut themselves up in Warsaw to await the approach of the conqueror. Suvaroff was soon at the gates of Praga, the eastern suburb of that capital, where twenty-six thousand men and one hundred pieces of cannon defended the bridge of the Vistula and the approach to the capital. To assault such a position with forces hardly superior was evidently a hazardous enterprise; but the approach of winter, rendering it indispensable that if anything was done at all it should be immediately attempted, Suvaroff, who was habituated to successful assaults in the Turkish wars, resolved to storm the city. On November 2d the Russians made their appearance before the glacis of Praga, and Suvaroff, having in great haste completed three powerful batteries and breached the defences with imposing celerity, made his dispositions for a general assault on the following day. The conquerors of Ismail advanced to the attack in the same order which they had adopted on that memorable occasion. Seven columns at daybreak approached the ramparts, rapidly filled up the ditches with their fascines, broke down the defences, and pouring into the intrenched camp carried destruction into the ranks of the Poles. In vain the defenders did their utmost to resist the torrent. The wooden houses of Praga speedily took fire, and amid the shouts of the victors and the cries of the inhabitants the Polish battalions were borne backward to the edge of the Vistula. The multitude of fugitives speedily broke down the bridges; and the citizens of Warsaw beheld with unavailing anguish their defenders on the other side perishing in the flames, or by the sword of the conquerors. Ten thousand soldiers fell on the spot, nine thousand were made prisoners, and above twelve thousand citizens, of every age and sex, were put to the sword--a dreadful instance of carnage which has left a lasting stain on the name of Suvaroff and which Russia expiated in the conflagration of Moscow. The tragedy was at an end. Warsaw capitulated two days afterward; the detached parties of the patriots melted away, and Poland was no more. On November 6th Suvaroff made his triumphant entry into the blood-stained capital. King Stanislaus was sent into Russia, where he ended his days in captivity, and the final partition of the monarchy was effected. FOOTNOTES: [45] Thaddeus Kosciuszko was born in 1755, of a poor but noble family, and received the first elements of his education in the corps of cadets at Warsaw. There he was early distinguished by his diligence, ability, and progress in mathematical science, insomuch that he was selected as one of the four students annually chosen at that institution to travel at the expense of the State. He went abroad, accordingly, and spent several years in France, chiefly engaged in military studies; from whence he returned in 1778, with ideas of freedom and independence unhappily far in advance of his country at that period. As war did not seem likely at that period in the north of Europe, he set sail for America, then beginning the War of Independence, and was employed by Washington as his adjutant, and distinguished himself greatly in that contest beside Lafayette, Lameth, Dumas, and so many of the other ardent and enthusiastic spirits from the Old World. He returned to Europe on the termination of the war, decorated with the order of Cincinnatus, and lived in retirement till 1789, when, as King Stanislaus was adopting some steps with a view to the assertion of national independence, he was appointed major-general by the Polish Diet. In 1791 he joined with enthusiasm in the formation of the Constitution which was proclaimed on May 5th of that year.--ED. THE RISE OF NAPOLEON THE FRENCH CONQUEST OF ITALY A.D. 1796 SIR WALTER SCOTT Napoleon, regarded by many as the most remarkable man of modern times, took control of the forces of the French Revolution and directed them toward purposes little dreamed of by the earlier leaders of the uprising. The excesses of the Reign of Terror had caused such a reaction that even in Paris men began to talk of restoring the monarchy, and in 1795 a new tumult began, due in part to the efforts of the Royalists. Once more a mob marched against the hall of the National Convention; and the general of the national troops in the city, uncertain what to do, gladly left affairs in the hands of a subordinate, one of the few remaining French officers who had received a regular military training under the old _régime_. This lesser general, a young man of twenty-six, was Napoleon Bonaparte, who had already won repute as a military engineer. Bonaparte met the mob as no Paris mob had yet been met. He had a row of cannon loaded with grape-shot, and these were fired to kill. Many of the rabble fell, the rest fled in dismay. "That whiff of grape-shot," says Carlyle, "ended the Revolution." Bonaparte, made much of by the Convention he had defended, was appointed commander of the army fighting on the Italian frontier. Ever since Valmy, Revolutionary France had been compelled to defend herself against civil war within and the attacks of the foreign monarchs, friends and relatives of Louis XVI, from without. The tremendous energy of her aroused people had made her equal to the task. She had conquered Holland and the German lands west of the Rhine, she had forced both Prussia and Spain to sue for peace. But England from her island throne, and Austria, the most powerful of France's continental foes, the most closely related to the murdered Queen Marie Antoinette, were still threatening the French borders. The Austrians held most of Italy and it was against them that Napoleon was despatched. He was the first to carry the war away from the French border line and into the heart of the countries of her foes. France was starving; and Napoleon from the treasuries of Italy sent her unlimited supplies; sent her splendid works of art. No wonder the impoverished people hailed him with delight as their preserver. No wonder the purer aspirations after liberty perished in the passion for conquest, spoils, and that Frenchest of French vanities, "_la gloire_." Napoleon has himself observed that no country in the world is more distinctly marked out by its natural boundaries than Italy. The Alps seem a barrier erected by nature herself, on which she has inscribed in gigantic characters "Here let ambition be staid." Yet this tremendous circumvallation of mountains, as it could not prevent the ancient Romans from breaking out to desolate the world, so it has been in like manner found, ever since the days of Hannibal, unequal to protect Italy herself from invasion. The French nation, in the times of which we treat, spoke indeed of the Alps as a natural boundary, so far as to authorize them to claim all which lay on the western side of these mountains, as naturally pertaining to their dominions; but they never deigned to respect them as such when the question respected their invading, on their own part, the territories of other states which lay on or beyond the formidable frontier. They assumed the law of natural limits as an unchallengeable rule when it made in favor of France, but never allowed it to be quoted against her interest. During the Revolutionary War, the general fortune of battle had varied from time to time in the neighborhood of these mighty boundaries. The King of Sardinia possessed almost all the fortresses which command the passes on these mountains, and had therefore been said to wear the keys of the Alps at his girdle. He had indeed lost his dukedom of Savoy, and the county of Nice, in the last campaign; but he still maintained in opposition to the French a very considerable army, and was supported by his powerful ally the Emperor of Austria, always vigilant regarding that rich and beautiful portion of his dominions which lies in the North of Italy. The frontiers of Piedmont were therefore covered by a strong Austro-Sardinian army, opposed to the French armies to which Napoleon had been just named commander-in-chief. A strong Neapolitan force was also to be added, so that in general numbers their opponents were much superior to the French; but a great part of this force was cooped up in garrisons which could not be abandoned. It may be imagined with what delight the General, scarce aged twenty-six, advanced to an independent field of glory and conquest, confident in his own powers, and in the perfect knowledge of the country which he had acquired, when, by his scientific plans of the campaign, he had enabled General Dumorbion to drive the Austrians back, and obtain possession of the Col di Tenda, Saorgio, and the gorges of the higher Alps. Bonaparte's achievements had hitherto been under the auspices of others. He made the dispositions before Toulon, but it was Dugommier who had the credit of taking the place. Dumorbion, as we have just said, obtained the merit of the advantages in Piedmont. Even in the civil turmoil of 13th Vendémiaire, his actual services had been overshaded by the official dignity of Barras, as commander-in-chief. But if he reaped honor in Italy the success would be exclusively his own; and that proud heart must have throbbed to meet danger upon such terms; that keen spirit have toiled to discover the means of success. For victory, he relied chiefly upon a system of tactics hitherto unpractised in war, or at least upon any considerable or uniform scale. As war becomes a profession, and a subject of deep study, it is gradually discovered that the principles of tactics depend upon mathematical and arithmetical science; and that the commander will be victorious who can assemble the greatest number of forces upon the same point at the same moment, notwithstanding an inferiority of numbers to the enemy when the general force is computed on both sides. No man ever possessed in a greater degree than Bonaparte the power of calculation and combination necessary for directing such decisive manoeuvres. It constituted indeed his secret--as it was for some time called--and that secret consisted in an imagination fertile in expedients which would never have occurred to others; clearness and precision in forming his plans; a mode of directing with certainty the separate moving columns which were to execute them, by arranging so that each division should arrive on the destined position at the exact time when their service was necessary; and above all, in the knowledge which enabled such a master-spirit to choose the most fitting subordinate implements, to attach them to his person, and by explaining to them so much of his plan as it was necessary each should execute, to secure the exertion of their utmost ability in carrying it into effect. Thus, not only were his manoeuvres, however daring, executed with a precision which warlike operations had not attained before his time; but they were also performed with a celerity which gave them almost the effect of surprise. Napoleon was like lightning in the eyes of his enemies; and when repeated experience had taught them to expect this portentous rapidity of movement, it sometimes induced his opponents to wait in a dubious and hesitating posture for attacks, which, with less apprehension of their antagonist, they would have thought it more prudent to frustrate and to anticipate. The forces which Bonaparte had under his command were between fifty and sixty thousand good troops, having, many of them, been brought from the Spanish campaign in consequence of the peace with that country; but very indifferently provided with clothing, and suffering from the hardships they had endured in those mountains, barren and cold regions. The cavalry, in particular, were in very poor order; but the nature of their new field of action not admitting of their being much employed, rendered this of less consequence. The misery of the French army, until these Alpine campaigns were victoriously closed by the armistice of Cherasco, could, according to Bonaparte's authority, scarce bear description. The officers for several years had received no more than eight livres a month (twenty-pence sterling a week) in name of pay, and staff-officers had not among them a single horse. Berthier preserved, as a curiosity, an order dated on the day of the victory of Albenga, which munificently conferred a gratuity of three louis d'ors upon every general of division. Among the generals to whom this donation was rendered acceptable by their wants were, or might have been, many whose names became afterward the praise and dread of war. Augereau, Masséna, Serrurier, Joubert, Lannes, and Murat, all generals of the first consideration, served under Bonaparte in the Italian campaign. The plan of crossing the Alps and marching into Italy suited in every respect the ambitious and self-confident character of the General to whom it was now intrusted. It gave him a separate and independent authority, and the power of acting on his own judgment and responsibility; for his countryman Salicetti, the deputy who accompanied him as commissioner of the Government, was not probably much disposed to intrude his opinions. He had been Bonaparte's patron, and was still his friend. The young General's mind was made up to the alternative of conquest or ruin, as may be judged from his words to a friend at taking leave of him. "In three months," he said, "I will be either at Milan or at Paris;" intimating at once his desperate resolution to succeed, and his sense that the disappointment of all his prospects must be the consequence of a failure. With the same view of animating his followers to ambitious hopes, he addressed the Army of Italy to the following purpose: "Soldiers, you are hungry and naked; the Republic owes you much, but she has not the means to acquit herself of her debts. The patience with which you support your hardships among these barren rocks is admirable, but it cannot procure you glory. I am come to lead you into the most fertile plains that the sun beholds: rich provinces, opulent towns; all shall be at your disposal. Soldiers, with such a prospect before you, can you fail in courage and constancy?" This was showing the deer to the hound when the leash is about to be slipped. The Austro-Sardinian army, to which Bonaparte was opposed, was commanded by Beaulieu, an Austrian general of great experience and some talent, but no less than seventy-five years old; accustomed all his life to the ancient rules of tactics, and unlikely to suspect, anticipate, or frustrate those plans formed by a genius so fertile as that of Napoleon. Bonaparte's plan for entering Italy differed from that of former conquerors and invaders, who had approached that fine country by penetrating or surmounting at some point or other her Alpine barriers. This inventive warrior resolved to attain the same object by turning round the southern extremity of the Alpine range, keeping as close as possible to the shores of the Mediterranean, and passing through the Genoese territory by the narrow pass called the Boccheta, leading around the extremity of the mountains, and betwixt these and the sea. Thus he proposed to penetrate into Italy by the lowest level which the surface of the country presented, which must be of course where the range of the Alps unites with that of the Apennines. The point of junction where these two immense ranges of mountains touch upon each other is at the heights of Mount St. Jacques, above Genoa, where the Alps, running northwestward, ascend to Mont Blanc, their highest peak, and the Appenines, running to the southeast, gradually elevate themselves to Monte Velino, the tallest mountain of the range. To attain this object of turning the Alps in the manner proposed, it was necessary that Bonaparte should totally change the situation of his army; those occupying a defensive line, running north and south, being to assume an offensive position, extending east and west. Speaking of an army as of a battalion, he was to form into column upon the right of the line which he had hitherto occupied. This was an extremely delicate operation to be undertaken in presence of an active enemy, his superior in numbers; nor was he permitted to execute it uninterrupted. No sooner did Beaulieu learn that the French General was concentrating his forces, and about to change his position, than he hastened to preserve Genoa, without possession of which, or at least of the adjacent territory, Bonaparte's scheme of advance could scarce have been accomplished. The Austrian divided his army into three bodies. Colli, at the head of a Sardinian division, he stationed on the extreme right at Ceva; his centre division, under D'Argenteau, having its head at Sasiello, had directions to march on a mountain called Monte Notte, with two villages of the same name, near to which was a strong position at a place called Montelegino, which the French had occupied in order to cover their flank during their march toward the east. At the head of his left wing, Beaulieu himself moved from Novi upon Voltri, a small town nine miles west of Genoa, for the protection of that ancient city, whose independence and neutrality were like to be held in little reverence. Thus it appears, that while the French were endeavoring to penetrate into Italy by an advance from Sardinia by the way of Genoa, their line of march was threatened by three armies of Austro-Sardinians, descending from the skirts of the Alps, and menacing to attack their flank. But, though a skilful disposition, Beaulieu's had, from the very mountainous character of the country, the great disadvantage of wanting connection between the three separate divisions; neither, if needful, could they be easily united on any point desired, while the lower line, on which the French moved, permitted constant communication and coöperation. On April 10, 1796, D'Argenteau, with the central division of the Austro-Sardinian army, descended upon Monte Notte, while Beaulieu on the left attacked the van of the French army, which had come as far as Voltri. General Cervoni, commanding the French division which sustained the attack of Beaulieu, was compelled to fall back on the main body of his countrymen; and had the assault of D'Argenteau been equally animated, or equally successful, the fame of Bonaparte might have been stifled in its birth. But Colonel Rampon, a French officer, who commanded the redoubts near Montelegino, stopped the progress of D'Argenteau by the most determined resistance. At the head of not more than fifteen hundred men, whom he inspired with his own courage, and caused to swear to maintain their post or die there, he continued to defend the redoubts, during the whole of the 11th, until D'Argenteau, whose conduct was afterward greatly blamed for not making more determined efforts to carry them, drew off his forces for the evening, intending to renew the attack next morning. But on the morning of the 12th, the Austrian General found himself surrounded with enemies. Cervoni, who retreated before Beaulieu, had united himself with La Harpe, and both advancing northward during the night of the 11th, established themselves in the rear of the redoubts of Montelegino, which Rampon had so gallantly defended. This was not all. The divisions of Augereau and Masséna had marched, by different routes, on the flank and on the rear of D'Argenteau's column; so that next morning, instead of renewing his attack on the redoubts, the Austrian General was obliged to extricate himself by a disastrous retreat, leaving behind him colors and cannon, a thousand slain, and two thousand prisoners. Such was the Battle of Monte Notte, the first of Bonaparte's victories; eminently displaying the truth and mathematical certainty of combination, which enabled him on many more memorable occasions, even when his forces were inferior in numbers, and apparently disunited in position, suddenly to concentrate them and defeat his enemy, by overpowering him on the very point where he thought himself strongest. He had accumulated a superior force on the Austrian centre, and destroyed it, while Colli, on the right, and Beaulieu himself, on the left, each at the head of numerous forces, did not even hear of the action till it was fought and won. In consequence of the success at Monte Notte, and the close pursuit of the defeated Austrians, the French obtained possession of Cairo, which placed them on that side of the Alps which slopes toward Lombardy, and where the streams from these mountains run to join the Po. Beaulieu had advanced to Voltri, while the French withdrew to unite themselves in the attack upon D'Argenteau. He had now to retreat northward with all haste to Dego, in the valley of the river Bormida, in order to resume communication with the right wing of his army, consisting chiefly of Sardinians, from which he was now nearly separated by the defeat of the centre. General Colli, by a corresponding movement on the left, occupied Millesimo, a small town about nine miles from Dego, with which he resumed and maintained communication by a brigade stationed on the heights of Biastro. From the strength of this position, though his forces were scarce sufficiently concentrated, Beaulieu hoped to maintain his ground till he should receive supplies from Lombardy, and recover the consequences of the defeat at Monte Notte. But the antagonist whom he had in front had no purpose of permitting him such respite. Determined upon a general attack on all points of the Austrian position, the French army advanced in three bodies upon a space of four leagues in extent. Augereau, at the head of the division which had not fought at Monte Notte, advanced on the left against Millesimo; the centre, under Masséna, directed themselves upon Dego, by the vale of the Bormida; the right wing, commanded by La Harpe, manoeuvred on the right of all, for the purpose of turning Beaulieu's left flank. Augereau was the first who came in contact with the enemy. He attacked General Colli, April 13th. His troops, emulous of the honor acquired by their companions, behaved with great bravery, rushed upon the outposts of the Sardinian army at Millesimo, forced and retained possession of the gorge by which it was defended, and thus separated from the Sardinian army a body of about two thousand men, under the Austrian General Provera, who occupied a detached eminence called Cossaria, which covered the extreme left of General Colli's position. But the Austrian showed the most obstinate courage. Although surrounded by the enemy, he threw himself into the ruinous castle of Cossaria, which crowned the eminence, and showed a disposition to maintain the place to the last; the rather that, as he could see from the turrets of his stronghold the Sardinian troops, from whom he had been separated, preparing to fight on the ensuing day, he might reasonably hope to be disengaged. Bonaparte in person came up; and seeing the necessity of dislodging the enemy from his strong post, ordered three successive attacks to be made on the castle. Joubert, at the head of one of the attacking columns, had actually, with six or seven others, made his way into the outworks, when he was struck down by a wound in the head. General Banal and Adjutant-General Quenin fell, each at the head of the column which he commanded; and Bonaparte was compelled to leave the obstinate Provera in possession of the castle for the night. The morning of the 14th brought a different scene. Contenting himself with blockading the castle of Cossaria, Bonaparte now gave battle to General Colli, who made every effort to relieve it. These attempts were all in vain. He was defeated and cut off from Beaulieu; he retired as well as he could upon Ceva, leaving to his fate the brave General Provera, who was compelled to surrender at discretion. On the same day, Masséna, with the centre, attacked the heights of Biastro, being the point of communication betwixt Beaulieu and Colli, while La Harpe, having crossed the Bormida, where the stream came up to the soldiers' middle, attacked in front and in flank the village of Dego, where the Austrian Commander-in-Chief was stationed. The first attack was completely successful--the heights of Biastro were carried, and the Piedmontese routed. The assault of Dego was not less so, although after a harder struggle. Beaulieu was compelled to retreat, and was entirely separated from the Sardinians, who had hitherto acted in combination with him. The defenders of Italy now retreated in different directions, Colli moving westward toward Ceva, while Beaulieu, closely pursued through a difficult country, retired upon D'Aqui. Even the morning after the victory, it was nearly wrested out of the hands of the conquerors. A fresh division of Austrians, who had evacuated Voltri later than the others, and were approaching to form a junction with their General, found the enemy in possession of Beaulieu's position. They arrived at Dego like men who had been led astray, and were no doubt surprised at finding it in the hands of the French. Yet they did not hesitate to assume the offensive, and by a brisk attack drove out the enemy, and replaced the Austrian eagles in the village. Great alarm was occasioned by this sudden apparition; for no one among the French could conceive the meaning of an alarm beginning on the opposite quarter to that on which the enemy had retreated, and without its being announced from the outposts toward D'Aqui. Bonaparte hastily marched on the village. The Austrians repelled two attacks; at the third, General Lanusse, afterward killed in Egypt, put his hat upon the point of his sword, and advancing to the charge penetrated into the place. Lannes also, afterward Duke of Montebello, distinguished himself on the same occasion by courage and military skill, and was recommended by Bonaparte to the Directory for promotion. In this Battle of Dego, more commonly called of Millesimo, the Austro-Sardinian army lost five or six thousand men, thirty pieces of cannon, with a great quantity of baggage. Besides, the Austrians were divided from the Sardinians; and the two generals began to show not only that their forces were disunited, but that they themselves were acting upon separate motives; the Sardinians desiring to protect Turin, whereas the movements of Beaulieu seemed still directed to prevent the French from entering the Milanese territory. Leaving a sufficient force on the Bormida to keep in check Beaulieu, Bonaparte now turned his strength against Colli, who, overpowered, and without hopes of succor, abandoned his line of defence near Ceva, and retreated to the line of the Tanaro. Napoleon in the mean time fixed his head-quarters at Ceva, and enjoyed from the heights of Montezemoto the splendid view of the fertile fields of Piedmont, stretching in boundless perspective beneath his feet, watered by the Po, the Tanaro, and a thousand other streams which descended from the Alps. Before the eyes of the delighted army of victors lay this rich expanse like a promised land; behind them was the wilderness they had passed--not indeed a desert of barren sand, similar to that in which the Israelites wandered, but a huge tract of rocks and inaccessible mountains, crested with ice and snow, seeming by nature designed as the barrier and rampart of the blessed regions, which stretched eastward beneath them. We can sympathize with the self-congratulation of the General who had surmounted such tremendous obstacles in a way so unusual. He said to the officers around him, as they gazed upon this magnificent scene, "Hannibal took the Alps by storm. We have succeeded as well by turning their flank." The dispirited army of Colli was attacked at Mondovi during his retreat by two corps of Bonaparte's army from two different points, commanded by Masséna and Serrurier. The last General the Sardinian repulsed with loss; but when he found Masséna, in the mean time, was turning the left of his line, and that he was thus pressed on both flanks, his situation became almost desperate. The cavalry of the Piedmontese made an effort to renew the combat. For a time they overpowered and drove back those of the French; and General Stengel, who commanded the latter, was slain in attempting to get them into order. But the desperate valor of Murat, unrivalled perhaps in the heady charge of cavalry combat, renewed the fortune of the field; and the horse, as well as the infantry of Colli's army, were compelled to a disastrous retreat. The defeat was decisive; and the Sardinians, after the loss of the best of their troops, their cannon, baggage, and appointments, and being now totally divided from their Austrian allies, and liable to be overpowered by the united forces of the French army, had no longer hopes of effectually covering Turin. Bonaparte, pursuing his victory, took possession of Cherasco, within ten leagues of the Piedmontese capital. Thus Fortune, in the course of a campaign of scarce a month, placed her favorite in full possession of the desired road to Italy, by command of the mountain-passes, which had been invaded and conquered with so much military skill. He had gained three battles over forces far superior to his own; inflicted on the enemy a loss of twenty-five thousand men in killed, wounded, and prisoners; taken eighty pieces of cannon, and twenty-one stands of colors; reduced to inaction the Austrian army; almost annihilated that of Sardinia; and stood in full communication with France upon the eastern side of the Alps, with Italy lying open before him, as if to invite his invasion. But it was not even with such laurels, and with facilities which now presented themselves for the accomplishment of new and more important victories upon a larger scale, and with more magnificent results, that the career of Bonaparte's earliest campaign was to be closed. The head of the royal house of Savoy, if not one of the most powerful, still one of the most distinguished in Europe, was to have the melancholy experience, that he had encountered with the "Man of Destiny," as he was afterward proudly called, who, for a time, had power, in the emphatic phrase of Scripture, "to bind kings with chains, and nobles with fetters of iron." The shattered relics of the Sardinian army had fallen back, or rather fled, to within two leagues of Turin, without hope of being again able to make an effectual stand. The sovereign of Sardinia, Savoy, and Piedmont had no means of preserving his capital, nay, his existence on the Continent, excepting by an almost total submission to the will of the victor. Let it be remembered, that Victor Amadeus III was the descendant of a race of heroes, who, from the peculiar situation of their territories, as constituting a neutral ground of great strength betwixt France and the Italian possessions of Austria, had often been called on to play a part in the general affairs of Europe, of importance far superior to that which their condition as a second-rate power could otherwise have demanded. In general, they had compensated their inferiority of force by an ability and gallantry which did them the highest credit, both as generals and as politicians; and now Piedmont was at the feet, in her turn, of an enemy weaker in numbers than her own. Besides the reflections on the past fame of his country, the present humiliating situation of the King was rendered more mortifying by the state of his family connections. Victor Amadeus was the father-in-law of "Monsieur" (by right Louis XVIII), and of the Comte d'Artois, the reigning King of France. He had received his sons-in-law at his court at Turin, had afforded them an opportunity of assembling around them their forces, consisting of the emigrant _noblesse_, and had strained all the power he possessed, and in many instances successfully, to withstand both the artifices and the arms of the French Republicans. And now, so born, so connected, and with such principles, he was condemned to sue for peace on any terms which might be dictated, from a general of France aged twenty-six years, who, a few months before, was desirous of an appointment in the artillery service of the Grand Seignior! An armistice was requested by the King of Sardinia under these afflicting circumstances, but could only be purchased by placing two of his strongest fortresses--those keys of the Alps, of which his ancestors had long been the keepers--Coni and Tortona, in the hands of the French, and thus acknowledging that he surrendered at discretion. The armistice was agreed on at Cherasco, but commissioners were sent by the King to Paris, to arrange with the Directory the final terms of peace. These were such as victors give to the vanquished. Besides the fortresses already surrendered, the King of Sardinia was to place in the hands of the French five others of the first importance. The road from France to Italy was to be at all times open to the French armies; and indeed the King, by surrender of the places mentioned, had lost the power of interrupting their progress. He was to break off every species of alliance and connection with the combined powers at war with France, and become bound not to entertain at his court, or in his service, any French emigrants whatsoever, or any of their connections; nor was an exception even made in favor of his own two daughters. In short, the surrender was absolute. Victor Amadeus exhibited the utmost reluctance to subscribe this treaty, and did not long survive it. His son succeeded in name to the kingdom of Piedmont; but the fortresses and passes which had rendered him a prince of some importance were, excepting Turin and one or two of minor consequence, all surrendered into the hands of the French. Viewing this treaty with Sardinia as the close of the Piedmontese campaign, we pause to consider the character which Bonaparte displayed at that period. The talents as a general which he had exhibited were of the very first order. There was no disconnection in his objects, they were all attained by the very means he proposed, and the success was improved to the utmost. A different conduct usually characterizes those who stumble unexpectedly on victory, either by good-fortune or by the valor of their troops. When the favorable opportunity occurs to such leaders, they are nearly as much embarrassed by it as by a defeat. But Bonaparte, who had foreseen the result of each operation by his sagacity, stood also prepared to make the most of the advantages which might be derived from it. His style in addressing the Convention was, at this period, more modest and simple, and therefore more impressive, than the figurative and bombastic style which he afterward used in his bulletins. His self-opinion, perhaps, was not risen so high as to permit him to use the sesquipedalian words and violent metaphors, to which he afterward seems to have given a preference. We may remark also, that the young victor was honorably anxious to secure for such officers as distinguished themselves the preferment which their services entitled them to. He urges the promotion of his brethren-in-arms in almost every one of his despatches--a conduct not only just and generous, but also highly politic. Were his recommendations successful, their General had the gratitude due for the benefit; were they overlooked, thanks equally belonged to him for his good wishes, and the resentment for the slight attached itself to the Government who did not give effect to them. OVERTHROW OF THE MAMELUKES THE BATTLE OF THE NILE A.D. 1798 CHARLES KNIGHT Napoleon's Italian victories forced even Austria to seek peace and acquiesce in the extension of the French Republic to the Rhine and over a considerable part of Italy. The Continent was for a moment at peace, only England remaining in open hostility to France. A great invasion was planned to subdue the island kingdom, but Britain felt secure in the power of her ships which had repeatedly defeated those of France, Spain, and Holland. The French Government, which had gradually gathered a strong fleet on the Mediterranean, now at Bonaparte's urgency undertook what has often been regarded as the rather visionary attempt of conquering Egypt, perhaps expecting to extend French power over all Asia and so destroy British trade, the source of Britain's wealth. Egypt was nominally subject to Turkey, but was really ruled by the Mamelukes, an aristocracy of soldiers who had held the land for centuries. Nelson, the English admiral, despatched to discover and defeat the French fleet, is England's greatest naval hero. He had already won renown as second in command in an important victory over the Spaniards off Cape St. Vincent. The Battle of the Nile was the first of his three most celebrated achievements, the others being the defeat of the Danes at Copenhagen[46] and then the final destruction of the French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar. Bonaparte with great difficulty persuaded the Directory to postpone their scheme for the invasion of the British Islands, and to permit him to embark an army for Egypt, the possession of which country, he maintained, would open to France the commerce of the East, and prepare the way for the conquest of India. Having subdued Egypt, he would return before another winter to plant the tricolor on the Tower of London. In April, Bonaparte was appointed general-in-chief of the Army of the East. The secret had been well kept. The French fleet under Admiral Brueys was in the harbor of Toulon, ready to sail upon its secret destination. Something different from the invasion of England was in contemplation; for on board the admiral's ship, L'Orient, were a hundred literary men and artists, mathematicians and naturalists, who were certainly not required to enlighten the French upon the native productions or the antiquities of the British Isles. Bonaparte arrived at Toulon on May 9th, and issued one of his grandiloquent proclamations to his troops. The armament consisted of thirteen ships of the line, many frigates and corvettes, and four hundred transports. The army, which it was to carry to some unknown shore, consisted of forty thousand men. On May 19th this formidable expedition left the great French harbor of the Mediterranean. On the day when Bonaparte arrived at Toulon, Nelson had sailed from Gibraltar, with three seventy-fours, four frigates, and a sloop, to watch the movements of the enemy. Since the most daring of British naval commanders had fought in the Battle of St. Vincent, he had lost an arm in an unsuccessful attack upon the island of Teneriffe. For some time his spirit was depressed, and he thought that a left-handed admiral could never again be useful. He had lost also his right eye, and was severely wounded in his body. But he had not lost that indomitable spirit which rose superior to wounds and weakness of constitution. He rested some time at home; and then, early in 1798, sailed in the Vanguard to join the fleet under Lord St. Vincent. The Admiralty had suggested, and Lord St. Vincent had previously determined, that a detachment of the squadron blockading the Spanish fleet should sail to the Mediterranean, under the command of Nelson. The seniors of the fleet were offended at this preference of a junior officer; and men of routine at home shrugged their shoulders, and feared, with the cold Lord Grenville, that Nelson "will do something _too_ desperate." He was not stinted in his means, being finally reënforced with ten of the best ships of St. Vincent's fleet. The first operation of Bonaparte was the seizure of Malta. His fleet was in sight of the island on June 9th. He had other weapons than his cannon for the reduction of a place deemed impregnable. The Order of St. John of Jerusalem had held the real sovereignty of the island since 1530. These Knights of Malta, powerful at sea, had formed one of the bulwarks of Christendom against the Ottomans. They had gradually lost their warlike prowess as well at their religious austerity; and Malta, protected by its fortifications, became the seat of luxury for this last of the monastic military orders whose occupation was gone. Bonaparte had confiscated their property in Italy; and he had sent a skilful agent to the island to sow dissensions among the Knights, and thus to prepare the way for the fall of the community. There were many French knights among them, to whom the principal military commands had been intrusted by the grand master, a weak German. Bonaparte, on June 9th, sent a demand to the grand master, that his whole fleet should be permitted to enter the great harbor for the purpose of taking in water. The reply was that, according to the rules of the Order, only two ships, or at most four, could be allowed to enter the port at one time. The answer was interpreted as equivalent to a declaration of hostility; and Bonaparte issued orders that the army should disembark the next morning on the coasts of the island wherever a landing could be effected. The island was taken almost without opposition; the French Knights declaring that they would not fight against their countrymen. On June 13th, the French were put in possession of La Valletta and the surrounding forts. Bonaparte made all sorts of promises of compensation to the recreant Knights, which the Directory were not very careful to keep. He landed to examine his prize, when General Caffarelli, who accompanied him, said, "We are very lucky that there was somebody in the place to open the doors for us." Leaving a garrison to occupy the new possession, the French sailed away on the 20th, with all the gold and silver of the treasury, and all the plate of the churches and religious houses. "The essential point now," says Thiers, "was not to encounter the English fleet"; nevertheless, he adds, "nobody was afraid of the encounter." Nelson was at Naples on the day when Bonaparte quitted Malta. He immediately sailed. On the 22d, at night, the two fleets crossed each other's track unperceived, between Cape Mesurado and the mouth of the Adriatic. The frigates of the British fleet had been separated from the main body, and thus Nelson had no certain intelligence. His sagacity made him conjecture that the destination of the armament was Egypt. He made the most direct course to Alexandria, which he reached on the 28th. No enemy was there, and no tidings could be obtained of them. On the morning of July 1st, Admiral Brueys was off the same port, and learned that Nelson had sailed away in search of him. Bonaparte demanded that he should be landed at some distance from Alexandria, for preparations appeared for the defence of the ancient city. As he and several thousand troops who followed him reached the shore in boats, a vessel appeared in sight, and the cry went forth that it was an English sail. "Fortune," he exclaimed, "dost thou abandon me? Give me only five days!" A French frigate was the cause of the momentary alarm. Nelson had returned to Sicily. The Sultan was at peace with France; a French minister was at Constantinople. Such trifling formalities in the laws of nations were little respected by the man who told his soldiers that "the genius of Liberty having rendered the Republic the arbiter of Europe, had assigned to her the same power over the seas and over the most distant nations." Four thousand of the French army were landed, and marched in three columns to the attack of Alexandria. It was quickly taken by assault. Bonaparte announced that he came neither to ravage the country nor to question the authority of the Grand Seignior, but to put down the domination of the Mamelukes, who tyrannized over the people by the authority of the beys. He proclaimed to the population of Egypt, in magnificent language that he caused to be translated into Arabic, that he came not to destroy their religion. We Frenchmen are true Mussulmans. Have not we destroyed the pope, who called upon Europe to make war upon Mussulmans? Have not we destroyed the Knights of Malta, because these madmen believed that God had called them to make war upon Mussulmans? Leaving a garrison of three thousand men in Alexandria, the main army commenced its march to Cairo. Bonaparte was anxious to arrive there before the periodical inundation of the Nile. The fleet of Brueys remained at anchor in the road of Abukir. Bonaparte chose the shorter route to Cairo through the desert of Damanhour, leading thirty thousand men--to each of whom he had promised to grant seven acres of fertile land in the conquered territories--through plains of sand without a drop of water. They murmured, and almost mutinied, but they endured, and at length reached the banks of the Nile, at Rahmaniyeh, where a flotilla, laden with provisions, baggage, and artillery, awaited them. The Mamelukes, with Amurath Bey at their head, were around the French. The invaders had to fight with enemies who came upon them in detachments, gave a fierce assault, and then fled. As they approached the great Pyramids of Gizeh, they found an enemy more formidable than these scattered bands. Amurath Bey was encamped with twelve thousand Mamelukes and eight thousand mounted Bedouins, on the west bank of the Nile, and opposite Cairo. The French looked upon the great entrepôt, where the soldiers expected to find the gorgeous palaces and the rich bazaars of which some had read in Galland's _Arabian Nights_, whose tales they had recounted to their comrades on their dreary march under a burning sun. They had to sustain the attack of Amurath and his Mamelukes, who came upon them with the fury of a tempest. In the East, Bonaparte was ever in his altitudes; and he now pointed to the Pyramids, and exclaimed to his soldiers, "Forty centuries look down upon you." The chief attack of the Mamelukes was upon a square which Desaix commanded. In spite of the desperate courage of this formidable cavalry, the steadiness of the disciplined soldiery of the army of Italy repelled every assault; and after a tremendous loss Amurath Bey retreated toward Upper Egypt. His intrenched camp was forced, amid a fearful carnage. The conquerors had no difficulty in obtaining possession of Cairo. Ibrahim Bey evacuated the city, which on July 25th Bonaparte entered. His policy now was to conciliate the people instead of oppressing them. He addressed himself to the principal sheiks, and obtained from them a declaration in favor of the French. It went forth with the same authority among the Mussulmans as a brief of the pope addressed to Roman Catholics. In the grand mosque a litany was sung to the glory of "the Favorite of Victory, who at the head of the valiant of the West has destroyed the infantry and the horse of the Mamelukes." A few weeks later "the Favorite of Victory" was seated in the grand mosque at the "Feast of the Prophets," sitting cross-legged as he repeated the words of the _Koran_, and edifying the sacred college by his piety. From the beginning to the end of July, Mr. Pitt was waiting with anxious expectation for news from the Mediterranean. During this suspense he wrote to the Speaker that he "could not be quite sure of keeping any engagement he might make." It was not till September 26th that the English Government knew the actual result of the toils and disappointments to which Nelson had been subjected. When it was known in England that he had been to Egypt and had returned to Sicily, the journalists talked of naval mismanagement; and worn out captains who were hanging about the Admiralty asking for employment marvelled at the rashness of Lord St. Vincent in sending so young a commander upon so great an enterprise. The Neapolitan Ministry, dreading to offend the French Directory, refused Nelson the supplies of provision and water which he required before he again started in pursuit of the fleet which "Cæsar and his fortune bare at once." Sir William Hamilton was our minister at Naples; his wife was the favorite of the Queen of Naples, and one of the most attractive of the ladies of that luxurious court. Nelson had a slight acquaintance with Lady Hamilton; and upon his representations of the urgent necessity for victualling his fleet, secret instructions were given that he should be supplied with all he required. In 1805 Nelson requested Mr. Rose to urge upon Mr. Pitt the claims of Lady Hamilton upon the national gratitude, because "it was through her interposition, exclusively, he obtained provisions and water for the English ships at Syracuse, in the summer of 1798; by which he was enabled to return to Egypt in quest of the enemy's fleet; to which, therefore, the success of his brilliant action of the Nile was owing, as he must otherwise have gone down to Gibraltar to refit, and the enemy would have escaped." On July 25th Nelson sailed from Syracuse. It was three days before he gained any intelligence of the French fleet, and he then learned that they had been seen about four weeks before, steering to the southeast from Candia. He was again convinced that their destination was Egypt; and he made all sail for Alexandria. On August 1st he beheld the tricolored flag flying upon its walls. His anxiety was at an end. For a week he had scarcely taken food or slept. The signal was made for the enemy's fleet; and he now ordered dinner to be served, and when his officers rose to prepare for battle he exclaimed that before the morrow his fate would be a peerage or Westminster Abbey. The fleet of Admiral Brueys was at anchor in the bay Abukir. The transports and other small vessels were within the harbor. Bonaparte told O'Meara that he had sent an officer from Cairo with peremptory orders that Brueys should enter the harbor, but that the officer was killed by the Arabs on the way. Brueys had taken measures to ascertain the practicability of entering the harbor with his larger ships, and had found that the depth of water was insufficient. He was unwilling to sail away to Corfu--as Bonaparte affirmed that he had ordered him to do if to enter the harbor were impracticable--until he knew that the army was securely established at Cairo. The French Admiral moored his fleet in what he judged the best position; a position described by Nelson himself as "a strong line of battle for defending the entrance of the bay (of shoals), flanked by numerous gunboats, four frigates, and a battery of guns and mortars." The French ships were placed "at a distance from each other of about a hundred sixty yards, with the van-ship close to a shoal in the northwest, and the whole of the line just outside a four-fathom sand-bank; so that an enemy, it was considered, could not turn either flank." Nelson, with the rapidity of genius, at once grasped this plan of attack. Where there was room for a French ship to swing, there was room for an English ship to anchor. He would place half his ships on the inner side of the French line, and half on the outer side. The number of ships in the two fleets was nearly equal, but four of the French were of larger size. At 3 P.M. the British squadron was approaching the bay, with a manifest intention of giving battle. Admiral Brueys had thought that the attack would be deferred to the next morning. Nelson had no intention of permitting the enemy to weigh anchor and get to sea in the darkness. By six o'clock Nelson's line was formed, without any precise regard to the succession of the vessels according to established forms. The shoal at the western extremity of the bay was rounded by eleven of the British squadron. The Goliath led the way, and when her commander, Foley, reached the enemy's van, he steered between the outermost ship and the shoal. The Zealous--Captain Hood--instantly followed. At twenty minutes past six the two van-ships of the French opened their fire upon these vessels, but they were soon disabled. Four other British ships also took their stations inside the French line. Nelson, in the Vanguard, followed by five of his seventy-fours, anchored on the outer side of the enemy. Nine of the French fleet were thus placed between the two fires of eleven of the British ships. The Leander had not been engaged, having been occupied in the endeavor to assist the Culloden, which, coming up after dark, ran aground. Before the sun went down the shore was crowded with the people of the country gazing upon this terrible conflict. When darkness fell, the flashes of the guns faintly indicated the positions of the contending fleets. Each British ship was ordered to carry four lanterns at her mizzen-peak, and these were lighted at seven o'clock. Each ship also went into action with the white ensign of St. George, of which the red cross in the centre rendered it easily distinguishable in the darkest night at sea. But there was another illumination, more awful than the flashes of two thousand cannon, which was that night to strike unwonted dismay into the bravest of the combatants of either nation. Five of the French ships had surrendered. The Vanguard had been engaged with the Spartiate and the Aquilon. Her loss was severe. A splinter had struck Nelson on the head, cutting a large piece of the flesh and skin from the forehead, which fell over his remaining eye. He was carried down to the cockpit, and the effusion of blood being very great, his wound was held to be dangerous, if not mortal, by the anxious shipmates around him. He was carried where his men were also carried, without regard to rank, to be tended by the busy surgeons. These left their wounded to bestow their care on the first man of the fleet. "No," said Nelson, "I will take my turn with my brave fellows." Sidney, in the field of Zuetphen, taking the cup of water from his lips to give to the dying soldier, with the memorable words, "This man's necessity is more than mine," was a parallel example of heroism. The Admiral did wait his turn; and meanwhile, in the belief that his career was ended, called to his chaplain to deliver a last token of affection to his wife. The wound was found to be superficial. He was carried to his cabin, and left alone, amid the din of the battle. Suddenly the cry was heard that L'Orient, the French flagship of one hundred twenty guns, was on fire. Nelson groped his way to the deck, to the astonishment of the crew, who heard their beloved commander giving his orders that the boats should be lowered to proceed to the help of the burning vessel. The Bellerophon had been overpowered by the weight of metal of L'Orient, and had lost her masts. The Swiftsure had also been engaged with this formidable vessel. Both had maintained an unremitting fire upon the French flagship. Admiral Brueys had fallen, and had died the death of a brave man on his deck. The ship was in flames; at ten o'clock she blew up, the conflagration having lasted for nearly an hour. When the explosion came, there was an awful silence. For ten minutes not a gun was fired on either side. The instinct of self-preservation, as well as the sudden awe on this sublime event, produced this pause in the battle. Some of the French, endeavoring to get out of the vicinity of the burning wreck, had slipped their cables. The nearest of the English took every precaution to prevent the combustible materials doing them injury. The shock of the explosion shook the Alexander, Swiftsure, and Orion to their kelsons and materially injured them. None of the British ships, however, took fire. About seventy only of the crew of L'Orient were saved by the English boats. The battle was resumed by the French ship, the Franklin; and it went on, at intervals, till daybreak. The contest was sustained by four French line-of-battle ships, and four of the English. Finally, two of the French line-of-battle ships and two frigates escaped. Of thirteen sail of the line, nine were taken, two were burned. Of the British, about nine hundred men were killed and wounded. No accurate account was obtained of the French loss. The estimate which represented that loss at five thousand was evidently exaggerated. About three thousand French prisoners were sent on shore. Kléber, the French general, wrote to Napoleon, "The English have had the disinterestedness to restore everything to their prisoners." After the victory of the Nile, Nelson returned to Naples. He required rest; and in the ease and luxury, the flattery and the honors which there awaited him, he forgot his quiet home, and after a time was involved in public acts which reflect discredit upon his previously spotless name. At Palermo, Lord Cochrane had opportunities of conversation with him. He says, "To one of his frequent injunctions, 'Never mind manoeuvres, always go at them,' I subsequently had reason to consider myself indebted for successful attacks under apparently difficult circumstances." Cochrane considered Nelson "an embodiment of dashing courage, which would not take much trouble to circumvent an enemy, but being confronted with one would regard victory so much a matter of course as hardly to deem the chance of defeat worth consideration." This opinion is borne out by a letter which Nelson wrote to his old friend, Admiral Locker, from Palermo: "It is you who always said, 'Lay a Frenchman close and you will beat him'; and my only merit in my profession is being a good scholar." Nelson was himself a master who made many good scholars. M. Thiers, having described the great naval battle of Abukir with tolerable fairness, admits that it was the most disastrous that the French navy had yet experienced--one from which the most fatal military consequences might be apprehended. The news of the disaster caused a momentary despair in the French army. Bonaparte received the intelligence with calmness. "Well," he exclaimed, "we must die here; or go forth, great, as were the ancients." He wrote to Kléber, "We must do great things"; and Kléber replied, "Yes, we must do great things: I prepare my faculties." It would have been fortunate for the fame of Bonaparte, if he had abstained from doing some of "the great things" which he accomplished while he remained in the East. The victory of Nelson formed the great subject of congratulation in the royal speech, when the session was opened on November 20th. "By this great and brilliant victory, an enterprise of which the injustice, perfidy, and extravagance had fixed the attention of the world, and was peculiarly directed against some of the most valuable interests of the British Empire, has, in the first instance, been turned to the confusion of its authors." FOOTNOTES: [46] The "Battle of the Baltic," April 2, 1801.--ED. JENNER INTRODUCES VACCINATION A.D. 1798 SIR THOMAS J. PETTIGREW In the advance of medical science no more famous discovery has been made than that of vaccination, that is, inoculation with the modified virus of a disease, thereby causing a mild form of it, in order to prevent a virulent attack. This treatment has in recent years been applied by the use of various serums and antitoxins against different diseases; but, originally and specifically, vaccination, as now understood, is inoculation with cowpox for the prevention of smallpox. Jenner's work in connection with the modern introduction of this practice is fully described in the following pages. In a more primitive manner inoculation against smallpox was practised many centuries ago in India, China, and other lands. The first modern accounts of it are said to have been given by a Turkish physician in 1714. In England it was first actually employed through the efforts of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who (1716-1718) had observed it in Constantinople, and there seen her son inoculated. The practice soon spread through Western Europe and to North America. Jenner's discoveries and demonstrations as to the specific value of the vaccine virus of cowpox, which led to the modern methods of vaccination for prevention of smallpox, proved of such efficacy and importance that the whole credit for this service to medical science has been popularly given to him. But among the intelligent it detracts nothing from his just fame to make due acknowledgment of previous work along similar lines. There have always been some, since Jenner's time, and are still considerable numbers of people in different countries, strongly opposed to vaccination for smallpox, on the ground of what they deem its unscientific and dangerous nature. But the vast majority of medical practitioners, and of the world at large, are convinced of its vital benefits, and in several countries vaccination is made compulsory by the State. Edward Jenner was born on May 17, 1749. He was a native of Berkeley in Gloucestershire, England. His father was the vicar of this place, and his mother was descended from an ancient family in Berkshire. In early life Jenner was deprived of his father, and the direction of his education devolved upon an elder brother, the Rev. Stephen Jenner. He attained a respectable proficiency in the classics, and his taste for natural history manifested an early development; for, at the age of nine, he had made a collection of the nests of the dormouse, and he employed the hours usually devoted by boys to play, in searching for fossils in the neighborhood. "No childish play to him was pleasing." Intended for the medical profession, Jenner was apprenticed to Daniel Ludlow, of Sodbury, near Bristol, to acquire a knowledge of surgery and pharmacy; and, after the period of his apprenticeship had expired in 1770, he went to London to complete his professional studies, and was a student at St. George's Hospital, and a resident, for two years, in the family of the celebrated John Hunter. The similarity of their tastes and spirit of research will render it a matter of no surprise that he should become a most favorite pupil. That this was the case in an eminent degree the correspondence which was maintained between the two great physiologists sufficiently proves. "There was in both a directness and plainness of conduct, an unquestionable desire of knowledge, and a congenial love of truth." Jenner was remarkable for the neatness and precision with which he made preparations of anatomy and natural history. His dissection of tender and delicate organs, his success in minute injections, and the taste he displayed in their arrangement are said to have been almost unrivalled. Hunter recommended him to Sir Joseph Banks, to prepare and arrange the various specimens brought home by the celebrated circumnavigator, Captain Cook, in his first voyage of discovery in 1771, and he was solicited to become the naturalist of the succeeding expedition in the year following; but Jenner's partiality to his native soil, and his desire of settling in the place of his birth, were too strong to admit of his being allured into such an appointment. He preferred the seclusion of a country village; and to this selection do we owe one of the greatest blessings ever bestowed upon mankind. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the subject by which he should afterward be known to the whole world, dwelt upon his mind with considerable force even at this early period, for the prophylactic powers of the cowpox were known, or rather rumored of, in a few districts, and the subject had been mentioned by Jenner to Hunter and others, though he had not been successful in directing their attention sufficiently to the importance of it. Indeed, he pressed this subject so much upon his professional brethren, that, at a medical club at Redborough to which he belonged, he was threatened to be expelled if he persisted in harassing them with a proposition which they then conceived had no foundation but in popular and idle rumor, and which had become so entirely distasteful to them. It remained, therefore, to Jenner to pursue the inquiry and to place the whole matter upon a proper physiological basis, by which it might be rendered permanently beneficial. This inquiry was perfected amid the labors and anxious toils attendant on the life of "a country surgeon," with few books to consult, and little leisure to devote to their perusal. Observation necessarily supplied the place of literary research; the book of nature was open to his view, and it was one he was well calculated to comprehend; it surpassed all others, and its contemplation amply repaid the student. Of all classes of men with whom it has been the fortune of the writer of this sketch to associate, there is none, in his opinion, so generally and so truly amiable as the naturalists. The contemplation of nature seldom fails to produce an elevation of character; it also begets a sweetness of disposition flowing from a sense of what is beautiful in creation; and the evidences of beneficence, everywhere so abundant, soften the feelings and impart to the individual a sincere benevolence of heart. This disposition was strikingly manifested in Jenner, to whose affection, kindness, meekness, good-will, and benevolence so many have borne the most ample testimony. It was no uncommon thing for Jenner to be accompanied in his daily professional tour of many miles by friends, who have eagerly listened to the outpourings of his mind called forth by the beauties which in the vale of Gloucester surrounded him. His observations on the structure and economy of the various objects of natural history were delivered with the most captivating simplicity and ingenuity. Full of information himself, he delighted to impart it, and was equally solicitous of obtaining a return from others. He was an enthusiast in his devotion to nature, and he anxiously desired that all should participate in the gratification which such a study never failed to afford. He united in an especial manner a talent for the most profound observations to a disposition most lively and ardent distinguished by mirth, playfulness, and wit. With these powers, it is not surprising that his society should have been much courted; and, fully engaged as he was by the duties of an extensive practice, he yet found time to cultivate an acquaintance with polite literature. Many little productions of his muse have appeared in print; they were addressed to some of his more favored correspondents, or occasionally read at convivial meetings, and display the turn of his mind, the benevolence of his disposition, and the liveliness of his imagination. His best poetical productions find their subjects in natural history. _The Signs of Rain_ unites the accuracy of the naturalist with the fancy of the poet. Jenner had nearly passed half a century before he made known to the world his experiments and investigations relative to the vaccine disease. His first successful vaccination was made May 14, 1769. His ardor from an early period had been noticed, and it took its rise from the following accidental circumstance. While a pupil with Mr. Ludlow, a young countrywoman applied for advice. The subject of smallpox was mentioned, upon which she observed, "I cannot take that disease, for I have had the cowpox." This was sufficient to excite the attention of Jenner, and the incident never escaped his recollection. It is easier to conceive than to express the emotions which would naturally spring from reflection on such a subject; his benevolent feelings were at once aroused to full activity; he pictured to himself all the horrors of that pestilential and most loathsome disease, disfiguring Nature's greatest work, slaying thousands upon thousands, and he was yet sufficiently young to recollect the severity of discipline to which he had himself submitted in the process preparatory to the practice of inoculation, which, to use his own words, in that day was no less than that of "bleeding till the blood was thin; purging till the body was wasted to a skeleton; and starving on vegetable diet to keep it so." The patience manifested by Jenner in the prosecution of his inquiry into the cowpox, the scrutiny to which he subjected every appearance that presented itself, and the fortitude with which he withstood every untoward circumstance entitle him to all praise and show forth his great capabilities for conducting a philosophical investigation. He divested the subject of all its difficulties and obscurities, and gave to "vague, inapplicable and useless rumor the certainty and precision of scientific knowledge." The extent of his anticipations upon this truly momentous subject do not appear to have been fully stated until 1780, ten years subsequent to his mention of it to John Hunter. He then confidentially disclosed to his intimate friend, Edward Gardner--who gave evidence upon the subject before the committee of the House of Commons--the opinions he entertained upon the natural history of the cowpox; dated its origin from the diseased heel of a horse; alluded to the different diseases with which the hands of the milkers became affected from handling the infected cows; distinguished that which was calculated to afford security against the smallpox; and divulged the hope he entertained of being able finally to eradicate that disease from the face of the globe. Doctor Baron has recorded the remarkable words with which this important communication was made: "I have intrusted a most important matter to you, which I firmly believe will prove of essential benefit to the human race. I know you, and should not wish what I have stated to be brought into conversation; for should anything untoward turn up in my experiments I should be made, particularly by my medical brethren, the subject of ridicule--for I am the mark they all shoot at." Jenner's reasons for concealment did not arise from any selfish or unworthy motive. The publicity he had always given to the subject and the efforts he had made among his professional associates to pursue the inquiry exclude the possibility of entertaining such a suspicion. It arose from a dread of disappointment and the fear of failure should the matter be brought forward in a state other than that of a maturity sufficient to carry conviction immediately upon its promulgation. In the course of his researches he was led to conclude that swinepox, as well as cowpox, was only a variety of smallpox. He inoculated his eldest son with the matter of swinepox and produced a disease similar to a very mild smallpox. After this, the inoculation of variolous matter would produce no effect. He ascertained that cowpox, as it was commonly termed by the milkers, would frequently fail in effecting a security against the smallpox. This led him to inquire more particularly into the variety of spontaneous eruptions to which the teats of the cow were liable, and to discriminate the different kinds of sores produced by them on the hands of the milkers, and to establish the character of those which possessed a specific power over the constitution, and those which had no such efficacy. He found that instances occurred in which the true cowpox failed in preventing smallpox; but nothing daunted by this apparently fatal discovery he set about ascertaining the causes of this deviation. He found the specific virtues of the virus to have been lost or deteriorated so that it was rendered capable only of producing a local affection and had no influence whatever upon the constitution; and by the greatest ingenuity and patience of observation of the analogies drawn from the virus of smallpox, aided by his knowledge of the laws of the animal economy, he discovered that it was only in a certain state of the vesicle that the virus was capable of affording its protecting agency, and that when taken under other conditions, or at other periods, it could produce a local disease, yet that it was not able to manifest any constitutional effect, or afford immunity from the invasions of the smallpox. On May 14, 1796, Jenner inserted lymph taken from the hand of Sarah Nelmes who was infected with cowpox, into the arm of James Phipps, a healthy boy about eight years of age. This is the first instance of regular inoculation of the vaccine disease by Jenner. The boy went through the disorder, and on July 1st following he had the matter of smallpox introduced into his arm, but no effect followed. Jenner had not before seen the cowpox but as presented on the hands of the milkers, nor had it been transmitted from one human being to another. He was struck with its great resemblance to the smallpox pustule. The success of this case must necessarily have operated powerfully upon him, and have urged him to continue the research with increased energy. His anticipations thus realized, his intentions accomplished, what must have been the feelings of such a man as Jenner? They were suited to the magnitude of the occasion, and mark the character of the philosopher, distinguished as it ever was by great simplicity, benevolence, and humility. "While," says he, "the vaccine discovery was progressive, the joy I felt at the prospect before me of being the instrument destined to take away from the world one of its greatest calamities, blended with the fond hope of enjoying independence and domestic peace and happiness, was often so excessive, that in pursuing my favorite subject among the meadows I have sometimes found myself in a kind of reverie. It is pleasant to me to recollect that these reflections always ended in devout acknowledgments to that Being from whom this and all other mercies flow." Lord Bacon said that "it is Heaven upon earth to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in Providence, and turn upon the poles of truth." Jenner was a striking illustration of the truth of that remark. The modesty of Jenner was evidenced in his original intention of submitting his observations on the cowpox in a paper addressed to the Royal Society. Doctor Baron tells us that "when the subject was laid before the president (the late Sir Joseph Banks), Jenner was given to understand that he should be cautious and prudent; that he had already gained some credit by his communications to the Royal Society and ought not to risk his reputation by presenting to the learned body anything which appeared so much at variance with established knowledge, and withal so incredible." It came forth most unostentatiously, about the end of June, 1798, dedicated to his friend Doctor Parry of Bath. Doctor Jenner visited London in the month of April of that year, and remained until July 14th. His object in this visit was to demonstrate the disease to his professional friends, but such was the distrust, or apathy, felt on the occasion, that Jenner returned to the country, without having been able to prevail on a single individual to submit to the inoculation of the virus. The virus Jenner brought to London was consigned to the care of the late Mr. Cline, of St. Thomas's Hospital. This celebrated surgeon inserted some of it, by two punctures, into the hip of a young patient with a disease of that part of the body. This calescent mode of proceeding was adopted with the idea of exciting a counter-irritation in the diseased part. The intention was to convert the vesicles into an issue, after the progress of the cowpox had been observed. This idea was, however, abandoned. Smallpox matter was afterward inserted into this child in three places. It produced a slight inflammation on the third day, and then subsided. The child was effectually protected against the disease. Mr. Cline now became very sanguine as to the result and inoculated three other children with lymph taken from the vesicles of the child, but no evil effect ensued. The subject began to excite the attention of the profession, and all were eager to put the matter to the test of experiment. Mr. Cline urged Doctor Jenner to settle in London. He promised him ten thousand pounds a year as the result of his practice. What was his reply? "Shall I, who even in the morning of my days, sought the lowly and sequestered paths of life, the valley, and not the mountain; shall I, now my evening is fast approaching, hold myself up as an object for fortune and for fame? Admitting it as a certainty that I obtain both, what stock should I add to my little fund of happiness? My fortune, with what flows in from my profession, is sufficient to gratify my wishes; indeed, so limited is my ambition, and that of my nearest connections, that even were I precluded from future practice I should be enabled to satisfy all my wants. As for fame, what is it? A gilded butt, forever pierced with the arrows of malignancy." That a discovery of such importance to mankind, once divulged, should bring forth many claimants, and that its author should be subjected to virulent attacks, is easy to be conceived. Jenner, however, never thought it necessary to reply to unfounded and harsh aspersions, satisfied in the strength of his own case, and feeling the justice and truth of his own claims and position. The practice being now established, it is unnecessary even to refer to the names of the opponents of vaccination. Many mistakes, and some of a serious nature, occurred to interrupt the progress of the discovery; these had been for the most part foreseen by Jenner, and were satisfactorily explained. In a letter to a friend, Jenner says, "I will just drop a hint. The vaccine disease, in my opinion, is not a preventive of the smallpox, but the smallpox itself; that is to say, the horrible form under which the disease appears in its contagious state is, as I conceive, a malignant variety." Again: "What I have said on this vaccine subject is true. If properly conducted, it secures the constitution as much as variolous inoculation possibly can. It is the smallpox in a purer form than that which has been current among us for twelve centuries past." And, in a letter to Mr. Pruen, "I have ever considered the variola and the vaccine radically and essentially the same. As the inoculation of the former has been known to fail, in instances so numerous, it would be very extraordinary if the latter should always be exempt from failure. It would tend to invalidate my early doctrine on this point." It is not necessary here to dwell upon the fatality of the smallpox when taken in the natural way, or to show that the mortality has been increased by the practice of inoculation, which creates an atmosphere for the constant propagation of the disease; these have been satisfactorily demonstrated in evidence before the House of Commons, and anyone may readily obtain this information. It is, however, interesting to record the names of those who, abandoning all prejudice and solicitous to promote a general good, submitted to the practice at its earliest period. Mr. Henry Hicks was the first to submit his own children to the vaccination. Lady Frances Morton (Lady Ducie) was the first personage of rank who had her child, and her only child, vaccinated. The Countess of Berkeley was instrumental in forwarding it; and the children of King William IV were vaccinated by Mr. Knight. Jenner's discovery entailed upon him a most extensive correspondence, and obliged him frequently to travel in London. His professional engagements were not only interrupted, but almost annihilated, and his private fortune encroached upon by such circumstances. His friends urged an application to Parliament. A petition to Parliament was presented on March 17, 1802, and Mr. Addington--later, Lord Sidmouth--informed the House that he had taken the King's pleasure on the contents of the petition and that His Majesty recommended it strongly to the consideration of Parliament. A committee was appointed, of which Admiral Berkeley was the chairman. A great mass of evidence was brought forward, and many professional and other persons examined. The Duke of Clarence gave his testimony, and manifested strongly his conviction of the prophylactic powers of the vaccine disease. Much opposition was offered to the claims of Jenner. He felt this deeply, and in a letter to his friend Mr. Hicks, dated April 28, 1802, he writes: "I sometimes wish this business had never been brought forward. It makes me feel indignant to reflect that one who has, through a most painful and laborious investigation, brought to light a subject that will add to the happiness of every human being in the world, should appear among his countrymen as a supplicant for the means of obtaining a few comforts for himself and family." The committee reported, and the House voted ten thousand pounds to Doctor Jenner. An amendment, proposing twenty thousand pounds, was lost by a majority of three! Sir Gilbert Blane, Doctor Lettsom, and others, feeling the utter inadequacy of this reward to the merits of the case, proposed to raise a fund by public subscription; but it was not carried into effect. The Royal Jennerian Society was established in 1803, and had the King for the patron, the Queen for the patroness, and various members of the royal family and nobility for its supporters. The design of the institution was to vaccinate the poor gratuitously, and supply virus to all parts of the world. It effected great good, and reduced the number of deaths by smallpox in a very remarkable degree. But dissensions sprang up, chiefly through the conduct of the resident inoculator recommending practices contrary to the printed regulations of the society, and it was virtually dissolved in 1806. Lord Henry Petty--later, Marquis of Lansdowne--was the chancellor of the exchequer in 1806, and on July 2d brought the subject of vaccination again before the House of Parliament. Upon this, the College of Physicians was directed to make inquiry into its state and condition, and a report was made on April 19, 1807. The report was highly satisfactory as to the advantages of the practice. On July 29th the Right Honorable Spencer Perceval,[47] being then chancellor of exchequer, called the attention of the House to it, and moved an additional grant of ten thousand pounds, when an amendment to double the sum was proposed by Mr. Edward Morris, M.P. for Newport, in Cornwall, and carried by a majority of thirteen. In 1808 the "National Vaccine Establishment" was formed, where the practice of vaccination and the supply of lymph has ever since been continued. Foreign academies and societies enrolled Doctor Jenner in the lists of their associates, and the medical societies of his own country were not less anxious to adorn their roster with his name. In 1808 he was elected a corresponding member of the National Institute, and in 1811 was chosen an associate, in place of Doctor Mackelyne, deceased. The Empress Dowager of Russia sent him a diamond ring, accompanied by a letter in testimony of her admiration of vaccination. She had the first child vaccinated in Russia named "Vaccinoff," and fixed a pension upon it for life. The Medical Society of London presented him with a gold medal; the Physical Society of Guy's Hospital instituted a new order of members, under the title of "Honorary Associates," and named Jenner for the first; the nobility and gentry of Gloucestershire presented him with a handsome gold cup; and various other marks of consideration were bestowed upon him as testimonies to the benefits he had conferred upon mankind. He was chosen mayor of his native town; received the freedom of the corporation of Dublin; the freedom of the city of Edinburgh; and elected an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of that city. In 1813 the University of Oxford granted him a degree of Doctor in Physic, by a decree of the convocation. The diploma was presented him by Sir C. Pegge and Doctor Kidd, the professors of anatomy and chemistry. On this occasion--and a similar honor had not been conferred by the university on any man for nearly seventy years before--Doctor Jenner observed, "It is remarkable that I should have been the only one of a long line of ancestors and relations who was not educated at Oxford. They were determined to turn me into the meadows, instead of allowing me to flourish in the groves of Academus. It is better, perhaps, as it is, especially as I have arrived at your highest honors without complying with your ordinary rules of discipline." The conduct of the London College of Physicians, it is painful to remark, was not characterized by such liberality. The majority of the fellows refused to admit him without the usual examination. Many of the fellows were anxious upon the subject, but their wishes did not prevail. The commander-in-chief of the army, upon the recommendation of the Army Medical Board and the Lords of the Admiralty, recommended the adoption of vaccination in the army and navy, and the naval physicians and surgeons presented a gold medal to Jenner for his discovery. The practice extended itself through France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Russia, and the United States. In the East, it overcame even the scruples of the Hindu and the Chinese. The writer of this memoir, by the kindness of Sir George Staunton, is in possession of a treatise on vaccination drawn up by Mr. Pearson and translated by Sir George into the Chinese language. It was of great use in encouraging the natives to the adoption of the salutary practice. The King of Prussia submitted his own children to vaccination. He was the first monarch to do so. On September 13, 1815, Doctor Jenner lost his wife. He retired to Berkeley, and thereafter lived in retirement. He died January 26, 1823, in the seventy-fourth year of his age, and was buried on February 3d in the chancel of the parish church of Berkeley. FOOTNOTES: [47] Two years later Perceval was premier (1809-1812) and he was assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons, May 11, 1812.--ED. CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY EMBRACING THE PERIOD COVERED IN THIS VOLUME A.D. 1775-1799 JOHN RUDD, LL.D. Events treated at length are here indicated in large type; the numerals following give volume and page. Separate chronologies of the various nations, and of the careers of famous persons, will be found in the INDEX VOLUME, with volume and page references showing where the several events are fully treated. A.D. 1775. Burke speaks for conciliation with America; Lord Effingham resigns his military command rather than fight against the colonists of America. Beginning of the American Revolution: "BATTLE OF LEXINGTON." See xiv, 1. Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point surprised by Ethan Allen. "BATTLE OF BUNKER HILL." See xiv, 19. Washington appointed Commander-in-Chief by the Continental Congress. Montgomery slain in an attack on Quebec. See "CANADA REMAINS LOYAL TO ENGLAND," xiv, 30. All intercourse between the American colonists and Denmark interdicted by its King, Christian VII. 1776. General Howe evacuates Boston, March 17th. British repulse at Charleston by Colonel Moultrie. Declaration of Independence adopted by the Continental Congress, July 4th. See "SIGNING OF AMERICAN DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE," xiv, 39. Battle of Long Island; defeat of the Americans. New York occupied by the British. Howe defeats the Americans at White Plains. Fort Washington taken by the British November 16th. Washington successfully surprises the Hessians at Trenton, December 26th. Riots in England to destroy machinery. Publication in England of the first volume of Gibbon's _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_. 1777. Washington defeats Cornwallis at Princeton, January 3d. The British burn Danbury. Ticonderoga captured by Burgoyne. Battles of Brandywine and Germantown; defeat of the Americans. Lafayette and Steuben arrive in America. "DEFEAT OF BURGOYNE AT SARATOGA." See xiv, 51. Division of the Crim Tartars into two distinct parties, the Russian and Turkish. Execution in England of Dr. Dodd for forgery. Austria annexes Bukowina. 1778. France recognizes the independence of the United States and forms an alliance with them. Evacuation of Philadelphia by the British. A French fleet and army arrive in America to aid the United States. Savannah captured by the British. Massacre of Wyoming. Congress refuses to treat with the British commissioners. Beginning of the War of the Bavarian Succession. Cook discovers the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands. France declares war against England. 1779. Battle of Brier Creek; defeat of the Americans. Stony Point stormed by the Americans under Wayne. Paul Jones gains a naval victory off the English coast; see "FIRST VICTORY OF THE AMERICAN NAVY," xiv, 68. Repulse by the British of the Americans and French at Savannah. Spain declares war against England; Gibraltar invested by the French and Spanish fleets. 1780. Siege and capture of Charleston by the British. First Battle of Camden; defeat of the Americans. Treachery of Arnold, who agrees to deliver West Point to the British. Execution of Major André. Victory of the Americans at King's Mountain. Gordon "No Popery" riots in England. England declares war against Holland for allowing Paul Jones to take his prizes into her harbors. Revolt of Tupac Amaru in Peru. "JOSEPH II ATTEMPTS REFORMS IN HUNGARY." See xiv, 85. 1781. Battles of the Cowpens and Guilford Court House; defeat of the British. British victory at Hobkirk's Hill. Eutaw Springs the scene of a drawn battle. Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown. See "SIEGE AND SURRENDER OF YORKTOWN," xiv, 97. Arnold burns New London and captures Fort Griswold. Completion of the ratification of the Articles of Confederation by the States of the Union. Continuation of the siege of Gibraltar by the French and Spanish. Institution of the first Sunday-school at Gloucester, England, by Robert Raikes. 1782. Evacuation by the British of Savannah and Charleston. A preliminary treaty of peace between the United States and Great Britain signed by John Adams, Franklin, Jay, and Laurens. See "CLOSE OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION," xiv, 137. Great naval victory of the British admiral, Rodney, over the French, in the West Indies. Tippoo Sahib, in Mysore, succeeds his father, Hyder Ali. Grattan secures the independence of the Irish Parliament. "BRITISH DEFENCE OF GIBRALTAR." See xiv, 116. 1783. Peace of Paris between the United States and Great Britain. New York evacuated by the British. Peace of Versailles between Britain, France, and Spain. Catharine II seizes the Crimea for Russia. Many colonists of America settle in Canada on conclusion of the war. See "SETTLEMENT OF AMERICAN LOYALISTS IN CANADA," xiv, 156. Perfidious massacre of Tartars by Potemkin, Russian general and first favorite of Catharine II. A patent granted to Henry Johnson and John Walter of the _Times_ for stereotype or logographic printing. "FIRST BALLOON ASCENSION." See xiv, 163. 1784. Treaty of peace between England and Holland. Founding of the first daily newspaper in America, at Philadelphia. The scandal of the Diamond Necklace in France. In Ireland the Peep-o'-Day Boys make their appearance. Iceland for nearly twelve months desolated by an irruption of Hecla. 1785. Negotiations between the United States and Spain for free navigation of the Mississippi. John Adams, first minister of the United States to England, received by the King. Establishment of the Philippine Company in Spain. John Howard, English philanthropist, sets out on his travels to visit the plague hospitals. La Pérouse, French Admiral, proceeds to explore the Northern Pacific. 1786. A negro colony sent from London to found the settlement of Sierra Leone. Outbreak of Shay's revolt in Massachusetts. Impeachment of Warren Hastings, England, for peculation in India. Galvani makes electrical discoveries. 1787. "FRAMING OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES." See xiv, 173. Civil liberty taught in France by Lafayette and his companions in America, leads to the French Revolution. Shay's rebellion repressed. Congress undertakes the government of the Northwest Territory. Wedgwood manufactures his imitations of Etruscan ware. Swedenborg's New Jerusalem Church founded. 1788. Revolution in the Austrian Netherlands provinces. Ratification in eleven of the states of the Constitution of the United States. Founding of Cincinnati. The members of the Society of Friends in Philadelphia emancipate their slaves. Mental derangement of George III of England. A penal settlement formed by the English in Australia. Louis XVI of France appoints Necker chief minister. New Assembly of Notables; the Third Estate admitted, numbering one-half. War against Russia declared by Sweden. 1789. Washington elected President of the United States. The first Congress under the Constitution supersedes the Continental Congress. Inauguration of Washington at New York, April 30. See "INAUGURATION OF WASHINGTON: HIS FAREWELL ADDRESS," xiv, 197. War in India between the English and Tippoo Sahib. A Roman Catholic episcopal see erected at Baltimore, the first in the United States. Battle of Fokshani; defeat of the Turks by the Austrians and Russians. Meeting of the States-General of France; power is seized by the Third Estate. See "FRENCH REVOLUTION: STORMING OF THE BASTILLE," xiv, 212. Mutiny of the Bounty, English ship. 1790. Philadelphia becomes the seat of government of the United States. Harmar makes an unsuccessful expedition against the Indians of the Northwest Territory. First issue of French Assignats. Declaration of independence by the Belgian provinces; Congress of Brussels convened. 1791. "ESTABLISHMENT OF THE UNITED STATES BANK." See xiv, 230. Vermont admitted into the Union. Defeat of St. Clair by the Miamis. Passage of the constitutional act of Canada dividing it into Upper and Lower Canada. Buckle-makers of England petition Parliament against the use of shoe-strings. Guillotin introduces the machine for decapitation, bearing his name. "NEGRO REVOLUTION IN HAITI." See xiv, 236. Flight of the French royal family; they are stopped at Varennes and taken back to Paris. Insurrections in La Vendée and Brittany; massacres at Avignon, Marseilles, and Aix. A new constitution adopted by the King and Diet of Poland, which gives offence to Catharine of Russia. Hungary secures constitutional liberties from Leopold II; the rights of Protestants sanctioned. 1792. Washington reëlected President of the United States. The national mint established at Philadelphia. Admission of Kentucky into the Union. Confiscation of the property of the French _Émigrés_; a Girondist ministry formed by Louis XVI; he is compelled to declare war against Austria and Prussia. See "REPUBLICAN FRANCE DEFIES EUROPE: BATTLE OF VALMY," xiv, 252. 1793. Congress passes the first fugitive-slave law of the United States. Washington begins his second administration. "INVENTION OF THE COTTON-GIN." See xiv, 271. "EXECUTION OF LOUIS XVI: MURDER OF MARAT: CIVIL WAR IN FRANCE." See xiv, 295. Toulon retaken by the French from the English; Napoleon Bonaparte commands the French artillery. Further partition of Poland; the western portion annexed by Prussia; she also seizes Dantzic, a free city; Russia takes the more eastern provinces. Volta makes known his galvanic battery. 1794. Battle of Maumee Rapids; the power of the Miamis broken by General Wayne. The great Whiskey Insurrection in Pennsylvania. Jay arranges a treaty with Great Britain. Climax of the Reign of Terror in France; fall and death of Danton; Robespierre and the Jacobin Club both fall. See "THE REIGN OF TERROR," xiv, 311. Victory of the English, under Lord Howe, over the French fleet. "DOWNFALL OF POLAND." See xiv, 330. Trial in England of Hardy, Horne Tooke, and others for constructive high treason. 1795. Sale of the Western Reserve (in Ohio) of Connecticut. Holland completely conquered by the French; insurrection in Paris by the bourgeois against the Convention; the Constitution of the year 111 adopted; Bonaparte crushes the insurrection of Vendémiaire; government of the Directory. Formation of the Orange Society in Ireland. Third partition of Poland. 1796. Tennessee admitted into the Union. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson elected President and Vice-President of the United States. Publication of Washington's Farewell Address. Bonaparte given command of the French in Italy; Sardinia submits; the Austrians driven from Lombardy; the Cispadane Republic formed. Unsuccessful attempt of the French on Ireland. "RISE OF NAPOLEON: FRENCH CONQUEST OF ITALY." See xiv, 339. Ceylon taken from the Dutch by the English. Alliance of France with Tippoo Sahib and Spain against England. 1797. Difficulties between the United States and France nearly lead to war. Suspension of specie payments in England; naval victories of the British, Cape Vincent, over the Spaniards, and of Camperdown, over the Dutch. 1798. Passage in the United States of the Alien and Sedition laws. "OVERTHROW OF THE MAMELUKES: THE BATTLE OF THE NILE." See xiv, 353. Imprisonment of the pope and formation of the Roman republic by the French; the Helvetian republic founded by them. "JENNER INTRODUCES VACCINATION." See xiv, 363. Gas-lights introduced by Watt and Boulton. 1798. English expedition against Holland; capture of the Dutch fleet. Mysore taken by the English; death of Tippoo Sahib. Sugar first extracted from the beet-root by Achard. "THE GREAT IRISH REBELLION." See xv, 1. Count Rumford discovers that heat is a mode of motion. Greathead, England, invents the lifeboat. Gradual emancipation of negroes in New York. 1799. Advance into Syria by Napoleon; repulsed from Acre; victorious over the Turks at Abukir; he reëmbarks for France; Kléber left in command in Egypt. Napoleon, Sieyès, and Fouché effect a change of government in France; military force used; Napoleon first consul. 
30186	----	THE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS A COMPREHENSIVE AND READABLE ACCOUNT OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY, EMPHASIZING THE MORE IMPORTANT EVENTS, AND PRESENTING THESE AS COMPLETE NARRATIVES IN THE MASTER-WORDS OF THE MOST EMINENT HISTORIANS NON-SECTARIAN NON-PARTISAN NON-SECTIONAL ON THE PLAN EVOLVED FROM A CONSENSUS OF OPINIONS GATHERED FROM THE MOST DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARS OF AMERICA AND EUROPE, INCLUDING BRIEF INTRODUCTIONS BY SPECIALISTS TO CONNECT AND EXPLAIN THE CELEBRATED NARRATIVES, ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY, WITH THOROUGH INDICES, BIBLIOGRAPHIES, CHRONOLOGIES, AND COURSES OF READING EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ROSSITER JOHNSON, LL.D. ASSOCIATE EDITORS CHARLES F. HORNE, Ph.D. JOHN RUDD, LL.D. _With a staff of specialists_ _VOLUME XIII_ The National Alumni Copyright, 1905, BY THE NATIONAL ALUMNI [Illustration: The charge of the British at Quebec. Painting by R. Caxton Woodville.] CONTENTS VOLUME XIII PAGE _An Outline Narrative of the Great Events_, xiii CHARLES F. HORNE _John Law Promotes the Mississippi Scheme (A.D. 1716)_, 1 LOUIS ADOLPHE THIERS _Prince Eugene Vanquishes the Turks_ _Siege and Battle of Belgrad (A.D. 1717)_, 16 PRINCE EUGENE OF SAVOY _Bursting of the South Sea Bubble (A.D. 1720)_, 22 LOUIS ADOLPHE THIERS _Bach Lays the Foundation of Modern Music (A.D. 1723)_, 31 HENRY TIPPER _Settlement of Georgia (A.D. 1732)_, 44 WILLIAM B. STEVENS _Rise of Methodism (A.D. 1738)_ _Preaching of the Wesleys and of Whitefield_, 57 WILLIAM E.H. LECKY _Conquests of Nadir Shah_ _Capture of Delhi (A.D. 1739)_, 72 SIR JOHN MALCOLM _First Modern Novel (A.D. 1740)_, 100 EDMUND GOSSE _Frederick the Great Seizes Silesia (A.D. 1740)_ _Maria Theresa Appeals to the Hungarians_, 108 WILLIAM SMYTH _Defeat of the Young Pretender at Culloden (A.D. 1746)_ _Last of the Stuarts_, 117 JUSTIN McCARTHY _Benjamin Franklin Experiments with Electricity (A.D. 1747)_, 130 JOHN BIGELOW AND BENJAMIN FRANKLIN _Voltaire Directs European Thought from Geneva (A.D. 1755)_, 144 JOHN MORLEY GEORGE W. KITCHIN _Braddock's Defeat (A.D. 1755)_, 163 WINTHROP SARGENT GEORGE WASHINGTON CAPTAIN DE CONTRECOEUR _Exile of the Acadian Neutrals (A.D. 1755)_, 181 WILLIAM H. WITHROW _Clive Establishes British Supremacy in India_ _Black Hole of Calcutta: Battle of Plassey (A.D. 1756)_, 185 SIR ALEXANDER J. ARBUTHNOT _Seven Years' War (A.D. 1756-1763)_ _Battle of Torgau_, 204 WOLFGANG MENZEL FREDERICK THE GREAT _Conquest of Canada_ _Victory of Wolfe at Quebec (A.D. 1759)_, 229 A.G. BRADLEY _Usurpation of Catharine II in Russia (A.D. 1762)_, 250 W. KNOX JOHNSON _Conspiracy of Pontiac (A.D. 1763)_, 267 E.O. RANDALL _American Colonies Oppose the Stamp Act (A.D. 1765)_ _Patrick Henry's Speech_, 299 JAMES GRAHAME GEORGE BANCROFT _Watt Improves the Steam-engine (A.D. 1769)_, 302 FRANÇOIS ARAGO _First Partition of Poland (A.D. 1772)_, 313 JAMES FLETCHER _The Boston Tea Party (A.D. 1773)_, 333 GEORGE BANCROFT _Cotton Manufacture Developed (A.D. 1774)_, 341 THOMAS F. HENDERSON _Intellectual Revolt of Germany_ _Goethe's_ Werther _Arouses Romanticism (A.D. 1775)_, 347 KARL HILLEBRAND _Pestalozzi's Method of Education (A.D. 1775)_, 364 GEORGE RIPLEY _Universal Chronology (A.D. 1716-1775)_, 379 JOHN RUDD LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS VOLUME XIII PAGE _The charge of the British at Quebec (page 248)_, Painting by R. Caton Woodville. Frontispiece _The British officer reads the decree of exile of the Acadian Neutrals, in the village church_, 184 Painting by Frank Dicksee. AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, CONNECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE GREAT EVENTS (FROM VOLTAIRE TO WASHINGTON) CHARLES F. HORNE During the eighteenth century a remarkable change swept over Europe. The dominant spirit of the time ceased to be artistic as in the Renaissance, or religious as in the Reformation, or military as during the savage civil wars that had followed. The central figure of the world was no longer a king, nor a priest, nor a general. Instead, the man on whom all eyes were fixed, who towered above his fellows, was a mere author, possessed of no claim to notice but his pen. This was the age of the arisen intellect. The rule of Louis XIV, both in its splendor and its wastefulness, its strength and its oppression, its genius and its pride, had well prepared the way for what should follow. Not only had French culture extended over Europe, but the French language had grown everywhere to be the tongue of polite society, of the educated classes. It had supplanted Latin as the means of communication between foreign courts. Moreover, the most all-pervading and obtrusive of French monarchs was succeeded by the most retiring, the one most ready of all to let the world take what course it would. Louis XV chanced to reign during this entire period, from 1715 to 1774, and that is equivalent to saying that France, which had become the chief state of Europe, was ungoverned, was only robbed and bullied for the support of a profligate court. So long as citizens paid taxes, they might think--and say--wellnigh what they pleased. The elder Louis had realized something of the error of his own career and had left as his last advice to his successor, to abstain from war. We are told that the obedient legatee accepted the caution as his motto, and had it hung upon his bedroom wall, where it served him as an excellent excuse for doing nothing at all. His government was notoriously in the hands of his mistresses, Pompadour and the others, and their misrule was to the full as costly to France as the wars of the preceding age. They drained the country quite as deeply of its resources and renown; they angered and insulted it far more. Meanwhile the misery of all Europe, caused by the continued warfare, cried out for reform, demanded it imperatively if the human race were not to disappear. The population of France had diminished by over ten per cent. during the times of the "Grand Monarch"; the cost of the Thirty Years' War to Germany we have already seen. Hence we find ourselves in a rather thoughtful and anxious age. Even kings begin to make some question of the future. Governments become, or like to call themselves, "benevolent despotisms," and instead of starving their subjects look carefully, if somewhat dictatorially, to their material prosperity. England, to be sure, but England alone, stands out as an exception to the prevalence of despotic rule. There the commons had already won their battle. King George I, the German prince whom they had declared their sovereign after the death of Anne (1714), did not even know his subjects' language, communicated with his ministers in barbaric Latin, and left the governing wholly in their hands. The "cabinet" system thus sprang up; the ministers were held responsible to Parliament and obeyed its will. The exiled Stuart kings made one or two feeble attempts to win back their throne, but the tide of progress was against them and their last hope vanished in the slaughter of Culloden.[1] By that defeat Great Britain was finally and firmly established as a parliamentary government; and the most marked of all the physical changes of the century was the rapid expansion of her power under this new form of rule. She grew to be really "mistress of the seas," extended her sceptre over distant lands, ceased to be an island, and became a world-wide empire. Her trade increased enormously; her manufactures developed. By his invention of the "spinning-jenny," Arkwright placed England's cotton manufacture among the most giant industries of the world.[2] The land grew vastly rich. It was her reward for political progress, for having been able so to "get the start of the majestic world." SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT At the opening of this period the talk of the town, both in Paris and in London, ran on colonies and the tremendous wealth to be gained from them as the Spaniards and the Dutch had done. During the minority of Louis XV, even the Prince Regent of France dabbled in colonial investments. The stock market became suddenly a prominent feature of politics. John Law planned his dazzling "Mississippi Scheme," by which all Frenchmen were to become millionaires. Only, unfortunately, the bubble burst, and the industrious were ruined instead.[3] England had its "South Sea Bubble," with the same madness of speculation, vanishing fortunes, and blasted reputations.[4] The nobility having been driven by gunpowder from their ancient occupation as warrior chiefs, having lost to kings and people their rights as governors, became traders instead. We approach a period in which they cease to be the leading order of society, we approach the "reign of the middle classes." From England, according to the English view, sprang also the great intellectual movement of the age. Voltaire visited the England of Addison and Pope; Montesquieu studied the English Constitution of 1689; and these two men were the writers who overthrew absolutism in Europe, who paved the way for the epoch of Revolution that was to follow. Montesquieu's _Persian Letters_, satirizing French society, appeared as early as 1721. Voltaire's sarcasms and witty sneers got him into trouble with the French Government as early as 1715. He was imprisoned in the Bastille, but released and at last driven from his country, a firebrand cast loose upon Europe to spread the doctrine of man's equality, to cry out everywhere for justice against oppression, and to mock with almost satanic ingenuity against the religion in whose name Europe had plunged into so many wars. By 1740 Voltaire was the most prominent figure of his world, if we except perhaps the quarrelling sovereigns, Maria Theresa and Frederick the Great. He dwelt for a time with Frederick in Berlin; but the two disagreed as great potentates will, and Voltaire withdrew to Geneva (1755), the little independent city republic which had served as a refuge to so many fugitives on France's border.[5] From Geneva, Voltaire corresponded with most of the crowned heads of Europe. His advice was eagerly sought by "benevolent despotism." The aid of his mighty pen was claimed by every victim of oppression. In Paris, Diderot and his companions brought out the famous _Cyclopædia_, a mighty monument of human learning indeed, but even more a mighty sermon against tyranny, a scornful protest against Christianity, a teacher spreading over all the earth the preachings of Voltaire. If there was evil in this movement there was also good. Thought was aroused, was stimulated, and everywhere the products of awakened genius began to appear. The marvellous development of modern music had its origin in this period with the creations of Bach.[6] The modern novel began its tremendously important career with Richardson and Fielding.[7] Inventive genius achieved the first great triumph of modern mechanicism in Watt's steam-engine.[8] Even across the ocean spread the intellectual impulse, and the New World had its Franklin to astonish and delight the old with his experiments in electricity--childish experiments at first, as man reached out slowly, shudderingly, toward control of this last and most marvellous of his servants.[9] Philanthropy awoke also. Serious folk began to have vague self-questionings as to the righteousness of human slavery. The prison system was investigated; in England there were vague attempts at its reform. The noble Oglethorpe did what he could to arouse public sentiment against imprisonment for debt, and in his own person led to America a colony of the unfortunate victims of the system. They founded Georgia, the latest of the colonies; and the chain of settlements along the Atlantic coastline was complete.[10] Who would find waste land to live on after that, must journey farther west, must seek the interior of the new continent--a simple fact, but one that was soon destined to produce tempestuous results. In this age also, as if in answer to the spiritual apathy of which Voltaire was only the expression, not the cause, there arose Methodism, which in externals at least showed itself the most passionate and the most expressive form of devotion to Christianity. Wesley and Whitefield, the celebrated preachers, spread their doctrines over England in the face of insult and persecution. They penetrated the American colonies; their doctrines reached even beyond their language and affected the entire European Continent. The revival of devotion may have been hysterical, yet a vast revival it assuredly was; it has been called by some critics the most important religious movement since the Reformation.[11] WARS OF EUROPE AND ASIA In face of such events as these, we learn to attach less importance to the schemes of kings, and their selfish territorial wars, horrible as these may be in their exhibitions of human heartlessness and blood-guilt, destructive as they have ever been in their consequences of suffering and degeneration. The Turks were now finally beaten back from their conquests in Hungary. The war which they had begun with the siege of Vienna was continued by the celebrated Austrian general, Prince Eugene, the companion of Marlborough against Louis XIV. Eugene won victory after victory, and finally by the capture of Belgrad (1717) drove the Mahometans forever from Hungarian territory, reduced them from a universal menace to become an ever-fading "Eastern question."[12] Russia also, at first under Peter the Great and later under Catherine II, began to reach out for Turkish territory. The Turks had risen by the sword, and now, as other nations progressed and they stood still, the power of the sword was failing them. Russia expanded toward the Black Sea, as before she had expanded toward the Baltic, feeling out from her boundaries everywhere, moving along the line of least resistance, already looking toward Poland as her next tempting mouthful. In Asia too the Turks had troubles to encounter. Asia, the vastly productive, multitudinous through unprogressive, could still raise up conquerors of the Turkish type to stand against them. The last of those sudden waves of temporary, meaningless, barbarian conquest swept over the Asian plains. Nadir Shah, a Persian bandit, freed his country from the yoke of its Afghan tyrants, assumed its throne, and by repeated battles enlarged his domains at Turkish expense. He subdued Afghanistan, and then extending his attention to India made a sudden invasion of that huge land, overthrew the forces of the Great Mogul, and, having captured both him and his capital, permitted him to continue to reign as a sort of subject prince. Returning from this distant expedition, Nadir Shah was beginning to push his conquests over Northeastern Asia when he was slain by a conspiracy among his Persian followers, driven to desperation by his savage tyranny. His dominions fell to pieces with his death.[13] Europe meanwhile was going through a series of wars which seem small improvement over those of Nadir, except that they have had more polished historians. The selfish principles of Louis XIV had not lost their influence, the passion for territorial aggrandizement had not disappeared. In all history it would be hard to find a war more brazen in the avowed selfishness of its beginning, more utterly callous in its persistence, than that into which all Europe plunged in 1740. This astonishing turmoil is known as the War of the Austrian Succession. We have seen how the extinction of the line of the Spanish Hapsburgs had given rise to kingly jealousies and strife in 1700. Next the Austrian Hapsburgs, or at least the male line of them, became extinct in 1740. Their surviving representative was a daughter, a young and energetic woman, Maria Theresa, the "Empress Queen." Her father, the Emperor Charles VI, foreseeing the difficulties she must encounter, had during his lifetime made treaties with every important court of Europe, by which he yielded them valuable concessions in return for their guarantee that on his death his daughter should succeed to his throne and his possessions undisturbed. Her husband was to be made emperor. The moment Charles was gone, every treaty was thrown to the winds, and every hand seemed extended by a common impulse to clutch what it could from a woman's weakness.[14] The first to move was Frederick II, King of Prussia, he whom his admirers have called the Great. He was a young man, he had just succeeded to the Prussian kingdom which his father had left peaceful and prosperous, guarded by a powerful and well-trained army, made secure by a well-filled treasury. Young Frederick was undoubtedly great in intellect and in cynical frankness. He saw his opportunity, he made no pretence of keeping his promises; marching his army forward he seized the nearest Austrian province, the rich and extensive land of Silesia. The other kingdoms rushed to get their share of the spoils; France, Bavaria, Saxony, Sardinia, and Spain formed an alliance with Prussia. Only England, in her antagonism to France, made protest--purely diplomatic. Austria was assailed from every side. Her overthrow seemed certain. A French army was within three days' march of Vienna; it captured the Bohemian capital, Prague. It was then that Maria Theresa made her famous appeal to the Hungarians, and the impressionable Magyars swore to die in her defence. She gathered armies, Austrian and Hungarian. She made a desperate alliance with Frederick, consenting to give him Silesia so as to save her other domains. The members of the coalition quarrelled among themselves. The French were driven to a disastrous retreat from Prague. Louis XV remembered his disapproval of war, as soon as it became disastrous; and the whole assault on the Empress Queen faded away as selfishly as it had risen. The only result was that Frederick had Silesia, and Maria Theresa intended to have it back; and so they plotted and plotted, fought and fought. War followed war, and battle, battle. Silesia became a desert at last and of little value to either party. As to the Silesians who had once existed there, a few of them escaped starvation and massacre, not many, some hundred thousands, a mere matter of figures this in the kingly game and not accurately kept count of. THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR The final upshot of this Silesian argument was the Seven Years' War. Maria Theresa made friends with the mistress of Louis XV, and so secured a French alliance. Frederick offended the Empress of Russia by his witty tongue, and she also joined in the "ladies' war" against him. Saxony, the nearest state to Prussia, was ever on the side of the strongest. So here was the European coalition hurled against Frederick in his turn. He proved the ablest general of his age, one of the master minds of military skill. For seven years he withstood all his enemies, Austria and Russia mainly, for Saxony he soon conquered, and France showed no great military powers--disgraced herself if further disgrace were possible to her condition. Over the military details of the contest we need not pause.[15] Prussia had always been regarded as one of the lesser European states, Austria and France as the chief powers. Russia now proved herself of equal weight with the greatest, so that even the genius of Frederick began to fail against the enormous odds which crushed him down. His land was laid waste, his capital seized by a sudden attack and held for ransom. He was saved by the death of the Russian Empress; her son and successor, an admirer of Frederick, promptly changed sides in the war. By degrees everyone abandoned it but Maria Theresa; and she, finding her single strength insufficient against Prussia, was compelled to yield at last. Frederick kept his dear-bought desert of Silesia. This Seven Years' War caused what that of the Austrian Succession had attempted, a complete redistribution of the balance of European power, England, Russia, and Prussia rising to at least equality with Austria and France. Even before the opening of the formal war France and England had been engaged in a colonial strife, which had caused England to declare herself Frederick's ally; and, while in Europe the grapple between England and France did not assume serious proportions, it was of enormous consequence to their colonies in India and America. In India both countries had trading-stations, but the French were popular with the natives and the English were not. The weakness of the native support was not realized by either party. The conquests of Nadir Shah were scarcely known to them; the name of the Great Mogul at Delhi was one of vagueness and mysterious power; it seemed to the French that with Indian aid they could easily drive the English into the sea; and the attempt was made. It must have been successful but for Clive. That remarkable young warrior rose from his subordinate desk, laid aside his clerkly pen, and gathering a little band of fighters round him, defeated both French and natives in the remarkable siege of Arcot. Then came the hideous tale of the "black hole of Calcutta," and Clive achieved revenge and completed his work of conquest at Plassey (1757).[16] Centuries had elapsed since Europeans had encountered, in serious battle, any Asiatics except the Turks--and these had proved quite equal to the strife. Hence the vast superiority which the more progressive civilization had attained was little realized. The American aborigines had indeed fallen an easy prey to Europe, but the conquest of Asia and Africa had not yet been begun. Thus the victories of Clive seemed to his contemporaries even more marvellous than they were. They won for England not only an empire in India, but a high prestige in Europe also. WAR IN AMERICA In America the British success was equally decisive though more dearly bought. Here the war had originated in the Ohio valley. Finding no more room upon the coast, the English colonists were pressing westward and there met the French. The vast wilderness which had lain unoccupied for centuries, even though men knew of its existence, now became suddenly of importance. Frenchmen needed it for their fur trade; Britons for colonization. They fought for it. Here as in India the natives had been won by the diplomatic French, but their aid proved of no avail. The British Parliament sent over General Braddock in 1757, and he perished with a large portion of his army in the celebrated ambuscade from which Washington escaped.[17] For a time French energy made the war seem not unequal; but the number of French in America was small; the home Government of Louis XV seemed wholly lost in sloth and indifferent to the result. The English Government was doggedly resolute. Its unwilling subjects, the French colonists of Acadia, were driven from their homes.[18] Troops were poured into America, and in 1759 Wolfe won his famous victory at Quebec.[19] The next year Montreal also fell into the hands of the British, and the conquest of Canada was complete. The treaty of 1763, which ended the Seven Years' War for Prussia, brought peace also between England and France. The latter surrendered her colonial pretensions, partly in India, wholly in America, without having really exerted herself to retain them. Perhaps her experience in the Mississippi Scheme of Law had convinced her they were of but little worth. SUPREMACY OF FREDERICK THE GREAT The latter half of the reign of Frederick the Great was very different from its beginning. He had encountered war sufficient to satiate even his reckless appetite, and he clung to peace. Prussia became for a while the centre of European government and intrigue; and Frederick, by far the ablest sovereign of his time, remained until his death (1786) the leader in that system of paternal government, of kindly tyranny, which typifies the age. He husbanded the resources of his country with jealous care; he compelled his people to work, and be provident, and prosper, whether they would or no. Maria Theresa treated her subjects with much the same benevolence; and her son and successor Joseph II became the most ardent of the admirers of Frederick. Russia also came under a ruler of similar ideas, Catharine II,[20] a German princess by birth, who wedded a czar, deposed him, and, ruling in his stead, became the most Russian of the Russians. She ruled her land wisely and well, with a little more than Frederick's tyranny, a little less than his benevolence. She was cynical, as was the fashion, and her moral life shocked even that easy-going age. Also she was a philosopher, and invited Diderot, chief of the French Cyclopædists, to dwell at her court, much as Voltaire had dwelt at Frederick's. French literature was still the literature of Europe, and both Frederick and Catharine openly despised the tongue of their own lands. It was among these three congenial rulers, of Russia, Prussia, and young Joseph of Austria, that the scheme arose of dividing Poland among themselves.[21] This has been termed "the crime of the century," but it was in strict accordance with what the rest of Europe had attempted to do to Austria and then to Prussia. Only, the first two victims had proved unexpectedly capable of resistance, the third was more shrewdly selected. Kindly benevolent despotism had also a voice in the matter, for Poland was wretchedly misgoverned, a source of constant danger to herself and to her neighbors. It was really a kindness, as those neighbors explained, to relieve her of half her territories. So well were their successors of the next generation pleased with the results, that they took each another slice, and then, fully convinced of the ancestral wisdom and good-will, divided what was left. SHADOW OF COMING CHANGES The new cynicism and philosophy which was thus spreading even among monarchs, was soon destined to have most explosive results. It found expression first in a further revolt against the dominion of the Roman Church. Most of the sovereigns joined in a determined attack against the Jesuits, the enthusiastic and devoted priests who had become the mainstay of the papal power. After a long resistance, the Jesuits succumbed; their order was abolished by Pope Clement XIV in 1773. The next startling symptom of the changing times was the rapid literary development of Germany. Its young men had been left free to think and talk. Frederick half contemptuously declared that his people might believe what nonsense they pleased so long as they remained orderly. The poet Lessing by his books roused the ancient spirit of liberty, long dormant in the German mind. Goethe and Schiller became the foremost of a crowd of younger men whose revolt at first took the form of an extravagant devotion to romance as opposed to the dull workaday world about them.[22] Pestalozzi, a Swiss, conceived the idea of reforming the world through its children, encouraging the little ones by constant, loving example to develop all the strength and goodness that was in them.[23] Yet the first open defiance given to despotism by the fast-growing spirit of freedom came not from Europe but from America; was a revolt not against the lazy tyranny in France or the kindly tyranny of Eastern Europe, but against the constitutional government of England. When the French minister signed the treaty surrendering to England all his country's possessions in America he justified himself with a well-turned phrase, "I give her all, on purpose to destroy her." The words seemed prophetic, England's loss came through her gain. The Indians, devoted to the French, refused to submit peacefully to the change of rule. Pontiac, often regarded as the ablest statesman of his fading race, gathered them into a widespread confederacy, and for years held the English at bay in the region of the Great Lakes.[24] The expenses involved both upon England and upon her American colonists by this strife and by the French war itself were a constant source of friction. England insisted that she had spent her substance in defence of the colonists, and should be repaid by them. They on the other hand asserted that she had fought for her own glory, and had been well repaid by her vast increases of territory both in India and America; that they had become impoverished, while she had now the richest trade in the world, and stood upon the top-most pinnacle of national grandeur with wealth pouring in to her from every quarter of the globe. Neither side being able to convince the other by abstract argument, England exerted her authority and passed the "Stamp Act," laying new taxes on the colonists.[25] They responded with protests, argumentative, eloquent, fiery, and defiant. They refused to trade with Great Britain, and became self-supporting. Thus the obnoxious laws, instead of bringing money to the mother country, caused her heavy losses. English merchants joined the Americans in petitioning for the repeal of the offensive acts of Parliament; and soon every tax was withdrawn except a tiny one on tea, so small that the money involved was trifling. But it was not the money, it was the principle involved, which had aroused the Americans; and their resistance continued as vigorous as against the previous really burdensome taxation. The tea which King George commanded should be sent forcibly to the colonists, they refused to receive. In Boston it was dumped into the harbor.[26] The English Parliament drew back in amazement; its members found themselves dealing, as one of them put it, with a nation of lawyers. They were wrong; they had encountered a force far more potent, a nation of freemen who had been permitted for a century and a half to rule themselves, who had reached the fullest measure of self-reliance and self-assertion. America had become earliest ripe for the Age of Revolution toward which the European middle classes, more lately left to themselves, were more slowly, but not less surely, developing. [FOR THE NEXT SECTION OF THIS GENERAL SURVEY SEE VOLUME XIV] FOOTNOTES: [1] See _Defeat of the Young Pretender at Culloden_, page 117. [2] See _Cotton Manufacture Developed_, page 341. [3] See _John Law Promotes the Mississippi Scheme_, page 1. [4] See _Bursting of the South Sea Bubble_, page 22. [5] See _Voltaire Directs European Thought from Geneva_, page 144. [6] See _Bach Lays the Foundation of Modern Music_, page 31. [7] See _First Modern Novel_, page 100. [8] See _Watt Improves the Steam-engine_, page 302. [9] See _Benjamin Franklin Experiments with Electricity_, page 130. [10] See _Settlement of Georgia_, page 44. [11] See _Rise of Methodism: Preaching of the Wesleys and of Whitefield_, page 57. [12] See _Prince Eugene Vanquishes the Turks: Siege and Battle of Belgrad_, page 16. [13] See _Conquests of Nadir Shah: Capture of Delhi_, page 72. [14] _See Frederick the Great Seizes Silesia: Maria Theresa Appeals to the Hungarians_, page 108. [15] See _Seven Years' War: Battle of Torgau_, page 204. [16] _See Clive Establishes British Supremacy in India: The Black Hole of Calcutta: Battle of Plassey_, page 185. [17] See _Braddock's Defeat_, page 163. [18] See _Exile of the Acadian Neutrals_, page 181. [19] See _Conquest of Canada: Victory of Wolfe at Quebec_, page 229. [20] See _Usurpation of Catharine II in Russia_, page 250. [21] See _First Partition of Poland_, page 313. [22] See _Intellectual Revolt of Germany_, page 347. [23] See _Pestalozzi's Method of Education_, page 364. [24] See _Conspiracy of Pontiac_, page 267. [25] See _American Colonies Oppose the Stamp Act_, page 289. [26] See _Boston Tea Party_, page 333. JOHN LAW PROMOTES THE MISSISSIPPI SCHEME A.D. 1716 LOUIS ADOLPHE THIERS Known under the various titles of the "Mississippi Scheme," the "Mississippi Bubble," and the "System," the financial enterprise originated by John Law, under authority of the French government, proved to be the most disastrous experiment of the kind ever made by a civilized state. Louis XIV ended his long reign in 1715, leaving his throne to his great-grandson, a child of five years, Louis XV. The impoverished country was in the hands of a regent, Philippe, Duke of Orléans, whose financial undertakings were all unfortunate. John Law, the son of a Scotch banker, was an adventurer and a gambler who yet became celebrated as a financier and commercial promoter. After killing an antagonist in a duel in London, he escaped the gallows by fleeing to the Continent, where he followed gaming and at the same time devised financial schemes which he proposed to various governments for their adoption. His favorite notion was that large issues of paper money could be safely circulated with small security. Law offered to relieve Orléans from his financial troubles, and the Regent listened with favor to his proposals. In 1716 Law, with others, organized what he called the General Bank. It was ably managed, became popular, and by means of it Law successfully carried out his paper-currency ideas. His notes were held at a premium over those of the government, whose confidence was therefore won. Two years later Law's institution was adopted by the state and became the Royal Bank of France. The further undertakings of this extraordinary "new light of finance," the blowing and bursting of the great "bubble," are recorded by Thiers, the French statesman and historian, himself eminent as his country's chief financier during her wonderful recovery after the Franco-German War. Law was always scheming to concentrate into one establishment his bank, the administration of the public revenues, and the commercial monopolies. He resolved, in order to attain this end, to organize, separately, a commercial company, to which he would add, one after another, different privileges in proportion to its success, and which he would then incorporate with the General Bank. Constructing thus separately each of the pieces of his vast machine, he proposed ultimately to unite them and form the grand whole, the object of his dreams and his ardent ambition. An immense territory, discovered by a Frenchman, in the New World, presented itself for the speculations of Law. The Chevalier de la Salle, the famous traveller of the time, having penetrated into America by Upper Canada, descended the river Illinois, arrived suddenly at a great river half a league wide, and, abandoning himself to the current, was borne into the Gulf of Mexico. This river was the Mississippi. The Chevalier de la Salle took possession of the country he had passed through for the King of France, and gave it the beautiful name of Louisiana. There was much said of the magnificence and fertility of this new country, of the abundance of its products, of the richness of its mines, which were reported to be much more extensive than those of Mexico or Peru. Law, taking advantage of this current of opinion, projected a company which should unite the commerce of Louisiana with the fur trade of Canada. The Regent granted all he asked, by an edict given in August, 1717, fifteen months after the first establishment of the bank. The new company received the title of the "West Indian Company." It was to have the sovereignty of all Louisiana on the condition only of liege homage to the King of France, and of a crown of gold of thirty marks at the commencement of every new reign. It was to exercise all the rights of sovereignty, such as levying troops, equipping vessels-of-war, constructing forts, establishing courts, working mines, etc. The King relinquished to it the vessels, forts, and munitions of war which belonged to the Crozat Company,[27] and conceded, furthermore, the exclusive right of the fur trade of Canada. The arms of this sovereign company represented the effigy of an old river-god leaning upon a horn of plenty. Law revolved in his mind many other projects relating to his Western company. He spoke, at first mysteriously, of the benefits which he was preparing for it. Associating with a large number of noblemen, whom his wit, his fortune, and the hope of considerable gains attracted around him, he urged them strongly to obtain for themselves some shares, which would soon rise rapidly in the market. He was himself soon obliged to buy some above par. The par value being five hundred francs, two hundred of them represented at par a sum of one hundred thousand francs. The price for the day being three hundred francs, sixty thousand francs were sufficient to buy two hundred shares. He contracted to pay one hundred thousand francs for two hundred shares at a fixed future time; this was to anticipate that they would gain at least two hundred francs each, and that a profit of forty thousand francs could be realized on the whole. He agreed, in order to make this sort of wager more certain, to pay the difference of forty thousand francs in advance, and to lose the difference if he did not realize a profit from the proposed transfer. This was the first instance of a sale at an anticipated advance. This kind of trade consisted in giving "earnest-money" called a premium, which the purchaser lost if he failed to take the property. He who made the bargain had the liberty of rescinding it if he would lose more by adhering to it than by abandoning it. No advantage would accrue to Law for the possible sacrifice of forty thousand francs, unless at the designated time the shares had not been worth as much as sixty thousand francs, or three hundred francs each; for having engaged to pay one hundred thousand francs for what was worth only fifty thousand, for instance, he would suffer less to lose his forty thousand francs than to keep his engagement. But, evidently, if Law did wish by this method to limit the possible loss, he hoped nevertheless not to make any loss at all; and, on the contrary, he believed firmly that the two hundred shares would be worth at least the hundred thousand francs, or five hundred francs each, at the time fixed for the expiration of the contract. This large premium attracted general attention, and people were eager to purchase the Western shares. They rose sensibly during the month of April, 1719, and went nearly to par. Law disclosed his projects; the Regent kept his promise, and authorized him to unite the great commercial companies of the East and West Indies. The two companies of the East Indies and of China, chartered in 1664 and 1713, had conducted their affairs very badly: they had ceased to carry on any commerce, and had underlet their privileges at a charge which was very burdensome to the trade. The merchants who had bought it of them did not dare to make use of their privileges, for fear that their vessels would be seized by the creditors of the company. Navigation to the East was entirely abandoned, and the necessity of reviving it had become urgent. By a decree of May, 1719, Law caused to be accorded to the West India Company the exclusive right of trading in all seas beyond the Cape of Good Hope. From this time it had the sole right of traffic with the islands of Madagascar, Bourbon, and France, the coast of Sofola in Africa, the Red Sea, Persia, Mongolia, Siam, China, and Japan. The commerce of Senegal, an acquisition of the company which still carried it on, was added to the others, so that the company had the right of French trade in America, Africa, and Asia. Its title, like its functions, was enlarged; it was no longer called the "West India Company," but the "_Indian_ Company." Its regulations remained the same as before. It was authorized to issue another lot of shares, in order to raise the necessary funds either to pay the debts of the companies which it succeeded or for organizing the proper establishments. Fifty thousand of these shares were issued at a par of five hundred francs, which made a nominal capital of twenty-five millions. But the company demanded five hundred fifty francs in cash for them, or a total of twenty-seven millions two hundred fifty thousand francs, inasmuch as it esteemed its privileges as very great and its popularity certain. It required fifty francs to be paid in advance, and the remaining five hundred in twenty equal monthly payments. In case the payments should not be fully made, the fifty francs paid in advance were forfeited by the subscriber. It was nothing but a bargain made at a premium with the public. The prompt realization of the promises of Law, the importance and extent of the last privileges granted to the company, the facilities accorded to the subscribers, everything, induced a subscription to the new shares. The movement became animated. One could, by the favorable terms offered, by paying out five hundred fifty francs, obtain eleven shares instead of one, and thus, with a little money, speculate to a considerable amount. To this method of attracting speculators Law added another; he procured a decision that no one should subscribe for the new shares without exhibiting four times as many old ones. It was necessary, therefore, to hasten to obtain them in order to fulfil the requisite condition. In a short time they were carried up to par, and far above that. From three hundred francs, at which they were at the start, they rose to five hundred, five hundred fifty, six hundred, and seven hundred fifty francs; that is, they gained 150 per cent. These second shares were called the "daughters," to distinguish them from the first. Law contemplated at last the completion of his project by uniting the collection of the revenues to the other privileges of the Indian Company, and redeeming the national debt. This was the greatest and most difficult part of his plan. The national debt was fifteen to sixteen hundred millions, partly in contracts for perpetual annuities, partly in State notes which would soon be due. The interest on the debt was eighty millions, or one-half the revenue of the government. Some combination was necessary to meet the state notes at their maturity, and to reduce the annual charges which the public treasury could no longer sustain. Law conceived the idea of substituting the company for the government, and converting the whole national debt into shares in the Indian Company. To accomplish this he wished the company to lend the treasury the fifteen to sixteen hundred millions which would redeem the debt; and that, to obtain this enormous sum, it should issue shares to that amount. In this manner the fifteen or sixteen hundred millions furnished to the government by the company, and paid out by the government to its creditors, must return to the company by the sale of its shares. Let us see the means which Law had devised to insure the success of his scheme. The government would pay 3 per cent. interest for the sum loaned to it, which would make forty-five or forty-eight millions a year. The treasury would thus effect an annual saving of thirty-two or thirty-five millions in the interest on the debt. In return, the collection of the revenue must be transferred to the company, notwithstanding that it had been actually granted to the brothers Paris. The collection would pay the collectors a net profit of fifteen or sixteen millions. The company, receiving 3 per cent. interest on the capital invested, and reaping from another source a profit of fifteen or sixteen millions, would be in a position to pay 4 per cent. on the sixteen hundred millions of the debt converted into shares. The profits from commerce and its future success might soon enable it to increase this dividend. According to the prevailing rates of interest, which had fallen to 3 per cent. since the establishment of the bank, this was a sufficient remuneration on the shares. They had, besides, the hope of increasing their capital. The shares having, in fact, doubled in value during the opposition of the "Antisystem," they ought to increase still more rapidly since they were relieved from this opposition. The expectation that the fifteen or sixteen hundred millions of the debt would be invested in the shares was well founded. There was even a certainty of it; for this immense capital, forcibly expelled from its investment in state securities, could find no other place for investment than in the company. This plan of Law's was vast and bold. Its success would liquidate the state debt and diminish the annual charges on the treasury, reducing the interest from eighty millions to forty-five or forty-eight millions. The annual charges from which the treasury was to be relieved were to be paid from the profits on the collection of the revenue and the contingent profits of commerce. The whole operation was to pay the creditors of the state 3 per cent. per annum, and the profits and monopolies heretofore granted to farmers of the revenue and commercial companies. This 3 per cent. interest, these profits, and these monopolies, as we shall soon see, might easily amount to the sum of eighty millions annually, which the creditors were formerly paid. Thus far they were not defrauded by this forced conversion of securities; a credit entirely new was substituted for one which was worn out; an establishment had been created, which, combining the functions of a commercial bank and the administration of the finances, must become the most colossal financial power ever known. The first subscription having been taken up in a few days, Law opened a new one on September 28th, for the same amount and on exactly the same conditions as the preceding. The eagerness of subscribers was the same. The creditors passed whole days at the offices of the treasury to obtain their receipts, and there were some even who had their meals brought to them there, so that they might not lose their turn in the ranks. The state notes were, of course, much in demand, and had rapidly risen to par. They had even given rise to a most reprehensible speculation. A confidential clerk of Law, the Prussian Versinobre, having known in advance of the decree regarding the payment, abused his knowledge of the secret, and caused to be bought by brokers with whom he was associated a large amount of state notes at 50 or 60 per cent. below their nominal value, and employed them for the subscriptions when they were received at par. When it is considered that the subscriptions, already, were sold at a large advance, and that by means of the state notes they were bought at about half price, it will be understood what a profit this company of brokers must have realized. Those who intended to subscribe had accomplished comparatively little by obtaining receipts or state notes; it was still necessary to go to the Hôtel de Nevers, where the subscriptions were received. The entrances there were crowded to suffocation. The hall servants made considerable sums by subscribing for those who could not get through the crowd to the offices. Some adventurers, assuming the livery of Law, performed this service, charging and obtaining a very large fee. The most humble employees of the company became patrons who were very much courted. As to the higher officers and Law himself, they received as much adulation as if they were the actual dispensers of the favors of Fortune. The approaches to Law's residence were encumbered with carriages. All that was most brilliant among the nobility of France came to beg humbly for the subscriptions, which were already much above the nominal price of shares, and which were sure to rise much higher. By a clause creating the company, the ownership of the shares entailed nothing derogatory to rank. The nobility, therefore, could indulge in this speculation without endangering its titles. It was as much in debt as the King, thanks to its prodigality and the long wars of that century, and it sought to win, at least, the amount of its debt by fortunate speculations. It surrounded, it fawned upon Law, who, very anxious to gain partisans, reserved very few shares for himself, but distributed them among his friends of the court. This new subscription was also taken up in a few days. If we reflect that fifty millions in cash was sufficient to secure five hundred millions of each issue, we shall understand how the state notes which remained in market and the receipts already delivered would suffice to monopolize the shares offered to the public. The creditors who had not liquidated their claims--and the greater number had not--could not avail themselves of the right to subscribe for shares, and were obliged to buy them in the market at an exorbitant price. The shares subscribed for at the Hôtel de Nevers for five thousand francs were re-sold in the Rue Quincampoix for six, seven, and eight thousand francs. To the need of having some of this investment was joined the hope of seeing the shares rise in the market to an indefinite extent, and it is not surprising that the eagerness to obtain them soon increased to frenzy. In order to satisfy this demand a third subscription was opened on October 2d, three days after the second. Similar in every respect to the first two, it ought to bring in a capital of five hundred millions and complete the fifteen hundred millions which the company needed to redeem the public debt. The concourse of people was as great as ever at the treasury, where the receipts were given and at the Hôtel de Nevers, where the applications for shares were received. The occasion of this eagerness is evident, since that which was obtained at the Hôtel de Nevers for five thousand francs was worth seven and eight thousand in the Rue Quincampoix. This new issue at five thousand francs caused the rates in the Rue Quincampoix to diminish: in an instant they were below five thousand francs--even as low as four thousand--so blind were these movements, and, so to speak, convulsive, during this period of feverish excitement. There was no possible reason for selling in one place for four thousand francs that for which they paid five thousand at another. But this phenomenon lasted only a few hours; the rates rose again rapidly, and, the subscription being taken up, the shares sold again for seven and eight thousand francs. The crafty brokers had already had two opportunities of making some profitable operations. Having obtained the state notes at a very small price, they procured shares at the most moderate rates, between five hundred and a thousand francs; then they sold them for from seven to eight thousand francs; and October 2d, the day of the decline, they repurchased them for four thousand, to sell them again the next day for seven or eight thousand. It will be seen how they must have made money with these opportunities. It was no longer a few scattered groups which were seen in the Rue Quincampoix, but a compact crowd engaged in speculating from morning till night. The subscriptions had been divided into coupons, transferable, like notes, to the bearer by an indorsement simply formal. During the course of October the shares had already risen above ten thousand francs, and it was impossible to know where they would stop. The end of the month of December, 1719, was the term of this delusion of three months. A certain number of stock-jobbers, better advised than others, or more impatient to enter upon the enjoyment of their riches, combined to dispose of their shares. They took advantage of the rage which led so many to sell their estates--they purchased them, and thus obtained the real for the imaginary. They established themselves in splendid mansions, upon magnificent domains, and made a display of their fortunes of thirty or forty millions. They possessed themselves of precious stones and jewels, which were still eagerly offered, and secured solid value in exchange for the semblance of it, which had become so prized by the crowd of dupes. The first effect of this desire to realize was a general increase in the price of everything. An enormous mass of paper being put in the balance with the existing quantity of merchandise and other property, the more paper there was offered against purchasable objects the more rapid the increase became. Cloth which heretofore brought fifteen to eighteen francs a yard rose to one hundred twenty-five francs a yard. In a cook-shop a "Mississippian," bidding against a nobleman for a fowl, ran the price up to two hundred francs. From this instant the shares suffered their first decline, and a heavy uneasiness began to spread abroad. The extent of the fall was not measured by those whom it menaced; but people wondered, doubted, and began to be alarmed. The shares declined to fifteen thousand francs. However, the bank-notes were not yet distrusted. The bank was, in fact, entirely distinct from the company, and their fate, up to this time, appeared in no way dependent the one on the other. The notes had not undergone any fictitious and extraordinary advance. Large amounts had been issued, certainly, but for gold and silver, and upon the deposit of shares. The portion which had been issued upon the deposit of shares partook of the danger of the shares themselves; but no one thought of that, and the bank-notes still possessed the entire confidence of the public; only they no longer had the same advantage over specie since the latter had been so much sought by the "realizers." The notes already began to be presented at the bank for coin, and the vast reserve which it had possessed began to diminish perceptibly. Law did then what governments do so often, and always with ill-success: he resorted to forced measures. He declared, in the first place, by decree, that the bank-notes should always be worth 5 per cent. more than coin. In consideration of this superiority in value the prohibition which forbade the deposits of gold and silver for bills, at Paris, was taken off, so that notes could be procured at the bank for coin. This permission was simply ridiculous, for no one now wished to exchange specie for paper, even at par. But this was not all; the decree declared that thereafter silver should not be used in payments of over one hundred francs nor gold in those over three hundred francs. This was forcing the circulation of notes in large payments, and that of specie in small, and was designed to accomplish by violence what could only be expected from the natural success of the bank. These measures did not bring any more gold and silver to the bank. The necessity of using bank-notes in payment of over three hundred francs gave them a certain forced employment, but did not procure them confidence. Notes were used for large payments, but coin was amassed secretly as a value more real and more assured. The creditors of the state ceased to carry their receipts to the Rue Quincampoix, because they already distrusted the shares; they could not decide to buy real estate, because the price had been quadrupled; they suffered the most painful anxiety, and in their turn embarrassed the holders of shares who needed the receipts to pay their instalments of one-tenth. The catastrophe approached, and nothing could avert it, unless some magic wand could give the company an income of four or five hundred millions a year, which was now only seventy or eighty millions. Law, adding measures to measures, at last prohibited the circulation of gold, because this metal was, by its convenience, a rival of bank-notes infinitely more dangerous than silver. He then announced an approaching reduction in the value of coin, which he had raised by a decree in February, only to reduce it again in a short time. The mark, in silver, raised from sixty to eighty francs, was reduced to seventy on April 1st, and sixty-five on May 1st. But this measure was utterly insufficient to bring it to the bank. The situation grew worse every day; the issue of notes to pay for the shares presented at the bank had risen to two billions six hundred ninety-six millions; their depreciation increased; and creditors of every description, being paid in paper which was at a discount of 60 per cent., complained bitterly of the theft authorized by law. In this juncture there remained but one step to be taken. As the necessary sacrifice had not been made in the first place, and the shares abandoned to their fate in order to protect the notes, both must now be sacrificed, shares and notes together, in order to finish this wicked fiction. The falsehood of this nominal value, which obliged men to receive at par what was depreciated 30 or 40 per cent., could not be prolonged. The immediate reduction of the nominal value of the shares and bank-notes was the only resource. Sacrifices cannot be too hastily made when they are inevitable. M. d'Argenson, although dismissed from the treasury, still remained keeper of the seals; he had risen in the esteem of the Regent as Law had declined, and he advised the reduction of the nominal value of the shares and notes as an urgent necessity. Law, who saw in this reduction an avowal of the fiction in the legal values, and a blow which must hasten the fall of the "System," opposed it with his whole strength. Nevertheless, M. d'Argenson prevailed. On May 21, 1720, a decree, which remains famous in the history of the "System," advertised the progressive reduction in the value of shares and notes. This reduction was to begin on the very day of the publication of the decree, and to continue from month to month until December 1st. At this last term the shares were to be estimated at five thousand francs, and a bank-note of ten thousand francs at five thousand; one of a thousand at five hundred, etc. The notes were thus reduced 50 per cent., and the shares only four-ninths per cent. Law, although opposed to the decree, consented to promulgate it. Scarcely was it published when a fearful clamor was raised on all sides. The reduction was called a bankruptcy; the government was reproached with being the first to throw discredit upon the values which it had created, with having robbed its own creditors, a number of whom had just been paid in bank-notes, even as late as the preceding day--in a word, with assailing the fortunes of all the citizens. The crowd wished to sack Law's hotel and to tear him in pieces. Nothing that could have happened would have produced a greater clamor; but in times like those it was not only necessary not to fear these clamors: it was even a duty to defy them. The reply to the complaints would have soon been evident to the intelligence of everybody. Without doubt the creditors of the state, and some private individuals, who had been paid in bank-notes, were half ruined by the reduction, but this was not the fault of the decree of May 21st--the real reduction was long before this; the decree only stated a loss already experienced, and the notes were worth still less than the decree declared. Because a number of creditors had been ruined by the falsity of nominal values, was it a reason to continue the fiction that it might extend the ruin? On the contrary, it was necessary to put an end to it, to save others from becoming victims. The official declaration of the fact, although it was known before, must produce a shock and hasten the discredit, but it was of little importance that it was hastened, since it was inevitable. The public thought Law the author of this measure, advised exclusively by M. d'Argenson, and he became the sole object of hatred. The Parliament, making common cause with the public, thought it a good opportunity to take up arms. It did not perceive, in its blind hatred of the "System," that it was going to render a service to its author, and that to declare itself against the reduction of the bank-notes was to maintain that the values created by Law had a solid foundation. It assembled on May 27th to demand a revocation of the decree of the 21st. At the very moment when it was deliberating, the Regent sent one of his officers to prohibit all discussion, announcing the revocation of the decree. The Regent had the weakness to yield to the public clamor. Had the decree been bad, its revocation would have been worse. To declare that the shares and notes were still worth what they purported to be availed nothing, for no one believed it, and their credit was not restored by it. A legal falsehood was reaffirmed, and, without rendering any service to those who were already ruined, the ruin of those who were obliged to receive the notes at their nominal value was insured. The decree of May 21st, wise if it had been sustained, became disastrous as soon as it was revoked. Its only effect was to hasten the general discredit, without the essential advantage of reëstablishing a real, legal value. We have just said that the bank was not obliged to pay notes of over one hundred francs. It paid them slowly, and employed all imaginable artifices to avoid the payment of them. Nevertheless, its coffers were almost exhausted, and it was necessary to authorize it to confine its disbursements to the payment of notes of ten francs only. The people rushed to the bank in crowds to realize their notes of ten francs, fearing that these would soon share the fate of those of one hundred. The pressure was so great that three persons were suffocated. The indignant mob, ready for any excess, already menaced the house of Law. He fled to the Palais Royal to seek an asylum near the Regent. The mob followed him, carrying the bodies of the three who had been suffocated. The carriage which had just conveyed him was broken to pieces, and it was feared that even the residence of the Regent would not be respected. The gates of the court of the Palais Royal had been closed; the Duke of Orléans, with great presence of mind, ordered them to be opened. The crowd rushed into the court and suddenly stopped upon the steps of the palace. Leblanc, the chief of police, advanced to those who bore the corpses, and said, "My friends, go place these bodies in the Morgue, and then return to demand your payment." These words calmed the tumult; the bodies were carried away and the sedition was quelled. Severities against the rich "Mississippians" were commenced in this same month of October. For a long time it had been suspected that the government, following an ancient usage, would deprive them, by means of _visas_ and _chambres-ardentes_, of what they had acquired by stock-jobbing. A list was made of those known to have speculated in shares. A special commission arbitrarily placed on this list the names of those whom public opinion designated as having enriched themselves by speculation in paper. They were ordered to deposit a certain number of shares at the offices of the company, and to purchase the required number if they had sold their own. The "realizers" were thus brought back by force to the company which they had deserted. Eight days were given to speculators of good faith to make, voluntarily, the prescribed deposit. To prevent flight from the country, it was prohibited, under pain of death, to travel without a passport. These measures increased still more the decline of the shares. All those whose names were not upon the list of rich speculators, and who could not tell what became of the shares not yet deposited, hastened to dispose of all they retained. The "System" wholly disappeared in November, 1720, one year after its greatest credit. All the notes were converted into annuities or preferred shares, and all the shares were deposited with the company. Then a general visa was ordered, consisting of an examination of the whole mass of shares, with the purpose of annulling the greater portion of those which belonged to the enriched stock-jobbers. Law, foreseeing the renewed rage which the visa would excite, determined to leave France. The hatred against him had been so violent since the scene of July 17th that he had not dared to quit the Palais Royal. The following fact will give an idea of the fury excited against him: A hackman, having a quarrel with the coachman of a private carriage, cried out, "There is Law's carriage!" The crowd rushed upon the carriage, and nearly tore in pieces the coachman and his master before it could be undeceived. Law demanded passports of the Duke of Orléans, who granted them immediately. The Duke of Bourbon, made rich by the "System," felt under obligations to Law, and offered money and the carriage of Madame de Prie, his mistress. Law refused the money and accepted the carriage. He repaired to Brussels, taking with him only eight hundred louis. Scarcely was he gone when his property, consisting of lands and shares, was sequestrated. FOOTNOTES: [27] A company headed by Anthony Crozat. It was chartered in 1712, and formed a commercial monopoly in Louisiana.--ED. PRINCE EUGENE VANQUISHES THE TURKS SIEGE AND BATTLE OF BELGRAD A.D. 1717 PRINCE EUGENE OF SAVOY This struggle marked the disastrous end of a determined effort of the Ottoman empire to recover lost possessions. It also resulted in giving all Hungary, with Belgrad and a part of Servia, permanently to Austria. After their last great invasion of Austrian territory and their crushing defeat by Sobieski and the Imperialists (1683), the Turks suffered many losses of territory at the hands of various European powers. In 1696 Peter the Great took from them Azov, an important entrance to the Black Sea. By the treaty of the Pruth (1711) this, with other Russian possessions, was again ceded to the Turks. The temporary success led them to seek further recoveries. Their aim was chiefly directed against Austria and Venice, which had aggrandized themselves at the expense of the Moslem power. Turkish victories caused the Venetians to call in the aid of Austria. The Austrian intervention not only saved Venice, but once more checked the Turkish arms. The Emperor Charles VI appointed as leader of the Austrian forces Prince Eugene of Savoy, already distinguished through a long series of wars as one of the greatest soldiers of his time, the companion of Marlborough. In 1716 Eugene defeated the grand vizier at Temesvar, and in the following year took Belgrad and destroyed the Turkish army, as told in his own racy and cavalier style. From all sides men flocked to serve under me. There were enough to form a squadron of princes and volunteers. Among the former a Prince of Hesse, two of Bavaria, a Bevern, a Culenbach, one of Wuertemberg, two of Ligne, one of Lichtenstein, of Anhalt-Dessau, the Count of Charolai, the Princes of Dombes, of Marsillac, of Pons, etc. The Emperor made me a present of a magnificent diamond crucifix, and strongly assured me that all my victories came, and would come, from God; this was getting rid of gratitude toward me; and I set off for Futack, where I assembled my army toward the end of May, 1717. It was necessary to possess myself of Belgrad, which for three centuries had been so many times taken and retaken. Luckily, I did not find there the cordelier, John de Capistran, who, with the crucifix in his hand, and in the hottest part of the fire during the whole day, defended the place so well: and Hunyady, who commanded there, against Mahomet II in 1456. Hunyady died of his wounds. The Emperor lost Belgrad; Mahomet lost an eye, and the cordelier was canonized. Unfortunately the Grand Seignior had but too well replaced the wrong-headed grand vizier, who had been killed. It was the Pacha of Belgrad, who supplied the vacancy, called Hastchi Ali, who made the most judicious arrangements for the preservation of the place, and caused me a great deal of embarrassment. On June 10th I passed the Danube: my volunteer princes threw themselves into boats to arrive among the first, and to charge the spahis with some squadrons of Mercy, which had already passed below Panczova, to protect the disembarkation of some, and the bridge constructed for the others, with eighty-four boats. On the 19th I went, with a large escort, to reconnoitre the place where I wished to pitch my camp. Twelve hundred spahis rushed upon us with unequalled fury, and shouted "_Allah! Allah!_" I know not why one of their officers broke through a squadron which was in front, to find me at the head of the second, where I placed myself from prudential motives, having many orders to give. He missed me, and I was going to obtain satisfaction with my pistol when a dragoon at my side knocked him under his horse. On the same day we had a naval combat, which lasted two hours; and our saics having the advantage I remained master of the operations on the Danube. On the 20th I continued working on the lines of contravallation, under a dreadful fire from the place. Toward the end of June I advanced my camp so near Belgrad that the bullets were constantly flying over my head. A storm destroyed all my bridges: and, but for the courage of a Hessian officer, in a redoubt, I do not know how I should have been able to reëstablish the one upon the Save. Wishing to take the place on the side next the water, I caused a fort at the mouth of the Donawitz to be attacked by Mercy, who fell from his horse, in an apoplectic fit. They carried him away, thinking him dead. He was afterward successfully cured; but, being informed of his accident I went to replace him, and the fort was taken. The Prince of Dombes narrowly escaped being killed at my side by a bullet which made my horse rear. Marcilly was killed in bravely defending a post which I had charged him to intrench. He demanded succor from Rudolph Heister, who refused him, and who was deservedly killed as a punishment for his cowardice, by a cannon-ball which reached him behind his chevaux-de-frise. I arrived, accidentally at first, with a large escort; I sent for a large detachment; I halted, and completely beat the janizaries, leaving, indeed, five hundred men killed upon the field, Taxis, Visconti, Suger, etc. The Pacha of Roumelia, the best officer of the Mussulmans, lost his life also. On July 22d my batteries were finished. I bombarded, burned, and destroyed the place so much that they would have capitulated if they had not heard that the grand vizier had arrived at Missa, on the 30th, with two hundred fifty thousand men. On August 1st we saw them on the heights which overlooked my camp, extending in a semicircle from Krotzka as far as Dedina. The Mussulmans formed the most beautiful amphitheatre imaginable, very agreeable to look at, excellent for a painter, but hateful to a general. Enclosed between this army and a fortress which had thirty thousand men in garrison, the Danube on the right, and the Save on the left, my resolution was formed. I intended to quit my lines and attack them, notwithstanding their advantage of ground: but the fever, which had already raged in my army, did not spare me. Behold me seriously ill, and in my bed, instead of being at the head of my troops, whom I wished to lead the road to honor. I can easily conceive that this caused a little uneasiness at the court, in the city, and even in my army. It required boldness and good-fortune to extricate one's self from it. The general who might have succeeded me would, and indeed, almost must, have thought that he should be lost if he retreated, and be beaten if he did not retreat. Every day made our situation worse. The numerous artillery of the Turks had arrived on the heights of which I have spoken. We were so bombarded with it, as well as with that from the garrison, that I knew not where to put my tent, for, in going in and out, many of my domestics had been killed. In the small skirmishes which we often had with the spahis, my young volunteers did not fail to be among them, discharging their pistols, though cannon-balls intermingled also. And one day, D'Esrade, the governor of the Prince of Dombes, had his leg shot off by his side, and one of his pages was killed. All our princes, whom I have enumerated above, distinguished themselves, and loved me like their father. I had caused the country in the rear of the grand vizier's army to be ravaged: but these people, as well as their horses and especially their camels, will live almost upon nothing. Scarcely an hour passed in which I did not lose a score of men by the dysentery, or by the cannon from the lines, which the infidels advanced more and more every night toward my intrenchments. I was less the besieger than the besieged. My affairs toward the city went on better. A bomb which fell into a magazine of powder completed its destruction and occasioned the loss of three thousand men. At length I recovered from my illness; and, on August 15th, notwithstanding the ill-advice of persons who were not fond of battles, the matter was fixed. I calculated that listlessness and despair would produce success. I did not sleep, as Alexander did before the battle of Arbela; but the Turks did, who were no Alexanders: opium and predestination will make philosophers of us. I gave brief and explicit instructions touching whatever might happen. I quitted my intrenchments one hour after midnight: the darkness first and then a fog rendered my first undertakings mere chance. Some of my battalions, on the right wing, fell, unintentionally, while marching, into a part of the Turkish intrenchments. A terrible confusion among them, who never have either advanced posts or spies; and, among us, a similar confusion, which it would be impossible to describe: they fired from the left to the centre, on both sides, without knowing where. The janizaries fled from their intrenchments: I had time to throw into them fascines and gabions, to make a passage for my cavalry who pursued them, I know not how: the fog dispersed and the Turks perceived a dreadful breach. But for my second line, which I ordered to march there immediately, to stop this breach, I should have been lost. I then wished to march in order: impossible! I was better served than I expected. La Colonie, at the head of his Bavarians, rushed forward and took a battery of eighteen pieces of cannon. I was obliged to do better than I wished. I sustained the Bavarians; and the Turks, after having fled to the heights, lost all the advantages of their ground. A large troop of their cavalry wished to charge mine, which were too much advanced; a whole regiment was cut in pieces; but two others, who arrived opportunely to their aid, decided the victory. It was then that I received a cut from a sabre; it was, I believe, my thirteenth wound, and probably my last. Everything was over at eleven o'clock in the morning. Viard, during the battle, retained the garrison of Belgrad, which capitulated the same day. I forgot that there was no Boufflers there: I played the generous man: I granted the honors of war to the garrison, who, not knowing what they meant, did not avail themselves of them. Men, women, and children, chariots and camels, issued forth all at once, pell-mell, by land and by water. At Vienna the devotees cried out, "A miracle!" those who envied me cried out, "Good-fortune!" Charles VI was, I believe, among the former: and Guido Stahrenberg among the latter. I was well received, as might have been expected. Here is my opinion respecting this victory, in which I have more cause for justification than for glory; my partisans have spoken too favorably of it, and my enemies too severely. They would have had much more reason to propose cutting off my head on this occasion than on that of Zenta, for there I risked nothing. I was certain of conquering: but here, not only I might have been beaten, but totally ruined and lost in a storm, for the enemy's artillery to the left, on the shores of the Danube, had destroyed my bridges. I was, indeed, superior in saics and in workmen and artillerymen to protect or repair them: I had a corps also at Semlin. Could I anticipate the tardiness or disinclination of the authorities who engaged in this war, where there were so many vices of the interior in administration, and so much ignorance in the chiefs of the civil and commissariat departments? Hence it was that I was in want of everything necessary to commence the siege, and to take Belgrad before the arrival of the grand vizier, and which hindered me afterward from checking him on the heights. This, however, I should have done--but for my cursed fever--before his artillery arrived. And then that unlucky dysentery, which put my army into the hospital, or rather into the burying-ground, for each regiment had one behind its camp--could I anticipate that also? These were the two motives which induced me to attack, and to risk all or nothing, for I was as certainly lost one way as another. I threw up intrenchments against intrenchments: I knew a little more upon that subject than my comrade the grand vizier; and I had plenty of troops in health to guard them. I obliged him for want of provisions--for, as I have already said, I caused all the country in his rear to be ravaged--to decamp, and, consequently, Belgrad to surrender. Thus, if this manuscript should be read, give me neither praise, my dear reader, nor blame. After all, I extricated myself, perhaps, as Charles VI said, his confessor, and the pious souls who trust in God, and who wished me at the Devil, by the protection of the Virgin Mary, for the battle was fought on Assumption Day. Europe was getting embroiled elsewhere. Some charitable souls advised the Emperor to send me to negotiate at London, reckoning that they might procure for another the easy glory of terminating the war. I was not such a fool as to fall into this snare, and I set off for Hungary at the commencement of June, with a fine sword worth eighty thousand florins which the Emperor had presented to me. BURSTING OF THE SOUTH SEA BUBBLE A.D. 1720 LOUIS ADOLPHE THIERS Never, perhaps, was there a time when rash monetary speculation seized with a firmer grip upon people and governments than during the early part of the eighteenth century. Concurrently with the delusive "Mississippi Scheme" of John Law (1717), which resulted in financial panic in France, a similarly disastrous enterprise was carried on in England. This was the attempt to turn the South Sea Company into a concern for enriching quickly both its private and its governmental investors. The collapse of this scheme, in the same year as that of Law's, caused even more serious and widespread ruin. Thiers' relation of the origin and development of the South Sea Company, of the forming and collapse of the "bubble," and of the spread of the speculative mania which manifested itself in so many other extravagant projects, makes a fitting counterpart to this historian's narrative of the rise and fall of the contemporary scheme in his own country. The South Sea Company was originated by the celebrated Harley, Earl of Oxford, in the year 1711, with the view of restoring public credit, which had suffered by the dismissal of the Whig ministry, and of providing for the discharge of the army and navy debentures and other parts of the floating debt, amounting to nearly ten millions sterling. A company of merchants, at that time without a name, took his debt upon themselves, and the government agreed to secure them for a certain period the interest of 6 per cent. To provide for this interest, amounting to six hundred thousand pounds per annum, the duties upon wines, vinegar, India goods, wrought silks, tobacco, whale-fins, and some other articles were rendered permanent. The monopoly of the trade to the South Seas was granted, and the company, being incorporated by act of Parliament, assumed the title by which it has ever since been known. The minister took great credit to himself for his share in this transaction, and the scheme was always called by his flatterers "the Earl of Oxford's masterpiece." Even at this early period of its history the most visionary ideas were formed by the company and the public of the immense riches of the eastern coast of South America. Everybody had heard of the gold and silver mines of Peru and Mexico; everyone believed them to be inexhaustible, and that it was only necessary to send the manufactures of England to the coast to be repaid a hundred-fold in gold and silver ingots by the natives. A report industriously spread, that Spain was willing to concede four ports on the coasts of Chile and Peru for the purposes of traffic, increased the general confidence, and for many years the South Sea Company's stock was in high favor. Philip V of Spain, however, never had any intention of admitting the English to a free trade in the ports of Spanish America. Negotiations were set on foot, but their only result was the _assiento_ contract, or the privilege of supplying the colonies with negroes for thirty years, and of sending once a year a vessel, limited both as to tonnage and value of cargo, to trade with Mexico, Peru, or Chile. The latter permission was only granted upon the hard condition that the King of Spain should enjoy one-fourth of the profits, and a tax of 5 per cent. on the remainder. This was a great disappointment to the Earl of Oxford and his party, who were reminded, much oftener than they found agreeable, of the "_Parturiunt montes, nascitur ridiculus mus._" But the public confidence in the South Sea Company was not shaken. The Earl of Oxford declared that Spain would permit two ships, in addition to the annual ship, to carry out merchandise during the first year; and a list was published in which all the ports and harbors of these coasts were pompously set forth as open to the trade of Great Britain. The first voyage of the annual ship was not made till the year 1717, and in the following year the trade was suppressed by the rupture with Spain. The name of the South Sea Company was thus continually before the public. Though their trade with the South American states produced little or no augmentation of their revenues, they continued to flourish as a monetary corporation. Their stock was in high request, and the directors, buoyed up with success, began to think of new means for extending their influence. The Mississippi scheme of John Law, which so dazzled and captivated the French people, inspired them with an idea that they could carry on the same game in England. The anticipated failure of his plans did not divert them from their intention. Wise in their own conceit, they imagined they could avoid his faults, carry on their schemes forever, and stretch the cord of credit to its extremest tension without causing it to snap asunder. It was while Law's plan was at its greatest height of popularity, while people were crowding in thousands to the Rue Quincampoix, and ruining themselves with frantic eagerness, that the South Sea directors laid before Parliament their famous plan for paying off the national debt. Visions of boundless wealth floated before the fascinated eyes of the people in the two most celebrated countries of Europe. The English commenced their career of extravagance somewhat later than the French; but as soon as the delirium seized them they were determined not to be outdone. Upon January 22, 1720, the House of Commons resolved itself into a committee of the whole house to take into consideration that part of the King's speech at the opening of the session which related to the public debts, and the proposal of the South Sea Company toward the redemption and sinking of the same. The proposal set forth at great length, and under several heads, the debts of the state, amounting to thirty million nine hundred eighty-one thousand seven hundred twelve pounds, which the company was anxious to take upon itself, upon consideration of 5 per cent. per annum, secured to it until midsummer, 1727; after which time the whole was to become redeemable at the pleasure of the legislature, and the interest to be reduced to 4 per cent. It was resolved, on February 2d, that the proposals were most advantageous to the country. They were accordingly received, and leave was given to bring in a bill to that effect. Exchange Alley was in a fever of excitement. The company's stock, which had been at 130 the previous day, gradually rose to 300, and continued to rise with the most astonishing rapidity during the whole time that the bill in its several stages was under discussion. Sir Robert Walpole was almost the only statesman in the House who spoke out boldly against it. He warned them, in eloquent and solemn language, of the evils that would ensue. It countenanced, he said, "the dangerous practice of stock-jobbing, and would divert the genius of the nation from trade and industry. It would hold out a dangerous lure to decoy the unwary to their ruin, by making them part with the earnings of their labor for a prospect of imaginary wealth. The great principle of the project was an evil of first-rate magnitude; it was to raise artificially the value of the stock by exciting and keeping up a general infatuation, and by promising dividends out of funds which could never be adequate to the purpose." The bill was two months in its progress through the House of Commons. During this time every exertion was made by the directors and their friends, and more especially by the chairman, the noted Sir John Blunt, to raise the price of the stock. The most extravagant rumors were in circulation. Treaties between England and Spain were spoken of whereby the latter was to grant a free trade to all her colonies; and the rich produce of the mines of Potosi-la-Paz was to be brought to England until silver should become almost as plentiful as iron. For cotton and woollen goods, which could be supplied to them in abundance, the dwellers in Mexico were to empty their golden mines. The company of merchants trading to the South Seas would be the richest the world ever saw, and every hundred pounds invested in it would produce hundreds per annum to the stockholder. At last the stock was raised by these means to near 400, but, after fluctuating a good deal, settled at 330, at which price it remained when the bill passed the Commons by a majority of 172 against 55. Contrary to all expectation South Sea stock fell when the bill received the royal assent. On April 7th the shares were quoted at 310, and on the following day at 290. Already the directors had tasted the profits of their scheme, and it was not likely that they should quietly allow the stock to find its natural level without an effort to raise it. Immediately their busy emissaries were set to work. Every person interested in the success of the project endeavored to draw a knot of listeners round him, to whom he expatiated on the treasures of the South American seas. Exchange Alley was crowded with attentive groups. One rumor alone, asserted with the utmost confidence, had an immediate effect upon the stock. It was said that Earl Stanhope had received overtures in France from the Spanish government to exchange Gibraltar and Port Mahon for some places on the coast of Peru, for the security and enlargement of the trade in the South Seas. Instead of one annual ship trading to those ports, and allowing the King of Spain 25 per cent. out of the profits, the company might build and charter as many ships as it pleased, and pay no percentage whatever to any foreign potentate. "Visions of ingots danced before their eyes," and stock rose rapidly. On April 12th, five days after the bill had become law, the directors opened their books for a subscription of a million, at the rate of three hundred pounds for every one hundred pounds capital. Such was the concourse of persons of all ranks that this first subscription was found to amount to above two millions of original stock. It was to be paid in five payments, of sixty pounds each for every one hundred pounds. In a few days the stock advanced to 340, and the subscriptions were sold for double the price of the first payment. To raise the stock still higher it was declared in a general court of directors, on April 21st, that the midsummer dividend should be 10 per cent., and that all subscriptions should be entitled to the same. These resolutions answering the end designed, the directors, to improve the infatuation of the moneyed men, opened their books for a second subscription of a million, at 4 per cent. Such was the frantic eagerness of people of every class to speculate in these funds that in the course of a few hours no less than a million and a half was subscribed at that rate. In the mean time innumerable joint-stock companies started up everywhere. They soon received the name of "bubbles," the most appropriate that imagination could devise. The populace are often most happy in the nicknames they employ. None could be more apt than that of "bubbles." Some of them lasted for a week or a fortnight, and were no more heard of, while others could not even live out that short span of existence. Every evening produced new schemes and every morning new projects. The highest of the aristocracy were as eager in this hot pursuit of gain as the most plodding jobber in Cornhill. The Prince of Wales became governor of one company, and is said to have cleared forty thousand pounds by his speculations. The Duke of Bridgewater started a scheme for the improvement of London and Westminster, and the Duke of Chandos another. There were nearly a hundred different projects, each more extravagant and deceptive than the other. To use the words of the _Political State_, they were "set on foot and promoted by crafty knaves, then pursued by multitudes of covetous fools, and at last appeared to be, in effect, what their vulgar appellation denoted them to be--bubbles and mere cheats." It was computed that near one million and a half sterling was won and lost by these unwarrantable practices, to the impoverishment of many a fool and the enriching of many a rogue. Some of these schemes were plausible enough, and, had they been undertaken at a time when the public mind was unexcited, might have been pursued with advantage to all concerned. But they were established merely with a view of raising the shares in the market. The projectors took the first opportunity of a rise to sell out, and next morning the scheme was at an end. Maitland, in his _History of London_, gravely informs us that one of the projects which received great encouragement was for the establishment of a company "to make deal boards out of sawdust." This is, no doubt, intended as a joke; but there is abundance of evidence to show that dozens of schemes, hardly a whit more reasonable, lived their little day, ruining hundreds ere they fell. One of them was for a wheel for perpetual motion--capital one million; another was "for encouraging the breed of horses in England, and improving of glebe and church lands, and repairing and rebuilding parsonage and vicarage houses." Why the clergy, who were so mainly interested in the latter clause, should have taken so much interest in the first, is only to be explained on the supposition that the scheme was projected by a knot of the fox-hunting parsons, once so common in England. The shares of this company were rapidly subscribed for. But the most absurd and preposterous of all, and which showed, more completely than any other, the utter madness of the people, was one started by an unknown adventurer, entitled "_A Company for carrying on an Undertaking of Great Advantage, but Nobody to know What It Is_." Were not the facts stated by scores of credible witnesses, it would be impossible to believe that any person could have been duped by such a project. The man of genius who essayed this bold and successful inroad upon public credulity merely stated in his prospectus that the required capital was half a million, in five thousand shares of one hundred pounds each, deposit two pounds per share. Each subscriber paying his deposit would be entitled to one hundred pounds per annum per share. How this immense profit was to be obtained he did not condescend to inform them at that time, but promised that in a month full particulars should be duly announced, and a call made for the remaining ninety-eight pounds of the subscription. Next morning, at nine o'clock, this great man opened an office in Cornhill. Crowds of people beset his door, and when he shut up, at three o'clock, he found that no less than one thousand shares had been subscribed for and the deposits paid. He was thus, in five hours, the winner of two thousand pounds. He was philosopher enough to be contented with his venture, and set off the same evening for the Continent. He was never heard of again. It is time, however, to return to the great South Sea gulf, that swallowed the fortunes of so many thousands of the avaricious and the credulous. On May 29th the stock had risen as high as 500, and about two-thirds of the government annuitants had exchanged the securities of the state for those of the South Sea Company. During the whole of the month of May the stock continued to rise, and on the 28th it was quoted at 550. In four days after this it took a prodigious leap, rising suddenly from 550 to 890. It was now the general opinion that the stock could rise no higher, and many persons took that opportunity of selling out, with a view of realizing their profits. Many noblemen and persons in the train of the King, and about to accompany him to Hanover, were also anxious to sell out. So many sellers and so few buyers appeared in the alley on June 3d that the stock fell at once from 890 to 640. The directors were alarmed and gave their agents orders to buy. Their efforts succeeded. Toward evening confidence was restored, and the stock advanced to 750. It continued at this price with some slight fluctuation, until the company closed its books on June 22d. It would be needless and uninteresting to detail the various arts employed by the directors to keep up the price of stock. It will be sufficient to state that it finally rose to 1000 per cent. It was quoted at this price in the commencement of August. The bubble was then full-blown and began to quiver and shake preparatory to its bursting. Many of the government annuitants expressed dissatisfaction against the directors. They accused them of partiality in making out the lists for shares in each subscription. Further uneasiness was occasioned by its being generally known that Sir John Blunt, the chairman, and some others had sold out. During the whole of the month of August the stock fell, and on September 2d it was quoted at 700 only. Day after day it continued to fall, until it was as low as 400. In a letter dated September 13th, from Mr. Broderick, M.P., to Lord Chancellor Middleton, and published in Coxe's _Walpole_, the former says: "Various are the conjectures why the South Sea directors have suffered the cloud to break so early. I made no doubt but they would do so when they found it to their advantage. They have stretched credit so far beyond what it would bear that specie proves insufficient to support it. Their most considerable men have drawn out, securing themselves by the losses of the deluded, thoughtless numbers, whose understandings have been overruled by avarice and the hope of making mountains out of mole-hills. Thousands of families will be reduced to beggary. The consternation is inexpressible--the rage beyond description, and the case altogether so desperate that I do not see any plan or scheme so much as thought of for averting the blow; so that I cannot pretend to guess what is next to be done." Ten days afterward, the stock still falling, he writes: "The company have yet come to no determination, for they are in such a wood that they know not which way to turn. By several gentlemen lately come to town, I perceive the very name of a South Sea man grown abominable in every country. A great many goldsmiths are already run off, and more will; daily I question whether one-third, nay, one-fourth, of them can stand it." At a general court of the Bank of England, held soon afterward, the governor informed them of the several meetings that had been held on the affairs of the South Sea Company, adding that the directors had not yet thought fit to come to any decision upon the matter. A resolution was then proposed, and carried without a dissentient voice, empowering the directors to agree with those of the South Sea to circulate their bonds to what sum and upon what terms and for what time they might think proper. Thus both parties were at liberty to act as they might judge best for the public interest. Books were opened at the bank for subscription of three millions for the support of public credit, on the usual terms of 15 pounds per cent. deposit, 3 pounds per cent. premium, and 5 pounds per cent. interest. So great was the concourse of people in the early part of the morning, all eagerly bringing their money, that it was thought the subscription would be filled that day; but before noon the tide turned. In spite of all that could be done to prevent it, the South Sea Company's stock fell rapidly. Its bonds were in such discredit that a run commenced upon the most eminent goldsmiths and bankers, some of whom, having lent out great sums upon South Sea stock, were obliged to shut up their shops and abscond. The Sword-blade Company, which had hitherto been the chief casher of the South Sea Company, stopped payment. This, being looked upon as but the beginning of evil, occasioned a great run upon the bank, which was now obliged to pay out money much faster than it had received it upon the subscription in the morning. The day succeeding was a holiday (September 29th), and the bank had a little breathing-time. It bore up against the storm; but its former rival, the South Sea Company, was wrecked upon it. Its stock fell to 150, and gradually, after various fluctuations, to 135. The bank, finding it was not able to restore public confidence and stem the tide of ruin, without running the risk of being swept away, with those it intended to save, declined to carry out the agreement into which it had partially entered. "And thus," to use the words of the _Parliamentary History_, "were seen, in the space of eight months, the rise, progress, and fall of that mighty fabric, which, being wound up by mysterious springs to a wonderful height, had fixed the eyes and expectations of all Europe, but whose foundations, being fraud, illusion, credulity, and infatuation, fell to the ground as soon as the artful management of its directors was discovered." BACH LAYS THE FOUNDATION OF MODERN MUSIC A.D. 1723 HENRY TIPPER Our first recognized triumph in the marvellous modern development of music, the first great masterpiece which taught the world the beauty of which the art is capable, was Bach's _Das Wohltemperirte Clavier_. The production marks, therefore, "the first great climax of musical art." Like the other arts and sciences, the story of music is that of a slow building up. Music "divinest of arts, exactest of sciences"--for music is both an art and a science--has developed from the crude two-or three-note scale melody, without semitones, to the elaborate, ornate lucubrations of the modern oratorio, opera, or symphony. From the beginning the "half-sister of Poetry" has been the handmaid of Religion. The ancients ascribed miraculous properties to music. Of the actual system of the Egyptians our information is very scant; but we learn from the monuments depicting the number and variety of their instruments that they had advanced from childish practice to orchestration and harmony. According to Plato, "In their possession are songs having the power to exalt and ennoble mankind." The harp is undoubtedly of Egyptian origin. In Israel plastic art was discouraged; the natural emotion of the people was, therefore, expressed in poetry and music. Miriam, the daughter of Jephthah, Deborah, and later the Virgin, whose grand chant, the _Magnificat_, is ever being upraised from Christendom's heart, portray the deep emotional temperament of this great religious race. The artistic standard of the music of the Greeks was far behind that of their observation and intelligence in other matters. Their theories on the combinations, of which they never made use, and analysis of their scales show much ingenuity, but their accounts are so vague that one cannot get any clear idea of what these were really like. When art is mature, people do not tell of city walls being overthrown, of savage animals being tamed--as run the stories of Orpheus and Amphion. One Greek there was, Pythagoras, who discerned the association between the distant music of the spheres with the seven notes of the scale. "He discovered the numerical relation of one tone to another."[28] It was about the time of Pythagoras that a scheme of tetrachords which did not overlap was adopted. In Persia and Arabia was obtained a perfect system of intonation. The Chinese system is minutely exact in theory, bombastic in fancy. The Hindus sedulously avoided applying mathematics to their scales. The development of the scale is shown in the construction of the ancient Greek scale, the modern Japanese, and the aboriginal Australian scale, and the phonographed tunes of some of the Red Indians of North America. Here a reference must be made to the scale of the Scotch bagpipe, a highly artificial product, without historical materials available to assist in unravelling its development. It comprises a whole diatonic series of notes, and modes may be selected therefrom. But it is to Rome that we owe the seed of our modern methods of treatment. The Netherland school had been highly developed there by a long line of distinguished masters, who paved the way for the gifted Palestrina, who exalted polyphony to a secure eminence equal to that attained by the arts of painting and architecture. He brought forth a perception of the needs which music suffered, adding an earnestness and science to a profound quality of simpleness and grace. It was between 1561 and 1571 that his genius mellowed and his style took on those characteristics upon which was based the future music of the Catholic Church. It was while he was Maestro at the Vatican that he submitted to the Church the famed _Missa Papæ Marcelli_, which determined the future of church music. The culmination of art in music is strikingly shown in the subjoined article from the pen of that great authority, Mr. H. Tipper. The first tonal prophet and poet of the modern era, the era in which reason made tremendous protest against mere dogma, and the best religious instincts of human nature called imperatively for emancipation and for nearer individual contact with God, is Johann Sebastian Bach. We look dazzled at the brilliant victories of the Italian Renaissance, and amid tumultuous beauty run riot with imagination we hear the voice of Savonarola at the close of the period uttering his lamentations. The great Italian reformer saw and felt that in his own day and in his own country the glory and beauty of the movement had vanished in sensuality; that hardness of heart and indifference to primary human needs had diverted the waters of the Renaissance from their main fertilizing channel. The deep need of the epoch was social, not mental, sociality in its widest sense: the right of the individual; his inherent majesty, which the accident of birth should not be able to impair--this and this only was the natural outcome of the new birth which came to humanity; this and this only was the sequel which German profundity and integrity, not Italian brilliancy and carelessness, placed before the mind of Europe. The Reformation, then, this Protestantism, is distinctive of the new era. It was a protest, not only religious, as the word is usually applied, but scientific. It is the basis in the modern Western world of those laws of criticism which have submitted, or will submit, everything to searching analytical investigation, and as in the case of the natural world, so in the moral and ethical, men, by the light of revealed truth, or by those higher instincts of nobility which emanate from the Eternal Love, seek to apply to the reformation of society those principles of love, justice, and recompense which each would wish applied individually to self. As an inspirer of thought and man of action, the world has seen few such men as Luther. His genius, as it were, discovered and laid bare the inexhaustible treasures of the German language; his sympathy and genial humanity sent a thrill of song, poetical and tonal, throughout the fatherland. He was the great awakener of German emotion. To Luther, a man who cared not for song was without the pale of humanity. But his enthusiasm was practical. In the church, as we have seen, he gathered from all sources whatever was of the best, and gave it to the people. In the schools he advocated the cause of song. In the streets the people needed not advocacy. Wherever two or three gathered together, song was in the midst of them, and it is not too much to say that the Lutheran hymn was the saviour of German poetry and a font of German song. In the seventeenth century there was in Germany little poetry worthy of the name save that inspired by the devotional character of Luther's genius. His heir and successor in the realm of tone was Sebastian Bach. True, two centuries had elapsed between the death of the great reformer in morals and the birth of the great reformer in tone; but the work of the latter could not have been without the former. The chorale was introduced by Luther; it was perfected by Bach. To what other influence than the Lutheran can we attribute the growth of Bach? Are there any other resources of German art and thought which can account for the advent of the great musician? In art Duerer stood by the side of Luther. In him again we find a man. Thought, thought! help me to express my native thought. Teach me to express in my art the reality of Nature, its wonderful beauty, thrice beautiful to me an artist; the pathos of life, its realism, far apparently from the ideal, yet most precious to me as a man. This was the aim of Duerer, and he seems a man after the Lutheran mould. The aim of Duerer may be found in some respects in Bach's work, because both men were men of integrity, great and patient in soul. This, of course, is not to say that Bach was affected by Duerer, but is merely an endeavor to find what was noblest in Germany preceding Bach. One more allusion. In Bach's art we trace the mystic; not shadowy outpourings of hysterical emotion, but beauties of eternal verities disclosed in vision--faint, it is true--to none save the noblest of mortals. One such kindred spirit preceding Bach was Boehme, the father of German mysticism, the poor cobbler, whose soul lay far away in the regions of celestial love, and whose utterance is of the realities thereof. These three men, Luther, Duerer, Boehme, are those to whom the great musician Bach is akin, but he is truly the child of the former, and the father of the highest aspirations in instrumental music. For confirmatory evidence we have only to trace the growth of the Bach family. The progenitor, Veit Bach, was born at Wechmar, near Gotha, in 1550, and, following his trade as a baker, settled, after considerable wanderings, near the Hungarian frontier. Veit Bach was a stanch Lutheran. Whether the Lutheran services had given him a love of music, or whether they had only quickened a constitutional sympathy, it is impossible to say. Certain it is that he was passionately fond of music, and, cast for a period among a population whose emotions found constant and ready utterance in tone, he brought back to Wechmar, whither he had returned on account of religious persecution, his beloved cythringa and the art of playing it. There is evidence that this knowledge afforded him consolation and enjoyment in the quiet monotony of his life. While the mill was working, Veit Bach was often playing; and doubtless the peculiar charm and rhythm of old Hungarian melodies, songs of the people, which he had learned from the wandering gypsies, recurred to him, as well as those grand devotional hymns on which he had been nourished from childhood. We have said that Veit Bach was a stanch Lutheran. From father to son through generations, the Lutheran doctrine, pure and undefiled, had been handed down, accompanied by the musical gift, until both, uniting in Sebastian Bach, born at Eisenach in 1685, served to glorify the Lutheran chorale and the art which perfected it. Again, the traditions of the great reformer must have been imbibed by Sebastian Bach from infancy. Surrounding his native town lay a circle of wooded heights, from one of which arose the Wartburg, that illustrious shrine of the German nation whither in mediæval and modern times her sons have repaired to exhibit and replenish their lamp of genius. There the minnesingers had gathered in contest a song; thither as a modern Elijah came the great monk, weary of soul, yet whose immortal genius unfolded the page of Sacred Writ; and down the wood-clad slope came issuing the melody of the Hebrew psalmist, translated into German speech and entering into German hearts, mingled with the narrative of the Redeemer's passion lit by awful and solemn glory of Eternal Love. Who shall say that young Bach knew not of these things? Who will contend that, when his genius matured and ripened, the immortal tones in which the eternal passion was portrayed owed nothing to this sympathy of association, this spiritual life with the great reformer born two centuries before? Yet once more. The Bach family was full of affection and sympathy one toward the other. Each year witnessed a reunion of the various members of the family scattered throughout Thuringia, and each came bearing the gift of music. As a child among the elders we can imagine how the young Sebastian revered his uncles, Johann Christopher and Michael Sebastian, in whom were conserved and developed the Lutheran tonal principles and traditions; how he somewhat feared the austere character of his elder brother, Johann Christopher, to whose charge he was intrusted upon the death of his father. But we need not imagine how the soul of the young boy was filled with inexpressible yearning for the art of music. We know that it was so. His brother, who instructed him, gauged not the nature of the lad. Often and often did the boy's wistful eyes and loving heart covet the possession of a manuscript book kept by his brother in strict reserve, containing a priceless collection of compositions by the great German masters and mediators. The boy extracted them from their resting-place, and we see the young tone-prophet striving to master the art-forms of Reinken, Buxtehude, Frescobaldi, Kerl, Froberger, and Pachelbel, endeavoring to wrest from them their style and inmost meaning by the light of the moon's pale rays, which led, alas! in after-years to blindness. What revelations came to the soul of the young musician we know not. But his genius thus directed knew no pause until it had won forever the freedom of the tonal art, until the last fetter of conventionality had been removed, until in all dignity and beauty music came forth, henceforth to comfort and solace the human heart. But of this anon. We trace the young boy to school; we see him a chorister in the choir of St. Michael's, Lueneburg. Here he entered the gymnasium, studying Greek and Latin, organ-and violin-playing. Here, too, he exhausted the treasures of the musical library. But at Hamburg the great Reinken was giving a series of organ recitals. Thither young Bach repaired. At Celle he became acquainted with several suites and other compositions of celebrated French masters. In 1703 he became violinist in the Saxe-Weimar orchestra, and in the same year, aged eighteen, he was appointed organist at the new church at Arnstadt, where other members of his family had held similar positions. Thus already we have ample evidence both of intense activity and catholicity of taste, and now, a mere youth, he enters upon his life-work: the perfecting of church music, especially the chorale form, and the emancipation of the art from any influence whatsoever other than derives from contact with nature and emotion. If we ask what equipment he had for his task, we answer: enthusiasm, so deep, so tempered in all its qualities, that, though in a few years he became the ablest performer of his time upon the harpsichord and organ, yet never once is the term "virtuoso" associated in our thought with the purity of aspiration which characterized him. His enthusiasm was religious, deep-seated, his vision far and wide, and no temporary triumph, no sunlit cloud of fame, could satisfy the imperative needs of his inmost nature. And this nature was calm, with the calmness of strength and with that tender purity and homely virtue which characterized the surroundings of his boyhood. This enthusiasm, this religious instinct, for what was noblest and best, led him early, as we have seen, to seek inspiration from the works of men who combined in their compositions all that the great previously existing schools had taught. Bach was never weary of learning if perchance he could attain a more lucid or more beautiful expression of his thought. We have, then, this enthusiasm, this capacity for at once discerning what was best. Add to it one more quality--the religious, in its best sense, which young Bach possessed to the uttermost, the feeling that his art was but the medium of expression for the deep things of God--and we have the equipment with which the young musician started on his quest. Young Bach had received no great instruction in the schools of composition. That which he had he gathered with a catholicity of taste from all the renowned masters. Not one of his immediate ancestors had stirred beyond the confines of their simple home. Well for him was it so. No late meretricious Neapolitan tinsel could exist in the quiet, calm beauty of his Thuringian dwelling-place. Nature lay before him. "Come," she said, "seek to understand me. I have treasures that ye know not of, treasures that can only be gathered by the pure in heart and patient in spirit. Here around you, in your quiet German home, are the elements of all your strength. Here there is no distraction. Riches shall not allure you. Honorable poverty shall minister to your purity"; and young Bach knew that the voice was true, and, heeding it, there came to him likewise an inner voice, relating spiritual things, even as the voice of Nature related natural things. Comprehending, then, his character, we pass on. His work at this period was formal. He felt, but could not express. But at Lubeck the noble-hearted Buxtehude was endeavoring to bring home to the hearts of the people the mission of music. Bach went thither. Fascinated by the grand organ-playing of the Lubeck master, and listening with heart-felt love to those memorable concerts of which we have previously spoken, Bach forgot both time and engagements. When he returned to Arnstadt, the spirit of Buxtehude was upon him. Henceforth the quiet people of Arnstadt knew no rest. Variations, subtle, beautiful, a refined and fuller contrapuntal treatment, mingled with the chorale. The conservatism of Arnstadt received a severe shock--a dreadful experience, doubtless, to the quiet German town. Such genius could come to no good end, and so the consistory and Bach agreed to part. Bach had married in October, 1707. In 1708, while at Muehlhausen, his first considerable work, composed for the municipal elector, appeared. His election at Saxe-Weimar was undoubtedly owing to his playing before the Duke Wilhelm Ernst, and we can imagine with what pleasure the young musician, conscious of great power, looked forward to the intellectual and cultured life for which Weimar was renowned. In the course of a few years Bach was appointed orchestral and concert director to the Duke. The liberal atmosphere of Weimar, the appreciation of men whose opinion was of worth, could but stimulate the mental faculties and widen the range of thought, and there is a breadth of conception and majesty in Bach at this period unknown before. With the assiduity of genius he labored for the realization of his ideal. Palestrina, Lotti, and Caldara were laid under contribution. The master transcribed the works of these composers with his own hands, and arranged the violin concertos of Vivaldi for the harpsichord and organ. It is ever with the greatest artists. They assimulate all the forms of kindred art, yet never sacrifice their individuality. The means enabling them to express their inmost soul must be found, but their soul will alone dictate the form which its expression will assume. But Bach is approaching the close of the first period of his career. An invitation has been given him (1717) to become conductor of the orchestra at the court of Leopold of Anhalt-Koethen, a prince remarkable for his benevolence and cultured attainments. Here his duties were comparatively slight and his leisure abundant. Hitherto he had been engaged, as it were, in the temple service. At Weimar he had developed into a great tone-poet of sacred song. With refined strength and exquisite perception he had gathered up the related parts of song, weaving them into a unity of impassioned and majestic utterance. But the great poet must have a wider experience. He must enter, as it were, into the great deeps of sacred emotion in things natural; he must perceive in the universe a deeper, a more majestic beauty even than in the temple. Then he will become a great prophet among his fellows, and illumine for all time the pathway of life, giving strength to the weak, consolation to the weary, and song to the blithe and pure of heart. This is what Bach became in tone. His attention at Koethen was directed mainly to instrumental music. We have previously remarked upon the endeavors which certain German masters made to bring home to their countrymen an appreciation of instrumental music. How long the seed lay germinating in Bach's mind we know not. A new idea had taken possession of him, or, rather, he contemplated the application of the principle of his former labors in polyphony to instrumental music pure and simple. At Koethen he supplemented his labors at Weimar. At Leipsic, whither we shall presently follow him, he brought them to completion. But we are anticipating. We have seen how patiently, how toilsomely, Music has broken one by one the fetters of conventionality; how she has grown in strength and beauty, anticipating the moment of her final deliverance. It has come at last. With the patience and impatience of genius Bach strikes in twain the last fetter of conventionality. He has realized his quest. The boy who, far away in future thought, studied the art-forms of his great predecessors and contemporaries in the lowly chamber or by the light of the silent moon, has found his beloved, the Tonal Muse. She stands free before him to serve his will--his will purified by conception and incessant effort--and he will lead her in her new-found freedom and place her in the path of progress. Bach's compositions at this time include the early part of one of the greatest of his works, the _Wohltemperirte Clavier_. In this work--the second part of which was composed at Leipsic--Bach attained the full mastery of form. The strivings and efforts of the great Netherland masters found completion in this work of Bach. In it are compressed the labors of centuries. The works of the masters, Okeghem, Dufay, Josquin des Pres, and others, are but prophecies in tone, announcing a realization of their ideal in the centuries yet to come, that ideal which they felt so particularly, yet could not express. The _Wohltemperirte Clavier_ then marks the first great climax of musical art. The evolution was certain, and it consummated in a kindred mind. The deepest expression of human feeling, the agony of the dire distress and conflict of life, the calm majesty of faith which enables the soul to overcome every obstacle, its pathetic appeal to God for rest and comfort, the strength of victory, are possible in music, are expressed in music as no other art can express them, because of Bach. True to his trust, he extracted all that was best in the works of his predecessors and, vivifying it by his genius, created forms of expression which the greatest that have followed him have utilized and extolled. But, as we have said, the great poet must perceive in things natural, in the beauty of the universe around him, in the sacred feelings of human emotion, a sacredness as worthy and as earnest, though less concentrated in character, as that which exists in the more direct function of religious worship. To the great poet, however he works, all things are sacred. He it is who reveals the heaven that lies around us. He opens the portals of Nature, and we enter in to find strength and consolation. Bach does all this in the masterly work we are considering. Not to the Italian, but to the German, did Nature at length disclose her choicest method of expression, and this because the German had ever lived in close contact with her. In all Bach's works at this period the work of emancipation goes forward. Take, for instance, the Brandenburg concertos leading to the combination of the present orchestra. But a new sphere of action here again opens to Bach. His master and friend, the Prince of Koethen, was distracted from the pursuit of music by his wife's want of interest therein, and so Bach sorrowfully looks around him for a more congenial appointment. This he found at Leipsic, in 1723, as cantor to the school of St. Thomas. Leipsic, like Weimar, was celebrated for its intellectual life; but the various vexations which the great musician encountered from the action of the authorities reflects but little credit upon them. Bach's labors here were simply Titanic. There were four churches at Leipsic, the principal being St. Nicholas and St. Thomas. Bach seems to have been responsible for the musical service at each. How innate and healthy was his genius may be inferred from the fact that for these musical services alone three hundred eighty cantatas seem to have been composed. Bach entered upon his labors at Leipsic at the age of thirty-eight, and continued therein until his death, in 1750. Let us examine briefly the nature of these labors, and endeavor to glean from them their characteristic principles. When Bach came to Leipsic he came full of experience and power. As a youth he had devoted himself to the perfecting of church music. Untiringly, unceasingly, with steadfast love, he had brought the laws of counterpoint and fugue to mingle with the grace of melody and the genius of a noble imagination. At Koethen his poetic and artistic temperament roamed through the realms of nature, and brought us near to the understanding of their varied utterance. At Leipsic he finished the education of his life and his career as a tone-poet. He seeks again the shelter of the temple, but his genius has matured and ripened. He has examined the mysteries of life. His enthusiasm for the pure and good is stronger than ever, but life is still a mystery. Evil, pain, love deep as hell and high as heaven, the Titanic conflict of opposing principles, Nature and her decrees, sorrow, remorse, sweet, unaffected joy, and tranquil resignation--what mean they all? The answer, the solution, is on Calvary. There is no other solution. Intellect, deny it how it will, is baffled by the complex problem. The solution is of love through trouble and anguish. The Passion music of Bach rises to the sublime understanding of this grand mystery, and again the evolution of the old mystery and Passion-play consummates in a kindred mind. Again the triumph of faith is with the German. Luther frees the understanding from tyranny. Bach raises it to the region of genius and sympathy, and closes the labors of a thousand years of Christian tonal effort by his Passion music of the Redeemer. But while this is so, he initiated the modern period of tonal art, leaving, however, this Passion music as his noblest legacy, as if to warn men that no other solution of life exists. But though Bach's genius was thus supreme, it was not because he was undisturbed by the vexations of daily life. Rarely, if ever, has an artist equally great produced in such boundless profusion the highest works of genius, when engaged with men most frequently unable to understand his thought, and immersed in the arduous duties of teacher in an art noteworthy of producing fatigue and exhaustion of spirit. But his enthusiasm and strength were equal to the task. With grand integrity, and desire for the welfare of the congregations of the churches alluded to, he obtained from their respective ministers the texts of their discourses for the ensuing Sundays, and produced, apparently without effort, hundreds of cantatas to convey to the hearers the inner meaning of the words which fell from the preacher's lips. These cantatas frequently opened with orchestral introduction followed by a chorus, usually very impressive, and imbued with the meaning of the text. The recitatives and solo airs would still further convey this meaning, while a chorale or hymn in four parts, with elaborate instrumental accompaniment, served to express the feelings of the whole congregation. To each instrument was assigned a separate part, and the whole accompaniment was separate from the singing. But if Bach in the consummation of the chorale perfected Luther's work in the realm of music, he in his Passion music finds worthy expression of a nation's devotion. His genius, as it were, felt the spirit-life of the past. His soul vibrated to the yearnings of the unknown millions of his race who had passed away in the centuries preceding him, and whose consolation in their humble toil, in the various hardships of their lives, was the narrative of this Passion music of the Saviour Christ. The rough, dramatic presentation accorded to this narrative gathered, as time went on, elements of beauty and traditional treatment around it. It was powerfully to affect the drama proper and oratorio, but in its direct and proper functions it was to inspire the first, and in some respects the greatest, of the great musicians of Germany to his utmost effort, to his most lofty flight of genius, as his winged spirit soared through the ages of the past toward the future ages yet to come. This Passion music of St. Matthew is the noblest presentment of the characteristics of the German mind, and is unsurpassed in the realm of religious art. It is an unfolding of the German spirit, and evidences qualities the possession of which makes for national greatness. As we have said, Bach is the great lyric poet of his nation, the first great German genius after the devastating horrors of war. Looming on the sight, or as contemporaries, are Handel, Leibnitz, Wolf, Klopstock, Lessing, and Winckelmann. The modern era, with its philosophy and revolution, has arrived. The domain of thought is enwidened, and the Middle Ages blend and fade in the historic vista of the past. But the modern era commences with these great affirmations in art and poetry. Bach takes the narrative of the Passion, and erects the Cross anew with sympathetic genius of art and love. Handel, as if he had caught Isaiah's prophetic fire, gave to Europe its most beautiful and noble epic, the _Messiah_; and Klopstock, the first of the great line of Germany's modern poets, devoted his genius and labor to the same subject. But with Bach and Handel no miserable conflicting elements of theology sully the conception of the Saviour Christ. These great artists rise to the universal and the true. The highest art is absolute and knows no appeal. It is in harmony with universal law, both spiritual and physical. FOOTNOTES: [28] Naumann. SETTLEMENT OF GEORGIA A.D. 1732 WILLIAM B. STEVENS It was not only the beginning of a new commonwealth, destined to become an important State of the American Union, but also the spirit and purpose which led to it, that made the English colonization of Georgia a great and unique event in the history of this country. Seldom have military and philanthropic achievements been combined in the career of one man. James Oglethorpe was already a distinguished soldier and a member of the English Parliament when in 1732 he sailed with one hundred twenty men and founded Savannah. His express object was the settlement of Georgia, not only as a home for insolvent debtors, who suffered in English jails, but also for persecuted Protestants of the Continent. It was not the least of his services that on his second visit to the future "Empire State of the South" he took with him John and Charles Wesley, whose influence has been so marked among the American people. Prior to the undertaking of Sir Robert Montgomery in 1717, with which Stevens' narrative begins, few white men had visited the Georgia country, which was the home of various Indian tribes. De Soto traversed it on his great westward expedition (1539-1542), but little was known of it when in 1629 it was included in King Charles I's Carolina grant to Sir Robert Heath, or even at the time of the next Carolina grant (1663), when it passed to Monk, Clarendon, and others. Under the later proprietors it became known to Englishmen through such glowing descriptions as naturally aroused an interest in its settlement. It was not until 1717 that any effort was made to improve the lands between the Savannah and the Altamaha. In that year Sir Robert Montgomery, Bart., whose father was joined with Lord Cardross in his measures for establishing a Scots colony in Port Royal, published _A Discourse Concerning the Designed Establishment of a new Colony to the South of Carolina_, in what he termed "the most delightful country in the universe." This pamphlet was accompanied by a beautiful but fanciful plan representing the form of settling the districts or county divisions in his province, which he styled "the Margraviate of Azilia." In his description of the country he writes "that Nature has not blessed the world with any tract which can be preferable to it; that Paradise, with all her virgin beauties, may be modestly supposed, at most, but equal to its native excellencies." Having obtained, from the Lords Proprietors of Carolina a grant of the lands between Savannah and the Altamaha, he issued his proposals for settling this "future Eden"; but, though garnished with the most glowing descriptions, and set forth under the most captivating attractions, they were issued in vain; and the three years having expired within which he was to make the settlement or forfeit the land, the territory reverted to Carolina, and his scheme of colonization came to an end. The Margraviate of Azilia was magnificent upon the map, but was impracticable in reality. The Lords Proprietors of Carolina having failed in their scheme of government, and their authority being crushed by the provincial revolution of 1719, they sold their titles and interest in that province to Parliament in 1729; reserving to Lord John Carteret, one of their number, the remaining eight shares of the country, as he refused to join the others in disposing of the colony. After the purchase of the territory of Carolina, which then extended from the St. John's to Albemarle Sound, it was deemed too large for one government, and was therefore divided into two provinces, under the respective titles of North and South Carolina. The territorial boundary of South Carolina, however, on the south, was the Savannah River; the remaining portion being then held in reserve by the British Crown. The same year that the House of Commons resolved on an address to the King to purchase the rights of the Lords Proprietors to this territory, a committee was appointed by Parliament "to inquire into the state of the gaols of the kingdom, and to report the same and their opinion thereupon to the House." This committee, raised on the motion of James Oglethorpe, Esq., in consequence of the barbarities which had fallen under his own observation while visiting some debtors in the Fleet and Marshalsea prisons, consisted of ninety-six persons, and Oglethorpe was made its chairman. A more honorable or effective committee could scarcely have been appointed. It embraced some of the first men in England; among them thirty-eight noblemen, the chancellor of the exchequer, the master of rolls, Admiral Vernon and Field Marshal Wade. They entered upon their labors with zeal and diligence, and not only made inquiries, through the Fleet prison, but also into the Marshalsea, the prison of the king's bench, and the jail for the county of Surrey. The philanthropy of Oglethorpe, whose feelings were easily enlisted in the cause of misery, rested not with the discharge of his Parliamentary duty, nor yet in the further benefit of relaxing the rigorous laws which thrust the honest debtor into prisons which seemed to garner up disease in its most loathsome forms--crime in its most fiend-like works--humanity in its most shameless and degraded aspect; but it prompted still further efforts--efforts to combine present relief with permanent benefits, by which honest but unfortunate industry could be protected, and the laboring poor be enabled to reap some gladdening fruit from toils which now wrung out their lives with bitter and unrequited labors. To devise and carry out such efforts himself Lord Percival and a few other noblemen and gentlemen addressed a memorial to the privy council, stating "that the cities of London, Westminster, and parts adjacent do abound with great numbers of indigent persons who are reduced to such necessity as to become burthensome to the public, and who would be willing to seek a livelihood in any of his majesty's plantations in America if they were provided with a passage and means of settling there." The memorialists promised to take upon themselves the entire charge of this affair, to erect a province into a proprietary government, provided the crown would grant them a portion of the land bought in 1729 by Parliament from the Lords Proprietors of South Carolina, lying south of the Savannah River; together with such powers as shall enable them to receive the charitable contributions and benefactions of all such persons as are willing to encourage so good a design. This petition, referred at first to a committee of the privy council, was by them submitted to the consideration of the board of trade, who, after a second commitment, made their report, that the attorney and solicitor-general should be directed to prepare a draft of the charter. This report, being laid before his majesty, was by him approved and he directed the proper officer to make out the charter. The charter thus prepared was approved by the King, but in consequence of the formalities of office did not pass under the great seal until June 9, 1732. This instrument constituted twenty noblemen and gentlemen a body corporate, by the name and style of "The Trustees for establishing a Colony of Georgia, in America"; giving to the projected colony the name of the monarch who had granted to them such a liberal territory for the development of their benevolence. The charter revealed two purposes as the object of this colonization: the settling of poor but unfortunate people on lands now waste and desolate, and the interposing of this colony as a barrier between the northern colonies and the French, Spanish, and Indians on the south and west. These designs the trustees amplified and illustrated in their printed papers and official correspondence. Oglethorpe, in his _New and Accurrate Account_, declares: "These trustees not only give land to the unhappy who go thither, but are also empowered to receive the voluntary contributions of charitable persons to enable them to furnish the poor adventurers with all necessaries for the expense of the voyage, occupying the land, and supporting them till they find themselves comfortably settled. So that now the unfortunate will not be obliged to bind themselves to a long servitude, to pay for their passage, for they may be carried gratis into a land of liberty and plenty, where they immediately find themselves in possession of a competent estate in a happier climate than they knew before; and they are unfortunate, indeed, if here they cannot forget their sorrows." This was the main purpose of the settlement; and such noble views were "worthy to be the source of an American republic." Other colonies had been planted by individuals and companies for wealth and dominion; but the trustees of this, at their own desire, were restrained by the charter "from receiving any grant of lands in the province, or any salary, fee, perquisite, or profit whatsoever, by or from this undertaking." The proprietors of other colonies were looking to their own interests; the motto of the trustees of this was "_Non sibi, sed aliis_." The proprietors of other colonies were anxious to build up cities and erect states that should bear their names to a distant posterity; the trustees of this only busied themselves in erecting an asylum, whither they invited the indigent of their own and the exiled Protestants of other lands. It was the first colony ever founded by charity. New England had been settled by Puritans, who fled thither for conscience' sake; New York by a company of merchants and adventurers in search of gain; Maryland, by papists retiring from Protestant intolerance; Virginia, by ambitious cavaliers; Carolina by the scheming and visionary Shaftesbury, and others, for private aims and individual aggrandizement; but Georgia was planted by the hand of benevolence, and reared into being by the nurturings of a disinterested charity. But the colony was not to be confined to the poor and unfortunate. The trustees granted portions of five hundred acres to such as went over at their own expense, on condition that they carried over one servant to every fifty acres, and did military service in time of war or alarm. Thus the materials of the new colony consisted of three classes: the upper, or large landed proprietors and officers; the middle, or freeholders, sent over by the trustees; and the servants indented to that corporation or to private individuals. Subsidiary to the great design of philanthropy was the further purpose of making Georgia a silk, wine, oil, and drug-growing colony. "Lying," as the trustees remark, "about the same latitude with part of China, Persia, Palestine, and the Madeiras, it is highly probable that when hereafter it shall be well peopled and rightly cultivated England may be supplied from thence with raw silk, wine, oil, dyes, drugs, and many other materials for manufactures which she is obliged to purchase from southern countries." Such were the principal purposes of the trustees in settling Georgia. Extravagance was their common characteristic; for in the excited visions of its enthusiastic friends, Georgia was not only to rival Virginia and South Carolina, but to take the first rank in the list of provinces depending on the British Crown. Neither the El Dorado of Raleigh nor the Utopia of More could compare with the garden of Georgia; and the poet, the statesman, and the divine lauded its beauties and prophesied its future greatness. Oglethorpe, in particular, was quite enthusiastic in his description of the climate, soil, productions, and beauties of this American Canaan. "Such an air and soil," he writes, "can only be fitly described by a poetical pen, because there is but little danger of exceeding the truth." With such blazoned exaggerations, strengthened by the interested efforts of a noble and learned body of trustees, and by the personal supervision of its distinguished originator, it is no matter of wonder that all Europe was aroused to attention; and that Swiss and German, Scotch and English, alike pressed forward to this promised land. Appeals were made by the trustees to the liberal, the philanthropic, the public-spirited, the humane, the patriotic, the Christian, to aid in this design of mercy, closing their arguments with the noble thought: "To consult the welfare of mankind, regardless of any private views, is the perfection of virtue, as the accomplishing and consciousness of it are the perfection of happiness." These preliminaries settled, we are brought to the period when the plan, the charity, the labors of the trustees, were to be put into efficient operation. Fortunate was it for the corporation that they had among their number one whose benevolence, whose fortune, and whose patriotism, as well as his military distinction conspired to make him the fittest leader and pioneer of so noble an undertaking. That one was James Oglethorpe, the originator, the chief promotor, the most zealous advocate of the colony; an honor conceded by his associates, and acknowledged by all. We are brought now to the dock-yard at Deptford, to behold the first embarkation of the Georgia pilgrims. The trustees, having selected from the throng of emigrants thirty-five families, numbering in all about one hundred twenty-five "sober, industrious, and moral persons," chartered the Ann, a galley of two hundred tons, Captain John Thomas, and stationed her at Deptford, four miles below London, to receive her cargo and passengers. In the mean time the men were drilled to arms by sergeants of the guards; and all needed stores were gathered to make them comfortable on the voyage and to establish them on land. It was not until the early part of November that the embarkation was ready for sailing. On the 16th they were visited by the trustees, "to see nothing was wanting, and to take leave" of Oglethorpe; and having called the families separately before them in the great cabin they inquired if they liked their usage and voyage; or if they had rather return, giving them even then the alternative of remaining in England if they preferred it; and having found but one man who declined--on account of his wife, left sick in Southwark--they bid Oglethorpe and the emigrants an affectionate farewell. The ship sailed the next day, November 17, 1732, from Gravesend, skirted slowly along the southern coast of England, and, taking its departure from Sicily light, spread out its white sails to the breezes of the Atlantic. Day after day and week after week the voyagers seem the centre of the same watery circle canopied by the same bending sky. No mile-stones tell of their progress. The way-marks of the mariner are the sun by day and the moon and stars by night; no kindred ship answers back its red-cross signal; but there they float, the germ of a future nation, upon the desert waters. Sailing a circuitous route, they did not reach the coast of America until January 13, 1733, when they cast anchor in Rebellion Roads, and furled their sails at last in the harbor of Charleston. Oglethorpe immediately landed, and was received by the Governor and Council of South Carolina with every mark of civility and attention. The King's pilot was directed by them to carry the ship into Port Royal, and small vessels were furnished to take the emigrants to the river Savannah. Thus assisted, in about ten hours they resumed their voyage and shortly dropped anchor within Port Royal bar. The colony landed at Beaufort on January 20th, and had quarters given them in the new barracks. Here they received every attention from the officers of His Majesty's Independent Company and the gentlemen of the neighborhood, and refreshed themselves after the fatigues and discomforts of their long voyage and cramped accommodations. Leaving his people here, Oglethorpe, accompanied by Colonel William Bull, of South Carolina, went forward to the Savannah River to select a site for the projected settlement. Winding among the inlets, which break into numerous islands the low flat seaboard, their canoe at last shot into the broad stream of the Savannah; and bending their course upward they soon reached a bold, pine-crowned bluff, at the foot of which they landed to inspect its localities. Reaching its top, a beautiful prospect met their eyes. At their feet, some fourteen yards below, flowed the quiet waters of the Savannah, visible for some distance above and traceable through its green landscape till it emptied itself into the ocean. Before them lay a beautiful island of richest pasturage, beyond which was seen the north branch of the Savannah bordered by the slopes of Carolina, with a dark girdle of trees resting against the horizon. Behind them was the unbroken forest of tall green pines, with an occasional oak draperied with festoons of gray moss or the druidical mistletoe. A wide expanse of varied beauty was before them; an ample and lofty plain around them; and, though spring had not yet garnished the scene with her vernal glories, sprinkling the woods with gay wild-flowers and charming creepers, and making the atmosphere balmy with the bay, the jessamine, and the magnolia, yet, even in winter, were there sufficient charms in the spot to fix on it the heart of Oglethorpe, and cause him to select it as the home of his waiting colony. "The landscape," he writes, "is very agreeable, the stream being wide and bordered with high woods on both sides," On the northern end of this bluff they found a trading-house and an Indian village called Yamacraw. The chief of this little tribe was Tomochichi; and the trader's name was Musgrove, married to a half-breed, named Mary. By an ancient treaty of the Creeks with the Governor of South Carolina, no white settlement was allowed to be made south of the Savannah River without their consent. Satisfied with the eligibility of this situation, Oglethorpe applied to Mary Musgrove, who could speak both Indian and English, to obtain from the tribe their agreement to his settlement. They at first appeared uneasy and threatened to take up arms, but were pacified by her representations of the benefits which would accrue to them; and she gained from them a provisional treaty, until the consent of the whole nation could be obtained. The Indians, once made sensible of the advantages they would derive from the erection of a town within their limits, hailed their coming with joy and busied themselves in many offices of service and regard. The land selected, the consent of the tribe obtained, and the services of Mary secured as an interpreter in their subsequent intercourse with the red men, Oglethorpe returned to Beaufort on January 24th; and the Sunday after was made a day of praise and thanksgiving for their safe arrival in America, and the happy auspices which clustered round the opening prospects of Georgia. During the stay of the colonists in South Carolina they were treated with genuine hospitality, and when they departed they were laden with most substantial and valuable tokens of interest and benevolence. Leaving the ship at Port Royal, Oglethorpe engaged a sloop of seventy tons, and five plantation-boats, and embarked the colonists on Tuesday, the 30th, but, detained by a storm, they did not reach their destination until the afternoon of Thursday, February 12 (new style), 1733. The people immediately pitched four large tents, being one for each tithing, into which municipal divisions they had already been divided; and, landing their bedding and other necessaries, spent their first night in Georgia. As soon as the tents had been pitched, the Indians came forward with their formal salutations. In front advanced, with antic dancings, the "medicine man," bearing in each hand a spread fan of white feathers fastened to a rod hung from top to bottom with little bells; marching behind this jingling symbol of peace and friendship, came the King and Queen, followed by about twenty others, making the air ring with their uncouth shouts. Approaching Oglethorpe, who walked out a few steps from his tent to meet them, the medicine man came forward with his fans, declaiming the while the deeds of their ancestors, and stroked him on every side with the emblems of amity. This over, the King and Queen bade him welcome and, after an interchange of compliments, they were conducted to Oglethorpe's tent and partook of a pleasant entertainment hastily prepared for the occasion. And now all was bustle upon the bluff. The unlading of goods, the felling of trees, the hewing of timber, the clearing of land, the erection of palisades--all supervised by the watchful eye and directed by the energetic mind of their leader--gave a brisk and industrious air to the novel scene. On the 9th Oglethorpe and Colonel Bull marked out the square, the streets, and forty lots for houses; and the first clapboard-house of the colony of Georgia was begun that day. On March 12th Oglethorpe writes: "Our people still lie in tents; there being only two clapboard houses built, and three sawed houses framed. Our crane, our battery of cannon, and magazine are finished. This is all we have been able to do by reason of the smallness of our numbers, of which many have been sick, and others unused to labor, though I thank God they are now pretty well, and we have not lost one since our arrival." The most generous assistance was given them by South Carolina. The Assembly, which met in Charleston three days after the arrival of the emigrants, immediately resolved to furnish the colony with large supplies of cattle and rice; to provide boats for the transportation of the people from Port Royal to Savannah; and placed under Oglethorpe's command the scout-boats and a troop of fifteen rangers for his protection. They further appointed Colonel William Bull one of the Governor's council, and a gentleman esteemed "most capable of assisting Oglethorpe in settling the colony by reason of his experience in colonial affairs, the nature of lands and the intercourse with Indians," to attend him and offer him his advice and assistance. Such was the readiness of all to assist him that the Governor wrote, "Had not our Assembly been sitting I would have gone myself." Nor was private benevolence in any way behind public munificence. It is pleasant, in looking over the list of individual benefactions, to read such records as these: _February._--"Colonel Bull came to Savannah with four laborers, and assisted the colony for a month; he himself measuring the scantling, and setting out the work for the sawyers, and giving the proportion of the houses. Mr. Whitaker and his friends sent the colony one hundred head of cattle. Mr. St. Julian came to Savannah and stayed a month, directing the people in building their houses and other work. Mr. Hume gave a silver boat and spoon for the first child born in Georgia, which being born of Mrs. Close, were given accordingly. Mr. Joseph Bryan himself, with four of his sawyers, gave two months' work in the colony. The inhabitants of Edisto sent sixteen sheep. Mr. Hammerton gave a drum. Mrs. Ann Drayton sent two pair of sawyers to work in the colony. Colonel Bull and Mr. Bryan came to Savannah with twenty servants, whose labor they gave to the colony. His excellency Robert Johnson gave seven horses, valued at twenty-five pounds, Carolina currency." These, with many other like records, evince their spirit in promoting the settlement of Georgia. And well they might; for the planting of this colony to the south of the Savannah increased their security from invasion by the Spaniards, and from the incursions and massacres of the Indian tribes, and still further operated as a preventive to the enticing lures held out to the negroes, by which desertion was rendered common and insurrection always dreaded. They were prepared, therefore, to hail the new colony as a bulwark against their Floridian and savage enemies, as opening further opportunities of trade, and as enhancing the value of their frontier possessions, which, according to the best authorities, were raised to five times their former value about Port Royal and the Savannah River. The fostering care of South Carolina was to be repaid by the protecting service of Georgia. The labors of the colonists were great, but they had much to cheer them; and the assiduity and attention of Oglethorpe won upon their hearts so that they styled him "Father," and he exercised his paternal care by unremitting efforts to advance their welfare. He spared not himself in any personal efforts, but took his turn regularly in doing night-guard duty, as an example to the rest, and at times worked at the hardest labor to encourage their industry. Having put Savannah in a posture of defence, supplied it with provisions, and taken hostages of the Indians, Oglethorpe set out for Charleston, attended by Tomochichi and his two nephews, being desirous of cultivating the acquaintance and securing the good offices of the Governor, council, and Assembly of South Carolina. At Charleston he was met at the water-side by his excellency the Governor and council, who conducted him to Governor Johnson's house, where the speaker and House of Assembly came to present their official congratulations on his arrival. His solicitations for assistance were promptly answered. The Assembly voted two thousand pounds currency for the assistance of Georgia the first year, and soon after the committee of supply brought in a bill for granting eight thousand pounds currency for the use of the new colony the ensuing year. The citizens also subscribed one thousand pounds currency, five hundred pounds of which were immediately paid down. Grateful for this munificence Oglethorpe returned to Georgia to meet the great council of the towns of the Lower Creeks, whom he had desired to meet him in Savannah to strengthen the provisional treaty already made with Tomochichi, and secure their abiding amity for the future. In answer to this desire, eighteen chief men and their attendants, making in all about fifty, came together from the nine tribes of the nation, and met him in solemn council on the afternoon of May 18th. Speeches, not lacking in interest, but full of Indian hyperbole and the inflations of interpreters, were made by the chiefs, and answered by Oglethorpe through the medium of Messrs. Wiggin and Musgrove; and on May 21st the treaty was concluded. The principal stipulations of it were that the trustees' people should trade in the Indian towns; their goods being sold according to fixed rates mutually agreed upon: thus, a white blanket was set down at five buckskins, a gun at ten; a hatchet at three doeskins, a knife at one, and so on. Restitution and reparation were to be made for injuries committed and losses sustained by either party; the criminals to be tried by English law. Trade to be stopped with any town violating any article of the treaty. All lands not used by the Indians were to be possessed by the English, but, upon the settling of any new town, certain lands agreed on between the chiefs and the magistrates were to be reserved for the former. All runaway negroes were to be restored to Carolina, the Indians receiving for each one thus recovered four blankets and two guns, or the value thereof in other goods. And lastly, they agreed, with "straight hearts" and "true love," to allow no other white people to settle on their lands, but ever to protect the English. The Indians, having received suitable presents, were dismissed in amity and peace; while Oglethorpe left the same day for Charleston, satisfied at having obtained, by such honorable means, the cession of such a fine country to the crown of England. This treaty was ratified by the trustees the following October. The judicious and honorable conduct of Oglethorpe toward the Indians was of more security to the colony than its military defences. For a long time he had regarded the Indians with kindly feelings. At his suggestion Bishop Wilson, one of the bright and shining lights of the English Church, wrote _An Essay Toward an Instruction for the Indians_, which he dedicated to Oglethorpe; and, now that he met them on their native soil, he evinced the same care for their interests, and through life manifested in all his acts his regard for their welfare. He was the red man's friend; showing in his intercourse with him the honorableness of William Penn, without his private interests to subserve; the generosity of Lord Baltimore, without a patent of immense tracts to secure to his descendants; the compassion of Roger Williams, without his mercantile views, to incite him to foster among the Indians kindness and regard. Oglethorpe stands superior to all, because he had no private end to gratify, no lands to secure, no property to invest, no wealth to accumulate from or among the tribes whose amity he cultivated. The art of the painter has commemorated the treaty of Penn with the Leni Lenapes, under the elm-tree of Shakamaxon; but neither this scene on the north edge of Philadelphia, nor the treaty of Roger Williams with "the old Prince Caconicas" at Seconke, nor the alliance of Leonard Calvert with the Susquehannas at Yoacomoco, excels, in any element of philanthropy or in any trait of nobleness, the treaty of Oglethorpe with the tribes of the Muscogees, under the "four pine-trees" on the bluff of Yamacraw. RISE OF METHODISM PREACHING OF THE WESLEYS AND OF WHITEFIELD A.D. 1738 WILLIAM E.H. LECKY Next to the founders of the world's great religions, the principal figures in religious history are the leaders of its new movements, the founders of sects or denominations. In this subordinate class few names outrank that of John Wesley, while those of his brother, Charles, and George Whitefield, their eloquent colleague, are inseparably associated with that of the great founder of Methodism, one of the most striking of the epochal religious movements of modern times. Although not intending to break with the Anglican Church, Wesley and his followers were carried out upon independent lines which led to the upbuilding of a distinct type of religious faith and organization, whose power has been especially marked in Great Britain and America, and has been increasingly spread throughout the world. Between Whitefield and John Wesley, in 1741, a separation occurred on points of doctrine, Whitefield adhering to a rigid Calvinism, while Wesley inclined to Arminianism, and thenceforth they followed their several paths. Although Whitefield founded no sect, he exerted a widespread influence by his presence and voice. Before their separation both preachers had been in America, and the personality and eloquence of Whitefield not only wrought a spell upon the multitude, but even exercised a degree of fascination over such a philosophical spirit as Franklin. Wesley's work in America was deeper and more enduring, and is still a growing feature of the country's religious development. Nothing could be happier for the present purpose than the treatment of this great religious movement, in its beginnings, as it is here dealt with by the dispassionate historian of England during the century in which the movement arose. The Methodist movement was a purely religious one. All explanations which ascribe it to the ambition of its leaders, or to merely intellectual causes, are at variance with the facts of the case. The term Methodist was a college nickname bestowed upon a small society of students at Oxford who met together, between 1729 and 1735, for the purpose of mutual improvement. They were accustomed to communicate every week, to fast regularly on Wednesdays and Fridays and on most days during Lent; to read and discuss the Bible in common, to abstain from most forms of amusement and luxury, and to visit sick persons, and prisoners in the jail. John Wesley, the master spirit of this society, and the future leader of the religious revival of the eighteenth century, was born in 1703, and was the second surviving son of Samuel Wesley, the rector of Epworth, in Lincolnshire. His father, who had early abandoned Nonconformity, and acquired some reputation by many works both in prose and verse, had obtained his living from the government of William, and had led for many years a useful and studious life, maintaining a far higher standard of clerical duty than was common in his time. His mother was the daughter of an eminent Nonconformist minister, who had been ejected in 1662, and was a woman of rare mental endowments, of intense piety, and of a strong, original, and somewhat stern character. Their home was not a happy one. Discordant dispositions and many troubles darkened it. The family was very large. Many children died early. The father sank slowly into debt. His parishioners were fierce, profligate, and recalcitrant. When John Wesley was only six years old the rectory was burned to the ground, and the child was forgotten among the flames, and only saved at the last moment by what he afterward deemed an extraordinary providence. All these circumstances doubtless deepened the natural and inherited piety for which he was so remarkable; and some strange and unexplained noises which during a long period were heard in the rectory, and which its inmates concluded to be supernatural, contributed to that vein of credulity which ran through his character. He was sent to the Charterhouse, and from thence to Oxford, where at the age of twenty-three he was elected fellow of Lincoln. He had some years before acquired from his brother a certain knowledge of Hebrew, and he was speedily distinguished by his extraordinary logical powers, by the untiring industry with which he threw himself into the studies of the place, and above all by the force and energy of his character. His religious impressions, which had been for a time somewhat obscured, revived in their full intensity while he was preparing for ordination in 1725. He was troubled with difficulties, which his father and mother gradually removed, about the damnatory clauses in the Athanasian Creed, and about the compatibility of the articles with his decidedly Arminian views concerning election; and he was deeply influenced by the _Imitation_ of St. Thomas à Kempis, by the _Holy Living and Dying_ of Jeremy Taylor, and by Law's _Serious Call_. His life at Oxford became very strict. He rose every morning at four, a practice which he continued till extreme old age. He made pilgrimages on foot to William Law to ask for spiritual advice. He abstained from the usual fashion of having his hair dressed, in order that he might give the money so saved to the poor. He refused to return the visits of those who called on him, that he might avoid all idle conversation. His fasts were so severe that they seriously impaired his health, and extreme abstinence and gloomy views about religion are said to have contributed largely to hurry one of the closest of his college companions to an early and a clouded death. The society hardly numbered more than fifteen members, and was the object of much ridicule at the university; but it included some men who afterward played considerable parts in the world. Among them was Charles, the younger brother of John Wesley, whose hymns became the favorite poetry of the sect, and whose gentler, more submissive, and more amiable character, though less fitted than that of his brother for the great conflicts of public life, was very useful in moderating the movement and in drawing converts to it by personal influence. Charles Wesley appears to have been the first to originate the society at Oxford; he brought Whitefield into its pale, and, besides being the most popular poet, he was one of the most persuasive preachers of the movement. There, too, was James Hervey, who became one of the earliest links connecting Methodism with general literature. During most of his short life he was a confirmed invalid. His affected language, his feeble, tremulous, and lymphatic nature formed a curious contrast to the robust energy of Wesley and Whitefield; but he was a great master of a kind of tumid and over-ornamented rhetoric which has an extraordinary attraction to half-educated minds. His _Meditations_ was one of the most popular books of the eighteenth century. His _Theron and Aspasio_, which was hardly less successful, was an elaborate defence of evangelical opinions; and though at this time the pupil and one of the warmest admirers of Wesley, he afterward became conspicuous in the Calvinistic section of the party, and wrote with much acerbity against his old master. There, too, above all, was George Whitefield, in after-years the greatest pulpit orator of England. He was born in 1714, in Gloucester, in the Bell Inn, of which his mother was proprietor, and where upon the decline of her fortunes he was for some time employed in servile functions. He had been a wild, impulsive boy, alternately remarkable for many mischievous pranks and for strange outbursts of religious zeal. He stole money from his mother, and he gave part of it to the poor. He early declared his intention one day to preach the Gospel, but he was the terror of the Dissenting minister of his neighborhood, whose religious services he was accustomed to ridicule and interrupt. He bought devotional books, read the Bible assiduously, and on one occasion, when exasperated by some teasing, he relieved his feelings, as he tells us, by pouring out in his solitude the menaces of Psalm cxviii; but he was also passionately fond of card-playing, novel-reading, and the theatre; he was two or three times intoxicated, and he confesses with much penitence to "a sensual passion" for fruits and cakes. His strongest natural bias was toward the stage. He indulged it on every possible occasion, and at school he wrote plays and acted in a female part. Owing to the great poverty of his mother, he could only go to Oxford as a servitor, and his career there was a very painful one. St. Thomas à Kempis, Drelincourt's _Defence against Death_, and Law's devotional works had all their part in kindling his piety into a flame. He was haunted with gloomy and superstitious fancies, and his religion assumed the darkest and most ascetic character. He always chose the worst food, fasted twice a week, wore woollen gloves, a patched gown, and dirty shoes, and was subject to paroxysms of a morbid devotion. He remained for hours prostrate on the ground in Christ Church Walk in the midst of the night, and continued his devotions till his hands grew black with cold. One Lent he carried his fasting to such a point that when Passion Week arrived he had hardly sufficient strength to creep upstairs, and his memory was seriously impaired. In 1733 he came in contact with Charles Wesley, who brought him into the society. To a work called _The Life of God in the Soul of Man_, which Charles Wesley put into his hands, he ascribed his first conviction of that doctrine of free salvation which he afterward made it the great object of his life to teach. With the exception of a short period in which he was assisting his father at Epworth, John Wesley continued at Oxford till the death of his father, in 1735, when the society was dispersed, and the two Wesleys soon after accepted the invitation of General Oglethorpe to accompany him to the new colony of Georgia. It was on his voyage to that colony that the founder of Methodism first came in contact with the Moravians, who so deeply influenced his future life. He was surprised and somewhat humiliated at finding that they treated him as a mere novice in religion; their perfect composure during a dangerous storm made a profound impression on his mind, and he employed himself while on board ship in learning German, in order that he might converse with them. On his arrival in the colony he abandoned, after a very slight attempt, his first project of converting the Indians, and devoted himself wholly to the colonists at Savannah. They were of many different nationalities, and it is a remarkable proof of the energy and accomplishments of Wesley that, in addition to his English services, he officiated regularly in German, French, and Italian, and was at the same time engaged in learning Spanish, in order to converse with some Jewish parishioners. His character and opinions at this time may be briefly described. He was a man who had made religion the single aim and object of his life, who was prepared to encounter for it every form of danger, discomfort, and obloquy; who devoted exclusively to it an energy of will and power of intellect that in worldly professions might have raised him to the highest positions of honor and wealth. Of his sincerity, of his self-renunciation, of his deep and fervent piety, of his almost boundless activity, there can be no question. Yet with all these qualities he was not an amiable man. He was hard, punctilious, domineering, and in a certain sense even selfish. A short time before he left England, his father, who was then an old and dying man, and who dreaded above all things that the religious fervor which he had spent the greater part of his life in kindling in his parish should dwindle after his death, entreated his son in the most pathetic terms to remove to Epworth, in which case he would probably succeed to the living, and be able to maintain his mother in her old home. Wesley peremptorily refused to leave Oxford, and the reason he assigned was very characteristic. "The question," he said, "is not whether I could do more good to others there than here; but whether I could do more good to myself, seeing wherever I can be most holy myself there I can most promote holiness in others." "My chief motive," he wrote when starting for Georgia, "is the hope of saving my own soul. I hope to learn the true sense of the Gospel of Christ by preaching it to the heathen." He was at this time a High-Churchman of a very narrow type, full of exaggerated notions about church discipline, extremely anxious to revive obsolete rubrics, and determined to force the strictest ritualistic observances upon rude colonists, for whom of all men they were least adapted. He insisted upon adopting baptism by immersion, and refused to baptize a child whose parents objected to that form. He would not permit any non-communicant to be a sponsor, repelled one of the holiest men in the colony from the communion-table because he was a Dissenter; refused for the same reason to read the burial-service over another; made it a special object of his teaching to prevent ladies of his congregation from wearing any gold ornament or any rich dress, and succeeded in inducing Oglethorpe to issue an order forbidding any colonist from throwing a line or firing a gun on Sunday. His sermons, it was complained, were all satires on particular persons. He insisted upon weekly communions, desired to rebaptize Dissenters who abandoned their Nonconformity, and exercised his pastoral duties in such a manner that he was accused of meddling in every quarrel and prying into every family. A more unpropitious commencement for a great career could hardly be conceived. Wesley returned to England in bad health and low spirits. He redoubled his austerities and his zeal in teaching, and he was tortured by doubts about the reality of his faith. It was at this time and in this state of mind that he came in contact with Peter Boehler, a Moravian teacher, whose calm and concentrated enthusiasm, united with unusual mental powers, gained a complete ascendency over his mind. From him Wesley for the first time learned that form of the doctrine of justification by faith which he afterward regarded as the fundamental tenet of Christianity. He had long held that in order to be a real Christian it was necessary to live a life wholly differing from that of the world around him, and that such a renewal of life could only be effected by the operation of the divine Spirit; and he does not appear to have had serious difficulties about the doctrine of imputed righteousness, although the ordinary evangelical doctrine on this matter was emphatically repudiated and denounced by Law. From Boehler he first learned to believe that every man, no matter how moral, how pious, or how orthodox he may be, is in a state of damnation, until, by a supernatural and instantaneous process wholly unlike that of human reasoning, the conviction flashes upon his mind that the sacrifice of Christ has been applied to and has expiated his sins; that this supernatural and personal conviction or illumination is what is meant by saving faith, and that it is inseparably accompanied by an absolute assurance of salvation and by a complete dominion over sin. It cannot exist where there is not a sense of the pardon of all past and of freedom from all present sins. It is impossible that he who has experienced it should be in serious and lasting doubt as to the fact; for its fruits are constant peace--not one uneasy thought; "freedom from sin--not one unholy desire." Repentance and fruits meet for repentance, such as the forgiveness of those who have offended us, ceasing from evil and doing good, may precede this faith, but good works in the theological sense of the term spring from, and therefore can only follow, faith. Such, as clearly as I can state it, was the fundamental doctrine which Wesley adopted from the Moravians. His mind was now thrown, through causes very susceptible of a natural explanation, into an exceedingly excited and abnormal condition, and he has himself chronicled with great minuteness in his journal the incidents that follow. On Sunday, March 5, 1738, he tells us that Boehler first fully convinced him of the want of that supernatural faith which alone could save. The shock was very great, and the first impulse of Wesley was to abstain from preaching, but his new master dissuaded him, saying: "Preach faith till you have it; and then because you have faith you will preach faith." He followed the advice, and several weeks passed in a state of extreme religious excitement, broken, however, by strange fits of "indifference, dulness, and coldness." While still believing himself to be in a state of damnation, he preached the new doctrine with such passionate fervor that he was excluded from pulpit after pulpit. He preached to the criminals in the jails. He visited, under the superintendence of Boehler, some persons who professed to have undergone the instantaneous and supernatural illumination. He addressed the passengers whom he met on the roads or at the public tables in the inns. On one occasion, at Birmingham, he abstained from doing so, and he relates, with his usual imperturbable confidence, that a heavy hailstorm which he afterward encountered was a divine judgment sent to punish him for his neglect. This condition could not last long. At length, on May 24th, a day which he ever after looked back upon as the most momentous in his life--the cloud was dispelled. Early in the morning, according to his usual custom, he opened the Bible at random, seeking for a divine guidance, and his eye lighted on the words, "There are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, even that we would be partakers of the divine nature." Before he left the house he again consulted the oracle, and the first words he read were, "Thou art not far from the kingdom of God." In the afternoon he attended service in St. Paul's Cathedral, and the anthem, to his highly wrought imagination, seemed a repetition of the same hope. The sequel may be told in his own words: "In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed; I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away _my_ sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death. I began to pray with all my might for those who had in a more especial manner despitefully used me and persecuted me. I then testified openly to all what I now first felt in my heart." Pictures of this kind are not uncommon in the lives of religious enthusiasts, but they usually have a very limited interest and importance. It is, however, scarcely an exaggeration to say that the scene which took place at that humble meeting in Aldersgate Street forms an epoch in English history. The conviction which then flashed upon one of the most powerful and most active intellects in England is the true source of English Methodism. Shortly before this, Charles Wesley, who had also fallen completely under the influence of Boehler, had passed through a similar change; and Whitefield, without ever adopting the dangerous doctrine of perfection which was so prominent in the Methodist teaching, was at a still earlier period an ardent preacher of justification by faith of the new birth. It was characteristic of John Wesley that ten days before his conversion he wrote a long, petulant, and dictatorial letter to his old master, William Law, reproaching him with having kept back from him the fundamental doctrine of Christianity, and intimating in strong and discourteous language his own conviction, and that of Boehler, that the spiritual condition of Law was a very dangerous one. It was no less characteristic of the indefatigable energy which formed another and a better side of his nature, that immediately after this change he started on a pilgrimage to Herrnhut, the head-quarters of Moravianism, in order that he might study to the best advantage what he now regarded as the purest type of a Christian church. He returned objecting to many things, but more than ever convinced of his new doctrine, and more than ever resolved to spend his life in diffusing it. In the course of 1738 the chief elements of the movement were already formed. Whitefield had returned from Georgia. Charles Wesley had begun to preach the doctrine with extraordinary effect to the criminals in Newgate and from every pulpit into which he was admitted. Methodist societies had already sprung up under Moravian influence. The design of each was to be a church within a church, a seed-plot of a more fervent piety, the centre of a stricter discipline and a more energetic propagandism, than existed in religious communities at large. In these societies the old Christian custom of love-feasts was revived. The members sometimes passed almost the whole night in the most passionate devotions, and voluntarily submitted to a spiritual tyranny that could hardly be surpassed in a Catholic monastery. They were to meet every week, to make an open and particular confession of every frailty, to submit to be cross-examined on all their thoughts, words, and deeds. The following, among others, were the questions asked at every meeting: "What known sin have you committed since our last meeting? What temptations have you met with? How were you delivered? What have you thought, said, or done of which you doubt whether it be sin or not? Have you nothing you desire to keep secret?" Such rules could only have been accepted under the influence of an overpowering religious enthusiasm, and there was much truth in the judgment which the elder brother of John Wesley passed upon them in 1739. "Their societies," he wrote to their mother, "are sufficient to dissolve all other societies but their own. Will any man of common-sense or spirit suffer any domestic to be in a band engaged to relate to five or ten people anything without reserve that concerns the person's conscience, how much soever it may concern the family? Ought any married person to be there unless husband and wife be there together?" From this time the leaders of the movement became the most active of missionaries. Without any fixed parishes they wandered from place to place, proclaiming their new doctrine in every pulpit to which they were admitted, and they speedily awoke a passionate enthusiasm and a bitter hostility in the Church. Nothing, indeed, could appear more irregular to the ordinary parochial clergyman than those itinerant ministers who broke away violently from the settled habits of their profession, who belonged to and worshipped in small religious societies that bore a suspicious resemblance to conventicles, and whose whole tone and manner of preaching were utterly unlike anything to which he was accustomed. They taught in language of the most vehement emphasis, as the cardinal tenet of Christianity, the doctrine of a new birth in a form which was altogether novel to their hearers. They were never weary of urging that all men are in a condition of damnation who have not experienced a sudden, violent, and supernatural change, or of inveighing against the clergy for their ignorance of the very essence of Christianity. "Tillotson," in the words of Whitefield, "knew no more about true Christianity than Mahomet." _The Whole Duty of Man_, which was the most approved devotional manual of the time, was pronounced by the same preacher, on account of the stress it laid upon good works, to have "sent thousands to hell." The Methodist preacher came to an Anglican parish in the spirit and with the language of a missionary going to the most ignorant heathens; and he asked the clergyman of the parish to lend him his pulpit, in order that he might instruct the parishioners--perhaps for the first time--in the true Gospel of Christ. It is not surprising that the clergy should have resented such a movement; and the manner of the missionary was as startling as his matter. The sermons of the time were almost always written, and the prevailing taste was cold, polished, and fastidious. The new preachers preached extempore, with the most intense fervor of language and gesture, and usually with a complete disregard of the conventionalities of their profession. Wesley frequently mounted the pulpit without even knowing from what text he would preach, believing that when he opened his Bible at random the divine Spirit would guide him infallibly in his choice. The oratory of Whitefield was so impassioned that the preacher was sometimes scarcely able to proceed for his tears, while half the audience were convulsed with sobs. The love of order, routine, and decorum, which was the strongest feeling in the clerical mind, was violently shocked. The regular congregation was displaced by an agitated throng who had never before been seen within the precincts of the church. The usual quiet worship was disturbed by violent enthusiasm or violent opposition, by hysterical paroxysms of devotion or remorse, and when the preacher had left the parish he seldom failed to leave behind him the elements of agitation and division. We may blame, but we can hardly, I think, wonder at the hostility all this aroused among the clergy. It is, indeed, certain that Wesley and Whitefield were at this time doing more than any other contemporary clergymen to kindle a living piety among the people. It is equally certain that they held the doctrines of the Articles and the Homilies with an earnestness very rare among their brother-clergymen, that none of their peculiar doctrines were in conflict with those doctrines, and that Wesley at least was attached with an even superstitious reverence to ecclesiastical forms. Yet before the end of 1738 the Methodist leaders were excluded from most of the pulpits of the Church, and were thus compelled, unless they consented to relinquish what they considered a divine mission, to take steps in the direction of separation. Two important measures of this nature were taken in 1739. One of them was the creation of Methodist chapels, which were intended, not to oppose or replace, but to be supplemental and ancillary to, the churches, and to secure that the doctrine of the new birth should be faithfully taught to the people. The other, and still more important event, was the institution by Whitefield of field-preaching. The idea had occurred to him in London, where he found congregations too numerous for the church in which he preached, but the first actual step was taken in the neighborhood of Bristol. At a time when he was thus deprived of the chief normal means of exercising his talents his attention was called to the condition of the colliers of Kingswood. He was filled with horror and compassion at finding in the heart of a Christian country, and in the immediate neighborhood of a great city, a population of many thousands sunk in the most brutal ignorance and vice, and entirely excluded from the ordinances of religion. Moved by such feelings, he resolved to address the colliers in their own haunts. The resolution was a bold one, for field-preaching was then utterly unknown in England, and it needed no common courage to brave all the obloquy and derision it must provoke, and to commence the experiment in the centre of a half-savage population. Whitefield, however, had a just confidence in his cause and in his powers. Standing himself upon a hillside, he took for his text the first words of the Sermon which was spoken from the Mount, and he addressed with his accustomed fire an astonished audience of some two hundred men. The fame of his eloquence spread far and wide. On successive occasions five, ten, fifteen, even twenty thousand were present. It was February, but the winter sun shone clear and bright. The lanes were filled with the carriages of the more wealthy citizens, whom curiosity had drawn from Bristol. The trees and hedges were crowded with humbler listeners, and the fields were darkened by a compact mass. The face of the preacher paled with a thrilling power to the very outskirts of that mighty throng. The picturesque novelty of the occasion and of the scene, the contagious emotion of so great a multitude, a deep sense of the condition of his hearers and of the momentous importance of the step he was taking, gave an additional solemnity. His rude auditors were electrified. They stood for a time in rapt and motionless attention. Soon tears might be seen forming white gutters down cheeks blackened from the coal-mine. Then sobs and groans told how hard hearts were melting at his words. A fire was kindled among the outcasts of Kingswood, which burned long and fiercely, and was destined in a few years to overspread the land. It was only with great difficulty that Whitefield could persuade the Wesleys to join him in this new phase of missionary labor. John Wesley has left on record, in his journal, his first repugnance to it, "having," as he says, "been all my life (till very lately) so tenacious of every point relating to decency and order, that I should have thought the saving of souls almost a sin if it had not been done in a church." Charles Wesley, on this as on most other occasions, was even more strongly conservative. The two brothers adopted their usual superstitious practice of opening their Bibles at random, under the belief that the texts on which their eyes first fell would guide them in their decision. The texts were ambiguous and somewhat ominous, relating for the most part to violent deaths; but on drawing lots the lot determined them to go. It was on this slender ground that they resolved to give the weight of their example to this most important development of the movement. They went to Bristol, from which Whitefield was speedily called, and continued the work among the Kingswood colliers and among the people of the city; while Whitefield, after a preaching tour of some weeks in the country, reproduced on a still larger scale the triumphs of Kingswood by preaching with marvellous effect to immense throngs of the London rabble at Moorfields and on Kennington Common. From this time field-preaching became one of the most conspicuous features of the revival. The character and genius of the preacher to whom this most important development of Methodism was due demand a more extended notice than I have yet given them. Unlike Wesley, whose strongest enthusiasm was always curbed by a powerful will, and who manifested at all times and on all subjects an even exaggerated passion for reasoning, Whitefield was chiefly a creature of impulse and emotion. He had very little logical skill, no depth or range of knowledge, not much self-restraint, nothing of the commanding and organizing talent, and, it must be added, nothing of the arrogant and imperious spirit so conspicuous in his colleague. At the same time a more zealous, a more single-minded, a more truly amiable, a more purely unselfish man it would be difficult to conceive. He lived perpetually in the sight of eternity, and a desire to save souls was the single passion of his life. Of his labors it is sufficient to say that it has been estimated that in the thirty-four years of his active career he preached eighteen thousand times, or on an average ten times a week; that these sermons were delivered with the utmost vehemence of voice and gesture, often in the open air, and to congregations of many thousands; and that he continued his exertions to the last, when his constitution was hopelessly shattered by disease. During long periods he preached forty hours, and sometimes as much as sixty hours, a week. In the prosecution of his missionary labors he visited almost every important district in England and Wales. At least twelve times he traversed Scotland, three times he preached in Ireland, thirteen times he crossed the Atlantic. Very few men placed by circumstances at the head of a great religious movement have been so absolutely free from the spirit of sect. Very few men have passed through so much obloquy with a heart so entirely unsoured, and have retained amid so much adulation so large a measure of deep and genuine humility. There was indeed not a trace of jealousy, ambition, or rancor in his nature. There is something singularly touching in the zeal with which he endeavored to compose the differences between himself and Wesley, when so many of the followers of each leader were endeavoring to envenom them; in the profound respect he continually expressed for his colleague at the time of their separation; in the exuberant gratitude he always showed for the smallest act of kindness to himself; in the tenderness with which he guarded the interests of the inmates of that orphanage at Georgia around which his strongest earthly affections were entwined; in the almost childish simplicity with which he was always ready to make a public confession of his faults. CONQUESTS OF NADIR SHAH CAPTURE OF DELHI A.D. 1739 SIR JOHN MALCOLM It was the fortune of Persia to be delivered from the Afghan yoke at a time when, under a feeble and corrupt ruler, the national life had been almost crushed out by foreign tyranny. This deliverance was wrought by a man who raised himself from the lowest condition to the head of the kingdom which he restored. Besides this achievement for Persia, Nadir Shah performed deeds of conquest which placed his name among those who have won lasting celebrity by the subjugation of empires. The Afghans had in 1722 captured Ispahan, the Persian capital, then an important metropolis with six hundred thousand inhabitants. They sacked the city and killed all of the royal family except Hasan, the weak ruler, his son Tamasp, and two grandchildren. From this blow the once magnificent capital of Persia has never recovered. Tamasp became shah in 1727. How the brief rule of the conquering Afghans was terminated by Nadir Shah, and how he pursued his own bloody path of conquest, Sir John Malcolm, the historian of Persia, relates in a most graphic and comprehensive manner. Nadir Shah was born in the province of Khorasan. Persian historians pass over the early occurrences of his life, and the first event that these notice is the birth of his eldest son, Reza Kuli, which occurred when he was thirty-one years of age. He had before that experienced great vicissitudes of fortune, and had given proofs both of valor and talent. When only seventeen he was taken prisoner by the Usbegs, who made annual incursions into Khorasan; but he effected his escape after a captivity of four years. His occupation from that period till he entered into the service of Shah Tamasp can only merit notice as it is calculated to show that the character of this extraordinary man was always the same. He was at one time in the service of a petty chief of his native province, whom he murdered, and whose daughter he carried off and married. After this, he obtained a precarious subsistence by heading a band of robbers; from which occupation he passed, by an easy transition in such troubled times, into the employment of the Afghan Governor of Khorasan, by whom he was at first raised to rank and command, as a reward for his valor in actions with the Usbegs, and afterward degraded and punished with the bastinado on account of his insolent and turbulent conduct. Irritated at the disgrace he had suffered, Nadir left the city of Mushed, and went to the fort of Khelat in the same province, which was in the possession of his uncle, who appears at this period to have been at the head of a small branch of the Affshars. He resided there but a short time, before his relation, alarmed at his violence and ambition, compelled him to retire. He appears next to have resumed his occupation of a robber; but his depredations were now on a more extended scale. The Afghans had become masters of Ispahan; and the rule of the Suffavean monarchs over the distant provinces of the kingdom was subverted, without that of their conquerors being firmly established. At such a moment a plunderer of known valor and experience could not want followers; and in the course of a short time we find Nadir, a chief of reputation, at the head of a body of three thousand men, levying large contributions on the inhabitants of Khorasan. His uncle, alarmed at his increasing power, sought his friendship. He addressed a kind letter to him, and proposed that he should enter the service of Shah Tamasp, and aid that Prince in expelling the Afghans from Persia. Nadir pretended to listen to this overture, and earnestly desired that the King should grant him a pardon for his past offences. This was easily obtained; and he went to Khelat to receive it. He appears to have always deemed the Governor of that place as the chief obstacle to his rise; and at this moment he laid a plan to destroy him and to seize his fortress. He completely succeeded in both; and, after having slain his uncle with his own hand, he proceeded to employ the means he had acquired by this crime in overthrowing the Afghan ruler of Khorasan. This popular attack upon the enemies of his country enabled him to obtain a second pardon from Shah Tamasp, whose service he entered, and to whose cause he brought a great accession of strength and reputation. Shah Tamasp early entertained the greatest jealousy of Nadir: and upon his disobeying a mandate he had sent him to return from an expedition on which he was engaged, the weak monarch ventured to proclaim him a rebel and a traitor. The indignant chief, the moment he heard of these proceedings, marched against the court, which he soon compelled to submit on the terms he chose to dictate. From the occurrence of this open rupture we may date the annihilation of the little power Tamasp had ever enjoyed. Nadir continued to treat him with respect till he deemed the time mature for his usurpation of the throne; but we discover that, as early as his first expedition into Khorasan, he began to prepare the minds of his countrymen for his future elevation. Like Ardisheer, the founder of the Sassanian race of Persian kings, he had his visions of future grandeur. He saw, we are told, in one of these, a water-fowl and a white fish with four horns; he dreamt that he shot the bird; and, after all his attendants had failed in their attempts to seize the extraordinary fish, he stretched out his hand and caught it with the greatest ease. The simple fact of his dreaming of a bird and a fish, he was informed by flattering astrologers, was a certain presage of his attaining imperial power; and his historian has had a less difficult task in discovering, from subsequent events, that the four horns of the fish were types of the kingdoms of Persia, Khaurizm, India, and Tartary, which were all destined to be conquered by this hero. Such trifles are not unworthy of notice; they show the art or superstition of him who uses or believes in them, and portray better than the most elaborate descriptions the character of those minds upon which they make an impression. The expulsion of the Afghans from Persia seemed the sole effort of the genius of Nadir; and no reward, therefore, appeared too great for the man who was liberating his country from its cruel oppressors. The grant made by Tamasp to this chief, of the four finest provinces of the empire, was considered only as a just recompense for the great services that he had performed. We are told that in the same letter by which Tamasp conveyed the grant of these countries, or, in other words, alienated half his kingdom, his victorious general was requested to assume the title of sultan, and a diadem, richly set with jewels, was sent by one of the noblemen of the court. Nadir accepted all the honors except the title of sultan; that high name he thought would excite envy without conferring benefit; he, however, took advantage of this proffered elevation to the rank of a prince, to exercise one of the most important privileges which attach to monarchs. He directed that his army should be paid in coin brought from the province of Khorasan, and that it should be struck in his own name, which virtually amounted to an assumption of the independent sovereignty of that country. The armies of the Turks occupied some of the finest parts of the province of Irak and all Azerbaijan. Nadir marched against them as soon as his troops were refreshed from the fatigues they had endured in the pursuit of the Afghans. He encountered the united force of two Turkish pachas on the plains of Hamadan, overthrew them, and made himself master, not only of the city, but of all the country in its vicinity. He hastened to Azerbaijan, where the same success attended him. Tabriz, Ardabil, and all the principal cities of that quarter had surrendered; and the conqueror was preparing to besiege Erivan, the capital of Armenia, when he received from his brother, whom he had left in the government of Khorasan, an account of an alarming rebellion of the Afghans of that province. He hastened to its relief; and his success against the rebels was completed by the reduction of the fortresses of Furrah and Herat. An event occurred, during the siege of the latter city, which marked the barbarous character of this war. Nadir had obtained a victory over a large division of the Afghan force, and resolved to celebrate it with a splendid feast. Among other guests were several prisoners of high rank. During the festivities the heads of three hundred Afghans, who had been slain in the action, were held up on the tops of spears. "At this sight," says the flattering historian of Nadir, "the chiefs of our enemies fixed their eyes upon the ground, and never dared to raise them again, notwithstanding the extraordinary kindness with which they were treated by their great and generous conqueror!" While Nadir was employed at the siege of Herat the Persian nobles at Ispahan persuaded the weak Tamasp to place himself at the head of an army and march against the Turks, who were again assembling on the frontier. The reverses which the arms of that nation had sustained in Persia had caused a revolution at Constantinople, where the janizaries had first murdered the vizier, and afterward dethroned Achmet, and placed his nephew, Mahmud, upon the throne. To this Prince Nadir had sent an envoy, demanding that the Turks should evacuate the province of Azerbaijan; and Shah Tamasp had sent another with what a Persian historian indignantly terms "a sweet-scented letter of congratulation" upon his elevation to the throne. Before the result of the mission sent by Nadir could be known, Tamasp had marched to besiege Erivan, had retreated from before that fortress, been defeated by a Turkish army, and had lost in one month all that the genius and valor of his general had gained during the preceding season. To render the effects of his weakness complete, the alarmed monarch had agreed to a peace, by which he abandoned the whole of the country beyond the Araxes to the Turks, and ceded five districts of the province of Kirmanshahan to Achmet, the reigning pacha of Bagdad, by whom this treaty was negotiated. The disgrace of this engagement was aggravated by its containing no stipulation for the release of the Persians who had been made prisoners during the war. The moment that Nadir received accounts of the peace it seems to have occurred to his mind that it afforded an excellent pretext for the consummation of those projects he had so long cherished: but, although bold and impatient, he was compelled to proceed with caution to the extinction of a race of kings to whom obedience had become a habit, and who were at that moment represented by a prince who, though weak and despicable, was endeared to many of his subjects by his misfortunes. His first step was to issue a proclamation, in which he inveighed with bitterness against a treaty which bounded the great empire of Persia by the river Araxes, and left many of the inhabitants of that kingdom prisoners in the hands of cruel enemies. "Such a treaty," he said, "is contrary to the will of Heaven: and the angels who guard the tomb of the holy Ali call aloud for the deliverance of his followers from the bondage in which they are now held by vile heretics." There is no country, however abject its inhabitants may appear, where the most daring and ambitious can venture to usurp the supreme power without first obtaining a hold on public opinion; we cannot have a stronger proof of this fact, as applicable to Persia, than what we find in the conduct of Nadir upon this memorable occasion. Though that chief had revived the military spirit of his country, and roused a nation sunk in sloth and luxury to great and successful exertion, yet neither this success, the imbecility of Shah Tamasp, nor a reliance upon his own fame and strength could induce him to take the last step of usurpation, until he had, by his arts, excited in the minds of his countrymen that complete contempt for the reigning sovereign, and that pride in his glory, which were likely to make his elevation appear more the accomplishment of their wishes than of his ambition. At the same time that Nadir published the proclamation which has been mentioned, he addressed letters to all the military chiefs of the country. In that to the Governor of Fars, which has been preserved, he informs him of the great success he has had against the Afghans and of the conquest of Herat. He then proceeds to state the astonishment and indignation with which he has learnt the particulars of the treaty concluded with Turkey. "You will no doubt," he observes, "be rejoiced to hear that, as it was to be hoped from the goodness of God, this peace with the Turks is not likely to endure; and you may rest in expectation of my approach; for, by the blessing of the Most High, I will advance immediately, with an army elated with success, skilled in sieges, numerous as emmets, valiant as lions, and combining with the vigor of youth the prudence of age. Let the cup-bearer," he exclaims, quoting from a popular poet, "tell our enemy, the worshipper of fire, to cover his head with dust, for the water that had departed is returned into its channel." He concludes this letter by threatening, with excommunication and destruction, all Shiahs, or, in other words, all Persians who are adverse to the renewal of hostilities. "Those Shiahs," he observes, "who are backward on this great occasion, and are reconciled to this shameful peace, shall be expelled from the faithful sect and forever counted among its enemies. To slaughter them will be meritorious; to permit their existence impious." The actions of Nadir corresponded with these declarations. He sent an officer to Constantinople, the duties of whose mission to the Emperor Mahmud were limited to this short message: "Restore the provinces of Persia or prepare for war." A messenger was deputed to Achmet, the Pacha of Bagdad, to apprise him that "the deliverer of Persia" was approaching. A peace had been concluded with the Russians, by which it was stipulated that they should abandon all the conquests they had made on the shores of the Caspian; and Nadir despatched two officers to that quarter to see that there was no delay in the execution of this treaty. After adopting these measures Nadir marched to Ispahan. He first upbraided Shah Tamasp, and then pretended to be reconciled to him; but the scene of his mock submission to this Prince drew to a close. Tamasp was invited to the tents of his general to share in the joys of a feast, which terminated in his being seized and dethroned. He was sent to Khorasan. The Mahometan author who records these events is careful in informing us that the generosity of Nadir desired that Tamasp, though a prisoner, should be accompanied by all his ladies, and enjoy every other comfort that could be deemed necessary to pleasurable existence. The time did not yet appear to Nadir to be ripe for his seizing the crown of Persia. The officers of his army and some venal nobles of the court earnestly requested that he, who was alone worthy to wear the diadem, would place it upon his head; but he rejected their entreaties, from pretended respect for the blood of the Suffavean kings. The son of Tamasp, an infant only eight months old, was seated upon the throne, and Nadir accepted the name and power of regent of the empire. When the ceremonies necessary at this coronation were over, Nadir marched with a large army to the attack of Bagdad. The Governor of that city, Achmet Pacha, was not more distinguished for his talents as a soldier than a statesman; and the Persian leader had made his preparations in the expectation of an obstinate defence; but neither the valor nor skill of Achmet would have saved his city had not the Turkish general Topal Osman advanced, at the head of an immense army, to his relief. Nadir instantly resolved to hazard a battle. He left a small part of his army in his lines, and led the remainder to attack Topal Osman, who was encamped on the banks of the Tigris, near the village of Samarra, which is situated about sixty miles from Bagdad. The action that ensued was one of the most bloody ever fought between the Turks and Persians. It was at first favorable to the latter, whose cavalry put the enemy to flight; but the Turkish infantry advanced and restored the battle. A corps of Arabs, from whom Nadir expected support, fell upon one of his flanks. His men, who had been exposed all day to the intense rays of a summer sun, fainted with heat and thirst. He himself twice fell to the ground, in the midst of his enemies, from his horses being shot; and his standard-bearer, conceiving him slain, fled from the field. All these causes combined to give the victory to Topal Osman; and, after a contest of more than eight hours, the army of Nadir was completely defeated. The moment the news of this event reached Bagdad, the inhabitants of that city fell on the troops left to guard the trenches, who were also routed. The loss of the Persians in this battle was estimated by their enemies at sixty thousand men; and it probably amounted to more than one-third of that number. The Turks suffered almost as severely; but their triumph was very complete; for Nadir did not reassemble the whole of his broken and dispersed army till he reached the plains of Hamadan, a distance of more than two hundred miles from the field of action. There is no period in the life of Nadir at which he appears to more advantage than after this great misfortune. Instead of reproaching his soldiers with their defeat, he loaded them with praises and with favors. Their losses in money and horses were more than repaid, and they were encouraged by the exhortations as well as the actions of their politic commander to desire nothing so much as an opportunity of revenging themselves upon their enemies. This conduct increased his reputation and popularity to so great a degree that recruits from every part of Persia hastened to join his standard; and in less than three months after this action Nadir descended again into the plains of Bagdad with an army more numerous than before. His brave antagonist, Topal Osman, had jealous rivals at the court of Constantinople; and these, alarmed at the great fame he had acquired, not only prevented, by their intrigues, his being reënforced with men, but, by withholding the supplies of money that were necessary to pay his troops, compelled him to separate his force. He, nevertheless, made the greatest efforts to oppose this second invasion of Nadir. He sent a corps of cavalry to arrest the progress of the Persians; but the latter, eager for revenge, made such a sudden and furious attack on this body that they completely routed it. On hearing this intelligence, the Turkish general advanced with all the troops he had been able to draw together to his support; but his own army partook of the panic of their flying comrades. Topal Osman endeavored in vain to rally them. He was himself so infirm that he always rode in a litter. His attendants, in the hope that he might escape, lifted him, when the flight became general, upon a horse; but his rich dress attracted the eye of a Persian soldier, who pierced him with his lance, and then, separating his head from his body, carried it to his commander. We are pleased to find that Nadir respected the remains of his former conqueror. His head and corpse were sent by an officer of rank to the Turkish army, that they might receive those honorable rites of sepulture which in all nations are considered due to a great and valiant soldier. After the death of Topal Osman and the defeat of his army Nadir proceeded to invest Bagdad; but being alarmed at the account of a serious revolt in the province of Fars, he readily listened to the terms which the ruler of the city proposed, which were that the governments of Turkey and Persia should repossess the countries that belonged to them in the reign of Sultan Hasan before the Afghan invasion. The rebellion which had compelled him to retire from the Turkish territories had hardly been suppressed before he learned that the Emperor of Constantinople had refused to ratify the engagements made by the Pacha of Bagdad, and had sent a general, named Abdallah, at the head of a large force, with orders either to conclude peace or to continue the war, as circumstances should render it expedient. Nadir hastened to occupy Armenia and Georgia, which were the principal of the disputed provinces. He threw a bridge over the rapid Araxes; and at once invested the cities of Tiflis, Gunjah, and Erivan, in the hope that the danger with which they were threatened would lead the Turkish general to hazard an action. Nor was he deceived. Abdallah, encouraged by his superior numbers, left the intrenchments with which he had covered his army, and attacked the Persians on the plains of Baghavund, near Erivan. The Persian leader, when he saw him advancing, addressed his troops in the most animated language. "Their enemies," he said, "outnumbered them eight to one; but that was only an incitement to glorious exertion. He had dreamt on the past night," he told them, "that a furious animal had rushed into his tent, which, after a long struggle, he had slain. With such an omen," he exclaimed, "success is certain to those who fight under the protection of his great arm, who raiseth the weak to glory, and casteth down the proudest oppressors." If his troops were encouraged by this speech, they were still more so by his example. After his skill had made the most able disposition of his army, he rushed upon the enemy at the head of his bravest men; and wherever he led, the Persians were irresistible. In one of these charges Abdallah Pacha was slain by a soldier, who brought his head to Nadir; and as the battle still raged, he directed it to be fixed upon a spear and to be displayed where it would be best seen by the enemy. The effect was as he anticipated. The Turks, perceiving their general was slain, fled in every direction and left the plain covered with their dead. This victory was followed by the submission of the cities of Gunjah and Tiflis; and those of Kars and Erivan, with all the former possessions of the Persians in that quarter, were soon afterward ceded to him by the policy of the Ottoman court, who, taught by misfortune, were glad to conclude a peace on the basis which had been before settled by the Pacha of Bagdad. The period was now arrived when Nadir thought he might lay aside the veil which he had hitherto used. An account was brought that the infant sovereign of Persia had died at Ispahan, and consequently that the throne was vacant. It has always been the usage of the kings of Persia to observe the Nuroze, or vernal equinox, as a great festival; and on it all the chief officers, civil and military, of the government appear at court. Nadir issued an order that not only these, but every person of rank and consideration in the kingdom, should meet him on the day of that festival, on the plains of Chowal Mogam, where he ordered a number of temporary buildings to be erected and made every preparation to receive them with splendor and magnificence. We are informed that upward of one hundred thousand persons attended this celebrated meeting; and if this includes the troops, the amount is probably not exaggerated. Nadir, his historian informs us, assembled the principal nobles and officers on the morning of the festival, and addressed them in the following terms: "Shah Tamasp and Shah Abbas were your kings, and the princes of their blood are the heirs to the throne. Choose one of them for your sovereign, or some other person whom you know to be great and virtuous. It is enough for me that I have restored the throne to its glory and delivered my country from the Afghans, the Turks, and the Russians." He retired, that their deliberations might seem more free, but was soon recalled to hear their unanimous request that he who had saved his country and was alone able to protect it, would accept the crown. He refused this offer, protesting solemnly that the idea of ascending the throne of Persia had never once entered his imagination! The same scene was enacted every day for a month, till Nadir, appearing to be subdued by their earnest solicitations, agreed to comply with their wishes, but said, when he made this apparent concession: "I must insist that, as I sacrifice so much for Persia, the inhabitants of that nation shall, in consideration for one who has no object but their tranquillity, abandon that belief which was introduced by Shah Ismail, the founder of the Suffavean dynasty, and once more acknowledge the legitimate authority of the four first caliphs. Since the schism of Shiah has prevailed," he added, "this country has been in continued distraction; let us all become Sunnis, and that will cease. But as every national religion should have a head, let the holy imam Jaffer, who is of the family of the Prophet, and whom we all venerate, be the head of ours." After the assembly had consented to this change, and a royal mandate had been issued to proclaim it, Nadir informed them that he would communicate what had been done to the Emperor of Constantinople, and require that monarch to give full effect to this advance to general concord among Mahometans; and he would also insist that, as there were now four orthodox sects among Sunnis, the Persians, under the name of the sect of Jaffer, should be admitted as the fifth, and that another column should be added to the four which already decorated the temple at Mecca, in honor of this new branch of the true religion. The historian of Nadir is careful in informing us that the crown of Persia was placed upon the head of the conqueror exactly at twenty minutes past eight on the morning of February 26, 1736. The moment, no doubt, had been fixed by the most skilful astrologers. The ceremony was performed in a splendid hall erected for the occasion, and Nadir was seated on a throne covered with precious jewels. Various coins were immediately struck in his name, on which was the following inscription: "The impression stamped on this gold proclaims to the world the sovereignty of Nadir, native of the land of Persia, and the monarch who subdues the earth." On the reverse was a short Arabic sentence, which signified "That which has happened is the best." But even the flatterer who records these particulars confesses that there were malicious wits who made free with the latter sentence, and, by the alteration of the position of one letter, made it signify "That which has happened is not the best." Nadir Shah, soon after his elevation to the throne, marched to Ispahan; but the short time he spent in that capital was solely devoted to military preparations; he had resolved on the entire extinction of the Afghans as a separate power, and that could not be effected without the reduction of the city and province of Kandahar, which was then in possession of a prince called Hasan Khan, the brother of the celebrated Mahmud; but before he proceeded upon this expedition he adopted every measure that could secure the internal tranquillity of Persia during his absence. The peace of the country round Ispahan had been much disturbed by the depredations of a numerous and barbarous tribe, called Bukhteearees, who inhabit the mountains that stretch from near this capital to the vicinity of Shuster. The subjugation of these plunderers had ever been deemed possible. Their lofty and rugged mountains abound with rocks and caverns, which in times of danger serve them as fastnesses and dens. But Nadir showed that this fancied security, which had protected them for ages, was a mere delusion. He led his veteran soldiers to the tops of their highest mountains; parties of light troops hunted them from the cliffs and glens in which they were concealed, and in the space of one month the tribe was completely subdued. Their chief was taken prisoner and put to death; but the policy of Nadir treated those of his followers who escaped the first fury of his troops with lenity and favor; he assigned them better but more accessible lands than what they before possessed; he also took a number of them into his army; and this corps, by its extraordinary bravery at the siege of Kandahar, confirmed the wisdom of his generous conduct. Nadir marched with an army of eighty thousand men through Khorasan and Sistan to Kandahar. He met with no resistance of any consequence before he reached that city; but he found its defences were too formidable to give him hopes of its early surrender. His first resolution was to subdue it by blockade; and he not only made permanent cantonments for his army in its vicinity, but ordered the lines of a new city to be traced out, which he called Nadirabad, or the "Abode of Nadir." He also built towers all around Kandahar, and so connected them with small batteries that it became impossible for the besieged to maintain any intercourse with the surrounding country. Observing, however, that the Afghans were not intimidated by the indications which his conduct gave of his determined resolution to conquer them, and that they had still abundance of provisions, he was compelled, after a year had been wasted in the blockade, to commence a more active course of operations. The city of Kandahar stood on the face of a hill, and was defended by a wall and by a number of small towers. The Persians made themselves masters of some of the most commanding eminences, to which they conveyed, with incredible labor, both cannon and mortars. Aided by the fire of these, they successively assailed the different towers. At some they were repulsed with great loss; at others they succeeded; but the bravery of the corps of Bukhteearees, who have been before mentioned, was successful in carrying a principal tower, which enabled them to enter the citadel, and placed the whole town at their mercy. The Governor, however, with the principal part of the garrison, still held out in a detached fort; but seeing that resistance was vain, he offered to capitulate, and Nadir readily gave him a promise of forgiveness and protection. It appears at this period to have been the policy of the conqueror to conciliate the Afghans. He had in a very great degree disarmed the prejudices of that nation, by the proclamation which he issued, on ascending the throne, against the tenets of the Shiahs; and he now sought, not merely to soften that resentment, but to attach them to his person and government by favors. He completely succeeded; some of the tribes of that nation continued during his life to rank among the bravest soldiers of his army and formed a powerful check upon the discontent and turbulence of his own countrymen. While Nadir was employed in besieging Kandahar his generals had been successful in reducing the strongholds in its vicinity; and his eldest son, Reza Kuli, had, during this short period, obtained a fame which seemed to promise that his name would one day equal that of his father. The Afghan Prince of Kandahar had expected aid from the chief of Bulkh, against whom Nadir detached his son, with a chosen body of twelve thousand horse. The Prince not only defeated this ruler and took his capital, but passed the Oxus, and did not hesitate to give battle to the monarch of the Usbegs, who had advanced from Bokhara with an army far outnumbering the Persians. The rash valor of Reza Kuli was crowned with a signal victory; and the career of the young hero was only arrested by a mandate from his father, who desired him to recross the Oxus. Nadir at the same time addressed two letters to the King of the Usbegs, and to the other chiefs of that part of Tartary, informing them that he had sent orders to his son to retreat within the limits of the Persian empire, and not to disturb countries which were the inheritance of the race of Genghis Khan and of high Turkoman families. This conduct, which was evidently the result of that policy which affects moderation, that it may better accomplish its ambitious purposes, has been ascribed by some to a jealousy which they conceive Nadir, even at this early period, entertained of the rising reputation of his son; but those who impute it to this cause forget that Reza Kuli, when he returned, was not only received with extraordinary favor and affection, but soon afterward was intrusted with all the power of a sovereign, and left to govern Persia, while his father proceeded with his vast designs of subjugating to his authority the distant regions of India. When Nadir Shah marched against the Afghans he had sent an ambassador to Delhi requesting the monarch of India would give orders to the governors of his northern provinces not to permit the enemies of Persia to find a refuge from an avenging sword in the territories of an ally. No satisfactory answer had been received to this mission; and, while the Afghans were allowed to take shelter within the limits of the Indian empire, obstacles were thrown in the way of the return of the Persian envoy. Nadir, incensed at these proceedings, pursued the fugitives to Kabul, and not only made himself master of that city, but of all the country in its vicinity. After this conquest he addressed another letter to the Emperor of India, in which he reproached him, in the bitterest terms, for his past conduct, but still professed a desire of maintaining the relations of friendship. The bearer of this letter was slain by the Afghan chief: and Nadir, perhaps, did not regret an event which added to the pretexts that before existed to justify him to the world in undertaking the most splendid of all his enterprises--the invasion of India (1738). The progress of Nadir from Kabul to India was rapid and successful: almost all the governors of the principal provinces through which he passed anticipated the fate of the empire by their submission; but the conqueror has, in a letter to his son, Reza Kuli, given us the most authentic account we could desire to possess of events from the day on which he left Lahore till that on which he resolved to restore the vanquished Mahomet Shah to the throne of his ancestors. After informing that Prince of an advantage which his troops had gained over an advanced party of his enemies, and describing an ineffectual attempt he had made to prevent the junction of an army under Saadut Khan with Mahomet Shah, he states that the Indian monarch considered himself so strong from his reënforcement that he left his intrenchments, and drew up his troops in order of battle. The result will be best told in Nadir's own words. "We," he observes, "who wished for such a day, after appointing guards for our camp, and invoking the support of an all-powerful Creator, mounted, and advanced to the charge. For two complete hours the action raged with violence, and a heavy fire from cannon and musketry was kept up. After that, by the aid of the Almighty, our lion-hunting heroes broke the enemy's line and chased them from the field of battle, dispersing them in every direction. This battle lasted two hours; and for two hours and a half more were our conquering soldiers engaged in pursuit. When one hour of the day remained, the field was entirely cleared of the enemy; and as the intrenchments of their camp were strong and the fortifications formidable, we would not permit our army to assault it. "An immense treasure, a number of elephants, part of the artillery of the Emperor, and rich spoils of every description were the reward of our victory. Upward of twenty thousand of the enemy were slain on the field of battle, and a much greater number were made prisoners. Immediately after the action was over we surrounded the Emperor's army, and took measures to prevent all communication with the adjacent country; preparing at the same time our cannon and mortars to level with the ground the fortifications which had been erected. "As the utmost confusion reigned in the imperial camp, and all discipline was abandoned, the Emperor, compelled by irresistible necessity, after the lapse of one day, sent Nizam-ul-mulk, on Thursday, the 17th Zilkadeh, to our royal camp; and the day following, Mahomet Shah himself, attended by his nobles, came to our heaven-like presence, in an afflicted state. "When the Emperor was approaching, as we ourselves are of a Turkoman family, and Mahomet Shah is a Turkoman and the lineal descendant of the noble house of Gurgan, we sent our dear son, Nassr Ali Khan, beyond the bounds of our camp to meet him. The Emperor entered our tents, and we delivered over to him the signet of our empire. He remained that day a guest in our royal tent. Considering our affinity as Turkomans, and also reflecting on the honors that befitted the majesty of a king of kings, we bestowed such upon the Emperor, and ordered his royal pavilions, his family, and his nobles to be preserved; and we have established him in a manner equal to his great dignity. "At this time the Emperor, with his family and all the lords of Hindustan, who marched from camp, are arrived in Delhi; and on Thursday, the 29th of Zilkadeh, we moved our glorious standard toward that capital. "It is our royal intention, from the consideration of the high birth of Mahomet Shah, of his descent from the house of Gurgan, and of his affinity to us as a Turkoman, to fix him on the throne of the empire and to place the crown of royalty upon his head. Praise be to God, glory to the Most High, who has granted us the power to perform such an action! For this great grace which we have received from the Almighty we must ever remain grateful. "God has made the seven great seas like unto the vapor of the desert, beneath our glorious and conquering footsteps and those of our faithful and victorious heroes. He has made in our royal mind the thrones of kings and the deep ocean of earthly glory more despicable than the light bubble that floats upon the surface of the wave; and no doubt his extraordinary mercy, which he has now shown, will be evident to all mankind." The facts stated in this letter are not contradicted either by Persian of Indian historians; though the latter find reasons for the great defeat of their countrymen suffered at Karnal, in the rashness of some of their leaders and the caution of others; and they state that even after the victory the conqueror would have returned to Persia on receiving two millions sterling, if the disappointed ambition of an Indian minister had not urged him to advance to Delhi. But it is not necessary to seek for causes for the overthrow of an army who were so panic-struck that they fled at the first charge, and nearly twenty thousand of whom were slain with hardly any loss to their enemies; and our knowledge of the character of Nadir Shah forbids our granting any belief to a tale which would make it appear that the ultimate advantages to be obtained from this great enterprise, and the unparalleled success with which it had been attended, depended less upon his genius than upon the petty jealousies and intrigues of the captive ministers of the vanquished Mahomet Shah. The causes which led Nadir to invade India have been already stated; nor were they groundless. The court of Delhi had certainly not observed the established ties of friendship. It had given shelter to the Afghans who fled from the sword of the conqueror; and this protection was likely to enable them to make another effort to regain their lost possessions, and consequently to reinvolve Persia in war. The ambassadors of Nadir, who had been sent to make remonstrances on this subject, had not only been refused an answer, but were prevented from returning, in defiance of the reiterated and impatient applications of that monarch. This proceeding, we are told, originated more in irresolution and indecision than from a spirit of hostility; but it undoubtedly furnished a fair and justifiable pretext for Nadir's advance. Regarding the other motives which induced him to undertake this enterprise, we can conjecture none but an insatiable desire of plunder, a wish to exercise that military spirit he had kindled in the Persians, or the ambitious view of annexing the vast dominions of the sovereign of Delhi to the crown of Persia. But if he ever cherished this latter project he must have been led by a near view of the condition of the empire of India, to reject it as wholly impracticable. We are, however, compelled to respect the greatness of that mind which could resolve, at the very moment of its achievement, upon the entire abandonment of so great a conquest; for he did not even try to establish a personal interest at the court of Delhi, except through the operation of those sentiments which his generous conduct in replacing him upon his throne might make upon the mind of Mahomet Shah. Nadir claimed, as a prize which he had won, the wealth of the Emperor and a great proportion of that of his richest nobles and subjects. The whole of the jewels that had been collected by a long race of sovereigns, and all the contents of the imperial treasury, were made over by Mahomet Shah to the conqueror. The principal nobles, imitating the example of their monarch, gave up all the money and valuables which they possessed. After these voluntary gifts, as they were termed, had been received, arrears of revenue were demanded from distant provinces, and heavy impositions were laid upon the richest of the inhabitants of Delhi. The great misery caused by these impositions was considerably augmented by the corrupt and base character of the Indian agents employed, who actually farmed the right of extortion of the different quarters of the city to wretches who made immense fortunes by the inhuman speculation, and who collected, for every ten thousand rupees they paid into Nadir's treasury, forty and fifty thousand from the unhappy inhabitants, numbers of whom perished under blows that were inflicted to make them reveal their wealth; while others, among whom were several Hindus of high rank, became their own executioners rather than bear the insults to which they were exposed, or survive the loss of that property which they valued more than their existence. The approach of Nadir Shah to Delhi had filled the inhabitants of that city with dread; but the strict discipline which his troops observed on their first arrival restored confidence to all. This, however, was but of short duration. The monarch himself had occupied a palace in the city, and had sent some troops to different quarters of it to maintain tranquillity and to protect the inhabitants from insult and injury. The conqueror entered the capital on March 8th, and on that and the two succeeding days all was quiet; but on the night of the 10th it was reported that Nadir was dead. This report, which was first circulated by some designing persons, instantly spread, and a thoughtless mob made a furious assault upon the Persians who were scattered about the town as safeguards. These, who were divided in small parties, and quite unsuspicious of attack, were almost all murdered; and we must cease to cherish any general sentiments of pity for the depraved nobles of Delhi, when assured by concurring authorities that most of those at whose palaces troops were stationed for their protection gave them up without effort to the fury of the populace, and even in some instances assisted in their destruction. Nadir, when he first heard of this tumult, sent several persons to explain to the populace their delusion and their danger; but his messengers were slain. He remained with all the Persians he could assemble in the palace which he occupied till the day dawned, when he mounted his horse and rode forth to endeavor, by his presence, to quell the tumult. But his moderation only inflamed the insolence and fury of those whom, even Indian historians inform us, it was his desire to spare; and he at last gave his troops, who had arrived from their encampment near the city, orders for a general massacre. He was too well obeyed: the populace, the moment the Persians began to act, lost all their courage; and from sunrise till twelve o'clock Delhi presented a scene of shocking carnage, the horrors of which were increased by the flames that now spread to almost every quarter of that capital. Nadir, after he had issued the fatal orders, went into the small mosque of Roshin-u-dowlah, which stands near the centre of the city, and remained there in a deep and silent gloom that none dared to disturb. At last the unhappy Mahomet Shah, attended by two of his ministers, rushed into his presence, exclaiming, "Spare my people!" Nadir replied, "The Emperor of India must never ask in vain," and he instantly commanded that the massacre should cease. The prompt obedience which was given to this command is remarked by all his historians as the strongest proof of the strict discipline which he had introduced into his army. The number of persons slain on this occasion has been differently estimated, and from the nature of the scene it could not be correctly ascertained. An author who has been often referred to conjectures that about one hundred twenty thousand perished; while another European writer nearly doubles this amount. But an Indian historian of respectability reduces this exaggerated estimate to the moderate calculation of eight thousand persons: and there is every reason to conclude that his statement is nearer the truth than any of those which have been mentioned. Two nobles who were supposed to have caused the riot fled, with conscious guilt, to a small fortress near Delhi. They were pursued, taken, and put to death with those who were deemed their accomplices, who amounted to about four hundred persons. A very few days after the occurrence of these events, a marriage was celebrated between the second son of Nadir and a princess of the imperial house of Timur; and the succession of festivities that attended these nuptials gave a color of joy to scenes which abounded with misery; but the majority of the inhabitants of Delhi appear to have been of a light and dissolute character. We are indeed told by an Indian author that numbers regretted the departure of the Persians. The drolls and players of the capital began, immediately after they went away, to amuse their countrymen with a ludicrous representation of their own disgrace; and the fierce looks and savage pride of their conquerors, which had been so late their dread, became in these imitations one of their chief sources of entertainment. Nadir remained at Delhi fifty-eight days (1739). Before he quitted it, he had a long and secret conference with Mahomet Shah, in which it is supposed he gave him such counsel as he deemed best to enable him to preserve that power to which he was restored. To all the nobles of the court he spoke publicly, and warned them to preserve their allegiance to the Emperor, as they valued his favor or dreaded his resentment. To those who were absent he wrote in similar terms; he informed them that he was so united in friendship with Mahomet Shah that they might be esteemed as having one soul in two bodies; and, after desiring them to continue to walk in the path of duty to the imperial house of Timur, he concluded these circular-letters in the following words: "May God forbid! but if accounts of your rebelling against your Emperor should reach our ears we will blot you out of the pages of the book of creation." The conqueror had behaved with considerable moderation and kindness toward the chief omrahs of the court of Delhi; but he must have despised their luxurious and effeminate habits. We, indeed, learn his sentiments from a remarkable anecdote. When speaking one day to Kummer-u-din, who was then vizier, he demanded how many ladies he had? "Eight hundred fifty," was the reply. "Let one hundred fifty of our female captives," said Nadir, "be sent to the vizier, who will then be entitled to the high military rank of a _mim-bashee_, or commander of a thousand." The march of Nadir from India was literally encumbered with spoil. The amount of the plunder that he carried from that country has been estimated variously. The highest calculation makes it upward of seventy millions sterling; the lowest is considerably more than thirty. A great part of this was in precious stones, of which Nadir was immoderately fond. When on his march from India he was informed that several of the most valuable crown-jewels had been secreted by some of his followers, he made this a pretext for searching the baggage of every man in his army, and appropriating all the jewels that were found to himself. The soldiers murmured, but submitted; and their not resisting this despotic act is an extraordinary proof of the subordination which he had established. He was, however, in general kind and liberal to his troops: he had given to each man a gratuity of three months' pay at the fall of Kandahar; he gave them as much more after the victory of Karnal; and they received a still greater bounty before he marched from Delhi. The troops of Nadir, we are told, suffered much in their retreat from India by the intense heat to which they were exposed. Their passage over the rivers of the Punjab and the Indus was delayed by accidents to the temporary bridges which he had constructed, and in one instance by the threatened attack of the mountaineers of Kabul, whose forbearance the proud conqueror did not disdain to purchase; and when we consider the nature of the country through which he had to pass, the immense train of baggage with which his army was accompanied, and the danger that might have arisen from the slightest confusion, we cannot blame the prudence with which he acted upon this occasion. The greatest expectation was excited in Persia at the prospect of the return of their victorious monarch. The inhabitants of that country had already felt the benefit of his triumphs. He had commanded that all taxes should be remitted for three years: and they began to anticipate scenes of unheard-of joy and abundance. The most exaggerated reports were circulated of the vast riches which their sovereign and his soldiers had acquired; and all conceived that Nadir was disposed to enjoy himself, from the number of artificers and musicians which he brought from India. Curiosity, too, was eager to behold the train of elephants which attended his march. That noble animal had become a stranger to the plains of Persia; and the natives of that country were only familiar with its shape from seeing its figure represented in the sculpture of ancient times. Sanguine minds were led, by a natural association of ideas, to believe that their present ruler was the destined restorer of their country to its former glory; and the conqueror was hailed, at his return, as a hero whose fame had eclipsed that of a Sapor or a Nushirwan. The soldiers of Nadir were, we are informed, after the expedition to India, most anxious for repose; but that Prince was too well acquainted with the consequences of this indulgence to permit them to enjoy it. He had, after he passed the Indus, led them through the deserts of Sind to the attack of a feudatory chief, who had established himself in the government of that province. This ruler had courted Nadir Shah when he first threatened the invasion of India, as he deemed such a measure favorable to his views of independence; but when his possessions were made over to the Persian monarch he changed his policy; and, lodging all his treasure and property in the fortress of Amerkote, made a feeble attempt at opposition; but his capital was taken and plundered, and he was compelled to surrender himself to the mercy of the conqueror; who, however, satisfied with his submission and the possession of his wealth, restored him to the government of the province, which he agreed henceforth to hold as a tributary to the crown of Persia. After this expedition Nadir marched to Herat, where he made a proud display of the jewels and plunder he had acquired in India; among which the most remarkable was the celebrated throne of the Emperor of Delhi, made in the shape of a peacock, and ornamented with precious stones of every description. This gorgeous exhibition took place on June 4, 1740; and on that day and several others the court, army, and populace were amused with pageants, shows, and entertainments of every kind; but Nadir, though satisfied that this public celebration of triumph was calculated to raise his fame with his subjects and to gratify the vanity of his soldiers, appears always to have dreaded the danger of inaction. He moved his army from Herat; and after meeting his son, Reza Kuli, and bestowing valuable presents upon him and the other princes of his family, he moved toward Bulkh, where he had ordered preparations to be made for his crossing the Oxus to punish the sovereign of Bokhara, who, unmindful of his established alliance, had taken advantage of his absence in India to make inroads into the province of Khorasan. The motives which induced Nadir to proceed upon this expedition were soon apparent. He had no desire to extend the boundary of his empire in a direction where he knew it could not be maintained, but he wished to visit upon the inhabitants of this part of Tartary those calamities which they were in the annual habit of inflicting upon the frontier provinces of Persia. Abul Fyze Khan, who was the ruler of the Usbegs at this period, boasted a lineal descent from Genghis; but he appears to have inherited none of the spirit of his great ancestor. He was terrified into submission at the approach of Nadir, and sent his vizier to deprecate the wrath of that monarch. The minister was well received, but told that his master must immediately surrender if he desired to save himself from destruction and his country from ruin. While these negotiations were carried on the Persian army advanced by rapid marches to Bokhara, and on August 23d, five days after they had crossed the Oxus, encamped within twelve miles of that capital, where his short expedition was brought to a close by the personal submission of Abul Fyze Khan, who, attended by all his court, proceeded to the tents of Nadir Shah, and laid his crown and other ensigns of royalty at the feet of the conqueror, who assigned him an honorable place in his assembly; and a few days afterward restored him to his throne on the condition that the Oxus should remain, as it had been in former periods, the boundary of the two empires. This treaty was cemented by an alliance between the daughter of the ruler of Bokhara and the nephew of his conqueror; and after its conclusion a great number of Tartars were, with the concurrence of their own monarch, enrolled in the Persian army, whose commander probably esteemed the services of these hardy warriors as of more consequence to the peace of his own dominions and the fulfilment of his future views of ambition than all the wealth he had brought from India. The arms of Nadir were next directed against the kingdom of Khaurizm, which is situated to the westward of Bokhara, and stretches along both banks of the Oxus to the shores of the Caspian Sea. The Prince of this country, whose name was Ilburz, neither merited nor received such human treatment as Abul Fyze Khan. He had committed frequent depredations upon the Persian territories; and, conceiving that the strength of his fortresses would secure him from vengeance, he resolved on resistance. The King of Bokhara had sent a mission to advise him to submit to the arms of Nadir: he not only treated this friendly counsel with disdain, but, in violation of laws which the most savage nations respect, he slew those through whom it was conveyed. This conduct greatly irritated the monarch of Persia, who, after he had defeated his army and made him prisoner, doomed him and twenty of his chief officers to death. The possessions of Ilburz were bestowed upon Taher Khan, a cousin of the sovereign of Bokhara, and consequently a direct descendant of the celebrated Genghis. When the winter of this year was far advanced, Nadir marched to Khelat, to which place he continued from his most early years to be much attached. He had directed that its fortifications should be improved, that a palace should be built, and that aqueducts should be constructed to improve the fertility of its fields. He had also ordered that all his treasures should be carried thither; and a peaceful retirement to this cherished spot, after the toils and dangers of war were at an end, was one of the most innocent of those dreams which amused the fancy of this indefatigable conqueror. After a short residence at Khelat Nadir proceeded to Mushed, which he made the capital of his empire; and during three months that he remained in this city his time was passed in constant festivities. Five monarchs had been subdued in five years. The empire of Persia had not only been rescued from a foreign yoke, but its limits had been extended as far as the Oxus to the north and the Indus to the east; and the hero by whom all this had been accomplished promised his exulting subjects that the Turks should soon be driven from the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates; but honor required that, before any other expedition was undertaken, Nadir should revenge the blood of his brother, Ibrahim Khan, who had been slain in an attack of the Lesghis. When the army was on its march to Daghestan an event occurred which cast a dark cloud over all the fair prospects that dawned upon Persia, and exhibited in the strongest view the miserable condition of those empires whose fate hangs upon the disposition and talents of a despotic sovereign. An advanced corps, chiefly composed of Afghans, had, by their extraordinary valor, gained the greatest advantages over the Lesghis; and Nadir was hastening by the way of Mazandaran to their support, when, pursuing his march through one of the forests in that country, a ball from an assassin, who had concealed himself behind a tree, wounded him in the hand and killed his horse. The Prince, Reza Kuli, who was near him, galloped toward the spot from which the shot had been fired; but neither his efforts nor those of his guards that aided him could succeed in the attempts to seize the fugitive, who, favored by the thickness of the wood, effected his escape. He was afterward taken; and the historian of Nadir asserts that he was the agent of a chief of a barbarous tribe who cherished a secret resentment against the conqueror. This accident, though it made a deep and indelible impression upon the mind of Nadir, did not prevent his proceeding to attack the Lesghis; but he never engaged in an enterprise of more hazard. These mountaineers defended themselves with the most desperate bravery; and the rugged nature of the whole country of Daghestan, which they inhabit, made it almost impossible to subdue them. The bravest troops of the Persian army were worn out with the fatigue of this harassing war; and the preparations which the Russians began to make at Astrakhan, though dictated by a fear that Nadir meant to invade their country after he had subdued the Lesghis, gave the latter every encouragement to persevere in their resistance; and the Persian monarch was compelled to retire from this expedition with very partial success and very great loss. Nadir had, from the day on which his life was attempted, entertained suspicions of his eldest son, Reza Kuli. He summoned him to his presence. The Prince instantly obeyed, and was on his arrival made prisoner and deprived of sight. A respectable European writer, who went to Persia two years after this event, asserts that the assassin who fired at Nadir in the wood of Mazandaran was employed by the prince Reza Kuli; who, he informs us, though brave and able, was violent and oppressive. He had, this author asserts, on hearing that Nadir was dead when on his expedition to India, declared himself king, and at the same time put the unfortunate Shah Tamasp, who was confined at Subzawar, in Khorasan, to death. The same writer assures us that Nadir, though convinced of the guilt of his son, addressed him in the mildest and most human terms, and offered him complete pardon if he would only confess his crime and promise repentance; but that the fierce youth rejected this offer, and said he gloried in the attempt he had made to rid the world of a tyrant, and provoked his fate by the coarsest abuse of his father and sovereign. It is probable that this author received the account which he has given of this transaction from some person who was desirous of palliating the guilt of a reigning tyrant; but we are compelled to refuse our credit of this statement. The flattering historian of Nadir expressly informs us that that sovereign was deceived, by the gross misrepresentations of infamous men, into the commission of this great crime. The European physician who attended that monarch during the latter years of his life asserts the innocence of Reza Kuli. He adds that Nadir was so penetrated with remorse after the deed of horror was done that he vented his fury on all around him; and fifty noblemen, who had witnessed the dreadful act, were put to death on the pretext that they should have offered their lives as sacrifices to save the eyes of a prince who was the glory of their country. It is also to be remarked that the impressions which have been transmitted regarding a fact comparatively recent are all against Nadir, who is believed to have had no evidence of his son's guilt but his own suspicions. From the moment that his life had been attempted in Mazandaran that monarch had become gloomy and irritable. His bad success against the Lesghis had increased the natural violence of his temper and, listening to the enemies of Reza Kuli, he, in a moment of rage, ordered him to be blinded. "Your crimes have forced me to this dreadful measure," was, we are told, the speech that Nadir made to his son. "It is not my eyes you have put out," replied Reza Kuli, "but those of Persia." The prophetic truth of this answer sunk deep into the soul of Nadir; and we may believe his historian, who affirms that he never afterward knew happiness nor desired that others should enjoy it. All his future actions were deeds of horror, except the contest which he carried on against the Turks for three years; and even in it he displayed none of that energy and heroic spirit which marked his first wars with that nation. The Persian army had made unsuccessful efforts to reduce the cities of Basra, of Bagdad, and of Mussul. Nadir marched early in the succeeding year to meet a large Turkish force which had advanced to near Erivan; and we are told that he desired to encounter his enemies in battle on the same plain where he had ten years before acquired such renown; but their general, subdued by his own fears, fled and was massacred by his soldiers; who, thrown into confusion at this event, were easily routed by the Persians. This was the last victory of Nadir, and it was gained merely by the terror of his name. Sensible of his own condition he hastened to make peace. His pretensions regarding the establishment of a fifth sect among orthodox Mahometans and the erection of a fifth pillar in the Mosque of Mecca were abandoned. It was agreed that prisoners on both sides should be released; that Persian pilgrims going to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina should be protected; and that the whole of the provinces of Irak and Azerbaijan should remain with Persia, except an inconsiderable territory that had belonged to the Turkish government in the time of Shah Ismail, the first of the Suffavean kings. The conduct of Nadir to his own subjects during the last five years of his reign had been described, even by a partial historian, as exceeding in barbarity all that has been recorded of the most bloody tyrants. The acquisition of the wealth of India had at first filled the mind of this monarch with the most generous and patriotic feelings. He had proclaimed that no taxes should be collected from Persia for three years. But the possession of riches had soon its usual effect of creating a desire for more; and while the vast treasures he had acquired were hoarded at the fort of Kelat, which, with all the fears of a despot, he continually labored to render inaccessible, he not only paid his armies, but added to his golden heaps, from the arrears of remitted revenue, which he extorted with the most inflexible rigor. Nadir knew that the attack which he had made upon the religion of his country had rendered him unpopular, and that the priests, whom he peculiarly oppressed, endeavored to spread disaffection. This made him suspect those who still adhered to the tenets of the Shiah sect, or, in other words, almost all the natives of Persia. The troops in his army upon whom he placed most reliance were the Afghans and Tartars, who were of the Sunni persuasion. Their leaders were his principal favorites; and every pretext was taken to put to death such Persian chiefs as possessed either influence or power. These proceedings had the natural effect of producing rebellion in every quarter, and the spirit of insurrection which now displayed itself among his subjects changed the violence of Nadir into outrageous fury. His murders were no longer confined to individuals: the inhabitants of whole cities were massacred; and men, to use the words of his historian, left their abodes, and took up their habitations in caverns and deserts, in the hope of escaping his savage ferocity. We are told--and the events which preceded render the tale not improbable--that when on his march to subdue one of his nephews who had rebelled in Sistan, he proposed to put to death every Persian in his army. There can be little doubt that his mind was at this moment in a state of frenzy which amounted to insanity. Some of the principal officers of his court, who learned that their names were in the list of proscribed victims, resolved to save themselves by the assassination of Nadir. The execution of the plot was committed to four chief men who took advantage of their stations, and, under the pretext of urgent business, rushed past the guards into the inner tents, where the tyrant was asleep. The noise awoke him; and he had slain two of the meaner assassins, when a blow from Salah Beg deprived him of existence. FIRST MODERN NOVEL A.D. 1740 EDMUND GOSSE "Let me make the ballads of a nation," said Fletcher of Saltoun, "and I care not who makes the laws." The place which the ancient ballads held in forming the characters of the people is in our day more than filled by the novels. Everybody reads them, especially in the younger generation, and every character is more or less moulded by the sentiments and teachings they contain. The novel has been almost entirely a modern English development. Two centuries ago our ancestors did not read fiction: they had practically none to read. So that the production of the first English novel in 1740, leading as it has to the present state of affairs, may fairly be counted a most important event in the history of our race. Nowadays ten thousand novels are published every year, and for some of these is claimed the enormous circulation of half a million copies. There is nothing offensive to the dignity of literary history in acknowledging that the most prominent piece of work effected by literature in England during the eighteenth century is the creation--for it can be styled nothing less--of the modern novel. In the seventeenth century there had been a very considerable movement in the direction of prose fiction. The pastoral romances of the Elizabethans had continued to circulate; France had set an example in the heroic stories of D'Urfé and La Calprenède, which English imitators and translators had been quick to follow, even as early as 1647. The _Francion_ of Sorel and the _Roman Bourgeois_ of Furetière--the latter, published in 1666, of especial interest to students of the English novel--had prepared the way for the exact opposite to the heroic romance; namely, the realistic story of every-day life. Bunyan and Richard Head, Mrs. Behn and Defoe--each had marked a stage in the development of English fiction. Two noble forerunners of the modern novel, _Robinson Crusoe_ and _Gulliver's Travels_, had inflamed the curiosity and awakened the appetite of British readers; but, although there were already great satires and great romances in the language, the first quarter of the eighteenth century passed away without revealing any domestic genius in prose fiction, any master of the workings of the human heart. Meanwhile the drama had decayed. The audiences which had attended the poetic plays of the beginning and the comedies of the close of the seventeenth century now found nothing on the boards of the theatre to satisfy their craving after intellectual excitement. The descendants of the men and women who had gone out to welcome the poetry of Shakespeare and the wit of Congreve were now rather readers than play-goers, and were most ready to enjoy an appeal to their feelings when that appeal reached them in book form. In the playhouse they came to expect bustle and pantomime rather than literature. This decline in theatrical habits prepared a domestic audience for the novelists, and accounts for that feverish and apparently excessive anxiety with which the earliest great novels were awaited and received. Meanwhile the part taken by Addison and Steele in preparing for this change of taste must not be overlooked, and the direct link between Addison, as a picturesque narrative essayist, and Richardson, as the first great English novelist, is to be found in Pierre de Marivaux (1688-1763), who imitated the _Spectator_, and who is often assumed, though somewhat too rashly, to have suggested the tone of _Pamela_. Into this latter question we shall presently have need to inquire again. It is enough to point out here that when the English novel did suddenly and irresistibly make its appearance, it had little in common with the rococo and coquettish work which had immediately preceded it in France, and which at first, even to judges so penetrating as the poet Gray, was apt to seem more excellent because more subtle and refined. The rapidity with which the novel became domiciled among us, and the short space of time within which the principal masterpieces of the novelists were produced, are not more remarkable than the lassitude which fell upon English fiction as soon as the first great generation had passed away. The flourishing period of the eighteenth-century novel lasted exactly twenty-five years, during which time we have to record the publication of no less than fifteen eminent works of fiction. These fifteen are naturally divided into three groups. The first contains _Pamela_, _Joseph Andrews_, _David Simple_, and _Jonathan Wild_. In these books the art is still somewhat crude, and the science of fiction incompletely understood. After a silence of five years we reach the second and greatest section of this central period, during which there appeared in quick succession _Clarissa_, _Roderick Random_, _Tom Jones_, _Peregrine Pickle_, _Amelia_, and _Sir Charles Grandison_. As though invention had been exhausted by the publication of this incomparable series of masterpieces, there followed another silence of five years, and then were issued, each on the heels of the other, _Tristram Shandy_, _Rasselas_, _Chrysal_, _The Castle of Otranto_, and _The Vicar of Wakefield_. Five years later still, a book born out of due time appeared, _Humphrey Clinker_, and then, with one or two such exceptions as _Evelina_ and _Caleb Williams_, no great novel appeared again in England for forty years, until, in 1811, the new school of fiction was inaugurated by _Sense and Sensibility_. The English novel, therefore, in its first great development, should be considered as comprised within the dates 1740 and 1766; and it may not be uninstructive, before entering into any critical examination of the separate authors, to glance at this chronological list of the first fifteen great works of English fiction. The novels contained in the catalogue just given, however widely they differed from one another in detail, had this in common: that they dealt with mental and moral phenomena. Before 1740 we possessed romances, tales, prose fiction of various sorts, but in none of these was essayed any careful analysis of character or any profound delineation of emotion. In Defoe, where the record of imaginary fact was carried on with so much ingenuity and knowledge, the qualities we have just mentioned are notably absent; nor can it be said that we find them in any prose-writer of fiction earlier than Richardson, except in some very slight and imperfect degree in Aphra Behn, especially in her Rousseauish novel of _Oroonoko_. The first great English novelist, Samuel Richardson (1689-1761), was born and bred in Derbyshire. He records of himself that when still a little boy he had two peculiarities: he loved the society of women best, and he delighted in letter-writing. Indeed, before he was eleven, he wrote a long epistle to a widow of fifty, rebuking her for unbecoming conduct. The girls of the neighborhood soon discovered his insight into the human heart, and his skill in correspondence, and they employed the boy to write their love-letters for them. In 1706 Richardson was apprenticed to a London printer, served a diligent apprenticeship, and worked as a compositor until he rose, late in life, to be master of the Stationers' Company. He was fifty years of age before he showed symptoms of any higher ambition than that of printing correctly acts of Parliament and new editions of law-books. In 1739 the publishers, Rivington and Osborne, urged him to compose for them a volume of _Familiar Letters_, afterward actually produced as an aid to illiterate persons in their correspondence. Richardson set about this work, gave it a moral flavor, and at last began to write what would serve as a caution to young serving-women who were exposed to temptation. At this point he recollected a story he had heard long before, of a beautiful and virtuous maid-servant who succeeded in marrying her master; and then, laying the original design aside, Richardson, working rapidly, wrote in three months his famous story of _Pamela_. All Richardson's novels are written in what Mrs. Barbauld has ingeniously described as "the most natural and the least probable way of telling a story," namely, in consecutive letters. The famous heroine of his first book is a young girl, Pamela Andrews, who describes in letters to her father and mother what goes on in the house of a lady with whom she had lived as maid, and who is just dead when the story opens. The son of Pamela's late mistress, a Mr. B.--it was Fielding who wickedly enlarged the name to Booby--becomes enamoured of her charms, and takes every mean advantage of her defenceless position; but, fortunately, Pamela is not more virtuous than astute, and after various agonies, which culminate in her thinking of drowning herself in a pond, she brings her admirer to terms, and is discovered to us at last as the rapturous though still humble Mrs. B. There are all sorts of faults to be found with this crude book. The hero is a rascal, who comes to a good end, not because he has deserved to do so, but because his clever wife has angled for him with her beauty, and has landed him at last, like an exhausted salmon. So long as Pamela is merely innocent and frightened, she is charming, but her character ceases to be sympathetic as she grows conscious of the value of her charms, and even the lax morality of the day was shocked at the craft of her latest manoeuvres. But all the world went mad with pleasure over the book. What we now regard as tedious and prolix was looked upon as so much linked sweetness long drawn out. The fat printer had invented a new thing, and inaugurated a fresh order of genius. For the first time the public was invited, by a master of the movements of the heart, to be present at the dissection of that fascinating organ, and the operator could not be leisurely enough, could not be minute enough, for his breathless and enraptured audience. In France, for some ten years past there had been writers--Crébillon, Marivaux, Prévost--who had essayed this delicate analysis of emotion, but these men were the first to admit the superiority of their rough English rival. In _Marianne_, where the heroine tells her own story, which somewhat resembles that of Pamela, the French novelist produced a very refined study of emotion, which will probably be one day more largely read than it now is, and which should be looked through by every student of the English novel. This book is prolix and languid in form, and undoubtedly bears a curious resemblance to Richardson's novel. The English printer, however, could not read French,[29] and there is sufficient evidence to show that he was independent of any influences save those which he took from real life. None the less, of course, Marivaux, who has a name for affectation which his writings scarcely deserve, has an interest for us as a harbinger of the modern novel. _Pamela_ was published in two volumes in 1740. The author was sufficiently ill-advised to add two more in 1741. In this latter instalment Mrs. B. was represented as a dignified matron, stately and sweet under a burden of marital infidelity. But this continuation is hardly worthy to be counted among the works of Richardson. The novelist showed great wisdom in not attempting to repeat too quickly the success of his first work. He allowed the romances of Henry and Sarah Fielding, the latter as grateful to him as the former were repugnant, to produce their effect upon the public, and it was to an audience more able to criticise fiction that Richardson addressed his next budget from the mail-bag. _Clarissa; or, The History of a Young Lady_, appeared, in instalments, but in seven volumes in all, in 1748, with critical prefaces prefixed to the first and fourth volumes. In this book the novelist put his original crude essay completely into the shade, and added one to the masterpieces of the world. Released from the accident which induced him in the pages of _Pamela_ to make his heroine a servant-girl, in _Clarissa_, Richardson depicted a lady, yet not of so lofty a rank as to be beyond the range of his own observation. The story is again told entirely in letters; it is the history of the abduction and violation of a young lady by a finished scoundrel, and ends in the death of both characters. To enable the novelist to proceed, each personage has a confidant. The beautiful and unhappy Clarissa Harlowe corresponds with the vivacious Miss Howe; Robert Lovelace addresses his friend and quondam fellow-reveller, John Belford. The character of Clarissa is summed up in these terms by her creator: "A young Lady of great Delicacy, Mistress of all the Accomplishments, natural and acquired, that adorn the Sex, having the strictest Notions of filial Duty." Her piety and purity, in fact, are the two loadstars of her moral nature, and the pursuit of each leads her life to shipwreck. By the universal acknowledgment of novel-readers, Clarissa is one of the most sympathetic, as she is one of the most lifelike, of all the women in literature, and Richardson has conducted her story with so much art and tact that her very faults canonize her, and her weakness crowns the triumph of her chastity. In depicting the character of Lovelace, the novelist had a difficult task, for to have made him a mere ruffian would have been to ruin the whole purpose of the piece. He is represented as witty, versatile, and adroit, the very type of the unscrupulous gentleman of fashion of the period. He expiates his crimes, at the close of a capital duel, by the hands of Colonel Morden, a relative of the Harlowe family, who has seen Clarissa die. The success of _Clarissa_, both here and in France, was extraordinary. As the successive volumes appeared, and readers were held in suspense as to the fate of the exquisite heroine, Richardson was deluged with letters entreating him to have mercy. The women of England knelt sobbing round his knees, and addressed him as though he possessed the power of life and death. The slow and cumbrous form of _Clarissa_ has tended to lessen the number of its students, but there is probably no one who reads at all widely who has not at one time or another come under the spell of this extraordinary book. In France its reputation has always stood very high. Diderot said that it placed Richardson with Homer and Euripides, Rousseau openly imitated it, and Alfred de Musset has styled it the best novel in the world. To those who love to see the passions taught to move at the command of sentiment, and who are not wearied by the excessively minute scale, as of a moral miniature-painter, on which the author designs his work, there can scarcely be recommended a more thrilling and affecting book. The author is entirely inexorable, and the reader must not hope to escape until he is thoroughly purged with terror and pity. After the further development of Fielding's genius, and after the advent of a new luminary in Smollett, Richardson once more presented to the public an elaborate and ceremonious novel of extreme prolixity. The _History of Sir Charles Grandison_, in seven (and six) volumes, appeared in the spring of 1754, after having been pirated in Dublin during the preceding winter. Richardson's object in this new adventure was, having already painted the portraits of two virtuous young women--the one fortunate, the other a martyr--to produce this time a virtuous hero, and to depict "the character and actions of a man of true honor," as before, in a series of familiar letters. There is more movement, more plot, in this novel than in the previous ones; the hero is now in Italy, now in England, and there is much more attempt than either in _Pamela_ or _Clarissa_ to give the impression of a sphere in which a man of the world may move. Grandison is, however, a slightly ludicrous hero. His perfections are those of a prig and an egoist, and he passes like the sun itself over his parterre of adoring worshippers. The ladies who are devoted to Sir Charles Grandison are, indeed, very numerous, but the reader's interest centres in three of them--the mild and estimable Harriet Byron, the impassioned Italian Clementina della Porretta, and the ingenuous ward Emily Jervois. The excuse for all this is that this paragon of manly virtue has "the most delicate of human minds," and that women are irresistibly attracted to him by his splendid perfections of character. But posterity has admitted that the portrait is insufferably overdrawn, and that Grandison is absurd. The finest scenes in this interesting but defective novel are those in which the madness of Clementina is dwelt upon in that long-drawn patient manner of which Richardson was a master. The book is much too long. Happy in the fame which "the three daughters" of his pen had brought him, and enjoying prosperous circumstances, Richardson's life closed in a sort of perpetual tea-party, in which he, the only male, sat surrounded by bevies of adoring ladies. He died in London, of apoplexy, on July 4, 1761. His manners were marked by the same ceremonious stiffness which gives his writing an air of belonging to a far earlier period than that of Fielding or Smollett; but his gravity and sentimental earnestness only helped to endear him to the women. Of the style of Richardson there is little to be said; the reader never thinks of it. If he forces himself to regard it, he sees that it is apt to be slipshod, although so trim and systematic. Richardson was a man of unquestionable genius, dowered with extraordinary insight into female character, and possessing the power to express it; but he had little humor, no rapidity of mind, and his speech was so ductile and so elaborate that he can scarcely compete with later and sharper talents. FOOTNOTES: [29] It is, however, now certain that there existed an English version of _Marianne_. FREDERICK THE GREAT SEIZES SILESIA MARIA THERESA APPEALS TO THE HUNGARIANS A.D. 1740 WILLIAM SMYTH Maria Theresa, the "Empress Queen," stands out among the most heroic and romantic figures of the eighteenth century. She was the daughter of Charles VI, last of the real Hapsburg emperors of Germany and rulers of Austria. With him ended the male line of the mighty family, but the descendants of his daughter and her husband, the Duke of Lorraine, were known as the house of Hapsburg-Lorraine, and gradually the second name disappeared from common usage, leaving only the more famous half. Having no male heirs Charles was determined that his daughter, Maria, should succeed to all the vast Hapsburg estates, and he entered into treaties upon the subject with the various chief powers of Europe, yielding them substantial advantages in return for their gossamer promise to support her in her inheritance. The moment Charles died (1740) these treaties were thrown to the winds. Each state planned to snatch what territory it could from the young and apparently helpless Maria Theresa. Frederick II of Prussia, afterward called the Great, was the first of the robbers to move. He also had just come into power in the new kingdom, which his father, Frederick I, had created. Part of his inheritance was a splendid standing army, the best-drilled and most powerful in Europe. With this he promptly overran Silesia, a borderland composed of many little duchies and accounted one of the most valuable provinces of the Austrian crown. Frederick openly and cynically announced the maxim which seems in secret to have guided many monarchs, that personal honesty had no part in the business of being a king. His rash and conscienceless seizure of Silesia was successful, but it proved the prelude to a quarter-century of repeated wars which involved almost the whole of Europe and brought his own country to the verge of ruin. In 1740 Maria Theresa ascends the throne of her ancestors--possessed, it seems, of a commanding figure, great beauty, animation and sweetness of countenance, a pleasing tone of voice, fascinating manners, and uniting feminine grace with a strength of understanding and an intrepidity above her sex. But her treasury contained only one hundred thousand florins, and these claimed by the Empress Dowager; her army, exclusive of the troops in Italy and the Low Countries, did not amount to thirty thousand effective men; a scarcity of provisions and great discontent existed in the capital; rumors were circulated that the government was dissolved, that the Elector of Brunswick was hourly expected to take possession of the Austrian territories; apprehensions were entertained of the distant provinces--that the Hungarians, supported by the Turks, might revive the elective monarchy; different claimants on the Austrian succession were expected to arise; besides, the Elector of Bavaria, the Elector of Cologne, and the Elector Palatine were evidently hostile; the ministers themselves, while the Queen was herself without experience or knowledge of business, were timorous, desponding, irresolute, or worn out with age. To these ministers, says Mr. Robinson, in his despatches to the English court, "the Turks seemed already in Hungary, the Hungarians themselves in arms, the Saxons in Bohemia, the Bavarians at the gates of Vienna, and France the soul of the whole." The Elector of Bavaria, indeed, did not conceal his claims to the kingdom of Bohemia and the Austrian dominions; and, finally, while the Queen had scarcely taken possession of her throne, a new claimant appeared in the person of Frederick of Prussia, who acted with "such consummate address and secrecy"--as it is called by the historian--that is, with such unprincipled hypocrisy and cunning, that his designs were scarcely even suspected when his troops entered the Austrian dominions. Silesia was the province which he resolved, in the present helpless situation of the young Queen, to wrest from the house of Austria. He revived some antiquated claims on parts of that duchy. The ancestors of Maria Theresa had not behaved handsomely to the ancestors of Frederick, and the young Queen was now to become a lesson to all princes and states of the real wisdom that always belongs to the honorable and scrupulous performance of all public engagements. Little or nothing, however, can be urged in favor of Frederick. Prescription must be allowed at length to justify possession in cases not very flagrant. The world cannot be perpetually disturbed by the squabbles and collisions of its rulers; and the justice of his cause was, indeed, as is evident from all the circumstances of the case, and his own writings, the last and the least of all the many futile reasons which he alleged for the invasion of the possessions of Maria Theresa, the heiress of the Austrian dominions, young, beautiful, and unoffending, but inexperienced and unprotected. The common robber has sometimes the excuse of want; banditti, in a disorderly country, may pillage, and, when resisted, murder; but the crimes of men, even atrocious as these, are confined at least to a contracted space, and their consequences extend not beyond a limited period. It was not so with Frederick. The outrages of his ambition were to be followed up by an immediate war. He could never suppose that, even if he succeeded in getting possession of Silesia, the house of Austria could ever forget the insult and the injury that had thus been received; he could never suppose, though Maria Theresa might have no protection from his cruelty and injustice, that this illustrious house would never again have the power, in some way or other, to avenge their wrongs. One war, therefore, even if successful, was not to be the only consequence; succeeding wars were to be expected; long and inveterate jealousy and hatred were to follow; and he and his subjects were, for a long succession of years, to be put to the necessity of defending, by unnatural exertions, what had been acquired--if acquired--by his own unprincipled ferocity. Such were the consequences that were fairly to be expected. What, in fact, took place? The seizure of this province of Silesia was first supported by a war, then by a revival of it, then by the dreadful Seven Years' War. Near a million of men perished on the one side and on the other. Every measure and movement of the King's administration flowed as a direct consequence from this original aggression: his military system, the necessity of rendering his kingdom one of the first-rate powers of Europe, and, in short, all the long train of his faults, his tyrannies, and his crimes. We will cast a momentary glance on the opening scenes of this contest between the two houses. As a preparatory step to his invasion of Silesia, the King sent a message to the Austrian court. "I am come," said the Prussian envoy to the husband of Maria Theresa, "with safety for the house of Austria in one hand, and the imperial crown for your royal highness in the other. The troops and money of my master are at the service of the Queen, and cannot fail of being acceptable at a time when she is in want of both, and can only depend on so considerable a prince as the King of Prussia and his allies, the maritime powers, and Russia. As the King, my master, from the situation of his dominions, will be exposed to great danger from this alliance, it is hoped that, as an indemnification, the Queen of Hungary will not offer him less than the whole duchy of Silesia." "Nobody," he added, "is more firm in his resolutions than the King of Prussia: he must and will enter Silesia; once entered, he must and will proceed; and if not secured by the immediate cession of that province, his troops and money will be offered to the electors of Saxony and Bavaria." Such were the King's notifications to Maria Theresa. Soon after, in a letter to the same Duke of Lorraine, the husband of Maria Theresa, "My heart," says Frederick--for he wrote as if he conceived he had one--"My heart," says Frederick, "has no share in the mischief which my hand is doing to your court." The feelings of the young Queen may be easily imagined, powerful in the qualities of her understanding, with all the high sensibilities which are often united to a commanding mind, and educated in all the lofty notions which have so uniformly characterized her illustrious house. She resisted; but her arms proved in the event unsuccessful. She was not prepared; and even if she had been, the combination was too wide and powerful against her. According to the plan of her enemies, more particularly of France (her greatest enemy), Bohemia and Upper Austria, spite of all her efforts, were likely to be assigned to the Elector of Bavaria; Moravia and Upper Silesia to the Elector of Saxony; Lower Silesia and the country of Glatz to the King of Prussia; Austria and Lombardy to Spain; and some compensation to be allotted to the King of Sardinia. It was therefore, at last, necessary to detach the King of Prussia from the general combination by some important sacrifice. The sufferings, the agonies, of the poor Queen were extreme. Lord Hyndford, on the part of England as a mediating power, prevailed on the helpless Maria Theresa to abate something of her lofty spirit, and make some offers to the King. "At the beginning of the war," said Frederick, "I might have been contented with this proposal, but not now. Shall I again give the Austrians battle, and drive them out of Silesia? You will then see that I shall receive other proposals. At present I must have _four_ duchies, and not _one_. Do not, my lord," said the King, "talk to me of magnanimity; a prince ought first to consult his own interests. I am not averse to peace; but I expect to have four duchies, and will have them." At a subsequent period the same scene was to be renewed, and Mr. Robinson, the English ambassador, who was very naturally captivated with the attractions and spirit of Maria Theresa, endeavored to rouse her to a sense of her danger. "Not only for political reasons," replied the Queen, "but from conscience and honor, I will not consent to part with much in Silesia. No sooner is one enemy satisfied than another starts up; another, and then another, must be contented, and all at my expense." "You must yield to the hard necessity of the times," said Mr. Robinson. "What would I not give, except in Silesia?" replied the impatient Queen. "Let him take all we have in Gelderland; and if he is not to be gained by that sacrifice, others may. Let the King, your master, only speak to the Elector of Bavaria! Oh, the King, your master--let him only march! let him march only!" But England could not be prevailed upon to declare war. The dangers of Maria Theresa became more and more imminent, and a consent to further offers was extorted from her. "I am afraid," said Mr. Robinson, "some of these proposals will be rejected by the King." "I wish he may reject them," said the Queen. "Save Limburg, if possible, were it only for the quiet of my conscience. God knows how I shall answer for the cession, having sworn to the states of Brabant never to alienate any part of their country." Mr. Robinson, who was an enthusiast in the cause of the Queen, is understood to have made some idle experiment of his own eloquence on the King of Prussia; to have pleaded her cause in their next interview; to have spoken, not as if he was addressing a cold-hearted, bad man, but as if speaking in the House of Commons of his own country, in the assembly of a free people, with generosity in their feelings and uprightness and honor in their hearts. The King, in all the malignant security of triumphant power, in all the composed consciousness of great intellectual talents, affected to return him eloquence for eloquence; said his ancestors would rise out of their tombs to reproach him if he abandoned the rights that had been transmitted to him; that he could not live with reputation if he lightly abandoned an enterprise which had been the first act of his reign; that he would sooner be crushed with his whole army, etc. And then, descending from his oratorical elevation, declared that he would _now_ "not only have the four duchies, but all Lower Silesia, with the town of Breslau. If the Queen does not satisfy me in six weeks, I will have four duchies more. They who want peace will give me what I want. I am sick of ultimatums; I will hear no more of them. My part is taken; I again repeat my demand of all Lower Silesia. This is my final answer, and I will give no other." He then abruptly broke off the conference, and left Mr. Robinson to his own reflections. The situation of the young Queen now became truly deplorable. The King of Prussia was making himself the entire master of Silesia; two French armies poured over the countries of Germany; the Elector of Bavaria, joined by one of them, had pushed a body of troops within eight miles of Vienna, and the capital had been summoned to surrender. The King of Sardinia threatened hostilities; so did the Spanish army. The Electors of Saxony, Cologne, and Palatine joined the grand confederacy; and abandoned by all her allies but Great Britain, without treasure, without an army, and without ministers, she appealed, or rather fled for refuge and compassion, to her subjects in Hungary. These subjects she had at her accession conciliated by taking the oath which had been abolished by her ancestor Leopold, the confirmation of their just rights, privileges, and approved customs. She had taken this oath at her accession, and she was now to reap the benefit of that sense of justice and real magnanimity which she had displayed, and which, it may fairly be pronounced, sovereigns and governments will always find it their interest, as well as their duty, to display, while the human heart is constituted, as it has always been, proud and eager to acknowledge with gratitude and affection the slightest condescensions of kings and princes, the slightest marks of attention and benevolence in those who are illustrious by their birth or elevated by their situation. When Maria Theresa had first proposed to repair to these subjects, a suitor for their protection, the gray-headed politicians of her court had, it seems, assured her that she could not possibly succeed; that the Hungarians, when the Pragmatic Sanction had been proposed to them by her father, had declared that they were accustomed to be governed only by men; and that they would seize the opportunity of withdrawing from her rule, and from their allegiance to the house of Austria. Maria Theresa, young and generous and high-spirited herself, had confidence in human virtue. She repaired to Hungary; she summoned the states of the Diet; she entered the hall, clad in deep mourning; habited herself in the Hungarian dress; placed the crown of St. Stephen on her head, the cimeter at her side; showed her subjects that she could herself cherish and venerate whatever was dear and venerable in their sight; separated not herself in her sympathies and opinions from those whose sympathies and opinions she was to awaken and direct, traversed the apartment with a slow and majestic step, ascended the tribune whence the sovereigns had been accustomed to harangue the states, committed to her chancellor the detail of her distressed situation, and then herself addressed them in the language which was familiar to them, the immortal language of Rome, which was not now for the first time to be employed against the enterprises of injustice and the wrongs of the oppressor. To the cold and relentless ambition of Frederick, to a prince whose heart had withered at thirty, an appeal like this had been made in vain; but not so to the freeborn warriors, who saw no possessions to be coveted like the conscious enjoyment of honorable and generous feelings--no fame, no glory like the character of the protectors of the helpless and the avengers of the innocent. Youth, beauty, and distress obtained that triumph, which, for the honor of the one sex, it is to be hoped will never be denied to the merits and afflictions of the other. A thousand swords leaped from their scabbards and attested the unbought generosity and courage of untutored nature. "_Moriamur pro rege nostro_, Maria Theresa!" was the voice that resounded through the hall ("We will die for our sovereign, Maria Theresa!"). The Queen, who had hitherto preserved a calm and dignified deportment, burst into tears--I tell but the facts of history. Tears started to the eyes of Maria Theresa, when standing before her heroic defenders--those tears which no misfortunes, no suffering, would have drawn from her in the presence of her enemies and oppressors. "Moriamur pro rege nostro, Maria Theresa!" was again and again heard. The voice, the shout, the acclamation that reëchoed around her, and enthusiasm and frenzy in her cause, were the necessary effect of this union of every dignified sensibility which the heart can acknowledge and the understanding honor. It is not always that in history we can pursue the train of events, and find our moral feelings gratified as we proceed; but in general we may. Philip II overpowered _not_ the Low Countries, nor Louis, Holland; and even on this occasion of the distress and danger of Maria Theresa we may find an important, though not a perfect and complete, triumph. The resolutions of the Hungarian Diet were supported by the nation; Croats, Pandours, Slavonians, flocked to the royal standard, and they struck terror into the disciplined armies of Germany and France. The genius of the great General Kevenhuller was called into action by the Queen; Vienna was put into a state of defence; divisions began to rise among the Queen's enemies; a sacrifice was at last made to Frederick--he was bought off by the cession of Lower Silesia and Breslau; and the Queen and her generals, thus obtaining a respite from this able and enterprising robber, were enabled to direct, and successfully direct, their efforts against the remaining hosts of plunderers that had assailed her. France, that with perfidy and atrocity had summoned every surrounding power to the destruction of the house of Austria, in the moment of the helplessness and inexperience of the new sovereign--France was at least, if Frederick was not, defeated, disappointed, and disgraced. The interest that belongs to a character like that of Maria Theresa, of strong feelings and great abilities, never leaves the narrative, of which she is the heroine. The student cannot expect that he should always approve the conduct or the sentiments that but too naturally flowed from qualities like these, when found in a princess like Maria Theresa--a princess placed in situations so fitted to betray her into violence and even rancor--a princess who had been a first-rate sovereign of Europe at four-and-twenty, and who had never been admitted to that moral discipline to which ordinary mortals, who act in the presence of their equals, are so happily subjected. That the loss of Silesia should never be forgotten--the King of Prussia never forgiven--that his total destruction would have been the highest gratification to her, cannot be objects of surprise. The mixed character of human nature seldom affords, when all its propensities are drawn out by circumstances, any proper theme for the entire and unqualified praises of a moralist; but everything is pardoned to Maria Theresa, when she is compared, as she must constantly be, with her great rival, Frederick. Errors and faults we can overlook when they are those of our common nature; intractability, impetuosity, lofty pride, superstition, even bigotry, an impatience of wrongs, furious and implacable--all these, the faults of Maria Theresa, may be forgiven, may at least be understood. But Frederick had no merits save courage and ability; these, great as they are, cannot reconcile us to a character with which we can have no sympathy--of which the beginning, the middle, and the end, the foundation and the essence, were entire, unceasing, inextinguishable, concentrated selfishness. I do not detain my hearers with any further reference to Maria Theresa. She long occupies the pages of history--the interesting and captivating princess--the able and still attractive Queen--the respected and venerable matron, grown prudent by long familiarity with the uncertainty of fortune, and sinking into decline amid the praises and blessings of her subjects. DEFEAT OF THE YOUNG PRETENDER AT CULLODEN LAST OF THE STUARTS A.D. 1746 JUSTIN McCARTHY Obstinate tenacity of purpose--a leading characteristic of the Stuart sovereigns--showed a remarkable survival in the vain attempt of the grandson of James II to recover the throne of England. The chief historical significance of that attempt lies in the fact that its failure marks the end of the Stuart endeavor for renewed power. Charles Edward Louis Philip Casimir, known as the "Young Pretender," also as the "Young Chevalier" and "Bonnie Prince Charlie," was born in Rome in 1720. From his earliest years he was the hope of the Jacobites, as the political descendants of the partisans of James II were called. In 1743 Charles headed an abortive expedition for the invasion of England from France. In August, 1745, he landed with seven followers in the Hebrides, and on the 19th raised the standard of his father in Glenfinnan, Scotland. There at once the Highland clans rallied to his support and began what is known as the "Rising of '45" or the "Forty-five," the beginning and ending of which are told here in McCarthy's most brilliant manner. From the first young Charles Stuart might well have come to regard himself as the favorite of fortune. The history of the "Forty-five" divides itself into two distinct parts: the first a triumphant record of brilliant victories, and the picture of a young prince marching through conquest after conquest to a crown; the second part prefaced by a disastrous resolution leading to overwhelming defeat and ending in ignominious flight and the extinction of the last Stuart hope. From the moment when the Stuart standard fluttered its folds of white and crimson on the Highland wind it seemed as if the Stuart luck had turned. Charles might well conceive himself happy. Upon his sword sat laurel victory. Smooth success was strewn before his feet. The blundering and bewildered Cope[30] actually allowed Charles and his army to get past him. Cope was neither a coward nor a traitor, but he was a terrible blunderer, and while the English general was marching upon Inverness Charles was triumphantly entering Perth. From Perth the young Prince, with hopeless, helpless Cope still in his rear, marched on Edinburgh. The condition of Edinburgh was peculiar: although a large proportion of its inhabitants, especially those who were well-to-do, were stanch supporters of the house of Hanover, there were plenty of Jacobites in the place, and it only needed the favor of a few victories to bring into open day a great deal of latent Jacobitism that was for the moment prudently kept under by its possessors. The lord-provost himself was more than suspected of being a Jacobite at heart. The city was miserably defended. Such walls as it possessed were more ornamental than useful, and in any case were sadly in want of repair. All the military force it could muster to meet the advance of the clans was the small but fairly efficient body of men who formed the town guard; the train-bands, some thousand strong, who knew no more than so many spinsters of the division of a battle; the small and undisciplined Edinburgh regiment, and a scratch collection of volunteers hurriedly raked together from among the humbler citizens of the town, and about as useful as so many puppets to oppose to the daring and the ferocity of the clans. Edinburgh opinion had changed very rapidly with regard to that same daring and ferocity. When the first rumors of the Prince's advance were bruited abroad the adherents of the house of Hanover in Edinburgh made very merry over the gang of ragged rascals, hen-roost robbers, and drunken rogues upon whom the Pretender relied in his effort to "enjoy his ain again." But as the clans came nearer and nearer, as the air grew thicker with flying rumors of the successes that attended upon the Prince's progress, as the capacity of the town seemed weaker for holding out, and as the prospect of reënforcements seemed to grow fainter and fainter, the opinion of Hanoverian Edinburgh concerning the clans changed mightily. Had the Highlanders been a race of giants, endowed with more than mortal prowess, and invulnerable as Achilles, they could hardly have struck more terror into the hearts of loyal and respectable Edinburgh citizens. Still, there were some stout hearts in Edinburgh who did their best to keep up the courage of the rest and to keep out the enemy. Andrew Fletcher and Duncan Forbes were of the number. M'Laurin, the mathematician, turned his genius to the bettering of the fortifications. Old Dr. Stevenson, bedridden but heroic, kept guard in his arm-chair for many days at the Netherbow gate. The great question was, would Cope come in time? Cope was at Aberdeen. Cope had put his army upon transports. Cope might be here to-morrow, the day after to-morrow, to-day, who knows? But in the mean time the King's Dragoons, whom Cope had left behind him when he first started out to meet the Pretender, had steadily and persistently retreated before the Highland advance. They had now halted--they can hardly be said to have made a stand--at Corstorphine, some three miles from Edinburgh, and here it was resolved to do something to stay the tide of invasion. Hamilton's Dragoons were at Leith. These were ordered to join the King's Dragoons at Corstorphine and to collect as many Edinburgh volunteers as they could on their way. Inside the walls of Edinburgh it was easy enough to collect volunteers, and quite a little army of them marched out with drums beating and colors flying at the heels of Hamilton's Dragoons. But on the way to the town gates the temper of the volunteers changed, and by the time that the town gates were reached and passed the volunteers had dwindled to so pitiable a handful that they were dismissed, and Hamilton's Dragoons proceeded alone to join Cope's King's Dragoons at Corstorphine. But the united force of dragoons did not stay long at Corstorphine. The fame of the fierce Highlanders had unhinged their valor, and it only needed a few of the Prince's supporters to ride within pistol-shot and discharge their pieces at the royal troops to set them into as disgraceful a panic as ever animated frightened men. The dragoons, ludicrously unmanned, turned tail and rode for their lives, rode without drawing bridle and without staying spur till they came to Leith, paused there for a little, and then, on some vague hint that the Highlanders were on their track, they were in the saddle again and riding for their lives once more. Dismayed Edinburgh citizens saw them sweep along what now is Prince's Street, a pitiable sight; saw them, bloody with spurring, fiery hot with haste, ride on--on into the darkness. On and on the desperate cowards scampered, sheep-like in their shameful fear, till they reached Dunbar, and behind its gates allowed themselves to breathe more freely and to congratulate themselves upon the dangers they had escaped. Such is the story of the famous, or infamous, "Canter of Coltbrigg," one of the most disgraceful records of the abject collapse of regular troops before the terror of an almost unseen foe that are to be found in history. Well might loyal Edinburgh despair if such were its best defenders. The town was all tumult, the loyalists were in utter gloom, the secretly exulting Jacobites were urging the impossibility of resistance, and the necessity for yielding while yielding was still an open question. On the top of all this came a summons from the Prince demanding the immediate surrender of the city. A deputation was at once despatched to Gray's Mill, where the Prince had halted, to confer with him. Scarcely had the deputation gone when rumor spread abroad in the town that Cope--Cope the long expected, the almost given up--was actually close at hand, and the weather-cock emotions of the town veered to a new quarter. Perhaps they might be able to hold out after all. The great thing was to gain time. The deputation came back to say that Prince Charles must have a distinct answer to his summons before two o'clock in the morning, and it was now ten at night. Still spurred by the hope of gaining time, and allowing Cope to arrive, if, indeed, he were arriving, the deputation was sent back again. But the Prince refused to see them, and the deputation returned to the city and all unconsciously decided the fate of Edinburgh. Lochiel and Murray, with some five hundred Camerons, had crept close to the walls under the cover of the darkness of the night, in the hope of finding some means of surprising the city. Hidden close by the Netherbow port they saw the coach which had carried the deputation home drive up and demand admittance. The admittance, which was readily granted to the coach, could not well be refused to the Highlanders, who leaped up the moment the doors were opened, overpowered the guard, and entered the town. Edinburgh awoke in the morning to find its doubts at an end. It was in the hands of the Highlanders. Jacobite Edinburgh went wild with delight over its hero Prince. He entered Holyrood with the white rose in his bonnet and the star of St. Andrew on his breast, through enthusiastic crowds that fought eagerly for a nearer sight of his face or the privilege of touching his hand. The young Prince looked his best; the hereditary melancholy which cast its shadow over the faces of all the Stuarts was for the moment dissipated. Flushed with easy triumph, popular applause, and growing hope, the young Prince entered the palace of his ancestors like a king returning to his own. James Hepburn, of Keith, with drawn sword, led the way; beautiful women distributed white cockades to enraptured Jacobites; the stateliest chivalry of Scotland made obeisance to its rightful Prince. The intoxicating day ended with a great ball at the palace, at which the youthful grace of Charles Stuart confirmed the charm that already belonged to the adventurous and victorious Prince of Wales. September 17, 1745, was one of the brightest days in the Stuart calendar. The conquest of Edinburgh was but the prelude to greater glories. Cope was rallying his forces at Dunbar--was marching to the relief of Edinburgh. Charles, acting on the advice of his generals, marched out to meet him. Cope's capacity for blundering was by no means exhausted. He affected a contemptuous disregard for his foes, delayed attack in defiance of his wisest generals, was taken unawares in the gray morning of the 21st, at Prestonpans, and routed completely and ignominiously in five minutes. Seldom has it been the misfortune of an English general to experience so thorough, so humiliating a defeat. The wild charges of the Highlandmen broke up the ordered ranks of the English troops in hopeless confusion; almost all the infantry was cut to pieces, and the cavalry escaped only by desperate flight. Cope's Dragoons were accustomed to flight by this time; the clatter of their horses' hoofs as they cantered from Coltbrigg was still in their ears, and as they once again tore in shameless flight up the Edinburgh High Street they might well have reflected upon the rapidity with which such experiences repeated themselves. General Preston, of the castle, refused to admit the cowards within his gate, so there was nothing for them but to turn their horses' heads again, and spur off into the west country. As for Cope, he managed to collect some ragged remnant of his ruined army about him, and to make off with all speed to Berwick, where he was received by Lord Mark Ker with the scornful assurance that he was the first commander-in-chief in Europe who had brought with him the news of his own defeat. The victorious Highlanders were unable, if they had wished, to follow up the flight, owing to their lack of cavalry. They remained on the field to ascertain their own losses and to count their spoil. The losses were trifling, the gain was great. Only thirty Highlanders were killed, only seventy wounded, in that astonishing battle. As for the gain, not merely were the honorable trophies of victory, the colors and the standards, left in Highland hands, but the artillery and the supplies, with some two thousand pounds in money, offered the Prince's troops a solid reward for their daring. It is to the credit of Charles that after the fury of attack was over he insisted upon the wounded enemy and the prisoners being treated with all humanity. An incident is told of him which brings into relief the better qualities of his race. One of his officers, pointing to the ghastly field all strewn with dead bodies, with severed limbs and mutilated trunks, said to the Prince, "Sir, behold your enemies at your feet." The Prince sighed. "They are my father's subjects," he said sadly, as he turned away. The battle of Prestonpans is enshrined in Jacobite memories as the battle of Gladsmuir, for a reason very characteristic of the Stuarts and their followers. Some queer old book of prophecies had foretold, more than a century earlier, that there should be a battle at Gladsmuir. The battle of Prestonpans was not fought really on Gladsmuir at all. Gladsmuir lies a good mile away from the scene of Charles' easy triumph and Cope's inglorious rout; but for enthusiastic Jacobite purposes it was near enough to seem an absolute fulfilment of the venerable prediction. A battle was to be fought at Gladsmuir; go to, then--a battle _was_ fought at Gladsmuir, or _near_ Gladsmuir, which is very much the same thing: anyhow, not very far away from Gladsmuir. And so the Jacobites were contented, and more than ever convinced of the advantages of prophecy in the affairs of practical politics. Some busy days were passed in Edinburgh in which councils of war alternated with semiregal entertainments, and in which the Prince employed his ready command of language in paying graceful compliments to the pretty women who wore the white cockade, and in issuing proclamations in which the Union was dissolved and religious liberty promised. One thing the young Prince could not be induced to do: none of the arguments of his counsellors could prevail upon him to threaten severe measures against the prisoners fallen into his hands. It was urged that unless the government treated their prisoners as prisoners of war and not as rebels, the Prince would be well advised to retaliate by equal harshness to the captives in his power. But on this point the Prince was obdurate. He would not take in cold blood the lives that he had saved in the heat of action. Then, and all through this meteoric campaign, the conduct of Charles was characterized by a sincere humanity, which stands out in startling contrast with the cruelties practised later by his enemy, the "Butcher of Cumberland." It prevented the Prince from gaining an important military advantage by the reduction of Edinburgh castle. He attempted the reduction of the castle by cutting off its supplies, but, when the general in command threatened to open fire upon the town in consequence, Charles immediately rescinded the order, although his officers urged that the destruction of a few houses, and even the loss of a few lives, was, in a military sense, of scant importance in comparison with the capture of so valuable a stronghold as Edinburgh castle. The Prince held firmly to his resolve, and Edinburgh castle remained to the end in the hands of the royal troops. Charles displayed a great objection, too, to any plundering or lawless behavior on the part of his wild Highland army. We learn from the Bland Burges papers that when the house of Lord Somerville, who was opposed to the Prince, was molested by a party of Highlanders, the Prince, on hearing of it, sent an apology to Lord Somerville, and an officer's guard to protect him from further annoyance. But time was running on, and it was necessary to take action again. England was waking up to a sense of its peril. Armies were gathering. The King had come back from Hanover, the troops were almost all recalled from Flanders. It was time to make a fresh stroke. Charles resolved upon the bold course of striking south at once for England, and early in November he marched. He set off on the famous march south. In this undertaking, as before, the same extraordinary good-fortune attended upon the Stuart arms. His little army of less than six thousand men reached Carlisle, reached Manchester, without opposition. On December 4th he was at Derby, only one hundred twenty-seven miles from London. Once again, by skill or by good-fortune, he had contrived to slip past the English general sent out to bar his way. Cumberland with his forces was at Stafford, nine miles farther from the capital than the young Prince, who was now only six days from the city, with all his hopes and his ambitions ahead of him, and behind him the hostile army of the general he had eluded. Never, perhaps, in the history of warfare did an invader come so near the goal of his success and throw it so wantonly away; for that is what Charles did. With all that he had come for apparently within his reach, he did not reach out to take it; the crown of England was in the hollow of his hand, and he opened his hand and let the prize fall from it. It is difficult to understand now what curious madness prompted the Prince's advisers to counsel him as they did, or the Prince to act upon their counsels. He was in the heart of England; he was hard by the capital, which he would have to reach if he was ever to mount the throne of his fathers. He had a devoted army with him--it would seem as if he had only to advance and to win--and yet, with a fatuity which makes the student of history gasp, he actually resolved to retreat, and did retreat. It is true, and must not be forgotten, that Charles did not know, and could not know, all his advantages; that many of the most urgent arguments for advance could not present themselves to his mind. He could not know the panic in which Hanoverian London was cast; he could not know that desperate thoughts of joining the Stuart cause were crossing the craven mind of the Duke of Newcastle; he could not know that the frightened _bourgeoisie_ were making a maddened rush upon the Bank of England; he could not know that the King of England had stored all his most precious possessions on board of yachts that waited for him at the Tower stairs, ready at a moment's notice to carry him off again into the decent obscurity of the electorship of Hanover. He could not know the exultation of the metropolitan Jacobites; he could not know the perturbation of the Hanoverian side; he could not know the curious apathy with which a large proportion of the people regarded the whole proceeding, people who were as willing to accept one king as another, and who would have witnessed with absolute unconcern "George the Elector" scuttling away from the Tower stairs at one end of the town, while "Charles the Prince" entered it from another. These factors in his favor he did not know, could not know, could hardly be expected even to guess. But what he could know, what he did know, was this: he was at the head of a devoted army, which if it was small had hitherto found its career marked by triumph after triumph. He was in the heart of England, and had already found that the Stuart war-cry was powerful enough to rally many an English gentleman to his standard. Sir Walter Williams Wynn, whom men called the "King of Wales," was on his way to join the Prince of Wales. So was Lord Barrymore, the member of Parliament; so was many another gallant gentleman of name, of position, of wealth. Manchester had given him the heroic, the ill-fated, James Dawson, and a regiment three hundred strong. Lord James Drummond had landed at Montrose with men, money, and supplies. The Young Chevalier's troops were eager to advance; they were flushed with victories, their hearts were high; they believed, in the wild Gaelic way, in the sanctity of their cause; they believed that the Lord of Hosts was on their side, and such a belief strengthened their hands. For a prince seeking his principality it would seem that there was one course, and one only, to pursue. He might go and take it, and win the great game he played for; or, failing that, he might die as became a royal gentleman, sword in hand and fighting for his rights. The might-have-beens are indeed for the most part a vanity, but we can fairly venture to assert now that if Charles had pushed on he would, for the time at least, have restored the throne of England to the house of Stuart. We may doubt, and doubt with reason, whether any fortuitous succession of events could have confirmed the Stuart hold upon the English crown; but we can scarcely doubt that the hold would have been for the time established, that the Old Pretender would have been King James III, and that George the Elector would have been posting, bag and baggage, to the rococo shades of Herrenhausen. But, as we have said, failing that, if Charles had fallen in battle at the head of his defeated army, how much better that end would have been than the miserable career which was yet to lend no tragic dignity to the prolonged, pitiful, pitiable life of the Young Pretender! However, for good or evil, the insane decision was made. Charles' council of war persistently argued for retreat. There were thirty thousand men in the field against them. If they were defeated they would be cut to pieces, and the Prince, if he escaped slaughter, would escape it only to die as a rebel on Tower Hill, whereas, if they were once back in Scotland, they would find new friends, new adherents, and even if they failed to win the English crown, might at least count, with reasonable security, upon converting Scotland, as of old, into a separate kingdom with a Stuart king on its throne. By arguments such as these the Prince's officers caused him to throw away the one chance he had of gaining all that he had crossed the seas to gain. It is only fair to remember that the young Prince himself was from the first to last in favor of the braver course of boldly advancing upon London. When his too prudent counsellors told him that if he advanced he would be in Newgate in a fortnight, he still persisted in pressing his own advice. Perhaps he thought that where the stake was so great, and the chance of success not too forbidding, failure might as well end in Newgate as in the purlieus of petty foreign courts. But, with the exception of his Irish officers, he had nobody on his side. The Duke of Perth and Sir John Gordon had a little plan of their own. They thought that a march into Wales would be a good middle course to adopt, but their suggestion found no backers. All Charles' other counsellors were to a man in favor of retreat, and Charles, after at first threatening to regard as traitors all who urged such a course, at last gave way. Sullenly he issued the disastrous order to retreat, sullenly he rode in the rear of that retreat, assuming the bearing of a man who is no longer responsible for failure. The cheery good-humor, the bright heroism, which had so far characterized him he had now completely lost, and he rode, a dejected, a despairing, almost a doomed man, among his disheartened followers. It is dreary reading the record of that retreat; yet it is starred by some bright episodes. At Clifton there was an engagement where the retreating Highlanders held their own, and inflicted a distinct defeat upon Cumberland's army. Again, when they were once more upon Scottish soil, they struck a damaging blow at Hawley's army at Falkirk. But the end came at last on the day when the dwindling, discouraged, retreating army tried its strength with Cumberland at Culloden. Men of the Cumberland type are to be found in all ages and in history of all nations. Men in whom the beast is barely under the formal restraint of ordered society, men in whom a savage sensuality is accompanied by a savage cruelty, men who take a hideous physical delight in bloodshed, darken the pages of all chronicles. It would be unjust to the memory of Cumberland to say that in his own peculiar line he had many, if any, superiors; that many men are more worthy of the fame which he won. To be remembered with a just loathing as a man by whom brutalities of all kinds were displayed, almost to the point of madness, is not the kind of memory most men desire; it is probably not the kind of memory that even Cumberland himself desired to leave behind him. But if he had cherished the ambition of handing down his name to other times, "linked with one virtue and a thousand crimes"; if he had deliberately proposed to force himself upon the attention of posterity as a mere abominable monster, he could hardly have acted with more persistent determination toward such a purpose. In Scotland, for long years after he was dead and dust, the mention of his name was like a curse; and even in England, where the debt due to his courage counted for much, no one has been found to palliate his conduct or to whitewash his infamy. As "Butcher" Cumberland he was known while he lived; as Butcher Cumberland he will be remembered so long as men remember the "Forty-five" and the horrors after Culloden fight. Some of those horrors no doubt were due to the wild fury of revenge that always follows a wild fear. The invasion of the young Stuart had struck terror; the revenge for that terror was bloodily taken. Everything contributed to make Culloden fatal to the fortunes of the Pretender. The discouragement of some of the clans, the disaffection of others, the wholesale desertions which had thinned the ranks of the rebel army, the Prince's sullen distrust of his advisers, the position of the battle-field, the bitter wintry weather, which drove a blinding hail and snow into the eyes of the Highlanders--all these were so many elements of danger that would have seriously handicapped a better conditioned army than that which Charles Stuart was able to oppose to Cumberland. But the Prince's army was not well conditioned: it was demoralized by retreat, hungry, ragged, dizzy with lack of sleep. Even the terrors of the desperate Highland attack were no longer so terrible to the English troops. Cumberland had taught his men, in order to counteract the defence which the target offered to the bodies of the Highlanders, to thrust with their bayonets in a slanting direction--not against the man immediately opposite to its point, but at the unguarded right side of the man attacking their comrade on the right. After enduring for some time the terrible cannonade of the English, the battle began when the Macintoshes charged with all their old desperate valor upon the English. But the English were better prepared than before, and met the onslaught with such a volley as shattered the Highland attack and literally matted the ground with Highland bodies. Then the royal troops advanced, and drove the rebels in helpless rout before them. The fortunes of the fight might have gone very differently if all the Highlanders had been as true to their cause as those who formed this attacking right wing. "English gold and Scotch traitors," says an old ballad of another fight, "won," "but no Englishman." To no English gold can the defeat of Culloden be attributed, but unhappily Scotch treason played its part in the disaster. The Macdonalds had been placed at the left wing of battle instead of at the right, which they considered to be their proper place. Furious at what they believed to be an insult, they took no part whatever in the fight after they had discharged a single volley, but stood and looked on in sullen apathy while the left wing and centre of the Prince's army were being whirled into space by the Royalist advance. The Duke of Perth appealed desperately and in vain to their hearts, reminded them of their old-time valor, and offered, if they would only follow his cry of "Claymore," to change his name and be henceforward called Macdonald. In vain Keppoch rushed forward almost alone, and met his death, moaning that the children of his tribe had deserted him. There are few things in history more tragic than the picture of that inert mass of moody Highlanders, frozen into traitors through an insane pride and savage jealousy, witnessing the ruin of their cause and the slaughter of their comrades unmoved, and listening impassively to the entreaties of the gallant Perth and the death groans of the heroic Keppoch. In a few minutes the battle was over, the rout was complete; the rebel army was in full retreat, with a third of its number lying on the field of battle; the Duke of Cumberland was master of the field, of all the Highland baggage and artillery, of fourteen stands, and more than two thousand muskets. Culloden was fought and won. It is not necessary to believe the stories that have been told of Charles Stuart, attributing to him personal cowardice on the fatal day of Culloden. The evidence in favor of such stories is of the slightest; there is nothing in the Prince's earlier conduct to justify the accusation, and there is sufficient evidence in favor of the much more likely version, that Charles was with difficulty prevented from casting away his life in one desperate charge when the fortune of the day was decided. It is part of a prince's business to be brave, and if Charles Stuart had been lacking in that essential quality of sovereignty he could scarcely have concealed the want until the day of Culloden, or have inspired the clans with the personal enthusiasm which they so readily evinced for him. Through all those stormy and terrible days, over which poetry and romance have so often and so fondly lingered, the fugitive found that he had still in the season of his misfortunes friends as devoted as he had known in the hours of his triumph. His adventures in woman's dress, his escape from the English ship, the touching devotion of Flora Macdonald, the loyalty of Lochiel, the fidelity of Cluny Macpherson--all these things have been immortalized in a thousand tales and ballads, and will be remembered in the North Country as long as tales and ballads continue to charm. At last, at Lochnanuagh, the Prince embarked upon a French ship that had been sent for him, and early in October, 1746, he landed in Brittany. FOOTNOTES: [30] Sir John Cope, commander-in-chief of King George's forces. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN EXPERIMENTS WITH ELECTRICITY A.D. 1747 JOHN BIGELOW AND BENJAMIN FRANKLIN It was not only by his demonstration that lightning is identical with electricity that Franklin did an important work in connection with electrical science. He is also entitled to great credit for the stimulus imparted by his experiments and writings to further discoveries in this field. Franklin was by far the most practical among the natural philosophers of his time; and the development of science in the knowledge and application of electricity has continued to reflect upon mankind his genius for the useful. The ancients had no scientific acquaintance with electricity. The early Greeks, so far as known, observed but a single phenomenon in connection with it--the electrification of amber by friction. Aristotle and Pliny note the production of electricity by certain fishes, especially the torpedo, a ray possessing an electrical apparatus with which it kills or stuns its prey and defends itself against its enemies. Not before the sixteenth century of the Christian era was there any recorded scientific study of electrical phenomena. The early predecessors of Franklin, such as Gilbert, Boyle, and others, are considered to have created the science of electricity and magnetism. The invention of the Leyden jar or vial, in 1745, said to have been "hit upon by at least three persons working independently," was a very important advance. The work of Franklin, following so soon upon the then latest step of progress in Europe, is best made known to the world through his own writings, particularly in the letters, selected by Bigelow, which appear in the present account of the philosopher's experiments. While on a visit to Boston in 1746 Franklin witnessed some electrical experiments performed by a Mr. Spence, recently arrived from Scotland. Shortly after his return to Philadelphia the Library Company received from Mr. Collinson, of London, and a member of the Royal Society, a glass tube, with instructions for making experiments with it. With this tube Franklin began a course of experiments which resulted in discoveries which, humanly speaking, seem to be exerting a larger material influence upon the industries of the world than any other discovery of the human intellect. Dr. Stuber, then a resident of Philadelphia, and author of the first continuation of Franklin's _Life_, who seems to have enjoyed peculiar opportunities of obtaining full and authentic information upon the subject, gives us the following account of the observations which this letter brought for the first time to the notice of the world through Mr. Collinson. "His observations," says Dr. Stuber, "he communicated, in a series of letters, to his friend Collinson, the first of which is dated March 28, 1747. In these he shows the power of points in drawing and throwing off the electrical matter which had hitherto escaped the notice of electricians. He also made the grand discovery of a plus and minus, or of a positive and negative, state of electricity. We give him the honor of this without hesitation; although the English have claimed it for their countryman, Dr. Watson. Watson's paper is dated January 21, 1748; Franklin's, July 11, 1747, several months prior. Shortly after Franklin, from his principles of the plus and minus state, explained in a satisfactory manner the phenomena of the Leyden vial, first observed by Mr. Cuneus, or by Professor Muschenbroeck, of Leyden, which had much perplexed philosophers. He showed clearly that when charged the bottle contained no more electricity than before, but that as much was taken from one side as was thrown on the other; and that to discharge it nothing was necessary but to produce a communication between the two sides, by which the equilibrium might be restored, and that then no sign of electricity would remain. He afterward demonstrated by experiments that the electricity did not reside in the coating, as had been supposed, but in the pores of the glass itself. After a vial was charged he removed the coating, and found that upon applying a new coating the shock might still be received. In the year 1749 he first suggested his idea of explaining the phenomena of thunder-gusts and of the aurora borealis upon electrical principles. He points out many particulars in which lightning and electricity agree, and he adduces many facts, and reasonings from facts, in support of his positions. "In the same year he received the astonishingly bold and grand idea of ascertaining the truth of his doctrine by actually drawing down the lightning, by means of sharp-pointed iron rods raised into the region of the clouds. Even in this uncertain state his passion to be useful to mankind displayed itself in a powerful manner. Admitting the identity of electricity and lightning, and knowing the power of points in repelling bodies charged with electricity, and in conducting their fires silently and imperceptibly, he suggested the idea of securing houses, ships, etc., from being damaged by lightning, by erecting pointed rods that should rise some feet above the most elevated part, and descend some feet into the ground or water. The effect of these he concluded would be either to prevent a stroke by repelling the cloud beyond the striking distance, or by drawing off the electrical fire which it contained; or, if they could not effect this, they would at least conduct the electric matter to the earth without any injury to the building. "It was not till the summer of 1752 that he was enabled to complete his grand and unparalleled discovery by experiment. The plan which he had originally proposed was to erect, on some high tower or other elevated place, a sentry-box, from which should rise a pointed iron rod, insulated by being fixed in a cake of resin. Electrified clouds passing over this would, he conceived, impart to it a portion of their electricity, which would be rendered evident to the senses by sparks being emitted when a key, the knuckle, or other conductor was presented to it. Philadelphia at this time afforded no opportunity of trying an experiment of this kind. While Franklin was waiting for the erection of a spire, it occurred to him that he might have more ready access to the region of clouds by means of a common kite. He prepared one by fastening two cross sticks to a silken handkerchief, which would not suffer so much from the rain as paper. To the upright stick was affixed an iron point. The string was, as usual, of hemp, except the lower end, which was silk. Where the hempen string terminated, a key was fastened. With this apparatus, on the appearance of a thunder-gust approaching he went out into the commons, accompanied by his son, to whom alone he communicated his intentions, well knowing the ridicule which, too generally for the interest of science, awaits unsuccessful experiments in philosophy. He placed himself under a shed, to avoid the rain; his kite was raised, a thunder-cloud passed over it, no sign of electricity appeared. He almost despaired of success, when suddenly he observed the loose fibres of his string to move toward an erect position. He now presented his knuckle to the key and received a strong spark. How exquisite must his sensations have been at this moment! On this experiment depended the fate of his theory. If he succeeded, his name would rank high among those who had improved science; if he failed, he must inevitably be subjected to the derision of mankind, or, what is worse, their pity, as a well-meaning man, but a weak, silly projector. The anxiety with which he looked for the result of his experiment may be easily conceived. Doubts and despair had begun to prevail, when the fact was ascertained, in so clear a manner that even the most incredulous could no longer withhold their assent. Repeated sparks were drawn from the key, a vial was charged, a shock given, and all the experiments made which are usually performed with electricity. "About a month before this period some ingenious Frenchman had completed the discovery in the manner originally proposed by Dr. Franklin. The letters which he sent to Mr. Collinson, it is said, were refused a place in the _Transactions_ of the Royal Society of London. However this may be, Collinson published them in a separate volume, under the title of _New Experiments and Observations on Electricity, made at Philadelphia, in America_. They were read with avidity, and soon translated into different languages. A very incorrect French translation fell into the hands of the celebrated Buffon, who, notwithstanding the disadvantages under which the work labored, was much pleased with it, and repeated the experiments with success. He prevailed on his friend, M. Dalibard, to give his countrymen a more correct translation of the works of the American electrician. This contributed much toward spreading a knowledge of Franklin's principles in France. The King, Louis XV, hearing of these experiments, expressed a wish to be a spectator of them. A course of experiments was given at the seat of the Duc d'Ayen, at St. Germain, by M. de Lor. The applause which the King bestowed upon Franklin excited in Buffon, Dalibard, and De Lor an earnest desire of ascertaining the truth of his theory of thunder-gusts. Buffon erected his apparatus on the tower of Montbar, M. Dalibard at Marly-la-Ville, and De Lor at his house in the Estrapade at Paris, some of the highest ground in that capital. Dalibard's machine first showed signs of electricity. On May 16, 1752, a thunder-cloud passed over it, in the absence of M. Dalibard, and a number of sparks were drawn from it by Coiffier, joiner, with whom Dalibard had left directions how to proceed, and by M. Paulet, the prior of Marly-la-Ville. "An account of this experiment was given to the Royal Academy of Sciences, by M. Dalibard, in a memoir dated May 13, 1752. On May 18th, M. de Lor proved equally as successful with the apparatus erected at his own house. These philosophers soon excited those of other parts of Europe to repeat the experiment; among whom none signalized themselves more than Father Beccaria, of Turin, to whose observations science is much indebted. Even the cold regions of Russia were penetrated by the ardor for discovery. Professor Richmann bade fair to add much to the stock of knowledge on this subject, when an unfortunate flash from his conductor put a period to his existence. "By these experiments Franklin's theory was established in the most convincing manner. "Besides these great principles Franklin's letters on electricity contain a number of facts and hints which have contributed greatly toward reducing this branch of knowledge to a science. His friend, Mr. Kinnersley, communicated to him a discovery of the different kinds of electricity excited by rubbing glass and sulphur. This was first observed by M. du Faye, but it was for many years neglected. The philosophers were disposed to account for the phenomena rather from a difference in the quantity of electricity collected, and even Du Faye himself seems to have at last adopted this doctrine. Franklin at first entertained the same idea, but upon repeating the experiments he perceived that Mr. Kinnersley was right, and that the _vitreous_ and _resinous_ electricity of Du Faye were nothing more than the _positive_ and _negative_ states, which he had before observed, and that the glass globe charged positively, or increased, the quantity of electricity on the prime conductor, while the globe of sulphur diminished its natural quantity, or charged negatively. These experiments and observations opened a new field for investigation, upon which electricians entered with avidity; and their labors have added much to the stock of our knowledge. "Franklin's letters have been translated into most of the European languages, and into Latin. In proportion as they have become known, his principles have been adopted." In speaking of the first publication of his papers on electricity, Franklin himself says: "Obliged as we were to Mr. Collinson for the present of the tube, etc., I thought it right he should be informed of our success in using it, and wrote him several letters containing accounts of our experiments. He got them read in the Royal Society, where they were at first not thought worth so much notice as to be printed in their _Transactions_. One paper, which I wrote to Mr. Kinnersley, on the sameness of lightning with electricity, I sent to Mr. Mitchel, an acquaintance of mine, and one of the members also of that society, who wrote me word that it had been read, but was laughed at by the connoisseurs. The papers, however, being shown to Dr. Fothergill, he thought them of too much value to be stifled, and advised the printing of them. Mr. Collinson then gave them to Cave for publication in his _Gentleman's Magazine_, but he chose to print them separately in a pamphlet, and Dr. Fothergill wrote the preface. Cave, it seemed, judged rightly for his profession, for by the additions that arrived afterward they swelled to a quarto volume, which has had five editions and cost him nothing for copy-money." The following is an extract from the preface to the first edition of the pamphlet published by Cave, as above mentioned: "It may be necessary to acquaint the reader that the following observations and experiments were not drawn up with the view to their being made public, but were communicated at different times, and most of them in letters, written on various topics, as matter only of private amusement. "But some persons to whom they were read, and who had themselves been conversant in electrical disquisitions, were of opinion they contained so many curious and interesting particulars relative to this affair, that it would be doing a kind of injustice to the public to confine them solely to the limits of a private acquaintance. "The editor was therefore prevailed upon to commit such extracts of letters and other detached pieces as were in his hands to the press, without waiting for the ingenious author's permission so to do; and this was done with the less hesitation, as it was apprehended the author's engagements in other affairs would scarce afford him leisure to give the public his reflections and experiments on the subject, finished with that care and precision of which the treatise before us shows he is alike studious and capable." Dr. Priestley, in his _History of Electricity_, published in the year 1767, gives a full account of Franklin's experiments and discoveries. "Nothing was ever written upon the subject of electricity," he says, "which was more generally read and admired in all parts of Europe than these letters. There is hardly any European language into which they have not been translated; and, as if this were not sufficient to make them properly known, a translation of them has lately been made into Latin. It is not easy to say whether we are most pleased with the simplicity and perspicuity with which these letters are written, the modesty with which the author proposes every hypothesis of his own, or the noble frankness with which he relates his mistakes, when they were corrected by subsequent experiments. "Though the English have not been backward in acknowledging the great merit of this philosopher, he has had the singular good-fortune to be, perhaps, even more celebrated abroad than at home; so that, to form a just idea of the great and deserved reputation of Dr. Franklin, we must read the foreign publications on the subject of electricity, in many of which the terms Franklinism,' 'Franklinist,' and the 'Franklinian System' occur in almost every page. In consequence of this, Dr. Franklin's principles bid fair to be handed down to posterity as equally expressive of the true principles of electricity, as the Newtonian philosophy is of the system of nature in general." The observations and theories of Franklin met with high favor in France, where his experiments were repeated and the results verified to the admiration of the scientific world. In the year 1753 his friend Peter Collinson wrote to him from London: "The King of France strictly commands the Abbé Mazéas to write a letter in the politest terms to the Royal Society, to return the King's thanks and compliments, in an express manner, to Mr. Franklin, of Pennsylvania, for his useful discoveries in electricity, and the application of pointed rods to prevent the terrible effect of thunder-storms." And the same Mr. Collinson wrote as follows to the Reverend Jared Eliot, of Connecticut, in a letter dated London, November 22, 1753: "Our friend Franklin will be honored on St. Andrew's Day, the 30th instant, the anniversary of the Royal Society, when the Right Honorable the Earl of Macclesfield will make an oration on Mr. Franklin's new discoveries in electricity, and, as a reward and encouragement, will bestow on him a gold medal." This ceremony accordingly took place, and the medal was conferred. "PHILADELPHIA, 28 Mch., 1747. "_To Peter Collinson_: "SIR--Your kind present of an electric tube, with directions for using it, has put several of us on making electrical experiments, in which we have observed some particular phenomena that we look upon to be new. I shall therefore communicate them to you in my next, though possibly they may not be new to you, as among the numbers daily employed in those experiments on your side of the water, it is probable some one or other has hit upon the same observations. For my own part, I never was before engaged in any study that so totally engrossed my attention and my time as this has lately done; for what with making experiments when I can be alone, and repeating them to my friends and acquaintance, who, from the novelty of the thing, come continually in crowds to see them, I have, during some months past, had little leisure for anything else. I am, etc., "B. FRANKLIN." "PHILADELPHIA, 11 July, 1747. "_To Peter Collinson_: "SIR--In my last I informed you that in pursuing our electrical inquiries we had observed some particular phenomena which we looked upon to be new, and of which I promised to give you some account, though I apprehended they might not possibly be new to you, as so many hands are daily employed in electrical experiments on your side of the water, some or other of which would probably hit on the same observations. "The first thing is the wonderful effect of pointed bodies, both in _drawing off_ and _throwing off_ the electrical fire. For example: "Place an iron shot of three or four inches diameter on the mouth of a clean, dry glass bottle. By a fine silken thread from the ceiling, right over the mouth of the bottle, suspend a small cork ball about the bigness of a marble, the thread of such a length as that the cork ball may rest against the side of the shot. Electrify the shot, and the ball will be repelled to the distance of four or five inches, more or less, according to the quantity of electricity. When in this state, if you present to the shot the point of a long, slender, sharp bodkin, at six or eight inches distance, the repellency is instantly destroyed, and the cork flies to the shot. A blunt body must be brought within an inch and draw a spark to produce the same effect. To prove that the electrical fire is drawn off by the point, if you take the blade of the bodkin out of the wooden handle and fix it in a stick of sealing-wax, and then present it at the distance aforesaid, or if you bring it very near, no such effect follows; but sliding one finger along the wax till you touch the blade, the ball flies to the shot immediately. If you present the point in the dark you will see, sometimes at a foot distance and more, a light gather upon it, like that of a firefly or glow-worm; the less sharp the point, the nearer you must bring it to observe the light; and at whatever distance you see the light you may draw off the electrical fire and destroy the repellency. If a cork ball so suspended be repelled by the tube, and a point be presented quick to it, though at a considerable distance, it is surprising to see how suddenly it flies back to the tube. Points of wood will do near as well as those of iron, provided the wood is not dry, for perfectly dry wood will no more conduct electricity than sealing-wax. "To show that points will _throw off_ as well as _draw off_ the electrical fire, lay a long sharp needle upon the shot, and you cannot electrize the shot so as to make it repel the cork ball. Or fix a needle to the end of a suspended gun-barrel or iron rod so as to point beyond it like a little bayonet, and while it remains there the gun-barrel or rod cannot, by applying the tube to the other end, be electrized so as to give a spark, the fire continually running out silently at the point. In the dark you may see it make the same appearance as it does in the case before mentioned. "The repellency between the cork ball and the shot is likewise destroyed, 1st, by sifting fine sand on it--this does it gradually; 2dly, by breathing on it; 3dly, by making a smoke about it from burning wood; 4thly, by candle-light, even though the candle is at a foot distance--these do it suddenly. The light of a bright coal from a wood fire, and the light of a red-hot iron, do it likewise, but not at so great a distance. Smoke from dry rosin dropped on hot iron does not destroy the repellency, but is attracted by both shot and cork ball, forming proportionable atmospheres round them, making them look beautifully, somewhat like some of the figures in Burnet's or Whiston's _Theory of the Earth_. "N.B.--This experiment should be made in a closet where the air is very still, or it will be apt to fail. "The light of the sun thrown strongly upon both cork and shot by a looking-glass, for a long time together, does not impair the repellency in the least. This difference between firelight and sunlight is another thing that seems new and extraordinary to us. "We had for some time been of opinion that the electrical fire was not created by friction, but collected, being really an element diffused among and attracted by other matter, particularly by water and metals. We had even discovered and demonstrated its afflux to the electrical sphere, as well as its efflux, by means of little, light windmill wheels made of stiff paper vanes fixed obliquely, and turning freely on fine wire axes; also by little wheels of the same matter, but formed like water-wheels. Of the disposition and application of which wheels, and the various phenomena resulting, I could, if I had time, fill you a sheet. The impossibility of electrizing one's self, though standing on wax, by rubbing the tube, and drawing the fire from it; and the manner of doing it by passing it near a person or thing standing on the floor, etc., had also occurred to us some months before. Mr. Watson's ingenious _Sequel_ came to hand; and these were some of the new things I intended to have communicated to you. But now I need only mention some particulars not hinted in that piece, with our reasonings thereupon; though perhaps the latter might well enough be spared. "1. A person standing on wax and rubbing the tube, and another person on wax drawing the fire, they will both of them (provided they do not stand so as to touch one another) appear to be electrized to a person standing on the floor; that is, he will perceive a spark on approaching each of them with his knuckle. "2. But if the persons on wax touch one another during the exciting of the tube, neither of them will appear to be electrized. "3. If they touch one another after exciting the tube, and drawing the fire as aforesaid, there will be a stronger spark between them than was between either of them and the person on the floor. "4. After such strong spark neither of them discover any electricity. "These appearances we attempt to account for thus: We suppose, as aforesaid, that electrical fire is a common element, of which every one of the three persons above mentioned has his equal share, before any operation is begun with the tube. _A_, who stands on wax and rubs the tube, collects the electrical fire from himself into the glass; and, his communication with the common stock being cut off by the wax, his body is not again immediately supplied. _B_ (who stands on wax likewise), passing his knuckle along near the tube, receives the fire which was collected by the glass from _A_; and his communication with the common stock being likewise cut off, he retains the additional quantity received. To _C_, standing on the floor, both appear to be electrized; for he, having only the middle quantity of electrical fire, receives a spark upon approaching _B_, who has an over quantity; but gives one to _A_, who has an under quantity. If _A_ and _B_ approach to touch each other, the spark is stronger, because the difference between them is greater. After such touch there is no spark between either of them and _C_, because the electrical fire in all is reduced to the original equality. If they touch while electrizing, the equality is never destroyed, the fire only circulating. Hence have arisen some new terms among us. We say _B_ (and bodies like circumstanced) is electrized _positively_; _A_, _negatively_. Or rather, _B_ is electrized _plus_; _A_, _minus_. And we daily in our experiments electrize bodies _plus_ or _minus_, as we think proper. To electrize _plus_ or _minus_ no more needs to be known than this: that the parts of the tube or sphere that are rubbed do, in the instant of the friction, attract the electrical fire, and therefore take it from the thing rubbing; the same parts immediately, as the friction upon them ceases, are disposed to give the fire they have received to any body that has less. Thus you may circulate it as Mr. Watson has shown; you may also accumulate it or subtract it, upon or from any body, as you connect that body with the rubber or with the receiver, the communication with the common stock being cut off. We think that ingenious gentleman was deceived when he imagined (in his _Sequel_) that the electrical fire came down the wire from the ceiling to the gun-barrel, thence to the sphere, and so electrized the machine and the man turning the wheel, etc. We suppose it was _driven off_, and not brought on through that wire; and that the machine and man, etc., were electrized _minus_--that is, had less electrical fire in them than things in common. "As the vessel is just upon sailing, I cannot give you so large an account of American electricity as I intended; I shall only mention a few particulars more. We find granulated lead better to fill the vial with than water, being easily warmed, and keeping warm and dry in damp air. We fire spirits with the wire of the vial. We light candles, just blown out, by drawing a spark among the smoke between the wire and snuffers. We represent lightning by passing the wire in the dark over a China plate that has gilt flowers, or applying it to gilt frames of looking-glasses, etc. We electrize a person twenty or more times running, with a touch of the finger on the wire, thus: He stands on wax. Give him the electrized bottle in his hand. Touch the wire with your finger and then touch his hand or face; there are sparks every time. We increase the force of the electrical kiss vastly, thus: Let _A_ and _B_ stand on wax, or _A_ on wax and _B_ on the floor; give one of them the electrized vial in hand; let the other take hold of the wire; there will be a small spark; but when their lips approach they will be struck and shocked. The same if another gentleman and lady, _C_ and _D_, standing also on wax, and joining hands with _A_ and _B_, salute or shake hands. We suspend by fine silk thread a counterfeit spider made of a small piece of burnt cork, with legs of linen thread, and a grain or two of lead stuck in him to give him more weight. Upon the table, over which he hangs, we stick a wire upright, as high as the vial and wire, four or five inches from the spider; then we animate him by setting the electrical vial at the same distance on the other side of him; he will immediately fly to the wire of the vial, bend his legs in touching it, then spring off and fly to the wire of the vial, playing with his legs against both, in a very entertaining manner, appearing perfectly alive to the persons unacquainted. He will continue this motion an hour or more in dry weather. We electrify, upon wax in the dark, a book that has a double line of gold round upon the covers, and then apply a knuckle to the gilding; the fire appears everywhere upon the gold like a flash of lightning; not upon the leather, nor if you touch the leather instead of the gold. We rub our tubes with buckskin and observe always to keep the same side to the tube and never to sully the tube by handling; thus they work readily and easily without the least fatigue, especially if kept in tight pasteboard cases lined with flannel, and sitting close to the tube. This I mention because the European papers on electricity frequently speak of rubbing the tubes as a fatiguing exercise. Our spheres are fixed on iron axes which pass through them. At one end of the axes there is a small handle with which you turn the sphere like a common grindstone. This we find very commodious, as the machine takes up but little room, is portable, and may be enclosed in a tight box when not in use. It is true the sphere does not turn so swift as when the great wheel is used; but swiftness we think of little importance, since a few turns will charge the vial, etc., sufficiently. I am, etc., "B. FRANKLIN." (Read before the Royal Society, December 21, 1752.) "PHILADELPHIA, 19 October, 1752. "_To Peter Collinson_: SIR--As frequent mention is made in publick papers from Europe of the success of the Philadelphia Experiment for drawing the electric fire from clouds by means of pointed rods of iron erected on high buildings, etc., it may be agreeable to the curious to be informed that the same experiment has succeeded in Philadelphia, though made in a different and more easy manner, which is as follows: Make a small cross of two light strips of cedar, the arms so long as to reach to the four corners of a large thin silk handkerchief when extended; tie the corners of the handkerchief to the extremities of the cross, so you have the body of a kite; which, being properly accommodated with a tail, loop, and string, will rise in the air, like those made of paper; but this being of silk is fitter to bear the wet and wind of a thunder-gust without tearing. To the top of the upright stick of the cross is to be fixed a very sharp-pointed wire, rising a foot or more above the wood. To the end of the twine, next the hand, is to be tied a silk ribbon; and where the silk and twine join, a key may be fastened. This kite is to be raised when a thunder-gust appears to be coming on, and the person who holds the string must stand within a door or window, or under some cover, so that the silk ribbon may not be wet; and care must be taken that the twine does not touch the frame of the door or window. As soon as any of the thunder-clouds come over the kite, the pointed wire will draw the electric fire from them, and the kite, with all the twine, will be electrified, and the loose filaments of the twine will stand out every way, and be attracted by an approaching finger. And when the rain has wetted the kite and twine, so that it can conduct the electric fire freely, you will find it stream out plentifully from the key on the approach of your knuckle. At this key the vial may be charged; and from electric fire thus obtained spirits may be kindled, and all the other electric experiments be performed which are usually done by the help of a rubbed glass globe or tube, and thereby the sameness of the electric matter with that of lightning completely demonstrated. "B. FRANKLIN." VOLTAIRE DIRECTS EUROPEAN THOUGHT FROM GENEVA A.D. 1755 JOHN MORLEY GEORGE W. KITCHIN To set an exact date as marking the culmination of the vast influence of Voltaire upon the world is not easy. He was the chief leader, the most prominent and central figure, of that widespread intellectual revolt which extended from France over Europe during the middle of the eighteenth century. The spirit of doubt, questioning all ancient institutions, challenging them to prove their truth, arose everywhere, at times mocking, bitter, and superficial, or again earnest, thoughtful, deep as the deepest springs of human being. It has become almost a commonplace to say that Voltaire and his chief successor, Rousseau, caused the French Revolution. François Marie Arouet, who himself assumed his literary name, Voltaire, was born in 1694. He was recognized as among the foremost writers of France at least as early as 1723, and Frederick the Great of Prussia established a friendship with him which resulted in Voltaire's living at the Prussian court as king's chamberlain for nearly three years (1750-1753). It was largely due to Voltaire's influence that the celebrated French _Encyclopædia_, the first volume of which appeared in 1751, took its tone of scepticism, of cold, scientific criticism. It preached heresy and revolution. The publication was repeatedly stopped by the government, but was encouraged by Madame Pompadour and others, and finally finished in 1765. Meanwhile Voltaire, who had been repeatedly exiled from the French court for the daring of his writings, settled near Geneva in 1755 and resided there during his active and fiery old age. The beginning of this residence has, therefore, been selected as marking the acme of his power. From his mountain château his writings poured like a torrent over the surrounding countries. Wherever there was oppression, his voice was raised in protest; wherever there was falsity, his rapier wit assailed it. He held correspondence with and influenced most of the crowned heads of Europe. He became the hero of his countrymen. Christianity, and especially Catholicism, served only too often as his subjects of assault, but he was never, as his enemies called him, an atheist. In 1778, an old man of eighty-three, he ventured to return to Paris to see the production of his last tragedy, _Irene_. Tremendous was the enthusiasm. Paris, grown more Voltairean than Voltaire himself, went mad in its reception of its teacher. The excitement proved too much for his feeble frame, and he died in the full tide of his triumph. JOHN MORLEY When the right sense of historical proportion is more fully developed in men's minds, the name of Voltaire will stand out like the names of the great decisive movements in the European advance, like the Revival of Learning or the Reformation. The existence, character, and career of this extraordinary person constituted in themselves a new and prodigious era. The peculiarities of his individual genius changed the mind and spiritual conformation of France, and in a less degree of the whole of the West, with as far-spreading and invincible an effect as if the work had been wholly done, as it was actually aided, by the sweep of deep-lying collective forces. A new type of belief, and of its shadow, disbelief, was stamped by the impression of his character and work into the intelligence and feeling of his own and the following times. We may think of Voltairism in France somewhat as we think of Catholicism or the Renaissance or Calvinism. It was one of the cardinal liberations of the growing race, one of the emphatic manifestations of some portion of the minds of men, which an immediately foregoing system and creed had either ignored or outraged. Voltairism may stand for the name of the Renaissance of the eighteenth century, for that name takes in all the serious haltings and shortcomings of this strange movement, as well as all its terrible fire, swiftness, sincerity, and strength. The rays from Voltaire's burning and far-shining spirit no sooner struck upon the genius of the time, seated dark and dead like the black stone of Memnon's statue, than the clang of the breaking chord was heard through Europe, and men awoke in new day and more spacious air. The sentimentalist has proclaimed him a mere mocker. To the critic of the schools, ever ready with compendious label, he is the revolutionary destructive. To each alike of the countless orthodox sects his name is the symbol for the prevailing of the gates of hell. Erudition figures him as shallow and a trifler; culture condemns him for pushing his hatred of spiritual falsehood much too seriously; Christian charity feels constrained to unmask a demon from the depths of the pit. The plain men of the earth, who are apt to measure the merits of a philosopher by the strength of his sympathy with existing sources of comfort, would generally approve the saying of Dr. Johnson, that he would sooner sign a sentence for Rousseau's transportation than that of any felon who had gone from the Old Bailey these many years, and that the difference between him and Voltaire was so slight that "it would be difficult to settle the proportion of iniquity between them." Those of all schools and professions who have the temperament which mistakes strong expression for strong judgment, and violent phrase for grounded conviction, have been stimulated by antipathy against Voltaire to a degree that in any of them with latent turns for humor must now and then have even stirred a kind of reacting sympathy. The rank vocabulary of malice and hate, that noisome fringe of the history of opinion, has received many of its most fulminant terms from critics of Voltaire, along with some from Voltaire himself, who unwisely did not always refuse to follow an adversary's bad example. Yet Voltaire was the very eye of eighteenth-century illumination. It was he who conveyed to his generation in a multitude of forms the consciousness at once of the power and the rights of human intelligence. Another might well have said of him what he magnanimously said of his famous contemporary, Montesquieu, that humanity had lost its title-deeds, and he had recovered them. The fourscore volumes which he wrote are the monument, as they were in some sort the instrument, of a new renaissance. They are the fruit and representation of a spirit of encyclopædic curiosity and productiveness. Hardly a page of all these countless leaves is common form. Hardly a sentence is there which did not come forth alive from Voltaire's own mind or which was said because someone else had said it before. His works as much as those of any man that ever lived and thought are truly his own. It is not given, we all know, even to the most original and daring of leaders, to be without precursors, and Voltaire's march was prepared for him before he was born, as it is for all mortals. Yet he impressed on all he said, on good words and bad alike, a marked autochthonic quality, as of the self-raised spontaneous products of some miraculous soil, from which prodigies and portents spring. Many of his ideas were in the air, and did not belong to him peculiarly; but so strangely rapid and perfect was his assimilation of them, so vigorous and minutely penetrative was the quality of his understanding, so firm and independent his initiative, that even these were instantly stamped with the express image of his personality. In a word, Voltaire's work from first to last was alert with unquenchable life. Some of it, much of it, has ceased to be alive for us now in all that belongs to its deeper significance, yet we recognize that none of it was ever the dreary still-birth of a mind of hearsays. There is no mechanical transmission of untested bits of current coin. In the realm of mere letters Voltaire is one of the little band of great monarchs, and in style he remains of the supreme potentates. But literary variety and perfection, however admirable, like all purely literary qualities are a fragile and secondary good which the world is very willing to let die, where it has not been truly begotten and engendered of living forces. Voltaire was a stupendous power, not only because his expression was incomparably lucid, or even because his sight was exquisitely keen and clear, but because he saw many new things after which the spirits of others were unconsciously groping and dumbly yearning. Nor was this all. Fontenelle was both brilliant and far-sighted, but he was cold, and one of those who love ease and a safe hearth, and carefully shun the din, turmoil, and danger of the great battle. Voltaire was ever in the front and centre of the fight. His life was not a mere chapter in a history of literature. He never counted truth a treasure to be discreetly hidden in a napkin. He made it a perpetual war-cry and emblazoned it on a banner that was many a time rent, but was never out of the field. There are things enough to be said of Voltaire's moral size, and no attempt is made in these pages to dissemble in how much he was condemnable. It is at least certain that he hated tyranny, that he refused to lay up his hatred privily in his heart, and insisted on giving his abhorrence a voice, and tempering for his just rage a fine sword, very fatal to those who laid burdens too hard to be borne upon the conscience and life of men. Voltaire's contemporaries felt this. They were stirred to the quick by the sight and sound and thorough directness of those ringing blows. If he was often a mocker in form, he was always serious in meaning and laborious in matter. If he was unflinching against theology, he always paid religion respect enough to treat it as the most important of all subjects. The old-fashioned nomenclature puts him down among sceptics, because those who had the official right to affix these labels could think of no more contemptuous name, and could not suppose the most audacious soul capable of advancing even under the leadership of Satan himself beyond a stray doubt or so. He had perhaps as little of the sceptic in his constitution as Bossuet or Butler, and was much less capable of becoming one than De Maistre or Paley. This was a prime secret of his power, for the mere critic and propounder of unanswered doubts never leads more than a handful of men after him. Voltaire boldly put the great question, and he boldly answered it. He asked whether the sacred records were historically true, the Christian doctrine divinely inspired and spiritually exhaustive, and the Christian Church a holy and beneficent organization. He answered these questions for himself and for others beyond possibility of misconception. The records he declared saturated with fable and absurdity, the doctrine imperfect at its best, and a dark and tyrannical superstition at its worst, and the Church was the arch-curse and infamy. Say what we will of these answers, they were free from any taint of scepticism. Our lofty new idea of rational freedom as freedom from conviction, and of emancipation of understanding as emancipation from the duty of settling whether important propositions are true or false, had not dawned on Voltaire. He had just as little part or lot in the complaisant spirit of the man of the world, who from the depths of his mediocrity and ease presumes to promulgate the law of progress, and as dictator to fix its speed. Who does not know this temper of the man of the world, that worst enemy of the world? His inexhaustible patience of abuses that only torment others; his apologetic word for beliefs that may perhaps not be so precisely true as one might wish, and institutions that are not altogether so useful as some might think possible; his cordiality toward progress and improvement in a general way, and his coldness or antipathy to each progressive proposal in particular; his pygmy hope that life will one day become somewhat better, punily shivering by the side of his gigantic conviction that it might well be infinitely worse. To Voltaire, far different from this, an irrational prejudice was not the object of a polite coldness, but a real evil to be combated and overthrown at every hazard. Cruelty was not to him as a disagreeable dream of the imagination, from thought of which he could save himself by arousing to a sense of his own comfort, but a vivid flame burning into his thoughts and destroying peace. Wrong-doing and injustice were not simple words on his lips; they went as knives to the heart; he suffered with the victim, and consumed with an active rage against the oppressor. To Voltaire reason and humanity were but a single word, and love of truth and passion for justice but one emotion. None of the famous men who have fought, that they themselves might think freely and speak truly, has ever seen more clearly that the fundamental aim of the contest was that others might live happily. Who has not been touched by that admirable word of his, of the three years in which he labored without remission for justice to the widow and descendants of Calas--"During that time not a smile escaped me without my reproaching myself for it as for a crime"? Or by his sincere avowal that of all the words of enthusiasm and admiration which were so prodigally bestowed upon him on the occasion of his last famous visit to Paris in 1778, none went to his heart like that of a woman of the people, who in reply to one asking the name of him whom the crowd followed gave answer, "Do you not know that he is the preserver of the Calas?" The same kind of feeling, though manifested in ways of much less unequivocal nobleness, was at the bottom of his many efforts to make himself of consequence in important political business. We know how many contemptuous sarcasms have been inspired by his anxiety at various times to perform diplomatic feats of intervention between the French government and Frederick II. In 1742, after his visit to the Prussian King at Aix-la-Chapelle, he is supposed to have hinted to Cardinal Fleury that to have written epic and drama does not disqualify a man for serving his king and country on the busy fields of affairs. The following year, after Fleury's death, when French fortunes in the war of the Austrian succession were near their lowest, Voltaire's own idea that he might be useful from his intimacy with Frederick seems to have been shared by Amelot, the secretary of state, and at all events he aspired to do some sort of active, if radically futile, diplomatic work. In later times when the tide had turned, and Frederick's star was clouded over with disaster, we again find Voltaire the eager intermediary with Choiseul, pleasantly comparing himself to the mouse of the fable, busily striving to free the lion from the meshes of the hunter's net. In short, on all sides, whatever men do and think was real and alive to Voltaire. Whatever had the quality of interesting any imaginable temperament had the quality of interesting him. There was no subject which any set of men have ever cared about which, if he once had mention of it, Voltaire did not care about likewise. And it was just because he was so thoroughly alive himself that he filled the whole era with life. The more closely one studies the various movements of that time, the more clear it becomes that, if he was not the original centre and first fountain of them all, at any rate he made many channels ready and gave the sign. He was the initial principle of fermentation throughout that vast commotion. We may deplore, if we think fit, as Erasmus deplored in the case of Luther, that the great change was not allowed to work itself out slowly, calmly, and without violence and disruption. These graceful regrets are powerless, and on the whole they are very enervating. Let us make our account with the actual, rather than seek excuses for self-indulgence in pensive preference of something that might have been. Practically in these great circles of affairs, what only might have been is as though it could not be; and to know this may well suffice for us. It is not in human power to choose the kind of men who rise from time to time to the supreme control of momentous changes. The force which decides this immensely important matter is as though it were chance. We cannot decisively pronounce any circumstance whatever an accident, yet history abounds with circumstances which in our present ignorance of the causes of things are as if they were accidents. It was one of the happy chances of circumstance that there arose in France on the death of Louis XIV a man with all Voltaire's peculiar gifts of intelligence, who added to them an incessant activity in their use, and who besides this enjoyed such length of days as to make his intellectual powers effective to the very fullest extent possible. This combination of physical and mental conditions so amazingly favorable to the spread of the Voltairean ideas was a circumstance independent of the state of the surrounding atmosphere, and was what in the phraseology of prescientific times might well have been called providential. If Voltaire had seen all that he saw, and yet been indolent; or if he had been as clear-sighted and as active as he was, and yet had only lived fifty years, instead of eighty-four, Voltairism would never have struck root. As it was, with his genius, his industry, his longevity, and the conditions of the time being what they were, that far-spreading movement of destruction was inevitable. There are more kinds of Voltaireans than one, but no one who has marched ever so short a way out of the great camp of old ideas is directly or indirectly out of the debt and out of the hand of the first liberator, however little willing he may be to recognize one or the other. Attention has been called by every writer on Voltaire to the immense number of the editions of his works, a number probably unparalleled in the case of any author within the same limits of time. Besides being one of the most voluminous book-writers, he is one of the cheapest. We can buy one of Voltaire's books for a few halfpence, and the keepers of the cheap stalls in the cheap quarters of London and Paris will tell you that this is not from lack of demand, but the contrary. So clearly does that light burn for many even now, which scientifically speaking ought to be extinct, and for many indeed is long ago extinct and superseded. The reasons for this vitality are that Voltaire was himself thoroughly alive when he did his work, and that the movement which that work began is still unexhausted. How shall we attempt to characterize this movement? The historian of the Christian church usually opens his narrative with an account of the depravation of human nature and the corruption of society which preceded the new religion. The Reformation in like manner is only to be understood after we have perceived the enormous mass of superstition, injustice, and wilful ignorance by which the theological idea had become so incrusted as to be wholly incompetent to guide society, because it was equally repugnant to the intellectual perceptions and the moral sense, the knowledge and the feelings, of the best and most active-minded persons of the time. The same sort of consideration explains and vindicates the enormous power of Voltaire. France had outgrown the system that had brought her through the Middle Ages. The further development of her national life was fatally hindered by the tight bonds of an old order, which clung with the hardy tenacity of a thriving parasite, diverting from the roots all their sustenance, eating into the tissue, and feeding on the juices of the living tree. The picture has often been painted, and we need not try to paint it once more in detail here. The whole power and ordering of the nation were with the sworn and chartered foes of light, who had every interest that a desire to cling to authority and wealth can give in keeping the understanding subject. The glories of the age of Louis XIV were the climax of a set of ideas that instantly afterward lost alike their grace, their usefulness, and the firmness of their hold on the intelligence of men. A dignified and venerable hierarchy, an august and powerful monarch, a court of gay and luxurious nobles, all lost their grace because the eyes of men were suddenly caught and appalled by the awful phantom, which was yet so real, of a perishing nation. Turn from Bossuet's orations to Boisguillebert's _Détail de la France_; from the pulpit rhetorician's courtly reminders that even majesty must die, to Vauban's pity for the misery of the common people;[31] from Corneille and Racine to La Bruyère's picture of "certain wild animals, male and female, scattered over the fields, black, livid, all burned by the sun, bound to the earth that they dig and work with unconquerable pertinacity; they have a sort of articulate voice, and when they rise on their feet they show a human face, and, in fact, are men." The contrast had existed for generations. The material misery caused by the wars of the great Louis deepened the dark side, and the lustre of genius consecrated to the glorification of traditional authority and the order of the hour heightened the brightness of the bright side, until the old contrast was suddenly seen by a few startled eyes, and the new and deepest problem, destined to strain our civilization to a degree that not many have even now conceived, came slowly into pale outline. There is no reason to think that Voltaire ever saw this gaunt and tremendous spectacle. Rousseau was its first voice. Since him the reorganization of the relations of men has never faded from the sight either of statesmen or philosophers, with vision keen enough to admit to their eyes even what they dreaded and execrated in their hearts. Voltaire's task was different and preparatory. It was to make popular the genius and authority of reason. The foundations of the social fabric were in such a condition that the touch of reason was fatal to the whole structure, which instantly began to crumble. Authority and use oppose a steadfast and invincible resistance to reason, so long as the institutions which they protect are of fair practicable service to a society. But after the death of Louis XIV, not only the grace and pomp, but also the social utility of spiritual and political absolutism, passed obviously away. Spiritual absolutism was unable to maintain even a decent semblance of unity and theological order. Political absolutism by its material costliness, its augmenting tendency to repress the application of individual energy and thought to public concerns, and its pursuit of a policy in Europe which was futile and essentially meaningless as to its ends, and disastrous and incapable in its choice of means, was rapidly exhausting the resources of national well-being and viciously severing the very tap-root of national life. To bring reason into an atmosphere so charged was, as the old figure goes, to admit air to the chamber of the mummy. And reason was exactly what Voltaire brought; too narrow, if we will, too contentious, too derisive, too unmitigatedly reasonable, but still reason. And who shall measure the consequence of this difference in the history of two great nations: that in France absolutism in church and state fell before the sinewy genius of stark reason, while in England it fell before a respect for social convenience, protesting against monopolies, benevolences, ship-money? that in France speculation had penetrated over the whole field of social inquiry, before a single step had been taken toward application, while in England social principles were applied before they received any kind of speculative vindication? that in France the first effective enemy of the principles of despotism was Voltaire, poet, philosopher, historian, critic; in England, a band of homely squires? Voltaire, there can be little doubt, never designed a social revolution, being in this the representative of the method of Hobbes. His single object was to reinstate the understanding in its full rights, to emancipate thought, to extend knowledge, to erect the standard of critical common-sense. He either could not see, or else, as one sometimes thinks, he closes his eyes and refuses for his part to see, that it was impossible to revolutionize the spiritual basis of belief without touching the social forms, which were inseparably connected with the old basis by the strong bonds of time and a thousand fibres of ancient association and common interest. Rousseau began where Voltaire left off. He informs us that, in the days when his character was forming, nothing which Voltaire wrote escaped him, and that the _Philosophical Letters_ (that is, the Letters on the English), though assuredly not the writer's best work, were what first attracted him to study, and implanted a taste which never afterward became extinct. The correspondence between Voltaire and the Prince of Prussia, afterward the great Frederick, inspired Rousseau with a passionate desire to learn how to compose with elegance, and to imitate the coloring of so fine an author.[32] Thus Voltaire, who was eighteen years his elder, gave this extraordinary genius his first productive impulse. But a sensibility of temperament, to which perhaps there is no parallel in the list of prominent men, impelled Rousseau to think, or rather to feel, about the concrete wrongs and miseries of men and women, and not the abstract rights of their intelligence. Hence the two great revolutionary schools, the school which appealed to sentiment, and the school which appealed to intelligence. The Voltairean principles of the strictest political moderation and of literary common-sense, negative, merely emancipatory, found their political outcome, as French historians early pointed out, in the Constituent Assembly, which was the creation of the upper and middle class, while the spirit of Rousseau, ardent, generous, passionate for the relief of the suffering, overwhelmed by the crowding forms of manhood chronically degraded and womanhood systematically polluted, came to life and power in the Convention and the sections of the Commune of Paris which overawed the Convention. "It will not do," wrote D'Alembert to Voltaire as early as 1762, "to speak too loudly against Jean Jacques or his book, for he is rather a king in the Halles."[33] This must have been a new word in the ears of the old man, who had grown up in the habit of thinking of public opinion as the opinion, not of markets where the common people bought and sold, but of the galleries of Versailles. Except for its theology, the age of Louis XIV always remained the great age to Voltaire, the age of pomp and literary glory, and it was too difficult a feat to cling on one side to the Grand Monarch, and to stretch out a hand on the other to the _Social Contract_. It was too difficult for the man who had been embraced by Ninon de l'Enclos, who was the correspondent of the greatest sovereigns in Europe, and the intimate of some of the greatest nobles in France, to feel much sympathy with writings that made their author king of the Halles. Frederick offered Rousseau shelter, and so did Voltaire; but each of them disliked his work as warmly as the other. They did not understand one who, if he wrote with an eloquence that touched all hearts, repulsed friends and provoked enemies like a madman or a savage. The very language of Rousseau was to Voltaire as an unknown tongue, for it was the language of reason clothing the births of passionate sensation. _Émile_ only wearied him, though there were perhaps fifty pages of it which he would have had bound in morocco.[34] It is a stale romance, he cries, while the _Social Contract_ is only remarkable for some insults rudely thrown at kings by a citizen of Geneva, and for four insipid pages against the Christian religion, which are simply plagiarized from Bayle's centos.[35] Partly, no doubt, this extreme irritation was due to the insults with which Jean Jacques had repulsed his offers of shelter and assistance, had repudiated Voltaire's attempts to defend him, and had held up Voltaire himself as a proper object for the persecutions of Geneva. But there was a still deeper root of discrepancy, which we have already pointed out. Rousseau's exaggerated tone was an offence to Voltaire's more just and reasonable spirit; and the feigned austerity of a man whose life and manners he knew assumed in his eyes a disagreeable shade of hypocrisy.[36] Besides these things, he was clearly apprehensive of the storms which Rousseau's extraordinary hardihood had the very natural effect of raising in the circles of authority, though it is true that the most acute observers of the time thought that they noticed a very perceptible increase of Voltaire's own hardihood as a consequence of the example which the other set him. The rivalry between the schools of Rousseau and Voltaire represents the deadlock to which social thought had come; a deadlock of which the catastrophe of the Revolution was both expression and result. At the time of Voltaire's death there was not a single institution in France with force enough to be worth a month's purchase. The monarchy was decrepit; the aristocracy was as feeble and impotent as it was arrogant; the _bourgeoisie_ was not without aspiration, but it lacked courage and it possessed no tradition; and the Church was demoralized, first by the direct attack of Voltaire and the not less powerful indirect attack of the _Encyclopædia_, and second by the memory of its own cruelty and selfishness in the generation just closing. But Voltaire's theory, so far as he ever put it into its most general form, was that the temporal order was safe and firm, and that it would endure until criticism had transformed thought and prepared the way for a _régime_ of enlightenment and humanity. Rousseau, on the contrary, directed all the engines of passion against the whole temporal fabric, and was so little careful of freedom of thought, so little confident in the plenary efficacy of rational persuasion, as to insist upon the extermination of atheists by law. The position of each was at once irrefragable and impossible. It was impossible to effect a stable reconstitution of the social order until men had been accustomed to use their minds freely, and had gradually thrown off the demoralizing burden of superstition. But then the existing social order had become intolerable, and its forces were practically extinct, and consequently such an attack as Rousseau's was inevitable, and was at the same time and for the same reasons irresistible. To overthrow the power of the Church only was to do nothing in a society perishing from material decay and political emasculation. Yet to regenerate such a society without the aid of moral and spiritual forces, with whose activity the existence of a dominant ecclesiastical power was absolutely incompatible, was one of the wildest feats that ever passionate sophist attempted. GEORGE W. KITCHIN Two sayings which characterize the two speakers are recorded of this time. The one is that of Louis XV, who with all his odious vices, his laziness, and unkingly seclusion, was not devoid of intelligence. "All this," he said, "will last as long as I shall," and his forecast was justified: the "deluge" came long after he had gone to his account; and the phrase stands against him as an expression of his base selfishness, which saw the coming troubles without caring about them, because he believed that they would not come in his day. The other saying is that of Voltaire, who, in 1762, exclaimed in an ecstasy of hope and prophecy, "Happy the young men, for they shall see many things." And yet those youths were mostly gray-headed when the "many things" began, and not a few of them lost those gray heads, instead of looking on as interested spectators of a new order of things. The writers of this time, whatever their faults, form the true aristocracy of France: the rest of the nation, sinking lower and lower, left their superiority all the more marked and uncontested. The series of great writers of the age may be said to begin with Montesquieu, though Voltaire had published his _OEdipus_ in 1718, and the _Lettres Persanes_ did not appear till 1721. Montesquieu, a man of noble birth, was brought up as a lawyer. We trace in him accordingly an aristocratic and legal tone of mind, which naturally took pleasure in England and the law-abiding conservatism of her constitution, as it appeared to him in the middle of the eighteenth century. Like so many of his fellows, Montesquieu chafed under the influence of a corrupt clergy, and declared against them, with the philosophers. This was almost the only point he had in common with Voltaire, whom he heartily disliked. We may say that he represents the aristocratic and constitutional resistance to the state of things in France, while Voltaire is champion of liberty of thought and tolerance. Montesquieu resists the Jesuit influences of his day on conservative grounds alone; Voltaire resists them by resting on the enlightened despotism of his time, and appealing to it, rather than to the laws or constitution of his country. Lastly, at a later day, Rousseau, sworn foe to society, from which he had suffered much, the sentimentalist, enemy of aristocracy and monarchy, instinctively antagonistic to the legal temperament, speaks directly to the people, even as Montesquieu had spoken to the educated and the well-to-do, and Voltaire to kings; and they, stirred to the heart by his appeals, elected him the prophet of their cause, believed in him, and at his bidding subverted the whole fabric of society. Montesquieu's great work, the _Esprit des Lois_, which followed his _Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness and Fall of the Romans_ (1734), and appeared in 1748, forms an epoch in French prose style. He and Voltaire are the two parents of modern French prose literature. The _Esprit des Lois_ was far more greedily read in England than in France. Society there had little taste for so solid a work; they vastly preferred the lively sparkle of the _Persian Letters_; the book was perhaps too clearly influenced by an admiration for the Constitution of England, and by a love for liberty, face to face with the weak arbitrary despotism which was dragging France to a catastrophe. If Montesquieu is the advocate of political freedom, Voltaire is the champion of tolerance and freedom of conscience; and that, in his day and with his surroundings, meant that he was the deadly foe of the established faith, as he saw it in its acts in France. When we regard this apostle of toleration, and watch his pettinesses and vanity, note him at kings' courts, see him glorifying Louis XIV, that great antagonist of all tolerance, whether religious or political or social, we are inclined to think that the most difficult of all toleration is that of having to endure its champion and to try to do him justice. Voltaire was no deep thinker: he had amazing cleverness, was very susceptible of the influence of thought, and unrivalled in expression. We shall expect to find him taking color from what was round him, nor shall we be astonished if that color is dazzling and brilliant. Five successive influences marked his earlier life. First, his education under the Jesuits, which gave him an insight into their system; secondly, his introduction to the irreligious and immoral society of the fashionable _abbes_ of the day, which showed him another side of the official religion of the time; thirdly, the beneficent friendship of the Abbé de Caumartin, who set him thinking about great and ambitious subjects, and led him to write the _Henriade_, and probably also to begin projecting his _Siècle de Louis XIV_; fourthly, the enforced leisure of the Bastille, whither he went a second time in 1726 for having resented an insult put on him by a coarse nobleman, one of the Rohans; lastly--thanks to the order for his exile--his sojourn in England after release from the Bastille, and his friendship for the chief writers and thinkers of this country. Hitherto he had been a purely literary man; henceforth he was fired with an ambition to be a philosopher and a liberator. Certainly France was unfortunate in the education she gave this brilliant and wayward child of her genius. There was hardly a Frenchman of eminence in this period who did not either visit England or learn the English language, many doing both. And one so bright and receptive as Voltaire could not fail to notice many things. He could see how free thought was: he could make a contrast between the respect paid to letters in London, and their degradation under Louis XIV and later; he saw Newton and Locke in places of honor, Prior and Gay acting as ambassadors, Addison as secretary of state; he reached England in time to see the national funeral given to the remains of Newton. Bolingbroke took him in hand; he was astonished to find a learned and literary _noblesse_; Locke was his true teacher. He went back to France another man, after three years' absence: above all, he carried with him the then popular English way of thinking as to the supernatural, and became a somewhat cold, common-sense deist, opposed to the atheism of some and the dull bigotry of the established creed in the hands of others. God was to him conscious creator of the world, and only faintly, if at all, its ruler; he recognized the need of a deity as a starting-point for his system, though he did not feel the need of his care and presence in life; not God our Father, only God our Creator. He brought over with him a great ripening of humane feelings: this is his noblest quality and parent of his best acts. When we see him as a champion of oppressed Huguenots, combating wrong and ill-doing with all the vehemence of his fiery soul, we find a common ground, which is lost sight of as we contemplate his equally hot attacks on Christianity, or his dwelling in kings' courts, or his panegyrics on great sovereigns who had so fiercely crushed down that liberty of thought of which he was the life-long defender. In his _OEdipus_ he had assaulted priestcraft with not undeserved severity; we must always remember what he saw around him. In his _Henriade_ (1725), perhaps almost unintentionally, he had glorified Henry IV at the expense of the Great Monarch. After his stay in England we have his _Brutus_ (1730), an attack on kingcraft, and his _Zaïre_ (1732), a Parisian Othello, both based on Shakespeare. From this time onward he plunges into a supple and dexterous, if sometimes rather disingenuous, strife with a superior power. Throughout, the poet and man of taste struggles against the philosophic freethinker: he loves the surface impressions, perhaps the reflective illusions; "his sentiments are worth more than his ideas." The _English Letters_ of 1735, written some years before, and now issued with much hesitation, created a great storm: they boldly attacked the royal power, the clergy, the faith; they were burned by the hangman; and Voltaire had to go into voluntary exile for a while. There his literary activity was unwearied: many of his works were written, or at least sketched, during the next five years. Strange problem of the human mind. While he here composed his _Mahomet_ and other serious works, he also wrote his scandalous _Pucelle_; as if he could not rest without destroying all nobility of sentiment and faith in heroism. While Jeanne d'Arc is the helpless victim of his shameless attack, he is also busy with his _Siècle de Louis XIV_, a hero apparently more to his taste than the great Maid of Orléans. The influence of Voltaire on opinion grew slowly but steadily through these years: no one more sedulously undermined the established faiths. It was in these years that he enjoyed a passing favor at the French court, whence his febrile energy, his roughnesses, his want of the true gloss of courtiership, soon lost him the good-will of his old friend Madame de Pompadour. He then tried Berlin, finding it equally untenable ground; eventually he withdrew to Ferney in the territory of Geneva, whence he kept up incessant war against all the injustices which touched his heart. His defence of Calas, of Servin, of the luckless Lally, all date from this time. In these days he animated the Encyclopædists with his spirit, encouraging them in their gigantic undertaking, the "Carroccio of the battle of the eighteenth century." It was a huge dictionary of human knowledge, written in direct antagonism to all belief in spiritual powers or religion. It sold incredibly, and the effect of it on society was immense. This great edifice, "built half of marble, half of mud," as Voltaire himself said, had as its chief architects Diderot and D'Alembert. Nothing contributed more to undermine the foundations on which all institutions, and not least royalty, were built. A little later than Voltaire came Rousseau, "the valet who did not become a cardinal." His influences are also later, and touched society far more widely. Voltaire had spoken to society; Rousseau spoke to the heart of the people. He was above all things a sentimentalist, this son of a Genevan clockmaker. Society treated him harshly; and he avenged himself by making fierce war on society. The savage state is the best--society being revolting in its falseness and shallow varnish: all men are naturally equal and free; society is nothing but an artificial contract, an arrangement by which, in the end, the strong domineer over the weak; the state of nature is divine: there is a Garden of Eden for those who will cast society behind them. Sciences and arts, civilization and literature, Encyclopædists included, are hateful as corrupters of mankind; all progress has been backward, if one may venture to say so--downward, certainly. Rousseau embroidered these paradoxes with a thousand sweet sentiments: he shut his eyes to history, to facts, to the real savage, the very disagreeable "primitive man," as he may yet sometimes be seen. "Follow nature" was his one great precept: then you will scourge away the false and conventional, and life will grow pure and simple; there will be no rank, no cunning law devised to keep men from their rights, no struggle for life, no competition. All France panted and groaned to emulate the "noble savage"--with what success, we know. These were the chief literary luminaries of this time: and they all helped to pull down the fabric of the old society. That society, however, little understood the tendency of things; to a large extent it became the fashion to be philosophic, to be free-minded, to attack religion: with pride in their rank, and cold scorn for their humbler brethren, and high-bred contempt for their clergy, and ruinous vices sometimes made amusing by their brightness and their vivacious vanity, the French upper classes thought it great sport to pull merrily at the old walls of their country's institutions, never dreaming that they could be so ill-ordered as to fall down and crush them in their ruin. FOOTNOTES: [31] Vauban and Boisguillebert are both to be found in _Les Economiste Financiers du XVIIIième Siècle_, published by Guillaumin, 1851. [32] _Confessions_, pt. i. liv. v. Date of 1736. [33] _OEuvres_, lxxv. 182. [34] Corr. 1762. _OEuvres_, lxxv. 188. [35] _OEuvres_, lxvii. 432. [36] Condorcet, 170. BRADDOCK'S DEFEAT A.D. 1755 WINTHROP SARGENT GEORGE WASHINGTON CAPTAIN DE CONTRECOEUR The repeated wars between France and England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had involved also their colonies in America and India. In America the Indians had been employed as allies upon both sides, and thus encouraged in their hideous deeds of massacre and torture. Hence there had grown an ever-increasing bitterness between the French in Canada and the English colonists along the Atlantic coasts, and this finally led to the momentous French and Indian war, which, contrary to the course of the earlier contests, originated in America and spread thence to Europe. Its immediate cause was the disputed possession of the interior of the continent, the Mississippi and Ohio valleys. These had been first explored by the French, and when English pioneers began to penetrate thither the French built a chain of forts to resist them. An expedition of Virginians under the command of their youthful leader, Major George Washington, had a sharp encounter with the enemy in 1754; and then the English government determined to assert its authority by an overwhelming force. No war was declared against France, nor even against Canada; but a distinguished English general, Braddock, was sent over with three thousand regular troops to seize the French forts in the Ohio Valley, especially Fort Duquesne, on the site of the modern city of Pittsburg. Braddock's expedition thus started the war which ended in the expulsion of France from the North American continent. It did more than that: it sowed the seeds of lasting dissension between the American colonial troops and the British regulars. The British despised their uninformed allies, and the latter soon learned in their turn to despise the regulars. The English general liked the young Virginian major, Washington, and invited him, as one who knew the ground, to accompany the projected expedition and give advice--which Braddock never took. Its caution seemed to him to savor too much of cowardice, and he persisted in marching through the wilderness toward Fort Duquesne as though his forces had been upon parade, with drums beating and colors flying. The French were very near to being frightened into flight, but determined on making one effort at resistance. Its results are here told by the standard Pennsylvania historian, Sargent, and also in briefer form by Washington himself in a letter to the Virginian Governor, and by the French commander of Fort Duquesne in his official report. WINTHROP SARGENT With a commendable discretion--the utmost, perhaps, that he was capable of--Braddock had concluded his arrangements for passing what he regarded as the only perilous place between his army and the fort, which he designed to reach early on the 10th. Had the proposition, started and abandoned by St. Clair, to push forward that very night a strong detachment to invest it before morning, been actually made to him, it is very probable he would have discountenanced it. As in all human likelihood it would have been crowned with success, it is as well for the general's reputation that the suggestion aborted. What precautionary steps his education and capacity could suggest were here taken by Braddock. Before three o'clock on the morning of the 9th Gage was sent forth with a chosen band to secure both crossings of the river, and to hold the farther shore of the second ford till the rest of the army should come up. At four, St. Clair, with a working party, followed to make the roads. At 6 A.M. the general set out, and, having advantageously posted about four hundred men upon the adjacent heights, made, with all the wagons and baggage, the first crossing of the Monongahela. Marching thence in order of battle toward the second ford, he received intelligence that Gage had occupied the shore, according to orders, and that the route was clear. The only enemy he had seen was a score of savages, who fled without awaiting his approach. By eleven o'clock the army reached the second ford; but it was not until after one that the declivities of the banks were made ready for the artillery and wagons, when the whole array, by a little before two o'clock, was safely passed over. Not doubting that from some point on the stream the enemy's scouts were observing his operations, Braddock was resolved to strongly impress them with the numbers and condition of his forces; and accordingly the troops were ordered to appear as for a dress-parade. In after-life Washington was accustomed to observe that he had never seen elsewhere so beautiful a sight as was exhibited during this passage of the Monongahela. Every man was attired in his best uniform; the burnished arms shone bright as silver in the glistening rays of the noonday sun, as, with colors waving proudly above their heads, and amid inspiring bursts of martial music, the steady files, with disciplined precision, and glittering in scarlet and gold, advanced to their position. While the rear was yet on the other side, and the van was falling into its ordained course, the bulk of the army was drawn up in battle array on the western shore, hard by the spot where one Frazier, a German blacksmith in the interest of the English, had lately had his home. Two or three hundred yards above the spot where it now stood was the mouth of Turtle Creek--the "Tulpewi Sipu" of the Lenape--which, flowing in a southwestwardly course to the Monongahela, that here has a northwestward direction, embraces, in an obtuse angle of about one hundred twenty-five degrees, the very spot where the brunt of the battle was to be borne. The scene is familiar to tourists, being, as the crow flies, but eight miles from Pittsburg, and scarce twelve by the course of the river. For three-quarters of a mile below the entrance of the creek the Monongahela was unusually shallow, forming a gentle rapid or "ripple," and easily fordable at almost any point. Its common level is from three to four hundred feet below that of the surrounding country; and along its upper banks, at the second crossing, stretches a fertile bottom of a rich pebbled mould, about a fourth of a mile in width and twenty feet above low-water mark. At this time it was covered by a fair, open walnut-wood, uncumbered with bush or undergrowth. The ascent from the river, however, is rarely abrupt; but by a succession of gentle alluvial slopes or bottoms the steep hillsides are approached, as though the waters had gradually subsided from their original glory to a narrow bed at the very bottom of the ancient channel. At this particular place the rise of the first bottom does not exceed an angle of three degrees. Above it again rises a second bottom of the same width and about fifty feet higher than the first, and gradually ascending until its farther edge rests upon the bold, rocky face of the mountain line, climbing at once some two hundred feet to the usual level of the region around. A firm clay, overlaid with mould, forms the soil of the second bottom, which was heavily and more densely timbered than the first; and the underwood began to appear more plentifully where the ground was less exposed to the action of the spring floods. In the bosom of the hill several springs unite their sources to give birth to a petty rivulet that hurries down the steep to be lost in the river. Its cradle lies in the bed of a broad ravine, forty or fifty feet deep, that rises in the hill-side, and, crossing the whole of the second bottom, debouches on the first, where the waters whose current it so far guides, trickle oozily down through a swampy bed. Great trees grew within and along this chasm, and the usual smaller growth peculiar to such a situation; and a prodigious copse of wild grape-vines, not yet entirely gone, shrouded its termination upon the first bottom and shadowed the birth of the infant brook. About two hundred yards from the line of hills, and three hundred south of the ravine just described, commences another of a more singular nature; with its steep sides, almost exactly perpendicular, it perfectly resembles a ditch cut for purposes of defence. Rising near the middle of the second bottom, it runs westwardly to the upper edge of the first, with a depth at its head of four or five feet, increasing as it descends, and a width of eight or ten. A century ago its channel was overhung and completely concealed by a luxurious thicket of pea-vines and trailers, of bramble-bushes and the Indian plum; its edges closely fringed with the thin, tall wood-grass of summer. But even now, when the forests are gone and the plough long since passed over the scene, the ravine cannot be at all perceived until one is directly upon it; and hence arose the chief disasters of the day. Parallel with and about one hundred fifty yards north of this second gulley ran a third; a dry, open hollow, and rather thinly wooded; but which afforded a happy protection to the enemy from the English fire. Either of these ravines would have sheltered an army; the second--the most important, though not the largest--would of itself afford concealment to a thousand men. There is little reason to doubt that as Braddock drew near, M. de Contrecoeur was almost decided to abandon his position without striking a blow, and, withdrawing his men, as did his successor, in 1758, leave to the English a bloodless victory. He certainly was prepared to surrender on terms of honorable capitulation. A solitary gun was mounted upon a carriage to enable the garrison to evacuate with the honors of war; it being a point of nice feeling with a defeated soldier that he should retire with drums beating a national march, his own colors flying, and a cannon loaded, with a lighted match. This deprives the proceeding of a compulsory air; and to procure this gratification, Contrecoeur made his arrangements. The British army was so overwhelming in strength, so well appointed and disciplined, that he perhaps deemed any opposition to its advance would be not less fruitless than the defence of the works. However this may be, he had as yet on July 7th announced no definite conclusion, though possibly his views were perceptible enough to his subordinates. On that day it was known that the enemy, whose numbers were greatly magnified, were at the head-waters of Turtle Creek. On the 8th, where his route was changed, M. de Beaujeu, a captain in the regulars, proposed to the commander that he might be permitted to go forth with a suitable band to prepare an ambuscade for the English on the banks of the Monongahela, and to dispute with them the passage of the second ford. If we may believe tradition, it was with undisguised reluctance that Contrecoeur complied with this request, and even then, it is said, refused to assign troops for the enterprise, bidding him call for volunteers as for a forlorn hope. To that summons the whole garrison responded. If this tale be true, Contrecoeur recanted his determination, and wisely preferred making him a regular detachment, conditioned on his success in obtaining the union of the Indians, who, to the number of nearly a thousand warriors, were gathered at the place. Accordingly, the savages were at once called to a council. These people, consisting of bands assembled from a dozen different nations, listened with unsuppressed discontent to the overtures of the Frenchman. Seated under the palisades that environed the fort, or standing in knots about the speaker, were gathered a motley but a ferocious crew. Alienated from their ancient friends, here were Delawares from the Susquehanna eager to speed the fatal stroke, and Shawanoes from Grave Creek and the Muskingum; scattered warriors of the Six Nations; Ojibwas, Pottawottomis from the far Michigan; Abenakis and Caughnawagas from Canada; Ottawas from Lake Superior, led on by the royal Pontiac; and Hurons from the falls of Montreal and the mission of Lorette, whose barbarous leader gloried in a name torn from the most famous pages of Christian story. To these reluctant auditors Beaujeu stated his designs. "How, my father," said they in reply, "are you so bent upon death that you would also sacrifice us? With our eight hundred men do you ask us to attack four thousand English? Truly, this is not the saying of a wise man. But we will lay up what we have heard, and to-morrow you shall know our thoughts." On the morning of July 9th the conference was repeated, and the Indians announced their intention of refusing to join in the expedition. At this moment a runner--probably one of those dislodged by Gage in the early dawn--burst in upon the assembly and heralded the advent of the foe. Well versed in the peculiar characteristics of the savages, by whom he was much beloved, and full of tact and energy, Beaujeu took ready advantage of the excitement which these tidings occasioned. "I," said he, "am determined to go out against the enemy. I am certain of victory. What! will you suffer your father to depart alone?" Fired by his language and the reproach it conveyed, they at once resolved by acclamation to follow him to the fray. In a moment the scene was alive with frantic enthusiasm. Barrels of bullets and flints and casks of powder were hastily rolled to the gates: their heads were knocked out, and every warrior left to supply himself at his own discretion. Then, painted for war and armed for the combat, the party moved rapidly away, in numbers nearly nine hundred strong, of whom six hundred thirty-seven were Indians, one hundred forty-six Canadians, and seventy-two regular troops. Subordinate to Beaujeu were MM. Dumas and De Ligneris, both captains in the regular army, four lieutenants, six ensigns, and twenty cadets. Though his numbers were thus not so greatly inferior to Braddock's, it is not likely that Beaujeu calculated on doing more than giving the English a severe check and perhaps delaying for a few days their advance. It is impossible that he should have contemplated the complete victory that was before him. On the evening of July 8th the ground had been carefully reconnoitred and the proper place for the action selected. The intention was to dispute as long as possible the passage of the second ford, and then to fall back upon the ravines. But long ere they reached the scene the swell of the military music, the crash of falling trees apprised them that the foe had already crossed the river, and that his pioneers were advanced into the woodlands. Quickening their pace into a run, they managed to reach the broken ground just as the van of the English came in sight. Braddock had turned from the first bottom to the second, and mounting to its brow was about to pass around the head of the ravines to avoid the little morass caused by the water-course before described. His route did not lie parallel with the most dangerous defile, where the banks are so steep and the cover so perfect, but passed its head at an angle of about forty-five degrees; thus completely exposing his face and flanks from a point on the second bottom, at a hundred yards distance, to another within thirty, where he would turn the ravine. Of course the farther he advanced the nearer he would approach to its brink, till the whole should finally be left behind; thus opening a line of two hundred yards long, at an average distance of sixty, to the enemy's fire. Had he possessed the least knowledge of these defiles, he would undoubtedly have secured them in season, since nothing would have been easier than their occupation by Gage's advanced party. But not a man in his army had ever dreamed of their existence. The arrangement of the march from the river's bank had been made as follows: The engineers and guides and six light-horsemen proceeded immediately before the advanced detachment under Gage, and the working-party under St. Clair, who had with them two brass six-pounders and as many tumbrils or tool-carts. On either flank, parties to the number of eight were thrown out to guard against surprises. At some distance behind Gage followed the line, preceded by the light horse, four squads of whom also acted as extreme flankers at either end of the column. Next came the seamen, followed by a subaltern with twenty grenadiers, a twelve-pounder and a company of grenadiers. Then the vanguard succeeded, and the wagon and artillery train, which began and ended with a twelve-pounder: and the rear-guard closed the whole. Numerous flanking-parties, however, protected each other; and six subalterns, each with twenty grenadiers, and ten sergeants, with ten men each, were detached for this purpose. The greater part of Gage's command was actually advanced beyond the spot where the main battle was fought, and was just surmounting the second bottom, when Mr. Gordon, one of the engineers who were in front marking out the road, perceived the enemy bounding forward. Before them, with long leaps, came Beaujeu, the gayly colored fringes of his hunting-shirt and the silver gorget on his bosom at once bespeaking the chief. Comprehending in a glance the position he had attained, he suddenly halted and waved his hat above his head. At this preconcerted signal the savages dispersed to the right and left, throwing themselves flat upon the ground, and gliding behind rocks or trees or into the ravines. Had the earth yawned beneath their feet and reclosed above their heads, they could not have more instantaneously vanished. The French--some of whom, according to Garneau, were mounted--held the centre of the semicircular disposition so instantly assumed; and a tremendous fire was at once opened on the English. For a moment Gage's troops paused aghast at the furious yells and strangeness of the onset. Rallying immediately, he returned their fire, and halted a moment till St. Clair's working-party came up; when he bade his men advance at once upon the centre of the concentric line. As he drew near he was again greeted with a staggering discharge, and again his ranks were shaken. Then in return, they opened a fire of grape and musketry so tremendous as to sweep down every unsheltered foe who was upon his feet, and to utterly fright the savages from their propriety. Beaujeu and a dozen more fell dead upon the spot, and the Indians already began to fly, their courage being unable to endure the unwonted tumult of such a portentous detonation. But reanimated by the clamorous exhortations of Dumas and De Ligneris, and observing that the regulars and militia still preserved a firm front, they returned once more to their posts and resumed the combat. For a time the issue seemed doubtful, and the loud cries of "_Vive le Roi!_" of the French were met by the charging cheers of the English. But precision of aim soon began to prevail over mere mechanical discipline. In vain the Forty-fourth continued their fire; in vain their officers, with waving swords, led them to the charge; hidden beneath great trees or concealed below the level of the earth, the muzzles of their pieces resting on the brink of the ravine, and shooting with a secure and steady aim, the majority of the enemy rested secure and invisible to their gallant foemen. In the mean time Braddock, whose extreme rear had not yet left the river's bank, hearing the uproar in advance, ordered Burton to press forward with the vanguard, and the rest of the line to halt; thus leaving Halket with four hundred men to protect the baggage while eight hundred engaged the enemy. But just as Burton, under a galling fire, was forming his troops upon the ground, Gage's party gave way and precipitately endeavored to fall into his rear; confusing men who were confused before. The manoeuvre was unsuccessfully executed, and the two regiments became inextricably commingled. Vainly Braddock strove to separate the soldiers, huddling together like frightened sheep. Vainly the regimental colors were advanced on opposite directions as rallying-points. "_Ut conspicuum in proelio Haberent signum quod sequerentur milites._" The officers sought to collect their men together and lead them on in platoons. Nothing could avail. On every hand the officers, distinguished by their horses and their uniforms, were the constant mark of hostile rifles; and it was soon as impossible to find men to give orders as it was to have them obeyed. In a narrow road twelve feet wide, shut up on either side and overpent by the primeval forest, were crowded together the panic-stricken wretches, hastily loading and reloading, and blindly discharging their guns in the air, as though they suspected their mysterious murderers were sheltered in the boughs above their heads; while all around, removed from sight, but making day hideous with their war-whoops and savage cries, lay ensconced a host insatiate for blood. Foaming with rage and indignation, Braddock flew from rank to rank, with his own hands endeavoring to force his men into position. Four horses were shot under him, but mounting a fifth he still strained every nerve to retrieve the ebbing fortunes of the day. His subordinates gallantly seconded his endeavors, throwing themselves from the saddle and advancing by platoons, in the idle hope that their men would follow; but only to rush upon their fate. The regular soldiery, deprived of their immediate commanders and terrified at the incessant fall of their comrades, could not be brought to the charge, while the provincials, better skilled, sought in vain to cover themselves and to meet the foe upon equal terms; for to the urgent entreaties of Washington and Sir Peter Halket, that the men might be permitted to leave the ranks and shelter themselves, the general turned a deaf ear. Wherever he saw a man skulking behind a tree, he flew at once to the spot and, with curses on his cowardice and blows with the flat of his sword, drove him back into the open road. Wherever the distracted artillerymen saw a smoke arise, thither did they direct their aim; and many of the flankers who had succeeded in obtaining the only position where they could be of any service, were thus shot down. Athwart the brow of the hill lay a large log, five feet in diameter, which Captain Waggoner, of the Virginia Levies, resolved to take possession of. With shouldered firelocks he marched a party of eighty men to the spot, losing but three on the way; and at once throwing themselves behind it, the remainder opened a hot fire upon the enemy. But no sooner were the flash and the report of their pieces perceived by the mob behind, than a general discharge was poured upon the little band, by which fifty were slain outright and the rest constrained to fly. By this time the afternoon was well advanced and the whole English line surrounded. The ammunition began to fail and the artillery to flag; the baggage was warmly attacked; and a runner was despatched to the fort with the tidings that by set of sun not an Englishman would be left alive upon the ground. Still, gathering counsel from despair, Braddock disdained to yield; still, strong in this point only of their discipline, his soldiers died by his side, palsied with fear, yet without one thought of craven flight. At last, when every aide but Washington was struck down; when the lives of the vast majority of the officers had been sacrificed with a reckless intrepidity, a sublime self-devotion, that surpasses the power of language to express; when scarce a third part of the whole army remained unscathed, and these incapable of aught save remaining to die or till the word to retire was given--at last, Braddock abandoned all hope of victory, and, with a mien undaunted as in his proudest hour, ordered the drums to sound a retreat. The instant their faces were turned, the poor regulars lost every trace of the sustaining power of custom; and the retreat became a headlong flight. "Despite of all the efforts of the officers to the contrary, they ran," says Washington, "as sheep pursued by dogs, and it was impossible to rally them." Beneath a large tree standing between the heads of the northernmost ravines, and while in the act of giving an order, Braddock received a mortal wound; the ball passing through his right arm into the lungs. Falling from his horse, he lay helpless on the ground, surrounded by the dead, abandoned by the living. Not one of his transatlantic soldiery "who had served with the Duke" could be prevailed upon to stay his headlong flight and aid to bear his general from the field. Orme thought to tempt them with a purse containing sixty guineas; but in such a moment even gold could not prevail upon a vulgar soul, and they rushed unheeding on. Disgusted at such pusillanimity, and his heart big with despair, Braddock refused to be removed, and bade the faithful friends who lingered by his side to provide for their own safety. He declared his resolution of leaving his own body on the field; the scene that had witnessed his dishonor he desired should bury his shame. With manly affection, Orme disregarded his injunctions; and Captain Stewart, of Virginia, the commander of the light-horse which were attached to the general's person, with another American officer, hastening to Orme's relief, his body was placed first in a tumbrel, and afterward upon a fresh horse, and thus borne away. Stewart seems to have cherished a sense of duty or of friendship toward his chief that did not permit him to desert him for a moment while life remained. It was about five o'clock in the afternoon when the English abandoned the field. Pursued to the water's edge by about fifty savages the regular troops cast from them guns, accoutrements, and even clothing, that they might run the faster. Many were overtaken and tomahawked here; but where they had once crossed the river, they were not followed. Soon turning from the chase, the glutted warriors made haste to their unhallowed and unparalleled harvest of scalps and plunder. The provincials, better acquainted with Indian warfare, were less disconcerted; and though their losses were as heavy, their behavior was more composed. In full possession of his courage and military instincts, Braddock still essayed to procure an orderly and soldier-like retreat; but the demoralization of the army now rendered this impossible. With infinite difficulty, a hundred men, after running about half a mile, were persuaded to stop at a favorable spot where Braddock proposed to remain until Dunbar should arrive, to whose camp Washington was sent with suitable orders. It will thus be seen how far was his indomitable soul from succumbing in the discharge of his duties, beneath the unexpected burthen that had been laid upon him. By his directions Burton posted sentries here, and endeavored to form a nucleus around which to gather the shattered remains of the troops, and where the wounded might be provided for. But all was idle. In an hour's time almost every soldier had stolen away, leaving their officers deserted. These, making the best of their way off, were joined beyond the other ford by Gage, who had rallied some eighty men; and this was all that remained of that gallant army which scarce six hours before was by friend and foe alike deemed invincible. With little interruption the march was continued through that night and the ensuing day, till at 10 P.M. on July 10th they came to Gist's plantation; where early on the 11th some wagons and hospital stores arrived from Dunbar for their relief. Despite the intensity of his agonies, Braddock still persisted in the exercise of his authority and the fulfilment of his duties. From Gist's he detailed a party to return toward the Monongahela with a supply of provisions to be left on the road for the benefit of stragglers yet behind, and Dunbar was commanded to send to him the only two remaining old companies of the Forty-fourth and Forty-eighth, with more wagons to bring off the wounded; and on Friday, July 11th, he arrived at Dunbar's camp. Through this and all the preceding day men half famished, without arms and bewildered with terror, had been joining Dunbar; his camp was in the utmost confusion, and his soldiers were deserting without ceremony. Braddock's strength was now fast ebbing away. Informed of the disorganized condition of the remaining troops, he abandoned all hope of a prosperous termination to the expedition. He saw that not only death, but utter defeat, was inevitable. But conscious of the odium the latter event would excite, he nobly resolved that the sole responsibility of the measure should rest with himself, and consulted with no one upon the steps he pursued. He merely issued his orders, and insisted that they were obeyed. Thus, after destroying the stores to prevent their falling into the hands of the enemy--of whose pursuit he did not doubt--the march was to be resumed on Saturday, July 12th, toward Will's Creek. Ill-judged as these orders were, they met with but too ready acquiescence at the hands of Dunbar, whose advice was neither asked nor tendered on the occasion. Thus the great mass of those stores which had been so painfully brought thither were destroyed. Of the artillery but two six-pounders were preserved; the cohorns were broken or buried, and the shells bursted. One hundred fifty wagons were burned; the powder-casks were staved in, and their contents, to the amount of fifty thousand pounds, cast into a spring; and the provisions were scattered abroad upon the ground or thrown into the water. Nothing was saved beyond the actual necessities for a flying march; and when a party of the enemy some time afterward visited the scene, they completed the work of destruction. For this service--the only instance of alacrity that he displayed in the campaign--Dunbar must not be forgiven. It is not perfectly clear that Braddock intelligently ever gave the orders; but in any case they were not fit for a British officer to give or to obey. Dunbar's duty was to have maintained here his position, or at the least not to have contemplated falling back beyond Will's Creek. That he had not horses to remove his stores was, however, his after-excuse. It was not until Sunday, July 13th, that all this was finished; and the army with its dying general proceeded to the Great Meadows, where the close was to transpire: "Last scene of all, That ends this strange, eventful history." Ever since the retreat commenced Braddock had preserved a steadfast silence, unbroken save when he issued the necessary commands. That his wound was mortal he knew; but he also knew that his fame had received a not less fatal stab; that his military reputation, dearer than his own life to a veteran or those of a thousand others, was gone forever. These reflections embittered his dying hours; nor were there any means at hand of diverting the current of his thoughts or ministering to the comfort of his body; even the chaplain of the army was among the wounded. He pronounced the warmest eulogiums upon the conduct of his officers--who, indeed, had merited all he could say of them--and seems to have entertained some compunctions at not having more scrupulously followed the advice of Washington, or perhaps at the loss of power to provide for that young soldier's interests as thoroughly as he would have done had he returned victorious. At all events, we find him singling out his Virginia aide as his nuncupative legatee, bequeathing to him his favorite charger and his body-servant Bishop, so well known in after-years as the faithful attendant of the patriot chief. The only allusion he made to the fate of the battle was to softly repeat once or twice to himself, "Who would have thought it?" Turning to Orme, "We shall better know how to deal with them another time," were his parting words. A few moments later and he breathed his last. Thus at about eight on the night of Sunday, July 13th, honorably died a brave old soldier, who, if wanting in temper and discretion, was certainly, according to the standard of the school in which he had been educated, an accomplished officer; and whose courage and honesty are not to be discussed. The uttermost penalty that humanity could exact he paid for his errors; and if his misfortune brought death and woe upon his country, it was through no shrinking on his part from what he conceived to be his duty. He shared the lot of the humblest man who fell by his side. So terminated the bloody battle of the Monongahela; a scene of carnage which has been truly described as unexampled in the annals of modern warfare. Of the 1460 souls, officers and privates, who went into the combat, 456 were slain outright and 421 were wounded; making a total of 877 men. Of 89 commissioned officers, 63 were killed or wounded; not a solitary field-officer escaping unhurt. GEORGE WASHINGTON "FORT CUMBERLAND, 18 July, 1755. "_To Governor Dinwiddie_: "HONBL. SIR--As I am favored with an opportunity, I should think myself inexcusable was I to omit giving you some account of our late Engagement with the French on the Monongahela, the 9th instant. "We continued our march from Fort Cumberland to Frazier's (which is within 7 miles of Duquesne) without meeting any extraordinary event, having only a straggler or two picked up by the French Indians. When we came to this place, we were attacked (very unexpectedly) by about three hundred French and Indians. Our numbers consisted of about thirteen hundred well-armed men, chiefly Regulars, who were immediately struck with such an inconceivable panick that nothing but confusion and disobedience of orders prevailed among them. The officers, in general, behaved with incomparable bravery, for which they greatly suffered, there being near sixty killed and wounded--a large proportion, out of the number we had! "The Virginia companies behaved like men and died like soldiers; for I believe out of three companies that were on the ground that day scarce thirty were left alive. Capt. Peyroney and all his officers, down to a corporal, were killed; Captn. Polson had almost as hard a fate, for only one of his escaped. In short, the dastardly behavior of the Regular troops (so called)[37] exposed those who were inclined to do their duty to almost certain death, and, at length, in despite of every effort to the contrary, broke and ran as sheep before hounds, leaving the artillery, ammunition, provisions, baggage, and, in short, everything a prey to the enemy. And when we endeavored to rally them, in hopes of regaining the ground and what we had left upon it, it was with as little success as if we had attempted to have stopped the wild bears of the mountains or rivulets with our feet; for they would break by, in despite of every effort that could be made to prevent it. "The General was wounded in the shoulder and breast, of which he died three days after; his two aids-de-camp were both wounded, but are in a fair way of recovery; Colo. Burton and Sr. John St. Clair are also wounded and I hope will get over it; Sir Peter Halket, with many other brave officers, were killed in the field. It is supposed that we had three hundred or more killed; about that number we brought off wounded, and it is conjectured (I believe with much truth) that two-thirds of both received their shot from our own cowardly Regulars, who gathered themselves into a body, contrary to orders, ten or twelve deep, would then level, fire and shoot down the men before them. "I tremble at the consequences that this defeat may have upon our back settlers, who, I suppose, will all leave their habitations unless there are proper measures taken for their security. "Colo. Dunbar, who commands at present, intends, as soon as his men are recruited at this place, to continue his march to Philadelphia for winter quarters,[38] consequently there will be no men left here, unless it is the shattered remains of the Virginia troops, who are totally inadequate to the protection of the frontiers." CAPTAIN DE CONTRECOEUR Monsieur de Contrecoeur, captain of infantry commanding at Fort Duquesne, having been informed that the English would march out from Virginia to come to attack him, was warned a little time afterward that they were on the road. He put spies through the country who would inform him faithfully of their route. The 7th of this month (July) he was warned that the army, composed of 3,000 men of the regular English forces were only six leagues from his fort. The commander employed the next day in making his arrangements, and on the 9th of the month he sent Monsieur de Beaujeu against the enemy and gave him for second in command Monsieurs Dumas and de Lignery, all three of them being captains, with four lieutenants, six ensigns, 20 cadets, 100 soldiers, 100 Canadians, and 600 savages, with orders to hide themselves in a favorable place that had previously been reconnoitred. The detachment found itself in the presence of the enemy at three leagues from the fort before being able to gain its appointed post. Monsieur de Beaujeu seeing that his ambuscade had failed, began a direct attack. He did this with so much energy that the enemy, who awaited us in the best order in the world, seemed astounded at the assault. Their artillery, however, promptly commenced to fire and our forces were confused in their turn. The savages also, frightened by the noise of the cannon rather than their execution, commenced to lose ground. Monsieur de Beaujeu was killed, and Monsieur Dumas rallied our forces. He ordered his officers to lead the savages and spread out on both wings, so as to take the enemy in flank. At the same time he, Monsieur de Lignery, and the other officers who were at the head of the French attacked in front. This order was executed so promptly that the enemy, who were already raising cries of victory, were no longer able even to defend themselves. The combat wavered from one side to the other and success was long doubtful, but at length the enemy fled. They struggled unavailingly to keep some order in their retreat. The cries of the savages with which the woods echoed, carried fear into the hearts of the foe. The rout was complete. The field of battle remained in our possession, with six large cannons and a dozen smaller ones, four bombs, eleven mortars, all their munitions of war and almost all their baggage. Some deserters who have since come to us tell us that we fought against two thousand men, the rest of the army being four leagues farther back. These same deserters tell us that our enemies have retired to Virginia. The spies that we have sent out report that the thousand men who had no part in the battle, also took fright and abandoned their arms and provisions along the road. On this news we sent out a detachment which destroyed or burned all that remained by the roadside. The enemies have lost more than a thousand men on the field of battle; they have lost a great part of their artillery and provisions, also their general, named Monsieur Braddock, and almost all their officers. We had three officers killed and two wounded, two cadets wounded. This remarkable success, which scarcely seemed possible in view of the inequality of the forces, is the fruit of the experience of Monsieur Dumas and of the activity and valor of the officers that he had under his orders. FOOTNOTES: [37] The regulars laid the responsibility of defeat on the provincials, alleging "that they were harassed by duties unequal to their numbers, and dispirited through want of provisions; that time was not allowed them to dress their food; that their water (the only liquor, too, they had) was both scarce and of a bad quality; in fine, that the provincials had disheartened them by repeated suggestions of their fears of a defeat should they be attacked by Indians, in which case the European method of fighting would be entirely unavailing."--_Review of the Military Operations in North America from 1753 to 1756._ The _Gentleman's Magazine_ asserted these same forces--Irish, Scotch, and English--ran away "shamefully" at Prestonpans. The news of Braddock's defeat "struck a general damp on the spirits of the soldiers" in Shirley's and Pepperell's regiments, and many deserted. "I must leave a proper number in each county to protect it from the combinations of the Negro slaves, who have been very audacious on the defeat on the Ohio. These poor creatures imagine the French will give them their freedom."--DINWIDDIE to Earl of Halifax, 23 July, 1755. [38] "Fearful of an unpursuing foe, all the ammunition, and so much of the provisions were destroyed for accelerating their flight, that Dunbar was actually obliged to send for thirty horse-loads of the latter before he reached Fort Cumberland, where he arrived a very few days after, with the shattered remains of the English troops."--_Review of the Military Operations in North America._ Dinwiddie wished Dunbar to remain and make a new attempt on Duquesne; but a council of officers unanimously decided the scheme was impracticable, and on the next day (August 2d) began his march toward Philadelphia. EXILE OF THE ACADIAN NEUTRALS A.D. 1755 WILLIAM H. WITHROW[39] The deportation and dispersion of the French Neutrals from their Acadian homes at Grandpré, on the peninsula that projects into Minas Basin, Nova Scotia, was one of the most pitiful incidents in the French and Indian war, known as the American phase of the Seven Years' War. The region is familiar to Americans, through the epic of the poet Longfellow, as the Land of Evangeline. The district around Minas Basin was settled in the early years of the seventeenth century by immigrants from La Rochelle, Saintonge, and Poitou. During the wars between France and England the Acadians, as a Nova Scotian historian relates, "were strongly patriotic, and took up arms in the cause of their native land. Intensely devoted to the Roman Catholic Church, and considering these wars as in the nature of crusades, they fought valiantly and well. But when Nova Scotia was finally ceded to Great Britain (in 1713) their position became very awkward and painful. Many of them refused to take the oath of allegiance, and for others a modified formula was framed. Emissaries of the French power at Louisburg and Quebec circulated among them and maintained their loyalty to France at a fever heat, while their priests pursued the same policy and kept up the hostility to the conquerors. The British provincial government was located at Annapolis, and though its laws were mild and clement, it could not command respect on account of its physical weakness. Under these circumstances hundreds of Acadians joined the French armies during every war between the two powers, and proved dangerous foemen on account of their knowledge of the region. British settlers were unwilling to locate among these people on account of their racial hostility, and the fairest lands of the province were thus held by an alien and hostile population. The expulsion and exile of the French Neutrals from their homes in Acadia--the region now included in the Canadian provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick--are one of the saddest episodes in history. The occasion for their removal and dispersion was the alleged charge that they secretly took sides with their French compatriots against the English in every struggle on this continent between the two nations, each seeking supreme dominion in the New World, and were thus a constant menace to the English colonists on the seaboard. The trouble at this period was complicated by disputed boundary lines, the whole interior of the continent being claimed by France, while the English were shut in between the mountain ranges of the Alleghanies and the sea. But the English colonies would not be hemmed in either by nature or by France. Their hardy sons sought adventure and gain in the Far West, while not a few for this purpose pushed their way to the St. Lawrence and the Lakes by the water-ways and woodland valleys of the continent. The French, resenting this intrusion, began to erect a series of forts to mark the boundaries of their possessions and conserve the inland fur trade. Already, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the first scene in the opening drama had been enacted at Louisburg. This stronghold in Cape Breton, which guarded the marine highway to New France, had surrendered in 1745 to the forces of England and her colonial levies on the Atlantic. French pride was hurt at this disaster and the loss of the important naval station in the gulf. To recover the lost prestige, Count de la Galissonière was sent as governor to Canada. This nobleman's extravagant assumptions of the extent of the territorial possessions of New France, however, offended the English colonists and roused the jealousy of many of the Indian tribes. Nor was this feeling allayed when France, by the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, recovered Louisburg, and when her boundary commissioners claimed all the country north of the Bay of Fundy as not having been ceded to England by the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), the inevitable result followed; hostilities between the two nations were precipitated in the valley of the Ohio by the persistent encroachment of the English. English successes in other parts of the continent in some measure atoned for Braddock's defeat. Beauséjour fell before an expeditionary force sent out from Massachusetts, while Dieskau was routed and made a prisoner near Lake George by Colonel (afterward Sir William) Johnson, in command of the colonial militia and a band of Mohawk warriors. The command of the expedition against Beauséjour, in the Acadian isthmus, to which the French still laid claim, had been given to Colonel Monckton, who, in the spring of 1755, sailed from Boston with forty-one vessels and two thousand men. Ill-manned by a few hundred refugees and a small body of soldiers it soon capitulated and was renamed Fort Cumberland. The Acadian peasants, on the beautiful shores of the Bay of Fundy, Canadian historians tell us, "were a simple, virtuous, and prosperous community," though other writers give them less favorable character, speaking of them as turbulent, aggressive, and meddlesome. With remarkable industry they had reclaimed from the sea by dikes many thousand of fertile acres, which produced abundant crops of grain and orchard fruits; and on the sea meadows at one time grazed as many as sixty thousand head of cattle. The simple wants of the peasants were supplied by domestic manufacture or by importations from Louisburg. So great was their attachment to the government and institutions of their fatherland that during the aggressions of the English after the conquest of the region a great part of the population--some ten thousand in number, it is said, though the figures are disputed--abandoned their homes and migrated to that portion of Acadia still claimed by the French, while others removed to Cape Breton or to Canada. About seven thousand still remained in the peninsula of Nova Scotia, but they claimed a political neutrality, resolutely refusing to take the oath of allegiance to the alien conquerors. They were accused of intriguing with their countrymen at Louisburg, with resisting the English authority, and with inciting, and even leading, the Indians to ravage the English settlements. The cruel Micmacs needed little instigation. They swooped down on the little town of Dartmouth, opposite Halifax, and within gunshot of its forts, and reaped a rich harvest of scalps and booty. The English prisoners they sometimes sold at Louisburg for arms and ammunition. The Governor asserted that pure compassion was the motive of this traffic, in order to rescue the captives from massacre. He demanded, however, an excessive ransom for their liberation. The Indians were sometimes, indeed generally, it was asserted, led in these murderous raids by French commanders. These violations of neutrality, however, were chiefly the work of a few turbulent spirits. The mass of the Acadian peasants seem to have been a peaceful and inoffensive people, although they naturally sympathized with their countrymen, and rejoiced at the victory of Du Quesne, and sorrowed at the defeat of Lake George. They were, nevertheless, declared rebels and outlaws, and a council at Halifax, confounding the innocent with the guilty, decreed the expulsion of the entire French population. [Illustration: British officer reads the decree of exile of the Acadian neutrals in the village church. Painting by Frank Dicksee, A.R.A.] The decision was promptly given effect. Ships soon appeared before the principal settlement in the Bay of Fundy. All the male inhabitants over ten years of age were summoned to hear the King's command. At Grandpré four hundred assembled in the village church, when the British officer read from the altar the decree of their exile. Resistance was impossible; armed soldiers guarded the door, and the men were imprisoned. They were marched at the bayonet's point, amid the wailings of their relatives, on board the transports. The women and children were shipped in other vessels. Families were scattered; husbands and wives separated--many never to meet again. Hundreds of comfortable homesteads and well-filled barns were ruthlessly given to the flames. A number, variously estimated at from three to seven thousand, were dispersed along the Atlantic seaboard from Maine to Georgia. Twelve hundred were carried to South Carolina. A few planted a New Acadia among their countrymen in Louisiana. Some sought to return to their blackened hearths, coasting in open boats along the shore. These were relentlessly intercepted when possible, and sent back into hopeless exile. An imperishable interest has been imparted to this sad story by Longfellow's beautiful poem _Evangeline_, which describes the sorrows and sufferings of some of the inhabitants of the little village of Grandpré. FOOTNOTES: [39] By permission of the author. CLIVE ESTABLISHES BRITISH SUPREMACY IN INDIA THE BLACK HOLE OF CALCUTTA: BATTLE OF PLASSEY A.D. 1756 SIR ALEXANDER J. ARBUTHNOT Robert Clive is recognized as the man to whom, above all others, England owes the establishment of her empire in India. Born in 1725 in Shropshire, he was raised to the Irish peerage in 1760 as Baron Clive of Plassey. The son of a poor country squire, at eighteen he entered the service of the East India Company at Madras. For over a century the company had competed with its Dutch rival in India, and Clive went to his post at a time when French rivalry with the English was becoming formidable. In 1744 war broke out between the English and French, and Clive saw his first military service. In the second war with the French (1751-1754), he bore the leading part, capturing Arcot (1751), and successfully defending it against a vastly superior force of natives, who were aided by the French. By these successes he won a brilliant reputation. His later career proved him to be as efficient in civil as in military affairs, and he stands in English history distinguished among great administrators, although he has been no less the object of censure than of praise by his country's historians. A parliamentary inquiry into his official conduct resulted (1773) in his practical vindication. Whatever the truth in the case may be, Clive must ever hold his place among the "builders of Greater Britain." In 1753 Clive returned to England, and two years later went back to India as governor of Fort St. David, in the Madras presidency. Of his proceedings in this government and his further successful military enterprises, which went so far to win India for England, Arbuthnot, late member of the Council of India, gives an authoritative account, based on the fullest information available at the close of the nineteenth century. Clive returned to the Madras Presidency at a critical moment. War with France was imminent, and broke out in the course of a few months. The very day that Clive assumed the government of Fort St. David, Calcutta was captured by the Nawab[40] of Bengal, and the tragedy of the Black Hole took place. The acquisition of Calcutta by the East India Company was somewhat later than that of Madras. It dates from 1686, when the representatives of the company, driven by the Mogul authorities from Hugli, where they had established a factory, moved under the leadership of Job Charnock some twenty-six miles down the river to Satanati, now one of the northern suburbs of Calcutta. Ten years afterward they built the original Fort William, and in 1700 they purchased the villages of Satanti, Kalikata, and Govindpur from the son of the Emperor. In 1707 the East India Company declared Calcutta a separate presidency. Here, surrounded by the richest districts in India, amid a teeming population, on the banks of a river which was the chief highway of Eastern commerce, the servants of the company drove a thriving trade, threatened only, but never actually assailed, by the raids of the Mahrattas, the memory of which is still kept alive by the famous Mahratta ditch. They were in the same relation to the Nawab of Bengal as the servants of the company at Madras were to the Nawab of the Carnatic. In April, 1756, Aliverdi Khan, who was a just and strong ruler, died, and was succeeded by his grandson, Suraj ud Daulah, a youth under twenty years of age, whose training had been of the worst description. One of the whims of this youth was hatred toward the English, and he had not been two months on the throne when he found a pretext for indulging this sentiment in the fact that the English, in anticipation of difficulties with the French, were strengthening the fortifications of Fort William. On June 4th he seized the English factory at Kasimbazar, and on the 15th attacked Calcutta. The women and children in the fort were removed on board ship on the 18th, and on the same day the Governor, Mr. Drake, and the military commandant, Captain Minchin, deserted their posts, and to their lasting disgrace betook themselves to the ships. Mr. Holwell, a member of the council, assumed command in the fort, but on the 25th the place was taken. All the Englishmen in the fort, one hundred forty-six persons, were thrust at the point of a sword into a small room, the prison of the garrison, commonly known as the Black Hole, only twenty feet square. The Nawab had promised to spare their lives, but had gone to sleep after a debauch. No expostulations on the part of the prisoners, not even bribes, would induce the guards to awake the Nawab and obtain his leave to liberate the prisoners, until the morning, when, having slept off his debauch, he allowed the door to be opened. By that time, out of one hundred forty-six prisoners, one hundred twenty-three had miserably perished. The survivors, among whom was the acting Governor, Holwell, were brought before the tyrant, insulted and reproached by him, and detained in custody in wretched sheds and fed upon grain and water. An Englishwoman who was one of the survivors, was placed in the Nawab's harem. The details of this terrible tragedy and of the sufferings which the survivors subsequently underwent, are given in a letter from Mr. Holwell, from which it appears that his eventual release was brought about by the intercession of Aliverdi Khan's widow, who had in vain endeavored to dissuade the Nawab from attacking Calcutta, and had predicted that his doing so would be his ruin. Intelligence of the outrage did not reach Madras until August 16th, when it was at once decided to send a force under Clive to Calcutta to avenge it. Clive was appointed commander-in-chief, with full military and political control. He took with him 900 English soldiers and 1200 Sepoys and some artillery. Owing, however, to the obstinacy of Admiral Watson, and to jealousy of Clive on the part of Colonel Aldercron, who had recently arrived at Madras in command of the Thirty-ninth foot, a delay of two months took place before the expedition sailed. Watson declined to undertake it at all unless the government of the Bengal settlement, which the Madras council proposed to assume pending orders from home, was intrusted to the survivors of the Bengal Council, the leaders of which had so shamefully deserted their posts; while Aldercron, on being informed that Clive was to exercise the military command, actually went so far as to disembark the greater part of his regiment, together with guns and stores which had already been put on board ship, allowing only two hundred fifty men to remain, who were to serve as marines under Watson. The delay was unfortunate; for before the squadron sailed the northeast monsoon had set in, and in consequence none of the ships reached the Hugli until the middle of December, and even then two of the largest ships were missing; the Marlborough, with most of the artillery, and the Cumberland, with Admiral Pocock and two hundred fifty English soldiers, having failed to make their way against the monsoon. Clive's orders were to recapture Calcutta, to attack the Nawab at his capital, Murshidabad, and, in the event of war between England and France being declared, to capture the French settlement of Chandernagor (Chandranagar). When the expedition reached the Hugli, Clive wished the men under his command to be taken on in the ships as far as Budge Budge (Bajbaj)--a fortified place about ten miles from Calcutta, which it was necessary to capture; but Watson, with his habitual perversity, insisted upon the troops being landed at Mayapur, some miles farther down, thus obliging them to make a most fatiguing night march through a swampy country covered with jungle. The result was that they reached Budge Budge in an exhausted condition, and being surprised by the Nawab's troops shortly after their arrival, had a very narrow escape from destruction, which was averted only by Clive's presence of mind and readiness of resource. Clive says, in a letter to Pigot, reporting this affair a few days afterward: "You must know our march from Mayapur to the northward of Budge Budge was much against my inclinations. I applied to the admiral for boats to land us at the place we arrived at after sixteen hours' march by land. The men suffered hardships not easily to be described; it was four in the afternoon when we decamped from Mayapur, and we did not arrive off Budge Budge until past eight the next morning. At nine the Grenadier company and all the Sepoys were despatched to the fort, where I heard Captain Coote was landed with the King's troops. At ten, Manickchand, the Governor of Calcutta, attacked us with between two and three thousand horse and foot, and was worsted. Manickchand himself received a shot in his turban. Our two field pieces were of little or no service to us, having neither tubes nor port-fires, and heavy carriages were sent with them from Fort St. David. Indeed, we still labor under every disadvantage in the world for want of the Marlborough. It seems the enemy were encamped within two miles of us, and we ignorant of the matter. So much for the intelligence of the country." There can be no doubt that Clive sustained a surprise that might have been prevented had the ordinary precautions been used; but in the circumstances there is much allowance to be made. Clive himself was ill, and had suffered much from the fatiguing march which he and his men had gone through, owing to Watson's wrong-headed obstinacy. But notwithstanding illness and fatigue, and the unexpected appearance of a hostile force, Clive on this, as on other occasions, never for a moment lost his nerve. He at once rallied his men, who, awakened out of their sleep by being fired upon, were at first thrown into confusion, and then with scarcely a pause made dispositions which retrieved the situation, although not without heavy loss to the English. When Watson and Clive entered the river, they found at Falta some of the fugitives from Calcutta, and the scanty remains of a small force which, on the receipt of intelligence of the seizure of Kasimbazar, but before the news of the Black Hole tragedy had arrived, the Madras authorities had sent to Bengal under Major Kilpatrick. Clive, after beating off Manickchand's army, was met by Major Kilpatrick, who had been sent to his aid with reënforcements. In the mean time Watson had bombarded Budge from his ships, and had effected a breach in the ramparts of the fort. Clive had arranged to assault the fort the next day, when a drunken sailor, discovering the breach, entered it alone, and firing his pistol among a small group of the defenders who were sitting near, shouted out, "The fort is mine," accompanying the exclamation by three loud cheers. He was at once attacked, but defended himself valiantly, and, some of the English soldiers and Sepoys coming up, the garrison abandoned the fort, which was taken possession of by Captain Eyre Coote, who had come up from Madras with a detachment of the Thirty-ninth foot. The squadron, with the troops, then moved on to Calcutta, which surrendered on January 2d, Manickchand having evacuated the place and returned with his army to the head-quarters of the Nawab at Murshidabad. Then occurred another of Watson's arbitrary and ill-judged proceedings. Notwithstanding the orders of the Madras government, investing Clive with military and political control in Bengal, Watson appointed Coote, whose rank was that of captain, to be governor of Fort William. Clive declined to permit this arrangement, claiming the command as the senior officer, and threatened to place Coote under arrest if he disobeyed his orders. Thereupon Watson threatened to fire upon the fort unless Clive gave it up. The matter ended in a compromise, Clive surrendering the fort to Watson on condition that it was afterward handed over to the representatives of the company. In this, and in other disputes with Watson, Clive appears to have kept his temper, while acting with firmness. Writing to Mr. Pigot, Clive describes this affair in the following words: "I cannot help regretting that I ever undertook this expedition. The mortifications I have received from Mr. Watson[41] and the gentlemen of the squadron in point of prerogative are such that nothing but the good of the service could induce me to submit to them. The morning the enemy quitted Calcutta, a party of our Sepoys entered the fort at the same time with a detachment from the ships, and were ignominiously thrust out. Upon coming near the fort myself, I was informed that there were orders that none of the company's officers or troops should have entrance. This, I own, enraged me to such a degree that I was resolved to enter if possible, which I did, though not in the manner maliciously reported, by forcing the sentries; for they suffered me to pass very patiently upon being informed who I was. At my entrance Captain Coote presented me with a commission from Admiral Watson, appointing him governor of Fort William which I knew not a syllable of before; and it seems this dirty underhand contrivance was carried on in the most secret manner, under a pretence that I intended the same thing, which I declare never entered my thoughts. The affair was compromised by the admiral consenting that I should be governor and that the company's troops should remain in the fort. The next day the admiral delivered up the fort to the company's representatives in the King's name." Watson, it would seem, could not bring himself to recognize the fact that Clive was not only an officer of the East India Company, but had been granted a royal commission. In this he showed himself both stupid and headstrong. Notwithstanding this petty jealousy of the company's service, a jealousy in which he was by no means singular, he was an honorable man, desirous, according to his lights, to serve his King and country; and in the important transactions which afterward took place, his cooperation with Clive appears to have been fairly cordial. It was otherwise with the council at Calcutta, who greatly resented the independent powers which had been conferred upon Clive by the Madras authorities. At that early period those presidential jealousies which have so often interfered with the efficient administration of Indian affairs, and even now are not entirely extinguished, appear to have existed in full force. The select committee at Calcutta, as the Governor's council was then designated, called upon Clive to surrender the powers with which he had been invested, and to place himself under them. His reply was a decided refusal. "I do not," he wrote, "intend to make use of my power for acting separately from you, without you reduce me to the necessity of so doing; but as far as concerns the means of executing these powers, you will excuse me, gentlemen, if I refuse to give them up. I cannot do it without forfeiting the trust reposed in me by the select committee of Fort St. George. It does not become me, as an individual, to give my opinion whether the conduct of the gentlemen of Fort St. George has been faulty or not. That point must be determined by our superiors." The attitude of the Calcutta committee was described by Clive in a letter to his friend Pigot in the following terms: "I am sorry to say that the loss of private property and the means of recovering it seem to be the only objects which take up the thoughts of the Bengal gentlemen. Believe me, they are bad subjects and rotten at heart, and will stick at nothing to prejudice you and the gentlemen of the committee. Indeed, how should they do otherwise when they have not spared one another? I shall only add, their conduct at Calcutta finds no excuse even among themselves, and that the riches of Peru and Mexico should not induce me to dwell among them." Immediately after the recapture of Calcutta, Clive, in conjunction with Watson, moved up the river to Hugli, and captured that place without difficulty, securing booty which was estimated at fifteen thousand pounds, and destroying some large and valuable granaries. They had also planned an expedition to Dacca, the capital of Eastern Bengal, when they learned that the Nawab was again marching upon Calcutta with a large force. A battle ensued on February 5th, in which Clive, with 1350 Europeans, 800 Sepoys, and 7 field-guns, beat the Nawab's force of 40,000 men, including 18,000 cavalry, 40 guns, and 50 elephants. The greater part of the battle was fought in a dense fog, and Clive's men, losing their way, came under the fire of their own guns and of those in Fort William. At one time the position of the troops was very critical. The English loss was heavy, amounting to 57 killed and 117 wounded, of whom 39 and 82 respectively were Europeans, and it included Clive's aide-de-camp and secretary, who were killed by his side. But the battle, although attended by this heavy loss to the English, was even more disastrous to the Nawab's troops, whose casualties amounted to 1300, among whom were 2 noblemen of high rank and 22 of lesser note. Clive's account of this engagement is contained in the following letter, addressed by him, a few weeks after it was fought, to the Duke of Newcastle. It has been for many years deposited among the manuscripts in the British Museum, whence, by the kindness of Dr. Richard Garnett, a copy has been furnished to the writer of this memoir. It is believed that the letter has not been published before. "_From Lieutenant-colonel Robert Clive to Thomas Pelham Holles, Duke Of Newcastle, First Lord Of the Treasury_: "May it please your Grace: The countenance your Grace was pleased to shew me when I left England encourages me to address you on the subject of the East India Company. "No doubt your Grace hath been acquainted with the capture of the Town of Calcutta and Fort William by the Moors, the principal settlement in the Kingdom of Bengall and of the utmost consequence to the E. India Company. The loss of private property only is computed at more than 2 millions sterling. "When this unfortunate news arrived at Madrass, the President and Council aplyed to Vice-Admiral Watson for assistance in recovering the rights and possessions of the Province of Bengal, and for the same purpose ordered a large body of land forces to embark under my command; and I have the pleasure to inform your Grace this expedition by sea and land has been crown'd with all the success that could be wished. "The Town of Calcutta and Fort William was soon retaken, with several other Forts belonging to the Enemy. This news brought down the Nabob, or Prince of the Country, himselfe at the head of 20,000 horse and 30,000 foot, 25 pieces of cannon, with a great number of elephants--our little army, consisting of 700 Europeans and 1200 blacks, arm'd and disciplined after the English manner, lay encamped about 5 miles from the Town of Calcutta. On the 4th of February the Nabob's Army appear'd in sight, and past our camp at the distance of 1-1/2 miles, and encamp'd on the back of the town. Several parties of their horse past within 400 yards of our advanc'd battery, but as wee entertain'd great hopes of a peace from the Nabob's promises, wee did not fire upon them. "On the 5th, agreeable to the Nabob's desire, I despatch'd two gentlemen to wait upon him, in hopes everything might be settled without drawing the sword, but the haughtiness and disrespect with which he treated them convinced me nothing could be expected by mild measures. This determin'd me to attack his camp in the night time, for which purpose I aply'd to Admiral Watson for 500 sailors to draw our cannon, which he readily sent me, and at 3 o'clock in the morning our little army, consisting of 600 Europeans, 500 blacks, 7 field-pieces and the sailors above mentioned, set out for the attack. "A little before daybreak wee entred the camp, and received a very brisk fire. This did not stop the progress of our troops, which march'd thro' the enemie's camp upwards of 4 miles in length. Wee were more than 2 hours passing, and what escaped the van was destroy'd by the rear. Wee were obliged to keep a constant fire of artillery and musketry the whole time. A body of 300 of the enemy's horse made a gallant charge, but were received with so much coolness by the military that few escaped. Several other brisk charges were made on our rear, but to no purpose, and wee returned safe to camp, having killed by the best accounts 1300 men and between 5 and 600 horse, with 4 elephants, the loss on our side 200 men killed and wounded. This blow had its effect, for the next day the army decamp'd and the Nabob sent me a letter offering terms of accommodation; and I have the pleasure of acquainting your Grace a firm peace is concluded, greatly to the honour and advantage of the Company, and the Nabob has entered into an alliance offensive and defensive with them, and is returned to his capital at Muxadavad. "As I have already been honour'd with your Grace's protection and favour, I flatter my selfe with the continuance of it, and that, if your Grace thinks me deserving, your Grace will recommend me to the Court of Directors.--I am, with the greatest respect, your Grace's most devoted humble servant, "ROBERT CLIVE. "CAMP NEAR CALCUTTA, "_23d Febry. 1757_." The terms of the treaty were exceedingly favorable to the company. All the privileges formerly granted to the English were renewed, all trade covered by English passes was freed, all property of the company or of its servants or tenants which had been taken by the Nawab's officers to servants was to be restored; the English were to fortify Calcutta, and to coin money as they might deem proper. The Nawab, on February 11th, began his return march to his capital, previously commissioning Omichand, in whose garden the late battle had been fought, to propose a treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive, with the English. This treaty was accepted and signed by Clive and Watson, not without some hesitation on the part of the latter, who, the day after the fight in the outskirts of Calcutta, advised Clive to renew his attack. Clive, however, dreaded a combination between the French and the Nawab, and regarded the French settlement at Chandernagor as a serious danger to Calcutta. He had learned, when at Hugli, that war had been again declared between England and France, and before leaving Madras he had been instructed by the government there that, in the event of a war with France again breaking out in Europe, he was to capture Chandernagor. After the capture of Chandernagor, Clive's distrust of the Nawab was intensified, not only by the information supplied by Mr. Watts of his intrigues with the French, but by his refusal to allow the passage of a few Sepoys and of supplies of ammunition and stores to the English factory at Kasimbazar. Meanwhile Clive received from Watts information of a plot which had been formed by some of the leading personages at the Nawab's court to dethrone him. These persons were Raja Dulab Ram, the finance minister; Mir Jafar, the commander-in-chief of the army; and Yar Latif Khan, a man not of the first rank, who would seem to have started the conspiracy, stipulating that, if it succeeded, he should be made nawab. There is some ground, however, for supposing that the original suggestion emanated from Jaggat Seth, a wealthy banker, who had received personal insults from the Nawab. Another person of considerable weight who was also implicated in the plot was Omichand, the wealthy Hindu in whose garden the Nawab's camp had been pitched on that foggy night in February when Clive marched through it. On that occasion he sustained a somewhat heavy loss, but inflicted a much heavier loss upon the troops of the Nawab, and thereby frightened the latter into treating for peace. At an early stage of the proceedings Clive received overtures from Mir Jafar, the commander-in-chief, who offered to aid the English against the Nawab on condition that he should succeed him. The events which followed included what in some respects were the most brilliant, and were certainly the most questionable, incidents in Clive's career. While his military reputation, already established by the defence of Arcot, the victory at Kaveripak, and the operations before Trichinopoli, rose higher than ever, and while he developed a capacity for civil and political administration of the highest order, the fame of his exploits was tarnished by a breach of faith which it is impossible to justify, and by the acceptance of large sums of money from the native prince whom he placed upon the throne of Bengal after the deposition of Suraj ud Daulah. The treaty provided for an offensive and defensive alliance with Mir Jafar; for a prohibition against any resettlement of the French in Bengal, and for the transfer of their factories to the English company; for compensation for English losses at Calcutta, viz., to the company, £1,000,000; to the European inhabitants, £500,000; to the native inhabitants, £200,000; to the Armenians, £70,000; for the cession of all land within the Mahratta ditch and 600 yards beyond it; for the cession to the company of the Zemidari of the country to the south of Calcutta as far as Kalpi, subject to the payment of the customary rent; for the payment by the Nawab of all English troops sent to his assistance, and for a prohibition against the erection of any new forts below Hugli. Under a supplementary treaty Mir Jafar was to pay £500,000 to the army and navy and £120,000 to the members of council. Mir Jafar's signature to the treaty was received on June 12th, and Clive's force at once advanced. On that day all the troops quartered at Calcutta, together with one hundred fifty sailors from the fleet, crossed over to Chandernagor, where they joined the remainder of the force already quartered at the latter place. The Europeans, including the artillery, were sent up the river in two hundred boats, the Sepoys marching by land. On June 13th Clive despatched to the Nawab a letter which was practically a declaration of war. It arraigned the Nawab for his breach of treaty, and informed him that Clive had determined, with the approbation of all who were charged with the company's affairs, to proceed immediately to Kasimbazar, and to submit the dispute with the Nawab to the arbitration of Mir Jafar, Raja Dulab Ram, Jaggat Seth, and "others of your highness' great men." "If these," he wrote, "decide that I have deviated from the treaty, then I swear to give up all further claims upon your highness; but if it should appear that your highness has broken faith, then I shall demand satisfaction for all the losses sustained by the English, and all the charges of the army and navy." The letter ended with an intimation that as the rains were at hand, and it would take many days to receive an answer, the writer would "wait upon the Nawab at his capital to receive satisfaction." The attitude which Clive adopted was bold and defiant, but, for all that, Clive was by no means free from anxiety. It was not at all certain that Mir Jafar would adhere to his agreement. He was to have joined Clive at Katwa with a friendly force, but instead of doing so he merely sent Clive a letter promising to join him on the field of battle. On the 14th Clive's force reached Kalna, where it was joined by Watts, who had escaped from Murshidabad on the previous day. On the 17th they captured Katwa, with its fortress, after a slight resistance, and found the place well stocked with grain. On the 19th, while they halted at Katwa, the monsoon rains set in, and the troops, who were lodged in tents, had to take shelter in huts and small houses. On the same day Clive, whose anxiety continued to be very great, addressed the following letter to the committee at Calcutta: "I feel the greatest anxiety at the little intelligence I receive from Mir Jafar, and if he is not treacherous, his _sang froid_ or want of strength will, I fear, overset the expedition. I am trying a last effort by means of a Brahmin to prevail upon him to march out and join us. I have appointed Plassey as the place of rendezvous, and have told him at the same time that unless he gives this or some other sufficient proof of the sincerity of his intentions I will not cross the river. This, I hope, will meet with your approbation. I shall act with such caution as not to risk the loss of our forces; and whilst we have them, we may always have it in our power to bring about a revolution, though the present should not succeed. They say there is a considerable quantity of grain in and about the place. If we collect eight or ten thousand maunds" (eight or ten hundred thousand pounds), "we may maintain our situation during the rains, which will greatly distress the Nawab, and either reduce him to terms which may be depended upon, or give us time to bring in the Birbhum Raja, the Mahrattas, or Ghazi ud din. I desire you will give your sentiments freely how you think I should act if Mir Jafar can give us no assistance." The situation was certainly a very alarming one. Clive had only 3200 men to oppose what proved to be an army of 50,000. He had no cavalry, and only a few guns, while the enemy had a large artillery force. In the circumstances, it is perhaps hardly to be wondered at that Clive should desire to share the responsibility. This he did, for what proved to be the first and last time in his life, by holding a council of war, to which he propounded the following question: "Whether, in our present situation, without assistance, and on our own bottom, it would be prudent to attack the Nawab, or whether we should wait till joined by some country power." Of the sixteen members of the council, nine, including Clive, voted for delay, and seven, including Eyre Coote, were for an immediate attack. But Clive did not adhere to his original vote. After the council had risen, he withdrew to a clump of trees, and having passed an hour in thinking over all the arguments for and against delay, he determined to move forward at once. Meeting Eyre Coote on his way back to camp, he told him he had changed his mind, and intended to march the next morning. Accordingly, in the early morning of June 22d, the force marched down the bank of the Bhagirathi, and crossed the river the same afternoon without meeting with any opposition. There still remained fifteen miles to be traversed in order to reach Plassey. Clive's force, after struggling through mud and water in a continued torrent of rain, did not arrive at the village until one o'clock on the morning of the 23d. Clive had heard from Mir Jafar that the Nawab's army would halt at Mankarah, a place some miles short of Plassey; but the Nawab had changed his plans, and reached Plassey twelve hours before Clive. Thus, on his arrival, Clive found that the enemy were close at hand. He spent the remainder of the night making his dispositions, while his troops bivouacked in an extensive mango-grove on ground already soaked by the rain, which was still falling. The mango-grove was 800 yards in length and 300 in breadth, and was surrounded by a bank and a ditch. About fifty yards beyond it stood a hunting-box belonging to the Nawab of Oude. Of this Clive at once took possession. The grove was little more than a mile from the Nawab's encampment. The force under Clive, as stated, did no exceed 3200 men, of whom 900 were English, 200 were Eurasians, and 2100 native Sepoys. There was a small artillery train, composed of eight six-pounders and two small howitzers. The Nawab's army, so far as numerical strength was concerned, was enormously superior to Clive's force. It consisted of 35,000 infantry--for the most part imperfectly trained and undisciplined--and 15,000 cavalry well mounted and well armed. He had 53 pieces of artillery, most of them of heavy calibre, and with them 40 or 50 Frenchmen commanded by M. St. Frais, who had been a member of the French council at Chandernagor. His army occupied a strongly intrenched position. His right rested on the river, while his left stretched out into the open plain. The following is a brief description of the battle, taken from Clive's journal of military proceedings: "At daybreak we discovered the Nawab's army at the distance of about three miles in full march towards us, upon which the whole were ordered under arms, being in two battalions. The Europeans were told off in four grand divisions, the artillery distributed between them, and the Sepoys on the right and left of the whole. "Our situation was very advantageous, being in a grove surrounded by high mud-banks. Our right and front were entirely covered by those mud-banks, our left by Placis' house and the river, our rear by the grove and a large village. The enemy approached apace, covered a fine extensive plain in front of us as far as the eye could discern from right to left, and consisted, as we have since learned, of 15,000 horse and 35,000 foot, with more than 40 pieces of cannon, from thirty-two to nine pounders. They began to cannonade from this heavy artillery, which, though well pointed, could do little execution, our people being lodged under the banks. We could not hope to succeed in an attempt on their cannon, as they were planted almost round, and at a considerable distance both from us and each other. We therefore remained quiet in front, in hopes of a successful attack on their camp at night. At 300 yards from the bank under which we were posted was a pool of water with high banks all round it, and was apparently a post of strength. This the enemy presently took possession of, and would have galled us much from thence but for our advantageous position, with some cannon managed by 50 Frenchmen. This heavy artillery continued to play very briskly on the grove. "As their army, exclusive of a few advanced parties, were drawn up at too great a distance for our short sixes to reach them, one field-piece with a howitzer was advanced 200 yards in front, and we could see that they played with great success amongst those that were of the first rank, by which the whole army was dispirited and thrown into confusion. "A large body of their horse starting out on our right, and as by that movement we supposed they intended an attempt on the advanced field-piece and howitzer, they were both ordered back. "About eleven o'clock a very heavy shower of rain came on, and we imagined the horse would now, if ever, have attacked in hopes of breaking us, as they might have thought we could not then make use of our firelocks; but their ignorance or the brisk firing of our artillery prevented them from attempting it. "At noon, a report being made that a party of horse had attacked and taken our boats, the pickets were ordered, but, the account proving false, they were countermanded. "The enemy's fire now began to slacken, and soon after entirely ceased. In this situation we remained until two o'clock, when, perceiving that most of the enemy were returned to their camp, it was thought a proper opportunity to seize one of the eminences from which the enemy had much annoyed us in the morning. Accordingly, the Grenadiers, of the 1st Battalion, with two field-pieces and a body of Sepoys, supported by four platoons and two field-pieces from the 2d Battalion, were ordered to take possession of it, which accordingly they did. "This encouraged us to take possession of another advanced post within 300 yards of the entrance to the enemy's camp. "All these motions brought the enemy out a second time, but in attempting to bring out their cannon they were so galled by our artillery that they could not effect it, notwithstanding they made several attempts. Their horse and foot, however, advanced much nearer than in the morning, and by their motions made as if they intended to charge; two or three large bodies being within 150 yards. In this situation they stood a considerable time a very brisk and severe cannonade, which killed them upwards of 400 men, among whom were four or five principal officers. This loss put the enemy into great confusion, and encouraged us to attack the entrance into their camp and an adjacent eminence at the same time. This we effected with little or no loss, although the former was defended by the 50 French and a very large body of black infantry, and the latter by a large body of horse and foot intermixt together. During the heat of the action the remainder of the forces were two or three times ordered to join us, and that order as often countermanded on account of the movement of a large body of horse towards the grove, whom we had often fired upon to keep at a proper distance. Those afterwards proved to be our friends, commanded by Mir Jafar. The entrance to the camp being gained, a general rout ensued, and the whole army continued the pursuit for upwards of six miles, which, for want of horse, answered no other purpose than that of taking all their artillery, consisting of forty pieces of cannon, and all their baggage." Such is the account which Clive gave of the battle in a journal written by him very shortly after, if not on the day after, it was fought. It cannot be said that it furnishes a very clear or full narrative of the events of the day. It does not mention the death of Mir Mudin, the Nawab's only faithful general, which appears to have occurred shortly after eleven o'clock, and was really the crisis of the battle. It contains no statement of the loss sustained, which, however, was very slight. Orme gives some particulars, but as regards the Europeans in a very imperfect form. He states: "This important victory was gained with little loss: only sixteen Sepoys were killed and thirty-six wounded. And of the Europeans about twenty were killed and wounded, of which number six of the killed and ten of the wounded were of the artillery, as were likewise the two officers who were wounded during the different operations of the day." The numbers of killed and wounded are given somewhat more in detail by Malleson, although his totals agree with those given by Orme. By Malleson's account, seven Europeans were killed and sixteen wounded. According to both these writers, the total number of killed and wounded in Clive's force was seventy-two. The loss on the Nawab's side appears to have been between five and six hundred. Considering the great disparity of numbers, the loss to Clive's force was ridiculously small. Indeed, as Sir Alfred Lyall justly observes in his interesting review of _The Rise and Expansion of the British Dominion in India_, the so-called battle of Plassey was a rout rather than a battle. As a military achievement it cannot be compared with the defence of Arcot, or with the fight at Kaveripak, or with some other actions in which Clive was engaged. At the same time its results were far-reaching and of the greatest political importance. Indeed, it is universally regarded by historians as the starting-point of British dominion in India. Had Plassey been lost, the establishment of British rule in India would in all probability never have taken place; and although Plassey was followed in a very few years by other contests far more severe, such as Adams' fights at Gheria and at Andhanala, and Sir Hector Munro's victory over the Mogul's and the Nawab Vazir's troops at Buxar, the political importance of Plassey, which placed the ruler of the richest provinces in India in subjection to the English company, can hardly be overestimated. Nor, although the victory was so easily won, was it less remarkable than Clive's other military achievements for the strategy which he displayed or for the unfailing nerve and coolness with which he encountered the enormous odds against him. Clive had not anticipated that the Nawab would be able to array against him so large a force. When day broke on that June morning, and revealed to his astonished gaze the 50,000 horse and foot and the large artillery force, to which he had to oppose his 3200 infantry, his eight light field-pieces and no cavalry, it must have needed an amount of nerve which is rarely possessed even by the bravest men to make his dispositions for the approaching battle. But on this, as on other occasions, Clive's nerve never failed. Indeed, the greater the danger, the more clear was his judgment and the more keen his courage. The position which Clive took up in the mango-grove, protected as it was by the trees and by the mud-bank surrounding it, which rendered the heavy artillery of the enemy practically innocuous, and the skill with which his few field-pieces were directed, were important elements in securing the victory. Indeed, the most remarkable feature in the battle is that while the artillery force of the enemy was enormously superior in the weight of metal and in the number of guns to that of Clive, the contest was mainly an artillery contest, and was practically decided by that arm. The death of the Nawab's only faithful general, Mir Mudin, who was mortally wounded by a cannon-shot, was, as we have said, the crisis of the battle. It so disheartened the Nawab that from that moment he gave himself up in despair, and became only too ready to listen to the insidious advice of the leaders who had betrayed him, that he should quit the field and leave it to them to continue the battle. Important as Plassey was, and well as it was fought by Clive and his small force, it is not a battle that can be held to redound to the credit of British arms. Looking to the enormous disparity of numbers, and making every allowance for the superior courage and training of the victorious force, it can hardly be supposed that the result could have been what it was had it not been for the treachery of the Nawab's principal generals. On the evening after the battle, Clive's force halted at Daudpur, six miles beyond Plassey. There on the next day he was joined by Mir Jafar, the latter not altogether at ease as to the reception he might meet with after his somewhat ambiguous attitude both before and during the engagement; but Clive at once reassured him, and saluted him as the Nawab of Bengal, Behar and Orissa, advising him to proceed at once to Murshidabad, to secure the person of Suraj ud Daulah and prevent the place being plundered. Suraj ud Daulah had fled from the battle-field some time before the issue was finally decided, and had arrived that same night at Murshidabad. On the following night Mir Jafar reached that place. The whole of that day Suraj ud Daulah had passed in a state of the greatest perplexity as to the course he should pursue, whether he should submit to the English or should make a stand in the city. Some of his principal officers advised the former, some the latter, course. He had decided to resist, and had ordered his troops to be massed for this purpose, when he heard of the arrival of Mir Jafar. Then he resolved upon flight, and accompanied by his favorite wife and a single eunuch, he left his palace in disguise, and entering a boat which had been engaged for the purpose, reached Rajmahal, ninety miles distant, on the evening of the fourth day. There the rowers were obliged to halt for a rest, and taking refuge in a deserted garden, the Nawab was seen by a fakir whose ears he had caused to be cut off thirteen months before and was handed over to Mir Jafar's brother, who resided at Rajmahal. He was at once captured, sent back to Murshidabad, and handed over to Mir Jafar on July 2d. He pleaded earnestly for his life, offering to give up everything else, and Mir Jafar, probably remembering the kindness he had received from the grandfather of his prisoner, was at first disposed to spare him, but afterward consulted with his higher officials, some of whom advocated a policy of clemency, while others, including Mir Jafar's son, Miran, a truculent youth, not unlike Suraj ud Daulah in disposition, urged that the only security against a fresh revolution lay in the death of the prisoner. The latter accordingly was made over to Miran, by whose orders he was brutally murdered in the course of the night. FOOTNOTES: [40] Nabob. [41] It should be remembered that at that time it was the fashion in private letters and in society to describe naval and military officers as if they were civilians, and not by their naval or military rank. SEVEN YEARS' WAR BATTLE OF TORGAU A.D. 1756-1763 WOLFGANG MENZEL FREDERICK THE GREAT In the Seven Years' War Prussia stood practically alone against the united strength of all Europe; and it was the success of her King, Frederick, in withstanding the assaults of the vast and determined coalition that won him from the unanimous voice of military critics the title of the "Great." The tremendous conflict, the most gigantic in Europe, between the Thirty Years' War and the French Revolution, was the natural outcome of that earlier contest in which Frederick had seized Silesia. If this strong and able monarch was the type of the new spirit of doubt and endless questioning which had begun to permeate Europe, his chief antagonist, Maria Theresa, was no less emblematic of all that was noblest in the older, conservative Catholicism which Frederick defied. Maria Theresa never forgot her loss of Silesia. It was said of her that she could not see a Silesian without weeping, and with steady patience she set herself to draw all Europe into an alliance against Frederick. Her rival's caustic tongue helped her purpose. He gave personal offence not only to Elizabeth, the ruler of Russia, but to Madame Pompadour, the real sovereign of France under Louis XV. Both of these ladies urged their countries against the insulter. The three leading powers of continental Europe having thus leagued against Prussia, the lesser states soon joined them. Only England stood outside the coalition. Her war with France originating in the colonies and on the ocean, led her into an alliance with Prussia. But England was safe on her island, and few of her troops fought upon the Continent. She sent Frederick some money help; part of the time she kept the French troops from his frontier; that was all. The succession of Frederick's remarkable battles are too numerous to detail. In one campaign he crushed the French at Rossbach, and overthrew the Austrians at Leuthen. Then he defeated the Russians at Zorndorf. Torgau was his last great triumph, and therefore his own account of that contest is here presented in connection with the concise narrative of the entire war by the standard German historian, Menzel. Frederick was a vigorous writer as well as a great fighter, and it is only fair to caution the reader against accepting too fully the perhaps unconscious egotism of the monarch's personal view. Some critics consider General Zieten the real winner of this battle. WOLFGANG MENZEL In the autumn of 1756, Frederick, unexpectedly and without previously declaring war, invaded Saxony, of which he speedily took possession, and shut up the little Saxon army, thus taken unawares on the Elbe at Pirna. A corps of Austrians, who were also equally unprepared to take the field, hastened, under the command of Browne, to their relief, but were, on October 1st, defeated at Lowositz, and the fourteen thousand Saxons under Rutowsky at Pirna were in consequence compelled to lay down their arms, the want to which they were reduced by the failure of their supplies having already driven them to the necessity of eating hair-powder mixed with gunpowder. Augustus III and Bruhl fled with such precipitation that the secret archives were found by Frederick at Dresden. The Electress vainly strove to defend them by placing herself in front of the chest; she was forcibly removed by the Prussian grenadiers, and Frederick justified the suddenness of his attack upon Saxony by the publication of the plans of his enemies. He remained during the whole of the winter in Saxony, furnishing his troops from the resources of the country. It was here that his chamberlain, Glasow, attempted to take him off by poison, but, meeting by chance one of the piercing glances of the King, tremblingly let fall the cup and confessed his criminal design, the inducement for which has ever remained a mystery, to the astonished King. The allies, surprised and enraged at the suddenness of the attack, took the field, in the spring of 1757, at the head of an enormous force. Half a million men were levied, Austria and France furnishing each about one hundred fifty thousand, Russia one hundred thousand, Sweden twenty thousand, the German empire sixty thousand. These masses were, however, not immediately assembled on the same spot, were, moreover, badly commanded and far inferior in discipline to the seventy thousand Prussians brought against them by Frederick. The war was also highly unpopular, and created great discontent among the Protestant party in the empire. On the departure of Charles of Wuertemberg for the Imperial army, his soldiery mutinied, and, notwithstanding their reduction to obedience, the general feeling among the Imperial troops was so much opposed to the war that most of the troops deserted and a number of the Protestant soldiery went over to Frederick. The Prussian King was put out of the ban of the empire by the Diet, and the Prussian ambassador at Ratisbon kicked the bearer of the decree out of the door. Frederick was again the first to make the attack, and invaded Bohemia (1757). The Austrian army under Charles of Lorraine lay before Prague. The King, resolved at all hazards to gain the day, led his troops across the marshy ground under a terrible and destructive fire from the enemy. His gallant general, Schwerin, remonstrated with him. "Are you afraid?" was the reply. Schwerin, who had already served under Charles XII in Turkey and had grown gray in the field, stung by this taunt, quitted his saddle, snatched the colors, and shouted, "All who are not cowards follow me!" He was at that moment struck by several cartridge-balls and fell to the ground enveloped in the colors. The Prussians rushed past him to the attack. The Austrians were totally routed; Browne fell, but the city was defended with such obstinacy that Daun, one of Maria Theresa's favorites, was meanwhile able to levy a fresh body of troops. Frederick consequently raised the siege of Prague and came upon Daun at Kolin, where he had taken up a strong position. Here again were the Prussians led into the thickest of the enemy's fire, Frederick shouting to them, on their being a third time repulsed with fearful loss, "Would ye live forever?" Every effort failed, and Benkendorf's charge at the head of four Saxon regiments, glowing with revenge and brandy, decided the fate of the day. The Prussians were completely routed. Frederick lost his splendid guard and the whole of his luggage. Seated on the verge of a fountain and tracing figures in the sand, he reflected upon the means of realluring fickle Fortune to his standard. A fresh misfortune befell him not many weeks later. England had declared in his favor, but the incompetent English commander, nicknamed, on account of his immense size, the Duke of Cumberland, allowed himself to be beaten by the French at Hastenbeck and signed the shameful Treaty of Closter Seven, by which he agreed to disband his troops.[42] This treaty was confirmed by the British monarch. The Prussian general Lewald, who had merely twenty thousand men under his command, was, at the same time, defeated at Gross-Zagerndorf by an overwhelming Russian force under Apraxin. Four thousand men were all that Frederick was able to bring against the Swedes. They were, nevertheless, able to keep the field, owing to the disinclination to the war evinced by their opponents. Autumn fell, and Frederick's fortune seemed fading with the leaves of summer. He had, however, merely sought to gain time in order to recruit his diminished army, and Daun having, with his usual tardiness, neglected to pursue him, he suddenly took the field against the Imperialists under the Duke of Saxe-Hildburghausen and the French under Soubise. The two armies met on November 5, 1757, on the broad plain around Leipsic, near the village of Rossbach, not far from the scene of the famous encounters of earlier times. The enemy, three times superior in number to the Prussians, lay in a half-circle with a view of surrounding the little Prussian camp, and, certain of victory, had encumbered themselves with a numerous train of women, wigmakers, barbers, and modistes from Paris. The French camp was one scene of confusion and gayety. On a sudden Frederick sent General Seydlitz with his cavalry among them, and an instant dispersion took place, the troops flying in every direction without attempting to defend themselves, some Swiss, who refused to yield, alone excepted. The Germans on both sides showed their delight at the discomfiture of the French. An Austrian coming to the rescue of a Frenchman who had just been captured by a Prussian, "Brother German," exclaimed the latter, "let me have this French rascal!" "Take him and keep him!" replied the Austrian, riding off. The scene more resembled a chase than a battle. The Imperial army (_Reichsarmee_) was thence nicknamed the "Runaway" (_Reissaus_) army. Ten thousand French were taken prisoners. The loss on the side of the Prussians amounted to merely one hundred sixty men. The booty chiefly consisted in objects of gallantry belonging rather to a boudoir than to a camp. The French army perfectly resembled its mistress, the Marquise de Pompadour. The Austrians had meanwhile gained great advantages to the rear of the Prussian army, had beaten the King's favorite, General Winterfeld, at Moys in Silesia, had taken the important fortress at Schweidnitz and the metropolis, Breslau, whose commandant, the Duke of Bevern--a collateral branch of the house of Brunswick--had fallen into their hands while on a reconnoitring expedition. Frederick, immediately after the battle of Rossbach, hastened into Silesia, and, on his march thither, fell in with a body of two thousand young Silesians, who had been captured in Schweidnitz, but, on the news of the victory gained at Rossbach, had found means to regain their liberty, and had set off to his rencounter. The King, inspired by this reënforcement, hurried onward, and, at Leuthen, near Breslau, gained one of the most brilliant victories over the Austrians during this war. Making a false attack upon the right wing, he suddenly turned upon the left. "Here are the Wurtembergers," said he, "they will be the first to make way for us!" He trusted to the inclination of these troops, who were zealous Protestants, in his favor. They instantly gave way and Daun's line of battle was destroyed. During the night he threw two battalions of grenadiers into Lissa, and, accompanied by some of his staff, entered the castle, where, meeting with a number of Austrian generals and officers, he civilly saluted them and asked, "Can one get a lodging here, too?" The Austrians might have seized the whole party, but were so thunderstruck that they yielded their swords, the King treating them with extreme civility. Charles of Lorraine, weary of his unvarying ill-luck, resigned the command and was nominated stadtholder of the Netherlands, where he gained great popularity. At Leuthen twenty-one thousand Austrians fell into Frederick's hands; in Breslau, which shortly afterward capitulated, he took seventeen thousand more, so that his prisoners exceeded his army in number. Fresh storms rose on the horizon and threatened to overwhelm the gallant King, who, unshaken by the approaching peril, firmly stood his ground. The Austrians gained an excellent general in the Livonian, Gideon Laudon, whom Frederick had refused to take into his service on account of his extreme ugliness, and who now exerted his utmost endeavors to avenge the insult. The great Russian army, which had until now remained an idle spectator of the war, also set itself in motion. Frederick advanced in the spring of 1758 against Laudon, invaded Moravia, and besieged Olmuetz, but without success; Laudon ceaselessly harassed his troops and seized a convoy of three hundred wagons. The King was finally compelled to retreat, the Russians, under Fermor, crossing the Oder, murdering and burning on their route, converting Kuestrin, which refused to yield, into a heap of rubbish, and threatening Berlin. They were met by the enraged King at Zorndorf. Although numerically but half as strong as the Russians, he succeeded in beating them, but with the loss of eleven thousand of his men, the Russians standing like walls. The battle was carried on with the greatest fury on both sides; no quarter was given, and men were seen, when mortally wounded, to seize each other with their teeth as they rolled fighting on the ground. Some of the captured Cossacks were presented by Frederick to some of his friends with the remark, "See with what vagabonds I am reduced to fight!" He had scarcely recovered from this bloody victory when he was again compelled to take the field against the Austrians, who, under Daun and Laudon, had invaded Lusatia. He for some time watched them without hazarding an engagement, under an idea that they were themselves too cautious and timid to venture an attack. He was, however, mistaken. The Austrians surprised his camp at Hochkirch during the night of October 14th. The Prussians--the hussar troop of the faithful Zieten, whose warnings had been neglected by the King, alone excepted--slept, and were only roused by the roaring of their own artillery, which Laudon had already seized and turned upon their camp. The excellent discipline of the Prussian soldiery, nevertheless, enabled them, half naked as they were, and notwithstanding the darkness of the night, to place themselves under arms, and the King, although with immense loss, to make an orderly retreat. He lost nine thousand men, many of his bravest officers, and upward of a hundred pieces of artillery. The principal object of the Austrians, that of taking the King prisoner or of annihilating his army at a blow, was, however, frustrated. Frederick eluded the pursuit of the enemy and went straight into Silesia, whence he drove the Austrian general, Harsch, who was besieging Neisse, across the mountains into Bohemia. The approach of winter put a stop to hostilities on both sides. During this year Frederick received powerful aid from Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick, brother to Charles, the reigning Duke, who replaced Cumberland in the command of the Hanoverians and Hessians, with great ability covered the right flank of the Prussians, manoeuvred the French, under their wretched general, Richelieu, who enriched himself with the plunder of Halberstadt, across the Rhine, and defeated Clermont, Richelieu's successor, at Crefeld. His nephew, the Crown Prince Ferdinand, served under him with distinction. Toward the conclusion of the campaign an army under Broglio again pushed forward and succeeded in defeating the Prince von Ysenburg, who was to have covered Hesse with seven thousand men at Sangerhausen; another body of troops under Soubise also beat Count Oberg, on the Lutterberg. The troops on both sides then withdrew into winter quarters. The French had, during this campaign, also penetrated as far as East Friesland, whence they were driven by the peasantry until Wurmser of Alsace made terms with them and maintained the severest discipline among his troops. The campaign of 1759 was opened with great caution by the allies. The French reënforced the army opposed to the Duke of Brunswick, and attacked him on two sides, Broglio from the Main, Contades from the Lower Rhine. The Duke was pushed back upon Bergen, but nevertheless gained a glorious victory over the united French leaders at Minden. His nephew, the Crown Prince Ferdinand, also defeated another French army under Brissac, on the same day, at Herford. The Imperial army, commanded by its newly nominated leader, Charles of Wurtemberg, advanced, but was attacked by the Crown Prince, while its commander was amusing himself at a ball at Fulda, and ignominiously put to flight. Frederick, although secure against danger from this quarter, was threatened with still greater peril by the attempted junction of the Russians and Austrians, who had at length discovered that the advantages gained by Frederick had been mainly owing to the want of unity in his opponents. The Russians under Soltikoff, accordingly, approached the Oder. Frederick, at that time fully occupied with keeping the main body of the Austrians under Daun at bay in Bohemia, had been unable to hinder Laudon from advancing with twenty thousand men for the purpose of forming a junction with the Russians. In this extremity he commissioned the youthful general, Wedel, to use every exertion to prevent the further advance of the Russians. Wedel was, however, overwhelmed by the Russians near the village of Kay, and the junction with Laudon took place. Frederick now hastened in person to the scene of danger, leaving his brother, Henry, to make head against Daun. On the banks of the Oder at Kunersdorf, not far from Frankfort, the King attempted to obstruct the passage of the enemy, in the hope of annihilating him by a bold manoeuvre, which, however, failed, and he suffered the most terrible defeat that took place on either side during this war (August 12, 1759). He ordered his troops to storm a sand-mountain, bristling with batteries, from the bottom of the valley of the Oder; they obeyed, but were unable to advance through the deep sand, and were annihilated by the enemy's fire. A ball struck the King, whose life was saved by the circumstance of its coming in contact with an _étui_ in his waistcoat pocket. He was obliged to be carried almost by force off the field when all was lost. The poet Kleist, after storming three batteries and crushing his right hand, took his sword in his left hand and fell while attempting to carry a fourth. Soltikoff, fortunately for the King, ceased his pursuit. The conduct of the Russian generals was, throughout this war, often marked by inconsistency. They sometimes left the natural ferocity of their soldiery utterly unrestrained; at others, enforced strict discipline, hesitated in their movements, or spared their opponent. The key to this conduct was their dubious position with the Russian court. The Empress, Elizabeth, continually instigated by her minister, Bestuzheff, against Prussia, was in her dotage, was subject to daily fits of drunkenness, and gave signs of approaching dissolution. Her nephew, Peter, the son of her sister, Anna, and of Charles Frederick, Prince of Holstein-Gottorp, the heir to the throne of Russia, was a profound admirer of the great Prussian monarch, took him for his model, secretly corresponded with him, became his spy at the Russian court, and made no secret of his intention to enter into alliance with him on the death of the Empress. The generals, fearful of rendering themselves obnoxious to the future emperor, consequently showed great remissness in obeying Bestuzheff's commands. Frederick, however, although unharassed by the Russians, was still doomed to suffer fresh mishaps. His brother, Henry, had, with great prudence, cut off the magazines and convoys to Daun's rear, and had consequently hampered his movements. The King was, notwithstanding, discontented, and, unnecessarily fearing lest Daun might still succeed in effecting a junction with Soltikoff and Laudon, recalled his brother, and by so doing occasioned the very movement it was his object to prevent. Daun advanced; and General Finck, whom Frederick had despatched against him at the head of ten thousand men, fell into his hands. Shut up in Maxen, and too weak to force its way through the enemy, the whole corps was taken prisoner. Dresden also fell; Schmettau, the Prussian commandant, had, up to this period, bravely held out, notwithstanding the smallness of the garrison, but, dispirited by the constant ill-success, he at length resolved at all events to save the military chest, which contained three million dollars, and capitulated on a promise of free egress. By this act he incurred the heavy displeasure of his sovereign, who dismissed both him and Prince Henry. Fortune, however, once more favored Frederick; Soltikoff separated his troops from those of Austria and retraced his steps. The Russians always consumed more than the other troops, and destroyed their means of subsistence by their predatory habits. Austria vainly offered gold; Soltikoff persisted in his intention and merely replied, "My men cannot eat gold." Frederick was now enabled, by eluding the vigilance of the Austrians, to throw himself upon Dresden, for the purpose of regaining a position indispensable to him on account of its proximity to Bohemia, Silesia, the Mere, and Saxony. His project, however, failed, notwithstanding the terrible bombardment of the city, and he vented his wrath at this discomfiture on the gallant regiment of Bernburg, which he punished for its want of success by stripping it of every token of military glory. The constant want of ready money for the purpose of recruiting his army, terribly thinned by the incessant warfare, compelled him to circulate a false currency, the English subsidies no longer covering the expenses of the war, and his own territory being occupied by the enemy. Saxony consequently suffered, and was, owing to this necessity, completely drained, the town council at Leipsic being, for instance, shut up in the depth of winter without bedding, light, or firing, until it had voted a contribution of eight tons of gold; the finest forests were cut down and sold, etc. Berlin meanwhile fell into the hands of the Russians, who, on this occasion, behaved with humanity. General Todleben even ordered his men to fire upon the allied troop, consisting of fifteen thousand Austrians, under Lacy and Brentano, for attempting to infringe the terms of capitulation by plundering the city. The Saxons destroyed the château of Charlottenburg and the superb collection of antiques contained in it, an irreparable loss to art, in revenge for the destruction of the palaces of Bruhl by Frederick. No other treasures of art were carried away or destroyed either by Frederick in Dresden or by his opponents in Berlin. This campaign offered but a single pleasing feature: the unexpected relief of Kolberg, who was hard pushed by the Russians in Pomerania, by the Prussian hussars under General Werner. Misfortune continued to pursue the King throughout the campaign of 1760. Fouquet, one of his favorites, was, with eight thousand men, surprised and taken prisoner by Laudon in the Giant Mountains near Landshut; the mountain country was cruelly laid waste. The important fortress of Glatz fell, and Breslau was besieged. This city was defended by General Tauenzien, a man of great intrepidity. The celebrated Lessing was at that time his secretary. With merely three thousand Prussians he undertook the defence of the extensive city, within whose walls were nineteen thousand Austrian prisoners. He maintained himself until relieved by Frederick. The King hastened to defend Silesia, for which Soltikoff's procrastination allowed him ample opportunity. Daun had, it is true, succeeded in forming a junction with Laudon at Liegnitz, but their camps were separate, and the two generals were on bad terms. Frederick advanced close in their vicinity. An attempt made by Laudon, during the night of August 15th, to repeat the disaster of Hochkirch, was frustrated by the secret advance of the King to his rencounter, and a brilliant victory was gained by the Prussians over their most dangerous antagonist. The sound of the artillery being carried by the wind in a contrary direction, the news of the action and of its disastrous termination reached Daun simultaneously; at all events, he put this circumstance forward as an excuse, on being, not groundlessly, suspected of having betrayed Laudon from a motive of jealousy. He retreated into Saxony. The regiment of Bernburg had greatly distinguished itself in this engagement, and on its termination an old subaltern officer stepped forward and demanded from the King the restoration of its military badges, to which Frederick gratefully acceded. Scarcely, however, were Breslau relieved and Silesia delivered from Laudon's wild hordes than his rear was again threatened by Daun, who had fallen back upon the united Imperial army in Saxony and threatened to form a junction with the Russians then stationed in his vicinity in the Mere. Frederick, conscious of his utter inability to make head against this overwhelming force, determined, at all risks, to bring Daun and the Imperial army to a decisive engagement before their junction with the Russians, and, accordingly, attacked them at Torgau. Before the commencement of the action he earnestly addressed his officers and solemnly prepared for death. Daun, naturally as anxious to evade an engagement as Frederick was to hazard one, had, as at Collin, taken up an extremely strong position, and received the Prussians with a well-sustained fire. A terrible havoc ensued; the battle raged with various fortune during the whole of the day, and, notwithstanding the most heroic attempts, the position was still uncarried at fall of night. The confusion had become so general that Prussian fought with Prussian, whole regiments had disbanded, and the King was wounded when Zieten, the gallant hussar general, who had during the night cut his way through the Austrians, who were in an equal state of disorder and had taken the heights, rushed into his presence. Zieten had often excited the King's ridicule by his practice of brandishing his sabre over his head in sign of the cross, as an invocation for the aid of Heaven before making battle; but now, deeply moved, he embraced his deliverer, whose work was seen at break of day. The Austrians were in full retreat. This bloody action, by which the Prussian monarchy was saved, took place on November 3, 1760. George II, King of England, expired during this year. His grandson, George III, the son of Frederick, Prince of Wales, who had preceded his father to the tomb, at first declared in favor of Prussia, and fresh subsidies were voted to her monarch by the English Parliament, which at the same time expressed "its deep admiration of his unshaken fortitude and of the inexhaustible resources of his genius." Female influence, however, erelong placed Lord Bute in Pitt's stead at the helm of state, and the subsidies so urgently demanded by Prussia were withdrawn. The Duke of Brunswick was, meanwhile, again victorious at Billinghausen over the French, and covered the King on that side. On the other hand, the junction of the Austrians with the Russians was effected in 1761; the allied army amounted in all to one hundred thirty thousand men, and Frederick's army, solely consisting of fifty thousand, would in all probability have again been annihilated had he not secured himself behind the fortress of Schweidnitz, in the strong position at Bunzelwitz. Butterlin, the Russian general, was moreover little inclined to come to an engagement on account of the illness of the Empress and the favor with which Frederick was beheld by the successor to the throne. It was in vain that Laudon exerted all the powers of eloquence; the Russians remained in a state of inactivity and finally withdrew. Laudon avenged himself by unexpectedly taking Schweidnitz under the eyes of the King by a clever _coup-de-main_, and had not a heroic Prussian artilleryman set fire to a powder-magazine, observing as he did so, "All of ye shall not get into the town!" and blown himself with an immense number of Austrians into the air, he would have made himself master of this important stronghold almost without losing a man. Frederick retreated upon Breslau. The Empress Elizabeth expired in the ensuing year, 1762, and was succeeded by Peter III, who instantly ranged himself on the side of Prussia. Six months afterward he was assassinated, and his widow seized the reins of government under the title of Catharine II. Frederick was on the eve of giving battle to the Austrians at Reichenbach in Silesia, and the Russians under Czernichef were under his command, when the news arrived of the death of his friend and of the inimical disposition of the new Empress, who sent Czernichef instant orders to abandon the Prussian banner. Such was, however, Frederick's influence over the Russian general that he preferred hazarding his head rather than abandon the King at this critical conjuncture, and, deferring the publication of the Empress' orders for three days, remained quietly within the camp. Frederick meanwhile was not idle, and gained a complete victory over the Austrians (July 21, 1762). The attempt made by a Silesian nobleman, Baron Warkotsch, together with a priest named Schmidt, secretly to carry off the King from his quarters at Strehlen, failed. In the autumn Frederick besieged and took Schweidnitz. The two most celebrated French engineers put their new theories into practice on this occasion: Lefévre, for the Prussians against the fortress; Griboval, for the Austrians engaged in its defence. Frederick's good-fortune was shared by Prince Henry, who defeated the Imperial troops at Freiburg in Saxony, and by Ferdinand of Brunswick, who gained several petty advantages over the French, defeating Soubise at Wilhelmsthal and the Saxons on the Lutterbach. The spiritless war on this side was finally terminated during the course of this year (1762) by a peace between England and France. Goltz had at the same time instigated the Tartars in Southern Russia to revolt, and was on the point of creating a diversion with fifty thousand of them in Frederick's favor. Frederick, with a view of striking the empire with terror, also despatched General Kleist into Franconia, with a flying corps, which no sooner made its appearance in Nuremberg and Bamberg than the whole of the South was seized with a general panic, Charles, Duke of Wurtemberg, for instance, preparing for instant flight from Stuttgard. Sturzebecher, a bold cornet of the Prussian hussars, accompanied by a trumpeter and by five-and-twenty men, advanced as far as Rothenburg on the Tauber, where, forcing his way through the city gate, he demanded a contribution of eighty thousand dollars from the town council. The citizens of this town, which had once so heroically opposed the whole of Tilly's forces, were chased by a handful of hussars into the Bockshorn, and were actually compelled to pay a fine of forty thousand florins, with which the cornet scoffingly withdrew, carrying off with him two of the town councillors as hostages. So deeply had the citizens of the free towns of the empire at that time degenerated. Frederick's opponents at length perceived the folly of carrying on war without the remotest prospect of success. The necessary funds were, moreover, wanting. France was weary of sacrificing herself for Austria. Catharine of Russia, who had views upon Poland and Turkey, foresaw that the aid of Prussia would be required in order to keep Austria in check, and both cleverly and quickly entered into an understanding with her late opponent. Austria was, consequently, also compelled to succumb. The rest of the allied powers had no voice in the matter. Peace was concluded at Hubertsburg, one of the royal Saxon residences, February 15, 1763. Frederick retained possession of the whole of his dominions. The machinations of his enemies had not only been completely frustrated, but Prussia had issued from the Seven Years' War with redoubled strength and glory; she had confirmed her power by her victories, had rendered herself feared and respected, and had raised herself from her station as one of the principal potentates of Germany on a par with the great powers of Europe. FREDERICK THE GREAT The Russians entered Berlin the same day. It was agreed the citizens should, by tax, raise the sum of two millions, which should be paid in lieu of pillage. Generals Lacy and Czernichef were nevertheless tempted to burn a part of the city; and something fatal might have happened had it not been for the remonstrances of M. Verelst, the Dutch ambassador. This worthy republican spoke to them of the rights of nations, and depicted their fervidity in colors so fearful as to excite flame. Their fury and vengeance turned on the royal palaces of Charlottenburg and Schoenhausen, which were pillaged by the Cossacks and Saxons. The rumor of the march of the King [Frederick] gained credit. Information was received by Lacy and Czernichef that he intended to cut off their retreat. This hastened their departure, and they retired on October 12th. The Russians repassed the Oder at Frankfort and Schwedt; and on the 15th Soltikoff marched toward Landsberg on the Warthe. Lacy pillaged whatever he could find on his route, and in three days regained Torgau. The Prince of Wurtemberg and Hulsen, embarrassed as to how to act, had turned toward Coswig, and cantoned there for want of knowing where to go. At Gross-Morau the King heard these different accounts. As there were no more Russians to combat, he was at liberty to direct all his efforts against Saxony; therefore, instead of taking the route to Koepenick, he took that of Lueben. Marshal Daun, however, had followed the King into Lusatia. He then approached Torgau, and, as it was known that he had left Laudon at Loewenberg, General Goltz had orders to return into Silesia, to oppose the attempts of the Austrians with his utmost abilities. On the 22d the army of the King arrived at Jessen. The troops of the Prince de Deuxponts extended wholly along the left shore of the Elbe. He and the greatest part of his forces were at Prata, opposite Wittenberg; this fortress he evacuated as soon as the van of the Prussians appeared near the town. The sudden changes that had happened during this campaign required new measures to be taken and other dispositions to be made. The Prussians had not a single magazine in all Saxony. The army of the King existed from day to day; he drew some little flour from Spandau, but this began to fail; add to this, the enemy occupied all Saxony. Daun had arrived at Torgau, the troops of the circles held the course of the Elbe, and the Duke of Wurtemberg occupied the environs of Dessau. To free himself from so many enemies, the King ordered Hulsen and the Prince of Wurtemberg to march to Magdeburg, there to pass the Elbe, and escort the boats loaded with flour which were to come to Dessau, where the King resolved to pass the Elbe with the right of his army, and afterward join Hulsen. In the principality of Halberstadt the Prince of Wurtemberg had a rencounter with a detachment of the Duke, his brother, which was entirely destroyed. The Duke returned with all speed through Merseburg and Leipsic to Naumburg. The right of the King passed the Elbe on the 26th, and joined Hulsen and the Prince near Dessau. On this movement the Prince de Deuxponts abandoned the banks of the Elbe, and retired through Duben to Leipsic. He had left Ried in the rear, in a forest between Oranienbaum and Kemberg, where this officer had taken post, with little judgment; having garnished the woods with his hussars, and posted his pandoors in the plain. The van of the Prussians attacked Ried; his scattered troops were beaten in detail and his corps almost destroyed. Of thirty-six hundred men he could only assemble one thousand seven hundred, at Pretsch, to which place he was driven after the action. When the army of the King had obtained Kemberg, Zieten, who with the left had stopped the enemy at Wittenberg, passed the Elbe and joined the main army. Marshal Daun had, however, come up with Lacy at Torgau. As certain information was received that his vanguard had taken the road to Eulenburg, he could be supposed to have no other intention than that of joining the army of the circles. On this the army marched to Duben, to oppose a junction so prejudicial to the interests of the King. Here arriving, a battalion of Croats was found, who were all either taken or put to the sword. At this place the King formed a magazine: it seemed the most convenient post because it is a peninsula and nearly surrounded by the Mulde. Some redoubts were constructed; and ten battalions under Sydow were left for its defence. The army of the King thence marched to Eulenburg. The Austrian troops that had encamped in that vicinity retired, through Mochrena to Torgau, with so much precipitate haste that they abandoned a part of their tents. The army encamped with the right at Thalwitz and the left at Eulenburg. Hulsen was obliged to pass the Mulde with some battalions. He took a position between Belzen and Gostevra, opposite the Prince de Deuxponts, whose army was at Taucha. Under the present circumstances the first thing necessary was to drive the troops of the circles to a distance, as well because they were on the rear of the Prussians as to prevent their union with the Austrians. This cost but little trouble; Hulsen gave them the alarm, and they decamped the same night, passed the Pleisse, and then the Elster, and retreated to Zeitz. Major Quintus, with his free battalion, vigorously charged their rear-guard; from which he took four hundred prisoners. After so happily terminating this expedition, the Prussians recovered possession of Leipsic, and Hulsen rejoined the army. Every event hitherto (November) had turned to the advantage of the King. The irruption of the Russians and the taking of Berlin, which might appear to induce consequences so great, ended in a manner less afflicting than could have been expected. Contributions and money only were lost. The enemy was driven from the frontiers of Brandenburg. Wittenberg and Leipsic were recovered; and the troops of the circle were repulsed to a distance too considerable for it to be feared they should join the Imperialists with promptitude; but all was not yet done, and the projects that remained were the most difficult part of the whole. The Russians kept at Landsberg on the Wartha and there might remain peaceful spectators of what should pass in Saxony. The King, however, was informed that other reasons engaged them not to march to too great a distance; for their design was, should the Austrians obtain any advantages over the army of the King, or should Marshal Daun maintain Torgau, to reënter the electorate of Brandenburg, and, conjointly with the Austrians, to take up their quarters on the banks of the Elbe. The consequence of such a project would have been fatally desperate to Prussia. By this position they would cut off the army, not only from Silesia and Pomerania, but from Berlin itself--that nursing mother which supplied clothing, arms, baggage, and every necessary for the men. Add to which the troops would have no quarters to take except beyond the Mulde, between the Pleisse, the Saale, the Elster, and the Unstrut. This would have been a space too narrow to supply the army with subsistence through the winter. And whence should magazines for the spring, uniforms, and recruits be obtained? The army thus pressed, and thrown back upon the allies, would have starved them by starving itself. Without any profound military knowledge every rational man would comprehend that, had the King remained quiet during autumn, and formed no new attempts, he would but have delivered himself, tied hand and foot, into the power of the enemy. Let us still further add that the provisions that had been deposited at Duben scarcely would supply the troops for the space of a month; that the frost, which began to be felt, would soon impede the navigation of the Elbe; consequently the boats could no longer bring provisions from Magdeburg; and, in fine, that the very last distress must have succeeded had not good measures been taken to remove the enemy, and gain ground on which the army might encamp and subsist. After having maturely examined and weighed all these reasons, it was determined to commit the fortune of Prussia to the issue of a battle, if no other means by manoeuvring could be found of driving Marshal Daun from his post at Torgau. It will be proper to observe that the fears with which he might be inspired could only relate to two objects: the first, that of gaining Dresden before him, in which there was but a feeble garrison; and the second, of approaching the Elbe and disturbing him concerning subsistence, which was brought from Dresden by the river. It must be confessed that this last manoeuvre could not give him much uneasiness, because he was entirely master of the right shore of the Elbe, and might bring the provisions he wanted by land when they could no more be transported by water. The greatest difficulty in executing this plan was that two things nearly contradictory were to be reconciled: the march of the army to the Elbe, and the security of the magazine. Not to forget all rule, the army of the King, in advancing, ought not to depart too far from the line of defence by which it covered its subsistence; and the motion it was to make upon the Elbe threw it entirely to the right and uncovered its rear. It was still endeavored to reconcile this enterprise on the enemy with the security of the magazine. The King proposed to incline to Schilda, that he might prove the countenance of Daun, and attack him at Torgau should he obstinately persist in remaining there. As it was but one march to Schilda, should the marshal retire on this motion, there was no fear that he should attempt Duben, and, if he remained at Torgau, by attacking him on the morrow, it seemed apparent that he would have so many occupations he would have no time to form projects against the magazine. Everything conspiring to confirm the King in his resolution, he, on November 2d, marched the army to Schilda. During the whole route he continued with the vanguard of the hussars, that he might observe to which side the advanced posts of the enemy retired as they were repulsed by the troops of the King. This did not long remain a subject of doubt. The detachments all withdrew to Torgau, except Brentano, who was attacked at Belgern, and taken in such a direction that he could only escape toward Strebla. Kleist took eight hundred prisoners. The army of the King encamped from Schilda through Probsthain to Langen-Reichenbach, and Marshal Daun remained firm and motionless at Torgau. There no longer was any doubt that he had received positive orders from his court to maintain his post at any price. The following dispositions were made for the attack on the morrow. The right of the Imperialists was supported behind the ponds of Groswich; their centre covered the hill of Sueptitz; the left terminated beyond Zinna, extending toward the ponds of Torgau. Exclusive of this, Ried observed the Prussian army from beside the forest of Torgau. Lacy, with a reserve of twenty thousand men, covered the causeway and the ponds that lie at the extremity of the place where the Imperialists had supported their left. Still the ground on which the enemy stood wanted depth, and the lines had not an interval of above three hundred paces. This was a very favorable circumstance for the Prussians; because, by attacking the centre in front and rear, the foe would be placed between two fires, and could not avoid being beaten. To produce this effect the King divided his army into two bodies. The one destined to approach from the Elbe, after having passed the forest of Torgau, was to attack the enemy in the rear, from the hill of Sueptitz; while the other, following the route of Eulenburg to Torgau, was to fix a battery on the eminence of Groswich, and at the same time attack the village of Sueptitz. These two corps, acting in concert, must necessarily divide the centre of the Austrians; after which it would be easy to drive the remnant toward the Elbe, where the ground was one continued gentle declivity, excellently advantageous to the Prussians, and must have procured them a complete victory. The King began his march at the dawn of day, on the 3d, and was followed by thirty battalions and fifty squadrons of his left. The troops crossed the forest of Torgau in three columns. The route of the first line of infantry led through Mochrena, Wildenhayn, Groswich, and Neiden; the route of the second through Pechhutte, Jaegerteich, and Bruckendorf, to Elsnich. The cavalry that composed the third column passed the wood of Wildenhayn, to march to Vogelsang. Zieten at the same time led the right of the army, consisting of thirty battalions and seventy squadrons, and filed off on the road that goes from Eulenburg to Torgau. The corps headed by the King met with General Ried, posted at the skirts of the forest of Torgau, with two regiments of hussars, as many dragoons, and three battalions of pandoors. Some volleys of artillery were fired, and he fell back on the right of the Imperialists. Near Wildenhayn there is a small plain in the forest, where ten battalions of grenadiers were seen, well posted, who affected to dispute the passage of the Prussians. They made some discharges of artillery on the column of the King, which were answered by the Prussians. A line of infantry was formed to charge, but they reclined toward their army. The hussars brought word at the same time that the regiment of St. Ignon was in the wood, between the two columns of infantry, and that it had even dismounted. It was incontinently attacked; and, as these dragoons found no outlet for escape, the whole regiment was destroyed. These grenadiers and this regiment were mutually to depart on an expedition against Dobeln, and the commanding officer, St. Ignon, who was taken, bitterly complained that Ried had not informed him of the approach of the Russians. This trifling affair only cost the troops a few moments; they pursued their road, and the heads of the columns arrived, at one o'clock, on the farther side of the forest, in the small plain of Neiden. Here were seen some dragoons of Bathiani, and four battalions, who coming from the village of Elsnich made some discharges of artillery at a venture and fired with their small arms. This no doubt was a motion of surprise, occasioned perhaps by having seen some Prussian hussars. They retired upon a height behind the defile of Neiden. In this place is a large marsh, which begins at Groswich and goes to the Elbe, and over which there is no other passage but two narrow causeways. Had this corps taken advantage of its ground there certainly would have been no battle. However determined the King might be to attack the Imperialists, such an attack would have become impossible: he must have renounced his project, and returned full speed to regain Eulenburg. But it happened far otherwise; these battalions hastened to rejoin the army, to which they were invited by a heavy cannonade which they heard from the side of Zieten. The King supposed, as was very probable, that the troops of Zieten already were in action with the enemy. This induced him to pass the defile of Neiden with his hussars and infantry; for the cavalry which ought to have proceeded was not yet come up. The King glided into a little wood, and personally reconnoitred the position of the enemy. He judged there was no ground on which it was proper to form, in presence of the Austrians, but by passing this small wood, which would in some measure conceal his troops, and whence a considerable ravine might be gained, to protect the soldiers, while they formed, from the enemy's artillery. This ravine was not indeed above eight hundred paces from the Austrian army; but the remainder of the ground, which from Sueptitz descended like a glacis to the Elbe, was such that, had the army here been formed, one-half must have been cut off before it could approach the enemy. Marshal Daun scarcely could credit the report that the Prussians were marching to the attack; nor was it till after reiterated information that he ordered his second line to face about and that the greatest part of the artillery of the first line was brought to the second. Whatever precaution the King might take to cover the march of his troops, the enemy, who had four hundred pieces of artillery in battery, could not fail to kill many of his men. Eight hundred soldiers fell, and thirty cannon were destroyed, with their horses, train, and gunners, before the columns arrived at the place where they were to be put in order of battle. The King formed his infantry in three lines, each of ten battalions, and began the attack. Had his cavalry been present, he would have thrown two regiments of dragoons into a bottom, that was on the right of his infantry, to cover its flank; but the Prince of Holstein, whose phlegm was invincible, did not come up till an hour after the action had begun. According to the regulations that had been agreed on, the attacks were to be made at the same time, and the result ought to have been that either the King or Zieten should penetrate through the centre of the enemy at Sueptitz. But General Zieten, instead of attacking, amused himself for a considerable time with a body of pandoors, whom he encountered in the forest of Torgau. He next cannonaded the corps of Lacy, who as we have said was posted behind the ponds of Torgau. In a word, the orders were not executed; the King attacked singly, without being seconded by Zieten, and without his cavalry being present. This still did not prevent him from pursuing his purpose. The first line of the King left the ravine and boldly marched to the enemy; but the prodigious fire of the Imperial artillery, and the descent of the ground, were too disadvantageous. Most of the Prussian generals, commanders of battalions, and soldiers, were killed or wounded. The line fell back, and returned in some disorder. By this the Austrian carbineers profited, pursued, and did not retreat till they had received some discharges from the second line. This line also approached, was disturbed, and, after a more bloody and obstinate combat than the preceding, was in like manner repulsed. Buelow, who led it to the attack, was taken. At length the much-expected Prince of Holstein and his cavalry arrived. The third line of the Prussians was already in action; the regiment of Prince Henry, attacking the enemy, was in turn charged by the Austrian cavalry, and supported by the hussars of Hund, Reitzenstein, and Prittwitz, against all the efforts of the enemy to break its ranks. The dreadful fire of the artillery of the Austrians had too hastily consumed the ammunition. They had left their reserve of cannon on the other side of the Elbe, and their close lines did not admit of ammunition-wagons to pass and make proper distribution to the batteries. The King profited by the moment when their fire slackened, and ordered the dragoons of Bayreuth to attack their infantry. They were led on with so much valor and impetuosity by Buelow that, in less than three minutes, they took prisoners the regiments of the Emperor, Neuperg, Geisruck, and Imperial-Bayreuth. The cuirassiers of Spaen and Frederick at the same time made an assault on that part of the enemy's infantry which was most to the right of the Prussians, put it to the rout, and brought back many prisoners. The Prince of Holstein was placed to cover the left flank of the infantry, which his right wing joined, and his left inclined toward the Elbe. The enemy soon presented himself before the Prince, with eighty squadrons; the right toward the Elbe, the left toward Zinna. O'Donnel commanded the Imperial cavalry. Had he resolutely attacked the Prince, the battle must have been lost without resource, but he was respectful of a ditch of a foot and a half wide, which those who skirmished were forbidden to pass. The enemy believed it to be considerable, because the Prussians made a pretence of fearing to cross it; and the Imperialists remained, in the presence of the Prince, inactive. The dragoons of Bayreuth had just cleared the height of Sueptitz. The King sent thither the regiment of Maurice, which had not engaged, and a brave and worthy officer, Lestwitz, brought up a corps of a thousand men, which he had formed from the different regiments that had been repulsed in previous attacks. With these troops the Prussians seized on the eminence of Sueptitz, and there fixed themselves, with all the cannon they could hastily collect. Zieten at length, having arrived at his place of destination, attacked on his side. It began to be dark, and to prevent Prussians from combating Prussians, the infantry of Sueptitz beat the march. They were presently joined by Zieten; and scarcely had the Prussians begun to form with order on the ground before Lacy came up, with his corps, to dislodge the King's forces. He came too late: he was twice repulsed. Offended at his ill-reception, at half-past nine he retired toward Torgau. The Prussians and Imperialists were so near each other, among the vineyards of Sueptitz, that many officers and soldiers, on both parts, wandering in the dark, were made prisoners after the battle was over and all was tranquil. The King himself, as he was repairing to the village of Neiden, as well to expedite orders relative to the victory as to send intelligence of it through Brandenburg and Silesia, heard the sound of a carriage near the army. The word was demanded, and the reply was "Austrian." The escort of the King fell on and took two field-pieces and a battalion of pandoors, that had lost themselves in the night. A hundred paces farther he came up with a troop of horse; that again gave the word "Austrian carbineers." The King's escort attacked and dispersed them in the forest. Those who were taken related that they had lost their road with Ried in the wood, and that they had imagined the Imperialists remained masters of the field. The whole forest that had been crossed by the Prussians before the battle, and beside which the King was then riding, was full of large fires. What these might mean no one could divine, and some hussars were sent to gain information. They returned, and related that soldiers sat round the fires, some in blue uniforms and others in white. As intelligence more exact was necessary, officers were then sent, who learned a very singular fact, of which I doubt whether any example in history may be found: The soldiers were of both armies, and had sought refuge in the woods, where they had passed an act of neutrality, to wait till fortune had decided in favor of the Prussians or Imperialists; and they had mutually agreed to follow the victorious party. This battle cost the Prussians thirteen thousand men, three thousand of whom were killed, and three thousand fell into the enemy's hands, during the first attacks, while the Austrians were victorious; Buelow and Finck were among these. The breast of the King was grazed by a ball, and the margrave, Charles, received a contusion: several generals were wounded. The battle was obstinately disputed by both armies; its fury cost the Imperialists twenty thousand men, eight thousand of whom were taken, with four generals. They lost twenty-seven pair of colors and fifty cannon. Marshal Daun was wounded at the commencement of the battle. When the enemy saw the first line of the Prussians give ground, with hopes too frivolous, they despatched couriers to Vienna and Warsaw to announce their victory; but the same night they abandoned the field of battle, and crossed the Elbe at Torgau. On the morning of the following day (the 4th), Torgau capitulated to General Hulsen. The Prince of Wurtemberg was sent over the Elbe to pursue the foe, who fled in disorder: he augmented the number of prisoners already made. The Imperialists would have been totally defeated had not General Beck, who was not in the engagement, covered their retreat by posting his corps between Arzberg and Triestewitz, behind the Landgraben. It was wholly in the power of Daun to have avoided a battle. Had he placed Lacy behind the defile of Neiden, instead of the ponds of Torgau, which six battalions would have been sufficient to defend, his camp would have been impregnable, so great may the consequences be of the least inadvertency in the difficult trade of war. When the Russians were informed of the fate of the day of Torgau, they retired to Thorn, where they crossed the Vistula. The army of the King, on the 5th, advanced to Strebla, and on the 6th to Meissen. The Imperialists had left Lacy on that side of the Elbe, that he might cover the bottom of Plauen before their arrival. He attempted to dispute the defile of Zehren with the vanguard; but, when he saw the cavalry in motion to turn him by Lommatsch, he fled to Meissen, where he crossed the Tripsche; but, in spite of the celerity of his march, his rear-guard was attacked, and lost four hundred men. The pursuit was continued that an attempt might be made, favored by the fears and disorder of the foe, to pass the bottom of Plauen with him and seize on this important post. But no diligence could accomplish this; the troops were two hours too late; for, on arriving at Ukersdorf, another corps of the enemy was discovered, that had already taken post at the Windberg, the right of which extended to the Trompeter Schloesgen. This was the corps of Haddick, who, with the Prince de Deuxponts, quitting Leipsic, had marched to Zeitz, and afterward to Rosswein. No sooner were they informed of the Imperial defeat at Torgau than they diligently advanced to cover Dresden before the Prussians could come up. FOOTNOTES: [42] The Hanoverian nobility, who hoped thereby to protect their property, were implicated in this affair. They were shortly afterward well and deservedly punished, being laid under contribution by the French. CONQUEST OF CANADA VICTORY OF WOLFE AT QUEBEC A.D. 1759 A.G. BRADLEY With the opening of the Seven Years' War the two races, French and English, once more began to contend for the prize of empire in the New World. For a while the advantage in the struggle was on the side of France, though the preponderance of population was vastly on the side of the English colonies. Louis XV, however, had one general in Canada worthy of the gallant race from which he had sprung, and who strenuously endeavored to uphold the fortunes of his country. This was the Marquis de Montcalm, a cultured and far-seeing French nobleman, whose ability and enthusiasm in the profession of arms had procured for him the chief military command in Canada, and who was now seeking to expel the English from the colonial possessions of France on the Continent. But, unfortunately for his country, Montcalm was ill-supported by Old France, and his difficulties were increased by the maladministration of affairs in the colony. Despite these drawbacks, he was for some years the means of protracting the gallant struggle in America and of bringing many disasters on the English arms. Concentrating his forces in the neighborhood of Lake Champlain, he attacked Fort William Henry, on Lake George, and with a body of Indian auxiliaries from the Ottawa forced the English to capitulate. The victory was marred by horrible Indian atrocities on the English prisoners of war, which Montcalm was unable to prevent. During the year 1757 Montcalm acted solely on the defensive, while the English, having incompetent generals, accomplished little and failed in an attempt to wrest Louisburg from the French. The following year, however, William Pitt, "the Great English Commoner," was called to the councils of his nation, and infused new vigor into the war which had now been formally declared between the two countries. Pitt, aiming at the extinction of French power in America, fitted out a fleet of one hundred fifty sail, under Admiral Boscawen, with a land force of some fourteen thousand men, under General Amherst and Brigadier-General James Wolfe, and despatched both to Canada. The first operation was the siege of Louisburg, which surrendered with about five thousand prisoners, and in the capture of which young Wolfe greatly distinguished himself. Later in the year the French were compelled to abandon Fort Duquesne, in the Ohio Valley, which the English now named Pittsburg, in honor of War Minister Pitt; and Frontenac (Kingston), the marine arsenal of the French at the foot of Lake Ontario, surrendered and was destroyed. The effect of these losses was disheartening to the French, though before the season's campaign closed Montcalm defeated the English, under General Abercrombie, in an attack on the French post on Lake Champlain, afterward named Ticonderoga. When the year 1759 opened, the English were ready to resume operations with spirit and effect. Amherst's army advanced upon Crown Point and Ticonderoga, from which the French retired, and Sir William Johnson captured Niagara and drove the French from the Lakes. Wolfe, now general of the forces of the St. Lawrence, sailed in June with his army from Louisburg to Quebec. The story of this eventful expedition and its result here given is by the able pen of the historian A.G. Bradley. When the flag of Britain supplanted the emblem of France on the ramparts of Quebec the city was held by an English garrison under General Murray, and in the spring of 1760 it narrowly escaped recapture by De Levis, at the head of seven thousand men, who had come from Montreal to attack it. The timely arrival of a British fleet saved the now British stronghold, while Montreal was in turn invested, and that post and all Canada surrendered to the British Crown. Three years later the Peace of Paris confirmed the cession of the country to Britain, and closed the dominion of France in Canada. England rang with the triumphs of her ally, Frederick of Prussia, and, by a perversion peculiarly British, the scoffing freethinker became the "Protestant hero" in both church and taproom. Pitt was omnipotent in Parliament; only a single insignificant member ever ventured to oppose him. "Our unanimity is prodigious," wrote Walpole. "You would as soon hear a 'No' from an old-maid as from the House of Commons." Newcastle was supremely happy among jobbers and cringing place-hunters under the full understanding that neither he nor his kind trespassed within the sphere of foreign politics. The estimates had exceeded all former limits, and reached for those days the enormous sum of twelve and a half millions. The struggle with France was vigorously waged, too, upon the ocean, warships, privateers, and merchantmen grappling to the death with one another in many a distant sea, while the main fleets of the enemy were for the most part blockaded in their ports by vigilant British armaments. Everywhere were exhilaration and a superb feeling of confidence, engendered by incipient successes and by the consciousness that the nation was united in purpose and that the leaders of its enterprises were not chosen because they were "rich in votes or were related to a duke." James Wolfe had certainly neither of these qualifications, and he it was whom Pitt designed to act the leading part in the coming year, "a greater part," he modestly wrote after receiving his appointment, "than I wished or desired. The backwardness of some of the older officers has in some measure forced the Government to come down so low. I shall do my best and leave the rest to fortune, as perforce we must when there are not the most commanding abilities." Pitt's plan for the coming season in America was to strike two great blows at Canada, and a lesser one, which, if successful, would involve the conquest of that country. Wolfe, aided by a fleet, was to attack Quebec; Amherst with another force was to push through by the Lake Champlain route and unite with him if possible. A further expedition was to be sent against Niagara under Prideaux; but for the present we are concerned only with the first and by far the most memorable of the three. Wolfe at this time was colonel of the Sixty-seventh regiment. He was to have local rank only of major-general while in America, since more substantial elevation would, in the eyes of Newcastle and his friends, have been almost an outrage on the British Constitution as by them interpreted. Pitt and his young officers, however, were well content to waive such trifles for the present, and concede so much of consolation to the long list of rejected incapables, in return for such honor and glory as might perchance be theirs. The land force was to consist of twelve thousand men, a few of whom were to sail from England, but the bulk were to be drawn from the American and West Indian garrisons. The latter, however, were counter-ordered; the former proved to be below the estimated strength, and the actual number that gathered in Louisburg, the point of rendezvous, was only about eight thousand five hundred. The command of the fleet was given to Admiral Saunders, and this appointment demanded great discretion, as the sailor in this instance had not only to be efficient on his own element, but to be a man of tact, and one who at the same time would put patriotism above professional jealousy, and could be trusted to work heartily with the land forces. It was late in February when Saunders' fleet, convoying Wolfe, his stores, and a few troops, sailed from Spithead. The winds being adverse and the seas running high, May had opened before the wild coast of Nova Scotia was dimly seen through the whirling wreaths of fog. It was a late season, and Louisburg harbor was still choked with ice, so that the fleet had to make southward for Halifax at the cost of much of that time which three years' experience had at length taught the British was so precious in all North American enterprises. At Halifax Wolfe found the troops from the American garrisons awaiting him. Among them was the Forty-third regiment, with the gallant Major Knox, our invaluable diarist, filled with joy at the prospect of active service after twenty months' confinement in a backwoods fort, and ready with his sword as happily for us he was with his pen. In a fortnight Louisburg was open, and both fleet and transports were grinding amid the still drifting ice in its harbor. Here again the army was landed, and its numbers completed from the Louisburg garrison. There was naturally much to be done with an army brought together from so many various quarters. The force, too, proved, as I have said, far short of the estimate, being considerably under nine thousand men; but, on the other hand, these were all good troops and mostly veterans. Though the benefits of Bath waters had been more than neutralized by nearly three months of buffeting on the element he so loathed, Wolfe spared himself no effort. He was not only a fighting, but to the highest degree an organizing, general. Every sickly and unlikely man, small as was his force, was weeded out. Every commissariat detail down to the last gaiter-button was carefully scrutinized. Seldom had England sent out a body of men so perfect in discipline, spirit, and material of war, and assuredly none so well commanded since the days of Marlborough. It was well it was so, seeing that they were destined to attack one of the strongest posts in the world, defended by an army nearly twice as numerous as themselves, and fighting, moreover, in defence of its home and country and, as it fully believed, of its religion. The young general was thoroughly alive to the numerical weakness of his force, but that he rejoiced in its efficiency is evident from his letters, and he was hard to please. "If valor can make amends for want of numbers," he wrote to Pitt, "we shall succeed." Admiral Durell, with ten ships, had been sent forward early in May to stop French supply- or war-ships from ascending the St. Lawrence when navigation opened. It was June 1st when Wolfe and Saunders with the main army followed him, owing to fog and ice and contrary winds, in somewhat straggling fashion. The bands played the time-honored air of _The Girl I Left Behind Me_, and the men cheered lustily as the ships cleared the bar, while at the mess-tables, says Knox, there was only one toast among the officers--"British colors on every French fort, post, and garrison in America." With Saunders went twenty-two ships of the line--five frigates and seventeen sloops-of-war, besides the transports. All went smoothly till the 20th, when, the wind dropping, they were caught in the cross-currents caused by the outpouring waters of the Saguenay, which, draining a vast mountain wilderness to the northward, would be accounted a mighty river if it were not for the still mightier one that absorbs it. Here the ships ran some risk of fouling, but escaped any serious damage, and in three days were at the Île aux Coudres, where the real dangers of the navigation began. It must be remembered that such a venture was unprecedented, and regarded hitherto as an impossibility for large ships without local pilots. The very presence of the first made the second possible, for some of the vessels approaching the shore ran up French flags, whereupon numbers of the country people, in response to an invitation, came on board, little guessing the visitors could be their enemies. Pilots were by this ruse secured, and their services impressed under pain of death. Knox, who understood French, tells us that the poor unwilling pilot who took his ship up the tortuous channel made use of the most frightful imprecations, swearing that most of the fleet and the whole army would find their graves in Canada. An old British tar, on the other hand, master of a transport and possessed of an immense scorn for foreigners, would not allow a French pilot to interfere, and insisted, in the teeth of all remonstrance, on navigating his own ship. "D--n me," he roared, "I'll convince you that an Englishman shall go where a Frenchman daren't show his nose," and he took it through in safety. "The enemy," wrote Vaudreuil soon after this to his Government, "have passed sixty ships-of-war where we dare not risk a vessel of a hundred tons by night or day." The British navy has not been sufficiently remembered in the story of Quebec. Let us now turn for a moment to Montcalm and see what he has been doing all this time to prepare for the attack. It was an accepted axiom in Canada that no armament strong enough to seriously threaten Quebec could navigate the St. Lawrence. In the face of expected invasion it was the Lake George and Champlain route that mostly filled the public mind. Bougainville, however, had returned from France early in May with the startling news that a large expedition destined for Quebec was already on the sea. A former opinion of this able officer's declared that three or four thousand men could hold the city against all comers. There was now four times that strength waiting for Wolfe, while his own, so far as numbers went, we know already. Eighteen transport ships, carrying supplies and some slight reënforcements, had slipped past the English cruisers in the fogs, and brought some comfort to Montcalm. The question now was how best to defend Quebec, as well as make good the two land approaches at Ticonderoga and Lake Ontario respectively. For the defence of the city, when every able-bodied militia-man had been called out, nearly sixteen thousand troops of all arms would be available. About the disposition of these and the plan of defence there was much discussion. Montcalm himself was for a long time undecided. The alternative plans do not concern us here; the one finally adopted is alone to the point. Everyone knows that the ancient capital of Canada is one of the most proudly placed among the cities of the earth. But it may be well to remind those who have not seen it, that it occupies the point of a lofty ridge, forming the apex of the angle made by the confluence of the St. Charles River and the St. Lawrence. Westward from the city this ridge falls so nearly sheer into the St. Lawrence for several miles that, watched by a mere handful of men, it was impregnable. Moreover, the river suddenly narrows to a breadth of three-quarters of a mile opposite the town, whose batteries were regarded as being fatal to any attempt of an enemy to run past them. On the other side of the town the St. Charles River, coming in from the northwest immediately below its walls, formed a secure protection. Montcalm, however, decided to leave only a small garrison in the city itself and go outside it for his main defence. Now, from the eastern bank of the mouth of the St. Charles, just below the city, there extends in an almost straight line along the northern shore of the St. Lawrence a continuous ridge, the brink, in fact, of a plateau, at no point far removed from the water's edge. Six miles away this abruptly terminates in the gorge of the Montmorency River, which, rushing tumultuously toward the St. Lawrence, makes that final plunge on to its shore level which is one of the most beautiful objects in a landscape teeming with natural and human interest. Along the crown of this six-mile ridge, known in history as "the Beauport lines," Montcalm decided to make his stand. So, throughout the long days of May and June the French devoted themselves to rendering impregnable from the front a position singularly strong in itself, while the Montmorency and its rugged valley protected the only flank which was exposed to attack. Below him spread the river, here over two miles in width from shore to shore, with the western point of the island of Orleans overlapping his left flank. Above the woods of this long, fertile island, then the garden of Canada, the French, upon June 27th, first caught sight of the pennons flying from the topmasts of the English battle-ships, and before evening they witnessed the strange sight of red-coated infantry swarming over its well-tilled fields. Wolfe had not much time that evening to consider the situation, which might well have appalled a less stout heart than his, for the troops had scarcely landed when a sudden summer storm burst upon the scene, churned the river into angry waves, broke some of the smaller ships from their moorings, casting them upon the rocks, and staving in many of the boats and rafts. The people of Quebec, who for weeks had been urging upon the Divinity in their peculiar way that they, his chosen people, were in danger, would not have been Canadian Catholics of their generation had they not been jubilant at this undoubted sign of divine intervention. But Montcalm was the last man to presume on such favor by any lack of energy. The very next night the British, having in the mean time pitched their camp upon the Isle of Orleans, were thrown into no small alarm by the descent of a fleet of fire-ships. The only men awake were the guards and sentries at the point, and as the matches were not applied to the drifting hulks till they were close at hand, the sudden effect in the darkness of the night upon the soldiers' nerves was more than they could stand, having beheld nothing like it in their lives, and they rushed in much confusion on the sleeping camp, causing still more there. For it was not alone the flames and the explosives that were a cause of perturbation, but a hail of grape-shot and bullets from the igniting guns poured hurtling through the trees. The chief object of the fire-ships, however, was the fleet which lay in the channel between the Isle of Orleans and the shore, and toward it they came steadily drifting. Knox describes the pandemonium as awful, and the sight as inconceivably superb of these large burning ships, crammed with every imaginable explosive and soaked from their mast-heads to their water-line in pitch and tar. It was no new thing, however, to the gallant sailors, who treated the matter as a joke, grappling fearlessly with the hissing, spitting demons, and towing them ashore. "Damme, Jack," they shouted, "didst ever take h--ll in tow before?" This exploit seems to have been a venture of Vaudreuil's, and its failure, an extremely expensive one, cost that lively egotist and his friends a severe pang. The next day Wolfe published his first manifesto to the Canadian people. "We are sent by the English King," it ran, "to conquer this province, but not to make war upon women and children, the ministers of religion, or industrious peasants. We lament the sufferings which our invasion may inflict upon you: but if you remain neutral, we proffer you safety in person and property and freedom in religion. We are masters of the river; no succor can reach you from France. General Amherst, with a large army, assails your southern frontier. Your cause is hopeless, your valor useless. Your nation have been guilty of great cruelties to our unprotected settlers, but we seek not revenge. We offer you the sweets of peace amid the horrors of war. England, in her strength, will befriend you; France, in her weakness, leaves you to your fate." Wolfe could hardly have felt the confidence he here expressed. The longer he looked upon the French position the less he must have liked it, and the larger must Amherst and his eventual cooperation have loomed in his mind as a necessary factor to success. But would Amherst get through to Montreal and down the St. Lawrence in time to be of use before the short season had fled? Those who were familiar with the difficulties would certainly have discouraged the hope which Wolfe for a time allowed himself to cherish; and Wolfe, though he admired his friend and chief, did not regard celerity of movement as his strongest point. About the first move, however, in the game Wolfe had to play there could be no possible doubt, and that was the occupation of Point Lévis. This was the high ground immediately facing Quebec, where the river, narrowing to a width of twelve hundred yards, brought the city within cannon-shot from the southern bank. It was the only place, in fact, from which it could be reached. It is said Montcalm had been anxious to occupy it, and intrench it with four thousand men, but was overruled on the supposition that the upper town, about which official Quebec felt most concern, would be outside its range of fire. If this was so, they were soon to be undeceived. The occupation of Point Lévis by Monckton's brigade, which Wolfe now ordered on that service, need not detain us. They crossed from the camp of Orleans to the village of Beaumont, which was seized with slight resistance. Thence moving on along the high road to Point Lévis, they found the church and village occupied by what Knox, who was there, estimates at a thousand riflemen and Indians. The Grenadiers charging the position in front, and the Highlanders and light infantry taking it in the rear, it was stormed with a loss of thirty men, and Monckton then occupied a position which, so far as artillery fire was concerned, had Quebec at its mercy. The brigadier, who had fully expected to find French guns there, at once began to intrench himself on this conspicuous spot, while floating batteries now pushed out from Quebec and began throwing shot and shell up at his working-parties, till Saunders sent a frigate forward to put an end to what threatened to be a serious annoyance. The French had changed their minds about the danger of Monckton's guns, though not a shot had yet been fired, and agitated loudly for a sortie across the river. Montcalm thought poorly of the plan; but a miscellaneous force of fifteen hundred Canadians, possessed of more ardor than cohesion, insisted on attempting a night assault. They landed some way up the river, but did not so much as reach the British position. The difficulties of a combined midnight movement were altogether too great for such irregulars, and they ended by firing upon one another in the dark and stampeding for their boats, with a loss of seventy killed and wounded. Two brigades were now in midstream on the Isle of Orleans and one on Point Lévis. Landing artillery and stores, intrenching both positions, and mounting siege-guns at the last-named one consumed the first few days of July. Wolfe's skill in erecting and firing batteries had been abundantly demonstrated at Louisburg; and though his head quarters were on the island, he went frequently to superintend the preparations for the bombardment of Quebec. On July 12th a rocket leaped into the sky from Wolfe's camp. It was the signal for the forty guns and mortars that had been mounted on Point Lévis to open on the city that Vaudreuil and his friends had fondly thought was out of range. The first few shots may have encouraged the delusion, as they fell short; but the gunners quickly got their distance, and then began that storm of shot and shell which rained upon the doomed city, with scarce a respite, for upward of eight weeks. Houses, churches, and monasteries crashed and crumbled beneath the pitiless discharge. The great cathedral, where the memories and the trophies of a century's defiance of the accursed heretic had so thickly gathered, was gradually reduced to a skeleton of charred walls. The church of Notre Dame de la Victoire, erected in gratitude for the delivery of the city from the last and only previous attack upon it sixty years before, was one of the first buildings to suffer from the far more serious punishment of this one. Wolfe, though already suffering from more than his chronic ill-health, was ubiquitous and indefatigable; now behind Monckton's guns at Point Lévis, now with Townshend's batteries at Montmorency, now up the river, ranging with his glass those miles of forbidding cliffs which he may already have begun to think he should one day have to climb. Some of Saunders' ships were in the Basin, between Orleans and Quebec, and frequently engaged with Montcalm's floating batteries; while in the mean time the roar of artillery from a dozen different quarters filled the simmering July days, and lit the short summer nights with fiery shapes, and drew in fitful floods the roving thunder-clouds that at this season of the year in North America are apt to lurk behind the serenest sky. Fighting at close quarters there was, too, in plenty, though of an outpost and backwoods kind. Bois Herbert, with his painted Canadians and Abernakis Indians, and Stark and young Rogers with their colonial rangers--Greek against Greek--scalped each other with a hereditary ferocity that English and French regulars knew nothing of. In bringing a fleet up to Quebec, British sailors had already performed one feat pronounced impossible by Canadian tradition. They now still further upset their enemies' calculations by running the gauntlet of the batteries of Quebec and placing the Sutherland, with several smaller ships, at some distance up the river. This cost Montcalm six hundred men, whom he had to send under Dumas to watch the squadron. But all this brought the end no nearer. Time was exceeding precious, and July was almost out. Necessary messages were continually passing under flags of truce, and superfluous notes of defiance sometimes accompanied them. "You may destroy the town," said De Ramezay to Wolfe, "but you will never get inside it." "I will take Quebec," replied the fiery stripling, "if I stay here till November." Through the whole weary month of August little occurred that the exigencies of our space would justify recording. Montcalm considered himself safe, and he even allowed two thousand Canadians to leave for the harvest. Wolfe had a thousand men of his small force sick or wounded in hospital. Amherst, it was reported, had taken Ticonderoga, but there was little likelihood of his getting through to their assistance. Prideaux, in the Far West, as it then was, had captured Niagara. It was a great success, but it in no way helped Wolfe. It must not be supposed, however, that August had passed away in humdrum fashion. The guns had roared with tireless throats, and the lower town was a heap of ruins. Far away down both banks of the St. Lawrence the dogs of war had raged through seigniories and hamlets. Between the upper and the nether millstone of Wolfe's proclamations and Montcalm's vengeance, the wretched peasantry were in a sore plight. Raided through and through by the fierce _guerillas_ of North American warfare, swept bare of grain and cattle for Wolfe's army, the fugitives from smoking farms and hamlets were glad to seek refuge in the English lines, where the soldiers generously shared with them their meagre rations. More than one expedition had been sent up the river. Admiral Holmes, with over twenty ships, was already above the town, and had driven the French vessels, which had originally taken refuge there, to discharge their crews and run up shallow tributaries. Wolfe's intention now was to place every man that he could spare on board the ships in the upper river, and his entire force was reduced by death, wounds, and sickness to under seven thousand men. On September 3d, with slight annoyance from an ill-directed cannon fire, he removed the whole force at Montmorency across the water to the camps of Orleans or Point Lévis. On the following day all the troops at both these stations which were not necessary for their protection were paraded; for what purpose no one knew, least of all the French, who from their lofty lines could mark every movement in the wide panorama below, and were sorely puzzled and perturbed. Some great endeavor was in the wind, beyond a doubt; but both Wolfe and his faithful ally, the admiral, did their utmost to disguise its import. And for this very reason it would be futile, even if necessary, to follow the fluctuating manoeuvres that for the next few days kept the enemy in constant agitation: the sudden rage of batteries here, the threatening demonstrations of troop-laden boats there, the constant and bewildering movement of armed ships at every point. It was well designed and industriously maintained, for the sole purpose of harassing the French and covering Wolfe's real intention. On the night of September 4th the general was well enough to dine with Monckton's officers at Point Lévis, but the next day he was again prostrate with illness, to the great anxiety of his army. He implored the doctor to "patch him up sufficiently for the work in hand; after that nothing mattered." Chronic gravel and rheumatism, with a sharp low fever, aggravated by a mental strain of the severest kind, all preying on a sickly frame, were what the indomitable spirit there imprisoned had to wrestle with. On the 6th, however, Wolfe struggled up, and during that day and the next superintended the march of his picked column, numbering some four thousand men, up the south bank of the river. Fording, near waist-deep, the Etchemain River, they were received beyond its mouth by the boats of the fleet, and, as each detachment arrived, conveyed on board. The Forty-eighth, however, seven hundred strong, were left, under Colonel Burton, near Point Lévis to await orders. The fleet, with Wolfe and some thirty-six hundred men on board, now moved up to Cap Rouge, behind which, at the first dip in the high barrier of cliffs, was Bougainville with fifteen hundred men (soon afterward increased), exclusive of three hundred serviceable light cavalry. The cove here was intrenched, and the French commander was so harried with feigned attacks that he and his people had no rest. At the same time, so well was the universal activity maintained that Montcalm, eight miles below, was led to expect a general attack at the mouth of the Charles River, under the city. Throughout the 8th and 9th the weather was dark and rainy and the wind from the east, an unfavorable combination for a movement requiring the utmost precision. On the 10th the troops from the crowded ships were landed to dry their clothes and accoutrements. Wolfe and his brigadiers now finally surveyed that line of cliffs which Montcalm had declared a hundred men could hold against the whole British army. It was defended here and there by small posts. Below one of these, a mile and a half above the city, the traces of a zigzag path up the bush-covered precipice could be made out, though Wolfe could not see that even this was barricaded. Here, at the now famous Anse du Foulon, he decided to make his attempt. The ships, however, kept drifting up and down between Cap Rouge and the city, with a view to maintaining the suspense of the French. Each morning Wolfe's general orders to the soldiers were to hold themselves in readiness for immediate action, with as full directions for their conduct as was compatible with the suppression of the spot at which they were to fight. On the night of the 11th the troops were reëmbarked, and instructions sent to Burton to post the Forty-eighth on the south shore opposite the Anse du Foulon. On the following day Wolfe published his last orders, and they contained a notable sentence: "A vigorous blow struck by the army at this juncture may determine the fate of Canada." Almost at the same moment his gallant opponent from his head-quarters at Beauport was writing to Bourlamaque at Montreal that he gave the enemy a month or less to stay, but that he himself had no rest night or day, and had not had his boots or clothes off for a fortnight. Another Frenchman was informing his friends that what they knew of that "impetuous, bold, and intrepid warrior, Monsieur Wolfe," gave them reason to suppose he would not leave them without another attack. A suspicious calm brooded over the British squadron off Cap Rouge as Bougainville watched it from the shore throughout the whole of the 12th. The men were under orders to drop into their boats at nine, and were doubtless busy looking to their arms and accoutrements. By a preconcerted arrangement the day was spent after a very different fashion in the Basin of Quebec. Constant artillery fire and the continual movement of troops against various parts of the Beauport lines engaged the whole attention of Montcalm, who had, in fact, little notion what a number of men had gone up the river with Wolfe. When night fell upon the ruined city and the flickering campfires of the long French lines, the tumult grew louder and the anxiety greater. The batteries of Point Lévis and the guns of Saunders' ships redoubled their efforts. Amid the roar of the fierce artillery, served with an activity not surpassed during the whole siege, Montcalm, booted and spurred, with his black charger saddled at the door, awaited some night attack. The horse would be wanted yet, but for a longer ride than his master anticipated, and, as it so turned out, for his last one. Up the river at Cap Rouge all was silence, a strange contrast to the din below. The night was fine, but dark, and was some three hours old when a single light gleamed of a sudden from the Sutherland's main-mast. It was the signal for sixteen hundred men to drop quietly into their boats. A long interval of silence and suspense then followed, till at two o'clock the tide began to ebb, when a second lantern glimmered from Wolfe's ship. The boats now pushed off and drifted quietly down in long procession under the deep shadow of the high northern shore. The ships followed at some distance with the remainder of the force under Townshend, the Forty-eighth, it will be remembered, awaiting them below. The distance to be traversed was six miles, and there were two posts on the cliffs to be passed. French provision-boats had been in the habit of stealing down in the night, and to this fact, coupled with the darkness, it seems Wolfe trusted much. He was himself in one of the leading boats, and the story of his reciting Gray's _Elegy_, in solemn tones while he drifted down, as he hoped, to victory and, as he believed, to death, rests on good authority.[43] The tide was running fast, so that the rowers could ply their oars with a minimum of disturbance. From both posts upon the cliff their presence was noticed, and the challenge of a sentry rang out clear upon the silent night. On each occasion a Highland officer, who spoke French perfectly, replied that they were a provision convoy, to the satisfaction of the challengers. But the risk was undeniable, and illustrates the hazardous nature of the enterprise. Wolfe's friend, Captain Howe, brother of the popular young nobleman who fell at Ticonderoga, with a small body of picked soldiers, was to lead the ascent, and as the boats touched the narrow beach of the Anse du Foulon he and his volunteers leaped rapidly on shore. Some of the boats accidentally overran the spot, but it made little difference, as the narrow path was, in any case, found to be blocked, and the eager soldiers were forced to throw themselves upon the rough face of the cliff, which was here over two hundred feet high, but fortunately sprinkled thick with stunted bushes. Swiftly and silently Howe and his men scrambled up its steep face. No less eagerly the men behind, as boat after boat discharged its load of red-coats under Wolfe's eye on the narrow shore, followed in their precarious steps. Day was just beginning to glimmer as the leading files leaped out onto the summit and rushed upon the handful of astonished Frenchmen before them, who fired a futile volley and fled. The shots and cries alarmed other posts at some distance off, yet near enough to fire in the direction of the landing-boats. It was too late, however; the path had now been cleared of obstacles, and the British were swarming onto the plateau. The first sixteen hundred men had been rapidly disembarked, and the boats were already dashing back for Townshend's brigade, who were approaching in the ships, and for the Forty-eighth, awaiting them on the opposite shore. The scattered French posts along the summit were easily dispersed, while the main army at Beauport, some miles away, on the far side of the city, were as yet unconscious of danger. Bougainville and his force back at Cap Rouge were as far off and as yet no wiser. Quebec had just caught the alarm, but its weak and heterogeneous garrison had no power for combined mobility. By six o'clock Wolfe had his whole force of forty-three hundred men drawn up on the plateau, with their backs to the river and their faces to the north. Leaving the Royal Americans, five hundred forty strong, to guard the landing-place, and with a force thus reduced to under four thousand he now marched toward the city, bringing his left round at the same time in such fashion as to face the western walls, scarcely a mile distant. As Wolfe drew up his line of battle on that historic ridge of table-land known as the Plains of Abraham, his right rested on the cliff above the river, while his left approached the then brushy slope which led down toward the St. Charles Valley. He had outmanoeuvred Montcalm; it now remained only to crush him. Of this Wolfe had not much doubt, though such confidence may seem sufficiently audacious for the leader of four thousand men, with twice that number in front of him and half as many in his rear, both forces commanded by brave and skilful generals. But Wolfe counted on quality, not on numbers, which Montcalm himself realized were of doubtful efficacy at this crucial moment. The French general, in the mean time, had been expecting an attack all night at Beauport, and his troops had been lying on their arms. It was about six o'clock when the astounding news was brought him that the British were on the plateau behind the city. The Scotch Jacobite, the Chevalier Johnstone, who has left us an account of the affair, was with him at the time, and they leaped on their horses--he to give the alarm toward Montmorency, the general to hasten westward by Vaudreuil's quarters to the city. "This is a serious business," said Montcalm to Johnstone as he dug his spurs into his horse's flanks. Vaudreuil, who in his braggart, amateur fashion had been "crushing the English" with pen and ink and verbal eloquence this last six weeks, now collapsed, and Montcalm, who knew what a fight in the open with Wolfe meant, hastened himself to hurry forward every man that could be spared. Fifteen hundred militia were left to guard the Beauport lines, while the bulk of the army poured in a steady stream along the road to Quebec, over the bridge of the St. Charles, some up the slopes beyond, others through the tortuous streets of the city, on to the Plains of Abraham. Montcalm, by some at the time, and by many since, has been blamed for precipitating the conflict, but surely not with justice! He had every reason to count on Bougainville and his twenty-three hundred men, who were no farther from Wolfe's rear than he himself was from the English front. The British held the entire water. Wolfe once intrenched on the plateau, the rest of his army, guns, and stores could be brought up at will, and the city defences on that side were almost worthless. Lastly, provisions with the French were woefully scarce; the lower country had been swept absolutely bare. Montcalm depended on Montreal for every mouthful of food, and Wolfe was now between him and his source of supply. By nine o'clock Montcalm had all his men in front of the western walls of the city and was face to face with Wolfe, only half a mile separating them. His old veterans of William Henry, Oswego, and Ticonderoga were with him, the reduced regiments of Béarn, Royal Rousillon, Languedoc, La Sarre, and La Guienne, some thirteen hundred strong, with seven hundred colony regulars and a cloud of militia and Indians. Numbers of these latter had been pushed forward as skirmishers into the thickets, woods, and cornfields which fringed the battle-field, and had caused great annoyance and some loss to the British, who were lying down in their ranks, reserving their strength and their ammunition for a supreme effort. Three pieces of cannon, too, had been brought to play on them--no small trial to their steadiness; for, confident of victory, it was not to Wolfe's interest to join issue till Montcalm had enough of his men upon the ridge to give finality to such a blow. At the same time the expected approach of Bougainville in the rear had to be watched for and anticipated. It was indeed a critical and anxious moment! The Forty-eighth regiment were stationed as a reserve of Wolfe's line, though to act as a check rather to danger from Bougainville than as a support to the front attacks in which they took no part. Part, too, of Townshend's brigade, who occupied the left of the line nearest to the wooded slopes in which the plain terminated, were drawn up _en potence_, or at right angles to the main column, in case of attacks from flank or rear. The Bougainville incident is, in fact, a feature of this critical struggle that has been too generally ignored, but in such a fashion that inferences might be drawn, and have been drawn, detrimental to that able officer's sagacity. Theoretically he should have burst on the rear of Wolfe's small army, as it attacked Montcalm, with more than twenty-three hundred tolerable troops. He was but six miles off, and it was now almost as many hours since the British scaled the cliff. Pickets and a small battery or two between himself and Wolfe had been early in the morning actually engaged. The simple answer is that Bougainville remained ignorant of what was happening. Nothing but an actual messenger coming through with the news would have enlightened him, and in the confusion none came till eight o'clock. The sound of desultory firing borne faintly against the wind from the neighborhood of the city had little significance for him. It was a chronic condition of affairs, and Bougainville's business was to watch the upper river, where an attack was really expected. It was a rare piece of good-fortune for Wolfe that the confusion among the French was so great as to cause this strange omission. But then it was Wolfe's daring that had thus robbed a brave enemy of their presence of mind and created so pardonable a confusion. The constituents of that ever-memorable line of battle which Wolfe drew up on the Plains of Abraham must of a surety not be grudged space in this account. On the right toward the cliffs of the St. Lawrence were the Twenty-eighth, the Thirty-fifth, the Forty-third, and the Louisburg Grenadiers under Monckton; in the centre, under Murray, were the Forty-seventh, Fifty-eighth, and the Seventy-eighth Highlanders; with Townshend on the left were the Fifteenth (_en potence_) and the Second battalion of the Sixtieth or Royal Americans--in all somewhat over three thousand men. In reserve, as already stated, was Burton with the Forty-eighth, while Howe with some light infantry occupied the woods still farther back, and the Third battalion of the Sixtieth guarded the landing-place. None of these last corps joined in the actual attack. When Montcalm, toward ten o'clock, under a cloudy but fast-clearing sky, gave the order to advance, he had, at the lowest estimate from French sources, about thirty-five hundred men, exclusive of Indians and flanking skirmishers, who may be rated at a further fifteen hundred. The armies were but half a mile apart, and the French regulars and militia, being carefully but perhaps injudiciously blended along their whole line, went forward with loud shouts to the attack. The British, formed in a triple line, now sprang to their feet and moved steadily forward to receive the onset of the French. Wolfe had been hit on the wrist, but hastily binding up the shattered limb with his handkerchief, he now placed himself at the head of the Louisburg Grenadiers, whose temerity against the heights of Beauport, in July, he had soundly rated. He had issued strict orders that his troops were to load with two bullets, and to reserve their fire till the enemy were at close quarters. He was nobly obeyed, though the French columns came on firing wildly and rapidly at long range, the militia throwing themselves down, after their backwoods custom, to reload, to the disadvantage of the regular regiments among whom they were mixed. The British fire, in spite of considerable punishment, was admirably restrained, and when delivered it was terrible. Knox tells us that the French received it at forty paces, that the volleys sounded like single cannon-shots, so great was the precision, and French officers subsequently declared they had never known anything like it. Whole gaps were rent in the French ranks, and in the confusion which followed the British reloaded with deliberation, poured in yet another deadly volley, and with a wild cheer rushed upon the foe. They were the pick of a picked army, and the shattered French, inured to arms in various ways though every man of them was, had not a chance. Montcalm's two thousand regulars were ill-supported by the still larger number of their comrades, who, unsurpassed behind breastworks or in forest warfare, were of little use before such an onslaught. The rush of steel, of bayonet on the right and centre, of broadsword on the left, swept everything before it and soon broke the French into a flying mob, checked here and there by brave bands of white-coated regulars, who offered a brief but futile resistance. Wolfe, in the mean time, was eagerly pressing forward at the head of his Grenadiers, while behind him were the Twenty-eighth and the Thirty-fifth, of Lake George renown. One may not pause here to speculate on the triumph that must at such a moment have fired the bright eyes that redeemed his homely face and galvanized the sickly frame into a very Paladin of old, as sword in hand he led his charging troops. Such inevitable reflections belong rather to his own story than to that of the long war which he so signally influenced, and it was now, in the very moment of victory, as all the world well knows, that he fell. He was hit twice in rapid succession--a ball in the groin which did not stop him, and a second through the lungs, against which his high courage fought in vain. He was seen to stagger by Lieutenant Browne of the Grenadiers and Second regiment, who rushed forward to his assistance. "Support me," exclaimed Wolfe, "lest my gallant fellows should see me fall." But the lieutenant was just too late, and the wounded hero sank to the ground; not, however, before he was also seen by Mr. Henderson, a volunteer, and almost immediately afterward by an officer of artillery, Colonel Williamson, and a private soldier whose name has not been preserved. The accurate Knox himself was not far off, and this is the account given him by Browne that same evening, and seems worthy to hold the field against the innumerable claims that have been set up in the erratic interests of "family tradition." These four men carried the dying general to the rear, and by his own request, being in great pain, laid him upon the ground. He refused to see a surgeon, declared it was all over with him, and sank into a state of torpor. "They run; see how they run!" cried out one of the officers. "Who run?" asked Wolfe, suddenly rousing himself. "The enemy, sir; egad, they give way everywhere." "Go, one of you, my lads," said the dying general, "with all speed to Colonel Burton, and tell him to march down to the St. Charles River and cut off the retreat of the fugitives to the bridge." He then turned on his side, and exclaiming, "God be praised, I now die in peace," sank into insensibility, and in a short time, on the ground of his victory which for all time was to influence the destinies of mankind, gave up his life contentedly at the very moment, to quote Pitt's stirring eulogy, "when his fame began." FOOTNOTES: [43] That of Professor Robinson, of Edinburgh University, who was present as a midshipman. USURPATION OF CATHARINE II IN RUSSIA A.D. 1762 W. KNOX JOHNSON "No sovereign since Ivan the Terrible," says Rambaud, "extended the frontiers of the empire by such vast conquests" as those of Catharine II. "She gave Russia for boundaries the Niemen, the Dniester, and the Black Sea." This aggrandizement, which was her own boast, was a sufficient compensation to Russia, if not to history, for the crimes charged against Catharine both at home and elsewhere in the scenes of her political and military triumphs. Her participation in the three partitions of Poland (1772, 1793, 1795) associated her name forever with the long and pathetic tragedy of that nation. Voltaire, whose admiration for Catharine engages Johnson's attention, seems really to have regarded her as the political teacher of Europe, for, referring to her, he said, "Light now comes from the North." The woman who so enslaved men of genius and enlarged the empire which Peter the Great had already made powerful, was not herself a Russian. She was born at Stettin, Prussian Pomerania, in 1729, the daughter of Christian Augustus, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst and Governor of Stettin. Johnson gives an interesting account of her introduction to the court of the Empress (Czarina) Elizabeth Petrovna, daughter of Peter the Great and Catharine I. His story of her marriage and sudden usurpation of the throne is a spirited picture of a dark event in her career. Above all, he furnishes a most animated and searching analysis of her character and acts, and of her relations with great personages of her day. His critical observations, happily blending with the historical review, shed a revealing light upon this famous ruler and her reign. It is January, 1744, and the commandant of Stettin, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst zu Dornburg, is keeping New-Year festivities at his castle of Zerbst, when suddenly couriers from Berlin, couriers from St. Petersburg, throw everyone into wild commotion. For the Czarina Elizabeth, casting about for a wife for her nephew, the young grand duke Peter of Holstein, nominated heir-presumptive to all the Russias, has accepted advice from Frederick, soon to become "the Great." She is formally desirous of a visit from the Princess of Zerbst and her daughter, Sophie Frederika, now fifteen years of age, and already noticeable for her good looks and good-sense. Not a moment is to be lost. So eastward, northward, the sleighs hurry them through the white leagues of snow, to arrive within six weeks at the Russian court, now established in Moscow; with little state or ceremony, nevertheless, for the princely house of Zerbst is poor as it is ancient. Sophie's wardrobe, she informs us herself, consists just of three, or it may be four, dresses, with twelve chemises. For here begins that singular autobiography; an unauthenticated fragment, it is true, but a self-portraiture convincing as any in literature. At Moscow they made the best of impression; the Czarina was graciousness itself, and within eighteen months the young Princess had been received into the Greek Church as Catharine, and married to the Grand Duke, himself only seventeen years old. But already she had learned not to expect happiness. He was, if we believe the accounts of him, senseless and boorish in the extreme. Certainly he did not pretend to the least affection for Catharine. A few days after her arrival, he had confided to her, "as his cousin," that he was "ardently in love with one of the maids-of-honor; since, however, the Empress desired it, he had resigned himself, and was willing to marry her instead!" She was forced, according to her assertion, to listen to confidences of a like nature during many years. His puerilities and eccentricities, we are told, amounted almost to madness. He was fond of drilling dogs and tin soldiers, together with his disgusted suite. But, like everyone else about the court, he lived in terror of the strong-willed, strong-drinking Czarina. His kennel must be kept a secret, and was accordingly located in his wife's bedroom. He would spend hours indoors cracking whips or emitting weird sounds on musical instruments. At night, after Madame Tchoglokoff, who was charged with the surveillance of the grand-ducal _ménage_, had retired, under the impression that she had locked everyone up safely, he would call for lights again, like a schoolboy, and make Catharine and her attendants play with marionettes on the counterpane till one, two, three o'clock in the morning. He had been more or less drunk, to credit his enemies, since the age of ten; and Catharine declares he had a mortal aversion to the bath, which it seems was then a Russian, not a German, observance. When ordered by the Empress to take one as penance during Lent, he replied that it was repugnant to his moral nature and unsuited to his physical constitution: nothing, he said, but the most vital considerations could induce him to risk the Empress' displeasure, but he was not prepared to die; and life was dearer to him than her majesty's approbation. Both were obstinate, and the dispute led to the most terrific outburst of rage on the part of the Czarina that Catharine had yet witnessed. On another occasion his wife discovered him presiding over a court-martial in full regimentals, with a large rat in the centre of the room, which had just been suspended with all the formalities of a military execution. It appeared that the unfortunate beast had transgressed the laws of war; it had climbed the ramparts of a card-board fortress, and had actually eaten two pith sentries on duty at the bastions. It was to be exposed to the public view as an example during three days following! Catharine, unluckily, was so lost to the fitness of things as to betray open merriment. The Grand Duke was furious; and she had to retire, excusing herself with difficulty on account of her ignorance of military discipline. The affair sensibly aggravated the estrangement between them. Of Elizabeth, who led an eccentric life with her own peculiar intimates, Catharine knew little; but she was the victim of an unrelenting if petty tyranny, which kept jealous watch over every word and movement, deprived her of any attendant of whom she made a friend, and dictated every minute circumstance of her life. It was like nothing so much as a dame school, even to the various tutors and governesses ordered her by the Czarina. When her father died she was allowed a week's mourning; at the end of that time the Empress sent a command to leave off; "she was a grand duchess, and her father was not a king." But Catharine was not of the stuff from which are modelled the monuments of docility. Little by little, as her character develops, she acquires a proud and lonely self-dependence. She awakens to intellectual interests; from the first, indeed, she had flung herself with ardor into the study of Russian history and language. During these early years books are her great distraction; "_dixhuit années d'ennui et de solitude_," we read in a epitaph written by herself, "_lui firent lire bien des livres_." After a trial in the wilderness of third-rate contemporary fiction, Voltaire stirs her intellect. And he leads her, too, spellbound by that incomparable _verve_ and intellectual agility of his; she surrenders herself to the illusion of his brilliant assurances, dancing like some triumphant will-o'-the-wisp over the obscure deeps and perplexities of things. In a hundred ways, evil and good, she will remain the pupil of Voltaire. He has his part in her social test of philosophical speculations; he has his part also, be sure of it, in her long devotion to ideals of monarchy expressed for her in Henri Quatre and Louis Quatorze. After Voltaire and Madame de Sévigné, Montesquieu, Baronius, Tacitus, Bayle, Brantôme, and the early volumes of the _Encyclopædia_. But her gay, expansive nature was not capable, for long, of purely intellectual or stoic consolation. In a moral environment such as that of Elizabeth's court it was too easy for the reader of Brantôme to seek elsewhere the "love" romances had spoken of, but marriage had denied her. She was remarked by all in her day for her gift of fascination. To outward observers she seemed at this time a radiant and happy presence, as Burke saw Marie Antoinette, the morning-star of a pleasure-loving society, "full of life, and splendor, and joy." She says that she never considered herself extremely beautiful, but "she was able to please, _et cela était mon fort_." All contemporary testimony bears out this singular faculty of attracting others, rarest of natural gifts, but to a woman such as Catharine a very perilous one. Not even those set to spy upon her could resist her personal magnetism. She could be beautiful or terrible, playful or majestic, at pleasure. At St. Petersburg there were few wits, and her intellectual superiority to those about her was sufficient to gain her the nickname among her husband's friends of "Madame la Ressource." Despite Peter's difficult relations with her, he would refer to her in most of his perplexities, especially when political, connected with his duchy of Holstein. "I don't understand things very well myself," he would explain to strangers, "but my wife understands everything." We observe in the _Autobiography_ a fixed idea to "gain over" as many people as possible, to attach them to her interests; partly because of the opposition to the Czarina's circle, which gradually came to characterize the "_Jeune Cour_," but specially in the service of those vague, ambitious foreshadowings which from her first years in Russia had possessed her mind. Clear-sighted, with a keen sense of her husband's inadequacy to his position, warned by the implacable hostility of his mistress Elizabeth Vorontsoff and her relations, above all with a passionate thirst to realize her presentiment of greatness, she was instinctively preparing for some emergency, she knew not exactly what. As for the more precise premonitions of the memoirs, they are what would naturally appear to her after the _fait accompli_. Ambition, calculation looking before and after, patience in adversity, quickness to note and use the weakness of those about her, a steady indifference to unessentials, a political intelligence unhampered by the keener sensibilities--these are the master traits of the Catharine of the _Autobiography_. So far, then, of these earlier years, while we have the memoirs with us. We must now pass quickly over many things. The motto of the Romanoffs might be taken from _Macbeth_: "The near in blood, the nearer bloody."[44] But in that sombre history there is no darker page than the conspiracy of 1762. In January Elizabeth died and the Grand Duke ascended the throne, quietly enough, as Peter III. But the position of Catharine was worse than before. The Czar was completely under the influence of her enemies; he insulted her in public; and it seemed certain that his next step would be to divorce her, throw her into prison, and marry Elizabeth Vorontsoff. He had once already ordered her arrest, which his uncle had afterward persuaded him to retract. The very reforms with which he had begun his reign worked against him. He had made himself unpopular not only with the clergy, but with the Preobrajenski Guards, which, like the prætorians of the Roman Empire, disposed of the throne. He smoked and drank till three or five o'clock in the morning, writes the French ambassador; yet he would be up again at seven manoeuvring his troops. He would order a hundred cannon to be fired together that he might have a foretaste of war, and his eccentricities in general were intensified by absolute power. The history of the _coup-d'état_ is still obscure. A considerable party, however, formed round Catharine: the brothers Gregory and Alexis Orloff won over several regiments, and the princess Dashkoff gained adherents in society. Matters were precipitated by the accidental arrest of one of the conspirators; and although their plans were incoherent, the good-fortune of Catharine carried her through. At five o'clock in the morning of July 9th Alexis Orloff entered her room at Peterhoff, and told her to set out for St. Petersburg, where she was to be proclaimed immediately. She hastened there with the Orloffs. Three regiments, to whom _vodka_ had judiciously been dispensed beforehand, took the oath of allegiance with enthusiasm; and others followed suit. Peter was thunderstruck. On the advice of Marshal Muennich he embarked for Cronstadt, where he was challenged, and demanded admittance as emperor. "_Il n'y a plus d'empéreur!_" replied the commandant, Talitsine. He hurried back again, and after agonies of indecision finally abdicated. "He had lost his crown," as Frederick said scornfully, "like a naughty child sent to bed with a whipping." So far the revolution had been bloodless, but its darker hour was to come. "I placed the deposed Emperor under the command of A. Orloff, with four 'chosen' officers and a detachment of 'quiet' and 'sober' men, and sent him to a distance of twenty-seven versts from St. Petersburg to a place called Ropsha, 'very retired,' but very pleasant"--so runs Catharine's account to Poniatowski. On the 15th he was dead; of "hemorrhoidal colic," said the official announcement; strangled, as Europe rightly believed, by Alexis Orloff with his own hands. It is hardly possible that this hideous murder was without Catharine's at least tacit consent. She certainly condoned the crime. There was danger in a name; and her sentiment was doubtless that of Lord Essex when the fate of Stafford hung in the balance: "Stone dead hath no fellow!" Already, where the Neva turns toward the Baltic, one wretched boy-Czar languished beneath the melancholy fortress of the Schluesselburg. Two years, and he too, after having known the bitterness of life, will be violently done to death in his turn. But Voltaire wrote to Madame du Deffand: "I am aware that people reproach her with some bagatelles _à propos_ of that husband of hers; however, one really cannot intermeddle in these family squabbles!" Such was the tragedy of Peter III. He dies, as Catharine said, unpitied: a fool, echo her friends, who perished in his folly. But history is precise and simple; truth complex and difficult. Was there no light, no touch of nobility at all in that strange chaotic temperament? No reverence in the boy who would kneel to the picture of the great Frederick? No generosity in the Czar who sacrificed victory to a sentiment; who abolished the hateful "secret chancery," torture, monopolies, and refused a statue of gold offered by St. Petersburg, "desiring rather to raise a monument in the hearts of the people"? There was something inarticulate there, surely--in the would-be musician who must shut himself up for hours to scrawk madly, passionately, on a crazy violin, and whose last request was for his confidant and instrument. "What is history," said Napoleon, "but a fiction agreed upon?" Such, nevertheless, is the form and spirit of the hapless Peter as portrayed by his enemies. This was the Catharine of Elizabeth's court, and protagonist of that revolution which first made her known to Europe. But it was the sovereign who dazzled her contemporaries, and still lives splendidly with the "Great Czar" in the annals of Russia. That exuberant personality of hers is so eloquent, so omnipresent in the sphere of politics, that one is often the most luminous illustration of the other. There is a note you will find common to her grandiose schemes of territorial expansion, of intellectual enlightenment and domestic reform. It is the note of theatricality, of extravagance, of excess. The strangest chimeric phantasy sometimes here possesses her, hitherto prosaic enough in so many ways; and it communicates itself to men like the Orloffs, Patiomkin, Suvaroff. It is, I think, M. Leroy-Beaulieu, who remarks that in Russia the shows of things are more important than reality. So rite, ceremonial, the spectacular, the symbolic, seem to have a power there greater than in any other people of civilization. But stronger still was Catharine's overmastering desire to play to the applause of Europe. She had conceived herself as the heroine of a grandiose drama. It was her ambition to be the "Grand Monarque" of the North, and to show the Paris of Louis Quinze that the age of Olympian sovereignty was not yet past. Hence her sensitiveness to Western opinion, her assiduous court to the men of intellect, her anxiety to be admired and feared in Europe. Nowhere is this pose, this consciousness of a gallery, more evident than in the sphere of foreign policy. The great Peter had fulfilled the dream of Ivan in reaching the Baltic, and so, in her wars with the Turk, Catharine realized the aim of Peter by forcing her way to the Black Sea. But a Hellenic empire at Constantinople haunts her dreams. She stirs up Greek against Ottoman, and her trumpeter Voltaire heralds a new Sparta and Athens; she calls her grandson Constantine, and surrounds him with Greek nurse and servants. Her famous progress southward, the most eccentric pageant in history, is typical of Patiomkin's _régime_. This extraordinary man--mountebank, writes the English envoy, "_esprit réveur_," says the keener-eyed Prince de Ligne--a barbarian, of terrific appearance; fantastic beyond the verge of madness, acquired a greater influence with Catharine than any other man of her reign. He had been created "Prince of Taurida" (the Crimea) after the conquest of the southern provinces; and was resolved to dazzle Europe and his sovereign with her new acquisitions. In January, 1787, she set out on her triumphal journey. A huge retinue accompanied her, together with the foreign ambassadors, Cobenzl, Fitzherbert, and Ségur, the last of whom has described this strange procession. Forty miles were covered every day. There is a palace at every stopping-place; towns and villages dot what six months ago had been a howling wilderness. Painted forests seem to clothe the horizon: fertile solitudes swarm with gayly dressed peasants--imported for this occasion only. From Kiev floating pavilions carry them down the Dnieper: the prince-magician alone has a hundred twenty of his beloved musicians. Again the same _mise-en-scène_: operatic Cossacks rowing out from either shore, the village of yesterday in the foreground, roofless façades in the middle distance; the same reviews in successive provinces of hussars out of her own escort! The greatest of optimists saw everything and affected to see through nothing--the works of his highness surpass conception. Suddenly spring appears, glittering on the enamelled meadows and majestic river; they journey to the music of the galleys between throngs of spectators from thirty nations. Every morning a fresh scene opens, the days "travel more quickly than they themselves." At Kanioff she is met by his majesty of Poland, none other than Poniatowski, the lover, of Peterhoff in the old days! At Kherson, on an eastern gate, appears the famous legend "The road to Byzantium"; and there it is the Holy Roman Emperor who is drawn into her train--they have already mapped out the Ottoman dominions. So with excursions and alarums eastward by Poltava of glorious memory to the new "Glory of Catharine," her city of Ekaterinoslaff; and last of all through undulating steppes to the gorgeous palace piled upon the sand at Inkerman, where after banquetings a curtain falls away, and behold--the pasteboard fortifications of Sebastopol! where a green-wood squadron anchored beneath them splutters forth its husky artillery. _Splendide mendax!_ The West applauded frantically: never had such a travelling-show been seen in Europe. At home, too, the cult of appearances went hand in hand with generosity and enthusiasm. "_C'est presque un monde_," she writes to Voltaire, "_à créer, à unir, à conserver!_" First comes the administration of justice, and her ukase of 1762, on its abuses, has a ring of sincerity that can hardly be mistaken. There is a real courage again in her dealings with the clergy. Four years later she summons a great assembly to Moscow to consider a new code; and her "Instruction" to the delegates, saturated as it is with Montesquieu and the rest, shows her abreast of her time. Politicians of the old school, indeed, shuddered at its array of grandiloquent maxims--"there are bombs enough in it," cried Panin, "to bring the walls about our ears." She is here, in spite of all that has been said, exactly where we invariably find her, neither a day in front of her age nor a day behind. Reform of the _ex cathedra_ sort was just then in the air. From the Tagus to the Dnieper, and from Copenhagen to the Vatican, Europe was crowded with paternal monarchs and earnest ministers, who were willing to do almost everything for the people and nothing by them. The world had not seen statesmen so sincere, enlightened, and plausible. A generation later, on the meeting of the National Assembly, the despotic reformation of Montesquieu and Voltaire will still seem about to be translated into action. Men read their Rousseau: soon they will understand him; they will also understand that _Non de nobis sine nobis_, which was the haughty motto of the Hungarian magnates. But her attention soon became diverted. She was not, as Gunning thought, insincere, only fickle; she wanted patience and continuity of aim. The "States-General" had produced an excellent effect in the world, and, in fact, had afforded her information afterward turned to account. Her eye is on the Turk: as with the second Pitt, had it not been for this cursed war we should have seen greater things. "Beginnings--only beginnings!" exclaims an eye-witness, "there are plenty of sketches to be seen, but where is the finished picture?" Another reports that shoals of academies and secondary schools bear witness to Catharine's enthusiasm for education, but that some exist only on paper, while others seem to have everything except scholars. Things are done hastily, and without just measure or proportion; the imitative talent of the Russian does not seem to carry him quite far enough. At her death, says a historian who wrote eight years after it, most of her foundations were already in ruins; everything seemed to have been abandoned before completion. Yet we must not forget that liberal ideas were in themselves a revelation to the Russia of her days, and that after a succession of contemptible sovereigns she appeared as the first worthy successor of Peter. It was already something for a woman there to be governed by large social conceptions; has it not been said even elsewhere that the politics of women are proper names? You may say what you will: she saved the European tradition of Peter the Great, and was in a sense the creator of modern Russia. But to her philosophic friends at Paris it mattered little whether her designs were in the parchment or any other stage. Since Voltaire had hailed her as the "Northern Semiramis," no adulation was enough to translate their enthusiasm: the "charms of Cleopatra," for example, were united in her to "the soul of Brutus." On her side she "distributed compliments in abundance, gold medals also (but more often in bronze?), and from time to time even a little money." La Harpe, Marmontel, Volney, Galiani, and many others fallen silent in these days were sharers in her bounty. She would buy the books of some specially favored and instal them at home again as "her librarians." Only one or two, D'Alembert, Raynal, stood aloof, with the mistrustful Jean Jacques, who refused the demesne of Gatschina. Diderot came to St. Petersburg in those days, declaiming for two, three, five hours with unmatched copiousness of discourse, astounding Catharine with his large argument and fiery eloquence, and entertaining her hugely by his oblivion of everything once fairly launched on his foaming torrent. The philosopher who, borne on spiritual hurricanes, would leap from his chair at Princess Dashkoff's, striding to and fro as he spat upon the floor in his excitement, forgot himself equally in the presence of "Semiramis." "In the heat of exposition he brought his hands down on the imperial knees with such force and iteration" that Catharine complained they had turned black and blue. But for all that she would egg on this strange wild-fowl. "_Allons_," she would exclaim, a table once set safely between them, "_entre hommes tout est permis!_" As for Voltaire, his proudest title was that of "lay preacher of the religion of 'St.' Catharine." Her correspondence with him, which begins the year after her accession and continues until his death, is in truth a kind of journalism, written partly by herself, partly by others. Its object is to keep the friend of princes and dictator of literary opinion _au courant_ with her ideas, measures, and general policy. She is not content now, however, with the applause of her generation; she aims at commanding the sources of history itself. Here she motions posterity to take its stand behind contemporaries in the church of Voltaire's foundation, while the archpriest of Ferney prostrates himself with iterated formula, "_Te Cathariniam laudamus, te Dominam confitemur_." For St. Catharine was an interested reader of that correspondence of Diderot's with her sculptor Falconet, whose theme is the solidity of posthumous fame. Rulihière had already written an account of the events of 1762, of which he had been an eye-witness; she had tried first to buy him, and then to have him thrown into the Bastille. She will search Venice for a pliable historian; and her own letter on the _coup-d'état_, together with her memoirs, shows how strong in her was that "_besoin de parolier_" analyzed by the great Pascal a century before. Catharine, be quite certain of it, is no earnest seeker after truth; rather "the plain man," with something of the acuteness as well as the insensibility of common-sense. The _Philosophes_ were the interest of the cultivated "as scholars had been in one century, painters in another, theologians in a third." They had the ear of Europe, who rest now in Mr. Morley's bosom. But Catharine confessed years after: "Your learned men in '_ist_' bored me to extinction. There was only my good protector Voltaire. Do you know it was he who made me the mode?" With what a quaint inconsequence her truer self appeared at the Revolution! She, who will foresee Napoleon, was rudely shocked by the fall of the Bastille. The Revolution touched her in her tenderest point. With every year, in spite of her sentiments and cosmopolitan culture, this Princess of Zerbst became more and more fervently autocratic and Russian. She had jestingly asked her doctor to bleed away the last drop of her German blood. No one ever had a more fanatical hero-worship for the Russian himself, or a deeper enthusiasm for the greatness in his history. It was in the political sphere that her convictions play, and she had a vague but passionate belief in what she and Russia might do together. Yet here were these declaimers threatening to overrun Europe, and "Equality setting peoples at the throats of kings!" The cant about fraternity, the catch-words and sentiments, vanish like smoke. No anathemas on the Revolution were fiercer than those of the "_Ame Républicaine_," who had burned to restore the ancient institutions of Athens. The hostess of Diderot breathed fiery indignation against "these Western atheists"; and the nationalization of church property, the very first of her own reforms, becomes, in the men of '89, an "organized brigandage." "There is an economy of truth," said Burke. "Semiramis," like Romeo, "hung up philosophy," and the bust of her "preceptor," Voltaire, accompanied Fox to the basement! "_Enfin tout philosophe est banni de céans, Et nous ne vivons plus qu'avec les honnétes gens._" The advantage of women in affairs of this sort is, that they are natural opportunists, and care nothing for the tyranny of your system. There is a wise inconsequence in their ideas, for the logic of the universe is not professed from an academic chair. "_Moi_," she says, "_je ne suis qu'un composé de batons rompus!_" Voltaire had learned from Bayle, and Catharine tells us she had learned from Voltaire, to distrust "the men of a system." "_Stulti sunt innumerabiles_," said Erasmus, and theirs was but an ingenious foolishness. Diderot, on that adventurous visit of his, was bursting with eagerness to take Russia off the wall, and put it "in the kettle of magicians." Never before now had such projects been seen in a government office! He gesticulated by the hour: she was delighted to listen. He drew up scores of schemes; they were as well ordered, as regular, as his own meals. But presently he realized that no one had taken him seriously! Catharine once remarked herself that she wrote on "sensitive skins, while his material was foolscap." And finally, like Mercier de la Rivière, he departed wiser, and a little hurt. "A wonderful man," she said afterward to Ségur, "but a little too old--and a little too young!" His _Plan of a University for Russia_, which had an appreciable influence on education elsewhere, "has never to this day," says Waliszewski, "been translated into Russian." How natural again, and with what vivid abandon, she presents herself in her correspondence with Grimm! He lives in Paris, factotum and confidant, passes his life in executing her commissions. To him she talks, rather than writes, as she talks to her intimates, in overwhelming voluble fashion, gossiping, punning, often playing the buffoon, as she does with that little set of hers at her retreat of the "Hermitage." Persons, even places, have their nicknames. St. Petersburg is the "Duck-pond"; Grimm himself the "Fag," "Souffredouleur," George Dandin, "M. le Baron de Thunder-ten-Tronck." Frederick the Great appears as "Herod" (a palpable hit that!), the diplomats as "Wind-bags," "Pea-soup," "Die Perrueckirte Haeupter;" Maria Theresa becomes "Maman;" Gustavus of Sweden, "Falstaff;" and so on. There is no question here of making a figure; often she has nothing to say; she writes purely to give extravagance an outlet. We have her here as though we had been present at one of those sparkling conversations which, in old days, used to send Grimm sleepless to his rooms, but of which nothing remained memorable, which in truth charmed by their vivacity rather than by wit--by that _verve_ which so often supplies the place of brilliancy. This familiar note will appear again in her letters to the Emperor Joseph; as unlike those addressed to Herod as the letters to Grimm are unlike those to Madame Geoffrin or Voltaire. He was also _des nôtres_. She, who judged men in general poorly enough, though she used them incomparably well, not only recognized--unlike most of his contemporaries--but was fascinated by the elements of greatness in that extraordinary man. She used him, it is true, as she used Orloff and Patiomkin; her good-fortune helped her as it did before, and will again; their great alliance against the Ottoman brought her everything, and him nothing. Still, no foreigner ever dazzled her as he, who could so little impose himself on his age. "He will live unrivalled," she wrote in her enthusiasm; "his star is in the ascendant, he will leave all Europe behind!" A wandering star, alas! He will go before her to the grave, the great failure of his generation, in the bitterness of death dictating that saddest of epitaphs, "Here lies one who never fulfilled an aim." _Impar congressus!_ like Michelet's Charles the Bold, "_il avait trop voulu, des choses infinies_." The arts were indifferent to her, and she was insensible to the simplicity of true greatness. She idolized a Zuboff, but Kosciuszko was immured at St. Petersburg till the day of her death, and she never even learned his precise name. Yet she brought to society and politics much of that protean activity which was the distinction of her teacher Voltaire in the field of letters. She did much for education, and something for Russian literature. She herself wrote or collaborated in plays, whose performances the Holy Synod had to attend--and applaud--in a body. She also published translations, pamphlets, books for her grandchildren, a history of Russia to the fourteenth century, and even helped to edit a newspaper. Unlike Frederick, she did not despise the language of her country. She put her court to school, and at the "Hermitage" so many lines of Russian were learned every day. But Radistchev said: "Fear and silence reign round Czarkoe-Sielo. The silence of Death is there, for there despotism has its abode." He received the knout and Siberia, because his words were true. She lived, as he said, remote from her people. Beggars were forbidden to enter Moscow, lest she should see them; but a rumor ran after her return from the South that Alexis Orloff led her into a barn where were laid out the bodies of all who had died of hunger on the day of her triumphal entry. Like Peter the Great, she even in some ways intensified serfdom. A hundred fifty thousand "peasants of the crown" were handed over by her as serfs to her lovers. Their proprietors could send them with hard labor to Siberia; they could give them fifteen thousand blows for a trifling offence; a Soltikoff tortured seventy-five to death. _Sed ignoti perierunt mortibus illi!_ the day will come, but not yet. This is not the place to describe the campaigns of Rumaintsoff, Patiomkin, and the rest, against Sweden and the Ottomans. Her own ideas in the field of foreign policy we have already seen. After the Revolution another policy, that of spurring on Gustavus and the Western powers to a crusade against France, takes the first place. It gave them something to think about, she explained to Ostermann, and she "wanted elbow-room." The third Polish partition explains why she was so anxious for "elbow-room." Schemes of the kind were common enough in the eighteenth century, everybody was dismembered on paper by everybody else; it was but a delicate attention reserved for a neighbor in times of trouble and sickness. And John Sobieski had foretold the doom of Poland a hundred years before. But it remains a blot upon her name. For her final fate overtook Poland, not, as is commonly said, because of her internal anarchy--sedulously fostered by the foreign powers--but because that anarchy seemed about to disappear. The spirit of reform had penetrated to Warsaw, and after the Constitution of May 3d Catharine was afraid of a revival of the national forces similar to that which had followed the reforms of 1772 in her neighbor Sweden. She was aided by traitors from within, _a'quali era piu cara la servitu che la liberta della loro patria_; and on the field of Maciejovitsy they were able to cry, "_Finis Poloniæ!_" No question has been more obscured. The fashion of liberal thought has changed, the history, like that of town and gown, has been written by the victorious aggressors, and Poland is become the rendezvous of the political sophistries, as it has been the cockpit of the political ruffianism, of all Europe. But Catharine could boast that she had pushed the frontiers of Russia farther than any sovereign since Ivan the Terrible. "I came to Russia a poor girl. Russia has dowered me richly, but I have paid her back with Azov, the Crimea, and the Ukraine." There remains the side of her which attracted Byron, and which no one has failed to seize. The beginnings of her moral descent are there before us in the memoirs; ennui and solitude weighed upon her, and as she gained greater liberty she sought distractions which, at first, were harmless. The third stage was the infamous command of the Empress--the Grand Duke and she have no children; the succession must be secured. If Soltikoff, as Catharine implies, were the father of her son Paul, the sovereigns who have since occupied the throne of Russia are Romanoffs only in name. From this point till her death, in 1796, she entirely ignored the code of morality convenient in a society whose basis is the family. In the succession of her "lovers" only Patiomkin, and for a moment Gregory Orloff, acquired a position of the first political importance; and Patiomkin's was maintained long after his first relation had come to an end. It has been ascribed to her as a merit that she pensioned these worthies handsomely, instead of dealing with them after the manner of Christina of Sweden; and that she was able to make passion, which has lost others, coincident with her calculated self-interest. Certainly she entered, a child, into a society "rotten before it was ripe." She was surrounded with a court long demoralized by a succession of drunken and dissolute czarinas, which aped the corruption of Versailles more consummately than its refinement. The age was that of Louis XV, of Lord Sandwich, of Augustus the Strong: in it even a Burke had persuaded himself that "vice lost half its evil by losing all its grossness." The reader of Bayle and Brantôme had been introduced to a bizarre sort of morality; her "spiritual father," Voltaire, was the author of _La Pucelle_ and _Jacques le Fataliste_ proceeded from the same pen as the _University for Russia_. Diderot, indeed, whose moral obscenity was not the whole of the man, but was, nevertheless, sincere and from the centre, was able to compliment her on the freedom from "the decencies and virtues, the worn-out rags of her sex." She had no fund of theoretical cynicism on such matters, nor, on the other hand, the slightest moral pretence. The revolutionary _Moniteur_ branded her as Messalina. "_Cela ne regarde que moi_," she said haughtily, and the sheet circulated throughout the empire. Such is the summary of the gallons of printers' ink that have soiled paper on this account. It is the aspect of her allowed to escape no one, and therefore we say no more of it here. How easy it is to "hint and chuckle and grin" with the "_chroniques scandaleuses!_" easier still to be incontinent of one's moral indignation. The truth is that this back-stair gossip misses, on the whole, that just proportion necessary if you would not only see but also perceive. Catharine, whom her generation called "the Great," had one absorbing passion; it was the greatness of Russia, and of herself as ruler of Russia--"_mon petit ménage_," as she would call it, with her touch of lightness--and she desired to be the first amateur of "_la grande politique_" in Europe. "_Elle brillait surtout par le caractère_," says Waliszewski, whose volumes, collecting most of what is known about Catharine, I have freely consulted. It is only natural that her biographer should regard her as a strikingly complex and exceptional being. _Nous sommes tous des exceptions._ Yet she is not essentially different from the "woman of character" you may meet in every street. Given her splendid physical constitution there is nothing prodigious about her except her good-fortune in every crisis and important action of her career. In one of his Napoleonic fits of incoherence, Patiomkin said vividly enough that the Empress and himself were "the spoilt children of God." For herself, she says in that introductory page, which Sainte-Beuve has well compared with Machiavelli, that what commonly passes for good-fortune is in reality the result of natural qualities and conduct. If that satisfies, it is so much to her credit. Certainly, "the stars connived" with her from the day in 1762 when she galloped in her cuirassier's uniform through the streets of St. Petersburg. "_Toute la politique_," she said, "_est fondée sur trois mots circonstances, conjectures et conjonctures_;" and like many leaders of action she was in her moments a fatalist, for then she saw how little after all, the greatest, as Bismarck says, can control events. FOOTNOTES: [44] _Macbeth_, ii, 3. That is, the nearer in relationship the heirs of power to the source of their inheritance, the greater their danger at the hands of bloody usurpers (like Macbeth).--ED. CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC A.D. 1763 E.O. RANDALL With the fall of Quebec and De Vaudreuil's capitulation of Montreal, Canada passed from the dominion of France to Britain, and for a time came under military rule. In the West, around the shores of the Great Lakes and the country watered by the Ohio, though small English garrisons occupied the forts of the region, the French still held posts on the Wabash and the Mississippi, and had a considerable settlement at New Orleans. About the Lakes and in the Ohio Valley discontent smouldered among the Indians, many of whom bewailed the fate of their old allies, the French, while they feared the English, whom they dreaded as likely to drive them from their hunting-grounds and treat them with injustice or neglect. Their fears in this respect were worked upon and disaffection among them was fomented by French traders from Montreal and St. Louis; the results of which were presently seen in the rising of all the Western tribes under the wily leadership of Pontiac, chief of the Ottawa warriors, who sought to exterminate the English and restore the supremacy of the French and Indian races. The incidents of this conspiracy of Pontiac are related in an edifying paper by the Hon. E.O. Randall, of Columbus, Ohio, contributed to the _Transactions_ of the Ohio Archæological and Historical Society, and here, by kind permission, reproduced. The conquest of Canada left the Indians of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys subject to British domination. The red men were repulsed but not conquered. They were scattered over a vast territory; their total number between the Mississippi on the west, the ocean on the east, between the Ohio on the south, and the Great Lakes on the north was probably not in excess of two hundred thousand, and their fighting warriors not more than ten thousand.[45] Fort Duquesne was in November, 1758, captured from the French by the British forces under General John Forbes. The military posts of the French in the East, on the waters of Lake Erie and the Allegheny, viz., Presqu'île, Le Boeuf, and Venango, passed into the hands of the British soon after the taking of Fort Duquesne. Most of the Western forts were transferred to the English during the autumn of 1760; but the extreme Western settlements on the Illinois, viz., Forts Ouatanon, Vincennes, Kaskaskia, Chartres, and Cahokia, remained several years longer under French control. In the fall of 1760 Major Robert Rogers was directed by the then British commander, Sir Jeffrey Amherst, to traverse the Great Lakes with a detachment of provincial troops and, in the name of England, take possession of Detroit, Michilimackinac, and the other Western forts included in the surrender of the French. Major Rogers, with two hundred rangers, left Montreal, ascended the St. Lawrence, crossed Lakes Ontario and Erie, and reached the mouth of the Cuyahoga[46] on November 7th. No body of troops under the British flag had ever before penetrated so far west on the Lakes. Rogers and his men encamped in the neighboring forest. Shortly after their arrival a party of Indian chiefs and warriors appeared at the camp and declared they were envoys from Pontiac, "ruler of all that country," and demanded, in his name, that the British soldiers "should advance no farther" until they had conferred with the great chief, who was rapidly approaching. That same day Pontiac himself appeared; and "it is here," says Parkman, "for the first time, that this remarkable man stands forth distinctly on the page of history." The place and date of birth of Pontiac are both matters of dispute. There seems to be no doubt that he was the son of an Ottawa chief; his mother is variously stated to have been an Ojibwa, a Miami, and a Sac. Preponderance of evidence, as the lawyers say, seems to favor the Ojibwas. Authorities also vary as to the date of his nativity from 1712 to 1720.[47] Historical writers usually content themselves with the vague statement that he was born "on the Ottawa River," without designating which Ottawa River, for many were so called; indeed, the Ottawas were in the habit of calling every stream upon which they sojourned any length of time "Ottawa," after their own tribe. The Miami chief Richardville is on record as often asserting that Pontiac was born by the Maumee at the mouth of the Auglaize.[48] In any event, Pontiac, like his great successor, the incomparable Shawano chief, Tecumseh, was a native of Ohio. The Ottawas, Ojibwas, and the Pottawottomis had formed a sort of alliance of which Pontiac was the virtual head. He was of a despotic and commanding temperament, and he wielded practical authority among all the tribes of the Illinois country, and was known to all the Indian nations of America. Pontiac, conscious of his power and position, haughtily asked Major Rogers, "What his business was in that country?" and how he dared enter it without Pontiac's permission? Rogers informed the chief that the war was over, the French defeated, the country surrendered to the British, and he was on his way to receive the posts from the French occupiers. Pontiac was wily and diplomatic. He received the news stolidly, reserved his answer till next morning, when his reply was that as he desired to live in peace with the British, he would let them remain in his country as long as "they treated him with due respect and deference." Both parties smoked the calumet and protested friendship. Rogers proceeded on his errand. On November 29, 1760, the French garrison at Detroit transferred that historic and most important Western station to British possession.[49] The stormy season prevented Rogers from advancing farther. Michilimackinac and the three remoter posts of Ste. Marie, La Baye (Green Bay), and St. Joseph remained in the hands of the French until the next year. The interior posts of the Illinois country were also retained by the French, but the British conquest of America was completed. The victory of England and the transfer of the French strongholds to British commanders were a terrible and portentous blow to the Indian. He could not fail to foresee therein dire results to his race. His prophetic vision read the handwriting on the wall! Expressions and signs of discontent and apprehension began to be audible among the Indian tribes; "from the Potomac to Lake Superior, and from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, in every wigwam and hamlet of the forest, a deep-rooted hatred of the English increased with rapid growth." When the French occupied the military posts of the lakes and the rivers they freely supplied the neighboring Indians with weapons, clothing, provisions, and fire-water. The sudden cessation of these bounties was a grievous and significant calamity. The English fur-trader and incomer was rude and coarse and domineering as compared with the agreeable and docile Frenchman. Worse and more alarming than all was the intrusion into the forest solitude and hunting-ground of the Indian by the English settler, who regarded the red man as having no rights he was bound to respect. While the rivalry between the two white nations was in progress, the red man was courted by each as holding in large degree the balance of power. But the war over, the ascendant Briton no longer regarded the Indians as necessary allies, and they were in large measure treated with indifference and injustice. The hostility of the Indian against the British was, of course, assiduously promoted by the French, who saw in it trouble for the British, possibly a regaining of their lost ground. The warlike and revengeful spirit of the Indian began to give itself vent. The smouldering fires were bound to burst forth. During the years 1761 and 1762 plots were hatched in various tribes to stealthily approach, and, by attack or treacherous entrance, destroy the posts of Detroit, Fort Pitt, and others. These plots were severally discovered in time to forestall their attempt. Indian indignation reached its height when in 1763 it was announced to the tribes that the King of France had ceded all their (Indian) country to the King of England, without consulting them in the matter. At once a plot was contrived, "such as was never before or since conceived or executed by North American Indians." It was determined and planned to make an assault upon all the British posts on the same day; "then, having destroyed the garrisons, to turn upon the defenceless frontier and ravage and lay waste the white settlements." It was fondly believed by thousands of braves that then the British might be exterminated, or at least driven to the seaboard and confined to their coast settlements. It was the great chief, Pontiac, who if he did not originally instigate, fostered, directed, and personally commanded this secretly arranged universal movement. His mastermind comprehended the importance and necessity of combined and harmonious effort. He proposed to unite all the tribes into one confederacy for offensive operations. At the close of 1762 he despatched ambassadors to the different nations--to the tribes of the North on the Lakes; to the northwest, the head-waters of the Mississippi and south to its mouth; to the east and the southeast. The Indians thus enlisted and banded together against the British comprised, "with few unimportant exceptions, the whole Algonquin stock." Especially were the Ohio tribes solicited and secured; the Shawanoes, the Miamis, the Wyandots, and the Delawares. The Senecas were the only members of the Iroquois confederacy that joined the league. The onslaught was to be made in the month of May, 1763, the tribes to rise simultaneously at the various points and each tribe destroy the British garrison in its neighborhood. It was a vast scheme, worthy the brain and courage of the greatest general and shrewdest statesman. The plan was divulged by individual Indians to officers at two or three of the posts, but was either disbelieved or its importance ignored. While this gigantic and almost chimerical plot was being developed by Pontiac and his associate chiefs, the treaty of peace between France and England was signed at Paris, February 10, 1763. By this compact France yielded to England all her territory north of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence and east of the Mississippi. The Spanish possessions on the Gulf of Mexico were ceded to England, the territory west of the Mississippi going to Spain. France was left no foothold in North America. While the powers of England, France, and Spain were in the French capital arranging this result, as Parkman remarks, "countless Indian warriors in the American forests were singing the war-song and whetting their scalping-knives." The chief centre of Indian activity and the main point of attack was the post of Detroit, the Western head-quarters of the British government. Pontiac was personally to strike the first blow. The rendezvous of his painted and armed warriors was to be the banks of the little river Ecorces, which empties into the Detroit River a few miles below the Fort, now the city of Detroit. It was April 27th when the assembled warriors listened to the final war-speech of the great chief. Pontiac was an orator of a high order, fierce and impassioned in style. He presented at length the injustice of the British as compared with that of the French; he set forth the danger to his race from the threatened supremacy of the British power; he predicted the awakening of "their great father the King of France," during whose sleep the English had robbed the Indian of his American possessions. In passionate appeals he aroused the vengeance and superstition of his people and warned them that the white man's civilization was poisoning and annihilating the red race. In his dramatic way he related to the superstitious Indians a dream wherein the Great Spirit sent his message that they were to cast aside the weapons, the utensils of civilization, and the "deadly rum" of the white men, and, with aid from the Great Spirit, drive the dogs in red from every post in their (Indian) country. He revealed his plans of destruction of the whites and the details of the plot to secure Detroit. He and a few of his chosen chiefs were to visit the Fort, under pretence of a peaceful visit, gain admittance, seek audience with Major Henry Gladwyn, the commandant, and his officers, and then at an agreed signal the chiefs were to draw their weapons, previously concealed beneath their blankets, raise the war-whoop, rush upon the officers and strike them down. The Indian forces waiting meanwhile at the gate were then to assail the surprised and half-armed soldiers. Thus through this perfidious murder Detroit would fall an easy prey to the savages and Pontiac's conspiracy have a successful inauguration. His plan was approved. Just below Detroit, on the same side of the river, was a Pottawottomi village; across the river some three miles up the current was an Ottawa village; on the same eastern side about a mile below Detroit was the Wyandot village. Along each side of the river for two or three miles were houses of the French settlers. "The king and lord of all this country," as Major Rogers called Pontiac, had located one of his homes, where he spent the early summer, on a little island (Île à Pêche) at the opening of Lake St. Clair. Here he had a small oven-shaped cabin of bark and rushes. Here he dwelt with his squaws and children, and here doubtless he might often have been seen, lounging, Indian style, half naked, on a rush mat or bear-skin. The number of warriors under the command of Pontiac is variously estimated from six hundred to two thousand. The garrison consisted of one hundred twenty soldiers, eight officers, and about forty others capable of bearing arms. Two armed schooners, The Beaver and The Gladwyn, were anchored in the river near the Fort. Pontiac's plot was revealed to Gladwyn the night before its proposed execution by an Ojibwa girl from the Pottawottomi village.[50] Gladwyn, thus warned, was forearmed. Pontiac and his six chiefs were admitted to the council-chamber. Pontiac began the harangue of peace and friendly palaver and was about to give the preconcerted signal when Gladwyn raised his hand and the sound of clashing arms and drum-beating was heard without. Pontiac feared he was foiled, and announcing that he would "call again," next time with his squaws and children, he and his party withdrew. The next morning, Pontiac, in hopes of regaining Gladwyn's confidence, repaired to the Fort with but three of his chiefs, and bearing in his hand the pipe of peace. Offering it to Gladwyn he again protested his friendship for the British, whom he declared "we love as our brothers." A few days later, the Indians thronged the open field behind the Fort gate. It was closed and barred. Pontiac, advancing, demanded admittance. Gladwyn replied that he might enter, but only alone. The great chief, baffled and enraged, then "threw off the mask he had so long worn" and boldly declared his intention to make war. A day or two later the four tribes, Ottawas, Ojibwas, Pottawottomis, and Wyandots, clamored about the Fort, and the attack was begun by volleys of bullets fired at the palisade walls. Thus opened the famous siege of Detroit, which lasted six months, from May 1 to November 1 (1763), one of the longest and most bitterly contested sieges in the history of Western Indian warfare. The incomparable treachery of Pontiac in endeavoring to secure the Fort by dissemblance of friendship was further evidenced by his pretence at a truce. Pontiac declaring his earnest desire for "firm and lasting peace," requested Gladwyn to send to the camp of the chief, Captain Campbell, Gladwyn's second in command, a veteran officer and most upright and manly in character. Campbell went, was made prisoner, and subsequently was foully and hideously murdered. Pontiac neglected no expedient known to Indian perfidy, cruelty, or deviltry. He surpassed his race in all the detestable elements of their nature. His conduct from first to last was only calculated to create distrust, contempt, and loathing. His warriors murdered the British settlers in the vicinity of the Fort, burned their huts, robbed the Canadians, and committed every variety of depredation. Pontiac, realizing the seriousness of the situation and the obstinate courage of the British garrison, prepared for a lengthy campaign. He ordered the Ottawa village moved across the river to the Detroit side, where it was located about a mile and a half northeast of the Fort, at the mouth of Parent's Creek, afterward known as Bloody Run. The garrison bravely and patiently withstood all assaults and bided the time of rescue. By midnight sallies and other expedients they removed all exterior buildings, fences, trees, and other obstacles that lay within the range of their guns or that might afford protection to sneaking and stealthy Indians who would crawl snakelike close to the palisade and fire at the sentinels and loop-holes, or shoot their arrows tipped with burning tow upon the roofs of the structures within the Fort. Fortunately the supply of water was inexhaustible; the provisions were wisely husbanded; friendly Canadians across the river, under cover of night, brought supplies. These Canadian farmers were also subject to tribute to the Indians, who seized their supplies by theft or open violence. They appealed to Pontiac, and about the only creditable act recorded of that perfidious chief was his agreement to make restitution to the robbed settlers. Pontiac gave them in payment for their purloined property promissory notes drawn on birch-bark and signed with the figure of an otter--the totem to which he belonged--all of which promises to pay, it is said, were redeemed. Day after day passed with varying incidents of attack and repulse. The keen-eyed watchfulness of the Indians never for an instant abated; their vigils were tireless and ceaseless; woe to the soldier who ventured without the Fort or even lifted his head above the palisade. Pontiac's patience was strengthened with the delusive idea that the French were only temporarily defeated and would rally to his assistance. He even despatched messengers across the interior to the French commandant, Neyon, at Fort Chartres on the Mississippi, requesting that French troops be sent without delay to his aid. Meanwhile Gladwyn had sent one of his schooners to Fort Niagara to hasten promised reënforcements from the British. Lieutenant Cuyler had already (May 13th) left Niagara with convoy of seven boats, ninety-six men, and quantities of supplies and ammunition. This little fleet coasted along the northern shore of Lake Erie until near the mouth of the Detroit River. The force attempted to land, when a band of Wyandot Indians suddenly burst from the woods, seized five of the boats, and killed or captured sixty of the soldiers. Cuyler with the remaining men (thirty-six), many of whom were wounded, escaped in the other boats and crossed to Fort Sandusky, which they found had been taken and burned by the Wyandots; the garrison had been slaughtered and Ensign Paully sent prisoner to Pontiac's camp. Cuyler with his escaping companions slowly wended his way back, where he reported the result of his expedition to the commanding officer, Major Wilkins. At the same time the Wyandots, with the captured boats and prisoners, proceeded up the Detroit to Pontiac's quarters, arriving in full sight of the Fort's garrison, when Gladwyn, of course, learned of the destruction of the Cuyler flotilla. The disappointment to the inmates of the Fort was almost unbearable. Gladwyn's schooner, however, reached Fort Niagara and returned about July 1st, laden with food, ammunition, and reënforcements, and the most welcome news of the Treaty of Paris. Pontiac, undismayed, continued his efforts. His forces now numbered, it is recorded, about eight hundred twenty warriors: two hundred fifty Ottawas, his own tribe and under his immediate command; one hundred fifty Pottawottomis, under Ninivay; fifty Wyandots, under Takee; two hundred Ojibwas, under Wasson; and one hundred seventy of the same tribe, under Sekahos. The two schooners were a serious menace to the movements of the Indians, and many desperate attempts were made to burn them by midnight attacks, and the floating of fire-rafts down upon them; but all to no avail. Pontiac had the stubborn persistency of a later American general who said he would fight it out on that line if it took all summer. He exerted himself with fresh zeal to gain possession of the Fort. He demanded the surrender of Gladwyn, saying a still greater force of Indians was on the march to swell the army of besiegers. Gladwyn was equally tenacious and unyielding; he proposed to "hold the fort" till the enemy were worn out or reënforcements arrived. Pontiac sought to arouse the active aid of the neighboring Canadians, but the Treaty of Paris had made them British subjects, and they dared not war on their conquerors. History scarcely furnishes a like instance of so large an Indian force struggling so long in an attack on a fortified place. The Wyandots and Pottawottomis, however, never as enthusiastic in this war as the other tribes, late in July decided to withdraw from the besieging confederacy and make peace with the British. They did so, and exchanged prisoners with Gladwyn. The Ottawas and Ojibwas, however, still held on, watching the Fort and keeping up a desultory fusillade. The end was drawing nigh. On July 29th, Captain James Dalzell arrived from Niagara with artillery supplies and two hundred eighty men in twenty-two barges. Their approach to the Fort was bravely contested by the combined Indian forces, even the Wyandots and Pottawottomis breaking their treaty and treacherously joining in the assault. Dalzell's troops entered the Fort, and he proposed an immediate sortie. Dalzell was bravery personified, and he had fought with Israel Putnam. On the morning after his arrival (July 31st) at two o'clock, he led a force of two hundred fifty men out of the Fort. They silently in the darkness marched along the river toward the Ottawa village just across Parent's Creek. The Indians were prepared and had ambuscaded both sides of the road. They were, Indian fashion, secreted behind trees and fences and Canadian houses. Their presence was not discovered till the van of Dalzell's column reached the bridge over the creek, when a terrible fire was opened upon the soldiers from all sides. It was still dark; the Indians could not be seen. A panic ensued. The troops in disorder retreated amid an awful slaughter. Dalzell himself was killed, and Major Robert Rogers assumed command, and the fleeing soldiers were only spared from total destruction by two of the British boats coming to the rescue. About sixty men were killed or wounded. It was known as the Battle of Bloody bridge. Upon the retreating into the Fort of Major Rogers' survivors the siege was renewed. Pontiac was greatly encouraged over this victory, and his Indians showed renewed zeal. The schooner Gladwyn was sent to Niagara for help. On its return, it was attacked and its crew and supplies practically destroyed. Another relief expedition under Major Wilkins in September was overwhelmed in a lake storm and seventy soldiers were drowned. But even Indian persistency began to tire. The realization that the French were beaten and time only would bring victory to the British led all the tribes, except the Ottawas, to sue for peace. This was on October 12th. Pontiac could only hold his own tribe in line. The Ottawas sustained their hostility until October 30th, when a French messenger arrived from Neyon, who reported to Pontiac that he must expect no help from the French, as they were now completely and permanently at peace with the British.[51] Pontiac was advised to quit the war at once. His cause was doomed. The great chief who had so valiantly and unremittently fought for six months suddenly raised the siege and retired into the country of the Maumee, where he vainly endeavored to arouse the Miamis and neighboring tribes to another war upon the invading British. Though the memorable siege of Detroit, personally conducted by Pontiac, ended in failure to the great chief, his conspiracy elsewhere met with unparalleled success. The British posts planned to be simultaneously attacked and destroyed by the savages were some dozen in number, including besides Detroit, St. Joseph, Michilimackinac, Ouiatenon, Sandusky, Miami, Presqu'île, Niagara, Le Boeuf, Venango, Fort Pitt, and one or two others of lesser importance. Of all the posts from Niagara and Pitt westward, Detroit alone was able to survive the conspiracy. For the rest "there was but one unvaried tale of calamity and ruin." It was a continued series of disasters to the white men. The victories of the savages marked a course of blood from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi. On May 16, 1763, the Wyandots surrounded Fort Sandusky, and under pretence of a friendly visit several of them well known to Ensign Paully, the commander, were admitted. While smoking the pipe of peace the treacherous and trusted Indians suddenly arose, seized Paully, and held him prisoner while their tribesmen killed the sentry, entered the fort, and in cold blood murdered and scalped the little band of soldiers. The traders in the post were likewise killed and their stores plundered. The stockade was fired and burned to the ground. Paully was taken to Detroit where he was "adopted" as the husband of an old widowed squaw, from whose affectionate toils he finally escaped to his friends in the Detroit Fort. St. Joseph was located at the mouth of the river St. Joseph, near the southern end of Lake Michigan.[52] Ensign Schlosser was in command with a mere handful of soldiers, fourteen in number. On the morning of May 25th the commander was informed that a large "party" of Pottawottomis had arrived from Detroit "to visit their relations," and the chief (Washashe) and three or four of his followers wished to hold a "friendly talk" with the commander. Disarmed of suspicion, the commander-ensign admitted the callers; the result is the oft-repeated story. The entering Indians rushed to the gate, tomahawked the sentinel, let in their associates, who instantly pounced upon the garrison, killed eleven of the soldiers, plundered the fort, and later carried Schlosser and his three surviving companions captives to Detroit. Fort Michilimackinac was the most important point on the Upper Lakes, commanding as it did the Straits of Mackinac, the passage from Lake Huron into Lake Michigan. Great numbers of the Chippewas (Ojibwas), in the last of May, began to assemble in the vicinity of the fort, but with every indication of friendliness. June 4th was King George's birthday. It must be celebrated with pastimes. The discipline of the garrison, some thirty-five in number, was relaxed. Many squaws were admitted as visitors into the fort, while their "braves" engaged in their favorite game of ball just outside the garrison entrance. It was a spirited contest between the Ojibwas and Sacs. Captain George Etherington, commander of the fort, and his lieutenant, Leslie, stood without the palisades to watch the sport. Suddenly the ball was thrown near the open gate and behind the two officers. The Indians pretending to rush for the ball instantly encircled and seized Etherington and Leslie, and crowded their way into the fort, where the squaws supplied them with tomahawks and hatchets, which they had carried in, hidden under their blankets. Quick as a flash, the instruments of death were gleaming in the sunlight, and Lieutenant Jamet and fifteen soldiers and a trader were struck down, never to rise. The rest of the garrison were made prisoners and five of them afterward tomahawked. All of the peaceful traders were plundered and carried off. The prisoners were conveyed to Montreal. The French population of the post was undisturbed. Captain Etherington succeeded in sending timely warning to the little garrison at La Baye; Lieutenant Gorrell, the commandant, and his men were brought as prisoners to the Michilimackinac fort and thence sent with Etherington and Leslie to the Canadian capital. The little post of Ste. Marie (the Sault) had been partially destroyed and abandoned. The garrison inmates had withdrawn to Michilimackinac and shared its fate. The garrison at Ouiatenon situated on the Wabash (Indian _Ouabache_), near the present location of Lafayette (Indiana), then in the very heart of the Western forest, as planned, was to have been massacred on June 1st. Through the information given by the French at the post, the soldiers were apprised of their intended fate, and, through the intervention of the same French friends, the Indians were dissuaded from executing their sanguinary purpose. Lieutenant Jenkins and several of his men were made prisoners by stratagem; the remainder of the garrison readily surrendered. On the present site of Fort Wayne (Indiana) was Fort Miami,[53] at the confluence of the Rivers St. Joseph and St. Mary, which unite to form the Maumee. The fort at this time was in charge of Ensign Holmes. On May 27th the commander was decoyed from the Fort by the story of an Indian girl, that a squaw lay dangerously ill in a wigwam near the stockade, and needed medical assistance. The humane Holmes, forgetting his caution on an errand of mercy, walked without the gate and was instantly shot dead. The soldiers in the palisades, seeing the corpse of their leader and hearing the yells and whoopings of the exultant Indians, offered no resistance, admitted the red men and gladly surrendered on promise of having their lives spared. Fort Presqu'île stood on the southern shore of Lake Erie at the site of the present town of Erie. The block-house, an unusually strong and commodious one, was in command of Ensign Christie, with a courageous and skilful garrison of twenty-seven men. Christie, learning of the attack on the other posts, "braced up" for his "visit from the hell-hounds" as he appropriately called the enemy. He had not long to wait. On June 15th about two hundred of them put in an appearance from Detroit. They sprang into the ditch around the fort, and with reckless audacity approached to the very walls and threw fire-balls of pitch upon the roof and sides of the fortress. Again and again the wooden retreat was on fire, but amid showers of bullets and arrows the flames were extinguished by the fearless soldiers. The savages rolled logs before the fort and erected strong breastworks, from behind which they could discharge their shots and throw their fire-balls. For nearly three days a terrific contest ensued. The savages finally undermined the palisades to the house of Christie, which was at once set on fire, nearly stifling the garrison with the smoke and heat, for Christie's quarters were close to the block-house. Longer resistance was vain, "the soldiers, pale and haggard, like men who had passed through a fiery furnace, now issued from their scorched and bullet-pierced stronghold." The surrendering soldiers were taken to Pontiac's quarters on the Detroit River. Three days after the attack on Presqu'île, Fort le Boeuf, twelve miles south on Le Boeuf Creek, one of the head sources of the Allegheny River, was surrounded and burned. Ensign Price and a garrison of thirteen men miraculously escaped the flames and the encircling savages and endeavored to reach Fort Pitt. About half of them succeeded; the remainder died of hunger and privation by the way. Fort Venango, still farther south, on the Allegheny River, was captured by a band of Senecas, who gained entrance by resorting to the oft-employed treachery of pretending friendliness. The entire garrison was butchered, Lieutenant Gordon, the commander, being slowly tortured to death, and the fort was burned to the ground. Not a soul escaped to tell the horrible tale. Fort Ligonier, another small post, commanded by Lieutenant Archibald Blane, forty miles southeast of Fort Pitt, was attacked but successfully held out till relieved by Bouquet's expedition. Thus within a period of about a month from the time the first blow was struck at Detroit, Pontiac was in full possession of nine out of the twelve posts, so recently belonging to and, it was thought, securely occupied by the British. The fearful threat of the great Ottawa conspirator that he would exterminate the whites west of the Alleghanies was wellnigh fulfilled. Over two hundred traders with their servants fell victims to his remorseless march of slaughter and rapine, and goods estimated at over half a million dollars became the spoils of the confederated tribes. The result of Pontiac's widespread and successful uprising struck untold terror to the settlers along the Western frontier of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. The savages, roused to the highest pitch of fury and weltering in the blood of their victims, were burning the cabins and crops of the defenceless whites and massacring the men, women, and children. Many hundreds of the forest-dwellers with their families flocked to the stockades and protected posts. Particularly in the Pennsylvania country did dread and consternation prevail. The frontiersmen west of the Alleghanies fled east over the mountains to Carlisle, Lancaster, and numbers even continued their flight to Philadelphia. Pontiac was making good his threat that he would drive the pale-faces back to the sea. But Forts Niagara and Pitt were still in the possession of the "red-coats," as the British soldiers were often called by the forest "redskins." Following the total destruction of Le Boeuf and Venango, the Senecas made an attack on Fort Niagara, an extensive work on the east side of Niagara River, near its mouth as it empties into Lake Ontario. This fort guarded the access to the whole interior country by way of Canada and the St. Lawrence. The fort was strongly built and fortified and was far from the centre of the country of the warpath Indians, for, with the exception of the Senecas, the Iroquois tribes inhabiting Eastern Canada and New York did not participate in Pontiac's conspiracy. The attack on Fort Niagara, therefore, was half-hearted, and after a feeble effort the besiegers despaired of success or assistance and abandoned the blockade, which only lasted a few days. Fort Pitt was the British military head-quarters of the Western frontier. It was the Gibraltar of defence, protecting the Eastern colonies from invasion by the Western Indians. The consummation of Pontiac's gigantic scheme depended upon the capture of Fort Pitt. It was a strong fortification at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers. Its northern ramparts were faced with brick on the side looking down the Ohio. Fort Pitt stood "far aloof in the forest, and one might journey eastward full two hundred miles before the English settlements began to thicken." The garrison consisted of three hundred thirty soldiers, traders, and backwoodsmen, besides about one hundred women and a greater number of children. Captain Simeon Ecuyer, a brave Swiss officer, was in command. Every preparation was made for the expected attack. All houses and cabins outside the palisade were levelled to the ground. A rude fire-engine was constructed to extinguish any flames that might be kindled by the burning arrows of the Indians. In the latter part of May the hostile savages began to approach the vicinity of the fort. On June 22d they opened fire "upon every side at once." The garrison replied by a discharge of howitzers, the shells of which, bursting in the midst of the Indians, greatly amazed and disconcerted them. The Indians then boldly demanded a surrender of the fort, saying vast numbers of braves were on the way to destroy it. Ecuyer displayed equal bravado and replied that several thousand British soldiers were on the way to punish the tribes for their uprising. The fort was now in a state of siege. For about a month "nothing occurred except a series of petty and futile attacks," in which the Indians, mostly Ottawas, Ojibwas, and Delawares, did small damage. On July 26th, under a flag of truce, the besiegers again demanded surrender. It was refused and Ecuyer told the savages that if they again showed themselves near the Fort he would throw "bombshells" among them and "blow them to atoms." The assault was continued with renewed fury. Meanwhile Sir Jeffrey Amherst, the commander-in-chief of the British forces, awakening to the gravity of the situation, ordered Colonel Bouquet, a brave and able officer in his majesty's service, to take command of certain specified forces and proceed as rapidly as possible to the relief of Fort Pitt, and then make aggressive warfare on the Western tribes. Bouquet, leaving his head-quarters at Philadelphia, reached Carlisle late in June, where he heard for the first time of the calamities at Presqu'île, Le Boeuf, and Venango. He left Carlisle with a force of five hundred men, some of them the pick of the British regulars, but many of them aged veterans enfeebled by disease and long, severe exposure. Bouquet had seen considerable service in Indian warfare. He was not likely to be caught napping. He marched slowly along the Cumberland Valley and crept cautiously over the mountains, passing Forts Loudon and Bedford, the latter surrounded with Indians, to Fort Ligonier, which, as noted above, had been blockaded for weeks by the savages who, as at Bedford, fled at Bouquet's approach. On August 5th the little army, footsore and tired and half-famished, reached a small stream within twenty-five miles of Fort Pitt, known as Bushy Run. Here in the afternoon they were suddenly and fiercely fired upon by a superior number of Indians. A terrific contest ensued, only ended by the darkness of night. The encounter was resumed next day; the odds were against the British, who were surrounded and were being cut down in great numbers by the Indians who skulked behind trees and logs and in the grass and declivities. Bouquet resorted to a ruse which was signally successful. He formed his men in a wide semicircle, and from the centre advanced a company toward the enemy; the advancing company then made a feint of retreat, the deceived Indians followed close after and fell into the ambuscade. The outwitted savages were completely routed and fled in hopeless confusion. Bouquet had won one of the greatest victories in Western Indian warfare. His loss was about one hundred fifty men, nearly a third of his army. The loss of the Indians was not so great. As rapidly as possible Bouquet pushed on to Fort Pitt, which he entered without molestation on August 25th. The extent and the end of Pontiac's conspiracy had at last been reached. The Pennsylvania Assembly, and King George, even, formally thanked Bouquet. Forts Detroit and Pitt, as has been seen, proved impregnable; neither the evil cunning nor the persistent bravery of the savage could dislodge the occupants of those important posts. The siege of Detroit had been abandoned by the combined forces of Pontiac, but the country round about continued to be infested with the hostile Indians, who kept up a sort of petty bushwhacking campaign that compelled the soldiers and traders of the fort, for safety, to remain "in doors" during the winter of 1763-1764. Bouquet, on gaining Fort Pitt, desired to pursue the marauding and murderous savages to their forest retreats and drive them hence, but he was unable to accomplish anything until the following year. In the spring of 1764 Sir Jeffrey Amherst resigned his office, and General Thomas Gage succeeded him as commander-in-chief of the British forces in America, with head-quarters in Boston. Shortly after assuming office, General Gage determined to send two armies from different points into the heart of the Indian country. The first, under Bouquet, was to advance from Fort Pitt into the midst of the Delaware and Shawano settlements of the Ohio Valley; and the other, under Bradstreet, was to pass from Fort Niagara up the Lakes and force the tribes of Detroit and the region round about to unconditional submission. Colonel John Bradstreet left Fort Niagara in July, 1764, with the formidable force of over a thousand soldiers. In canoes and _bateaux_ this imposing army of British regulars coasted along the shore of Lake Erie, stopping at various points to meet and treat with the Indians, who, realizing their inability to cope with so powerful an antagonist, made terms of peace or went through the pretence of so doing. At Sandusky (Fort), particularly, Bradstreet accepted the false promises of the Wyandots, Ottawas, Miamis, Delawares, and Shawanoes. On August 26th he arrived at Detroit, to the great joy and relief of the garrison, which now, for more than a year, had been "cut off from all communication with their race" and had been virtually prisoners confined within the walls of their stockade. Bradstreet forwarded small detachments to restore or retake, as the case might be, the farther western British posts, which had fallen into the hands of Pontiac's wily and exultant warriors. In October (1764) Bouquet, with an army of fifteen hundred troops, defiled out of Fort Pitt, and, taking the Indian trail westward, boldly entered the wilderness, "which no army had ever before sought to penetrate." It was a novel sight, this regiment of regulars, picking its way through the woods and over the streams to the centre of the Ohio country. Striking the Tuscarawas River he followed down its banks, halting at short intervals to confer with delegations of Indians until October 25th, when he encamped on the Muskingum, near the forks of that river formed by the confluence of the Tuscarawas and Walhonding rivers. Here with much display of the pomp and circumstance of war on the part of Bouquet, to impress and over-awe the savages, he held conferences with the chiefs of the various tribes. They agreed to lay down their arms and live for the future in friendship with the white invaders. All prisoners heretofore taken and then held by the Indians were to be surrendered to Bouquet. Over two hundred of these, captives, including women and children, were delivered up, and with these Bouquet, with his successful soldiery, retraced his course to Fort Pitt, arriving there on November 28th. It was one of the most memorable expeditions in the pre-State history of Ohio. The sudden and surprising victories of Pontiac were being rapidly undone. The great Ottawa chief saw his partially accomplished scheme withering into ignominious failure. Sullen, disappointed, consumed with humiliation and revenge, he withdrew from active prominence to his forest wigwam. He sought the banks of the Maumee, the scene of his birth and the location of the villages of many tribes who were his sympathetic adherents. He did not participate in any of the councils held by Bradstreet and the chiefs. "His vengeance was unslaked and his purpose unshaken." But his glory was growing dim and his power was withering into dust. From the scenes of his promising but short-lived triumphs, he retired into the country of the Illinois and the Mississippi. He tried to arouse the aid of the French. He gathered a band of four hundred warriors on the Maumee, and with these faithful followers revisited the Western tribes, in hopes of creating another confederation.[54] Not even would the southern tribes, however, respond to his appeals. All was lost. His allies were falling off; his followers, discouraged, were deserting him. Again and again he went back to his chosen haunts and former faithful followers on the Maumee. But his day had passed. In the spring of 1766 Pontiac met Sir William Johnson[55] at Oswego. In his peace speech at that time he said: "I speak in the name of all the nations westward, of whom I am the master. It is the will of the Great Spirit that we should meet here to-day; and before him I now take you by the hand. I call him to witness that I speak from my heart; for since I took Colonel Croghan[56] by the hand last year, I have never let go my hold, for I see that the Great Spirit will have us friends. "Moreover, when our great father, of France, was in this country, I held him fast by the hand. Now that he is gone, I take you, my English father, by the hand, in the name of all the nations, and promise to keep this covenant as long as I shall live." But he did not speak from the heart; on the contrary, only from the head. Leaving the Oswego conference, "his canoe laden with the gifts of his enemy," Pontiac steered homeward for the Maumee; and in that vicinity he spent the following winter. From now on for some two years the great Ottawa chief disappeared as if lost in the forest depths. In April, 1769, he is found at Fort St. Louis, on the west side of the Mississippi, where he gave himself mainly to the temporary oblivion of "fire-water," the dread destroyer of his race. He was wont to cross the "Father of Waters" to the fort on the British side at Cahokia, where he would revel with the friendly creoles. In one of these visits, in the early morning, after drinking deeply, he strode with uncertain step into the adjacent forest. He was arrayed in the uniform of a French officer, which apparel had been given him many years before by the Marquis of Montcalm. His footsteps were stealthily dogged by a Kaskaskia Indian, who in the silence and seclusion of the forest, at an opportune moment, buried the blade of a tomahawk in the brain of the Ottawa conqueror, the champion of his race. The murderer had been bribed to the heinous act by a British trader named Williamson, who thought to thus rid his country (England) of a dangerous foe. The unholy price of the assassination was a barrel of liquor. It was supposed that the Illinois, Kaskaskia, Peoria, and Cahokia Indians were more or less guilty as accomplices in the horrible deed. That an Illinois Indian was guilty of the act was sufficient. The Sacs and Foxes, and other Western tribes friendly to Pontiac and his cause were aroused to furious revenge. They went upon the warpath against the Illinois Indians. A relentless war ensued, and, says Parkman, "over the grave of Pontiac more blood was poured out in atonement than flowed from the veins of the slaughtered heroes on the corpse of Patroclus." The body of the murdered chief was borne across the river and buried near Fort St. Louis. No monument ever marked the resting-place of the great hero and defender of his people. FOOTNOTES: [45] Estimate of Sir William Johnson in 1763: Iroquois, 1950; Delawares, 600; Shawnees, 300; Wyandots, 450; Miamis and Kickapoos, 800; Ottawas, Ojibwas, and other wandering tribes of the Northwest "defy all efforts at enumeration." The British population in the colonies was then about 1,000,000; the French, something like 100,000. [46] Rogers called this river Chocage. Rogers' camp was on the present site of the city of Cleveland. [47] Parkman says he was about fifty years old when he met Major Rogers, which was in 1760. [48] Chief Richardville also asserted that Pontiac was born of an Ottawa father and a Miami mother. The probability of this tradition is allowed by Knapp, and accepted by Dr. C.E. Slocum, of Defiance, a very careful and reliable authority. Dodge says some claimed Pontiac was a Catawba prisoner, adopted into the Ottawa tribe. [49] Detroit was first settled by Cadillac, July 24, 1701, with fifty soldiers and fifty artisans and traders. So it had been the chief Western stronghold of the French for one hundred fifty years. Detroit at this time (1760) contained about two thousand inhabitants. The centre of the settlement was a fortified town, known as the "Fort," to distinguish it from the dwellings scattered along the river-banks. The Fort stood on the western bank of the river and contained about a hundred small wood houses with bark or thatch-straw roofs. These primitive dwellings were packed closely together and surrounded and protected by a palisade about twenty-five feet high; at each corner was a wooden bastion, and a block-house was erected over each gateway. The only public buildings in the enclosure were a council-house, the barracks, and a rude little church. [50] There are many versions of the divulging of the plot; one that it was by an old squaw; another that a young squaw of doubtful character told it to one of the subordinate officers; still another, that it was by an Ottawa warrior. Parkman seems to favor the Ojibwa girl, called Catherine, and said to be the mistress of Gladwyn. [51] True to his Indian nature, Pontiac determined to assume a mask of peace and bide his time. Gladwyn wrote as follows to Lord Jeffrey Amherst: "This moment I received a message from Pontiac telling me that he should send to all the nations concerned in the war to bury the hatchet; and he hopes your excellency will forget what has passed."--ED. [52] This post of St. Joseph was the site of a Roman Catholic mission founded about the year 1700. Here was one of the most prominent French military posts. [53] There were several forts called Miami in those early days. This one was built in 1749-1750 by the French commandant, Raimond. [54] Pontiac sought the aid of the Kickapoos, Piankishaws, Sacs, Foxes, Dakotas, Missouris, and other tribes on the Mississippi and its head-waters. [55] Sir William Johnson was at this time superintendent of Indian affairs in the North (of the colonies) by appointment from the King. Johnson was a great favorite with the Indians, and exerted great power over them, especially among the Six Nations. He married a sister of Brant, the Mohawk chief; he was, moreover, adopted into the Mohawk tribe and made a sachem. [56] George Croghan was a deputy Indian agent under Sir William Johnson. In 1765, at the instance of Johnson, Croghan proceeded from Fort Pitt down the Ohio to the mouth of the Wabash, up which he journeyed and thence across the country to Detroit, treating with the Indians as he passed. On this journey Croghan met Pontiac, who made promises of peace and friendship. AMERICAN COLONIES OPPOSE THE STAMP ACT PATRICK HENRY'S SPEECH A.D. 1765 JAMES GRAHAME GEORGE BANCROFT Although the Stamp Act passed by the English Parliament in 1765 was repealed in the following year, the opposition which led to its repeal became also one of the principal causes of the American Revolution. The passage of this act and the laying of its impositions upon the colonies formed the climax of England's mercantile policy there, where irritating revenue laws had already, as in Massachusetts, for some years been in force. In 1763 England determined to levy upon the colonies direct taxes, not only for their own military defence, but also as a contribution to the payment of the British war debt. George Grenville, who, says Macaulay, knew of "no national interests except those which are expressed by pounds, shillings, and pence," became prime minister in 1763. His first measure was that known as the "Molasses or [Sugar] Act," reviving an old law for enforcement in the American colonies. The act was meant to "protect" West Indian sugar-planters, and it laid a heavy duty upon all sugar and molasses imported into North America from the French West Indies. The outbreak of indignation, especially in New England, against this imposition was a prelude to the more general and determined resistance to the Stamp Act, which was Grenville's second obnoxious measure. The history of "Grenville's Stamp Act" is adequately set forth by Grahame and Bancroft, whose respective accounts present its most important features and its fate in the hands of American patriots. JAMES GRAHAME The calamities of the French and Indian War (1755) had scarcely ended when the germ of another war was planted which soon grew up and produced deadly fruit. At that time sundry resolutions passed the British Parliament relative to the imposition of a stamp duty in America, which gave a general alarm. By them the right, the equity, the policy, and even the necessity of taxing the colonies were formally avowed. These resolutions, being considered as the preface of a system of American revenue, were deemed an introduction to evils of much greater magnitude. They opened a prospect of oppression, boundless in extent and endless in duration. They were, nevertheless, not immediately followed by any legislative act. Time and an invitation were given to the Americans to suggest any other mode of taxation that might be equivalent in its produce to the Stamp Act; but they objected not only to the mode, but the principle; and several of their assemblies, though in vain, petitioned against it. An American revenue was, in England, a very popular measure. The cry in favor of it was so strong as to silence the voice of petitions to the contrary. The equity of compelling the Americans to contribute to the common expenses of the empire satisfied many who, without inquiring into the policy or justice of taxing their unrepresented fellow-subjects, readily assented to the measures adopted by the Parliament for this purpose. The prospect of easing their own burdens at the expense of the colonists dazzled the eyes of gentlemen of landed interest, so as to keep out of their view the probable consequences of the innovation. The omnipotence of Parliament was so familiar a phrase on both sides of the Atlantic that few in America, and still fewer in Great Britain, were impressed, in the first instance, with any idea of the illegality of taxing the colonists. Illumination on that subject was gradual. The resolutions in favor of an American stamp act, which passed in March, 1764, met with no opposition. In the course of the year which intervened between these resolutions and the passing of a law grounded upon them, the subject was better understood, and constitutional objections against the measure were urged by several, both in Great Britain and America. This astonished and chagrined the British ministry; but as the principle of taxing America had been for some time determined upon, they were unwilling to give it up. Impelled by partiality for a long-cherished idea, Grenville, in March, 1765, brought into the House of Commons his long-expected bill for laying a stamp duty in America. By this, after passing through the usual forms, it was enacted that the instruments of writing in daily use among a commercial people should be null and void unless they were executed on stamped paper or parchment, charged with a duty imposed by the British Parliament. When the bill was brought in, Charles Townshend concluded a speech in its favor with words to the following effect: "And now will these Americans, children planted by our care, nourished up by our indulgence, till they are grown to a degree of strength and opulence, and protected by our arms--will they grudge to contribute their mite to relieve us from the heavy weight of that burden which we lie under?" To which Colonel Barre replied: "They planted by your care? No, your oppressions planted them in America! They fled from tyranny to a then uncultivated and inhospitable country, where they exposed themselves to almost all the hardships to which human nature is liable; and, among others, to the cruelty of a savage foe the most subtle, and I will take upon me to say the most formidable, of any people upon the face of God's earth! And yet, actuated by principles of true English liberty, they met all hardships with pleasure, compared with those they suffered in their own country from the hand of those that should have been their friends. "They nourished up by your indulgence? They grew by your neglect of them! As soon as you began to care about them, that care was exercised in sending persons to rule them, in one department and another, who were, perhaps, the deputies of deputies to some members in this House, sent to spy out their liberties, to misrepresent their actions, and to prey upon them: men whose behavior on many occasions has caused the blood of those sons of liberty to recoil within them; men promoted to the highest seats of justice--some who to my knowledge were glad, by going to a foreign country, to escape being brought to the bar of a court of justice in their own. "They protected by your arms? They have nobly taken up arms in your defence, have exerted a valor, amid their constant and laborious industry, for the defence of a country whose frontier was drenched in blood, while its interior parts yielded all its little savings to your emolument. And, believe me, that same spirit of freedom which actuated these people at first will accompany them still: but prudence forbids me to explain myself further. God knows I do not at this time speak from any motives of party heat. I deliver the genuine sentiments of my heart. However superior to me, in general knowledge and experience, the respectable body of this House may be, yet I claim to know more of America than most of you; having seen and been conversant in that country. The people, I believe, are as truly loyal as any subjects the King has; but a people jealous of their liberties, and who will vindicate them if ever they should be violated: but the subject is too delicate. I will say no more." During the debate on the bill, the supporters of it insisted much on the colonies being virtually represented in the same manner as Leeds, Halifax, and some other towns were. A recurrence to this plea was a virtual acknowledgment that there ought not to be taxation without representation. It was replied that the connection between the electors and non-electors of Parliament, in Great Britain, was so interwoven from both being equally liable to pay the same common tax as to give some security of property to the latter: but with respect to taxes laid by the British Parliament, and paid by the Americans, the situation of the parties was reversed. Instead of both parties bearing a proportional share of the same common burden, what was laid on the one was exactly so much taken off from the other. The bill met with no opposition in the House of Lords; and, on March 22, 1765, it received the royal assent. The night after it passed, Dr. Franklin wrote to Charles Thomson: "The sun of liberty is set; you must light up the candles of industry and economy." Thomson answered, "I was apprehensive that other lights would be the consequence"; and he foretold the opposition which shortly took place. On its being suggested from authority that the stamp officers would not be sent from Great Britain, but selected from among the Americans, the colony agents were desired to point out proper persons for that purpose. They generally nominated their friends, which affords a presumptive proof that they supposed the act would have gone down. In this opinion they were far from being singular. That the colonists would be ultimately obliged to submit to the Stamp Act was at first commonly believed, both in England and America. The framers of it, in particular, flattered themselves that the confusion which would arise upon the disuse of writings, and the insecurity of property which would result from using any other than that required by law, would compel the colonies, however reluctant, to use the stamped paper, and consequently to pay the taxes imposed thereon. They therefore boasted that it was a law which would execute itself. By the term of the Stamp Act, it was not to take effect till November 1st--a period of more than seven months after its passing. This gave the colonists an opportunity of leisurely canvassing the new subject and examining fully on every side. In the first part of this interval, struck with astonishment, they lay in silent consternation, and could not determine what course to pursue. By degrees they recovered their recollection. Virginia led the way in opposition to the Stamp Act. Patrick Henry, on May 29, 1765, brought into the House of Burgesses of that colony vigorous resolutions, which were substantially adopted. [See Bancroft's account.] They were well received by the people and immediately forwarded to the other provinces. They circulated extensively and gave a spring to the discontented. Till they appeared, most were of opinion that the act would be quietly adopted. Murmurs, indeed, were common, but they seemed to be such as would soon die away. The countenance of so respectable a colony as Virginia confirmed the wavering and emboldened the timid. Opposition to the Stamp Act, from that period, assumed a bolder face. The fire of liberty blazed forth from the press. Some well-judged publications set the rights of the colonists in a plain but strong point of view. The tongues and the pens of the well-informed citizens labored in kindling the latent sparks of patriotism. The flame spread from breast to breast till the conflagration became general. In this business, New England had a principal share. The inhabitants of that part of America, in particular, considered their obligations to the mother-country, for past favors, to be very inconsiderable. They were fully informed that their forefathers were driven by persecution to the woods of America, and had there, without any expense to the parent state, effected a settlement on bare creation. Their resentment, for the invasion of their accustomed right of taxation, was not so much mitigated by the recollection of late favors as it was heightened by the tradition of grievous sufferings to which their ancestors, by the rulers of England, had been subjected. The heavy burdens which the operation of the Stamp Act would have imposed on the colonists, together with the precedent it would establish of future exactions, furnished the American patriots with arguments calculated as well to move the passions as to convince the judgments of their fellow-colonists. In great warmth they exclaimed: "If the Parliament have a right to levy the stamp duties, they may by the same authority lay on us imposts, excises, and other taxes without end, till their rapacity is satisfied or our abilities are exhausted. We cannot, at future elections, displace these men who so lavishly grant away our property. Their seat and their power are independent of us, and it will rest with their generosity where to stop in transferring the expenses of government from their own to our shoulders." It was fortunate for the liberties of America that newspapers were the subject of a heavy stamp duty. Printers, when uninfluenced by government, have generally arranged themselves on the side of liberty, nor are they less remarkable for their attention to the profits of their profession. A stamp duty, which openly invaded the first and threatened a diminution of the last provoked their united zealous opposition. They daily presented to the public original dissertations tending to prove that if the Stamp Act were suffered to operate, the liberties of Americans were at an end, and their property virtually transferred to their transatlantic fellow-subjects. The writers among the Americans, seriously alarmed for the fate of their country, came forward with essays to prove that, agreeably to the British Constitution, taxation and representation were inseparable; that the only constitutional mode of raising money from the colonists was by acts of their own legislatures; that the crown possessed no further power than that of requisition; and that the Parliamentary right of taxation was confined to the mother-country, where it originated from the natural right of man to do what he pleased with his own, transferred by consent from the electors of Great Britain to those whom they chose to represent them in Parliament. They also insisted much on the misapplication of public money by the British ministry. Great pains were taken to inform the colonists of the large sums annually bestowed on pensioned favorites and for the various purposes of bribery. Their passions were inflamed by high-colored representations of the hardship of being obliged to pay the earnings of their industry into a British treasury, well known to be a fund for corruption. While a variety of legal and illegal methods were adopted to oppose the Stamp Act, November 1st, on which it was to commence its operation, approached. At Boston the day was ushered in by a funereal tolling of bells. Many shops and stores were shut. The effigies of the planners and friends of the Stamp Act were carried about the streets in public derision, and then torn in pieces by the enraged populace. It was remarkable that, though a large crowd was assembled, there was not the least violence or disorder. At Portsmouth, in New Hampshire, the morning was ushered in with tolling all the bells in town. In the course of the day notice was given to the friends of Liberty to attend her funeral. A coffin, neatly ornamented and inscribed with the word "Liberty" in large letters was carried to the grave. The funeral procession began from the State House, attended with two unbraced drums. While the inhabitants who followed the coffin were in motion, minute-guns were fired, and continued till the coffin arrived at the place of interment. Then an oration in favor of the deceased was pronounced. It was scarcely ended before the coffin was taken up; it having been perceived that some remains of life were left, on which the inscription was immediately altered to "Liberty revived." The bells immediately exchanged their melancholy for a more joyful sound; and satisfaction appeared in every countenance. The whole was conducted with decency and without injury or insult to any man's person or property. The general aversion to the Stamp Act was, by similar methods, in a variety of places, demonstrated. It is remarkable that the proceedings of the populace on these occasions were carried on with decorum and regularity. They were not ebullitions of a thoughtless mob, but for the most part planned by leading men of character and influence, who were friends to peace and order. These, knowing well that the bulk of mankind are more led by their senses than by their reason, conducted the public exhibitions on that principle, with a view of making the Stamp Act and its friends both ridiculous and odious. Though the Stamp Act was to have operated from November 1st, yet legal proceedings in the courts were carried on as before. Vessels entered and departed without stamped papers. The printers boldly printed and circulated their newspapers, and found a sufficient number of readers; though they used common paper in defiance of the acts of Parliament. In most departments, by common consent, business was carried on as though no Stamp Act had existed. This was accompanied by spirited resolutions to risk all consequences rather than submit to use the paper required by law. While these matters were in agitation, the colonists entered into associations against importing British manufactures till the Stamp Act should be repealed. In this manner British liberty was made to operate against British tyranny. Agreeably to the free Constitution of Great Britain, the subject was at liberty to buy or not to buy, as he pleased. By suspending their future purchases on the repeal of the Stamp Act, the colonists made it the interest of merchants and manufacturers to solicit for that repeal. They had usually taken so great a proportion of British manufactures that the sudden stoppage of all their orders, amounting, annually, to two or three millions sterling, threw some thousands in the mother-country out of employment, and induced them, from a regard to their own interest, to advocate the measures wished for by America. The petitions from the colonists were seconded by petitions from the merchants and manufacturers of Great Britain. What the former prayed for as a matter of right, and connected with their liberties, the latter also solicited from motives of immediate interest. In order to remedy the deficiency of British goods, the colonists betook themselves to a variety of necessary domestic manufactures. In a little time large quantities of common cloths were brought to market; and these, though dearer and of a worse quality, were cheerfully preferred to similar articles imported from Britain. That wool might not be wanting, they entered into resolutions to abstain from eating lambs. Foreign elegancies were laid aside. The women were as exemplary as the men in various instances of self-denial. With great readiness they refused every article of decoration for their persons and luxuries for their tables. These restrictions, which the colonists had voluntarily imposed on themselves, were so well observed that multitudes of artificers in England were reduced to great distress, and some of their most flourishing manufactories were in a great measure at a stand. An association was entered into by many of the "Sons of Liberty"--the name given to those who were opposed to the Stamp Act--by which they agreed, "to march with the utmost expedition, at their own proper costs and expense, with their whole force, to the relief of those that should be in danger from the Stamp Act or its promoters and abettors, or anything relative to it, on account of anything that may have been done in opposition to its obtaining." This was subscribed by so many in New York and New England that nothing but a repeal could have prevented the immediate commencement of a civil war. From the decided opposition to the Stamp Act which had been adopted by the colonies, it became necessary for Great Britain to enforce or to repeal it. Both methods of proceeding had supporters. The opposers of a repeal urged arguments, drawn from the dignity of the nation, the danger of giving way to the clamors of the Americans, and the consequences of weakening Parliamentary authority over the colonies. On the other hand, it was evident, from the determined opposition of the colonies, that it could not be enforced without a civil war, by which event the nation must be a loser. In the course of these discussions Dr. Franklin was examined at the bar of the House of Commons, and gave extensive information on the state of American affairs, and the impolicy of the Stamp Act, which contributed much to remove prejudices and to produce a disposition that was friendly to a repeal. Some speakers of great weight, in both Houses of Parliament, denied their right of taxing the colonies. The most distinguished supporters of this opinion were Lord Camben, in the House of Lords, and William Pitt, in the House of Commons. The former, in strong language, said: "My position is this; I repeat it; I will maintain it to my last hour: taxation and representation are inseparable. This position is founded on the laws of nature. It is more; it is itself an eternal law of nature. For whatever is a man's own is absolutely his own. No man has a right to take it from him without his consent. Whoever attempts to do it attempts an injury. Whoever does it commits a robbery." Pitt, with an original boldness of expression, justified the colonists in opposing the Stamp Act. "You have no right," said he, "to tax America. I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of our fellow-subjects, so lost to every sense of virtue as tamely to give up their liberties, would be fit instruments to make slaves of the rest." He concluded with giving his advice that the Stamp Act be repealed absolutely, totally, and immediately; that reasons for the repeal be assigned; that it was founded on an erroneous principle. "At the same time," said he, "let the sovereign authority of this country over the colonies be asserted in as strong terms as can be devised, and be made to extend to every point of legislation whatsoever, that we may bind their trade, confine their manufactures, and exercise every power except that of taking their money out of their pockets without their consent." The approbation of this illustrious statesman, whose distinguished abilities had raised Great Britain to the highest pitch of renown, inspired the Americans with additional confidence in the rectitude of their claims of exemption from parliamentary taxation, and emboldened them to further opposition, when, at a future day, the project of an American revenue was resumed. After much debating, two protests in the House of Lords, and passing an act, "For securing the dependence of America on Great Britain," the repeal of the Stamp Act was carried, in March, 1766. This event gave great joy in London. Ships in the River Thames displayed their colors, and houses were illuminated all over the city. It was no sooner known in America, than the colonists rescinded their resolutions, and recommenced their mercantile intercourse with the mother-country. They presented their homespun clothes to the poor, and imported more largely than ever. The churches responded with thanksgivings, and public and private rejoicings knew no bounds. By letters, addresses, and other means, almost all the colonies showed unequivocal marks of acknowledgment and gratitude. So sudden a calm after so violent storm is without a parallel in history. By the judicious sacrifice of one law, the Parliament of Great Britain procured an acquiescence in all that remained. GEORGE BANCROFT Virginia received the plan to tax America by Parliament with consternation. At first the planters foreboded universal ruin; but soon they resolved that the act should recoil on England, and began to be proud of frugality; articles of luxury of English manufacture were banished, and threadbare coats were most in fashion. A large and embarrassing provincial debt enforced the policy of thrift. Happily the Legislature of Virginia was then assembled; and the electors of Louisa County had just filled a sudden vacancy in their representation by making choice of Patrick Henry. He had resided among them scarcely a year, but his benignity of temper, pure life, and simplicity of habits had already won their love. Devoted from his heart to their interest, he never flattered the people and was never forsaken by them. As he took his place, not yet acquainted with the forms of business in the House, or with its members, he saw the time for the enforcement of the Stamp Tax drawing near, while all the other colonies, through timid hesitation or the want of opportunity, still remained silent, and cautious loyalty hushed the experienced statesmen of his own. More than half the assembly had made the approaching close of the session an excuse for returning home. But Patrick Henry disdained submission. Alone, a burgess of but a few days, unadvised and unassisted, in an auspicious moment, of which the recollection cheered him to his latest day, he came forward in the committee of the whole House, and while Thomas Jefferson, a young collegian from the mountain frontier, stood outside of the closed hall, eager to catch the first tidings of resistance, and George Washington, as is believed, was in his place as a member, he maintained by resolutions that the inhabitants of Virginia inherited from the first adventurers and settlers of that dominion equal franchises with the people of Great Britain; that royal charters had declared this equality; that taxation by themselves, or by persons chosen by themselves to represent them, was the distinguishing characteristic of British freedom and of the constitution; that the people of that most ancient colony had uninterruptedly enjoyed the right of being thus governed by their own laws respecting their internal polity and taxation; that this right had never been forfeited, nor in any other way given up, but had been constantly recognized by the King and people of Great Britain. Such was the declaration of colonial rights adopted at his instance by the Assembly of Virginia. It followed from these resolutions--and Patrick Henry so expressed it in a fifth supplementary one--that the General Assembly of the whole colony have the sole right and power to lay taxes on the inhabitants of the colony, and that any attempt to vest such power in any other persons whatever tended to destroy British as well as American freedom. It was still further set forth, yet not by Henry, in two resolutions, which, though they were not officially produced, equally embodied the mind of the younger part of the Assembly, that the inhabitants of Virginia were not bound to yield obedience to any law designed to impose taxation upon them, other than the laws of their own General Assembly, and that anyone who should, either by speaking or writing, maintain the contrary, should be deemed an enemy to the colony. A stormy debate arose and many threats were uttered. Robinson, the speaker, already a defaulter; Peyton Randolph, the King's attorney, and the frank, honest, and independent George Wythe, a lover of classic learning, accustomed to guide the House by his strong understanding and single-minded integrity, exerted all their powers to moderate the tone of "the hot and virulent resolutions"; while John Randolph, the best lawyer in the colony, "singly" resisted the whole proceeding. But, on the other side, George Johnston, of Fairfax, reasoned with solidity and firmness, and Henry flamed with impassioned zeal. Lifted beyond himself, "Tarquin," he cried, "and Cæsar, had each his Brutus; Charles the First, his Cromwell; and George the Third----" "Treason!" shouted the speaker, "treason, treason!" was echoed round the house, while Henry, fixing his eye on the first interrupter, continued without faltering, "may profit by their example!" Swayed by his words, the committee of the whole showed its good-will to the spirit of all the resolutions enumerated; but the five offered by Patrick Henry were alone reported to the House, and on Thursday, May 30th, having been adopted by small majorities, the fifth by a vote of twenty to nineteen, they became a part of the public record. "I would have given five hundred guineas for a single vote," exclaimed the attorney-general, aloud, as he came out past young Jefferson, into whose youthful soul the proceedings of that day sank so deeply that resistance to tyranny became a part of his nature. But Henry "carried all the young members with him." That night, thinking his work done, he rode home, but the next day, in his absence, an attempt was made to strike all the resolutions off the journals, and the fifth, and the fifth only, was blotted out. The Lieutenant-Governor, though he did not believe new elections would fall on what he esteemed cool, reasonable men, dissolved the assembly; but the four resolutions which remained on the journals, and the two others, on which no vote had been taken, were published in the newspapers throughout America, and by men of all parties, by royalists in office, not less than by public bodies in the colonies, were received without dispute as the avowed sentiment of the "Old Dominion." This is the "way the fire began in Virginia." Of the American colonies, "Virginia rang the alarum bell. Virginia gave the signal for the continent." WATT IMPROVES THE STEAM-ENGINE A.D. 1769 FRANÇOIS ARAGO No greater service has been rendered to the world through mechanical invention than that performed by James Watt in his improvement of the steam-engine. Watt was born at Greenock, Scotland, in 1736. During the eighty-three years of his life much progress was made in mechanics and engineering in different countries, but the name of Watt remains the most brilliant among contemporary workers in these departments of practical science. The first contriver of a working steam-engine is supposed to have been Edward, second Marquis of Worcester (1601-1667). No complete description of his engine is known to exist, and conjectures about it disagree; but it is not questioned that he made important contributions to the great invention, upon which others at the same time were engaged. The construction of the first actual working steam-engine is usually credited to Thomas Savery, born in England about 1650. He devised a "fire-engine," as he called it, for the raising of water, but, owing to the want of strong boilers and a suitable form of condenser, it imperfectly served its purpose, and was soon superseded by the better engine of Thomas Newcomen, here referred to by Arago. Newcomen was an English inventor, born in 1663. With Savery and Cawley, he invented and in 1705 patented the atmospheric steam-engine by which he is known, and which, as told by Arago, gave place to the superior invention of Watt. Arago was an eminent French physicist and astronomer (1786-1853), who is even better known through his biographies of other great workers in science. His account of "the fruitful inventions which will forever connect the name of Watt with the steam-engine" is all the more valuable for preservation because written while the steam-engine was still in an early stage of its development. Of its later improvements and varied uses, numerous descriptions are within easy reach of all readers. In physical cabinets we find a good many machines on which industry had founded great hopes, though the expense of their manufacture or that of keeping them at work has reduced them to be mere instruments of demonstration. This would have been the final fate of Newcomen's machine, in localities at least not rich in combustibles, if Watt's efforts had not come in to give it an unhoped-for degree of perfection. This perfection must not be considered as the result of some fortuitous observation or of a single inspiration of genius; the inventor achieved it by assiduous labor, by experiments of extreme delicacy and correctness. One would say that Watt had adopted as his guide that celebrated maxim of Bacon's: "To write, speak, meditate, or act when we are not sufficiently provided with _facts_ to stake out our thoughts is like navigating without a pilot along a coast strewed with dangers or rushing out on the immense ocean without compass or rudder." In the collection belonging to the University of Glasgow there was a little model of a steam-engine by Newcomen that had never worked well. The professor of physics, Anderson, desired Watt to repair it. In the hands of this powerful workman the defects of its construction disappeared; from that time the apparatus was made to work annually under the inspection of the astonished students. A man of common mind would have rested satisfied with this success. Watt, on the contrary, as usual with him, saw cause in it for deep study. His researches were successively directed to all the points that appeared likely to clear up the theory of the machine. He ascertained the proportion in which water dilates in passing from a state of fluidity into that of vapor; the quantity of water that a certain weight of coal can convert into vapor; the quantity and weight of steam expended at each oscillation by one of Newcomen's engines of known dimensions; the quantity of cold water that must be injected into the cylinder to give a certain force to the piston's descending oscillation; and finally the elasticity of steam at various temperatures. Here was enough to occupy the life of a laborious physicist, yet Watt found means to conduct all these numerous and difficult researches to a good termination, without the work of the shop suffering thereby. Dr. Cleland wished, not long since, to take me to the house, near the port of Glasgow, whither our associate[57] retired, on quitting his tools, to become an experimenter. It was razed to the ground! Our anger was keen but of short duration. Within the area still visible of the foundations ten or twelve vigorous workmen appeared to be occupied in sanctifying the cradle of modern steam-engines; they were hammering with redoubled blows various portions of boilers, the united dimensions of which certainly equalled those of the humble dwelling that had disappeared there. On such a spot, and under such circumstances, the most elegant mansion, the most sumptuous monument, the finest statue, would have awakened less reflection than those colossal boilers. If the properties of steam are present to your mind, you will perceive at a glance that the economic working of Newcomen's engine seems to require two irreconcilable conditions. When the piston descends, the cylinder is required to be cold, otherwise it meets some steam there, still very elastic, which retards the operation very much, and diminishes the effect of the external atmosphere. Then, when steam at the temperature of 100° flows into the same cylinder and finds it cold, the steam restores its heat by becoming partially fluid, and until the cylinder has regained the temperature of 100° its elasticity will be found considerably attenuated; thence will ensue slowness of motion, for the counterpoise will not raise the piston until there is sufficient spring contained in the cylinder to counterbalance the action of the atmosphere; thence there will also arise an increase of expense. No doubt will remain on the immense importance of this economical observation, when I shall have stated that the Glasgow model at each oscillation expended a volume of steam several times larger than that of the cylinder. The expense of steam, or, what comes to the same thing, the expense of fuel, or, if we like it better, the pecuniary cost of keeping on the working of the machine, would be several times less if the successive heatings and coolings, the inconveniences of which have just been described, could be avoided. This apparently insolvable problem was solved by Watt in the most simple manner. It sufficed for him to add to the former arrangement of the engine a vessel totally distinct from the cylinder, and communicating with it only by a small tube furnished with a tap. This vessel, now known as "the condenser," is Watt's principal invention. Still another invention by Watt deserves a word, the advantages of which will become evident to everybody. When the piston descends in Newcomen's engine, it is by the weight of the atmosphere. The atmosphere is cold; hence it must cool the sides of the metal cylinder, which is open at the top, in proportion as it expands itself over the entire surface. This cooling is not compensated during the whole ascension of the piston, without the expense of a certain quantity of steam. But there is no loss of this sort in the engines modified by Watt. The atmospheric action is totally eliminated by the following means: The top of the cylinder is closed by a metal cover, only pierced in the centre by a hole furnished with greased tow stuffed in hard, but through which the rod of the piston has free motion, though without allowing free passage either to air or steam. The piston thus divides the capacity of the cylinder into two distinct and well-closed areas. When it has to descend, the steam from the caldron reaches freely the upper area through a tube conveniently placed, and pushes it from top to bottom as the atmosphere did in Newcomen's engine. There is no obstacle to this motion, because, while it is going on, only the base of the cylinder is in communication with the condenser, wherein all the steam from that lower area resumes its fluid state. As soon as the piston has quite reached the bottom, the mere turning of a tap suffices to bring the two areas of the cylinder, situated above and below the piston, into communication with each other, so that both shall be filled with steam at the same degree of elasticity; and the piston being thus equally acted upon, upward and downward, ascends again to the top of the cylinder, as in Newcomen's atmospheric engine, merely by the action of a slight counterpoise. Pursuing his researches on the means of economizing steam, Watt also reduced the result of the refrigeration of the external surface of the cylinder containing the piston, almost to nothing. With this view he enclosed the metal cylinder in a wooden case of larger diameter, filling the intermediate annular space with steam. Now the engine was complete. The improvements effected by Watt are evident; there can be no doubt of their immense utility. As a means of drainage, then, you would expect to see them substituted for Newcomen's comparatively ruinous engines. Undeceive yourselves: the author of a discovery has always to contend against those whose interest may be injured, the obstinate partisans of everything old, and finally the envious. And these three classes united, I regret to acknowledge it, form the great majority of the public. In my calculation I even deduct those who are doubly influenced to avoid a paradoxical result. This compact mass of opponents can only be disunited and dissipated by time; yet time is insufficient; it must be attacked with spirit and unceasingly; our means of attack must be varied, imitating the chemist in this respect--he learning from experience that the entire solution of certain amalgams requires the successive application of several acids. Force of character and perseverance of will, which in the long run disintegrate the best woven intrigues, are not always found conjoined with creative genius. In case of need, Watt would be a convincing proof of this. His capital invention--his happy idea on the possibility of condensing steam in a vessel separate from the cylinder in which the mechanical action goes on--was in 1765. Two years elapsed without his scarcely making an effort to apply it on a large scale. His friends at last put him in communication with Dr. Roebuck, founder of the large works at Carron, still celebrated at the present day. The engineer and the man of projects enter into partnership; Watt cedes two-thirds of his patent to him. An engine is constructed on the new principles; it confirms all the expectations of theory; its success is complete. But in the _interim_ Dr. Roebuck's affairs receive various checks. Watt's invention would undoubtedly have restored them; it would have sufficed to borrow money; but our associate felt more inclined to give up his discovery and change his business. In 1767, while Smeaton was carrying on some triangulations and levellings between the two rivers of the Forth and the Clyde, forerunners of the gigantic works of which that part of Scotland was to be the theatre, we find Watt occupied with similar operations along a rival line crossing the Lomond passage. Later he draws the plan of a canal that was to bring coals from Monkland to Glasgow, and superintends the execution of it. Several projects of a similar nature, and, among others, that of a navigable canal across the isthmus of Crinan, which Rennie afterward finished; some deep studies on certain improvements in the ports of Ayr, Glasgow, and Greenock; the construction of the Hamilton and Rutherglen bridges; surveys of the ground through which the celebrated Caledonian Canal was to pass, occupied our associate up to the end of 1773. Without wishing at all to diminish the merit of these enterprises, I may be permitted to say that their interest and importance were chiefly local, and to assert that neither their conception, direction, nor execution required a man called James Watt. In the early part of 1774, after contending with Watt's indifference, his friends put him into communication with Mr. Boulton, of Soho, near Birmingham, an enterprising, active man, gifted with various talents. The two friends applied to Parliament for a prolongation of privilege, since Watt's patent, dated 1769, had only a few more years to run. The bill gave rise to the most animated discussion. The celebrated mechanic wrote as follows to his aged father: "This business could not be carried on without great expense and anxiety. Without the aid of some warm-hearted friends we should not have succeeded, for several of the most powerful in the House of Commons were opposed to us." It seemed to me interesting to search out to what class of society these Parliamentary persons belonged to whom Watt alluded, and who refused to the man of genius a small portion of the riches that he was about to create. Judge of my surprise when I found the celebrated Burke at their head. Is it possible, then, that men may devote themselves to deep studies, possess knowledge and probity, exercise to an eminent degree oratorical powers that move the feelings, and influence political assemblies, yet sometimes be deficient in plain common-sense? Now, however, owing to the wise and important modifications introduced by Lord Brougham in the laws relative to patents, inventors will no longer have to undergo the annoyances with which Watt was teased. As soon as Parliament had granted a prolongation of twenty-five years to Watt's patent, he and Boulton together began the establishments at Soho, which have become the most useful school in practical mechanics for all England. The construction of draining-pumps of very large dimensions was soon undertaken there, and repeated experiments showed that, with equal effect, they saved three-quarters of the fuel that was consumed by Newcomen's previous engines. From that moment the new pumps were spread through all the mining counties, especially in Cornwall. Boulton and Watt received as a duty the value of one-third of the coal saved by each of their engines. We may form an opinion of the commercial importance of the invention from an authentic fact: in the Chace-water mine alone, where three pumps were at work, the proprietors found it to their advantage to buy up the inventor's rights for the annual sum of sixty thousand francs (two thousand four hundred pounds). Thus in one establishment alone, the substitution of the condenser for internal injection had occasioned an annual saving in fuel of upward of one hundred eighty thousand francs (seven thousand pounds). Men are easily reconciled to paying the rent of a house or the price of a farm. But this good-will disappears when an _idea_ is the subject treated of, whatever advantage, whatever profit, it may be the means of procuring. Ideas! are they not conceived without trouble or labor? Who can prove that with time the same might not have occurred to everybody? In this way days, months, and years of priority would give no force to the patent! Such opinions, which I need not here criticise, had obtained a footing from mere routine as decided. Men of genius, the "manufacturers of ideas," it seemed, were to remain strangers to material enjoyments; it was natural that their history should continue to resemble a legend of martyrs! Whatever may be thought of these reflections, it is certain that the Cornwall miners paid the dues that were granted to the Soho engineers with increased repugnance from year to year. They availed themselves of the very earliest difficulties raised by plagiarists, to claim release from all obligation. The discussion was serious; it might compromise the social position of our associate: he therefore bestowed his entire attention to it and became a lawyer. The long and expensive lawsuits that resulted therefrom, but which they finally gained, would not deserve to be now exhumed; but having recently quoted Burke as one of the adversaries to our great mechanic, it appears only a just compensation here to mention that the Roys, Mylnes, Herschels, Delucs, Ramsdens, Robisons, Murdocks, Rennies, Cummings, Mores, Southerns, eagerly presented themselves before the magistrates to maintain the rights of persecuted genius. It may be also advisable to add, as a curious trait in the history of the human mind, that the lawyers--I shall here prudently remark that we treat only of the lawyers of a neighboring country--to whom malignity imputes a superabundant luxury in words, reproached Watt, against whom they had leagued in great numbers, for having invented nothing but ideas. This, I may remark in passing, brought upon them before the tribunal the following apostrophe from Mr. Rous: "Go, gentlemen, go and rub yourselves against those untangible combinations, as you are pleased to call Watt's engines; against those pretended abstract ideas; they will crush you like gnats, they will hurl you up in the air out of sight!" The persecutions which a warm-hearted man meets with, in the quarters where strict justice would lead him to expect unanimous testimonies of gratitude, seldom fail to discourage, and to sour his disposition. Nor did Watt's good-humor remain proof against such trials. Seven long years of lawsuits had excited in him such a sentiment of indignation, that it occasionally showed itself in severe expressions; thus he wrote to one of his friends: "What I most detest in this world are plagiarists! The plagiarists. They have already cruelly assailed me; and if I had not an excellent memory, their impudent assertions would have ended by persuading me that I have made no improvement in steam-engines. The bad passions of those men to whom I have been most useful (would you believe it?) have gone so far as to lead them to maintain that those improvements, instead of deserving this denomination, have been highly prejudicial to public wealth." Watt, though greatly irritated, was not discouraged. His engines were not, in the first place, like Newcomen's, mere pumps, mere draining-pumps. In a few years he transformed them into universal motive powers, and of indefinite force. His first step in this line was the invention of a double-acting engine (_à double effet_). In the engine known under this name, as well as in the one denominated the "modified" engine, the steam from the boiler, when the mechanic wishes it, goes freely above the piston and presses it down without meeting any obstacle; because at that same moment, the lower area of the cylinder is in communication with the condenser. This movement once achieved, and a certain cock having been opened, the steam from the caldron can enter only below the piston and elevates it. The steam above it, which had produced the descending movement, then goes to regain its fluid state in the condenser, with which it has become, in its turn, in free communication. The contrary arrangement of the cocks replaces all things in their primitive state, as soon as the piston has regained its maximum height. Thus similar effects are reproduced indefinitely. Power is not the only element of success in industrial works. Regularity of action is not less important; but what regularity could be expected from a motive power engendered by fire fed by shovelfuls, and the coal itself of various qualities; and this under the direction of a workman, sometimes not very intelligent, almost always inattentive? The motive steam will be more abundant, it will flow more rapidly into the cylinder, it will make the piston work faster in proportion as the fire is more intense. Great inequalities of movement then appear to be inevitable. Watt's genius had to provide against this serious defect. The throttle-valves by which the steam issues from the boiler to enter the cylinder are constantly open. When the working of the engine accelerates, these valves partly close; a certain volume of steam must therefore occupy a longer time in passing through them, and the acceleration ceases. The aperture of the valves, on the contrary, dilates when the motion slackens. The pieces requisite for the performance of these various changes connect the valves with the axes which the engine sets to work, by the introduction of an apparatus, the principle of which Watt discovered in the regulator of the sails of some flour-mills: this he named the "governor," which is now called the "centrifugal regulator." Its efficacy is such, that a few years ago, in the cotton-spinning manufactory of a renowned mechanic, Mr. Lee, there was a clock set in motion by the engine of the establishment, and it showed no great inferiority to a common spring clock. Watt's regulator, and an intelligent use of the revolving principle--that is the secret, the true secret, of the astonishing perfection of the industrial products of our epoch; this is what now gives to the steam-engine a rate entirely free from jerks. That is the reason why it can, with equal success, embroider muslins and forge anchors, weave the most delicate webs and communicate a rapid movement to the heavy stones of a flour-mill. This also explains how Watt had said, fearless of being reproached for exaggeration, that to prevent the comings and goings of servants, he would be served, he would have gruel brought to him, in case of illness, by tables connected with his steam-engine. I am aware it is supposed by the generality of people that this suavity of motion is obtained only by a loss of power; but it is an error, a gross error: the saying, "much noise and little work," is true, not only in the moral world, but is also an axiom in mechanics. A few words more and we shall reach the end of our technical details. Within these few years great advantage has been found in not allowing a free access of steam from the boiler into the cylinder, during the whole time of each oscillation of the engine. This communication is interrupted, for example, when the piston has reached one-third of its course. The two remaining thirds of the cylinder's length are then traversed by virtue of the acquired velocity, and especially by the detention of the steam. Watt had already indicated such an arrangement. Some very good judges esteem the economical importance of the steam-detent as equal to that of the condenser. It seems certain that since its adoption the Cornwall engines give unhoped-for results; that with one bushel of coal they equal the labor of twenty men during ten hours. Let us keep in mind that in the coal districts a bushel of coal only costs ninepence, and it will be demonstrated that over the greater part of England Watt reduced the price of a man's day's work, a day of ten hours' labor, to less than a sou (one halfpenny). Numerical valuations make us appreciate so well the importance of his inventions that I cannot resist the desire to present two more improvements. I borrow them from one of the most celebrated correspondents of the Academy--from Sir John Herschel. The ascent of Mont Blanc, starting from the valley of Chamounix, is justly considered as the hardest work that a man can accomplish in two days. Thus the maximum mechanical work of which we are capable in twice twenty-four hours is measured by transporting the weight of our body to the elevation of Mont Blanc. This work or its equivalent would be accomplished by a steam-engine in the course of burning one kilogram (two pounds) of coal. Watt has, therefore, ascertained that the daily power of a man does not exceed what is contained in half a kilogram (one pound) of coal. Herodotus records that the construction of the great Pyramid of Egypt employed 100,000 men during 20 years. The pyramid consists of calcareous stone; its volume and its weight can be easily calculated; its weight has been found to be about 5,900,000 kilograms (nearly 5,000 tons). To elevate this weight to 38 metres, which is the pyramid's centre of gravity, it would require to burn 8244 hectolitres of coal. Our English neighbors have some foundries where they consume this quantity every week. FOOTNOTES: [57] Watt was one of the eight foreign associates of the French Academy of Sciences, which body Arago was addressing.--ED. FIRST PARTITION OF POLAND A.D. 1772 JAMES FLETCHER Of the three partitions which Poland underwent in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the first was due to the jealousies of European powers. It was an event of great significance for the Polish kingdom, ominous of future spoliations, which indeed followed, to the destruction of its political life. It had been long since Poland passed her golden age--two centuries and more. In the mean time she had undergone many vicissitudes, yet had preserved her identity as a state. When Russia had won successes in the war of 1768-1774 with Turkey, she seized the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia. Austria, seeing in this acquisition a menace to her eastern frontier, opposed it. Russia, in order to appease Austria, looked about for territory that might be obtained for her in compensation. The state of affairs in Poland presented a tempting opportunity for interference which might lead to a division of the kingdom. Stanislaus II, King of Poland, had been elected in 1764, mainly through the influence of Russia--he was one of Catharine II's lovers. His people had risen against him when Russia adopted her policy of spoliation. Prussia, as well as Austria, advanced territorial claims, and the partition of 1772, really planned by Frederick the Great, was consummated on the basis of a secret treaty of those powers with Catharine's government. Some writers, possessed with the love of reducing political transactions to one rigid scale of cause and effect, and at the same time of exhibiting their acumen by threading the mazes of events up to remote circumstances, pretend to trace the design of the partition of Poland for more than a century back. Rulhière seems to plume himself on the idea. "The projects executed in our days against Poland," he observes, "were proposed more than a hundred years ago. I have discovered this important and hitherto unknown circumstance in the archives of foreign affairs of France." This point had been canvassed under the reign of John Casimir; and it only remains to be remarked that such very subtle analysis of the motives and progress of actions generally overshoots the mark, since no men can act always according to rule, but are in some degree influenced by circumstances and caprice. It would be equally absurd to imagine that Frederick, in the complicated intrigues which preceded the first partition, was actuated by one deeply laid scheme of policy to arrive at one end: the possession of Polish Prussia. It was, indeed, absolutely essential for him to obtain this province, to consolidate and open a communication between his scattered dominions, which then, as Voltaire says, were stretched out like a pair of gaiters; but it remained a _desideratum_ rather than a design, since he knew that neither Russia nor Austria would be inclined to permit the aggression; for the former had evidently marked out the whole of Poland for herself, and would consider Frederick an unwelcome intruder; while Austria, which had lately experienced the Prussian King's encroachments, was more jealous than ever of his obtaining the slightest aggrandizement, and had openly declared that she would not allow the seizure of the least Polish village. His views, however, widened as he advanced, and no doubt he spoke with sincerity when he told the Emperor Joseph that "he had never followed a plan in war, much less any plan in policy, and that events alone had suggested all his resolutions." Admitting the truth of this, we proceed to trace out the circumstances which produced this crisis. The relations of the three courts, at the commencement of the war between Russia and Turkey (1768), did not portend anything like a coalition; Frederick, indeed, was in alliance with Russia, but also secretly favored the Sultan; Austria was all but an open enemy of both Russia and Prussia. Circumstances, however, obliged Austria to forget her hatred to Prussia, and Frederick thus became the mediator between the courts of Vienna and St. Petersburg. Frederick had every reason to wish to lull the suspicions and jealousies of Austria, that he might be left in undisputed possession of Silesia; and that power, moreover, was no longer an object of dread or jealousy to him, for the Seven Years' War had reduced its resources to the lowest ebb. The dispositions of the court of Vienna cannot be comprised in so few words: its situation was much more complicated, its policy more embarrassed, and the persons who governed it will be much more difficult to make known. Maria Theresa was now not very far from the tomb, and after all the arduous struggles she had undergone for the defence of her states, vicissitudes she had experienced, and the exhaustion of her resources, she determined to end her days in peace. She devoted almost the whole of her time to superstitious devotions in a gloomy chamber hung round with death's heads, and a portrait of her late husband in the act of expiring. She yet cherished, however, some of the feelings of mortality, implacable hatred to Frederick, and contempt mingled with hate for Catharine II, of whom she never spoke but with disdain, calling her "_that woman_." Besides, she could sometimes also silence the reproaches of conscience, so as to seize for the public use the bequests of the pious for religious purposes, and to confiscate the revenues of rich monasteries apparently without any compunction. Men fancied, says our author, that they could foresee in all this conduct that if this just and religious Princess had power enough over herself to silence her generosity and even sometimes her piety, she might perhaps be capable in some state crisis of incurring still greater remorse and silence justice. Her minister, Kaunitz, to whom she intrusted all the management of affairs, is not the least important personage in this drama, nor did he underrate his own consequence. "Heaven," said he, "is a hundred years in forming a great mind for the restoration of an empire, and it then rests another hundred years; on this account I tremble for the fate which awaits this monarchy after me." Throughout a long and arduous ministry he had shown himself the most subtle and refined politician, unfettered in his schemes by any remorse or feeling, and making a boast that he had no friends. Such a man was well fitted to play the part allotted to him. After the conclusion of the long war, he had made it his policy to repair the damages the empire had sustained by alliances, and even his opposition to Frederick daily subsided. But it was another agent who commenced the connection between Austria and Prussia. Joseph, Maria Theresa's son and coregent with his mother, detested this pacific policy and longed for war. He was, however, obliged to submit; for Maria dreaded the effects of this warlike propensity, and kept the government in the hands of her ministers. He had continual contentions with the Empress, and urged her to improve her finances by conquest or aggression; but all the power he could obtain was the command of the troops, which he augmented to two hundred thousand men, and organized them under the counsel of his field marshal, Lacy. In his mania for military matters he visited in 1768 all the fields of battle of the last war, and after traversing Bohemia and Saxony, and learning from his generals the causes of the defeats and victories, he approached in the course of his tour the borders of Prussian Silesia, where Frederick was engaged in his annual reviews. The King sent a polite message, and expressed a great desire to be personally acquainted with him. The young Prince could not pay a visit to the former enemy of his family without previously consulting his mother, the Empress; and the interview was deferred till the next year; when it took place on August 25th, at Neisse, a town in Silesia. At this period the war between Russia and Turkey engrossed general attention, and seems to have formed the principal subject of the conference; but no resolutions of any importance were agreed to. The flattering manner in which Frederick received the young Prince must have made a great impression on his mind; and the extravagant compliments which were lavished on him were highly gratifying to youthful vanity, from such a great man. Frederick frequently repeated that Joseph would surpass Charles V; and though it has the appearance of irony to those acquainted with the _dénouement_ of this youthful monarch's character, it was probably not intended so, for Frederick, we have seen before, could stoop to the most servile adulation when it answered his purpose. Be that as it may, the effect on Joseph was the same, for on his return he spoke of the Prussian monarch with the highest enthusiasm. Maria Theresa was growing old, and the Austrian ministers began to turn to the rising sun; the eyes of Kaunitz were opened to the policy of cultivating a friendship with Prussia; and the correspondence between the two courts became every day more frequent. This led to another conference between the two princes at Neustadt, in Moravia, which was held on September 3, 1770, and at which Kaunitz was present. The King was more courteous than ever; he appeared in the military uniform of Austria, and continued to wear it as long as he remained in the Austrian territory. He made use of every species of compliment. One day, as they were leaving the dining-room and the Emperor made a motion to give him the precedence, he stepped back, saying with a significant smile and _double entendre_, not lost on Joseph, "Since your imperial majesty begins to manoeuvre, I must follow wherever you lead." Nor did he spare his civilities to Kaunitz, with the view of removing the rankling feeling which had often made that conceited minister exclaim, "The King of Prussia is the only man who denies me the esteem which is due to me." Kaunitz insisted on the necessity of opposing the ambitious views of Russia, and stated that the Empress would never allow Catharine to take possession of Moldavia and Wallachia, which would make her states adjoin those of Austria; nor permit her to penetrate farther into Turkey. He added that an alliance between Austria and Prussia was the only means of checking Catharine's overbearing power. To this Frederick replied that being in alliance with the court of St. Petersburg, his only practicable measure was to prevent the war from becoming general by conciliating the friendly feelings of Catharine toward Austria. On the day after this conference a courier arrived from Constantinople, with the news of the destruction of the Turkish fleet and the rout of their army, and to request the mediation of the courts of Vienna and Berlin. To this both readily assented, but without agreeing upon any terms. Frederick did not forget to follow up his former mode of tactics with the Emperor; he pretended to make him the confidant of all his designs, a species of flattery most gratifying to a young prince. On his return to Berlin, also, the King affected to imitate the Austrian manners, and uttered several pompous panegyrics on the talents of Joseph, who had recited to him some of Tasso's verses, and nearly a whole act of the _Pastor Fido_. Thus did Frederick avail himself of circumstances to commence an amicable correspondence with Austria, and he thus became the medium of communication between the hostile courts of Vienna and St. Petersburg. No more direct intelligence, however, existed between these two states than before; for great as was Theresa's hatred against Catharine, Catharine's was no less violent; and even when Austria made friendly overtures, through Frederick, concerning mediation between Turkey and Russia, she desired Frederick to desist, and rejected the interference. A channel of communication, however, was opened between the three conspiring powers; and the next step was for one of the triumvirate to broach the iniquitous partition plot. It is made a matter of much dispute which of them started the project, and they all equally disclaim the infamy of being its author. The fact, no doubt, was, that in this, as in all other unjust coalitions, they did not, in the first instance, act on a preconcerted plan; but each individual power cherished secretly its design, and like designing villains, who understand one another, almost "Without eyes, ears, and harmful sound of words," the conspiring parties were naturally drawn together by the similarity of reckless atrocity in their designs. It cannot be imagined that the scheme of partition originated with Catharine; she had long been the real mistress of Poland, the King was nothing more than her tenant at will, and it required only a little time for the whole kingdom to sink into a Russian province. The intentions of the other powers began to evince themselves more plainly in 1770. Frederick began to throw out hints of claims on certain Polish districts; he obliged the Polish Prussians to furnish his troops with horses and corn in exchange for debased money, which was either forged Polish silver coin, only one-third of its nominal value, or false Dutch ducats, 17 per cent. under the proper value. By this disgraceful species of swindling it is calculated he gained seven million dollars. The young Poles were enrolled in the armies by force; and every town and village in Posnania was taxed at a stated number of marriageable girls, who were sent to stock the districts of the Prussian dominions depopulated by the long wars. Each girl's portion was to be a bed, two pigs, a cow, and three ducats of gold. It is said that one town alone was obliged to furnish the Prussian general, Belling, with fifty girls. Under pretence that the magistrates of Dantzic prevented the levies, troops were marched into the territories of the city, a contribution of one hundred thousand ducats was exacted, and one thousand young men were pressed for the Prussian service. Frederick's military possession of Posnania, as well as the greater part of Polish Prussia, seemed to be but too consonant with his hinted claims, and his arbitrary levies evinced not merely intended, but actual possession. Austria, too, was playing a similar part on the south. In the spring of 1769 Birzynski, at the head of a small troop of confederates, entered Lubowla, one of the towns in the starosty or district of Zips, or Spiz, with the intention of levying contributions, as he was accustomed, in a disorderly manner. This little district is situated to the south of the palatinate of Cracow, among the Carpathian Mountains, and has been originally a portion of the kingdom of Hungary. The confederates were followed by the Russians, and took refuge in Hungary, as was their custom. This near approach of the Russians to the imperial frontiers was made a pretext by the court of Vienna for concentrating a body of troops there; and at the same time hints were thrown out of Austria's claims, not only to this but some of the adjacent districts. Researches were ordered to be made into old records, to establish these pretensions; the Austrian troops seized the territory of Zips, and engineers were employed by the Empress to mark out the frontier. They advanced the boundary line along the districts of Sandecz, Nowitarg, and Czorsztyn, and marked it out with posts furnished with the imperial eagle. Stanislaus had complained of this proceeding in a letter of October 28, 1770; to which the Empress returned for answer, in January, 1771, that she would willingly make an amicable arrangement, after peace was established, to settle the disputed frontier, but that she was determined to claim her right to the district of Zips, and that for the present it was requisite to pursue the operation of demarcation. The Empress seems to have been instigated not only by the characteristic avidity of Austrian policy, but by jealousies awakened by the near approaches of the Russian troops. Besides, it is a point of some consequence to be remembered--though it seems to have escaped the observation of most historians--that she had before her eyes a fearful proof of the danger of an uncertain frontier in the affair of Balta, which was the ostensible cause of the war between Turkey and Russia. This open encroachment on the Polish territory, however, was a fatal precedent; Catharine and Frederick could advance, as excuses for their proceedings, that they were solely intended to restore tranquillity to Poland; and that their possession was only temporary, whereas Theresa's was a permanent seizure. Frederick, therefore, endeavors strenuously in his writings to exonerate his intentions from censure, and shifts the odium of this step on Austria; but whether he is absolutely innocent of the "injustice," as he himself calls it, or adds to his guilt by the height of hypocrisy and cant, is a question not very difficult of solution. The three powers could now readily understand each other's designs; but the first communication which took place between them on the subject occurred in December, 1770, and January, 1771. In the former month Catharine invited Prince Henry, Frederick's brother, who had before been a personal acquaintance, to her court; and the wily despot of Prussia urged him earnestly to accept the invitation. He reached St. Petersburg in the midst of the festivities and rejoicings for the victories over the Turks; and having, like his brother, abundant flattery at will, he seized the opportunity of loading Catharine with compliments. It would be absurd to suppose that the Empress, masculine as her mind was, could be insensible to this species of attack; she, like all other followers of ambition and conquest, made the applause and admiration, even of the vulgar, the aim of her life; and it can only be affectation in those who pretend to despise the adulation which they so eagerly labor for. Henry was admitted to confidential conferences, and so well did he avail himself of his opportunities and influence that he succeeded in persuading the Empress to accept the mediation of Austria between Turkey and Russia--a commission with which he was charged by his brother. It was in these conferences that the fate of Poland was decided. While Catharine was hesitating about accepting the terms Austria proposed, which were that she should renounce her design upon Moldavia and Wallachia, the news arrived at St. Petersburg that the Austrian troops had taken possession of Zips. Catharine was much astonished at the proceeding, and remarked that if Austria seized the Polish territory, the two other neighboring powers must imitate her example until she desisted. This hint suggested to Henry a mode of removing those objections of Austria which impeded the negotiation. He knew that the court of Vienna was as eager for aggrandizement as Russia, and that all her jealousies would be allayed by a similar accession of territory; that at the same time she would never consent to have the Russians as her neighbors in Moldavia and Wallachia, but would have no objection to their making an equal increase to that immense empire elsewhere. Frederick's consent, also, must be purchased by an equal allotment; where, then, he thought, were there three such portions to be found but where Austria pointed out? Catharine approved of the plan after a few moments' reflection, but mentioned two impediments: first, that when her troops had entered Poland she had solemnly declared that she would maintain the integrity of the kingdom; the next, that Austria would not receive such a proposal from her without suspicion. These difficulties were readily removed--the first by breaking the engagement, and the second by making Frederick the negotiator with the court of Vienna. Frederick's admirers pretend that he was unacquainted with this intrigue, and, when the plan was made known to him, opposed it strenuously; "but that on the following day, having reflected on the misfortunes of the Poles, and on the impossibility of reëstablishing their liberty, he showed himself more tractable." It is to be hoped that, for the sake of Frederick's remnant of character, that is not true; after the singular manner in which he had evinced his concern for "the misfortunes of the Poles," and his solicitude for their "liberty" in Polish Prussia, such pretensions would have been the very height of hypocrisy. His scruples, at any rate, if any such existed, were soon dispelled; and he exerted himself in persuading the court of Vienna to enter into the plot. Austria was but too ready to fall into the design; the conflicting views, indeed, between Maria Theresa, Joseph, and their minister Kaunitz gave rise to some complication of politics and consequent delay. Frederick, strongly as he is said to have disclaimed the plan in the present instance, was now the only party impatient to conclude it. "The slowness and irresolution of the Russians," he says in his _Mémoires_, "protracted the conclusion of the treaty of partition; the negotiation hung chiefly on the possession of the city of Dantzic. The Russians pretended they had guaranteed the liberty of this little republic, but it was in fact the English, who, jealous of the Prussians, protected the liberty of this maritime town, and who prompted the Empress of Russia not to consent to the demands of his Prussian majesty. It was requisite, however, for the King to determine; and as it was evident that the master of the Vistula and the port of Dantzic would, in time, subject that city, he decided that it was not necessary to stop such an important negotiation, for an advantage _which in fact was only deferred_; therefore his majesty relaxed in this demand. After so many obstacles had been removed this secret contract was signed at St. Petersburg, February 17, 1772. The month of June was fixed on for taking possession, and it was agreed that the Empress-Queen should be invited to join the two contracting powers and share in the partition." It now remained to persuade Austria to join the coalition. Joseph and Kaunitz were soon won over, but Maria Theresa's conscience made a longer resistance. The fear of hell, she said, restrained her from seizing another's possessions. It was represented to her, however, that her resistance could not prevent the other two powers from portioning out Poland, but might occasion a war which would cost the valuable lives of many; whereas the peaceable partition would not spill a drop of blood. She was thus, she imagined, placed in a dilemma between two sins; and forgetting the command, "Do not evil that good may come," she endeavored to persuade herself that she was doing her duty in choosing the least. She yielded at length with the air of some religious devotee who exclaims to her artful seducer, "May God forgive you!" and at the same time sinks into his arms. The contract was signed between Prussia and Austria on March 4th, and the definite treaty of partition which regulated the three portions was concluded on August 5, 1772. Russia was to have, by this first partition, the palatinates of Polotsk, Vitebsk, and Mstislavl, as far as the rivers of Dwina and Dnieper, more than three thousand square leagues; Austria had for her share Red Russia (Galicia), and a portion of Podolia and Little Poland as far as the Vistula, about twenty-five hundred square leagues; and Prussia was to be contented with Polish Prussia (excepting Dantzic and Thorn with their territory), and part of Great Poland as far as the river Notec (or Netze), comprising about nine hundred square leagues. All the rest of the kingdom was to be insured to Stanislaus under the old constitution. All the three powers thought it necessary to publish some defence of their conduct; and, in separate pamphlets, they attempted to prove that they had legitimate claims on Poland, and that their present violent seizures were only just resumptions of their own territory or equivalent to it. Rulhière says that Catharine only made her claim as a just indemnification for the trouble and expense which she had devoted to Poland; this, however, it will be found by referring to her defence, is not the case. She sets forth the great kindness she had shown the republic by insuring the election of a Piast (Stanislaus), and uses these remarkable words on the subject: "That event was necessary to restore the Polish liberty to its ancient lustre, to insure the elective right of the monarchy, and to destroy foreign influence, which was so rooted in the state, and which was the continual source of trouble and contest." She then exclaims against the confederates: "Their ambition and cupidity, veiled under the phantom of religion and the defence of their laws, pervade and desolate this vast kingdom, without the prospect of any termination of this madness but its entire ruin." She then proceeds with her "Deduction," endeavoring to prove, from old authors, that it was not till 1686 that the Polish limits were extended beyond the mouth of the Dwina and the little town of Stoika on the Dnieper, five miles below Kiow. The following is a specimen of the lawyer-like sophistry which the Empress employs to establish her claim to the Russian territory, which remained in the hands of the Poles after the treaty in 1686: "The design of such a concession being only to put an end to a bloody war more promptly, and by a remedy as violent as a devastation (_aussi violent qu'une devastation_), to insure tranquillity of neighborhood between two rival and newly reconciled nations, it necessarily follows that every act on the part of the subjects of the republic of Poland, contrary to such intention, has, _ipso facto_, revived Russia's indisputable and unalienated right to all that extent of territory. It must be observed, also, that this arrangement about the frontier was only provisional and temporary, since it is expressly said that it shall only remain so _until it has been otherwise amicably settled_. "The object was, therefore, to give the nations time to lay aside their inveterate hatred; and to remove immediate causes of dispute between the different subjects, and consequent rupture between the two states. Russia sacrificed for a time the possession of the territory which extends from the fertile town of Stoika to the river Tecmine, and from the right bank of the Dnieper, fifty versts in breadth along the frontiers of Poland. There is no idea of cession here on the part of Russia; it is a pledge (gage) which she advances for the solidity of the peace, _which ought to be returned to her when the object of it is effected_. This is the only reasonable construction which can be put upon the stipulation, '_until it has been otherwise amicably settled_.' Russia is not to be a loser because the confusion of the internal affairs of Poland has never allowed that country to come to a definite agreement on this subject, notwithstanding the requests of Russia." It does not demand much acumen to unveil such impudent sophistry as this. The assertion that the arrangement was only provisional and temporary is false; the treaty indeed left the detail of the boundary line to be drawn out by commissioners, as must always be the case in arrangements of this kind, and as was meant to be implied by the words which the Russian minister transforms into "_until it has been otherwise amicably arranged_." Such was the weak manner in which the Russian diplomatists imagined to deceive Europe; their defence indeed is as triumphant a proof of the badness of their cause as the most earnest friend of Poland could desire. Our surprise may well be excited at the weakness of the argument, particularly when we remember that Catharine's servants had long been trained in glossing over the basest and most shameful transactions. "The ministers of St. Petersburg," said a contemporary writer, "are accustomed to appear without blushing at the tribunal of the public in defence of any cause; the death of Peter and assassination of Prince John inured them to it." Such a work hardly requires refutation. Every sophism and every falsehood is a damning argument against the Russian cause. Truth, in fact, is outraged in every page of the writing; and one striking instance will suffice. Catharine states that the Polish Government would never make any arrangement about the frontier; but the fact is that even as late as 1764 commissioners were appointed at the diet of coronation for this very purpose, but the Russians refused to nominate theirs; again in 1766, when Count Rzewinski, Polish ambassador to St. Petersburg, made a similar application, he was answered that the affairs of the dissidents must be first settled. The Austrian pretensions were even more elaborately drawn up than those of Russia. In the first place, the district of Zips, the first sacrifice to Austrian rapacity, came under consideration. Sigismund, who came to the Hungarian throne in 1387, mortgaged this district to Wladislas II (Jagello), King of Poland, in 1412, for a stipulated sum of money. It is commonly called the "Thirteen Towns of Zips," but the district contains sixteen. No reclamation of it had been made till the present time; it had then been in the undisputed possession of Poland nearly three hundred sixty years. The chief demur which the Austrians now made to the mortgage was that the King of Hungary was restricted by the constitution, as expressed in the coronation-oath, from alienating any portion of the kingdom. But even this plea, weak as it is under such circumstances, is not available; since it is proved that this article was never made a part of the coronation-oath until the accession of Ferdinand I in 1527. The Austrian minister endeavored also to establish the right of his mistress to Galicia and Podolia, as Queen of Hungary, and the duchies of Oswiecim and Zator, as Queen of Bohemia. "What lastly establishes indisputably the ancient claim of Hungary to the provinces in question is that in several seals and documents of the ancient kings of Hungary preserved in our archives, the titles and arms of Galicia are always used." After exhausting the records, and stating that the crown of Hungary has never in any way renounced its rights and pretensions, the author modestly winds up his arguments in the following way: "Consequently, after such a long delay, the house of Austria is well authorized in establishing and reclaiming the lawful rights and pretensions of her crowns of Hungary and Bohemia, and to obtain satisfaction by the means which she now employs; in the use of which she has exhibited the greatest moderation possible, by confining herself to a very moderate equivalent for her real pretensions to the best provinces of Poland, such as Podolia, etc." Frederick argues his cause on the general principles of civil law. "Since then," he says, "the crown of Poland cannot prove express cessions, which are the only good titles between sovereigns to confer a legitimate possession of disputed provinces, it will perhaps have recourse to prescription and immemorial possession. We all know the famous dispute among the learned on the question of prescription and natural right, whether it obtains between sovereigns and free nations. The affirmative is founded only on that very weak argument that he who for a long time has not made use of his rights is presumed to have abandoned them; a presumption which is at best doubtful, and cannot destroy the right and established property of a monarch. Besides, even this presumption altogether vanishes when the superior strength of a usurper has prevented the lawful proprietor from claiming his rights, which has been the case in the present instance. "Time alone cannot render a possession just which has not been so from its origin; and as there is no judge between free nations, no one can decide if the time past is sufficient to establish prescription, or if the presumption of the desertion [of rights] is sufficiently proved. But even leaving this point undetermined, the prescription which the republic of Poland could allege in the present case has not any of the qualities which the advocates of prescription require, to render it valid between free states." We do not imagine that our readers will coincide with Frederick in the following opinion: "We flatter ourselves that when the impartial public has weighed without prejudice all that has just been detailed in this _expose_, they will not find in the step which his majesty has taken anything which is not conformable to justice, to natural right, to the general use of nations, and, lastly, to the example which the Poles themselves have given in seizing all these countries by simple matter of fact. We trust also that the Polish nation will eventually recover from its prejudices; that it will acknowledge the enormous injustice which it has done to the house of Brandenburg, and that it will bring itself to repair it by a just and honorable arrangement with which his majesty will willingly comply, sincerely wishing to cultivate the friendship and good-fellowship of this illustrious nation, and to live with the republic in good union and harmony." We have thus given the three monarchs liberty to plead for themselves; and no one can rise from the perusal of their "Defences" without feeling additional conviction of their injustice, and resentment at their hypocrisy. We must own we are almost inclined to interpret Frederick's appeal as a sneering parody on the cant of diplomacy in general; but, in whatever light it be viewed, it gives additional insight into the heart and head of that military despot and disciple of Machiavelli. Iniquity almost invariably pays virtue the compliment of attempting to assume her semblance; and the three wholesale plunderers--Russia, Austria, and Prussia--therefore determined to give some show of justice to their violent seizure, by wringing from their victims a ratification of their claims. But "the children of this world" with all their wisdom cannot always preserve consistency, and, cunning as the villain may sometimes be, he will, at some time or other, make the most disgraceful mistakes. By requiring further ratification, the three powers admitted that their anterior claims were not well founded; and common-sense ought to have told them that, if the former claims were not just, the latter, depending on the same title, were rendered still less so by aggravated violence. Every show of justice in a villainous action rises up in sterner judgment against the perpetrator, inasmuch as it evinces design, and makes him responsible for the motive. These remarks might be applied to Catharine, Frederick, Maria Theresa, or Joseph; for though they may shield themselves from personal accusation by acting under the vague titles of "powers," "states," or "governments," the evasion is mean and cowardly; for particularly in such despotic governments as theirs the passions and wills of the rulers are the directors of every political scheme. The three powers fixed on April 19, 1773, for the opening of a diet at Warsaw to ratify their claims. Their troops were in possession of all Poland; the capital in particular was strongly invested; and Rewiski, Benoit, and Stakelberg, the Austrian, Prussian, and Russian ministers, were on the spot to overrule and direct all the debates. They declared that every deputy who opposed their proposals should be treated as an enemy of his country and of the three powers. Frederick himself states, in his description of this transaction, that the deputies were informed if they continued refractory that the whole kingdom would be dismembered; but, on the contrary, that if they were submissive the foreign troops would evacuate by degrees the territory they intended to leave to the republic. The Diet was to be confederated, that the Poles might be deprived of their last resource, the _liberum veto_. Some few patriots still raised their voices, even in the midst of the united armies of Russia, Austria, and Prussia; and among these Reyten was the most distinguished. He was a Lithuanian by descent, had acted a good part in the confederacy of Bar, and had earned a character which made the electors of Nowogrodek select him for their representative in the present memorable Diet. His colleague was Samuel Korsak, a worthy coadjutor, who did not turn a deaf ear to his father's parting words: "My son, I send you to Warsaw accompanied by my oldest domestics; I charge them to bring me your head if you do not oppose with all your might what is now plotting against your country." Poninski, a creature of the allied powers, was the marshal of the Diet, appointed by the intervention of the ambassadors; and when the session opened one of the deputies nominated him, and he was immediately proceeding to take the seat, without waiting for the election; but several members rose to protest against this breach of privilege, and Reyten exclaimed: "Gentlemen, the marshal cannot be thus self-appointed; the whole Assembly must choose him; I protest against the nomination of Poninski; name him who is to be your president." Some voices instantly shouted, "Long live the true son of his country, Marshal Reyten!" Poninski retired, adjourning the session to the next day. On the following morning Poninski again made his appearance, merely to postpone the Assembly one day more. When this period arrived he went to the hall with a guard of foreign soldiers, to station some of his faction at the doors and to prevent the entrance of the public. Reyten, Korsak, and their little band of patriots were soon at their posts, when Reyten, perceiving that the people were not allowed to enter, exclaimed: "Gentlemen, follow me. Poninski shall not be marshal of the Diet to-day, if I live!" It was already twelve o'clock, and Poninski did not appear, but a messenger arrived to state that he adjourned the meeting. "We do not acknowledge Poninski for marshal," replied Reyten; and seeing many of the members about to retire, he placed himself before the door with his arms crossed, and attempted to stop the deserters. But his exertions proving useless he threw himself along the doorway, exclaiming, with a wearied but determined voice, "Go, go, and seal your own eternal ruin, but first trample on the breast which will only beat for honor and liberty." There were now only fifteen members in the hall, and of these but six persevered in their patriotic determination; namely, Reyten, Korsak, Durin, Terzmanowski, Kozuchowski, and Penczkowski. At ten a message arrived from the Russian ambassador, inviting the resolute deputies to a conference at his house. Four of them, among whom was Korsak, accordingly went; and Stakelberg at first addressed them mildly, but, finding them resolute, began to threaten them with confiscation of their estates. On this Korsak rose and declared, since they wished to seize his possessions--which were already, however, mostly plundered by the Russian armies--there was no occasion for so many preliminaries; and he actually put into his hands a list of all his property, adding: "This is all I have to sacrifice to the avarice of the enemies of my country. I know that they also can dispose of my life; but I do not know any despot on earth rich enough to corrupt or powerful enough to intimidate me!" Reyten remained still at his post, and the four patriots on returning found the doors closed, and lay down without for the night. On the following day the ministers of the three powers repaired to the King's palace, and Stakelberg threatened him with the immediate destruction of his capital unless he gave his sanction to the forced confederation. Stanislaus demanded the advice of his council, but received no reply; and taking their silence for an assent, and not knowing how to evade a direct answer, he yielded to the ministers' demands. The corrupt Diet held their assembly without the hall, because Reyten was still at his post--such was their dread of even one patriotic individual. On April 23d, when Poninski and the confederates entered, they found Reyten stretched senseless on the floor, in which state he must have lain thirty-six hours. Such was the determination with which he resisted the oppression of his country, and so entirely were all the energies of his mind devoted to the cause, that when he learned its fall he lost his reason. The allies began to redouble their threats, and signified to the deputies their intention of portioning out the whole of the kingdom, if any more opposition were offered; but, notwithstanding, the Diet continued stormy, and many bold speeches were made. Of all situations the King's must have been the most perplexing and irksome; but no person was better adapted to act such a part than Stanislaus. He made the most pathetic appeals to his subjects, and frequently spoke in a strain more fit for an unfortunate but patriotic hero than for one who had done nothing but affect a few tears--for we can hardly doubt that they were hypocritical--over the misfortunes which he had brought on his country. The following sentence must have sounded strangely in his mouth: "_Fecimus quod potuimus, omnia tentavimus, nihil omisimus._" Again, on May 10th, he absolutely had the audacity to defend his political conduct, stating that he had always done his duty whenever any business depended on him. On May 17th the Diet agreed to Poninski's motion to appoint a commission that, in conjunction with the three ambassadors, should regulate the limits of the four countries, and determine upon the changes in the Polish Government. On the 18th the commissioners were nominated by the King and Poninski. Some small remains of liberty lingered even among the commissioners, and called for fresh threats and violence from the allied powers. At length they agreed to ratify the treaty of August 5th, and establish a permanent council in whom the executive power was to be vested. This council consisted of forty members, and was divided into four departments, which engrossed every branch of administration. The King was the nominal president, but the real authority was possessed by the Russian ambassador. The partition was not fully arranged till 1774, and then Prussia and Austria began to extend their bounds beyond the agreed limits. _L'appetit vient en mangeant_, and these encroachments were a sad augury of future partitions to the Poles. The indifference with which other states regarded this partition was indeed surprising. France, in particular, might have been expected to protest against it; but the imbecility and dotage of Louis XV, and the weakness of his minister, paid too little attention to the interests of their own nation to be likely to think of others. They made the most frivolous excuses, and even had the meanness to attempt to shift the blame on the shoulders of their ambassador at Vienna, pretending that he amused himself with hunting instead of politics, and had no knowledge of the design of partition until it was consummated. Louis contented himself with saying, with an affectation of rage, "It would not have happened if Choiseul had been here!" Some few patriots in England declaimed on the injustice of the proceeding; but the spirit of the ministry, which was occupied in wrangling with the American colonies about the imposition of taxes, was not likely to be very attentive to the cries of oppressed liberty. The partition is not one of those equivocal acts which seem to vibrate between right and wrong, justice and injustice, and demand the most accurate analysis to ascertain on which side they preponderate. Argument is thrown away on such a subject; for to doubt about the nature of a plain decisive act like this must necessarily proceed from something even worse than uncertainty and scepticism concerning the simple fundamental principles of moral action. A little reflection, however, will not be lost on so memorable a portion of history, which opens a wider field for instruction than the "thousand homilies" on the ambition and glory and other commonplaces of Greek and Roman history. Such great political crimes reveal a corresponding system of motives of as black a hue, and even the narrowest experience teaches us that motives are never so well traced as in their results. The corrupt principle which prompts injustice and deceit in foreign transactions would operate equally in domestic affairs; and the minister who uses hypocrisy and falsehood in manifestoes and treaties would not scruple to do the same in matters of private life. An implicit confidence in enemies like these was one of the amiable "crimes" for which "Sarmatia fell unwept." THE BOSTON TEA-PARTY A.D. 1773 GEORGE BANCROFT One of the most famous demonstrations of the purpose of the American colonies to resist what they regarded as the unjust taxation laid upon them by Great Britain was this unique occurrence in Boston harbor. Everywhere in the colonies the people had begun to go without articles that were subject to taxes. They ceased to import goods for clothing, and wore homespun. It was not easy to find a substitute for tea, but various plants and leaves were used instead of it, and "store tea" became a popular designation of real tea as distinguished from domestic herbs. At last the English Government abandoned all taxes except that laid on tea; this the Government insisted upon laying as strictly as ever. Ships with cargoes of tea were sent with the expectation that the colonists would pay the tax. What followed upon the arrival of the tea-ships at Boston and Charlestown, and gave to American history the "Boston Tea-party," is fully told in Bancroft's pages. On Sunday, November 28th, the ship Dartmouth appeared in Boston harbor with one hundred fourteen chests of the East India Company's tea. To keep the Sabbath strictly was the New England usage. But hours were precious; let the tea be entered, and it would be beyond the power of the consignees to send it back. The selectmen held one meeting by day and another in the evening, but they sought in vain for the consignees, who had taken sanctuary in the Castle. The committee of correspondence was more efficient. They met also on Sunday, and obtained from the Quaker Rotch, who owned the Dartmouth, a promise not to enter his ship till Tuesday; and authorized Samuel Adams to invite the committees of the five surrounding towns, Dorchester, Roxbury, Brookline, Cambridge, and Charlestown, with their own townsmen and those of Boston, to hold a mass meeting the next morning. Faneuil Hall could not contain the people that poured in on Monday. The concourse was the largest ever known. Adjourning to "the Old South" Meeting-house, Jonathan Williams did not fear to act as moderator, nor Samuel Adams, Hancock, Molineux, and Warren to conduct the business of the meeting. On the motion of Samuel Adams, who entered fully into the question, the assembly, composed of upward of five thousand persons, resolved unanimously that "the tea should be sent back to the place from whence it came at all events, and that no duty should be paid on it." "The only way to get rid of it," said Young, "is to throw it overboard." The consignees asked for time to prepare their answer; and "out of great tenderness" the body postponed receiving it to the next morning. Meantime the owner and master of the ship were converted and forced to promise not to land the tea. A watch was also proposed. "I," said Hancock, "will be one of it, rather than that there should be none," and a party of twenty-five persons, under the orders of Edward Proctor as its captain, was appointed to guard the tea-ship during the night. On the same day the council who had been solicited by the Governor and the consignees to assume the guardianship of the tea, coupled their refusal with a reference to the declared opinion of both branches of the General Court that the tax upon it by Parliament was unconstitutional. The next morning the consignees jointly gave as their answer: "It is utterly out of our power to send back the teas; but we now declare to you our readiness to store them until we shall receive further directions from our constituents"; that is, until they could notify the British Government. The wrath of the meeting was kindling, when the sheriff of Suffolk entered with a proclamation from the Governor, "warning, exhorting, and requiring them, and each of them there unlawfully assembled, forthwith to disperse, and to surcease all further unlawful proceedings, at their utmost peril." The words were received with hisses, derision, and a unanimous vote not to disperse. "Will it be safe for the consignees to appear in the meeting?" asked Copley; and all with one voice responded that they might safely come and return; but they refused to appear. In the afternoon Rotch, the owner, and Hall, the master, of the Dartmouth, yielding to an irresistible impulse, engaged that the tea should return as it came, without touching land or paying a duty. A similar promise was exacted of the owners of the other tea-ships whose arrival was daily expected. In this way "it was thought the matter would have ended." "I should be willing to spend my fortune and life itself in so good a cause," said Hancock, and this sentiment was general; they all voted "to carry their resolutions into effect at the risk of their lives and property." Every shipowner was forbidden, on pain of being deemed an enemy to the country, to import or bring as freight any tea from Great Britain till the unrighteous act taxing it should be repealed, and this vote was printed and sent to every seaport in the province and to England. Six persons were chosen as post-riders to give due notice to the country towns of any attempt to land the tea by force, and the committee of correspondence, as the executive organ of the meeting, took care that a military watch was regularly kept up by volunteers armed with muskets and bayonets, who at every half-hour in the night regularly passed the word "All is well," like sentinels in a garrison. Had they been molested by night, the tolling of the bells would have been the signal for a general uprising. An account of all that had been done was sent into every town in the province. The ships, after landing the rest of their cargo, could neither be cleared in Boston with the tea on board nor be entered in England, and on the twentieth day from their arrival would be liable to seizure. "They find themselves," said Hutchinson, "involved in invincible difficulties." Meantime in private letters he advised to separate Boston from the rest of the province; and to begin criminal prosecutions against its patriot sons. The spirit of the people rose with the emergency. Two more tea-ships which arrived were directed to anchor by the side of the Dartmouth at Griffin's wharf, that one guard might serve for all. The people of Roxbury, on December 3d, voted that they were bound by duty to themselves and posterity to join with Boston and other sister-towns to preserve inviolate the liberties handed down by their ancestors. The next day the men of Charlestown, as if foreseeing that their town was destined to be a holocaust, declared themselves ready to risk their lives and fortunes. On Sunday, the 5th, the committee of correspondence wrote to Portsmouth in New Hampshire, to Providence, Bristol, and Newport in Rhode Island, for advice and cooperation. On the 6th they entreat New York, through MacDougall and Sears; Philadelphia, through Mifflin and Clymer, to insure success by "a harmony of sentiment and concurrence in action." As for Boston itself, the twenty days are fast running out; the consignees conspire with the revenue officers to throw on the owner and master of the Dartmouth the whole burden of landing the tea, and will neither agree to receive it nor give up their bill of lading nor pay freight. Every movement was duly reported, and "the town became furious as in the time of the Stamp Act." On the 9th there was a vast gathering at Newburyport of the inhabitants of that and the neighboring towns, and, none dissenting, they agreed to assist Boston, even at the hazard of their lives. "This is not a piece of parade," they say, "but if an occasion should offer, a goodly number from among us will hasten to join you." On Saturday, the 11th, Rotch, the owner of the Dartmouth, is summoned before the Boston committee with Samuel Adams in the chair, and asked why he has not kept his engagement to take his vessel and the tea back to London within twenty days of its arrival. He pleaded that it was out of his power. "The ship must go," was the answer; "the people of Boston and the neighboring towns absolutely require and expect it;" and they bade him ask for a clearance and pass, with proper witnesses of his demand. "Were it mine," said a leading merchant, "I would certainly send it back." Hutchinson acquainted Admiral Montagu with what was passing; on which the Active and the Kingfisher, though they had been laid up for the winter, were sent to guard the passages out of the harbor. At the same time orders were given by the Governor to load guns at the Castle, so that no vessel, except coasters, might go to sea without a permit. He had no thought of what was to happen; the wealth of Hancock, Phillips, Rowe, Dennie, and so many other men of property seemed to him a security against violence; and he flattered himself that he had increased the perplexities of the committee. The decisive day draws nearer and nearer; on the morning of Monday, the 13th, the committees of the five towns are at Faneuil Hall, with that of Boston. Now that danger was really at hand, the men of the little town of Malden offered their blood and their treasure; for that which they once esteemed the mother-country had lost the tenderness of a parent and become their great oppressor. "We trust in God," wrote the men of Lexington, "that should the state of our affairs require it, we shall be ready to sacrifice our estates and everything dear in life, yea, and life itself, in support of the common cause." Whole towns in Worcester County were on tiptoe to come down. "Go on as you have begun," wrote the committee of Leicester on the 14th; "and do not suffer any of the teas already come or coming to be landed or pay one farthing of duty. You may depend on our aid and assistance when needed." The line of policy adopted was, if possible, to get the tea carried back to London uninjured in the vessel in which it came. A meeting of the people on Tuesday afternoon directed and, as it were, "compelled" Rotch, the owner of the Dartmouth, to apply for a clearance. He did so, accompanied by Kent, Samuel Adams, and eight others as witnesses. The collector was at his lodgings, and refused to answer till the next morning; the assemblage, on their part, adjourned to Thursday, the 16th, the last of the twenty days before it would become legal for the revenue officers to take possession of the ship and so land the teas at the Castle. In the evening the Boston committee finished their preparatory meetings. After their consultation on Monday with the committees of the five towns, they had been together that day and the next, both morning and evening; but during the long and anxious period their journal has only this entry: "No business transacted; matter of record." At ten o'clock on the 15th, Rotch was escorted by his witnesses to the custom-house, where the collector and comptroller unequivocally and finally refused to grant his ship a clearance till it should be discharged of the teas. Hutchinson began to clutch at victory; "for," said he, "it is notorious the ship cannot pass the Castle without a permit from me, and that I shall refuse." On that day the people of Fitchburg pledged their word "never to be wanting according to their small ability"; for "they had indeed an ambition to be known to the world and to posterity as friends to liberty." The men of Gloucester also expressed their joy at Boston's glorious opposition, cried with one voice that "no tea subject to a duty should be landed" in their town, and held themselves ready for the last appeal. The morning of Thursday, December 16, 1773, dawned upon Boston, a day by far the most momentous in its annals. Beware, little town; count the cost, and know well, if you dare defy the wrath of Great Britain, and if you love exile and poverty and death rather than submission. The town of Portsmouth held its meeting on that morning, and, with six only protesting, its people adopted the principles of Philadelphia, appointed their committee of correspondence, and resolved to make common cause with the colonies. At ten o'clock the people of Boston, with at least two thousand men from the country, assembled in the Old South. A report was made that Rotch had been refused a clearance from the collector. "Then," said they to him, "protest immediately against the custom-house, and apply to the Governor for his pass, so that your vessel may this very day proceed on her voyage for London." The Governor had stolen away to his country house at Milton. Bidding Rotch make all haste, the meeting adjourned to three in the afternoon. At that hour Rotch had not returned. It was incidentally voted, as other towns had already done, to abstain totally from the use of tea; and every town was advised to appoint its committee of inspection, to prevent the detested tea from coming within any of them. Then, since the Governor might refuse his pass, the momentous question recurred, "Whether it be the sense and determination of this body to abide by their former resolutions with respect to the not suffering the tea to be landed." On this question Samuel Adams and Young addressed the meeting, which was become far the most numerous ever held in Boston, embracing seven thousand men. There was among them a patriot of fervid feeling, passionately devoted to the liberty of his country, still young, his eye bright, his cheek glowing with hectic fever. He knew that his strength was ebbing. The work of vindicating American freedom must be done soon, or he will be no party to the great achievement. He rises, but it is to restrain, and being truly brave and truly resolved he speaks the language of moderation: "Shouts and hosannas will not terminate the trials of this day, nor popular resolves, harangues, and acclamations vanquish our foes. We must be grossly ignorant of the value of the prize for which we contend, of the power combined against us, of the inveterate malice and insatiable revenge which actuate our enemies, public and private, abroad and in our bosom, if we hope that we shall end this controversy without the sharpest conflicts. Let us consider the issue before we advance to those measures which must bring on the most trying and terrible struggle this country ever saw." Thus spoke the younger Quincy. "Now that the hand is to the plough," said others, "there must be no looking back," and the whole assembly of seven thousand voted unanimously that the tea should not be landed. It had been dark for more than an hour. The church in which they met was dimly lighted, when at a quarter before six Rotch appeared, and satisfied the people by relating that the Governor had refused him a pass, because his ship was not properly cleared. As soon as he had finished his report, Samuel Adams rose and gave the word: "This meeting can do nothing more to save the country." On the instant a shout was heard at the porch; the war-whoop resounded; a body of men, forty or fifty in number, disguised as Indians, passed by the door, and, encouraged by Samuel Adams, Hancock, and others, repaired to Griffin's wharf, posted guards to prevent the intrusion of spies, took possession of the three tea-ships, and in about three hours three hundred forty chests of tea, being the whole quantity that had been imported, were emptied into the bay without the least injury to other property. "All things were conducted with great order, decency, and perfect submission to Government." The people around, as they looked on, were so still that the noise of breaking open the tea-chests was plainly heard. A delay of a few hours would have placed the tea under the protection of the Admiral at the Castle. After the work was done, the town became as still and calm as if it had been holy time. The men from the country that very night carried back the great news to their villages. The next morning the committee of correspondence appointed Samuel Adams and four others to draw up a declaration of what had been done. They sent Paul Revere as express with the information to New York and Philadelphia. The height of joy that sparkled in the eyes and animated the countenances and the hearts of the patriots as they met one another is unimaginable. The Governor, meantime, was consulting his books and his lawyers to make out that the resolves of the meeting were treasonable. Threats were muttered of arrests, of executions, of transportation of the accused to England; while the committee of correspondence pledged themselves to support and vindicate each other and all persons who had shared in their effort. The country was united with the town, and the colonies with one another more firmly than ever. The Philadelphians unanimously approved what Boston had done. New York, all impatient at the winds which had driven its tea-ship off the coast, was resolved on following the example. In South Carolina the ship with two hundred fifty-seven chests of tea arrived on December 2d; the spirit of opposition ran very high; but the consignees were persuaded to resign, so that, though the collector after the twentieth day seized the dutiable article, there was no one to vend it or to pay the duty, and it perished in the cellars where it was stored. Late on Saturday, the 25th, news reached Philadelphia that its tea-ship was at Chester. It was met four miles below the town, where it came to anchor. On Monday, at an hour's notice, five thousand men collected in a town meeting; at their instance the consignee, who came as passenger, resigned; and the captain agreed to take his ship and cargo directly back to London and to sail the very next day. "The ministry had chosen the most effectual measures to unite the colonies. The Boston committee were already in close correspondence with the other New England colonies, with New York and Pennsylvania. Old jealousies were removed and perfect harmony subsisted between all." "The heart of the King was hardened against them like that of Pharaoh," and none believed he would relent. Union therefore was the cry; a union which should reach "from Florida to the icy plains" of Canada. "No time is to be lost," said the Boston press; "a congress or a meeting of the American States is indispensable; and what the people wills shall be effected." Samuel Adams was in his glory. He had led Boston to be foremost in duty and cheerfully offer itself as a sacrifice for the liberties of mankind. COTTON MANUFACTURE DEVELOPED A.D. 1774 THOMAS F. HENDERSON Up to the time when James Hargreaves, an English mechanic, invented (1767) and brought into use the spinning-jenny--so named after his wife, Jenny--the spinning of yarn was done altogether by hand. Richard Arkwright added to the jenny of Hargreaves a much more useful invention, the cotton-spinning frame, called a "water-frame" because it was driven by water. In 1779 Samuel Crompton invented a still better machine, the spinning-mule. In this he utilized the principles of the jenny and of the frame, adding drawing-rollers, and thereby making a machine that could draw, stretch, and twist yarn at one operation. From this combination of features the mule received its name. Since the time of Crompton it has been greatly improved, and the spinning-room of a modern cotton-mill contains machinery as highly perfected as any that has been invented. Spinning by machinery is the foundation of the modern textile industry. Soon after Arkwright's invention of the spinning-frame, Edmund Cartwright invented the power-loom, the idea of which came to him while he was visiting Arkwright's cotton-mills at Cromford. Cartwright took out his first patent in 1785. Within fifty years from that time there were at least one hundred thousand power-looms at work in Great Britain. Arkwright's invention quickly gave a great impetus to the cotton industry. Both the cultivation and the manufacture of cotton rapidly increased. Eli Whitney's timely invention of the cotton-gin in 1793 hastened the general introduction of the new manufacturing machinery. For more than a century the making of cotton goods has been one of the leading industries of the world. The first cotton-mill was built by Arkwright and Hargreaves at Nottingham, England. Not long afterward the earliest cotton-mill in America was built at Beverly, Massachusetts (1787). To aid the new industry, the Legislature of that State made a grant of five hundred dollars. Cotton manufacture rapidly increased in New England, and there until recently was the centre of the American industry. Within the past few years, however, many cotton-mills have been built in various Southern States, and the cotton-belt region bids fair soon to become the chief seat of manufacture of its own great staple. Since 1866 the cotton supply of the United States has increased from somewhat more than two million bales to about twelve million bales (1904). The world's consumption of cotton in 1903 was nearly fifteen million bales. In the United States the annual consumption in cotton-mills is now about four million bales; in Great Britain, over three million bales; in Continental Europe, about five million bales. The number of spindles represented in the world's cotton manufacture in 1903 was nearly 112,000,000; in the United States, about 22,240,000; Great Britain, 42,200,000; Continental Europe, 34,000,000. In 1903 the exports of cotton manufactures from the United States were valued at over $32,000,000. Nearly one-half of the exports went to China, the rest being divided among many countries. These figures only furnish a slight concrete suggestion of the immense industrial and commercial importance of the invention that Arkwright and his associates and successors produced and perfected for mankind. What Eli Whitney did for the cultivation and handling of cotton they have done for the world-wide interests connected with its manufacture. The gradual disuse of wigs is assigned by some as the reason that Richard Arkwright began to turn his attention to mechanical inventions as likely to afford him a new source of income; but as during his journeys he was brought into constant intercourse with persons engaged in weaving and spinning, his inquisitive and strongly practical intelligence would in any case have been naturally led to take a keen interest in inventions which were a constant topic of conversation among the manufacturing population. The invention of the fly-shuttle by Kay of Bury had so greatly increased the demand for yarn that it became difficult to meet it merely by hand labor. A machine for carding cotton had been introduced into Lancashire about 1760, but until 1767 spinning continued to be done wholly with the old-fashioned hand-wheel. In that year James Hargreaves completed his invention of the spinning-jenny, which he patented in 1770. The thread spun by the jenny was, however, suitable only for weft, and the roving process still required to be performed by hand. Probably Arkwright knew nothing of the experiments of Hargreaves, when, in 1767, he asked John Kay, a clockmaker then residing in Warrington, to "bend him some wires and turn him some pieces of brass." Shortly afterward Arkwright gave up his business at Bolton, and devoted his whole attention to the perfecting of a contrivance for spinning by rollers. After getting Kay to construct for him certain wooden models, which convinced him that the solution of the problem had been accomplished, he is said to have applied to a Mr. Atherton, of Warrington, to make the spinning-machine, who, from the poverty of Arkwright's appearance, declined to undertake it. He, however, agreed to lend Kay a smith and watch-tool maker to do the heavier part of the engine, and Kay undertook to make the clockmaker's part of it. Arkwright and Kay then went to Preston, where, with the cooperation of a friend of Arkwright, John Smalley, described as a "liquor-merchant and painter," the machine was constructed and set up in the parlor of the house belonging to the Free Grammar-school. The room appears to have been chosen for its secluded position, being hidden by a garden filled with gooseberry-trees; but the very secrecy of their operations aroused suspicion, and popular superstition at once connected them with some kind of witchcraft or sorcery. Two old women who lived close by averred that they heard strange noises in it of a humming nature, as if the devil were tuning his bagpipes, and Arkwright and Kay were dancing a reel, and so much consternation was produced that many were inclined to break open the place. The building has since been changed into a public-house, which is known as the Arkwright Arms. As a proof of the straits to which Arkwright was then reduced, and the degree to which he had sacrificed his comfort in order to obtain the means of completing his invention, it is said that his clothes were in such a ragged state that he declined, unless supplied with a new suit, to go to record his vote at the Preston election in 1768, which took place while he was engaged in setting up his machine. Having thoroughly satisfied himself of the practical value of his invention, he removed to Nottingham, an important seat of the stocking trade, whither Hargreaves, the inventor of the spinning-jenny, had removed the year previously, after his machines had been destroyed by a mob at Blackburn. Arkwright entered into partnership with Smalley from Preston, Kay continuing with him under a bond as a workman, and they erected a spinning-mill between Hockley and Woolpack Lane, a patent being taken out by Arkwright for the machine, July 3, 1769. The spinning-frame of Arkwright was the result of inventive power of a higher and rarer order than that necessary to originate the spinning-jenny. It was much more than a mere development of the old hand-wheel. It involved the application of a new principle, that of spinning by rollers, and in the delicate adjustment of its various parts and the nice regulation of the different mechanical forces called into operation, so as to make them properly subordinate to the accomplishment of one purpose, we have the first adequate examples of those beautiful and intricate mechanical contrivances that have transformed the whole character of the manufacturing industries. The spinning-frame consisted of four pairs of rollers, acting by tooth and pinion. The top roller was covered with leather to enable it to take hold of the cotton, the lower one fluted longitudinally to let the cotton pass through it. By one pair of rollers revolving quicker than another the rove was drawn to the requisite fineness for twisting, which was accomplished by spindles or flyers placed in front of each set of rollers. The original invention of Arkwright has neither been superseded nor substantially modified, although it has of course undergone various minor improvements. The first spinning-mill of Arkwright was driven by horses, but finding this method too expensive, as well as incapable of application on a sufficiently large scale, he resolved to use water-power, which had already been successfully applied for a similar purpose, notably in the silk-mill erected by Thomas Lombe, on the Derwent at Derby in 1717. In 1771 Arkwright therefore went into partnership with Mr. Reed, of Nottingham, and Mr. Strutt, of Derby, the possessors of patents for the manufacture of ribbed stockings, and erected his spinning-frame at Cromford, in Derbyshire, in a deep, picturesque valley near the Derwent, where he could obtain an easy command of water-power from a never-failing spring of warm water, which even during the severest frost scarcely ever froze. From the fact that the spinning-frame was driven by water, it came to be known as the water-frame; since the application of steam it has been known as the throstle. As the yarn it produced was of a much harder and firmer texture than that spun by the jenny, it was specially suited for warp, but the Lancashire manufacturers declined to make use of it. Arkwright and his partners therefore wove it at first into stockings, which, on account of the smoothness and equality of the yarn, were greatly superior to those woven from the hand-spun cotton. In 1773 he began to use the thread as warp for the manufacture of calicoes, instead of the linen warp formerly used together with the cotton weft, and thus a cloth solely of cotton was for the first time produced in England. It met at once with a great demand, but, on account of an act passed in 1736 for the protection of the woollen manufactures of England against the calicoes of India, it was liable to a double duty, which at the instance of the Lancashire manufacturers was speedily enforced. Notwithstanding their strenuous opposition, Arkwright, however, in 1774 obtained an act specially exempting from extra duty the "new manufacture of stuffs wholly made of raw cotton-wool." Up to this time more than twelve thousand pounds had been expended by Arkwright and his partners on machinery, with little or no return; but after the new act the cotton manufacture created by his energy and genius developed with amazing rapidity, until it became the leading industry of the North of England. While struggling against the mingled inertness and active opposition of the manufacturers, Arkwright had all the while been busily engaged in augmenting the capability and efficiency of his machinery, and in 1775 he brought out a patent for a series of adaptations and inventions by means of which the whole process of yarn manufacture--including carding, drawing, roving, and spinning--was performed by a beautifully arranged succession of operations on one machine. With the grant of this patent, every obstacle in the way of a sufficient supply of yarn was overcome, and, whatever might happen to Arkwright, the prosperity of the cotton manufacture was guaranteed. Afterward the invention was adapted for the woollen and worsted trade with equal success. The machine of Arkwright was adapted for roving by means of a revolving cam. For the process of carding, additions and improvements of great ingenuity were affixed to the carding-cylinder patented by Lewis Paul in 1748, transforming it into an entirely new machine. The most important of these were the crank and comb, said to have been used by Hargreaves, but which it is now known that Hargreaves stole from Arkwright; the perpetual revolving cloth called the feeder, said to have been used by John Lees, a Quaker of Manchester, in 1778, but which Arkwright had undoubtedly used previously at Cromford; and filleted cards on the second cylinder, which also must have been used by Arkwright in 1778, although a manufacturer named Wood claimed to have first used them in 1774. Indeed, the whole of the complicated self-acting machinery, which without the intervention of hand labor performed the different processes necessary to change raw cotton into thread suitable for warp, was substantially the invention of Arkwright; and while each separate machine was in itself a remarkable triumph of inventive skill, the construction of the whole series, and the adaptation of each to its individual function in the continuous succession of operations, must be regarded as an almost unique achievement in the history of invention. INTELLECTUAL REVOLT OF GERMANY GOETHE'S "WERTHER" REVIVES ROMANTICISM A.D. 1775 KARL HILLEBRAND The latter half of the eighteenth century was, throughout Europe, a period of revolt against the old ideas, the outworn bonds of mediæval society. In art and literature the older system, with its elaborately planned rules and formulas, is technically called "classicism"; and the outburst against it established "romanticism," the spirit of desire, the longing for higher things, an impulse which ruled the intellectual world for generations, and which many critics still believe to be the chief hope for the future. Romanticism found expression, more or less impassioned and defiant, in every land, but its earliest and strongest impulse is generally regarded as having sprung from Germany. The sceptical, half-cynical rule of Frederick the Great had left men's minds free, and imagination was everywhere aroused. The early culmination of its extravagance is found in the youth of Goethe and Schiller, Germany's two greatest poets; and Goethe's famous novel, _The Sorrows of Young Werther_, became the text-book of the rising generation of romanticists. Werther kills himself for disappointed love, and the book has been seriously accused of creating an epidemic of suicide in Germany. Hillebrand, writer of the following analysis of the period and the movement, is among the foremost of present-day German authorities upon the subject. Goethe was twenty-six years old when he accepted (1775) the invitation of Charles Augustus, and transported to Weimar the tone and the _allures_ of the literary bohemia of Strasburg. There, to the terror of the good burghers of that small residence, to the still greater terror of the microscopic courtiers, began that "genial" and wild life which he and his august companion led during several years. Hunting, riding on horseback, masquerades, private theatricals, satirical verse, improvisation of all sorts, flirtation particularly, filled up day and night, to the scandal of all worthy folk, who were utterly at a loss to account for his serene highness saying "_Du_" to this Frankfort _roturier_. The gay Dowager Duchess, Wieland's firm friend, looked upon these juvenile freaks with a more lenient eye; for she well knew that the fermentation once over, a noble, generous wine would remain. "We are playing the devil here," writes Goethe to Merck; "we hold together, the Duke and I, and go our own way. Of course, in doing so we knock against the wicked, and also against the good; but we shall succeed; for the gods are evidently on our side." Soon Herder was to join them there, unfortunately not always satisfied with the results of his teaching about absolute liberty of genius. The whole generation bore with impatience the yoke of the established order, of authority under whatever form, whether the fetters were those of literary convention or social prejudice, of the state or the church. The _ego_ affirmed its absolute, inalienable right; it strove to manifest itself according to its caprices, and refused to acknowledge any check. Individual inspiration was a sacred thing, which reality with its rules and prejudices could only spoil and deflower. Now, according to the temperament of each, they rose violently against society and its laws, or resigned themselves silently to a dire necessity. The one in Titanic effort climbed Olympus, heaving Pelion on Ossa; the other wiped a furtive tear out of his eye, and, aspiring to deliverance, dreamed of an ideal happiness. Sometimes in the same poet the two dispositions succeed each other. "Cover thy sky with vapor and clouds, O Zeus," exclaims Goethe's Prometheus, "and practise thy strength on tops of oaks and summits of mountains like the child who beheads thistles. Thou must, nevertheless, leave me my earth and my hut, which thou hast not built, and my hearth, whose flame thou enviest. Is it not my heart, burning with a sacred ardor, which alone has accomplished all? And should I thank thee, who wast sleeping whilst I worked?" The same young man who had put into the mouth of the rebellious Titan this haughty and defiant outburst, at other moments, when he was discouraged and weary of the struggle, took refuge within himself. Like Werther, "finding his world within himself, he spoils and caresses his tender heart, like a sickly child, all whose caprices we indulge." One or the other of those attitudes toward reality, the active and the passive, were soon taken by the whole youth of the time; and just as Schiller's _Brigands_ gave birth to a whole series of wild dramas, _Werther_ left in the novels of the time a long line of tears. More than that, even in reality Karl Moor found imitators who engaged in an open struggle against society, and one met at every corner languishing Siegwarts, whose delicate soul was hurt by the cruel contact of the world. What strikes us most in this morbid sentimentality is the eternal melancholy sighing after nature. Ossian's cloudy sadness and Young's dark Nights veil every brow. They fly into the solitudes of the forests in order to dream freely of a less brutal world. They must, indeed, have been very far from nature to seek for it with such avidity. Many, in fact, of these ardent, feverish young men became in the end a prey, some to madness, others to suicide. A species of moral epidemic, like that which followed upon the apparent failure of the Revolution in 1799, had broken out. The germ of Byronism may be clearly detected already in the Wertherism of those times. Exaggerated and overstrained imaginations found insufficient breathing-room in the world, and met on all sides with boundaries to their unlimited demands. Hearts, accustomed to follow the dictates of their own inspiration alone, bruised themselves against the sharp angles of reality. The thirst for action which consumed their ardent youth could not be quenched, in fact, in the narrow limits of domestic life; and public life did not exist. Frederick had done great things, but only, like the three hundred other German governments, to exclude the youth of the middle classes from active life. Thence the general uneasiness. _Werther_ was as much an effect as a cause of this endemic disease; above all, it was the expression of a general state of mind. It is this which constitutes its historical importance, while the secret of its lasting value is to be found in its artistic form. Besides, if I may say so without paradox, the disease was but an excess of health, a juvenile crisis through which Herder, young Goethe, Schiller, and indeed the whole generation had to pass. "Oh," exclaimed old Goethe fifty years later in a conversation with young Felix Mendelssohn, "oh, if I could but write a fourth volume of my life! It should be a history of the year 1775, which no one knows or can write better than I. How the nobility, feeling itself outrun by the middle classes, began to do all it could not to be left behind in the race; how liberalism, Jacobinism, and all that devilry awoke; how a new life began; how we studied and poetized, made love and wasted our time; how we young folk, full of life and activity, but awkward as we could be, scoffed at the aristocratic propensities of Messrs. Nicolai and Co., in Berlin, who at that time reigned supreme." "Ah, yes, that was a spring, when everything was budding and shooting, when more than one tree was yet bare, while others were already full of leaves. All that in the year 1775!" Old pedantic Nicholai, at whom he scoffed thus, foresaw, with his prosy common-sense, what would happen "with all those confounded striplings," as Wieland called them, "who gave themselves airs as if they were accustomed to play at blind-man's buff with Shakespeare." "In four or five years," said he in 1776, "this fine enthusiasm will have passed away like smoke; a few drops of spirit will be found in the empty helmet, and a big _caput mortuum_ in the crucible." This proved true certainly for the great majority, but not so as regards the two coursers which then broke loose, and for him who had cut their traces and released them. Goethe, indeed, modified, or at least cleared up, his early views under the influence of a deeper study of nature and the sight of ancient and Renaissance art in Italy (1786-1788); Schiller put himself to school under Kant (1790), and went out of it with a completely altered philosophy: Kant himself became another after, if not in consequence of, the great King's death (1786); Herder alone remained faithful throughout to the creed he had himself preached. The way opened by Herder, although partly and temporarily abandoned during the classical period which intervened, was followed again by the third generation of the founders of German culture, the so-called Romanticists, and by all the great scholars, who, in the first half of this century, revived the historical sciences in Germany. Herder's ideas have, indeed, penetrated our whole thought to such a degree, while his works are so unfinished and disconnected, that it is hardly possible for us to account for the extraordinary effect these ideas and works produced in their day, except by marking the contrast which they present with the then reigning methods and habits as well as the surprising influence exercised by Herder personally. From his twenty-fifth year, indeed, he was a sovereign. His actual and uncontested sway was not, it is true, prolonged beyond a period of about sixteen years, albeit his name figured to a much later time on the list of living potentates. It is also true that when the seeds thrown by him had grown luxuriantly, and were bearing fruit, the sower was almost entirely forgotten or wilfully ignored. The generation, however, of the "_Stuermer und Draenger_,"[58] or, as they were pleased to denominate themselves, the "original geniuses," looked up to Herder as their leader and prophet. Some of them turned from him later on and went back to the exclusive worship of classical antiquity; but their very manner of doing homage to it bore witness to Herder's influence. The following generation threw itself no less exclusively into the Middle Ages; but what, after all, was it doing if not following Herder's example, when it raked up Dantes and Calderons out of the dust in order to confront them with and oppose them to Vergils and Racines? However they might repudiate, nay, even forget, their teacher, his doctrines already pervaded the whole intellectual atmosphere of Germany, and men's minds breathed them in with the very air they inhaled. To-day they belong to Europe. Herder, I repeat, is certainly neither a classical nor a finished writer. He has no doubt gone out of fashion, because his style is pompous and diffuse, his composition loose or fragmentary; because his reasoning lacks firmness and his erudition solidity. Still, no other German writer of note exercised the important indirect influence which was exercised by Herder. In this I do not allude to Schelling and his philosophy, which received more than one impulse from Herder's ideas; nor to Hegel, who reduced them to a metaphysical system and defended them with his wonderful dialectics. But F.A. Wolf, when he points out to us in Homer the process of epic poetry; Niebuhr, in revealing to us the growth of Rome, the birth of her religious and national legends, the slow, gradual formation of her marvellous constitution; Savigny, when he proves that the Roman civil law, that masterpiece of human ingenuity, was not the work of a wise legislator, but rather the wisdom of generations and of centuries; Eichhorn, when he wrote the history of German law and created thereby a new branch of historical science which has proved one of the most fertile; A.W. Schlegel and his school, when they transplanted all the poetry of other nations to Germany by means of imitations which are real wonders of assimilation; Frederick Schlegel, when, in the _Wisdom of the Hindoos_ he opened out that vast field of comparative linguistic science, which Bopp and so many others have since cultivated with such success; Alexander von Humboldt and Karl Ritter, when they gave a new life to geography by showing the earth in its growth and development and coherence; W. von Humboldt, when he established the laws of language as well as those of self-government; Jacob Grimm, when he brought German philology into existence, while his brother Wilhelm made a science of Northern mythology; still later on, D.F. Strauss, when, in the days of our own youth, he placed the myth and the legend, with their unconscious origin and growth, not alone in opposition to the idea of Deity intervening to interrupt established order, but also to that of imposture and conscious fraud; Otfr. Mueller, when he proved that Greek mythology, far from containing moral abstractions or historical facts, is the involuntary personification of surrounding nature, subsequently developed by imagination; Max Mueller, even, when he creates the new science of comparative mythology--what else are they doing but applying and working out Herder's ideas? And if we turn our eyes to other nations, what else were Burke and Coleridge, B. Constant and A. Thierry, Guizot and A. de Tocqueville--what are Renan and Taine, Carlyle and Darwin doing, each in his own branch, but applying and developing Herder's two fundamental principles, that of organic evolution and that of the entireness of the individual? For it was Herder who discovered the true spirit of history, and in this sense it is that Goethe was justified in saying of him: "A noble mind, desirous of fathoming man's soul in whatever direction it may shoot forth, searcheth throughout the universe for sound and word which flow through the lands in a thousand sources and brooks; wanders through the oldest as the newest regions and listens in every zone." "He knew how to find this soul wherever it lay hid, whether robed in grave disguise, or lightly clothed in the garb of play, in order to found for the future this lofty rule: Humanity be our eternal aim!" Among the young literary rebels who, under Herder's guidance, attempted, toward and after 1775, to overthrow all conventionalism, all authority, even all law and rule, in order to put in their stead the absolute self-government of genius, freed from all tutorship--the foremost were the two greatest German poets, Goethe and Schiller. Goethe's _Goetz_ and _Werther_, Schiller's _Brigands_ and _Cabal and Love_, were greeted as the promising forerunners of the national literature to come. Their subjects were German and modern, not French or classic; in their plan they affected Shakespearean liberty; in their language they were at once familiar, strong, and original; in their inspiration they were protests against the social prejudices and political abuses of the time, vehement outbursts of individuality against convention. Not twenty years had passed away, when both the revolutionists had become calm and resigned liberal conservatives, who understood and taught that liberty is possible only under the empire of law; that the real world with all its limits had a right as well as the inner world, which knows no frontiers; that to be completely free man must fly into the ideal sphere of art, science, or formless religion. Not that they abjured "the dreams of their youth." The nucleus of their new creed was contained in their first belief; but it had been developed into a system of social views more in harmony with society and its exigencies, of æsthetic opinions more independent of reality and its accidents, of philosophical ideas more speculative and methodical. In other words, Goethe and Schiller never ceased to believe, as they had done at twenty, that all vital creations in nature as in society are the result of growth and organic development, not of intentional, self-conscious planning, and that individuals on their part act powerfully only through their nature in its entirety, not through one faculty alone, such as reason or will, separated from instinct, imagination, temperament, passion, etc. Only they came to the conviction that here existed general laws which presided over organic development, and that there was a means of furthering in the individual the harmony between temperament, character, understanding, and imagination, without sacrificing one to the others. Hence they shaped for themselves a general view of nature and mankind, society and history, which may not have become the permanent view of the whole nation; but which for a time was predominant, which even now is still held by many, and which in some respects will always be the ideal of the best men in Germany, even when circumstances have wrought a change in the intellectual and social conditions of their country, so as to necessitate a total transformation and accommodation of those views. We cannot regard it merely as the natural effect of advancing years if Goethe and Schiller modified and cleared their views; if Kant, whose great emancipating act, the _Critique of Pure Reason_, falls chronologically in the same period (1781), corrected what seemed to him too absolute in his system, and reconstructed from the basis of the conscience that metaphysical world which he had destroyed by his analysis of the intellect. The world just then was undergoing profound changes. The great "Philosopher-king" had descended to the tomb (1786), and with him the absolute liberty of thought which had reigned for forty-six years. The French Revolution, after having exalted all generous souls, and seemingly confirmed the triumph of liberty and justice which the generation had witnessed in America, took a direction and drifted into excesses which undeceived, sobered, and saddened even the most hopeful believers. As regards personal circumstances, the Italian journey of Goethe (1786-1788) and his scientific investigations into nature, the study of Kant's new philosophy to which Schiller submitted his undisciplined mind (1790 and 1791), were the high-schools out of which their genius came strengthened and purified, although their æsthetic and moral doctrines did not remain quite unimpaired by them. I shall endeavor to give an idea of this double process and its results at the risk of being still more abstract and dry than before. Man is the last and highest link in nature; his task is to understand what she aims at in him and then to fulfil her intentions. This view of Herder's was Goethe's starting-point in the formation of his _Weltanschauung_ (or general view of things). "All the world," says one of the characters in _Wilhelm Meister_, "lies before us, like a vast quarry before the architect. He does not deserve the name if he does not compose with these accidental natural materials an image whose source is in his mind, and if he does not do it with the greatest possible economy, solidity, and perfection. All that we find outside of us, nay, within us, is object-matter; but deep within us lives also a power capable of giving an ideal form to this matter. This creative power allows us no rest till we have produced that ideal form in one or the other way, either without us in finished works or in our own life." Here we already have in germ Schiller's idea that life ought to be a work of art. But how do we achieve this task, continually impeded as we are by circumstances and by our fellow-creatures, who will not always leave us in peace to develop our individual characters in perfect conformity with nature? In our relations with our neighbor, Goethe--like Lessing and Wieland, Kant and Herder, and all the great men of his and the preceding age, in England and France as well as in Germany--recommended absolute toleration, not only of opinions, but also of individualities, particularly those in which Nature manifests herself "undefiled." As to circumstances, which is only another name for fate, he preached and practised resignation. At every turn of our life, in fact, we meet with limits; our intelligence has its frontiers which bar its way; our senses are limited and can only embrace an infinitely small part of nature; few of our wishes can be fulfilled; privation and sufferings await us at every moment. "Privation is thy lot, privation! That is the eternal song which resounds at every moment, which, our whole life through, each hour sings hoarsely to our ears!" laments Faust. What remains, then, for man? "Everything cries to us that we must _resign_ ourselves." "There are few men, however, who, conscious of the privations and sufferings in store for them in life, and desirous to avoid the necessity of resigning themselves anew in each particular case, have the courage to perform the act of resignation once for all;" who say to themselves that there are eternal and necessary laws to which we must submit, and that we had better do it without grumbling; who "endeavor to form principles which are not liable to be destroyed, but are rather confirmed by contact with reality." In other words, when man has discovered the laws of nature, both moral and physical, he must accept them as the limits of his actions and desires; he must not wish for eternity of life or inexhaustible capacities of enjoyment, understanding, and acting, any more than he wishes for the moon. For rebellion against these laws must needs be an act of impotency as well as of deceptive folly. By resignation, on the contrary, serene resignation, the human soul is purified; for thereby it becomes free of selfish passions and arrives at that intellectual superiority in which the contemplation and understanding of things give sufficient contentment, without making it needful for man to stretch out his hands to take possession of them; a thought which Goethe's friend, Schiller, has magnificently developed in his grand philosophical poems. Optimism and pessimism disappear at once, as well as fatalism; the highest and most refined intellect again accepts the world, as children and ignorant toilers do: as a given necessity. He does not even think the world could be otherwise, and within its limits he not only enjoys and suffers, but also works gayly, trying like Horace, to subject things to himself, but resigned to submit to them when they are invincible. Thus the simple Hellenic existence which, contrary to Christianity, but according to nature, accepted the present without ceaselessly thinking of death and another world, and acted in that present and in the circumstances allotted to each by fate, without wanting to overstep the boundaries of nature, would revive again in our modern world and free us forever from the torment of unaccomplished wishes and of vain terrors. The sojourn in Italy, during which Goethe lived outside the struggle for life, outside the competition and contact of practical activity, in the contemplation of nature and art, developed this view--the spectator's view--which will always be that of the artist and of the thinker, strongly opposed to that of the actor on the stage of human life. _Iphigenie_, _Torquato Tasso_, _Wilhelm Meister_, are the fruits and the interpreters of this conception of the moral world. What ripened and perfected it so as to raise it into a general view, not only of morality, but also of the great philosophical questions which man is called upon to answer, was his study of nature, greatly furthered during his stay in Italy. The problem which lay at the bottom of all the vague longing of his generation for nature _he_ was to solve. It became his incessant endeavor to understand the coherence and unity of nature. "You are forever searching for what is necessary in nature," Schiller wrote to him once, "but you search for it by the most difficult way. You take the whole of nature in order to obtain light on the particular case; you look into the totality for the explanation of the individual existence. From the simplest organism (in nature) you ascend step by step to the more complicated, and finally construct the most complicated of all--man--out of the materials of the whole of nature. In thus creating man anew under the guidance of nature, you penetrate into his mysterious organism." And, indeed, as there is a wonderful harmony with nature in Goethe the poet and the man, so there is the same harmony in Goethe the savant and the thinker; nay, even science he practised as a poet. As one of the greatest physicists of our days, Helmholtz, has said of him, "He did not try to translate nature into abstract conceptions, but takes it as a complete work of art, which must reveal its contents spontaneously to an intelligent observer." Goethe never became a thorough experimentalist; he did not want "to extort the secret from nature by pumps and retorts." He waited patiently for a voluntary revelation, _i.e._, until he could surprise that secret by an intuitive glance; for it was his conviction that if you live intimately with Nature she will sooner or later disclose her mysteries to you. If you read his _Songs_, his _Werther_, his _Wahlverwandtschaften_, you feel that extraordinary intimacy--I had almost said identification--with nature, present everywhere. Werther's love springs up with the blossom of all nature; he begins to sink and nears his self-made tomb while autumn, the death of nature, is in the fields and woods. So does the moon spread her mellow light over his garden, as "the mild eye of a true friend over his destiny." Never was there a poet who humanized nature or naturalized human feeling, if I might say so, to the same degree as Goethe. Now, this same love of nature he brought into his scientific researches. He began his studies of nature early, and he began them as he was to finish them--with geology. Buffon's great views on the revolutions of the earth had made a deep impression upon him, although he was to end as the declared adversary of that vulcanism which we can trace already at the bottom of Buffon's theory--naturally enough, when we think how uncongenial all violence in society and nature was to him, how he looked everywhere for slow, uninterrupted evolution. From theoretical study he had early turned to direct observation; and when his administrative functions obliged him to survey the mines of the little dukedom, ample opportunity was offered for positive studies. As early as 1778, in a paper, _Granite_, he wrote: "I do not fear the reproach that a spirit of contradiction draws me from the contemplation of the human heart--this most mobile, most mutable and fickle part of the creation--to the observation of (granite) the oldest, firmest, deepest, most immovable son of nature. For all natural things are in connection with each other." It was his life's task to search for the links of this coherence in order to find that unity which he knew to be in the moral as well as material universe. From those "first and most solid beginnings of our existence" he turned to the history of plants and to the anatomy of the animals which cover this crust of the earth. The study of Spinoza confirmed him in the direction thus taken. "There I am on and under the mountains, seeking the divine _in herbis et lapidibus_," says he, in Spinoza's own words; and again: "Pardon me if I like to remain silent when people speak of a divine being which I can know only in _rebus singularibus_." This pantheistic view grew stronger and stronger with years; but it became a pantheism very different from that of Parmenides, for whom being and thinking are one, or from that of Giordano Bruno, which rests on the analogy of a universal soul with the human soul, or even from that of Spinoza himself, which takes its start from the relations of the physical world with the conceptive world, and of both with the divine one. Goethe's pantheism always tends to discover the cohesion of the members of nature, of which man is one: if once he has discovered this universal unity, where there are no gaps in space nor leaps in time, he need not search further for the divine. It is analogy which helps us to form these intuitive or platonic ideas. It was through analogy that Goethe arrived at his great discoveries in natural science, and I only repeat what such men as Johannes Mueller, Baer, and Helmholtz have been willing to acknowledge, when I say that the poet's eye has been as keen as that of any naturalist. Kant had contended that there might be a superior intelligence, which, contrary to human intelligence, goes from the general to the particular; and Goethe thought--he proved, I might say--that in man too some of this divine intelligence can operate and shine, if only in isolated sparks. It was a spark of this kind which, first at Padua on the sight of a fanpalm-tree, then again, on the eve of his departure from Palermo, during a walk in the public garden amid the Southern vegetation, revealed to him the law of the metamorphosis of plants. He found an analogy between the different parts of the same plant which seemed to repeat themselves: unity and evolution were revealed to him at once. Three years later the sight of a half-broken sheep-skull, which he found by chance on the sand of the Venetian Lido, taught him that the same law, as he had suspected, applied also to vertebrate animals, and that the skull might be considered as a series of strongly modified vertebræ. He had, in fact, already hinted at the principle, shortly after put forward by Lamarck, and long afterward developed and firmly established by Darwin. He considered the difference in the anatomical structure of animal species as modifications of a type or planned structure, modifications brought about by the difference of life, food, and dwellings. He had discovered as early as 1786 the intermaxillary bone in man, i.e., the remnant of a part which had had to be adapted to the exigencies of the changed structure; and proved thereby that there had been a primitive similarity of structure, which had been transformed by development of some parts and atrophy of others. Goethe's sketch of an _Introduction into Comparative Anatomy_, which he wrote in 1795, urged by A. von Humboldt, has remained, if I may believe those competent to judge, a fundamental stone of modern science. And I may be allowed, as I am unversed in such matters, to invoke the authority of one of the most eminent living physiologists, Helmholtz, who says of Goethe's anatomical essay, that in it the poet "teaches, with the greatest clearness and decision, that all differences in the structure of animal species are to be considered as changes of one fundamental type, which have been brought about by fusion, transformation, aggrandizement, diminution, or total annihilation of several parts. This has, indeed, become, in the present state of comparative anatomy, the leading idea of this science. It has never since been expressed better or more clearly than by Goethe: and after-times have made few essential modifications."[59] Now, the same may be said, I am told, in spite of some differences as to details, of his metamorphosis of plants. I do not mean by this to say that Goethe is the real author of the theory of evolution. There is between him and Mr. Darwin the difference which there is between Vico and Niebuhr, Herder and F.A. Wolf. In the one case we have a fertile hint, in the other a well-established system, worked out by proofs and convincing arguments. Nevertheless, when a man like Johannes Mueller sees in Goethe's views "the presentiment of a distant ideal of natural history," we may be allowed to see in Goethe one of the fathers of the doctrine of evolution, which, after all, is only an application of Herder's principle of _fieri_ to the material world. After having thus gone through the whole series of organisms, from the simplest to the most complicated, Goethe finds that he has laid, as it were the last crowning stone of the universal pyramid, raised from the materials of the whole quarry of nature; that he has reconstructed man. And here begins a new domain; for after all for mankind the _highest_ study must be man himself. The social problems of property, education, marriage, occupied Goethe's mind all his life through, although more particularly in the last thirty years. The relations of man with nature, the question how far he is free from the laws of necessity, how far subject to them, are always haunting him. If you read the _Wahlverwandtschaften_, the _Wanderjahre_, the second _Faust_, you will find those grave questions approached from all sides. I shall not, however, enter here into an exposition of Goethe's political, social, and educational views, not only because they mostly belong to a later period, but especially because they have never found a wide echo, nor determined the opinions of an important portion of the nation, nor entered as integrating principles into its lay creed. Not so with the metaphysical conclusion which he reached by this path, and which is somewhat different from the pantheism of his youth, inasmuch as he combines with it somewhat of the fundamental ideas of Leibnitz, which were also Lessing's, and which, after all, form a sort of return to Christianity, as understood in its widest sense, in the sense in which it harmonizes with Plato's idealism. "Thinking is not to be severed from what is thought, nor will from movement." Nature consequently is God, and God is nature, but in this God-nature man lives as an imperishable monad, capable of going through thousands of metamorphoses, but destined to rest on each stage of this unlimited existence, in full possession of the present, in which he has to expand his whole being by action or enjoyment. This conception of life was not, as you will see, the creation of an imagination longing to pass beyond the conditions of human existence--which is the idealism of the "general"--but the highest result of the poet's insight into the order of nature. I have said that there was an antagonism between Kant's views and those of Herder and Goethe, and that this antagonism has been ever since sensibly felt in the intellectual history of Germany. Some efforts were made to reconcile them, as for instance by Schiller. Sometimes a sort of alliance took place, as in 1813, when the Romanticists, who were quite under the spell of the Herder-Goethe ideas, invoked the aid of the moral energy, which was a special characteristic of Kant's disciples; but the antagonism lives on not the less even now in the German nation, as the antagonism between Hume and Burke, Locke and Berkeley, Fielding and Richardson, Shakespeare and Milton, nay, between Renaissance and Puritanism in spite of their apparent death, is still living in the English nation. This difference is, as will happen in this world, much more the difference between two dispositions of mind, character, and temperament, than between two opposite theories; or at least the conflicting opinions are much more the result of our moral and intellectual dispositions than of objective observation and abstract argumentation. Germany owes much to the stern unflinching moral principles of Kant; she owes still more, however, to the serene and large views of Goethe. The misfortune of both ideals is that they cannot and will never be accessible save to a small _élite_, that of Kant to a moral, that of Goethe to an intellectual, élite. But are not all ideals of an essentially aristocratic nature? The German ideals, however, are so more than others, and the consequence has been a wide gap between the mass of the nation and the minority which has been true to those ideals. The numerical majority, indeed, of the German nation has either remained faithful to the Church, though without fanaticism, or has become materialistic and rationalistic. It is a great misfortune for a nation when its greatest writer in his greatest works is only understood by the happy few, and when its greatest moralist preaches a moral which is above the common force of human nature. The only means of union between the nation and the intellectual and moral aristocracy, which has kept and guarded that treasure, as well as the only link between these two aristocratic views of life themselves, would be furnished by religion, a religion such as Lessing, Mendelssohn, and above all Schleiermacher, propounded, such as reigned all over Germany forty or fifty years ago, before party spirit had set to work, and the flattest of rationalisms had again invaded the nation--a religion corresponding, for the mass, to what Goethe's and Kant's philosophy, which is neither materialism nor spiritualism, is for the few--a religion based on feeling and intuition, on conscience and reverence, but a religion without dogmas, without ritual, without forms, above all without exclusiveness and without intolerance. I doubt whether this mild and noble spirit, which is by no means indifferentism, will soon revive, as I doubt whether Germany will quickly get over the conflict between the traditional and the rationalistic spirit which mars her public life; whether too she will soon reach that political ideal which England realized most fully in the first half of this century, and which consists in a perfect equilibrium between the spirit of tradition and that of rationalism. However, although Kant's lofty and Goethe's deep philosophy of life is now the treasure of a small minority only, it has none the less pervaded all the great scientific and literary work done up to the middle of this century. It has presided over the birth of our new state; and the day will certainly come when public opinion in Germany will turn away from the tendency of her present literature, science, and politics--a somewhat narrow patriotism, a rather shallow materialism, and a thoroughly false parliamentary _régime_--and come back to the spirit of the generations to whom, after all, she owes her intellectual, though not perhaps her political and material, civilization. FOOTNOTES: [58] "Storm and stress," the period of intellectual revolt, struggle, and emancipation in Germany.--ED. [59] Written in 1853, five years before the appearance of Mr. Darwin's great work. PESTALOZZI'S METHOD OF EDUCATION A.D. 1775 GEORGE RIPLEY Modern education began when Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi established his experimental school at Neuhof in 1775. Comenius had shown the true path of teaching. Pestalozzi was the enthusiast who felt with burning passion the injustice done to the child in the schoolhouses of his day. He protested that the old education was all wrong, and he proved this by his achievements, establishing a little school in his own home at Neuhof, and then in 1800 a larger one at Burgdorf. The Swiss Government adopted his ideas. Teachers were sent to learn of him. From Burgdorf is sprung the whole school system of to-day. As a practical school-teacher Pestalozzi was nevertheless a failure in the end, because he relied on no force but that of personal affection to control his pupils. This divinest of methods succeeded remarkably while his schools were so small as to bring him into close paternal contact with every child. But at the large institution at Yverdon, of which he was master in his later years, the method broke down badly. Hence there were not wanting in his own times critics who pronounced him a failure. They did not see that beside his insistence on love as the "way," the reformer had an even more important message for the world. "The grand change advocated by Pestalozzi," says Mr. Quick, "was a change of object. The main object of the school should not be to teach, but to develop." In this sentence we have the key to all modern education, though not every teacher even to-day has digested fully the idea that his duty is less that of stuffing a child full of facts than of developing its character and abilities, encouraging whatever of value exists within itself. The full importance of Pestalozzi's work was recognized by keener intellects even in his own lifetime. Queen Louise, the heroine of Prussia, wished she could fly to Switzerland to grasp Pestalozzi's hand. His system was introduced throughout Northern Germany and did wonders for the development of the German people. To-day it is the system of the world. After completing the usual course of education, Pestalozzi continued his studies, with a view to engaging in the ministry of the gospel, to which the wishes of his friends, as well as his own deep religious feelings, had early destined him. This course, however, was soon abandoned. He appeared for the first and only time in the pulpit as a candidate, and then, discouraged by the ill-success of the experiment, renounced all aspirations to the sacred office. Soon after, he applied himself to the law, but with a strong predilection for political studies. At this time his inquiries seem to have taken the direction which ultimately led him to the discoveries that characterize his name. He saw clearly the great abuses in society which prevailed in his native country; and by dwelling on their enormity his active mind suggested means of relief which could be realized only by a more thorough and judicious education of the people at large. His first publication, issued while a student at law, contained his views on this subject. It was an essay on the bearing which education ought to have upon our respective callings. It was not for a mind like Pestalozzi's to behold the evils which had been brought to his notice without deep and painful emotion. This was experienced to such a degree that he was thrown into a state of morbid excitement; and, at length, a dangerous illness broke off his ardent researches. Still his mind was not quieted. His thoughts could not be prevented from dwelling on the painful subjects to which he had given his whole soul. Prostrate on the bed of sickness, he continued to indulge himself in dark musings; and his fancy represented the prospects of the future, both for society and for himself, in gloomy colors. The strength of his constitution, however, carried him through the disorder; and from the moment of his recovery he resolved to follow the leadings of Providence, and, setting aside all human considerations, to act up to the full extent of his conceptions, and if possible to put his views to the test of experience. He now abandoned all his former studies, committed his papers to the flames, and believing that the evils into which society was plunged were mainly owing to a departure from the straight and simple path of nature, to the school of nature he resolved to go. Accordingly he quitted Zurich and went to Kirchberg, in the Canton of Bern, where he became an apprentice to a farmer of the name of Tschiffeli. After qualifying himself under the direction of Tschiffeli for the charge of a farm, he purchased a tract of waste land in the neighborhood of Lensburg, in the Canton of Bern, on which he erected a dwelling-house, with suitable buildings, and gave it the name of Neuhof. The work of his hands here was prospered. He soon brought himself into comfortable circumstances, and saw his prospects as bright and happy as could be wished. At this time he formed a connection in marriage with Ann Schulthess, the daughter of one of the wealthiest merchants in Zurich, a young lady of a refined education and great dignity of character. This marriage, while it increased the happiness of his domestic circle, offered him a new sphere of useful exertion, by giving him an interest in a flourishing cotton manufactory. After eight years of successful industry at Neuhof, Pestalozzi resolved to make a fair trial of the plan, which he had long had at heart, of giving the lower orders such an education as should raise them to a condition more consistent with the capacities of their nature and with the spirit of Christianity. To avoid the interference of others as much as possible, and to place the beneficial results of his system in a clearer light, he selected the objects of his experiment from the very dregs of the people. If he found a child who was left in destitute circumstances from the death of its parents or from their incompetency and vice, he immediately took him home, so that, in a short time, his house was converted into an asylum, in which fifty orphan or pauper children were fed, clothed, and instructed in the different employments from which they might afterward be able to gain a livelihood, and for the exercise of which his farm and the cotton manufactory, in which he was a partner, afforded an ample opportunity. But this experiment, so happily conceived by Pestalozzi, was destined to prove unsuccessful. He possessed few of the means necessary to bring it to a prosperous issue. His zeal, which led him to undertake the most magnificent enterprises, was not combined with sufficient patience, practical knowledge of human nature, and fixed habits of order and economy to enable him to realize the plans which he proposed; and at length he was obliged to abandon his experiment in despair. It was not, however, altogether useless. He had the satisfaction of knowing that he had rescued more than a hundred children from the degrading influences under which they were born, and planted the seeds of virtue and religion in their hearts; and, in addition to this, his qualifications for the task to which his life was now devoted were greatly increased by this insight he had acquired into its real nature, and the means of its accomplishment. The results of his experience at Neuhof, from the time of opening his asylum in 1775, to its close in 1790, are left on record in the valuable works which he published during that interval. The first of these, entitled _Leonard and Gertrude_, is a popular novel, under which form he chose to convey his ideas respecting the condition of the lower classes, and the means of their improvement. The success of this work was not what he expected. Though universally popular as a novel, there were few who entered into the spirit of the deep wisdom which it contained. This was published in 1781, and, in order to draw the attention of its readers to the great object which he had in view, he published another work in the following year, entitled _Christopher and Eliza_. But this also failed of the purpose for which it was principally intended. Still Pestalozzi was not discouraged in his attempts to make the public acquainted with his new ideas. He now addressed himself to the literary world, as he had before written expressly for the common people. In a journal published at Basel, under the direction of Iselin, a distinguished philanthropist, he inserted a series of essays, entitled _Evening Hours of a Hermit_, which contained a more systematic account of his mode of instruction and his plans for national improvement. But the current of public thought was in an opposite direction, and little attention could be gained to the plans which he labored to introduce. His success was somewhat better in a weekly publication, which he undertook at the beginning of 1782, under the title of the _Swiss Journal_. This was continued for one year, and forms two octavo volumes in which a great variety of subjects is discussed, connected with his favorite purpose of national improvement. Soon after the breaking up of his establishment at Neuhof, the country began to be agitated with the excesses of the French Revolution, and Pestalozzi, disappointed in the sanguine hopes which he had formed at the commencement of that event, and disgusted with the scenes of brutality and lawlessness which it had occasioned, wrote his _Inquiry into the Course of Nature in the Developement of the Human Species_. This work, published in 1797, marks a new epoch in the development of his views. It was written at a moment when his mind was covered with the deepest gloom, and he was almost ready to sink under the struggle between the bright conceptions of improvement which he had formed and the darkness which hung over the existing institutions of society. The following questions, which he proposes to himself at the commencement of the work, will give some idea of its plan and of the spirit in which it was composed: "What am I? What is the human species? What have I done? What is the human species doing? "I want to know what the course of my life, such as it has been, has made of me? and I want to know what the course of life, such as it has been, has made of the human species? "I want to know on what ground the volition of the human species and its opinions rest under the circumstances in which it is placed?" The following portrait of himself, which he draws at the close of the volume, is highly characteristic of his feelings at this time: "Thousands pass away, as nature gave them birth, in the conception of sensual gratification, and they seek no more. Tens of thousands are overwhelmed by the burdens of craft and trade; by the weight of the hammer, the ell, or the crane, and they are no more. But I know a man, who did seek more; the joy of simplicity dwelt in his heart, and he had faith in mankind such as few men have; his soul was made for friendship; love was his element, and fidelity his strongest tie. But he was not made by this world nor for it; and wherever he was placed in it he was found unfit. "And the world that found him thus, asked not whether it was his fault or the fault of another; but it bruised him with an iron hammer, as the bricklayers break an old brick to fill up crevices. But though bruised, he yet trusted in mankind more than in himself; and he proposed to himself a great purpose, which to attain he suffered agonies and learned lessons such as few mortals had learned before. "He could not, nor would he, become generally useful, but for his purpose he was more useful than most men are for theirs; and he expected justice at the hands of mankind, whom he still loved with an innocent love. But he found none. Those that made themselves his judges, without further examination confirmed the former sentence, that he was generally and absolutely useless. This was the grain of sand which decided the doubtful balance of his wretched destinies. "He is no more; thou mayest know him no more; all that remains of him is the decayed remnants of his destroyed existence. He fell as a fruit that falls before it is ripe, whose blossom has been nipped by the northern gale, or whose core is eaten out by the gnawing worm. "Stranger that passest by, refuse not a tear of sympathy; even in falling, this fruit turned itself toward the trunk, on the branches of which it lingered through the summer, and it whispered to the tree: 'Verily, even in my death will I nourish thy roots.' "Stranger that passest by, spare the perishing fruit, and allow the dust of its corruption to nourish the roots of the tree, on whose branches it lived, sickened, and died." But a brighter day for Pestalozzi was about to dawn. He now became sensible of the great error of his former plans, which made too much account of external circumstances, without exerting sufficient influence on the inward nature, which it was his object to elevate. His mind gradually arrived at the important truth, which is the keystone of the system he afterward matured: "That the amelioration of outward circumstances will be the effect, but can never be the means, of mental and moral improvement." He had now succeeded in awakening the attention of the Swiss Government to the importance of his plans for national education, and was invited to take charge of an asylum for orphans and other destitute children, which should be formed under his own direction and supported at the public expense. The place selected for this experiment was Stanz, the capital of the Canton of Underwalden, which had been recently burned and depopulated by the French Revolutionary troops. A new Ursuline convent, which was then building, was assigned to Pestalozzi as the scene of his future operations. On his arrival there he found only one apartment finished, a room about twenty-four feet square, and that unfurnished. The rest of the building was occupied by the carpenters and masons; and even had there been rooms, the want of beds and kitchen furniture would have made them useless. In the mean time, it having been announced that an asylum was to be opened, crowds of children came forward, some of them orphans, and others without protection or shelter, whom it was impossible, under such circumstances, to send away. The one room was devoted to all manner of purposes. In the day it served as a schoolroom, and at night, furnished with some scanty bedding, was occupied by Pestalozzi with as many of the scholars as it would hold. The remainder were quartered out for the night in some of the neighboring houses and came to the asylum only in the day. Of course, under such circumstances, anything like order or regularity was out of the question. Even personal cleanliness was impossible; and this, added to the dust occasioned by the workmen, the dampness of the new walls, and the closeness of the atmosphere in a small and crowded apartment, made the asylum an unhealthy abode. The character of the children, too, was a great obstacle to Pestalozzi's success. Many of them were the offspring of beggars and outlaws and had long been inured to wretchedness and vice; others had seen better days, and, oppressed by disappointment and suffering, had lost all disposition to exert themselves; while a few, who were from the higher classes of society, had been spoiled by indulgence and luxury, and were now conceited, petulant, and full of scornful airs toward their companions. The whole charge of the establishment thus composed devolved upon Pestalozzi. From motives of economy and from the difficulty of procuring suitable assistants, he employed no one but a housekeeper. The burden of this task was increased by the caprice and folly of many of the parents, whose children had been sent to the asylum. They were prejudiced against him as a Protestant and an agent of the Helvetic Government, and spared no complaints which their unreasonableness or ignorance could suggest. Mothers who were in the daily practice of begging from door to door would come on some silly pretext and take away their children because they would be no worse off at home. On Sundays especially the whole family circle, from parents to the remotest cousin, would assemble in a body at the asylum, and, after filling the minds of the children with their idle whims, would either take them home or leave them peevish and unhappy. Sometimes children were brought to the asylum merely to obtain clothing, which being done they were soon removed and no reasons given. In many instances, parents required payment for leaving their children, to compensate for the loss occasioned by taking them off from their begging. In others, they desired to make an agreement for a certain number of days in the week, in which they could have permission to send them out to beg; and this being refused, they indignantly declared that they would remove them forthwith--a threat which was not unfrequently executed. Such was the character of the materials on which Pestalozzi was obliged to commence his great experiments. He was deprived of the ordinary means of instruction and authority; and thus thrown entirely upon his own resources, the inventive genius, for which he was afterward distinguished, was awakened within him, and the spirit of humanity received a fresh impulse. One of the first benefits which he derived from his apparently untoward circumstances was the necessity of resorting to the power of love in the child's heart as the only source of obedience. There was nothing either in the disposition of the parents or the children to aid him in his efforts; on the contrary, a spirit of contempt on the one side and of open hostility on the other placed those obstacles in his way which a less original and energetic mind than his would not have been able to surmount. The usual methods of punishment could not be applied with any success; accordingly, he discarded them all. He made no attempt to frighten his refractory troop into order and obedience, but used only the instrument of an all-forbearing kindness. Even when obliged to apply coercive measures, he employed them with such a spirit as showed the children that he did not have recourse to them through anger, but that their use occasioned no less distress to him than to themselves. His mode of instruction partook of the character of his discipline. Both were marked with the simplicity of nature. He had none of the ordinary apparatus of teaching, not even books. Himself and his pupils were all. The result was that he abandoned the common artificial systems of instruction and gave his whole attention to the original elements of knowledge which exist in every mind. He taught numbers instead of ciphers, living sounds instead of dead characters, deeds of faith and love instead of abstruse creeds, substances instead of shadows, realities instead of signs. He led the intellect of his children to the discovery of truths which, in the nature of things, they could never understand. In the midst of his children he forgot that there was any world beside his asylum. And as their circle was a universe to him, so was he to them all in all. From morning till night he was the centre of their existence. To him they owed every comfort and every enjoyment; and, whatever hardships they had to endure, he was their fellow-sufferer. He partook of their meals and slept among them. In the evening he prayed with them before they went to bed; and from his conversation they dropped into the arms of slumber. At the first dawn of day it was his voice that called them to the light of the rising sun and to the praise of their heavenly Father. All day he stood among them, teaching the ignorant and assisting the helpless; encouraging the weak and admonishing the transgressor. His hand was daily with them, joined in theirs; his eye, beaming with benevolence, rested on theirs. He wept when they wept, and rejoiced when they rejoiced. He was to them a father, and they were to him as children. Seventy or eighty children, whose dispositions were of the most unpromising character, were converted, in a short time, into a peaceful and happy family circle. Their tempers were meliorated, their manners softened, their health improved, and their whole appearance so changed that it was almost impossible to recognize them as the same persons whose haggard and stupid faces had formerly been noticed by every visitor at the asylum. He wished to give to his establishment the character of a family, rather than of a public school. He often related to his pupils narratives of a happy and well-regulated household; and endeavored to awaken their hearts to a sense of the blessings which men may bestow upon each other by the exercise of Christian love. He taught this, whenever he could, by examples taken from real life. Thus when Altorf, the capital of the Canton of Uri, was laid in ashes, having informed them of the event he suggested the idea of receiving some of the sufferers into the asylum. "Hundreds of children," said he, "are at this moment wandering about as you were last year, without a home, perhaps without food or clothing. What would you say of applying to the Government, which has so kindly provided for you, for leave to receive about twenty of these poor children among you?" "Oh, yes," exclaimed his pupils; "yes, dear Mr. Pestalozzi, do apply if you please." "Nay, my children," replied he, "consider it well first. You must know I cannot get as much money as I please for our house-keeping; and if you invite twenty children among us, I shall, very likely, not get any more for that. You must, therefore, make up your minds to share your bedding and clothing with them, and to eat less and work more than before; and if you think you cannot do that readily and cheerfully, you had better not invite them!" "Never mind," said the children; "though we should not be so well off ourselves, we should be very glad to have these poor children among us." But the prosperity which Pestalozzi here enjoyed proved to be of short duration. Before the expiration of a year from the commencement of his undertaking, Stanz was taken by the Austrians, and he was obliged to abandon his experiment at the very moment of its greatest success. This took place in the summer of 1799. He was now exposed to the ridicule of many, who had always derided his plan as visionary and enthusiastic, and to whom he was prevented, by this untimely removal, from giving the evidence of facts in demonstration of its excellence. His disappointment and sufferings on this account were severe. Depressed and unhappy, he retired into the solitude of the Alps, and amid the rocks and the steeps of the Gurnigal sought rest for his weary soul, and health for his exhausted nerves. But he could not long remain inactive. The enjoyment of the majestic scenes of nature among which he was placed, and the kindness and sympathy of a friend named Zehender, soon restored him to a cheerful state of mind; and he descended from the mountains, determined to resume his experiment from the point where it had been cut short at Stanz. The Helvetic Government at this time made him a grant of about thirty pounds a year, which in 1801 was raised to one hundred, but was stopped entirely in 1803, by the dissolution of the Government. This was barely sufficient for his own subsistence, and the small remains of his private fortune were absorbed in the maintenance of his family. In the autumn of 1799, by the advice of his friends, Pestalozzi removed to Burgdorf, an ancient Swiss city, in the Canton of Bern, where after several unsatisfactory attempts, on a small scale, to carry his plans into execution, he at last succeeded by the end of the year in opening an establishment which in 1800 numbered twenty-six pupils, and in 1801 thirty-seven. About one-third of these were sons of representatives of different cantons in Switzerland, and a part belonged to wealthy tradesmen and agriculturists, and the rest were children of respectable families reduced in their circumstances, who were placed by their friends under the care of Pestalozzi. The expenses of this undertaking were defrayed, at first, by a loan, which he was afterward enabled, but with great difficulty, to repay. But it would have been impossible to continue the institution had not the Helvetic Government voted him, in addition to the grant before mentioned, an annual supply of fuel, and a salary of twenty-five pounds each to two of his assistants, Kruesi and Buss, who, however, generously declined receiving it themselves, but devoted it to the general funds of the institution, from which they received nothing but their board and lodging. At this time Pestalozzi published a work at the request of his friend Gessner, of Zurich, under the title of _How Gertrude Teaches her Children_, in which he gave a historical account of his experiments up to that period, and a general outline of his principles of education. This book made a very favorable impression upon the public; it excited a greater attention to his plans, confirmed the hopes of his friends, and convinced many of the soundness of his ideas who had heretofore regarded them as wild speculations. The current of popularity now set so strong in his favor that he was chosen in 1802 as one of the deputies to Paris, pursuant to a proclamation of the French Consul, to frame a new constitution for Switzerland. He now made his appearance again as a political writer, and presented his views on the state of the country and the means of improving it, in a pamphlet entitled _View of the Objects to which the Legislature of Switzerland has chiefly to direct its Attention_. The moderate and liberal opinions expressed in this publication, and the wisdom of the proposals which it suggested, conciliated the best men of all parties, and offended none but the few who cherished an extravagant and bigoted attachment to the ancient order of things. In all his labors Pestalozzi had a most efficient assistant in his wife, who interested herself especially in cultivating the affections of the younger pupils; while the different branches of domestic economy fell upon his daughter-in-law and an old housekeeper who had been in his family for more than thirty years and lived in it rather as a friend than a servant. The domestic arrangements had for their object to form habits of order, and to insure the enjoyment of good health to the children. In the morning, half an hour before six, the signal was given for getting up: six o'clock found the pupils ready for their first lesson, after which they were assembled for morning prayer. Between this and breakfast, the children had time left them for preparing themselves for the day; and at eight o'clock they were again called to their lessons, which continued, with the interruption of from five to seven minutes' recreation between every two hours, till twelve o'clock. Half an hour later, dinner was served up; and afterward the children were allowed to take moderate exercise till half-past two, when the afternoon lessons began, and were continued till half-past four. From half-past four till five there was another interval of recreation, during which the children had fruit and bread distributed to them. At five, the lessons were resumed till the time of supper at eight o'clock, after which, the evening prayer having been held, they were conducted to bed about nine. The hours of recreation were mostly spent in innocent games on a fine common situated between the castle and the lake and crossed in different directions by beautiful avenues of chestnut and poplar trees. On Wednesday and Sunday afternoons, if the weather permitted, excursions of several miles were made through the beautiful scenery of the surrounding country. In summer the children went frequently to bathe in the lake, the borders of which offered, in winter, fine opportunities for skating. In bad weather they resorted to gymnastic exercises in a large hall expressly fitted up for that purpose. This constant attention to regular bodily exercise, together with the excellent climate of Yverdon, and the simplicity of their mode of living, proved so effectual in preserving the health of the children that illness of any kind made its appearance but very rarely, notwithstanding that the number of pupils amounted at one time to upward of one hundred eighty. Such was the care bestowed upon physical education in Pestalozzi's establishment; and an equal degree of solicitude was evinced for the intellectual and moral well-being of the children. Successful, however, as the purposes of Pestalozzi were at Yverdon, the scene which is most intimately associated with his name, and which was the theatre of his brightest and most useful achievements, he was destined again to meet with bitter disappointment, and finally to go down to his grave in sorrow. After a series of embarrassments, occasioned principally by the artifices of an unprincipled and intriguing adventurer among his teachers, and having suffered in his property, his happiness, and to a certain extent in his character, and witnessed the gradual destruction of his establishment, he died at Brugg, in the Canton of Basel, on February 17, 1827, at the advanced age of eighty-two years. CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY EMBRACING THE PERIOD COVERED IN THIS VOLUME A.D. 1716-1775 JOHN RUDD, LL.D. CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY EMBRACING THE PERIOD COVERED IN THIS VOLUME A.D. 1716-1775 JOHN RUDD, LL.D. Events treated at length are here indicated in large type; the numerals following give volume and page. Separate chronologies of the various nations, and of the careers of famous persons, will be found in the INDEX VOLUME, with volume and page references showing where the several events are fully treated. A.D. 1716. Establishment of Law's bank in Paris in connection with the Mississippi Scheme. See "JOHN LAW PROMOTES THE MISSISSIPPI SCHEME," xiii, 1. Parliament passes the Septennial Act limiting the duration of a parliament to seven years. Unsuccessful invasion of Norway by Charles XII. War on Turkey by Austria; Battle of Peterwardein; victory of Prince Eugene. 1717. Occupation of Sardinia by Philip V of Spain. Walpole resigns the English ministry. A triple alliance formed between Britain, Holland, and France. Battle of Belgrad; defeat of the Turks by Prince Eugene. See "PRINCE EUGENE VANQUISHES THE TURKS," xiii, 16. 1718. Foundation of New Orleans, Louisiana, by the French. Invasion of Sicily by the Spaniards; Austria joins the Triple Alliance; the Spanish fleet defeated off Cape Passaro. Another attempt on Norway by Charles XII; he is killed while besieging Frederikshald. St. Petersburg becomes the capital of Russia. 1719. Philip V submits to the alliance; the Spaniards evacuate Sicily and Sardinia. Ravaging of the coast of Sweden by the Russian fleet. Great speculative craze in England. 1720. "BURSTING OF THE SOUTH SEA BUBBLE." See xiii, 22. Disastrous end of Law's financial schemes in France. Sweden and Prussia arrange the Treaty of Stockholm; Prussia acquires a large portion of Hither Pomerania. Sardinia becomes a kingdom, raised out of the Savoy dominions. 1721. Walpole again First Lord of the Treasury (prime minister) of England. France becomes financially bankrupt. 1722. A patent granted Wood for the coinage of copper coin for Ireland; this led Swift to write of the "wooden halfpence." Persia conquered by the Afghans. A Jacobite plot against George I of England discovered. Founding of a Moravian brotherhood at Herrnhut, Saxony. War on Persia by Peter the Great. 1723. Majority of Louis XV of France. Large territories secured from Persia by Peter the Great. "BACH LAYS THE FOUNDATION OF MODERN MUSIC." See xiii, 31. 1724. A professorship of modern history founded by George I at Oxford and at Cambridge university. Resignation of the Spanish crown by Philip V in favor of his son, Louis; the latter dies after a short reign, and his father reassumes the government. 1725. Treaty of Vienna between Austria and Spain, assenting to the Pragmatic Sanction of Charles VI. Treaty of Hanover between Great Britain, France, and Prussia. Death of Peter the Great; his widow, Catharine I, succeeds to the throne of Russia. 1726. Russia joins in the Treaty of Vienna. 1727. Spain makes an unsuccessful attempt to blockade and fails in her siege of Gibraltar. Death of George I; George II succeeds to the throne of England. Persia freed from the Afghans by Nadir Kuli, Shah of Persia. For having published the proceedings in the British House of Commons Edward Cane is taken into custody by the sergeant-at-arms. 1728. Assembling at Soissons of a congress of the great powers. Discovery of the strait bearing his name by Bering. 1729. Great Britain, France, and Spain arrange the Treaty of Seville. Purchase of Carolina by the crown; two royal provinces instituted, North and South Carolina; plot of the negroes in the latter to murder their masters. Revolt of Corsica against the Genoese. 1730. Introduction by Réaumur of his thermometer. Baltimore, Maryland, founded. Opening of the first railway, between Manchester and Liverpool, England. 1731. An earthquake convulses Chile for twenty-seven days; Santiago nearly engulfed. Origin of Methodism by the preaching of Wesley and Whitefield. 1732. Oglethorpe founds a settlement in Georgia. See "SETTLEMENT OF GEORGIA," xiii, 44. Franklin establishes the first subscription library in the United Colonies. Expulsion of the Protestants from Salzburg. 1733. Death of Augustus II of Poland; War of the Polish Succession between Austria and France. Invention in England of the fly-shuttle for weaving, by John Kay, aided by Arkwright. 1734. Austrian campaign against France and Sardinia in Northern Italy; Philip V enters Naples and proclaims himself king. Battle of Bitonto; defeat of the Austrians, May 25; Capua falls in November. Siege of Philippsburg by the French under Berwick; the fortress taken, Berwick slain. Trial of Zenger in New York, establishing the principle of freedom of the English colonial press. 1735. First settlement of the Moravians in America, made at Georgia. Don Carlos conquers Sicily; is crowned king as Charles III. 1736. Issue of a papal bull against freemasonry. Glass lamps used in the streets of London. War of Russia against Turkey; capture of Azov by the former. Nadir Shah (Kuli Khan) succeeds to the Persian throne. 1737. War on Turkey by Charles VI. End of the Medici line in Tuscany; Francis Stephen becomes grand duke. English theatres are placed under control of the lord chamberlain. Birth of Edward Gibbon, historian. 1738. Conquest of Afghanistan by Nadir (Kuli) Shah. At Vienna is signed the definitive treaty between Charles VI of Germany and Louis XV of France. Forming of the first Methodist Society in England, by John Wesley. See "RISE OF METHODISM," xiii, 57. 1739. War of Jenkins's Ear between England and Spain; in 1731 an English merchant-vessel was boarded by a Spanish guardship, and the captain, Robert Jenkins, cruelly used, an ear being torn off. Nadir Shah captures Delhi; he sacks the city and massacres the people. See "CONQUESTS OF NADIR SHAH," xiii, 72. Recovery of Belgrad and Servian territory by the Turks, arranged by treaty between Austria and Turkey. 1740. Death of Frederick William I; accession of Frederick the Great to the Prussian throne. Treachery of the powers which had guaranteed the succession of the Austrian throne to Maria Theresa. See "FREDERICK THE GREAT SEIZES SILESIA," xiii, 108. A Moravian settlement formed at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. "FIRST MODERN NOVEL." See xiii, 100. 1741. A revolution places Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great, on the throne of Russia; Ivan, an infant, and his parents are imprisoned. Alliance between England and Austria. War between Sweden and Russia. Unsuccessful attack of Admiral Vernon on Cartagena, New Granada. Final separation of New Hampshire from Massachusetts. Pretended negro plot in New York. 1742. Election and coronation of the Elector of Bavaria as Emperor Charles VII of Germany. Silesia and Glatz ceded to Frederick the Great. The French are expelled Bohemia. 1743. Second Bourbon Family Compact between the kings of France and Spain. Great Britain supports the cause of Maria Theresa. Battle of Dettingen; victory of the English and Hanoverian army. 1744. War renewed with Austria by Frederick the Great; he invades Bohemia, captures Prague, but is forced to retreat. Beginning of King George's War in America. 1745. Last Jacobite rebellion in Britain; Scotland rises for the Young Pretender, Charles Edward; Battle of Prestonpans; he is victorious and advances into England, but is compelled to retreat. Capture of Louisburg by British-American colonists. Death of Emperor Charles VII; Maximilian Joseph, his successor in Bavaria, makes peace with Maria Theresa. Battle of Fontenoy; victory of the French, under Marshal Saxe, over the allies under the Duke of Cumberland. Victories of the Prussians at Hohenfriedberg, Sohr, Hennersdorf, and Kesseldorf. Francis I, husband of Maria Theresa, elected to the imperial throne. Peace between Austria and Prussia. Invention of the Leyden jar, named from the city where first used. 1746. Battle of Falkirk; victory of the Young Pretender; he is overthrown at the Battle of Culloden. See "DEFEAT OF THE YOUNG PRETENDER AT CULLODEN," xiii, 117. Conquest of the Austrian Netherlands by the French. Madras, India, surrenders to the French. Genoa surrenders to the Austrians; they are expelled by a popular rising. 1747. Naval victory of the English, off Cape Finisterre, under Anson and Warren, over the French. They suffer another defeat at the hand of Admiral Hawke at Belle-Isle. Battle of Rocourt; Marshal Saxe defeats the allies under the Duke of Cumberland, at Lawfeld. Russia supports the cause of Maria Theresa. "FRANKLIN EXPERIMENTS WITH ELECTRICITY." See xiii, 130. 1748. Marshal Saxe captures Maestricht; Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, ending the War of the Austrian Succession. Excavations begin at Pompeii. Pompadour's ascendency over the French King. Pondicherry successfully defended by Dupleix against the English under Boscawen and Lawrence. 1749. George II grants a charter to the Ohio Company. 1750. Bounties granted and a company formed in England to encourage the herring and cod fisheries. 1751. Clive begins his successful career in India. 1752. Change from the Old to the New (or Gregorian) style of calendar in England. 1753. Founding of the British Museum, due to the legacy of Sir Hans Sloane, who bequeaths his library, antiquities, and collection of natural curiosities for that purpose. 1754. Encroachments of the French in North America; Washington, colonel of a provincial regiment, sent from Virginia to drive them from the Ohio, is defeated and made prisoner. King's College, now Columbia, founded at New York. A congress of the American colonies at Albany; union discussed. 1755. Braddock defeated and slain near Fort Duquesne. See "BRADDOCK'S DEFEAT," xiii, 163. Great earthquake at Lisbon, Portugal, November 1st. "VOLTAIRE DIRECTS EUROPEAN THOUGHT." See xiii, 144. Dispersion of the French colonists of Acadia. See "EXILE OF THE ACADIAN NEUTRALS," xiii, 181. 1756. Treaty of Defence between England and Prussia. Treaty of alliance between France and Austria against Prussia. Beginning of the Seven Years' War. See "SEVEN YEARS' WAR," xiii, 204. Calcutta captured by Surajah Dowlah; he throws the English prisoners into the Black Hole. See "CLIVE ESTABLISHES BRITISH SUPREMACY IN INDIA," xiii, 185. Conquest of Minorca by the French from the English. Fort Oswego, New York, captured by Montcalm's troops. 1757. Calcutta retaken by Watson and Clive. Capture by the English of the French fort Charlemagne, on the Ganges. An army levied by the German Diet against Frederick the Great.[60] France and Sweden declare war against Prussia. Battle of Prague; the Austrians defeated by Frederick. His army beaten by the Austrians under Daun, at Kolin; a Russian army overruns East Prussia. The Duke of Cumberland defeated by the French at Hastenbeck. Defeat of the Prussian general Lehwald by the Russians. The French and Imperialists, under Soubise, defeated by Frederick at Rossbach. After occupying Silesia the Austrians are defeated at Leuthen. Capture of Fort William Henry, at the south end of Lake George, by Montcalm. Mission by Franklin to England in behalf of the Pennsylvanians. 1758. Expulsion of the French from Hanover, by Ferdinand of Brunswick. Frederick defeats the Russians at Zorndorf; Daun defeats him at Hochkirchen. Arcot, India, taken by the French, who then besiege Madras. Battle of Ticonderoga; victory of Montcalm over Abercrombie, July 8. Louisburg reduced and occupied by Amherst and Boscawen; loss to the French of forts Frontenac and Duquesne. The French fleet is driven out of the Indian seas by the English admiral, Peacocke. 1759. Battle of Minden; defeat of the French by Ferdinand of Brunswick. Kunersdorf: overwhelming defeat of Frederick the Great by the Austrians and Russians. Boscawen, the English Admiral, defeats the French off Lagos; Admiral Hawke gains a naval victory over them, under Conflans, in Quiberon Bay. Fink, the Prussian General, surrenders at Maxen. Havre de Grace bombarded by Rodney, the British Admiral. Quebec captured by the British under Wolfe. See "CONQUEST OF CANADA," xiii, 229. Opening of the British Museum. Expulsion of the Jesuits from Portugal by King John. Guadelupe taken from the French by the English. 1760. George III succeeds to the English throne on the death of his grandfather, George II. Montreal captured by the English; completion of the conquest of Canada. Battles of Liegnitz, Torgau, and Warburg; Berlin occupied by Austrians and Russians. Destructive eruption of Vesuvius, February 21st. Battle of Wandiwash, India; the English defeat the French. 1761. Pitt resigns from the British ministry. Third Family Compact of the Bourbons of France, Spain, Naples, and Parma. Belle-Isle captured from the French by the English. Pondicherry surrendered to the English by the French. Otis, at Boston, speaks against the Writs of Assistance. 1762. Declaration of war against Spain by England; Havana conquered. Martinique captured from the French by the English: restored the year following. Death of Elizabeth, Empress of Russia; deposition and murder of her successor, Peter III; Catharine II usurps the throne. See "USURPATION OF CATHARINE II IN RUSSIA," xiii, 250. 1763. Peace of Paris, ending of the Seven Years' War: Canada, Nova Scotia, Cape Breton ceded to England by France, and Florida by Spain; Louisiana to France by Spain. Peace of Hubertsburg: Silesia confirmed to Frederick the Great. Indians unsuccessfully besiege the English at Fort Detroit. See "CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC," xiii, 267. 1764. Catharine II secures the election of Stanislas Poniatowski as king of Poland. Mason and Dixon begin the survey of the line determining the boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania. 1765. Parliament passes the Stamp Act; formation of the Sons of Liberty; convening of the Stamp Act Congress. See "AMERICAN COLONIES OPPOSE THE STAMP ACT," xiii, 289. Formal ceding of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa by the Mogul Emperor to the English. 1766. Repeal of the Stamp Act by the British Parliament. Hydrogen discovered by Henry Cavendish. Protestants refused concessions by the Diet of Poland; Russia and Prussia intervene; first step toward the partition of Poland. 1767. Parliament imposes duties on imports into the American colonies. Beginning of the war between the English and the rajah of Mysore, Hyder Ali. Hargreaves invents the spinning-jenny for cotton-weaving. 1768. Elections in England; repeated expulsion and reëlection of Wilkes. A military force stationed at Boston by the British; a circular-letter of Massachusetts to the other American colonies. Corsica, in revolt, is ceded by Genoa to France. Cook sails on his first voyage around the world. James Bruce sets out on his expedition to discover the sources of the Nile. Foundation of the Royal Academy, London; Sir Joshua Reynolds first president. 1769. "WATT IMPROVES THE STEAM-ENGINE." See xiii, 302. The _Letters of Junius_ begin to appear. Patent issued in England to Richard Arkwright for his roller-spinning "water-frame." Daniel Boone migrates from North Carolina into Kentucky. 1770. Lord North's ministry succeeds that of Grafton in England; Burke introduces resolutions condemning the course adopted in America. Boston Massacre, March 5. Military and naval successes of the Russians against Turkey. 1771. Parliament concedes the freedom of reporting its proceedings. Battle of the Alamance; insurrection of the North Carolina Regulators. Russia conquers the Crimea. 1772. "FIRST PARTITION OF POLAND." See xiii, 313. Appointment of Warren Hastings as president of the Supreme Council of Bengal. A revenue cutter burned by the populace of Rhode Island while it was attempting to suppress smuggling. Lord Mansfield, in the case of the negro Somerset, decides that a slave cannot be held in England. The Watauga Association, from which grew the State of Tennessee, founded. 1773. "THE BOSTON TEA PARTY." See xiii, 333. A pseudo Peter III, Pugatcheff, raises a rebellion against Catharine II of Russia. 1774. Passing by the British Parliament of the Boston Port Bill, closing the port; meeting of the first Continental Congress at Philadelphia, September 5th. John Howard, the philanthropist, receives the thanks of Parliament for his attention to the condition of prisons. "COTTON MANUFACTURE DEVELOPED." See xiii, 341. Oxygen discovered by Joseph Priestley, England. 1775. "INTELLECTUAL REVOLT OF GERMANY." See xiii, 347. Outrages of the Whiteboys in Ireland. Execution in Russia of Pugatcheff, pseudo Peter III. Stereotype printing first attempted at Philadelphia by Benjamin Mecon, Franklin's nephew. FOOTNOTES: [60] It should be remembered that the German empire of those days was not the same as the German Empire of to-day. Austria was formerly the paramount state. END OF VOLUME XIII 
14260	----	_This is Volume VI of a complete set of_ The Great Events by Famous Historians. _Issued Strictly as a Limited Edition. In Volume I of this Set will be found the Official Certificate, under the Seal of the National Alumni, as to the Limitation of the Edition, the Registered Number, and the Name of the Owner._ BINDING - Vol. VI The binding of this volume is a facsimile of the original on exhibition in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. It was executed by Geoffroy Tory, and presented by him to King Francis I. The broken vase so cleverly worked into the tooled design was the device of Tory, which, as explained in his book, _Champfleury_, represents our frail body--a vessel of clay. Tory was professor of philosophy and literature in several colleges. In 1518 he set up a printing-press, from whence he brought out beautiful editions of the Greek and Latin authors, translated and annotated by himself. In 1530 he was appointed Printer to King Francis I. [Illustration] [Illustration: Tragic death of Archbishop Thomas A. Becket at the alter of the Cathedral of Canterbury Painting by A. Dawant.] THE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS A COMPREHENSIVE AND READABLE ACCOUNT OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY, EMPHASIZING THE MORE IMPORTANT EVENTS, AND PRESENTING THESE AS COMPLETE NARRATIVES IN THE MASTER-WORDS OF THE MOST EMINENT HISTORIANS NON-SECTARIAN NON-PARTISAN NON-SECTIONAL ON THE PLAN EVOLVED FROM A CONSENSUS OF OPINIONS GATHERED FROM THE MOST DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARS OF AMERICA AND EUROPE, INCLUDING BRIEF INTRODUCTIONS BY SPECIALISTS TO CONNECT AND EXPLAIN THE CELEBRATED NARRATIVES, ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY, WITH THOROUGH INDICES, BIBLIOGRAPHIES, CHRONOLOGIES, AND COURSES OF READING. SUPERVISING EDITOR ROSSITER JOHNSON, LL.D. LITERARY EDITORS CHARLES F. HORNE, Ph.D. JOHN RUDD, LL.D. DIRECTING EDITOR WALTER F. AUSTIN, LL.M. _With a staff of specialists VOLUME VI_ The National Alumni CONTENTS VOLUME VI PAGE _An Outline Narrative of the Great Events_, CHARLES F. HORNE xiii _Archiepiscopate of Thomas Becket_ _His Defence of Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction_ _His Assassination (A.D. 1162-1170)_, JOHN LINGARD 1 _The Peace of Constance Secures the Liberties of the Lombard Cities (A.D. 1183)_, ERNEST F. HENDERSON 28 _Saladin Takes Jerusalem from the Christians (A.D. 1187_), SIR GEORGE W. COX 41 _The Third Crusade (A.D. 1189-1194)_, HENRY VON SYBEL 54 _The Teutonic Knights_ _Their Organization and History (A.D. 1190-1809)_, F.C. WOODHOUSE 68 _Philip of France Wins the French Domains of the English Kings (A.D. 1202-1204)_, KATE NORGATE 86 _Founding of the Mongol Empire by Genghis Khan (A.D. 1203), HENRY H. HOWORTH 103 _Venetians and Crusaders Take Constantinople_ _Plunder of the Sacred Relics (A.D. 1204), EDWIN PEARS 121 _Latin Empire of the East_ _Its Foundation and Fall (A.D. 1204-1261)_, W.J. BRODRIBB SIR WALTER BESANT 140 _Innocent III Exalts the Papal Power (A.D. 1208)_, T.F. TOUT 156 _Signing of Magna Charta (A.D. 1215)_, DAVID HUME 175 _The Golden Bull, "Hungary's Magna Charta," Signed (A.D. 1222)_, E.O.S., 191 _Russia Conquered by the Tartar Hordes_ _Alexander Nevski Saves the Remnant of His People (A.D. 1224-1262)_, ALFRED RAMBAUD 196 _The Sixth Crusade_ _Treaty of Frederick II with the Saracens (A.D. 1228)_, SIR GEORGE W. COX 208 _Rise of the Hanseatic League (A.D. 1241)_, H. DENICKE 214 _Mamelukes Usurp Power in Egypt (A.D. 1250)_, SIR WILLIAM MUIR 240 _The "Mad Parliament"_ _Beginning of England's House of Commons (A.D. 1258)_, JOHN LINGARD 246 _Louis IX Leads the Last Crusade (A.D. 1270)_, JOSEPH FRANÇOIS MICHAUD 275 _Height of the Mongol Power in China (A.D. 1271)_, MARCO POLO 287 _Founding of the House of Hapsburg (A.D. 1273)_, WILLIAM COXE 298 _Edward I Conquers Wales (A.D. 1277)_, CHARLES H. PEARSON 316 _Japanese Repel the Tartars (A.D. 1281)_, EDWARD H. PARKER MARCO POLO 327 _The Sicilian Vespers (A.D. 1282)_, MICHELE AMARI 340 _Expulsion of Jews from England (A.D. 1290)_, HENRY HART MILMAN 356 _Exploits and Death of William Wallace, the "Hero of Scotland" (A.D. 1297-1305)_, SIR WALTER SCOTT 369 _First Great Jubilee of the Roman Catholic Church (A.D. 1300)_, FERDINAND GREGOROVIUS 378 _Universal Chronology (A.D. 1162-1300)_, JOHN RUDD 385 ILLUSTRATIONS VOLUME VI _Tragic death of Thomas A Becket at the altar of the Cathedral of Canterbury (page 26),_ Painting by Albert Dawant. Frontispiece _The lust of the army spared neither maiden nor the virgin dedicated to God_, Painting by E. Luminais. 128 _King Edward I fulfils his promise of giving the Welsh "a native prince; one who could not speak a word of English"_, Painting by Ph. Morris. 324 AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, CONNECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF GREAT EVENTS (FROM BARBAROSSA TO DANTE) CHARLES F. HORNE It was during the period of about one hundred fifty years, extending from the middle of the twelfth to the close of the thirteenth century, that the features of our modern civilization began to assume a recognizable form. The age was characterized by the decline of feudalism, and by the growth of all the new influences which combined to create a new state of society. With the decay of the great lords came the rise of the great cities, the increased power and importance of the middle classes, the burghers or "citizens," who dominate the world to-day. In opposition to these there came also an unforeseen accession of strength to kings. The boundaries of modern states grew more clearly defined; modern nationalities were distinctly established; Europe assumed something of the outline, something of the social character, which she still retains. The period includes not only the culmination and close of the crusading fervor, but also, coincident with this, the culmination of both the religious and the temporal powers of the popes, and the scarce recognized beginning of their decline. Universities, vaguely existent before, now increase rapidly in numbers and importance, receive definite outlines and foundations, and exert a mighty influence. In fact it has been not inaptly said that the rule of mediæval Europe was divided amid three powers--the emperor, the pope, and the University of Paris. Books, from which we can trace the history of the time, become as numerous as before they had been scant and vague and misleading. Thought reveals itself struggling everywhere for expression, displayed at times in the sunshine of song and rhyme and merry laughter, at times in the storms of philosophic dispute and religious persecution. In short, this was an age of strife between old ways and new. It saw the granting of Magna Charta, but it saw also the establishment of the Inquisition, and the creation of the two great monastic orders, whose opposing methods, the Dominicans ruling by fear and the Franciscans by love, are typical of the contrasting spirits of the time. It was the age which in the next century under Dante's influence was to burst into blossom as the Renaissance. FREDERICK BARBAROSSA Not often has one man proven influential enough to dominate and alter the direction of his epoch; but very frequently we see one taking advantage of its tendencies and so managing these, so directing them, that he seems almost to create his surroundings, and becomes to all men the expression and example of his times. Such a leader was the emperor Frederick Barbarossa (1152-1190), and we may follow his fortunes in tracing the early part of this era. The First Crusade had depleted Europe of half a million fighting men. Then came a pause of fifty years, after which it was learned that Jerusalem was again in danger of falling into the hands of the Mahometans. So, in 1147, another vast crusading army set out to the rescue. Barbarossa himself went with this Second Crusade, as a young German noble. He was one of the few who escaped death in the Asian deserts, one of the very few who from the colossal failure of the expedition returned to Europe with added honor and reputation. He was elected Emperor. The crusade had been as deadly as the first, though less successful, and when this nominal leadership of Western Europe was thus conferred on the gallant Frederick, he found the Teutonic races weakened by the loss of a million of their most valiant warriors--that is, of the feudal lords and their retainers. Here we find at once one of the great causes of the decay of Feudalism. Many of the old families had become wholly extinct; and under the feudal system their estates lapsed to their overlords, the kings. Other families were represented only by heiresses; and the marrying of these ladies became a recognized move in the game for power, in which the kings, and especially the emperor Frederick, now took a foremost part. Previous emperors had been figureheads; Frederick became the real ruler of Europe. The kings of Denmark and Poland fully acknowledged themselves his vassals. So also, though less definitely, did the King of England. For a moment the imperial unity of Europe seemed reviving. Only one of the Emperor's great dukes, Henry the Lion, of Saxony, dared stand against him; and Henry was ultimately crushed. The war-cries of the two opponents, however, became eternalized as factional names in the struggle of Frederick's successors against other foes. For generations whoever upheld the empire was a Waibling, and whoever would attack it, on whatsoever plea, a Welf. Frederick, having established his power in Germany, attempted to assert it in Italy as well; and so the strife passed over the Alps and became that of Ghibelline against Guelf, in Italian phrase, of emperor against pope, of monarchy against democracy. It was this fatal insistence upon Italian authority that brought disaster upon Frederick and all his house, and ultimately upon the empire as well, and on the entire German race. The Italians had been quite content to call themselves subjects of a Holy Roman Empire which extended but vaguely over Europe, and whose chief took his title from their ancient city and only came among them to be crowned. They looked at the matter in a wholly different light when Frederick regarded his position seriously, and interfered in their affairs with the strong hand, crushing their feuds and exacting money tribute. Rebellion was promptly kindled, and for twenty years one German army after another dwindled away in the passage of the Alps, wasted under the fevers of Italian marshes, or was crushed in desperate battle. By the treaty of Constance, in 1183, Frederick confessed the one defeat of his career. He acknowledged the practical independence of the Italian cities.[1] CITIES AND KINGS The Emperor had in fact encountered a power too strong for him. He had been struggling against the beginnings of modern democracy, a system stronger even in its infancy than the ancient rule of the aristocracy which it has gradually supplanted. The resistance of Italy came not from its knights and lords, but from its great cities, which had been slowly growing more and more self-reliant and independent. The rise of these city republics of the Middle Ages cannot be fully traced. Everywhere little communities of men seem to have been driven by desperation to build walls about their group of homes and to defy all comers. As it was in Italy that the ancient Roman civilization had been most firmly established and the barbarian dominance least complete, so it was in Italy that these walled towns first asserted their importance. Venice indeed, protected by her marshes, we have seen establishing a somewhat republican form even from her foundation. She and Genoa and Pisa defended themselves against the Saracens and built ships and grew to be the chief maritime powers of the Mediterranean, rulers of island empires. They fought wars against one another, and Pisa was overwhelmed and ruined in a tremendous conflict with Genoa. Genoa's fleets carried supplies for the first crusaders. In later crusades, when the deadly nature of the long journey by land was more clearly known, the wealthy maritime republics were hired to carry the crusaders themselves to the East--and profited vastly by the business. Gradually the inland cities took courage from their sea-board neighbors. Florence became the centre of reviving art, her citizens the chief bankers for all Europe. Milan became chief of the Lombard cities, leading them against Barbarossa. And when he captured and destroyed the metropolis in 1161, the burghers of the surrounding lesser towns rallied to her help. No sooner was the Emperor out of reach than walls and houses rose again with the speed of magic, till Milan stood reincarnate, fairer and stronger than before. A similar though slower growth can be traced among the cities of the North. As early as 1067 we find the town of Mans near Normandy rebelling against its lord. Still earlier had Henry the City-builder thought it wise to strengthen and fortify his peasantry, despite the counsel of his barons. Indeed, through all the Middle Ages we find kings and commons drawn often into union by their mutual antagonism to the feudal nobility. Barbarossa, even while he quarrelled with the Italian cities, encouraged those of Germany. At the same time that Frederick was thus reasserting the imperial power, England had a strong king in Henry II. By wedding the most important feudal heiress in France, Henry added so many provinces to his ancestral French domain of Normandy that more than half France lay in his possession, and the French kings found that in this overgrown duke, who was also an independent monarch, they possessed a vassal far wealthier and more powerful than themselves. Henry took more than one step toward the humiliation, or even subjugation, of France, but seems to have been hampered by a real feudal respect for his overlord. Moreover, he got into the same difficulty as the Emperor. He quarrelled with the Church, and found it too strong for him. Much of his time and most of his energy were devoted to his celebrated struggle against his great bishop, Thomas Becket.[2] Thus the French King was given time and opportunity to strengthen his sovereignty. Then came the great Third Crusade, altering and once more upsetting the growing forces of the times, and among its many unforeseen results was the rescue of France from the grip of her too mighty vassal. The long threatening recapture of Jerusalem became a fact in 1187.[3] The Christian kingdom established by the First Crusade was overthrown; and Emperor Barbarossa, in his splendid and revered old age, vowed to attempt its reëstablishment. Once more did all the nobility of Europe pour eastward, embracing eagerly the purpose of their chief. This was the last great crusade, those that followed being but feeble and unimportant efforts in comparison. Not only was the Emperor at its head, but the King of England, son of Henry II, the famous Richard of the Lion Heart, took up the movement with enthusiasm. So, also, though less passionately, did Philip Augustus, ablest of the kings of France. No other crusade could boast such names as these.[4] Yet the mighty undertaking ended in failure. Barbarossa perished in the East, and the glory of his empire died with him. Richard and Philip quarrelled about precedence, and the French King seized the opportunity to return home, full of shrewd plans for the humbling of his obnoxious vassal sovereign. Richard, left almost alone with his dwindling plague-stricken forces, had finally to acknowledge the hopelessness of the cause. His adventures have been made the theme of many a romance. On his way home he was seized and imprisoned in Germany, and this and his death soon after left the throne to his brother John. BEGINNINGS OF MODERN GOVERNMENT Historians have united to pour upon John every species of opprobrium. Certain it is that he secured his crown by evil means, that he sought to protect it by falsity and treachery. But after all, his rival, Philip Augustus, could be treacherous too, and the main difference between them is that Philip defeated John. He wrenched from him Normandy and many of John's other French provinces, so that the dominions of the English kings were reduced to scarce half their former compass. Hence the opprobrium on John.[5] Heavy as the loss might seem, it proved in reality a blessing to the English race. Forced to confine themselves to Great Britain, her kings became truly English, instead of French--which they had been hitherto. England ceased to be a mere appanage of Normandy, ruled by Norman nobles. The Normans who had settled in the island became sharply divided from those who remained in France, and Saxons and English-Normans became firmly welded into a united race. This is what England owes to John. Moreover his tyranny and falsehood led the lower classes in his realm to unite with the nobility against him. Thus the deepset class distinction of feudal times between lord and serf, the owner and the owned, became less marked in England than elsewhere in Europe. The vast threefold struggle which had everywhere to be fought out between kings, nobles, and commons was in England decided against the kings by the union of the other two. Their combined strength forced from John the Magna Charta, or Great Charter, the foundation of modern government in England, though the celebrated document granted no new privilege to lord or citizen or peasant. It only confirmed on parchment the rights which John would have denied them. So this also, the corner-stone of liberty, the beginning of constitutional progress, does England owe to her oppressor. Never perhaps has any man devoted to evil done unwittingly so much of good as he.[6] Thus the English nation grew united, while the French provinces were brought into closer dependence on their own king. In fact, Philip Augustus, by clever use now of the commons, now of the nobles, succeeded in dominating both. Following his example his successors managed for many centuries to remain "lords of France" with a security and absoluteness of power which no English king, no German emperor, was ever again to attain. In Germany the death of Barbarossa left his throne to a short-lived evil son and then to an infant grandson, Frederick II. Other claimants to the realm sprang up, the great lords asserted and fully established their right to elect what emperor they pleased. Through this right they made themselves strong, their ruler weak, and so feudalism persisted in Germany while it was fading in France and England. Private war continued, baron fought against baron, confusion and anarchy prevailed more and more, and in the march of civilization Germany was left behind. She lagged for centuries in the rear of her neighbors, staring after them, despising, envying, scarce comprehending. It is only within the last hundred and fifty years that Germany has reasserted her ancient place among the foremost of the nations. THE PAPACY We have said that the only place where Barbarossa failed was in his Italian wars. These were waged against democracy and against the popes. Southern Italy was at this time a kingdom, in Central Italy lay the papal states, and north of these were all the independent cities. Assuming the democratic leadership of the cities, the popes acquired a strong temporal power. The growth of this we have traced through earlier periods; it reached its culmination under Pope Innocent III (1198-1216). He almost succeeded to the emperors as the acknowledged ruler of Europe.[7] Secured from martial invasion by the strength of the federated cities, as well as by the spiritual dominion which he wielded, Innocent extended his authority over all men and all affairs. He ordered unlucky King John to accept a certain archbishop for England; and when John refused, England was laid under an "interdict," that is, no church services could be held there, not even to shrive the dying or bury the dead. For a while John was scornful, but at length his accumulating troubles forced him to kneel submissively to the Pope, surrender his crown, and receive it back as a vassal of the papacy under obligation to pay heavy tribute. By the same weapon of an interdict Innocent forced the mighty Philip Augustus to take back a wife whom he had divorced without papal consent. And in Germany Innocent twice secured the creation of an emperor of his own choice, the second being the child, Frederick II, who had been brought up under the Pope's own guardianship. Among other spectacular features of his reign Innocent founded the Inquisition, and thus formally divorced the Church from its earlier preaching of universal peace and love. Moreover, he attempted a diversion of the tremendous, wasted power of the crusades. He wanted holy wars fought nearer home, and preached a crusade against John of England. The mere threat brought John to his knees; and Innocent then turned his newfound weapon against the heretics of southern France, the Albigenses. These unfortunate people, having a certain religious firmness wholly incomprehensible to John, refused submission. The crusade against them became an actual and awful reality. In the name of Christ, men devastated a Christian country. The spirit of persecution thus aroused became rampant in religion and remained so for over half a thousand years. Rebels against the Church accepted its most evil teaching, and in their brief periods of power became torturers and executioners in their turn. This first of the "religious wars" achieved its purpose. It exterminated or at least suppressed the heresy by exterminating every heretic who dared assert himself. Vast numbers of wholly orthodox Christians perished also, since even they fought against the "crusaders" in defending their homes. War did not change its hideous face because man had presumed to place a blessing on it. Next to Italy, Southern France had been the most cultured land of Europe. The crusaders left it almost a desert. It had been practically independent of the kings at Paris, henceforth it offered them no resistance. A more excusable direction given by Innocent to the crusading enthusiasm was against the Saracens in Spain. A new and tremendous army of these had come over from Africa to reënforce their brethren, who shared the peninsula with the Spaniards. The Pope's preaching sent sixty thousand crusaders to help the Spaniards against this swarm of invaders, and the Saracens were completely defeated. The battle of Navas de Tolosa, in 1212, settled that Spain was to be Christian instead of Mahometan.[8] THE LATER CRUSADES Against the Saracens of the East, however, crusades grew less and less effective. "Geography explains much of history." In Spain the Saracens were weak because far from the centre of their power. In the East the Europeans were at the same disadvantage. For one man who fell in battle in the Holy Land, twenty perished of starvation or disease upon the journey thither. Europe began to realize this. The East no longer lured men with the golden glamour that it held for an earlier generation. Kings had the contrasted examples of Philip Augustus and the heroic Richard to teach them the value of staying at home. We need glance but briefly at these later crusades. The fourth was undertaken in 1203. Venice contracted to transport its warriors to the Holy Land, but instead persuaded them to join her in an attack upon the decrepit Empire of the East.[9] Constantinople fell before their assault and received a Norman emperor, nor did the religious zeal of these particular followers of the cross ever carry them farther on their original errand. They were content to establish themselves as kings, dukes, and counts in their unexpected empire. Some of the little Frankish states thus created lasted for over two centuries, though the central power at Constantinople was regained by the Greek emperors of the east in 1261.[10] Meanwhile the patriotic and powerful King Andrew of Hungary led a fifth crusade. The German Emperor, Frederick II, headed a sixth in which, by diplomacy rather than arms, he temporarily regained Jerusalem.[11] For a time this treaty of peace deprived of their occupation the orders of religious knighthood still warring in the East. One of these, the Teutonic Knights, made friends with Frederick, and by his aid its members were transported to the eastern frontier of Germany, where among the Poles and Po-russians (Prussians) they could still find heathen fighting to their taste. From this order sprang the military basis of modern Prussia.[12] The Seventh and Eighth crusades were the work of the great French King and saint, Louis IX. The enthusiasm which had roused the mass of ordinary men to these vast destructive outpourings was faded. Louis had to coax and persuade his people to follow him, and even his earnest purpose and real ability could not save his expeditions from disastrous failure. In the Seventh Crusade he attacked, not Jerusalem, but Egypt, then the centre of Mahometan power. He was defeated and made prisoner; his army was practically exterminated. Yet by a personal heroism, which shone even more brilliantly in adversity than in success, he has won lasting fame. His captivity disrupted an empire. The mamelukes, the slave soldiers of Egypt, who had fought most valiantly against him, were wakened to a realization of their own power. They overthrew their sultan, and founded an Egyptian government which lasted until Napoleon's time.[13] After much suffering, Louis was allowed to purchase his freedom and returned to France. There he spent long years of wise government, of noble guidance of his people, and of secret preparations which he dared not avow. At length in his old age he confessed to his astounded nation that he meant to make one more attempt against the Saracens. It was a vow to God, he said, and he begged his people for assistance. The age had outgrown crusades. Perhaps no one man in all Louis' domains believed in the possibility of his success. History scarce presents anywhere a spectacle more pathetic than this last crusade, compelled by the fire of a single enthusiast. In love of him, his soldiers followed him, though with despair at heart; and the weeping crowds who bade them farewell at their ships, mourned them as men already dead. They attempted to attack the Saracens first at Tunis, and there Louis died of fever. The crusades perished with him.[14] POPE AND EMPEROR With the wane of the crusading fervor waned also the power of the popes. Innocent had extended his authority by terror and physical force. But men soon ceased to find religious inspiration for such "holy wars," and the calls of later popes fell upon deafened ears. The democratic policy of Innocent's predecessors had rallied all Italy around them; but his successors seem to have failed to recognize their true sources of strength. They abandoned their allies and ruled with autocratic power. Italy became divided, half Guelf, half Ghibelline, Moreover, even Frederick II, the ward whom Innocent had placed on the imperial throne, refused to sanction the encroachments of papal authority over the empire. So the strife of emperor and pope began again, only to terminate with the utter defeat and extermination of the great house of Barbarossa. Their possessions in Southern Italy and Sicily were conferred by the popes upon Charles of Anjou, brother of Louis IX of France. But while the popes were thus temporarily successful in the giant contest against their greatest rival, to such partisan extremities were they driven by the necessities of the struggle, that the awakening world looked at them with doubtful eyes, began to question their spiritual rights and honors, as well as the temporal authority they claimed. In Charles of Anjou the popes soon found that they had but substituted one master for another. Charles was rapidly becoming as obnoxious to Rome as the emperors had ever been, when suddenly the tyranny of his French soldiers roused the Sicilians to desperation, and by the massacre of the Sicilian Vespers[15] the French power in Italy was crushed. Men were slow to realize that the mighty hold which the papacy had once possessed on the deep heart of the world was being sapped at its foundation. Diplomatic pontiffs still managed for a time to play off one sovereign against another, and to have their battles fought by foreign armies on a business basis. As late as the year 1300 the first great jubilee of the Church was celebrated and brought hundreds of thousands of pilgrims flocking to Rome.[16] The papacy, though sorely pressed by many enemies, still proudly asserted its political supremacy. But in truth it had lost its power, not only over the minds of kings to hold them in subjection, not only over the interests of nobles to stir them to revolt, but alas, even over the love of the lower classes to rally them for its defence. Within ten years from the great jubilee the papacy met complete defeat and subjugation at the hands of a far lesser man and feebler monarch than Frederick II. To the empire the long contest was as disastrous as to the papacy. When Frederick II, at one time the most splendid monarch of Europe, died in 1250, a crushed and defeated man, Germany sank into such anarchy as it had not known since the days of the Hunnish invasion. "When the Emperor was condemned by the Church," says an ancient chronicle, "robbers made merry over their booty. Ploughshares were beaten into swords, reaping hooks into lances. Men went everywhere with flint and steel, setting in a blaze whatsoever they found." The period from 1254 to 1273 is known as the "Great Interregnum" in German history. There was no emperor, no authority, and every little lord fought and robbed as he pleased. The cities, driven to desperation, raised armed forces of their own and united in leagues, which later developed into the great Hanseatic League, more powerful than neighboring kings.[17] The anarchy spread to Italy. Bands of "Free Companies" roamed from place to place, plundering, fighting battles, storming walled cities, and at last the Pope sent thoroughly frightened word to Germany that the lords must elect an emperor to keep order or he would appoint one himself. The Church had learned its lesson, that without a strong civil government it could not exist. And perhaps the government had at least partly seen what later ages learned more fully, that without religion _it_ could not exist. Church and state were gentler to each other after that. They realized that, whatever their quarrels, they must stand or fall together. So, in 1273, it was the Pope's insistence that led to the selection of another emperor, Rudolph of Hapsburg. He was one of the lesser nobles, elected by the great dukes so that he should be too feeble to interfere with them. But he did interfere, and overthrew Ottocar of Bohemia, the strongest of them all, and restored some measure of law and tranquillity to distracted Germany. His son he managed to establish as Duke of Austria, and eventually the empire became hereditary in the family; so that the Hapsburgs remained rulers of Germany until Napoleon, that upsetter of so many comfortable sinecures, drove them out. Of Austria they are emperors even to this day.[18] THE TARTARS As though poor, dishevelled Germany had not troubles sufficient of her own, she suffered also in this century from the last of the great Asiatic invasions. About the year 1200 a remarkable military leader, Genghis Khan, appeared among the Tartars, a Mongol race of Northern Asia.[19] He organized their wild tribes and started them on a bloody career of rapine and conquest. He became emperor of China; his hordes spread over India and Persia. In 1226 they entered Russia, and after an heroic struggle the Russian duchies and republics were forced into submission to the Tartar yoke.[20] For nearly two centuries Russia became part, not of Europe, but of Asia, and her civilization received an oriental tinge which it has scarce yet outgrown. The huge Tartar invasion penetrated even to Silesia in Eastern Germany, where the Asiatics defeated a German army at Liegnitz (1241). But so great was the invader's loss that they retreated, nor did their leaders ever again seek to penetrate the "land of the iron-clad men." The real "yellow peril" of Europe, her submersion under the flood of Asia's millions, was perhaps possible at Liegnitz. It has never been so since. In the construction of impenetrable armor the inventive genius of the West had already begun to rise superior to the barbaric fury of the East. The arts of civilization were soon to soar immeasurably above mere numerical superiority. In Asia the Tartar power probably reached its greatest height under Kublai Khan, the Emperor of China whom Marco Polo visited.[21] And it is worth our modern notice that Kublai failed in an attempt to conquer Japan. Russia fell a victim to the Tartar hordes; Japan repelled them.[22] PROGRESS OF CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT While Europe and Asia were thus in turmoil throughout most of this era, England, secure in her island isolation, was making rapid progress on the career of union and free government whereon John had so unintentionally started her. The age thus adds to its other claims to distinction that of having seen the beginnings of constitutional government. England's Magna Charta was paralleled by the "Golden Bull" of Hungary, a charter granted by the crusading King, Andrew, to his tumultuous subjects.[23] In England the long reign of the weak Henry III, son of John, took more and more from the power of the crown. He was opposed by Simon of Montfort, who, to secure the affections and support of the common people, summoned their representatives to meet in a parliament with the knights and bishops. His "Mad Parliament"[24] of 1258 contained the first shadow of a government by the people; his later assemblies were still more democratic. Considered in this light one likes to remember that Montfort's first assembly won its title of "mad" by passing such excellent laws that none of those in power would submit to them. Following Henry III, Edward I came to the throne, a man of broad views and legal mind. He confirmed and legalized the rights already attained by his subjects, and centralized the authority of all Great Britain in his own hands by conquering both Wales[25] and Scotland. The struggles of Sir William Wallace and his devoted followers to throw off the English yoke ended only in disaster.[26] Edward, the most enlightened and perhaps the most brilliant sovereign of the thirteenth century, endeavored to protect the Jews,[27] but was finally compelled, by the clamor of his subjects, to expel the unfortunate race from his domains. He, however, permitted the exiles to take their wealth with them; and the scarcity thus created was one of the contributing causes which compelled him to promise his parliaments not to lay taxes without their consent. It was by this power to control the purse of king and country that parliament finally established itself as the supreme power in England. It "bought" each one of its concessions, each added authority. So that we may fairly figure that, from this time, trade becomes as important as war. Gold begins to seem to men not only more attractive, but more powerful than iron. The age of brute strength has passed; the age of schemes and subtle policies begun. The merchant dominates the knight. [FOR THE NEXT SECTION OF THIS GENERAL SURVEY SEE VOLUME VII.] ARCHIEPISCOPATE OF THOMAS BECKET HIS DEFENCE OF ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION: HIS ASSASSINATION A.D. 1162-1170 JOHN LINGARD Henry II, son of the empress Matilda of Germany by her second husband, Geoffrey of Anjou, ascended the throne of England on the death of his uncle Stephen, the usurper, and was the first king of that Plantagenet line which ruled England for over three centuries. Henry was crowned at Westminster on December 19, 1154, by Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury. Theobald by his authority and vigilance had maintained public tranquillity after the death of Stephen, and by his counsels of conciliation and peace and other services had earned the gratitude of the Monarch. When age compelled Theobald to retire from the councils of his sovereign, he recommended Henry to accept as minister his archdeacon, Thomas Becket. Becket was the son of Gilbert Becket, a prominent citizen of London. The boy's mother, according to an interesting tradition, had been the daughter of a Saracen emir who had made Gilbert a captive, in Jerusalem, after the First Crusade. The daughter helped Gilbert to escape, and later, for love of him, followed on an eastern ship bound for the English metropolis, although she knew no other words of the English language than "London" and "Gilbert." Wandering desolately through the streets and markets, with these words on her lips, she was recognized by a servant who had shared his master's captivity. He hastened to tell Gilbert, who at once sought for, sheltered her, and, shortly afterward, made her his wife. Their son Thomas was educated at the Abbey of Merton and in the schools of London, Oxford, and Paris. When his father died, Archbishop Theobald took the youth into his family. He studied civil and canon law on the Continent, attending, among others, the lectures of Gratian at Bologna. His accomplishments and talents were fully recognized on his return to England, and preferments followed rapidly until he became archdeacon of Canterbury, a dignity with the rank of baron, next to that of bishop and abbot. He became confidential adviser to the Primate; as his representative twice visited Rome; and, recommended to the notice of King Henry, was appointed chancellor, preceptor of the young prince, depositary of the royal favor, and received several valuable sinecures. He assumed great splendor and magnificence in his retinue. He attended Henry on his expedition to France, and his chivalric exploits in Normandy at the head of seven hundred knights, twelve hundred cavalry, and four thousand infantry, were more befitting the career of a military adventurer than that of a churchman. Archbishop Theobald died in 1161, and left at the royal disposal the highest dignity in the English Church. The favor enjoyed by the Chancellor Thomas Becket, and the situation which he filled, pointed him out as the person the most likely to succeed Theobald. By the courtiers he was already called the "Future Archbishop"; and when the report was mentioned to him, he ambiguously replied that he was acquainted with four poor priests far better qualified for that dignity than himself. But Henry, whatever were his intentions, is believed to have kept them locked up within his own breast. During the vacancy the revenues of the see were paid into his exchequer, nor was he anxious to deprive himself of so valuable an income by a precipitate election. At the end of thirteen months (A.D. 1162) he sent for the Chancellor at Falaise, bade him prepare for a voyage to England, and added that within a few days he would be archbishop of Canterbury. Becket, looking with a smile of irony on his dress, replied that he had not much of the appearance of an archbishop; and that if the King were serious, he must beg permission to decline the preferment, because it would be impossible for him to perform the duties of the situation and at the same time retain the favor of his benefactor. But Henry was inflexible; the legate Henry of Pisa added his entreaties; and Becket, though he already saw the storm gathering in which he afterward perished, was induced, against his own judgment, to acquiesce. He sailed to England (May 30); the prelates and a deputation of the monks of Canterbury assembled in the king's chapel at Westminster; every vote was given in his favor; the applause of the nobility testified their satisfaction; and Prince Henry in the name of his father gave the royal assent. Becket was ordained priest by the Bishop of Rochester, and the next day, having been declared free from all secular obligations, he was consecrated by Henry of Winchester. It was a most pompous ceremony, for all the nobility of England, to gratify the King, attended in honor of his favorite. That the known intentions of Henry must have influenced the electors there can be little doubt; but it appears that throughout the whole business every necessary form was fully observed. Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of Hereford, a prelate of rigid morals and much canonical learning, alone observed jeeringly that the King had at last wrought a miracle; for he had changed a soldier into a priest, a layman into an archbishop. The sarcasm was noticed at the time as a sally of disappointed ambition. That Becket had still to learn the self-denying virtues of the clerical character is plain from his own confession; that his conduct had always defied the reproach of immorality was confidently asserted by his friends, and is equivalently acknowledged by the silence of his enemies. The ostentatious parade and worldly pursuits of the chancellor were instantly renounced by the Archbishop, who in the fervor of his conversion prescribed to himself, as a punishment for the luxury and vanity of his former life, a daily course of secret mortification. His conduct was now marked by the strictest attention to the decencies of his station. To the train of knights and noblemen, who had been accustomed to wait on him, succeeded a few companions selected from the most virtuous and learned of his clergy. His diet was abstemious; his charities were abundant; his time was divided into certain portions allotted to prayer and study and the episcopal functions. These he found it difficult to unite with those of the chancellor; and, therefore, as at his consecration he had been declared free from all secular engagements, he resigned that office into the hands of the King. This total change of conduct has been viewed with admiration or censure according to the candor or prejudices of the beholders. By his contemporaries it was universally attributed to a conscientious sense of duty: modern writers have frequently described it as a mere affectation of piety, under which he sought to conceal projects of immeasurable ambition. But how came this hypocrisy, if it existed, to elude, during a long and bitter contest, the keen eyes of his adversaries? A more certain path would surely have offered itself to ambition. By continuing to flatter the King's wishes, and by uniting in himself the offices of chancellor and archbishop, he might in all probability have ruled without control both in church and state. For more than twelve months the primate appeared to enjoy his wonted ascendency in the royal favor. But during his absence the warmth of Henry's affection insensibly evaporated. The sycophants of the court, who observed the change, industriously misrepresented the actions of the Archbishop, and declaimed in exaggerated terms against the loftiness of his views, the superiority of his talents, and the decision of his character. Such hints made a deep impression on the suspicious and irritable mind of the King, who now began to pursue his late favorite with a hatred as vehement as had been the friendship with which he had formerly honored him. Amidst a number of discordant statements it is difficult to fix on the original ground of the dissension between them; whether it were the Archbishop's resignation of the chancellorship, or his resumption of the lands alienated from his see, or his attempt to reform the clergymen who attended the court, or his opposition to the revival of the odious tax known by the name of the _danegelt_.[28] But that which brought them into immediate collision was a controversy respecting the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts. A rapid view of the origin and progress of these courts, and of their authority in civil and criminal causes, may not prove uninteresting to the reader. From the commencement of Christianity its professors had been exhorted to withdraw their differences from the cognizance of profane tribunals, and to submit them to the paternal authority of their bishops, who, by the nature of their office, were bound to heal the wounds of dissension, and by the sacredness of their character were removed beyond the suspicion of partiality or prejudice. Though an honorable, it was a distracting, servitude, from which the more pious would gladly have been relieved; but the advantages of the system recommended it to the approbation of the Christian emperors. Constantine and his successors appointed the bishops the general arbitrators within their respective dioceses; and the officers of justice were compelled to execute their decisions without either delay or appeal. At first, to authorize the interference of the spiritual judge, the previous consent of both the plaintiff and defendant was requisite; but Theodosius left it to the option of the parties, either of whom was indulged with the liberty of carrying the cause in the first instance into the bishop's court, or even of removing it thither in any stage of the pleadings before the civil magistrate. Charlemagne inserted this constitution of Theodosius in his code, and ordered it to be invariably observed among all the nations which acknowledged his authority. If by the imperial law the laity were permitted, by the canon law the clergy were compelled, to accept of the bishop as the judge of civil controversies. It did not become them to quit the spiritual duties of their profession, and entangle themselves in the intricacies of law proceedings. The principle was fully admitted by the emperor Justinian, who decided that in cases in which only one of the parties was a clergyman, the cause must be submitted to the decision of the bishop. This valuable privilege, to which the teachers of the northern nations had been accustomed under their own princes, they naturally established among their converts; and it was soon confirmed to the clergy by the civil power in every Christian country. Constantine had thought that the irregularities of an order of men devoted to the offices of religion should be veiled from the scrutinizing eye of the people. With this view he granted to each bishop, if he were accused of violating the law, the liberty of being tried by his colleagues, and moreover invested him with a criminal jurisdiction over his own clergy. Whether his authority was confined to lesser offences, or extended to capital crimes, is a subject of controversy. There are many edicts which without any limitation reserve the correction of the clergy to the discretion of the bishop; but in the novels of Justinian a distinction is drawn between ecclesiastical and civil transgressions. With the former the Emperor acknowledges that the civil power has no concern: the latter are cognisable by the civil judge. Yet before his sentence can be executed, the convict must be degraded by his ecclesiastical superior; or, if the superior refuse, the whole affair must be referred to the consideration of the sovereign. That this regulation prevailed among the western nations, after their separation from the Empire, is proved by the canons of several councils; but the distinction laid down by Justinian was insensibly abolished, and, whatever might be the nature of the offence with which a clergyman was charged, he was, in the first instance at least, amenable to none but an ecclesiastical tribunal. It was thus that on the Continent the spiritual courts were first established, and their authority was afterward enlarged; but among the Anglo-Saxons the limits of the two judicatures were intermixed and undefined. When the Imperial government ceased in other countries, the natives preserved many of its institutions, which the conquerors incorporated with their own laws; but our barbarian ancestors eradicated every prior establishment, and transplanted the manners of the wilds of Germany into the new solitude which they had made. After their conversion, they associated the heads of the clergy with their nobles, and both equally exercised the functions of civil magistrates. It is plain that the bishop was the sole judge of the clergy in criminal cases: that he alone decided their differences, and that to him appertained the cognizance of certain offences against the rights of the Church and the sanctions of religion; but as it was his duty to sit with the sheriff in the court of the county, his ecclesiastical became blended with his secular jurisdiction, and many causes, which in other countries had been reserved to the spiritual judge, were decided in England before a mixed tribunal. This disposition continued in force till the Norman Conquest; when, as the reader must have formerly noticed, the two judicatures were completely separated by the new sovereign; and in every diocese "Courts Christian," that is, of the bishop and his archdeacons, were established after the model and with the authority of similar courts in all other parts of the Western Church. The tribunals, created by this arrangement, were bound in the terms of the original charter to be guided in their proceedings by the "episcopal laws," a system of ecclesiastical jurisprudence, composed of the canons of councils, the decrees of popes, and the maxims of the more ancient fathers. This, like all other codes of law, had in the course of centuries received numerous additions. New cases perpetually occurred; new decisions were given; and new compilations were made and published. The two, which at the time of the Conquest prevailed in the spiritual courts of France, and which were sanctioned by the charter of William in England, were the collection under the name of Isidore, and that of Burchard, Bishop of Worms. About the end of the century appeared a new code from the pen of Ivo, Bishop of Chartres, whose acquaintance with the civil law of Rome enabled him to give to his work a superiority over the compilations of his predecessors. Yet the knowledge of Ivo must have been confined to the Theodosian code, the institutes and mutilated extracts from the pandects of Justinian. But when Amalphi was taken by the Pisans in 1137, an entire copy of the last work was discovered; and its publication immediately attracted, and almost monopolized, the attention of the learned. Among the students and admirers of the pandects was Gratian, a monk of Bologna, who conceived the idea of compiling a digest of the canon law on the model of that favorite work; and soon afterwards, having incorporated with his own labors the collections of former writers, he gave his "decretum" to the public in 1151. From that moment the two codes, the civil and canon laws, were deemed the principal repositories of legal knowledge; and the study of each was supposed necessary to throw light on the other. Roger, the bachelor, a monk of Bec, had already read lectures on the sister sciences in England, but he was advanced to the government of his abbey; and the English scholars, immediately after the publication of the decretum, crowded to the more renowned professors in the city of Bologna. After their return they practised in the episcopal courts; their respective merits were easily appreciated, and the proficiency of the more eminent was rewarded with an ample harvest of wealth and preferment. This circumstance gave to the spiritual a marked superiority over the secular courts. The proceedings in the former were guided by fixed and invariable principles, the result of the wisdom of ages; the latter were compelled to follow a system of jurisprudence confused and uncertain, partly of Anglo-Saxon, partly of Norman origin, and depending on precedents, of which some were furnished by memory, others had been transmitted by tradition. The clerical judges were men of talents and education; the uniformity and equity of their decisions were preferred to the caprice and violence which seemed to sway the royal and baronial justiciaries; and by degrees every cause, which legal ingenuity could connect with the provisions of the canons, whether it regarded tithes, or advowsons, or public scandal, or marriage, or testaments, or perjury, or breach of contract, was drawn before the ecclesiastical tribunals. A spirit of rivalry arose between the two judicatures, which quickly ripened into open hostility. On the one side were ranged the bishops and chief dignitaries of the Church, on the other the King and barons; both equally interested in the quarrel, because both were accustomed to receive the principal share of the fees, fines, and forfeitures in their respective courts. Archbishop Theobald had seen the approach, and trembled for the issue of the contest; and from his death-bed he wrote to Henry, recommending to his protection the liberties of the Church, and putting him on his guard against the machinations of its enemies. The contest at last commenced; and the first attack was made with great judgment against that quarter in which the spiritual courts were the most defenceless, their criminal jurisdiction. The canons had excluded clergymen from judgments of blood; and the severest punishments which they could inflict were flagellation, fine, imprisonment, and degradation. It was contended that such punishments were inadequate to the suppression of the more enormous offences; and that they encouraged the perpetration of crime by insuring a species of impunity to the perpetrator. As every individual who had been admitted to the tonsure, whether he afterward received holy orders or not, was entitled to the clerical privileges, we may concede that there were in these turbulent times many criminals among the clergy; but, if it were ever said that they had committed more than a hundred homicides within the last ten years, we may qualify our belief of the assertion, by recollecting the warmth of the two parties, and the exaggeration to which contests naturally give birth. In the time of Theobald, Philip de Brois, a canon of Bedford, had been arraigned before his bishop, convicted of manslaughter,[29] and condemned to make pecuniary compensation to the relations of the deceased. Long afterward, Fitz-Peter, the itinerant justiciary, alluding to the same case, called him a murderer in the open court at Dunstable. A violent altercation ensued, and the irritation of Philip drew from him expressions of insult and contempt. The report was carried to the King, who deemed himself injured in the person of his officer, and ordered De Brois to be indicted for this new offence in the spiritual court. He was tried and condemned to be publicly whipped, to be deprived of the fruits of his benefice, and to be suspended from his functions during two years. It was hoped that the severity of the sentence would mitigate the King's anger; but Henry was implacable: he swore "by God's eyes" that they had favored De Brois on account of his clerical character, and required the bishops to make oath that they had done justice between himself and the prisoner (A.D. 1163). In this temper of mind he summoned them to Westminster, and required their consent that, for the future, whenever a clergyman had been degraded for a public crime by the sentence of the spiritual judge, he should be immediately delivered into the custody of a lay officer to be punished by the sentence of a lay tribunal. To this the bishops, as guardians of the rights of the Church, objected. The proposal, they observed, went to place the English clergy on a worse footing than their brethren in any other Christian country; it was repugnant to those liberties which the King had sworn to preserve at his coronation; and it violated the first principle of law, by requiring that the same individual should be tried twice and punished twice for one and the same offence. Henry, who had probably anticipated the answer, immediately quitted the subject, and inquired whether they would promise to observe the ancient customs of the realm. The question was captious, as neither the number nor the tendency of these customs had been defined; and the Archbishop with equal policy replied that he would observe them, "saving his order." The clause was admitted when the clergy swore fealty to the sovereign; why should it be rejected when they only promised the observance of customs? The King put the question separately to all the prelates, and, with the exception of the Bishop of Chichester, received from each the same answer. His eyes flashed with indignation: they were leagued, he said, in a conspiracy against him; and in a burst of fury he rushed out of the apartment. The next morning the primate received an order to surrender the honor of Eye and the castle of Berkhamstead. The King had departed by break of day. The original point in dispute was now merged in a more important controversy; for it was evident that under the name of the customs was meditated an attack not on one, but on most of the clerical immunities. Of the duty of the prelates to oppose this innovation no clergyman at that period entertained a doubt; but to determine how far that opposition might safely be carried was a subject of uncertain discussion. The Archbishop of York, who had been gained by the King, proposed to yield for the present, and to resume the contest under more favorable auspices; the undaunted spirit of Becket spurned the temporizing policy of his former rival, and urged the necessity of unanimous and persevering resistance. Every expedient was employed to subdue his resolution; and at length, wearied out by the representations of his friends and the threats of his enemies, the pretended advice of the Pontiff, and the assurance that Henry would be content with the mere honor of victory, he waited on the King at Woodstock, and offered to make the promise and omit the obnoxious clause. He was graciously received; and to bring the matter to an issue, a great council was summoned to meet at Clarendon after the Christmas holidays. In this assembly, January 25, 1164, John of Oxford, one of the royal chaplains, was appointed president by the King, who immediately called on the bishops to fulfil their promise. His angry manner and threatening tone revived the suspicions of the Primate, who ventured to express a wish that the saving clause might still be admitted. At this request the indignation of the King was extreme; he threatened Becket with exile or death; the door of the next apartment was thrown open, and discovered a body of knights with their garments tucked up, and their swords drawn; the nobles and prelates besought the Archbishop to relent; and two Knights Templars on their knees conjured him to prevent by his acquiescence the massacre of all the bishops, which otherwise would most certainly ensue. Sacrificing his own judgment to their entreaties rather than their arguments, he promised in the word of truth to observe the "customs," and required of the King to be informed what they were. The reader will probably feel some surprise to learn that they were yet unknown; but a committee of inquiry was appointed, and the next day Richard de Lucy and Joscelin de Baliol exhibited the sixteen Constitutions of Clarendon. Three copies were made, each of which was subscribed by the King, the prelates, and thirty-seven barons. Henry then demanded that the bishops should affix their seals. After what had passed, it was a trifle neither worth the asking nor the refusing. The Primate replied that he had performed all that he had promised, and that he would do nothing more. His conduct on this trying occasion has been severely condemned for its duplicity. To me he appears more deserving of pity than censure. His was not the tergiversation of one who seeks to effect his object by fraud and deception: it was rather the hesitation of a mind oscillating between the decision of his own judgment and the opinions and apprehensions of others. His conviction seems to have remained unchanged: he yielded to avoid the charge of having by his obstinacy drawn destruction on the heads of his fellow-bishops. After the vehemence with which the recognition of the "customs" was urged, and the importance which has been attached to them by modern writers, the reader will naturally expect some account of the Constitutions of Clarendon. I shall therefore mention the principal: I. It was enacted that "the custody of every vacant archbishopric, bishopric, abbey, and priory of royal foundation ought to be given and its revenues paid to the king; and that the election of a new incumbent ought to be made in consequence of the king's writ, by the chief clergy of the church, assembled in the king's chapel, with the assent of the king, and with the advice of such prelates as the king may call to his assistance." The custom recited in the first part of this constitution could not claim higher antiquity than the reign of William Rufus, by whom it was introduced. It had, moreover, been renounced after his death by all his successors, by Henry I, by Stephen, and, lastly, by the present King himself. On what plea therefore it could be now confirmed as an ancient custom it is difficult to comprehend. II. By the second and seventh articles it was provided that in almost every suit, civil or criminal, in which each or either party was a clergyman, the proceeding should commence before the king's justices, who should determine whether the cause ought to be tried in the secular or episcopal courts; and that in the latter case a civil officer should be present to report the proceedings, and the defendant, if he were convicted in a criminal action, should lose his benefit of clergy. This, however it might be called for by the exigencies of the times, ought not to have been termed an ancient custom. It was most certainly an innovation. It overturned the law as it had invariably stood from the days of the Conqueror, and did not restore the judicial process of the Anglo-Saxon dynasty. III. It was ordered that "no tenant-in-chief of the king, no officer of his household, or of his demesne, should be excommunicated, or his lands put under an interdict, until application had been made to the king, or in his absence to the grand justiciary, who ought to take care that what belongs to the king's courts shall be there determined, and what belongs to the ecclesiastical courts shall be determined in them." Sentences of excommunication had been greatly multiplied and abused during the Middle Ages. They were the principal weapons with which the clergy sought to protect themselves and their property from the cruelty and rapacity of the banditti in the service of the barons. They were feared by the most powerful and unprincipled, because, at the same time that they excluded the culprit from the offices of religion, they also cut him off from the intercourse of society. Men were compelled to avoid the company of the excommunicated, unless they were willing to participate in his punishment. Hence much ingenuity was displayed in the discovery of expedients to restrain the exercise of this power; and it was contended that no tenant of the crown ought to be excommunicated without the king's permission, because it deprived the sovereign of the personal services which he had a right to demand of his vassal. This "custom" had been introduced by the Conqueror, and, though the clergy constantly reclaimed, had often been enforced by his successors. IV. The next was also a custom deriving its origin from the Conquest, that no archbishop, bishop, or dignified clergyman should lawfully go beyond the sea without the king's permission. Its object was to prevent complaints at the papal court, to the prejudice of the sovereign. V. It was enacted that appeals should proceed regularly from the archdeacon to the bishop, and from the bishop to the archbishop. If the archbishop failed to do justice, the cause ought to be carried before the king, that by his precept the suit might be terminated in the archbishop's court, so as not to proceed further without the king's consent. Henry I had endeavored to prevent appeals from being carried before the Pope, and it was supposed that the same was the object of the present constitution. The King, however, thought proper to deny it. According to the explanation which he gave, it prohibited clergymen from appealing to the pope in _civil_ causes only, when they might obtain justice in the royal courts. The remaining articles are of minor importance. They confine pleas of debt and disputes respecting advowsons to the cognizance of the king's justices; declare that clergymen who hold lands of the crown hold by barony, and are bound to the same services as the lay barons; and forbid the bishops to admit to orders the sons of villeins, without the license of their respective lords. As the Primate retired he meditated in silence on his conduct in the council. His scruples revived, and the spontaneous censures of his attendants added to the poignancy of his feelings. In great agony of mind he reached Canterbury, where he condemned his late weakness, interdicted himself from the exercise of his functions, wrote to Alexander a full account of the transaction, and solicited absolution from that Pontiff. It was believed that, if he had submitted with cheerfulness at Clarendon, he would have recovered his former ascendency over the royal mind: but his tardy assent did not allay the indignation which his opposition had kindled, and his subsequent repentance for that assent closed the door to forgiveness. Henry had flattered himself with the hope that he should be able to extort the approbation of the "customs" either from the gratitude of Alexander, whom he had assisted in his necessities, or from the fears of that Pontiff, lest a refusal might add England to the nations which acknowledged the antipope. The firmness of the Pope defeated all his schemes, and the King in his anger vowed to be revenged on the Archbishop. Among his advisers there were some who sought to goad him on to extremities. They scattered unfounded reports; they attributed to Becket a design of becoming independent; they accused him of using language the most likely to wound the vanity of the monarch. He was reported to have said to his confidants that the youth of Henry required a master; that the violence of his passions must and might easily be tamed; and that he knew how necessary he himself was to a king incapable of guiding the reins of government without his assistance. It was not that these men were in reality friends to Henry. They are said to have been equally enemies to him and to the Church. They sighed after the licentiousness of the last reign, of which they had been deprived, and sought to provoke a contest, in which, whatever party should succeed, they would have to rejoice over the defeat either of the clergy, whom they considered as rivals, or of the King, whom they hated as their oppressor. The ruin of a single bishop was now the principal object that occupied and perplexed the mind of this mighty monarch. By the advice of his counsellors it was resolved to waive the controversy respecting the "customs," and to fight with those more powerful weapons which the feudal jurisprudence always offered to the choice of a vindictive sovereign. A succession of charges was prepared, and the Primate was cited to a great council in the town of Northampton. With a misboding heart he obeyed the summons; and the King's refusal to accept from him the kiss of peace admonished him of his danger. At the opening of the council, October 13th, John of Oxford presided; Henry exercised the office of prosecutor. The first charge regarded some act of contempt against the King, supposed to have been committed by Becket in his judicial capacity. The Archbishop offered a plea in excuse; but Henry swore that justice should be done him; and the obsequious court condemned Becket to the forfeiture of his goods and chattels, a penalty which was immediately commuted for a fine of five hundred pounds. The next morning the King required him to refund three hundred pounds, the rents which he had received as warden of Eye and Berkhamstead. Becket coolly replied that he would pay it; more, indeed, had been expended by him in the repairs, but money should never prove a cause of dissension between himself and his sovereign. Another demand followed of five hundred pounds received by the Chancellor before the walls of Toulouse. It was in vain that the Archbishop described the transaction as a gift. Henry maintained that it was a loan; and the Court, on the principle that the word of the sovereign was preferable to that of a subject, compelled him to give security for the repayment of the money. The third day the King required an account of all the receipts from vacant abbeys and bishoprics which had come into the hands of Becket during his chancellorship, and estimated the balance due to the Crown at the sum of forty-four thousand marks. At the mention of this enormous demand the Archbishop stood aghast. However, recovering himself, he replied that he was not bound to answer: that at his consecration both Prince Henry and the Earl of Leicester, the justiciary, had publicly released him by the royal command from all similar claims; and that on a demand so unexpected and important he had a right to require the advice of his fellow-bishops. Had the Primate been ignorant of the King's object, it was sufficiently disclosed in the conference which followed between him and the bishops. Foliot, with the prelates who enjoyed the royal confidence, exhorted him to resign; Henry of Winchester alone had the courage to reprobate this interested advice. On his return to his lodgings the anxiety of Becket's mind brought on an indisposition which confined him to his chamber; and during the next two days he had leisure to arrange plans for his subsequent conduct. The first idea which suggested itself was a bold, and what perhaps might have proved a successful, appeal to the royal pity. He proposed to go barefoot to the palace, to throw himself at the feet of the King, and to conjure him by their former friendship to consent to a reconciliation. But he afterward adopted another resolution, to decline the authority of the court, and trust for protection to the sacredness of his character. In the morning, October 18th, having previously celebrated the mass of St. Stephen the first martyr, he proceeded to court, arrayed as he was in pontifical robes, and bearing in his hand the archiepiscopal cross. As he entered, the King with the barons retired into a neighboring apartment, and was soon after followed by the bishops. The Primate, left alone with his clerks in the spacious hall, seated himself on a bench, and with calm and intrepid dignity awaited their decision. The courtiers, to please the prince, strove to distinguish themselves by the intemperance of their language. Henry, in the vehemence of his passion, inveighed, one while against the insolence of Becket, at another against the pusillanimity and ingratitude of his favorites; till even the most active of the prelates who had raised the storm began to view with horror the probable consequences. Roger of York contrived to retire; and as he passed through the hall, bade his clerks follow him, that they might not witness the effusion of blood. Next came the Bishop of Exeter, who threw himself at the feet of the Primate, and conjured him to have pity on himself and the episcopal order; for the King had threatened with death the first man who should speak in his favor. "Flee, then," he replied; "thou canst not understand the things that are of God." Soon afterward appeared the rest of the bishops. Hilary of Chichester spoke in their name. "You were," he said, "our primate; but by opposing the royal customs, you have broken your oath of fealty to the King. A perjured archbishop has no right to our obedience. From you, then, we appeal to the Pope, and summon you to answer us before him." "I hear," was his only reply. The bishops seated themselves along the opposite side of the hall, and a solemn silence ensued. At length the door opened and the Earl of Leicester at the head of the barons bade him hear his sentence. "My sentence," interrupted the Archbishop; "son and earl, hear me first. You know with what fidelity I served the King, how reluctantly, to please him, I accepted my present office, and in what manner I was declared by him free from all secular claims. For what happened before my consecration I ought not to answer, nor will I. Know, moreover, that you are my children in God. Neither law nor reason allows you to judge your father. I therefore decline your tribunal, and refer my quarrel to the decision of the Pope. To him I appeal and shall now, under the protection of the Catholic Church and the apostolic see, depart." As he walked along the hall, some of the courtiers threw at him knots of straw, which they took from the floor. A voice called him a traitor. At the word he stopped, and, hastily turning round, rejoined, "Were it not that my order forbids me, that coward should repent of his insolence." At the gate he was received with acclamations of joy by the clergy and people, and was conducted in triumph to his lodgings. It was generally believed that if the Archbishop had remained at Northampton, that night would have proved his last. Alarmed by frequent hints from his friends, he petitioned to retire beyond the sea, and was told that he might expect an answer the following morning. This unnecessary delay increased his apprehensions. To deceive the vigilance of the spies that beset him, he ordered a bed to be prepared in the church, and in the dusk of the evening, accompanied by two clerks and a servant on foot, escaped by the north gate. After fifteen days of perils and adventures, Brother Christian (that was the name he assumed) landed at Gravelines in Flanders. His first visit was paid, November 3d, to the King of France, who received him with marks of veneration; his second to Alexander, who kept his court in the city of Sens. He had been preceded by a magnificent embassy of English prelates and barons, who had endeavored in vain to prejudice the Pontiff against him, though by the distribution of presents they had purchased advocates in the college of cardinals. The very lecture of the constitutions closed the mouths of his adversaries. Alexander, having condemned in express terms ten of the articles, recommended the Archbishop to the care of the Abbot of Pontigny, and exhorted him to bear with resignation the hardships of exile. When Thomas surrendered his bishopric into the hands of the Pope, his resignation was hailed by a part of the consistory as the readiest means of terminating a vexatious and dangerous controversy, but Alexander preferred honor to convenience, and refusing to abandon a prelate who had sacrificed the friendship of a king for the interests of the Church, reinvested him with the archiepiscopal dignity. The eyes of the King were still fixed on the exile at Pontigny, and by his order the punishment of treason was denounced against any person who should presume to bring into England letters of excommunication or interdict from either the Pontiff or the Archbishop. He confiscated the estates of that prelate, commanded his name to be erased from the liturgy, and seized the revenues of every clergyman who had followed him into France or had sent him pecuniary assistance. By a refinement of vengeance, he involved all who were connected with him either by blood or friendship, and with them their families, without distinction of rank or age or sex, in one promiscuous sentence of banishment. Neither men, bowing under the weight of years, nor infants still hanging at the breast, were excepted. The list of proscription was swelled with four hundred names; and the misfortune of the sufferers was aggravated by the obligation of an oath to visit the Archbishop, and importune him with the history of their wrongs. Day after day crowds of exiles besieged the door of his cell at Pontigny. His heart was wrung with anguish; he implored the compassion of his friends, and enjoyed at last the satisfaction of knowing that the wants of these blameless victims had been amply relieved by the benefactions of the King of France, the Queen of Sicily, and the Pope. Still Henry's resentment was insatiable. Pontigny belonged to the Cistercians; and he informed them that if they continued to afford an asylum to the traitor, not one of their order should be permitted to remain within his dominions. The Archbishop was compelled to quit his retreat; but Louis immediately offered him the city of Sens for his residence. Here, as he had done at Pontigny, Becket led the solitary and mortified life of a recluse. Withdrawing himself from company and amusements, he divided the whole of his time between prayer and reading. His choice of books was determined by a reference to the circumstances in which he was placed; and in the canon law, the histories of the martyrs, and the Holy Scriptures he sought for advice and consolation. On a mind naturally firm and unbending, such studies were likely to make a powerful impression; and his friends, dreading the consequences, endeavored to divert his attention to other objects. But their remonstrances were fruitless. Gradually his opinions became tinged with enthusiasm: he identified his cause with that of God and the Church; concession appeared to him like apostasy, and his resolution was fixed to bear every privation, and to sacrifice, if it was necessary, even his own life in so sacred a contest. The violence of Henry nourished and strengthened these sentiments; and at last, urged by the cries of the sufferers, the Archbishop assumed a bolder tone, which terrified his enemies, and compelled the court of Rome to come forward to his support. By a sentence, promulgated with more than the usual solemnity, he cut off from the society of the faithful such of the royal ministers as had communicated with the antipope, those who had framed the Constitutions of Clarendon, and all who had invaded the property of the Church. At the same time he confirmed by frequent letters the wavering mind of the Pontiff, checked by his remonstrances the opposition of the cardinals who had been gained by his adversaries; and intimated to Henry, in strong but affectionate language, the punishment which awaited his impenitence. This mighty monarch, the lord of so many nations, while he affected to despise, secretly dreaded, the spiritual arms of his victim. The strictest orders were issued that every passenger from beyond the sea should be searched; that all letters from the Pope or the Archbishop should be seized; that the bearers should suffer the most severe and shameful punishments; and that all freemen, in the courts to which they owed service, should promise upon oath not to obey any censure published by ecclesiastical authority against the King or the kingdom. But it was for his Continental dominions that he felt chiefly alarmed. There the great barons, who hated his government, would gladly embrace the opportunity to revolt; and the King of France, his natural opponent, would instantly lend them his aid against the enemy of the Church. Hence for some years the principal object of his policy was to avert or at least to delay the blow which he so much dreaded. As long as the Pope was a fugitive in France, dependent on the bounty of his adherents, the King had hoped that his necessities would compel him to abandon the Primate. But the antipope was now dead; and though the Emperor had raised up a second in the person of Guido of Crema, Alexander had returned to Italy, and recovered possession of Rome. Henry therefore resolved to try the influence of terror, by threatening to espouse the cause of Guido. He even opened a correspondence with the Emperor; and in a general diet at Wuerzburg his ambassadors made oath in the name of their master, that he would reject Alexander, and obey the authority of his rival. Of this fact there cannot be a doubt. It was announced to the German nations by an imperial edict, and is attested by an eye-witness, who from the council wrote to the Pope a full account of the transaction. Henry, however, soon repented of his precipitancy. In 1167 his bishops refused to disgrace themselves by transferring their obedience at the nod of their prince; and he was unwilling to involve himself in a new and apparently a hopeless quarrel. To disguise or excuse his conduct he disavowed the act, attributed it to his envoys, and afterward induced them also to deny it. John of Oxford was despatched to Rome, who, in the presence of Alexander, swore that at Wuerzburg he had done nothing contrary to the faith of the Church or to the honor and service of the Pontiff. His next expedient was one which had been prohibited by the Constitutions of Clarendon. He repeatedly authorized his bishops to appeal in their name and his own from the judgment of the Archbishop to that of the Pope. By this means the authority of that prelate was provisionally suspended; and though his friends maintained that these appeals were not vested with the conditions required by the canons, they were always admitted by Alexander. The King improved the delay to purchase friends. By the Pontiff his presents were indignantly refused: they were accepted by some of the cardinals, by the free states in Italy, and by several princes and barons supposed to possess influence in the papal councils. On some occasions Henry threw himself and his cause on the equity of Alexander; at others he demanded and obtained legates to decide the controversy in France. Twice he condescended to receive the Primate, and to confer with him on the subject. To avoid altercation, it was agreed that no mention should be made of the "customs"; but each mistrusted the other. Henry was willing to preserve the liberties of the Church "saving the dignity of his crown"; and the Archbishop was equally willing to obey the King, "saving the rights of the Church." In the second conference these cautionary clauses were omitted; the terms were satisfactorily adjusted, and the Primate, as he was about to depart, requested of his sovereign the kiss of peace. It was the usual termination of such discussions, the bond by which the contending parties sealed their reconciliation. But Henry coldly replied that he had formerly sworn never to give it him; and that he was unwilling to incur the guilt of perjury. So flimsy an evasion could deceive no one; and the Primate departed in the full conviction that no reliance could be placed on the King's sincerity. He had now in view the coronation of his son Henry, a measure the policy of which has been amply but unsatisfactorily discussed by modern historians. The performance of the ceremony belonged of right to the Archbishop of Canterbury; and Becket had obtained from the Pope a letter forbidding any of the English bishops to usurp an office which was the privilege of his see. But it was impossible for him to transmit this prohibition to those to whom it was addressed; and his enemies, to remove the scruples of the prelates, exhibited a pretended letter from the Pontiff empowering the Archbishop of York to crown the prince. He was knighted early in the morning of June 14th; the coronation was performed with the usual solemnities in Westminster Abbey; and at table the King waited on his son with his own hands. The next day William, King of Scotland, David his brother, and the English barons and free tenants did homage and swore fealty to the young King. Why the wife of the Prince was not crowned with her husband we are not informed; but Louis took to himself the insult offered to his daughter, and entered the borders of Normandy with his army. Henry hastened to defend his dominions; the two monarchs had a private conference; the former treaty was renewed; and a promise was given of an immediate reconciliation with the Primate. Every attempt to undermine the integrity of the Pontiff had now failed; and Henry saw with alarm that the thunder, which he had so long feared, was about to burst on his dominions. A plan of adjustment had been arranged between his envoys and Alexander; and to defeat the chicanery of his advisers, it was accompanied with the threat of an interdict if it were not executed within the space of forty days. He consented to see the Archbishop, and awaited his arrival in a spacious meadow near the town of Freitville on the borders of Touraine (July 22d). As soon as Becket appeared, the King, spurring forward his horse with his cap in his hand, prevented his salutation; and, as if no dissension had ever divided them, discoursed with him apart, with all that easy familiarity which had distinguished their former friendship. In the course of their conversation, Henry exclaimed, "As for the men who have betrayed both you and me, I will make them such return as the deserts of traitors require." At these words the Archbishop alighted from his horse, and threw himself at the feet of his sovereign, but the King laid hold of the stirrup, and insisted that he should remount, saying: "In short, my Lord Archbishop, let us renew our ancient affection for each other; only show me honor before those who are now viewing our behavior." Then returning to his attendants, he observed: "I find the Archbishop in the best disposition toward me: were I otherwise toward him, I should be the worst of men." Becket followed him, and by the mouth of the Archbishop of Sens presented his petition. He prayed that the King would graciously admit him to the royal favor, would grant peace and security to him and his, would restore the possessions of the See of Canterbury, and would, in his mercy, make amends to that Church for the injury it had sustained in the late coronation of his son. In return he promised him love, honor, and every service which an archbishop could render in the Lord to his king and his sovereign. To these demands Henry assented: they again conversed apart for a considerable time; and at their separation it was mutually understood that the Archbishop, after he had arranged his affairs in France, should return to the court, and remain there for some days, that the public might be convinced of the renewal and solidity of their friendship. If Henry felt as he pretended, his conduct in this interview will deserve the praise of magnanimity, but his skill in the art of dissimulation may fairly justify a suspicion of his sincerity. The man who that very morning had again bound himself by oath in the presence of his courtiers to refuse the kiss of peace, could not be animated with very friendly sentiments toward the Archbishop; and the mind of that prelate, though his hopes suggested brighter prospects, was still darkened with doubt and perplexity. Months were suffered to elapse before the royal engagements were executed; and when at last, with the terrors of another interdict hanging over his head (November 12th), the King restored the archiepiscopal lands, the rents had been previously levied, the corn and cattle had been carried off, and the buildings were left in a dilapidated state. The remonstrances of the Primate and his two visits to the court obtained nothing but deceitful promises; his enemies publicly threatened his life, and his friends harassed him with the most gloomy presages; yet, as the road was at last open, he resolved to return to his diocese, and at his departure wrote to the King an eloquent and affecting letter. "It was my wish," he concludes, "to have waited on you once more, but necessity compels me, in the lowly state to which I am reduced, to revisit my afflicted church. I go, sir, with your permission, perhaps to perish for its security, unless you protect me. But whether I live, or die, yours I am, and yours I shall ever be in the Lord. Whatever may befall me or mine, may the blessing of God rest on you and your children." Henry had promised him money to pay his debts and defray the expenses of his journey. Having waited for it in vain, he borrowed three hundred pounds of the Archbishop of Rouen, and set out in the company, or rather in the custody, of his ancient enemy, John of Oxford. Alexander, before he heard of the reconciliation at Freitville, had issued letters of suspension or excommunication against the bishops who had officiated at the late coronation; he had afterward renewed them against Roger of York (September 26th), Gilbert of London, and Joscelin of Salisbury, to whose misrepresentations was attributed the delay of the King to fulfil his engagements. For the sake of peace the Archbishop had wisely resolved to suppress these letters; but the three prelates, who knew that he brought them with him, had assembled at Canterbury, and sent to the coast Ranulf de Broc, with a party of soldiers, to search him on his landing, and take them from him. Information of the design reached him at Whitsand; and in a moment of irritation he despatched them before himself by a trusty messenger, by whom, or by whose means, they were publicly delivered to the bishops in the presence of their attendants. It was a precipitate and unfortunate measure, and probably the occasion of the catastrophe which followed. The prelates, caught in their own snare, burst into loud complaints against his love of power and thirst of revenge; they accused him to the young King of violating the royal privileges, and wishing to tear the crown from his head; and they hastened to Normandy to demand redress from the justice or the resentment of Henry. Under the protection of his conductor the Primate reached Canterbury, December 3d, where he was joyfully received by the clergy and people. Thence he prepared to visit Woodstock, the residence of the young Henry, to pay his respects to the Prince and to justify his late conduct. But the courtiers, who dreaded his influence over the mind of his former pupil, procured a peremptory order, December 15th, for him to return, and confine himself to his own diocese. He obeyed, and spent the following days in prayer and the functions of his station. Yet they were days of distress and anxiety. The menaces of his enemies seemed to derive importance from each succeeding event. His provisions were hourly intercepted; his property was plundered; his servants were beaten and insulted. On Christmas Day he ascended the pulpit. His sermon was distinguished by the earnestness and animation with which he spoke. At the conclusion he observed that those who thirsted for his blood would soon be satisfied, but that he would first avenge the wrongs of his Church by excommunicating Ranulf and Robert de Broc, who for seven years had not ceased to inflict every injury in their power on him, on his clergy, and on his monks. On the following Tuesday (December 28th) arrived secretly in the neighborhood four knights, Reginald Fitzurse, William Tracy, Hugh de Moreville, and Richard Brito. They had been present in Normandy when the King, irritated by the representations of the three bishops, had exclaimed, "Of the cowards who eat my bread, is there not one who will free me from this turbulent priest?" and mistaking this passionate expression for the royal license, had bound themselves by oath to return to England and either carry off or murder the Primate. They assembled at Saltwood, the residence of the Brocs, to arrange their operations. The next day (December 29th), about two in the afternoon the knights abruptly entered the Archbishop's apartment, and, neglecting his salutation, seated themselves on the floor. It seems to have been their wish to begin by intimidation; but if they hoped to succeed, they knew little of the intrepid spirit of their opponent. Pretending to have received their commission from Henry, they ordered the Primate to absolve the excommunicated prelates. He replied with firmness, and occasionally with warmth, that if he had published the papal letters, it was with the royal permission; that the case of the Archbishop of York had been reserved to the Pontiff; but that he was willing to absolve the others on condition that they previously took the accustomed oath of submitting to the determination of the Church. It was singular that of the four knights, three had, in the days of his prosperity, spontaneously sworn fealty to him. Alluding to this circumstance he said, as they were quitting the room, "Knowing what formerly passed between us, I am surprised you should come to threaten me in my own house." "We will do more than threaten," was their reply. When they were gone, his attendants loudly expressed their alarm: he alone remained cool and collected, and neither in his tone nor gesture betrayed the slightest symptom of apprehension. In this moment of suspense the voices of the monks singing vespers in the choir struck their ears; and it occurred to someone that the church was a place of greater security than the palace. The Archbishop, though he hesitated, was borne along by the pious importunity of his friends; but when he heard the gates close behind him he instantly ordered them to be reopened, saying that the temple of God was not to be fortified like a castle. He had passed through the north transept, and was ascending the steps of the choir, when the knights with twelve companions, all in complete armor, burst into the church. As it was almost dark, he might, if he had pleased, have concealed himself among the crypts or under the roof; but he turned to meet them, followed by Edward Grim, his cross-bearer, the only one of his attendants who had not fled. To the vociferations of Hugh of Horsea, a military subdeacon, "Where is the traitor?" no answer was returned; but when Fitzurse asked, "Where is the Archbishop?" he replied: "Here I am, the Archbishop, but no traitor. Reginald, I have granted thee many favors. What is thy object now? If you seek my life, I command you in the name of God not to touch one of my people." When he was told that he must instantly absolve the bishops he answered, "Till they offer satisfaction I will not!" "Then die!" exclaimed the assassin, aiming a blow at his head. Grim interposed his arm, which was broken, but the force of the stroke bore away the Primate's cap and wounded him on the crown. As he felt the blood trickling down his face he joined his hands and bowed his head saying, "In the name of Christ and for the defence of his Church I am ready to die." In this posture, turned toward his murderers, without a groan and without a motion, he awaited a second stroke, which threw him on his knees; the third laid him on the floor at the foot of St. Bennet's altar. The upper part of his skull was broken in pieces, and Hugh of Horsea, planting his foot on the Archbishop's neck, with the point of his sword drew out the brains and strewed them over the pavement![30] Thus at the age of fifty-three perished this extraordinary man, a martyr to what he deemed to be his duty, the preservation of the immunities of the Church. The moment of his death was the triumph of his cause. His personal virtues and exalted station, the dignity and composure with which he met his fate, the sacredness of the place where the murder was perpetrated, all contributed to inspire men with horror for his enemies and veneration for his character. The advocates of the "customs" were silenced. Those who had been eager to condemn, were now the foremost to applaud, his conduct; and his bitterest foes sought to remove from themselves the odium of having been his persecutors. The cause of the Church again flourished: its liberties seemed to derive new life and additional vigor from the blood of their champion. THE PEACE OF CONSTANCE SECURES THE LIBERTIES OF THE LOMBARD CITIES A.D. 1183 ERNEST F. HENDERSON Frederick, Duke of Swabia, and his brother Conrad, Duke of the Franks, grandsons of Henry IV, were the hereditary and dynastic successors to the throne of Germany, when with the death of Henry V in 1125 the male line of the Franconian dynasty ended. The brothers demanded the assertion of the elective right in the imperial office, and Lothair, Duke of Saxony, was elected emperor of Germany. Lothair died in 1138. His son-in-law, the Wolf or Welf nobleman, Henry the Proud, Duke of Bavaria, whom Lothair had nominated as his successor, was opposed by the Swabian faction--also known as the Waiblingen faction--from the Franconian village in which the Swabian duke Frederick was born. The Waiblingen faction elected as emperor of Germany Conrad the Crusader, in whom began the Hohenstaufen dynasty, so named from the Swabian family seat on the lofty Staufen hill rising from the Rems River. From this event dates the strife of the Welfs and Waiblingens, who in Italy became known as Guelfs and Ghibellines. The chief opponents in the long strife that ensued were the Guelf dukes, Henry the Proud and Henry the Lion, and the Ghibelline emperor Frederick Barbarossa. Frederick Barbarossa (Redbeard) succeeded his father Conrad in 1152, and began a reign which was disturbed by wars with his nobility and by expeditions into Italy to subdue the revolts of the city republics of Lombardy against imperial authority. During his first expedition to Italy, 1154-1155, Barbarossa soon crushed all opposition and was crowned Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, at Rome, by Pope Hadrian IV. During his second expedition, 1158-1162, he destroyed the city of Milan and dispersed the inhabitants, who sought refuge in cities with which they had formerly been at enmity. Barbarossa's violence antagonized the Italians, and they combined in the Lombard League to drive him out of Italy. He was excommunicated by Pope Alexander III, who succeeded Hadrian in 1159, and to inaugurate the league a town named Alessandria in honor of the Pope was founded on the Piedmont frontier. In the expedition of 1166-1168 Barbarossa, who had set up an antipope, captured Rome and enthroned Paschal III as pope. His triumph however, was shortened by a pestilence which decimated his troops, and thence began a series of reverses which ended in the ascendency of the Lombard League. No sooner had Frederick passed through North Italy on the way to his triumph and ultimate humiliation in Rome than the formation was begun of that greater Lombard League which was to prove so terrible and invincible an enemy. Cremona was, according to the Emperor's own account, the prime mover in the matter. Mantua, Bergamo, and Brescia joined with that city, and bound themselves to mutual protection. The league, which was to last for fifty years, was not openly hostile to the Emperor; fidelity to him, indeed, was one of the articles of its constitution. But only such duties and services were to be performed as had been customary in the time of Conrad III; so the cities practically renounced the Roncaglian decrees and declared themselves in revolt. From the beginning, too, the league took sides with Alexander. But its most daring act of insubordination was the leading back in triumph of the Milanese to the scene of their former glory. The outer walls of Milan had not been entirely levelled to the ground, and the city arose as if by magic from her ruins. Bergamo, Brescia, and Cremona lent her efficient aid in the work of restoration. A sculpture executed in 1171 by order of the consuls, and showing the return, accompanied by their allies, of the exiles, is still to be seen in Milan, near the Porta Romana. How few of those who look on it to-day realize what that return meant to the long-suffering citizens, and what premonitions of evil to come must have gone with them. The Lombard League spread rapidly. Lodi, after much demur and after being surrounded by an army, was forced to join it. Piacenza needed no constraint, and Parma yielded after some opposition. Including Milan there were soon eight cities in the confederation. The imperial officials were disavowed and the old consular rule reëstablished, while everywhere Alexandrine bishops replaced those that had been invested by Victor and Paschal. Returning almost in disgrace from Rome, Frederick took up the struggle against the revolted cities, sending an appeal for reinforcements to Germany. But an attack on Milan proved fruitless, as did also one on Piacenza, and the Emperor was soon forced to intrench himself in Pavia. His position became more and more desperate, the more so as the new archbishop of Milan, Galdinus, unfolded a great activity in favor of Alexander. The Pope named him apostolic legate for the whole of Lombardy, and it was doubtless due to his influence that at this time the Verona coalition formally joined the Lombard League. Sixteen cities were now banded together against the Emperor, who remained helpless in their midst. Pavia soon ceased to be a safe refuge, and he retired to Novara and then to Vercelli; but both cities were even then planning to join the confederation. In the end Frederick prepared to leave Italy as a fugitive, and with but a small train of followers. In Susa, where the road begins which leads over the Mount Cenis pass, he was told that he must give up the few remaining hostages he was leading with him. All exits were found to be closed against him, and it came to his ear that an attempt was to be made upon his life. The Emperor fled from Susa disguised as a servant, while his chamberlain, Hartmann of Siebeneichen, who bore him a striking likeness, continued to play the part of captive monarch. A band of assassins actually made their way into the royal chamber, but seem to have spared the brave chamberlain on learning their mistake. The real object of their attack was meanwhile hastening on toward Basel, which he finally reached in safety. It was to be expected that a man of Frederick's iron will would soon return to avenge the humiliations he had suffered, and the League hastened to strengthen itself in all directions. Alexander was invited to take up his residence in their midst, and he, although obliged to refuse, continued to work for the rebel cities. The latter showed their gratitude by founding a new town, which was to be a common fortress for the whole league, and naming it Alessandria in honor of their ally. The citizens took an oath of fealty to the Pope and agreed to pay him a yearly tax. The new foundation, although laughed at at first by the imperialists and called Alessandria della Paglia, from its hastily constructed straw huts, soon held a population of fifteen thousand. It continues to-day to reflect credit on its sponsor. Contrary to all expectations it was six years before Frederick returned to Italy, and the Lombard League was meanwhile left master of the field. This delay is undoubtedly ascribable to the fact that the Emperor found it impossible at once to raise another army. The recent blows of fate had been too severe, and no enthusiasm for a new Italian war could be called into being. When, later, Frederick did recross the Alps it was with the mere shadow of an army; the nobles had seized every possible excuse to remain at home. No doubt but that the enforced rest was of benefit to Germany; there at least the Emperor's power was undiminished. Indeed, the lands of many of those who had been carried away by the pestilence had fallen to him by inheritance, or lapsed as fiefs of the crown. Frederick is the first of the emperors who really acquired great family possessions. These helped him to maintain his imperial power without having to rely too much on the often untrustworthy princes of the realm. The Salian estates, to which his father had fallen heir on the death of Henry V, formed a nucleus, while, by purchase and otherwise, he acquired castle after castle, and one stretch of territory after another, especially in Suabia and the Rhine Palatinate. By the Emperor's influence feud after feud was settled, and the princes were induced to acknowledge his second son--why not his eldest has never been explained--as successor to the throne. The internal prosperity and concord were not without their influence on the neighboring powers, and Hungary, Bohemia, and Poland were forced to acknowledge and fulfil their feudal duties. Meanwhile Tuscany and a part of the Romagna had remained true to the empire. Frederick's emissary, Christian of Mayence, who was sent to Italy in 1171, was able to play a leading _rôle_ in the hostilities between Pisa and Genoa, and, in 1173, to again besiege Ancona, which was still a centre for Greek intrigues. Christian was able to assure the Emperor that some allies at least were left in Italy. In one way time had worked a favorable change. So long as an immediate attack was to be feared the Lombard cities--between thirty and forty of which, including such towns as Venice, Bologna, and Pavia, had finally joined the League--were firmly united and ready to make any effort. But as the years went on and the danger became less pressing, internal discord crept in among them. Venice, for instance, helped Christian of Mayence in besieging Ancona; and Pavia, true to its old imperial policy, was only waiting for an opportunity for deserting its latest allies. The league feared, too, that Alexander might leave it to its fate and make an independent peace with the Emperor. As a matter of fact, in 1170, strong efforts had been made to bring about such a consummation. But Frederick was bound by the Wuerzburg decrees, and his envoy could not offer the submission that Alexander required. John of Salisbury tells us that the Emperor made a proposition to the effect that he himself, for his own person, should not be compelled to recognize any pope "save Peter and the others who are in heaven," but that his son Henry, the young King of the Romans, should recognize Alexander, and, in return, receive from him the imperial coronation. The bishops ordained by Frederick's popes were to remain in office. Alexander answered these proposals with a certain scorn, and the imperial ambassador, Eberhard of Bamberg, returned from Veroli, where the conference had taken place, with nothing to show for his pains. Alexander's next move was to send an account of the interview to the heads of the Lombard League, and at the same time to consecrate, as it were, that organization. He declared that it had been formed for the purpose of defending the peace of the cities which composed it, and of the Church, against the "so-called Emperor, Frederick," whose yoke it had seen fit to cast off. The rectors of the confederation were taken under the wing of the papacy, and those who should disobey them threatened with the ban. The Pope recommended a strict embargo on articles of commerce from Tuscany should the cities of that province refuse to join the league. At this same time Alexander showed his friendliness toward the Eastern Empire by performing in person the marriage ceremony over the niece of the Emperor Manuel and one of the Roman Frangipani. Frederick's first act on entering Italy in 1174 was to wreak vengeance on Susa, where he had once been captive; no half measures were used, and the town was soon a heap of ashes. Asti, also, the first league town which lay in the path of the imperial army, was straightway made to capitulate. But, although the fall of these two cities induced many to abandon the cause of the league, the new fortress of Alessandria, situated as it was in the midst of a swampy plain and surrounded with massive earth walls, proved an effectual stumbling-block in the way of the avenger. Heavy rains and floods came to the aid of the besieged city and the imperial tents and huts were almost submersed, while hunger and other discomforts caused many of the allies of the Germans to desert. The siege was continued for six months, but Frederick at last abandoned it on learning that an army of the league was about to descend on his weakened forces. He burned his besieging implements, his catapults, battering rams, and movable towers, and retreated to Pavian territory. The forces of the allied cities were sufficient to alarm Frederick, but they did not follow up their advantage. One is surprised to find negotiations for a peace begun at a time when a decisive battle seemed imminent. What preliminary steps were taken, or why the Lombards should have been the first to take them, is not clear; although some slight successes gained by Christian of Mayence at this juncture in the neighborhood of Bologna may have been not without effect. A commission of six men was appointed to draw up the articles of treaty, three being chosen from the cities, three appointed by the Emperor. The consuls of Cremona were to decide on disputed points--points, namely, as to which it was impossible to arrive at a mutual agreement. A truce to all hostilities was meanwhile declared, and at Montebello both sides bound themselves to concur in whatever arrangement should be made by the commission and the consuls. The Lombards meanwhile went through the form of a submission, knelt at the Emperor's feet, and lowered their standards before him. Frederick thereupon received them into favor and dismissed the greater part of his army, the league doing likewise. Naturally enough the disputed points were the most important ones, and had to be referred to the consuls of Cremona. But the rage and disappointment of the Lombards went beyond bounds when the different decisions, which, indeed, were remarkably fair, at last were made known. The Emperor was to exercise no prerogatives in Northern Italy that had not been exercised in the time of Henry V; he was also to sanction the continuance of the league. But no arrangement was made for a peace between the heads of Christendom, although the league had made this its first demand. Then, too, Alessandria, which Frederick considered to have been founded in scorn of himself, was to cease to exist, and its inhabitants were to return to their former homes. The report of the consuls roused a storm of indignation; in many cases the document embodying it was torn in shreds by the mob. The Lombards altogether refused to be bound by the terms of the treaty, and reopened hostilities. Frederick hastily gathered what forces he could and sent a pressing call to Germany for aid. It was now that the greatest vassal of the Crown, Henry the Lion, rewarded twenty years of trustfulness and favor by deserting Frederick in his hour of need. The only cause that is known, a strangely insufficient one, was a dispute concerning the town of Goslar, which the Emperor had withdrawn from Henry's jurisdiction. The details of the meeting, which took place according to one chronicle at Partenkirchen, to another at Chiavenna, are but vaguely known to us, but Frederick is said to have prostrated himself at the feet of his mighty subject and to have begged in vain for his support. We have seen how Frederick, at the beginning of his reign, had caused Henry, who was already in possession of Saxony, to be acknowledged Duke of Bavaria in place of Henry Jasomirgott, who was conciliated by the gift of the new duchy of Austria. From that moment Henry the Lion's power had steadily grown. He increased his glory, and above all his territory, by constant wars against the Wends, developing a hitherto unheard-of activity in the matter of peopling Slavic lands with German colonists. The bishoprics of Lubeck, Ratzeburg and Schwerin owed to him their origin, while he it was who caused the marshy lands around Bremen to be reclaimed and cultivated. When, on various occasions, conspiracies were formed against Henry by other Saxon nobles, the Emperor had boldly and successfully taken his part, helping in person to quell the insurgents; in 1162 he had prevented the Duke of Austria and the King of Bohemia from trying to bring about their rival's downfall. A marriage with Matilda, daughter of the King of England, had increased the great Saxon's influence; and during the continued absences of the Emperor in Italy his rule was kingly in all but name. In 1171 he affianced his daughter to the son of King Waldemar of Denmark, and by this alliance secured his new colonies from Danish hostility. In actual extent and productiveness his estates fairly surpassed those of his imperial cousin, and the defection of such a man signified the death knell of the latter's cause. The battle of Legnano, fought on May 29, 1176, ended in disaster and defeat. Frederick himself, who was wounded and thrown from his horse, finally reached Pavia after days of adventurous flight, having meanwhile been mourned as dead by the remnant of his army. All was not yet lost, indeed, for the league, not knowing what reinforcements were on the way from Germany--the small army of Christian of Mayence, too, was still harvesting victories in the March of Ancona--did not follow up its successes. Cremona, moreover, jealous of Milan, began to waver in her allegiance to the cause of which she had so long been the leader, and eventually signed a treaty with the Emperor. But Frederick, although he at first made a pretence of continuing the war, was soon forced by the representations of his nobles to abandon the policy of twenty-four years, and to make peace on the best terms obtainable with Alexander III, and, through him, with the Lombard cities. The oath of Wuerzburg was broken, and the two treaties of Anagni and Venice put an end to the long war. At Anagni the articles were drawn up on which the later long and wearisome negotiations were based. The Emperor, the Empress, and the young King of the Romans were to acknowledge Alexander as the Catholic and universal pope, and to show him all due respect. Frederick was to give up the prefecture of Rome and the estates of Matilda, and to make peace with the Lombards, with the King of Sicily, the Emperor of Constantinople, and all who had aided and supported the Roman Church. Provision was to be made for a number of German archbishops and bishops who had received their authority from the antipopes. There is no need to dwell on the endless discussions that ensued with regard to these matters; more than once it seemed as though all attempts at agreement would have to be abandoned. But both parties were sincerely anxious for peace, and at last a remarkably skilful compromise was drawn up at Venice. Frederick had objected strongly to renouncing the rights of the empire regarding the estates of Matilda; he was to be allowed to draw the revenues of those estates for fifteen years to come, and the question was eventually to be settled by commissioners. The form of the peace with the Lombards was a still more difficult matter, but the Pope made a wise suggestion which was adopted. A truce of six years was declared, at the end of which time it was hoped that a basis would have been found for a readjustment of the relations between the Emperor and the league. With Sicily, too, hostilities were to cease for a term of fifteen years. It will be seen that all the great questions at issue, save the recognitions of Alexander as pope, were thus relegated to a future time; to a time when the persons concerned would no longer be swayed by passion, and when the din of war would be forgotten. During the negotiations the Pope had remained for the most part in Venice, while Frederick had not been allowed to enter the city, but had remained in the neighborhood in order that the envoys might pass more quickly to and fro. The terms of the treaty were finally assented to by the Emperor at Chioggia, July 21, 1177. Alexander now prepared to carry out his cherished project of holding a mighty peace congress at Venice; and there, at the news of the approaching reconciliation, nobles and bishops and their retinues came together from all parts of Europe. Now that the peace was to become an accomplished fact, Venice outdid herself in preparing to honor the Emperor. The latter, too, was determined to spare no expense that could add to the splendor of the occasion. He had negotiated for a loan with the rich Venetians, and he now imposed a tax of one thousand marks of silver on his nobles. Frederick's coming was announced for Sunday, July 24th, and by that time the city had donned its most festive attire. Two tall masts had been erected on the present Piazzetta, and from them floated banners bearing the lion of St. Mark's. A platform had been constructed at the door of the church, and upon it was placed a raised throne for the Pope. When the Emperor landed on the Lido he was met by cardinals whom Alexander had sent to absolve him from the ban. The Doge, the Patriarch of Grado, and a crowd of lesser dignitaries then appeared and furnished a brilliant escort with their gondolas and barks. Having reached the shore Frederick, in the presence of an immense crowd, approached the papal throne, and, throwing off his purple mantle, prostrated himself before the Pope and kissed the latter's feet. Three red slabs of marble mark the spot where he knelt. It was a moment of world-wide importance; the Empire and the papacy had measured themselves in mortal combat, and the Empire, in form at least, was now surrendering at discretion. No wonder that later ages have fabled much about this meeting. The Pope is said, with his foot on the neck of the prostrate King, to have exclaimed aloud, "The lion and the young dragon shalt thou trample under thy feet!" As a matter of fact Alexander's letters of this time express anything but insolent triumph, and his relations with the Emperor after the peace had been sworn to assumed the friendliest character. On the day after his entry into Venice Frederick visited him in the palace of the Patriarch, and we are told that the conversation was not only amicable, but gay, and that the Emperor returned to the Doge's palace in the best of moods. A year after the congress at Venice the antipope--Calixtus III had succeeded Paschal in 1168 without in any way altering the complexion of affairs--made a humble submission to Alexander at Tusculum. Therewith the schism ended, and a year later, in 1179, Alexander held a great council in the Lateran, where it was decreed that a two-thirds majority in the college of cardinals was necessary to make valid the choice of a pope. There was no mention of the clergy and people of Rome, none of the right of confirmation on the part of the Emperor. It was not to be supposed that Frederick would ever forgive that act of Henry the Lion by which the whole aspect of the war in Italy had been changed. Yet it is probable that technically Henry had committed no offence against the Empire; for no charge of desertion or "_herisliz_," as refusal to do military service was called, or even of neglect of feudal duties, was ever brought against him. He probably possessed some privilege, like that bestowed on Henry Jasomirgott, rendering it optional with him to accompany the Emperor on expeditions out of Germany. But the circumstances had been so exceptional, so much had hung in the balance at the time of Frederick's appeal for aid, that no one can blame the Emperor for now letting Henry feel the full weight of his displeasure. Nor was an occasion lacking by which his ruin might be accomplished. For years the Saxon nobles and bishops had writhed under Henry's oppressions, and the Emperor had hitherto taken sides with his powerful cousin; he now lent a willing ear to the charges of the latter's enemies. The restitution to Udalrich of Halberstadt of his bishopric, a restitution that had been provided for in the treaty of Venice, gave the signal for the conflict. Henry the Lion refused to restore certain fiefs which, as Udalrich asserted, belonged to the Halberstadt Church. Archbishop Philip of Cologne and others came forward with similar claims. Henry was repeatedly summoned to answer his accusers, but did not deign to appear. On the contrary he prepared to raise up for himself allies and to besiege the castles of those who would not join him. His own lands were thereupon laid waste by his private enemies, and that with the Emperor's consent. But Halberstadt, which took part in one of these plundering expeditions, suffered a terrible vengeance at the hand of the enraged Guelf. In one destructive blaze the city, churches and all, was reduced to ashes. In the war that he was now waging Henry did not hesitate to call in even the Wends to his aid, but Westphalia was soon lost to him, and only in East Saxony was he able to maintain himself. At a diet held in Wuerzburg in January, 1180, the Emperor laid the question before the princes what was to be done to one who had refused, after having been three times summoned, to come before the imperial tribunal. The answer was that he was to be deprived of all honor, to be judged in the public ban, and to lose his duchy and all his benefices. Thus was final sentence passed on the chief man in Germany next to the Emperor himself. An imperial army was now raised and several fortresses were besieged. No battle took place, but the fact that Frederick had a large force at his command was sufficient to cause defection in the ranks of Henry's allies. In 1181 the Emperor's army marched as far as Lubeck, which city, Henry's proudest foundation, was forced to submit. The whole region north of the Elbe followed Lubeck's example, and Henry was soon forced to confess that his cause was hopeless. He laid down his arms, and was summoned to a diet at Erfurt to learn his fate. Here he fell on his knees before Frederick, who, with tears in his eyes, raised him and kissed him in token of peace. He was made to surrender all his possessions with the exception of Brunswick and Luneburg. He was to go into exile, and to bind himself by an oath not to return without the Emperor's permission. He soon afterward passed over to Normandy, where he stayed for two years with his father-in-law, Henry II. He then passed over with the latter to England. The years immediately following the Congress of Venice were, strange to say, the most brilliant period of Frederick's reign. It was, after all, only his ideals that had suffered, and a time of prosperity now settled down upon the nation. With Alexander the Emperor remained on friendly terms; but the Pope in 1181 died in exile, having been forced by the faithless Romans, as Gregory VII had been a century before, to flee the holy city. The peace with the Lombard towns was signed at Constance within the six years agreed upon, on June 23, 1183. The communal freedom for which they had fought so long was now accorded them; the Emperor gave up all right to the regalia and recognized the Lombard League. His dream of becoming a second Justinian had not been realized. The cities received the privilege of using the woods, meadows, bridges, and mills in their immediate vicinity, and of raising revenues from them; the jurisdiction in ordinary, civil, and criminal cases; the right of making fortifications. The Emperor was, to a certain extent, to be provided for when he chose to come to Italy; but he promised to make no long stay in any one town. The cities were to choose their own consuls, who were to be invested with their dignity by the Emperor or his representatives. The ceremony, however, was to be performed only once in five years. In important matters where more than a certain sum was at stake, appeals to the Emperor were to be allowed. With the city of Alessandria, so long to him a thorn in the flesh, Frederick had already come to a separate agreement by consent of the league. The city was, technically, to be annihilated, and then to be refounded; it was no longer to bear the name of the Pope, but that of the Emperor. Alessandria was to become Cæsarea; yet none of the Inhabitants was to suffer by the change. The treaty is extant; it provided that the people should leave the city and remain without the walls until led back by an imperial envoy. All the male inhabitants of Cæsarea were then to swear fealty to the Emperor and to his son Henry VI. The Lombard cities, from this time forward, remained true to Frederick. SALADIN TAKES JERUSALEM FROM THE CHRISTIANS A.D. 1187 SIR GEORGE W. COX Eight days after their conquest of the Holy City, in 1099, the first crusaders proceeded to establish the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, with Godfrey of Bouillon as its first king. On the death of Godfrey, in 1100, his brother Baldwin succeeded him, and in 1118 he was succeeded by Baldwin II, Count of Edessa. The fourth king was Fulc, Count of Anjou and son-in-law of Baldwin II (1131-1144), and after him reigned his son, Baldwin III (1144-1162). This King came to the throne at the age of thirteen. Early in his reign the Christian stronghold of Edessa, in Mesopotamia, was captured by the Turks, and its loss, which seemed to threaten the destruction of the kingdom of Jerusalem itself, was the occasion of an appeal to Europe which called out the Second Crusade. The great preacher of this crusade was St. Bernard of Clairvaux, a man who, in earnestness and eloquence, closely resembled Pope Urban and Peter the Hermit. Bernard's influence won to his cause not only the common people, but also nobles and kings, and the Second Crusade was led by Louis VII, King of France, and Conrad III, Emperor of Germany. The time of the Second Crusade was 1147-1149. Louis and Conrad each commanded a great army, but they made the mistake of working separately. Conrad reached Constantinople first, and partly in consequence of the faithless conduct of Manuel, the Byzantine emperor--who, like his predecessor Alexius, in the time of the First Crusade, threw obstacles in the way of the western hosts--the whole German army was cut to pieces in Asia Minor, only the Emperor himself, with a few followers, escaping. Louis, soon arriving with his army, received the same treatment from Manuel, and after taking a few towns he saw his forces likewise destroyed by the Turks. Louis himself escaped and returned to France. So ended in utter failure and shame the Second Crusade. The event seemed to give the lie to the glowing promises of St. Bernard, who was charged by anguished women with sending their fathers, husbands, and sons forth on a fruitless errand to disgrace and death. The Latin kingdom of Jerusalem profited nothing from this ignominious enterprise. The power of that kingdom was already waning, and, but for the knights of the military orders now in Jerusalem, the city must have yielded to the Turcoman hordes that continually menaced it. Baldwin III died in 1162, at the age of thirty-three, loved and lamented by his people and respected by his foes. He died childless, and his brother Almeric was elected to succeed him. What experience and what fate awaited the kingdom after this will be seen in the remarkable narration which follows. Almost at the beginning of Almeric's reign the affairs of the Latin kingdom became complicated with those of Egypt; and the Christians are seen fighting by the side of one Mahometan race, tribe, or faction against another. The divisions of Islam may have turned less on points of theology, but they were scarcely less bitter than those of Christendom; and Noureddin, the sultan of Aleppo, eagerly embraced the opportunity which gave him a hold on the Fatimite Caliph of Egypt, when Shawer, the grand _wazir_ of that Caliph, came into his presence as a fugitive. A soldier named Dargham had risen up and deposed him, and the deposition of the wazir was the deposition of the real ruler, for the Fatimite caliphs themselves were now merely the puppets which the Merovingian kings had been in the days of Charles Martel and Pépin. Among the generals of Noureddin were Shiracouh and his nephew Saladin (Salah-ud-deen) of the shepherd tribe of the Kurds. These Noureddin despatched into Egypt to effect the restoration of Shawer. His enemy Dargham had sought by lavish offers to buy the aid of the Latins; but the terms were still unsettled when he was worsted in a battle by Shiracouh and slain. Shawer again sat in his old seat; but with success came the fear that his supporters might prove not less dangerous than his enemies. He refused to fulfil his compact with Noureddin and ordered his generals to quit the country. Shiracouh replied by the capture of Pelusium, and Shawer, more successful than Dargham in obtaining aid from Jerusalem, besieged Shiracouh in his newly conquered city with the help of the army of Almeric. The Latin King after a fruitless blockade of some months found himself called away to meet dangers nearer home; and the besieged general, not knowing the cause, accepted an offer of capitulation binding him to leave Egypt after the surrender of his prisoners. But the Latin armies were transferred from Egypt only to undergo a desperate defeat at the hands of Noureddin in the territory of Antioch, and thus to leave Antioch itself at the mercy of the enemy. Noureddin may have hesitated to attack Antioch, from the fear that such an enterprise might bring upon him the arms of the Greek Emperor. He was more anxious to extinguish the Fatimite power in Egypt; in other words, to become lord of countries hemming in the Latin kingdom to the south as well as to the north; and it was precisely this danger which King Almeric knew that he had most reason to fear. To put the best color on his design, Noureddin obtained from Mostadhi, the caliph of Bagdad, the sanction which converted his enterprise into a war as holy as that which the Norman conqueror waged against Harold of England. The story of the war attests the valor of both sides, under the alternations of disaster and success. The Latin King had already entered Cairo, when a large part of the force of Shiracouh was overwhelmed by a terrific sandstorm. But the retreat of Shiracouh across the Nile failed to reassure the Egyptians. Almeric received two hundred thousand gold pieces for the continuance of his help, with the promise that two hundred thousand more should be paid to him on the complete destruction of their enemies; and the treaty was ratified in the presence of the powerless sovereign, whose consent was never asked for the alliances or treaties of the minister who was his master. The remaining events of the campaign were a battle, in which a part of the army of Almeric was defeated by Shiracouh and his nephew Saladin; the surrender of Alexandria on the summons of Shiracouh; and the blockade of that city by Almeric, who at length obtained from the Turk the pledge that after an exchange of prisoners he would lead his forces away from Egypt, on the condition that the road to Syria should be left open to him. The banners of Almeric and the Fatimite Caliph waved together on the walls of Alexandria; but on either side the peace or truce was a mere makeshift for the purpose of gaining time. Neither the Latin King nor the Sultan of Aleppo had given up the thought of the conquest of Egypt; and Almeric found a ready cause of quarrel in the plea that since his own return to Palestine the Egyptians had entered into communication with their enemy and his. The King of Jerusalem had lately married the niece of the Greek Emperor, and the latter promised to aid the expedition with his fleet. The help of the Knights Hospitalers was easily obtained, while (some said, on this account) that of the Knights Templars was refused. At length with a large and powerful army Almeric left Jerusalem, pretending that his destination was the Syrian town of Hems; but after a while his march was suddenly turned. In ten days he reached Pelusium; and the storm and capture of that city were followed by a wanton carnage which served to increase, if anything could increase, the reputation of the Christians for merciless cruelty. The prayers of the wazir Shawer for help were now directed as earnestly to the Turkish Sultan as they had once been to the Latin King of Jerusalem; but his envoys were also sent to Almeric offering him a million pieces of gold, of which a tenth part was produced on the spot. Almeric took the bribe; and when his army looked for nothing less than the immediate sack of Cairo, they were told that they must remain idle while the rest of the money was being collected. The wazir took care that the gathering should not be ended before the soldiers of Noureddin had reached the frontier, and Almeric found too late that he was caught in the trap which his own greed had laid for him. He could himself do nothing but retreat, and his retreat was as disastrous as it was ignominious. The Greek fleet had shown itself off the mouths of the Nile, and had sailed away again. The Greek Emperor could not be punished; but a scapegoat for the failure of the enterprise was found in the grand master of the Hospitalers, who was deprived of his dignity by his knights. The triumph of Shiracouh brought with it the fall of the wazir Shawer, who was seized and put to death, while the man whose aid he had invoked was chosen to fill his place. But Shiracouh himself lived only two months; and then by way of choosing one whose love of pleasure and lack of influence seemed to promise a career of useful insignificance, the Fatimite Caliph made the young Saladin his minister. The Caliph was mistaken. Saladin brought back his Kurds, and so used the treasures which his office placed at his command that the new yoke became stronger than the old one. To the Latins the exaltation of Saladin signified the formation of a really formidable power on their southern frontier. Their alarm prompted embassies to the court of the Eastern Emperor and the princes of Western Christendom. But the time was not yet come for a third crusade; and only from Manuel was any help obtained. His fleet aided the Latins in a fruitless siege of Damietta; and a terrible earthquake which laid Aleppo in ruins and shattered the walls of Antioch saved them from attack by the army of Noureddin which was approaching from the north. Still, in spite of conspiracies or revolutions of the old nobility, the power of Saladin was growing, and at length he dealt with the mock sovereignty of the Fatimites as Pépin dealt with that of the Merovingians. The last Fatimite Sultan, then prostrate in his last illness, never knew that the public prayer had been offered in the name of the Caliph of Bagdad; but Saladin had the glory of ending a schism which had lasted two hundred years, and from Mostadhi, the vicar of the Prophet, he received the gift of a linen robe and two swords. But the healing of one schism led only to the opening of another. Saladin was the servant of the Sultan of Aleppo, and he had been recognized and confirmed in office by Mostadhi strictly on the score of this lieutenancy. But the new wazir of Egypt had no mind to obey any longer the summons of his old master, and to his threat of chastisement Saladin in his council of emirs retorted by a threat of war. His vehemence was cooled when his own father declared before the assembly that, were he so commissioned by Noureddin, he would strike his son's head off from his shoulders. In private, he let Saladin know that his mistake lay not in thinking of resistance, but in speaking of it; and a letter sent by his advice sufficed for the present to smooth matters over. But the time of quietness could not last long. The designs of Saladin became continually more manifest, and Noureddin was on his way to Egypt when he was struck down by illness and died at Damascus. The widow of Noureddin held the fortress of Paneas; and her husband's death encouraged Almeric to undertake the siege. A bribe to abandon it was at first refused. A fortnight later it was accepted; but Almeric returned to Jerusalem only to die. His life had lasted only five years longer than that of his predecessor Baldwin; but it had been long enough to win for him a reputation for consummate avarice and meanness. His son and successor, Baldwin IV, was a leper, and his disease made such rapid strides as to make it necessary to delegate his authority to another. His first choice fell on Guy of Lusignan, the husband of his sister Sibylla, but either the weakness of Guy or the quarrels of the barons brought everything into confusion, and Baldwin, foiled in his wish to annul his marriage, devised his crown to Baldwin, the infant son of Sibylla by her first marriage, Raymond II, Count of Tripoli, being nominated regent and Joceline of Courtenay the guardian of the child. But within three years the leper King died, followed soon after by the infant Baldwin V, and in the renewed strife consequent on these events Guy of Lusignan managed to establish himself, by right of his wife, King of Jerusalem. He was still quite a young man, but he had earned for himself an evil name. The murderer of Patric, Earl of Salisbury, he had been banished by Henry II from his dominions in France; and the opinion of those who knew him found expression in the words of his brother Geoffrey, "Had they known me, the men who made my brother king would have made me a god." Guy was king; but Raymond of Tripoli refused him his allegiance. Guy besieged him in Tiberias, and Raymond made a treaty with Saladin. But Saladin was now minded to seize a higher prey. He was master of Syria and Egypt: he was resolved that the Crescent should once more displace the Cross on the mosque of Omar. Pretexts for the war were almost superfluous; but he had an abundance of them in the ravages committed by barons of the Latin kingdom on the lands and the property of Moslems. Fifty thousand horsemen and a vast army on foot gathered under his standard, when he declared his intention of attacking Jerusalem; but their first assault was on the castle of Tiberias. On hearing these ominous tidings Raymond of Tripoli at once laid aside all thought of private quarrels. Hastening to Jerusalem he said that the safety of his own city was a very secondary matter, and earnestly besought Guy to confine himself to a strictly defensive war, which would soon reduce the invader to the extremity of distress. The advice was wise and good; but the grand master of the Templars fastened on the very nobleness of his self-sacrifice and the disinterestedness of his counsel as proof of some sinister design which they were intended to hide. Had it been Baldwin III to whom he was speaking, the insinuation would have been thrust aside with scorn and disgust. To the mean mind of Guy it carried with it its own evidence; and it was resolved to meet the Saracen on ground of his own choosing. The troops of Saladin were already distressed by heat and thirst when they encountered the Latin army from Jerusalem. The issue of the first day's fighting was undecided; but the heat of a Syrian summer night was for the Christians rendered more terrible by the stifling smoke of woods set on fire by the orders of Saladin. Parched with thirst, and well knowing that on the event of that day depended the preservation of the Holy Sepulchre, the crusaders at sunrise rushed with their fierce war-cries on the enemy. Before them the golden glory of morning lit up the radiant shores of the tranquil sea where the Galilean fisherman had heard from the lips of Jesus of Nazareth the word of life. But nearer still was a memorial yet more holy, a pledge of divine favor yet more assuring. On a hillock hard by was raised the relic of the true cross, and this hillock was many times a rallying point during this bloody day. There was little of generalship perhaps on either side; and where men are left to mere hard fighting, numbers must determine the issue. The hosts of Saladin far outnumbered those of the Latin chiefs; and for these retreat ended in massacre. The King and the grand master of the Templars were taken prisoners; the holy relic which had spurred them on to desperate exertion fell into the hands of the infidels. The victory of Saladin was rich in its fruits. Tiberias was taken. Berytos, Acre, Cæsarea, Jaffa opened their gates; Tyre alone was saved by the heroism of Conrad of Montferrat, brother of the first husband of Queen Sibylla. Not caring to undertake a regular siege, Saladin marched to Ascalon, and offered its defenders an honorable peace, which after some hesitation was accepted. The rejection of Raymond's advice had left Jerusalem practically at the mercy of Saladin. It was crowded with people, but the garrison was scanty, and the armies which should have defended it were gone. Their presence would not, probably, have availed to give a different issue to the siege; but it must have added fearfully to its horrors. Saladin had made up his mind that the Latin kingdom must fall, and he would have fought on until either he or his enemies could fight no longer. Numbers, wealth, resources, military skill, instruments of war, all combined to give him advantages before which mere bravery must sooner or later go down; and protracted resistance meant nothing more than the infliction of useless misery. Saladin may have been neither a saint nor a hero; but it cannot be denied that his temper was less fierce and his language more generous than that of the Christians who under Godfrey had deluged the city with blood. He had no wish, he said, so to defile a place hallowed by its associations for Moslems as well as Christians, and if the city were surrendered, he pledged himself not merely to furnish the inhabitants with the money which they might need, but even to provide them with new homes in Syria. But superstition and obstinacy are to all intents and purposes words of the same meaning. The offer, honorable to him who made and carrying no ignominy to those who might accept it, was rejected, and Saladin made a vow that entering the city as an armed conqueror he would offer up within it a sacrifice as awful as that by which the crusaders had celebrated their loathsome triumph. Most happily for others, most nobly for himself, he failed to keep this vow to the letter. Fourteen days sufficed to bring the siege to an end. The Christians had done what they could to destroy the military engines of their enemies; the golden ornaments of the churches had been melted down and turned into money; but no solid advantage was gained by all their efforts. The conviction of the Christian that death brought salvation to the champions of the cross, the assurance of the Moslem that to those who fell fighting for the creed of Islam the gates of paradise were at once opened, only added to the desperation of the combatants and to the fearfulness of the carnage. At length the besieged discovered that the walls near the gate of St. Stephen had been undermined, and at once they abandoned all hope of safety except from miraculous intervention. Clergy and laity crowded into the churches, their fears quickened by the knowledge that the Greeks within the city were treating with the enemy. The remembrance of Saladin's offer now came back with more persuasive power; but to the envoys whom they sent the stern answer was returned that he was under a vow to deal with the Christians as Godfrey and his fellows had dealt with the Saracens. Yet, conscious or unconscious of the inconsistency of his words with the oath which he professed to have sworn, he promised them his mercy if they would at once surrender the city. The besieged resolved to trust the word of the conqueror, as they could not resist his power. The agreement was made that the nobles and fighting men should be taken to Tyre, which still held out under Conrad; that the Latin inhabitants should be redeemed at the rate of ten crowns of gold for each man, five for each woman, one for each child; and that failing this ransom, they should remain slaves. On the sick and the helpless he waged no war; and although the Knights of the Hospital were among the most determined of his enemies, he would allow their brethren to remain for a year in their attendance on the sufferers who could not be moved away. In the exasperation of a religious warfare now extended over nearly a century these terms were very merciful. It may be said that this mercy was the right of a people who submitted to the invader, and that in the days of Godfrey and Peter the Hermit the defenders had resisted to the last. It is enough to answer that the capitulation of the Latins was a superfluous ceremony and that Saladin knew it to be so, while, if the same submission had been offered to the first crusaders, it would have been sternly and fiercely refused. Four days were allowed to the people to prepare for their departure. On the fifth they passed through the camp of the enemy, the women carrying or leading their children, the men bearing such of their household goods as they were able to move. On the approach of the Queen and her ladies in the garb and with the gestures of suppliants Saladin himself came forward, and with genuine courtesy addressed to them words of encouragement and consolation. Cheered by his generous language, they told him that for their lands, their houses, and their goods they cared nothing. Their prayer was that he would restore to them their fathers, their husbands, and their brothers. Saladin granted their request, added his alms for those who had been left orphans or destitute by the war, and remitted a portion of the ransom appointed for the poor. In this way the number of those who remained unredeemed was reduced to eleven or twelve thousand; and Saracenic slavery, although degrading, was seldom as cruel as the slavery which had but as yesterday been extinguished by the most fearful of recent wars. The entry of Saladin into Jerusalem was accompanied by the usual signs of triumph. Amid the waving of banners and the clash of martial music he advanced to the Mosque of Omar, on the summit of which the Christian cross still flashed in the clear air. A wail of agony burst from the Christians who were present as this emblem was hurled down to the earth and dragged through the mire. For two days it underwent this indignity, while the mosque was purified from its defilements by streams of rosewater, and dedicated afresh to the worship of the one God adored by Islam. The crosses, the relics, the sacred vessels of the Christian sanctuaries, which had been carefully stowed away in four chests, had fallen into the hands of the conquerors, and it was the wish of Saladin to send them to the Caliph of the Prophet as the proudest trophies of his victory. Even this wish he generously consented to forego. The chests were left in the keeping of the patriarch, and the price put upon them, fifty-two thousand golden bezants, was paid by Richard of England. Conrad still held out in Tyre, nor was he induced to surrender even when Saladin himself assailed its walls. The siege was raised; and the next personage to appear before its gates was Guy of Lusignan, who, having regained his freedom, insisted on being admitted as lord of the city. The grand master of the Templars seconded his demand. The reply was short and decisive. The people would own no other master than the gallant knight who had so nobly defended them. But the escape of Tyre had no effect on the general issue of the war. Town after town submitted to Saladin; and the long series of his triumphs closed when he entered the gates of Antioch. Eighty-eight years had passed away since the crusaders of Godfrey and Tancred had stood triumphant on the walls of the Holy City; and during all those years the Latin kingdom had seldom rested from wars and forays, from feuds and dissensions of every kind. From the first it displayed no characteristics which could give it any stability; from the first it exhibited signs which foreboded its certain downfall. It sanctified treachery, for it rested on the principle that no faith was to be kept with the unbeliever; and the sowing of wind by the constant breach of solemn compact made them reap the whirlwind. A right of pasturage round Paneas had been granted to the Mahometans by Baldwin III. When the ground was covered with their sheep the Christian troops burst in, murdered the shepherds, and drove away their flocks--not with the sanction, we may hope, of the most high-minded of the Latin kings of Jerusalem. It recognized no title to property except in those who professed the faith of Christ, and the power to commit injustice with practical impunity tended still further to demoralize the people. It gave full play to the passions of men in random wars and petty forays, while it did nothing to keep up or to promote either military science or the discipline without which that science becomes useless. It was marked by an almost total lack of statesmanship. In a country so circumstanced a wise ruler would strain every nerve to conciliate the conquered people, to strengthen himself by alliances which should be firmly maintained and by treaties which should be scrupulously kept, to weaken such states as he might fail to win over to his friendship by anticipating combinations which might bring with them fatal dangers for his power. That the history of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem presents a mournful and even ludicrous contrast to this picture it must surely be unnecessary to say. In the case of Egypt alone did the Latin kings show some sense of the course which prudence called upon them to take; and even here this course was followed with miserable indecision, and at last disgracefully abandoned through mere lust of gold. It had to deal with an immorality not of its own creating, but which in mere regard to its own safety it should have striven to keep well in check. No such efforts were made, and the words of William of Tyre--even if taken with a qualification--when he speaks of the Latin women, point to a state of things which must involve grave and imminent peril. It was the misfortune of this kingdom that it was called into being by troops of adventurers banded together--it cannot be said confederated--for a religious rather than a political purpose; in other words, for personal rather than for public ends. It started therefore without any principle of cohesion. The warriors who engaged in the enterprise might abandon it when they thought that they had fulfilled the conditions of their vow, and although the continuance of their efforts was indispensably needed for the military and political success of the undertaking. The private and personal character of these enterprises led to the perpetuation and multiplication of private and personal interests, and thus to the endless divisions and feuds between the barons of the kingdom, which were a constant scandal and menace and which led frequently to deliberate treachery. It encouraged, or permitted, or was compelled to tolerate the growth of societies which arrogated to themselves an independent jurisdiction, and thus rendered impossible a central authority of sufficient coercive power. The origin of the military orders may have been in the highest degree edifying. The Knights Templars might begin as the humble guardians of the holy places: the Knights Hospitalers may have been the poor brothers of St. John bound to the service of the sick and helpless among the pilgrims of the cross. But in the land where they might at any time encounter a merciless or at the least a detested enemy, they were justified in bearing arms; the necessity of bearing arms involved the need of discipline; and the discipline of an enthusiastic fraternity cut off from the world and centred upon itself cannot fail to become formidable. The natural strength of these orders was increased by immunities and privileges granted partly by the Latin kings of Jerusalem, but in greater part by the popes. The Hospitalers, as bestowing their goods to feed the poor and to entertain pilgrims, were freed from the obligation of paying tithe, or of giving heed to interdicts even if these were laid upon the whole country, while it was expressly asserted that no patriarch or prelate should dare to pass any sentence of excommunication against them. In other words, a society was called into existence directly antagonistic to the clergy, and an irreconcilable conflict of claims was the inevitable consequence. Nor can we be surprised to find the clergy complaining that the knights, not content with the immunities secured to themselves, gave shelter to persons who, not belonging to their order but lying under sentence of excommunication, sought to place themselves under their protection. But if the Knights of the Hospital had thus their feuds with the clergy, they had feuds still more bitter with the rival order of the Templars. With different interests and different aims, the one sought to promote enterprises against which the other protested, or stickled about points of precedence when common decency called for harmonious action, or withheld its aid when that aid was indispensable for the very safety of the State. Thus we have the triple discord of the King and his barons struggling against the claims of the clergy, and the military orders in conflict with the barons and the clergy alike. Of a state so circumstanced the words are emphatically true that a house divided against itself shall not stand. THE THIRD CRUSADE A.D. 1189-1194 HENRY VON SYBEL Although after the failure of the Second Crusade the interest felt by the western nations in the kingdom of Jerusalem, established by the first crusaders in 1099, had greatly diminished, still the news of the loss of the Holy City--which was taken by Saladin, Sultan of Egypt and Syria, in 1187--fell like a thunderbolt on men's minds. Once more the flame which had kindled the mystic war of God blazed high. "What a disgrace, what an affliction," cried Pope Urban III, "that the jewel which the second Urban won for Christendom should be lost by the third!" He vehemently exhorted the Church and all her faithful to join the war, worked day and night, prayed, sighed, and so wore himself out with grief and anger that he sickened and died in a few weeks. His successor, Gregory VIII, and afterward Pope Clement III, were inspired by the same feeling and exerted themselves for the great cause with untiring energy. In 1185 a number of English barons had put on the cross on hearing of Saladin's menacing progress; toward the end of 1187 the heir to the throne, Richard, followed their example; some months later King Henry II had a meeting with his former enemy, Philip Augustus of France, at Gisors, where they vowed to abandon their earthly quarrels and become warriors of the everlasting God. Nearly the whole nobility and a number of the lower class of people were carried away by their example. King William of Sicily fitted out his fleet, and was only prevented by death from joining it himself. From Denmark, Scandinavian pilgrims thronged to Syria both by land and water. In Germany, now as formerly, the zeal was not so great, until in March, 1188, the emperor Frederick Barbarossa, at the age of near seventy, put on the cross, and by his ever firm and powerful will collected together a mass of nearly one hundred thousand pilgrims. All the western nations rose to arms. The news of this enormous movement reached the East, and the ferocious war-cry of Europe was answered by a voice of defiance. Saladin had organized his dominions almost according to the western system. Under an oath of allegiance and service in war he granted to each of his emirs a town of feudal tenure; its surrounding land they again divided among their followers; the Sultan thus attached those wandering hordes of horsemen to the soil and kept those restless spirits permanently together. He then invoked the religious zeal of all the Mahometans with such success that volunteers flocked to his standard from every quarter. These masses dispersed at the beginning of every winter, but on the return of fair weather they again collected in ever-increasing numbers. Saladin well knew the mutual hatred which divided the Greek Byzantines and the Latin Franks, and kept so securely alive in the Eastern Emperor, Isaac Angelus, the fear of the insolence of the western soldiers that he concluded an offensive and defensive alliance with Saladin against those who shared his own faith. The leaders of the Third Crusade--Richard I ("the Lion-hearted"), King of England; Frederick I, surnamed "Barbarossa," of Germany, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire; and Philip Augustus, King of France--were the most powerful monarchs of Europe. A halo of false romance and glory, however, surrounds this crusade, mainly by reason of the associations connecting it with the self-seeker Richard. In the real conduct of the crusaders appears a sordid greed glutting itself with atrocities as savage as those perpetrated under Godfrey of Bouillon a century before. In Richard the world now sees a destroying "hero," one of the scourges of mankind. The son of Henry II, Richard became King of England in 1189. His chief ambition appears to have been the spread of his own renown, and this aim he sought to achieve in Palestine. He raised moneys by the sale of titles, lands, etc., and then started for the Holy Land. Modern history presents him, as well as his colleagues and followers, divested of the glamour which for centuries hung about the Third Crusade, of which the only heroic figure on the Christian side is the likewise pitiable Barbarossa. The whole East, from the Danube to the Indus, from the Caspian Sea to the sources of the Nile, prepared with one intent to withstand the great invasion of Europe. Amid cares and preparations which had reference to three-quarters of the globe, Saladin neglected his nearest enemy, the feeble remnant of the Christian States in Syria, which, although unimportant in themselves, were of great consequence as landing-places for the invading western nations during the approaching war. The small principalities of Antioch and Tripoli still existed, and in the midst of the Turkish forces the marquis Conrad of Montferrat still displayed the banner of the cross upon the ramparts of Tyre. It seems as if in this instance Saladin had abandoned himself too much to the superb and easy carelessness of his nature. Hitherto he had not shrunk from the most strenuous exertions; but he was so certain of his victory that he neglected to strike the final blow. Not until the autumn of 1187 did he begin the siege of Tyre; and for the first time in his life he found a dangerous adversary in Conrad of Montferrat, a man of cool courage and keen determination, whose soul was unmoved by religious enthusiasm, and equally free from weakness or indecision; so that under his command the inhabitants of the city repulsed every attack with increasing assurance and resolution. Saladin hereupon determined to try starvation, which a strict blockade by sea and land was to cause in the town; but in June, 1188, the Sicilian fleet appeared, gave the superiority by sea to the Christians, and brought relief to Tyre. The Sultan retreated, and marched through the defenceless provinces of Antioch and Tripoli, but there too he left the capitals in peace upon the arrival of the Sicilian fleet in their waters. The following summer he spent in taking the Frankish fortresses in Arabia Petræa, the possession of which was important to him in order to secure freedom of communication between Egypt and Syria. Meanwhile the reinforcements from the West were pouring into the Christian seaport towns. In the first place, the two military and religious orders, the Templars and the Knights of St. John, had collected munitions of war of every kind from all their European possessions, and increased the number of their mercenaries to fourteen thousand men. King Guy[31] also had ransomed himself from captivity and had gone to Tripoli, where by degrees the remnant of the Syrian barons, and pilgrims of all nations, gathered round him. They took the right resolution to remain no longer inactive, but with the gigantic preparations in Europe in prospect, to begin the attack at once. On August 28, 1189, Guy commenced the siege of the strong maritime fortress of Ptolemais (St. Jean d'Acre). A fleet from Pisa had already joined the Sicilian one; in October there arrived twelve thousand Danes and Friesians, and in November a number of Flemings, under the Count of Avesnes, French knights under the Bishop of Beauvais, and Thuringians, under their landgrave, Louis. Saladin, roused from his inactivity by these events, hastened to the spot with his army, and in his turn surrounded the Christian camp, which lay in a wide semicircle round Ptolemais, and was defended by strong intrenchments within and without. It formed an iron ring round the besieged town, which Saladin, spite of all his efforts, could not break through. Each wing of the position rested upon the sea, and was thus certain of its supplies, and able to protect the landing of reinforcements, which continually arrived in constantly increasing numbers--Italians, French, English and Germans, Normans, and Swedes. "If on one day we killed ten," said the Arabs, "on the next, a hundred more arrived fresh from the West." The fighting was incessant by land and by sea, against the town and against the Sultan's camp. Sometimes the Egyptian fleet drove the Christian ships far out to sea; and Saladin could then succor the garrison with provisions and fresh troops, till new Frankish squadrons again surrounded the harbor, and only a few intrepid divers could steal through between the hostile ships. On land, too, now one side and now the other was in danger. One day the Sultan scaled the Christian intrenchments, and advanced close to the walls of the city, before the Franks rallied sufficiently to drive him back by a desperate attack; but they soon took their revenge in a night sortie, when they attacked the Sultan in his very tent, and he narrowly escaped by rapid flight. Against the town their progress was very slow, as the garrison, under an able and energetic commander, Bohaeddin, showed itself resolute and indefatigable. One week passed after another, and the condition of the Franks became painfully complicated. They could go neither backward nor forward, they could make no impression on the walls; nor could they re-embark in the face of an active enemy. There was no choice but to conquer or die; so preparations were made for a long sojourn; wooden barracks, and for the princes even stone houses were built, and a new hostile town arose all around Ptolemais. In spite of this the winter brought innumerable hardships. In that small space more than a hundred thousand men were crowded together, with insufficient shelter, and uncertain supplies of wretched food; pestilential diseases soon broke out, which swept away thousands, and were intensified by the exhalations from the heaps of dead. Saladin retreated from their deadly vicinity to more airy quarters on the adjacent hills; his troops also suffered from the severe weather, but were far better supplied than the Christians with water, provisions, and other comforts, as the caravans from Cairo and Bagdad met in their camp, and numbers of merchants displayed in glittering booths all kinds of eastern wares. It was an unexampled assemblage of the forces of two quarters of the world round one spot, unimportant in itself, and chosen almost by accident. Our own times have seen a counterpart to it in the siege of Sebastopol, which, though in a totally different form, was a new act in the same great struggle between the East and the West. Happily the western nations did not derive their warlike stimulus from religious sources, and they displayed, if not their military, at any rate, their moral superiority, in the most brilliant manner. Although, in the fight around Ptolemais, the superiority was doubtless on Saladin's side, there was a moment in which Europe threatened to oppose to the mighty Sultan an antagonist as great as himself. In May, 1189, the emperor Frederick IX marched out of Ratisbon with his army for Syria. He had already ruled thirty-seven years over Germany and Italy, and his life had been one of war and labor, of small results, but growing fame. He was born a ruler in the highest sense of the word; he possessed all the attributes of power; bold yet cautious, courageous and enduring, energetic and methodical, he towered proudly above all who surrounded him, and had the highest conception of his princely calling. But his ideas were beyond his time, and while he tried to open the way for a distant future, he was made to feel the penalty of running counter to the inclination of the present generation. It seemed to him unbearable that the Emperor, who was extolled by all the world as the defender of the right and the fountain-head of law, should be forced to bow before unruly vassals or unlimited ecclesiastical power. He had, chiefly from the study of the Roman law, conceived the idea of a state complete within itself, and strong in the name of the common weal, a complete contrast to the existing condition of Europe, where all the monarchies were breaking up, and the crowned priest reigned supreme over a crowd of petty princes. Under these circumstances he appeared foreshadowing modern thoughts deep in the Middle Ages, like a fresh mountain breeze, dispersing the incense-laden atmosphere of the time. This discrepancy caused the greatness and the misfortune of the mighty Emperor. The current of his time set full against him. When, as the representative of the State, he enforced obedience to the law, he appeared to some an impious offender against the Holy Church; to others, a tyrant trampling on the general freedom; and while conquering in a hundred fights, he was driven from one position after another by the force of opinion. But so commanding was the energy, so powerful the earnestness, and so inexhaustible the resources of his nature that he was as terrible to his foes on the last day as on the first, passionless and pitiless, never distorted by cruelty, and never melted by pity, an iron defender of his imperial rights. We can only guess at the reasons which may have induced a sovereign of this stamp to leave a sphere of domestic activity for the fantastic wars of the crusades. Once, in the midst of his Italian feud, when the deeds of Alexander the Great were read aloud to him, he exclaimed: "Happy Alexander, who didst never see Italy! happy I had I never been in Asia!" Whether piety or love of fame ultimately decided him, he felt within himself the energy to take a great decision, and at once proceeded to action. The aged Emperor once more displayed in this last effort the fulness of his powerful and ever-youthful nature. For the first time during these wars, since the armed pilgrimages had begun, Europe beheld a spirit conscious of their true object, and capable of carrying it out. The army was smaller than any of the former ones, consisting of twenty thousand knights and fifty thousand squires and foot soldiers; but it was guided by one inflexible, indomitable will. With strict discipline, the imperial leader drove all disorderly and useless persons out of his camp; he was always the first to face every obstacle or danger, and showed himself equal to all the political or military difficulties of the expedition. The Greek empire had to be traversed first, whose Emperor, Isaac, had allied himself with Saladin; but at the sight of these formidable masses he shrank in terror from any hostile attempt, and hastened to transport the German army across into Asia Minor. There they hoped for a friendly reception from the Emir of Iconium, who was reported to have a leaning toward Christianity; but in the mean time the old ruler had been dethroned by his sons, who opposed the Germans with a strong force. They were destined to feel the weight of the German arm. After their mounted bowmen had harassed the Christian troops for a time with a shower of arrows, the Emperor broke their line of battle, and scattered them by a sudden attack of cavalry in all directions, while at the same moment Frederick's son unexpectedly scaled the walls of their city. The crusaders then marched in triumph to Cilicia; the Armenians already yielded submissively to a cessation of hostilities; and far and wide throughout Turkish Syria went the dread of Frederick's irresistible arms. Even Saladin himself, who had boldly defied the disorderly attacks of the hundreds of thousands before Ptolemais, now lost all hope, and announced to his emirs his intention of quitting Syria on Frederick's arrival, and retreating across the Euphrates. On this every highway in the country became alive, the emirs quitted their towns, and began to fly with their families, their goods, and chattels, and hope rose high in the Christian camp. This honor was reserved for the Emperor; that which no other Frankish sword could achieve he had done by the mere shadow of his approach; he had forced from Saladin a confession of inferiority. But he was not destined to see the realization of his endeavors here, any more than in Europe. His army had entered Cilicia, and was preparing to cross the rapid mountain stream of the Seleph. On June 10, 1190, they marched slowly across the narrow bridge, and the Emperor, impatient to get to the front, urged his horse into the stream, intending to swim to the opposite shore. The raging waters suddenly seized him, and hurried him away before the eyes of the people. When he was drawn out, far down the river, he was a corpse. Boundless lamentations resounded throughout the army; the most brilliant ornament and sole hope of Christendom was gone; the troops arrived at Antioch in a state of the deepest dejection. From thence a number of the pilgrims returned home, scattered and discouraged, and a pestilence broke out among the rest, which was fatal to the greater number of them. It seemed, says a chronicler, "as though the members would not outlive their head." The Emperor's son, Duke Frederick of Swabia, reached the camp before Ptolemais with five thousand men, instituted there the Order of the Teutonic Knights--who were destined hereafter to found a splendid dominion on the distant shores of the German Ocean--and soon afterward followed his father to the grave. The highest hopes were soon destroyed by this lamentable downfall. It seemed as if a stern fate had resolved to give the Christian world a distant view of the possibility of victory; the great Emperor might have secured it, but the generation which had not understood him was doomed to misery and defeat. A second winter, with the same fearful additions of hunger and sickness, came upon the camp before Ptolemais, and the measure of misfortune was filled by renewed and bitter quarrels among the Frankish princes. King Guy was as incompetent as ever, and so utterly mismanaged the Christian cause that the marquis Conrad of Montferrat indignantly opposed him. Queen Sibylla, by marriage with whom Guy had gained possession of the crown, died just at this juncture. Conrad instantly declared that Sibylla's sister Eliza was the only rightful heir, and, as he held every step toward advancement to be laudable, did not for a moment scruple to elope with her from her husband, to marry her himself, and to lay claim to the crown. Amid all this confusion and disaster the eyes of the crusaders turned with increasing anxiety toward the horizon, to catch a glimpse of the sails which were to bring to them two fresh leaders, the kings of France and of England. Their preparations had not been very rapid. Henry II of England had, even since his oath, got into a new quarrel with Philip Augustus of France, which only ended with his death, in 1189. His son and successor, Richard, whose zeal had led him to put up the cross earlier than the rest, instantly began to arrange the expedition with Philip. In his impetuous manner he exulted in the prospect of unheard-of triumphs; the government of England was hastily and insufficiently provided for during the absence of the King; above all, money was needed in great quantities, and raised by every expedient, good or bad. When someone remonstrated with the King concerning these extortions, he exclaimed, "I would sell London itself, if I could but find a purchaser." He legislated with the same inconsiderate vehemence as to the discipline and order of his army: murderers were to be buried alive on land, and at sea to be tied to the corpses of their victims and thrown into the water; thieves were to be tarred and feathered; and whoever gambled for money, be he king or baron, was to be dipped three times in the sea, or flogged naked before the whole army. Richard led his army through France, and went on board his splendid fleet at Marseilles, while Philip sailed from Genoa in hired vessels. Half way to Sicily, however, Richard got tired of the sea voyage, landed near Rome, and journeyed with a small retinue through the Abruzzi and Calabria, already on the lookout for adventures, and often engaged in bloody quarrels with the peasants of the mountain villages. When he at last arrived in Sicily his unstable mind suddenly underwent a total change; a quarrel with the Sicilian King, Tancred, drove the Holy Sepulchre entirely out of his head. Now fighting, now negotiating, he stayed nine months at Messina--hated and feared by the inhabitants, who called him the Lion, the Savage Lion--deaf to the entreaties of his followers, who were eager to get to Syria, and heedless and defiant to all Philip Augustus' representations and demands. At last the French King, losing patience, sailed without him, and arrived at Ptolemais in April, 1191. He was received with eager joy, but did not succeed in at all advancing the siege operations; for so many of the French pilgrims had preceded him that the army he brought was but small, and, though an adroit and cunning diplomatist, a tried and unscrupulous statesman, he lacked the rough soldierly vigor and bravery on which everything at that moment depended. At length Richard was again on his road, and again he allowed himself to be turned aside from his purpose. One of his ships, which bore his betrothed bride, had stranded on the Cyprian coast, and, in consequence of the hostility of the king of that island, had been very inhospitably received. Richard was instantly up in arms, declared war against the Comnene,[32] and conquered the whole island in a fortnight--an impromptu conquest, which was of the highest importance to the Christian party in the East for centuries after. Still occupied in establishing a military colony of his knights, he was surprised by a visit from King Guy, of Jerusalem, who wished to secure the support of the dreaded monarch in his party contests at home. Guy complained to King Richard of the matrimonial offences of his rival, informed him that Philip Augustus had declared in favor of Conrad's claims, and on the spot secured the jealous adherence of the English monarch. He landed on June 8th at Ptolemais; the Christians celebrated his arrival by an illumination of the camp: and without a moment's delay, by his warlike ardor, he roused the whole army out of the state of apathy into which it had lately fallen. Day after day the walls of the city were energetically assailed on every side. On July 8th Saladin made his last attempt to raise the siege, by an attack on the Christian intrenchments; he was driven back with great loss, whereupon he permitted the besieged to capitulate. The town surrendered, with all its stores, after a siege of nearly three years' duration; the heroic defenders still remaining, about three thousand in number, were to be exchanged within the space of forty days, for two thousand captive Christians, and a ransom of two hundred thousand pieces of gold. The war, according to all reports, had by this time cost the crusaders above thirty thousand men. Those among the pilgrims who were enthusiastic and devout now hoped their way would lead straight to the Holy Sepulchre. But it soon became manifest that the feeling which had prompted the crusades was dead forever. The news of the fall of Jerusalem had awakened a momentary excitement in the western nations, but had failed to stir up the old enthusiasm. On Syrian ground, the ideal faith rapidly gave way before substantial worldly considerations. Richard, Guy, and the Pisans, on the one hand; Philip, Conrad, and the Genoese, on the other, were already in open discord, which was so embittered by Richard's blustering fury that Philip Augustus embarked at the end of July for France, declaring upon his oath that he had no evil intentions toward England, but determined in his heart to let Richard feel his resentment on the first opportunity. Meanwhile negotiations had begun between Saladin and Richard, which at first seemed to promise favorable results for the Christians, but unfortunately the day fixed for the exchange of the prisoners arrived before Saladin was able to procure the whole of the promised ransom. Richard, with the most brutal cruelty, slaughtered two thousand seven hundred prisoners in one day. Saladin magnanimously refused the demands of his exasperated followers for reprisals, but of course there could be no further question of a treaty, and the war recommenced with renewed fury. Richard led the army on an expedition against Ascalon, defeated Saladin on his march thither at Arsuf, and advanced amid incessant skirmishes and single combats, into which he recklessly plunged as though he had been a simple knight-errant. Accordingly his progress was so slow that Saladin had destroyed the town before his arrival and rendered its capture worthless to the Christians. Again negotiations were begun, but in January, 1192, Richard suddenly advanced upon Jerusalem, and by forced marches quickly reached Baitnuba, a village only a few miles distant from the Holy City. But there the Sultan had thrown up strong and extensive fortifications, and after long and anxious deliberations, the Franks returned toward Ascalon. Meanwhile Conrad of Montferrat had placed himself in communication with Saladin, proposed to him point-blank an alliance against Richard, and by his prudent and consistent conduct daily grew in favor with the Sultan. The Christian camp, on the other hand, was filled with ever-increasing discord; and the difference between Richard and Conrad reached such a height that the Marquis went back to Ptolemais, and regularly besieged the Pisans, who were friendly to the English. Into such a miserable state of confusion had the great European enterprise fallen for want of a good leader and an adequate object. In April news came from England that the King's brother, John, was in open rebellion against him and in alliance with France; whereupon Richard, greatly alarmed, informed the barons that he must prepare for his departure, and that they must definitively choose between Guy and Conrad as their future ruler. To his great disappointment, the actual necessities of the case triumphed over all party divisions, and all voted for Conrad, as the only able and fitting ruler in the country. Nothing remained for Richard but to accede to their wishes, and as a last act of favor toward Guy, to bestow upon him the crown of Cyprus. Conrad did not delay one moment signing the treaty with Saladin, and the Sultan left the new King in possession of the whole line of coast taken by the crusaders, and also ceded to him Jerusalem, where, however, he was to allow a Turkish mosque to exist; the other towns of the interior were then to be divided between the two sovereigns. What a conclusion to a war in which the whole world had been engaged, and had made such incalculable efforts! After the only competent leader had been snatched from the Christians by an angry fate, the weakness and desultoriness of the others had destroyed the fruits of conquest. The host of devout pilgrims had beheld Jerusalem from Baitnuba, and had then been obliged to turn their backs upon the holy spot in impotent grief. Suddenly a nameless, bold, and cunning prince made his appearance in this great war between the two religions in the world, a man indifferent to religion or morality, who knew no other motive than selfishness, but who followed that with vigor and consistency, and had already stretched forth his hand to grasp the crown of the Holy Sepulchre. But on the 28th of April Conrad was murdered by two Saracen assassins; many said, at King Richard's instigation, but more affirmed it was by the order of the Old Man of the Mountain, the head of a fanatical sect in Lebanon. Everything was again unsettled by this event. The Syrian barons instantly elected Count Henry of Champagne as their king; five days after Conrad's death he married his widow Eliza, and was perfectly ready to succeed to Conrad's alliance with Saladin, as well as to his wife. But King Richard, with his usual thoughtlessness, allowed the scandalous marriage, but prevented the reasonable diplomatic arrangement. As he had a certain liking for Henry, who was his nephew, he wished to conquer a few more provinces for him in a hurry, and to win some fresh laurels for himself at the same time; and accordingly began the war anew against Saladin. A Turkish fortress was taken, when more evil tidings arrived from England, and Richard announced that he could not remain a moment longer. The barons broke out in a general cry of indignation that he who had plunged them into danger should forsake them in the midst of it, and once more the vacillating King allowed himself to be diverted from his purpose. Again the Christians remained long inactive at Baitnuba, not daring to attack the city. The ultimate reason for this delay was illustrative of the state of things. The leaders knew that the great mass of pilgrims would disperse as soon as their vows were fulfilled by the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre; this would seal the destruction of the Frankish rule in Syria, should it happen before the treaty of peace with Saladin was concluded. Thus the ostensible object of the crusade could not be achieved without ruining Christianity in the East. It is impossible to give a stronger illustration of the hopelessness and internal conflict of all their views and endeavors at that time. They at last turned back disheartened to Ramla, where they were startled by the news that Saladin had unexpectedly assumed the offensive, attacked the important seaport town of Jaffa, and was probably already in possession of it. Richard's warlike impetuosity once more burst forth. With a handful of followers he put to sea and hastened to Jaffa. When he came in sight of the harbor, the Turks were already inside the town, plundering in every direction, and assailing the last remains of the garrison. After a short reconnoitre Richard drove his vessel on shore, rushed with an echoing war-cry into the midst of the enemy's superior force, and by his mighty blows actually drove the Turks in terror and confusion out of the place. On the following day he encamped with contemptuous insolence outside the gates with a few hundred horsemen, when he was suddenly attacked by as many thousands. In one instant he was armed, drove back the foremost assailants, clove a Turk's head down to his shoulders, and then rode along the wavering front of the enemy, from one wing to the other. "Now," cried he, "who will dare a fight for the honor of God?" Henceforth his fame was such that, years after, Turkish mothers threatened their children with "King Richard is coming!" and Turkish riders asked their shying horses if "they saw the Lion-hearted King." But these knightly deeds did not advance the war at all. It was fortunate for the Franks that Saladin's emirs were weary of the long strife, and the Sultan himself wished for the termination of hostilities in consequence of his failing health. The favorable terms of the former treaty, more especially the possession of Jerusalem, were of course no longer to be obtained. The Christians were obliged to be content, on August 30, 1192, with a three-years' armistice, according to which the sea-coast from Antioch to Joppa was to remain in the possession of the Christians, and the Franks obtained permission to go to Jerusalem as unarmed pilgrims, to pray at the Holy Sepulchre. Richard embarked directly, without even taking measures for ransoming the prisoners. As may easily be imagined, the Christians were deeply exasperated by such a peace; the Turks rejoiced, and only Saladin looked forward with anxiety to the future, and feared dangerous consequences from the duration of even the smallest Christian dominion in the East. The most active and friendly intercourse, rarely disturbed by suspicion, soon began between the two nations. On the very scene of the struggle mutual hatred had subsided, commercial relations were formed, and political negotiations soon followed. In the place of the mystic trophy which was the object of the religious war, Europe had gained an immense extension of worldly knowledge and of wealth from the struggle of a hundred years. THE TEUTONIC KNIGHTS THEIR ORGANIZATION AND HISTORY A.D. 1190-1809 F.C. WOODHOUSE Scarcely less renowned than the Knights Templars, the Teutonic Knights carried the spirit and traditions of the great military religious orders of the Middle Ages far into the modern period. No earlier date for the foundation of the order than 1190 is given on recognized authority, its actual beginning, like that of the other orders of its kind, being humble and obscure. It appears that about 1128 a wealthy German, having participated in the siege and capture of Jerusalem, settled there, and soon began to show pity for his unfortunate countrymen among the pilgrims who came, receiving some of them into his own house to be cared for. When the work became too great for him there, he built a hospital, in which he devoted himself to nursing sick pilgrims, to whose support he likewise gave all his wealth. Still the task outgrew the means at his command, and in order to increase his charity he began to solicit alms. While he took care of the men, his wife performed a like service for poor women pilgrims. Soon they were joined by many of their wealthier countrymen who had come to fight for the Holy Land. Presently they "banded themselves together, after the pattern of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, and united the care of the sick and poor with the profession of arms in their defence, under the title of Hospitalers of the Blessed Virgin." These Teutonic Hospitalers continued their work, in hospital and field, until the capture of Jerusalem by Saladin in 1187, and the conqueror, in recognition of their benevolent services, consented that some of them should remain there and continue their work. Out of these lowly beginnings grew one of the most powerful and widespread of the military religious orders. It was during the siege of Acre, 1189-1191, that the Teutonic Order received its final and complete organization as one of the great military religious orders of Europe. The German soldiers suffered great miseries from sickness and from their wounds, and as their language was not understood by the French and other European contingents of the crusading army, they were left untended and friendless. To meet this want, some citizens of Bremen and Lubeck provided a sort of field hospital, and devoted themselves to the care of their wounded and sick countrymen. These were soon joined by others, and by the brethren of the Hospital of the Blessed Virgin at Jerusalem, whom Saladin had banished from the city, and the little body came to be known by the designation of the Teutonic Knights of the Hospital of the Blessed Virgin at Jerusalem. It is said that the order owed its constitution to Frederick, Duke of Swabia; but there is much obscurity, and little authentic record to determine this or to furnish particulars of the transaction. The order seems, however, to have been confirmed by Pope Celestine III, the constitution and rules of the Templars and Hospitalers being taken as the model for the new order, Henry de Walpot being the first master. This appears to have happened about 1190, though some authorities maintain that it was not till 1191 or even later. While, therefore, the three great orders had much in common, there was this difference in their original foundation. The Hospitalers were at first a nursing order, and gradually became military; the Templars were always purely and solely military; while the Teutonic Knights were from the first both military and nursing. Contemporary chroniclers compare the Teutonic Knights with the mystic living creature seen by Ezekiel, having the faces of a man and of a lion, the former indicating the charity with which they tended the sick; the latter, the courage and daring with which they met and fought the enemies of Christ. The Teutonic Knights continued their care of the sick soldiers till Acre was taken in July, 1191, by the united forces of Philip Augustus, King of France, and Richard Coeur de Lion, King of England. After the capture of Acre by the Christian army, Henry de Walpot purchased a site within the city, and built a church and hospital for his order, the first that it possessed. To these buildings were gradually added lodgings for the members of the order, for pilgrims, and for the soldiers which were enlisted to assist the knights in the field. All this cost a large sum of money; but, as many wealthy Germans had enrolled themselves as knights, means were not wanting as the occasion for them occurred and the requirements of the order developed. Among the greatest of the earlier benefactors was Frederick, Duke of Swabia, who contributed money and aided the progress of the order by his influence, and, when he died at Acre, was interred in the church of the knights. Contemporary writers speak in the highest terms of his virtues, saying that he lived a hero and died a saint. At this period and for the rest of its history, the constitution of the Teutonic order embraced two classes of members--the knights and the clergy--both being exclusively of German birth. The knights were required to be of noble family, and, besides the ordinary threefold monastic vows, took a fourth vow, that they would devote themselves to the care of the sick and to fight the enemies of the faith. Their dress was black, over which a white cloak with a black cross upon the left shoulder was worn. The clergy were not necessarily of noble birth, their duties being to minister to the order in their churches, to the sick in the hospitals and on the field of battle. To these two classes, who constituted the order, were added serving brethren, called _Heimlike_ and _Soldner_, and in Latin, _Familiares_. Many of these gave their services gratuitously from religious motives; others received payment and were really servants. The knights selected their esquires from among the serving brothers. All these wore a dress of the same color as the knights, that they might be known at once to belong to the order. The original rules of the order were very severe. All the members lived in common; they slept in dormitories on small and hard beds; they took their meals together in the refectory, and their fare was meagre and of the plainest quality. They were required to attend the daily services in the church, and to recite certain prayers and offices privately. They were not permitted to leave their convent, nor to write or receive letters, without permission of their superior. Their clothes, armor, and the harness of their horses were all of the plainest description; all gold, jewels, and other costly ornaments being strictly forbidden. Arms of the best temper and horses of good breed were provided. When they marched to battle, each knight had three or four horses, and an esquire carried his shield and lance. The grand master was elected from the class of the knights only. Next in rank to him was the preceptor, or grand commander, who had the general supervision of the clergy and serving brethren, and who presided in chapter in the absence of the grand master. Next to the preceptor came the marshal, who acted as lieutenant-general in the field of battle under the grand master. The third dignitary was the grand hospitaler, who had the superintendence of the hospitals and of all that related to their management. The fourth officer was the trappier, who supplied the knights with their clothing and accoutrements. And, lastly, there was the treasurer, who received and paid all the money that passed through the hands of the order. All these officers were removable, and were commonly changed every year. As the order extended, new functionaries were required and were appointed; namely, provincial masters of the several countries where the order obtained possessions, who took rank next after the grand master; and there were also many local officers as particular circumstances required. The grand master was not absolute, but was obliged to seek the advice of the chapter before taking any important step, and if he were necessarily absent, he appointed a lieutenant to act for him, who also governed the order after the death of the grand master till his successor was elected. After the death of Saladin disputes arose among his sons, and the opportunity was seized of commencing a new crusade, the history of which is well known, and in which the Teutonic Knights took an active part. At this time (1197) Henry VI, Emperor of Germany, gave the knights the monastery of the Cistercians, at Palermo, in Sicily, and several privileges and exemptions--a transaction that caused considerable disagreement between the Pope and the Emperor. The knights were, however, finally confirmed in possession of the monastery, and it became the preceptory or chief house of the order in Sicily, where other property was gradually bestowed upon the knights. Henry de Walpot, the first grand master, died at Acre, in 1200, and was succeeded by Otho de Kerpen, who was an octogenarian at the time of his election, but full of vigor and energy, which he displayed by devoted attention to the duties of his office, and personal attendance upon the sick in the hospitals. During the mastership of Otho de Kerpen, an order of knighthood arose in the north of Europe, which was afterward incorporated with the Teutonic order. Livonia, a country situated on the borders of the Baltic, was at this time still pagan. The merchants of Bremen and Lubeck, who had trading relations with the inhabitants, desired to impart to them the truths and blessings of Christianity, and took a monk of the name of Menard to teach them the elements of the faith. The work succeeded, and Menard was consecrated bishop, and fixed his see at Uxhul, which was afterward transferred to Riga. The mission, however, as it advanced, aroused the jealousy and suspicion of the pagan nobles, and they attacked and destroyed the new town, with its cathedral and other buildings. The Bishop appealed to his countrymen for help. Many responded to his call, and, as there was at that time no crusade in progress in Palestine, the Pope (1199) was persuaded to accord to those who took up arms for the defence of the Christians in Livonia the same privileges as were given to those who actually went to the Holy Land. In consequence of these events a military religious order was founded, to assist in this war, called the Order of Christ, which was confirmed by Pope Innocent III, in 1205. The knights wore a white robe, upon which a red sword and a star were emblazoned. They maintained a vigorous and successful conflict with the heathen, till circumstances rendered it desirable that they should be incorporated with the Teutonic Knights. In the mean time the Latins had seized Constantinople, and set up Baldwin, Count of Flanders, as emperor, and divided the Eastern Empire among themselves. The Teutonic Knights received considerable possessions, and a preceptory was founded in Achaia. Some time afterward another was established in Armenia, where also the order had obtained property and territory in return for service rendered in the field. The order also received the distinction of adding to their bearings the Cross of Jerusalem. The valor of the knights, however, and the active part which they took in all the religious wars of the day, cost them dear, and from time to time their numbers were greatly reduced; so much so that when Herman de Salza was elected grand master (1210) he found the order so weak that he declared he would gladly sacrifice one of his eyes if he could thereby be assured that he should always have ten knights to follow him to battle with the infidels. The vigor of his administration brought new life to the order, and he was able to carry on its mission with such success that at his death there were no less than two thousand German nobles who had assumed the badge of the order and fought under its banner. Large accessions of property also came at this time to the knights in Hungary, Prussia, Livonia, and elsewhere. In 1214 the emperor Frederick I decreed that the grand master should always be considered a member of the imperial court, that whenever he visited it he should be lodged at the Emperor's expense, and that two knights should always have quarters assigned them in the imperial household. In 1221 the emperor Frederick II, by an imperial act, took the Teutonic order under his special protection, including all its property and servants; exempted them from all taxes and dues; and gave its members free use of all pastures, rivers, and forests in his dominions. And in 1227 Henry commanded that all proceedings in his courts should be conducted without cost to the order. The King of Hungary also, seeing the valor of the knights, endeavored to secure his own possessions by giving them charge of several of his frontier towns. It would be unnecessary, as it would be tedious, to repeat all the details of the crusades, the varying successes and defeats, in all of which the Teutonic Knights took part, both in Syria and in Egypt, fighting side by side with their brethren in arms, the Templars and Hospitalers. They continued also their humane services to the sick and wounded, as the following curious contemporary document shows. It forms part of a charter, obtained by one Schweder, of Utrecht, who says that, being at the siege of Damietta, "he saw the wonderful exertions of the brethren of the Teutonic Order, for the succor of the sick and the care of the soldiers of the army, and was moved to endow the order with his property in the village of Lankarn." It was during the siege of Damietta that the famous St. Francis of Assisi visited the crusading army, and endeavored to settle a dispute that had arisen between the knights and the foot soldiers of the army, the latter being dissatisfied and declaring that they were unfairly exposed to danger as compared with the mounted knights. In 1226 the grand master was selected by the emperor Frederick and Pope Honorius to be arbitrator in a dispute that had arisen between them. So well pleased were they with his honorable and wise counsel that, in recognition of his services, he and his successors were created princes of the Empire, and the order was allowed to bear upon its arms the Imperial Eagle. The Emperor also bestowed a very precious ring upon the master, which was ever afterward used at the institution of the grand master of the order. Again, in 1230, the Grand master was one of the principal agents in bringing about a reconciliation between the Emperor and Pope Gregory IX, whose dissensions had led to many troubles and calamities. It has already been mentioned that the King of Hungary bestowed upon the knights some territory on the borders of his dominions, with a view to their defending it from the incursions of the barbarous tribes in the vicinity. The King's anticipations were amply realized. The knights maintained order in the disturbed districts, and by their presence put an end to the incursions of the predatory bands who came periodically to waste the country with fire and sword. The land soon smiled with harvests, and a settled and contented population lived in peace and quietness. But no sooner were these happy results attained than the King took a mean advantage of the knights, and resumed possession of the country which they had converted from a desert to a fruitful and valuable district. The consequence was that the wild tribes renewed their invasions, and the reclaimed country once more lapsed into desolation. Then again the King made the border country over to the knights, who speedily reasserted their rights, and established a settled government and general prosperity in the dominion made over to them. This grant and some others that followed were confirmed to the order by the bull of Pope Honorius III in 1222. A few years after this the Duke of Poland asked the aid of the order against the pagan inhabitants of the country that was afterward Prussia. These people were very savage and barbarous, and constantly committed horrible cruelties upon their more civilized neighbors, laying waste the country, destroying crops, carrying off cattle, burning towns, villages, and convents, and murdering the inhabitants with circumstances of extreme atrocity, often burning their captives alive as sacrifices to their gods. The grand master consulted with his chapter and with the Emperor on the proposed enterprise, and finally resolved to enter upon it, the Emperor undertaking to secure to the order any territory that they might be able to conquer and hold in Prussia. Pope Gregory IX, in 1230, gave his sanction to the expedition, and conferred on those concerned in it all the privileges accorded to crusaders. In the following year an army invaded Prussia and erected a fortress at Thorn, on the Vistula, on the site of a grove of enormous oaks, which the inhabitants looked upon as sacred to their god Thor. This was followed, in 1232, by the foundation of another stronghold at Culm. A successful campaign followed, and the castle of Marienwerder, lower down the Vistula, was after some reverses and delays successfully built and fortified. The grand master then established a firm system of government over the conquered country, and drew up laws and regulations for the administration of justice, for the coining of money, and other necessary elements of civilization. Other fortified places were built which gradually developed into cities and towns. But all this was not effected without many battles and much patient endurance, and frequent defeats and checks. Nor did the knights forget the spiritual needs of their heathen subjects. Mission clergy labored among them, and by their instruction, and still more by their holy, self-denying lives, they succeeded in winning many to forsake their idols and become Christians. The order received an important accession to its ranks at this time (1237) by the incorporation into it of the ancient Order of Christ, in Livonia, which had considerable possessions. This was followed shortly afterward by an agreement between the order and the King of Denmark, by which the former undertook the defence of the kingdom against its pagan neighbors. In 1234 the order received into its ranks Conrad, Landgrave of Thuringia and Hesse, a man who had led a wicked and violent life, but, being brought to see his errors, made an edifying repentance, and became a Teutonic Knight, and afterward was elected grand master. This Conrad was brother to Louis of Thuringia, who was the husband of St. Elizabeth of Hungary. After the death of Elizabeth, the hospital at Marburg, where she had passed the latter years of her widowhood in the care of the sick, was made over to the Teutonic Knights, and after her canonization a church was built to receive her remains, and placed under the care of the order. In 1240 the knights received an earnest petition from the Duke of Poland, for aid against the Turks, who were ravaging his dominions, and by the enormous multitude of their hosts were able to defeat any army he could bring into the field. The knights accepted the invitation, and took part in a series of bloody and obstinate battles, in which they lost many of their number. They had also a new enemy to encounter in the Duke of Pomerania, who had been their ally, but who now sided with the Prussians against them. In the war that ensued the Duke was defeated, several of his strongholds were taken, and he was obliged to sue for peace. A few years afterward, however (1243), the Duke recommenced hostilities, and with more success. Culm was besieged by him, and the greatest miseries were endured by the inhabitants, the slaughter being so great in the numerous conflicts before the walls that at last very few men remained. The Bishop even counselled the widows to marry their servants, that the population of the town might not become extinct. The war was continued for several years with varying fortune, till a peace was at last concluded, principally through the mediation of the Duke of Austria. About this time a disputed election caused a schism in the order, and two rival grand masters for several years divided the allegiance of the knights, till Henry de Hohenlohe was recognized by both sides as master. During his term of office successful war was carried on in Courland and other neighboring countries, which resulted in the spread of Christianity and the advance of the power of the order. At the same time, the Teutonic order took part in the crusades in Palestine, and shared with the Templars and Hospitalers the successes and reverses there. It would be tedious to enter upon all the details of the conflicts undertaken by the order against the Prussians and others; suffice it to say that the knights, though often defeated, steadily advanced their dominion, and secured its permanence by the erection of fortresses, the centres about which cities and towns ultimately arose. Among these were Dantzic, Koenigsberg, Elbing, Marienberg, and Thorn. By the year 1283 the order was in possession of all the country between the Vistula and the Memel, Prussia, Courland, part of Livonia, and Samogitia; commanderies were established everywhere to hold it in subjection, and bishoprics and monasteries were founded for the spread of Christianity among the heathen population. In the contests between the Venetians and the Genoese, the Teutonic Knights aided the former, and in 1291, after the loss of Acre, the grand master took up his residence in Venice. About this time the Pope originated a scheme for the union of the three orders of the Hospitalers, the Templars, and the Teutonic Knights, into one great order, purposing at the same time to engage the Emperor and the kings of Christendom to lay aside all their quarrels, and combine their forces for the recovery once for all of the Holy Land. Difficulties without number, which proved insuperable, prevented the realization of this scheme. Among these was the objection raised by the Teutonic Knights, that while the Hospitalers and Templars had but one object in view--the recovery of Palestine, their order had to maintain its conquests in the North of Europe, and to prosecute the spread of the true faith among the still heathen nations. In 1309, when all hope of the recovery of the Christian dominion in the East had been abandoned, and no further crusades seemed probable, it was determined to remove the seat of the grand master from Venice to Marienberg. At a chapter of the order held there, further regulations were agreed upon for the government of the conquered countries, some of which are very curious, but give an interesting picture of the state of the people and of society at that period. Thus it was commanded that no Jew, necromancer, or sorcerer should be allowed to settle in the country. Masters who had slaves, and generally Prussians, prisoners of war, were obliged to send them to the parish church to be instructed by the clergy in the Christian religion. German alone was to be spoken, and the ancient language of the country was forbidden, to prevent the people hatching conspiracies, and to do away with the old idolatry and heathen superstitions. Prussians were not allowed to open shops or taverns, nor to act as surgeons or accoucheurs. The wages of servants were strictly settled, and no increase or diminution was permitted. Three marks and a half a year were the wages of a carpenter or smith, two and a half marks of a coachman, a mark and a half of a laborer, two marks of a domestic servant, and half a mark of a nurse. Masters had the right to follow their runaway servants, and to pierce their ears; but if they dismissed a servant before the end of his term of service, they must pay him a year's wages. Servants were not allowed to marry during time of harvest and vintage, under penalty of losing a year's wages and paying a fine of three marks. No bargains were to be made on Sundays and festivals, and no shops were to be open on those days till after morning service. Sumptuary laws of the most stringent nature were passed, some of which appear very singular. At a marriage or other domestic festival, officers of justice might offer their guests six measures of beer, tradesmen must not give more than four, peasants only two. Playing for money, with dice or cards, was forbidden. Bishops were to visit their dioceses every three years, and to aid missions to the heathen. Those who gave drink to others must drink of the same beverage themselves, to avoid the danger of poisoning, as commonly practised by the heathen Prussians. A new coinage was also issued. The next half-century was a period of general prosperity and advance for the order. It was engaged almost incessantly in war, either for the retention of its conquests or for the acquisition of new territory. There were also internal difficulties and dissensions, and contests with the bishops. In 1308 the Archbishop of Riga appealed to Pope Clement V, making serious charges against the order, and endeavoring to prevail upon him to suppress it in the same way as the Templars had lately been dealt with. Gerard, Count of Holstein, however, came forward as the defender of the knights. A formal inquiry was opened before the Pope at Avignon in 1323. The principal charges brought forward by the Archbishop were, that the order had not fulfilled the conditions of its sovereignty in defending the Church against its heathen enemies; that it did not regard excommunications; that it had offered insolence to the Archbishop, and seized some of the property of his see, and other similar accusations. The grand master explained some of these matters, denied others, and produced an autograph letter of the Archbishop's, in which he secretly endeavored to stir up the Grand Duke of Lithuania to make a treacherous attack upon some of the fortresses of the knights. The end of the matter was that the case was dismissed, and there is little doubt that there were serious faults on both sides. The times were indeed full of violence, cruelty, and crime. The annals abound with terrible and shameful records, bloody and desolating wars, and individual cases of oppression, injustice, and cruelty. Now a grand master is assassinated in his chapel during vespers; now a judge is proved to have received bribes, and to have induced a suitor to sacrifice the honor of his wife as the price of a favorable decision. Wealth and power led to luxury and sensuality, the weaker were oppressed, noble and bishop alike showing themselves proud and tyrannical. There are often two contradictory accounts of the same transaction, and it is impossible to decide where the fault really was, when there seems so little to choose between the conduct of either side. The conclusion seems forced upon us that human nature was in those days much the same as it is now, and that riches and irresponsible authority scarcely ever fail to lead to pride and to selfish and oppressive treatment of inferiors. When we gaze upon the magnificent cathedrals that were rising all over Europe at the bidding of the great of those times, we are filled with admiration, and disposed to imagine that piety and a high standard of religious life must have prevailed; but a closer acquaintance with historical facts dissipates the illusion, and we find that then as now good and evil were mingled. The history of the order for the next century presents little of interest. In 1388 two of the knights repaired to England by order of the grand master, to make commercial arrangements with that country, which had been rendered necessary by the changes introduced into the trade of Europe by the creation of the Hanseatic League. A second commercial treaty between the King of England and the order was made in 1409. The order had now reached the summit of its greatness. Besides large possessions in Germany, Italy, and other countries, its sovereignty extended from the Oder to the Gulf of Finland. This country was both wealthy and populous. Prussia is said to have contained fifty-five large fortified cities, forty-eight fortresses, and nineteen thousand and eight towns and villages. The population of the larger cities must have been considerable, for we are told that in 1352 the plague carried off thirteen thousand persons in Dantzic, four thousand in Thorn, six thousand at Elbing, and eight thousand at Koenigsberg. One authority reckons the population of Prussia at this time at two million one hundred and forty thousand eight hundred. The greater part of these were German immigrants, since the original inhabitants had either perished in the war or retired to Lithuania. Historians who were either members of the order or favorably disposed toward it, are loud in their praise of the wisdom and generosity of its government; while others accuse its members and heads of pride, tyranny, luxury, and cruel exactions. In 1410 the Teutonic order received a most crushing defeat at Tannenberg from the King of Poland, assisted by bodies of Russians, Lithuanians, and Tartars. The grand master, Ulric de Jungingen, was slain, with several hundred knights and many thousand soldiers. There is said to have been a chapel built at Gruenwald, in which an inscription declared that sixty thousand Poles and forty thousand of the army of the knights were left dead upon the field of battle. The banner of the order, its treasury, and a multitude of prisoners fell into the hands of the enemy, who shortly afterward marched against Marienberg and closely besieged it. Several of the feudatories of the knights sent in their submission to the King of Poland, who began at once to dismember the dominions of the order and to assign portions to his followers. But this proved to be premature. The knights found in Henry de Planau a valiant leader, who defended the city with such courage and obstinacy that, after fifty-seven days' siege, the enemy retired, after serious loss from sorties and sickness. A series of battles followed, and finally a treaty of peace was signed, by which the order gave up some portion of its territory to Poland. But a new enemy was on its way to inflict upon the order greater and more lasting injury than that which the sword could effect. The doctrines of Wycklif had for some time been spreading throughout Europe, and had lately received a new impulse from the vigorous efforts of John Huss in Bohemia, who had eagerly embraced them, and set himself to preach them, with additions of his own. Several knights accepted the teaching of Huss, and either retired from the order or were forcibly ejected. Differences and disputes also arose within the order, which ended in the arrest and deposition of the grand master in 1413. But the new doctrines had taken deep root, and a large party within the order were more or less favorable to them, so much so that at the Council of Constance (1415) a strong party demanded the total suppression of the Teutonic order. This was overruled; but it probably induced the grand master to commence a series of persecutions against those in his dominions who followed the principles of Huss. The treaty that had followed the defeat at Tannenberg had been almost from the first disputed by both parties, and for some years appeals were made to the Pope and the Emperor on several points; but the decisions seldom gave satisfaction or commanded obedience. The general result was the loss to the order of some further portions of its dominions. Another outbreak of the plague, in 1427, inflicted injury upon the order. In a few weeks no less than eighty-one thousand seven hundred and forty-six persons perished. There were also about this time certain visions of hermits and others, which threatened terrible judgments upon the order, because, while it professed to exist and fight for the honor of God, the defence of the Church, and the propagation of the faith, it really desired and labored only for its own aggrandizement. It was said, too, that it should perish through a goose (_oie_), and as the word "Huss" means a goose in Bohemian _patois_, it was said afterward that the writings of Huss, or more truly, perhaps, the work of the goose-quill, had fulfilled the prophecy in undermining and finally subverting the order. There were also disputes respecting the taxes, which the people declared to be oppressive, and finally, in 1454, a formidable rebellion took place against the authority of the knights. Casimir, King of Poland, who had long had hostile intentions against the order, secretly threw all his weight into the cause of the malcontents, who made such way that the grand master was forced to retire to Marienberg, his capital, where he was soon closely besieged. Casimir now openly declared war, and laid claim to the dominions of the knights in Prussia and Pomerania, formally annexing them to the kingdom of Poland. The grand master sent petitions for aid to the neighboring princes, but without success. The kings of Denmark and Sweden excused themselves on account of the distance of their dominions from the seat of war. Ladislaus, King of Bohemia and Hungary, was about to marry his sister to Casimir, and the religious dissensions of Bohemia and the attacks of the Turks upon Hungary fully occupied his attention and demanded the employment of all his troops and treasure; and finally the capture of Constantinople by Mahomet at this very time (1458) seemed to paralyze the energies of the European powers. The grand master, Louis d'Erlichshausen, thus found himself deserted in his time of need. He did what he could by raising a considerable body of mercenaries, and with these, his knights, and the regular troops of the order, he defended himself with courage and wonderful endurance, so that he not only succeeded in holding the city, but recovered several other towns that had revolted. But his resources were unequal to the demands made upon them, his enemy overwhelmed him with numbers, his own soldiers clamored for their pay long overdue, and there was no prospect of aid from without. There was nothing left, therefore, to him but to make the best terms he could. He adopted the somewhat singular plan of making over Marienberg and what remained of the dominions of the order to the chiefs who had given him aid, in payment for their services, and he himself, with his knights and troops, retired to Koenigsberg, which then became the capital of the order. Marienberg soon afterward came into the hands of Casimir; but the knights again captured it, and again lost it, 1460. War continued year after year between Poland and the knights, the general result of which was that the latter were defeated and lost one town after another, till, in 1466, a peace was concluded, by the terms of which the knights ceded to Poland almost all the western part of their dominions, retaining only a part of Eastern Prussia, with Koenigsberg for their capital, the grand master acknowledging himself the vassal of the King of Poland, with the title of Prince and Councillor of the kingdom. In 1497 the order lost its possessions in Sicily through the influence of the Pope and the King of Aragon, who combined to deprive it of them. It still retained a house at Venice, and some other property in Lombardy. In 1511 Albert de Brandenberg was elected grand master. He made strenuous efforts to procure the independence of the order, and solicited the aid of the Emperor to free it from the authority of Poland, but without success. The grand master refused the customary homage to the King of Poland, and, after fruitless negotiations, war was once more declared, which continued till 1521, when peace was concluded; one of the results of which was the separation of Livonia from the dominion of the order, and its erection into an independent state. All this time the doctrines of Luther had been making progress and spreading among all classes in Prussia and Germany. In 1522 the grand master went to Nuremberg to consult with the Lutherans there, and shortly afterward he visited Luther himself at Wittenberg. Luther's advice was decided and trenchant. He poured contempt upon the rules of the order, and advised Albert to break away from it and marry. Melancthon supported Luther's counsels. Shortly after, Luther wrote a vigorous letter to the knights of the order, in which he maintained that it was of no use to God or man. He urged all the members to break their vow of celibacy and to marry, saying that it was impossible for human nature to be chaste in any other way, and that God's law, which commanded man to increase and multiply, was older than the decrees of councils and the vows of religious orders. At the request of the grand master he also sent missionaries into Prussia to preach the reformed doctrines. One or two bishops and many of the clergy accepted them, and they spread rapidly among the people. Services began to be said in the vulgar tongue, and images and other ornaments were pulled down in the churches, especially in the country districts. In 1525 Albert met the King of Poland at Cracow, and formally resigned his office as grand master of the Teutonic order, making over his dominions to the King, and receiving from him in return the title of hereditary Duke of Prussia. Shortly afterward he followed Luther's advice, and married the princess Dorothea of Denmark. Many of the knights followed his example. The annals and archives of the order were transferred to the custody of the King of Poland, and were lost or destroyed during the troubles that subsequently came upon that kingdom. A considerable number of the knights refused to change their religion and abandon their order, and in 1527 assembled in chapter at Mergentheim to consult as to their plans for the future. They elected Walter de Cronberg grand master, whose appointment was ratified by the Emperor, Charles V. In the religious wars that followed, the knights fought on the side of the Emperor, against the Protestants. In 1595 the commandery of Venice was sold to the Patriarch and was converted into a diocesan seminary; and in 1637 the commandery of Utrecht was lost to the order. In 1631 Mergentheim was taken by the Swedes under General Horn. In the war against the Turks during this period some of the knights, true to the ancient principles of their order, took part on the Christian side, both in Hungary and in the Mediterranean. In the wars of Louis XIV, the order lost many of its remaining commanderies, and by an edict of the King, in 1672, the separate existence of the order was abolished in his dominions, and its possessions were conferred on the Order of St. Lazarus. When Prussia was erected into a kingdom, in 1701, the order issued a solemn protest against the act, asserting its ancient rights over that country. The order maintained its existence in an enfeebled condition till 1809, when it was formally abolished by Napoleon. In 1840 Austria instituted an honorary order called by the same name, and in 1852 Prussia revived it under the designation of the Order of St. John. PHILIP OF FRANCE WINS THE FRENCH DOMAINS OF THE ENGLISH KINGS A.D. 1202-1204 KATE NORGATE When Richard "the Lion-hearted" died in 1199, he left no son to follow him on the throne of England and to claim possession of the vast French fiefs of the Plantagenet family. These fiefs, which covered more than half of France and made their undisputed lord more powerful than the French King himself, became at once a source of strife. John, nicknamed "Lackland," the youngest brother of Richard, succeeded him in England and in Normandy without dispute. But their little nephew Arthur was already Count of Brittany; and the other French possessions of the Plantagenets--Anjou, Maine, and Touraine--declared for Arthur in preference to John. At this time France was ruled by Philip Augustus, who ranks among the shrewdest and ablest of all her monarchs. Dreading the vast power of the Plantagenets, he naturally sought to divide their domains by upholding Arthur. This unhappy lad, only twelve years old, was made a mere pawn in the savage game of his elders. His tragic fate is powerfully depicted by Shakespeare in his _King John_. After some fighting and several sharp political moves and countermoves, John and Philip came to terms, May 18, 1200, by which the French King conferred almost all of the disputed fiefs on John. Constant bickering, however, continued. John had to do homage for his fiefs, and his French vassals took every opportunity to appeal from him to Philip, as their overlord. Finally, when the moment seemed propitious, Philip demanded from his overgrown vassal certain Norman castles as a sort of guarantee of good behavior. This led up to the war in which the Plantagenets lost all their French domains, and became lords only of England. It was arranged that John and Philip should hold a conference at Boutavant. John, it appears, kept--or at least was ready to keep--the appointment; but Philip either was, or pretended to be, afraid of venturing into Norman territory, and would not advance beyond Gouleton. Thither John came across the river to meet him. No agreement was arrived at. Finally, Philip cited John to appear in Paris fifteen days after Easter, 1202, at the court of his overlord the King of France, to stand to its judgment, to answer to his lord for his misdoings, and undergo the sentence of his peers. The citation was addressed to John as Count of Anjou and Poitou and Duke of Aquitaine; the Norman duchy was not mentioned in it. This omission was clearly intentional; when John answered the citation by reminding Philip that he was Duke of Normandy, and as such, in virtue of ancient agreement between the kings and the dukes, not bound to go to any meeting with the King of France save on the borders of their respective territories, Philip retorted that he had summoned not the Duke of Normandy, but the Duke of Aquitaine, and that his rights over the latter were not to be annulled by the accidental union of the two dignities in one person. John then promised that he would appear before the court in Paris on the appointed day, and give up to Philip two small castles, Thillier and Boutavant, as security for his submitting to its decision. April 28th passed, and both these promises remained unfulfilled. One English writer asserts that thereupon "the assembled court of the King of France adjudged the King of England to be deprived of all his land which he and his forefathers had hitherto held of the King of France," but there is reason to think that this statement is erroneous, and derived from a false report put forth by Philip Augustus for political purposes two or three years later. It is certain that after the date of this alleged sentence negotiations still went on; "great and excellent mediators" endeavored to arrange a pacification; and Philip himself, according to his own account, had another interview with John, at which he used all his powers of persuasion to bring him to submission, but in vain. Then the French King, by the advice of his barons, formally "defied" his rebellious vassal; in a sudden burst of wrath he ordered the Archbishop of Canterbury--evidently one of the mediators just referred to--out of his territories, and dashing after him with such forces as he had at hand, began hostilities by a raid upon Boutavant, which he captured and burned. Even after this, if we may trust his own report, he sent four knights to John to make a final attempt at reconciliation; but John would not see them. The war which followed was characteristic of both kings alike. Philip's attack took the form not of a regular invasion, but of a series of raids upon Eastern Normandy, whereby, in the course of the next three months, he made himself master of Thillier, Lions, Longchamp, La Fertéen-Braye, Orgueil, Gournay, Mortemer, Aumale, and the town and county of Eu. John was throughout the same period flitting ceaselessly about within a short distance of all these places; but Philip never came up with him, and he never but once came up with Philip. On July 7, 1202, the French King laid siege to Radepont, some ten miles to the southeast of Rouen. John, who was at Bonport, let him alone for a week, and then suddenly appeared before the place, whereupon Philip immediately withdrew. John, however, made no attempt at pursuit. According to his wont, he let matters take their course till he saw a favorable opportunity for retaliation. At the end of the month the opportunity came. At the conclusion of the treaty in May, 1200, Arthur, after doing homage to his uncle for Brittany, had been by him restored to the guardianship of the French King. The death of the boy's mother in September, 1201, left him more than ever exposed to Philip's influence; and it was no doubt as a measure of precaution, in view of the approaching strife between the kings, that John on March 27, 1202, summoned his "beloved nephew Arthur" to come and "do right" to him at Argentan at the octave of Easter. The summons probably met with no more obedience than did Philip's summons to John; and before the end of April Philip had bound Arthur securely to his side by promising him the hand of his infant daughter Mary. This promise was ratified by a formal betrothal at Gournay, after the capture of that place by the French; at the same time Philip made Arthur a knight, and gave him the investiture of all the Angevin dominions except Normandy. Toward the end of July Philip despatched Arthur, with a force of two hundred French knights, to join the Lusignans in an attack on Poitou. The barons of Brittany and of Berry had been summoned to meet him at Tours, but the only allies who did meet him there were three of the Lusignans and Savaric de Mauléon, with some three hundred knights. Overruling the caution of the boy-duke, who wished to wait for reinforcements from his own duchy, the impetuous southerners urged an immediate attack upon Mirebeau, their object being to capture Queen Eleanor,[33] who was known to be there, and whom they rightly regarded as the mainstay of John's power in Aquitaine. Eleanor, however, became aware of their project in time to despatch a letter to her son, begging him to come to her rescue. He was already moving southward when her courier met him on July 30th as he was approaching Le Mans. By marching day and night he and his troops covered the whole distance between Le Mans and Mirebeau--eighty miles at the least--in forty-eight hours, and appeared on August 1, 1202, before the besieged castle. The enemies had already taken the outer ward and thrown down all the gates save one, deeming their own valor a sufficient safeguard against John's expected attack. So great was their self-confidence that they even marched out to meet him. Like most of those who at one time or another fought against John, they underrated the latent capacities of their adversary. They were driven back into the castle, hotly pursued by his troops, who under the guidance of William des Roches forced their way in after the fugitives, and were in a short time masters of the place. The whole of the French and Poitevin forces were either slain or captured; and among the prisoners were the three Lusignans and Arthur. Philip was at that moment busy with the siege of Arques; on the receipt of these tidings he left it and turned southward, but he failed, or perhaps did not attempt, to intercept John, who, bringing his prisoners with him, made his way leisurely back to Falaise. There he imprisoned Arthur in the castle, and despatched his victorious troops against Arthur's duchy; they captured Dol and Fougères, and harried the country as far as Rennes. Philip, after ravaging Touraine, fired the city of Tours and took the citadel; immediately afterward he withdrew to his own territories, as by that time John was again at Chinon. As soon as Philip was gone, John, in his turn, entered Tours and wrested the citadel from the French garrison left there by his rival; but his success was won at the cost of another conflagration, which, an English chronicler declares, was never forgiven him by the citizens and the barons of Touraine. For the moment, however, he was in luck. In Aquitaine he seemed in a fair way to carry all before him without striking a blow. Angoulême had passed into his hands by the death of his father-in-law on June 17th. Guy of Limoges had risen in revolt again, but at the end of August or early in September he was captured. The Lusignans, from their prison at Caen, made overtures for peace, and by dint of protestations and promises succeeded ere long in regaining their liberty, of course on the usual conditions of surrendering their castles and giving hostages for their loyalty. It was almost equally a matter of course that as soon as they were free they began intriguing against John. But the chronic intrigues of the south were in reality--as John himself seems to have discovered--a far less serious danger than the disaffection in his northern dominions. This last evil was undoubtedly, so far as Normandy was concerned, owing in great measure to John's own fault. He had intrusted the defence of the Norman duchy to his mercenaries under the command of a Provençal captain--whose real name is unknown--who seems to have adopted for himself the nickname of _Lou Pescaire_ ("the Fisherman")--which the Normans apparently corrupted into "Louvrekaire"--and who habitually treated his employer's peaceable subjects in a fashion in which other commanders would have shrunk from treating avowed enemies. Side by side with the discontent thus caused among the people there was a rapid growth of treason among the Norman barons--treason fraught with far greater peril than the treason of the nobles of Aquitaine, because it was more persistent and more definite in its aim; because it was at once less visible and tangible and more deeply rooted; because it spread in silence and wrought in darkness; and because, while no southern rebel ever really fought for anything but his own hand, the northern traitors were in close concert with Philip Augustus. John knew not whom to trust; he could, in fact, trust no one; and herein lay the explanation of his restless movements, his unaccountable wanderings, his habit of journeying through byways, his constant changes of plan. Moreover, besides the Aquitanian rebels, the Norman traitors, and the French enemy, there were the Breton partisans of Arthur to be reckoned with. These had now found a leader in William des Roches, who, when he saw that he could not prevail upon John to set Arthur at liberty, openly withdrew from the King's service and organized a league of the Breton nobles against him. These Bretons, reinforced by some barons from Anjou and Maine, succeeded, on October 29, 1202, in gaining possession of Angers. It may have been to watch for an opportunity of dislodging them that John, who was then at Le Mans, went to spend a fortnight at Saumur and another at Chinon. Early in December, however, he fell back upon Normandy, and while the intruders were harrying his ancestral counties with fire and sword, he kept Christmas with his Queen at Caen, "faring sumptuously every day, and prolonging his morning slumbers till dinner-time." It seems that shortly afterward the Queen returned to Chinon, and that in the middle of January, 1203, the enemies at Angers were discovered to be planning an attempt to capture her there. John hurried to Le Mans, only stopping at Alençon to dine with Count Robert and endeavor to secure his suspected loyalty by confirming him in all his possessions. No sooner had they parted, however, than Robert rode off to the French court, did homage to Philip, and admitted a French garrison into Alençon. While John, thus placed between two fires, was hesitating whether to go on or to go back, Peter des Préaux succeeded in getting the Queen out of Chinon and bringing her to her husband at Le Mans; thence they managed to make their way back in safety to Falaise. This incident may have suggested to John that it was time to take some decisive step toward getting rid of Arthur's claims. According to one English chronicler, some of the King's counsellors had already been urging this matter upon him for some time past. They pointed out that so long as Arthur lived, and was neither physically nor legally incapacitated for ruling, the Bretons would never be quiet, and no lasting peace with France would be possible. They therefore suggested to the King a horrible scheme for rendering Arthur incapable of being any longer a source of danger. The increasing boldness of the Bretons at last provoked John into consenting to this project, and he despatched three of his servants to Falaise to put out the eyes of the captive. Two of these men chose to leave the King's service rather than obey him; the third went to Falaise as he was bidden, but found it impossible to fulfil his errand. Arthur's struggles were backed by the very soldiers who guarded him, and the fear of a mutiny drove their commander, Hubert de Burgh, to prevent the execution of an order which he felt that the King would soon have cause to regret. He gave out, however, that the order had been fulfilled, and that Arthur had died in consequence. The effect of this announcement proved at once the wisdom of Hubert and the folly of those to whose counsel John had yielded. The fury of the Bretons became boundless; they vowed never to leave a moment's peace to the tyrant who had committed such a ghastly crime upon their Duke, his own nephew, and Hubert soon found it necessary, for John's own sake, to confess his fraud and demonstrate to friends and foes alike that Arthur was still alive and uninjured. John himself now attempted to deal with Arthur in another way. Being at Falaise at the end of January, 1203, he caused his nephew to be brought before him, and "addressed him with fair words, promising him great honors if he would forsake the King of France and cleave faithfully to his uncle and rightful lord." Arthur, however, rejected these overtures with scorn, vowing that there should be no peace unless the whole Angevin dominions, including England, were surrendered to him as Richard's lawful heir. John retorted by transferring his prisoner from Falaise to Rouen and confining him, more strictly than ever, in the citadel. Thenceforth Arthur disappears from history. What was his end no one knows. The chronicle of the Abbey of Margan in South Wales, a chronicle of which the only known manuscript ends with the year 1232, and of which the portion dealing with the early years of John's reign was not compiled in its present form till after 1221 at earliest, asserts that on Maunday Thursday (April 3, 1203), John, "after dinner, being drunk and possessed by the devil," slew his nephew with his own hand and tied a great stone to the body, which he flung into the Seine; that a fisherman's net brought it up again, and that, being recognized, it was buried secretly, "for fear of the tyrant," in the Church of Notre Dame des Prés, near Rouen. William the Breton, in his poem on Philip Augustus, completed about 1216, relates in detail, but without date, how John took Arthur out alone with him by night in a boat on the Seine, plunged a sword into his body, rowed along for three miles with the corpse, and then threw it overboard. Neither of these writers gives any authority for his story. The earliest authority of precisely ascertained date to which we can trace the assertion that Arthur was murdered was a document put forth by a personage whose word, on any subject whatever, is as worthless as the word of John himself--King Philip Augustus of France. In 1216--about the time when his Breton historiographer's poem was completed--Philip affected to regard it as a notorious fact that John had, either in person or by another's hand, murdered his nephew. But Philip at the same time went on to assert that John had been summoned to trial before the supreme court of France, and by it condemned to forfeiture of all his dominions, on that same charge of murder; and this latter assertion is almost certainly false. Seven months after the date assigned by the Margan annalist to Arthur's death--in October, 1203--Philip owned himself ignorant whether the Duke of Brittany were alive or not.[34] Clearly, therefore, it was not as the avenger of Arthur's murder that Philip took the field at the end of April. On the other hand, Philip had never made the slightest attempt to obtain Arthur's release; early in 1203, if not before, he was almost openly laying his plans in anticipation of Arthur's permanent effacement from politics. The interests of the French King were in fact no less concerned in Arthur's imprisonment, and more concerned in his death, than were the interests of John himself. John's one remaining chance of holding Philip and the Bretons in check was to keep them in uncertainty whether Arthur were alive or dead, in order to prevent the Bretons from adopting any decided policy, and hamper the French King in his dealings with them and with the Angevin and Poitevin rebels by compelling him to base his alliance with them on conditions avowedly liable to be annulled at any moment by Arthur's reappearance on the political scene. If, therefore, Arthur--as is most probable--was now really dead, whether he had indeed perished a victim of one of those fits of ungovernable fury in which--and in which alone--the Angevin counts sometimes added blunder to crime, or whether he had died a natural death from sickness in prison, or by a fall in attempting to escape,[35] it would be equally politic on John's part to let rumor do its worst rather than suffer any gleam of light to penetrate the mystery which shrouded the captive's fate. John's chance, however, was a desperate one. A fortnight after Easter, 1203, the French King attacked and took Saumur. Moving southward, he was joined by some Poitevins and Bretons, with whose help he captured sundry castles in Aquitaine. Thence he went back to the Norman border, to be welcomed at Alençon by its count, and to lay seige to Conches. John, who was then at Falaise, sent William the Marshal to Conches, to beg that Philip would "have pity on him and make peace." Philip refused; John hurried back to Rouen, to find both city and castle in flames--whether kindled by accident or by treachery there is nothing to show. Conches was taken; Vaudreuil was betrayed; the few other castles in the county of Evreux which had not already passed, either by cession, conquest, or treason, into Philip's hands shared the like fate, while John flitted restlessly up and down between Rouen and various places in the neighborhood, but made no direct effort to check the progress of the invader. Messenger after messenger came to him with the same story: "The King of France is in your land as an enemy; he is taking your castles; he is binding your seneschals to their horses' tails and dragging them shamefully to prison; he is dealing with your goods at his own pleasure." John heard them all with an unmoved countenance, and dismissed them all with the unvarying reply: "Let him alone! Some day I shall win back all that he is winning from me now." It was by diplomacy that John hoped to parry the attack which he knew he could not repel by force. Early in the year he had complained to the Pope of the long course of insult and aggression pursued toward him by Philip, and begged Innocent to interfere in his behalf. Thereupon Philip, in his turn, sent messengers and letters to the Pope, giving his own version of his relations with John, and endeavoring to justify his own conduct. On May 26th, Innocent announced to both kings that he was about to despatch the abbots of Casamario, Trois Fontaines, and Dun as commissioners to arbitrate upon the matters in dispute between them. These envoys seem to have been delayed on their journey; and when they reached France they, for some time, found it impossible to ascertain whether Philip would or would not accept their arbitration. When at last he met them in council at Mantes on August 26th, he told them bluntly that he "was not bound to take his orders from the apostolic see as to his rights over a fief and a vassal of his own, and that the matter in dispute between the two kings was no business of the Pope's." John meanwhile had, on August 11th, suddenly quitted his passive attitude and laid siege to Alençon; but he retired on Philip's approach four days later. An attempt which he made to regain Brezolles was equally ineffectual. Philip, on the other hand, was now resolved to bring the war to a crisis. It was probably straight from the council at Mantes that he marched to the siege of Château Gaillard. Château Gaillard was a fortress of far other importance than any of the castles which both parties had been so lightly winning, losing, and winning again, during the last ten years. It was the key of the Seine above Rouen, the bulwark raised by Richard Coeur de Lion to protect his favorite city against attack from France. Not till the fortifications which commanded the river at Les Andelys were either destroyed or in his own hands could Philip hope to win the Norman capital. And those fortifications were of no common order. Their builder was the greatest, as he was the last, of the "great builders" of Anjou; and his "fair castle on the Rock of Andelys" was at once the supreme outcome of their architectural genius, and the earliest and most perfect example in Europe of the new development which the crusaders' study of the mighty works of Byzantine or even earlier conquerors, quickened and illuminated as it was by the exigencies of their own struggle with the infidels, had given to the science of military architecture in the East. During the past year John had added to his brother's castle a chapel with an undercroft, placed at the southeastern corner of the second ward. The fortress, which nature and art had combined to make impregnable, was well stocked with supplies of every kind; moreover, it was one of the few places in Normandy which Philip had no hope of winning, and John no fear of losing, through treason on the part of its commandant. Roger de Lacy, to whom John had given it in charge, was an English baron who had no stake in Normandy, and whose personal interest was therefore bound up with that of the English King; he was also a man of high character and dauntless courage. Nothing short of a siege of the most determined kind would avail against the "Saucy Castle"; and on that siege Philip now concentrated all his forces and all his skill. As the right bank of the Seine at that point was entirely commanded by the castle and its neighbor fortification, the walled town--also built by Richard--known as the New or Lesser Andely, while the river itself was doubly barred by a stockade across its bed, close under the foot of the rock, and by a strong tower on an island in midstream just below the town, he was obliged to encamp in the meadows on the opposite shore. The stockade, however, was soon broken down by the daring of a few young Frenchmen; and the waterway being thus cleared for the transport of materials, he was enabled to construct below the island a pontoon, by means of which he could throw a portion of his troops across the river to form the siege of the New Andely, place the island garrison between two fires, and at once keep open his own communications and cut off those of the besieged with both sides of the river alike. These things seem to have been done toward the end of August. On the 27th and 28th of that month John was at Montfort, a castle some five-and-twenty miles from Rouen, held by one of his few faithful barons, Hugh of Gournay. On the 30th, if not the 29th, he and all his available forces were back at Rouen, ready to attempt on that very night the relief of Les Andelys. The King's plan was a masterpiece of ingenuity; and the fact that the elaborate preparations needed for its execution were made so rapidly and so secretly as to escape detection by an enemy so close at hand goes far to show how mistaken are the charges of sloth and incapacity which, even in his own day, men brought against "John Softsword."[36] He had arranged that a force of three hundred knights, three thousand mounted men-at-arms, and four thousand foot, under the command of William the Marshal, with a band of mercenaries under Lou Pescaire, should march by night from Rouen along the left bank of the Seine, and fall, under cover of darkness, upon the portion of the French army which still lay on that side of the river. Meanwhile, seventy transport vessels, which had been built by Richard to serve either for sea or river traffic, and as many more boats as could be collected, were to be laden with provisions for the distressed garrison of the island fort, and convoyed up the stream by a flotilla of small warships, manned by "pirates" under a chief named Alan and carrying, besides their own daring and reckless crews, a force of three thousand Flemings. Two hundred strokes of the oar, John reckoned, would bring these ships to the French pontoon; they must break it if they could; if not, they could at least coöperate with the Marshal and Lou Pescaire in cutting off the northern division of the French host from its comrades and supplies on the left bank, and throw into the island fort provisions which would enable it to hold out till John himself should come to its rescue. One error brought the scheme to ruin, an error neither of strategy nor of conduct, but of scientific knowledge. John had miscalculated the time at which, on that night, the Seine would be navigable upstream, and his counsellors evidently shared his mistake till it was brought home to them by experience. The land forces achieved their march without hinderance, and at the appointed hour, shortly before daybreak, fell upon the French camp with such a sudden and furious onslaught that the whole of its occupants fled across the pontoon, which broke under their weight. But the fleet, which had been intended to arrive at the same time, was unable to make way against the tide, and before it could reach its destination the French had rallied on the northern bank, repaired the pontoon, recrossed it in full force, and routed John's troops. The ships, when they at last came up, thus found themselves unsupported in their turn, and though they made a gallant fight they were beaten back with heavy loss. In the flush of victory one young Frenchman contrived to set fire to the island fort; it surrendered, and the whole population of the New Andely fled in a panic to Château Gaillard, leaving their town to be occupied by Philip. The Saucy Castle itself still remained to be won. Knowing, however, that for this nothing was likely to avail but a blockade, which was now practically formed on two sides by his occupation of the island fort and the Lesser Andely, Philip on the very next day set off to make another attempt on Radepont, whence he had been driven away by John a year before. This time John made no effort to dislodge him. It was not worth while; the one thing that mattered now was Château Gaillard. Thither Philip, after receiving the surrender of Radepont, returned toward the end of September, 1203, to complete the blockade. No second attempt to relieve it was possible. It may have been for the purpose of endeavoring to collect fresh troops from the western districts, which were as yet untouched by the war, that John about this time visited his old county of Mortain, and even went as far as Dol, which his soldiers had taken in the previous year. But his military resources in Normandy were exhausted; the Marshal bluntly advised him to give up the struggle. "Sire," said William, "you have not enough friends; if you provoke your enemies to fight, you will diminish your own force; and when a man provokes his enemies, it is but just if they make him rue it." "Whoso is afraid, let him flee!" answered John. "I myself will not flee for a year; and if indeed it came to fleeing, I should not think of saving myself otherwise than you would, wheresoever you might be." "I know that well, sire," replied William; "but you, who are wise and mighty and of high lineage, and whose work it is to govern us all, have not been careful to avoid irritating people. If you had, it would have been better for us all. Methinks I speak not without reason." The King, "as if a sword had struck him to the heart," spoke not a word, but rushed to his chamber; next morning he was nowhere to be found; he had gone away in a boat, almost alone, and it was only at Bonneville that his followers rejoined him. This was apparently at the beginning of October, 1203. For two months more he lingered in the duchy, where his position was growing more hopeless day by day. At the end of October, or early in November, he took the decisive step of dismantling Pont de l'Arche, Moulineaux, and Montfort, three castles which, next to Château Gaillard, would be of the greatest value to the French for an advance upon Rouen. To Rouen itself he returned once more on November 9th, and stayed there four days. On the 12th he set out for Bonneville, accompanied by the Queen, and telling his friends that he intended to go to England to seek counsel and aid from his barons and people there, and would soon return. In reality his departure from the capital was caused by a rumor which had reached him of a conspiracy among the Norman barons to deliver him up to Philip Augustus. At Bonneville, therefore, he lodged not in the town, but in the castle, and only for a few hours; the Marshal and one or two others alone were warned of his intention to set forth again before daybreak, and the little party had got a start of seven leagues on the road to Caen before their absence was discovered by the rest of the suite, of whom "some went after them, and the more part went back." Still John was reluctant to leave Normandy; he went south to Domfront and west to Vire before he again returned to the coast at Barfleur on November 28th, and even then he spent five days at Gonneville and one at Cherbourg before he finally took ship at Barfleur on December 5th, to land at Portsmouth next day. It was probably before he left Rouen that he addressed a letter to the commandant of Château Gaillard in these terms: "We thank you for your good and faithful service, and desire that, as much as in you lies, you will persevere in the fidelity and homage which you owe to us; that you may receive a worthy meed of praise from God and from ourself and from all who know your faithfulness. If, however--which God forbid!--you should find yourself in such straits that you can hold out no longer, then do whatsoever our trusty and well-beloved Peter of Préaux, William of Mortimer, and Hugh of Howels, our clerk, shall bid you in our name." An English chronicler says that John "being unwilling"--or "unable"--"to succor the besieged, through fear of the treason of his men, went to England, leaving all the Normans in a great perturbation of fear." It is hard to see what they feared, unless it were John's possible vengeance, at some future time, for their universal readiness to welcome his rival. Not one town manned its walls, not one baron mustered his tenants and garrisoned his castles, to withstand the invader. Some, as soon as John was out of the country, openly made a truce with Philip for a year, on the understanding that if not succored by John within that time they would receive the French King as their lord; the rest stood passively looking on at the one real struggle of the war, the struggle for Château Gaillard. At length, on March 6, 1204, the Saucy Castle fell. Its fall opened the way for a French advance upon Rouen; but before taking this further step Philip deemed it politic to let the Pope's envoy, the Abbot of Casamario, complete his mission by going to speak with John. The abbot was received at a great council in London at the end of March; the result was his return to France early in April, in company with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the bishops of Norwich and Ely, and the earls of Pembroke and Leicester, all charged with a commission "to sound the French King, and treat with him about terms of peace." On the French King's side the negotiation was a mere form; to whatever conditions the envoys proposed, he always found some objection; and his own demands were such as John's representatives dared not attempt to lay before their sovereign--Arthur's restoration, or, if he were dead, the surrender of his sister Eleanor, and the cession to Philip, as her suzerain and guardian, of the whole Continental dominions of the Angevin house. Finally, Philip dropped the mask altogether, and made a direct offer, not to John, but to John's Norman subjects, including the two lay ambassadors. All those, he said, who within a year and a day would come to him and do him homage for their lands should receive confirmation of their tenure from him. Hereupon the two English earls, after consulting together, gave him five hundred marks each, on the express understanding that he was to leave them unmolested in the enjoyment of their Norman lands for a twelvemonth and a day, and that at the expiration of that time they would come and do homage for those lands to him, if John had not meanwhile regained possession of the duchy. Neither William the Marshal nor his colleague had any thought of betraying or deserting John; as the Marshal's biographer says, they "did not wish to be false"; and when they reached England they seem to have frankly told John what they had done, and to have received no blame for it. The return of the English embassy was followed by a letter from the commandant of Rouen--John's "trusty and well-beloved" Peter of Préaux--informing the English King that "all the castles and towns from Bayeux to Anet" had promised Philip that they would surrender to him as soon as he was master of Rouen, an event which, Peter plainly hinted, was not likely to be long delayed. This information about the western towns was probably incorrect, for it was on Western Normandy that Philip made his next attack. John meanwhile had in January imposed a scutage of two marks and a half per shield throughout England, and, in addition, a tax of a seventh of movables, which, though it fell upon all classes alike, the clergy included, he is said to have demanded expressly on the ground of the barons' desertion of him in Normandy. The hire of a mercenary force was of course the object to which the proceeds of both these taxes were destined; but they took time to collect and John soon fell back upon a readier, though less trustworthy, resource, and summoned the feudal host of England to meet him at Portsmouth, seemingly in the first week of May. It gathered, however, so slowly that he was obliged to give up the expedition. Philip was about this time besieging Falaise; he won it, and went on in triumph to receive the surrender of Domfront, Séez, Lisieux, Caen, Bayeux, Coutances, Barfleur, and Cherbourg. He was then joined by John's late ally, the Count of Boulogne, as well as by Guy of Thouars, the widower of Constance of Brittany; and these two, their forces swelled by a troop of mercenaries who had transferred their services from John to Philip after the surrender of Falaise, completed the conquest of Southwestern Normandy, while the French King at last set his face toward Rouen. He was not called upon to besiege it, nor even to threaten it with a siege. On June 1, 1204, Peter de Préaux made in his own name, and in the names of the commandants of Arques and Verneuil, a truce with Philip, promising that these two fortresses and Rouen should surrender if not succored within thirty days. The three castellans sent notice of this arrangement to John, who, powerless and penniless as he was, scornfully bade them "look for no help from him, but do whatsoever seemed to them best." It seemed to them best not even to wait for the expiration of the truce; Rouen surrendered on June 24th, and in a few days Arques and Verneuil followed its example. Thus did Normandy forsake--as Anjou and Maine had already forsaken[37]--the heir of its ancient rulers for the King of the French. FOUNDING OF THE MONGOL EMPIRE BY GENGHIS KHAN A.D. 1203 HENRY H. HOWORTH The origin and early history of the Mongols are very obscure, but from Chinese annals we learn of the existence of the race, from the sixth to the ninth century, in regions around the north of the great desert of Gobi and Lake Baikal in Eastern Asia. The name Mongol is derived from the word _mong_, meaning "brave" or "bold." Chinese accounts show that it was given to the Mongol race long before the time of Genghis Khan. It is conjectured that the Mongols were at first one tribe of a great confederacy whose name was probably extended to the whole when the power of the imperial house which governed it gained the supremacy. The Mongol khans are traced up to the old royal race of the Turks, who from a very early period were masters of the Mongolian desert and its borderland. Here from time immemorial the Mongols "had made their home, leading a miserable nomadic life in the midst of a wild and barren country, unrecognized by their neighbors, and their very name unknown centuries after their kinsmen, the Turks, had been exercising an all-powerful influence over the destinies of Western Asia." But at the beginning of the thirteenth century arose among them a chief, Genghis Khan, the "very mighty ruler," whose prowess was destined to lead the Mongolian hordes to the conquest of a vast empire, extending over China and from India through Persia and into Russia. Who and what this mighty ruler was, and by what achievements he advanced to lay the foundations of his empire, are told by Howorth, not only with an authoritative fidelity to history, but with a literary art that is no less faithful in its appreciation of oriental character and custom. Among the men who have influenced the history of the world Genghis Khan holds a foremost place. Popularly he is mentioned with Attila and with Timur as one of the "scourges of God," one of those terrible conquerors whose march across the page of history is figured by the simile of a swarm of locusts, or a fire in a Canadian forest; but this is doing gross injustice to Genghis Khan. Not only was he a conqueror, a general whose consummate ability made him overthrow every barrier that must intervene between the chief of a small barbarous tribe of an obscure race and the throne of Asia, and this with a rapidity and uniform success that can only be compared to the triumphant march of Alexander, but he was far more than a conqueror. Alexander, Napoleon, and Timur were all more or less his equals in the art of war. But the colossal powers they created were merely hills of sand, that crumbled to pieces as soon as they were dead. With Genghis Khan matters were very different: he organized the empire which he had conquered so that it long survived and greatly thrived after he was gone. In every detail of social and political economy he was a creator; his laws and his administrative rules are equally admirable and astounding to the student. Justice, tolerance, discipline--virtues that make up the modern ideal of a state--were taught and practised at his court. And when we remember that he was born and educated in the desert, and that he had neither the sages of Greece nor of Rome to instruct him, that unlike Charlemagne and Alfred he could not draw his lessons from a past whose evening glow was still visible in the horizon, we are tempted to treat as exaggerated the history of his times, and to be sceptical of so much political insight having been born of such unpromising materials. It is not creditable to English literature that no satisfactory account of Genghis Khan exists in the language. Baron D'Ohsson in French, and Erdmann in German, have both written minute and detailed accounts of him, but none such exists in English, although the subject has an epic grandeur about it that might well tempt some well-grounded scholar to try his hand upon it. Genghis Khan received the name of Temudjin. According to the vocabulary attached to the history of the Yuen dynasty, translated from the Chinese by Hyacinthe, _temudjin_ means the best iron or steel. The name has been confounded with _temurdji_, which means a smith, in Turkish. This accounts for the tradition related by Pachymeres, Novairi, William of Ruysbrok, the Armenian Haiton, and others, that Genghis Khan was originally a smith. The Chinese historians and Ssanang Setzen place his birth in 1162; Raschid and the Persians in 1155. The latter date is accommodated to the fact that they make him seventy-two years old at his death in 1227, but the historian of the Yuen dynasty, the Kangmu, and Ssanang Setzen are all agreed that he died at the age of sixty-six, and they are much more likely to be right. Mailla says he had a piece of clotted blood in his fist when born--no bad omen, if true, of his future career. According to De Guignes, Karachar Nevian was named his tutor. Ssanang Setzen has a story that his father set out one day to find him a partner among the relatives of his wife, the Olchonods, and that on the way he was met by Dai Setzen, the chief of the Kunkurats, who thus addressed him: "Descendant of the Kiyots and of the race of the Bordshigs, whither hiest thou?" "I am seeking a bride for my son," was his reply. Dai Setzen then said that he recently had a dream, during which a white falcon had alighted on his hand. "This," he said, "Bordshig, was your token. From ancient days our daughters have been wedded to the Bordshigs, and I now have a daughter named Burte who is nine years old. I will give her to thy son." "She is too young," he said; but Temudjin, who was present, urged that she would suit him by and by. The bargain was thereupon closed, and, having taken a draught of koumiss and presented his host with two horses, Yissugei returned home. On his father's death Temudjin was only thirteen years old, an age that seldom carries authority in the desert, where the chief is expected to command, and his mother acted as regent. This enabled several of the tribes which had submitted to the strong hand of Yissugei to reassert their independence. The Taidshuts, under their leaders Terkutai, named Kiriltuk, _i.e._, the Spiteful, the great-grandson of Hemukai, and his nephew Kurul Bahadur, were the first to break away, and they were soon after joined by one of Yissugei's generals with a considerable following. To the reproaches of Temudjin the latter answered: "The deepest wells are sometimes dry, and the hardest stones sometimes split; why should I cling to thee?" Temudjin's mother, we are told, mounted her horse, and taking the royal standard called Tuk (this was mounted with the tails of the yak or mountain cow, or, in default, with that of a horse; it is the _tau_ or _tu_ of the Chinese, used as the imperial standard, and conferred as a token of royalty upon their vassals, the Tartar princes) in her hand, she led her people in pursuit of the fugitives, and brought a good number of them back to their allegiance. After the dispersion of the Jelairs, many of them became the slaves and herdsmen of the Mongol royal family. They were encamped near Sarikihar, the Saligol of Hyacinthe, in the district of Ulagai Bulak, which D'Ohsson identifies with the Ulengai, a tributary of the Ingoda, that rises in the watershed between that river and the Onon. One day Tagudshar, a relative of Chamuka, the chief of the Jadjerats, was hunting in this neighborhood, and tried to lift the cattle of a Jelair, named Jusi Termele, who thereupon shot him. This led to a long and bitter strife between Temudjin, who was the patron of the Jelairs, and Chamuka. He was of the same stock as Temudjin, and now joined the Taidshuts, with his tribe the Jadjerats. He also persuaded the Uduts and Nujakins, the Kurulas and Inkirasses, to join them. Temudjin struggled in vain against this confederacy, and one day he was taken prisoner by the Taidshuts. Terkutai fastened on him a _cangue_-- the instrument of torture used by the Chinese, consisting of two boards which are fastened to the shoulders, and when joined together round the neck form an effectual barrier to desertion. He one day found means to escape while the Taidshuts were busy feasting. He hid in a pond with his nostrils only out of water, but was detected by a pursuer named Surghan Shireh. He belonged to the Sulduz clan; had pity on him; took him to his house; hid him under some wool in a cart so that his pursuers failed to find him, and then sent him to his own people. This and other stories illustrate one phase of Mongol character. We seldom hear among them of those domestic murders so frequent in Turkish history; pretenders to the throne were reduced to servitude, and generally made to perform menial offices, but seldom murdered. They illustrate another fact: favors conferred in distress were seldom forgotten, and the chroniclers frequently explain the rise of some obscure individual by the recollection of a handsome thing done to the ruler in his unfortunate days. Another phase of Mongol character, namely, the treachery and craft with which they attempt to overreach one another in war, may be illustrated by a short _saga_ told by Ssanang Setzen, and probably relating to this period of Temudjin's career. It is curious how circumstantial many of these traditions are. "At that time," he says, "Buke Chilger of the Taidshuts dug a pit-fall in his tent and covered it with felts. He then, with his brothers, arranged a grand feast, to which Temudjin was invited with fulsome phrases. 'Formerly we knew not thine excellence,' he said, 'and lived in strife with thee. We have now learnt that thou art not false, and that thou art a _Bogda_ of the race of the gods. Our old hatred is stifled and dead; condescend to enter our small house.' "Temudjin accepted the invitation, but before going he was warned by his mother: 'Rate not the crafty foe too lightly,' she said. 'We do not dread a venomous viper the less because it is so small and weak. Be cautious!' "He replied: 'You are right, mother, therefore do you, Khassar, have the bow ready: Belgutei, you also be on your guard: you, Chadshikin, see to the horse; and you, Utsuken, remain by my side. My nine Orloks, you go in with me; and you, my three hundred and nine bodyguards, surround the _yurt_.' "When he arrived he would have sat down in the middle of the treacherous carpet, but Utsuken pulled him aside and seated him on the edge of the felt. Meanwhile a woman was meddling with the horse and cut off its left stirrup. Belgutei, who noticed it, drove her out, and struck her on the leg with his hand, upon which one Buri Buke struck Belgutei's horse with his sword. The nine Orloks now came round, helped their master to mount the white mare of Toktanga Taishi of the Kortshins; a fight began, which ended in the defeat and submission of the enemy." Once more free, Temudjin, who was now seventeen years old, married Burte Judjin. He was not long in collecting a number of his men together, and soon managed to increase their number to thirteen thousand. These he divided into thirteen battalions of one thousand men each, styled _gurans_, each guran under the command of a _gurkhan_. The gurkhans were chosen from his immediate relatives and dependents. The forces of the Taidshuts numbered thirty thousand. With this much more powerful army Temudjin risked an encounter on the banks of the Baldjuna, a tributary of the Ingoda, and gained a complete victory. Abulghazi says the Taidshuts lost from five thousand to six thousand men. The battle-field was close to a wood, and we are told that Temudjin, after his victory, piled fagots together and boiled many of his prisoners in seventy caldrons--a very problematical story. Among his neighbors were the Jadjerats, or Juriats, the subjects of Chamuka, who, according to De Guignes, fled after the battle with the Taidshuts. One day a body of the Jadjerats, who were hunting, encountered some of Temudjin's followers, and they agreed to hunt together. The former ran short of provisions, and he generously surrendered to them a large part of the game his people had captured. This was favorably compared by them with the harsh behavior of their suzerains, the Taidshut princes, and two of their chiefs, named Ulugh Bahadur and Thugai Talu, with many of the tribe went to join Temudjin. They were shortly after attacked and dispersed by the Taidshuts. This alarmed or disgusted several of the latter's allies, who went over to the party of Temudjin. Among these were Chamuka, who contrived for a while to hide his rancor; and the chiefs of the Suldus and Basiuts. Their example was soon followed by the defection of the Barins and the Telenkuts, a branch of the Jelairs. Temudjin's repute was now considerable, and De Mailla tells us that wishing to secure the friendship of Podu, chief of the Kieliei, or Ykiliesse (_i.e._, the Kurulats), who lived on the river Ergone (_i.e._, the Argun), and who was renowned for his skill in archery, he offered him his sister Termulun in marriage. This was gladly accepted, and the two became fast friends. As a sign of his good-will, Podu wished to present Temudjin with fifteen horses out of thirty which he possessed, but the latter replied: "To speak of giving and taking is to do as merchants and traffickers, and not allies. Our elders tell us it is difficult to have one heart and one soul in two bodies. It is this difficult thing I wish to compass; I mean to extend my power over my neighbors here; I only ask that the people of Kieliei shall aid me." Temudjin now gave a grand feast on the banks of the Onon, and distributed decorations among his brothers. To this were invited Sidsheh Bigi, chief of the Burgins or Barins, his own mother, and two of his step-mothers. A skin of koumiss, or fermented milk, was sent to each of the latter, but with this distinction: in the case of the eldest, called Kakurshin Khatun, it was for herself and her family; in that of the younger, for herself alone. This aroused the envy of the former, who gave Sichir, the master of ceremonies, a considerable blow. The undignified disturbance was winked at by Temudjin, but the quarrel was soon after enlarged. One of Kakurshin's dependents had the temerity to strike Belgutei, the half-brother of Temudjin, and wounded him severely in the shoulder, but Belgutei pleaded for him. "The wound has caused me no tears. It is not seemly that my quarrels should inconvenience you," he said. Upon this Temudjin sent and counselled them to live at peace with one another, but Sidsheh Bigi soon after abandoned him with his Barins. He was apparently a son of Kakurshin Khatun, and therefore a step-brother of Temudjin. About 1194 Temudjin heard that one of the Taidshut chiefs, called Mutchin Sultu, had revolted against Madagu, the Kin Emperor of China, who had sent his _chinsang_ ("prime minister"), Wan-jan-siang, with an army against him. He eagerly volunteered his services against the old enemies of his people, and was successful. He killed the chief and captured much booty; _inter alia_ was a silver cradle with a covering of golden tissue, such as the Mongols had never before seen. As a reward for his services he received from the Chinese officer the title of _jaut-ikuri_--written "Tcha-u-tu-lu" in Hyacinthe, who says it means "commander against the rebels." According to Raschid, on the same occasion Tului, the chief of the Keraits, was invested with the title of _wang_ ("king"). On his return from this expedition, desiring to renew his intercourse with the Barins, he sent them a portion of the Tartar booty. The bearers of this present were maltreated. Mailla, who describes the event somewhat differently, says that ten of the messengers were killed by Sidsheh Bigi to revenge the indignities that had been put on his family. Temudjin now marched against the Barins, and defeated them at Thulan Buldak. Their two chiefs escaped. According to Mailla they were put to death. In 1196 Temudjin received a visit from Wang Khan, the Kerait chief, who was then in distress. His brother Ilkah Sengun, better known as Jagampu Keraiti, had driven him from the throne. He first sought assistance from the chief of Kara Khitai, and, when that failed him, turned to Temudjin, the son of his old friend. Wang Khan was a chief of great consequence, and this appeal must have been flattering to him. He levied a contribution of cattle from his subjects to feast him with, and promised him the devotion of a son in consideration of his ancient friendship with Yissugei. Temudjin was now, says Mailla, one of the most powerful princes of these parts, and he determined to subjugate the Kieliei, the inhabitants of the Argun, but he was defeated. During the action, having been hit by twelve arrows, he fell from his horse unconscious, when Bogordshi and Burgul, at some risk, took him out of the struggle. While the former melted the snow with some hot stones and bathed him with it, so as to free his throat from the blood, the latter, during the long winter night, covered him with his own cloak from the falling snow. He would, nevertheless, have fared badly if his mother had not collected a band of his father's troops and come to his assistance together with Tului, the Kerait chief, who remembered the favors he had received from Temudjin's father. Mailla says that returning home with a few followers, he was attacked by a band of robbers. He was accompanied by a famous crossbowman, named Soo, to whom he had given the name of Merghen. While the robbers were within earshot, Merghen shouted: "There are two wild ducks, a male and a female; which shall I bring down?" "The male," said Temudjin. He had scarcely said so when down it came. This was too much for the robbers, who dared not measure themselves against such marksmanship. The Merkits had recently made a raid upon his territory, and carried off his favorite wife, Burte Judjin. It was after her return from her captivity that she gave birth to her elder son, Juji, about whose legitimacy there seems to have been some doubt in his father's mind. It was to revenge this that he now (1197) marched against them, and defeated them near the river Mundsheh (a river "Mandzin" is still to be found in the canton Karas Muren). He abandoned all the booty to Wang Khan. The latter, through the influence of Temudjin, once more regained his throne, and the following year (1198) he headed an expedition on his own account against the Merkits, and beat them at a place named Buker Gehesh, but he did not reciprocate the generosity of his ally. In 1199 the two friends made a joint expedition against the Naimans. This tribe was now divided between two brothers who had quarrelled about their father's concubine. One of them, named Buyuruk, had retired with a body of the people to the Kiziltash mountains. The other, called Baibuka--but generally referred to by his Chinese title of Taiwang, or Tayang--remained in his own proper country. It was the latter who was now attacked by the two allies, and forced to escape to the country of Kem Kemdjut--_i.e._, toward the sources of the Yenissei. Chamuka, the chief of the Jadjerats, well named Satchan, or "the Crafty," still retained his hatred for Temudjin. He now whispered in the ear of Wang Khan that his ally was only a fair-weather friend. Like the wild goose, he flew away in winter, while he himself, like the snowbird, was constant under all circumstances. These and other suggestions aroused the jealousy of Wang Khan, who suddenly withdrew his forces, and left Temudjin in the enemy's country. The latter was thereupon forced to retire also. He went to the river Sali or Sari. Gugsu Seirak, the Naiman general, went in pursuit, defeated Wang Khan in his own territory, and captured much booty. Wang Khan was hard pressed, and was perhaps only saved by the timely succor sent by Temudjin, which drove away the Naimans. Once more did the latter abandon the captured booty to his treacherous ally. After the victory, he held a Kuriltai, on the plains of Sari or Sali, to which Wang Khan was invited, and at which it was resolved to renew the war against the Taidshuts in the following year. The latter were in alliance with the Merkits, whose chief, Tukta, had sent a contingent, commanded by his brothers, to their help. The two friends attacked them on the banks of the river Onon. Raschid says in the country of Onon, _i.e._, the great desert of Mongolia. The confederates were beaten. Terkutai Kiriltuk and Kuduhar, the two leaders of the Taidshuts, were pursued and overtaken at Lengut Nuramen, where they were both killed. Another of their leaders, with the two chiefs of the Merkits, fled to Burghudshin, _i.e._, Burgusin on Lake Baikal, while the fourth found refuge with the Naimans. This victory aroused the jealousy of certain tribes which were as yet independent of Temudjin, namely, the Kunkurats, Durbans, Jelairs, Katakins, Saldjuts, and Taidshuts, and they formed a confederacy to put him down. We are told that their chiefs met at a place called Aru Bulak, and sacrificed a horse, a bull, a ram, a dog, and a stag, and striking with their swords, swore thus: "Heaven and earth, hear our oaths, we swear by the blood of these animals, which are the chiefs of their kind, that we wish to die like them if we break our promises." The plot was disclosed to Temudjin by his father-in-law, Dai Setzen, a chief of the Kunkurats. He repaired to his ally, Wang Khan, and the two marched against the confederates, and defeated them near the Lake Buyur. He afterward attacked some confederate Taidshuts and Merkits on the plain of Timurkin, _i.e._, of the river Timur or Temir, and defeated them. Meanwhile the Kunkurats, afraid of resisting any longer, marched to submit to him. His brother, Juji Kassar, not knowing their errand, unfortunately attacked them, upon which they turned aside and joined Chamuka. That inveterate enemy of Temudjin had at an assembly of the tribes, Inkirasses, Kurulasses, Taidshuts, Katakins, and Saldjuts, held in 1201, been elected gurkhan. They met near a river, called Kieiho by Mailla; Kian, by Hyacinthe; and Kem, by Raschid, and then adjourned to the Tula, where they made a solemn pact praying that "whichever of them was unfaithful to the rest might be like the banks of that river which the water ate away, and like the trees of a forest when they are cut into fagots." This pact was disclosed to Temudjin by one of his friends who was present, named Kuridai. He marched against them, and defeated them at a place north of the Selinga, called Ede Kiurghan, _i.e._, site of the grave mounds. Chamuka fled, and the Kunkurats submitted. In the spring of 1202, Temudjin set out to attack the tribes Antshi and Tshagan. These were doubtless the subjects of Wangtshuk and Tsaghan, mentioned by Ssanang Setzen. They were probably Tungusian tribes. The western writers tell us that Temudjin gave orders to his soldiers to follow up the beaten enemy, without caring about the booty, which should be fairly divided among them. His relatives, Kudsher, Daritai, and Altun, having disobeyed, were deprived of their share, and became, in consequence, his secret enemies. Ssanang Setzen has much more detail, and his narrative is interesting because, as Schmidt suggests, it apparently contains the only account extant of the conquest of the tribes of Manchuria. He says that while Temudjin was hawking between the river Olcho and the Ula, Wangtshuk Khakan, of the Dschurtschid (Niutchi Tartars of Manchuria), had retired from there. Temudjin was angry, and went to assemble his army to attack the enemy's capital. But as a passage was forbidden him across the river Ula, and the road was blockaded, the son of Toktanga Baghatur Taidshi, named Andun Ching Taidshi, coupled ten thousand horses together by their bridles, and pressed into the river, forced a passage, and the army then began to besiege the town. Temudjin sent word to Wangtshuk, and said, "If you will send me ten thousand swallows and one thousand cats then I will cease attacking the town"; upon which the required number was procured. Temudjin fastened some lighted wool to the tail of each and let them go; then the swallows flew to their nests in the houses, and the cats climbed and jumped on the roofs; the city was fired, by which means Temudjin conquered Wangtshuk Khakan, and took his daughter Salichai for his wife. He then marched farther eastward to the river Unegen, but he found it had overflowed its banks, whereupon he did not cross it, but sent envoys to Tsaghan Khakan of the Solongos, _i.e._, of the Solons. "Bring me tribute, or we must fight," he said; upon which Tsaghan Khakan was frightened, sent him a daughter of Dair Ussun, named Kulan Goa, with a tent decorated with panther skins, and gave him the tribes of Solongos and Bughas as a dowry, upon which he assisted Tsaghan Khakan, so that he brought three provinces of the Solongos under his authority. Ssanang Setzen at this point introduces one of those quaint sagas, which, however mythical in themselves, are true enough to the peculiar mode of thought of the Mongols to make them very instructive. The saga runs thus: "During a three years' absence of her husband, Brute Judjin sent Arghassun Churtshi, _i.e._, Arghassun the lute-player, to him. When the latter was introduced, he spoke thus: 'Thy wife, Burte Judjin Khatun, thy princely children, the elders and princes of thy kingdom, all are well. The eagle builds his nest in a high tree; at times he grows careless in the fancied security of his high-perched home; then even a small bird will sometimes come and plunder it and eat the eggs and young brood: so it is with the swan whose nest is in the sedges on the lake. It, too, trusts too confidently in the dark thickets of reeds, yet prowling water falcons will sometimes come and rob it of eggs and young. This might happen to my revered lord himself!' "These words aroused Temudjin from his confident air. 'Thou hast spoken truly,' he said, and hied him on his way homeward. But when some distance still from home he began to grow timid. 'Spouse of my young days, chosen for me by my noble father, how dare I face thee, home-tarrying Burte Judjin, after living with Chulan, whom I came across in my journey? It would be shameful to seem unfriendly in the assembly of the people. One of you nine Orloks his you to Burte Judjin and speak for me.' "Mukuli, of the Jelair tribe, volunteered, and when he came to her, delivered this message: 'Besides protecting my own lands I have looked around also elsewhere. I have not followed the counsel of the greater and lesser lords. On the contrary, I have amused myself with the variegated colors of a tent hung with panther skins. Distant people to rule over, I have taken Chulan to be my wife: the Khan has sent me to tell you this.'" His wife seems to have understood the enigmatical phrases, for Setzen says: "The sensible (!) Burte Judjin thus replied: 'The wish of Burte Judjin and of the whole people is that the might of our sovereign may be increased. It rests with him whom he shall befriend or bind himself to. In the reedy lakes there are many swans and geese. If it be his wish to shoot arrows at them until his finger be weary, who shall complain? So also there are many girls and women among our people. It is for him to say who the choicest and luckiest are. I hope he will take to himself both a new wife and a new house. That he will saddle the untractable horse. Health and prosperity are not wearisome, nor are disease and pain desirable, says the proverb. May the golden girth of his house be immortal.'"[38] When he arrived at home he discovered that Arghassun had appropriated his golden lute; upon which he ordered Boghordshi and Mukuli to kill him. They seized him, gave him two skins full of strong drink, and then went to the Khan, who had not yet risen. Boghordshi spake outside the tent: "The light already shines in your _Ordu_. We await your commands; that is, if your effulgent presence, having cheerfully awoke, has risen from its couch! The daylight already shines. Condescend to open the door to hear and to judge the repentant culprit, and to exercise your favor and clemency." The Khan now arose and permitted Arghassun to enter, but he did not speak to him. Boghordshi and Mukuli gave him a signal with their lips. The culprit then began: "While the seventy-tuned Tsaktsaghai unconcernedly sings 'tang, tang,' the hawk hovers over and pounces suddenly upon him and strangles him before he can bring out his last note, 'jang.' So did my lord's wrath fall on me and has unnerved me. For twenty years have I been in your household, but have not yet been guilty of dishonest trickery. It is true I love smoked drink, but dishonesty I have not in my thought. For twenty years have I been in your household, but I have not practised knavery. I love strong drink, but am no trickster." Upon which Temudjin ejaculated, "My loquacious Arghassun, my chattering _Churtchi!_" and pardoned him. Temudjin now seems to have been master of the country generally known as Eastern Dauria, watered by the Onon, the Ingoda, the Argun; and also of the tribes of the Tungusic race that lived on the Nonni and the Upper Amur. The various victims of his prowess began to gather together for another effort. Among these were Tukta, the chief of the Merkits, with the Naiman leader, Buyuruk Khan, the tribes Durban, Katagun, Saldjut, and Uirat, the last of whom were clients of the Naimans. Wang Khan was then in alliance with him. At the approach of the enemy they retired into the mountains Caraun Chidun, in the Khinggan chain, on the frontiers of China, where they were pursued. The pursuers were terribly harassed by the ice and snow, which Mailla said was produced by one of their own shamans, or necromancers, and which proved more hurtful to them than to the Mongols. Many of them perished, and when they issued from the defiles they were too weak to attack the two allies. The latter spent the winter at Altchia Kungur. Here their two families were united by mutual betrothals; as these, however, broke down, ill-feeling was aroused between them, and Chamuka had an opportunity of renewing his intrigues. He suggested that Temudjin had secret communications with the Naimans, and was not long in arousing the jealousy of Wang Khan and his son Sengun. They attempted to assassinate him, but he was warned in time. He now collected an army and marched against the Keraits. His army was very inferior in numbers, but attacked the enemy with ardor. Wang Khan's bravest tribe, the Jirkirs, turned their backs, while the Tunegkaits were defeated, but numbers nevertheless prevailed, and Temudjin was forced to fly. This battle, which is renowned in Mongol history, was fought at a place called Kalanchin Alt. Raschid says this place is near the country of the Niuchis, not far from the river Olkui. Some of the Chinese authorities call it Khalagun ola and Hala chon, and D'Ohsson surmises that it is that part of the Khinggan chain from which flow the southern affluents of the Kalka, one of which is called Halgon in D'Anville's map. Mailla, however, distinctly places it between the Tula and the Onon, which is probably right. Abandoned by most of his troops, he fled to the desert Baldjuna, where he was reduced to great straits. Here are still found many grave mounds, and the Buriats relate that this retired place, protected on the north by woods and mountains, was formerly an asylum. A few firm friends accompanied him. They were afterward known as Baldjunas, a name compared by Von Hammer with that of Mohadshirs, borne by the companions of Mahomet's early misfortunes. Two shepherds, named Kishlik and Badai, who had informed him of Wang Khan's march, were created Terkhans. Having been a fugitive for some time, Temudjin at length moved to the southeast, to the borders of Lake Kara, into which flows the river Uldra; there he was joined by some Kunkurats, and he once more moved on to the sacred Mongol lake, the Dalai Nur. Thence he indited the following pathetic letter to Wang Khan: "1. O Khan, my father, when your uncle, the Gur Khan, drove you for having usurped the throne of Buyuruk, and for having killed your brothers Tatimur Taidshi and Buka Timur, to take refuge at Keraun Kiptchak, where you were beleaguered, did not my father come to your rescue, drive out, and force the Gur Khan to take refuge in Ho Si (the country west of the Hwang-ho), whence he returned not? Did you not then become Anda (_i.e._, sworn friend) with my father, and was not this the reason I styled _you_ 'father'? "2. When you were driven away by the Naimans, and your brother, Ilkah Sengun, had retired to the far east, did I not send for him back again; and when he was attacked by the Merkits, did I not attack and defeat them? Here is a second reason for your gratitude. "3. When in your distress you came to me with your body peering through your tatters, like the sun through the clouds, and worn out with hunger, you moved languidly like an expiring flame, did I not attack the tribes who molested you; present you with abundance of sheep and horses? You came to me haggard. In a fortnight you were stout and well-favored again. Here is a third service we have done you. "4. When you defeated the Merkits so severely at Buker Gehreh, you gave me none of the booty; yet shortly after, when you were hard pressed by the Naimans, I sent four of my best generals to your assistance, who restored you the plunder that had been taken from you. Here is the fourth good office. "5. I pounced like a jerfalcon onto the mountain Jurkumen, and thence over the lake Buyur, and I captured for you the cranes with blue claws and gray plumage, that is to say, the Durbans and Taidshuts. Then I passed the lake Keule. There I took the cranes with blue feet; that is, the Katakins, Saldjuts, and Kunkurats. This is the fifth service I have done you. "6. Do you not remember, O Khan, my father, how on the river Kara, near the mount Jurkan, we swore that if a snake glided between us, and envenomed our words, we would not listen to it until we had received some explanation? yet you suddenly left me without asking me to explain. "7. O Khan, my father, why suspect me of ambition? I have not said, 'My part is too small, I want a greater;' or 'It is a bad one, I want a better.' When one wheel of a cart breaks, and the ox tries to drag it, it only hurts its neck. If we then detach the ox, and leave the vehicle, the thieves come and take the load. If we do not unyoke it, the ox will die of hunger. Am I not one wheel of thy chariot?" With this letter Temudjin sent a request that the black gelding of Mukuli Bahadur, with its embroidered and plated saddle and bridle, which had been lost on the day of their struggle, might be restored to him; he also asked that messengers might be sent to treat for a peace between them. Another letter was sent to his uncle Kudshir, and to his cousin Altun. This letter is interesting, because it perhaps preserves for us some details of what took place at the accession of Genghis. It is well known that the Mongol Khan affected a coy resistance when asked to become chief. The letter runs thus: "You conspired to kill me, yet from the beginning did I tell the sons of Bartam Bahadur (_i.e._, his grandfather), as well as Satcha (his cousin), and Taidju (his uncle). Why does our territory on the Onon remain without a master? I tried to persuade you to rule over our tribes. You refused. I was troubled. I said to you, 'Kudshir, son of Tekun Taishi, be our khan.' You did not listen to me; and to you, Altun, I said, 'You are the son of Kutluk Khan, who was our ruler. You be our khan.' You also refused, and when you pressed it on me, saying, 'Be you our chief,' I submitted to your request, and promised to preserve the heritage and customs of our fathers. Did I intrigue for power? I was elected unanimously to prevent the country, ruled over by our fathers near the three rivers, passing to strangers. As chief of a numerous people, I thought it proper to make presents to those attached to me. I captured many herds, yurts, women, and children, which I gave you. I enclosed for you the game of the steppe, and drove toward you the mountain game. You now serve Wang Khan, but you ought to know that he is fickle. You see how he has treated me. He will treat you even worse." Wang Khan was disposed to treat, but his son Sengun said matters had gone too far, and they must fight it out. We now find Wang Khan quarrelling with several of his dependents, whom he accused of conspiring against him. Temudjin's intrigues were probably at the bottom of the matter. The result was that Dariti Utshegin, with a tribe of Mongols, and the Sakiat tribe of the Keraits, went over to Temudjin, while Altun and Kudshir, the latter's relations, who had deserted him, took refuge with the Naimans. Among the companions of his recent distress, a constant one was his brother Juji Kassar, who had also suffered severely, and had had his camp pillaged by the Keraits. Temudjin had recourse to a ruse. He sent two servants who feigned to have come from Juji, and who offered his submission on condition that his wife and children were returned to him. Wang Khan readily assented, and to prove his sincerity sent back to Juji Kassar some of his blood in a horn, which was to be mixed with koumiss, and drunk when the oath of friendship was sworn. Wang Khan was completely put off his guard, and Temudjin was thus able to surprise him. His forces numbered about four thousand six hundred, and he seems to have advanced along the banks of the Kerulon, toward the heights of Jedshir, between the Tula and the Kerulon, and therefore toward the modern Urga, where Wang Khan was posted. In the battle which followed, and which was fought in the spring of 1203, the latter was defeated; he fled to the Naimans, and was there murdered. Temudjin was sincerely affected by the death of the old man. The Naiman chief, Tayang, had his skull encased in silver and bejewelled, and afterward used it as a ceremonial cup; a custom very frequent in Mongolia. Such cups have been lately met with in Europe, one of which was exhibited at the great exhibition of 1851, where it was shown as the skull of Confucius. Another, or perhaps the same, which was encased in marvellous jeweller's work, has been lately destroyed; the gold having been barbarously melted by the Jews. By the death of Wang Khan, Temudjin became the master of the Kerait nation, and thus both branches of the Mongol race were united under one head. He now held a _kuriltai_, where he was proclaimed khan. There is some confusion about the period when he adopted the title of Genghis, but the probability is that he did so three years later. The earlier date (1203) is the one, however, from which his reign is often reckoned to have commenced. VENETIANS AND CRUSADERS TAKE CONSTANTINOPLE PLUNDER OF THE SACRED RELICS A.D. 1204 EDWIN PEARS In the treaty arranged at the end of the Third Crusade (1192) it was stipulated that all hostilities between the Christians and the Moslems should cease. The Fourth Crusade (1196-1197), which is sometimes considered merely as a movement supplementary to the Third, forced renewed hostilities, against the wishes of the Palestine Christians, who preferred that the three-years' peace should continue. The Fourth Crusade ended disastrously, those who remained longest to prosecute it being finally cut to pieces at Jaffa in 1197. The travellers returning to the West from Syria besought immediate help for the Christian survivors there. The Byzantine empire had fallen into decrepitude, and the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem was reduced to a mere strip of coast. Only by prompt action could it be hoped to save any portion of it from complete wreck. Innocent III, who became pope in 1198, well understood the meaning of the Moslem triumphs. The four crusades had already greatly extended the papal jurisdiction, and Innocent himself was the moving spirit of the Fifth, although an ignorant priest named Fulk also preached it with a success almost equal to that of Peter the Hermit in the first expedition. Vast numbers of warriors took the cross, though no king and only a few minor princes joined them. Most famous among the leaders were Boniface II, Marquis of Montferrat, and Baldwin IV, Count of Flanders. Venice joined the crusaders under the lead of her doge, Henry Dandolo, then more than ninety years old. When ambassador at the Byzantine court (1173) he was blinded by order of the emperor Manuel I, and revenge was probably one of the motives which took him again to the East. The Venetians, being asked to transport the crusaders, demanded an extortionate price; but as Venice was the only power possessing the necessary ships, a contract was made with her for the service in 1201. Immediately the Venetians, by a secret treaty with Egypt, for the sake of commercial privileges, betrayed the crusaders to the Moslems. Embarkation from Venice in the summer of 1202 was made very difficult, and many intending crusaders went home in disgust. Still Venice insisted upon the full price; but money to pay it was wanting; and in spite of the Pope and many of the bitter spirits, a bargain was struck--the crusaders agreed to help the Venetians in taking and plundering Zara, a rival Christian city on the eastern coast of the Adriatic. Zara was accordingly captured--ultimately to be destroyed by the Venetians, who next drew some of the crusaders into a plot to overthrow the Byzantine emperor Alexius IV, and place his son on the throne. By this means the Venetians thought to make good their promise to frustrate the crusade, and at the same time to obtain great commercial advantages at Constantinople. Thus was the pilgrim host "changed from a crusading army into a filibustering expedition." Having wintered at Zara, the crusaders were landed, in June, 1203, under the walls of Constantinople. The Emperor was deposed by his own people, and his son, Alexius V, crowned during a revolution in the city, which followed an unsuccessful attack by the crusaders in July. The second and successful assault, in April, 1204, with its sequel of pillage and debauchery, forms the subject of Pears' brilliant narrative. The city, during these troubles, suffered from two fires, of which the second, in July, 1203, deserves to be reckoned among the great historic conflagrations of the world. The preparations which the leaders had been pushing on during several weeks were completed in April, 1204, and that day was chosen for an assault upon Constantinople. Instead of attacking simultaneously a portion of the harbor walls and a portion of the landward walls, Venetians and crusaders alike directed their efforts against the defences on the side of the harbor. The horses were embarked once more in the _huissiers_.[39] The line of battle was drawn up; the huissiers and galleys in front, the transports a little behind and alternating between the huissiers and the galleys. The whole length of the line of battle was upward of half a league, and stretched from the Blachern to beyond the Petrion.[40] The Emperor's vermilion tent had been pitched on the hill just beyond the district of the Petrion, where he could see the ships when they came immediately under the walls. Before him was the district which had been devastated by the fire. On the morning of the 9th the ships, drawn up in the order described, passed over from the north to the south side of the harbor. The crusaders landed in many places, and attacked from a narrow strip of the land between the walls and the water. Then the assault began in terrible earnest along the whole line. Amid the din of the imperial trumpets and drums the attackers endeavored to undermine the walls, while others kept up a continual rain of arrows, bolts, and stones. The ships had been covered with blanks and skins so as to defend them from the stones and from the famous Greek fire, and, thus protected, pushed boldly up to the walls. The transports soon advanced to the front, and were able to get so near the walls that the attacking parties on the gangways or platforms, flung out once more from the ships' tops, were able to cross lances with the defenders of the walls and towers. The attack took place at upward of a hundred points until noon, or, according to Nicetas,[41] until evening. Both parties fought well. The invaders were repulsed. Those who had landed were driven back, and amid the shower of stones were unable to remain on shore. The invaders lost more than the defenders. Before night a portion of the vessels had retired out of range of the mangonels,[42] while another portion remained at anchor and continued to keep up a continual fire against those on the walls. The first day's attack had failed. The leaders of both crusaders and Venetians withdrew their forces to the Galata side. The assault had failed, and it became necessary at once to determine upon their next step. The same evening a parliament was hastily called together. Some advised that the next attack should be made on the walls on the Marmora side, which were not so strong as those facing the Golden Horn. The Venetians, however, immediately took an exception, which everyone who knew Constantinople would at once recognize as unanswerable. On that side the current is always much too strong to allow vessels to be anchored with any amount of steadiness or even safety. There were some present who would have been very well content that the current or a wind--no matter what--should have dispersed the vessels, provided that they themselves could have left the country and have gone on their way. It was at length decided that the two following days, the 10th and 11th, should be devoted to repairing their damages, and that a second assault should be delivered on the 12th. The previous day was a Sunday, and Boniface and Dandolo made use of it to appease the discontent in the rank and file of the army. The bishops and abbots were set to work to preach against the Greeks. They urged that the war was just; that the Greeks had been disobedient to Rome, and had perversely been guilty of schism in refusing to recognize the supremacy of the Pope, and that Innocent himself desired the union of the two churches. They saw in the defeat the vengeance of God on account of the sins of the crusaders. The loose women were ordered out of the camp, and, for better security, were shipped and sent far away. Confession and communion were enjoined, and, in short, all that the clergy could do was done to prove that the cause was just, to quiet the discontented, and to occupy them until the attack next day. The warriors had in the mean time been industriously repairing their ships and their machines of war. A slight, but not unimportant, change of tactics had been suggested by the assault on the 9th. Each transport had been assigned to a separate tower. The number of men who could fight from the gangways or platforms thrown out from the tops had been found insufficient to hold their own against the defenders. The modified plan was, therefore, to lash together, opposite each tower to be attacked, two ships, containing gangways to be thrown out from their tops, and thus concentrate a greater force against each tower. Probably, also, the line of attack was considerably shorter than at the first assault. On Monday morning, the 12th, the assault was renewed. The tent of the Emperor[43] had been pitched near the monastery of Pantepoptis,[44] one of many which were in the district of the Petrion, extending along the Golden Horn from the palace of Blachern, about one-fourth of its length. From this position he could see all the movements of the fleet. The walls were covered with men who were ready again to fight under the eye of their Emperor. The assault commenced at dawn, and continued with the utmost fierceness. Every available crusader and Venetian took part in it. Each little group of ships had its own special portion of the walls, with its towers, to attack. The besiegers during the first portion of the day made little progress, but a strong north wind sprang up, which enabled the vessels to get nearer the land than they had previously been. Two of the transports, the Pilgrim and the Parvis, lashed together, succeeded in throwing one of their gangways across to a tower in the Petrion, and opposite the position occupied by the Emperor. A Venetian, and a French knight, André d'Urboise, immediately rushed across and obtained a foothold. They were at once followed by others, who fought so well that the defenders of the tower were either killed or fled. The example gave new courage to the invaders. The knights who were in the huissiers, as soon as they saw what had been done, leaped on shore, placed their ladders against the wall, and shortly captured four towers. Those on board the fleet concentrated their efforts on the gates, broke in three of them, and entered the city, while others landed their horses from the huissiers. As soon as a company of knights was formed, they entered the city through one of these gates, and charged for the Emperor's camp. Mourtzouphlos[45] had drawn up his troops before his tents, but they were unused to contend with men in heavy armor, and after a fairly obstinate resistance the imperial troops fled. The Emperor, says Nicetas--who is certainly not inclined to unduly praise the Emperor, who had deprived him of his post of _grand logothete_--did his best to rally his troops, but all in vain, and he had to retreat toward the palace of the Lion's Mouth. The number of the wounded and dead was _sans fin et sans mesure_. An indiscriminate slaughter commenced. The invaders spared neither age nor sex. In order to render themselves safe they set fire to the city lying to the east of them, and burned everything between the monastery of Everyetis and the quarter known as Droungarios.[46] So extensive was the fire, which burned all night and until the next evening, that, according to the marshal, more houses were destroyed than there were in the three largest cities in France. The tents of the Emperor and the imperial palace of Blachern were pillaged, the conquerors making their head-quarters on the same site at Pantepoptis. It was evening, and already late, when the crusaders had entered the city, and it was impossible for them to continue their work of destruction through the night. They therefore encamped near the walls and towers which they had captured. Baldwin of Flanders spent the night in the vermilion tent of the Emperor, his brother Henry in front of the palace of Blachern, Boniface, the Marquis of Montferrat, on the other side of the imperial tents in the heart of the city. The city was already taken. The inhabitants were at length awakened out of the dream of security into which seventeen unsuccessful attempts to capture the New Rome[47] had lulled them. Every charm, pagan and Christian, had been without avail. The easy sloth into which the possession of innumerable relics, and the consciousness of being under the protection of an army of saints and martyrs, had plunged a large part of the inhabitants, had been rudely dispelled. The Panhagia of the Blachern, with its relic of the Virgin's robe, the host of heads, arms, bodies, and vestments of saints and of portions of the holy Cross, had been of no more use than the palladium which lay buried then, as now, under the great column which Constantine had built. The rough energy of the Westerns had disregarded the talismans of the Greek Church as completely as those of paganism. In vain had the believers in these charms destroyed during the siege the statues which were believed to be of ill omen or unlucky. The invaders had a superstition as deep as their own, but with the difference that they could not believe that a people in schism could have the protection of the hierarchy of heaven, or be regarded as the rightful possessors of so many relics. During the night following its capture the Golden Gate, which was at the Marmora side of the landward walls, had been opened, and already an affrighted crowd was pressing forward to make its escape from the captured city. Others were doing their best to bury their treasures. The Emperor himself, either seized with panic or finding that all was lost--as, indeed, everything was lost so soon as the army had succeeded in obtaining a foothold within the walls--fled from the city, He, too, escaped by the Golden Gate, taking with him Euphrosyne, the widow of Alexis. The brave Theodore Lascaris determined, however, to make one more attempt. His appeal to the people was useless. Those who were not panic-stricken appear to have been indifferent. Some, at least, were apparently still dreaming of a mere change of rulers, like those of which the majority of them had seen several. But before any attempt at reorganization could be made the enemy was in sight, and Theodore himself had to fly. The crusaders had expected another day's fighting, and knew nothing of the flight of Mourtzouphlos. To their surprise they encountered no resistance. The day was occupied in taking possession of their conquest. The Byzantine troops laid down their arms on receiving assurances of personal safety. The Italians who had been expelled took advantage of the entry of their friends and appear to have retaliated upon the population for their expulsion. Two thousand of the inhabitants, says Gunther, were killed, and mostly by these returned Italians. As the victorious crusaders passed through the streets, women, old men, and children, who had been unable to flee, met them, and, placing one finger over another so as to make the sign of the cross, hailed the Marquis of Montferrat as king, while a hastily gathered procession, with the cross and the sacred emblems of Christ, greeted him in triumph. Then began the plunder of the city. The imperial treasury and the arsenal were placed under guard; but with these exceptions the right to plunder was given indiscriminately to the troops and sailors. Never in Europe was a work of pillage more systematically and shamelessly carried out. Never by the army of a Christian state was there a more barbarous sack of a city than that perpetrated by these soldiers of Christ, sworn to chastity, pledged before God not to shed Christian blood, and bearing upon them the emblem of the Prince of Peace. Reciting the crimes committed by the crusaders, Nicetas says, with indignation: "You have taken up the cross, and have sworn on it and on the holy Gospels to us that you would pass over the territory of Christians without shedding blood and without turning to the right hand or to the left. You told us that you had taken up arms against the Saracens only, and that you would steep them in their blood alone. You promised to keep yourselves chaste while you bore the cross, as became soldiers enrolled under the banner of Christ. Instead of defending his tomb, you have outraged the faithful who are members of him. You have used Christians worse than the Arabs used the Latins, for they at least respected women." An immense mass of treasure was found in each of the imperial palaces and in those of the nobles. Each baron took possession of the castle or palace which was allotted to him, and put a guard upon the treasure which he found there. "Never since the world was created," says the marshal, "was there so much booty gained in one city. Each man took the house which pleased him, and there were enough for all. Those who were poor found themselves suddenly rich. There was captured an immense supply of gold and silver, of plate and of precious stones, of satins and of silk, of furs, and of every kind of wealth ever found upon earth." The sack of the richest city in Christendom, which had been the bribe offered to the crusaders to violate their oaths, was made in the spirit of men who, having once broken through the trammels of their vows, are reckless to what lengths they go. Their abstinence and their chastity once abandoned, they plunged at once into orgies of every kind. [Illustration: The lust of the army spared neither maiden nor the virgin dedicated to God Painting by E. Luminais.] [Illustration] The lust of the army spared neither maiden nor the virgin dedicated to God. Violence and debauchery were everywhere present; cries and lamentations and the groans of the victims were heard throughout the city; for everywhere pillage was unrestrained and lust unbridled. The city was in wild confusion. Nobles, old men, women, and children ran to and fro trying to save their wealth, their honor, and their lives. Knights, foot soldiers, and Venetian sailors jostled each other in a mad scramble for plunder. Threats of ill-treatment, promises of safety if wealth were disgorged, mingled with the cries of many sufferers. These "pious brigands," as Gunther aptly calls them, acted as if they had received a license to commit every crime. Sword in hand, houses and churches were pillaged. Every insult was offered to the religion of the conquered citizens. Churches and monasteries were the richest storehouses, and were therefore the first buildings to be rifled. Monks and priests were selected for insult. The priests' robes were placed by the crusaders on their horses. The icons were ruthlessly torn down from the screens or were broken. The sacred buildings were ransacked for relics or their beautiful caskets. The chalices were stripped of their precious stones and converted into drinking-cups. The sacred plate was heaped with ordinary plunder. The altar cloths and the screens of cloth of gold, richly embroidered and bejewelled, were torn down, and either divided among the troops or destroyed for the sake of the gold and silver which were woven into them. The altars of Hagia Sophia,[48] which had been the admiration of all men, were broken for the sake of the material of which they were made. Horses and mules were taken into the church in order to carry off the loads of sacred vessels and the gold and silver plates of the throne, the pulpits, and the doors, and the beautiful ornaments of the church. The soldiers made the chief church of Christendom the scene of their profanity. A prostitute was seated in the patriarchal chair, who danced, and sang a ribald song for the amusement of the soldiers. Nicetas, in speaking of the desecration of the Great Church, writes with the utmost indignation of the barbarians who were incapable of appreciating and therefore respecting its beauty. To him it was an "earthly heaven, a throne of divine magnificence, an image of the firmament created by the Almighty." The plunder of the same church in 1453 by Mahomet II compares favorably with that made by the crusaders of 1204. The sack of the city went on during the three days after the capture. An order was issued, probably on the third day, by the leaders of the army, for the protection of women. Three bishops had pronounced excommunication against all who should pillage church or convent. It was many days, however, before the army could be reduced to its ordinary condition of discipline. A proclamation was made throughout the army that all the booty should be collected, in order to be divided fairly among the captors. Three churches were selected as depots, and trusty guards of crusaders and Venetians were stationed to watch what was thus brought in. Much, however, was kept back, and much stolen. Stern measures had to be resorted to before order was restored. Many crusaders were hanged. The Count of St. Paul hanged one of his own knights with his shield round his neck because he had not given up the booty he had captured. A contemporary writer, the continuator of the history of William of Tyre, forcibly contrasts the conduct of the crusaders before and after the capture. When the Latins would take Constantinople they held the shield of God before them. It was only when they had entered that they threw it away, and covered themselves with the shield of the devil. The Italians resident in Constantinople, who had returned to the city with their countrymen, were conspicuous in their hostility to the Greeks. Amid this resentment there were examples, however, that former friendships were not forgotten. The escape of Nicetas himself is an illustration in point. He had held the position of grand logothete,[49] but he had been deposed by Mourtzouphlos. When the Latins entered the city he had retired to a small house near Hagia Sophia, which was so situated as to be likely to escape observation. His large house, and probably his official residence, which he is careful to tell us was adorned with an abundant store of ornaments, had been burned down in the second fire. Many of his friends found refuge with him, apparently regarding his dwelling as specially adapted for concealment. Nothing, however, could escape the observation of the horde which was now ransacking every corner. When the Italians had been banished from the city Nicetas had sheltered a Venetian merchant, with his wife and family. This man now clothed himself like a soldier and, pretending that he was one of the invaders, prevented his countrymen or any other Latins from entering the house. For some time he was successful, but at length a crowd, principally of French soldiers, pushed past and flocked within. From that time protection became impossible. The Venetian advised Nicetas to leave, in order to prevent himself from being imprisoned and to save the honor of his daughters. Nicetas and his friends accepted the advice. Having clothed themselves in skins or the poorest garments, they were conducted through the city by their faithful friend as if they were his prisoners. The girls and young ladies of the party were placed in their midst, their faces having been intentionally smeared in order to give them the appearance of being of the poorest class. As they reached the Golden Gate the daughter of a magistrate, who was one of the party, was suddenly seized and carried off by a crusader. Her father, who was weak and old, and wearied with the long walk, fell, and was unable to do anything but cry for assistance. Nicetas followed and called the attention of certain soldiers who were passing, and after a long and piteous appeal, after reminding them of the proclamation which had been made against the violation of women, he ultimately succeeded in saving the maiden. The entreaties would have been in vain if the leader of the party had not at length threatened to hang the offender. A few minutes later the fugitives had passed out of the city, and fell on their knees to thank God for his protection in having permitted them to escape with their lives. Then they set out on their weary way to Silivria. The road was covered with fellow-sufferers. Before them was the Patriarch himself, "without bag or money, or stick or shoes, with but one coat," says Nicetas, "like a true apostle, or rather like a true follower of Jesus Christ, in that he was seated on an ass, with the difference that instead of entering the new Zion in triumph he was leaving it." A large part of the booty had been collected in the three churches designated for that purpose. The marshal himself tells us that much was stolen which never came into the general mass. The stores which had been collected were, however, divided in accordance with the compact which had been made before the capture. The Venetians and the crusaders each took half. Out of the moiety belonging to the army there were paid the fifty thousand silver marks due to the Venetians. Two foot sergeants received as much as one horse sergeant, and two of the latter sergeants received as much as a knight. Exclusive of what was stolen and of what was paid to the Venetians, there were distributed among the army four hundred thousand marks, or eight hundred thousand pounds, and ten thousand suits of armor. The total amount distributed among the crusaders and Venetians shows that the wealth of Constantinople had not been exaggerated. Eight hundred thousand pounds were given to the crusaders, a like sum to the Venetians, with the one hundred thousand pounds due to them. These sums had been collected in hard cash from a city where the inhabitants were hostile, and where they had in their wells and cisterns an easy means of hiding their treasures of gold, silver, and precious stones--a means traditionally well known in the East. Abundance of booty was taken possession of by the troops which never went into the general mass. Sismondi estimates that the wealth in specie and movable property before the capture was not less than twenty-four million pounds sterling. The distribution was made during the latter end of April. Many works of art in bronze were sent to the melting-pot to be coined. Many statues were broken up in order to obtain the metals with which they were adorned. The conquerors knew nothing and cared nothing for the art which had added value to the metal. The weight of the bronze was to them the only question of interest. The works of art which they destroyed were sacrificed not to any sentiment like that of the Moslem against images which they believed to be idols or talismans. No such excuse can be made for the Christians of the West Their motive for destroying so much that was valuable was neither fanaticism nor religion. It was the simple greed for gain. No sentiment restrained their cupidity. The great statue of the Virgin which ornamented the Taurus was sent as unhesitatingly to the furnace as the figure of Hercules. No object was sufficiently sacred, none sufficiently beautiful, to be worth saving if it could be converted into cash. Amid so much that was destroyed it is impossible that there were not a considerable number of works of art of the best periods. The one list which has been left us by the Greek logothete professes to give account of only the larger statues which were sent to the melting-pot. But it is worth while to note what were these principal objects so destroyed. Constantinople had long been the great storehouse of works of art and of Christian relics, the latter of which were usually encased with all the skill that wealth could buy or art furnish. It had the great advantage over the elder Rome that it had never been plundered by hordes of barbarians. Its streets and public places had been adorned for centuries with statues in bronze or marble. In reading the works of the historians of the Lower Empire the reader cannot fail to be struck alike with the abundance of works of art and with the appreciation in which they were held by the writers. First among the buildings as among the works of art, in the estimation of every citizen, was Hagia Sophia. It was emphatically the Great Church. Tried by any test, it is one of the most beautiful of human creations. Nothing in Western Europe even now gives a spectator who is able with an educated eye to restore it to something like its former condition, so deep an impression of unity, harmony, richness, and beauty in decoration as does the interior of the masterpiece of Justinian. All that wealth could supply and art produce had been lavished upon its interior--at that time, and for long afterward, the only portion of a church which the Christian architect thought deserving of study. "Internally, at least," says a great authority on architecture, "the verdict seems inevitable that Santa Sophia is the most perfect and most beautiful church which has yet been erected by any Christian people. When its furniture was complete the verdict would have been still more strongly in its favor." We have seen that to Nicetas, who knew and loved it in its best days, it was a model of celestial beauty, a glimpse of heaven itself. To the more sober English observer, "its mosaic of marble slabs of various patterns and beautiful colors, the domes, roofs, and curved surfaces, with gold-grounded mosaic relieved by figures or architectural devices," are "wonderfully grand and pleasing." All that St. Mark's is to Venice, Hagia Sophia was to Constantinople. But St. Mark's, though enriched with some of the spoils of its great original, is, as to its interior at least, a feeble copy. Hagia Sophia justified its founder in declaring, "I have surpassed thee, O Solomon!" and during seven centuries after Justinian his successors had each attempted to add to its wealth and its decoration. Yet this, incomparably the most beautiful church in Christendom, at the opening of the thirteenth century was stripped and plundered of every ornament which could be carried away. It appeared to the indignant Greeks that the very stones would be torn from the walls by these intruders, to whom nothing was sacred. Around the Great Church were other objects which could be readily converted into bronze, and the destruction of which was irreparable. The immense hippodrome was crowded with statues. Egypt had furnished an obelisk for the centre, Delphi had given its commemoratory bronze of the victory of Platæa. Later works of pagan sculptors were there in abundance, while Christian artists had continued the traditions of their ancestors. The cultured inhabitants of Constantinople appreciated these works of art and took care of them. In giving a list of the more important of the objects which went to the melting-pot, Nicetas again and again urges that these works were destroyed by barbarians who were ignorant of their value. Incapable of appreciating either their historical interest or the value with which the labor of the artist had endowed them, the crusaders knew only the value of the metals of which they were composed. The emperors had been buried within the precincts of the Church of the Holy Apostles, the site of which was afterward chosen by Mahomet II for the erection of the mosque now called by his name. Their tombs, beginning with that of Justinian, were ransacked in the search for treasure. It was not until the palaces of the nobles, the churches, and the tombs had been plundered that the pious brigands turned their attention to the statues, A colossal figure of Juno, which had been brought from Samos, and which stood in the forum of Constantine, was sent to the melting-pot. We may judge of its size from the fact that four oxen were required to transport its head to the palace. The statue of Paris presenting to Venus the apple of discord followed. The Anemodulion, or "Servant of the Winds," was a lofty obelisk, whose sides were covered with bas-reliefs of great beauty, representing scenes of rural life, and allegories depicting the seasons, while the obelisk was surmounted by a female figure which turned with the wind, and so gave to the whole its name. The bas-reliefs were stripped off and sent to the palace to be melted. A beautiful equestrian statue of great size, representing either Bellerophon and Pegasus or, as the populace believe, Joshua on horseback commanding the sun to stand still, was likewise sent to the furnace. The horse appeared to be neighing at the sound of the trumpet, while every muscle was strained with the ardor of battle. The colossal Hercules of Lysippus, which, having adorned Tarentum, had thence been transported to the Elder and subsequently to the hippodrome of the New Rome, met with a like fate. The artist had expressed, in a manner which had won the admiration of beholders, the deep wrath of the hero at the unworthy tasks set before him. He was represented as seated, but without quiver or bow or club. His lion's skin was thrown loosely about his shoulders, his right foot and right hand stretched out to the utmost, while he rested his head on his left hand with his elbow on his bent knee. The whole figure was full of dignity; the chest deep, the shoulders broad, the hair curly, the arms and limbs full of muscle. The figure of an ass and its driver, which Augustus had had cast in bronze to commemorate the news brought to him of the victory of Actium, met with the same fate. For the sake of melting them down into money the barbarians seized also the ancient statue of the wolf suckling Romulus and Remus; the statues of a sphinx, a hippopotamus, a crocodile, an elephant, and others, which had represented a triumph over Egypt; the monster of Scylla and others; most of which were probably executed before the time of Christ. The celebrated statue of Helen was destroyed by men who knew nothing of its original. There must be added to these the graceful figure of a woman who held in her right hand the figure of an armed man on horseback. Then near the eastern goals, known as the "reds," stood the statues of the winners in the chariot races. They stood erect in their bronze chariots, as the originals also had been seen when they gained their victories, as if they were still directing their steeds to the goals. A figure of the Nile bull in deadly conflict with a crocodile stood near. These and other statues were hastily sent to the furnace to be converted into money. We may judge of the value and artistic merit of the bronze statues which were destroyed, by the specimens which remain. The four horses which the emperor Theodosius had brought from Chios and placed in the hippodrome escaped, by some lucky chance, the general plunder, and were taken to Venice, where they still adorn the front of St. Mark's. The pillage of the relics of Constantinople lasted for forty years. More than half of the total amount of objects carried off were, however, taken away between the years 1204 and 1208. During the few days which followed the capture of the city the bishops and priests who were with the crusaders were active in laying hands on this species of sacred spoil; and the statement of a contemporary writer is not improbable, that the priests of the orthodox Church preferred to surrender such spoil to those of their own cloth rather than to the rough soldier or the rougher Venetian sailor. On the other hand, the highest priestly dignitaries in the army--men, even, who refused to take of the earthly spoil--were eager to obtain possession of this sacred booty, and unscrupulous as to the means by which they obtained it. The holy Cross was carefully divided by the bishops for distribution among the barons. Gunther gives us a specimen of the means to which Abbot Martin, who had had the German crusaders placed under his charge, had recourse. The abbot had learned that many relics had been hidden by the Greeks in a particular church. This building was attacked in the general pillage. He, as a priest, searched carefully for the relics, while the soldiers were looking for more commonplace booty. The abbot found an old priest, with the long hair and beard common then, as now, to orthodox ecclesiastics, and roughly addressed him, "Show me your relics, or you are a dead man." The old priest, seeing that he was addressed by one of his own profession, and frightened probably by the threat, thought, says Gunther, that it was better to give up the relics to him than to the profane and blood-stained hands of the soldiers. He opened an iron safe, and the abbot, in his delight at the sight, buried his hands in the precious store. He and his chaplain filled their surplices, and ran with all haste to the harbor to conceal their prize. That they were successful in keeping it during the stormy days which followed could only be attributed to the virtue of the relics themselves. The way in which Dalmatius de Sergy obtained the head of St. Clement is an illustration of the crusader's belief that the acquisition of a relic and its transport to the West would be allowed as a compensation for the fulfilment of the crusader's vow. That knight was grievously afflicted that he could not go to the Holy Land, and earnestly prayed God to show him how he could execute some other task equivalent to that which he had sworn, but failed, to accomplish. His first thought was to take relics to his own country. He consulted the two cardinals who were then in Constantinople, who approved his idea, but charged him not to buy these relics, because their purchase and sale were forbidden. He accordingly determined to steal them, if such a word may be applied to an act which was clearly regarded as praiseworthy. The knight, in order to discover something of especial value, remained in Constantinople until Palm Sunday in the following year. A French priest pointed out to him a church in which the head of St. Clement was preserved. He went there in the company of a Cistercian monk and asked to see the relics. While one kept the persons in charge speaking with him, the other stole a portion of the relic. On leaving, the knight was disgusted to find that the whole head had not been taken, and, on the pretext that he had left his gauntlet behind, a companion regained admittance to the church, while the knight again kept the monk in charge in conversation at the door. Dalmatius went to the chest behind the altar where the relic had been kept, stole the remainder, went out, mounted his horse and rode away. The head was placed with pious joy in the chapel of his house. He returned, disguised, some days after to the church, in order, as he pretended, to do reverence to the relic--in order really to ascertain that he had taken the right head, for there had been two in the chest. He was informed that the head of St. Clement had been stolen. Then, being satisfied as to its authenticity, he took a vow that he would give the relic to the Church of Cluny in case he should arrive safely. He embarked. The devil, from jealousy, sent a hurricane, but the tears and prayers before the relic defeated him, and the knight arrived safely home. The monks of Cluny received the precious treasure with every demonstration of reverent joy, and in the fullest confidence that they had secured the perpetual intercession of St. Clement on behalf of themselves and those who did honor to his head. The relics most sought after were those which related to the events mentioned in the New Testament, especially to the infancy, life, and passion of Christ, and to the saints popular in the West. In the years which followed the conquest Latin priests were sent to Constantinople from France, Flanders, and Italy, to take charge of the churches in the city. These priests appear to have been great hunters after relics. Thus it came to pass that there was scarcely an important church or monastery in most Western countries which did not possess some share of the spoil which came from Constantinople. For some years the demand for relics seemed to be insatiable, and caused fresh supplies to be forthcoming to an almost unlimited extent. The new relics, equally with the old, were certified in due form to be what they professed to be. Documents, duly attested and full of detailed evidence--sometimes, doubtless, manufactured for the occasion--easily satisfied those to whom it was of importance to possess certified relics, and throughout the West the demand for relics which might bring profit to their possessors continued to increase. At length the Church deemed it necessary to put a stop to the supply, and especially to that of the apocryphal and legendary acts which testified to their authenticity, and in 1215 the fourth Lateran council judged it necessary to make a decree enjoining the bishops to take means to prevent pilgrims from being deceived. LATIN EMPIRE OF THE EAST ITS FOUNDATION AND FALL A.D. 1204-1261 W.J. BRODRIBB AND SIR WALTER BESANT As a result of the intrigues connected with the Fifth Crusade, in which crusaders and Venetians--the latter for their own commercial advantage--jointly participated, it was decided to capture Constantinople, the seat of the Byzantine empire, and to partition the empire itself among the captors. The combined forces of the Latins accordingly made two assaults upon the capital of their Eastern fellow-Christians, who had from the first made passive opposition to the crusades, fearing for the integrity of their empire. The city succumbed to the second attack and was thoroughly plundered. The division of the empire was especially insisted upon by Dandolo, the aged doge, who led the Venetians in the expedition. The Venetians well knew that whoever held the city of Constantinople held the key of the East. It proved in the end that they had an imperfect knowledge of the strength and resources, as well as of the peculiar weakness, of the Byzantine possessions, which at best were but loosely held together, and required ceaseless vigilance on the part of the central government to guard them against outward attack and hold in check the spirit of internal revolt. It was nevertheless the cautious policy of the Venetians not to hold the key of the East, Constantinople, since to hold it would entail the necessity of defending its possessions. They preferred to be on such terms of friendship, not necessarily alliance, with those who should hold the key, as would give them all the advantages they desired, without involving them in irksome obligations if there came a change of masters. "Venice fought for her own hand," let other nations as they might be led astray by illusory hopes of allies and friends bound by ties of gratitude. She well knew how to guard herself against the spirit of perfidy so active in the Middle Ages, as well as how to exercise that spirit in her own interest. Once in possession and control of Constantinople, the Latins found it necessary to proceed directly to the partition of the empire. It had been agreed between old Dandolo and Baldwin, Boniface and others of the crusaders that one full quarter of the whole dominion was to be assigned to the Latin emperor, who was to be elected by Venetians and crusaders together. This left three-quarters remaining, of which Venice was to take half, the rest to be in some manner divided among the crusaders. First of all, however, came the election of an emperor for the new state. Venice wanted no imperial dignity, nor could any dignity be bestowed upon the nonagenarian Dandolo greater than that which he actually enjoyed as doge of his native republic. He accepted, however, the title of Despot of Romania.[50] The emperor must therefore be chosen from among the French or Flemings. Two of the chiefs might show strong claims for the choice. Of these two, the Marquis of Montferrat, who at first seemed the most likely to be chosen, was already connected by means of his brother's marriage with the late reigning dynasty of Constantinople. He was, besides, proved to be a valorous soldier and a prudent general. On the other hand, Baldwin, the count of Flanders, a younger man, had displayed all the prowess of his rival, and was personally more popular. Besides, the larger part of the army consisted of his own people, Flemings. There was, therefore, no surprise when the council of election announced that the choice had fallen upon Baldwin, and his rival was among the first to acknowledge the validity of the election. The Marquis of Montferrat obtained for his prize Crete and the Asiatic part of the empire. As, however, he discovered that the latter part of the Byzantine realm would require to be conquered, he exchanged it for the kingdom of Thessalonica. The Greek empire had at one blow fallen to pieces. What the crusaders had conquered was that part of the country now called Roumelia. Across the Dardanelles, Theodore Lascaris established himself as emperor at Nicæa; and Alexius, a son of Manuel Comnenus, created an empire for himself at Trebizond; another established himself as despot of Epirus; and the other two wandering emperors, Alexius III and Alexius V, joined their forces, in the hope of keeping the Latins out of the northwest provinces. But these two passed masters in duplicity could not, even in misfortune, trust one another, and Alexius III, the craftier if not the stronger of the two vagabond usurpers, seized his ally, put out his eyes, and handed him over to the Latins. They went through the formality of a trial, and found him guilty of the murder of Alexius IV. He was sentenced to death, and after a good deal of discussion it was decided that the manner of his death should be by being hurled from the top of a lofty column, and this was accordingly done. As for Alexius III, after a great variety of adventures he finally fell into the hands of his son-in-law, Theodore Lascaris, who shut him up in a monastery, where his troubled life came to an end. Baldwin began his reign by sending a conciliatory letter to the Pope.[51] He had not, it is true, attempted to carry out the vows which he and his brother-crusaders had taken upon themselves. Palestine still groaned under the yoke of the infidel. At the same time the Pope could not but feel gratified at the extinction of the Greek schism and the restoration of the unity of Christendom, That event was undoubtedly due to him, and the Pope acknowledged it in a careful letter, which left him free at any time to express his disapprobation of the course pursued by the crusaders. To the King of France Baldwin wrote, inviting the French knights to find their way to this new scene of conquest and glory. To Palestine he sent promises of assistance, with, as tokens of his power, the gates of Constantinople and the chain which barred the port. And then, the empire being fairly parcelled out, the Marquis of Montferrat took his knights and men-at-arms to establish his own kingdom of Thessalonica. Other chiefs, who had obtained each his own part of the Byzantine territories, went off to conquer them for themselves; and the Greeks began to perceive that they were ruled by a mere handful of Latin adventurers, only to be dreaded when they were together, and now scattered in small garrisons and feeble bands all about the country. When this knowledge was thoroughly acquired, troubles began to befall the new empire. These troubles were originated, however, not by the Greeks, but by the Bulgarians, and were due to the arrogance and pride of Baldwin. John, King of this savage people, was of the Latin Church. Being as orthodox as he was barbarous, he rejoiced mightily at the fall of the Greeks, and sent an embassy of congratulation to the new Latin Emperor. Weak as he was upon his unstable throne, Baldwin actually had the folly and impudence to assault these ambassadors, to treat them as rebels, and to send a message to their master that, before his servants could be received at the Byzantine court, he must first deserve pardon by touching with his forehead the footstool of the imperial throne. It was not likely that a high-spirited and independent sovereign would brook such a message. He instantly threw the whole weight of his influence and strength into the cause of the Greeks, and with their leaders concerted a scheme of general and simultaneous massacre worthy of his barbarism and their treachery. The secret was well kept; the conspirators were in no hurry to strike the blow. They waited patiently till a time when it seemed as if the force of the Latins was at the lowest; that is, when Prince Henry, brother of the Emperor, had crossed the Hellespont with the flower of the troops. The empire in Europe was covered with thin and sparse garrisons; there were no forces in Constantinople to come to their succor should they try to hold out; they might be taken in detail and at once. And then those Byzantine Vespers began. It was a revolt of thousands against tens; there was a great slaughter, a rush of the little bands who escaped upon Adrianople, where there was a fresh slaughter; and while the Greeks were up in successful revolt, the Bulgarians, accompanied by a savage band of fourteen thousand Comans, invaded the country, mad for pillage and revenge. The position was one of extreme peril. Baldwin sent messengers to his brother, ordering him to return in all haste, and then made such hasty preparations as were possible, and sallied forth to the siege of Adrianople. Had he waited for Henry's return, all might have gone well with him, but he would not wait. It was the rule of the crusaders never to refuse battle, whatever the odds, a rule to which their greatest victories as well as their greatest disasters were chiefly due. What Godfrey did before Ascalon, Baldwin was ready to do before Adrianople. He had with him no more than a hundred and forty knights, with three trains of archers and men-at-arms--say two thousand men in all. The gallant Villehardouin, Marshal of Romania, who was destined to survive this day and write its story, led the vanguard. The main body, with whom was Baldwin, was commanded by the Count of Blois; the rear was brought up by old Dandolo. The slender ranks of the little army were continually being recruited by the accession of the fugitive remains of the garrisons. On the way to Adrianople they met the light cavalry of the Comans. Orders were given not to pursue these light horsemen, who fought after the manner of the Parthians. In a solid phalanx the western knights were able to face any odds, but scattered and dispersed they would fall beneath the weight of numbers. The order insisted on by Dandolo, who knew this kind of enemy, was broken by no others than the Emperor himself and the Count of Blois. The Comans, as usual, fled at the first charge of the heavily armed knights, who spurred after them, regardless of the order, and led by the Emperor. When they had ridden a mile or so, when their horses were breathed, then the Comans closed in upon the little band of knights, and the unequal contest began of a hundred and forty against fourteen thousand. Some few struggled out of the _mêlée_ and found their way back to the rest of the army. Most fell upon the field. Among these was the Count of Blois. A few were taken prisoners, among whom was the Emperor. No one ever knew his fate. The wildest stories were told of this unfortunate Prince. His hands and feet, it was said, were cut off, and he was exposed, mutilated, to the wild animals; he was beheaded; he enacted the part of Joseph--Potiphar's wife being King John's queen. Nothing was too wild to be believed about him. Twenty years later a hermit of the Netherlands thought it would be possible to pass himself off as the real Baldwin, who had escaped from captivity and was thus expiating his early sins. He obtained the fate from justice and the sympathy from the vulgar which have commonly been the lot of pretenders. Whatever the real end of this Emperor, King John wrote a year later to the Pope, calmly informing him that his intercession for Baldwin was no longer of any use, because he was no longer living. Then it was, and not till then, that his brother, Henry of Flanders, consented to assume the title of Emperor. Already the leaders of the crusade, who only three years before had set sail so proudly from Venice, were dead or on the point of death: Baldwin murdered in captivity; the Count of Blois killed on the field of battle; Dandolo dead, at the age, say some writers, of a hundred, in the year 1205; the Marquis of Montferrat about to be slain in an obscure skirmish with the barbarous Bulgarians. Henry stood alone, save for the faithful Geoffrey de Villehardouin, Marshal of Champagne and Romania, who, though his narrative ceases at this point, is believed to have remained with the new Emperor. His reign lasted for ten years only. It was a reign of successful, brave, and prudent administration in things military, civil, and ecclesiastical Its success was greatly assisted by the fact that very early in his reign the Greeks discovered the mistake they had made in changing the rule of the Latins for the rule of the Bulgarians. The first were hard masters, with rough, rude ways, and little sympathy with the culture of the Byzantines; but the latter proposed, as soon as the Latins were driven south, to exterminate the population of Thrace, or at least to transplant the Greeks beyond the Balkans. They called upon the Emperor to forgive them and to help them. Henry, with a little army of eight hundred knights, with archers and men-at-arms, perhaps five thousand in all, made no scruple of going out to attack this disorderly mob of forty thousand Bulgarians. As no mention is made of the Comans, it is presumable that these had gone home again with their booty. At the siege of Thessalonica King John was murdered--slain by no less a person than St. Demetrius himself, said the Greeks--and a peace was concluded between his successor and Henry. The last years of this exemplary monarch's life were spent in wise administration. He checked the zeal of the Pope's legate, and would not countenance persecution about the double procession and other controverted dogmas. He checked the pretensions of the clergy, by placing his throne on the same level with that of the Patriarch, whereas it had formerly been lower; and he prohibited the alienation of fiefs, which would have handed over the patrimony of the knights to the Church, and turned, as Gibbon says, a colony of soldiers into a college of priests. When he died, childless, the next heir to the empire was his sister Yolande, who had married Peter of Courtenay, Count of Auxerre, a member of that princely house which still survives in the line of the English earls of Devon. It was an unfortunate day for that prince when he accepted the crown which had already in ten years carried off two of his brothers. Yet the chance was splendid. What count or duke or knight of these days but would seize a crown thus offered, however great the peril? He accepted the crown, then, and, to make a worthy appearance on entering into possession, he either mortgaged or sold the best part of ten estates, and raised, with the help of Philip Augustus, an army of one hundred and forty knights and five thousand five hundred men-at-arms and archers. He persuaded the pope Honorius III to crown him, it being understood that, as Emperor of the East, he had no claim to jurisdiction or right over Rome, and, following the example of Baldwin, engaged the Venetians to convey him and his army to Constantinople. They would do so on similar terms and for a consideration--let him first recover for them the port of Durazzo from the Despot of Epirus; this was no longer Michael, the founder of the kingdom, but his brother Theodore. The Emperor delivered his assault on Durazzo, and was unsuccessful. Then the Venetians refused the transport. Peter thereupon made an agreement with the despot Theodore, by which the latter undertook to convey him and his army safely to his dominion overland. It is another story of Greek treachery. The Emperor, with his troops, while in the mountains, was attacked by Greeks of Theodore's army. Such of his men as did not surrender were cut to pieces. He himself was taken prisoner, detained for two years, and then put to death in some mysterious way. Yolande, the Empress, while yet she was uncertain of the fate of her lord, gave birth to a son, the most unfortunate Baldwin. The eldest of Yolande's sons, Philip de Courtenay, had the singular good-sense and good-fortune to decline the offered crown. He found plenty of fighting in Europe of an equally adventurous kind, and less treacherous than that among the Greeks. The second son, Robert, accepted the responsibilities and dangers of the position. For seven years he held the sceptre with a trembling hand amid all kinds of disasters. The Despot of Epirus, the treacherous Theodore, swept across the country as far as Adrianople, where he raised his standard and called himself emperor. Vatatces, the successor of Theodore Lascaris, seized upon the last relics of the Asiatic possessions, intercepted western succor, actually persuaded a large body of French mercenaries to serve under him, constructed a fleet, and obtained the command of the Dardanelles. A personal and private outrage of the grossest kind, offered to the unfortunate Emperor by an obscure knight, drove him in rage and despair from the city. He sought refuge in Italy, but was recalled by his barons, and was on his way back to Constantinople when he was seized with some malady which killed him. It is a miserable record of a weak and miserable life. On his death, his brother Baldwin being still a boy, the barons looked about them for a stronger hand to rule the tottering State. They found the man they wanted in gallant old John de Brienne, the last of those who raised themselves from simple knightly rank to a royal palace. Gauthier de Brienne was King of Sicily and Duke of Apulia. John himself, one of the last specimens of the great crusading heroes, was titular King of Jerusalem, having married Constance, daughter of Isabelle and granddaughter of Amaury. Philip Augustus himself selected John de Brienne as the most worthy knight to become the husband of Constance and the King of Jerusalem. He was now an old man of more than seventy years. His daughter, Yolande, was married to Frederick II, who had assumed the title of King of Jerusalem, but old as he was he was still of commanding stature and martial bearing. His arm had lost none of its strength, nor his brain any of its vigor. He accepted the crown on the understanding that the young Baldwin, then eleven years of age, should join him as emperor on coming of age. Great things were expected from so stout a soldier. Yet for two years nothing was done. Then the Emperor was roused into action. It was understood at Constantinople that Vatatces, the successor of Theodore Lascaris, was on the point of concluding an alliance, offensive and defensive, with Agan, King of the Bulgarians and successor of John. The alliance could have but one meaning, the destruction of the Latin empire. It must be remembered that the vast Roman Empire of the East was shrunken in its dimensions to the city of Constantinople and that narrow strip of territory commanded by her walls, her scanty armies, and her diminished fleets. Of territory, indeed, the Latin empire had none in the sense of land producing revenue. What it held was held with the drawn sword in the hand ready for use. The kingdom of Thessalonica was gone; and though the dukedoms, marquisates, and countships of Achaia, Athens, Sparta, and other independent petty states were still held by the emperors or their sons, they were like the outlying provinces of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem--Edessa, Tripoli, and the rest--a source of weakness rather than of strength. Little help, if any, could be looked for from them. The alliance, however, was concluded, and the allies, with an immense army, estimated at a hundred thousand, besides three hundred ships-of-war, sat down before the city and besieged it by sea and land. The incident that follows reads like a story from the history of Amadis de Gaul. Gibbon says that he "trembles" to relate it. While this immense host lay outside his walls; while thirty ships armed with their engines of war menaced his long line of seaward defences in the narrow strait, brave old John de Brienne, who had but one hundred and sixty knights with their following of men-at-arms and archers---say two thousand in all--led forth his little band, and at one furious onset routed the besieging army. Probably it was mainly composed of the Bulgarian hordes, undisciplined, badly armed, and, like all such hosts, liable to panic. Perhaps, too, the number of the enemy was by no means so great as is reported, nor were the forces of John de Brienne so small. Nor was his success limited to the rout of the army, for the citizens, encouraged by their flight, attacked the ships, and succeeded in dragging five-and-twenty of them within the port. It would appear that the Bulgarians renewed their attempt in the following year, and were again defeated by the old Emperor. It would have been well for the Latins had his age been less. He died in the year 1237, and young Baldwin, who was married to his daughter Martha, became sole emperor. John de Brienne made so great a name that he was compared with Ajax, Odin the Dane, Hector, Roland, and Judas Maccabæus. Baldwin, who came after him, might have been compared with any of those kinglings who succeeded Charlemagne, and sat in their palaces while the empire fell to pieces. His incapacity is proved, if by nothing else, by his singular and uniform ill-luck. If, after the fight of life is over, no single valiant blow can be remembered, the record is a sorry one indeed. Baldwin's difficulties were, it must be owned, very great: they were so great that for a considerable portion of the four-and-twenty years during which he wore the Roman purple his crown was left him by sufferance, and his manner of reigning was to travel about Europe begging for money. The Pope proclaimed a crusade for him, but it was extremely difficult to awaken general enthusiasm for a Courtenay in danger of being overthrown by a Lascaris; and the other point, the submission of Constantinople to Rome in things ecclesiastical, could not be said to touch the popular sentiment at all. The Pope, however, supplemented his exhortation by bestowing upon the indigent Emperor a treasure of indulgences, which he no doubt sold at their marketable value, whatever that was. One fears that it was not much. From England he obtained, after an open insult at Dover, a small contribution toward the maintenance of his empire. Louis IX of France would have rendered him substantial assistance, but for the more pressing claims of the Holy Land and his project for delivering the holy places by a new method. His brother-in-law, Frederick II, excommunicated by the Church, was not likely to manifest any enthusiasm for an ecclesiastical cause; and those allies from whom he might have expected substantial aid, the Venetians, were at war with the Genoese; the Prince of Achaia was in captivity, and the feeble son of Boniface, King of Thessalonica--the sons of all these sturdy crusaders were feeble, like the Syrian _pullani_, sons of Godfrey's heroes--had been deposed. Yet money and men must be raised, or the city must be abandoned. A wise man would have handed over the empire to any who dared defend it. Baldwin was not a wise man. He proceeded to sell the remaining lands of Courtenay and the marquisate of Namur, and by this and other expedients managed to return with an army of thirty thousand men. What would not Baldwin I, or Henry his uncle, or John de Brienne his father-in-law have been able to effect with an army of thirty thousand soldiers of the West? But Baldwin the Incapable did next to nothing. By this time the strip of country remaining to the Emperor was only that immediately surrounding the city. All the rest was in the hands of Greek or of Bulgarian. When these were at war, the city was safe; when these were united, the city was every moment in danger of falling. Baldwin used his new recruits in gaining possession of the country for a distance of three days' journey round his capital--about sixty miles in all--which was something. But how was the position to be maintained or to be improved? There were no revenues in that bankrupt city, from whose port the trade had passed away, and which had lost the command of the narrow seas. What was the condition of the citizens we know not. That of the imperial household was such that the Emperor's servants were fain to demolish empty houses for fuel, and to strip churches of the lead upon their roofs to supply the daily wants of his family. He sent his son Philip to Venice as security for a debt; he borrowed at enormous interest of the merchants of Italy; and when all else failed, and the money which he had raised at such ruinous sacrifices had melted away, and his soldiers were clamoring for pay, he remembered the holy relics yet remaining to the city, in spite of the cartloads carried off during the great sack of 1204, and resolved to raise more money upon them. There was, first of all, the Crown of Thorns. This had been already pledged in Venice for the sum of thirteen thousand one hundred and thirty-four pieces of gold to the Venetians. As the money was spent and the relic could not be redeemed within the time, the Venetians were preparing to seize it. They would have been within their right. But Baldwin conceived an idea, so clever that it must have been suggested by a Greek, which, if successfully carried out, would result in the attainment of much more money by its means. He would _give_ it to Louis IX of France. A relic of such importance might be pawned, it might be given, but it could not be sold. Therefore Baldwin gave it to King Louis. By this plan the Venetians were tricked of their relic, on which they had counted; the debt was transferred to France, which easily paid it; the precious object itself, to which Frederick II granted a free passage through his dominions, was conveyed by Dominican friars to Troyes, whither the French court advanced to receive it, and a gift of ten thousand marks reconciled Baldwin and his barons to their loss. After all, as the prospects of the State were so gloomy, it might be some consolation to them to reflect that so sacred a relic--which had this great advantage over the wood of the true Cross, that it had not been and could not be multiplied until it became equal in bulk to the wood of a three-decker--was consigned to the safe custody of the most Christian King of France. This kind of traffic once begun, and proving profitable, there was no reason why it should not continue. Accordingly, the Crown of Thorns was followed by a large and very authentic piece of the true Cross. St. Louis gave Baldwin twenty thousand marks as an honorarium for the gift of this treasure, which he deposited in the Sainte-Chapelle. Here it remained, occasionally working miracles, as every bit of the true Cross was bound to do, until the troubles of the league, when it was mysteriously stolen. Most likely some Huguenot laid hands upon it, and took the same kind of delight in burning it that he took in throwing the consecrated wafer to the pigs. And then more relics were found and disposed of. There was the baby linen of our Lord; there was the lance which pierced his side; there was the sponge with which they gave him to drink; there was the chain with which his hands had been fettered: all these things, priceless, inestimable, wonder-working, Baldwin sent to Paris in exchange for marks of silver. And then there were relics of less holiness, but still commanding the respect and adoration of Christians; these also were hunted up and sent. Among them were the rod of Moses, and a portion--alas! a portion only--of the skull of John the Baptist. Thirty or forty thousand marks for all these treasures! And it seems but a poor result of the conquest of Constantinople by the Latins that all which came of it was the transferrence of relics from the East to the West--nothing else. Such order as the later Greek emperors had preserved, changed into anarchy and misrule; such commerce as naturally flowed from Asia into the Golden Horn, diverted and lost; a strange religion imposed upon an unwilling people; the break-up of the old Roman forms; the destruction by fire of a third of the city; the disappearance of the ancient Byzantine families; the ruin of the wealthy, the depression of the middle classes; the impoverishment of the already poor; the decay and loss of learning: these were the things which the craft and subtlety of Dandolo, working on the Franks' lust of conquest, had brought about for the proud city of the East. But the end was drawing daily nearer. Vatatces of Nicæa died. He was succeeded by his son Theodore, on whose death the crown of Nicæa devolved upon an infant. The child was speedily, though not immediately, openly dethroned by the regent, Michael Palæologus. When at length the imperial title was assumed by the latter, Baldwin thought it advisable to attempt negotiations with him. His ambassadors were received with open contumely; Michael would give the Latins nothing. "Tell your master," he said, "that if he be desirous of peace, he must pay me, as an annual tribute, the sum which he receives from the trade and customs of Constantinople. On these terms I may allow him to reign; if he refuses, it will be war." That was in the year 1259. Michael, no putter-forth of empty and boastful words, prepared immediately for the coming war; so in his feeble way did Baldwin, but his money was spent, his recruits were melting away, the Venetians alone were his allies, and the Genoese had joined the Greeks. And yet Michael did not know--so great was the terror of the Frank and Flemish name which the great Baldwin, Henry of Flanders, and John de Brienne had left behind them--how weak was the Latin empire; how unstable were the defences of the city. Michael, in 1260, marched into Thrace, strengthened the garrisons, and expelled the Latins yet remaining in the country. Had he, the same year, marched upon Constantinople, the city would have been his. But the glory of taking it was destined for one of his generals. The Greek Emperor, returning to Nicæa, sent Alexius Strategopoulos, his most trusted general, on whom he had conferred the title of cæsar, to take the command of his armies in Europe. He laid strict orders upon him to enter the Latin territory as soon as the existing truce was concluded: to watch, report--act upon the defensive if necessary--but nothing more. Now the lands round Constantinople had been sold by their Latin seigneurs to Greek cultivators, who, to defend their property, formed themselves into an armed militia, called "Voluntaries." With these voluntaries Alexius opened communications, and was by their aid enabled to get accurate information of all that went on among the Latins. As soon as the truce expired, he marched his troops across the frontier and approached the city. His force--doubtless the Latins were badly served by their spies--seemed too small to inspire any serious alarm, and the Latins, who had recently received succor from Venice which made them confident, resolved on striking the first blow by an attack on the port of Daphnusia. They accordingly despatched a force of six thousand men, with thirty galleys, leaving the city almost bare of defenders. This, then, was the moment for successful treachery. One Koutrilzakes, a Greek voluntary, secured the assistance of certain friends within the town. Either a subterranean passage was to be opened to the Greeks, or they were to be assured of friends upon the walls. Alexius, at dead of night, brought his army close to the city. At midnight, against a certain stipulated spot the scaling-ladders were placed, where there were none but traitors to receive the men; at the same time, the passage was traversed, and Alexius found himself within the walls of the city.[52] They broke open the Gate of the Fountain; they admitted the Greek men-at-arms and the Coman auxiliaries before the alarm was given; and by daylight the Greeks had complete command of the land wall, and were storming the imperial palace. There was one chance left for Baldwin. He might have betaken himself to the Venetians, and held their quarter until the unlucky expedition to Daphnusia returned, when they might have expelled the Greeks, or made at least an honorable capitulation. But Baldwin was not the man to fight a lost or losing battle. He hastily fled to the port, embarked on board a vessel, and set sail for Euboea. In the deserted palace the Greek soldiers found sceptre, crown, and sword, the imperial insignia, and carried them in mockery through the streets. While Baldwin was flying from the palace to the port, behind him and around him was the tramp of the rude Coman barbarians, proclaiming that the city was taken. The houses, hastily thrown open as the first streaks of the summer day lit up the sky, resounded with the acclamations of those, yesterday his own subjects, who welcomed the new-comers with cries of "Long live Michael the Emperor of the Romans!" The house of Courtenay had played its last card and lost the game. Pity that it was thrown away by so poor a player. It matters little about the end of Baldwin. He got safely to Euboea, thence to Rome, and lived twelve or thirteen years longer in obscurity. When he died, his only son, Philip, assumed the empty title of emperor of Constantinople, which, Gibbon says, "too bulky and sonorous for a private name, modestly expired in silence and oblivion." It took, however, a long time to expire. Two hundred and fifty years later one of its last holders was the inheritor of so many shadowy claims that his very name in history is blurred by them. René of Anjou gave himself, among other titles, that of emperor of Constantinople. Constantinople was taken, and the Latin Empire destroyed at a blow. There were, however, still remaining the Venetian merchants, who had the command of the port, and who might, by holding out until the return of the ships from Daphnusia, undo all. Alexius set fire to their houses, but was careful to leave their communications with the vessels unmolested. They had therefore nothing left but to secure the safety of their wives, families, and movable property, which they did by embarking them on board the ships. And when the Daphnusian expedition returned, they found, to their surprise, that the Greeks held the whole city except a small portion near the port, and had manned the walls. A hasty truce was arranged; the merchants loaded every ship with their families and their property; the Latin fleet sailed down the Dardanelles, and the Latin Empire in the East was at an end. It began with violence and injustice: it ended as it began. There were six Latin emperors, of whom the first was a gallant soldier; the second, a sovereign of admirable qualities, and an able administrator; the third, a plain French knight, who was murdered on his way to assume the purple buskins; the fourth, a weak and pusillanimous creature; the fifth, a stout old warrior; and the last, a monarch of whom nothing good can be said and nothing evil, except that which was said of Boabdil (called _El Chico_), that he was unlucky. As the Latins never had the slightest right or title to these possessions in the East, so the western powers were never impelled to assist them, and their downfall was merely a matter of time. In the interests of civilization their occupation of the city seems to have been unfortunate; they learned nothing for themselves, they taught nothing; neither East nor West profited. They destroyed the old institutions, so that the ancient Roman Empire was broken up by their conquest; they inflicted irreparable losses on learning and art; and perhaps the only good result of their conquest was that, for the moment, at least, it deflected the course of trade with the East from the Golden Horn, and sent it by another route to Venice, Genoa, and Pisa. INNOCENT III EXALTS THE PAPAL POWER A.D. 1208 T.F. TOUT Under Pope Innocent III the example of Gregory VII (Hildebrand) was followed, with the result of still further strengthening and extending the pontifical sway. When Innocent became pope (1198), the holy see was engaged in a desperate contest for supremacy with the Hohenstaufen rulers of the Holy Roman Empire. Henry VI, son of Frederick Barbarossa, had but recently died, leaving his wife Constance, heiress of the kingdom of Naples or the "Two Sicilies," and a son, Frederick--afterward Frederick II--born in 1194, to be dealt with by the Pope. While the imperial power under the Hohenstaufens was making head against the papal authority, Italy was overrun in parts by German subjects of the emperors, and in two expeditions (1194 and 1197) Henry VI recovered the Two Sicilies from the usurper Tancred of Lecce. In his dealings with the Sicilies Innocent therefore had to reckon with the German influence which played an important part in the new settlement of the kingdom. His triumphs in this field, as well as in his conflicts with Philip Augustus of France, Otto IV of Germany, and King John of England, and in the war which he made upon heretics, are set forth in the following article in their historical order, and the cumulative growth of his supremacy forms a subject of increasing interest to the end. After the great emperors came the great Pope. Within four months of the death of Henry VI, Celestine III had been succeeded by Innocent III, under whom the visions of Gregory VII and Alexander III at last became accomplished facts, the papal authority attained its highest point of influence, and the empire, raised to such heights by Frederick Barbarossa and Henry VI, was reduced to a condition of dependence upon it. The new Pope had been Lothaire of Segni, a member of the noble Roman house of Conti, who had studied law and theology at Paris and Bologna, and had at an early age won for himself a many-sided reputation as a jurist, a politician, and as a writer. The favor of his uncle, Clement III, had made him cardinal before he was thirty, but under Celestine III he kept in the background, disliked by the Pope, and himself suspicious of the timid and temporizing old man. But on Celestine's death on January 8, 1198, Lothaire, though still only thirty-seven years of age, was at once hailed as his most fitting successor, as the strong man who could win for the Church all the advantages that she might hope to gain from the death of Henry VI. Nor did Innocent's pontificate belie the promise of his early career. Innocent III possessed a majestic and noble appearance, an unblemished private character, popular manners, a disposition prone to sudden fits of anger and melancholy, and a fierce and indomitable will. He brought to his exalted position the clearly formulated theories of the canonists as to the nature of the papal power, as well as the overweening ambition, the high courage, the keen intelligence and the perseverance and energy necessary to turn the theories of the schools into matters of every-day importance. His enunciations of the papal doctrine put claims that Hildebrand himself had hardly ventured to advance, in the clearest and most definite light. The Pope was no mere successor of Peter, the vicegerent of man. "The Roman pontiff," he wrote, "is the vicar, not of man, but of God himself." "The Lord gave Peter the rule not only of the Universal Church, but also the rule of the whole world." "The Lord Jesus Christ has set up one ruler over all things as his universal vicar, and as all things in heaven, earth, and hell bow the knee to Christ, so should all obey Christ's vicar, that there be one flock and one shepherd." "No king can reign rightly unless he devoutly serve Christ's vicar." "Princes have power in earth, priests have also power in heaven. Princes reign over the body, priests over the soul. As much as the soul is worthier than the body, so much worthier is the priesthood than the monarchy." "The Sacerdotium is the sun, the Regnum the moon. Kings rule over their respective kingdoms, but Peter rules over the whole earth. The Sacerdotium came by divine creation, the Regnum by man's cunning." In these unrestricted claims to rule over church and state alike we seem to be back again in the anarchy of the eleventh century. And it was not against the feeble feudal princes of the days of Hildebrand that Innocent III had to contend, but against strong national kings, like Philip of France and John of England. It is significant of the change of the times, that Innocent sees his chief antagonist, not so much in the empire as in the limited localized power of the national kings. When Richard of England had yielded before Henry VI, the national state gave way before the universal authority of the lord of the world. But Innocent claimed that he alone was lord of the world. The empire was but a German or Italian kingdom, ruling over its limited sphere. Only in the papacy was the old Roman tradition of universal monarchy rightly upheld. Filled with these ambitions of universal monarchy, Innocent's survey took in both the smallest and the greatest of European affairs. Primarily his work was that of an ecclesiastical statesman, and intrenched far upon the authority of the State. We shall see him restoring the papal authority in Rome and in the Patrimony,[53] building up the machinery of papal absolutism, protecting the infant King of Sicily, cherishing the municipal freedom of Italy, making and unmaking kings and emperors at his will, forcing the fiercest of the western sovereigns to acknowledge his feudal supremacy, and the greatest of the kings of France to reform his private life at his commands, giving his orders to the petty monarchs of Spain and Hungary, and promulgating the law of the Church Universal before the assembled prelates of Christendom in the Lateran Council. Nevertheless, the many-sided Pontiff had not less near to his heart the spiritual and intellectual than the political direction of the universe. He had the utmost zeal for the extension of the kingdom of Christ. The affair of the crusade was, as we shall see, ever his most pressing care, and it was his bitterest grief that all his efforts to rouse the Christian world for the recovery of Jerusalem fell on deaf ears. He was strenuous in upholding orthodoxy against the daring heretics of Southern France. He was sympathetic and considerate to great religious teachers, like Francis and Dominic, from whose work he had the wisdom to anticipate the revival of the inner life of the Church. As many-sided as strong, and successful as he was strong, Innocent III represents it worthily and adequately. Even before Innocent had attained the chair of Peter, the worst dangers that had so long beset the successors of Alexander III were over. After the death of Henry VI, the Sicilian and the German crowns were separated, and the strong anti-imperial reaction that burst out all over Italy against the oppressive ministers of Henry VI was allowed to run its full course. The danger was not so much of despotism as of anarchy, and Innocent, like Hildebrand, knew how to turn confusion to the advantage of hierarchy. No real effort was made to obtain for the little Frederick the crowns of both Germany and Sicily, While Philip of Swabia, her brother-in-law, hurried to Germany to maintain, if he could, the unity of the Hohenstaufen empire, Constance was quite content to secure her son's succession in Naples and Sicily by renewing the homage due to the Pope. Having thus obtained the indispensable papal confirmation, Constance ruled in Naples as a national queen in the name of the little Frederick. She drove away the German bandits, who had made the name of her husband a terror to her subjects. Markwald of Anweiler left his Apulian fiefs[54] for Romagna. But the Pope joined with Constance in hostility to the Germans. Without Innocent's strong and constant support she could hardly have carried out her policy. Recognizing in the renewal of the old papal protection the best hopes for the independence of Sicily, Constance, on her death in 1198, called on Innocent III to act as the guardian of her son. Innocent loyally took up her work, and struggled with all his might to preserve the kingdom of Frederick against his many enemies. But the contest was a long and a fierce one. No sooner was Constance dead than the Germans came back to their prey. The fierce Markwald, driven from Romagna by the papal triumph, claimed the regency and the custody of the King. The Saracens and Greeks of Sicily, still numerous and active, joined the Germans. Walter, Bishop of Troja, Chancellor of Sicily, weaved deep plots against his master and his overlord. But the general support of the Church gave Innocent a strong weapon. Roffrid, Abbot of Monte Casino, a tried friend of Henry VI, declared for Innocent against Markwald, who in revenge besieged the great monastery, until a summer storm drove him baffled from its walls. But the purchased support of Pisa gave Markwald the command of the sea, and Innocent had too many schemes on foot and too little military power at his command to be able to make easy headway against him. At last Innocent had reluctant recourse to Count Walter of Brienne, the French husband of Tancred's daughter Albina, and now a claimant for the hereditary fiefs of Tancred, Lecce, and Taranto, from which, despite Henry VI's promise, he had long been driven. For almost the first time in Italian history, Frenchmen were thus called in to drive out the Germans. But it was then as afterward a dangerous experiment. Walter of Brienne and his small French following invaded Apulia, and fought hard against Diepold of Acerra, another of King Henry's Germans. Meanwhile Markwald, now in open alliance with the Bishop of Troja, made himself master of Sicily and regent of the young King. His death in 1202 removed the most dangerous enemy of both Innocent and Frederick. But the war dragged on for years in Apulia, especially after Diepold had slain Walter of Brienne. The turbulent feudal barons of Apulia and Sicily profited by this long reign of anarchy to establish themselves on a permanent basis. At last Innocent sent his own brother, Richard, Count of Segni, to root out the last of the Germans. So successful was he that, in 1208, the Pope himself visited the kingdom of his ward, and arranged for its future government by native lords, helped by his brother, who now received a rich Apulian fief. It was Innocent's glory that he had secured for Frederick the whole Norman inheritance. It was amid such storms and troubles that the young Frederick grew up to manhood. In Central and Northern Italy, Innocent III was more speedily successful than in the South. On Philip of Swabia's return to Germany, Tuscany and the domains of the Countess Matilda fell away from their foreign lord, and invoked the protection of the Church. The Tuscan cities formed themselves into a new league under papal protection. Only Pisa, proud of her sea power, wealth, and trade, held aloof from the combination. It seemed as if, after a century of delays, the papacy was going to enjoy the inheritance of Matilda,[55] and Innocent eagerly set himself to work to provide for its administration. In the north the Pope maintained friendly relations with the rival communities of the Lombard plain. But his most immediate and brilliant triumph was in establishing his authority over Rome and the Patrimony of St. Peter. On his accession he found his lands just throwing off the yoke of the German garrisons that had kept them in subjection during Henry VI's lifetime. He saw within the city power divided between the _præfectus urbis_, the delegate of the Emperor, and the _summus senator,_ the mouthpiece of the Roman commune. Within a month the prefect ceased to be an Imperial officer, and became the servant of the papacy, bound to it by fealty oaths, and receiving from it his office. Within a year the senator also had become the papal nominee, and the whole municipality was controlled by the Pope. No less complete was Innocent's triumph over the nobility of the Campagna. He drove Conrad of Urslingen back to Germany, and restored Spoleto to papal rule. He chased Markwald from Romagna and the March of Ancona to Apulia, and exercised sovereign rights even in the most remote regions that acknowledged him as lord. If it was no very real sway that Innocent wielded, it at least allowed the town leagues and the rustic nobility to go on in their own way, and made it possible for Italy to work out its own destinies. More powerful and more feared in Italy than any of his predecessors, Innocent could contentedly watch the anti-imperial reaction extending over the Alps and desolating Germany by civil war. Despite the precautions taken by Henry VI, it was soon clear that the German princes would not accept the hereditary rule of a child of three. Philip of Swabia abandoned his Italian domains and hurried to Germany, anxious to do his best for his nephew. But he soon perceived that Frederick's chances were hopeless, and that it was all that he could do to prevent the undisputed election of a Guelf. He was favored by the absence of the two elder sons of Henry the Lion. Henry of Brunswick the eldest, the Count Palatine of the Rhine, was away on a crusade, and was loyal to the Hohenstaufen, since his happy marriage with Agnes. The next son Otto, born at Argenton during his father's first exile, had never seen much of Germany. Brought up at his uncle Richard of Anjou's court, Otto had received many marks of Richard's favor, and looked up to the chivalrous, adventurous King as an ideal of a warrior prince. Richard had made him Earl of Yorkshire, and had invested him in 1196 with the country of Poitou, that he might learn war and statecraft in the same rude school in which Richard had first acquainted himself with arms and politics. Even now Otto was not more than seventeen years of age. Richard himself, as the new vassal of the Empire for Aries and England, was duly summoned to the electoral diet, but his representatives impolitically urged the claims of Count Henry, who was ruled ineligible on account of his absence. Thus it was that when the German magnates at last met for the election on the 8th of March, 1198, at Muehlhausen, their choice fell on Philip the Arabian, who took the title of Philip II. Many of the magnates had absented themselves from the diet at Muehlhausen, and an irreconcilable band of partisans refused to be bound by its decisions. Richard of England now worked actively for Otto, his favorite nephew, and found support both in the old allies of the Angevins in the Lower Rhineland and the ancient supporters of the house of Guelf. Germany was thus divided into two parties, who completely ignored each other's acts. Three months after the diet of Muehlhausen, another diet met at Cologne and chose Otto of Brunswick as King of the Romans. Three days afterward the young prince was crowned at Aachen. A ten-years' civil war between Philip II and Otto IV now devastated the Germany that Barbarossa and Henry VI had left so prosperous. The majority of the princes remained firm to Philip, who also had the support of the strong and homogeneous official class of _ministeriales_ that had been the best helpers of his father and brother. Nevertheless, Otto had enough of a party to carry on the struggle. On his side was Cologne, the great mart of Lower Germany, so important from its close trading relations with England, and now gradually shaking itself free of its archbishops. The friendship of Canute of Denmark and the Guelf tradition combined to give him his earliest and greatest success in the North. It was the interest of the baronage to prolong a struggle which secured their own independence at the expense of the central authority. Both parties looked for outside help. Otto, besides his Danish friends, relied on his uncle Richard, and, after his death, on his uncle John. Philip formed a league with his namesake Philip of France. But distant princes could do but little to determine the result of the contest. It was of more moment that both appealed to Innocent III, and that the Pope willingly accepted the position of arbiter. "The settlement of this matter," he declared, "belongs to the apostolic see, mainly because it was the apostolic see that transferred the Empire from the East to the West, and ultimately because the same see confers the Imperial crown." In March, 1201, Innocent issued his decision. "We pronounce," he declared, "Philip unworthy of empire, and absolve all who have taken oaths of fealty to him as king. Inasmuch as our dearest son in Christ, Otto, is industrious, discreet, strong, and constant, himself devoted to the Church and descended on each side from a devout stock, we, by the authority of St. Peter, receive him as king, and will in due course bestow upon him the imperial crown." The grateful Otto promised in return to maintain all the possessions and privileges of the Roman Church, including the inheritance of the countess Matilda. Philip of Swabia still held his own, and the extravagance of the papal claim led to many of the bishops as well as the lay magnates of Germany joining in a declaration that no former pope had ever presumed to interfere in an imperial election. But the swords of his German followers were a stronger argument in favor of Philip's claims than the protests of his supporters against papal assumptions. As time went on, the Hohenstaufen slowly got the better of the Guelfs. With the falling away of the North, Otto's cause became distinctly the losing one. In 1206, Otto was defeated outside the walls of Cologne, and the great trading city was forced to transfer its obedience to his rival. In 1207 Philip became so strong that Innocent was constrained to reconsider his position, and suggested to Otto the propriety of renouncing his claims. But in June, 1208, Philip was treacherously murdered at Bamberg by his faithless vassal, Otto of Wittelsbach, to whom he had refused his daughter's hand. It was no political crime, but a deed of private vengeance. It secured, however, the position of Otto, for the ministeriales now transferred their allegiance to him, and there was no Hohenstaufen candidate ready to oppose him. Otto, moreover, did not scruple to undergo a fresh election which secured for him universal recognition in Germany. By marrying Beatrice, Philip of Swabia's daughter, he sought to unite the rival houses, while he conciliated Innocent by describing himself as King "by the grace of God and the Pope." Next year he crossed the Alps to Italy, and bound himself by oath, not only to allow the papacy the privileges that he had already granted, but to grant complete freedom of ecclesiastical elections, and to support the Pope in his struggle against heresy. In October, 1209, he was crowned Emperor at Rome. After ten years of waiting, Innocent, already master of Italy, had procured for his dependent both the German kingdom and the Roman Empire. Despite his preoccupation with Italy and Germany, the early years of Innocent's pontificate saw him busily engaged in upholding the papal authority and the moral order of the Church in every country in Europe. No consideration of the immediate interests of the Roman see ever prevented him from maintaining his principles even against powerful sovereigns who could do much to help forward his general plans. The most conspicuous instance of this was Innocent's famous quarrel with Philip Augustus of France, when to vindicate a simple principle of Christian morals he did not hesitate to abandon the alliance of the "eldest son of the Church" at a time when the fortunes of the papacy were everywhere doubtful. Philip's first wife, Isabella of Hainault, the mother of the future Louis VIII, had died in 1190, just before her husband had started on his crusade. In 1193 Philip negotiated a second marriage with Ingeborg, the sister of Canute VI, the powerful King of Denmark, hoping to obtain from his Danish brother-in-law substantial help against England and the Empire. Philip did not get the expected political advantages from the new connection, and at once took a strong dislike to the lady. On the day after the marriage Philip refused to have anything more to do with his bride. Within three months, he persuaded a synod of complaisant French bishops of Compiègne to pronounce the marriage void by reason of a remote kinship that existed between the two parties. Ingeborg was young, timid, friendless, helpless, and utterly ignorant of the French tongue, but King Canute took up her cause, and, from her retreat in a French convent, she appealed to Rome against the wickedness of the French King and clergy. Celestine III proved her friend, and finding protestations of no avail, he finally quashed the sentence of the French bishops and declared her the lawful wife of the French King. But Philip persisted in his repudiation of Ingeborg, and Celestine contented himself with remonstrances and warnings that were utterly disregarded. In 1196 Philip found a fresh wife in Agnes, a lady of the powerful house of Andechs-Meran, whose authority was great in Thuringia, and whose Alpine lordships soon developed into the country of Tyrol. Innocent at once proved a stronger champion of Ingeborg than the weak and aged Celestine. He forthwith warned Philip and the French bishops that they had no right to put asunder those whom God had joined together. "Recall your lawful wife," he wrote to Philip, "and then we will hear all that you can righteously urge. If you do not do this, no power shall move us to right or left, until justice be done." A papal legate was now sent to France, threatening excommunication and interdict, were Ingeborg not immediately reinstated in her place. For a few months the Pope hesitated, moved, no doubt, by his Italian and German troubles, and fearful lest his action against a Christian prince should delay the hoped-for crusade. But he gradually turned the leaders of the French clergy from their support of Philip, and at last, in February, 1200, an interdict was pronounced forbidding the public celebration of the rites of the Church in the whole lands that owed obedience to the King of France. Philip Augustus held out fiercely for a time, declaring that he would rather lose half his lands than be separated from Agnes. Meanwhile he used pressure on his bishops to make them disregard the interdict, and vigorously intrigued with the cardinals, seeking to build up a French party in the papal curia. Innocent so far showed complacency that the legate he sent to France was the King's kinsman, Octavin, Cardinal-bishop of Ostia, who was anxious to make Philip's humiliation as light as possible. His labors were eased by the partial submission of Philip, who in September visited Ingeborg, and promised to take her again as his wife, and so gave an excuse to end the interdict. Philip still claimed that his marriage should be dissolved; though here again he suddenly abandoned a suit which he probably saw was hopeless. The death of Agnes of Meran in July, 1201, made a complete reconciliation less difficult. Next year the Pope legitimated the children of Agnes and Philip, on the ground that the sentence of divorce, pronounced by the French bishops, gave the King reasonable grounds for entering in good faith on his union with her. Ingeborg was still refused the rights of a queen, and constantly besought the Pope to have pity on her forlorn condition. The Pope was now forced to content himself with remonstrances. Philip declared that a baleful charm separated him from Ingeborg, and again begged the Pope to divorce him from a union based on sorcery and witchcraft. The growing need of the French alliance now somewhat slackened the early zeal of Innocent for the cause of the Queen. But no real cordiality was possible as long as the strained relations of Ingeborg and Philip continued. At last, in 1213, in the very crisis of his fortunes, Philip completed his tardy reconciliation with his wife, after they had been separated for twenty years. Henceforth Philip was the most active ally of the papacy. While thus dealing with Philip of France, Innocent enjoyed easier triumphs over the lesser kings of Europe. It was his ambition to break through the traditional limits that separated the church from the state, and to bind as many as he could of the kings of Europe to the papacy by ties of political vassalage. The time-honored feudal superiority of the popes over the Norman kingdom of Sicily had been the first precedent for this most unecclesiastical of all papal aggressions. Already others of the smaller kingdoms of Europe, conspicuous among which was Portugal, had followed the example of the Normans in becoming vassals of the holy see. Under Innocent at least three states supplemented ecclesiastical by political dependence on the papacy. Sancho, King of Portugal, who had striven to repudiate the former submission of Alfonso I, was in the end forced to accept the papal suzerainty. Peter, King of Aragon, went in 1204 to Rome and was solemnly crowned king by Innocent. Afterward Peter deposited his crown on the high altar of St. Peter's and condescended to receive the investiture of his kingdom from the Pope, holding it as a perpetual fief of the holy see, and promising tribute to Innocent and his successors. In 1213 a greater monarch than the struggling Christian kings of the Iberian peninsula was forced, after a long struggle, to make an even more abject submission. The long strife of Innocent with John of Anjou, about the disputed election to the see of Canterbury, was fought with the same weapons which the Pope had already employed against the King of France. But John held out longer. Interdict was followed by excommunication and threatened deposition. At last the English King surrendered his crown to the papal agent Pandulf, and, like Peter of Aragon, received it back as a vassal of the papacy, bound by an annual tribute. Nor were these the only kings that sought the support of the great Pope. The schismatic princes of the East vied in ardor with the Catholic princes of the West in their quest of Innocent's favor. King Leo of Armenia begged for his protection. The Bulgarian prince John besought the Pope to grant him a royal crown. Innocent posed as a mediator in Hungary between the two brothers, Emeric and Andrew, who were struggling for the crown. Canute of Denmark, zealous for his sister's honor, was his humble suppliant. Poland was equally obedient. The Duke of Bohemia accepted the papal reproof for allying himself with Philip of Swabia. Despite his vigor and his authority, Innocent's constant interference with the internal concerns of every country in Europe did not pass unchallenged. Even the kings who invoked his intercession were constantly in conflict with him. Besides his great quarrels in Germany, France, and England, Innocent had many minor wars to wage against the princes of Europe. For five years the kingdom of Leon lay under interdict because its king Alfonso had married his cousin, Berengaria of Castile, in the hope of securing the peace between the two realms. It was only after the lady had borne five children to Alfonso that she voluntarily terminated the obnoxious union, and Innocent found it prudent, as in France, to legitimize the offspring of a marriage which he had denounced as incestuous. Not one of the princes of the peninsula was spared. Sancho of Navarre incurred interdict by reason of suspected dealings with the Saracens, while the marriage of his sister with Peter of Aragon, the vassal of the Pope, involved both kings in a contest with Innocent. Not only did the monarchs of Europe resent, so far as they were able, the Pope's haughty policy; for the first time the peoples of their realms began to make common cause with them against the political aggressions of the papacy. The nobles of Aragon protested against King Peter's submission to the papacy, declared that his surrender of their kingdom was invalid, and prevented the payment of the promised tribute. When John of England procured his Roman overlord's condemnation of Magna Charta, the support of Rome was of no avail to prevent his indignant subjects combining to drive him from the throne, and did not even hinder Louis of France, the son of the papalist Philip II, from accepting their invitation to become English king in his stead. It was only by a repudiation of this policy, and by an acceptance of the Great Charter, that the papacy could secure the English throne for John's young son, Henry III, and thus continue for a time its precarious overlordship over England. For the moment Innocent's iron policy crushed opposition, but in adding the new hostility of the national kings and the rising nations of Europe to the old hostility of the declining empire, Innocent was entering into a perilous course of conduct, which, within a century, was to prove fatal to one of the strongest of his successors. The more political the papal authority became, the more difficult it was to uphold its prestige as the source of law, of morality, of religion. Innocent himself did not lose sight of the higher ideal because he strove so firmly after more earthly aims. His successors were not always so able or so high-minded. And it was as the protectors of the people, not as the enemies of their political rights, that the great popes of the eleventh and twelfth centuries had obtained their wonderful ascendency over the best minds of Europe. The coronation of Otto IV did not end Innocent's troubles with the Empire. It was soon followed by an open breach between the Pope and his nominee, from which ultimately developed something like a general European war, between a league of partisans of the Pope and a league of partisans of Otto. It was inevitable that Otto, as a crowned emperor, should look upon the papal power in a way very different from that in which he had regarded it when a faction leader struggling for the crown. Then the support of the Pope was indispensable. Now the autocracy of the Pope was to be feared. The Hohenstaufen ministeriales, who now surrounded the Guelfic Emperor, raised his ideals and modified his policy. Henry of Kalden, the old minister of Henry VI, was now his closest confidant, and under his direction it soon became Otto's ambition to continue the policy of the Hohenstaufen. The great object of Henry VI had been the union of Sicily with the Empire. To the alarm and disgust of Innocent, his ancient dependent now strove to continue Henry VI's policy by driving out Henry VI's son from his Sicilian inheritance. Otto now established relations with Diepold and the other German adventurers, who still defied Frederick II and the Pope in Apulia. He soon claimed the inheritance of Matilda as well as the Sicilian monarchy. In August, 1210, he occupied Matilda's Tuscan lands, and in November invaded Apulia, and prepared to despatch a Pisan fleet against Sicily. Innocent was moved to a terrible wrath. On hearing of the capture of Capua, and the revolt of Salerno and Naples, he excommunicated the Emperor and freed his subjects from their oaths of fealty to him. But, despite the threats of the Church, Otto conquered most of Apulia and was equally successful in reviving the Imperial authority in Northern Italy. Innocent saw the power that he had built up so carefully in Italy crumbling rapidly away. In his despair he turned to France and Germany for help against the audacious Guelf. Philip Augustus, though still in bad odor at Rome through his persistent hostility to Ingeborg, was now an indispensable ally. He actively threw himself into the Pope's policy, and French and papal agents combined to stir up disaffection against Otto in Germany. The haughty manners and the love of the young King for Englishmen and Saxons had already excited disaffection. It was believed that Otto wished to set up a centralized despotism of court officials, levying huge taxes on the model of the Angevin administrative system of his grandfathers and uncles. The bishops now took the lead in organizing a general defection from the absent Emperor. In September, 1211, a gathering of disaffected magnates, among whom were the newly made king Ottocar of Bohemia and the dukes of Austria and Bavaria, assembled at Nuremberg. They treated the papal sentence as the deposition of Otto, and pledged themselves to elect as their new king Frederick of Sicily, the sometime ward of the Pope. It was not altogether good news to the Pope that the German nobles had, in choosing the son of Henry VI, renewed the union of German and Sicily. But Innocent felt that the need of setting up an effective opposition to Otto was so pressing that he put out of sight the general in favor of the immediate interests of the Roman see. He accepted Frederick as emperor, only stipulating that he should renew his homage for the Sicilian crown, and consequently renounce an inalienable union between Sicily and the Empire. Frederick now left Sicily, repeated his submission to Innocent at Rome, and crossed the Alps for Germany. Otto had already abandoned Italy to meet the threatened danger in the North. Misfortunes soon showered thick upon him. His Hohenstaufen wife, Beatrice, died, and her loss lessened his hold on Southern Germany. When Frederick appeared, Swabia and Bavaria were already eager to welcome the heir of the mighty southern line, and aid him against the audacious Saxon. The spiritual magnates flocked to the side of the friend and pupil of the Pope. In December, 1212, followed Frederick's formal election and his coronation at Mainz by the archbishop Siegfried. Early in 1213 Henry of Kalden appeared at his court. Henceforward the important class of the ministeriales was divided. While some remained true to Otto, others gradually went back to the personal representative of Hohenstaufen. Otto was now thrown back on Saxony and the Lower Rhineland. He again took up his quarters with the faithful citizens of Cologne, when he appealed for help to his uncle, John of England, still under the papal ban. With English help he united the princes of the Netherlands in a party of opposition to the Pope and the Hohenstaufen. Frederick answered by a closer and a more effective league with France. Even before his coronation he had met Louis, the son of Philip Augustus, at Vaucouleurs. All Europe seemed arming at the bidding of the Pope and Emperor. John of England now hastily reconciled himself to Innocent, at the price of the independence of his kingdom. He thus became in a better position to aid his excommunicated nephew, and revenge the loss of Normandy and Anjou on Philip Augustus. His plan was now a twofold one. He himself summoned the barons of England to follow him in an attempt to recover his ancient lands on the Loire. Meanwhile, Otto and the Netherlandish lords were encouraged, by substantial English help, to carry out a combined attack on France from the north. The opposition of the English barons reduced to comparative insignificance the expedition to Poitou, but a very considerable army gathered together under Otto, and took up its position in the neighborhood of Tournai. Among the French King's vassals, Ferrand, Count of Flanders, long hostile to his overlord Philip, and the Count of Boulogne fought strenuously on Otto's side; while, of the Imperial vassals, the Count of Holland and Duke of Brabant (Lower Lorraine) were among Otto's most active supporters. A considerable English contingent came also, headed by Otto's bastard uncle, William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury. Philip himself commanded the chivalry of France, leaving his son Louis to fight against John in Poitou. On July 27th the decisive battle was fought at Bouvines, a few miles southwest of Tournai. The army of France and Church gained an overwhelming victory over the league which had incurred the papal ban, and Otto's fortunes were utterly shattered. He soon lost all his hold over the Rhineland, and was forced to retreat to the ancient domains of his house in Saxony. His remaining friends made their peace with Philip and Frederick. The defection of the Wittelsbachers lost his last hold in the south of Germany, and the desertion of Valdemar of Denmark deprived him of a strong friend in the North. John withdrew from Continental politics to be beaten more decisively by his barons than he had been beaten in Poitou or at Bouvines. Frederick II, was now undisputed King of the Romans, and Innocent III had won another triumph. By the Golden Bull of Eger (July, 1213) Frederick had already renewed the concessions made by Otto to the Church, and promised obedience to the holy see. In 1216 he pledged himself to separate Sicily from the Empire, and establish his son Henry there as king, under the supremacy of the Church. But, like his other triumphs, Innocent's victory over the Empire was purchased at no small cost. For the first time, a German national irritation at the aggressions of the papacy began to be distinctly felt. It found an adequate expression in the indignant verses of Walther von der Vogelweide, protesting against the priests who strove to upset the rights of the laity, and denouncing the greed and pride of the foreigners who profited by the humiliation of Germany. Amid all the distractions of western politics, Innocent III ardently strove to revive the crusading spirit. He never succeeded in raising all Europe, as several of his predecessors had done. But after great efforts, and the eloquent preaching of Fulk of Neuilly he stirred up a fair amount of enthusiasm for the crusading cause, and, in 1204, a considerable crusading army, mainly French, mustered at Venice. It was the bitterest disappointment of Innocent's life that the Fourth Crusade never reached Palestine, but was diverted to the conquest of the Greek empire. Yet the establishment of a Catholic Latin empire at Constantinople, at the expense of the Greek schismatics, was no small triumph. Not disheartened by his first failure, Innocent still urged upon Europe the need of the holy war. If no expedition against the Saracens of Syria marked the result of his efforts, his pontificate saw the extension of the crusading movement to other lands. Innocent preached the crusade against the Moors of Spain, and rejoiced in the news of the momentous victory of the Christians at Navas de Tolosa. He saw the beginnings of a fresh crusade against the obstinate heathen on the eastern shores of the Baltic. But all these crusades were against pagans and infidels. Innocent made a much greater new departure when he proclaimed the first crusade directed against a Christian land. The Albigensian crusade succeeded in destroying the most dangerous and widespread popular heresy that Christianity had witnessed since the fall of the Roman Empire, and Innocent rejoiced that his times saw the Church purged of its worst blemish. But in extending the benefits of a crusade to Christians fighting against Christians, he handed on a precedent which was soon fatally abused by his successors. In crushing out the young national life of Southern France the papacy again set a people against itself. The denunciations of the German Minnesinger were reechoed in the complaints of the last of the Troubadours. Rome had ceased to do harm to Turks and Saracens, but had stirred up Christians to war against fellow-Christians. God and his saints abandon the greedy, the strife-loving, the unjust worldly Church. The picture is darkly colored by a partisan, but in every triumph of Innocent there lay the shadow of future trouble. Crusades, even against heretics and infidels, are the work of earthly force rather than of spiritual influence. It was to build up the great outward corporation of the Church that all these labors of Innocent mainly tended. Even his additions to the canon law, his reforms of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, dealt with the external rather than the internal life of the Church. The criticism of James of Vitry, that the Roman curia was so busy in secular affairs that it hardly turned a thought to spiritual things, is clearly applicable to much of Innocent's activity. But the many-sided Pope did not ignore the religious wants of the Church. His crusade against heresy was no mere war against enemies of the wealth and power of the Church. The new tendencies that were to transform the spiritual life of the thirteenth century were not strange to him. He favored the early work of Dominic; he had personal dealings with Francis, and showed his sympathy with the early work of the poor man of Assisi. But it is as the conqueror and organizer rather than the priest or prophet that Innocent made his mark in the Church. It is significant that, with all his greatness, he never attained the honors of sanctity. Toward the end of his life, Innocent held a general council in the basilica of St. John Lateran. A vast gathering of bishops heads of orders, and secular dignitaries gave brilliancy to the gathering and enhanced the glory of the Pontiff. Enthroned over more than four hundred bishops, the Pope proudly declared the law to the world. "Two things we have specially to heart," wrote Innocent, in summoning the assembly, "the deliverance of the Holy Land and the reform of the Church Universal." In its vast collection of seventy canons, the Lateran Council strove hard to carry out the Pope's programme. It condemned the dying heresies of the Albigenses and the Cathari, and prescribed the methods and punishments of the unrepentant heretic. It strove to rekindle zeal for the crusade. It drew up a drastic scheme for reforming the internal life and discipline of the Church. It strove to elevate the morals and the learning of the clergy, to check their worldliness and covetousness, and to restrain them from abusing the authority of the Church through excess of zeal or more corrupt motives. It invited bishops to set up free schools to teach poor scholars grammar and theology. It forbade trial by battle and trial by ordeal. It subjected the existing monastic orders to stricter superintendence, and forbade the establishment of new monastic rules. It forbade superstitious practices and the worship of spurious or unauthorized relics. The whole series of canons sought to regulate and ameliorate the influence of the Church on society. If many of the abuses aimed at were too deeply rooted to be overthrown by mere legislation, the attempt speaks well for the character and intelligence of Pope and council. All mediaeval lawmaking, civil and ecclesiastical alike, was but the promulgation of an ideal, rather than the issuing of precepts meant to be literally executed. But no more serious attempt at rooting out inveterate evils was ever made in the Middle Ages than in this council. The formal enunciation of this lofty programme of reform brought Innocent's pontificate to a glorious end. The Pontiff devoted what little remained of his life to hurrying on the preparations for the projected crusade, which was to set out 1217. But in the summer of 1216 Innocent died at Perugia, when only fifty-six years old. If not the greatest he was the most powerful of all the popes. For nearly twenty years the whole history of Europe groups itself round his doings. SIGNING OF MAGNA CHARTA A.D. 1215 DAVID HUME The Great Charter is one of the most famous documents in history. Regarded as the foundation of English civil liberty, it also stands as the historic prototype of later declarations of human freedom in various lands. In the Great Charter, as observed by Green, "the vague expressions of the older charters were exchanged for precise and elaborate provisions. The Great Charter marks the transition from the age of traditional rights to the age of written legislation, of parliaments and statutes, which was soon to come." King John of England, although compelled to submit to the loss of his French provinces in 1204, never after lost sight of plans for the renewal of the war with France. A bitter controversy with Pope Innocent III began over an election for the archbishopric of Canterbury, and resulted in a bull deposing John, 1212, with a command to Philip of France to execute the deposition. John made terms with the Pope by agreeing to hold his kingdom in fief from the pontiff, and to pay an annual tribute of one thousand marks (1213). John then invaded France, in alliance with Otho IV, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, and others, but was defeated at Bouvines, near Lille, 1214. This ended John's endeavors to recover his lost power in France, and he could only think henceforth of ruling peaceably his own kingdom and preserving, to his own advantage, his now close connection with the Pope. But although the English King's reign had been full of unfortunate events, the last and most grievous of his trials still awaited him, and "he was destined to pass through a series of more humiliating circumstances than had ever yet fallen to the lot of any other monarch." Under the feudal law of William the Conqueror, the ancient liberties of the Anglo-Saxons were greatly curtailed; in fact, the whole English people were reduced to a state of vassalage, which for the majority closely bordered upon actual slavery. Even the proud Norman barons themselves submitted to a kingly prerogative more absolute than was usual in feudal governments. A charter of comparative liberality had been granted by Henry I, renewed by Stephen, and confirmed by Henry II, but had never, either in letter or spirit, been made effective. And now came the great crisis in which the matters at issue--first between the King and his barons, but ultimately between the Grown and the subjects at large--were to be adjusted. The event was hastened by the exactions and impositions of John himself, and by personal as well as official conduct which rendered him odious to his people--these causes at length producing a general combination against him. The effect of John's lawless practices had already appeared in the general demand made by the barons of a restoration of their privileges; and after he had reconciled himself to the Pope, by abandoning the independence of the kingdom, he appeared to all his subjects in so mean a light that they universally thought they might with safety and honor insist upon their pretensions. But nothing forwarded this confederacy so much as the concurrence of Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury; a man whose memory, though he was obtruded on the nation by a palpable encroachment of the see of Rome, ought always to be respected by the English. This prelate--whether he was moved by the generosity of his nature and his affection to public good or had entertained an animosity against John, on account of the long opposition made by that prince to his election, or thought that an acquisition of liberty to the people would serve to increase and secure the privileges of the Church--had formed the plan of reforming the government. In a private meeting of some principal barons at London, he showed them a copy of Henry I's charter, which, he said, he had happily found in a monastery; and he exhorted them to insist on the renewal and observance of it. The barons swore that they would sooner lose their lives than depart from so reasonable a demand. The confederacy began now to spread wider, and to comprehend almost all the barons in England; and a new and more numerous meeting was summoned by Langton at St. Edmundsbury, under color of devotion. He again produced to the assembly the old charter of Henry; renewed his exhortations of unanimity and vigor in the prosecution of their purpose; and represented, in the strongest colors, the tyranny to which they had so long been subjected, and from which it now behooved them to free themselves and their posterity. The barons, inflamed by his eloquence, incited by the sense of their own wrongs, and encouraged by the appearance of their power and numbers, solemnly took an oath, before the high altar, to adhere to each other, to insist on their demands, and to make endless war on the King till he should submit to grant them. They agreed that, after the festival of Christmas, they would prefer in a body their common petition; and in the mean time they separated, after mutually engaging that they would put themselves in a posture of defence, would enlist men and purchase arms, and would supply their castles with the necessary provisions. The barons appeared in London on the day appointed, and demanded of the King, that, in consequence of his own oath before the primate, as well as in deference to their just rights, he should grant them a renewal of Henry's charter, and a confirmation of the laws of St. Edward. The King, alarmed with their zeal and unanimity, as well as with their power, required a delay; promised that, at the festival of Easter, he would give them a positive answer to their petition; and offered them the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Ely, and the Earl of Pembroke as sureties for his fulfilling this engagement. The barons accepted of the terms, and peaceably returned to their castles. During this interval, John, in order to break or subdue the league of his barons, endeavored to avail himself of the ecclesiastical power, of whose influence he had, from his own recent misfortunes, had such fatal experience. He granted to the clergy a charter, relinquishing forever that important prerogative for which his father and all his ancestors had zealously contended; yielding to them the free election on all vacancies; reserving only the power to issue a _congé d'élire_, and to subjoin a confirmation of the election; and declaring that, if either of these were withheld, the choice should nevertheless be deemed just and valid. He made a vow to lead an army into Palestine against the infidels, and he took on him the cross, in hopes that he should receive from the Church that protection which she tendered to everyone that had entered into this sacred and meritorious engagement. And he sent to Rome his agent, William de Mauclerc, in order to appeal to the Pope against the violence of his barons, and procure him a favorable sentence from that powerful tribunal. The barons, also, were not negligent on their part in endeavoring to engage the Pope in their interests. They despatched Eustace de Vescie to Rome; laid their case before Innocent as their feudal lord, and petitioned him to interpose his authority with the King, and oblige him to restore and confirm all their just and undoubted privileges. Innocent beheld with regret the disturbances which had arisen in England, and was much inclined to favor John in his pretensions. He had no hopes of retaining and extending his newly acquired superiority over that kingdom, but by supporting so base and degenerate a prince, who was willing to sacrifice every consideration to his present safety; and he foresaw that if the administration should fall into the hands of those gallant and high-spirited barons, they would vindicate the honor, liberty, and independence of the nation, with the same ardor which they now exerted in defence of their own. He wrote letters, therefore, to the prelates, to the nobility, and to the King himself. He exhorted the first to employ their good offices in conciliating peace between the contending parties, and putting an end to civil discord. To the second he expressed his disapprobation of their conduct in employing force to extort concessions from their reluctant sovereign; the last he advised to treat his nobles with grace and indulgence, and to grant them such of their demands as should appear just and reasonable. The barons easily saw, from the tenor of these letters, that they must reckon on having the Pope, as well as the King, for their adversary; but they had already advanced too far to recede from their pretensions, and their passions were so deeply engaged that it exceeded even the power of superstition itself any longer to control them. They also foresaw that the thunders of Rome, when not seconded by the efforts of the English ecclesiastics, would be of small avail against them; and they perceived that the most considerable of the prelates, as well as all the inferior clergy, professed the highest approbation of their cause. Besides that these men were seized with the national passion for laws and liberty, blessings of which they themselves expected to partake, there concurred very powerful causes to loosen their devoted attachment to the apostolic see. It appeared, from the late usurpations of the Roman Pontiff, that he intended to reap alone all the advantages accruing from that victory, which under his banners, though at their own peril, they had everywhere obtained over the civil magistrate. The Pope assumed a despotic power over all the churches; their particular customs, privileges, and immunities were treated with disdain; even the canons of general councils were set aside by his dispensing power; the whole administration of the Church was centred in the court of Rome; all preferments ran, of course, in the same channel; and the provincial clergy saw, at least felt, that there was a necessity for limiting these pretensions. The legate, Nicholas, in filling those numerous vacancies which had fallen in England during an interdict of six years, had proceeded in the most arbitrary manner; and had paid no regard, in conferring dignities, to personal merit, to rank, to the inclination of the electors, or to the customs of the country. The English Church was universally disgusted; and Langton himself, though he owed his elevation to an encroachment of the Romish see, was no sooner established in his high office than he became jealous of the privilege annexed to it, and formed attachments with the country subjected to his jurisdiction. These causes, though they opened slowly the eyes of men, failed not to produce their effect; they set bounds to the usurpations of the papacy; the tide first stopped, and then turned against the sovereign Pontiff; and it is otherwise inconceivable how that age, so prone to superstition, and so sunk in ignorance, or rather so devoted to a spurious erudition, could have escaped falling into an absolute and total slavery under the court of Rome. About the time that the Pope's letters arrived in England, the malcontent barons, on the approach of the festival of Easter, when they were to expect the King's answer to their petition, met by agreement at Stamford; and they assembled a force consisting of above two thousand knights, besides their retainers and inferior persons without number. Elated with their power, they advanced in a body to Brackley, within fifteen miles of Oxford, the place where the court then resided; and they there received a message from the King, by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Earl of Pembroke, desiring to know what those liberties were which they so zealously challenged from their sovereign. They delivered to these messengers a schedule, containing the chief articles of their demands; which was no sooner shown to the King than he burst into a furious passion, and asked why the barons did not also demand of him his kingdom; swearing that he would never grant them such liberties as must reduce himself to slavery. No sooner were the confederate nobles informed of John's reply than they chose Robert Fitz-Walter their general, whom they called "the mareschal of the army of God and of Holy Church "; and they proceeded without further ceremony to levy war upon the King, They besieged the castle of Northampton during fifteen days, though without success; the gates of Bedford castle were willingly opened to them by William Beauchamp, its owner; they advanced to Ware on their way to London, where they held a correspondence with the principal citizens; they were received without opposition into the capital; and finding now the great superiority of their force, they issued proclamations, requiring the other barons to join them, and menacing them, in case of refusal or delay, with committing devastation on their houses and estates. In order to show what might be expected from their prosperous arms, they made incursions from London, and laid waste the King's parks and palaces; and all the barons, who had hitherto carried the semblance of supporting the royal party, were glad of this pretence for openly joining a cause which they always had secretly favored. The King was left at Odiham, in Hampshire, with a poor retinue of only seven knights, and after trying several expedients to elude the blow, after offering to refer all differences to the Pope alone, or to eight barons, four to be chosen by himself, and four by the confederates, he found himself at last obliged to submit at discretion. A conference between the King and the barons was appointed at Runnymede, between Windsor and Staines; a place which has ever since been extremely celebrated, on account of this great event. The two parties encamped apart, like open enemies; and after a debate of a few days, the King, with a facility somewhat suspicious, signed and sealed the charter which was required of him. This famous deed, commonly called the "Great Charter," either granted or secured very important liberties and privileges to every order of men in the kingdom: to the clergy, to the barons, and to the people. The freedom of elections was secured to the clergy; the former charter of the King was confirmed, by which the necessity of a royal congé d'élire and confirmation was superseded; all check upon appeals to Rome was removed, by the allowance granted every man to depart the kingdom at pleasure, and the fines to be imposed on the clergy, for any offence, were ordained to be proportional to their lay estates, not to their ecclesiastical benefices. The privileges granted to the barons were either abatements in the rigor of the feudal law or determinations in points which had been left by that law or had become, by practice, arbitrary and ambiguous. The reliefs of heirs succeeding to a military fee were ascertained: an earl's and baron's at a hundred marks, a knight's at a hundred shillings. It was ordained by the charter that, if the heir be a minor, he shall, immediately upon his majority, enter upon his estate, without paying any relief; the king shall not sell his wardship; he shall levy only reasonable profits upon the estate, without committing waste or hurting the property; he shall uphold the castles, houses, mills, parks, and ponds, and if he commit the guardianship of the estate to the sheriff or any other, he shall previously oblige them to find surety to the same purpose. During the minority of a baron, while his lands are in wardship, and are not in his own possession, no debt which he owes to the Jews shall bear any interest. Heirs shall be married without disparagement; and before the marriage be contracted, the nearest relatives of the person shall be informed of it. A widow, without paying any relief, shall enter upon her dower, the third part of her husband's rents; she shall not be compelled to marry, so long as she chooses to continue single; she shall only give security never to marry without her lord's consent. The king shall not claim the wardship of any minor who holds lands by military tenure of a baron, on pretence that he also holds lands of the crown by socage or any other tenure. Scutages shall be estimated at the same rate as in the time of Henry I; and no scutage or aid, except in the three general feudal cases--the king's captivity, the knighting of his eldest son, and the marrying of his eldest daughter--shall be imposed but by the great council of the kingdom; the prelates, earls, and great barons shall be called to this great council, each by a particular writ; the lesser barons by a general summons of the sheriff. The king shall not seize any baron's land for a debt to the crown if the baron possesses as many goods and chattels as are sufficient to discharge the debt. No man shall be obliged to perform more service for his fee than he is bound to by his tenure. No governor or constable of a castle shall oblige any knight to give money for castle guard, if the knight be willing to perform the service in person, or by another able-bodied man; and if the knight be in the field himself, by the king's command, he shall be exempted from all other service of this nature. No vassal shall be allowed to sell so much of his land as to incapacitate himself from performing his service to his lord. These were the principal articles, calculated for the interest of the barons; and had the charter contained nothing further, national happiness and liberty had been very little promoted by it, as it would only have tended to increase the power and independence of an order of men who were already too powerful, and whose yoke might have become more heavy on the people than even that of an absolute monarch. But the barons, who alone drew and imposed on the prince this memorable charter, were necessitated to insert in it other clauses of a more extensive and more beneficent nature: they could not expect the concurrence of the people without comprehending, together with their own, the interests of inferior ranks of men; and all provisions which the barons for their own sake were obliged to make in order to insure the free and equitable administration of justice, tended directly to the benefit of the whole community. The following were the principal clauses of this nature: It was ordained that all the privileges and immunities above mentioned, granted to the barons against the King, should be extended by the barons to their inferior vassals. The King bound himself not to grant any writ empowering a baron to levy aid from his vassals except in the three feudal cases. One weight and one measure shall be established throughout the kingdom. Merchants shall be allowed to transact all business without being exposed to any arbitrary tolls and impositions; they and all freemen shall be allowed to go out of the kingdom and return to it at pleasure; London and all cities and burghs shall preserve their ancient liberties, immunities, and free customs; aids shall not be required of them but by the consent of the great council; no towns or individuals shall be obliged to make or support bridges but by ancient custom; the goods of every freeman shall be disposed of according to his will; if he die intestate, his heirs shall succeed to them. No officer of the crown shall take any horses, carts, or wood, without the consent of the owner. The king's courts of justice shall be stationary, and shall no longer follow his person; they shall be open to everyone; and justice shall no longer be sold, refused, or delayed by them. Circuits shall be regularly held every year; the inferior tribunals of justice, the county court, sheriff's turn, and courtleet shall meet at their appointed time and place; the sheriffs shall be incapacitated to hold pleas of the crown, and shall not put any person upon his trial, from rumor or suspicion alone, but upon the evidence of lawful witnesses. No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or dispossessed of his free tenement and liberties, or outlawed, or banished, or anywise hurt or injured, unless by the legal judgment of his peers or by the law of the land; and all who suffered otherwise in this or the two former reigns shall be restored to their rights and possessions. Every freeman shall be fined in proportion to his fault; and no fine shall be levied on him to his utter ruin; even a villein or rustic shall not by any fine be bereaved of his carts, ploughs, and implements of husbandry. This was the only article calculated for the interests of this body of men, probably at that time the most numerous in the kingdom. It must be confessed that the former articles of the Great Charter contain such mitigations and explanations of the feudal law as are reasonable and equitable; and that the latter involve all the chief outlines of a legal government, and provide for the equal distribution of justice and free enjoyment of property; the great objects for which political society was at first founded by men, which the people have a perpetual and unalienable right to recall, and which no time, nor precedent, nor statute, nor positive institution ought to deter them from keeping ever uppermost in their thoughts and attention. Though the provisions made by this charter might, conformably to the genius of the age, be esteemed too concise, and too bare of circumstances to maintain the execution of its articles, in opposition to the chicanery of lawyers, supported by the violence of power, time gradually ascertained the sense of all the ambiguous expressions; and those generous barons, who first extorted this concession, still held their swords in their hands, and could turn them against those who dared, on any pretence, to depart from the original spirit and meaning of the grant. We may now, from the tenor of this charter, conjecture what those laws were of King Edward, which the English nation, during so many generations, still desired, with such an obstinate perseverance, to have recalled and established. They were chiefly these latter articles of Magna Charta; and the barons who, at the beginning of these commotions, demanded the revival of the Saxon laws, undoubtedly thought that they had sufficiently satisfied the people by procuring them this concession, which comprehended the principal objects to which they had so long aspired. But what we are most to admire is the prudence and moderation of those haughty nobles themselves who were enraged by injuries, inflamed by opposition, and elated by a total victory over their sovereign. They were content, even in this plenitude of power, to depart from some articles of Henry I's charter, which they made the foundation of their demands, particularly from the abolition of wardships, a matter of the greatest importance; and they seem to have been sufficiently careful not to diminish too far the power and revenue of the crown. If they appear, therefore, to have carried other demands to too great a height, it can be ascribed only to the faithless and tyrannical character of the King himself, of which they had long had experience, and which they foresaw would, if they provided no further security, lead him soon to infringe their new liberties, and revoke his own concessions. This alone gave birth to those other articles, seemingly exorbitant, which were added as a rampart for the safeguard of the Great Charter. The barons obliged the King to agree that London should remain in their hands, and the Tower be consigned to the custody of the Primate till the 15th of August ensuing or till the execution of the several articles of the Great Charter. The better to insure the same end, he allowed them to choose five-and-twenty members from their own body as conservators of the public liberties; and no bounds were set to the authority of these men either in extent or duration. If any complaint were made of a violation of the charter, whether attempted by the king, justiciaries, sheriffs, or foresters, any four of these barons might admonish the king to redress the grievance; if satisfaction were not obtained, they could assemble the whole council of twenty-five; who, in conjunction with the great council, were empowered to compel him to observe the charter, and, in case of resistance, might levy war against him, attack his castles, and employ every kind of violence except against his royal person and that of his queen and children. All men throughout the kingdom were bound, under the penalty of confiscation, to swear obedience to the twenty-five barons; and the freeholders of each county were to choose twelve knights, who were to make report of such evil customs as required redress, conformably to the tenor of the Great Charter[56]. The names of those conservators were: the Earls of Clare, Albemarle, Gloucester, Winchester, Hereford; Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk; Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford; William Mareschal, the younger; Robert Fitz-Walter, Gilbert de Clare, Eustace de Vescey, Gilbert Delaval, William de Moubray, Geoffrey de Say, Roger de Mombezon, William de Huntingfield; Robert de Ros, the Constable of Chester; William de Aubenie, Richard de Perci, William Malet, John Fitz-Robert, William de Lanvalay, Hugh de Bigod, and Roger de Montfichet. These men were, by this convention, really invested with the sovereignty of the kingdom; they were rendered coördinate with the King, or rather superior to him, in the exercise of the executive power; and as there was no circumstance of government which, either directly or indirectly, might not bear a relation to the security or observance of the Great Charter, there could scarcely occur any incident in which they might not lawfully interpose their authority. John seemed to submit passively to all these regulations, however injurious to majesty. He sent writs to all the sheriffs ordering them to constrain everyone to swear obedience to the twenty-five barons; he dismissed all his foreign forces; he pretended that his government was thenceforth to run in a new tenor and be more indulgent to the liberty and independence of his people. But he only dissembled till he should find a favorable opportunity for annulling all his concessions. The injuries and indignities which he had formerly suffered from the Pope and the King of France, as they came from equals or superiors, seemed to make but small impression on him; but the sense of this perpetual and total subjection under his own rebellious vassals sank deep in his mind; and he was determined, at all hazards, to throw off so ignominious a slavery. He grew sullen, silent, and reserved; he shunned the society of his courtiers and nobles; he retired into the Isle of Wight, as if desirous of hiding his shame and confusion; but in this retreat he meditated the most fatal vengeance against all his enemies. He secretly sent abroad his emissaries to enlist foreign soldiers, and to invite the rapacious Brabançons into his service, by the prospect of sharing the spoils of England and reaping the forfeitures of so many opulent barons who had incurred the guilt of rebellion by rising in arms against him. And he despatched a messenger to Rome, in order to lay before the Pope the Great Charter, which he had been compelled to sign, and to complain, before that tribunal, of the violence which had been imposed upon him. Innocent, considering himself as feudal lord of the kingdom, was incensed at the temerity of the barons, who, though they pretended to appeal to his authority, had dared, without waiting for his consent, to impose such terms on a prince, who, by resigning to the Roman pontiff his crown and independence, had placed himself immediately under the papal protection. He issued, therefore, a bull, in which, from the plenitude of his apostolic power, and from the authority which God had committed to him, to build and destroy kingdoms, to plant and overthrow, he annulled and abrogated the whole charter, as unjust in itself, as obtained by compulsion, and as derogatory to the dignity of the apostolic see. He prohibited the barons from exacting the observance of it; he even prohibited the King himself from paying any regard to it; he absolved him and his subjects from all oaths which they had been constrained to take to that purpose; and he pronounced a general sentence of excommunication against everyone who should persevere in maintaining such treasonable and iniquitous pretensions. The King, as his foreign forces arrived along with this bull, now ventured to take off the mask; and, under sanction of the Pope's decree, recalled all the liberties which he had granted to his subjects, and which he had solemnly sworn to observe. But the spiritual weapon was found upon trial to carry less force with it than he had reason from his own experience to apprehend. The Primate refused to obey the Pope in publishing the sentence of excommunication against the barons; and though he was cited to Rome, that he might attend a general council there assembled, and was suspended, on account of his disobedience to the Pope and his secret correspondence with the King's enemies; though a new and particular sentence of excommunication was pronounced by name against the principal barons--John still found that his nobility and people, and even his clergy, adhered to the defence of their liberties and to their combination against him; the sword of his foreign mercenaries was all he had to trust to for restoring his authority. The barons, after obtaining the Great Charter, seem to have been lulled into a fatal security, and to have taken no rational measures, in case of the introduction of a foreign force, for reassembling their armies. The King was, from the first, master of the field, and immediately laid siege to the castle of Rochester, which was obstinately defended by William de Albiney, at the head of a hundred and forty knights with their retainers, but was at last reduced by famine. John, irritated with the resistance, intended to have hanged the governor and all the garrison; but on the representation of William de Mauleon, who suggested to him the danger of reprisals, he was content to sacrifice, in this barbarous manner, the inferior prisoners only. The captivity of William de Albiney, the best officer among the confederated barons, was an irreparable loss to their cause; and no regular opposition was thenceforth made to the progress of the royal arms. The ravenous and barbarous mercenaries, incited by a cruel and enraged prince, were let loose against the estates, tenants, manors, houses, parks of the barons, and spread devastation over the face of the kingdom. Nothing was to be seen but the flames of villages, and castles reduced to ashes, the consternation and misery of the inhabitants, tortures exercised by the soldiery to make them reveal their concealed treasures, and reprisals no less barbarous, committed by the barons and their partisans on the royal demesnes, and on the estates of such as still adhered to the Crown. The King, marching through the whole extent of England, from Dover to Berwick, laid the provinces waste on each side of him, and considered every estate which was not his immediate property as entirely hostile and the object of military execution. The nobility of the North in particular, who had shown greatest violence in the recovery of their liberties, and who, acting in a separate body, had expressed their discontent even at the concessions made by the Great Charter, as they could expect no mercy, fled before him with their wives and families, and purchased the friendship of Alexander, the young King of Scots, by doing homage to him. The barons, reduced to this desperate extremity, and menaced with the total loss of their liberties, their properties, and their lives, employed a remedy no less desperate; and making applications to the court of France, they offered to acknowledge Louis, the eldest son of Philip, for their sovereign, on condition that he would afford them protection from the violence of their enraged Prince. Though the sense of the common rights of mankind, the only rights that are entirely indefeasible, might have justified them in the deposition of their King, they declined insisting before Philip on a pretension which is commonly so disagreeable to sovereigns and which sounds harshly in their royal ears. They affirmed that John was incapable of succeeding to the crown, by reason of the attainder passed upon him during his brother's reign, though that attainder had been reversed, and Richard had even, by his last will, declared him his successor. They pretended that he was already legally deposed by sentence of the peers of France, on account of the murder of his nephew, though that sentence could not possibly regard anything but his transmarine dominions, which alone he held in vassalage to that crown. On more plausible grounds they affirmed that he had already deposed himself by doing homage to the Pope, changing the nature of his sovereignty, and resigning an independent crown for a fee under a foreign power. And as Blanche of Castile, the wife of Louis, was descended by her mother from Henry II, they maintained, though many other princes stood before her in the order of succession, that they had not shaken off the royal family in choosing her husband for their sovereign. Philip was strongly tempted to lay hold on the rich prize which was offered to him. The legate menaced him with interdicts and excommunications if he invaded the patrimony of St. Peter or attacked a prince who was under the immediate protection of the holy see; but as Philip was assured of the obedience of his own vassals, his principles were changed with the times, and he now undervalued as much all papal censures as he formerly pretended to pay respect to them. His chief scruple was with regard to the fidelity which he might expect from the English barons in their new engagements, and the danger of intrusting his son and heir into the hands of men who might, on any caprice or necessity, make peace with their native sovereign, by sacrificing a pledge of so much value. He therefore exacted from the barons twenty-five hostages of the most noble birth in the kingdom; and having obtained this security, he sent over first a small army to the relief of the confederates; then more numerous forces, which arrived with Louis himself at their head. The first effect of the young Prince's appearance in England was the desertion of John's foreign troops, who, being mostly levied in Flanders and other provinces of France, refused to serve against the heir of their monarchy. The Gascons and Poictevins alone, who were still John's subjects, adhered to his cause; but they were too weak to maintain that superiority in the field which they had hitherto supported against the confederated barons. Many considerable noblemen deserted John's party--the earls of Salisbury, Arundel, Warrenne, Oxford, Albemarle, and William Mareschal the Younger. His castles fell daily into the hands of the enemy; Dover was the only place which, from the valor and fidelity of Hubert de Burgh, the governor, made resistance to the progress of Louis; and the barons had the melancholy prospect of finally succeeding in their purpose, and of escaping the tyranny of their own King, by imposing on themselves and the nation a foreign yoke. But this union was of short duration between the French and English nobles; and the imprudence of Louis, who on every occasion showed too visible a preference to the former, increased their jealousy which it was so natural for the latter to entertain in their present situation. The Viscount of Melun, too, it is said, one of his courtiers, fell sick at London, and, finding the approaches of death, he sent for some of his friends among the English barons, and, warning them of their danger, revealed Louis's secret intentions of exterminating them and their families as traitors to their Prince, and of bestowing their estates and dignities on his native subjects, in whose fidelity he could more reasonably place confidence. This story, whether true or false, was universally reported and believed; and, concurring with other circumstances which rendered it credible, did great prejudice to the cause of Louis. The Earl of Salisbury and other noblemen deserted again to John's party; and as men easily change sides in civil war, especially where their power is founded on a hereditary and independent authority and is not derived from the opinion and favor of the people, the French Prince had reason to dread a sudden reverse of fortune. The King was assembling a considerable army with a view of fighting one great battle for his crown; but passing from Lynne to Lincolnshire, his road lay along the sea-shore, which was overflowed at high water; and not choosing the proper time for his journey, he lost in the inundation all his carriages, treasure, baggage, and regalia. The affliction of this disaster, and vexation from the distracted state of his affairs, increased the sickness under which he then labored; and though he reached the castle of Newark, he was obliged to halt there, and his distemper soon after put an end to his life, in the forty-ninth year of his age and eighteenth of his reign, and freed the nation from the dangers to which it was equally exposed by his success or by his misfortunes. THE GOLDEN BULL, "HUNGARY'S MAGNA CHARTA," SIGNED A.D. _1222_ E.O.S. During the century preceding the reign of Andrew II, King of Hungary, which began in 1205, that country had been engaged in frequent wars with Venice over the possession of Dalmatia, but no event of recent years had given much importance to Hungarian history. The reign of Andrew began in a time of great confusion in state and church, when the crusading spirit was still a power which both religious and secular rulers found it convenient to turn to the advancement of their own designs. When Andrew deserted the cause of the crusaders in Palestine, after an unsuccessful attack upon a tower on Mount Tabor, he was doubtless piqued at the failure of the King of Jerusalem to render him any support in ordering his affairs at home, where, under his viceroy, the virtual absolutism of the government had become endangered. Out of the conditions which confronted him on his arrival in Hungary came the memorable event--forming one of the great chapters in his country's annals--faithfully and succinctly recounted in the following pages. The reign of Andrew II, in Hungary, forms one of the most important epochs in the history of the country over which he reigned, since from him the nobles obtained their Golden Bull (_Bulla Aurea_), equivalent to the Magna Charta of England. The people of Hungary had, indeed, by their own determination and spirit of independence, and by the wisdom and virtue of the first kings of the race of Arpad, secured in their constitution the foundation of their liberties; but the power of the sovereign had in the mean time increased, so as to surpass those limits within which alone the office can be conducive to the happiness and welfare of the community. The ceremony of coronation was considered, indeed, a necessary condition for the exercise of the royal authority; but though this in some measure acted as a check upon his inordinate power, still all offices and dignities were in the gift of the King, few, if any, being hereditary, and even the magnates could not prevent the monarch giving away any part of his dominions. Wars with Russia and Poland occupied the first years after the accession of Andrew, and much discontent was occasioned in the country by the imperious character of Gertrude his Queen, who ruled over her husband, and caused her relatives and friends to be raised to the highest places in the State. The marriage of the young princess Elizabeth to Louis, son of the Landgrave of Thuringia, was solemnized with great pomp at Presburg, in 1212. The period of prosperity to Hungary which had followed the birth of this child made the people look upon her as one favored by heaven, and her singular virtues helped to confirm the superstition; her life has formed the groundwork of one of the most beautiful of saintly legends, and after her death she was canonized as St. Elizabeth of Hungary. At her nuptials, Queen Gertrude, assuming the authority of her husband, not only presented the ambassadors of the Landgrave with rich presents of gold, silver, and jewels, but bid them tell their lord that if a long life were granted to her she would send them still greater wealth. The following year Andrew accompanied his son Coloman into Poland, to celebrate his marriage with a daughter of the duke, and intrusted the regency during his absence to Gertrude and her relations. Time and opportunity favored a conspiracy against the imperious Queen, and the first attack was made on her brother, the Archbishop of Colocza. He, however, escaped with his life, and in revenge he induced the Pope (Honorius) to lay Hungary under an interdict. The people, however, showed small regard for the denunciations of a distant pontiff, and, irritated by fresh offences, committed by brothers of the Queen, in which Gertrude herself appears to have participated, they murdered her in her own palace, and her children only escaped by the care and fidelity of their tutor. Their uncles fled from the country, carrying with them a large amount of treasure collected by Andrew, who bitterly complained of their ingratitude in a letter to the holy see. The King shortly afterward married the daughter of Peter of Courtenay, Count of Auxerre, and made a vow to raise another crusade. The Latin Emperor of Constantinople dying about this time, the choice of a successor lay between the Hungarian King and his new father-in-law. It fell upon Andrew, and he was invited to take possession of the imperial crown, but was dissuaded from accepting the honor by Pope Honorius, who had already crowned Peter emperor of the East. Peter was opposed by Theodore Comnenus, by whom he was arrested and thrown into a dungeon. The Pope appealed for assistance to Andrew, then on his way to the Holy Land. Andrew accordingly proceeded to Acre, which he reached after a long voyage, but his expedition partook more of a pilgrimage than of a crusade. He was absent from Hungary four years, and returned to find the whole kingdom in disorder, the treasury emptied, and greedy prelates and magnates devouring the substance of the people. To replenish his treasury, Andrew appropriated the gold and jewels left by the empress Constantia, whose death, which took place about this time, prevented her establishing her claim. He further supplied his own extravagance, by farming the taxes to Jews, deteriorating the coin, mortgaging the domains belonging to the fortified castles, and selling the crown lands to wealthy magnates. His eldest son Bela had already gained the respect and affection of the people by the firmness of his character and his love of justice; and Andrew, jealous of his popularity, obliged him to fly the kingdom and seek protection from Leopold, Duke of Austria. The King was, however, at last persuaded to invite him to return, and, in order to secure his throne, he established him at a distance from himself, in the government of Croatia and Dalmatia. Two years later his younger son Coloman took the place of Bela, who was intrusted with the government of Transylvania and of all the country between the Theiss and Aluta. With a weak monarch and an exhausted treasury, the land had become the prey of barbarous invaders, and the disorders of the kingdom had reached such a climax that the magnates resolved to appeal to the mediation of the Pope. Honorius commanded Andrew to restore the lands which he had parted with in direct violation of his coronation oath, by which he had sworn to preserve the integrity of the kingdom and the honor of the crown. Bela now assembled the nobles and franklins of Hungary, and, supported by them, demanded the restoration of the ancient constitution. The ecclesiastics of Hungary, instigated by the Pope, offered to mediate a peace between the King, who was supported by the great magnates, and his son, who had the voice of the people. The condition of this peace was the Golden Bull of Hungary, which was granted in the year 1222. It was here enacted that, "As the liberties of the nobility, and of certain other natives of these realms, founded by King Stephen the Saint, have suffered great detriment and curtailment by the violence of sundry kings impelled by their own evil propensities, by the cravings of their insatiable cupidity and by the advice of certain malicious persons, and as the 'nobiles' of the country had preferred frequent petitions for the confirmation of the constitution of these realms; so that, in utter contempt of the royal authority, violent discussions and accusations had arisen, ... the King declares he is now willing to confirm and maintain, for all times to come, the nobility and freemen of the country in all their rights, privileges, and immunities, as provided by the statutes of St. Stephen." 1. "That the 'nobiles' and their possessions shall not, for the future, be subject to taxes and impositions. 2. "That no man shall be either accused or arrested, sentenced or punished for a crime, unless he receive a legal summons, and until a judicial inquiry into his case shall have taken place. 3. "That though the 'nobiles' and franklins shall be bound to do military service at their own expense, it shall not be legal to force them to cross the frontier of their country. In a foreign war, the king shall be bound to pay the knights and the troops of the counties. 4. "The king has no right to entail whole counties and the high offices of the kingdom. 5. "The king is not allowed to farm to Jews and Ishmaelites his domains, the taxes, the coinage, or the salt mines." The Golden Bull comprised thirty-one chapters, and seven copies were made and delivered into the keeping of the Knights of St. John, the Knights Templars of Hungary and Slavonia, the King, the Palatine, the archbishops of Gran and Colocza, and the Pope. The thirty-first clause gave every Hungarian noble a right of veto upon the acts of the king if unconstitutional. This clause was, however, supposed to give an undue power to the people, and was revoked in 1687. Those magnates who, by the Golden Bull, were compelled to return the land unjustly alienated by King Andrew, formed a conspiracy to overthrow the monarchy, abolish the constitution, and divide the land among themselves. The conspiracy was discovered in time to prevent its execution, but Andrew lost courage and did not venture to insist on his refractory nobles fulfilling their part in the conditions of the Great Charter. He was, however, compelled to ratify it in a diet held in Beregher Forest, in 1231, where the Golden Bull was signed and sealed with all solemnity in the city of Gran. Andrew married for a third time in his old age, Beatrice, daughter of the Marquis d'Este, and died in 1234. During his reign the court was first held at a fixed place of residence; it was not only composed of prelates and magnates, but was frequented by learned men, educated at the schools of Paris and Bologna, as well as within the kingdom. The cities acquired importance about this period, and the condition of the serfs underwent some amelioration. RUSSIA CONQUERED BY THE TARTAR HORDES ALEXANDER NEVSKI SAVES THE REMNANT OF HIS PEOPLE A.D. 1224-1262 ALFRED RAMBAUD Russia was for centuries the chief power of the Slavic race. On its plains and amid the neighboring lands they established a civilization and went through a development not unlike those which transformed Western Europe during the Middle Ages. Slavonia, like Gaul, had received Roman civilization and Christianity from the South. The Northmen had brought her an organization which recalls that of the Germans; and under Yaroslaff, 1016-1054, like the West under Charlemagne, she had enjoyed a certain semblance of unity, while she was afterward dismembered and divided like France in feudal times. The Tartars seem to have been a tribe of the great Mongol race. They conquered Northern China and Central Asia, and after forty years of struggle were united with other Mongol tribes into one nation by Genghis Khan. His lieutenants subdued a multitude of Turkish peoples, passed the Caspian Sea by its southern shore, invaded Georgia and the Caucasus, and entered upon the southern steppes of Russia, where they came in contact with the Polovtsi, also a Mongol race, the hereditary enemies of the Russians proper. This summary by the distinguished French academician, M. Rambaud--our leading authority in Russian history with its related studies--presents, with sufficient clearness, the character and tendency of Russia in the thirteenth century, when she was invaded and subjugated by Asiatic hordes. The Polovtsi asked the Christian princes for help against the Mongols and Turks, who were their brothers by a common origin. "They have taken our country," said they to the descendants of St. Vladimir; "to-morrow they will take yours." Mstislaf the Bold, then Prince of Galitch, persuaded all the dynasties of Southern Russia to take up arms against the Tartars: his nephew Daniel, Prince of Volhynia, Mstislaf Romanovitch, Grand Prince of Kiev, Oleg of Kursk, Mstislaf of Tchernigof, Vladimir of Smolensk, and Vsevolod, for a short time Prince of Novgorod,[57] responded to his appeal. To cement his alliance with the Russians, Basti, Khan of the Polovtsi, embraced orthodoxy. The Russian army had already arrived on the Lower Dnieper, when the Tartar ambassadors made their appearance. "We have come, by God's command, against our slaves and grooms, the accursed Polovtsi. Be at peace with us; we have no quarrel with you." The Russians, with the promptitude and thoughtlessness that characterized the men of that time, put the ambassadors to death. They then went farther into the steppe, and encountered the Asiatic hordes on the Kalka, a small river running into the Sea of Azov. The Russian chivalry, on this memorable day, showed the same disordered and the same ill-advised eagerness as the French chivalry at the opening of the English wars. Mstislaf the Bold, Daniel of Galitch, and Oleg of Kursk were the first to rush into the midst of the infidels, without waiting for the princes of Kiev, and even without giving them warning, in order to gain for themselves the honors of victory. In the middle of the combat, the Polovtsi were seized with a panic and fell back on the Russian ranks, thus throwing them into disorder. The rout became general, and the leaders spurred on their steeds in hopes of reaching the Dnieper. Six princes and seventy of the chief boyars or _voievodes_ remained on the field of battle. It was the Crécy and Poitiers of the Russian chivalry. Hardly a tenth of the army escaped; the Kievians alone left ten thousand dead. The Grand Prince of Kiev, however, Mstislaf Romanovitch, still occupied a fortified camp on the banks of the Kalka. Abandoned by the rest of the army, he tried to defend himself. The Tartars offered to make terms; he might retire on payment of a ransom for himself and his _droujina_. He capitulated, and the conditions were broken. His guard was massacred, and he and his two sons-in-law were stifled under planks. The Tartars held their festival over the inanimate bodies, 1224. After this thunderbolt, which struck terror into the whole of Russia, the Tartars paused and returned to the East. Nothing more was heard of them. Thirteen years passed, during which the princes reverted to their perpetual discords. Those in the northeast had given no help to the Russians of the Dnieper; perhaps the grand prince George II of Suzdal[58] may have rejoiced over the humiliation of the Kievians and Galicians. The Mongols were forgotten; the chronicles, however, are filled with fatal presages: in the midst of scarcity, famine and pestilence, of incendiaries in the towns and calamities of all sorts, they remark on the comet of 1224, the earthquake, and eclipse of the sun of 1230. The Tartars were busy finishing the conquest of China, but presently one of the sons of Genghis, Ugudei, sent his nephew Batu to the West. As the reflux of the Polovtsi had announced the invasion of 1224, that of the Saxin nomads, related to the Khirghiz who took refuge on the lands of the Bulgarians of the Volga, warned men of a new irruption of the Tartars, and indicated its direction. It was no longer South Russia, but Sozdalian Russia, that was threatened. In 1237 Batu conquered the Great City, capital of the half-civilized Bulgars, who were, like the Polovtsi, ancient enemies of Russia, and who were to be included in her ruin. Bolgary was given up to the flames, and her inhabitants were put to the sword. The Tartars next plunged into the deep forests of the Volga, and sent a sorcerer and two officers as envoys to the princes of Riazan. The three princes of Riazan, those of Pronsk, Kolomna, Moscow, and Murom, advanced to meet them. "If you want peace," said the Tartars, "give us the tenth of your goods." "When we are dead," replied the Russian princes, "you can have the whole." Though abandoned by the princes of Tchernigoff and the grand prince George II, of whom they had implored help, the dynasty of Riazan accepted the unequal struggle. They were completely crushed; nearly all their princes remained on the field of battle. Legend has embellished their fall. It is told how Feodor preferred to die rather than see his young wife, Euphrasia, the spoil of Batu; and how, on learning his fate, she threw herself and her son from the window of the _terem_. Oleg the Handsome, found still alive on the battle-field, repelled the caresses, the attention, and religion of the Khan, and was cut in pieces. Riazan was immediately taken by assault, sacked, and burned. All the towns of the principality suffered the same fate. It was now the turn of the Grand Prince, for the Russia of the northeast had not even the honor of falling in a great battle like the Russia of the southwest, united for once against the common enemy. The Suzdalian army, commanded by a son of George II, was beaten on the day of Kolomna, on the Oka. The Tartars burned Moscow, then besieged Vladimir, the royal city, which George II had abandoned to seek for help in the North. His two sons were charged with the defence of the capital. Princes and boyars, feeling there was no alternative but death or servitude, prepared to die. The princesses and all the nobles prayed Bishop Metrophanes to give them the tonsure; and when the Tartars rushed into the town by all its gates, the vanquished retired into the cathedral, where they perished, men and women, in a general conflagration. Suzdal, Rostoff, Yaroslavl, fourteen towns, and a multitude of villages in the grand principality were also given over to the flames, 1238. The Tartars then went to seek the Grand Prince, who was encamped on the Sit, almost on the frontier of the possessions of Novgorod. George II could neither avenge his people nor his family. After the battle, the Bishop of Rostoff found his headless corpse. His nephew, Vassilko, who was taken prisoner, was stabbed for refusing to serve Batu. The immense Tartar army, after having sacked Tver, took Torjok; there "the Russian heads fell beneath the sword of the Tartars as grass beneath the scythe." The territory of Novgorod was invaded; the great republic trembled, but the deep forests and the swollen rivers delayed Batu. The invading flood reached the Cross of Ignatius, about fifty miles from Novgorod, then returned to the southeast. On the way the small town of Kozelsk (near Kaluga) checked the Tartars for so long, and inflicted on them so much loss, that it was called by them the "wicked town." Its population was exterminated, and the prince Vassili, still a child, was "drowned in blood." The two following years, 1239-1240, were spent by the Tartars in ravaging Southern Russia. They burned Pereiaslaf and Tchernigoff, defended with desperation by its princes. Next Mangu, grandson of Genghis Khan, marched against the famous town of Kiev, whose name resounded through the East and in the books of the Arab writers. From the left bank of the Dnieper, the barbarian admired the great city on the heights of the right bank, towering over the wide river with her white walls and towers adorned by Byzantine artists, and innumerable churches with cupolas of gold and silver. Mangu proposed capitulation to the Kievians; the fate of Riazan, of Tchernigof, of Vladimir, the capitals of powerful states, announced to them the lot that awaited them in case of refusal, yet the Kievians dared to massacre the envoys of the Khan. Michael, their Grand Prince, fled; his rival, Daniel of Galitch, did not care to remain. On hearing the report of Mangu, Batu came to assault Kiev with the bulk of his army. The grinding of the wooden chariots, the bellowings of the buffaloes, the cries of the camels, the neighing of the horses, the howlings of the Tartars rendered it impossible, says the annalist, to hear your own voice in the town. The Tartars assailed the Polish Gate and knocked down the walls with a battering-ram. The Kievians, supported by the brave Dmitri, a Galician boyar, defended the fallen ramparts till the end of the day, then retreated to the Church of the Dime, which they surrounded by a palisade. The last defenders of Kiev found themselves grouped around the tomb of Yaroslaff. Next day they perished. The Khan gave the boyar his life, but the "Mother of Russian cities" was sacked. The pillage was most terrible. Even the tombs were not respected. All that remains of the Church of the Dime is a few fragments of mosaic in the Museum at Kiev. St. Sophia and the Monastery of the Catacombs were delivered up to be plundered, 1240. Volhynia and Galicia still remained, but their princes could not defend them, and Russia found herself, with the exception of Novgorod and the northwest country, under the Tartar yoke. The princes had fled or were dead: hundreds of thousands of Russians were dragged into captivity. Men saw the wives of boyars, "who had never known work, who a short time ago had been clothed in rich garments, adorned with jewels and collars of gold, surrounded with slaves, now reduced to be themselves the slaves of barbarians and their wives, turning the wheel of the mill and preparing their coarse food." If we look for the causes which rendered the defeat of the brave Russian nation so complete, we may, with Karamsin, indicate the following: 1. Though the Tartars were not more advanced, from a military point of view, than the Russians, who had made war in Greece and in the West against the most warlike and civilized people of Europe, yet they had an enormous superiority of numbers. Batu probably had with him five hundred thousand warriors. 2. This immense army moved like one man; it could successively annihilate the droujinas of the princes, or the militia of the towns, which only presented themselves successively to its blows. The Tartars had found Russia divided against herself. 3. Even though Russia had wished to form a confederation, the sudden irruptions of an army entirely composed of horsemen did not leave her time. 4. In the tribes ruled by Batu, every man was a soldier; in Russia the nobles and citizens alone bore arms: the peasants, who formed the bulk of the population, allowed themselves to be stabbed or bound without resistance. 5. It was not by a weak nation that Russia was conquered. The Tartar-Mongols, under Genghis Khan, had filled the East with the glory of their name, and subdued nearly all Asia. They arrived, proud of their exploits, animated by the recollection of a hundred victories, and reinforced by numerous peoples whom they had vanquished, and hurried with them to the West. When the princes of Galitch, of Volhynia, and of Kiev arrived as fugitives in Poland and Hungary, Europe was terror-stricken. The Pope, whose support had been claimed by the Prince of Galitch, summoned Christendom to arms. Louis IX prepared for a crusade. Frederic II, as emperor, wrote to the sovereigns of the West: "This is the moment to open the eyes of body and soul now that the brave princes on whom we reckoned are dead or in slavery." The Tartars invaded Hungary, gave battle to the Poles in Liegnitz in Silesia, had their progress a long while arrested by the courageous defence of Olmutz in Moravia, by the Tcheque voievode Yaroslaff, and stopped finally, learning that a large army, commanded by the King of Bohemia and the dukes of Austria and Carinthia, was approaching. The news of the death of Oktai, second Emperor of all the Tartars, in China, recalled Batu from the West, and during the long march from Germany his army necessarily diminished in number. The Tartars were no longer in the vast plains of Asia and Eastern Europe, but in a broken hilly country, bristling with fortresses, defended by a population more dense and a chivalry more numerous than those in Russia. To sum up, all the fury of the Mongol tempest spent itself on the Slavonic race. It was the Russians who fought at the Kalka, at Kolomna, at the Sit; the Poles and Silesians at Liegnitz; the Bohemians and Moravians at Olmutz. The Germans suffered nothing from the invasion of the Mongols but the fear of it. It exhausted itself principally on those plains of Russia which seem a continuation of the steppes of Asia. Only in Russian history did the invasion produce great results. Batu built on one of the arms of the Lower Volga a city called Sarai (the Castle), which became the capital of a powerful Tartar empire, the "Golden Horde," extending from the Ural and Caspian to the mouth of the Danube. The Golden Horde was formed not only of Tartar-Mongols or Nogais, who even now survive in the Northern Crimea, but particularly of the remains of ancient nomads, such as the Patzinaks and Polovtsi, whose descendants seem to be the present Kalmucks and Bashkirs; of Turkish tribes tending to become sedentary, like the Tartars of Astrakhan in the present day; and of the Finnish populations already established in the country, and which mixed with the invaders. Oktai, Kuluk, and Mangu, the first three successors of Genghis Khan, elected by all the Mongol princes, took the title of "great khans," and the Golden Horde recognized their authority; but under his fourth successor, Kublai, who usurped the throne and established himself in China, this bond of vassalage was broken. The Golden Horde became an independent state, 1260. United and powerful under the terrible Batu, who died in 1255, it fell to pieces under his successors; but in the fourteenth century the khan Uzbeck reunited it anew, and gave the Horde a second period of prosperity. The Tartars, who were pagans when they entered Russia, embraced, about 1272, the faith of Islam, and became its most formidable apostles. Meanwhile Yaroslaff, brother of the grand prince George II, was his successor in Suzdal. Yaroslaff, 1238-1246, found his inheritance in the most deplorable condition. The towns and villages were burned, the country and roads covered with unburied corpses; the survivors hid themselves in the woods. He recalled the fugitives and began to rebuild. Batu, who had completed the devastation of South Russia, summoned Yaroslaff to do him homage at Sarai, on the Volga. Yaroslaff was received there with distinction. Batu confirmed his title of grand prince, but invited him to go in person to the Great Khan, supreme chief of the Mongol nation, who lived on the banks of the river Sakhalian or Amur. To do this was to cross the whole of Russia and Asia. Yaroslaff bent his knees to the new master of the world, Oktai, succeeded in refuting the accusations brought against him by a Russian boyar, and obtained a new confirmation of his title. On his return he died in the desert of exhaustion, and his faithful servants brought his body back to Vladimir. His son Andrew succeeded him in Suzdal, 1246-1252. His other son, Alexander, reigned at Novgorod the Great. Alexander was as brave as he was intelligent. He was the hero of the North, and yet he forced himself to accept the necessary humiliations of his terrible situation. In his youth we see him fighting with all the enemies of Novgorod, Livonian knights and Tchuds, Swedes and Finns. The Novgorodians found themselves at issue with the Scandinavians on the subject of their possessions on the Neva and the Gulf of Finland. As they had helped the natives to resist the Latin faith, King John obtained the promise of Gregory IX that a crusade, with plenary indulgences, should be preached against the Great Republic and her _protégés_, the pagans of the Baltic. His son-in-law, Birger, with an army of Scandinavians, Finns, and western crusaders, took the command of the forces, and sent word to the Prince of Novgorod: "Defend yourself if you can; know that I am already in your provinces." The Russians on their side, feeling they were fighting for orthodoxy, opposed the Latin crusade with a Greek one. Alexander humbled himself in St. Sophia, received the benediction of the archbishop Spiridion, and addressed an energetic harangue to his warriors. He had no time to await reinforcements from Suzdal. He attacked the Swedish camp, which was situated on the Ijora, one of the southern affluents of the Neva, which has given its name to Ingria. Alexander won a brilliant victory, which gained him his surname of Nevski, and the honor of becoming, under Peter the Great, the second conqueror of the Swedes, one of the patrons of St. Petersburg. By the orders of his great successor his bones repose in the monastery of Alexander Nevski. The battle of the Neva was preserved in a dramatic legend. An Ingrian chief told Alexander how, in the eve of the combat, he had seen a mysterious bark, manned by two warriors with shining brows, glide through the night. They were Boris and Gleb, who came to the rescue of their young kinsman. Other accounts have preserved to us the individual exploits of the Russian heroes--Gabriel, Skylaf of Novgorod, James of Polotsk, Sabas, who threw down the tent of Birger, and Alexander Nevski himself, who with a stroke of the lance "imprinted his seal on his face," 1240. Notwithstanding the triumph of such a service, Alexander and the Novgorodians could not agree; a short time after, he retired to Pereiaslavl-Zaliesski. The proud republicans soon had reason to regret the exile of this second Camillus. The Order of the Swordbearers, the indefatigable enemy of orthodoxy, took Pskof, their ally; the Germans imposed tribute on the Vojans, vassals of Novgorod, constructed the fortress of Koporie on her territory of the Neva, took the Russian town of Tessof in Esthonia, and pillaged the merchants of Novgorod within seventeen miles of their ramparts. During this time the Tchuds and the Lithuanians captured the peasants, and the cattle of the citizens. At last Alexander allowed himself to be touched by the prayers of the archbishop and the people, assembled an army, expelled the Germans from Koporie, and next from Pskof, hanged as traitors the captive Vojans and Tchuds, and put to death six knights who fell into his hands. This war between the two races and two religions was cruel and pitiless. The rights of nations were hardly recognized. More than once Germans and Russians slew the ambassadors of the other side. Alexander Nevski finally gave battle to the Livonian knights on the ice of Lake Peipus, killed four hundred of them, took fifty prisoners, and exterminated a multitude of Tchuds. Such was the "Battle of the Ice," 1242. He returned in triumph to Novgorod, dragging with him his prisoners in armor of iron. The grand master expected to see Alexander at the gates of Riga, and implored help of Denmark. The Prince of Novgorod, satisfied with having delivered Pskof, concluded peace, recovered certain districts, and consented to the exchange of prisoners. At this time Innocent IV, deceived by false information, addressed a bull to Alexander, as a devoted son of the Church, assuring him that his father Yaroslaff, while dying among the Horde, had desired to submit himself to the throne of St. Peter. Two cardinals brought him this letter from the Pope, 1251. It is this hero of the Neva and Lake Peipus, this vanquisher of the Scandinavians and Livonian knights, that we are presently to see grovelling at the feet of a barbarian. Alexander Nevski had understood that, in presence of this immense and brutal force of the Mongols, all resistance was madness, all pride ruin. To brave them was to complete the overthrow of Russia. His conduct may not have been chivalrous, but it was wise and humane. Alexander disdained to play the hero at the expense of his people, like his brother Andrew of Suzdal, who was immediately obliged to fly, abandoning his country to the vengeance of the Tartars. The Prince of Novgorod was the only prince in Russia who had kept his independence, but he knew Batu's hands could extend as far as the Ilmen. "God has subjected many peoples to me," wrote the barbarian to him: "will you alone refuse to recognize my power? If you wish to keep your land, come to me; you will see the splendor and the glory of my sway." Then Alexander went to Sarai with his brother Andrew, who disputed the grand principality of Vladimir with his uncle Sviatoslaf. Batu declared that fame had not exaggerated the merit of Alexander, that he far excelled the common run of Russian princes. He enjoined the two brothers to show themselves, like their father Yaroslaff, at the Great Horde; they returned from it in 1257. Kuiuk had confirmed the one in the possession of Vladimir, and the other in that of Novgorod, adding to it all South Russia and Kiev. The year 1260 put the patience of Alexander and his politic obedience to the Tartars to the proof. Ulavtchi, to whom the khan Berkai had confided the affairs of Russia, demanded that Novgorod should submit to the census and pay tribute. It was the hero of the Neva that was charged with the humiliating and dangerous mission of persuading Novgorod. When the _possadnik_ uttered in the _vetche_ the doctrine that it was necessary to submit to the strongest, the people raised a terrible cry and murdered the possadnik. Vassili himself, the son of Alexander, declared against a father "who brought servitude to freemen," and retired to the Pskovians. It needed a soul of iron temper to resist the universal disapprobation, and counsel the Novgorodians to the commission of the cowardly though necessary act. Alexander arrested his son, and punished the boyars who had led him into the revolt with death or mutilation. The vetche had decided to refuse the tribute, and send back the Mongol ambassadors with presents. However, on the rumor of the approach of the Tartars, they repented, and Alexander could announce to the enemy that Novgorod submitted to the census. But when they saw the officers of the Khan at work, the population revolted again, and the Prince was obliged to keep guard on the officers night and day. In vain the boyars advised the citizens to give in: assembled around St. Sophia, the people declared they would die for liberty and honor. Alexander then threatened to quit the city with his men and abandon it to the vengeance of the Khan. This menace conquered the pride of the Novgorodians. The Mongols and their agents might go, register in hand, from house to house in the humiliated and silent city to make the list of the inhabitants. "The boyars," says Karamsin, "might yet be vain of their rank and their riches, but the simple citizens had lost with their national honor their most precious possession," 1260. In Suzdal also Alexander found himself in the presence of insolent victors and exasperated subjects. In 1262 the inhabitants of Vladimir, of Suzdal, of Rostof, rose against the collectors of the Tartar impost. The people of Yaroslavl slew a renegade named Zozimus, a former monk, who had become a Moslem fanatic. Terrible reprisals were sure to follow. Alexander set out with presents for the Horde at the risk of leaving his head there. He had likewise to excuse himself for having refused a body of auxiliary Russians to the Mongols, wishing at least to spare the blood and religious scruples of his subjects. It is a remarkable fact that over the most profound humiliations of the Russian nationality the contemporary history always throws a ray of glory. At the moment that Alexander went to prostrate himself at Sarai, the Suzdalian army, united to that of Novgorod, and commanded by his son Dmitri, defeated the Livonian knights and took Dorpat by assault. The khan Berkai gave Alexander a kind greeting, accepted his explanations, dispensed with the promised contingent, but kept him for a year near his court. The health of Alexander broke down; he died on his return before reaching Vladimir. When the news arrived at his capital, the metropolitan Cyril, who was finishing the liturgy, turned toward the faithful and said, "Learn, my dear children, that the Sun of Russia is set, is dead." "We are lost," cried the people, breaking forth into sobs. Alexander, by this policy of resignation, which his chivalrous heroism does not permit us to despise, had secured some repose for exhausted Russia. By his victories over his enemies of the West he had given her some glory, and hindered her from despairing under the most crushing tyranny, material and moral, which a European people had ever suffered. THE SIXTH CRUSADE TREATY OF FREDERICK II WITH THE SARACENS A.D. 1228 SIR GEORGE W. COX For six years after the end of the Fifth Crusade--in which the crusaders, forgetting their vows, instead of delivering Jerusalem sacked Constantinople--the Christians of Palestine were protected by a truce with Saphadin, who had succeeded his brother Saladin in power. This truce was broken by the action of the Latin Christians, Pope Innocent himself, who had been the leading spirit of the Fifth Crusade, continuing to make known his designs for the recovery of the Holy Land. Between the Fifth and the Sixth Crusades occurred that which was in some respects the strangest manifestation of the crusading mania, whereby the inspiration of the Pope and other preachers of a new crusade carried some fanatics to the maddest extremes. This movement, or series of movements, is known as the "Children's Crusade," 1212. In response to the appeals of certain priests who went about France and Germany calling upon the children to perform what, through wickedness, their fathers had failed to do, and assuring them of miraculous aid and success, fifty thousand boys and girls, braving parental authority, gathered together and pervaded both cities and countries, singing: "Lord Jesus, give us back thy Holy Cross," and saying, "We are going to Jerusalem to deliver the Holy Sepulchre." Some of them crossed the Alps, intending to embark at Italian ports; others took ship at Marseilles. Many were lost in the forests, and perished with heat, hunger, thirst, and fatigue. Some, after being stripped by thieves, were reduced to slavery, and a remnant, in sorrow and shame, returned to their homes. Of those who sailed, some were lost by shipwreck, and others sold as slaves to the Saracens. "No authority," says Michaud, "interfered, either to stop or prevent the madness; and when it was announced to the Pope that death had swept away the flower of the youth of France and Germany, he contented himself with saying: 'These children reproach us with having fallen asleep, while they were flying to the assistance of the Holy Land.'" Innocent now called a general council of the Church--the Fourth Lateran Council, 1215--for the purpose of stimulating a new crusade. "The necessity for succoring the Holy Land," said his letters of convocation, "and the hope of conquering the Saracens, are greater than ever. We renew our cries and our prayers to you to excite you to this noble enterprise." The Sixth Crusade, which was inspired by the Pope and preached in France by his legate, Robert de Courçon, was divided in the sequel into three maritime expeditions. The first, 1216, consisted mainly of Hungarians under their King, Andrew; the second, 1218, was composed of Germans, Italians, French, and English nobles and their followers; and the third, 1228, was led by Frederick II in person. The first two produced no considerable advantage for the Christians; while Frederick, involved in the Hohenstaufen struggle with the papacy, evaded his crusading vows made long before. Innocent III died in 1216; Honorius III, the next pope, died in 1227; and his successor, Gregory IX, urged Frederick on to fulfil his promise. The Emperor embarked in 1227, but when he had been only three days at sea, by reason of his own illness or the sickness of his troops--accounts are not agreed--he returned to port. The Pope, furious at his conduct, excommunicated him. But in the following year, notwithstanding the ban, Frederick set sail for Palestine, and the story of this expedition is the essential history of the Sixth Crusade. After his excommunication, Frederick appealed not to the Pope, but to the sovereigns of Christendom. His illness, he said, had been real, the accusations of the Pope wanton and cruel. "The Christian charity which should hold all things together is dried up at its source, in its stem, not in its branches. What had the Pope done in England but stir up the barons against John, and then abandon them to death or ruin? The whole world paid tribute to his avarice. His legates were everywhere, gathering where they had not sown, and reaping where they had not strawed." But although he thus dealt in language as furious as that of the Pope, the thought of breaking definitely with him and of casting aside his crusading vow as worthless mockery never seems to have entered his mind. He undertook to bring his armies together again with all speed, and to set off on his expedition. His promise only brought him into fresh trouble with the Pope, who in the Holy Week next following laid under interdict every place in which Frederick might happen to be. If this censure should be treated with contempt, his subjects were at once absolved from their allegiance. The Emperor went on steadily with his preparations, and then went to Brundisium. He was met by papal messengers who strictly forbade him to leave Italy until he had offered satisfaction for his offences against the Church. In his turn Frederick, having sailed to Otranto, sent his own envoys to the Pope to demand the removal of the interdict; and these, of course, were dismissed with contempt. In September the Emperor landed at Ptolemais; but the emissaries of the Pope had preceded him, and he found himself under the ban of the clergy and shunned by their partisans. The patriarch and the masters of the military orders were to see that none served under his polluted banners. The charge was given to willing servants: but Frederick found friends in the Teutonic Knights under their grand master Herman de Salza, as well as with the body of pilgrims generally. He determined to possess himself of Joppa, and summoned all the crusaders to his aid. The Templars refused to stir, if any orders were to be issued in his name; and Frederick agreed that they should run in the name of God and Christendom. But while the enemy was aided greatly by the divisions among the Christians, the death of the Damascene sultan Moadhin was of little use to Frederick. The Egyptian sultan, Kameel, was now in a position of greater independence, and his eagerness for an alliance with the Emperor had rapidly cooled down. Frederick, on his side, still resolved to try the effect of negotiation. His demands extended at first, it is said, to the complete restoration of the Latin kingdom, and ended, if we are to believe Arabian chroniclers, in almost abject supplications. At length a treaty was signed. It surrendered to the Emperor the whole of Jerusalem except the Temple or mosque of Omar, the keys of which were to be retained by the Saracens; but Christians, under certain conditions, might be allowed to enter it for the purpose of prayer. It further restored to the Christians the towns of Jaffa, Bethlehem, and Nazareth. To Frederick the conclusion of this treaty was a reason for legitimate satisfaction. It enabled him to hasten back to his own dominions, where a papal army was ravaging Apulia and threatening Sicily. One task only remained for him in the East. He must pay his vows at the Holy Sepulchre. But here also the hand of the Pope lay heavy upon him. Not merely Jerusalem, but the Sepulchre itself, passed under the interdict as he entered the gates of the city, and the infidel Moslem saw the churches closed and all worship suspended at the approach of the Christian Emperor. On Sunday, in his imperial robes and attended by a magnificent retinue, Frederick went to his coronation, as king of Jerusalem, in the Church of the Sepulchre. Not a single ecclesiastic was there to take part in the ceremony. The archbishops of Capua and Palermo stood aloof, while Frederick, taking the crown from the high altar, placed it on his own head. By his orders his friend Herman de Salza read an address, in which the Emperor acquitted the Pope for his hard judgment of him and for his excommunication, and added that a real knowledge of the facts would have led him to speak not against him, but in his favor. He confessed his desire to put to shame the false friends of Christ, his accusers and slanderers, by the restoration of peace and unity, and to humble himself before God and before his vicar upon earth. From the Saracens he won golden opinions. The cadi silenced a muezzin who had to proclaim the hour of prayer from a minaret near the house in which the Emperor lodged, because he added to his call the question, "How is it possible that God had for his son Jesus the son of Mary?" Frederick marked the silence of the crier when the hour of prayer came round. On learning the cause he rebuked the cadi for neglecting, on his account, his duty and his religion, and warned him that if he should visit him in his kingdom he would find no such ill-judged deference. He showed no dissatisfaction, it is said, with the inscription which declared that Saladin had purified the city from those who worshipped many gods, or any displeasure when the Mahometans in his train fell on their knees at the times for prayer. His thoughts about the Christians were shown, it was supposed, when, seeing the windows of the Holy Chapel barred to keep out the birds which might defile it, he asked: "You may keep out the birds; but how will you keep out the swine?" In glowing terms Frederick wrote to the sovereigns of Europe, announcing the splendid success which he had achieved rather by the pen than by the sword. He scarcely knew what a rock of offence he had raised up among Christians and Moslems alike. By a few words on a sheet of parchment the Christian Emperor had deprived his people of the hope of getting their sins forgiven by murdering unbelievers; by the same words the Moslem Sultan had prevented his subjects from insuring an entrance to the delights of paradise by the slaughter of the Nazarenes. From Gerold, Patriarch of Jerusalem, a letter went to the Pope, full of virulent abuse of the Emperor as a traitor, an apostate, and a robber; but even before he received this letter Gregory had condemned what he chose to consider as a monstrous attempt to reconcile Christ and Belial, and to set up Mahomet as an object of worship in the temple of God. "The antagonist of the Cross," he wrote, "the enemy of the faith and of all chastity, the wretch doomed to hell, is lifted up for adoration, by a perverse judgment, and by an intolerable insult to the Saviour, to the lasting disgrace of the Christian name and the contempt of all the martyrs who have laid down their lives to purify the Holy Land from the defilements of the Saracens." But Frederick, in his turn, could be firm and unyielding. He returned from Jerusalem to Joppa, from Joppa to Ptolemais; and there learning that a proposal had been made to establish a new order of knights, he declared that no one should, without his consent, levy soldiers within his dominion. Summoning all the Christians within the city to the broad plain without the gates, he spoke his mind freely about the conduct of the Patriarch and the Templars, with all who aided and abetted them, and insisted that all the pilgrims, having now paid their vows, should return at once to Europe. On this point he was inexorable. His archers took possession of the churches; two friars who denounced him from the pulpit were scourged through the streets; the Patriarch was shut up in his palace; and the commands of the Emperor were carried out. Frederick returned to Europe, to find that the Pope had been stirring up Albert of Austria to rebel against him, and that the papal forces were in command of John of Brienne, who may have been the author of the false news of Frederick's death, and who certainly proclaimed himself as the only emperor. To the Pope, Frederick sent his envoys, Herman de Salza at their head. They were dismissed with contempt; and their master was again placed under the greater excommunication with the Albigensians, the Poor Men of Lyons, the Arnoldists, and other heretics who, in the eyes of the faithful, were the worst enemies of the Christian church. Such was the reward of the man who had done more toward the reëstablishment of the Latin kingdom in Palestine than had been done by the lion-hearted Richard, and who, it may fairly be said, had done it without shedding a drop of blood. RISE OF THE HANSEATIC LEAGUE A.D. 1241 H. DENICKE[59] Trade trusts, which have attained so large a growth in our day, are not an original product of the present age. The Hanseatic League, or _Hansa_--the word meaning a society, union--was the first trust of which we have authentic record. It began about A.D. 1140, but the league was not signed until 1241. It was first called into being to protect the property of the German merchants against the piratical Swedes and other Norsemen, but presently became submerged in a combination of certain cities to enlarge and control the trade of each country with which they had commerce. So powerful did the league become that it dominated kings, nobles, and cities by its edicts. Those free cities which constituted the league had the emperor for their lord, were released from feudal obligations, and passed their own laws, subject only to his approval. The emperors, finding in the strength of the cities a bulwark against the bishops and the princes, constantly extended the municipal rights and privileges. The Hanseatic League at one time nearly monopolized the whole trade of Europe north of Italy. It was an epoch of associations in which the league arose. The Church was but a society, fighting as an army for its liberty. Each trade had its guild, and none might practise his trade unless he was a member of the particular guild controlling it. The handicrafts were in the same case; and the real or operative freemasonry was instituted, about the same time, for the erection of ecclesiastical and palatial buildings. Wealth, power, pomp, and pride began to wane in the cities of the league early in the fifteenth century, and the movement was accelerated by the change of ocean routes of trade due to the discovery of America, and the Cape of Good Hope way to India. The final extinction came as late as October, 1888, when the free cities of Hamburg and Bremen, whose right to remain free ports had been ratified in the imperial constitution of 1871, renounced their ancient privileges and became completely merged in the autocratic Fatherland. With good reason the world's commerce is to-day accepted as one of the most imposing and unique phenomena of our time. It is but necessary to consult a statistical handbook in order to obtain a conception of the gigantic figures involved in the exports and imports of the multifarious articles of commerce to and from all countries--figures whose magnitude precludes the possibility of forming an adequate conception of their true significance. No less astonishing are the means employed by traffic to-day to develop our system of credit and our complex and useful web of communication. One fact, however, should be borne in mind: namely, that our commerce is of comparatively modern growth. The two factors chiefly responsible for its development were: (1) The great voyages of discovery which began at the close of the fifteenth century and opened a theretofore unsuspected field of production and consumption; and (2) the utilization of steam, that great triumph of the nineteenth century. Perhaps a brief sketch of that earlier commercial development which immediately preceded our extensive modern commercial network may not be unwelcome to the reader desirous of contrasting the narrower but nevertheless fascinating mediæval conditions of the German Hansa with those prevailing in our present mercantile world. Let us inquire how the confederation of the Hansa arose, and, after briefly sketching its external history, review in greater detail its commercial and industrial methods, its art work, domestic life, and constitution. The development of the German Hansa may be traced to two principal sources: (1) The associations formed by German merchants abroad, and (2) the union established by the Low-German cities at home. In the days of Charlemagne, Germany's eastern boundary was extended to the Elbe, and beyond it to Holstein, but it was not until four centuries later, that is, in the reign of Frederick Barbarossa, that the Baltic was reached, the southern borders of which sea, now constituting Mecklenburg, Pomerania, and Prussia, having theretofore been inhabited chiefly by Slavonic and Lithuanian peoples. The credit for this increase of power is due primarily to the Saxon duke Henry the Lion, who, while the Emperor was engaged in maturing and executing mighty plans of world conquest, developed upon this virgin soil an extraordinary colonial activity, transplanting hither German peasants, burghers, and priests, and with them German customs and Christian civilization. In this way there arose about the year A.D. 1200, upon soil wrested from the Slavs, a number of promising towns, foremost among which was Lubeck, a place endowed by Duke Henry with municipal rights especially designed to promote commercial intercourse and affording liberal and far-reaching privileges to the counsellors and burghers. Soon thereafter the rapidly developing neighboring cities of Wismar, Rostock, Stralsund, Greifswald, Anklam, and Stettin, usually called "the Wendish cities," became participants in the constitution thus granted. The territory now grew rapidly. In the course of the thirteenth century, the then pagan country of Prussia and the present Baltic provinces of Russia were conquered by the Teutonic knights and kindred orders and were occupied and settled. The same historical process which took place in Greece, and in more recent times in America, also repeated itself here: the youthful colonial offshoots overcame the narrowing and confining influence of the mother country, yet reacted favorably upon it by virtue of that vivifying influence, due to more rapid and exuberant growth. In the mean time the other countries contiguous to the North and Baltic seas, that is, Russia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and England, had become converted to Christianity. Some of them, indeed, had embraced the Christian creed several centuries prior to this time. The natural consequence was that a lively intercourse was cultivated upon the two seas, especially after the crusades, which enterprises, by opening new avenues of commerce and increasing the knowledge concerning numerous articles of utility, had greatly augmented the demands of the people of the Occident. The extraordinary development of trade on the Baltic, indeed, vividly recalls the ancient commercial activity on the Mediterranean; and the phrase, "a basin fruitful of culture," often applied to the latter region, may with equal justice be applied also to the former. In the beginning, Russians, Danes, and Englishmen participated in the active trade conducted on the northern littoral. Eventually, however, they were displaced by their German rivals. As the northern nations upon their acceptance of Christianity had once before formed their political and social institutions upon German models, so they now, in such cities as Stockholm, Bergen, Copenhagen, and others, became subject to the cultural and, above all, the commercial influence of the German burgher. It is interesting to note the manner in which this extraordinary influence was secured. In later mediæval times all classes of the population were compelled to rely upon self-help. In other words, they were compelled to replace the defective or insufficient protection afforded by the State by corporate bodies. Thus the merchants of a Low-German German town, when in search of a common centre of trade, pledged themselves by a solemn oath to a defensive and offensive alliance and mutual furtherance; and wider alliances between the various towns themselves soon followed. Of all these private commercial associations none attained to greater importance than did the Gothland Company, a society of Low-German merchants who visited Gothland, the centre of commercial activity in the Baltic, for trading purposes. Here was the seat of the mighty city of Wisby, which contained such wealth that a Danish king once declared that the swine there ate from silver troughs. Even at the present day the massive ruins of the old city wall and of the eighteen churches which once existed there bear testimony to the former magnitude and grandeur of the city. The Gothland Company flourished chiefly during the thirteenth century and enjoyed all the privileges of a political power; bearing its own seal, policing the seas, and insisting upon strict compliance on the part of all navigators of the Baltic with the marine laws which it had created. Parallel with this development was the formation of unions between inland towns, caused by the depredations of robber-knights; the menacing increase of power among the nobility; and by commercial motives of all kinds, as, for example, the necessity of preventing banished criminals and debtors from seeking an asylum in neighboring communities. Along the entire region from Esthland to Holland, both of which at that time belonged to the German crown, the municipalities united. In the far-western part of the German empire there was the municipal group of the Netherlands, among which such cities as Amsterdam, Utrecht, and Deventer belonged. Farther inland was the Rhenish-Westphalian group, consisting of Cologne, Dortmund, Munster, and others, which cities, though somewhat distant from the sea, nevertheless occupy a place of honor as pioneers of German marine commerce. Between these two western groups and those in the East there was a wide gap extending as far as the mouths of the Elbe and the Weser. At the entrance to these rivers, however, and along the borders of the Baltic were the great maritime communities, the chief members of the Hanseatic League, including the before-mentioned Wendish group and the cities of Bremen and Hamburg. Yet not these alone, although they were in some respects the most important. Inland, the municipal groups extended so as to embrace Berlin, then very unimportant, Perleberg, etc., in the Mark of Brandenburg, the Saxon cities of Magdeburg, Hanover, Luneburg, Goslar, Hildesheim, Brunswick, and others; in the far-eastern part of the empire the six rapidly growing cities of the Teutonic order, Kulm, Thorn, Dantzic, Elbing, Braunsberg, and Koenigsberg; and finally, in Livonia and Esthonia, Riga, Dorpat, Reval, and Pernau. Noteworthy was the treaty concluded in A.D. 1241, between Hamburg and Lubeck, whereby the former assumed control of the interests in the North Sea and the Elbe, while the latter safeguarded those of the Baltic. This treaty between Hamburg and Lubeck is sometimes regarded as the beginning of the Hanseatic League. It has here been sufficiently demonstrated, however, that the association was the result of a slow and gradual process, enforced by conditions, and that it did not originate in the mind of any particular statesman as a definite plan. The two groups, the maritime and the inland municipal, had developed independently: it now remained to unite them; and from the union thus effected sprang the great institution of the German Hansa. The private associations, not excepting the Gothland Company, in view of the rapid extension of commerce and the consequent jealousy of foreign competitors, were no longer able to afford sufficient protection to the foreign trade--a condition which did not escape the statesmen of Lubeck, with their marked power of initiative and political sagacity. Thus it came, during the last decades of the thirteenth century, that the private societies became more and more dependent upon the municipal unions, which, under the leadership of the free and centrally located city of Lubeck, now assumed the energetic guardianship of maritime commerce, by reason of which they were drawn from their hitherto isolated position and gradually became fused into an increasingly compact union. Already at the close of the thirteenth century the young institution of the Hansa received its initiation in warfare in a conflict with the kingdom of Norway, which country was compelled to purchase peace at the price of new and greater concessions to the league. Soon thereafter, however, the steady progress of the Hansa met with a rebuff. Denmark, at that time the foremost power of the North, had for more than a century endeavored to obtain the supremacy of the Baltic, at the entrance to which it was so advantageously situated. At one time Lubeck was for an entire decade forced into a sort of vassalage to the energetic king Eric Menved of Denmark, although the relations to the sister-cities of the league, which had never been entirely severed, were subsequently restored and confirmed by new treaties. When finally, in A.D. 1361, the Danish king Waldemar Atterdag, inspired by rapacity and revenge, went so far as to fall upon the metropolis of the Baltic, the Swedish city of Wisby, in the midst of peace, and to annex it, thereby inflicting serious losses upon the resident Low-German merchants, Lubeck once more placed herself at the head of the Wendish cities and at the diet of Greifswald decreed war against the ruthless invader. But the expedition proved disastrous, owing chiefly to the tardiness of the kings of Sweden and Norway, who had been drawn into the alliance. Nevertheless, the unfortunate admiral of the Lubeck fleet, Johann Wittenborg, who also enjoyed the rank of burgomaster of the Hanseatic city, was put to the axe in the public market-place of Lubeck in expiation of his failure. A doubtful peace was now concluded with the Danes, but was soon broken by their renewed plunderings of Hanseatic vessels and the obstacles placed by them upon traffic. Another passage at arms was required. The ensuing conflict was the greatest and most glorious ever fought, not only by the Hansa, but by Germany, upon the sea. In 1367 deputies from the Prussian, Wendish, and Netherlandish cities assembled in the city hall of Cologne and there prepared those memorable articles of confederation which decreed another war with King Waldemar of Denmark; stipulated the levying of a definite contingent of troops on the part of the contracting cities; provided for a duty on exports to defray the expenses of the campaign; and draughted letters of protest to the Pope, to Emperor Charles IV, and to many of the German princes. That auspicious day marks a turning-point in the history of the Hanseatic League, and was fraught with high importance to the whole German empire. The preliminary history of the Hansa here ends and its brilliant epoch begins. The warships of the cities and their army so thoroughly vanquished Denmark that, after two years of warfare, the Danish royal council and the representatives respectively of the municipalities, the nobility, and the clergy despatched a commission of thirty-two to Stralsund to sign a treaty, ostensibly in the name of their fugitive ruler--a treaty which may justly be said to mark the climax in the development of the power of the burghers of Germany. The treaty not only provided for considerable concessions in matters of navigation and intercourse, but also conceded to the members of the Cologne confederation, comprising about sixty Hansa cities, the right to occupy and to fortify for a period of fifteen years the four chief castles on Skane--Helsingborg, Malmo, Scanov, and Falsterbo--commanding the sound, the most important maritime highway traversed by the Hanseatic vessels. But the most extraordinary privilege granted by this treaty was that making the subsequent election of a king for Denmark subject to the approval of the confederation--thus assigning to the burghers a right such as no king or emperor of that time exercised over a foreign state. The confederates, however, wisely declined to avail themselves of this dangerous prerogative, not only for political reasons, but also because of the clever negotiations of the youthful queen Margaret, the daughter and heir of Waldemar, who, by the union of Kalmar in 1397, became invested with the triple crown of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. The fact remains, however, that the Hansa for the ensuing century and a half maintained its title as the foremost of maritime and as one of the principal political powers--and that entirely unaided and without the sanction of kaiser or empire. Let us take a very general survey of this glorious period, concerning which many interesting disclosures have recently been made, and endeavor to obtain, if possible, a glimpse of the activity of these busy cities and of the confederation which they formed. As to commerce, the first task which the confederation set itself to fulfil was the abolition of that early mediæval condition which inclined to regard the stranger in foreign parts as devoid of rights. The efforts of the confederation in this particular resulted in the acquisition of hundreds of privileges, secured either singly or conjointly by the cities. The contents of the treaties are usually the same: (1) Protection of person and goods; (2) abolition of the law which declared forfeit to the feudal lord such goods as, for instance, might happen to fall from a wagon and thereby touch the ground; (3) the abolition of the strand right, which had secured to the owner of the shore land the jetsam and flotsam of wrecked or stranded vessels; (4) the concession of legal procedure to the debtor; (5) liberation from the duel and other forms of the "divine judgment" in legal procedure; (6) the reduction of duties; (7) permission to sell at retail, as for example, cloth and linen by the ell--a privilege previously accorded only to natives. These are but a few of the privileges secured, the most important of which, however, remains to be mentioned. This was the establishment of branches and bureaus in the most frequented commercial centres abroad. On the other hand, the confederation never had the remotest intention of granting similar privileges to the nations from which these concessions had been secured, such as the English, Flemish, Norwegians, Danes, and Russians. On the contrary. In Cologne, for example, foreign merchants were permitted only three times a year and then for a period of three weeks only. Never, perhaps, in history has a monopoly been so rigidly and relentlessly enforced--a monopoly which not only rested upon the nation at home, but which made bold incursions into the sovereignty of foreign states in order to smother their independent trade, or, as in Norway, utterly to stamp it out. Of the two great avenues of trade, that indicated by the termini Bruges and Novgorod is first deserving of mention. For centuries it was practically used exclusively by merchants of the Hansa, who, moreover, were forbidden to form copartnerships with foreigners, such as Russians and Englishmen. Novgorod, well guarded against pirates and situated in the navigable Volkhov, was at that time in a sense the capital of the much-divided Russian empire. This city, since the day of its founder, Rurik, had been the centre of Russian trade and enjoyed an almost republican independence. From this point diverged the most frequented highways of trade to the Dnieper and the Volga. From Russia the German merchant exported chiefly fine furs, such as beaver, ermine, and sable, and enormous quantities of wax, which to-day, as formerly, is still obtained in the central wooded parts of the country where apiculture is extensively prosecuted. His imports, on the other hand, consisted of fine products of the loom, articles of wool, linen, and silk; of boots and shoes, usually manufactured at home of Russian leather; and finally, of beer, metal goods, and general merchandise. It is evident, therefore, that the German merchant provided Russia--which country was at that time industrially in a very primitive condition--with all the necessaries required. Bruges, in Flanders, the western terminus of the before-mentioned highway of commerce, was during the last centuries of the Middle Ages approximately what London is to the world of to-day. It was, beside Venice, the actual world-mart of the Continent, a centre where Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, Frenchmen, and High- and Low-Germans--a motley throng--congregated to exchange their goods. Thither the Hanseatic merchant transported wood and other forest products; building stones and iron, the latter being still forged in primitive forest smithies; and copper from the rich mines of Falun, the ore from which was usually sold or mortgaged to the Lubeck merchants. From the Baltic countries he imported grain, and from Scandinavia herring and cod--all natural products, in exchange for which he sent to the respective countries his own manufactured goods. In Bruges he represented the entire northern region, both in the giving and the receiving of merchandise, for only through his instrumentality could the gifts of the East, such as oil, wine, spices, silk, and other articles of luxury, which were usually transported through the Alpine passes and thence down the Rhine to Bruges, be distributed among the northern nations. This applies also to the highly prized textiles of Flanders, which in those days were sometimes sold at fabulous prices. The other stream of Hanseatic trade terminated at London. The German merchant sent thither chiefly French wines and Venetian silks. It was he who attended to this traffic--not the consumer or the producer. In exchange for these commodities he took English wool--the output being already at that time very extensive--transporting it to the mills of Flanders. Such was at that time the commercial relation of Germany to England. If the latter country to-day, by virtue of its incomparably favorable geographical position, has become the first naval and commercial power, it was in an economic sense at that time absolutely dependent upon Germany, which country, after the loss of its political supremacy, outstripped all other nations in the contest for economic supremacy--excepting perhaps the Arabians and the republics of Northern Italy, who controlled the trade in the Orient and the Mediterranean. Naturally the English merchants were jealous and frequently brought complaints before their kings and parliaments; but the latter, despite occasional contentions, ever and again upheld the foreign invader. The reason is not far to seek: like the kings of the north, they could not dispense with the silver chests of the Hanseatic towns and merchants, who on more than one occasion secured their loans by appropriating the products of the tin mines or the duties on wool, or by taking in pawn crown and jewels. It is evident, therefore, that the greatest source of wealth to the Hansa was this intermediary traffic. Several other important commercial connections will be touched upon later. Casual mention should here be made, however, to the trade with Scotland, Ireland, Brabant, and France, whose annual markets were regularly attended by the Hansa merchants. While the trade of the cities of the league found such wide extension abroad, however, the traffic with their nearest neighbors, the High-Germans, was very weak. Their domestic trade, indeed, was confined chiefly to the plains of Northern Germany, extending southward to Thuringia and eastward to the Oder and the Vistula, where Cracow constituted the last outpost. The great High-German communities along the Main and the Danube pursued different political and economic interests. Being chiefly manufacturing cities, they formed only temporary unions. Dependent rather upon the south of Europe, they were also differentiated from their northern brethren by their coinage, inasmuch as they accepted gold as their standard, whereas the Low-Germans preferred silver money, especially that of Lubeck. Of course each Hanse town formed the nucleus of the local intercourse; and thither came noblemen and peasant to barter the produce of the fields for the merchandise of the city, and to invest, or probably more frequently to borrow, money. Lubeck and Bruges were in those days the money centres of Northern Europe, and their councillors and commercial magnates were the bankers of kings and princes. The methods of transportation and intercourse at that time were very different from those of to-day. There was no postal service, no insurance, very sparse circulation of bills, and very little of that agency--or commission--business, which relegates to a third party the transportation and management of goods. Trade was very largely a matter of individual enterprise, demanding in a far greater measure than to-day the personal superintendence of the merchant. Usually the latter himself travelled well-armed across sand and sea to distant lands, trusting in God and upon his strong right arm. As master of a vessel he did not fail to interest his crew in the safety of the ship and cargo by allotting to them part of the profits. Indeed, his journey was far more perilous than it is to-day. Upon the public highway he was subject to the attack of the robber barons, who held him prisoner against heavy ransom; and in the innumerable hiding-places of the rock-bound northern coast his course was followed by the watch-boats of pirates. The occupations of highway robbery and piracy were at that time still regarded among wide circles as excusable. Dozens of feudal castles, the retreats of robber barons, were destroyed by the soldiers of the municipalities, and dozens of freebooting vessels were annihilated, the robbers themselves being executed with axe or sword or thrown overboard. The piracy of that age reached its acme in the notorious "Society of Equal Sharers" or "Brotherhood of Victuallers." This consisted of an incongruous aggregation of noble and plebeian blades, who, despite their excessive brutality, nevertheless possessed some genuine knightly characteristics, the hardihood and bravery of the true mariner, and a boundless love of adventure. Formed during the eighth decade of the fourteenth century for the purpose of assisting the King of Sweden against the martial queen Margaret of Denmark, its immediate object at that time was the supplying of victuals to the beleaguered city of Stockholm--whence its name. When, upon the surrender of the city and the establishment of peace, the immediate object of the society had been fulfilled, the attraction of freebooting proved too strong for these wild companions, whose excesses now assumed an increasingly alarming form. For more than a half century they remained the terror of the northern seas. Almost annually the cities were compelled to send out vessels against them, which, however, were not always so successful as the celebrated Bunte Kuh ("Brindled Cow") of Hamburg, which captured the most dangerous of the piratic captains, Claus Stoertebeker and Godeke Michel, with their followers and their fabulous treasures, and brought them to Hamburg. Tradition has it that for three days the public executioner stood ankle-deep in the blood of the condemned. Nevertheless, the seafaring public did not suspect the presence of a robber behind every bush or cliff. After all, an undisturbed voyage was the rule rather than the exception; sensational occurrences, of course, then, as now, playing an important part in the reports of the time. To these social disorders must be added elemental dangers of all kinds, such as the tides and shallows of the North Sea--the shallow waters contiguous to the coast being chiefly navigated--dangers against which neither compass nor chronometer was then available. Even buoys and lighthouses were comparatively rare or inadequate at a time when nautical knowledge itself was still extremely defective. It was therefore not astonishing that shipwrecks were of daily occurrence and were of course followed by all the evils of that cruel and barbarous "Strand law" which, despite all papal edicts and voluntary treaties, could not be abrogated, but was actually carried out by the Archbishop of Bremen himself. Notwithstanding all these hinderances, the sea voyage, which, by reason of the dangers attending it, was strictly prohibited during the winter months, was incomparably safer and pleasanter than the journey by land. The traveller by land was strictly confined to the prescribed highway of travel, every deviation from which was regarded as a defraudation of the customs and was punished by confiscation of goods. The inconveniences to which the merchant was subjected in the way of taxes are almost incredible. As the mediæval spirit was reflected in the confusion of coinage--nearly every petty count and every city eventually enjoying the privilege of a private mint--so also was the deplorable disunion existing among the German people mirrored in the innumerable road and water taxes. Above Hamburg, along a road about twelve German miles in extent, there were not fewer than nine customs stations. Fortunately the tariff was not complicated, but was levied on the freight of the ship or wagon, or estimated by the bale or box irrespective of value or the quality of the goods under inspection. Upon the presented crucifix the merchant, aided occasionally by his cojurors, solemnly swore to the correctness of his representations concerning the goods carried by him, the oath, as is well known, being very frequently brought into requisition in all judicial and commercial transactions during mediæval times. The Hansa ships were usually round-bellied, high-boarded craft with one mast, and flew the pennant of their home port. They were comparatively broad and built of heavy planks, and could easily be transformed into war vessels by furnishing them with a superstructure known as the _castell_ ("castle") in which catapults and archers could be placed. In size they were probably as large as the trading vessels which cross the Baltic to-day. That they were skilfully handled is evident from the fact that a contemporaneous report mentions a trip from Ripen in Jutland to Amsterdam as having been successfully made in two days. As regards the laws of navigation, a point especially noteworthy was the talent displayed in organizing fellowship unions. Reference is not here made to the habit of the merchants in sailing in squadrons so much as to the peculiar institutions which regulated the life on board--institutions which have recently been justly designated as the most perfect expression of that executive ability which characterized the close of German mediævalism. An account of these institutions dating from the middle of the sixteenth century has fortunately been preserved. As soon as the vessel was upon the high sea the crew, which consisted of the captain and the "ship's children," pledged itself strictly to obey orders and equitably to divide any booty eventually secured. A court of sheriffs was then organized, consisting of a judge, four sheriffs, a sergeant-at-arms, a secretary, an executioner, and several other officials. Thereupon came the proclamation of the maritime law upon which the eventual judgment of the court was based. The tenor of this law was as follows: It is forbidden to swear in God's name; to mention the devil; to sleep after the hour for prayer; to handle lights; to destroy or waste food; to meddle with the duties of the drawer of liquor; to play at dice or cards after sunset; and to vex the cook or annoy the crew under penalty of a monetary fine. The following are some of the penalties inflicted for various offences: Whoever sleeps while on guard or creates a disturbance between decks shall be drawn under the keel of the vessel; whoever attempts to draw weapons on board, be they long or short, shall have the respective weapon run through his hand into the mast, so that he will have to draw the weapon through his own hand again if he would free himself; whoever accuses another unjustly shall pay the double fine prescribed for the offence charged; and no one shall endeavor to take revenge upon the executioners. Upon the completion of the voyage the court resigned, after dispensing a general amnesty and partaking of bread and salt in company with the rest of the crew. Upon landing, the monetary fines which had been collected from delinquents on board were presented to the lord of the strand for benevolent distribution. On arriving at the end of his journey the merchant was confronted by new difficulties. It not infrequently happened that the master of the port visited by him had, within the time elapsed since the departure of the vessel from home, fallen into strife with the respective Hanse town whose ensign the vessel bore. As newspapers and despatches were at that time unknown, it is not difficult to conjecture the difficulties with which a merchant had to contend. Moreover, he required an exact knowledge of local conditions and of the legal rights accorded him, which were different in each city and always inferior to those of the native inhabitants. To-day, as a rule, a foreigner, wherever he may be, enjoys the full benefits of the place he happens to visit, equally with the resident citizen. It was not so in the days of the Hansa, and hence the constant endeavor of the league to obtain firmly established offices or bureaus abroad. At an early date such a bureau existed in London under the name of the Stahlhof, another at Novgorod under the name of the St. Petershof, and still others at smaller towns in England and the Netherlands--each having its peculiar privileges, customs, and mercantile usages, but all possessing in common the invaluable right of settling any difficulty affecting the members of the league according to their own native code. In London the representative of the league was compelled to become an English citizen, and the entire bureau thus became naturalized, as it were. The same was true of the Hanse bureau at Bruges, a city in which after all, in view of the powerful competition prevailing there, a pronounced monopoly was certain to be curbed to some extent. Here the league merely possessed warerooms, while their agents lived privately among the burghers. The right of holding court in the Carmelite monastery was conceded to them; and there, too, they administered their affairs. In Novgorod, however, the conditions were entirely different. In view of the uncivilized condition and the national prejudices of the Russians, the greatest care had to be exercised in all intercourse with the natives in order that the existence of the entire Hanseatic colony might not be endangered. Consequently, this intercourse was regulated with great circumspection and in all detail both by the diet of the Hanseatic League and by the chiefs of the bureau. It was, however, in Bergen, Norway, that northernmost station of the Hansa, that the most interesting conditions prevailed. Here, that is, in Norway, the German merchant, by means of money or arms, gradually drove all competitors, including Englishmen, from the field, and in 1350 succeeded in establishing in the most favorably situated and liveliest city of the land, Bergen, the last of his numerous bureaus--a bureau which maintained itself, though in somewhat deteriorated form, until the eighteenth century. This station, created at a late period of Hanseatic expansion, bears testimony to the colonial genius of the German merchants of the league and affords a glimpse into their business methods. It may therefore be deserving of a more detailed consideration. Twenty-one farms or granges, belonging to as many Hanse towns, dotted the shore. Each of these, surrounded by trees and lawns, covered considerable space and included spacious granaries and dwellings, most of which served also as warehouses. Each grange had its dock, where ships could conveniently land and discharge their goods. The entire space thus occupied by the Hanses was enclosed by a wall, beyond which and running parallel with it was the so-called "Schustergasse"--a street occupied by German artisans, who, though permanently settled here, nevertheless remained closely in touch with their German brethren of the bureau. Every bureau had its _Schutting_--a spacious, windowless room which depended for light and air upon a hole in the roof, which likewise served as a vent for the smoke issuing from the hearth. It was in this room that the agents of the Hansa merchants assembled to debate on judicial or mercantile affairs. During the long winter evenings the families of the agents, as the assistants and apprentices of the resident factors were pleasantly termed, congregated here, each group at its own particular rough-hewn, wooden table, to indulge in strong drink and pleasant gossip. When the interests of the entire colony were to be discussed, the _Ælterleute_ ("seniors") from every grange would meet in the Schutting belonging to Bremen and called _Zum Mantel._ This assemblage was called the "Council of Eighteen," the representative of Lubeck enjoying the greatest distinction and wielding the greatest influence among them by reason of the hegemony exercised by his native town. When matters of particular importance arose, or in case of a serious dispute, the affair at issue was usually referred to the _Bergenfahrercollegium_ ("the town council"), or more frequently to the general convention of the Hansa at Lubeck. The expenses of maintaining the colony, in view of the almost monastic simplicity of life prevailing there and the large membership, were naturally small. In its zenith it probably numbered about three thousand persons, who were subjected to strict laws--as strict, indeed, as those of any camp or monastery. No woman was permitted within the colony, and no person was permitted out of doors after sundown, unless, indeed, he wished to run the gauntlet of the fierce watchdogs which guarded the reservations of the settlers. The members and employés of the Hansa who resided here were not permitted to marry Norwegian women, in order that their special rights and privileges might not be endangered through intermixture with the natives. How considerable were these special rights the reader may determine from the fact that, during the weekly markets, the members of the Hansa bureaus had the streets barricaded by powerful fellows who permitted no one to interfere with the valuable privilege of priority conceded to the Hanses in the matter of barter. Naturally enough the purchasing price of goods was arbitrarily set by the latter under these conditions, while the fixing of the selling price, in the absence of all competition, was a matter of course. That the exercise of such pressure sometimes disturbed the serenity of the Norwegian can readily be conjectured, especially when it is considered that the average Northman is by no means indisposed to have a little brush with his neighbor now and then. But in such an event the Germans usually gave tit for tat, and that with a vengeance. On one occasion they killed a bishop in the presence of the king; at various other times they burned monasteries over the heads of the inmates; and frequently they sheltered criminals, or demolished entire dwellings in order to obtain kindling wood speedily and conveniently. Only by means of concord among themselves and strict exclusiveness could the Hanses for centuries maintain their position upon that inhospitable and thinly peopled shore. The novice, who usually entered the service of the Hansa at the age of twelve, was compelled to serve an apprenticeship of seven years, during which his duties consisted also in cooking, cleaning, and washing for and in waiting upon the older clerks. Thereafter he advanced to the position of journeyman, his inauguration being attended by festive, highly suggestive, and, to the beholder, amusing ceremonies. These ceremonies began with a great drinking bout arranged at the youth's expense. The next feature of the programme was entitled _Das Staupenspiel im Paradies_ ("the Walloping in Paradise"), a procedure to which every apprentice was exposed annually and to which on this occasion he bade a final farewell. This part of the ceremony consisted in setting apart a space enclosed within birch boughs, on entering which the blindfolded and scantily attired youth who was to be initiated into the order of journeymen was thoroughly trounced by "angels of paradise" in the form of lusty companions who were usually unsparing of the rod. A festive procession through the streets followed. It was led by two fantastically attired youngsters who impersonated a Norwegian peasant and his wife, and whose duty it was to play tricks upon the sightseers and to amuse them. After a baptism in the sea the unfortunate youth who figured as the hero of this festival was subjected to a procedure akin to that of roasting a herring in the flue; and it is singular enough that the records show only one case of death by suffocation consequent upon this ordeal. Good days, however, now followed upon evil ones, and the youthful novitiate was fêted and entertained by his companions and made to forget the sufferings and hardships of his initiation. Many other pastimes were indulged in by the members of the bureaus, which, however, cannot be touched upon here. Suffice it to say that they were characterized by the humor and roughness of the age. Despite repeated attempts of the Hansa and of the several cities to put an end to these sports, they nevertheless continued to be practised for centuries, upon the rather plausible plea that they served as a wholesome training for the mercantile youth. Never before or since, however, has the pedagogy of the rod found so thoroughgoing an application as here. One of the busiest centres of Hanseatic activity remains to be touched upon: namely, the small tongue of land near Skanor and Falsterbo, and constituting an appendage of the larger peninsula of Skane or Schonen. The once prosperous stretch of beach here referred to is now a desert tract of sand, the furrows and ruins on which are the only relics of the busy commercial life once prevailing. After the herring had during the tenth and eleventh centuries visited the Pomeranian coast in great shoals, it changed its course to the above-mentioned region of the Sound. The Hanses were not slow to avail themselves of this circumstance. They succeeded in securing a practical ownership of this most valuable district of Denmark; thereby demonstrating how incredibly incompetent the princes of the land were at that time as regards the utilization of their natural resources. These princes actually granted to several German cities, and, moreover, to each individually, the right to establish reservations here--the so-called _Vitten_--consisting of fenced enclosures on the coast, within which were erected vendors' and fish-booths, dwellings, and even churches, all under the administration of special governors appointed by the Germans. From this point the herring grounds were readily accessible. The fishing lasted from July until October; and during this time merchants, fishermen, and coopers resorted here by thousands to fish as well as to salt, smoke, pack, and load the produce of the net. In connection with this industry there were held in the immediate vicinity much-frequented annual markets, the distributing centres for home consumption. At the beginning of the fifteenth century the capricious fish suddenly took another direction, visiting the coast of Holland, to the people of which he thenceforth became as lucrative a source of revenue as he had been to the Hanses. It has been said that Amsterdam with all its wealth is built upon herrings; and a similar statement could once be applied with equal justice to the Hansa cities of the Baltic. Concerning the characteristic methods of conducting trade it may be well here to add that during the distant period here under consideration a so-called commission business could scarcely be said to exist; and this is true also of speculation in the narrower sense. While buying and selling on time were not infrequent, especially in the grain market, the transactions were upon an infinitely smaller scale than as conducted at present, when, as the saying goes, "goods is sold a dozen times before it is actually available." The unsound methods at present in vogue, based as they are upon fluctuations in price, were then scarcely known. "Goods in exchange for goods or its equivalent in money" was the motto of the Hanseatic merchant, who, however, was by no means always entirely guiltless of fraudulent operations. Often enough the lowermost layers of herring in the keg consisted of spoiled goods, and not infrequently a bale of linen had to be returned from station to station to the place whence it was sent in order that it might be reëxamined as to quantity and quality. In these transactions the crafty dealer usually preferred to take advantage of the proverbial simplicity of the Norwegian. The scope of the Hansa trade was greater than one would imagine. It was greater, for example, than that of the maritime towns of Germany for the period immediately preceding the era of steam navigation, _i.e._, about 1830. The fish trade was at that early period far more brisk, partly because the herring then visited the shores of the Baltic, and partly because the church laws relative to abstinence from meat during the fasts were rigidly observed by all the states of Christian Europe. A few figures will serve vividly to illustrate this change: In 1855, 3,700 kegs of herring were imported by way of Lubeck, as against 33,000 kegs for the period 500 years previous; and in the year of war, 1369, despite the embargo with Denmark, a great consumer, the exports of herring from thirty Hanseatic ports yielded a sum of 130,000,000 marks, 40,000,000 of which fell to the share of Hamburg, then a much smaller city than Lubeck. It is natural, in the light of these commercial conditions, that industry, and handicraft also, must have greatly flourished. In those days there were twice as many bakers in Lubeck as at present. The coopers, also, in view of the great demand for herring kegs, were in high repute, and scarcely less so the brewers, who at that time greatly excelled their South German competitors. The beer of Hamburg or Rostock was never absent from a northern feast. Nearly all the cities from Livonia to the mouth of the Weser were surrounded by gardens of hops, and Hamburg especially owed its rapid rise during the fourteenth century chiefly to its brewers, at times five hundred or more in number, one hundred and twenty-six of whom supplied the market of Amsterdam alone. Not only representatives of the higher industrial arts, such as goldsmiths, metal workers, picture carvers, paternoster makers, and altar makers, but shoemakers and other handicraftsmen were to be found in the Far North, which, at that time, was still somewhat deficient in these matters. There is report of a worthy shoemaker, who, after sojourning in Russia, repaired to Stockholm, where he entered the service of a knight, and thence to Santiago di Compostela, where he wrought for pilgrims. All these trades were divided into guilds and sequestered in certain streets or localities; and it was long before they were permitted to participate in the city government, which rested solely in the hands of the great landlords and merchant princes. In the fourteenth century, however, following the example of the South German communities, the "Rebellious Guilds" arose also in the Hanse towns and inaugurated that far-reaching democratic movement akin to the War of the Classes in ancient Rome. The guilds demanded a seat and a voice in the municipal councils, and made the payment of their quota dependent upon this concession. Most of the Northern cities experienced bloody insurrections at this time, and the hangman was very busy. Now the victory was with the patricians, and anon with the plebeians; and the contest was continually renewed with changing fortune. After holding aloof for some time the Hanseatic League finally took part in this purely internal affair of the several cities, and always in favor of the patrician party; in this way assuming a function originally foreign to its purpose. The movement was a perfectly natural and justifiable one. Though originally subject to service and tribute on the part of bishop, cloister, or prince, the condition of the tradesman changed with the establishment of the principle that long unchallenged residence in a city insured personal freedom to the individual--a privilege which in those days of marked class discrimination was shared only by the burgher and the monk. Among the two last-mentioned classes even the low-born individual could rise by his own efforts: here neither prejudice nor privilege interfered with the free exercise of native talent. Many a poor apprentice in the bureau of Bergen eventually became the progenitor of a long race of distinguished merchants; and some of these families are flourishing in Europe to-day. It is but natural that the handicraftsman, once released from his bonds, should have desired to share these privileges, more particularly as the old aristocratic _régime_ constantly became more assertive and presumptuous. It is necessary also to consider that the former social position of the artisan should not be measured by present standards; for the difference in the educational status of the classes was not nearly so pronounced then as now, and the workman, moreover, was characterized by a spirit often as chivalrous as that of the commercial magnate. There is a well-authenticated case of a shoemaker challenging another member of his craft to a duel--which, by the way, had a fatal termination--without exciting either serious comment or ridicule. History teaches that where commerce and industry flourish, art also secures its triumphs. The glorious Gothic cathedrals of the Hanseatic cities bear eloquent testimony to this truth. "The Northlander who entered the Trave or the Vistula and beheld the multitude of soaring church spires must have felt as did once the German pilgrim to Rome," says a modern investigator. The principal representative and patron of this art culture, here as elsewhere during the Middle Ages, was the Church. But the splendid town halls as well as the few private mansions preserved, with their step-like aggregation of gables, afford convincing evidence alike of the solid appreciation of art as of the love of splendor which characterized that distant generation. Certain it is that they greatly surpassed us in the domain of Gothic architecture. Owing to the strict adherence to the Catholic dogma a scientific development in the modern sense was, of course, impossible in those days; and, although most of the parish churches had their schools also, these were commonly designed chiefly for the sons of patricians, whose schooling usually embraced a little Latin and some reading, writing, and singing. Not infrequently the only scholar in the place was the town clerk, the forerunner of our present recorder. The robust, healthy German of that day, yielding to a tendency which has characterized our people from immemorial times, preferred the more to surrender himself to a life of solid comfort and good cheer. The Middle Age was one which inclined to favor the enjoyment of life. It is but necessary to consider the variegated costumes, rich in color, whose ultimate extravagances necessitated special dress regulations, as well as the tournaments, the numerous archer festivals, and the frequent masquerades, to realize that the people of that day appreciated the good things of life. On the occasion of baptisms, weddings, and other domestic events, great feasts were frequently arranged in the house of the guilds or even in the town hall; and many princely visitors were here also entertained at the expense of the municipal budget. The administration of the cellarage of the municipal council was also then considered a far more respectable post than now. All these facts attest the prosperity of the Hanseatic towns. Fortunes of one hundred thousand marks were by no means exceptional, and were often invested in neighboring knightly estates (feofs), thereby sometimes securing to the owner an eventual admission to the ranks of the nobility. At one time--_i.e._, after the great Hanseatic war--the city of Lubeck owned the entire dukedom of Lauenburg. The constitution of these municipalities provided for a council consisting of from twelve to twenty-four members who, though elected for life, alternated in terms of office ranging from two to three years. These members had the privilege of appointing their successors from among the eligible families of the Hanse town. The heads of the council consisted of from two to four burgomasters, who presided at the meetings. The position of member of the council was a purely honorary one. The duties comprised the administration of municipal affairs; of military and judicial affairs; of the archives; the exercise of police supervision over the market, the marine service, and the guilds; and, most important of all, the administration of the finances. They fixed the taxes, for which frequently no receipt was given or demanded; the money on such occasions being deposited unnoticed in a box set apart for the purpose--a proof that the payment of taxes at that time was regarded as a point of honor by the burgher and without suspicion by the magistrate. The general character of the municipal life of the Hanse towns in those days has been well compared by a modern writer to a family household. The workman regarded himself within his circle as an official of the city--a fact shown by the use of the word _Aemter_ ("offices") to designate the guilds. Hence the strong municipal patriotism which animated these burghers and which compensates in some degree for the absence of that great political enthusiasm which is derived from the consciousness of a united country. A quaint genre picture of the time, preserved at Bremen, represents a native of the latter city and another from Lubeck sitting together in a tavern and disputing as to the comparative merits of their respective towns. The controversy reaches its climax by one of the disputants declaring stolidly that he too might "master such words" and taking a long and mighty draught. The separate towns, usually upon a request of the Lubeck council, would send their deputies to confer jointly upon matters affecting the league, these conferences or diets usually being held in some Wendish city. On no occasion, however, were all the towns of the league represented at these conferences. Their constitution was absolutely free from all theoretical or rigid forms or ordinances. Whoever found that his interests were especially affected by the subject under discussion sent representatives to the diet of the league, and these usually discharged their duties faithfully, without shirking the long and arduous trip even during the winter season. The conferences held in this way were probably wider in their scope than those of any other power of the time. Usually, however, not political, but commercial, matters were discussed. There was no common treasury. Whenever money was required an export duty was levied, with which absolute compliance was demanded. An infraction of the laws of the league was punishable by a fine, and in extreme cases by exclusion from the Hansa--a sentence necessarily involving the commercial isolation and eventual bankruptcy of the delinquent city. Bremen, it is true, once withstood the consequences of the Hanseatic ban for more than fifty years, but this was before the extraordinary extension of Hanseatic power consequent upon the Danish war. From all this it appears that the constitution of the Hansa was a very slack but elastic one, which easily adapted itself to the exigencies of the moment. A charter of a Hanseatic constitution has never existed--proof in itself of the desire to afford as much latitude as possible in the construction of the laws. Theory is regarded as valueless; immediate facts and interests are all in all. The supremacy of Lubeck, for example, was never formally recognized by the other cities of the league. Thus did the Hansa flourish until the close of the Middle Ages. With the discovery of America and of the passage to India trade was diverted into new channels; it became transoceanic and, not without some culpability on the part of the Hanses themselves, fell into the hands of the now more favorably situated countries of Western Europe--Spain, Portugal, France, the Netherlands, and, finally, England. Equally detrimental to the Hansa was the political transformation wrought at this time, especially as regards the rapidly growing power of the princes, who, with all the influence at their command, sought to abrogate all special privileges and to foster a levelling process in order that they alone might be exalted. One city after another sank into utter dependence upon the sovereign rulers of the respective provinces, who, in their turn, began to take an interest in economic affairs, thus contributing to widen the breach between these respective cities and the league. It was under these circumstances that Gustavus Vasa declared of the Hansa that "Its teeth were falling out, like those of an old woman." The Hollanders, especially, had long been converted from allies into formidable rivals. The most important and decisive factor of this decadence, however, was the victorious opposition to the Hanseatic monopoly now brought to bear by the hitherto commercially oppressed nations, England and Russia, who simply closed the doors of the bureaus and abrogated the privileges of the German merchants of the league. The condition of the Hansa was akin to that of a healthy, vigorous tree, set in poor soil and deriving its sustenance from the weakness of the home rulers and the primitive or defective economic conditions of foreign countries. As soon as these negative mediæval conditions were swept away by the storms of the Reformation the tree gradually but surely fell into decay. With this later stage there is associated the historic tragedy of Jürgen Wullenwever, that genial and daring democratic innovator, who, in an endeavor to conquer Denmark in order to restore the prestige of the Hansa, was betrayed by his patrician fellow-burghers and hanged. The Hansa, though in a stage of increasing decrepitude, now lingered on until the final crash came in 1630, when all the members dissolved their allegiance to the league. Only the three Hanse towns of Hamburg, Bremen, and Lubeck renewed the compact, which, however, to-day is purely nominal. The Hansa had fulfilled its great historic mission. It had impressed the stamp of German culture upon the North; given German commerce the supremacy over that of all other nations; protected the northern and eastern boundaries of the empire at a time when the imperial power was impotent and the State disrupted; and maintained and extended the prestige of the German flag in the northern seas. Said a great German writer: "When all on land was steeped in particularism, the Hansa, our people upon the sea, alone remained faithful to the German spirit and to German tradition." MAMELUKES USURP POWER IN EGYPT A.D. 1250 SIR WILLIAM MUIR From A.D. 969 to 1171 the Arabian dynasty of caliphs called Fatimites--because they professed to trace their descent from Fatima, the daughter of Mahomet--reigned in Egypt. Their downfall was due to their own decline into imbecility, through which they fell into the hands of Turkish viziers who, keeping their nominal masters in subserviency, themselves assumed the actual rule. For several generations the caliphs of Bagdad, under whose sway the Fatimites were now reduced, had attracted to their capital slaves from Turcoman and Mongol hordes. These slaves they used both as bodyguards and as contingents to offset the dominating influence of the Arab soldiery in their affairs. In the end the slaves superseded the Arab soldiers altogether, and from bondmen became masters of the court. They stirred up riots and rebellion and hastened the fall of the effete caliphate. Under the Eyyubite dynasty in Egypt, which Saladin founded about 1174, the same practice was followed with the same results. The Eyyubites were strangers in Egypt, and welcomed the support of foreign myrmidons. Slave dealers bought children of conquered tribes in Central Asia, promising them great fortunes in the West. These children, together with prisoners of war from the eastern hordes, streamed into Egypt, where they were again bought by the rulers, who thus unwittingly prepared the way for their own destruction. The military body created by Saladin, called mamelukes ("slaves;" literally "the possessed"), obtained ascendency in the manner here related by Muir. The thousands who, with uncomely names and barbarous titles, began to crowd the streets of Cairo, occupied a position to which we have no parallel elsewhere. Finding a weak and subservient population, they lorded it over them. Like the children of Israel, they ever kept themselves distinct from the people of the land--but the oppressors, not, like them, the oppressed. Brought up to arms, the best favored and most able of the mamelukes when freed became, at the instance of the Sultan, emirs of ten, of fifty, of a hundred, and often, by rapid leaps, of a thousand. They continued to multiply by the purchase of fresh slaves who, like their masters, could rise to liberty and fortunes. The sultans were naturally the largest purchasers, as they employed the revenues of the state in surrounding themselves with a host of slaves; we read, for example, of one who bought some six thousand. While the great mass pursued a low and servile life, the favorites of the emirs, and specially of the crown, were educated in the arts of peace and war, and, as pages and attendants, gradually rose to the position of their masters--the slave of to-day, the commander, and not infrequently the sultan of to-morrow. From the first, insolent and overbearing, the mamelukes began, as time passed on, to feel their power, and grew more and more riotous and turbulent, oppressing the land by oft-repeated pillage and outrage. Broken up into parties, each with the name of some sultan or leader, their normal state was one of internal combat and antagonism; while, pampered and indulged, they often turned upon their masters. Some of the more powerful sultans were able to hold them in order, and there were not wanting occasional intervals of quiet; but trouble and uproar were ever liable to recur. The Eyyubite princes settled their mamelukes, chiefly Turks and Mongols--so as to keep them out of the city--on an island in the Nile, whence they were called Baharites, and the first mameluke dynasty (1260-1382) was of this race, and called accordingly. The others, a later importation, were called Burjites, from living in the Citadel, or quarters in the town; they belonged more to the Circassian race. The second dynasty (1382-1517) was of these, and, like the Baharite dynasty, bore their name. The mamelukes were for the most part attached faithfully to their masters, and the emirs, with their support, enriched themselves by exactions from the people, with the unscrupulous gains of office, and with rich fiefs from the state. The mamelukes, as a body, thus occupied a prominent and powerful position, and often, especially in later times, forced the Sultan to bend to their will. Such is the people which for two centuries and a half ruled Egypt with a rod of iron, and whose history we shall now attempt to give. It was about the middle of the twelfth century that Nureddin and King Amalrich both turned a longing eye toward Egypt, where, in the decrepitude of the Fatimites, dissension and misrule prevailed. The Caliph, in alarm, sought aid first from one and then from the other; and each in turn entered Egypt ostensibly for its defence, but in reality for its possession. A friendly treaty was at last concluded with both; but it was broken by Amalrich, who invaded the country and demanded a heavy ransom. In this extremity, the Caliph again appealed to Nureddin, sending locks of his ladies' hair in token of alarm. Glad of the opportunity, Nureddin despatched his general, Shirkoh, to the rescue, before whom Amalrich, crestfallen, retired. Shirkoh, having thus delivered the Caliph, gained his favor, and, as vizier, assumed the administration. Soon after he died; and his nephew, Saladin, succeeded to the vizierate. The following year the Caliph also died; and now Saladin, who had by vigorous measures put down all opposition, himself as sultan took possession of the throne. Thus the Fatimite dynasty, which had for two centuries ruled over Egypt, came to an end. Saladin was son of a Kurdish chief called Eyyub, and hence the dynasty is termed Eyyubite. His capital was Cairo. He fortified the city, using the little pyramid for material, and, abandoning the luxurious palace of the Fatimites, laid the foundations of the Citadel on the nearest crest of the Mokattam range, and to it transferred his residence. After a prosperous rule over Egypt and Syria of above twenty years he died, and his numerous family fell into dissension. At last his brother Adlil, gaining the ascendency, achieved a splendid reign not only at home, but also in the East, from Georgia to Aden. He died of grief at the taking of Damietta by the crusaders, and his grandson Eyyub succeeded to the throne. It was now that the Charizmian hordes fell upon Syria, and, with horrible atrocities, sacked the holy city. Forming an alliance with these barbarians, the Sultan sent the mameluke general Beibars to join them against his uncle, the Syrian prince Ismail, between whom and the crusaders an unholy union had prevailed. Near Joppa the combined army of Franks and Moslems met at the hands of Beibars and the eastern hordes, with a bloody overthrow; and thus all Syria again fell under Egypt. To establish his power both at home and abroad, the Sultan bought vast numbers of Turkish mamelukes; and it was he who first established them as Baharites on the Nile. His son Turan was the last Eyyubite sultan. In his reign Louis IX of France invaded Egypt, and, advancing upon Cairo, was defeated and taken prisoner. Turan allowed him to go free; and for this act of kindness, as well as for attempts to curb their outlawry, he was pursued and slain by the Baharite mamelukes, who thereupon seized the government. The leading mamelukes chose one of themselves, the emir Eibek, to be head of the administration. He contented himself at first to govern in the name of Eyyub's widow, who, indeed, had been in complicity with the assassins of her stepson Turan. The Caliph of Bagdad, however, objected to a female reigning even in name, and so Eibek married the widow; and still further to conciliate the Eyyubites of Syria and Kerak, elevated to the title of sultan a child of the Eyyubite stock. This concession notwithstanding, Nasir the Eyyubite, ruler of Damascus, advanced on Egypt, but, deserted by his Turkish slaves, was beaten back by Eibek, who returned in triumph to the capital. He soon found it, however, impossible to hold the turbulent mamelukes in hand, for, with the victorious general Aktai at their head, they scorned discipline and defied authority. Eibek, therefore, compassed the death of Aktai, on which the Baharite emirs all rose in rebellion. They were defeated. Many were slain and cast into prison; the rest fled to Nasir, and eventually to Kerak. Among the latter were Beibars and Kilawun, of whom we shall hear more hereafter. Eibek was now undisputed Sultan, recognized as such by all the powers around. And so he bethought him of taking a princess of Mosul for another wife; on which the Sultana, already estranged, caused him to be put to death; and she too, in the storm that followed, was assassinated by the slave girls of still another wife. Eibek's minor son was now raised by the emirs to the titular sultanate; and Kotuz, a distinguished mameluke of Charizmian birth, persuaded to assume the uninviting post of vicegerent. The Eyyubite Prince of Kerak, in whose service many of the Baharite mamelukes still remained, attempting, with their help, to seize Egypt, was twice repulsed by Kotuz, and thus obliged to disband the Baharites, who returned to their Egyptian allegiance. Their return was fortunate, a time of trial being at hand. For it was now that Holagu with his Mongol hordes, having overthrown Bagdad and slain the last of the Abbassides, launched his savage troops on the West. He fulminated a despatch to Nasir the Eyyubite head of Syria, in which he claimed to be "the scourge of the Almighty, sent to execute judgment on the ungodly nations of the earth." Nasir answered it in like defiant terms; but, not being supported by Kotuz, had to fly from Damascus, which was taken possession of by the Mongol tyrant. After ravaging Syria with unheard-of barbarity, Holagu was recalled to Central Asia by the death of Mangu. Leaving his army behind under Ketbogha, he sent an embassy to Egypt with a letter as threatening as that to Nasir. Kotuz, who had by this time cast the titular Sultan aside and himself assumed the throne, summoned a council and by their advice put the embassy to death. Then awakening to the possibilities of the future, he roused the emirs to action by a stirring address on the danger that threatened Egypt, their families, and their faith. Gathering a powerful army, the Egyptians advanced to Acre, where they found the crusaders bound by a promise to the Mongols of neutrality. The two armies met at Ain-Jalut, and there, after a fiercely contested battle, and mainly by the bravery of Beibars as well as of Kotuz himself, the Mongols were beaten and Ketbogha slain. On the news reaching Damascus, the city rose upon their barbarian tyrants, and slew not only all the Mongols, but great numbers also of the Jews and Christians who, during the interregnum, had raised their heads against Islam. Following up their victory, the Egyptians drove the Mongols out of Syria, and pursued them beyond Emessa. Kotuz, thus master of the country, reappointed the former governors throughout Syria, on receiving oath of fealty, to their several posts. For his signal service, Kotuz had led Beibars to expect Aleppo; but, suspicion aroused of dangerous ambition on Beibars' part, he gave that leading capital to another. Beibars upon this, fearing the fate that might befall him at Cairo, resolved to anticipate the danger. On the return journey, while Kotuz was on the hunting-field alone, he begged for the gift of a Mongol slave girl, and, taking his hand to kiss for the promised favor, seized hold of it while his accomplices stabbed him from behind to death. Beibars was forthwith saluted sultan, and entered Cairo with the acclamations of the people, and with the same festive surroundings as had been prepared for the reception of his murdered predecessor. THE "MAD PARLIAMENT" BEGINNING OF ENGLAND'S HOUSE OF COMMONS A.D. 1258 JOHN LINGARD With the loss of Normandy under King John, the barons of Norman descent in England had become patriotic Englishmen. They forced their monarch to sign the Magna Charta and thus laid the foundation of English constitutional liberty. John died in 1216 and was succeeded by his son Henry of Winchester, a minor in his eleventh year. The celebrated Hubert de Burgh, chief justiciar, soon became regent, and reigned comparatively without control, even after the young King attained his majority. But in 1232 Henry, being in need of money, imprisoned the regent and compelled him to forfeit the greater part of his estate. After De Burgh's fall, King Henry III became his own master, and was responsible for the measures of government, the wars with foreign powers, the disputes with the Pope and with the barons, during which the evolution of the English parliament made important progress, chiefly through the efforts of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester. One of the most important episodes of that evolution was the "Mad Parliament"--derisively so called by the royal partisans--at which the Provisions of Oxford, long considered the rash innovations of an ambitious oligarchy, were promulgated. Of this Mad Parliament it has been said, "It would have been well for England if all parliaments had been equally sane." As to the opinion, repeatedly emphasized in the following account, that De Montfort was false and ambitious, it is well to remind the reader that other historians have looked upon Earl Simon as a disinterested patriot of the highest type. It was Henry's misfortune to have inherited the antipathy of his father to the charter of Runnymede, and to consider his barons as enemies leagued in a conspiracy to deprive him of the legitimate prerogatives of the crown. He watched with jealousy all their proceedings, refused their advice, and confided in the fidelity of foreigners more than in the affection of his own subjects. Such conduct naturally alienated the minds of the nobles, who boldly asserted that the great offices of state were their right, and entered into associations for the support of their pretensions. Had the King possessed the immense revenues of his predecessors he might perhaps have set their enmity at defiance; but during the wars between Stephen and Maud, and afterward between John and his barons, the royal demesnes had been considerably diminished; and the occasional extravagance of Henry, joined to his impolitic generosity to his favorites, repeatedly compelled him to throw himself on the voluntary benevolence of the nation. Year after year the King petitioned for a subsidy, and each petition was met with a contemptuous refusal. If the barons at last relented, it was always on conditions most painful to his feelings. They obliged him to acknowledge his former misconduct, to confirm anew the two charters, and to promise the immediate dismissal of the foreigners.[60] But Henry looked only to the present moment: no sooner were his coffers replenished than he forgot his promises and laughed at their credulity. Distress again forced him to solicit relief, and to offer the same conditions. Unwilling to be duped a second time, the barons required his oath. He swore, and then violated his oath with as much indifference as he had violated his promise. His next applications were treated with scorn; but he softened their opposition by offering to submit to excommunication if he should fail to observe his engagements. In the great hall of Westminster the King, barons, and prelates assembled; the sentence was pronounced by the bishops with the usual solemnity; and Henry, placing his hand on his breast, added, "So help me God, I will observe these charters, as I am a Christian, a knight, and a king crowned and anointed." The aid was granted, and the King reverted to his former habits. It was not, however, that he was by inclination a vicious man. He had received strong religious impressions; though fond of parade, he cautiously avoided every scandalous excess; and his charity to the poor and attention to the public worship were deservedly admired. But his judgment was weak. He had never emancipated his mind from the tutelage in which it had been held in his youth, and easily suffered himself to be persuaded by his favorites that his promises were not to be kept, because they had been compulsory and extorted from him in opposition to the just claims of his crown. On the fall of Hubert de Burgh the King had given his confidence to his former tutor, Peter the Poitevin, Bishop of Winchester. That the removal of the minister would be followed by the dismissal of the other officers of government, and that the favorite would employ the opportunity to raise and enrich his relatives and friends, is not improbable; but it is difficult to believe, on the unsupported assertion of a censorious chronicler, that Peter could be such an enemy to his own interest as to prevail on the King to expel all Englishmen from his court, and confide to Poitevins and Bretons the guard of his person, the receipt of his revenue, the administration of justice, the custody of all the royal castles, the wardship of all the young nobility, and the marriages of the principal heiresses. But the ascendency of the foreigners, however great it might be, was not of very long duration. The barons refused to obey the royal summons to come to the council: the Earl Marshal unfurled the standard of rebellion in Wales, and the clergy joined with the laity in censuring the measures of government. Edmund, the new archbishop of Canterbury, attended by several other prelates, waited on Henry. He reminded the King that his father, by pursuing similar counsels, had nearly forfeited the crown; assured him that the English would never submit to be trampled upon by strangers in their own country; and declared that he should conceive it his duty to excommunicate every individual, whoever he might be, that should oppose the reform of the government and the welfare of the nation. Henry was alarmed, and promised to give him an answer in a few weeks. A parliament of the barons was called, and Edmund renewed his remonstrance. The Poitevins were instantly dismissed, the insurgents restored to favor, and ministers appointed who possessed the confidence of the nation. At the age of twenty-nine the King had married Eleanor, the daughter of Raymond, Count of Provence. The ceremony of her coronation, the offices of the barons, the order of the banquet, and the rejoicings of the people are minutely described by the historian, who, in the warmth of his admiration, declares that the whole world could not produce a more glorious and ravishing spectacle. Eleanor had been accompanied to England by her uncle William, Bishop-elect of Valence, who soon became the King's favorite, was admitted into the council, and assumed the ascendency in the administration. The barons took the first opportunity to remonstrate; but Henry mollified their anger by adding three of their number to the council, and, that he might be the more secure from their machinations, obtained from the Pope a legate to reside near his person. This was the cardinal Otho, who employed his influence to reconcile Henry with the most discontented of the barons. By his advice William returned to the Continent. He died in Italy, but the King, mindful of his interests, had previously procured his election to the see of Winchester, vacant by the death of Peter des Roches. The next favorites were two other uncles of the Queen, Peter de Savoy, to whom Henry gave the honor of Richmond, and Boniface de Savoy, who, at the death of Edmund, was chosen archbishop of Canterbury. The natives renewed their complaints, and waited with impatience for the return of Richard, the King's brother, from Palestine; but that Prince was induced to espouse the cause of the foreigners, and to marry Sanchia, another of the daughters of Raymond. But now Isabella, the Queen-mother, dissatisfied that the family of Provence should monopolize the royal favor, sent over her children by her second husband, the Count de la Marche, to make their fortunes in England. Alice, her daughter, was married to the young Earl of Warenne; Guy, the eldest son, received some valuable presents and returned to France; William de Valence, with the order of knighthood, obtained an annuity and the honor of Hertford; and Aymar was sent to Oxford, preferred to several benefices, and at last made bishop of Winchester. Associations were formed to redress the grievances of the nation: under the decent pretext of preventing the misapplication of the revenue, a demand was repeatedly made that the appointment of the officers of state should be vested in the great council; and at length the constitution was entirely overturned by the bold ambition of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester. Simon was the younger of the two sons of the Count de Montfort, a name celebrated in the annals of religious warfare. By the resignation of Amauri, his brother, the constable of France, he had succeeded to the estates of his mother Amicia, the elder of the two sisters and coheiresses of the late Earl of Leicester: his subsequent marriage with Eleanor, the King's sister, had brought within his view the prospect of a crown; and his marked opposition to the extortions of the King and the pontiffs had secured to him, though a foreigner, the affection of the nobility, the clergy, and the people. Policy required that the King should not provoke, nor should oppress, so formidable a subject. But Henry did neither: he on some occasions employed the Earl in offices of trust and importance; on others, by a succession of petty affronts, irritated instead of subduing his spirit. Among the inhabitants of Guienne there were many whose wavering fidelity proved a subject of constant solicitude; and Simon had been appointed, by patent, governor of the province for five years, with the hope that his activity and resolution would crush the disaffected and secure the allegiance of the natives. They were to the earl years of continual exertion: his conduct necessarily begot enemies; and he was repeatedly accused to the King of peculation, tyranny, and cruelty. How far the charges were true it is impossible to determine; but his accusers were the Archbishop of Bordeaux and the chief of the Gascon nobility, who declared that, unless justice were done to their complaints, their countrymen would seek the protection of a different sovereign. When Simon appeared before his peers, he was accompanied by Richard, the King's brother, and the earls of Gloucester and Hereford, who had engaged to screen him from the royal resentment; and the King, perceiving that he could not procure the condemnation of the accused, vented his passion in intemperate language. In the course of the altercation the word "traitor" inadvertently fell from his lips. "Traitor!" exclaimed the earl; "if you were not a king, you should repent of that insult." "I shall never repent of anything so much," replied Henry, "as that I allowed you to grow and fatten within my dominions." By the interposition of their common friends they were parted. Henry conferred the duchy and government of Guienne on his son Edward, but the earl returned to the province, nor would he yield up his patent without a considerable sum as a compensation for the remaining years of the grant. Fearing the King's enmity, he retired into France, and was afterward reconciled to him through the mediation of the Bishop of Lincoln. Though Richard had frequently joined the barons in opposing his brother, he could never be induced to invade the just rights of the crown. He was as much distinguished by his economy as Henry was by his profusion; and the care with which he husbanded his income gave him the reputation of being the most opulent prince of Europe. Yet he allowed himself to be dazzled with the splendor of royalty, and incautiously sacrificed his fortune to his ambition. In the beginning of the year 1256 the archbishops of Cologne and Mainz, with the Elector Palatine, chose him at Frankfort king of the Romans; and a few weeks later the Archbishop of Triers, the King of Bohemia, the Duke of Saxony, and the Marquis of Brandenburg, the other four electors, gave their suffrages in favor of Alphonso, King of Castile. It was, however, in an evil hour for Henry that Richard departed for Germany. The discontented barons, no longer awed by his presence, associated to reform the State, under the guidance of the Earl of Leicester, high steward, the Earl of Hereford, high constable, the Earl Marshal, and the Earl of Gloucester. The circumstances of the times were favorable to their views. An unproductive harvest had been followed by a general scarcity, and the people were willing to attribute their misery, not to the inclemency of the seasons, but to the incapacity of their governors. Henry called a great council at Westminster, and on the third day the barons assembled in the hall in complete armor. When the King entered, they put aside their swords; but Henry, alarmed at their unusual appearance, exclaimed, "Am I then your prisoner?" "No, sire," replied Roger Bigod, "but by your partiality to foreigners, and your own prodigality, the realm is involved in misery. Wherefore we demand that the powers of government be delegated to a committee of barons and prelates, who may correct abuses and enact salutary laws." Some altercation ensued, and high words passed between the Earl of Leicester and William de Valence, one of the King's brothers. Henry, however, found it necessary to submit; and it was finally agreed that he should solicit the Pope to send a legate to England and modify the terms on which he had accepted the kingdom of Sicily; that he should give a commission to reform the State to twenty-four prelates and barons, of whom one-half had been already selected from his council, the other half should be named by the barons themselves in a parliament to be held at Oxford; and that, if he faithfully observed these conditions, measures should be taken to pay his debts, and to prosecute the claim of Edmund to the crown of the two Sicilies. At the appointed day the great council, distinguished in our annals by the appellation of the "Mad Parliament," assembled at Oxford. The barons, to intimidate their opponents, were attended by their military tenants, and took an oath to stand faithfully by each other, and to treat as "a mortal enemy" every man who should abandon their cause. The committee of reform was appointed. Among the twelve selected by Henry were his nephew the son of Richard, two of his half-brothers, and the great officers of state; the leaders of the faction were included in the twelve named by the barons. Every member was sworn to reform the state of the realm, to the honor of God, the service of the King, and the benefit of the people; and to allow no consideration, "neither of gift nor promise, profit nor loss, love nor hatred nor fear," to influence him in the discharge of his duty. Each twelve then selected two of their opponents; and to the four thus selected was intrusted the charge of appointing fifteen persons to form the council of state. Having obtained the royal permission, they proceeded to make the choice with apparent impartiality. Both parties furnished an equal number; and at their head was placed Boniface, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who, if he were connected with the court from his relationship to the Queen, was also known to lean to the popular faction, through his jealousy of the superior influence of the King's half-brothers. In reality, however, these elections proved the declining influence of the Crown; for, while the chiefs of the reformers were named, Henry's principal friends, his nephew and his brothers, had been carefully excluded. In a short time the triumph of Leicester was complete. The justiciary, the chancellor, the treasurer, all the sheriffs, and the governors of the principal castles belonging to the King, twenty in number, were removed, and their places were supplied by the chiefs of the reformers, or the most devoted of their adherents. The new justiciary took an oath to administer justice to all persons, according to the ordinances of the committee; the chancellor not to put the great seal to any writ which had not the approbation of the King and the privy council, nor to any grant without the consent of the great council, nor to any instrument whatever which was not in conformity with the regulations of the committee; the governors of the castles to keep them faithfully for the use of the King, and to restore them to him or his heirs, and no others, on the receipt of an order from the council; and at the expiration of twelve years to surrender them loyally on the demand of the King. Having thus secured to themselves the sovereign authority, and divested Henry of the power of resistance, the committee began the work of reform by ordaining: 1. That four knights should be chosen by the freeholders of each county to ascertain and lay before the parliament the trespasses, excesses, and injuries committed within the county under the royal administration; 2. That a new high sheriff should be annually appointed for each county by the votes of the freeholders; 3. That all sheriffs, and the treasurer, chancellor, and justiciary should annually give in their accounts; 4. And that parliaments should meet thrice in the year, in the beginning of the months of February, June, and October. They were, however, careful that these assemblies should consist entirely of their own partisans. Under the pretext of exonerating the other members from the trouble and expense of such frequent journeys, twelve persons were appointed as representatives of the commonalty, that is, the whole body of earls, barons, and tenants of the Crown; and it was enacted that whatever these twelve should determine, in conjunction with the council of state, should be considered as the act of the whole body. These innovations did not, however, pass without opposition. Henry, the son of the King of the Romans, Aymar, Guy and William, half-brothers to the King, and the Earl of Warenne, members of the committee, though they were unable to prevent, considerably retarded, the measures of the reformers, and nourished in the friends of the monarch a spirit of resistance which might ultimately prove fatal to the projects of Leicester and his associates. It was resolved to silence them by intimidation. They were required to swear obedience to the ordinances of the majority of the members; proposals were made to resume all grants of the crown, from which the three brothers derived their support; and several charges of extortion and trespass were made in the king's courts not only against them, but also against the fourth brother, Geoffrey de Valence. Fearing for their liberty or lives, they all retired secretly from Oxford, and fled to Wolvesham, a castle belonging to Aymar, as bishop-elect of Winchester. They were pursued and surrounded by the barons: their offer to take the oath of submission was now refused; and of the conditions proposed to them the four brothers accepted as the most eligible, to leave the kingdom, taking with them six thousand marks, and trusting the remainder of their treasures and the rents of their lands to the honor of their adversaries. Their departure broke the spirit of the dissidents. John de Warenne and Prince Henry successively took the oath: even Edward, the King's eldest son, reluctantly followed their example, and was compelled to recall the grants which he had made to his uncles of revenues in Guienne, and to admit of four reformers as his council for the administration of that duchy. To secure their triumph a royal order was published that all the lieges should swear to observe the ordinances of the council; and a letter was written to the Pope in the name of the parliament, complaining of the King's brothers, soliciting the deposition of the Bishop of Winchester, and requesting the aid of a legate to coöperate with them in the important task of reforming the state of the kingdom. In a short time Leicester was alarmed by the approach of a dangerous visitor, Richard, King of the Romans. That Prince had squandered away an immense mass of treasure in Germany, and was returning to replenish his coffers by raising money on his English estates. At St. Omer, to his surprise, he received a prohibition to land before he had taken an oath to observe the provisions of reform, and not to bring the King's brothers in his suite. His pride deemed the message an insult; but his necessities required the prosecution of his journey, and he gave a reluctant promise to comply as soon as he should receive the King's permission. At Canterbury Henry signified his commands, and Richard took the oath. Henry had been for two years the mere shadow of a king. The acts of government, indeed, ran in his name; but the sovereign authority was exercised without control by the lords of the council; and obedience to the royal orders--when the King ventured to issue any orders--was severely punished as a crime against the safety of the State. But if he were a silent, he was not an inattentive, observer of the passing events. The discontent of the people did not escape his notice; and he saw with pleasure the intestine dissensions which daily undermined the power of the faction. The earls of Leicester and Gloucester pursued opposite interests and formed two opposite parties. Leicester, unwilling to behold the ascendency of his rival, retired into France; and Gloucester discovered an inclination to be reconciled to his sovereign. But to balance this advantage Prince Edward, who had formerly displayed so much spirit in vindicating the rights of the crown, joined the Earl of Leicester, their most dangerous enemy; and this unexpected connection awakened in the King's mind the suspicion of a design to depose him and place his son on the throne. In these dispositions of enmity, jealousy, and distrust the barons assembled in London to meet Henry in parliament. But each member was attended by a military guard; his lodgings were fortified to prevent a surprise; the apprehension of hostilities confined the citizens within their houses; and the concerns of trade with the usual intercourse of society were totally suspended. After many attempts, the good offices of the King of the Romans effected a specious but treacherous pacification; and the different leaders left the parliament friends in open show, but with the same feelings of animosity rankling in their breasts, and with the same projects for their own aggrandizement and the depression of their opponents. At length Henry persuaded himself that the time had arrived when he might resume his authority. He unexpectedly entered the council, and in a tone of dignity reproached the members with their affected delays and their breach of trust. They had been established to reform the State, improve the revenue, and discharge his debts; but they had neglected these objects, and had labored only to enrich themselves and to perpetuate their own power. He should, therefore, no longer consider them as his council, but employ such other remedies as he thought proper. He immediately repaired to the Tower, which had lately been fortified; seized on the treasure in the mint; ordered the gates of London to be closed; compelled all the citizens above twelve years of age to swear fealty in their respective wardmotes; and by proclamation commanded the knights of the several counties to attend the next parliament in arms. The barons immediately assembled their retainers, and marched to the neighborhood of the capital; but each party, diffident of its strength, betrayed an unwillingness to begin hostilities; and it was unanimously agreed to postpone the discussion of their differences till the return of Prince Edward, who was in France displaying his prowess at a tournament. He returned in haste, and, to the astonishment of all who were not in the secret, embraced the interests of the barons. Henry, however, persevered in his resolution. By repeated desertions the party of his enemies had been reduced to the two earls of Leicester and Gloucester, the grand justiciary, the Bishop of Worcester, and Hugh de Montfort, whose principal dependence was on the oath which the King and the nation had taken to observe the Provisions of Oxford. To this argument it was replied that the same authority which enacted the law was competent to repeal it; and that an oath which should deprive the parliament of such right was in its own nature unjust and consequently invalid. For greater security, however, the King applied to Pope Alexander, who by several bulls released both him and the nation from their oaths, on the principle that the Provisions of Oxford were injurious to the State, and therefore incompatible with their previous obligations. These bulls Henry published, appointed a new justiciary and chancellor, removed the officers of his household, revoked to himself the custody of the royal castles, named new sheriffs in the counties, and by proclamation announced that he had resumed the exercise of the royal authority. This was followed by another proclamation to refute the false reports circulated by the barons. The King, now finding himself at liberty, was induced to visit Louis of France; and Leicester embraced the opportunity to return to England and reorganize the association which had so lately been dissolved. His hopes of success were founded on the pride and imprudence of Prince Edward, who, untaught by experience, had called around him a guard of foreigners, and intrusted to their leaders the custody of his castles. Such conduct not only awakened the jealousy of the barons, but alienated the affections of the royalists. Henry, at his return, aware of the designs of his enemies, ordered the citizens of London, the inhabitants of the Cinque Ports, and the principal barons, and afterward all freemen throughout the kingdom, to swear fealty not only to himself but, in the event of his death, to his eldest son the Prince Edward. To the second oath the Earl of Gloucester objected. He was immediately joined at Oxford by his associates; and in a few days the Earl of Leicester appeared at their head. With the royal banner displayed before them, they took Gloucester, Worcester, and Bridgenorth; ravaged without mercy the lands of the royalists, the foreigners, and the natives who refused to join their ranks, and, augmenting their numbers as they advanced, directed their march toward London. In London the aldermen and principal citizens were devoted to the King: the mayor and the populace openly declared for the barons. Henry was in possession of the Tower; and Edward, after taking by force one thousand marks out of the temple, hastened to throw himself into the castle of Windsor, the most magnificent palace, if we may believe a contemporary, then existing in Europe. The Queen attempted to follow her son by water; but the populace insulted her with the most opprobrious epithets, discharged volleys of filth into the royal barge, and prepared to sink it with large stones as it should pass beneath the bridge. The mayor at length took her under his protection and placed her in safety in the episcopal palace near St. Paul's. The King of the Romans now appeared again on the scene in the quality of mediator. The negotiation lasted three weeks: but Henry was compelled to yield to the increasing power of his adversaries; and it was agreed that the royal castles should once more be intrusted to the custody of the barons, the foreigners be again banished, and the Provisions of Oxford be confirmed, subject to such alterations as should be deemed proper by a committee appointed for that purpose. Henry returned to his palace at Westminster; new officers of state were selected; and the King's concessions were notified to the conservators of the peace in the several counties. The King now found himself sufficiently strong to take the field. He was disappointed in an attempt to obtain possession of Dover; but nearly succeeded in surprising the Earl of Leicester, who with a small body of forces had marched from Kenilworth to Southwark. Henry appeared on one side of the town, the Prince on the other; and the royalists had previously closed the gates of the city. So imminent was the danger that the Earl, who had determined not to yield, advised his companions to assume the cross, and to prepare themselves for death by the offices of religion. But the opportunity was lost by a strict adherence to the custom of the times. A herald was sent to require him to surrender; and in the mean while the populace, acquainted with the danger of their favorite, burst open the gates and introduced him into the city. The power of the two parties was now more equally balanced, and their mutual apprehensions inclined them to listen to the pacific exhortations of the bishops. It was agreed to refer every subject of dispute to the arbitration of the King of France; an expedient which had been proposed the last year by Henry, but rejected by Leicester. Louis accepted the honorable office, and summoned the parties to appear before him at Amiens. The King attended in person; the earl, who was detained at home in consequence of a real or pretended fall from his horse, had sent his attorneys. Both parties solemnly swore to abide by the decision of the French monarch. Louis heard the allegations and arguments of each, consulted his court, and pronounced judgment in favor of Henry. He annulled the Provisions of Oxford as destructive of the rights of the crown and injurious to the interests of the nation; ordered the royal castles to be restored; gave to the King the authority to appoint all the officers of the state and of his household, and to call to his council whomsoever he thought proper, whether native or foreigner; reinstated him in the same condition in which he was before the meeting of the "Mad Parliament," and ordered that all offences committed by either party should be buried in oblivion. This award was soon afterward confirmed by Pope Urban; and the Archbishop of Canterbury received an order to excommunicate all who, in violation of their oaths, should refuse to submit to it. The barons had already taken their resolution. The moment the decision was announced to them they declared that it was, on the face of it, contrary to truth and justice, and had been procured by the undue influence which the Queen of Louis, the sister-in-law to Henry, possessed over the mind of her husband. Hostilities immediately recommenced; and as every man of property was compelled to adhere to one of the two parties, the flames of civil war were lighted up in almost every part of the kingdom. In the North, and in Cornwall and Devon, the decided superiority of the royalists forced the friends of the barons to dissemble their real sentiments; the midland counties and the marches of Wales were pretty equally divided: but in the Cinque Ports, the metropolis, and the neighboring districts Montfort ruled without opposition. His partisan, Thomas Fitz-Thomas, had been intruded into the office of mayor of London; and a convention for their mutual security had been signed by that officer and the commonalty of the city on the one part, and the earls of Leicester, Gloucester, and Derby, Hugh le Despenser, the grand justiciary, and twelve barons on the other. In the different wardmotes every male inhabitant above twelve years of age was sworn a member of the association: a constable and marshal of the city were appointed; and orders were given that at the sound of the great bell at St. Paul's all should assemble in arms and obey the authority of these officers. The efficacy of the new arrangements was immediately put to the test. Despenser, the justiciary, came from the Tower, put himself at the head of the associated bands, and conducted them to destroy the two palaces of the King of the Romans, at Isleworth and Westminster, and the houses of the nobility and citizens known or suspected to be attached to the royal cause. The justices of the king's bench and the barons of the exchequer were thrown into prison; the moneys belonging to foreign merchants and bankers, which for security had been deposited in the churches, were carried to the Tower; and the Jews, to the number of five hundred, men, women, and children, were conducted to a place of confinement. Out of these, Despenser selected a few of the more wealthy, that he might enrich himself by their ransom; the rest he abandoned to the cruelty and rapacity of the populace, who, after stripping them of their clothes, massacred them all in cold blood. Cock ben Abraham, who was considered the most opulent individual in the kingdom, had been killed in his own house by John Fitz-John, one of the barons. The murderer at first appropriated to himself the treasure of his victim; but he afterward thought it more prudent to secure a moiety, by making a present of the remainder to Leicester.[61] Henry had summoned the tenants of the crown to meet him at Oxford; and being joined by Comyn, Bruce, and Baliol, the lords of the Scottish borders, unfurled his standard and placed himself at the head of the army. His first attempts were successful. Northampton, Leicester, and Nottingham, three of the strongest fortresses in the possession of the barons, were successively reduced; and among the captives were reckoned Simon the eldest of Leicester's sons, fourteen other bannerets, forty knights, and a numerous body of esquires. From Nottingham he was recalled into Kent by the danger of his nephew Henry, besieged in the castle of Rochester, At his approach the enemy, who had taken and pillaged the city, retired with precipitation; and the King, after an ineffectual attempt to secure the coöperation of the Cinque Ports, fixed his head-quarters in the town of Lewes. Leicester, having added a body of fifteen thousand citizens to his army, marched from London, with a resolution to bring the controversy to an issue. From Fletching he despatched a letter to Henry, protesting that neither he nor his associates had taken up arms against the King, but against the evil counsellors who enjoyed and abused the confidence of their sovereign. Henry returned a public defiance, which was accompanied by a message from Prince Edward and the King of the Romans, declaring in the name of the royal barons that the charge was false; pronouncing Montfort and his adherents perjured; and daring the earls of Leicester and Derby to appear in the King's court and prove their assertion by single combat. After the observation of these forms, which the feudal connection between the lord and the vassal was supposed to make necessary, Montfort prepared for the battle. It was the peculiar talent of this leader to persuade his followers that the cause in which they fought was the cause of heaven. He represented to them that their objects were liberty and justice; and that their opponent was a prince whose repeated violation of the most solemn oaths had released them from their allegiance, and had entailed on his head the curse of the Almighty. He ordered each man to fasten a white cross on the breast and shoulder, and to devote the next evening to the duties of religion. Early in the morning he marched forward, and, leaving his baggage and standard on the summit of a hill, about two miles from Lewes, descended into the plain. Henry's foragers had discovered and announced his approach; and the royalists in three divisions silently awaited the attack. Leicester, having called before the ranks the Earl of Gloucester and several other young noblemen, bade them kneel down, and conferred on them the order of knighthood; and the Londoners, who impatiently expected the conclusion of the ceremony, rushed with loud shouts on the enemy. They were received by Prince Edward, broken in a few minutes, and driven back as far as the standard. Had the Prince returned from the pursuit, and fallen on the rear of the confederates, the victory might have been secured. But he remembered the insults which the citizens had offered to his mother, and the excesses of which they had lately been guilty; the suggestions of prudence were less powerful than the thirst of revenge; and the pursuit of the fugitives carried him with the flower of the army four miles from the field of battle. More than three thousand Londoners were slain; but the advantage was dearly purchased by the loss of the victory and the ruin of the royal cause. Leicester, who viewed with pleasure the thoughtless impetuosity of the Prince, fell with the remainder of his forces on Henry and his brother. A body of Scots, who fought on foot, was cut to pieces. Their leaders, John Comyn and Robert de Bruce,[62] were made prisoners: the same fate befell the King of the Romans; and the combat was feebly maintained by the exertions and example of Philip Basset, who fought near the person of Henry. But when that nobleman sank through loss of blood, his retainers fled; the King, whose horse had been killed under him, surrendered; and Leicester conducted the royal captive into the priory. The fugitives, as soon as they learned the fate of their sovereign, came back to share his captivity, and voluntarily yielded themselves to their enemies. When Edward returned from the pursuit, both armies had disappeared. He traversed the field, which was strewed with the bodies of the slain and the wounded, anxiously, but fruitlessly, inquiring after his father. As he approached Lewes, the barons came out, and, on the first shock, the earl Warenne, with the King's half-brothers and seven hundred horse, fled to Pevensey, whence they sailed to the Continent. Edward, with a strong body of veterans from the Welsh marches, rode along the wall to the castle, and understanding that his father was a captive in the priory, obtained permission to visit him from Leicester. An unsuccessful attempt made by the barons against the castle revived his hopes; he opened a negotiation with the chiefs of the party; and the next morning was concluded the treaty known by the name of "the Mise of Lewes." By this it was agreed that all prisoners taken during the war should be set at liberty; that the princes Edward and Henry should be kept as hostages for the peaceable conduct of their fathers, the King of England and the King of the Romans; and that all matters which could not be amicably adjusted in the next parliament should be referred to the decision of certain arbitrators. In the battle of Lewes about five thousand men are said to have fallen on each side. By this victory the royal authority was laid prostrate at the feet of Leicester. The scheme of arbitration was merely a blind to deceive the vulgar: his past conduct had proved how little he was to be bound by such decisions; and the referees themselves, aware of the probable result, refused to accept the office. The great object of his policy was the preservation of the ascendency which he had acquired. To Henry, who was now the convenient tool of his ambition, he paid every exterior demonstration of respect, but never suffered him to depart out of his custody; and, without consulting him, affixed his seal to every order which was issued for the degradation of the royal authority. The King of the Romans, a more resolute and dangerous enemy, instead of being restored to liberty, was closely confined in the castle of Wallingford, and afterward in that of Kenilworth; and the two princes were confided to the custody of the new governor of Dover, with instructions to allow of no indulgence which might facilitate their escape. Instead of removing the sheriffs, a creature of Leicester was sent to each county with the title of conservator of the peace. This officer was empowered to arrest all persons who should carry arms without the King's special license; to prevent all breaches of the peace; to employ the _posse comitatus_ to apprehend offenders; and to cause four knights to be chosen as the representatives of the county in the next parliament. In that assembly a new form of government was established, to last, unless it were dissolved by mutual consent, till the compromise of Lewes had been carried into full execution, not only in the reign of Henry, but also of Edward, the heir-apparent. This form had been devised by the heads of the faction to conceal their real views from the people; and was so contrived that they retained in their own hands the sovereign authority, while to the superficial observer they seemed to have resigned it to the King and his council. It was enacted that Henry should delegate the power of choosing his counsellors to a committee of three persons, whose proceedings should be valid, provided they were attested by the signatures of two of the number. The King immediately issued a writ to the Earl of Leicester, the Earl of Gloucester, and the Bishop of Chichester, authorizing them to appoint in his name a council of nine members; nor were they slow in selecting for that purpose the most devoted of their adherents. The powers given to this council were most extensive, and to be exercised without control whenever the parliament was not sitting. Besides the usual authority it possessed the appointment of all the officers of state, of all the officers of the household, and of all the governors of the royal castles. Three were ordered to be in constant attendance on the King's person; all were to be summoned on matters of great importance; and a majority of two-thirds was required to give a sanction to their decisions. Hitherto the original committee seemed to have been forgotten; but it was contrived that when the council was so divided that the consent of two-thirds could not be obtained, the question should be reserved for the determination of the three electors, an artifice by which, under the modest pretence of providing against dissension, they invested themselves with the sovereign authority. By additional enactments it was provided that no foreigner, though he might go or come, or reside peaceably, should be employed under the government; that past offences should be mutually forgiven; that the two charters, the provisions made the last year, in consequence of the Statutes of Oxford, and all the ancient and laudable customs of the realm, should be inviolably observed; and that three prelates should be appointed to reform the state of the Church, and to procure for the clergy, with the aid of the civil power if necessary, full compensation for their losses during the late troubles. The earl was now in reality possessed of more extensive authority than Henry had ever enjoyed; but he soon discovered that to retain the object of his ambition would require the exertion of all his powers. The cause of the captive monarch was ardently espoused by foreign nations and by the sovereign pontiff. Adventurers from every province of France crowded to the royal standard which Queen Eleanor had erected at Damme in Flanders; and a numerous fleet assembled in the harbor to transport to England the thousands who had sworn to humble the pride of a disloyal and aspiring subject. To oppose them Leicester had summoned to the camp on Barham downs, not only the King's military tenants, but the whole force of the nation,[63] and, taking on himself the command of the fleet, cruised in the narrow seas to intercept the invaders. But the winds seemed to be leagued with the earl; the Queen's army was detained for several weeks in the vicinity of Damme; and the mercenaries gradually disbanded themselves, when the short period for which they had contracted to serve was expired. At the same time the Pontiff had commissioned Guido, Cardinal Bishop of Sabina, to proceed to England, and take Henry under the papal protection; but, deterred by the hint of a conspiracy against his life from crossing the sea, he excommunicated the barons unless before the 1st of September they should restore the King to all his rights, and at the same time summoned four of the English prelates to appear before him at Boulogne. After much tergiversation these obeyed, but appealed from his jurisdiction to the equity of the Pope or a general council; and though they consented to bring back a sentence of excommunication against the King's enemies, they willingly suffered it to be taken from them by the officers at Dover. Their appeal was approved by the convocation of the clergy, and Guido, after publishing the excommunication himself at Hesdin, returned to Rome, where he was elevated to the chair of St. Peter by the name of Clement IV. During the summer Leicester had been harassed with repeated solicitations for the release of the two princes, Edward and Henry. In the winter he pretended to acquiesce, and convoked a parliament to meet after Christmas for the avowed purpose of giving the sanction of the legislature to so important a measure. But the extraordinary manner in which this assembly was constituted provoked a suspicion that his real object was to consolidate and perpetuate his own power. Only those prelates and barons were summoned who were known to be attached to his party; and the deficiency was supplied by representatives from the counties, cities, and boroughs who, as they had been chosen through his influence, proved the obsequious ministers of his will. Several weeks were consumed in private negotiation with Henry and his son. Leicester was aware of the untamable spirit of Edward, nor would he consent that the Prince should exchange his confinement for the company of his father on any other terms than that he should still remain under the inspection of his keepers, and evince his gratitude for the indulgence by ceding to the earl and his heirs the county of Chester, the castle of Pec, and the town of Newcastle-under-Lyne; in exchange for which he should receive other lands of the same annual value. At length the terms were settled, and confirmed by the parliament, with every additional security which the jealousy of the faction could devise. It was enacted "by common consent of the King, his son Edward, the prelates, earls, barons, and commonalty of the realm," that the charters and the ordinances should be inviolably observed; that neither the King nor the Prince should aggrieve the earl or his associates for their past conduct; that if they did, their vassals and subjects should be released from the obligation of fealty till full redress were obtained, and their abettors should be punished with exile and forfeiture; that the barons, whom the King had defied before the battle of Lewes, should renew their homage and fealty; but on the express condition that such homage and fealty should be no longer binding if he violated his promise; that the command of the royal castles should be taken from suspected persons and intrusted to officers of approved loyalty; that the Prince should not leave the realm for three years, under pain of disherison; that he should not choose his advisers and companions himself, but receive them from the council of state; that with his father's consent he should put into the hands of the barons for five years, five royal castles, as securities for his behavior, and should deliver to Leicester the town and castle of Bristol in pledge till a full and legal transfer should be made of Chester, Pec, and Newcastle; that both Henry and Edward should swear to observe all these articles, and not to solicit any absolution from their oath, nor make any use of such absolution, if it were to be pronounced by the Pope; and lastly, that they should cause the present agreement "To be confirmed in the best manner that might be devised, in Ireland, in Gascony, by the King of Scotland, and in all lands subject to the King of England." These were terms which nothing but necessity could have extorted; and to add to their stability, they were for the most part embodied in the form of a writ, signed by the King, and sent to the sheriffs, with orders to publish them in the full court of each county twice every year. It is generally supposed that the project of summoning to parliament the representatives of the counties, cities, and boroughs grew out of that system of policy which the earl had long pursued, of flattering the prejudices, and attaching to himself the affections, of the people. Nor had his efforts proved unsuccessful. Men in the higher ranks of life might penetrate behind the veil, with which he sought to conceal his ambition; but by the nation at large he was considered as the reformer of abuses, the protector of the oppressed, and the savior of his country. Even some of the clergy, and several religious bodies, soured by papal and regal exactions, gave him credit for the truth of his pretensions, and preachers were found who, though he had been excommunicated by the legate, made his virtues the theme of their sermons, and exhorted their hearers to stand by the patron of the poor and the avenger of the Church.[64] Within the kingdom no man dared to dispute his authority; it was only at the extremities that a faint show of resistance was maintained. The distant disobedience of a few chiefs on the Scottish borders he despised or dissembled; and the open hostilities of the lords in the Welsh marches were crushed in their birth by his promptitude and decision. He compelled Roger de Mortimer and his associates to throw down their arms, surrender their castles, and abide the judgment of their peers, by whom they were condemned to expatriate themselves, some for twelve months, others for three years, and to reside during their exile in Ireland. They pretended to submit, but lingered on the sea-coast, and amid the mountains of Wales, in the hope that some new event might recall them to draw the sword and fight again in the cause of their sovereign. It had cost Leicester some years and much labor to climb to the summit of his greatness; his descent was rapid beyond the calculation of the most sanguine among his enemies. He had hitherto enjoyed the coöperation of the powerful earls of Derby and Gloucester; but, if he was too ambitious to admit of an equal, they were too proud to bow to a fellow-subject. Frequent altercations betrayed their secret jealousies; and the sudden arrest and imprisonment of Derby, on a charge of corresponding with the royalists, warned Gloucester of his own danger. He would have shared the captivity of his friends had he assisted at the great tournament at Northampton; but by his absence he disconcerted the plans of his enemy, and, recalling Mortimer and the exiles, unfurled the royal standard in the midst of his tenantry. Leicester immediately hastened to Hereford with the King, the Prince, and a numerous body of knights. To prevent the effusion of blood their common friends intervened; a reconciliation was effected, and four umpires undertook the task of reconciling their differences. But under this appearance of friendship all was hollow and insincere. Leicester sought to circumvent his adversary; Gloucester waited the result of a plan for the liberation of Edward, which had been concerted through the means of Thomas de Clare, brother to the Earl, and companion to the Prince. One day after dinner Edward obtained permission to take the air without the walls of Hereford, attended by his keepers. They rode to Widmarsh. A proposal was made to try the speed of their horses; several matches were made and run; and the afternoon was passed in a succession of amusements. A little before sunset there appeared on Tulington hill a person riding on a gray charger and waving his bonnet. The Prince, who knew the signal, bidding adieu to the company, instantly galloped off with his friend, another knight, and four esquires. The keepers followed; but in a short time Mortimer, with a band of armed men, issued from a wood, received Edward with acclamations of joy, and conducted him to his castle of Wigmore. The next day the Prince met the Earl of Gloucester at Ludlow. They mutually pledged themselves to forget all former injuries, and to unite their efforts for the liberation of the King, on condition that he should govern according to the laws, and should exclude foreigners from his councils. When Leicester received the news of Edward's escape, he conceived that the prince was gone to join the Earl Warenne, and William de Valence, who a few days before had landed with one hundred and twenty knights on the coast of Pembrokeshire. Ignorant, however, of his real motions, he dared not pursue him; but issued writs in the King's name, ordering the military tenants of the Crown to assemble at first in Worcester, and afterward in Gloucester. To these he added circular letters to the bishops, accusing Edward of rebellion, and requesting a sentence of excommunication against all disturbers of the peace "from the highest to the lowest." The royalists had wisely determined to cut off his communication with the rest of the kingdom by securing to themselves the command of the Severn. Worcester readily opened its gates; Gloucester was taken by storm; and the castle, after a siege of two weeks, was surrendered on condition that the garrison should not serve again during the next forty days. Every bridge was now broken down; the small craft on the river was sunk or destroyed; and the fords were either deepened or watched by powerful detachments. Leicester, caught as it were in the toils, remained inactive at Hereford; but he awaited the arrival of the troops whom he had summoned, and concluded with Llewellyn of Wales a treaty of alliance, by which, for the pretended payment of thirty thousand marks, Henry was made to resign all the advantages which he and his predecessors had wrested from the princes of that country. At last, reinforced by a party of Welshmen, the Earl marched to the south, took and destroyed the castle of Monmouth, and fixed his head-quarters at Newport. Here he expected a fleet of transports to convey him to Bristol; but the galleys of the Earl of Gloucester blockaded the mouth of the Avon; and Edward, with the bravest of his knights, made an attempt on the town of Newport itself. The part which lay on the left bank of the Usk was carried; but the destruction of the bridge arrested the progress of the victors, and Leicester, with his dispirited followers, escaped into Wales. Misfortune now pressed on misfortune; and the last anchor of his hope was broken by the defeat of his son Simon of Montfort. That young nobleman was employed in the siege of Pevensey, on the coast of Sussex, when he received the King's writ to repair to Worcester. On his march he sacked the city of Winchester, the gates of which had been shut against him, passed peaceably through Oxford, and reached the castle of Kenilworth, the principal residence of his family. Here he remained for some days in heedless security, awaiting the orders of his father. Margot, a woman who in male attire performed the office of a spy, informed the Prince that Simon lay in the priory, and his followers in the neighboring farmhouses. Edward immediately formed the design of surprising them in their beds; and marching from Worcester in the evening, arrived at Kenilworth about sunrise the next morning. Twelve bannerets with all their followers were made prisoners; and their horses and treasures repaid the industry of the captors. Simon alone with his pages escaped naked into the castle. Leicester on the same day had crossed the Severn by a ford, and halted at Kempsey, about three miles from Worcester. Happy to find himself at last on the left bank of the river, and ignorant of the fate of his son and the motions of the enemy, he proceeded to Evesham, with the intention of continuing his march the next morning for Kenilworth. The Prince had returned with his prisoners to Worcester, but left the city in the evening, and, to mask his real design, took the road which leads to Bridgenorth. He passed the river near Clains, and, wheeling to the right, arrived before sunrise in the neighborhood of Evesham. He took his station on the summit of a hill in the direction of Kenilworth; two other divisions, under the Earl of Gloucester and Roger de Mortimer, occupied the remaining roads. As the royalists bore the banners of their captives, they were taken by the enemy for the army of Simon de Montfort. But the mistake was soon discovered. Leicester, from an eminence, surveyed their numbers and disposition, and was heard to exclaim, "The Lord have mercy on our souls, for our bodies are Prince Edward's." According to his custom he spent some time in prayer, and received the sacrament. His first object was to force his way through the division on the hill. Foiled in this attempt, and in danger of being surrounded, he ordered his men to form a circle, and oppose on all sides the pressure of the enemy. For a while the courage of despair proved a match for the superiority of numbers. The old King, who had been compelled to appear in the ranks, was slightly wounded, and as he fell from his horse would probably have been killed had he not cried out to his antagonist, "Hold, fellow! I am Harry of Winchester." The Prince knew the voice of his father, sprang to his rescue, and conducted him to a place of safety. During his absence Leicester's horse was killed under him; and, as he fought on foot, he asked if they gave quarter. A voice replied, "There is no quarter for traitors." Henry de Montfort, his eldest son, who would not leave his side, fell at his feet. His dead body was soon covered by that of the father. The royalists obtained a complete but sanguinary victory. Of Leicester's partisans all the barons and knights were slain, with the exception of about ten, who were afterward found breathing, and were cured of their wounds. The foot soldiers of the royal army--so we are told to save the honor of the leaders--offered to the body of the earl every indignity. His mangled remains were afterward collected by the King's orders and buried in the church of the abbey. By this victory the sceptre was replaced in the hands of Henry. With their leader, the hopes of the barons had been extinguished: they spontaneously set at liberty the prisoners who had been detained since the battle of Lewes, and anxiously awaited the determination of the Parliament, which had been summoned to meet at Winchester. In that assembly it was enacted that all grants and patents issued under the King's seal during the time of his captivity should be revoked; that the citizens of London, for their obstinacy and excesses, should forfeit their charter; that the Countess of Leicester and her family should quit the kingdom; and that the estates of all who had adhered to the late earl should be confiscated. The rigor of the last article was afterward softened by a declaration, in which the King granted a free pardon to those who could show that their conduct had not been voluntary, but the effect of compulsion. These measures, however, were not calculated to restore the public tranquillity. The sufferers, prompted by revenge, or compelled by want, had again recourse to the sword; the mountains, forests, and morasses furnished them with places of retreat; and the flames of predatory warfare were kindled in most parts of the kingdom. To reduce these partial but successive insurrections occupied Prince Edward the greater part of two years. He first compelled Simon de Montfort and his associates, who had sought an asylum in the Isle of Axholm, to submit to the award which should be given by himself and the King of the Romans. He next led his forces against the men of the Cinque Ports, who had long been distinguished by their attachment to Leicester, and who since his fall had, by their piracies, interrupted the commerce of the narrow seas, and made prizes of all ships belonging to the King's subjects. The capture of Winchelsea, which was carried by storm, taught them to respect the authority of the sovereign; and their power by sea made the Prince desirous to recall them to their duty and attach them to the crown. They swore fealty to Henry; and in return obtained a full pardon and the confirmation of their privileges. From the Cinque Ports Edward proceeded to Hampshire, which, with Berkshire and the neighboring counties, was ravaged by numerous banditti, under the command of Adam Gordon, the most athletic man of the age. They were surprised in Alton Wood, in Buckinghamshire. The Prince engaged in single combat with their leader, wounded and unhorsed him, and then, in reward of his valor, granted him his pardon. Still the garrison of Kenilworth continued to brave the royal power, and even added contumely to their disobedience. Having in one of their excursions taken a king's messenger, they cut off one of his hands, and sent him back with an insolent message to Henry. To subdue these obstinate rebels it was necessary to summon the chivalry of the kingdom; but the strength of the place defied all the efforts of the assailants; and the obstinacy of Hastings the governor refused for six months every offer which was made to him in the name of his sovereign. There were many, even among the royalists, who disapproved of the indiscriminate severity exercised by the parliament at Winchester; and a possibility was suggested of granting indulgence to the sufferers, and at the same time satisfying those who had profited by their forfeitures. With this view a committee was appointed of twelve prelates and barons, whose award was confirmed by the King in parliament, and called the _Dictum de Kenilworth_. They divided the delinquents into three classes. In the first were the Earl of Derby, Hugh de Hastings, who had earned his preëminence by his superior ferocity, and the persons who had so insolently mutilated the King's messenger. The second comprised all who on different occasions had drawn the sword against their sovereign; and in the third were numbered those who, though they had not fought under the banner, had accepted office under the authority, of Leicester. To all was given the option of redeeming their estates by the payment to the actual possessors of certain sums of money, to the amount of seven years' value by delinquents of the first class, of five by those of the second, and of two years or one year by those of the third. By many the boon was accepted with gratitude: it was scornfully refused by the garrison of the castle of Kenilworth and by the outlaws who had fled to the Isle of Ely. The obstinacy of the former was subdued by famine; and they obtained from the clemency of the King the grant of their lives, limbs, and apparel. The latter, relying on the strength of their asylum, gloried in their rebellion, and occasionally ravaged the neighboring country. Their impunity was, however, owing to the perfidy of the Earl of Gloucester, who, without the talents, aspired to the fame and preëminence, of his deceased rival. He expressed his disapprobation of the award; the factious inhabitants of London chose him for their leader; and his presumption was nourished by the daily accession of outlaws from different parts of the country. Henry summoned his friends to the siege of the capital; and the Earl, when he beheld from the walls the royal army, and reflected on the consequences of a defeat, condemned his own temerity, accepted the mediation of the King of the Romans, and on the condition of receiving a full pardon, gladly returned to his duty, leaving at the same time the citizens to the good pleasure of the King. His submission drew after it the submission of the other insurgents. If Llewellyn remained in arms, it was only with the hope of extorting more favorable terms. The title of Prince of Wales with a right to the homage of the Welsh chieftains satisfied his ambition; and he consented to swear fealty to Henry, and to pay him the sum of twenty-five thousand marks. The restoration of tranquillity allowed the King to direct his attention to the improvement of his people. He condescended to profit by the labors of his adversaries; and some of the most useful among the provisions of the barons were with other laws enacted by legitimate authority in a parliament at Marlborough. To crown this important work, and to extinguish, if it were possible, the very embers of discontent, the clergy were brought forward with a grant of the twentieth of their revenues, as a fund which might enable those who had been prevented by poverty to redeem their estates according to the decision of the arbitrators at Kenilworth. The outlaws in the Isle of Ely were also reduced. The King's poverty had disabled him from undertaking offensive measures against them: but a grant of the tenth part of the church revenues for three years, which he had obtained from the Pope, infused new vigor into his councils; bridges were thrown over the rivers; roads were constructed across the marshes; and the rebels returned to their obedience on condition that they should enjoy the benefit of the Dictum of Kenilworth, which they had so contemptuously and obstinately refused. LOUIS IX LEADS THE LAST CRUSADE A.D. 1270 JOSEPH FRANÇOIS MICHAUD Louis IX, King of France, 1226-1270, was at once a monarch of great ability and a man of intense religious spirit. Naturally, in such a time as that of his reign, a man like Louis would be a crusader. His first expedition--called the Seventh Crusade, 1248-1254--was directed against Egypt. He captured Damietta in 1249 and pushed into the interior, but was defeated by the Egyptian Sultan and taken prisoner with his entire army. He was liberated on the surrender of Damietta and the payment of a large ransom, and in 1254 he returned to France. The state of Europe meanwhile had become unfavorable to further prosecution of the crusades, and Louis was the only monarch who longer took a serious interest in the fate of the Christian colonies of Asia. He also wished to avenge the honor of the French arms in Egypt, and so at length he planned a new expedition against the Moslems in that country. But he long kept this purpose a secret "between God and himself." Louis consulted Pope Clement IV, who at first tried to discourage the perilous enterprise; but finally the Pontiff gave his approval, and while admitting no others as yet into his designs, Louis quietly made preparation and awaited the favorable hour. At last, the great Parliament of France being assembled in the hall of the Louvre, the King entered, bearing in his hand the crown of thorns of Christ. At sight of this, the whole assembly became aware of the monarch's intentions, which he now fully made known, exhorting all who heard him to take the cross. A sad surprise fell upon the reluctant parliament; but Louis was strongly seconded by the Pope's legate, and many of the prelates, nobles, and knights received the cross. Notwithstanding the deep regret which spread among his people, who felt the need of their sovereign's presence for keeping peace and order in the kingdom, and also feared for his own safety--his health being greatly impaired--there was profound respect for the motives of Louis and general acquiescence in his determination. Among many this resignation gave place to zealous devotion, and "the warlike nobility of the kingdom only thought of following their King in an expedition which was already looked upon as unfortunate." Final preparations were accordingly made for Louis' undertaking. While all France was engaged in preparing for the expedition beyond the seas, the crusade was preached in the other countries of Europe. A council was held at Northampton, in England, in which Ottobon, the Pope's legate, exhorted the faithful to arm themselves to save the little that remained of the kingdom of Jerusalem; and Prince Edward took the cross, to discharge the vow that his father, Henry III, had made when the news reached Europe of the captivity of Louis IX in Egypt. After the example of Edward, his brother, Prince Edmund, with the earls of Pembroke and Warwick, and many knights and barons, agreed to take arms against the infidels. The same zeal for the deliverance of the holy places was manifested in Scotland, when John Baliol and several nobles enrolled themselves under the banners of the cross. Cataloni and Castile furnished a great number of crusaders; the King of Portugal, and James, King of Aragon, took the cross. Doña Sancha, one of the daughters of the Aragonese prince, had made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and had died in the hospital of St. John, after devoting many years to the service of pilgrims and the sick. James had several times conquered the Moors, but neither his exploits against the infidels nor the remembrance of a daughter who had fallen a martyr to Christian charity could sustain his piety against the attacks of his earthly passions, and his shameful connection with Berengaria scandalized Christendom. The Pope, to whom he communicated his design of going to the Holy Land, replied that Jesus Christ could not accept the services of a prince who crucified him every day by his sins. The King of Aragon, by a strange combination of opposite sentiments, would neither renounce Berengaria nor give up his project of going to fight against the infidels in the East. He renewed his oath in a great assembly at Toledo, at which the ambassadors of the Khan of Tartary and of the King of Armenia were present. We read, in a Spanish dissertation upon the crusades, that Alfonso the Wise, who was not able to go to the East himself, furnished the King of Aragon with a hundred men and a hundred thousand marvedis in gold; the Order of St. James, and other orders of knighthood, who had often accompanied the conqueror of the Moors in his battles, supplied him also with men and money. The city of Barcelona offered him eighty thousand Barcelonese sols, and Majorca fifty thousand silver sols, with two equipped vessels. The fleet, composed of thirty large ships, and a great number of smaller craft, in which were embarked eight hundred men-at-arms and two thousand foot soldiers, set out from Barcelona on the 4th of September, 1268. When they arrived off Majorca, the fleet was dispersed by a tempest; one part of the vessels gained the coasts of Asia, another took shelter in the ports of Sardinia, the vessel that the King of Arragon was on board of was cast upon the coast of Languedoc. The arrival at Ptolemais of the Aragonese crusaders, commanded by a natural son of James, restored some hopes to the Franks of Palestine. An envoy from the King of Aragon, according to the oriental chronicles, repaired to the Khan of the Tartars, to announce to him that the Spanish monarch would soon arrive with his army. But whether he was detained by the charms of Berengaria, or whether the tempest that dispersed his fleet made him believe that heaven was averse to his pilgrimage, James did not arrive. His departure, in which he appeared to despise the counsels of the holy see, had been severely censured; and his return, which was attributed to his disgraceful passion, met with an equal share of blame. Murmurs likewise arose against the King of Portugal, who had levied the tenths, but did not leave his kingdom. All those who in Europe took an interest in the crusade, had, at this time, their eyes directed toward the kingdom of Naples, where Charles of Anjou was making great preparations to accompany his brother into the East; but this kingdom, recently conquered, was doomed again to be the theatre of a war kindled by vengeance and ambition. There fell out in the states of Naples and Sicily, which had so often changed masters, that which almost always takes place after a revolution: deceived hopes were changed into hatreds; the excesses inseparable from a conquest, the presence of an army proud of its victories, with the too violent government of Charles, animated the people against their new King. Clement IV thought it his duty to give a timely and salutary warning. "Your kingdom," he wrote to him, "at first exhausted by the agents of your authority, is now torn by your enemies; thus the caterpillar destroys what has escaped the grasshopper. The kingdom of Sicily and Naples has not been wanting in men to desolate it; where now are they that will defend it?" This letter of the Pope's announced storms ready to break forth. Many of those who had called Charles to the throne regretted the house of Swabia, and directed their new hopes toward Italy, strengthening Conradin, heir of Frederick and of Conrad. This young Prince quitted Germany with an army and advanced toward Italy, strengthening himself in his march with the party of the Ghibellines, and with all those whom the domination of Charles had irritated. All Italy was in flames, and the Pope, Charles' protector, retired to Viterbo, had no defence to afford him, except only the thunders of the Church. Charles of Anjou, however, now assembled his troops, and marched out to meet his rival. The two armies met in the plain of St. Valentine, near Aquila; the army of Conradin was cut to pieces, and the young Prince fell into the power of the conqueror. Posterity cannot pardon Charles for having abused his victory here so far as to condemn and decapitate his disarmed and vanquished enemy. After this execution, Sicily and the country of Naples were given up to all the furies of a jealous, suspicious tyranny, for violence produces violence, and great political crimes never come alone. It was thus that Charles got ready for the crusade; but, on the other hand, Providence was preparing terrible catastrophes for him. "So true it is," says a historian, "that God as often gives kingdoms to punish those he elevates as to chastise those whom he brings low." While these bloody scenes were passing in Italy, Louis IX was following up the establishment of public peace and his darling object, the crusade, at the same time. The holy monarch did not forget that the surest manner of softening the evils of war, as well as of his absence, was to make good laws; he therefore issued several ordinances, and each of these ordinances was a monument of his justice. The most celebrated of all is the Pragmatic Sanction, which Bossuet called the firmest support of Gallican liberties. He also employed himself in elevating that monument of legislation which illustrated his reign and which became a light for following ages. The Count of Poictiers, who was to accompany his brother, was in the mean time engaged in pacifying his provinces, and established many regulations for maintaining public order. He, above everything, endeavored to abolish slavery; having for a maxim "that men are born free, and it is always wise to bring back things to their origin." This good prince drew upon himself the benedictions of his people; and the love of his vassals assured the duration of the laws he made. We have said that Prince Edward, son of Henry III, had taken the oath to combat the infidels. He had recently displayed a brilliant valor in the civil war that had so long desolated England; and the deliverance of his father and the pacification of the kingdom had been the reward of his exploits. It was his esteem for the character of Louis IX, more than the spirit of devotion, that induced him to set out for the East. The King of France, who himself exhorted him to take the cross, lent him seventy _livres tournois_ for the preparations for his voyage. Edward was to follow Louis as his vassal, and to conduct under his banners the English crusaders, united with those of Guienne. Gaston de Béarn, to whom the French monarch advanced the sum of twenty-five thousand livres, prepared to follow Prince Edward to the Holy Land. The period fixed upon for the departure of the expedition was drawing near. By order of the legate, the _curés_ in every parish had taken the names of the crusaders, in order to oblige them to wear the cross publicly, and all had notice to hold themselves in readiness to embark in the month of May, 1270. Louis confided the administration of his kingdom, during his absence, to Matthew, Abbot of St. Denis, and to Simon, Sieur de Nesle; he wrote to all the nobles who were to follow him into the Holy Land, to recommend them to assemble their knights and men-at-arms. As religious enthusiasm was not sufficiently strong to make men forget their worldly interests, many nobles who had taken the cross entertained great fears of being ruined by the holy war, and most of them hesitated to set out. Louis undertook to pay all the expenses of their voyage, and to maintain them at his own cost during the war--a thing that had not been done in the crusades of Louis VII or Philip Augustus, in which the ardor of the crusaders did not allow them to give a thought to their fortunes or to exercise so much foresight. We have still a valuable monument of this epoch in a charter, by which the King of France stipulates how much he is to pay to a great number of barons and knights during the time the war beyond the seas should last. Early in the month of March, Louis repaired to the Church of St. Denis, where he received the symbols of the pilgrimage and placed his kingdom under the protection of the apostles of France. Upon the day following this solemn ceremony, a mass for the crusade was celebrated in the Church of Notre Dame at Paris. The monarch appeared there, accompanied by his children and the principal nobles of his court; he walked from the palace barefooted, carrying his scrip and staff. The same day he went to sleep at Vincennes, and beheld, for the last time, the spot on which he had enjoyed so much happiness in administering justice to his people. And it was here too that he took leave of Queen Marguerite, whom he had never before quitted--a separation rendered so much the more painful by the sorrowful reflection it recalled of past events and by melancholy presentiments for the future. Both the people and the court were affected by the deepest regret; and that which added to the public anxiety was the circumstance that everyone was ignorant of the point to which the expedition was to be directed: the coast of Africa was only vaguely conjectured. The King of Sicily had taken the cross without having the least inclination to embark for Asia; and when the question was discussed in council he gave it as his opinion that Tunis should be the object of the first attack. The kingdom of Tunis covered the seas with pirates, who infested all the routes to Palestine; it was, besides, the ally of Egypt, and might, if subdued, be made the readiest road to that country. These were the ostensible reasons put forth; the true ones were that it was of importance to the King of Sicily that the coasts of Africa should be brought under European subjection, and that he did not wish to go too far from Italy. The true reason with St. Louis, and that which, no doubt, determined him, was that he believed it possible to convert the King of Tunis, and thus bring a vast kingdom under the Christian banners. The Mussulman Prince, whose ambassadors had been several times in France, had himself given birth to this idea, by saying that he asked nothing better than to embrace the religion of Jesus Christ; thus, that which he had said to turn aside an invasion was precisely the cause of the war being directed against his territories. Louis IX often repeated that he would consent to pass the whole of his life in a dungeon, without seeing the sun, if, by such sacrifice, the conversion of the King of Tunis and his nation could be brought about; an expression of ardent proselytism that has been blamed with much bitterness, but which only showed an extreme desire to see Africa delivered from barbarism and marching with Europe in the progress of intelligence and civilization, which are the great blessings of Christianity. As Louis traversed his kingdom on his way to Aigues-Mortes, where the army of the crusaders was to embark, he was everywhere hailed by the benedictions of his people, and gratified by hearing their ardent prayers for the success of his arms. The clergy and the faithful, assembled in the churches, prayed for the King and his children and all that should follow him. They prayed also for foreign princes and nobles who had taken the cross and promised to go into the East, as if they would, by that means, press them to hasten their departure. Very few, however, responded to this religious appeal. The King of Castile, who had taken the cross, had pretensions to the imperial crown, nor could he forget the death of his brother Frederick, immolated by Charles of Anjou. It was not only that the affairs of the empire detained the German princes and nobles; the death of young Conradin had so shocked and disgusted men's minds in Germany that no one from that country would have consented to fight under the same banners as the King of Sicily. So black a crime, committed amid the preparations for a holy war, appeared to presage great calamities. In the height of their grief or indignation, people might fear that heaven would be angry with the Christians, and that its curse would fall upon the arms of the crusaders. When Louis arrived at Aigues-Mortes, he found neither the Genoese fleet nor the principal nobles who were to embark with him; the ambassadors of Palæologus were the only persons who did not cause themselves to be waited for; for a great dread of the crusade was entertained at Constantinople, and this fear was more active than the enthusiasm of the crusaders. Louis might have asked the Greek Emperor why, after having promised to send soldiers, he had only sent ambassadors; but Louis, who attached great importance to the conversion of the Greeks, contented himself with removing the apprehensions of the envoys, and, as Clement IV died at that period, he sent them to the conclave of the cardinals, to terminate the reunion of the two churches. At length the unwilling crusaders, stimulated by repeated exhortations and by the example of Louis, set forward on their march from all the provinces, and directed their course toward the ports of Aigues-Mortes and Marseilles. Louis soon welcomed the arrival of the Count of Poictiers, with a great number of his vassals; the principal nobles brought with them the most distinguished of their knights and their most brave and hardy soldiers; many cities likewise contributed their supply of warriors. Each troop had its banner, and formed a separate corps, bearing the name of a city or a province, the battalions of Beaucaire, Carcassonne, Châlons, Perigord, etc., attracted observation in the Christian army. These names, it is true, excited great emulation, but they also gave rise to quarrels, which the wisdom and firmness of Louis had great difficulty in appeasing. Crusaders arrived from Catalonia, Castile, and several other provinces of Spain; five hundred warriors from Friesland likewise ranged themselves with full confidence under the standard of such a leader as Louis, saying that their nation had always been proud to obey the kings of France. Before he embarked, the King wrote once more to the regents of the kingdom, to recommend them to watch carefully over public morals, to deliver France from corrupt judges, and to render to everybody, particularly the poor, prompt and perfect justice, so that He who judges the judgments of men might have nothing to reproach him with. Such were the last farewells that Louis took of France. The fleet set sail on the 4th of July, 1270, and in a few days arrived in the road of Cagliari. Here the council of the counts and barons was assembled in the King's vessel, to deliberate upon the plan of the crusade. Those who advocated the conquest of Tunis said that by that means the passages of the Mediterranean would be opened and the power of the mamelukes would be weakened; and that after that conquest the army would go triumphantly into either Egypt or Palestine. Many of the barons were not of this opinion; they said that, if the Holy Land stood in need of prompt assistance, they ought to afford it without delay. While they were engaged on the coast of Africa, in a country with which they were unacquainted, the Christian cities of Syria might all fall into the hands of the Saracens. The most redoubtable enemy of the Christians was Beibars, the terrible Sultan of Cairo; it was him they ought first to attack; it was into his states, into the bosom of his capital, that the war should be carried, and not to a place two hundred leagues from Egypt. They added to this, remembrances of the defeats that ought to be avenged upon the very theatre of so many disasters. Contemporary history does not say to what extent Louis was struck with the wisdom of these last opinions; but the expedition to Tunis flattered his most cherished hopes. It had been proposed by the King of Sicily, whose concurrence was necessary to the success of the crusade. It was, therefore, decided that the Genoese fleet should direct its course toward Africa; and two days after, on the 20th of July, it arrived in sight of Tunis and Carthage. At the sight of the Christian fleet, the inhabitants of the coast of Africa were seized with terror, and all who were upon the Carthage shore took flight toward the mountains or toward Tunis. Some vessels that were in the port were abandoned by their crews; the King ordered Florent de Varennes, who performed the functions of admiral, to get into a boat and reconnoitre the coast. Varennes found nobody in the port or upon the shore; he sent word to the King that there was no time to be lost--he must take immediate advantage of the consternation of the enemy. But it was remembered that in the preceding expedition the descent upon the coast of Egypt had been too precipitate; in this it was determined to risk nothing. Inexperienced youth had presided over the former war; now it was directed by old age and ripe manhood, and it was resolved to wait till the morrow. The next day at dawn the coast appeared covered with Saracens, among whom were many men on horseback. The crusaders, nevertheless, commenced their preparations for landing. At the approach of the Christians, the multitude of infidels disappeared; which, according to the account of an eyewitness, was a blessing from heaven, for the disorder was so great that a hundred men would have been sufficient to stop the disembarkation of the whole army. When the Christian army had landed, it was drawn up in order of battle upon the shore, and, in accordance with the laws of war, Pierre de Condé, almoner to the King, read with a loud voice a proclamation by which the conquerors took possession of the territory. This proclamation, which Louis had drawn up himself, began by these words: "I proclaim, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of Louis, King of France, his sergeant," etc. The baggage, provisions, and munitions of war were landed; a vast space was marked out, and the Christian soldiers pitched their tents. While they were digging ditches and raising intrenchments to protect the army from a surprise, they took possession of the tower built on the point of the cape, and on the following day five hundred sailors planted the standard of the lilies upon the castle of Carthage. The village of Marsa, which was close to the castle, fell likewise into the hands of the crusaders; the women and the sick were placed here, while the army remained beneath their tents. Louis still hoped for the conversion of the King of Tunis, but this pious illusion was very quickly dissolved. The Mussulman Prince sent messengers to the King to inform him that he would come and meet him at the head of a hundred thousand men, and would require baptism of him on the field of battle; the Moorish King added that he had caused all the Christians in his dominions to be seized, and that every one of them should be massacred if the Christian army presumed to insult his capital. The menaces and vain bravadoes of the Prince of Tunis effected no change in the plans of the crusade; the Moors, besides, inspired no fear, and they themselves could not conceal the terror which the sight only of the Christians created in them. Not daring to face their enemy, their scattered bands sometimes hovered around the Christian army, seeking to surprise any stragglers from the camp; and at others, uniting together, they poured down toward the advanced posts, launched a few arrows, showed their naked swords, and then depended upon the swiftness of their horses to secure them from the pursuit of the Christians. They not unfrequently had recourse to treachery; three hundred of them came into the camp of the crusaders, and said they wished to embrace the Christian faith, and a hundred more followed them announcing the same intention. After being received with open arms, they waited for what they deemed a favorable opportunity, and fell upon a body of the Christians, sword in hand; but being overwhelmed by numbers, most of them were killed, and the rest were allowed to escape. Three of the principals fell on their knees and implored the compassion of their leaders. The contempt the Franks had for such enemies obtained their pardon, and they were driven out of the camp. At length the Mussulman army, now emboldened by the inaction of the Christians, presented itself several times on the plain. Nothing would have been more easy than to attack and conquer it; but Louis had resolved to act upon the defensive, and to await the arrival of the King of Sicily, before beginning the war--a fatal resolution, which ruined everything. The Sicilian monarch, who had advised this ill-starred expedition, was destined to complete, by his delays, the evil he had begun by his counsels. The Mussulmans flocked from all parts of Africa to defend the cause of Islamism against the Christians. Preparations were carried on in Egypt to meet the invasion of the Franks; and in the month of August, Beibars announced by messengers that he was about to march to the assistance of Tunis. The troops which the Sultan of Cairo maintained in the province of Barca received orders to set forward. Thus the Moorish army was about to become formidable; but it was not this host of Saracens that the crusaders had most to dread. Other dangers, other misfortunes, threatened them: the Christian army wanted water; they had none but salted provisions; the soldiers could not endure the climate of Africa; winds constantly prevailed, which, coming from the torrid zone, appeared to the Europeans to be the breath of a devouring fire. The Saracens upon the neighboring mountains raised the sand with certain instruments made for the purpose, and the dust was carried by the wind in burning clouds down upon the plain upon which the Christians were encamped. At last, dysentery, that fatal malady of warm climates, began to commit frightful ravages among the troops; and the plague, which appears to be born of itself upon this burning, arid sand, spread its dire contagion through the Christian army. They were obliged to be under arms night and day; not to defend themselves from an enemy that always fled away from them, but to guard against surprise. A vast number of the crusaders sunk under fatigue, famine, and disease. It became impossible to bury the dead; the ditches of the camp were filled with carcasses, thrown in in heaps, which added to the corruption of the air and to the spectacle of the general desolation. In spite of his sufferings, in spite of his griefs, Louis IX was constantly engaged in endeavors to alleviate the situation of his army. He gave orders as long as he had any strength left, dividing his time between the duties of a Christian and those of a monarch. The fever, however, increased; no longer able to attend either to his cares for the army or to exercises of piety, he ordered the cross to be placed before him, and, stretching out his hands, he in silence implored Him who had suffered for all men. The whole army was in a state of mourning--the soldiers walked about in tears, demanding of heaven the preservation of so good a prince. Amid the general grief, Louis turned his thoughts toward the accomplishment of the divine laws and the destinies of France. Philip, who was his successor to the throne, was in his tent; he desired him to approach his bed, and in a faltering voice gave him counsels in what manner he should govern the kingdom of his fathers. The instructions he gave him comprise the most noble maxims of religion and loyalty; and that which will render them forever worthy of the respect of posterity is that they had the authority of his example, and only recalled the virtues of his own life. HEIGHT OF THE MONGOL POWER IN CHINA A.D. 1271 MARCO POLO The celebrated traveller, Marco Polo, was born at Venice in 1254, and died there in 1334, His father, a Venetian merchant, had passed many years in Tartary, where he was hospitably treated by Kublai Khan, to whose court, at an early age, Marco was taken, and there was received into the Khan's service. The training he acquired there fitted him to become a professional politician rather than a traveller, in the ordinary sense of the word; hence his more intimate acquaintance with the social and political systems which he describes. Possessing, in a high degree, the versatility and subtlety seen in so many of his nation, and improving his new opportunities, he soon became among the high-class Tartars as one of themselves. He adopted their dress and manners, and learned the four languages spoken in the Khan's dominions, of which he left a famous description in his book of travels. The empire seems at this time to have been at the height of its splendor, and historians, as well as students and readers of history, have been fortunate in possessing the shrewd and candid observations of Marco Polo, whose unique narratives still preserve their simple charm, nowise impaired by comparison with our stricter historical methods. It is our desire to treat of the great and admirable achievements of the Grand Khan now reigning, who is styled Kublai Khan; the latter word implying, in our language, lord of lords, and with much propriety added to his name; for in respect to number of subjects, extent of territory, and amount of revenue he surpasses every sovereign that has heretofore been or that now is in the world; nor has any other been served with such implicit obedience by those whom he governs. Kublai Khan is the lineal and legitimate descendant of Genghis Khan, the first emperor, and the rightful sovereign of the Tartars. He obtained the sovereignty by his consummate valor, his virtues, and his prudence, in opposition to the designs of his brothers, supported by many of the great officers and members of his own family. But the succession appertained to him of right. It is forty-two years since he began to reign, and he is fully eighty-five years of age. Previously to his ascending the throne he had served as a volunteer in the army, and endeavored to take a share in every enterprise. Not only was he brave and daring in action, but in point of judgment and military skill he was considered to be the most able and successful commander that ever led the Tartars to battle. From that period, however, he ceased to take the field in person, and intrusted the conduct of expeditions to his sons and his captains; excepting in one instance, the occasion of which was as follows. A certain chief named Nayan, who, although only thirty years of age, was kinsman to Kublai, had succeeded to the dominion of many cities and provinces, which enabled him to bring into the field an army of four hundred thousand horse. His predecessors, however, had been vassals of the Grand Khan. Actuated by youthful vanity upon finding himself at the head of so great a force, he formed, in the year 1286, the design of throwing off his allegiance, and usurping the sovereignty. With this view he privately despatched messengers to Kaidu, another powerful chief, whose territories lay toward the greater Turkey, and who, although a nephew of the Grand Khan, was in rebellion against him, and bore him determined ill-will, proceeding from the apprehension of punishment for former offences. To Kaidu, therefore, the propositions made by Nayan were highly satisfactory, and he accordingly promised to bring to his assistance an army of a hundred thousand horse. Both princes immediately began to assemble their forces, but it could not be effected so secretly as not to come to the knowledge of Kublai, who, upon hearing of their preparations, lost no time in occupying all the passes leading to the countries of Nayan and of Kaidu, in order to prevent them from having any information respecting the measures he was himself taking. He then gave orders for collecting, with the utmost celerity, the whole of the troops stationed within ten days' march of the city of Kambalu. These amounted to three hundred and sixty thousand horse, to which was added a body of a hundred thousand foot, consisting of those who were usually about his person, and principally his falconers and domestic servants. In the course of twenty days they were all in readiness. Had he assembled the armies kept up for the constant protection of the different provinces of Cathay, it must necessarily have required thirty or forty days; in which time the enemy would have gained information of his arrangements, and been enabled to effect their junction, and to occupy such strong positions as would best suit with their designs. His object was, by promptitude, which is ever the companion of victory, to anticipate the preparations of Nayan, and, by falling upon him while single, destroy his power with more certainty and effect than after he should have been joined by Kaidu. In every province of Cathay and of Manji,[65] as well as in other parts of his dominions, there were many disloyal and seditious persons, who at all times were disposed to break out in rebellion against their sovereign, and on this account it became necessary to keep armies in such of the provinces as contained large cities and an extensive population, which are stationed at the distance of four or five miles from those cities, and can enter them at their pleasure. These armies the Grand Khan makes it a practice to change every second year, and the same with respect to the officers who command them. By means of such precautions the people are kept in quiet subjection, and no movement nor innovation of any kind can be attempted. The troops are maintained not only from the pay they receive out of the imperial revenues of the province, but also from the cattle and their milk, which belong to them individually, and which they send into the cities for sale, furnishing themselves from thence, in return, with those articles of which they stand in need. In this manner they are distributed over the country, in various places, to the distance of thirty, forty, and even sixty days' journey. If even the half of these corps were to be collected in one place, the statement of their number would appear marvellous and scarcely entitled to belief. Having formed his army in the manner above described, the Grand Khan proceeded toward the territory of Nayan, and by forced marches, continued day and night, he reached it at the expiration of twenty-five days. So prudently, at the same time, was the expedition managed, that neither that Prince himself nor any of his dependents were aware of it, all the roads being guarded in such a manner that no persons who attempted to pass could escape being made prisoners. Upon arriving at a certain range of hills, on the other side of which was the plain where Nayan's army lay encamped, Kublai halted his troops and allowed them two days of rest. During this interval he called upon his astrologers to ascertain, by virtue of their art, and to declare in presence of the whole army, to which side the victory would incline. They pronounced that it would fall to the lot of Kublai. It has ever been the practice of the grand khans to have recourse to divination for the purpose of inspiriting their men. Confident, therefore, of success, they ascended the hill with alacrity the next morning, and presented themselves before the army of Nayan, which they found negligently posted, without advanced parties or scouts, while the chief himself was asleep in his tent, accompanied by one of his wives. Upon awaking, he hastened to form his troops in the best manner that circumstances would allow, lamenting that his junction with Kaidu had not been sooner effected. Kublai took his station in a large wooden castle, borne on the backs of four elephants, whose bodies were protected with coverings of thick leather hardened by fire, over which were housings of cloth of gold. The castle contained many cross-bowmen and archers, and on the top of it was hoisted the imperial standard, adorned with representations of the sun and moon. His army, which consisted of thirty battalions of horse, each battalion containing ten thousand men, armed with bows, he disposed in three grand divisions; and those which formed the left and right wings he extended in such a manner as to outflank the army of Nayan. In front of each battalion of horse were placed five hundred infantry, armed with short lances and swords, who, whenever the cavalry made a show of fight, were practised to mount behind the riders and accompany them, alighting again when they returned to the charge, and killing, with their lances, the horses of the enemy. As soon as the order of battle was arranged, an infinite number of wind instruments of various kinds were sounded, and these were succeeded by songs, according to the custom of the Tartars before they engage in fight, which commences upon the signal given by the cymbals and drums, and there was such a beating of the cymbals and drums, and such singing, that it was wonderful to hear. This signal, by the orders of the Grand Khan, was first given to the right and left wings; and then a fierce and bloody conflict began. The air was instantly filled with a cloud of arrows that poured down on every side, and vast numbers of men and horses were seen to fall to the ground. The loud cries and shouts of the men, together with the noise of the horses and the weapons, were such as to inspire terror in those who heard them. When their arrows had been discharged, the hostile parties engaged in close combat with their lances, swords, and maces shod with iron; and such was the slaughter, and so large were the heaps of the carcasses of men, and more especially of horses, on the field, that it became impossible for the one party to advance upon the other. Thus the fortune of the day remained for a long time undecided, and victory wavered between the contending parties from morning until noon; for so zealous was the devotion of Nayan's people to the cause of their master, who was most liberal and indulgent toward them, that they were all ready to meet death rather than turn their backs to the enemy. At length, however, Nayan, perceiving that he was nearly surrounded, attempted to save himself by flight, but was presently made prisoner, and conducted to the presence of Kublai, who gave orders for his being put to death. This was carried into execution by enclosing him between two carpets, which were violently shaken until the spirit had departed from the body; the motive for this peculiar sentence being that the sun and the air should not witness the shedding of the blood of one who belonged to the imperial family. Those of his troops which survived the battle came to make their submission and swear allegiance to Kublai. Nayan, who had privately undergone the ceremony of baptism, but never made open profession of Christianity, thought proper, on this occasion, to bear the sign of the cross in his banners, and he had in his army a vast number of Christians, who were among the slain. When the Jews and the Saracens perceived that the banner of the cross was overthrown, they taunted the Christian inhabitants with it, saying: "Behold the state to which your (vaunted) banners, and those who followed them, are reduced!" On account of these derisions the Christians were compelled to lay their complaints before the Grand Khan, who ordered the former to appear before him, and sharply rebuked them. "If the cross of Christ," he said, "has not proved advantageous to the party of Nayan, the effect has been consistent with reason and justice, inasmuch as he was a rebel and a traitor to his lord, and to such wretches it could not afford its protection. Let none therefore presume to charge with injustice the God of the Christians, who is himself the perfection of goodness and of justice." The Grand Khan, having obtained this signal victory, returned with great pomp and triumph to the capital city of Kanbalu. This took place in the month of November, and he continued to reside there during the months of February and March, in which latter was our festival of Easter. Being aware that this was one of our principal solemnities, he commanded all the Christians to attend him, and to bring with them their book, which contains the four gospels of the evangelists. After causing it to be repeatedly perfumed with incense, in a ceremonious manner, he devoutly kissed it, and directed that the same should be done by all his nobles who were present. This was his usual practice upon each of the principal Christian festivals, such as Easter and Christmas; and he observed the same at the festivals of the Saracens, Jews, and idolaters.[66] Upon being asked his motive for this conduct, he said: "There are four great prophets who are reverenced and worshipped by the different classes of mankind. The Christians regard Jesus Christ as their divinity; the Saracens, Mahomet; the Jews, Moses;[67] and the idolaters, Sogomombar-khan,[68] the most eminent among their idols. I do honor and show respect to all the four, and invoke to my aid whichever among them is in truth supreme in heaven." But from the manner in which his majesty acted toward them, it is evident that he regarded the faith of the Christians as the truest and the best; nothing, as he observed, being enjoined to its professors that was not replete with virtue and holiness. By no means, however, would he permit them to bear the cross before them in their processions, because upon it so exalted a personage as Christ had been scourged and (ignominiously) put to death. It may perhaps be asked by some why, if he showed such a preference to the faith of Christ, he did not conform to it and become a Christian? His reason for not so doing he assigned: "Wherefore should I become a Christian? The Christians of these countries are ignorant, inefficient persons, who do not possess the faculty of performing anything (miraculous); whereas the idolaters can do whatever they will. When I sit at table the cups that were in the middle of the hall come to me filled with wine and other beverage, spontaneously and without being touched by human hand, and I drink from them. They have the power of controlling bad weather and obliging it to retire to any quarter of the heavens, with many other wonderful gifts of that nature. Their idols have the faculty of speech, and predict to them whatever is required. Should I become a convert to the faith of Christ and profess myself a Christian, the nobles of my court and other persons who do not incline to that religion will ask me what sufficient motives have caused me to receive baptism and to embrace Christianity. 'What extraordinary powers,' they will say, 'what miracles, have been displayed by its ministers?' Whereas, the idolaters declare that what they exhibit is performed through their own sanctity and the influence of their idols. "To this I shall not know what answer to make, and I shall be considered by them as laboring under a grievous error; while the idolaters, who by means of their profound art can effect such wonders, may without difficulty compass my death. But let the Pontiff send hither a hundred persons well skilled in Christian law, who being confronted with the idolaters shall have power to coerce them, and showing that they themselves are endowed with similar art, but which they refrain from exercising because it is derived from the agency of evil spirits, shall compel them to desist from practices of such a nature in their presence. When I am witness of this I shall place them and their religion under an interdict, and shall allow myself to be baptized. Following my example, all my nobility will then in like manner receive baptism, and this will be imitated by my subjects in general." From this discourse it must be evident that if the Pope had sent out persons duly qualified to preach the gospel, the Grand Khan would have embraced Christianity, for which, it is certainly known, he had a strong predilection. The Grand Khan appoints twelve of the most intelligent among his nobles, whose duty it is to make themselves acquainted with the conduct of the officers and men of his army, particularly upon expeditions and in battles, and to present their reports to him, and he, upon being apprised of their respective merits, advances them in his service, raising those who commanded a hundred men to the command of a thousand, and presenting many with vessels of silver, as well as the customary tablets or warrants of command and of government. The tablets given to those commanding a hundred men are of silver; to those commanding a thousand, of gold or of silver gilt; and those who command ten thousand receive tablets of gold, bearing the head of a lion; the former being of the weight of a hundred and twenty _saggi_,[69] and these with the lion's head two hundred and twenty. At the top of the inscription on the tablet is a sentence to this effect: "By the power and might of the great God, and through the grace which he vouchsafes to our empire, be the name of the Khan blessed; and let all such as disobey (what is herein directed) suffer death and be utterly destroyed." The officers who hold these tablets have privileges attached to them, and in the inscription is specified what are the duties and the powers of their respective commands. He who is at the head of a hundred thousand men, or the commander-in-chief of a grand army, has a golden tablet weighing three hundred saggi, with the sentence above mentioned, and at the bottom is engraved the figure of a lion, together with representations of the sun and moon. He exercises also the privileges of his high command, as set forth in this magnificent tablet. Whenever he rides in public, an umbrella is carried over his head, denoting the rank and authority he holds;[70] and when he is seated, it is always upon a silver chair. The Grand Khan confers likewise upon certain of his nobles tablets on which are represented figures of the gerfalcon, in virtue of which they are authorized to take with them as their guard of honor the whole army of any great prince. They can also make use of the horses of the imperial stud at their pleasure, and can appropriate the horses of any officers inferior to themselves in rank. Kublai is of the middle stature, that is, neither tall nor short; his limbs are well formed, and in his whole figure there is a just proportion. His complexion is fair, and occasionally suffused with red, like the bright tint of the rose, which adds much grace to his countenance. His eyes are black and handsome, his nose is well shaped and prominent. He has four wives of the first rank, who are esteemed legitimate, and the eldest born son of any one of these succeeds to the empire upon the decease of the grand khan. They bear equally the title of "empress," and have their separate courts. None of them has fewer than three hundred young female attendants of great beauty, together with a multitude of youths as pages, and other eunuchs, as well as ladies of the bedchamber; so that the number of persons belonging to each of their respective courts amounts to ten thousand. The Grand Khan usually resides during three months of the year--December, January, and February--in the great city of Kanbalu,[71] situated toward the northeastern extremity of Cathay; and here, on the southern side of the new city, is the site of his vast palace, in a square enclosed with a wall and deep ditch; each side of the square being eight miles in length, and having at an equal distance from each extremity an entrance gate. Within this enclosure there is, on the four sides, an open space one mile in breadth, where the troops are stationed, and this is bounded by a second wall, enclosing a square of six miles. The palace contains a number of separate chambers, all highly beautiful, and so admirably disposed that it seems impossible to suggest any improvement to the system of their arrangement. The exterior of the roof is adorned with a variety of colors--red, green, azure, and violet--and the sort of covering is so strong as to last for many years. The glazing of the windows is so well wrought and so delicate as to have the transparency of crystal. In the rear of the body of the palace there are large buildings containing several apartments, where is deposited the private property of the monarch, or his treasure in gold and silver bullion, precious stones, and pearls, and also his vessels of gold and silver plate. Here are likewise the apartments of his wives and concubines; and in this retired situation he despatches business with convenience, being free from every kind of interruption. His majesty, having imbibed an opinion from the astrologers that the city of Kanbalu was destined to become rebellious to his authority, resolved upon building another capital, upon the opposite side of the river, where stand the palaces just described, so that the new and the old cities are separated from each other only by the stream that runs between them. The new-built city received the name of Tai-du, and all those of the inhabitants who were natives of Cathay were compelled to evacuate the ancient city and to take up their abode in the new. Some of the inhabitants, however, of whose loyalty he did not entertain suspicion, were suffered to remain, especially because the latter, although of the dimensions that shall presently be described, was not capable of containing the same number as the former, which was of vast extent. This new city is of a form perfectly square, and twenty-four miles in extent, each of its sides being neither more nor less than six miles. It is enclosed with walls of earth that at the base are about ten paces thick, but gradually diminish to the top, where the thickness is not more than three paces. In all parts the battlements are white. The whole plan of the city was regularly laid out by line, and the streets in general are consequently so straight that when a person ascends the wall over one of the gates, and looks right forward, he can see the gate opposite to him on the other side of the city. In the public streets there are, on each side, booths and shops of every description. All the allotments of ground upon which the habitations throughout the city were constructed are square and exactly on a line with each other; each allotment being sufficiently spacious for handsome buildings, with corresponding courts and gardens. One of these was assigned to each head of a family; that is to say, such a person of such a tribe had one square allotted to him, and so of the rest. Afterward the property passed from hand to hand. In this manner the whole interior of the city is disposed in squares, so as to resemble a chess-board, and planned out with a degree of precision and beauty impossible to describe. The wall of the city has twelve gates, three on each side of the square, and over each gate and compartment of the wall there is a handsome building; so that on each side of the square there are five such buildings, containing large rooms, in which are disposed the arms of those who form the garrison of the city, every gate being guarded by a thousand men. It is not to be understood that such a force is stationed there in consequence of the apprehension of danger from any hostile power whatever, but as a guard suitable to the honor and dignity of the sovereign. FOUNDING OF THE HOUSE OF HAPSBURG A.D. 1273 WILLIAM COXE The house of Hapsburg---also called the house of Austria--owes its origin and firm establishment to the most celebrated of the Hapsburgs, a German princely family who derived their name from Hapsburg castle, built about 1020, on the banks of the Aare in Switzerland. This founder of the imperial line was Rudolph, son of Albert IV, Count of Hapsburg and Landgrave of Alsace. Rudolph was born in 1218, and died at Germersheim, Germany, in 1291. He succeeded his father in Hapsburg and Alsace in 1239, and in 1273 was elected German King (Rudolph I), with the substance, though not the title, of the imperial dignity of the Holy Roman Empire. It is said that the electors desired an emperor, but not the exercise of imperial power, and that in Rudolph they saw a candidate of comparative lowliness, from whom their authority stood in little jeopardy. At the age of fifty-five the new sovereign assumed his throne in the face of difficulty and danger. He was opposed by the Spanish claimant, Alfonso of Castile, and confronted a formidable rival in Ottocar, King of Bohemia, whose contumacy disturbed the reign of Rudolph from its very beginning. Rudolph's enemies had appealed against him to Pope Gregory X, and Rudolph in turn sought the ratification of the Pontiff, to whom, immediately after his election, he sent messengers with a letter imploring papal countenance. From this moment to the day when he finally overcame Ottocar in the field and secured the possessions which became hereditary in the house of Hapsburg, the historian narrates the steps whereby Rudolph advanced in his career. Fortunately for the interests of Rudolph and the peace of Germany, Gregory X was prudent, humane, and generous, and from a long experience of worldly affairs had acquired a profound knowledge of men and manners. An ardent zeal for the propagation of the Christian faith was the leading feature of his character, and the object of his greatest ambition was to lead an army of crusaders against the infidels. To the accomplishment of this purpose he directed his aims, and, like a true father of Christendom, was anxious to appease instead of fomenting the troubles of Europe, and to consolidate the union of the German states, which it had been the policy of his predecessors to divide and disunite. By the most insinuating address he knew how to conciliate the affections of those who approached him, and to bend to his purpose the most steady opposition; and he endeavored to gain by extreme affability and the mildness of his deportment what his predecessors had extorted by the most extravagant pretensions. The ambassadors of Rudolph were received with complacency by the Pope, and obtained his sanction by agreeing, in the name of their master, to the same conditions which Otho IV and Frederick II had sworn to observe; by confirming all the donations of the emperors, his predecessors, to the papal see; by promising to accept no office or dignity in any of the papal territories, particularly in the city of Rome, without the consent of the Pope; by agreeing not to disturb nor permit the house of Anjou to be disturbed in the possession of Naples and Sicily, which they held as fiefs from the Roman see; and by engaging to undertake in person a crusade against the infidels. In consequence of these concessions, Gregory gave the new King of the Romans his most cordial support, refused to listen to the overtures of Ottocar, and after much difficulty finally succeeded in persuading Alfonso to renounce his pretensions to the imperial dignity. An interview in October, 1275, between Rudolph and Gregory at Lausanne, concluded his negotiations with the Roman see, and gave rise to a personal friendship between the heads of the Church and the empire, who were equally distinguished for their frank and amiable qualities. In this interview Rudolph publicly ratified the articles which his ambassadors had concluded in his name; the electors and princes who were present followed his example, and Gregory again confirmed the election of Rudolph, on condition that he should repair to Rome the following year to receive the imperial crown. At the conclusion of this ceremony the new Emperor, with his consort and the princes of the empire, assumed the cross, and engaged to undertake a crusade against the infidels. During the negotiations of Rudolph with Gregory X, Ottocar had exerted himself to shake the authority of the new chief of the empire, and to consolidate a confederacy with the German princes. He not only rejected with disdain all the proposals of accommodation made at the instances of Rudolph by the judicious and conciliating Pontiff, but prevented the clergy of Bohemia from contributing the tenths of their revenue or preaching the crusade. He endeavored to alarm the princes of the empire by displaying the views of the new sovereign, to recover the imperial fiefs which they had appropriated during the interregnum, and by his promises and intrigues succeeded in attaching to his cause the Margrave of Baden and the counts of Freiburg, Neuburg, and Montfort. But he secured a still more powerful partisan in Henry, Duke of Lower Bavaria, by fomenting the disputes between him and his brother the Count Palatine, and by ceding to him Scharding and other places wrested from Bavaria by the Duke of Austria. When summoned by Rudolph to do homage for his fiefs, according to the custom of the empire, he returned a haughty answer, treating him as Count of Hapsburg; a second summons was received with silent contempt; on a third he sent his ambassador, the Bishop of Seccan, to the Diet of Augsburg; and his example was followed by Henry of Bavaria. These ministers were, however, only deputed to raise a feigned contest relative to the vote of Henry and to protest against the election of Rudolph. The ambassador of Henry urged the protest with moderation and respect; but the Bishop of Seccan delivered a virulent invective against the chief of the empire, in a style conformable to the spirit and character of his powerful and haughty master. He declared that the assembly in which Rudolph had been chosen was illegal; that the arbitration of Louis of Bavaria was unprecedented; that a man excommunicated by the Pope for plundering churches and convents was ineligible to the imperial throne, and that his sovereign, who held his dominions by an indisputable title, owed no homage to the Count of Hapsburg. As he spoke in the Latin tongue, the Emperor interrupted him with a dignified rebuke. "Bishop," he said, "if you were to harangue in an ecclesiastical consistory, you might use the Latin tongue; but when discoursing upon your rights and the rights of the princes of the empire, why do you employ a language which the greater part of those who are present do not comprehend?" The rebuke of the sovereign justly roused the indignation of the assembly; the princes, and particularly the Elector Palatine, started from their seats, and were scarcely prevented from employing violence, even by the interposition of Rudolph; and the ambassadors, quitting the assembly, retired from Augsburg. The diet, irritated by this insult, passed a decree asserting the unanimity of Rudolph's election; they declared Ottocar guilty of contumacy; required him to restore Austria, Carinthia, and Carniola, which he had usurped, and to do homage for the remainder of his dominions. In case of refusal the ban of the empire was denounced against him, and supplies of men and money were voted to support their sovereign, to assert the imperial dignity, and to reduce the rebellious princes to obedience. The Burgrave of Nuremberg and the Bishop of Basel were despatched to Ottocar in the name of the diet, to demand his instant acknowledgment of Rudolph as king of the Romans, and the restitution of Austria, Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola. They accordingly repaired to Prague, and delivered their message. "Tell Rudolph," replied the spirited monarch, "that he may rule over the territories of the empire, but I will not tamely yield those possessions which, I have acquired at the expense of so much blood and treasure; they are mine by marriage, by purchase, or by conquest." He then broke out into bitter invectives against Rudolph, and after tauntingly expressing his surprise that a petty count of Hapsburg should have been preferred to so many powerful candidates, dismissed the ambassadors with contempt. In the heat of his resentment he even violated the laws of nations, and put to death the heralds who announced to him the resolutions of the diet and delivered the ban of the empire. During this whole transaction Rudolph acted with becoming prudence and extreme circumspection. He had endeavored by the mildest methods to bring Ottocar to terms of conciliation; and when all his overtures were received with insult and contempt, and hostilities became inevitable, he did not seek a distant war till he had obtained the full confirmation of the Pope and had reëstablished the peace of those parts of the empire which bordered on his own dominions. He first attacked the petty adherents of Ottocar, the Margrave of Baden, and the counts of Freiburg, Montfort, and Neuburg, and, having compelled them to do homage and to restore the fiefs which they had appropriated during the preceding troubles, he prepared to turn his whole force against the King of Bohemia, with a solicitude which the power and talents of his formidable rival naturally inspired. The contest in which Rudolph was about to engage was of a nature to call forth all his resources and talents. Ottocar was a prince of high spirit, great abilities, and distinguished military skill, which had been exercised in constant warfare from his early youth. By hereditary right he succeeded to Bohemia and Moravia, and to these territories he had made continual additions by his crusades against the Prussians, his contests with the kings of Hungary, and still more by his recent acquisition of Austria, Carinthia, and Carniola. In the tenth century Austria, with both Styria and Carniola, under the title of a margravate, was governed by Leopold I of the house of Bamberg. It continued in the possession of his family, and in 1156 was erected into an independent duchy by the emperor Frederick II, and conferred on Henry, fifth in descent from Leopold, as an indivisible and inalienable fief; in failure of male issue it was made descendible to his eldest daughter, and, in failure of female issue, disposable by will. In 1245 Frederick the Warlike, last duke of the Bamberg line, obtained a confirmation of this decree; but, dying in the ensuing year without issue and without disposing of his territories by will, a dispute arose relative to his succession. The claimants were his two sisters, Margaret, widow of Henry VII, King of the Romans, and Constantia, wife of Henry the Illustrious, Margrave of Misnia; and his niece Gertrude, daughter of Henry, his elder brother, the wife of Premislaus, eldest son of Wenceslaus, King of Bohemia and brother of Ottocar. But on the plea that neither of the claimants was a daughter of the last Duke, the Emperor Frederick II sequestrated these territories as fiefs escheating to the empire, and transferred the administration to Otho, Count of Werdenberg, who took possession of the country and resided in Vienna. As this event happened during the contest between the see of Rome and the house of Swabia, Innocent IV, who had deposed and excommunicated Frederick, laid Austria under an interdict, and encouraged the kings of Bohemia and Hungary and the Duke of Bavaria to invade the country. The Pope first patronized the claims of Margaret, and urged her to marry a German prince; but on her application to the Emperor to bestow the duchy on her eldest son Frederick, he supported Gertrude, who, after the death of Premislaus, had espoused Herman, Margrave of Baden, nephew of Otho, Duke of Bavaria, and induced the anticæsar, William of Holland, to grant him the investiture. On the demise of Frederick II his son Conrad was too much occupied with the affairs of Italy to attend to those of Germany; the imperial troops quitted Austria, and, Herman dying, Otho of Bavaria occupied that part of Austria which lies above the Ems. But Wenceslaus of Bohemia, prevailing on the states to choose his eldest surviving son Ottocar as their sovereign, under the condition that he should espouse Margaret, expelled the Bavarians and took possession of the whole country. Gertrude fled to Bela, King of Hungary, whose uncle Roman, a Russian prince, she married, and ceded to him her pretensions on Styria, on condition that he should assert her right to Austria. A war ensued between Ottocar and the King of Hungary, in which Ottocar, being defeated, was compelled to cede part of Styria to Stephen, son of Bela, and a small district of that country was appropriated for the maintenance of Gertrude. But the Hungarian governors being guilty of the most enormous exactions the natives of Styria rose and transferred their allegiance to Ottocar, who secured that duchy by defeating Bela at Cressenbrum, and by the treaty of peace which followed that victory. Ottocar had scarcely obtained possession of Styria before he deprived Gertrude of her small pittance, and the unfortunate princess took refuge from his tyranny in a convent of Misnia. Having thus secured Austria and Styria, and ascended the throne of Bohemia, Ottocar divorced Margaret, who was much older than himself; and to acquire that right of succession of Frederick the Warlike which he had lost by this separation from his wife he, in 1262, procured from Richard of Cornwall the investiture of Austria, Styria, and Carniola, as fiefs devolved to the empire. He either promised or gave compensation to Agnes, daughter of Gertrude by Herman of Baden, and to Henry, Margrave of Misnia, husband of Constantia. Ottocar next purchased of Ulric, Duke of Carinthia and Carniola, who had no issue, the right of succeeding to those duchies on his death. In the deed of transfer, instituted December, 1268, Ulric describes himself as without heirs; although his brother Philip, Archbishop of Salzburg, was still living. On the death of Ulric, in 1269 or 1270, Ottocar took possession of those duchies, defeated Philip, who asserted his claims, and forced the natives to submit to his authority. By these accessions of territory, Ottocar became the most powerful prince of Europe, for his dominions extended from the confines of Bavaria to Raab in Hungary, and from the Adriatic to the shores of the Baltic. On the contrary, the hereditary possessions of Rudolph were comparatively inconsiderable, remote from the scene of contest, and scattered at the foot of the Alps and in the mountains of Alsace and Swabia; and though head of the empire, he was seated on a tottering throne, and feebly supported by the princes of Germany, who raised him to that exalted dignity to render him their chief rather in name than in power. Although the princes and states of the empire had voted succors, many had failed in their promised assistance, and, had the war been protracted, those few would have infallibly deserted a cause in which their own interests were not materially concerned. The wise but severe regulations of Rudolph for extirpating the banditti, demolishing the fortresses of the turbulent barons, and recovering the fiefs which several of the princes had unjustly appropriated, excited great discontent. Under these circumstances the powerful and imperious Ottocar cannot be deemed rash for venturing to contend with a petty count of Switzerland, whom he compared to those phantoms of sovereignty, William of Holland and Richard of Cornwall, or that he should conclude a king of Bohemia to be more powerful than an emperor. The event, however, showed that he had judged too hastily of his own strength and of Rudolph's comparative weakness, and proved that, when the reins of government were held by an able hand, the resources of the empire were still considerable, and its enmity an object of terror. Rudolph derived considerable support from his sons-in-law the Electors of Palatine and Saxony, and from the Elector of Brandenburg; the Burgrave of Nuremberg, the nobles of Alsace and Swabia, and the citizens and mountaineers of Switzerland. Having made the necessary preparations, he, with a judicious policy, turned his attention to those princes who, from the vicinity of their dominions, were in a state of continual enmity or warfare with the King of Bohemia. He concluded a treaty with Ladislaus, King of Hungary, and strengthened the bond of union by betrothing his daughter to Andrew, Duke of Slavonia and brother of Ladislaus. He entered into an alliance with Meinhard, Count of Tyrol, which he cemented by the marriage of his eldest son Albert with Elizabeth, daughter of Meinhard. But his views were still more promoted by the general discontent which pervaded every part of the Austrian dominions, and by the anathemas of Philip, titular Duke of Carinthia and Archbishop of Salzburg, who absolved the people of his diocese from their oath of allegiance, and exhorted them to shake off the yoke of a tyrant and receive the chief of the empire. The prelate made repeated exhortations to Rudolph to hasten his expedition. He drew a hideous picture of Ottocar's oppressions; expatiated on the discontents of the natives, and their inveterate hatred to the Bohemians, and used all his eloquence to encourage the King of the Romans to invade the country. "I observe," he says, "the countenances of your adversaries pale with terror; their strength is withered; they fear you unknown; your image is terrible in their imaginations; and they tremble even at the very mention of your name. How will they act, and how will they tremble when they hear the voice of the approaching thunder, when they see the imperial eagles rushing down on them like the flash of the lightning!" The plan formed by Rudolph for the prosecution of the war was calculated to divide the forces and distract the attention of Ottocar. He himself was to penetrate into Bohemia, while his son was to invade Austria, and Meinhard of Tyrol to make a diversion on the side of Styria. To oppose this threatened invasion, Ottocar assembled a considerable army, sent a reënforcement to Henry of Bavaria, augmented the garrison of Klosterneuburg, a fortress deemed impregnable, fortified Vienna, and despatched a considerable party of his army toward Teppel to secure his frontier; but resigning himself to supineness and careless security, he passed that time, which should have been employed in repressing the discontented by his presence and rousing the courage of his troops, in hunting and courtly diversions. Rudolph, apprised of these dispositions, changed his plan, marched against Henry of Bavaria, and compelled him, by force of arms, to desert the Bohemian alliance. He meditated a reconciliation between the Duke and his brother the Count Palatine, and, to secure his coöperation, gave his daughter Hedwige in marriage to Otho, son of Henry, with the promise of assigning a part of Upper Austria as a pledge of her portion. This success opened to him a way into Austria. Accompanied by Henry with a reënforcement of one thousand horses, he traversed Lower Bavaria, by Ratisbon and Passau; overran that part of Austria which lies to the south of the Danube, without resistance, was received with joy by the natives, and rapidly marched toward Vienna. This well-concerted expedition bore rather the appearance of a journey than a conquest, and Ottocar, awakened from his lethargy, received the intelligence with astonishment and terror. He now found even his ally Henry, in whose assistance he had confided, serving with his enemies, his Austrian territories invaded by a powerful army, the people hailing the King of the Romans as their deliverer, and the adversary, whom he had despised and insulted, in the very heart of his dominions. In these circumstances he recalled his army from Teppel, and led them through the woods and mountains of Bohemia to Drosendorf, on the frontiers of Austria, with the hope of saving the capital. But his troops being harassed by the fatigues of this long and difficult march, and distressed for want of provisions, he was unable to continue his progress, while Rudolph, advancing along the southern bank of the Danube, made himself master of Klosterneuburg by stratagem, and encamped under the walls of Vienna. Here, being joined by Meinhard of Tyrol, who had overrun Styria and Carinthia, and drawn the natives to his standard, he laid siege to the city. The garrison and people, who were warmly attached to Ottocar and encouraged with the hopes of speedy relief, held out for five weeks; at length the want of provisions and the threats of Rudolph to destroy the vineyards excited a small tumult among the people, and the governor proposed a capitulation. During this time the discontents in Ottocar's army increased with their increasing distress; he was threatened by the approach of the Hungarians toward the Austrian frontiers; he saw his own troops alarmed, dispirited, and mutinous; and he was aware that on the surrender of the capital Rudolph had prepared a bridge of boats to cross the Danube and carry the war into Bohemia. In this situation, surrounded by enemies, embarrassed by increasing difficulties, deserted or opposed by his nobles, his haughty spirit was compelled to bend; he sued for peace, and the conditions were arranged by the arbitration of the Bishop of Olmuetz, the Elector Palatine, and the Burgrave of Nuremberg. It was agreed, on the 22d of November, 1276, that the sentence of excommunication and deprivation which had been pronounced against Ottocar and his adherents should be revoked; that he should renounce all his claims to Austria, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, and Windischmark; that he should take the oath of allegiance, do homage for the remainder of his territories to the head of the empire, and should receive the investiture of Bohemia, Moravia, and his other fiefs. An article was also inserted, by which Ottocar promised to deliver up to Ladislaus, King of Hungary, all the places wrested from him in that kingdom. To cement this union a double marriage was to be concluded between a son and daughter of each of the two sovereigns; Rudolph engaged to give a portion of forty thousand marks of silver to his daughter, and, as a pledge for the payment, assigned to Ottocar a part of that district of Austria which lies beyond the Danube. The peace being concluded, the city of Vienna opened its gates and readily acknowledged the new sovereign. Ottocar was obliged to submit to these humiliating conditions, and on the 25th of November, the day appointed for doing homage, crossed the Danube with a large escort of Bohemian nobles to the camp of Rudolph, and was received by the King of the Romans, in the presence of several princes of the empire. With a depressed countenance and broken spirit, which he was unable to conceal from the bystanders, he made a formal resignation of his pretensions to Austria, Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola, and, kneeling down, did homage to his rival, and obtained the investiture of Bohemia and Moravia, with the accustomed ceremonies. Rudolph, having thus secured these valuable provinces, took possession of them as fiefs reverted to the empire, and issued a decree placing them under the government of Louis of Bavaria as vicar-general to the empire, in case of his death or during an interregnum. He at the same time established his family in the Austrian dominions, by persuading the Archbishop of Salzburg and the bishops of Passau, Freising, and Bamberg to confer on his sons, Albert, Hartman, and Rudolph, the ecclesiastical fiefs held by the dukes of Austria. His next care was to maintain the internal peace of those countries by salutary regulations; and he gained the affection of the nobles by confirming their privileges and permitting them to rebuild the fortresses which Ottocar had demolished. To superintend the execution of these regulations he fixed his residence at Vienna, where he was joined by his Queen and family. In order to reward his retainers he was, however, compelled to lay considerable impositions on his new subjects, and to obtain free gifts from the bishop and clergy; and the discontents arising from these measures probably induced Ottocar to attempt the recovery of the territories which he had lost. Although the King of Bohemia had taken leave of Rudolph with the strongest professions of friendship, and at different intervals had renewed his assurances of unalterable harmony, yet the humiliating conditions which he had subscribed, and the loss of such valuable provinces, filled him with resentment; his lofty spirit was still further inflamed by his queen Cunegunda, a princess of an imperious temper, who stimulated her husband with continual reproaches. He accordingly raised obstacles to the execution of the treaty, and neglected to comply with many of the conditions to which he had agreed. Rudolph, desirous to avoid a rupture, despatched his son Albert to Prague, Ottocar received him with affected demonstrations of friendship, and even bound himself by oath to fulfil the articles of the peace. But Albert had scarcely retired from Prague before Ottocar immured in a convent the daughter he had promised to one of the sons of Rudolph, and sent a letter to the King of the Romans, filled with the most violent invectives, and charging him with a perfidious intention of renewing the war. Rudolph returned a dignified answer to these reproaches, and prepared for the renewal of the contest which he saw was inevitable. He instantly reoccupied that part of Austria which he had yielded to Ottocar as a pledge for the portion of his daughter. He also obtained succors from the Archbishop of Salzburg, the bishops of Passau, Ratisbon, and the neighboring prelates and princes, and collected levies from Austria and Styria for the protection of Vienna. In an interview at Hainburg, on the frontiers of Austria, with Ladislaus, King of Hungary, he adopted that Prince as his son, and concluded with him an offensive and defensive alliance. Unwilling, however, to trust his hopes and fortune to his new subjects, many of whom were ready to desert him, or to allies whose fidelity and attachment were doubtful, he applied to the princes of the German empire, but had the mortification to be disappointed in his expectations. He was joined by a few only of the inferior princes; but many who had not taken part in the former war were still less inclined to support him on the present occasion; several gained by Ottocar either remained neutral or took part against him; those who expressed an inclination to serve him delayed sending their succors, and he derived no assistance even from his sons-in-law the Electors of Palatine and Saxony. On the other hand, he was threatened with the most imminent danger, for Ottocar, who during the peace had prepared the means of gratifying his vengeance, had formed a league with Henry of Bavaria, had purchased either the neutrality or assistance of many of the German princes, had drawn auxiliaries from the chiefs of Poland, Bulgaria, Pomerania, and Magdeburg, and from the Teutonic hordes on the shores of the Baltic. He had also excited a party among the turbulent nobles of Hungary, and spread disaffection among his former subjects in Austria and Styria. In June he quitted Prague, effected a junction with his allies, directing his march toward the frontiers of Austria, carried Drosendorf, after a short siege, by storm, and, descending along the banks of the Taya, invested the fortress of Laa. Rudolph, convinced that his cause would suffer by delay, waited with great impatience the arrival of a body of troops from Alsace, under the command of his son Albert. But as these troops did not arrive at the appointed time he was greatly agitated and disturbed, became pensive and melancholy, and frequently exclaimed that there was not one in whom he could confide or on whose advice he could depend. His household and attendants partook of his despondency. To use the words of a contemporary chronicle, "All the family of King Rudolph ran to confessors, arranged their affairs, forgave their enemies, and received the communion, for a mortal danger seemed to hang over them." The citizens of Vienna caught the contagion and began to be alarmed for their safety. Seeing him almost abandoned by his German allies, and without a sufficient army to oppose his adversaries, they requested his permission to capitulate and choose a new sovereign, that they might not be involved in his ruin. Roused from his despondency by this address, Rudolph prevailed on the citizens not to desert their sovereign; he confirmed their privileges, declared Vienna an imperial city, animated them with new spirit, and obtained from them a promise to defend the ramparts to the last extremity. At this period he was joined by some troops from Alsace and Swabia, and particularly by his confidant and confessor, the Bishop of Basel, at the head of one hundred chosen horse, and a body of expert slingers. This small but timely reënforcement revived his confidence, and although he was privately informed that his son Albert could not supply him with further succors, and was advised not to hazard an engagement with an enemy so superior in number, he resolved to commit his fortune to the decision of arms. Turning then to the chosen body newly arrived, he addressed them with a spirit which could not fail of inspiring them with courage, and gave at the same time the most flattering testimony to their zeal and fidelity. "Remain," he said, "one day at Vienna, and refresh yourselves after the fatigues of your march, and we will then take the field. You shall be the guard of my person, and I trust that God, who has advanced me to this dignity, will not forsake me in the hour of danger." Three days after the arrival of the Bishop of Basel Rudolph quitted Vienna, marched along the southern bank of the Danube, to Hainburg, crossed that river, and advanced to Marcheck, on the banks of the March or Morava, where he was joined by the Styrians and Carinthians, and the forces led by the King of Hungary. He instantly despatched two thousand of his Hungarian auxiliaries to reconnoitre and interrupt the operations of his adversary. They fulfilled their orders with spirit and address, for Ottocar, roused by their insults, broke up his camp, and marched to Jedensberg, within a short distance of Weidendorf, whither Rudolph had advanced. While the two armies continued in this situation, some traitors repaired to the camp of-Rudolph and proposed to assassinate Ottocar, but Rudolph, with his characteristic magnanimity, rejecting this offer, apprised Ottocar of the danger with which he was threatened, and made overtures of reconciliation. The King of Bohemia, confident in the superiority of his force, deemed the intelligence a fabrication and the proposals of Rudolph a proof of weakness, and disdainfully refused to listen to any negotiation. Finding all hopes of accommodation frustrated, Rudolph prepared for a conflict, in which, like Cæsar, he was not to fight for victory alone, but for life. At the dawn of day, August 26, 1278, his army was drawn up, crossed the rivulet which gives name to Weidendorf, and approached the camp of Ottocar. He ordered his troops to advance in a crescent, and attack at the same time both flanks and the front of the enemy, and then, turning to his soldiers, exhorted them to avenge the violation of the most solemn compacts and the insulted majesty of the empire, and by the efforts of that day to put an end to the tyranny, the horrors, and the massacres to which they had been so long exposed. He had scarcely finished before the troops rushed to the charge, and a bloody conflict ensued, in which both parties fought with all the fury that the presence and exertions of their sovereigns or the magnitude of the cause in which they were engaged could inspire. At length the imperial troops gained the advantage, but in the very moment of victory the life of him on whom all depended was exposed to the most imminent danger. Several knights of superior strength and courage, animated by the rewards and promises of Ottocar, had confederated either to kill or take the King of the Romans. They rushed forward to the place where Rudolph, riding among the foremost ranks, was encouraging and leading his troops, and Herbot of Fullenstein, a Polish knight, giving spurs to his horse, made the first charge. Rudolph, accustomed to this species of combat, eluded the stroke, and, piercing his antagonist under his beaver, threw him dead to the ground. The rest followed the example of the Polish warrior, but were all slain, except Valens, a Thuringian knight of gigantic stature and strength, who, reaching the person of Rudolph, pierced his horse in the shoulder, and threw him wounded to the ground. The helmet of the King was beaten off by the shock, and being unable to rise under the weight of his armor he covered his head with his shield, till he was rescued by Berchtold Capillar, the commander of the corps of reserve, who, cutting his way through the enemy, flew to his assistance. Rudolph mounted another horse, and, heading the corps of reserve, renewed the charge with fresh courage, and his troops, animated by his presence and exertions, completed the victory. Ottocar himself fought with no less intrepidity than his great competitor. On the total rout of his troops he disdained to quit the field, and, after performing incredible feats of valor, was overpowered by numbers, dismounted, and taken prisoner. He was instantly stripped of his armor, and killed by some Austrian and Styrian nobles whose relations he had put to death. The discomfited remains of his army, pursued by the victors, were either taken prisoners, cut to pieces, or drowned in their attempts to pass the March; and above fourteen thousand perished in this decisive engagement. Rudolph continued on the field till the enemy were totally routed and dispersed. He endeavored to restrain the carnage, and sent messengers to save the life of Ottocar, but his orders arrived too late, and when he received an account of his death he generously lamented his fate. He did ample justice to the valor and spirit of Ottocar; in his letter to the Pope, after having described the contest and the resolution displayed by both parties either to conquer or die, he adds: "At length our troops prevailing drove the Bohemians into the neighboring river, and almost all were either cut to pieces, drowned, or taken prisoners. Ottocar, however, after seeing his army discomfited and himself left alone, still would not submit to our conquering standards, but, fighting with the strength and spirit of a giant, defended himself with wonderful courage, until he was unhorsed and mortally wounded by some of our soldiers. Then that magnanimous monarch lost his life at the same time with the victory, and was overthrown, not by our power and strength, but by the right hand of the Most High." The body of Ottocar, deformed with seventeen wounds, was borne to Vienna, and, after being exposed to the people, was embalmed, covered with a purple pall, the gift of the Queen of the Romans, and buried in a Franciscan convent. The plunder of the camp was immense, and Rudolph, apprehensive lest the disputes of the booty and the hope of new spoils should occasion a contest between his followers and the Hungarians, dismissed his warlike but barbarous allies with acknowledgments for their services, and pursued the war with his own forces. He took possession of Moravia without opposition, and advanced into Bohemia as far as Colin. The recent wars, the total defeat of the army, and the death of Ottocar had rendered that country a scene of rapine and desolation. Wenceslaus, his only son, was scarcely eight years of age; and the Queen Cunegunda, a foreign princess, was without influence or power; the turbulent nobles, who had scarcely submitted to the vigorous administration of Ottocar, being without check or control, gave full scope to their licentious spirit; the people were unruly and rebellious, and not a single person in the kingdom possessed sufficient authority to assume and direct the reins of government. In this dreadful situation Cunegunda appealed to the compassion of Rudolph, and offered to place her infant son and the kingdom under his protection. In the midst of these transactions Otho, Margrave of Brandenburg and nephew of Ottocar, marched into Bohemia at the head of a considerable army, took charge of the royal treasures, secured the person of Wenceslaus, and advanced against the King of the Romans. Rudolph, weakened by the departure of the Hungarians and thwarted by the princes of the empire, was too prudent to trust his fortune to the chance of war; he listened therefore to overtures of peace, and an accommodation was effected by arbitration. He was to retain possession of the Austrian provinces, and to hold Moravia for five years, as an indemnification for the expenses of the war; Wenceslaus was acknowledged King of Bohemia, and during his minority the regency was assigned to Otho; Rudolph, second son of the Emperor, was to espouse the Bohemian princess Agnes; and his two daughters, Judith and Hedwige, were affianced to the King of Bohemia and to Otho the Less, brother of the Margrave. In consequence of this agreement Rudolph withdrew from Bohemia, and in 1280 returned to Vienna in triumph. Being delivered from the most powerful of his enemies, and relieved from all further apprehensions by the weak and distracted state of Bohemia, he directed his principal aim to secure the Austrian territories for his own family. With this view he compelled Henry of Bavaria, under the pretext of punishing his recent connection with Ottocar, to cede Austria above the Ems, and to accept in return the districts of Scharding, Neuburg, and Freistadt as the dowry of his wife. But, though master of all the Austrian territories, he experienced great difficulties in transferring them to his family. Some claimants of the Bamberg line still existed: Agnes, daughter of Gertrude and wife of Ulric of Heunburg, and the two sons of Constantia by Albert of Misnia. Those provinces were likewise coveted by Louis, Count Palatine of the Rhine, and by his brother Henry of Bavaria, as having belonged to their ancestors, and by Meinhard of Tyrol, from whom he had derived such essential assistance, in virtue of his marriage with Elizabeth, widow of the emperor Conrad and sister of the Dukes of Bavaria. The Misnian princes, however, having received a compensation from Ottocar, withheld their pretensions, and Rudolph purchased the acquiescence of Agnes and her husband by a sum of money and a small cession of territory. He likewise eluded the demands of the Bavarian princes and of Meinhard by referring them to the decision of the German diet, In the mean time he conciliated, by acts of kindness and liberality, his new subjects, and obtained from the states of the duchy a declaration that all the lands possessed by Frederick the Warlike belonged to the Emperor, or to whomsoever he should grant them as fiefs, saving the rights of those who within a given time should prosecute their claims. He then intrusted his son Albert with the administration, convoked, on August 9, 1281, a diet at Nuremberg, at which he presided in person, and obtained a decree annulling all the acts and deeds of Richard of Cornwall and his predecessors, since the deposition of Frederick II, except such as had been approved by a majority of the electors. In consequence of this decree another was passed specifically in-validating the investiture of the Austrian provinces, which in 1262 was obtained from Richard of Cornwall by Ottocar. Carinthia having been unjustly occupied by Ottocar, in contradiction to the rights of Philip, Archbishop of Salzburg, brother of Ulric, the last duke, the claims of Philip were acknowledged by Rudolph, and he took his seat at the Diet of Augsburg as Duke of Carinthia. On the conquest of that duchy he petitioned for the investiture, but Rudolph delayed complying with his request under various pretences, and, Philip dying without issue in 1279, the duchy escheated to the empire as a vacant fief. Rudolph, being at length in peaceable possession of these territories, gradually obtained the consent of the electors, and at the Diet of Augsburg, in December, 1282, conferred jointly on his two sons, Albert and Rudolph, Austria, Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola. But at their desire he afterward resumed Carinthia, and bestowed it on Meinhard of Tyrol, to whom he had secretly promised a reward for his services, and in 1286 obtained the consent of the electors to this donation. By the request of the states of Austria (1283), he declared that duchy and Styria an inalienable and indivisible domain to be held on the same terms, and with the same rights and privileges, as possessed by the ancient dukes, Leopold and Frederick the Warlike, and vested the sole administration in Albert, assigning a specific revenue to Rudolph and his heirs, if he did not obtain another sovereignty within the space of four years. EDWARD I CONQUERS WALES A.D. 1277 CHARLES H. PEARSON Up to the time of Edward I, Wales, which had been partially subdued by Henry I, was a source of continual disturbance to the English kingdom. Long before the accession of Edward, the greater part of Welsh territory was parcelled out into little English principalities. Under John and Henry III, Llewelyn the Great, Prince of Wales, maintained his independence until 1237, three years before his death, when he submitted in order to secure the succession of his son David. Upon David's death, in 1246, the principality of Wales was divided between Llewelyn and Owen the Red, sons of Griffith ap Llewelyn, David's illegitimate brother. Civil war soon followed, and in 1224 Llewelyn made himself master of the land. Llewelyn might have reached absolute independence had he not taken part with Simon de Montfort in the barons' war against Henry III. With the defeat and death of Montfort at Evesham (1265) the prospect of a new Welsh sovereignty vanished; Llewelyn purchased a peace and was recognized by Henry as prince of Wales, retaining a part of his territories. When Llewelyn was summoned as a vassal of the English crown to the coronation of Edward I (1274), he refused. Twice again was he summoned to do homage to the King, but still evaded the summons. Upon his final refusal to come to the parliament of 1276, his lands were declared to be forfeited, and in 1277 Edward led an army into Wales. The whole force of the realm was summoned to meet at Worcester in June, 1277, and so well was the command obeyed that Edward found himself able to dispose of three armies. With the first he himself operated along the north, opening a safe road through the Cheshire forests, and fortifying Flint and Rhuddlan, while the ships of the Cinque Ports hovered along the coast and ravaged Anglesey. The _corps d'armée_, under the Earl of Lincoln and Roger Mortimer, besieged and reduced Dolvorwyn castle in Montgomeryshire. The third was led into Cardigan by Payne de Chaworth, who ravaged the country with such vigor that the South Welsh--being probably disaffected to a prince not of their own lineage--surrendered the castle of Stradewi and made a general submission. Edward had avoided the fatal errors of previous commanders, who had risked their forces in a barren and difficult country. His blockade was so well sustained that Llewelyn was starved, rather than beaten, into unconditional submission. With singular moderation, Edward had declined receiving the homage of the southern chiefs. He now granted Llewelyn honorable terms, November 5, 1277. A fine of fifty thousand pounds was imposed to mark the greatness of the victory, but remitted next day out of the King's grace. Four border cantreds,[72] old possessions of the English crown, which Llewelyn had wrested from it in the wars of the late reign, were to be surrendered to the English King, who already occupied them. Prisoners in the English interests were to be set free, and Llewelyn was to come under "an honorable" safe-conduct to London and perform homage. Edward had promised David [73] half the principality, but with a reservation at the time that he might, if he chose, give him compensation elsewhere. He now elected to do this, moved, it would seem, simply by the wish not to dismember Llewelyn's dominions, and David was made governor of Denbigh castle, married to the Earl of Derby's daughter, and endowed with extensive estates. In every other respect Llewelyn was tenderly dealt with. The hostages exacted were sent back. The rent of one thousand marks stipulated for Anglesey was remitted. When the Prince of Wales came to London to perform homage he received the last favor of all, and was married sumptuously, at the King's cost, to Lady Eleanor de Montfort. There is no reason for supposing that Edward cherished any covert plans of absorbing Wales into England. Having wiped out the dishonor of his early years, and replaced England in its old position of ascendency, he had no motive for reviving bitter memories or dispossessing a great noble of his fief. The King's conduct in giving his cousin to one who was only her equal through a usurped royalty; the inquests held in the marches to determine border law; the instructions to the royal judges, to judge according to local customs; the special commission appointed when Llewelyn thought himself aggrieved are curious evidence of fair-mindedness in a strong-willed and almost absolute sovereign. But in one respect Edward was ill-fitted to deal with an uncivilized people. He was overstrict for the times even in England, where his subjects almost learned, before he died, to regret the anarchy of his father's reign. But his officers were nowhere harsher than in Wales, where the people, unaccustomed to a minute legality, complained that they were worse treated than Saracens or Jews. Old offences were raked up; wrecking was made punishable; the legal taxes were aggravated by customary payments; and distresses were levied on the first goods that came to hand, whether Llewelyn's own or his subjects'. The people of the four annexed cantreds were soon ripe for rebellion, David was alienated from the English cause by petty quarrels with Reginald Gray, Justice of Chester, who insisted on making him answer before the English courts, hanged some of his vassals, and carried a military road through his woods. The Welsh gentlemen complained that they were removed from offices which they had purchased, brought to justice for old offences which ought to have been condoned by the peace, and deprived of their jurisdiction in local courts. For a time the lady Eleanor tried to mediate between her husband and her cousin. But it was impossible that a stern, just man like Edward, penetrated with the most advanced doctrine of European legists and deriving his information from English employés, should be able to understand the position of the chief of a semibarbarous nationality, who thought outrages on law matters to be atoned for by fines, while he brooded with implacable rancor over every slight, real or fancied, to his own position as prince of Wales, representative of a dynasty that had ruled "since the time of Camber the son of Brutus." Moreover, Llewelyn thought, perhaps unreasonably, that he had been betrayed by Edward. He said that on the day of his marriage the English King had forced him to subscribe a document to the effect that he would never harbor an English exile or maintain forces against Edward's will. There was little in all this that was not implied in Llewelyn's position as vassal, and he himself did not complain that the conditions had ever been offensively pressed. A king who had granted such liberal terms as Edward might perhaps claim, with reason, that his conquered vassal should never threaten him with hostilities. But the offence was none the less deadly, that it was justified by the relations of subject and sovereign. A curious superstition precipitated an outbreak, In the time of Henry I some Norman had fabricated the so-called prophecies of Merlin, which were designed to reconcile the Welsh to the Norman Conquest. Henry was designated in them as the lion of justice, and it was given as a sign of his reign that the symbol of commerce would be split and the half be round. The prophecy had already been fulfilled by the regulation for breaking coin at the mint, and making the half-penny a round piece by itself. In 1279 Edward issued the farthing as an entire coin. The change recalled the memory of Merlin's prophecy; and the vague oracles, that had been compiled to describe Henry's dominion over the Saxons, were easily interpreted to mean that a Welsh prince should be crowned at London, and retrieve what its natives regarded as the lost dominion of the principality. Llewelyn, it is said, consulted a witch, who assured him that he should ride crowned through Westcheap. But the Prince of Wales also relied on less visionary assurances. The "quo-warranto" commission was prosecuting its labors vigorously, and had produced a widespread discontent in England, where men said openly that the King would not suffer them to reap their own corn or mow their grass. Llewelyn was in correspondence with the malcontents, and received promises of support. His brother David was easily induced to join the rebellion, and began it on Palm Sunday, 1282, by storming the castle of Hawarden, and making Roger de Clifford, its lord and Edward's sheriff, his prisoner. Flint and Rhuddlan were next reduced, and the Welsh spread over the marches, waging a war of singular ferocity, slaying, and even burning, young and old women and sick people in the villages. The rebellion found Edward unprepared, but he met it with equal vigor and efficiency. Making Shrewsbury his head-quarters, and moving the exchequer and king's bench to it, he summoned troops not only from all England, but from Gascony. It is possible that the foreign recruits were intended to strengthen the King's hands against subjects of doubtful fidelity, but no real embarrassment from the disaffected was sustained. The troops mustered operated in two armies, which started from Rhuddlan and Worcester, and enclosed Llewelyn, as before, from north and south. Meanwhile the ships of the Cinque Ports reduced Anglesey, "the noblest feather in Llewelyn's wing," as Edward joyfully observed. But the King was faithful to his old policy of a blockade. A bridge of ships was thrown across the Menai Straits, and the forests between Wales proper and the English border were hewn down by an army of pioneers. The King's banner, the golden dragon, showed that quarter would be given. As the war lasted on, negotiations were attempted; and the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had threatened the last sentence of the Church against Llewelyn and his adherents, was sent over to Snowdon to hold a conference. Llewelyn had already been warned that it was idle to expect assistance from Rome. He was now summoned to submit at discretion, with a hope--so expressed as to be a promise--that he and the natives of the revolted districts would have mercy shown them. In private he was informed that, on condition of surrendering Wales, he should receive a county in England and a pension of one thousand pounds a year. David was to go to the Holy Land, and not return except by the King's permission. These terms were undoubtedly hard, but could not be called unreasonable, as, by the subjugation of Anglesey, the principality was reduced to the two modern counties of Merionethshire and Carnarvonshire. Llewelyn and his barons preferred to die fighting sword in hand for position and liberty. The Primate excommunicated them and withdrew. About the time of this interview, November 6th, there was a sharp skirmish at Bangor. Some of the Earl of Gloucester's troops crossed over before the bridge was completed, except for low-water mark, and were surprised and routed, with the loss of their leader and fourteen bannerets, by the Welsh. This encouraged Llewelyn to resume offensive operations, and he poured troops into Cardigan to ravage the lands of a Welshman in the English interest. The English forces in Radnor marched up along the left bank of the Wye, and came in sight of the enemy at Buelth, December 10th. Llewelyn was surprised during a reconnaissance and killed by an English knight, Stephen de Frankton. After a short but brilliant encounter, in which the English charged up the brow of a hill and routed the enemy with loss, they examined the dead bodies, and for the first time knew that Llewelyn was among the slain. A letter was found on his person giving a list, in false names, of the English nobles with whom he was in correspondence, but either the cipher was undiscoverable or the matter was hushed up by the King's discretion. Llewelyn, dying under church ban, was denied Christian sepulture. His head, crowned with a garland of silver ivy-leaves, was carried on the point of a lance through London, and exposed on the battlements of the Tower. The prophecy that he should ride crowned through London had been fatally fulfilled. With the death of Llewelyn the Welsh war was virtually at an end. With all his faults of temper and judgment, he had shown himself a man of courage and capacity, who identified his own cause with his people's. But David, though now implicated in the rebellion beyond hope of pardon, had fought under the English banner against his countrymen, with the wish to dismember the principality. The Welsh cannot be accused of fickleness if they became languid in a struggle against overwhelming power and a king who had shown them more tenderness than their leader for the time. David's one castle of Bere was starved into surrender by the Earl of Pembroke, and David himself taken in a bog by some Welsh in the English interest. His last remaining adherent, Rees ap Walwayn, surrendered, on hearing of his lord's captivity, and was sent prisoner to the Tower. For David himself a sadder fate was reserved. His request for a personal interview with his injured sovereign was refused. Edward did not care to speak with a man whom he had no thought of pardoning. He at once summoned a parliament of barons, judges, and burgesses to meet at Shrewsbury, September 29th, and decide on the prisoner's fate. It is evident that Edward was incensed in no common measure against the traitor whom, as he expressed it, he had "taken up as an exile, nourished as an orphan, endowed from his own lands, and placed among the lords of our palace," and who had repaid these benefits by a sudden and savage war. Nevertheless, the King, from policy or from temperament, resolved to associate the whole nation in a great act of justice on a man of princely lineage. The sentence, which excited no horror at the time, was probably passed without a dissentient voice. David was sentenced, as a traitor, to be drawn slowly to the gallows; as a murderer, to be hanged; as one who had shed blood during Passion-tide, to be disembowelled after death; and for plotting the King's death, his dismembered limbs were to be sent to Winchester, York, Northampton, and Bristol. Seldom has a shameful and violent death been better merited than by a double-dyed traitor like David, false by turns to his country and his king; nor could justice be better honored than by making the last penalty of rebellion fall upon the guilty Prince, rather than on his followers. The form of punishment in itself was mitigated from the extreme penalty of the law, which prescribed burning for traitors. Compared with the execution under the Tudors and Stuarts, or with the reprisal taken after Culloden, the single sentence of death carried out on David seems scarcely to challenge criticism. Yet it marks a decline from the almost bloodless policy of former kings. Since the times of William Rufus no English noble, except under John, had paid the penalty of rebellion with life. In particular, during the late reign, Fawkes de Breaute and the adherents of Simon de Montfort had been spared by men flushed with victory and exasperated with a long strife. There were some circumstances to palliate David's treachery, if, as is probable, his charges against the English justiciary have any truth. We may well acquit Edward of that vilest infirmity of weak minds, which confounds strength with ferocity and thinks that the foundations of law can be laid in blood. He probably received David's execution as a measure demanded by justice and statesmanship, and in which the whole nation was to be associated with its king. Never was court of justice more formally constituted; but it was a fatal precedent for himself, and the weaker, worse men who succeeded him. From that time, till within the last century, the axe of the executioner has never been absent from English history. Edward was resolved to incorporate Wales with England. The children of Llewelyn and David were honorably and safely disposed of in monasteries, from which they never seem to have emerged. The great Welsh lords who had joined the rebellion were punished with deprivation of all their lands. Out of the conquered territory Denbigh and Ruthyn seem to have been made into march lordships under powerful Englishmen. Anglesey and the land of Snowdon, Llewelyn's territories of Carnarvon and Merionethshire, with Flint, Cardigan, and Carmarthenshire, were kept in the hands of the Crown. The Welsh divisions of commotes were retained, and several of these constituted a sheriffdom, which bore pretty much the same relation to an English shire that a Territory bears to a State in the American Union. The new districts were also brought more completely under English law than the marches, which retained their privileges and customs. The changes, where we can trace them, seem to have been for the better. The blood-feud was abolished; widows obtained a dower; bastards were no longer to inherit; and in default of heirs male in the direct line, daughters were allowed to inherit. On the other hand, fines were to be assessed according to local custom; compurgation was retained for unimportant cases and inheritances were to remain divisible among all heirs male. The ordinance that contains these dispositions is no parliamentary statute, but seems to have been drawn up by the King in council, March 24, 1284. It was based on the report of a commission which examined one hundred and seventy-two witnesses. Soon afterward an inquest was ordered to ascertain the losses sustained by the Church in Wales, with a view to giving it compensation. Nor did Edward neglect appeals to the national sentiment. The supposed body of Constantine was disinterred at Carnarvon, and received honorable burial in a church. The crown of Arthur and a piece of the holy Cross, once the property of the Welsh princes, were added to the King's regalia. It was probably by design that Queen Eleanor was confined at Carnarvon, April 25, 1284, of a prince whom the Welsh might claim as a countryman.[74] At last, having lingered for more than a year about the principality, Edward celebrated the consummation of his conquests, August 1, 1284, by a splendid tournament at Nefyn, to which nobles and knights flocked from every part of England and even from Gascony. It was even more a demonstration of strength than a pageant. The cost of the Welsh campaign must have been enormous, and it is difficult to understand how Edward met it. But no sort of expedient was spared. Commissioners were sent through England and Ireland to beg money of clergy and laity. Next, the cities of Guienne and Gascony were applied to; then, the money that had been collected for a crusade was taken out of the consecrated places where it was deposited. The treasures put in the Welsh churches were freely confiscated. Nevertheless, the Parliament of Shrewsbury granted the King a thirtieth, from which, however, the loans previously advanced were deducted. In return for this the King passed the Statute of Merchants, which made provisions for the registration of merchants' debts, their recovery by distraint, and the debtor's imprisonment. The clergy had at first been less compliant when the King applied to them for a tenth. The Convocation of the Province of Canterbury, April, 1283, replied that they were impoverished; that they still owed a fifteenth, and that they expected to be taxed again by the Pope. They also reminded him bitterly of the Statute of Mortmain. Ultimately the matter was compromised by the grant of a twentieth, November, 1283. [Illustration: King Edward I fulfills his promise of giving the Welsh "a native prince who could not speak one word of English" Painting by Ph. Morris.] [Illustration.] For a few years Wales was still an insecure portion of the English dominion. In 1287, Rees ap Meredith, whose services to Edward had been largely rewarded with grants of land and a noble English wife, commenced levying war against the king's sheriff. His excuse was that his baronial rights had been encroached upon; but as he had once risked forfeiture by preferring a forcible entry to the execution of the king's writ which had been granted him, we may probably assume that he claimed powers inconsistent with English sovereignty. After foiling the Earl of Cornwall in a costly campaign, Rees, finding himself outlawed, fled, by the Earl of Gloucester's complicity, into Ireland. Some years later he returned to resume his war with Robert de Tiptoft, but this time was taken prisoner and executed at York by Edward's orders, 1292. More dangerous by far was the insurrection of two years later, 1294, when the Welsh, irritated by a tax, and believing that Edward had sailed for France, rose up throughout the crown lands and slew one of the collectors, Roger de Pulesdon. Madoc, a kinsman of Llewelyn, was put forward as king, and his troops burned Carnarvon castle and inflicted a severe defeat on the English forces sent to relieve Denbigh, November 10th. Edward now took the field in person, and resumed his old policy of cutting down the forests as he forced his way into the interior. The Welsh fought well, and between disease and fighting the English lost many hundred men. Once the King was surrounded at Conway, his provisions intercepted, and his road barred by a flood; but his men could not prevail on him to drink out of the one cask of wine that had been saved. "We will all share alike," he said, "and I, who have brought you into this strait, will have no advantage of you in food." The flood soon abated, and, reinforcements coming up, the Welsh were dispersed. Faithful to his policy of mercy, the King spared the people everywhere, but hanged three of their captains who were taken prisoners. Madoc lost heart, made submission, and was admitted to terms. Meanwhile, Morgan, another Welshman of princely blood, had headed a war in the marches against the Earl of Gloucester, who was personally unpopular with his vassals. Two years before the earldom had been confiscated into the King's hands, and it is some evidence that Edward's rule was not oppressive, by comparison with that of his lords, that the marchmen now desired to be made vassals of the crown. Morgan is said to have been hunted down by his old confederate, Madoc, but it seems more probable that he was the first to sue for peace. He was pardoned without reserve. As there was then war with Scotland, hostages were taken from the Welsh chiefs, and were kept in English castles for several years. But the last lesson had proved effectual. The Welsh settled down peaceably on their lands and generally adopted the English customs. Except a few great lords, their gentry were still the representatives of their old families. Only five men in all had received the last punishment of the law for sanguinary rebellions extending over eighteen years of the King's reign. Of any massacre of the bards, or any measures taken to repress them, history knows nothing. Never was conquest more merciful than Edward's, and the fault lies with his officers, not with the King, if many years still passed before the old quarrel between Wales and England was obliterated from the hearts of the conquered people. JAPANESE REPEL THE TARTARS A.D. 1281 E.H. PARKER MARCO POLO Kublai Khan, the first of the Mongol emperors who reigned at Peking, and Kameyama, the ninetieth emperor--as reputed--of Japan, are supposed to have come to their respective thrones in the same year, 1260. At this period the Japanese rulers (_mikados_) were mere puppets in the hands of their _shoguns_--hereditary commanders-in-chief of the army--and the shoguns themselves were tools of the regents of the Hojo dynasty. Corea had lately been made tributary to the Tartar or Mongol power, when some of the Coreans in the service of Kublai Khan suggested to him that his way was now open to Japan, 1265. Next year Kublai selected a chief envoy whose name, as Parker says, appears in Chinese characters precisely the same as that of Sir Robert Hart,[75] and whom the author of the narrative immediately following, in order to avoid uncouth names, designates as "Hart." By this envoy Kublai sent a letter to Japan, and this act was the beginning of the execution of his designs against that country, formed upon the advice of the Coreans. In this letter the Mongol Emperor called upon Japan to return to the vassal duty which for centuries, he claimed, she had formerly owned to China. --EDWARD HARPER PARKER The King of Corea, who had meanwhile been instructed to show the road to the Mongol mission, provided it with two high officers as escort. In 1267, however, Hart and his staff returned to Peking from their wanderings, _re injecta_, faithfully accompanied by their Corean guides, whose explanations as to why the goal had not been reached were by no means satisfactory to Kublai. The whole party was despatched once more to Corea, carrying with them to the King positive instructions "to succeed better this time." The wily King of Corea now adopted another tack. He pleaded that the sea-route was beset with dangers to which it would be unseemly to expose the person of an imperial envoy, but he accommodatingly sent the Emperor's letter on to Japan by an envoy of his own. This Corean envoy was detained half a year by the Japanese, but he had also to return empty-handed. Meanwhile the King of Corea sent his own brother on a special mission to Kublai, to endeavor to mollify his Tartar majesty. In the autumn of 1268 Hart and his former assistant colleague were sent a third time. As a surveying party had meanwhile been examining the sea-route by way of Quelpaert Island, the mission was enabled to reach the Tsushima Islands this time; but the local authority would not suffer them to land, or at least to stay, nor were the letters accepted, as, in the opinion of the Japanese, "the phraseology was not considered sufficiently modest." Once more the unsuccessful mission returned to Peking, but on this occasion it was with two Japanese "captives"--probably spies; for there is plenty of evidence that even then the art was well understood in Japan. In the summer of 1269 it was resolved to utilize these captives as a peg whereon to hang the conciliatory and virtuous act of returning them. Coreans were intrusted with this mission; but even this letter the Japanese declined to receive, and the envoys were detained a considerable time in the official prisons at Dazai Fu (in Chikuzen). Early in the year 1270 a Manchu Tartar in Kublai's employ, named Djuyaoka, who had already been employed as a kind of resident or adviser at the court of the King of Corea, was despatched on a solemn mission to Japan, having earnestly volunteered for his new service in spite of his gray hairs. The King of Corea was again ordered to assist, and a Corean in Chinese employ, named Hung Ts'a-k'iu (Marco Polo's Von-Sanichin), was told to demonstrate with a fleet around the Liao-Tung and Corean peninsulas. The envoy is usually called by his adopted Chinese name of Chao Liang-Pih. The mission landed in the spring of 1271 at an island called Golden Ford, which, according to the Chinese characters, ought, I suppose, to be pronounced Kananari in Japanese. Here the strangers met with a very rough reception. The Tartar, however, kept his head well during the various attempts which were made to frighten him; he pointed out the historical precedents to be found in the annals of previous Chinese dynasties, and firmly declined to surrender his credentials except at the chief seat of government, and to the king or ruler in person. It seems that even the Japanese now began to see that the "honest broker," Corea, was playing false to both sides; at all events, they said that "Corea had reported the imminence of a Chinese attack, whereas Kublai's language seemed to deprecate war." Officials from head-quarters explained that "from ancient times till now, no foreign envoy has ever gone east of the Dazai Fu." The reply to this was: "If I cannot see your ruler, you had better take him my head; but you shall not have my documents." The Japanese pleaded that it was too far to the ruler's capital, but that in the mean time they would send officers back with him to China. He was thereupon sent back to await events at Tsushima, and, having remained there a year, he arrived back in Peking in the summer of 1273. In escorting him to Tsushima, the Japanese had sent with him a number of secondary officials to have an audience of Kublai; it appears that the Japanese had been alarmed at the establishment of a Mongol garrison at Kin Chow (I suppose the one near Port Arthur, then within Corean dominions); and the Tartar envoy, during his stay in Tsushima, now sent on these Japanese "envoys" (or spies) in advance, advising Kublai at the same time to humor Japanese susceptibilities by removing the Kin Chow garrison. The cabinet council suggested to Kublai that it would be a good thing to explain to the Japanese envoys that the occupation of Kin Chow was "only temporary," and would be removed so soon as the operations now in process against Quelpaert were at an end. It is related that the "Japanese interpreters"--which probably means Chinese accompanying the Japanese--explained to Kublai that it was quite unnecessary to go round via Corea, and that with a good wind it was possible to reach Japan in a very short time. Kublai said, "Then I must think it over afresh." Late in the year 1273 the same Tartar envoy was once more sent to Japan, but it is not stated by what route or where he first landed; this time he really reached the Dazai Fu, or capital of Chikuzen. In the same year, and possibly in connection with the above mission, a Chinese general, Lu T'ung, with a force of forty thousand men in nine hundred boats, defeated one hundred thousand Japanese--it is not stated where. I am inclined to think, from the consonance of the word Liu and the nine hundred boats, that this must be the affair mentioned lower down. The Manchu Tartar envoy seems to have been a very sensible sort of man, for not only did he bring back with him full details of the names and titles of the Mikado and his ministers, descriptions of the cities and districts, particulars of national customs, local products, etc., but also strongly dissuaded Kublai from engaging in a useless war with Japan; and he also gave some excellent advice to the celebrated Mongol general Bayen, who was just then preparing to "finish off" the southern provinces of China. It may not be generally known, but it is a fact that Bayen himself, in the late autumn of 1273, had been originally destined for the Japanese expedition, and the prisoners captured at the first attack on Siaag-yang Fu (Marco Polo's Sa-yan Fu) had already been handed over to him for service in Japan. The Mongol history also gives a full copy of the letter sent to Japan on this occasion. In it Kublai expresses his surprise at the persistent ignoring by Japan of his successive missions; he charitably suggests that "perhaps the fresh troubles and revolutions in Corea, which have now once more been settled, are more to blame than your own deliberate intentions." The menace of war was a little stronger than in the letter of 1266, but was still decently veiled and somewhat guarded. Before starting, the Manchu had requested that the etiquette to be observed at his audience with the ruler might be laid down. The cabinet council, to be on the safe side, advised: "As the relative ranks prevailing in the country are unknown to us, we have no definite etiquette to specify." On the other hand, both Kublai and his ministers were much too sharp to believe in the power of the "guard-house west of the Dazai Fu," and they came to the sensible conclusion that the Japanese "envoys" were simply war-spies sent by the supreme Japanese government itself. Chinese history does not explain why, amid the conflicting counsels exposed above, and others mentioned in biographical chapters, Kublai decided to attack Japan at the very moment when Bayen was marching upon South China; but, anyway, during the year 1274, large numbers of Manchus were raised for service in Japan, and placed under General Hung. (Sani-chin may perhaps stand for the Chinese word Tsiang-chun, or "general.") It appears that, toward the end of that year, fifteen thousand men in nine hundred ships made a raid upon some point in Japan; but, although "a victory" is claimed, no details whatever are given beyond the facts that "our army showed a lack of order; the arrows were exhausted; we achieved nothing beyond plundering." The three islands raided were Tsushima, Iki, and one I cannot identify, described in Chinese as I-man. The Japanese annals confirm the attack upon Tsushima and Iki, adding that the enemy slew all the males and carried off all the females in the two islands, but were unsuccessful in their advance upon the Dazai Fu. The enemy's general, Liu Fu-heng, was slain; the enemy numbered thirty thousand. The slain officer was, perhaps, a relative of Liu T'ung, who served again in China. In the year 1275 two more envoys bearing Chinese names were sent with letters to Japan, "but they also got no reply." The Japanese annals confirm this, and add that "they came to discuss terms of peace, but their envoy, Tu Shi-chung--whose name corresponds--was decapitated." This is true, but he was not decapitated until 1280, and, as is well known to competent students, Japanese history is always open to suspicion when it conflicts with Chinese, and too often "touches up" from Chinese. In 1277 some merchants from Japan appeared in China with a quantity of gold, which they desired to exchange for copper _cash_. The following year the "coast authorities"--probably meaning at Ningpo and Wenchow, where even now, as I found in 1884, immense quantities of old Japanese copper cash are in daily use--were instructed to permit Japanese trade. But preparations for war still went on, and the head-quarters of the army were fixed at Liao-yang, where General Kuropatkin fixed his more recently. Naval preparations were particularly active during 1279, and Corea was invited to make arrangements for boats to be built in that country, where timber was so plentiful--evidently alluding to the Russian "concessions" on the Yalu. Large numbers of ships were also constructed in Central China. During this year a defeated Chinese general in Mongol employ, named Fan Wen-hu, advised that the war against Japan should be postponed "until the result of our mission, accompanied by the Japanese priest carrying our letters, shall be known." When this priest was appointed, by whom, and to do what, there is nothing to show. To a certain extent this enigmatical sentence is supported by the Japanese annals, which announce that "in the summer of 1279 the Mongol generals Hia Kwei and Fan Wen-hu came and sent _aides-de-camp_ to Dazai Fu to discuss peace, but Tokimune (the regent) had them decapitated at Hakata in Chikuzen." Hia Kwei was certainly another defeated Chinese general, but I do not think he ever went to Japan. It is in the spring of 1280 that the Chinese record the execution by the Japanese of "Tu Shi-chung," etc. But it is quite evident that Fan Wen-hu cannot possibly have been executed in 1279, for later on, in 1280, after Hung Ts'a-k'iu and others had been appointed to the Japan expedition, "it was decided to wait a little, and Fan Wen-hu was consulted as to the best means of attack; meanwhile prisoners of war, criminals, Mussulmans, etc., were enlisted, and volunteers were called for." It is difficult to account for "Mussulmans" in such company, for the villanous "Saracen" Achmat was just then at the height of his power. The King of Corea meanwhile personally paid a visit to Peking, and gave the assurance that he was raising thirty thousand extra soldiers to serve in the Japan war. Fan Wen-hu was now placed in supreme command of one hundred thousand men. "The King of Corea with ten thousand soldiers, fifteen thousand sea-men, nine hundred war-ships, and one hundred and ten thousand hundred-weight of grain, proceeded against Japan. Hung Ts'a-k'iu and his colleagues were provided with weapons, Corean armor, jackets, etc. The troops were given strict instructions not to harass the inhabitants of Corea. Corean generals received high rank, and the King was given extra honors." In 1281 the generals Hung Ts'a-k'iu and Hintu (a Ouigour Turk) went in command of a naval force of forty thousand men via "Kin Chouin Corea." Another force of one hundred thousand men was sent across the sea from modern Ningpo and Tinghai, the two forces arranging to meet at the islands of Iki and Hirado. Alouhan (a Mongol) and Fan Wen-hu received in anticipation the honorary titles of "Left and Right Governors of Japan province"; and when they and the other generals took leave of Kublai, the Emperor said: "As they had sent us envoys first, we also sent envoys thither; but then they kept our envoys, and would not let them go; hence I send you, gentlemen, on this errand. I understand the Chinese say that when you take another people's country, you need to get both the people and the land. If you go and slay all the people, and only secure the land, what use is that? There is another matter, upon which I feel truly anxious--that is, I fear want of harmony among you, gentlemen! If the natives of that country come to discuss any matter with you, gentlemen, you should join your minds for one common plan, and reply as though one mouth only had to speak." When the army, after a week's sail from Tinghai, reached the islands of Ku-tsi (off Masanpho) and Tsushima, some Japanese stranded fishermen were caught and forced to sketch a map of the localities; and meanwhile it had been agreed that the island of Iki was a better rendezvous than "Kin Chou in Corea," on account of the then prevailing winds. From the Japanese sailors' sketch it appeared that a little west of the Dazai Fu was the island of Hirado, which, being surrounded on all sides with plenty of water, afforded a good anchorage for the ships. It was decided--subject, apparently, to Kublai's approval--to occupy Hirado first, and then summon General Hung, etc., from Iki, to join in a general attack. Kublai replied by the messenger in effect: "I cannot judge here of the situation there. I presume Alouhan and his colleagues ought to know, and they must decide for themselves." Meanwhile Alouhan--written also Alahan--had fallen sick, and died at Ningpo, and another Mongol, named Atahai--written also Antahai--was sent to replace him. Now comes the sudden collapse of the whole expedition, recorded, unfortunately, in most laconic and unsatisfactory terms. I give the various extracts _in extenso_: 1. _Chapter on Japan_.--"Eighth moon. The generals, having before coming in sight of the enemy lost their entire force, got back. They said that, 'having reached Japan, they wished to attack Dazai Fu, but that a violent wind smashed the ships. That they were still bent on discussing operations, when three of the commanders [Chinese names] declined to accept their orders any more, and made off. The provincial staff conveyed the rest of the army to Hoh P'u [probably = Masanpho], whence they were dismissed back to their homes.' But one of the defeated soldiers, who succeeded in escaping home, gave the following account: 'The imperial armies in the 6th moon put to sea. In the 7th moon they reached Hirado Island, and then moved to Five Dragon Mountains [the Japanese pronunciation would be Go-riu Shima, or Yama, and perhaps it means the Goto Islands]. On the 1st of the 8th moon the wind smashed the ships. On the 5th day Fan Wen-hu and the other generals each made selection of the soundest and best boats, and got into them, and abandoned the soldiers, to the number of over one hundred thousand, at the foot of the hills. The soldiers then agreed to select the centurion Chang as general in command, and styled him 'General Chang,' submitting themselves to his orders. They were just engaged in cutting down trees to make boats to come back in, when, on the 7th day, the Japanese came and gave battle. All were killed except 20,000 or 30,000 who were carried off prisoners. On the 9th day these got to the Eight Horn Islands [the Japanese pronunciation would be Hakkaku Shima], where all the Mongols, Coreans, and men of Han [--North China] were massacred. As it was understood that the newly recruited army consisted of men of T'ang [= Cantonese, etc.], they were not killed, but turned into slaves, of whom deponent was one. The trouble arose from want of harmony and subordination in the general staff, in consequence of which they abandoned the troops and returned. After some time two other stragglers got back; that is out of a host of 100,000 only three ever returned.'" 2. _Chapter on the Ouigour General, Siang-wei._--"In 1281 the sea-force of 100,000 men under Fan Wen-hu, etc., took seven days and nights to reach Bamboo Island [the Japanese pronunciation would be Chikushima; perhaps is another form of Tsushima], where they effected a junction with the forces of the provincial staff from Liao-yang. It was the intention to first attack the Dazai Fu, but there was vacillation and indecision. On the 1st day of the 8th moon a great typhoon raged, and 60 or 70 per cent. of the army perished. The Emperor was furious, etc." 3. _Chapter on Li T'ing, a Shan Tung man, who was on Fan Wen-hu's staff._--"In 1281 the army encamped on Bamboo Island, but, a storm arising, the vessels were all smashed. Li T'ing escaped ashore on a piece of wreckage, collected the remains of the host, and returned via Corea to Peking. Only 10 to 20 per cent. of the soldiers escaped alive [apparently referring to the 40,000, not to the 100,000]." 4. _Chapter on the Chih-Li-man-Chang-Hi._--"He accompanied Fan Wen-hu and Li T'ing with the naval force which crossed the sea against Japan. Chang Hi, on arrival, at once left his boats, and set to work intrenching on the island of Hirado. He also kept his war-ships at anchor at a cable's length from each other, so as to avoid the destructive action of wind and waves. When the great typhoon arose in the 8th moon, the galleons of Fan and Li were all smashed; only Chang Hi's escaped uninjured. When Fan Wen-hu, etc., suggested going back, Chang Hi said: 'Half the soldiers are drowned, but those who have escaped death are all sturdy troops. Surely it is better for us to take advantage of this moment, before they have begun to think regretfully of home, to live on the enemy's country and advance?' Fan Wen-hu, etc., would not agree to this and said: 'When we see the Emperor, we will bear all the blame; you have no share in it.' Chang Hi gave them a number of his boats. At that instant there were 4,000 soldiers encamped on Hirado Island without any boats. Chang Hi said, 'How can I bear to leave them?' And then he jettisoned all the seventy horses in the boats in order to enable them to get back. When they got to Peking, Fan Wen-hu, etc., were all disgraced. Only Chang Hi escaped punishment." 5. _Chapter on Ch'u Ting, an An Hwei man._--"He was with Fan Wen-hu's force when the sudden storm arose. His craft was smashed, but Ch'u Ting got hold of a piece of wreckage, and drifted about for three days and three nights, until he fell in with Fan Wen-hu's ship at a certain island, and was thus able to get to Kin Chou in Corea. The soldiers encamped in the Hoh P'u bay also drifted in, and were collected and taken home by him." _Chapter on Hung Tsun-k'i, alias Hung Ts'a-k'iu, a Corean of ancient Chinese descent_.--"[After recounting how Kublai placed him in charge of the well-disposed Corean troops, how he served in the Corean and Quelpaert campaigns, and against Japan in 1274 and 1277, the Mongol History goes on:] In 1281, in company with Hintu [a Ouigour], he led a naval force of 40,000 men via Kin Chou and Hoh-P'u in Corea to join the 100,000 men coming by sea from Ningpo under Fan Wen-hu. Forces were joined at the Iki, Hirado, and other islands of Japan; but before the hostile forces were encountered, in the 8th month, a storm smashed the ships, and he returned." _Extract from Japanese Riokuji, or Historical Handbook_.--"In the 5th moon of 1281 the Mongols raided us on a wholesale scale. Our troops were unsuccessful in resisting them at Iki and Tsushima. The enemy advanced and occupied Five Dragon Mountains in Hizen. The Hojo-tandai led the troops bravely to the fight. The enemy retired upon Takashima. In the intercalary 7th moon a great wind blew. The enemy's war-ships were all broken to pieces. Our troops energetically attacked and cut them up, the sea being covered with prostrate corpses. Of the Mongol army of 100,000 only three men got back alive. Henceforward the Mongols were unable to pry about our coasts again." MARCO POLO Of so great celebrity was the wealth of Cipango (Japan), that a desire was excited in the breast of the grand khan Kublai, now reigning, to make the conquest of it, and to annex it to his dominions. In order to effect this, he fitted out a numerous fleet, and embarked a large body of troops, under the command of two of his principal officers, one of whom was named Abba-catan, and the other Vonsancin.[76] The expedition sailed from the ports of Zaitun and Kinsai,[77] and, crossing the intermediate sea, reached the island in safety; but in consequence of a jealousy that arose between the two commanders, one of whom treated the plans of the other with contempt and resisted the execution of his orders, they were unable to gain possession of any city or fortified place, with the exception of one only, which was carried by assault, the garrison having refused to surrender. Directions were given for putting the whole to the sword, and in obedience thereto the heads of all were cut off, excepting of eight persons, who, by the efficacy of a diabolical charm, consisting of a jewel or amulet introduced into the right arm, between the skin and the flesh, were rendered secure from the effects of iron, either to kill or wound, Upon this discovery being made, they were beaten with a heavy wooden club, and presently died.[78] It happened, after some time, that a north wind began to blow with great force, and the ships of the Tartars, which lay near the shore of the island, were driven foul of each other. It was determined thereupon, in a council of the officers on board, that they ought to disengage themselves from the land; and accordingly, as soon as the troops were re-embarked, they stood out to sea. The gale, however, increased to so violent a degree that a number of the vessels foundered. The people belonging to them, by floating upon pieces of the wreck, saved themselves upon an island lying about four miles from the coast of Cipango. The other ships, which, not being so near to the land, did not suffer from the storm, and in which the two chiefs were embarked, together with the principal officers, or those whose rank entitled them to command a hundred thousand or ten thousand men, directed their course homeward, and returned to the Grand Khan. Those of the Tartars who remained upon the island where they were wrecked, and who amounted to about thirty thousand men, finding themselves left without shipping, abandoned by their leaders, and having neither arms nor provisions, expected nothing less than to become captives or to perish; especially as the island afforded no habitations where they could take shelter and refresh themselves. As soon as the gale ceased and the sea became smooth and calm, the people from the main island of Cipango came over with a large force, in numerous boats, in order to make prisoners of these shipwrecked Tartars, and, having landed, proceeded in search of them, but in a straggling, disorderly manner. The Tartars, on their part, acted with prudent circumspection, and, being concealed from view by some high land in the centre of the island, while the enemy were hurrying in pursuit of them by one road, made a circuit of the coast by another, which brought them to the place where the fleet of boats was at anchor. Finding these all abandoned, but with their colors flying, they instantly seized them, and, pushing off from the island, stood for the principal city of Cipango, into which, from the appearance of the colors, they were suffered to enter unmolested.[79] Here they found few of the inhabitants besides women, whom they retained for their own use, and drove out all others. When the King was apprised of what had taken place, he was much afflicted, and immediately gave directions for a strict blockade of the city, which was so effectual that not any person was suffered to enter or to escape from it during six months that the siege continued. At the expiration of this time the Tartars, despairing of succor, surrendered upon the condition of their lives being spared. These events took place in the course of the year 1264.[80] The Grand Khan having learned some years after that the unfortunate issue of the expedition was to be attributed to the dissension between the two commanders, caused the head of one of them to be cut off; the other he sent to the savage island of Zorza,[81] where it is the custom to execute criminals in the following manner. They are wrapped round both arms, in the hide of a buffalo fresh taken from the beast, which is sewed tight. As this dries, it compresses the body to such a degree that the sufferer is incapable of moving or in any manner helping himself, and thus miserably perishes. THE SICILIAN VESPERS A.D. 1282 MICHELE AMARI[82] Under Frederic II, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Sicily had been governed wisely. His son Conrad succeeded him as King of Sicily in 1250, but went to Germany, where his crown was being contested by William of Holland, leaving his illegitimate brother Manfred to administer Sicily. Conrad and his brother Henry died in 1254. Manfred continued to rule Sicily as regent for his nephew Conradin, son of Conrad, but in 1258, upon a rumor of Conradin's death, assumed the crown. Pope Alexander IV and his successor Urban IV, a Frenchman, would not recognize Manfred as ruler. Urban offered the Sicilian crown to a brother of Louis IX of France, Charles, Count of Anjou, who promised to hold Sicily as a fief of the holy see. Charles was compelled to conquer his new kingdom, and with a large army of Frenchmen invaded Sicily. Manfred was defeated and slain in a sanguinary battle at Grandella, near Benevento, and Charles soon made himself master of the kingdom. Young Conradin was still living, but was defeated at Tagliacozzo in 1268, and was beheaded at Naples by order of Charles. The French earned the scarcely veiled hatred of the Sicilians by their tyranny and cruelties, and a conspiracy arose to give the crown to Pedro, King of Aragon, who had married Constance, daughter of Manfred. Charles of Anjou was not ignorant of the fact that his throne was in danger, nor was he totally unprepared. The overthrow of the French power in Sicily, however, was precipitated by an incident at Palermo on Easter Monday, the 30th of March, 1282, which led to the wholesale massacre known to history as the "Sicilian Vespers," because of its commencement at the hour of vespers. The Sicilians endured the French yoke--though cursing it--until the spring of 1282. The military preparations of the King of Aragon were not yet completed, nor, even if partially known in Sicily, could they inspire any immediate hope. The people were overawed by the immense armaments of Charles destined against Constantinople; and forty-two royal castles, either in the principal cities or in situations of great natural strength, served to keep the island in check. A still greater number were held by French feudatories; the standing troops were collected and in arms; and the feudal militia, composed in great part of foreign subfeudatories, waited only the signal to assemble. In such a posture of affairs, which the foresight of the prudent would never have selected for an outbreak, the officers of Charles continued to grind down the Sicilian people, satisfied that their patience would endure forever. New outrages shed a gloom over the festival of Easter at Palermo, the ancient capital of the kingdom, detested by the strangers more than any other city as being the strongest and the most deeply injured. Messina was the seat of the King's viceroy in Sicily, Herbert of Orleans; Palermo was governed by the Justiciary of Val di Mazzara, John of St. Remigio, a minister worthy of Charles. His subalterns, worthy both of the Justiciary and of the King, had recently launched out into fresh acts of rapine and violence. But the people submitted. It even went so far that the citizens of Palermo, seeking comfort from God amid their worldly tribulations, and having entered a church to pray, in that very church, on the days sacred to the memory of the Saviour's passion, and amid the penitential rites, were exposed to the most cruel outrages. The ban-dogs of the exchequer searched out among them those who had failed in the payment of the taxes, dragged them forth from the sacred edifice, manacled, and bore them to prison, crying out, insultingly, before the multitude attracted to the spot, "Pay, _faterini_, pay!" And the people still submitted. The Monday after Easter, which fell on the 30th of March, there was a festival at the Church of Santo Spirito. On that occasion a heinous outrage against the liberties of the Sicilians afforded the impulse, and the patience of the people gave way. Half a mile from the southern wall of the city, on the brink of the ravine of Oreto, stands a church dedicated to the Holy Ghost, concerning which the Latin fathers have not failed to record that on the day on which the first stone of it was laid, in the twelfth century, the sun was darkened by an eclipse. On one side of it were the precipice and the river; on the other, the plain extending to the city, which in the present day is in great part divided by walls and dotted with gardens; while a square enclosure of moderate size, shaded by dusky cypresses, honeycombed with tombs, and adorned with urns and other sepulchral monuments, surrounds the church. This is a public cemetery, laid out toward the end of the eighteenth century, and fearfully filled in three weeks by the dire pestilence which devastated Sicily in 1837. On the Tuesday following Easter, at the hour of vespers, religion and custom drew crowds of people to this cheerful plain, then carpeted with the flowers of spring. Citizens, wending their way toward the church, divided into numerous groups. They walked, sat in clusters, spread the tables, or danced upon the grass; and--whether it were a defect or a merit of the Sicilian character--threw off, for the moment, the recollection of their sufferings. Suddenly the followers of the Justiciary appeared among them, and every bosom thrilled with a shudder of disgust. The strangers came with their usual insolent demeanor, as they said, to maintain tranquillity; and for this purpose they mingled with the groups, joined in the dances, and familiarly accosted the women; pressing the hand of one, taking unwarranted liberties with others; addressing indecent words and gestures to those more distant, until some temperately admonished them to depart, in God's name, without insulting the women; and others murmured angrily; but the hot-blooded youths raised their voices so fiercely that the soldiers said to one another, "These insolent paterini must be armed, that they dare thus to answer," and replied to them with the most offensive insults, insisting, with great insolence, on searching them for arms, and even here and there striking them with sticks or thongs. Every heart already throbbed fiercely on either side, when a young woman, of singular beauty and of modest and dignified deportment, appeared with her husband and relations, bending her steps toward the church. Drouet, a Frenchman, impelled either by insolence or license, approached her as if to examine her for concealed weapons; seized her and searched her bosom. She fell fainting into her husband's arms, who, in a voice almost choked with rage, exclaimed, "Death, death to the French!" At the same moment a youth burst from the crowd which had gathered round them, sprang upon Drouet, disarmed and slew him; and probably, at the same moment, paid the penalty by the loss of his own life, leaving his name unknown and the mystery forever unsolved--whether it were love for the injured woman, the impulse of a generous heart, or the more exalted flame of patriotism that prompted him thus to give the signal of deliverance. Noble example has a power far beyond that of argument or eloquence to rouse the people; and the erstwhile abject slaves awoke at length from their long bondage. "Death, death to the French!" they cried; and the cry--say the historians of the time--reechoed, like the voice of God, through the whole country, and found an answer in every heart. Above the corpse of Drouet were heaped those of the slain on either side. The crowd expanded itself, closed in, and swayed hither and thither in wild confusion. The Sicilians, with sticks, stones, and knives, rushed with desperate ferocity upon their fully armed opponents. They sought for them and hunted them down. Fearful tragedies were enacted amid the preparations for festivity, and the overthrown tables were drenched with blood. The people displayed their strength and conquered. The struggle was brief, and great the slaughter of the Sicilians; but of the French there were two hundred--and two hundred fell! Breathless, covered with blood, brandishing the plundered weapons, and proclaiming the insult and its vengeance, the insurgents rushed toward the tranquil city, "Death to the French!" they shouted, and as many as they found were put to the sword. The example, the words, the contagion of passion, in an instant aroused the whole people. In the heat of the tumult Roger Mastrangelo, a nobleman, was chosen--or constituted himself--their leader. The multitude continued to increase; dividing into troops they scoured the streets, burst open doors, searched every nook, every hiding-place, and shouting "Death to the French!" smote them and slew them, while those too distant to strike added to the tumult by their applause. On the outbreak of this sudden uproar the Justiciary had taken refuge in his strong palace; the next moment it was surrounded by an enraged multitude crying aloud for his death; they demolished the defences and rushed furiously in, but the Justiciary escaped them. Favored by the confusion and the closing darkness, he succeeded, though wounded in the face, in mounting his horse unobserved, with only two attendants, and fled with all speed. Meanwhile the slaughter continued with increased ferocity; even the darkness of night failed to arrest it, and it was resumed the next day more furiously than ever. Nor did it finally cease because the thirst for vengeance was slaked, but because victims were wanting to appease it. Two thousand French perished in this first outbreak. Even Christian burial was denied them, but pits were afterward dug to receive their despised remains, and tradition still points out a column surmounted by an iron cross, raised by compassionate piety on one of these spots, probably long after the perpetration of the deed of vengeance. Tradition, moreover, relates that the sound of a word, like the _Shibboleth_ of the Hebrews, was the cruel test by which the French were distinguished in the massacre; and that, if there were found a suspicious or unknown person, he was compelled, with a sword to his throat, to pronounce the word _ciciri_, and the slightest foreign accent was the signal for his death. Forgetful of their own character, and as if stricken by fate, the gallant warriors of France neither fled nor united nor defended themselves. They unsheathed their swords and presented them to their assailants, imploring, as if in emulation of each other, to be the first to die. Of one common soldier it is recorded that, having concealed himself behind a wainscot, and being dislodged at the sword's point, he resolved not to die unavenged, and, springing forth with a wild cry upon the ranks of his enemies, slew three of them before he himself perished. The insurgents broke into the convents of the Minorites and Preaching Friars, and slaughtered all the monks whom they recognized as French. Even the altars afforded no protection; tears and prayers were alike unheeded; neither old men, women, nor infants were spared. The ruthless avengers of the ruthless massacre of Agosta swore to root out the seed of the French oppressors throughout the whole of Sicily; and this vow they cruelly fulfilled, slaughtering infants at their mothers' breasts and after them the mothers themselves, not sparing even pregnant women, but, with a horrible refinement of cruelty, ripping up the bodies of Sicilian women who were with child by French husbands, and dashing against the stones the fruit of the mingled blood of the oppressors and the oppressed. This general massacre of all who spoke the same language, and these heinous acts of cruelty, have caused the Sicilian Vespers to be classed among the most infamous of national crimes. The very atrocity of the Vespers proved the salvation of Sicily, by cutting off all possibility of compromise. On that same bloodstained night of the 31st of March, the people of Palermo assembled in parliament, and, divided between the triumph of vengeance and terror at their own daring act, advanced still more decidedly in the path they had chosen. They abolished monarchy, and resolved to establish a commonwealth under the protection of the Church of Rome. They were moved to this determination by deadly hatred against Charles and his government, and the recollection of the stern rule of the Swabian dynasty on the one hand, and, on the other, by grateful remembrance of the liberty enjoyed in 1254; by the example of the Tuscan and Lombard republics, and by the natural pride of a powerful city, which having freed itself from a detested yoke confided in its own strength. The name of the Church was added in order to disarm the wrath of the Pope, to tempt his ambition, or to justify the rebellion under the pretext that in driving out their more immediate but criminal ruler they contemplated no infraction of loyalty to the suzerain from whom he held his power. Roger Mastrangelo, Henry Barresi, and Niccoloso of Ortoleva (knights), and Niccolo of Ebdemonia were proclaimed captains of the people with five counsellors. By the glare of torchlight on the bloody ground, amid the noise and throng of the armed multitude, and with all the sublime pomp of tumult, the republican magistrates were inaugurated. Trumpets and Moorish kettle-drums sounded, and thousands upon thousands of voices uttered the joyous cry of "The Republic and Liberty!" The ancient banner of the city--a golden eagle in a red field--was unfolded to wave amid new glories; and in homage to the Church the keys of St. Peter were quartered upon it. At midnight, John of St. Remigio stayed his rapid flight at Vicari, a castle thirty miles distant from the capital; where, knocking loudly and hurriedly, he was with difficulty recognized by the garrison, half-drunk from the celebration of the same festival which had bred so fearful a slaughter in Palermo. Having admitted him, they were transfixed with amazement at seeing their Justiciary at so unreasonable an hour, unescorted, breathless, and covered with blood. John refused all explanation at the time, but the next morning at daybreak he called to arms all the French of the neighborhood--a feudal militia well inured to warfare--and breaking silence urged them to resist, and perhaps to avenge, the fate of their comrades. It was not long before the forces of Palermo, which had set out at dawn in pursuit of the fugitive--whose traces they had discovered--arrived at full speed beneath the walls of Vicari, and surrounded the city in disorder, impatient for the assault; but not perceiving how it was to be made, they had recourse to threats, and demanded immediate surrender, promising to the inhabitants the safety of their persons, and to John and his followers permission, on laying down their arms, to embark for Aigues-Mortes, in Provence. They, however, disdaining such conditions, and regarding the mob of assailants with contempt, made a vigorous sortie. At first military discipline obtained the advantage, and the Sicilians gave way, but the tide of battle was turned by a power beyond that of human skill, by the spirit which had given birth to the Vespers, and which suddenly blazed up again in the scattered squadrons. They paused--they looked at one another, "Death--death to the French!" they cried, and rushing upon them with irresistible fury, they drove back the veteran warriors into the fortress, defeated and in confusion. After this it was in vain that the French proposed terms of surrender. Heedless of the rules of war the young archers of Cacamo shot the Justiciary as he presented himself upon the walls, and, seeing him fall, the whole multitude rushed to the assault, occupied the fortress, put the garrison to the sword, and flung their corpses, piecemeal, to the dogs and to the vultures. This done, the host returned to Palermo. Meanwhile, the fame of what had occurred spread rapidly from town to town, and the first in that neighborhood to rise was Corleone, as chief in population and importance, and also because of its numerous Lombard inhabitants, who held the names of Angevins and Guelfs in abhorrence, and of the intolerable burdens imposed upon it by the near neighborhood of the royal farms. This city, afterward surnamed the Valiant, boldly following the example of the capital, sent William Basso, William Corto, and Giugliono de Miraldo as orators to Palermo, to propose terms of alliance and fraternity between the two cities; mutual assistance in arms, forces, and money; reciprocal privileges of citizenship, and enfranchisement from all burdens laid upon such as were not citizens. It is not known whether the idea of the league originated with the republican rulers of Palermo or with the patriots of Corleone; but whichever may have been the case, it clearly exhibits the preponderance in those early days of the municipal tendency, and the exchange of feudal relations for the federal union of communities, the banner under which the revolution spread itself throughout the entire island. The assembled people of Palermo, with one voice, accepted the terms, and by their desire, on the 3d of April, they were sworn to on the Gospels by the captains and counsellors of the city, with the deputies of Corleone, and officially registered among the public acts; Palermo binding herself, moreover, to assist her ally in the destruction of the strong fortress of Calata Mauro. Meanwhile, one Boniface, elected captain of the people of Corleone, went forth with three thousand men to scour the surrounding country. The royal farms were plundered and devastated; the herds, which had been carefully fattened for the army of the East, were confiscated to the service of the Sicilian revolution; the castles of the French were stormed, their houses sacked, and the massacre so ruthless that, according to Saba Malaspina, it seemed as if every man either had the death of a father, son, or brother to revenge, or firmly believed that the slaughter of a Frenchman was an act well pleasing to God. Thus, in a very few days, the movement propagated itself many miles around owing to the similarity of sentiments, the force of example, and the energy of the insurgents. In many places it assumed a character which must be inexplicable to those who, in spite of all that has been already stated, would persist in regarding these tumultuous outbreaks as the result of conspiracy; while the people showed the utmost readiness to put the foreigners to the sword, yet they feared to disown the name of King Charles. Their hesitation lasted but a few days, for they were carried away by the impulse of universal feeling and by the strength of the rebels; so that all, by degrees, declared themselves elected chiefs to lead their forces against the French, and captains of the people whom they sent to the capital, the fame of whose example had roused their courage, and which was now the centre of all their confidence, of all their hopes. This first nucleus of the representatives of the nation being thus assembled in Palermo, they became imbued with the same valor which in one short night had raised a popular tumult to the dignity of a revolution. They were further encouraged by the manly energy of the people, who, mingled with insurgents from the surrounding towns, traversed the city to and fro, eagerly relating to one another the outrages they had suffered, and crying aloud, "Death rather than the yoke of the French!" So that no sooner were the syndics of the greater part of Val di Mazzara assembled in parliament, than they agreed to the establishment of the republican form of government conducted in the name of the Church. The people without responded with loud acclamations and shouts of "The Republic and Liberty!" All encouraged each other to venture everything, when Roger Mastrangelo, bent on urging them on so far that all retreat should be cut off and that they might be able to control the course of events, rose and boldly thus addressed the assembly: "Citizens! I hear daring words and solemn oaths, but I see no symptoms of action, as if the blood that has been shed were the seal of victory rather than the provocation to a long and deadly struggle. Do you know Charles and his thousands of executioners, and can you yet amuse yourselves with the decoration of banners? Not far distant on the mainland are armies and navies ready for the Grecian war: there are the French panting for vengeance, and in a few days they will burst upon us. If they find our ports open for their disembarkation; if our inertness or our faults favor their progress they will soon spread throughout the whole of Sicily; they will subdue the irresolute people by force of arms, deceive them with reports of our unhappy divisions, seduce them with promises, and drag them back to the shameful yoke of bondage or drive them to raise their parricidal weapons against ourselves. You have sworn to die or to be free, and you will become slaves and will not all die--for the butchers will at length be weary--and will reserve the herd of survivors to exercise upon them their despotic will. Sicilians! remember the days of Conradin. To halt now will be destruction; to pursue our course, glory, and deliverance. Our forces are sufficient to raise the whole country as far as Messina, and Messina must not belong to the foe; we share the same origin, the same language, the same past glory and present shame, the same experience that slavery and misery are the result of division. "All Sicily is stained with the blood of the strangers. She is strong in the courage of her sons, in the ruggedness of her mountains, in the protection of the seas, which are her bulwarks. Who then shall set foot upon her soil, except to find in it a yawning grave? Christ, who preached liberty to mankind, who inspired you to effect this blessed deliverance, now extends to you his almighty hand--if you will but act like men in your own defence. Citizens, captains of the people, it is my counsel that messengers be sent to all the other towns inviting them to unite with us for the maintenance of the commonwealth, that by force of arms, by daring, and by rapidity of action we should aid the weak, determine the doubtful, and combat the froward. For this purpose, let us divide into three bands which may simultaneously traverse the whole island, then let a general parliament mature our counsels, unite our views, and regulate the form of government; for I call God to witness that Palermo aspires, not to dominion, but seeks only liberty for all, and for herself the glory of being foremost in peril." "And the people of Corleone," replied Boniface, "will follow the fortunes of this noble city--the fortress and ornament of Sicily. Corleone sends hither three thousand of her warriors to conquer or to die with you. But if our fate be to perish, let all those perish with us who would take part with the stranger in the day of the deliverance of Sicily. Thou, Roger, valiant in fight and sage in counsel, thou hast spoken words of safety. Henceforward he who lingers is a traitor to his country; let us arm ourselves and go forth." "Forward, forward!" thundered the voice of the people in answer to his words, and with marvellous celerity the messengers were despatched; the forces assembled and sent forth in three divisions--one to the left toward Cefalu, one to the right upon Calatafimi, and the third toward the centre of the island, through Castro Giovanni. They displayed the banner of the commonwealth with the keys of St. Peter depicted around them, and their fame went before them, awakening hope and desire in all hearts. Hence every city and town unhesitatingly renounced its allegiance to Charles with a degree of unity which was admirable--except in regard to the slaughter of the French. They were hunted down in the mountains and forests, assaulted and vanquished in the castles, and pursued with such fury that even to those who had escaped from the hands of the Sicilians life became a burden; and from the most impregnable fortresses, from the remotest hiding-places, they gave themselves up into the hands of the people who summoned them to die. Some even precipitated themselves from the towers of their strongholds. A very few, aided either by fortune or by their own valor, escaped with their lives, but were despoiled of everything, and these sought refuge in Messina. But the fate of William Porcelet merits especial remembrance. He was Lord or Governor of Calatafimi, and, amid the unbridled iniquity of his countrymen, was distinguished for justice and humanity. On the day of vengeance, in the full flush of its triumph and fury, the Palermitan host appeared at Calatafimi, and not only spared the life of William and of his family, but treated him with distinguished honor and sent him back to Provence--a fact which goes to prove, that for the excesses committed by the people, ample provocation had not been wanting. Meanwhile the great object toward which every effort was directed was to gain over Messina to the cause of the revolution, for all comprehended the importance of her situation, of her seaport, and of the powerful and wealthy city herself--obviously marked out as the key-stone of the war--as well as the pressing necessity of obtaining her alliance or of making a desperate effort to subdue her by force of arms. Negotiations were therefore commenced. Of those which were private and the most efficacious no record has been handed down to us; but of those publicly conducted, a letter is still extant, dated from Palermo, the 13th of April, and despatched by messengers to Messina, which begins thus: "The Palermitans to the noble citizens of the illustrious city of Messina, bondsmen under Pharaoh in dust and mire--greeting, and deliverance from the servile yoke by the arm of liberty. "Rise!" continues the epistle. "Rise, O daughter of Zion, and reassert thy former strength; ... cease thy lamentations, which only awaken contempt; take thy weapons, thy quiver and thy bow, and unbind the fetters from thy neck." It proceeds to speak of Charles as a Nero, a wolf, a lion, and a ferocious dragon; then reverting to Messina, it exclaims: "The voice of God says to thee, 'Take up thy bed and walk!' for thou art whole." And again it exhorts her citizens "to struggle with the old serpent, and, being regenerate, like new-born babes to suck the milk of liberty, to seek justice, and to fly from calamity and ignominy." While the Palermitans sought to gain over the citizens by these Biblical metaphors, Herbert of Orleans strengthened himself with foreign arms and with the support of the Messinese nobles--who by abuses and oppression had exalted themselves above their fellow-citizens, and therefore now resolutely sided with the Vicar. But first he sent seven Messinese galleys to attack Palermo under the command of Richard de Riso, who in 1268 had dared with a few vessels to confront the whole Pisan fleet, and who was now to lose in civil war his honor as a citizen and his reputation as a leader; for uniting with four galleys from Amalfi, under the command of Matthew del Giudice and Roger of Salerno, he proceeded to blockade the port of Palermo, and, as he was unable to effect anything else, approached the walls and caused the name of Charles to be shouted aloud, together with insults and menaces to the citizens. They, however, with the long-suffering of conscious strength, replied that "they would neither return the insults nor his blows; the Messinese and Palermitans were brothers; the French oppressors their only enemies, and they would do better to turn their arms against the tyrants." With these words they hoisted the standard of the cross of Messina upon the walls beside the eagle of Palermo. The city of Messina--or rather those who wielded the municipal authority--in order to prove their loyalty, on the 15th of April sent five hundred cross-bowmen, under the command of Chiriolo, a knight of Messina, to garrison Taormina and prevent its occupation by the insurgents. The people, on the other hand, felt their Sicilian blood boil as they received the news of the rising in Palermo and in the other cities, of the progress of the insurgents through the island, and of the slaughter and flight of the French, heightened by many false or exaggerated reports; and when they beheld the fugitives enter Messina, destitute and terror-stricken, they began to murmur and show animosity against the soldiers of Herbert. These, feeling themselves no longer safe in the city, withdrew--some to the castle of Matagrifone, some to the royal palace where Herbert resided. The latter, in an evil hour, decided on a display of energy. He sent ninety horsemen under Micheletto Gatta to occupy the defences of Taormina, as if unable to repose confidence in the Messinese garrison, and the latter, seeing them approach in such arrogant and almost hostile guise, and incited by a citizen named Bartholomew, received them with a cry of insulting defiance and a shower of arrows. The contest being thus engaged, forty of the French remained on the field. The rest fled precipitately for refuge to the castle of Scaletta; and the Sicilians, tearing down the banners of Charles, marched upon Messina to compel her to join the rebellion. In the city thousands were willing, but none had courage, for the work, till a man of the people--Bartholomew Maniscalco by name--conspired with several others to give the signal of action. Meanwhile, forces were preparing to repulse the insurgents from Taormina, and the more prudent of the citizens deplored the impending effusion of the blood of their brethren. The people were on the alert, nor did the conspirators hold back. Perhaps the entrance into the port of a Palermitan galley, and the slaughter by her crew of a few French who had fallen into their hands, hastened the event. It was the 28th of April when, from the midst of the tumultuous crowd, broke forth the cries of "Death to the French! Death to those who side with them!" and the massacre commenced. The victims, however, were but few, as the previous threatening aspect of the people had cleared the city of the greater number of the French. Maniscalco meanwhile, with his confederates, hoisted the cross of Messina in the place of the detested banner of Anjou; for a brief space he was captain of the people, but owing either to his own modesty or to the influence of the more powerful citizens, which always prevailed in the industrial city of Messina, that same night, by their advice, he resigned the government to Baldwin Mussone, a noble returned but a few hours before, with Matthew and Baldwin de Riso, from the court of King Charles. On the following day, the municipal council having been assembled in form, Mussone was hailed captain by the entire people; and calling on the sacred name of Christ, the republic was proclaimed, under the protection of the Church. The gonfalon, or great banner of the city, was displayed with the utmost pomp. The judges Raynald de Limogi and Nicoloso Saporito, the historian Bartholomew of Neocastro, and Peter Ansalone were elected as counsellors of the new government; and all the public officers, even to the executioners, were likewise elected--as if to show that henceforward the sword of justice was to rule in place of disorder and violence. But it was yet too soon for so complete a revolution. On the 30th of April the galleys were recalled from Palermo, whither messengers of friendship and alliance were despatched in their stead. Herbert, feeling himself no longer secure in the castle, had recourse to the old manoeuvre of fomenting divisions, but with no better success. He despatched Matthew, a member of the family of Riso--which from consciousness of guilt had allied itself with him--to endeavor to gain over Baldwin Mussone. Matthew accordingly sought him and in presence of all the other counsellors admonished him, using the arguments of a crooked policy, to reflect on the great power of the King, and that this insane tumult would deprive Messina of the advantages that would naturally accrue to her from the rebellion of Palermo. What were the Palermitans to him that he should share their madness? In what had Charles injured him or his city? "How is it possible," continued he, "that thou who wast but yesterday loyal to the King, a friend to us, and the companion of our journey, shouldst have secretly nourished such hatred in thy heart? and now, far from restraining the people from rushing to their ruin, shouldst spur them wildly on? For thy own sake, for that of thy country, return to thy senses--it is yet time." But Baldwin, with a clearer comprehension of the honor and interests of the city, which were identical with those of Sicily, answered him indignantly, and neither counsellors nor citizens hesitated for a moment whether to prostitute Messina to the stranger or bid her share the freedom of the sister-cities of the island. Rejecting, therefore, these deceptive arguments, Baldwin, in the presence of Matthew de Riso, solemnly renewed his oath to maintain the liberty of Sicily or perish, and exhorted him to join in support of the same sacred cause. In conclusion, he desired him to return to Herbert, and offer him security for his own life and that of his soldiers, if leaving their arms, horses, and accoutrements, they would sail direct for Aigues-Mortes in Provence, binding themselves not to touch anywhere on the Sicilian or other neighboring coasts. The Viceroy agreed to these terms, but had no sooner traversed half the strait with two vessels than he broke them, and full of hostile designs landed in Calabria in order to join Peter of Catanzaro, who being advised of what was going forward had embarked before them with his Calabrians, abandoning his horses and baggage to the fury of the people. Theobald de Messi, castellan of the fortress of Matagrifone, and Micheletto--with those who had taken refuge at Scaletta--subsequently surrendered, with all their followers, on the terms granted to the Viceroy. The former, having embarked on board a small vessel, set sail several times, but was driven into port by contrary winds or adverse fate. The latter was shut up in the castle, and his soldiers in the palace, to protect them from the fury of the multitude. But these precautions availed not to save them. On the 7th of May the galleys returned from Palermo, bringing captive with them two of those of Amalfi which had accompanied them in the expedition, and the crew, inflamed either by example or indignation at the unnatural and useless attempt in which they had been employed against their fellow-countrymen, loudly demanded French blood to slake their thirst for vengeance. The citizens, meanwhile, were no less exasperated by Herbert's breach of faith; so that, as the galley of Natale Pancia, entering the port, grazed the vessel of Theobald de Messi, the crew, on a signal from the shore, sprang upon her deck, seized and bound the prisoners and flung them overboard to perish. On beholding this spectacle the former fury blazed up afresh within the city; the mob, rushing to the palace, massacred the soldiers taken at Scaletta; the alarm-bells rang; the few partisans of the French concealed themselves in terror; the armed and bloodstained people poured in torrents through the streets, even the rulers of the city made no attempt to quell their fury; for Neocastro, who undoubtedly shared in their counsels, writes that they, on the contrary, advanced the more boldly in the path of revolution when they beheld the multitude so inextricably engaged. EXPULSION OF JEWS FROM ENGLAND A.D. 1290 HENRY HART MILMAN Long persecuted in so-called Christian lands, the people without a country--the Jews--first appeared in England during the latter half of the eleventh century, a colony, it is said, having been taken from Rouen to London by William the Conqueror. These first-comers were, we are told, special favorites of William Rufus. Little is seen of them under Henry I, but in the reign of Stephen they are found established in most of the principal towns, but dwelling as a people apart, not being members of the State, but chattels of the King, and only to be meddled with, for good or for evil, at his bidding. Exempt from taxation and fines, they hoarded wealth, which the King might seize at his pleasure, though none of his subjects could touch it. The Jew's special capacity--in which Christians were forbidden by the Church to employ themselves through fear of the sin of usury---was that of money-lender. In this status the Jews remained without eventful history until the latter part of the twelfth century, when the crusading spirit had aroused a more intense hatred of the race. At the coronation of Richard I (1189) certain of the Jews intruded among the spectators, causing a riot, in which the Jewish quarter was plundered; and this violence was followed by a frenzy of persecution all over the land. A rumor spread that the Jews were accustomed to crucify a Christian boy at Easter, and this aroused the populace to fury against them. Murder and rapine prevailed in several places. Five hundred Jews, who were allowed to take refuge in the castle at York, were there besieged by the townsmen, in whom no offers of ransom could appease the thirst for blood. These avengers were led on by their own clergy, with the cry, "Destroy the enemies of Christ!" A rabbi addressed his countrymen: "Men of Israel, it is better that we should die for our law than to fall into the power of those that hate it, and our law prescribes that we may die by our own hands. Let us voluntarily render up our souls to our Creator." Then all but a few of them burned or buried their effects, and, after setting fire to the castle in many places, the men cut the throats of their wives and children, and then their own. Richard I had special dealings with the Jews, the effectual results of which were more securely to bind them as crown chattels and to add to the royal emoluments. King John, well estimating the importance of the Jews as a source of revenue, began his reign by heaping favors upon them, which only made his subjects in general look upon them with more jealousy. Under Henry III both the wealth of the Jews and the oppressions which laid exactions upon it increased; and during the half-century preceding their expulsion from the realm, their condition, as shown by Milman, became more and more intolerable. Jewish history has a melancholy sameness--perpetual exactions, the means of enforcing them differing only in their degrees of cruelty. Under Henry III the Parliament of England began, 1250, to consider that these extraordinary succors ought at least to relieve the rest of the nation. They began to inquire into the King's resources from this quarter, and the King consented that one of the two justices of the Jews should be appointed by parliament. But the barons thought more of easing themselves than of protecting the oppressed. In 1256 a demand of eight thousand marks was made, under pain of being transported, some at least of the most wealthy, to Ireland; and, lest they should withdraw their families into places of concealment, they were forbidden, under the penalty of outlawry and confiscation, to remove wife or child from their usual place of residence, for their wives and children were now liable to taxation as well as themselves. During the next three years sixty thousand marks more were levied. How, then, was it possible for any traffic, however lucrative, to endure such perpetual exactions? The reason must be found in the enormous interest of money, which seems to have been considered by no means immoderate at 50 per cent.; certain Oxford scholars thought themselves relieved by being constrained to pay only twopence weekly on a debt of twenty shillings. In fact, the rivalry of more successful usurers seems to have afflicted the Jews more deeply than the exorbitant demands of the King. These were the "Caorsini," Italian bankers, though named from the town of Cahors, employed by the Pope to collect his revenue. It was the practice of these persons, under the sanction of their principal, to lend money for three months without interest, but afterward to receive 5 per cent, monthly till the debt was discharged; the former device was to exempt them from the charge of usury. Henry III at one time attempted to expel this new swarm of locusts; but they asserted their authority from the Pope, and the monarch trembled. Nor were their own body always faithful to the Jews. A certain Abraham, who lived at Berkhampstead and Wallingford, with a beautiful wife who bore the heathen name of Flora, was accused of treating an image of the Virgin with most indecent contumely; he was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, but released, on the intervention of Richard, Earl of Cornwall, on payment of seven hundred marks. He was a man, it would seem, of infamous character, for his brethren accused him of coining, and offered one thousand marks rather than that he should be released from prison. Richard refused the tempting bribe, because Abraham was "his Jew." Abraham revenged himself by laying information of plots and conspiracies entered into by the whole people, and the more probable charge of concealment of their wealth from the rapacious hands of the King. This led to a strict and severe investigation of their property. At this investigation was present a wicked and merciless Jew, who rebuked the Christians for their tenderness to his brethren, and reproached the King's officers as gentle and effeminate. He gnashed his teeth, and, as each Jew appeared, declared that he could afford to pay twice as much as was exacted. Though he lied, he was useful in betraying their secret hoards to the King. The distresses of the King increased, and, as his parliament resolutely refused to maintain his extravagant expenditure, nothing remained but to drain still further the veins of the Jews. The office was delegated to Richard, Earl of Cornwall, his brother, whom, from his wealth, the King might consider possessed of some secret for accumulating riches from hidden sources. The rabbi Elias was deputed to wait on the Prince, expressing the unanimous determination of all the Jews to quit the country rather than submit to further burdens: "Their trade was ruined by the Caorsini, the Pope's merchants--the Jew dared not call them usurers--who heaped up masses of gold by their money-lending; they could scarcely live on the miserable gains they now obtained; if their eyes were torn out and their bodies flayed, they could not give more." The old man fainted at the close of his speech, and was with difficulty revived. Their departure from the country was a vain boast, for whither should they go? The edicts of the King of France had closed that country against them, and the inhospitable world scarcely afforded a place of refuge. Earl Richard treated them with leniency and accepted a small sum. But the next year the King renewed his demands; his declaration affected no disguise: "It is dreadful to imagine the debts to which I am bound. By the face of God, they amount to two hundred thousand marks; if I should say three hundred thousand, I should not go beyond the truth. Money I must have, from any place, from any person, or by any means." The King's acts display as little dignity as his proclamation. He actually sold or mortgaged to his brother Richard all the Jews in the realm for five thousand marks, giving him full power over their property and persons; our records still preserve the terms of this extraordinary bargain and sale. Popular opinion, which in the worst times is some restraint upon the arbitrary oppressions of kings, in this case would rather applaud the utmost barbarity of the monarch than commiserate the wretchedness of the victims; for a new tale of the crucifixion of a Christian child, called Hugh of Lincoln, was now spreading horror throughout the country. The fact was confirmed by a solemn trial and the conviction and execution of the criminals. It was proved, according to the mode of proof in those days, that the child had been stolen, fattened on bread and milk for ten days, and crucified with all the cruelties and insults of Christ's Passion, in the presence of all the Jews in England, summoned to Lincoln for this especial purpose; a Jew of Lincoln sat in judgment as Pilate. But the earth could not endure to be an accomplice in the crime; it cast up the buried remains, and the affrighted criminals were obliged to throw the body into a well, where it was found by the mother. A great part of this story refutes itself, but among the ignorant and fanatic Jews there might be some who, exasperated by the constant repetition of this charge, might brood over it so long as at length to be tempted to its perpetration. I must not suppress the fearful vengeance wreaked on the supposed perpetrators of this all-execrated crime. The Jew into whose house the child, it was said, had gone to play, tempted by the promise of life and security from mutilation, made full confession, and threw the guilt upon his brethren. The King, indignant at this unauthorized covenant of mercy, ordered him to execution. The Jew, in his despair or frenzy, entered into a still more minute and terrible denunciation of all the Jews of the realm, as consenting to the act. He was dragged, tied to a horse's tail, to the gallows; his body and his soul delivered to the demons of the air. Ninety-one Jews of Lincoln were sent, to London as accomplices, and thrown into dungeons. If some Christians felt pity for their sufferings, their rivals, the Caorsini, beheld them with dry eyes. The King's inquest declared all the Jews of the realm guilty of the crime. The mother made her appeal to the King. Eighteen of the richest and most eminent of the Lincoln Jews were hung on a new gallows; twenty more were imprisoned in the Tower awaiting the same fate. But if the Jews of Lincoln were thus terribly chastised, the church of Lincoln was enriched and made famous for centuries. The victim was canonized; pilgrims crowded from all parts of the kingdom, even from foreign lands, to pay their devotions at the shrine, to witness and to receive benefit from the miracles which were wrought by the martyr of eight years old. How deeply this legend sank into the popular mind may be conceived from Chaucer's _Prioress' Tale_. The rest of the reign of Henry III passed away with the same unmitigated oppressions of the Jews; which the Jews, no doubt, in some degree revenged by their extortions from the people. The contest between the royal and ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the Jews was arranged by certain constitutions, set forth by the King in council. By these laws no Jew could reside in the kingdom but as king's serf. Service was to be performed in the synagogue in a low tone, so as not to offend the ears of Christians. The Jews were forbidden to have Christian nurses for their children. The other clauses were similar to those enacted in other countries: that the Jew should pay all dues to the parson; no Jew should eat or buy meat during Lent; all disputes on religion were forbidden; sexual intercourse between Jews and Christians interdicted; no Jew might settle in any town where Jews were not accustomed to reside, without special license from the King. The barons' wars drew on, fatal to the Israelites as compelling the King, by the hopeless state of his finances, to new extortions, and tempting the barons to plunder and even murder them as wickedly and unconstitutionally attached to the King. How they passed back from Richard of Cornwall into the King's jurisdiction as property appears not. It is not likely that the King redeemed the mortgage; but in 1261 they were again alienated to Prince Edward. The King's object was apparently by this and other gifts to withdraw the Prince from his alliance with the barons. The justiciaries of the Jews are now in abeyance. The chancellor of the exchequer was to seal ail writs of Judaism, and account to the attorneys of the Prince for the amount. But this was not the worst of their sufferings or the bitterest disgrace; the Prince, in his turn, mortgaged them to certain of their dire enemies, the Caorsini, and the King ratified the assignment by his royal authority. But for this compulsory aid, wrung from them by violence, the Jews were treated by the barons as allies and accomplices of the King. When London, at least her turbulent mayor and the populace, declared for the barons; when the Grand Justiciary, Hugh le Despenser, led the city bands to destroy the palaces of the King of the Romans at Westminster and Isleworth, threw the justices of the king's bench and the barons of the exchequer into prison, and seized the property of the foreign merchants, five hundred of the Jews,[83] men, women, and children, were apprehended and set apart, but not for security. Despenser chose some of the richest in order to extort a ransom for his own people, the rest were plundered, stripped, murdered by the merciless rabble. Old men, and babes plucked from their mothers' breasts, were pitilessly slaughtered. It was on Good Friday that one of the fiercest of the barons, Fitz John, put to death Cok ben Abraham, reputed to have been the wealthiest man in the kingdom, seized his property, but, fearful of the jealousy of the other barons surrendered one-half of the plunder to Leicester in order to secure his own portion. The Jews of other cities fared no better, were pillaged, and then abandoned to the mob by the Earl of Gloucester; many at Worcester were plundered and forced to submit to baptism by the Earl of Derby. At an earlier period the Earl of Leicester (Simon de Montfort) had expelled them from the town of Leicester; they sought refuge in the domains of the Countess of Winchester. Robert Grostête, the wisest and best churchman of the day, then Archdeacon of Leicester, hardly permitted the Countess to harbor this accursed race; their lives might be spared, but all further indulgence, especially acceptance of their ill-gotten wealth, would make her an accomplice in the wickedness of their usuries.[84] After the battle of Lewes, 1264, the King, with the advice of his barons--he was now a prisoner in their camp--issued a proclamation to the Lord Mayor and sheriffs of London, in favor of the Jews. Some had found refuge, during the tumult and massacre, in the Tower of London; they were permitted to return with their families to their homes. All ill-usage or further molestation was prohibited under pain of death. Orders of the same kind were issued to Lincoln; twenty-five citizens were named by the King and the barons their special protectors; so also to Northampton. The King--Prince Edward was now at war with the barons, who had the King in their power--revoked the grant of the Jews to his son; with that the grant to the Caorsini, which had not expired, was cancelled. The justiciaries appointed by the Prince to levy the tallage upon them were declared to have lost their authority; the Jews passed back to the property of the King. The King showed his power by annulling many debts and the interest due upon them to some of his faithful followers, avowedly in order to secure their attachment. It was now clearly for the King's interest that such profitable subjects should find, we may not say justice, but something like restitution, which might enable them again to become profitable. The King in the parliament, which commenced its sittings immediately after the battle of Lewes, and continued till after the battle of Evesham, August 4, 1265, restored the Jews to the same state in which they were before the battle of Lewes. As to the Jews in London, the constable of the Tower was to see not only that those who had taken refuge in the Tower, but those who had fled to other places, were to return to their houses, which were to be restored, except such as had been granted away by the King; and even all their property which could be recovered from the King's enemies. Excepting that some of the barons' troops, flying from the battle of Evesham, under the younger Simon de Montfort, broke open and plundered the synagogue at Lincoln, where they found much wealth, and some excesses committed at Cambridge, the Jews had time to breathe. The King, enriched by the forfeited estates of the barons, spared the Jews. We only find a tallage of one thousand pounds, with promise of exemption for three years, unless the King or his son should undertake a crusade. Their wrongs had, no doubt, sunk deep into the hearts of the Jews. It has been observed that oppression, which drives even wise men mad, may instigate fanatics to the wildest acts of frenzy; an incident at Oxford will illustrate this. Throughout these times the Jews still flourished, if they may be said to have flourished, at Oxford. In 1244 certain clerks of the university broke into the houses of the Jews and carried away enormous wealth. The magistrates seized and imprisoned some of the offenders. Grostete, as bishop of the diocese--Oxford was then in the diocese of Lincoln--commanded their release, because there was no proof of felony against them. We hear nothing of restitution. The scholars might indeed hate the Jews whose interest on loans was _limited_ by Bishop Grostete to twopence weekly in the pound--between 40 and 50 per cent. Probably the poor scholars' security was not overgood. Later, the studies in the university are said to have been interrupted, the scholars being unable to redeem their books pledged to the Jews. Twenty-four years after the outbreak of the scholars, years of bitterness and spoliation and suffering, while the chancellor and the whole body of the university were in solemn procession to the reliques of St. Frideswide, they were horror-struck by beholding a Jew rush forth, seize the cross which was borne before them, dash it to the ground, and trample upon it with the most furious contempt. The offender seems to have made his escape in the tumult, but his people suffered for his crime. Prince Edward was then at Oxford; and, by the royal decree, the Jews were imprisoned, and forced, notwithstanding much artful delay on their part, to erect a beautiful cross of white marble, with an image of the Virgin and Child, gilt all over, in the area of Merton College, and to present to the proctors another cross of silver to be borne at all future processions of the university. The Jews endeavored to elude this penalty by making over their effects to other persons. The King empowered the sheriff to levy the fine on all their property. The last solemn act of Henry of Winchester was a statute of great importance. Complaints had arisen that the Jews, by purchase, or probably foreclosure of mortgage, might become possessed of all the rights of lords of manors, escheat wardships, even of presentation to churches. They might hold entire baronies with all their appurtenances. The whole was swept away by one remorseless clause. The act disqualified the Jews altogether from holding lands or even tenements, except the houses of which they were actually possessed, particularly in the city of London, where they might only pull down and rebuild on the old foundations. All lands or manors were actually taken away; those which they held by mortgage were to be restored to the Christian owners, without any interest on such bonds. Henry almost died in the act of extortion; he had ordered the arrears of all charges to be peremptorily paid, under pain of imprisonment. Such was the distress caused by this inexorable mandate that even the rival bankers, the Caorsini, and the friars themselves, were moved to commiseration, though some complained that the wild outcries raised in the synagogue on this doleful occasion disturbed the devotion of the Christians in the neighboring churches. The death of Henry released the Jews from this Egyptian bondage; but they changed their master, not their fortune. The first act of Edward's reign, after his return from the Holy Land, regulated the affairs of the Jews exactly in the same spirit; a new tallage was demanded, which was to extend to the women and children; the penalty of nonpayment, even of arrears, was exile, not imprisonment. The defaulter was to proceed immediately to Dover, with his wife and children, leaving his house and property to the use of the King. The execution of this edict was committed, not to the ordinary civil authorities, but to an Irish bishop (elect) and to two friars. This edict was followed up by the celebrated Act of Parliament Concerning Judaism,[85] the object of which seems to have been the same with the policy of Louis IX of France, to force the Jews to abandon usury, and betake themselves to traffic, manufactures, or the cultivation of land. It positively prohibited all usury and cancelled all debts on payment of the principal. No Jew might distress beyond the moiety of a Christian's land and goods; they were to wear their badge, a badge now of yellow, not white, and pay an Easter offering of threepence, men and women, to the King. They were permitted to practise merchandise or labor with their hands, and--some of them, it seems, were still addicted to husbandry--to hire farms for cultivation for fifteen years. On these terms they were assured of the royal protection. But manual labor and traffic were not sources sufficiently expeditious for the enterprising avarice of the Jews. Many of them, thus reduced, took again to a more unlawful and dangerous occupation, clipping and adulterating the coin. In one day, November 17, 1279, all the Jews in the kingdom were arrested. In London alone two hundred and eighty were executed after a full trial; many more in other parts of the kingdom. A vast quantity of clipped coin was found and confiscated to the King's use. The King granted their estates and forfeitures with lavish hand. But law, though merciless and probably not overscrupulous in the investigation of crime, did not satisfy the popular passions, which had been let loose by these wide and general accusations. The populace took the law into their own hands. Everywhere there was full license for plunder and worse than plunder. The King was obliged to interpose. A writ was issued, addressed to the justiciaries who had presided at the trials for the adulteration of the coin, Peter of Pentecester, Walter of Heylynn, John of Cobham, appointed justiciaries for the occasion. It recited that many Jews had been indicted and legally condemned to death and to the forfeiture of their goods and chattels; but that certain Christians, solely on account of religious differences, were raising up false and frivolous charges against men who had not been legally arraigned, in order to extort money from them by fear. No Jew against whom a legal indictment had not been issued before May 1, 1280, was to be molested or subject to accusation. Those only arrested on grave suspicion before that time were to be put upon their trial. Jewish tradition attributes the final expulsion of the Jews to these charges, which the King, it avers, did not believe, yet was compelled to yield to popular clamor. But not all the statutes, nor public executions, nor the active preaching of the Dominican friars, who undertook to convert them if they were constrained to hear their sermons--the king's bailiffs, on the petition of the friars, were ordered to induce the Jews to become quiet, meek, and uncontentious hearers--could either alter the Jewish character, still patient of all evil so that they could extort wealth, or suppress the still increasing clamor of public detestation, which demanded that the land should cast forth from its indignant bosom this irreclaimable race of rapacious infidels. Still worse, if we may trust a papal bull, the presence and intercourse of the Jews were dangerous to the religion of England. In the year 1286 the Pope (Honorius IV) addressed a bull to the Archbishop of Canterbury and his suffragans, rebuking them for the remissness of the clergy in not watching more closely the proceedings of the Jews. The Archbishop, indeed, had not been altogether so neglectful in the duty of persecution. The number and the splendor of the synagogues in London had moved the indignation, perhaps the jealousy, of Primate Peckham. He issued his monition to the Bishop of London to inhibit the building any more of these offensively sumptuous edifices, and to compel the Jews to destroy those built within a prescribed time. The zeal of the Bishop of London (Robert de Gravesend) outran that of the Archbishop; he ordered them all to be levelled to the ground. The Archbishop, prevailed on by the urgent supplications of the Jews, graciously informed the Bishop that he might conscientiously allow one synagogue, if that synagogue did not wound the eyes of pious Christians by its magnificence. But the bull of Honorius IV was something more than a stern condemnation of the usurious and extortionate practices of the Jews; it was a complaint of their progress, not merely in inducing Jewish converts to Christianity to apostatize back to Judaism, but of their not unsuccessful endeavors to tempt Christians to Judaism. "These Jews lure them to their synagogues on the Sabbath--are we to suppose that there was something splendid and attractive in the synagogue worship of the day?--and in their friendly intercourse at common banquets, the souls of Christians, softened by wine and good eating and social enjoyment, are endangered." The _Talmud_ of the Jews, which they still persist in studying, is especially denounced as full of abomination, falsehood, and infidelity. The King at length listened to the public voice, and the irrevocable edict of total expulsion from the realm was issued. Their whole property was seized at once, and just money enough left to discharge their expenses[86] to foreign lands, perhaps equally inhospitable. The 10th of October was the fatal day. The King benignantly allowed them till All Saints' Day; after which all who delayed were to be hanged without mercy. The King, in the execution of this barbarous proceeding, put on the appearance both of religion and moderation. Safe-conducts were to be granted to the sea-shore from all parts of the kingdom. The wardens of the Cinque Ports were to provide shipping and receive the exiles with civility and kindness. The King expressed his intention of converting great part of his gains to pious uses, but the Church looked in vain for the fulfilment of his vows. He issued orders that the Jews should be treated with kindness and courtesy on their journey to the sea-shore. But where the Prince by his laws thus gave countenance to the worst passions of human nature, it was not likely that they would be suppressed by his proclamations. The Jews were pursued from the kingdom with every mark of popular triumph in their sufferings; one man, indeed, the master of a vessel at Queenborough, was punished for leaving a considerable number on the shore at the mouth of the river, when, as they prayed to him to rescue them from their perilous situation, he answered that they had better call on Moses, who had made them pass safe through the Red Sea, and, sailing away with their remaining property, left them to their fate. The number of exiles is variously estimated at fifteen thousand and sixty and sixteen thousand five hundred and eleven; all their property, debts, obligations, mortgages, escheated to the King. Yet some, even in those days, presumed to doubt whether the nation gained by the act of expulsion, and even ventured to assert that the public burdens on the Christians only became heavier and more intolerable. Catholics suffered in the place of the enemies of the Cross of Christ. The loss to the Crown was enormous.[87] The convents made themselves masters of the valuable libraries of the Jews, one at Stamford, another at Oxford, from which the celebrated Roger Bacon is said to have derived great information; and long after, the common people would dig in the places they had frequented, in hopes of finding buried treasure. EXPLOITS AND DEATH OF WILLIAM WALLACE, THE "HERO OF SCOTLAND" A.D. 1297-1305 SIR WALTER SCOTT When the granddaughter and sole heiress of King Alexander III of Scotland was betrothed, in her sixth year, 1288, to the son of Edward I of England, an early union of the English and Scottish crowns seemed assured. But the death of the little princess, two years later, left the throne of Scotland vacant, and was followed by the rise of thirteen claimants, three of whom were entitled to serious regard--John de Baliol, Lord of Galloway; Robert Bruce, Lord of Annandale; and John Hastings, Lord of Abergavenny, all descended from David, brother of William the Lion, King of Scotland, 1165-1214. Edward I of England at once assumed all the rights of a feudal suzerain until the disputed claims should be settled. Finally the claim of Baliol was recognized, he did homage to Edward for his services to the realm of Scotland, and for a time peace prevailed. But when Edward called upon the Scottish nobles to serve in his foreign wars, and made other demands implying the dependence of Scotland, the resentment of Baliol's subjects forced him into an attitude of war. In 1295 he made an alliance against Edward with Philip the Fair of France. In 1296 Edward invaded Scotland, took Berwick and slaughtered eight thousand of its citizens; defeated the Scots at Dunbar; occupied Edinburgh, Stirling, and Perth; compelled Baliol to surrender, and sent him to the Tower of London. Edward then made Scotland a dependency of his crown. This submission was not the act of the people, but of their leaders. "The Scots assembled in troops and companies, and betaking themselves to the woods, mountains, and morasses, prepared for a general insurrection against the English power." They found their leader in the outlawed knight, William Wallace. Wallace was born about 1274. Popular tradition, which "delights to dwell upon the beloved champion of the people," has invested him with many striking qualities, ascribing to him a gigantic stature and enormous strength, as well as extraordinary courage. Little, if anything, is really known of his personality and private life; while all that belongs to history concerning him is told by his celebrated and admiring fellow-countryman, Sir Walter Scott, in the following narrative. Wallace is believed to have been proclaimed an outlaw for the slaughter of an Englishman in a casual fray. He retreated to the woods, collected around him a band of men as desperate as himself, and obtained several successes in skirmishes with the English. Joined by Sir William Douglas, who had been taken at the siege of Berwick, but had been discharged upon ransom, the insurgents compelled Edward to send an army against them, under the Earl of Surrey, the victor of Dunbar. Several of the nobility, moved by Douglas' example, had joined Wallace's standard, but overawed at the approach of the English army, and displeased to act under a man, like Wallace, of comparatively obscure birth, they capitulated with Sir Henry Percy, the nephew of Surrey, and in one word changed sides. Wallace kept the field at the head of a considerable army, partly consisting of his own experienced followers, partly of the smaller barons or crown tenants, and partly of vassals even of the apostate lords, and volunteers of every condition. By the exertion of much conduct and resolution, Wallace had made himself master of the country beyond Forth, and taken several castles, when he was summoned to Stirling to oppose Surrey, the English Governor of Scotland. Wallace encamped on the northern side of the river, leaving Stirling bridge apparently open to the English, but resolving, as it was long and narrow, to attack them while in the act of crossing. The Earl of Surrey led fifty thousand infantry and a thousand men-at-arms. Part of his soldiers, however, were the Scottish barons who had formerly joined Wallace's standard, and who, notwithstanding their return to that of Surrey, were scarcely to be trusted. The English treasurer, Cressingham, murmured at the expense attending the war, and, to bring it to a crisis, proposed to commence an attack the next morning by crossing the river. Surrey, an experienced warrior, hesitated to engage his troops in the defile of a wooden bridge, where scarce two horsemen could ride abreast; but, urged by the imprudent vehemence of Cressingham, he advanced, contrary to common-sense as well as to his own judgment. The vanguard of the English was attacked before they could get into order; the bridge was broken down, and thousands perished in the river and by the sword. Cressingham was slain, and Surrey fled to Berwick to recount to Edward that Scotland was lost at Stirling in as short a time as it had been won at Dunbar. In a brief period after this victory, almost all the fortresses of the kingdom surrendered to Wallace. Increasing his forces, Wallace, that he might gratify them with plunder, led them across the English border, and sweeping it lengthwise from Newcastle to the gates of Carlisle, left nothing behind him but blood and ashes. The nature of Wallace was fierce, but not inaccessible to pity or remorse. As his unruly soldiers pillaged the church of Hexham, he took the canons under his immediate protection. "Abide with me," he said, "holy men, for my people are evil-doers, and I may not correct them." When he returned from this successful foray, an assembly of the states was held at the Forest Church in Selkirkshire, where Wallace was chosen guardian of the kingdom of Scotland. The meeting was attended by Lennox, Sir William Douglas, and some few men of rank: others were absent from fear of King Edward, or from jealousy of an inferior person, like Wallace, raised to so high a station. Conscious of the interest which he had deservedly maintained in the breast of the universal people of Scotland, Wallace pursued his judicious plans of enforcing general levies through the kingdom and bringing them under discipline. It was full time, for Edward was moving against them. The English monarch was absent in Flanders when these events took place, and, what was still more inconvenient, before he could gain supplies from his parliament to suppress the Scottish revolt, Edward found himself obliged to confirm Magna Charta, the charter of the forest, and other stipulations in favor of the people; the English being prudent, though somewhat selfishly disposed to secure their own freedom before they would lend their swords to destroy that of their neighbors. Complying with these demands, Edward, on his return from the Low Countries, found himself at the head of a gallant muster of all the English chivalry, forming by far the most superb army that had ever entered Scotland. Wallace acted with great sagacity, and, according to a plan which often before and after proved successful in Scottish warfare, laid waste the intermediate country between Stirling and the frontiers, and withdrew toward the centre of the kingdom to receive the English attack, when their army should be exhausted by privation. Edward pressed on, with characteristic hardihood and resolution. Tower and town fell before him; but his advance was not without such inconvenience and danger as a less determined monarch would have esteemed a good apology for retreat. His army suffered from want of provisions, which were at length supplied in small quantities by some of his ships. As the English King lay at Kirkliston, in West Lothian, a tumult broke out between the Welsh and English in his army, which, after costing some blood, was quelled with difficulty. While Edward hesitated whether to advance or retreat, he learned, through the treachery of two apostate Scottish nobles, the earls of Dunbar and Angus, that Wallace, with the Scottish army, had approached so near as Falkirk. This advance was doubtless made with the purpose of annoying the expected retreat of the English. Edward, thus apprised that the Scots were in his vicinity, determined to compel them to action. He broke up his camp, and, advancing with caution, slept the next night in the fields along with the soldiers. But the casualties of the campaign were not yet exhausted. His war-horse, which was picketed beside him, like that of an ordinary man-at-arms, struck the King with his foot and hurt him in the side. A tumult arose in the camp, but Edward, regardless of pain, appeased it by mounting his horse, riding through the cantonments, and showing the soldiers that he was in safety. Next morning, July 22, 1298, the armies met. The Scottish infantry were drawn up on a moor, with a morass in front. They were divided into four phalanxes or dense masses, with lances lowered obliquely over each other, and seeming, says an English historian, like a castle walled with steel. These spearmen were the flower of the army, in whom Wallace chiefly confided. He commanded them in person, and used the brief exhortation, "I have brought you to the ring; dance as you best can." The Scottish archers, under the command of Sir John Stewart, brother of the Steward of Scotland, were drawn up in the intervals between the masses of infantry. They were chiefly brought from the wooded district of Selkirk. We hear of no Highland bowmen among them. The cavalry, which amounted to only one thousand men-at-arms, held the rear. The English cavalry began the action. The Marshal of England led half of the men-at-arms straight upon the Scottish front, but in doing so involved them in the morass. The Bishop of Durham, who commanded the other division of the English cavalry, was wheeling round the morass on the east, and, perceiving this misfortune, became disposed to wait for support. "To mass, Bishop!" said Ralph Basset of Drayton, and charged with the whole body. The Scottish men-at-arms went off without couching their lances; but the infantry stood their ground firmly. In the turmoil that followed, Sir John Stewart fell from his horse and was slain among the archers of Ettrick, who died in defending or avenging him. The close bodies of Scottish spearmen, now exposed without means of defence or retaliation, were shaken by the constant showers of arrows; and the English men-at-arms finally charging them desperately while they were in disorder, broke and dispersed these formidable masses. The Scots were then completely routed, and it was only the neighboring woods which saved a remnant from the sword. The body of Stewart was found among those of his faithful archers, who were distinguished by their stature and fair complexions from all others with which the field was loaded. Macduff and Sir John the Grahame, "the hardy wight and wise," still fondly remembered as the bosom friend of Sir William Wallace, were slain in the same disastrous action. Popular report states this battle to have been lost by treachery; and the communication between the earls of Dunbar and Angus and King Edward, as well as the disgraceful flight of the Scottish cavalry without a single blow, corroborates the suspicion. But the great superiority of the English in archery may account for the loss of this as of many another battle on the part of the Scots. The bowmen of Ettrick Forest were faithful; but they could only be few. So nearly had Wallace's scheme for the campaign been successful, that Edward, even after having gained this great battle, returned to England, and deferred reaping the harvest of his conquest till the following season. If he had not been able to bring the Scottish army to action, his retreat must have been made with discredit and loss, and Scotland must have been left in the power of the patriots. The slaughter and disgrace of the battle of Falkirk might have been repaired in other respects, but it cost the Scottish kingdom an irredeemable loss in the public services of Wallace. He resigned the guardianship of the kingdom, unable to discharge its duties, amid the calumnies with which faction and envy aggravated his defeat. The Bishop of St. Andrew's, Bruce, Earl of Carrick, and Sir John Comyn were chosen guardians of Scotland, which they administered in the name of Baliol. In the mean time that unfortunate Prince was, in compassion or scorn, delivered up to the Pope by Edward, and a receipt was gravely taken for his person from the nuncio then in France. This led to the entrance of a new competitor for the Scottish kingdom. The Pontiff of Rome had been long endeavoring to establish a claim, to whatsoever should be therein found, to which a distinct and specific right of property could not be ascertained. The Pontiff's claim to the custody of the dethroned King being readily admitted, Boniface VIII was encouraged to publish a bull claiming Scotland as a dependency on the see of Rome because the country had been converted to Christianity by the relics of St. Andrew. The Pope, in the same document, took the claim of Edward to the Scottish crown under his own discussion, and authoritatively commanded Edward I to send proctors to Rome to plead his cause before his holiness. This magisterial requisition was presented by the Archbishop of Canterbury to the King, in the presence of the council and court, the prelate at the same time warning the sovereign to yield unreserved obedience, since Jerusalem would not fail to protect her citizens, and Mount Zion her worshippers. "Neither for Zion nor Jerusalem," said Edward, in towering wrath, "will I depart from my just rights while there is breath in my nostrils." Accordingly he caused the Pope's bull to be laid before the Parliament of England, who unanimously resolved "that in temporals the King of England was independent of Rome, and that they would not permit his sovereignty to be questioned." Their declaration concludes with these remarkable words: "We neither do, will, nor can permit our sovereign to do anything to the detriment of the constitution, which we are both sworn to and are determined to maintain"--a spirited assertion of national right, had it not been in so bad a cause as that of Edward's claim of usurpation over Scotland. Meantime the war languished during this strange discussion, from which the Pope was soon obliged to retreat. There was an inefficient campaign in 1299 and 1300. In 1301 there was a truce, in which Scotland as well as France was included. After the expiry of this breathing space, Edward I, in the spring of 1302, sent an army into Scotland of twenty thousand men, under Sir John Seward, a renowned general. He marched toward Edinburgh in three divisions, leaving large intervals between each. While in this careless order, Seward's vanguard found themselves suddenly within reach of a small but chosen body of troops, amounting to eight thousand men, commanded by Sir John Comyn, the guardian, and a gallant Scottish knight, Sir Simon Fraser. Seward was defeated, but the battle was scarce over when his second division came up. The Scots, flushed with victory, reestablished their ranks, and having cruelly put to death their prisoners, attacked and defeated the second body also. The third division came up in the same manner. Again it became necessary to kill the captives, and to prepare for a third encounter. The Scottish leaders did so without hesitation, and their followers, having thrown themselves furiously on the enemy, discomfited that division likewise, and gained--as their historians boast--three battles in one day. But the period seemed to be approaching in which neither courage nor exertion could longer avail the unfortunate people of Scotland. A peace with France, in which Philip the Fair totally omitted all stipulations in favor of his allies, left the kingdom to its own inadequate means of resistance, while Edward directed his whole force against it. The castle of Brechin, under the gallant Sir Thomas Maule, made an obstinate resistance. He was mortally wounded and died in an exclamation of rage against the soldiers, who asked if they might not then surrender the castle. Edward wintered at Dunfermline, and began the next campaign with the siege of Stirling, the only fortress in the kingdom that still held out. But the courage of the guardians altogether gave way; they set the example of submission, and such of them as had been most obstinate in what the English King called rebellion, were punished by various degrees of fine and banishment. With respect to Sir William Wallace, it was agreed that he might have the choice of surrendering himself unconditionally to the King's pleasure, provided he thought proper to do so; a stipulation which, as it signified nothing in favor of the person for whom it was apparently conceived, must be imputed as a pretext on the part of the Scottish nobles to save themselves from the disgrace of having left Wallace altogether unthought of. Some attempts were made to ascertain what sort of accommodation Edward was likely to enter into with the bravest and most constant of his enemies; but the demands of Wallace were large, and the generosity of Edward very small. The English King broke off the treaty, and put a price of three hundred marks on the head of the patriot. Meantime Stirling castle continued to be defended by a slender garrison, and, deprived of all hopes of relief, continued to make a desperate defence, under its brave governor, Sir William Olifaunt, until famine and despair compelled him to an unconditional surrender, when the King imposed the harshest terms on this handful of brave men. But what Edward prized more than the surrender of the last fortress which resisted his arms in Scotland was the captivity of her last patriot. He had found in a Scottish nobleman, Sir John Monteith, a person willing to become his agent in searching for Wallace among the wilds where he was driven to find refuge. Wallace was finally betrayed to the English by his unworthy and apostate countryman, who obtained an opportunity of seizing him at Robroyston, near Glasgow, by the treachery of a servant. Sir William Wallace was instantly transferred to London, where he was brought to trial in Westminster Hall, with as much apparatus of infamy as the ingenuity of his enemies could devise. He was crowned with a garland of oak, to intimate that he had been king of outlaws. The arraignment charged him with high treason, in respect that he had stormed and taken towns and castles, and shed much blood. "Traitor," said Wallace, "was I never." The rest of the charges he confessed and proceeded to justify them. He was condemned, and executed by decapitation, 1305. His head was placed on a pinnacle on London bridge, and his quarters were distributed over the kingdom. Thus died this courageous patriot, leaving a remembrance which will be immortal in the hearts of his countrymen. This steady champion of independence having been removed, and a bloody example held out to all who should venture to tread in his footsteps, Edward proceeded to form a species of constitution for the country, which, at the cost of so much labor, policy, and bloodshed, he had at length, as he conceived, united forever with the English crown. Ten commissioners chosen for Scotland and twenty for England composed a set of regulations for the administration of justice, and enactments were agreed upon by which the feudal law, which had been long introduced into Scotland, was strengthened and extended, while the remains of the ancient municipal customs of the original Celtic tribes, or the consuetudinary laws of the Scots and Bretts--the Scotto-Irish and British races--were finally abrogated. This was for the purpose of promoting a uniformity of laws through the islands. Sheriffs and other officers were appointed for the administration of justice. There were provisions also made for a general revision of the ancient laws and statutes of Scotland. FIRST GREAT JUBILEE OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH A.D. 1300 FERDINAND GREGOROVIUS Benedetto Gaetani, born at Anagni, Italy, about 1228--whom contemporary poets and historians also consigned to infamy--occupied the pontifical throne but ten years, 1294-1303, but those were years of almost continual strife. It is indeed likely that partisanship painted him, in some respects, with colors too black, attributing to him crimes of which he was not guilty. But even these exaggerations of dispraise were due to the unquestioned facts of his character and career. When at length Boniface was worsted in his quarrel with Philip the Fair, a widespread reaction began on the part of the laity against ecclesiastical assumptions, and the great dramatic act by which, under Hildebrand, the papacy first displayed its power had its counterpart in the manner of its decline. "The drama of Anagni is to be set against the drama of Canossa." But Boniface enjoyed one year of triumph scarcely paralleled in all the experience of his fellow-pontiffs. This was the closing year of the thirteenth century. Taking advantage of a fresh wave of religious enthusiasm which then swept over Europe, the Pope called upon the Christian world--almost at peace from long warfare--to celebrate a jubilee. The institution of the Catholic jubilee is generally considered as dating from this celebration, though some writers refer its establishment to the pontificate of Innocent III, a century earlier. Boniface VIII inaugurated the fourteenth century with a pilgrimage festival which has become renowned. The centennial jubilee had been celebrated in ancient Rome by magnificent games; the recollections of these games, however, had expired, and no tidings inform us whether the close or beginning of a century was marked in Christian Rome by any ecclesiastical festival. The immense processions of pilgrims to St. Peter's had ceased during the crusades; the crusades ended, the old longing reawoke among the people and drew them again to the graves of the apostles. The pious impulse was fostered in no small degree by the shrewdness of the Roman priests. About the Christmas of 1299--and with Christmas, according to the style of the Roman curia, the year ended--crowds flocked both from the city and country to St. Peter's. A cry, promising remission of sins to those who made the pilgrimage to Rome, resounded throughout the world and forced it into movement. Boniface gave form and sanction to the growing impulse by promulgating the bull of jubilee of February 22, 1300, which promised remission of sins to all who should visit the basilicas of St. Peter and St. Paul during the year. The pilgrimage of Italians was to last for thirty days, that of foreigners for fifteen. The enemies of the Church were alone excluded. As such the Pope designated Frederick of Sicily, the Colonnas and their adherents, and, curiously enough, all Christians who held traffic with Saracens. Boniface consequently made use of the jubilee to brand his enemies and to exclude them from the privileges of Christian grace. The pressure toward Rome was unexampled. The city presented the aspect of a camp where crowds of pilgrims, that resembled armies, thronged incessantly in and out. A spectator standing on one of the heights of the city might have seen swarms like wandering tribes approach along the ancient Roman roads from north, south, east, and west; and, had he mixed among them, might have had difficulty in discovering their home. Italians, Provençals, Frenchmen, Hungarians, Slavs, Germans, Spaniards, even Englishmen came. Italy gave free passage to pilgrims and kept the Truce of God. The crowds arrived, wearing the pilgrim's mantle or clad in their national dress, on foot, on horseback, or on cars, leading the ill and weary, and laden with their luggage. Veterans of a hundred were led by their grandsons; and youths bore, like Æneas, father or mother on their shoulders. They spoke in many dialects, but they all sang in the same language the litanies of the Church, and their longing dreams had but one and the same object. On beholding in the sunny distance the dark forest of towers of the holy city they raised the exultant shout, "Rome, Rome!" like sailors who after a tedious voyage catch their first glimpse of land. They threw themselves down in prayer and rose again with the fervent cry, "St. Peter and St. Paul, have mercy." They were received at the gates by their countrymen and by guardians appointed by the city to show them their quarters; nevertheless, they first made their way to St. Peter's, ascended the steps of the vestibule on their knees, and then threw themselves in ecstasies on the grave of the apostle. During an entire year Rome swarmed with pilgrims and was filled with a perfect babel of tongues. It was said that thirty thousand pilgrims entered and left the city daily, and that daily two hundred thousand pilgrims might have been found within it. An exemplary administration provided for order and for moderate prices. The year was fruitful, the Campagna and the neighboring provinces sent supplies in abundance. One of the pilgrims who was a chronicler relates that "bread, wine, meat, fish, and oats were plentiful and cheap in the market; the hay, however, was very dear; the inns so expensive that I was obliged to pay for my bed and the stabling of my horse (beyond the hay and oats) a Tornese groat a day. As I left Rome on Christmas eve, I saw so large a party of pilgrims depart that no one could count the number. The Romans reckon that altogether they have had two millions of men and women. I frequently saw both sexes trodden under foot, and it was sometimes with difficulty that I escaped the same fate myself." The way that led from the city across the bridge of St. Angelo to St. Peter's was too narrow; a new street was therefore opened in the walls along the river, not far from the ancient tomb known as Meta Romuli. The bridge was covered with booths, which divided it in two, and in order to prevent accidents it was enacted that those going to St. Peter's should keep to one side of the bridge; those returning, to the other. Processions went incessantly to St. Paul's without the walls and to St. Peter's, where the already renowned relic, the handkerchief of Veronica, was exhibited. Every pilgrim laid an offering on the altar of the apostle, and the same chronicler of Asti assures us, as an eye-witness, that two clerics stood by the altar of St. Paul's, day and night, who with rakes in their hands gathered in untold money. The marvellous sight of priests, who smilingly shovelled up gold like hay, caused malicious Ghibellines to assert that the Pope had appointed the jubilee solely for the sake of gain. Boniface in truth stood in need of money to defray the expenses of the war with Sicily, which swallowed up incalculable sums. If instead of copper, the monks in St. Paul's had lighted on gold florins, they would necessarily have collected fabulous wealth, but the heaps of money, both in St. Peter's and St. Paul's, consisted mainly of small coins, the gifts of poor pilgrims. Cardinal Jacopo Stefaneschi pointedly comments on the fact, and laments the change of times, when only the poor gave offerings, and when kings no longer, like the three magi, brought gifts to the Saviour. The receipts of the jubilee, which the Pope was able to devote to the two basilicas for the purchase of estates, were sufficiently considerable. If in ordinary years the gifts of pilgrims to St. Peter's amounted to thirty thousand four hundred gold florins, we may conclude how much greater must have been the gains of the year of jubilee. "The gifts of pilgrims," wrote the chronicler of Florence, "yield treasures to the Church, and the Romans all grow wealthy by the sale of their goods." The year of jubilee was for them indeed a year of wealth. The Romans, therefore, treated the pilgrims with kindness, and nothing is heard of any act of violence. If the fall of the house of Colonna had aroused enemies to the Pope in Rome, he disarmed them by the immense profits which accrued to the Romans who have always lived solely on the money of foreigners. Their senators at this time were Richard Anibaldi of the Colosseum, from which the Anibaldi had already expelled the Frangipani, and Gentile Orsini, whose name may still be read on an inscription in the Capitol. These gentlemen did not permit the pious enthusiasm of the pilgrimage to prevent them from making war in the neighborhood. They allowed the pilgrims to pray at the altars, but they themselves advanced with the Roman banners against Toscanella, which they subjugated to the Capitol. We may imagine on how vast a scale Rome sold relics, amulets, and images of saints, and at the same time how many remains of antiquity, coins, gems, rings, statues, marble remains, and also manuscripts were carried back by the pilgrims to their homes. When they had sufficiently satisfied their religious instincts, these pilgrims turned with astonished gaze to the monuments of the past. Ancient Rome, through which they wandered, the book of the _Mirabilia_ in their hand, exercised its profound spell upon them. Besides the recollections of antiquity other memories of the deeds of popes and emperors, from the time of Charles the Great, animated this classic theatre of the world in the year 1300. Every mind, alive to the language of history, must have felt deeply the influence of the city at this time, when troops of pilgrims from every country, wandering in this world of majestic ruins, bore living testimony to the eternal ties which bound Rome to mankind. It can scarcely be doubted that Dante beheld the city in these days, and that a ray from them fell on his immortal poem which begins with Easter week of the year 1300. The sight of the capital of the world inspired the soul of another Florentine. "I also found myself," writes Giovanni Villani, "in that blessed pilgrimage to the holy city of Rome, and as I beheld the great and ancient things within her, and read the histories and the great deeds of the Romans--which Vergil, Sallust, Lucan, Titus Livius, Valerius, Paul Orosius, and other great masters of history have described--I took style and form from them, although as a pupil I was not worthy to do so great a work. And thus in 1300, returned from Rome, I began to write this book to the honor of God and St. John and to the commendation of our city of Florence." The fruit of Villani's creative enthusiasm was his history of Florence, the greatest and most naive chronicle that has been produced in the beautiful Italian tongue; and it is possible that many other talented men may have received fruitful impressions from Rome at this time. For Boniface the jubilee was a real victory. The crowds that streamed to Rome showed him that men still retained their belief in the city as the sacred temple of the united world. The monster festival of reconciliation seemed to flow like a river of grace over its own past, and to wipe away the hated recollection of Celestine V, of his war with the Colonnas, and all the accusations of his enemies. In these days he could revel in a feeling of almost divine power, as scarcely any pope had been able to do before him. He sat on the highest throne of the West, adorned by the spoils of empire, as the "vicar of God" on earth. As the dogmatic ruler of the world, the keys of blessing and destruction in his hand, he beheld thousands from distant lands come before his throne and cast themselves in the dust before him as before a higher being. Kings, however, he did not see. Beyond Charles Martel, no monarch came to Rome to receive, as a penitent, absolution for his sins. This shows that the faith, which the battles of Alexander III and Innocent III had formerly won, was extinguished at royal courts. Boniface VIII closed the memorable festival on Christmas Eve of the year 1300. It forms an epoch in the history of the papacy, as in that of Rome. The year of jubilee and enthusiasm was followed, in terrible contrast, by the tragic end of the Pope, the fall of the papacy from its height, and the decline of Rome to a condition of awful solitude. CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY EMBRACING THE PERIOD COVERED IN THIS VOLUME A.D. 1162-1300 JOHN RUDD, LL.D. CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY EMBRACING THE PERIOD COVERED IN THIS VOLUME A.D. 1162-1300 JOHN RUDD, LL.D. Events treated at length are here indicated in large type; the numerals following give volume and page. Separate chronologies of the various nations, and of the careers of famous persons, will be found in the INDEX VOLUME, with volume and page references showing where the several events are fully treated. A.D. 1162. Surrender and destruction of the city of Milan; the whole of Lombardy submits to Frederick. Thomas Becket, appointed archbishop of Canterbury, resigns the chancellorship. See "ARCHIEPISCOPATE OF THOMAS BECKET," vi, i. Flight of Pope Alexander III into France. 1163. Council of Tours; Alexander declares void all the acts of his opponents; stringent decrees against the heretics of Southern France, called Manicheans, Paulicians, and afterward Albigenses. 1164. Henry II convokes an assembly of barons and prelates; they enact the Constitutions of Clarendon. See "ARCHIEPISCOPATE OF THOMAS BECKET," vi, i. 1165. Pope Alexander returns to Rome. 1166. Emperor Frederick I reenforces his army and again invades Italy. 1167. General league of the Lombard cities formed; Milan rebuilt. Emperor Frederick Barbarossa defeats the Sicilian auxiliaries of Pope Alexander, captures Rome, and seats Antipope Paschal. 1168. Success of the Lombard League; they found a new city, named Alessandria, in honor of the Pope. See "THE PEACE OF CONSTANCE," vi, 28. Death of Antipope Paschal III; Antipope Callistus III set up. 1169. Richard Strongbow, with other knights, begins the English conquest of Ireland; Wexford, Waterford, and Dublin captured. 1170. Peter Waldo, a citizen of Lyons, founds a preaching society, afterward called Waldenses. Murder of Thomas Becket. See "ARCHIEPISCOPATE OF THOMAS BECKET," vi, i. 1171. End of the Fatimite dynasty in Egypt; Saladin, acting for Noureddin, becomes supreme head. Henry II lands with an army at Waterford, Ireland; his own knights and many Irish chiefs do homage to him for their lands. 1173. Henry II appears before the papal legates and receives absolution for Becket's death; his Queen, Eleanor, jealous of Fair Rosamond, incites her sons to rebel against their father; Louis, King of France, supports them, and David of Scotland invades England. 1174. Saladin becomes independent sultan of Egypt. Henry II does penance at Becket's tomb; he defeats and captures the King of Scotland, and quells the insurrection of his sons. The Leaning Tower of Pisa commenced. 1175. English conquest of Ireland completed. 1176. Frederick I is defeated at Legnano by the forces of the Lombard League. See "THE PEACE OF CONSTANCE," vi, 28. Peter Coleman commences the erection of the first stone bridge across the Thames at London. 1177. Meeting of Emperor Frederick and Pope Alexander; a treaty is concluded between them. Henry II divides England into six circuits, through which he sends justices twice a year to administer the law in each county. 1178. A fleet is sent by the King of Sicily to assist the Christians in Palestine. 1179. Eleventh general council, Third of the Lateran, declares that the true pope must be elected by two-thirds of the cardinals; one of its canons condemns the Waldenses, and their translation of their Bible is suppressed. 1180. Death of Louis VII; his son Philip Augustus succeeds to the French throne. Henry the Lion, placed under the ban of the empire, has his Bavarian domains sequestered and his Saxon kingdom partitioned. About this time the Gothic style of architecture is introduced. 1182. France expels the Jews. 1183. Lombard cities secure their freedom. See "THE PEACE OF CONSTANCE," vi, 28. Baldwin IV, disabled by leprosy, resigns the crown of Jerusalem to his nephew, Baldwin V. Saladin takes Damascus, Aleppo, and Mosul, and sets aside the Turkish Sultan. 1184. Diet of Mainz; the functions and dignities of the electors of Germany settled. Council of Verona; excommunication of the Roman people and the Waldenses. 1185. Tumults at Constantinople; Andronicus murdered, which ends the Comneni dynasty; Isaac Angelus made emperor. Prince Arthur, grandson of Henry II, born after the death of his father, Geoffrey, Duke of Brittany. 1186. Marriage of the Emperor's son, Henry, to Constance, heiress of the throne of the Two Sicilies; they are crowned king and queen of Italy at Milan. Revolt of Bulgaria and Wallachia (Roumania); they throw off the Byzantine yoke. 1187. Battle of Tiberias. See "SALADIN TAKES JERUSALEM FROM THE CHRISTIANS," vi, 41. Pope Gregory VIII urges a new crusade. York Minster, England, founded. 1188. Imposition of the "tithe of Saladin," on behalf of the crusaders in England. King Richard says he "would sell London itself" to aid the cause. See "THE THIRD CRUSADE," vi, 54. Pope Clement III again makes Rome the papal residence. 1189. Massacre of Jews in England. Sancho, King of Portugal, takes Silvas and Beja. Tancred, natural son of Roger, is invited by the Sicilians to occupy the throne; he is supported by the Pope against Constance and her husband. Frederick Barbarossa sets out on the Third Crusade. See "THE THIRD CRUSADE," vi, 54. 1190. King Richard of England claims the dowry of his sister, Joan, widow of the late King of Sicily. Emperor Frederick is drowned. See "THE THIRD CRUSADE," vi, 54. A wealthy German, to aid his poor countrymen at Acre, founds the order of Teutonic Knights. See "THE TEUTONIC KNIGHTS," vi, 68. 1191. Pope Celestin III allows the Romans to destroy Tusculum; the expelled inhabitants build Frascati. The city of Bern, Switzerland, built. 1192. The Order of the Garter said to have been originated by Richard I of England at Acre. After leaving Palestine, Richard is shipwrecked near Aquileia; he is imprisoned and held for ransom by Emperor Henry VI. 1193. Pope Celestin III threatens to excommunicate the princes who hold King Richard in captivity. John Lackland, brother of Richard, King of England, attempts to usurp the throne; he is resisted by the barons. Discord and wars among the municipal republics of Italy. 1194. Richard, after having been a captive for more than a year, is released for a ransom of 150,000 marks, raised by his subjects. He returns to England, declares war against Philip Augustus, and invades Normandy. He pardons his brother John. Emperor Henry VI puts an end to the Norman line in Sicily; he founds the Hohenstaufen dynasty there. 1195. Battle of Alarcos; Alfonso the Noble, King of Castile, defeated by the Moors. 1196. Crusade of German barons to Palestine. 1197. Death of Henry VI of Germany; his heir is an infant son, Frederick II. 1198. Contest for the crowns of Germany and Italy between Philip of Swabia, supported by the Ghibellines, and Otho of Brunswick, son of Henry the Lion, aided by the Guelfs. Florence becomes an independent republic. Battle of Gisors, France; Richard Coeur de Lion defeats the French; his war-cry, "_Dieu et mon droit_" later became the motto to the arms of England. 1199. Richard Coeur de Lion is slain while contesting with one of his French vassals. John usurps the throne of England to the exclusion of Prince Arthur. See "PHILIP OF FRANCE WINS THE FRENCH DOMAINS OF THE ENGLISH KINGS," vi, 86. A quarrel between Parma and Placentia inflames a general war among the cities of Lombardy. 1200. King John and Philip Augustus, the latter forsaking Arthur's cause, come to terms. Pope Innocent III compels Philip Augustus to take back his queen, whom he had divorced. 1201. Fourth Crusade undertaken by Baldwin of Flanders, Simon de Montfort, and Boniface of Montserrat; treaty of the nobles of France and Flanders with Venice. Chartering of the University of Paris, by Philip. 1202. Venice secures the help of the crusaders by agreeing to transport them to Palestine, in place of a part of the payment, in the conquest of the city of Zara, then in rebellion. Prince Arthur made prisoner by his uncle, King John, who murders him. See "PHILIP OF FRANCE WINS THE FRENCH DOMAINS OF THE ENGLISH KINGS," vi, 86. 1203. Constantinople attacked and taken by the Venetians and crusaders, who restore the emperor Isaac Angelus. A great Mongol empire raised by Ghengis Khan. See "FOUNDING OF THE MONGOL EMPIRE BY GHENGIS KHAN," vi, 103. 1204. Constantinople in revolt. See "VENETIANS AND CRUSADERS TAKE CONSTANTINOPLE," vi, 121. Loss of Normandy and other French possessions by King John of England. See "PHILIP OF FRANCE WINS THE FRENCH DOMAINS OF THE ENGLISH KINGS," vi, 86. Foundation of the Latin Empire of the East. See "LATIN EMPIRE OF THE EAST," vi, 140. 1205. Boniface sells Crete to the Venetians. 1206. Henry of Flanders elected emperor of Constantinople; he vainly attempts to remedy the civil and ecclesiastical confusion in his dominions. Theodore Lascaris, son-in-law of Alexius III, establishes the Greek empire of Nicaea. 1207. Stephen Langton consecrated archbishop of Canterbury by Innocent III; resistance of King John. See "INNOCENT III EXALTS THE PAPAL POWER," vi, 156. 1208. Tuscany ceases to be a separate state, except the republic of Florence. A crusade against the Albigenses is proclaimed by Innocent III. An interdict laid on England as King John persists in rejecting Stephen Langton. See "INNOCENT III EXALTS THE PAPAL POWER," vi, 156. Assassination of Philip of Swabia by Otho, Count of Wittelsbach; Otho IV becomes emperor of Germany in place of his father. 1209. Foundation of the order of Franciscans. Defeat of the Scots under William I in an invasion of England. Salinguerra, leader of the Ghibellines at Ferrara, expels the marquis Azzo and the Guelfs. Massacre of the Albigenses by the crusaders, at Beziers, France. See "INNOCENT III EXALTS THE PAPAL POWER," vi, 156. 1210. Emperor Otho IV claims Sicily of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen; he attempts its conquest. He is excommunicated by the Pope. Fourteen heretics are condemned to the flames by the Council of Paris; the works of Aristotle are ordered to be burned, and the future translation and reading of them forbidden. 1211. Marquis Azzo recovers his influence in Ferrara. 1212. Frederick of Hohenstaufen, supported by Innocent III, wars with Otho for the German crown. Battle of Navasde Tolosa; the kings of Castile, Aragon, and Navarre crush the Moors and destroy the Almohade power in Spain. Children's Crusade from France and Germany. See "THE SIXTH CRUSADE," vi, 208. 1213. King John of England submits to the Pope. See "INNOCENT III EXALTS THE PAPAL POWER," vi, 156. Subjugation of the Albigenses by Simon de Montfort, who is awarded the principality of Toulouse, 1214. Battle of Bouvines; victory of Philip Augustus over Otho IV, supported by English and Flemish auxiliaries. 1215. Transubstantiation declared, by the twelfth general council, to be a doctrine of the Church; auricular confession enforced; it transfers the greater part of the lands of Count Raymond, the late Albigenses leader, to Simon de Montfort. Magna Charta signed by King John. See "SIGNING OF MAGNA CHARTA," vi, 175. In Florence begins the fierce quarrel between the Guelfs and Ghibellines. Founding of the order of Dominicans. China invaded by Ghengis Khan; he captures Peking. 1216. Invited by the English barons, Louis, son of Philip Augustus, lands in England with an army; King John marches to meet him; he loses his baggage and many men in the Lincolnshire quicksands; he flees to Newark and there dies of chagrin. Henry III succeeds John; the Earl of Pembroke Protector. 1217. A fifth crusade; Andrew II, King of Hungary, and other princes head the expedition. Simon de Montfort, during a revolt, is slain at the siege of Toulouse. Louis is defeated by the Protector, Pembroke, and returns to France. 1218. Andrew withdraws from the crusade; it is continued by William I, Count of Holland, and John of Brienne. 1219. Damietta is reduced by the crusaders. A bull of Pope Honorius III forbids the teaching of the civil law in the University of Paris. 1220. Imperial coronation of the Hohenstaufen Frederick II. Turkestan is overrun by the Mongols, who capture Bokhara and Samarkand. 1221. Disastrous terms are imposed on the crusaders, who evacuate Egypt. 1222. Signing of the Golden Bull of Hungary. See "THE GOLDEN BULL, 'HUNGARY'S MAGNA CHARTA,' SIGNED," vi, 191. 1223. Death of Philip Augustus; his son, Louis VIII, succeeds to the French throne. Pope Honorius III convenes a congress at Florence; Emperor Frederick pledges himself to proceed on the crusade within two years, and to marry John de Brienne's daughter, Yolanthe. Hacon V holds the first Norwegian parliament, or storthing, at Bergen. 1224. Victory over the Russians by the Mongols on the Kalka. See "RUSSIA CONQUERED BY THE TARTAR HORDES," vi, 196. Amaury de Montfort cedes his claim on Toulouse to Louis VIII of France. 1225. Pope Honorius III, annoyed by the Roman senate, retires to Tivoli. Frederick, after obtaining a further delay of two years for his crusade, marries Yolanthe. See "THE SIXTH CRUSADE," vi, 208. 1226. Death of Louis VIII; his son, Louis IX (St. Louis), succeeds under the regency of his mother, Blanche of Castile. Renewal of the Lombard League against Emperor Frederick II. 1227. Death of Pope Honorius III; Gregory IX, who succeeds him, urges the crusade; Frederick's first expedition miscarries. See "THE SIXTH CRUSADE," vi, 208. Great disorders in Italy; the Gyelf partisans are driven out of Verona and Vicenza. Death of Ghengis Khan; his four sons divide the empire between them. 1228. Death of Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury; his successor, Edmund, preserves Magna Charta from being infringed. 1229. Terms fatal to the Albigenses are accepted by Raymond VII of Toulouse. Frederick II again departs for Palestine. See "THE SIXTH CRUSADE," vi, 208. 1230. Reconciliation of Emperor Frederick II and Pope Gregory IX. First arrival of the Teutonic Knights in Prussia. Theodor, Emperor of Thessalonica, defeated, made prisoner, and blinded by Asan, King of Bulgaria; his brother, Manuel, usurps the throne. 1231. Summoned to assist the Poles, the Teutonic Knights defeat the pagan Prussians and found their dominions on the shores of the Baltic. Four hundred families of Oghusian Tartars, driven from Khorassan, effect a settlement near Mount Olympus; from these the Ottomans descend. 1232. Distracted by civil wars the Moors in Spain are defeated at Seville by Ferdinand III of Leon and Castile, and lose the Balearic Islands to James, King of Aragon. 1233. Conrad of Marburg, the first inquisitor of Germany, put to death for his cruelty. Coal first discovered near Newcastle, England. 1234. Pope Gregory IX driven from Rome by the senate and citizens, who resist his temporal power and seize his revenues; he appeals to Emperor Frederick II for assistance. 1235. Marriage of Frederick II to Isabella, sister of Henry III of England. He forbids the extravagant payments usually made on such occasions to buffoons, mimics, and players. 1236. Ezzelino da Romano, the Ghibelline leader, joins Emperor Frederick II in war upon the Lombard League. Cordova recovered from the Moors by Ferdinand III of Leon and Castile. 1237. Battle of Cortenuova; victory of Frederick II over the Lombard League. Union of the Knights Swordbearers, founded 1186, with the Teutonic Knights in Prussia; they extend their conquests. 1238. League of Venice, Genoa, and Pope Gregory IX against Frederick II. Establishment of the Moorish kingdom of Granada, Spain. 1239. Frederick II, having married his natural son, Enzio, to Adelaide, heiress of the two principalities of Torri and Gallura, creates him king of Sardinia. Pope Gregory IX claims the island and excommunicates the Emperor, denouncing him as a heretic and absolving his subjects from their allegiance. 1240. Emperor Frederick II advances against Pope Gregory IX and threatens Rome. The Pope declares a crusade against him. Batu Khan, at the head of Mongols of the Golden Horde, overruns and devastates Russia. On the Neva, Alexander, Prince of Novgorod, gains a great victory over the Swedes. 1241. Hamburg and Lubeck form an alliance to protect their commerce. See "RISE OF THE HANSEATIC LEAGUE," vi, 214. Central Europe is invaded by the Mongols, or Tartars, who vanquish the Silesians, Poles, and Teutonic Knights at Wahlstatt; they defeat the Hungarians on the Sajo. A Pisan and Sicilian fleet, by order of Frederick II, captures twenty-two Genoese galleys in which cardinals, prelates, and ambassadors, summoned by the Pope, were proceeding to hold a council at Rome; the prisoners were held at Naples and Apulia. 1242. Aldermen first elected in London. Asia Minor is invaded by the Mongols. Alexander Nevski, son of Jaroslav, defeats the Swedes and Knights Swordbearers at Lake Peipus. 1243. Frederick II urges the cardinals to appoint a pope; he releases some of his prisoners to attend the conclave. 1244. Jerusalem is stormed and sacked by the Kharesmians. Pope Innocent IV escapes from Rome and fixes his court at Lyons. Earliest use of the word "parliament" in England. 1245. Thirteenth general council (Lyons) convened by Pope Innocent IV; it proclaims the deposition of Frederick II. A new crusade is ordered. End of the Babenberg dynasty in Austria. 1246. Ferdinand, assisted by the Moors of Granada, lays siege to Seville. 1247. Parma, recovered by the papal party, is besieged by Frederick II. 1248. First crusade of Louis IX of France. See "Louis IX LEADS THE LAST CRUSADE," vi, 275. Seville is wrested from the Moors by St. Ferdinand of Leon and Castile. Emperor Frederick II compelled to raise the siege of Parma. 1249. Damietta is captured by the crusaders. 1250. Battle of Mansourah; total defeat of the crusaders by the Egyptians; King Louis IX captured with his army; they are released on restoring Damietta and promising to abstain from future hostilities. Turan Shah, Sultan of Egypt, assassinated by the mamelukes. See "MAMELUKES USURP POWER IN EGYPT," vi, 240. Death of Emperor Frederick II; his son Conrad succeeds as king of Italy; he is acknowledged as king of Germany by most of the temporal princes. William II, Count of Holland, assisted by the ecclesiastical states and the papal party, contests the imperial dignity. Waldeman, King of Sweden, introduces the mariner's compass among the navigators of the Baltic. Florence adopts a democratic government; peace obtained between the Guelfs and Ghibellines. 1251. Ottocar, son of Wenceslaus I of Bohemia, acquires Austria. Pope Innocent IV returns to Italy; he visits Genoa, Milan, and other cities, and fixes his residence in Perugia. 1252. Crusading movement of the "Pastors." This originated in France on receipt of the news of St. Louis' expedition; there occurred an outbreak of fanaticism as insensate as that of the Children's Crusade. A Hungarian, named Jacob, proclaimed that Christ rejected the great ones of the earth, and that the deliverance of the Holy City must be accomplished by the poor and humble. Shepherds left their flocks, laborers laid down the plough, to follow his footsteps. "Pastors" was the name given to these village crusaders. 1253. Founding of the Sorbonne in Paris for secular ecclesiastics; its decisions on religious questions were deemed final. 1254. Death of Conrad IV, last of the Hohenstaufen emperors; his heir is Conradin, his infant son. In Germany, William is acknowledged; Pope Innocent IV attempts to wrest the Two Sicilies from the Hohenstaufens; he is defeated by the regent Manfred, uncle of Conradin. Pope Innocent IV dies at Naples. Alexander IV is elected. 1255. Bills of exchange in favor of Italian merchants drawn at Rome on the English bishops and abbots, which they are compelled to pay. 1256. Death of William of Holland in battle against the Frisians. 1257. Rival election in Germany of Richard, Earl of Cornwall, and Alfonso of Castile as kings of the Romans. The reign of both is only nominal. 1258. In England the barons form a council to advise or command the King. See "THE MAD PARLIAMENT," vi, 246. Genoa and Venice engage in their first great conflict; the combined fleets of Venice and Pisa defeat the Genoese. Manfred is crowned king of the Two Sicilies. Hulaku Khan founds the Mongol empire of the Ilkhans and ends the caliphate of Bagdad. 1259. Treaty of Abbeville between Henry III, King of England, and Louis IX (St. Louis) of France. 1260. Ottocar II of Bohemia secures Styria by defeating Bela IV of Hungary. 1261. Overthrow of the Latin Empire of the East; Michael Palaeologus, assisted by Genoese forces, instals the Palaeologi dynasty on the Eastern throne; recovery of Constantinople by the Greeks. The Genoese are given important naval stations, and the Venetians are excluded from the Black Sea. 1262. Beginning of the barons' war in England; the kingly power is restored to Henry III by parliament; his son Edward brings in a foreign army to support him. 1263. Last invasion of Scotland by the Norwegians repulsed by King Alexander III. 1264. Henry III and his brother, Richard of Cornwall, are defeated and taken prisoners at Lewes by Simon de Montfort at the head of the English barons. 1265. Representation of the commons in parliament is granted by Simon de Montfort. At the battle of Evesham he is defeated and slain; the authority of the King is restored. Birth of Dante. 1266. Magnus, King of Norway, cedes the Hebrides and the Isle of Man to Scotland. Charles of Anjou conquers Sicily. Florentine nobles (Grandi) are excluded from all part in the government of Florence. 1267. Conradin enters Italy with an army; a large part of Sicily declares in his favor. 1268. In attempting to recover the Two Sicilies from Charles, Conradin, the last of the Hohenstaufens, is captured and executed. Beibars, Sultan of Egypt and Syria, conquers the Christian principalities of Antioch and Joppa. See "MAMELUKES USURP POWER IN EGYPT," vi, 240. Louis IX, by a pragmatic sanction, resists the papal claim to nominate bishops in France. 1269. Charles of Anjou aids in the restoration of the Guelfs in Florence. 1270. Louis IX, of France, by his "establishments," suppresses the wager of battle and provides for a regular administration of justice. The last of the crusades. See "Louis IX LEADS THE LAST CRUSADE," vi, 275. Venice levies a toll on the goods of Bolognese merchants; payment is refused; war between the two states follows. 1271. Crusade of Prince Edward of England; he drives Beibars from the siege of Acre and takes Mazareth; an attempt is made to murder him. Marco Polo sets out on his travels. See "HEIGHT OF THE MONGOL POWER IN CHINA," vi, 287. 1272. Prince Edward concludes a truce with Beibars for ten years; he leaves Palestine. End of the crusades. Death of Henry III of England; his son, Edward I, succeeds. A patent of nobility is granted to his silversmith by Philip III, King of France. 1273. Election of Rudolph as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. See "FOUNDING OF THE HOUSE OF HAPSBURG," vi, 298. 1274. After a long stay in France Edward I lands in England; is crowned with his Queen, Eleanora, at Westminster. Fourteenth general council, Second of Lyons, presided over by Pope Gregory IX. Death of Thomas Aquinas, the "Angelic Doctor," while on his way to attend the council of Lyons. 1275. Edward I persecutes the Jews in England. Marriage between the doges and foreigners prohibited by the Venetians. 1276. Ottocar II, of Bohemia, is vanquished by Rudolph of Hapsburg. See "FOUNDING OF THE HOUSE OF HAPSBURG," vi, 298. Lombardy distracted by civil wars, earthquakes, floods, famine, and pestilence, followed by a severe winter of four months. Death of Beibars, Sultan of Egypt and Syria; succession of Kaldoun. Edward I subdues Wales as far as Snowdon. See "EDWARD I CONQUERS WALES," vi, 316. 1278. Prussia submits to the Teutonic Knights. Ghibellines allowed to return to Florence. Rudolph defeats Ottocar II at Marchfeld; he is slain. See "FOUNDING OF THE HOUSE OF HAPSBURG," vi, 298. 1279. Edward I, of England, gives up Normandy to Philip III of France. The English Parliament passes the first statute of mortmain; it forbids the alienation in mortmain of real property to religious houses or other corporations. 1280. Kublai Khan, grandson of Ghengis Khan, completes the Mongol conquest of China. 1281. Tartars attempt the conquest of Japan. See "JAPANESE REPEL THE TARTARS," vi, 327. A vacancy of six months in the papal chair; Martin IV ultimately elected pope. Edward I further extends his conquest in Wales. See "EDWARD I CONQUERS WALES," vi, 316. 1282. Rudolph of Hapsburg invests his sons, Albert and Rudolph, with the duchies of Austria, Styria, and Carniola, founding the house of Austria. See "FOUNDING OF THE HOUSE OF HAPSBURG," vi, 298. A great inundation of the sea forms the Zuyder Zee, a large gulf in the Netherlands, formerly covered with forests and towns; thousands of lives are lost and all the towns and villages submerged. Massacre of the French in Sicily. See "THE SICILIAN VESPERS," vi, 340, 1283. After a struggle of fifty years the Teutonic Knights complete their power over the Prussians. 1284. Naval battle of Meloria; the Genoese crush the power of the Pisans. Queen Eleanora gives birth to a son at Carnarvon castle, Wales, afterward Edward II, from whom the eldest son of the King of England takes the title of Prince of Wales. See "EDWARD I CONQUERS WALES," vi, 316. 1285. Death of Philip III of France; his son, Philip IV, succeeds. Florence is appealed to for protection by the citizens of Pisa. 1286. First introduction of the _gabelle_, or salt duty, in France. 1287. Destruction of the shipping and magazines in the harbor of Pisa by the Genoese. 1288. Othman, from whose name are derived the terms Ottoman and Osmanli, lays the foundation of the Turkish empire in Asia Minor. 1289. The Ghibellines of Arezzo and their allies are defeated by the Florentines at Campaldino. 1290. Edward I expels the Jews from England. See "EXPULSION OF JEWS FROM ENGLAND," vi, 356. Death of the "Maid of Norway," Queen of Scotland; John Balliol, Robert Bruce, and others dispute the succession. Ladislaus of Hungary assassinated; he is succeeded by Andrew III, called the Venetian, from the place of his birth. 1291. Edward I, of England, decides the disputed succession in Scotland; he claims and receives homage from the competitors as their suzerain. In Switzerland the three Forest Cantons confederate, these being Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden. Siege and conquest of Acre from the Christians by Malek el-Ashref; end of the Christian realm of Jerusalem. Death of Rudolph of Hapsburg. Death of Saadi, the Persian poet. 1292. Edward I awards the crown of Scotland to John Balliol, who does homage to him. Adolphus of Nassau elected to the German throne. 1293. Balliol hesitates to obey a summons from Edward I to appear in London. 1294. Under Nicolo Spinola the Genoese capture a Venetian fleet and take Canea, in the isle of Candia. 1295. Philip the Fair of France, and John Balliol, King of Scotland, make war on England. 1296. Balliol is dethroned by Edward I, who invades and conquers Scotland. Pope Boniface VIII issues his bull (_Clericus laicos_) against the taxation of the property of the Church without the consent of the holy see. Philip the Fair of France refuses to comply with it. 1297. Great victory of the Scots, under William Wallace, at Stirling. See "EXPLOITS AND DEATH OF WILLIAM WALLACE," vi, 369. Count Guy Flanders is defeated by the French. Philip the Fair is excommunicated because his law against the export of coin stops the papal revenues derived from France. Pope Boniface VIII prohibits the dissection of dead bodies for the study of anatomy at Bologna. 1298. Adolphus of Nassau defeated and slain by Rudolph's son, Albert, who is elected king by the German electors. At Curzola the Genoese gain a naval victory over the Venetians. A successful war is waged against the Colonnas by Pope Boniface VIII. Wallace defeated at Falkirk by Edward I. See "EXPLOITS AND DEATH OF WILLIAM WALLACE," vi, 369, 1299. Defeat of the Turks at Hems by the allied forces of the Templars and Mongols; recovery of Jerusalem for a short period. Ottoman Turks invade the Greek empire. 1300. Institution of the jubilee by Pope Boniface VIII. See "FIRST GREAT JUBILEE OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH," vi, 378. Guy, Count of Flanders, defeated and made prisoner by Philip's brother, Charles de Valois. A charitable society at Antwerp is first given the name of Lollards, because they lulled the sick by singing to them. FOOTNOTES: 1. See _The Peace of Constance_, page 28. 2. See _Archiepiscopate of Thomas Becket_, page 1. 3. See _Saladin Takes Jerusalem from the Christians_, page 41. 4. See _The Third Crusade_, page 54. 5. See _Philip of France Wins the French Domains of the English Kings_, page 86. 6. See _Signing of the Magna Charta_, page 175. 7. See _Innocent III Exalts the Papal Power_, page 156. 8. See _Decline of the Moorish Power in Spain_, vol. v, page 256. 9. See _Venetians and Crusaders Take Constantinople_, page 121. 10. See _Latin Empire of the East_, page 140. 11. See _The Sixth Crusade_, page 208. 12. See _The Teutonic Knights_, page 68. 13. See _Mamelukes Usurp Power in Egypt_, page 240. 14. See _Louis IX Leads the Last Crusade_, page 275. 15. See _The Sicilian Vespers_, page 340. 16. See _First Great Jubilee of the Roman Catholic Church_, page 378. 17. See _Rise of the Hanseatic League_, page 214. 18. See _Founding of the House of Hapsburg_, page 298. 19. See _Founding of the Mongol Empire_, page 103. 20. See _Russia Conquered by the Tartar Hordes_, page 196. 21. See _Height of the Mongol Power in China_, page 287. 22. See _Japanese Repel the Tartars_, page 327. 23. See _The Golden Bull, "Hungary's Magna Charta,"_ page 191. 24. See _The "Mad Parliament,"_ page 246. 25. See _Edward I Conquers Wales_, page 316. 26. See _Exploits and Death of William Wallace_, page 369. 27. See _Expulsion of Jews from England_, page 356. 28. A tax originally levied by Ethelred II to maintain forces against the Danes. 29. He had killed the father of a young lady whom he had betrayed. 30. The King knew not how to behave to the murderers. To punish them for that which they had understood he wished them to do, appeared ungenerous; to spare them was to confirm the general suspicion that he had ordered the murder. He left them therefore to the judgment of the spiritual courts. In consequence they travelled to Rome, and were enjoined by Alexander to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where some, if not all, of them died. 31. Guy--Guido of Lusignan--was King of Jerusalem, the kingdom founded by the crusaders in 1099. When Saladin took the city, in 1187, he imprisoned Guy. 32. The house of Comnenus, rulers of the Byzantine empire. 33. Mother of John, grandmother of Arthur, and heiress of Aquitaine. 34. According to R. Coggeshall, Philip virtually declared himself still ignorant on the point six months later. 35. These were the alternative versions proposed by John's friends, according to M. Paris. 36. _Johannem Mollegladium_. This nickname is no doubt a translation of one which must have been applied to John in French, though unluckily its vernacular form is lost. It has been suggested that "if the phrase had any English equivalent, it would probably be something embracing a more direct metaphor than 'Softsword'--something like 'Tinsword,' or, better still, if the thirteenth century knew of putty, 'John Puttysword.'" 37. In 1199, by acknowledging Arthur as their liege lord and Richard's lawful heir. 38. _I.e._, "May the band that binds the felts and spars of the yurt never decay"; in other words, may he ever be prosperous--a favorite Mongol wish. 39. Transports. 40. The Petrion, which is repeatedly mentioned by contemporary writers, was a district built on the slope of a hill running parallel to the Golden Horn for about one-third of the length of the harbor walls eastward from Blachern. It had apparently been a neglected spot during the early centuries of the history of Constantinople, but had lately come to be the residence of numerous hermits, and the site of several monasteries and convents. A great part is now occupied by the Jewish colony of Galata. 41. Nicetas' _Chronicate_, Greek authority on the Latin conquest. 42. Engines for throwing stones and other missiles. 43. Alexius V, Byzantine Emperor. 44. The remarkable church of this monastery still exists as a mosque, and is known as Eski imaret Mahallasse. It still bears witness to its having been arranged for both monks and nuns. It is on the Fourth Hill, just above the Phanar. 45. Alexius V, his Greek name. 46. It was the quarter about the gate in the harbor walls, now known as Zindan Capou, near the dried-fruit market. 47. Another name of Constantinople. 48. The Great Church, dedicated to the "Divine Wisdom"; the Santa Sophia, built by Justinian. 49. This office still exists. The principal duty of the person who holds it is to recite the creed in great religious services when the patriarch officiates. 50. Romania was the usual name for the Byzantine or Eastern empire. 51. Innocent III. 52. By a similar manoeuvre did the Spaniards rob King René two hundred years later of the city of Naples. 53. Peter's Patrimony was an administrative division of the Papal States, situated in Central Italy northwest of the Roman Campagna.--ED. 54. Apulia, a former duchy, was now a part of the Two Sicilies. 55. Matilda, Countess of Tuscany, also ruler of a large part of Northern Italy, died about 1115, bequeathing her possessions to the papacy, which she had supported in its struggle with the Empire. The execution of her will had been prevented by the Imperial power. 56. This seems a very strong proof that the house of commons was not then in being; otherwise the knights and burgesses from the several counties could have given in to the lords a list of grievances, without so unusual an election. 57. Novgorod was for centuries the chief commercial city of Russia. It was an independent republic, holding sway over extensive territories around the Baltic Sea. 58. Suzdal was at this time the principal state of Central Russia, with a capital of the same name. 59. Translated by Joseph Sohn. 60. Thus was gradually introduced what has since been considered the constitutional method of opposing the measures of the Crown, the refusal of the supplies for the current year. Henry's predecessors were too rich to depend on the aid of their vassals: to resist their will with any hope of success it was necessary to have recourse to the sword. But his poverty compelled him annually to solicit relief, and to purchase it by concessions to his parliament. 61. The Earl of Gloucester also massacred the Jews in Canterbury; and the Earl of Derby destroyed their houses at Worcester and compelled them to receive baptism. As a justification, it was pretended that they were attached to the King, had Greek fire in their possession, kept false keys to the gates, and had made subterraneous passages from their houses leading under the walls. 62. Grandfather of King Robert Bruce, of Scotland. 63. The military tenants were ordered under the penalty of felony to bring into the field not only the force specified by their tenures, but all the horsemen and infantry in their power: every township was compelled to send eight, six, or four footmen well armed with lances, bows and arrows, swords, crossbows, and hatchets, who should serve forty days at the expense of the township; and the cities and burghs received orders to furnish as many horsemen and footmen as the sheriff might appoint. No excuse was to be allowed on account of the shortness of the time, the approach of the harvest, or any other private inconvenience. 64. It is amusing to compare the opposite writers of this period. Wikes and the letter-writer in Westminster are royalists, and severely censure the ambition and treason of Leicester, but, in the estimation of the chroniclers of Dunstable and of Waverly, he lived a saint and died a martyr. 65. By these we are to understand Northern and Southern China, separated by the great Hoang-ho on the eastern, and by the southern limits of Shen-si on the western side. 66. This conduct toward the professors of the several systems of faith is perfectly consistent with the character of Kublai, in which policy was the leading feature. It was his object to keep in good humor all classes of his subjects, and especially those of the capital or about the court, by indulging them in the liberty of following unmolested their own religious tenets, and by flattering each with the idea of possessing his special protection. Many of the highest offices, both civil and military, were held by Mahometans. 67. Neither do those who profess the Mussulman faith regard Mahomet as a divinity, nor do the Jews so regard Moses; but it is not to be expected that a Tartar emperor should make very accurate theological distinctions. 68. This word, probably much corrupted by transcribers, must be intended for one of the numerous titles of Buddha. 69. The _saggio_ of Venice being equal to the sixth part of an ounce, these consequently weighed twenty ounces, and the others in proportion up to fifty ounces. 70. In many parts of the East, the parasol or umbrella with a long handle, borne by an attendant, is a mark of high distinction, and even denotes sovereignty when of a particular color. 71. This is Polo's name for Kublai's capital--_Khan-Balig_ ("the Khan's city")--the Chinese Peking, captured by the Mongols in 1215. In 1264 Kublai made it his chief residence, and in 1267 he built a new city--Marco Polo's Tai-du, more properly Ta-tu--a little to the northeast of the old one. 72. Subdivisions of counties, corresponding to the English hundreds. 73. Llewelyn's brother. 74. It is said that Edward promised the Welsh "a native prince; one who could not speak a word of English," and then presented to their astonished gaze the new-born infant. 75. A British diplomat who has been for many years director of the imperial maritime customs of China. 76. These names appear to be intended for Abaka-khan, a Mongol or Mogul, and Vang-san-chin, a Chinese. Many of the latter nations were employed by Kublai, both in civil and military capacities, and rendered him good service. 77. By the port of Zaitun is probably meant Amoy, and by Kinsai the port of Ningpo or of Chusan, which are at the entrance of the river which flows by Hang-chau, the Kinsai of Polo. 78. The idea of being rendered invulnerable by the use of amulets is common among the natives of the eastern islands. 79. If the original operations were directed, as might be presumed, against the ancient capital, we should infer that the city here spoken of was Ozaka, situated at the mouth of the river upon which, at some distance from the coast, Kioto stands, and which is known to have been formerly much frequented by Chinese shipping. But, according to P. Gaubil, the island was that of Firando, near the city of Nagasaki, not then a place of so much importance as it has since become. 80. There is here a manifest error in the date, which instead of 1264 should rather be 1284. In the early Venice epitome it is 1269, as well as in the early texts printed by the Paris Geographical Society; and in the Basel edition, 1289. Polo cannot be made accountable for these contradictions among his transcribers. 81. No clew presents itself by which to discover the island meant by the name of Zorza or--allowing for the Venetian pronunciation--Jorja. Some suppose it to be in one of the lakes of Tartary. 82. Translated and edited by Francis Egerton, Earl of Ellesmere. 83. In his charter to the city, King Henry exempts his Jews, who were to remain the exclusive property of himself and his successors. 84. The remarkable letter of Robert Grostête, then Archdeacon of Leicester, afterward the famous Bishop of Lincoln, to the Countess on this subject, shows the feelings of the most enlightened churchman in those times toward the Jews. His mercy, if it was mercy, would spare their lives. "As murderers of the Lord, as still blaspheming Christ and mocking his Passion, they were to be in captivity to the princes of the earth. As they have the brand of Cain, and are condemned to wander over the face of the earth, so were they to have the privilege of Cain, that no one was to kill them. But those who favored or harbored them were to take care that they did not oppress Christian subjects by usury. It was for this reason that Simon de Montfort had expelled them from Leicester. Whoever protected them might share in the guilt of their usuries." 85. This act, translated from the Norman French, is remarkable in that the King admits that they (the Jews) are, and have been, very profitable to him and his ancestors. 86. The act for the expulsion of the Jews has not come down to us; we know not, therefore, the reasons alleged for the measure. Of the fact there can be no doubt (see _Report on the Dignity of a Peer_, p. 180), and there are many documents relating to the event, as writs to the authorities in Gloucester and York, to grant them safe-conduct to the ports where they were to embark. 87. "Great," writes the author of _Anglia Judaica_, "were the spoils they left behind them. Whole rolls, full of patents relating to their estates, are still remaining in the Tower, which, together with their rents in fee and their mortgages, all escheated to the King." END OF VOLUME VI. 
26337	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 26337-h.htm or 26337-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/6/3/3/26337/26337-h/26337-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/6/3/3/26337/26337-h.zip) THE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS VOLUME IX A COMPREHENSIVE AND READABLE ACCOUNT OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY. EMPHASIZING THE MORE IMPORTANT EVENTS. AND PRESENTING THESE AS COMPLETE NARRATIVES IN THE MASTER-WORDS OF THE MOST EMINENT HISTORIANS NON-SECTARIAN NON-PARTISAN NON-SECTIONAL ON THE PLAN EVOLVED FROM A CONSENSUS OF OPINIONS GATHERED FROM THE MOST DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARS OF AMERICA AND EUROPE. INCLUDING BRIEF INTRODUCTIONS BY SPECIALISTS TO CONNECT AND EXPLAIN THE CELEBRATED NARRATIVES. ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY. WITH THOROUGH INDICES, BIBLIOGRAPHIES, CHRONOLOGIES, AND COURSES OF READING EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ROSSITER JOHNSON, LL.D. ASSOCIATE EDITORS CHARLES F. HORNE, Ph.D. JOHN RUDD, LL.D. With a staff of specialists VOLUME IX [Illustration: Henry VIII, during the festivities at Guines--"The Field of the Cloth of Gold"--in courtly dance with one of the French Queen's ladies-in-waiting Painting by Adolph Menzel] The National Alumni Copyright, 1905, by The National Alumni CONTENTS VOLUME IX PAGE _An Outline Narrative of the Great Events_, xiii CHARLES F. HORNE _Luther Begins the Reformation in Germany (A.D. 1517)_, 1 JULIUS KOESTLIN JEAN M. V. AUDIN _Negro Slavery in America_ _Its Introduction by Law (A.D. 1517)_, 36 SIR ARTHUR HELPS _First Circumnavigation of the Globe (A.D. 1519)_ _Magellan Reaches the Ladrones and Philippines_, 41 JOAN BAUTISTA ANTONIO PIGAFETTA _The Field of the Cloth of Gold (A.D. 1520)_, 59 J. S. BREWER _Cortés Captures the City of Mexico (A.D. 1521)_, 72 WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT _Liberation of Sweden (A.D. 1523)_, 79 ERIC GUSTAVE GEIJER _The Peasants' War in Germany (A.D. 1524)_, 93 J. H. MERLE D'AUBIGNÉ _France Loses Italy (A.D. 1525)_ _Battle of Pavia_, 111 WILLIAM ROBERTSON _Sack of Rome by the Imperial Troops (A.D. 1527)_, 124 BENVENUTO CELLINI T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE _Great Religious Movement in England_ _Fall of Wolsey (A.D. 1529)_, 137 JOHN RICHARD GREEN _Pizarro Conquers Peru (A.D. 1532)_, 156 HERNANDO PIZARRO WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT _Calvin is Driven from Paris (A.D. 1533)_ _He Makes Geneva the Stronghold of Protestantism_, 176 A. M. FAIRBAIRN JEAN M. V. AUDIN _England Breaks with the Roman Church (A.D. 1534)_ _Destruction of Monasteries_, 203 JOHN RICHARD GREEN _Cartier Explores Canada (A.D. 1534)_, 236 H. H. MILES _Mendoza Settles Buenos Aires (A.D. 1535)_, 254 ROBERT SOUTHEY _Founding of the Jesuits (A.D. 1540)_, 261 ISAAC TAYLOR _De Soto Discovers the Mississippi (A.D. 1541)_, 277 JOHN S. C. ABBOTT _Revolution of Astronomy by Copernicus (A.D. 1543)_, 285 SIR ROBERT STAWELL BALL _Council of Trent and the Counter-reformation (A.D. 1545)_ 293 ADOLPHUS W. WARD _Protestant Struggle against Charles V_ _The Smalkaldic War (A.D. 1546)_, 313 EDWARD ARMSTRONG _Introduction of Christianity into Japan (A.D. 1549)_, 325 JOHN H. GUBBINS _Collapse of the Power of Charles V (A.D. 1552)_ _France Seizes German Bishoprics_, 337 LADY C. C. JACKSON _The Religious Peace of Augsburg (A.D. 1555)_ _Abdication of Charles V_ 348 WILLIAM ROBERTSON _Akbar Establishes the Mogul Empire in India (A.D. 1556)_, 366 J. TALBOYS WHEELER _Universal Chronology (A.D. 1517-1557)_ 385 JOHN RUDD LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS VOLUME IX PAGE _Henry VIII during the festivities at Guines_--"_The Field of the Cloth of Gold_"--_in courtly dance with one of the French Queen's ladies-in-waiting_ (_page 63_), Frontispiece Painting by Adolph Menzel. _Gustavus I (Vasa) addressing his last meeting of the Estates_, 79 Painting by L. Hersent. AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, CONNECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE GREAT EVENTS (THE REFORMATION: REIGN OF CHARLES V) CHARLES F. HORNE Our modern world begins with the Protestant Reformation. The term itself is objected to by Catholics, who claim that there was little real reform. But the importance of the event, whether we call it reform or revolution, is undenied. Previous to 1517 the nations of Europe had formed a single spiritual family under the acknowledged leadership of the Pope. The extent of the Holy Father's authority might be disputed, especially when he interfered in affairs of state. Kings had fought against his troops on the field of battle. But in spiritual matters he was still supreme, and when reformers like Huss and Savonarola refused him obedience on questions of doctrine, the very men who had been fighting papal soldiers were shocked by this heretical wickedness. The heretics were burned and the wars resumed. When Alexander Borgia sat upon the papal throne for eleven years, there were even philosophers who drew from his very wickedness an argument for the divine nature of his office. It must be indeed divine, said they, since despite such pollution as his, it had survived and retained its influence. Some modern critics have even gone so far as to assert that for at least two generations before the Reformation the great majority of the educated classes had ceased to care whether the Christian religion were true or not. The Renaissance had so awakened their interest in the affairs of this world, its artistic beauties and intellectual advance, that they gave no thought to the beyond. But we approach controversial matters scarce within our scope. Suffice it to say that the Reformation brought religion once more into intensest prominence in all men's eyes, and that a large portion of the civilized world broke away from the domination of the Pope. Men insisted on judging for themselves in spiritual matters. Only after three centuries of strife was the privilege granted them. Only within the past century has thought been made everywhere free--at least from direct physical coercion. The last execution by the Spanish Inquisition was in 1826, and the institution was formally abolished in 1835. The era of open warfare and actual bodily torture between various sects all calling themselves Christian, thus extended over three centuries. These may be divided into four periods. The first is one of fierce dispute but little actual warfare, during which the revolt spread over Europe with Germany as its centre. An agreement between the contestants was still hoped for; the break was not recognized as final until 1555, when, by the Peace of Augsburg, the two German factions definitely agreed to separate and to refrain from interference with each other. Or perhaps it would be better to end the first period with 1556, when the mighty Emperor, Charles V, resigned all his authority, giving Germany to his brother, Ferdinand, who maintained peace there, while Spain passed to Charles' son, Philip II, most resolute and fanatic of Catholics. The second period began in 1558, when the Protestant queen, Elizabeth, ascended the throne of England. She and Philip of Spain became the champions of their respective faiths; the strife extended over Europe, and soon developed into bitter war. This spread from land to land, and finally returned to Germany as the awful Thirty Years' War. Then came the third period, during which the religious question was less prominent; but Catholic sovereigns like Louis XIV of France and James II of England still hoped by persecutions to force their subjects to reaccept the ancient faith. These aims were only abandoned with the downfall of Louis' military power before the armies of Marlborough and Eugene, early in the eighteenth century. During the final hundred years the stubborn contest was confined to the lands still Catholic, in which intellect, under such leaders as Voltaire, struggled with the superstition and prejudice of the masses, and demanded everywhere the freedom it at last attained. For the present we need look only to the first of these periods, that in which Germany holds the centre of the view.[1] It is an odd coincidence that at the outbreak of the Reformation all the chief states of Europe were ruled by sovereigns of unusual ability, but each one of them a man who obviously thought more of his ambitions, his pleasures, and his political plans than of his religion. Moreover, each of these rulers came to the throne before he was of age, and thus lacked the salutary training of a subordinate position; while, on the other hand, each of them, through varying causes, wielded a power much greater than that of any of his recent predecessors. RULERS OF EUROPE IN 1517 Henry VIII of England was the first of these young despots to assume authority. Nine years older than the century, he became king in 1509 at the age of eighteen. His father, Henry VII, had, as we have seen, snatched power from an exhausted aristocracy. He had been what men sneeringly called a "tradesman" king, caring little for the show and splendor of his office, but using it to amass enormous sums of money by means not over-scrupulous. Young Henry VIII, handsome, dashing, and debonair, at once repudiated his father's policy, executed the ministers who had directed it, and was hailed as a liberator by his delighted people. They quite overlooked the fact that he neglected to restore the ill-gotten funds, and soon used them in establishing a far more vigorous tyranny than his father would have dared. Much is forgiven a youthful king if he be but brave and jovial and hearty in his manner. His blunders, his excesses of fury, are put down to his inexperience. Nations are ever yearning for a hero-ruler. In France a monarch of twenty years, Francis I, ascended the throne in 1515, five years older then than the century. Henry of England had descended from a family of simple Welsh gentlemen, far indeed at one time from the crown; Francis I was also of a new line of kings, only a distant cousin of the childless Louis XII, whom he succeeded. "That great boy of Angoulême will ruin all," groaned Louis on his death-bed. Ruin the prosperity of France, he meant, for Louis had been a good and thoughtful king, cherishing his land and enabling it to rise to the height of wealth and power, justified by its natural resources and the ingenuity of its people. Francis, the "great boy," even more than his rival Henry, proved bent on being a hero. Like Maximilian of Germany, he sought to be known as the flower of knighthood. To win his ambition he also was possessed of youth and wealth, a gallant bearing, and a devoted people. He had intellect, too, and a love of art. He became the great patron of the later Renaissance. The famous artist Da Vinci died at his court, in his arms, legend says. Artists, literary men, flocked to his service. Paris became the intellectual centre of Europe. France snatched from Italy the supremacy of thought, of genius. Alas for the fickleness of untried youth! Henry seemed to promise his country freedom and he gave it tyranny. Francis promised his people glory--that is, honor and splendor. In the end he brought them shame and suffering. Charles V of Germany, youngest of this mighty trio, seemed by his wisdom to promise his subjects at least protection; and his reign produced anarchy. Charles, unlike his rivals, was almost born into power. His father died in the lad's babyhood; his mother went insane. His two grandfathers were the two mightiest potentates of Europe, Ferdinand the Wise of Spain, and Maximilian, head of the great Hapsburg house and Emperor of Germany. Neither had any nearer heir than little Charles. His father's position as ruler of the Netherlands was given him as a child, so that he was really a Fleming by education, a silent, thoughtful, secretive youth, far different from the jovial Henry or the brilliant Francis, but ambitious as either and more conscientious perhaps, a dangerous rival in the race for fame. Ferdinand died in 1515, and Charles became King of Spain, with all that the title included of power over the Mediterranean and Southern Italy, and all the vast new world of America. Charles was then fifteen, just the age of the century, nine years younger than Henry, five years younger than Francis. Amid the tumult of the opening Reformation in 1519, the aged Maximilian also died, departed not unwillingly, one fancies, from an age whose intricacies had grown too many for his simple soul. The young King of Spain thus became lord of all the vast Hapsburg possessions of Austria, Bohemia, the Netherlands and so on. He sought to be elected Emperor of Germany also, but here the matter was less easy. Already his rule extended over more of Europe than any sovereign had held since Charlemagne, and Europe took alarm. Henry and Francis both thrust in, each of them suggesting to the German electorial princes that he had claims of his own, and would make an emperor far more suitable than Charles. Henry polished up his German ancestry; Francis recalled that Germans and Frenchmen were both Franks, had been one mighty race under Charlemagne, and surely might become so once again--under his leadership, of course. The matter was really decided by a fourth party. The Turks had once more become a serious menace to Europe. During the brief reign of Sultan Selim the Ferocious (1512-1520) they crushed Persia and conquered Syria and Egypt. They seized the caliph, spiritual ruler of the Mahometan faith, and declared themselves heads of the Mahometan world. Triumphant over Asia, they were turning upon Europe with renewed energy. Hungary was at its last expiring gasp. Selim's death in 1520 did not stop the invaders, for his son Solyman, a youth of twenty-five, soon proved himself a fourth giant, fitted to be ranked with the three young rulers of the West. He also was a seeker after glory. History calls him the "magnificent," and holds him greatest among the Turkish rulers. It was certainly under him that the Turks advanced farthest into Europe, if that is to be established as the chief measure of Mahometan greatness. In 1526 Solyman utterly crushed the Hungarians at Mohacs. In 1529 he besieged Vienna; and though he failed to capture the Hapsburg capital, yet at a still later period he exacted from the German Emperor Ferdinand a money tribute. His fleets swept the Mediterranean. This increasing menace of the Turks was much considered by the German electors. At first they refused to add to the power of either of the three monarchs who so assiduously courted them. They chose instead the ablest of their own number, Frederick the Wise, Duke of Saxony. But Frederick proved his wisdom by refusing the task of steering Germany through the troublous seas ahead. He insisted on their electing some ruler strong enough to command obedience, and to gather all Europe against the Turks. So as Charles was after all a German, and of the Hapsburg race which had so long ruled them, they named him Emperor. He was Charles I of Spain, but Charles V of Germany. His rule extended over a wider realm than any monarch has since held. This success of their younger rival was very differently received by Henry and by Francis. The English King accepted the rebuff good-naturedly; perhaps he had never felt any real hope of success. But Francis was enraged. It was the first check he had met in a career of spectacular success. He invited Henry to their celebrated meeting at the Field of the Cloth of Gold[2] to plan an alliance and revenge. Henry came, but the silent Charles had already managed to enlist his interests by quieter ways; while Francis, by his ostentation and splendor, offended the bluff Englishman. So Henry kept out of the quarrel; but to Charles and Francis it became the main business of their lives. Their reigns thereafter are the story of one long strife between them, rising to such bitterness that at one time they passed the lie and challenged each other to personal combat, over which there was much bustling and bluster, but no result. To get a full view of this Europe of young men, that beheld the Reformation, we must note one other ruler farther north. Ever since the union of Colmar in 1397, Sweden had been more or less bound to Denmark, the strongest of the northern kingdoms. By the year 1520 the Danish monarch Christian had reduced the Swedes to a state of most cruel vassalage and misery. Only one young noble, Gustavus Vasa, a lad of twenty-three, still held out, and by adventures wild as those of Robin Hood evaded his enemies and at last roused his countrymen to one more revolt. It was successful, and in 1523 Gustavus, by the unanimous election of the Swedes, became the first of a new line of monarchs.[3] He proved as able as a king as he had been daring as an adventurer, and his long reign laid the foundation of Sweden's greatness in the following century. He early accepted the reformed religion, and thus it spread through the Far North almost without a check. THE REFORMATION The Reformation began in Germany in 1517, when the Saxon monk Luther--himself then only thirty-four years a sojourner upon our planet--protested against the Church's sale of indulgences. He was not alone in his protest, but only stood forth as the mouthpiece of many earnest men. His prince, that Frederick the Wise who afterward refused to be emperor, upheld him. Maximilian, dying in the early days of the dispute, had kind words of regard for the hero-monk. Even the Pope, Leo X, treated the matter amicably at first. He also was still in early life, having been made pope at thirty-six, an age quite as juvenile for the leadership of the spiritual world as that of the various temporal monarchs for theirs. Leo, being a member of the famous Medici family, was apparently more interested in art than in religion. He wanted to rebuild the gorgeous cathedral of St. Peter, and he did not want to quarrel with Germany. So also Charles V, desiring to be emperor, could scarce antagonize Frederick of Saxony, who could and did secure him his ambition. Thus in its earliest days Luther's revolt was handled very gently, and it spread with speed. Then Charles, secure upon his throne and gravely Catholic, resolved on firmer methods of stamping out the heresy. He summoned Luther to that famous interview at Worms (1521), where the reformer, threatened with outlawry and all the terror of the empire's power, refused to unsay his preaching, crying out in agony: "Here I stand! I can no other! God help me! Amen!" Charles in his shrewd, silent way saw that the matter was not to be settled so easily as he had hoped. Already half Germany was on Luther's side. Several leading nobles accompanied him as he left the Emperor's presence. Charles wanted their help against the Turks. So there was more temporizing. Then came war with Francis no tune this for quarrelling with obstinate Teutonic princes and their obstinate _protege_. The peasants of Germany did Luther's cause more harm than Charles had done. These ignorant and bitterly oppressed unfortunates, constituting everywhere, remember, the vast majority of the human race, heard impassioned preachings of reform, revolt. To them Rome seemed not the oppressor, but their immediate lords; and, thinking they were obeying Luther's behest, they rose in arms. Some of the more violent reformers joined them. Luther preached against the uprising, but it was not to be checked. Terrible were the excesses of the mobs of brutal peasantry, and all the upper classes of the land were forced in self-defence to turn against them and crush them. Many a noble who had once thought well of the reform, abandoned it in fear and horror at its consequences.[4] Meanwhile the war with France became more serious. The claims of both Charles and Francis to Italian lands made that unlucky country the theatre of their battles. Francis, with his compact domain and readily gathered resources, proved at first more than a match for the scattered forces and insecure authority of the Emperor. Never had the French monarch's fame stood higher than when in 1525, with an army made confident by repeated victories, he besieged Pavia. The city was the last important stronghold of Charles in Italy; it was reduced almost to surrender. Then came a fatal blunder. Francis confused the old ways with the new. The German generals had been hopeless of raising the siege, the imperial armies were on the point of disbanding, but as a last resort their leaders advanced and defied the enemy to fight on equal terms. Instead of laughing at the proposal as any modern leader would, Francis, in face of the protest of all his generals, accepted and in true chivalrous fashion fought the wholly unnecessary battle of Pavia. His forces were completely defeated, he himself made prisoner. "All is lost," he wrote home to France, "but honor." Even that too was lost, had he but known. Charles, unchivalrous, determined to make the most of his good-luck, and, for the release of his royal prisoner, demanded such terms as would make France little more than a subject state.[5] King Francis refused, threatened heroic suicide to save his country; but he wearied of captivity at last and descended to his rival's level. It was the tragic turning-point of the French monarch's life, the not wholly untragic turning-point of larger destinies, ancient chivalry being admitted unsuccessful and wholly out of date. The two monarchs dickered over the terms of release. Charles abated somewhat of his demands, and Francis was made free, having sworn to a treaty which he never meant to keep. He repudiated it on various pleas, and having thus sacrificed honor to regain something of all it had lost him, recommenced the strife with Charles on more equal terms. The Pope, not the Leo of earlier years, but Clement VII, another Medici, absolved Francis from his treaty oath. This benevolence can scarce be ascribed to religious grounds, for Charles was assuredly a better Catholic than Francis. But as a temporal ruler Clement feared to have in Italy a neighbor so powerful and unchecked as the Emperor was becoming. Charles had his revenge. A German army of "Lutheran heretics" marched into Italy swearing to hang the Pope to the dome of St. Peter's. They stormed Rome, sacked it with such cruelty as rivalled the barbarian plunderings of over a thousand years before; and if they did not hang Clement, it was only because his castle of St. Angelo proved too strong for their assaults. The marvellous art treasures which had been slowly garnered in Rome since the days of Nicholas V, were almost wholly destroyed.[6] Charles hastened to disclaim responsibility for this direct assault upon the head of his Church; but he did not relinquish any of the advantages it gave. He and the Pope arranged an alliance and the Imperial army turned from Rome against Florence, where Pope Clement's family, the Medici, had recently been expelled as rulers. The siege and capture of Florence (1529) mark almost the last fluttering of real independence in Italy. From that time the country remained in the grasp of the Hapsburgs or their heirs and allies. Petty tyrants, minions of Austria or Spain, ruled over the various cities. Their intellectual supremacy passed over to France. Only within the last half-century has a brighter day redawned for Italy, has she ceased to be what she was so long called, "the battle-ground" of other nations. Meanwhile since neither Pope nor Emperor had found time to offer any vigorous opposition to the German Reformation, it had grown unchecked. In its inception it had unquestionably been a pure and noble movement: but as the "protesting" princes moved further in the matter, it dawned on them that the suppression of the Roman Church meant the suppression of all the bishoprics and abbeys, to which at least half the lands of the empire belonged. Such an opportunity for plunder, and such easy plunder, had never been before. Luther and the other preachers urged that the church property should be used to erect schools and support Protestant divines; but only a small fraction of it was ever surrendered by the princes for these purposes. The Reformation had ceased to be a purely religious movement. In no country was this new aspect of the revolt so marked as in England. There Henry VIII had grown ever more secure in his power by holding aloof from the jangling that weakened Charles and Francis. He had sunk into a tyrant and a voluptuary. Yet England herself, profiting by almost half a century of peace, was progressing rapidly in culture. She was no longer behind her neighbors. The Renaissance movement can scarce be said to have begun in England before 1500, yet by 1516 her famous chancellor, Sir Thomas More, was writing histories and philosophies. In 1522 the King himself sighed for literary fame and gave opportunity for many future satirists by writing a Latin book against the Lutherans. The Pope conferred upon his royal champion a title, "Defender of the Faith." As Henry, however, devoted himself more and more to pleasure, the real power in England passed into the hands of his great minister Cardinal Wolsey, who had risen from humble station to be for a time the most influential man in Europe.[7] He even aspired to be pope, with what seemed assured chances of success. But destiny willed otherwise. Henry chanced to fall in love with a lady who insisted on his marrying her. To do this he had to secure from the Pope a divorce from his former Queen, who chanced to be an aunt of the Emperor Charles. What was poor Pope Clement to do? Offend Charles who was just helping him crush the Florentines, or refuse his "Defender of the Faith"? Real reason for the divorce there was none. Clement temporized: and Wolsey with one eye on his own future, helped him. The result was tempestuous. Wolsey was hurried to his tragic downfall. Henry took matters in his own hands and had his own English bishops divorce him. England joined the ranks of the nations denying the authority of Rome. Sir Thomas More and other nobles who refused to follow Henry's bidding were beheaded. Thomas Cromwell, a new minister, abler perhaps than even Wolsey, and risen from a yet lower sphere of life, directed England's counsel. By one act after another the break with Rome was made complete. A thousand monasteries were suppressed and their wealth added to the crown. Cromwell earned his name, "the hammer of the monks." In 1534 was passed the final "Act of Supremacy," declaring that the King of England and he alone was head of the English Church.[8] In France, too, was heresy beginning to appear. The young scholar, Jean Calvin, wrote so vigorously against Rome that he was driven to flee from Paris, though King Francis was himself suspected of favoring the free thought of the reformers. Calvin, after many vicissitudes, settled in Geneva and built up there a religious republic, that became intolerant on its own account, and burned heretics who departed from its heresy. But at least Geneva was in earnest. Calvinism spread fast over France; it began crowding Lutheranism from parts of Germany. Geneva became the "Protestant Rome," the centre of the opposition from which ministers went forth to preach the faith.[9] Science also began to raise its head against the ancient Church. The Polish astronomer Copernicus had long since conceived his idea that the earth was not the centre of the universe. He even pointed out the proofs of his theory to a few brother-scientists; but the Church taught otherwise, so Copernicus kept silent till, on his death-bed, he let his doctrines be published in a book. Then he passed away, bequeathing to posterity the wonderful foundation upon which modern science has so built as to make impossible many of the over-literal teachings of the mediæval Church.[10] THE COUNTER-REFORMATION Nothing but a miracle, it seemed, could save the falling cause of Rome, and there have been men to assert that a miracle occurred. The order of the Jesuits was founded in 1540 by Ignatius Loyola.[11] His followers with intense fanaticism and self-abnegation devoted themselves absolutely to upholding the ancient faith, to trampling out heresy wherever it appeared. They sent out missionaries too, to the New World, to Asia, Africa, and even distant Japan. As Catholicism lost ground in Europe it extended over other continents.[12] Partly at least under Jesuit influence began the great "Counter-reformation," as it is called, the reform within the Church itself. Even the most faithful Catholics had admitted the need of this. Charles V had long urged the calling of a general council, and one finally assembled in 1545 at Trent. It even tried to win the Lutherans back peaceably into the fold, and, though this hope was soon abandoned, a very marked reform was established within the Church. This Council of Trent held sessions extending over nearly twenty years, and when its labors were completed the entire body of laws and doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church were fully established and defined.[13] The refusal of the Protestants to join the Council of Trent brought matters to a crisis. It placed them definitely outside the pale of the Church, and Charles V could no longer find excuse in his not over-troublous conscience, to avoid taking measures against them. They themselves realized this, and formed a league for mutual support, the Smalkald League; but it was never very harmonious. Thought, made suddenly free, could not be expected to run all in the same channel. The Protestants had divided into Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans, and a dozen minor sects, some of which opposed one another more bitterly than they did the Catholics. Toleration was as yet a thing unknown.[14] The state of affairs was thus one peculiarly fitted for the genius of Charles, who managed so to divide the members of the league that only one of them, the Elector of Saxony, successor to Frederick the Wise, met the Emperor's forces in battle. He was easily overthrown. The league dissolved, and Charles, supported by his Spanish forces, was undisputed master of Germany. He used his power mildly, insisting indeed on the Protestants returning to the Church, but promising them many of the reforms they demanded. This was the moment of Charles' greatest power (1547). His ancient rivals Henry and Francis both died in this year, the one sunk in sensual sloth, the other in shame and gloom and savage cruelty. In his hatred of Charles, Francis had even in his latter years allied himself with Solyman the Magnificent, and encouraged the Turks in their assault on Germany. Henry's crown fell to a child, Edward VI; that of Francis, to his son, another Henry, the second of France, a young man apparently immersed in sports and pleasures. The Turks had been defeated by Charles' fleets in the Mediterranean. The Council of Trent, at first refractory, seemed yielding to his wishes. Spain, where at one time he had faced a violent revolt against his absolutism, was now wholly submissive. Germany seemed equally overcome. The Emperor was at the summit of his ambitions. Europe lay at his feet. In 1552, with the suddenness of an earthquake, the Protestant princes of Germany burst into a carefully planned revolt.[15] Maurice, another member of the Saxon house, was their leader. Charles, caught unprepared, had to flee from Germany, crossing the Alps in a litter, while he groaned with gout. Henry of France, in alliance with the rebels, proclaimed himself "Defender of the Liberties of Germany," and invading the land, began seizing what cities and strong places he could. The princes, amazed at their own complete success, sent Henry word that their liberties were now fully secured, and he might desist. But he concluded to keep what he had won. So began the series of aggressions by which France gradually advanced her frontier to the Rhine. Charles returned with an army the next year, and made peace with his Germans, that he might turn all his fury against Henry, who had thus assumed his father's unforgotten quarrel. A mighty German army laid siege to Henry's most valuable bit of spoils, the strong city of Metz. But the young French nobles, under Francis, Duke of Guise, a new, great general who had risen to the help of France, threw themselves gallantly into the fortress for its defence. Cold, hunger, and pestilence wasted the imperial troops until--one can scarce say they raised the siege, they disappeared, those who did not die had slunk away in fear before the grisly death. Charles accepted his fate with bitter calm, commenting that he saw Fortune was indeed a woman, she deserted an aged emperor for a young king. The Emperor's life had failed. He had not the heart to begin his plots again. In 1555 he consented to the Peace of Augsburg,[16] which granted complete liberty of faith to the German princes, and so ended the first period of the Reformation. Religion, in this celebrated treaty, was still regarded as a matter in which only monarchs were to be considered. By a peculiar obliquity of vision, the princes denied to their subjects the very thing they demanded for themselves. Each ruler was allowed to establish what creed he chose within his own domains, and then to compel his subjects to accept it. The following year (1556) Charles with solemn ceremony resigned all his kingdoms--Austria and the Empire to his brother, Spain to his son the celebrated Philip II. Charles himself retired to a Spanish monastery, where two years later he died. He had found life a vanity, indeed. THE OTHER CONTINENTS Of the world of Asia during this time it scarce seems necessary to speak. The Tartars or Mongols, driven back from the borders of the Turkish empire, invaded India and there founded the Mongol or Mogul empire which Akbar pushed to its greatest extent.[17] These Moguls remained emperors of India until its conquest by the English, over two centuries later. Even to our own days their title has come down as a symbol of power, "the Great Mogul." Portuguese adventurers continued and expanded the trade with Asia, which Vasco da Gama had opened. The Spaniards also sought a share in it, and Jesuit missionaries preached the Christian faith. Magellan, a Portuguese but sailing in the service of Spain, was the first to fulfil the vision of Columbus and find the Indies by sailing westward.[18] He crossed the entire Atlantic and Pacific oceans, discovered the Philippine Islands, and was slain there by the natives. One of his ships completed the first circumnavigation of the globe. Look also to Spain's achievements in America, a new continent, but one already vastly important because of the broad empires Spaniards were winning there, the enormous wealth that was beginning to pour into the mother-country. Settlement had begun immediately on the discovery. Rich mines were opened and the Indians forced to work in them as slaves. As the unhappy aborigines perished by thousands under the unaccustomed toil, negroes were brought from Africa to supply their places, were driven like wild beasts to the labor.[19] The New World became more like a hell than like the paradise for which Isabella and Columbus planned. Cortés conquered Mexico,[20] rich with gold beyond all that Europe had even dreamed. Pizarro found in Peru[21] a civilization whose remarkable advance we are only lately beginning to realize. And he annihilated it--for gold. Lima was founded, and Buenos Aires, to be twice destroyed by Indians and yet become the metropolis of South America.[22] Even here extended the rivalry of the great European monarchs, Charles and Francis. Cartier, in the service of the latter, refused to acknowledge the claims of Spain to America, and exploring the St. Lawrence planned for France a colonial empire to match that of her enemy.[23] De Leon discovered Florida, and died while seeking there to emulate the successes of Cortés. De Soto discovered the Mississippi[24] and he also perished, lured on in the same knight-errant search for another golden empire to conquer. Who, having read the lives of such adventurers as these, shall ridicule the wildest extravagance in all the romances of chivalry? Wonderland grew real around these men. They achieved impossibilities. The maddest imaginings of the poets, the most fantastic tales of knightly wanderings and successes, seem slight beside the exploits of these daring, dauntless, heartless cavaliers of Spain. [FOR THE NEXT SECTION OF THIS GENERAL SURVEY SEE VOLUME X] FOOTNOTES: [1] See _Luther Begins the Reformation in Germany_, page 1. [2] See _The Field of the Cloth of Gold_, page 59. [3] See _Liberation of Sweden_, page 79. [4] See The Peasants' War in Germany, page 93. [5] See _France Loses Italy_, page 111. [6] See _Sack of Rome by the Imperial Troops_, page 124. [7] See _Great Religious Movement in England_, page 137. [8] See _England Breaks with the Roman Church_, page 203. [9] See _Calvin is Driven from Paris_, page 176. [10] See _Revolution of Astronomy by Copernicus_, page 285. [11] See _Founding of the Jesuits_, page 261. [12] See _Introduction of Christianity into Japan_, page 325. [13] See _Council of Trent_, page 293. [14] See _Protestant Struggle against Charles V_, page 313. [15] See _Collapse of the Power of Charles V_, page 337. [16] See _The Religious Peace of Augsburg_, page 348. [17] See _Akbar Establishes the Mogul Empire in India_, page 366. [18] See _First Circumnavigation of the Globe_, page 41. [19] See _Negro Slavery in America_, page 36. [20] See _Cortés Captures the City of Mexico_, page 72. [21] See _Pizarro Conquers Peru_, page 156. [22] See _Mendoza Settles Buenos Aires_, page 254. [23] See _Cartier Explores Canada_, page 236. [24] See _De Soto Discovers the Mississippi_, page 277. LUTHER BEGINS THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY A.D. 1517 JULIUS KOESTLIN JEAN M. V. AUDIN It has seldom happened that the story of one man was essentially the history of a great movement and of an epoch in human progress. In the case of Luther, a large part of the world regards his name as a historic epitome. The monk whose "words were half-battles," and whom Carlyle chose for his hero-priest, was chief among the reformers, and in the general view stands for the Reformation itself. But recognition of Luther's dominating position and representative character should not leave us blind to other factors in the religious revolution which was also an evolution, the achievement not of one man, but of advancing generations with many leaders. Luther had great helpers in his own time and great successors. He also had great predecessors. The Reformation was the religious development of the Renaissance; it had been heralded by Wycliffe, Huss, and Savonarola, and there were many minor prophets of a reformed church before the great German was born. Luther's Reformation was a revolt against the power and abuses of the Roman Catholic Church. It was directed against certain doctrines as well as certain practices, and especially against evils in the spiritual and temporal government of the Church. All the reformers aimed at freeing themselves from oppressive rule at Rome, and endeavored to establish a purer faith. The appeal to private judgment as against unquestioning belief was a natural result of the revival of learning as well as of spiritual quickening. Before Luther's time, however, such revolts against church authority had been quickly suppressed. It is also true that many abuses had been done away by reformation within the Church itself; and that, indeed, was what Luther at first intended. His movement became "too powerful to be put down, and its leaders soon passed beyond the point at which they were willing to reform the Church from within. Finding that the Church would not respond as quickly and as fully to their demands as they wished, they left the Church and attacked it from without." In Germany the administration of the Church had long caused discontent. Through Martin Luther this feeling found powerful utterance, and in him the demand for reforms became irresistibly urgent. Luther, the son of a poor miner, was born at Eisleben, Saxony, November 10, 1483. He became an Augustinian monk, in 1507 was consecrated a priest, and the next year was made professor of philosophy in the University of Wittenberg. In 1511 he visited Rome, and on his return to Wittenberg was made doctor of theology. He had already become known through the power and independence of his preaching. Although he went to Rome "an insane papist," as he said, and while he was still intensely devoted to the Church and its leaders, he made known his belief in what became the fundamental doctrines of Protestantism, exclusive authority of the Bible--implying the right of private judgment--and justification by faith. The immediate occasion of Luther's first great protest was the sale of indulgences by the Dominican monk John Tetzel. From early times the church authorities had granted indulgences or remissions of penances imposed on persons guilty of mortal sins, the condition being true penitence. At length the Church began to accept money, not in lieu of penitence, but of the customary penances which usually accompanied it. Before 1517 Luther had given warnings against the abuse of indulgences, without blaming the administration of the Church. But when in that year Tetzel approached the borders of Saxony selling indulgences in the name of the Pope, Leo X, who wanted money for the building of St. Peter's Church in Rome, Luther, with many of the better minds of Germany, was greatly offended by the vender's methods. Against the course of Tetzel Luther took a firm stand, and when the reformer posted his theses (summarized by Koestlin) on the church door at Wittenberg the first great movement of the Reformation in the sixteenth century was inaugurated. In accordance with the impartial plan of the present work regarding the treatment of controverted matters, it is here sought to satisfy the historic sense, which includes the sense of justice, by giving a presentation of each view of the story--the Protestant by Koestlin, the Catholic by Jean M. V. Audin, whose _Life of Luther_ has been called the "tribunal" before which the great reformer must be summoned for his answer. JULIUS KOESTLIN Luther longed now to make known to theologians and ecclesiastics generally his thoughts about indulgences, his own principles, his own opinions and doubts, to excite public discussion on the subject, and to awake and maintain the fray. This he did by the ninety-five Latin theses or propositions which he posted on the doors of the Castle Church at Wittenberg on October 31, 1517, the eve of All Saints' Day and of the anniversary of the consecration of the church. These theses were intended as a challenge for disputation. Such public disputations were then very common at the universities and among theologians, and they were meant to serve as means not only of exercising learned thought, but of elucidating the truth. Luther headed his theses as follows: "_Disputation to Explain the Virtue of Indulgences._--In charity, and in the endeavor to bring the truth to light, a disputation on the following propositions will be held at Wittenberg, presided over by the Reverend Father Martin Luther. Those who are unable to attend personally may discuss the question with us by letter. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen." It was in accordance with the general custom of that time that, on the occasion of a high festival, particular acts and announcements, and likewise disputations at a university, were arranged, and the doors of a collegiate church were used for posting such notices. The contents of these theses show that their author really had such a disputation in view. He was resolved to defend with all his might certain fundamental truths to which he firmly adhered. Some points he considered still within the region of dispute; it was his wish and object to make these clear to himself by arguing about them with others. Recognizing the connection between the system of indulgences and the view of penance entertained by the Church, he starts with considering the nature of true Christian repentance; but he would have this understood in the sense and spirit taught by Christ and the Scriptures. He begins with the thesis: "Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, when he says repent, desires that the whole life of the believer should be one of repentance." He means, as the subsequent theses express it, that true inward repentance, that sorrow for sin and hatred of one's own sinful self, from which must proceed good works and mortification of the sinful flesh. The pope could only remit his sin to the penitent so far as to declare that God had forgiven it. Thus then the theses expressly declare that God forgives no man his sin without making him submit himself in humility to the priest who represents him, and that he recognizes the punishments enjoined by the Church in her outward sacrament of penance. But Luther's leading principles are consistently opposed to the customary announcements of indulgences by the Church. The pope, he holds, can only grant indulgences for what the pope and the law of the Church have imposed; nay, the pope himself means absolution from these obligations only, when he promises absolution from all punishment. And it is only the living against whom those punishments are directed which the Church's discipline of penance enjoins; nothing, according to her own laws, can be imposed upon those in another world. Further on Luther declares: "When true repentance is awakened in a man, full absolution from punishment and sin comes to him without any letters of indulgence." At the same time he says that such a man would willingly undergo self-imposed chastisement, nay, he would even seek and love it. Still, it is not the indulgences themselves, if understood in the right sense, that he wishes to be attacked, but the loose babble of those who sold them. Blessed, he says, be he who protests against this, but cursed be he who speaks against the truth of apostolic indulgences. He finds it difficult, however, to praise these to the people, and at the same time to teach them the true repentance of the heart. He would have them even taught that a Christian would do better by giving money to the poor than by spending it in buying indulgences, and that he who allows a poor man near him to starve draws down on himself, not indulgences, but the wrath of God. In sharp and scornful language he denounces the iniquitous trader in indulgences, and gives the Pope credit for the same abhorrence for the traffic that he felt himself. Christians must be told, he says, that, if the Pope only knew of it, he would rather see St. Peter's Church in ashes than have it built with the flesh and bones of his sheep. Agreeably with what the preceding theses had said about the true penitent's earnestness and willingness to suffer, and the temptation offered to a mere carnal sense of security, Luther concludes as follows: "Away therefore with all those prophets who say to Christ's people 'Peace, peace!' when there is no peace, but welcome to all those who bid them seek the Cross of Christ, not the cross which bears the papal arms. Christians must be admonished to follow Christ their Master through torture, death, and hell, and thus through much tribulation, rather than, by a carnal feeling of false security, hope to enter the kingdom of heaven." The Catholics objected to this doctrine of salvation advanced by Luther that, by trusting to God's free mercy, and by undervaluing good works, it led to moral indolence. But, on the contrary, it was to the very unbending moral earnestness of a Christian conscience, which, indignant at the temptations offered to moral frivolity, to a deceitful feeling of ease in respect to sin and guilt, and to a contempt of the fruits of true morality, rebelled against the false value attached to this indulgence money, that these theses, the germ, so to speak, of the Reformation, owed their origin and prosecution. With the same earnestness he now for the first time publicly attacked the ecclesiastical power of the papacy, in so far namely as, in his conviction, it invaded the territory reserved to himself by the heavenly Lord and Judge. This was what the Pope and his theologians and ecclesiastics could least of all endure. On the same day that these theses were published, Luther sent a copy of them with a letter to the archbishop Albert, his "revered and gracious lord and shepherd in Christ." After a humble introduction, he begged him most earnestly to prevent the scandalizing and iniquitous harangues with which his agents hawked about their indulgences, and reminded him that he would have to give an account of the souls intrusted to his episcopal care. The next day he addressed himself to the people from the pulpit in a sermon he had to preach on the festival of All Saints. After exhorting them to seek their salvation in God and Christ alone, and to let the consecration by the Church become a real consecration of the heart, he went on to tell them plainly, with regard to indulgences, that he could only absolve from duties imposed by the Church, and that they dare not rely on him for more, nor delay on his account the duties of true repentance. Theologians before Luther, and with far more acuteness and penetration than he showed in his theses, had already assailed the whole system of indulgences. And, in regard to any idea on Luther's part of the effects of his theses extending widely in Germany, it may be noticed that not only were they composed in Latin, but that they dealt largely with scholastic expressions and ideas, which a layman would find it difficult to understand. Nevertheless the theses created a sensation which far surpassed Luther's expectations. In fourteen days, as he tells us, they ran through the whole of Germany, and were immediately translated and circulated in German. They found, indeed, the soil already prepared for them, through the indignation long since and generally aroused by the shameless doings they attacked; though till then nobody, as Luther expresses it, had liked to bell the cat, nobody had dared to expose himself to the blasphemous clamor of the indulgence-mongers and the monks who were in league with them, still less to the threatened charge of heresy. On the other hand, the very impunity with which this traffic in indulgences had been maintained throughout German Christendom had served to increase from day to day the audacity of its promoters. The task that Luther had now undertaken lay heavy upon his soul. He was sincerely anxious, while fighting for the truth, to remain at peace with his Church, and to serve her by the struggle. Pope Leo, on the contrary, as was consistent with his whole character, treated the matter at first very lightly, and, when it threatened to become dangerous, thought only how, by means of his papal power, to make the restless German monk harmless. Two expressions of his in these early days of the contest are recorded. "Brother Martin," he said, "is a man of a very fine genius, and this outbreak the mere squabble of envious monks;" and again, "It is a drunken German who has written the theses; he will think differently about them when sober." Three months after the theses had appeared, he ordered the vicar-general of the Augustinians to "quiet down the man," hoping still to extinguish easily the flame. The next step was to institute a tribunal for heretics at Rome for Luther's trial; what its judgment would be was patent from the fact that the single theologian of learning among the judges was Sylvester Prierias. Before this tribunal Luther was cited on August 7th; within sixty days he was to appear there at Rome. Friend and foe could well feel certain that they would look in vain for his return. Papal influence, meanwhile, had been brought to bear on the elector Frederick[25] to induce him not to take the part of Luther, and the chief agent chosen for working on the Elector and the emperor Maximilian was the papal legate, Cardinal Thomas Vio of Gaeta, called Cajetan, who had made his appearance in Germany. The University of Wittenberg, on the other hand, interposed on behalf of their member, whose theology was popular there, and whose biblical lectures attracted crowds of enthusiastic hearers. He had just been joined at Wittenberg by his fellow-professor Philip Melanchthon, then only twenty-one years old, but already in the first rank of Greek scholars, and the bond of friendship was now formed which lasted through their lives. The university claimed that Luther should at least be tried in Germany. Luther expressed the same wish through Spalatin[26] to his sovereign. The Pope meanwhile had passed from his previous state of haughty complacency to one of violent haste. Already, on August 23d, thus long before the sixty days had expired, he demanded the Elector to deliver up this "child of the devil," who boasted of his protection, to the legate, to bring away with him. This is clearly shown by two private briefs from the Pope, of August 23d and 25th, the one addressed to the legate, the other to the head of all the Augustinian convents in Saxony, as distinguished from the vicar of those congregations, Staupitz, who already was looked on with suspicion at Rome. These briefs instructed both men to hasten the arrest of the heretic; his adherents were to be secured with him, and every place where he was tolerated laid under the interdict. In the summer of 1518 a diet was held at Augsburg at which the papal legate attended. The Pope was anxious to obtain its consent to the imposition of a heavy tax throughout the empire, to be applied ostensibly for the war against the Turks, but alleged to be wanted in reality for entirely other objects. The demand for a tax, however, was received with the utmost disfavor both by the diet and the empire; and a long-cherished bitterness of feeling now found expression. An anonymous pamphlet was circulated, from the pen of one Fischer, a prebendary of Wuerzburg, which bluntly declared that the avaricious lords of Rome only wished to cheat the "drunken Germans," and that the real Turks were to be looked for in Italy. This pamphlet reached Wittenberg and fell into the hands of Luther, whom now for the first time we hear denouncing "Roman cunning," though he only charged the Pope himself with allowing his grasping Florentine relations to deceive him. The diet seized the opportunity offered by this demand for a tax, to bring up a whole list of old grievances; the large sums drawn from German benefices by the Pope under the name of annates, or extorted under other pretexts; the illegal usurpation of ecclesiastical patronage in Germany; the constant infringement of concordats, and so on. The demand itself was refused; and in addition to this, an address was presented to the diet from the bishop and clergy of Liège, inveighing against the lying, thieving, avaricious conduct of the Romish minions, in such sharp and violent tones that Luther, on reading it afterward when printed, thought it only a hoax, and not really an episcopal remonstrance. This was reason enough why Cajetan, to avoid increasing the excitement, should not attempt to lay hands on the Wittenberg opponent of indulgences. The elector Frederick, from whose hands Cajetan would have to demand Luther, was one of the most powerful and personally respected princes of the empire, and his influence was especially important in view of the election of a new emperor. This Prince went now in person to Cajetan on Luther's behalf, and Cajetan promised him, at the very time that the brief was on its way to him from Rome, that he would hear Luther at Augsburg, treat him with fatherly kindness, and let him depart in safety. Luther accordingly was sent to Augsburg. It was an anxious time for himself and his friends when he had to leave for that distant place, where the Elector, with all his care, could not employ any physical means for his protection, and to stand accused as a heretic before that papal legate who, from his own theological principles, was bound to condemn him. "My thoughts on the way," said Luther afterward, "were now I must die; and I often lamented the disgrace I should be to my dear parents." He went thither in humble garb and manner. He made his way on foot till within a short distance of Augsburg, when illness and weakness overcame him, and he was forced to proceed by carriage. Another younger monk of Wittenberg accompanied him, his pupil Leonard Baier. At Nuremberg he was joined by his friend Link, who held an appointment there as preacher. From him he borrowed a monk's frock, his own being too bad for Augsburg. He arrived here on October 7th. The surroundings he now entered, and the proceedings impending over him, were wholly novel and unaccustomed. But he met with men who received him with kindness and consideration; several of them were gentlemen of Augsburg favorable to him, especially the respected patrician, Dr. Conrad Peutinger, and two counsellors of the Elector. They advised him to behave with prudence, and to observe carefully all the necessary forms to which as yet he was a stranger. Luther at once announced his arrival to Cajetan, who was anxious to receive him without delay. His friends, however, kept him back until they had obtained a written safe-conduct from the Emperor, who was then hunting in the environs. In the mean time a distinguished friend of Cajetan, one Urbanus of Serralonga, tried to persuade him, in a flippant and, as Luther thought, a downright Italian manner, to come forward and simply pronounce six letters--"_Revoco_" ("I retract"). Urbanus asked him with a smile if he thought his sovereign would risk his country for his sake. "God forbid!" answered Luther. "Where then do you mean to take refuge?" he went on to ask him. "Under heaven," was Luther's reply. On October 11th Luther received the letter of safe-conduct, and the next day he appeared before Cajetan. Humbly, as he had been advised, he prostrated himself before the representative of the Pope, who received him graciously and bade him rise. The Cardinal addressed him civilly and with a courtesy Luther was not accustomed to meet with from his opponents; but he immediately demanded him, in the name and by command of the Pope, to retract his errors, and promise in future to abstain from them and from everything that might disturb the peace of the Church. He pointed out, in particular, two errors in his theses; namely, that the Church's treasure of indulgences did not consist of the merits of Christ, and that faith on the part of the recipient was necessary for the efficacy of the sacrament. With respect to the second point, the religious principles upon which Luther based his doctrine were altogether strange and unintelligible to the scholastic standpoint of Cajetan; mere tittering and laughter followed Luther's observations, and he was required to retract this thesis unconditionally. The first point settled the question of papal authority. The Cardinal-legate could not believe that Luther would venture to resist a papal bull, and thought he had probably not read it. He read him a vigorous lecture of his own on the paramount authority of the pope over council, Church, and Scripture. As to any argument, however, about the theses to be retracted, Cajetan refused from the first to engage in it, and undoubtedly he went further in that direction than he originally desired or intended. His sole wish was, as he said, to give fatherly correction, and with fatherly friendliness to arrange the matter. But in reality, says Luther, it was a blunt, naked, unyielding display of power. Luther could only beg from him further time for consideration. Luther's friends at Augsburg, and Staupitz, who had just arrived there, now attempted to divert the course of these proceedings, to collect other decisions of importance bearing on the subject, and to give him the opportunity of a public vindication. Accompanied therefore by several jurists friendly to his cause, and by a notary and Staupitz, he laid before the legate next day a short and formal statement of defence. He could not retract unless convicted of error, and to all that he had said he must hold as being Catholic truth. Nevertheless he was only human, and therefore fallible, and he was willing to submit to a legitimate decision of the Church. He offered, at the same time, publicly to justify his theses, and he was ready to hear the judgment of the learned doctors of Basel, Freiburg, Louvain, and even Paris upon them. Cajetan with a smile dismissed Luther and his proposals, but consented to receive a more detailed reply in writing to the principal points discussed the previous day. On the morrow, October 14th, Luther brought his reply to the legate. But in this document also he insisted clearly and resolutely from the commencement on those very principles which his opponents regarded as destructive of all ecclesiastical authority and of the foundations of Christian belief. Still he entreated Cajetan to intercede with Leo X, that the latter might not harshly thrust out into darkness his soul, which was seeking for the light. But he repeated that he could do nothing against his conscience: one must obey God rather than man, and he had the fullest confidence that he had Scripture on his side. Cajetan, to whom he delivered this reply in person, once more tried to persuade him. They fell into a lively and vehement argument; but Cajetan cut it short with the exclamation, "Revoke." In the event of Luther not revoking or submitting to judgment at Rome, he threatened him and all his friends with excommunication, and whatever place he might go to with an interdict; he had a mandate from the Pope to that effect already in his hands. He then dismissed him with the words, "Revoke, or do not come again into my presence." Nevertheless he spoke in quite a friendly manner after this to Staupitz, urging him to try his best to convert Luther, whom he wished well. Luther, however, wrote the same day to his friend Spalatin, who was with the Elector, and to his friends at Wittenberg, telling them he had refused to yield. Luther added further that an appeal would be drawn up for him in the form best fitted to the occasion. He further hinted to his Wittenberg friends at the possibility of his having to go elsewhere in exile; indeed, his friends already thought of taking him to Paris, where the university still rejected the doctrine of papal absolutism. He concluded this letter by saying that he refused to become a heretic by denying that which had made him a Christian; sooner than do that, he would be burned, exiled, or cursed. The appeal, of which Luther here spoke, was "from the Pope ill-informed to the same when better informed." On October 16th he submitted it, formally prepared, to a public notary. Luther even addressed, on October 17th, a letter to Cajetan, conceding to him the utmost he thought possible. Moved, as he said, by the persuasions of his dear father Staupitz and his brother Link, he offered to let the whole question of indulgences rest, if only that which drove him to this tragedy were put a stop to; he confessed also to having been too violent and disrespectful in dispute. In after-years he said to his friends, when referring to this concession, that God had never allowed him to sink deeper than when he had yielded so much. The next day, however, he gave notice of his appeal to the legate, and told him he did not wish longer to waste his time in Augsburg. To this letter he received no answer. Luther waited, however, till the 20th. He and his Augsburg patrons began to suspect whether measures had not already been taken to detain him. They therefore had a small gate in the city wall opened in the night, and sent with him an escort well acquainted with the road. Thus he hastened away, as he himself described it, on a hard-trotting hack, in a simple monk's frock, with only knee-breeches, without boots or spurs, and unarmed. On the first day he rode eight miles, as far as the little town of Monheim. As he entered in the evening an inn and dismounted in the stable, he was unable to stand from fatigue and fell down instantly among the straw. He travelled thus on horseback to Wittenberg, where he arrived, well and joyful, on the anniversary of his ninety-five theses. He had heard on the way of the Pope's brief to Cajetan, but he refused to think it could be genuine. His appeal, meanwhile, was delivered to the Cardinal at Augsburg, who had it posted by his notary on the doors of the cathedral. Without waiting for an answer direct from Rome, Luther now abandoned all thoughts of success with Leo X. On November 28th he formally and solemnly appealed from the Pope to a general Christian council. By so doing he anticipated the sentence of excommunication which he was daily expecting. With Rome he had broken forever, unless she were to surrender her claims and acquisitions of more than a thousand years. After once the first restraints of awe were removed with which Luther had regarded the papacy, behind and beyond the matter of the indulgences, and he had learned to know the papal representative at Augsburg, and made a stand against his demands and menaces, and escaped from his dangerous clutches, he enjoyed for the first time the fearless consciousness of freedom. He took a wider survey around him, and saw plainly the deep corruption and ungodliness of the powers arrayed against him. His mind was impelled forward with more energy as his spirit for the fight was stirred within him. Even the prospect that he might have to fly, and the uncertainty whither his flight could be, did not daunt or deter him. He was really prepared for exile or flight at any moment. At Wittenberg his friends were alarmed by rumors of designs on the part of the Pope against his life and liberty, and insisted on his being placed in safety. Flight to France was continually talked of; had he not followed in his appeal a precedent set by the University of Paris? We certainly cannot see how he could safely have been conveyed thither, or where, indeed, any other and safer place could have been found for him. Some urged that the Elector himself should take him into custody and keep him in a place of safety, and then write to the legate that he held him securely in confinement and was in future responsible for him. Luther proposed this to Spalatin, and added: "I leave the decision of this matter to your discretion; I am in the hands of God and of my friends." The Elector himself, anxious also in this respect, arranged early in December a confidential interview between Luther and Spalatin at the castle of Lichtenberg. He also, as Luther reported to Staupitz, wished that Luther had some other place to be in, but he advised him against going away so hastily to France. His own wish and counsel, however, he refrained as yet from making known. Luther declared that at all events, if a ban of excommunication were to come from Rome, he would not remain longer at Wittenberg. On this point also the Prince kept secret his resolve. At Rome the bull of excommunication was published as early as June 16th. It had been considered very carefully in the papal consistory. The jurists there were of opinion that Luther should be cited once more, but their views did not prevail. The bull begins with the words, "Arise, O Lord, and avenge thy cause." It proceeds to invoke St. Peter, St. Paul, the whole body of the saints, and the Church. A wild boar had broken into the vineyard of the Lord, a wild beast was there seeking to devour, etc. Of the heresy against which it was directed, the Pope, as he states, had additional reason to complain, since the Germans, among whom it had broken out, had always been regarded by him with such tender affection: he gives them to understand that they owed the empire to the Roman Church. Forty-one propositions from Luther's writings are then rejected and condemned as heretical, or at least scandalous and corrupting, and his works collectively are sentenced to be burned. As to Luther himself, the Pope calls God to witness that he has neglected no means of fatherly love to bring him into the right way. Even now he is ready to follow toward him the example of divine mercy which wills not the death of a sinner, but that he should be converted and live; and so once more he calls upon him to repent, in which case he will receive him graciously like the prodigal son. Sixty days are given him to recant. But if he and his adherents will not repent, they are to be regarded as obstinate heretics and withered branches of the vine of Christ, and must be punished according to law. No doubt the punishment of burning was meant; the bull in fact expressly condemns the proposition of Luther which denounces the burning of heretics. All this was called then at Rome, and has been called even latterly by the papal party, "the tone rather of fatherly sorrow than of penal severity." The emperor Charles V, before leaving the Netherlands on his journey to Aix-la-Chapelle to be crowned (1520),[27] had already been induced to take his first step against Luther. He had consented to the execution of the sentence in the bull condemning Luther's works to be burned, and had issued orders to that effect throughout the Netherlands. They were burned in public at Louvain, Cologne, and Mainz. At Cologne this was done while he was staying there. It was in this town that the two legates approached the elector Frederick with the demand to have the same done in his territory, and to execute due punishment on the heretic himself, or at least to keep him close prisoner or to deliver him over to the Pope. Frederick, however, refused, saying that Luther must first be heard by impartial judges. Erasmus also, who was then staying at Cologne, expressed himself to the same effect, in an opinion obtained from him by Frederick through Spalatin. At an interview with the Elector he said to him: "Luther has committed two great faults: he has touched the Pope on his crown and the monks on their bellies." The burning of Luther's books at Mainz was effected without hinderance, and the legates in triumph proceeded to carry out their mission elsewhere. Luther, however, lost no time in following up their execution of the bull with his reply. On December 10th he posted a public announcement that the next morning, at nine o'clock, the anti-Christian decretals, that is, the papal law-books, would be burned, and he invited all the Wittenberg students to attend. He chose for this purpose a spot in front of the Elster gate, to the east of the town, near the Augustinian convent. A multitude poured forth to the scene. With Luther appeared a number of other doctors and masters, and among them Melanchthon and Carlstadt. After one of the masters of art had built up a pile, Luther laid the decretals upon it, and the former applied the fire. Luther then threw the papal bull into the flames, with the words, "Because thou hast vexed the Holy One of the Lord,[28] let the everlasting fire consume thee." While Luther with the other teachers returned to the town, some hundreds of students remained upon the scene and sang a _Te Deum_, and a Dirge for the decretals. After the ten o'clock meal, some of the young students, grotesquely attired, drove through the town in a large carriage, with a banner, emblazoned with a bull, four yards in length, amid the blowing of brass trumpets and other absurdities. They collected from all quarters a mass of scholastic and papal writings, and hastened with them and the bull to the pile, which their companions had meanwhile kept alight. Another _Te Deum_ was then sung, with a requiem, and the hymn, "_O du armer Judas_." Luther at his lecture the next day told his hearers with great earnestness and emotion what he had done. The papal chair, he said, would yet have to be burned. Unless with all their hearts they abjured the kingdom of the pope, they could not obtain salvation. By this bold act, Luther consummated his final rupture with the papal system, which for centuries had dominated the Christian world and had identified itself with Christianity. The news of it must also have made the fire which his words had kindled throughout Germany blaze out in all its violence. He saw now, as he wrote to Staupitz, a storm raging, such as only the last day could allay, so fiercely were passions aroused on both sides. Germany was then, in fact, in a state of excitement and tension more critical than at any other period of her history. The announcement of the retractation required from Luther by the bull was to have been sent to Rome within one hundred twenty days. Luther had given his answer. The Pope declared that the time of grace had expired; and on January 3d Leo X finally pronounced the ban against Luther and his followers, and an interdict on the places where they were harbored. Never did the most momentous issue in the fortunes of the German nation and church rest so entirely with one man as they did now with the Emperor. Everything depended on this whether he, as head of the empire, should take the great work in hand, or should fling his authority and might into the opposite scale. Charles had been welcomed in Germany as one whose youthful heart seemed likely to respond to the newly awakened life and aspirations, as the son of an old German princely family, who by his election as emperor had won a triumph over the foreign king Francis, supported though the latter was by the Pope. Rumor now alleged that he was in the hands of the Mendicant friars; the Franciscan Glapio was his confessor and influential adviser, the very man who had instigated the burning of Luther's works. He was, however, by no means so dependent on those about him as might have been supposed. His counsellors, in the general interests of his government, pursued an independent line of policy, and Charles himself, even in these his youthful days, knew to assert his independence as a monarch and display his cleverness as a statesman. He saw the prudence of cultivating friendship and contracting if possible an alliance with the Pope. The pressure desirable for this purpose could now be supplied by means of the very danger with which the papacy was threatened by the great German heresy, and against which Rome so sorely needed the aid of a temporal power. At the same time, Charles was far too astute to allow his regard for the Pope, and his desire for the unity of the Church, to entangle his policy in measures for which his own power was inadequate, or by which his authority might be shaken and possibly destroyed. Strengthened as was his monarchical power in Spain, in Germany he found it hemmed in and fettered by the estates of the empire and the whole contexture of political relations. Such were the main points of view which determined for Charles V his conduct toward Luther and his cause. Luther thus was at least a passive sharer in the game of high policy, ecclesiastical and temporal, now being played, and had to pursue his own course accordingly. The imperial court was quickly enough acquainted with the state of feeling in Germany. The Emperor showed himself prudent at this juncture, and accessible to opinions differing from his own, however small cause his proclamations gave to the friends of Luther to hope for any positive act of favor on his part. While Charles was on his way up the Rhine to hold, at the beginning of the new year, a diet at Worms, the elector Frederick approached him with the request that Luther should at least be heard before the Emperor took any proceedings against him. The Emperor informed him in reply that he might bring Luther for this purpose to Worms, promising that the monk should not be molested. The Emperor, on March 6th, issued a citation to Luther, summoning him to Worms to give "information concerning his doctrines and books." An imperial herald was sent to conduct him. In the event of his disobeying the citation, or refusing to retract, the estates declared their consent to treat him as an open heretic. Luther, therefore, had to renounce at once all hope of having the truth touching his articles of faith tested fairly at Worms by the standard of God's word in Scripture. Spalatin indicated to him the points on which he would in any case be expected to make a public recantation. Luther formed his resolve at once on the two points required of him. He determined to obey the summons to the diet, and, if there unconvicted of error, to refuse the recantation demanded. The Emperor's citation was delivered to him on March 26th by the imperial herald, Kaspar Sturm, who was to accompany him to Worms. Within twenty-one days after its receipt, Luther was to appear before the Emperor; he was due therefore at Worms on April 16th at the latest. On April 2d, the Tuesday after Easter, he set out on his way to Worms. His friend Amsdorf and the Pomeranian nobleman Peter Swaven, who was then studying at Wittenberg, accompanied him. He took with him also, according to the rules of the order, a brother of the order, John Pezensteiner. The Wittenberg magistracy provided carriages and horses. The way led past Leipzig, through Thuringia from Naumburg to Eisenach, southward past Berka, Hersfeld, Gruenberg, Friedberg, Frankfort, and Oppenheim. The herald rode on before in his coat-of-arms, and announced the man whose word had everywhere so mightily stirred the minds of people, and for whose future behavior and fate friend and foe were alike anxious. Everywhere people collected to catch a glimpse of him. On April 6th he was very solemnly received at Erfurt. The large majority of the university there were by this time full of enthusiasm for his cause. Meanwhile at Worms disquietude and suspense prevailed on both sides. Hutten[29] from the castle of Ebernburg sent threatening and angry letters to the papal legates, who became really anxious lest a blow might be struck from that quarter. Some anxious friends of Luther's were afraid that, according to papal law, the safe-conduct would not be observed in the case of a condemned heretic. Spalatin himself sent from Worms a second warning to Luther after he had left Frankfort, intimating that he would suffer the fate of Huss. But Luther continued on his way. To Spalatin he replied, though Huss were burned, yet the truth was not burned; he would go to Worms though there were as many devils there as there were tiles on the roofs of the houses. On April 16th, at ten o'clock in the morning, Luther entered Worms. He sat in an open carriage with his three companions from Wittenberg, clothed in his monk's habit. He was accompanied by a large number of men on horseback, some of whom, like Jonas, had joined him earlier in his journey; others, like some gentlemen belonging to the Elector's court, had ridden out from Worms to receive him. The imperial herald rode on before. The watchman blew a horn from the tower of the cathedral on seeing the procession approach the gate. Thousands streamed hither to see Luther. The gentlemen of the court escorted him into the house of the Knights of St. John, where he lodged with two counsellors of the Elector. As he stepped from his carriage he said, "God will be with me." Aleander, writing to Rome, said that he looked around with the eyes of a demon. Crowds of distinguished men, ecclesiastics and laymen, who were anxious to know him personally, flocked daily to see him. On the evening of the following day he had to appear before the diet, which was assembled in the Bishop's palace, the residence of the Emperor, not far from where Luther was lodging. He was conducted thither by side streets, it being impossible to get through the crowds assembled in the main thoroughfare to see him. On his way into the hall where the diet was assembled, tradition tells us how the famous warrior, George von Frundsberg, clapped him on the shoulder and said: "My poor monk! my poor monk! thou art on thy way to make such a stand as I and many of my knights have never done in our toughest battles. If thou art sure of the justice of thy cause, then forward in the name of God, and be of good courage--God will not forsake thee." The Elector had given Luther as his advocate the lawyer Jerome Schurf, his Wittenberg colleague and friend. When at length, after waiting two hours, Luther was admitted to the diet, Eck, the official of the Archbishop of Treves, put to him simply, in the name of the Emperor, two questions, whether he acknowledged the books--pointing to them on a bench beside him--to be his own, and next, whether he would retract their contents or persist in them. Schurf here exclaimed, "Let the titles of the books be named." Eck then read them out. Among them there were some merely edifying writings, such as _A Commentary on the Lord's Prayer_, which had never been made the subject of complaint. Luther was not prepared for this proceeding, and possibly the first sight of the august assembly made him nervous. He answered in a low voice, and as if frightened, that the books were his, but that since the question as to their contents concerned the highest of all things, the Word of God and the salvation of souls, he must beware of giving a rash answer, and must therefore humbly entreat further time for consideration. After a short deliberation the Emperor instructed Eck to reply that he would, out of his clemency, grant him a respite till the next day. So Luther had again, on April 18th, a Thursday, to appear before the diet. Again he had to wait two hours till six o'clock. He stood there in the hall among the dense crowd, talking unconstrained and cheerfully with the ambassador of the diet, Peutinger, his patron at Augsburg. After he was called in, Eck began by reproaching him for having wanted time for consideration. He then put the second question to him in a form more befitting and more conformable with the wishes of the members of the diet: "Wilt thou defend _all_ the books acknowledged by thee to be thine, or recant some part?" Luther now answered with firmness and modesty, in a well-considered speech. He divided his works into three classes. In some of them he had set forth simple evangelical truths, professed alike by friend and foe. Those he could on no account retract. In others he had attacked corrupt laws and doctrines of the papacy, which no one could deny had miserably vexed and martyred the consciences of Christians, and had tyrannically devoured the property of the German nation: if he were to retract these books, he would make himself a cloak for wickedness and tyranny. In the third class of his books he had written against individuals who endeavored to shield that tyranny and to subvert godly doctrine. Against these he freely confessed that he had been more violent than was befitting. Yet even these writings it was impossible for him to retract without lending a hand to tyranny and godlessness. But in defence of his books he could only say in the words of the Lord Jesus Christ: "If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil; but if well, why smitest thou me?" If anyone could do so, let him produce his evidence and confute him from the sacred writings, the Old Testament and the Gospel, and he would be the first to throw his books into the fire. And now, as in the course of his speech he had sounded a new challenge to the papacy, so he concluded by an earnest warning to Emperor and empire, lest, by endeavoring to promote peace by a condemnation of the divine Word, they might rather bring a dreadful deluge of evils, and thus give an unhappy and inauspicious beginning to the reign of the noble young Emperor. He said not these things as if the great personages who heard him stood in any need of his admonitions, but because it was a duty that he owed to his native Germany, and he could not neglect to discharge it. Luther, like Eck, spoke in Latin, and then, by desire, repeated his speech with equal firmness in German. Schurf, who was standing by his side, declared afterward with pride, "how Martin had made this answer with such bravery and modest candor, with eyes upraised to heaven, that he and everyone were astonished." The princes held a short consultation after this harangue. Then Eck, commissioned by the Emperor, sharply reproved him for having spoken impertinently and not really answered the question put to him. He rejected his demand that evidence from Scripture might be brought against him by declaring that his heresies had already been condemned by the Church, and in particular by the Council of Constance, and such judgments must suffice if anything were to be held settled in Christianity. He promised him, however, if he would retract the offensive articles, that his other writings should be fairly dealt with, and finally demanded a plain answer "without horns" to the question whether he intended to adhere to all he had written or would retract any part of it? To this Luther replied he would give an answer "with neither horns nor teeth." Unless he were refuted by proofs from Scripture, or by evident reason, his conscience bound him to adhere to the Word of God which he had quoted in his defence. Popes and councils, as was clear, had often erred and contradicted themselves. He could not, therefore, and he would not, retreat anything, for it was neither safe nor honest to act against one's conscience. Eck exchanged only a few more words with him in reply to his assertion that councils had erred. "You cannot prove that," said Eck. "I will pledge myself to do it," was Luther's answer. Pressed and threatened by his enemy, he concluded with the famous words: "Here I stand, I can do no otherwise. God help me. Amen." The Emperor reluctantly broke up the diet at about eight o'clock in the evening. Darkness had meanwhile come on; the hall was lighted with torches, and the audience were in a state of general excitement and agitation. Luther was led out; whereupon an uproar arose among the Germans, who thought that he had been taken prisoner. As he stood among the heated crowd, Duke Erich of Brunswick sent him a silver tankard of Eimbeck beer, after having first drunk of it himself. On reaching his lodging, "Luther," to use the words of a Nuremberger present there, "stretched out his hands, and with a joyful countenance exclaimed, 'I am through! I am through!'" Spalatin says: "He entered the lodging so courageous, comforted, and joyful in the Lord that he said before others and myself, 'if he had a thousand heads, he would rather have them all cut off than make one recantation.'" He relates also how the elector Frederick, before his supper, sent for him from Luther's dwelling, took him into his room and expressed to him his astonishment and delight at Luther's speech. "How excellently did Father Martin speak both in Latin and German before the Emperor and the orders! He was bold enough, if not too much so." The Emperor, on the contrary, had been so little impressed by Luther's personality, and had understood so little of it, that he fancied the writings ascribed to him must have been written by someone else. Many of his Spaniards had pursued Luther, as he left the diet, with hisses and shouts of scorn. Luther, by refusing thus point-blank to retract, effectually destroyed whatever hopes of mediation or reconciliation had been entertained by the milder and more moderate adherents of the Church who still wished for reform. Nor was any union possible with those who, while looking to a truly representative council as the best safeguard against the tyranny of a pope, were anxious also to obtain at such a council a secure and final settlement of all questions of Christian faith and morals. It was these very councils about which Eck purposely called on Luther for a declaration; and Luther's words on this point might well have been considered by the Elector as "too bold." Luther remained faithful to himself. True it was that he had often formerly spoken of yielding in mere externals, and of the duty of living in love and harmony, and respecting the weaknesses of others; and his conduct during the elaboration of his own church system will show us how well he knew to accommodate himself to the time, and, where perfection was impossible, to be content with what was imperfect. But the question here was not about externals, or whether a given proceeding were judicious or not for the attainment of an object admittedly good. It was a question of confessing or denying the truth--the highest and holiest truths, as he expressed it--relating to God and the salvation of man. In this matter his conscience was bound. And the trial thus offered for his endurance was not yet over. On the morning of the 19th the Emperor sent word to the estates that he would now send Luther back in safety to Wittenberg, but treat him as a heretic. The majority insisted on attempting further negotiations with him through a committee specially appointed. These were conducted accordingly by the Elector of Treves. The friendliness and the visible interest in his cause with which Luther now was urged were more calculated to move him than Eck's behavior at the diet. He himself bore witness afterward how the Archbishop had shown himself more than gracious to him and would willingly have arranged matters peaceably. Instead of being urged simply to retract all his propositions condemned by the Pope, or his writings directed against the papacy, he was referred in particular to those articles in which he rejected the decisions of the Council of Constance. He was desired to submit in confidence to a verdict of the Emperor and the empire when his books should be submitted to judges beyond suspicion. After that he should at least accept the decision of a future council, unfettered by any acknowledgment of the previous sentence of the Pope. So freely and independently of the Pope did this committee of the German Diet, including several bishops and Duke George of Saxony, proceed in negotiating with a papal heretic. But everything was shipwrecked on Luther's firm reservation that the decision must not be contrary to the Word of God; and on that question his conscience would not allow him to renounce the right of judging for himself. After two days' negotiations, he thus, on April 25th, according to Spalatin, declared himself to the Archbishop: "Most gracious Lord, I cannot yield; it must happen with me as God wills," and continued: "I beg of your grace that you will obtain for me the gracious permission of his imperial majesty that I may go home again, for I have now been here for ten days and nothing yet has been effected." Three hours later the Emperor sent word to Luther that he might return to the place he came from, and should be given a safe-conduct for twenty-one days, but would not be allowed to preach on the way. Free residence, however, and protection at Wittenberg, in case Luther were condemned by the empire, was more than even Frederick the Wise would be able to assure him. But he had already laid his plan for the emergency. Spalatin refers to it in these words: "Now was my most gracious Lord somewhat disheartened; he was certainly fond of Dr. Martin, and was also most unwilling to act against the Word of God or to bring upon himself the displeasure of the Emperor. Accordingly, he devised means how to get Dr. Martin out of the way for a time, until matters might be quietly settled, and caused Luther also to be informed, the evening before he left Worms, of his scheme for getting him out of the way. At this Dr. Martin, out of deference to his Elector, was submissively content, though certainly, then and at all times, he would much rather have gone courageously to the attack." The very next morning, Friday, the 26th, Luther departed. The imperial herald went behind him, so as not to attract notice. They took the usual road to Eisenach. At Friedberg Luther dismissed the herald, giving him a letter to the Emperor and the estates, in which he defended his conduct at Worms, and his refusal to trust in the decision of men, by saying that when God's Word and things eternal were at stake, one's trust and dependence should be placed, not on one man or many men, but on God alone. At Hersfeld, where Abbot Crato, in spite of the ban, received him with all marks of honor, and again at Eisenach, he preached, notwithstanding the Emperor's prohibition, not daring to let the Word of God be bound. From Eisenach, while Swaven, Schurf, and several other of his companions went straight on, he struck southward, together with Amsdorf and Brother Pezensteiner, in order to go and see his relations at Moehra. Here, after spending the night at the house of his uncle Heinz, he preached the next morning, Saturday, May 4th. Then, accompanied by some of his relations, he took the road through Schweina, past the castle of Altenstein, and then across the back of the Thuringian Forest to Waltershausen and Gotha. Toward evening, when near Altenstein, he bade leave of his relations. About half an hour farther on, at a spot where the road enters the wooded heights, and, ascending between hills along a brook, leads to an old chapel, which even then was in ruins and has now quite disappeared, armed horsemen attacked the carriage, ordered it to stop with threats and curses, pulled Luther out of it, and then hurried him away at full speed. Pezensteiner had run away as soon as he saw them approach. Amsdorf and the coachman were allowed to pass on; the former was in the secret, and pretended to be terrified, to avoid any suspicion on the part of his companion. The Wartburg[30] lay to the north, about eight miles distant, and had been the starting-point of the horsemen, as it now was their goal; but precaution made them ride first in an eastern direction with Luther. The coachman afterward related how Luther in the haste of the flight dropped a gray hat he had worn. And now Luther was given a horse to ride. The night was dark, and at about eleven o'clock they arrived at the stately castle, situated above Eisenach. Here he was to be kept as a knight-prisoner. The secret was kept as strictly as possible toward friend and foe. For many weeks afterward even Frederick's brother John had no idea of it. Among his friends and followers the terrible news had spread, immediately upon his capture, that he had been made away with by his enemies. At Worms, however, while the Pope was concluding an alliance with Charles against France, the papal legate Aleander, by commission of the Emperor, prepared the edict against Luther on the 8th of May. It was not, however, until the 25th, after Frederick the Elector of the Palatinate and a great part of the other members of the diet had already left, that it was deemed advisable to have it communicated to the rest of the estates; nevertheless it was antedated the 8th, and issued "by the unanimous advice of the electors and estates." It pronounced upon Luther, applying the customary strong expressions of papal bulls, the ban and reban; no one was to receive him any longer, or feed him, etc., but wherever he was found he was to be seized and handed over to the Emperor. JEAN M. V. AUDIN The Reformation was a revolution, and they who rebelled against the authority of the Church were revolutionists. However slightly you look into the constitution of the Church, you will be convinced that the Reformation possessed the character of an insurrection. What is the meaning of this fine word, Reformation? Amelioration, doubtless. Well, then, with history before us, it is easy to show that it was only a prostration of the human mind. Glutted with the wealth of which it robbed the Catholics, and the blood which it shed, it gives us, instead of the harmony and Christian love of which it deprived our ancestors, nothing but dissensions, resentments, and discords. No, the Reformation was not an era of happiness and peace; it was only established by confusion and anarchy. Do you feel your heart beat at the mention of justice and truth? Acknowledge, then, what it is impossible to deny, that Luther must not be compared with the apostles. The apostles came teaching in the name of Jesus Christ their master, and the Catholics are entitled to ask us from whom Luther had his mission. We cannot prove that he had a mission direct or indirect. Luther perverted Christianity; he withdrew himself criminally from the communion in which regeneration alone was possible. It has been said that all Christendom demanded a reformation--who disputes it? But long before the time of Luther the papacy had listened to the complaints of the faithful. The Council of Lateran had been convened to put an end to the scandals which afflicted the Church. The papacy labored to restore the discipline of the early ages, in proportion as Europe, freed from the yoke of brute force, became politically organized and advanced with slow but sure step to civilization. Was it not at that time that the source of all religious truth was made accessible to scientific study, since, by means of the watchful protection of the papacy, the holy Scriptures were translated into every language? The New Testament of Erasmus, dedicated to Leo X, had preceded the quarrel about indulgences. A reformer should take care that, in his zeal to get rid of manifest abuses, he does not at the same time shake the faith and its wholesome institutions to the foundation. When the reformers violently separated themselves from the Church of Rome, they thought it necessary to reject every doctrine taught by her. Luther, that spirit of evil, who scattered gold with dirt, declared war against the institutions without which the Church could not exist; he destroyed unity. Who does not remember that exclamation of Melanchthon, "We have committed many errors, and have made good of evil without any necessity for it"? In justification of the brutal rupture of Germany with Rome, the scandals of the clergy are alleged. But if at the period of the Reformation there were priests and monks in Germany whose conduct was the cause of regret to Christians, their number was not larger than it had been previously. When Luther appeared, there was in Germany a great number of Catholic prelates whose piety the reformers themselves have not hesitated to admire. What pains they take to deceive us! In books of every size they teach us, even at the present day, that the beast, the man of sin, the creature of Babylon, are the names which God has given in his Scriptures to the pope and the papacy! Can it be imagined that Christ, who died for our sins, and saved us by his blood, would have suffered that for ten or twelve centuries his church should be guided by such an abominable wretch? that he would have allowed millions of his creatures to walk in the shadow of death? and that so many generations should have had no other pastor but Antichrist? Luther mistook the genius of Christianity in introducing a new principle into the world--the immediate authority of the Bible as the sole criterion of the truth. If tradition is to be rejected, it follows that the Bible cannot be authoritatively explained by acquired knowledge; in a word, human interpretation based upon its comprehensions of the Greek and Hebrew languages. So, by this theory, the palladium of orthodoxy is to be found in a knowledge of foreign tongues, and living authority is replaced by a dead letter; a slavery a thousand times more oppressive than the yoke of tradition. Has any dogmatist succeeded in drawing up a confession of faith by means of the Bible which could not be attacked by means of reason? This formula, that the Bible must be the "_unicum principium theologiæ_," is the source of contradictory doctrines in Protestant theology; hence this question arises: "What Protestant theology is there in which there are not errors more or less?" It was the Bible that inspired all the neologists of the sixteenth century; the Bible that they made use of to persecute and condemn themselves as heretics. When Luther maintained that the Bible contains the enunciation of all the truths of which a knowledge is necessary to salvation, and that no doctrine which is not distinctly laid down in the Bible can be regarded as an article of faith, he did not imagine that the time was at hand when everybody, from this very volume, would form a confession for himself, and reject all others which contradicted his individual creed. This necessity for inquiry so occupies the minds of men at the present day that the principal articles of the original creed are rejected by those who call themselves the disciples of Jesus. But what are we to understand by the Bible? The question was a difficult one to solve even at the beginning of the Reformation, when Luther, in his preface to the translation of the Bible, laid down a difference between the canonical books by preferring the gospel of St. John to the three other evangelists; by depreciating the Epistle of St. James as an epistle of straw, that contained nothing of the Gospel in it, and which an apostle could not have written, since it attributes to works a merit which they did not possess. It was in the Bible that Luther discovered these two great truths of salvation, which he revealed to the world at the beginning of his apostleship--_the slavery of man's will, and the impeccability of the believer_. It is said in Exodus, chapter ix, that God hardened the heart of Pharaoh. It was questioned whether these words were to be construed literally. This Erasmus rightly denied, and it roused the doctor's wrath. Luther, in his reply, furiously attacks the fools who, calling reason to their aid, dare call for an account from God why he condemns or predestines to damnation innocent beings before they have even seen the light. Truly, Luther, in the eyes of all God's creatures, must appear a prodigy of daring when he ventures to maintain that no one can reach heaven unless he adopts the slavery of the human will. And it is not merely by the spirit of disputation, but by settled conviction, that he defends this most odious of all ideas. He lived and died teaching that horrible doctrine, which the most illustrious of his disciples--among others, Melanchthon and Matthew Albert of Reutlingen--condemned. "How rich is the Christian!" repeated Luther; "even though he wished it, he cannot forfeit heaven by any stain; believe, then, and be assured of your salvation: God in eternity cannot escape you. Believe, and you shall be saved: repentance, confession, satisfaction, good works, all these are useless for salvation; it is sufficient to have faith." Is not this a fearful error--a desolating doctrine? If you demonstrate to Luther its danger or absurdity, he replies that you blaspheme the Spirit of light. Neither attempt to prove to him that he is mistaken; he will tell you that you offend God. No, no, my brother, you will never convince me that the Holy Spirit is confined to Wittenberg any more than to your person. Not content with maledictions, Luther then turns himself to prophecy; he announces that his doctrine, which proceeds from heaven, will gain, one by one, all the kingdoms of the world. He says of Zwingli's explanation of the eucharist, "I am not afraid of this fanatical interpretation lasting long." On the other hand Zwingli predicted that the Swiss creed would be handed down from generation to generation, crossing the Elbe and the Rhine. Prophet against prophet, if success be the test of truth, Luther will inevitably have to yield in this point. The Reformation, which at first was entirely a religious phenomenon, soon assumed a political character; it could not fail to do so. When people began to exclaim, like Luther, on the house-tops: "The Emperor Charles V ought not to be supported longer; let him and the Pope be knocked on the head;" that "he is an excited madman, a bloodhound, who must be killed with pikes and clubs," how could civil society continue subject to authority? It was natural that the monk's virulent writings against the bishops' spiritual power should be reduced by the subjects of the ecclesiastical superiors into a political theory. When he proclaimed that the yoke of priests and monks must be shaken off, we might expect that this wild appeal would be directed against the tithes which the people paid to the prelates and the abbots. The Saxon's doctrine being based wholly on the holy Scriptures, the peasant considered himself authorized in virtue of their text to break violently with his lord; hence that long war between the cottage and the castle. This it was that made Erasmus write sorrowfully to Luther: "You see that we are now reaping the fruits of what you sowed. You will not acknowledge the rebels; but they acknowledge you, and they know only too well that many of your disciples, who clothed themselves in the mantle of the Gospel, have been the instigators of this bloody rebellion. In your pamphlet against the peasants, you in vain endeavor to justify yourself. It is you who have raised the storm by your publications against the monks and the prelates, and you say that you fight for gospel liberty, and against the tyranny of the great! From the moment that you began your tragedy I foresaw the end of it." That civil war, in which Germany had to mourn the loss of more than a hundred thousand of her children, was the consequence of Luther's preaching. It is fortunate that, through the efforts of a Catholic prince, Duke George of Saxony, it was speedily brought to an end. Had it lasted but a few years longer, of all the ancient monuments with which Germany was filled, not a single vestige would have remained. Karlstadt might then have sat upon their ruins, and sung, with his Bible in his hand, the downfall of the images. The iconoclast's theories, all drawn from the Word of God, held their ground in spite of Luther, and dealt a fatal blow to the arts. When a gorgeous worship requires magnificent temples, imposing ceremonies, and striking solemnities; when religion presents to the eye sensible images as objects of public veneration; when earth and heaven are peopled with supernatural beings, to whom imagination can lend a sensible form--then it is that the arts, encouraged and ennobled, reach the zenith of their splendor and perfection. The architect, raised to honors and fortune, conceives the plans of those basilicas and cathedrals whose aspect strikes us with religious awe, and whose richly adorned walls are ornamented with the finest efforts of art. Those temples and altars are decorated with marbles and precious metals, which sculpture has fashioned into the similitude of angels, saints, and the images of illustrious men. The choirs, the jubes, the chapels, and sacristies are hung with pictures on all sides. Here Jesus expires on the cross; there he is transfigured on Mount Tabor. Art, the friend of imagination, which delights only in heaven, finds there the most sublime creations--a St. John, a Cecilia, above all a Mary, that patroness of tender hearts, that virgin model to all mothers, that mediatrix of graces, placed between man and his God, that august and amiable being, of whom no other religion presents either the resemblance or the model. During the solemnities, the most costly stuffs, precious stones, and embroidery cover the altars, vessels, priests, and even the very walls of the sanctuary. Music completes the charm by the most exquisite strains, by the harmony of the choir. These powerful incentives are repeated in a hundred different places; the metropolises, parishes, the numerous religious houses, the simple oratories, sparkle with emulation to captivate all the powers of the religious and devout mind. Thus a taste for the arts becomes general by means of so potent a lever, and artists increase in number and rivalry. Under this influence the celebrated schools of Italy and Flanders flourished; and the finest works which now remain to us testify the splendid encouragement which the Catholic religion lavished upon them. After this natural progress of events, it cannot be doubted that the Reformation has been unfavorable to the fine arts, and has very much restrained the exercise of them. It has severed the bonds which united them to religion, which sanctified them, and secured for them a place in the veneration of the people. The Protestant worship tends to disenchant the material imagination; it makes fine churches and statues and paintings unnecessary; it renders them unpopular, and takes from them one of their most active springs. The peasants' war was soon succeeded by the spoliation of the monasteries; "an invasion of the most sacred of all rights, more important, in certain respects, than liberty itself--property." From that time not a day passed without Luther preaching up the robbery of the religious houses. To excite the greed of the princes whom he wished to secure to his views, he loved to direct their attention to the treasures which the abbeys, cloisters, sacristies, and sanctuaries contained. "Take them," he said; "all these are your own--all belong to you." Luther was convinced that to the value of the golden remonstrances which shone on the Catholic altars he was indebted for more than one conversion. In a moment of humor he said: "The gentry and princes are the best Lutherans; they willingly accept both monasteries and chapters, and appropriate their treasures." The Landgrave of Hesse, to obtain authority for giving his arm to two lawful wives, took care to make the wealth of the monasteries glitter in the eyes of the Church of Wittenberg, so that as the price of their permission he was willing to give it to the Saxon ministers. The plunder of church property, preached by Luther, will be the eternal condemnation of the Protestants. Though Naboth's vineyard may serve as a bait or reward for apostasy, it cannot justify crime. A laureate of the Institute of France has discovered grounds for palliating this blow to property. He congratulates the princes who embraced the Reformation for having, by means of the ecclesiastical property, filled their coffers, paid their debts, applied the confiscated wealth to useful establishments, clubs, universities, hospitals, orphanages, retreats, and rewards for the old servants of the state. But Luther himself took care, on more than one occasion, to denounce the avarice of the princes who, when once masters of the monastic property, employed its revenues for the support of mistresses and packs of hounds. We remember the eloquent complaints which he uttered in his old age against these carnal men, who left the Protestant clergy in destitution, and did not even pay the schoolmasters their salaries. He mourned them, but it was too late. Sometimes the chastisement of heaven fell, even in this life, on the spoiler; and Luther has mentioned instances of several of those iron hands, who, after having enriched themselves by the plunder of a monastery, church, or abbey, fell into abject poverty. Besides, we will admit that Luther never thought of consoling the plundered monks by asserting, like Charles Villers, that "one of the finest effects of these terrible commotions which unsettle all properties, the fruits of social institutions, is to substitute for them greatness of mind, virtues, and talents, the fruits of nature exclusively." If the triumph of the peasants in the fields of Thuringia might have been an irreparable misfortune to Germany and to Christianity, we cannot deny that Luther's appeal to the secular arm, to suppress the rebellion, may have thoroughly altered the character of the first Reformation. Till then it had been established by preaching; but from the moment of that bloody episode it required the civil authority to move it. The sword, therefore, took the place of the Word; and to perpetuate itself the Reformation was bound to exaggerate the theory of passive obedience. One of the distinguished historians of Heidelberg, Carl Hagen, has recently favored us with some portions of the political code in which Protestantism commands subjects to be obedient to the civil power, even when it commands them to commit sin. Thus the democratic element, first developed by the Reformation, was effaced to become absorbed in the despotic. It was no longer the people, but the prince, who chose or rejected the Protestant minister. When the Landgrave of Hesse consulted Melanchthon, in 1525, as to the line he should pursue in the appointment of a pastor, the doctor told him that he had the right to interfere in the election of the ministers, and that, if he surmounted the struggles in which the Word of God had involved him, he ought not to commit that sacred Word but to such preacher as seemed best to him; in other terms, observes the historian, to him whom the civil power thinks competent. And Martin Bucer contrived to extend Melanchthon's theory by constituting the civil power supreme judge of religious orthodoxy, by conferring on it the right of ultimate decision in questions of heresy, and of punishing, if necessary by fire and sword innovators, who are a thousand times more culpable, he says, than the robber or murderer, who only steal the material bread and slay the body, while the heretic steals the bread of life and kills the soul. Intolerance then entered into the councils of the Reformation. It was no longer with the peasants that Luther declared war. Whoever did not believe in his doctrines was denounced as a rebel; in the Saxon's eyes, the peasant was only an enemy to be despised; the real Satan was Karlstadt, Zwingli, and Krautwald. His disciples were no longer satisfied with plundering the monasteries--they desired to live in ease; they must have servants, a fine house, a well-supplied table, and plenty of money. The struggle then was no longer with piety and knowledge, but with power and influence. Every city and town had its own Lutheran pope. At Nuremberg, Osiander was a regular pacha. Those who among the Protestants endeavored to reprove his scandalous ostentation were abused and maligned. When he ascended the pulpit, his fingers were adorned with diamonds which dazzled the eyes of his hearers. The religious disputes which disturbed men's minds in Germany retarded, rather than advanced, the march of intellect. Blind people who fought furiously with each other could not find the road to truth. These quarrels were only another disease of the human mind. Although printing served to disseminate the principles of the reformers, the sudden progress of Lutheranism, and the zeal with which it was embraced, prove that reason and reflection had no part in their development. Villers has drawn a brilliant sketch of the influence which the Reformation exercised over biblical criticism. "It may be said that criticism of the Scripture text was unknown previous to the time of Luther; and if by this is meant that captious, whimsical, and shuffling criticism which DeWette has so justly condemned--certainly so. But that which relates to languages, antiquities, the knowledge of times, places, authors--in a word, hermeneutics--was known and practised in our schools before the Reformation, as is proved by the works of Cajetan and Sadoletus, and a multitude of learned men whom Leo X had encouraged and rewarded. We have seen besides, in the history of the Reformation, what that vain science has produced. It was by means of his critical researches that, from the time of Luther, Karlstadt found such a meaning of '_Semen immolare Moloch_,' as made his disciples shrug their shoulders; that Muenzer preached community of goods and wives; that Melanchthon taught that the dogma of the Trinity deprives our mind of all liberty; that at a later period Ammon asserted that the resurrection of the dead could not be deduced from the New Testament; Veter, that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses; that the history of the Jews to the time of the Judges is only a popular tradition; Bretschneider, that the Psalms cannot be looked upon as inspired; Augusti, that the true doctrine of Jesus Christ has not been preserved intact in the New Testament; and Geisse, that not one of the four gospels was written by the evangelist whose name it bears. "Since the days of Semler, Germany presents a singular spectacle: every ten years, or nearly so, its theological literature undergoes a complete revolution. What was admired during the one decennial period is rejected in the next, and the image which they adored is burned to make way for new divinities; the dogmas which were held in honor fall into discredit; the classical treatise of morality is banished among the old books out of date; criticism overturns criticism; and the commentary of yesterday ridicules that of the previous day." FOOTNOTES: [25] Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, was Luther's friend and protector. [26] Georg Spalatin, a friend and fellow-reformer of Luther's, was in the diplomatic service of Elector Frederick. [27] Charles, the grandson of Maximilian I, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, succeeded him 1519. At the time of his coronation Charles was but twenty years old. He was also King of Spain.--ED. [28] It is obvious that he refers to Christ, who is spoken of in Scripture as the Holy One of God (St. Mark i. 24; Acts ii. 27), not, as ignorance and malice have suggested, to himself. [29] Ulrich von Hutten was a friend and supporter of Luther. [30] In 1521-1522 Frederick the Wise gave Luther asylum in the Wartburg, where for ten months the reformer remained in disguise as "Junker Georg." His room, with its furniture, is still preserved. NEGRO SLAVERY IN AMERICA ITS INTRODUCTION BY LAW A.D. 1517 SIR ARTHUR HELPS In 1442 the first negro slaves were imported into Europe. They were taken from Africa to Portugal in ships of Prince Henry, the "Navigator." From that time there was little traffic in negroes until after the discovery of America. Then there was great destruction of American Indians by war, disease, and killing work, and the importation of negroes into Spanish America was begun in order to fill the void in the labor market. Influenced by the spirit of Bartolome de las Casas, a Spanish monk, celebrated as the defender of the Indians against his own countrymen who conquered them, the monarchs of Spain prohibited Indian slavery. "It is a very significant fact that the great 'Protector of the Indians,' Las Casas, should, however innocently, have been concerned with the first large grant of licenses to import negroes into the West India Islands." We first hear of the introduction of negro slaves in those islands through the instructions given in 1501 to Nicolas de Ovando, who in the following year succeeded Columbus as governor. During the nine years of his governorship negro slavery in the Spanish possessions of the New World was greatly extended. A few years later, as shown by Helps, official license gave it a legal sanction. Helps' account begins with an abstract of Las Casas' memorials to the King of Spain looking to a remedy for the bad government of the West Indies. The outline of Las Casas' scheme was as follows: The King was to give to every laborer willing to emigrate to Española his living during the journey from his place of abode to Seville, at the rate of half a real a day throughout the journey, for great and small, child and parent. At Seville the emigrants were to be lodged in the Casa de la Contratacion (the India House), and were to have from eleven to thirteen maravedis a day. From thence they were to have a free passage to Española, and to be provided with food for a year. And if the climate "should try them so much" that at the expiration of this year they should not be able to work for themselves, the King was to continue to maintain them; but this extra maintenance was to be put down to the account of the emigrants, as a loan which they were to repay. The King was to give them lands--his own lands--furnish them with ploughshares and spades, and provide medicines for them. Lastly, whatever rights and profits accrued from their holdings were to become hereditary. This was certainly a most liberal plan of emigration. And, in addition, there were other privileges held out as inducements to these laborers. In connection with the above scheme, Las Casas, unfortunately for his reputation in after-ages, added another provision, namely, that each Spanish resident in the island should have license to import a dozen negro slaves. The origin of this suggestion was, as he informs us, that the colonists had told him that, if license were given them to import a dozen negro slaves each, they, the colonists, would then set free the Indians. And so, recollecting that statement of the colonists, he added this provision. Las Casas, writing his history in his old age, thus frankly owns his error: "This advice, that license should be given to bring negro slaves to these lands, the _clerigo_ Casas first gave, not considering the injustice with which the Portuguese take them and make them slaves; which advice, after he had apprehended the nature of the thing, he would not have given for all he had in the world. For he always held that they had been made slaves unjustly and tyrannically; for the same reason holds good of them as of the Indians." The above confession is delicately and truthfully worded--"not considering"; he does not say, not being aware of; but though it was a matter known to him, his moral sense was not watchful, as it were, about it. We must be careful not to press the admissions of a generous mind too far, or to exaggerate the importance of the suggestion of Las Casas. It would be quite erroneous to look upon this suggestion as being the introduction of negro slavery. From the earliest times of the discovery of America, negroes had been sent there. But what is of more significance, and what it is strange that Las Casas was not aware of, or did not mention, the Hieronymite Fathers[31] had also come to the conclusion that negroes must be introduced into the West Indies. Writing in January, 1518, when the fathers could not have known what was passing in Spain in relation to this subject, they recommended licenses to be given to the inhabitants of Española, or to other persons, to bring negroes there. From the tenor of their letter it appears that they had before recommended the same thing. Zuazo, the judge of residencia, and the legal colleague of Las Casas, wrote to the same effect. He, however, suggested that the negroes should be placed in settlements and married. Fray Bernardino de Manzanedo, the Hieronymite father, sent over to counteract Las Casas, gave the same advice as his brethren about the introduction of negroes. He added a proviso, which does not appear in their letter--perhaps it did exist in one of the earlier ones--that there should be as many women as men sent over, or more. The suggestion of Las Casas was approved of by the Chancellor; and, indeed, it is probable there was hardly a man of that time who would have seen further than the excellent clerigo did. Las Casas was asked what number of negroes would suffice? He replied that he did not know; upon which a letter was sent to the officers of the India House at Seville to ascertain the fit number in their opinion. They said that four thousand at present would suffice, being one thousand for each of the islands, Española, Porto Rico, Cuba, and Jamaica. Somebody now suggested to the Governor, De Bresa, a Fleming of much influence and a member of the council, that he should ask for this license to be given to him. De Bresa accordingly asked the King for it, who granted his request; and the Fleming sold this license to certain Genoese merchants for twenty-five thousand ducats, having obtained from the King a pledge that for eight years he should give no other license of this kind. The consequence of this monopoly enjoyed by the Genoese merchants was that negroes were sold at a great price, of which there are frequent complaints. Both Las Casas and Pasamonte--rarely found in accord--suggested to the King that it would be better to pay the twenty-five thousand ducats and resume the license, or to abridge its term. Figueroa, writing to the Emperor from Santo Domingo in July, 1500, says: "Negroes are very much in request; none have come for about a year. It would have been better to have given De Bresa the customs duties--_i.e._, the duties that had been usually paid on the importation of slaves--than to have placed a prohibition." I have scarcely a doubt that the immediate effect of the measure adopted in consequence of the clerigo's suggestion was greatly to check that importation of negro slaves which otherwise, had the license been general, would have been very abundant. Before quitting this part of the subject, something must be said for Las Casas which he does not allege for himself. This suggestion of his about the negroes was not an isolated one. Had all his suggestions been carried out, and the Indians thereby been preserved, as I firmly believe they might have been, these negroes might have remained a very insignificant number in the general population. By the destruction of Indians a void in the laborious part of the community was being constantly created, which had to be filled up by the labor of negroes. The negroes could bear the labor in the mines much better than the Indians; and any man who perceived that a race, of whose Christian virtues and capabilities he thought highly, were fading away by reason of being subjected to labor which their natures were incompetent to endure, and which they were most unjustly condemned to, might prefer the misery of the smaller number of another race treated with equal injustice, but more capable of enduring it. I do not say that Las Casas considered all these things; but, at any rate, in estimating his conduct, we must recollect that we look at the matter centuries after it occurred, and see all the extent of the evil arising from circumstances which no man could then be expected to foresee, and which were inconsistent with the rest of the clerigo's plans for the preservation of the Indians. I suspect that the wisest among us would very likely have erred with him; and I am not sure that, taking all his plans together, and taking for granted, as he did then, that his influence at court was to last, his suggestion about the negroes was an impolitic one. One more piece of advice Las Casas gave at this time, which, if it had been adopted, would have been most serviceable. He proposed that forts for mercantile purposes, containing about thirty persons, should be erected at intervals along the coast of the _terra firma_, to traffic with merchandise of Spain for gold, silver, and precious stones; and in each of these ports ecclesiastics were to be placed, to undertake the superintendence of spiritual matters. In this scheme may be seen an anticipation of subsequent plans for commercial intercourse with Africa. And, indeed, one is constantly reminded by the proceedings in those times of what has occurred much later and under the auspices of other nations. Of all these suggestions, some of them certainly excellent, the only questionable one was at once adopted. Such is the irony of life. If we may imagine superior beings looking on at the affairs of men, and bearing some unperceived part of the great contest in the world, this was a thing to have gladdened all the hosts of hell. FOOTNOTES: [31] Spanish monks, followers of St. Jerome (Hieronymus). FIRST CIRCUMNAVIGATION OF THE GLOBE MAGELLAN REACHES THE LADRONES AND PHILIPPINES A.D. 1519 JOAN BAUTISTA ANTONIO PIGAFETTA[32] Ferdinand Magellan, whose name in Portuguese was Fernao de Magalhaes, was born in Portugal about 1480. After serving with the Portuguese in the East Indies, 1505-1512, and in Morocco, 1514, where during an action he was lamed for life, he became disaffected toward his country, and in 1517 renounced his allegiance and turned to Spain in hope of better reward for his services. In conjunction with a fellow-countryman, Ruy Faleiro, a geographer and astronomer, he offered to find for Spain the Moluccas, in the Malay Archipelago, and to prove that they were within the Spanish and not the Portuguese lines of demarcation. The acceptance of this proposal by the Emperor, Charles V, who was also King of Spain, gave Magellan the opportunity, which he so well improved, to immortalize his name in the annals of maritime discovery. While the specific object of the expedition failed on account of the leader's death, his performance made him worthy, as some historians think, to be considered "the most undaunted and in many respects the most extraordinary man that ever traversed an unknown sea." A squadron of five ships with two hundred sixty-five men was fitted out by the Emperor, and the two friends were named as joint commanders, but Faleiro was afterward detached from the expedition, leaving full command to Magellan, who sailed from San Lucar, Spain, September 20, 1519, first touching at Madeira. Magellan passed through the straits that bear his name and so penetrated to the Pacific, that ocean being first so called by him. He was the first European to reach it from the Atlantic. Magellan was killed by natives in the Philippines, April 27, 1521; but his ships continued their course. One by one they were lost from the expedition, except the Victoria, on which was Pigafetta, who wrote for Charles V an account of the voyage. The Victoria returned to Spain in September, 1522, completing the first circumnavigation of the earth. Bautista was pilot and afterward captain of the Trinidad, one of the lost vessels. In 1898 the Philippines and Guam, one of the Ladrones, were acquired by the United States as a result of the Spanish-American War. JOAN BAUTISTA Magellan steered to the southwest to make the island of Teneriffe, and they reached the said island on the day of St. Michael, which was September 29th. Thence he made his course to fetch the Cape Verd Islands, and they passed between the islands and the cape without sighting either the one or the other. Having to make for Brazil, and as soon as they sighted the other coast of Brazil, he steered to the southeast along the coast of Cape Frio, which is in 23° south latitude; and from this cape he steered to the west, a matter of thirty leagues, to make the Rio Janeiro, which is in the same latitude as Cape Frio, and they entered the said river on the day of St. Lucy, which was December 13th, in which place they took in wood, and they remained there until the first octave of Christmas, which was December 26th of the same year. They sailed from this Rio de Janeiro on December 26th, and navigated along the coast to make Cape of St. Mary, which is only 35°; as soon as they sighted it, they made their course west-northwest, thinking they would find a passage for their voyage, and they found that they had got into a great river of fresh water, to which they gave the name of River St. Christopher, and it is in 34°, and they remained in it till February 2, 1520. He sailed from this river of St. Christopher on the 2d of the said month of February; they navigated along the said coast, and farther on to the south they discovered a point, which is in the same river more to the south, to which they gave the name of Point St. Anthony; it is in 36°; hence they ran to the southwest a matter of twenty-five leagues, and made another cape, which they named Cape St. Apelonia, which is in 36°; thence they navigated to the west-southwest to some shoals, which they named Shoals of the Currents, which are in 39°; and thence they navigated out to the sea, and lost sight of land for a matter of two or three days, when they again made for the land, and they came to a bay, which they entered, and ran within it the whole day, thinking that there was an outlet for Molucca; and when night came they found that it was quite closed up, and in the same night they again stood out by the way which they had come in. This bay is in 34°; they named it the island of St. Matthew. They navigated from this island of St. Matthew along the coast until they reached another bay, where they caught many sea-wolves and birds; to this they gave the name of Bay of Labors; it is in 37°; here they came near losing the flag-ship in a storm. Thence they navigated along the said coast, and arrived on the last day of March of the year 1520 at the port of St. Julian, which is in 49°. Here they wintered, and found the day a little more or less than seven hours. In this port three of the ships rose up against the captain-major, their captains saying that they intended to take him to Castile in arrest, as he was taking them all to destruction. Here, through the exertions of the said captain-major, and the assistance and favor of the foreigners whom he carried with him, the captain-major went to the said three ships which were already mentioned, and there the captain of one of them was killed, who was the treasurer of the whole fleet, and named Luis de Mendoza; he was killed in his own ship by stabs with a dagger by the chief constable of the fleet, who was sent to do this by Ferdinand Magellan in a boat with certain men. The said three ships having thus been recovered, five days later Ferdinand Magellan ordered Gaspar de Quexixada to be decapitated and quartered; he was captain of one of the ships and was one of those who had mutinied. In this port they refitted the ship. Here the captain-major made Alvaro de Mesquita, a Portuguese, a captain of one of the ships the captain of which had been killed. There sailed from this port on August 24th four ships, for the smallest of the ships had been already lost; he had sent it to reconnoitre, and the weather had been heavy and had cast it ashore, where all the crew had been recovered along with the merchandise, artillery, and fittings of the ship. They remained in this port, in which they wintered, five months and twenty-four days, and they were 70° less ten minutes to the southward. They sailed on August 24th of the said year from this port of St. Julian, and navigated a matter of twenty leagues along the coast, and so they entered a river which was called Santa Cruz, which is in 50°, where they took in goods and as much as they could obtain. The crew of the lost ship were already distributed among the other ships, for they had returned by land to where Ferdinand Magellan was, and they continued collecting goods which had remained there during August and up to September 18th, and there they took in water and much fish which they caught in this river; and in the other, where they wintered, there were people like savages, and the men are from nine to ten spans in height, very well made; they have not got houses, they only go about from one place to another with their flocks, and eat meat nearly raw. They are all of them archers, and kill many animals with arrows, and with the skins they make clothes, that is to say, they make the skins very supple, and fashion them after the shape of the body, as well as they can, then they cover themselves with them, and fasten them by a belt round the waist. When they do not wish to be clothed from the waist upward, they let that half fall which is above the waist, and the garment remains hanging down from the belt which they have girt around them. They wear shoes which cover them four inches above the ankle, full of straw inside to keep their feet warm. They do not possess any iron, nor any other ingenuity of weapons, only they make the points of their arrows with flints, and so also the knives with which they cut, and the adze and awls with which they cut and stitch their shoes and clothes. They are very agile people and do no harm, and thus follow their flocks; wherever night finds them, there they sleep; they carry their wives along with them, with all the chattels they possess. The women are very small and carry heavy burdens on their backs. They wear shoes and clothes just like the men. Of these men they obtained three or four and brought them in the ships, and they all died except one, who went to Castile in a ship which went thither. They sailed from this river of Santa Cruz on October 18th: they continued navigating along the coast until the 21st day of the same month, October, when they discovered a cape, to which they gave the name of Cape of the Virgins, because they sighted it on the day of the eleven thousand virgins; it is in 52°, a little more or less, and from this cape, a matter of two or three leagues' distance, we found ourselves at the mouth of a strait. We sailed along the said coast within that strait, which they had reached the mouth of: they entered in it a little and anchored. Ferdinand Magellan sent to discover what there was farther in, and they found three channels; that is to say, two more in a southerly direction, and one traversing the country in the direction of Molucca, but at that time this was not yet known, only the three mouths were seen. The boats went thither, and brought back word, and they set sail and anchored at these mouths of the channels, and Ferdinand Magellan sent two ships to learn what there was within, and these ships went; one returned to the captain-major, and the other, of which Alvaro de Mesquita was captain, entered into one of the bays which was to the south, and did not return any more. Ferdinand Magellan, seeing that it did not come back, set sail, and the next day he did not choose to make for the bays, and went to the south and took another which runs northwest and southeast and a quarter west and east. He left letters in the place from which he sailed, so that, if the other ship returned, it might make the course which he left prescribed. After this they entered into the channel, which at some places had a width of three leagues, and two, and one, and in some places half a league, and he went through it as long as it was daylight, and anchored when it was night: and he sent the boats, and the ships went after the boats, and they brought news that there was an outlet, for they already saw the great sea on the other side; on which account Ferdinand Magellan ordered artillery to be fired for rejoicing; and before they set forth from this strait they found two islands, the first one larger, and the other, nearer toward the outlet, is the smaller one; and they went out between these islands and the coast on the southern side, as it was deeper than on the other side. This strait is a hundred leagues in length to the outlet; that outlet and the entrance are in 52° latitude. They made a stay in this strait from October 21st to November 26th, which makes thirty-six days of the said year of 1520, and as soon as they went out from the strait to the sea they made their course, for the most part, to west-northwest, when they found that their needles varied to the northwest almost one-half; and after they had navigated thus for many days they found an island in a little more or less than 18° or 19°, and also another, which was in from 13° to 14°, and this in south latitude; they are uninhabited. They ran on until they reached the line, when Ferdinand Magellan said that now they were in the neighborhood of Molucca, and that he would go in a northerly direction as far as 10° or 12°, and they reached to as far as 13° north, and in this latitude they navigated to the west and a quarter southwest a matter of a hundred leagues, where on March 6, 1521, they fetched two islands inhabited by many people of little truth; and they did not take precautions against them until they saw that they were taking away the skiff of the flag-ship, and they cut the rope with which it was made fast, and took it ashore without their being able to prevent it. They gave this island the name of Thieves' Island (_dos Ladroes_). Ferdinand Magellan, seeing that the skiff was lost, set sail, it being already night, tacking about until the next day; as soon as it was morning they anchored at the place where they had seen the skiff carried to, and he ordered two boats to be got ready with a matter of fifty or sixty men, and he went ashore in person and burned the whole village, and they killed seven or eight persons, between men and women, and recovered the skiff, and returned to the ships; and while they were there they saw forty or fifty _paraos_ come from the same land, and which brought much refreshments. Ferdinand Magellan would not make any further stay, and at once set sail, and ordered the course to be steered west and a quarter southwest, and so they made land, which is in barely 11°. This land is an island, but he would not touch at this one, and they went to touch at another farther on which appeared first. Ferdinand Magellan sent a boat ashore to observe the nature of the island; when the boat reached land, they saw, from the ships, paraos come out from behind the point; then they called back their boat. The people of the paraos, seeing that the boat was returning to the ships, turned back the paraos, and the boat reached the ships, which at once set sail for another island very near to this island, which is 10°, and they gave it the name of the Island of Good Signs, because they observed some gold in it. While they were thus anchored at this island there came to them two paraos, and brought them fowls and cocoanuts, and told them they had already seen there other men like them, from which they presumed that these might be Lequios or Mogores, a nation of people who have this name, or Chiis; and thence they set sail, and navigated farther on among many islands, to which they gave the name of Valley without Peril, and also St. Lazarus; and they ran on to another island twenty leagues from that from which they sailed, which is in 10°, and came to anchor at another island, which is named Macangor, which is in 9°; and in this island they were very well received, and they placed a cross in it. This King conducted them thence a matter of thirty leagues to another island, named Cabo, which is in 10°, and in this island Ferdinand Magellan did what he pleased with the consent of the country, and in one day eight hundred people became Christian, on which account Ferdinand Magellan desired that the other kings, neighbors to this one, should become subject to this one, who had become Christian; and these did not choose to yield to such obedience. Ferdinand Magellan, seeing that, got ready one night with his boats, and burned the villages of those who would not yield the said obedience; and a matter of ten or twelve days after this was done he sent to a village about half a league from that which he had burned, which is named Matam, and which is also an island, and ordered them to send him at once three goats, three pigs, three loads of rice, and three loads of millet for provisions for the ship. They replied that, of each article which he sent to ask them three of, they would send him by twos, and if he was satisfied with this they would at once comply; if not, it might be as he pleased, but that they would not give it. Because they did not choose to grant what he demanded of them, Ferdinand Magellan ordered three boats to be equipped with a matter of fifty or sixty men, and went against the said place, which was on April 28th in the morning; there they found many people, who might well be as many as three thousand or four thousand men, who fought with such will that the said Ferdinand Magellan was killed there, with six of his men, in the year 1521. When Ferdinand Magellan was dead the Christians got back to the ships, where they thought fit to make two captains and governors whom they should obey; and, having done this, they took counsel (and decided) that the captains should go ashore where the people had turned Christians, to ask for pilots to take them to Borneo, and this was on May 1st of the said year. When the two captains went, being agreed upon what had been said, the same people of the country who had become Christians armed themselves against them, and killed the two captains and twenty-six gentlemen; and the other people who remained got back to the boats and returned to the ships, and, finding themselves again without captains, they agreed, inasmuch as the principal persons were killed, that one Joan Lopez, who was the chief treasurer, should be captain-major of the fleet, and the chief constable of the fleet should be captain of one of the ships. He was named Gonzalo Vas Despinosa. Having done this, they set sail, and ran about twenty-five leagues with three ships, which they still possessed; they then mustered, and found that they were altogether one hundred eight men in all these three ships, and many of them were wounded and sick, on which account they did not venture to navigate the three ships and thought it would be well to burn one of them--the one that should be most suitable for that purpose--and to take into the two ships those that remained: this they did out at sea, out of sight of any land. While they did this many paraos came to speak to them, and navigating among the islands, for in that neighborhood there are a great many. They did not understand one another, for they had no interpreter, for he had been killed with Ferdinand Magellan. Sailing farther on among islets, they came to anchor at an island which is named Carpyam, where there is gold enough, and this island is in fully 8°. While at anchor in this port of Carpyam they had speech with the inhabitants of the island, and made peace with them, and Carvalho, who was captain-major, gave them the boat of the ship which had been burned: this island has three islets in the offing. Here they took in refreshments, and sailed farther on to the west-southwest, and fell in with another island, which is named Caram, and is in 11°; from this they went on farther to west-southwest, and fell in with a large island, and ran along the coast of this island to the northeast, and reached as far as 9°, where they went ashore one day, with the boats equipped to seek for provisions, for in the ships there was now not more than eight days' food. On reaching shore the inhabitants would not suffer them to land, and shot at them with arrows of cane hardened in fire, so that they returned to the ships. Seeing this, they agreed to go to another island, where they had had some dealings, to see if they could get some provisions. Then they met with a contrary wind, and, going about in the direction in which they wished to go, they anchored, and while at anchor they saw people on shore hailing them to go thither; they went there with the boats, and as they were speaking to those people by signs, for they did not understand each other otherwise, a man-at-arms, named Joan de Campos, told them to let him go on shore, since there were no provisions in the ships, and it might be that they would obtain some means of getting provisions, and that, if the people killed him, they would not lose much with him, for God would take thought of his soul; and also if he found provisions, and if they did not kill him, he would find means for bringing them to the ships: and they thought well of this. So he went on shore, and as soon as he reached it the inhabitants received him and took him into the interior the distance of a league, and when he was in the village all the people came to see him, and they gave him food and entertained him well, especially when they saw that he ate pigs' flesh, because in this island they had dealings with the Moors of Borneo, and because the country people were greedy they made them neither eat pigs nor bring them up in the country. The country is called Dyguacam and is in 9°. The said Christian, seeing that he was favored and well treated by the inhabitants, gave them to understand by his signs that they should carry provisions to the ships, which would be well paid for. In the country there was nothing except rice not pounded. Then the people set to pounding rice all the night, and when it was morning they took the rice and the said Christian and came to the ships, where they did them great honor, and took in the rice and paid them, and they returned on shore. This man being already set on shore, inhabitants of another village a little farther on came to the ships and told them they would give them much provisions for their money; and as soon as the said man whom they had sent arrived, they set sail and went to anchor at the village of those who had come to call them, which was named Vay Palay Cucar a Canbam, where Carvalho made peace with the King of the country, and they settled the price of rice, and they gave them two measures of rice, which weighed one hundred fourteen pounds, for three fathoms of linen stuff of Britanny; they took there as much rice as they wanted, and goats and pigs; and while they were at this place there came a Moor, who had been in the village of Dyguacam, which belongs to the Moors of Borneo, as had been said above, and after that he went to his country. While they were at anchor at this village of Dyguacam, there came to them a parao in which there was a negro named Bastiam, who asked for a flag and a passport for the Governor of Dyguacam, and they gave him all this and other things for a present. They asked the said Bastiam, who spoke Portuguese sufficiently well, since he had been in Molucca, where he had become a Christian, if he would go with them and show them Borneo; he said he would be very willing, and when the departure arrived he hid himself, and, seeing that he did not come, they set sail from this port of Dyguacam on July 21st to seek for Borneo. As they set sail there came to them a parao, which was coming to the port of Dyguacam, and they took it, and in it they took three Moors, who said they were pilots and that they would take them to Borneo. Having got these Moors, they steered along this island to the southwest, and fell in with two islands at its extremity, and passed between them; that on the north side is named Bolyna, and that on the south Bamdym. Sailing to the west-southwest a matter of fourteen leagues, they fell in with a white bottom, which was a shoal below the water; and the black men they carried with them told them to draw near to the coast of the island, as it was deeper there, and that was more in the direction of Borneo, for from that neighborhood the island of Borneo could already be sighted. This same day they reached and anchored at some islands, to which they gave the name of islets of St. Paul, which was a matter of two and a half or three leagues from the great island of Borneo, and they were in about 7° at the south side of these islands. In the island of Borneo there is an exceedingly big mountain to which they gave the name of Mount St. Paul; and from thence they navigated along the coast of Borneo to the southwest, between an island and the island of Borneo itself; and they went forward on the same course and reached the neighborhood of Borneo, and the Moors they had with them told them that there was no Borneo, and the wind did not suffer them to arrive thither, as it was contrary. They anchored at an island which is there, and which may be eight leagues from Borneo. Close to this island is another which has many Myrobalans, and the next day they set sail for the other island, which is nearer to the port of Borneo; and going along thus they saw so many shoals that they anchored and sent the boats ashore in Borneo, and they took the aforesaid Moorish pilots on shore, and there went a Christian with them; and the boats went to set them on land, from whence they had to go to the city of Borneo, which was three leagues off, and there they were taken before the Shahbender of Borneo, and he asked what people they were, and for what they came in the ships; and they were presented to the King of Borneo with the Christian. As soon as the boats had set the said men on shore, they sounded, in order to see if the ships should come in closer; and during this they saw three junks which were coming from the port of Borneo--from the said city--out to sea, and as soon as they saw the ships they returned inshore; continuing to sound, they found the channel by which the port is entered; then they set sail, and entered this channel, and being within the channel they anchored, and would not go farther in until they received a message from the shore, which arrived next day with two paraos: these carried certain swivel guns of metal, and a hundred men in each parao, and they brought goats and fowls and two cows, and figs and other fruit, and told them to enter farther in opposite the islands which were near there, which was the true berth; and from this position to the city there might be three or four leagues. While thus at anchor they established peace, and settled that they should trade in what there was in the country, especially wax, to which they answered that they would be willing to sell all that there was in the country for their money. This port of Borneo is in 8°. For the answer thus received from the King they sent him a present by Gonzalo Mendes Despinosa, captain of the ship Victoria, and the King accepted the present, and gave to all of them China stuffs; and when there had passed twenty or twenty-three days that they were there trading with the people on the island, and had got five men on shore in the city itself, there came to anchor at the bar, close to them, five junks, at the hour of vespers, and they remained there that evening and the night until next day in the morning, when they saw coming from the city two hundred paraos, some under sail, others rowing. Seeing in this manner the five junks and the paraos, it seemed to them that there might be treachery, and they set sail for the junks, and as soon as the crews of the junks saw them under sail, they also set sail and made off where the wind best served them; and they overhauled one of the junks with boats, and took it with twenty-seven men; and the ships went and anchored abreast off the Island of the Myrobalans, with the junk made fast to the poop of the flag-ship, and the paraos returned to the shore, and when night came there came a squall from the west in which the said junk went to the bottom alongside the flag-ship, without being able to receive any assistance from it whatever. Next day, in the morning, they saw a sail, and went to it and took it. This was a great junk in which the son of the King of Lucam came as captain, and had with him ninety men; and as soon as they took them they sent some of them to the King of Borneo; and they sent him word by these men to send the Christians whom they had got there, who were seven men, and they would give him all the people they had taken in the junk; on which account the King sent two men of seven whom he had got there in a parao, and they again sent him word to send the five men who still remained, and they would send all the people they had got from the junk. They waited two days for the answer, and there came no message; and they took thirty men from the junk, and sent them to the King of Borneo, and set sail with fourteen men of those they had taken and three women; and they steered along the coast of the said island to the northeast, returning backward, and they again passed between the islands and the great island of Borneo, where the flag-ship grounded on a point of the island, and so remained more than four hours, and the tide turned and it got off, by which it was seen clearly that the tide was of twenty-four hours. While making the aforesaid course the wind shifted to northeast, and they stood out to sea, and they saw a sail coming, and the ships anchored and the boats went to it and took it. It was a small junk and carried nothing but cocoanuts; and they took in water and wood, and set sail along the coast of the island to the northeast, until they reached the extremity of the said island, and met with another small island, where they overhauled the ships, and they gave it the name of Port St. Mary of August, and it is in fully 7°. As soon as they had taken these precautions they set sail and steered to the southwest until they sighted the island, which is called Fagajam, and this is a course of thirty-eight to forty leagues; and as soon as they sighted this island they steered to the southwest, and again made an island which is called Seloque, and they had information that there were many pearls there; and when they had already sighted the island the wind shifted to a head wind, and they could not fetch it by the course they were sailing, and it seemed to them that it might be in 6°. This same night they arrived at the island of Quipe, and ran along it to the southeast, and passed between it and another island called Tamgym; and always running along the coast of the said island, and going thus, they fell in with a parao laden with sago leaves (which is of a tree which is named _cajare_), which the people of that country eat as bread. The parao carried twenty-one men, and the chief of them had been in Molucca, in the house of Francisco Semrryn; this was in 5°, a little more or less. The inhabitants of this land came to see the ships, and so they had speech of one another, and an old man of these people said he would conduct them to Molucca. In this manner, having fixed a time with the old man, an agreement was made with him, and they gave him a certain price for this; and when the next day came, and they were to depart, the old man intended to escape, and they understood it, and took him and others who were with him, and who also said that they knew pilots' work, and they set sail; and as soon as the inhabitants saw them go, they fitted out to go after them; and of the paraos, there did not reach the ships more than two, and these reached so near that they shot arrows into the ships, and the wind was fresh and they could not come up with them. At midnight of that day they sighted some islands, and they steered more toward them; and next day they saw land, which was an island; and at night following that day they found themselves very close to it, and when night fell the wind calmed and the currents drew them very much inshore; there the old pilot cast himself into the sea and betook himself to land. Sailing thus forward, after one of the pilots had fled, they sighted another island and arrived close to it, and another Moorish pilot said that Molucca was still farther on; and navigating thus, the next day in the morning they sighted three high mountains, which belonged to a nation of people whom they called Salabos; and then they saw a small island and they anchored to take in some water, because they feared that in Molucca they would not be allowed to take it in; and they omitted doing so because the Moorish pilot told them that there were some four hundred in that island, and that they were all very bad, and might do them some injury, as they were men of little faith; and that he would give them no such advice as to go to that island; and also because Molucca, which they were seeking, was now near, and that its kings were good men, who gave a good reception to all sorts of men in their country; and while still in this neighborhood they saw the islands themselves of Molucca, and for rejoicing they fired all the artillery, and they arrived at the island on November 8, 1521, so that they spent from Spain to Molucca two years and two months. As soon as they arrived at the island of Tydor, which is in 30', the King thereof did them great honor, which could not be exceeded. There they treated with the King for their cargo, and the King engaged to give them whatever there was in the country for their money, and they settled to give for the bahar of cloves fourteen ells of yellow cloth of seventy-seven tem, which are worth in Castile a ducat the ell; of red cloth of the same kind ten ells; they also gave thirty ells of Britanny linen cloth, and for each of these quantities they received a bahar of cloves; likewise for thirty knives, eight bahars. Having thus settled all the above mentioned prices, the inhabitants of the country gave them information that farther on, in another island near, there was a Portuguese man. This island might be two leagues distant, and it was named Targatell. This man was the chief person of Molucca; there we now have got a fortress. They then wrote letters to the said Portuguese to come and speak with them, to which he answered that he did not dare, because the King of the country forbade it; that if they obtained permission from the King he would come at once. This permission they soon got, and the Portuguese came to speak with them. They gave him an account of the prices which they had settled, at which he was amazed, and said on that account the King had ordered him not to come, as they did not know the truth about the prices of the country; and while they were thus taking in cargo there arrived the King of Baraham, which is near there, and said that he wished to be a vassal of the King of Castile, and also that he had got four hundred bahars of cloves, and that he had sold them to the King of Portugal, and that they had bought it, but that he had not yet delivered it; and if they wished for it, he would give it all to them; to which the captains answered that if he brought it to them, and came with it, they would buy it, but not otherwise. The King, seeing that they did not wish to take the cloves, asked them for a flag and a letter of safe-conduct, which they gave him, signed by the captains of the ships. While they were thus waiting for the cargo, it seemed to them, from the delay in delivery, that the King was preparing some treachery against them, and the greater part of the ships' crews made an uproar and told the captains to go, as the delays which the King made were for nothing else than treachery: as it seemed to them all that it might be so, they were abandoning everything and were intending to depart; and being about to unfurl the sails, the King, who had made the agreement with them, came to the flag-ship and asked the captain why he wanted to go, because that which he had agreed upon with him he intended to fulfil it as had been settled. The captain replied that the ships' crews said they should go and not remain any longer, as it was only treachery that was being prepared against them. To this the King answered that it was not so, and on that account he at once sent for his _Koran_, upon which he wished to make oath that nothing should be done to them. They at once brought him his _Koran_, and upon it he made oath, and told them to rest at ease with that. At this the crews were set at rest, and he promised them that he would give them their cargo by December 15, 1521, which he fulfilled within the said time, without being wanting in anything. When the two ships were already laden and about to unfurl their sails, the flag-ship sprung a large leak, and, the King of the country learning this, he sent them twenty-five divers to stop the leak, which they were unable to do. They settled that the other ship should depart, and that this one should again discharge all its cargo and unload it; and as they could not stop the leak, the King promised that they, the people of the country, should give them all that they might be in need of. This was done, and they discharged the cargo of the flag-ship; and when the said ship was repaired, they took in her cargo, and decided on making for the country of the Antilles, and the course from Molucca to it was two thousand leagues, a little more or less. The other ship, which set sail first, left on December of the said year, and went out to sea for the Timor, and made its course behind Java, two thousand fifty-five leagues, to the Cape of Good Hope. ANTONIO PIGAFETTA In order to double the Cape of Good Hope, we went as far as 42° south latitude, and we remained off that cape for nine weeks, with the sails struck, on account of the western and northwestern gales, which beat against our bows with fierce squalls. The Cape of Good Hope is in 34° 30' south latitude, sixteen hundred leagues distant from Cape of Molucca, and it is the largest and most dangerous cape in the world. Some of our men, and among them the sick, would have liked to land at a place belonging to the Portuguese called Mozambique, both because the ship made much water and because of the great cold which we suffered; and much more because we had nothing but rice-water for food and drink, all the meat of which we had made provision having putrefied, for the want of salt had not permitted us to salt it. But the greater number of us, prizing honor more than life itself, decided on attempting at any risk to return to Spain. At length, by the aid of God, on the 6th of May, we passed the terrible cape, but we were obliged to approach it within only five leagues' distance, or else we should never have passed it. We then sailed toward the northwest for two whole months without ever taking rest; and in this short time we lost twenty-one men, between Christians and Indians. We made then a curious observation on throwing them into the sea; that was that the Christian remained with the face turned to the sky, and the Indians with the face turned to the sea. If God had not granted us favorable weather, we should all have perished of hunger. Constrained by extreme necessity, we decided on touching at the Cape Verd island named St. James. Knowing that we were in an enemy's country and among suspicious persons, on sending the boat ashore to get provision of victuals, we charged the seamen to say to the Portuguese that we had sprung our foremast under the equinoctial line--although this misfortune had happened at the Cape of Good Hope--and that our ship was alone, because while we tried to repair it our captain-general had gone with the other two ships to Spain. With these good words, and giving our merchandise in exchange, we obtained two boat-loads of rice. In order to see whether we had kept an exact account of the days, we charged those who went ashore to ask what day of the week it was, and they were told by the Portuguese inhabitants of the island that it was Thursday, which was a great cause of wondering to us, since with us it was only Wednesday. We could not persuade ourselves that we were mistaken; and I was more surprised than the others, since, having always been in good health, I had every day, without intermission, written down the day that was current. But we were afterward advised that there was no error on our part, since, as we had always sailed toward the west, following the course of the sun, and had returned to the same place, we must have gained twenty-four hours, as it is clear to anyone who reflects upon it. The boat, having returned for rice a second time to the shore, was detained with thirteen men who were in it. As we saw that, and, from the movement in certain caravels, suspected that they might wish to capture us and our ship, we at once set sail. We afterward learned, some time after our return, that our boat and men had been arrested, because one of our men had discovered the deception and said that the captain-general was dead, and that our ship was the only one remaining of Magellan's fleet. At last, when it pleased heaven, on Saturday, September 6, 1522, we entered the Bay of San Lucar; and of sixty men who composed our crew when we left Molucca, we were reduced to only eighteen, and these for the most part sick. Of the others, some died of hunger, some had run away at the island of Timor, and some had been condemned to death for their crimes. From the day when we left this Bay of San Lucar until our return thither, we reckoned that we had run more than fourteen thousand four hundred sixty leagues, and we had completed going round the earth from east to west. Monday, September 8th, we cast anchor near the mole of Seville, and discharged all the artillery. Tuesday we all went in shirts and barefoot, with a taper in our hands, to visit the shrine of Santa Maria de Antigua. Then leaving Seville, I went to Valladolid, where I presented to his sacred majesty Don Carlos neither gold nor silver, but things more precious in the eyes of so great a sovereign. I presented to him, among other things, a book written by my hand of all the things that occurred day by day in our voyage. I departed thence as I was best able and went to Portugal, and related to King John the things which I had seen. FOOTNOTES: [32] Translated by Lord Stanley of Alderley. THE FIELD OF THE CLOTH OF GOLD A.D. 1520 J. S. BREWER From the magnificence of the preparations made for the famous meeting described in the following pages, the plain on which it took place, between Guines and Ardres, France, received the name of the "Field of the Cloth of Gold." The meeting of the two kings, Henry VIII of England and Francis I of France, was brought about by circumstances connected with the rivalry between Francis and the emperor Charles V. The enmity of the two latter and their repeated wars form a principal subject of European history during many years. Francis came to the throne in 1515, and the first four years of his reign were marked by brilliant successes, which brought him fame as a ruler and a warrior. But in 1519 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the imperial dignity, and Charles, being preferred before him, became emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Great was the mortification of Francis and he soon after declared war against his rival. Both sought the alliance of Henry VIII, and in hopes of securing his friendship, and thereby preventing a union of the Emperor and the English King against himself, Francis arranged the meeting so brilliantly pictured by Brewer. But Francis, by overdoing this gorgeous reception, gave offence to Henry, whom he seemed to eclipse in magnificence. Meanwhile Charles, anticipating the interview, had visited Henry in England, and by his more politic address he secured the favor both of the English monarch and his great minister, Cardinal Wolsey. Situated in a flat and uninviting plain--poor and barren, as the uncultivated border-land of the two kingdoms--Guines and its castle offered little attraction, and if possible less accommodation, to the gay throng now to be gathered within its walls. Its weedy moat and dismantled battlements, "its keep too ruinous to mend," defied the efforts of carpenters and bricklayers, as the English commissioners pathetically complained; and could not by any artifice or contrivance be made to assume the appearance of a formidable, or even a respectable, fortress to friend or enemy. But on the castle green, within the limits of a few weeks, and in the face of great difficulties, the English artists of that day contrived a summer palace, more like a vision of romance, the creation of some fairy dream--if the accounts of eye-witnesses of all classes may be trusted--than the dull, every-day reality of clay-born bricks and mortar. No "palace of art" in these beclouded climates of the West ever so truly deserved its name. As if the imagination of the age, pent up in wretched alleys and narrow dwelling-houses, had resolved for once to throw off its ordinary trammels and recompense itself for its long restraint, it prepared to realize those visions of enchanted bowers and ancient pageantry on which it had fed so long in the fictions and romances of the Middle Ages. I have thought it worth while to notice so much of the details as will enable the reader to form some slight conception for himself of this scene of enchantment which the genius of the age had contrived for its own amusement. The palace was an exact square of three hundred twenty-eight feet. It was pierced on every side with oriel windows and clear-stories curiously glazed, the mullions and posts of which were overlaid with gold. An embattled gate, ornamented on both sides with statues representing men in various attitudes of war, and flanked by an embattled tower, guarded the entrance. From this gate to the entrance of the palace arose in long ascent a sloping dais or half pace, along which were grouped "images of sore and terrible countenances," in armor of argentine or bright metal. At the entrance, under an embowed landing-place, facing the great doors, stood "antique" (classical) figures girt with olive branches. The passages, the roofs of the galleries from place to place and from chamber to chamber, were ceiled and covered with white silk, fluted and embowed with silken hanging of divers colors and braided cloths, "which showed like bullions of fine burnished gold." The roofs of the chambers were studded with roses, set in lozenges, and diapered on a ground of fine gold. Panels enriched with antique carving and gilt bosses covered the spaces between the windows; while along all the corridors and from every window hung tapestry of silk and gold, embroidered with figures. Chairs covered with cushions of turkey-work, cloths of estate, of various shapes and sizes, overlaid with golden tissue and rich embroidery, ornamented the state apartments. The square on every side was decorated with equal richness, and blazed with the same profusion of glass, gold, and ornamental hangings; and "every quarter of it, even the least, was a habitation fit for a prince," says Fleuranges, who had examined it with the critical eye of a rival and a Frenchman. To the palace was attached a spacious chapel, still more sumptuously adorned. Its altars were hung with cloth of gold tissue embroidered with pearls; cloth of gold covered the walls and desks. Basins, censers, cruets, and other vessels, of the same precious materials, lent their lustre to its services. On the high altar, shaded by a magnificent canopy of immense proportions, stood enormous candlesticks and other ornaments of gold. Twelve golden images of the apostles, as large as children of four years old, astonished the eyes of the spectator. The copes and vestments of the officiating clergy were cloth of tissue powdered with red roses, brought from the looms of Florence, and woven in one piece, thickly studded with gold and jewelry. No less profusion might be seen in the two closets left apart for the King and the Queen. Images and sacred vessels of solid gold, in gold cloth, cumbrous with pearls and precious stones, attested the rank, the magnificence, and devotion of the occupants. The ceilings of these closets were gilded and painted; the hangings were of tapestry embroidered with fretwork of pearls and gems. The chapel was served by thirty-five priests and a proportionate number of singing-boys. From the palace a secret gallery led into a private apartment in Guines castle, along which the royal visitors could pass and repass at pleasure. The King was attended by squires of the body, sewers, gentlemen-ushers, grooms and pages of the chamber, for all of whom suitable accommodation had to be provided. The lord chamberlain, the lord steward, the lord treasurer of the household, the comptroller, with their numerous staffs, had to be lodged in apartments adapted to their rank and services. As it was one great object of the interview to entertain all comers with masques and banquetings of the most sumptuous kind, the mere rank and file of inferior officers and servants formed a colony of themselves. The bakehouse, pantry, cellar, buttery, kitchen, larder, accatry, were amply provided with ovens, ranges, and culinary requirements, to say nothing of the stables, the troops of grooms, farriers, saddlers, stirrup-makers, furbishers, and footmen. Upward of two hundred attendants were employed in and about the kitchen alone. Outside the palace gate, on the greensward, stood a quiet fountain, of antique workmanship, with a statue of Bacchus "birlyng the wine." Three runlets, fed by secret conduits hid beneath the earth, spouted claret, hypocras, and water into as many silver cups, to quench the thirst of all comers. On the opposite side was a pillar wreathed in gold, and supported by four gilt lions; and on the top stood an image of blind Cupid, armed with bow and arrows. The gate itself, built in massive style, was pierced with loop-holes. Its windows and recesses were filled with images of Hercules, Alexander, and other ancient worthies, richly gilt and painted. In long array, in the plain beyond, twenty-eight hundred tents stretched their white canvas before the eyes of the spectator, gay with the pennons, badges, and devices of the various occupants; while miscellaneous followers, in tens of thousands, attracted by profit or the novelty of the scene, camped on the grass and filled the surrounding slopes, in spite of the severity of provost-marshal and reiterated threats of mutilation and chastisement. Multitudes from the French frontiers, or the populous cities of Flanders, indifferent to the political significance of the scene, swarmed from their dingy homes to gaze on kings, queens, knights, and ladies dressed in their utmost splendor. Beggars, itinerant minstrels, venders of provisions and small luxuries, mixed with wagoners, ploughmen, laborers, and the motley troop of camp-followers, crowded round, or stretched themselves beneath the summer's sun on bundles of straw and grass, in drunken idleness. No better lodging awaited many a gay knight and lady who had travelled far to be present at the spectacle, and were obliged to content themselves with such open-air accommodation. Backward and forward surged the excited and unwieldy crowd, as every hour brought its fresh contingent of curiosity or criticism in the shape of some new-comer conspicuous for his fantastic bearing or the quaint fashion of his armor. Each new candidate for the love and honor of the ladies, for popular applause, or less noble objects, was greeted with shouts and acclamations as he succeeded in distinguishing himself from the throng by the strangeness or splendor of his appointments. Christendom had never witnessed such a scene. The fantastic usages of the courts of Love and Beauty were revived once more. The Mediæval Age had gathered up its departing energies for this last display of its favorite pastime--henceforth to be consigned, without regret, to "the mouldered lodges of the past." At the time that Henry set sail for Calais, Francis started from Montreuil for Ardres. It was a meagre old town, long since in ruins, the fosses and castle of which had been hastily repaired. He was attended on his route by a vast and motley multitude. No less than ten thousand of this poor vagrant crew were compelled to turn back, by a proclamation ordering that no person, without special permission, should approach within two leagues of the King's train, "on pain of the halter." As the French had proposed that both parties should lodge in tents erected on the field, they had prepared numerous pavilions, fitted up with halls, galleries, and chambers, ornamented within and without with gold and silver tissue. Amid golden balls and quaint devices glittering in the sun, rose a gilt figure of St. Michael, conspicuous for his blue mantle powdered with golden _fleurs-de-lis_, and crowning a royal pavilion, of vast dimensions, supported by a single mast. In his right hand he held a dart, in his left a shield emblazoned with the arms of France. Inside, the roof of the pavilion represented the canopy of heaven, ornamented with stars and figures of the zodiac. The lodgings of the Queen, of the Duchess of Alençon, the King's favorite sister, and of other ladies and princes of the blood were covered with cloth of gold. The rest of the tents, to the number of three hundred or four hundred, emblazoned with the arms of the owners, were pitched on the banks of a small river outside the city walls. A large house in the town, built for the occasion, served as a place of reception for royal visitors. From June 4, 1520, when Henry first entered Guines, the festivities continued with unabated splendor for twenty days. They were opened by a visit of Wolsey to the French King, and gave the Cardinal an opportunity for displaying his love of magnificence, not unaptly reckoned by poets and philosophers as the nearest virtue to magnanimity. A hundred archers of the guard, followed by fifty gentlemen of his household, clothed in crimson velvet with chains of gold, bareheaded, bonnet in hand, and mounted on magnificent horses richly caparisoned, led the way. After them came fifty gentlemen ushers, also bareheaded, carrying gold maces with knobs as big as a man's head; next a cross-bearer in scarlet, supporting a crucifix adorned with precious stones. Then four lackeys followed, with gilt bâtons and pole-axes, in paletots of crimson velvet, their bonnets in hand adorned with plumes, their coats ornamented before and behind with the Cardinal's badge in goldsmith's work. Lastly came the Legate himself, mounted on a barded mule trapped in crimson velvet, with gold front-stalls, studs, buckles, and stirrups. Over a chimere of figured crimson velvet he wore a fine linen rochet. Bishops and other ecclesiastics succeeded, and the whole procession was brought up by fifty archers of the King's guard, their bows bent, their quivers at their sides, their jackets of red cloth adorned with a gold rose before and behind. In this state the procession approached the town of Ardres. Arrived at the King's lodgings Wolsey dismounted, amid the roar of artillery and the sound of drums, trumpets, fifes, and other instruments of music. He was received by the King of France, bonnet in hand, with the greatest demonstrations of affection. The visit was returned next day by the French. These ceremonies were preliminary to the meeting of the two sovereigns on Thursday, June 7th. On that day, the King of England, apparelled in cloth of silver damask, thickly ribbed with cloth of gold, and mounted on a charger arrayed in the most dazzling trappings overlaid with fine gold and curiously wrought in mosaic, advanced toward the valley of Ardres. No man, from personal inclinations or personal qualities, was better calculated to sustain his part in a brilliant ceremonial such as then struck the eyes of the spectators. An admirable horseman, tall and muscular, slightly inclined to corpulence, with a red beard and ruddy countenance, Henry VIII was at this time, by the admission of his rivals, the most comely and commanding prince of his age. Closely attending on the King was Sir Henry Guilford, the master of the horse, leading a spare charger, not less splendidly arrayed in trappings of fine gold wrought in ciphers, with headstall, reins, and saddle of the same material. Nine henchmen followed in cloth of tissue, the harness of their horses covered with gold scales. In front rode the old Marquis of Dorset, bearing the sword of estate before the King; behind came the Cardinal, the Dukes of Buckingham and Suffolk, with the Earl of Shrewsbury and others. A shot fired from the castle of Guines, and responded to by a shot from the castle of Ardre, gave warning that the two princes were ready to set forward. As Henry advanced toward the valley with all his company in military array, the French King might be descried on the opposite hill with his dazzling company, in dress, deportment, and the splendor of his retinue not less glorious or conspicuous than his rival. Over a short cassock of gold frieze he wore a mantle of cloth of gold covered with jewels. The front and the sleeves were studded with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and large loose-hanging pearls; on his head he wore a velvet bonnet adorned with plumes and precious stones. Far in advance rode the provost-marshal with his archers to clear the ground. Then followed the marshals of the army in cloth of gold, their orders about their necks, mounted on horses covered with gold trappings; next the grand master, the princes of the blood, and the King of Navarre. After them came the Swiss guard on foot, in new liveries, with their drums, flutes, trumpets, clarions, and hautboys; then the gentlemen of the household; and immediately preceding the King was the grand constable, Bourbon, bearing the sword naked, and the _grand ecuyer_, with the sword of France, powdered with gold fleurs-de-lis. As the two companies approached each other, there was a momentary pause. The French watched with some jealousy the close array of the English footmen, who, stretched in a long line on the King's left, marched step for step with all the solemn gravity of their nation, as if they were rather preparing for battle than pastime, while, on the other side, the superior numbers of the French awakened the national jealousy of the Englishmen. "Sir, ye be my king and sovereign," broke in the lord Abergavenny in breathless haste; "wherefore, above all I am bound to show you truth, and not to let [stop] for none. I have been in the French party, and they may be more in number; double so many as ye be." Then spoke up the Earl of Shrewsbury, "Sire, whatever my lord of Abergavenny sayeth, I myself have been there, and the Frenchmen be more in fear of you and your subjects than your subjects be of them. Wherefore," said the Earl, "if I were worthy to give counsel, your grace should march forward." "So we intend, my lord," replied the King. "On afore, my masters!" shouted the officers of arms; and the whole company halted, face foremost, close by the valley of Ardres. A minute's pause--a breathless silence, followed by a slight stir on both sides. Then from the dense array of cloth of gold, silver, and jewelry, of white plumes and waving pennons, amid the acclamations of myriads of spectators on the surrounding hills, and the shrill burst of pipes, trumpets, and clarions, two horsemen were seen to emerge, and, in the sight of both nations, slowly descend into the valley from opposite sides. These were the two sovereigns. As they approached nearer they spurred their horses to a gallop; then, uncovering, embraced each other on horseback, and, after dismounting, embraced again. While the two sovereigns proceeded arm in arm to a rich pavilion--which no one else was allowed to enter, except Wolsey on one side and the Admiral of France on the other--the officers on both sides, intermingling their ranks, made good cheer, and toasted each other in broken French and English, "Bons amys, French and English!" Friday and Saturday were occupied in preparing the field for the tournament. The lists, nine hundred feet in length and three hundred twenty feet broad, were pitched on a rising ground in the territory of Guines, about half way between Guines and Ardres. Galleries hung with tapestry surrounded the enclosure, and on the right side, in the place of honor, were two glazed chambers for the two Queens. A deep foss served to keep off the crowd. The entrances were guarded by twelve French and twelve English archers; and at the foot of the lists, under a triumphal arch, stood the _perron_, or tree of nobility, from which the shields of the two Kings were suspended on a higher line than those of the other challengers and answerers. The perron for Henry VIII was formed of a hawthorn; and for Francis I a raspberry (_framboisier_), in supposed allusion to his name. Cloth of gold served for the trunk and dried leaves; the foliage was of green silk; the flowers and fruits of silver and Venetian gold. Under the tree, which measured in compass not less than one hundred twenty-nine feet, the heralds took their stand on an artificial mound, surrounded by railings of green damask. On Sunday, while the French King dined at Guines with the Queen of England, the English King dined with the French Queen and the Duchess of Alençon at Ardres. On arriving at the Queen's lodgings, Henry was received by Louis of Savoy and a bevy of ladies magnificently dressed. Passing slowly through their ranks, in leisurely admiration of their charms, he reached the apartment where the Queen attended his coming. As he made his reverence to the Queen, she rose from her chair of state to meet him. Kneeling with one knee on the ground, his bonnet in his hand, he first kissed the Queen, next Madame, then the Duchess of Alençon, and finally all the princesses and ladies of the company. This done, dinner was announced. At the third service, Mountjoy's herald entered with a great golden goblet, crying in the name of the King of England, "Largess to the most high, mighty, and excellent prince, Henry, King of England, etc. Largess, largess!" The banquet ended at five in the evening, when the King took his leave. To display his skill before the ladies, he set spurs to his horse, making it bound and curvet "as valiantly as any man could do." The jousts commenced on Monday, the 11th. The rules adopted to secure fair play and guard against accidents may be read by those curious in such matters in the original black-letter _Ordonnance_, printed at the time. On the first day the Kings of England and France, with their aids, held the lists against all comers; and, with the exception of Wednesday, when the wind was too high, the jousts continued without interruption throughout the week. On Sunday, the two Kings exchanged hospitality as before. On this occasion, Francis, dropping all reserve, visited the King of England before eight in the morning, attended by four companions only, and, entering his apartment without ceremony, embraced him as he was seated at breakfast. The jousts were concluded in the following week, with a solemn mass sung by the Cardinal in a chapel erected on the field. The arrangements observed on this occasion, not less elaborate than those by which the feats of arms were regulated, may be read in the same volume as the _Ordonnance_. Here, as in the ceremonial of the lists, the spirit of chivalry reigned triumphant. When the Cardinal of Bourbon, according to the usages of the time, presented the Gospel to the French King to kiss, Francis, declining, commanded it to be offered to the King of England, who was too well bred to accept the honor. When the _Pax_ was presented at the _Agnus Dei_, the two sovereigns repeated the same mannerly breeding. The two Queens were equally ceremonious. After a polite altercation of some minutes, when neither would decide who should be the first to kiss the _Pax_, woman-like they kissed each other instead. A sermon in Latin, enlarging on the blessings of peace, was delivered by Pace at the close of the service; and a salamander was sent up in the air in the direction of Guines, to the astonishment and terror of the beholders. The whole was concluded with a banquet, at which the royal ladies, too polite to eat, spent their time in conversation; but the legates, cardinals, and prelates dined, drank, and ate _sans fiction_ in another room by themselves. On Sunday, June 24th, the Kings met in the lists to interchange gifts and bid each other farewell. Henry and his court left for Calais; Francis returned to Abbeville. The two Kings parted on the best of terms, as the world thought, and with mutual feelings of regret. Yet Henry had already arranged to meet the Emperor at Gravelines, there settle the terms of a new convention, to the disadvantage of the French King. The imperial envoy, the Marquis d'Arschot, arrived at Calais on July 4th, and was received by the Duke of Buckingham. On the 5th the King visited Gravelines, and returned with the Emperor to Calais three days after. The interview, graced by the presence of Charles, his brother Ferdinand, Herman, the Archbishop of Cologne, and the Lord Chièvres, though less splendid, was more cordial than the interview with the French King, and was meant for business. Frugal and reserved, the Emperor contrived, by his simple and unostentatious habits, to render himself more agreeable to his English guests than even Francis had been able to do with all his profuse and expensive civilities. Not, as some may condemn us, in consequence of our national fickleness; nor, as others may excuse us, because Englishmen preferred the plainer manners of the German or the Fleming; but because in the interview with Francis, in spite of appearances, there was no real cordiality. A tournament, in fact, was the least eligible method of promoting friendly feeling; it was more likely to engender unpleasant disputes and jealousies. To enforce the rules laid down for preserving order and fair play among the combatants was not an easy or a popular task. National rivalry was apt to break out, and it was hard for the judges to escape the imputation of partiality. Nor did the English, it must be admitted, return from the field in much good humor. With a feeling of complacency engendered by their insular position and their long isolation from the Continent, they had been wont to consider themselves as far superior to the French in all exercises of strength and agility. The French knights had shown themselves fully equal to their English opponents; the French King was not inferior in personal courage and activity to his English rival. Then rumors, such as spring up like the dragon's teeth in vast and motley multitudes, evidently fanned and fostered by Flemish emissaries, continually represented the French as engaged in contriving some act of treachery against the English King and nation. Among the nobles, also, the Dukes of Suffolk and Buckingham, the lord Abergavenny, and others were glad of any pretext for maligning a pageant of which Wolsey had the prime direction. Francis still hovered on the frontier in the fruitless hope of being invited to take part in this interview with the Emperor. The day before Charles left Ghent, the Lady Vendôme and the Duchess her daughter-in-law contrived to have business in that town, but their artifice was not successful. Francis was obliged to content himself with the assurance that the visage and countenance of his English ally appeared "not to be so replenished with joy" as at the valley of Ardres, and that he had given proofs of undiminished affection by riding a courser that Francis had given him. With an impressiveness intended to be candid, he told Sir Richard Wingfield, who had succeeded as English resident at the French court, that "if the King Catholic were a prince of like faith unto the King his brother [Henry], and that he might perceive from Wolsey that his coming thither [to Calais] might be the cause of any good conclusion between them" (that is, between himself and the Emperor), "he would not fail to come in post, and not to have looked for rank and place to him belonging, but would have put him into the King's chamber as one of the number of the same." But neither his extreme humility nor his flattering proposal that Henry and himself, "the chief pillars of Christendom," should handle the Pope, whom Francis knew "to be at some season the fearfulest creature of the world, and at some other to be as brave," nor the schemes and blandishments of the ladies, availed. He chafed under disappointment; still more at his ill-success in counteracting the growing intimacy of Henry and the Emperor. He had exhausted, to little purpose, "that liberal and unsuspicious confidence" which too credulous historians are apt to think characterized his proceedings at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, to the disadvantage of his less attractive and engaging contemporary. He could neither prevent the meetings of his two rivals nor penetrate their secrets. He was utterly foiled, yet dared not show his resentment. While the Pope and the Spaniards, unable to penetrate beneath the surface or read the signs of the times, were puzzled and scandalized at the Emperor's condescension, the world looked on with astonishment, as well it might, to see the two monarchs of the West thus anxiously soliciting the Cardinal's good graces. What could there be in the son of a butcher to command such deference? Of the projects discussed at this interview we are not precisely informed. The English version, intended for the meridian of the French court, and to lull the suspicions of Francis, is the only account we possess. If any credit be due to a statement prepared under such circumstances and calculated to alienate the French King irrecoverably from the Emperor, we are to believe that the imperial ambassadors had already proposed to Henry to break off his matrimonial engagement with France, and transfer the hand of the princess Mary to the Emperor. As an inducement for the King to coincide in this arrangement, the Emperor undertook to make war on France by sea and land, and not desist until Henry "had recovered his right and title in the same." The King, according to the same document, rejected such a treacherous overture with the utmost horror, vehemently protesting against its immorality and perfidiousness. That such a proposal was made, though probably not by Chièvres, to whom it is attributed--that it was accepted by England, but with none of the indignation described in the document--is clear beyond dispute. Long before any interruption had occurred in the amicable relations between the two countries, before even the landing of Charles at Canterbury, or in the interview in the valley of Ardres, it had been secretly proposed that the French engagement should be set aside, and the hand of Mary be transferred to the Emperor. The King's horror at this act of faithlessness--if it had any existence beyond the paper on which it was written--must have been tardy and gratuitous, seeing that the chief purpose of the meeting at Calais was to settle the basis of this matrimonial alliance, and obtain the solemn ratification of the Emperor. CORTÉS CAPTURES THE CITY OF MEXICO A.D. 1521 WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT Spain had already begun to conquer and colonize the New World when in 1519 Hernando Cortés, with about 700 men, landed in Mexico, having previously served in Española (Haiti) and Cuba. He was born in Medellin, Estremadura, Spain, in 1485, and was therefore now about thirty-four years of age. To make the retreat of his force impossible, he destroyed his ships and marched into the interior and established himself in the capital city, Tenochtitlan, on the site of the present city of Mexico. Cortés found Southern Mexico under the rule of the Aztecs (more correctly Aztecas), a partly civilized and powerful branch of Nahuatl Indians of Central Mexico. They had formed a confederacy with other tribes, and now maintained a formidable empire in the Mexican valley plateau. Their emperor was Montezuma II, who sent messengers to remonstrate against the advance of Cortés. The Spaniard continued his march, entered the city, and soon made Montezuma his prisoner, holding him as a hostage. In June, 1520, the Spaniards were besieged in the city; during a parley Montezuma was killed; on the night of the 30th the Spaniards, while trying to leave the city, lost half their men in a severe fight, and only after another battle (July 7th) escaped into Tlascala. Reorganizing his force, strengthened by Indian allies and by ships which he built on the lakes, Cortés, in May, 1521, began the siege of Mexico, as historians call the Aztec capital. Guatemotzin, the last of the Aztec emperors, made a desperate defence, and before its capture the city was almost destroyed. On August 12th the Spaniards made a strong assault, which so weakened the defenders that the following day was to be the last of the once flourishing empire. Cortés' chief lieutenants were Pedro de Alvarado, Gonzalo de Sandoval, and Olid, famous Spanish soldiers. After taking the capital city, Cortes, being empowered by Guatemotzin, conquered the whole of Mexico, which was called New Spain, and in 1523 he was appointed governor. On the morning of August 13, 1521, the Spanish commander again mustered his forces, having decided to follow up the blow of the preceding day before the enemy should have time to rally, and at once to put an end to the war. He had arranged with Alvarado, on the evening previous, to occupy the market-place of Tlatelolco; and the discharge of an arquebuse was to be the signal for a simultaneous assault. Sandoval was to hold the northern causeway, and, with the fleet, to watch the movements of the Indian Emperor and to intercept the flight to the mainland, which Cortés knew he meditated. To allow him to effect this would be to leave a formidable enemy in his own neighborhood, who might at any time kindle the flame of insurrection throughout the country. He ordered Sandoval, however, to do no harm to the royal person, and not to fire on the enemy at all except in self-defence. It was the day of St. Hippolytus--from this circumstance selected as the patron saint of modern Mexico--that Cortés led his warlike array for the last time across the black and blasted environs which lay around the Indian capital. On entering the Aztec precincts he paused, willing to afford its wretched inmates one more chance of escape before striking the fatal blow. He obtained an interview with some of the principal chiefs, and expostulated with them on the conduct of their Prince. "He surely will not," said the general, "see you all perish, when he can easily save you." He then urged them to prevail on Guatemotzin to hold a conference with him, repeating the assurances of his personal safety. The messengers went on their mission, and soon returned with the Cihuacoatl at their head, a magistrate of high authority among the Mexicans. He said, with a melancholy air, in which his own disappointment was visible, that "Guatemotzin was ready to die where he was, but would hold no interview with the Spanish commander"; adding in a tone of resignation, "It is for you to work your pleasure." "Go, then," replied the stern conqueror, "and prepare your countrymen for death. Their hour is come." He still postponed the assault for several hours. But the impatience of his troops at this delay was heightened by the rumor that Guatemotzin and his nobles were preparing to escape with their effects in the periaguas and canoes which were moored on the margin of the lake. Convinced of the fruitlessness and impolicy of further procrastination, Cortés made his final dispositions for the attack, and took his own station on an azotea which commanded the theatre of operations. When the assailants came into the presence of the enemy, they found them huddled together in the utmost confusion, all ages and both sexes, in masses so dense that they nearly forced one another over the brink of the causeways into the water below. Some had climbed on the terraces, others feebly supported themselves against the walls of the buildings. Their squalid and tattered garments gave a wildness to their appearance which still further heightened the ferocity of their expression, as they glared on their enemy with eyes in which hate was mingled with despair. When the Spaniards had approached within bow-shot, the Aztecs let off a flight of impotent missiles, showing to the last the resolute spirit, though they had lost the strength, of their better days. The fatal signal was then given by the discharge of an arquebuse--speedily followed by peals of heavy ordnance, the rattle of fire-arms, and the hellish shouts of the confederates as they sprang upon their victims. It is unnecessary to stain the page with a repetition of the horrors of the preceding day. Some of the wretched Aztecs threw themselves into the water and were picked up by the canoes. Others sank and were suffocated in the canals. The number of these became so great that a bridge was made of their dead bodies, over which the assailants could climb to the opposite banks. Others again, especially the women, begged for mercy, which, as the chroniclers assure us, was everywhere granted by the Spaniards, and, contrary to the instructions and entreaties of Cortés, everywhere refused by the confederates. While this work of butchery was going on, numbers were observed pushing off in the barks that lined the shore, and making the best of their way across the lake. They were constantly intercepted by the brigantines, which broke the flimsy array of boats, sending off their volleys to the right and left as the crews of the latter hotly assailed them. The battle raged as fiercely on the lake as on the land. Many of the Indian vessels were shattered and overturned. Some few, however, under cover of smoke, which rolled darkly over the waters, succeeded in clearing themselves of the turmoil, and were fast nearing the opposite shore. Sandoval had particularly charged his captains to keep an eye on the movements of any vessel in which it was at all probable that Guatemotzin might be concealed. At this crisis, three or four of the largest periaguas were seen skimming over the water and making their way rapidly across the lake. A captain, named Garci Holguin, who had command of one of the best sailors in the fleet, instantly gave them chase. The wind was favorable, and every moment he gained on the fugitives, who pulled their oars with a vigor that despair alone could have given. But it was in vain; and after a short race, Holguin, coming alongside of one of the periaguas, which, whether from its appearance or from information he had received, he conjectured might bear the Indian Emperor, ordered his men to level their cross-bows at the boat. But, before they could discharge them a cry arose from those in it that their lord was on board. At the same moment a young warrior, armed with buckler and _maquahuitl_, rose up, as if to beat off the assailants. But, as the Spanish captain ordered his men not to shoot, he dropped his weapons and exclaimed: "I am Guatemotzin. Lead me to Malintzin;[33] I am his prisoner, but let no harm come to my wife and my followers." Holguin assured him that his wishes should be respected, and assisted him to get on board the brigantine, followed by his wife and attendants. These were twenty in number, consisting of Coanaco, the deposed Lord of Tlacopan, the Lord of Tlacopan, and several other caciques and dignitaries, whose rank, probably, had secured them some exemption from the general calamities of the siege. When the captives were seated on the deck of the vessel Holguin requested the Aztec Prince to put an end to the combat by commanding his people in the other canoes to surrender. But with a dejected air he replied: "It is not necessary. They will fight no longer when they see their Prince is taken." He spoke the truth. The news of Guatemotzin's capture spread rapidly through the fleet and on shore, where the Mexicans were still engaged in conflict with their enemies. It ceased, however, at once. They made no further resistance; and those on the water quickly followed the brigantines, which conveyed their captive monarch to land. It seemed as if the fight had been maintained thus long the better to divert the enemy's attention and cover their master's retreat. Meanwhile, Sandoval, on receiving tidings of the capture, brought his own brigantine alongside of Holguin's and demanded the royal prisoner to be surrendered to him. But the captain claimed him as his prize. A dispute arose between the parties, each anxious to have the glory of the deed, and perhaps the privilege of commemorating it on his escutcheon. The controversy continued so long that it reached the ears of Cortés, who, in his station on the azotea, had learned with no little satisfaction the capture of his enemy. He instantly sent orders to his wrangling officers to bring Guatemotzin before him, that he might adjust the difference between them. He charged them, at the same time, to treat their prisoner with respect. He then made preparations for the interview, caused the terrace to be carpeted with crimson cloth and matting, and a table to be spread with provisions, of which the unhappy Aztecs stood so much in need. His lovely Indian mistress, Doña Marina, was present to act as interpreter. She stood by his side through all the troubled scenes of the conquest, and she was there now to witness its triumphant termination. Guatemotzin, on landing, was escorted by a company of infantry to the presence of the Spanish commander. He mounted the azotea with a calm and steady step, and was easily to be distinguished from his attendant nobles, though his full, dark eye was no longer lighted up with its accustomed fire, and his features wore an expression of passive resignation, that told little of the fierce and fiery spirit that burned within. His head was large, his limbs well proportioned, his complexion fairer than that of his bronze-colored nation, and his whole deportment singularly mild and engaging. Cortés came forward with a dignified and studied courtesy to receive him. The Aztec monarch probably knew the person of his conqueror, for he first broke silence by saying: "I have done all that I could to defend myself and my people. I am now reduced to this state. You will deal with me, Malintzin, as you list." Then, laying his hand on the hilt of a poniard stuck in the General's belt, he added with vehemence, "Better despatch me with this, and rid me of life at once." Cortés was filled with admiration at the proud bearing of the young barbarian, showing in his reverses a spirit worthy of an ancient Roman. "Fear not," he replied; "you shall be treated with all honor. You have defended your capital like a brave warrior. A Spaniard knows how to respect valor even in an enemy." He then inquired of him where he had left the Princess his wife; and, being informed that she still remained under protection of a Spanish guard on board the brigantine, the General sent to have her escorted to his presence. She was the youngest daughter of Montezuma, and was hardly yet on the verge of womanhood. On the accession of her cousin Guatemotzin to the throne, she had been wedded to him as his lawful wife. She is celebrated by her contemporaries for her personal charms; and the beautiful Princess Tecuichpo is still commemorated by the Spaniards, since from her by a subsequent marriage are descended some of the illustrious families of their own nation. She was kindly received by Cortés, who showed her the respectful attentions suited to her rank. Her birth, no doubt, gave her an additional interest in his eyes, and he may have felt some touch of compunction as he gazed on the daughter of the unfortunate Montezuma. He invited his royal captives to partake of the refreshments which their exhausted condition rendered so necessary. Meanwhile the Spanish commander made his dispositions for the night, ordering Sandoval to escort the prisoners to Cojohuacan, whither he proposed himself immediately to follow. The other captains, Olid and Alvarado, were to draw off their forces to their respective quarters. It was impossible for them to continue in the capital, where the poisonous effluvia from the unburied carcasses loaded the air with infection. A small guard only was stationed to keep order in the wasted suburbs. It was the hour of vespers when Guatemotzin surrendered, and the siege might be considered as then concluded. The evening set in dark, and the rain began to fall before the several parties had evacuated the city. During the night a tremendous tempest, such as the Spaniards had rarely witnessed, and such as is known only within the tropics, burst over the Mexican valley. The thunder, reverberating from the rocky amphitheatre of hills, bellowed over the waste of waters, and shook the _teocallis_ and crazy tenements of Tenochtitlan--the few that yet survived--to their foundations. The lightning seemed to cleave asunder the vault of heaven, as its vivid flashes wrapped the whole scene in a ghastly glare for a moment, to be again swallowed up in darkness. The war of elements was in unison with the fortunes of the ruined city. It seemed as if the deities of Anahuac,[34] scared from their ancient bodies, were borne along shrieking and howling in the blast, as they abandoned the fallen capital to its fate. FOOTNOTES: [33] A name given by the Indians to Cortés. [34] The low water-bordered coastal region of Mexico. The name is now applied to a part of the table-land near the city of Mexico.--ED. LIBERATION OF SWEDEN A.D. 1523 ERIC GUSTAVE GEIJER[35] Gustavus Vasa, son of Eric Johanson, and hence called Gustavus Ericson, was descended from the house of Vasa, and before the beginning of his long reign (1523-1560) as king of Sweden had served his country against the Danes, who were the controlling power in the union with Sweden and Norway. In a battle fought at the Brennkirk, July 22, 1518, Gustavus, then twenty-two years old, bore the Swedish banner. This battle resulted in the defeat of Christian II of Denmark. Gustavus was given as a hostage to Christian during his interview with the Swedish administrator, and the Dane treacherously carried the young patriot off to Denmark. In the following year he escaped in the disguise of a peasant. Sweden was conquered by Christian in 1520, and in the same year, having taken Stockholm, he ordered there the massacre of the nobility, known as the "Blood-bath." Ninety of the leading men of Sweden, including the father of Gustavus, were put to death. This outrage provoked an uprising, in which the province of Dalecarlia bore the leading part, and its people followed Gustavus in a movement for independence. He soon gathered an army of his adherents, called "Dalesmen"--men of the dales--strong enough to meet the enemy. Gustavus Vasa is not only famed as the deliverer of Sweden, but also as the promoter of popular education in his country, and for the support which he gave to the Reformation, he himself having early embraced the doctrines of Luther. The heroic aspects of this Scandinavian patriot and King have alike endeared his memory to his own people and made his fame to endure in the world annals of mankind. His last appearance and address before the estates of his kingdom, in the closing year of his life, have been finely commemorated in art, with a commingling of power and pathos, the aged monarch taking leave of his people and his throne. "He took his place in the hall of assemblage, accompanied by all his sons. The King having saluted the estates, they listened for the last time to the accents of that eloquence so well liked by the people." [Illustration: Gustavus I (Vasa) addressing his last meeting of the Estates Painting by L. Hersent] The most influential yeomen of all the parishes in the eastern and western dales elected Gustavus to be "lord and chieftain over them and the commons of the realm of Sweden." Some scholars who had arrived from Westeras brought with them new accounts of the tyranny of Christian. Gustavus placed them amid a ring of peasants to tell their story and answer the questions of the crowd. Old men represented it as a comfortable sign for the people, that as often as Gustavus discoursed to them the north wind always blew, "which was an old token to them that God would grant them good success." Sixteen active peasants were appointed to be his bodyguard; and two hundred more youths who joined him were called his foot-goers. The chronicles reckon his reign from this small beginning; while the Danes and their abettors in Stockholm long continued to speak of him and his party as a band of robbers in the woods. Thus the Dalesmen swore fidelity to Gustavus--the inhabitants, namely, of the upper parishes on both arms of the Dal-elf, where a numerous people, living amid wild yet grand natural scenery and hardened by privations, is still known by that name. Gustavus came to the Kopparberg with several hundred men in the early part of February, 1521, there took prisoner his enemy Christopher Olson, the powerful warden of the mines, made himself master of the money collected for the crown dues, and of the wares of the Danish traders on the spot, distributed both the money and goods among his men--who made their first standard from the silk stuffs there taken--and then returned to the Dales. Not long afterward, on a Sunday, when the people of the Kopparberg were at church, Gustavus again appeared at the head of fifteen hundred Dalesmen. He spoke to the people after divine service, and now the miners likewise swore fidelity to his cause. Thereupon the commonalty of the mining districts and the Dalesmen wrote to the commons of Helsingland, requesting that the Helsingers might bear themselves like true Swedish men against the overbearing violence and tyranny of the Danes. Those cruelties which King Christian had already exercised on the best in the land, they said, would soon reach every man's door and fill all the houses of Sweden with the tears and shrieks of widows and orphans; if they would take up arms and show themselves to be stout-hearted men, there was now good hope for victory and triumph under a praiseworthy captain, the lord Gustavus Ericson, whom God had preserved "as a drop of the knightly blood of Sweden"; wherefore they begged them to give their help for the sake of the brotherly league by which, since early times, the commonalty of both countries had been united. Ten years afterward, the Dalecarlians recall the fact that they had received a friendly answer to the request which their accredited messengers had preferred on that occasion, and that their neighbors the Helsingers had promised to stand by them as one man, "whatever evils might befall them from the oppression of foreign or native masters." When Gustavus had begun the siege of Stockholm, every third man of the Helsingers in fact marched thither to strengthen his army. Yet at first they hesitated to embrace the cause, although Gustavus himself went among them, and spoke to the assembled people from the barrow on the royal domain of Norrala. Thence he proceeded to Gestricland, where fugitives from Stockholm had already prepared men's minds. The burghers of Gefle, and commissioners from several parishes, swore fidelity to him in the name of the whole province. Here the rumor reached him that the Dalecarlians had already suffered a defeat; he hastened back, and soon received an account of the first victory of his followers. Letters of the magistracy of Stockholm, which were sent over the whole kingdom, warned the people to avoid all participation in the revolt. Relief was supplicated from the King; additions were made to the fortifications of the capital, sloops and barks were equipped, in order, as it was said, to deprive "Gustavus Ericson and his company of malefactors of all opportunity of quitting the country," but really to keep the approaches on the side of the sea open, which were obstructed by the fishers and peasants of the islets, who had begun to take arms for Gustavus. Special admonitory letters were despatched to Helsingland and Dalecarlia, signed by Gustavus Trolle, his father Eric Trolle, and Canute Bennetson (Sparre) of Engsoe, styling themselves the council of the realm of Sweden, by which, however, say the chronicles, the royal cause was rather damaged than strengthened. "For when the Dalesmen and miners heard the letter, they said it was manifest to them that the council at this time was but small and thin, since it consisted of only three men, and these of little weight." Gustavus Trolle, the Danish bishops, Canute Bennetson, above named, and Henry of Mellen, the King's lieutenant at Westeras--where they had recently been assembled with commissioners from the magistracy of Stockholm by Bishop Otho--now marched with six thousand men of horse and foot toward the Dal River, and encamped at the ferry of Brunback. On the other side the Dalecarlians guarded this frontier of their country, under the command of Peter Swenson of Viderboda, a powerful miner, whom Gustavus had appointed their captain in his absence. When those in the Danish camp observed how the Dalesmen shot their arrows across the stream, Bishop Beldenacke is said to have inquired of the Swedish lords present--to use the words of the chronicles--"how great a force the tract above the Long Wood (the forest on the boundary between Westmanland and Dalecarlia) could furnish at the utmost?" Answer was made to him, full twenty thousand men. Yet further he asked where so many mouths might obtain sustenance? To this it was replied that the people were not used to dainty meats; they drunk for the most part nothing but water, and, if need were, could be satisfied with bark-bread. Then Beldenacke declared: "Men who eat wood and drink water the devil himself could not overcome, much less anyone else. Brethren, let us leave this place!" The story makes the Danes hereupon prepare for breaking up their encampment. However this may be, it is certain that Peter Swenson, with the Dalesmen, crossed the Dal secretly, by a circuit, at Utsund's Ferry, surprised the camp, and put the foe to rout. Gustavus had himself dealt with the inhabitants of Helsingland and Gestricland, in order to insure himself against leaving foes in the rear, and, after his return to the Dales, he prepared for an expedition into the lower country. He assembled his troops at Hedemora, and sought to inure them to habits of order and obedience by military exercises. The dale peasant had no fire-arms and knew little of discipline; his weapons were the axe, the bow, the pike, and the sling, the latter sometimes throwing pieces of red-hot iron. Gustavus instructed his men to fashion their arrows in a more effective shape, and increased the length of the spear by four or five feet, with a view to repel the attacks of cavalry. He caused monetary tokens to be struck--an expedient which seems to have been not uncommon in Sweden, since, from a remote period, even leather money is mentioned. The coins now struck at Hedemora were of copper, with a small admixture of silver, similar to those introduced by the King, and called "Christian's klippings;" on one side was the impress of an armed man; on the other, arrows laid crosswise, with three crowns. Gustavus broke from his quarters, and marched across the Long Wood into Westmanland. His course lay through districts which bore traces yet fresh of the enemy's passage. The peasantry rose as he advanced. On St. George's Day, April 23d, he mustered his army at the church of Romfertuna. The number is stated by the chronicles at from fifteen to twenty thousand men, yet on the correctness of this little reliance can be placed, even if we did not absolutely class this account with those which compare the multitude of Dalesmen in the fight of Brunneback to the sands of the sea-shore and the leaves of the forest, and their arrows to the hail of the storm-cloud. The liberation of Sweden by Gustavus Vasa is a history written by the people, and they counted neither themselves nor their foes. The army was now divided under two generals, Lawrence Olaveson and Lawrence Ericson, both practised warriors. Gustavus next issued his declaration of war against Christian, and marched to Westeras. He expected here to be met by the peasants of the western mining district from Lindesberg and Nora, who had already taken the oath of fidelity to him through his deputies; but instead of this he was informed that Peter Ugla, one of those intrusted with the performance of this duty, had allowed himself to be surprised at Koping, and cut to pieces with his whole force. On the other hand, tidings arrived that the peasants on Wermd Isle had revolted, slain a band of Christian's men in the church itself, and made themselves masters of two of his ships. The letters conveying the news, and magnifying the advantages gained, Gustavus caused to be read aloud to his followers. Theodore Slagheck, exercising power with barbarous cruelty and outrage, had himself taken the command of the castle of Westeras. He caused all the fences of the neighborhood to be broken down, in order to be able to use his cavalry without impediment against the insurgent peasants, who, on April 29th, approached the town. Both horsemen and foot, with field-pieces, marched against them; and Gustavus, who had interdicted his men from engaging in a contest with the enemy, intending to defer the attack till the following day, was still at Balundsas, half a mile from the town, when news reached him that his young soldiers were already at blows with their adversaries, and he hastened to their assistance. The Dalecarlians opposed their long pikes to the onset of the cavalry with such effect that, more than four hundred horses having perished in the assault, they were driven back on the infantry, who were posted in their rear, and compelled to flee along with them, while Lawrence Ericson pushed into the town by a circuitous road and possessed himself of the enemy's artillery in the market-place. When the garrison of the castle observed this, they set fire to the houses by shooting their combustibles, and burned the greatest part of the town. The miners and peasants dispersed to extinguish the flames or to plunder, bartered with one another the goods of the traders in the booths, possessed themselves of the stock of wine in the cathedral and the council-house, seated themselves round the vats, drank and sang. The Danes, reënforced from the castle, rallied anew, and the victory would undoubtedly have been changed into an overthrow had not Gustavus sent Lawrence Olaveson, with the followers he had kept about him, again into the town, where, after a renewal of the conflict, the foe was put to an utter rout. Many cast away their arms, and threw themselves, between fire and sword, into the waters. Gustavus caused all the stores of spirituous liquors to be destroyed, and beat in the wine casks with his own hand. The fight of Westeras, from its influence on public opinion, acquired greater importance than of itself it would have possessed. Little was gained by the conquest of the town, so long as the castle held out; and how unserviceable a force of peasants was for a siege, Gustavus was often subsequently to experience. Wherever the tidings of his victory came, the people revolted, and he was already enabled to divide his power, and to invest the castles of several provinces. Siege was accordingly laid to Stegborg, Nykoping, and Orebro. A division of the Vermelanders, with the peasants of Rekarne, in Sudermania, was employed in beleaguering the castle of Westeras; of whose exploits, however, nothing else is told than that they shot the councillor Canute Bennetson (Sparre), to whom Slagheck transferred the command, so that he tumbled in his wolfskin coat from the wall into the stream. Howbeit, another detachment reduced Horningsholm in Sudermania; Christian's governors in Vermeland and Dalsland were slain; the people of the former province, under the command of their justiciary, prepared for an attack upon the councillor Thure Jonson, the King's lieutenant in West-Gothland, and, crossing Lake Vener, entered that district. In Dalsland, fifteen hundred men took up arms; several thousand peasants from Nerike marched across the Tiwed with the same object. Gustavus had been obliged to grant a furlough to his Dalesmen about seed-time; and to supply their place he caused the people of several districts of Upland to be summoned to assemble in the forest of Rymningen, at Oeresundsbro; from which point his two captains essayed an attack upon the Archbishop of Upsala. It was St. Eric's Day (May 18th), and a great confluence of people was present at the fair. An assault was expected; for a deputation of four priests and two burgesses, sent from Upsala to the forest, had received from the leaders the answer that it must be Swedes, not outlandish men, who should bear the shrine of holy Eric, and that they would come to take their part in the festival. Bennet Bjugg (Barley), the Archbishop's bailiff, to show his contempt of such foes, caused a banquet to be set out in the open space between the larger and smaller episcopal manor houses of that day, where, before the eyes of the people, he made himself and his fellows merry till late in the night with drinking, dancing, and singing. Roused from a late sleep by an assault on the gates of the fortified house, and finding it beset by the enemy, they attempted to escape by a concealed passage, which then connected the Bishop's house with the cathedral. But the peasants set fire to this passage, which was of wood, and shot fire arrows at the roof of the episcopal residence, in which the flames soon burst forth. The building was laid in ashes, and next day the females of the household, with some burghers of Upsala, crept out of its cellars, in which they had taken refuge. Great part of the garrison perished. The bailiff escaped with a wound from an arrow, of which he died after rejoining his master at Stockholm. This prelate, Archbishop Gustavus Trolle, had lately returned from a journey to Helsingland, undertaken in order to retain this part of his diocese in its allegiance to the King. Shortly afterward he received, by a messenger from Gustavus, who had himself come to Upsala at Whitsuntide, a letter exhorting him to embrace the cause of his country, to which his chapter had been persuaded to annex a memorial to the same effect. The Archbishop detained the messenger, saying that he would carry the answer himself. He broke up immediately with five hundred German horse and three thousand foot of the garrison of Stockholm, and had come within half a mile of Upsala before Gustavus received intelligence of his approach. This the latter did not at first credit, but remained, expecting an answer to his overture of negotiation, until, about six in the morning, being on horseback upon the sand-hill near Upsala, the spot where he afterward built a royal castle, he saw the Archbishop marching across the King's Mead (Kungsang) toward the town. Gustavus had but two hundred of his so-called foot-goers and a small number of horse with him, for the peasants had returned to their homes. He made a hasty retreat, but was overtaken by Trolle's horsemen at the Ford of Laby. Here a young Finnish noble, who was next to him, in the confusion rode down his horse in the midst of the stream; and he would have been lost had not the rest of his followers turned upon the enemy with such effect as to make them desist from the pursuit. Gustavus now betook himself to the forest of Rymningen, raised the peasantry of the adjoining districts, and sent out young men under his best captains to surprise the Archbishop on his return. The remains of cattle slaughtered on the road betrayed the ambush to the prelate, who drew off in another direction. He was nevertheless overtaken and attacked, escaping the spear of Lawrence Olaveson only by bending downward on his horse, so that the weapon pierced his neighbor; and he brought back to Stockholm hardly a sixth part of his army. Gustavus followed close after with his collected force, and encamped under the Brunkeberg. Four gibbets on this eminence, stocked with corpses of Swedish inhabitants, attested the character of the government in the capital. Thus began, at the midsummer of 1521, the siege of Stockholm, which was to last full two years, amid difficulties little thought of nowadays, after the lapse of ages; and the admiration which men so willingly render to the exertions in the cause of freedom have deprived events of their original colors. The path of Gustavus was not in general one of glittering feats, although his life is in itself one grand achievement. What he accomplished was the effect of strong endurance and great sagacity; and though he wanted not for intrepidity, it was of a kind before which the mere warrior must vail his crest. All the remaining movements of the war of liberation consist in sieges of the various castles and fortresses of the country, undertaken as opportunity offered, with levies of the peasantry, whose detachments relieved each other, though sometimes neglecting this duty when pressed by the cares or necessities of their own families. Hence the object of these investments, which was to deprive the besieged of provisions, could only be imperfectly attained, and there were many fortified mansions of which the proprietors adhered to the Danish party, as that of Wik in Upland, which remained blockaded throughout the whole year. These difficulties were the most formidable where, as at Stockholm, access was open by the sea, of which Severin Norby, with the Danish squadron, was master. The scantiness of the means of attack may be discovered from the circumstance that sixty German spearmen, whom Clement Rensel, a burgher of Stockholm, himself a narrator of these events, brought from Dantzic in July for the service of Gustavus, were regarded as a reënforcement of the highest importance. "At this time," says the chronicle, "Lord Gustave enjoyed not much repose or many pleasant days, when he kept his people in so many campaigns and investments, since he bore for them all great anxiety, fear, and peril, how he might lend them help in their need, so that they might not be surprised through heedlessness and laches. So likewise his pain was not small when he had but little in his money chest, and it was grievous to give this answer when the folk cried for stipend. Therefore he stayed not many days in the same place, but travelled day and night between the camps." In the month of August he arrived at Stegeborg, which was now besieged by his general, Arwid the West-Goth, who had recently repulsed with great bravery Severin Norby's attempt to relieve the castle, and had even begun to take homage for Gustavus from the people of his province, although in this he experienced difficulties. The East-Goths declared that they had been so chastised for their attack on the Bishop's castle at Linkoping the preceding year that they no longer dared to provoke either King Christian or Bishop Hans Brask. The personal presence of Gustavus decided the waverers, and even the Bishop received him as a friend, because he would otherwise have stood in danger of a hostile visitation. Gustavus now convoked a diet of barons at Vadstena, which was attended by seventy Swedish gentlemen of noble family and by many other persons of all classes in Gothland. These made him a tender of the crown, which he refused to accept. On August 24th, therefore, they swore fealty and obedience to him as administrator of the kingdom--"in like manner," add the chronicles, "as had formerly been done in Upland"; whence they seem to have assumed that he had already been acknowledged as such in Upper Sweden, here called Upland, as we often find it in the chronicles of the Middle Age. This was the first public declaration of the nobility in favor of Gustavus and his cause; although the greatest barons in this division of the kingdom, such as Nils Boson (Grip), Holger Carlson (Gere), and Thure Jenson (Roos) in West-Gothland, all three councillors of state, were still in arms for Christian. That the first-named nobleman joined the party of Gustavus before the end of the year we know from his letter of thanks for a fief of which he received the investure. Both the latter were proclaimed in 1523 to be enemies of the realm, as also was the archbishop Gustavus Trolle. He had repaired to Denmark two years before, in order to obtain, by his personal instances with the King, the often-promised relief for the besieged garrison of Stockholm, but was received with coldness and reproaches. After the baronial diet of Vadstena, the Gothlanders acknowledged the authority of the administrator, and, the Danes having been driven out West-Gothland and Smaland, the seat of the war was removed to Finland. By the commencement of the next year the principal castles of the interior had fallen into the hands of Gustavus, and some, as those of Westeras and Orebo, were razed to the ground by the now exasperated peasantry. Stockholm and Kalmar, as well as Abo in Finland, yet stood out, and by help of reënforcement which they received at the beginning of 1522, through the Danish admiral Severin Norby, the enemy were again able to resume the offensive. By sallies from the beleaguered capital on April 7th, 8th, and 13th, the camp of Gustavus was set on fire and destroyed, and for a whole month afterward no Swedish force was seen before the walls of Stockholm. The besiegers of Abo were likewise driven off, and the chief adherents of Gustavus, being obliged to flee from Finland, Arvid, Bishop of Abo, with many noble persons of both sexes, perished at sea. Christian himself by new cruelties added to the detestation with which he was regarded in Sweden. The wives and children, of the most distinguished among the barons beheaded in Stockholm, had been conveyed to Denmark, and among them the mother and two sisters of Gustavus, whom the King, in spite of the entreaties of his consort, threw into a dungeon. Here they died, either by violence, as Gustavus himself complains in a letter of 1522 concerning the cruel oppression of King Christian, directed to the Pope, the Emperor, and all Christian princes, or, as others assert, of the plague. An order had also been recently issued by the King to commanders in Sweden to put to death all the Swedes of distinction who had fallen into their hands. The chronicles say that Severin Norby had received this order so early as the summer of 1521, but, instead of complying with it, permitted the escape of many noblemen, who afterward did homage to Gustavus at Vadstena, in order, as he expressed it, that they might rather guard their necks like warriors than be slaughtered like chickens. But in Abo a new massacre was perpetrated at the beginning of the next year by Lord Thomas, the royalist commander there, who afterward, in an attempt to relieve Stockholm, fell, with all his ships, into the hands of Gustavus, and was hanged upon an oak in Tynnels Island. After Severin Norby had relieved the capital, the secretary, master Gotschalk Ericson, wrote thence to Christian that there were but eighty of the burghers, for the most part Germans, who could be counted on for the King's service, but of footmen and gunners in the castle there were now eight hundred fifty men, well furnished with all; the peasants were, indeed, weary of the war, but were still more fearful of the King's vengeance, and put faith in no assurances, whence the country could only be reduced to obedience by violent methods; if a sufficient force were sent, East-Gothland, Sodermanland, and Upland would submit to the King, and his grace could then punish the Dalecarlians and Helsingers, who first stirred up these troubles. The governor of the castle of Stockholm informs the King, in a report on military occurrences of the winter, "that his men had compelled him to consent to an increase of pay on account of the successes they had gained; that he had expelled from the town, or imprisoned, the suspected Swedish burghers; that the peasants would rather be hanged on their own hearths than longer endure the burden of war; that Gustavus, who had in vain tempted his fidelity, had already sent his plate and the chief part of his own movable property to a priest in Helsingland; he (the governor) also transmitted an inventory of the goods of the decapitated nobles." But by the end of one month Gustavus, who in this letter is styled "a forest thief and robber," had again filled three camps around Stockholm with Dalesmen and Norrlanders; and when, pursuant to a convention with Lubeck, he received thence in the month of June an auxiliary force of ten ships, a number that was afterward augmented, he was enabled to dispense with the greatest portion of his peasants, and retained about him only those who were young and unmarried. The assistance of the Lubeckers, it was true, was given only by halves, and from selfish motives; they did not forget their profit on the arms, purchased Swedish iron and copper for klippings, with which worthless coins they came well provided, and exacted a dear price for their men, ships, and military stores, refusing even, it is said, to supply Gustavus with two pieces of cannon at a decisive moment, although upon the proffered security of two of the royal castles. This occurred on occasion of a second, and this time unsuccessful, attempt made by Norby to relieve Stockholm; in which he was only saved from ruin by the refusal of the admiral of Lubeck to attack. Meanwhile Gustavus, despite the losses which he sustained by sallies, pushed his three camps by degrees close to the town, then covering little more than the island still contains, the town properly so called. At length, after Kingsholm, Langholm, Sodermalm, Waldemar's Island, now the Zoölogical Gardens, had been connected by block-houses and chains, the place was invested on all sides. Yet it held out through the winter, until the news of Christian's fate, joined to the pangs of hunger, deprived the garrison of all spirit for further resistance. He did not dare to trust either his subjects or his soldiers, collected twenty ships, in which he embarked the public records, with the treasure and crown jewels, his consort and child, and his adviser Sigbert, who was concealed in his chest. Deserting his kingdom, he sailed away in the face of the whole population of Copenhagen, April 20, 1523. Thus ended the reign of Christian II, a king in whom one knows not which rivets the attention, the multiplied undertakings he commenced and abandoned in a career so often stained with blood, his audacity, his feebleness, or that misery of many years by which he was to expiate a short and ill-used tenure of power. There are men who, like the storm birds before the tempest, appear in history as foretokens of the approaching outburst of great convulsions. Of such a nature was Christian, who, tossed hither and thither between all the various currents of his time without central consistence, awakened alternately the fear or pity of the beholders. Frederick I, who was chosen to succeed him in Denmark, wrote to the estates of Sweden, demanding that in accordance with the stipulations of the Union of Kalmar he might also be acknowledged king in Sweden. They replied "that they had elected Gustavus Ericson to be Sweden's king." That event came to pass at the Diet of Strengess, June 7, 1523. Thus was the union dissolved, after enduring one hundred twenty-six years. Norway wavered at this critical moment. The inhabitants of the southern portion declared, when the Swedes under Thure Jenson (Roos) and Lawrence Siggeson (Sparre) had penetrated into their country as far as Opslo, that they would unite with Sweden if they might rely upon its support. Bohusland was subdued, Bleking likewise on another side, and Gustavus sought, both by negotiation and arms, to enforce the old claims of Sweden to Scania and Halland. The town of Kalmar was taken on May 27th, and the castle on July 7th. Stockholm having surrendered on June 20th, on condition of the free departure of the garrison with their property and arms, and of every other person who adhered to the cause of Christian, Gustavus made his public entry on Midsummer's Eve; before the end of the year Finland also was reduced to obedience. The kingdom was freed from foreign enemies, but internal foes still remained; and Lubeck was an ally whose demands made it more troublesome than it would have been as an enemy. A town wasted in the civil war had been the scene of the election of Gustavus Vasa to the throne. In the capital, when he made his public entry, one-half of the houses were empty, and of population scarcely a fourth part remained. To fill up the gap, he issued an invitation to the burghers in other towns to settle there, a summons which he was obliged twelve years afterward to renew, "seeing that Stockholm had not yet revived from the days of King Christian." The spectacle which here met his eyes was a type of the condition of the whole kingdom, and never was it said of any sovereign with more justice that the throne to which he had been elevated was more difficult to preserve than to win. FOOTNOTES: [35] Translated by J. H. Turner, M.A. THE PEASANTS' WAR IN GERMANY A.D. 1524 J. H. MERLE D'AUBIGNE The Peasants' War was the most widespread and most bloody of the mediæval forerunners of the French Revolution. Like the rebellion of the Jacquerie and many another ferocious, desperate outburst of the downtrodden common folk, it foretold a day of vengeance to come. These early uprisings were all hopeless from their start, because the untrained and naked bodies of the people, however numerous, could not possibly hold an open battlefield against skilled and armed men of war. Each revolt terminated in the butchery of the unhappy rebels. The Peasants' War has acquired special notoriety because of its connection with the Reformation. The people rose in the name of religion, and, as their ignorance and ferocity led them into hideous excesses of revenge upon their oppressors, the new religion was blamed for all the evil thus done in its name. This revolt, because of the fear and disgust it roused, became the most severe set-back Protestantism received in all its struggle with the more ancient and conservative Church. The following account of the outbreak and its consequences is by a standard Protestant historian, president of the College of Geneva, a student who can see justice on both sides of the great controversy. A political ferment, very different from that produced by the Gospel, had long been at work in the empire. The people, bowed down by civil and ecclesiastical oppression, bound in many countries to the seigniorial estates, and transferred from hand to hand along with them, threatened to rise with fury and at last to break their chains. This agitation had showed itself long before the Reformation by many symptoms, and even then the religious element was blended with the political; in the sixteenth century it was impossible to separate these two principles, so closely associated in the existence of nations. In Holland, at the close of the preceding century, the peasants had revolted, placing on their banners, by way of arms, a loaf and a cheese, the two great blessings of these poor people. The "Alliance of the Shoes" had shown itself in the neighborhood of Spires in 1502. In 1513 it appeared again in Breisgau, being encouraged by the priests. In 1514 Wuertemberg had seen the "League of Poor Conrad," whose aim was to maintain by rebellion "the right of God." In 1515 Carinthia and Hungary had been the theatres of terrible agitations. These seditions had been quenched in torrents of blood, but no relief had been accorded to the people. A political reform, therefore, was not less necessary than a religious reform. The people were entitled to this; but we must acknowledge that they were not ripe for its enjoyment. Since the commencement of the Reformation, these popular disturbances had not been renewed; men's minds were occupied by other thoughts. Luther, whose piercing glance had discerned the condition of the people, had already from the summit of the Wartburg addressed them in serious exhortations calculated to restrain their agitated minds: "Rebellion," he had said, "never produces the amelioration we desire, and God condemns it. What is it to rebel, if it be not to avenge one's self? The devil is striving to excite to revolt those who embrace the Gospel, in order to cover it with opprobrium; but those who have rightly understood my doctrine do not revolt." Everything gave cause to fear that the popular agitation could not be restrained much longer. The government that Frederick of Saxony had taken such pains to form, and which possessed the confidence of the nation, was dissolved. The Emperor, whose energy might have been an efficient substitute for the influence of this national administration, was absent; the princes whose union had always constituted the strength of Germany were divided; and the new declaration of Charles V against Luther, by removing every hope of future harmony, deprived the reformer of part of the moral influence by which in 1522 he had succeeded in calming the storm. The chief barriers that hitherto had confined the torrent being broken, nothing could any longer restrain its fury. It was not the religious movement that gave birth to political agitations; but in many places it was carried away by their impetuous waves. Perhaps we should even go further, and acknowledge that the movement communicated to the people by the Reformation gave fresh strength to the discontent fermenting in the nation. The violence of Luther's writings, the intrepidity of his actions and language, the harsh truths that he spoke, not only to the Pope and prelates, but also to the princes themselves, must all have contributed to inflame minds that were already in a state of excitement. Accordingly, Erasmus did not fail to tell him, "We are now reaping the fruits that you have sown." And further, the cheering truths of the Gospel, at last brought to light, stirred all hearts and filled them with anticipation and hope. But many unregenerated souls were not prepared by repentance for the faith and liberty of Christians. They were very willing to throw off the papal yoke, but they would not take up the yoke of Christ. And hence, when princes devoted to the cause of Rome endeavored in their wrath to stifle the Reformation, real Christians patiently endured these cruel persecutions; but the multitude resisted and broke out, and, seeing their desires checked in one direction, gave vent to them in another. "Why," said they, "should slavery be perpetuated in the state while the Church invites all men to a glorious liberty? Why should governments rule only by force, when the Gospel preaches nothing but gentleness?" Unhappily, at a time when the religious reform was received with equal joy both by princes and people, the political reform, on the contrary, had the most powerful part of the nation against it; and while the former had the Gospel for its rule and support, the latter had soon no other principles than violence and despotism. Accordingly, while the one was confined within the bounds of truth, the other rapidly, like an impetuous torrent, overstepped all limits of justice. But to shut one's eyes against the indirect influence of the Reformation on the troubles that broke out in the empire would betoken partiality. A fire had been kindled in Germany by religious discussions from which it was impossible to prevent a few sparks escaping, which were calculated to inflame the passions of the people. The claims of a few fanatics to divine inspiration increased the evil. While the Reformation had continually appealed from the pretended authority of the Church to the real authority of the holy Scriptures, these enthusiasts not only rejected the authority of the Church, but of the Scriptures also; they spoke only of an inner word, of an internal revelation from God; and, overlooking the natural corruption of their hearts, they gave way to all the intoxication of spiritual pride, and fancied they were saints. "To them the holy Scriptures were but a dead letter," said Luther, "and they all began to cry, 'The Spirit! the Spirit!' But most assuredly I will not follow where their spirit leads them. May God of his mercy preserve me from a church in which there are none but saints. I desire to dwell with the humble, the feeble, the sick, who know and feel their sins, and who groan and cry continually to God from the bottom of their hearts to obtain his consolation and support." These words of Luther have great depth of meaning, and point out the change that was taking place in his views as to the nature of the Church. They indicate at the same time how contrary were the religious opinions of the rebels to those of the Reformation. The most notorious of these enthusiasts was Thomas Munzer; he was not devoid of talent, had read his Bible, was zealous, and might have done good if he had been able to collect his agitated thoughts and find peace of heart. But as he did not know himself, and was wanting in true humility, he was possessed with a desire of reforming the world, and forgot, as all enthusiasts do, that the reformation should begin with himself. Some mystical writings that he had read in his youth had given a false direction to his mind. He first appeared at Zwickau, quitted Wittenberg after Luther's return, dissatisfied with the inferior part he was playing, and became pastor of the small town of Alstadt in Thuringia. He could not long remain quiet, and accused the reformers of founding, by their adherence to the letter, a new popery, and of forming churches which were not pure and holy. "Luther," said he, "has delivered men's consciences from the yoke of the Pope, but he has left them in a carnal liberty, and not led them in spirit toward God." He considered himself as called of God to remedy this great evil. The revelations of the Spirit were in his eyes the means by which his reform was to be effected. "He who possesses this spirit," said he, "possesses the true faith, although he should never see the Scriptures in his life. Heathens and Turks are better fitted to receive it than many Christians who style us enthusiasts." It was Luther whom he here had in view. "To receive this Spirit we must mortify the flesh," said he at another time, "wear tattered clothing, let the beard grow, be of sad countenance, keep silence, retire into desert places, and supplicate God to give us a sign of his favor. Then God will come and speak with us, as formerly he spoke with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. If he were not to do so, he would not deserve our attention. I have received from God the commission to gather together his elect into a holy and eternal alliance." The agitation and ferment which were at work in men's minds were but too favorable to the dissemination of these enthusiastic ideas. Man loves the marvellous and whatever flatters his pride. Munzer, having persuaded a part of his flock to adopt his views, abolished ecclesiastical singing and all other ceremonies. He maintained that obedience to princes, "void of understanding," was at once to serve God and Belial. Then, marching out at the head of his parishioners to a chapel in the vicinity of Alstadt, whither pilgrims from all quarters were accustomed to resort, he pulled it down. After the exploit, being compelled to leave that neighborhood, he wandered about Germany, and went as far as Switzerland, carrying with him, and communicating to all who would listen to him, the plan of a general revolution. Everywhere he found men's minds prepared; he threw gunpowder on the burning coals, and the explosion forthwith took place. Luther, who had rejected the warlike enterprises of Sickengen, could not be led away by the tumultuous movements of the peasantry. He wrote to the Elector: "It causes me especial joy that these enthusiasts themselves boast, to all who are willing to listen to them, that they do not belong to us. The Spirit urges them on, say they; and I reply, it is an evil spirit, for he bears no other fruit than the pillage of convents and churches; the greatest highway robbers upon earth might do as much." At the same time, Luther, who desired that others should enjoy the liberty he claimed for himself, dissuaded the Prince from all measures of severity: "Let them preach what they please, and against whom they please," said he; "for it is the Word of God that must march in front of the battle and fight against them. If their spirit be the true spirit, he will not fear our severity; if ours is the true one, he will not fear their violence. Let us leave the spirits to struggle and contend with one another. Perhaps some persons may be led astray; there is no battle without wounds; but he who fighteth faithfully shall be crowned. Nevertheless, if they desire to take up the sword, let your highness forbid it, and order them to quit the country." The insurrection began in the Black Forest, and near the sources of the Danube, so frequently the theatre of popular commotions. On the 19th of July, 1524, some Thurgovian peasants rose against the Abbot of Reichenau, who would not accord them an evangelical preacher. Ere long thousands were collected round the small town of Tengen to liberate an ecclesiastic who was there imprisoned. The revolt spread with inconceivable rapidity from Swabia as far as the Rhenish provinces, Franconia, Thuringia, and Saxony. In the month of January, 1525, all these countries were in a state of rebellion. About the end of this month the peasants published a declaration in twelve articles, in which they claimed the liberty of choosing their own pastors; the abolition of small tithes, of slavery, and of fines on inheritance; the right to hunt, fish, and cut wood, etc. Each demand was backed by a passage from holy writ, and they said in conclusion, "If we are deceived, let Luther correct us by Scripture." The opinions of the Wittenberg divines were consulted. Luther and Melanchthon delivered theirs separately, and they both gave evidence of the difference of their characters. Melanchthon, who thought every kind of disturbance a crime, oversteps the limits of his usual gentleness, and cannot find language strong enough to express his indignation. The peasants are criminals against whom he invokes all laws human and divine. If friendly negotiation is unavailing, the magistrates should hunt them down as if they were robbers and assassins. "And yet," adds he--and we require at least one feature to remind us of Melanchthon--"let them take pity on the orphans when having recourse to the penalty of death!" Luther's opinion of the revolt was the same as Melanchthon's, but he had a heart that beat for the miseries of the people. On this occasion he manifested a dignified impartiality, and spoke the truth frankly to both parties. He first addressed the princes, and more especially the bishops: "It is you," said he, "who are the cause of this revolt; it is your clamors against the Gospel, your guilty oppressions of the poor, that have driven the people to despair. It is not the peasants, my dear lords, that rise up against you--it is God himself who opposes your madness. The peasants are but the instruments he employs to humble you. Do not imagine you can escape the punishment he is preparing for you. Even should you have succeeded in destroying all these peasants, God is able from the very stones to raise up others to chastise your pride. If I desired revenge, I might laugh in my sleeve, and look on while the peasants were carrying on their work, or even increase their fury; but may God preserve me from such thoughts! My dear lords, put away your indignation, treat those poor peasants as a man of sense treats people who are drunk or insane. Quiet these commotions by mildness, lest a conflagration should arise and burn all Germany. Among these twelve articles there are certain demands which are just and equitable." This prologue was calculated to conciliate the peasants' confidence in Luther, and to make them listen patiently to the truths he had to tell them. He represented to them that the greater number of their demands were well founded, but that to revolt was to act like heathens; that the duty of a Christian is to be patient, not to fight; that if they persisted in revolting against the Gospel in the name of the Gospel, he should look upon them as more dangerous enemies than the Pope. "The Pope and the Emperor," continued he, "combined against me; but the more they blustered, the more did the Gospel gain ground. And why was this? Because I have never drawn the sword or called for vengeance; because I never had recourse to tumult or insurrection: I relied wholly on God, and placed everything in his almighty hands. Christians fight not with swords or arquebuses, but with sufferings and with the Cross. Christ, their captain, handled not the sword. He was hung upon a tree." But to no purpose did Luther employ this Christian language. The people were too much excited by the fanatical speeches of the leaders of the insurrection to listen, as of old, to the words of the reformer. "He is playing the hypocrite," said they; "he flatters the nobles. He has declared war against the Pope, and yet wishes us to submit to our oppressors." The revolt, instead of dying away, became more formidable. At Weinsberg, Count Louis of Helfenstein and the seventy men under his orders were condemned to death by the rebels. A body of peasants drew up with their pikes lowered, while others drove the count and his soldiers against this wall of steel. The wife of the wretched Helfenstein, a natural daughter of the emperor Maximilian, holding an infant two years old in her arms, knelt before them, and with loud cries begged for her husband's life, and vainly endeavored to arrest this march of murder; a boy, who had been in the count's service and had joined the rebels, capered gayly before him, and played the dead march upon his fife, as if he had been leading his victims in a dance. All perished; the child was wounded in its mother's arms, and she herself thrown upon a dung-cart and thus conveyed to Heilbronn. At the news of these cruelties, a cry of horror was heard from the friends of the Reformation, and Luther's feeling heart underwent a terrible conflict. On the one hand the peasants, ridiculing his advice, pretended to receive revelations from heaven, made an impious use of the threatenings of the Old Testament, proclaimed an equality of rank and a community of goods, defended their cause with fire and sword, and indulged in barbarous atrocities. On the other hand, the enemies of the Reformation asked the reformer, with a malicious sneer, if he did not know that it was easier to kindle a fire than to extinguish it. Shocked at these excesses, alarmed at the thought that they might check the progress of the Gospel, Luther hesitated no longer, no longer temporized; he inveighed against the insurgents with all the energy of his character, and perhaps overstepped the just bounds within which he should have contained himself. "The peasants," said he, "commit three horrible sins against God and man, and thus deserve the death of body and soul. First, they revolt against their magistrates, to whom they have sworn fidelity; next, they rob and plunder convents and castles; and lastly, they veil their crimes with the cloak of the Gospel. If you do not put a mad dog to death, you will perish, and all the country with you. Whoever is killed fighting for the magistrates will be a true martyr, if he has fought with a good conscience." Luther then gives a powerful description of the guilty violence of the peasants who force peaceful and simple men to join their alliance and thus drag them to the same condemnation. He then adds: "For this reason, my dear lords, help, save, deliver, have pity on these poor people. Let everyone strike, pierce, and kill who is able. If thou diest, thou canst not meet a happier death; for thou diest in the service of God, and to save thy neighbor from hell." Neither gentleness nor violence could arrest the popular torrent. The church-bells were no longer rung for divine service; whenever their deep and prolonged sounds were heard in the fields, it was the tocsin, and all ran to arms. The people of the Black Forest had rallied round John Muller of Bulgenbach. With an imposing aspect, covered with a red cloak and wearing a red cap, this leader boldly advanced from village to village followed by the peasantry. Behind him, on a wagon decorated with ribands and branches of trees, was raised the tricolor flag--black, red, and white--the signal of revolt. A herald dressed in the same colors read the twelve articles, and invited the people to join in the rebellion. Whoever refused was banished from the community. Ere long this march, which at first was peaceful, became more disquieting. "We must compel the lords to submit to our alliance," exclaimed they. And to induce them to do so, they plundered the granaries, emptied the cellars, drew the seigniorial fish-ponds, demolished the castles of the nobles who resisted, and burned the convents. Opposition had inflamed the passions of these rude men; equality no longer satisfied them; they thirsted for blood, and swore to put to death every man who wore a spur. At the approach of the peasants, the cities that were unable to resist them opened their gates and joined them. In whatever place they entered, they pulled down the images and broke the crucifixes; armed women paraded the streets and threatened the monks. If they were defeated in one quarter, they assembled in another, and braved the most formidable forces. A committee of peasants was established at Heilbrunn. The counts of Lowenstein were taken prisoners, dressed in a smock-frock, and then, a white staff having been placed in their hands, they were compelled to swear to the twelve articles. "Brother George, and thou, brother Albert," said a tinker of Ohringen to the counts of Hohenlohe who had gone to their camp, "swear to conduct yourselves as our brethren, for you also are now peasants; you are no longer lords." Equality of rank, the dream of many democrats, was established in aristocratic Germany. Many nobles, some through fear, others from ambition, then joined the insurgents. The famous Goetz von Berlichingen, finding his vassals refuse to obey him, desired to flee to the Elector of Saxony; but his wife, who was lying-in, wishing to keep him near her, concealed the Elector's answer. Goetz, being closely pursued, was compelled to put himself at the head of the rebel army. On the 7th of May the peasants entered Wuerzburg, where the citizens received them with acclamations. The forces of the princes and knights of Swabia and Franconia, which had assembled in this city, evacuated it, and retired in confusion to the citadel, the last bulwark of the nobility. But the movement had already extended to other parts of Germany. Spires, the Palatinate, Alsace, and Hesse accepted the twelve articles, and the peasants threatened Bavaria, Westphalia, the Tyrol, Saxony, and Lorraine. The Margrave of Baden, having rejected the articles, was compelled to flee. The coadjutor of Fulda acceded to them with a smile. The smaller towns said they had no lances with which to oppose the insurgents. Mentz, Treves, and Frankfort obtained the liberties they had claimed. An immense revolution was preparing in all the empire. The ecclesiastical and secular privileges, that bore so heavily on the peasants, were to be suppressed; the possessions of the clergy were to be secularized, to indemnify the princes and provide for the wants of the empire; taxes were to be abolished, with the exception of a tribute payable every ten years; the imperial power was to subsist alone, as being recognized by the New Testament; all the other princes were to cease to reign; sixty-four free tribunals were to be established, in which men of all classes should have a seat; all ranks were to return to their primitive condition; the clergy were to be henceforward merely the pastors of the churches; princes and knights were to be simply the defenders of the weak; uniformity in weights and measures was to be introduced, and only one kind of money was to be coined throughout the empire. Meanwhile the princes had shaken off their first lethargy, and George von Truchsess, commander-in-chief of the imperial army, was advancing on the side of the Lake of Constance. On the 2d of May he defeated the peasants at Beblingen; then marched on the town of Weinsberg, where the unhappy Count of Helfenstein had perished, burned and razed it to the ground, giving orders that the ruins should be left as an eternal monument of the treason of its inhabitants. At Fairfeld he united with the Elector Palatine and the Elector of Treves, and all three moved toward Franconia. The Frauenburg, the citadel of Wuerzburg, held out for the princes, and the main army of the peasants still lay before its walls. As soon as they heard of the Truchsess' march, they resolved on an assault, and at nine o'clock at night on the 15th of May the trumpets sounded, the tricolor flag was unfurled, and the peasants rushed to the attack with horrible shouts. Sebastian von Rotenhan, one of the warmest partisans of the Reformation, was governor of the castle. He had put the fortress in a formidable state of defence, and, having exhorted the garrison to repel the assault with courage, the soldiers, holding up three fingers, had all sworn to do so. A most terrible conflict took place. To the vigor and despair of the insurgents, the fortress replied from its walls and towers by petards, showers of sulphur and boiling pitch and the discharges of artillery. The peasants, thus struck by their unseen enemies, were staggered for a moment; but in an instant their fury grew more violent. The struggle was prolonged as the night advanced. The fortress, lit up by a thousand battle-fires, appeared in the darkness like a towering giant, who, vomiting flames, struggled alone amid the roar of thunder, for the salvation of the empire against the ferocious valor of these furious hordes. Two hours after midnight the peasants withdrew, having failed in all their efforts. They now tried to enter into negotiations, either with the garrison or with Truchsess, who was advancing at the head of his army. But this was going out of their path; violence and victory alone could save them. After some little hesitation they resolved to march against the imperial forces, but the cavalry and artillery made terrible havoc in their ranks. At Koenigshofen, and afterward at Engelstadt, those unfortunate creatures were totally defeated. The princes, the nobles, and bishops, abusing their victory, indulged in the most unprecedented cruelties. The prisoners were hanged on the trees by the wayside. The Bishop of Wuerzburg, who had run away, now returned, traversed his diocese accompanied by executioners, and watered it alike with the blood of the rebels and of the peaceful friends of the Word of God. Goetz von Berlichingen was sentenced to imprisonment for life. The margrave Casimir of Anspach put out the eyes of eighty-five insurgents who had sworn that their eyes should never look upon that Prince again; and he cast this troop of blinded individuals upon the world, to wander up and down, holding each other by the hand, groping along, tottering, and begging their bread. The wretched boy who had played the dead-march on his fife at the murder of Helfenstein, was chained to a post, a fire was kindled around him, and the knights looked on, laughing at his horrible contortions. Public worship was now everywhere restored in its ancient forms. The most flourishing and populous districts of the empire exhibited to those who travelled through them nothing but heaps of dead bodies and smoking ruins. Fifty thousand men had perished, and the people lost nearly everywhere the little liberty they had hitherto enjoyed. Such was the horrible termination of this revolt in the south of Germany. But the evil was not confined to the south and west of Germany. Munzer, after having traversed a part of Switzerland, Alsace, and Swabia, had again directed his steps toward Saxony. A few citizens of Muelhausen, in Thuringia, had invited him to their city and elected him their pastor. The town council having resisted, Munzer deposed it and nominated another, consisting of his friends, with himself at their head. Full of contempt for that Christ, "sweet as honey," whom Luther preached, and being resolved to employ the most energetic measures, he exclaimed, "Like Joshua, we must put all the Canaanites to the sword." He established a community of goods and pillaged the convents. "Munzer," wrote Luther to Ansdorff on the 11th of April, 1525, "Munzer is not only pastor, but king and emperor of Muelhausen." The poor no longer worked; if anyone needed corn or cloth, he went and demanded it of some rich man; if the latter refused, the poor man took it by force; if the owner resisted, he was hanged. As Muelhausen was an independent city, Munzer was able to exercise his power for nearly a year without opposition. The revolt in the south of Germany led him to imagine that it was time to extend his new kingdom. He had a number of heavy guns cast in the Franciscan convent, and endeavored to raise the peasantry and miners of Mansfeld. "How long will you sleep?" said he to them in a fanatical proclamation: "Arise and fight the battle of the Lord! The time is come. France, Germany, and Italy are moving. On, on, on! (_Dran, Dran, Dran!_) Heed not the groans of the impious ones. They will implore you like children, but be pitiless. _Dran, Dran, Dran!_ The fire is burning: let your sword be ever warm with blood. _Dran, Dran, Dran!_ Work while it is yet day." The letter was signed, "Munzer, servant of God against the wicked." The country people, thirsting for plunder, flocked round his standard. Throughout all the districts of Mansfeld, of Stolberg, and Schwarzburg in Hesse, and the duchy of Brunswick the peasantry rose in insurrection. The convents of Michelstein, Ilsenburg, Walkenfied, Rossleben, and many others in the neighborhood of the Hartz, or in the plains of Thuringia, were devastated. At Reinhardsbrunn, which Luther had visited, the tombs of the ancient landgraves were profaned and the library destroyed. Terror spread far and wide. Even at Wittenberg some anxiety was felt. Those doctors, who had feared neither the Emperor nor the Pope, trembled in the presence of a madman. They were always on the watch for news; every step of the rebels was counted. "We are here in great danger," said Melanchthon. "If Munzer succeeds, it is all over with us, unless Christ should rescue us. Munzer advances with a worse than Scythian cruelty, and it is impossible to repeat his dreadful threats." The pious Elector had long hesitated what he should do. Munzer had exhorted him and all the princes to be converted, because, said he, their hour was come; and he had signed these letters: "Munzer, armed with the sword of Gudeon." Frederick would have desired to reclaim these misguided men by gentle measures. On the 14th of April, when he was dangerously ill, he had written to his brother John: "We may have given these wretched people more than one cause for insurrection. Alas! the poor are oppressed in many ways by their spiritual and temporal lords." And when his attention was directed to the humiliation, the revolutions, the dangers to which he would expose himself unless he promptly stifled the rebellion, he replied: "Hitherto I have been a mighty elector, having chariots and horses in abundance; if it be God's pleasure to take them from me now, I will go on foot." The youthful Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, was the first of the princes who took up arms. His knights and soldiers swore to live and die with him. After pacifying his own states, he directed his march toward Saxony. On their side, Duke John, the Elector's brother, Duke George of Saxony, and Duke Henry of Brunswick advanced and united their troops with those of Hesse. The peasants, terrified at the sight of this army, fled to a small hill, where, without any discipline, without arms, and for the most part without courage, they formed a rampart with their wagons. Munzer had not even prepared ammunition for his large guns. No succors appeared; the rebels were hemmed in by the army; they lost all confidence. The princes, taking pity on them, offered them propositions which they appeared willing to accept. Upon this Munzer had recourse to the most powerful lever that enthusiasm can put in motion. "To-day we shall behold the arm of the Lord," said he, "and all our enemies shall be destroyed." At this moment a rainbow appeared over their heads; the fanatical host, who carried a rainbow on their flags, beheld in it a sure prognostic of the divine protection. Munzer took advantage of it: "Fear nothing," said he to the citizens and peasants: "I will catch all their balls in my sleeve." At the same time he cruelly put to death a young gentleman, Maternus von Geholfen, an envoy from the princes, in order to deprive the insurgents of all hope of pardon. The Landgrave, having assembled his horsemen, said to them: "I well know that we princes are often in fault, for we are but men; but God commands all men to honor the powers that be. Let us save our wives and children from the fury of these murderers. The Lord will give us the victory, for he has said, 'Whosoever resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God.'" Philip then gave the signal of attack. It was the 15th of May, 1525. The army was put in motion; but the peasant host stood immovable, singing the hymn, "Come, Holy Ghost," and waiting for heaven to declare in their favor. The artillery soon broke down their rude rampart, carrying dismay and death into the midst of the insurgents. Their fanaticism and courage at once forsook them; they were seized with a panic-terror, and ran away in disorder. Five thousand perished in the flight. After the battle the princes and their victorious troops entered Frankenhausen. A soldier who had gone into a loft in the house where he was quartered, found a man in bed. "Who art thou?" said he; "art thou one of the rebels?" Then, observing a pocket-book, he took it up, and found several letters addressed to Thomas Munzer, "Art thou Munzer?" demanded the trooper. The sick man answered, "No." But as the soldier uttered dreadful threats, Munzer, for it was really he, confessed who he was. "Thou art my prisoner," said the horseman. When Munzer was taken before Duke George and the Landgrave, he persevered in saying that he was right to chastise the princes, since they opposed the Gospel. "Wretched man!" replied they, "think of all those of whose death you have been the cause." But he answered, smiling in the midst of his anguish, "They would have it so!" He took the sacrament, and was beheaded at the same time with Pfeiffer, his lieutenant. Mulhausen was taken, and the peasants were loaded with chains. A nobleman having observed among the crowd of prisoners a peasant of favorable appearance, went up and said to him: "Well, my man, which government do you like best--that of the peasants or of the princes?" The poor fellow made answer with a deep sigh, "Ah, my lord, no knife cuts so deep as the rule of the peasant over his fellows." The remnants of the insurrection were quenched in blood; Duke George, in particular, acted with the greatest severity. In the states of the Elector, there were neither executions nor punishment. The Word of God, preached in all its purity, had shown its power to restrain the tumultuous passions of the people. From the very beginning, indeed, Luther had not ceased to struggle against the rebellion, which was, in his opinion, the forerunner of the Judgment-day. Advice, prayers, and even irony had not been spared. At the end of the articles drawn up at Erfurth by the rebels he had subjoined, as a supplementary article: "_Item._ The following article has been omitted. Henceforward the honorable council shall have no power; it shall do nothing; it shall sit like an idol or a log of wood; the commonalty shall chew its food, and it shall govern with its hands and feet tied; henceforth the wagon shall guide the horses, the horses shall hold the reins, and we shall go on admirably, in conformity with the glorious system set forth in these articles." Luther did not confine himself to writing. While the disturbance was still at its height, he quitted Wittenberg and went through some of the districts where the agitation was greatest. He preached, he labored to soften his hearers' hearts, and his hand, to which God had given power, turned aside, quieted, and brought back the impetuous and overflowing torrents into their natural channels. In every quarter the doctors of the Reformation exerted a similar influence. At Halle, Brentz had revived the drooping spirits of the citizens by the promise of God's Word, and four thousand peasants had fled before six hundred citizens. At Ichterhausen, a mob of peasants having assembled with an intent to demolish several castles and put their lords to death, Frederick Myconius went out to them alone, and such was the power of his words that they immediately abandoned their design. Such was the part taken by the reformers and the Reformation in the midst of this revolt; they contended against it with all their might, with the sword of the Word, and boldly maintained those principles which alone, in every age, can preserve order and subjection among the nations. Accordingly, Luther asserted that, if the power of sound doctrine had not checked the fury of the people, the revolt would have extended its ravages far more widely, and have overthrown both church and state. If the reformers thus contended against sedition, it was not without receiving grievous wounds. That moral agony which Luther had first suffered, in his cell at Erfurth, became still more serious after the insurrection of the peasants. No great change takes place among men without suffering on the part of those who are its instruments. The birth of Christianity was effected by the agony of the Cross; but He who hung upon that cross addressed these words to each of his disciples, "Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the same baptism that I am baptized with?" On the side of the princes, it was continually repeated that Luther and his doctrine were the cause of the revolt, and, however absurd this idea may be, the reformer could not see it so generally entertained without experiencing the deepest grief. On the side of the people, Munzer and all the leaders of the insurrection represented him as a vile hypocrite, a flatterer of the great, and these calumnies easily obtained belief. The violence with which Luther had declared against the rebels had displeased even moderate men. The friends of Rome exulted; all were against him, and he bore the heavy anger of his times. But his greatest affliction was to behold the work of heaven thus dragged in the mire and classed with the most fanatical projects. Here he felt was his Gethsemane: he saw the bitter cup that was presented to him; and, foreboding that he would be forsaken by all, he exclaimed: "Soon, perhaps, I shall also be able to say, 'All ye shall be offended because of me this night.'" Yet in the midst of this deep bitterness he preserved his faith: "He who has given me power to trample the enemy under foot," said he, "when he rose up against me like a cruel dragon or a furious lion, will not permit this enemy to crush me, now that he appears before me with the treacherous glance of the basilisk. I groan as I contemplate those calamities. Often have I asked myself whether it would not have been better to have allowed the papacy to go on quietly, rather than witness the occurrence of so many troubles and seditions in the world. But no! it is better to have snatched a few souls from the jaws of the devil than to have left them all between his murderous fangs." Now terminated the revolution in Luther's mind that had begun at the period of his return from the Wartburg. The inner life no longer satisfied him: the Church and her institutions now became most important in his eyes. The boldness with which he had thrown down everything was checked at the sight of still more sweeping destructions; he felt it his duty to preserve, govern, and build up; and from the midst of the blood-stained ruins with which the peasant war had covered all Germany, the edifice of the new Church began slowly to arise. These disturbances left a lasting and deep impression on men's minds. The nations had been struck with dismay. The masses, who had sought in the Reformation nothing but political reform, withdrew from it of their own accord, when they saw it offered them spiritual liberty only. Luther's opposition to the peasants was his renunciation of the ephemeral favor of the people. A seeming tranquillity was soon established, and the noise of enthusiasm and sedition was followed in all Germany by a silence inspired by terror. Thus the popular passions, the cause of revolution, the interests of a radical equality, were quelled in the empire; but the Reformation did not yield. These two movements, which many have confounded with each other, were clearly marked out by the difference of their results. The insurrection was from below; the Reformation, from above. A few horsemen and cannon were sufficient to put down the one; but the other never ceased to rise in strength and vigor, in despite of the reiterated assaults of the empire and the Church. FRANCE LOSES ITALY BATTLE OF PAVIA A.D. 1525 WILLIAM ROBERTSON Close upon the election of Charles V as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire came the first of a series of wars between that sovereign and Francis I, King of France, who had been Charles's rival for the imperial crown. The Emperor was at this time, 1521, favored by Henry VIII of England, and a secret treaty with Charles was finally concluded by Pope Leo X, who from the first had hesitated between the two young rivals, and who had already treated with Francis. The papal support proved the foundation of future power for Charles in Italy. The Pope and the Emperor agreed to unite their forces for expulsion of the French from their seat in the duchy of Milan. In 1521 hostilities broke out in Navarre and in the Netherlands, and finally in the Milanese, where the people were tired of French government. The various allies drove the French completely out of Italy, and Charles invaded France, but was there repulsed. King Francis, elated by this last success, determined upon another invasion of the Milanese. He went in person to Italy, leaving his mother as regent in France. With largely superior forces, he drove the imperialists before him. Instead, however, of pursuing the enemy, whom he might have overtaken at an untenable position, Francis, against the almost unanimous advice of his generals, laid siege to the strongly fortified city of Pavia, only to meet before it the crushing defeat which for centuries settled the fate of Italy. Pavia was held by a strong imperialist force under Lannoy. Francis prosecuted the siege with obstinacy equal to the rashness with which he had undertaken it. During three months everything known to the engineers of that age, or that could be effected by the valor of his troops, was attempted, in order to reduce the place; while Lannoy and Pescara, unable to obstruct his operations, were obliged to remain in such an ignominious state of inaction that a pasquinade was published at Rome offering a reward to any person who could find the imperial army, lost in the month of October in the mountains between France and Lombardy, and which had not been heard of since that time. Leyva, well acquainted with the difficulties under which his countrymen labored, and the impossibility of their facing, in the field, such a powerful army as formed the siege of Pavia, placed his only hopes of safety in his own vigilance and valor. The efforts of both were extraordinary, and in proportion to the importance of the place with the defence of which he was intrusted. He interrupted the approaches of the French by frequent and furious sallies. Behind the breaches made by their artillery he erected new works, which appeared to be scarcely inferior in strength to the original fortifications. He repulsed the besiegers in all their assaults, and by his own example brought not only the garrison, but the inhabitants, to bear the most severe fatigues, and to encounter the greatest dangers, without murmuring. The rigor of the season conspired with his endeavors in retarding the progress of the French. Francis, attempting to become master of the town by diverting the course of the Tessino, which is its chief defence on one side, a sudden inundation of the river destroyed, in one day, the labor of many weeks, and swept away all the mounds which his army had raised with infinite toil as well as at great expense. Notwithstanding the slow progress of the besiegers, and the glory which Leyva acquired by his gallant defence, it was not doubted but that the town would at last be obliged to surrender. Pope Clement, who already considered the French arms as superior in Italy, became impatient to disengage himself from his connections with the Emperor, of whose designs he was extremely jealous, and to enter into terms of friendship with Francis. As Clement's timid and cautious temper rendered him incapable of following the bold plan which Leo had formed of delivering Italy from the yoke of both the rivals, he returned to the more obvious and practicable scheme of employing the power of the one to balance and to restrain that of the other. For this reason he did not dissemble his satisfaction at seeing the French King recover Milan, as he hoped that the dread of such a neighbor would be some check upon the Emperor's ambition, which no power in Italy was now able to control. He labored hard to bring about a peace that would secure Francis in the possession of his new conquests; and as Charles, who was always inflexible in the prosecution of his schemes, rejected the proposition with disdain, and with bitter exclamations against the Pope, by whose persuasions, while Cardinal di Medici, he had been induced to invade the Milanese, Clement immediately concluded a treaty of neutrality with the King of France, in which the republic of Florence was included. Francis having, by this transaction, deprived the Emperor of his two most powerful allies, and at the same time having secured a passage for his own troops through their territories, formed a scheme of attacking the kingdom of Naples, hoping either to overrun that country, which was left altogether without defence, or that at least such an unexpected invasion would oblige the viceroy to recall part of the imperial army out of the Milanese. For this purpose he ordered six thousand men to march under the command of John Stuart, Duke of Albany. But Pescara, foreseeing that the effect of this diversion would depend entirely upon the operations of the armies in the Milanese, persuaded Lannoy to disregard Albany's motions, and to bend his whole force against the King himself; so that Francis not only weakened his army very unseasonably by this great detachment, but incurred the reproach of engaging too rashly in chimerical and extravagant projects. By this time the garrison of Pavia was reduced to extremity; their ammunition and provisions began to fail; the Germans, of whom it was chiefly composed, having received no pay for seven months, threatened to deliver the town into the enemy's hands, and could hardly be restrained from mutiny by all Leyva's address and authority. The imperial generals, who were no strangers to his situation, saw the necessity of marching without loss of time to his relief. This they had now in their power. Twelve thousand Germans, whom the zeal and activity of Bourbon taught to move with unusual rapidity, had entered Lombardy under his command, and rendered the imperial army nearly equal to that of the French, greatly diminished by the absence of the body under Albany, as well as by the fatigues of the siege and the rigor of the season. But the more their troops increased in number, the more sensibly did the imperialists feel the distress arising from want of money. Far from having funds for paying a powerful army, they had scarcely what was sufficient for defraying the charges of conducting their artillery and of carrying their ammunition and provisions. The abilities of the generals, however, supplied every defect. By their own example, as well as by magnificent promises in name of the Emperor, they prevailed on the troops of all the different nations which composed their army to take the field without pay; they engaged to lead them directly toward the enemy, and flattered them with the certain prospect of victory, which would at once enrich them with such royal spoils as would be an ample reward for all their services. The soldiers, sensible that, by quitting the army, they would forfeit the great arrears due to them, and eager to get possession of the promised treasures, demanded a battle with all the impatience of adventurers who fight only for plunder. The imperial generals, without suffering the ardor of their troops to cool, advanced immediately toward the French camp. On the first intelligence of their approach, Francis called a council of war to deliberate what course he ought to take. All his officers of greatest experience were unanimous in advising him to retire, and to decline a battle with an enemy who courted it from despair. The imperialists, they observed, would either be obliged in a few weeks to disband an army which they were unable to pay, and which they kept together only by the hope of plunder, or the soldiers, enraged at the nonperformance of the promises to which they had trusted, would rise in some furious mutiny, which would allow their generals to think of nothing but their own safety; that meanwhile he might encamp in some strong post, and, waiting in safety the arrival of fresh troops from France and Switzerland, might before the end of spring take possession of all the Milanese without danger or bloodshed. But in opposition to them, Bonnivet, whose destiny it was to give counsels fatal to France during the whole campaign, represented the ignominy that it would reflect on their sovereign if he should abandon a siege which he had prosecuted so long, or turn his back before an enemy to whom he was still superior in number, and insisted on the necessity of fighting the imperialists rather than relinquish an undertaking on the success of which the King's future fame depended. Unfortunately, Francis' notions of honor were delicate to an excess that bordered on what was romantic. Having often said that he would take Pavia or perish in the attempt, he thought himself bound not to depart from that resolution; and, rather than expose himself to the slightest imputation, he chose to forego all the advantages which were the certain consequences of a retreat, and determined to wait for the imperialists before the walls of Pavia. The imperial generals found the French so strongly intrenched that, notwithstanding the powerful motives which urged them on, they hesitated long before they ventured to attack them; but at last the necessities of the besieged and the murmurs of their own soldiers obliged them to put everything to hazard. Never did armies engage with greater ardor or with a higher opinion of the importance of the battle which they were going to fight; never were troops more strongly animated with emulation, national antipathy, mutual resentment, and all the passions which inspire obstinate bravery. On the one hand, a gallant young monarch, seconded by a generous nobility and followed by subjects to whose natural impetuosity indignation at the opposition which they had encountered added new force, contended for victory and honor. On the other side, troops more completely disciplined, and conducted by generals of greater abilities, fought from necessity, with courage heightened by despair. The imperialists, however, were unable to resist the first efforts of the French valor, and their firmest battalions began to give way. But the fortune of the day was quickly changed. The Swiss in the service of France, unmindful of the reputation of their country for fidelity and martial glory, abandoned their post in a cowardly manner. Leyva, with his garrison, sallied out and attacked the rear of the French, during the heat of the action, with such fury as threw it into confusion; and Pescara, falling on their cavalry with the imperial horse, among whom he had prudently intermingled a considerable number of Spanish foot armed with the heavy muskets then in use, broke this formidable body by an unusual method of attack, against which they were wholly unprovided. The rout became universal; and resistance ceased in almost every part but where the King was in person, who fought now, not for fame or victory, but for safety. Though wounded in several places, and thrown from his horse, which was killed under him, Francis defended himself on foot with a heroic courage. Many of his bravest officers, gathering round him, and endeavoring to save his life at the expense of their own, fell at his feet. Among these was Bonnivet, the author of this great calamity, who alone died unlamented. The King, exhausted with fatigue, and scarcely capable of further resistance, was left almost alone, exposed to the fury of some Spanish soldiers, strangers to his rank and enraged at his obstinacy. At that moment came up Pomperant, a French gentleman, who had entered together with Bourbon into the Emperor's service, and, placing himself by the side of the monarch against whom he had rebelled, assisted in protecting him from the violence of the soldiers, at the same time beseeching him to surrender to Bourbon, who was not far distant. Imminent as the danger was which now surrounded Francis, he rejected with indignation the thoughts of an action which would have afforded such matter of triumph to his traitorous subject, and calling for Lannoy, who happened likewise to be near at hand, gave up his sword to him; which he, kneeling to kiss the King's hand, received with profound respect; and taking his own sword from his side, presented it to him, saying that it did not become so great a monarch to remain disarmed in the presence of one of the Emperor's subjects. Ten thousand men fell on this day, one of the most fatal France had ever seen. Among these were many noblemen of the highest distinction, who chose rather to perish than to turn their backs with dishonor. Not a few were taken prisoners, of whom the most illustrious was Henry d'Albret, the unfortunate King of Navarre. A small body of the rear-guard made its escape under the command of the Duke of Alençon; the feeble garrison of Milan, on the first news of the defeat, retired, without being pursued, by another road; and, in two weeks after the battle, not a Frenchman remained in Italy. Lannoy, though he treated Francis with all the outward marks of honor due to his rank and character, guarded him with the utmost attention. He was solicitous, not only to prevent any possibility of his escaping, but afraid that his own troops might seize his person and detain it as the best security for the payment of their arrears. In order to provide against both these dangers, he conducted Francis, the day after the battle, to the strong castle of Pizzichitone, near Cremona, committing him to the custody of Don Ferdinand Alarcon, general of the Spanish infantry, an officer of great bravery and of strict honor, but remarkable for that severe and scrupulous vigilance which such a trust required. Francis, who formed a judgment of the Emperor's dispositions by his own, was extremely desirous that Charles should be informed of his situation, fondly hoping that from his generosity or sympathy he should obtain speedy relief. The imperial generals were no less impatient to give their sovereign an early account of the decisive victory which they had gained, and to receive his instructions with regard to their future conduct. As the most certain and expeditious method of conveying intelligence to Spain at that season of the year was by land, Francis gave the _commendador_ Pennalosa, who was charged with Lannoy's despatches, a passport to travel through France. Charles received the account of this signal and unexpected success that had crowned his arms with a moderation which, if it had been real, would have done him more honor than the greatest victory. Without uttering one word expressive of exultation or of intemperate joy, he retired immediately into his chapel, and, having spent an hour in offering up his thanksgivings to heaven, returned to the presence-chamber, which by that time was filled with grandees and foreign ambassadors assembled in order to congratulate him. He accepted of their compliments with a modest deportment; he lamented the misfortune of the captive King, as a striking example of the sad reverse of fortune to which the most powerful monarchs are subject; he forbade any public rejoicings, as indecent in a war carried on among Christians, reserving them until he should obtain a victory equally illustrious over the infidels; and seemed to take pleasure, in the advantage which he had gained, only as it would prove the occasion of restoring peace to Christendom. Charles, however, had already begun to form schemes in his own mind which little suited such external appearances. Ambition, not generosity, was the ruling passion in his mind; and the victory at Pavia opened such new and unbounded prospects of gratifying it as allured him with irresistible force. But it being no easy matter to execute the vast designs which he meditated, he thought it necessary, while proper measures were taking for that purpose, to affect the greatest moderation, hoping under that veil to conceal his real intentions from the other princes of Europe. Meanwhile France was filled with consternation. The King himself had early transmitted an account of the rout at Pavia in a letter to his mother, delivered by Pennalosa, which contained only these words: "Madam, all is lost except our honor." The officers who made their escape, when they arrived from Italy, brought such a melancholy detail of particulars as made all ranks of men sensibly feel the greatness and extent of the calamity. France, without its sovereign, without money in her treasury, without an army and without generals to command it, and encompassed on all sides by a victorious and active enemy, seemed to be on the very brink of destruction. But on that occasion the great abilities of Louise, the regent, saved the kingdom which the violence of her passions had more than once exposed to the greatest danger. Instead of giving herself up to such lamentations as were natural to a woman so remarkable for her maternal tenderness, she discovered all the foresight and exerted all the activity of a consummate politician. She assembled the nobles at Lyons, and animated them, by her example no less than by her words, with such zeal in defence of their country as its present situation required. She collected the remains of the army which had served in Italy, ransomed the prisoners, paid the arrears, and put them in a condition to take the field. She levied new troops, provided for the security of the frontiers, and raised sums sufficient for defraying these extraordinary expenses. Her chief care, however, was to appease the resentment or to gain the friendship of the King of England; and from that quarter the first ray of comfort broke in upon the French. Though Henry, in entering into alliances with Charles or Francis, seldom followed any regular or concerted plan of policy, but was influenced chiefly by the caprice of temporary passions, such occurrences often happened as recalled his attention toward that equal balance of power which it was necessary to keep between the two contending potentates, the preservation of which he always boasted to be his peculiar office. He had expected that his union with the Emperor might afford him an opportunity of recovering some part of those territories in France which had belonged to his ancestors, and for the sake of such an acquisition he did not scruple to give his assistance toward raising Charles to a considerable preëminence above Francis. He had never dreamed, however, of any event so decisive and so fatal as the victory at Pavia, which seemed not only to have broken, but to have annihilated, the power of one of the rivals; so that the prospect of the sudden and entire revolution which this would occasion in the political system filled him with the most disquieting apprehensions. He saw all Europe in danger of being overrun by an ambitious prince, to whose power there now remained no counterpoise; and though he himself might at first be admitted, in quality of an ally, to some share in the spoils of the captive monarch, it was easy to discern that with regard to the manner of making the partition, as well as his security for keeping possession of what should be allotted him, he must absolutely depend upon the will of a confederate, to whose forces his own bore no proportion. He was sensible that if Charles were permitted to add any considerable part of France to the vast dominions of which he was already master, his neighborhood would be much more formidable to England than that of the ancient French kings; while at the same time the proper balance on the Continent, to which England owed both its safety and importance, would be entirely lost. Concern for the situation of the unhappy monarch coöperated with these political considerations; his gallant behavior in the battle of Pavia had excited a high degree of admiration, which never fails of augmenting sympathy; and Henry, naturally susceptible of generous sentiments, was fond of appearing as the deliverer of a vanquished enemy from a state of captivity. The passions of the English minister seconded the inclinations of the monarch. Wolsey, who had not forgotten the disappointment of his hopes in two successive conclaves, which he imputed chiefly to the Emperor, thought this a proper opportunity of taking revenge; and, Louise courting the friendship of England with such flattering submissions as were no less agreeable to the King than to the Cardinal, Henry gave her secret assurances that he would not lend his aid toward oppressing France in its present helpless state, and obliged her to promise that she would not consent to dismember the kingdom even in order to procure her son's liberty. During these transactions, Charles, whose pretensions to moderation and disinterestedness were soon forgotten, deliberated, with the utmost solicitude, how he might derive the greatest advantages from the misfortunes of his adversary. Some of his counsellors advised him to treat Francis with the magnanimity that became a victorious prince, and, instead of taking advantage of his situation to impose rigorous conditions, to dismiss him on such equal terms as would bind him forever to his interest by the ties of gratitude and affection, more forcible as well as more permanent than any which could be formed by extorted oaths and involuntary stipulations. Such an exertion of generosity is not, perhaps, to be expected in the conduct of political affairs, and it was far too refined for that prince to whom it was proposed. The more obvious but less splendid scheme, of endeavoring to make the utmost of Francis' calamity, had a greater number in the council to recommend it, and suited better with the Emperor's genius. But though Charles adopted this plan, he seems not to have executed it in the most proper manner. Instead of making one great effort to penetrate into France with all the forces of Spain and the Low Countries; instead of crushing the Italian states before they recovered from the consternation which the success of his arms had occasioned, he had recourse to the artifices of intrigue and negotiation. This proceeded partly from necessity, partly from the natural disposition of his mind. The situation of his finances at that time rendered it extremely difficult to carry on any extraordinary armament; and he himself, having never appeared at the head of his armies, the command of which he had hitherto committed to his generals, was averse to bold and martial counsels, and trusted more to the arts with which he was acquainted. He laid, besides, too much stress upon the victory of Pavia, as if by that event the strength of France had been annihilated, its resources exhausted, and the kingdom itself, no less than the person of its monarch, had been subjected to his power. Full of this opinion, he determined to set the highest price upon Francis' freedom; and, having ordered the Count de Roeux to visit the captive King in his name, he instructed him to propose the following articles as the conditions on which he would grant him his liberty: That he should restore Burgundy to the Emperor, from whose ancestors it had been unjustly wrested; that he should surrender Provence and Dauphiné, that they might be erected into an independent kingdom for the constable Bourbon; that he should make full satisfaction to the King of England for all his claims, and finally renounce the pretensions of France to Naples, Milan, or any other territory in Italy. When Francis, who had hitherto flattered himself that he should be treated by the Emperor with the generosity becoming one great prince toward another, heard these rigorous conditions, he was so transported with indignation that, drawing his dagger hastily, he cried out, "'Twere better that a king should die thus." Alarcon, alarmed at his vehemence, laid hold on his hand; but though he soon recovered greater composure, he still declared in the most solemn manner that he would rather remain a prisoner during life than purchase liberty by such ignominious concessions. The chief obstacle that stood in the way of Francis' liberty was the Emperor's continuing to insist so peremptorily on the restitution of Burgundy as a preliminary to that event. Francis often declared that he would never consent to dismember his kingdom; and that, even if he should so far forget the duties of a monarch as to come to such a resolution, the fundamental laws of the nation would prevent its taking effect. On his part he was willing to make an absolute cession to the Emperor of all his pretensions in Italy and the Low Countries; he promised to restore to Bourbon all his lands which had been confiscated; he renewed his proposal of marrying the Emperor's sister, the queen-dowager of Portugal; and engaged to pay a great sum by way of ransom for his own person. But all mutual esteem and confidence between the two monarchs were now entirely lost; there appeared, on the one hand, a rapacious ambition, laboring to avail itself of every favorable circumstance; on the other, suspicion and resentment, standing perpetually on their guard; so that the prospect of bringing their negotiations to an issure seemed to be far distant. The Duchess of Alençon, the French King's sister, whom Charles permitted to visit her brother in his confinement, employed all her address in order to procure his liberty on more reasonable terms. Henry of England interposed his good offices to the same purpose; but both with so little success that Francis, in despair, took suddenly the resolution of resigning his crown, with all its rights and prerogatives, to his son, the Dauphin, determining rather to end his days in prison than to purchase his freedom by concessions unworthy of a king. The deed for this purpose he signed with legal formality in Madrid, empowering his sister to carry it into France, that it might be registered in all the parliaments of the kingdom; and, at the same time, intimating his intention to the Emperor, he desired him to name the place of his confinement, and to assign him a proper number of attendants during the remainder of his days. This resolution of the French King had great effect; Charles began to be sensible that, by pushing rigor to excess, he might defeat his own measures; and instead of the vast advantages which he hoped to draw from ransoming a powerful monarch, he might at last find in his hands a prince without dominions or revenues. About the same time one of the King of Navarre's domestics happened, by an extraordinary exertion of fidelity, courage, and address, to procure his master an opportunity of escaping from the prison in which he had been confined ever since the battle of Pavia. This convinced the Emperor that the most vigilant attention of his officers might be eluded by the ingenuity or boldness of Francis or his attendants, and one unlucky hour might deprive him of all the advantages which he had been so solicitous to obtain. By these considerations he was induced to abate somewhat of his former demands. On the other hand, Francis' impatience under confinement daily increased; and having received certain intelligence of a powerful league forming against his rival in Italy, he grew more compliant with regard to his concessions, trusting that, if he could once obtain his liberty, he would soon be in a condition to resume whatever he had yielded. Such being the views and sentiments of the two monarchs, the treaty which procured Francis his liberty was signed at Madrid on January 14, 1526. SACK OF ROME BY THE IMPERIAL TROOPS A.D. 1527 BENVENUTO CELLINI T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE Charles, Duc de Bourbon, known as the Constable de Bourbon, became famous in the wars of the emperor Charles V with Francis I, King of France. The vast estates of both branches of the Bourbon family were united in the possession of the Constable, making him a person of importance independently of his military career. He was born in 1490, and was made Constable of France for his services at the battle of Melegnano (1515), in which Francis gained a brilliant victory over the Swiss. The attempt of powerful enemies to undermine Bourbon in the favor of the King led to the threatened loss of the Constable's dignities and lands, and provoked him to renounce the French service. After making a secret treaty with Charles V and with his ally, Henry VIII of England, Bourbon led a force of German mercenaries into Lombardy, where in 1523 he joined Charles' Spanish army, and next year aided in driving the French from Italy. Invading France, he marched under the Emperor's orders to Marseilles and laid siege to the city, but failed to take it. Bourbon contributed materially to the Emperor's great victory at Pavia, and was rewarded by being made Duke of Milan and commander in Northern Italy. But although Charles thus honored Bourbon he did not trust him, and was not really desirous of advancing a person of such great resource and consequence. In the peace between Spain and France in 1526 Bourbon's great interests were neglected. Notwithstanding these things, when Charles V wished to punish Pope Clement VII, who had joined a league against him, Bourbon, with George of Frundsberg, led an army of Spanish and German mercenaries to Rome. The description of the sack which followed, written by Benvenuto Cellini, the celebrated Italian artist, shows him as an effective participant in the defence. This account of a combatant is of course only fragmentary, and is supplemented by Trollope's critical narrative. BENVENUTO CELLINI The whole world was now in warfare. Pope Clement had sent to get some troops from Giovanni de' Medici, and when they came they made such disturbances in Rome that it was ill living in open shops.[36] On this account I retired to a good snug house behind the Banchi, where I worked for all the friends I had acquired. Since I produced few things of much importance at that period, I need not waste time in talking about them. I took much pleasure in music and amusements of the kind. On the death of Giovanni de' Medici in Lombardy, the Pope, at the advice of Messer Jacopo Salviati, dismissed the five bands he had engaged; and when the Constable of Bourbon knew there were no troops in Rome, he pushed his army with the utmost energy up to the city. The whole of Rome upon this flew to arms. I happened to be intimate with Alessandro, the son of Piero del Bene, who, at the time when the Colonnesi entered Rome, had requested me to guard his palace.[37] On this more serious occasion, therefore, he prayed me to enlist fifty comrades for the protection of the said house, appointing me their captain, as I had been when the Colonnesi came. So I selected fifty young men of the highest courage, and we took up quarters in his palace, with good pay and excellent appointments. Bourbon's army had now arrived before the walls of Rome, and Alessandro begged me to go with him to reconnoitre. So we went with one of the stoutest fellows in our company; and on the way a youth called Cecchino della Casa joined himself to us. On reaching the walls by the Campo Santo, we could see that famous army, which was making every effort to enter the town. Upon the ramparts where we took our station, several young men were lying, killed by the besiegers; the battle raged there desperately, and there was the densest fog imaginable. I turned to Alessandro and said: "Let us go home as soon as we can, for there is nothing to be done here; you see the enemies are mounting, and our men are in flight." Alessandro, in a panic, cried, "Would God that we had never come here!" and turned in maddest haste to fly. I took him up somewhat sharply with these words: "Since you have brought me here, I must perform some action worthy of a man"; and, directing my arquebuse where I saw the thickest and most serried troop of fighting men, I aimed exactly at one whom I remarked to be higher than the rest: the fog prevented me from being certain whether he was on horseback or on foot. Then I turned to Alessandro and Cecchino, and bade them discharge their arquebuses, showing them how to avoid being hit by the besiegers. When we had fired two rounds apiece I crept cautiously up to the wall, and, observing among the enemy a most extraordinary confusion, I discovered afterward that one of our shots had killed the Constable of Bourbon; and, from what I subsequently learned, he was the man whom I had first noticed above the heads of the rest.[38] Quitting our position on the ramparts, we crossed the Campo Santo, and entered the city by St. Peter's; then, coming out exactly at the Church of Santo Agnolo, we got with the greatest difficulty to the great gate of the castle; for the generals, Renzo di Ceri and Orazio Baglioni, were wounding and slaughtering everybody who abandoned the defence of the walls.[39] By the time we had reached the great gate, part of the foemen had already entered Rome, and we had them in our rear. The castellan had ordered the portcullis to be lowered, in order to do which they cleared a little space, and this enabled us four to get inside. On the instant that I entered, the captain Palone de' Medici claimed me as being of the papal household and forced me to abandon Alessandro, which I had to do much against my will. I ascended to the keep, and at the same instant Pope Clement came in through the corridors into the castle; he had refused to leave the palace of St. Peter earlier, being unable to believe that his enemies would effect their entrance into Rome.[40] Having got into the castle in this way, I attached myself to certain pieces of artillery, which were under the command of a bombardier called Giuliano Fiorentino. Leaning there against the battlements, the unhappy man could see his poor house being sacked, and his wife and children outraged; fearing to strike his own folk, he dared not discharge the cannon, and, flinging the burning fuse upon the ground, he wept as though his heart would break, and tore his cheeks with both his hands.[41] Some of the other bombardiers were behaving in like manner; seeing which, I took one of the matches, and got the assistance of a few men who were not overcome by their emotions. I aimed some swivels and falconets at points where I saw it would be useful, and killed with them a good number of the enemy. Had it not been for this, the troops who poured into Rome that morning and were marching straight upon the castle might possibly have entered it with ease, because the artillery was doing them no damage. I went on firing under the eyes of several cardinals and lords, who kept blessing me and giving me the heartiest encouragement. In my enthusiasm I strove to achieve the impossible; let it suffice that it was I who saved the castle that morning, and brought the other bombardiers back to their duty.[42] I worked hard the whole of that day, and when the evening came--while the army was marching into Rome through Trastevere--Pope Clement appointed a great Roman nobleman named Antonio Santacroce to be a captain of all the gunners. The first thing this man did was to come to me, and, having greeted me with the utmost kindness, he stationed me with five fine pieces of artillery on the highest point of the castle, to which the name of the "Angel" specially belongs. This circular eminence goes round the castle and surveys both Prati and the town of Rome. The captain put under my orders enough men to help in managing my guns, and, having seen me paid in advance, he gave me rations of bread and a little wine, and begged me to go forward as I had begun. I was perhaps more inclined by nature to the profession of arms than to the one I had adopted, and I took such pleasure in its duties that I discharged them better than those of my own art. Night came, the enemy had entered Rome, and we who were in the castle--especially myself, who have always taken pleasure in extraordinary sights--stayed gazing on the indescribable scene of tumult and conflagration in the streets below. People who were anywhere else but where we were could not have formed the least imagination of what it was. T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE The combined force of Bourbon and Frundsberg was in all respects more like a rabble-rout of brigands and bandits than an army, and was assuredly such as must, even in those days, have been felt to be a disgrace to any sovereign permitting them to call themselves his soldiers. Their pay was, as was often the case with the troops of Charles V, hopelessly in arrear, and discipline was of course proportionably weak among them. Indeed, it seemed every now and then on the point of coming to an end altogether. The two generals had the greatest difficulty in preventing their army from becoming an entirely anarchical and disorganized mob of freebooters as dangerous to its masters as to everybody else. Of course food, raiment, and shelter were the first absolute essentials for keeping this dangerous mass of armed men in any degree of order and organization, and in fact the present march of Frundsberg and Bourbon had the obtaining of these necessaries for its principal and true object. The progress southward of this bandit army unchecked by any opposing force--for Giovanni delle Bande Nere had lost his life in the attempt to prevent them from passing the Po; and after the death of that great captain, the army of the league did not muster courage to attack or impede the invaders in any way--filled the cities exposed to their inroad with terror and dismay. They had passed like a destroying locust swarm over Bologna and Imola, and crossing the Apennines, which separate Umbria from Tuscany, had descended into the valley of the Arno not far from Arezzo. Florence and Rome both trembled. On which would the storm burst? That was the all-absorbing question. Pope Clement, with his usual avarice-blinded imbecility, had, immediately on concluding a treaty with the Neapolitan viceroy, discharged all his troops except a bodyguard of about six hundred men. Florence was nearly in as defenceless a position. She had, says Varchi, "two great armies on her territory; one that under Bourbon, which came as an enemy to sack and plunder her; and the other, that of a league, which came as a friend to protect her, but sacked and plundered her none the less." It was, however, probably the presence of this army, little as it had hitherto done to impede the progress of the enemy, which decided Bourbon eventually to determine on marching toward Rome. It seems doubtful how far they were, in so doing, executing the orders or carrying out the wishes of the Emperor. Clement, though he had played the traitor to Charles, as he did to everyone else, and had been at war with him recently, had now entered into a treaty with the Emperor's viceroy. And apart from this there was a degree of odium and scandal attaching to the sight of the "most Catholic" Emperor sending a Lutheran army in his pay to attack the head of the Church, and ravage the venerated capital of Christendom, which so decorous a sovereign as Charles would hardly have liked to incur. Still, it may be assumed that if the Emperor wished his army kept together, and provided no sums for the purpose, he was not unwilling that they should live by plunder. And perhaps his real intention was to extort from Rome the means of paying his troops by the mere exhibition of the danger arising from their propinquity while they remained unpaid. Upon the whole we are warranted in supposing that Bourbon and Frundsberg would hardly have ventured on the course they took if they had not had reason to believe that it would not much displease their master. And Charles was exactly the sort of man who would like to have the profit of an evil deed without the loss of reputation arising from the commission of it, and who would consider himself best served by agents who could commit a profitable atrocity without being guilty of the annoying want of tact of waiting for his direct orders to commit it. For the especial business in hand, it was impossible, moreover, to have had two more fitting agents than Bourbon and Frundsberg. It was not every knightly general in those days who would have accepted the task, even with direct orders, of marching to the sack of Rome, and the open defiance of its sacred ruler. A Florentine or a Neapolitan soldier might have had small scruple in doing so; and a Roman baron--a Colonna or an Orsini--none at all. But there would have been found few men of such mark as Bourbon, in either France or Spain, willing to undertake the enterprise he was now engaged in. The unfortunate Constable, however, was a disgraced and desperate man. He was disgraced in the face of Europe by unknightly breach of fealty to his sovereign, despite the intensity of the provocation which had driven him to that step. For all the sanctions which held European society together, in the universal bondage which alone then constituted social order, were involved in maintaining the superstition that so branded him. And he was a desperate man in his fortunes; for though no name in all Europe was at that day as great a military power at the head of a host as that of Bourbon, and though the miserable bearer of it had so shortly before been one of the wealthiest and largest territorial nobles of France, yet the Constable had now his sword for his fortune as barely as the rawest lad in the rabble-rout that followed him, sent out from some landless tower of an impoverished knight, in half-starved Galicia or poverty-stricken Navarre, to carve his way in the world. Even among those whose ranks he had joined, Bourbon was a disgraced and ruined man beyond redemption. Although his well-known military capacity had easily induced Charles to welcome and make use of him, he must have felt that the step he had taken in breaking his allegiance and abandoning his country had rendered him an outcast and almost a pariah in the estimation of the chivalry of Europe. The feeling he had awakened against himself throughout Christendom is strikingly illustrated by an anecdote recorded of his reception at Madrid. When, shortly after winning the battle of Pavia, Bourbon went thither to meet Charles, and the Marquis of Villane was requested to lodge the victorious general in his palace, the haughty Spaniard told the Emperor that his house and all that he possessed were at his sovereign's disposition, but that he should assuredly burn it down as soon as Bourbon was out of it; since, having been sullied by the presence of a renegade, it could no longer be a fitting residence for a man of honor. So low had Bourbon fallen! Every man's hand was raised against him, and his hand was against every man. And it is easy to conceive what must have been his tone of mind and feeling, as he led on his mutinous robber-rout to Rome, while men of all parties looked on in panic-stricken horror. Thus Bourbon led his unpaid and mutinous hordes to a deed which, none knew better than he, would shock and scandalize all Europe, as a man who, having fallen already so low as to have lost all self-respect, cares not in his reckless despair to what depth he plunges. As for Frundsberg, he was a mere soldier of fortune, whose world was his camp, whose opinions and feelings had been formed in quite another school from those of his fellow-general; whose code of honor and of morals was an entirely different one, and whose conscience was not only perfectly at rest respecting the business he was bound on, but approved of it as a good and meritorious work for the advancement of true religion. He carried round his neck a halter of golden tissue, we are told, with which he loudly boasted that he would hang the Pope as soon as he got to Rome; and had others of crimson silk at his saddle-bow, which he said were destined for the cardinals! Too late Clement became aware of the imminence and magnitude of the danger that threatened him and the capital of Christendom. He besought the Neapolitan viceroy, who had already signed a treaty with him, as has been seen, to exert himself and use his authority to arrest the southward march of Bourbon's army. And it is remarkable that this representative of the Emperor in the government of Naples did, as it would seem, endeavor earnestly to avert the coming avalanche from the Eternal City. But, while the Emperor's viceroy used all his authority and endeavors to arrest the advance of the Emperor's army, the Emperor's generals advanced and sacked Rome in spite of him. Which of them most really acted according to the secret wishes of that profound dissembler, and most false and crafty monarch, it is impossible to know. It may have been that Bourbon himself had no power to stay the plundering, bandit-like march of his hungry and unpaid troops. And the facts recorded of the state of discipline of the army are perfectly consistent with such a supposition. The Viceroy sent a messenger to Bourbon, while he was yet in Bologna, informing him of the treaty signed with Clement, and desiring him therefore to come no farther southward. Bourbon, bent, as Varchi says, on deceiving both the Pope and the Viceroy, replied that, if the Pope would send him two hundred thousand florins for distribution to the army, he would stay his march. But, while this answer was carried back to Rome, the tumultuous host continued its fearfully menacing advance; and the alarm in Rome was rapidly growing to desperate terror. At the Pope's earnest request, the Viceroy, "who knew well," says Varchi, "that his holiness had not a farthing," himself took post and rode hard for Florence with letters from Clement, hoping to obtain the money there. The departure of the Viceroy in person, and the breathless haste of his ride to Florence, speak vividly of this Spanish officer's personal anxiety respecting the dreadful fate which threatened Rome. But the Florentines do not seem to have been equally impressed with the necessity of losing no time in making an effort to avert the calamity from a rival city. It was after "much talking," we are told, that they at last consented to advance a hundred fifty thousand florins, eighty thousand in cash down, and the remainder by the end of October. It was now April; and Bourbon had by this time crossed the Apennines, and was with his army on the western slopes of the mountains, not far from the celebrated monastery of Lavernia. Thither the Viceroy hurried with all speed, accompanied by only two servants and a trumpeter; and having "with much difficulty," says Varchi, come to speech with the general, proffered him the eighty thousand florins. Upon which he was set upon by the tumultuous troops, and "narrowly escaped being torn in pieces by them." In endeavoring to get away from them and make his way back to Florence, he fell into the hands of certain peasants near Camaldoli, and was here again in danger of his life, and was wounded in the head. He was, however, rescued by a monk of Vallombrosa, and by him conducted to the neighboring little town of Poppi in the Casentino, or upper valley of the Arno, whence he made his way to Siena, and so back to Rome, with no pleasant tidings of what might be expected from Bourbon and his brigand army. The Vallombrosan monk, who thus bestead the Viceroy at his need, was, as Varchi records, rewarded by the bishopric of Muro, in the kingdom of Naples, which, adds the historian, "he still holds." The fate of Rome was no longer doubtful. Clement, who by his pennywise parsimony had left himself defenceless, made a feeble and wholly vain attempt to put the city in a state of defence. The corrupt and cowardly citizens could not have opposed any valid resistance to the ruffian hordes who were slowly but surely, like an advancing conflagration, coming upon them, even if they had been willing to do their best. But the trembling Pope's appeal to them to defend the walls fell on the ears of as sorely trembling men, each thinking only of the possible chances of saving his own individual person. Yet it seems clear that means of defence might have been found had not the Pope been thus paralyzed by terror. Clement, however, was as one fascinated. Martin du Bellay tells us that he himself, then in Italy as ambassador from Francis I, hurried to Rome, and warned the Pope of his danger in abundant time for him to have prepared for the protection of the city by the troops he had at his disposal. But no persuasion availed to induce Clement to take any step for that purpose. Neither would he seek safety by flight, nor permit his unfortunate subjects to do so. John da Casale, ambassador of Henry VIII at Venice, writes thence to Wolsey on May 16th--the fatal tidings of the sack of the city having just reached Venice--as follows: "He"--Clement--"refused to quit the city for some safer place. He even forbade by edict that anyone should carry anything out of the gates on pain of death, though many were anxious to depart and carry their fortunes elsewhere." Meantime Florence, for her own protection, had hastily induced Francesco Maria, Duke of Urbino, to place himself at the head of the remaining forces of the Italian league, and to take up a position at Incisa, a small town in the Upper Valdarno, about twenty miles from the city, on the road to Arezzo. Thus the torrent was turned off from the capital of the commonwealth. Probably as soon as the invading army once found itself to the south of Florence, that wealthy city was in no immediate danger. Rome was metal more attractive to the invaders, even had there not been an army between them and Florence. And now it became frightfully clear that the doom of the Eternal City was at hand. On came the strangely heterogeneous rout of lawless soldiery, leaving behind them a trail of burned and ruined cities, devastated fields, and populations plague-stricken from the contamination engendered by the multitude of their unburied dead. On May 5th Bourbon arrived beneath the walls of Rome. During the last few days the unhappy Pope had endeavored to arm what men he could get together under Renzo di Ceri and one Horatius--not Cocles, unhappily--but Baglioni. "Rome contained within her walls," says Ranke, "some thirty thousand inhabitants capable of bearing arms. Many of these men had seen service. They wore swords by their sides, which they had used freely in their broils among each other, and then boasted of their exploits. But to oppose the enemy, who brought with him certain destruction, five hundred men were the utmost that could be mustered within the city. At the first onset the Pope and his forces were overthrown." On the evening of May 6th the city was stormed and given over to the unbridled cupidity and brutality of the soldiers, who during many a long day of want and hardship had been looking forward to the hour that was to repay them amply for all past sufferings by the boundless gratification of every sense, and every caprice of lawless passion. Bourbon himself had fallen in the first moments of the attack, as he was leading his men to scale the walls, and any small influence that he might have exerted in moderating the excesses of the conquerors was thus at an end. It does not fall within the scope of the present narrative to attempt any detailed account of the days and scenes that followed. They have been described by many writers; and the reader who bears in mind what Rome was--her vileness, her cowardice, her imbecility, her wealth, her arts, her monuments, her memories, her helpless population of religious communities of both sexes, and the sacred character of her high places and splendors, which served to give an additional zest to the violence of triumphant heretics--he that bears in mind all these things may safely give the reign to his imagination without any fear of overcharging the picture. Frundsberg had been wont to boast that if ever he reached Rome he would hang the Pope. He never did reach it, having been carried off by a fit of apoplexy while striving to quell a mutiny among his troops shortly after leaving Bologna on his southward march. But the threat is sufficiently indicative of the spirit that animated his army, to show that Clement owed his personal safety only to the strength of the castle of St. Angelo, in which he sought refuge. The sensation produced throughout Europe by the dreadful misfortune which had fallen on the Eternal City was immense. John da Casale, in the letter cited above, says that it would have been better for Rome to have been taken by the Turks, when they were in Hungary, as the infidels would have perpetrated less odious outrages and less horrible sacrilege. Clerk, Bishop of Bath, writes to Wolsey from Paris on May 28th following: "Please it, your Grace, after my most humble recommendation, to understand that about the fifteenth of this moneth, by letters sent from Venyce, it was spoken, that the Duke of Burbon with the armye imperyall by vyolence shold enter Rome as the 6th of this moneth; and that in the same entree the said Duke should be slayne; and that the Pope had savyd Himself with the Cardynalls in Castell Angell; whiche tydinges bycause they ware not written unto Venyce, but upon relation of a souldier, that came from Rome to Viterbe, and bycause ther cam hither no maner of confirmation thereof unto this day, thay war not belevyd. This day ther is come letters from Venyce confyrming the same tydinges to be true. They write also that they have sackyd and spoylyd the town, and slayne to the nombre of 45,000, _non parcentes nec etati nec sexui nec ordini_; amongst other that they have murdyrd a marveillous sorte of fryars, and agaynst pristes and churchis they have behavyd thymselfes as it doth become Murranys and Lutherans to do." How deeply Wolsey himself was moved by the news is seen by a letter from him to Henry VIII, written on June 2d following. He forwards to the King the letters "nowe arryved, as wel out of Fraunce as out of Italy, confirming the piteous and lamentable spoiles, pilages, with most cruel murdres, committed by the Emperialls in the citie of Rome, _non parcentes sacris, etati, sexui, aut relioni_; and the extreme daungier that the Poopes Holines and Cardinalles, who fled into the Castel Angel, wer in, if by meane of the armye of the liege, they should not be shortly socoured and releved. Which, sire, is matier that must nedes commove and stire the hartes of al good christen princes and people to helpe and put their handes with effecte to reformacion thereof, and the repressing of such tirannous demenour." Even Charles himself affected at least to mourn the success of his own army. Nowhere did this terrible Italian misfortune fail to awaken sympathy and compassion save in a rival Italian city. Florence heard the tidings, says Varchi, with the utmost delight. The same historian expresses his own opinion, that the sack of Rome was at once the most cruel and the most merited chastisement ever inflicted by heaven. And another Florentine writer piously accounts for the failure of all means adopted to avert the calamity, by supposing that it was God's eternal purpose then and thus to chastise the crimes of the Roman prelates--a theory, it may occur to some minds, somewhat damaged by the unfortunate fact that the greater part of the miseries suffered in those awful days were inflicted on the unhappy flocks of those purple shepherds. FOOTNOTES: [36] These troops entered Rome in October, 1526. They were disbanded in March, 1527. [37] Cellini here refers to the attack made upon Rome by the great Ghibelline house of Colonna, led by their chief captain, Pompeo, in September, 1526. They took possession of the city and drove Clement into the castle of St. Angelo, where they forced him to agree to terms favoring the Imperial cause. It was customary for Roman gentlemen to hire bravoes for the defence of their palaces when any extraordinary disturbance was expected, as, for example, upon the vacation of the papal chair. [38] All historians of the sack of Rome agree in saying that Bourbon was shot dead while placing ladders against the outworks near the shop Cellini mentions. But the honor of firing the arquebuse which brought him down cannot be assigned to anyone in particular. Very different stories were current on the subject. [39] Renzo di Ceri was a captain of adventurers, who had conquered Urbino for the Pope in 1515, and afterward fought for the French in the Italian wars. Orazio Baglioni, of the semiprincely Perugian family, was a distinguished _condottiere_. He subsequently obtained the captaincy of the Bande Nere, and died fighting near Naples in 1528. Orazio murdered several of his cousins in order to acquire the lordship of Perugia. His brother Malatesta undertook to defend Florence in the siege of 1530, and sold the city by treason to Clement. [40] Giovio, in his _Life of the Cardinal Prospero Colonna_, relates how he accompanied Clement in his flight from the Vatican to the castle. While passing some open portions of the gallery, he threw his violet mantle and cap of a monseigneur over the white stole of the Pontiff, for fear he might be shot at by the soldiers in the streets below. [41] The short autobiography of Raffaello da Montelupo, a man in many respects resembling Cellini, confirms this part of our author's narrative. It is one of the most interesting pieces of evidence regarding what went on inside the castle during the sack of Rome. Montelupo was also a gunner and commanded two pieces. [42] This is an instance of Cellini's exaggeration. He did more than yeoman's service, no doubt, but we cannot believe that, without him, the castle would have been taken. GREAT RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT IN ENGLAND FALL OF WOLSEY A.D. 1529 JOHN RICHARD GREEN The "New Learning" which had been slowly spreading from Italy over all Europe, did not markedly affect England until the sixteenth century. There the long Wars of the Roses had not only gone nigh to exterminating the old nobility, but had so distracted men's minds from more peaceful pursuits that little note was taken of the intellectual movement abroad. Under Henry VII and Henry VIII all this changed. These Tudor monarchs were indeed tyrants over England, but they brought her peace--and time for thought. Under the leadership of the celebrated Dutch scholar Erasmus, and the almost equally renowned Englishmen, Sir Thomas More and Dean Colet, the land awakened about 1500 to a new life of study and of culture, whose principles spread rapidly among the upper classes. When news of Luther's religious revolt reached England, the leaders of the New Learning were at first inclined to favor his ideas. But the two movements, one scholarly and calm, the other impassioned and intense, soon parted company, as Green shows in his justly famous account. The true ruler of England at the time was the "great cardinal," Wolsey, whose brain long enabled him to play upon King Henry as a toreador does upon a bull, guiding at will the frenzied rushes of the mighty brute. In 1521, the period when the following account begins, Wolsey was fifty years old. He had risen from being the studious son of a grazier and wool merchant to be a dean of the Church under Henry VII, and a bishop, cardinal and lord chancellor, of England under Henry VIII. His ambition to be pope was thwarted by the emperor Charles V, but he was "cardinal legate," having control of the Catholic Church throughout England; and it was said of him that in all European affairs he was "seven times more powerful than the Pope." In England Luther's protest seemed at first to find no echo. King Henry VIII was, both on political and on religious grounds, firm on the papal side. England and Rome were drawn to a close alliance by the identity of their political position. Each was hard pressed between the same great powers; Rome had to hold its own between the masters of Southern and the masters of Northern Italy, as England had to hold her own between the rulers of France and of the Netherlands. From the outset of his reign to the actual break with Clement VII the policy of Henry is always at one with that of the papacy. Nor were the King's religious tendencies hostile to it. He was a trained theologian and proud of his theological knowledge, but to the end his convictions remained firmly on the side of the doctrines which Luther denied. In 1521, therefore, he entered the lists against Luther with an "Assertion of the Seven Sacraments," for which he was rewarded by Leo with the title of "Defender of the Faith." The insolent abuse of the reformer's answer called More and Fisher into the field. The influence of the "New Learning" was now strong at the English court. Colet and Grocyn were among its foremost preachers; Linacre was Henry's physician; More was a privy councillor; Pace was one of the secretaries of state; Tunstall was master of the rolls. And as yet the New Learning, though scared by Luther's intemperate language, had steadily backed him in his struggle. Erasmus pleaded for him with the Emperor. Ulrich von Hutten attacked the friars in satires and invectives as violent as his own. But the temper of the Renaissance was even more antagonistic to the temper of Luther than that of Rome itself. From the golden dream of a new age wrought peaceably and purely by the slow progress of intelligence, the growth of letters, the development of human virtue, the reformer of Wittenberg turned away with horror. He had little or no sympathy with the new cult. He despised reason as heartily as any papal dogmatist could despise it. He hated the very thought of toleration or comprehension. He had been driven by a moral and intellectual compulsion to declare the Roman system a false one, but it was only to replace it by another system of doctrine just as elaborate and claiming precisely the same infallibility. To degrade human nature was to attack the very base of the New Learning; and his attack on it called the foremost of its teachers to the field. But Erasmus no sooner advanced to its defence than Luther declared man to be utterly enslaved by original sin and incapable, through any efforts of his own, of discovering truth or of arriving, at goodness. Such a doctrine not only annihilated the piety and wisdom of the classic past, from which the New Learning had drawn its larger views of life and of the world; it trampled in the dust reason itself, the very instrument by which More and Erasmus hoped to regenerate both knowledge and religion. To More especially, with his keener perception of its future effect, this sudden revival of a purely theological and dogmatic spirit, severing Christendom into warring camps and ruining all hopes of union and tolerance, was especially hateful. The temper which hitherto had seemed so "endearing, gentle, and happy," suddenly gave way. His reply to Luther's attack upon the King sank to the level of the work it answered; and though that of Bishop Fisher was calmer and more argumentative, the divorce of the New Learning from the Reformation seemed complete. But if the world of scholars and thinkers stood aloof from the new movement it found a warmer welcome in the larger world where men are stirred rather by emotion than by thought. There was an England of which even More and Colet knew little, in which Luther's words kindled a fire that was never to die. As a great social and political movement Lollardry had ceased to exist, and little remained of the directly religious impulse given by Wycliffe beyond a vague restlessness and discontent with the system of the Church. But weak and fitful as was the life of Lollardry the prosecutions whose records lie scattered over the bishops' registers failed wholly to kill it. We see groups meeting here and there to read "in a great book of heresy all one night certain chapters of the Evangelists in English," while transcripts of Wycliffe's tracts passed from hand to hand. The smouldering embers needed but a breath to fan them into flame, and the breath came from William Tyndale. Born among the Cotswolds when Bosworth Field gave England to the Tudors, Tyndale passed from Oxford to Cambridge to feel the full impulse given by the appearance there of the New Testament of Erasmus. From that moment one thought was at his heart. He "perceived by experience how that it was impossible to establish the lay people in any truth except the Scripture were plainly laid before their eyes in their mother tongue." "If God spare my life," he said to a learned controversialist, "ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the Scripture than thou dost." But he was a man of forty before his dream became fact. Drawn from his retirement in Gloucestershire by the news of Luther's protest at Wittenberg, he found shelter for a year with a London alderman, Humfrey Monmouth. "He studied most part of the day at his book," said his host afterward, "and would eat but sodden meat by his good-will and drink but small single beer." The book at which he studied was the Bible. But it was soon needful to quit England if his purpose was to hold. "I understood at the last not only that there was no room in my lord of London's palace to translate the New Testament, but also that there was no place to do it in all England." From Hamburg, where he took refuge in 1524, he probably soon found his way to the little town which had suddenly become the sacred city of the Reformation. Students of all nations were flocking there with an enthusiasm which resembled that of the crusades. "As they came in sight of the town," a contemporary tells us, "they returned thanks to God with clasped hands, for from Wittenberg, as heretofore from Jerusalem, the light of evangelical truth had spread to the utmost parts of the earth." Such a visit could only fire Tyndale to face the "poverty, exile, bitter absence from friends, hunger and thirst and cold, great dangers, and innumerable other hard and sharp fightings," which the work he had set himself was to bring with it. In 1525 his version of the New Testament was completed, and means were furnished by English merchants for printing it at Cologne. But Tyndale had soon to fly with his sheets to Worms, a city whose Lutheran tendencies made it a safer refuge, and it was from Worms that six thousand copies of the New Testament were sent in 1526 to English shores. The King was keenly opposed to a book which he looked on as made "at the solicitation and instance of Luther"; and even the men of the New Learning from whom it might have hoped for welcome were estranged from it by its Lutheran origin. We can only fairly judge their action by viewing it in the light of the time. What Warham and More saw over sea might well have turned them from a movement which seemed breaking down the very foundations of religion and society. Not only was the fabric of the Church rent asunder and the centre of Christian unity denounced as "Babylon," but the reform itself seemed passing into anarchy. Luther was steadily moving onward from the denial of one Catholic dogma to that of another; and what Luther still clung to, his followers were ready to fling away. Carlstadt was denouncing the reformer of Wittenberg as fiercely as Luther himself had denounced the Pope, and meanwhile the religious excitement was kindling wild dreams of social revolution, and men stood aghast at the horrors of a peasant war which broke out in Southern Germany. It was not therefore as a mere translation of the Bible that Tyndale's work reached England. It came as a part of the Lutheran movement, and it bore the Lutheran stamp in its version of ecclesiastical words. "Church" became "congregation," "priest" was changed into "elder." It came too in company with Luther's bitter invectives and reprints of the tracts of Wycliffe, which the German traders of the Steelyard were importing in large numbers. We can hardly wonder that More denounced the book as heretical, or that Warham ordered it to be given up by all who possessed it. Wolsey took little heed of religious matters, but his policy was one of political adhesion to Rome, and he presided over a solemn penance to which some Steelyard men submitted in St. Paul's. "With six-and-thirty abbots, mitred priors, and bishops, and he in his whole pomp mitred," the Cardinal looked on while "great baskets full of books were commanded; after the great fire was made before the Rood of Northen (the crucifix by the great north door of the cathedral), thus to be burned, and those heretics to go thrice about the fire and to cast in their fagots." But scenes and denunciations such as these were vain in the presence of an enthusiasm which grew every hour. "Englishmen," says a scholar of the time, "were so eager for the Gospel as to affirm that they would buy a New Testament even if they had to give a hundred thousand pieces of money for it." Bibles and pamphlets were smuggled over to England and circulated among the poorer and trading classes through the agency of an association of "Christian Brethren," consisting principally of London tradesmen and citizens, but whose missionaries spread over the country at large. They found their way at once to the universities, where the intellectual impulse given by the New Learning was quickening religious speculation. Cambridge had already won a name for heresy; Barnes, one of its foremost scholars, had to carry his fagot before Wolsey at St. Paul's; two other Cambridge teachers, Bilney and Latimer, were already known as "Lutherans." The Cambridge scholars whom Wolsey introduced into Cardinal College, which he was founding, spread the contagion through Oxford. A group of "brethren" was formed in Cardinal College for the secret reading and discussion of the Epistles; and this soon included the more intelligent and learned scholars of the university. It was in vain that Clark, the centre of this group, strove to dissuade fresh members from joining it by warnings of the impending dangers. "I fell down on my knees at his feet," says one of them, Anthony Dalaber, "and with tears and sighs besought him that for the tender mercy of God he should not refuse me, saying that I trusted verily that he who had begun this on me would not forsake me, but would give me grace to continue therein to the end. When he heard me say so, he came to me, took me in his arms, and kissed me, saying, 'The Lord God Almighty grant you so to do, and from henceforth ever take me for your father, and I will take you for my son in Christ.'" In 1528 the excitement which followed on this rapid diffusion of Tyndale's works forced Wolsey to more vigorous action; many of the Oxford Brethren were thrown into prison and their books seized. But in spite of the panic of the Protestants, some of whom fled over sea, little severity was really exercised. Henry's chief anxiety, indeed, was lest in the outburst against heresy the interest of the New Learning should suffer harm. This was remarkably shown in the protection he extended to one who was destined to eclipse even the fame of Colet as a popular preacher. Hugh Latimer was the son of a Leicestershire yeoman, whose armor the boy had buckled on in the days of Henry VII, ere he set out to meet the Cornish insurgents at Blackheath Field. Latimer has himself described the soldierly training of his youth. "My father was delighted to teach me to shoot with the bow. He taught me how to draw, how to lay my body to the bow, not to draw with strength of arm as other nations do, but with the strength of the body." At fourteen he was at Cambridge, flinging himself into the New Learning which was winning its way there with a zeal that at last told on his physical strength. The ardor of his mental efforts left its mark on him in ailments and enfeebled health from which, vigorous as he was, his frame never wholly freed itself. But he was destined to be known, not as a scholar, but as a preacher. In his addresses from the pulpit the sturdy good-sense of the man shook off the pedantry of the schools as well as the subtlety of the theologian. He had little turn for speculation, and in the religious changes of the day we find him constantly lagging behind his brother-reformers. But he had the moral earnestness of a Jewish prophet, and his denunciations of wrong had a prophetic directness and fire. "Have pity on your soul," he cried to Henry, "and think that the day is even at hand when you shall give an account of your office, and of the blood that hath been shed by your sword." His irony was yet more telling than his invective. "I would ask you a strange question," he said once at Paul's Cross to a ring of bishops; "who is the most diligent prelate in all England, that passeth all the rest in doing of his office? I will tell you. It is the Devil! Of all the pack of them that have cure, the Devil shall go for my money; for he ordereth his business. Therefore, you unpreaching prelates, learn of the Devil to be diligent in your office. If you will not learn of God, for shame learn of the Devil." But Latimer was far from limiting himself to invective. His homely humor breaks in with story and apologue; his earnestness is always tempered with good-sense; his plain and simple style quickens with a shrewd mother-wit. He talks to his hearers as a man talks to his friends, telling stories such as we have given of his own life at home, or chatting about the changes and chances of the day with a transparent simplicity and truth that raise even his chat into grandeur. His theme is always the actual world about him, and in his simple lessons of loyalty, of industry, of pity for the poor, he touches upon almost every subject from the plough to the throne. No such preaching had been heard in England before his day, and with the growth of his fame grew the danger of persecution. There were moments when, bold as he was, Latimer's heart failed him. "If I had not trust that God will help me," he wrote once, "I think the ocean sea would have divided my lord of London and me by this day." A citation for heresy at last brought the danger home. "I intend," he wrote with his peculiar medley of humor and pathos, to "make merry with my parishioners this Christmas, for all the sorrow, lest perchance I may never return to them again." But he was saved throughout by the steady protection of the court. Wolsey upheld him against the threats of the Bishop of Ely; Henry made him his own chaplain; and the King's interposition at this critical moment forced Latimer's judges to content themselves with a few vague words of submission. What really sheltered the reforming movement was Wolsey's indifference to all but political matters. In spite of the foundation of Cardinal College in which he was now engaged, and of the suppression of some lesser monasteries for its endowment, the men of the New Learning looked on him as really devoid of any interest in the revival of letters or in their hopes of a general enlightenment. He took hardly more heed of the new Lutheranism. His mind had no religious turn, and the quarrel of faiths was with him simply one factor in the political game which he was carrying on and which at this moment became more complex and absorbing than ever. The victory of Pavia had ruined that system of balance which Henry VII, and, in his earlier days, Henry VIII, had striven to preserve. But the ruin had not been to England's profit, but to the profit of its ally. While the Emperor stood supreme in Europe, Henry had won nothing from the war, and it was plain that Charles meant him to win nothing. He set aside all projects of a joint invasion; he broke his pledge to wed Mary Tudor and married a princess of Portugal; he pressed for a peace with France which would give him Burgundy. It was time for Henry and his minister to change their course. They resolved to withdraw from all active part in the rivalry of the two powers. In June, 1525, a treaty was secretly concluded with France. But Henry remained on fair terms with the Emperor; and though England joined the Holy League for the deliverance of Italy from the Spaniards which was formed between France, the Pope, and the lesser Italian states on the release of Francis in the spring of 1526 by virtue of a treaty which he at once repudiated, she took no part in the lingering war which went on across the Alps. Charles was too prudent to resent Henry's alliance with his foes, and from this moment the country remained virtually at peace. No longer spurred by the interest of great events, the King ceased to take a busy part in foreign politics, and gave himself to hunting and sport. Among the fairest and gayest ladies of his court stood Anne Boleyn. She was sprung of a merchant family which had but lately risen to distinction through two great marriages, that of her grandfather with the heiress of the earls of Ormond, and that of her father, Sir Thomas Boleyn, with a sister of the Duke of Norfolk. It was probably through his kinship with the Duke, who was now lord treasurer and high in the King's confidence, that Boleyn was employed throughout Henry's reign in state business, and his diplomatic abilities had secured his appointment as envoy both to France and to the Emperor. His son, George Boleyn, a man of culture and a poet, was among the group of young courtiers in whose society Henry took most pleasure. Anne was his youngest daughter; born in 1507, she was still but a girl of sixteen when the outbreak of war drew her from a stay in France to the English court. Her beauty was small, but her bright eyes, her flowing hair, her gayety and wit soon won favor with the King, and only a month after her return in 1522 the grant of honors to her father marked her influence over Henry. Fresh gifts in the following years showed that the favor continued; but in 1524 a new color was given to this intimacy by a resolve on the King's part to break his marriage with the Queen. Catharine had now reached middle age; her personal charms had departed. The death of every child save Mary may have woke scruples as to the lawfulness of a marriage on which a curse seemed to rest; the need of a male heir for public security may have deepened this impression. But whatever were the grounds of his action we find Henry from this moment pressing the Roman see to grant him a divorce. It is probable that the matter was already mooted in 1525, a year which saw new proof of Anne's influence in the elevation of Sir Thomas Boleyn to the baronage as Lord Rochford. It is certain that it was the object of secret negotiation with the Pope in 1526. No sovereign stood higher in the favor of Rome than Henry, whose alliance had ever been ready in its distress and who was even now prompt with aid in money. But Clement's consent to his wish meant a break with the Emperor, Catharine's nephew; and the exhaustion of France, the weakness of the league in which the lesser Italian states strove to maintain their independence against Charles after the battle of Pavia, left the Pope at the Emperor's mercy. While the English envoy was mooting the question of divorce in 1526 the surprise of Rome by an imperial force brought home to Clement his utter helplessness. It is hard to discover what part Wolsey had as yet taken in the matter, or whether as in other cases Henry had till now been acting alone, though the Cardinal himself tells us that on Catharine's first discovery of the intrigue she attributed the proposal of divorce to "my procurement and setting forth." But from this point his intervention is clear. As legate he took cognizance of all matrimonial causes, and in May, 1527, a collusive action was brought in his court against Henry for cohabiting with his brother's wife. The King appeared by proctor; but the suit was suddenly dropped. Secret as were the proceedings, they had now reached Catharine's ear; and as she refused to admit the facts on which Henry rested his case her appeal would have carried the matter to the tribunal of the Pope, and Clement's decision could hardly be a favorable one. The Pope was now in fact a prisoner in the Emperor's hands. At the very moment of the suit Rome was stormed and sacked by the army of the Duke of Bourbon. "If the Pope's holiness fortune either to be slain or taken," Wolsey wrote to the King when the news of this event reached England, "it shall not a little hinder your grace's affairs." But it was needful for the Cardinal to find some expedient to carry out the King's will, for the group around Anne were using her skilfully for their purposes. A great party had now gathered to her support. Her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, an able and ambitious man, counted on her rise to set him at the head of the council board; the brilliant group of young courtiers to which her brother belonged saw in her success their own elevation; and the Duke of Suffolk with the bulk of the nobles hoped through her means to bring about the ruin of the statesman before whom they trembled. What most served their plans was the growth of Henry's passion. "If it please you," the King wrote at this time to Anne Boleyn, "to do the office of a true, loyal mistress, and give yourself body and heart to me, who have been and mean to be your loyal servant, I promise you not only the name but that I shall make you my sole mistress, remove all others from my affection, and serve you only." What stirred Henry's wrath most was Catharine's "stiff and obstinate" refusal to bow to his will. Wolsey's advice that "your Grace should handle her both gently and doulcely" only goaded Henry's impatience. He lent an ear to the rivals who charged his minister with slackness in the cause, and danger drove the Cardinal to a bolder and yet more unscrupulous device. The entire subjection of Italy to the Emperor was drawing closer the French alliance, and a new treaty had been concluded in April. But this had hardly been signed when the sack of Rome and the danger of the Pope called for bolder measures. Wolsey was despatched on a solemn embassy to Francis to promise an English subsidy on the despatch of a French army across the Alps. But he aimed at turning the Pope's situation to the profit of the divorce. Clement was virtually a prisoner in the castle of St. Angelo; and as it was impossible for him to fulfil freely the function of a Pope, Wolsey proposed, in conjunction with Francis, to call a meeting of the college of cardinals at Avignon which should exercise the papal powers till Clement's liberation. As Wolsey was to preside over this assembly, it would be easy to win from it a favorable answer to Henry's request. But Clement had no mind to surrender his power, and secret orders from the Pope prevented the Italian cardinals from attending such an assembly. Nor was Wolsey more fortunate in another plan for bringing about the same end by inducing Clement to delegate to him his full powers westward of the Alps. Henry's trust in him was fast waning before these failures and the steady pressure of his rivals at court, and the coldness of the King on his return in September was an omen of his minister's fall. Henry was in fact resolved to take his own course; and while Wolsey sought from the Pope a commission enabling him to try the case in his legatine court and pronounce the marriage null and void by sentence of law, Henry had determined at the suggestion of the Boleyns and apparently of Thomas Cranmer, a Cambridge scholar who was serving as their chaplain, to seek, without Wolsey's knowledge, from Clement either his approval of a divorce or, if a divorce could not be obtained, a dispensation to remarry without any divorce at all. For some months his envoys could find no admission to the Pope; and though in December Clement succeeded in escaping to Orvieto and drew some courage from the entry of the French army into Italy, his temper was still too timid to venture on any decided course. He refused the dispensation altogether. Wolsey's proposal for leaving the matter to a legatine court found better favor; but when the commission reached England it was found to be "of no effect or authority." What Henry wanted was not merely a divorce but the express sanction of the Pope to his divorce, and this Clement steadily evaded. A fresh embassy, with Wolsey's favorite and secretary, Stephen Gardiner, at its head, reached Orvieto in March, 1528, to find, in spite of Gardiner's threats, hardly better success; but Clement at last consented to a legatine commission for the trial of the case in England. In this commission Cardinal Campeggio, who was looked upon as a partisan of the English King, was joined with Wolsey. Great as the concession seemed, this gleam of success failed to hide from the minister the dangers which gathered round him. The great nobles whom he had practically shut out from the King's counsels were longing for his fall. The Boleyns and the young courtiers looked on him as cool in Anne's cause. He was hated alike by men of the old doctrine and men of the new. The clergy had never forgotten his extortions, the monks saw him suppressing small monasteries. The foundation of Cardinal College failed to reconcile to him the scholars of the New Learning; their poet, Skelton, was among his bitterest assailants. The Protestants, goaded by the persecution of this very year, hated him with a deadly hatred. His French alliances, his declaration of war with the Emperor, hindered the trade with Flanders and secured the hostility of the merchant class. The country at large, galled with murrain and famine and panic-struck by an outbreak of the sweating sickness which carried off two thousand in London alone, laid all its suffering at the door of the Cardinal. And now that Henry's mood itself became uncertain Wolsey knew his hour was come. Were the marriage once made, he told the French ambassador, and a male heir born to the realm, he would withdraw from state affairs and serve God for the rest of his life. But the divorce had still to be brought about ere marriage could be made or heir be born. Henry indeed had seized on the grant of a commission as if the matter were at an end. Anne Boleyn was installed in the royal palace and honored with the state of a wife. The new legate, Campeggio, held the bishopric of Salisbury, and had been asked for as judge from the belief that he would favor the King's cause. But he bore secret instructions from the Pope to bring about if possible a reconciliation between Henry and the Queen, and in no case to pronounce sentence without reference to Rome. The slowness of his journey presaged ill; he did not reach England till the end of September, and a month was wasted in vain efforts to bring Henry to a reconciliation or Catharine to retirement into a monastery. A new difficulty disclosed itself in the supposed existence of a brief issued by Pope Julius and now in the possession of the Emperor, which overruled all the objections to the earlier dispensation on which Henry relied. The hearing of the cause was delayed through the winter, while new embassies strove to induce Clement to declare this brief also invalid. Not only was such a demand glaringly unjust, but the progress of the imperial arms brought vividly home to the Pope its injustice. The danger which he feared was not merely a danger to his temporal domain in Italy--it was a danger to the papacy itself. It was in vain that new embassies threatened Clement with the loss of his spiritual power over England. To break with the Emperor was to risk the loss of his spiritual power over a far larger world. Charles had already consented to the suspension of the judgment of his diet at Worms, a consent which gave security to the new Protestantism in North Germany. If he burned heretics in the Netherlands, he employed them in his armies. Lutheran soldiers had played their part in the sack of Rome. Lutheranism had spread from North Germany along the Rhine, it was now pushing fast into the hereditary possessions of the Austrian house, it had all but mastered the Low Countries. France itself was mined with heresy; and were Charles once to give way, the whole Continent would be lost to Rome. Amid difficulties such as these the papal court saw no course open save one of delay. But the long delay told fatally for Wolsey's fortunes. Even Clement blamed him for having hindered Henry from judging the matter in his own realm and marrying on the sentence of his own courts, and the Boleyns naturally looked upon his policy as dictated by hatred to Anne. Norfolk and the great peers took courage from the bitter tone of the girl; and Henry himself charged the Cardinal with a failure in fulfilling the promises he had made him. King and minister still clung indeed passionately to their hopes from Rome. But in 1529 Charles met their pressure with a pressure of his own; and the progress of his arms decided Clement to avoke the cause to Rome. Wolsey could only hope to anticipate this decision by pushing the trial hastily forward, and at the end of May the two legates opened their court in the great hall of the Blackfriars. King and Queen were cited to appear before them when the court again met on June 18th. Henry briefly announced his resolve to live no longer in mortal sin. The Queen offered an appeal to Clement, and on the refusal of the legates to admit it flung herself at Henry's feet. "Sire," said Catharine, "I beseech you to pity me, a woman and a stranger, without an assured friend and without an indifferent counsellor. I take God to witness that I have always been to you a true and loyal wife, that I have made it my constant duty to seek your pleasure, that I have loved all whom you loved, whether I have reason or not, whether they are friends to me or foes. I have been your wife for years; I have brought you many children. God knows that when I came to your bed I was a virgin, and I put it to your own conscience to say whether it was not so. If there be any offence which can be alleged against me I consent to depart with infamy; if not, then I pray you to do me justice." The piteous appeal was wasted on a king who was already entertaining Anne Boleyn with royal state in his own palace; the trial proceeded, and on July 23d the court assembled to pronounce sentence. Henry's hopes were at their highest when they were suddenly dashed to the ground. At the opening of the proceedings Campeggio rose to declare the court adjourned to the following October. The adjournment was a mere evasion. The pressure of the imperialists had at last forced Clement to summon the cause to his own tribunal at Rome, and the jurisdiction of the legates was at an end. "Now see I," cried the Duke of Suffolk as he dashed his hand on the table, "that the old saw is true, that there was never legate or cardinal that did good to England!" The Duke only echoed his master's wrath. Through the twenty years of his reign Henry had known nothing of opposition to his will. His imperious temper had chafed at the weary negotiations, the subterfuges and perfidies of the Pope. Though the commission was his own device, his pride must have been sorely galled by the summons to the legates' court. The warmest adherents of the older faith revolted against the degradation of the Crown. "It was the strangest and newest sight and device," says Cavendish, "that ever we read or heard of in any history or chronicle in any region that a king and queen should be convented and constrained by process compellatory to appear in any court as common persons, within their own realm and dominion, to abide the judgment and decree of their own subjects, having the royal diadem and prerogative thereof." Even this degradation had been borne in vain. Foreign and papal tribunal as that of the legates really was, it lay within Henry's kingdom and had the air of an English court. But the citation to Rome was a summons to the King to plead in a court without his realm. Wolsey had himself warned Clement of the hopelessness of expecting Henry to submit to such humiliation as this. "If the King be cited to appear in person or by proxy and his prerogative be interfered with, none of his subjects will tolerate the insult. To cite the King to Rome, to threaten him with excommunication, is no more tolerable than to deprive him of his royal dignity. If he were to appear in Italy it would be at the head of a formidable army." But Clement had been deaf to the warning, and the case had been avoked out of the realm. Henry's wrath fell at once on Wolsey. Whatever furtherance or hinderance the Cardinal had given to his remarriage, it was Wolsey who had dissuaded him from acting, at the first, independently; from conducting the cause in his own courts and acting on the sentence of his own judges. Whether to secure the succession by a more indisputable decision or to preserve uninjured the prerogatives of the papal see, it was Wolsey who had counselled him to seek a divorce from Rome and promised him success in his suit. And in this counsel Wolsey stood alone. Even Clement had urged the King to carry out his original purpose when it was too late. All that the Pope sought was to be freed from the necessity of meddling in the matter at all. It was Wolsey who had forced papal intervention on him, as he had forced it on Henry, and the failure of his plans was fatal to him. From the close of the legatine court Henry would see him no more, and his favorite, Stephen Gardiner, who had become chief secretary of state, succeeded him in the King's confidence. If Wolsey still remained minister for a while, it was because the thread of the complex foreign negotiations which he was conducting could not be roughly broken. Here too, however, failure awaited him. His diplomacy sought to bring fresh pressure on the Pope and to provide a fresh check on the Emperor by a closer alliance with France. But Francis was anxious to recover his children who had remained as hostages for his return; he was weary of the long struggle, and hopeless of aid from his Italian allies. At this crisis of his fate therefore Wolsey saw himself deceived and outwitted by the conclusion of peace between France and the Emperor in a new treaty at Cambray. Not only was his French policy no longer possible, but a reconciliation with Charles was absolutely needful, and such a reconciliation could only be brought about by Wolsey's fall. In October, on the very day that the Cardinal took his place with a haughty countenance and all his former pomp in the court of chancery an indictment was preferred against him by the King's attorney for receiving bulls from Rome in violation of the Statute of Provisors. A few days later he was deprived of the seals. Wolsey was prostrated by the blow. In a series of abject appeals he offered to give up everything that he possessed if the King would but cease from his displeasure. "His face," wrote the French ambassador, "is dwindled to half its natural size. In truth his misery is such that his enemies, Englishmen as they are, cannot help pitying him." For the moment Henry seemed contented with his disgrace. A thousand boats full of Londoners covered the Thames to see the Cardinal's barge pass to the Tower, but he was permitted to retire to Esher. Although judgment of forfeiture and imprisonment was given against him in the king's bench at the close of October, in the following February he received a pardon on surrender of his vast possessions to the crown and was permitted to withdraw to his diocese of York, the one dignity he had been suffered to retain. Not less significant was the attitude of the New Learning. On Wolsey's fall the seals had been offered to Warham, and it was probably at his counsel that they were finally given to Sir Thomas More. The Chancellor's dream, if we may judge it from the acts of his brief ministry, seems to have been that of carrying out the religious reformation which had been demanded by Colet and Erasmus while checking the spirit of revolt against the unity of the Church. His severities against the Protestants, exaggerated as they have been by polemic rancor, remain the one stain on a memory that knows no other. But it was only by a rigid severance of the cause of reform from what seemed to him the cause of revolution that More could hope for a successful issue to the projects of reform which the council laid before parliament. The "Petition of the Commons" sounded like an echo of Colet's famous address to the convocation. It attributed the growth of heresy not more to "frantic and seditious books published in the English tongue contrary to the very true Catholic and Christian faith" than to "the extreme and uncharitable behavior of divers ordinaries." It remonstrated against the legislation of the clergy in convocation without the King's assent or that of his subjects, the oppressive procedure of the church courts, the abuses of ecclesiastical patronage, and the excessive number of holy days. Henry referred the petition to the bishops, but they could devise no means of redress, and the ministry persisted in pushing through the houses their bills for ecclesiastical reform. The importance of the new measures lay really in the action of parliament. They were an explicit announcement that church reform was now to be undertaken, not by the clergy, but by the people at large. On the other hand it was clear that it would be carried out in a spirit of loyalty to the Church. The commons forced from Bishop Fisher an apology for words which were taken as a doubt thrown on their orthodoxy. Henry forbade the circulation of Tyndale's translation of the Bible as executed in a Protestant spirit. The reforming measures, however, were pushed resolutely on. Though the questions of convocation and the bishops' courts were adjourned for further consideration, the fees of the courts were curtailed, the clergy restricted from lay employments, pluralities restrained, and residence enforced. In spite of a dogged opposition from the bishops the bills received the assent of the House of Lords, "to the great rejoicing of lay people, and the great displeasure of spiritual persons." Not less characteristic of the New Learning was the intellectual pressure it strove to bring to bear on the wavering Pope. Cranmer was still active in the cause of Anne Boleyn; he had just published a book in favor of the divorce; and he now urged on the ministry an appeal to the learned opinion of Christendom by calling for the judgment of the chief universities of Europe. His counsel was adopted; but Norfolk trusted to coarser means of attaining his end. Like most of the English nobles and the whole of the merchant class, his sympathies were with the house of Burgundy. He looked upon Wolsey as the real hinderance to the divorce through the French policy which had driven Charles into a hostile attitude; and he counted on the Cardinal's fall to bring about a renewal of friendship with the Emperor and to insure his support. The father of Anne Boleyn, now created Earl of Wiltshire, was sent in 1530 on this errand to the imperial court. But Charles remained firm to Catharine's cause, and Clement would do nothing in defiance of the Emperor. Nor was the appeal to the learned world more successful. In France the profuse bribery of the English agents would have failed with the University of Paris but for the interference of Francis himself, eager to regain Henry's good-will by this office of friendship. As shameless an exercise of the King's own authority was needed to wring an approval of his cause from Oxford and Cambridge. In Germany the very Protestants, then in the fervor of their moral revival and hoping little from a proclaimed opponent of Luther, were dead against the King. So far as could be seen from Cranmer's test every learned man in Christendom, but for bribery and threats, would have condemned the royal cause. Henry was embittered by failures which he attributed to the unskilful diplomacy of his new counsellors; and it was rumored that he had been heard to regret the loss of the more dexterous statesman whom they had overthrown. Wolsey, who since the beginning of the year had remained at York, though busy in appearance with the duties of his see, was hoping more and more as the months passed by for his recall. But the jealousy of his political enemies was roused by the King's regrets, and the pitiless hand of Norfolk was seen in the quick and deadly blow which he dealt at his fallen rival. On November 4th, the eve of his installation feast, the Cardinal was arrested on a charge of high treason and conducted by the lieutenant of the Tower toward London. Already broken by his enormous labors, by internal disease, and the sense of his fall, Wolsey accepted the arrest as a sentence of death. An attack of dysentery forced him to rest at the Abbey of Leicester, and as he reached the gate he said feebly to the brethren who met him, "I am come to lay my bones among you." On his death-bed his thoughts still clung to the Prince whom he had served. "Had I but served God as diligently as I have served the King," murmured the dying man, "he would not have given me over in my gray hairs. But this is my due reward for my pains and study, not regarding my service to God, but only my duty to my Prince." PIZARRO CONQUERS PERU A.D. 1532 HERNANDO PIZARRO WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT Before Europeans visited Peru, a highly developed civilization existed there under the native Indian empire of the Incas, as the chiefs were called who ruled from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century. These sovereigns constituted a hereditary aristocratic order, and had long been the masters of prodigious wealth taken from the gold and silver mines of the country. It was the rich treasure which they expected to find there that first led the Spaniards to look for conquests in that quarter of the world. When the "South Sea," as the Spaniards called the Pacific Ocean, had been discovered by Balboa, and the first conquests on the mainland secured, another Spanish soldier, Francisco Pizarro, who had accompanied Balboa, settled in the new city of Panama. While living there in repose, he longed to perform further and greater services for the Spanish sovereign. He therefore obtained permission from the colonial governor to explore the Pacific coast toward the south. After an unsuccessful voyage in 1524-1526, he set out again in the latter year, and sailed for Peru, reaching that country through many hardships, the surmounting of which places him fairly among the great discoverers. Having collected much information concerning the empire of the Incas, Pizarro went to Spain and received authority to conquer Peru. Returning to Panama, he sailed from there in December, 1531, with three ships, one hundred eighty-three men, and thirty-seven horses. He first landed at the island of Puna, where he was joined by Hernando de Soto, and then, crossing to Tumbez, marched inland and reached Cajamarca, the city of the Incas, in November, 1532. The circumstantial account of what followed, written by Hernando Pizarro, half-brother and companion of Francisco, is fitly supplemented by the narrative of Prescott, whose story of the last of the Incas is so widely known. HERNANDO PIZARRO _To the Magnificent Lords, the Judges of the Royal Audience of his Majesty, who reside in the city of Santo Domingo._ MAGNIFICENT LORDS: I arrived in this port of Yaguana on my way to Spain, by order of the governor Francisco Pizarro, to inform his majesty of what has happened in that government of Peru, to give an account of the country and of its present condition; and, as I believe that those who come to this city give your worships inconsistent accounts, it has seemed well to me to write a summary of what has taken place, that you may be informed of the truth. The Governor, in the name of his majesty, founded a town near the sea-coast, which was called San Miguel. It is twenty-five leagues from that point of Tumbez. Having left citizens there, and assigned the Indians in the district to them, he set out, with sixty horse and ninety foot, in search of the town of Cajamarca, at which place he was informed that Atahualpa then was brother of him who is now lord of that land. Between the two brothers there had been a very fierce war, and this Atahualpa had conquered the land as far as he then was, which, from the point whence he started, was a hundred fifty leagues. After seven or eight marches, a captain of Atahualpa came to the Governor and said that his lord had heard of his arrival and rejoiced greatly at it, having a strong desire to see the Christians; and when he had been two days with the Governor he said that he wished to go forward and tell the news to his lord, and that another would soon be on the road with a present as a token of peace. The Governor continued his march until he came to a town called La Ramada. Up to that point all the land was flat, while all beyond was very rugged and obstructed by very difficult passes. When he saw that the messenger from Atahualpa did not return, he wished to obtain intelligence from some Indians who had come from Cajamarca; so they were tortured, and they then said that they had heard that Atahualpa was waiting for the Governor in the mountains to give him battle. The Governor then ordered the troops to advance, leaving the rear-guard in the plain. The rest ascended, and the road was so bad that, in truth, if they had been waiting for us, either in this pass or in another that we came to on the road to Cajamarca, they could very easily have stopped us; for, even by exerting all our skill, we could not have taken our horses by the roads; and neither horse nor foot can cross those mountains except by the roads. The distance across them to Cajamarca is full twenty leagues. When we were half-way, messengers arrived from Atahualpa and brought provisions to the Governor. They said that Atahualpa was waiting for him at Cajamarca, wishing to be his friend; and that he wished the Governor to know that his captains had taken his brother prisoner, that they would reach Cajamarca within two days, and that all the territory of his father now belonged to him. The Governor sent back to say that he rejoiced greatly at this news, and that, if there was any lord who refused to submit, he would give assistance and subjugate him. Two days afterward the Governor came in sight of Cajamarca, and he met Indians with food. He put the troops in order and marched to the town. Atahualpa was not there, but was encamped on the plain, at a distance of a league, with all his people in tents. When the Governor saw that Atahualpa did not come, he sent a captain, with fifteen horsemen, to speak to Atahualpa, saying that he would not assign quarters to the Christians until he knew where it was the pleasure of Atahualpa that they should lodge, and he desired him to come that they might be friends. Just then I went to speak to the Governor, touching the orders in case the Indians made a night attack. He told me that he had sent men to seek an interview with Atahualpa. I told him that, out of the sixty cavalry we had, there might be some men who were not dexterous on horseback, and some unsound horses, and that it seemed a mistake to pick out fifteen of the best; for, if Atahualpa should attack them, their numbers were insufficient for defence, and any reverse might lead to a great disaster. He therefore ordered me to follow with other twenty horsemen, and to act according to circumstances. When I arrived I found the other horsemen near the camp of Atahualpa, and that their officer had gone to speak with him. I left my men there also, and advanced with two horsemen to the lodging of Atahualpa, and the captain announced my approach and who I was. I then told Atahualpa that the Governor had sent me to visit him and to ask him to come, that they might be friends. He replied that a cacique of the town of San Miguel had sent to tell him that we were bad people and not good for war, and that he himself had killed some of us, both men and horses. I answered that those people of San Miguel were like women, and that one horse was enough for the whole of them; that, when he saw us fight, he would know what we were like; that the Governor had a great regard for him; that if he had any enemy he had only to say so, and that the Governor would send to conquer him. He said that, four marches from that spot, there were some very rebellious Indians who would not submit to him, and that the Christians might go there to help his troops. I said that the Governor would send ten horsemen, who would suffice for the whole country, and that his Indians were unnecessary, except to search for those who concealed themselves. He smiled like a man who did not think so much of us. The captain told me that, until I came, he had not been able to get him to speak, but that one of his chiefs had answered for him, while he always kept his head down. He was seated in all the majesty of command, surrounded by all his women, and with many chiefs near him. Before coming to his presence there was another group of chiefs, each standing according to his rank. At sunset I said that I wished to go, and asked him to tell me what to say to the Governor. He replied that he would come to see him on the following morning, that he would lodge in three great chambers in the court-yard, and that the centre one should be set apart for himself. That night a good lookout was kept. In the morning he sent messengers to put off his visit until the afternoon; and these messengers, in conversing with some Indian girls in the service of the Christians, who were their relations, told them to run away because Atahualpa was coming that afternoon to attack the Christians and kill them. Among the messengers there came that captain who had already met the Governor on the road. He told the Governor that his lord Atahualpa said that, as the Christians had come armed to his camp, he also would come armed. The Governor replied that he might come as he liked. Atahualpa set out from his camp at noon, and when he came to a place which was about half a quarter of a league from Cajamarca he stopped until late in the afternoon. There he pitched his tents, and formed his men in three divisions. The whole road was full of men, and they had not yet left off marching out of the camp. The Governor had ordered his troops to be distributed in the three halls which were in the open court-yard, in form of a triangle; and he ordered them to be mounted and armed until the intentions of Atahualpa were known. Having pitched his tents, Atahualpa sent a messenger to the Governor to say that as it was now late he wished to sleep where he was, and that he would come in the morning. The Governor sent back to beg him to come at once, because he was waiting for supper, and that he should not sup until Atahualpa should come. The messengers came back to ask the Governor to send a Christian to Atahualpa, that he intended to come at once, and that he would come unarmed. The Governor sent a Christian, and presently Atahualpa moved, leaving the armed men behind him. He took with him about five or six thousand Indians without arms, except that, under their shirts, they had small darts and slings with stones. He came in a litter, and before him went three or four hundred Indians in liveries, cleaning the straws from the road and singing. Then came Atahualpa in the midst of his chiefs and principal men, the greatest among them being also borne on men's shoulders. When they entered the open space, twelve or fifteen Indians went up to the little fortress that was there and occupied it, taking possession with a banner fixed on a lance. When Atahualpa had advanced to the centre of an open space, he stopped, and a Dominican friar, who was with the Governor, came forward to tell him, on the part of the Governor, that he waited for him in his lodging, and that he was sent to speak with him. The friar then told Atahualpa that he was a priest, and that he was sent there to teach the things of the faith if they should desire to be Christians. He showed Atahualpa a book which he carried in his hands, and told him that that book contained the things of God. Atahualpa asked for the book, and threw it on the ground, saying: "I will not leave this place until you have restored all that you have taken in my land. I know well who you are and what you have come for." Then he rose up in his litter and addressed his men, and there were murmurs among them and calls to those who were armed. The friar went to the Governor and reported what was being done and that no time was to be lost. The Governor sent to me; and I had arranged with the captain of the artillery that, when a sign was given, he should discharge his pieces, and that, on hearing the reports, all the troops should come forth at once. This was done, and as the Indians were unarmed they were defeated without danger to any Christian. Those who carried the litter and the chiefs who surrounded Atahualpa were all killed, falling round him. The Governor came out and seized Atahualpa, and in protecting him he received a knife-cut from a Christian in the hand. The troops continued the pursuit as far as the place where the armed Indians were stationed, who made no resistance whatever, because it was now night. All were brought into the town where the Governor was quartered. Next morning the Governor ordered us to go to the camp of Atahualpa, where we found forty thousand castellanos and four or five thousand marcos of silver. The camp was as full of people as if none were wanting. All the people were assembled, and the Governor desired them to go to their homes, and told them that he had not come to do them harm; that what he had done was by reason of the pride of Atahualpa, and that he himself ordered it. On asking Atahualpa why he had thrown away the book and shown so much pride, he answered that his captain, who had been sent to speak with the Governor, had told him that the Christians were not warriors, that the horses were unsaddled at night, and that with two hundred Indians he could defeat them all. He added that this captain and the chief of San Miguel had deceived him. The Governor then inquired concerning his brother the Cuzco, and he answered that he would arrive next day, that he was being brought as a prisoner, and that his captain remained with the troops in the town of Cuzco. It afterward turned out that in all this he had spoken the truth, except that he had sent orders for his brother to be killed, lest the Governor should restore him to his lordship. The Governor said that he had not come to make war on the Indians, but that our lord the Emperor, who was lord of the whole world, had ordered him to come that he might see the land, and let Atahualpa know the things of our faith, in case he should wish to become a Christian. The Governor also told him that that land and all other lands belonged to the Emperor, and that he must acknowledge him as his lord. He replied that he was content, and, observing that the Christians had collected some gold, Atahualpa said to the Governor that they need not take such care of it, as if there was so little; for that he could give them ten thousand plates, and that he could fill the room in which he was up to a white line, which was the height of a man and a half from the floor. The room was seventeen or eighteen feet wide and thirty-five feet long. He said that he could do this in two months. Two months passed away and the gold did not arrive, but the Governor received tidings that every day parties of men were advancing against him. In order both to ascertain the truth of these reports, and to hurry the arrival of the gold, the Governor ordered me to set out with twenty horsemen and ten or twelve foot-soldiers for a place called Guamachuco, which is twenty leagues from Cajamarca. This was the place where it was reported that armed men were collecting together. I advanced to that town, and found a quantity of gold and silver, which I sent thence to Cajamarca. Some Indians, who were tortured, told us that the captains and armed men were at a place six leagues from Guamachuco; and, though I had no instructions from the Governor to advance beyond that point, I resolved to push forward with fourteen horsemen and nine foot-soldiers, in order that the Indians might not take heart at the notion that we had retreated. The rest of my party were sent to guard the gold, because their horses were lame. Next morning I arrived at that town, and did not find any armed men there, and it turned out that the Indians had told lies, perhaps to frighten us and induce us to return. At this village I received permission from the Governor to go to a mosque of which we had intelligence, which was a hundred leagues away on the sea-coast, in a town called Pachacamac. It took us twenty-two days to reach it. The road over the mountains is a thing worth seeing, because, though the ground is so rugged, such beautiful roads could not in truth be found throughout Christendom. The greater part of them is paved. There is a bridge of stone or wood over every stream. We found bridges of network over a very large and powerful river, which we crossed twice, which was a marvellous thing to see. The horses crossed over by them. At each passage they have two bridges, the one by which the common people go over, and the other for the lords of the land and their captains. The approaches are always kept closed, with Indians to guard them. These Indians exact transit dues from all passengers. The chiefs and people of the mountains are more intelligent than those of the coast. The country is populous. There are mines in many parts of it. It is a cold climate, it snows, and there is much rain. There are no swamps. Fuel is scarce. Atahualpa has placed governors in all the principal towns, and his predecessors had also appointed governors. In all these towns there were houses of imprisoned women, with guards at the doors, and these women preserve their virginity. If any Indian has any connection with them his punishment is death. Of these houses, some are for the worship of the sun, others for that of old Cuzco, the father of Atahualpa. Their sacrifices consist of sheep and _chica_, which they pour out on the ground. They have another house of women in each of the principal towns, also guarded. These women are assembled by the chiefs of the neighboring districts, and when the lord of the land passes by they select the best to present to him, and when they are taken others are chosen to fill up their places. These women also have the duty of making chica for the soldiers when they pass that way. They took Indian girls out of these houses and presented them to us. All the surrounding chiefs come to these towns on the roads to perform service when the army passes. They have stores of fuel and maize and of all other necessaries. They count by certain knots on cords, and so record what each chief has brought. When they had to bring us loads of fuel, maize, chica, or meat, they took off knots or made them on some other part; so that those who have charge of the stores keep an exact account. In all these towns they received us with great festivities, dancing, and rejoicing. When we arrived on the plain of the sea-coast we met with a people who were less civilized, but the country was populous. They also have houses of women, and all the other arrangements as in the towns of the mountains. They never wished to speak to us of the mosque, for there was an order that all who should speak to us of it should be put to death. But as we had intelligence that it was on the coast, we followed the high road until we came to it. The road is very wide, with an earthen wall on either side, and houses for resting at intervals, which were prepared to receive the Cuzco when he travelled that way. There are very large villages, the houses of the Indians being built of canes, and those of the chiefs are of earth with roofs of branches of trees; for in that land it never rains. From the city of San Miguel to this mosque the distance is one hundred sixty or one hundred eighty leagues, the road passing near the sea-shore through a very populous country. The road, with a wall on each side, traverses the whole of this country; and, neither in that part nor in the part farther on, of which we had notice for two hundred leagues, does it ever rain. They live by irrigation, for the rainfall is so great in the mountains that many rivers flow from them, so that throughout the land there is not three leagues without a river. The distance from the sea to the mountains is in some parts ten leagues, in others twelve. It is not cold. Throughout the whole of this coast-land, and beyond it, tribute is not paid to Cuzco, but to the mosque. The bishop of it was in Cajamarca with the Governor. He had ordered another room of gold, such as Atahualpa had ordered, and the Governor ordered me to go on this business, and to hurry those who were collecting it. When I arrived at the mosque I asked for the gold, and they denied it to me, saying that they had none. I made some search, but could not find it. The neighboring chiefs came to see me, and brought presents, and in the mosque there was found some gold-dust, which was left behind when the rest was concealed. Altogether I collected eighty-five thousand castellanos and three thousand marcos of silver. This town of the mosque is very large, and contains grand edifices and courts. Outside, there is another great space surrounded by a wall, with a door opening on the mosque. In this space there are the houses of the women, who, they say, are the women of the devil. Here, also, are the storerooms, where the stores of gold are kept. There is no one in the place where these women are kept. Their sacrifices are the same as those to the sun, which I have already described. Before entering the first court of the mosque, a man must fast for twenty days; before ascending to the court above, he must fast for a year. In this upper court the bishop used to be. When messengers of the chiefs, who had fasted for a year, went up to pray to God that he would give them a good harvest, they found the bishop seated, with his head covered. There are other Indians whom they call pages of the sun. When these messengers of the chief delivered their messages to the bishop, the pages of the devil went into a chamber, where they said that he speaks to them; and that devil said that he was enraged with the chiefs, with the sacrifices they had to offer, and with the presents they wished to bring. I believe that they do not speak with the devil, but that these his servants deceive the chiefs. For I took pains to investigate the matter, and an old page, who was one of the chief and most confidential servants of their god, told a chief, who repeated it to me, that the devil said they were not to fear the horses, as they could do no harm. I caused the page to be tortured, and he was so stubborn in his evil creed that I could never gather anything from him, but that they really held their devil to be a god. This mosque is so feared by all the Indians that they believe that, if any of those servants of the devil asked them for anything and they refused it, they would presently die. It would seem that the Indians do not worship this devil from any feelings of devotion, but from fear. For the chiefs told me that, up to that time, they had served that mosque because they feared it, but that now they had no fear but of us; and that, therefore, they wished to serve us. The cave in which the devil was placed was very dark, so that one could not enter it without a light, and within it was very dirty. I made all the caciques, who came to see me, enter the place, that they might lose their fear; and, for want of a preacher, I made my sermon, explaining to them the errors in which they lived. In this town I learned that the principal captain of Atahualpa was at a distance of twenty leagues from us, in a town called Jauja. I sent to tell him to come and see me, and he replied that I should take the road to Cajamarca, and that he would take another road and meet me. The Governor, on hearing that the captain was for peace and that he was ready to come with me, wrote to me to tell me to return; and he sent three Christians to Cuzco, which is fifty leagues beyond Jauja, to take possession and to see the country. I returned by the road of Cajamarca, and by another road, where the captain of Atahualpa was to join me. But he had not started; and I learned from certain chiefs that he had not moved, and that he had taken me in. So I went back to the place where he was, and the road was very rugged, and so obstructed with snow that it cost us much labor to get there. Having reached the royal road, and come to a place called Bombon, I met a captain of Atahualpa with five thousand armed Indians whom Atahualpa had sent on pretence of conquering a rebel chief; but, as it afterward appeared, they were assembled to kill the Christians. Here we found five hundred thousand pesos of gold that they were taking to Cajamarca. This captain told me that the captain-general remained in Jauja, that he knew of our approach, and was much afraid. I sent a messenger to him to tell him to remain where he was and to fear nothing. I also found a negro here who had gone with the Christians to Cuzco, and he told me that these fears were feigned; for that the captain-general had many well-armed men with him, that he counted them by his knots in presence of the Christians, and that they numbered thirty-five thousand Indians. So we went to Jauja, and, when we were half a league from the town, and found that the captain did not come out to receive us, a chief of Atahualpa, whom I had with me and whom I had treated well, advised me to advance in order of battle, because he believed that the captain intended to fight. We went up a small hill overlooking Jauja, and saw a large black mass in the plaza, which appeared to be something that had been burned. I asked what it was, and they told me it was a crowd of Indians. The plaza is large, and has a length of a quarter of a league. As no one came to receive us on reaching the town, our people advanced in the expectation of having to fight the Indians. But, at the entrance of the square, some principal men came out to meet us with offers of peace, and told us that the captain was not there, as he had gone to reduce certain chiefs to submission. It would seem that he had gone out of fear, with some of his troops, and had crossed a river near the town by a bridge of network. I sent to tell him to come to me peaceably or else the Christians would destroy him. Next morning the people came who were in the square. They were Indian servants, and it is true that they numbered over a hundred thousand souls. We remained here five days, and during all that time they did nothing but dance and sing and hold great drinking-feasts. The captain did not wish to come with me, but when he saw that I was determined to make him he came of his own accord. I left the chief who came with me as captain there. This town of Jauja is very fine and picturesque, with very good level approaches, and it has an excellent river-bank. In all my travels I did not see a better site for a Christian settlement, and I believe that the Governor intends to form one there, though some think that it would be more convenient to select a position near the sea, and are, therefore, of an opposite opinion. All the country, from Jauja to Cajamarca, by the road we returned, is like that of which I have already given a description. After returning to Cajamarca and reporting my proceedings to the Governor, he ordered me to go to Spain and to give an account to his majesty of this and other things which appertain to his service. I took, from the heap of gold, one hundred thousand castellanos for his majesty, being the amount of his fifth. The day after I left Cajamarca, the Christians, who had gone to Cuzco, returned, and brought one million five hundred thousand of gold. After I arrived at Panama, another ship came in, with some knights. They say that a distribution of the gold was made; and that the share of his majesty, besides the one hundred thousand pesos and the five thousand marcos of silver that I bring, was another one hundred sixty-five thousand castellanos and seven thousand or eight thousand marcos of silver; while to all those of us who had gone, a further share of gold was sent. After my departure, according to what the Governor writes to me, it became known that Atahualpa had assembled troops to make war on the Christians, and justice was done upon him. The Governor made his brother, who was an enemy, lord in his place. Molina comes to this city, and from him your worships may learn anything else that you may desire to know. The shares of the troops were, to the horsemen nine thousand castellanos, to the Governor six thousand, to me three thousand. The Governor has derived no other profit from that land, nor has there been deceit or fraud in the account. I say this to your worships because, if any other statement is made, this is the truth. May our lord long guard and prosper the magnificent persons of your worships. Done in this city, November, 1533. At the service of your worships, HERNANDO PIZARRO. WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT The clouds of the evening had passed away, and the sun rose bright on the following morning, the most remarkable epoch in the annals of Peru. It was Saturday, November 16, 1532. The loud cry of the trumpet called the Spaniards to arms with the first streak of dawn; and Pizarro, briefly acquainting them with the plan of the assault, made the necessary dispositions. The plaza was defended on its three sides by low ranges of buildings, consisting of spacious halls with wide doors or vomitories opening into the square. In these halls he stationed his cavalry in two divisions, one under his brother Hernando, the other under De Soto. The infantry he placed in another of the buildings, reserving twenty chosen men to act with himself as occasion might require. Pedro de Candia, with a few soldiers and the artillery, comprehending under this imposing name two small pieces of ordnance called falconets, he established in the fortress. All received orders to wait at their posts till the arrival of the Inca. After his entrance into the great square, they were still to remain under cover, withdrawn from observation, till the signal was given by the discharge of a gun, when they were to cry their war-cries, to rush out in a body from their covert, and, putting the Peruvians to the sword, bear off the person of the Inca. The arrangements of the immense halls, opening on a level with the plaza, seemed to be contrived on purpose for a _coup de théâtre_. Pizarro particularly inculcated order and implicit obedience, that in the hurry of the moment there should be no confusion. Everything depended on their acting with concert, coolness, and celerity. The chief next saw that their arms were in good order, and that the breastplates of their horses were garnished with bells, to add by their noise to the consternation of the Indians. Refreshments were also liberally provided, that the troops should be in condition for the conflict. These arrangements being completed, mass was performed with great solemnity by the ecclesiastics who attended the expedition; the God of battles was invoked to spread his shield over the soldiers who were fighting to extend the empire of the cross; and all joined with enthusiasm in the chant, "_Exsurge, Domine_" ("Rise, O Lord! and judge thine own cause"). One might have supposed them a company of martyrs about to lay down their lives in defence of their faith, instead of a licentious band of adventurers, meditating one of the most atrocious acts of perfidy on the record of history; yet, whatever were the vices of the Castilian cavalier, hypocrisy was not among the number. He felt that he was battling for the Cross, and under this conviction, exalted as it was at such a moment as this into the predominant impulse, he was blind to the baser motives which mingled with the enterprise. With feelings thus kindled to a flame of religious ardor, the soldiers of Pizarro looked forward with renovated spirits to the coming conflict; and the chieftain saw with satisfaction that in the hour of trial his men would be true to their leader and themselves. It was late in the day before any movement was visible in the Peruvian camp, where much preparation was making to approach the Christian quarters with due state and ceremony. A message was received from Atahualpa, informing the Spanish commander that he should come with his warriors fully armed, in the same manner as the Spaniards had come to his quarters the night preceding. This was not an agreeable intimation to Pizarro, though he had no reason, probably, to expect the contrary. But to object might imply distrust, or perhaps disclose, in some measure, his own designs. He expressed his satisfaction, therefore, at the intelligence, assuring the Inca that, come as he would, he would be received by him as a friend and brother. It was noon before the Indian procession was on its march, when it was seen occupying the great causeway for a long extent. In front came a large body of attendants, whose office seemed to be to sweep away every particle of rubbish from the road. High above the crowd appeared the Inca, borne on the shoulders of his principal nobles, while others of the same rank marched by the sides of his litter, displaying such a dazzling show of ornaments on their persons that, in the language of one of the conquerors, "they blazed like the sun." But the greater part of the Inca's forces mustered along the fields that lined the road, and were spread over the broad meadows as far as the eye could reach. When the royal procession had arrived within half a mile of the city, it came to a halt; and Pizarro saw, with surprise, that Atahualpa was preparing to pitch his tents as if to encamp there. A messenger soon after arrived, informing the Spaniards that the Inca would occupy his present station the ensuing night and enter the city on the following morning. This intelligence greatly disturbed Pizarro, who had shared in the general impatience of his men at the tardy movements of the Peruvians. The troops had been under arms since daylight, the cavalry mounted, and the infantry at their post, waiting in silence the coming of the Inca. A profound stillness reigned throughout the town, broken only at intervals by the cry of the sentinel from the summit of the fortress, as he proclaimed the movements of the Indian army. Nothing, Pizarro well knew, was so trying to the soldiers as prolonged suspense in a critical situation like the present; and he feared lest his ardor might evaporate, and be succeeded by that nervous feeling natural to the bravest soul at such a crisis, and which, if not fear, is near akin to it. He returned an answer, therefore, to Atahualpa, deprecating his change of purpose, and adding that he had provided everything for his entertainment, and expected him that night to sup with him. This message turned the Inca from his purpose; and, striking his tents again, he resumed his march, first advising the general that he should leave the greater part of his warriors behind, and enter the place with only a few of them, and without arms, as he preferred to pass the night at Cajamarca. At the same time he ordered accommodations to be provided for himself and his retinue in one of the large stone buildings, called, from a serpent sculptured on the walls, the "House of the Serpent". No tidings could have been more grateful to the Spaniards. It seemed as if the Indian monarch was eager to rush into the snare that had been spread for him! The fanatical cavalier could not fail to discern in it the immediate finger of Providence. It is difficult to account for this wavering conduct of Atahualpa, so different from the bold and decided character which history ascribes to him. There is no doubt that he made his visit to the white men in perfect good faith, though Pizarro was probably right in conjecturing that this amiable disposition stood on a very precarious footing. There is as little reason to suppose that he distrusted the sincerity of the strangers, or he would not thus unnecessarily have proposed to visit them unarmed. His original purpose of coming with all his force was doubtless to display his royal state, and perhaps, also, to show greater respect for the Spaniards; but when he consented to accept their hospitality and pass the night in their quarters, he was willing to dispense with a great part of his armed soldiery, and visit them in a manner that implied entire confidence in their good faith. He was too absolute in his own empire easily to suspect; and he probably could not comprehend the audacity with which a few men, like those now assembled in Cajamarca, meditated an assault on a powerful monarch in the midst of his victorious army. He did not know the character of the Spaniard. It was not long before sunset when the van of the royal procession entered the gates of the city. First came some hundreds of the menials, employed to clear the path from every obstacle, and singing songs of triumph as they came, "which, in our ears," says one of the conquerors, "sounded like the songs of hell!" Then followed other bodies of different ranks and dressed in different liveries. Some wore a showy stuff, checkered white and red, like the squares of a chess-board. Others were clad in pure white, bearing hammers or maces of silver or copper; and the guards, together with those in immediate attendance on the Prince, were distinguished by a rich azure livery, and a profusion of gay ornaments, while the large pendants attached to the ears indicated the Peruvian noble. Elevated high above his vassals came the Inca Atahualpa, borne on a sedan or open litter, on which was a sort of throne made of massive gold of inestimable value. The palanquin was lined with the richly colored plumes of tropical birds, and studded with shining plates of gold and silver. The monarch's attire was much richer than on the preceding evening. Round his neck was suspended a collar of emeralds of uncommon size and brilliancy. His short hair was decorated with golden ornaments, and the imperial _borla_ encircled his temples. The bearing of the Inca was sedate and dignified; and from his lofty station he looked down on the multitudes below with an air of composure, like one accustomed to command. As the leading lines of the procession entered the great square--larger, says an old chronicler, than any square in Spain--they opened to the right and left for the royal retinue to pass. Everything was conducted with admirable order. The monarch was permitted to traverse the plaza in silence, and not a Spaniard was to be seen. When some five or six thousand of his people had entered the place, Atahualpa halted, and, turning round with an inquiring look, demanded, "Where are the strangers?" At this moment Fray Vicente de Valverde, a Dominican friar, Pizarro's chaplain, and afterward Bishop of Cuzco, came forward with his breviary, or, as other accounts say, a Bible, in one hand and a crucifix in the other, and, approaching the Inca, told him that he came by order of his commander to expound to him the doctrines of the true faith, for which purpose the Spaniards had come from a great distance to his country. The friar then explained, as clearly as he could, the mysterious doctrine of the Trinity, and, ascending high in his account, began with the creation of man, thence passed to his fall, to his subsequent redemption by Jesus Christ, to the Crucifixion, and the Ascension, when the Saviour left the apostle Peter as his vicegerent upon earth. This power had been transmitted to the successors of the apostle, good and wise men, who, under the title of popes, held authority over all powers and potentates on earth. One of the last of these popes had commissioned the Spanish Emperor, the most mighty monarch in the world, to conquer and convert the natives in this western hemisphere; and his general, Francisco Pizarro, had now come to execute this important mission. The friar concluded with beseeching the Peruvian monarch to receive him kindly, to abjure the errors of his own faith and embrace that of the Christians now proffered to him, the only one by which he could hope for salvation; and, furthermore, to acknowledge himself a tributary of the emperor Charles, who, in that event, would aid and protect him as his loyal vassal. Whether Atahualpa possessed himself of every link in the curious chain of argument by which the monk connected Pizarro with St. Peter, may be doubted. It is certain, however, that he must have had very incorrect notions of the Trinity if, as Garcilasso states, the interpreter, Felipillo, explained it by saying that "the Christians believed in three gods and one God, and that made four." But there is no doubt he perfectly comprehended that the drift of the discourse was to persuade him to resign his sceptre and acknowledge the supremacy of another. The eyes of the Indian monarch flashed fire and his dark brow grew darker as he replied: "I will be no man's tributary! I am greater than any prince upon earth. Your Emperor may be a great prince; I do not doubt it when I see that he has sent his subjects so far across the waters; and I am willing to hold him as a brother. As for the Pope of whom you speak, he must be crazy to talk of giving away countries which do not belong to him. For my faith," he continued, "I will not change it. Your own God, as you say, was put to death by the very men whom he created. But mine," he concluded, pointing to his deity--then, alas! sinking in glory behind the mountains--"my God still lives in the heavens and looks down on his children." He then demanded of Valverde by what authority he had said these things. The friar pointed to the book which he held as his authority. Atahualpa, taking it, turned over the pages a moment; then, as the insult he had received probably flashed across his mind, he threw it down with vehemence and exclaimed: "Tell your comrades that they shall give me an account of their doings in my land. I will not go from here till they have made me full satisfaction for all the wrongs they have committed." The friar, greatly scandalized by the indignity offered to the sacred volume, stayed only to pick it up, and, hastening to Pizarro, informed him of what had been done, exclaiming at the same time: "Do you not see that, while we stand here wasting our breath in talking with this dog, full of pride as he is, the fields are filling with Indians? Set on at once! I absolve you." Pizarro saw that the hour had come. He waved a white scarf in the air, the appointed signal. The fatal gun was fired from the fortress. Then, springing into the square, the Spanish captain and his followers shouted the old war-cry of "St. Iago and at them!" It was answered by the battle-cry of every Spaniard in the city, as, rushing from the avenues of the great halls in which they were concealed, they poured into the plaza, horse and foot, each in his own dark column, and threw themselves into the midst of the Indian crowd. The latter, taken by surprise, stunned by the report of artillery and muskets, the echoes of which reverberated like thunder from the surrounding buildings, and blinded by the smoke which rolled in sulphurous volumes along the square, were seized with a panic. They knew not whither to fly for refuge from the coming ruin. Nobles and commoners, all were trampled down under the fierce charge of the cavalry, who dealt their blows right and left without sparing; while their swords, flashing through the thick gloom, carried dismay into the hearts of the wretched natives, who now, for the first time, saw the horse and his rider in all their terrors. They made no resistance, as, indeed, they had no weapons with which to make it. Every avenue to escape was closed, for the entrance to the square was choked up with the dead bodies of men who had perished in vain efforts to fly; and such was the agony of the survivors under the terrible pressure of their assailants that a large body of Indians, by their convulsive struggles, burst through the wall of stone and dried clay which formed part of the boundary of the plaza! It fell, leaving an opening of more than a hundred paces, through which multitudes now found their way into the country, still hotly pursued by the cavalry, who, leaping the fallen rubbish, hung on the rear of the fugitives, striking them down in all directions. Meanwhile the fight, or rather massacre, continued hot around the Inca, whose person was the great object of the assault. His faithful nobles, rallying about him, threw themselves in the way of the assailants, and strove, by tearing them from their saddles, or, at least, by offering their own bosoms as a mark for their vengeance, to shield their beloved master. It is said by some authorities that they carried weapons concealed under their clothes. If so, it availed them little, as it is not pretended that they used them. But the most timid animal will defend itself when at bay. That they did not so in the present instance is proof that they had no weapons to use. Yet they still continued to force back the cavaliers, clinging to their horses with dying grasp, and, as one was cut down, another taking the place of his fallen comrade with a loyalty truly affecting. The Indian monarch, stunned and bewildered, saw his faithful subjects falling round him without hardly comprehending his situation. The litter on which he rode heaved to and fro as the mighty press swayed backward and forward; and he gazed on the overwhelming ruin, like some forlorn mariner, who, tossed about in his bark by the furious elements, sees the lightning's flash and hears the thunder bursting around him, with the consciousness that he can do nothing to avert his fate. At length, weary with the work of destruction, the Spaniards, as the shades of evening grew deeper, felt afraid that the royal prize might, after all, elude them; and some of the cavaliers made a desperate effort to end the affray at once by taking Atahualpa's life. But Pizarro, who was nearest his person, called out with stentorian voice, "Let no one who values his life strike at the Inca"; and, stretching out his arm to shield him, received a wound on the hand from one of his own men--the only wound received by a Spaniard in the action. The struggle now became fiercer than ever round the royal litter. It reeled more and more, and at length, several of the nobles who supported it having been slain, it was overturned, and the Indian prince would have come with violence to the ground, had not his fall been broken by the efforts of Pizarro and some other of the cavaliers, who caught him in their arms. The imperial borla was instantly snatched from his temples by a soldier named Estete, and the unhappy monarch, strongly secured, was removed to a neighboring building, where he was carefully guarded. All attempt at resistance now ceased. The fate of the Inca soon spread over town and country. The charm which might have held the Peruvians together was dissolved. Every man thought only of his own safety. Even the soldiery encamped on the adjacent fields took alarm, and, learning the fatal tidings, were seen flying in every direction before their pursuers, who, in the heat of triumph, showed no touch of mercy. At length night, more pitiful than man, threw her friendly mantle over the fugitives, and the scattered troops of Pizarro rallied once more to the sound of the trumpet in the bloody square of Cajamarca. CALVIN IS DRIVEN FROM PARIS HE MAKES GENEVA THE STRONGHOLD OF PROTESTANTISM A.D. 1533 A. M. FAIRBAIRN JEAN M. V. AUDIN Among what may be called the second generation of Protestant reformers, the great leader was John Calvin. By his writings, and by his directive and administrative work, he exerted a strong influence upon the reformed churches in his own day and upon the theology and polity of later times. He was born in France in 1509, and while still in early manhood, having become familiar with classical learning, with law, and especially with theology, he ardently embraced the Protestant faith and began to preach the reformed doctrines. Calvin spent some time in Paris, then a centre of the "New Learning" and of religious ferment, and there he felt the effects of raging persecution. The publication of his great work, the _Institutes of the Christian Religion_, marked an epoch in the history of Protestantism. Though differing on certain points from the teachings of Luther, it was a powerful exposition of the Protestant faith as Calvin understood it, severely logical in form, and especially distinguished by its stern doctrines relating to divine sovereignty. When in 1536 Calvin went to live in Geneva, it was already a Protestant city. He became virtually its ruler and made it a kind of theocracy, or rather a "religious republic," which he administered with vigorous laws enforced with the greatest strictness. Zealous Protestants from many countries gathered at Geneva, and from there the influence of Calvin, somewhat modified by that of his Swiss predecessor Zwingli, spread rapidly into France, England, Scotland, and Germany. At the time of Calvin's death (1564) there were three types of Protestantism established in the world--his own, and those of Luther and Zwingli. In Great Britain, and afterward in America, the Calvinistic type came to play a most important part in religious and national development. Two estimates of Calvin, the first from a Protestant point of view, the second that of a Roman Catholic writer, are here presented. A. M. FAIRBAIRN In 1528 Calvin's father, perhaps illuminated by the disputes in his cathedral chapter, discovered that the law was a surer road to wealth and honor than the church, and decided that his son should leave theology for jurisprudence. The son, nothing loath, obeyed, and left Paris for Orleans, possibly, as he descended the steps of the Collège de Montaigu, brushing shoulders with a Spanish freshman named Ignatius Loyola. In Orleans Calvin studied law under Pierre de l'Estoile, who is described as _jurisconsultorum Gallorum facile princeps_, and as eclipsing in classical knowledge Reuchlin, Aleander, and Erasmus; and Greek under Wolmar, in whose house he met for the first time Theodore Beza, then a boy about ten years of age. After a year in Orleans he went to Bourges, attracted by the fame of the Italian jurist Alciati, whose ungainliness of body and speech and vanity of mind his students loved to satirize and even by occasional rebellion to chasten. In 1531 Gérard Calvin died and his son, in 1532, published his first work, a commentary on Seneca's _de Clementia_. His purpose has been construed by the light of his late career; and some have seen in the book a veiled defence of the Huguenot martyrs, others a cryptic censure of Francis I, and yet others a prophetic dissociation of himself from Stoicism. But there is no mystery in the matter; the work is that of a scholar who has no special interest in either theology or the Bible. This may be statistically illustrated: Calvin cites twenty-two Greek authors and fifty-five Latin, the quotations being most abundant and from many books; but in his whole treatise there are only three Biblical texts expressly cited, and those from the Vulgate. The man is cultivated and learned, writes elegant Latin, is a good judge of Latinity, criticises like any modern the mind and style, the knowledge and philosophy, the manner, the purpose, and the ethical ideas of Seneca; but the passion for religion has not as yet penetrated as it did later into his very bones. Erasmus is in Calvin's eyes the ornament of letters, though his large edition of Seneca is not all it ought to have been; but even Erasmus could not at twenty-three have produced a work so finished in its scholarship, so real in its learning, or so wide in its outlook. The events of the next few months are obscure, but we know enough to see how forces, internal and external, were working toward change. In the second half of 1532 and the earlier half of 1533 Calvin was in Orleans, studying, teaching, practising the law, and acting in the university as proctor for the Picard nation; then he went to Noyon, and in October he was once more in Paris. The capital was agitated; Francis was absent, and his sister, Margaret of Navarre, held her court there, favoring the new doctrines, encouraging the preachers, the chief among them being her own almoner, Gérard Roussel. Two letters of Calvin to Francis Daniel belong to this date and place; and in them we find a changed note. One speaks of "the troublous times," and the other narrates two events: first, it describes a play "pungent with gall and vinegar," which the students had performed in the College of Navarre to satirize the Queen; and secondly, the action of certain factious theologians who had prohibited Margaret's _Mirror of a Sinful Soul_. She had complained to the King, and he had intervened. The matter came before the university, and Nicolas Cop, the rector, had spoken strongly against the arrogant doctors and in defence of the Queen, "mother of all the virtues and of all good learning." Le Clerc, a parish priest, the author of the mischief, defended his performance as a task to which he had been formally appointed, praising the King, the Queen as woman and as author, contrasting her book with "such an obscene production" as _Pantagruel_, and finally saying that the book had been published without the approval of the faculty and was set aside only as "liable to suspicion." Two or three days later, on November 1, 1533, came the famous rectorial address which Calvin wrote, and Cop revised and delivered, and which shows how far the humanist had travelled since April 4, 1532, the date of the _de Clementia_. He is now alive to the religious question, though he has not carried it to its logical and practical conclusion. Two fresh influences have evidently come into his life, the New Testament of Erasmus and certain sermons by Luther. The exordium of the address reproduces, almost literally, some sentences from Erasmus' _Paraclesis_, including those which unfold his idea of the _philosophia Christiana_; while the body of it repeats Luther's exposition of the beatitudes and his distinction between law and gospel, with the involved doctrines of grace and faith. Yet "_Ave gratia plena_" is retained in the exordium; and at the end the peace-makers are praised, who follow the example of Christ and contend not with the sword, but with the word of truth. This address enables us to seize Calvin in the very act and article of change; he has come under a double influence. Erasmus has compelled him to compare the ideal of Christ with the church of his own day; and Luther has given him a notion of grace which has convinced his reason and taken possession of his imagination. He has thus ceased to be a humanist and a papist, but has not yet become a reformer. And a reformer was precisely what his conscience, his country, and his reason compelled him to become. Francis was flagrantly immoral, but a fanatic in religion; and mercy was not a virtue congenial to either church or state. Calvin had seen the Protestants from within; he knew their honesty, their honor, the purity of their motives, and the integrity of their lives; and he judged, as a jurist would, that a man who had all the virtues of citizenship ought not to be oppressed and treated as unfit for civil office or even as a criminal by the state. This is no conjecture, for it is confirmed by the testimony he bears to the influence exercised over him by the martyred Étienne de la Forge. He thus saw that a changed mind meant a changed religion, and a changed religion a change of abode. Cop had to flee from Paris, and so had Calvin. In the May of 1534 he went to Noyon, laid down his offices, was imprisoned, liberated, and while there he seems to have finally renounced Catholicism. But he feared the forces of disorder which lurked in Protestantism, and which seemed embodied in the Anabaptists. Hence at Orleans he composed a treatise against one of their favorite beliefs, the sleep of the soul between death and judgment. Conscious personal being was in itself too precious, and in the sight of God too sacred, to be allowed to suffer even a temporary lapse. But to serve the cause he loved was impossible with the stake waiting for him, its fires scorching his face, and kindly friends endangered by his presence. And so, in the winter of 1534, he retired from France and settled at Basel. Now a city where Protestantism reigned, where learning flourished, and where men so unlike as Erasmus and Farel--the fervid preacher of reform--could do their work unhindered, was certain to make a deep impression on a fugitive harassed and expatriated on account of religion; and the impression it made can be read in the _Christianæ Religionis Institutio_, and especially in the prefatory _Letter to Francis I_. The _Institutio_ is Calvin's positive interpretation of the Christian religion: the _Letter_ is learned, eloquent, elegant, dignified, the address of a subject to his sovereign, yet of a subject who knows that his place in the state is as legal, though not as authoritative, as the sovereign's. It throbs with a noble indignation against injustice, and with a noble enthusiasm for freedom and truth. It is one of the great epistles of the world, a splendid apology for the oppressed and arraignment of the oppressors. It does not implore toleration as a concession, but claims freedom as a right. Its author is a young man of but twenty-six, yet he speaks with the gravity of age. He tells the King that his first duty is to be just; that to punish unheard is but to inflict violence and perpetrate fraud. Those for whom he speaks are, though simple and godly men, yet charged with crimes that, were they true, ought to condemn them to a thousand fires and gibbets. These charges the King is bound to investigate, for he is a minister of God, and if he fails to serve the God whose minister he is, then he is a robber and no king. Then he asks, "Who are our accusers?" and he turns on the priests like a new Erasmus, who does not, like the old, delight in satire for its own sake or in a literature which scourges men by holding up the mirror to vice, but who feels the sublimity of virtue so deeply that witticisms at the expense of vice are abhorrent to him. He takes up the charges in detail: it is said that the doctrine is new, doubtful, and uncertain, unconfirmed by miracles, opposed to the fathers and ancient custom, schismatical and productive of schism, and that its fruits are sects, seditions, license. On no point is he so emphatic as the repudiation of the personal charges: the people he pleads for have never raised their voice in faction or sought to subvert law and order; they fear God sincerely and worship him in truth, praying even in exile for the royal person and house. The book which this address to the King introduces is a sketch or programme of reform in religion. The first edition of the _Institutio_ is distinguished from all later editions by the emphasis it lays, not on dogma, but on morals, on worship, and on polity. Calvin conceives the Gospel as a new law which ought to be embodied in a new life, individual and social. What came later to be known as Calvinism may be stated in an occasional sentence or implied in a paragraph, but it is not the substance or determinative idea of the book. The problem discussed has been set by the studies and the experience of the author; he has read the New Testament as a humanist learned in the law, and he has been startled by the contrast between its ideal and the reality which confronts him. And he proceeds in a thoroughly juridical fashion, just as Tertullian before him, and as Grotius and Selden after him. Without a document he can decide nothing; he needs a written law or actual custom; and his book falls into divisions which these suggest. Hence his first chapter is concerned with duty or conduct as prescribed by the Ten Commandments; his second with faith as contained in the apostolic symbol; his third with prayer as fixed by the words of Christ; his fourth with the sacrament as given in the Scriptures; his fifth with the false sacraments as defined by tradition and enforced by Catholic custom; and his sixth with Christian liberty or the relation of the ecclesiastical and civil authorities. But though the book is, as compared with what it became later, limited in scope and contents--the last edition which left the author's hand in 1559 had grown from a work in six chapters to one in four books and eighty chapters--yet its constructive power, its critical force, its large outlook impress the student. We have here none of Luther's scholasticism, or of Melanchthon's deft manipulation of incompatible elements; but we have the first thoughts on religion of a mind trained by ancient literature to the criticism of life. The _Institutio_ bears the date "_Mense Martio; Anno_ 1536"; but Calvin, without waiting till his book was on the market, made a hurried journey to Ferrara, whose Duchess, Renée, a daughter of Louis XII, stood in active sympathy with the reformers. The reasons for this brief visit are very obscure; but it may have been undertaken in the hope of mitigating, by the help of Renée, the severity of the persecutions in France. On his return Calvin ventured, tradition says, to Noyon, probably for the sake of family affairs; but he certainly reached Paris; and, while in the second half of July making his way into Germany, he arrived at Geneva. An old friend, possibly Louis du Tillet, discovered him, and told Farel; and Farel, in sore straits for a helper, besought him, and indeed in the name of the Almighty commanded him, to stay. Calvin was reluctant, for he was reserved and shy, and conceived his vocation to be the scholar's rather than the preacher's; but the entreaties of Farel, half tearful, half minatory, prevailed. And thus Calvin's connection with Geneva began. Calvin's life from this point onward falls into three parts: his first stay in Geneva from July, 1536, to March, 1538; his residence in Strasburg from September, 1538, to September, 1541; and his second stay in Geneva from the last date till his death, May 27, 1564. In the first period, he, in company with Farel, made an attempt to organize the church and reform the mind and manners of Geneva, and failed; his exile, formally voted by the council, was the penalty of his failure. In the second period he was professor of theology and French preacher at Strasburg, a trusted divine and adviser, a delegate to the Protestant churches of Germany, which he learned to know better, making the acquaintance of Melanchthon, and becoming more appreciative of Luther. At Strasburg some of his best literary work was done--his _Letter to Cardinal Sadoleto_ (in its way his most perfect production), his _Commentary on the Romans_, a _Treatise on the Lord's Supper_, the second Latin and the first French edition of his _Institutio_. In the third period he introduced and completed his legislation at Geneva, taught, preached, and published there, watched the churches everywhere, and conducted the most extensive correspondence of his day. In these twenty-eight years he did a work which changed the face of Christendom. We come then to Calvin's legislative achievements as his main title to name and fame. But two points must here be noted. In the first place, while his theology was less original and effective than his legislation or polity, yet he so construed the former as to make the latter its logical and indeed inevitable outcome. The polity was a deduction from the theology, which may be defined as a science of the divine will as a moral will, aiming at the complete moralization of man, whether as a unit or as a society. The two were thus so organically connected that each lent strength to the other, the system to the church and the church to the system, while other and more potently reasonable theologies either died or lived a feeble and struggling life. Secondly, the legislation was made possible and practicable by Geneva, probably the only place in Europe where it could have been enacted and enforced. We have learned enough concerning Genevan history and institutions to understand why this should have been the case. The city was small, free, homogeneous, distinguished by a strong local patriotism, a stalwart communal life. In obedience to these instincts it had just emancipated itself from the ecclesiastical Prince and its ancient religious system; and the change thus accomplished was, though disguised in a religious habit, yet essentially political. For the council which abolished the bishop had made itself heir to his faculties and functions; it could only dismiss him as civil lord by dismissing him as the ecclesiastical head of Geneva, and in so doing it assumed the right to succeed as well as to supersede him in both capacities. This, however, involved a notable inversion of old ideas; before the change the ecclesiastical authority had been civil, but because of the change the civil authority became ecclesiastical. If theocracy means the rule of the church or the sovereignty of the clergy in the state, then the ancient constitution of Geneva was theocratic; if democracy means the sovereignty of the people in church as well as in state, then the change had made it democratic. And it was just after the change had been effected that Calvin's connection with the city began. Its chief pastor had persuaded him to stay as a colleague, and the council appointed him professor and preacher. He was young, exactly twenty-seven years of age, full of high ideals, but inexperienced, unacquainted with men, without any knowledge of Geneva and the state of things there. He could therefore make no terms, could only stay to do his duty. What that duty was soon became apparent. Geneva had not become any more moral in character because it had changed its mind in religion. It had two months before Calvin's arrival sworn to live according to the holy evangelical law and Word of God; but it did not seem to understand its own oath. And the man whom his intellectual sincerity and moral integrity had driven out of Catholicism could not hold office in any church which made light of conviction and conduct; and so he at once set himself to organize a church that should be efficaciously moral. He built on the ancient Genevan idea, that the city is a church; only he wished to make the church to be primary and real. The theocracy, which had been construed as the reign of the clergy, he would interpret as ideal and realize as a reign of God. The citizens, who had assumed control of their own spiritual destinies and ecclesiastical affairs, he wanted to instruct in their responsibilities and discipline into obedience. And he would do it in the way of a jurist who believes in the harmony of law and custom; he would by positive enactments train the city, which conceived itself to be a church, to be and behave as if it were indeed a church, living according to the gospel which it had sworn to obey. Thus a confession of faith was drawn up which the people were to adopt as their own, and so attain clarity and concordance of mind concerning God and his Word; and a catechism was composed which was to be made the basis of religious instruction in both the school and the family, for the citizen as well as the child. Worship was to be carefully regulated, psalm-books prepared, psalm-singing cultivated; the preacher was to interpret the Word, and the pastor to supervise the flock. The Lord's Supper was to be celebrated monthly, but only those who were morally fit or worthy were to be allowed to communicate. The church, in order that it might fulfil its functions and guard the holy table, must have the right of excommunication. It was not enough that a man should be a citizen or a councillor to be admitted to the Lord's Supper; his mind must be Christian and his conduct Christlike. Without faith the rite was profaned, the presence of Christ was not realized. Moreover, since matrimonial cases were many and infelicity sprang both from differences of faith and impurity of conduct, a board, composed partly of magistrates and partly of ministers, was to be appointed to deal with them; and it was to have the power to exclude from the church those who either did not believe its doctrines or did not obey its commandments. These were drastic proposals to be made to a city which had just dismissed its bishop, attained political freedom, and proclaimed a reformation of religion; and Calvin was not the man to leave them inoperative. A card-player was pilloried; a tire-woman, a mother, and two bridesmaids were arrested because they had adorned the bride too gayly; an adulterer was driven with the partner of his guilt through the streets by the common hangman, and then banished. These things taxed the temper of the city sorely; it was not unfamiliar with legislation of the kind, but it had not been accustomed to see it enforced. Hence, men who came to be known as "libertines," though they were both patriotic and moral and only craved freedom, rose and said: "This is an intolerable tyranny; we will not allow any man to be lord over our consciences." And about the same time Calvin's orthodoxy was challenged. Two Anabaptists arrived and demanded liberty to prophesy; and Peter Caroli charged him with heresy as to the Trinity. He would not use the Athanasian creed; and he defended himself by reasons that the scholar who knows its history will respect. The end soon came. When he heard that he had been sentenced to banishment he said, "If I had served men this would have been a poor reward, but I have served Him who never fails to perform what he has promised." In 1541 Geneva recalled Calvin, and he obeyed as one who goes to fulfil an imperative but unwelcome duty. There is nothing more pathetic in the literature of the period than his hesitancies and fears. He tells Farel that he would rather die a hundred times than again take up that cross "_in qua millies quotidie pereundum esset_." And he writes to Viret that it were better to perish once for all than "_in illa carnificina iterum torqueri_." But he loved Geneva, and it was in evil case. Rome was plotting to reclaim it; Savoy was watching her opportunity, the patriots feared to go forward, and even the timid dared not go back. So the necessities of the city, divided between its factions and its foes, constituted an appeal which Calvin could not resist; but he did not yield unconditionally. He went back as the legislator who was to frame laws for its church; and he so adapted them to the civil constitution and the constitution to them, that he raised the little city of Geneva to be the Protestant Rome. The _Ordonnances ecclésiastiques_ may be described as Calvin's programme of Genevan reform, or his method for applying to the local and external church the government which our Lord had instituted and the Apostles had realized. These ordinances expressed his historical sense and gratified his religious temper, while adapting the church to the city, so that the city might become a better church. To explain in detail how he proposed to do this is impossible within our limits; and we shall therefore confine ourselves to the most important of the factors he created, the ministry. The ministerial ideal embodied in these ecclesiastical ordinances may be said to have had certain indirect but international results; it compelled Calvin to develop his system of education; it supplied the reformed church, especially in France, with the men which it needed to fight its battles and to form the iron in its blood; it presented the reformed church everywhere with an intellectual and educational ideal, which must be realized if its work was to be done; and it created the modern preacher, defining the sphere of his activity and setting up for his imitation a noble and lofty example. Calvin soon found that the reformed faith could live in a democratic city only by an enlightened pulpit speaking to enlightened citizens, and that an educated ministry was helpless without an educated people. His method for creating both entitles him to rank among the foremost makers of modern education. As a humanist he believed in the classical languages and literatures--there is a tradition which says that he read through Cicero once a year--and so "he built his system on the solid rock of Græco-Roman antiquity." Yet he did not neglect religion; he so trained the boys of Geneva through his catechism that each was said to be able to give a reason for his faith "like a doctor of the Sorbonne." He believed in the unity of knowledge and the community of learning, placing the magistrate and the minister, the citizen and the pastor, in the hands of the same teacher, and binding the school and the university together. The boy learned in the one and the man studied in the other, but the school was the way to the university, the university was the goal of the school. In nothing does the pedagogic genius of Calvin more appear than in his fine jealousy as to the character and competence whether of masters or professors, and in his unwearied quest after qualified men. His letters teem with references to the men in various lands and many universities whom he was seeking to bring to Geneva. The first rector, Antoine Saunier, was a notable man; and he never rested till he had secured his dear old teacher, Mathurin Cordier. Castellio was a schoolmaster; Theodore Beza was head of college and academy, or school and university, together; and Calvin himself was a professor of theology. The success of the college was great; the success of the academy was greater. Men came from all quarters--English, Italians, Spanish, Germans, Russians, ministers, jurists, old men, young men, all with the passion to learn in their blood--to jostle each other among the thousand hearers who met to listen to the great reformer. But France was the main feeder of the academy; Frenchmen filled its chairs, occupied its benches, learned in it the courage to live and the will to die. From Geneva books poured into France; and the French church was ever appealing for ministers, yet never appealed in vain. Within eleven years, 1555-1566--Calvin died in 1564--it is known that Geneva sent one hundred sixty-one pastors into France; how many more may have gone unrecorded we cannot tell. And they were learned men, strenuous, fearless, praised by a French bishop as modest, grave, saintly, with the name of Jesus Christ ever on their lips. Charles IX implored the magistrates of Geneva to stop the supply and withdraw the men already sent; but the magistrates replied that the preachers had been sent not by them, but by their ministers, who believed that the sovereign duty of all princes and kings was to do homage to Him who had given to them their dominion. It was small wonder that the Venetian Suriano should describe Geneva as "the mine whence came the ore of heresy"; or that the Protestants should gather courage as they heard the men from Geneva sing psalms in the face of torture and death. It was indeed a very different France which the eyes of the dying Calvin saw from that which the young man had seen thirty years before. Religious hate was even more bitter and vindictive; war had come and made persecution more ferocious; but the Huguenots had grown numerous, potent, respected, feared, and disputed with Catholicism the supremacy of the kingdom. And Calvin had done it, not by arms nor by threats, nor by encouragement of sedition or insurrection--to such action he was ever resolutely opposed--but by the agency of the men whom he formed in Geneva, and by their persuasive speech. The reformed minister was essentially a preacher, intellectual, exegetical, argumentative, seriously concerned with the subjects that most appealed to the serious-minded. Modern oratory may be said to begin with him, and indeed to be his creation. He helped to make the vernacular tongues of Western Europe literary. He accustomed the people to hear the gravest and most sacred themes discussed in the language which they knew; and the themes ennobled the language, the language was never allowed to degrade the themes. And there was no tongue and no people that he influenced more than the French. Calvin made Bossuet and Massillon possible; as a preacher he found his successor in Bourdaloue; and a literary critic who does not love him has expressed a doubt as to whether Pascal could be more eloquent or was so profound. And the ideal then realized in Geneva exercised an influence far beyond France. It extended into Holland, which in the strength of the reformed faith resisted Charles V and his son, achieved independence, and created the freest and best educated state on the continent of Europe. John Knox breathed for a while the atmosphere of Geneva, was subdued into the likeness of the man who had made it, and when he went home he copied its education and tried to repeat its reformation. English reformers, fleeing from martyrdom, found a refuge within its hospitable walls, and, returning to England, attempted to establish a Genevan discipline, and failed, but succeeded in forming the Puritan character. If the author of the _Ordonnances ecclésiastiques_ accomplished, whether directly or indirectly, so much, we need not hesitate to term him a notable friend to civilization. JEAN M. V. AUDIN When the sword of the law fell upon one of his followers, the voice of Luther was magnificent; it exclaimed, in the ears of emperors, kings, and dukes, "You have shed the blood of the just," and then the Saxon, in honor of the martyr, extemporized a hymn which was chanted in the very face of the civil power: "In the Low Countries, at Brussels, The Lord his greatness hath displayed, In the death of two of his loved children On whom grand gifts he had bestowed." Calvin had not the courage to imitate Luther. He has told us that he wanted courage; he again repeats it: he says that he, a plebeian, trifling as a man, and having but little learning, has nothing in him which could deserve celebrity. And yet he essayed a timid protest in favor of certain Huguenots who had been burned on the public square. "The work," says Prince Masson, "of a double-faced writer, a Catholic in his writings and a Lutheran in his bedchamber." This is his first book. It is entitled _de Clementia_ (or _Treatise on Clemency_), and is a paraphrase of some Latin writer of the decline. Moreover, this is the first time that a commentator is ignorant of the life of him whose work he publishes. Calvin has confounded the two Senecas, the father and the son; the rhetorician and the philosopher, of both of whom he makes but one literary personage, living the very patriarchal life of more than one hundred fifteen years. We must pardon Varillas for having, with sufficient acrimony, brought into relief this mistake of the biographer of Seneca the philosopher, and not, like the historians of the Reformation, become vexed at the proud tone of the French historian. Had the fault been committed by a Catholic, where is the Protestant who would not have done the same thing as Varillas? The literary work which Calvin, in the shape of a commentary, has interwoven with the treatise of Seneca is a production not unworthy a literator of the revival; it is an amplification, which one would have supposed to have been written in the cell of a Benedictine monk, so numerous are the citations, so great is the display of erudition, so replete is it with the names, Greek and Latin, of poets, historians, moralists, rhetoricians, philosophers, and philologists. Calvin is a coquettish student, who loves to parade his reading and his memory. His work is a gallery, open to all the modern and ancient glories of literature, whom the commentator calls to his aid, often for the elucidation of a doubtful passage. The young rhetorician glorifies his country, and when upon his march he encounters some historic name, by which his idea can be illustrated, he hastens to proclaim it, with all its titles to admiration. He there salutes Budé in magnificent terms: "Budé, the glory and pillar of human learning, thanks to whom, at this day, France can claim the palm of erudition." The portrait which he draws of Seneca is the production of a practised pen: "Seneca, whose pure and polished phrase savors, in some sort, of his age; his diction florid and elegant; his style, without labor or restraint, moves on, free and unembarrassed." It may be seen that the student had the honor to study under Mathurin Cordier and to attend the lectures of Alciati; but, after all, his book is but a defective allegory; for what reader could have divined that the writer designed to represent Francis I, under the name of Nero, as addressed by the Cordovan? The treatise could produce no sensation, and, like the work of Seneca, must be shipwrecked in that sea of the passions which, at the two epochs, raged around both writers. Calvin experienced much trouble in having his Latin commentary printed; he was in need of funds, and the revenues of his benefice of Pont l'Evêque were insufficient to defray the expense of printing. How could he apply to the Mommor family? Moreover, he was in dread that his book should prove a failure and thereby injure his budding reputation. All these alarms of a maiden author are set forth in various letters which he addressed on this subject to the dear friends of his bosom. "Behold my books of Seneca concerning clemency, printed at my own expense and labor! They must now be sold, in order that I may again obtain the money which I have expended. I must also watch that my reputation does not suffer. You will oblige me, then, by informing me how the work has been received, whether with favor or indifference." The whole anxiety of the poor author is to lose nothing by the enterprise; his purse is empty; it needs replenishing; and he urges the professors to give circulation to the treatise; he solicits one of his friends at Bourges, a member of the university, to bring it forward in his lectures; and appeals to the aid of Daniel, to whom he sent a hundred copies. Papire Masson was mistaken: the commentary on clemency did not first appear, as he supposes, under the title of _Lucius Calvinus, civis Romanus_, but under that of _Calvinus_, a name ever after retained by the reformer. This treatise introduced Calvin to the notice of the learned world: Bucer, Capito, Padius, sent congratulations to the writer; Calvin, in September, 1532, had sent a copy of his work to Bucer, who was then at Strasburg. The person commissioned to present it was a poor young man, suspected of Anabaptism, and a refugee from France. Calvin's letter of recommendation is replete with tender compassion for the miseries of the sinner. "My dear Bucer," he writes, "you will not be deaf to my entreaties, you will not disregard my tears; I implore you, to come to the aid of the proscribed, be a father to the orphan." This was sending the sick man to a sad physician. Bucer, by turns Catholic, Lutheran, Anabaptist, Zwinglian! Besides, why this proselytism of a moral _curé_? The exile was Anabaptist by the same title as Calvin was predestinarian, in virtue of a text of Scripture: "Go; whoever shall believe and be baptized will be saved." The Anabaptist believed in the inefficacy of baptism without faith manifested by an external act; but is not Calvin, at this very hour, as much to be pitied as the Anabaptist? He also doubted, searched, and interrogated his Bible, and imagined that he had caught the meaning of a letter which no intelligence before him had been able to seize. And what was this truth, the conquest of which infused such fear into his soul that, before he could announce it to the world, he sold his charge of Pont l'Evêque and even his paternal inheritance? In the year 1531 John Calvin presented himself before Simon Legendre and Peter le Roy, royal notaries at Paris, to invest his brothers with powers of attorney to sell what had been left him by his father and mother. "To all to whom these present letters shall come; John de la Barre, Chevalier Count d'Estampes, Governor of Paris and chief of the judicial tribunal of said city, greeting: We make known that before Simon Legendre and Peter le Roy, notaries of our lord the King, at Paris, came in person Master John Calvin, licentiate at law, and Anthony Cauvin, his brother, clerk, living at Paris, and sons of Gérard Cauvin--while yet alive, secretary of M. the Bishop of Noyon--and of Jeanne le Franc, his wife; who jointly and severally make, name, ordain, appoint, and establish as their general agent and special attorney Master Charles Cauvin, their brother, to whom bearing these present letters they grant, and by these presents do give, full power and right to sell, concede, and alienate, to whatever person or persons the two undivided thirds belonging to the aforesaid constituents, coming to them in proper right of succession by the demise of the aforesaid deceased Jeanne le Franc, their mother; also the fourth undivided part of a piece of meadow, containing fourteen acres or thereabouts, situated in the territory of Noyon, and pertaining on one part to the wood of Chastelain; on another, to the monks and sisters of the Hôtel-Dieu of St. John, at Noyon; on another, to the nuns and abbess of the French convent, the Abbey aux Bois, and to the chapter of the church of Notre Dame, of the said city, and running up to the highway passing from Noyon to Genury; to make sale and alienation of the same, for such price and at such costs as the aforesaid Master Charles Cauvin, their brother, shall judge for the better; to collect the money and give security, with lien upon all their future possessions. "Done, and passed, on Wednesday, the fifteenth day of February, in the year 1531." Some short time after this, Calvin resigned his charge of the Chapel de la Gesine to Anthony de la Marlière, _Mediante pretio conventionis_, for the sum agreed on, says the act of transfer, and also surrendered his benefice of Pont l'Evêque for a similar consideration. The storm was gathering. Calvin wished to expose to its fury some other head than his own, and chose that of Nicolas Cop, rector of the Sorbonne, at Paris. Cop was a German of Basel, who was captivated with the student because of his ready speech, his airs of virtue, his scriptural knowledge, his railleries against the monks, and his ridicule of the university. As to the rest, he was a man of a dull, heavy mind, understood nothing of theological subjects, and would have been much better placed in a refectory than in a learned body; at table than in the professor's chair. Cop had to pronounce his usual discourse on All Saints' Day, in presence of the Sorbonne and the university. He had recourse to Calvin, who set to work and "built him up a discourse," says Beza--"an oration quite different from those which were customary." The Sorbonne and university did not assist at the discourse, but only some Franciscans, who appeared to be scandalized at certain propositions of the orator, and among others at one concerning justification by faith alone in Christ--an old error, which, for many ages, has been trailed along in all the writings of heretics; often dead and resuscitated--and which Calvin, in Cop's discourse, dressed out in tinsel in order to give it some appearance of novelty. But our Franciscans had sight and hearing equally as good; they detected the heresy easily, and denounced to the parliament the evil-sounding propositions, which they had taken pains to note down in writing. Cop was greatly embarrassed by his new glory; he had not expected so much fame. He, however, held up well and convoked the university at the Mathurins. The university assembled in a body in order to judge the cause. The rector there commenced a discourse, drawn up by Calvin, in which he formally denied having preached the propositions denounced, with the exception of one only, precisely the worst, that concerning justification. Imagine the tumult which the orator excited! Scarcely could he make himself heard, and ask mercy. The old Sorbonnists shuddered on their benches. The unfortunate Cop would have been seized had he not made his escape, to return no more. The student kept himself concealed at the Collège du Forbet, which was already surrounded by a body of archers headed by John Morin. Calvin was warned of their approach. "He escaped through a window, concealed himself in the suburb St. Victor, at the house of a vine-dresser, changed his clothes, assumed the long gown of the vine-dresser, and, placing a wallet of white linen and a rake on his shoulders, he took the road to Noyon." A canon of that city, who was on his way to Paris, met the _curé_ of Pont l'Evêque and recognized him. "Where are you going, Master John," he demanded, "in this fine disguise?" "Where God shall please," answered Calvin, who then began to explain the motive and reasons of his disguise. "And would you not do better to return to Noyon and to God?" asked the canon, looking at him sadly. Calvin was a moment silent, then, taking the priest's hand--"Thank you," said he, "but it is too late." During this colloquy the lieutenant was searching Calvin's papers, and secured those which might have compromised the friends of the fugitive. Calvin found a refuge with the Queen of Navarre, who was fortunate enough to reconcile her _protégé_ with the court and the university. The person whom she employed to effect this was an adroit man who had succeeded in deceiving the government. Francis I based his glory upon the patronage and encouragement which he accorded to learning, and Calvin, as a man of letters, merited consideration. The King needed some forgiveness for serious political faults, and, with reason, he believed that the humanists would redeem his character before the people. He was at once the protector and the slave of the _literati_. At that period the little court of Nérac was the asylum of writers, who, like Desperriers, there prepared their _Cymbalum Mundi_; of gallant ladies, who composed love-tales, of which they were often the heroines themselves; of poets, who extemporized odes after Beza's model; of clerics and other gentry of the Church, who entertained packs of hunting-dogs, and courtesans; of Italian play-actors, who, in the Queen's theatre, presented comedies taken from the New Testament, in which Jesus was made to utter horrible things against monks and nuns; or of princes, who, like the Queen's husband, scarcely knew how to read, and yet discoursed, like doctors, about doctrine and discipline. It was against Roussel, the confessor of Margaret, that Calvin, at a later date, composed his _Adversus Nicodemitas_. At Nérac he found Le Fevre d'Etaples, who had fled the wrath of the Sorbonne, and who "regarded the young man with a benignant eye, predicting that he was to become the author of the restoration of the Church in France." Le Fevre recalls to our mind that priest about whom Mathesius tells us, who said to Luther, when sick: "My child, you will not die; God has great designs in your regard." As to the rest, James le Fevre d'Etaples was a sufficiently charitable and honest man. He died a Catholic, and very probably without ever having prophesied in the terms mentioned by Beza. It does not appear that Margaret enjoined the law of silence upon her guest of Noyon, for we find him disseminating his errors in Saintonge, where many laborers flocked to hear him and abandoned Catholicism to embrace the Reformation. It was while on one of his excursions that the missionary encountered Louis du Tillet, clerk of the Parliament of Paris and secretary of Du Tillet, Bishop of Meaux. Louis possessed a beautiful dwelling at Claix, a sort of Thebais, retired and pleasant, where Calvin commenced his most serious work, _Institutes of the Christian Religion_. The time he could spare from this literary occupation he devoted to preaching in the neighboring cities, and especially at Angoulême. A vine, beneath which he loved to recline and muse, may still be seen; it was for a long time called "Calvin's vine." He was still living on the last bounties of a church which he had renounced, and which he called "a stepmother and a prostitute"; and on the presents of a queen gallant, whose morals and piety he lauded, continuing to assist at the Catholic service, and composing Latin orations, which were delivered out of the assembly of the synod, at the temple of St. Peter. He left the court of Margaret and reappeared at Orleans. The Reformation in France, as in Germany, wherever it showed itself, produced, on all sides, disorder and trouble. In place of a uniform symbol, it brought contradictory confessions, which gave rise to interminable disputes. In Germany the Lutheran word caused a thousand sects to spring up--each of which wished to establish a Christian republic on the ruins of Catholicism. Carlstadt, Schwenkfield, Oecolampadius, Zwingli, Munzer, Boskold, begotten by Luther, had denied their father, and taught heterogeneous dogmas, of which every one passed for the production of the Holy Ghost. Luther, who no longer concealed himself beneath a monk's robe, but borrowed the ducal sword, drove before him all these rebel angels, and, at the gate of Wittenberg, stationed an executioner to prohibit their entrance; driven back into the provinces, the dissenters appealed to open force. Germany was then inundated with the blood of her noble intelligences, who had been born for her glory. Munzer died on the scaffold, and the Anabaptists marched to punishment, denying and cursing the Saxon who did violence to their faith. Everything was perishing--painting, sculpture, poesy, letters. The Reformation imitated Nero, and sang its triumphs amid ruins and blood. In France it was destined soon to excite similar tempests. It had already troubled the Church. It no longer, as before, sheltered itself beneath the shades of night to propagate its doctrines. It erected, by the side of the Catholic pulpit, another pulpit, from which its dogmas were defended by its disciples; it led its partisans at court, among the clergy, in the universities and in the parliaments. Calvin's book, _de Clementia_, gained him a large number of proselytes: his disciples had an austere air, downcast eyes, pale faces, emaciated cheeks--all the signs of labor and sufferings. They mingled little with the world, avoided female conversation, the court, and shows; the Bible was their book of predilection; they spoke, like the Saviour, in apologues. They were termed Christians of the primitive Church. To resemble these, they only needed the very essence of Christianity; namely, faith, hope, and charity. To be convinced that their symbol was as diversified as their faces, it was only necessary to hear them speak; some taught the sleep of the soul, after this life, till the day of the last judgment; others, the necessity of a second baptism. Among them there were Lutherans, who believed in the real presence, and Zwinglians, who rejected it; apostles of free-will, and defenders of fatalism; Melanchthonians, who admitted an ecclesiastical hierarchy; Carlstadians, who maintained that every Christian is a priest; realists, chained to the letter; idealists, who bent the letter to the thought; rationalists, who rejected every mystery; mystics, who lost themselves in the clouds; and Antitrinitarians, who, like Servetus, admitted but two persons in God. These doctors all carried with them the same book--the Bible. Servetus,[43] a Spanish physician, had left his own country, and established himself, in 1531, at Hagenau, where he had published different treatises against the Trinity. He had disputed at Basel with Oecolampadius, some time before this renegade from the Lutheran faith "was strangled by the devil," if we are to believe the account given by Doctor Martin Luther. Servetus boasted that he triumphed over the theologian. Having left Basel in 1532, and crossed the Rhine, he came to hurl a solemn defiance at Calvin; the gauntlet was taken up by the _curé_ of Pont l'Evêque, the place of combat indicated, the day for the tournament named, but at the appointed hour "the heart of this unhappy wretch failed," says Beza, "who having agreed to dispute, did not dare appear." Calvin, on his part--in his refutations of the errors of Servetus, published in 1554--boasts of having in vain offered the Spanish physician remedies suitable to cure his malady. Servetus pretends that his adversary was laying snares for him, which he had the good-fortune to avoid. At a later period he forgot his part, and came to throw himself into the ambuscade of his enemy. The parliaments redoubled their severity: Calvin was narrowly watched, his liberty might be compromised, and even his life put in peril. He resolved to abandon France, either from fear or spite--if we are to credit an ecclesiastical historian--not being able to forgive Francis I for the preference manifested by this Prince toward a relation of the Constable, "of moderate circumstances," who was promoted to a benefice, for which the author of the _Commentary on Seneca_ had condescended to make solicitation. The testimony of the historian is weighty. Soulier knows neither hatred, passion, nor anger; he seeks after the truth, and he believes that he has found it in the recital which we are about to peruse. "We, the undersigned--Louis Charreton, counsellor of the King, dean of the presidents of the parliaments of Paris, son of the late Andrew Charreton, who was first Baron of Champagne, and counsellor to the high chamber of the Parliament of Paris; Madam Antoinette Charreton, widow of Noel Renouard, former master in the chamber of the courts of Paris, and daughter of the late Hugh Charreton, Lord of Montauzon; and John Charreton, Sieur de la Terrière; all three cousins, and grandchildren of Hugh Charreton--certify that we have frequently heard from our fathers that the aforesaid Sieur Hugh Charreton had several times told them that under the reign of Francis I, while the court was at Fontainebleau, Calvin, who had a benefice at Noyon, came there and took lodgings in the hotel where the aforesaid Sieur Charreton was lodging, who, understanding that Calvin was a man of letters and of great erudition, and being very fond of the society of learned men, informed him that he would be delighted to have some interviews with him; to this Calvin the more willingly consented under the belief that the aforesaid Sieur de Charreton might be able to assist him in the affair which had brought him to Fontainebleau; that after several interviews the aforesaid Sieur de Charreton demanded from Calvin the object of his journey, to which he answered that he had come to solicit a priory from the King, for which there was but one rival, who was a relative of the Constable. "The Sieur de Charreton asked him if he thought this nothing. He replied that he was aware of the high consideration enjoyed by the Constable, but he also knew that the King, in disposing of benefices, was wont to choose the most proper persons, and that the relative of the Constable was of very poor capacity. To which the aforesaid Sieur de Charreton rejoined that this was no obstacle, since no great capacity was needed to hold a simple benefice; whereupon Calvin exclaimed and cried out that if such wrong was done him he would find means to make them speak of him for five hundred years; and the aforesaid Sieur de Charreton having urged him strongly to tell him how he would do this, Calvin conducted him to his room and showed him the commencement of his _Institutes_; and after having read a portion of them, Calvin demanded his opinion; he answered _that it was poison well put in sugar_, and advised him not to continue a work which was only a false interpretation of the Scriptures and of everything which the holy fathers had written; and as he perceived that Calvin remained firm in his wicked purpose, he gave notice thereof to the Constable, who declared that Calvin was a fool and should soon be brought to his senses. But two days after, the benefice having been bestowed on the relative of the Constable, Calvin departed and began to propagate his sect, which, being very convenient, was embraced by many persons, some through libertinism, others from weakness of mind. "That some time after, the Constable was going to his government of Languedoc, and passed through Lyons, where the aforesaid Sieur de Charreton paid him a visit, and was asked if he did not belong to the sect of Calvin, with whom he had lodged. He answered that he would be very sorry to embrace a religion the father and founder of which he had seen born. "In testimony whereof we have given our signatures, at Paris, this 20th of September, 1682. "Signed: Charreton, President; A. Charreton, Widow Renouard; and Charreton de la Terrière." After having published his _Psychopannychia_, in 1534, at Orleans, Calvin left that city. He felt a desire to visit Basel, at that time the Athens of Switzerland, a city of renown, so long the abode of Erasmus, famous for its _literati_, its celebrated printers, and its theologians amorous of novelties; where Froben had published his fine edition of the works of St. Jerome; where Holbein had painted his picture of Christ ready for the sepulchre, where Capito taught Hebrew, and Oecolampadius commented on the Psalms. He set out from Orleans in company with his friend Du Tillet; near Metz their domestic robbed them and fled with their sacks and valises, and they were forced to seek Strasburg on foot, nearly destitute of clothing, and with but ten crowns in their pockets. Calvin spent some time in Strasburg, studying the different transformations which the reformed gospel had undergone during the brief space of fifteen years. He entered into intimate relations with some of the most celebrated representatives of Protestantism. Anyone else, who had arrived there free from prejudices against Catholicism, would have found salutary instruction in the ceaseless agitations of that city, which knew not where to poise itself in order to find repose, and which, since 1521, had become Lutheran, Anabaptist, Zwinglian, and, at that very moment, was dreaming of a new transfiguration, to be accomplished by the aid of Bucer, one of its new guests. At Basel, Calvin found Simon Grynæus and Erasmus. Calvin could not neglect this opportunity of visiting the Batavian philologist, whose fame was European. After a short interview they separated. Bucer, who had assisted at the meeting, was solicitous to know the opinion of the caustic old man. "Master," said he, "what think you of the new-comer?" Erasmus smiled, without answering. Bucer insisted. "I behold," said the author of the _Colloquies_, "a great pest, which is springing up in the Church, against the Church." On the next day Du Tillet, clerk of the Parliament of Paris, arrived at Basel and, by dint of tears and entreaties, brought with him his brother Louis, who repented, made his abjuration, and was shortly after elected archdeacon, a dignity disputed with him by Renaudie, who was to be used by the Reformation for the execution of the plot of Amboise. The _Psychopannychia_, the first controversial work of Calvin, is a pamphlet directed against the sect of Anabaptists, whom the bloody day of Frankenhausen had conquered, but not subdued. The spirit of Munzer lived again in his disciples, who were parading their mystic reveries through Holland, Flanders, and France. Luther had essayed his powers against Munzer, imagining that by his fiery language, his Pindaric wrath, his flames and thunders, he would soon overwhelm the chief of the miners, as he had defeated, it is said, those theological dwarfs who were unable to stand before him. From the summit of the mountain he had appeared to Munzer in the midst of lightnings, but those lightnings did not alarm his adversary, who was bold enough to face him with unquailing eye. Munzer also possessed a fiery tongue, which he used with admirable skill, to inflame and arouse the peasants; this time victory remained with the man of the sledge-hammer. And Luther, who wished to terminate the affair at any cost, was reduced, as is well known, to avail himself of the sword of one of his electors. The wrecks which escaped from the funeral obsequies of Thuringia took refuge in a new land. France received and listened to the prophets of Anabaptism. These Anabaptists maintained seducing doctrines. They dreamed of a sort of Jerusalem, very different from the Jewish Jerusalem; a Jerusalem quite spiritual, without swords, soldiers, or civil magistracy: the true city of the elect. Their speech was infected with Pelagianism and Arianism; on several points of dogma they agreed with Catholics--on predestination, for example, and on the merit of works. Some of them taught the sleep of the soul till the day of judgment. It was against these "sleepers" that Calvin determined to measure himself. The _Commentary on Seneca_ is a philological work, a book of the revival, a rhetorical declamation, in which Calvin is evidently aspiring to a place among the humanists, and making his court, in sufficiently fine Latin, to all the Ciceronians of the age: this was bringing himself forward with skill and tact. The Latin language was the idiom of the Church, of the convents, colleges, universities, and parliaments. The _Psychopannychia_ is a religious pamphlet, and now Calvin must expect a rival in the first pamphleteer of Germany, Luther himself. It is certain that Calvin was acquainted with the writings of the Saxon monk against Eck, Tetzel, Prierias, Latomus, and the Sorbonnists. He must be praised for not having dreamed of entering the lists against a spirit of such a temper as his rival. Had he desired, after Luther's manner, to deal in caricature, he would certainly have failed. Sallies, play upon words, and conceits did not suit a mind like his, whose forte was finesse. By nature sober, he could not, like the Saxon monk, fertilize his brain in enormous pots of beer; moreover, beer was not as yet in use beyond the Rhine. Nor had he at his service those German smoking-houses, where, of an evening, among the companions of gay science, his weary mind might have revived its energies. In France the monks did not resort to taverns. Calvin was, therefore, everything he was destined to become: an adroit, biting disputant, ready at retort, but without warmth or enthusiasm. He loves to bear testimony in his own behalf, that "he did not indulge his wrath, except modestly; that he always made it a rule to set aside outrageous or biting expressions; that he almost always moderated his style, which was better adapted to instruct than to drive forcibly, in such sort, however, that it may ever attract those who would not be led." One must see that, with such humor and style, Calvin might have died forgotten, in some little benefice of Swabia, and that he was never formed for raising storms, but only for using them. At this epoch the grand agitator of society was first, society itself, and then Luther, that great pamphleteer, "whose books are quite full of demons," who drove humanity into the paths of a revolution, for which all the elements had been prepared years before. Luther had sown the wind, Calvin came to reap the whirlwind. Not that the latter does not sometimes rise even to wrath, but it is a wrath which savors of labor and which he pursues as a rhymester would a rebellious epithet. Besides, he is good enough to repent for it, as if this wrath burned the face over which it glowed. "I have presented some things," he murmurs, "a little sharply, even roughly said, which, peradventure, may offend the delicate ears of some. But, as I am aware there are some good persons who have conceived such affection for this dream of the sleep of souls, I would not have them offended with me." Where Calvin is concerned we must not allow our admiration to be too easily awaked; we must note that he is speaking of an Anabaptist, that is, of a soul which has thrown off the "papism." But let a Catholic appear--a priest unknown to fame, who, as editor, shall have reprinted a new edition of the work of Henry VIII, "_Assertio Septem Sacramentorum_"--for instance, Gabriel de Sacconay, precentor of Lyons, and you shall then behold Calvin, under the form of a dithyrambic or congratulatory epistle, without the least regard for delicate ears, throw into the face of the Catholic the most filthy expressions of offence. Calvin has himself given a correct estimate of the value of his _Psychopannychia_, and of his treatise against the Anabaptists, which one of his historians desires to have reprinted in our time, purged of all its bitterness of style. He was right in saying, "I have reproved the foolish curiosity of those who were debating these questions, which, in fact, are but vexations of mind." One day this question, about the sleep of souls--one that in the ancient Church had long since been examined, by Metito--was presented to Luther, who disposed of it in few words. "These," said he, "are picked nutshells." FOOTNOTES: [43] Michael Servetus was a controversialist in matters of philosophy and religion. For many years he was the object of attack by the different orthodox schools on account of his heretical speeches and writings. In 1553 he published a work which led to his arrest by order of the inquisitor-general at Lyons. Servetus escaped, but was again taken, at the instance of Calvin, and was burned at Geneva, October 27, 1553.--ED. ENGLAND BREAKS WITH THE ROMAN CHURCH DESTRUCTION OF THE MONASTERIES A.D. 1534 JOHN RICHARD GREEN Following the fall of Wolsey, Sir Thomas More became lord chancellor of England, but the real power of Wolsey passed to another and perhaps even more able minister, Thomas Cromwell. Henry VIII needed always some strong, able, crafty guide to show him a path through the intricacies of European politics, and enable him at the same time to follow the savage dictates of his passion and his whims. Such a helper he found now in Cromwell. Few men have ever been so daring or so ruthless as this great statesman. He helped Henry in all his evil schemes, though Green and other critics as well have thought to discern a larger, wiser policy in the impenetrable mind of the subtle minister. As secretary of state he drove England at his own pace through the vast religious changes of the period. For the ruin he brought upon Catholicism, and more especially for his destruction of the thousand monasteries that dotted England, he has been called the "hammer of the monks." Of even lower birth than Wolsey, and rising to almost equal power, Cromwell began life as a son of a blacksmith. He wandered over Europe and especially Italy as a soldier, merchant, and general adventurer of the lower and wilder type. He became Wolsey's right-hand man, and held loyally by his chief even after the latter's overthrow. It had been Henry's passion for Anne Boleyn, and the resulting necessity for divorce from his wife Catherine, that caused Wolsey's fall. On the same passion did Cromwell build his rise. He secretly urged the King to break with Rome entirely and declare himself sole head of the English Church. Thus he could divorce himself. Henry first tried a last negotiation with the Pope; that failing, he turned to his new adviser. Cromwell was again ready with his suggestion that the King should disavow the papal jurisdiction, declare himself head of the Church within its realm, and obtain a divorce from his own ecclesiastical courts. But the new minister looked on the divorce as simply the prelude to a series of changes which he was bent upon accomplishing. In all his checkered life, that had left its deepest stamp on him in Italy. Not only in the rapidity and ruthlessness of his designs, but in their larger scope, their admirable combination, the Italian statecraft entered with Cromwell into English politics. He is in fact the first English minister in whom we can trace through the whole period of his rule the steady working out of a great and definite aim, that of raising the King to absolute authority on the ruins of every rival power within his realm. It was not that Cromwell was a mere slave of tyranny. Whether we may trust the tale that carries him in his youth to Florence or not, his statesmanship was closely modelled on the ideal of the Florentine thinker whose book was constantly in his hand. Even as a servant of Wolsey he startled the future Cardinal, Reginald Pole, by bidding him take for his manual in politics the _Prince_ of Machiavelli. Machiavelli hoped to find in Cæsar Borgia or in the later Lorenzo de' Medici a tyrant who, after crushing all rival tyrannies, might unite and regenerate Italy; and, terrible and ruthless as his policy was, the final aim of Cromwell seems to have been that of Machiavelli, an aim of securing enlightenment and order for England by the concentration of all authority in the Crown. The first step toward such an end was the freeing the monarchy from its spiritual obedience to Rome. What the first of the Tudors had done for the political independence of the kingdom, the second was to do for its ecclesiastical independence. Henry VII had freed England from the interference of France or the house of Burgundy; and in the question of the divorce Cromwell saw the means of bringing Henry VIII to free it from the interference of the papacy. In such an effort resistance could be looked for only from the clergy. But their resistance was what Cromwell desired. The last check on royal absolutism which had survived the Wars of the Roses lay in the wealth, the independent synods and jurisdiction, and the religious claims of the Church; and for the success of the new policy it was necessary to reduce the great ecclesiastical body to a mere department of the state in which all authority should flow from the sovereign alone, his will be the only law, his decision the only test of truth. Such a change, however, was hardly to be wrought without a struggle; and the question of national independence in all ecclesiastical matters furnished ground on which the Crown could conduct this struggle to the best advantage. The secretary's first blow showed how unscrupulously the struggle was to be waged. A year had passed since Wolsey had been convicted of a breach of the Statute of Provisors. The pedantry of the judges declared the whole nation to have been formally involved in the same charge by its acceptance of his authority. The legal absurdity was now redressed by a general pardon, but from this pardon the clergy found themselves omitted. In the spring of 1531 a convocation was assembled to be told that forgiveness could be bought at no less a price than the payment of a fine amounting to a million of our present money, and the acknowledgment of the King as "the chief protector, the only and supreme lord, and head of the Church and clergy of England." Unjust as was the first demand, they at once submitted to it; against the second they struggled hard. But their appeals to Henry and Cromwell met only with demands for instant obedience. A compromise was at last arrived at by the insertion of a qualifying phrase, "So far as the law of Christ will allow"; and with this addition the words were again submitted by Warham to the convocation. There was a general silence. "Whoever is silent seems to consent," said the Archbishop. "Then are we all silent," replied a voice from among the crowd. There is no ground for thinking that the "headship of the Church" which Henry claimed in this submission was more than a warning addressed to the independent spirit of the clergy, or that it bore as yet the meaning which was afterward attached to it. It certainly implied no independence of Rome, for negotiations were still being carried on with the papal court. But it told Clement plainly that in any strife that might come between himself and Henry the clergy were in the King's hand, and that he must look for no aid from them in any struggle with the Crown. The warning was backed by an address to the Pope from the lords and some of the commons who assembled after a fresh prorogation of the houses in the spring. "The cause of his majesty," the peers were made to say, "is the cause of each of ourselves." They laid before the Pope what they represented as the judgment of the universities in favor of the divorce; but they faced boldly the event of its rejection. "Our condition," they ended, "will not be wholly irremediable. Extreme remedies are ever harsh of application; but he that is sick will by all means be rid of his distemper." In the summer the banishment of Catherine from the King's palace to a house at Ampthill showed the firmness of Henry's resolve. Each of these acts was no doubt intended to tell on the Pope's decision, for Henry still clung to the hope of extorting from Clement a favorable answer; and at the close of the year a fresh embassy, with Gardiner, now Bishop of Winchester, at its head, was despatched to the papal court. But the embassy failed like its predecessors, and at the opening of 1532 Cromwell was free to take more decisive steps in the course on which he had entered. What the nature of his policy was to be, had already been detected by eyes as keen as his own. More had seen in Wolsey's fall an opening for the realization of those schemes of religious and even of political reform on which the scholars of the New Learning had long been brooding. The substitution of the lords of the council for the autocratic rule of the cardinal-minister, the break-up of the great mass of powers which had been gathered into a single hand, the summons of a parliament, the ecclesiastical reforms which it at once sanctioned, were measures which promised a more legal and constitutional system of government. The question of the divorce presented to More no serious difficulty. Untenable as Henry's claim seemed to the new Chancellor, his faith in the omnipotence of parliament would have enabled him to submit to any statute which named a new spouse as queen and her children as heirs to the crown. But as Cromwell's policy unfolded itself he saw that more than this was impending. The Catholic instinct of his mind, the dread of a rent Christendom and of the wars and bigotry that must come of its rending, united with More's theological convictions to resist any spiritual severance of England from the papacy. His love for freedom, his revolt against the growing autocracy of the Crown, the very height and grandeur of his own spiritual convictions, all bent him to withstand a system which would concentrate in the king the whole power of church as of state, would leave him without the one check that remained on his despotism, and make him arbiter of the religious faith of his subjects. The later revolt of the Puritans against the king-worship which Cromwell established proved the justice of the provision which forced More in the spring of 1532 to resign the post of chancellor. But the revolution from which he shrank was an inevitable one. Till now every Englishman had practically owned a double life and a double allegiance. As citizen of a temporal state his life was bounded by English shores, and his loyalty due exclusively to his English King. But as citizen of the state spiritual, he belonged not to England, but to Christendom. The law which governed him was not a national law, but a law that embraced every European nation, and the ordinary course of judicial appeals in ecclesiastical cases proved to him that the sovereignty in all matters of conscience or religion lay, not at Westminster, but at Rome. Such a distinction could scarcely fail to bring embarrassment with it as the sense of national life and national pride waxed stronger; and from the reign of the Edwards the problem of reconciling the spiritual and temporal relations of the realm grew daily more difficult. Parliament had hardly risen into life when it became the organ of the national jealousy, whether of any papal jurisdiction without the realm or of the separate life and separate jurisdiction of the clergy within it. The movement was long arrested by religious reaction and civil war. But the fresh sense of national greatness which sprang from the policy of Henry VIII, the fresh sense of national unity as the monarchy gathered all power into its single hand, would have itself revived the contest even without the spur of the divorce. What the question of the divorce really did was to stimulate the movement by bringing into clearer view the wreck of the great Christian commonwealth of which England had till now formed a part, and the impossibility of any real exercise of a spiritual sovereignty over it by the weakened papacy, as well as by outraging the national pride through the summons of the King to a foreign bar and the submission of English interests to the will of a foreign emperor. With such a spur as this the movement, which More dreaded, moved forward as quickly as Cromwell desired. The time had come when England was to claim for herself the fulness of power, ecclesiastical as well as temporal, within her bounds; and, in the concentration of all authority within the hands of the sovereign which was the political characteristic of the time, to claim this power for the nation was to claim it for the king. The import of that headship of the Church which Henry had assumed in the preceding year was brought fully out in one of the propositions laid before the convocation of 1532. "The King's majesty," runs this memorable clause, "hath as well the care of the souls of his subjects as their bodies; and may by the law of God by his parliament make laws touching and concerning as well the one as the other." The principle embodied in these words was carried out in a series of decisive measures. Under strong pressure the convocation was brought to pray that the power of independent legislation till now exercised by the church should come to an end, and to promise "that from henceforth we shall forbear to enact, promulge, or put into execution any such constitutions and ordinances so by us to be made in time coming, unless your highness by your royal assent shall license us to make, promulge, and execute them, and the same so made be approved by your highness' authority." Rome was dealt with in the same unsparing fashion. The parliament forbade by statute any further appeals to the papal court; and on a petition from the clergy in convocation the houses granted power to the King to suspend the payments of first-fruits, or the year's revenue which each bishop paid to Rome on his election to a see. All judicial, all financial connection with the papacy was broken by these two measures. The last, indeed, was as yet but a menace which Henry might use in his negotiations with Clement. The hope which had been entertained of aid from Charles was now abandoned; and the overthrow of Norfolk and his policy of alliance with the Empire was seen at the midsummer of 1532 in the conclusion of a league with France. Cromwell had fallen back on Wolsey's system; and the divorce was now to be looked for from the united pressure of the French and English kings on the papal court. But the pressure was as unsuccessful as before. In November Clement threatened the King with excommunication if he did not restore Catherine to her place as queen and abstain from all intercourse with Anne Boleyn till the case was tried. But Henry still refused to submit to the judgment of any court outside his realm; and the Pope, ready as he was with evasion and delay, dared not alienate Charles by consenting to a trial within it. The lavish pledges which Francis had given in an interview during the preceding summer may have aided to spur the King to a decisive step which closed the long debate. At the opening of 1533 Henry was privately married to Anne Boleyn. The match, however, was carefully kept secret while the papal sanction was being gained for the appointment of Cranmer to the see of Canterbury, which had become vacant by Archbishop Warham's death in the preceding year. But Cranmer's consecration at the close of March was the signal for more open action, and Cromwell's policy was at last brought fairly into play. The new primate at once laid the question of the King's marriage before the two houses of convocation, and both voted that the license of Pope Julius had been beyond the papal powers and that the marriage which it authorized was void. In May the King's suit was brought before the Archbishop in his court at Dunstable; his judgment annulled the marriage with Catherine as void from the beginning, and pronounced the marriage with Anne Boleyn, which her pregnancy had forced Henry to reveal, a lawful marriage. A week later the hand of Cranmer placed upon Anne's brow the crown which she had coveted so long. "There was much murmuring" at measures such as these. Many thought "that the Bishop of Rome would curse all Englishmen, and that the Emperor and he would destroy all the people." Fears of the overthrow of religion told on the clergy; the merchants dreaded an interruption of the trade with Flanders, Italy, and Spain. But Charles, though still loyal to his aunt's cause, had no mind to incur risks for her; and Clement, though he annulled Cranmer's proceedings, hesitated as yet to take sterner action. Henry, on the other hand, conscious that the die was thrown, moved rapidly forward in the path that Cromwell had opened. The Pope's reversal of the primate's judgment was answered by an appeal to a general council. The decision of the cardinals to whom the case was referred in the spring of 1534, a decision which asserted the lawfulness of Catherine's marriage, was met by the enforcement of the long-suspended statute forbidding the payment of first-fruits to the Pope. Though the King was still firm in his resistance to Lutheran opinions, and at this moment endeavored to prevent by statute the importation of Lutheran books, the less scrupulous hand of his minister was seen already striving to find a counterpoise to the hostility of the Emperor in an alliance with the Lutheran princes of North Germany. Cromwell was now fast rising to a power which rivalled Wolsey's. His elevation to the post of lord privy seal placed him on a level with the great nobles of the council board; and Norfolk, constant in his hopes of reconciliation with Charles and the papacy, saw his plans set aside for the wider and more daring projects of "the black-smith's son." Cromwell still clung to the political engine whose powers he had turned to the service of the Crown. The parliament which had been summoned at Wolsey's fall met steadily year after year; and measure after measure had shown its accordance with the royal will in the strife with Rome. It was now called to deal a final blow. Step by step the ground had been cleared for the great statute by which the new character of the English Church was defined in the session of 1534. By the Act of Supremacy authority in all matters ecclesiastical was vested solely in the Crown. The courts spiritual became as thoroughly the king's courts as the temporal courts at Westminster. The statute ordered that the King "shall be taken, accepted, and reputed the only supreme head on earth of the Church of England, and shall have and enjoy, annexed and united to the imperial crown of this realm, as well the title and state thereof as all the honors, jurisdictions, authorities, immunities, profits, and commodities to the said dignity belonging, with full power to visit, repress, redress, reform, and amend all such errors, heresies, abuses, contempts, and enormities which by any manner of spiritual authority or jurisdiction might or may lawfully be reformed." The full import of the Act of Supremacy was only seen in the following year. At the opening of 1535 Henry formally took the title of "on earth Supreme Head of the Church of England," and some months later Cromwell was raised to the post of vicar-general, or vicegerent of the King in all matters ecclesiastical. His title, like his office, recalled the system of Wolsey. It was not only as legate, but in later years as vicar-general, of the Pope, that Wolsey had brought all spiritual causes in England to an English court. The supreme ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the realm passed into the hands of a minister who as chancellor already exercised its supreme civil jurisdiction. The papal power had therefore long seemed transferred to the crown before the legislative measures which followed the divorce actually transferred it. It was in fact the system of Catholicism itself that trained men to look without surprise on the concentration of all spiritual and secular authority in Cromwell. Successor to Wolsey as keeper of the great seal, it seemed natural enough that Cromwell should succeed him also as vicar-general of the Church, and that the union of the two powers should be restored in the hands of a minister of the King. But the mere fact that these powers were united in the hands, not of a priest, but of a layman, showed the new drift of the royal policy. The Church was no longer to be brought indirectly under the royal power; in the policy of Cromwell it was to be openly laid prostrate at the foot of the throne. And this policy his position enabled him to carry out with a terrible thoroughness. One great step toward its realization had already been taken in the statute which annihilated the free legislative powers of the convocations of the clergy. Another followed in an act which, under the pretext of restoring the free election of bishops, turned every prelate into a nominee of the King. The election of bishops by the chapters of their cathedral churches had long become formal, and their appointment had since the time of the Edwards been practically made by the papacy on the nomination of the crown. The privilege of free election was now with bitter irony restored to the chapters, but they were compelled on pain of præmunire to choose whatever candidate was recommended by the king. This strange expedient has lasted till the present time, though its character has wholly changed with the development of constitutional rule. The nomination of bishops has ever since the accession of the Georges passed from the king in person to the minister, who represents the will of the people. Practically, therefore, an English prelate, alone among all the prelates of the world, is now raised to his episcopal throne by the same popular election which raised Ambrose to his episcopal chair at Milan. But at the moment of the change Cromwell's measure reduced the English bishops to absolute dependence on the crown. Their dependence would have been complete had his policy been thoroughly carried out, and the royal power of deposition put in force, as well as that of appointment. As it was, Henry could warn the Archbishop of Dublin that, if he persevered in his "proud folly, we be able to remove you again and to put another man of more virtue and honesty in your place." By the more ardent partisans of the Reformation this dependence of the bishops on the crown was fully recognized. On the death of Henry VIII Cranmer took out a new commission from Edward for the exercise of his office. Latimer, when the royal policy clashed with his belief, felt bound to resign the see of Worcester. If the power of deposition was quietly abandoned by Elizabeth, the abandonment was due, not so much to any deference for the religious instincts of the nation as to the fact that the steady servility of the bishops rendered its exercise unnecessary. A second step in Cromwell's policy followed hard on this enslavement of the episcopate. Master of convocation, absolute master of the bishops, Henry had become master of the monastic orders through the right of visitation over them, which had been transferred by the Act of Supremacy from the papacy to the crown. The monks were soon to know what this right of visitation implied in the hands of the vicar-general. As an outlet for religious enthusiasm, monasticism was practically dead. The friar, now that his fervor of devotion and his intellectual energy had passed away, had sunk into a mere beggar. The monks had become mere landowners. Most of the religious houses were anxious only to enlarge their revenues and to diminish the number of those who shared them. In the general carelessness which prevailed as to the spiritual objects of their trust, in the wasteful management of their estates, in the indolence and self-indulgence which for the most part characterized them, the monastic establishments simply exhibited the faults of all corporate bodies that have outlived the work which they were created to perform. They were no more unpopular, however, than such corporate bodies generally are. The Lollard cry for their suppression had died away. In the north, where some of the greatest abbeys were situated, the monks were on good terms with the country gentry, and their houses served as schools for their children; nor is there any sign of a different feeling elsewhere. But they had drawn on themselves at once the hatred of the New Learning and of the monarchy. In the early days of the revival of letters, popes and bishops had joined with princes and scholars in welcoming the diffusion of culture and the hopes of religious reform. But, though an abbot or a prior here or there might be found among the supporters of the movement, the monastic orders as a whole repelled it with unswerving obstinacy. The quarrel only became more bitter as years went on. The keen sarcasms of Erasmus, the insolent buffoonery of Hutten, were lavished on the "lovers of darkness" and of the cloister. In England Colet and More echoed with greater reserve the scorn and invective of their friends. The monarchy had other causes for its hate. In Cromwell's system there was no room for either the virtues or the vices of monasticism, for its indolence and superstition, or for its independence of the throne. The bold stand which the monastic orders had made against benevolences had never been forgiven, while the revenues of their foundations offered spoil vast enough to fill the royal treasury and secure a host of friends for the new reforms. Two royal commissioners, therefore, were despatched on a general visitation of the religious houses, and their reports formed a "Black Book" which was laid before parliament in 1536. It was acknowledged that about a third of the houses, including the bulk of the larger abbeys, were fairly and decently conducted. The rest were charged with drunkenness, with simony, and with the foulest and most revolting crimes. The character of the visitors, the sweeping nature of their report, and the long debate which followed on its reception leave little doubt that these charges were grossly exaggerated. But the want of any effective discipline which had resulted from their exemption from all but papal supervision told fatally against monastic morality even in abbeys like St. Albans; and the acknowledgment of Warham, as well as a partial measure of suppression begun by Wolsey, goes some way to prove that, in the smaller houses at least, indolence had passed into crime. A cry of "down with them" broke from the commons as the report was read. The country, however, was still far from desiring the utter downfall of the monastic system, and a long and bitter debate was followed by a compromise which suppressed all houses whose income fell below two hundred pounds a year. Of the thousand religious houses which then existed in England, nearly four hundred were dissolved under this act and their revenues granted to the crown. The secular clergy alone remained; and injunction after injunction from the vicar-general taught rector and vicar that they must learn to regard themselves as mere mouth-pieces of the royal will. The Church was gagged. With the instinct of genius, Cromwell discerned the part which the pulpit, as the one means which then existed of speaking to the people at large, was to play in the religious and political struggle that was at hand; and he resolved to turn it to the profit of the monarchy. The restriction of the right of preaching to priests who received licenses from the Crown silenced every voice of opposition. Even to those who received these licenses theological controversy was forbidden; and a high-handed process of "tuning the pulpits," by express directions as to the subject and tenor of each special discourse, made the preachers at every crisis mere means of diffusing the royal will. As a first step in this process every bishop, abbot, and parish priest was required by the new vicar-general to preach against the usurpation of the papacy, and to proclaim the King as supreme head of the Church on earth. The very topics of the sermon were carefully prescribed; the bishops were held responsible for the compliance of the clergy with these orders; and the sheriffs were held responsible for the obedience of the bishops. While the great revolution which struck down the Church was in progress, England looked silently on. In all the earlier ecclesiastical changes, in the contest over the papal jurisdiction and papal exactions, in the reform of the church courts, even in the curtailment of the legislative independence of the clergy, the nation as a whole had gone with the King. But from the enslavement of the priesthood, from the gagging of the pulpits, from the suppression of the monasteries, the bulk of the nation stood aloof. There were few voices, indeed, of protest. As the royal policy disclosed itself, as the monarchy trampled under foot the tradition and reverence of ages gone by, as its figure rose bare and terrible out of the wreck of old institutions, England simply held her breath. It is only through the stray depositions of royal spies that we catch a glimpse of the wrath and hate which lay seething under this silence of the people. For the silence was a silence of terror. Before Cromwell's rise, and after his fall from power, the reign of Henry VIII witnessed no more than the common tyranny and bloodshed of the time. But the years of Cromwell's administration form the one period in our history which deserves the name that men have given to the rule of Robespierre. It was the English "Terror." It was by terror that Cromwell mastered the King. Cranmer could plead for him at a later time with Henry as "one whose surety was only by your majesty, who loved your majesty, as I ever thought, no less than God." But the attitude of Cromwell toward the King was something more than that of absolute dependence and unquestioning devotion. He was "so vigilant to preserve your majesty from all treasons," adds the primate, "that few could be so secretly conceived but he detected the same from the beginning." Henry, like every Tudor, was fearless of open danger, but tremulously sensitive to the lightest breath of hidden disloyalty; and it was on this dread that Cromwell based the fabric of his power. He was hardly secretary before spies were scattered broadcast over the land. Secret denunciations poured into the open ear of the minister. The air was thick with tales of plots and conspiracies; and with the detection and suppression of each, Cromwell tightened his hold on the King. As it was by terror that he mastered the King, so it was by terror that he mastered the people. Men felt in England, to use the figure by which Erasmus paints the time, "as if a scorpion lay sleeping under every stone." The confessional had no secrets for Cromwell. Men's talk with their closest friends found its way to his ear. "Words idly spoken," the murmurs of a petulant abbot, the ravings of a moon-struck nun, were, as the nobles cried passionately at his fall, "tortured into treason." The only chance of safety lay in silence. "Friends who used to write and send me presents," Erasmus tells us, "now send neither letter nor gifts, nor receive any from anyone, and this through fear." But even the refuge of silence was closed by a law more infamous than any that has ever blotted the statute-book of England. Not only was thought made treason, but men were forced to reveal their thoughts on pain of their very silence being punished with the penalties of treason. All trust in the older bulwarks of liberty was destroyed by a policy as daring as it was unscrupulous. The noblest institutions were degraded into instruments of terror. Though Wolsey had strained the law to the utmost, he had made no open attack on the freedom of justice. If he shrank from assembling parliaments, it was from his sense that they were the bulwarks of liberty. But under Cromwell the coercion of juries and the management of judges rendered the courts mere mouth-pieces of the royal will; and where even this shadow of justice proved an obstacle to bloodshed, parliament was brought into play to pass bill after bill of attainder. "He shall be judged by the bloody laws he has himself made," was the cry of the council at the moment of his fall, and by a singular retribution the crowning injustice which he sought to introduce even into the practice of attainder, the condemnation of a man without hearing his defence, was only practised on himself. But, ruthless as was the "Terror" of Cromwell, it was of a nobler type than the Terror of France. He never struck uselessly or capriciously, or stooped to the meaner victims of the guillotine. His blows were effective just because he chose his victims from among the noblest and the best. If he struck at the Church, it was through the Carthusians, the holiest and the most renowned of English churchmen. If he struck at the baronage, it was through Lady Salisbury, in whose veins flowed the blood of kings. If he struck at the New Learning, it was through the murder of Sir Thomas More. But no personal vindictiveness mingled with his crime. In temper, indeed, so far as we can judge from the few stories which lingered among his friends, he was a generous, kindly hearted man, with pleasant and winning manners which atoned for a certain awkwardness of person, and with a constancy of friendship which won him a host of devoted adherents. But no touch either of love or hate swayed him from his course. The student of Machiavelli had not studied the _Prince_ in vain. He had reduced bloodshed to a system. Fragments of his papers still show us with what a business-like brevity he ticked off human lives among the casual "remembrances" of the day. "Item, the Abbot of Reading to be sent down to be tried and executed at Reading." "Item, to know the King's pleasure touching Master More." "Item, when Master Fisher shall go to his execution, and the other." It is indeed this utter absence of all passion, of all personal feeling, that makes the figure of Cromwell the most terrible in our history. He has an absolute faith in the end he is pursuing, and he simply hews his way to it as a woodman hews his way through the forest, axe in hand. The choice of his first victim showed the ruthless precision with which Cromwell was to strike. In the general opinion of Europe, the foremost Englishman of the time was Sir Thomas More. As the policy of the divorce ended in an open rupture with Rome, he had withdrawn silently from the ministry, but his silent disapproval of the new policy was more telling than the opposition of obscurer foes. To Cromwell there must have been something specially galling in More's attitude of reserve. The religious reforms of the New Learning were being rapidly carried out, but it was plain that the man who represented the very life of the New Learning believed that the sacrifice of liberty and justice was too dear a price to pay even for religious reform. In the actual changes which the divorce brought about, there was nothing to move More to active or open opposition. Though he looked on the divorce and remarriage as without religious warrant, he found no difficulty in accepting an act of succession passed in 1534 which declared the marriage of Anne Boleyn valid, annulled the title of Catherine's child, Mary, and declared the children of Anne the only lawful heirs to the crown. His faith in the power of parliament over all civil matters was too complete to admit a doubt of its competence to regulate the succession to the throne. But by the same act an oath recognizing the succession as then arranged was ordered to be taken by all persons; and this oath contained an acknowledgment that the marriage with Catherine was against Scripture, and invalid from the beginning. Henry had long known More's belief on this point; and the summons to take this oath was simply a summons to death. More was at his house at Chelsea when the summons called him to Lambeth, to the house where he had bandied fun with Warham and Erasmus or bent over the easel of Holbein. For a moment there may have been some passing impulse to yield. But it was soon over. Triumphant in all else, the monarchy was to find its power stop short at the conscience of man. The great battle of spiritual freedom, the battle of the Protestant against Mary, of the Catholic against Elizabeth, of the Puritan against Charles, of the Independent against the Presbyterian, began at the moment when More refused to bend or to deny his convictions at a king's bidding. "I thank the Lord," More said with a sudden start as the boat dropped silently down the river from his garden steps in the early morning, "I thank the Lord that the field is won." At Lambeth, Cranmer and his fellow-commissioners tendered to him the new oath of allegiance; but, as they expected, it was refused. They bade him walk in the garden, that he might reconsider his reply. The day was hot, and More seated himself in a window from which he could look down into the crowded court. Even in the presence of death, the quick sympathy of his nature could enjoy the humor and life of the throng below. "I saw," he said afterward, "Master Latimer very merry in the court, for he laughed and took one or twain by the neck so handsomely that if they had been women I should have weened that he waxed wanton." The crowd below was chiefly of priests, rectors, and vicars, pressing to take the oath that More found harder than death. He bore them no grudge for it. When he heard the voice of one who was known to have boggled hard at the oath, a little while before, calling loudly and ostentatiously for drink, he only noted him with his peculiar humor. "He drank," More supposed, "either from dryness or from gladness," or "to show _quod ille notus erat Pontifici_." He was called in again at last, but only repeated his refusal. It was in vain that Cranmer plied him with distinctions which perplexed even the subtle wit of the ex-chancellor; More remained unshaken and passed to the Tower. He was followed there by Bishop Fisher of Rochester, the most aged and venerable of the English prelates, who was charged with countenancing treason by listening to the prophecies of a religious fanatic called the "Nun of Kent." But for the moment even Cromwell shrank from their blood. They remained prisoners, while a new and more terrible engine was devised to crush out the silent but widespread opposition to the religious changes. By a statute passed at the close of 1534 a new treason was created in the denial of the King's titles; and in the opening of 1535 Henry assumed, as we have seen, the title of "on earth supreme head of the Church of England." The measure was at once followed up by a blow at victims hardly less venerable than More. In the general relaxation of the religious life, the charity and devotion of the brethren of the Charter-house had won the reverence even of those who condemned monasticism. After a stubborn resistance they had acknowledged the royal supremacy and taken the oath of submission prescribed by the act. But, by an infamous construction of the statute which made the denial of the supremacy treason, the refusal of satisfactory answers to official questions, as to a conscientious belief in it, was held to be equivalent to open denial. The aim of the new measure was well known, and the brethren prepared to die. In the agony of waiting, enthusiasm brought its imaginative consolations; "when the host was lifted up, there came as it were a whisper of air which breathed upon our faces as we knelt; and there came a sweet, soft sound of music." They had not long, however, to wait, for their refusal to answer was the signal for their doom. Three of the brethren went to the gallows; the rest were flung into Newgate, chained to posts in a noisome dungeon, where, "tied and not able to stir," they were left to perish of jail fever and starvation. In a fortnight five were dead and the rest at the point of death, "almost despatched," Cromwell's envoy wrote to him, "by the hand of God, of which, considering their behavior, I am not sorry." Their death was soon followed by that of More. The interval of imprisonment had failed to break his resolution, and the new statute sufficed to bring him to the block. With Fisher he was convicted of denying the King's title as only supreme head of the Church. The old bishop approached the scaffold with a book of the New Testament in his hand. He opened it at a venture ere he knelt, and read, "This is life eternal to know thee, the only true God." In July More followed his fellow-prisoners to the block. On the eve of the fatal blow he moved his beard carefully from the reach of the doomsman's axe. "Pity that should be cut," he was heard to mutter with a touch of the old sad irony, "that has never committed treason." Cromwell had at last reached his aim. England lay panic-stricken at the feet of the "low-born knave," as the nobles called him, who represented the omnipotence of the crown. Like Wolsey he concentrated in his hands the whole administration of the state; he was at once foreign minister and home minister, and vicar-general of the Church, the creator of a new fleet, the organizer of armies, the president of the terrible star chamber. His Italian indifference to the mere show of power stood out in strong contrast with the pomp of the Cardinal. Cromwell's personal habits were simple and unostentatious; if he clutched at money, it was to feed the army of spies whom he maintained at his own expense, and whose work he surveyed with a ceaseless vigilance. For his activity was boundless. More than fifty volumes remain of the gigantic mass of his correspondence. Thousands of letters from "poor bedesmen," from outraged wives and wronged laborers and persecuted heretics, flowed in to the all-powerful minister, whose system of personal government turned him into the universal court of appeal. But powerful as he was, and mighty as was the work which he had accomplished, he knew that harder blows had to be struck before his position was secure. The new changes, above all the irritation which had been caused by the outrages with which the dissolution of the monasteries was accompanied, gave point to the mutinous temper that prevailed throughout the country; for the revolution in agriculture was still going on, and evictions furnished embittered outcasts to swell the ranks of any rising. Nor did it seem as though revolt, if it once broke out, would want leaders to head it. The nobles, who had writhed under the rule of the Cardinal, writhed yet more bitterly under the rule of one whom they looked upon not only as Wolsey's tool, but as a low-born upstart. "The world will never mend," Lord Hussey had been heard to say, "till we fight for it." "Knaves rule about the King!" cried Lord Exeter; "I trust some day to give them a buffet!" At this moment, too, the hopes of political reaction were stirred by the fate of one whom the friends of the old order looked upon as the source of all their troubles. In the spring of 1536, while the dissolution of the monasteries was marking the triumph of the new policy, Anne Boleyn was suddenly charged with adultery and sent to the Tower. A few days later she was tried, condemned, and brought to the block. The Queen's ruin was everywhere taken as an omen of ruin to the cause which had become identified with her own, and the old nobility mustered courage to face the minister who held them at his feet. They found their opportunity in the discontent of the North, where the monasteries had been popular, and where the rougher mood of the people turned easily to resistance. In the autumn of 1536 a rising broke out in Lincolnshire, and this was hardly quelled when all Yorkshire rose in arms. From every parish the farmers marched with the parish priest at their head upon York, and the surrender of this city determined the waverers. In a few days Skipton castle, where the Earl of Cumberland held out with a handful of men, was the only spot north of the Humber which remained true to the King. Durham rose at the call of the chiefs of the house of Neville, Lords Westmoreland and Latimer. Though the Earl of Northumberland feigned sickness, the Percies joined the revolt. Lord Dacre, the chief of the Yorkshire nobles, surrendered Pomfret, and was acknowledged as their chief by the insurgents. The whole nobility of the North were now enlisted in the "Pilgrimage of Grace," as the rising called itself, and thirty thousand "tall men and well horsed" moved on the Don demanding the reversal of the royal policy, a reunion with Rome, the restoration of Catherine's daughter, Mary, to her rights as heiress of the crown, redress for the wrongs done to the Church, and above all the driving away of base-born councillors, or, in other words, the fall of Cromwell. Though their advance was checked by negotiation, the organization of the revolt went steadily on throughout the winter, and a parliament of the North, which gathered at Pomfret, formally adopted the demands of the insurgents. Only six thousand men under Norfolk barred their way southward, and the Midland counties were known to be disaffected. But Cromwell remained undaunted by the peril. He suffered, indeed, Norfolk to negotiate; and allowed Henry under pressure from his council to promise pardon and a free parliament at York, a pledge which Norfolk and Dacre alike construed into an acceptance of the demands made by the insurgents. Their leaders at once flung aside the badge of the "Five Wounds" which they had worn, with a cry, "We will wear no badge but that of our lord the King," and nobles and farmers dispersed to their homes in triumph. But the towns of the North were no sooner garrisoned and Norfolk's army in the heart of Yorkshire than the veil was flung aside. A few isolated outbreaks in the spring of 1537 gave a pretext for the withdrawal of every concession. The arrest of the leaders of the Pilgrimage of Grace was followed by ruthless severities. The country was covered with gibbets. Whole districts were given up to military execution. But it was on the leaders of the rising that Cromwell's hand fell heaviest. He seized his opportunity for dealing at the northern nobles a fatal blow. "Cromwell," one of the chief among them broke fiercely out as he stood at the council board, "it is thou that art the very special and chief cause of all this rebellion and wickedness, and dost daily travail to bring us to our ends and strike off our heads. I trust that ere thou die, though thou wouldst procure all the noblest heads within the realm to be stricken off, yet there shall one head remain that shall strike off thy head." But the warning was unheeded. Lord Darcy, who stood first among the nobles of Yorkshire, and Lord Hussey, who stood first among the nobles of Lincolnshire, went alike to the block. The Abbot of Barlings, who had ridden into Lincoln with his canons in full armor, swung with his brother-abbots of Whalley, Woburn, and Sawley from the gallows. The abbots of Fountains and of Jervaulx were hanged at Tyburn side by side with the representative of the great line of Percy. Lady Bulmer was burned at the stake. Sir Robert Constable was hanged in chains before the gate of Hull. The defeat of the northern revolt showed the immense force which the monarchy had gained. Even among the rebels themselves not a voice had threatened Henry's throne. It was not at the King that they aimed these blows, but at the "low-born knaves" who stood about the King. At this moment, too, Henry's position was strengthened by the birth of an heir. On the death of Anne Boleyn he had married Jane Seymour, the daughter of a Wiltshire knight; and in 1537 this Queen died in giving birth to a boy, the future Edward VI. The triumph of the Crown at home was doubled by its triumph in the great dependency which had so long held the English authority at bay across St. George's Channel. With England and Ireland alike at his feet, Cromwell could venture on a last and crowning change. He could claim for the monarchy the right of dictating at its pleasure the form of faith and doctrine to be taught throughout the land. Henry had remained true to the standpoint of the New Learning; and the sympathies of Cromwell were mainly with those of his master. They had no wish for any violent break with the ecclesiastical forms of the past. They desired religious reform rather than religious revolution, a simplification of doctrine rather than any radical change in it, the purification of worship rather than the introduction of any wholly new ritual. Their theology remained, as they believed, a Catholic theology, but a theology cleared of the superstitious growths which obscured the true Catholicism of the early Church. In a word, their dream was the dream of Erasmus and Colet. The spirit of Erasmus was seen in the articles of religion which were laid before convocation in 1536; in the acknowledgment of justification by faith, a doctrine for which the founders of the New Learning, such as Contarini and Pole, were struggling at Rome itself; in the condemnation of purgatory, of pardons, and of masses for the dead, as it was seen in the admission of prayers for the dead and in the retention of the ceremonies of the Church without material change. A series of royal injunctions which followed carried out the same policy of reform. Pilgrimages were suppressed; the excessive number of holy days was curtailed; the worship of images and relics was discouraged in words which seemed almost copied from the protest of Erasmus. His appeal for a translation of the Bible which weavers might repeat at their shuttle and ploughmen sing at their plough received at last a reply. At the outset of the ministry of Norfolk and More, the King had promised an English version of the Scriptures, while prohibiting the circulation of Tyndale's Lutheran translation. The work, however, lagged in the hands of the bishops; and as a preliminary measure the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments were now rendered into English, and ordered to be taught by every schoolmaster and father of a family to his children and pupils. But the bishops' version still hung on hand; till, in despair of its appearance, a friend of Archbishop Cranmer, Miles Coverdale, was employed to correct and revise the translation of Tyndale; and the Bible which he edited was published in 1538 under the avowed patronage of Henry himself. But the force of events was already carrying England far from the standpoint of Erasmus or More. The dream of the New Learning was to be wrought out through the progress of education and piety. In the policy of Cromwell, reform was to be brought about by the brute force of the monarchy. The story of the royal supremacy was graven even on the title-page of the new Bible. It is Henry on his throne who gives the sacred volume to Cranmer, ere Cranmer and Cromwell can distribute it to the throng of priests and laymen below. Hitherto men had looked on religious truth as a gift from the Church. They were now to look on it as a gift from the King. The very gratitude of Englishmen for fresh spiritual enlightenment was to tell to the profit of the royal power. No conception could be further from that of the New Learning, from the plea for intellectual freedom which runs through the life of Erasmus, or the craving for political liberty which gives nobleness to the speculations of More. Nor was it possible for Henry himself to avoid drifting from the standpoint he had chosen. He had written against Luther; he had persisted in opposing Lutheran doctrine; he had passed new laws to hinder the circulation of Lutheran books in his realm. But influences from without as from within drove him nearer to Lutheranism. If the encouragement of Francis had done somewhat to bring about his final breach with the papacy, he soon found little will in the French King to follow him in any course of separation from Rome; and the French alliance threatened to become useless as a shelter against the wrath of the Emperor. Charles was goaded into action by the bill annulling Mary's right of succession; and in 1535 he proposed to unite his house with that of Francis by close intermarriage, and to sanction Mary's marriage with a son of the French King if Francis would join in an attack on England. Whether such a proposal was serious or no, Henry had to dread attack from Charles himself and to look for new allies against it. He was driven to offer his alliance to the Lutheran princes of North Germany, who dreaded like himself the power of the Emperor, and who were now gathering in the League of Smalkald. But the German princes made agreement as to doctrine a condition of their alliance; and their pressure was backed by Henry's partisans among the clergy at home. In Cromwell's scheme for mastering the priesthood it had been needful to place men on whom the King could rely at their head. Cranmer became primate, Latimer became Bishop of Worcester, Shaxton and Barlow were raised to the sees of Salisbury and St. David's, Hilsey to that of Rochester, Goodrich to that of Ely, Fox to that of Hereford. But it was hard to find men among the clergy who paused at Henry's theological resting-place; and of these prelates all except Latimer were known to sympathize with Lutheranism, though Cranmer lagged far behind his fellows in their zeal for reform. The influence of these men, as well as of an attempt to comply at least partly with the demand of the German princes, left its stamp on the articles of 1536. For the principle of Catholicism, of a universal form of faith overspreading all temporal dominions, the Lutheran states had substituted the principle of territorial religion, of the right of each sovereign or people to determine the form of belief which should be held within their bounds. The severance from Rome had already brought Henry to this principle, and the Act of Supremacy was its emphatic assertion. In England, too, as in North Germany, the repudiation of the papal authority as a ground of faith, of the voice of the Pope as a declaration of truth, had driven men to find such a ground and declaration in the Bible; and the articles expressly based the faith of the Church of England on the Bible and the three creeds. With such fundamental principles of agreement it was possible to borrow from the Augsburg Confession five of the ten articles which Henry laid before the convocation. If penance was still retained as a sacrament, baptism and the Lord's Supper were alone maintained to be sacraments with it; the doctrine of transubstantiation, which Henry stubbornly maintained, differed so little from the doctrine maintained by Luther that the words of Lutheran formularies were borrowed to explain it; confession was admitted by the Lutheran churches as well as by the English. The veneration of saints and the doctrine of prayer to them, though still retained, were so modified as to present little difficulty even to a Lutheran. However disguised in form, the doctrinal advance made in the articles of 1536 was an immense one; and a vehement opposition might have been looked for from those of the bishops like Gardiner, who, while they agreed with Henry's policy of establishing a national church, remained opposed to any change in faith. But the articles had been drawn up by Henry's own hand, and all whisper of opposition was hushed. Bishops, abbots, clergy, not only subscribed to them, but carried out with implicit obedience the injunctions which put their doctrine roughly into practice; and the failure of the Pilgrimage of Grace in the following autumn ended all thought of resistance among the laity. But Cromwell found a different reception for his reforms when he turned to extend them to the sister-island. The religious aspect of Ireland was hardly less chaotic than its political aspect had been. Ever since Strongbow's landing, there had been no one Irish church, simply because there had been no one Irish nation. There was not the slightest difference in doctrine or discipline between the Church without the pale and the Church within it. But within the pale the clergy were exclusively of English blood and speech, and without it they were exclusively of Irish. Irishmen were shut out by law from abbeys and churches within the English boundary; and the ill-will of the natives shut out Englishmen from churches and abbeys outside it. As to the religious state of the country, it was much on a level with its political condition. Feuds and misrule told fatally on ecclesiastical discipline. The bishops were political officers, or hard fighters, like the chiefs around them; their sees were neglected, their cathedrals abandoned to decay. Through whole dioceses the churches lay in ruins and without priests. The only preaching done in the country was done by the begging friars, and the results of the friars' preaching were small. "If the King do not provide a remedy," it was said in 1525, "there will be no more Christentie than in the middle of Turkey." Unfortunately the remedy which Henry provided was worse than the disease. Politically Ireland was one with England, and the great revolution which was severing the one country from the papacy extended itself naturally to the other. The results of it indeed at first seemed small enough. The supremacy, a question which had convulsed England, passed over into Ireland to meet its only obstacle in a general indifference. Everybody was ready to accept it without a thought of the consequences. The bishops and clergy within the pale bent to the King's will as easily as their fellows in England, and their example was followed by at least four prelates of dioceses without the pale. The native chieftains made no more scruple than the lords of the council in renouncing obedience to the Bishop of Rome, and in acknowledging Henry as the "supreme head of the Church of England and Ireland under Christ." There was none of the resistance to the dissolution of the abbeys which had been witnessed on the other side of the channel, and the greedy chieftains showed themselves perfectly willing to share the plunder of the Church. But the results of the measure were fatal to the little culture and religion which even the past centuries of disorder had spared. Such as they were, the religious houses were the only schools that Ireland contained. The system of vicars, so general in England, was rare in Ireland; churches in the patronage of the abbeys were for the most part served by the religious themselves, and the dissolution of their houses suspended public worship over large districts of the country. The friars, hitherto the only preachers, and who continued to labor and teach in spite of the efforts of the government, were thrown necessarily into a position of antagonism to the English rule. Had the ecclesiastical changes which were forced on the country ended here, however, in the end little harm would have been done. But in England the breach with Rome, the destruction of the monastic orders, and the establishment of the supremacy had aroused in a portion of the people itself a desire for theological change which Henry shared and was cautiously satisfying. In Ireland the spirit of the Reformation never existed among the people at all. They accepted the legislative measures passed in the English Parliament without any dream of theological consequences, or of any change in the doctrine or ceremonies of the Church. Not a single voice demanded the abolition of pilgrimages or the destruction of images or the reform of public worship. The mission of Archbishop Browne in 1535 "for the plucking down of idols and extinguishing of idolatry" was a first step in the long effort of the English government to force a new faith on a people who to a man clung passionately to their old religion. Browne's attempts at "tuning the pulpits" were met by a sullen and significant opposition. "Neither by gentle exhortation," the Archbishop wrote to Cromwell, "nor by evangelical instruction, neither by oath of them solemnly taken nor yet by threats of sharp correction, may I persuade or induce any, whether religious or secular, since my coming over once to preach the Word of God, nor the just title of our illustrious Prince." Even the acceptance of the supremacy, which had been so quietly effected, was brought into question when its results became clear. The bishops abstained from compliance with the order to erase the Pope's name out of their mass-books. The pulpits remained steadily silent. When Browne ordered the destruction of the images and relics in his own cathedral, he had to report that the prior and canons "find them so sweet for their gain that they heed not my words." Cromwell, however, was resolute for a religious uniformity between the two islands, and the primate borrowed some of his patron's vigor. Recalcitrant priests were thrown into prison, images were plucked down from the rood-loft, and the most venerable of Irish relics, the staff of St. Patrick, was burned in the market-place. But he found no support in his vigor save from across the channel. The Irish council looked coldly on; even the Lord Deputy still knelt to say prayers before an image at Trim. A sullen, dogged opposition baffled Cromwell's efforts, and their only result was to unite all Ireland against the Crown. But Cromwell found it easier to deal with Irish inaction than with the feverish activity which his reforms stirred in England itself. It was impossible to strike blow after blow at the Church without rousing wild hopes in the party who sympathized with the work which Luther was doing oversea. Few as these "Lutherans" or "Protestants" still were in numbers, their new hopes made them a formidable force; and in the school of persecution they had learned a violence which delighted in outrages on the faith which had so long trampled them under foot. At the very outset of Cromwell's changes, four Suffolk youths broke into a church at Dovercourt, tore down a wonder-working crucifix, and burned it in the fields. The suppression of the lesser monasteries was the signal for a new outburst of ribald insult to the old religion. The roughness, insolence, and extortion of the commissioners sent to effect it drove the whole monastic body to despair. Their servants rode along the road with copes for doublets or tunicles for saddle-cloths, and scattered panic among the larger houses which were left. Some sold their jewels and relics to provide for the evil day they saw approaching. Some begged of their own will for dissolution. It was worse when fresh ordinances of the vicar-general ordered the removal of objects of superstitious veneration. Their removal, bitter enough to those whose religion twined itself around the image or the relic which was taken away, was embittered yet more by the insults with which it was accompanied. A miraculous rood at Boxley, which bowed its head and stirred its eyes, was paraded from market to market and exhibited as a juggle before the court. Images of the Virgin were stripped of their costly vestments and sent to be publicly burned at London. Latimer forwarded to the capital the figure of Our Lady, which he had thrust out of his cathedral church at Worcester with rough words of scorn: "She with her old sister of Walsingham, her younger sister of Ipswich, and their two other sisters of Doncaster and Penrice, would make a jolly muster at Smithfield." Fresh orders were given to fling all relics from their reliquaries, and to level every shrine with the ground. In 1538 the bones of St. Thomas of Canterbury were torn from the stately shrine which had been the glory of his metropolitan church, and his name was erased from the service-books as that of a traitor. The introduction of the English Bible into churches gave a new opening for the zeal of the Protestants. In spite of royal injunctions that it should be read decently and without comment, the young zealots of the party prided themselves on shouting it out to a circle of excited hearers during the service of mass, and accompanied their reading with violent expositions. Protestant maidens took the new English primer to church with them and studied it ostentatiously during matins. Insult passed into open violence when the bishops' courts were invaded and broken up by Protestant mobs; and law and public opinion were outraged at once when priests who favored the new doctrines began openly to bring home wives to their vicarages. A fiery outburst of popular discussion compensated for the silence of the pulpits. The new Scriptures, in Henry's bitter words of complaint, were "disputed, rhymed, sung, and jangled in every tavern and alehouse." The articles which dictated the belief of the English Church roused a furious controversy. Above all, the sacrament of the mass, the centre of the Catholic system of faith and worship, and which still remained sacred to the bulk of Englishmen, was attacked with a scurrility and profaneness which pass belief. The doctrine of transubstantiation, which was as yet recognized by law, was held up in scorn in ballads and mystery plays. In one church a Protestant lawyer raised a dog in his hands when the priest elevated the host. The most sacred words of the old worship, the words of consecration, "_Hoc est corpus_," were travestied into a nickname for jugglery as "Hocus-pocus." It was by this attack on the mass, even more than by the other outrages, that the temper both of Henry and the nation was stirred to a deep resentment. With the Protestants Henry had no sympathy whatever. He was a man of the New Learning; he was proud of his orthodoxy and of his title of "Defender of the Faith." And above all he shared to the utmost his people's love of order, their clinging to the past, their hatred of extravagance and excess. The first sign of reaction was seen in the parliament of 1539. Never had the houses shown so little care for political liberty. The monarchy seemed to free itself from all parliamentary restrictions whatever when a formal statute gave the King's proclamations the force of parliamentary laws. Nor did the Church find favor with them. No word of the old opposition was heard when a bill was introduced granting to the King the greater monasteries which had been saved in 1536. More than six hundred religious houses fell at a blow, and so great was the spoil that the King promised never again to call on his people for subsidies. But the houses were equally at one in withstanding the new innovations of religion, and an act for "abolishing diversity of opinions in certain articles concerning Christian religion" passed with general assent. On the doctrine of transubstantiation, which was reasserted by the first of six articles to which the act owes its usual name, there was no difference of feeling or belief between the men of the New Learning and the older Catholics. But the road to a further instalment of even moderate reform seemed closed by the five other articles which sanctioned communion in one kind, the celibacy of the clergy, monastic vows, private masses, and auricular confession. A more terrible feature of the reaction was the revival of persecution. Burning was denounced as the penalty for a denial of transubstantiation; on a second offence it became the penalty for an infraction of the other five doctrines. A refusal to confess or to attend mass was made felony. It was in vain that Cranmer, with the five bishops who partially sympathized with the Protestants, struggled against the bill in the lords: the commons were "all of one opinion," and Henry himself acted as spokesman on the side of the articles. In London alone five hundred Protestants were indicted under the new act. Latimer and Shaxton were imprisoned, and the former forced into a resignation of his see. Cranmer himself was only saved by Henry's personal favor. But the first burst of triumph was no sooner spent than the hand of Cromwell made itself felt. Though his opinions remained those of the New Learning and differed little from the general sentiment which found itself represented in the act, he leaned instinctively to the one party which did not long for his fall. His wish was to restrain the Protestant excesses, but he had no mind to ruin the Protestants. In a little time therefore the bishops were quietly released. The London indictments were quashed. The magistrates were checked in their enforcement of the law, while a general pardon cleared the prisons of the heretics who had been arrested under its provisions. A few months after the enactment of the Six Articles we find from a Protestant letter that persecution had wholly ceased, "the Word is powerfully preached and books of every kind may safely be exposed for sale." Never indeed had Cromwell shown such greatness as in his last struggle against fate. "Beknaved" by the King, whose confidence in him waned as he discerned the full meaning of the religious changes which Cromwell had brought about, met too by a growing opposition in the council as his favor declined, the temper of the man remained indomitable as ever. He stood absolutely alone. Wolsey, hated as he had been by the nobles, had been supported by the Church; but churchmen hated Cromwell with an even fiercer hate than the nobles themselves. His only friends were the Protestants, and their friendship was more fatal than the hatred of his foes. But he showed no signs of fear or of halting in the course he had entered on. So long as Henry supported him, however reluctant his support might be, he was more than a match for his foes. He was strong enough to expel his chief opponent, Bishop Gardiner of Winchester, from the royal council. He met the hostility of the nobles with a threat which marked his power. "If the lords would handle him so, he would give them such a breakfast as never was made in England, and that the proudest of them should know." He soon gave a terrible earnest of the way in which he could fulfil his threat. The opposition to his system gathered, above all, round two houses which represented what yet lingered of the Yorkist tradition, the Courtenays and the Poles. Courtenay, the Marquis of Exeter, was of royal blood, a grandson through his mother of Edward IV. He was known to have bitterly denounced the "knaves that ruled about the King"; and his threats to "give them some day a buffet" were formidable in the mouth of one whose influence in the western counties was supreme. Margaret, the Countess of Salisbury, a daughter of the Duke of Clarence by the heiress of the Earl of Warwick, and a niece of Edward IV, had married Sir Richard Pole, and became mother of Lord Montacute as of Sir Geoffry and Reginald Pole. The temper of her house might be guessed from the conduct of the younger of the three brothers. After refusing the highest favors from Henry as the price of his approval of the divorce, Reginald Pole had taken refuge at Rome, where he had bitterly attacked the King in a book, _The Unity of the Church_. "There may be found ways enough in Italy," Cromwell wrote to him in significant words, "to rid a treacherous subject. When Justice can take no place by process of law at home, sometimes she may be enforced to take new means abroad." But he had left hostages in Henry's hands. "Pity that the folly of one witless fool," Cromwell wrote ominously, "should be the ruin of so great a family. Let him follow ambition as fast as he can, those that little have offended (saving that he is of their kin), were it not for the great mercy and benignity of the Prince, should and might feel what it is to have such a traitor as their kinsman." The "great mercy and benignity of the Prince" was no longer to shelter them. In 1538 the Pope, Paul III, published a bull of excommunication and deposition against Henry, and Pole pressed the Emperor vigorously, though ineffectually, to carry the bull into execution. His efforts only brought about, as Cromwell had threatened, the ruin of his house. His brother, Lord Montacute, and the Marquis of Exeter, with other friends of the two great families, were arrested on a charge of treason and executed in the opening of 1539, while the Countess of Salisbury was attainted in parliament and sent to the Tower. Almost as terrible an act of bloodshed closed the year. The abbots of Glastonbury, Reading, and Colchester, men who had sat as mitred abbots among the lords, were charged with a denial of the King's supremacy and hanged as traitors. But Cromwell relied for success on more than terror. His single will forced on a scheme of foreign policy whose aim was to bind England to the cause of the Reformation while it bound Henry helplessly to his minister. The daring boast which his enemies laid afterward to Cromwell's charge, whether uttered or not, is but the expression of his system--"In brief time he would bring things to such a pass that the King with all his power should not be able to hinder him." His plans rested, like the plan which proved fatal to Wolsey, on a fresh marriage of his master; Henry's third wife, Jane Seymour, had died in childbirth; and in the opening of 1540 Cromwell replaced her by a German consort, Anne of Cleves, a sister-in-law of the Lutheran Elector of Saxony. He dared even to resist Henry's caprice when the King revolted on their first interview from the coarse features and unwieldy form of his new bride. For the moment Cromwell had brought matters "to such a pass" that it was impossible to recoil from the marriage, and the minister's elevation to the earldom of Essex seemed to proclaim his success. The marriage of Anne of Cleves, however, was but the first step in a policy which, had it been carried out as he designed it, would have anticipated the triumphs of Richelieu. Charles and the house of Austria could alone bring about a Catholic reaction strong enough to arrest and roll back the Reformation; and Cromwell was no sooner united with the princes of North Germany than he sought to league them with France for the overthrow of the Emperor. Had he succeeded, the whole face of Europe would have been changed, Southern Germany would have been secured for Protestantism, and the Thirty Years' War averted. But he failed as men fail who stand ahead of their age. The German princes shrank from a contest with the Emperor, France from a struggle which would be fatal to Catholicism; and Henry, left alone to bear the resentment of the house of Austria and chained to a wife he loathed, turned savagely on his minister. In June the long struggle came to an end. The nobles sprang on Cromwell with a fierceness that told of their long-hoarded hate. Taunts and execrations burst from the Lords at the council table as the Duke of Norfolk, who had been intrusted with the minister's arrest, tore the ensign of the garter from his neck. At the charge of treason Cromwell flung his cap on the ground with a passionate cry of despair. "This, then," he exclaimed, "is my guerdon for the services I have done! On your consciences, I ask you, am I a traitor?" Then, with a sudden sense that all was over, he bade his foes make quick work, and not leave him to languish in prison. Quick work was made. A few days after his arrest he was attainted in parliament, and at the close of July a burst of popular applause hailed his death on the scaffold. CARTIER EXPLORES CANADA FRENCH ATTEMPTS AT COLONIZATION A.D. 1534 H. H. MILES Early in the sixteenth century, when France, after the Hundred Years' War with England, had begun to be a notable European power, the nation, under the young and brilliant Francis I, took up the project of prosecuting New World discovery and obtaining a firm footing on the mainland of America. The French King's attention had been directed to the enterprise by his grand admiral, Philip de Chabot, who seems to have been interested in the hardy mariner and skilled navigator, Jacques Cartier, and wished to place him at the head of an expedition to the New World, to prosecute discovery on the northeastern coast of America. This was in the year A.D. 1534, ten year after Verrazano had been in the region and named it New France, in honor of the French King. On April 20, 1534, Cartier, with two small vessels of about sixty tons each, set sail from the Britanny port of St. Malo for Newfoundland, on the banks of which Cartier's Breton and Norman countrymen had long been accustomed to fish. The incidents of this and the subsequent voyages of the St. Malo mariner, with an account of the expedition under the Viceroy of Canada, the Sieur de Roberval, will be found appended in Dr. Miles' interesting narrative. Canada was discovered in the year 1534, by Jacques Cartier (or Quartier), a mariner belonging to the small French seaport St. Malo. He was a man in whom were combined the qualities of prudence, industry, skill, perseverance, courage, and a deep sense of religion. Commissioned by the King of France, Francis I, he conducted three successive expeditions across the Atlantic for the purpose of prosecuting discovery in the western hemisphere; and it is well understood that he had previously gained experience in seamanship on board fishing-vessels trading between Europe and the Banks of Newfoundland. He was selected and recommended to the King for appointment as one who might be expected to realize, for the benefit of France, some of the discoveries of his predecessor, Verrazano, which had been attended with no substantial result, since this navigator and his companions had scarcely done more than view, from a distance, the coasts of the extensive regions to which the name of New France had been given. It was also expected of Cartier that, through his endeavors, valuable lands would be taken possession of in the King's name, and that places suitable for settlement, and stations for carrying on traffic, would be established. Moreover, it was hoped that the precious metals would be procured in those parts, and that a passage onward to China (Cathay) and the East Indies would be found out. And, finally, the ambitious sovereign of France was induced to believe that, in spite of the pretensions of Portugal and Spain,[44] he might make good his own claim to a share in transatlantic territories. With such objects in view, Jacques Cartier set sail from St. Malo, on Monday, April 20, 1534.[45] His command consisted of two small vessels, with crews amounting to about one hundred twenty men, and provisioned for four or five months. On May 10th the little squadron arrived off Cape Bonavista, Newfoundland; but, as the ice and snow of the previous winter had not yet disappeared, the vessels were laid up for ten days in a harbor near by, named St. Catherine's. From this, on the 21st, they sailed northward to an island northeast of Cape Bonavista, situated about forty miles from the mainland, which had been called by the Portuguese the "Isle of Birds." Here were found several species of birds which, it appears, frequented the island at that season of the year in prodigious numbers, so that, according to Cartier's own narrative, the crews had no difficulty in capturing enough of them, both for their immediate use and to fill eight or ten large barrels (_pippes_) for future consumption. Bears and foxes are described as passing from the mainland, in order to feed upon the birds as well as their eggs and young. From the Isle of Birds the ships proceeded northward and westward until they came to the Straits of Belle-Isle, when they were detained by foul weather, and by ice, in a harbor, from May 27th until June 9th. The ensuing fifteen days were spent in exploring the coast of Labrador as far as Blanc Sablon and the western coast of Newfoundland. For the most part these regions, including contiguous islands, were pronounced by Cartier to be unfit for settlement, especially Labrador, of which he remarks, "it might, as well as not, be taken for the country assigned by God to Cain." From the shore of Newfoundland the vessels were steered westward across the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and about June 25th arrived in the vicinity of the Magdalen Islands. Of an island named "Isle Bryon," Cartier says it contained the best land they had yet seen, and that "one acre of it was worth the whole of Newfoundland." Birds were plentiful, and on its shores were to be seen "beasts as large as oxen and possessing great tusks like elephants, which, when approached, leaped suddenly into the sea." There were very fine trees and rich tracts of ground, on which were seen growing quantities of "wild corn, peas in flower, currants, strawberries, roses, and sweet herbs." Cartier noticed the character of the tides and waves, which swept high and strong among the islands, and which suggested to his mind the existence of an opening between the south of Newfoundland and Cape Breton. Toward the end of June the islands and mainland of the northwest part of the territory now called New Brunswick came in sight, and, as land was approached, Cartier began at once to search for a passage through which he might sail farther westward. The ships' boats were several times lowered, and the crews made to row close inshore in the bays and inlets, for the purpose of discovering an opening. On these occasions natives were sometimes seen upon the beach, or moving about in bark canoes, with whom the French contrived to establish a friendly intercourse and traffic, by means of signs and presents of hatchets, knives, small crucifixes, beads, and toys. On one occasion they had in sight from forty to fifty canoes full of savages, of which seven paddled close up to the French boats, so as to surround them, and were driven away only by demonstrations of force. Cartier learned afterward that it was customary for these savages to come down from parts more inland, in great numbers, to the coast, during the fishing season, and that this was the cause of his finding so many of them at that time. On the 7th day of the month a considerable body of the same savages came about the ships, and some traffic occurred. Gifts, consisting of knives, hatchets, and toys, along with a red cap for their head chief, caused them to depart in great joy. Early in July, Cartier found that he was in a considerable bay, which he named "La Baie des Chaleurs." He continued to employ his boats in the examination of the smaller inlets and mouths of the rivers flowing into the bay, hoping that an opening might be discovered similar to that by which, a month before, he had passed round the north of Newfoundland into the gulf. After the 16th the weather was boisterous, and the ships were anchored for shelter close to the shore several days. During this time the savages came there to fish for mackerel, which were abundant, and held friendly intercourse with Cartier and his people. They were very poor and miserably clad in old skins, and sang and danced to testify their pleasure on receiving the presents which the French distributed among them. Sailing eastward and northward, the vessels next passed along the coast of Gaspé, upon which the French landed and held intercourse with the natives. Cartier resolved to take formal possession of the country, and to indicate, in a conspicuous manner, that he did so in the name of the King, his master, and in the interests of religion. With these objects in view, on Friday, July 24th, a huge wooden cross, thirty feet in height, was constructed, and was raised with much ceremony, in sight of many of the Indians, close to the entrance of the harbor; three _fleurs-de-lys_ being carved under the cross, and an inscription, "_Vive le Roy de France_." The French formed a circle on their knees around it, and made signs to attract the attention of the savages, pointing up to the heavens, "as if to show that by the cross came their redemption." These ceremonies being ended, Cartier and his people went on board, followed from the shore by many of the Indians. Among these the principal chief, with his brother and three sons, in one canoe, came near Cartier's ship. He made an oration, in course of which he pointed toward the high cross, and then to the surrounding territory, as much as to say that it all belonged to him, and that the French ought not to have planted it there without his permission. The sight of hatchets and knives displayed before him, in such a manner as to show a desire to trade with him, made him approach nearer, and, at the same time, several sailors, entering his canoe, easily induced him and his companions to pass into the ship. Cartier, by signs, endeavored to persuade the chief that the cross had been erected as a beacon to mark the way into the harbor; that he would revisit the place and bring hatchets, knives, and other things made of iron, and that he desired the friendship of his people. Food and drink were offered, of which they partook freely, when Cartier made known to the chief his wish to take two of his sons away with him for a time. The chief and his sons appear to have readily assented. The young men at once put on colored garments, supplied by Cartier, throwing out their old clothing to others near the ship. The chief, with his brother and remaining son, were then dismissed with presents. About midday, however, just as the ships were about to move farther from shore, six canoes, full of Indians, came to them, bringing presents of fish, and to enable the friends of the chief's sons to bid them adieu. Cartier took occasion to enjoin upon the savages the necessity of guarding the cross which had been erected, upon which the Indians replied in unintelligible language. Next day, July 25th, the vessels left the harbor with a fair wind, making sail northward to 50° latitude. It was intended to prosecute the voyage farther westward, if possible; but adverse winds, and the appearance of the distant headlands, discouraged Cartier's hopes so much that on Wednesday, August 5th, after taking counsel with his officers and pilots, he decided that it was not safe to attempt more that season. The little squadron, therefore, bore off toward the east and northeast, and made Blanc Sablon on the 9th. Continuing thence their passage into the Atlantic, they were favored with fair winds, which carried them to the middle of the ocean, between Newfoundland and Bretagne. They then encountered storms and adverse winds, respecting which Cartier piously remarks: "We suffered and endured these with the aid of God, and after that we had good weather and arrived at the harbor of St. Malo, whence we had set out, on September 5, 1534." Thus ended Jacques Cartier's first voyage to Canada. As a French-Canadian historian of Canada has observed, this first expedition was not "sterile in results"; for, in addition to the other notable incidents of the voyage, the two natives whom he carried with him to France are understood to have been the first to inform him of the existence of the great river St. Lawrence, which he was destined to discover the following year. It is not certainly known how nearly he advanced to the mouth of that river on his passage from Gaspé Bay. But it is believed that he passed round the western point of Anticosti, subsequently named by him Isle de l'Assumption, and that he then turned to the east, leaving behind the entrance into the great river, which he then supposed to be an extensive bay, and, coasting along the shore of Labrador, came to the river Natachquoin, near Mount Joli, whence, as already stated, he passed eastward and northward to Blanc Sablon. Cartier and his companions were favorably received on their return to France. The expectations of his employers had been to a certain extent realized, while the narrative of the voyage, and the prospects which this afforded of greater results in future, inspired such feelings of hope and confidence that there seems to have been no hesitation in furnishing means for the equipment of another expedition. The Indians who had been brought to France were instructed in the French language, and served also as specimens of the people inhabiting his majesty's western dominions. During the winter the necessary preparations were made. On the May 19, 1535, Cartier took his departure from St. Malo on his second expedition. It was in every way better equipped than that of the preceding year, and consisted of three ships, manned by one hundred ten sailors. A number of gentlemen volunteers from France accompanied it. Cartier himself embarked on board the largest vessel, which was named La Grande Hermine, along with his two interpreters. Adverse winds lengthened the voyage, so that seven weeks were occupied in sailing to the Straits of Belle-Isle. Thence the squadron made for the Gulf of St. Lawrence, so named by Cartier in honor of the day upon which he entered it. Emboldened by the information derived from his Indian interpreters, he sailed up the great river, at first named the River of Canada, or of Hochelaga. The mouth of the Saguenay was passed on September 1st, and the island of Orleans reached on the 9th. To this he gave the name "Isle of Bacchus," on account of the abundance of grape-vines upon it. On the 16th the ships arrived off the headland since known as Cape Diamond. Near to this, a small river, called by Cartier St. Croix, now the St. Charles, was observed flowing into the St. Lawrence, intercepting, at the confluence, a piece of lowland, which was the site of the Indian village Stadacona. Towering above this, on the left bank of the greater river, was Cape Diamond and the contiguous highland, which in after times became the site of the Upper Town of Quebec. A little way within the mouth of the St. Croix, Cartier selected stations suitable for mooring and laying up his vessels; for he seems, on his arrival at Stadacona, to have already decided upon wintering in the country. This design was favored, not only by the advanced period of the season, but also by the fact that the natives appeared to be friendly and in a position to supply his people abundantly with provisions. Many hundreds came off from the shore in bark canoes, bringing fish, maize, and fruit. Aided by the two interpreters, the French endeavored at once to establish a friendly intercourse. A chief, Donacona, made an oration, and expressed his desire for amicable relations between his own people and their visitors. Cartier, on his part, tried to allay apprehension, and to obtain information respecting the country higher up the great river. Wishing also to impress upon the minds of the savages a conviction of the French power, he caused several pieces of artillery to be discharged in the presence of the chief and a number of his warriors. Fear and astonishment were occasioned by the sight of the fire and smoke, followed by sounds such as they had never heard before. Presents, consisting of trinkets, small crosses, beads, pieces of glass, and other trifles, were distributed among them. Cartier allowed himself a rest of only three days at Stadacona, deeming it expedient to proceed at once up the river with an exploring party. For this purpose he manned his smallest ship, the Ermerillon, and two boats, and departed on the 19th of September, leaving the other ships safely moored at the mouth of the St. Charles. He had learned from the Indians that there was another town, called Hochelaga, situated about sixty leagues above. Cartier and his companions, the first European navigators of the St. Lawrence, and the earliest pioneers of civilization and Christianity in those regions, moved very slowly up the river. At the part since called Lake St. Peter the water seemed to become more and more shallow. The Ermerillon, was therefore left as well secured as possible, and the remainder of the passage made in the two boats. Frequent meetings, of a friendly nature, with Indians on the river bank, caused delays, so that they did not arrive at Hochelaga until October 2d. As described by Cartier himself, this town consisted of about fifty large huts or cabins, which, for purposes of defence, were surrounded by wooden palisades. There were upward of twelve hundred inhabitants,[46] belonging to some Algonquin tribe. At Hochelaga, as previously at Stadacona, the French were received by the natives in a friendly manner. Supplies of fish and maize were freely offered, and, in return, presents of beads, knives, small mirrors, and crucifixes were distributed. Entering into communication with them, Cartier sought information respecting the country higher up the river. From their imperfect intelligence it appears he learned the existence of several great lakes, and that beyond the largest and most remote of these there was another great river which flowed southward. They conducted him to the summit of a mountain behind the town, whence he surveyed the prospect of a wilderness stretching to the south and west as far as the eye could reach, and beautifully diversified by elevations of land and by water. Whatever credit Cartier attached to their vague statements about the geography of their country, he was certainly struck by the grandeur of the neighboring scenery as viewed from the eminence on which he stood. To this he gave the name of Mount Royal, whence the name of Montreal was conferred on the city which has grown up on the site of the ancient Indian town Hochelaga. According to some accounts, Hochelaga was, even in those days, a place of importance, having subject to it eight or ten outlying settlements or villages. Anxious to return to Stadacona, and probably placing little confidence in the friendly professions of the natives, Cartier remained at Hochelaga only two days, and commenced his passage down the river on October 4th. His wary mistrust of the Indian character was not groundless, for bands of savages followed along the banks and watched all the proceedings of his party. On one occasion he was attacked by them and narrowly escaped massacre. Arriving at Stadacona on the 11th, measures were taken for maintenance and security during the approaching winter. Abundant provisions had been already stored up by the natives and assigned for the use of the strangers. A fence or palisade was constructed round the ships, and made as strong as possible, and cannon so placed as to be available in case of any attack. Notwithstanding these precautions, it turned out that, in one essential particular, the preparations for winter were defective. Jacques Cartier and his companions being the first of Europeans to experience the rigors of a Canadian winter, the necessity for warm clothing had not been foreseen when the expedition left France, and now, when winter was upon them, the procuring of a supply was simply impossible. The winter proved long and severe. Masses of ice began to come down the St. Lawrence on November 15th, and, not long afterward, a bridge of ice was formed opposite to Stadacona. Soon the intensity of the cold--such as Cartier's people had never before experienced--and the want of suitable clothing occasioned much suffering. Then, in December, a disease, but little known to Europeans, broke out among the crew. It was the scurvy, named by the French _mal-de-terre_. As described by Cartier, it was very painful, loathsome in its symptoms and effects, as well as contagious. The legs and thighs of the patients swelled, the sinews contracted, and the skin became black. In some cases the whole body was covered with purple spots and sore tumors. After a time the upper parts of the body--the back, arms, shoulders, neck, and face--were all painfully affected. The roof of the mouth, gums, and teeth fell out. Altogether, the sufferers presented a deplorable spectacle. Many died between December and April, during which period the greatest care was taken to conceal their true condition from the natives. Had this not been done, it is to be feared that Donacona's people would have forced an entrance and put all to death for the purpose of obtaining the property of the French. In fact, the two interpreters were, on the whole, unfaithful, living entirely at Stadacona; while Donacona, and the Indians generally, showed, in many ways, that, under a friendly exterior, unfavorable feelings reigned in their hearts. But the attempts to hide their condition from the natives might have been fatal, for the Indians, who also suffered from scurvy, were acquainted with means of curing the disease. It was only by accident that Cartier found out what those means were. He had forbidden the savages to come on board the ships, and when any of them came near the only men allowed to be seen by them were those who were in health. One day, Domagaya was observed approaching. This man, the younger of the two interpreters, was known to have been sick of the scurvy at Stadacona, so that Cartier was much surprised to see him out and well. He contrived to make him relate the particulars of his recovery, and thus found out that a decoction of the bark and foliage of the white spruce-tree furnished the savages with a remedy. Having recourse to this enabled the French captain to arrest the progress of the disease among his own people, and, in a short time, to bring about their restoration to health. The meeting with Domagaya occurred at a time when the French were in a very sad state--reduced to the brink of despair. Twenty-five of the number had died, while forty more were in expectation of soon following their deceased comrades. Of the remaining forty-five, including Cartier and all the surviving officers, only three or four were really free from disease. The dead could not be buried, nor was it possible for the sick to be properly cared for. In this extremity, the stout-hearted French captain could think of no other remedy than a recourse to prayers and the setting up of an image of the Virgin Mary in sight of the sufferers. "But," he piously exclaimed, "God, in his holy grace, looked down in pity upon us, and sent to us a knowledge of the means of cure." He had great apprehensions of an attack from the savages, for he says in his narrative: "We were in a marvellous state of terror lest the people of the country should ascertain our pitiable condition and our weakness," and then goes on to relate artifices by which he contrived to deceive them. One of the ships had to be abandoned in course of the winter, her crew and contents being removed into the other two vessels. The deserted hull was visited by the savages in search of pieces of iron and other things. Had they known the cause for abandoning her, and the desperate condition of the French, they would have soon forced their way into the other ships. They were, in fact, too numerous to be resisted if they had made the attempt. At length the protracted winter came to an end. As soon as the ships were clear of ice, Cartier made preparations for returning at once to France. On May 3, 1536, a wooden cross, thirty-five feet high, was raised upon the river bank. Donacona was invited to approach, along with his people. When he did so, Cartier caused him, together with the two interpreters and seven warriors, to be seized and taken on board his ship. His object was to convey them to France and present them to the King. On the 6th, the two vessels departed. Upward of six weeks were spent in descending the St. Lawrence and traversing the gulf. Instead of passing through the Straits of Belle-Isle, Cartier this time made for the south coast of Newfoundland, along which he sailed out into the Atlantic Ocean. On Sunday, July 17, 1536, he arrived at St. Malo. By the results of this second voyage, Jacques Cartier established for himself a reputation and a name in history which will never cease to be remembered with respect. He had discovered one of the largest rivers in the world, had explored its banks, and navigated its difficult channel more than eight hundred miles, with a degree of skill and courage which has never been surpassed; for it was a great matter in those days to penetrate so far into unknown regions, to encounter the hazards of an unknown navigation, and to risk his own safety and that of his followers among an unknown people. Moreover, his accounts of the incidents of his sojourn of eight months, and of the features of the country, as well as his estimate of the two principal sites upon which, in after times, the two cities, Quebec and Montreal, have grown up, illustrate both his fidelity and his sagacity. His dealings with the natives appear to have been such as to prove his tact, prudence, and sense of justice, notwithstanding the objectionable procedure of capturing and carrying off Donacona with other chiefs and warriors. This latter measure, however indefensible in itself, was consistent with the almost universal practice of navigators of that period and long afterward. Doubtless Cartier's expectation was that their abduction could not but result in their own benefit by leading to their instruction in civilization and Christianity, and that it might be afterward instrumental in producing the rapid conversion of large numbers of their people. However this may be, considering the inherent viciousness of the Indian character, Cartier's intercourse with the Indians was conducted with dignity and benevolence, and was marked by the total absence of bloodshed--which is more than can be urged in behalf of other eminent discoverers and navigators of those days or during the ensuing two centuries. Cartier was undoubtedly one of the greatest sea-captains of his own or any other country, and one who provided carefully for the safety and welfare of his followers, and, so far as we know, enjoyed their respect and confidence; nor were his plans hindered or his proceedings embarrassed by disobedience on their part or the display of mutinous conduct calculated to mar the success of a maritime expedition. In fine, Jacques Cartier was a noble specimen of a mariner, in an age when a maritime spirit prevailed. A severe disappointment awaited Cartier on his return home from his second voyage. France was now engaged in a foreign war; and at the same time the minds of the people were distracted by religious dissensions. In consequence of these untoward circumstances, both the court and the people had ceased to give heed to the objects which he had been so faithfully engaged in prosecuting in the western hemisphere. Neither he nor his friends could obtain even a hearing in behalf of the fitting out of another expedition, for the attention of the King and his advisers was now absorbed by weightier cares at home. Nevertheless, from time to time, as occasion offered, several unsuccessful attempts were made to introduce the project of establishing a French colony on the banks of the St. Lawrence. Meanwhile, Donacona, and the other Indian warriors who had been brought captives to France, pined away and died. At length, after an interval of about four years, proposals for another voyage westward, and for colonizing the country, came to be so far entertained that plans of an expedition were permitted to be discussed. But now, instead of receiving the unanimous support which had been accorded to previous undertakings, the project was opposed by a powerful party at court, consisting of persons who tried to dissuade the King from granting his assent. These alleged that enough had already been done for the honor of their country; that it was not expedient to take in hand the subjugation and settlement of those far-distant regions, tenanted only by savages and wild animals; that the intensely severe climate and hardships such as had proved fatal to one-fourth of Cartier's people in 1535, were certain evils, which there was no prospect of advantage to outweigh; that the newly discovered country had not been shown to possess mines of gold and silver; and, finally, that such extensive territories could not be effectively settled without transporting thither a considerable part of the population of the kingdom of France. Notwithstanding the apparent force of these objections, the French King did eventually sanction the project of another transatlantic enterprise on a larger scale than heretofore. A sum of money was granted by the King toward the purchase and equipment of ships, to be placed under the command of Jacques Cartier, having the commission of captain-general.[47] Apart from the navigation of the fleet, the chief command in the undertaking was assigned to M. de Roberval, who, in a commission dated January 15, 1540, was named viceroy and lieutenant-general over Newfoundland, Labrador, and Canada. Roberval was empowered to engage volunteers and emigrants, and to supply the lack of these by means of prisoners to be taken from the jails and hulks. Thus, in about five years from the discovery of the river St. Lawrence, and, six years after, of Canada, measures were taken for founding a colony. But from the very commencement of the undertaking, which, it will be seen, proved an entire failure, difficulties presented themselves. Roberval was unable to provide all the requisite supplies of small arms, ammunition, and other stores, as he had engaged to do, during the winter of 1540. It also was found difficult to induce volunteers and emigrants to embark. It was, therefore, settled that Roberval should remain behind to complete his preparations, while Cartier, with five vessels, provisioned for two years, should set sail at once for the St. Lawrence. On May 23, 1541, Cartier departed from St. Malo on his third voyage to Canada. After a protracted passage of twelve weeks, the fleet arrived at Stadacona. Cartier and some of his people landed and entered into communication with the natives, who flocked round him as they had done in 1535. They desired to know what had become of their chief, Donacona, and the warriors who had been carried off to France five years before. On being made aware that all had died, they became distant and sullen in their behavior. They held out no inducements to the French to reëstablish their quarters at Stadacona. Perceiving this, as well as signs of dissimulation, Cartier determined to take such steps as might secure himself and followers from suffering through their resentment. Two of his ships he sent back at once to France, with letters for the King and for Roberval, reporting his movements, and soliciting such supplies as were needed. With the remaining ships he ascended the St. Lawrence as far as Cap-Rouge, where a station was chosen close to the mouth of a stream which flowed into the great river. Here it was determined to moor the ships and to erect such storehouses and other works as might be necessary for security and convenience. It was also decided to raise a small fort or forts on the highland above, so as to command the station and protect themselves from any attack which the Indians might be disposed to make. While some of the people were employed upon the building of the fort, others were set at work preparing ground for cultivation. Cartier himself, in his report, bore ample testimony to the excellent qualities of the soil, as well as the general fitness of the country for settlement.[48] Having made all the dispositions necessary for the security of the station at Cap-Rouge, and for continuing, during his absence, the works already commenced, Cartier departed for Hochelaga on September 7th, with a party of men, in two barges. On the passage up he found the Indians whom he had met in 1535 as friendly as before. The natives of Hochelaga seemed also well disposed, and rendered all the assistance he sought in enabling him to attempt the passage up the rapids situated above that town. Failing to accomplish this, he remained but a short time among them, gathering all the information they could furnish about the regions bordering on the Upper St. Lawrence. He then hastened back to Cap-Rouge. On his way down he found the Indians, who a short time before were so friendly, changed and cold in their demeanor, if not actually hostile. Arrived at Cap-Rouge, the first thing he learned was that the Indians had ceased to visit the station as at first, and, instead of coming daily with supplies of fish and fruit, that they only approached near enough to manifest, by their demeanor and gestures, feelings decidedly hostile toward the French. In fact, during Cartier's absence, former causes of enmity had been heightened by a quarrel, in which, although some of his own people had, in the first instance, been the aggressors, a powerful savage had killed a Frenchman, and threatened to deal with another in like manner. Winter came, but not Roberval with the expected supplies of warlike stores and men, now so much needed, in order to curb the insolence of the natives. Of the incidents of that winter passed at Cap-Rouge, there is but little reliable information extant. It is understood, however, that the Indians continued to harass and molest the French throughout the period of their stay, and that Cartier, with his inadequate force, found it difficult to repel their attacks. When spring came round, the inconveniences to which they had been exposed, and the discouraging character of their prospects, led to a unanimous determination to abandon the station and return to France as soon as possible.[49] At the very time that Cartier, in Canada, was occupied in preparations for the reëmbarkation of the people who had wintered at Cap-Rouge, Roberval, in France, was completing his arrangements for departure from Rochelle with three considerable ships. In these were embarked two hundred persons, consisting of gentlemen, soldiers, sailors, and colonists, male and female, among whom was a considerable number of criminals taken out of the public prisons. The two squadrons met in the harbor of St. John's, Newfoundland, when Cartier, after making his report to Roberval, was desired to return with the outward-bound expedition to Canada. Foreseeing the failure of the undertaking, or, as some have alleged, unwilling to allow another to participate in the credit of his discoveries, Cartier disobeyed the orders of his superior officer. Various accounts have been given of this transaction, according to some of which, Cartier, to avoid detention or importunity, weighed anchor in the night-time and set sail for France. Roberval resumed his voyage westward, and by the close of July had ascended the St. Lawrence to Cap-Rouge, where he at once established his colonists in the quarters recently vacated by Cartier. It is unnecessary to narrate in detail the incidents which transpired in connection with Roberval's expedition, as this proved a signal failure, and produced no results of consequence to the future fortunes of the country. It is sufficient to state that, although Roberval himself was a man endowed with courage and perseverance, he found himself powerless to cope with the difficulties of his position, which included insubordination that could be repressed only by means of the gallows and other extreme modes of punishment; disease, which carried off a quarter of his followers in the course of the ensuing winter; unsuccessful attempts at exploration, attended with considerable loss of life; and finally famine, which reduced the surviving French to a state of abject dependence upon the natives for the salvation of their lives. Roberval had sent one of his vessels back to France, with urgent demands for succor; but the King, instead of acceding to his petition, despatched orders for him to return home. It is stated, on somewhat doubtful authority, that Cartier himself was deputed to bring home the relics of the expedition; and, if so, this distinguished navigator must have made a fourth voyage out to the regions which he had been the first to make known to the world. Thus ended Roberval's abortive attempt to establish a French colony on the banks of the St. Lawrence. Of the principal actors in the scenes which have been described, but little remains to be recorded. Roberval, after having distinguished himself in the European wars carried on by Francis I, is stated to have fitted out another expedition, in conjunction with his brother, in the year 1549, for the purpose of making a second attempt to found a colony in Canada; but he and all with him perished at sea. The intrepid Cartier, by whose services in the western hemisphere so extensive an addition had been made to the dominions of the King of France, was suffered to retire into obscurity, and is supposed to have passed the remainder of his days on a small estate possessed by him in the neighborhood of his native place, St. Malo. The date of his decease is unknown.[50] FOOTNOTES: [44] The courts of Spain and Portugal had protested against any fresh expedition from France to the west, alleging that, by right of prior discovery, as well as the Pope's grant of all the western regions to themselves, the French could not go there without invading their privileges. Francis, on the other hand, treated these pretensions with derision, observing sarcastically that he would "like to see the clause in old Father Adam's will by which an inheritance so vast was bequeathed to his brothers of Spain and Portugal." [45] The dates in this and subsequent pages are in accordance with the "old style" of reckoning. [46] It has not been satisfactorily settled to what tribe the Indians belonged who were found by Cartier at Hochelaga. Some have even doubted the accuracy of his description in relation to their numbers, the character of their habitations, and other circumstances, under the belief that allowance must be made for exaggeration in the accounts of the first European visitors, who were desirous that their adventures should rival those of Cortés and Pizarro. It has also been suggested that the people were not Hurons, but remnants of the Iroquois tribes, who might have lingered there on their way southward. At any rate, when the place was revisited by Frenchmen more than half a century afterward, very few savages were seen in the neighborhood, and these different from those met by Cartier, while the town itself was no longer in existence. Champlain, upward of seventy years after Jacques Cartier, visited Hochelaga, but made no mention in his narrative either of the town or of inhabitants. [47] Commission dated October 20, 1540. In this document the French King's appreciation of Cartier's merits is strongly shown in the terms employed to express his royal confidence "in the character, judgment, ability, loyalty, dignity, hardihood, great diligence, and experience of the said Jacques Cartier." Cartier was also authorized to select fifty prisoners "whom he might judge useful," etc. [48] His description is substantially as follows: "On both sides of the river were very good lands filled with as beautiful and vigorous trees as are to be seen in the world, and of various sorts. A great many oaks, the finest I have ever seen in my life, and so full of acorns that they seemed like to break down with their weight. Besides these there were the most beautiful maples, cedars, birches, and other kinds of trees not to be seen in France. The forest land toward the south is covered with vines, which are found loaded with grapes as black as brambleberries. There were also many hawthorn-trees, with leaves as large as those of the oak, and fruit like that of the medlar-tree. In short, the country is as fit for cultivation as one could find or desire. We sowed seeds of cabbage, lettuce, turnips, and others of our country, which came up in eight days." [49] Early in the spring of 1542 Cartier seems to have made several small excursions in search of gold and silver. That these existed in the country, especially in the region of the Saguenay, was intimated to him by the Indians; and this information probably led Roberval afterward to undertake his unfortunate excursion to Tadousac. Cartier did find a yellowish material, which he styled "_poudre d'or_," and which he took to France, after exhibiting it to Roberval when he met him at Newfoundland. It is likely that this was merely fine sand intermixed with particles of mica. He also took with him small transparent stones, which he supposed to be diamonds, but which could have been no other than transparent crystals of quartz. [50] Cartier was born December 31, 1494. He was therefore in the prime of life when he discovered Canada, and not more than forty-nine years of age at the time when he returned home from his last trip to the west. MENDOZA SETTLES BUENOS AIRES A.D. 1535 ROBERT SOUTHEY By the discovery in 1515 of the Rio de la Plata ("River of Silver"), the Spaniards opened for themselves a way to colonization in South America. The first explorer, Juan Diaz de Solis, was killed by the Indians on landing from the river. But in 1519 Magellan, while on his great voyage of circumnavigation, visited the Plata, and in 1526 Sebastian Cabot, in the service of Charles I of Spain (the emperor Charles V), ascended the river to the junction of the Paraguay and the Parana, both of which he then explored for a long distance. Among the natives, whose silver ornaments, it is said, gave origin to the name La Plata, as well as to that of Argentina, Cabot passed two years in friendly intercourse. He then sent to Spain an account of Paraguay, and a request for authority and reënforcements to take possession of the country with its rich resources. Although his request was favorably received, no efficient action was taken upon it, and, after waiting for five years, Cabot, despairing of the necessary assistance, left the region. It was not long, however, before a somewhat extensive settlement in those parts was projected. Don Pedro Mendoza, a knight of Guadix, Granada, one of the royal household, undertook the colonization of the country, and September 1, 1534, he sailed from San Lucar. Mendoza had enriched himself at the sackage of Rome by the Constable de Bourbon in 1527. Ill-gotten wealth has been so often ill-expended as to have occasioned proverbs in all languages; the plunder of Rome did not satisfy him, and, dreaming of other Mexicos and Cuzcos, he obtained a grant of all the country from the river Plata to the straits, to be his government, with permission to proceed across the continent to the South Sea. He undertook to carry out in two voyages, and within two years, a thousand men, a hundred horses, and stores for one year at his own expense, the King[51] granting him the title of _adelantado_, and a salary of two thousand ducats for life, with two thousand more from the fruits of the conquest in aid of his expenses. He was to build three fortresses, and be perpetual alcaid of the first; his heirs after him were to be first alguazils of the place where he fixed his residence, and after he had remained three years he might transfer the task of completing the colonization and conquest either to his heir or any other person whom it might please him to appoint--and with it the privileges annexed--if within two years the King approved the choice. A king's ransom was now understood to belong to the crown; but as a further inducement this prerogative was waived in favor of Mendoza and his soldiers, who were to share it, first having deduced the royal fifth, and then a sixth. If, however, the King in question were slain in battle, half the spoils should go to the crown. These terms were made in wishful remembrance of the ransom of Atabalipa. He was to take with him a physician, an apothecary, and a surgeon, and especially eight "religioners." Life is lightly hazarded by those who have nothing more to stake, but that a man should, like Mendoza, stake such riches as would content the most desperate life-gambler for his winnings is one of the many indications how generally and how strongly the contagious spirit of adventure was at that time prevailing. Mendoza had covenanted to carry five hundred men in his first voyage. Such was his reputation, and such the ardor for going to the Silver River, that more adventurers offered than it was possible for him to take, and he accelerated his departure on account of the enormous expense which such a host occasioned. The force with which he set forth consisted of eleven ships and eight hundred men. So fine an armament had never yet sailed from Europe for America: but they who beheld its departure are said to have remarked that the service of the dead ought to be performed for the adventurers. They reached Rio de Janeiro after a prosperous voyage, and remained there a fortnight, during which time the Adelantado, being crippled by a contraction of the sinews, appointed Juan Osorio to command in his stead. Having made this arrangement they proceeded to their place of destination, anchored at Isle St. Gabriel within the Plata, and then on its southern shore and beside a little river. There Don Pedro de Mendoza laid the foundation of a town which because of its healthy climate he named "Nuestra Señora de Buenos Aires" ("Our Lady of Good Air"). It was not long before he was made jealous of Osorio by certain envious officers, and, weakly lending ear to wicked accusations, he ordered them to fall upon him and kill him, then drag his body into the plaza, or public market-place, and proclaim him a traitor. The murder was perpetrated, and thus was the expedition deprived of one who is described as an honest and generous good soldier. Experience had not yet taught the Spaniards that any large body of settlers in a land of savages must starve unless well supplied with food from other sources until they can raise it for themselves. The Quirandies, who possessed the country round about this new settlement, were a wandering tribe who, in places where there was no water, quenched their thirst by eating a root which they called _cardes_, or by sucking the blood of the animals which they slew. About three thousand of these savages had pitched their movable dwellings some four leagues from the spot which Mendoza had chosen for the site of his city. They were well pleased with their visitors, and during fourteen days brought fish and meat to the camp; on the fifteenth day they failed, and Mendoza sent a few Spaniards to them to look for provisions, who came back empty-handed and wounded. Upon this, he ordered his brother Don Diego, with three hundred soldiers and thirty horsemen, to storm their town, and kill or take prisoner the whole horde. The Quirandies had sent away their women and children, collected a body of allies, and were ready for the attack. Their weapons were bows and arrows and _tardes_--stone-headed tridents about half the length of a lance. Against the horsemen they used a long thong, having a ball of stone at either end. With this they were wont to catch their game; throwing it with practised aim at the legs of the animal it coiled round and brought it to the ground. In all former wars with the Indians the horsemen had been the main strength and often the salvation of the Spaniards. This excellent mode of attack made them altogether useless; they could not defend themselves. The commander and six hidalgos were thrown and killed, and the whole body of horse must have been cut off if the rest had not fled in time and been protected by the infantry. About twenty foot-soldiers were slain with tardes. But it was not possible that these people, brave as they were, could stand against European weapons and such soldiers as the Spaniards: they gave way at last, leaving many of their brethren dead, but not a single prisoner. The conquerors found in their town plenty of flour, fish, what is called "fish-butter"--which probably means inspissated oil--otter-skins, and fishing-nets. They left a hundred men to fish with these nets, and the others returned to the camp. Mendoza was a wretched leader for such an expedition. He seems, improvidently, to have trusted to the natives for provision and to have quarrelled with them unnecessarily. Very soon after his arrival six ounces of bread had been the daily allowance; it was now reduced to three ounces of flour, and, every third day, a fish. They marked out the city and began a mud wall for its defence, the height of a lance and three feet thick. It was badly constructed: what was built up one day, fell down the next; the soldiers had not as yet learned this part of their duties. A strong house was built within the circuit for the Adelantado; meantime their strength began to fail for want of food. Rats, snakes, and vermin of every eatable size were soon exterminated from the environs. Three men stole a horse and ate it; they were tortured to make them confess the fact and then hanged for it; their bodies were left upon the gallows, and in the night all the flesh below the waist was cut away. One man ate the corpse of his brother; some murdered their messmates for the sake of receiving their rations as long as they could conceal their death by saying they were ill. The mortality was very great. Mendoza, seeing that all must perish if they remained here, sent George Luchsan, one of his German or Flemish adventurers, up the river, with four brigantines, to seek for food. Wherever they came the natives fled before them and burned what they could not carry away. Half the men were famished to death, and all must have perished if they had not fallen in with a tribe who gave them barely enough maize to support them during their return. The Quirandies had not been dismayed by one defeat: they prevailed upon the Bartenes, the Zechuruas, and the Timbues to join them, and with a force which the besieged in their fear estimated at three-and-twenty thousand--though it did not probably amount to a third of that number--suddenly attacked the new city. The weapons which they used were not less ingeniously adapted to their present purpose than those which had proved so effectual against the horse. They are said to have had arrows which took fire at the point as soon as they were discharged, which were not extinguished until they had burned out, and which kindled whatever they touched. With these devilish instruments they set fire to the thatched huts of the settlers and consumed them all. The stone house of the Adelantado was the only dwelling which escaped destruction. At the same time, and with the same weapons, they attacked the ships and burned four; the other three got to a safe distance in time and at length drove them off with their artillery. About thirty Spaniards were slain. The Adelantado now left a part of his diminished force in the ships to repair the settlement, giving them stores enough to keep them from starving for a year, which they were to eke out as best they could; he himself advancing up the river with the rest in the brigantines and smaller vessels. But he deputed his authority to Juan de Ayolas, being utterly unequal to the fatigue of command--in fact he was, at this time, dying of the most loathsome and dreadful malady that human vices have ever yet brought upon human nature. About eighty-four leagues up the river they came to an island inhabited by the Timbues, who received them well. Mendoza presented their chief, Zchera Wasu, with a shirt, a red cap, an axe, and a few other trifles, in return for which he received fish and game enough to save the lives of his people. This tribe trusted wholly to fishing and to the chase for food. They used long canoes. The men were naked, and ornamented both nostrils with stones. The women wore a cotton cloth from the waist to the knee, and cut beauty-slashes in their faces. Here the Spaniards took up their abode, and named the place "Buena Esperanza," signifying "Good Hope." One Gonzalo Romero, who had been one of Cabot's people and had been living among the savages, joined them here. He told them there were large and rich settlements up the country, and it was thought advisable that Ayolas should proceed with the brigantines in search of them. Meantime Mendoza, who was now become completely crippled, returned to Buenos Aires, where he found a great part of his people dead, and the survivors struggling with famine and every species of wretchedness. They were relieved by the arrival of Gonzalo Mendoza, who, at the beginning of their distresses, had been despatched to the coast of Brazil in quest of supplies. Part of Cabot's people, after the destruction of his settlement, had sailed for Brazil and established themselves in a bay called Ygua, four-and-twenty leagues from St. Vicente. There they began to form plantations, and continued two years on friendly terms with the adjoining natives and with the Portuguese. Disputes then arose, and, according to the Castilian account (for no other remains), the Portuguese resolved to fall upon them and drive them out of the country; of this they obtained intelligence, surprised the intended invaders, plundered the town of St. Vicente, and, being joined by some discontented Portuguese from that infant colony, sailed in two ships for the island of St. Catalina. There these adventurers began a new settlement, but such was their restless spirit that, when Gonzalo Mendoza arrived there, they were easily persuaded to abandon the houses which they had just constructed, and the fields which were now beginning to afford them comfortable subsistence; and the whole colony, with their two ships, joined him and made for the Plata, to partake in the conquest and spoils of the Silver River. They brought a considerable supply of stores, and were themselves well armed and well supplied with ammunition. Some Brazilian Indians with their families accompanied them, and they themselves, being accustomed to the language and manners of the natives, were of the most essential service to the adventurers with whom they joined company. At sight of this seasonable relief Mendoza returned thanks to God, shedding tears of joy. He waited awhile in hopes of hearing good tidings from Ayolas, and at length sent Juan de Salazar with a second detachment in quest of him. His health grew daily worse and his hopes fainter; he had lost his brother in this expedition, and expended above forty thousand ducats of his substance; nor did there appear much probability of any eventual success to reimburse him, so he determined to sail for Spain, leaving Francisco Ruyz to command at Buenos Aires, and appointing Ayolas governor if he should return; and Salazar, in case of his death. His instructions were that, as soon as either of them should return, he was to examine what provisions were left, and allow no rations to any persons who could support themselves, nor to any women who were not employed in either washing or in some other such necessary service; that he should sink the ships, or dispose of them in some other manner, and, if he thought fit, proceed across the continent to Peru, where, if he met with Pizarro and Almagro, he was to procure their friendship in the Adelantado's name; and if Almagro should be disposed to give him one hundred fifty thousand ducats for a resignation of his government--as he had given to Pedro de Alvarado--he was to accept it--or even one hundred thousand--unless it should appear more profitable not to close with such an offer. How strong must his hope of plunder have been after four years of continued disappointment and misery! Moreover, he charged his successor, if it should please God to give him any jewel or precious stone, not to omit sending it him, as some help in his trouble, and he instructed him to form a settlement on the way to Peru, either upon the Paraguay or elsewhere, from whence tidings of his proceedings might be transmitted. Having left these directions Mendoza embarked, still dreaming of gold and jewels. On the voyage they were so distressed for provisions that he was obliged to kill a favorite bitch which had accompanied him through all his troubles. While he was eating this wretched meal his senses failed him--he began to rave, and died in the course of two days. FOOTNOTES: [51] Charles I of Spain, who was also the emperor Charles V. FOUNDING OF THE JESUITS A.D. 1540 ISAAC TAYLOR Toward the middle of the sixteenth century definite utterance began to be given to a widespread feeling in the Church that the old monastic orders were no longer fulfilling their purpose. Suggestions of new orders were entertained by the church authorities, and plans for their formation--not to supersede but to supplement the old--began to assume shape. Meanwhile an enthusiastic Spanish soldier, who had renounced the profession of arms, independently gathered about himself the nucleus of what was to be one of the most famous orders in the history of the Church. This organization, called the Company (or Society) of Jesus, but better known to many as the Order of Jesuits, owes its foundation primarily to Ignatius de Loyola (Inigo Lopez de Recalde), who was born at the castle of Loyola, Guipuzcoa, Spain, in 1491. After being educated as a page at the court of Ferdinand, he joined the army, and during his recovery from a wound received at Pamplona in 1521, he became imbued with spiritual ardor and dedicated himself to the service of the Virgin. Henceforth the "fiery Ignatius" devoted himself to the pursuit and, as he believed, the purification of religion. In 1528 he entered the University of Paris, and there, with a few associates, in 1534 he projected the new religious order, which in 1540 was confirmed by the Pope. _The Constitution of the Order_ and _Spiritual Exercises_ were written by him in Spanish. The object of these comrades was to battle for the Church in that time of religious warfare, to stop the spread of heresy, and especially to stay the progress of Protestantism and win back those who had abandoned the old faith. Exempting themselves from the routine of monastic duties, the members of the new order were to have freedom for preaching, hearing confessions, and educating the young. After considering and abandoning various plans for work abroad, the band of fathers at last decided to devote themselves to serving the Church within its own domains, and the first step was a visit of some members of the fraternity to Rome for the purpose of obtaining papal confirmation. Loyola himself, with his chosen colleagues, Faber and Lainez, undertook the mission to Rome, while the eight others were to disperse themselves throughout Northern Italy, and especially to gain a footing, if they could, and to acquire influence at those seats of learning where the youth of Italy were to be met with; such as Padua, Ferrara, Bologna, Siena, and Vicenza. Surprising effects resulted, it is said, from these labors; but we turn toward the three fathers, Ignatius, Lainez, and Faber, who were now making their way on foot to Rome. If Loyola's course of secular study, and if his various engagements as evangelist and as chief of a society, had at all chilled his devotional ardor, or had drawn his thoughts away from the unseen world, this fervor and this upward direction of the mind now returned to him in full force: we are assured that, on this pilgrimage, and "through favor of the Virgin," his days and nights were passed in a sort of continuous ecstasy. As they drew toward the city, and while upon the Siena road, he turned aside to a chapel, then in a ruinous condition, and which he entered alone. Here ecstasy became more ecstatic still; and, in a trance, he believed himself very distinctly to see Him whom, as holy Scripture affirms, "no man hath seen at any time." By the side of this vision of the invisible appeared Jesus, bearing a huge cross. The Father presents Ignatius to the Son, who utters the words, so full of meaning, "I will be favorable to you at Rome." It is no agreeable task thus to compromise the awful realities of religion, and thus to perplex the distinctions which a religious mind wishes to observe between truth and illusion; yet it seems inevitable to narrate that which comes before us, as an integral and important portion of the history we have to do with. And yet incidents such as these, while they will be very far from availing to bring us over as converts to the system which they are supposed supernaturally to authenticate, need not generate any extreme revulsion of feeling in an opposite direction. Good men, ill-trained, or trained under a system which to so great an extent is factitious, demand from us often, we do not say that which an enlightened Christian charity does not include, but a something which is logically distinguishable from it; we mean a philosophic habit of mind, accustomed to deal with human nature, and with its wonderful inconsistencies, on the broadest principles. Some diversities of language present themselves in the narratives that have come down to us of this vision. In that which, perhaps, is worthy of the most regard, the phraseology is such as to suggest the belief that its _exact_ meaning should not easily be gathered from the words. Loyola had asked of the blessed Virgin, "_ut eum cum filio suo poneret_"; and during this trance this request, whatever it might mean, was manifestly granted. From this vision, and from the memorable words "_Ego vobis Romæ propitius ero_," the society may be said to have taken its formal commencement, and to have drawn its appellation. Henceforward it was the "Society of Jesus," for its founder, introduced to the Son of God by the eternal Father, had been orally assured of the divine favor--favor consequent upon his present visit to Rome. Here, then, we have exposed to our view the inner economy or divine machinery of the Jesuit Institute. The Mother of God is the primary mediatrix; the Father, at her intercession, obtains for the founder an auspicious audience of the Son; and the Son authenticates the use to be made of his name in this instance; and so it is that the inchoate order is to be the "Society of Jesus." An inquiry, to which in fact no certain reply could be given, obtrudes itself upon the mind on an occasion like this; namely, how far the infidelity and atheism which pervaded Europe in the next and the following century sprung directly out of profanation such as this? Merely to narrate them, and to do so in the briefest manner, does violence to every genuine sentiment of piety. What must have been the effect produced upon frivolous and sceptical tempers when with sedulous art such things were put forward as solemn verities not to be distinguished from the primary truths of religion, and entitled to the same reverential regard in our minds! Loyola, although thus warranted, as he thought, in assuming for his order so peculiar and exclusive a designation, used a discreet reserve at the first in bringing it forward, lest he should wound the self-love of rival bodies, or seem to be challenging for his company a superiority over other religious orders. So much caution as this his experience would naturally suggest to him; and that he felt the need of it is indicated by what he is reported to have said as he entered Rome. Although the words so recently pronounced still sounded in his ear, "_Ego vobis Romæ propitius ero_," yet as he set foot within the city he turned to his companions and said, with a solemn significance of tone, "I see the windows shut!"--meaning that they should there meet much opposition, and find occasion for the exercise of prudence and of patient endurance of sufferings; of prudence, not less than of patience. But while care was to be taken not to draw toward themselves the envious or suspicious regards of the religious orders or of ecclesiastical potentates, there was even a more urgent need of discretion in avoiding those occasions of scandal which might spring from their undertaking the cure of the souls of the other sex. Into what jeopardy of their saintly reputation had certain eminent men fallen in this very manner; and how narrowly had they escaped the heaviest imputations! The fathers were not to take upon themselves the office of confessors to women--"_nisi essent admodum illustres_." That the risk must necessarily be less, or that there would be none in the instance of ladies of high rank, is not conspicuously certain; but if not, what were those special motives which should warrant the fathers in incurring this peril in such cases? Mere Christian charity would undoubtedly impel a man to meet danger for the welfare of the soul of a poor sempstress as readily as for that of a duchess or the mistress of a monarch. If, therefore, the peril is to be braved in the one case which ought to be evaded in the other, there must be present some motive of which Christian charity knows nothing. So acutely alive was Loyola to the evils that might spring to his order from this source that we find him at a later period not merely rejecting ladies, "_admodum illustres_," but bearding the Pope and the cardinals, and glaringly contravening his own vow of unconditional obedience to the Vicar of Christ, rather than give way to the solicitations of fair and noble penitents. Soon after the arrival of the three--_i.e._, Loyola, Faber, and Lainez--at Rome, in the year 1537, they obtained an audience of the Pope, who welcomed their return, and gave anew his sanction to their endeavors. Faber and Lainez received appointments as theological professors in the gymnasium; while Loyola addressed himself wholly to the care of souls and to the reform of abuses. To several persons of distinction and to some dignitaries of the Church he administered the discipline of the _Spiritual Exercises_, they, for this purpose, withdrawing to solitudes in the neighborhood of Rome, where they were daily conversed with and instructed by himself. At the same time he labored in hospitals, schools, and private houses to induce repentance and to cherish the languishing piety of those who would listen to him. Among such, who fully surrendered their souls to his guidance, were the Spanish procurator Peter Ortiz and Cardinal Gaspar Contarini, both of whom were led by him into a course of fervent devotion in which they persisted, and they, moreover, continued to use their powerful influence in favor of the infant society. The pulpits of many of the churches in the several cities where the fathers had stationed themselves, and some in Rome, had been opened to their use, and the energy and the freshness of their eloquence affected the popular mind in an extraordinary manner; sometimes, indeed, they brought upon themselves violent opposition, but in more frequent instances, their zeal and patient assiduity triumphing over prejudice, jealousy, ecclesiastical inertness, and voluptuousness, the tide of feeling set in with this new impulse, and a commencement was effectively made of that Catholic revival which spread itself throughout Southern Europe, turned back the Reformation wave, saved the papacy, and secured for Christendom the still needed antagonist influence of the Romish and of the reformed systems of doctrine, worship, and polity. At Rome, Loyola, by his personal exertions, effected great reforms in liturgical services--induced a more frequent and devout attention to the sacraments of confession and the eucharist; established and promoted the catechetical instruction of youth; and, in a word, restored to Romanism much of its vitality. The author and mover of so much healthful change did not escape the persecutions that are the lot of reformers. Such trials Loyola encountered, and passed through triumphantly--so we are assured; but in listening to the Jesuit writers, when telling their own story, where the credit of the order and the reputation of its founder are deeply implicated, it is with reservation that we follow them. So fearful a storm--yet a storm long before descried, it is said, by Loyola--fell suddenly upon him and his colleagues that it seemed as if the infant society could by no means resist the impetuous torrent that assailed it. The populace, as well as persons in authority, suddenly gave heed to rumors most startling which came in at once from Spain, from France, and from the North of Italy, and the purport of which was to throw upon the fathers the most grievous imputations affecting their personal character as well as their doctrine. These men were reported to be heretics, Lutherans in disguise, seducers of youth, and men of flagitious life. The author or secret mover of this assault is said to have been a Piedmontese monk of the Augustinian order, himself a secret favorer of the Lutheran heresy and "a tool of Satan," and who at last, throwing off the mask, avowed himself a Lutheran. This man, for the purpose of diverting from himself the suspicions of which his mode of preaching had made him the object at Rome, raised this outcry against Loyola and his companions, affirming of them slanderously and falsely what was quite true as to himself. The Pope and the court having been absent for some time from Rome, this disguised heresiarch had seized the opportunity for gaining the ear of the populace by inveighing against the vices of ecclesiastics, and insinuating opinions to which he gave a color of truth by citations from Scripture and the early fathers. Two of Loyola's colleagues, Salmeron and Lainez, who in their passage through Germany had become skilled in detecting Lutheran pravity, were deputed to listen to this noisy preacher; they did so, and reported that the audacious man was, under some disguise of terms, broaching rank Lutheranism in the very heart of Rome. Loyola, however, determined to treat the heresiarch courteously, and therefore sent him privately an admonition to abstain from a course which occasioned so much scandal, and which could not but afflict Catholic ears. The preacher took fire at this remonstrance, and openly attacked those who had dared thus to rebuke him. Thus attacked, Loyola and his colleagues, on their side, loudly maintained the great points of Catholic doctrine impugned by this preacher, such as the merit and necessity of good works, the validity of religious vows, and the supreme authority of the Church; and in consequence it became extremely difficult on his part to ward off the imputation of Lutheranism or to make it appear that he was anything else than a self-condemned heretic. He, however, so far commanded the popular mind that he maintained his reputation and his influence, and actually succeeded in rendering his accusers the objects of almost universal suspicion or hatred. Their powerful friends forsook them; all stood aloof, or all but a Spaniard named Garzonio, who, having lodged Loyola and some of his companions under his roof, knew well their soundness in the faith and their personal piety. Through his timely intervention the cardinal-dean of the sacred college was induced to inform himself, by a personal interview, of their doctrine and life. This dignitary was satisfied, and more than satisfied, of the innocence and piety of the fathers. Nevertheless, Loyola, looking far forward, and knowing well what detriment to his order might arise in remote quarters from slanders not authoritatively refuted and disallowed, demanded to be confronted with his accusers before the ecclesiastical authorities. He would be content with no vague and irregular expression of approval--he would accept no half acquittal. He sought, and at length obtained, an official exculpation in the amplest terms, with an acknowledgment of his orthodoxy on the part of the highest authority on earth, and this was granted under circumstances that gave it universal notoriety. In court the principal witness was confounded by proof, under his own hand, of the falseness of the allegation he had advanced; and at the same time testimonials from the highest quarters in favor of the fathers, severally and individually, arrived opportunely; in a word, the society, in this early and signal instance, triumphed over its assailants, and thenceforward it occupied a position the most lofty and commanding in the view of the Catholic world. Loyola and his colleagues saw the ruin of their adversaries, two of whom, falling into the hands of the inquisitors, were burned as heretics. The time was now come for effecting a permanent organization of the society and for installing a chief at its head. With these purposes in view, Loyola summoned his colleagues to Rome from the cities of Italy where they were severally laboring. The fathers being assembled, he commended to them anew the proposal which they had already accepted, but which he seemed anxious to fix irrevocably upon their consciences by often-repeated challenges of the most solemn kind. To impart the more solemnity to this repetition of their mutual engagements, and to preclude, by all means, the possibility of retraction, he advised that several days should be devoted to preliminary prayer and fasting, during which season each should, with an absolute surrender of himself to the will of God, await passively the manifestation of that will. "Heaven," said Loyola to his companions, "heaven has forbidden Palestine to our zeal--nevertheless that zeal burns with increasing intensity from day to day. Should we not hence infer that God has called us--not, indeed, to undertake the conversion of one nation or of a country, but of all the people and of all the kingdoms of the world?" Such was the founder's profession and such the limits of his ambition. The spiritual mechanism which he had devised, and which he was now putting in movement, intends nothing that is partial or circumscribed; its very purport is universality; it is absolutism carried out until it has embraced the human family and has brought every human spirit into its toils. But so small a band could hope for no success that should be indicative of ultimate triumph unless they would surrender themselves individually to a common will, which should be to each of them as the will of God, articulately pronounced. After renewing, therefore, the vows of poverty, of chastity, and of unconditional obedience to the Pope, the fathers assented to the proposal that one of their number should, by the suffrages of all, be constituted the superior or general of the order, and as such be invested with an authority as absolute as it was possible for man to exercise or for men to submit to. Yet to whose hands should be assigned--and for life--this irresponsible power over the bodies, souls, and understandings of his companions? It had not been until after a lengthened preparation of fasting, prayer, and night-watching that a resolution so appalling had been formed. Yet it was easier to consent to the proposal, abstractedly placed before them, than to yield themselves to all its undefined and irrevocable consequences, when the awful surrender of what is most precious to man--his individuality--was to be made, not to a chief unnamed, but to this or that one among themselves. To whose hands could the ten consign the irresponsible disposal of their souls and bodies? They had, however, already advanced too far to recede. They had, as they believed, in humble imitation of Christ the Lord, offered themselves as a living sacrifice to God--so far as concerned the body--by the vow of poverty and the vow of chastity. They had thus immolated the flesh, and had reserved to themselves nothing of worldly possessions, nothing of earthly solaces; all had been laid upon the altar. They, had, moreover professed their willingness to deposit there their very souls. The vow of unconditional obedience, as thus understood, was a holocaust of the immortal well-being. Each now, as an offering acceptable to God, was to pawn his interest in time and eternity, putting the pledge into the hands of one to be chosen by themselves. It was debated whether this absolute power should be conferred upon the holder of it for life or for a term of years only, and whether in the fullest sense it should be without conditions, or whether it should be limited by constitutional forms. At length, however, the election of a general for life was assented to, and especially for this reason--and it is well to note it--that the new society had been devised and formed for the very purpose of carrying forward vast designs which must demand a long course of years for their development and execution; and that no one who must look forward to the probable termination of his generalship at the expiration of a few years could be expected to undertake, or to prosecute with energy, any such far-reaching project. On the contrary, he should be allowed to believe that the limits of his life alone need be thought of as bounding his holy ambition. Provisions were made, however, for holding some sort of control over the individual to whom so much power was to be intrusted. The actual election of Loyola to the generalship did not formally take place until after the time when the order had received pontifical authentication. Meantime, all implicitly regarded him as their master; from him emanated the acts of the body; and to him was assigned the task--aided by Lainez--of preparing what should be the constitutions of the society. During the interval between the concerted organization of the order and the formal recognition of Loyola as the general he found several occasions highly favorable for extending and for enhancing his influence, as well among the common people as among ecclesiastical dignitaries. One such opportunity was afforded, soon after the above-mentioned exculpation of the fathers, by the occurrence of a famine during an unusually severe winter. The streets of Rome presented the spectacle of hundreds of half-naked and starving wretches who fruitlessly implored aid or who silently expired unaided. Loyola and his colleagues, themselves subsisting from day to day on alms, felt often--we are told--the nip of hunger, yet they needed no incitement which these scenes of woe did not spontaneously supply. They were at once alive to the claims of humanity and to the requirements of Christian duty. They begged for the perishing, took them to such shelter as was at their command, carefully and tenderly ministered to the sick, and, withal, used the advantage which these offices of kindness afforded them for purposes of religious instruction. Hundreds, rescued from death through cold and hunger, were thus brought to repentance on the path which the Church prescribes. A great impression in favor of the Jesuit fathers was made upon all classes by this course of conduct. In humanity, self-denying assiduity, and Christian zeal they had immeasurably surpassed any who might have pretended rivalry with them. It was now, therefore, that Loyola sought from the Pontiff that formal recognition which his personal assurances of regard and approval seemed to show he could not refuse. Paul III was, however, cautious in this instance, and seemed unwilling to commit himself and the Church at this critical moment, except so far as he knew himself to be supported by the feeling and opinion of those of the cardinals whom he most regarded. He referred Loyola's petition to three of them. The first of these was Barthelemi Guidiccioni, who had often declared himself to be decisively opposed to the multiplication of religious orders. The Church, he thought, had too many of these excrescences already, and, instead of adding another to the number, he would gladly have reduced them all to four. His two colleagues were easily induced to concur with him in this opinion, and thus it appeared as if the infant society, notwithstanding the advances it had lately made in securing the good opinion of persons of high rank, as well as in winning popular applause, was little likely to receive what was indispensable to its permanent establishment--a papal bull in its favor. Personally, however, the Pope did not conceal his cordial feeling toward Loyola and his companions. He seems to have perceived clearly that these men, resolute in their punctilious adherence to the doctrine and ritual of the Church, and committed by the most solemn engagements to its service--deep-purposed as they were, full of a well-governed energy, resolute in the performance of the most arduous duties, and, moreover, highly accomplished in secular and sacred learning--were the very instruments which the Church had need of in this crisis of its fate. Northern Europe was irrecoverably lost; Germany and Switzerland were held to Catholicism at points only; while France and Northern Italy were listening to the seductions of heresy. Scarcely could it be said, even of Spain, that it was clear of the same infection. The Church ought then, at such a moment, to embrace cordially, and by all means to favor, the efforts of men like Loyola and his distinguished companions. It was with this feeling that Paul III, while held back by his advisers from the course he would have adopted, went as far as he could in promoting and extending the influence of the society. At the same moment application had been made, on the part of several potentates, for the services of the fathers, who had already gained a high reputation at the courts near to which they had exercised their ministry. It was seen and understood by princes that these were the men--and these almost alone--to whom might be confided those arduous tasks which the perils of the times continually presented: none so well furnished as these fathers; none so self-denying and laborious; none so uncompromising in the maintenance of their principles. They were, therefore, despatched in various directions, and with the papal sanction, to undertake offices more or less spiritual, and in some instances purely secular. It was thus that a commencement was made in that course which has thrown unlimited power into the hands of the society, and which again has brought upon it suspicion, hatred, and reiterated ruin. But the most noted of these appointments was that which, in sending, as by an accident, Francis Xavier to India, detached from the Jesuit society the man who, had he remained at home, must have imparted his own character to its constitutions, and have guided its movements, and who probably would have dislodged Loyola from the generalship, and have held Lainez and Faber in a subordinate position. Not merely did Xavier's departure allow Jesuitism to take its form from the hands of these three, but it conferred upon the society, from a very early date, the incalculable advantage of that reflected power and reputation which the Indian missions secured for it. Xavier's apostleship in the East, with its real and with its romantic and exaggerated glories, was a fund upon which the society at home allowed itself to draw without limit. If it be admitted that Xavier effected something real for Christianity in pagan India, it may be affirmed that he accomplished at the same time, though indirectly, far more for Jesuitism throughout Europe. This course of events, so signal in its consequences as favoring the development and rapid extension of the Jesuit scheme throughout Christendom, and which yet could not be attributed to any forethought or machination on the part of Loyola, is well deserving of a distinct notice. The train of circumstances, as related and affirmed by the Jesuit writers, excludes the supposition of its taking its rise in any plot or intention. John III of Portugal--a religious prince--had long entertained the project of stretching the empire of the Church over those regions which his valiant and enterprising people were subjecting to his secular sway. In modern phraseology, he piously desired to consecrate his military triumphs in the East by spreading the Gospel among the subjugated heathen. His royal wish and intention had become known to Loyola's friend Govea, who wrote to him from Paris on the subject. This letter was as a spark at contact with which Loyola's zeal burst forth in a flame. He replied, however, that, as he and his companions had now solemnly surrendered themselves to the absolute and unconditional disposal of the Vicar of Christ, they could attempt nothing spontaneously. It is easy to imagine how speedily this declaration, conveyed to Govea, would produce its effect, would come round to its destination, and would assume the form of a pontifical injunction addressed to Loyola to despatch some of the fathers to the court of John, there to await the pleasure of so religious a prince. Six missionaries had been asked for. Loyola, with the consent of the Pope, assigned two--Rodriquez and Bobadilla--to his service. The latter, however, falling ill--so it is affirmed--Francis Xavier was appointed in his place. Xavier, it is said, leaped for joy when summoned, at a moment, to set out toward Portugal commissioned to convert India to the Christian faith. A few hours sufficed for his preparations; by noon of the next day he had sewed the tatters of his attire with his own hand, had packed his bundle, had bid adieu to his friends, and was forward on the road to Lisbon. Upon this desperate enterprise he set forward with his eye steadily fixed upon objects far more remote and more dazzling than the sunny plains of Hindostan. The immeasurable difficulty of his mission was to him its excitement; its dangers brightened in his view into martyrdom; its toils were to be his ease; its privations his solace, and despair the aliment of his hope. But at this initial point of his course we must take leave of Francis Xavier--the prince of missionaries. Bobadilla, with Loyola's consent, remained in Portugal, where his zeal found scope enough. At length--but it does not appear in what manner this change of opinion had been brought about--Cardinal Guidiccioni professed himself favorable to the suit of Loyola; probably an enhanced conviction that the Romish hierarchy was encountering a peril which called for extraordinary measures, and that the new order was likely to meet the occasion, had prevailed over considerations less urgent and of a more general kind. This opponent gained, no obstacle remained to be overcome. On October 3, 1540 (or September 27th), was issued the bull which gave ecclesiastical existence to the new order under the name of the "Company of Jesus." At the first the society was forbidden to admit more than sixty professed members, but three years later another bull removed entirely this restriction. The time was now come when the decisive step must be taken which should enable the new institute to realize its intention, which should render Jesuitism _Jesuitism_ indeed. This was the election of a chief, individually, who thenceforward should be absolute lord of the bodies and souls, the will and well-being, of all the members. Until this election should be made and ratified, the society was a _project_ only; it would then become a dread reality. Those of the fathers who could leave their functions at foreign courts--and these were three only--were summoned to Rome; those who could not attend there sent forward their votes. But in what manner are we to deal with the account that is presented to us of that which took place on this occasion? How is it to be made to consist either with the straightforwardness and simplicity of intention that are the characteristics of great and noble natures, or how with those maxims of guilelessness which Christianity so much approves? The problem admits of only a partial and unsatisfactory solution; nor can we advance even so far as this unless we make a very large allowance in favor of Loyola personally, on the ground of the ill influence of the system within which he had received his moral and religious training. He conducted himself after the fashion of his Church: this must be his apology. It was he, unquestionably, who had conceived the primary idea of the society. He was author of the book which constitutes its germ and law, the _Spiritual Exercises_. He had been principal in digesting the constitutions, or actual code, of the society. It was he, individually, whom the others had always regarded as their leader and teacher. His personal influence was the cement which held the parts in union. It was Loyola who, while his colleagues dispersed themselves throughout Europe, remained in Rome, there to manage the common interests of all, and to carry forward those negotiations with the papal court which were of vital importance and of the highest difficulty. In a word, it was he who had convoked this meeting to elect a chief and who asked the proxies of the absent. Are we then to believe that this bold spirit, this far-seeing mind, this astute, inventive, and politic Ignatius, born to rule other minds, and able always to subjugate his own will; that this contriver of a despotism, after having carried the principle of unconditional obedience, after having won the consent of his companions to the proposal that their master should be their master _for life_--are we to believe that he had never imagined it as probable (much less wished) that the choice of his compeers should fall upon himself, or that he had peremptorily resolved, in such a case, to reject the proffered sovereignty? Surely those writers--the champions of the society--use us cruelly who demand that we should believe so much as this. Le Jay, Brouet, Lainez, and Loyola were those who personally appeared on this occasion. The absent members sent their votes in sealed letters. Three days having passed in prayer and silence, the four assembled on the fourth day, when the votes were ascertained. All but Loyola's own were in his favor; he voted for the one who should carry the majority of votes. Loyola, we are told, was in an equal degree distressed and amazed in discovering what was in the minds of his colleagues. _He_, indeed, to be general of the Society of Jesus!--how strange and preposterous a supposition! Positively he could think of no such thing. What a life had he led before his conversion! How abounding in weaknesses had been his course since! How could he aspire to rule others, who so poorly could rule himself? Days of prayer must yet be devoted to the purpose of imploring the divine aid in directing the minds of all toward one who should indeed be qualified for so arduous an office. At the end of this term Loyola was a second time elected, and again refused to comply with the wishes of his friends. He would barely admit their importunities; they could scarcely bring themselves to listen to his contrary reasons. Time passed on, and there seemed a danger lest the society should go adrift upon the rocks even in its first attempt to reach deep water. At length Loyola agreed to submit himself to the direction of his confessor. He might thus, perhaps, find it possible to thrust himself through his scruples by the loophole of passive obedience, for he already held himself bound to comply with the injunctions of his spiritual guide, be they what they might. This good man, therefore, a father Theodosius of the communion of Minor Brethren, is constituted arbiter of the destinies of the Society of Jesus. To his ear Loyola confides all the reasons, irresistible as they were, which forbade his compliance with the will of his friends. The confessor listens patiently to the long argument, but sets the whole of it at naught. In a word he declares that Loyola, in declining the proffered generalship, is fighting against God. Further resistance would have been a flagrant impiety. The installation of the general was carried forward in a course of services held in the seven principal churches of Rome, and with extraordinary solemnity in the Church of St. Paul without the city, April 23, 1541. On this occasion the vows of perpetual poverty, chastity, and obedience were renewed before the altar of the Virgin, where Loyola administered the communion to his brethren, they having vowed absolute obedience to him, and he the same to the Pope. DE SOTO DISCOVERS THE MISSISSIPPI[52] A.D. 1541 JOHN S. C. ABBOTT From the eastern coast of Florida the Spaniards made early explorations of the interior until they reached the Mississippi River. Florida, which was discovered by Juan Ponce de Leon in 1513, was soon visited by other voyagers, and in 1528 Panfilo Narvaez made a disastrous march into the forests. One survivor of his party, Cabaça de Vaca, afterward crossed the Mississippi, near the site of Memphis, and made his way to the Spanish settlements in Mexico. Still the vast Florida region was unexplored, but in 1539 Hernando de Soto, the companion of Pizarro in the conquest of Peru (1532) landed, with upward of six hundred men, at what is now called Tampa Bay, on the west coast, in search of the fabulous wealth believed to await him. "For month after month and year after year the procession of priests and cavaliers, cross-bowmen, arquebusiers, and Indian captives laden with the baggage, wandered on through wild and boundless wastes, lured hither and thither by the _ignis fatuus_ of their hopes." Through untold hardships, increased by fierce battles with the Indians, they traversed wide regions now embraced in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, reaching the great river probably in the spring of 1541, and still looking for the "phantom El Dorado." De Soto directed his footsteps in a westerly direction, carefully avoiding an approach to the sea, lest his troops should rise in mutiny, send for the ships, and escape from the ill-starred enterprise. This certainly indicates, under the circumstances, an unsound, if not a deranged, mind. For four days the troops toiled along through a dismal region, uninhabited, and encumbered with tangled forests and almost impassable swamps. At length they came to a small village called Chisca, upon the banks of the most majestic stream they had yet discovered. Sublimely the mighty flood, a mile and a half in width, rolled by them. The current was rapid and bore upon its bosom a vast amount of trees, logs, and driftwood, showing that its sources must be hundreds of leagues far away in the unknown interior. This was the mighty Mississippi, the "Father of Waters." The Indians at that point called it Chucagua. Its source and its embouchure were alike unknown to De Soto. Little was he then aware of the magnitude of the discovery he had made. "De Soto," says Irving, "was the first European who looked out upon the turbid waters of this magnificent river; and that event has more surely enrolled his name among those who will ever live in American history than if he had discovered mines of silver and gold." The Spaniards had reached the river after a four days' march through an unpeopled wilderness. The Indians of Chisca knew nothing of their approach, and probably had never heard of their being in the country. The tribe inhabiting the region of which Chisca was the metropolis was by no means as formidable as many whom they had already encountered. The dwelling of the cacique stood on a large artificial mound from eighteen to twenty feet in height. It was ascended by two ladders, which could of course be easily drawn up, leaving the royal family thus quite isolated from the people below. Chisca, the chieftain, was far advanced in years, a feeble, emaciated old man of very diminutive stature. In the days of his prime he had been a renowned warrior. Hearing of the arrival of the Spaniards he was disposed to regard them as enemies, and, seizing his tomahawk, he was eager to descend from his castle and lead his warriors to battle. The contradictory statements are made that De Soto, weary of the harassing warfare of the winter, was very anxious to secure the friendship of these Indians. Unless he were crazed, it must have been so; for there was absolutely nothing to be gained, but everything to be imperilled, by war. On the other hand, it is said that the moment the Spaniards descried the village they rushed into it, plundering the houses, seizing men and women as captives. Both statements may have been partially true. It is not improbable that the disorderly troops of De Soto, to his great regret, were guilty of some outrages, while he personally might have been intensely anxious to repress this violence and cultivate only friendly relations with the natives. But, whatever may have been the hostile or friendly attitude assumed by the Spaniards, it is admitted that the cacique was disposed to wage war against the new-comers. The more prudent of his warriors urged that he should delay his attack upon them until he had made such preparations as would secure successful results. "It will be best first," said they, "to assemble all the warriors of our nation, for these men are well armed. In the mean time let us pretend friendship, and not provoke an attack until we are strong enough to be sure of victory." The irascible old chief was willing only partially to listen to this advice. He delayed the conflict, but did not disguise his hostility. De Soto sent to him a very kindly message declaring that he came in peace, and wished only for an unmolested march through his country. The cacique returned an angry reply refusing all courteous intercourse. The Spaniards had been but three hours in the village when, to their surprise, they perceived an army of four thousand warriors, thoroughly prepared for battle, gathered around the mound upon which was reared the dwelling of their chief. If so many warriors could be assembled in so short a time, they feared there must be a large number in reserve who could soon be drawn in. The Spaniards, in their long marches and many battles, had dwindled away to less than five hundred men. Four thousand against five hundred were fearful odds; and yet the number of their foes might speedily be doubled or even quadrupled. In addition to this, the plains around the city were exceedingly unfavorable for the movements of the Spanish army, while they presented great advantages to the nimble-footed natives; for their region was covered with forests, sluggish streams, and bogs. By great exertions, De Soto succeeded in effecting a sort of compromise. The cacique consented to allow the Spaniards to remain for six days in the village to nurse the sick and the wounded. Food was to be furnished them by the cacique. At the end of six days the Spaniards were to leave, abstaining entirely from pillage, from injuring the crops, and from all other acts of violence. The cacique and all the inhabitants of the village abandoned the place, leaving it to the sole occupancy of the Spaniards. April, in that sunny clime, was mild as genial summer. The natives, with their simple habits, probably found little inconvenience in encamping in the groves around. On the last day of his stay, De Soto obtained permission to visit the cacique. He thanked the chief cordially for his hospitality, and, taking an affectionate leave, continued his journey into the unknown regions beyond. Ascending the tortuous windings of the river on the eastern bank, the Spaniards found themselves, for four days, in almost impenetrable thickets, where there were no signs of inhabitants. At length they came to quite an opening in the forest. A treeless plain, waving with grass, spread far and wide around them. The Mississippi River here was about half a league in width. On the opposite bank large numbers of Indians were seen, many of them warriors in battle array, while a fleet of canoes lined the shore. De Soto decided, for some unexplained reason, to cross the river at that point, though it was evident that the Indians had in some way received tidings of his approach, and were assembled there to dispute his passage. The natives could easily cross the river in their canoes, but they would hardly venture to attack the Spaniards upon the open plain, where there was such a fine opportunity for the charges of their cavalry. Here De Soto encamped for twenty days, while all who could handle tools were employed in building four large flat-boats for the transportation of the troops across the stream. On the second day of the encampment several natives from some tribe disposed to be friendly, on the eastern side of the river, visited the Spaniards. With very much ceremony of bowing and semibarbaric parade they approached De Soto and informed him that they were commissioned by their chief to bid him welcome to his territory, and to assure him of his friendly services. De Soto, much gratified by this message, received the envoys with the greatest kindness, and dismissed them highly pleased with their reception. Though this chief sent De Soto repeated messages of kindness, he did not himself visit the Spanish camp, the alleged reason being--and perhaps the true one--that he was on a sick-bed. He, however, sent large numbers of his subjects with supplies of food, and to assist the Spaniards in drawing the timber to construct their barges. The hostile Indians on the opposite bank frequently crossed in their canoes, and, attacking small bands of workmen, showered upon them volleys of arrows, and fled again to their boats. One day the Spaniards, while at work, saw two hundred canoes filled with natives, in one united squadron, descending the river. It was a beautiful sight to witness this fleet, crowded with decorated and plumed warriors, their paddles, ornaments, and burnished weapons flashing in the sunlight. They came in true military style; several warriors standing at the bow and stern of each boat, with large shields of buffalo-hide on their left arms, and with bows and arrows in their hands. De Soto advanced to the shore to meet them, where he stood surrounded by his staff. The royal barge containing the chief paddled within a few rods of the bank. The cacique then rose, and addressed De Soto in words which, translated by the interpreter, were as follows: "I am informed that you are the envoy of the most powerful monarch of the globe. I have come to proffer to you friendship and homage, and to assure you of my assistance in any way in which I can be of service." De Soto thanked him heartily for his offer and entreated him to land, assuring him that he should meet only with the kindest reception. The boats immediately returned for another load. Rapidly they passed to and fro, and the whole army was transported to the western bank of the Mississippi. The point where De Soto and his army crossed, it is supposed, was at what is called the lowest Chickasaw Bluff. "The river in this place," says the Portuguese narrative, "was a mile and a half in breadth, so that a man standing still could scarcely be discerned from the opposite shore. It was of great depth, of wonderful rapidity, and very turbid, and was always filled with floating trees and timber carried down by the force of the current." The army having all crossed, the boats were broken up, as usual, to preserve the nails. It would seem that the hostile Indians had all vanished, for the Spaniards advanced four days in a westerly direction, through an uninhabited wilderness, encountering no opposition. On the fifth day they toiled up a heavy swell of land, from whose summit they discerned, in a valley on the other side, a large village of about four hundred dwellings. It was situated on the fertile banks of a stream which is supposed to have been the St. Francis. The extended valley, watered by this river, presented a lovely view as far as the eye could reach, with luxuriant fields of Indian corn and with groves of fruit and trees. The natives had received some intimation of the approach of the Spaniards, and in friendly crowds gathered around them, offering food and the occupancy of their houses. Two of the highest chieftains subordinate to the cacique soon came, with an imposing train of warriors, bearing a welcome from their chief and the offer of his services. De Soto received them with the utmost courtesy, and, in the interchange of these friendly offices, both Spaniards and natives became alike pleased with each other. The adventurers remained in this village for six days, finding abundant food for themselves and their horses, and experiencing, in the friendship and hospitality of the natives, joys which certainly never were found in the horrors of war. The province was called by the name of Kaski, and was probably the same as that occupied by the Kaskaskia Indians. Upon commencing anew their march they passed through a populous and well-cultivated country, where peace, prosperity, and abundance seemed to reign. In two days, having journeyed about twenty miles up the western bank of the Mississippi, they approached the chief town of the province, where the cacique lived. It was situated, as is supposed, in the region now called Little Prairie, in the extreme southern part of the State of Missouri, not far from New Madrid. Here they found the hospitable hands of the cacique and his people extended to greet them. The residence of the chief stood upon a broad artificial mound, sufficiently capacious for twelve or thirteen houses, which were occupied by his numerous family and attendants. He made De Soto a present of a rich fur mantle, and invited him, with his suite, to occupy the royal dwellings for their residence. De Soto politely declined this offer, as he was unwilling thus to incommode his kind entertainer. He, however, accepted the accommodation of several houses in the village. The remainder of the army were lodged in exceedingly pleasant bowers, skilfully and very expeditiously constructed by the natives of bark and the green boughs of trees, outside the village. It was now the month of May. The weather was intensely hot, and these rustic bowers were found to be refreshingly cool and grateful. The name of the friendly chief was Casquin. Here the army remained for three days, without a ripple of unfriendly feeling arising between the Spaniards and the natives. It was a season of unusual drouth in the country, and, on the fourth day following, an extraordinary incident occurred. Casquin, accompanied by quite an imposing retinue of his most distinguished men, came into the presence of De Soto, and, stepping forward with great solemnity of manner, said to him: "Señor, as you are superior to us in prowess and surpass us in arms, we likewise believe that your God is better than our God. These you behold before you are the chief warriors of my dominions. We supplicate you to pray to your God to send us rain, for our fields are parched for the want of water." De Soto, who was a reflective man, of pensive temperament and devoutly inclined, responded: "We are all alike sinners, but we will pray to God, the Father of Mercies, to show his kindness to you." He then ordered the carpenter to cut down one of the tallest pine trees in the vicinity. It was carefully trimmed and formed into a perfect but gigantic cross. Its dimensions were such that it required the strength of one hundred men to raise and plant it in the ground. Two days were employed in this operation. The cross stood upon a bluff on the western bank of the Mississippi. The next morning after it was reared the whole Spanish army was called out to celebrate the erection of the cross by a solemn religious procession. A large number of the natives, with apparent devoutness, joined in the festival. Casquin and De Soto took the lead, walking side by side. The Spanish soldiers and the native warriors, composing a procession of more than a thousand, persons, walked harmoniously along as brothers to commemorate the erection of the cross--the symbol of the Christian's faith. The cross! It should be the emblem of peace on earth and good-will among men. Alas! how often has it been the badge of cruelty and crime! The priests--for there were several in the army--chanted their Christian hymns and offered fervent prayers. The Mississippi at this point is not very broad, and it is said that upon the opposite bank twenty thousand natives were assembled, watching with intensest interest the imposing ceremony, and apparently at times taking part in the exercises. When the priests raised their hands in prayer, they too extended their arms and raised their eyes, as if imploring the aid of the God of heaven and earth. Occasionally a low moan was heard wafted across the river--a wailing cry, as if woe-stricken children were imploring the aid of an almighty father. The spirit of De Soto was deeply moved to tenderness and sympathy as he witnessed this benighted people paying such homage to the emblem of man's redemption. After several prayers were offered, the whole procession, slowly advancing two by two, knelt before the cross, as if in brief ejaculatory prayer, and kissed it. All then returned with the same solemnity to the village, the priests chanting the grand anthem, _Te Deum Laudamus_. Thus more than three hundred years ago the cross, significant of the religion of Jesus, was planted upon the banks of the Mississippi, and the melody of Christian hymns was wafted across the silent waters and blended with the sighing of the breeze through the tree-tops. It is sad to reflect how little of the spirit of that religion has since been manifested in those realms in man's treatment of his brother-man. It is worthy of especial notice that upon the night succeeding this eventful day clouds gathered, and the long-looked-for rain fell abundantly. The devout Las Casas writes: "God, in his mercy, willing to show these heathen that he listeneth to those who call upon him in truth, sent down in the middle of the ensuing night a plenteous rain, to the great joy of the Indians." FOOTNOTES: [52] By permission of the executor of the estate of the late John S. C. Abbott. REVOLUTION OF ASTRONOMY BY COPERNICUS A.D. 1543 SIR ROBERT STAWELL BALL The promulgation of the accepted system of astronomy, called the Copernican system, which represents the earth as revolving on its axis and considers the sun as the centre of motion for the earth and other planets, marked the greatest of scientific revolutions. Copernicus, whose name, thus Latinized, was Koppernigk or Kopernik, was born at Thorn, Prussia, February 19, 1473, and died at Frauenburg, Prussia, May 24, 1543. The founder of modern astronomy was probably of German descent: according to some authorities his father was a Germanized Slav, his mother a German; and the honor of producing him is claimed by both Germany and Poland. With equal conciseness and lucidity, in the following pages the eminent British astronomer furnishes important particulars concerning the life of Copernicus; and he gives an account, no less interesting than instructive, of the evolution of the Copernican astronomy in its founder's mind. Copernicus, the astronomer, whose discoveries make him the great predecessor of Kepler and Newton, did not come from a noble family, as certain other early astronomers have done, for his father was a tradesman. Chroniclers are, however, careful to tell us that one of his uncles was a bishop. We are not acquainted with any of those details of his childhood or youth which are often of such interest in other cases where men have risen to exalted fame. It would appear that the young Nicolaus, for such was his Christian name, received his education at home until such time as he was deemed sufficiently advanced to be sent to the University at Cracow. The education that he there obtained must have been in those days of very primitive description, but Copernicus seems to have availed himself of it to the utmost. He devoted himself more particularly to the study of medicine, with the view of adopting its practice as the profession of his life. The tendencies of the future astronomer were, however, revealed in the fact that he worked hard at mathematics, and for him, as for one of his illustrious successors, Galileo, the practice of the art of painting had a very great interest, and in it he obtained some measure of success. By the time he was twenty-seven years old, it would seem that Copernicus had given up the notion of becoming a medical practitioner, and had resolved to devote himself to science. He was engaged in teaching mathematics, and appears to have acquired some reputation. His growing fame attracted the notice of his uncle the Bishop, at whose suggestion Copernicus took holy orders, and he was presently appointed to a canonry in the Cathedral of Frauenburg, near the mouth of the Vistula. To Frauenburg, accordingly, this man of varied gifts retired. Possessing somewhat of the ascetic spirit, he resolved to devote his life to work of the most serious description. He eschewed all ordinary society, restricting his intimacies to very grave and learned companions, and refusing to engage in conversation of any useless kind. It would seem as if his gifts for painting were condemned as frivolous; at all events, we do not learn that he continued to practise them. In addition to the discharge of his theological duties, his life was occupied partly in ministering medically to the wants of the poor, and partly with his researches in astronomy and mathematics. His equipment in the matter of instruments for the study of the heavens seems to have been of a very meagre description. He arranged apertures in the walls of his house at Allenstein, so that he could observe in some fashion the passage of the stars across the meridian. That he possessed some talent for practical mechanics is proved by his construction of a contrivance for raising water from a stream, for the use of the inhabitants of Frauenburg. Relics of this machine are still to be seen. The intellectual slumber of the Middle Ages was destined to be awakened by the revolutionary doctrines of Copernicus. It may be noted, as an interesting circumstance, that the time at which he discovered the scheme of the solar system coincided with a remarkable epoch in the world's history. The great astronomer had just reached manhood at the time when Columbus discovered the New World. Before the publication of the researches of Copernicus, the orthodox scientific creed averred that the earth was stationary, and that the apparent movements of the heavenly bodies were real movements. Ptolemy had laid down this doctrine fourteen hundred years before. In his theory this huge error was associated with so much important truth, and the whole presented such a coherent scheme for the explanation of the heavenly movements, that the Ptolemaic theory was not seriously questioned until the great work of Copernicus appeared. No doubt others before Copernicus had from time to time in some vague fashion surmised, with more or less plausibility, that the sun, and not the earth, was the centre about which the system really revolved. It is, however, one thing to state a scientific fact; it is quite another thing to be in possession of the train of reasoning, founded on observation or experiment, by which that fact may be established. Pythagoras, it appears, had indeed told his disciples that it was the sun, and not the earth, which was the centre of movement, but it does not seem at all certain that Pythagoras had any grounds which science could recognize for the belief which is attributed to him. So far as information is available to us, it would seem that Pythagoras associated his scheme of things celestial with a number of preposterous notions in natural philosophy. He may certainly have made a correct statement as to which was the most important body in the solar system, but he certainly did not provide any rational demonstration of the fact. Copernicus, by a strict train of reasoning, convinced those who would listen to him that the sun was the centre of the system. It is useful for us to consider the arguments which he urged and by which he effected that intellectual revolution which is always connected with his name. The first of the great discoveries which Copernicus made relates to the rotation of the earth on its axis. That general diurnal movement, by which the stars and all other celestial bodies appear to be carried completely round the heavens once every twenty-four hours, had been accounted for by Ptolemy on the supposition that the apparent movements were the real movements. Ptolemy himself felt the extraordinary difficulty involved in the supposition that so stupendous a fabric as the celestial sphere should spin in the way supposed. Such movements required that many of the stars should travel with almost inconceivable velocity. Copernicus also saw that the daily rising and setting of the heavenly bodies could be accounted for either by the supposition that the celestial sphere moved round and that the earth remained at rest, or by the supposition that the celestial sphere was at rest while the earth turned round in the opposite direction. He weighed the arguments on both sides as Ptolemy had done, and as the result of his deliberation Copernicus came to an opposite conclusion from Ptolemy. To Copernicus it appeared that the difficulties attending the supposition that the celestial sphere revolved were vastly greater than those which appeared so weighty to Ptolemy as to force him to deny the earth's rotation. Copernicus shows clearly how the observed phenomena could be accounted for just as completely by a rotation of the earth as by a rotation of the heavens. He alludes to the fact that, to those on board a vessel which is moving through smooth water, the vessel itself appears to be at rest, while the objects on shore appear to be moving past. If, therefore, the earth were rotating uniformly, we dwellers upon the earth, oblivious of our own movement, would wrongly attribute to the stars the displacement which was actually the consequence of our own motion. Copernicus saw the futility of the arguments by which Ptolemy had endeavored to demonstrate that a revolution of the earth was impossible. It was plain to him that there was nothing whatever to warrant refusal to believe in the rotation of the earth. In his clear-sightedness on this matter we have specially to admire the sagacity of Copernicus as a natural philosopher. It had been urged that, if the earth moved round, its motion would not be imparted to the air, and that therefore the earth would be uninhabitable by the terrific winds which would be the result of our being carried through the air. Copernicus convinced himself that this deduction was preposterous. He proved that the air must accompany the earth, just as one's coat remains round him, notwithstanding the fact that he is walking down the street. In this way he was able to show that all _a priori_ objections to the earth's movements were absurd, and therefore he was able to compare together the plausibilities of the two rival schemes for explaining the diurnal movement. Once the issue had been placed in this form, the result could not be long in doubt. Here is the question: Which is it more likely--that the earth, like a grain of sand at the centre of a mighty globe, should turn round once in twenty-four hours, or that the whole of that vast globe should complete a rotation in the opposite direction in the same time? Obviously, the former is far the more simple supposition. But the case is really much stronger than this. Ptolemy had supposed that all the stars were attached to the surface of a sphere. He had no ground whatever for this supposition, except that otherwise it would have been wellnigh impossible to devise a scheme by which the rotation of the heavens around a fixed earth could have been arranged. Copernicus, however, with the just instinct of a philosopher, considered that the celestial sphere, however convenient, from a geometrical point of view, as a means of representing apparent phenomena, could not actually have a material existence. In the first place, the existence of a material celestial sphere would require that all the myriad stars should be at exactly the same distances from the earth. Of course, no one will say that this or any other arbitrary disposition of the stars is actually impossible; but as there was no conceivable physical reason why the distances of all the stars from the earth should be identical, it seemed in the very highest degree improbable that the stars should be so placed. Doubtless, also, Copernicus felt a considerable difficulty as to the nature of the materials from which Ptolemy's wonderful sphere was to be constructed. Nor could a philosopher of his penetration have failed to observe that, unless that sphere were infinitely large, there must have been space outside it, a consideration which would open up other difficult questions. Whether infinite or not, it was obvious that the celestial sphere must have a diameter at least many thousands of times as great as that of the earth. From these considerations Copernicus deduced the important fact that the stars and other important celestial bodies must all be vast objects. He was thus enabled to put the question in such a form that it would hardly receive any answer but the correct one: Which is it more rational to suppose, that the earth should turn round on its axis once in twenty-four hours, or that thousands of mighty stars should circle round the earth in the same time, many of them having to describe circles many thousands of times greater in circumference than the circuit of the earth at the equator? The obvious answer pressed upon Copernicus with so much force that he was compelled to reject Ptolemy's theory of the stationary earth, and to attribute the diurnal rotation of the heavens to the revolution of the earth on its axis. Once this tremendous step had been taken, the great difficulties which beset the monstrous conception of the celestial sphere vanished, for the stars need no longer be regarded as situated at equal distances from the earth. Copernicus saw that they might lie at the most varied degrees of remoteness, some being hundreds or thousands of times farther away than others. The complicated structure of the celestial sphere as a material object disappeared altogether; it remained only as a geometrical conception, whereon we find it convenient to indicate the places of the stars. Once the Copernican doctrine had been fully set forth, it was impossible for anyone, who had both the inclination and the capacity to understand it, to withhold acceptance of its truth. The doctrine of a stationary earth had gone forever. Copernicus having established a theory of the celestial movements which deliberately set aside the stability of the earth, it seemed natural that he should inquire whether the doctrine of a moving earth might not remove the difficulties presented in other celestial phenomena. It had been universally admitted that the earth lay unsupported in space. Copernicus had further shown that it possessed a movement of rotation. Its want of stability being thus recognized, it seemed reasonable to suppose that the earth might also have some other kinds of movements as well. In this, Copernicus essayed to solve a problem far more difficult than that which hitherto occupied his attention. It was a comparatively easy task to show how the diurnal rising and setting could be accounted for by the rotation of the earth. It was a much more difficult undertaking to demonstrate that the planetary movements, which Ptolemy had represented with so much success, could be completely explained by the supposition that each of these planets revolved uniformly round the sun, and that the earth was also a planet, accomplishing a complete circuit of the sun once in the course of a year. It would be impossible, in a sketch like the present, to enter into any detail as to the geometrical propositions on which this beautiful investigation of Copernicus depended. We can only mention a few of the leading principles. It may be laid down in general that, if an observer is in movement, he will, if unconscious of the fact, attribute to the fixed objects around him a movement equal and opposite to that which he actually possesses. A passenger on a canal-boat sees the objects on the banks apparently moving backward with a speed equal to that by which he himself is advancing forward. By an application of this principle, we can account for all the phenomena of the movements of the planets, which Ptolemy had so ingeniously represented by his circles. Let us take, for instance, the most characteristic feature in the irregularities of the outer planets. Mars, though generally advancing from west to east among the stars, occasionally pauses, retraces his steps for a while, again pauses, and then resumes his ordinary onward progress. Copernicus showed clearly how this effect was produced by the real motion of the earth, combined with the real motion of Mars. When the earth comes directly between Mars and the sun, the retrograde movement of Mars is at its highest. Mars and the earth are then advancing in the same direction. We, on the earth, however, being unconscious of our own motion, attribute, by the principle I have already explained, an equal and opposite motion to Mars. The visible effect upon the planet is that Mars has two movements, a real onward movement in one direction, and an apparent movement in the opposite direction. If it so happened that the earth was moving with the same speed as Mars, then the apparent movement would exactly neutralize the real movement, and Mars would seem to be at rest relatively to the surrounding stars. Under the actual circumstances considered, however, the earth is moving faster than Mars, and the consequence is that the apparent movement of the planet backward exceeds the real movement forward, the net result being an apparent retrograde movement. With consummate skill, Copernicus showed how the applications of the same principles could account for the characteristic movements of the planets. His reasoning in due time bore down all opposition. The supreme importance of the earth in the system vanished. It had now merely to take rank as one of the planets. The same great astronomer now, for the first time, rendered something like a rational account of the changes of the seasons. Nor did certain of the more obscure astronomical phenomena escape his attention. He delayed publishing his wonderful discoveries to the world until he was quite an old man. He had a well-founded apprehension of the storm of opposition which they would arouse. However, he yielded at last to the entreaties of his friends, and his book[53] was sent to the press. But ere it made its appearance to the world, Copernicus was seized with mortal illness. A copy of the book was brought to him on May 23, 1543. We are told that he was able to see it and to touch it, but no more; and he died a few hours afterward. FOOTNOTES: [53] _De Orbium Coelestium Revolutionibus._ COUNCIL OF TRENT AND THE COUNTER-REFORMATION A.D. 1545 ADOLPHUS W. WARD An important phase of history in the sixteenth century is summarized by Macaulay when he says that "the Church of Rome, having lost a large part of Europe, not only ceased to lose, but actually regained nearly half of what she had lost." Macaulay is speaking of what is known as the "Counter-reformation," a reaction against the Protestant movement, which was rapidly spreading in Europe. By the Counter-reformation not only were the Roman Catholic losses largely recovered, but an increased zeal for the regeneration of the Church of Rome became fruitful of results. The reformation of the Church from within had been often attempted by the ecclesiastical leaders. Several "reforming councils" had been held, but the desired object had not been accomplished. During the pontificate of Paul III (1534-1549) the movement for regenerating the Church, as well as for opposing the progress of Protestantism, was effectually inaugurated. At the Council of Trent the new policy was definitely set forth. A general council had long been demanded by the Germans. Even many of the leading Italians had come to desire it. Charles V, who had his own reasons for temporizing with the Protestants, had urged it year after year. Much as the domination of the Emperor might be feared in such an assembly, Paul at length decided to comply. Twice he ordered the assembling of a council (1536 and 1538), but the distracted state of Europe caused postponement. Meanwhile, owing to the continued progress of the Protestants, Paul and Charles came to an agreement that another summons should be issued. A few prelates were gathered at Trent in 1542, but, owing to the Emperor's war with France and the Turks, the Pope next year dispersed them. Finally a papal bull summoned all the bishops of Christendom to Trent for March 15, 1545. The Pope showed much sagacity in calling this council at the moment when Charles and his inveterate enemy, Francis I, were concerting the suppression of the Protestants. On December 13, 1545, three legates appointed by the Pope held their public entry into Trent, and the council was formally opened. Paul III's continued desire to conciliate the Emperor was shown by his adherence to Trent as the locality of the council, when the legates again urged the choice of a town on Italian soil. Yet the very Bishop of Trent, Cardinal Madruccio, was a prince of the Empire, and by descent attached to the house of Austria, whose interests he consistently represented during the first series of sessions. The papal legates, with whose control over the council the Emperor at the outset showed no intention of interfering, typified the different elements in the ecclesiastical policy of Paul III. The presiding legate, Cardinal del Monte--afterward Pope Julius III--while notable neither for religious zeal nor for wise self-control, was a thoroughgoing supporter of the interests of the Curia. Cardinal Cervino, afterward Pope Marcellus II, a prelate of blameless life, was animated by those ideas of ecclesiastical reform of which Pope Paul had encouraged the open expression; but he was more especially eager for the extirpation of heresy, and not over-scrupulous in the choice of means for reaching his ends. Lastly, Cardinal Pole's[54] presence at Trent, in which some have seen a mere papal ruse, must have surrounded the early proceedings of the council with a hopeful glamour in the eyes of those who, like himself, expected from it the reunion as well as the reinvigoration of Western Christendom. Nothing, as had probably been foreseen at Rome, could have better facilitated the immediate establishment of the ascendency in the council of the papal policy than the composition of its opening meeting. Of the thirty-four ecclesiastics present, only five were Spanish and two French bishops, and no German bishop had crossed the Alps. Nor had any secular power except the Emperor and King Ferdinand sent their ambassadors. The business machinery of the council, which the legates lost no time in getting into order, was altogether in favor of their influence as managers. Learned doctors, without being, as in former councils, allowed to take part in the debates, prepared the work of the three committees or congregations, who in their turn brought it up for discussion to the general congregations. The sessions in which the decrees thus prepared were actually passed had a purely formal character, but before they were successively held opportunity enough was given for manipulation and delay. The voting in the council was by heads, instead of by nations, as at Constance and Basel; and care was taken to refresh by occasional additions the working majority of Italian bishops, mostly, in comparison with the "ultramontane" prelates, holders of petty sees. Some of these are even stated to have bound themselves by a sworn engagement to uphold the interests of the holy see, though by no means all of the Italian bishops were servile Curialists; witness those of Chioggia and of Fiesole. The council in its second session (January 7, 1546) waived the form of title by which previous councils had implicitly declared their representative authority paramount. On the other hand, it boded well for the cause of reform that, by an early resolution, virtually all abbots and members of the monastic orders except five generals were excluded. Clearly, episcopal interest was resolved upon asserting itself. So long, however, as the German bishops were detained in their dioceses by the duty of repressing heresy there, while the great body of the French were kept away by the vigilant jealousy of their government, the episcopal interest and the episcopal principle were mainly represented in the council by the Spanish prelates, the loyal subjects of Charles. Their leader was Pacheco, Cardinal of Jaën. With him came eminent theological professors, who in the early period of the council at least were without rivals--Dominico de Soto, whom Queen Mary afterward placed in Peter Martyr's chair at Oxford, and Bartolomeo Carranza, afterward primate of all Spain and for many years a prisoner of the Inquisition. Through the Emperor's ambassador, the accomplished and indefatigable but not invariably discreet Mendoza, the Spanish bishops were carefully apprised of the wishes of their sovereign. The crucial question as to the order in which the council should debate the two divisions of subjects which it had met to settle had to be decided at once; and the compromise arrived at showed both the strength of the minority and the unwillingness of the leaders of the majority, the presiding legates, to push matters to an extreme. Their instructions from the Pope were to give the declaration of dogma the preference over the announcement of disciplinary reforms; for it seemed to him of primary necessity to draw, while there was time, a clear line of demarcation between the Church and heresy; and for this, as he correctly judged, the assistance of the council was absolutely indispensable. The Emperor, on the other hand, was still unwilling to shut the door completely against the Protestants, while both he and the episcopal party at the council were eager for that reformation of the life and government of the Church which seemed to them her most crying need. Ultimately it was agreed that the declaration of dogma and the reformation of abuses should be treated _pari passu_, the decrees formulated in each case being from time to time announced simultaneously. Taking into account the subsequent history of the council, one can hardly deny that this arrangement saved the work of the assembly from being left half done. Nor was the progress made in the period ending with the eighth session of the council (March 11, 1547), intrigues and quarrels notwithstanding, by any means trifling. On the doctrinal side, the foundations of the faith were in the first instance examined, and the whole character of the doctrinal decrees of the council was in point of fact determined, when the authority of the tradition of the Church, including of course the decrees of her ecumenical councils, was acknowledged by the side of that of Scripture. Little to the credit of the council's capacity for taking pains, the authenticity of the Vulgate was proclaimed, a pious wish being added that it should be henceforth printed as correctly as possible. At first, Pope Paul III hesitated about giving his assent to these decrees, which had been passed before receiving his approval, and showed some anxiety to prevent a similar course being taken in the matter of discipline by publishing a regulatory bull on his own authority. But on being more fully advised by the legates of the nature of the situation, he consented to allow the debates to proceed, provided always that the decrees should be submitted to him before publication. During the next months (April to June, 1546) the work of the council was accordingly vigorously continued in both its branches. In that of discipline, the episcopal and the monastic interests at once came into conflict on the subject of the license for preaching; and still more excitement was aroused by the question of episcopal residence, which brought into conflict the highest purposes of the episcopal office and the selfish profits of the Roman Curia. The discussions on preaching ended with a reasonable compromise, monks being henceforth prohibited from preaching without the bishop's license in any churches but those of their own order. The question of residence was by the Pope's wish adjourned. Thus the council, now augmented by Swiss and many other bishops, while all the chief Catholic powers except Poland were represented by ambassadors, could venture to approach those questions of dogma which the Emperor would gladly have seen postponed, so long as he was still pausing on the brink of his conflict with the German Protestants. The Pope, on the contrary, while ostentatiously displaying on the frontier the auxiliary forces which he had promised to the Emperor, was eager to proclaim through the council as distinctly as possible the solid unity of the orthodox Church. The doctrine concerning original sin having been promulgated in the teeth of imperial opposition, the legates pressed for the issue of the decree concerning justification. In the midst of the debates the Smalkaldic War broke out (July, 1546). For a time it seemed as if at Trent, too, the opposing interests would have proved irreconcilable. Pole, as the justification decree began to shape itself, had, "for reasons of health," withdrawn to Padua; Madruccio and Del Monte exchanged personal insults; Pacheco accused the legates of gross chicanery, and they in their turn threatened a removal of the council to an Italian city, where, in accordance with what they knew to be the papal wish, the council might deliberate without being either overawed by the Emperor or menaced by his Protestant adversaries. Soon, however, the case was altered by the manifest collapse of the latter, notwithstanding their expectations of support from England, Denmark, and France, long before their final catastrophe in the battle of Muhlberg, April 24, 1547. The Emperor would not hear of the removal of the council to Lucca, Ferrara, or any other Italian town, and in consequence the plan of campaign at Trent was modified, in order at all events to make the breach with the Protestants impassable. The debates on justification were eagerly pushed on, and, after some further trials of _finesse_, the decree on the subject which anathematized the fundamental doctrines of the Lutheran Reformation was passed in the sixth session of the council, January 13, 1547. On the other hand, the decree on residence was again postponed, and a very high tone was taken toward the prelates absent from the council--the Germans being, of course, those principally glanced at. In the next session (March 5th) decrees followed asserting the orthodox doctrine of the Church concerning the sacraments, and baptism and confirmation in particular, and with these was at last issued the decree concerning residence. It avoided pronouncing on the view which had been so ardently advocated by the Spanish bishops and argued by the pen of Archbishop Carranza, that the duty of residence was imposed by divine law, and it took care to safeguard the dispensing authority of the Roman see. Yet, though at times evaded or overridden, the prohibition of pluralism contained in this decree, together with certain other provisions for the _bona-fide_ execution of bishops' functions, has indisputably proved most advantageous to the vigor and vitality of the episcopacy of the Church of Rome. Paul III's attitude toward the Emperor had meanwhile grown more and more suspicious. Partly they had become antagonists on the great question of Church reorganization; partly the Emperor was becoming disposed to thwart the dynastic policy of the Farnese; partly, again, the Pope now thought himself able to fall back on the alliance of France. In January Paul III recalled the auxiliaries and stopped the subsidies which he had furnished to Charles V; and in March Henry II succeeded to the French throne, whose intrigues with the German Protestants, though leaving unaffected his fanatical rigor against his own heretics at home, seemed likely to break the current of imperial success. Thus at Trent the struggle against the Spanish bishops acquired an intense significance; and in the eighth session, March 11th, the legates at last made use of the power intrusted to them, it was said, eighteen months before, and carried, against the votes of Spain, the removal of the council to Bologna, on the plea of an outbreak of the plague at Trent. By the Emperor's desire, the Spanish bishops, plague or no plague, remained in the city. "The obstinate old man," said Charles, "would end by ruining the Church;" and sanguine Protestants might dream of a renewal of the situation of 1526-1527. The progress of events widened the breach between the Emperor and the Pope. After Muhlberg Charles V seemed irresistible, and, as he would hear of no solution but a return of the council to Trent, there seemed no choice between submission and defiance. Gradually, however, it became clear that he had no wish again to drive things to extremes, and least of all to provoke anything of the nature of a schism. Moreover, France, where the Guises were now in the ascendant, was becoming more hostile to him; and the murder of the Pope's son at Piacenza, followed by the occupation of that city by Spanish troops, September, 1547, nearly brought about the conclusion of a Franco-Italian league against Charles. But though French bishops arrived at Bologna, their attitude there was by no means acceptable to the Pope, and Henry II had no real intention of making war upon the Emperor. Thus the latter thought himself able to take into his own hands the settlement of the religious difficulty. In the midst of further disappointments and of fresh designs, the immediate purposes of which are not altogether clear, Pope Paul III died, November 15, 1549. That the most generous of the aspirations which had under his reign first found full opportunity for asserting themselves had survived his manoeuvring, was shown by the favorable reception, both outside and inside the conclave, of the proposal that Reginald Pole should be his successor. But Pole refused to be elected by the impulsive method of adoration, and in the end the Farnese[55] interest, supported by the French, prevailed, and Cardinal del Monte was chosen. The papal government of Julius III (1550 to 1555) showed hardly more of temperate wisdom than had marked his conduct of the presidency at Trent; but he had the courage at the very outset to decide upon the safest course. After a few conditions, most of them quite in the spirit of the imperial policy, had been proposed and accepted, the bull summoning the council to Trent for the following spring was issued without further ado (November). Yet even before the council actually reopened, _i.e._, May 1, 1551, it had become evident that the papal view of its purposes remained as widely divergent from the Imperial as in the days of Paul III. The nomination of Cardinal Crescentio, a Roman by birth, as president of the council, with two Italian prelates, Pighino of Siponto and Lippomano of Verona, by his side, was in itself ominous; and the German Protestants, upon whom the Emperor pressed safe-conducts at Augsburg (1551), perceived the papal intention of treating the council as a mere continuation of that which had previously sat at Trent. Still, several of them, as well as the Catholic electors, finally promised to attend. On the other hand, Henry II of France prohibited the appearance of a single French prelate, and began to talk of a Gallican council. Thus the brief series of sessions held at Trent from May, 1551, to April, 1552, proved in the main, though not altogether, barren of results. Unless the assembled fathers were prepared to reconsider the decrees already passed, and to force the assent of the Pope to a religious policy of quite unprecedented breadth, another deadlock was at hand; and already, in the early months of 1552, the council, this time with the manifest connivance of Rome, began to thin. When, in April, Maurice of Saxony, now the ally of France, approached the southern frontier of the Empire, the Pope, whose own French war had taken a disastrous turn, had reason enough for shunning further coöperation with the Emperor. The council dwindled apace in spite of the efforts of Charles V, who had never ceased to believe in his schemes. Finally, however, he could not prevent the remnants of the council from passing a decree suspending its sessions for two years, which was opposed by not more than a dozen loyal Spanish votes, April 28, 1552. Charles V's resignation of his thrones (1554-1556) resulted, though far from being so intended, in a confession of his failure. While it was in progress, Julius III died (March 23, 1555), leaving behind him scant evidence to support the rumor of his having indulged, at all events in the last period of his reign, in ideas of church reformation. But the choice of his successor, Marcellus II (April-May, 1555), shows that these ideas were not yet extinct in the sacred college, notwithstanding the simultaneous creation by Julius III of fourteen cardinals; for Cervino had always been reckoned a member, though a moderate one, of the reforming party. Far greater, however, was the significance attaching to the election of the Pope who speedily took the place of Marcellus. The pontificate of Paul IV (Gian Pietro Caraffa, May, 1555-August, 1559) forms one of the most remarkable chapters in the history of the Counter-reformation, which in him seemed under both its aspects to have secured the mastery of the Church. God's will alone, he was convinced, had placed him where he stood; for he was unconscious of having achieved anything through the favor of man. He was now seventy-nine years of age, but he had never been more eager to devote himself to his chosen purpose--the establishment in the eyes of all peoples of a pure and spiritually active church, free from all impediments of corruptions and abuses, and purged of all poison of heresy and schism. Fully aware--though he had belonged to it himself--of the virtual failure of Paul III's commission of reform, Paul IV, in his first bull, solemnly promised an effectual reform of the Church and the Roman Curia, and lost no time in instituting a congregation for the purpose. The commission, which consisted of three divisions, each of them composed jointly of cardinals, bishops, and doctors, wisely addressed itself in the first instance to the question of ecclesiastical appointments. The new Pope likewise issued orders for the specific reform of monastic establishments, and his energy seemed to stand in striking contrast with the hesitations and delays of the recently suspended council. But once more the seductions of the temporal power overcame its holder. Caraffa's residence in Spain, and enthusiasm for the religious ideals and methods prevalent there, had not eradicated the bitterly anti-Spanish feeling inborn in him as a Neapolitan, and Charles V, returning hatred for hatred, had done his utmost to offend the dignity and damage the interests of the Cardinal. To these personal and national sentiments had been added the conviction that the Emperor's dealings with the German Protestants had encouraged them to deal a deadly blow to the unity and strength of the Church; and thus Paul IV allowed himself to be borne away by passion. His fiery temperament, fretted rather than soothed by old age, left him and those around him no peace; he maltreated the imperialist cardinals and the dependents of the Emperor within his reach, and sought to instigate the French government to take up arms once more. Of a sudden, as if in another gust of passion, he made a clean sweep of the obstacles which his own perversity had placed in his path, and then took up in terrible earnest the work of church reform. He would allow no appointment savoring of corruption to any spiritual office; he would hear of no exception to the duty of residence; he completely abolished dispensations for marriages within prohibited degrees. Into the general management of the churches of the city, as well as into that of his own papal court, he introduced so strict a discipline that Rome was likened to a well-conducted monastery. But the agency which above all others he encouraged was that which his own advice had established in the centre of the Catholic world--the Inquisition. From the sacred college downward, no sphere of life was exempted from its control; and his intolerance extended itself to the very Jews whose privileges in the papal states he ruthlessly revoked. On his death-bed he recommended the Inquisition with the holy see itself to the pious cardinals surrounding him. It was afterward observed that many reforms decreed in its third period by the Council of Trent were copied from the ordinances issued by Paul IV in this memorable _biennium_. But inasmuch as during his pontificate the Church of Rome had lost ground in almost every country of Europe except Italy and Spain, his death (August 18, 1559) naturally brought with it a widespread renewal of the demand for remedies more effective than those supplied by his feverish activity and by the operations of his favorite institution. Personally, Pius IV (1559-1566) was regarded, and probably chosen, as an opponent of the late Pope; his family history inclined him to the Imperial interest, and he was understood to favor concessions to Germany with a view of bringing her stray sheep back into the fold. But in general he furthered rather than arrested the religious reaction. Above all, the Inquisition, though he is not known to have done anything to intensify its rigor or augment its authority, went on as before. Carlo Borromeo,[56] the nephew of Pius IV, served the holy see in a spirit of unselfish devotion, and began those efforts on behalf of religion which in the end obtained for him a place among the saints of the Church--a position not reached by many popes' nephews. With the aid of this influence, Pius IV came to perceive that the future, both of the Church and of the papacy, depended on the spirit of confidence and cohesion which could be infused into the former; nor had he from the very outset of his pontificate ever doubted the expediency of reassembling the council at Trent. The emperor Ferdinand and the French Government, who persisted in treating the reunion of the Church as the primary object of the council, at first strongly urged the substitution for Trent of a genuinely German or French town, where the German bishops, and perhaps even the Protestants, would feel no scruple about attending. But a totally free and _new_ council of this description lay outside the horizon of the papacy; and Pius IV might have let fall the plan altogether but for the fear of the entire separation in that event of the Gallican Church from Rome. In France, Protestantism had made considerable strides during the reign of Henry II (1547-1559). About six weeks before the death of Henry the first national synod of Protestants was held at Paris (May, 1559). Under Francis II the Guise influence became paramount, and the persecution of the Protestants continued. But though the suppression, just before this, of the so-called conspiracy of Amboise had temporarily added to the power of the Guises, it had also made the Queen-mother, Catherine de' Medici, resolve not to let the power of the state pass wholly out of her hands. Hence the appointment of the large-hearted L'Hôpital as chancellor, and the assembly of notables at Fontainebleau (August), where the grievances against Rome found full expression, and where arrangements were made for a meeting of the States-general and a national council of the French Church. This resolution determined Pius IV to lose no further time. On November 29, 1560, he issued a bull summoning all the prelates and princes of Christendom to Trent for the following Easter. The invitation included both Eastern schismatics and Western heretics, Elizabeth of England among the rest; but neither she nor the German Protestant princes assembled at Naumburg, nor the kings of the Scandinavian North, would so much as receive the papal summons. In France the death of Francis II (December 5, 1560) further depressed the Guise influence; and Catherine entered into negotiations with the Pope with a view to concessions such as would satisfy the Huguenots while approved by the French bishops. The "Edict of January" (1562), which followed, long remained a sort of standard of fair concessions to the Huguenots. The first deliberations of the reassembled council were barren. The question which really came home to the fathers of the Church assembled at Trent presented itself again when the sacrament of orders had in due course to be debated. The imperial and French ambassadors still coöperated as actively as ever, and the episcopal party, the Spanish prelates in particular, entered upon the struggle with a full sense of its critical importance. If the right divine of episcopacy could be declared, with it would be established the divine obligation of residence. Pius IV accordingly showed considerable shrewdness in instructing the legates at once to formulate a decree on residence, which, while leaving the question of divine obligation open, imposed penalties on nonresidence--except for lawful reasons--sufficient to meet practical requirements. But though such a decree was passed by the council, the debates on the origin of the episcopal office, which involved nothing less than the origin and nature of the papal supremacy, continued (November); and the critical nature of the discussion was the more apparent when in the midst of it there at last arrived nearly a score of French bishops, headed by the Cardinal of Lorraine. Hitherto France had been represented at the council by spokesmen of the French court and of the Parliament of Paris; now the foremost among the prelates of the monarchy, whose abilities, however, unfortunately fell far short of his pretensions, announced in full conciliar assembly the demands of his branch of the Church. The recent January edict proved the strength of the Huguenots in France; and though the Cardinal's first speech at Trent breathed nothing but condemnation of these heretics, it suited him to pose as the advocate of as extensive a series of reforms as had yet been urged upon the council. Further additions were made in the "libel," which was shortly afterward (January, 1563) presented by the French ambassador, and perfect harmony existed between the French and the imperial policy at the council. What decision, then, was to be expected on the crucial question as to the relations between papal and episcopal authority? How could a recognition of the Pope's claim to be regarded as _rector universalis ecclesiæ_ be expected from such a union of the ultramontane forces? The current was not likely to be stopped by the papal court, which about this time Pius IV announced on his own account at Rome; it seemed on the point of rising higher than ever when (February, 1563) the Cardinal of Lorraine and some other prelates waited upon the Emperor at Innsbruck. In truth, however, a turning-point in the history of the council was close at hand. The Cardinal of Lorraine had left Trent for Innsbruck with threats of a Gallican synod on his lips. Ferdinand I had arrived there very wroth with the council, and had received the Bishop of Zante (Commendone), whom the legates sent to deprecate his vexation, with marked coolness. The remedies proposed to the Emperor by the Cardinal were drastic enough; the council was to be swamped by French, German, and Spanish bishops, and the Emperor, by repairing to Trent in person, was to awe the assembly into discussing the desired reforms, whether with or without the approval of the legates. But Ferdinand I, by nature moderate in action, and taught by the example of his brother, Charles V, the danger of violent courses, preferred to resort to a series of direct and by no means tame appeals to the Pope. The latter, indisposed as he was to support a fresh proposition for the removal of the council to some German town, urged by France, but resisted by Spain, which at the same time persistently opposed the concession of the cup demanded by both France and the Emperor, saw his opportunity for taking his adversaries singly. The deaths about this time (March, 1563) of the presiding legate, Cardinal Gonzaga, and of his colleague Cardinal Seripando, both of whom had occasionally shown themselves inclined to yield to the reforming party, were likewise in his favor. Their places were filled by Cardinals Morone, formerly a prisoner indicted by the Inquisition, now an eager champion of papal claims, and Navagero, a Venetian by birth, but not in his political sentiments. Morone, though he had left Rome almost despairing of any favorable issue of the council, at once began to negotiate with the Emperor through the Jesuit Canisius. The leverage employed may, in addition to the distrust between Ferdinand and his Spanish nephew, and the ancient jealousy between Austria and France, have included some reference to the heterodox opinions and the consequently doubtful prospects of the Emperor's eldest son, Maximilian. In a word, the papal government about this time formed and carried out a definite plan for inducing the Emperor to abandon his conciliar policy. The consideration offered for his assenting to a speedy termination of the council was the promise that, so soon as that event should have taken place, the desired concession of the cup should be made to his subjects. Ferdinand I, without becoming a thoroughgoing partisan of the papal policy, accepted the bargain as seemingly the shortest road to the end which, for the sake of the peace of the empire, he had at heart. Thus, notwithstanding the continued opposition of the French bishops, the decrees concerning the episcopate began to shape themselves more easily, and the Pope of his own accord submitted to the council certain canons of a stringent kind reforming in a similar way the discipline of the cardinalate (June). And when, in the course of a violent quarrel about precedence between the kings of France and Spain, the latter, enraged at his demands not being enforced by the Pope, had threatened, by insisting on the admission of Protestants to the council, indefinitely to prolong it, the Emperor intervened against the proposal. But the conflict between the papal and the episcopal authority seemed still incapable of solution, and, though Lainez audaciously demanded the reference of all questions of reform to the sole decision of the Pope, and denounced the opposition of the French bishops as proceeding from members of a schismatic church, this opposition steadily continued in conjunction with that of the Spaniards, and still found a leader in the Cardinal of Lorraine. Yet at this very time a change began to be perceptible in the conduct of this versatile and ambitious prelate. The Cardinal was supposed to have himself aspired to the office of presiding legate, and, though he had missed this place of honor and power, the condition of things in France was such as naturally to incline him in the direction of Rome. The assassination of his brother Francis, Duke of Guise (February, 1563), deprived his family and interest of their natural chief, and inclined Catherine de' Medici to transact with the Huguenots. The Cardinal accordingly became anxious at the same time to return to France and prevent the total eclipse of the influence he had hitherto exercised at court, and to secure himself by an understanding with the Pope. A letter which about this time arrived from Mary, Queen of Scots, declaring her readiness to submit to the decrees of the council, and, should she ascend the throne of England, to reduce that country to obedience to the holy see, may perhaps be connected with these overtures. Pius IV, delighted to meet the Cardinal half way, sent instructions in this sense to the legates, whom the recent display of Spanish arrogance had already disposed favorably toward France. Thus the decree on the sacrament of orders was passed in the colorless condition desired by the papal party, in a session held on July 15th, the Spanish bishops angrily declaring themselves betrayed by the French Cardinal. Other decrees were passed in this memorable session, among them one of substantial importance for the establishment of diocesan seminaries for priests. Clearly, the council had now become tractable and might speedily be brought to an end. In this sense the Pope addressed urgent letters to the three great Catholic monarchs, and found willing listeners except in Spain. Meanwhile the remaining decrees, both of doctrine and of discipline, were eagerly pushed on. The sacrament of marriage gave rise to much discussion; but the proposal that the marriage of priests should be permitted, though formerly included in both the imperial and the French libel, was now advocated only by the two prelates who spoke directly in the name of the Emperor. But in the decree proposed on the all-important subject of the reformation of the life and morals of the clergy, the legates presumed too far on the yielding mood of the governments. It not only contained many admirable reforms as to the conditions under which spiritual offices, from the cardinalate downward, were to be held or conferred, but the papacy had wisely and generously surrendered many existing usages profitable to itself. At the same time, however, it was proposed not only to deprive the royal authority in the several states of a series of analogous profits, but to take away from it the nomination of bishops and the right of citing ecclesiastics before a secular tribunal. To the protest which the ambassadors of the powers inevitably raised against these proposals, the legates replied by raising a cry that the "reformation of the princes" should be comprehended in the decrees. It became necessary to postpone the objectionable article; but now the fears of the supporters of the existing system began to be excited, both at Rome and at Trent, and it was contrived to introduce so many modifications into the proposed decree as seriously to impair its value. Then, though the Cardinal of Lorraine himself, during a visit to Rome (September), showed his readiness to support the papal policy, the French ambassadors at the council carried their opposition to its encroachments upon the claims of their sovereign so far as to withdraw to Venice. And above all, the Spanish bishops, upheld by the persistency of their King, stood firmly by the original form of the reformation decree, and finally obtained its restoration to a very considerable extent. Thus the greater portion of the decree was at last passed in the penultimate session of the council (November 11th). With the exception of Spain, all the powers now made known their consent to winding up the business of the council without further loss of time. But Count Luna still immovably resisted the closing of the council before the express assent of King Philip should have been received; nor was it till the news--authentic or not--arrived of a serious illness having befallen the Pope that the fear of the complications which might arise in the event of his death put an end to further delay. Summoned in all haste, the fathers met on December 3d for their five-and-twentieth session, and on this and the following day rapidly discussed a series of decrees, some of which were by no means devoid of intrinsic importance. In the doctrinal decrees concerning purgatory and indulgences, as in those concerning the invocation of saints and the respect due to their relics and images, it was sought to preclude a reckless exaggeration or distortion of the doctrines of the Church on these heads, and a corrupt perversion of the usages connected with them. Of the disciplinary decrees, the most important and elaborate related to the religious of both sexes. It contained a clause, inserted on the motion of Lainez, which the Jesuits afterward interpreted as generally exempting their society from the operation of this decree. Another decree enjoined sobriety and moderation in the use of the ecclesiastical penalty of excommunication. For the rest, all possible expedition was used in gathering up the threads of the work done or attempted by the council. The determination of the Index, as well as the revision of missal, breviary, ritual, and catechism, was remitted to the Pope. Then the decrees debated in the last session and at its adjourned meeting were adopted, being subscribed by 234 (or 255?) ecclesiastics; and the decrees passed in the sessions of the council before its reassembling under Pope Pius IV were read over again, and thus its continuity (1545-1563) was established without any use being made of the terms "approbation" and "confirmation." A decree followed, composed by the Cardinal of Lorraine and Cardinal Madruccio, solemnly commending the ordinances of the council to the Church and to the princes of Christendom, and remitting any difficulties concerning the execution of the decrees to the Pope, who would provide for it either by summoning another general council or as he might determine. A concluding decree put an end to the council itself, which closed with a kind of general thanksgiving intoned by the Cardinal of Lorraine. The decrees of the council were shortly afterward (January 26, 1564) ratified by Pius IV, against the wish of the more determined Curialists, while others would have wished him to guard himself by certain restrictions. These were, however, unnecessary, as he reserved to himself the interpretation of doubtful or disputed decrees. This reservation remained absolute as to decrees concerning dogma; for the interpretation of those concerning discipline, Sixtus V afterward appointed a special commission under the name of the "congregation of the Council of Trent." While the former became _ipso facto_ binding on the entire Church, the decrees on discipline and reformation could not become valid in any particular state till after they had been published in it with the consent of its government. This distinction is of the greatest importance. The doctrinal system of the Church of Rome was now enduringly fixed; the area which the Church had lost she could henceforth only recover if she reconquered it. Many attempts at reunion by compromise have since been made from the Protestant side, and some of these have perhaps been met half way by the generous wishes of not a few Catholics; but the Council of Trent has doomed all these projects to inevitable sterility. The gain of the Church of Rome from her acquisition at Trent of a clearly and sharply defined "body of doctrine" is not open to dispute, except from a point of view which her doctors have steadily repudiated. And it is difficult to suppose but that, in her conflict with the spirit of criticism which from the first in some measure animated the Protestant Reformation and afterward urged it far beyond its original scope, the Church of Rome must have proved an unequal combatant had not the Council of Trent renewed the foundations of the authority claimed by herself and of that claimed by her head on earth. The effect of the disciplinary decrees of the council, though more far-reaching and enduring than has been on all sides acknowledged, was necessarily in the first instance dependent on the reception given to them by the several Catholic powers. The representatives of the Emperor at once signed the whole of the decrees of the council, though only on behalf of his hereditary dominions; and he had his promised reward when, a few months afterward (April), the German bishops were, under certain restrictions, empowered to accord the cup in the eucharist to the laity. But neither the Empire through its diet, nor Hungary, ever accepted the Tridentine decrees, though several of the Catholic estates of the Empire, both spiritual and temporal, individually accepted them with modifications. The example of Ferdinand was followed by several other powers; but in Poland the diet, to which the decrees were twice (1564 and 1578) presented as having been accepted by King Sigismund Augustus, refused to accord its own acceptance, maintaining that the Polish Church, as such, had never been represented at the council. In Portugal and in the Swiss Catholic cantons the decrees were received without hesitation, as also by the Seigniory of Venice, whose representatives at Trent had rarely departed from an attitude of studied moderation, and who now merely safeguarded the rights of the republic. True to the part recently played by him, the Cardinal of Lorraine, on his own responsibility, subscribed to the decrees in the name of the King of France. But the Parliament of Paris was on the alert, and on his return home the Cardinal had to withdraw in disgrace to Rheims. Neither the doctrinal decrees of the council nor the disciplinary, which in part clashed with the customs of the kingdom and the privileges of the Gallican Church, were ever published in France. The ambassador of Spain, whose King and prelates had so consistently held out against the closing of the council, refused his signature till he had received express instructions. Yet as it was Spain which had hoped and toiled for the achievement at the council of solid results, so it was here that the decrees fell on the most grateful soil, when, after considerable deliberation and delay, their publication at last took place, accompanied by stringent safeguards as to the rights of the King and the usages of his subjects (1565). The same course was adopted in the Italian and Flemish dependencies of the Spanish monarchy. The disciplinary decrees of the council, on the whole, fell short in completeness of the doctrinal. But while they consistently maintained the papal authority and confirmed its formal pretensions, the episcopal authority, too, was strengthened by them, not only as against the monastic orders, but in its own moral foundations. More than this, the whole priesthood, from the Pope downward, benefited by the warnings that had been administered, by the sacrifices that had been made, and by the reforms that had been agreed upon. The Church became more united, less worldly, and more dependent on herself. These results outlasted the movement known as the Counter-reformation, and should be ignored by no candid mind. FOOTNOTES: [54] Pole became archbishop of Canterbury (1556) and chief adviser to Queen Mary, under whom he was largely responsible for the persecution of English Protestants. [55] The Farnese were an illustrious Italian family. Alessandro Farnese was Pope Paul III. [56] Count Carlo Borromeo, Italian cardinal, Archbishop of Milan, was one of the most noted of the ecclesiastical reformers. He was canonized in 1610. PROTESTANT STRUGGLE AGAINST CHARLES V THE SMALKALDIC WAR A.D. 1546 EDWARD ARMSTRONG In 1530 Charles V convened a diet at Augsburg for the settlement of religious disputes in Germany and preparation for war against the Turks, who were advancing into the empire. The diet issued a decree condemning most of the Protestant tenets. In consequence of this the Protestant princes of Germany at once entered into a league, known as the Smalkaldic League, from Smalkald, Germany, where it was formed. They bound themselves to assist each other by arms and money in defence of their faith against the Emperor, and to act together in all religious matters. They concluded an alliance with Francis I, King of France, and from Henry VIII of England they received moral support and some material assistance. Charles was not yet ready to proceed to extremities. In 1531 terms of pacification were agreed upon, and the Emperor received earnest support from Protestant Germany in his preparations against the Turks, who after all withdrew without a battle. During the next few years there was no open hostility between the two religious parties, but all attempts at reconciliation failed. In 1538 the Catholic princes formed a counter-league, called the Holy League, and violent disputes continued. At last Charles determined to crush the Reformation in Germany by military force. The German Protestants refused to be bound by the decrees of the Council of Trent (1545), because it was held in a foreign country and presided over by the Pope. Their attitude confirmed the Emperor in his resolve, and in 1546 began the conflict known as the Smalkaldic War, of which Armstrong gives us a spirited and impartial account. War was actually opened neither by Emperor nor princes, but by the Protestant towns. The capable _condottiere_ Sebastian Schartlin von Burtenbach led the forces of Augsburg and Ulm briskly southward, seized Fussen in the Bishop of Augsburg's territory on July 9th, and then surprised the small force guarding the pass of Ehrenberg, which gave access to the Inn valley. The religious character of the war was emphasized by plunder of churches and ill usage of monks and clergy. Two obvious courses were now open to the insurgent princes. Either they could march direct on Regensburg, where a mere handful of troops protected Charles from a strongly Protestant population, or in support of Schartlin they could clear Tyrol of imperialists, close the passes to Spanish and Italian reënforcements, and even pay a domiciliary visit to the Council of Trent. This latter was Schartlin's programme; the Tyrolese had Protestant sympathies and dreaded the advent of the foreign troops; Charles averred that even their government was ill-affected. Schartlin would even have persuaded the Venetians and Grisons to forbid passage to the Emperor's troops, and have enlisted the services of Ercole of Ferrara, the enemy of the Pope. But either of the two strategic movements was too bold for the Smalkaldic council of war. The first would have violated the neutrality of Bavaria, in which the league still believed, while it had no quarrel with Ferdinand, who was ostensibly conciliatory. The towns, moreover, wished to keep their captain within hail, for they feared the possibility of attack either from Regensburg or from Ferdinand's paltry forces in the Vorarlberg. Schartlin retired on Augsburg, but on July 20th, reënforced by a Wuertemberg contingent, occupied Donauworth, and was here joined on August 4th by the Elector and Landgrave. The insurgent army now numbered fifty thousand foot and seven thousand horse. The very size of this force, by far the largest that Germany could remember, is a disproof of the not uncommon assertion that Charles took the Lutherans by surprise. On a rumor that the enemy were crossing the Danube to separate him from the troops on the march from Italy, Charles moved on Landshut with some six thousand men, not much more than a tenth of the opposing force. He was determined, he wrote, to remain in Germany alive or dead, rejecting as idle vanity the notion that it was beneath his dignity to lead a small force. At Landshut he met papal auxiliaries under Ottavio Farnese and Alessandro Vitelli, with detachments of light horse sent by the Dukes of Florence and Ferrara. When the Spanish foot and Neapolitan cavalry had joined, he could muster at Regensburg twenty-eight thousand men, over whom he placed Alba in command. The Elector and Landgrave, in renunciation of their fealty, had sent in a herald with a broken staff addressed to Charles self-styled the Fifth and Roman Emperor. To him was delivered the ban of the empire against his masters, condemning them, not for heresy, but for acts of violence and rebellion, for the Pack plot, the attack on Wuertemberg, and the seizure of Brunswick. The campaign now began in earnest. While the Lutherans timidly wasted their opportunities, Charles with his greatly inferior force made a hazardous night march on Ingolstadt. The movement was executed with much disorder, resembling a flight rather than an advance. The league neglected the chance of making a flank attack on the hurrying, straggling line as it followed the right bank of the Danube until it was conveyed across the river at Neustadt. To add to the Emperor's danger, his German troops were mostly Lutherans, hating the priests and the Spanish and Italian regiments. Many had early deserted from their general, the Marquis of Marignano; all cherished ill-feeling against Charles' confessor as being the cause of the civil war. Even the population of Bavaria, professedly a friendly territory, was in great part a Lutheran. At Ingolstadt Charles could draw supplies from Bavaria, whose neutrality the league had foolishly respected, and thither the Count of Buren with the Netherland army might find his way. He was by no means out of danger, encamped as he was with but feeble artillery outside the city walls. But the Lutheran princes with all their bluster had little stomach for stand-up fights. From August 31st to September 3d they bombarded the city with one hundred ten guns, to which Charles' thirty-two pieces could make scant reply. They did not dare attack the impoverished trenches. "I would have done it," wrote the Landgrave, "had I been alone." On the other hand it was reported that the Lutherans laid the blame on Philip, that he had refused to move, "for every fox must save his own skin." The Cockerel, as the confessor, De Soto, had contemptuously prophesied, had crowed better than he fought. Charles, on the other hand, was at his best. He rode round the trenches, exhorting his soldiers to stand firm, with the assurance that artillery made more noise than mischief. In vain Granvelle sent the confessor to persuade him that Christianity needed an emperor less gallant and more sensible. He answered that no king nor emperor had ever been killed by a cannon-ball, and, if he were so unfortunate as to make a start, it would be better so to die than to live. When Ferdinand afterward expostulated with his brother, Charles assured him that his self-exposure had been exaggerated, but that they were short of hands, and it was not a time to set bad example. The division of Lutheran command was already giving Charles the expected opportunities. The princes withdrew westward, a palpable confession of weakness. They had been the aggressors, and yet they now surrendered the initiative to Charles. Their retirement enabled the Count of Buren to march in with his Netherland division, and with him the troops of Albert and Hans of Hohenzollern. This march of Buren was the strategic feat of the war. He had led the hostile forces which were watching him a dance up and down the Rhine, and slipped across it unopposed. He had brought his troops three hundred miles, mainly through the heart of Protestant Germany, with no certain knowledge where he should find the Emperor, for communications could only be maintained by means of long detours. Finally he marched boldly past the vastly superior army of the league, which had professedly retired from Ingolstadt to bar his passage. Charles now took the offensive, pushing the enemy slowly up the Danube, and steadily forcing his way toward Ulm. The strongly Protestant Count Palatine of Neuburg, Otto Henry, was the first prince to lose his territory, which, indeed, his debts had already forced him to desert. The Lutherans now showed more fight, and during the last fortnight of October the advance came almost to a standstill. Charles was ill, money and supplies were falling short, Spaniards and Italians were suffering from the cold rains of the Danube valley. The papal contingent was demoralized for want of pay; three thousand men deserted in a day, whereas the Lutherans were reënforced. Yet Charles, in spite of professional advice, refused to go into winter quarters. He counted on divisions in the League, on the selfish interests of the towns, on the penury of the princes, and reckoned aright. The fighting was never more than skirmishing; not arms but ducats were deciding the issue; the fate of war was literally hanging on a fortnight's pay. The Emperor had said that a league between towns and princes could never last. The financial burden pressed mainly on the cities, and they refused to raise further subsidies. The richer classes had always disliked the war; the great merchants were often, as the Fuggers of Augsburg, zealous Catholics. Trade was at a standstill, and they could protest that all their capital was at the Emperor's mercy, at Antwerp, at Seville, in the Indies, or else in Portugal. It was convenient to forget the brisk traffic which still continued with friendly Lyons. Zeal for the Lutheran cause seemed limited to a Catholic, Piero Strozzi the Florentine exile, who in his hatred for the Hapsburgs was vainly spending his fortune on revenge, striving for aid from Venice, negotiating loans from France. There was, moreover, no real solidarity between Northern and Southern Germany. Neither the Protestant princes nor the wealthy cities of the Baltic had as yet stirred a finger for the cause. Under any circumstances the Lutheran army must have broken up. The leaders had resolved to retire to the Rhineland for the winter, live at free quarters on the ecclesiastical princes, and renew the struggle in the spring. At this critical moment Maurice of Saxony came into action. Hitherto his conduct had been ambiguous. This was probably due less to deliberate deceit than to genuine hesitation. The incompetence of the Lutheran leaders and Ferdinand's expressed intention of invading Ernestine Saxony determined him. Persuading his estates with difficulty that it was necessary to save the Electorate for the house of Wettin, he undertook to execute the ban in his cousin's state. His reward was the title of elector and the Ernestine territories. The correspondence of Charles and his brother on the subject was characteristic of both. Ferdinand, always greedy of territory, had bargained for partition, but Charles persuaded him to be content with John Frederick's Bohemian fiefs. Charles, cautious and suspicious, was unwilling to grant the title until Maurice had proved his loyalty; Ferdinand, more impetuous, induced him to pay the bribe and give credit for the service. The Albertine and Austrian troops soon overran the defenceless land. This determined the manner of the Danubian campaign, and the Saxon phase of the war began. John Frederick must withdraw his troops to defend their homes, and he plundered _en route_ the neutral ecclesiastical territories through which he passed. "In a papal country," he told the burgomaster of Aschaffenburg, "there is nothing neutral." The campaign of the Danube was suddenly over. Philip of Hesse retired sullenly to his two wives, as Schartlin put it. As he passed through Frankfurt he hoisted banners with the crucifix, flails, and mattocks, to incite the lower classes to revolt; he had failed to bend the powers above him, he would fain stir Acheron. Charles could now complete the subjection of Southern Germany. Granvelle, the last to be convinced of the necessity of war, was the first convert to the policy of peace, which the Landgrave and the towns desired. Peace would relieve the financial strain and prevent the Germans from becoming desperate; peace would enable Charles to turn his arms against the Turks. Charles thought it undignified to negotiate with an army in the field: peace entailed the abandonment of Maurice, and henceforth no other prince would dare serve him; Augsburg and Ulm, if they were persuaded that he had no wish to establish a tyranny in Germany, were likely to capitulate, and after a victory his generosity in leaving Germany her liberty would appear the greater. Charles did not at this moment fear the Turk, and it was in his power at any moment to propitiate the French. Pedro de Soto urged the continuance of the war, to avert the danger of a papal-French combination, which would be the natural result of Paul's indignation at a compromise with heretics. The deserted princes and towns of South Germany now one by one made submission. Very pathetic was the Emperor's meeting with the Elector Palatine, the friend of his youth, the whilom lover of his sister, the husband of his niece. Charles did not extend his hand: the Elector made three low bows, after which Charles drew out a paper which he read and then spoke to him in French--"It has grieved me most of all that you in your old age should have been my enemies' companion, when we have been brought up together in our youth." The Elector answered almost in a whisper, and left "like a skinned cat," the Emperor half raising his cap, but no one else. He was ordered to go to Granvelle, and the minister played the doctor and healed the wound. He returned with tears in his eyes, and then Charles forgave him. "My cousin, I am content that your past deserts toward me should cancel the errors which you have recently committed." Henceforth the old friendship was renewed. Ulrich of Wuertemberg escaped less lightly. He paid a large indemnity, received Spanish garrisons in his fortresses, and engaged to serve against his late allies. He had no resource, for his subjects hated him; from the windows of the cottages fluttered the red and white Burgundian colors as a token of what was in the peasants' hearts. Ferdinand pressed warmly for the restoration of the duchy to Austria, but Charles replied that the aim of the war was the service of God and the revival of imperial authority: to seek their private advantage would only quicken the envy with which neighboring powers regarded the house of Hapsburg. Farther north the octogenarian of the Elector of Cologne resigned his see, and the evangelization of the Middle Rhine was at an end. Ulm gave in with a good grace, but Augsburg long delayed. Charles' original intention was, apparently, to garrison these towns, as Milan and Naples, with reliable Spanish troops, and perhaps to destroy their walls and dominate them by fortresses. But he treated the cities leniently. He left here and there companies of imperial troops, levied moderate contributions, replaced at Ulm and Augsburg the democratic constitution of the trades by the old wealthy aristocracies, but promised to respect the existing religion. Strasburg, which, in spite of French entreaties, capitulated in February, 1547, was almost exempt from punishment; it was feared that the distant, wealthy, and headstrong city might hold out a hand to the Swiss and become a canton. In Southern and Western Germany there was no longer an enemy in the field, but, in the North, Maurice's treachery had brought its penalty. John Frederick, acting with unusual vigor, recovered his dominions, received homage from the feudatories of Halberstadt and Magdeburg, and overran Maurice's territories, until he was checked before the walls of Leipsic. When Ferdinand prepared to aid Maurice, the German Protestants of Lusatia and Silesia refused their contingents, and the Bohemian Utraquists made common cause with the Lutherans. The Utraquist nobility and towns formed a league in defence of national and religious liberties; they convoked a diet and raised an army. Ferdinand was faced by a general Bohemian revolt. His position was weakened by his wife's death in February, for it was pretended that he was merely consort. Only the Catholic nobles were for the Hapsburg King; the roads were barricaded to prevent the passage of his artillery; and John Frederick, entering Bohemia, received a hearty welcome. The North German maritime and inland cities were now in arms, and the Lutheran princes of Oldenburg and Mansfield were threatening the Netherlands. Charles sent his best troops to Ferdinand's aid, and despatched Hans and Albert Hohenzollern in support of Maurice. But Germans could still beat Germans. Albert was surprised and taken at Rochlitz. Ferdinand eagerly pressed Charles to march north in person. The Emperor was unwilling, and Granvelle strongly dissuaded it. The despatch of Alba was the alternative, but Charles did not trust his generalship. He was delayed, partly by gout, and partly by fear of a fresh rising in the Swabian towns. Here he had left seven thousand men, but he could not himself safely stay in Nuremberg without a garrison of three thousand, and could not afford to lock these up. His sole presence in the North, wrote Piero Colonna, was worth twenty-five thousand foot, and Charles, ill as he was, must march. The unexpected turn which the war had taken in Saxony was not Charles' only trouble. Paul III had been alarmed by the Emperor's progress, which had been more rapid and complete than he expected, and at the end of six months, for which he had promised his contingent, he withdrew it. The material loss was slight, but the whole aspect of the war was altered. Charles could scarcely now profess to be fighting for submission to Pope and council, for the council in March transferred itself, after violent altercations with the Spanish bishops and imperial envoys, to Bologna. Rome rejoiced at the successes of John Frederick. In the late French war the Turks had figured as the Pope's friends and had spared his shores; it now seemed possible that the Lutherans might be the Pope's allies. It was certain that, if time were given, the Pope's defection would stimulate the active hostility of France. Charles must have done with the rebellion, and that quickly. Tortured by gout and fearing that his forces would prove inferior to the Saxons, Charles moved painfully from Nordlingen to Regensburg and thence to Eger, where he was joined by Ferdinand, Maurice, and the electoral prince of Brandenburg. Spending Easter at Eger, he crossed the Saxon frontier on April 13, 1547, with eighteen thousand foot and eight thousand horse. Ten days of incessant marching brought him within touch of the Elector, who was guarding the bridge of Meissen. John Frederick had foolishly frittered away his forces in Saxon and Bohemian garrisons. He now burned the bridge and retired down the Elbe to Muehlberg, hoping to concentrate his scattered forces under the walls of Wittenberg, while his bridge of boats would keep open communications with the left bank. Charles was too quick for the ponderous Elector. He marched at midnight on April 23-24, and at 9 A.M. reached the Elbe, nearly opposite Muehlberg. As the mist cleared, Alba's light horse descried the bridge of boats swinging from the farther bank, and a dozen Spaniards, covered by an arquebuse fire, swam the river with swords between their teeth, routed the guard, and brought the boats across. Meanwhile Alba and Maurice found a ford by which the light horse crossed with arquebusiers _en croupe_. Charles and Ferdinand followed, with the water up to the girths, the Emperor pale as death and thin as a skeleton. The Elector, after attending his Sunday sermon, was enjoying his breakfast; he made no attempt to defend his strong position on the higher bank, but withdrew his guns and infantry, covering the retreat in person with his cavalry. The bulk of the imperial forces had crossed by the bridge of boats, and the day was passed in a running rear-guard action. It was a long-drawn sunset, and not till between six and seven did Alba, as ever making sure, deliver his decisive attack. The Saxon horse had turned fiercely on the pursuing light cavalry some nine miles from Muehlberg, and then the imperialists, striking home, converted the retreat into a headlong flight. More than a third of the Saxon forces were left upon the field; the whole of their artillery and baggage train was taken. John Frederick regained his timid generalship by his personal bravery. Left almost single-handed in the wood through which his troops retired, he slashed at the Neapolitan light-horsemen and Hungarian hussars who surrounded him, but at length surrendered to Ippolito da Porto of Vicenza, who led him, his forehead streaming with blood, to Charles. Of the interview between the Emperor and his enemy there are several versions, but none inconsistent. "Most powerful and gracious Emperor," said the Elector, vainly endeavoring to dismount, "I am your prisoner." "You recognize me as Emperor now?" rejoined Charles. "I am to-day a poor prisoner; may it please your majesty to treat me as a born prince." "I will treat you as you deserve," said Charles. Then broke in Ferdinand, "You have tried to drive me and my children from our lands." The evidence as to the angry scene seems conclusive. Charles had been twenty-one hours in the saddle; he had been exasperated by the insolence of the Princess, who had addressed him as "Charles of Ghent, self-styled Emperor." Yet his harsh reception of a wounded prisoner contrasts unpleasantly with the generosity which his biographers have ascribed to him. Muehlberg was little more than a skirmish, and yet it was decisive. In a far more murderous battle the imperialists were beaten. The forces of the maritime towns had compelled Eric of Brunswick to raise the siege of Bremen, and on his retreat had defeated him near Drakenberg with a heavy loss. But victories belated or premature do not turn the scale against an opportune success. The sole result of the battle was to delay the Landgrave's surrender a little longer. Philip had sworn to die like a mad-dog before he would surrender his fortresses, but he yielded ultimately without a blow. He found discontent rife among his nobles; he was threatened alike from the Netherlands and by the Count of Buren; for months he wavered between capitulation and resistance. Arras assured the nuncio that he was a scoundrel and a coward; that he had implored Maurice to intercede, first for all Lutheran Germany, then for John Frederick and himself, and finally for himself alone. "See what men these are," added the Bishop later. "Philip has even offered to march against the Duke of Saxony; he is a sorry fellow and of evil nature: he is such a scoundrel that his majesty cannot trust him in any promise that he may make, for he has never kept one yet." The imperial minister's judgment upon the Landgrave was too severe. He long struggled for honor against fear, and, but for his son-in-law, Maurice's influence might have made a better fight. Maurice had from the first striven to detach Philip from John Frederick, while in turn he was expected by the Landgrave to strike in for a free Germany and a free gospel against the Hungarian hussars and the black Spanish devils. When the two Lutheran leaders parted in November, 1546, on no good terms, Philip warned his son-in-law that the Elector was on the march against him, but begged to intercede with Charles for a general peace. Maurice would have no peace with his Ernestine cousins, but offered to use all his influence on behalf of Philip, who must hasten to decide, for Buren was "on his legs" and the Emperor was an obstinate man. From this moment the Landgrave's irresolution was piteous; the negotiations crippled all enterprise, and yet he could not persuade himself to abandon his ally, although the natural expiry of the League of Smalkald on February 27, 1547, gave him a tolerable pretext. Maurice waxed impatient at the recurring hesitation, at the perpetual amendment of all suggested terms: Philip could not bargain with Charles as though he were a tradesman; he need have no fear for religion, but he must make it clear to the Emperor and Ferdinand that he was against John Frederick. Then came the defeat of Muehlberg, which at least relieved Philip from obligations to his late ally. It was now the surrender of his fortresses and his artillery that he could not stomach, and the victory of Drakenberg raised his once martial ardor to a final flicker. The flicker died away, and at length Philip yielded to the pressure of Maurice and Joachim of Brandenburg. Charles insisted on unconditional surrender, but promised the mediators that punishment should not extend to personal injury or perpetual imprisonment--this only, however, on their pledge that Philip should not be informed of these limitations. It was agreed that he should dismantle his fortresses with one exception, surrender his artillery, and pay an indemnity, but that his territory should remain intact and its religion undisturbed. With Philip's surrender the war seemed virtually at an end. Magdeburg, indeed, still held out, for fear of falling again under its Catholic Hohenzollern Archbishop. There was no reason to believe that the city would prove more courageous than its fellows. Charles did not dare spend his four thousand Spaniards in the assault, but in this case extravagance would have proved to be economy. When he knew his subject, his opinion was usually well founded; he had little knowledge, however, of North Germany, and confused Magdeburg with Ulm or Augsburg. It were better for Charles had his Spaniards been decimated on its parapet than that they should lord it in security over the churches and taverns of Southern Germany. Apart from his two last mistakes, in the campaign against the league, Charles, whether as a soldier or statesman, is seen at his best. When once the drums beat to arms there was an end to irresolution. He had that reserve of energy upon which an indolent, lethargic nature can sometimes at a crisis draw. The Netherlands seemed threatened from east to west; yet in perfect calm he ordered his agitated sister Mary to watch her frontiers, but to send every man and gun that could be spared under Buren to the front. Taking advantage of his enemies' delays, he made with greatly inferior forces the forward move on Ingolstadt, and was there seen under heavy fire "steady as a rock and smiling." Racked by gout he now sought sleep in his litter behind a bastion, now warmed his aching limbs in a little movable wooden room heated by a stove. In the cold, wet November, when generals and ministers fell sick, and soldiers of every nationality deserted, he resolutely rejected expert advice to withdraw into winter quarters. He would not give his enemies, he said, the least chance of outstaying him. All success, wrote the Marquis of Marignano, was due to the Emperor's resolution to keep the field. Charles vexed the fiery Buren by shrinking from a general engagement, because he knew that his combinations would break up the league without the risk of a battle. But when once danger really pressed, ill as he was, he marched across Germany, and followed fast upon the Elector's heels until he tripped and took him. INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY INTO JAPAN A.D. 1549 JOHN H. GUBBINS Lands discovered or settled by Europeans after the founding of the Jesuits were quickly chosen by the zealous members of that order as scenes of missionary work. In the case of Japan, missions followed discovery with unusual rapidity. Excepting what was told by Marco Polo, who visited the coast of Japan in the thirteenth century, nothing was learned of that country by the Western World until its discovery by the Portuguese. In 1541 King John III requested Francis Xavier, one of the Jesuit founders, with other members of his order, to undertake missionary work in the Portuguese colonies. Through his labors in India, Xavier became known as the "Apostle of the Indies." Before sailing to Japan he had established a flourishing mission with a school, called the Seminary of the Holy Faith, at Goa, on the Malabar coast of India. It was to Portuguese enterprise that Christianity owed its introduction into Japan in the sixteenth century. As early as 1542 Portuguese trading vessels began to visit Japan, where they exchanged Western commodities for the then little-known products of the Japanese islands; and seven years afterward three Portuguese missionaries (Xavier, Torres, and Fernandez) took passage in one of these merchant ships and landed at Kagoshima. The leading spirit of the three, it need scarcely be said, was Xavier, who had already acquired considerable reputation by his missionary labors in India. After a short residence the missionaries were forced to leave Satsuma, and after as short a stay in the island of Hirado, which appears to have been then the rendezvous of trade between the Portuguese merchants and the Japanese, they crossed over to the mainland and settled down in Yamaguchi in Nagato, the chief town of the territories of the Prince of Choshiu. After a visit to the capital, which was productive of no result, owing to the disturbed state of the country, Xavier (November, 1551) left Japan with the intention of founding a Jesuit mission in China, but died on his way in the island of Sancian. In 1553 fresh missionaries arrived, some of whom remained in Bungo, where Xavier had made a favorable impression before his departure, while others joined their fellow-missionaries in Yamaguchi. After having been driven from the latter place by the outbreak of disturbances, and having failed to establish a footing in Hizen, we find the missionaries in 1557 collected in Bungo, and this province appears to have become their headquarters from that time. In the course of the next year but one, Vilela made a visit to Kioto, Sakai, and other places, during which he is said to have gained a convert in the person of the _daimio_, of the small principality of Omura, who displayed an imprudent excess of religious zeal in the destruction of idols and other extreme measures, which could only tend to provoke the hostility of the Buddhist priesthood. The conversion of this prince was followed by that of Arima-no-Kami (mistakenly called the Prince of Arima by the Jesuits). Other missionaries arriving in 1560, the circle of operations was extended; but shortly afterward the revolution, headed by Mori, compelled Vilela to leave Kioto, where he had settled, and a simultaneous outbreak in Omura necessitated the withdrawal of the missionaries stationed there. Mori, of Choshiu, was perhaps the most powerful noble of the day, possessing no fewer than ten provinces, and, as he was throughout an open enemy to Christianity, his influence was exercised against it with much ill result. On Vilela's return to Kioto from Sakai, where a branch mission had been established, he succeeded in gaining several distinguished converts. Among these were Takayama, a leading general of the time, and his nephew. He did not, however, remain long in the capital. The recurrence of troubles in 1568 made it necessary for him to withdraw, and he then proceeded to Nagasaki, where he met with considerable success. In this same year we come across Valegnani preaching in the Goto Isles, and Torres in the island of Seki, where he died. Almeida, too, about this time founded a Christian community at Shimabara, afterward notorious as the scene of the revolt and massacre of the Christians. Hitherto we find little mention of Christianity in Japanese books. This may partly be explained by the fact that the labors of the missionaries were chiefly confined to the southern provinces, Christianity having as yet made little progress at Kioto, the seat of literature. But the scarcity of Japanese records can scarcely be wondered at in the face of the edict issued later in the next century, which interdicted not only books on the subject of Christianity, but any book in which even the name of _Christian_ or the word _Foreign_ should be mentioned. Short notices occur in several native works of the arrival in Kioto at this date of the Jesuit missionary Organtin, and some curious details are furnished respecting the progress of Christianity in the capital and the attitude of Nobunaga in regard to it. The _Saikoku Kirishitan Bateren Jitsu Roku_, or "True Record of Christian Padres in Kiushiu," gives a minute account of the appearance and dress of Organtin, and goes on to say: "He was asked his name and why he had come to Japan, and replied that he was the Padre Organtin and had come to spread his religion. He was told that he could not be allowed at once to preach his religion, but would be informed later on. Nobunaga accordingly took counsel with his retainers as to whether he should allow Christianity to be preached or not. One of these strongly advised him not to do so, on the ground that there were already enough religions in the country. But Nobunaga replied that Buddhism had been introduced from abroad and had done good in the country, and he therefore did not see why Christianity should not be granted a trial. Organtin was consequently allowed to erect a church and to send for others of his order, who, when they came, were found to be like him in appearance. Their plan of action was to tend the sick and relieve the poor, and so prepare the way for the reception of Christianity, and then to convert everyone and make the sixty-six provinces of Japan subject to Portugal." The _Ibuki Mogusa_ gives further details of this subject, and says that the Jesuits called their church _Yierokuji_, after the name of the period in which it was built, but that Nobunaga changed the name to _Nambanji_, or "Temple of the Southern Savages." The word _Namban_ was the term usually applied to the Portuguese and Spaniards. During the next ten years Organtin and other missionaries worked with considerable success in Kioto under Nobunaga's immediate protection. This period is also remarkable for the conversion of the Prince of Bungo, who made open profession of Christianity and retired into private life, and for the rapid progress which the new doctrine made among the subjects of Arima-no-Kami. This good fortune was again counterbalanced by the course of events in the Goto Islands, where Christianity lost much ground owing to a change of rulers. Ten years thus passed away, when the Christian communities sustained great loss in the disgrace of Takayama, who was banished to Kaga for taking part in an unsuccessful intrigue against Nobunaga which was headed by the Prince of Choshiu. Takayama's nephew, Ukon, however, declared for Nobunaga, and the latter gave a further proof of his friendly feeling toward Christianity by establishing a church in Adzuchi-no-Shiro, the castle town which he had built for himself in his native province of Omi. In 1582 a mission was sent to the papal see on the part of the Princes of Bungo and Omura, and Arima-no-Kami. This mission was accompanied by Valegnani, and reached Rome in 1585, returning five years later to Japan. In the following year Nobunaga was assassinated and Hideyoshi, who succeeded him in the chief power, was content, for the first three or four years of his administration, to follow in the line of policy marked out by his predecessor. Christianity, therefore, progressed in spite of the drawbacks caused by the frequent feuds between the southern _daimios_, and seminaries were established under Hideyoshi's auspices at Osaka and Sakai. During this period Martinez arrived in the capacity of bishop; he was charged with costly presents from the Viceroy of Goa to Hideyoshi, and received a favorable audience. Hideyoshi's attitude toward Christianity at this time is easily explained. The powerful southern barons were not willing to accept him as Nobunaga's successor without a struggle, and there were other reasons against the adoption of too hasty measures. Two of his generals, Kondera and Konishi Setsu-no-Kami, who afterward commanded the second division of the army sent against Corea, the Governor of Osaka, and numerous other officers of state and nobles of rank and influence, had embraced Christianity, and the Christians were therefore not without influential supporters. Hideyoshi's first act was to secure his position. For this purpose he marched into Kiushiu at the head of a large force and was everywhere victorious. This done, he threw off the mask he had been wearing up to this time, and in 1587 took the first step in his new course of action by ordering the destruction of the Christian church at Kioto--which had been in existence for a period of eighteen years--and the expulsion of the missionaries from the capital. It will be seen by the following extract from the _Ibuki Mogusa_ that Nobunaga at one time entertained designs for the destruction of Nambanji. "Nobunaga," we read, "now began to regret his previous policy in permitting the introduction of Christianity. He accordingly assembled his retainers and said to them: 'The conduct of these missionaries in persuading people to join them by giving money does not please me. It must be, I think, that they harbor the design of seizing the country. How would it be, think you, if we were to demolish Nambanji?' To this Mayeda Tokuzenin replied: 'It is now too late to demolish the temple of Nambanji. To endeavor to arrest the power of this religion now is like trying to arrest the current of the ocean. Nobles both great and small have become adherents of it. If you would exterminate this religion now, there is fear lest disturbances be created even among your own retainers. I am, therefore, of opinion that you should abandon your intention of destroying Nambanji.' Nobunaga in consequence regretted exceedingly his previous action with regard to the Christian religion, and set about thinking how he could root it out." The Jesuit writers attribute Hideyoshi's sudden change of attitude to three different causes, but it is clear that Hideyoshi was never favorable to Christianity, and that he only waited for his power to be secure before taking decided measures of hostility. His real feeling in regard to the Christians and their teachers is explained in the _Life of Hideyoshi_, from which work we learn that even before his accession to power he had ventured to remonstrate with Nobunaga for his policy toward Christianity. Hideyoshi's next act was to banish Takayama Ukon to Kaga, where his uncle already was, and he then in 1588 issued a decree ordering the missionaries to assemble at Hirado and prepare to leave Japan. They did so, but finding that measures were not pushed to extremity they dispersed and placed themselves under the protection of various nobles who had embraced Christianity. The territories of these princes offered safe asylums, and in these scattered districts the work of Christianity progressed secretly while openly interdicted. In 1591 Valegnani had a favorable audience of Hideyoshi, but he was received entirely in an official capacity, namely, in the character of envoy of the Viceroy of Goa. Christianity was at its most flourishing stage during the first few years of Hideyoshi's administration. We can discern the existence at this date of a strong Christian party in the country, though the turning-point had been reached, and the tide of progress was on the ebb. It is to this influence probably, coupled with the fact that his many warlike expeditions left him little leisure to devote to religious questions, that we must attribute the slight relaxation observable in his policy toward Christianity at this time. "Up to this date," says Charlevoix, "Hideyoshi had not evinced any special bitterness against Christianity, and had not proceeded to rigorous measures in regard to Christians. The condition of Christianity was reassuring. Rodriguez was well in favor at court, and Organtin had returned to Kioto along with several other missionaries, and found means to render as much assistance to the Christians in that part of the country as he had been able to do before the issue of the edict against Christianity by Hideyoshi." The inference which it is intended should be drawn from these remarks, taken with the context, is clear; namely, that, had the Jesuits been left alone to prosecute the work of evangelizing Japan, the ultimate result might have been very different. However, this was not to be. Hitherto, for a period of forty-four years, the Jesuits had it all their own way in Japan; latterly, by virtue of a bull issued by Pope Gregory XIII in 1585--the date of the appointment of the first bishop and of the arrival at Rome of the Japanese mission--and subsequently confirmed by the bull of Clement III in 1600, by which the _réligieux_ of other orders were excluded from missionary work in Japan. The object of these papal decrees was, it seems, to insure the propagation of Christianity on a uniform system. They were, however, disregarded when the time came, and therefore, for a new influence which was brought to bear upon Christianity at this date--not altogether for its good, if the Jesuit accounts may be credited--we must look to the arrival of an embassy from the Governor of the Philippines, whose ambassador was accompanied by four Franciscan priests. These new arrivals, when confronted by the Jesuits with the papal bull, declared that they had not transgressed it, and defended their action on the ground that they had come attached to an embassy and not in the character of missionaries; but they argued at the same time, with a casuistry only equalled by their opponents, that, having once arrived in Japan, there was nothing to hinder them from exercising their calling as preachers of Christianity. The embassy was successful, and Baptiste, who appears to have conducted the negotiations in place of the real envoy, obtained Hideyoshi's consent to his shrewd proposal that, pending the reference to Manila of Hideyoshi's claim to the sovereignty of the Philippines, he and his brother missionaries should remain as hostages. Hideyoshi, while consenting, made their residence conditional on their not preaching Christianity--a condition which it is needless to say was never observed. Thus, at one and the same time, the Spaniards, who had long been watching with their jealous eyes the exclusive right of trade enjoyed by the Portuguese, obtained an opening for commerce, and the Franciscans a footing for their religious mission. It was not long before the newly-arrived missionaries were called upon to prove their devotion to their cause. In 1593, in consequence of the indiscreet statements of the pilot of a Spanish galleon, which, being driven by stress of weather into a port of Tosa, was seized by Hideyoshi, nine missionaries--namely, six Franciscans and three Jesuits--were arrested in Kioto and Osaka, and, having been taken to Nagasaki, were there burned. This was the first execution carried out by the government. Hideyoshi died in the following year (1594), and the civil troubles which preceded the succession of Iyeyasu to the post of administrator, in which the Christians lost their chief supporter, Konishi, who took part against Iyeyasu, favored the progress of Christianity in so far as diverting attention from it to matters of more pressing moment. Iyeyasu's policy toward Christianity was a repetition of his predecessor's. Occupied entirely with military campaigns against those who refused to acknowledge his supremacy, he permitted the Jesuits, who now numbered one hundred, to establish themselves in force at Kioto, Osaka, and Nagasaki. But as soon as tranquillity was restored, and he felt himself secure in the seat of power, he at once gave proof of the policy he intended to follow by the issue of a decree of expulsion against the missionaries. This was in 1600. The Jesuit writers affirm that he was induced to withdraw his edict in consequence of the threatening attitude adopted by certain Christian nobles who had espoused his cause in the late civil war, but no mention is made of this in the Japanese accounts. So varying, and indeed so altogether unintelligible, was the action of the different nobles throughout Kiushiu in regard to Christianity during the next few years, that we see one who was not a Christian offering an asylum in his dominions to several hundred native converts who were expelled from a neighboring province; another who had systematically opposed the introduction of Christianity actually sending a mission to the Philippines to ask for missionaries; while a third, who had hitherto made himself conspicuous by his almost fanatical zeal in the Christian cause, suddenly abandoned his new faith, and, from having been one of its most ardent supporters, became one of its most bitter foes. The year 1602 is remarkable for the despatch of an embassy by Iyeyasu to the Philippines, and for the large number of _réligieux_ of all orders who flocked to Japan. Affairs remained _in statu quo_ for the next two or three years, during which the Christian cause was weakened by the death of two men which it could ill afford to lose. One of these was the noble called Kondera by Charlevoix, but whose name we have been unable to trace in Japanese records. The other was Organtin, who had deservedly the reputation of being the most energetic member of the Jesuit body. The number of Christians in Japan at this time is stated to have been one million eight hundred thousand. The number of missionaries was of course proportionally large, and was increased by the issue in 1608 of a new bull by Pope Paul V allowing to _réligieux_ of all orders free access to Japan. The year 1610 is remarkable for the arrival of the Dutch, who settled in Hirado, and for the destruction in the harbor of Nagasaki of the annual Portuguese galleon sent by the traders of Macao. In this latter affair, which rose out of a dispute between the natives and the people of the ship, Arima-no-Kami was concerned, and his alliance with the missionaries was thus terminated. In 1611 no less than three embassies arrived in Japan from the Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese respectively, and in 1613 Saris succeeded in founding an English factory in Hirado, where the Dutch had already established themselves. It was early in the following year that Christianity was finally proscribed by Iyeyasu. The decree of expulsion directed against the missionaries was followed by a fierce outbreak of persecution in all the provinces in which Christians were to be found, which was conducted with systematic and relentless severity. The Jesuit accounts attribute this resolution on the part of Iyeyasu to the intrigues of the English and Dutch traders. Two stories, by one of which it was sought to fix the blame on the former and by the other on the latter, were circulated, and will be found at length in Charlevoix's history. We have no wish to enter upon a defence either of our countrymen or of the Dutch, and fully admit the possibility of such intrigues having occurred. Indeed, considering in what relations both Spanish and Portuguese stood at that time to both of the other nations, and how high religious feeling ran in the seventeenth century, it would be strange if some intrigue had not taken place. Still we should like to point out that there were, we think, causes, other than those to which the Jesuit writers confine themselves, quite sufficient in themselves to account for the extreme measures taken against Christianity at this date. There was the predetermination against Christianity already shown by Iyeyasu; there were the new avenues of trade opened up by the arrival of the English and Dutch; there was the increased activity displayed by the missionaries at a time when Christianity was in a weak state, and lastly there was the influence of the Buddhist priesthood. That this edict of expulsion issued by Iyeyasu was the effect of no sudden caprice on his part, is clear from the general view which we have of his whole policy, which was similar to that of his predecessor. His early tolerance of Christianity is susceptible of the same explanation as that shown by Hideyoshi. His mind was evidently made up, and he was only biding his time. It is also highly probable that the new facilities for trade offered by the advent of the Dutch and English may have had some influence upon the action of Iyeyasu. It is impossible that he can have been altogether blind to the fact that the teaching of Christianity had not been unattended with certain evils, dangerous, to say the least, to the tranquillity of the country; and it cannot have escaped his notice that, whereas the respective admissions of Portuguese and Spaniards had been followed by the introduction of Christian missionaries, who in numbers far exceeded the traders, the same feature was not a part of the policy of the two other nations, whose proceedings had no connection whatsoever with religion. Possibly, too, reports may have reached his ears of the growing supremacy of the Dutch in the East, and have induced him to transfer his favor from the Portuguese and Spaniards to the new arrivals. As regards the condition of Christianity at this time, the Jesuit accounts supply us with facts which show that, numerically speaking, the Christian cause was never so strong as at this period. There were some two millions of converts, whose spiritual concerns were administered by no fewer than two hundred missionaries, three-fourths of whom were Jesuits. According to the _Kerisuto-Ki_, a native work, there were Christian churches in every province of Kiushiu except Hiuga and Osumi, and also in Kioto, Osaka, Sendai, and Kanagawa in Kaga; and it was only in eight provinces of Japan that Christianity had gained no footing. An increased activity in the operations of the missionaries is discernible about this time. The Dominicans in Satsuma, the Franciscans in Yedo (Tokio), and the Jesuits in the capital and southern provinces, seem to have been vying with each other which should gain most converts; and the circuit made by Cerqueyra, in which he visited all the Jesuit establishments throughout the country, was probably not without effect in exciting fresh enthusiasm among the converts everywhere, which, again, would naturally draw attention to the progress of Christianity. But, strong as the position of the Christians was numerically, we must not judge of the strength of their cause merely by the number of converts, or by the number of missionaries resident in Japan. If we consider the facts before us, we find that Christianity lacked the best of all strength--influence in the state. All its principal supporters among the aristocracy were either dead, had renounced their new faith, or were in exile; and here we have the real weakness of the Christian cause. While, therefore, circumstances combined to draw attention to its progress, it was in a state which could ill resist any renewed activity of persecution which might be the result of the increased interest which it excited. Without influence at the court and without influence in the country, beyond what slight influence the mass of common people scattered through various provinces, who were Christians, might be said to possess, Christianity presented itself assailable with impunity. The last cause we have mentioned, as being probably connected with the decisive measures adopted by Iyeyasu, is the influence of the Buddhist priesthood. Japanese history mentions the great power attained by the priesthood prior to Nobunaga's administration. Although that power was broken by Nobunaga, Hideyoshi did not inherit the former's animosity toward the priests, and Iyeyasu from the first came forward as their patron. And, again, we must not lose sight of the fact that a deep-rooted suspicion of foreigners was ever present in the minds of the Japanese Government; a suspicion which the course of events in China, of which we may presume the Japanese were not altogether ignorant--the jealousy of the native priests; the control of their converts exercised by the missionaries, which doubtless extended to secular matters; the connection of Christianity with trade; and the astounding progress made by it in the space of half a century--all tended to confirm. Enough has been said to show that we need not go so far as the intrigues, real or imaginary, of the English and Dutch, to look for causes for the renewed stimulus given at this date to the measures against Christianity. In 1614 the edict was carried into effect, and the missionaries, accompanied by the Japanese princes who had been in exile in Kaga, and a number of native Christians, were made to embark from Nagasaki. Several missionaries remained concealed in the country, and in subsequent years not a few contrived to elude the vigilance of the authorities and to reënter Japan. But they were all detected sooner or later, and suffered for their temerity by their deaths. Persecution did not stop with the expulsion of the missionaries, nor at the death of Iyeyasu was any respite given to the native Christians. And this brings us to the closing scene of this history--the tragedy of Shimabara. In the autumn of 1637 the peasantry of a convert district in Hizen, driven past endurance by the fierce ferocity of the persecution, assembled to the number of thirty thousand, and, fortifying the castle of Shimabara, declared open defiance to the Government; their opposition was soon overborne; troops were sent against them, and after a short but desperate resistance all the Christians were put to the sword. With the rising of Shimabara, and its sanguinary suppression by the Government, the curtain falls on the early history of Christianity in Japan. COLLAPSE OF THE POWER OF CHARLES V FRANCE SEIZES GERMAN BISHOPRICS A.D. 1552 LADY C. C. JACKSON Henry II, son of Francis I, ascended the throne of France in 1547. It had been the ambition of the French to establish the eastern boundary of their country on the Rhine, and thence along the summit of the Alps to the Mediterranean Sea. Jealousy of the growing power of his father's old enemy, the emperor Charles V, probably added to the French King's eagerness to fulfil the desire of his people for extension of their borders. Charles was now occupied with the religious wars in Germany, and Henry prepared to improve his opportunity by taking full advantage of the Emperor's situation. The fact that the Protestants among his own subjects were cruelly persecuted did not deter the French monarch from furthering his ambition by consenting to assist the German Protestants against their own sovereign. In 1551, when for six years there had been no actual war between France and the empire, Henry entered into an alliance with German princes against the Emperor. Several of those princes, headed by Maurice of Saxony, had secretly formed a league to resist by force of arms the "measures employed by Charles to reduce Germany to insupportable and perpetual servitude." Charles V was on the point of becoming as despotic in Germany as he was in Spain. The long interval of peace, though not very profound--war being always threatened and attempts to provoke it frequent--yet was sufficiently so to enable him to devote himself to his favorite scheme of humbling the princes and free states of the empire. He had sown dissension among them, succeeded in breaking up the League of Smalkald, and detained in prison, threatened with perpetual captivity, the Landgrave of Hesse and the elector John Frederick of Saxony. They had been sentenced to death, having taken up arms against him. Frequently appealed to to release them, Charles declared that to trouble him further on their account would be to bring on them the execution of the sentence they so richly merited. His political aims he believed to be now accomplished, and the spirit of German independence nearly, if not wholly, extinguished. But with this he was not content. The time had arrived, he thought, for the full and final extirpation of heresy, and the carrying out of his grand scheme of "establishing uniformity of religion in the empire." The formula of faith, called the "Interim," which he had drawn up for general observance until the council reassembled, had been for the sake of peace accepted with slight resistance, except at Magdeburg, which, for its obstinate rejection of it, was placed under the ban of the empire. But the prelates were assembling at Trent, and the full acquiescence of all parties in their decisions--given, of course, in conformity with the views of Charles V--was to be made imperative. Henry II had already renewed the French alliance with Sultan Solyman, and was urged to send his lieutenants to ravage the coast of Sicily--a suggestion he was not at all loath to follow. Yet the proposal of an alliance with the heretic German princes--though the league was not simply a Protestant one--met with strenuous opposition from that excellent Catholic, Anne de Montmorency. The persecuting King, too, anxious as he was to oppose his arms to those of the Emperor, feared to do so in alliance with heretics, lest he should compromise his soul's salvation. But the princes had offered him an irresistible bribe. They proposed--even declared they thought it right--that the seigneur King should take possession of those imperial cities which were not Germanic in language--as Metz, Cambray, Toul, Verdun, and similar ones--and retain them in quality of vicar of the Holy Empire. As a further inducement, they promised--having accomplished their own objects--to aid him with their troops to recover from Charles his heritage of Milan. This was decisive. On October 5th a pact was signed with France by the Lutheran elector Maurice, in his own name and that of the confederate princes, Henry's ambassador being the Catholic Bishop of Bayonne. Extensive preparations for war were immediately set on foot and new taxes levied; for the King had promised aid in money also--a considerable sum monthly as long as hostilities continued. He, however, deemed it expedient, before joining his army, to give some striking proof of his continued orthodoxy; first, by way of counterbalancing his heretical alliance with the Lutherans and his infidel one with the Mussulmans; next, to destroy the false hopes founded on them by French reformers. The heretics, during his absence, were therefore to be hunted down with the utmost rigor. The Sorbonne was charged "to examine minutely all books from Geneva, and no unlettered person was permitted to discuss matters of faith." All cities and municipalities were strictly enjoined to elect none but good Catholics to the office of mayor or sheriff, exacting from them a certificate of Catholicism before entering on the duties of their office. Neglect of this would subject the electors themselves to the pains and penalties inflicted on heretics. A grand inquisitor was appointed to take care of the faith in Lyons, and the daily burnings on the Place de Grève went on simultaneously with the preparations in the arsenals, and no less vigorously. Thus the King was enabled to enter on this war with a safe conscience. Montmorency,[57] unwilling always to oppose the Emperor, was compelled, lest he should seem less patriotic than his rivals, to add his voice also in favor of the project that promised the realization of the views of Charles VII and Francis I that the natural boundary of France was the Rhine. To return to Germany and the Emperor--whose complicated affairs are so entangled with those of France that they cannot be wholly separated, each in some measure forming the complement of the other. The command-in-chief of the German army was given to Maurice of Saxony--an able general, full of resource, daring and dauntless in the field, crafty and cautious in the cabinet as Charles himself. Throughout the winter he secretly assembled troops, preparing to take the field early in the spring, yet adroitly concealing his projects, and lulling into security "the most artful monarch in Europe." The Emperor had left Augsburg for Innspruck that he might at the same time watch over the council and the affairs of Germany and Italy. He was suffering from asthma, gout, and other maladies, chiefly brought on by his excesses at table, and rendered incurable by his inability to put any restraint on his immoderate appetite. In his retreat some rumors had reached him that the movements of Maurice of Saxony were suspicious, and that he was raising troops in Transylvania. But he gave little heed to this, or to warnings pressed on him by some of his partisans. For Maurice, to serve his own ambitious views, had in fact, though professing the reformed faith, aided Charles to acquire that power and ascendency, that almost unlimited despotism in Germany he now proposed to overthrow. For his services he had obtained the larger part of the electoral dominions of his unfortunate relative, John Frederick of Saxony, whose release, as also that of the Landgrave, now formed part of his programme for delivering Germany from her fetters ere the imperial despot could--as Maurice saw he was prepared to do--rivet them on her. To renew the Protestant league, to place himself at its head and defy the despot, was more congenial to Maurice's restless, aspiring mind than to play the part of his lieutenant. The winter passed away without any serious suspicions on Charles' part. To throw him off his guard Maurice had undertaken to subdue the Magdeburgers. The leniency of his conduct toward "those rebels" with whom he was secretly in league did at last excite a doubt in Charles' mind. Maurice was summoned to Innspruck, ostensibly to confer with him respecting the liberation of his father-in-law, the Landgrave of Hesse. But Maurice was far too wary to put himself in his power, and readily found some plausible excuse to delay his journey from time to time. But when, early in March, at the head of twenty-five thousand men, thoroughly equipped, he announced that he was about to set out on his journey, the information was accompanied with a declaration of war. "It was a war," he said, "for the defence of the true religion, its ministers and preachers; for the deliverance of prisoners detained against all faith and justice; to free Germany from her wretched condition, and to oppose the Emperor's completion of that absolute monarchy toward which he had so long been aiming." To this manifesto was appended another from the King of France. Therein Henry announced himself the "defender of the liberties of Germany, and protector of her captive princes"; further stating "that, broken-hearted [_le coeur navre_] at the condition of Germany, he could not refuse to aid her, but had determined to do so to the utmost power of his ability, even to personally engaging in this war, undertaken for liberty and not for his personal benefit." This document--written in French--was headed by the representation of a cap between two poniards, and around it the inscription "The Emblem of Liberty." It is said to have been copied from some ancient coins, and to have been appropriated as the symbol of freedom by Cæsar's assassins. Thus singularly was brought to light by a king of the French Renaissance that terrible cap of liberty, before which the ancient crown of France was one day destined to fall. The declaration of the German princes and that of their ally, the King of France, fell like a thunderbolt on the Emperor--so great was his astonishment and consternation at the events so unexpected. With rapid marches Maurice advanced on Upper Germany, while other divisions of the army, headed by the confederate princes, hastened on toward Tyrol, by way of Franconia and Swabia, everywhere being received with open arms as "Germany's liberators." Maurice reached Augsburg on April 1st, and took possession of that important city--the garrison offering no resistance, and the inhabitants receiving him joyfully. There, as in other towns on his march which had willingly opened their gates to him, the Interim was abolished; the churches restored to the Protestants; the magistrates appointed by the Emperor displaced, and those he had rejected reinstated. Money, too, was freely offered him, and the deficiency in his artillery supplied. At Trent the news that the Protestant princes, joined by several of the Catholics and free states, "had taken up arms for liberty," caused a terrible panic. The fathers of the council, Italian, Spanish, and German, at once made a precipitate retreat, and this famous council, without authority from pope or emperor, dissolved itself, to reassemble only after even a longer interval than before. When Maurice began his march Henry II had joined his army at Châlons, and was on his way to Lorraine. Toul, on his approach, presented the keys of the city to the constable commanding the vanguard--the King afterward making his entry, and receiving the oath of fidelity from the inhabitants, having previously sworn to maintain their rights and privileges inviolate. After this easy conquest the French army continued its march toward Metz. This old free republican city did not so readily as Toul yield to the French. The municipal authorities very politely offered provisions to the army, but declined to deliver the keys of the city to the constable. They were, however, willing to admit the King and the princes who accompanied him within their walls. "Troops were not permitted to enter Metz, whatever their nation." This was one of their privileges. Montmorency cared little for privileges, and violence would probably have been used but that the Bishop of Metz, who was a Frenchman, prevailed on the principal burgesses to allow the constable to enter with an escort of two ensigns, each with his company of infantry. Montmorency availed himself of this permission to give his ensigns fifteen hundred of his best troops. The city gates were thrown open, and the burgesses then perceived their error, but too late to remedy it. They were firmly repulsed when attempting to exclude the unwelcome visitors; there was, however, no bloodshed. The people were soon reconciled to the change; and the chief sheriff and town council on the King's entry having assembled on the cathedral porch, Henry there, in the presence of an anxious multitude who crowded around him to hear him, made oath strictly to maintain their franchises and immunities. Thus easily was captured the former capital of the ancient Austrian kings, which remained under the dominion of France until separated from her by the misfortunes of the second empire. The city of Verdun followed the example of Toul; so that Henry's defence of the liberties of Germany was thus far nothing more than a military promenade, with grand public entries, banquets, and general festivity. The inhabitants of Metz--like the rest of his conquests, French in language and manners--petitioned the King not to restore their city to the empire, of which it had been a vassal republic from the beginning of the feudal era; they feared the Emperor's revenge. Henry, however, had no thought of relinquishing Metz; he was too well pleased with his new possession, and "proposed to make it one of the ramparts of France." But while Henry for the defence of German independence was making conquests and annexing them to his dominions, Charles V had fled before Maurice's vigorous pursuit, and had only escaped capture by a mere mischance that briefly retarded his pursuers' progress. When Augsburg was taken, Charles felt that he was not safe at Innspruck. He was neither in a position to crush the rebellious princes nor to resist the invasion of the King of France. Want of means had induced him to disband a large part of his army; Mexico and Peru for some time had failed to make any remittances to his treasury; the bankers of Venice and Genoa were not willing to lend him money, and it was only by placing Piombino in the hands of Cosmo de' Medici that he obtained from him the small sum of two hundred thousand crowns. His first impulse was to endeavor to pass over the route of the Netherlands by the valleys of the Inn and the Rhine; but as he could only move, owing to his gout, from place to place in a litter, he was compelled, from physical suffering, after proceeding a very short distance on his journey, to return to Innspruck. There he remained with a small body of soldiers sufficient to guard himself personally--having sent all he could possibly spare to hold the mountain pass leading to the almost inaccessible castle of Ehrenberg. But, guided by a shepherd, the heights of Ehrenberg were reached by the troops under George of Brandenburg, after infinite fatigue and danger. The walls were scaled, and the garrison, terrified by the appearance of this unlooked-for enemy, threw down their arms and surrendered. A few hours only separated Innspruck from Ehrenberg, and Maurice proposed to push on rapidly so as to anticipate the arrival there of any accounts of the loss of the castle, hoping to surprise the Emperor and his attendants in an open, defenceless town, and there to dictate conditions of peace. The dissatisfaction of a portion of the troops at not immediately receiving the usual gratuity for taking a place by assault occasioned a short delay in the advance of Maurice's army. He arrived at Innspruck in the middle of the night, and learned that the Emperor had fled only two hours before to Carinthia, followed by his ministers and attendants, on foot, on horses, in litters, as they could, but in the greatest hurry and confusion. The night was stormy; rain was falling in torrents when the modern Charlemagne, unable to move, was borne in a litter by the light of torches across steep mountain paths with a swiftness most surprising; terror adding wings to the footsteps of his bearers, lest they and their gouty burden should fall into the hands of the heretic army, said to be in pursuit. But pursuit was soon given up, for the troops were worn and weary with forced marches and climbing the heights of Ehrenberg; they needed rest, and there was the imperial palace of Innspruck to pillage, Maurice having given it up to them. Negotiations for peace were opened on May 20th at Passau on the Danube. The King of France was informed of this, it being found necessary to put some check on his proceedings; to remind him that he was the "defender of the liberties of Germany," not Germany's oppressor. He and his army had advanced into Alsace, and Montmorency had assured him that it would be "as easy to enter Strasburg and other cities of the Rhine as to penetrate butter." However, when they knocked at the gates of Strasburg and courteously requested that the Venetian, Florentine, and other ambassadors might be permitted to enter and admire the beautiful city, they found the Strasburgers insensible to these amenities--butter by no means easily melted; for not only they refused to gratify the _soi-disant_ ambassadors with a sight of their fine city, but mounted and pointed their cannon, as a hint to their visitors that they would do well to withdraw. Henry, perceiving that he would be unable in the present campaign to extend his dominions to the banks of the Rhine, contented himself, "before turning his back on it, with the fact that the horses of his army had drunk of the waters of that stream." The Austrasian expedition was less brilliant in its results than he had expected; nevertheless, whether he was to be included in the peace then negotiating or not, he resolved to retain the three bishoprics--Toul, Metz, and Verdun. Meanwhile the conference of Passau, between Maurice with his princes of the league on the one part; Ferdinand, King of the Romans, and the Emperor's plenipotentiaries on the other, proceeded less rapidly than Maurice desired. By prolonging the negotiation Charles hoped to gain time to assemble an army, when the Catholic princes might rally around him. But even those who had joined the league were exceedingly lukewarm toward their Emperor; his despotism, they considered, being as dangerous to them as to the Protestants. Even his brother Ferdinand--who was on such excellent terms with Maurice that it would almost seem that he had connived at an enterprise he could not openly join in--is said to have seen with satisfaction the check put on Charles by the dauntless leader of the league. But Maurice's propositions being at first rejected, and no counter ones proposed, he at once set off for his army to renew hostilities, as though the negotiations were closed. Charles doubtless renounced the realization of the dream of his life with a pang of despair. That it should vanish at the very moment when he looked for its fulfilment was anguish to him. But pressed by Ferdinand, convinced, too, that resistance is useless, Charles yields an unwilling assent to the demands of the princes, and the "Treaty of Public Peace" is signed on August 2d. Henceforth "the two religions are to be on a footing of equality in the empire"; Germany divided between Luther and the Pope, who are to live side by side in peace, neither interrupting the other. The ban of the empire to be withdrawn from all persons and places; the captive princes, detained for five years in prison if not in fetters, released; while many other matters relating to imperial encroachments are to be satisfactorily settled within six months. "The defender of German liberty" was not included in this treaty. As he proposed to keep the cities he was to occupy but as vicar of the empire, he would have to fight a battle for them with Charles himself. Though compelled to renounce absolute sway over Germany, he yet thought it incumbent on him to reëstablish the territory of the empire in its full integrity. His valiant sister, the Dowager-queen of Hungary, who governed the Netherlands so ably for him, was diligently collecting an army for the destitute monarch of many kingdoms, and troops were on their way from Spain. In spite of his infirmities, Charles was in such haste to chastise the French, and revenge himself on Henry--having succeeded in raising an army sixty thousand strong, besides seven thousand pioneers--that he rejected the prudent counsels of his generals, who begged him to wait until the spring, when Metz might be attacked with much greater advantage. But his excessive obstinacy, which had led to so many of his disasters, again prevailed. The Duc de Guise, now Governor of Metz, had put the citadel into a state of defence. The garrison was numerous, and, as was usual wherever he commanded, thither followed all the young, ardent spirits among the great families of France. The siege of Metz was a terrible disaster for the Emperor. The extreme severity of the winter, a scant supply of clothing and other necessaries, were soon followed by sickness, typhus, and many deaths. Desertions were numerous; for the sufferings of the troops had quenched all war and subverted all discipline. Desperate efforts to take Metz were continued for nearly three months without avail, when Charles, thoroughly disheartened, and unable to rise from his couch except for removal to his litter, raised the siege--abandoning the greater part of his artillery, which was half buried in the mud. "Fortune," he exclaimed, "I perceive is indeed a woman; she prefers a young king to an old emperor." The spectacle that met the eyes of the victorious defenders of Metz, on issuing forth in pursuit of the enemy, is said to have been one of so harrowing a nature that even rough soldiers, accustomed to the horrors of war, looked on the misery around them with emotions of deepest pity. There lay the dying and the dead heaped up together; the wounded and those who had been stricken down by fever stretched side by side on the gory, muddy earth. Others had sunk into it, and, unable to extricate themselves, were frozen to their knees, and plaintively asked for death to put an end to their wretchedness. Scattered along the route of the retreat lay dead horses, tents, arms, portions of the baggage, and many sick soldiers who had fallen by the way in their efforts to keep up with the hasty march of the remnant of the army--a sad and terrible scene indeed in a career called one of glory. François de Guise greatly distinguished himself as a general, and added to his military renown by his defence of Metz; but far greater glory attaches to his name for his humane and generous conduct to the suffering, abandoned troops of Charles' army. All whose lives could be saved, or sufferings relieved, received every care and attention that he and the surgeons of his army could bestow on them. Following his example, instead of the savage brutality with which the victors were then accustomed to treat their fallen foes, kindness and good offices were rendered by all to the poor victims of the Emperor's revenge for the loss of Metz. So utterly contrary was such treatment to the practice of the age that the generosity and humanity of François de Guise toward an enemy's troops passed into a proverb as the "_Courtoisie de Metz_." FOOTNOTES: [57] Anne de Montmorency, Marshal and Constable of France. He was distinguished in the wars against Charles V. THE RELIGIOUS PEACE OF AUGSBURG ABDICATION OF CHARLES V A.D. 1555 WILLIAM ROBERTSON By the victory of Charles V at Muehlberg, in 1547, the Emperor obtained a decided advantage over the Smalkaldic League, and seemed to be master of the situation in Germany. He convened a diet at Augsburg, and promulgated an "interim," or provisional arrangement for peace, but it was imperfectly carried out. Later interims also proving unsatisfactory, various other attempts at settlement were made, and finally, by the Peace of Passau (1552), religious liberty was granted to the Protestants. Charles now appeared to be at the height of his power; but new danger threatened him from France. The alliance of King Henry II with Maurice of Saxony, and other Protestant princes, was followed by what is sometimes called the second Smalkaldic War. Charles was quickly worsted, and only escaped capture by fleeing into Switzerland. In a later attack upon France he gained but little success. The Emperor was now more than ever anxious for peace, and only awaited the meeting of a diet which had been summoned soon after the Treaty of Passau. This meeting was delayed by violent commotions raised in Germany by Albert, Margrave of Brandenburg. It was further delayed by the engrossment in his own affairs of Ferdinand, King of Bohemia and Hungary. He was the brother of Charles, had exerted himself, though with slight success, to settle the religious disputes in Germany, and Charles needed his presence at the Diet, whereby he hoped to secure a final pacification. As a diet was now necessary on many accounts, Ferdinand, about the beginning of the year 1555, had repaired to Augsburg. Though few of the princes were present either in person or by their deputies, he opened the assembly by a speech, in which he proposed a termination of the dissensions to which the new tenets and controversies with regard to religion had given rise, not only as the first and great business of the diet, but as the point which both the Emperor and he had most at heart. He represented the innumerable obstacles which the Emperor had to surmount before he could procure the convocation of a general council, as well as the fatal accidents which had for some time retarded, and had at last suspended, the consultations of that assembly. He observed that experience had already taught them how vain it was to expect any remedy for evils which demanded immediate redress from a general council, the assembling of which would either be prevented, or its deliberations be interrupted, by the dissensions and hostilities of the princes of Christendom; that a national council in Germany, which, as some imagined, might be called with greater ease, and deliberate with more perfect security, was an assembly of an unprecedented nature, the jurisdiction of which was uncertain in its extent, and the form of its proceedings undefined; that in his opinion there remained but one method for composing their unhappy differences, which, though it had been often tried without success, might yet prove effectual if it were attempted with a better and more pacific spirit than had appeared on former occasions, and that was, to choose a few men of learning, abilities, and moderation, who, by discussing the disputed articles in an amicable conference, might explain them in such a manner as to bring the contending parties either to unite in sentiment, or to differ with charity. This speech being printed in common form, and dispersed over the empire, revived the fears and jealousies of the Protestants; Ferdinand, they observed with much surprise, had not once mentioned, in his address to the Diet, the Treaty of Passau, the stipulations of which they considered as the great security of their religious liberty. The suspicions to which this gave rise were confirmed by the accounts which were daily received of the extreme severity with which Ferdinand treated their Protestant brethren in his hereditary dominions; and as it was natural to consider his actions as the surest indication of his intentions, this diminished their confidence in those pompous professions of moderation, and of zeal for the reëstablishment of concord, to which his practice seemed to be so repugnant. The arrival of the cardinal, Morone, whom the Pope had appointed to attend the Diet as his nuncio, completed their conviction, and left them no room to doubt that some dangerous machination was forming against the peace or safety of the Protestant Church. Julius, elated with the unexpected return of the English nation from apostasy, began to flatter himself that, the spirit of mutiny and revolt having now spent its force, the happy period was come when the Church might resume its ancient authority, and be obeyed by the people with the same tame submission as formerly. Full of these hopes, he had sent Morone to Augsburg with instructions to employ his eloquence to excite the Germans to imitate the laudable example of the English, and his political address in order to prevent any decree of the Diet to the detriment of the Catholic faith. But Julius died, and as soon as Morone heard of this he set out abruptly from Augsburg, where he had resided only a few days, that he might be present at the election of the new pontiff. One cause of their suspicions and fears being thus removed, the Protestants soon became sensible that their conjectures concerning Ferdinand's intentions, however specious, were ill-founded, and that he had no thoughts of violating the articles favorable to them in the Treaty of Passau. Charles, from the time that Maurice had defeated all his schemes in the empire, and overturned the great system of religious and civil despotism which he had almost established there, gave little attention to the internal government of Germany, and permitted his brother to pursue whatever measures he judged most salutary and expedient. Ferdinand, less ambitious and enterprising than the Emperor, instead of resuming a plan which he, with power and resources so far superior, had failed of accomplishing, endeavored to attach the princes of the empire to his family by an administration uniformly moderate and equitable. To this he gave, at present, particular attention, because his situation at this juncture rendered it necessary to court their favor and support with more than usual assiduity. Charles had again resumed his favorite project of acquiring the imperial crown for his son Philip, the prosecution of which, the reception it had met with when first proposed had obliged him to suspend, but had not induced him to relinquish. This led him warmly to renew his request to his brother, that he would accept of some compensation for his prior right of succession, and sacrifice that to the grandeur of the house of Austria. Ferdinand, who was as little disposed as formerly to give such an extraordinary proof of self-denial, being sensible that, in order to defeat this scheme, not only the most inflexible firmness on his part, but a vigorous declaration from the princes of the empire in behalf of his title, were requisite, was willing to purchase their favor by gratifying them in every point that they deemed interesting or essential. At the same time he stood in need of immediate and extraordinary aid from the Germanic body, as the Turks, after having wrested from him a great part of his Hungarian territories, were ready to attack the provinces still subject to his authority with a formidable army, against which he could bring no equal force into the field. For this aid from Germany he could not hope, if the internal peace of the empire were not established on a foundation solid in itself, and which should appear, even to the Protestants, so secure and so permanent as might not only allow them to engage in a distant war with safety, but might encourage them to act in it with vigor. A step taken by the Protestants themselves, a short time after the opening of the Diet, rendered him still more cautious of giving them any new cause of offence. As soon as the publication of Ferdinand's speech awakened the fears and suspicions which have been mentioned, the electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, together with the Landgrave of Hesse, met at Naumburg, and, confirming the ancient treaty of confraternity which had long united their families, they added to it a new article, by which the contracting parties bound themselves to adhere to the Confession of Augsburg, and to maintain the doctrine which it contained in their respective dominions. Ferdinand, influenced by all these considerations, employed his utmost address in conducting the deliberations of the Diet, so as not to excite the jealousy of a party on whose friendship he depended, and whose enmity, as they had not only taken the alarm, but had begun to prepare for their defence, he had so much reason to dread. The members of the Diet readily agreed to Ferdinand's proposal of taking the state of religion into consideration previous to any other business. But, soon as they entered upon it, both parties discovered all the zeal and animosity which a subject so interesting naturally engenders, and which the rancor of controversy, together with the violence of civil war, had inflamed to the highest pitch. The Protestants contended that the security which they claimed in consequence of the Treaty of Passau should extend, without limitation, to all who had hitherto embraced the doctrine of Luther, or who should thereafter embrace it. The Catholics, having first of all asserted the Pope's right, as the supreme and final judge with respect to all articles of faith, declared that though, on account of the present situation of the empire, and for the sake of peace, they were willing to confirm the toleration granted by the Treaty of Passau to such as had already adopted the new opinions, they must insist that this indulgence should not be extended either to those cities which had conformed to the "interim," or to such ecclesiastics as should for the future apostatize from the Church of Rome. It was no easy matter to reconcile such opposite pretensions, which were supported, on each side, by the most elaborate arguments, and the greatest acrimony of expression, that the abilities or zeal of theologians long exercised in disputation could suggest. Ferdinand, however, by his address and perseverance; by softening some things on each side; by putting a favorable meaning upon others; by representing incessantly the necessity as well as the advantages of concord; and by threatening, on some occasions, when all other considerations were disregarded, to dissolve the Diet, brought them at length to a conclusion in which they all agreed. Conformably to this, a recess was framed, approved of, and published with the usual formalities. The following are the chief articles which it contained: That such princes and cities as have declared their approbation of the Confession of Augsburg shall be permitted to profess the doctrine and exercise the worship which it authorizes, without interruption or molestation from the Emperor, the King of the Romans, or any power or person whatsoever; that the Protestants, on their part, shall give no disquiet to the princes and states who adhere to the tenets and rites of the Church of Rome; that, for the future, no attempt shall be made toward terminating religious differences but by the gentle and pacific methods of persuasion and conference; that the Popish ecclesiastics shall claim no spiritual jurisdiction in such states as receive the Confession of Augsburg; that such as had seized the benefices or revenues of the Church, previous to the Treaty of Passau, shall retain possession of them, and be liable to no persecution in the imperial chamber on that account; that the supreme civil power in every state shall have right to establish what form of doctrine and worship it shall deem proper, and, if any of its subjects refuse to conform to these, shall permit them to remove with all their effects whithersoever they shall please; that if any prelate or ecclesiastic shall hereafter abandon the Romish religion, he shall instantly relinquish his diocese or benefice, and it shall be lawful for those in whom the right of nomination is vested to proceed immediately to an election, as if the office were vacant by death or translation, and to appoint a successor of undoubted attachment to the ancient system. Such are the capital articles in this famous recess, which is the basis of religious peace in Germany, and the bond of union among its various states, the sentiments of which are so extremely different with respect to points the most interesting as well as important. In our age and nation, to which the idea of toleration is familiar, and its beneficial effects well known, it may seem strange that a method of terminating their dissensions, so suitable to the mild and charitable spirit of the Christian religion, did not sooner occur to the contending parties. But this expedient, however salutary, was so repugnant to the sentiments and practice of Christians during many ages that it did not lie obvious to discovery. Among the ancient heathens, all whose deities were local and tutelary, diversity of sentiments concerning the object or rites of religious worship seems to have been no source of animosity, because the acknowledging veneration to be due to any one god did not imply denial of the existence or the power of any other god; nor were the modes and rites of worship established in one country incompatible with those which other nations approved of and observed. Thus the errors in their system of theology were of such a nature as to be productive of concord; and, notwithstanding the amazing number of their deities, as well as the infinite variety of their ceremonies, a sociable and tolerating spirit subsisted almost universally in the Pagan world. But when the Christian revelation declared one Supreme Being to be the sole object of religious veneration, and prescribed the form of worship most acceptable to him, whoever admitted the truth of it held, of consequence, every other system of religion, as a deviation from what was established by divine authority, to be false and impious. Hence arose the zeal of the first converts to the Christian faith in propagating its doctrines, and the ardor with which they labored to overturn every other form of worship. They employed, however, for this purpose no methods but such as suited the nature of religion. By the force of powerful arguments, they convinced the understandings of men; by the charms of superior virtue, they allured and captivated their hearts. At length the civil power declared in favor of Christianity; and though numbers, imitating the example of their superiors, crowded into the church, many still adhered to their ancient superstitions. Enraged at their obstinacy, the ministers of religion, whose zeal was still unabated, though their sanctity and virtue were much diminished, forgot so far the nature of their own mission, and of the arguments which they ought to have employed, that they armed the imperial power against these unhappy men, and, as they could not persuade, they tried to compel them to believe. The Diet of Augsburg was soon followed by the Emperor's resignation of his hereditary dominions to his son Philip; together with his resolution to withdraw entirely from any concern in business or the affairs of this world, in order that he might spend the remainder of his days in retirement and solitude. Though it requires neither deep reflection nor extraordinary discernment to discover that the state of royalty is not exempt from cares and disappointment; though most of those who are exalted to a throne find solicitude, and satiety, and disgust to be their perpetual attendants in that envied preëminence, yet to descend voluntarily from the supreme to a subordinate station, and to relinquish the possession of power in order to attain the enjoyment of happiness, seems to be an effort too great for the human mind. Several instances, indeed, occur in history, of monarchs who have quitted a throne, and have ended their days in retirement. But they were either weak princes, who took this resolution rashly, and repented of it as soon as it was taken, or unfortunate princes, from whose hands some stronger rival had wrested their sceptre, and compelled them to descend with reluctance into a private station. Diocletian is perhaps the only prince capable of holding the reins of government who ever resigned them from deliberate choice, and who continued during many years to enjoy the tranquillity of retirement without fetching one penitent sigh, or casting back one look of desire toward the power or dignity which he had abandoned. No wonder, then, that Charles' resignation should fill all Europe with astonishment, and give rise, both among his contemporaries and among the historians of that period, to various conjectures concerning the motives which determined a prince, whose ruling passion had been uniformly the love of power, at the age of fifty-six, when objects of ambition continue to operate with full force on the mind, and are pursued with the greatest ardor, to take a resolution so singular and unexpected. But, while many authors have imputed it to motives so frivolous and fantastical as can hardly be supposed to influence any reasonable mind; while others have imagined it to be the result of some profound scheme of policy, historians more intelligent and better informed neither ascribe it to caprice, nor search for mysterious secrets of state, where simple and obvious causes will fully account for the Emperor's conduct. Charles had been attacked early in life with the gout; and, notwithstanding all the precautions of the most skilful physicians, the violence of the distemper increased as he advanced in age, and the fits became every year more frequent as well as more severe. Not only was the vigor of his constitution broken, but the faculties of his mind were impaired by the excruciating torments which he endured. During the continuance of the fits, he was altogether incapable of applying to business; and even when they began to abate, as it was only at intervals that he could attend to what was serious, he gave up a great part of his time to trifling and even childish occupations, which served to relieve or amuse his mind, enfeebled and worn out with excess of pain. Under these circumstances, the conduct of such affairs as occurred of course in governing so many kingdoms was a burden more than sufficient; but to push forward and complete the vast schemes which the ambition of his more active years had formed, or to keep in view and carry on the same great system of policy, extending to every nation in Europe, and connected with the operations of every different court, were functions which so far exceeded his strength that they oppressed and overwhelmed his mind. As he had been long accustomed to view the business of every department, whether civil or military or ecclesiastical, with his own eyes, and to decide concerning it according to his own ideas, it gave him the utmost pain, when he felt his infirmities increase so fast upon him, that he was obliged to commit the conduct of all his affairs to his ministers. He imputed every misfortune which befell him, and every miscarriage that happened, even when the former was unavoidable or the latter accidental, to his inability to take the inspection of business himself. He complained of his hard fortune in being opposed, in his declining years, to a rival who was in the full vigor of life; and that, while Henry could take and execute all his resolutions in person, he should now be reduced, both in counsel and in action, to rely on the talents and exertions of other men. Having thus grown old before his time, he wisely judged it more decent to conceal his infirmities in some solitude than to expose them any longer to the public eye, and prudently determined not to forfeit the fame or lose the acquisitions of his better years by struggling, with a vain obstinacy, to retain the reins of government, when he was no longer able to hold them with steadiness, or to guide them with address.[58] But though Charles had revolved this scheme in his mind for several years, and had communicated it to his sisters the dowager queens of France and Hungary, who not only approved of his intention, but offered to accompany him to whatever place of retreat he should choose, several things had hitherto prevented his carrying it into execution. He could not think of loading his son with the government of so many kingdoms until he should attain such maturity of age and of abilities as would enable him to sustain that weighty burden. But as Philip had now reached his twenty-eighth year, and had been early accustomed to business, for which he discovered both inclination and capacity, it can hardly be imputed to the partiality of paternal affection that his scruples with regard to this point were entirely removed; and that he thought he might place his son, without further hesitation or delay, on the throne which he himself was about to abandon. His mother's situation had been another obstruction in his way. For although she had continued almost fifty years in confinement, and under the same disorder of mind which concern for her husband's death had brought upon her, yet the government of Spain was still vested in her jointly with the Emperor; her name was inserted, together with his, in all the public instruments issued in that kingdom; and such was the fond attachment of the Spaniards to her, that they would probably have scrupled to recognize Philip as their sovereign, unless she had consented to assume him as her partner on the throne. Her utter incapacity for business rendered it impossible to obtain her consent. But her death, which happened this year, removed this difficulty; and as Charles, upon that event, became sole monarch of Spain, it left the succession open to his son. The war with France had likewise been a reason for retaining the administration of affairs in his own hands, as he was extremely solicitous to have terminated it, that he might have given up his kingdoms to his son at peace with all the world. But as Henry had discovered no disposition to close with any of his overtures, and had even rejected proposals of peace which were equal and moderate, in a tone that seemed to indicate a fixed purpose of continuing hostilities, he saw that it was vain to wait longer in expectation of an event which, however desirable, was altogether uncertain. As this, then, appeared to be the proper juncture for executing the scheme which he had long meditated, Charles resolved to resign his kingdoms to his son with a solemnity suitable to the importance of the transaction, and to perform this last act of sovereignty with such formal pomp as might leave a lasting impression on the minds not only of his subjects, but of his successor. With this view he called Philip out of England, where the peevish temper of his queen, which increased with her despair of having issue, rendered him extremely unhappy; and the jealousy of the English left him no hopes of obtaining the direction of their affairs. Having assembled the states of the Low Countries at Brussels, on October 25th, Charles seated himself for the last time in the chair of state, on one side of which was placed his son, and on the other his sister the Queen of Hungary, regent of the Netherlands, with a splendid retinue of the princes of the empire and grandees of Spain standing behind him. The president of the council of Flanders, by his command, explained in a few words his intention in calling this extraordinary meeting of the states. He then read the instrument of resignation, by which Charles surrendered to his son Philip all his territories, jurisdiction, and authority in the Low Countries, absolving his subjects there from their oath of allegiance to him, which he required them to transfer to Philip, his lawful heir, and to serve him with the same loyalty and zeal which they had manifested, during so long a course of years, in support of his government. Charles then rose from his seat, and leaning on the shoulder of the Prince of Orange, because he was unable to stand without support, he addressed himself to the audience, and from a paper which he held in his hand, in order to assist his memory, he recounted with dignity, but without ostentation, all the great things which he had undertaken and performed since the commencement of his administration. He observed that, from the seventeenth year of his age, he had dedicated all his thoughts and attention to public objects, reserving no portion of his time for the indulgence of his ease, and very little for the enjoyment of private pleasure; that, either in a pacific or hostile manner, he had visited Germany nine times, Spain six times, France four times, Italy seven times, the Low Countries ten times, England twice, Africa as often, and had made eleven voyages by sea; that while his health permitted him to discharge his duty, and the vigor of his constitution was equal, in any degree, to the arduous office of governing such extensive dominions, he had never shunned labor, nor repined under fatigue; that now, when his health was broken, and his vigor exhausted by the rage of an incurable distemper, his growing infirmities admonished him to retire; nor was he so fond of reigning as to retain the sceptre in an impotent hand, which was no longer able to protect his subjects, or to secure to them the happiness which he wished they should enjoy; that instead of a sovereign worn out with diseases, and scarcely half alive, he gave them one in the prime of life, accustomed already to govern, and who added to the vigor of youth all the attention and sagacity of maturer years; and if, during the course of a long administration, he had committed any material error of government, or if, under the pressure of so many and great affairs, and amid the attention which he had been obliged to give to them, he had either neglected or injured any of his subjects, he now implored their forgiveness; that, for his part, he should ever retain a grateful sense of their fidelity and attachment, and would carry the remembrance of it along with him to the place of his retreat, as his sweetest consolation, as well as the best reward for all his services, and in his last prayers to Almighty God would pour forth his most earnest petitions for their welfare. Then, turning toward Philip, who fell on his knees and kissed his father's hand--"If," said he, "I had left you by my death this rich inheritance, to which I have made such large additions, some regard would have been justly due to my memory on that account; but now, when I voluntarily resign to you what I might have still retained, I may well expect the warmest expression of thanks on your part. With these, however, I dispense, and shall consider your concern for the welfare of your subjects, and your love of them, as the best and most acceptable testimony of your gratitude to me. It is in your power, by a wise and virtuous administration, to justify the extraordinary proof which I this day give of my paternal affection, and to demonstrate that you are worthy of the confidence which I repose in you. Preserve an inviolable regard for religion; maintain the Catholic faith in its purity; let the laws of your country be sacred in your eyes; encroach not on the rights and privileges of your people; and if the time should ever come when you shall wish to enjoy the tranquillity of private life, may you have a son endowed with such qualities that you can resign your sceptre to him with as much satisfaction as I give up mine to you." As soon as Charles had finished this long address to his subjects and to their new sovereign, he sank into the chair, exhausted and ready to faint with the fatigue of such an extraordinary effort. During his discourse the whole audience melted into tears, some from admiration of his magnanimity, others softened by the expressions of tenderness toward his son, and of love to his people; and all were affected with the deepest sorrow at losing a sovereign who, during his administration, had distinguished the Netherlands, his native country, with particular marks of his regard and attachment. Philip then arose from his knees, and after returning thanks to his father, with a low and submissive voice, for the royal gift which his unexampled bounty had bestowed upon him, he addressed the assembly of the states, and, regretting his inability to speak the Flemish language with such facility as to express what he felt on this interesting occasion, as well as what he owed to his good subjects in the Netherlands, he begged that they would permit Granvelle, bishop of Arras, to deliver what he had given him in charge to speak in his name. Granvelle, in a long discourse, expatiated on the zeal with which Philip was animated for the good of his subjects, on his resolution to devote all his time and talents to the promoting of their happiness, and on his intention to imitate his father's example in distinguishing the Netherlands with peculiar marks of his regard. Maes, a lawyer of great eloquence, replied in the name of the states, with large professions of their fidelity and affection to their new sovereign. Then Mary, Queen dowager of Hungary, resigned the regency with which she had been intrusted by her brother during the space of twenty-five years. Next day Philip, in the presence of the states, took the usual oaths to maintain the rights and privileges of his subjects; and all the members, in their own name and in that of their constituents, swore allegiance to him. A few weeks after this transaction, Charles, in an assembly no less splendid and with a ceremonial equally pompous, resigned to his son the crowns of Spain, with all the territories depending on them, both in the Old and in the New world. Of all these vast possessions, he reserved nothing for himself but an annual pension of a hundred thousand crowns, to defray the charges of his family, and to afford him a small sum for acts of beneficence and charity. As he had fixed on a place of retreat in Spain, hoping that the dryness and the warmth of the climate in that country might mitigate the violence of his disease, which had been much increased by the moisture of the air and rigor of the winters in the Netherlands, he was extremely impatient to embark for that kingdom, and to disengage himself entirely from business, which he found to be impossible while he remained in Brussels. But his physicians remonstrated so strongly against his venturing to sea at that cold and boisterous season of the year, that he consented, though with reluctance, to put off his voyage for some months. He retained the imperial dignity, not from any unwillingness to relinquish it, for, after having resigned the real and extensive authority that he enjoyed in his hereditary dominions, to part with the limited and often ideal jurisdiction which belongs to an elective crown was no great sacrifice. His sole motive for delay was to gain a few months for making one trial more, in order to accomplish his favorite scheme in behalf of his son. At the very time Charles seemed to be most sensible of the vanity of worldly grandeur, and when he appeared to be quitting it not only with indifference but with contempt, the vast schemes of ambition, which had so long occupied and engrossed his mind, still kept possession of it. He could not think of leaving his son in a rank inferior to that which he himself had held among the princes of Europe. As he had, some years before, made a fruitless attempt to secure the imperial crown to Philip, that, by uniting it to the kingdoms of Spain and the dominions of the house of Burgundy, he might put it in his power to prosecute, with a better prospect of success, those great plans which his own infirmities had obliged him to abandon, he was still unwilling to relinquish this flattering project as chimerical or unattainable. Notwithstanding the repulse which he had formerly met with from his brother Ferdinand, he renewed his solicitations with fresh importunity, and during the summer had tried every art, and employed every argument, which he thought could induce him to quit the imperial throne to Philip, and to accept of the investiture of some province, either in Italy or in the Low Countries, as an equivalent. But Ferdinand, who was so firm and inflexible with regard to this point that he had paid no regard to the solicitations of the Emperor, even when they were enforced with all the weight of authority which accompanies supreme power, received the overture, that now came from him in the situation to which he had descended, with great indifference, and would hardly deign to listen to it. Charles, ashamed of his own credulity in having imagined that he might accomplish now that which he had attempted formerly without success, desisted finally from his scheme. He then resigned the government of the empire, and, having transferred all his claims of obedience and allegiance from the Germanic body to his brother the King of the Romans, he executed a deed to that effect, with all the formalities requisite in such an important transaction. The instrument of resignation he committed to William, Prince of Orange, and empowered him to lay it before the college of electors. Nothing now remained to detain Charles from that retreat for which he languished. The preparations for his voyage having been made for some time, he set out for Zuitburg, in Zealand, where the fleet which was to convoy him had orders to assemble. In his way thither he passed through Ghent, and after stopping there a few days, to indulge that tender and pleasing melancholy which arises in the mind of every man in the decline of life on visiting the place of his nativity, and viewing the scenes and objects familiar to him in his early youth, he pursued his journey, accompanied by his son Philip, his daughter the archduchess, his sisters the dowager Queens of France and Hungary, Maximilian his son-in-law, and a numerous retinue of the French nobility. Before he went on board he dismissed them with marks of his attention or regard, and, taking leave of Philip with all the tenderness of a father who embraced his son for the last time, he set sail on September 17th, under the convoy of a large fleet of Spanish, Flemish, and English ships. He declined a pressing invitation from the Queen of England to land in some part of her dominions, in order to refresh himself, and that she might have the comfort of seeing him once more. "It cannot, surely," said he, "be agreeable to a queen to receive a visit from a father-in-law who is now nothing more than a private gentleman." His voyage was prosperous, and he arrived at Laredo, in Biscay, on the eleventh day after he left Zealand. As soon as he landed he fell prostrate on the ground, and, considering himself now as dead to the world, he kissed the earth and said, "Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked I now return to thee, thou common mother of mankind." From Laredo he pursued his journey to Burgos, carried sometimes in a chair and sometimes in a horse-litter, suffering exquisite pain at every step, and advancing with the greatest difficulty. Some of the Spanish nobility repaired to Burgos, in order to pay court to him, but they were so few in number, and their attendance was so negligent, that Charles observed it, and felt, for the first time, that he was no longer a monarch. Accustomed from his early youth to the dutiful and officious respect with which those who possess sovereign power are attended, he had received it with the credulity common to princes, and was sensibly mortified when he now discovered that he had been indebted to his rank and power for much of that obsequious regard which he had fondly thought was paid to his personal qualities. But though he might have soon learned to view with unconcern the levity of his subjects, or to have despised their neglect, he was more deeply afflicted with the ingratitude of his son, who, forgetting already how much he owed to his father's bounty, obliged him to remain some weeks at Burgos before he paid him the first moiety of that small pension which was all that he had reserved of so many kingdoms. As, without this sum, Charles could not dismiss his domestics with such rewards as their services merited, or his generosity had destined for them, he could not help expressing both surprise and dissatisfaction. At last the money was paid, and Charles having dismissed a great number of his domestics, whose attendance he thought would be superfluous or cumbersome in his retirement, he proceeded to Valladolid. There he took a last and tender leave of his two sisters, whom he would not permit to accompany him to his solitude, though they requested him with tears, not only that they might have the consolation of contributing by their attendance and care to mitigate or to soothe his sufferings, but that they might reap instruction and benefit by joining with him in those pious exercises to which he had consecrated the remainder of his days. From Valladolid he continued his journey to Plazentia in Estremadura. He had passed through this place a great many years before, and having been struck at that time with the delightful situation of the monastery of St. Justus, belonging to the order of St. Jerome, not many miles distant from the town, he had then observed to some of his attendants that this was a spot to which Diocletian might have retired with pleasure. The impression had remained so strong in his mind that he pitched upon it as the place of his own retreat. It was seated in a vale of no great extent, watered by a small brook, and surrounded by rising grounds, covered with lofty trees; from the nature of the soil, as well as the temperature of the climate, it was esteemed the most healthful and delicious situation in Spain. Some months before his resignation he had sent an architect thither to add a new apartment to the monastery, for his accommodation; but he gave strict orders that the style of the building should be such as suited his present station, rather than his former dignity. It consisted only of six rooms, four of them in the form of friars' cells, with naked walls; the other two, each twenty feet square, were hung with brown cloth, and furnished in the most simple manner. They were all on a level with the ground, with a door on one side into a garden, of which Charles himself had given the plan, and had filled it with various plants which he intended to cultivate with his own hands. On the other side, they communicated with the chapel of the monastery, in which he was to perform his devotions. Into this humble retreat, hardly sufficient for the comfortable accommodation of a private gentleman, did Charles enter, with twelve domestics only. He buried there, in solitude and silence, his grandeur, his ambition, together with all those vast projects which, during almost half a century, had alarmed and agitated Europe, filling every kingdom in it, by turns, with the terror of his arms, and the dread of being subdued by his power. FOOTNOTES: [58] Don Levesque, in his memoirs of Cardinal Granvelle, gives a reason for the Emperor's resignation, which, as far as I recollect, is not mentioned by any other historian. He says that, the Emperor having ceded the government of the kingdom of Naples and the duchy of Milan to his son upon his marriage with the Queen of England, Philip, notwithstanding the advice and entreaties of his father, removed most of the ministers and officers whom he had employed in those countries, and appointed creatures of his own to fill the places which they held. That he aspired openly, and with little delicacy, to obtain a share in the administration of affairs in the Low Countries. That he endeavored to thwart the Emperor's measures and to limit his authority, behaving toward him sometimes with inattention, and sometimes with haughtiness. That Charles, finding that he must either yield on every occasion to his son, or openly contend with him, in order to avoid either of these, which were both disagreeable and mortifying to a father, he took the resolution of resigning his crowns, and of retiring from the world (vol. i. p. 24, etc.). Don Levesque derived his information concerning these curious facts, which he relates very briefly, from the original papers of Cardinal Granvelle. But as that vast collection of papers, which has been preserved and arranged by M. l'Abbé Boizot of Besançon, though one of the most valuable historical monuments of the sixteenth century, and which cannot fail of throwing much light on the transactions of Charles V, is not published, I cannot determine what degree of credit should be given to this account of Charles' resignation. I have, therefore, taken no notice of it in relating this event. AKBAR ESTABLISHES THE MOGUL EMPIRE IN INDIA A.D. 1556 J. TALBOYS WHEELER Between the years 1494 and 1526 Baber, great-grandson of Timur (Tamerlane), the Tartar conqueror, made extensive conquests in India. There he laid the first foundations of the Mahometan Tartar empire of the Moguls, as his followers are called. This empire reached its height under Akbar (Jel-al-eddin Mahomet), who succeeded his father Humayun, son of Baber, in 1556. Humayun did little toward uniting the various territories which Baber had conquered. Akbar was the contemporary of Queen Elizabeth of England, and his reign is as important in the history of India as is hers in the history of the western world. He ascended the throne at the age of fourteen. At the time of his accession he was in the Punjab warring against the revolted Afghans. The commander of the Mogul armies was Bairam Khan, and when Humayun died that general became Akbar's guardian. Wheeler's account of this great ruler's achievements presents throughout a most interesting portrayal of his personality and character, and is especially remarkable for its simplicity and its oriental atmosphere. The reign of Akbar bears a strange resemblance to that of Asoka.[59] Indeed, the likeness between Akbar and Asoka is one of the most remarkable phenomena in history. They were separated from each other by an interval of eighteen centuries; the main features of their respective lives were practically the same. Asoka was putting down revolt in the Punjab when his father died; so was Akbar. Asoka was occupied for years in conquering and consolidating his empire; so was Akbar. Asoka conquered India to the north of the Nerbudda; so did Akbar. Asoka was tolerant of other religions; so was Akbar. Asoka went against the priests; so did Akbar. Asoka taught a religion of his own; so did Akbar. Asoka abstained from flesh meat; so did Akbar. In the end Asoka took refuge in Buddha, the law, and the assembly. In the end Akbar recited the formula of Islam: "There is but one God, and Mahomet is his prophet." Some of these coincidents are mere accidents. Others reveal a similarity in the current of religious thought, a similarity in the stages of religious development; consequently they add a new chapter to the history of mankind. The wars of Akbar are only interesting so far as they bring out types of character. When the news reached the Punjab that Humayun was dead, other news arrived. Hemu had recovered Agra and Delhi; he was advancing with a large army into the Punjab. The Mogul force was very small. The Mogul officers were in a panic; they advised a retreat into Kabul. Akbar and Bairam Khan resolved on a battle. The Afghans were routed. The Hindu general was wounded in the eye and taken prisoner. Bairam Khan bade Akbar slay the Hindu, and win the title of "champion of the faith." Akbar drew his sword, but shrunk back. He was as brave as a lion; he would not hack a wounded prisoner. Bairam Khan had no such sentiment. He beheaded Hemu with his own sword. This story marks the contrast between the prince and his guardian. Akbar was brave and skilful in the field; he was outwardly gracious and forgiving when the fight was over. Bairam Khan was loyal to the throne; he slaughtered enemies in cold blood without mercy. It was impossible that the two should agree. Akbar grew more and more impatient of his guardian; for years he was self-constrained at Rama. He thought a great deal, but did nothing; he bided his time. Within four years Bairam Khan had laid the foundations of the Mogul empire. Its limits were as yet restricted. The Mogul pale only covered the Punjab, the northwest provinces, and Oude; it is only extended from the Indus to the junction of the Jumna and Ganges. On the south it was bounded by Rajputana. It included the three capitals of Lahore, Delhi, and Agra. So far it coincided with the kingdom of Ala-ud-din, who conquered the Deccan and Peninsula. At the end of the four years Akbar was a young man of eighteen. He resolved to throw off the authority of his guardian. He carried out his designs with the artifice of an Asiatic. He pretended that his mother was sick. He left the camp where Bairam Khan commanded, in order to pay her a visit. He proclaimed that he had assumed the authority of Padishah; that no orders were to be obeyed save his own. Bairam Khan was taken by surprise. Possibly, had he known what was coming, he would have put Akbar out of the way; but his power was gone. He tried to work upon the feelings of Abkar; he found that the Padishah was inflexible. He revolted, but was defeated and forgiven. Akbar offered him any post save that of minister; he would be minister or nothing. In the end he elected to go to Mecca, the last refuge for Mussulman statesmen. Everything was ready for his embarkation; suddenly he was assassinated by an Afghan. It was the old story of Afghan revenge. He had killed the father of the assassin in some battle: in revenge the son had stabbed him to death. Akbar was now free to act. The political situation was one of extreme peril. The Afghans were fighting one another in Kabul in the northwest; they were also fighting one another in Behar and Bengal in the southeast. When he marched against one, his territories were exposed to the raids of the other. Meantime his Mogul officers often set his sovereignty at defiance; when brought to task they broke out in mutiny and rebellion. Two events at this period will show the actual state of affairs. Far away in the south of Rajputana lies the remote territory of Malwa. It was originally conquered by Ala-ud-din. During the decline of the Tughlaks the governor Malwa became an independent ruler. At the beginning of the reign of Akbar, Baz Bahadur was ruler of Malwa. He was a type of the Mussulman princes of the time; no doubt he went to mosque; he surrounded himself with Hindu singing and dancing girls; he became more or less Hinduized. Akbar sent an officer named Adham Khan to conquer Malwa. Adham Khan had no difficulty. Baz Bahadur abandoned his treasures and harem and fled. Adham Khan distributed part of the spoil to the Padishah. Akbar could not brook such disobedience. Notwithstanding the distance he hurried to Malwa. He received his rightful share of the plunder; he professed to accept the excuses of the defaulter. When he returned to Agra he recalled Adham Khan to court; he sent another governor to Malwa. Adham Khan obeyed; he went to Agra; he found that he had lost favor. Commands were given to others. He could get nothing. He was driven mad by delay and disappointment. He did not suspect Akbar; he threw the blame upon the minister. One day he went to the palace; he stabbed the minister to death in the hall of audience; he ran up to an outer terrace. Akbar heard the uproar; he rushed in and beheld the bleeding corpse. He saw the stupefied murderer on the terrace; he half drew his sword, but remembered himself. Adham Khan seized his hands and begged for mercy. Akbar shook him off and ordered the servants to throw him from the terrace. The order was obeyed; Adham Khan was killed on the spot. Another officer, named Khan Zeman, played a similar game in Behar. He was warned that Akbar was on the move; he escaped punishment by making over the spoil before Akbar came up. This satisfied Akbar; he returned part of the spoil and went back to Agra. Henceforth Khan Zeman was a rebel at heart. Some Usbeg chiefs revolted in Oudh; they were joined by Khan Zeman. Akbar was called away to the Punjab by an Afghan invasion; on his return the rebels were in possession of Oudh and Allahabad. Akbar marched against them in the middle of the rains. He outstripped his army; he reached the Ganges with only his bodyguard. The rebels were encamped on the opposite bank; they had no fear; they expected Akbar to wait until his army came up. That night Akbar swam the river with his bodyguard. At daybreak he attacked the enemy. The rebels heard the thunder of the imperial kettle-drums; they could not believe their ears. They fled in all directions. Khan Zeman was slain in the pursuit. The other leaders were taken prisoners; they were trampled to death by elephants. Thus for a while the rebellion was stamped out. These incidents are only types of others. In plain truth, the Mussulman power in India had spent its force. The brotherhood of Islam had ceased to bind together conflicting races; it could not hold together men of the same race. The struggle between Shiah and Sunni was dividing the world of Islam. Moguls, Turks, and Afghans were fighting against each other; they were also fighting among themselves. Rebels of different races were combining against the Padishah. Meantime any scruples that remained against fighting fellow-Mussulmans were a hinderance to Akbar in putting down revolts. The Mussulman power was crumbling to pieces. The dismemberment had begun two centuries earlier in the revolt of the Deccan. Since then the strength which remained in the scattered fragments was wasted in wars and revolts; the whole country was drifting into anarchy. No one could save the empire but a born statesman. Akbar had already proved himself a born soldier. Had he been only a soldier he might still have held his own against Afghans and Usbegs from Peshawur to Allahabad. Had he been bloodthirsty and merciless, like Bairam Khan, he might have stamped out revolt and mutiny by massacre and terrorism. But he would have left no mark in history, no lessons for posterity, no political ideas for the education of the world. He might have made a name like Genghis Khan or Timur; but the story of his life would have dropped into oblivion. After his death every evil that festered in the body politic would have broken out afresh. His successors would have inherited the same wars, the same revolts, and the same mutinies; unless they had inherited his capacity, they would have died out in anarchy and in revolution. Akbar had never been educated. He had never learned to write, nor even to read. He had not gone with his father to Persia, where he might have been schooled in Mussulman learning. He had spent a joyless boyhood with a cruel uncle in Kabul; he had been schooled in nothing but war. But he had listened to histories, and pondered over histories, until grand ideas began to seethe in his brain. The problem before him was the resuscitation of the empire, or rather the creation of a new empire out of the existing chaos. Fresh blood was wanted to infuse life and strength into the body politic; to enable the Mogul Shiahs to subdue the Afghan Sunnis. Akbar saw with the eye of genius that the necessary force was latent in the Rajputs. Henceforth he devoted all the energies of his nature to bring that force into healthy play. In 1575 Akbar was about thirty-four years of age. Twenty years had passed away since the boy had been installed as padishah. He had not as yet conquered Kabul in the northwest, nor Bengal in the southeast; he had not made any sensible advance into the Deccan. But he had gained a succession of victories. He had restored order in the Punjab and Hindustan. He had subdued Malwa, Guzerat, and Rajputana. Many Rajputs were still in arms against him; he had nothing to fear from them. He had fixed his capital at Agra; his favorite residence, however, was at Fathipur Sikri, about twelve miles from Agra. It is easy to individualize Akbar. He was haughty, like all the Moguls; he was outwardly clement and affable. He was tall and handsome; broad in the chest and long in the arms. His complexion was ruddy, a nut-brown. He had a good appetite and a good digestion. His strength was prodigious. His courage was very remarkable. While yet a boy he displayed prodigies of valor in the battle against Hemu. He would spring on the backs of elephants who had killed their keepers; he would compel them to do his bidding. He kept a herd of dromedaries; he gained his victories by the rapidity of his marches. He was an admirable marksman. He had a favorite gun which had brought him thousands of game. With that same gun he shot Jeimal the Rajput at the siege of Chitor. Akbar, like his father and grandfather, professed to be a Mussulman. His mother was a Persian; he was a Persian in his thoughts and ways. He was imbued with the old Mogul instinct of toleration. He was lax and indifferent, without the semblance of zeal. He consulted soothsayers who divined with burned rams' bones. He celebrated the Persian festival of the Nau-roz, or new year, which had no connection with Islam. He reverenced the seven heavenly bodies by wearing a dress of different color every day in the week. He joined in the Brahmanical worship and sacrifices of his Rajput queens. Still he was outwardly a Mussulman. He had no sons; he vowed that if a son was born to him he would walk to the tomb of a Mussulman saint at Ajmir; it was more than two hundred miles from Fathipur. In 1570 his eldest son Seli was born; Akbar walked to Ajmir; he offered up his prayers at the tomb. Meantime the Ulama were growing troublesome at Agra. The Ulama comprised the collective body of Mussulman doctors and lawyers who resided at the capital. The Ulama have always possessed great weight in a Mussulman state. Judges, magistrates, and law officers in general are chosen from their number. Consequently the opinion of the collective body was generally received as the final authority. The Ulama at Agra were bigoted Sunnis. They hated and persecuted the Shiahs. Especially they persecuted the teachers of the Sufi heresy, which had grown up in Persia and was spreading in India. They had grown in power under the Afghan sultans. They had been quiet in the days of Humayun and Bairam Khan; both were confessedly Shiahs; the Ulama were too courtly to offend the power which appointed the law officers. When, however, Akbar threw over Bairam Khan and asserted his own sovereignty, the Ulama became more active. They were anxious to keep the young Padishah in the right way. Akbar and his vizier Abul Fazl were certainly men of genius. They are still the bright lights of Indian history. They were the foremost men of their time. But each had a characteristic weakness. Akbar was a born Mogul. With all his good qualities he was proud, ignorant, inquisitive, and self-sufficient. Abul Fazl was a born courtier. With all his good qualities he was a flatterer, a time-server, and a eulogist; he made Akbar his idol; he bowed down and worshipped him. They became close friends; they were indeed necessary to each other. Akbar looked to his minister for praise; Abul Fazl looked to his master for advancement. It is difficult to admire the genius of Akbar without seeing that he has been worked upon by Abul Fazl. It is equally difficult to admire the genius of Abul Fazl without seeing that he is pandering to the vanity of Akbar. When Akbar made the acquaintance of Abul Fazl he was in sore perplexity. He was determined to rule men of all creeds with even hand. The Ulama were thwarting him. The chief justice at Agra had sentenced men to death for being Shiahs and heretics. The Ulama were urging the Padishah to do the same. He was reluctant to quarrel with them; he was still more reluctant to sanction their high-handed proceedings toward men who worshipped the same God, but after a different fashion. How far Akbar opened his soul to Abul Fazl is unknown. No doubt Abul Fazl read his thoughts. Indeed, he had his own wrongs to avenge. The Ulama had persecuted his father and driven him into exile. The Ulama were ignorant, bigoted, and puffed up with pride and orthodoxy. Their learning was confined to Arabic and the _Koran_. They ignored what they did not know and could not understand. Abul Fazl must have hated and despised them. He was far too courtly, too astute, to express his real sentiments. The Ulama were at variance with the Padishah; they were also at variance among themselves. Possibly he foresaw that if they disputed before Akbar they might excite his contempt. How far he worked upon Akbar can never be ascertained. In the end Akbar ordered that the Ulama should discuss all questions in his presence; he would then decide who was right and who was wrong. There is no evidence that Abul Fazl suggested this course. It was, however, the kind of incense that a courtier would offer to a sovereign like Akbar. The learned men were to lay their opinions before the Padishah; he was to sit and judge. If he needed help, Abul Fazl would be at his side. Indeed, Abul Fazl would ask questions and invite opinions. He, the Padishah, would only hear and decide. Accordingly, preparations were made for the coming debates. The discussions were held on Thursday evenings. They were carried on in a large pavilion; it was built for the purpose in the royal garden at Fathpur Sikri. All the learned men at Agra were invited to attend. The Padishah and all the grandees of the empire were present. Abul Fazl acted as a kind of director. He started questions; he expounded his master's policy of toleration. Akbar preserved his dignity as padishah. He listened with majestic gravity to all that was said. Occasionally he bestowed praises and presents upon the best speakers. For many evenings the proceedings were conducted with due decorum. As, however, the speakers grew accustomed to the presence of the Padishah, the spirit of dissension began to work. One evening it led to an uproar; learned men reviled each other before the Padishah. No doubt Abul Fazl did his best to make the Ulama uncomfortable. He shifted the discussion from one point to another. He started dangerous subjects. He placed them in dilemmas. If they sought to please the Padishah they sinned against the _Koran_; if they stuck to the _Koran_ they offended the Padishah. A question was started as to Akbar's marriages. One orthodox magistrate was too conscientious to hold his tongue; he was removed from his post. The courtiers saw that the Padishah delighted in the discomfiture of the Ulama with inconsistency, trickery, and cheating. The law officers were unable to defend themselves. Their authority and orthodoxy was set at naught. They were fast drifting into disgrace and ruin. They had cursed one another in their speech; probably in their hearts they were all agreed in cursing Abul Fazl. By this time Akbar held the Ulama in small esteem. He was growing sceptical of their religion. He had listened to the history of the caliphate; he yearned toward Ali and his family; he became in heart a Shiah. Already he may have doubted Mahomet and the _Koran_. Still he was outwardly a Mussulman. His object now was to overthrow the Ulama altogether; to become himself the supreme spiritual head, the pope or caliph of Islam. Abul Fazl was laboring to invest him with the same authority. He mooted the question one Thursday evening. He raised a storm of opposition; for this he was prepared. He had started the idea; he exerted all his tact and skill to carry it out. The debates proved that there were differences of opinion among the Ulama. Abul Fazl urged that there were differences of opinion between the highest Mussulman authorities; between those who were accepted as infallible, and were known as Mujtahids. He thus inserted the thin edge of the wedge. He proposed that when the Mujtahids disagreed, the decision should be left to the Padishah. Weeks and months passed away in these discussions. Nothing could be said against the measure excepting that it would prove offensive to the Padishah. Meantime a document was drawn up in the names of the chief men among the Ulama. It gave the Padishah the power of deciding between the conflicting authorities. It gave him the still more dangerous power of issuing fresh decrees, provided they were in accordance with some verse of the _Koran_ and were manifestly for the benefit of the people. The document was in the handwriting of Sheik Mubarak; Abul Fazl, Abdul Faiz, and probably Akbar himself had each a hand in the composition. The chief men among the Ulama were required to sign it. Perhaps if they had been priests or divines they might have resisted to the last. But they were magistrates and judges; their posts and emoluments were in danger. In the end they signed it in sheer desperation. From that day the power of the Ulama was gone; they had abdicated their authority to the padishah; they became mere ciphers in Islam. A worse lot befell their leaders. The head of the Ulama and the obnoxious chief justice were removed from their posts and forced to go to Mecca. The breaking up of the Ulama is an epoch in history of Mussulman India. The Ulama may have been ignorant and bigoted; they may have sought to keep religions and the government of the empire within the narrow grooves of orthodoxy. Nevertheless, they had played an important part throughout Mussulman rule. As exponents of the law of Mahomet they had often proved a salutary check upon despotism of the sovereign. They had forced every minister, governor, and magistrate to respect the fundamental principles of the _Koran_. They led and controlled public opinion among the Mussulman population. They formed the only body in the state that ever ventured to oppose the will of the sovereign. The Thursday evenings had done their work. Within four years they had broken up the power of the Ulama. Abul Fazl had another project in his brain; it combined the audacity of genius with the mendacity of a courtier. He declared that Akbar was himself the twelfth imam, the lord of the period, who was to reconcile the seventy-two sects of Islam, to regenerate the world, to usher in the millennium. The announcement took the court by surprise. It fitted, however, into current ideas; it paved the way for further assumptions. Akbar grasped the notion with eagerness; it fascinated him for the remainder of his life; it bound him in the closest ties of friendship and confidence with Abul Fazl. The religious life of Akbar had undergone a vast change. He was testing religion by morality and reason. His faith in Islam was fading away. Mahomet had married a girl of ten; he had taken another man's wife; therefore he could not have been a prophet sent by God. Akbar disbelieved the story of his night-journey to heaven. Meantime Akbar was eagerly learning the mysteries of other religions. He entertained Brahmans, Sufis, Parsis, and Christian fathers. He believed in the transmigration of the soul, in the supreme spirit, in the ecstatic reunion of the soul with God, in the deity of fire and the sun. He leaned toward Christianity; he rejected the trinity and incarnation. The gravitations of Akbar toward Christianity are invested with singular interest. He had been impressed with what he heard of the Portuguese in India; their large ships, impregnable forts, and big guns. He sent a letter to the Portuguese viceroy at Goa inviting Christian fathers to come to his court at Fathpur Sikri and instruct him in the sacred books. The religious world at Goa was thrown into a ferment at the prospect of converting the Great Mogul. Every priest in Goa prayed that he might be sent on the mission. Three fathers were despatched to Fathpur, which was more than twelve hundred miles away. Akbar awaited their arrival with the utmost impatience. He received them with every mark of favor. They delivered their presents, consisting of a polyglot Bible in four languages and the images of Jesus and the Virgin Mary. To their unspeakable delight the Great Mogul placed the Bible on his head and kissed the images. So eager was he for instruction that he spent the whole night in conversation with the fathers. He provided them with lodgings in the precincts of his palace; he permitted them to set up a chapel and altar. Akbar had ceased to be a Mussulman; he still maintained appearances. He set apart Saturday evenings for controversies between the fathers and the mollahs. In the end the fathers convinced Akbar of the superiority of Christianity. They contrasted the sensualities of Mahomet with the pure morality of the Gospel; the wars of Mahomet and the caliphs with the preachings and sufferings of the Apostles. The Mussulman historian curses the fathers; he states that Akbar became a Christian. The fathers, however, could never induce Akbar to be baptized. He gave them his favorite son Amurath, a boy of thirteen, to be educated in Christianity and the European sciences. He directed Abul Fazl to prepare a translation of the Gospel. He entered the chapel of the fathers, and prostrated himself before the image of the Saviour. He permitted the fathers to preach Christianity in any part of his empire; to perform their rites in public, in opposition to Mussulman law. A Portuguese was buried at Fathpur with all the pomp of the Roman Catholic ritual; the cross was carried through the streets for the first time. But Akbar would not become a Christian; he waited, he said, for the divine illumination. "He hated the Mussulman religion. He overthrew the mosques and converted them into stables. He trusted and employed the Hindus more than the Mussulmans. Many of the Mussulmans rebelled against him; they stirred up his brother, the Governor of Kabul, to take up arms against him; but Akbar defeated the rebels and restored order. "It is uncertain what really was the religion of Akbar. Some said that he was a Hindu; others that he was a Christian. Some said that he belonged to a fourth sect, which was not connected with either of the three others. He acknowledged one God who was best content with a variety of sects and worshippings. Early in the morning, and again at noon, evening, and midnight, he worshipped the sun. He belonged to a new sect, of which the followers regarded him as their prophet." Akbar was no fanatic. He was not carried away by religious craze. His religion was the outcome of his policy; it was political rather than superstitious; it began with him and ended with him. Probably the lack of fanaticism caused its failure. Abul Fazl speaks of the numbers who joined it; the list which he has preserved only contains the names of eighteen courtiers, including himself, his father, and his brother. Only one Hindu is on the list; namely, Bir Bar, the Brahman. Akbar tried hard to improve the morals of his subjects, Hindus as well as Mussulmans. He placed restrictions upon prostitution; he severely punished seducers. He permitted the use of wine; he punished intoxication. He prohibited the slaughter of cows. He forbade the marriage of boys before they were sixteen, and of girls before they were fourteen. He permitted the marriage of Hindu widows. He tried to stop sati among the Hindus, and polygamy among the Mussulmans. There was much practical simplicity in Akbar's character. It showed itself in a variety of ways. It was not peculiar to Akbar; it was an instinct which shows itself in Moguls generally. His emirs cheated him by bringing borrowed horses to muster; he stopped them by branding every horse with the name of the emir to which it belonged as well as with the imperial mark. He appointed writers to record everything he said or did. He sent writers into every city and province to report to him everything that was going on. He hung up a bell at the palace; any man who had a grievance might ring the bell and obtain a hearing. Akbar was very inquisitive. He sent an expedition to discover the sources of the Ganges. He made a strange experiment to discover what language was first spoken by mankind. This experiment is typical of the man. The Mussulmans declared that the first language was Arabic; the Jews said it was Hebrew; the Brahmans said it was Sanskrit. Akbar ordered twelve infants to be brought up by dumb nurses; not a word was to be spoken in their presence until they were twelve years of age. When the time arrived the children were brought before Akbar. Proficients in the learned tongues were present to catch the first words, to decide upon the language to which it belonged. The children could not say a word; they spoke only by signs. The experiment was an utter failure. The character of Akbar had its dark side. He was sometimes harsh and cruel. His persecution of Mussulmans was unpardonable. He had another way of getting rid of his enemies which is revolting to civilization. He kept a prisoner in his pay. He carried a box with three compartments--one for betel; another for digestive pills; a third for poisoned pills. No one dared to refuse to eat what was offered him by the Padishah; the offer was esteemed an honor. How many were poisoned by Akbar is unknown. The practice was in full force during the reigns of his successors. Akbar required his emirs to prostrate themselves before him. This rule gave great offence to Mussulmans; prostration is worship; no strict Mussulman will perform worship except when offering his prayers to God. Abul Fazl says that Akbar ordered it to be discontinued. The point is doubtful. It was certainly performed by members of the "divine faith." It was also performed during the reign of his son and successor. The Mogul government was pure despotism. Every governor and viceroy was supreme within his province; the Padishah was supreme throughout his empire. There was nothing to check provincial rulers but fear of the Padishah; there was nothing to check the Padishah but fear of rebellion. All previous Mussulman sovereigns had been checked by the Ulama and the authority of the _Koran_. Akbar had broken up the Ulama and set aside the _Koran_; he governed the empire according to his will; his will was law. The old Mogul khans had held diets; no trace of a diet is to be found in the history of Mogul India prior to the reign of Aurungzeb. There may have been a semblance of a diet on the accession of a new padishah; all the emirs, rajas, and princes of the empire paid their homage, presented gifts, and received titles and honors. But there was no council or parliament of any sort or kind. The Padishah was one and supreme. Akbar dwelt many years at Lahore. There he seems to have reached the height of human felicity. A proverb became current, "As happy as Akbar." He established his authority in Kabul and Bengal. He added Cashmere to his dominions. His empire was as large as that of Asoka. During the reign of Burhan, Akbar sent ambassadors to the sultans of the Deccan to invite them to accept him as their suzerain. In return he would uphold them on their thrones; he would prevent all internecine wars. One and all refused to pay allegiance to the Mogul. Akbar was wroth at the refusal. He sent his son Amurath to command in Guzerat; he ordered Amurath to seize the first opportunity for interfering in the affairs of Ahmadnagar. The moment soon arrived. Burhan died in 1594. A war ensued between rival claimants for the throne. The minister invited Amurath to interfere. Amurath advanced to Ahmadnagar. Meantime the minister and queen came to terms; they united to resist the Moguls. The Queen dowager, known as Chand Bibi, arrayed herself in armor; she veiled her face and led the troops in person. The Moguls were driven back. At last a compromise was effected. Berar was ceded to the Padishah; Amurath retired from Ahmadnagar. About this time a strange event took place at Lahore. On Easter Sunday, 1597, the Padishah was celebrating the Nau-roz, or feast of the new year, in honor of the sun. Tented pavilions were set up in a large plain. An image of the sun, fashioned of gold and jewels, was placed upon a throne. Suddenly a thunderbolt fell from the skies. The throne was overturned. The royal pavilion was set on fire; the flames spread throughout the camp; the whole was burned to the ground. The fire reached the city and burned down the palace. Nearly everything was consumed. The imperial treasures were melted down, and molten gold and silver ran through the streets of Lahore. This portentous disaster made a deep impression on Akbar. He went away to Cashmere; he took one of the Christian fathers with him. He began to question the propriety of his new religion; he could not bring himself to retract, certainly not to become an open Christian. When the summer was over he returned to Lahore. In 1598 Akbar left Lahore and set out for Agra. He was displeased with the conduct of the war in the Deccan. His son Amurath was a drunkard. The commander-in-chief, known as the Khan Khanan, who accompanied Amurath, was intriguing and treacherous; he had probably been bribed by the Deccanis. Abul Fazl was still the trusted servant and friend; he had been raised to the rank of commander of two thousand five hundred. Akbar had already recalled the Khan Khanan. He now sent Abul Fazl into the Deccan to bring away Amurath, or to send him away, as should seem most expedient. Abul Fazl departed on his mission. He arrived at Burhanpur, the capital of Khandesh. He soon discovered the luke-warmness of Bahadur Khan, the ruler. He insisted that Bahadur Khan should join him and help the imperial cause. Bahadur Khan was disinclined to help Akbar to conquer the Deccan. He thought to back out by sending rich presents to Abul Fazl. Abul Fazl was too loyal to be bribed; he returned the presents and went alone toward Ahmadnagar. Meanwhile Amurath was retreating from Ahmadnagar. He encamped in Berar; he drank more deeply than ever; he died very suddenly the very day that Abul Fazl came up. The death of Amurath removed one complication, but it led to the question of advance. The imperial officers urged a retreat. Abul Fazl had been bred in a cloister; he was approaching his fiftieth year; he had never before been in active service, but he had the spirit of a soldier; he refused to retreat from an enemy's country; he pushed manfully on for Ahmadnagar. His efforts were rewarded with success. The Queen-regent was assailed by other enemies, and yielded to her fate. She agreed that if Abul Fazl would punish her enemies, she would surrender the fortress of Ahmadnagar. Tidings had now reached Akbar that his son Amurath was dead. He resolved to go in person to the Deccan. He left his eldest son, Selim, in charge of the government. He sent an advance force under his other son, Danyal, associated with the Khan Khanan. The advance force reached Burhanpur. There the disloyalty of Bahadur Khan was manifest; he refused to pay respects to Danyal. Akbar was encamped at Ujain when the news reached him. He ordered Abul Fazl to join him; he ordered Danyal to go on to Ahmadnagar; he then prepared for the subjugation of Bahadur Khan. The story of the operations may be told in a few words. Danyal advanced to Ahmadnagar. Chand Bibi was slaughtered by her own soldiers. Ahmadnagar was occupied by the Moguls. Meanwhile Bahadur Khan abandoned Burhanpur and took refuge in the strong fortress of Asirghur. Akbar was joined by Abul Fazl and laid siege to Asirghur. The siege lasted six months. At last Bahadur Khan surrendered; his life was spared; henceforth he fades away from history. So far Akbar had prospered; he had conquered the great highway into the Deccan--Malwa, Khandesh, Berar, and Ahmadnagar. He raised Abul Fazl to the command of four thousand. He resolved on conquering the Deccan. He was about to strike when his arm was arrested. His eldest son Selim had broken out in revolt. He had gone to Allahabad and assumed the title of padishah. Akbar returned alone to Agra; he was falling on evil days. He effected a reconciliation with Selim; he saw that Selim was still rebellious at heart; that his best officers were inclining toward his undutiful son. In his perplexity he sent to the Deccan for Abul Fazl. The trusted servant hastened to join his imperial master. But Selim had always hated Abul Fazl. He instigated a Rajput chief of Bundelkund to waylay Abul Fazl. This chief was Bir Singh of Urchah. Bir Singh fell upon Abul Fazl near Nawar, killed him, and sent his head to Selim. Bir Singh fled from the wrath of the Padishah; he led the life of an outlaw in the jungle until he heard of the death of Akbar. Akbar was deeply wounded by the murder of Abul Fazl. He thereby lost his chief support, his best trusted friend. Henceforth he seemed to yield to circumstances rather than to struggle against the world. Other misfortunes befell him: his mother died; his youngest son, Danyal, killed himself with drink in the Deccan; his own life was beginning to draw to a close. The last events in the reign of Akbar are obscure. Outwardly he became reconciled to Selim. Outwardly he abandoned scepticism and heresy; he professed himself a Mussulman. At heart he was anxious that Selim should be set aside; that Khuzru, the eldest son of Selim, should succeed him to the throne. It is impossible to unravel the intrigues that filled the court at Agra. At last Akbar was smitten with mortal disease. For some days Selim was refused admittance to his father's chamber. In the end there was a compromise. Selim swore to maintain the Mussulman religion. He also swore to pardon his son Khuzru and all who had supported Khuzru. He was then brought into the presence of Akbar. The old Padishah was past all speech. He made a sign with his hand that Selim should take the imperial diadem and gird on the imperial sword. Selim obeyed. He prostrated himself upon the ground before the couch of his dying father; he touched the ground with his head. He then left the chamber. A few hours had passed away and Akbar was dead. He died in October, 1605, aged sixty-three. The burial of Akbar was performed after a simple fashion. His grave was prepared in a garden at Secundra, about four miles from Agra. The body was placed upon a bier. Selim and his three sons carried it out of the fortress. The young princes, assisted by the officers of the imperial household, carried it to Secundra. Seven days were spent in mourning over the grave. Provisions and sweetmeats were distributed among the poor every morning and evening throughout the mourning. Twenty readers were appointed to recite the _Koran_ every night without ceasing. Finally, the foundations were laid of that splendid mausoleum which is known far and wide as the tomb of Akbar. FOOTNOTES: [59] Asoka was an illustrious king of the Maurya dynasty in India, who died about B.C. 225. He did much for the advancement of Buddhism, and has been called the "Buddhist Constantine."--ED. CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY EMBRACING THE PERIOD COVERED IN THIS VOLUME A.D. 1517-1557 JOHN RUDD, LL.D. Events treated at length are here indicated in large type; the numerals following give volume and page. Separate chronologies of the various nations, and of the careers of famous persons, will be found in the INDEX VOLUME, with volume and page references showing where the several events are fully treated. * Denotes date uncertain. A.D. 1517. Protest of Luther against the sale of indulgences. See "LUTHER BEGINS THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY," ix, 1. Overthrow of the mameluke power in Egypt, by Selim I, who annexes that country to the Ottoman empire. Balboa beheaded by Pedrarias Davila, the new Governor of Darien, on a charge of contemplated revolt. Negro slaves first introduced into America. See "NEGRO SLAVERY IN AMERICA," ix, 36. 1518. First preaching of the reformed doctrines by Zwingli, in Switzerland. Conquest of Arabia by the Ottomans. 1519. Death of Maximilian I; his grandson, Charles I of Spain--jointly with Ferdinand his brother, in his hereditary realm--elected as Emperor Charles V. Union under one crown of the German Empire, Spain, the Netherlands, the Sicilies, Sardinia, and the Spanish Indies. Cortés first enters Mexico. See "CORTÉS CAPTURES THE CITY OF MEXICO," ix, 72. Mouth of the Mississippi discovered by Francisco de Garay. Magellan starts on his expedition to circumnavigate the world. See "FIRST CIRCUMNAVIGATION OF THE GLOBE," ix, 41. 1520. Papal bull of Leo X against Luther, who publicly burns it. See "LUTHER BEGINS THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY," ix, 1. Execution of nobles at Stockholm, following the successful invasion of Sweden by King Christian II of Denmark; Sten Sture, the Protector, is mortally wounded at Bogesund; Christian proclaimed king. Henry VIII of England agrees to meet Francis I of France. See "THE FIELD OF THE CLOTH OF GOLD," ix, 59. Solyman the Magnificent, Sultan of the Ottomans, succeeds Selim I. 1521. Conquest of Belgrade by the Ottoman Turks. Issue of the first of the Placards, edicts of Emperor Charles V against heresy, in the Netherlands. First of the wars between Charles V and Francis I; Navarre unsuccessfully invaded by the French; France invaded from the north; Milan lost to the French. Treaty of Bruges between Henry VIII and Charles V. Execution of the Duke of Buckingham for high treason; the office of constable of England, his inheritance, abolished. "CORTÉS CAPTURES THE CITY OF MEXICO." See ix, 72. Magellan reaches the Ladrones and the Philippines; he is slain on an island of the latter group. 1522. Conquest of Rhodes from the Knights of St. John by the Turks, under Solyman the Magnificent. Battle of La Biococca; the French defeated by the forces of Charles under Colonna. France invaded by the English under the Earl of Surrey. A ship belonging to Magellan's fleet completes the circumnavigation of the globe. Luther publishes his New Testament; he writes his Reply to Henry VIII, who had been dubbed "Defender of the Faith" by Pope Leo X, in acknowledgment of a book, _A Defence of the Seven Sacraments_, written against Luther. 1523. Invasion of France by Henry VIII and Charles V. Italy invaded by the French. Abrogation of the mass and image-worship in Switzerland. Gustavus Vasa becomes king of Sweden. See "LIBERATION OF SWEDEN," ix, 79. Frederick I, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, succeeds to the throne of Christian II of Denmark, who is deposed by his subjects. 1524. Retreat of Bonnivet; death of Bayard, "the knight without fear and without reproach." Italy invaded by Francis I; he occupies Milan and lays siege to Pavia. "THE PEASANTS' WAR IN GERMANY." See ix, 93. Voyage to the North American coast by Verrazano, an Italian navigator, on behalf of France. 1525. Defeat of Francis I at Pavia. See "FRANCE LOSES ITALY," ix, 111. Bloody conclusion of the Peasants' War. A hereditary Protestant principality formed in East Prussia by the grand master of the Teutonic Knights; the suzerain being Sigismund, King of Poland. 1526. Treaty of Madrid; release of Francis I. See "FRANCE LOSES ITALY," ix, 111. Battle of Mohacs; the Hungarians are overwhelmed by Solyman; Louis II slain. Rival elections of John Zapolya and Ferdinand of Austria to the vacant throne. Foundation of the Mongol dynasty of India by Baber, who conquers Ibrahim Lodi of Delhi at Paniput. Tyndale's version of the English Bible printed at Worms. 1527. Storming of Rome; it is pillaged by the troops of the Constable de Bourbon. See "SACK OF ROME BY THE IMPERIAL TROOPS," ix, 124. Restoration of the republic in Florence; the Medici expelled. Winning of the Hungarian crown by Ferdinand of Austria; Zapolya expelled the country. 1528. War declared against Charles V by Henry VIII and Francis I. Deliverance of Genoa from the French yoke, by Andrea Doria. After tyrannizing over Scotland for more than two years, the Earl of Angus is driven out of the realm. 1529. Fall of Cardinal Wolsey. See "GREAT RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT IN ENGLAND," ix, 137. Presentation of the Protest by the German reformers at the Diet of Spire; from this the reformers take the name of Protestants.[60] Peace of Cambrai between Francis I and Charles V. Siege of Florence; united attempt of Charles V and Pope Clement VII to restore the rule of the Medici. Vienna unsuccessfully besieged by Solyman the Magnificent; he gives to Zapolya the rule in Hungary. Establishment in Sweden of Lutheranism as the state church. 1530. Coronation of Charles V, Pope Clement VII, at Bologna, performing the ceremony, the last crowning by any pope of a German emperor. Restoration of the Medici on the submission of Florence to the invaders. Malta ceded to the Knights of St. John by Charles V, who also hands over the Moluccas to the Portuguese. Formulation of the reform (Protestant) profession of faith at the Diet of Augsburg; prepared and read before the Diet by Melanchthon. 1531. Breach between Henry VIII and Pope Clement VII. Battle of Kappel; defeat of the army of Zurich by Swiss Catholics; fall of Zwingli. Henry VIII of England first addressed as "supreme head of the Church." Publication of Michel Servetus' treatise on the _Errors of the Trinity_. 1532. Restoration of religious peace, with freedom of worship, in Germany, secured by the Pacification of Nuremberg. Conquest of Peru. See "PIZARRO CONQUERS PERU," ix, 156. 1533. Cranmer annuls the marriage of Henry VIII with Catherine of Aragon; he marries Anne Boleyn; her coronation. Marriage of the Dauphin Henry with Catherine de' Medici. Enforced flight of Calvin from Paris. See "CALVIN IS DRIVEN FROM PARIS," ix, 176. Queen Margaret of Navarre, sister of Francis I, avows heretical opinions; her mysteries, farces, and novels give a great impulse to literature in France. A taste for poetry and refinement of the English language follows the writings of Howard, Earl of Surrey, and Sir Thomas Wyatt, in England. 1534. Throwing off of the papal authority in England. See "ENGLISH ACT OF SUPREMACY," ix, 203. Establishment of their disorderly reign of the Anabaptists, under the lead of John of Leyden, in Muenster. Unsuccessful attempt of the Bishop of Geneva and the Duke of Savoy to reëstablish their authority over Geneva; it is henceforth free. First fierce persecution of the reformers in France begins. Discovery of the St. Lawrence by Jacques Cartier.* See "CARTIER EXPLORES CANADA," ix, 236. 1535. Suppression of the monasteries in England. Publication in England by Tyndale and Coverdale of a new translation of the Bible. Settlement of Paraguay and founding of Buenos Aires. See "MENDOZA SETTLES BUENOS AIRES," ix, 254. Downfall of the Anabaptists at Muenster; John of Leyden put to death. After being created a cardinal, Fisher is beheaded in England; the like befalls Sir Thomas More. 1536. Completion of the union between England and Wales. Henry VIII, on the charge of infidelity, commits Anne Boleyn to the Tower of London; she is executed. Marriage of Henry to Jane Seymour. Francis I takes Turin and attempts the surprise of Genoa. Provence invaded by Charles V. Discovery of California by Cortés. 1537. Death of Jane Seymour, Queen of England. Further enslavement of the Indians forbidden by a brief of Pope Paul III. 1538. General suppression of monasteries and destruction of relics in England. Truce of Nice, for ten years, between France and Spain. Marriage of Mary de Guise with James V of Scotland. John Calvin expelled Geneva. 1539. Publication of Cranmer's Bible in England. Calvin, head of the Reformers, founds the University of Geneva. Beginning of the explorations of De Soto, after his landing in Florida. Emperor Charles V drives the citizens of Ghent into revolt against his exactions. 1540. Marriage of Henry VIII to Anne of Cleves; she is divorced; the King marries Catherine Howard. Submission of Ghent to Charles V; he destroys its liberties; many of the citizens find refuge in England. Papal sanction given to the Society of Jesus. See "FOUNDING OF THE JESUITS," ix, 261. Cherry-trees, carried from Flanders, first planted in England. First known printing in America; done in Mexico. See "ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF PRINTING," viii, 1. 1541. Charles V heads an unsuccessful expedition against Algiers. Hungary overrun by the Turks, under Solyman the Magnificent. King John III of Portugal requests Francis Xavier and other Jesuits to undertake missions to his colonies. De Soto reaches the Mississippi River. See "DE SOTO DISCOVERS THE MISSISSIPPI," ix, 277. 1542. Discovery of Japan by the Portuguese.* Execution of Catherine Howard, fifth queen-consort of Henry VIII. He assumes the title of king of Ireland. Battle of Solway Moss; successful invasion of Scotland by the English. War renewed between Francis I and Charles V. Trade with Japan by the Portuguese permitted. 1543. Marriage of Henry VIII with Catherine Parr. "REVOLUTION OF ASTRONOMY BY COPERNICUS." See ix, 285. Birth and accession of Mary Stuart to the throne of Scotland; Earl of Arran is regent. 1544. Invasion of Scotland by the English under the Earl of Hertford; they burn Edinburgh. Mary and Elizabeth restored to the right of succession to the English throne. 1545. Attempted invasion of England by the French. Nineteenth general council. See "COUNCIL OF TRENT AND THE COUNTER-REFORMATION," ix, 293. Spanish discovery of the silver mines of Potosi. Massacre of the Vaudois in Southern France. 1546. Burning of George Wishart as a heretic, by order of Cardinal Beaton, the Scottish primate; he is assassinated. Beginning of the War of the Smalkald League. See "PROTESTANT STRUGGLE AGAINST CHARLES V," ix, 313. 1547. Death of Henry VIII; Edward VI succeeds his father on the English throne; the Duke of Somerset protector. Henry II succeeds to the throne of France, on the death of his father, Francis I. Capture of John Knox, the Scottish reformer; he is condemned to the French galleys. In Russia the Grand Prince of Moscow, Ivan IV (the Terrible), assumes the title of czar or tsar. 1548. Publication of the Augsburg Interim. See "PROTESTANT STRUGGLE AGAINST CHARLES V," ix, 313. 1549. In England the Act of Uniformity, regulating public worship, is passed. Formal uniting of the Netherlands with the Spanish crown by Charles V. Francis Xavier lands in Japan. See "INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY INTO JAPAN," ix, 325. Book of Common Prayer adopted in England, under Edward VI. 1550. Promulgation against the heretics in the Netherlands by Charles; the hateful Inquisition established there. Peace between England and France; Boulogne restored to the latter. Publication of his _Lives of the Painters_, by Giorgio Vasari. 1551. After a long siege Magdeburg is taken by Maurice of Saxony. Turkish ravages on the coast of Sicily; an attack on Malta fails; Tripoli surrenders to them. Palestrina, the first to reconcile musical science with musical art, made _maestro di capella_ by Pope Julius III. 1552. Adoption of the Forty-two Articles of the Church of England; these were afterward reduced to Thirty-nine. Alliance of Maurice of Saxony with France; they make war on Charles V, on behalf of the Protestants. The Peace of Passau follows. See "COLLAPSE OF THE POWER OF CHARLES V," ix, 337 and 348. Seizure of the bishoprics of Metz, Toul, and Verdun by Henry II of France. See "COLLAPSE OF THE POWER OF CHARLES V," ix, 337. Subjugation of the Tartars of Kazan by Ivan the Terrible of Russia. 1553. Death of Edward VI; his sister, Mary, succeeds to the English throne. Unsuccessful attempt of the Duke of Northumberland to place his daughter-in-law, Lady Jane Grey, on the throne. After a stubborn defence by Francis, Duke of Guise, Charles V is compelled to raise the siege of Metz. Burning of Servetus at Geneva, with Calvin's approval. 1554. Rebellion of Wyatt, in support of Lady Jane Grey's attempt on the crown of England; she is executed. Queen Mary, of England, marries Philip of Spain. Regency of Mary de Guise, mother of Mary Stuart, in Scotland. Astrakhan conquered by Ivan the Terrible. 1555. Peace of Augsburg between the Roman Catholic and Lutheran parties in Germany. See "THE RELIGIOUS PEACE OF AUGSBURG," ix, 348. Persecution of the Protestants begun by Queen Mary in England; burning of Latimer and Ridley. The sovereignty of the Netherlands resigned by Charles V to his son, Philip II. Return to Scotland of John Knox. Completion of the version of the Psalms, in English metre, by Sternhold and Hopkins. 1556. Burning of Cranmer. Emperor Charles V resigns the crown of Germany. See "RELIGIOUS PEACE OF AUGSBURG," ix, 348. "AKBAR ESTABLISHES THE MOGUL EMPIRE IN INDIA." See ix, 366. 1557. Philip II of Spain arrives in England; he obtains a declaration of war against France and departs. Battle of St. Quentin; the Earl of Pembroke joins the army of Philip II in Flanders, with 10,000 English soldiers; defeat of the French. Signing of the Solemn League and Covenant, "even to the knife," by Scottish Lords of the Congregation. FOOTNOTES: [60] Sometimes given as 1530. 
9929	----	Distributed Proofreaders Note: Italics: _ Bold: % %THE GREAT EVENTS% BY Famous Historians A COMPREHENSIVE AND READABLE ACCOUNT OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY. EMPHASIZING THE MORE IMPORTANT EVENTS. AND PRESENTING THESE AS COMPLETE NARRATIVES IN THE MASTER-WORDS OF THE MOST EMINENT HISTORIANS %NON-SECTARIAN NON-PARTISAN NON-SECTIONAL% ON THE PLAN EVOLVED FROM A CONSENSUS OF OPINIONS GATHERED FROM THE MOST DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARS OF AMERICA AND EUROPE. INCLUDING BRIEF INTRODUCTIONS BY SPECIALISTS TO CONNECT AND EXPLAIN THE CELEBRATED NARRATIVES, ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY. WITH THOROUGH INDICES. BIBLIOGRAPHIES. CHRONOLOGIES. AND COURSES OF READING EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ROSSITER JOHNSON, LL.D. ASSOCIATE EDITORS CHARLES F. HORNE, Ph.D. JOHN RUDD, LL.D. _With a staff of specialists VOLUME XII_ %The National Alumni% 1905 %CONTENTS% VOLUME XII _An Outline Narrative of the Great Events_ CHARLES F. HORNE _Louis XIV Establishes Absolute Monarchy (A.D. 1661)_ JAMES COTTER MORISON _New York Taken by the English (A.D. 1664)_ JOHN R. BRODHEAD _Great Plague in London (A.D. 1665)_ DANIEL DEFOE _Great Fire in London (A.D. 1666)_ JOHN EVELYN _Discovery of Gravitation (A.D. 1666)_ SIR DAVID BREWSTER _Morgan, the Buccaneer, Sacks Panama (A.D. 1671)_ JOHANN W. VON ARCHENHOLZ _Struggle of the Dutch against France and England (A.D. 1672)_ C.M. DAVIES. _Discovery of the Mississippi La Salle Names Louisiana (A.D. 1673-1682)_ FRANÇOIS XAVIER GARNEAU _King Philip's War (A.D. 1675)_ RICHARD HILDRETH _Growth of Prussia under the Great Elector His Victory at Fehrbellin (A.D. 1675)_ THOMAS CARLYLE _William Penn Receives the Grant of Pennsylvania Founding of Philadelphia (A.D. 1681)_ GEORGE E. ELLIS _Last Turkish Invasion of Europe Sobieski Saves Vienna (A.D. 1683)_ SUTHERLAND MENZIES _Monmouth's Rebellion (A.D. 1685)_ GILBERT BURNET _Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (A.D. 1685)_ BON LOUIS HENRI MARTIN _The English Revolution Flight of James II (A.D. 1688)_ GILBERT BURNET H.D. TRAILL _Peter the Great Modernizes Russia Suppression of the Streltsi (A.D. 1689)_ ALFRED RAMBAUD _Tyranny of Andros in New England The Bloodless Revolution (A.D. 1689)_ CHARLES WYLLYS ELLIOTT _Massacre of Lachine (A.D. 1689)_ FRANÇOIS XAVIER GARNEAU _Siege of Londonderry and Battle of the Boyne (A.D. 1689-1690)_ TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT _Salem Witchcraft Trials (A.D. 1692)_ RICHARD HILDRETH _Establishment of the Bank of England (A.D. 1694)_ JOHN FRANCIS _Colonization of Louisiana (A.D. 1699)_ CHARLES E.T. GAYARRÉ _Prussia Proclaimed a Kingdom (A.D. 1701)_ LEOPOLD VON RANKE _Founding of St. Petersburg (A.D. 1703)_ K. WALISZEWSKI _Battle of Blenheim (A.D. 1704) Curbing of Louis XIV_, SIR EDWARD SHEPHERD CREASY _Union of England and Scotland (A.D. 1707)_ JOHN HILL BURTON _Downfall of Charles XII at Poltava (A.D. 1709) Triumph of Russia_ K. WALISZEWSKI _Capture of Port Royal (A.D. 1710) France Surrenders Nova Scotia to England_ DUNCAN CAMPBELL _Universal Chronology (A.D. 1661-1715)_ JOHN RUDD ILLUSTRATIONS VOLUME XII _Surrender of Marshal Tallard at the Battle of Blenheim_, Painting by R. Caton Woodville. _The Duke of Monmouth humiliates himself before King James II_, Painting by J. Pettie, A.R.A. _Charles XII carried on a litter during the Battle of Poltava_, Painting by W. Hauschild. %AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE% Tracing Briefly The Causes, Connections, And Consequencies Of %THE GREAT EVENTS% (Age Of Louis XIV) CHARLES F. HORNE It is related that in 1661, on the day following the death of the great Cardinal Mazarin, the various officials of the State approached their young King, Louis XIV. "To whom shall we go now for orders, Your Majesty?" "To me," answered Louis, and from that date until his death in 1715 they had no other master. Whether we accept the tale as literal fact or only as the vivid French way of visualizing a truth, we find here the central point of over fifty years of European history. The two celebrated cardinals, Richelieu and Mazarin, had, by their strength and wisdom, made France by far the most powerful state in Europe. Moreover, they had so reduced the authority of the French nobility, the clergy, and the courts of law as to have become practically absolute and untrammelled in their control of the entire government. Now, all this enormous power, both at home and abroad, over France and over Europe, was assumed by a young man of twenty-three. "I am the state," said Louis at a later period of his career. He might almost have said, "I am Europe," looking as he did only to the Europe that dominated, and took pleasure in itself, and made life one continued glittering revel of splendor. Independent Europe, that claimed the right of thinking for itself, the suffering Europe of the peasants, who starved and shed their blood in helpless agony--these were against Louis almost from the beginning, and ever increasingly against him. At first the young monarch found life very bright around him. His courtiers called him "the rising sun," and his ambition was to justify the title, to be what with his enormous wealth and authority was scarcely difficult, the Grand Monarch. He rushed into causeless war and snatched provinces from his feeble neighbors, exhausted Germany and decaying Spain. He built huge fortresses along his frontiers, and military roads from end to end of his domains. His court was one continuous round of splendid entertainments. He encouraged literature, or at least pensioned authors and had them clustered around him in what Frenchmen call the Augustan Age of their development.[1] [Footnote 1: See _Louis XIV Establishes Absolute Monarchy_, page 1.] The little German princes of the Rhine, each of them practically independent ruler of a tiny state, could not of course compete with Louis or defy him. Nor for a time did they attempt it. His splendor dazzled them. They were content to imitate, and each little prince became a patron of literature, or giver of entertainments, or builder of huge fortresses absurdly disproportioned to his territory and his revenues. Germany, it has been aptly said, became a mere tail to the French kite, its leaders feebly draggling after where Louis soared. Never had the common people of Europe or even the nobility had less voice in their own affairs. It was an age of absolute kingly power, an age of despotism. England, which under Cromwell had bid fair to take a foremost place in Europe, sank under Charles II into unimportance. Its people wearied with tumult, desired peace more than aught else; its King, experienced in adversity, and long a homeless wanderer in France and Holland, seemed to have but one firm principle in life. Whatever happened he did not intend, as he himself phrased it, to go on his "travels" again. He dreaded and hated the English Parliament as all the Stuarts had; and, like his father, he avoided calling it together. To obtain money without its aid, he accepted a pension from the French King. Thus England also became a servitor of Louis. Its policy, so far as Charles could mould it, was France's policy. If we look for events in the English history of the time we must find them in internal incidents, the terrible plague that devastated London in 1665,[1] the fire of the following year, that checked the plague but almost swept the city out of existence.[2] We must note the founding of the Royal Society in 1660 for the advancement of science, or look to Newton, its most celebrated member, beginning to puzzle out his theory of gravitation in his Woolsthorpe garden.[3] [Footnote 1: See _Great Plague in London_, page 29.] [Footnote 2: See _Great Fire in London_, page 45.] [Footnote 3: See _Discovery of Gravitation_, page 51.] CONTINENTAL WARS Louis's first real opponent he found in sturdy Holland. Her fleets and those of England had learned to fight each other in Cromwell's time, and they continued to struggle for the mastery of the seas. There were many desperate naval battles. In 1664 an English fleet crossed the ocean to seize the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, and it became New York.[4] In 1667 a Dutch fleet sailed up the Thames and burned the shipping, almost reaching London itself. [Footnote 4: See _New York Taken by the English_, page 19.] Yet full as her hands might seem with strife like this, Holland did not hesitate to stand forth against the aggression of Louis's "rising sun." When in his first burst of kingship, he seized the Spanish provinces of the Netherlands and so extended his authority to the border of Holland, its people, frightened at his advance, made peace with England and joined an alliance against him. Louis drew back; and the Dutch authorized a medal which depicted Holland checking the rising sun. Louis never forgave them, and in 1672, having secured German neutrality and an English alliance, he suddenly attacked Holland with all his forces.[5] [Footnote 5: See _Struggle of the Dutch against France and England_, page 86.] For a moment the little republic seemed helpless. Her navy indeed withstood ably the combined assaults of the French and English ships, but the French armies overran almost her entire territory. It was then that her people talked of entering their ships and sailing away together, transporting their nation bodily to some colony beyond Louis's reach. It was then that Amsterdam set the example which other districts heroically followed, of opening her dykes and letting the ocean flood the land to drive out the French. The leaders of the republic were murdered in a factional strife, and the young Prince William III of Orange, descended from that William the Silent who had led the Dutch against Philip II, was made practically dictator of the land. This young Prince William, afterward King William III of England, was the antagonist who sprang up against Louis, and in the end united all Europe against him and annihilated his power. Seeing the wonderful resistance that little Holland made against her apparently overwhelming antagonists, the rest of Germany took heart; allies came to the Dutch. Brandenburg and Austria and Spain forced Louis to fall back upon his own frontier, though with much resolute battling by his great general, Turenne. Next to young William, Louis found his most persistent opponent in Frederick William, the "Great Elector" of Brandenburg and Prussia, undoubtedly the ablest German sovereign of the age, and the founder of Prussia's modern importance. He had succeeded to his hereditary domains in 1640, when they lay utterly waste and exhausted in the Thirty Years' War; and he reigned until 1688, nearly half a century, during which he was ever and vigorously the champion of Germany against all outside enemies. He alone, in the feeble Germany of the day, resisted French influence, French manners, and French aggression. In this first general war of the Germans and their allies against Louis, Frederick William proved the only one of their leaders seriously to be feared. Louis made an alliance with Sweden and persuaded the Swedes to overrun Brandenburg during its ruler's absence with his forces on the Rhine. But so firmly had the Great Elector established himself at home, so was he loved, that the very peasantry rose to his assistance. "We are only peasants," said their banners, "but we can die for our lord." Pitiful cry! Pitiful proof of how unused the commons were to even a little kindness, how eagerly responsive! Frederick William came riding like a whirlwind from the Rhine, his army straggling along behind in a vain effort to keep up. He hurled himself with his foremost troops upon the Swedes, and won the celebrated battle of Fehrbellin. He swept his astonished foes back into their northern peninsula. Brandenburg became the chief power of northern Germany.[1] [Footnote 1: See _Growth of Prussia under the Great Elector: His Victory at Fehrbellin_, page 138.] In 1679 the Peace of Ryswick ended the general war, and left Holland unconquered, but with the French frontier extended to the Rhine, and Louis at the height of his power, the acknowledged head of European affairs. Austria was under the rule of Leopold I, Emperor of Germany from 1657 to 1705, whose pride and incompetence wholly prevented him from being what his position as chief of the Hapsburgs would naturally have made him, the leader of the opposition, the centre around whom all Europe could rally to withstand Louis's territorial greed. Leopold hated Louis, but he hated also the rising Protestant "Brandenburger," he hated the "merchant" Dutch, hated everybody in short who dared intrude upon the ancient order of his superiority, who refused to recognize his impotent authority. So he would gladly have seen Louis crush every opponent except himself, would have found it a pleasant vengeance indeed to see all these upstart powers destroying one another. Moreover, Austria was again engaged in desperate strife with the Turks. These were in the last burst of their effort at European conquest. No longer content with Hungary, twice in Leopold's reign did they advance to attack Vienna. Twice were they repulsed by Hungarian and Austrian valor. The final siege was in 1683. A vast horde estimated as high as two hundred thousand men marched against the devoted city. Leopold and most of the aristocracy fled, in despair of its defence. Only the common people who could not flee, remained, and with the resolution of despair beat off the repeated assaults of the Mahometans.[2] [Footnote 2: See _Last Turkish Invasion of Europe: Sobieski Saves Vienna_, page 164.] They were saved by John Sobieski, a king who had raised Poland to one of her rare outflashing periods of splendor. With his small but gallant Polish army he came to the rescue of Christendom, charged furiously upon the huge Turkish horde, and swept it from the field in utter flight. The tide of Turkish power receded forever; that was its last great wave which broke before the walls of Vienna. All Hungary was regained, mainly through the efforts of Austria's greatest general, Prince Eugene of Savoy. The centre of the centuries of strife shifted back where it had been in Hunyady's time, from Vienna to the mighty frontier fortress of Belgrad, which was taken and retaken by opposing forces. LATER EFFORTS OF LOUIS XIV The earlier career of Louis XIV seems to have been mainly influenced by his passion for personal renown; but he had always been a serious Catholic, and in his later life his interest in religion became a most important factor in his world. The Protestants of France had for wellnigh a century held their faith unmolested, safeguarded by that Edict of Nantes, which had been granted by Henry IV, a Catholic at least in name, and confirmed by Cardinal Richelieu, a Catholic by profession. Persuasive measures had indeed been frequently employed to win the deserters back to the ancient Church; but now under Louis's direction, a harsher course was attempted. The celebrated "dragonades" quartered a wild and licentious soldiery in Protestant localities, in the homes of Protestant house-owners, with special orders to make themselves offensive to their hosts. Under this grim discouragement Protestantism seemed dying out of France, and at last, in 1685, Louis, encouraged by success, took the final step and revoked the Edict of Nantes, commanding all his subjects to accept Catholicism, while at the same time forbidding any to leave the country. Huguenots who attempted flight were seized; many were slain. Externally at least, the reformed religion disappeared from France.[1] [Footnote 1: See _Revocation of the Edict of Nantes_, page 180.] Of course, despite the edict restraining them, many Huguenots, the most earnest and vigorous of the sect, did escape by flight; and some hundred thousands of France's ablest citizens were thus lost to her forever. Large numbers found a welcome in neighboring Holland; the Great Elector stood forward and gave homes to a wandering host of the exiles. England received colonies of them; and even distant America was benefited by the numbers who sought her freer shores. No enemy to France in all the world but received a welcome accession to its strength against her. In the same year that Protestant Europe was thus assailed and terrified by the reviving spectre of religious persecution, Charles II of England died and his brother James II succeeded him. Charles may have been Catholic at heart, but in name at least he had retained the English religion. James was openly Catholic. A hasty rebellion raised against him by his nephew, Monmouth, fell to pieces;[1] and James, having executed Monmouth and approved a cruel persecution of his followers, began to take serious steps toward forcing the whole land back to the ancient faith. [Footnote 1: See _Monmouth's Rebellion_, page 172.] So here was kingly absolutism coming to the aid of the old religious intolerance. The English people, however, had already killed one king in defence of their liberties; and their resolute opposition to James began to suggest that they might kill another. Many of the leading nobles appealed secretly to William of Orange for help. William was, as we have said, the centre of opposition to Louis, and that began to mean to Catholicism as well. Also, William had married a daughter of King James and had thus some claim to interfere in the family domains. And, most important of all, as chief ruler of Holland, William had an army at command. With a portion of that army he set sail late in 1688 and landed in England. Englishmen of all ranks flocked to join him. King James fled to France, and a Parliament, hastily assembled in 1689, declared him no longer king and placed William and his wife Mary on the throne as joint rulers.[2] Thus William had two countries instead of one to aid him in his life-long effort against Louis. [Footnote 2: See _The English Revolution: Flight of James II_, page 200.] Louis, indeed, accepted the accession of his enemy as a threat of war and, taking up the cause of the fugitive James, despatched him with French troops to Ireland, where his Catholic faith made the mass of the people his devoted adherents. There were, however, Protestant Irish as well, and these defied James and held his troops at bay in the siege of Londonderry, while King William hurried over to Ireland with an army. Father-in-law and son-in-law met in the battle of the Boyne, and James was defeated in war as he had been in diplomacy. He fled back to France, leaving his Catholic adherents to withstand William as best they might. Limerick, the Catholic stronghold, was twice besieged and only yielded when full religious freedom had been guaranteed. Irishmen to this day call it with bitterness "the city of the violated treaty."[1] [Footnote 1: See _Siege of Londonderry and the Battle of the Boyne_, page 258.] Meanwhile the strife between Louis and William had spread into another general European war. William had difficulties to encounter in his new kingdom. Its people cared little for his Continental aims and gave him little loyalty of service. In fact, peculation among public officials was so widespread that, despite large expenditures of money, England had only a most feeble, inefficient army in the field, and William was in black disgust against his new subjects. It was partly to aid the Government in its financial straits that the Bank of England was formed in 1694.[2] [Footnote 2: See _Establishment of the Bank of England_, page 286.] Yet Louis's troubles were greater and of deeper root. Catholic Austria and even the Pope himself, unable to submit to the arrogance of the "Grand Monarch," took part against him in this war. It can therefore no longer be regarded as a religious struggle. It marks the turning-point in Louis's fortunes. His boundless extravagance had exhausted France at last. Both in wealth and population she began to feel the drain. The French generals won repeated victories, yet they had to give slowly back before their more numerous foes; and in 1697 Louis purchased peace by making concessions of territory as well as courtesy. This peace proved little more than a truce. For almost half a century the European sovereigns had been waiting for Charles II of Spain to die. He was the last of his race, last of the Spanish Hapsburgs descended from the Emperor Charles V, and so infirm and feeble was he that it seemed the flickering candle of his life must puff out with each passing wind. Who should succeed him? In Mazarin's time, that crafty minister had schemed that the prize should go to France, and had wedded young Louis XIV to a Spanish princess. The Austrian Hapsburgs of course wanted the place for themselves, though to establish a common ancestry with their Spanish kin they must turn back over a century and a half to Ferdinand and Isabella. But strong men grew old and died, while the invalid Charles II still clung to his tottering throne. Louis ceased hoping to occupy it himself and claimed it for his son, then for his grandson, Philip. Not until 1700, after a reign of nearly forty years, did Charles give up the worthless game and expire. He declared Philip his heir, and the aged Louis sent the youth to Spain with an eager boast, "Go; there are no longer any Pyrenees." That is, France and Spain were to be one, a mighty Bourbon empire. That was just what Europe, experienced in Louis's unscrupulous aggression, dared not allow. So another general alliance was formed, with William of Holland and England at its head, to drive Philip from his new throne in favor of a Hapsburg. William died before the war was well under way, but the British people understood his purposes now and upheld them. Once more they felt themselves the champions of Protestantism in Europe. Anne, the second daughter of the deposed King James, was chosen as queen; and under her the two realms of England and Scotland were finally joined in one by the Act of Union (1707), with but a single Parliament.[1] [Footnote 1: See _Union of England and Scotland_, page 341.] Meanwhile Marlborough was sent to the Rhine with a strong British army. Prince Eugene paused in fighting the Turks and joined him with Austrian and German troops. Together they defeated the French in the celebrated battle of Blenheim (1704),[2] and followed it in later years with Oudenarde and Malplaquet. Louis was beaten. France was exhausted. The Grand Monarch pleaded for peace on almost any terms. [Footnote 2: See _Battle of Blenheim: Curbing of Louis XIV_, page 327.] Yet his grandson remained on the Spanish throne. For one reason, the Spaniards themselves upheld him and fought for him. For another, the allies' Austrian candidate became Emperor of Germany, and to make him ruler of Spain as well would only have been to consolidate the Hapsburg power instead of that of the Bourbons. Made dubious by this balance between evils, Europe abandoned the war. So there were two Bourbon kingdoms after all--but both too exhausted to be dangerous. Louis had indeed outlived his fame. He had roused the opposition of all his neighbors, and ruined France in the effort to extend her greatness. The praises and flattery of his earlier years reached him now only from the lips of a few determined courtiers. His people hated him, and in 1715 celebrated his death as a release. Frenchmen high and low had begun the career which ended in their terrific Revolution. Lying on his dreary death-bed, the Grand Monarch apologized that he should "take so long in dying." Perhaps he, also, felt that he delayed the coming of the new age. What his career had done was to spread over all Europe a new culture and refinement, to rouse a new splendor and recklessness among the upper classes, and to widen almost irretrievably the gap between rich and poor, between kings and commons. In the very years that parliamentary government was becoming supreme in England, absolutism established itself upon the Continent. CHANGES IN NORTHERN EUROPE Toward the close of this age the balance of power in Northern Europe shifted quite as markedly as it had farther south. Three of the German electoral princes became kings. The Elector of Saxony was chosen King of Poland, thereby adding greatly to his power. George, Elector of Hanover, became King of England on the death of Queen Anne. And the Elector of Brandenburg, son of the Great Elector, when the war of 1701 against France and Spain broke out, only lent his aid to the European coalition on condition that the German Emperor should authorize him also to assume the title of king, not of Brandenburg but of his other and smaller domain of Prussia, which lay outside the empire. Most of the European sovereigns smiled at this empty change of title without a change of dominions; but Brandenburg or Prussia was thus made more united, more consolidated, and it soon rose to be the leader of Northern Germany. A new family, the Hohenzollerns, contested European supremacy with the Hapsburgs and the Bourbons.[1] [Footnote 1: See _Prussia Proclaimed a Kingdom_, page 310.] More important still was the strife between Sweden and Russia. Sweden had been raised by Gustavus Adolphus to be the chief power of the North, the chosen ally of Richelieu and Mazarin. Her soldiers were esteemed the best of the time. The prestige of the Swedes had, to be sure, suffered somewhat in the days when the Great Elector defeated them so completely at Fehrbellin and elsewhere. But Louis XIV had stood by them as his allies, and saved them from any loss of territory, so that in 1700 Sweden still held not only the Scandinavian peninsula but all the lands east of the Baltic as far as where St. Petersburg now stands, and much of the German coast to southward. The Baltic was thus almost a Swedish lake, when in 1697 a new warrior king, Charles XII, rose to reassert the warlike supremacy of his race. He was but fifteen when he reached the throne; and Denmark, Poland, and Russia all sought to snatch away his territories. He fought the Danes and defeated them. He fought the Saxon Elector who had become king of Poland. Soon both Poland and Saxony lay crushed at the feet of the "Lion of the North," as they called him then--"Madman of the North," after his great designs had failed. Only Russia remained to oppose him--Russia, as yet almost unknown to Europe, a semi-barbaric frontier land, supposedly helpless against the strength and resources of civilization. Russia was in the pangs of a most sudden revolution. Against her will she was being suddenly and sharply modernized by Peter the Great, most famous of her czars. He had overthrown the turbulent militia who really ruled the land, and had waded through a sea of bloody executions to establish his own absolute power.[1] He had travelled abroad in disguise, studied shipbuilding in Holland, the art of government in England, and fortification and war wheresoever he could find a teacher. Removing from the ancient, conservative capital of Moscow, he planted his government, in defiance of Sweden, upon her very frontier, causing the city of St. Petersburg to arise as if by magic from a desolate, icy swamp in the far north.[2] [Footnote 1: See _Peter the Great Modernizes Russia: Suppression of the Streltsi_, page 223.] [Footnote 2: See _Founding of St. Petersburg_, page 319.] Charles of Sweden scorned and defied him. At Narva in 1700, Charles with a small force of his famous troops drove Peter with a huge horde of his Russians to shameful flight. "They will teach us to beat them," said Peter philosophically; and so in truth he gathered knowledge from defeat after defeat, until at length at Poltava in 1709 he completely turned the tables upon Charles, overthrew him and so crushed his power that Russia succeeded Sweden as ruler of the extreme North, a rank she has ever since retained.[1] [Footnote 1: See _Downfall of Charles XII at Poltava: Triumph of Russia_, page 352.] GROWTH OF AMERICA The vast political and social changes of Europe in this age found their echo in the New World. The decay of Spain left her American colonies to feebleness and decay. The islands of the Caribbean Sea became the haunt of the buccaneers, pirates, desperadoes of all nations who preyed upon Spanish ships, and, as their power grew, extended their depredations northward along the American coast. So important did these buccaneers become that they formed regular governments among themselves. The most famed of their leaders was knighted by England as Sir Henry Morgan; and the most renowned of his achievements was the storm and capture of the Spanish treasure city, Panama.[2] [Footnote 2: See _Morgan, the Buccaneer, Sacks Panama_, page 66.] As Spain grew weak in America, France grew strong. From her Canadian colonies she sent out daring missionaries and traders, who explored the great lakes and the Mississippi valley.[3] They made friends with the Indians; they founded Louisiana.[4] All the north and west of the continent fell into their hands. [Footnote 3: See _Discovery of the Mississippi_, page 108.] [Footnote 4: See _Colonization of Louisiana_, page 297.] Never, however, did their numbers approach those of the English colonists along the Atlantic coast. Both Massachusetts and Virginia were grown into important commonwealths, almost independent of England, and well able to support the weaker settlements rising around them. After the great Puritan exodus to New England to escape the oppression of Charles I, there had come a Royalist exodus to Virginia to escape the Puritanic tyranny of Cromwell's time. Large numbers of Catholics fled to Maryland. Huguenots established themselves in the Carolinas and elsewhere. Then came Penn to build a great Quaker state among the scattered Dutch settlements along the Delaware.[1] The American seaboard became the refuge of each man who refused to bow his neck to despotism of whatever type. [Footnote 1: See _William Penn Receives the Grant of Pennsylvania: Founding of Philadelphia_, page 153.] Under such settlers English America soon ceased to be a mere offshoot of Europe. It became a world of its own; its people developed into a new race. They had their own springs of action, their own ways of thought, different from those of Europe, more simple and intense as was shown in the Salem witchcraft excitement, or more resolute and advanced as was revealed in Bacon's Virginia rebellion.[2] [Footnote 2: See _Salem Witchcraft Trials_, page 268.] The aboriginal inhabitants, the Indians, found themselves pressed ever backward from the coast. They resisted, and in 1675 there arose in New England, King Philip's war, which for that section at least settled the Indian question forever. The red men of New England were practically exterminated.[3] Those of New York, the Iroquois, were more fortunate or more crafty. They dwelt deeper in the wilderness, and formed a buffer state between the French in Canada and the English to the south, drawing aid now from one, now from the other. [Footnote 3: See _King Philip's War_, page 125.] Each war between England and Louis XIV was echoed by strife between their rival colonies. When King William supplanted James in 1688 there followed in America also a "bloodless revolution."[4] Governor Andros, whom James had sent to imitate his own harsh tyranny in the colonies, was seized and shipped back to England. William was proclaimed king. The ensuing strife with France was marked by the most bloody of all America's Indian massacres. The Iroquois descended suddenly on Canada; the very suburbs of its capital, Montreal, were burned, and more than a thousand of the unsuspecting settlers were tortured, or more mercifully slain outright.[5] [Footnote 4: See _Tyranny of Andros in New England: The Bloodless Revolution_, page 241.] [Footnote 5: See _Massacre of Lachine_, page 248.] In the later war about the Spanish throne, England captured Nova Scotia, the southern extremity of the French Canadian seaboard; and part of the price Louis XIV paid for peace was to leave this colony in England's hands.[1] The scale of American power began to swing markedly in her favor. Everywhere over the world, as the eighteenth century progressed, England with her parliamentary government was rising into power at the expense of France and absolutism. [Footnote 1: See _Capture of Port Royal: France Surrenders Nova Scotia to England_, page 373.] [Footnote: FOR THE NEXT SECTION OF THIS GENERAL SURVEY SEE VOLUME XIII.] %LOUIS XIV ESTABLISHES ABSOLUTE MONARCHY% A.D. 1661 JAMES COTTER MORISON Not only was the reign of Louis XIV one of the longest in the world's history, but it also marked among Western nations the highest development of the purely monarchical principle. Including the time that Louis ruled under the guardianship of his mother and the control of his minister, Cardinal Mazarin, the reign covered more than seventy years (1643-1715). The sovereign who could say, "I am the state" ("_l'État c'est moi_"), and see his subjects acquiesce with almost Asiatic humility, while Europe looked on in admiration and fear, may be said to have embodied for modern times the essence of absolutism. That all things, domestic and foreign, seemed to be in concurrence for giving practical effect to the Grand Monarque's assumption of supremacy is shown by the fact that his name dominates the whole history of his time. His reign was not only "the Augustan Age of France"; it marked the ascendency of France in Europe. Of such a reign no adequate impression is to be derived from reading even the most faithful narrative of its thronging events. But the reign as well as the personality of Louis is set in clear perspective for us by Morison's picturesque and discriminating treatment. The reign of Louis XIV was the culminating epoch in the history of the French monarchy. What the age of Pericles was in the history of the Athenian democracy, what the age of the Scipios was in the history of the Roman Republic, that was the reign of Louis XIV in the history of the old monarchy of France. The type of polity which that monarchy embodied, the principles of government on which it reposed or brought into play, in this reign attain their supreme expression and development. Before Louis XIV the French monarchy has evidently not attained its full stature; it is thwarted and limited by other forces in the state. After him, though unresisted from without, it manifests symptoms of decay from within. It rapidly declines, and totally disappears seventy-seven years after his death. But it is not only the most conspicuous reign in the history of France--it is the most conspicuous reign in the history of monarchy in general. Of the very many kings whom history mentions, who have striven to exalt the monarchical principle, none of them achieved a success remotely comparable to his. His two great predecessors in kingly ambition, Charles V and Philip II, remained far behind him in this respect. They may have ruled over wider dominions, but they never attained the exceptional position of power and prestige which he enjoyed for more than half a century. They never were obeyed so submissively at home nor so dreaded and even respected abroad. For Louis XIV carried off that last reward of complete success, that he for a time silenced even envy, and turned it into admiration. We who can examine with cold scrutiny the make and composition of this colossus of a French monarchy; who can perceive how much the brass and clay in it exceeded the gold; who know how it afterward fell with a resounding ruin, the last echoes of which have scarcely died away, have difficulty in realizing the fascination it exercised upon contemporaries who witnessed its first setting up. Louis XIV's reign was the very triumph of commonplace greatness, of external magnificence and success, such as the vulgar among mankind can best and most sincerely appreciate. Had he been a great and profound ruler, had he considered with unselfish meditation the real interests of France, had he with wise insight discerned and followed the remote lines of progress along which the future of Europe was destined to move, it is lamentably probable that he would have been misunderstood in his lifetime and calumniated after his death. Louis XIV was exposed to no such misconception. His qualities were on the surface, visible and comprehensible to all; and although none of them was brilliant, he had several which have a peculiarly impressive effect when displayed in an exalted station. He was indefatigably industrious; worked on an average eight hours a day for fifty-four years; had great tenacity of will; that kind of solid judgment which comes of slowness of brain, and withal a most majestic port and great dignity of manners. He had also as much kindliness of nature as the very great can be expected to have; his temper was under severe control; and, in his earlier years at least, he had a moral apprehensiveness greater than the limitations of his intellect would have led one to expect. His conduct toward Molière was throughout truly noble, and the more so that he never intellectually appreciated Molière's real greatness. But he must have had great original fineness of tact, though it was in the end nearly extinguished by adulation and incense. His court was an extraordinary creation, and the greatest thing he achieved. He made it the microcosm of all that was the most brilliant and prominent in France. Every order of merit was invited there and received courteous welcome. To no circumstance did he so much owe his enduring popularity. By its means he impressed into his service that galaxy of great writers, the first and the last classic authors of France, whose calm and serene lustre will forever illumine the epoch of his existence. It may even be admitted that his share in that lustre was not so accidental and undeserved as certain king-haters have supposed. That subtle critic, M. Sainte-Beuve, thinks he can trace a marked rise even in Bossuet's style from the moment he became a courtier of Louis XIV. The King brought men together, placed them in a position where they were induced and urged to bring their talents to a focus. His court was alternately a high-bred gala and a stately university. If we contrast his life with those of his predecessor and successor, with the dreary existence of Louis XIII and the crapulous lifelong debauch of Louis XV, we become sensible that Louis XIV was distinguished in no common degree; and when we further reflect that much of his home and all of his foreign policy was precisely adapted to flatter, in its deepest self-love, the national spirit of France, it will not be quite impossible to understand the long-continued reverberation of his fame. But Louis XIV's reign has better titles than the adulations of courtiers and the eulogies of wits and poets to the attention of posterity. It marks one of the most memorable epochs in the annals of mankind. It stretches across history like a great mountain range, separating ancient France from the France of modern times. On the further slope are Catholicism and feudalism in their various stages of splendor and decay--the France of crusade and chivalry, of St. Louis and Bayard. On the hither side are freethought, industry, and centralization--the France of Voltaire, Turgot, and Condorcet. When Louis came to the throne the Thirty Years' War still wanted six years of its end, and the heat of theological strife was at its intensest glow. When he died the religious temperature had cooled nearly to freezing-point, and a new vegetation of science and positive inquiry was overspreading the world. This amounts to saying that his reign covers the greatest epoch of mental transition through which the human mind has hitherto passed, excepting the transition we are witnessing in the day which now is. We need but recall the names of the writers and thinkers who arose during Louis XIV's reign, and shed their seminal ideas broadcast upon the air, to realize how full a period it was, both of birth and decay; of the passing away of the old and the uprising of the new forms of thought. To mention only the greatest; the following are among the chiefs who helped to transform the mental fabric of Europe in the age of Louis XIV: Descartes, Newton, Leibnitz, Locke, Boyle. Under these leaders the first firm irreversible advance was made out of the dim twilight of theology into the clear dawn of positive and demonstrative science. Inferior to these founders of modern knowledge, but holding a high rank as contributors to the mental activity of the age, were Pascal, Malebranche, Spinoza, and Bayle. The result of their efforts was such a stride forward as has no parallel in the history of the human mind. One of the most curious and significant proofs of it was the spontaneous extinction of the belief in witchcraft among the cultivated classes of Europe, as the English historian of rationalism has so judiciously pointed out. The superstition was not much attacked, and it was vigorously defended, yet it died a natural and quiet death from the changed moral climate of the world. But the chief interest which the reign of Louis XIV offers to the student of history has yet to be mentioned. It was the great turning-point in the history of the French people. The triumph of the monarchical principle was so complete under him, independence and self-reliance were so effectually crushed, both in localities and individuals, that a permanent bent was given to the national mind--a habit of looking to the government for all action and initiative permanently established. Before the reign of Louis XIV it was a question which might fairly be considered undecided: whether the country would be able or not, willing or not, to coöperate with its rulers in the work of the government and the reform of abuses. On more than one occasion such coöperation did not seem entirely impossible or improbable. The admirable wisdom and moderation shown by the Tiers-État in the States-General of 1614, the divers efforts of the Parliament of Paris to check extravagant expenditure, the vigorous struggles of the provincial assemblies to preserve some relic of their local liberties, seemed to promise that France would continue to advance under the leadership indeed of the monarchy, yet still retaining in large measure the bright, free, independent spirit of old Gaul, the Gaul of Rabelais, Montaigne, and Joinville. After the reign of Louis XIV such coöperation of the ruler and the ruled became impossible. The government of France had become a machine depending upon the action of a single spring. Spontaneity in the population at large was extinct, and whatever there was to do must be done by the central authority. As long as the government could correct abuses it was well; if it ceased to be equal to this task, they must go uncorrected. When at last the reform of secular and gigantic abuses presented itself with imperious urgency, the alternative before the monarchy was either to carry the reform with a high hand or perish in the failure to do so. We know how signal the failure was, and could not help being, under the circumstances; and through having placed the monarchy between these alternatives, it is no paradox to say that Louis XIV was one of the most direct ancestors of the "Great Revolution." Nothing but special conditions in the politics both of Europe and of France can explain this singular importance and prominence of Louis XIV's reign. And we find that both France and Europe were indeed in an exceptional position when he ascended the throne. The Continent of Europe, from one end to the other, was still bleeding and prostrate from the effect of the Thirty Years' War when the young Louis, in the sixteenth year of his age, was anointed king at Rheims. Although France had suffered terribly in that awful struggle, she had probably suffered less than any of the combatants, unless it be Sweden. It happened by a remarkable coincidence that precisely at this moment, when the condition of Europe was such that an aggressive policy on the part of France could be only with difficulty resisted by her neighbors, the power and prerogatives of the French crown attained an expansion and preeminence which they had never enjoyed in the previous history of the country. The schemes and hopes of Philip the Fair, of Louis XI, of Henry IV, and of Richelieu had been realized at last; and their efforts to throw off the insolent coercion of the great feudal lords had been crowned with complete success. The monarchy could hardly have conjectured how strong it had become but for the abortive resistance and hostility it met with in the Fronde. The flames of insurrection which had shot up, forked and menacing, fell back underground, where they smouldered for four generations yet to come. The kingly power soared, single and supreme, over its prostrate foes. Long before Louis XIV had shown any aptitude or disposition for authority, he was the object of adulation as cringing as was ever offered to a Roman emperor. When he returned from his consecration at Rheims, the rector of the University of Paris, at the head of his professorial staff, addressed the young King in these words: "We are so dazzled by the new splendor which surrounds your majesty that we are not ashamed to appear dumfounded at the aspect of a light so brilliant and so extraordinary"; and at the foot of an engraving at the same date he is in so many words called a demigod. It is evident that ample materials had been prepared for what the vulgar consider a great reign. Abundant opportunity for an insolent and aggressive foreign policy, owing to the condition of Europe. Security from remonstrance or check at home, owing to the condition of France. The temple is prepared for the deity; the priests stand by, ready to offer victims on the smoking altar; the incense is burning in anticipation of his advent. On the death of Mazarin, in 1661, he entered into his own. Louis XIV never forgot the trials and humiliations to which he and his mother had been subjected during the troubles of the Fronde. It has often been remarked that rulers born in the purple have seldom shown much efficiency unless they have been exposed to exceptional and, as it were, artificial probations during their youth. During the first eleven years of Louis' reign--incomparably the most creditable to him--we can trace unmistakably the influence of the wisdom and experience acquired in that period of anxiety and defeat. He then learned the value of money and the supreme benefits of a full exchequer. He also acquired a thorough dread of subjection to ministers and favorites--a dread so deep that it implied a consciousness of probable weakness on that side. As he went on in life he to a great extent forgot both these valuable lessons, but their influence was never entirely effaced. To the astonishment of the courtiers and even of his mother he announced his intention of governing independently, and of looking after everything himself. They openly doubted his perseverance. "You do not know him," said Mazarin. "He will begin rather late, but he will go further than most. There is enough stuff in him to make four kings and an honest man besides." His first measures were dictated less by great energy of initiative than by absolute necessity. The finances had fallen into such a chaos of jobbery and confusion that the very existence of the government depended upon a prompt and trenchant reform. It was Louis' rare good-fortune to find beside him one of the most able and vigorous administrators who have ever lived--Colbert. He had the merit--not a small one in that age--of letting this great minister invent and carry out the most daring and beneficial measures of reform, of which he assumed all the credit to himself. The first step was a vigorous attack on the gang of financial plunderers, who, with Fouquet at their head, simply embezzled the bulk of the state revenues. The money-lenders not only obtained the most usurious interest for their loans, but actually held in mortgage the most productive sources of the national taxation: and, not content with that, they bought up, at 10 per cent. of their nominal value, an enormous amount of discredited bills, issued by the government in the time of the Fronde, which they forced the treasury to pay off at par; and this was done with the very money they had just before advanced to the government. Such barefaced plunder could not be endured, and Colbert was the last man to endure it. He not only repressed peculation, but introduced a number of practical improvements in the distribution, and especially in the mode of levying the taxes. So imperfect were the arrangements connected with the latter that it was estimated that of eighty-four millions paid by the people, only thirty-two millions entered into the coffers of the state. The almost instantaneous effects of Colbert's measures--the yawning deficit was changed into a surplus of forty-five millions in less than two years--showed how gross and flagrant had been the malversation preceding. Far more difficult, and far nobler in the order of constructive statesmanship, were his vast schemes to endow France with manufactures, with a commercial and belligerent navy, with colonies, besides his manifold reforms in the internal administration--tariffs and customs between neighboring provinces of France; the great work of the Languedoc canal; in fact, in every part and province of government. His success was various, but in some cases really stupendous. His creation of a navy almost surpasses belief. In 1661, when he first became free to act, France possessed only thirty vessels-of-war of all sizes. At the peace of Nimwegen, in 1678, she had acquired a fleet of one hundred twenty ships, and in 1683 she had got a fleet of one hundred seventy-six vessels; and the increase was quite as great in the size and armament of the individual ships as in their number. A perfect giant of administration, Colbert found no labor too great for his energies, and worked with unflagging energy sixteen hours a day for twenty-two years. It is melancholy to be forced to add that all this toil was as good as thrown away, and that the strong man went broken-hearted to the grave, through seeing too clearly that he had labored in vain for an ungrateful egotist. His great visions of a prosperous France, increasing in wealth and contentment, were blighted; and he closed his eyes upon scenes of improvidence and waste more injurious to the country than the financial robbery which he had combated in his early days. The government was not plundered as it had been, but itself was exhausting the very springs of wealth by its impoverishment of the people. Boisguillebert, writing in 1698, only fifteen years after Colbert's death, estimated the productive powers of France to have diminished by one-half in the previous thirty years. It seems, indeed, probable that the almost magical rapidity and effect of Colbert's early reforms turned Louis XIV's head, and that he was convinced that it only depended on his good pleasure to renew them to obtain the same result. He never found, as he never deserved to find, another Colbert; and he stumbled onward in ever deeper ruin to his disastrous end. His first breach of public faith was his attack on the Spanish Netherlands, under color of certain pretended rights of the Queen, his wife--the Infanta Marie Thérèse; although he had renounced all claims in her name at his marriage. This aggression was followed by his famous campaign in the Low Countries, when Franche-Comté was overrun and conquered in fifteen days. He was stopped by the celebrated triple alliance in mid career. He had not yet been intoxicated by success and vanity; Colbert's influence, always exerted on the side of peace, was at its height, the menacing attitude of Holland, England, and Sweden awed him, and he drew back. His pride was deeply wounded, and he revolved deep and savage schemes of revenge. Not on England, whose abject sovereign he knew could be had whenever he chose to buy him, but on the heroic little republic which had dared to cross his victorious path. His mingled contempt and rage against Holland were indeed instinctive, spontaneous, and in the nature of things. Holland was the living, triumphant incarnation of the two things he hated most--the principle of liberty in politics and the principle of free inquiry in religion. With a passion too deep for hurry or carelessness he made his preparations. The army was submitted to a complete reorganization. A change in the weapons of the infantry was effected, which was as momentous in its day as the introduction of the breech-loading rifle in ours. The old inefficient firelock was replaced by the flint musket, and the rapidity and certainty of fire vastly increased. The undisciplined independence of the officers commanding regiments and companies was suppressed by the rigorous and methodical Colonel Martinet, whose name has remained in other armies besides that of France as a synonyme of punctilious exactitude. The means of offence being thus secured, the next step was to remove the political difficulties which stood in the way of Louis' schemes; that is, to dissolve Sir W. Temple's diplomatic masterpiece, the triple alliance. The effeminate Charles II was bought over by a large sum of money and the present of a pretty French mistress. Sweden also received a subsidy, and her schemes of aggrandizement on continental Germany were encouraged. Meanwhile the illustrious man who ruled Holland showed that kind of weakness which good men often do in the presence of the unscrupulous and wicked. John de Witt could not be convinced of the reality of Louis' nefarious designs. France had ever been Holland's best friend, and he could not believe that the policy of Henry IV, of Richelieu and Mazarin, would be suddenly reversed by the young King of France. He tried negotiations in which he was amused by Louis so long as it suited the latter's purpose. At last, when the King's preparations were complete, he threw off the mask, and insultingly told the Dutch that it was not for hucksters like them, and usurpers of authority not theirs, to meddle with such high matters. Then commenced one of the brightest pages in the history of national heroism. At first the Dutch were overwhelmed; town after town capitulated without a blow. It seemed as if the United Provinces were going to be subdued, as Franche-Comté had been five years before. But Louis XIV had been too much intoxicated by that pride which goes before a fall to retain any clearness of head, if indeed he ever had any, in military matters. The great Condé, with his keen eye for attack, at once suggested one of those tiger-springs for which he was unequalled among commanders. Seeing the dismay of the Dutch, he advised a rapid dash with six thousand horse on Amsterdam. It is nearly certain, if this advice had been followed, that the little commonwealth, so precious to Europe, would have been extinguished; and that that scheme, born of heroic despair, of transferring to Batavia, "under new stars and amid a strange vegetation," the treasure of freedom and valor ruined in its old home by the Sardanapalus of Versailles, might have been put in execution. But it was not to be. Vigilant as Louis had been in preparation, he now seemed to be as careless or incompetent in execution. Not only he neglected the advice of his best general, and wasted time, but he did his best to drive his adversaries to despair and the resistance which comes of despair. They were told by proclamation that "the towns which should try to resist the forces of his majesty by opening the dikes or by any other means would be punished with the utmost rigor; and when the frost should have opened roads in all directions, his majesty would give no sort of quarter to the inhabitants of the said towns, but would give orders that their goods should be plundered and their houses burned." The Dutch envoys, headed by De Groot, son of the illustrious Grotius, came to the King's camp to know on what terms he would make peace. They were refused audience by the theatrical warrior, and told not to return except armed with full powers to make any concessions he might dictate. Then the "hucksters" of Amsterdam resolved on a deed of daring which is one of the most exalted among "the high traditions of the world." They opened the sluices and submerged the whole country under water. Still, their position was almost desperate, as the winter frosts were nearly certain to restore a firm foothold to the invader. They came again suing for peace, offering Maestricht, the Rhine fortresses, the whole of Brabant, the whole of Dutch Flanders, and an indemnity of ten millions. This was proffering more than Henry IV, Richelieu, or Mazarin had ever hoped for. These terms were refused, and the refusal carried with it practically the rejection of Belgium, which could not fail to be soon absorbed when thus surrounded by French possessions. But Louis met these offers with the spirit of an Attila. He insisted on the concession of Southern Gueldres and the island of Bommel, twenty-four millions of indemnity, the endowment of the Catholic religion, and an extraordinary annual embassy charged to present his majesty with a gold medal, which should set forth how the Dutch owed to him the conservation of their liberties. Such vindictive cruelty makes the mind run forward and dwell with a glow of satisfied justice on the bitter days of retaliation and revenge which in a future, still thirty years off, will humble the proud and pitiless oppressor in the dust; when he shall be a suppliant, and a suppliant in vain, at the feet of the haughty victors of Blenheim, Ramillies, and Oudenarde. But Louis' mad career of triumph was gradually being brought to a close. He had before him not only the waste of waters, but the iron will and unconquerable tenacity of the young Prince of Orange, "who needed neither hope to made him dare nor success to make him persevere." Gradually, the threatened neighbors of France gathered together and against her King. Charles II was forced to recede from the French alliance by his Parliament in 1674. The military massacre went on, indeed, for some years longer in Germany and the Netherlands; but the Dutch Republic was saved, and peace ratified by the treaty of Nimwegen. After the conclusion of the Dutch War the reign of Louis XIV enters on a period of manifest decline. The cost of the war had been tremendous. In 1677 the expenditure had been one hundred ten millions, and Colbert had to meet this with a net revenue of eighty-one millions. The trade and commerce of the country had also suffered much during the war. With bitter grief the great minister saw himself compelled to reverse the beneficent policy of his earlier days, to add to the tax on salt, to increase the ever-crushing burden of the _taille_, to create new offices--hereditary employments in the government--to the extent of three hundred millions, augmenting the already monstrous army of superfluous officials, and, finally, simply to borrow money at high interest. The new exactions had produced widespread misery in the provinces before the war came to an end. In 1675 the Governor of Dauphiné had written to Colbert, saying that commerce had entirely ceased in his district, and that the larger part of the people had lived during the winter on bread made from acorns and roots, and that at the time of his writing they were seen to be eating the grass of the fields and the bark of trees. The long-continued anguish produced at last despair and rebellion. In Bordeaux great excesses were committed by the mob, which were punished with severity. Six thousand soldiers were quartered in the town, and were guilty of such disorders that the best families emigrated, and trade was ruined for a long period. But Brittany witnessed still worse evils. There also riots and disturbances had been produced by the excessive pressure of the imposts. An army of five thousand men was poured into the province, and inflicted such terror on the population that the wretched peasants, at the mere sight of the soldiers, threw themselves on their knees in an attitude of supplication and exclaimed, "_Mea culpa_." The lively Madame de Sévigné gives us some interesting details concerning these events in the intervals when court scandal ran low and the brave doings of Madame de Montespan suffered a temporary interruption. "Would you like," says the tender-hearted lady to her daughter, "would you like to have news of Rennes? There are still five thousand soldiers here, as more have come from Nantes. A tax of one hundred thousand crowns has been laid upon the citizens, and if the money is not forthcoming in twenty-four hours the tax will be doubled and levied by the soldiers. All the inhabitants of a large street have already been driven out and banished, and no one may receive them under pain of death; so that all these poor wretches, old men, women recently delivered, and children, were seen wandering in tears as they left the town, not knowing whither to go or where to sleep or what to eat. The day before yesterday one of the leaders of the riot was broken alive on the wheel. Sixty citizens have been seized, and to-morrow the hanging will begin." In other letters she writes that the tenth man had been broken on the wheel, and she thinks he will be the last, and that by dint of hanging it will soon be left off. Such was the emaciated France which Louis the Great picked systematically to the bone for the next thirty-five years. He had long ceased to be guided by the patriotic wisdom of the great Colbert. His evil genius now was the haughty and reckless Louvois, who carefully abstained from imitating the noble and daring remonstrances against excessive expenditure which Colbert addressed to his master, and through which he lost his influence at court. Still, with a self-abnegation really heroic, Colbert begged, urged, supplicated the King to reduce his outlay. He represented the misery of the people. "All letters that come from the provinces, whether from the intendants, the receivers-general, and even the bishops, speak of it," he wrote to the King. He insisted on a reduction of the taille by five or six millions; and surely it was time, when its collection gave rise to such scenes as have just been described. It was in vain. The King shut his eyes to mercy and reason. His gigantic war expenditure, when peace came, was only partially reduced. For, indeed, he was still at war, but with nature and self-created difficulties of his own making. He was building Versailles: transplanting to its arid sands whole groves of full-grown trees from the depths of distant forests, and erecting the costly and fantastic marvel of Marli to afford a supply of water. Louis' buildings cost, first and last, a sum which would be represented by about twenty million pounds. The amount squandered on pensions was also very great. The great Colbert's days were drawing to a close, and he was very sad. It is related that a friend on one occasion surprised him looking out of a window in his château of Sceau, lost in thought and apparently gazing on the well-tilled fields of his own manor. When he came out of his reverie his friend asked him his thoughts. "As I look," he said, "on these fertile fields, I cannot help remembering what I have seen elsewhere. What a rich country is France! If the King's enemies would let him enjoy peace it would be possible to procure the people that relief and comfort which the great Henry promised them. I could wish that my projects had a happy issue, that abundance reigned in the kingdom, that everyone were content in it, and that without employment or dignities, far from the court and business, I saw the grass grow in my home farm." The faithful, indefatigable worker was breaking down, losing strength, losing heart, but still struggling on manfully to the last. It was noticed that he sat down to his work with a sorrowful, despondent look, and not, as had been his wont, rubbing his hands with the prospect of toil, and exulting in his almost superhuman capacity for labor. The ingratitude of the King, whom he had served only too well, gave him the final blow. Louis, with truculent insolence, reproached him with the "frightful expenses" of Versailles. As if they were Colbert's fault. Colbert, who had always urged the completion of the Louvre and the suppression of Versailles. At last the foregone giant lay down to die. A tardy touch of feeling induced Louis to write him a letter. He would not read it. "I will hear no more about the King," he said; "let him at least allow me to die in peace. My business now is with the King of kings. If," he continued, unconsciously, we may be sure, plagiarizing Wolsey, "if I had done for God what I have done for that man, my salvation would be secure ten times over; and now I know not what will become of me." Surely a tender and touching evidence of sweetness in the strong man who had been so readily accused of harshness by grasping courtiers. The ignorant ingratitude of the people was even perhaps more melancholy than the wilful ingratitude of the King. The great Colbert had to be buried by night, lest his remains should be insulted by the mob. He, whose heart had bled for the people's sore anguish, was rashly supposed to be the cause of that anguish. It was a sad conclusion to a great life. But he would have seen still sadder days if he had lived. The health of the luxurious, self-indulgent Louis sensibly declined after he had passed his fortieth year. In spite of his robust appearance he had never been really strong. His loose, lymphatic constitution required much support and management. But he habitually over-ate himself. He was indeed a gross and greedy glutton. "I have often seen the King," says the Duchess of Orleans, "eat four platefuls of various soups, a whole pheasant, a partridge, a large dish of salad, stewed mutton with garlic, two good slices of ham, a plate of pastry, and then fruit and sweetmeats." A most unwholesome habit of body was the result. An abscess formed in his upper jaw, and caused a perforation of the palate, which obliged him to be very careful in drinking, as the liquid was apt to pass through the aperture and come out by the nostrils. He felt weak and depressed, and began to think seriously about "making his salvation." His courtly priests and confessors had never inculcated any duties but two--that of chastity and that of religious intolerance--and he had been very remiss in both. He now resolved to make hasty reparation. The ample charms of the haughty Montespan fascinated him no more. He tried a new mistress, but she did not turn out well. Madame de Fontanges was young and exquisitely pretty, but a giddy, presuming fool. She moreover died shortly. He was more than ever disposed to make his salvation--that is, to renounce the sins of the flesh, and to persecute his God-fearing subjects, the Protestants. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, one of the greatest crimes and follies which history records, was too colossal a misdeed for the guilt of its perpetration to be charged upon one man, however wicked or however powerful he may have been. In this case, as in so many others, Louis was the exponent of conditions, the visible representative of circumstances which he had done nothing to create. Just as he was the strongest king France ever had, without having contributed himself to the predominance of the monarchy, so, in the blind and cruel policy of intolerance which led to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, he was the delegate and instrument of forces which existed independently of him. A willing instrument, no doubt; a representative of sinister forces; a chooser of the evil part when mere inaction would have been equivalent to a choice of the good. Still, it is due to historic accuracy to point out that, had he not been seconded by the existing condition of France, he would not have been able to effect the evil he ultimately brought about. Louis' reign continued thirty years after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, years crowded with events, particularly for the military historian, but over the details of which we shall not linger on this occasion. The brilliant reign becomes unbearably wearisome in its final period. The monotonous repetition of the same faults and the same crimes--profligate extravagance, revolting cruelty, and tottering incapacity--is as fatiguing as it is uninstructive. Louis became a mere mummy embalmed in etiquette, the puppet of his women and shavelings. The misery in the provinces grew apace, but there was no disturbance: France was too prostrate even to groan. In 1712 the expenditure amounted to two hundred forty millions, and the revenue to one hundred thirteen millions; but from this no less than seventy-six millions had to be deducted for various liabilities the government had incurred, leaving only a net income of thirty-seven millions--that is to say, the outlay was more than six times the income. The armies were neither paid nor fed, the officers received "food-tickets" (_billets de subsistance_), which they got cashed at a discount of 80 per cent. The government had anticipated by ten years its revenues from the towns. Still, this pale corpse of France must needs be bled anew to gratify the inexorable Jesuits, who had again made themselves complete masters of Louis XIV's mind. He had lost his confessor, Père la Chaise (who died in 1709), and had replaced him by the hideous Letellier, a blind and fierce fanatic, with a horrible squint and a countenance fit for the gallows. He would have frightened anyone, says Saint-Simon, who met him at the corner of a wood. This repulsive personage revived the persecution of the Protestants into a fiercer heat than ever, and obtained from the moribund King the edict of March 8,1715, considered by competent judges the clear masterpiece of clerical injustice and cruelty. Five months later Louis XIV died, forsaken by his intriguing wife, his beloved bastard (the Due de Maine), and his dreaded priest. The French monarchy never recovered from the strain to which it had been subjected during the long and exhausting reign of Louis XIV. Whether it could have recovered in the hands of a great statesman summoned in time is a curious question. Could Frederick the Great have saved it had he been _par impossible_ Louis XIV's successor? We can hardly doubt that he would have adjourned, if not have averted, the great catastrophe of 1789. But it is one of the inseparable accidents of such a despotism as France had fallen under, that nothing but consummate genius can save it from ruin; and the accession of genius to the throne in such circumstances is a physiological impossibility. The house of Bourbon had become as effete as the house of Valois in the sixteenth century; as effete as the Merovingians and Carlovingians had become in a previous age; but the strong chain of hereditary right bound up the fortunes of a great empire with the feeble brain and bestial instincts of a Louis XV. This was the result of concentrating all the active force of the state in one predestined irremovable human being. This was the logical and necessary outcome of the labors of Philip Augustus, Philip the Fair, of Louis XI, of Henry IV, and Richelieu. They had reared the monarchy like a solitary obelisk in the midst of a desert; but it had to stand or fall alone; no one was there to help it, as no one was there to pull it down. This consideration enables us to pass into a higher and more reposing order of reflection, to leave the sterile impeachment of individual incapacity, and rise to the broader question, and ask why and how that incapacity was endowed with such fatal potency for evil. As it has been well remarked, the loss of a battle may lead to the loss of a state; but then, what are the deeper reasons which explain why the loss of a battle should lead to the loss of a state? It is not enough to say that Louis XIV was an improvident and passionate ruler, that Louis XV was a dreary and revolting voluptuary. The problem is rather this: Why were improvidence, passion, and debauchery in two men able to bring down in utter ruin one of the greatest monarchies the world has ever seen? In other words, what was the cause of the consummate failure, the unexampled collapse, of the French monarchy? No personal insufficiency of individual rulers will explain it; and, besides, the French monarchy repeatedly disposed of the services of admirable rulers. History has recorded few more able kings than Louis le Gros, Philip Augustus, Philip le Bel, Louis XI, and Henry IV; few abler ministers than Sully, Richelieu, Colbert, and Turgot. Yet the efforts of all these distinguished men resulted in leading the nation straight into the most astounding catastrophe in human annals. Whatever view we take of the Revolution, whether we regard it as a blessing or as a curse, we must needs admit it was a reaction of the most violent kind--a reaction contrary to the preceding action. The old monarchy can only claim to have produced the Revolution in the sense of having provoked it; as intemperance has been known to produce sobriety, and extravagance parsimony. If the _ancien régime_ led in the result to an abrupt transition to the modern era, it was only because it had rendered the old era so utterly execrable to mankind that escape in any direction seemed a relief, were it over a precipice. %NEW YORK TAKEN BY THE ENGLISH% A.D. 1664 JOHN R. BRODHEAD For half a century the Dutch colony in New York, then called New Netherlands, had developed under various administrations, when British conquest brought it under another dominion. This transfer of the government affected the whole future of the colony and of the great State into which it grew, although the original Dutch influence has never disappeared from its character and history. Under Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch Governor (1647-1664), the colony made great progress. He conciliated the Indians, agreed upon a boundary line with the English colonists at Hartford, Connecticut, and took possession of the colony of New Sweden, in Delaware. Meanwhile the English colonists in different parts of North America were carrying on illicit trade with the Dutch at New Amsterdam (New York city). The English government, already jealous of the growing commerce of Holland, was irritated by the loss of revenue, and resolved in 1663 upon the conquest of New Netherlands. Brodhead, the historian of New York, recounts the steps of this conquest in a manner which brings the rival powers and their agents distinctly before us. England now determined boldly to rob Holland of her American province. King Charles II accordingly sealed a patent granting to the Duke of York and Albany a large territory in America, comprehending Long Island and the islands in its neighborhood--his title to which Lord Stirling had released--and all the lands and rivers from the west side of the Connecticut River to the east side of Delaware Bay. This sweeping grant included the whole of New Netherlands and a part of the territory of Connecticut, which, two years before, Charles had confirmed to Winthrop and his associates. The Duke of York lost no time in giving effect to his patent. As lord high admiral he directed the fleet. Four ships, the Guinea, of thirty-six guns; the Elias, of thirty; the Martin, of sixteen; and the William and Nicholas, of ten, were detached for service against New Netherlands, and about four hundred fifty regular soldiers, with their officers, were embarked. The command of the expedition was intrusted to Colonel Richard Nicolls, a faithful Royalist, who had served under Turenne with James, and had been made one of the gentlemen of his bedchamber. Nicolls was also appointed to be the Duke's deputy-governor, after the Dutch possessions should have been reduced. With Nicolls were associated Sir Robert Carr, Colonel George Cartwright, and Samuel Maverick, as royal commissioners to visit the several colonies in New England. These commissioners were furnished with detailed instructions; and the New England governments were required by royal letters to "join and assist them vigorously" in reducing the Dutch to subjection. A month after the departure of the squadron the Duke of York conveyed to Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret all the territory between the Hudson and Delaware rivers, from Cape May north to 41° 40' latitude, and thence to the Hudson, in 41° latitude, "hereafter to be called by the name or names of Nova Caesarea or New Jersey." Intelligence from Boston that an English expedition against New Netherlands had sailed from Portsmouth was soon communicated to Stuyvesant by Captain Thomas Willett; and the burgomasters and _schepens_ of New Amsterdam were summoned to assist the council with their advice. The capital was ordered to be put in a state of defence, guards to be maintained, and _schippers_ to be warned. As there was very little powder at Fort Amsterdam a supply was demanded from New Amstel, and a loan of five or six thousand guilders was asked from Rensselaerswyck. The ships about to sail for Curaçao were stopped; agents were sent to purchase provisions at New Haven; and as the enemy was expected to approach through Long Island Sound, spies were sent to obtain intelligence at West Chester and Milford. But at the moment when no precaution should have been relaxed, a despatch from the West India directors, who appear to have been misled by advices from London, announced that no danger need be apprehended from the English expedition, as it was sent out by the King only to settle the affairs of his colonies and establish episcopacy, which would rather benefit the company's interests in New Netherlands. Willett now retracting his previous statements, a perilous confidence returned. The Curaçao ships were allowed to sail; and Stuyvesant, yielded to the solicitation of his council, went up the river to look after affairs at Fort Orange. The English squadron had been ordered to assemble at Gardiner's Island. But, parting company in a fog, the Guinea, with Nicolls and Cartwright on board, made Cape Cod, and went on to Boston, while the other ships put in at Piscataway. The commissioners immediately demanded the assistance of Massachusetts, but the people of the Bay, who feared, perhaps, that the King's success in reducing the Dutch would enable him the better to put down his enemies in New England, were full of excuses. Connecticut, however, showed sufficient alacrity; and Winthrop was desired to meet the squadron at the west end of Long Island, whither it would sail with the first fair wind. When the truth of Willett's intelligence became confirmed, the council sent an express to recall Stuyvesant from Fort Orange. Hurrying back to the capital, the anxious director endeavored to redeem the time which had been lost. The municipal authorities ordered one-third of inhabitants, without exception, to labor every third day at the fortifications; organized a permanent guard; forbade the brewers to malt any grain; and called on the provincial government for artillery and ammunition. Six pieces, besides the fourteen previously allotted, and a thousand pounds of powder were accordingly granted to the city. The colonists around Fort Orange, pleading their own danger from the savages, could afford no help; but the soldiers of Esopus were ordered to come down, after leaving a small garrison at Ronduit. In the mean time the English squadron had anchored just below the Narrows, in Nyack Bay, between New Utrecht and Coney Island. The mouth of the river was shut up; communication between Long Island and Manhattan, Bergen and Achter Cul, interrupted; several yachts on their way to the South River captured; and the blockhouse on the opposite shore of Staten Island seized. Stuyvesant now despatched Counsellor de Decker, Burgomaster Van der Grist, and the two domines Megapolensis with a letter to the English commanders inquiring why they had come, and why they continued at Nyack without giving notice. The next morning, which was Saturday, Nicolls sent Colonel Cartwright, Captain Needham, Captain Groves, and Mr. Thomas Delavall up to Fort Amsterdam with a summons for the surrender of "the town situate on the island and commonly known by the name of Manhatoes, with all the forts thereunto belonging." This summons was accompanied by a proclamation declaring that all who would submit to his majesty's government should be protected "in his majesty's laws and justice," and peaceably enjoy their property. Stuyvesant immediately called together the council and the burgomasters, but would not allow the terms offered by Nicolls to be communicated to the people, lest they might insist on capitulating. In a short time several of the burghers and city officers assembled at the Stadt-Huys. It was determined to prevent the enemy from surprising the town; but, as opinion was generally against protracted resistance, a copy of the English communication was asked from the director. On the following Monday the burgomasters explained to a meeting of the citizens the terms offered by Nicolls. But this would not suffice; a copy of the paper itself must be exhibited. Stuyvesant then went in person to the meeting. "Such a course," said he, "would be disapproved of in the Fatherland--it would discourage the people." All his efforts, however, were in vain; and the director, protesting that he should not be held answerable for the "calamitous consequences," was obliged to yield to the popular will. Nicolls now addressed a letter to Winthrop, who with other commissioners from New England had joined the squadron, authorizing him to assure Stuyvesant that, if Manhattan should be delivered up to the King, "any people from the Netherlands may freely come and plant there or thereabouts; and such vessels of their own country may freely come thither, and any of them may as freely return home in vessels of their own country." Visiting the city under a flag of truce Winthrop delivered this to Stuyvesant outside the fort and urged him to surrender. The director declined; and, returning to the fort, he opened Nicolls' letter before the council and the burgomasters, who desired that it should be communicated, as "all which regarded the public welfare ought to be made public." Against this Stuyvesant earnestly remonstrated, and, finding that the burgomasters continued firm, in a fit of passion he "tore the letter in pieces." The citizens, suddenly ceasing their work at the palisades, hurried to the Stadt-Huys, and sent three of their numbers to the fort to demand the letter. In vain the director hastened to pacify the burghers and urge them to go on with the fortifications. "Complaints and curses" were uttered on all sides against the company's misgovernment; resistance was declared to be idle; "The letter! the letter!" was the general cry. To avoid a mutiny Stuyvesant yielded, and a copy, made out from the collected fragments, was handed to the burgomasters. In answer, however, to Nicolls' summons he submitted a long justification of the Dutch title; yet while protesting against any breach of the peace between the King and the States-General, "for the hinderance and prevention of all differences and the spilling of innocent blood, not only in these parts, but also in Europe," he offered to treat. "Long Island is gone and lost;" the capital "cannot hold out long," was the last despatch to the "Lord Majors" of New Netherlands, which its director sent off that night "in silence through Hell Gate." Observing Stuyvesant's reluctance to surrender, Nicolls directed Captain Hyde, who commanded the squadron, to reduce the fort. Two of the ships accordingly landed their troops just below Breuckelen (Brooklyn), where volunteers from New England and the Long Island villages had already encamped. The other two, coming up with full sail, passed in front of Fort Amsterdam and anchored between it and Nutten Island. Standing on one of the angles of the fortress--an artilleryman with a lighted match at his side--the director watched their approach. At this moment the two domines Megapolensis, imploring him not to begin hostilities, led Stuyvesant from the rampart, who then, with a hundred of the garrison, went into the city to resist the landing of the English. Hoping on against hope, the director now sent Counsellor de Decker, Secretary Van Ruyven, Burgomaster Steenwyck, and "Schepen" Cousseau with a letter to Nicolls stating that, as he felt bound "to stand the storm," he desired if possible to arrange on accommodation. But the English commander merely declared, "To-morrow I will speak with you at Manhattan." "Friends," was the answer, "will be welcome if they come in a friendly manner." "I shall come with ships and soldiers," replied Nicolls; "raise the white flag of peace at the fort, and then something may be considered." When this imperious message became known, men, women, and children flocked to the director, beseeching him to submit. His only answer was, "I would rather be carried out dead." The next day the city authorities, the clergymen, and the officers of the burgher guard, assembling at the Stadt-Huys, at the suggestion of Domine Megapolensis adopted a remonstrance to the director, exhibiting the hopeless situation of New Amsterdam, on all sides "encompassed and hemmed in by enemies," and protesting against any further opposition to the will of God. Besides the _schout_, burgomasters, and schepens, the remonstrance was signed by Wilmerdonck and eighty-five of the principal inhabitants, among whom was Stuyvesant's own son, Balthazar. At last the director was obliged to yield. Although there were now fifteen hundred souls in New Amsterdam, there were not more than two hundred fifty men able to bear arms, besides the one hundred fifty regular soldiers. The people had at length refused to be called out, and the regular troops were already heard talking of "where booty is to be found, and where the young women live who wear gold chains." The city, entirely open along both rivers, was shut on the northern side by a breastwork and palisades, which, though sufficient to keep out the savages, afforded no defence against a military siege. There were scarcely six hundred pounds of serviceable powder in store. A council of war had reported Fort Amsterdam untenable for though it mounted twenty-four guns, its single wall of earth not more than ten feet high and four thick, was almost touches by the private dwellings clustered around, and was commanded, within a pistol-shot, by hills on the north, over which ran the "Heereweg" or Broadway. Upon the faith of Nicolls' promise to deliver back the city and fort "in case the difference of the limits of this province be agreed upon betwixt his majesty of England and the high and mighty States-General," Stuyvesant now commissioned Counsellor John de Decker, Captain Nicholas Varlett, Dr. Samuel Megapolensis, Burgomaster Cornelius Steenwyck, old Burgomaster Oloff Stevenson van Cortlandt, and old Schepen Jacques Cousseau to agree upon articles with the English commander or his representatives. Nicolls, on his part, appointed Sir Robert Carr and Colonel George Cartwright, John Winthrop, and Samuel Willys, of Connecticut, and Thomas Clarke and John Pynchon, of Massachusetts. "The reason why those of Boston and Connecticut were joined," afterward explained the royal commander, "was because those two colonies should hold themselves the more engaged with us if the Dutch had been overconfident of their strength." At eight o'clock the next morning, which was Saturday, the Commissioners on both sides met at Stuyvesant's "bouwery" and arranged the terms of capitulation. The only difference which arose was respecting the Dutch soldiers, whom the English refused to convey back to Holland. The articles of capitulation promised the Dutch security in their property, customs of inheritance, liberty of conscience and church discipline. The municipal officers of Manhattan were to continue for the present unchanged, and the town was to be allowed to choose deputies, with "free voices in all public affairs." Owners of property in Fort Orange might, if they pleased, "slight the fortifications there," and enjoy their houses "as people do where there is no fort." For six months there was to be free intercourse with Holland. Public records were to be respected. The articles, consented to by Nicolls, were to be ratified by Stuyvesant the next Monday morning at eight o'clock, and within two hours afterward, the "fort and town called New Amsterdam, upon the Isle of Manhatoes," were to be delivered up, and the military officers and soldiers were to "march out with their arms, drums beating, and colors flying, and lighted matches." On the following Monday morning at eight o'clock Stuyvesant, at the head of the garrison, marched out of Fort Amsterdam with all the honors of war, and led his soldiers down the Beaver Lane to the water-side, whence they were embarked for Holland. An English corporal's guard at the same time took possession of the fort; and Nicolls and Carr, with their two companies, about a hundred seventy strong, entered the city, while Cartwright took possession of the gates and the Stadt-Huys. The New England and Long Island volunteers, however, were prudently kept at the Breuckelen ferry, as the citizens dreaded most being plundered by them. The English flag was hoisted on Fort Amsterdam, the name of which was immediately changed to "Fort James." Nicolls was now proclaimed by the burgomasters deputy-governor for the Duke of York, in compliment to whom he directed that the city of New Amsterdam should thenceforth be known as "New York." To Nicolls' European eye the Dutch metropolis, with its earthen fort enclosing a windmill and high flag-staff, a prison and a governor's house, and a double-roofed church, above which loomed a square tower, its gallows and whipping-post at the river's side, and its rows of houses which hugged the citadel, presented but a mean appearance. Yet before long he described it to the Duke as "the best of all his majesty's towns in America," and assured his royal highness that, with proper management, "within five years the staple of America will be drawn hither, of which the brethren of Boston are very sensible." The Dutch frontier posts were thought of next. Colonel Cartwright, with Captains Thomas Willett, John Manning, Thomas Breedon, and Daniel Brodhead, were sent to Fort Orange, as soon as possible, with a letter from Nicolls requiring La Montagne and the magistrates and inhabitants to aid in prosecuting his majesty's interest against all who should oppose a peaceable surrender. At the same time Van Rensselaer was desired to bring down his patent and papers to the new governor and likewise to observe Cartwright's directions. Counsellor de Decker, however, travelling up to Fort George ahead of the English commissioners, endeavored, without avail, to excite the inhabitants to opposition; and his conduct being judged contrary to the spirit of the capitulation which he had signed, he was soon afterward ordered out of Nicolls' government. The garrison quietly surrendered, and the name of Fort Orange was changed to that of "Fort Albany," after the second title of the Duke of York. A treaty was immediately signed between Cartwright and the sachems of the Iroquois, who were promised the same advantages "as heretofore they had from the Dutch"; and the alliance which was thus renewed continued unbroken until the beginning of the American Revolution. It only remained to reduce the South River; whither Sir Robert Carr was sent with the Guinea, the William and Nicholas, and "all the soldiers which are not in the fort." To the Dutch he was instructed to promise all their privileges, "only that they change their masters." To the Swedes he was to "remonstrate their happy return under a monarchical government." To Lord Baltimore's officers in Maryland he was to say that, their pretended rights being a doubtful case, "possession would be kept until his majesty is informed and satisfied otherwise." A tedious voyage brought the expedition before New Amstel. The burghers and planters, "after almost three days' parley," agreed to Carr's demands, and Ffob Oothout with five others signed articles of capitulation which promised large privileges. But the Governor and soldiery refusing the English propositions, the fort was stormed and plundered, three of the Dutch being killed and ten wounded. In violation of his promises, Carr now exhibited the most disgraceful rapacity; appropriated farms to himself, his brother, and Captains Hyde and Morely, stripped bare the inhabitants, and sent the Dutch soldiers to be sold as slaves in Virginia. To complete the work, a boat was despatched to the city's colony at the Horekill, which was seized and plundered of all its effects, and the marauding party even took "what belonged to the Quacking Society of Plockhoy, to a very naile." The reduction of New Netherlands was now accomplished. All that could be further done was to change its name; and, to glorify one of the most bigoted princes in English history, the royal province was ordered to be called "New York." Ignorant of James' grant of New Jersey to Berkeley and Carteret, Nicolls gave to the region west of the Hudson the name of "Albania," and to Long Island that of "Yorkshire," so as to comprehend all the titles of the Duke of York. The flag of England was at length triumphantly displayed, where, for half a century, that of Holland had rightfully waved; and from Virginia to Canada, the King of Great Britain was acknowledged as sovereign. Viewed in all its aspects, the event which gave to the whole of that country a unity in allegiance, and to which a misgoverned people complacently submitted, was as inevitable as it was momentous. But whatever may have been its ultimate consequences, this treacherous and violent seizure of the territory and possessions of an unsuspecting ally was no less a breach of private justice than of public faith. It may, indeed, be affirmed that, among all the acts of selfish perfidy which royal ingratitude conceived and executed, there have been few more characteristic and none more base. %GREAT PLAGUE IN LONDON% A.D. 1665 DANIEL DEFOE None of the great visitations of disease that have afflicted Europe within historic times has wholly spared England. But from the time of the "Black Death" (1349) the country experienced no such suffering from any epidemic as that which fell upon London in 1665. That year the "Great Plague" is said to have destroyed the lives of nearly one hundred thousand people in England's capital. The plague had previously cropped up there every few years, from lack of proper sanitation. At the time of this outbreak the water-supply of the city was notoriously impure. In 1665 the heat was uncommonly severe. Pepys said that June 7th of that year was the hottest day that he had ever known. The plague of 1665 is said, however, to have been brought in merchandise directly from Holland, where it had been smouldering for several years. Its ravages in London have often been described, and Defoe found in the calamity a subject for a special story on history. Probably he was not more than six years old when the plague appeared; but he assumes throughout the pose of a respectable and religious householder of the period. All his own recollections, all the legends of the time, and the parish records are grouped in masterly fashion to form a single picture. The account has been described as a "masterpiece of verisimilitude." In the first place a blazing star or comet appeared for several months before the plague, as there did the year after, a little before the great fire; the old women and the weak-minded portion of the other sex, whom I could almost call old women too, remarked--especially afterward, though not till both those judgments were over--that those two comets passed directly over the city, and that so very near the houses that it was plain they imported something peculiar to the city alone; that the comet before the pestilence was of a faint, dull, languid color, and its motion very heavy, solemn, and slow; but that the comet before the fire was bright and sparkling, or, as others said, flaming, and its motion swift and furious; and that, accordingly, one foretold a heavy judgment, slow, but severe, terrible, and frightful, as the plague was; but the other foretold a stroke, sudden, swift, and fiery, like the conflagration. Nay, so particular some people were that, as they looked upon that comet preceding the fire, they fancied that they not only saw it pass swiftly and fiercely, and could perceive the motion with the eye, but they even heard it; that it made a rushing, mighty noise, fierce and terrible, though at a distance and but just perceivable. I saw both these stars, and I must confess, had so much of the common notion of such things in my head that I was apt to look upon them as the forerunners and warnings of God's judgments; and especially, when after the plague had followed the first, I yet saw another of the like kind, I could not but say, God had not yet sufficiently scourged the city. But I could not at the same time carry these things to the height that others did, knowing, too, that natural causes are assigned by the astronomers for such things; and that their motions, and even their evolutions, are calculated, or pretended to be calculated; so that they cannot be so perfectly called the forerunners or foretellers, much less the procurers of such events as pestilence, war, fire, and the like. But let my thoughts, and the thoughts of the philosophers, be or have been what they will, these things had a more than ordinary influence upon the minds of the common people, and they had, almost universally, melancholy apprehensions of some dreadful calamity and judgment coming upon the city; and this principally from the sight of this comet, and the little alarm that was given in December by two people dying in St. Giles. The apprehensions of the people were likewise strangely increased by the error of the times; in which, I think the people, from what principles I cannot imagine, were more addicted to prophecies, and astrological conjurations, dreams, and old wives' tales, than ever they were before or since. Whether this unhappy temper was originally raised by the follies of some people who got money by it--that is to say, by printing predictions and prognostications--I know not; but certain it is books frightened them terribly; such as _Lilly's Almanack, Gadbury's Allogical Predictions, Poor Robin's Almanack_, and the like; also several pretended religious books--one entitled _Come out of her, my people, lest you be partaker of her plagues_; another, called _Fair Warning_; another, _Britain's Remembrancer_; and many such, all or most part of which foretold directly or covertly the ruin of the city: nay, some were so enthusiastically bold as to run about the streets with their oral predictions, pretending they were sent to preach to the city; and one in particular, who like Jonah to Nineveh, cried in the streets, "Yet forty days, and London shall be destroyed." I will not be positive whether he said "yet forty days" or "yet a few days." Another ran about naked, except a pair of drawers about his waist, crying day and night. As a man that Josephus mentions, who cried, "Woe to Jerusalem!" a little before the destruction of that city, so this poor naked creature cried, "O the great and the dreadful God!" and said no more, but repeated these words continually, with a voice and countenance full of horror, a swift pace; and nobody could ever find him to stop or rest or take any sustenance, at least that ever I could hear of. I met this poor creature several times in the streets, and would have spoken to him, but he would not enter into conversation with me, or anyone else, but held on his dismal cries continually. These things terrified the people to the last degree; and especially when two or three times, as I have mentioned already, they found one or two in the bills dead of the plague at St. Giles. The justices of peace for Middlesex, by direction of the secretary of state, had begun to shut up houses in the parishes of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, St. Martin's, St. Clement Danes, etc., and it was with good success; for in several streets where the plague broke out, after strictly guarding the houses that were infected, and taking care to bury those that died immediately after they were known to be dead, the plague ceased in those streets. It was also observed that the plague decreased sooner in those parishes, after they had been visited in detail, than it did in the parishes of Bishopsgate, Shoreditch, Aldgate, Whitechapel, Stepney, and others; the early care taken in that manner being a great check to it. This shutting up of houses was a method first taken, as I understand, in the plague which happened in 1603, on the accession of King James I to the crown; and the power of shutting people up in their own houses was granted by an act of Parliament entitled "An act for the charitable relief and ordering of persons infected with the plague." On which act of Parliament the lord mayor and aldermen of the city of London founded the order they made at this time, viz., June, 1665; when the numbers infected within the city were but few, the last bill for the ninety-two parishes being but four. By these means, when there died about one thousand a week in the whole, the number in the city was but twenty-eight; and the city was more healthy in proportion than any other place all the time of the infection. These orders of my lord mayor were published, as I have said, toward the end of June. They came into operation from July ist, and were as follows: "_Orders conceived and published by the lord mayor and aldermen of the city of London, concerning the infection of the plague_, 1665. "Whereas, in the reign of our late sovereign, King James, of happy memory, an act was made for the charitable relief and ordering of persons infected with the plague; whereby authority was given to justices of the peace, mayors, bailiffs, and other head officers, to appoint within their several limits, examiners, searchers, watchmen, surgeons, and nurse-keepers, and buriers, for the persons and places infected, and to minister unto them oaths for the performance of their offices. And the same statute did also authorize the giving of other directions, as unto them for the present necessity should seem good in their discretions. It is now upon special consideration thought very expedient for preventing and avoiding of infection of sickness (if it shall so please Almighty God) that these officers be appointed, and these orders hereafter duly observed." Then follow the orders giving these officers instructions in detail and prescribing the extent and limits of their several duties. Next, "_Orders concerning infected houses and persons sick of the plague._" These had reference to the "notice to be given of the sickness," "sequestration of the sick," "airing the stuff," "shutting up of the house," "burial of the dead," "forbidding infected stuff to be sold, and of persons leaving infected houses," "marking of infected houses," and "regulating hackney coaches that have been used to convey infected persons." Lastly there followed "_Orders for cleansing and keeping the streets and houses sweet_" and "_Orders concerning loose persons and idle assemblies_" such as "beggars," "plays," "feasts," and "tippling-houses." "(Signed) SIR JOHN LAWRENCE, _Lord Mayor_. SIR GEORGE WATERMAN, SIR CHARLES DOE, _Sheriffs_." I need not say that these orders extended only to such places as were within the lord mayor's jurisdiction; so it is requisite to observe that the justices of the peace, within those parishes, and those places called the hamlets and out-parts, took the same method: as I remember, the orders for shutting up of houses did not take place so soon on our side, because, as I said before, the plague did not reach the eastern parts of the town, at least not begin to be very violent, till the beginning of August. Now, indeed, it was coming on amain; for the burials that same week were in the next adjoining parishes thus: The next week To the prodigiously 1st of increased, as Aug. thus St. Leonard's, Shoreditch ... 64 84 110 St. Botolph, Bishopsgate .... 65 105 116 St. Giles, Cripplegate.......213 421 554 --- --- --- 342 610 780 The shutting up of houses was at first considered a very cruel and unchristian thing, and the poor people so confined made bitter lamentations; complaints were also daily brought to my lord mayor, of houses causelessly--and some maliciously--shut up. I cannot say, but, upon inquiry, many that complained so loudly were found in a condition to be continued; and others again, inspection being made upon the sick person, on his being content to be carried to the pesthouse, were released. Indeed, many people perished in these miserable confinements, which it is reasonable to believe would not have been distempered if they had had liberty, though the plague was in the house; at which the people were at first very clamorous and uneasy, and several acts of violence were committed on the men who were set to watch the houses so shut up; also several people broke out by force, in many places, as I shall observe by and by; still it was a public good that justified the private mischief; and there was no obtaining the least mitigation by any application to magistrates. This put the people upon all manner of stratagems, in order, if possible, to get out; and it would fill a little volume to set down the arts used by the people of such houses to shut the eyes of the watchmen who were employed, to deceive them, and to escape or break out from them. A few incidents on this head may prove not uninteresting. As I went along Houndsditch one morning, about eight o'clock, there was a great noise; it is true, indeed, there was not much crowd, because people were not very free to gather or to stay long together; but the outcry was loud enough to prompt my curiosity, and I called to one that looked out of a window, and asked what was the matter. A watchman, it seems, had been employed to keep his post at the door of a house which was infected, or said to be infected, and was shut up; he had been there all night for two nights together, as he told his story, and the day watchman had been there one day, and had now come to relieve him; all this while no noise had been heard in the house, no light had been seen; they called for nothing, sent him no errands, which was the chief business of the watchman; neither had they given him any disturbance, as he said, from the Monday afternoon, when he heard great crying and screaming in the house, which, as he supposed, was occasioned by some of the family dying just at that time. It seems the night before, the dead-cart, as it was called, had been stopped there, and a servant-maid had been brought down to the door dead, and the buriers or bearers, as they were called, put her into the cart, wrapped only in a green rug, and carried her away. The watchman had knocked at the door, it seems, when he heard that noise and crying, as above, and nobody answered a great while; but at last one looked out, and said, with an angry, quick tone, "What do ye want, that ye make such a knocking?" He answered: "I am the watchman! how do you do? what is the matter?" The person answered: "What is that to you? Stop the dead-cart." This, it seems, was about one o'clock; soon after, as the fellow said, he stopped the dead-cart, and then knocked again, but nobody answered: he continued knocking, and the bellman called out several times, "Bring out your dead!" but nobody answered, till the man that drove the cart, being called to other houses, would stay no longer, and drove away. The watchman knew not what to make of all this, so he let them alone till the day watchman came to relieve him, giving him an account of the particulars. They knocked at the door a great while, but nobody answered; and they observed that the window or casement at which the person had looked out continued open, being up two pair of stairs. Upon this the two men, to satisfy their curiosity, got a long ladder, and one of them went up to the window and looked into the room, where he saw a woman lying dead upon the floor in a dismal manner, having no clothes on her but her shift. Although he called aloud, and knocked hard on the floor with his long staff, yet nobody stirred or answered; neither could he hear any noise in the house. Upon this he came down again and acquainted his fellow, who went up also, and, finding the case as above, they resolved either to acquaint the lord mayor or some other magistrate with it. The magistrate, it seems, upon the information of the two men, ordered the house to be broken open, a constable and other persons being appointed to be present, that nothing might be plundered; and accordingly it was so done, when nobody was found in the house but that young woman, who, having been infected, and past recovery, the rest had left her to die by herself. Everyone was gone, having found some way to delude the watchman and to get open the door or get out at some back door or over the tops of the houses, so that he knew nothing of it; and as to those cries and shrieks which the watchman had heard, it was supposed they were the passionate cries of the family at the bitter parting, which, to be sure, it was to them all, this being the sister to the mistress of the house. Many such escapes were made out of infected houses, as particularly when the watchman was sent some errand, that is to say, for necessaries, such as food and physic, to fetch physicians if they would come, or surgeons, or nurses, or to order the dead-cart, and the like. Now, when he went it was his duty to lock up the outer door of the house and take the key away with him; but to evade this and cheat the watchman, people got two or three keys made to their locks, or they found means to unscrew the locks, open the door, and go out as they pleased. This way of escape being found out, the officers afterward had orders to padlock up the doors on the outside and place bolts on them, as they thought fit. At another house, as I was informed, in the street near Aldgate, a whole family was shut up and locked in because the maidservant was ill: the master of the house had complained, by his friends, to the next alderman and to the lord mayor, and had consented to have the maid carried to the pesthouse, but was refused, so the door was marked with a red cross, a padlock on the outside, as above, and a watchman set to keep the door according to public order. After the master of the house found there was no remedy, but that he, his wife, and his children were to be locked up with this poor distempered servant, he called to the watchman and told him he must go then and fetch a nurse for them to attend this poor girl, for that it would be certain death to them all to oblige them to nurse her; and that if he would not do this the maid must perish, either of the distemper, or be starved for want of food, for he was resolved none of his family should go near her, and she lay in the garret, four-story high, where she could not cry out or call to anybody for help. The watchman went and fetched a nurse as he was appointed, and brought her to them the same evening; during this interval the master of the house took the opportunity of breaking a large hole through his shop into a stall where formerly a cobbler had sat, before or under his shop window, but the tenant, as may be supposed, at such a dismal time as that, was dead or removed, and so he had the key in his own keeping. Having made his way into this stall, which he could not have done if the man had been at the door--the noise he was obliged to make being such as would have alarmed the watchman--I say, having made his way into this stall, he sat still till the watchman returned with the nurse, and all the next day also. But the night following, having contrived to send the watchman another trifling errand, he conveyed himself and all his family out of the house, and left the nurse and the watchman to bury the poor woman, that is, to throw her into the cart and take care of the house. I could give a great many such stories as these which in the long course of that dismal year I met with, that is, heard of, and which are very certain to be true or very near the truth; that is to say, true in general, for no man could at such a time learn all the particulars. There was, likewise, violence used with the watchmen, as was reported, in abundance of places; and I believe that, from the beginning of the visitation to the end, not less than eighteen or twenty of them were killed or so severely wounded as to be taken up for dead; which was supposed to have been done by the people in the infected houses which were shut up, and where they attempted to come out and were opposed. For example, not far from Coleman Street they blowed up a watchman with gunpowder, and burned the poor fellow dreadfully; and while he made hideous cries, and nobody would venture to come near to help him, the whole family that were able to stir got out at the windows one story high, two that were left sick calling out for help. Care was taken to give the latter nurses to look after them, but the fugitives were not found till after the plague abated, when they returned; but as nothing could be proved, so nothing could be done to them. It is to be considered, too, that as these were prisons without bars or bolts, which our common prisons are furnished with, so the people let themselves down out of their windows, even in the face of the watchman, bringing swords or pistols in their hands, and threatening to shoot the poor wretch if he stirred or called for help. In other cases some had gardens and walls or palings between them and their neighbors; or yards and back houses; and these, by friendship and entreaties, would get leave to get over those walls or palings, and so go out at their neighbors' doors, or, by giving money to their servants, get them to let them through in the night; so that, in short, the shutting up of houses was in no wise to be depended upon. Neither did it answer the end at all; serving more to make the people desperate and drive them to violent extremities in their attempts to break out. But what was still worse, those that did thus break out spread the infection by wandering about with the distemper upon them; and many that did so were driven to dreadful exigencies and extremities and perished in the streets or fields or dropped down with the raging violence of the fever upon them. Others wandered into the country and went forward any way as their desperation guided them, not knowing whither they went or would go, till faint and tired; the houses and villages on the road refusing to admit them to lodge, whether infected or no, they perished by the roadside. On the other hand, when the plague at first seized a family, that is to say, when any one of the family had gone out and unwarily or otherwise caught the distemper and brought it home, it was certainly known by the family before it was known to the officers who were appointed to examine into the circumstances of all sick persons when they heard of their being sick. I remember--and while I am writing this story I think I hear the very shrieks--a certain lady had an only daughter, a young maiden about nineteen years old and who was possessed of a very considerable fortune. The young woman, her mother, and the maid had been out for some purpose, for the house was not shut up; but about two hours after they came home the young lady complained she was not well; in a quarter of an hour more she vomited and had a violent pain in her head. "Pray God," says her mother, in a terrible fright, "my child has not the distemper!" The pain in her head increasing, her mother ordered the bed to be warmed, and resolved to put her to bed, and prepared to give her things to sweat, which was the ordinary remedy to be taken when the first apprehensions of the distemper began. While the bed was being aired, the mother undressed the young woman, and, on looking over her body with a candle, immediately discovered the fatal tokens. Her mother, not being able to contain herself, threw down her candle and screeched out in such a frightful manner that it was enough to bring horror upon the stoutest heart in the world. Overcome by fright, she first fainted, then recovered, then ran all over the house, up the stairs and down the stairs, like one distracted. Thus she continued screeching and crying out for several hours, void of all sense, or at least government of her senses, and, as I was told, never came thoroughly to herself again. As to the young maiden, she was dead from that moment; for the gangrene which occasions the spots had spread over her whole body, and she died in less than two hours: but still the mother continued crying out, not knowing anything more of her child, several hours after she was dead. I went all the first part of the time freely about the streets, though not so freely as to run myself into apparent danger, except when they dug the great pit in the church-yard of our parish of Aldgate. A terrible pit it was, and I could not resist the curiosity to go and see it. So far as I could judge, it was about forty feet in length and about fifteen or sixteen feet broad, and, at the time I first looked at it, about nine feet deep; but it was said they dug it nearly twenty feet deep afterward, when they could go no deeper, for the water. They had dug several pits in another ground when the distemper began to spread in our parish, and especially when the dead-carts began to go about, which in our parish was not till the beginning of August. Into these pits they had put perhaps fifty or sixty bodies each; then they made larger holes, wherein they buried all that the cart brought in a week, which, by the middle to the end of August, came to from two hundred to four hundred a week. They could not dig them larger, because of the order of the magistrates confining them to leave no bodies within six feet of the surface. Besides, the water coming on at about seventeen or eighteen feet, they could not well put more in one pit. But now at the beginning of September, the plague being at its height, and the number of burials in our parish increasing to more than were ever buried in any parish about London of no larger extent, they ordered this dreadful gulf to be dug, for such it was, rather than a pit. They had supposed this pit would have supplied them for a month or more when they dug it, and some blamed the churchwardens for suffering such a frightful thing, telling them they were making preparations to bury the whole parish, and the like; but time made it appear the church-wardens knew the condition of the parish better than they did; for the pit being finished September 4th, I think they began to bury in it on the 6th, and by the 20th, which was just two weeks, they had thrown into it one thousand one hundred fourteen bodies, when they were obliged to fill it up, the bodies being within six feet of the surface. It was about September 10th that my curiosity led or rather drove me to go and see this pit again, when there had been about four hundred people buried in it; and I was not content to see it in the daytime, as I had done before, for then there would have been nothing to see but the loose earth; for all the bodies that were thrown in were immediately covered with earth by those they called the buriers, but I resolved to go in the night and see some of the bodies thrown in. There was a strict order against people coming to those pits, and that was only to prevent infection; but after some time that order was more necessary, for people that were infected and near their end, and delirious also, would run to those pits, wrapped in blankets or rags, and throw themselves in and bury themselves. I got admittance into the church-yard by being acquainted with the sexton, who, though he did not refuse me at all, yet earnestly persuaded me not to go, telling me very seriously--for he was a good and sensible man--that it was indeed their business and duty to run all hazards, and that in so doing they might hope to be preserved; but that I had no apparent call except my own curiosity, which he said he believed I would not pretend was sufficient to justify my exposing myself to infection. I told him "I had been pressed in my mind to go, and that perhaps it might be an instructing sight that might not be without its uses." "Nay," says the good man, "if you will venture on that score, i' name of God go in; for depend upon it, 'twill be a sermon to you; it may be the best that you ever heard in your life. It is a speaking sight," says he, "and has a voice with it, and a loud one, to call us to repentance;" and with that he opened the door and said, "Go, if you will." His words had shocked my resolution a little and I stood wavering for a good while; but just at that interval I saw two links come over from the end of the Minories, and heard the bellman, and then appeared a dead-cart, so I could no longer resist my desire, and went in. There was nobody that I could perceive at first in the church-yard or going into it but the buriers and the fellow that drove the cart or rather led the horse and cart; but when they came up to the pit they saw a man going to and fro muffled up in a brown cloak and making motions with his hands under his cloak, as if he was in a great agony, and the buriers immediately gathered about him, supposing he was one of those poor delirious or desperate creatures that used to bury themselves. He said nothing as he walked about, but two or three times groaned very deeply and loud, and sighed as he would break his heart. When the buriers came up to him they soon found he was neither a person infected and desperate, as I have observed above, nor a person distempered in mind, but one oppressed with a dreadful weight of grief, indeed, having his wife and several of his children in the cart that had just come in, and he followed it in an agony and excess of sorrow. He mourned heartily, as it was easy to see, but with a kind of masculine grief that could not give itself vent in tears, and, calmly desiring the buriers to let him alone, said he would only see the bodies thrown in and go away; so they left importuning him. But no sooner was the cart turned round and the bodies shot into the pit promiscuously, which was a surprise to him, for he at least expected they would have been decently laid in, though indeed he was afterward convinced that was impracticable--I say, no sooner did he see the sight but he cried out aloud, unable to contain himself. I could not hear what he said, but he went backward and forward two or three times and fell down in a swoon. The buriers ran to him and took him up, and in a little while he came to himself, and they led him away to the Pye tavern, over against the end of Houndsditch, where it seems the man was known and where they took care of him. He looked into the pit again as he went away, but the buriers had covered the bodies so immediately with throwing in the earth that, though there was light enough, for there were lanterns and candles placed all night round the sides of the pit, yet nothing could be seen. This was a mournful scene, indeed, and affected me almost as much as the rest, but the other was awful and full of terror. The cart had in it sixteen or seventeen bodies; some were wrapped up in linen sheets, some in rugs, some all but naked or so loose that what covering they had fell from them in being shot out of the cart, for coffins were not to be had for the prodigious numbers that fell in such a calamity as his. It was reported, by way of scandal upon the buriers, that if any corpse was delivered to them decently wrapped in a winding-sheet, the buriers were so wicked as to strip them in the cart and carry them quite naked to the ground; but as I cannot easily credit anything so vile among Christians, and at a time so filled with terrors as that was, I can only relate it and leave it undetermined. I was indeed shocked at the whole sight; it almost overwhelmed me, and I went away with my heart full of the most afflicting thoughts, such as I cannot describe. Just at my going out at the church-yard and turning up the street toward my own house I saw another cart with links and a bellman going before, coming out of Harrow Alley, in the Butcher Row, on the other side of the way, and being, as I perceived, very full of dead bodies, it went directly toward the church; I stood awhile, but I had no desire to go back again to see the same dismal scene over again, so I went directly home, where I could not but consider, with thankfulness, the risk I had run. Here the poor unhappy gentleman's grief came into my head again, and, indeed, I could not but shed tears in reflecting upon it, perhaps more than he did himself; but his case lay so heavy upon my mind that I could not constrain myself from going again to the Pye tavern, resolving to inquire what became of him. It was by this time one o'clock in the morning and the poor gentleman was still there; the truth was the people of the house, knowing him, had kept him there all the night, notwithstanding the danger of being infected by him, though it appeared the man was perfectly sound himself. It is with regret that I take notice of this tavern: the people were civil, mannerly, and obliging enough, and had till this time kept their house open and their trade going on, though not so very publicly as formerly; but a dreadful set of fellows frequented their house, who, in the midst of all this horror, met there every night, behaved with all the revelling and roaring extravagances as are usual for such people to do at other times, and, indeed, to such an offensive degree that the very master and mistress of the house grew first ashamed and then terrified at them. They sat generally in a room next the street, and, as they always kept late hours, so when the dead-cart came across the street end to go into Houndsditch, which was in view of the tavern windows, they would frequently open the windows as soon as they heard the bell, and look out at them; and as they might often hear sad lamentations of people in the streets or at their windows as the carts went along, they would make their impudent mocks and jeers at them, especially if they heard the poor people call upon God to have mercy upon them, as many would do at those times in passing along the streets. These gentlemen, being something disturbed with the clatter of bringing the poor gentleman into the house, as above, were first angry and very high with the master of the house for suffering such a fellow, as they called him, to be brought out of the grave into their house; but being answered that the man was a neighbor, and that he was sound, but overwhelmed with the calamity of his family, and the like, they turned their anger into ridiculing the man and his sorrow for his wife and children; taunting him with want of courage to leap into the great pit and go to heaven, as they jeeringly expressed it, along with them; adding some profane and blasphemous expressions. They were at this vile work when I came back to the house, and as far as I could see, though the man sat still, mute and disconsolate, and their affronts could not divert his sorrow, yet he was both grieved and offended at their words: upon this, I gently reproved them, being well enough acquainted with their characters, and not unknown in person to two of them. They immediately fell upon me with ill language and oaths: asked me what I did out of my grave at such a time when so many honester men were carried into the church-yard? and why I was not at home saying my prayers till the dead-cart came for me? I was indeed astonished at the impudence of the men, though not at all discomposed at their treatment of me. However, I kept my temper. I told them that though I defied them or any man in the world to tax me with any dishonesty, yet I acknowledged that in this terrible judgment of God many a better than I was swept away and carried to his grave. But to answer their question directly, it was true that I was mercifully preserved by that great God whose name they had blasphemed and taken in vain by cursing and swearing in a dreadful manner; and that I believed I was preserved in particular, among other ends of his goodness, that I might reprove them for their audacious boldness in behaving in such a manner and in such an awful time as this was; especially for their jeering and mocking at an honest gentleman and a neighbor who they saw was overwhelmed with sorrow for the sufferings with which it had pleased God to afflict his family. They received all reproof with the utmost contempt and made the greatest mockery that was possible for them to do at me, giving me all the opprobrious, insolent scoffs that they could think of for preaching to them, as they called it, which, indeed, grieved me rather than angered me. I went away, however, blessing God in my mind that I had not spared them though they had insulted me so much. They continued this wretched course three or four days after this, continually mocking and jeering at all that showed themselves religious or serious, or that were any way us; and I was informed they flouted in the same manner at the good people who, notwithstanding the contagion, met at the church, fasted, and prayed God to remove his hand from them. I say, they continued this dreadful course three or four days--I think it was no more--when one of them, particularly he who asked the poor gentleman what he did out of his grave, was struck with the plague and died in a most deplorable manner; and in a word, they were every one of them carried into the great pit which I have mentioned above, before it was quite filled up, which was not above a fortnight or thereabout. %GREAT FIRE IN LONDON% A.D. 1666 JOHN EVELYN In the reign of Charles II--the "Merry Monarch," of whom one of his ministers observed that "he never said a foolish thing and never did a wise one"--the calamities which happened eclipsed the merriment of his people, if not that of the sovereign himself. In 1666 England had not fully recovered from the civil wars of 1642-1651. She was now at war with the allied Dutch and French, and was suffering from the terrible effects of the "Great Plague" which ravaged London in 1665. During September 2-5, 1666, occurred a catastrophe of almost equal horror. A fire, which broke out in a baker's house near the bridge, spread on all sides so rapidly that the people were unable to extinguish it until two-thirds of the city had been destroyed. Evelyn's account, from his famous _Diary_, is that of an eye-witness who took a prominent part in dealing with the conflagration, during which the inhabitants of London--like those of some of our cities in recent times--"were reduced to be spectators of their own ruin." Besides suspecting the French and Dutch of having landed and, as Evelyn records, of "firing the town," people assigned various other possible origins for the disaster, charging it upon the republicans, the Catholics, etc. It was obviously due, as Hume thought it worth while to note, to the narrow streets, the houses built entirely of wood, the dry season, and a strong east wind. "But the fire," says a later writer, "though destroying so much, was most beneficial in thoroughly eradicating the plague. The fever dens in which it continually lurked were burned, and the new houses which were erected were far more healthy and better arranged." In the year of our Lord 1666. 2d Sept. This fatal night, about ten, began that deplorable fire near Fish Street, in London. 3. The fire continuing, after dinner I took coach with my wife and son, and went to the Bankside in Southwark, where we beheld that dismal spectacle, the whole city in dreadful flames near the water-side; all the houses from the bridge, all Thames Street, and upward toward Cheapside, down to the Three Cranes, were now consumed. The fire having continued all this night--if I may call that night which was as light as day for ten miles round about, after a dreadful manner--when conspiring with a fierce eastern wind in a very dry season; I went on foot to the same place, and saw the whole south part of the city burning from Cheapside to the Thames, and all along Cornhill--for it kindled back against the wind as well as forward--Tower Street, Fenchurch Street, Gracechurch Street, and so along to Bainard's castle, and was now taking hold of St. Paul's Church, to which the scaffolds contributed exceedingly. The conflagration was so universal, and the people so astonished, that from the beginning, I know not by what despondency or fate, they hardly stirred to quench it; so that there was nothing heard or seen but crying out and lamentation, running about like distracted creatures, without at all attempting to save even their goods; such a strange consternation there was upon them, so as it burned both in breadth and length, the churches, public halls, exchange, hospitals, monuments, and ornaments, leaping after a prodigious manner from house to house, and street to street, at great distances one from the other; for the heat, with a long set of fair and warm weather, had even ignited the air and prepared the materials to conceive the fire, which devoured, after an incredible manner, houses, furniture, and everything. Here we saw the Thames covered with goods floating, all the barges and boats laden with what some had time and courage to save, as, on the other, the carts, etc., carrying out to the fields, which for many miles were strewed with movables of all sorts, and tents erecting to shelter both people and what goods they could get away. Oh, the miserable and calamitous spectacle! such as haply the world had not seen the like since the foundation of it, nor be outdone till the universal conflagration. All the sky was of a fiery aspect, like the top of a burning oven, the light seen above forty miles round about for many nights. God grant my eyes may never behold the like, now seeing above ten thousand houses all in one flame; the noise, and cracking, and thunder of the impetuous flames, the shrieking of women and children, the hurry of people, the fall of towers, houses, and churches was like a hideous storm, and the air all about so hot and inflamed that at last one was not able to approach it; so that they were forced to stand still and let the flames burn on, which they did for near two miles in length and one in breadth. The clouds of smoke were dismal, and reached, upon computation, near fifty miles in length. Thus I left it this afternoon burning, a resemblance of Sodom or the last day. London was, but is no more! 4. The burning still rages, and it has now gotten as far as the Inner Temple, all Fleet Street, the Old Bailey, Ludgate Hill, Warwick Lane, Newgate, Paul's Chain, Watling Street, now flaming, and most of it reduced to ashes; the stones of St. Paul's flew like granados, the melting lead running down the streets in a stream, and the very pavements glowing with fiery redness, so as no horse nor man was able to tread on them, and the demolition had stopped all the passages, so that no help could be applied. The eastern wind still more impetuously drove the flames forward. Nothing but the almighty power of God was able to stop them, for vain was the help of man. 5. It crossed toward Whitehall; oh, the confusion there was then at that court! It pleased his majesty to command me among the rest to look after the quenching of Fetter Lane, and to preserve, if possible, that part of Holborn, while the rest of the gentlemen took their several posts--for now they began to bestir themselves, and not till now, who hitherto had stood as men intoxicated, with their hands across--and began to consider that nothing was likely to put a stop, but the blowing up of so many houses might make a wider gap than any had yet been made by the ordinary method of pulling them down with engines; this some stout seamen proposed early enough to have saved nearly the whole city, but this some tenacious and avaricious men, aldermen, etc., would not permit, because their houses must have been of the first. It was therefore now commanded to be practised, and my concern being particularly for the hospital of St. Bartholomew, near Smithfield, where I had many wounded and sick men, made me the more diligent to promote it, nor was my care for the Savoy less. It now pleased God, by abating the wind, and by the industry of the people, infusing a new spirit into them, and the fury of it began sensibly to abate about noon, so as it came no further than the Temple westward, nor than the entrance of Smithfield north; but continued all this day and night so impetuous toward Cripplegate and the Tower, as made us all despair. It also broke out again in the Temple, but the courage of the multitude persisting, and many houses being blown up, such gaps and desolations were soon made, as with the former three-days' consumption, the back fire did not so vehemently urge upon the rest as formerly. There was yet no standing near the burning and glowing ruins by near a furlong's space. The coal and wood wharfs, and magazines of oil, resin, etc., did infinite mischief, so as the invective which a little before I had dedicated to his majesty and published, giving warning what might probably be the issue of suffering those shops to be in the city, was looked on as a prophecy. The poor inhabitants were dispersed about St. George's Fields and Moorfields, as far as Highgate, and several miles in circle, some under tents, some under miserable huts and hovels, many without a rag, or any necessary utensils, bed, or board; who, from delicateness, riches, and easy accommodations in stately and well-furnished houses, were now reduced to extremest misery and poverty. In this calamitous condition I returned with a sad heart to my house, blessing and adoring the mercy of God to me and mine, who in the midst of all this ruin was like Lot, in my little Zoar, safe and sound. 7. I went this morning on foot from Whitehall as far as London bridge, through the late Fleet Street, Ludgate Hill, by St. Paul's, Cheapside, Exchange, Bishopsgate, Aldersgate, and out to Moorfields, thence through Cornhill, etc., with extraordinary difficulty clambering over heaps of yet smoking rubbish, and frequently mistaking where I was. The ground under my feet was so hot that it even burned the soles of my shoes. In the mean time his majesty got to the Tower by water, to demolish the houses about the graff, which, being built entirely about it, had they taken fire, and attacked the White Tower, where the magazine of powder lay, would undoubtedly not only have beaten down and destroyed all the bridge, but sunk and torn the vessels in the river, and rendered the demolition beyond all expression for several miles about the country. At my return I was infinitely concerned to find that goodly church, St. Paul's, now a sad ruin, and that beautiful portico--or structure comparable to any in Europe, as not long before repaired by the King--now rent in pieces, flakes of vast stones split asunder, and nothing remaining entire but the inscription in the architrave, showing by whom it was built, which had not one letter of it defaced. It was astonishing to see what immense stones the heat had in a manner calcined, so that all the ornaments, columns, friezes, and projectures of massy Portland stone flew off, even to the very roof, where a sheet of lead covering a great space was totally melted; the ruins of the vaulted roof falling broke into St. Faith's, which being filled with the magazines of books belonging to the stationers, and carried thither for safety, they were all consumed, burning for a week following. It is also observable that the lead over the altar at the east end was untouched, and among the divers monuments the body of one bishop remained entire. Thus lay in ashes that most venerable church, one of the most ancient pieces of early piety in the Christian world, besides near one hundred more. The lead, ironwork, bells, plate, etc., melted; the exquisitely wrought Mercer's Chapel, the sumptuous Exchange, the august fabric of Christ Church, all the rest of the Companies' Halls, sumptuous buildings, arches, all in dust; the fountains dried up and ruined, while the very waters remained boiling; the _voragoes_ of subterranean cellars, wells, and dungeons, formerly warehouses, still burning in stench and dark clouds of smoke, so that in five or six miles traversing about I did not see one load of timber consume, nor many stones but what were calcined white as snow. The people who now walked about the ruins appeared like men in a dismal desert, or rather in some great city laid waste by a cruel enemy: to which was added the stench that came from some poor creatures' bodies, beds, etc. Sir Thomas Gresham's statue, though fallen from its niche in the Royal Exchange, remained entire, when all those of the kings since the Conquest were broken to pieces; also the standard in Cornhill, and Queen Elizabeth's effigies, with some arms on Ludgate, continued with but little detriment, while the vast iron chains of the city streets, hinges, bars, and gates of prisons, were many of them melted and reduced to cinders by the vehement heat. I was not able to pass through any of the narrow streets, but kept the widest; the ground and air, smoke and fiery vapor, continued so intense that my hair was almost singed and my feet insufferably surheated. The by-lanes and narrower streets were quite filled up with rubbish, nor could one have known where he was but by the ruins of some church or hall that had some remarkable tower or pinnacle remaining. I then went toward Islington and Highgate, where one might have seen two hundred thousand people of all ranks and degrees, dispersed and lying along by their heaps of what they could save from the fire, deploring their loss, and, though ready to perish for hunger and destitution, yet not asking one penny for relief, which to me appeared a stranger sight than any I had yet beheld. His majesty and council, indeed, took all imaginable care for their relief, by proclamation for the country to come in and refresh them with provisions. In the midst of all this calamity and confusion there was, I know not how, an alarm begun that the French and Dutch, with whom we are now in hostility, were not only landed, but even entering the city. There was in truth some days before great suspicion of these two nations joining; and now, that they had been the occasion of firing the town. This report did so terrify that on a sudden there was such an uproar and tumult that they ran from their goods, and, taking what weapons they could come at, they could not be stopped from falling on some of those nations whom they casually met, without sense or reason. The clamor and peril grew so excessive that it made the whole court amazed, and they did with infinite pains and great difficulty reduce and appease the people, sending troops of soldiers and guards to cause them to retire into the fields again, where they were watched all this night. I left them pretty quiet, and came home sufficiently weary and broken. Their spirits thus a little calmed, and the affright abated, they now began to repair into the suburbs about the city, where such as had friends or opportunity got shelter for the present, to which his majesty's proclamation also invited them. %DISCOVERY OF GRAVITATION% A.D. 1666 SIR DAVID BREWSTER Many admirers of Sir Isaac Newton have asserted that his was the most gigantic intellect ever bestowed on man. He discovered the law of gravitation, and by it explained all the broader phenomena of nature, such as the movements of the planets, the shape and revolution of the earth, the succession of the tides. Copernicus had asserted that the planets moved, Newton demonstrated it mathematically. His discoveries in optics were in his own time almost equally famous, while in his later life he shared with Leibnitz the honor of inventing the infinitesimal calculus, a method which lies at the root of all the intricate marvels of modern mathematical science. Newton should not, however, be regarded as an isolated phenomenon, a genius but for whom the world would have remained in darkness. His first flashing idea of gravitation deserves perhaps to be called an inspiration. But in all his other labors, experimental as well as mathematical, he was but following the spirit of the times. The love of science was abroad, and its infinite curiosity. Each of Newton's discoveries was claimed also by other men who had been working along similar lines. Of the dispute over the gravitation theory Sir David Brewster, the great authority for the career of Newton, gives some account. The controversy over the calculus was even more bitter and prolonged. It were well, however, to disabuse one's mind of the idea that Newton's work was a finality, that it settled anything. As to why the law of gravitation exists, why bodies tend to come together, the philosopher had little suggestion to offer, and the present generation knows no more than he. Before Copernicus and Newton men looked only with their eyes, and accepted the apparent movements of sun and stars as real. Now, going one step deeper, we look with our brains and see their real movements which underlie appearances. Newton supplied us with the law and rate of the movement--but not its cause. It is toward that cause, that great "Why?" that science has ever since been dimly groping. In the year 1666, when the plague had driven Newton from Cambridge, he was sitting alone in the garden at Woolsthrope, and reflecting on the nature of gravity, that remarkable power which causes all bodies to descend toward the centre of the earth. As this power is not found to suffer any sensible diminution at the greatest distance from the earth's centre to which we can reach--being as powerful at the tops of the highest mountains as at the bottom of the deepest mines--he conceived it highly probable that it must extend much further than was usually supposed. No sooner had this happy conjecture occurred to his mind than he considered what would be the effect of its extending as far as the moon. That her motion must be influenced by such a power he did not for a moment doubt; and a little reflection convinced him that it might be sufficient for retaining that luminary in her orbit round the earth. Though the force of gravity suffers no sensible diminution at those small distances from the earth's centre at which we can place ourselves, yet he thought it very possible that, at the distance of the moon, it might differ much in strength from what it is on the earth. In order to form some estimate of the degree of its diminution, he considered that, if the moon be retained in her orbit by the force of gravity, the primary planets must also be carried round the sun by the same power; and by comparing the periods of the different planets with their distances from the sun he found that, if they were retained in their orbits by any power like gravity, its force must decrease in the duplicate proportion, or as the squares of their distances from the sun. In drawing this conclusion, he supposed the planets to move in orbits perfectly circular, and having the sun in their centre. Having thus obtained the law of the force by which the planets were drawn to the sun, his next object was to ascertain if such a force emanating from the earth, and directed to the moon, was sufficient, when diminished in the duplicate ratio of the distance, to retain her in her orbit. In performing this calculation it was necessary to compare the space through which heavy bodies fall in a second at a given distance from the centre of the earth, viz., at its surface, with the space through which the moon, as it were, falls to the earth in a second of time while revolving in a circular orbit. Being at a distance from books when he made this computation, he adopted the common estimate of the earth's diameter then in use among geographers and navigators, and supposed that each degree of latitude contained sixty English miles. In this way he found that the force which retains the moon in her orbit, as deduced from the force which occasions the fall of heavy bodies to the earth's surface, was one-sixth greater than that which is actually observed in her circular orbit. This difference threw a doubt upon all his speculations; but, unwilling to abandon what seemed to be otherwise so plausible, he endeavored to account for the difference of the two forces by supposing that some other cause must have been united with the force of gravity in producing so great velocity of the moon in her circular orbit. As this new cause, however, was beyond the reach of observation, he discontinued all further inquiries into the subject, and concealed from his friends the speculations in which he had been employed. After his return to Cambridge in 1666 his attention was occupied with optical discoveries; but he had no sooner brought them to a close than his mind reverted to the great subject of the planetary motions. Upon the death of Oldenburg in August, 1678, Dr. Hooke was appointed secretary to the Royal Society; and as this learned body had requested the opinion of Newton about a system of physical astronomy, he addressed a letter to Dr. Hooke on November 28, 1679. In this letter he proposed a direct experiment for verifying the motion of the earth, viz., by observing whether or not bodies that fall from a considerable height descend in a vertical direction; for if the earth were at rest the body would describe exactly a vertical line; whereas if it revolved round its axis, the falling body must deviate from the vertical line toward the east. The Royal Society attached great value to the idea thus casually suggested, and Dr. Hooke was appointed to put it to the test of experiment. Being thus led to consider the subject more attentively, he wrote to Newton that wherever the direction of gravity was oblique to the axis on which the earth revolved, that is, in every part of the earth except the equator, falling bodies should approach to the equator, and the deviation from the vertical, in place of being exactly to the east, as Newton maintained, should be to the southeast of the point from which the body began to move. Newton acknowledged that this conclusion was correct in theory, and Dr. Hooke is said to have given an experimental demonstration of it before the Royal Society in December, 1679. Newton had erroneously concluded that the path of the falling body would be a spiral; but Dr. Hooke, on the same occasion on which he made the preceding experiment, read a paper to the society in which he proved that the path of the body would be an eccentric ellipse _in vacuo_, and an ellipti-spiral if the body moved in a resisting medium. This correction of Newton's error, and the discovery that a projectile would move in an elliptical orbit when under the influence of a force varying in the inverse ratio of the square of the distance, led Newton, as he himself informs us in his letter to Halley, to discover "the theorem by which he afterward examined the ellipsis," and to demonstrate the celebrated proposition that a planet acted upon by an attractive force varying inversely as the squares of the distances, will describe an elliptical orbit in one of whose _foci_ the attractive force resides. But though Newton had thus discovered the true cause of all the celestial motions, he did not yet possess any evidence that such a force actually resided in the sun and planets. The failure of his former attempt to identify the law of falling bodies at the earth's surface with that which guided the moon in her orbit, threw a doubt over all his speculations, and prevented him from giving any account of them to the public. An accident, however, of a very interesting nature induced him to resume his former inquiries, and enabled him to bring them to a close. In June, 1682, when he was attending a meeting of the Royal Society of London, the measurement of a degree of the meridian, executed by M. Picard in 1679, became the subject of conversation. Newton took a memorandum of the result obtained by the French astronomer, and having deduced from it the diameter of the earth, he immediately resumed his calculation of 1665, and began to repeat it with these new data. In the progress of the calculation he saw that the result which he had formerly expected was likely to be produced, and he was thrown into such a state of nervous irritability that he was unable to carry on the calculation. In this state of mind he intrusted it to one of his friends, and he had the high satisfaction of finding his former views amply realized. The force of gravity which regulated the fall of bodies at the earth's surface, when diminished as the square of the moon's distance from the earth, was found to be almost exactly equal to the centrifugal force of the moon as deduced from her observed distance and velocity. The influence of such a result upon such a mind may be more easily conceived than described. The whole material universe was spread out before him; the sun with all his attending planets; the planets with all their satellites; the comets wheeling in every direction in their eccentric orbits; and the systems of the fixed stars stretching to the remotest limits of space. All the varied and complicated movements of the heavens, in short, must have been at once presented to his mind as the necessary result of that law which he had established in reference to the earth and the moon. After extending this law to the other bodies of the system, he composed a series of propositions on the motion of the primary planets about the sun, which were sent to London about the end of 1683, and were soon afterward communicated to the Royal Society. About this period other philosophers had been occupied with the same subject. Sir Christopher Wren had many years before endeavored to explain the planetary motions "by the composition of a descent toward the sun, and an impressed motion; but he at length gave it over, not finding the means of doing it." In January, 1683-1684, Dr. Halley had concluded from Kepler's law of the periods and distances, that the centripetal force decreased in the reciprocal proportion of the squares of the distances, and having one day met Sir Christopher Wren and Dr. Hooke, the latter affirmed that he had demonstrated upon that principle all the laws of the celestial motions. Dr. Halley confessed that his attempts were unsuccessful, and Sir Christopher, in order to encourage the inquiry, offered to present a book of forty shillings value to either of the two philosophers who should, in the space of two months, bring him a convincing demonstration of it. Hooke persisted in the declaration that he possessed the method, but avowed it to be his intention to conceal it for time. He promised, however, to show it to Sir Christopher; but there is every reason to believe that this promise was never fulfilled. In August, 1684, Dr. Halley went to Cambridge for the express purpose of consulting Newton on this interesting subject. Newton assured him that he had brought this demonstration to perfection, and promised him a copy of it. This copy was received in November by the doctor, who made a second visit to Cambridge, in order to induce its author to have it inserted in the register book of the society. On December 10th Dr. Halley announced to the society that he had seen at Cambridge Newton's treatise _De Motu Corporum_, which he had promised to send to the society to be entered upon their register, and Dr. Halley was desired to unite with Mr. Paget, master of the mathematical school in Christ's Hospital, in reminding Newton of his promise, "for securing the invention to himself till such time as he can be at leisure to publish it." On February 25th Mr. Aston, the secretary, communicated a letter from Newton in which he expressed his willingness "to enter in the register his notions about motion, and his intentions to fit them suddenly for the press." The progress of his work was, however, interrupted by a visit of five or six weeks which he made in Lincolnshire; but he proceeded with such diligence on his return that he was able to transmit the manuscript to London before the end of April. This manuscript, entitled _Philosophic Naturalis Principia Mathematics_ and dedicated to the society, was presented by Dr. Vincent on April 28, 1686, when Sir John Hoskins, the vice-president and the particular friend of Dr. Hooke, was in the chair. Dr. Vincent passed a just encomium on the novelty and dignity of the subject; and another member added that "Mr. Newton had carried the thing so far that there was no more to be added." To these remarks the vice-president replied that the method "was so much the more to be prized as it was both invented and perfected at the same time." Dr. Hooke took offence at these remarks, and blamed Sir John for not having mentioned "what he had discovered to him"; but the vice-president did not seem to recollect any such communication, and the consequence of this discussion was that "these two, who till then were the most inseparable cronies, have since scarcely seen one another, and are utterly fallen out." After the breaking up of the meeting, the society adjourned to the coffee house, where Dr. Hooke stated that he not only had made the same discovery, but had given the first hint of it to Newton. An account of these proceedings was communicated to Newton through two different channels. In a letter dated May 22d Dr. Halley wrote to him "that Mr. Hooke has some pretensions upon the invention of the rule of the decrease of gravity being reciprocally as the squares of the distances from the centre. He says you had the notion from him, though he owns the demonstration of the curves generated thereby to be wholly your own. How much of this is so you know best, as likewise what you have to do in this matter; only Mr. Hooke seems to expect you would make some mention of him in the preface, which it is possible you may see reason to prefix." This communication from Dr. Halley induced the author, on June 20th, to address a long letter to him, in which he gives a minute and able refutation of Hooke's claims; but before this letter was despatched another correspondent, who had received his information from one of the members that were present, informed Newton "that Hooke made a great stir, pretending that he had all from him, and desiring they would see that he had justice done him." This fresh charge seems to have ruffled the tranquillity of Newton; and he accordingly added an angry and satirical postscript, in which he treats Hooke with little ceremony, and goes so far as to conjecture that Hooke might have acquired his knowledge of the law from a letter of his own to Huygens, directed to Oldenburg, and dated January 14,1672-1673. "My letter to Hugenius was directed to Mr. Oldenburg, who used to keep the originals. His papers came into Mr. Hooke's possession. Mr. Hooke, knowing my hand, might have the curiosity to look into that letter, and there take the notion of comparing the forces of the planets arising from their circular motion; and so what he wrote to me afterward about the rate of gravity might be nothing but the fruit of my own garden." In replying to this letter Dr. Halley assured him that Hooke's "manner of claiming the discovery had been represented to him in worse colors than it ought, and that he neither made public application to the society for justice nor pretended that you had all from him." The effect of this assurance was to make Newton regret that he had written the angry postscript to his letter; and in replying to Halley on July 14, 1686, he not only expresses his regret, but recounts the different new ideas which he had acquired from Hooke's correspondence, and suggests it as the best method "of compromising the present dispute" to add a _scholium_ in which Wren, Hooke, and Halley are acknowledged to have independently deduced the law of gravity from the second law of Kepler. At the meeting of April 28th, at which the manuscript of the _Principia_ was presented to the Royal Society, it was agreed that the printing of it should be referred to the council: that a letter of thanks should be written to its author; and at a meeting of the council on May 19th it was resolved that the manuscript should be printed at the society's expense, and that Dr. Halley should superintend it while going through the press. These resolutions were communicated by Dr. Halley in a letter dated May 22d; and in Newton's reply on June 20th, already mentioned, he makes the following observations: "The proof you sent me I like very well. I designed the whole to consist of three books; the second was finished last summer, being short, and only wants transcribing and drawing the cuts fairly. Some new propositions I have since thought on which I can as well let alone. The third wants the theory of comets. In autumn last I spent two months in calculation to no purpose, for want of a good method, which made me afterward return to the first book and enlarge it with diverse propositions, some relating to comets, others to other things found out last winter. The third I now design to suppress. Philosophy is such an impertinently litigious lady that a man had as good be engaged in lawsuits as have to do with her. I found it so formerly, and now I can no sooner come near her again but she gives me warning. The first two books, without the third, will not so well bear the title of _Philosophies Naturalis Principia Mathematica_; and therefore I had altered it to this: _de Moti Corporum, Libri duo_. But after second thoughts I retain the former title. 'Twill help the sale of the book, which I ought not to diminish now 'tis yours." In replying to this letter on June 29th Dr. Halley regrets that our author's tranquillity should have been thus disturbed by envious rivals, and implores him in the name of the society not to suppress the third book. "I must again beg you," says he, "not to let your resentments run so high as to deprive us of your third book, wherein your applications of your mathematical doctrine to the theory of comets, and several curious experiments which, as I guess by what you write ought to compose it, will undoubtedly render it acceptable to those who will call themselves philosophers without mathematics, which are much the greater number." To these solicitations Newton seems to have readily yielded. His second book was sent to the society, and presented on March 2, 1687. The third book was also transmitted, and presented on April 6th, and the whole work was completed and published in the month of May, 1687. Such is the brief account of the publication of a work which is memorable not only in the annals of one science or of one country, but which will form an epoch in the history of the world, and will ever be regarded as the brightest page in the records of human reason. We shall endeavor to convey to the reader some idea of its contents, and of the brilliant discoveries which it disseminated over Europe. The _Principia_ consists of three books. The first and second, which occupy three-fourths of the work, are entitled _On the Motion of Bodies_, and the third bears the title _On the System of the World_. The two first books contain the mathematical principles of philosophy, namely, the laws and conditions of motions and forces; and they are illustrated with several philosophical _scholia_ which treat of some of the most general and best-established points in philosophy, such as the density and resistance of bodies, spaces void of matter, and the motion of sound and light. The object of the third book is to deduce from these principles the constitution of the system of the world; and this book has been drawn up in as popular a style as possible, in order that it may be generally read. The great discovery which characterizes the _Principia_ is that of the principle of universal gravitation, as deduced from the motion of the moon, and from the three great facts or laws discovered by Kepler. This principle is: _That every particle of matter is attracted by or gravitates to every other particle of matter, with a force inversely proportional to the squares of their distances_. From the first law of Kepler, namely, the proportionality of the areas to the times of their revolution, Newton inferred that the force which kept the planet in its orbit was always directed to the sun; and from the second law of Kepler, that every planet moves in an ellipse with the sun in one of its foci, he drew the still more general inference that the force by which the planet moves round that focus varies inversely as the square of its distance from the focus. As this law was true in the motion of satellites round their primary planets Newton deduced the equality of gravity in all the heavenly bodies toward the sun, upon the supposition that they are equally distant from its centre; and in the case of terrestrial bodies he succeeded in verifying this truth by numerous and accurate experiments. By taking a more general view of the subject Newton demonstrated that a conic section was the only curve in which a body could move when acted upon by a force varying inversely as the square of the distance; and he established the conditions depending on the velocity and the primitive position of the body, which were requisite to make it describe a circular, an elliptical, a parabolic, or a hyberbolic orbit. Notwithstanding the generality and importance of these results, it still remained to be determined whether the forces resided in the centres of the planets or belonged to each individual particle of which they were composed. Newton removed this uncertainty by demonstrating that if a spherical body acts upon a distant body with a force varying as the distance of this body from the centre of the sphere, the same effect will be produced as if each of its particles acted upon the distant body according to the same law. And hence it follows that the spheres, whether they are of uniform density or consist of concentric layers, with densities varying according to any law whatever, will act upon each other in the same manner as if their force resided in their centres alone. But as the bodies of the solar system are very nearly spherical they will all act upon one another, and upon bodies placed on their surfaces, as if they were so many centres of attraction; and therefore we obtain the law of gravity which subsists between spherical bodies, namely, that one sphere will act upon another with a force directly proportional to the quantity of matter, and inversely as the square of the distance between the centres of the spheres. From the equality of action and reaction, to which no exception can be found, Newton concluded that the sun gravitated to the planets, and the planets to their satellites; and the earth itself to the stone which falls upon its surface, and, consequently, that the two mutually gravitating bodies approached to one another with velocities inversely proportional to their quantities of matter. Having established this universal law, Newton was enabled not only to determine the weight which the same body would have at the surface of the sun and the planets, but even to calculate the quantity of matter in the sun, and in all the planets that had satellites, and even to determine the density or specific gravity of the matter of which they were composed. In this way he found that the weight of the same body would be twenty-three times greater at the surface of the sun than at the surface of the earth, and that the density of the earth was four times greater than that of the sun, the planets increasing in density as they receded from the centre of the system. If the peculiar genius of Newton has been displayed in his investigation of the law of universal gravitation, it shines with no less lustre in the patience and sagacity with which he traced the consequences of this fertile principle. The discovery of the spheroidal form of Jupiter by Cassini had probably directed the attention of Newton to the determination of its cause, and consequently to the investigation of the true figure of the earth. The next subject to which Newton applied the principle of gravity was the tides of the ocean. The philosophers of all ages had recognized the connection between the phenomena of the tides and the position of the moon. The College of Jesuits at Coimbra, and subsequently Antonio de Dominis and Kepler, distinctly referred the tides to the attraction of the waters of the earth by the moon; but so imperfect was the explanation which was thus given of the phenomena that Galileo ridiculed the idea of lunar attraction, and substituted for it a fallacious explanation of his own. That the moon is the principal cause of the tides is obvious from the well-known fact that it is high water at any given place about the time when she is in the meridian of that place; and that the sun performs a secondary part in their production may be proved from the circumstance that the highest tides take place when the sun, the moon, and the earth are in the same straight line; that is, when the force of the sun conspires with that of the moon; and that the lowest tides take place when the lines drawn from the sun and moon to the earth are at right angles to each other; that is, when the force of the sun acts in opposition to that of the moon. By comparing the spring and neap tides Newton found that the force with which the moon acted upon the waters of the earth was to that with which the sun acted upon them as 4.48 to 1; that the force of the moon produced a tide of 8.63 feet; that of the sun, one of 1.93 feet; and both of them combined, one of 10-1/2 French feet, a result which in the open sea does not deviate much from observation. Having thus ascertained the force of the moon on the waters of our globe, he found that the quantity of matter in the moon was to that in the earth as 1 to 40, and the density of the moon to that of the earth as 11 to 9. The motions of the moon, so much within the reach of our own observation, presented a fine field for the application of the theory of universal gravitation. The irregularities exhibited in the lunar motions had been known in the time of Hipparchus and Ptolemy. Tycho had discovered the great inequality, called the "variation," amounting to 37', and depending on the alternate acceleration and retardation of the moon in every quarter of a revolution, and he had also ascertained the existence of the annual equation. Of these two inequalities Newton gave a most satisfactory explanation. Although there could be little doubt that the comets were retained in their orbits by the same laws which regulated the motions of the planets, yet it was difficult to put this opinion to the test of observation. The visibility of comets only in a small part of their orbits rendered it difficult to ascertain their distance and periodic times; and as their periods were probably of great length, it was impossible to correct approximate results by repeated observations. Newton, however, removed this difficulty by showing how to determine the orbit of a comet, namely, the form and position of the orbit, and the periodic time, by three observations. By applying this method to the comet of 1680 he calculated the elements of its orbit, and, from the agreement of the computed places with those which were observed, he justly inferred that the motions of comets were regulated by the same laws as those of the planetary bodies. This result was one of great importance; for as the comets enter our system in every possible direction, and at all angles with the ecliptic, and as a great part of their orbits extends far beyond the limits of the solar system, it demonstrated the existence of gravity in spaces far removed beyond the planet, and proved that the law of the inverse ratio of the squares of the distance was true in every possible direction, and at very remote distances from the centre of our system. Such is a brief view of the leading discoveries which the _Principia_ first announced to the world. The grandeur of the subjects of which it treats, the beautiful simplicity of the system which it unfolds, the clear and concise reasoning by which that system is explained, and the irresistible evidence by which it is supported might have insured it the warmest admiration of contemporary mathematicians and the most welcome reception in all the schools of philosophy throughout Europe. This, however, is not the way in which great truths are generally received. Though the astronomical discoveries of Newton were not assailed by the class of ignorant pretenders who attacked his optical writings, yet they were everywhere resisted by the errors and prejudices which had taken a deep hold even of the strongest minds. The philosophy of Descartes was predominant throughout Europe. Appealing to the imagination, and not to the reason, of mankind it was quickly received into popular favor, and the same causes which facilitated its introduction, extended its influence and completed its dominion over the human mind. In explaining all the movements of the heavenly bodies by a system of vortices in a fluid medium diffused through the universe Descartes had seized upon an analogy of the most alluring and deceitful kind. Those who had seen heavy bodies revolving in the eddies of a whirlpool or in the gyrations of a vessel of water thrown into a circular motion had no difficulty in conceiving how the planets might revolve round the sun by an analogous movement. The mind instantly grasped at an explanation of so palpable a character and which required for its development neither the exercise of patient thought nor the aid of mathematical skill. The talent and perspicuity with which the Cartesian system was expounded, and the show by which it was sustained, contributed powerfully to its adoption, while it derived a still higher sanction from the excellent character and the unaffected piety of its author. Thus intrenched, as the Cartesian system was, in the strongholds of the human mind, and fortified by its most obstinate prejudices, it was not to be wondered at that the pure and sublime doctrines of the _Principia_, were distrustfully received and perseveringly resisted. The uninstructed mind could not readily admit the idea that the great masses of the planets were suspended in empty space and retained in their orbits by an invisible influence residing in the sun; and even those philosophers who had been accustomed to the rigor of true scientific research, and who possessed sufficient mathematical skill for the examination of the Newtonian doctrines, viewed them at first as reviving the occult qualities of the ancient physics, and resisted their introduction with a pertinacity which it is not easy to explain. Prejudiced, no doubt, in favor of his own metaphysical views, Leibnitz himself misapprehended the principles of the Newtonian philosophy, and endeavored to demonstrate the truths in the _Principia_ by the application of different principles. Huygens, who above all other men was qualified to appreciate the new philosophy, rejected the doctrine of gravitation as existing between the individual particles of matter and received it only as an attribute of the planetary masses. John Bernouilli, one of the first mathematicians of his age, opposed the philosophy of Newton. Mairan, in the early part of his life, was a strenuous defender of the system of vortices. Cassini and Maraldi were quite ignorant of the _Principia_, and occupied themselves with the most absurd methods of calculating the orbits of comets long after the Newtonian method had been established on the most impregnable foundation; and even Fontenelle, a man of liberal views and extensive information, continued, throughout the whole of his life, to maintain the doctrines of Descartes. The chevalier Louville of Paris had adopted the Newtonian philosophy before 1720; Gravesande had introduced it into the Dutch universities at a somewhat earlier period; and Maupertuis, in consequence of a visit which he paid to England in 1728, became a zealous defender of it; but notwithstanding these and some other examples that might be quoted, we must admit the truth of the remark of Voltaire, that though Newton survived the publication of the _Principia_ more than forty years, yet at the time of his death he had not above twenty followers out of England. %MORGAN, THE BUCCANEER, SACKS PANAMA% A.D. 1671 JOHANN W. VON ARCHENHOLZ In the seventeenth century appeared "a class of rovers wholly distinct from any of their predecessors in the annals of the world, differing as widely in their plans, organizations, and exploits as in the principles that governed their actions." These adventurers were a piratical gang called buccaneers, or sometimes, as in the following narrative, freebooters, who became noted for their exploits in the West Indies and on South American coasts. The nucleus of this association of pirates is traced to bands of smugglers--English, French, and Dutch--who carried on a secret trade with the island of Santo Domingo. Later they settled there and on other islands, and after a while began to prey upon Spanish commerce. In 1630 they made their chief head-quarters on the island of Tortuga; in 1655 they aided in the English conquest of Jamaica, and ten years later settled the Bahamas. All these islands became centres of their activities. Most renowned among the leaders of the buccaneers was Sir Henry Morgan, a Welshman, who died in Jamaica in 1688. For years he carried stolen riches to England, and Charles II rewarded him with knighthood. Having pillaged parts of Cuba, he took and ransomed Puerto Bello, in Colombia (1668), and Maracaibo, in Venezuela (1669). In 1670 Morgan gathered a fleet of nearly forty vessels, and a force of over two thousand men, for the greatest of the exploits of the buccaneers, the capture and plunder of the wealthy city of Panama. By the end of the century the buccaneers had become dispersed among contending European armies, and little more was heard of them. Morgan's plan of capturing Panama was apparently attended with innumerable difficulties. The chief obstacle was the position of that city on the Pacific coast at such a great distance from the Caribbean Sea; and not an individual on board the fleet was acquainted with the road that led to the goal. To remedy this inconvenience, Morgan determined, in the first instance, to go to the island of St. Catharine, where the Spaniards confined their criminals, and thence to supply himself with guides. The passage was rapid. Morgan landed in that island one thousand men, who, by threatening to put to death everyone that hesitated for a moment to surrender, so terrified the Spaniards that they speedily capitulated. It was stipulated that, to save at least the honor of the garrison, there should be a sham fight. In consequence of this, a very sharp fire ensued, from the forts on one side, and on the other from the ships; but on both sides the cannons discharged only powder. Further, to give a serious appearance to this military comedy, the governor suffered himself to be taken, while attempting to pass from Fort Jerome to another fort. At the beginning the crafty Morgan did not rely too implicitly on this feint; and to provide for every event, he secretly ordered his soldiers to load their fusees with bullets, but to discharge them in the air, unless they perceived some treachery on the part of the Spaniards. But his enemies adhered most faithfully to their capitulation; and this mock engagement, in which neither party was sparing of powder, was followed for some time with all the circumstances which could give it the semblance of reality. Ten forts surrendered, one after another, after sustaining a kind of siege or assault; and this series of successes did not cost the life of a single man, nor even a scratch, on the part either of the victors or of the conquered. All the inhabitants of the island were shut up in the great fort of Santa Teresa, which was built on a steep rock; and the conquerors, who had not taken any sustenance for twenty-four hours, declared a most serious war against the horned cattle and game of the district. In the isle of St. Constantine Morgan found four hundred fifty-nine persons of both sexes; one hundred ninety of whom were soldiers, forty-two criminals, eighty-five children, and sixty-six negroes. There were ten forts, containing sixty-eight cannons, which were so defended in other respects by nature that very small garrisons were deemed amply sufficient to protect them. Besides an immense quantity of fusees and grenades--which were at that time much used--upward of three hundred quintals of gunpowder were found in the arsenal. The whole of this ammunition was carried on board the pirate's ships; the cannon, which could be of no service to them, were spiked; their carriages were burned, and all the forts demolished excepting one, which the freebooters themselves garrisoned. Morgan selected three of the criminals to serve him as guides to Panama. These he afterward, on his return to Jamaica, set at liberty, even giving them a share in the booty. The plan, conceived by this intrepid chieftain, inspired all his companions in arms with genuine enthusiasm; it had a character of grandeur and audacity that inflamed their courage; how capable they were of executing it the subsequent pages will demonstrate. Panama, which stood on the shore of the Pacific Ocean, in the ninth degree of northern latitude, was at that time one of the greatest, as well as most opulent cities in America. It contained two thousand large houses, the greater number of which were very fine piles of building, and five thousand smaller dwellings, each mostly three stories in height. Of these, a pretty considerable number were erected of stone, all the rest of cedar-wood, very elegantly constructed and magnificently furnished. That city was defended by a rampart and was surrounded with walls. It was the emporium for the silver of Mexico and the gold of Peru, whence those valuable metals were brought on the backs of mules--two thousand of which animals were kept for this purpose only--across the isthmus toward the northern coast of the Pacific. A great commerce was also carried on at Panama in negroes; which trade was at that time almost exclusively confined to the English, Dutch, French, and Danes. With this branch of commerce the Italians were intimately acquainted. They gave lessons in it to all the rest of Europe; and, as two things were necessary, in which the Genoese were by no means deficient--money and address--they were chiefly occupied in the slave trade, and supplied the provinces of Peru and Chile with negroes. At the period now referred to, the President of Panama was the principal intendant or overseer of the civil department, and captain-general of all the troops in the viceroyalty of Peru. He had in his dependency Puerto Bello and Nata, two cities inhabited by the Spaniards, together with the towns of Cruces, Panama, Capira, and Veragua. The city of Panama had also a bishop, who was a suffragan of the Archbishop of Lima. The merchants lived in great opulence; and their churches were decorated with uncommon magnificence. The cathedral was erected in the Italian style, surmounted with a large cupola, and enriched with gold and silver ornaments; as also were the eight convents which this city comprised. At a small distance from its walls there were some small islands, alike embellished by art and by nature, where the richest inhabitants had their country houses; from which circumstance they were called the "gardens of Panama." In short, everything concurred to render this place important and agreeable. Here several of the European nations had palaces for carrying on their commerce; and among these were the Genoese, who were held in great credit, and who had vast warehouses for receiving the articles of their immense trade, as also a most magnificent edifice. The principal houses were filled with beautiful paintings and the masterpieces of the arts, which had here been accumulated--more from an intense desire of being surrounded with all the splendor of luxury--since they possessed the means of procuring it--than from a refined taste. Their superabundance of gold and silver had been employed in obtaining these splendid superfluities, which were of no value but to gratify the vanity of their possessors. Such was Panama in 1670, when the freebooters selected it as the object of their bold attempt, and as the victim of their extravagancies, and immortalized their name by reducing it to a heap of ruins. In the execution of this design, which stupefied the New World, they displayed equal prudence and cruelty. Previous to the adoption of any other measure, it was necessary that the pirates should get possession of Fort St. Laurent, which was situated on the banks of the river Chagres. With this view, Morgan detached four ships, with four hundred men, under the command of the intrepid Brodely, who had happily succeeded in victualling the fleet, and who was intimately acquainted with the country. Morgan continued at the island of St. Catharine with the rest of his forces. His plan was to dissemble his vast projects against Panama as long as it was possible, and to cause the pillage of Fort St. Laurent to be regarded as a common expedition to which he would confine himself. Brodely discharged his commission with equal courage and success. That castle was situated on a lofty mountain, at the mouth of the river, and was inaccessible on almost every side. The first attempts were fruitless; and the freebooters, who advanced openly, without any other arms than their fusees and sabres, at first lost many of their comrades; for the Spaniards not only made use of all their artillery and musketry against them, but were also seconded by the Indians that were with them in the fort and whose arrows were far more fatal than the bullets. The assailants saw their companions-in-arms fall by their side without being able to avenge them. The danger of their present situation and the nature of their arms seemed to render the enterprise altogether impracticable. Their courage began to waver, their ranks were thrown into disorder, and they already thought of retiring, when the provocations of the Spaniards inspired them with new vigor. "You heretic dogs," cried they in a triumphant tone; "you cursed English, possessed by the devil! Ah, you will go to Panama, will you? No, no; that you shall not; you shall all bite the dust here, and all your comrades shall share the same fate." From these insulting speeches the pirates learned that the design of their expedition was discovered; and from that moment they determined to carry the fort or die to a man upon the spot. They immediately commenced the assault in defiance of the shower of arrows that were discharged against them, and undismayed by the loss of their commander, both of whose legs had been carried away by a cannon-ball. One of the pirates, in whose shoulder an arrow was deeply fixed, tore it out himself, exclaiming: "Patience, comrades, an idea strikes me; all the Spaniards are lost!" He tore some cotton out of his pocket, with which he covered his ramrod, set the cotton on fire, and shot this burning material, in lieu of bullets, at the houses of the fort, which were covered with light wood and the leaves of palm trees. His companions collected together the arrows which were strewed around them upon the ground, and employed them in a similar manner. The effect of this novel mode of attack was most rapid; many of the houses caught fire; a powder-wagon blew up. The besieged, being thus diverted from their means of defence, thought only of stopping the progress of the fire. Night came on; under cover of the darkness the freebooters attempted also to set on fire the palisades, which were made of a kind of wood that was easily kindled. In this attempt likewise they were crowned with success. The soil, which the palisades supported, fell down for want of support, and filled up the ditch. The Spaniards nevertheless continued to defend themselves with much courage, being animated by the example of their commander, who fought till the very moment he received a mortal blow. The garrison had, throughout, the use of their cannon, which kept up a most violent fire; but the enemy had already made too much progress to be disconcerted with it; they persevered in their attack, until they at length became masters of the fort. A great number of Spaniards, finding themselves deprived of all resource, precipitated themselves from the top of the walls into the river, that they might not fall alive into the hands of the freebooters, who made only twenty-four prisoners, and ten of these were wounded men, who had concealed themselves among the dead, in the hope of escaping their ferocious conquerors. These twenty-four men were all that remained of three hundred forty who had composed the garrison, which had shortly before been reënforced, for the President of Panama, having been apprised from Carthagena of the real object of the pirates' expedition, came to encamp, with thirty-six hundred men, in the vicinity of the threatened city. This information was confirmed to the freebooters after the capture of the fort. At the same time they learned that among this body of troops there were four hundred horsemen, six hundred Indians, and two hundred mulat-toes; the last of whom, being very expert in hunting bulls, were intended, in case of necessity, to send two thousand of those animals among the freebooters. It is scarcely credible that Brodely continued to command, notwithstanding the severity of his wounds; but he would not, by retiring, compromise the advantages which he had so dearly purchased; for out of four hundred men who had composed his little army, one hundred sixty had been killed, eighty wounded; and of these eighty, sixty were altogether out of the battle. The bodies of the French and English were interred; but those of the Spaniards were thrown down from the top of the fort and remained in a heap at the foot of its walls. Brodely found much ammunition and abundance of provisions, with which he was the more satisfied, as he knew that the grand fleet was greatly in want of both those articles. He caused the fort to be rebuilt, as far as was practicable, in order that he might defend himself there in case the Spaniards should make a speedy attempt to retake it. In this situation he waited for Morgan, who in a short time appeared with his fleet. As the pirates approached, they beheld the English flag flying on the fort, and abandoned themselves to the most tumultuous joy and excessive drinking, without dreaming of the dangers occurring at the mouth of the river Chagres, beneath whose waters there was a sunken rock. The coasting pilots of those latitudes came to their assistance, but their intoxication and their impatience would not permit them to attend to the latter. This negligence was attended with most fatal consequences and cost them four ships, one of which was the admiral's vessel. The crews, however, together with their ladings, were saved. This loss greatly affected Morgan, who was wholly intent upon his vast designs, but who, nevertheless, made his entrance into St. Laurent, where he left a garrison of five hundred men. He also detached from his body of troops one hundred fifty men for the purpose of seizing several Spanish vessels that were in the river. The remainder of his forces Morgan directed to follow himself. They carried but a small supply of provisions, not only that his march might not be impeded, but also because the means of conveyance were very limited. Besides, he was apprehensive lest he should expose to famine the garrison he had left in the fort, which did not abound with provisions, and was cut off on every side from receiving supplies; and it was likewise necessary that he should leave sufficient for the support of all the prisoners and slaves, whose number amounted very nearly to one thousand. After all these steps had been taken, Morgan briefly addressed his comrades, whom he exhorted to arm themselves with courage calculated to subdue every obstacle, that they might return to Jamaica with an increase of glory, and riches sufficient to supply all their wants for the rest of their lives. At length, on January 18th, he commenced his march toward Panama, with a chosen body of freebooters, who were thirteen hundred strong. The greatest part of their journey was performed by water, following the course of the river. Five vessels were laden with the artillery; and the troops were placed in a very narrow compass on board thirty-two boats. One reason why they had brought only a small quantity of provisions was because they hoped to meet with a supply on their route; but on the very day of their arrival at Rio de los Bravos the expectations of the pirates were frustrated. At the place where they landed they literally found nothing: the terror which they everywhere inspired had preceded them; the Spaniards had betaken themselves to flight, and had carried with them all their cattle and even the very last article of their movables. They had cut the grain and pulse without waiting for their maturity, the roots of which were even torn out of the ground: the houses and stables were empty. The first day of their voyage was spent in abstinence, tobacco affording them the only gratification that was not refused them. The second day was not more prosperous. In addition to the various impediments by which their passage was obstructed, want of rain had rendered the waters of the river very shallow, and a great number of trees had fallen into it, presenting almost insurmountable obstacles. On their arrival at the Cruz de Juan Gallego, they had no other alternative left but to abandon their boats and pursue their route by land; otherwise, they must have resigned themselves to the confusion necessarily consequent on retracing their steps. Animated, however, by their chieftains, they determined to try the adventure. On the third day their way led them to a forest, where there was no beaten path, and the soil of which was marshy. But it was indispensably necessary that they should leave this wretched passage, in order that they might reach--with incredible difficulties, indeed--the town of Cedro Bueno. For all these excessive fatigues they found no indemnification whatever; there were no provisions, not even a single head of game. These luckless adventurers at length saw themselves surrounded by all the horrors of famine. Many of them were reduced to devour the leaves of trees; the majority were altogether destitute of sustenance. In this state of severe privations, and with very light clothing, they passed the nights lying on the shore, benumbed with cold, incapable of enjoying, even in the smallest degree, the solace of sleep, and expecting with anxiety the return of day. Their courage was supported only with the hope of meeting some bodies of Spaniards, or some groups of fugitive inhabitants, and consequently of finding provisions, with an abundance of which the latter never failed to supply themselves when they abandoned their dwellings. Further, the pirates were obliged to continue their route at a small distance only from the river, as they had contrived to drag their canoes along with them, and, whenever the water was of sufficient depth, part of the men embarked on board them, while the remainder prosecuted their journey by land. They were preceded a few hundred paces by an advanced guard of thirty men under the direction of a guide who was intimately acquainted with the country; and the strictest silence was observed, in order that they might discover the ambuscades of the Spaniards, and, if it were possible, make some of them prisoners. On the fourth day the freebooters reached Torna Cavellos, a kind of fortified place which also had been evacuated, the Spaniards having carried away with them everything that was portable and consumed the rest by fire. Their design was to leave the pirates neither movables nor utensils; in fact, this was the only resource left them by which they could reduce those formidable guests to such a state of privation as to compel them to retire. The only things which had not been burned or carried off were some large sacks of hides, which were to these freebooters objects of avidity, and which had almost occasioned a bloody dispute. Previously to devouring them, it was necessary to cut them into pieces with all possible equity. Thus divided, the leather was cut into small bits, these were scraped and violently beaten between two stones. It was then soaked in water, in order to become soft, after which it was roasted; nor, thus prepared, could it have been swallowed if they had not taken most copious draughts of water. After this repast the freebooters resumed their route, and arrived at Torna-Munni, where also they found an abandoned fortress. On the fifth day they reached Barbacoas; but still no place presented to their view either man, animal, or any kind of provisions whatever. Here likewise the Spaniards had taken the precaution of carrying away or destroying everything that could serve for food. Fortunately, however, they discovered in the hollow of a rock two sacks of flour, some fruit, and two large vessels filled with wine. This discovery would have transported with joy a less numerous troop; but, to so many famished men it presented only very feeble resource. Morgan, who did not suffer less from hunger than the rest, generously appropriated none of it to his own use, but caused this scanty supply to be distributed among those who were just ready to faint. Many, indeed, were almost dying. These were conveyed on board the boats, the charge of which was committed to them; while those who had hitherto had the care of the vessels, were reunited to the body that was travelling by land. Their march was very slow, both on account of the extreme weakness of these men, even after the very moderate refreshment they had just taken, as well as from the roughness and difficulties of the way; and during the fifth day the pirates had no other sustenance but the leaves of trees and the grass of the meadows. On the following day the freebooters made still less progress; want of food had totally exhausted them, and they were frequently obliged to rest. At length they reached a plantation, where they found a vast quantity of maize in a granary that had just been abandoned. What a discovery was this to men whose appetites were sharpened by such long protractions! A great many of them devoured the grains in a raw state; the rest covered their shares with the leaves of the banana-tree, and thus cooked or roasted the maize. Reinvigorated by this food, they pursued their route; and, on the same day, they discovered a troop of Indians on the other side of the river, but those savages betook themselves to flight, so that it was impossible to reach them. The cruel freebooters fired on them and killed some of them; the rest escaped, exclaiming: "Come, you English dogs, come into the meadow; we will there wait for you." To this challenge the pirates were little tempted to answer. Their supply of maize was exhausted; and they were further obliged to lie down in the open air without eating anything. Hitherto, in the midst of privations the most severely painful, as well as of the most difficult labors, they had evinced an inexhaustible patience, but at length violent murmurs arose. Morgan and his rash enterprise became the object of their execrations: a great number of the freebooters were desirous of returning; but the rest, although discontented, declared that they would rather perish than not terminate an expedition so far advanced and which had cost them so much trouble. On the following day they crossed the river and directed their march toward a place which they took for a town or, at all events, for a village, where, to their great satisfaction, they thought they perceived at a distance the smoke issuing from several chimneys. "There, at last," said they, "we shall surely find both men and provisions." Their expectations were completely frustrated; not a single individual appeared throughout the place. They found no other articles of sustenance but a leather sack full of bread, together with a few cats and dogs, which were instantly killed and devoured. The place where they had now arrived was the town of Cruces, at which were usually landed those commodities which were conveyed up the river Chagres, in order to be carried by land to Panama, which was eight French leagues distant. Here were some fine warehouses built of stone, and likewise some stables belonging to the King of Spain, which, at the moment of the pirates' arrival, were the only buildings that remained untouched, all the inhabitants having betaken themselves to flight after they had set their houses on fire. Every corner of these royal buildings was ransacked by the freebooters, who at length discovered seventeen large vessels full of Peruvian wine, which were immediately emptied. Scarcely, however, had they drunk this liquor, which was to recruit their exhausted strength, than they all fell ill. At first they thought the wine was poisoned; they were overwhelmed with consternation, and were fully persuaded that their last hour was come. Their terrors were unfounded; as their sudden indisposition was easily accounted for by the nature of the unwholesome food they had so recently taken, by the extreme diminution of their strength, and the avidity with which they had swallowed the wine; in fact, they found themselves much better on the following day. As Morgan had been reduced to the necessity of removing, at this place, to a distance from all his ships, he was obliged to land all his men, not even excepting those who were most exhausted by weakness. The shallops alone, with sixty men, were sent to the spot where his vessels and largest ships had been left. A single shallop only was reserved to carry news, if occasion offered, to the flotilla. Morgan prohibited every man from going alone to any distance; and even required that they should not make excursions in troops amounting to less than a hundred men. Famine, however, compelled the freebooters to infringe this prohibition. Six of them went out to some distance in quest of food; the event justified the foresight of their chieftain. They were attacked by a large body of Spaniards, and could not without very great difficulty regain the village: they had also the mortification to see one of their comrades taken prisoner. Morgan now determined to prosecute his march. After reviewing his companions-in-arms he found that they amounted to eleven hundred men. As he foresaw that they were apprehensive lest their lost comrade should betray the secret of their enterprise and the state of their forces, Morgan made them believe that he had not been taken; that he had only lost his way in the woods, but had now returned to the main body. The freebooters were on the eighth day of their painful journey, and nothing but the hope of speedily terminating their labors could support them much longer, for they had now ascertained that they were on the way to Panama. An advanced guard of two hundred men was therefore formed, which was to watch the movements of the enemy. They marched onward for a whole day without perceiving any living object whatever, when suddenly a shower of three or four thousand arrows was discharged upon them from the top of a rock. For some minutes they were struck with astonishment; no enemy presented himself to their view. They beheld around them, at their feet, above their heads, nothing but steep rocks, trees, and abysses; and, without striking a single blow, they reckoned twenty of their comrades killed or wounded. This unexpected attack not being continued, they pursued their march across a forest, where, in a hollow way, they fell upon a large body of Indians who opposed their progress with much valor. In this engagement the freebooters were victorious, though they lost eight killed and ten wounded. They made every possible effort to catch some of the fugitives, but these fled away with the velocity of stags across the rocks, with all the turnings and windings of which they were intimately acquainted. Not a single man fell into their hands; the Indian chieftain was wounded; and, notwithstanding he lay on the ground, he continued to fight most obstinately until he received a mortal blow. He wore a crown of party-colored feathers. His death made a great impression on the Indians and was the principal cause of their defeat. The ground on which they had attacked the pirates was so favorable that one hundred men would have been fully sufficient to have destroyed the whole troop of freebooters. The latter availed themselves of the inconceivable negligence of the Spaniards in not taking more effectual measures for the defence of such an important pass. They exerted all possible diligence to make their way out of this labyrinth of rocks, where a second attack of a similar kind would have been attended with consequences of the most fatal tendency to them, and to get into an open and level country. On the ninth day they found themselves in a plain or spacious meadow, entirely divested of trees, so that nothing could shelter them against the ardor of the solar rays. It rained, however, most copiously at the moment of their arrival; and this circumstance added yet more to their difficulties. In a short time they were wetted to their skins. In case of a sudden attack their arms and ammunition would have afforded them but little assistance; while the Spaniards would be able most effectively to use their spears, which could not be damaged by the rain. No human means could remedy this inconvenience. The pirates had only to abandon themselves to their fate. Morgan most ardently desired that some prisoner might fall into his hands, from whose confessions, either voluntary or involuntary, he might obtain some information by which to direct his march. With this intention, fifty men were detached in different directions, with a promised reward of three hundred piasters, out of the society's stock, to the man who should bring in either a Spaniard or an Indian, exclusive of the share of booty to which he should be entitled. About noon they ascended a steep hill, from whose summit they began to discover the Pacific. At this sight, which announced the speedy termination of their miseries, they were transported with joy. From the top of this eminence they also perceived six ships departing from Panama, and sailing toward the islands of Taroga and Tarogiela, which were situated in the vicinity of that city. Panama itself for the present escaped their observation; but how was their satisfaction increased on beholding, in a valley, a vast number of bulls, cows, horses, and particularly of asses, which were under the care of some Spaniards, who betook themselves to flight the moment they saw the formidable pirates approaching? To the latter no _rencontre_ could be more desirable. They were ready to faint with famine and fatigue; the sustenance which they immediately devoured would contribute to give them that strength which every moment would become so necessary to them, and it is altogether inconceivable how the Spaniards could abandon such a prey to their famished enemies. This want of foresight can only be accounted for by the panic with which the Spaniards were seized. The spot which had just been deserted was occupied for some hours by the freebooters; they stood in great need of rest, and were in much greater want of provisions. They rushed therefore on the animals that had been left behind, of which they killed a great number, and devoured their half-raw flesh with such avidity that the blood streamed in torrents from their lips over the whole of their bodies. What could not be consumed on the spot they carried away with them, for Morgan, apprehensive of an attack by the flower of the Spaniards' troops, allowed them only a small space of time for repose. They resumed their march, but the uncertainty in which they had so long been involved was not yet at an end. Notwithstanding all that chieftain's experience, his spies could not succeed in taking a single prisoner--a circumstance, which seems almost incredible in a populous country--and after nine days' march Morgan was deprived of every hint that was so essentially necessary to him. Further, the freebooters were utterly ignorant how near they were to Panama, when, from the summit of a hill, they discovered the towers of that city. They could not refrain from shouting for joy. The air reëchoed with the sound of trumpets and cymbals; they threw up their caps in the air, vociferating, "Victory! victory!" In this place they halted and pitched their camp, with the firm determination of attacking Panama on the following day. At this time the Spaniards were in the utmost confusion. The first defensive step which they deemed it advisable to take was to despatch fifty horsemen for the purpose of reconnoitring the enemy. The detachment approached the camp within musket-shot and offered some insults to the freebooters, but speedily returned toward the city, exclaiming, "_Perros, nos veromos!_" ("You dogs, we will see you again!") Shortly after a second detachment of two hundred men appeared, who occupied every pass, in order that, after the victory--which they considered as infallible--not one single pirate might escape. The freebooters, however, beheld with the utmost concern the measures which were adopted in order to block them up, and, previously to every other consideration, turned their attention toward their abundant supply of provision. As they were prohibited from kindling any fire, they devoured the meat they had brought with them _entirely in a raw state_. They could not conceive how the Spaniards could carry their neglect or their fancied security to such a length as not to disturb that repose of which they stood so greatly in need; nor how they could allow them the necessary leisure for recruiting their exhausted strength and thus become the more fit for battle. They availed themselves of this oversight and were perfectly at ease; after they had glutted themselves with animal food they lay down upon the grass and slept quietly. Throughout the night the Spaniards made their artillery roar without intermission, in order to display their vigilance. On the ensuing day, which was the tenth of their march, January 27, 1671, the pirates advanced at a very early hour, with their military music, and took the road leading to Panama. By the advice, however, of one of their guides, they quitted the main road and went out of the way across a thick wood through which there was no footpath. For this the Spaniards were unprepared, having confined themselves to the erection of batteries and construction of redoubts on the highway. They soon perceived the inutility of this measure and were obliged to relinquish their guns in order to oppose their enemies on the contrary side; but not being able to take their cannons away from their batteries, they were, consequently, incapacitated from making use of one part of their defensive means. After two hours' march the freebooters discovered the hostile army, which was a very fine one, well equipped, and was advancing in battle array. The soldiers were clad in party-colored silk stuffs, and the horsemen were seated upon their mettlesome steeds as if they were going to a bull-fight. The President in person took the command of this body of troops, which was of considerable importance, both for the country and likewise for the forces supported there by Spain. He marched against the pirates with four regiments of the line consisting of infantry, besides twenty-four hundred foot-soldiers of another description, four hundred horsemen, and twenty-four hundred wild bulls under the conduct of several hundred Indians and negroes. This army, which extended over the whole plain, was discovered by the pirates from the summit of a small eminence, and presented to them a most imposing appearance, insomuch that they were struck with a kind of terror. They now began to feel some anxiety as to the event of an engagement with forces so greatly superior to them in point of numbers, but they were soon convinced that they must actually conquer or die, and encouraged each other to fight till the very last drop of their blood was shed; a determination this, which, on the part of these intrepid men, was by no means a vain resolution. They divided themselves into three bodies, placed two hundred of their best marksmen in the front, and marched boldly against the Spaniards, who were drawn up in order of battle on a very spacious plain. The Governor immediately ordered the cavalry to charge the enemy, and the wild bulls to be at the same time let loose upon them. But the ground was unfavorable for this purpose; the horsemen encountered nothing but marshes, behind which were posted the two hundred marksmen, who kept up such a continual and well-directed fire that horses and men fell in heaps beneath their shots before it was possible to effect a retreat. Fifty horsemen only escaped this formidable discharge of musketry. The bulls, on whose services they had calculated so highly, it became impracticable to drive among the pirates. Hence such a confusion arose as to completely reverse the whole plan of the battle. The freebooters, in consequence, attacked the Spanish infantry with so much the greater vigor. They successively knelt on the ground, fired, and rose up again. While those who were on one knee directed their fire against the hostile army, which began to waver; the pirates, who continued standing, rapidly charged their fire-arms. Every man, on this occasion, evinced a dexterity and presence of mind which decided the fate of the battle. Almost every shot was fatal. The Spaniards, nevertheless, continued to defend themselves with much valor, which proved of little service against an exasperated enemy whose courage, inflamed by despair, derived additional strength from their successes. At length the Spaniards had recourse to their last expedient: the wild cattle were let loose upon the rear of the freebooters. The buccaneers were in their element: by their shouts they intimidated the bulls, at the same time waving party-colored flags before them; fired on the animals and laid them all upon the ground, without exception. The engagement lasted two hours; and notwithstanding the Spaniards were so greatly superior, both in numbers and in arms, it terminated entirely in favor of the freebooters. The Spaniards lost the chief part of their cavalry, on which they had built their expectations of victory; the remainder returned to the charge repeatedly, but their efforts only tended to render their defeat the more complete. A very few horsemen only escaped, together with some few of the infantry who threw down their arms to facilitate the rapidity of their flight. Six hundred Spaniards lay dead on the field of battle; besides these, they sustained a very considerable loss in such as were wounded and taken prisoner. Among the latter were some Franciscans who had exposed themselves to the greatest dangers in order that they might animate the combatants and afford the last consolations of religion to the dying. They were conducted into Morgan's presence, who instantly pronounced sentence of death upon them. In vain did these hapless priests implore that pity which they might have expected from a less ferocious enemy. They were all killed by pistol-shots. Many Spaniards who were apprehensive lest they should be overtaken in their flight had concealed themselves in the flags and rushes along the banks of the river. They were mostly discovered and hacked to pieces by the merciless pirates. The freebooters' task, however, was by no means completed. They had yet to take Panama, a large and populous city, which was defended by forts and batteries, and into which the Governor had retired, together with the fugitives. The conquest of this place was the more difficult, as the pirates had dearly purchased their victory, and their remaining forces were in no respect adequate to encounter the difficulties attending such an enterprise. It was, however, determined to make an attempt. Morgan had just procured from a wounded captive Spanish officer the necessary information; but he had not a moment to lose. It would not do to allow the Spaniards time to adopt new measures of defence; the city was therefore assaulted on the same day, in defiance of a formidable artillery which wrought great havoc among the freebooters; and at the end of three hours they were in possession of Panama. The capture of that city was followed by a general pillage. Morgan, who dreaded the consequence of excessive intoxication--especially after his men had suffered such a long abstinence--prohibited them from drinking any wine under the severest penalties. He foresaw that such a prohibition would infallibly be infringed, unless it were sanctioned by an argument far more powerful than the fear of punishment. He therefore caused it to be announced that he had received information that the Spaniards had poisoned all their wine. This dexterous falsehood produced the desired effect, and for the first time the freebooters were temperate. The majority of the inhabitants of Panama had betaken themselves to flight. They had embarked their women, their riches, all their movables that were of any value and small in bulk, and had sent this valuable cargo to the island of Taroga. The men were dispersed over the country, but in sufficiently great numbers to appear formidable to the pirates, whose forces were much diminished, and who could not expect any assistance from abroad. They therefore continued constantly together, and for their greater security, most of them encamped without the walls. We have now reached the time when Morgan committed a barbarous and incomprehensible action, concerning which his comrades--some of whom were his historians--have given only a very ambiguous explanation. Notwithstanding that all the precious articles had been carried away from Panama, there still remained--as in every great European trading city--a vast number of shops, warehouses, and magazines filled with every kind of merchandise. Besides a very great quantity of wrought and manufactured articles, the productions of luxury and industry, that city contained immense stores of flour, wine, and spices; vast magazines of that metal which is justly deemed the most valuable of all because it is the most useful: extensive buildings, in which were accumulated prodigious stores of iron tools and implements, anvils and ploughs which had been received from Europe and were destined to revive the Spanish colonies. Some judgment may be formed respecting the value of the last-mentioned articles only when it is considered that a quintal (one hundredweight) of iron was sold at Panama for thirty-two piasters (about thirty-three dollars). All these multifarious articles, so essentially necessary for furnishing colonists with the means of subsistence, were, it should seem, of no value in the estimation of the ferocious Morgan because he could not carry them away; although, by preserving them, he might have made use of them by demanding a specific ransom for them. Circumstances might also enable him to derive some further advantages from them, but, in fact, whatever was distant or uncertain presented no attraction to this barbarian, who was eager to enjoy, but more ardent to destroy. He was struck by one consideration only. All these bulky productions of art and industry were for the moment of no use to the freebooters. Of what importance to him was the ruin of many thousand innocent families? He consulted only the ferocity of his character, and without communicating his design to any individual he secretly caused the city to be set on fire in several places. In a few hours it was almost entirely consumed. The Spaniards that had remained in Panama--as well as the pirates themselves, who were at first ignorant whence the conflagration proceeded--ran together and united their efforts in order to extinguish the flames. They brought water, and pulled down houses, with a view to prevent the further progress of that destructive element. All their exertions were fruitless. A violent wind was blowing, and, in addition to this circumstance, the principal part of the buildings in that city were constructed of wood. Its finest houses, together with their valuable furniture, among which was the magnificent palace belonging to the Genoese, the churches, convents, courthouse, shops, hospitals, pious foundations, warehouses loaded with sacks of flour, nearly two hundred other warehouses filled with merchandise--all were reduced to ashes! The fire also consumed a great number of animals, horses, mules, and many slaves who had concealed themselves and who were burned alive. A very few houses only escaped the fire, which continued burning upward of four weeks. Amid the havoc produced in every quarter by the conflagration, the freebooters did not neglect to pillage as much as they possibly could, by which means they collected a considerable booty. Morgan seemed ashamed of his atrocious act; he carefully concealed that he had ever executed it, and gave out that the Spaniards themselves had set their city on fire. %STRUGGLE OF THE DUTCH AGAINST FRANCE AND ENGLAND% A.D. 1672 C.M. DAVIES Seldom has any people held out so heroically against overwhelming numbers as did the Dutch in 1672. Of the various wars during the reign of Louis XIV, that which he carried on against Holland was one of the most important. By its settlement, at the Peace of Nimwegen (1678-1679), the long hostilities between France and Holland and their allies were brought to a close, and Holland was once more saved from threatened destruction. Louis, having invaded the Spanish Netherlands, had reluctantly consented to the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1668), by which he retained a small part of the Low Countries. By insisting on this treaty Holland gave deep offence to the French monarch, who in 1672 began a war of revenge against the Netherlands, where his schemes of large acquisition had been thwarted. His first attempt was to isolate Holland, and having purchased the King of Sweden, he bribed Charles II of England, uncle of William of Orange, to enter into a secret treaty against the Netherlands. The principal events of the war are narrated by Davies, who shows how the old spirit of the Dutch returned to them in this supreme hour of new peril to their liberties. The Dutch, though, in defence of their religion and liberties, they had beaten the first soldiers in the world, were never essentially a military nation; and in 1672 a long interval of peace, and devotion to the pursuits of commerce, had rendered them quite unfit for warlike enterprises. The army was entirely disorganized; the officers, appointed by the magistrates of the towns on the score of relationship or party adherence, without the slightest regard to their efficiency, were suffered, without fear of punishment, to keep the numbers of their regiments incomplete, in order that they might appropriate the pay of the vacancies; while the men, independent and undisciplined, were allowed to spend their time in the pursuit of some gainful trade or peaceful occupation, instead of practising military exercises. The disputes concerning the appointment of a captain-general had impeded any fresh levies, the recruits refusing to take the oath to the States except in conjunction with the Prince of Orange, and had induced many of the best and most experienced officers to take service in the French army; the fortifications of the towns were in a dilapidated condition, and no measures had been adopted for the security of the frontier. Such was the state to which party spirit had reduced a nation filled with brave, intelligent, and virtuous inhabitants, and governed by statesmen as able and wise as the world ever saw, when the two most powerful sovereigns of Europe declared war against her. The manifests were both issued on the same day. That of the King of England is strongly marked by the duplicity which was the distinguishing characteristic both of himself and of his court as then constituted. From the style of the document one might be led to suppose that he was forced into the war with extreme reluctance and regret, and only in consequence of the impossibility of obtaining redress by any other means for the deep injuries he had sustained. He declared that, so far back as the year 1664, his Parliament had complained of the wrongs and oppressions exercised by the Dutch on his subjects in the East Indies, and for which they had refused to make reparation by amicable means. They had openly refused him the honor of the flag, one of the most ancient prerogatives of his crown; had sought to invite the King of France to hostilities against him; and had insulted his person and dignity by the abusive pictures and medals exposed in all their towns. This expression was understood to allude to a medal complained of three years before, and to a portrait of Cornelius de Witt, in the perspective of which was a representation of the burning of Chatham. Cornelius de Witt being an ex-burgomaster of Dordrecht, the council of that town had, with a natural pride, caused this picture to be painted and hung up in the council-chamber. The extreme sensitiveness manifested by Charles on this point appeared to the States rather superfluous in a monarch whose own kingdom teemed with the most offensive truths relative to himself and his government. As if determined that the mode of commencing hostilities should be as lawless and unjust as the war itself, the court of England, several days before the declaration was issued, had commanded Sir Robert Holmes to attack the Dutch Smyrna fleet on its return. While cruising near the Isle of Wight, Holmes met the admiral, Sprague, by whom he was informed of the near approach of the vessels; but, anxious to secure to himself the whole of the booty, estimated at near a million and a half of guilders, he suffered Sprague to sail away in ignorance of his instructions, and leaving him with no more than nine frigates and three yachts. His covetousness, happily, proved the salvation of the fleet. After a short encounter of two days' duration, Holmes was forced to retire, having captured no more than three or four of the more inconsiderable ships, while the remainder gained their harbors in safety. The King of France appeared, by the tenor of his declaration of war, to imagine that his power and dignity entitled him to set at naught alike the natural rights of mankind and the law of nations; it resembled, indeed, rather the threat of a predatory incursion on the part of a barbarian chief than the justification of the taking up of arms by a civilized government. Without adducing a single cause of complaint, he satisfied himself with declaring that the conduct of the States had been such as it was not consistent with his glory to endure any longer. If anything, indeed, could justify the arrogant tone assumed by Louis, the circumstances in which he found himself would have done so. An army of one hundred twenty thousand, able and well-equipped troops, commanded by Condé and Turenne, and numbering in its ranks volunteers of the noblest families in France eager to distinguish themselves under the eye of their sovereign; funds lavishly supplied by the able minister of finance, Colbert; with vast magazines of ammunition and every other necessary collected, and winter quarters secured in the neighboring and friendly territories of Cologne and Muenster, seemed means almost absurdly disproportioned in magnitude to the end to be attained. At the same time he was but too well informed of the defenceless condition of the enemy. Jan de Witt and the States conceived that his first attempt would be upon Maestricht, the possession of which he was known to have long coveted, and that the difficulties of its conquest would be sufficient to deter from further enterprise a monarch of whose military prowess no very high idea was entertained, and who was supposed to be far more enamoured of the pomp and circumstance of war than of its toils and dangers. They accordingly fortified and provided Maestricht with the utmost care, leaving the frontier towns on the Rhine in an utterly inefficient state of defence. Aware of this fact, Louis commenced his operations on the side of Cleves, and, separating his army into four divisions, laid siege simultaneously to as many places. He himself summoned the town of Rhynberg, the Duke of Orleans sat down before Orsay, Condé was commanded to reduce Wesel, and Turenne, Burick. All surrendered within a week. To give an account of the capture of the towns which followed, would be but to heap example upon example of cowardice or treachery, or--as they are generally found together--both. Nothing less than entire unanimity and the most undaunted resolution could have enabled the Dutch to resist the overwhelming force employed against them; whereas, the miserable effect of the internal dissensions of the republic had been to destroy for the time all mutual confidence. In some places the garrisons, despising their incapable commanders, refused to act; or the governors, mistrustful of their undisciplined troops, lost all hope of prolonging a defence; in others, the detestation entertained by the magistrates toward the Orange party was so great that, preferring to submit to France rather than to a native stadtholder, they hastened to deliver up their towns to the invader; on the other hand, the friends of the house of Orange looked not without some complacency on the misfortunes which threatened the state, and which they hoped would reduce it to the necessity of raising the Prince to the dignities of his family; while in those places where the Catholics were numerous, the populace, under the guidance of the priests, forced both garrisons and governments to open their gates to the sovereign whom they hailed as the restorer of their religion. With scarcely a show of opposition, therefore, Louis advanced to the Rhine. The drought of the summer was so excessive that this river had become fordable in three places, which, being pointed out to the French by some peasants of Guelderland, the King determined on attempting the passage between Schenkenschans and Arnhem, near the Tollhuys, a village and tower about two miles distant from the separation of the branch of the river called the Wahal. The Prince of Orange, who was stationed with about twenty-two thousand men at Arnhem, and along the banks of the Yssel, instead of concentrating his forces to oppose the passage of the enemy, contented himself with detaching De Montbas to guard the Betuwe, and to throw succors if requisite into Nimwegen. But this general, deeming the troops placed under his command insufficient for the purpose required, abandoned his post. He was arrested and sent to Utrecht, but afterward allowed to escape. Immediately on the retreat of Montbas the Prince despatched General Wurtz, but still with a vastly inadequate force, to occupy the post at the Tollhuys. The French cuirassiers, led on by the Counts de Guiche and Revel, first waded into the ford under the fire of the artillery from the tower, which, however, as there were no more than seventeen men stationed in it, was not very formidable. They were followed by a number of volunteers, and in a short time the whole of the cavalry passed over with trifling loss. The Dutch troops, discouraged as well by the unexpectedness of the attempt as by their own inferiority in number, were driven back after a short skirmish. A bridge was then thrown across the river for the infantry, and thus this famous passage was accomplished with comparative ease and safety. As the position of the Prince of Orange on the Yssel, which in consequence of the drought was fordable throughout nearly the whole of its course, was now no longer tenable, he retired to Utrecht, abandoning Arnhem to the enemy, who soon after received the submission of Nimwegen and the whole of Guelderland, Thiel, and the Bommel. In order to put Utrecht into a state of defence, the Prince considered it necessary to burn down all the suburbs; a measure which, when he proposed to the States of the Province, he found them reluctant to comply with. He therefore immediately quitted that city, and with the whole of his forces made a further retreat into Holland. Thus left wholly unprotected, the States of Utrecht conceived that the only resource which remained to them was to mollify the conqueror by a speedy submission; and accordingly, while Louis was yet at Doesburg, they sent deputies to tender to him the keys of the city and the submission of the whole province. The King shortly after entered Utrecht in triumph. While the good-fortune, rather than the arms, of Louis subdued Guelderland and Utrecht, his allies, the Bishops of Cologne and Muenster, found no more vigorous resistance in Overyssel. Oldenzeel, Entschede, and other small towns yielded at once to their summons; Deventer, though well garrisoned and amply provided, was surrendered at once by the municipal government, who, by their exhortations and example, induced that of Zwol to adopt a like disgraceful course of conduct. The easily acquired spoil was divided among the captors; the King of France, who had furnished a subsidy of troops, placed garrisons in Campen and Elburg; the Archbishop of Cologne retained Deventer; Groll and Breevoort being allotted to the Bishop of Muenster, while Zwol was held in common. The troops of these warlike prelates exercised everywhere unbounded license and cruelties. Numbers of unhappy families were driven from their homes, and, taking refuge in Holland, added to the consternation which prevailed there. This province was now in imminent danger. No barrier remained, as it appeared, to oppose the progress of the enemy; the army of the Prince had dwindled to about thirteen thousand men; two of the frontier towns, Woerden and Oudewater, had solicited safeguards from the invaders; and Naarden was surprised by the Count of Rochefort. Had he marched on at once to Muyden he might have occupied that town also, a post of immense importance from its situation, as ships going to Amsterdam must come within reach of its cannon; and by means of a sluice there, the surrounding country may at any time be inundated. It had been left destitute of a garrison; but, the French commander remaining two or three days inactive at Naarden, time was afforded to John Maurice of Nassau to enter Muyden with a strong body of troops, and the chance thus lost was gone forever. Amazed at the rapid advances of the invader, and dispirited by the symptoms of daily increasing aversion which the great body of the people manifested to his government, the courage of Jan de Witt at this crisis so entirely forsook him that he took upon himself the disgrace of being the first to propose to the States of Holland that they should implore mercy from the conqueror. The resolution was immediately adopted, and by them proposed to the States-General, where it was passed with the dissentient voice only of Zealand, who was of opinion that they should treat simultaneously with England, from whence that province had to apprehend the principal danger. A deputation was accordingly sent to Louis, at Keppel, near Doesburg, headed by De Groot, and commissioned to inquire upon what terms his majesty was inclined to grant peace to the republic. They were answered by Louvois, that the King was not disposed to restore any of the conquests he had made or to enter into any negotiation unless the deputies were furnished with full powers and instructions as to what the States intended to offer. Returning to The Hague, De Groot made his report to the States of Holland, and, representing the desperate condition of their affairs, recommended that Louis should be gratified with Maestricht and all the other towns of the generality; and that a sum should be offered him to defray the expenses of the war, provided the King would leave them in possession of their liberty and sovereignty. Leyden, Haarlem, and most of the other towns followed the example of the nobles in receiving these pusillanimous counsels with approbation. Amsterdam, however, proved that the spirit of the "Gueux" was not yet utterly extinct in Holland. Prevailing with four towns of North Holland to follow their example, the Council of Amsterdam refused to send deputies to debate upon the question of granting full powers to the ambassadors, and made vigorous preparations for the defence of their city. They repaired the fortifications, and strengthened them with considerable outworks, the magistrates themselves being the first to sacrifice their magnificent country houses in the suburbs for this purpose; they assigned to each of the regiments of burgher guards, who were ten thousand in number, a portion of the city to watch; took into their pay as soldiers all those inhabitants whom the cessation of trade would throw out of employment; stationed outlyers in the Y, Amstel, Zuyder Zee, and Pampus, and, cutting the dikes, laid the country to a great distance round under water. They likewise passed a resolution that, though all the rest of Holland should make terms with the conqueror, they would sustain the siege single-handed till some friendly power should afford them assistance. The causes which combined to expose the United Provinces to these terrible disasters by land had, happily, no influence on their affairs by sea. The fleet, commanded by De Ruyter, an officer surpassed by none of any age or nation in ability and courage, and of devoted fidelity to the present government, had been increased to ninety-one ships and frigates of war, fifty-four fire-ships, and twenty-three yachts. That of the allies, commanded by the Duke of York, comprised after the junction of the French squadron under the Count d'Etrées, one hundred forty-nine ships-of-war, besides the smaller vessels. Sailing in quest of the enemy, De Ruyter discovered them lying in Solebay, evidently unprepared for his approach. On this occasion was felt the disadvantage of intrusting an officer with the chief command without at the same time giving him sufficient authority to insure its beneficial exercise. In consequence of the presence on board of Cornelius de Witt, the deputy of the States, De Ruyter, instead of ordering an immediate attack, was obliged to call a council of war, and thus gave the English time to arrange themselves in order of battle, which they did with astonishing celerity. The Dutch advanced in three squadrons, nearly in a line with each other; the Admiral Bankert on the left to the attack of the French; Van Gend on the right, with the purpose of engaging the blue squadron commanded by Montague, Earl of Sandwich; while De Ruyter in the middle directed his course toward the red flag of the English, and, pointing with his finger to the Duke of York's vessel, said to his pilot, "There is our man." The pilot instantly steered the ship right down upon that of the Duke, and a terrific broadside was returned with equal fury. After two hours' incessant firing, the English admiral retreated, his ship being so damaged that he was obliged to transfer his flag on board the London. At the same time Braakel, a captain who had signalized himself in the burning of Chatham, with a vessel of sixty-two guns, attacked the Royal James, of one hundred four guns, the ship of the Earl of Sandwich, which he boarded and fired. Montague, refusing to surrender, was drowned in the attempt to escape in a boat. On the other hand, Van Gend, the admiral of the squadron engaged with the Earl's, was killed in the beginning of the action. The contest was maintained with the daring and steady valor characteristic of both nations, from seven in the morning until nightfall. The French had received instructions to keep aloof from the fight, and allow the two fleets to destroy each other; and these they took care to carry out to the full. Thus, the only assistance they afforded to the English was to prevent the Dutch squadron engaged in watching their movements from acting, an advantage more than counterbalanced by the discouragement their behavior occasioned among their allies. Though both parties claimed the victory, it undoubtedly inclined in favor of the Dutch, who sustained a loss somewhat inferior to that of their antagonists, and had the satisfaction, moreover, of preventing a descent upon Zealand by the combined fleets, which was to have been the immediate consequence of a defeat. This was, however, attempted about a month after, when the disasters attending the arms of the States by land, having induced them to diminish the number of their ships, De Ruyter received commands to remain in the ports and avoid an engagement. The whole of the English fleet appeared in the Texel provided with small craft for the purpose of landing. But, by a singular coincidence, it happened that, on the very day fixed for the attempt, the water continued, from some unknown cause, so low as to render it impossible for the vessels to approach the shore, and to impress the people with the idea that the ebb of the tide lasted for the space of twelve hours. Immediately after, a violent storm arose, which drove the enemy entirely away from the coasts. The internal condition of the United Provinces was at this time such as to incite the combined monarchs, no less than their own successes, to treat them with insolence and oppression. They beheld the inhabitants, instead of uniting with one generous sentiment of patriotism in a firm and strenuous defence of their fatherland, torn by dissensions, and turning against each other the rage which should have been directed against their enemies. The divisions in every province and town were daily becoming wider and more embittered. Though both parties had merited an equal share of blame for the present miscarriages, the people imputed them exclusively to the government of Jan de Witt and his adherents; who, they said, had betrayed and sold the country to France; and this accusation to which their late pusillanimous counsels gave but too strong a color of plausibility, the heads of the Orange party, though well aware of its untruth, diligently sustained and propagated. The ministers of the Church, always influential and always on the alert, made the pulpits resound with declamations against the treachery and incapacity of the present government as the cause of all the evils under which they groaned; and emphatically pointed to the elevation of the Prince of Orange to the dignities of his ancestors as the sole remedy now left them. To this measure De Witt and his brother were now regarded as the only obstacles; and, so perverted had the state of public feeling become that the most atrocious crimes began to be looked upon as meritorious actions, provided only they tended to the desired object of removing these obnoxious ministers. On one occasion, Jan de Witt, having been employed at the Chamber of the States to a late hour of the night, was returning home attended by a single servant, according to his custom, when he was attacked by four assassins. He defended himself for a considerable time, till having received some severe wounds he fell, and his assailants decamped, leaving him for dead. One only, James van der Graaf, was arrested; the other three took refuge in the camp, where, though the States of Holland earnestly enjoined the Prince of Orange and the other generals to use diligent means for their discovery, they remained unmolested till the danger was passed. Van der Graaf was tried and condemned to death. The pensionary was strongly solicited by his friends to gratify the people by interceding for the pardon of the criminals; but he resolutely refused to adopt any such mode of gaining popularity. Impunity, he said, would but increase the number and boldness of such miscreants; nor would he attempt to appease the causeless hatred of the people against him by an act which he considered would tend to endanger the life of every member of the Government. The determination, however just, was imprudent. The criminal, an account of whose last moments was published by the minister who attended him, was regarded by the populace as a victim to the vengeance of Jan de Witt, and a martyr to the good of his country. On the same day a similar attempt was made on the life of his brother, Cornelius de Witt, at Dordrecht, by a like number of assassins, who endeavored to force their way into his house, but were prevented by the interference of a detachment of the burgher guard. Cornelius had already, on his return from the fleet in consequence of impaired health, been greeted with the spectacle of his picture, which had given such umbrage to the King of England, cut into strips and stuck about the town, with the head hanging upon the gallows. These symptoms of tumult rapidly increased in violence. A mob assembling, with loud cries of "_Oranje boven! de Witten onder_!" ("Long live the Prince of Orange! down with the De Witts!") surrounded the houses of the members of the council, whom they forced to send for the Prince, and to pass an act, repealing the "Perpetual Edict," declaring him stadtholder, and releasing him from the oath he had taken not to accept that office while he was captain-general. Having been signed by all the other members of the council, this act was carried to the house of Cornelius de Witt, who was confined to his bed by sickness, the populace at the same time surrounding the house and threatening him with death in case of refusal. He long resisted, observing that he had too many balls falling around him lately to fear death, which he would rather suffer than sign that paper; but the prayers and tears of his wife and her threats, that if he delayed compliance she would throw herself and her children among the infuriated populace, in the end overcame his resolution. He added to his signature the letters V.C. _(vi coactus_), but the people, informed by a minister of their purport, obliged him to erase them. Similar commotions broke out at Rotterdam, Haarlem, Leyden, Amsterdam, and in other towns, both of Holland and Zealand, where the populace constrained the magistrates by menace and violence to the repeal of the edict. Reluctant to have such a measure forced upon them by tumult and sedition, the States of Holland and Zealand now unanimously passed an act revoking the Perpetual Edict, and conferring on the Prince of Orange the dignity of stadtholder, captain, and admiral-general of these provinces. Soon afterward Cornelius de Witt was thrown into prison and put to the torture on a false charge of planning the assassination of the Prince of Orange. Jan de Witt visited his brother in his agony, and a mob, bursting into the jail, seized upon both brothers as traitors and murdered them with horrid brutality. From this time the authority of William became almost uncontrolled in the United Provinces. Most of the leaders of the Louvestein party, either convinced of the necessity of his elevation to power in the present emergency or unwilling to encounter the vexation of a fruitless opposition, acquiesced in the present state of things; many were afterward employed by him, and distinguished themselves by fidelity and zeal in his service. The constant coöperation and participation in his views also of the pensionary, Fagel, gave him an advantage which none of his predecessors had ever enjoyed; the influence of the pensionaries of Holland having hitherto been always opposed, and forming a counterpoise, to that of the stadtholder. Unquestionably the Dutch, while thus parting with their liberties, reaped in some degree the benefits usually attendant on such a sacrifice, in the increased firmness and activity of a government conducted by a sole responsible head. At the time of the embassy of Peter de Groot to solicit peace from the King of France, the Prince had so far partaken of the general dejection as to ask permission of the States to nominate a deputy to treat of his particular interests; but no sooner was he created stadtholder than he began to adopt bolder and more spirited resolutions for the safety of a country to which he felt himself attached by new and stronger ties. Being invited by the Assembly of the States to give his opinion on the terms offered by the allied monarchs, he declared that their acceptance would entail upon them certain ruin, and that the very listening to such was pernicious in the highest degree to affairs, as tending to disunite and dispirit the people. He encouraged them to hope for speedy assistance from his allies; pointed out the resources which yet existed for the support of the war; and persuaded them rather to resolve, if they were driven to extremity, to embark on board their vessels and found a new nation in the East Indies, than accept the conditions. At the same time he spurned with indignation the flattering proposals made him both by the Kings of France and England; for--so singularly are men appointed to work out their own destiny--these monarchs now vied with each other, and were in fact principally instrumental, in exalting the power and dignity of a prince who ere long was to hurl the brother of the one from the throne of his ancestors, and prepare for the other an old age of vexation and disgrace, if not to lay the first foundation of the ruin of his kingdom in the next century. Louis, upon the appointment of the Prince to the office of stadtholder, was liberal in offers of honor and advantages to his person and family, and among the rest was one which he considered could scarcely fail of its effect; that, namely, of making him sovereign of the provinces under the protection of France and England. William, however, was found wholly immovable on this point, declaring that he would rather retire to his lands in Germany, and spend his life in hunting, than sell his country and liberty to France. Nor were the dispiriting representations made by the English ambassadors, that Holland was utterly lost unless he consented to the terms proposed, at all more influential; "I have thought of a means," he replied, "to avoid beholding the ruin of my country--to die in the last ditch." Neither, indeed, was the state of the country, though sufficiently deplorable, such as to leave him no choice but to become the vassal of her haughty enemies. The progress of the invader in Holland was effectually arrested by the state of defence into which that province had been put. Imitating the noble example set them by Amsterdam, the other towns readily opened the sluices of the Lek, Meuse, Yssel, and Vecht, inundating by that means the whole of the intervening tracts of land. The Dutch army was stationed at the five principal posts of the provinces; Prince Maurice John being placed at Muyden and Weesp; Field Marshal Wurtz at Gorcum; the Count of Horn at the Goejanverwellen Sluys; another detachment occupied Woerden; and the Prince himself took up his head-quarters at Bodergrave and Nieuwerburg. At length, finding his army increased by the addition of subsidies from Spain to twenty-four thousand men, William determined to infuse new vigor into the public mind by the commencement of offensive hostilities. He first formed the design of surprising Naarden and Woerden, both of which attempts, however, proved unsuccessful. He then marched toward Maestricht, captured and demolished the fort of Valckenburg, by which that town was straitened, and, with the view of diverting the force of the enemy by carrying the war into his own territory, advanced to the siege of Charleroi. But the middle of winter having already arrived before he commenced the enterprise, he was soon after compelled, by the severity of the weather, to abandon it and retire to Holland, which, during his absence, had, from the same cause, been exposed to imminent danger. The Duke of Luxemburg, who had been left in command of the forces in Utrecht on the departure of the King of France, for Paris, finding that the ice with which the land-water was covered, was sufficiently strong to bear the passage of cavalry, marched with a strong body of troops to Zwammerdam, and thence to Bodergrave, both of which were abandoned. The purpose of the French commander was to advance directly upon The Hague, and to force the States to acknowledge the sovereignty of the King of France; a measure which would, he conceived, involve the immediate submission of the whole of the provinces. But, happily, his project was defeated by a sudden thaw, which obliged him to return to Utrecht; and had it not been that the fort of Nieuwerburg, situated on the dike, which afforded the only passage thither, was deserted by the commander, _Pain-et-Vin_, his retreat must have been cut off, and his army exposed to almost certain destruction. Before his departure, Luxemburg revenged himself on the luckless villages he had captured, which he pillaged and burned to the ground.[1] Pain-et-Vin was afterward tried for breach of duty and executed. [Footnote 1: The accounts given by the Dutch historians of the revolting outrages and barbarities exercised by the invaders on this expedition are strenuously denied by the writers on the French side; their conduct in Utrecht, however, which we shall have occasion hereafter to notice, affords but too ample evidence that there was some truth in the accusations. On the other hand, that the Dutch authors are guilty of exaggeration may be easily believed, since one of them gravely puts into the mouth of the Duke of Luxemburg the following address to his soldiers: "Go, my children, plunder, murder, destroy, and if it be possible to commit yet greater cruelties, be not negligent therein, that I may see I am not deceived in my choice of the flower of the king's troops."] Though it might well have been feared that the failure of all the enterprises of the Prince of Orange would have renewed the discontents lately prevalent in the United Provinces, such an effect was in no degree produced. The very boldness of the designs, it seemed, had been the cause of their ill-success, and argued a zeal and activity for the public good which inspired unbounded confidence in his future measures. The appearance of renovated vigor in the United Provinces, moreover, encouraged surrounding states to make some demonstrations in their favor. They had wished to see them humbled, but not destroyed. The Emperor and princes of Germany, in especial, contemplated with dread the prospect of exchanging the neighborhood of the inoffensive and industrious people, who rarely appeared to them in any other light than as the dispensers of abundance, wealth, and luxury, for that of an ambitious and unscrupulous monarch, whose glory was in destruction, and from whose encroachments their boundaries would be for not one moment safe. Though deeply imbued with these sentiments, the Elector of Brandenburg had hitherto been deterred from lending them any assistance, lest, should they be forced to make a peace with the King of France, the whole power and vengeance of that monarch might be directed against himself. He now induced the Emperor Leopold to enter into an alliance with him, by virtue of which he levied a force of twenty-four thousand men, to be joined with an equal number furnished by himself, for the purpose of opposing the advances of Louis. Though the secret treaty which the Emperor had made with France, binding himself not to afford aid to any member of the Triple Alliance, and of which the Elector was in ignorance, limited the employment of the imperial army strictly to the protection of the empire, and consequently prevented it from marching at once to the support of the provinces, its movement was of considerable advantage to their affairs, in calling off Turenne from Bois-le-Duc, to which he had laid siege, to the defence of the places on the Rhine. The Bishops of Muenster and Cologne, also, whom the brave defence of the garrison of Groningen had forced to raise the siege, were under the necessity of abandoning both that province and Guelderland, and hastening to the protection of their own territories. Among the benefits which the Dutch anticipated with the utmost confidence as the consequence of the elevation of the Prince of Orange to his paternal dignities was the appeasing the hostility of his uncle, the King of England. In this, however, they were wholly deceived. On the meeting of Parliament in this year, the chancellor, Shaftesbury, addressed the two Houses in a strain of hostile feeling to the Dutch nation, more bitter than the court as yet ventured to express. He represented that, "besides the personal indignities in the way of pictures, medals, and other public affronts which the King received from the States, they came at last to such a height of insolence as to deny him the honor of the flag, though an undoubted jewel of the crown, and disputed the King's title to it in all the courts of Europe, making great offers to the French King if he would stand by them in this particular. "But both kings, knowing their own interest, resolved to join against them, who were the common enemies of all monarchies, but especially the English, their only competitor in commerce and naval power, and the chief obstacle to their attainment of the dominion they aimed at, a dominion as universal as that of Rome; and so intoxicated were they with that vast ambition that under all their present distress and danger they haughtily rejected every overture for a treaty or a cessation of arms; that the war was a just and necessary measure, advised by the Parliament itself from the conviction that, at any rate, _Delenda est Carthago_--such a government'must be destroyed; and that therefore the King may well say it was their war; which had never been begun, but that the States refused him satisfaction because they believed him to be in so great want of money that they must sit down under any affronts." But the Parliament, always disinclined to the war, had now begun to view it with absolute aversion; and though moved, by the King's representations of the embarrassed condition he should be reduced to if the supply were refused, to yield a subsidy of seventy thousand pounds a month for eighteen months, they forced him to pay a high price for their complaisance by extorting his consent to the "Test Act." By the operation of this act, the Duke of York, the inveterate enemy of the Dutch, and Sir Thomas Clifford, the minister who had the most zealously pushed forward the business of the war, were forced to resign their offices. With the funds granted him by Parliament, Charles was enabled to complete the equipment of a fleet, which, when joined to a squadron of French ships under D'Estrées, numbered one hundred fifty sail. The Prince of Orange had wisely continued De Ruyter in the command of the fleet as lieutenant-admiral of the provinces, with almost unlimited instructions, and suffered himself to be wholly guided by him in naval affairs, interfering only so far as to reinstate Tromp in the office of admiral under the College of Amsterdam, and to effect a perfect reconciliation between him and De Ruyter--a matter which the placable and magnanimous temper of the latter rendered of easy accomplishment. Having failed in a scheme of blocking up the Thames by means of sinking vessels in the bed of that river, De Ruyter stationed himself at Schooneveldt, with the purpose of protecting the coast of Zealand against a meditated descent of the enemy. While at anchor he descried the hostile fleet approaching; but a calm, succeeded by rough weather, prevented them for some days from coming to an engagement. The Dutch were considerably inferior in strength to the allies, the number of their vessels being no more than fifty-two men-of-war and twelve frigates, of which, moreover, the equipages were, owing to the scarcity of seamen, by no means complete. But this deficiency was more than compensated by the spirit and conduct of their great commander. "The weaker our fleet is," observed De Ruyter, in answer to some remark made to him on the subject, "the more confidently I expect a victory, not from our own strength, but from the arm of the Almighty." Under a favorable breeze, the French and English ships bore down upon their unequal antagonists, in the full expectation that they would avoid the encounter, by retiring behind the sand-banks of Flushing. The Dutch, however, firmly awaited the shock, commenced by the squadron of French ships, which on this occasion had been placed in the van to avoid the imputation cast upon them in the last battle. They engaged with that of Tromp, whose impetuous firing compelled the French admiral to retire for a time; but quickly rallying, he returned to the charge with such vigor that Tromp was obliged to remove his flag on four different vessels successively. De Ruyter, meanwhile, had engaged the red squadron, commanded by Prince Rupert, which after a sharp contest he threw into some disorder, and succeeded in cutting off a considerable number of ships from the remainder. Instead, however, of pursuing his advantage, De Ruyter, becoming aware of the danger of his rival, who was now entirely surrounded by the enemy, hastened to his rescue. On seeing him approach, Tromp exclaimed: "Comrades, here is our grandsire [a pet name given to De Ruyter among the sailors] coming to help us; so long as I live I will never forsake him!" The generous aid was no less effectual than well timed, since the enemy, astonished at his unexpected appearance, fell back. "I am pleased to see," he said, "that our enemies still fear the Seven Provinces," the name of the vessel which carried his flag. The fight was continued with unremitting obstinacy till darkness separated the combatants, when the Dutch found that they had gained about three miles upon their antagonists. That the issue of such a contest should be doubtful was in itself equivalent to a victory on the side of the Dutch; a victory of which they reaped all the advantages, as well as the glory, since, besides delivering their coasts from the intended invasion, their loss was so inconsiderable that within a week the fleet was able to put to sea in its original numbers and strength. Another engagement, fought with less of energy and resolution on the side of the English than usually distinguished them, terminated in their retreat toward the Thames, which, De Ruyter conceiving to be a feint to draw the Dutch fleet off their coasts, he declined the pursuit. The movement, however, had its origin in a far different cause. The English sailors fully participated in the feelings entertained by the great body of the nation, who viewed the aggrandizement of their ally with jealousy, and the undeserved misfortunes of their enemy with pity, and considered every advantage gained over the Dutch as a step toward the completion of the sinister designs they suspected their own sovereign of harboring against their religion and liberties. They accordingly made no concealment of their reluctance to fight longer in such a quarrel. It was now become evident to the Government that the only mode of reconciling the people in any degree to the present state of things was the execution of some brilliant achievement which should flatter their national vanity and kindle their ambition or lead to the acquisition of spoil sufficiently considerable to afford some sensible assistance in supporting the war. A descent on Holland was therefore resolved on, or, if that were found impracticable, it was proposed to intercept the Indian fleet, whose arrival was hourly expected. With this view a formidable fleet of one hundred fifty sail made its appearance in the Texel, and was met by De Ruyter about five miles from the village of the Helder. The Dutch, though far inferior in number, having only seventy-five vessels, convinced that this struggle was to be the most desperate and the last, prepared themselves for it as men who had everything at stake. After a short but inspiring harangue, De Ruyter gave the signal for attack. As if with a presentiment that long years would elapse before they should again try the strength of each other's arm, the English and Dutch seemed mutually determined to leave upon the minds of their foes an ineffaceable impression of their skill and prowess. All the resources which ability could suggest or valor execute were now employed. Each admiral engaged with the antagonist against whom it had before been his fortune to contend. De Ruyter attached himself to the squadron of Prince Rupert; Tromp attacked Sprague, who commanded the blue flag; while Bankert was opposed to the French; the latter, however, after a short skirmish on the part of Rear Admiral Martel, who was unacquainted with the secret orders given to the commander, D'Estrées, dropped off to a distance; nor could all the signals made by Prince Rupert induce them to take any further share in the fight. Bankert, therefore, joined De Ruyter, who was engaged in a terrific contest with the squadron of Prince Rupert. The firing was kept up for several hours without cessation; the discharges from the cannon of the Dutch vessels being, it was said, as rapid as those of musketry, and in proportion of three to one to those of the enemy. Tromp, whose actions always reflected more honor on his courage than conduct, separated himself, as was his custom, from the remainder of the fleet, and pressed forward into the midst of the enemy. He had sustained a continued cannonading from the vessel of Sprague for upward of three hours, without a single one of his crew being wounded, when De Ruyter, who had forced Prince Rupert to retire, came to his assistance. The Prince, on the other side, joined Admiral Sprague, and the fight was renewed with increased ardor. The vessel of Tromp was so damaged that he was obliged to remove his flag on board of another; Sprague was reduced to a similar necessity of quitting his ship, the Royal Prince, for the St. George, which, ere long, was so much disabled that he was obliged to proceed to a third; but the boat in which he was passing being struck by a cannon-ball, sank, and himself and several others were drowned. Toward the close of evening one English man-of-war was on fire, and two foundered. Not a single ship-of-war was lost on the side of the Dutch, but both fleets were so much damaged as to be unable to renew the engagement on the next morning. Each side, as usual, returned thanks for the victory, to which, however, the English failed to establish their claim, neither by accomplishing the projected invasion or intercepting the East India fleet, the whole of which, except one vessel, reached the ports in safety. In the more distant quarters of the world the war was carried on with various success. The French captured the ports of Trincomalee, in Ceylon, and St. Thomas, on the coast of Coromandel--which were, however, recovered in the next year--and made an unsuccessful attempt on Curajao. The English possessed themselves of the island of Tobago and seized four merchantmen returning from India. But, on the other hand, the States' admiral, Evertson, made himself master of New York, and, attacking the Newfoundland ships, took or destroyed no less than sixty-five, and returned to Holland laden with booty. The King of France, meanwhile, well satisfied to have secured at so easy a rate a powerful diversion of the forces of Holland, and the mutual enfeebling of the two most formidable maritime powers of Europe, cared little how the affairs of his ally prospered, so that he had been enabled to pursue the career of his conquests on land. Marching in person at the head of his troops he laid siege to Maestricht, a town famous for its gallant defence against the Duke of Parma in 1579, but which now, notwithstanding several brisk and murderous sallies, capitulated in less than a month. With this achievement the campaign of Louis ended. The progress of his arms, and the development of his schemes of ambition had now raised him up a phalanx of enemies, such as not even his presumption could venture to despise. He had planned and executed his conquests in full reliance on the cooperation or neutrality of the neighboring powers, and found himself in no condition to retain them in defiance of their actual hostility. He had, from the first, been strongly advised by Condé and Turenne to destroy the fortifications of the less important towns, retaining so many only of the larger as to insure the subjection of the provinces. He had, however, deemed it more consonant to his "glory" to follow the advice of Louvois in preserving all his conquests entire, and had thus been obliged to disperse a large portion of his army into garrisons, leaving the remainder, thinned, moreover, by sickness and desertion, wholly insufficient to make head against the increasing number of his opponents. He therefore came to the mortifying resolution of abandoning the United Provinces, the possession of which he had anticipated with so much pride. This auspicious dawn of better fortunes to the provinces was followed by the long and ardently desired peace with England. The circumstances of the last battle, in which, as the English declared, "themselves, and the Dutch had been made the gladiators for the French spectators," had more than ever disgusted that nation with the alliance of an ambitious and selfish monarch, who, they perceived, was but gratifying his own rapacity at the expense of their blood and treasure. Spain had threatened a rupture with England unless she would consent to a reasonable peace; and even Sweden herself had declared, during the conferences at Cologne, that she should be constrained to adopt a similar course if the King of France persisted in extending his conquests. Should a war with these nations occur, the English saw themselves deprived of the valuable commerce they carried on in their ports, to be transferred, most probably, to the United Provinces; in addition to which consideration, their navigation had already sustained excessive injury from the privateering of the Zealanders, who had captured, it is said, no less than twenty-seven hundred English merchant-ships. These, and various other causes, had provoked the Parliament to use expressions of the highest indignation at the measures of the court, and to a peremptory refusal of further supplies for the war unless the Dutch, by their obstinacy in rejecting terms of peace, should render its continuance unavoidable. Aware of this disposition, the States had addressed a letter to the King, which, with sufficient adroitness, they had contrived should arrive precisely at the meeting of Parliament, offering the King restitution of all the places they had gained during the war, and satisfaction with respect to the flag, or "any other matter they had not already ordered according to his wishes." This communication, received with feelings of extreme irritation by the court, had all the effect intended on the House of Commons. It was in vain that the King complained of the personal insults offered him by the Dutch; in vain that the chancellor expatiated on their obstinacy, arrogance, and enmity to the English; and that the court party remonstrated against the imprudence of exposing England defenceless to the power of her haughty enemy. The Parliament persisted in refusing the solicited supply; voted the standing army a grievance; bitterly complained of the French alliance, and resolved that his majesty should be advised to proceed in a treaty with the States-General, in order to a speedy peace. A few days sufficed to accomplish a treaty; the Dutch obviating the principal difficulty by yielding the honor of the flag in the most ample manner. They now agreed that all their ships should lower their topsails and strike the flag upon meeting one or more English vessels bearing the royal standard, within the compass of the four seas, from Cape Finisterre to Staaten in Norway, and engaged to pay the King two million guilders for the expenses of the war. Shortly after, the Bishops of Muenster and Cologne, alarmed at the probability of being abandoned by the French to the anger of the Emperor, who had threatened them with the ban of the empire, consented to a treaty with the United Provinces, in virtue of which they restored all the places they had conquered. %DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI% LA SALLE NAMES LOUISIANA A.D. 1673-1682 FRANÇOIS XAVIER GARNEAU[1] [Footnote 1: Translated by Andrew Bell.] During the early colonization of New France, in the era of Count Frontenac, a remarkable spirit of adventure and discovery manifested itself in Canada among both clerics and laymen. This enterprise, in seeking to open up and colonize the country, indeed, showed itself under each successive governor, from the first settlement of Québec, in 1608, down to the fall, in 1759, of the renowned capital on the St. Lawrence. In the entailed arduous labor, full as it was of hazard and peril, the pathfinders of empire in the New World, besides laymen, were largely the Jesuit missionaries. This spirit of adventure specially began to show itself in the colony at the period when M. Talon became intendant, when the government of New France, at the time of Louis XIV's minister, Colbert, became vested directly in the French crown. Through Talon's instrumentality the colony revived, and by his large-minded policy its commerce, which had fallen into the hands of a company of monopolists, was in time set free from many of its restrictions. Before Talon quitted the country, he took steps to extend the dominion of France in the New World toward Hudson's Bay, and westward, in the direction of the Great Lakes. In 1671 he despatched a royal commissioner to Sault Ste. Marie, at the foot of Lake Superior, to assemble the Indians of the region and induce them to place themselves under the protection, and aid the commerce, of the French King. While thus engaged, the commissioner heard of the Mississippi River from the Indians; and Talon intrusted the task of tracking its waters to Father Marquette and to M. Joliet, a merchant of Québec. With infinite toil these two adventurous spirits reached the great river they were in search of, and explored it as far south as the Arkansas. Here unfriendly Indian tribes compelled them to return, without being permitted to trace the mighty stream to its outlet. This, however, is supposed to have been accomplished, in 1682, by Robert Cavalier, Sieur de la Salle, a daring young Frenchman, who descended the Mississippi, it is currently believed, to the Gulf of Mexico, naming the whole region Louisiana, in honor of Louis XIV. Whether La Salle actually explored the great river to its mouth is, among historians, still a moot point. It is supposed that early in his adventures he retraced his steps and returned to Canada, where, as well as in France, he had numerous detractors, among whom was De la Barre, the then Governor of New France. It is known that he was soon again in Québec, to meet his enemies, which he did successfully, after which he proceeded to France. Here he was royally received by the King, and, as a proof of the monarch's confidence in him, La Salle was intrusted with the command of a colonizing expedition which was sent to Louisiana by sea. This expedition never reached its destination, for differences with the commander of the vessels (Beaujeu) interfered with the direction of the expedition. The mouths of the Mississippi, it seems, were passed, and the ships reached the coast of Texas. Disaster now dogged the leader's footsteps, for Beaujeu ran one of the ships on the rocks, and then deserted with another. La Salle and some of his more trusty followers were left to their fate, which was a cruel one, for disease broke out in the ranks, and famine and savage foes made havoc among the survivors. His colony being reduced to forty persons, La Salle set out overland with sixteen men for Canada to procure recruits. On the way his companions mutinied, put La Salle to death, and but a handful of the party reached Canada, the remainder perishing in the wilderness. Were we to express in the briefest of terms the motives which induced the leading European races of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries who came to the Americas, we should say that the Spaniards went thither in quest of gold, the English for the sake of enjoying civil and religious freedom, the French in view of propagating the Gospel among the aborigines. Accordingly, we find, from the beginning, in the annals of New France, religious interests overlying all others. The members of the Society of Jesus, becoming discredited among the nations of Europe for their subserviency to power--usually exalting the rights of kings, but at all times inculcating submission, both by kings and their subjects, to the Roman pontiffs--individual Jesuits, we say, whatever may have been their demerits as members of the confraternity in Europe or in South America, did much to redeem these by their apostolic labors in the wilderness of the northern continent; cheerfully encountering, as they did, every form of suffering, braving the cruelest tortures, and even welcoming death as the expected seal of their martyrdom for the cause of Christ and for the advancement of civilization among barbarous nations. From Québec as a centre-point the missionary lines of the Jesuit fathers radiated in all directions through every region inhabited by our savages, from the Laurentian Valley to the Hudson's Bay territory, along the great-lake countries, and down the valley of the Mississippi. Scantily equipped, as it seemed to the worldly eye, with a breviary around the neck and a crucifix in hand, the missionary set forth, and became a pioneer for the most adventurous secular explorers of the desert. To such our forefathers owed their best earliest knowledge of vast regions, to whose savage inhabitants they imparted the glad tidings of the Gospel, and smoothed the way for native alliances with their compatriots of the laity, of the greatest after-import to the colony. Such devotedness, at once heroic and humble, could not but confound worldly philosophy, while it has gained for the members of the order the admiration of many Protestants. Thus we have the candid testimony of Bancroft, the able historian of the English plantations in this continent, that "The annals of missionary labors are inseparably connected with the origin of all the establishments of French America. Not a cape was doubled nor a stream discovered that a Jesuit did not show the way." On the other hand, there were instances where secular explorers, seeking to illustrate their names by great discoveries or to enrich themselves by traffic, opened a way for the after-labors of the missionary. The most celebrated of such were Champlain, Nicolet, Perrot, Joliet, La Salle, and La Verendrye. In regions south of the St. Lawrence, Père Druillettes was the first European who passed overland from that river to the eastern Atlantic seaboard, ascending the Chaudifere and descending the Kennebec in 1646. He did good service to the colony by preserving for it the amity of that brave nation, the only one which the Iroquois were slow to attack. In another direction, the traffickers and missionaries, constantly moving onward toward the sources of the St. Lawrence, had reached the upper extremity of Lake Huron. Pères Brébeuf, Daniel, Lalemant, Jogues, and Raimbault founded in the regions around its waters the Christianized settlements (_villages_) of St. Joseph, St. Michel, St. Ignace, and Ste. Marie. The last-named, seated at the point where Lake Huron communicates with Lake Erie, was long the central point of the northwestern missions. In 1639 Jean Nicholet, following the course of a river flowing out of Lake Michigan at Green Bay, was led within three days' navigation of "the Great Water," such was the distinctive name the aborigines gave to the Mississippi. In 1671 the relics of the Huron tribes, tired of wandering from forest to forest, settled down in Michilimackinac, at the end of Lake Superior, under the care of Père Marquette, who thus became the earliest founder of a European settlement in Michigan. The natives of the vicinity were of the Algonquin race; but the French called them _Sauteurs_, from their being near to Sault Ste. Marie. Between the years 1635 and 1647 communication with the region was little attempted, the hostile feeling of the Iroquois making the navigation of Lake Ontario perilous to adventurers, and obliging them to pass to and from the western mission field by the valley of the Ottawa. The Neuters' territory, visited by Champlain, and the southern lakeboard of Erie beyond Buffalo, were as yet almost unknown. The new impulse which had been given to Canada by Colbert and Talon began to bear fruit. Commerce revived, immigration increased, and the aborigines, dominated by the genius of civilization, feared and respected everywhere the power of France. Perrot, a famous explorer, was the first European who reached the end of Lake Michigan and the Miâmis country, where deputies from all the native tribes of the regions irrigated by the head waters of the Mississippi, the sources of the Red River and the St. Lawrence, responded to his call to meet him at the Sault Ste. Marie, From one discovery to another, as so many successive stages in a journey, the French attained a certainty that "the Great Water" did exist, and they could, in advance, trace its probable course. It appeared certain, from the recent search made for it in northerly and eastern directions, that its waters, so voluminous as the natives asserted, must at last find their sea-vent either in the Bay of Mexico or in the Pacific Ocean. Talon, who took a strong interest in the subject, during his intendancy recommended Captain Poulet, a skilful mariner of Dieppe, to verify the passage from sea to sea, through the Straits of Magellan. He induced M. de Frontenac to send M. Joliet into the region where the great stream, yet unseen, must take its rise; and follow its course, if found, till its waters reached the sea. The person thus employed on a mission which interested everyone at the time was a man of talent, educated in the Jesuits' College of Québec, probably in view of entering the Church, but who had gone into the peltry trade. He had travelled much in the countries around Lake Superior and gained great experience of the natives, especially those of the Ottawa tribes. M. Joliet and Père Marquette set out together in the year 1673. The latter, who had lived among the Potowatami Indians as a missionary, and gained their affections, was forewarned by them of the perils, they alleged, which would beset his steps in so daring an enterprise, admonishing him and his companion that the people of the farther countries would allow no stranger to pass through them; that travellers were always pillaged at the least; that the great river swarmed with monsters who devoured men,[1] and that the climate was so hot that human flesh could not endure it. [Footnote 1: There was some foundation for this report, as alligators abounded, at that time, in the lower waters of the river.] Having progressed to the farthest horde, over the Fox River, where Père Allouez was known, and the extremest point yet touched by any European, the adventurers found the people of the divers tribes living together in harmony; viz., the Kikapoos, Mascoutins, and Miâmis. They accorded the strangers a kind reception and furnished guides to direct the party, which was composed of nine persons in all--Joliet, Marquette, with five other whites, and two natives. On June 10th they set out, bearing two light canoes on their shoulders for crossing the narrow portage which separates the Fox River from that of Wisconsin, where the latter, after following a southerly, takes a western, course. Here their Indian guides left them, fearing to go farther. Arrived at the Lower Wisconsin they embarked and glided down the stream, which led the travellers through a solitude; they remarking that the levels around them presented an unbroken expanse of luxuriant herbage or forests of lofty trees. Their progress was slow, for it was not till the tenth day that they attained the confluence of the Wisconsin and Mississippi. But the goal was surely, if tardily, attained. They were now floating on the bosom of the "Father of Waters," a fact they at once felt assured of, and fairly committed themselves to the course of the doubled current. This event constituted an epoch in American annals. "The two canoes," says Bancroft, "with sails outspread under a new sky, sped their way, impelled by favoring breezes, along the surface of the calm and majestic ocean tributary. At one time the French adventurers glided along sand-banks, the resting-places of innumerable aquatic birds; at others they passed around wooded islands in midflood; and otherwhiles, again, their course lay through the vast plains of Illinois and Iowa, covered with magnificent woods or dotted with clumps of bush scattered about limitless prairie lands." It was not till the voyagers had descended sixty leagues of the great stream that they discovered any signs of the presence of man; but at length, observing on the right bank of the river a foot-track, they followed it for six miles, and arrived at a horde _(bourgade),_ situated on a river called by the natives Moingona, an appellation afterward corrupted into "Rivière des Moines." Seeing no one, the visitors hollowed lustily, and four old men answered the call, bearing in hand the calumet of peace. "We are Illinois," said the Indians: "you are our fellow-men; we bid you welcome." They had never before seen any whites, but had heard mention of the French, and long wished to form an alliance with them against the Iroquois, whose hostile excursions extended even to their country. They were glad to hear from Joliet that the colonists had lately chastised those whom no others could vanquish, and feasted the visitors, to manifest their gratitude as well as respect. The chief of the tribe, with some hundreds of his warriors, escorted the party to their canoes; and, as a mark of parting esteem, he presented a calumet, ornamented with feathers of various colors; a safe-conduct this, held inviolable among the aborigines. The voyagers, again on their way, were forewarned of the confluence of the Missouri with the main stream, by the noise of its discharging waters. Forty leagues lower, they reached the influx of the Ohio, in the territory of the Chouanows. By degrees the region they traversed changed its aspect. Instead of vast prairies, the voyagers only saw thick forests around them, inhabited by savages whose language was to them unknown. In quitting the southern line of the Ohio, they left the Algonquin family of aborigines behind, and had come upon a region of nomads, the Chickasaw nation being here denizens of the forest. The Dacotas, or Sioux, frequented the riverain lands, in the southern region watered by the great flood. Thus interpreters were needed by the natives, who wished to parley from either bank of the Mississippi, each speaking one of two mother-tongues, both distinct from those of the Hurons and Algonquins, much of the latter being familiar to Joliet and others of the party. Continuing their descent, the confluence of the Arkansas with the Mississippi was attained. The voyagers were now under the thirty-third parallel of north latitude, at a point of the river-course reported to have been previously reached, from the opposite direction, by the celebrated Spanish mariner De Soto. Here the Illinois chief's present stood the party in good stead, for on exhibiting his ornate calumet they were treated with profuse kindness. Bread, made of maize, was offered by the chief of the horde located at the mouth of the Arkansas River. Hatchet-heads of steel, in use by the natives, gave intimation that they traded with Europeans, and that the Spanish settlements on the Bay of Mexico were probably not far off. The waxing summer heats, too, gave natural corroboration to the same inferences. The party had now, in fact, attained to a region without a winter, unless as such be reckoned that part of its year known as "the rainy season." It now became expedient to call a halt, for the stored provisions were beginning to fail, and chance supplies could not be depended upon in such a wilderness as the bold adventurers had already traversed; and they were still more uncertain as to what treatment they might receive from savage populations if they proceeded farther. One thing was made plain to their perceptions: the Mississippi afforded no passage to the East Indian seas. They rightly concluded, also, that it found its sea outlet in the Bay of Mexico, not the Pacific Ocean. They had therefore now done enough to entitle them to the grateful thanks of their compatriots, and for the names of their two leaders to take a permanent place in the annals of geographical discovery. The task of ascending the great river must have been arduous, and the return voyage protracted. Arrived at the point where it is joined by the Illinois, they left it for that stream, which, ascending for a part of its lower course, Père Marquette elected to remain with the natives of tribes located near to its banks; while M. Joliet, with the rest of the party, passed overland to Chicago. Thence he proceeded to Québec, and reported his proceedings to the Governor, M. Talon at that time being in France. This duty he had to perform orally, having lost all his papers when shooting the rapids of the St. Lawrence, above Montreal. He afterward drew up a written report, with a tracing of his route, from memory. The encouragement the intendant procured for the enterprise fairly entitles him to share its glory with those who so ably carried it out; for we cannot attach too much honor to the memory of statesmen who turn to account their opportunities of patronizing useful adventure. M. Joliet received in property the island of Anticosti as a reward for his Western discoveries and for an exploratory voyage he made to Hudson's Bay. He was also nominated hydrographer-royal, and got enfeoffed in a seigniory near Montreal. Expecting to reap great advantage from Anticosti as a fishing and fur-trading station, he built a fort thereon; but after living some time on the island with his family, he was obliged to abandon it. His patronymic was adopted as the name of a mountain situated near the Rivère des Plaines, a tributary of the Illinois; and Joliet is also the appellation, given in his honor, of a town near Chicago. Père Marquette proceeded to Green Bay by Lake Michigan, in 1673; but he returned soon afterward and resumed his missionary labors among the Illinois Indians. Being then at war with the Miâmis, they came to him asking for gunpowder. "I have come among you," said the apostolic priest, "not to aid you to destroy your enemies' bodies, but to help you to save your own souls. Gunpowder I cannot give you, but my prayers you can have for your conversion to that religion which gives glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to all men." Upon one occasion he preached before two thousand warriors of their nation, besides the women and children present. His bodily powers, however, were now wellnigh exhausted. He decided to return to Mackinac; but while coasting the lower shores of Lake Michigan, feeling that his supreme hour was nigh, he caused the people in his canoe to set him ashore. Having obtained for him the shelter of a hut formed of branches, he there died the death of the righteous. His companions interred his remains near the river which yet bears his name, and set up a crucifix to mark the spot. Thus ended, amid the solitudes of the Western wilderness, the valuable existence of one whose name, too little known to his own age, will be remembered when hundreds of those which, however loudly sounded in the present, shall have passed into utter oblivion.[1] [Footnote 1: Guérin observes that, according to some authorities, La Salle, some time between the years 1669 and 1671, descended the Mississippi, as far as the Arkansas, by the river Ohio. There can be no doubt that the story is a mere figment.] The news of the discovery of the Mississippi made a great sensation in Canada, and eclipsed for a time the interest attaching to other explorations of the age, which were becoming more and more rife every year. Every speculative mind was set to work, as was usual on such occasions, to calculate the material advantages which might result, first to the colonists, and next to their mother-country, from access being obtained to a second gigantic waterway through the territories of New France; serving, as it virtually might in times to come, as a complement, or completing moiety for the former, enabling the colonists to have the command of two seas. Still, as the Gulf of Mexico had not been reached by the adventurers upon the present occasion, some persons had their doubts about the real course of the lower flood. There was therefore still in store credit for those who should succeed in clearing up whatever uncertainty there might be about a matter so important. "New France," says Raynal, "had among its people a Norman named Robert Cavalier de la Salle, a man inspired with the double passion of amassing a large fortune and gaining an illustrious name. This person had acquired, under the training of the Jesuits, among whom his youth was passed, activity, enthusiasm, firmness of character, and high-heartedness--qualities which that celebrated confraternity knew so well to discern and cultivate in promising natures committed to their care. Their most audacious and enterprising pupil, La Salle, was especially impatient to seize every occasion that chance presented for distinguishing himself, and ready to create such opportunities if none occurred." He had been resident some years in Canada when Joliet returned from his expedition to the Mississippi. The effect of so promising a discovery, upon such a mind as La Salle's, was of the most awakening kind. Joliet's report of what he experienced, and his shrewd conjectures as to what he did not see but which doubtless existed, well meditated upon by his fellow-genius, inspired the latter to form a vast design of exploration and traffic conjoined, in realizing which he determined to hazard both his fortunes and reputation. Cavalier Sieur de la Salle was born in Rouen, and the son of respectable parents. While yet a young man he came to Canada full of a project he had conceived of seeking a road to Japan and China by a northern or western passage, but did not bring with him the pecuniary means needful even to make the attempt. He set about making friends for himself in the colony, and succeeded in finding favor with the Count de Frontenac, who discerned in him qualities somewhat akin to his own. With the aid of M. de Courcelles and Talon he opened a factory for the fur traffic at Lachine, near Montreal, a name which (_China_) he gave to the place in allusion to the oriental goal toward which his hopes tended as an explorer. In the way of trade he visited Lakes Ontario and Erie. While the Canadians were yet excited about the discovery of the Mississippi, he imparted his aspirations regarding it to the Governor-general. He said that, by ascending, instead of descending, that great stream, a means might be found for reaching the Pacific Ocean; but that the outlay attending the enterprise could only be defrayed by combining with it an extended traffic with the nations of the West; that he would gladly make the attempt himself if a trading-post were erected for his use at the foot of Lake Ontario, as a basis for his operations, with an exclusive license to traffic in the Western countries. The Governor gave him the command of Fort Frontenac, to begin with. Obtaining, also, his recommendations to the Court, La Salle sailed for France in 1675, and gained all he wanted from the Marquis de Seignelai, son and successor of the great Colbert as minister of marine. The King bestowed on La Salle the seigniory of Cataraqui (Kingston) and ennobled him. This seigniory included Fort Frontenac, of which he was made the proprietor, as well as of Lake Ontario; conditioned, however, that he was to reconstruct the fort in stone. His majesty also invested him with all needful credentials for beginning and continuing his discoveries. La Salle, on his return to Canada, actively set about aggrandizing his new possession. Several colonists and some of the natives repaired to the locality, and settled under protection of his fort. He built in its vicinity three decked vessels--the first ever seen upon Lake Ontario. In 1677 he visited France again, in quest of aid to carry out his plans. Colbert and Seignelai got him a royal commission as recognized explorer of Northwest America, with permission to erect fortified posts therein at his discretion. He found a potent protector, also, in the Prince de Conti. La Salle, full of hope, sailed from La Rochelle in summer, 1678, with thirty seamen and artisans, his vessel freighted with equipments for his lake craft, and merchandise for barter with the aborigines. A brave officer, Chevalier de Tonti, went with him, proposing to share his fortunes. Arrived at Cataraqui, his energy put all his workpeople in activity. On November 18th he set sail from Fort Frontenac in one of his barks, loaded with goods and materials for constructing a second fort and a brigantine at Niagara. When he reached the head of Lake Ontario, his vessel excited the admiration of the savages; while the Falls of Niagara no less raised the wonder of the French. Neither had before seen the former so great a triumph of human art; nor the latter, so overpowering a spectacle of nature. La Salle set about founding his proposed stronghold at Niagara; but the natives, as soon as the defensive works began to take shape, demurred to their being continued. Not caring to dispute the matter with them, he gave his erections the form of a palisaded storehouse merely. During winter following, he laid the keel of a vessel on the stocks, at a place some six miles above the Falls. His activity redoubled as his operations progressed. He sent on his friend Tonti with the famous Récollet, Père Hennepin, to seek out several men whom he had despatched as forerunners, in autumn preceding, to open up a traffic he intended to carry on with the aborigines of the West. In person he visited the Iroquois and several other nations, with whom he wished to form trading relations. He has the honor of founding the town of Niagara. The vessel he there built he called the Griffin, because, said he, "the griffin has right of mastery over the ravens": an allusion, as was said, to his hope of overcoming all his ill-willers, who were numerous.[1] Be this as it may, the Griffin was launched in midsummer, 1679, under a salute of cannon, with a chanting of _Te Deum_ and shouts from the colonists; the natives present setting up yells of wonder, hailing the French as so many _Otkou_ (or "men of a contriving mind"). [Footnote 1: Some authors say that he named his vessel the Griffin in honor of the Frontenacs, the supporters in whose family coat-of-arms were two Griffins. Where all is so uncertain in an important matter, a third suggestion may be as near the mark as the first two. As the Norse or Norman sea-kings bore the raven for a standard, perhaps La Salle adopted the raven's master-symbol, in right of a hoped-for sovereignty over the American lakes.] On August 7th the Griffin, equipped with seven guns and loaded with small arms and goods, entered Lake Erie; when La Salle started for Detroit, which he reached in safety after a few days' sail. He gave to the expansion of the channel between Lakes Erie and Huron the name of Lake Ste. Claire, traversing which, on August 23d he entered Lake Huron. Five days later he reached Michilimackinac, after having encountered a violent storm, such as are not unfrequent in that locality. The aborigines of the country were not less moved than those of Niagara had been, at the appearance of the Griffin; an apparition rendered terrible as well as puzzling when the sound of her cannon boomed along the lake and reverberated from its shores. On attaining to the chapel of the Ottawa tribe, at the mission station, he landed and attended mass. Continuing his voyage, some time in September he reached the Baie des Puants, on the western lake board of Michigan, where he cast anchor. So far the first ship navigation of the great Canadian lakes had been a triumph; but the end was not yet, and it proved to be disastrous, for La Salle, hearing that his creditors had in his absence confiscated his possessions, despatched the Griffin, loaded with peltry, to Niagara, probably in view of redeeming them; but his vessel and goods were totally lost on the way. Meanwhile he started, with a trading-party of thirty men of different callings, bearing arms and merchandise. Passing to St. Joseph's, at the lower end of Lake Michigan, whither he had ordered that the Griffin should proceed on her proposed second voyage from Niagara, he laid the foundations of a fort on the crest of a steep height, washed on two sides by the river of the Miâmis, and defended on another side by a deep ravine. He set buoys at the entrance of the stream for the direction of the crew of the anxiously expected vessel, upon whose safety depended in part the continuation of his enterprises; sending on some skilful hands to Michilimackinac to pilot her on the lake. The vessel not appearing, and winter being near, he set out for the country of the Illinois Indians, leaving a few men in charge of the fort, and taking with him the missionaries Gabriel, Hennepin, and Zenobe, also some private men; Tonti, who was likewise of the party, having rejoined his principal, but without the men he was sent to seek, as he could not find them. The expedition, thus constituted, arrived toward the close of December at a deserted native village situated near the source of the Illinois River, in the canton which still bears La Salle's name. Without stopping here he descended that stream as far as Lake Peoria--called by Hennepin, "Pimiteoui"--on the margin of which he found encamped a numerous body of the Illinois. These Indians, though naturally gentle, yet turned unfriendly regards at first on the party, but, soon recovering from surprise at the appearance of the French, treated them with great hospitality; one of their attentions to the supposed wants of the visitors being to rub their wearied legs with bear's-grease and buffalo fat. These friendly people were glad to learn that La Salle meant to form establishments in their country. Like the Huron savages of Champlain's time, the Illinois, harassed as they were by the Iroquois, trusted that the French would protect them in future. The visitors remarked that the Illinois formed the sides of their huts with mats of flat reeds, lined and sewed together. All those the party saw were tall, robust in body, and dexterous with the bow. But the nation has been stigmatized by some early reporters as cowardly, lazy, debauched, and without respect for their chiefs. La Salle's people, hearing no mention of his ship all this while, began first to murmur, and then to leave him: six of them deserted in one night. In other respects events occurred ominous of evil for the termination of the enterprise. To occupy the attention of his companions, and prevent them from brooding on apprehended ills, as well as to guard them against a surprise by any hostile natives, he set them on erecting a fort upon an eminence, at a place four days' journey distant from Lake Peoria; which, when finished, he named Breakheart (_Crèvecoeur_), in allusion to the mental sufferings he then endured. To put an end to an intolerable state of suspense, in his own case he resolved to set out on foot for Frontenac, four hundred or five hundred leagues distant--hoping there to obtain good news about the Griffin; also in order to obtain equipments for a new bark, then in course of construction at Crèvecoeur, in which he meant to embark upon his return thither, intending to descend the Mississippi to its embouchure. He charged Père Hennepin to trace the downward course of the Illinois to its junction with the Mississippi, then to ascend the former as high as possible and examine the territories through which its upper waters flow. After making Tonti captain of the fort in his absence, he set out, March 2, 1680, armed with a musket, and accompanied by three or four whites and one Indian.[1] [Footnote 1: Charlevoix, by following the relation attributed to Tonti, has fallen into some obvious errors respecting La Salle's expedition to the Illinois River. Hennepin, an ocular witness, is assuredly the best authority, corroborated, as his narration is, by the relation and letters of Père Zenobe Mambrè.] Père Hennepin, who left two days before, descended the Illinois to the Mississippi, made several excursions in the region around their confluence; then ascended the latter to a point beyond the Sault St. Antony, where he was detained for some months by Sioux Indians, who only let him go on his promise to return to them next year. One of the chiefs traced on a scrap of paper the route he desired to follow; and this rude but correct chart, says Hennepin, "served us truly as a compass." By following the Wisconsin, which falls into the Mississippi, and Fox River, when running in the opposite direction, he reached Lake Michigan mission station, passing through, intermediately, vast and interesting countries. Such was the famous expedition of Hennepin; who, on his return, was not a little surprised to find a company of fur-traders near the Wisconsin River, led by one De Luth, who had probably preceded him in visiting that remote region. While Hennepin was exploring the upper valley of the Mississippi, La Salle's interests were getting from bad to worse at Crèvecoeur. But, for rightly understanding the events which at last obliged him to abandon that post, it is necessary to explain the state of his affairs in Canada, and to advert to the jealousies which other traffickers cherished regarding his monopolizing projects in the western regions of the continent. He came to the colony, as we have seen, a fortuneless adventurer--highly recommended, indeed; while the special protection he obtained from the Governor, with the titular and more solid favors he obtained at court, made him a competitor to all other commercialists, whom it was impossible to contend with directly. Underhand means of opposition, therefore--and these not always the fairest--were put in play to damage his interests and, if possible, effect his ruin. For instance, feuds were stirred up against him among the savage tribes, and inducements held out to his own people to desert him. They even induced the Iroquois and the Miâmis to take up arms against the Illinois, his allies. Besides this hostility to him within New France, he had to face the opposition of the Anglo-American colonists, who resisted the realization of his projects, for nationally selfish reasons. Thus they encouraged the Iroquois to attack La Salle's Indian allied connections of the Mississippi Valley; a measure which greatly increased the difficulties of a position already almost untenable. In a word, the odds against him became too great; and he was constrained to retire from the high game he wished to play out, which, indeed, was certainly to the disadvantage of individuals, if tending to enhance the importance of the colony as a possession of France. La Salle's ever-trusty lieutenant, the Chevalier de Tonti, meanwhile did all he could, at Crèvecoeur, to engage the Illinois to stand firm to their engagements with his principal. Having learned that the Miâmis intended to join the Iroquois in opposition to them, he hastened to teach the use of fire-arms to those who remained faithful, to put the latter on a footing of equality with these two nations, who were now furnished with the like implements of war. He also showed them how to fortify their hordes with palisades. But while in the act of erecting Fort Louis, near the sources of the river Illinois, most of the garrison at Crèvecoeur mutinied and deserted, after pillaging the stores of provision and ammunition there laid up. At this crisis of La Salle's affairs (1680) armed bands of the Iroquois suddenly appeared in the Illinois territory and produced a panic among its timid inhabitants. Tonti, acting with spirit and decision as their ally, now intervened, and enforced upon the Iroquois a truce for the Illinois; but the former, on ascertaining the paucity of his means, recommenced hostilities. Attacking the fort, they murdered Père Gabriel, disinterred the dead, and wasted the cultivated land of the French residents. The Illinois dispersed in all directions, leaving the latter isolated among their enemies. Tonti, who had at last but five men under his orders, also fled the country. While the Chevalier, in his passage from Crèvecoeur, was descending the north side of Lake Michigan, La Salle was moving along its southern side with a reënforcement of men, and rigging for the bark he left in course of construction at the above-named post, where, having arrived, he had the mortification to find it devastated and deserted. He made no attempt to refound it, but passed the rest of the year in excursions over the neighboring territories, in which he visited a great number of tribes; among them the Outagamis and Miâmis, whom he persuaded to renounce an alliance they had formed with the Iroquois. Soon afterward he returned to Montreal, taking Frontenac on his way. Although his pecuniary losses had been great, he was still able to compound with his creditors, to whom he conceded his own sole rights of trade in the Western countries, they in return advancing moneys to enable him to prosecute his future explorations. Having got all things ready for the crowning expedition he had long meditated, he set out with Tonti, Père Mambré, also some French and native followers, and directed his course toward the Mississippi, which river he reached February 6, 1682. The mildness of the climate in that latitude, and the beauties of the country, which increased as he proceeded, seemed to give new life to his hopes of finally obtaining profit and glory.[1] In descending the majestic stream, he recognized the Arkansas and other riverain tribes visited by Marquette; he traversed the territories of many other native nations, including the Chickasaws, the Taensas, the Chactas, and the Natchez--the last of these rendered so celebrated, in times near our own, by the genius of Chateaubriand. [Footnote 1: "A vessel loaded with merchandise belonging to La Salle, valued at 22,000 livres, had just been lost in the Gulf of St. Lawrence; several canoes, also loaded with his goods, were lost in the rapids of the same river. On learning these new misfortunes [in addition to others, of his enemies' procuring], he said it seemed to him that all Canada had risen up against his enterprises, with the single individual exception of the Governor-general. He asserted that the subordinates, whom he had brought from France, had been tempted to quit his service by rival traders, and that they had gone to the New Netherlands with the goods he had intrusted to their care; and as for the Canadians in his hire, his enemies had found means to detach them, also, from his interests."--Yet, "under the pressure of all his misfortunes," says a missionary, "I have never remarked the least change in him; no ill news seemed to disturb his usual equanimity: they seemed rather to spur him on to fresh efforts to retrieve his fortunes, and to make greater discoveries than he had yet effected."] Halting often in his descent to note the outlets of the many streams tributary to the all-absorbing Mississippi, among others the Missouri and the Ohio--at the embouchure of the latter erecting a fort--he did not reach the ocean mouths of the "Father of Waters" till April 5th, that brightest day of his eventful life. With elated heart, he took formal possession of the country--eminently in the name of the reigning sovereign of France; as he gave to it, at the same time, the distinctive appellation of Louisiana. Thus was completed the discovery and exploration of the Mississippi, from the Sault St. Antony to the sea; a line more than six hundred leagues in length. %KING PHILIP'S WAR% A.D. 1675 RICHARD HILDRETH This was the most extensive and most important of the Indian wars of the early European settlers in North America. It led to the practical extermination of the red men in New England. Various policies toward the natives were pursued by different colonists in different parts of the country. In New England the first white settlers found themselves in contact with several powerful tribes, chief among which were the Mohegans, the Narragansetts, and the Pequots. Some attempt was made to convert and civilize these savages, but it was not long before the English colonists were at war with the Pequots, the most dreaded of the tribes in southern New England. This contest(1636-1638) was mainly carried on for the colonists by the settlers of Connecticut. It resulted in the almost complete extermination of the Pequot tribe. After the union of the New England colonies (1643), formed principally for common defence against the natives, there was no considerable conflict between whites and Indians until the outbreak of King Philip's War, here described by Hildreth. Except in the destruction of the Pequots, the native tribes of New England had as yet undergone no very material diminution. The Pokanokets or Wampanoags, though somewhat curtailed in their limits, still occupied the eastern shore of Narragansett Bay. The Narragansetts still possessed the western shore. There were several scattered tribes in various parts of Connecticut; though, with the exception of some small reservations, they had already ceded all their lands. Uncas, the Mohegan chief, was now an old man. The Pawtucket or Pennacook confederacy continued to occupy the falls of the Merrimac and the heads of the Piscataqua. Their old sachem, Passaconaway, regarded the colonists with awe and veneration. In the interior of Massachusetts and along the Connecticut were several other less noted tribes. The Indians of Maine and the region eastward possessed their ancient haunts undisturbed; but their intercourse was principally with the French, to whom, since the late peace with France, Acadia had been again yielded up. The New England Indians were occasionally annoyed by war parties of Mohawks; but, by the intervention of Massachusetts, a peace had recently been concluded. Efforts for the conversion and civilization of the Indians were still continued by Eliot and his coadjutors, supported by the funds of the English society. In Massachusetts there were fourteen feeble villages of these praying Indians, and a few more in Plymouth colony. The whole number in New England was about thirty-six hundred, but of these near one-half inhabited the islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. A strict hand was held by Massachusetts over the Narragansetts and other subject tribes, contracting their limits by repeated cessions, not always entirely voluntary. The Wampanoags, within the jurisdiction of Plymouth, experienced similar treatment. By successive sales of parts of their territory, they were now shut up, as it were, in the necks or peninsulas formed by the northern and eastern branches of Narragansett Bay, the same territory now constituting the continental eastern portion of Rhode Island. Though always at peace with the colonists, the Wampanoags had not always escaped suspicion. The increase of the settlements around them, and the progressive curtailment of their limits, aroused their jealousy. They were galled, also, by the feudal superiority, similar to that of Massachusetts over her dependent tribes, claimed by Plymouth on the strength of certain alleged former submissions. None felt this assumption more keenly than Pometacom, head chief of the Wampanoags, better known among the colonists as King Philip of Mount Hope, nephew and successor of that Massasoit, who had welcomed the Pilgrims to Plymouth. Suspected of hostile designs, he had been compelled to deliver up his fire-arms and to enter into certain stipulations. These stipulations he was accused of not fulfilling; and nothing but the interposition of the Massachusetts magistrates, to whom Philip appealed, prevented Plymouth from making war upon him. He was sentenced instead to pay a heavy fine and to acknowledge the unconditional supremacy of that colony. A praying Indian, who had been educated at Cambridge and employed as a teacher, upon some misdemeanor had fled to Philip, who took him into service as a sort of secretary. Being persuaded to return again to his former employment, this Indian accused Philip anew of being engaged in a secret hostile plot. In accordance with Indian ideas, the treacherous informer was waylaid and killed. Three of Philip's men, suspected of having killed him, were arrested by the Plymouth authorities, and, in accordance with English ideas, were tried for murder by a jury half English, half Indians, convicted upon very slender evidence, and hanged. Philip retaliated by plundering the houses nearest Mount Hope. Presently he attacked Swanzey, and killed several of the inhabitants. Plymouth took measures for raising a military force. The neighboring colonies were sent to for assistance. Thus, by the impulse of suspicion on the one side and passion on the other, New England became suddenly engaged in a war very disastrous to the colonists and utterly ruinous to the native tribes. The lust of gain, in spite of all laws to prevent it, had partially furnished the Indians with fire-arms, and they were now far more formidable enemies than they had been in the days of the Pequots. Of this the colonists hardly seem to have thought. Now, as then, confident of their superiority, and comparing themselves to the Lord's chosen people driving the heathen out of the land, they rushed eagerly into the contest, without a single effort at the preservation of peace. Indeed, their pretensions hardly admitted of it. Philip was denounced as a rebel in arms against his lawful superiors, with whom it would be folly and weakness to treat on any terms short of absolute submission. A body of volunteers, horse and foot, raised in Massachusetts, marched under Major Savage, four days after the attack on Swanzey, to join the Plymouth forces. After one or two slight skirmishes, they penetrated to the Wampanoag villages at Mount Hope, but found them empty and deserted. Philip and his warriors, conscious of their inferiority, had abandoned their homes. If the Narragansetts, on the opposite side of the bay, did not openly join the Wampanoags, they would, at least, be likely to afford shelter to their women and children. The troops were therefore ordered into the Narragansett country, accompanied by commissioners to demand assurances of peaceful intentions, and a promise to deliver up all fugitive enemies of the colonists--pledges which the Narragansetts felt themselves constrained to give. Arrived at Taunton on their return from the Narragansett country, news came that Philip and his warriors had been discovered by Church, of Plymouth colony, collected in a great swamp at Pocasset, now Tiverton, the southern district of the Wampanoag country, whence small parties sallied forth to burn and plunder the neighboring settlements. After a march of eighteen miles, having reached the designated spot, the soldiers found there a hundred wigwams lately built, but empty and deserted, the Indians having retired deep into the swamp. The colonists followed; but the ground was soft; the thicket was difficult to penetrate; the companies were soon thrown into disorder. Each man fired at every bush he saw shake, thinking an Indian might lay concealed behind it, and several were thus wounded by their own friends. When night came on, the assailants retired with the loss of sixteen men. The swamp continued to be watched and guarded, but Philip broke through, not without some loss, and escaped into the country of the Nipmucks, in the interior of Massachusetts. That tribe had already commenced hostilities by attacking Mendon. They waylaid and killed Captain Hutchinson, a son of the famous Mrs. Hutchinson, and sixteen out of a party of twenty sent from Boston to Brookfield to parley with them. Attacking Brookfield itself, they burned it, except one fortified house. The inhabitants were saved by Major Willard, who, on information of their danger, came with a troop of horse from Lancaster, thirty miles through the woods, to their rescue. A body of troops presently arrived from the eastward, and were stationed for some time at Brookfield. The colonists now found that by driving Philip to extremity they had roused a host of unexpected enemies. The River Indians, anticipating an intended attack upon them, joined the assailants. Deerfield and Northfield, the northernmost towns on the Connecticut River, settled within a few years past, were attacked, and several of the inhabitants killed and wounded. Captain Beers, sent from Hadley to their relief with a convoy of provisions, was surprised near Northfield and slain, with twenty of his men. Northfield was abandoned, and burned by the Indians. "The English at first," says Gookin, "thought easily to chastise the insolent doings and murderous practice of the heathen; but it was found another manner of thing than was expected; for our men could see no enemy to shoot at, but yet felt their bullets out of the thick bushes where they lay in ambush. The English wanted not courage or resolution, but could not discover nor find an enemy to fight with, yet were galled by the enemy." In the arts of ambush and surprise, with which the Indians were so familiar, the colonists were without practice. It is to the want of this experience, purchased at a very dear rate in the course of the war, that we must ascribe the numerous surprises and defeats from which the colonists suffered at its commencement. Driven to the necessity of defensive warfare, those in command on the river determined to establish a magazine and garrison at Hadley. Captain Lathrop, who had been despatched from the eastward to the assistance of the river towns, was sent with eighty men, the flower of the youth of Essex county, to guard the wagons intended to convey to Hadley three thousand bushels of unthreshed wheat, the produce of the fertile Deerfield meadows. Just before arriving at Deerfield, near a small stream still known as Bloody Brook, under the shadow of the abrupt conical Sugar Loaf, the southern termination of the Deerfield Mountain, Lathrop fell into an ambush, and, after a brave resistance, perished there with all his company. Captain Moseley, stationed at Deerfield, marched to his assistance, but arrived too late to help him. Deerfield was abandoned, and burned by the Indians. Springfield, about the same time, was set on fire, but was partially saved by the arrival, with troops from Connecticut, of Major Treat, successor to the lately deceased Mason in the chief command of the Connecticut forces. An attack on Hatfield was vigorously repelled by the garrison. Meanwhile, hostilities were spreading; the Indians on the Merrimac began to attack the towns in their vicinity; and the whole of Massachusetts was soon in the utmost alarm. Except in the immediate neighborhood of Boston, the country still remained an immense forest, dotted by a few openings. The frontier settlements could not be defended against a foe familiar with localities, scattered in small parties, skilful in concealment, and watching with patience for some unguarded or favorable moment. Those settlements were mostly broken up, and the inhabitants, retiring toward Boston, spread everywhere dread and intense hatred of "the bloody heathen." Even the praying Indians and the small dependent and tributary tribes became objects of suspicion and terror. They had been employed at first as scouts and auxiliaries, and to good advantage; but some few, less confirmed in the faith, having deserted to the enemy, the whole body of them were denounced as traitors. Eliot the apostle, and Gookin, superintendent of the subject Indians, exposed themselves to insults, and even to danger, by their efforts to stem this headlong fury, to which several of the magistrates opposed but a feeble resistance. Troops were sent to break up the praying villages at Mendon, Grafton, and others in that quarter. The Natick Indians, "those poor despised sheep of Christ," as Gookin affectionately calls them, were hurried off to Deer Island, in Boston harbor, where they suffered excessively from a severe winter. A part of the praying Indians of Plymouth colony were confined, in like manner, on the islands in Plymouth harbor. Not content with realities sufficiently frightful, superstition, as usual, added bugbears of her own. Indian bows were seen in the sky, and scalps in the moon. The northern lights became an object of terror. Phantom horsemen careered among the clouds or were heard to gallop invisible through the air. The howling of wolves was turned into a terrible omen. The war was regarded as a special judgment in punishment of prevailing sins. Among these sins the General Court of Massachusetts, after consultation with the elders, enumerated: Neglect in the training of the children of church members; pride, in men's wearing long and curled hair; excess in apparel; naked breasts and arms, and superfluous ribbons; the toleration of Quakers; hurry to leave meeting before blessing asked; profane cursing and swearing; tippling-houses; want of respect for parents; idleness; extortion in shopkeepers and mechanics; and the riding from town to town of unmarried men and women, under pretence of attending lectures--"a sinful custom, tending to lewdness." Penalties were denounced against all these offences; and the persecution of the Quakers was again renewed. A Quaker woman had recently frightened the Old South congregation in Boston by entering that meeting-house clothed in sackcloth, with ashes on her head, her feet bare, and her face blackened, intending to personify the small-pox, with which she threatened the colony, in punishment for its sins. About the time of the first collision with Philip, the Tarenteens, or Eastern Indians, had attacked the settlements in Maine and New Hampshire, plundering and burning the houses, and massacring such of the inhabitants as fell into their hands. This sudden diffusion of hostilities and vigor of attack from opposite quarters made the colonists believe that Philip had long been plotting and had gradually matured an extensive conspiracy, into which most of the tribes had deliberately entered for the extermination of the whites. This belief infuriated the colonists and suggested some very questionable proceedings. It seems, however, to have originated, like the war itself, from mere suspicions. The same griefs pressed upon all the tribes; and the struggle once commenced, the awe which the colonists inspired thrown off, the greater part were ready to join in the contest. But there is no evidence of any deliberate concert; nor, in fact, were the Indians united. Had they been so, the war would have been far more serious. The Connecticut tribes proved faithful, and that colony remained untouched. Uncas and Ninigret continued friendly; even the Narragansetts, in spite of so many former provocations, had not yet taken up arms. But they were strongly suspected of intention to do so, and were accused by Uncas of giving, notwithstanding their recent assurances, aid and shelter to the hostile tribes. An attempt had lately been made to revive the union of the New England colonies. At a meeting of commissioners, those from Plymouth presented a narrative of the origin and progress of the present hostilities. Upon the strength of this narrative the war was pronounced "just and necessary," and a resolution was passed to carry it on at the joint expense, and to raise for that purpose a thousand men, one-half to be mounted dragoons. If the Narragansetts were not crushed during the winter, it was feared they might break out openly hostile in the spring; and at a subsequent meeting a thousand men were ordered to be levied to coöperate in an expedition specially against them. The winter was unfavorable to the Indians; the leafless woods no longer concealed their lurking attacks. The frozen surface of the swamps made the Indian fastnesses accessible to the colonists. The forces destined against the Narragansetts--six companies from Massachusetts, under Major Appleton; two from Plymouth, under Major Bradford; and five from Connecticut, under Major Treat--were placed under the command of Josiah Winslow, Governor of Plymouth since Prince's death--son of that Edward Winslow so conspicuous in the earlier history of the colony. The Massachusetts and Plymouth forces marched to Petasquamscot, on the west shore of Narragansett Bay, where they made some forty prisoners. Being joined by the troops from Connecticut, and guided by an Indian deserter, after a march of fifteen miles through a deep snow they approached a swamp in what is now the town of South Kingston, one of the ancient strongholds of the Narragansetts. Driving the Indian scouts before them, and penetrating the swamp, the colonial soldiers soon came in sight of the Indian fort, built on a rising ground in the morass, a sort of island of two or three acres, fortified by a palisade and surrounded by a close hedge a rod thick. There was but one entrance, quite narrow, defended by a tree thrown across it, with a block-house of logs in front and other on the flank. It was the "Lord's day," but that did not hinder the attack. As the captains advanced at the heads of their companies the Indians opened a galling fire, under which many fell. But the assailants pressed on and forced the entrance. A desperate struggle ensued. The colonists were once driven back, but they rallied and returned to the charge, and, after a two-hours' fight, became masters of the fort. Fire was put to the wigwams, near six hundred in number, and all the horrors of the Pequot massacre were renewed. The corn and other winter stores of the Indians were consumed, and not a few of the old men, women, and children perished in the flames. In this bloody contest, long remembered as the "Swamp Fight," the colonial loss was terribly severe. Six captains, with two hundred thirty men, were killed or wounded; and at night, in the midst of a snow-storm, with a fifteen-miles' march before them, the colonial soldiers abandoned the fort, of which the Indians resumed possession. But their wigwams were burned; their provisions destroyed; they had no supplies for the winter; their loss was irreparable. Of those who survived the fight many perished of hunger. Even as a question of policy this attack on the Narragansetts was more than doubtful. The starving and infuriated warriors, scattered through the woods, revenged themselves by attacks on the frontier settlements. Lancaster was burned, and forty of the inhabitants killed or taken; among the rest, Mrs. Rolandson, wife of the minister, the narrative of whose captivity is still preserved. Groton, Chelmsford, and other towns in that vicinity were repeatedly attacked. Medfield, twenty miles from Boston, was furiously assaulted, and, though defended by three hundred men, half the houses were burned. Weymouth, within eighteen miles of Boston, was attacked a few days after. These were the nearest approaches which the Indians made to that capital. For a time the neighborhood of the Narragansett country was abandoned. The Rhode Island towns, though they had no part in undertaking the war, yet suffered the consequences of it. Warwick was burned and Providence was partially destroyed. Most of the inhabitants sought refuge in the islands; but the aged Roger Williams accepted a commission as captain for the defence of the town he had founded. Walter Clarke was presently chosen governor in Coddington's place, the times not suiting a Quaker chief magistrate. The whole colony of Plymouth was overrun. Houses were burned in almost every town, but the inhabitants, for the most part, saved themselves in their garrisons, a shelter with which all the towns now found it necessary to be provided. Captain Pierce, with fifty men and some friendly Indians, while endeavoring to cover the Plymouth towns, fell into an ambush and was cut off. That same day, Marlborough was set on fire; two days after, Rehoboth was burned. The Indians seemed to be everywhere. Captain Wadsworth, marching to the relief of Sudbury, fell into an ambush and perished with fifty men. The alarm and terror of the colonists reached again a great height. But affairs were about to take a turn. The resources of the Indians were exhausted; they were now making their last efforts. A body of Connecticut volunteers, under Captain Denison, and of Mohegan and other friendly Indians, Pequots and Niantics, swept the entire country of the Narragansetts, who suffered, as spring advanced, the last extremities of famine. Canochet, the chief sachem, said to have been a son of Miantonomoh, but probably his nephew, had ventured to his old haunts to procure seed corn with which to plant the rich intervals on the Connecticut, abandoned by the colonists. Taken prisoner, he conducted himself with all that haughty firmness esteemed by the Indians as the height of magnanimity. Being offered his life on condition of bringing about a peace he scorned the proposal. His tribe would perish to the last man rather than become servants to the English. When ordered to prepare for death he replied: "I like it well; I shall die before my heart is soft or I shall have spoken anything unworthy of myself." Two Indians were appointed to shoot him, and his head was cut off and sent to Hartford. The colonists had suffered severely. Men, women, and children had perished by the bullets of the Indians or fled naked through the wintry woods by the light of their blazing houses, leaving their goods and cattle a spoil to the assailants. Several settlements had been destroyed and many more had been abandoned; but the oldest and wealthiest remained untouched. The Indians, on the other hand, had neither provisions nor ammunition. While attempting to plant corn and catch fish at Montague Falls, on the Connecticut River, they were attacked with great slaughter by the garrison of the lower towns, led by Captain Turner, a Boston Baptist, and at first refused a commission on that account, but, as danger increased, pressed to accept it. Yet this enterprise was not without its drawbacks. As the troops returned, Captain Turner fell into an ambush and was slain with thirty-eight men. Hadley was attacked on a lecture-day, while the people were at meeting; but the Indians were repulsed by the bravery of Goffe, one of the fugitive regicides, long concealed in that town. Seeing this venerable unknown man come to their rescue, and then suddenly disappear, the inhabitants took him for an angel. Major Church, at the head of a body of two hundred volunteers, English and Indians, energetically hunted down the hostile bands in Plymouth colony. The interior tribes about Mount Wachusett were invaded and subdued by a force of six hundred men, raised for that purpose. Many fled to the north to find refuge in Canada--guides and leaders, in after-years, of those French and Indian war parties by which the frontiers of New England were so terribly harassed. Just a year after the fast at the commencement of the war, a thanksgiving was observed for success in it. No longer sheltered by the River Indians, who now began to make their peace, and even attacked by bands of the Mohawks, Philip returned to his own country, about Mount Hope, where he was still faithfully supported by his female confederate and relative, Witamo, squaw-sachem of Pocasset. Punham, also, the Shawomet vassal of Massachusetts, still zealously carried on the war, but was presently killed. Philip was watched and followed by Church, who surprised his camp, killed upward of a hundred of his people, and took prisoners his wife and boy. The disposal of this child was a subject of much deliberation. Several of the elders were urgent for putting him to death. It was finally resolved to send him to Bermuda, to be sold into slavery--a fate to which many other of the Indian captives were subjected. Witamo shared the disasters of Philip. Most of her people were killed or taken. She herself was drowned while crossing a river in her flight, but her body was recovered, and the head, cut off, was stuck upon a pole at Taunton, amid the jeers and scoffs of the colonial soldiers, and the tears and lamentations of the Indian prisoners. Philip still lurked in the swamps, but was now reduced to extremity. Again attacked by Church, he was killed by one of his own people, a deserter to the colonists. His dead body was beheaded and quartered, the sentence of the English law upon traitors. One of his hands was given to the Indian who had shot him, and on the day appointed for a public thanksgiving his head was carried in triumph to Plymouth. The popular rage against the Indians was excessive. Death or slavery was the penalty for all known or suspected to have been concerned in shedding English blood. Merely having been present at the Swamp Fight was adjudged by the authorities of Rhode Island sufficient foundation for sentence of death, and that, too, notwithstanding they had intimated an opinion that the origin of the war would not bear examination. The other captives who fell into the hands of the colonists were distributed among them as ten-year servants. Roger Williams received a boy for his share. Many chiefs were executed at Boston and Plymouth on the charge of rebellion; among others, Captain Tom, chief of the Christian Indians at Natick, and Tispiquin, a noted warrior, reputed to be invulnerable, who had surrendered to Church on an implied promise of safety. A large body of Indians, assembled at Dover to treat of peace, were treacherously made prisoners by Major Waldron, who commanded there. Some two hundred of these Indians, claimed as fugitives from Massachusetts, were sent by water to Boston, where some were hanged and the rest shipped off to be sold as slaves. Some fishermen of Marblehead having been killed by the Indians at the eastward, the women of that town, as they came out of meeting on a Sunday, fell upon two Indian prisoners who had just been brought in, and murdered them on the spot. The same ferocious spirit of revenge which governed the contemporaneous conduct of Berkeley in Virginia toward those concerned in Bacon's rebellion swayed the authorities of New England in their treatment of the conquered Indians. By the end of the year the contest was over in the South, upward of two thousand Indians having been killed or taken. But some time elapsed before a peace could be arranged with the Eastern tribes, whose haunts it was not so easy to reach. In this short war of hardly a year's duration the Wampanoags and Narragansetts had suffered the fate of the Pequots. The Niantics alone, under the guidance of their aged sachem Ninigret, had escaped destruction. Philip's country was annexed to Plymouth, though sixty years afterward, under a royal order in council, it was transferred to Rhode Island. The Narragansett territory remained as before, under the name of King's Province, a bone of contention between Connecticut, Rhode Island, the Marquis of Hamilton, and the Atherton claimants. The Niantics still retained their ancient seats along the southern shores of Narragansett Bay. Most of the surviving Narragansetts, the Nipmucks, and the River Indians, abandoned their country and migrated to the north and west. Such as remained, along with the Mohegans and other subject tribes, became more than ever abject and subservient. The work of conversion was now again renewed, and, after such overwhelming proofs of Christian superiority, with somewhat greater success. A second edition of the Indian Old Testament, which seems to have been more in demand than the New, was presently published, revised by Eliot, with the assistance of John Cotton, son of the "Great Cotton," and minister of Plymouth. But not an individual exists in our day by whom it can be understood. The fragments of the subject tribes, broken in spirit, lost the savage freedom and rude virtues of their fathers without acquiring the laborious industry of the whites. Lands were assigned them in various places, which they were prohibited by law from alienating. But this very provision, though humanely intended, operated to perpetuate their indolence and incapacity. Some sought a more congenial occupation in the whale fishery, which presently began to be carried on from the islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. Many perished by enlisting in the military expeditions undertaken in future years against Acadia and the West Indies. The Indians intermarried with the blacks, and thus confirmed their degradation by associating themselves with another oppressed and unfortunate race. Gradually they dwindled away. A few hundred sailors and petty farmers, of mixed blood, as much African as Indian, are now the sole surviving representatives of the aboriginal possessors of Southern New England. On the side of the colonists the contest had also been very disastrous. Twelve or thirteen towns had been entirely ruined and many others partially destroyed. Six hundred houses had been burned, near a tenth part of all in New England. Twelve captains, and more than six hundred men in the prime of life, had fallen in battle. There was hardly a family not in mourning. The pecuniary losses and expenses of the war were estimated at near a million of dollars. %GROWTH OF PRUSSIA UNDER THE GREATELECTOR% HIS VICTORY AT FEHRBELLIN A.D. 1675 THOMAS CARLYLE It was the good-fortune of Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg, who is known in history as the "Great Elector," to lay a firm foundation for Prussian monarchy. Under his father, George William, the Tenth Elector, Brandenburg had lost much of its former importance. When Frederick William came into his inheritance in 1640 he found a weak and disunited state, little more than a group of provinces, with foreign territories lying between them, and governed by differing laws. The great problem before the Elector was how to become actual ruler of his ill-joined possessions, and his first aim was to weld them together, that he might make himself absolute monarch. By forming an army of mercenaries he established his authority. His whole life was occupied with warlike affairs. He remained neutral during the last stages of the Thirty Years' War, but was always prepared for action. He freed Prussia from Polish control and drove the Swedes from Brandenburg. This last was his most famous success. It was won by his victory over the Swedes under Wrangel, at Fehrbellin. Carlyle's characteristic narrative and commentary on this and other triumphs of the Great Elector place him before the reader as one of the chief personages of the Hohenzollern race and a leading actor in European history. Brandenburg had sunk very low under the Tenth Elector, in the unutterable troubles of the times, but it was gloriously raised up again by his Son Friedrich Wilhelm, who succeeded in 1640. This is he whom they call the "Great Elector" ("_Grosse Kurfuerst_"), of whom there is much writing and celebrating in Prussian Books. As for the epithet, it is not uncommon among petty German populations, and many times does not mean too much: thus Max of Bavaria, with his Jesuit Lambkins and Hyacinths, is by Bavarians called "Maximilian the Great." Friedrich Wilhelm, both by his intrinsic qualities and the success he met with, deserves it better than most. His success, if we look where he started and where he ended, was beyond that of any other man in his day. He found Brandenburg annihilated, and he left Brandenburg sound and flourishing--a great country, or already on the way toward greatness: undoubtedly a most rapid, clear-eyed, active man. There was a stroke in him swift as lightning, well aimed mostly, and of a respectable weight withal, which shattered asunder a whole world of impediments for him by assiduous repetition of it for fifty years. There hardly ever came to sovereign power a young man of twenty under more distressing, hopeless-looking circumstances. Political significance Brandenburg had none--a mere Protestant appendage dragged about by a Papist Kaiser. His Father's Prime Minister was in the interest of his enemies; not Brandenburg's servant, but Austria's. The very Commandants of his Fortresses, Commandant of Spandau more especially, refused to obey Friedrich Wilhelm on his accession--"were bound to obey the Kaiser in the first place." He had to proceed softly as well as swiftly, with the most delicate hand, to get him of Spandau by the collar, and put him under lock and key, as a warning to others. For twenty years past Brandenburg had been scoured by hostile armies, which, especially the Kaiser's part of which, committed outrages new in human history. In a year or two hence Brandenburg became again the theatre of business. Austrian Gallas, advancing thither again (1644) with intent "to shut up Tortenson and his Swedes in Jutland," where they had been chastising old Christian IV, now meddlesome again for the last time, and never a good neighbor to Sweden, Gallas could by no means do what he intended; on the contrary, he had to run from Tortenson what feet could do, was hunted, he and his _Merode_-Bruder (beautiful inventors of the "Marauding" Art), "till they pretty much all died (_crepirten_)," says Kohler. No great loss to society, the death of these Artists, but we can fancy what their life, and especially what the process of their dying, may have cost poor Brandenburg again. Friedrich Wilhelm's aim, in this as in other emergencies, was sun-clear to himself, but for most part dim to everybody else. He had to walk very warily, Sweden on one hand of him, suspicious Kaiser on the other; he had to wear semblances, to be ready with evasive words and advance noiselessly by many circuits. More delicate operation could not be imagined; but advance he did, advance and arrive. With extraordinary talent, diligence, and felicity, the young man wound himself out of this first fatal position; got those foreign Armies pushed out of his country, and kept them out. His first concern had been to find some vestige of revenue, to put that upon a clear footing, and by loans or otherwise to scrape a little ready money together, on the strength of which a small body of soldiers could be collected about him, and drilled into real ability to fight and obey. This as a basis; on this followed all manner of things, freedom from Swedish-Austrian invasions as the first thing. He was himself, as appeared by and by, a fighter of the first quality when it came to that, but never was willing to fight if he could help it; preferred rather to shift, manoeuvre, and negotiate, which he did in a most vigilant, adroit, and masterly manner. But by degrees he had grown to have, and could maintain it, an Army of twenty-four thousand men, among the best troops then in being. With or without his will, he was in all the great Wars of his time--the time of Louis XIV--who kindled Europe four times over, thrice in our Kurfuerst's day. The Kurfuerst's Dominions, a long, straggling country, reaching from Memel to Wesel, could hardly keep out of the way of any war that might rise. He made himself available, never against the good cause of Protestantism and German Freedom, yet always in the place and way where his own best advantage was to be had. Louis XIV had often much need of him; still oftener, and more pressingly, had Kaiser Leopold, the little Gentleman "in scarlet stockings, with a red feather in his hat," whom Mr. Savage used to see majestically walking about, with Austrian lip that said nothing at all. His twenty-four thousand excellent fighting-men, thrown in at the right time, were often a thing that could turn the balance in great questions. They required to be allowed for at a high rate, which he well knew how to adjust himself for exacting and securing always. When the Peace of Westphalia (1648) concluded that Thirty-Years' Conflagration, and swept the ashes of it into order again, Friedrich Wilhelm's right to Pommern was admitted by everybody, and well insisted on by himself; but right had to yield to reason of state, and he could not get it. The Swedes insisted on their expenses; the Swedes held Pommern, had all along held it--in pawn, they said, for their expenses. Nothing for it but to give the Swedes the better half of Pommern--_Fore_-Pommern so they call it, ("Swedish Pomernia" thenceforth), which lies next the Sea; this, with some Towns and cuttings over and above, was Sweden's share. Friedrich Wilhelm had to put up with _Hinder_-Pommern, docked furthermore of the Town of Stettin, and of other valuable cuttings, in favor of Sweden, much to Friedrich Wilhelm's grief and just anger, could he have helped it. They gave him Three secularized Bishoprics, Magdeburg, Halberstadt, Minden with other small remnants, for compensation, and he had to be content with these for the present. But he never gave up the idea of Pommern. Much of the effort of his life was spent upon recovering Fore-Pommern; thrice eager upon that, whenever lawful opportunity offered. To no purpose, then; he never could recover Swedish Pommern; only his late descendants, and that by slowish degrees, could recover it all. Readers remember that Burgermeister of Stettin, with the helmet and sword flung into the grave and picked out again, and can judge whether Brandenburg got its good luck quite by lying in bed. Once, and once only, he had a voluntary purpose toward War, and it remained a purpose only. Soon after the Peace of Westphalia, old Pfalz-Neuburg, the same who got the slap on the face, went into tyrannous proceedings against the Protestant part of his subjects in Juelic-Cleve, who called to Friedrich Wilhelm for help. Friedrich Wilhelm, a zealous Protestant, made remonstrances, retaliations; ere long the thought struck him, "Suppose, backed by the Dutch, we threw out this fantastic old gentleman, his Papistries, and pretended claims and self, clear out of it?" This was Friedrich Wilhelm's thought, and he suddenly marched troops into the Territory with that view. But Europe was in alarm; the Dutch grew faint. Friedrich Wilhelm saw it would not do. He had a conference with old Pfalz-Neuburg: "Young gentleman, we remember how your Grandfather made free with us and our august countenance! Nevertheless, we--" In fine, the "statistics of Treaties" was increased by One, and there the matter rested till calmer times. In 1666 an effective Partition of these litigated Territories was accomplished; Prussia to have the Duchy of Cleve-Proper, the Counties of Mark and Ravensberg, with other Patches and Pertinents; Neuburg, what was the better share, to have Juelich Duchy and Berg Duchy. Furthermore, if either of the Lines failed, in no sort was a collateral to be admitted; but Brandenburg was to inherit Neuburg, or Neuburg Brandenburg, as the case might be. A clear Bargain this at last, and in the times that had come it proved executable so far; but if the reader fancies the Lawsuit was at last out in this way, he will be a simple reader. In the days of our little Fritz,[1] the Line of Pfalz-Neuburg was evidently ending; but that Brandenburg, and not a collateral, should succeed it, there lay the quarrel open still, as if it had never been shut, and we shall hear enough about it. [Footnote 1: Frederick the Great] Friedrich Wilhelm's first actual appearance in War, Polish-Swedish War (1655-1660), was involuntary in the highest degree; forced upon him for the sake of his Preussen, which bade fair to be lost or ruined without blame of his or its. Nevertheless, here too he made his benefit of the affair. The big King of Sweden had a standing quarrel, with his big cousin of Poland, which broke out into hot War; little Preussen lay between them, and was like to be crushed in the collision. Swedish King was Karl Gustav, Christina's Cousin, Charles XII's Grandfather: a great and mighty man, lion of the North in his time; Polish King was one John Casimir; chivalrous enough, and with clouds of forward Polish chivalry about him, glittering with barbaric gold. Friedrich III, Danish King for the first time being, he also was much involved in the thing. Fain would Friedrich Wilhelm have kept out of it, but he could not. Karl Gustav as good as forced him to join; he joined; fought along with Karl Gustav an illustrious Battle, "Battle of Warsaw," three days long (July 28-30, 1656), on the skirts of Warsaw; crowds "looking from the upper windows" there; Polish chivalry, broken at last, going like chaff upon the winds, and John Casimir nearly ruined. Shortly after which, Friedrich Wilhelm, who had shone much in the Battle, changed sides. An inconsistent, treacherous man? Perhaps not, O reader; perhaps a man advancing "in circuits," the only way he has; spirally, face now to east, now to west, with his own reasonable private aim sun-clear to himself all the while. John Casimir agreed to give up the "Homage of Preussen" for this service; a grand prize for Friedrich Wilhelm. What the Teutsch Ritters strove for in vain, and lost their existence in striving for, the shifty Kurfuerst has now got: Ducal Prussia, which is also called East Prussia, is now a free sovereignty, and will become as "Royal" as the other Polish part, or perhaps even more so, in the course of time--Karl Gustav, in a high frame of mind, informs the Kurfuerst that he has him on his books, and will pay the debt one day. A dangerous debtor in such matters, this Karl Gustav. In these same months, busy with the Danish part of the Controversy, he was doing a feat of war which set all Europe in astonishment. In January, 1658, Karl Gustav marches his Army, horse, foot, and artillery, to the extent of Twenty thousand, across the Baltic ice, and takes an island without shipping--Island of Fuenen, across the Little Belt--three miles of ice, and a part of the sea _open_, which has to be crossed on planks; nay, forward from Fuenen, when once there, he achieves ten whole miles more of ice, and takes Zealand itself, to the wonder of all mankind: an imperious, stern-browed, swift-striking man, who had dreamed of a new Goth Empire: the mean Hypocrites and Fribbles of the South to be coerced again by noble Norse valor, and taught a new lesson; has been known to lay his hand on his sword while apprising an Embassador (Dutch High Mightiness) what his royal intentions were: "not the sale or purchase of groceries, observe you, Sir! My aims go higher." Charles XII's Grandfather, and somewhat the same type of man. But Karl died short while after; left his big, wide-raging Northern Controversy to collapse in what way it could. Sweden and the fighting parties made their "Peace of Oliva" (Abbey of Oliva, near Dantzig, May 1, 1660), and this of Preussen was ratified, in all form, among other points. No Homage more; nothing now above Ducal Prussia but the Heavens, and great times coming for it. This was one of the successfulest strokes of business ever done by Friedrich Wilhelm, who had been forced, by sheer compulsion, to embark in that big game. "Royal Prussia," the Western _Polish_ Prussia--this too, as all Newspapers know, has in our times gone the same road as the other, which probably after all, it may have had in Nature, some tendency to do? Cut away, for reasons, by the Polish sword, in that Battle of Tannenberg, long since, and then, also for reasons, cut back again: that is the fact, not unexampled in human History. Old Johann Casimir, not long after that Peace of Oliva, getting tired of his unruly Polish chivalry and their ways, abdicated, retired to Paris, and "lived much with Ninon de l'Enclos and her circle" for the rest of his life. He used to complain of his Polish chivalry that there was no solidity in them, nothing but outside glitter, with tumult and anarchic noise; fatal want of one essential talent, the talent of Obeying; and has been heard to prophesy that a glorious Republic, persisting in such courses, would arrive at results which would surprise it. Onward from this time Friedrich Wilhelm figures in the world, public men watching his procedure, Kings anxious to secure him, Dutch Printsellers sticking up his Portraits for a hero-worshipping Public. Fighting hero, had the Public known it, was not his essential character, though he had to fight a great deal. He was essentially an Industrial man; great in organizing, regulating, in constraining chaotic heaps to become cosmic for him. He drains bogs, settles colonies in the waste places of his Dominions, cuts canals; unweariedly encourages trade and work. The Friedrich-Wilhelm's Canal, which still carries tonnage from the Oder to the Spree, is a monument of his zeal in this way; creditable, with the means he had. To the poor French Protestants in the Edict-of-Nantes Affair, he was like an empress Benefit of Heaven: one Helper appointed, to whom the help itself was profitable. He munificently welcomed them to Brandenburg; showed really a noble piety and human self-pity, as well as judgment; nor did Brandenburg and he want their reward. Some twenty thousand nimble French souls, evidently of the best French quality, found a home there; made "waste sands about Berlin into pot-herb gardens"; and in the spiritual Brandenburg, too, did something of horticulture, which is still noticeable. Certainly this Elector was one of the shiftiest of men; not an unjust man either; a pious, God-fearing man rather, stanch to his Protestantism and his Bible; not unjust by any means, nor, on the other hand, by any means thin-skinned in his interpretings of justice: Fairplay to myself always, or occasionally even the Height of Fairplay. On the whole, by constant energy, vigilance, adroit activity, by an ever-ready insight and audacity to seize the passing fact by its right handle, he fought his way well in the world; left Brandenburg a flourishing and greatly increased Country, and his own name famous enough. A thickset, stalwart figure, with brisk eyes, and high, strong, irregularly-Roman nose. Good bronze Statue of him, by Schlueter, once a famed man, still rides on the _Lange-Bruecke_ (Long Bridge) at Berlin; and his Portrait, in huge frizzled Louis-Quatorze wig, is frequently met with in German Galleries. Collectors of Dutch Prints, too, know him; here a gallant, eagle-featured little gentleman, brisk in the smiles of youth, with plumes, with truncheon, caprioling on his war-charger, view of tents in the distance; there a sedate, ponderous wrinkly old man, eyes slightly puckered (eyes _busier_ than mouth), a face well plowed by Time, and not found unfruitful; one of the largest, most laborious potent faces (in an ocean of circumambient periwig) to be met with in that Century. There are many Histories about him, too, but they are not comfortable to read. He also has wanted a sacred Poet, and found only a bewildering Dryasdust. His two grand Feats that dwell in the Prussian memory are perhaps none of his greatest, but were of a kind to strike the imagination. They both relate to what was the central problem of his life--the recovery of Pommern from the Swedes. Exploit First is the famed Battle of Fehrbellin (Ferry of Belleen), fought on June 18, 1675. Fehrbellin is an inconsiderable Town still standing in those peaty regions, some five-and-thirty miles northwest of Berlin, and had for ages plied its poor Ferry over the oily-looking, brown sluggish stream called Rhin, or Rhein in those parts, without the least notice from mankind till this fell out. It is a place of pilgrimage to patriotic Prussians ever since Friedrich Wilhelm's exploit there. The matter went thus: Friedrich Wilhelm was fighting, far south in Alsace, on Kaiser Leopold's side, in the Louis XIV War--that second one, which ended in the Treaty of Nimwegen. Doing his best there, when the Swedes, egged on by Louis XIV, made war upon him; crossed the Pomeranian marshes, troop after troop, and invaded his Brandenburg Territory with a force which at length amounted to sixteen thousand men. No help for the moment; Friedrich Wilhelm could not be spared from his post. The Swedes, who had at first professed well, gradually went into plunder, roving, harrying at their own will; and a melancholy time they made of it for Friedrich Wilhelm and his People. Lucky if temporary harm were all the ill they were likely to do; lucky if---- He stood steady, however; in his solid manner finishing the thing in hand first, since that was feasible. He then even retired into winter-quarters to rest his men, and seemed to have left the Swedish sixteen thousand autocrats of the situation, who accordingly went storming about at a great rate. Not so, however; very far, indeed, from so. Having rested his men for certain months, Friedrich Wilhelm silently, in the first days of June, 1675, gets them under march again; marches his Cavalry and he as first instalment, with best speed from Schweinfurt, which is on the River Mayn, to Magdeburg, a distance of two hundred miles. At Magdeburg, where he rests three days, waiting for the first handful of Foot and a field-piece or two, he learns that the Swedes are in three parties wide asunder, the middle party of them within forty miles of him. Probably stronger, even this middle one, than his small body (of "Six thousand Horse, Twelve hundred Foot, and three guns")--stronger, but capable, perhaps, of being surprised, of being cut in pieces before the others can come up? Rathenau is the nearest skirt of this middle party: thither goes the Kurfuerst, softly, swiftly, in the June night (June 16-17, 1675); gets into Rathenau by brisk stratagem; tumbles out the Swedish Horse regiment there, drives it back toward Fehrbellin. He himself follows hard; swift riding enough in the summer night through those damp Havel lands, in the old Hohenzollern fashion; and, indeed, old Freisack Castle, as it chances--Freisack, scene of Dietrich von Quitzow and _Lazy Peg_ long since--is close by. Follows hard, we say; strikes in upon this midmost party (nearly twice his number, but Infantry for most part); and after fierce fight, done with good talent on both sides, cuts it into utter ruin, as proposed; thereby he has left the Swedish Army as a mere head and tail without body; has entirely demolished the Swedish Army. Same feat intrinsically as that done by Cromwell on Hamilton and the Scots in 1648. It was, so to speak, the last visit Sweden paid to Brandenburg, or the last of any consequence, and ended the domination of the Swedes in those quarters--a thing justly to be forever remembered by Brandenburg; on a smallish modern scale, the Bannockburn, Sempach, Marathon of Brandenburg. Exploit Second was four years later--in some sort a corollary to this, and a winding up of the Swedish business. The Swedes, in further prosecution of their Louis XIV speculation, had invaded Preussen this time, and were doing sad havoc there. It was in the dead of winter--Christmas, 1678--more than four hundred miles off; and the Swedes, to say nothing of their own havoc, were in a case to take Koenigsberg, and ruin Prussia altogether, if not prevented. Friedrich Wilhelm starts from Berlin, with the opening Year, on his long march; the Horse-troops first, Foot to follow at their swiftest; he himself (his Wife, his ever-true "Louisa," accompanying, as her wont was) travels toward the end, at the rate of "sixty miles a day." He gets in still in time; finds Koenigsberg unscathed; nay, it is even said the Swedes are extensively falling sick, having after a long famine found infinite "pigs near Insterburg," in those remote regions, and indulged in the fresh pork overmuch. I will not describe the subsequent manoeuvres, which would interest nobody; enough if I say that on January 16, 1679, it had become of the highest moment for Friedrich Wilhelm to get from Carwe (Village near Elbing), on the shore of the _Frische Haf_, where he was, through Koenigsberg, to Gilge on the _Curische Haf_, where the Swedes are, in a minimum of time. Distance, as the crow flies, is about a hundred miles; road, which skirts the two _Hafs_ (wide shallow _Washes_, as we should name them), is of rough quality and naturally circuitous. It is ringing frost to-day, and for days back. Friedrich Wilhelm hastily gathers all the sledges, all the horses of the district; mounts Four thousand men in sledges; starts with speed of light, in that fashion; scours along all day, and after the intervening bit of land, again along, awakening the ice-bound silences. Gloomy _Frische Haf_, wrapped in its Winter cloud-coverlids, with its wastes of tumbled sand, its poor frost-bound fishing-hamlets, pine hillocks--desolate- looking, stern as Greenland, or more so, says Busching, who travelled there in winter-time--hears unexpected human voices, and huge grinding and trampling; the Four thousand, in long fleet of sledges, scouring across it in that manner. All day they rush along--out of the rimy hazes of morning into the olive-colored clouds of evening again--with huge, loud-grinding rumble, and do arrive in time at Gilge. A notable streak of things, shooting across those frozen solitudes in the New Year, 1679; little short of Karl Gustav's feat, which we heard of in the other or Danish end of the Baltic, twenty years ago, when he took islands without ships. This Second Exploit--suggested or not by that prior one of Karl Gustav on the ice--is still a thing to be remembered by Hohenzollerns and Prussians. The Swedes were beaten here on Friedrich Wilhelm's rapid arrival; were driven into disastrous, rapid retreat Northward, which they executed in hunger and cold, fighting continually, like Northern bears, under the grim sky, Friedrich Wilhelm sticking to their skirts, holding by their tail, like an angry bear-ward with steel whip in his hand; a thing which, on the small scale, reminds one of Napoleon's experiences. Not till Napoleon's huge fighting-flight, a Hundred and thirty-four years after, did I read of such a transaction in those parts. The Swedish invasion of Preussen has gone utterly to ruin. And this, then, is the end of Sweden, and its bad neighborhood on these shores, where it has tyrannously sat on our skirts so long? Swedish Pommern; the Elector already had: last year, coming toward it ever since the Exploit of Fehrbellin, he had invaded Swedish Pommern; had besieged and taken Stettin, nay Stralsund too, where Wallenstein had failed; cleared Pommern altogether of its Swedish guests, who had tried next in Preussen, with what luck we see. Of Swedish Pommern the Elector might now say, "Surely it is mine; again mine, as it long was; well won a second time, since the first would not do." But no; Louis XIV proved a gentleman to his Swedes. Louis, now that the Peace of Nimwegen had come, and only the Elector of Brandenburg was still in harness, said steadily, though anxious enough to keep well with the Elector, "They are my allies, these Swedes; it was on my bidding they invaded you: can I leave them in such a pass? It must not be." So Pommern had to be given back: a miss which was infinitely grievous to Friedrich Wilhelm. The most victorious Elector cannot hit always, were his right never so good. Another miss which he had to put up with, in spite of his rights and his good services, was that of the Silesian Duchies. The Heritage-Fraternity with Liegnitz had at length, in 1675, come to fruit. The last Duke of Liegnitz was dead: Duchies of Liegnitz, of Brieg, Wohlau, are Brandenburg's, if there were right done; but Kaiser Leopold in the scarlet stockings will not hear of Heritage-Fraternity. "Nonsense!" answers Kaiser Leopold: "a thing suppressed at once, ages ago by Imperial power; flat _zero_ of a thing at this time; and you, I again bid you, return me your Papers upon it." This latter act of duty Friedrich Wilhelm would not do, but continued insisting: "Jagerndorf, at least, O Kaiser of the world," said he, "Jagerndorf, there is no color for your keeping that!" To which the Kaiser again answers, "Nonsense!" and even falls upon astonishing schemes about it, as we shall see, but gives nothing. Ducal Preussen is sovereign, Cleve is at peace, Hinter-Pommern ours; this Elector has conquered much, but Silesia, and Vor-Pommern, and some other things he will have to do without. Louis XIV, it is thought, once offered to get him made King, but that he declined for the present. His married and domestic life is very fine and human, especially with that Oranien-Nassau Princess, who was his first Wife (1646-1667) Princess Louisa of Nassau-Orange, Aunt to our own Dutch William, King William III, in time coming: an excellent, wise Princess, from whom came the Orange Heritages, which afterward proved difficult to settle. Orange was at last exchanged for the small Principality of Neufchatel in Switzerland, which is Prussia's ever since. "Oranienburg (_Orange-Burg)_" a Royal Country-house, still standing, some Twenty miles northward from Berlin, was this Louisa's place: she had trimmed it up into a little jewel of the Dutch type--pot-herb gardens, training-schools for girls, and the like--a favorite abode of hers when she was at liberty for recreation. But her life was busy and earnest; she was helpmate, not in name only, to an ever-busy man. They were married young, a marriage of love withal. Young Friedrich Wilhelm's courtship, wedding in Holland; the honest trustful walk and conversation of the two Sovereign Spouses, their journeyings together, their mutual hopes, fears, and manifold vicissitudes, till Death, with stern beauty, shut it in: all is human, true, and wholesome in it; interesting to look upon, and rare among sovereign persons. Not but that he had his troubles with his womankind. Even with this his first Wife, whom he loved truly, and who truly loved him, there were scenes--the Lady having a judgment of her own about everything that passed, and the man being choleric withal. Sometimes, I have heard, "he would dash his hat at her feet," saying symbolically, "Govern you, then, Madam! Not the Kurfuerst Hat; a Coif is my wear, it seems!" Yet her judgment was good, and he liked to have it on the weightiest things, though her powers of silence might halt now and then. He has been known, on occasions, to run from his Privy Council to her apartment, while a complex matter was debating, to ask her opinion, hers, too, before it was decided. Excellent Louisa, Princess full of beautiful piety, good sense, and affection--a touch of the Nassau-Heroic in her. At the moment of her death, it is said, when speech had fled, he felt from her hand which lay in his, three slight, slight pressures: "Farewell!" thrice mutely spoken in that manner, not easy to forget in this world. His second Wife, Dorothea, who planted the Lindens in Berlin, and did other husbandries, fell far short of Louisa in many things, but not in tendency to advise, to remonstrate, and plaintively reflect on the finished and unalterable. Dreadfully thrifty lady, moreover; did much in dairy produce, farming of town-rates, provision-taxes, not to speak again of that Tavern she was thought to have in Berlin, and to draw custom to it in an oblique manner! "Ah! I have not my Louisa now; to whom now shall I run for advice or help?" would the poor Kurfuerst at times exclaim. He had some trouble, considerable trouble, now and then, with mutinous spirits in Preussen; men standing on antique Prussian franchises and parchments, refusing to see that the same were now antiquated incompatible, nor to say impossible, as the new Sovereign alleged, and carrying themselves very stiffly at times. But the Hohenzollerns had been used to such things; a Hohenzollern like this one would evidently take his measures, soft but strong, and even stronger to the needful pitch, with mutinous spirits. One Buergermeister of Koenigsberg, after much stroking on the back, was at length seized in open Hall by Electoral writ, soldiers having first gently barricaded the principal streets, and brought cannon to bear upon them. This Buergermeister, seized in such brief way, lay prisoner for life, refusing to ask his liberty, though it was thought he might have had it on asking. Another gentleman, a Baron von Kalkstein, of old Teutsch-Ritter kin, of very high ways, in the Provincial Estates _(Staende)_ and elsewhere, got into lofty, almost solitary, opposition, and at length, into mutiny proper, against the new "Non-Polish" Sovereign, and flatly refused to do homage at his accession--refused, Kalkstein did, for his share; fled to Warsaw; and very fiercely, in a loud manner, carried out his mutinies in the Diets and Court Conclaves there, his plea being, or plea for the time, "Poland is our liege lord" (which it was not always), "and we cannot be transferred to you except by our consent asked and given," which, too, had been a little neglected on the former occasion of transfer; so that the Great Elector knew not what to do with Kalkstein, and at length (as the case was pressing) had him kidnapped by his Embassador at Warsaw; had him "rolled in a carpet" there, and carried swiftly in the Embassador's coach, in the form of luggage, over the frontier, into his native Province, there to be judged, and, in the end (since nothing else would serve him), to have the sentence executed, and his head cut off; for the case was pressing. These things, especially this of Kalkstein, with a boisterous Polish Diet and parliamentary eloquence in the rear of him, gave rise to criticisms, and required management on the part of the Great Elector. Of all his ancestors, our little Fritz, when he grew big, admired this one--a man made like himself in many points. He seems really to have loved and honored this one. In the year 1750 there had been a new Cathedral got finished at Berlin; the ancestral bones had to be shifted over from the vaults of the old one--the burying-place ever since Joachim II, that Joachim who drew his sword on Alba. King Friedrich, with some attendants, witnessed the operation, January, 1750. When the Great Kurfuerst's coffin came, he bade them open it; gazed in silence on the features for some time, which were perfectly recognizable; laid his hand on the hand long dead, and said, "_Messieurs, celui ci a fait de grandes choses_!" ("This one did a grand work"). %WILLIAM PENN RECEIVES THE GRANT OF PENNSYLVANIA% FOUNDING OF PHILADELPHIA A.D. 1681 GEORGE E. ELLIS Although European settlers had occupied portions of the present State of Pennsylvania for fifty years before William Penn arrived in that territory, the real foundation of the great commonwealth named after him is justly dated from his time. Penn was an English "Friend," or Quaker, and was descended from a long line of sailors. He was born in London in 1644, his father being Admiral Sir William Penn of the English navy. The son was educated at Oxford University, and became a preacher of the Society of Friends. This calling brought him into collision with the authorities. He was several times arrested, and for a while was imprisoned in the Tower for "urging the cause of freedom with importunity." Through the influence of his family and the growing weight of his own character, he escaped the heavier penalties inflicted upon some of his coreligionists, and, by the shrewdness and tact which he united with spiritual fervor, he rapidly advanced in public position. In 1675 Penn became part proprietor of West New Jersey, where a colony of English Friends was settled. Five years later, through his influence at court and the aid of wealthy persons, he was enabled to purchase a large tract in East New Jersey, where he designed to establish a similar colony on a larger plan. But this project was soon superseded by a much greater one, of which the execution is here related. The interest of William Penn having been engaged for some time in the colonization of an American province, and the idea having become familiar to his mind of establishing there a Christian home as a refuge for Friends, and the scene for a fair trial of their principles, he availed himself of many favorable circumstances to become a proprietary himself. In various negotiations concerning New Jersey he had had a conspicuous share, and the information which his inquiring mind gathered from the adventures in the New World gave him all the knowledge which was requisite for his further proceedings. Though he had personal enemies in high places, and the project which he designed crossed the interests of the Duke of York[1] and of Lord Baltimore, yet his court influence was extensive, and he knew how to use it. [Footnote 1: Afterward James II. He was proprietor of New York, and Lord Baltimore of Maryland.] The favor of Charles II and of his brother the Duke of York had been sought by Penn's dying father for his son, and freely promised. But William Penn had a claim more substantial than a royal promise of those days. The crown was indebted to the estate of Admiral Penn for services, loans, and interest, to the amount of sixteen thousand pounds. The exchequer, under the convenient management of Shaftesbury, would not meet the claim. Penn, who was engaged in settling the estate of his father, petitioned the King, in June, 1680, for a grant of land in America as a payment for all these debts. The request was laid before the privy council, and then before the committee of trade and plantations. Penn's success must have been owing to great interest made on his behalf; for both the Duke of York, by his attorney, and Lord Baltimore opposed him. As proprietors of territory bounding on the tract which he asked for, and as having been already annoyed by the conflict of charters granted in the New World, they were naturally unfairly biassed. The application made to the King succeeded after much debate. The provisions in the charter of Lord Baltimore were adopted by Penn with slight alterations. Sir William Jones objected to one of the provisions, which allowed a freedom from taxation, and the Bishop of London, as the ecclesiastical supervisor of plantations, proposed another provision, to prevent too great liberty in religious matters. Chief Justice North having reduced the patent to a satisfactory form, to guard the King's prerogative and the powers of Parliament, it was signed by writ of privy seal at Westminster, March 4, 1681. It made Penn the owner of about forty thousand square miles of territory. This charter is given at length by Proud and other writers. The preamble states that the design of William Penn was to enlarge the British empire and to civilize and convert the savages. The first section avers that his petition was granted on account of the good purposes of the son and the merits and services of the father. The bounds of the territory are thus defined: "All that tract or part of land, in America, with the islands therein contained, as the same is bounded on the east by Delaware River, from twelve miles distance northward of New Castle town, unto the three-and-fortieth degree of northern latitude, if the said river doth extend so far northward; but if the said river shall not extend so far northward, then, by the said river, so far as it doth extend; and from the head of the said river, the eastern bounds are to be determined by a meridian line to be drawn from the head of the said river, unto the said forty-third degree. The said land to extend westward five degrees in longitude to be computed from the said eastern bounds; and the said lands to be bounded on the north by the beginning of the three-and-fortieth degree of northern latitude, and on the south by a circle drawn at twelve miles' distance from New Castle, northward and westward, unto the beginning of the fortieth degree of northern latitude; and then by a straight line westward to the limits of longitude above mentioned." Though these boundaries appear to be given with definiteness and precision, a controversy, notwithstanding, arose at once between Penn and Lord Baltimore, which outlasted the lives of both of them, and, being continued by their representatives, was not in fact closed until the Revolutionary War. The charter vested the perpetual proprietaryship of this territory in William Penn and his heirs, on the fealty of the annual payment of two beaver-skins; it authorized him to make and execute laws not repugnant to those of England, to appoint judges, to receive those who wished to transport themselves, _to establish a military force_, to constitute municipalities, and to carry on a free commerce. It required that an agent of the proprietor should reside in or near London, and provided for the rights of the Church of England. The charter also disclaimed all taxation, except through the proprietor, the governor, the assembly, or Parliament, and covenanted that if any question of arms or conditions should arise it should be decided in favor of the proprietor. By a declaration to the inhabitants and planters of Pennsylvania, dated April 2d, the King confirmed the charter, to ratify it for all who might intend to emigrate under it, and to require compliance from all whom it concerned. By a letter from Penn to his friend Robert Turner, written upon the day on which the charter was signed, we learn that the proprietor designed to call his territory "New Wales"; but the under-secretary, a Welshman, opposed it. Penn then suggested "Sylvania," as applicable to the forest region; but the secretary, acting under instructions, prefixed "Penn" to this title. The modest and humble Quaker offered the official twenty guineas as a bribe to leave off his name. Failing again, he went to the King and stated his objection; but the King said he would take the naming upon himself, and insisted upon it as doing honor to the old admiral. Penn now resigned the charge of West New Jersey, and devoted himself to the preliminary tasks which should make his province available to himself and others. He sent over, in May, his cousin and secretary, Colonel William Markham, then only twenty-one years old, to make such arrangements for his own coming as might be necessary. This gentleman, who acted as Penn's deputy, carried over from him a letter, dated London, April 8, 1681, addressed "For the Inhabitants of Pennsylvania; to be read by my Deputy." This was a courteous announcement of his proprietaryship and intentions to the Dutch, Swedes, and English, who, to the number, probably, of about three thousand, were then living within his patent. Penn's object being to obtain adventurers and settlers at once, he published _Some Account of the Province of Pennsylvania, in America, lately granted, under the Great Seal of England, to William Penn_. This was accompanied by a copy of the charter and a statement of the terms on which the land was to be sold, with judicious advice addressed to those who were disposed to transport themselves, warning them against mere fancy dreams, or the desertion of friends, and encouraging them by all reasonable expectations of success. The terms of sale were, for a hundred acres of land, forty shillings purchase money, and one shilling as an annual quit-rent. This latter stipulation, made in perfect fairness, not unreasonable in itself, and ratified by all who of their own accord acceded to it, was, as we shall see, an immediate cause of disaffection, and has ever since been the basis of a calumny against the honored and most estimable founder of Pennsylvania. Under date of July 11, 1681, Penn published _Certain Conditions or Concessions to be agreed upon by William Penn, Proprietary and Governor of the Province of Pennsylvania, and those who may become Adventurers and Purchasers in the same Province_. These conditions relate to dividing, planting, and building upon the land, saving mulberry-and oak-trees, and dealing with the Indians. These documents were circulated, and imparted sufficient knowledge of the country and its produce, so that purchasers at once appeared, and Penn went to Bristol to organize there a company called "The Free Society of Traders in Pennsylvania," who purchased twenty thousand acres of land, and prepared to establish various trades in the province. Yet further to mature his plans, and to begin with a fair understanding among all who might be concerned in the enterprise, Penn drew up and submitted a sketch of the frame of government, providing for alterations, with a preamble for liberty of conscience. On the basis of contracts and agreements thus made and mutually ratified, three passenger ships, two from London and one from Bristol, sailed for Pennsylvania in September, 1681. One of them made an expeditious passage; another was frozen up in the Delaware; and the third, driven to the West Indies, was long delayed. They took over some of the ornamental work of a house for the proprietor. The Governor also sent over three commissioners, whose instructions we learn from the original document addressed to them by Penn, dated September 30, 1681. These commissioners were William Crispin, John Bezar, and Nathaniel Allen. Their duty was that of "settling the colony." Penn refers them to his cousin Markham, "now on the spot." He instructs them to take good care of the people; to guard them from extortionate prices for commodities from the earlier inhabitants; to select a site by the river, and there to lay out a town; to have his letter to the Indians read to them in their own tongue; to make them presents from him--adding, "Be grave; they love not to be smiled upon"--and to enter into a league of amity with them. Penn also instructs the commissioners to select a site for his own occupancy, and closes with some good advice in behalf of order and virtue. These commissioners probably did not sail until the latter part of October, as they took with them the letter to the Indians, to which Penn refers. This letter, bearing the date October 18, 1681, is a beautiful expression of feeling on the part of the proprietor. He does not address the Indians as heathen, but as his brethren, the children of the one Father. He announces to them his accession, as far as a royal title could legitimate it, to a government in their country; he distinguishes between himself and those who had ill treated the Indians, and pledges his love and service. About this time William Penn was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in London, probably by nomination of his friend, Dr. John Wallis, one of its founders, and with the hope that his connection with the New World would enable him to advance its objects. With a caution, which the experience of former purchases rendered essential, Penn obtained of the Duke of York a release of all his claims within the patent. His royal highness executed a quitclaim to William Penn and his heirs on August 21, 1682. The Duke had executed, in March, a ratification of his two former grants of East Jersey. But a certain fatality seemed to attend upon these transfers of ducal possessions. After various conflicts and controversies long continued, we may add, though by anticipation, that the proprietaryship of both the Jerseys was abandoned, and they were surrendered to the crown under Queen Anne, in April, 1702. Penn also obtained of the Duke of York another tract of land adjoining his patent. This region, afterward called the "Territories," and the three "Lower Counties," now Delaware, had been successively held by the Swedes and Dutch, and by the English at New York. The Duke confirmed it to William Penn, by two deeds, dated August 24, 1682. The last care on the mind of William Penn, before his embarkation, was to prepare proper counsel and instruction for his wife and children. This he did in the form of a letter written at Worminghurst, August 4, 1682. He knew not that he should ever see them again, and his heart poured forth to them the most touching utterances of affection. But it was not the heart alone which indited the epistle. It expressed the wisest counsels of prudence and discretion. All the important letters written by Penn contain a singular union of spiritual and worldly wisdom. Indeed, he thought these two ingredients to be but one element. He urged economy, filial love, purity, and industry, as well as piety, upon his children. He favored, though he did not insist upon, their receiving his religious views. We may express a passing regret that he who could give such advice to his children should not have had the joy to leave behind him anyone who could meet the not inordinate wish of his heart. In the mean while his deputy, Markham, acting by his instructions, was providing him a new home by purchasing for him, of the Indians, a piece of land, the deed of which is dated July 15th, and endorsed with a confirmation, August 1st, and by commencing upon it the erection which was afterward known as Pennsbury Manor. All his arrangements being completed, William Penn, at the age of thirty-eight, well, strong, and hopeful of the best results, embarked for his colony, on board the ship Welcome, of three hundred tons, Robert Greenaway master, on the last of August, 1682. While in the Downs he wrote a _Farewell Letter to Friends, the Unfaithful and Inquiring_, in his native land, dated August 30th, and probably many private letters. He had about one hundred fellow-passengers, mostly Friends from his own neighborhood in Sussex. The vessel sailed about September 1st, and almost immediately the small-pox, that desolating scourge of the passenger-ships of those days, appeared among the passengers, and thirty fell victims to it. The trials of that voyage, told to illustrate the Christian spirit which submissively encountered them, were long repeated from father to son and from mother to daughter. In about six weeks the ship entered the Delaware River. The old inhabitants along the shores, which had been settled by the whites for about half a century, received Penn with equal respect and joy. He arrived at New Castle on October 27th. The day was not commemorated by annual observances until the year 1824, when a meeting for that purpose was held at an inn, in Laetitia court, where Penn had resided. While the ship and its company went up the river, the proprietor, on the next day, called the inhabitants, who were principally Dutch and Swedes, to the court-house, where, after addressing them, he assumed and received the formal possession of the country. He renewed the commissions of the old magistrates, who urged him to unite the Territories to his government. After a visit of ceremony to the authorities at New York and Long Island, with a passing token to his friends in New Jersey, Penn went to Upland to hold the first Assembly, which opened on December 4th. Nicholas Moore, an English lawyer, and president of the Free Society of Traders, was made speaker. After three days' peaceful debate, the Assembly ratified, with modifications, the laws made in England, with about a score of new ones of a local, moral, or religious character, in which not only the drinking of healths, but the talking of scandal, was forbidden. By suggestion of his friend and fellow-voyager, Pearson, who came from Chester, in England, Penn substituted that name for Upland. By an act of union, passed on December 7th, the three Lower Counties, or the Territories, were joined in the government, and the foreigners were naturalized at their own request. On his arrival Penn had sent two messengers to Charles Calvert, Lord Baltimore, to propose a meeting and conference with him about their boundaries. On December 19th they met at West River with courtesy and kindness; but after three days they concluded to wait for the more propitious weather of the coming year. Penn, on his way back, attended a religious meeting at a private house, and afterward an official meeting at Choptank, on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake, and reached Chester again by December 29th, where much business engaged him. About twenty-three ships had arrived by the close of the year; none of them met with disaster, and all had fair passages. The new-comers found a comparatively easy sustenance. Provisions were obtained at a cheap rate of the Indians and of the older settlers. But great hardships were endured by some, and special providences are commemorated. Many found their first shelter in caves scooped out in the steep bank of the river. When these caves were deserted by their first occupants, the poor or the vicious made them a refuge; and one of the earliest signs both of prosperity and of corruption, in the colony, is disclosed in the mention that these rude coverts of the first devoted emigrants soon became tippling-houses and nuisances in the misuse of the depraved. There has been much discussion of late years concerning the far-famed Treaty of Penn with the Indians. A circumstance, which has all the interest both of fact and of poetry, was confirmed by such unbroken testimony of tradition that history seemed to have innumerable records of it in the hearts and memories of each generation. But as there appears no document or parchment of such _criteria_ as to satisfy all inquiries, historical scepticism has ventured upon the absurd length of calling in question the fact of the treaty. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, with commendable zeal, has bestowed much labor upon the questions connected with the treaty, and the results which have been attained can scarcely fail to satisfy a candid inquirer. All claim to a peculiar distinction for William Penn, on account of the singularity of his just proceedings in this matter is candidly waived, because the Swedes, the Dutch, and the English had previously dealt thus justly with the natives. It is in comparison with Pizarro and Cortes that the colonists of all other nations in America appear to an advantage; but the fame of William Penn stands, and ever will stand, preeminent for unexceptionable justice and peace in his relations with the natives. Penn had several meetings for conference and treaties with the Indians, besides those which he held for the purchase of lands. But unbroken and reverently cherished tradition, beyond all possibility of contradiction, has designated one great treaty held under a large elm-tree, at Shackamaxon (now Kensington), a treaty which Voltaire justly characterizes as "never sworn to, and never broken." In Penn's _Letter to the Free Society of Traders,_ dated August 16, 1683, he refers to his conferences with the Indians. Two deeds, conveying land to him, are on record, both of which bear an earlier date than this letter; namely, June 23d and July 14th of the same year. He had designed to make a purchase in May; but having been called off to a conference with Lord Baltimore, he postponed the business till June. The "Great Treaty" was doubtless unconnected with the purchase of land, and was simply a treaty of amity and friendship, in confirmation of one previously held, by Penn's direction, by Markham, on the same spot; that being a place which the Indians were wont to use for this purpose. It is probable that the treaty was held on the last of November, 1682; that the Delawares, the Mingos, and other Susquehanna tribes formed a large assembly on the occasion; that written minutes of the conference were made, and were in possession of Governor Gordon, who states nine conditions as belonging to them in 1728, but are now lost; and that the substance of the treaty is given in Penn's _Letter to the Free Traders_. These results are satisfactory, and are sufficiently corroborated by known facts and documents. The Great Treaty, being distinct from a land purchase, is significantly distinguished in history and tradition. The inventions of romance and imagination could scarcely gather round this engaging incident attractions surpassing in its own simple and impressive interest. Doubtless Clarkson has given a fair representation of it, if we merely disconnect from his account the statement that the Indians were armed, and all that confounds the treaty of friendship with the purchase of lands. Penn wore a sky-blue sash of silk around his waist, as the most simple badge. The pledges there given were to hold their sanctity "while the creeks and rivers run, and while the sun, moon, and stars endure." While the whites preserved in written records the memory of such covenants, the Indians had their methods for perpetuating in safe channels their own relations. They cherished in grateful regard, they repeated to their children and to the whites, the terms of the Great Treaty. The Delawares called William Penn _Miquon_, in their own language, though they seem to have adopted the name given him by the Iroquois, _Onas_; both which terms signify a quill or pen. Benjamin West's picture of the treaty is too imaginative for a historical piece. He makes Penn of a figure and aspect which would become twice the years that had passed over his head. The elm-tree was spared in the war of the American Revolution, when there was distress for firewood, the British officer, Simcoe, having placed a sentinel beneath it for protection. It was prostrated by the wind on the night of Saturday, March 3, 1810. It was of gigantic size, and the circles around its heart indicated an age of nearly three centuries. A piece of it was sent to the Penn mansion at Stoke Poges, in England, where it is properly commemorated. A marble monument, with suitable inscriptions, was "placed by the Penn Society, A.D. 1827, to mark the site of the Great Elm Tree." Long may it stand! Penn then made a visit to his manor of Pennsbury, up the Delaware. Under Markham's care, the grounds had been arranged, and a stately edifice of brick was in process of completion. The place had many natural beauties, and is said to have been arranged and decorated in consistency both with the office and the simple manners of the proprietor. There was a hall of audience for Indian embassies within, and luxurious gardens without. Hospitality had here a wide range, and Penn evidently designed it for a permanent abode. With the help of his surveyor, Thomas Holme, he laid out the plan of his now beautiful city, and gave it its name of Christian signification, that brotherly love might pervade its dwellings. He purchased the land, where the city stands, of the Swedes who already occupied it, and who purchased it of the Indians, though it would seem that a subsequent purchase was made of the natives of the same site with adjacent territory some time afterward by Thomas Holme, acting as president of the council, while Penn was in England. The Schuylkill and the Delaware rivers gave to the site eminent attractions. The plan was very simple, the streets running north and south being designated by numbers, those running east and west by the names of trees. Provision was made for large squares to be left open, and for common water privileges. The building was commenced at once, and was carried on with great zeal and continued success. %LAST TURKISH INVASION OF EUROPE% SOBIESKI SAVES VIENNA A.D. 1683 SUTHERLAND MENZIES After the defeat of the Turks at Lepanto, in 1571, the Ottoman power in Europe slowly declined. But under the Sultan Mahomet IV the old Moslem ambition for European conquest reawoke, as if for a final effort. And such it proved to be. By the disaster before Vienna, in which John Sobieski, King of Poland, once more saved Europe from their incursions, the Turks were driven back within their own confines, where they have since, for the most part, remained, making many wars, but no successful inroads, upon European powers. In 1682 the Hungarian magnates, who were resisting the oppression and persecution of their people by the Austrian Government, called upon the Turks for assistance. Listening to the proposals of Tekeli, the Hungarian leader, who had secured the aid of Louis XIV of France, Mahomet IV decided to break the truce he had made with Austria in 1665. In vain the Emperor Leopold I sent an embassy to Constantinople to dissuade the Sultan from his purpose. Early in the spring of 1683 Sultan Mahomet marched forth from his capital with a large army, which at Belgrad he transferred to the command of the Grand Vizier Kara Mustapha. Tekeli formed a junction with the Turks at Essek. In vain did Ibrahim, the experienced Pacha of Buda, endeavor to persuade Kara Mustapha first of all to subdue the surrounding country, and to postpone until the following year the attack upon Vienna; his advice was scornfully rejected, and, indeed, the audacity of the Grand Vizier seemed justified by the scant resistance he had met with. He talked of renewing the conquests of Solyman: he assembled, it is said, seven hundred thousand men, one hundred thousand horses, and one thousand two hundred guns--an army more powerful than any the Turks had set on foot since the capture of Constantinople. All of which may be reduced to one hundred fifty thousand barbarian troops without discipline, the last conquering army which the degenerate race of the Osmanlis produced wherewith to invade Hungary. Hostilities commenced in March, 1683; for the Turks, who had not been accustomed to enter upon a campaign before the summer season, had begun their march that year before the end of winter. Some prompt and easy successes exalted the ambition of Kara Mustapha; and in spite of the contrary advice of Tekeli, Ibrahim Pacha, and several other personages, he determined to besiege Vienna. He accordingly advanced direct upon that capital and encamped under its walls on July 14th. It was just at the moment that Louis XIV had captured Strasburg, and at which his army appeared ready to cross the Rhine: all Europe was in alarm, believing that an agreement existed between France and the Porte for the conquest and dismemberment of Germany. But it was not so. The Turks, without giving France any previous warning, had of themselves made their invasion of Hungary; Louis XIV was delighted at their success, but nevertheless disposed, if it went too far, to check them, in order to play the part of saviour of Christendom. It was fortunate for the Emperor Leopold that he had upon the frontiers of Poland an ally of indomitable courage in King John Sobieski, and that he found the German princes loyal and prompt on this occasion, contrary to their custom, in sending him succor. Moreover, in Duke Charles of Lorraine he met with a skilful general to lead his army. Consternation and confusion prevailed, however, in Vienna, while the Emperor with his court fled to Linz. Many of the inhabitants followed him; but the rest, when the first moments of terror had passed, prepared for the defence, and the dilatoriness of the Turks, who amused themselves with pillaging the environs and neighboring _châteaux_, allowed the Duke of Lorraine to throw twelve thousand men as a garrison into the city; then, as he was unable with his slender force to bar the approach of the Turkish army, he kept aloof and waited for the King of Poland. Leopold solicited succor on all sides, and the Pope made an appeal to the piety of the King of France. Louis XIV, on the contrary, was intriguing throughout Europe in order that the Christian princes should not quit their attitude of repose, and he only offered to the Diet of Ratisbon the aid of his arms on condition that it should recognize the recent usurpations decreed by the famous Chambers of Reunion,[1] and that it should elect his son king of the Romans. He reckoned, if it should accept his offers, to determine the Turks to retreat and to effect a peace which, by bringing the imperial crown into his house, would have been the death-stroke for Austria. All these combinations miscarried through the devotedness of the Poles. [Footnote 1: The Chambers of Reunion were special courts established in France by Louis XIV (1680). These courts declared for the annexation to France of various territories along the eastern frontier.--ED.] When Leopold supplicated Sobieski to come to his aid, Louis XIV tried to divert him from it; he reassured him upon the projects of the Turks by a letter of the Sultan, he made him see his real enemies in Austria, Brandenburg, and that power of the North, which the Dutch gazettes had begun to call "His Russian Majesty"; he reminded him, in fine, that the house of Austria, saved by the French on the day of St. Gothard, had testified its gratitude to them by allowing the victors to die of hunger and by envenoming their difference with the Porte. But it was all useless; hatred of the infidels prevailed, and the Polish squadrons hurried to the deliverance of Vienna. Count Rudiger de Starhemberg was made commandant of the city, and showed himself alike bold and energetic in everything that could contribute to its defence. The Turkish camp encircled Vienna and its suburbs, spreading over the country all round to the distance of six leagues. Two days afterward, Kara Mustapha opened the trenches, and his artillery battered the walls in order to make a breach. Great efforts, moreover, were made in digging mines, with the design of blowing up bastions or portions of the wall, so that the city might be carried by assault, wherein the Turks hoped to find an immense booty. But the besieged made an obstinate defence, and repaired during the night the damage done on the previous day. During sixty days forty mines and ten counter-mines were exploded; the Turks delivered eighteen assaults, the besieged made twenty-four sorties. Each inch of ground was only obtained by dint of a hard and long struggle, in which an equal stubbornness both in attack and defence was exhibited. The hottest fighting took place at the "Label" bastion, around which there was not a foot of ground that had not been steeped in the blood of friend or foe. However, by degrees the Turks gained a few paces; at the end of August they were lodged in the ditches of the city; and on September 4th they sprung a mine under the "Bourg" bastion; one-half of the city was shaken thereby, and a breach was rent in the bastion wide enough for an assault to be delivered, but the enemy was repulsed. Next day the Turks attacked it with renewed courage, but the valor of the besieged baffled the assailants. On September 10th another mine was sprung under the same bastion, and the breach was so wide that a battalion might have entered it abreast. The danger was extreme, for the garrison was exhausted by fighting, sickness, and incessant labor. The Count de Starhemberg despatched courier after courier to the Duke of Lorraine for succor: "There is not a moment to be lost, Monseigneur," he wrote, "not a moment;" and Vienna, exhausted, saw not yet her liberators arrive. At length, on the 14th, when the whole city was in a stupor in the immediate expectation of an attack, a movement was observed in the enemy's camp which announced that succor was at hand. At five o'clock in the afternoon the Christian army was descried surmounting the Hill of Kahlen, and it made its presence known by a salvo of artillery. John Sobieski had arrived at the head of a valiant army. The Electors of Saxony and of Bavaria with many princes, dukes, and margraves of Germany had brought with them fresh troops. Charles of Lorraine might then dare to march against the Moslems, although he had yet only forty-six thousand men. The army of Sobieski reached Klosterenburg, Koenigstetten, St. André, the Valley of Hagen and Kirling, where it effected its junction with the Austrians and the Saxons who had arrived there in passing by Hoeflin. On Sunday, September 15th, in the earliest rays of a fine autumnal day, the holy priest Marco d'Aviano celebrated mass in the chapel of Kahlenberg, and the King of Poland served him during the sacrifice. Afterward, Sobieski made his son kneel down and dubbed him a knight in remembrance of the great occasion on which he was going to be present; then, turning toward his officers, he reminded them of the victory of Choczim, adding that the triumph they were about to achieve under the walls of Vienna would not only save a city, but Christendom. Next morning the Christian army descended the Hill of Kahlen in order of battle. A salvo of five cannon-shot gave the signal for the fight. Sobieski commanded the right wing, the Duke of Lorraine the left, under whose orders served Prince Eugene of Savoy, then aged nineteen. The Elector of Bavaria was in the centre. The village of Naussdorf, situated upon the Danube, was attacked by the Saxon and imperial troops which formed the left wing, and carried after an obstinate resistance. Toward noon the King of Poland, having descended into the plain with the right wing, at the head of his Polish cavalry, attacked the innumerable squadrons of Turkish horse. Flinging himself upon the enemy's centre with all the fury of a hurricane, he spread confusion in their ranks; but his courage carried him too far; he was surrounded and was on the point of being overwhelmed by numbers. Then, shouting for aid, the German cavalry, which had followed him, charged the enemy at full gallop, delivered the King, and soon put the Turks to flight on all sides. The right wing had decided the victory; by seven o'clock in the evening the deliverance of Vienna was achieved. The bodies of more than ten thousand infidels strewed the field of battle. But all those combats were mere preludes to the great battle which must decide the fortune of the war. For the Turkish camp, with its thousands of tents, could still be seen spreading around as far as the eye could reach, and its artillery continued to play upon the city. The victorious commander-in-chief was holding a council of war to decide whether to give battle again on that same day, or wait till the morrow to give his troops an interval of rest, when a messenger came with the announcement that the enemy appeared to be in full flight; and it proved to be the fact. A panic had seized the Turks, who fled in disorder, abandoning their camp and baggage; and soon even those who were attacking the city were seen in full flight with the rest of the army. The booty found in the Turkish camp was immense: three hundred pieces of heavy artillery, five thousand tents, that of the Grand Vizier with all the military chests and the chancery. The treasures amounted to fifteen million crowns; the tent of the Vizier alone yielded four hundred thousand crowns. Two millions also were found in the military chest; arms studded with precious stones, the equipments of Kara Mustapha, fell into the hands of the victors. In their flight the Mussulmans threw away arms, baggage, and banners, with the exception of the holy standard of the Prophet, which, nevertheless, the imperials pretended to have seized. The King of Poland received for his share four million florins; and in a letter to his wife--the sole delight of his soul, his dear and well-beloved Mariette--he speaks of that booty and of the happiness of having delivered Vienna. "All the enemy's camp," he wrote, "with the whole of his artillery and all his enormous riches, have fallen into our hands. We are driving before us a host of camels, mules, and Turkish prisoners." Count Starhemberg received the King of Poland in the magnificent tent of the Grand Vizier and greeted him as a deliverer. Next day Sobieski, accompanied by the Elector of Bavaria and the different commanders, traversed the city on horseback, preceded by a great banner of cloth of gold and two tall gilded staves bearing the horse-tails which had been planted in front of the Grand Vizier's tent, as a symbol of supreme command. In the Loretto chapel of the Augustins the hero threw himself upon his face before the altar and chanted the _Te Deum_. Vienna was delivered; the flood of Ottomans, that had beaten against its walls one hundred fifty-four years previously, had returned more furiously, more menacing still, against that dignified protectress of European civilization, but this time it had been repelled never to return. Thus vanished the insane hopes of the Grand Vizier. If Demetrius Cantemir may be believed, Kara Mustapha had desired to capture Vienna to appropriate it to himself and found in the West an empire of which he would have been the sovereign. "That subject," says the historian, "who only held his power from the Sultan, despised in his heart the Sultan himself; and as he found himself at the head of all the disciplined troops of the empire, he looked upon his master as a shadow denuded of strength and substance, who, being very inferior in courage to him, could never oppose to him an army like that which was under his command. For all that concerned the Emperor of Germany, he appeared still less to be feared: being a prince bare and despoiled so soon as he should have lost Vienna. It was thus that Kara Mustapha reasoned within himself. "Already he casts his eyes over the treasures which he has in his possession; with the money of the Sultan he has also brought his own; all that of the German princes is going to be his; for he believes that it is amassed in the city he is besieging. If he needs support, he reckons upon the different governors of Hungary as devoted to his interests; these are his creatures, whom he has put into their posts during the seven years of his vizierate; not one of those functionaries dare offer an obstacle to the elevation of his benefactor. Ibrahim Pacha, Beylerbey of Buda, keeps him in suspense by reason of the influence that his fame gives him over the army and over Hungary; he must be won over before all else, as well as the chief officers of the janizaries and the spahis. Ibrahim shall be made King of Hungary. The different provinces comprised in that kingdom shall be divided into _timars_ for appanage of the spahis, and all the rest of the soldiery shall have establishments in the towns, as so many new colonies; to them shall be assigned the lands of the old inhabitants, who will be driven out or reduced to slavery. He reserves for himself the title of Sultan, his share shall be all Germany as far as the frontiers of France, with Transylvania and Poland, which he intends to render subject or at least make tributary the year following." Such are the projects that Cantemir attributes to Kara Mustapha; the intervention of Sobieski caused these chimerical plans quickly to vanish. The Emperor Leopold, who returned to Vienna on September 16th, instead of expressing his thanks and gratitude to the commanders who had rescued his capital, received them with the haughty and repulsive coldness prescribed by the etiquette of the imperial court. Sobieski nevertheless continued his services by pursuing the retreating Turks. Awakened from his dream of self-exaltation, the Grand Vizier retook the road toward Turkey, directing his steps to the Raab, where he rallied the remnants of his army. Thence he marched toward Buda, and attacked by the way the Styrian town of Lilenfeld; he was repulsed by the prelate Matthias Kalweis, and avenged himself for that fresh check by devastating Lower Styria. He crossed the Danube by a bridge of boats at Parkany; but the Poles vigorously disputed the passage with him, and he again lost more than eight thousand men taken or slain by the Christians. Shortly after, the fortress of Gran opened its gates to Kara Mustapha. The Grand Vizier barbarously put to death the officers who had signed the capitulation; he threw upon his generals the responsibility of his reverses, and thought to stifle in blood the murmurs of his accusers. The army marched in disorder as though struck with a panic terror. Kara Mustapha wished that a Jew whom he despatched to Belgrad should be escorted by a troop of horsemen. "I have no need of an escort," replied the Jew: "I have only to wear my cap in the German fashion, and not a Turk will touch me." The enemies of the Grand Vizier, however, conspired to effect his ruin at Constantinople; and the results of the campaign justified the predictions of the party of peace. Mahomet IV, enraged at these disasters, sent his grand chamberlain to Belgrad with orders to bring back the head of the Vizier (1683): it was, in fact, brought to the Sultan in a silver dish. %MONMOUTH'S REBELLION% A.D. 1685 GILBERT BURNET James II was scarcely seated on the English throne in 1685 when serious disturbances began in his realm. The King had inherited the peculiar traits of the Stuarts. His first purpose was to overcome the Parliamentary power and make himself absolute ruler. He was likewise a Roman Catholic, and one of his objects was the suppression of English Protestantism. During the first days of his reign the Protestant peasants in the west of England rose in revolt. They supported the claims of James Fitzroy, Duke of Monmouth, to the throne. Monmouth was the (reputed) illegitimate son of Charles II and Lucy Walters. With other exiled malcontents, English and Scotch, he had taken refuge in Holland. One of those exiled was the Earl of Argyle, whose father had figured prominently on the side of the Scottish Presbyterians against Charles I. Owing to national jealousy, the English and Scotch in Holland could not act in unison, but all were determined to strike against James. Two expeditions were planned--one under Argyle, who expected to find forces awaiting him in Scotland; the other under Monmouth, whose adherents were to join him in the west of England. Argyle's attempt miscarried through disagreement among the leaders, and the Earl was taken and beheaded, June 30, 1685. What befell the enterprise of Monmouth is told by Bishop Burnet, a contemporary historian. Monmouth was executed July 15, 1685, and in the trials known as the "Bloody Assizes," presided over by the brutal George Jeffreys, some three hundred of the Duke's followers were condemned to death, and more than a thousand otherwise punished. As soon as Lord Argyle sailed for Scotland, Monmouth set about his design with as much haste as possible. Arms were brought and a ship was freighted for Bilbao in Spain. He pawned all his jewels, but these could not raise much, and no money was sent to him out of England. So he was hurried into an ill-designed invasion. The whole company consisted but of eighty-two persons. They were all faithful to one another. But some spies whom Shelton, the new envoy, set on work, sent him the notice of a suspected ship sailing out of Amsterdam with arms. Shelton neither understood the laws of Holland nor advised with those who did; otherwise he would have carried with him an order from the admiralty of Holland, that sat at The Hague, to be made use of as the occasion should require. When he came to Amsterdam, and applied himself to the magistrates there, desiring them to stop and search the ship that he named, they found the ship was already sailed out of their port and their jurisdiction went no further. So he was forced to send to the admiralty at The Hague. But those on board, hearing what he was come for, made all possible haste. And, the wind favoring them, they got out of the Texel before the order desired could be brought from The Hague. After a prosperous course, the Duke landed at Lyme in Dorsetshire (June 11, 1685); and he with his small company came ashore with some order, but with too much daylight, which discovered how few they were. The alarm was brought hot to London, where, upon the general report and belief of the thing, an act of attainder passed both Houses in one day; some small opposition being made by the Earl of Anglesey, because the evidence did not seem clear enough for so severe a sentence, which was grounded on the notoriety of the thing. The sum of five thousand pounds was set on his head. And with that the session of Parliament ended; which was no small happiness to the nation, such a body of men being dismissed with doing so little hurt. The Duke of Monmouth's manifesto was long and ill-penned--full of much black and dull malice. It charged the King with the burning of London, the popish plot, Godfrey's murder, and the Earl of Essex's death; and to crown all, it was pretended that the late King was poisoned by his orders: it was set forth that the King's religion made him incapable of the crown; that three subsequent houses of commons had voted his exclusion: the taking away of the old charters, and all the hard things done in the last reign, were laid to his charge: the elections of the present parliament were also set forth very odiously, with great indecency of style; the nation was also appealed to, when met in a free parliament, to judge of the Duke's own pretensions;[1] and all sort of liberty, both in temporals and spirituals, was promised to persons of all persuasions. [Footnote 1: He asserted that his mother had been the lawful wife of his father.--ED.] Upon the Duke of Monmouth's landing, many of the country people came in to join him, but very few of the gentry. He had quickly men enough about him to use all his arms. The Duke of Albemarle, as lord lieutenant of Devonshire, was sent down to raise the militia, and with them to make head against him. But their ill-affection appeared very evident; many deserted, and all were cold in the service. The Duke of Monmouth had the whole country open to him for almost a fortnight, during which time he was very diligent in training and animating his men. His own behavior was so gentle and obliging that he was master of all their hearts as much as was possible. But he quickly found what it was to be at the head of undisciplined men, that knew nothing of war, and that were not to be used with rigor. Soon after their landing, Lord Grey was sent out with a small party. He saw a few of the militia, and he ran for it; but his men stood, and the militia ran from them. Lord Grey brought a false alarm, that was soon found to be so, for the men whom their leader had abandoned came back in good order. The Duke of Monmouth was struck with this when he found that the person on whom he depended most, and for whom he designed the command of the horse, had already made himself infamous by his cowardice. He intended to join Fletcher with him in that command. But an unhappy accident made it not convenient to keep him longer about him. He sent him out on another party, and he, not being yet furnished with a horse, took the horse of one who had brought in a great body of men from Taunton. He was not in the way, so Fletcher not seeing him to ask his leave, thought that all things were to be in common among them that could advance the service. After Fletcher had ridden about as he was ordered, as he returned, the owner of the horse he rode on--who was a rough and ill-bred man--reproached him in very injurious terms for taking out his horse without his leave. Fletcher bore this longer than could have been expected from one of his impetuous temper. But the other persisted in giving him foul language, and offered a switch or a cudgel, upon which he discharged his pistol at him and shot him dead. He went and gave the Duke of Monmouth an account of this, who saw it was impossible to keep him longer about him without disgusting and losing the country people who were coming in a body to demand justice. So he advised him to go aboard the ship and to sail on to Spain whither she was bound. By this means he was preserved for that time. Ferguson ran among the people with all the fury of an enraged man that affected to pass for an enthusiast, though all his performances that way were forced and dry. The Duke of Monmouth's great error was that he did not in the first heat venture on some hardy action and then march either to Exeter or Bristol; where as he would have found much wealth, so he would have gained some reputation by it. But he lingered in exercising his men and stayed too long in the neighborhood of Lyme. By this means the King had time both to bring troops out of Scotland, after Argyle was taken, and to send to Holland for the English and Scotch regiments that were in the service of the states; which the Prince sent over very readily and offered his own person, and a greater force, if it were necessary. The King received this with great expressions of acknowledgment and kindness. It was very visible that he was much distracted in his thoughts, and that, what appearance of courage soever he might put on, he was inwardly full of apprehensions and fears. He dare not accept of the offer of assistance that the French made him; for by that he would have lost the hearts of the English nation, and he had no mind to be so much obliged to the Prince of Orange or to let him into his counsels or affairs. Prince George committed a great error in not asking the command of the army; for the command, how much soever he might have been bound to the counsels of others, would have given him some lustre; whereas his staying at home in such times of danger brought him under much neglect. The King could not choose worse than he did when he gave the command to the Earl of Feversham, who was a Frenchman by birth--and nephew to M. de Turenne. Both his brothers changing religion--though he continued still a Protestant--made that his religion was not much trusted to. He was an honest, brave, and good-natured man, but weak to a degree not easy to be conceived. And he conducted matters so ill that every step he made was like to prove fatal to the King's service. He had no parties abroad. He got no intelligence, and was almost surprised and like to be defeated, when he seemed to be under no apprehension, but was abed without any care or order. So that if the Duke of Monmouth had got but a very small number of good soldiers about him, the King's affairs would have fallen into great disorder. The Duke of Monmouth had almost surprised Lord Feversham and all about him while they were abed. He got in between two bodies, into which the army lay divided. He now saw his error in lingering so long. He began to want bread, and to be so straitened that there was a necessity of pushing for a speedy decision. He was so misled in his march that he lost an hour's time, and when he came near the army there was an inconsiderable ditch, in the passing which he lost so much more time that the officers had leisure to rise and be dressed, now they had the alarm. And they put themselves in order. Yet the Duke of Monmouth's foot stood longer and fought better than could have been expected; especially, when the small body of horse they had, ran upon the first charge, the blame of which was cast on Lord Grey. The foot being thus forsaken and galled by the cannon, did run at last. About a thousand of them were killed on the spot, and fifteen hundred were taken prisoners. Their numbers, when fullest, were between five and six thousand. The Duke of Monmouth left the field[1] too soon for a man of courage who had such high pretensions; for a few days before he had suffered himself to be called king, which did him no service, even among those that followed him. He rode toward Dorsetshire; and when his horse could carry him no further he changed clothes with a shepherd and went as far as his legs could carry him, being accompanied only by a German whom he had brought over with him. At last, when he could go no farther, they lay down in a field where there was hay and straw, with which they covered themselves, so that they hoped to lie there unseen till night. Parties went out on all hands to take prisoners. The shepherd was found by Lord Lumley in the Duke of Monmouth's clothes. So this put them on his track, and having some dogs with them, they followed the scent, and came to the place where the German was first discovered. And he immediately pointed to the place where the Duke of Monmouth lay. So he was taken in a very indecent dress and posture. [Footnote 1: This engagement took place at Ledgemoor, Somerset, July 6, 1685.--ED.] His body was quite sunk with fatigue, and his mind was now so low that he begged his life in a manner that agreed ill with the courage of the former parts of it. He called for pen, ink, and paper, and wrote to the Earl of Feversham, and both to the Queen and the Queen dowager, to intercede with the King for his life. The King's temper, as well as his interest, made it so impossible to hope for that, that it showed a great meanness in him to ask it in such terms as he used in his letters. He was carried up to Whitehall, where the King examined him in person, which was thought very indecent, since he was resolved not to pardon him.[1] He made new and unbecoming submissions, and insinuated a readiness to change his religion; for, he said, the King knew what his first education was in religion. There were no discoveries to be got from him; for the attempt was too rash to be well concerted, or to be so deep laid that many were involved in the guilt of it. He was examined on Monday, and orders were given for his execution on Wednesday. [Footnote 1: The Duke of Monmouth pressed extremely that the King would see him, whence the King concluded he had something to say to him that he would tell to nobody else; but when he found it ended in nothing but lower submission than he either expected or desired, he told him plainly he had put it out of his power to pardon him by having proclaimed himself king. Thus may the most innocent actions of a man's life be sometimes turned to his disadvantage.--ED.] Turner and Ken, the Bishops of Ely and of Bath and Wells, were ordered to wait on him. But he called for Dr. Tennison. The bishops studied to convince him of the sin of rebellion. He answered, he was sorry for the blood that was shed in it, but he did not seem to repent of the design. Yet he confessed that his father had often told him that there was no truth in the reports of his having married his mother. This he set under his hand, probably for his children's sake, who were then prisoners in the Tower, that so they might not be ill-used on his account. He showed a great neglect of his duchess. And her resentments for his course of life with Lady Wentworth wrought so much on her that she seemed not to have any of that tenderness left that became her sex and his present circumstances, for when he desired to speak privately with her she would have witnesses to hear all that passed, to justify herself, and to preserve her family. They parted very coldly. He only recommended to her the rearing of their children in the Protestant religion. The bishops continued still to press on him a deep sense of the sin of rebellion; at which he grew so uneasy that he desired them to speak to him of other matters. They next charged him with the sin of living with Lady Wentworth, as he had done. In that he justified himself; he had married his duchess too young to give a true consent; he said that lady was a pious worthy woman, and that he had never lived so well, in all respects, as since his engagements with her. All the pains they took to convince him of the unlawfulness of that course of life had no effect. They did certainly very well in discharging their consciences and speaking so plainly to him. But they did very ill to talk so much of this matter and to make it so public, as they did, for divines ought not to repeat what they say to dying penitents no more than what the penitents say to them. By this means the Duke of Monmouth had little satisfaction in them and they had as little in him. He was much better pleased with Dr. Tennison, who did very plainly speak to him with relation to his public actings and to his course of life; but he did it in a softer and less peremptory manner. And having said all that he thought proper, he left those points, in which he saw he could not convince him, to his own conscience, and turned to other things fit to be laid before a dying man. The Duke begged one day more of life with such repeated earnestness that as the King was much blamed for denying so small a favor, so it gave occasion to others to believe that he had some hope from astrologers that if he outlived that day he might have a better fate. As long as he fancied there was any hope, he was too much unsettled in his mind to be capable of anything. But when he saw all was to no purpose and that he must die he complained a little that his death was hurried on so fast. But all on a sudden he came into a composure of mind that surprised those that saw it. There was no affectation in it. His whole behavior was easy and calm, not without a decent cheerfulness. He prayed God to forgive all his sins, unknown as well as known. He seemed confident of the mercies of God, and that he was going to be happy with him. And he went to the place of execution on Tower Hill with an air of undisturbed courage that was grave and composed. He said little there, only that he was sorry for the blood that was shed, but he had ever meant well to the nation. When he saw the axe he touched it and said it was not sharp enough. He gave the hangman but half the reward he intended, and said if he cut off his head cleverly, and not so butcherly as he did the Lord Russel's, his man would give him the rest. The executioner was in great disorder, trembling all over; so he gave him two or three strokes without being able to finish the matter and then flung the axe out of his hand. But the sheriff forced him to take it up; and at three or four more strokes he severed his head from his body and both were presently buried in the chapel of the Tower. Thus lived and died this unfortunate young man. He had several good qualities in him, and some that were as bad. He was soft and gentle even to excess and too easy to those who had credit with him. He was both sincere and good-natured, and understood war well. But he was too much given to pleasure and to favorites. %REVOCATION OF THE EDICT OF NANTES% A.D. 1685 BON LOUIS HENRI MARTIN It was one of the glories of Henry of Navarre to end the religious wars of France by publishing the Edict of Nantes (1598), which placed Catholics and Protestants on a practically equal footing as subjects. By the revocation of that edict, in 1685, Louis XIV opened the way for fresh persecution of the Huguenots. Of the hundreds of thousands whom the King and his agents then caused to flee the country and seek civil and religious liberty in other lands, many crossed the sea and settled in the colonies of North America, especially in South Carolina. By revoking the Edict of Nantes Louis XIV arrayed against himself all the Protestant countries of Europe. By seizures of territory he also offended Catholic states. In 1686 the League of Augsburg combined the greater part of Europe for resisting his encroachments. This period of the "Huguenots of the Dispersion" was marked by complicated strifes in politics, religion, and philosophy. It was one of the most reactionary epochs in French history. No writer has better depicted the time, with the severities, atrocities, and effects of the revocation of the great edict, than Martin, the celebrated historian of his country. For many years the government of Louis XIV had been acting toward the Reformation as toward a victim entangled in a noose which is drawn tighter and tighter till it strangles its prey. In 1683 the oppressed had finally lost patience, and their partial attempts at resistance, disavowed by the most distinguished of their brethren, had been stifled in blood. After the truce of Ratisbon, declarations and decrees hostile to Protestantism succeeded each other with frightful rapidity; nothing else was seen in the official gazette. Protestant ministers were prohibited from officiating longer than three years in the same church (August, 1684); Protestant individuals were forbidden to give asylum to their sick coreligionists; the sick who were not treated at home were required to go to the hospitals, where they were put in the hands of churchmen. A beautiful and touching request, written by Pastor Claude, was in vain presented to the King in January, 1685. Each day beheld some Protestant church closed for contraventions either imaginary or fraudulently fabricated by persecutors. It was enough that the child of a "convert" or a bastard (all bastards were reputed Catholic) should enter a Protestant church for the exercise of worship, to be interdicted there. If this state of things had continued long, not a single Protestant church would have been left. The Protestant academy or university of Saumur, which had formed so many eminent theologians and orators, was closed; the ministers were subjected to the villein tax for their real estate (January, 1685). The quinquennial assembly of the clergy, held in May, presented to the King a multitude of new demands against the heretics; among others, for the establishment of penalties against the "converts" who did not fulfil their duties as Catholics. The penalty of death, which had been decreed against emigrants, was commuted into perpetual confinement in the galleys, by the request of the clergy. The first penalty had been little more than a threat; the second, which confounded with the vilest miscreants, unfortunates guilty of having desired to flee from persecution, was to be applied in the sternest reality! It was extended to Protestants living in France who should authorize their children to marry foreigners. It was interdicted to Reformers to follow the occupation of printer or bookseller. It was forbidden to confer on them degrees in arts, law, or medicine. Protestant orphans could have only Catholic guardians. Half of the goods of emigrants was promised to informers. It was forbidden to Reformers to preach or write against Catholicism (July, August, 1685). A multitude of Protestant churches had been demolished, and the inhabitants of places where worship had been suppressed were prohibited from going to churches in places where it was still permitted. Grave difficulties resulted with respect to the principal acts of civil life, which, among Protestants as among Catholics, owed their authenticity only to the intervention of ministers of religion. A decree in council of September 15, 1685, enacted that, in places deprived of the exercise of worship, a pastor chosen by the intendant of the generality should celebrate, in the presence of relatives only, the marriages of Reformers; that their bans should be published to the congregations, and the registries of their marriages entered on the rolls of the local court. Similar decrees had been issued concerning baptisms and burials. Hitherto Protestantism had been struck right and left with all kinds of weapons, without any very definite method: these decrees seemed to indicate a definite plan; that is, the suppression of external worship, with a certain tolerance, at least provisionally, for conscience, and a kind of civil state separately constituted for obstinate Protestants. This plan had, in fact, been debated in council. "The King," wrote Madame de Maintenon, August 13, 1684, "has it in mind to work for the _entire_ conversion of heretics; he has frequent conferences for this purpose with M. le Tellier and M. de Chateauneuf (the secretary of state charged with the affairs of the so-called Reformed religion), in which they wish to persuade me to take part. M. de Chateauneuf has proposed means that are unsuitable. Things must not be hastened. _It is necessary to convert, not to persecute_. M. de Louvois prefers mild measures which do not accord with his nature and his eagerness to see things ended." The means proposed by Chateauneuf was apparently the immediate revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which was judged premature. As to the "mildness" of Louvois, it was soon seen in operation. Louvois pretended to be moderate, lest the King, through scruples of humanity, should hesitate to confer on him the management of the affair. He had his plan ready: it was to recur to the "salutary constraint" already tried in 1681 by the instrumentality of soldiers to the Dragonade. Colbert was no longer at hand to interpose obstacles to this. Louvois had persuaded the King that in the moral situation of Protestant communities it would be enough "to show them the troops," to compel them to abjure. The troops had been "shown," therefore, to the Reformers of Béarn; the intendant of that province, Foucault, had come to Paris to concert with the minister the management of the enterprise; Louvois could not have found a fitter instrument than this pitiless and indefatigable man, who had the soul of an inquisitor under the garb of a pliant courtier. On his return from Paris, Foucault, seconded by the Parliament of Pau and the clergy, began by the demolition, on account of "contraventions," of fifteen out of twenty Protestant churches that remained in Béarn, and the "conversion" of eleven hundred persons in two months (February-April, 1685). He then called for the assistance of the army to complete the work, promising "to keep a tight rein over the soldiers, so that they should do no violence." This was for the purpose of allaying the scruples of the King. The troops were therefore concentrated in the cities and villages filled with Reformers; the five remaining Protestant churches shared the fate of the rest, and the pastors were banished, some to a distance of six leagues from their demolished churches, others beyond the jurisdiction of the Parliament of Pau. Terror flew before the soldiers; as soon as the scarlet uniforms and the high caps of the dragoons were descried, corporations, whole cities, sent their submission to the intendant. An almost universal panic chilled all hearts. The mass of Reformers signed or verbally accepted a confession of the Catholic faith, suffered themselves to be led to the church, bowed their heads to the benediction of the bishop or the missionary, and cannon and bonfires celebrated the "happy reconciliation." Protestants who had hoped to find a refuge in liberty of conscience without external worship saw this hope vanish. Foucault paid no attention to the decrees in council that regulated the baptisms, marriages, and burials of Protestants, because, he said in a despatch to the minister, "in the present disposition to general and speedy conversion, this would expose those who waver, and harden the obstinate." The council issued a new order confirmatory of the preceding ones, and specially for Béarn. Foucault, according to his own words, "did not judge proper to execute it." This insolence went unpunished. Success justified everything. Before the end of August the twenty-two thousand Protestants of Béarn were "converted," save a few hundred. Foucault, in his _Memoirs_, in which he exhibits his triumphs with cynicism, does not, however, avow all the means. Although he confesses that "the distribution of money drew many souls to the Church," he does not say how he kept his promise of preventing the "soldiers from doing any violence." He does not recount the brutalities, the devastations, the tortures resorted to against the refractory, the outrages to women, nor how these soldiers took turns from hour to hour to hinder their hosts from sleeping during entire weeks till these unfortunates, stupefied, delirious, signed an abjuration. The King saw only the result. The resolution was taken to send everywhere these "booted missionaries" who had succeeded so well in Béarn. Louvois sent, on the part of the King, July 31st, a command to the Marquis de Boufflers, their general, to lead them into Guienne, and "to quarter them all on the Reformers"; "observing to endeavor to diminish the number of Reformers in such a manner that in each community the Catholics shall be twice or three times more numerous than they; so that when, in due time, his majesty shall wish no longer to permit the exercise of this religion in his kingdom, he may no longer have to apprehend that the small number that shall remain can undertake anything." The troops were to be withdrawn as fast as this object should be obtained in each place, without undertaking to convert all at once. The ministers should be driven out of the country, and by no means should they be retained by force; the pastors absent, the flocks could more easily be brought to reason. The soldiers were to commit "no other disorders than to levy (daily) twenty sous for each horseman or dragoon, and ten sous for each foot-soldier." Excesses were to be severely punished. Louvois, in another letter, warned the general not to yield to all the suggestions of the ecclesiastics, nor even of the intendants. They did not calculate on being able to proceed so rapidly as in Béarn. These instructions show precisely, not what was done, but what the King wished should be done. The subalterns, sure of immunity in case of success, acted more in accordance with the spirit of Louvois than according to the words dictated by Louis. The King, when by chance he heard that his orders had been transcended, rarely chastised the transgressor, lest it might be "said to the Reformers that his majesty disapproves of whatsoever has been done to convert them." Louis XIV, therefore, cannot repudiate, before history, his share of this terrible responsibility. The result exceeded the hopes of the King and of Louvois. Guienne yielded as easily as Béarn. The Church of Montauban, the head-quarters of the Reformation in this region, was "reunited" in great majority, after several days of military vexations; Bergerac held out a little longer; then all collective resistance ceased. The cities and villages, for ten or twelve leagues around, sent to the military leaders their promises of abjuration. In three weeks there were sixty thousand conversions in the district of Bordeaux or Lower Guienne, twenty thousand in that of Montauban or Upper Guienne. According to the reports of Boufflers, Louvois, September 7th, reckoned that before the end of the month there would not remain in Lower Guienne ten thousand Reformers out of the one hundred fifty thousand found there August 15th. "There is not a courier," wrote Madame de Maintenon, September 26th, "that does not bring the King great causes of joy; to wit, news of conversions by thousands." The only resistance that they deigned to notice here and there was that of certain provincial gentlemen, of simple and rigid habits, less disposed than the court nobility to sacrifice their faith to interest and vanity. Guienne subjected, the army of Béarn was marched, a part into Limousin, Saintonge, and Poitou, a part into Languedoc. Poitou, already "dragooned" in 1681 by the intendant Marillac, had just been so well labored with by Marillac's successor, Lamoignon de Basville, aided by some troops, that Foucault, sent from Béarn into Poitou, found nothing more to glean. The King even caused Louvois to recommend that they should not undertake to convert all the Reformers at once, lest the rich and powerful families, who had in their hands the commerce of those regions, should avail themselves of the proximity of the sea to take flight (September 8th). Basville, a great administrator, but harshly inflexible, was sent from Poitou into Lower Languedoc, in the first part of September, in order to coöperate there with the Duke de Noailles, governor of the province. The intendant of Lower Languedoc, D'Aguesseau, although he had zealously coöperated in all the restrictive measures of the Reformed worship, had asked for his recall as soon as he had seen that the King was determined on the employment of military force; convinced that this determination would not be less fatal to religion than to the country, he retired, broken-hearted, his spirit troubled for the future. The conversion of Languedoc seemed a great undertaking. The mass of Protestants, nearly all concentrated in Lower Languedoc, and in the mountainous regions adjoining, was estimated at more than two hundred forty thousand souls; these people, more ardent, more constant than the mobile and sceptical Gascons, did not seem capable of so easily abandoning their belief. The result, however, was the same as elsewhere. Nîmes and Montpellier followed the example of Montauban. The quartering of a hundred soldiers in their houses quickly reduced the notables of Nîmes; in this diocese alone, the principal centre of Protestantism, sixty thousand souls abjured in three days. Several of the leading ministers did the same. From Nîmes the Duc de Noailles led the troops into the mountains. Cévennes and Gevaudan submitted to invasion like the rest, as the armed mission advanced from valley to valley. These cantons were still under the terror of the sanguinary repressions of 1683, and had been disarmed, as far as it was possible, as well as all Lower Languedoc. Noailles, in the earlier part of October, wrote to Louvois that he would answer "upon his head" that, before the end of November, the province would contain no more Huguenots. If we are to believe his letters, prepared for the eyes of the King, everything must have taken place "with all possible wisdom and discipline"; but the Chancellor d'Aguesseau, in the "life" of his father, the intendant, teaches us what we are to think of it. "The manner in which this miracle was wrought," he says, "the singular facts that were recounted to us day by day, would have sufficed to pierce a heart less religious than that of my father!" Noailles himself, in a confidential letter, announced to Louvois that he would ere long send "some capable men to answer about any matters which he desired to know, and about which he could not write." There was a half tacit understanding established between the minister, the military chiefs, and the intendants. The King, in their opinion, desired the end without sufficiently desiring the means. Dauphiny, Limousin, La Rochelle, that holy Zion of the Huguenots, all yielded at the same time. Louis was intoxicated. It had sufficed for him to say a word, to lay his hand upon the hilt of his sword, to make those fierce Huguenots, who had formerly worn out so many armies, and had forced so many kings to capitulate before their rebellions, fall at his feet and the feet of the Church. Who would henceforth dare to doubt his divine mission and his infallible genius! Not that Louis, nor especially those that surrounded him, precisely believed that terror produced the effects of _grace_, or that these innumerable conversions were sincere; but they saw in this the extinction of all strong conviction among the heretics, the moral exhaustion of an expiring sect. "The children at least will be Catholics, if the fathers are hypocrites," wrote Madame de Maintenon. At present it was necessary to complete the work and to prevent dangerous relapses in these subjugated multitudes. It was necessary to put to flight as quickly as possible the "false pastors" who might again lead their old flocks astray, and to make the law conform to the fact, by solemnly revoking the concessions formerly wrung by powerful and armed heresy from the feebleness of the ruling power. Louis had long preserved some scruples about the violation of engagements entered into by his grandfather Henry IV; but his last doubts had been set at rest, several months since, by a "special council of conscience," composed of two theologians and two jurisconsults, who had decided that he might and should revoke the Edict of Nantes. The names of the men who took upon themselves the consequences of such a decision have remained unknown: doubtless the confessor La Chaise was one of the theologians; who was the other? The Archbishop of Paris, Harlai, was not, perhaps, in sufficient esteem, on account of his habits. The great name of the Bishop of Meaux naturally presents itself to the mind; but neither the correspondence of Bossuet nor the documents relating to his life throw any light on this subject, and we know not whether a direct and material responsibility must be added to the moral responsibility with which the maxims of Bossuet and the spirit of his works burden his memory. After the "council of conscience," the council of the King was convened for a definitive deliberation in the earlier part of October. Some of the ministers, apparently the two Colberts, Seignelai, and Croissi, insinuated that it would be better not to be precipitate. The Dauphin, a young prince of twenty-four, who resembled, in his undefined character, his grandfather more than his father, and who was destined to remain always as it were lost in the splendid halo of Louis the Great, attempted an intervention that deserves to rescue his name from oblivion. "He represented, from an anonymous memorial that had been addressed to him the evening before, that it was, perhaps, to be apprehended that the Huguenots might take up arms;" "that in case they did not dare to do this, a great number would leave the kingdom, which would injure commerce and agriculture, and thereby even weaken the state." The King replied that he had foreseen all and provided for all, that nothing in the world would be more painful to him than to shed a drop of the blood of his subjects, but that he had armies and good generals whom he would employ, in case of necessity, against rebels who desired their own destruction. As to the argument of interest, he judged it little worthy of consideration, compared with the advantages of an undertaking that would restore to religion its splendor, to the state its tranquillity, and to authority all its rights. The suppression of the Edict of Nantes was resolved upon without further opposition. Father la Chaise and Louvois, according to their ecclesiastical and military correspondence, had promised that it should not even cost the drop of blood of which the King spoke. The aged Chancellor le Tellier, already a prey to the malady that was to bring him to his grave, drew up with trembling hand the fatal declaration, which the King signed October 17th. Louis professed in this preamble to do nothing but continue the pious designs of his grandfather and his father for the reunion of their subjects to the Church. He spoke of the "perpetual and irrevocable" edict of Henry IV as a temporary regulation. "Our cares," he said, "since the truce that we facilitated for this purpose, have had the effect that we proposed to ourselves, since the better and the greater part of our subjects of the so-called Reformed religion have embraced the Catholic; and inasmuch as by reason of this the execution of the Edict of Nantes" "remains useless, we have judged that we could not do better, in order wholly to efface the memory of evils that this false religion had caused in our kingdom, than entirely to revoke the said Edict of Nantes and all that has been done since in favor of the said religion." The order followed to demolish unceasingly all the churches of the said religion situated in the kingdom. It was forbidden to assemble for the exercise of the said religion, in any place, private house or tenement, under penalty of confiscation of body and goods. All ministers of the said religion who would not be converted were enjoined to leave the kingdom in a fortnight, and divers favors were granted to those who should be converted. Private schools for instruction of children in the said religion were interdicted. Children who should be born to those of the said religion should for the future be baptized by the parish curates, under penalty of a fine of five hundred livres, and still more, if there were occasion, to be paid by the parents, and the children should then be brought up in the Catholic religion. A delay of four months was granted to fugitive Reformers to leave the kingdom and recover possession of their property; this delay passed, the property should remain confiscated. It was forbidden anew to Reformers to leave the kingdom, under penalty of the galleys for men, and confiscation of body and goods for women. The declarations against backsliders were confirmed. A last article, probably obtained by the representations of the Colberts, declared that the Reformers, "till it should please God to enlighten them like others, should be permitted to dwell in the kingdom, in strict loyalty to the King, to continue there their commerce and enjoy their goods, without being molested or hindered under pretext of the said religion." The Edict of Revocation was sent in haste to the governors and intendants, without waiting for it to be registered, which took place in the Parliament of Paris, October 22d. The intendants were instructed not to allow the ministers who should abandon the country to dispose of their real estate, or to take with them their children above seven years of age: a monstrous dismemberment of the family wrought by an arbitrary will that recognized neither natural nor civil rights! The King recommended a milder course toward noblemen, merchants, and manufacturers; he did not desire that obstinacy should be shown "in compelling them to be converted immediately without exception" "by any considerable violence." The tone of the ministerial instructions changed quickly on the reception of despatches announcing the effect of the edict in the provinces. This effect teaches us more in regard to the situation of the dragooned people than could the most sinister narratives. The edict which proscribed the Reformed worship, which interdicted the perpetuation of the Protestant religion by tearing from it infants at their birth, was received as a boon by Protestants who remained faithful to their belief. They saw, in the last article of the edict, the end of persecution, and, proud of having weathered the storm, they claimed the tolerance that the King promised them, and the removal of their executioners. The new converts, who, persuaded that the King desired to force all his subjects to profess his religion, had yielded through surprise, fear, want of constancy in suffering, or through a worthier motive, the desire of saving their families from the license of the soldiers, manifested their regret and their remorse, and were no longer willing to go to mass. All the leaders of the dragonades, the Noailles, the Foucaults, the Basvilles, the Marillacs, complained bitterly of a measure that was useless to them as to the demolition of Protestant churches and the prohibition of worship, and very injurious as to the progress of conversions. They had counted on rooting out the worship by converting all the believers. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes sinned, therefore, in their eyes by excess of moderation! Louvois hastened to reassure them in this respect, and authorized them to act as if the last article of the edict did not exist. "His majesty," he said, "desires that the extremest rigors of the law should be felt by those who will not make themselves of his religion, and those who shall have the foolish glory of wishing to remain the last must be pushed to the last extremity." "Let the soldiers," he said elsewhere, "be allowed to live very licentiously!" (November, 1685). The King, however, did not mean it thus, and claimed that persecution should be conducted with method and gravity. But men do not stop at pleasure in evil: one abyss draws on another. The way had been opened to brutal and cynical passions, to the spirit of denunciation, to low and mean fanaticism; the infamies with which the subaltern agents polluted themselves recoiled upon the chiefs who did not repress them, and on this proud government that did not blush to add to the odium of persecution the shame of faithlessness! The chiefs of the dragonades judged it necessary to restrain the bad converts by making example of the obstinate; hence arose an inundation of horrors in which we see, as Saint Simon says, "the orthodox imitating against heretics the acts of pagan tyrants against confessors and martyrs." Everything, in fact, was allowed the soldiers but rape and murder; and even this restriction was not always respected; besides, many of the unfortunate died or were maimed for life in consequence of the treatment to which they had been subjected; and the obscene tortures inflicted on women differed little from the last outrage, but in a perversity more refined. All the diabolic inventions of the highwaymen of the Middle Ages to extort gold from their captives were renewed here and there to secure conversions: the feet of the victims were scorched, they were strappadoed, suspended by the feet; young mothers were tied to the bedposts, while their infants at the breast were writhing with hunger before their eyes. "From torture to abjuration, and from this to communion, there was often not twenty-four hours' distance, and their executioners were their guides and witnesses. Nearly all the bishops lent themselves to this sudden and impious practice." Among the Reformed whom nothing could shake, those who encouraged others to resistance by the influence of their character or social position were sent to the Bastille or other state prisons; some were entombed in subterranean dungeons--in those dark pits, stifling or deadly cold, invented by feudal barbarism. The remains of animals in a state of putrefaction were sometimes thrown in after them, to redouble the horror! The hospital of Valence and the tower of Constance at Aigues-Mortes have preserved, in Protestant martyrology, a frightful renown. The women usually showing themselves more steadfast than the men, the most obstinate were shut up in convents; infamous acts took place there; yet they were rare. It must be said to the honor of the sex, often too facile to the suggestions of fanaticism, that the nuns showed much more humanity and true religion than the priests and monks. Astonished to see Huguenot women so different from the idea they had formed of them, they almost became the protectors of victims that had been given them to torment. The abduction of children put the final seal to the persecution. The Edict of Revocation had only declared that children subsequently born should be brought up in the Catholic religion. An edict of January, 1686, prescribed that children from five to sixteen years of age should be taken from their heretical relatives and put in the hands of Catholic relatives, or, if they had none, of Catholics designated by the judges! The crimes that we have just indicated might, in strictness, be attributed to the passions of subaltern agents; but this mighty outrage against the family and nature must be charged to the Government alone. With the revocation, the dragonade was extended, two places partially excepted, over all France. When the great harvest had been sufficiently gathered in the South and West, the reapers were sent elsewhere. The battalions of converters marched from province to province till they reached the northern frontier, carrying everywhere the same terror. Metz, where the Protestants were numerous, was particularly the theatre of abominable excesses. Paris and Alsace were alone, to a certain extent, preserved. Louvois did not dare to show such spectacles to the society of Versailles and Paris; the King would not have endured it. The people of Paris demolished the Protestant church of Charenton, an object of their ancient animosity; the ruling power weighed heavily upon the eight or nine thousand Huguenots who remained in the capital, and constrained two-thirds of them, by intimidation, to a feigned conversion; but there were no striking acts of violence, except perhaps the banishment of thirty elders of the consistory to different parts of the kingdom, and the soldiers did not make their appearance. The lieutenant of police, La Reinie, took care to reassure the leading merchants, and the last article of the Edict of Revocation was very nearly observed in Paris and its environs. As to Lutheran Alsace, it had nothing in common with the system of the Edict of Nantes and the French Calvinists: the Treaty of Westphalia, the capitulation of Strasburg, all the acts that bound it to France, guaranteed to it a separate religious state. An attempt was indeed made to encroach upon Lutheranism by every means of influence and by a system of petty annoyances; but direct attacks were limited to a suppression of public worship in places where the population was two-thirds Catholic. The political events that soon disturbed Europe compelled the French Government to be circumspect toward the people of this recently conquered frontier. The converters indemnified themselves at the expense of another frontier population, that was not dependent on France. The Vaudois, the first offspring of the Reformation, had always kept possession of the high Alpine valleys, on the confines of Piedmont and Dauphiny, in spite of the persecutions that they had repeatedly endured from the governments of France and Piedmont. The Piedmontese Vaudois had their Edict of Nantes; that is, liberty of worship in the three valleys of St. Martin, La Luzerne, and La Perouse. When the dragonade invaded Dauphiny, the Vaudois about Briançon and Pignerol took refuge in crowds with their brethren in the valleys subject to Piedmont. The French Government was unwilling to suffer them to remain in this asylum. The Duke Victor Amadeus II enjoined the refugees to quit his territory (November 4th). The order was imperfectly executed, and Louis XIV demanded more. The Duke, by an edict of February 1, 1686, prohibited the exercise of heretical worship, and ordered the schools to be closed under penalty of death. The _barbes_ (ministers), schoolmasters, and French refugees were to leave the states of the Duke in a fortnight, under the same penalty. The Vaudois responded by taking up arms, without reflecting on the immense force of their oppressors. The three valleys were assailed at the same time by French and Piedmontese troops. The French were commanded by the governor of Casale, Catinat, a man of noble heart, an elevated and philosophic mind, who deplored his fatal mission, and attempted to negotiate with the insurgents, but Catinat could neither persuade to submission these men resolved to perish rather than renounce their faith, nor restrain the fury of his soldiers exasperated by the vigor of the resistance. The valleys of St. Martin and La Perouse were captured, and the victors committed frightful barbarities. Meanwhile the Piedmontese, after having induced the mountaineers, who guarded the entrance of the valley of La Luzerne, to lay down their arms, by false promises, slaughtered three thousand women, children, and old men at the Pré de la Tour! The remotest recesses of the Alps were searched; a multitude of unfortunates were exterminated singly: more than ten thousand were dragged as prisoners to the fortresses of Piedmont, where most of them died of want. A handful of the bravest succeeding in maintaining themselves among the rocks, where they could not be captured, and, protected by the intervention of Protestant powers, and especially of the Swiss, finally obtained liberty to emigrate, both for themselves and their coreligionists. There has often been seen in history much greater bloodshed than that caused by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, scenes of destruction planned more directly and on a vaster scale by governments, and sometimes the same contrast between an advanced state of civilization and acts of barbarity; but no spectacle wounds moral sense and humanity to the same degree as this persecution carried on coldly and according to abstract ideas, without the excuse of struggle and danger, without the ardent fever of battle and revolution. The very virtues of the persecutors are here but an additional monstrosity: doubtless, there is also seen, at a later period, among the authors of another reign of terror, this same contrast that astounds and troubles the conscience of posterity; but they, at least, staked each day their own lives against the lives of their adversaries, and, with their lives, the very existence of the country involved in their cause! A million and a half of Frenchmen were in terror and despair; yet songs of victory resounded around Louis the Great. The aged Le Tellier lifted to heaven the hand that had just signed the Revocation, and parodied, on the occasion of an edict that recalls the times of Decius and Diocletian, the canticle by which Simeon hailed the birth of the Redeemer. He died a fanatic, after having lived a cold and astute politician (October 31, 1685); he died, and the most eloquent voices of the Gallican Church broke forth in triumphal hymns, as over the tomb of a victorious hero! "Let us publish this miracle of our days," exclaimed Bossuet, in that funeral oration of Le Tellier, wherein he nevertheless exhibited apprehensions of new combats and of a sombre future for the Church; "let us pour forth our hearts in praise of the piety of Louis; let us lift our acclamations to heaven, and let us say to this new Constantine, to this new Theodosius, to this new Marcianus, to this new Charlemagne: 'You have strengthened the faith, you have exterminated the heretics; this is the meritorious work of your reign, its peculiar characteristic. Through you heresy is no more: God alone could have wrought this wonder.'" The gentle Fléchier himself echoed Bossuet, with the whole corps of the clergy with the great mass of the people. Paris and Versailles, that did not witness the horror of the details, that saw only the general prestige and the victory of unity, were deaf to the doleful reports that came from the provinces, and applauded the "new Constantine." "This is the grandest and finest thing that ever was conceived and accomplished," wrote Madame de Sévigné. All the corporations, courts of justice, academies, universities, municipal bodies, vied with each other in every species of laudatory allusion; medals represented the King crowned by Religion "for having brought back to the Church two millions of Calvinists"; the number of victims was swollen in order to swell the glory of the persecutor. Statues were erected to the "destroyer of heresy." This concert of felicitations was prolonged for years; the influence of example, the habit of admiring, wrung eulogies even from minds that, it would seem, ought to have remained strangers to this fascination; every writer thought he must pay his tribute; even La Bruyere, that sagacious observer and excellent writer, whose acute and profound studies of manners appeared in 1687; and La Fontaine himself, the poet of free-thought and of universal freedom of action. The Government redoubled its rigor. The penalty of death was decreed against ministers reëntering the kingdom without permission, and the galleys against whomsoever should give them asylum; penalty of death against whomsoever should take part in a meeting (July 1, 1686). And this penalty was not simply a dead letter! Whenever the soldiers succeeded in surprising Protestants assembled for prayer in any solitary place, they first announced their presence by a volley; those who escaped the bullet and the sword were sent to the gallows or the galleys. Measures almost as severe were employed to arrest emigration. Seamen were forbidden to aid the Reformers to escape under penalty of a fine for the first offence, and of corporal punishment for a second offence (November 5, 1685). They went further: ere long, whoever aided the flight of emigrants became liable to the galleys for life, like emigrants themselves (May 7, 1686). Armed barks cruised along all the coasts; all the passes of the frontier were guarded; the peasants everywhere had orders to rush upon the fugitives. Some of the emigrants perished in attempting to force an exit; a host of others was brought back manacled; they dared not place them all under the galley-master's lash; they feared the effects of their despair and of their numbers, if they should mass them in the royal galleys; they crowded the prisons with those who were unwilling to purchase pardon by abjuration. The misfortunes of the first emigrants served to render their coreligionists, not more timid, but more adroit; a multitude of pilgrims, of mendicants dragging their children after them, of nomadic artisans of both sexes and of all trades, incessantly took their way toward all the frontiers; innumerable disguises thus protected the "flight of Israel out of Egypt." Reformers selected the darkest winter nights to embark, in frail open boats, on the Atlantic or stormy Channel; the waves were seen to cast upon the shores of England families long tossed by tempests and dying with cold and hunger. By degrees, the guards stationed along the shores and the frontiers were touched or seduced, and became saviors and guides to fugitives whom they were set to arrest. Then perpetual confinement in the galleys was no longer sufficient against the accomplices of the _desertes_; for the galleys an edict substituted death; death, which fell not upon those guilty of the pretended crime of desertion, was promised to their abettors (October 12, 1687). Some were given up to capital punishment; many, nevertheless, continued their perilous assistance to emigrants, and few betrayed them. Those Reformers whom the authority wished most to retain in the kingdom, the noblemen, the rich citizens, manufacturers, and merchants, were those who escaped easiest, being best able to pay for the interested compassion of the guards. It is said that the fugitives carried out of France sixty millions in five years. However this may be, the loss of men was much more to be regretted than the loss of money. The vital energy of France did not cease for many years to ooze away through this ever-open ulcer of emigration. It is difficult to estimate, even approximately, the number of Protestants who abandoned their country, become to them a barbarous mother. Vauban estimated it at a hundred thousand, from 1684 to 1691. Benoit, the Calvinist historian of the Edict of Nantes, who published his book in 1695, estimates it at two hundred thousand; the illustrious refugee Basnage speaks vaguely of three or four hundred thousand. Others give figures much more exaggerated, while the Duke of Burgundy, in the memoir that we have cited above, reduces the emigration to less than sixty-eight thousand souls in the course of twenty years; but the truly inconceivable illusions preserved by this young prince, concerning the moral and political results of the Revocation, do not allow us to put confidence in his testimony; he was deceived, took pleasure in being deceived, and closed his ear to whomsoever desired to undeceive him. The amount from two hundred thousand to two hundred fifty thousand, from the Revocation to the commencement of the following century, that is, to the revolt of Cévennes, seems most probable. But it is not so much by the quantity as by the quality of the emigrants that the real loss of France must be measured. France was incomparably more weakened than if two hundred thousand citizens had been taken at hazard from the Catholic mass of the nation. The Protestants were very superior, on the average, if not to the Catholic middle class of Paris and the principal centres of French civilization, at least to the mass of the people, and the emigrants were the best of the Protestants. A multitude of useful men, among them many superior men, left a frightful void in France, and went to swell the forces of Protestant nations. France declined both by what she lost and what her rivals gained. Before 1689 nine thousand sailors, the best in the kingdom, as Vauban says, twelve thousand soldiers, six hundred officers, had gone to foreign countries. The most skilful chiefs and agents of contemporaneous industry went in multitudes to settle in foreign lands. Industrial capacities, less striking than literary capacities, inflicted losses on France still more felt and less reparable. France was rich enough in literary glory to lose much without being impoverished; such was not the case with respect to industry; France was to descend in a few years, almost in a few months, from that economical supremacy which had been conquered for her by long efforts of a protective administration; populous cities beheld the branches of commerce that constituted their prosperity rapidly sinking, by the disappearance of the principal industrial families, and these branches taking root on the other side of the frontiers. Thus fell, never to rise again, the Norman hat trade--already suffering on account of regulations that fettered the Canadian fur trade. Other branches, in great number, did not disappear entirely, but witnessed the rise of a formidable competition in foreign lands, where they had hitherto remained unknown; these were so many outlets closed, so many markets lost for our exportation, lately so flourishing. A suburb of London (Spitalfields) was peopled with our workmen in silk, emigrated from Lyons and Touraine, which lost three-fourths of their looms; the manufacture of French silk was also established in Holland, with paper-making, cloth manufacture, etc. Many branches of industry were transplanted to Brandenburg, and twenty thousand Frenchmen carried the most refined arts of civilization to the coarse population thinly scattered among the sands and firs of that sombre region. French refugees paid for the hospitality of the Elector Frederick by laying the foundation of the high destinies of Berlin, which on their arrival was still but a small city of twelve or fifteen thousand souls, and which, thenceforth, took a start which nothing was to arrest. Like the Hebrews after the fall of Jerusalem, the Huguenot exiles scattered themselves over the entire world: some went to Ireland, carrying the cultivation of flax and hemp; others, led by a nephew of Duquesne, founded a small colony at the Cape of Good Hope. France was impoverished, not only in Frenchmen who exiled themselves, but in those, much more numerous, who remained in spite of themselves, discouraged, ruined, whether they openly resisted persecution or suffered some external observances of Catholicism to be wrung from them, all having neither energy in work nor security in life; it was really the activity of more than a million of men that France lost, and of the million that produced most. The great enterprise, the miracle of the reign, therefore miscarried; the new temple that Louis had pretended to erect to unity fell to ruin as it rose from the ground, and left only an open chasm in place of its foundation. Everything that had been undertaken by the governing power of France for a century in the direction of national, civil, and territorial unity had gloriously succeeded; as soon as the governing power left this legitimate field of unity to invade the domain of conscience and of human individuality, it raised before itself insurmountable obstacles; it concerned itself in contests wherein it was equally fatal to conquer or be conquered, and gave the first blow to the greatness of France. What a contrast between the pretensions of Louis that he could neither be mistaken nor deceived, that he saw everything, that he accomplished everything, and the illusions with which he was surrounded in regard to the facility of success and the means employed! The nothingness of absolute power, and of government by one alone, was thus revealed under the reign of the "Great King!" %THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION% FLIGHT OF JAMES II A.D. 1688 GILBERT BURNET H.D. TRAILL With the accession of William and Mary to the throne of England not only did the Stuart line come to an end, but the Protestant religion was finally established in the kingdom. By the Declaration of Right, upon which their title rested, it was decreed that after the death of William and Mary no person holding the Roman Catholic faith should ever be king or queen of England. Assumption of the throne by a Roman Catholic should release the people from their allegiance. William III (William of Orange) was a nephew of James II. He had greatly distinguished himself as leader of the Dutch against the invasions of Louis XIV, when the English people, tired of the tyranny of James II, and also fearing that he might be succeeded by a Catholic, decided to choose a Protestant for their sovereign. William was married (1677) to Mary, eldest child of James II. Could they have been sure that she would succeed her father, the English people would gladly have had Mary for their sole ruler, though European interests demanded the elevation to larger power of the Prince of Orange as the great antagonist of Louis XIV. William was accordingly invited to take possession of the English throne conjointly with Mary. The Prince of Orange landed at Torbay, November 5, 1688. This revolution, one of the least violent in all history, is best described by Bishop Burnet, who accompanied William of Orange from Holland to England, and in 1689 was made Bishop of Salisbury. He is not less eminent as the historian of his time than as a theologian and prelate of the English Church. Having made his preparations for sailing, William was annoyed by many delays occasioned by the hesitation of his subordinates. Traill's account of the convention which William summoned for settlement of the crown, gives in a wholly modern way the particulars of the formal accession of William and Mary. GILBERT BURNET All this while the men-of-war were still riding at sea, it being a continued storm for some weeks. The Prince[1] sent out several advice-boats with orders to them to come in. But they could not come up to them. On October 27th there was for six hours together a most dreadful storm; so that there were few among us that did not conclude that the best part of the fleet, and by consequence that the whole design, were lost. Many that have passed for heroes yet showed then the agonies of fear in their looks and whole deportment. The Prince still retained his usual calmness, and the same tranquillity of spirit that I had observed in him in his happiest days. On the 28th it calmed a little, and our fleet came all in, to our great joy. The rudder of one third-rate was broken; and that was all the hurt that the storm had done. At last the much-longed-for east wind came. And so hard a thing it was to set so vast a body in motion that two days of this wind were lost before all could be quite ready. [Footnote 1: William of Orange.] On November 1 (O.S.), we sailed out with the evening tide, but made little way that night, that so our fleet might come out and move in order. We tried next day till noon if it were possible to sail northward, but the wind was so strong and full in the east that we could not move that way. About noon the signal was given to steer westward. This wind not only diverted us from that unhappy course, but it kept the English fleet in the river; so that it was not possible for them to come out, though they were come down as far as to the Gunfleet. By this means we had the sea open to us, with a fair wind and a safe navigation. On the 3d we passed between Dover and Calais, and before night came in sight of the Isle of Wight. The next day, being the day in which the Prince was both born and married, he fancied if he could land that day it would look auspicious to the army and animate the soldiers. But we all, who considered that the day following, being gunpowder-treason day, our landing that day might have a good effect on the minds of the English nation, were better pleased to see that we could land no sooner. Torbay was thought the best place for our great fleet to lie in, and it was resolved to land the army where it could be best done near it; reckoning that being at such a distance from London we could provide ourselves with horses, and put everything in order before the King could march his army toward us, and that we should lie some time at Exeter for the refreshing of our men. I was in the ship, with the Prince's other domestics, that went in the van of the whole fleet. At noon on the 4th, Russel came on board us with the best of all the English pilots that they had brought over. He gave him the steering of the ship, and ordered him to be sure to sail so that next morning we should be short of Dartmouth; for it was intended that some of the ships should land there, and that the rest should sail into Torbay. The pilot thought he could not be mistaken in measuring our course, and believed that he certainly kept within orders, till the morning showed us we were past Torbay and Dartmouth. The wind, though it had abated much of its first violence, was yet still full in the east; so now it seemed necessary for us to sail on to Plymouth, which must have engaged us in a long and tedious campaign in winter through a very ill country. Nor were we sure to be received at Plymouth. The Earl of Bath, who was governor, had sent by Russel a promise to the Prince to come and join him; yet it was not likely that he would be so forward as to receive us at our first coming. The delays he made afterward, pretending that he was managing the garrison, whereas he was indeed staying till he saw how the matter was likely to be decided, showed us how fatal it had proved, if we had been forced to sail on to Plymouth. But while Russel was in no small disorder, after he saw the pilot's error (upon which he bade me go to my prayers, for all was lost), and as he was ordering the boat to be cleared to go aboard the Prince, on a sudden, to all our wonder, it calmed a little. And then the wind turned into the south, and a soft and happy gale of wind carried in the whole fleet in four hours' time into Torbay. Immediately as many landed as conveniently could. As soon as the Prince and Marshal Schomberg got to shore, they were furnished with such horses as the village of Broxholme could afford, and rode up to view the grounds, which they found as convenient as could be imagined for the foot in that season. It was not a cold night; otherwise the soldiers, who had been kept warm aboard, might have suffered much by it. As soon as I landed, I made what haste I could to the place where the Prince was; who took me heartily by the hand, and asked me if I would not now believe in predestination. I told him I would never forget that providence of God which had appeared so signally on this occasion.[1] He was cheerfuller than ordinary. Yet he returned soon to his usual gravity. The Prince sent for all the fishermen of the place and asked them which was the properest place for landing his horse, which all apprehended would be a tedious business and might hold some days. But next morning he was showed a place, a quarter of a mile below the village, where the ships could be brought very near the land, against a good shore, and the horses would not be put to swim above twenty yards. This proved to be so happy for our landing, though we came to it by mere accident, that if we had ordered the whole island round to be sounded we could not have found a properer place for it. There was a dead calm all that morning; and in three hours' time all our horse were landed, with as much baggage as was necessary till we got to Exeter. The artillery and heavy baggage were left aboard, and ordered to Topsham, the seaport to Exeter. All that belonged to us was so soon and so happily landed that by the next day at noon we were in full march, and marched four miles that night. We had from thence twenty miles to Exeter, and we resolved to make haste thither. [Footnote 1: Light is thrown on this passage by the following curious account given in M'Cormick's _Life of Carstares_: "Mr. Carstares set out along with his highness in quality of his domestic chaplain, and went aboard of his own ship. It is well known that, upon their first setting out from the coast of Holland, the fleet was in imminent danger by a violent tempest, which obliged them to put back for a few days. Upon that occasion, the vessel which carried the Prince and his retinue narrowly escaped shipwreck, a circumstance which some who were around his person were disposed to interpret into a bad omen of their success. Among these, Dr. Burnet happening to observe that it seemed predestined that they should not set foot on English ground, the Prince said nothing; but, upon stepping ashore at Torbay, in the hearing of Mr. Carstares, he turned about to Dr. Burnet, and asked him what he thought of the doctrine of predestination now?" Cunningham, according to the translation of the Latin MS. of his _History of England_, says that "Dr. Burnet, who understood but little of military affairs, asked the Prince of Orange which way he intended to march, and when? and desired to be employed by him in whatever service he should think fit. The Prince only asked what he now thought of predestination? and advised, if he had a mind to be busy, to consult the canons." The Bishop omits mentioning the proximate cause of the Prince's question, and says nothing about his declining the offer of his services, which indeed it is not likely that he did, at least so uncivilly.] But as we were now happily landed, and marching, we saw new and unthought-of characters of a favorable providence of God watching over us. We had no sooner got thus disengaged from our fleet than a new and great storm blew from the west; from which our fleet, being covered by the land, could receive no prejudice; but the King's fleet had got out as the wind calmed, and in pursuit of us was come as far as the Isle of Wight, when this contrary wind turned upon them. They tried what they could to pursue us; but they were so shattered by some days of this storm that they were forced to go into Portsmouth, and were no more fit for service that year. This was a greater happiness than we were then aware of: for Lord Dartmouth assured me some time after, that, whatever stories we had heard and believed, either of officers or seamen, he was confident they would all have fought very heartily. But now, by the immediate hand of Heaven, we were masters of the sea without a blow. I never found a disposition to superstition in my temper: I was rather inclined to be philosophical upon all occasions; yet I must confess that this strange ordering of the winds and seasons just to change as our affairs required it, could not but make a deep impression on me as well as on all that observed it. Those famous verses of Claudian seemed to be more applicable to the Prince than to him they were made on: "Heaven's favorite, for whom the skies do fight, And all the winds conspire to guide thee right!" The Prince made haste to Exeter, where he stayed ten days, both for refreshing his troops and for giving the country time to show its affection. Both the clergy and magistrates of Exeter were very fearful and very backward. The Bishop and the dean ran away. And the clergy stood off, though they were sent for and very gently spoken to by the Prince. The truth was, the doctrines of passive obedience and non-resistance had been carried so far and preached so much that clergymen either could not all on the sudden get out of that entanglement into which they had by long thinking and speaking all one way involved themselves, or they were ashamed to make so quick a turn. Yet care was taken to protect them and their houses everywhere, so that no sort of violence or rudeness was offered to any of them. The Prince gave me full authority to do this, and I took so particular a care of it that we heard of no complaints. The army was kept under such an exact discipline that everything was paid for where it was demanded, though the soldiers were contented with such moderate entertainment that the people generally asked but little for what they did eat. We stayed a week at Exeter before any of the gentlemen of the country about came in to the Prince. Every day some persons of condition came from other parts. The first were Lord Colchester, Mr. Wharton, the eldest sons of the Earl of Rivers, and Lord Wharton, Mr. Russel, Lord Russel's brother, and the Earl of Abingdon. The King came down to Salisbury, and sent his troops twenty miles farther. Of these, three regiments of horse and dragoons were drawn on by their officers, Lord Cornbury and Colonel Langston, on design to come over to the Prince. Advice was sent to the Prince of this. But because these officers were not sure of their subalterns, the Prince ordered a body of his men to advance and assist them in case any resistance was made. They were within twenty miles of Exeter, and within two miles of the body that the Prince had sent to join them, when a whisper ran about among them that they were betrayed. Lord Cornbury had not the presence of mind that so critical a thing required. So they fell in confusion, and many rode back. Yet one regiment came over in a body, and with them about a hundred of the other two. This gave us great courage, and showed us that we had not been deceived in what was told us of the inclinations of the King's army. Yet, on the other hand, those who studied to support the King's spirit by flatteries, told him that in this he saw that he might trust his army, since those who intended to carry over those regiments were forced to manage it with so much artifice, and dared not discover their design either to officers or soldiers, and that as soon as they perceived it the greater part of them had turned back. The King wanted support; for his spirits sunk extremely. His blood was in such fermentation that he was bleeding much at the nose, which returned oft upon him every day. He sent many spies over to us. They all took his money, and came and joined themselves to the Prince, none of them returning to him. So that he had no intelligence brought him of what the Prince was doing but what common reports brought him, which magnified our numbers and made him think we were coming near him while we were still at Exeter. He heard that the city of London was very unquiet. News was brought him that the Earls of Devonshire and Danby, and Lord Lumley, were drawing great bodies together, and that both York and Newcastle had declared for the Prince. Lord Delamere had raised a regiment in Cheshire. And the body of the nation did everywhere discover their inclinations for the Prince so evidently that the King saw he had nothing to trust to but his army. And the ill-disposition among them was so apparent that he reckoned he could not depend on them. So that he lost both heart and head at once. But that which gave him the last and most confounding stroke was that Lord Churchill and the Duke of Grafton left him and came and joined the Prince at Axminster, twenty miles on that side of Exeter. After this he could not know on whom he could depend. The Duke of Grafton was one of King Charles' sons by the Duchess of Cleveland. He had been some time at sea, and was a gallant but rough man. He had more spirit than anyone of that spurious race. He made answer to the King, about this time, that was much talked of. The King took notice of somewhat in his behavior that looked factious, and he said he was sure he could not pretend to act upon principles of conscience; for he had been so ill-bred that, as he knew little of religion, so he regarded it less. But he answered the King that, though he had little conscience, yet he was of a party that had conscience. Soon after that, Prince George, the Duke of Ormond, and Lord Drumlanerick, the Duke of Queensbury's eldest son, left him and came over to the Prince, and joined him when he was come as far as the Earl of Bristol's house at Sherburn. When the news came to London the Princess was so struck with the apprehensions of the King's displeasure, and of the ill-effects that it might have, that she said to Lady Churchill that she could not bear the thoughts of it, and would leap out of window rather than venture on it. The Bishop of London was then lodged very secretly in Suffolk Street. So Lady Churchill, who knew where he was, went to him and concerted with him the method of the Princess' withdrawing from the court. The Princess went sooner to bed than ordinary. And about midnight she went down a back stairs from her closet, attended only by Lady Churchill,[1] in such haste that they carried nothing with them. They were waited for by the Bishop of London, who carried them to the Earl of Dorset's, whose lady furnished them with everything, And so they went northward as far as Northampton, where that Earl attended on them with all respect, and quickly brought a body of horse to serve for a guard to the Princess. And in a little while a small army was formed about her, who chose to be commanded by the Bishop of London, of which he too easily accepted, and was by that exposed to much censure. [Footnote 1: And Mrs. Berkeley, afterward Lady Fitzharding. The back stairs were made a little before for that purpose. The Princess pretended she was out of order, upon some expostulations that had passed between her and the Queen, in a visit she received from her that night, therefore said she would not be disturbed till she rang her bell. Next morning, when her servants had waited two hours longer than her usual time of rising, they were afraid something was the matter with her, and finding the bed open, and her highness gone, they ran screaming to my father's lodgings, which were the next to hers, and told my mother the Princess was murdered by the priests; thence they went to the Queen, and old Mistress Buss asked her in a very rude manner what she had done with her mistress. The Queen answered her very gravely, she supposed their mistress was where she liked to be, but did assure them she knew nothing of her, but did not doubt they would hear of her again very soon. Which gave them little satisfaction, upon which there was a rumor all over Whitehall that the Queen had made away with the Princess.--_Dartmouth._] These things put the King in an inexpressible confusion. He saw himself now forsaken not only by those whom he had trusted and favored most, but even by his own children. And the army was in such distraction that there was not any one body that seemed entirely united and firm to him. A foolish ballad was made at that time treating the papists, and chiefly the Irish, in a very ridiculous manner, which had a burden, said to be Irish words, _lero, lero, lilibulero_, that made an impression on the army that cannot be well imagined by those who saw it not. The whole army, and at last all people both in city and country, were singing it perpetually. And perhaps never had so slight a thing so great an effect. But now strange counsels were suggested to the King and Queen. The priests and all the violent papists saw a treaty was now opened. They knew that they must be the sacrifice. The whole design of popery must be given up, without any hope of being able in an age to think of bringing it on again. Severe laws would be made against them. And all those who intended to stick to the King, and to preserve him, would go into those laws with a particular zeal; so that they and their hopes must be now given up and sacrificed forever. They infused all this into the Queen. They said she would certainly be impeached, and witnesses would be set up against her and her son; the King's mother had been impeached in the Long Parliament; and she was to look for nothing but violence. So the Queen took up a sudden resolution of going to France with the child. The midwife, together with all who were assisting at the birth, were also carried over, or so disposed of that it could never be learned what became of them afterward. The Queen prevailed with the King not only to consent to this, but to promise to go quickly after her. He was only to stay a day or two after her, in hope that the shadow of authority that was still left in him might keep things so quiet that she might have an undisturbed passage. So she went to Portsmouth. And thence, in a man-of-war, she went over to France, the King resolving to follow her in disguise. Care was also taken to send all the priests away. The King stayed long enough to get the Prince's answer. And when he had read it he said he did not expect so good terms. He ordered the lord chancellor to come to him next morning. But he had called secretly for the great seal. And the next morning, being December 10th, about three in the morning he went away in disguise with Sir Edward Hales, whose servant he seemed to be. They passed the river, and flung the great seal into it; which was some months after found by a fisherman near Foxhall. The King went down to a miserable fisher-boat that Hales had provided for carrying them over to France. Thus a great king, who had yet a good army and a strong fleet, did choose rather to abandon all than either to expose himself to any danger with that part of the army that was still firm to him or to stay and see the issue of a parliament. Some put this mean and unaccountable resolution on a want of courage. Others thought it was the effect of an ill-conscience, and of some black thing under which he could not now support himself. And they who censured it the most moderately said that it showed that his priests had more regard for themselves than for him; and that he considered their interests more than his own; and that he chose rather to wander abroad with them and to try what he could do by a French force to subdue his people than to stay at home and be shut up within the bounds of law, and be brought under an incapacity of doing more mischief; which they saw was necessary to quiet those fears and jealousies for which his bad government had given so much occasion. It seemed very unaccountable, since he was resolved to go, that he did not choose rather to go in one of his yachts or frigates than to expose himself in so dangerous and ignominious a manner. It was not possible to put a good construction on any part of the dishonorable scene which he then acted. With this his reign ended: for this was a plain deserting of his people and exposing the nation to the pillage of an army which he had ordered the Earl of Feversham to disband. And the doing this without paying them was letting so many armed men loose upon the nation; who might have done much mischief if the execution of those orders that he left behind him had not been stopped. I shall continue the recital of all that passed in this _interregnum_, till the throne, which he now left empty, was filled. He was not got far, when some fishermen of Feversham, who were watching for such priests and other delinquents as they fancied were making their escape, came up to him. And they, knowing Sir Edward Hales, took both the King and him, and brought them to Feversham. The King told them who he was.[1] And that flying about brought a vast crowd together to look on this astonishing instance of the uncertainty of all worldly greatness, when he who had ruled three kingdoms and might have been the arbiter of all Europe was now in such mean hands, and so low an equipage. The people of the town were extremely disordered with this unlooked-for accident; and, though for a while they kept him as a prisoner, yet they quickly changed that into as much respect as they could possibly pay him. Here was an accident that seemed of no great consequence. Yet all the strugglings which that party have made ever since that time to this day, which from him were called afterward the Jacobites, did rise out of this; for if he had got clear away, by all that could be judged, he would not have had a party left; all would have agreed that here was a desertion, and that therefore the nation was free and at liberty to secure itself. But that following upon this gave them a color to say that he was forced away and driven out. Till now he scarce had a party but among the papists. But from this incident a party grew up that has been long very active for his interests. [Footnote 1: And desired they would send to Eastwell for the Earl of Winchelsea; which Sir Basil Dixwell put a stop to by telling him surely they were good enough to take care of him. Which occasioned the King's saying he found there was more civility among the common people than some gentlemen, when he was returned to Whitehall.--_Dartmouth_.] As soon as it was known at London that the King was gone, the 'prentices and the rabble, who had been a little quieted when they saw a treaty on foot between the King and the Prince, now broke out again upon all suspected houses, where they believed there were either priests or papists. They made great havoc of many places, not sparing the houses of ambassadors. But none was killed, no houses burned, nor were any robberies committed. Never was so much fury seen under so much management. Jeffreys finding the King was gone, saw what reason he had to look to himself, and, apprehending that he was now exposed to the rage of the people whom he had provoked with so particular a brutality, he had disguised himself to make his escape. But he fell into the hands of some who knew him. He was insulted by them with as much scorn and rudeness as they could invent. And, after many hours tossing him about, he was carried to the lord mayor, whom they charged to commit him to the Tower, which Lord Lucas had then seized, and in it had declared for the Prince. The lord mayor was so struck with the terror of this rude populace, and with the disgrace of a man who had made all people tremble before him, that he fell into fits upon it, of which he died soon after. Upon the news of the King's desertion, it was proposed that the Prince should go on with all possible haste to London. But that was not advisable. For the King's army lay so scattered through the road all the way to London that it was not fit for him to advance faster than his troops marched before him; otherwise, any resolute officer might have seized or killed him. Though, if it had not been for that danger a great deal of mischief that followed would have been prevented by his speedy advance; for now began that turn to which all the difficulties that did afterward disorder our affairs may be justly imputed. Two gentlemen of Kent came to Windsor the morning after the Prince came thither. They were addressed to me; and they told me of the accident at Feversham, and desired to know the Prince's pleasure upon it. I was affected with this dismal reverse of the fortune of a great prince more than I think fit to express. I went immediately to Benthink and wakened him, and got him to go to the Prince and let him know what had happened, that some order might be presently given for the security of the King's person, and for taking him out of the hands of a rude multitude who said they would obey no orders but such as came from the Prince. The Prince ordered Zuylestein to go immediately to Feversham, and to see the King safe and at full liberty to go whithersoever he pleased. But as soon as the news of the King's being at Feversham came to London, all the indignation that people had formerly conceived against him was turned to pity and compassion. The privy council met upon it. Some moved that he should be sent for. Others said he was king, and might send for his guards and coaches as he pleased, but it became not them to send for him. It was left to his general, the Earl of Feversham, to do what he thought best. So he went for him with his coaches and guards. And, as he came back through the city, he was welcomed with expressions of joy by great numbers; so slight and unstable a thing is a multitude, and so soon altered. At his coming to Whitehall, he had a great court about him. Even the papists crept out of their lurking-holes, and appeared at court with much assurance. The King himself began to take heart. And both at Feversham, and now at Whitehall, he talked in his ordinary high strain, justifying all that he had done; only he spoke a little doubtfully of the business of Magdalen College. But when he came to reflect on the state of his affairs, he saw it was so soon broken that nothing was now left to deliberate upon. So he sent the Earl of Feversham to Windsor without demanding any passport, and ordered him to desire the Prince to come to St. James' to consult with him of the best way for settling the nation. When the news of what had passed at London came to Windsor, the Prince thought the privy council had not used him well, who after they had sent to him to take the government upon him, had made this step without consulting him. Now the scene was altered and new counsels were to be taken. The Prince heard the opinions, not only of those who had come along with him, but of such of the nobility as were now come to him, among whom the Marquis of Halifax was one. All agreed that it was not convenient that the King should stay at Whitehall. Neither the King, nor the Prince, nor the city, could have been safe if they had been both near one another. Tumults would probably have arisen out of it. The guards and the officious flatterers of the two courts would have been unquiet neighbors. It was thought necessary to stick to the point of the King's deserting his people, and not to give up that by entering upon any treaty with him. And since the Earl of Feversham, who had commanded the army against the Prince, was come without a passport he was for some days put in arrest. It was a tender point now to dispose of the King's person. Some proposed rougher methods: the keeping him a prisoner, at least till the nation was settled, and till Ireland was secured. It was thought his being kept in custody would be such a tie on all his party as would oblige them to submit and be quiet. Ireland was in great danger. And his restraint might oblige the Earl of Tyrconnel to deliver up the government, and to disarm the papists, which would preserve that kingdom and the Protestants in it. But, because it might raise too much compassion and perhaps some disorder if the King should be kept in restraint within the kingdom, therefore the sending him to Breda was proposed. The Earl of Clarendon pressed this vehemently on account of the Irish Protestants, as the King himself told me, for those that gave their opinions in this matter did it secretly and in confidence to the Prince. The Prince said he could not deny but that this might be good and wise advice, but it was that to which he could not hearken; he was so far satisfied with the grounds of this expedition that he could act against the King in a fair and open war; but for his person, now that he had him in his power, he could not put such a hardship on him as to make him a prisoner; and he knew the Princess' temper so well that he was sure she would never bear it: nor did he know what disputes it might raise, or what effect it might have upon the Parliament that was to be called; he was firmly resolved never to suffer anything to be done against his person; he saw it was necessary to send him out of London, and he would order a guard to attend upon him who should only defend and protect his person, but not restrain him in any sort. A resolution was taken of sending the Lords Halifax, Shrewsbury, and Delamere to London, who were first to order the English guards that were about the court to be drawn off and sent to quarters out of town, and when that was done the Count of Solms with the Dutch guards was to come and take all the posts about the court. This was obeyed without any resistance or disorder, but not without much murmuring. It was midnight before all was settled. And then these lords sent to the Earl of Middleton to desire him to let the King know that they had a message to deliver to him from the Prince. He went in to the King, and sent them word from him that they might come with it immediately. They came and found him abed. They told him the necessity of affairs required that the Prince should come presently to London; and he thought it would conduce to the safety of the King's person and the quiet of the town that he should retire to some house out of town, and they proposed Ham. The King seemed much dejected, and asked if it must be done immediately. They told him he might take his rest first, and they added that he should be attended by a guard who should only guard his person, but should give him no sort of disturbance. Having said this, they withdrew. The Earl of Middleton came quickly after them and asked them if it would not do as well if the King should go to Rochester; for since the Prince was not pleased with his coming up from Kent it might be perhaps acceptable to him if he should go thither again. It was very visible that this was proposed in order to a second escape. They promised to send word immediately to the Prince of Orange, who lay that night at Sion, within eight miles of London. He very readily consented to it. And the King went next day to Rochester, having ordered all that which is called the moving wardrobe to be sent before him, the Count of Solms ordering everything to be done as the King desired. A guard went with him that left him at full liberty, and paid him rather more respect than his own guards had done of late. Most of that body, as it happened, were papists. So when he went to mass they went in and assisted very reverently. And when they were asked how they could serve in an expedition that was intended to destroy their own religion, one of them answered, his soul was God's, but his sword was the Prince of Orange's. The King was so much delighted with this answer that he repeated it to all that came about him. On the same day the Prince came to St. James'. It happened to be a very rainy day. And yet great numbers came to see him. But, after they had stood long in the wet, he disappointed them; for he, who loved neither shows nor shoutings, went through the park. And even this trifle helped to set people's spirits on edge. The revolution was thus brought about with the universal applause of the whole nation; only these last steps began to raise a fermentation. It was said, here was an unnatural thing to waken the King out of his sleep, in his own palace, and to order him to go out of it when he was ready to submit to everything. Some said he was now a prisoner, and remembered the saying of King Charles I, that the prisons and the graves of princes lay not far distant from one another; the person of the King was now struck at, as well as his government, and this specious undertaking would now appear to be only a disguised and designed usurpation. These things began to work on great numbers. And the posting of the Dutch guards where the English guards had been, gave a general disgust to the whole English army. They indeed hated the Dutch besides, on account of the good order and strict discipline they were kept under; which made them to be as much beloved by the nation as they were hated by the soldiery. The nation had never known such an inoffensive march of an army. And the peace and order of the suburbs, and the freedom of markets in and about London, were so carefully maintained that in no time fewer disorders had been committed than were heard of this winter. None of the papists or Jacobites was insulted in any sort. The Prince had ordered me, as we came along, to take care of the papists and to secure them from all violence. When he came to London he renewed these orders, which I executed with so much zeal and care that I saw all the complaints that were brought me fully redressed. When we came to London I procured passports for all that desired to go beyond the sea. Two of the popish bishops were put in Newgate. I went thither in the Prince's name. I told them the Prince would not take upon him yet to give any orders about prisoners; as soon as he did that, they should feel the effects of it. But in the mean while I ordered them to be well used, and to be taken care of, and that their friends might be admitted to come to them; so truly did I pursue the principle of moderation even toward those from whom nothing of that sort was to be expected. Now that the Prince was come, all the bodies about the town came to welcome him. The bishops came the next day. Only the Archbishop of Canterbury, though he had once agreed to it, yet would not come. The clergy of London came next. The city, and a great many other bodies, came likewise, and expressed a great deal of joy for the deliverance wrought for them by the Prince's means. Old Sergeant Maynard came with the men of the law. He was then near ninety, and yet he said the liveliest thing that was heard of on that occasion. The Prince took notice of his great age, and said that he had outlived all the men of the law of his time; he answered he had liked to have outlived the law itself if his highness had not come over. The first thing to be done after the compliments were over was to consider how the nation was to be settled. The lawyers were generally of opinion that the Prince ought to declare himself king, as Henry VII had done. This, they said, would put an end to all disputes, which might otherwise grow very perplexing and tedious; and they said he might call a Parliament which would be a legal assembly if summoned by the king in fact, though his title was not yet recognized. This was plainly contrary to his declaration, by which the settlement of the nation was referred to a parliament; such a step would make all that the Prince had hitherto done pass for an aspiring ambition only to raise himself; and it would disgust those who had been hitherto the best affected to his designs, and make them less concerned in the quarrel if, instead of staying till the nation should offer him the crown, he would assume it as a conquest. These reasons determined the Prince against that proposition. He called all the peers and the members of the three last parliaments that were in town, together with some of the citizens of London. When these met it was told them that, in the present distraction, the Prince desired their advice about the best methods of settling the nation. It was agreed in both these Houses, such as they were, to make an address to the Prince, desiring him to take the administration of the Government into his hands in the _interim_. The next proposition passed not so unanimously; for, it being moved that the Prince should be likewise desired to write missive letters to the same effect, and for the same persons to whom writs were issued out for calling a parliament, that so there might be an assembly of men in the form of a parliament, though without writs under the great seal, such as that was that had called home King Charles II. To this the Earl of Nottingham objected that such a convention of the states could be no legal assembly unless summoned by the King's writ. Therefore he moved that an address might be made to the King to order the writs to be issued. Few were of his mind. The matter was carried the other way, and orders were given for those letters to be sent round the nation. The King continued a week at Rochester. And both he himself and everybody else saw that he was at full liberty, and that the guard about him put him under no sort of restraint. Many that were zealous for his interests went to him and pressed him to stay and to see the issue of things: a party would appear for him; good terms would be got for him; and things would be brought to a reasonable agreement. He was much distracted between his own inclinations and the importunities of his friends. The Queen, hearing what had happened, writ a most vehement letter to him, pressing his coming over, remembering him of his promise, which she charged on him in a very earnest if not in an imperious strain. This letter was intercepted. I had an account of it from one that read it. The Prince ordered it to be conveyed to the King, and that determined him. So he gave secret orders to prepare a vessel for him, and drew a paper, which he left on his table, reproaching the nation for their forsaking him. He declared that though he was going to seek for foreign aid to restore him to his throne, yet he would not make use of it to overthrow either the religion established or the laws of the land. And so he left Rochester very secretly on the last day of this memorable year and got safe over to France. H.D. TRAILL The convention for filling the vacant throne met on January 22d, when Halifax was chosen president in the Lords; Powle speaker of the Commons. A letter from William, read in both Houses, informed their members that he had endeavored to the best of his power to discharge the trust reposed in him, and that it now rested with the convention to lay the foundation of a firm security for their religion, laws, and liberties. The Prince then went on to refer to the dangerous condition of the Protestants in Ireland, and the present state of things abroad, which obliged him to tell them that next to the danger of unreasonable divisions among themselves, nothing could be so fatal as too great a delay in their consultations. And he further intimated that as England was already bound by treaty to help the Dutch in such exigencies as, deprived of the troops which he had brought over, and threatened with war by Louis XIV, they might easily be reduced to, so he felt confident that the cheerful concurrence of the Dutch in preserving this kingdom would meet with all the returns of friendship from Protestants and Englishmen whenever their own condition should require assistance. To this the two Houses replied with an address thanking the Prince for his great care in the administration of the affairs of the kingdom to this time, and formally continuing to him the same commission, recommending to his particular care the present state of Ireland. William's answer to this address was characteristic both of his temperament and his preoccupation. "My lords and gentlemen," he said, "I am glad that what I have done hath pleased you; and since you desire me to continue the administration of affairs, I am willing to accept it. I must recommend to you the consideration of affairs abroad which makes it fit for you to expedite your business, not only for making a settlement at home on a good foundation, but for the safety of Europe." On the 28th the Commons resolved themselves into a committee of the whole House, and Richard Hampden, son of the great John, was voted into the chair. The honor of having been the first to speak the word which was on everybody's lips belongs to Gilbert Dolben, son of a late archbishop of York, who "made a long speech tending to prove that the King's deserting his kingdom without appointing any person to administer the government amounted in reason and judgment of law to a demise." Sir Robert Howard, one of the members for Castle Rising, went a step further, and asserted that the throne was vacant. The extreme Tories made a vain effort to procure an adjournment, but the combination against them of Whigs and their own moderates was too strong for them, and after a long and stormy debate the House resolved "That King James II, having endeavored to subvert the constitution by breaking the original contract between the King and people, and by the advice of Jesuits and other wicked persons having violated the fundamental laws and withdrawn himself out of the kingdom, has abdicated the government, and that the throne is thereby vacant." This resolution was at once sent up to the Lords. Before, however, they could proceed to consider it, another message arrived from the Commons to the effect that they had just voted it inconsistent with the safety and welfare of this Protestant nation to be governed by a popish king. To this resolution the Peers assented with a readiness which showed in advance that James had no party in the Upper House, and that the utmost length to which the Tories in that body were prepared to go was to support the proposal of a regency. The first resolution of the Commons was then put aside in order that this proposal might be discussed. It was Archbishop Sancroft's plan, who, however, did not make his appearance to advocate it, and in his absence it was supported by Rochester and Nottingham, while Halifax and Danby led the opposition to it. After a day's debate it was lost by the narrow majority of two, forty-nine peers declaring in its favor and fifty-one against it. The Lords then went into committee on the Commons' resolution, and at once proceeded, as was natural enough, to dispute the clause in its preamble which referred to the original contract between the King and the people. No Tory, of course, could really have subscribed to the doctrine implied in these words; but it was doubtless as hard in those days as in these to interest an assembly of English politicians in affirmations of abstract political principle, and some Tories probably thought it not worth while to multiply causes of dissent with the Lower House by attacking a purely academic recital of their resolution. Anyhow, the numbers of the minority slightly fell off, only forty-six Peers objecting to the phrase, while fifty-three voted that it should stand. The word "deserted" was then substituted without a division for the word "abdicated," and, the hour being late, the Lords adjourned. The real battle, of course, was now at hand, and to anyone who assents to the foregoing criticisms it will be evident that it was far less of a conflict on a point of constitutional principle, and far more of a struggle between the parties of two distinct--one cannot call them rival--claimants to the throne than high-flying Whig writers are accustomed to represent it. It would, of course, be too much to say that the Whigs insisted on declaring the vacancy of the throne, _only_ because they wished to place William on it, and that the Tories contended for a demise of the crown, _only_ because they wished an English princess to succeed to the throne rather than a Dutch prince. Still, it is pretty certain that, but for this conflict of preferences, the two political parties, who had made so little difficulty of agreeing in the declaration that James had ceased to reign, would never have found it so hard to concur in its almost necessary sequence that the throne was vacant. The debate on the last clause of the resolution began, and it soon became apparent that the Whigs were outnumbered. The forty-nine peers who had supported the proposal of a regency--which implied that the royal title was still in James--were bound, of course, to oppose the proposition that the throne was vacant; and they were reënforced by several peers who held that that title had already devolved upon Mary. An attempt to compromise the dispute by omitting the words pronouncing the throne vacant, and inserting words which merely proclaimed the Prince and Princess of Orange king and queen, was rejected by fifty-two votes to forty-seven; and the original clause was then put, and negatived by fifty-five votes to forty-one. Thus amended by the substitution of "deserted" for "abdicated," and the omission of the words "and that the throne is thereby vacant," the resolution was sent back to the Commons, who instantly and without a division disagreed with the amendments. The situation was now becoming critical. The prospect of a deadlock between the two branches of the convention threw London into a ferment; crowds assembled in Palace Yard; petitions were presented in that tumultuous fashion which converts supplication into menace. To their common credit, however, both parties united in resistance to these attempts at popular coercion; and William himself interposed to enjoin a stricter police of the capital. On Monday, February 4th, the Lords resolved to insist on their amendments; on the following day the Commons reaffirmed their disagreement with them by two hundred eighty-two votes to one hundred fifty-one. A free conference between the two Houses was then arranged, and met on the following day. But the dispute, like many another in our political history, had meanwhile been settled out of court. Between the date of the peers' vote and the conference Mary had communicated to Danby her high displeasure at the conduct of those who were setting up her claims in opposition to those of her husband; and William, who had previously maintained an unbroken silence, now made, unsolicited, a declaration of a most important and, indeed, of a conclusive kind. If the convention, he said, chose to adopt the plan of a regency, he had nothing to say against it, only they must look out for some other person to fill the office, for he himself would not consent to do so. As to the alternative proposal of putting Mary on the throne and allowing him to reign by her courtesy, "No man," he said, "can esteem a woman more than I do the Princess; but I am so made that I cannot think of holding anything by apron strings; nor can I think it reasonable to have any share in the government unless it be put in my own person, and that for the term of my life. If you think fit to settle it otherwise I will not oppose you, but will go back to Holland, and meddle no more in your affairs." These few sentences of plain-speaking swept away the clouds of intrigue and pedantry as by a wholesome gust of wind. Both political parties at once perceived that there was but one possible issue from the situation. The conference was duly held, and the constitutional question was, with great display of now unnecessary learning, solemnly debated; but the managers for the two Houses met only to register a foregone conclusion. The word "abdicated" was restored; the vacancy of the throne was voted by sixty-two votes to forty-seven; and it was immediately proposed and carried without a division that the Prince and Princess of Orange should be declared king and queen of England. It now only remained to give formal effect to this resolution, and in so doing to settle the conditions whereon the crown, which the convention had now distinctly recognized itself as conferring upon the Prince and Princess, should be conferred. A committee appointed by the Commons to consider what safeguards should be taken against the aggressions of future sovereigns had made a report in which they recommended not only a solemn enunciation of ancient constitutional principles, but the enactment of new laws. The Commons, however, having regard to the importance of prompt action, judiciously resolved on carrying out only the first part of the programme. They determined to preface the tender of the crown to William and Mary by a recital of the royal encroachments of the past reigns, and a formal assertion of the constitutional principles against which such encroachments had offended. This document, drafted by a committee of which the celebrated Somers, then a scarcely known young advocate, was the chairman, was the famous "Declaration of Right." The grievances which it recapitulated in its earlier portion were as follows: (1) The royal pretension to dispense with and suspend laws without consent of Parliament; (2) the punishment of subjects, as in the "Seven Bishops'" case, for petitioning the crown; (3) the establishment of the illegal court of high commission for ecclesiastical affairs; (4) the levy of taxes without the consent of Parliament; (5) the maintenance of a standing army in time of peace without the same consent; (6) the disarmament of Protestants while papists were both armed and employed contrary to law; (7) the violation of the freedom of election; (8) the prosecution in the king's bench of suits only cognizable in Parliament; (9) the return of partial and corrupt juries; (10) the requisition of excessive bail; (11) the imposition of excessive fines; (12) the infliction of illegal and cruel punishments; (13) the grants of the estates of accused persons before conviction. Then after solemnly reaffirming the popular rights from which these abuses of the prerogative derogated, the declaration goes on to recite that, having an "entire confidence" William would "preserve them from the violation of the rights which they have here asserted, the Three Estates do resolve that William and Mary, Prince and Princess of Orange, be and be declared king and queen: to hold the crown and royal dignity, to them the said Prince and Princess during their lives and the life of the survivor of them; and the sole and full exercise of the royal power be only in and exercised by the said Prince of Orange, in the names of the said Prince and Princess during their lives, and, after their deceases, the said crown and royal dignity of the said kingdoms and dominions to the heirs of the body of the said Princess; and, for default of such issue, to the Princess Anne of Denmark and the heirs of her body; and, for the default of such issue, to the issue of the said Prince of Orange." Then followed an alteration required by the scrupulous conscience of Nottingham in the terms of the oath of allegiance. On February 12th Mary arrived from Holland. On the following day, in the Banqueting House at Whitehall, the Prince and Princess of Orange were waited on by both Houses of convention in a body. The declaration was read by the clerk of the crown; the sovereignty solemnly tendered to them by Halifax, in the name of the Estates; and on the same day they were proclaimed king and queen in the usual places in the cities of London and Westminster. %PETER THE GREAT MODERNIZES RUSSIA% SUPPRESSION OF THE STRELTSI A.D. 1689 ALFRED RAMBAUD It is the glory of Peter the Great to have changed the character of his country and elevated its position among European nations. By opening Russia to the influence of Western civilization he prepared the way for the advent of that vast empire as one of the world's great powers. Peter I Alexeievitch was born in Moscow June 9 (N.S.), 1672. After a joint reign with his half-brother Ivan (1682-1696), he ruled alone until his death, February 8 (N.S.), 1725. He is distinguished among princes as a ruler who temporarily laid aside the character of royalty "in order to learn the art of governing better." By his travels under a common name and in a menial disguise, he acquired fruits of observation which proved of greater practical advantage in his career than comes to sovereigns from training in the knowledge of the schools. His restless and inquiring spirit was never subdued by the burdens of state, and his matured powers proved equal to the demands laid upon him by the great formative work which he was called to accomplish for his people. The character and early career of this extraordinary man are here set forth by Rambaud in a masterly sketch, showing the first achievements which laid the foundation of Peter's constructive policies. Alexis Mikhailovitch, Czar of Russia, had by his first wife, Maria Miloslavski, two sons, Feodor and Ivan, and six daughters; by his second wife, Natalia Narychkine, one son (who became Peter I) and two daughters. As he was twice married, and the kinsmen of each wife had, according to custom, surrounded the throne, there existed two factions in the palace, which were brought face to face by his death and that of his eldest son, Feodor. The Miloslavskis had on their side the claim of seniority, the number of royal children left by Maria, and, above all, the fact that Ivan was the elder of the two surviving sons; but unluckily for them, Ivan was notoriously imbecile both in body and mind. On the side of the Narychkines was the interest excited by the precocious intelligence of Peter, and the position of legal head of all the royal family, which, according to Russian law, gave to Natalia Narychkine her title of czarina dowager. Both factions had for some time taken their measures and recruited their partisans. Who should succeed Feodor? Was it to be the son of the Miloslavski, or the son of the Narychkine? The Miloslavskis were first defeated on legal grounds. Taking the incapacity of Ivan into consideration, the boyars and the Patriarch Joachim proclaimed the young Peter, then nine years old, Czar. The Narychkines triumphed: Natalia became czarina regent, recalled from exile her foster-father, Matveef, and surrounded herself by her brothers and uncles. The Miloslavskis' only means of revenge lay in revolt, but they were without a head; for it was impossible for Ivan to take the lead. The eldest of his six sisters was thirty-two years of age, the youngest nineteen; the most energetic of them was Sophia, who was twenty-five. These six princesses saw themselves condemned to the dreary destiny of the Russian _czarevni_, and were forced to renounce all hopes of marriage, with no prospects but to grow old in the seclusion of the _terem_, subjected by law to the authority of a step-mother. All their youth had to look forward to was the cloister. They, however, only breathed in action; and though imperial etiquette and Byzantine manners, prejudices, and traditions forbade them to appear in public, even Byzantine traditions offered them models to follow. Had not Pulcheria, daughter of an emperor, reigned at Constantinople in the name of her brother, the incapable Theodosius? Had she not contracted a nominal marriage with the brave Marcian, who was her sword against the barbarians? Here was the ideal that Sophia could propose to herself; to be a _czardievitsa_, a "woman-emperor." To emancipate herself from the rigorous laws of the terem, to force the "twenty-seven locks" of the song, to raise the _fata_ that covered her face, to appear in public and meet the looks of men, needed energy, cunning, and patience that could wait and be content to proceed by successive efforts. Sophia's first step was to appear at Feodor's funeral, though it was not the custom for any but the widow and the heir to be present. There her litter encountered that of Natalia Narychkine, and her presence forced the Czarina-mother to retreat. She surrounded herself with a court of educated men, who publicly praised her, encouraged and excited her to action. Simeon Polotski and Silvester Medviedef wrote verses in her honor, recalled to her the example of Pulcheria and Olga, compared her to the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth of England, and even to Semiramis; we might think we were listening to Voltaire addressing Catharine II. They played on her name Sophia (wisdom), and declared she had been endowed with the quality as well as the title. Polotski dedicated to her the _Crown of Faith_, and Medviedef his _Gifts of the Holy Spirit_. The terem offered the strangest contrasts. There acted they the _Malade Imaginaire_, and the audience was composed of the heterogeneous assembly of popes, monks, nuns, and old pensioners that formed the courts of the ancient czarinas. In this shifting crowd there were some useful instruments of intrigue. The old pensioners, while telling their rosaries, served as emissaries between the palace and the town, carried messages and presents to the turbulent _streltsi_[1] and arranged matters between the czarian ladies and the soldiers. Sinister rumors were skilfully disseminated through Moscow: Feodor, the eldest son of Alexis, had died, the victim of conspirators; the same lot was doubtless reserved for Ivan. What was to become of the poor czarevni, of the blood of kings? At last it was publicly announced that a brother of Natalia Narychkine had seized the crown and seated himself on the throne, and that Ivan had been strangled. Love and pity for the son of Alexis, and the indignation excited by the news of the usurpation, immediately caused the people of Moscow to revolt, and the ringleaders cleverly directed the movement. The tocsin sounded from four hundred churches of the "holy city"; the regiments of the streltsi took up arms and marched, followed by an immense crowd, to the Kremlin, with drums beating, matches lighted, and dragging cannon behind them. Natalia Narychkine had only to show herself on the "Red Staircase," accompanied by her son Peter, and Ivan who was reported dead. Their mere appearance sufficed to contradict all the calumnies. The streltsi hesitated, seeing they had been deceived. A clever harangue of Matveef, who had formerly commanded them, and the exhortations of the patriarch, shook them further. The revolt was almost appeased; the Miloslavskis had missed their aim, for they had not yet succeeded in putting to death the people of whom they were jealous. [Footnote 1: The streltsi were an ancient Muscovite guard composed of citizens rendering hereditary military service in the different cities and fortified posts. At this time many of them were ripe for revolt.] Suddenly Prince Michael Dolgorouki, chief of the _prikaz_ of the streltsi, began to insult the rioters in the most violent language. This ill-timed harangue awoke their fury; they seized Dolgorouki, and flung him from the top of the Red Staircase onto their pikes. They stabbed Matveef, under the eyes of the Czarina; then they sacked the palace, murdering all who fell into their hands. Athanasius Narychkine, a brother of Natalia, was thrown from a window onto the points of their lances. The following day the _emeute_ recommenced; they tore from the arms of the Czarina her father Cyril and her brother Ivan; the latter was tortured and sent into a monastery. Historians show us Sophia interceded for the victims on her knees, but an understanding between the rebels and the Czarevna did exist; the streltsi obeyed orders. The following days were consecrated to the purifying of the palace and the administration, and the seventh day of the revolt they sent their commandant, the prince-boyar, Khovanski, to declare that they would have two czars--Ivan at the head, and Peter as coadjutor; and if this were refused, they would again rebel. The boyars of the _douma_ deliberated on this proposal, and the greater number of the boyars were opposed to it. In Russia the absolute power had never been shared, but the orators of the terem cited many examples both from sacred and profane history: Pharaoh and Joseph, Arcadius and Honorius, Basil II and Constantine VIII; and the best of all the arguments were the pikes of the streltsi (1682). Sophia had triumphed: she reigned in the name of her two brothers, Ivan and Peter. She made a point of showing herself in public, at processions, solemn services, and dedications of churches. At the Ouspienski Sobor, while her brothers occupied the place of the czar, she filled that of the czarina; only _she_ raised the curtains and boldly allowed herself to be incensed by the patriarch. When the _raskolniks_ challenged the heads of the orthodox church to discussion, she wished to preside and hold the meeting in the open air, at the Lobnoe Miesto on the Red Place. There was, however, so much opposition that she was forced to call the assembly in the Palace of Facets, and sat behind the throne of her two brothers, present though invisible. The double-seated throne used on those occasions is still preserved at Moscow; there is an opening in the back, hidden by a veil of silk, and behind this sat Sophia. This singular piece of furniture is the symbol of a government previously unknown to Russia, composed of two visible czars and one invisible sovereign. The streltsi, however, felt their prejudices against female sovereignty awaken. They shrank from the contempt heaped by the Czarevna upon the ancient manners. Sophia had already become in their eyes a "scandalous person" (_pozornoe litzo_). Another cause of misunderstanding was the support she gave to the state church, as reformed by Nicon, while the streltsi and the greater part of the people held to the "old faith." She had arrested certain "old believers," who at the discussion in the Palace of Facets had challenged the patriarchs and orthodox prelates, and she had caused the ringleader to be executed. Khovanski, chief of the streltsi, whether from sympathy with the _raskol_ or whether he wished to please his subordinates, affected to share their discontent. The court no longer felt itself safe at Moscow. Sophia took refuge with the Czarina and the two young princes in the fortified monastery of Troitsa, and summoned around her the gentlemen-at-arms. Khovanski was invited to attend, was arrested on the way, and put to death with his son. The streltsi attempted a new rising, but, with the usual fickleness of a popular militia, suddenly passed from the extreme of insolence to the extreme of humility. They marched to Troitsa, this time in the guise of suppliants, with cords round their necks, carrying axes and blocks for the death they expected. The patriarch consented to intercede for them, and Sophia contented herself with the sacrifice of the ringleaders. Sophia, having got rid of her accomplices, governed by aid of her two favorites--Chaklovity, the new commandant of the streltsi, whom she had drawn from obscurity, and who was completely devoted to her, and Prince Vasili Galitsyne. Galitsyne has become the hero of a historic school which opposes his genius to that of Peter the Great, in the same way as in France Henry, Duke of Guise, has been exalted at the expense of Henry IV. He was the special favorite, the intimate friend, of Sophia, the director of her foreign policy, and her right hand in military affairs. Sophia and Galitsyne labored to organize a holy league between Russia, Poland, Venice, and Austria against the Turks and Tartars. They also tried to gain the countenance of the Catholic powers of the West; and in 1687 Jacob Dolgorouki and Jacob Mychetski disembarked at Dunkirk as envoys to the court of Louis XIV. They were not received very favorably: the King of France was not at all inclined to make war against the Turks; he was, on the other hand, the ally of Mahomet IV, who was about to besiege Vienna while Louis blockaded Luxemburg. The whole plan of the campaign was, however, thrown out by the intervention of Russia and John Sobieski in favor of Austria. The Russian ambassadors received orders to reëmbark at Havre, without going farther south. The government of the Czarevna still persisted in its warlike projects. In return for an active cooperation against the Ottomans, Poland had consented to ratify the conditions of the Treaty of Androussovo, and to sign a perpetual peace (1686). A hundred thousand Muscovites, under the command of Prince Galitsyne, and fifty thousand Little Russian Cossacks, under the orders of the hetman Samoilovitch, marched against the Crimea (1687). The army suffered greatly in the southern steppes, as the Tartars had fired the grassy plains. Galitsyne was forced to return without having encountered the enemy. Samoilovitch was accused of treason, deprived of his command, and sent to Siberia; and Mazeppa, who owed to Samoilovitch his appointment as secretary-at-war, and whose denunciations had chiefly contributed to his downfall, was appointed his successor. In the spring of 1689 the Muscovite and Ukranian armies, commanded by Galitsyne and Mazeppa, again set out for the Crimea. The second expedition was hardly more fortunate than the first: they got as far as Perekop, and were then obliged to retreat without even having taken the fortress. This double defeat did not hinder Sophia from preparing for her favorite a triumphal entry into Moscow. In vain Peter forbade her to leave the palace; she braved his displeasure and headed the procession, accompanied by the clergy and the images and followed by the army of the Crimea, admitted the generals to kiss her hand and distributed glasses of brandy among the officers. Peter left Moscow in anger, and retired to the village of Preobrajenskoe. The foreign policy of the Czarevna was marked by another display of weakness. By the Treaty of Nertchinsk she restored to the Chinese empire the fertile regions of the Amur, which had been conquered by a handful of Cossacks, and razed the fortress of Albazine, where those adventurers had braved all the forces of the East. On all sides Russia seemed to retreat before the barbarians. Meanwhile Peter was growing. His precocious faculties, his quick intelligence, and his strong will awakened alike the hopes of his partisans and the fears of his enemies. As a child he only loved drums, swords, and muskets. He learned history by means of colored prints brought from Germany. Zotof, his master, whom he afterward made "the archpope of fools," taught him to read. Among the heroes held up to him as examples we are not surprised to find Ivan the Terrible, whose character and position offer so much analogy to his own. "When the Czarevitch was tired of reading," says M. Zabieline, "Zotof took the book from his hand and, to amuse him, would himself read the great deeds of his father, Alexis Mikhailovitch, and those of the Czar, Ivan Vasilievitch, their campaigns, their distant expeditions, their battles and sieges: how they endured fatigues and privations better than any common soldier; what benefits they had conferred on the empire, and how they extended the frontiers of Russia." Peter also learned Latin, German, and Dutch. He read much and widely, and learned a great deal, though without method. Like Ivan the Terrible, he was a self-taught man. He afterward complained of not having been instructed according to rule. This was perhaps a good thing. His education, like that of Ivan IV, was neglected, but at least he was not subjected to the enervating influence of the terem--he was not cast in that dull mould which turned out so many idiots in the royal family. He "roamed at large, and wandered in the streets with his comrades." The streets of Moscow at that period were, according to M. Zabieline, the worst school of profligacy and debauchery that can be imagined; but they were, on the whole, less bad for Peter than the palace. He met there something besides mere jesters: he encountered new elements which had as yet no place in the terem, but contained the germ of the regeneration of Russia. He came across Russians who, if unscrupulous, were also unprejudiced, and who could aid him in his bold reform of the ancient society. He there became acquainted with Swiss, English, and German adventurers--with Lefort, with Gordon, and with Timmermann, who initiated him into European civilization. His court was composed of Leo Narychkine, of Boris Galitsyne, who had undertaken never to flatter him; of Andrew Matveef, who had marked taste for everything European; and of Dolgorouki, at whose house he first saw an astrolabe. He played at soldiers with his young friends and his grooms, and formed them into the "battalion of playmates," who manoeuvred after the European fashion, and became the kernel of the future regular army. He learned the elements of geometry and fortification, and constructed small citadels, which he took or defended with his young warriors in those fierce battles which sometimes counted their wounded or dead, and in which the Czar of Russia was not always spared. An English boat stranded on the shore of Yaousa caused him to send for Franz Timmermann, who taught him to manage a sailing-boat, even with a contrary wind. He who formerly, like a true boyar of Moscow, had such a horror of the water that he could not make up his mind to cross a bridge, became a determined sailor: he guided his boat first on the Yaousa, then on the lake of Pereiaslavl. Brandt, the Dutchman, built him a whole flotilla; and already, in spite of the terrors of his mother, Natalia, Peter dreamed of the sea. "The child is amusing himself," the courtiers of Sophia affected to observe; but these amusements disquieted her. Each day added to the years of Peter seemed to bring her nearer to the cloister. In vain she proudly called herself "autocrat"; she saw her stepmother, her rival, lifting up her head. Galitsyne confined himself to regretting that they had not known better how to profit by the revolution of 1682, but Chaklovity, who knew he must fall with his mistress, said aloud, "It would be wiser to put the Czarina to death than to be put to death by her." Sophia could only save herself by seizing the throne--but who would help her to take it? The streltsi? But the result of their last rising had chilled them considerably. Sophia herself, while trying to bind this formidable force, had broken it, and the streltsi had not forgotten their chiefs beheaded at Troitsa. Now what did the emissaries of Sophia propose to them? Again to attack the palace; to put Leo Narychkine and other partisans of Peter to death; to arrest his mother, and to expel the patriarch. They trusted that Peter and Natalia would perish in the tumult. The streltsi remained indifferent when Sophia, affecting to think her life threatened, fled to the Dievitchi monastery, and sent them letters of entreaty. "If thy days are in peril," tranquilly replied the streltsi, "there must be an inquiry." Chaklovity could hardly collect four hundred of them at the Kremlin. The struggle began between Moscow and Preobrajenskoe, the village with the prophetical name (the "Transfiguration" or "Regeneration"). Two streltsi warned Peter of the plots of his sister, and for the second time he sought an asylum at Troitsa. It was then seen who was the true czar; all men hastened to range themselves around him: his mother, his armed squires, the "battalion of playmates," the foreign officers, and even the streltsi of the regiment of Soukharef. The patriarch also took the side of the Czar, and brought him moral support, as the foreign soldiers had brought him material force. The partisans of Sophia were cold and irresolute; the streltsi themselves demanded that her favorite Chaklovity should be surrendered to the Czar. She had to implore the mediation of the patriarch. Chaklovity was first put to the torture and made to confess his plot against the Czar, and then decapitated. Medviedef was at first only condemned to the knout and banishment for heresy, but he acknowledged he had intended to take the place of the patriarch and to marry Sophia; he was dishonored by being imprisoned with two sorcerers, condemned to be burned alive in a cage, and was afterward beheaded. Galitsyne was deprived of his property, and exiled to Poustozersk. Sophia remained in the Dievitchi Monastyr, subjected to a hard captivity. Though Ivan continued to reign conjointly with his brother, yet Peter, who was then only seventeen, governed alone, surrounded by his mother, the Narychkines, and the Dolgoroukis (1689). Sophia had freed herself from the seclusion of the terem, as Peter had emancipated himself from the seclusion of the palace to roam the streets and navigate rivers. Both had behaved scandalously, according to the ideas of the time--the one haranguing soldiers, presiding over councils, walking with her veil raised; the other using the axe like a carpenter, rowing like a Cossack, brawling with foreign adventurers, and fighting with his grooms in mimic battles. But to the one her emancipation was only a means of obtaining power; to the other the emancipation of Russia, like the emancipation of himself, was the end. He wished the nation to shake off the old trammels from which he had freed himself. Sophia remained a Byzantine, Peter aspired to be a European. In the conflict between the Czarevna and the Czar, progress was not on the side of the Dievitchi Monastyr. The first use the Czar made of his liberty was to hasten to Archangel. There, deaf to the advice and prayers of his mother, who was astounded at this unexpected taste for salt water, he gazed on that sea which no czar had ever looked on. He ate with the merchants and the officers of foreign navies; he breathed the air which had come from the West. He established a dockyard, built boats, dared the angry waves of this unknown ocean, and almost perished in a storm, which did not prevent the "skipper Peter Alexeievitch" from again putting to sea, and bringing the Dutch vessels back to the Holy Cape. Unhappily, the White Sea, by which, since the time of Ivan IV, the English had entered Russia, is frost-bound in winter. In order to open permanent communications with the West, with civilized countries, it was necessary for Peter to establish himself on the Baltic or the Black Sea. Now the first belonged to the Swedes, and the second to the Turks, as the Caspian did to the Persians. Who was first to be attacked? The treaties concluded with Poland and Austria, as well as policy and religion, urged the Czar against the Turks, and Constantinople has always been the point of attraction for orthodox Russia. Peter shared the sentiments of his people, and had the enthusiasm of a crusader against the infidel. Notwithstanding his ardent wish to travel in the West, he took the resolution not to appear in foreign lands till he could appear as a victor. Twice had Galitsyne failed against the Crimea; Peter determined to attack the barbarians by the Don, and besiege Azov. The army was commanded by three generals, Golovine, Gordon, and Lefort, who were to act with the "bombardier of the Preobrajenski regiment, Peter Alexeievitch." This regiment, as well as three others which had sprung from the "amusements" of Preobrajenskoe--the Semenovski, the Botousitski, and the regiment of Lefort--were the heart of the expedition. It failed because the Czar had no fleet with which to invest Azov by sea, because the new army and its chiefs wanted experience, and because Jansen, the German engineer, ill-treated by Peter, passed over to the enemy. After two assaults the siege was raised. This check appeared the more grave because the Czar himself was with the army, because the first attempt to turn from the "amusements" of Preobrajenskoe to serious warfare had failed, and because this failure would furnish arms against innovations, against the Germans and the heretics, against the new tactics. It might even compromise, in the eyes of the people, the work of regeneration (1695). Although Peter had followed the example of Galitsyne, and entered Moscow in triumph, he felt he needed revenge. He sent for good officers from foreign countries. Artillerymen arrived from Holland and Austria, engineers from Prussia, and Admiral Lima from Venice. Peter hurried on the creation of a fleet with feverish impatience. He built of green wood twenty-two galleys, a hundred rafts, and seventeen hundred boats or barks. All the small ports of the Don were metamorphosed into dock-yards; twenty-six thousand workmen were assembled there from all parts of the empire. It was like the camp of Boulogne. No misfortune--neither the desertion of the laborers, the burnings of the dock-yards, nor even his own illness--could lessen his activity. Peter was able to write that, "following the advice God gave to Adam, he earned his bread by the sweat of his brow." At last the "marine caravan," the Russian armada, descended the Don. From the slopes of Azov he wrote to his sister Natalia[1]: "In obedience to thy counsels, I do not go to meet the shells and balls; it is they who approach me, but tolerably courteously." [Footnote 1: His mother died in 1694, his brother Ivan in 1696.] Azov was blockaded by sea and land, and a breach was opened by the engineers. Preparations were being made for a general assault, when the place capitulated. The joy in Russia was great, and the streltsi's jealousy of the success of foreign tactics gave place to their enthusiasm as Christians for this victory over Islamism, which recalled those of Kazan and Astrakhan. The effect produced on Europe was considerable. At Warsaw the people shouted, "Long live the Czar!" The army entered Moscow under triumphal arches, on which were represented Hercules trampling a pacha and two Turks under foot, and Mars throwing to the earth a _mirza_ and two Tartars. Admiral Lefort and Schein the generalissimo took part in the _cortège_, seated on magnificent sledges; while Peter, promoted to the rank of captain, followed on foot. Jansen, destined to the gibbet, marched among the prisoners (1696). Peter wished to profit by this great success to found the naval power of Russia. By the decision of the _douma_ three thousand families were established at Azov, besides four hundred Kalmucks, and a garrison of Moscow streltsi. The patriarch, the prelates, and the monasteries taxed themselves for the construction of one vessel to every eight thousand serfs. The nobles, the officials, and the merchants were seized with the fever of this holy war, and brought their contributions toward the infant navy. It was proposed to unite the Don and the Volga by means of a canal. A new appeal was made to the artisans and sailors of Europe. Fifty young nobles of the court were sent to Venice, England, and the Low Countries to learn seamanship and shipbuilding. But it was necessary that the Czar himself should be able to judge of the science of his subjects; he must counteract Russian indolence and prejudice by the force of a great example; and Peter, after having begun his career in the navy at the rank of "skipper," and in the army at that of bombardier, was to become a carpenter of Saardam. He allowed himself, as a reward for his success at Azov, the much-longed-for journey to the West. In 1697 Admiral Lefort and Generals Golovine and Vosnitsyne prepared to depart for the countries of the West, under the title of "the great ambassadors of the Czar." Their suite was composed of two hundred seventy persons--young nobles, soldiers, interpreters, merchants, jesters, and buffoons. In the cortège was a young man who went by the name of Peter Mikhailof. This _incognito_ would render the position of the Czar easier, whether in his own personal studies or in delicate negotiations. On the journey to Riga Peter allowed himself to be insulted by the governor, but laid up the recollection for future use. At Koenigsburg the Prussian, Colonel Sternfeld, delivered to "M. Peter Mikhailof" "a formal brevet of master of artillery." The great ambassadors and their travelling companion were cordially received by the courts of Courland, Hanover, and Brandenburg. Sophia Charlotte of Hanover, afterward Queen of Prussia, has left us some curious notes about the Czar, then twenty-seven years of age. He astonished her by the vivacity of his mind and the promptitude and point of his answers, not less than by the grossness of his manners, his bad habits at table, his wild timidity, like that of a badly brought-up child, his grimaces, and a frightful twitching which at times convulsed his whole face. Peter had then a beautiful brown skin, with great piercing eyes, but his features already bore traces of toil and debauchery. "He must have very good and very bad points," said the young Electress; and in this he represented contemporary Russia. "If he had received a better education," adds the Princess, "he would have been an accomplished man." The suite of the Czar were not less surprising than their master; the Muscovites danced with the court ladies, and took the stiffening of their corsets for their bones. "The bones of these Germans are devilish hard!" said the Czar. Leaving the great embassy on the road Peter travelled quickly and reached Saardam. The very day of his arrival he took a lodging at a blacksmith's, procured himself a complete costume like those worn by Dutch workmen, and began to wield the axe. He bargained for a boat, bought it, and drank the traditional pint of beer with its owner. He visited cutleries, ropewalks, and other manufactories, and everywhere tried his hand at the work: in a paper manufactory he made some paper. However, in spite of the tradition, he only remained eight days at Saardam. At Amsterdam his eccentricities were no less astonishing. He neither took any rest himself nor allowed others to do so; he exhausted all his _ciceroni_, always repeating, "I must see it." He inspected the most celebrated anatomical collections; engaged artists, workmen, officers, and engineers; and bought models of ships and collections of naval laws and treaties. He entered familiarly the houses of private individuals, gained the good-will of the Dutch by his _bonhomie_, penetrated into the recesses of the shops and stalls, and remained lost in admiration over a dentist. But, amid all these distractions, he never lost sight of his aim. "We labor," he wrote to the patriarch Adrian, "in order thoroughly to master the art of the sea; so that, having once learned it, we may return to Russia and conquer the enemies of Christ, and free by his grace the Christians who are oppressed. This is what I shall long for to my last breath." He was vexed at making so little progress in shipbuilding, but in Holland everyone had to learn by personal experience. A naval captain told him that in England instruction was based on principles, and these he could learn in four months; so Peter crossed the sea, and spent three months in London and the neighboring towns. There he took into his service goldsmiths and gold-beaters, architects and bombardiers. He then returned to Holland, and, his ship being attacked by a violent tempest, he reassured those who trembled for his safety by the remark, "Did you ever hear of a czar of Russia who was drowned in the North Sea?" Though much occupied with his technical studies, he had not neglected policy; he had conversed with William III, but did not visit France in this tour, for "Louis XIV," says St. Simon, "had procured the postponement of his visit"; the fact being that his alliance with the Emperor and his wars with the Turks were looked on with disfavor at Versailles. He went to Vienna to study the military art, and dissuaded Leopold from making peace with the Sultan. Peter wished to conquer Kertch in order to secure the Straits of Ienikale. He was preparing to go to Venice, when vexatious intelligence reached him from Moscow. The first reforms of Peter, his first attempts against the national prejudices and customs, had raised him up a crowd of enemies. Old Russia did not allow herself quietly to be set aside by the bold innovator. There was in the interior a sullen and resolute resistance, which sometimes gave birth to bloody scenes. The revolt of the streltsi, the insurrection of Astrakhan, the rebellion of the Cossacks, and later the trial of his son and first wife are only episodes of the great struggle. Already the priests were teaching that Antichrist was born. Now it had been prophesied that Antichrist should be born of an adulteress, and Peter was the son of the _second_ wife of Alexis, therefore his mother Natalia was the "false virgin," the adulterous woman of the prophecies. The increasingly heavy taxes that weighed on the people were another sign that the time had come. Others, disgusted by the taste shown by the Czar for German clothes and foreign languages and adventures, affirmed that he was not the son of Alexis, but of Lefort the Genevan, or that his father was a German surgeon. They were scandalized to see the Czar, like another Gregory Otrepief, expose himself to blows in his military "amusements." The lower orders were indignant at the abolition of the long beards and national costume, and the _raskolniks_[1] at the authorization of "the sacrilegious smell of tobacco." [Footnote 1: Dissenters from the orthodox church of Russia (Greek Church).--ED.] The journey to the west completed the general dissatisfaction. Had anyone ever before seen a czar of Moscow quit Holy Russia to wander in the kingdoms of foreigners? Who knew what adventures might befall him among the _niemtsi_ and the _bousourmanes_? for the Russian people hardly knew how to distinguish between the Turks and the Germans, and were wholly ignorant of France and England. Under an unknown sky, at the extremity of the world, on the shores of the "ocean sea," what dangers might he not encounter? Then a singular legend was invented about the travels of the Czar. It was said that he went to Stockholm disguised as a merchant, and that the Queen had recognized him and had tried in vain to capture him. According to another version, she had plunged him in a dungeon, and delivered him over to his enemies, who wished to put him in a cask lined with nails and throw him into the sea. He had only been saved by a streletz who had taken his place. Some asserted that Peter was still kept there; and in 1705 the streltsi and raskolniks of Astrakhan still gave out that it was a false czar who had come back to Moscow--the true czar was a prisoner at Stockholm, attached to a stake. In the midst of this universal disturbance, caused by the absence of Peter, there were certain symptoms peculiarly disquieting. The Muscovite army grew more and more hostile to the new order of things. In 1694 Peter had discovered a fresh conspiracy, having for its object the deliverance of Sophia; and at the very moment of his departure from Russia he had to put down a plot of streltsi and Cossacks headed by Colonel Tsykler. Those of the streltsi who had been sent to form the garrison of Azov pined for their wives, their children, and the trades they had left in Moscow. When in the absence of the Czar they were sent from Azov to the frontiers of Poland, they again began to murmur. "What a fate is ours! It is the boyars who do all the mischief; for three years they have kept us from our homes." Two hundred deserted and returned to Moscow; but the douma, fearing their presence in the already troubled capital, expelled them by force. They brought back to their regiments a letter of Sophia. "You suffer," she wrote; "later it will become worse. March on Moscow. What is it you wait for? There is no news of the Czar." It was repeated through the army that the Czar had died in foreign lands, and that the boyars wished to put his son Alexis to death. It was necessary to march on Moscow and exterminate the nobles. The military sedition was complicated by the religious fanaticism of the raskolniks and the demagogic passions of the popular army. Four regiments revolted and deserted. Generals Schein and Gordon, with their regular troops, hastened after them, came up with them on the banks of the Iskra, and tried to persuade them to return to their duty. The streltsi replied by a petition setting forth all their grievances: "Many of them had died during the expedition to Azov, suggested by Lefort, a German, a heretic; they had endured fatiguing marches over burning plains, their only food being bad meat; their strength had been exhausted by severe tasks, and they had been banished to distant garrisons. Moscow was now a prey to all sorts of horrors. Foreigners had introduced the custom of shaving the beard and smoking tobacco. It was said that these niemtsi meant to seize the town. On this rumor, the streltsi had arrived, and also because Romodanovski wished to disperse and put them to the sword without anyone knowing why." A few cannon-shots were sufficient to scatter the rebels. A large number were arrested; torture, the gibbet, and the dungeon awaited the captives. When Peter hastened home from Vienna he decided that his generals and his douma had been too lenient. He had old grievances against the streltsi; they had been the army of Sophia, in opposition to the army of the Czar; he remembered the invasion of the Kremlin, the massacre of his mother's family, her terrors in Troitsa, and the conspiracies which all but delayed his journey to the west. At the very time that he was travelling in Europe for the benefit of his people, these incorrigible mutineers had forced him to renounce his dearest projects and had stopped him on the road to Venice. He resolved to take advantage of the opportunity by crushing his enemies _en masse_, and by making the Old Russia feel the weight of a terror that would recall the days of Ivan IV. The long beards had been the standard of revolt--they should fall. On August 26th he ordered all the gentlemen of his court to shave themselves, and himself applied the razor to his great lords. The same day the Red Place was covered with gibbets. The patriarch Adrian tried in vain to appease the anger of the Czar by presenting to him the wonder-working image of the Mother of God. "Why hast thou brought out the holy icon?" exclaimed the Czar. "Retire and restore it to its place. Know that I venerate God and his Mother as much as thyself, but know also that it is my duty to protect the people and punish the rebels." On October 30th there arrived at the Red Place the first instalment of two hundred thirty prisoners: they came in carts, with lighted torches in their hands, nearly all already broken by torture, and followed by their wives and children, who ran behind chanting a funeral wail. Their sentence was read, and they were slain, the Czar ordering several officers to help the executioner. John George Korb, the Austrian agent, who as an eye-witness has left us an authentic account of the executions, heard that five rebel heads had been sent into the dust by blows from an axe wielded by the noblest hand in Russia. The terrible carpenter of Saardam worked and obliged his boyars to work at this horrible employment. Seven other days were employed in this way; a thousand victims were put to death. Some were broken on the wheel, and others died by various modes of torture. The removal of the corpses was forbidden: for five months Moscow had before its eyes the spectacle of the dead bodies hanging from the battlements of the Kremlin and the other ramparts; and for five months the streltsi suspended to the bars of Sophia's prison presented her the petition by which they had entreated her to reign. Two of her confidants were buried alive; she herself, with Eudoxia Lapoukhine, Peter's wife, who had been repudiated for her obstinate attachment to the ancient customs, had their heads shaved and were confined in monasteries. After the revolt of the inhabitants of Astrakhan, who put their waywode to death, the old militia was completely abolished, and the way left clear for the formation of new troops. %TYRANNY OF ANDROS IN NEW ENGLAND% THE "BLOODLESS REVOLUTION" A.D. 1689 CHARLES W. ELLIOT When the spirit of the English Revolution of 1688 crossed the Atlantic and stirred the New England colonists to throw off the Stuart tyranny represented by Andros, a long step was taken in the development of early American self-government. The Charter Oak tradition, whether or not resting on actual occurrences, correctly typifies the temper of that self-government as it has ever manifested itself in the crises of patriotic development in this country. And the ending of theocratic government, as here recorded of Massachusetts, foreshadowed the further growth of democracy in America. Sir William Andros, an Englishman, was colonial governor of New York from 1674 to 1681, and of New England, including New York, from 1686 to 1689. His rule "was on the model dear to the heart of his royal master--a harsh despotism, but neither strong nor wise; it was wretched misgovernment and stupid, blundering oppression." What poor success Andros had in his attempt to force such a rule upon people of the English race who had already accustomed themselves to a large measure of independence and self-government Elliott's account briefly but fully shows. While colonies are poor they are neglected by the parent state; when they are able to pay taxes then she is quite ready to "govern them"; she is willing to appoint various dependents to important offices, and to allow the colonies to pay liberal salaries; she likes also to tax them to the amount of the surplus production which is transferred to the managers in the mother-country. Surprising as this is, it is what many call "government," and is common everywhere. England has been no exception to this, and her practice in New England was of this character till, in the year 1776, the back of the people was so galled that it threw its rider with violence. At various times attempts had been made to destroy the Massachusetts charter. At the restoration of Charles II, in 1660, the enemies of the Puritans roused themselves. All who scented the breath of liberty in those Western gales--all who had been disappointed of fond hopes in those infant states--all who had felt in New England, too, the iron hand of ecclesiastical tyranny, who chafed in the religious manacles which there, as everywhere else, were imposed upon the minority--all united against them; and in 1664 commissioners were sent over with extraordinary powers. The colony withstood them to the best of its ability; but at last, in 1676, a _quo warranto_ was issued, and judgment was obtained in England against the Massachusetts charter. In 1683 the quo warranto was brought over by Edward Randolph, who had been appointed collector of the port of Boston in 1681, but had not been allowed to act. He was the "messenger of death" to the hopes of the colony. The deputies refused to appear in England and plead, and judgment was entered up against them at last, in 1685, and the charter was abrogated. Charles died, and the bitter and bigoted James II came to the throne in 1684. The colonists then had rumors that Colonel Kirke, the fiercest hater of the Nonconformists in England, was coming over as governor, which filled them with dread. The colony now seemed to be at the mercy of the churchmen, or, worse than that, of the papists, for such was James. Mr. Rawson, secretary of the colony, about this time wrote, "Our condition is awful." Mr. Joseph Dudley was appointed governor and acted for a short time, but was succeeded by Sir Edmund Andros, who arrived December 19, 1686, with a commission from James II, to take upon himself the absolute government of all New England. Andros was supposed to be a bigoted papist, and he certainly carried matters with a high hand; the poisoned chalice of religious despotism, which these Pilgrims had commended to the lips of Roger Williams, the Browns, Mrs. Hutchinson, Gorton, Clarke, and the Quakers, was now offered to their own lips, and the draught was bitter. First, the press was muzzled; then marriage was no longer free. The minister Moody (1684) was imprisoned six months in New Hampshire for refusing to administer the communion to Cranfield and others, according to the manner and form set forth in the _Book of Common Prayer_. The Congregational ministers were as mere laymen, and danger menaced public worship and the meeting-houses. But this last extremity was saved them by the necessity which James was under of securing the triumph of _his_ church in Protestant England, the first step toward which was the proclamation of religious toleration. This, of course, secured the colonists, and the pilgrims were saved that fearful misery of being driven out from their own cherished altars. Andros carried things with as high a hand in Massachusetts as his master did in England; absolute subjection they both insisted on. Besides the denial of political and religious rights, the practice of arbitrary taxation was asserted by Andros, and all titles to lands were questioned; in the brutal phrase of the time, it was declared that "the calf died in the cow's belly"; that is, having no rights as a state, they had none as individuals; so fees, fines, and expenditures impoverished the people and enriched the officials. All seemed lost in Massachusetts. Andros went down to Hartford, in Connecticut, with his suite, and with sixty troops took possession of the government there and demanded the charter. Through the day (October 31, 1687) the authorities remonstrated and postponed. When they met Andros again in the evening the people collected, much excited. There seemed no relief. Their palladium, their charter, was demanded, and before them stood Andros, with soldiers and drawn swords, to compel his demand. There was then no hope, and the roll of parchment--the charter, with the great royal seal upon it--was brought forth and laid upon the table, in the midst of the excited people. Suddenly, without warning, all lights were extinguished! There were darkness and silence, followed by wonder, movement, and confusion. What meant this very unparliamentary conduct, or was it a gust of wind which had startled all? Lights were soon obtained, and then-- "Where is the charter?" was the question that went round the assembly. "What means this?" cried Andros, in anger. But no man knew where the charter had disappeared to; neither threats nor persuasion brought it to light. What could Andros do? Clearly nothing, for the authorities had done all that could be asked; they had produced the charter in the presence of Andros, and now it had disappeared from his presence. He had come upon a fool's errand, and some sharp Yankee (Captain Wadsworth) had outwitted him. Where was the charter? Safely hidden in the heart of the great oak, at Hartford, on the grounds of Samuel Wyllys. There it remained beyond the reach of tyranny. The tree known as the "Charter Oak" stood for over a century and a half from that day. The Indians had always prayed that the tree might be spared; they have our thanks. Andros wrote on the last page of their records, _Finis_, and disappeared--but that was not the end of Connecticut. It was a dark time for liberty in New England, and a dark day for liberty in Old England; for there James II and his unscrupulous ministers were corruptly, grossly, and illegally trampling down the rights of manhood. Andros was doing it in New England, and he found in Dudley, Stoughton, Clark, and others, sons of New England, ready feet. In 1688 Randolph writes, "We are as arbitrary as the great Turk"; which seems to have been true. The hearts of the best men in both countries sank within them, and they cried in their discouragement, "O Lord! how long!" Thus matters stood when, during the spring of 1688-1689, faint rumors of the landing of William, Prince of Orange, in England, came from Virginia. Could this be true? It brought Andros up to Boston (April), where he gave orders to have the soldiers ready against surprise. Liberty is the most ardent wish of a brave and noble people, and is too often betrayed by confidence in cultivated and designing and timid men. Liberty was the wish of the people of New England; and for the want of brave men then and since then they suffered. When, on April 4th, John Winslow brought from Virginia the rumor of the English Revolution and the landing of the Prince of Orange, it went through their blood like the electric current, and thrilled from the city along the byways into every home. Men got on their horses and rode onward to the next house to carry the tidings that the popish King was down and William was up, and that there was hope; through town and country the questions were eagerly asked: "Shall we get our old charter? Shall we regain our rights?" "What is there for us to do?" cried the people. Andros put out a proclamation that all persons should be in readiness to resist the forces of the Prince of Orange should they come. But the old magistrates and leaders silently prayed for his success; the people, less cautious and more determined, said to one another: "Let us do something. Why not act?" and this went from mouth to mouth till their hatred of Andros, and the remembrance to his dastardly oppressions, blazed into a consuming fire. "On April 18, 1689," wrote an onlooker, "I knew not anything of what was intended until it was begun, yet being at the north end of the town, where I saw boys running along the streets with clubs in their hands encouraging one another to fight, I began to mistrust what was intended, and hasting toward the Town Dock I soon saw men running for their arms; but before I got to the Red Lion I was told that Captain George and the master of the frigate were seized and secured in Mr. Colman's house at the North End; and when I came to the Town Dock I understood that Bullivant and some others were laid hold of, and then immediately the drums began to beat, and the people hastened and ran, some with and some for arms," etc. So it was begun, no one knew by whom; but men remembered yet their old liberties and were ready to risk something to regain them; they remembered, too, their present tyrants and longed to punish them. But in all this, men of property took no part--they are always timid. It was the "mob" that acted. Governor Andros was at the fort with some soldiers, and sent for the clergymen to come to him, who declined. The people and train-bands rallied together at the Town House, where old Governor Bradstreet and some other principal men met to consult as to what should be done. The King's frigate in the harbor ran up her flags, and the lieutenant swore he would die before she should be taken, and he opened her ports and ran out her guns; but Captain George (prisoner in Boston) sent him word not to fire a shot, for the people would tear him in pieces if he did. In the afternoon the soldiers and people marched to the fort, took possession of a battery, turned its guns upon the fort and demanded its surrender. They did not wait for its surrender, but stormed in through the portholes, and Captain John Nelson, a Boston merchant, cried out to Andros, "I demand your surrender." Andros was surprised at the anger of an outraged people, and knew not what to do, but at last gave up the fort, and was lodged prisoner in Mr. Usher's house. The next day he was forced to give up the castle in the harbor, and the guns of the battery from the shore were brought to bear upon the frigate. But the captain prayed that she might not be forced to surrender, because all the officers and crew would lose their wages; so she was dismantled for present security. All through the day people came pouring in from the country, well armed and hot with rage against Andros and his confederates; and the cooler men trembled lest some unnecessary violence might be done; so Captain Fisher, of Dedham, led Andros by the collar of the coat back to the fort for safety. On the 20th Bradstreet and other leading men met, and formed a kind of provisional council. They carefully abstained from resuming their old charter, partly from fear and partly from doubt, and called upon the towns to send up deputies. When these met, on May 22, 1689, forty out of fifty-four were for "resuming," but a majority of the council opposed it, and time was spent in disputes; but at last the old Governor and magistrates accepted the control of affairs, though they would not consent to resume the charter. Thus the moment for action passed, and the colony lost that chance for reestablishing its old rights. Rhode Island and Connecticut resumed their charters, which had never been legally vacated. Mr. Threat was obliged to take again the office of governor of Connecticut, when the amazing reports of the revolution and seizure of the Governor in Massachusetts reached them. They issued loyal addresses to William and Mary, in which they said: "Great was that day when the Lord who sitteth upon the floods did divide his and your adversaries like the waters of Jordan, and did begin to magnify you like Joshua, by the deliverance of the English dominions from popery and slavery." Andros escaped, but was apprehended at Rhode Island, and sent back to Boston, and in February, 1689, with Dudley and some others, he was sent away to England. Increase Mather, the agent of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, with the aid of friends in England, endeavored to gain the restoration of the old charter from King William, but was unsuccessful; a new one was granted (1691), which contained many of the old privileges; but the King would not grant them the power of appointing their own governor; that power was reserved; and appeals from the colony courts to England were allowed. The Governor and the King both had a veto upon all colonial legislation. By it all religions except the Roman Catholic were declared free, and Plymouth was annexed to Massachusetts. Thus two important elements of a free government were lost to Massachusetts; and powers which had been exercised over fifty years were, for nigh a hundred years, taken away. In Connecticut and Rhode Island they continued to elect their own rulers and to exercise all the powers of government. The new charter was brought over by Sir William Phipps, the new governor appointed by the King, who arrived on May 14, 1692. Thus ended the rule of the theocracy in Massachusetts, and from this time forward the ministers and church-members possessed no more power than the rest of the people. %MASSACRE OF LACHINE% A.D. 1689 FRANÇOIS XAVIER GARNEAU Just after Count Frontenac's first administration of Canada (1672-1682), when the colony of New France was under the rule of De la Barre and his successor, the Marquis de Denonville, Montreal and its immediate vicinity suffered from the most terrible and bloody of all the Indian massacres of the colonial days. The hatred of the Five Nations for the French, stimulated by the British colonists of New York, under its governor, Colonel Dongan, was due to French forays on the Seneca tribes, and to the capture and forwarding to the royal galleys in France of many of the betrayed Iroquois chiefs. At this period the English on the seaboard began to extend their trade into the interior of the continent and to divert commerce from the St. Lawrence to the Hudson. This gave rise to keen rivalries between the two European races, and led the English to take sides with the Iroquois in their enmity to the French. The latter, at Governor Denonville's instigation, sought to settle accounts summarily with the Iroquois, believing that the tribes of the Five Nations could never be conciliated, and that it was well to extirpate them at once. Soon the Governor put his fell purpose into effect. With a force of two thousand men, in a fleet of canoes, he entered the Seneca country by the Genesee River, and for ten days ravaged the Iroquois homes and put many of them cruelly to death. Returning by the Niagara River he erected and garrisoned a fort at its mouth and then withdrew to Québec. A terrible revenge was taken on the French colonists for these infamous acts, as the following article by M. Garneau shows. The situation of the colonists of New France during the critical era of M. Denonville's administration was certainly anything but enviable. They literally "dwelt in the midst of alarms," yet their steady courage in facing perils, and their endurance of privations when unavoidable, were worthy of admiration. A lively idea of what they had to resist or to suffer may be found by reading the more particular parts of the Governor's despatches to Paris. For instance, in one of these he wrote in reference to the raids of the Iroquois: "The savages are just so many animals of prey, scattered through a vast forest, whence they are ever ready to issue, to raven and kill in the adjoining countries. After their ravages, to go in pursuit of them is a constant but almost bootless task. They have no settled place whither they can be traced with any certainty; they must be watched everywhere, and long waited for, with fire-arms ready primed. Many of their lurking-places could be reached only by blood-hounds or by other savages as our trackers, but those in our service are few, and the native allies we have are seldom trustworthy; they fear the enemy more than they love us, and they dread, on their own selfish account, to drive the Iroquois to extremity. It has been resolved, in the present strait, to erect a fort in every seigniory, as a place of shelter for helpless people and live-stock, at times when the open country is overrun with ravagers. As matters now stand, the arable grounds lie wide apart, and are so begirt with bush that every thicket around serves as a point for attack by a savage foe; insomuch that an army, broken up into scattered posts, would be needful to protect the cultivators of our cleared lands."[1] [Footnote 1: Letter to M. Seignelai, August 10, 1688.] Nevertheless, at one time hopes were entertained that more peaceful times were coming. In effect, negotiations with the Five Nations were recommenced; and the winter of 1687-1688 was passed in goings to and fro between the colonial authorities and the leaders of the Iroquois, with whom several conferences were holden. A correspondence, too, was maintained by the Governor with Colonel Dongan at New York; the latter intimating in one of his letters that he had formed a league of all the Iroquois tribes, and put arms in their hands, to enable them to defend British colonial territory against all comers. The Iroquois confederation itself sent a deputation to Canada, which was escorted as far as Lake St. François by twelve hundred warriors--a significant demonstration enough. The envoys, after having put forward their pretensions with much stateliness and yet more address, said that, nevertheless, their people did not mean to press for all the advantages they had the right and the power to demand. They intimated that they were perfectly aware of the comparative weakness of the colony; that the Iroquois could at any time burn the houses of the inhabitants, pillage their stores, waste their crops, and afterward easily raze the forts. The Governor-general, in reply to these--not quite unfounded--boastings and arrogant assumptions, said that Colonel Dongan claimed the Iroquois as English subjects, and admonished the deputies that, if such were the case, then they must act according to his orders, which would necessarily be pacific, France and England not now being at war; whereupon the deputies responded, as others had done before, that the confederation formed an independent power; that it had always resisted French as well as English supremacy over its subjects; and that the coalesced Iroquois would be neutral, or friends or else enemies to one or both, at discretion; "for we have never been conquered by either of you," they said; adding that, as they held their country immediately from God, they acknowledge no other master. It did not appear, however, that there was a perfect accordance among the envoys on all points, for the deputies from Onnontaguez, the Onneyouths, and Goyogouins agreed to a truce on conditions proposed by M. Denonville; namely, that all the native allies of the French should be comprehended in the treaty. They undertook that deputies [others than some of those present?] should be sent from the Agniers and Tsonnouthouan cantons, who were then to take part in concluding a treaty; that all hostilities should cease on every side, and that the French should be allowed to revictual, undisturbed, the fort of Cataracoui. The truce having been agreed to on those bases, five of the Iroquois remained (one for each canton), as hostages for its terms being observed faithfully. Notwithstanding this precaution, several roving bands of Iroquois, not advertised, possibly, of what was pending, continued to kill our people, burn their dwellings, and slaughter live-stock in different parts of the colony; for example, at St. François, at Sorel, at Contrecoeur, and at St. Ours. These outrages, however, it must be owned, did not long continue, and roving corps of savages, either singly or by concert, drew off from the invaded country and allowed its harassed people a short breathing-time at least. The native allies of the French, on the other hand, respected the truce little more than the Iroquois. The Abenaquis invaded the Agniers canton, and even penetrated to the English settlements, scalping several persons. The Iroquois of the Sault and of La Montagne did the like; but the Hurons of Michilimackinac, supposed to be those most averse to the war, did all they could, and most successfully, too, to prevent a peace being signed. While the negotiations were in progress, the "Machiavel of the wilderness," as Raynal designates a Huron chief, bearing the native name of Kondiarak, but better known as Le Rat in the colonial annals, arrived at Frontenac (Kingston), with a chosen band of his tribe, and became a means of complicating yet more the difficulties of the crisis. He was the most enterprising, brave, and best-informed chief in all North America; and, as such, was one courted by the Governor in hopes of his becoming a valuable auxiliary to the French, although at first one of their most formidable enemies. He now came prepared to battle in their favor, and eager to signalize himself in the service of his new masters. The time, however, as we may well suppose, was not opportune, and he was informed that a treaty with the Iroquois being far advanced, and their deputies on the way to Montreal to conclude it, he would give umbrage to the Governor-general of Canada should he persevere in the hostilities he had been already carrying on. The Rat was taken aback on hearing this to him unwelcome news, but took care to hide his surprise and uttered no complaint. Yet was he mortally offended that the French should have gone so far in the matter without the concert of their native allies, and he at once resolved to punish them, in his own case, for such a marked slight. He set out secretly with his braves, laid an ambuscade near Famine Cove for the approaching deputation of Iroquois, murdered several and made the others his prisoners. Having done so, he secretly gloried in the act, afterward saying that he had "killed the peace." Yet in dealing with the captives he put another and a deceptive face on the matter; for, on courteously questioning them as to the object of their journey, being told that they were peaceful envoys, he affected great wonder, seeing that it was Denonville himself who had sent him on purpose to waylay them! To give seeming corroboration to his astounding assertions, he set the survivors at liberty, retaining one only to replace one of his men who was killed by the Iroquois in resisting the Hurons' attack. Leaving the deputies to follow what course they thought fit, he hastened with his men to Michilimackinac, where he presented his prisoner to M. Durantaye, who, not as yet officially informed, perhaps, that a truce existed with the Iroquois, consigned him to death, though he gave Durantaye assurance of who he really was; but when the victim appealed to the Rat for confirmation of his being an accredited envoy, that unscrupulous personage told him he must be out of his mind to imagine such a thing! This human sacrifice offered up, the Rat called upon an aged Iroquois, then and long previously a Huron captive, to return to his compatriots and inform them from him that while the French were making a show of peace-seeking, they were, underhand, killing and making prisoners of their native antagonists. This artifice, a manifestation of the diabolic nature of its author, had too much of the success intended by it, for, although the Governor managed to disculpate himself in the eyes of the more candid-minded Iroquois leaders, yet there were great numbers of the people who could not be disabused, as is usual in such cases, even among civilized races. Nevertheless the enlightened few, who really were tired of the war, agreed to send a second deputation to Canada; but when it was about to set out, a special messenger arrived, sent by Andros, successor of Dongan, enjoining the chiefs of the Iroquois confederation not to treat with the French without the participation of his master, and announcing at the same time that the King of Great Britain had taken the Iroquois nations under his protection. Concurrently with this step, Andros wrote to Denonville that the Iroquois territory was a dependency holden of the British, and that he would not permit its people to treat upon those conditions already proposed by Dongan. This transaction took place in 1688; but before that year concluded, Andros' "royal master" was himself superseded, and living an exile in France.[1] Whether instructions sent from England previously warranted the polity pursued by Andros or not, his injunctions had the effect of instantly stopping the negotiations with the Iroquois, and prompting them to recommence their vengeful hostilities. War between France and Britain being proclaimed next year, the American colonists of the latter adopted the Iroquois as their especial allies, in the ensuing contests with the people of New France. [Footnote 1: In 1688 Andros was appointed Governor of New York and New England. The appointment of this tyrant, and the annexation of the colony to the neighboring ones, were measures particularly odious to the people.--ED.] Andros, meanwhile, who adopted the policy of his predecessor so far as regarded the aborigines if in no other respect, not only fomented the deadly enmity of the Iroquois for the Canadians, but tried to detach the Abenaquis from their alliance with the French, but without effect in their case; for this people honored the countrymen of the missionaries who had made the Gospel known to them, and their nation became a living barrier to New France on that side, which no force sent from New England could surmount; insomuch that the Abenaquis, some time afterward, having crossed the borders of the English possessions, and harassed the remoter colonists, the latter were fain to apply to the Iroquois to enable them to hold their own. The declaration of Andros, and the armings of the Iroquois, now let loose on many parts of Canada, gave rise to a project as politic, perhaps, as it was daring, and such as communities when in extremity have adopted with good effect; namely, to divert invasion by directly attacking the enemies' neighboring territories. The Chevalier de Callières, with whom the idea originated, after having suggested to Denonville a plan for making a conquest of the province of New York, set out for France, to bring it under the consideration of the home government, believing that it was the only means left to save Canada to the mother-country. It was high time, indeed, that the destinies of Canada were confided to other directors than the late and present ones, left as the colony had been, since the departure of M. de Frontenac, in the hands of superannuated or incapable chiefs. Any longer persistency in the policy of its two most recent governors might have irreparably compromised the future existence of the colony. But worse evils were in store for the latter days of the Denonville administration; a period which, take it altogether, was one of the most calamitous which our forefathers passed through. At the time we have now reached in this history an unexpected as well as unwonted calm pervaded the country, yet the Governor had been positively informed that a desolating inroad by the collective Iroquois had been arranged, and that its advent was imminent; but as no precursive signs of it appeared anywhere to the general eyes, it was hoped that the storm, said to be ready to burst, might yet be evaded. None being able to account for the seeming inaction of the Iroquois, the Governor applied to the Jesuits for their opinion on the subject. The latter expressed their belief that those who had brought intelligence of the evil intention of the confederacy had been misinformed as to facts, or else exaggerated sinister probabilities. The prevailing calm was therefore dangerous as well as deceitful, for it tended to slacken preparations which ought to have been made to lessen the apprehensions of coming events which threw no shadow before. The winter and the spring of the year 1688-1689 had been passed in an unusually tranquil manner, and the summer was pretty well advanced when the storm, long pent up, suddenly fell on the beautiful island of Montreal, the garden of Canada. During the night of August 5th, amid a storm of hail and rain, fourteen hundred Iroquois traversed Lake St. Louis, and disembarked silently on the upper strand of that island. Before daybreak next morning the invaders had taken their station at Lachine in platoons around every considerable house within a radius of several leagues. The inmates were buried in sleep--soon to be the dreamless sleep that knows no waking, for too many of them. The Iroquois wait only for the signal from their leaders to fall on. It is given. In short space the doors and the windows of the dwellings are driven in; the sleepers dragged from their beds; men, women, children all struggling in the hands of their butchers. Such houses as the savages cannot force their way into, they fire; and as the flames reach the persons of those within, intolerable pain drives them forth to meet death beyond the threshold, from beings who know no pity. The more fiendish murderers even forced parents to throw their children into the flames. Two hundred persons were burned alive; others died under prolonged tortures. Many were reserved to perish similarly, at a future time. The fair island upon which the sun shone brightly erewhile, was lighted up by fires of woe; houses, plantations, and crops were reduced to ashes, while the ground reeked with blood up to a line a short league apart from Montreal city. The ravagers crossed to the opposite shore, the desolation behind them being complete, and forthwith the parish of Le Chenaie was wasted by fire and many of its people massacred. The colonists for many leagues around the devoted region seem to have been actually paralyzed by the brain-blow thus dealt their compatriots by the relentless savages, as no one seems to have moved a step to arrest their course; for they were left in undisturbed possession of the country during several weeks. On hearing of the invasion, Denonville lost his self-possession altogether. When numbers of the colonists, recovering from their stupor, came up armed desiring to be led against the murderers of their countrymen, he sent them back or forbade them to stir! Several opportunities presented themselves for disposing of parties of the barbarians, when reckless from drink after their orgies, or when roving about in scattered parties feeble in number; but the Governor-general's positive orders to refrain from attacking them withheld the uplifted hand from striking. In face of a prohibition so authoritative, the soldiers and the inhabitants alike could only look on and wait till the savages should find it convenient to retire. Some small skirmishing, indeed, there was at a few distant points between the people and their invaders. Thus a party of men, partly French and partly natives, led by Larobeyre, an ex-lieutenant, on the way to reënforce Fort Roland, where Chevalier de Vaudreuil commanded, were set upon and all killed or dispersed. More than half of the prisoners taken were burned by their conquerors. Larobeyre, being wounded and not able to fire, was led captive by the Iroquois to their country, and roasted at a slow fire in presence of the assembled tribe of his captors. Meantime the resistance to the barbarians being little or none in the regions they overran, they slew most of the inhabitants they met in their passage; while their course was marked, wherever they went, by lines of flame. Their bands moved rapidly from one devoted tract to another; yet wherever they had to face concerted resistance--which in some cases, at least, put a fitting obstacle in the way of their intended ravagings--they turned aside and sought an easier prey elsewhere. In brief, during ten entire weeks or more, did they wreak their wrath, almost unchecked, upon the fairest region of Canada, and did not retire thence till about mid-October. The Governor-General having sent a party of observation to assure himself of the enemy having decamped, this detachment observed a canoe on the Lake of the Two Mountains, bearing twenty-two of the retiring Iroquois. The Canadians, who were of about the same number, embarked in two boats and, nearing the savages, coolly received their fire; but in returning the discharge, each singled out his man, when eighteen of the Iroquois were at once laid low. However difficult it may have been to put the people of a partially cleared country, surrounded with forests, on their guard against such an irruption as the foregoing, it is difficult to account for their total unpreparedness without imputing serious blame to Denonville and his subalterns in office. That he exercised no proper influence, in the first place, was evident, and the small use he made of the means he had at his disposal when the crisis arrived was really something to marvel at. He was plainly unequal to the occasion, and his incapacity in every particular made it quite impossible for his presence, as chief of the colony, to be endured any longer. There is little doubt that had he not been soon recalled by royal order, the colonists themselves would have set him aside. The latter season of his inglorious administration took the lugubrious name "the Year of the Massacre."[1] [Footnote 1: The Five Nations, being at war with the French, made a sudden descent on Montreal, burned and sacked the town, killed one hundred of the inhabitants, carrying away a number of prisoners whom they burned alive, and then returned to their own country with the loss of only a few of their number. Had the English followed up the success of their allies, all Canada might have been easily conquered.--ED.] The man appointed through a happy inspiration to supersede M. de Denonville had now reached the Lower Canadian waters. He was no other than the Count de Frontenac. It appears that the King, willing to cover, with a handsome pretext, the recall of Denonville, in a letter dated May 31st, advertised him that, war having been rekindled in Europe, his military talents would be of the greatest use in home service. By this time De Frontenac was called to give counsel regarding the projects of the Chevalier de Callières, and assist in preparing the way for their realization if considered feasible. Meanwhile he undertook to resume his duties as governor-general of New France; but a series of events delayed his arrival in Canada till the autumn of 1689. He landed at Québec on October 18th, at 8 P.M., accompanied by De Callières, amid the heartiest demonstrations of popular welcome. The public functionaries and armed citizens in waiting, with torch-bearers, escorted him through the city, which was spontaneously illuminated, to his quarters. His return was hailed by all, but by none more than the Jesuits, who had, in fact for years before, labored to obtain his recall. The nobles, the merchants, the business class, gave him so hearty a reception as to convince him that real talent such as his must in the end rise superior to all the conjoined efforts of faction, public prejudices, and the evil passions of inferior minds. War was declared against Britain in the month of June. M. de Frontenac, on resuming the reins of government, had to contend both against the Anglo-American colonies and the Five Nations. His energy and skill, however, overcame all obstacles; the war was most glorious for the Canadians, so few in number compared with their adversaries; and far from succumbing to their enemies, they carried the war into the adversaries' camp and struck at the heart of their most remote possessions. %SIEGE OF LONDONDERRY AND BATTLE OF THE BOYNE% A.D. 1689-1690 TOBIAS G. SMOLLETT Londonderry, capital of the county of the same name in Ireland, is a city of historic celebrity by reason of the successful defence there made (April-August, 1689) by the Irish Protestants against the besieging forces of James II. The battle of the Boyne (July 1, 1690) is of less importance in a military sense than for the reason that it virtually ended the war which James II carried into Ireland in his unsuccessful attempt to regain his throne from William and Mary. On account of this result, and still more by reason of the hereditary antagonisms which have so long survived it, this battle still retains a peculiar fame in history. In Ireland, where the Roman Catholics were numerous, there was strong opposition to the government of William and Mary. The fugitive James II had supporters who controlled the Irish army. Some resistance was made by the English and Scotch colonists in Ireland, but little head was made against the Catholic party, which supported James, until William entered the country with his forces. In the following narrative Smollett speaks of an "intended massacre" of the Protestants at Londonderry. The people of that city were of Anglo-Saxon blood. Although belonging to various Protestant churches, they were united in their hostility to the Irish and to the Catholic faith. They were alarmed at the close of 1688 by rumors of a plan for their own extirpation by the papists. News of the approach of the Earl of Antrim with a regiment, under orders from the Lord Deputy, filled the city with consternation. What followed there is graphically told in the words of the historian. A better account of a military action than that which Smollett gives of the Battle of the Boyne it would be hard to find. On the first alarm of an intended massacre, the Protestants of Londonderry had shut their gates against the regiment commanded by the Earl of Antrim, and resolved to defend themselves against the Lord Deputy; they transmitted this resolution to the Government of England, together with an account of the danger they incurred by such a vigorous measure, and implored immediate assistance; they were accordingly supplied with some arms and ammunition, but did not receive any considerable reënforcement till the middle of April, when two regiments arrived at Loughfoyl under the command of Cunningham and Richards. By this time King James had taken Coleraine, invested Kilmore, and was almost in sight of Londonderry. George Walker, rector of Donaghmore, who had raised a regiment for the defence of the Protestants, conveyed this intelligence to Lundy, the governor; this officer directed him to join Colonel Crafton, and take post at the Longcausey, which he maintained a whole night against the advanced guard of the enemy, until, being overpowered by numbers, he retreated to Londonderry and exhorted the governor to take the field, as the army of King James was not yet completely formed. Lundy assembling a council of war, at which Cunningham and Richards assisted, they agreed that as the place was not tenable, it would be imprudent to land the two regiments; and that the principal officers should withdraw themselves from Londonderry, the inhabitants of which would obtain the more favorable capitulation in consequence of their retreat; an officer was immediately despatched to King James with proposals of a negotiation; and Lieutenant-general Hamilton agreed that the army should halt at the distance of four miles from the town. Notwithstanding this preliminary, James advanced at the head of his troops, but met with such a warm reception from the besieged that he was fain to retire to St. John's Town in some disorder. The inhabitants and soldiers in garrison at Londonderry were so incensed at the members of the council of war who had resolved to abandon the place that they threatened immediate vengeance. Cunningham and Richards retired to their ships, and Lundy locked himself in his chamber. In vain did Walker and Major Baker exhort him to maintain his government; such was his cowardice or treachery that he absolutely refused to be concerned in the defence of the place, and he was suffered to escape in disguise, with a load of matches on his back; but he was afterward apprehended in Scotland, from whence he was sent to London to answer for his perfidy or misconduct. After his retreat the townsmen chose Mr. Walker and Major Baker for their governors with joint authority; but this office they would not undertake until it had been offered to Colonel Cunningham, as the officer next in command to Lundy; he rejected the proposal, and with Richards returned to England, where they were immediately cashiered. The two new governors, thus abandoned to their fate, began to prepare for a vigorous defence: indeed their courage seems to have transcended the bounds of discretion, for the place was very ill-fortified; their cannon, which did not exceed twenty pieces, were wretchedly mounted; they had not one engineer to direct their operations; they had a very small number of horse; the garrison consisted of people unacquainted with military discipline; they were destitute of provisions; they were besieged by a king, in person, at the head of a formidable army, directed by good officers, and supplied with all the necessary implements for a siege or battle. The town was invested on April 20th; the batteries were soon opened, and several attacks were made with great impetuosity, but the besiegers were always repulsed with considerable loss; the townsmen gained divers advantages in repeated sallies, and would have held their enemies in the utmost contempt had they not been afflicted with a contagious distemper, as well as reduced to extremity by want of provisions; they were even tantalized in their distress, for they had the mortification to see some ships, which had arrived with supplies from England, prevented from sailing up the river by the batteries the enemy had raised on both sides, and a boom with which they had blocked up the channel. At length a reënforcement arrived in the Lough, under the command of General Kirke, who had deserted his master, and been employed in the service of King William. He found means to convey intelligence to Walker that he had troops and provisions on board for their relief, but found it impracticable to sail up the river. He promised, however, that he would land a body of forces at the Inch, and endeavor to make a diversion in their favor, when joined by the troops at Inniskillen, which amounted to five thousand men, including two thousand cavalry. He said he expected six thousand men from England, where they were embarked before he set sail; he exhorted them to persevere in their courage and loyalty, and assured them that he would come to their relief at all hazards. The assurances enabled them to bear their miseries a little longer, though their numbers daily diminished. Major Baker dying, his place was filled by Colonel Michelburn, who now acted as colleague to Mr. Walker. King James having returned to Dublin to be present at the Parliament, the command of his army devolved to the French general, Rosene,[1] who was exasperated by such an obstinate opposition by a handful of half-starved militia. He threatened to raze the town to its foundations and destroy the inhabitants without distinction of age or sex unless they would immediately submit themselves to their lawful sovereign. The governors treated his menaces with contempt, and published an order that no person, on pain of death, should talk of surrendering. They had now consumed the last remains of their provisions, and supported life by eating the flesh of horses, dogs, cats, rats, mice, and tallow, starch, and salted hides; and even this loathsome food began to fail. Rosene, finding them deaf to all his proposals, threatened to wreak his vengeance on all the Protestants of that county and drive them under the walls of Londonderry, where they should be suffered to perish by famine. The Bishop of Meath being informed of this design, complained to King James of the barbarous intention, entreating his majesty to prevent its being put into execution; that Prince assured him that he had already ordered Rosene to desist from such proceedings; nevertheless, the Frenchman executed his threats with the utmost rigor. [Footnote 1: James was assisted in his attempt by a small body of French troops, England having entered the Grand Alliance against Louis XIV.--ED.] Parties of dragoons were detached on this cruel service. After having stripped all the Protestants for thirty miles round, they drove these unhappy people before them like cattle, without even sparing the enfeebled old men, nurses with infants at their breasts, and tender children. About four thousand of these miserable objects were driven under the walls of Londonderry. This expedient, far from answering the purpose of Rosene, produced a quite contrary effect. The besieged were so exasperated at this act of inhumanity that they resolved to perish rather than submit to such a barbarian. They erected a gibbet in sight of the enemy, and sent a message to the French general importing that they would hang all the prisoners they had taken during the siege unless the Protestants whom they had driven under the walls should be immediately dismissed. This threat produced a negotiation, in consequence of which the Protestants were released after they had been detained three days without tasting food. Some hundreds died of famine or fatigue; and those who lived to return to their own habitations found them plundered and sacked by the papists, so that the greater number perished for want, or were murdered by straggling parties of the enemy. Yet these very people had for the most part obtained protection from King James, to which no respect was paid by his general. The garrison of Londonderry was now reduced from seven thousand to five thousand seven hundred men, and these were driven to such extremity of distress that they began to talk of killing the popish inhabitants and feeding on their bodies. Kirke, who had hitherto lain inactive, ordered two ships laden with provisions to sail up the river, under convoy of the Dartmouth (frigate); one of these, called the Mountjoy, broke the enemy's boom, and all the three--after having sustained a very hot fire from both sides of the river--arrived in safety at the town, to the inexpressible joy of the inhabitants. The army of James was so dispirited by the success of this enterprise that they abandoned the siege in the night, and retired with precipitation, after having lost about nine thousand men before the place. Kirke no sooner took possession of the town than Walker was prevailed upon to embark for England, with an address of thanks from the inhabitants to their majesties for the seasonable relief they had received. King James trusted so much to the disputes in the English Parliament that he did not believe his son-in-law would be able to quit that kingdom, and William had been six days in Ireland before he received intimation of his arrival. This was no sooner known than he left Dublin under the guard of the militia, commanded by Luttrel, and, with a reënforcement of six thousand infantry which he had lately received from France, joined the rest of his forces, which now almost equalled William's army in number, exclusive of about fifteen thousand men who remained in different garrisons. He occupied a very advantageous post on the bank of the Boyne, and, contrary to the advice of his general officers, resolved to stand battle. They proposed to strengthen their garrisons, and retire to the Shannon, to wait the effect of the operations at sea. Louis had promised to equip a powerful armament against the English fleet, and send over a great number of small frigates to destroy William's transports, as soon as their convoy should be returned to England; the execution of this scheme was not at all difficult, and must have proved fatal to the English army, for their stores and ammunition were still on board; the ships sailed along the coast as the troops advanced in their march; and there was not one secure harbor into which they could retire on any emergency. James, however, was bent on hazarding an engagement, and expressed uncommon confidence and alacrity. Besides the river, which was deep, his front was secured by a morass and a rising ground; so that the English army could not attack him without manifest disadvantage. King William marched up to the opposite bank of the river, and as he reconnoitred their situation was exposed to the fire of some field-pieces, which the enemy purposely planted against his person. They killed a man and two horses close by him, and the second bullet rebounding from the earth, grazed on his right shoulder, so as to carry off part of his clothes and skin and produce a considerable contusion. This accident, which he bore without the least emotion, created some confusion among his attendants, which, the enemy perceiving, concluded he was killed, and shouted aloud in token of their joy; the whole camp resounded with acclamation, and several squadrons of their horse were drawn down toward the river as if they intended to pass it immediately and attack the English army. The report was instantly communicated from place to place until it reached Dublin; from thence it was conveyed to Paris, where, contrary to the custom of the French court, the people were encouraged to celebrate the event with bonfires and illuminations. William rode along the line to show himself to the army after this narrow escape. At night he called a council of war, and declared his resolution to attack the enemy in the morning. Schomberg[1] at first opposed his design, but, finding the King determined, he advised that a strong detachment of horse and foot should that night pass the Boyne at Slane bridge and take post between the enemy and the pass at Duleck, that the action might be the more decisive; this counsel being rejected, the King determined that early in the morning Lieutenant-general Douglas with the right wing of the infantry, and young Schomberg with the horse, should pass at Slane bridge, while the main body of the foot should force their passage at Old bridge, and the left at certain fords between the enemy's camp and Drogheda. The Duke, perceiving that his advice was not relished by the Dutch generals, retired to his tent, where, the order of battle being brought to him, he received it with an air of discontent, saying it was the first that had ever been sent to him in that manner. The proper dispositions being made, William rode quite through the army by torchlight, and then retired to his tent after having given orders to his soldiers to distinguish themselves from the enemy by wearing green boughs in their hats during the action. [Footnote 1: The Duke of Schomberg, who commanded for William, had accompanied him to England in 1688. The Duke is further spoken of below. "Young Schomberg" was his son.--ED.] At six o'clock in the morning, General Douglas, with young Schomberg, the Earl of Portland, and Auverquerque, marched to Slane bridge, and passed the river with very little opposition. When they reached the farther bank they perceived the enemy drawn up in two lines, to a considerable number of horse and foot, with a morass in their front, so that Douglas was obliged to wait for reinforcements. This being arrived, the infantry was led on to the charge through the morass, while Count Schomberg rode round it with his cavalry, to attack the enemy in flank. The Irish, instead of waiting the assault, faced about, and retreated toward Duleck with some precipitation; yet not so fast but that Schomberg fell in among their rear, and did considerable execution. King James, however, soon reënforced his left wing from the centre; and the Count was in his turn obliged to send for assistance. At this juncture King William's main body, consisting of the Dutch guards, the French regiments,[1] and some battalions of English, passed the river, which was waist-high, under a general discharge of artillery. King James had imprudently removed his cannon from the other side; but he had posted a strong body of musketeers along the bank, behind hedges, houses, and some works raised for the occasion; these poured in a close fire on the English troops before they reached the shore; but it produced very little effect. Then the Irish gave way, and some battalions landed without further opposition; yet before they could form, they were charged with great impetuosity by a squadron of the enemy's horse, and a considerable body of their cavalry and foot, commanded by General Hamilton, advanced from behind some little hillocks to attack those that were landed as well as to prevent the rest from reaching the shore; his infantry turned their backs and fled immediately; but the horse charged with incredible fury, both on the bank and in the river, so as to put the unformed regiments in confusion. [Footnote 1: French Protestants or Huguenots.--ED.] Then the Duke of Schomberg passed the river in person, put himself at the head of the French Protestants, and pointing to the enemy, "Gentlemen," said he, "those are your persecutors." With these words he advanced to the attack, where he himself sustained a violent onset from a party of the Irish horse, which had broken through one of the regiments and were now on their return. They were mistaken for English, and allowed to gallop up to the Duke, who received two severe wounds in the head; but the French troops, now sensible of their mistake, rashly threw in their fire on the Irish while they were engaged with the Duke, and, instead of saving, shot him dead on the spot. The death of this general had wellnigh proved fatal to the English army, which was immediately involved in tumult and disorder; while the infantry of King James rallied and returned to their posts with a face of resolution. They were just ready to fall on the centre when King William, having passed with the left wing, composed of the Danish, Dutch, and Inniskillen horse, advanced to attack them on the right: they were struck with such a panic at his appearance that they made a sudden halt, and then facing about retreated to the village of Dunmore. There they made such a vigorous stand that the Dutch and Danish horse, though headed by the King in person, recoiled; even the Inniskillens gave way, and the whole wing would have been routed had not a detachment of dragoons, belonging to the regiment of Cunningham and Levison, dismounted and lined the hedges on each side of the ditch through which the fugitives were driven; there they did such execution on the pursuers as soon checked their ardor. The horse, which were broken, had now time to rally, and, returning to the charge, drove the enemy before them in their turn. In this action General Hamilton, who had been the life and soul of the Irish during the whole engagement, was wounded and taken, an incident which discouraged them to such a degree that they made no further efforts to retrieve the advantage they had lost. He was immediately brought to the King, who asked him if he thought the Irish would make any further resistance, and he replied, "On my honor I believe they will, for they have still a good body of horse entire." William, eying him with a look of disdain, repeated, "Your honor, your honor!" but took no other notice of his having acted contrary to his engagement, when he was permitted to go to Ireland on promise of persuading Tyrconnel to submit to the new government. The Irish now abandoned the field with precipitation; but the French and Swiss troops, that acted as their auxiliaries under De Lauzun, retreated in good order, after having maintained the battle for some time with intrepidity and perseverance. As King William did not think proper to pursue the enemy, the carnage was not great; the Irish lost a thousand five hundred men and the English about one-third of that number; though the victory was dearly purchased, considering the death of the gallant Duke of Schomberg, who fell, in the eighty-second year of his age, after having rivalled the best generals of that time in military reputation. He was the descendant of a noble family, in the Palatinate, and his mother was an Englishwoman, daughter of Lord Dudley. Being obliged to leave his country on account of the troubles by which it was agitated, he commenced a soldier of fortune, and served successively in the armies of Holland, England, France, Portugal, and Brandenburg; he attained to the dignity of mareschal in France, grandee in Portugal, generalissimo in Prussia, and duke in England. He professed the Protestant religion; was courteous and humble in his deportment; cool, penetrating, resolute, and sagacious, nor was his probity inferior to his courage. This battle also proved fatal to the barve Caillemote, who had followed the Duke's fortunes, and commanded one of the Protestant regiments. After having received a mortal wound, he was carried back through the river by four soldiers, and, though almost in the agonies of death, he, with a cheerful countenance, encouraged those who were crossing to do their duty, exclaiming, "_A la gloire, mes enfants, à la gloire!_" ("To glory, my lads, to glory!") The third remarkable person who lost his life on this occasion was Walker, the clergyman, who had so valiantly defended Londonderry against the whole army of King James; he had been very graciously received by King William, who gratified him with a reward of five thousand pounds and a promise of further favor; but, his military genius still predominating, he attended his royal patron in this battle, and, being shot, died in a few minutes. The persons of distinction who fell on the other side were the Lords Dongan and Carlingford; Sir Neile O'Neile and the Marquis of Hocquincourt. James, himself, stood aloof during the action on the hill of Dunmore, surrounded with some squadrons of horse, and seeing victory declare against him retired to Dublin without having made the least effort to reassemble his broken forces. Had he possessed either spirit or conduct his army might have been rallied and reënforced from his garrisons, so as to be in a condition to keep the field and even to act on the offensive; for his loss was inconsiderable, and the victor did not attempt to molest his troops in their retreat, an omission which has been charged to him as a flagrant instance of misconduct. Indeed, through the whole of this engagement William's personal courage was much more conspicuous than his military skill. %SALEM WITCHCRAFT TRIALS% A.D. 1692 RICHARD HILDRETH Among the people of Massachusetts during the century which saw the Pilgrims seek religious liberty there, a delusion broke out which not only spread horror through the community and caused suffering and disgrace even in the most respectable families, but has baffled all later attempts at explanation. The witchcraft madness, as manifested there and elsewhere in the world, has remained alike the puzzle of history and the riddle of psychology. Historically, witchcraft is classed with other occult phenomena or practices connected with supposed supernatural influences. The famous trials and executions for witchcraft which took place in and near Salem, Massachusetts, toward the end of the seventeenth century, owed their special prominence to their peculiar localization and environment. Otherwise they might have been regarded as nothing more than incidents of a once general course in criminal procedure. Thousands in Europe had already suffered similar condemnation, and the last recorded execution for witchcraft in Great Britain did not occur till 1722. Even so late as 1805 a woman was imprisoned for this "crime" in Scotland. Hildreth's account skilfully condenses the essential matters relating to this strange episode in Massachusetts history. * * * * * The practice of magic, sorcery, and spells, in the reality of which all ignorant communities have believed, had long been a criminal offence in England. A statute of the thirty-third year of Henry VIII made them capital felonies. Another statute of the first year of James I, more specific in its terms, subjected to the same penalty all persons "invoking any evil spirit, or consulting, covenanting with, entertaining, employing, feeding, or rewarding any evil spirit, or taking up dead bodies from their graves to be used in any witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or enchantment, or killing or otherwise hurting any person by such infernal arts." That second Solomon, before whom the illustrious Bacon bowed with so much reverence, was himself a firm believer in witchcraft. He professed, indeed, to be an adept in the art of detecting witches, an art which became the subject of several learned treatises, one of them from James' own royal pen. During the Commonwealth England had abounded with professional witch-detectors, who travelled from county to county, and occasioned the death of many unfortunate persons. The "Fundamentals" of Massachusetts contained a capital law against witchcraft, fortified by that express declaration of Scripture, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." Yet, among other evidences of departure from ancient landmarks, and of the propagation even to New England of a spirit of doubt, were growing suspicions as to the reality of that everyday supernaturalism which formed so prominent a feature of the Puritan theology. The zeal of Increase Mather against this rising incredulity had engaged him, while the old charter was still in existence, to publish a book of _Remarkable Providences_, in which were enumerated, among other things, all the supposed cases of witchcraft which had hitherto occurred in New England, with arguments to prove their reality. What at that time had given the matter additional interest was the case of a bewitched or haunted house at Newbury. An intelligent neighbor, who had suggested that a mischievous grandson of the occupant might perhaps be at the bottom of the mystery, was himself accused of witchcraft and narrowly escaped. A witch, however, the credulous townspeople were resolved to find, and they presently fixed upon the wife of the occupant as the culprit. Seventeen persons testified to mishaps experienced in the course of their lives, which they charitably chose to ascribe to the ill-will and diabolical practices of this unfortunate old woman. On this evidence she was found guilty by the jury; but the magistrates, more enlightened, declined to order her execution. The deputies thereupon raised a loud complaint at this delay of justice. But the firmness of Governor Bradstreet, supported as he was by the moderate party, and the abrogation of the charter which speedily followed, saved the woman's life. This same struggle of opinion existed also in the mother-country, where the rising sect of "freethinkers" began to deny and deride all diabolical agencies. Nor was this view confined to professed freethinkers. The latitudinarian party in the Church, a rapidly growing body, leaned perceptibly the same way. The "serious ministers," on the other hand, led by Richard Baxter, their acknowledged head, defended with zeal the reality of witchcraft and the personality and agency of the devil, to deny which they denounced as little short of atheism. They supported their opinions by the authority of Sir Matthew Hale, lord chief justice of England, as distinguished for piety as for knowledge of the law, under whose instructions two alleged witches, at whose trials he had presided shortly after the Restoration, had been found guilty and executed. The accounts of those trials, published in England on occasion of this controversy and republished at Boston, had tended to confirm the popular belief. The doubts by which Mather had been alarmed were yet confined to a few thinking men. Read with a forward and zealous faith, these stories did not fail to make a deep impression on the popular imagination. While Andros was still governor, shortly after Increase Mather's departure for England, four young children, members of a pious family in Boston, the eldest a girl of thirteen, the youngest a boy not five, had begun to behave in a singular manner, barking like dogs, purring like cats, seeming to become deaf, blind, or dumb, having their limbs strangely distorted, complaining that they were pinched, pricked, pulled, or cut--acting out, in fact, the effects of witchcraft, according to the current notions of it and the descriptions in the books above referred to. The terrified father called in Dr. Oakes, a zealous leader of the ultra-theocratic party--presently sent to England as joint agent with Mather--who gave his opinion that the children were bewitched. The oldest girl had lately received a bitter scolding from an old Irish indented servant, whose daughter she had accused of theft. This same old woman, from indications no doubt given by the children, was soon fixed upon as being the witch. The four ministers of Boston and another from Charlestown having kept a day of fasting and prayer at the troubled house, the youngest child was relieved. But the others, more persevering and more artful, continuing as before, the old woman was presently arrested and charged with bewitching them. She had for a long time been reputed a witch, and she even seems to have flattered herself that she was one. Indeed, her answers were so "senseless" that the magistrates referred it to the doctors to say if she were not "crazed in her intellects." On their report of her sanity, the old woman was tried, found guilty, and executed. Though Increase Mather was absent on this interesting occasion, he had a zealous representative in his son, Cotton Mather, by the mother's side grandson of the "Great Cotton," a young minister of twenty-five, a prodigy of learning, eloquence, and piety, recently settled as colleague with his father over Boston North Church. Cotton Mather had an extraordinary memory, stuffed with all sorts of learning. His application was equal to that of a German professor. His lively imagination, trained in the school of Puritan theology, and nourished on the traditionary legends of New England, of which he was a voracious and indiscriminate collector, was still further stimulated by fasts, vigils, prayers, and meditations almost equal to those of any Catholic saint. Of a temperament ambitious and active, he was inflamed with a great desire of "doing good." Fully conscious of all his gifts, and not a little vain of them, like the Jesuit missionaries in Canada, his contemporaries, he believed himself to be often, during his devotional exercises, in direct and personal communication with the Deity. In every piece of good-fortune he saw a special answer to his prayers; in every mortification or calamity, the special personal malice of the devil and his agents. Yet both himself and his father were occasionally troubled with "temptations to atheism," doubts which they did not hesitate to ascribe to diabolical influence. The secret consciousness of these doubts of their own was perhaps one source of their great impatience at the doubts of others. Cotton Mather had taken a very active part in the late case of witchcraft; and, that he might study the operations of diabolical agency at his leisure, and thus be furnished with evidence and arguments to establish its reality, he took the eldest of the bewitched children home to his own house. His eagerness to believe invited imposture. His excessive vanity and strong prejudices made him easy game. Adroit and artful beyond her years, the girl fooled him to the top of his bent. His ready pen was soon furnished with materials for "a story all made up of wonders," which, with some other matters of the same sort, and a sermon preached on the occasion, he presently published, under the title of _Memorable Providences relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions_, with a preface in which he warned all "Sadducees" that he should regard their doubts for the future as a personal insult. Cotton Mather was not the only dupe. "The old heresy of the sensual Sadducees, denying the being of angels either good or evil," says the recommendatory preface to this book, signed by the other four ministers of Boston, "died not with them, nor will it, whilst men, abandoning both faith and reason, count it their wisdom to credit nothing but what they see or feel. How much this fond opinion hath gotten ground in this debauched age is awfully observable; and what a dangerous stroke it gives to settle men in atheism is not hard to discern. God is therefore pleased, besides the witness borne to this truth in Sacred Writ, to suffer devils sometimes to do such things in the world as shall stop the mouths of gainsayers, and extort a confession from them." They add their testimony to the truth of Mather's statements, which they commend as furnishing "clear information" that there is "both a God and a devil, and witchcraft." The book was presently republished in London, with a preface by Baxter, who pronounced the girl's case so "convincing" that "he must be a very obdurate Sadducee who would not believe it." Mather's sermon, prefixed to this narrative, is a curious specimen of fanatical declamation. "Witchcraft," he exclaims, "is a renouncing of God, and the advancement of a filthy devil into the throne of the Most High. Witchcraft is a renouncing of Christ, and preferring the communion of a loathsome, lying devil before all the salvation of the Lord Redeemer. Witchcraft is a siding with hell against heaven and earth, and therefore a witch is not to be endured in either of them. 'Tis a capital crime, and is to be prosecuted as a species of devilism that would not only deprive God and Christ of all his honor, but also plunder man of all his comfort. Nothing too vile can be said of, nothing too hard can be done to, such a horrible iniquity as witchcraft is!" Such declamations from such a source, giving voice and authority to the popular superstition, prepared the way for the tragedy that followed. The suggestion, however, that Cotton Mather, for purposes of his own, deliberately got up this witchcraft delusion, and forced it upon a doubtful and hesitating people, is utterly absurd. And so is another suggestion, a striking exhibition of partisan extravagance, that because the case of the four Boston children happened during the government of Andros, therefore the responsibility of that affair rests on him, and not on the people of Massachusetts. The Irish woman was tried under a Massachusetts law, and convicted by a Massachusetts jury; and, had Andros interfered to save her life, to the other charges against him would doubtless have been added that of friendship for witches. Cotton Mather seems to have acted, in a degree, the part of a demagogue. Yet he is not to be classed with those tricky and dishonest men, so common in our times, who play upon popular prejudices which they do not share, in the expectation of being elevated to honors and office. Mather's position, convictions, and temperament alike called him to serve on this occasion as the organ, exponent, and stimulator of the popular faith. The bewitched girl, as she ceased to be an object of popular attention, seems to have returned to her former behavior. But the seed had been sown on fruitful ground. After an interval of nearly four years, three young girls in the family of Parris, minister of Salem village, now Danvers, began to exhibit similar pranks. As in the Boston case, a physician pronounced them bewitched, and Tituba, an old Indian woman, the servant of Parris, who undertook, by some vulgar rites, to discover the witch, was rewarded by the girls with the accusation of being herself the cause of their sufferings. The neighboring ministers assembled at the house of Parris for fasting and prayer. The village fasted; and presently a general fast was ordered throughout the colony. The "bewitched children," thus rendered objects of universal sympathy and attention, did not long want imitators. Several other girls and two or three women of the neighborhood began to be afflicted in the same way, as did also John, the Indian husband of Tituba, warned, it would seem, by the fate of his wife. Parris took a very active part in discovering the witches; so did Noyes, minister of Salem, described as "a learned, a charitable, and a good man." A town committee was soon formed for the detection of the witches. Two of the magistrates, resident at Salem, entered with great zeal into the matter. The accusations, confined at first to Tituba and two other friendless women, one crazed, the other bedrid, presently included two female members of Parris' church, in which, as in so many other churches, there had been some sharp dissensions. The next Sunday after this accusation Parris preached from the verse, "Have I not chosen you twelve, and one is a devil?" At the announcement of this text the sister of one of the accused women rose and left the meeting-house. She, too, was accused immediately after, and the same fate soon overtook all who showed the least disposition to resist the prevailing delusion. The matter had now assumed so much importance that the Deputy-governor--for the provisional government was still in operation--proceeded to Salem village, with five other magistrates, and held a court in the meeting-house. A great crowd was present. Parris acted at once as clerk and accuser, producing the witnesses, and taking down the testimony. The accused were held with their arms extended and hands open, lest by the least motion of their fingers they might inflict torments on their victims, who sometimes affected to be struck dumb, and at others to be knocked down by the mere glance of an eye. They were haunted, they said, by the spectres of the accused, who tendered them a book, and solicited them to subscribe a league with the devil; and when they refused, would bite, pinch, scratch, choke, burn, twist, prick, pull, and otherwise torment them. At the mere sight of the accused brought into court, "the afflicted" would seem to be seized with a fit of these torments, from which, however, they experienced instant relief when the accused were compelled to touch them--infallible proof to the minds of the gaping assembly that these apparent sufferings were real and the accusations true. The theory was that the touch conveyed back into the witch the malignant humors shot forth from her eyes; and learned references were even made to Descartes, of whose new philosophy some rumors had reached New England, in support of this theory. In the examinations at Salem village meeting-house some very extraordinary scenes occurred. "Look there!" cried one of the afflicted; "there is Goody Procter on the beam!" This Goody Procter's husband, notwithstanding the accusation against her, still took her side, and had attended her to the court; in consequence of which act of fidelity some of "the afflicted" began now to cry out that he too was a wizard. At the exclamation above cited, "many, if not all, the bewitched had grievous fits." Question by the Court: "Ann Putnam, who hurts you?" Answer: "Goodman Procter, and his wife, too." Then some of the afflicted cry out, "There is Procter going to take up Mrs. Pope's feet!" and "immediately her feet are taken up." Question by the Court: "What do you say, Goodman Procter, to these things?" Answer: "I know not: I am innocent." Abigail Williams, another of the afflicted, cries out, "There is Goodman Procter going to Mrs. Pope!" and "immediately said Pope falls into a fit." A magistrate to Procter: "You see the devil will deceive you; the children," so all the afflicted were called, "could see what you were going to do before the woman was hurt. I would advise you to repentance, for you see the devil is bringing you out." Abigail Williams cries out again, "There is Goodman Procter going to hurt Goody Bibber!" and "immediately Goody Bibber falls into a fit." Abigail Williams and Ann Putnam both "made offer to strike at Elizabeth Procter; but when Abigail's hand came near, it opened, whereas it was made up into a fist before, and came down exceedingly lightly as it drew near to said Procter, and at length, with open and extended fingers, touched Procter's hood very lightly; and immediately Abigail cries out, 'My fingers, my fingers, my fingers burn!' and Ann Putnam takes on most grievously of her head, and sinks down." Such was the evidence upon which people were believed to be witches, and committed to prison to be tried for their lives! Yet, let us not hurry too much to triumph over the past. In these days of animal magnetism, have we not ourselves seen imposture as gross, and even in respectable quarters a headlong credulity just as precipitate? We must consider also that the judgments of our ancestors were disturbed, not only by wonder, but by fear. Encouraged by the ready belief of the magistrates and the public, "the afflicted" went on enlarging the circle of their accusations, which presently seemed to derive fresh corroboration from the confessions of some of the accused. Tituba had been flogged into a confession; others yielded to a pressure more stringent than blows. Weak women, astonished at the charges and contortions of their accusers, assured that they were witches beyond all doubt, and urged to confess as the only possible chance for their lives, were easily prevailed upon to repeat any tales put into their mouths: their journeys through the air on broomsticks to attend witch sacraments--a sort of travesty on the Christian ordinance--at which the devil appeared in the shape of a "small black man"; their signing the devil's book, renouncing their former baptism, and being baptized anew by the devil, who "dipped" them in "Wenham Pond," after the Anabaptist fashion. Called upon to tell who were present at these sacraments, the confessing witches wound up with new accusations; and by the time Phipps arrived in the colony, near a hundred persons were already in prison. The mischief was not limited to Salem. An idea had been taken up that the bewitched could explain the causes of sickness; and one of them, carried to Andover for that purpose, had accused many persons of witchcraft, and thrown the whole village into the greatest commotion. Some persons also had been accused in Boston and other towns. It was one of Governor Phipps' first official acts to order all the prisoners into irons. This restraint upon their motions might impede them, it was hoped, in tormenting the afflicted. Without waiting for the meeting of the General Court, to whom that authority properly belonged, Phipps hastened, by advice of his counsel, to organize a special court for the trial of the witches. Stoughton, the Lieutenant-governor, was appointed president; but his cold and hard temper, his theological education, and unyielding bigotry were ill qualifications for such an office. His associates, six in number, were chiefly Boston men, possessing a high reputation for wisdom and piety, among them Richards, the late agent, Wait Winthrop, brother of Fitz-John Winthrop, and grandson of the former Governor, and Samuel Sewell, the two latter subsequently, in turn, chief-justices of the province. The new court, thus organized, proceeded to Salem, and commenced operations by the trial of an old woman who had long enjoyed the reputation of being a witch. Besides "spectral evidence," that is, the tales of the afflicted, a jury of women, appointed to make an examination, found upon her a wart or excrescence, adjudged to be "a devil's teat." A number of old stories were also raked up of dead hens and foundered cattle and carts upset, ascribed by the neighbors to her incantations. On this evidence she was brought in guilty, and hanged a few days after, when the court took an adjournment to the end of the month. The first General Court under the new charter met meanwhile, and Increase Mather, who had returned in company with Phipps, gave an account of his agency. From a House not well pleased with the loss of the old charter he obtained a reluctant vote of thanks, but he received no compensation for four years' expenses, which had pressed very heavily upon his narrow income. After passing a temporary act for continuing in force all the old laws, among others the capital law against witchcraft, an adjournment was had, without any objection or even reference, so far as appears, to the special court for the trial of the witches, which surely would have raised a great outcry had it been established for any unpopular purpose. According to a favorite practice of the old Government, now put in use for the last time, Phipps requested the advice of the elders as to the proceedings against the witches. The reply, drawn up by the hand of Cotton Mather, acknowledges with thankfulness "the success which the merciful God has given to the sedulous and assiduous endeavors of our honorable rulers to defeat the abominable witchcrafts which have been committed in the country, humbly praying that the discovery of those mysterious and mischievous wickednesses may be perfected." It advises, however, "critical and exquisite caution" in relying too much on "the devil's authority," that is, on spectral evidence, or "apparent changes wrought in the afflicted by the presence of the accused"; neither of which, in the opinion of the ministers, could be trusted as infallible proof. Yet it was almost entirely on this sort of evidence that all the subsequent convictions were had. Stoughton, unfortunately, had espoused the opinion--certainly a plausible one--that it was impossible for the devil to assume the appearance of an innocent man, or for persons not witches to be spectrally seen at witches' meetings; and some of the confessing witches were prompt to flatter the chief justice's vanity by confirming a doctrine so apt for their purposes. At the second session of the special court five women were tried and convicted. The others were easily disposed of; but in the case of Rebecca Nurse, one of Parris' church-members, a woman hitherto of unimpeachable character, the jury at first gave a verdict of acquittal. At the announcement of this verdict "the afflicted" raised a great clamor. The "honored Court" called the jury's attention to an exclamation of the prisoner during the trial, expressive of surprise at seeing among the witnesses two of her late fellow-prisoners: "Why do these testify against me? They used to come among us!" These two witnesses had turned confessors, and these words were construed by the court as confirming their testimony of having met the prisoner at witches' meetings. The unhappy woman, partially deaf, listened to this colloquy in silence. Thus pressed by the Court, and hearing no reply from the prisoner, the jury changed their verdict and pronounced her guilty. The explanations subsequently offered in her behalf were disregarded. The Governor, indeed, granted a reprieve, but the Salem committee procured its recall, and the unhappy woman, taken in chains to the meeting-house, was solemnly excommunicated, and presently hanged with the others. At the third session of the court six prisoners were tried and convicted, all of whom were presently hanged except Elizabeth Procter, whose pregnancy was pleaded in delay. Her true and faithful husband, in spite of a letter to the Boston ministers, denouncing the falsehood of the witnesses, complaining that confessions had been extorted by torture, and begging for a trial at Boston or before other judges, was found guilty, and suffered with the rest. Another of this unfortunate company was John Willard, employed as an officer to arrest the accused, but whose imprudent expression of some doubts on the subject had caused him to be accused also. He had fled, but was pursued and taken, and was now tried and executed. His behavior, and that of Procter, at the place of execution, made, however, a deep impression on many minds. A still more remarkable case was that of George Burroughs, a minister whom the incursions of the Eastern Indians had lately driven from Saco back to Salem village, where he had formerly preached, and where he now found among his former parishioners enemies more implacable even than the Indians. It was the misfortune of Burroughs to have many enemies, in part, perhaps, by his own fault. Encouragement was thus found to accuse him. Some of the witnesses had seen him at witches' meetings; others had seen the apparitions of his dead wives, which accused him of cruelty. These witnesses, with great symptoms of horror and alarm, even pretended to see these dead wives again appearing to them in open court. Though small of size, Burroughs was remarkably strong, instances of which were given in proof that the devil helped him. Stoughton treated him with cruel insolence, and did his best to confuse and confound him. What insured his condemnation was a paper he handed to the jury, an extract from some author, denying the possibility of witchcraft. Burroughs' speech from the gallows affected many, especially the fluent fervency of his prayers, concluding with the Lord's Prayer, which no witch, it was thought, could repeat correctly. Several, indeed, had been already detected by some slight error or mispronunciation in attempting it. The impression, however, which Burroughs might have produced was neutralized by Cotton Mather, who appeared on horseback among the crowd, and took occasion to remind the people that Burroughs, though a preacher, was no "ordained" minister, and that the devil would sometimes assume even the garb of an angel of light. At a fourth session of the court six women were tried and found guilty. At another session shortly after, eight women and one man were convicted, all of whom received sentence of death. An old man of eighty, who refused to plead, was pressed to death--a barbarous infliction prescribed by the common law for such cases. Ever since the trials began, it had been evident that confession was the only avenue to safety. Several of those now found guilty confessed and were reprieved; but Samuel Woodwell, having retracted his confession, along with seven others who persisted in their innocence, was sent to execution. "The afflicted" numbered by this time about fifty; fifty-five had confessed themselves witches and turned accusers; twenty persons had already suffered death; eight more were under sentence; the jails were full of prisoners, and new accusations were added every day. Such was the state of things when the court adjourned to the first Monday in November. Cotton Mather employed this interval in preparing his _Wonders of the Invisible World_, containing an exulting account of the late trials, giving full credit to the statements of the afflicted and the confessors, and vaunting the good effects of the late executions in "the strange deliverance of some that had lain for many years in a most sad condition, under they knew not what evil hand." While the witch trials were going on, the Governor had hastened to Pemaquid, and in accordance with instructions brought with him from England, though at an expense to the province which caused loud complaints, had built there a strong stone fort. Colonel Church had been employed, in the mean time, with four hundred men, in scouring the shores of the Penobscot and the banks of the Kennebec. Notwithstanding some slight cautions about trusting too much to spectral evidence, Mather's book, which professed to be published at the special request of the Governor, was evidently intended to stimulate to further proceedings. But, before its publication, the reign of terror had already reached such a height as to commence working its own cure. The accusers, grown bold with success, had begun to implicate persons whose character and condition had seemed to place them beyond the possibility of assault. Even "the generation of the children of God" were in danger. One of the Andover ministers had been implicated; but two of the confessing witches came to his rescue by declaring that they had surreptitiously carried his shape to a witches' meeting, in order to create a belief that he was there. Hale, minister of Beverly, had been very active against the witches; but when his own wife was charged, he began to hesitate. A son of Governor Bradstreet, a magistrate of Andover, having refused to issue any more warrants, was himself accused, and his brother soon after, on the charge of bewitching a dog. Both were obliged to fly for their lives. Several prisoners, by the favor of friends, escaped to Rhode Island, but, finding themselves in danger there, fled to New York, where Governor Fletcher gave them protection. Their property was seized as forfeited by their flight. Lady Phipps, applied to in her husband's absence on behalf of an unfortunate prisoner, issued a warrant to the jailer in her own name, and had thus, rather irregularly, procured his discharge. Some of the accusers, it is said, began to throw out insinuations even against her. The extraordinary proceedings on the commitments and trials; the determination of the magistrates to overlook the most obvious falsehoods and contradictions on the part of the afflicted and the confessors, under pretence that the devil took away their memories and imposed upon their brain, while yet reliance was placed on their testimony to convict the accused; the partiality exhibited in omitting to take any notice of certain accusations; the violent means employed to obtain confessions, amounting sometimes to positive torture; the total disregard of retractions made voluntarily, and even at the hazard of life--all these circumstances had impressed the attention of the more rational part of the community; and, in this crisis of danger and alarm, the meeting of the General Court was most anxiously awaited. When that body assembled, a remonstrance came in from Andover against the condemnation of persons of good fame on the testimony of children and others "under diabolical influences." What action was taken on this remonstrance does not appear. The court was chiefly occupied in the passage of a number of acts, embodying some of the chief points of the old civil and criminal laws of the colony. The capital punishment of witchcraft was specially provided for in the very terms of the English act of Parliament. Heresy and blasphemy were also continued as capital offences. By the organization of the Superior Court under the charter, the special commission for the trial of witches was superseded. But of this Superior Court Stoughton was appointed chief justice, and three of his four colleagues had sat with him in the special court. There is no evidence that these judges had undergone any change of opinion; but when the new court proceeded to hold a special term at Salem for the continuation of the witch trials a decided alteration in public feeling became apparent. Six women of Andover renounced their confessions, and sent in a memorial to that effect. Of fifty-six indictments laid before the grand jury, only twenty-six were returned true bills. Of the persons tried, three only were found guilty. Several others were acquitted, the first instances of the sort since the trials began. The court then proceeded to Charlestown, where many were in prison on the same charge. The case of a woman who for twenty or thirty years had been reputed a witch, was selected for trial. Many witnesses testified against her; but the spectral evidence had fallen into total discredit, and was not used. Though as strong a case was made out as any at Salem, the woman was acquitted, with her daughter, granddaughter, and several others. News presently came of a reprieve for those under sentence of death at Salem, at which Stoughton was so enraged that he left the bench, exclaiming, "Who it is that obstructs the course of justice I know not; the Lord be merciful to the country!" nor did he again take his seat during that term. At the first session of the Superior Court at Boston the grand jury, though sent out to reconsider the matter, refused to find a bill even against a confessing witch. The idea was already prevalent that some great mistakes had been committed at Salem. The reality of witchcraft was still insisted upon as zealously as ever, but the impression was strong that the devil had used "the afflicted" as his instruments to occasion the shedding of innocent blood. On behalf of the ministers, Increase Mather came out with his _Cases of Conscience concerning Witchcraft_, in which, while he argued with great learning that spectral evidence was not infallible, and that the devil might assume the shape of an innocent man, he yet strenuously maintained as sufficient proof confession, or "the speaking such words or the doing such things as none but such as have familiarity with the devil ever did or can do." As to such as falsely confessed themselves witches, and were hanged in consequence, Mather thought that was no more than they deserved. King William's veto on the witchcraft act prevented any further trials; and presently, by Phipps' order, all the prisoners were discharged. To a similar veto Massachusetts owes it that heresy and blasphemy ceased to appear as capital crimes on her statute-book. The Mathers gave still further proof of faith unshaken by discovering an afflicted damsel in Boston, whom they visited and prayed with, and of whose case Cotton Mather wrote an account circulated in manuscript. This damsel, however, had the discretion to accuse nobody, the spectres that beset her being all veiled. Reason and common-sense at last found an advocate in Robert Calef, a citizen of Boston, sneered at by Cotton Mather as "a weaver who pretended to be a merchant." And afterward, when he grew more angry, as "a coal sent from hell" to blacken his character--a man, however, of sound intelligence and courageous spirit. Calef wrote an account, also handed about in manuscript, of what had been said and done during a visitation of the Mathers to this afflicted damsel, an exposure of her imposture and their credulity, which so nettled Cotton Mather that he commenced a prosecution for slander against Calef, which, however, he soon saw reason to drop. Calef then addressed a series of letters to Mather and the other Boston ministers, in which he denied and ridiculed the reality of any such compacts with the devil as were commonly believed in under the name of witchcraft. The witchcraft spoken of in the Bible meant no more, he maintained, than "hatred or opposition to the word and worship of God, and seeking to seduce therefrom by some sign"--a definition which he had found in some English writer on the subject, and which he fortified by divers texts. It was, perhaps, to furnish materials for a reply to Calef that a circular from Harvard College, signed by Increase Mather as president, and by all the neighboring ministers as fellows, invited reports of "apparitions, possessions, enchantments, and all extraordinary things, wherein the existence and agency of the invisible world is more sensibly demonstrated," to be used "as some fit assembly of ministers might direct." But the "invisible world" was fast ceasing to be visible, and Cotton Mather laments that in ten years scarce five returns were received to this circular. Yet the idea of some supernatural visitation at Salem was but very slowly relinquished, being still persisted in even by those penitent actors in the scene who confessed and lamented their own delusion and blood-guiltiness. Such were Sewell, one of the judges; Noyes, one of the most active prosecutors; and several of the jurymen who had sat on the trials. The witnesses upon whose testimony so many innocent persons had suffered were never called to any account. When Calef's letters were presently published in London, together with his account of the supposed witchcraft, the book was burned in the college yard at Cambridge by order of Increase Mather. The members of the Boston North Church came out also with a pamphlet in defence of their pastors. Hale, minister of Beverly, in his _Modest Inquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft_, and Cotton Mather, in his _Magnalia_, though they admit there had been "a going too far" in the affair at Salem, are yet still as strenuous as ever for the reality of witchcraft. Nor were they without support from abroad. Dr. Watts, then one of the chief leaders of the English Dissenters, wrote to Cotton Mather, "I am persuaded there was much agency of the devil in those affairs, and perhaps there were some real witches, too." Twenty years elapsed before the heirs of the victims, and those who had been obliged to fly for their lives, obtained some partial indemnity for their pecuniary losses. Stoughton and Cotton Mather, though they never expressed the least regret or contrition for their part in the affair, still maintained their places in the public estimation. Just as the trials were concluded, Stoughton, though he held the King's commission as lieutenant-governor, was chosen a counsellor--a mark of confidence which the theocratic majority did not choose to extend to several of the moderate party named in the original appointment--and to this post he was annually reëlected as long as he lived; while Moody, because he had favored the escape of some of the accused, found it necessary to resign his pastorship of the First Church of Boston, and to return again to Portsmouth. Yet we need less wonder at the pertinacity with which this delusion was adhered to, when we find Addison arguing for the reality of witchcraft at the same time that he refuses to believe in any modern instance of it; and even Blackstone, half a century after, gravely declaring that "to deny the possibility, nay, actual existence of witchcraft and sorcery, is at once flatly to contradict the revealed word of God in various passages both of the Old and New Testament." %ESTABLISHMENT OF THE BANK OF ENGLAND% A.D. 1694 JOHN FRANCIS Not only did the establishment of the Bank of England meet the demands of public exigency at the time; it also created an institution which was to become vitally important in the expanding life of the nation. This custodian of the public money and manager of the public debt of Great Britain is now the largest bank in the world. The only other financial institution that could show an equal record of long stability was the Bank of Amsterdam, which existed from 1609 to 1814. The national debt of England began in 1693, when William III, in order to carry on the war against France, resorted to a system of loans. This debt, however, was not intended to be permanent; but when the Bank of England was established, the contracting of a permanent debt began. Its advantages and disadvantages to England have been discussed by many theorists and financial authorities. But of the extraordinary service rendered to Great Britain by the far-seeing Scotchman, William Paterson, originator of the plan of the Bank of England, there is no question, although, as Francis shows, the project at first met with opposition from many quarters. The important position assumed by England, toward the middle of the seventeenth century, renders the absence of a national bank somewhat surprising. Under the sagacious government of Cromwell the nation had increased in commercial and political greatness; and although several projects were issued for banks, one of which was to have branches in every important town throughout the country, yet, a necessity for their formation not being absolutely felt, the proposals were dismissed. During the Protectorate, however, Parliament, taking into consideration the rate of interest, which was higher in England than abroad, and that the trade was thereby rendered comparatively disadvantageous to the English merchant, reduced the legal rate from 8 to 6 per cent., and this measure, although it had been carried by the Parliament of Cromwell, almost every act of which proved odious in the eyes of the Stuarts, was nevertheless confirmed by the legislature of Charles II. In 1546 the payment of interest had been rendered legal, and fixed at 10 per cent. In 1624 the rate had been reduced to 8 per cent.; and with the advance of commercial prosperity it had been found advisable to lower it still further. There were many reasons for the establishment of a national bank. It was necessary for the sake of a secure paper currency. It was required for the support of the national credit. It was desirable as a method of reducing the rate of interest paid by the state; a rate so high that, according to Anderson, men were induced to take their money out of trade, for the sake of securing it; an operation "big with mischief." The truth is that the times required it. The theorist may prove to demonstration the perfection of his theory; the speculator may show the certainty of its success: but unless it be a necessity called for by the onward progress of society, it must eventually fall to the ground. That the want of such an establishment was felt is certain. But while such firms as Childs--the books of whom go back to the year 1620, and refer to prior documents; Hoares, dating from 1680; and Snows, from 1685--were able to assist the public demand, although at the exorbitant interest of the period, it does not occasion so much surprise that the attempt made to meet the increasing requirements of trade proved insufficient. In 1678, sixteen years previous to the foundation of the Bank of England, "proposals for a large model of a bank" were published; and, in 1683 a "national bank of credit" was brought forward. In a rare pamphlet entitled _Bank Credit; or the usefullness and security of The Bank of Credit, examined in a dialogue between a Country Gentleman and a London Merchant_, this idea is warmly defended. It was, however, simply to have one of credit, nor was it proposed to form a bank of deposit; although, by the following remark of the "Country Gentleman," it is evident that such an establishment on a secure scale was desirable. He says: "Could they not without damage to themselves have secured the running cash of the nobility, gentry, merchants, and the traders of the city and kingdom, from all hazard, which would have been a great benefit to all concerned, who know not where to deposit their cash securely?" After much trouble this bank of credit was established at Devonshire House, in Bishopsgate Street; its object, as we have related, being principally to advance money to tradesmen and manufacturers on the security of goods. Three-fourths of the value was lent on these, and bills for their amount given to the depositor. In order to render them current, an appointed number of persons in each trade was formed into a society to regulate commercial concerns. Any individual possessed of such bills might therefore obtain from this company goods or merchandise with as much ease as if he offered current coin. The bank of credit does not appear to have flourished. The machinery was too complicated, and the risk of depreciation and the value of manufactures too great. It was next to impossible for such a company to exist after the Bank of England came with its low discount and free accommodations. The wild spirit of speculation--that spirit which at various periods has created fearful crises in the commercial world--commenced in 1694. The fever which from time to time has flushed the mind of the moneyed man, and given a fierce excitement to the almost penniless adventurer, was then and in the following year in full operation. The great South Sea scheme in 1720 is ordinarily considered the earliest display of this reckless spirit. But a quarter of a century before, equal ingenuity and equal villany were exercised. Obscure men, whose sole capital was their enormous impudence, invented similar schemes, promised similar advantages, and used similar arts to entice the capitalists, which were employed with so much success at a later period. The want of a great banking association was sure to be made a pretext. Two "land banks," and a "London bank" to be managed by the magistrates, with several other proposals, were therefore put promisingly forward. One of these was for another "bank of credit"; and a pamphlet published in 1694, under the title of _England's Glory_, will give some idea of its nature: "If a person desires money to be returned at Coventry or York he pays it at the office in London, and receives a bill of credit after their form written upon marble paper, indenturewise, or on other as may be contrived to prevent counterfeiting." It was also proposed that the Government should share the profits; but neither of the projects was carried out. The people neglected their calling. The legitimate desire of money grew into a fierce and fatal spirit of avarice. The arts so common at a later day were had recourse to. Project begat project, copper was to be turned into brass. Fortunes were to be realized by lotteries. The sea was to yield the treasures it had engulfed. Pearl-fisheries were to pay impossible percentages. "Lottery on lottery," says a writer of the day, "engine on engine, multiplied wonderfully. If any person got considerably by a happy and useful invention, others followed in spite of the patent, and published printed proposals, filling the daily newspapers therewith, thus going on to jostle one another, and abuse the credulity of the people." Amid the many delusive and impracticable schemes were two important projects which have conferred great benefits on the English people. The first of these was the New River Company, the conception of Sir Hugh Middleton; the second was the corporation of the Bank of England. Nature and the great nations of antiquity suggested the former; the force and pressure of the times demanded the latter. It is from such demands that our chief institutions arise. By precept we may be taught their propriety; by example we may see their advantages. But until the necessity is personally felt they are sure to be neglected; and men wonder at their want of prescience and upbraid their shortsightedness when, with a sudden and sometimes startling success, the proposal they have slighted arises through the energy of another. William Paterson, one of those men whose capacity is measured by failure or success, was the originator of the new bank; and it is perhaps unfortunate for his fame that no biography exists of this remarkable person. As the projector of the present Bank of Scotland, as the very soul of the celebrated Darien Company, and as the founder of the Bank of England, he deserves notice. A speculator as well as an adventurous man, he proved his belief in the practicability of the Darien scheme by accompanying that unfortunate expedition; and the formation of the Bank of England was the object of his desires and the subject of his thoughts for a long time previous to its establishment. From that political change which had been so justly termed the "great revolution," to the establishment of the Bank of England, the new Government had been in constant difficulties; and the ministerial mode of procuring money was degrading to a great people. The duties in support of the war waged for liberty and Protestantism were required before they were levied. The city corporation was usually applied to for an advance; interest which varied probably according to the necessity of the borrower rather than to the real value of cash, was paid for the accommodation. The officers of the city went round in their turn to the separate wards, and borrowed in smaller amounts the money they had advanced to the state. Interest and premiums were thus often paid to the extent of 25 and even 30 per cent., in proportion to the exigency of the case, and the trader found his pocket filled at the expense of the public. Mr. Paterson gives a graphic description: "The erection of this famous bank not only relieved the ministerial managers from their frequent processions into the city, for borrowing of money on the best and nearest public securities, at 10 or 12 per cent. per annum, but likewise gave life and currency to double or treble the value of its capital in other branches of the public credit, and so, under God, became the principal means of the success of the campaign in 1695; as, particularly, in reducing the important fortress of Namur, the first material step toward the peace concluded in 1679." To remedy this evil the Bank of England was projected; and after much labor, William Paterson, aided by Mr. Michael Godfrey, procured from Government a consideration of the proposal. The King was abroad when the scheme was laid before the council, but the Queen occupied his place. Here considerable opposition occurred. Paterson found it more difficult to procure consent than he anticipated, and all those who feared an invasion of their interests united to stop its progress. The goldsmith foresaw the destruction of his monopoly, and he opposed it from self-interest. The Tory foresaw an easier mode of gaining money for the government he abhorred, with a firmer hold on the people for the monarch he despised, and his antagonism bore all the energy of political partisanship. The usurer foresaw the destruction of his oppressive extortion, and he resisted it with the vigor of his craft. The rich man foresaw his profits diminished on government contracts, and he vehemently and virtuously opposed it on all public principles. Loud therefore were the outcries and great the exertions of all parties when the bill was first introduced to the House of Commons. But outcries are vain and exertions futile in opposition to a dominant and powerful party. A majority had been secured for the measure; and they who opposed its progress covered their defeat with vehement denunciations and vague prophecies. The prophets are in their graves, and their predictions only survive in the history of that establishment the downfall of which they proclaimed. "The scheme of a national bank," says Smollett, "had been recommended to the ministry for the credit and security of the Government and the increase of trade and circulation. William Paterson was author of that which was carried into execution. When it was properly digested in the cabinet, and a majority in Parliament secured, it was introduced into the House of Commons. The supporters said it would rescue the nation out of the hands of extortioners; lower interest; raise the value of land; revive public credit; extend circulation; improve commerce; facilitate the annual supplies; and connect the people more closely with Government. The project was violently opposed by a strong party, who affirmed that it would become a monopoly, and engross the whole of the kingdom; that it might be employed to the worst purposes of arbitrary power; that it would weaken commerce by tempting people to withdraw their money from trade; that brokers and jobbers would prey on their fellow-creatures; encourage fraud and gambling; and corrupt the morals of the nation." Previous governments had raised money with comparative ease because they were legitimate. That of William was felt to be precarious. It was feared by the money-lender that a similar convulsion to the one which had borne him so easily to the throne of a great nation might waft him back to the shores of that Holland he so dearly loved. Thus the very circumstances which made supplies necessary also made them scarce. In addition to these things his person was unpopular. His phlegmatic Dutch habits contrasted unfavorably with those of the graceful Stuarts, whose evil qualities were forgotten in the remembrance of their showy characteristics. Neither his Dutch followers nor his Dutch manners were regarded with favor; and had it not been for his eminently kingly capacity, these things would have proved as dangerous to the throne as they tended to make the sovereign unpopular. In a pamphlet published a few years after the establishment of the new corporation is the following vivid picture of this monarch's government: "In spite of the most glorious Prince and most vigilant General the world has ever seen, yet the enemy gained upon us every year; the funds were run down, the credit jobbed away in Change Alley, the King and his troops devoured by mechanics, and sold to usury, tallies lay bundled up like Bath fagots in the hands of brokers and stock-jobbers; the Parliament gave taxes, levied funds, but the loans were at the mercy of those men (the jobbers); and they showed their mercy, indeed, by devouring the King and the army, the Parliament, and indeed the whole nation; bringing their great Prince sometimes to that exigence through inexpressible extortions that were put upon him, that he has even gone into the fields without his equipage, nay even without his army; the regiments have been unclothed when the King had been in the field, and the willing, brave English spirits, eager to honor their country, and follow such a King, have marched even to battle without either stockings or shoes, while his servants have been every day working in Exchange Alley to get his men money of the stock-jobbers, even after all the horrible demands of discount have been allowed; and at last, scarce 50 per cent. of the money granted by Parliament has come into the hands of the Exchequer, and that late, too late for service, and by driblets, till the King has been tired with the delay." This is a strange picture; beating even Mr. Paterson's account of the "processions in the city," and adds another convincing proof of the necessity which then existed for some establishment, capable of advancing money at a reasonable rate, on the security of Parliamentary grants. The scheme proposed by William Paterson was too important not to meet with many enemies, and it appears from a pamphlet by Mr. Godfrey, the first deputy-governor, that "some pretended to dislike the bank only for fear it should disappoint their majesties of the supplies proposed to be raised." That "all the several companies of oppressors are strangely alarmed, and exclaim at the bank, and seemed to have joined in a confederacy against it." That "extortion, usury, and oppression were never so attacked as they are likely to be by the bank." That "others pretend the bank will join with the prince to make him absolute. That the concern have too good a bargain and that it would be prejudicial to trade." In Bishop Burners _History of His Own Times_ we read an additional evidence of its necessity: "It was visible that all the enemies of the Government set themselves against it with such a vehemence of zeal that this alone convinced all people that they saw the strength that our affairs would receive from it. I heard the Dutch often reckon the great advantage they had had from their banks, and they concluded that as long as England remained jealous of her Government, a bank could never be settled among us, nor gain credit among us to support itself, and upon that they judged that the superiority in trade must still be on their side." All these varied interests were vainly exerted to prevent the bill from receiving the royal sanction; and the Bank of England, founded on the same principles which guarded the banks of Venice and Genoa, was incorporated by royal charter, dated July 27, 1694. From Mr. Gilbart's _History and Principles of Banking_ we present the following brief analysis of this important act: "The Act of Parliament by which the Bank was established is entitled 'An Act for granting to their majesties several duties upon tonnage of ships and vessels, and upon beer, ale, and other liquors, for securing certain recompenses and advantages in the said Act mentioned to such persons as shall voluntarily advance the sum of fifteen hundred thousand pounds toward carrying on the war with France.' After a variety of enactments relative to the duties upon tonnage of ships and vessels, and upon beer, ale, and other liquors, the Act authorizes the raising of 1,200,000 pounds by voluntary subscription, the subscribers to be formed into a corporation and be styled 'The Governor and Company of the Bank of England.' "The sum of 300,000 pounds was also to be raised by subscription, and the contributors to receive instead annuities for one, two, or three lives. Toward the 1,200,000 pounds no one person was to subscribe more than 10,000 pounds before the first day of July, next ensuing, nor at any time more than 20,000 pounds. The Corporation were to lend their whole capital to the Government, for which they were to receive interest at the rate of 8 per cent. per annum, and 4000 pounds per annum for management; being 100,000 pounds per annum on the whole. The Corporation were not allowed to borrow or owe more than the amount of their capital, and if they did so the individual members became liable to the creditors in proportion to the amount of their stock. The Corporation were not to trade in any 'goods, wares, or merchandise whatever, but they were allowed to deal in bills of Exchange, gold or silver bullion, and to sell any goods, wares, or merchandise upon which they had advanced money, and which had not been redeemed within three months after the time agreed upon.' The whole of the subscription was filled in a few days; 25 per cent. paid down; and, as we have seen, a charter was issued on July 27, 1694, of which the following are the most important points: "That the management and government of the corporation be admitted to the governor, deputy-governor, and twenty-four directors, who shall be elected between March 25th and April 25th of each year, from among the members of the company, duly qualified. "That no dividend shall at any time be made by the said governor and company save only out of the interest, profit, or produce arising out of the said capital, stock, or fund, or by such dealing as is allowed by act of Parliament. "They must be natural-born subjects of England, or naturalized subjects; they shall have in their own name and for their own use, severally, viz., the governor at least 4000 pounds, the deputy-governor 3000 pounds, and each director 2000 pounds of the capital stock of the said corporation. "That thirteen or more of the said governors or directors (of which the governor or deputy-governor shall be always one) shall constitute a court of directors for the management of the affairs of the company, and for the appointment of all agents and servants which may be necessary, paying them such salaries as they may consider reasonable. "Every elector must have, in his own name and for his own use, 500 pounds or more capital stock, and can only give one vote; he must, if required by any member present, take the oath of stock, or the declaration of stock if it be one of those people called Quakers. "Four general courts to be held in every year in the months of September, December, April, and July. A general court may be summoned at any time, upon the requisition of nine proprietors duly qualified as electors. "The majority of electors in general courts have the power to make and constitute by-laws and ordinances for the government of the corporation, provided that such by-laws and ordinances be not repugnant to the laws of the kingdom, and be confirmed and approved according to the statutes in such case made and provided." When the payment was completed it was handed into the exchequer, and the bank procured from other quarters the funds which it required. It employed the same means which the bankers had done at the Exchange, with this difference, that the latter traded with personal property, while the bank traded with the deposits of their customers. It was from the circulation of a capital so formed that the bank derived its profits. It is evident, however, from the pamphlet of the first deputy-governor, that at this period they allowed interest to their depositors; and another writer, D'Avenant, makes it a subject of complaint: "It would be for the general good of trade if the bank were restrained from allowing interest for running cash; for the ease of having 3 and 4 per cent. without trouble must be a continual bar to industry." First in Mercers' Hall, where they remained but a few months, and afterward in Grocers' Hall, since razed for the erection of a more stately structure, the Bank of England conducted its operations. Here, in one room, with almost primitive simplicity were gathered all who performed the duties of the establishment. "I looked into the great hall where the bank is kept," says the graceful essayist of the day, "and was not a little pleased to see the directors, secretaries, and clerks, with all the other members of that wealthy Corporation, ranged in their several stations according to the parts they hold in that just and regular economy." The secretaries and clerks altogether numbered but fifty-four, while their united salaries did not exceed four thousand three hundred fifty pounds. But the picture is a pleasant one, and though so much unlike present usages it is doubtful whether our forefathers did not derive more benefit from intimate association with and kindly feelings toward their inferiors than their descendants receive from the broad line of demarcation adopted at the present day. The effect of the new corporation was almost immediately experienced. On August 8th, in the year of its establishment, the rate of discount on foreign bills was 6 per cent.; although this was the highest legal interest, yet much higher rates had been previously demanded. The name of William Paterson was not long upon the list of directors. The bank was established in 1694, and for that year only was its founder among those who managed its proceedings. The facts which led to his departure from the honorable post of director are difficult to collect; but it is not at all improbable that the character of Paterson was too speculative for those with whom he was joined in companionship. Sir John Dalrymple remarks, "The persons to whom he applied made use of his ideas, took the honor to themselves, were civil to him awhile, and neglected him afterward." Another writer says, "The friendless Scot was intrigued out of his post and out of the honors he had earned." These assertions must be received with caution; accusations against a great body are easily made; and it is rarely consistent with the dignity of the latter to reply; they are received as truths either because people are too idle to examine or because there is no opportunity of investigating them. %COLONIZATION OF LOUISIANA% A.D. 1699 CHARLES E.T. GAYARRÉ It was not only as the beginning of what was to become an important State of the American Union, but also as a nucleus of occupation which led to an immense acquisition of territory by the United States, that the first settlement in Louisiana proved an event of great significance. Nothing in American history is of greater moment than the adding of the Louisiana Purchase (1803) to the United States domain. And the acquisition of that vast region, extending from New Orléans to British America, and westward from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains, had historic connection with the French settlement of 1699. As early as 1630 the territory afterward known as Louisiana was mostly embraced in the Carolina grant by Charles I to Sir Robert Heath. It was taken into possession for the French King by La Salle in 1682, and named Louisiana in honor of Louis XIV. In 1698 Louis undertook to colonize the region of the lower Mississippi, and sent out an expedition under Pierre le Moyne, Sieur d'Iberville, a naval commander, who had served in the French wars of Canada, and aided in establishing French colonies in North America. With two hundred colonists Iberville sailed (September 24, 1698) for the mouth of the Mississippi. Among his companions were his brothers, Sauvolle and Jean Baptiste le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville. The latter was long governor of Louisiana, and founded New Orleans. Of their arrival and subsequent operations in the lower Mississippi region, Gayarré, the Louisiana historian, gives a glowing and picturesque account. On February 27, 1699, Iberville and Bienville reached the Mississippi. When they approached its mouth they were struck with the gloomy magnificence of the sight. As far as the eye could reach, nothing was to be seen but reeds which rose five or six feet above the waters in which they bathed their roots. They waved mournfully under the blast of the sharp wind of the north, shivering in its icy grasp, as it tumbled, rolled, and gambolled on the pliant surface. Multitudes of birds of strange appearance, with their elongated shapes so lean that they looked like metamorphosed ghosts, clothed in plumage, screamed in the air, as if they were scared of one another. There was something agonizing in their shrieks that was in harmony with the desolation of the place. On every side of the vessel, monsters of the deep and huge alligators heaved themselves up heavily from their native or favorite element, and, floating lazily on the turbid waters, seemed to gaze at the intruders. Down the river, and rumbling over its bed, there came a sort of low, distant thunder. Was it the voice of the hoary Sire of Rivers, raised in anger at the prospect of his gigantic volume of waters being suddenly absorbed by one mightier than he? In their progress it was with great difficulty that the travellers could keep their bark free from those enormous rafts of trees which the Mississippi seemed to toss about in mad frolic. A poet would have thought that the great river, when departing from the altitude of its birthplace, and as it rushed down to the sea through three thousand miles, had, in anticipation of a contest which threatened the continuation of its existence, flung its broad arms right and left across the continent, and, uprooting all its forests, had hoarded them in its bed as missiles to hurl at the head of its mighty rival when they should meet and struggle for supremacy. When night began to cast a darker hue on a landscape on which the imagination of Dante would have gloated there issued from that chaos of reeds such uncouth and unnatural sounds as would have saddened the gayest and appalled the most intrepid. Could this be the far-famed Mississippi, or was it not rather old Avernus? It was hideous indeed--but hideousness refined into sublimity, filling the soul with a sentiment of grandeur. Nothing daunted, the adventurers kept steadily on their course. They knew that through those dismal portals they were to arrive at the most magnificent country in the world; they knew that awful screen concealed loveliness itself. It was a coquettish freak of nature, when dealing with European curiosity, as it came eagerly bounding to the Atlantic wave, to herald it through an avenue so sombre as to cause the wonders of the great valley of the Mississippi to burst with tenfold more force upon the bewildered gaze of those who, by the endurance of so many perils and fatigues, were to merit admittance into its Eden. It was a relief for the adventurers when, after having toiled up the river for ten days, they at last arrived at the village of the Bayagoulas. There they found a letter of Tonty[1] to La Salle, dated in 1685. The letter, or rather that "speaking bark" as the Indians called it, had been preserved with great reverence. Tonty, having been informed that La Salle was coming with a fleet from France to settle a colony on the banks of the Mississippi, had not hesitated to set off from the northern lakes, with twenty Canadians and thirty Indians, and to come down to the Balize to meet his friend, who had failed to make out the mouth of the Mississippi, and had been landed by Beaujeu on the shores of Texas. After having waited for some time, and ignorant of what had happened, Tonty, with the same indifference to fatigues and dangers of an appalling nature, retraced his way back, leaving a letter to La Salle to inform him of his disappointment. Is there not something extremely romantic in the characters of the men of that epoch? Here is Tonty undertaking, with the most heroic unconcern, a journey of nearly three thousand miles, through such difficulties as it is easy for us to imagine, and leaving a letter to La Salle, as a proof of his visit, in the same way that one would, in these degenerate days of effeminacy, leave a card at a neighbor's house. [Footnote 1: Henry de Tonty was an Italian explorer who accompanied La Salle in his descent of the Mississippi (1681-1682).--ED.] The French extended their explorations up to the mouth of the Red River. As they proceeded through that virgin country, with what interest they must have examined every object that met their eyes, and listened to the traditions concerning De Soto,[2] and the more recent stories of the Indians on La Salle and the iron-handed Tonty! A coat of mail which was presented as having belonged to the Spaniards, and vestiges of their encampment on the Red River, confirmed the French in the belief that there was much of truth in the recitals of the Indians. [Footnote 2: De Soto explored this region in 1541.--ED.] On their return from the mouth of the Red River the two brothers separated when they arrived at Bayou Manchac. Bienville was ordered to go down the river to the French fleet, to give information of what they had seen and heard. Iberville went through Bayou Manchac to those lakes which are known under the names of Pontchartrain and Maurepas. Louisiana had been named from a king: was it not in keeping that those lakes should be called after ministers? From the Bay of St. Louis, Iberville returned to his fleet, where, after consultation, he determined to make a settlement at the Bay of Biloxi. On the east side, at the mouth of the bay, as it were, there is a slight swelling of the shore, about four acres square, sloping gently to the woods in the background, and on the bay. Thus this position was fortified by nature, and the French skilfully availed themselves of these advantages. The weakest point, which was on the side of the forest, they strengthened with more care than the rest, by connecting with a strong intrenchment the two ravines, which ran to the bay in a parallel line to each other. The fort was constructed with four bastions, and was armed with twelve pieces of artillery. When standing on one of the bastions which faced the bay, the spectator enjoyed a beautiful prospect. On the right, the bay could be seen running into the land for miles, and on the left stood Deer Island, concealing almost entirely the broad expanses of water which lay beyond. It was visible only at the two extreme points of the island, which both, at that distance, appeared to be within a close proximity of the mainland. No better description can be given than to say that the bay looked like a funnel to which the island was the lid, not fitting closely, however, but leaving apertures for egress and ingress. The snugness of the locality had tempted the French, and had induced them to choose it as the most favorable spot, at the time, for colonization. Sauvolle was put in command of the fort, and Bienville, the youngest of the three brothers, was appointed his lieutenant. A few huts having been erected round the fort, the settlers began to clear the land, in order to bring it into cultivation. Iberville having furnished them with all the necessary provisions, utensils, and other supplies, prepared to sail for France. How deeply affecting must have been the parting scene! How many casualties might prevent those who remained in this unknown region from ever seeing again those who, through the perils of such a long voyage, had to return to their home! What crowding emotions must have filled up the breast of Sauvolle, Bienville, and their handful of companions, when they beheld the sails of Iberville's fleet fading in the distance, like transient clouds! Well may it be supposed that it seemed to them as if their very souls had been carried away, and that they felt a momentary sinking of the heart when they found themselves abandoned, and necessarily left to their own resources, scanty as they were, on a patch of land between the ocean on one side and on the other a wilderness, which fancy peopled with every sort of terrors. The sense of their loneliness fell upon them like the gloom of night, darkening their hopes and filling their hearts with dismal apprehensions. But as the country had been ordered to be explored, Sauvolle availed himself of that circumstance to refresh the minds of his men by the excitement of an expedition into the interior of the continent. He therefore hastened to despatch most of them with Bienville, who, with a chief of the Bayagoulas for his guide, went to visit the Colapissas. They inhabited the northern shore of Lake Pontchartrain, and their domains embraced the sites now occupied by Lewisburg, Mandeville, and Fontainebleau. That tribe numbered three hundred warriors, who, in their distant hunting-excursions, had been engaged in frequent skirmishes with some of the British colonists in South Carolina. When the French landed, they were informed that, two days previous, the village of the Colapissas had been attacked by a party of two hundred Chickasaws, headed by two Englishmen. These were the first tidings which the French had of their old rivals, and which proved to be the harbinger of the incessant struggle which was to continue for more than a century between the two races, and to terminate by the permanent occupation of Louisiana by the Anglo-Saxon. Bienville returned to the fort to convey this important information to Sauvolle. After having rested there for several days, he went to the Bay of Pascagoulas, and ascended the river which bears that name, and the banks of which were tenanted by a branch of the Biloxis, and by the Moelobites. Encouraged by the friendly reception which he met everywhere, he ventured farther, and paid a visit to the Mobilians, who entertained him with great hospitality. Bienville found them much reduced from what they had been, and listened with eagerness to the many tales of their former power, which had been rapidly declining since the crushing blow they had received from De Soto. When Iberville ascended the Mississippi the first time, he had remarked Bayou Plaquemines and Bayou Chetimachas. The one he called after the fruit of certain trees which appeared to have exclusive possession of its banks, and the other after the name of the Indians who dwelt in the vicinity. He had ordered them to be explored, and the indefatigable Bienville, on his return from Mobile, obeyed the instructions left to his brother, and made an accurate survey of these two bayous. When he was coming down the river, at the distance of about eighteen miles below the site where New Orleans now stands, he met an English vessel of sixteen guns, under the command of Captain Bar. The English captain informed the French that he was examining the banks of the river, with the intention of selecting a spot for the foundation of a colony. Bienville told him that Louisiana was a dependency of Canada; that the French had already made several establishments on the Mississippi; and he appealed, in confirmation of his assertions, to their own presence in the river, in such small boats, which evidently proved the existence of some settlement close at hand. The Englishman believed Bienville, and sailed back. Where this occurrence took place the river makes a considerable bend, and it was from the circumstance which I have related that the spot received the appellation of the "English Turn"--a name which it has retained to the present day. It was not far from that place, the atmosphere of which appears to be fraught with some malignant spell hostile to the sons of Albion, that the English, who were outwitted by Bienville in 1699, met with a signal defeat in battle from the Americans in 1815. The diplomacy of Bienville and the military genius of Jackson proved to them equally fatal when they aimed at the possession of Louisiana. Since the exploring expedition of La Salle down the Mississippi, Canadian hunters, whose habits and intrepidity Fenimore Cooper has so graphically described in the character of Leather-Stocking, used to extend their roving excursions to the banks of that river; and those holy missionaries of the Church, who, as the pioneers of religion, have filled the New World with their sufferings, and whose incredible deeds in the service of God afford so many materials for the most interesting of books, had come in advance of the pickaxe of the settler, and had domiciliated themselves among the tribes who lived near the waters of the Mississippi. One of them, Father Montigny, was residing with the Tensas, within the territory of the present parish of Tensas, in the State of Louisiana, and another, Father Davion, was the pastor of the Yazoos, in the present State of Mississippi. Such were the two visitors who in 1699 appeared before Sauvolle, at the fort of Biloxi, to relieve the monotony of his cheerless existence, and to encourage him in his colonizing enterprise. Their visit, however, was not of long duration, and they soon returned to discharge the duties of their sacred mission. Iberville had been gone for several months, and the year was drawing to a close without any tidings of him. A deeper gloom had settled over the little colony at Biloxi, when, on December 7th, some signal-guns were heard at sea, and the grateful sound came booming over the waters, spreading joy in every breast. There was not one who was not almost oppressed with the intensity of his feelings. At last, friends were coming, bringing relief to the body and to the soul! Every colonist hastily abandoned his occupation of the moment and ran to the shore. The soldier himself, in the eagerness of expectation, left his post of duty, and rushed to the parapet which overlooked the bay. Presently several vessels hove in sight, bearing the white flag of France, and, approaching as near as the shallowness of the beach permitted, folded their pinions, like water-fowl seeking repose on the crest of the billows. It was Iberville returning with the news that, on his representations, Sauvolle had been appointed by the King governor of Louisiana; Bienville, lieutenant-governor; and Boisbriant, commander of the fort at Biloxi, with the grade of major. Iberville, having been informed by Bienville of the attempt of the English to make a settlement on the banks of the Mississippi, and of the manner in which it had been foiled, resolved to take precautionary measures against the repetition of any similar attempt. Without loss of time he departed with Bienville, on January 16, 1700, and running up the river, he constructed a small fort, on the first solid ground which he met, and which is said to have been at a distance of fifty-four miles from its mouth. When so engaged, the two brothers one day saw a canoe rapidly sweeping down the river and approaching the spot where they stood. It was occupied by eight men, six of whom were rowers, the seventh was the steersman, and the eighth, from his appearance, was evidently of a superior order to that of his companions, and the commander of the party. Well may it be imagined what greeting the stranger received, when leaping on shore he made himself known as the Chevalier de Tonty, who had again heard of the establishment of a colony in Louisiana, and who, for the second time, had come to see if there was any truth in the report. With what emotion did Iberville and Bienville fold in their arms the faithful companion and friend of La Salle, of whom they had heard so many wonderful tales from the Indians, to whom he was so well known under the name of "Iron Hand"! With what admiration they looked at his person, and with what increasing interest they listened to his long recitals of what he had done and had seen on that broad continent, the threshold of which they had hardly passed! After having rested three days at the fort, the indefatigable Tonty reascended the Mississippi, with Iberville and Bienville, and finally parted with them at Natchez. Iberville was so much pleased with that part of the bank of the river where now exists the city of Natchez that he marked it down as a most eligible spot for a town, of which he drew the plan, and which he called Rosalie, after the maiden name of the Countess Pontchartrain, the wife of the chancellor. He then returned to the new fort he was erecting on the Mississippi, and Bienville went to explore the country of the Yatasses, of the Natchitoches, and of the Ouachitas. What romance can be more agreeable to the imagination than to accompany Iberville and Bienville in their wild explorations, and to compare the state of the country in their time with what it is in our days? When the French were at Natchez they were struck with horror at an occurrence, too clearly demonstrating the fierceness of disposition of that tribe which was destined in after years to become celebrated in the history of Louisiana. One of their temples having been set on fire by lightning, a hideous spectacle presented itself to the Europeans. The tumultuous rush of the Indians; the infernal howlings and lamentations of the men, women, and children; the unearthly vociferations of the priests, their fantastic dances and ceremonies around the burning edifice; the demoniac fury with which mothers rushed to the fatal spot, and, with the piercing cries and gesticulations of maniacs, flung their new-born babes into the flames to pacify their irritated deity--the increasing anger of the heavens--blackening with the impending storm, the lurid flashes of lightning darting as it were in mutual enmity from the clashing clouds--the low, distant growling of the coming tempest--the long column of smoke and fire shooting upward from the funeral pyre, and looking like one of the gigantic torches of Pandemonium--the war of the elements combined with the worst effects of frenzied superstition of man--the suddenness and strangeness of the awful scene--all the circumstances produced such an impression upon the French as to deprive them for a moment of the powers of volition and action. Rooted to the ground, they stood aghast with astonishment and indignation at the appalling scene. Was it a dream--a wild delirium of the mind? But no--the monstrous reality of the vision was but too apparent; and they threw themselves among the Indians, supplicating them to cease their horrible sacrifice to their gods, and joining threats to their supplications. Owing to this intervention, and perhaps because a sufficient number of victims had been offered, the priests gave the signal of retreat, and the Indians slowly withdrew from the accursed spot. Such was the aspect under which the Natchez showed themselves, for the first time, to their visitors: it was ominous presage for the future. After these explorations Iberville departed again for France, to solicit additional assistance from the government, and left Bienville in command of the new fort on the Mississippi. It was very hard for the two brothers, Sauvolle and Bienville, to be thus separated, when they stood so much in need of each other's countenance, to breast the difficulties that sprung up around them with a luxuriance which they seemed to borrow from the vegetation of the country. The distance between the Mississippi and Biloxi was not so easily overcome in those days as in ours, and the means which the two brothers had of communing together were very scanty and uncertain. Sauvolle died August 22,1701, and Louisiana remained under the sole charge of Bienville, who, though very young, was fully equal to meet that emergency, by the maturity of his mind and by his other qualifications. He had hardly consigned his brother to the tomb when Iberville returned with two ships of the line and a brig laden with troops and provisions. According to Iberville's orders, and in conformity with the King's instructions, Bienville left Boisbriant, his cousin, with twenty men, at the old fort of Biloxi, and transported the principal seat of the colony to the western side of the river Mobile, not far from the spot where now stands the city of Mobile. Near the mouth of that river there is an island, which the French had called Massacre Island from the great quantity of human bones which they found bleaching on its shores. It was evident that there some awful tragedy had been acted; but Tradition, when interrogated, laid her choppy finger upon her skinny lips, and answered not. This uncertainty, giving a free scope to the imagination, shrouded the place with a higher degree of horror and with a deeper hue of fantastical gloom. It looked like the favorite ballroom of the witches of hell. The wind sighed so mournfully through the shrivelled-up pines, those vampire heads seemed incessantly to bow to some invisible and grisly visitors: the footsteps of the stranger emitted such an awful and supernatural sound, when trampling on the skulls which strewed his path, that it was impossible for the coldest imagination not to labor under some crude and ill-defined apprehension. Verily, the weird sisters could not have chosen a fitter abode. Nevertheless, the French, supported by their mercurial temperament, were not deterred from forming an establishment on that sepulchral island, which, they thought, afforded some facilities for their transatlantic communications. In 1703 war had broken out between Great Britain, France, and Spain; and Iberville, a distinguished officer of the French navy, was engaged in expeditions that kept him away from the colony. It did not cease, however, to occupy his thoughts, and had become clothed, in his eye, with a sort of family interest. Louisiana was thus left, for some time, to her scanty resources; but, weak as she was, she gave early proofs of that generous spirit which has ever since animated her; and on the towns of Pensacola and St. Augustine, then in possession of the Spaniards, being threatened with an invasion by the English of South Carolina, she sent to her neighbors what help she could in men, ammunition, and supplies of all sorts. It was the more meritorious as it was the _obolus_ of the poor! The year 1703 slowly rolled by and gave way to 1704. Still, nothing was heard from the parent country. There seemed to be an impassable barrier between the old and the new continent. The milk which flowed from the motherly breast of France could no longer reach the parched lips of her new-born infant; and famine began to pinch the colonists, who scattered themselves all along the coast, to live by fishing. They were reduced to the veriest extremity of misery, and despair had settled in every bosom, in spite of the encouragements of Bienville, who displayed the most manly fortitude amid all the trials to which he was subjected, when suddenly a vessel made its appearance. The colonists rushed to the shore with wild anxiety, but their exultation was greatly diminished when, on the nearer approach of the moving speck, they recognized the Spanish instead of the French flag. It was relief, however, coming to them, and proffered by a friendly hand. It was a return made by the governor of Pensacola for the kindness he had experienced the year previous. Thus the debt of gratitude was paid: it was a practical lesson. Where the seeds of charity are cast, there springs the harvest in time of need. Good things, like evils, do not come singly, and this succor was but the herald of another one, still more effectual, in the shape of a ship from France. Iberville had not been able to redeem his pledge to the poor colonists, but he had sent his brother Chateaugué in his place, at the imminent risk of being captured by the English, who occupied, at that time, most of the avenues of the Gulf of Mexico. He was not the man to spare either himself or his family in cases of emergency, and his heroic soul was inured to such sacrifices. Grateful the colonists were for this act of devotedness, and they resumed the occupation of their tenements which they had abandoned in search of food. The aspect of things was suddenly changed; abundance and hope reappeared in the land, whose population was increased by the arrival of seventeen persons, who came, under the guidance of Chateaugué, with the intention of making a permanent settlement, and who, in evidence of their determination, had provided themselves with all the implements of husbandry. We, who daily see hundreds flocking to our shores, and who look at the occurrence with as much unconcern as at the passing cloud, can hardly conceive the excitement produced by the arrival of these seventeen emigrants among men who, for nearly two years, had been cut off from communication with the rest of the civilized world. A denizen of the moon, dropping on this planet, would not be stared at and interrogated with more eager curiosity. This excitement had hardly subsided when it was revived by the appearance of another ship, and it became intense when the inhabitants saw a procession of twenty females, with veiled faces, proceeding arm in arm, and two by two, to the house of the Governor, who received them in state and provided them with suitable lodgings. What did it mean? Innumerable were the gossipings of the day, and part of the coming night itself was spent in endless commentaries and conjectures. But the next morning, which was Sunday, the mystery was cleared by the officiating priest reading from the pulpit, after mass, and for the general information, the following communication from the minister to Bienville: "His majesty sends twenty girls to be married to the Canadians and to the other inhabitants of Mobile, in order to consolidate the colony. All these girls are industrious and have received a pious and virtuous education. Beneficial results to the colony are expected from their teaching their useful attainments to the Indian females. In order that none should be sent except those of known virtue and of unspotted reputation, his majesty did intrust the Bishop of Québec with the mission of taking these girls from such establishments as, from their very nature and character, would put them at once above all suspicions of corruption. You will take care to settle them in life as well as may be in your power, and to marry them to such men as are capable of providing them with a commodious home." This was a very considerate recommendation, and very kind it was, indeed, from the great Louis XIV, one of the proudest monarchs that ever lived, to descend from his Olympian seat of majesty to the level of such details and to such minute instructions for ministering to the personal comforts of his remote Louisianan subjects. Many were the gibes and high was the glee on that occasion; pointed were the jokes aimed at young Bienville on his being thus transformed into a matrimonial agent and _pater familiae_. The intentions of the King, however, were faithfully executed, and more than one rough but honest Canadian boatman of the St. Lawrence and of the Mississippi closed his adventurous and erratic career and became a domestic and useful member of that little commonwealth, under the watchful influence of the dark-eyed maid of the Loire or of the Seine. Infinite are the chords of the lyre which delights the romantic muse; and these incidents, small and humble as they are, appear to me to be imbued with an indescribable charm, which appeals to her imagination. %PRUSSIA PROCLAIMED A KINGDOM% A.D. 1701 LEOPOLD VON RANKE Few historical developments are more distinctly traceable or of greater importance than that of the margravate of Brandenburg into the kingdom of Prussia, the principal state of the present German empire. As far back as the tenth century the name Preussen (Prussia) was applied to a region lying east of Brandenburg, which in that century became a German margravate. At that time the inhabitants of Prussia were still heathens. In the thirteenth century they were converted to Christianity, having first been conquered by the Teutonic Knights in "a series of remorseless wars" continued for almost fifty years. German colonization followed the conquest. In 1466 nearly the whole of Prussia was wrested from the Teutonic Knights and annexed to the Polish crown. Soon after the beginning of the Reformation the Teutonic Knights embraced Protestantism and the order became secularized. In 1525 the Knights formally surrendered to King Sigismund of Poland, their late grand master was created duke of Prussia, and this, with other former possessions of the order, was held by him as a vassal of the Polish crown. This relation continued until 1618, when the duchy of Prussia was united with Brandenburg, which had become a German electorate. During the Thirty Years' War the enlarged electorate took little part in affairs, but suffered much from the ravages of the conflict. Under the electorate of George William, who died in 1640, Brandenburg became almost a desert, and in this impoverished condition was left to his son, Frederick William, the "Great Elector," who restored it to prosperity and strengthened its somewhat insecure sovereignty over the duchy of Prussia. The Great Elector died in 1688, and was succeeded by his son, Frederick III of Brandenburg. This Elector, through the series of events narrated by Ranke, became the founder of the Prussian monarchy, and is known in history as Frederick I. He founded the Academy of Sciences in Berlin and the University of Halle. * * * * * Frederick I, the next heir and successor to the "Great Elector," though far inferior to his father in native energy of character, cannot be accused of having flinched from the task imposed on him. Above all, the warlike fame of the Brandenburg troops suffered no diminution under his reign. His army took a very prominent and active part in the most important events of that period. Prince William of Orange might, perhaps, have hesitated whether to try the adventure which made him king of England, had not the Dutch troops, which he was forced to withdraw from the Netherlands for his expedition, been replaced by some from Brandenburg. The fact has indeed been disputed, but on closer investigation its truth has been established, beyond doubt, that many other Brandenburg soldiers in his service and that of his republic followed him to England, where they contributed essentially to his success. In the war which now broke out upon the Rhine the young Elector, Frederick, took the field himself, inflamed by religious enthusiasm, patriotism, and personal ambition. On one occasion, at the siege of Bonn, when he was anxious about the result, he stepped aside to the window and prayed to God that he might suffer no disgrace in this his first enterprise. He was successful in his attack upon Bonn, and cleared the whole lower Rhine of the hostile troops; he at the same time gained a high reputation for personal courage. Long after, at the beginning of the War of the Spanish Succession, the presence of the Elector contributed in a great measure to the speedy termination of the first important siege--that of Kaiserswerth, a point from which the French threatened at once both Holland and Westphalia. But it was not only when led by the Elector that his troops distinguished themselves by their courage; they fought most bravely at the battle of Hochstadt. Prince Eugene, under whose command they stood, could scarce find words strong enough to praise the "undaunted steadfastness" with which they first withstood the shock of the enemy's attack, and then helped to break through his tremendous fire. Two years later, at Turin, they helped to settle the affairs of Italy in the same manner as they had already done in those of Germany; headed by Prince Leopold of Anhalt, they climbed over the enemy's intrenchments, under the full fire of his artillery, shouting the old Brandenburg war-cry of "_Gah to_" ("Go on"). The warlike enterprise of Brandenburg never spread over a wider field than under Frederick I. Then it was that they first met the Turks in terrible battles; they showed themselves in the South of France at the siege of Toulon; in their camp the Protestant service was performed for the first time in the territories of the pope, and the inhabitants of the surrounding country came to look on and displayed a certain satisfaction at the sight. But the Netherlands were always the scene of their greatest achievements and at that time an excellent school for their further progress in the art of war; there they might at once study sieges under the Dutch commanders, Vauban and Cochorn, and campaigns under Marlborough, one of the greatest generals of all times. Throughout all the years of his reign Frederick steadily adhered to the Great Alliance which his father had helped to form so long as that alliance continued to subsist; and, indeed, the interest which he took in the affairs of Europe at large was in the end of great advantage to himself and to his house. That very alliance was the original cause of his gaining a crown--the foundation of the Prussian monarchy. It will not be denied, even by those who think most meanly of the externals of rank and title, that the attainment of a higher step in the European hierarchy, as it then stood, was an object worth striving for. The Western principalities and republics still formed a great corporation, at the head of which was the German Emperor. Even the crown of France had to submit to manifold and wearisome negotiations in order to obtain the predicate of "majesty," which until then had belonged exclusively to the Emperor. The other sovereigns then laid claim to the same dignity as that enjoyed by the King of France, and the Venetian republic to an equal rank with those, on the score of the kingdoms which she once possessed; and, accordingly, the electoral ambassadors to Vienna had to stand bareheaded while the Venetian covered his head. The electors and reigning dukes were but ill-pleased with such precedence, and in their turn laid claim to the designation of "serenissimus," and the title of "brother," for themselves, and the style of "excellency" for their ambassadors. But even the most powerful among the electors found it difficult to advance a single step in this matter, because whatever privileges were conceded to them were immediately claimed by all the rest, many of whom were mere barons of the empire. It is evident that Brandenburg was interested in being freed at once from these negotiations, which only served to impede and embarrass all really important business. There exists the distinct assertion of a highly placed official man that the royal title had been promised to the Elector, Frederick William: his son now centred his whole ambition in its attainment. Frederick, while elector, was one of the most popular princes that ever reigned in Brandenburg. His contemporaries praise him for his avoidance of all dissipation, and his life entirely devoted to duty; while his subjects were still asleep, say they, the Prince was already busied with their affairs, for he rose very early. A poet of the time makes Phosphorus complain that he is ever anticipated by the King of Prussia. His manners were gracious, familiar, sincere, and deliberate. His conversation indicated "righteous and princely thoughts." Those essays, written by him, which we have read, exhibit a sagacious and careful treatment of the subjects under consideration. He shared in a very great degree the taste of his times for outward show and splendor; but in him it took a direction which led to something far higher than mere ostentation. The works of sculpture and architecture produced under his reign are monuments of a pure and severe taste; the capital of Prussia has seen none more beautiful. He complacently indulged in the contemplation of the greatness founded by his father, the possession of a territory four times as large as that of any other elector, and the power of bringing into the field an army which placed him on a level with kings. Now, however, he desired that this equality should be publicly recognized, especially as he had no lack of treasure and revenue wherewith to maintain the splendor and dignity of a royal crown. In the mind of the father, this ambition was combined with schemes of conquest; in the son it was merely a desire for personal and dynastic aggrandizement. It is certain that the origin of such a state as the kingdom of Prussia can be attributed to no other cause than to so remarkable a succession of so many glorious princes. Frederick was resolved to appear among them distinguished by some important service rendered to his house. "Frederick I," said he, "gained the electoral dignity for our house, and I, as Frederick III, would fain give it royal rank, according to the old saying that 'the third time makes perfect." It was in the year 1693 that he first began seriously to act upon the project of obtaining a royal crown. He had just led some troops to Crossen which were to serve the Emperor against the Turks; but the imperial ministers neither arrived in due time to receive them, nor, when at length they made their appearance, did they bring with them the grants of certain privileges and expectancies which Frederick had looked for. In disgust at being treated with neglect at the very moment in which he was rendering the Emperor a very essential service, he went to Carlsbad, where he was joined by his ambassador to Vienna, who had been commissioned by the imperial ministers to apologize for the omissions of which they had been guilty. In concert with his ambassador, and his prime minister, Dankelmann, the brother of the former, Frederick resolved to make public the wish which he had hitherto entertained in secret, or only now and then let drop into conversation; the ambassador accordingly received instruction to present a formal memorial. At that time, however, nothing could be done. The Count of Ottingen, who was hostile to the Protestant princes, was once more in favor at the court of Vienna; the peril from without had ceased to be pressing, and coalition had begun gradually to dissolve; the only result of the negotiation was a vague and general promise. The Elector did not, however, give up his idea. The elevation of the Saxon house to the throne of Poland, the prospect enjoyed by his near kindred of Hanover of succeeding to that of England, and perhaps the very difficulties and opposition which he encountered, tended to sharpen his appetite for a royal crown. The misunderstandings which arose among the great European powers out of the approaching vacancy of the throne of Spain soon afforded him an excellent opportunity of renewing his demands. The court of Vienna was not to be moved by past, but by future, services. It would be unnecessary to enter into the details of the negotiation on this subject; it suffices to say that the Prince devoted his whole energy to it, and never lost sight of any advantage afforded by his position. Suggestions of the most exaggerated kind were made to him; for instance, that he should lay his claims before the Pope, who possessed the power of granting the royal dignity in a far higher degree than the Emperor; while, on the other hand, some of the more zealous Protestants among his ministers were anxious to avoid even that degree of approach toward the Catholic element implied in a closer alliance with the Emperor, and desired that the Elector's elevation in rank should be made to depend upon some new and important acquisition of territory, such, for example, as that of Polish Prussia, which then seemed neither difficult nor improbable. Frederick, however, persisted in the opinion that he was entitled to the royal dignity merely on acccount of his sovereign dukedom of Prussia, and that the recognition of the Emperor was the most important step in the affair. He was convinced that, when the Emperor had once got possession of the Spanish inheritance, or concluded a treaty upon the subject, nothing more was to be hoped from him; but that now, while the Elector of Brandenburg was able to render him as effectual assistance as any power in Europe, some advantage might be wrung from him in return. Influenced by these considerations, he resolved to lay proposals before the Emperor, which acquired uncommon significance from the circumstances under which they were made. At that very time, in March, 1700, England, Holland, and France had just concluded a treaty for the division of the Spanish monarchy, in which the right of inheritance of Austria was utterly disregarded, in order to preserve the European balance of power. Spain and the Indies were, indeed, to fall to the share of the young Archduke Charles, but he was to be deprived of Naples, Sicily, and Milan; and should the Archduke ever become Emperor of Germany, Spain and the Indies were to be given up to another prince, whose claims were far inferior to his. This treaty was received with disgust and indignation at Vienna, where the assistance of Heaven was solemnly implored, and its interference in the affair fully expected. At this juncture Brandenburg offered to make common cause with the Emperor, not alone against France, but even against England and Holland, with whom it was otherwise closely allied. The only recompense was to be the concession of royal rank to the Elector. The principal opposition to this offer arose out of the difference of confessions. It is also quite true that the Emperor's confessor, Pater Wolf, to whom the Elector wrote with his own hand, helped to overrule it, and took part in the negotiations. But the determining cause was, without doubt, the political state of affairs. A concession which involved no loss could not surely be thought too high a price to pay for the help of the most warlike of the German powers on so important an occasion. In the month of July, 1700, at the great conference, the imperial ministers came to the resolution that the wishes of the Elector should be complied with; and as soon as the conditions could be determined, involving the closest alliance both for the war and for the affairs of the empire, the treaty was signed on November 16, 1700. On the side of Brandenburg the utmost care was taken not to admit a word which might imply anything further than the assent and concurrence of the Emperor. The Elector affected to derive from his own power alone the right of assuming the royal crown. He would, nevertheless, have encountered much ulnpleasant oppositions in other quarters but for the concurrences which, very opportunely for him, now took place in France and Spain. The last Spanish sovereign of the line of Hapsburg had died in the mean time; and on opening his will it was found to be entirely in favor of the King of France, whose grandson was appointed heir to the whole Spanish monarchy. Hereupon Louis XIV broke the treaty of partition which had recently been made under his own influence, and determined to seize the greater advantage, and to accept the inheritance. This naturally roused all the antipathies entertained by other nations against France, and England and Holland went over to the side of Austria. The opposition which these two powers had offered to the erection of a new throne was now silenced, and they beheld a common interest in the elevation of the house of Brandenburg. Frederick had, moreover, already come to an understanding with the King of Poland, though not with the Republic; so that, thus supported, and with the consent of all his old allies, he could now celebrate the splendid coronation for which his heart had so long panted. We will not describe here the ceremonial of January 18,1701; to our taste it seems overcharged when we read the account of it. But there is a certain grandeur in the idea of the sovereign's grasping the crown with his own hand; and the performance of the ceremony of anointing after, instead of before, the crowning, by two priests promoted to bishoprics for the occasion, was a protest against the dependence of the temporal on the spiritual power, such as perhaps never was made at any other coronation either before or since. The spiritual element showed itself in the only attitude of authority left to it in Protestant states: that of teaching and exhortation. The provost of Berlin demonstrated, from the examples of Christ and of David, that the government of kings must be carried on to the glory of God and the good of their people. He lays down as the first principle that all rulers should bear in mind, they have come into the world for the sake of their subjects, and not their subjects for the sake of them. Finally, he exhorts all his hearers to pray to God that he will deeply impress this conviction upon the hearts of all sovereign princes. The institution of the order of the Black Eagle, which immediately preceded the coronation, was likewise symbolical of the duties of royalty. The words "_Suum cuique_," on the insignia of the order, according to Lamberty, who suggested them, contain the definition of a good government, under which all men alike, good as well as bad, are rewarded according to their several deserts. The laurel and the lightning denote reward and punishment. The conception at least is truly royal. Leibnitz, who was at that time closely connected with the court, and who busied himself very much with this affair, justly observes that nothing is complete without a name, and that, although the Elector did already possess every royal attribute, he became truly a king only by being called so. Although the new dignity rested only on the possession of Prussia, all the other provinces were included in the rank and title; those belonging to the German empire were thus in a manner chosen out from among the other German states, and united into a new whole, though, at the same time, care was taken in other respects to keep up the ancient connection with the empire. Thus we see that the elevation of the Elector to a royal title was an important, nay, even a necessary, impulse to the progress of Prussia, which we cannot even in thought separate from the whole combination of events. The name of Prussia now became inseparable from an idea of military power and glory, which was increased by splendid feats of arms, such as those which we have already enumerated. %FOUNDING OF ST. PETERSBURG% A.D. 1703 K. WALISZEWSKI[1] [Footnote 1: Translated from the Russian by Lady Mary Loyd.] So radical and so vigorous were the changes made by Peter the Great in Russia that they roused the opposition of almost the entire nation. Moscow, the ancient capital, was the chief seat of this protesting conservatism; and Peter, resolved to teach his opponents how determined he was in his course and how helpless they were against his absolute power, formed the tremendous project of building a wholly new capital, one where no voice could be raised against him, where no traditions should environ him. He chose an icy desert plain looking out toward the waters which led to that Western Europe which he meant to imitate, if not to conquer. No other man--one is almost tempted to say, no sane man--would have ventured to erect a capital city in such an impossible place and on the very frontier of his dominions. That Peter not only dared, but succeeded, though at an almost immeasurable cost, makes the creation of the great metropolis, St. Petersburg, one of the most remarkable events of history. It was the chances of the great northern war that led Peter to St. Petersburg. When he first threw down the gauntlet to Sweden he turned his eyes on Livonia--on Narva and Riga. But Livonia was so well defended that he was driven northward, toward Ingria. He moved thither grudgingly, sending, in the first instance, Apraxin, who turned the easily conquered province into a desert. It was not for some time, and gropingly, as it were, that the young sovereign began to see his way, and finally turned his attention and his longings to the mouth of the Neva. In former years Gustavus Adolphus had realized the strategical importance of a position which his successor, Charles XII, did not deem worthy of consideration, and had himself studied all its approaches. Peter not only took it to be valuable from the military and commercial point of view: he also found it most attractive, and would fain have never left it. He was more at home there than anywhere else, and the historical legends, according to which it was true Russian ground, filled him with emotion. No one knows what inspired this fondness on his part. It may have been the vague resemblance of the marshy flats to the lowlands of Holland; it may have been the stirring of some ancestral instinct. According to a legend, accepted by Nestor, it was by the mouth of the Neva that the earliest Norman conquerors of the country passed on their journeys across the Varegian Sea--_their own sea_--and so to Rome. Peter would seem to have desired to take up the thread of that tradition, nine centuries old; and the story of his own foundation of the town has become legendary and epic. One popular description represents him as snatching a halberd from one of his soldiers, cutting two strips of turf, and laying them crosswise with the words "Here there shall be a town!" Foundation-stones were evidently lacking, and sods had to take their place. Then, dropping the halberd, he seized a spade, and began the first embankment. At that moment an eagle appeared, hovering over the Czar's head. It was struck by a shot from a musket. Peter took the wounded bird, set it on his wrist, and departed in a boat to inspect the neighborhood. This occurred on May 16, 1703. History adds that the Swedish prisoners employed on the work died in thousands. The most indispensable tools were lacking. There were no wheelbarrows, and the earth was carried in the corners of men's clothing. A wooden fort was first built on the island bearing the Finnish name of Ianni-Saari (Hare Island). This was the future citadel of St. Peter and St. Paul. Then came a wooden church, and the modest cottage which was to be Peter's first palace. Near these, the following year, there rose a Lutheran church, ultimately removed to the left bank of the river, into the Liteinaia quarter, and also a tavern, the famous inn of the Four Frigates, which did duty as a town hall for a long time before it became a place of diplomatic meeting. Then the cluster of modest buildings was augmented by the erection of a bazaar. The Czar's collaborators gathered round him, in cottages much like his own, and the existence of St. Petersburg became an accomplished fact. But, up to the time of the battle of Poltava, Peter never thought of making St. Petersburg his capital. It was enough for him to feel he had a fortress and a port. He was not sufficiently sure of his mastery over the neighboring countries, not certain enough of being able to retain his conquest, to desire to make it the centre of his government and his own permanent residence. This idea was not definitely accepted till after his great victory. His final decision has been bitterly criticised, especially by foreign historians; it has been severely judged and remorselessly condemned. Before expressing any opinion of my own on the subject, I should like to sum up the considerations which have been put forward to support this unfavorable verdict. The great victory, we are told, diminished the strategic importance of St. Petersburg, and almost entirely extinguished its value as a port; while its erection into the capital city of the empire was never anything but madness. Peter, being now the indisputable master of the Baltic shores, had nothing to fear from any Swedish attack in the Gulf of Finland. Before any attempt in that direction, the Swedes were certain to try to recover Narva or Riga. If in later years they turned their eyes to St. Petersburg, it was only because that town had acquired undue and unmerited political importance. It was easy of attack and difficult to defend. There was no possibility of concentrating any large number of troops there, for the whole country, forty leagues round, was a barren desert. In 1788 Catharine II complained that her capital was too near the Swedish frontier, and too much exposed to sudden movements, such as that which Gustavus III very nearly succeeded in carrying out. Here we have the military side of the question. From the commercial point of view St. Petersburg, we are assured, did command a valuable system of river communication; but that commanded by Riga was far superior. The Livonian, Esthonian, and Courland ports of Riga, Libau, and Revel, all at an equal distance from St. Petersburg and Moscow, and far less removed from the great German commercial centres, enjoyed a superior climate, and were, subsequent to the conquest of the above-mentioned provinces, the natural points of contact between Russia and the West. An eloquent proof of this fact may be observed nowadays in the constant increase of their commerce, and the corresponding decrease of that of St. Petersburg, which has been artificially developed and fostered. Besides this, the port of St. Petersburg, during the lifetime of its founder, never was anything but a mere project. Peter's ships were moved from Kronslot to Kronstadt. Between St. Petersburg and Kronstadt the Neva was not, in those days, more than eight feet deep, and Manstein tells us that all ships built at Petersburg had to be dragged, by means of machines fitted with cables, to Kronstadt, where they received their guns. Once these had been taken on board, the vessels could not get upstream again. The port of Kronstadt was closed by ice for six months out of the twelve, and lay in such a position that no sailing-ship could leave it unless the wind blew from the east. There was so little salt in its waters that the ship timbers rotted in a very short time, and, besides, there were no oaks in the surrounding forests, and all such timber had to be brought from Kasan. Peter was so well aware of all these drawbacks that he sought and found a more convenient spot for his shipbuilding yards at Rogerwick, in Esthonia, four leagues from Revel. But here he found difficulty in protecting the anchorage from the effects of hurricanes and from the insults of his enemies. He hoped to insure this by means of two piers, built on wooden caissons filled with stones. He thinned the forests of Livonia and Esthonia to construct it, and finally, the winds and the waves having carried everything away twice over, the work was utterly abandoned. On the other hand, and from the very outset, the commercial activity of St. Petersburg was hampered by the fact that it was the Czar's capital. The presence of the court made living dear, and the consequent expense of labor was a heavy drawback to the export trade, which, by its nature, called for a good deal of manual exertion. According to a Dutch resident of that period, a wooden cottage, very inferior to that inhabited by a peasant in the Low Countries, cost from eight hundred to one thousand florins a year at St. Petersburg. A shopkeeper at Archangel could live comfortably on a quarter of that sum. The cost of transport, which amounted to between nine and ten copecks a pood (36.07 pounds), between Moscow and Archangel, five to six between Yaroslaff and Archangel, and three or four between Vologda and Archangel, came to eighteen, twenty, and thirty copecks a pood in the case of merchandise sent from any of these places to St. Petersburg. This accounts for the opposition of the foreign merchants at Archangel to the request that they should remove to St. Petersburg. Peter settled the matter in characteristic fashion, by forbidding any trade in hemp, flax, leather, or corn to pass through Archangel. This rule, though somewhat slackened, in 1714, at the request of the States-General of Holland, remained in force during the great Czar's reign. In 1718 hemp and some other articles of commerce were allowed free entrance into the port of Archangel, but only on condition that two-thirds of all exports should be sent to St. Petersburg. This puts the case from the maritime and commercial point of view. As a capital city, St. Petersburg, we are told again, was ill-placed on the banks of the Neva, not only for the reasons already given, but for others, geographical, ethnical, and climatic, which exist even in the present day, and which make its selection an outrage on common-sense. Was it not, we are asked, a most extraordinary whim which induced a Russian to found the capital of his Slavonic empire among the Finns, against the Swedes--to centralize the administration of a huge extent of country in its remotest corner--to retire from Poland and Germany on the plea of drawing nearer to Europe, and to force everyone about him, officials, court, and diplomatic corps, to inhabit one of the most inhospitable spots, under one of the least clement skies, he could possibly have discovered? The whole place was a marsh--the Finnish word neva means "mud"; the sole inhabitants of the neighboring forests were packs of wolves. In 1714, during a winter night, two sentries, posted before the cannon-foundry, were devoured. Even nowadays, the traveller, once outside the town, plunges into a desert. Far away in every direction the great plain stretches; not a steeple, not a tree, not a head of cattle, not a sign of life, whether human or animal. There is no pasturage, no possibility of cultivation--fruit, vegetables, and even corn, are all brought from a distance. The ground is in a sort of intermediate condition between the sea and _terra firma_. Up to Catharine's reign inundations were chronic in their occurrence. On September 11, 1706, Peter drew from his pocket the measure he always carried about him, and convinced himself that there were twenty-one inches of water above the floors of his cottage. In all directions he saw men, women, and children clinging to the wreckage of buildings, which was being carried down the river. He described his impressions in a letter to Menshikoff, dated from "Paradise," and declared it was "extremely amusing." It may be doubted whether he found many persons to share his delight. Communications with the town, now rendered easy by railways, were in those days not only difficult, but dangerous. Campredon, when he went from Moscow to St. Petersburg, in April, 1723, spent twelve hundred rubles. He lost part of his luggage, eight of his horses were drowned, and after having travelled for four weeks he reached his destination, very ill. Peter himself, who arrived before the French diplomat, had been obliged to ride part of the way, and to swim his horse across the rivers! But in spite of all these considerations, the importance of which I am far from denying, I am inclined to think Peter's choice a wise one. Nobody can wonder that the idea of retaining Moscow as his capital was most repugnant to him. The existence of his work in those hostile surroundings--in a place which to this day has remained obstinately reactionary--could never have been anything but precarious and uncertain. It must, after his death at least, if not during his life, have been at the mercy of those popular insurrections before which the sovereign power, as established in the Kremlin, had already so frequently bowed. When Peter carried Muscovy out of her former existence, and beyond her ancient frontiers, he was logically forced to treat the seat of his government in the same manner. His new undertaking resembled, both in aspect and character, a marching and fighting formation, directed toward the west. The leader's place, and that of his chief residence, was naturally indicated at the head of his column. This once granted, and the principle of the translation of the capital to the western extremity of the Czar's newly acquired possessions admitted, the advantages offered by Ingria would appear to me to outweigh all the drawbacks previously referred to. The province was, at that period, virgin soil sparsely inhabited by a Finnish population possessing neither cohesion nor historical consistency, and, consequently, docile and easily assimilated. Everywhere else--all along the Baltic coast, in Esthonia, in Carelia, and in Courland--though the Swedes might be driven out, the Germans still remained firmly settled; the neighborhood of their native country and of the springs of Teutonic culture enduing them with an invincible power of resistance. Riga in the present day, after nearly two centuries of Russian government, is a thoroughly German town. In St. Petersburg, Russia, as a country, became European and cosmopolitan, but the city itself is essentially Russian, and the Finnish element in its neighborhood counts for nothing. In this matter, though Peter may not have clearly felt and thought it out, he was actuated by the mighty and unerring instinct of his genius. I am willing to admit that here, as in everything else, there was a certain amount of whim, and perhaps some childish desire to ape Amsterdam. I will even go further, and acknowledge that the manner in which he carried out his plan was anything but reasonable. Two hundred thousand laborers, we are told, died during the construction of the new city, and the Russian nobles ruined themselves to build palaces which soon fell out of occupation. But an abyss was opened between the past the reformer had doomed and the future on which he had set his heart, and the national life, thus violently forced into a new channel, was stamped, superficially at first, but more and more deeply by degrees, with the Western and European character he desired to impart. Moscow, down to the present day, has preserved a religious, almost a monastic air; at every street corner chapels attract the passers-by, and the local population, even at its busiest, crosses itself and bends as it passes before the sacred pictures which rouse its devotion at every turn. St. Petersburg, from the very earliest days, presented a different and quite a secular appearance. At Moscow no public performance of profane music was permitted. At St. Petersburg the Czar's German musicians played every day on the balcony of his tavern. Toward the middle of the eighteenth century the new city boasted a French theatre and an Italian opera, and Schloezer noted that divine service was performed in fourteen languages! Modern Russia, governed, educated to a certain extent, intellectually speaking emancipated, and relatively liberal, could not have come into existence nor grown in stature elsewhere. And to conclude: Peter was able to effect this singular change without doing too great violence to the historical traditions of his country. From the earliest days of Russian history, the capital had been removed from place to place--from Novgorod to Kiev, from Kiev to Vladimir, from Vladimir to Moscow. This phenomenon was the consequence of the immense area of the national territory, and the want of consistency in the elements of the national life. From the beginning to the end of an evolution which lasted centuries the centre of gravity of the disjointed, scattered, and floating forces of ancient Russia perpetually changed its place. Thus the creation of St. Petersburg was nothing but the working out of a problem in dynamics. The struggle with Sweden, the conquest of the Baltic provinces, and the yet more important conquest of a position in the European world naturally turned the whole current of the national energies and life in that direction. Peter desired to perpetuate this course. I am inclined to think he acted wisely. %BATTLE OF BLENHEIM% CURBING OF LOUIS XIV A.D. 1704 SIR EDWARD SHEPHERD CREASY Among the decisive battles of the world, that of Blenheim is regarded by historians as one of the most far-reaching in results. "The decisive blow struck at Blenheim," says Alison, "resounded through every part of Europe. It at once destroyed the vast fabric of power which it had taken Louis XIV so long to construct." And Creasy himself elsewhere declares: "Had it not been for Blenheim, all Europe might at this day suffer under the effect of French conquests resembling those of Alexander in extent and those of the Romans in durability." It was the first great battle in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), which was carried on mainly in Italy, the Netherlands, and Germany. This war followed closely upon the War of the Palatinate, which ended with the Treaty of Ryswick, in 1697. To this peace Louis XIV of France--the most powerful monarch in Europe, who, in spite of his brutal conduct of the war, had really been a loser by it--gave his consent. Among the concessions made by him was his recognition--much against his own interest--of William III as the rightful King of England. Louis gave his consent to the Treaty of Ryswick partly because of his interest in the question of the Spanish succession. Charles II of Spain--last of the Hapsburg line in that country--was childless, and there were three claimants for the throne; namely, Philip of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV; the Electoral Prince of Bavaria; and Charles, son of Leopold I of Germany, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. The real stake was the "balance of power" in Europe. At last, after much wrangling and intrigue among the courts, Charles II bequeathed his throne to the Bavarian Prince, whose death, in 1699, left Europe still divided over the succession. Finally, Louis XIV completely won Charles II to his side, and Philip of Anjou was named in Charles' will as his heir. Louis accepted for Philip, who was crowned at Madrid, in 1701, as Philip V, and Europe was stirred to wrath by the greed of the already too powerful French King. Turning now upon England, Louis, in violation of the Treaty of Ryswick, declared the son of the exiled James II rightful king of that country. The result of Louis' acts was the Grand Alliance of The Hague against France, formed between England, Holland, Prussia, the Holy Roman Empire, Portugal, and Savoy. On the side of the allies in the war that followed, the great generals were the English Duke of Marlborough, Prince Eugene of Savoy, and Hensius, Pensioner of Holland. France had lost her best generals by death, and Louis was compelled to rely upon inferior men as leaders of his army. War was formally declared against France by the allies May 4, 1702. The early operations were carried on in Flanders, in Germany--on the Upper Rhine--and in Northern Italy. Marlborough headed the allied troops in Flanders during the first two years of the war, and took some towns from the enemy, but nothing decisive occurred. Nor did any actions of importance take place during this period between the rival armies in Italy. But in the centre of that line from north to south, from the mouth of the Schelde to the mouth of the Po, along which the war was carried on, the generals of Louis XIV acquired advantages in 1703 which threatened one chief member of the Grand Alliance with utter destruction. France had obtained the important assistance of Bavaria as her confederate in the war. The Elector of this powerful German state made himself master of the strong fortress of Ulm, and opened a communication with the French armies on the Upper Rhine. By this junction the troops of Louis were enabled to assail the Emperor in the very heart of Germany. In the autumn of 1703 the combined armies of the Elector and French King completely defeated the Imperialists in Bavaria; and in the following winter they made themselves masters of the important cities of Augsburg and Passau. Meanwhile the French army of the Upper Rhine and Moselle had beaten the allied armies opposed to them, and taken Treves and Landau. At the same time the discontents in Hungary with Austria again broke out into open insurrection, so as to distract the attention and complete the terror of the Emperor and his council at Vienna. Louis XIV ordered the next campaign to be commenced by his troops on a scale of grandeur and with a boldness of enterprise such as even Napoleon's military schemes have seldom equalled. On the extreme left of the line of the war, in the Netherlands, the French armies were to act only on the defensive. The fortresses in the hands of the French there were so many and 30 strong that no serious impression seemed likely to be made by the allies on the French frontier in that quarter during one campaign, and that one campaign was to give France such triumphs elsewhere as would, it was hoped, determine the war. Large detachments were therefore to be made from the French force in Flanders, and they were to be led by Marshal Villeroy to the Moselle and Upper Rhine. The French army already in the neighborhood of those rivers was to march under Marshal Tallard through the Black Forest, and join the Elector of Bavaria, and the French troops that were already with the Elector under Marshal Marsin. Meanwhile the French army of Italy was to advance through the Tyrol into Austria, and the whole forces were to combine between the Danube and the Inn. A strong body of troops was to be despatched into Hungary, to assist and organize the insurgents in that kingdom; and the French grand army of the Danube was then in collected and irresistible might to march upon Vienna and dictate terms of peace to the Emperor. High military genius was shown in the formation of this plan, but it was met and baffled by a genius higher still. Marlborough had watched with the deepest anxiety the progress of the French arms on the Rhine and in Bavaria, and he saw the futility of carrying on a war of posts and sieges in Flanders, while death-blows to the empire were being dealt on the Danube. He resolved, therefore, to let the war in Flanders languish for a year, while he moved with all the disposable forces that he could collect to the central scenes of decisive operations. Such a march was in itself difficult; but Marlborough had, in the first instance, to overcome the still greater difficulty of obtaining the consent and cheerful cooperation of the allies, especially of the Dutch, whose frontier it was proposed thus to deprive of the larger part of the force which had hitherto been its protection. Fortunately, among the many slothful, the many foolish, the many timid, and the not few treacherous rulers, statesmen, and generals of different nations with whom he had to deal, there were two men, eminent both in ability and integrity, who entered fully into Marlborough's projects and who, from the stations which they occupied, were enabled materially to forward them. One of these was the Dutch statesman Heinsius, who had been the cordial supporter of King William, and who now, with equal zeal and good faith, supported Marlborough in the councils of the allies; the other was the celebrated general, Prince Eugene, whom the Austrian cabinet had recalled from the Italian frontier to take the command of one of the Emperor's armies in Germany. To these two great men, and a few more, Marlborough communicated his plan freely and unreservedly; but to the general councils of his allies he only disclosed part of his daring scheme. He proposed to the Dutch that he should march from Flanders to the Upper Rhine and Moselle with the British troops and part of the foreign auxiliaries, and commence vigorous operations against the French armies in that quarter, while General Auverquerque, with the Dutch and the remainder of the auxiliaries, maintained a defensive war in the Netherlands. Having with difficulty obtained the consent of the Dutch to this portion of his project, he exercised the same diplomatic zeal, with the same success, in urging the King of Prussia and other princes of the empire to increase the number of the troops which they supplied, and to post them in places convenient for his own intended movements. Marlborough commenced his celebrated march on May 10th. The army which he was to lead had been assembled by his brother, General Churchill, at Bedburg, not far from Maestricht, on the Meuse; it included sixteen thousand English troops, and consisted of fifty-one battalions of foot, and ninety-two squadrons of horse. Marlborough was to collect and join with him on his march the troops of Prussia, Luneburg, and Hesse, quartered on the Rhine, and eleven Dutch battalions that were stationed at Rothweil. He had only marched a single day when the series of interruptions, complaints, and requisitions from the other leaders of the allies began, to which he seemed subjected throughout his enterprise, and which would have caused its failure in the hands of anyone not gifted with the firmness and the exquisite temper of Marlborough. One specimen of these annoyances and of Marlborough's mode of dealing with them may suffice. On his encamping at Kupen on the 20th, he received an express from Auverquerque pressing him to halt, because Villeroy, who commanded the French army in Flanders, had quitted the lines which he had been occupying, and crossed the Meuse at Namur with thirty-six battalions and forty-five squadrons, and was threatening the town of Huy. At the same time Marlborough received letters from the Margrave of Baden and Count Wratislaw, who commanded the Imperialist forces at Stollhoffen, near the left bank of the Rhine, stating that Tallard had made a movement, as if intending to cross the Rhine, and urging him to hasten his march toward the lines of Stollhoffen. Marlborough was not diverted by these applications from the prosecution of his grand design. Conscious that the army of Villeroy would be too much reduced to undertake offensive operations, by the detachments which had already been made toward the Rhine, and those which must follow his own march, he halted only a day to quiet the alarms of Auverquerque. To satisfy also the Margrave, he ordered the troops of Hompesch and Buelow to draw toward Philippsburg, though with private injunctions not to proceed beyond a certain distance. He even exacted a promise to the same effect from Count Wratislaw, who at this juncture arrived at the camp to attend him during the whole campaign. Marlborough reached the Rhine at Coblenz, where he crossed that river, and then marched along its left bank to Broubach and Mainz. His march, though rapid, was admirably conducted, so as to save the troops from all unnecessary fatigue; ample supplies of provisions were ready, and the most perfect discipline was maintained. By degrees Marlborough obtained more reinforcements from the Dutch and the other confederates, and he also was left more at liberty by them to follow his own course. Indeed, before even a blow was struck, his enterprise had paralyzed the enemy and had materially relieved Austria from the pressure of the war. Villeroy, with his detachments from the French Flemish army, was completely bewildered by Marlborough's movements, and, unable to divine where it was that the English general meant to strike his blow, wasted away the early part of the summer between Flanders and the Moselle without effecting anything.[1] [Footnote 1: "Marshal Villeroy," says Voltaire, "who had wished to follow Marlborough on his first marches, suddenly lost sight of him altogether, and only learned where he really was on hearing of his victory at Donawert."] Marshal Tallard, who commanded forty-five thousand French at Strasburg, and who had been destined by Louis to march early in the year into Bavaria, thought that Marlborough's march along the Rhine was preliminary to an attack upon Alsace; and the marshal therefore kept his forty-five thousand men back in order to protect France in that quarter. Marlborough skilfully encouraged his apprehensions by causing a bridge to be constructed across the Rhine at Philippsburg, and by making the Landgrave of Hesse advance his artillery at Mannheim, as if for a siege of Landau. Meanwhile the Elector of Bavaria and Marshal Marsin, suspecting that Marlborough's design might be what it really proved to be, forbore to press upon the Austrians opposed to them or to send troops into Hungary; and they kept back so as to secure their communications with France. Thus, when Marlborough, at the beginning of June, left the Rhine and marched for the Danube, the numerous hostile armies were uncombined and unable to check him. "With such skill and science," says Coxe, "had this enterprise been concerted that at the very moment when it assumed a specific direction the enemy was no longer enabled to render it abortive. As the march was now to be bent toward the Danube, notice was given for the Prussians, Palatines, and Hessians, who were stationed on the Rhine, to order their march so as to join the main body in its progress. At the same time directions were sent to accelerate the advance of the Danish auxiliaries, who were marching from the Netherlands." Crossing the river Neckar, Marlborough marched in a southeastern direction to Mundelshene, where he had his first personal interview with Prince Eugene, who was destined to be his colleague on so many glorious fields. Thence, through a difficult and dangerous country, Marlborough continued his march against the Bavarians, whom he encountered on July 2d on the heights of the Schullenberg, near Donauwoerth. Marlborough stormed their intrenched camp, crossed the Danube, took several strong places in Bavaria, and made himself completely master of the Elector's dominions except the fortified cities of Munich and Augsburg. But the Elector's army, though defeated at Donauwoerth, was still numerous and strong; and at last Marshal Tallard, when thoroughly apprised of the real nature of Marlborough's movements, crossed the Rhine; and being suffered, through the supineness of the German general at Stollhoffen, to march without loss through the Black Forest, he united his powerful army at Biberach, near Augsburg, with that of the Elector and the French troops under Marshal Marsin, who had previously been cooperating with the Bavarians. On the other hand, Marlborough recrossed the Danube, and on August 11th united his army with the Imperialist forces under Prince Eugene. The combined armies occupied a position near Hoechstaedt,[1] a little higher up the left bank of the Danube than Donauwoerth, the scene of Marlborough's recent victory, and almost exactly on the ground where Marshal Villars and the Elector had defeated an Austrian army in the preceding year. The French marshals and the Elector were now in position a little further to the east, between Blenheim and Lützingen, and with the little stream of the Nebel between them and the troops of Marlborough and Eugene. The Gallo-Bavarian army consisted of about sixty thousand men, and they had sixty-one pieces of artillery. The army of the allies was about fifty-six thousand strong, with fifty-two guns. [Footnote 1: The Battle of Blenheim is called by the Germans and the French the battle of Hoechstaedt.--ED.] Although the French army of Italy had been unable to penetrate into Austria, and although the masterly strategy of Marlborough had hitherto warded off the destruction with which the cause of the allies seemed menaced at the beginning of the campaign, the peril was still most serious. It was absolutely necessary for Marlborough to attack the enemy before Villeroy should be roused into action. There was nothing to stop that general and his army from marching into Franconia, whence the allies drew their principal supplies; and besides thus distressing them, he might, by marching on and joining his army to those of Tallard and the Elector, form a mass which would overwhelm the force under Marlborough and Eugene. On the other hand, the chances of a battle seemed perilous, and the fatal consequences of a defeat were certain. The disadvantage of the allies in point of number was not very great, but still it was not to be disregarded; and the advantage which the enemy seemed to have in the composition of their troops was striking. Tallard and Marsin had forty-five thousand Frenchmen under them, all veterans and all trained to act together; the Elector's own troops also were good soldiers. Marlborough, like Wellington at Waterloo, headed an army of which the larger proportion consisted, not of English, but of men of many different nations and many different languages. He was also obliged to be the assailant in the action, and thus to expose his troops to comparatively heavy loss at the commencement of the battle, while the enemy would fight under the protection of the villages and lines which they were actively engaged in strengthening. The consequences of a defeat of the confederated army must have broken up the Grand Alliance, and realized the proudest hopes of the French King. Alison, in his admirable military history of the Duke of Marlborough, has truly stated the effects which would have taken place if France had been successful in the war; and when the position of the confederates at the time when Blenheim was fought is remembered--when we recollect the exhaustion of Austria, the menacing insurrection of Hungary, the feuds and jealousies of the German princes, the strength and activity of the Jacobite party in England, and the imbecility of nearly all the Dutch statesmen of the time, and the weakness of Holland if deprived of her allies--we may adopt his words in speculating on what would have ensued if France had been victorious in the battle, and "if a power, animated by the ambition, guided by the fanaticism, and directed by the ability of that of Louis XIV, had gained the ascendency in Europe. "Beyond all question, a universal despotic dominion would have been established over the bodies, a cruel spiritual thraldom over the minds, of men. France and Spain, united under Bourbon princes and in a close family alliance--the empire of Charlemagne with that of Charles V--the power which revoked the Edict of Nantes and perpetrated the massacre of St. Bartholomew, with that which banished the Moriscoes and established the Inquisition, would have proved irresistible, and, beyond example, destructive to the best interests of mankind. "The Protestants might have been driven, like the pagan heathens of old by the son of Pépin, beyond the Elbe; the Stuart race, and with them Romish ascendency, might have been reestablished in England; the fire lighted by Latimer and Ridley might have been extinguished in blood; and the energy breathed by religious freedom into the Anglo-Saxon race might have expired. The destinies of the world would have been changed. Europe, instead of a variety of independent states, whose mutual hostility kept alive courage, while their national rivalry stimulated talent, would have sunk into the slumber attendant on universal dominion. The colonial empire of England would have withered away and perished, as that of Spain has done in the grasp of the Inquisition. The Anglo-Saxon race would have been arrested in its mission to overspread the earth and subdue it. The centralized despotism of the Roman Empire would have been renewed on Continental Europe; the chains of Romish tyranny, and with them the general infidelity of France before the Revolution, would have extinguished or perverted thought in the British Islands." Marlborough's words at the council of war, when a battle was resolved on, are remarkable, and they deserve recording. We know them on the authority of his chaplain, Mr. (afterward Bishop) Hare, who accompanied him throughout the campaign, and in whose journal the biographers of Marlborough have found many of their best materials. Marlborough's words to the officers who remonstrated with him on the seeming temerity of attacking the enemy in their position were: "I know the danger, yet a battle is absolutely necessary, and I rely on the bravery and discipline of the troops, which will make amends for our disadvantages." In the evening orders were issued for a general engagement, and were received by the army with an alacrity which justified his confidence. The French and Bavarians were posted behind the little stream called the Nebel, which runs almost from north to south into the Danube immediately in front of the village of Blenheim. The Nebel flows along a little valley, and the French occupied the rising ground to the west of it. The village of Blenheim was the extreme right of their position, and the village of Luetzingen, about three miles north of Blenheim, formed their left. Beyond Luetzingen are the rugged high grounds of the Godd Berg and Eich Berg, on the skirts of which some detachments were posted, so as to secure the Gallo-Bavarian position from being turned on the left flank. The Danube secured their right flank; and it was only in front that they could be attacked. The villages of Blenheim and Luetzingen had been strongly palisaded and intrenched; Marshal Tallard, who held the chief command, took his station at Blenheim; the Elector and Marshal Marsin commanded on the left. Tallard garrisoned Blenheim with twenty-six battalions of French infantry and twelve squadrons of French cavalry. Marsin and the Elector had twenty-two battalions of infantry and thirty-six squadrons of cavalry in front of the village of Luetzingen. The centre was occupied by fourteen battalions of infantry, including the celebrated Irish brigade. These were posted in the little hamlet of Oberglau, which lies somewhat nearer to Luetzingen than to Blenheim. Eighty squadrons of cavalry and seven battalions of foot were ranged between Oberglau and Blenheim. Thus the French position was very strong at each extremity, but was comparatively weak in the centre. Tallard seems to have relied on the swampy state of the part of the valley that reaches from below Oberglau to Blenheim for preventing any serious attack on this part of his line. The army of the allies was formed into two great divisions, the largest being commanded by the Duke in person, and being destined to act against Tallard, while Prince Eugene led the other division, which consisted chiefly of cavalry, and was intended to oppose the enemy under Marsin and the Elector. As they approached the enemy, Marlborough's troops formed the left and the centre, while Eugene's formed the right of the entire army. Early in the morning of August 13th the allies left their own camp and marched toward the enemy. A thick haze covered the ground, and it was not until the allied right and centre had advanced nearly within cannon-shot of the enemy that Tallard was aware of their approach. He made his preparations with what haste he could, and about eight o'clock a heavy fire of artillery was opened from the French right on the advancing left wing of the British. Marlborough ordered up some of his batteries to reply to it, and while the columns that were to form the allied left and centre deployed, and took up their proper stations in the line, a warm cannonade was kept up by the guns on both sides. The ground which Eugene's columns Jiad to traverse was peculiarly difficult, especially for the passage of the artillery, and it was nearly mid-day before he could get his troops into line opposite to Luetzingen. During this interval Marlborough ordered divine service to be performed by the chaplains at the head of each regiment, and then rode along the lines, and found both officers and men in the highest spirits and waiting impatiently for the signal for the attack. At length an aide-de-camp galloped up from the right with the welcome news that Eugene was ready. Marlborough instantly sent Lord Cutts, with a strong brigade of infantry to assault the village of Blenheim, while he himself led the main body down the eastward slope of the valley of the Nebel, and prepared to effect the passage of the stream. The assault on Blenheim, though bravely made, was repulsed with severe loss, and Marlborough, finding how strongly that village was garrisoned, desisted from any further attempts to carry it, and bent all his energies to breaking the enemy's line between Blenheim and Oberglau. Some temporary bridges had been prepared, and planks and fascines had been collected; and by the aid of these, and a little stone bridge which crossed the Nebel near a hamlet called Unterglau, that lay in the centre of the valley, Marlborough succeeded in getting several squadrons across the Nebel, though it was divided into several branches, and the ground between them was soft, and, in places, little better than a mere marsh. But the French artillery was not idle. The cannon-balls plunged incessantly among the advancing squadrons of the allies, and bodies of French cavalry rode frequently down from the western ridge, to charge them before they had time to form on the firm ground. It was only by supporting his men by fresh troops, and by bringing up infantry, who checked the advance of the enemy's horse by their steady fire, that Marlborough was able to save his army in this quarter from a repulse, which, succeeding the failure of the attack upon Blenheim, would probably have been fatal to the allies. By degrees, his cavalry struggled over the bloodstained streams; the infantry were also now brought across, so as to keep in check the French troops who held Blenheim, and who, when no longer assailed in front, had begun to attack the allies on their left with considerable effect. Marlborough had thus at length succeeded in drawing up the whole left wing of his army beyond the Nebel, and was about to press forward with it, when he was called away to another part of the field by a disaster that had befallen his centre. The Prince of Holstein Beck had, with eleven Hanoverian battalions, passed the Nebel opposite to Oberglau, when he was charged and utterly routed by the Irish brigade which held that village. The Irish drove the Hanoverians back with heavy slaughter, broke completely through the line of the allies, and nearly achieved a success as brilliant as that which the same brigade afterward gained at Fontenoy. But at Blenheim their ardor in pursuit led them too far. Marlborough came up in person, and dashed in upon the exposed flank of the brigade with some squadrons of British cavalry. The Irish reeled back, and as they strove to regain the height of Oberglau their column was raked through and through by the fire of three battalions of the allies, which Marlborough had summoned up from the reserve. Marlborough having reestablished the order and communications of the allies in this quarter, now, as he returned to his own left wing, sent to learn how his colleague fared against Marsin and the Elector, and to inform Eugene of his own success. Eugene had hitherto not been equally fortunate. He had made three attacks on the enemy opposed to him, and had been thrice driven back. It was only by his own desperate personal exertions, and the remarkable steadiness of the regiments of Prussian infantry, which were under him, that he was able to save his wing from being totally defeated. But it was on the southern part of the battle-field, on the ground which Marlborough had won beyond the Nebel with such difficulty, that the crisis of the battle was to be decided. Like Hannibal, Marlborough relied principally on his cavalry for achieving his decisive successes, and it was by his cavalry that Blenheim, the greatest of his victories, was won. The battle had lasted till five in the afternoon. Marlborough had now eight thousand horsemen drawn up in two lines, and in the most perfect order for a general attack on the enemy's line along the space between Blenheim and Oberglau. The infantry was drawn up in battalions in their rear, so as to support them if repulsed, and to keep in check the large masses of the French that still occupied the village of Blenheim. Tallard now interlaced his squadrons of cavalry with battalions of infantry, and Marlborough, by a corresponding movement, brought several regiments of infantry and some pieces of artillery to his front line at intervals between the bodies of horse. A little after five Marlborough commenced the decisive movement, and the allied cavalry, strengthened and supported by foot and guns, advanced slowly from the lower ground near the Nebel up the slope to where the French cavalry, ten thousand strong, awaited them. On riding over the summit of the acclivity, the allies were received with so hot a fire from the French artillery and small arms that at first the cavalry recoiled, but without abandoning the high ground. The guns and the infantry which they had brought with them maintained the contest with spirit and effect. The French fire seemed to slacken. Marlborough instantly ordered a charge along the line. The allied cavalry galloped forward at the enemy's squadrons, and the hearts of the French horsemen failed them. Discharging their carbines at an idle distance, they wheeled round and spurred from the field, leaving the nine infantry battalions of their comrades to be ridden down by the torrent of the allied cavalry. The battle was now won. Tallard and Marsin, severed from each other, thought only of retreat. Tallard drew up the squadrons of horse that he had left, in a line extended toward Blenheim, and sent orders to the infantry in that village to leave it and join him without delay. But long ere his orders could be obeyed the conquering squadrons of Marlborough had wheeled to the left and thundered down on the feeble array of the French marshal. Part of the force which Tallard had drawn up for this last effort was driven into the Danube; part fled with their general to the village of Sonderheim, where they were soon surrounded by the victorious allies and compelled to surrender. Meanwhile Eugene had renewed his attack upon the Gallo-Bavarian left, and Marsin, finding his colleague utterly routed, and his own right flank uncovered, prepared to retreat. He and the Elector succeeded in withdrawing a considerable part of their troops in tolerable order to Dillingen; but the krge body of French who garrisoned Blenheim were left exposed to certain destruction. Marlborough speedily occupied all the outlets from the village with his victorious troops, and then, collecting his artillery round it, he commenced a cannonade that speedily would have destroyed Blenheim itself and all who were in it. After several gallant but unsuccessful attempts to cut their way through the allies, the French in Blenheim were at length compelled to surrender at discretion; and twenty-four battalions and twelve squadrons, with all their officers, laid down their arms and became the captives of Marlborough. "Such," says Voltaire, "was the celebrated battle which the French called the battle of Hoechstaedt, the Germans Blindheim, and the English Blenheim. The conquerors had about five thousand killed and eight thousand wounded, the greater part being on the side of Prince Eugene. The French army was almost entirely destroyed: of sixty thousand men, so long victorious, there never reassembled more than twenty thousand effective. About twelve thousand killed, fourteen thousand prisoners, all the cannon, a prodigious number of colors and standards, all the tents and equipages, the general of the army, and one thousand two hundred officers of mark in the power of the conqueror, signalized that day!" Ulm, Landau, Treves, and Traerbach surrendered to the allies before the close of the year. Bavaria submitted to the Emperor, and the Hungarians laid down their arms. Germany was completely delivered from France, and the military ascendency of the arms of the allies was completely established. Throughout the rest of the war Louis fought only in defence. Blenheim had dissipated forever his once proud visions of almost universal conquest. %UNION OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND% A.D. 1707 JOHN HILL BURTON Although not one of the longest, the reign of Queen Anne was one of the most glorious, in English history. Not only was it signalized by the victorious deeds of Marlborough in the War of the Spanish Succession, but also by the union of the two kingdoms of England and Scotland, one of the principal events in British annals. Before the union England and Scotland had no political partnership save that derived through the person of the sovereign by inheritance of both crowns. From the completion of the union in 1707 both countries have been not only under one royal head, but also represented in a single Parliament. At the beginning of Anne's reign the attitude of Scotland toward England was hostile, old antagonisms surviving in memory to intensify fresh irritations. Although William III, predecessor of Anne, had urged a union of the kingdoms, all negotiations to that end had failed. In 1703, and again in 1704, the Scottish Parliament had passed an act of security declaring in favor of the abrogation of the union of the crowns which had existed for a century. The English Parliament resorted to retaliatory measures. By this time, however, the wiser statesmen in both countries saw that open hostilities could be averted only by a complete political union of the two kingdoms, and they used all their influence to bring it about. How this great historic reconciliation was accomplished, Burton, the eminent Scottish historian and jurist, shows with equal learning and impartiality. The English statute, responding by precautions and threats to the Scots Act of Security, contained clauses for furthering an incorporating union as the only conclusive settlement of accumulating difficulties. It provided that commissioners for England appointed by the Queen under the great seal shall have power "to treat and consult" with commissioners for the same purpose "authorized by authority of the Parliament of Scotland." The statute of the Parliament of Scotland completing the adjustment, with the short title "Act for a treaty with England," authorizes such persons "as shall be nominated and appointed by her majesty under the great seal of this kingdom" to treat and consult with "the commissioners for England." The next great step was the appointment of the two commissions, thirty-one on either side. On the English were the two archbishops; for Scotland there was no clerical element. It was noticed that for England all the members not official were from the peerage, while in Scotland there seemed to be a desire to represent the peerage, the landed commoners, and the burgesses or city interest, in just proportions. At an early stage in the daily business, the English brought up a proposition about the reception of which they had considerable apprehension: that there should be "the same customs, excise, and all other taxes" throughout the United Kingdom--virtually a resolution that Scotland should be taxed on the English scale. This was easily passed by means of a solvent--due, no doubt, to the financial genius of Godolphin--that, on an accounting and proof of local or personal hardships arising from the adoption of uniformity, compensation in money should be made from the English treasury. But a more critical point was reached when, on April 24th, the chancellor of Scotland brought forward, among certain preliminary articles, one "that there be free communication, and intercourse of trade and navigation, between the two kingdoms and plantations thereunto belonging, under such regulations as in the progress of this treaty shall be found most for the advantage of both kingdoms." This was frankly accepted on the part of England, and faithfully adjusted in detail. It was felt to be a mighty sacrifice made to exercise indefinite but formidable calamities in another shape. At this point in the progress of the union all interest resting on the excitements of political victory and defeat, or the chances of a bitter war, came to an end. There were a few small incidents in Scotland; but England was placidly indifferent. She had cheerfully paid a heavy stake as loser in the great game, and it would trouble her no more. The statesmen of the two countries knew that the union must pass unless the Jacobites of Scotland were joined by an invading French army; and that was not a likely casualty while Marlborough was hovering on the frontiers of France. There was a touch of the native haughtiness in this placid indifference of England. No doubt it helped in clearing the way to the great conclusion; but for many years after the fusing of the two nations into one, disturbing events showed that it had been better had the English known something about the national institutions and the temper of the people who had now a right to call themselves their fellow-countrymen. It was expected that Scotland would be quietly absorbed into England--absorptions much more difficult in the first aspect were in continuous progress in Asia and America. The Englishman had great difficulty in reconciling himself to political and social conditions not his own, and his pride prompted him to demand that, if he left England, any part of the world honored by his presence should make an England for his reception. When expecting this on the other side of the border, he forgot that the Scot had too much of his own independence and obstinacy. True, the Scot, among the sweet uses of adversity, had imbibed more of the vagrant, and could adapt himself more easily to the usages and temper of other nations. But on the question of yielding up his own national usages and prejudices in his own country he was as obstinate as his mighty partner. There was stills world of business to be transacted in details of the unattractive kind that belong to accountants' reports. These may be objects of vital and intense interest--as in the realizing of the assets in bankruptcies, where persons immediately interested in frantic excitement hunt out the array of small figures--two, three, four, or five--that tells them whether they are safe or ruined. But the interest is not of a kind to hold its intensity through after generations. On some items of the present accounting, however, there was, in the principle adopted, a fund of personal and political interest. The heavy debts of England had to be considered--and here, as in all pecuniary arrangements, England was freehanded. The Scots made an effort to retain their African Company, but they fortunately offered the alternative of purchasing the stock from the holders. On the alternative of retention the English commissioners were resolute in refusal and resistance, but they were ready to entertain the other; and they accepted it in a literal shape. To have bought the stock at its market value would have been a farce, after the ruin that had overcome the company. But if it could not be even said that England had ruined the company, the sacrifice had been made in the prevalence of English interests, and while there was yet a hold on England it should be kept. There was no difficulty in coming to a settlement satisfactory to the Scots, and willingly offered by the English. It was substantially payment of the loss on each share, as calculated from an examination of the company's books. The adjustment of the several pecuniary claims thus created in favor of Scotland was simply the collective summation of the losses incurred by all the stockholders; and when the summation was completed the total was passed into a capital sum, called the "Equivalent." This sum total of the various items, with all their fractions, making up a fractional sum less than four hundred thousand pounds, might be otherwise described as a capital stock held by the shareholders of the old company trading to Africa and the Indies, each to the extent of his loss. Odious suspicions were, down to the present generation, propagated about an item or group of items in the Equivalent. A sum amounting to twenty thousand five hundred forty pounds seventeen shillings sevenpence had been made over by the English treasury, to be paid to influential Scotsmen as the price of their votes or influence in favor of England. Fortunately this affair was closely investigated by the celebrated committee of inquiry that brought on Marlborough's dismissal and Walpole's imprisonment. It was found that the Scots treasury had been drained; and the crisis of the union was not a suitable time either for levying money or for leaving debts--the salaries of public offices especially--unpaid. England, therefore, lent money to clear away this difficulty. The transaction was irregular, and had not passed through the proper treasury forms. It was ascertained, however, that the money so lent had been repaid. In discussions of the affair, before those concerned were fully cleared of the odium of bribery, taunting remarks had been made on the oddity and sordid specialties of the items of payment. Thus the allowance to the Lord Banff was, in sterling money, eleven pounds two shillings. It would have had a richer sound, and perhaps resolved itself into round numbers, in Scots money; but as it is, there is no more to be said against it than that, as a debt in some way due to the Lord Banff, the exact English book-keeper had entered it down to its fraction. There remained a few matters of adjustment of uniformities between the two countries for the advantage of both--such as a fixed standard for rating money in account. The Scots grumbled, rather than complained, about the English standard being always made the rule, and no reciprocity being offered. But the Scots were left considerable facilities for the use of their own customs for home purposes in pecuniary matters, and in weights and measures. If, for the general convenience of commerce and taxation, any uniformity was necessary, and the practice of the greater nation was a suitable standard for the other, it was the smaller sacrifice, and to both parties the easier arrangement, that those who were only an eighth part of the inhabitants of the island should yield to the overwhelming majority. It was in keeping with the wisdom and tolerance prevailing throughout on the English side of the treaty that it should be first discussed in the Parliament of Scotland. If this was felt as a courtesy to Scotland it was an expediency for England. All opposition would be in Scotland, and it was well to know it at once, that disputes might be cleared off and a simple affirmative or negative presented to the Parliament of Scotland. The Parliament of England has ever restrained vague oratory by a rule that there must always be a question of yes or no, fitted for a division as the text of a debate. In Scotland on this occasion, as on many others, there was at first a discussion of the general question; and when this, along with other sources of information, had given the servants of the Crown some assurance of the fate of the measure, there was a separate debate and division on the first article, understood on all hands to be a final decision. The debate was decorated by a work of oratorical art long admired in Scotland, and indeed worthy of admiration anywhere for its brilliancy and power. It was a great philippic--taking that term in its usual acceptation--as expressing a vehement torrent of bitter epigram and denunciatory climax. The speech of John Hamilton, Lord Belhaven, "On the subject-matter of a union betwixt the two kingdoms of England and Scotland," was so amply dispersed in its day that if a collector of pamphlets on the union buys them in volumes he will generally find this speech in each volume. It is, no doubt, an effort of genius; but what will confer more interest on the following specimens selected from it is that it was an attempt to rouse the nation to action at this perilous and momentous crisis, and succeeded only in drawing attention and admiration as a fine specimen of rhetorical art: "I think I see the present peers of Scotland, whose noble ancestors conquered provinces, overran countries, reduced and subjected towns and fortified places, exacted tribute through the greater part of England, now walking in the court of requests like so many English attorneys, laying aside their walking-swords when in company with the English peers, lest their self-defence should be found murder. "I think I see the royal state of boroughs walking their desolate streets, hanging down their heads under disappointments, wormed out of all the branches of their old trade, uncertain what hand to turn to, necessitate to become 'prentices to their unkind neighbors, and yet after all finding their trade so fortified by companies and secured by prescriptions that they despair of any success therein. But above all, my lord, I think I see our ancient mother, Caledonia, like Caesar, sitting in the midst of our senate, ruefully looking round her, covering herself with her royal garment, attending the fatal blow, and breathing out her last with a _'et tu quoque mi fili,'_" The great remedy for all is an end of rancorous feuds and hatreds dividing Scotland; and this calls from him a glowing picture of the land that by union and industry has made itself too powerful to be a safe partner for humiliated Scotland: "They are not under the afflicting hand of Providence as we are; their circumstances are great and glorious; their treaties are prudently managed both at home and abroad; their generals brave and valorous; their armies successful and victorious; their trophies and laurels memorable and surprising; their enemies subdued and routed. Their royal navy is the terror of Europe; their trade and commerce extended through the universe, encircling the whole world, and rendering their own capital city the emporium for the whole inhabitants of the earth." The speech was for the country, not for the House. The great points about trade and virtual independence had been conceded by England, and a union was looked to rather as a refuge and a gain than as oppression and plunder. It has even been said that there was some inclination to receive the speech with irony; and Defoe, who seems to have been present on the occasion, gives this account of what followed: "Mr. Seton, who made the first speech, stood up to answer the Lord Belhaven; but as he had already spoken, the order of the House--viz., 'that the same member could not speak twice in the same cause'--was urged against his speaking, and the Earl of Marchmont standing up at the same time, the lord chancellor gave place to him, who indeed made a short return to so long a speech, and which answer occasioned some laughter in the House. The Earl of Marchmont's speech was to this purpose, viz.: He had heard a long speech, and a very terrible one; but he was of opinion it required a short answer, which he gave in these terms: 'Behold he dreamed, but, lo! when he awoke, he found it was a dream.' This answer, some said, was as satisfactory to the members, who understood the design of that speech as if it had been answered vision by vision." In the debates on the union, some Scots statesmen found a tactic, infinitely valuable to them in the united Parliament, of voting in a group. They were called the "New party," and nicknamed the "_Squadrone volante_." In the correspondence already referred to, it was good news at St. Stephen's when it was announced that the New party had adopted the union. On the critical division the numbers stood one hundred eighteen for the article and eighty-three against it. The remainder of the clauses passed without division, a ready acceptance being given to amendments, that were virtually improvements, in giving effect to the spirit of details in the treaty; as where it was adjusted that, for trading purposes, vessels bought abroad for trade from the Scots harbors should be counted equivalent to vessels of Scottish build. There was a considerable noisy excitement through the country, the Jacobites ever striving to rouse the people in the great towns to riot and sedition, and, when they found that impossible, spreading exaggerated accounts of the effects of their efforts. A mob was raised in Edinburgh, but it was appeased without the loss of life and with no other casualty save the frightening of the provost's wife. There were some eccentric movements among the Cameronians, rendered all the more grotesque by the Jacobites taking the leadership in them; and some of the more vehement clergy betook themselves to their own special weapons in the holding of a day of humiliation and prayer. Ere the whole came to a conclusion, a point was yielded to the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. It was passed as a separate act before the Act of Union was passed--the separate act stipulating its repetition in any act adopting the Treaty of Union. It provided for the preservation of the discipline, worship, and ecclesiastical government of the establishment. It was further provided that every sovereign of the United Kingdom, on accession to the throne, should make oath in terms of this act. Hence it happens that this oath is taken immediately on the accession, the other oaths, including that for the protection of the Church of England, being postponed till the ceremony of the coronation. On October 16, 1706, there came a vote on the passing of the "Act ratifying and approving the Treaty of Union." This was carried in the Scots Parliament by one hundred ten to sixty-nine. It was the determination of the Queen's ministers for England to carry the treaty as it came from Scotland, word for word; and they employed all their strength to do so. It was the policy of the English government and their supporters in the matter of the union, to avoid a Parliamentary debate upon it clause by clause at St. Stephen's. To this end there was an endeavor to give it, as much as in the peculiar conditions could be given, the character of a treaty between two independent powers, each acting through its executive, that executive acknowledging the full power of Parliament to examine, criticise, and virtually judge the act done as a whole, but not admitting Parliamentary interference with the progress of the details. If there were an illogicality in the essence of a treaty where the executive--the Queen--was the common sovereign of both realms, the difficulty could be discarded as a pedantry, in a constitutional community where the sovereign acts through responsible advisers. Some slight touches of apprehension were felt in England when it was seen that the Scots Estates were not only voting the separate articles, but in some measure remodelling them. The Estates were taking the privilege naturally claimed by the weaker party to a bargain in protecting themselves while it was yet time. When all was adjusted, England, as the vast majority, could correct whatever had been done amiss in the preliminary adjustment of her interests, but poor Scotland would be entirely helpless. There was another reason for tolerating the alterations, in their being directed to the safety and completeness of the legal institutions left in the hands of Scotland untouched, as matters of entire indifference to England; still it weakened the hands of those who desired to evade a Parliamentary discussion on the several articles in England that this had been permitted in Scotland, and had become effective in the shape of amendments. John Johnston, who had been for some time secretary of state for Scotland--a son of the celebrated covenanting hero Archibald Johnston of Warriston--was then in London carefully looking at the signs of the times. He wrote to Scotland, saying: "You may, I think, depend on it that the alterations you have hitherto made will not break the union; but if you go on altering, it's like your alterations will be altered here, which will make a new session with you necessary, and in that case no man knows what may happen." All is well as yet (January 4th), and if there be no more serious alterations the English ministers will be able to give effect to their resolution "to pass the union here without making any alterations at all." By what had been usually called a message from the throne, the attention of Parliament was directed to the treaty as it had come from Scotland, but the matter being of supreme importance the Queen was her own messenger. From the Commons she had to ask for a supply to meet the equivalent. To both Houses she said: "You have now an opportunity before you of putting the last hand to a happy union of the two kingdoms, which I hope will be a lasting blessing to the whole island, a great addition to its wealth and power, and a firm security to the Protestant religion. The advantages that will accrue to us all from a union are so apparent that I will add no more, but that I shall look upon it as a particular happiness if this great work, which has been so often attempted without success, can be brought to perfection in my reign." The opportunity was taken to imitate the Scots in a separate preliminary act "for securing the Church of England as by law established." There was a desultory discussion in both Houses, with a result showing the overwhelming strength of the supporters of the union. In the House of Lords there were some divisions, and among these the largest number of votes mustered by the opposition was twenty-three, bringing out a majority of forty-seven by seventy votes for the ministry. The conclusion of the discussion was a vote of approval by each House. The opposition, however, did not adopt their defeat. They were preparing to fight the battle over again, clause by clause, when a bill was brought in to convert the Articles of Union into an act of Parliament. The English House of Commons has always been supremely tolerant to troublesome and even mischievous members, so long as they adhere to the forms of the House--forms to be zealously guarded, since they were framed for averting hasty legislation and the possible domination of an intolerant majority. It was determined, however, that the impracticals and impedimenters should not have their swing on this occasion, when the descent of a French army to gather to its centre the Jacobitism still lingering in the country darkened the political horizon. Both Houses had a full opportunity for discussing the merits of every word in the treaty, and the risk of national ruin was not to be encountered because they had not expended all their loquacity, having expected another opportunity. The tactic for evading the danger was credited to the ingenuity of Sir Simon Harcourt, the attorney-general. The two acts of ecclesiastical security and the articles of the treaty were all recited in the preamble of the bill under the command of the mighty "Whereas," the enacting part of the act was dropped into a single sentence, shorter than statutory sentences usually are. The opposition might throw out the measure, and the ministry with it, if they had strength to do so; but there had been sufficient discussion on the clauses, and there should be no more. In the descriptive words of Burnet: "This put those in great difficulties who had resolved to object to several articles, and to insist on demanding several alterations in them, for they could not come at any debate about them; they could not object to the recital, it being mere matter of fact; and they had not strength enough to oppose the general enacting clause; nor was it easy to come at particulars and offer provisos relating to them. The matter was carried on with such zeal that it passed through the House of Commons before those who intended to oppose it had recovered out of the surprise under which the form it was drawn in had put them." There was thus but one question, that the bill do pass, and the opposition had not reaped encouragement to resist so great an issue. The Lords had, in their usual manner of dignified repose, managed to discuss the clauses, but it was rather a conversation, to see that all was in right order, and that no accident had happened to a measure of so vital moment, than a debate. On March 6, 1707, the Queen came to the House of Lords, and in a graceful speech gave the royal assent to the act. %DOWNFALL OF CHARLES XII AT POLTAVA% TRIUMPH OF RUSSIA A.D. 1709 K. WALISZEWSKI[1] [Footnote 1: Translated from the Russian by Lady Mary Loyd.] The battle of Poltava was selected by Sir Edward Creasy as one of the fifteen great decisive contests which have altered the fate of nations. His able narrative of the battle has been superseded in scholars' eyes by the more modern work of the great Russian authority, Waliszewski; but the importance of the event remains. It reversed the positions of Sweden and Russia in European politics, and placed Russia among the great countries of the modern world; Sweden among the little ones. Before 1709 Sweden still held the rank to which Gustavus Adolphus had raised her in the Thirty Years' War. Her prestige had been a little dimmed by the victories of the "Great Elector" of Prussia; but her ally Louis XIV had saved her from any considerable diminution of the extensive territories which she held on the mainland to the south and east of the Baltic Sea. About 1700 the young and gallant warrior, Charles XII, the "Madman of the North," reasserted her prowess, made her once more the dictator of Northern Europe, one of the five great powers of the world. Meanwhile Peter the Great was progressing but slowly with his transformation of Russia. His people had little confidence in him; his armies were half-barbaric hordes. When he ventured into war against Sweden Europe conceived but one possible result: these undisciplined barbarians would be annihilated. At first the expected occurred. Again and again large Russian armies were defeated by small bodies of Swedes; but with splendid tenacity Peter persisted in the face of revolt at home and defeat abroad. "The Swedes shall teach us to beat them" was his famous saying, and at Poltava he achieved his aim. From that time forward Russia's antagonism to her leader disappeared. His people followed him eagerly along the path to power. It would appear that it was not till Peter's visit to Vienna, in 1698, that he conceived the idea of attacking Sweden. Up till that time his warlike impulse had rather been directed southward, and the Turk had been the sole object of his enmity. But at Vienna he perceived that the Emperor, whose help he had counted on, had failed him, and forthwith the mobile mind of the young Czar turned to the right-about. A war he must have of some kind, it little mattered where, to give work to his young army. The warlike instincts and the greed of his predecessors, tempted sometimes by the Black Sea, sometimes by the Baltic and the border provinces of Poland, had, indeed, always swung and turned back and forward between the south and the north. These alternate impulses, natural enough in a nation so full of youth and strength, have, since those days, been most unnecessarily idealized, erected into a doctrine, and dignified as a work of unification. It must be acknowledged that every nation has at one time or the other thus claimed the right to resume the national patrimony at the expense of neighboring peoples, and Peter, by some lucky fate, remained in this respect within certain bounds of justice, of logic, and of truth. Absorbed and almost exhausted, as he soon became, by the desperate effort demanded by his war in the North, he forgot or imperilled much that the conquering ambition of his predecessors had left him in the South and West. He clung to the territory already acquired on the Polish side, retired from the Turkish border, and claimed what he had most right, relatively speaking, to claim in the matter of resumption, on his northwestern frontier. On that frontier the coast country between the mouth of the Narva, or Narova, and that of the Siestra, watered by the Voksa, the Neva, the Igora, and the Louga, was really an integral part of the original Russian patrimony. It was one of the five districts (_piatiny_) of the Novgorod territory, and was still full of towns bearing Slavonic names, such as Korela, Ojeshek, Ladoga, Koporie, Iamy, and Ivangrod. It was not till 1616 that the Czar Michael Feodorovitch, during his struggle with Gustavus Adolphus, finally abandoned the seacoast for the sake of keeping his hold on Novgorod. But so strong was the hope of recovering the lost territory, in the hearts of his descendants, that, after the failure of an attempt on Livonia, in Alexis' reign, a boyar named Ordin-Nashtchokin set to work to build a number of warships at Kokenhausen, on the Dvina, which vessels were intended for the conquest of Riga. Peter had an impression, confused it may be, but yet powerful, of these historic traditions. This is proved by the direction in which he caused his armies to march after he had thrown down the gauntlet to Sweden. He strayed off the path, swayed, as he often was, by sudden impulses, but he always came back to the traditional aim of his forefathers--access to the sea, a Baltic port, "a window open upon Europe." His interview with Augustus II at Rawa definitely settled his wavering mind. The _pacta conventa_, signed by the King of Poland when he ascended his throne, bound him to claim from the King of Sweden the territories which had formerly belonged to the republic of Poland. For this end the help of Denmark could be reckoned on. The Treaty of Roeskilde (1658), which had been forced on Frederick III, weighed heavily on his successors, and the eager glances fixed by the neighboring states on Holstein, after the death of Christian Albert, in 1694, threatened to end in quarrel. There were fair hopes, too, of the help of Brandenburg. When Sweden made alliance with Louis XIV and Madame de Maintenon, that country abandoned its historic position in Germany to Prussia. But Sweden still kept some footing, and was looked on as a rival. Further, Augustus had a personal charm for Peter sufficient in itself to prove how much simplicity, inexperience, and boyish thoughtlessness still existed in that half-polished mind. The Polish Sovereign, tall, strong, and handsome, an adept in all physical exercises, a great hunter, a hard drinker, and an indefatigable admirer of the fair sex, in whose person debauch of every kind took royal proportions, delighted the Czar and somewhat overawed him. He was more than inclined to think him a genius, and was quite ready to bind up his fortunes with his friend's. At the end of four days of uninterrupted feasting, they had agreed on the division of the spoils of Sweden, and had made a preliminary exchange of arms and clothing. The Czar appeared at Moscow a few weeks later wearing the King of Poland's waistcoat and belted with his sword. In the beginning of 1700 Augustus and Frederick of Denmark attacked Sweden; but Peter, though bound by treaty to follow their example, neither moved nor stirred. Frederick was beaten, his very capital was threatened. So much the worse for him! Augustus seized on Dunamunde, but utterly failed before Riga. All the better for the Russians; Riga was left for them! Another envoy came hurrying to Moscow. The Czar listened coolly to his reproaches, and replied that he would act as soon as news from Constantinople permitted it. Negotiations there were proceeding satisfactorily, and he hoped shortly to fulfil his promise, and to attack the Swedes in the neighborhood of Pskof. This was a point on which the allies had laid great stress, and Peter had studiously avoided contradicting them. It was quite understood between them that the Czar was not to lay a finger on Livonia. At last on August 8, 1700, a courier arrived with the longed-for dispatch. Peace with Turkey was signed at last, and that very day the Russian troops received their marching orders. But they were not sent toward Pskof. They marched on Narva, in the very heart of the Livonian country. The army destined to lay siege to Narva consisted of three divisions of novel formation, under the orders of three generals--Golovin, Weyde, and Repnin--with 10,500 Cossacks, and some irregular troops--63,520 men in all. Repnin's division, numbering 10,834 men, and the Little Russian Cossacks, stopped on the way, so that the actual force at disposal was reduced to about 40,000 men. But Charles XII, the new King of Sweden, could not bring more than 5300 infantry and 3130 cavalry to the relief of the town. And, being obliged, when he neared Wesemburg, to throw himself in flying column across a country which was already completely devastated, and, consequently, to carry all his supplies with him, his troops arrived in presence of an enemy five times as numerous as themselves, worn out, and completely exhausted by a succession of forced marches. Peter never dreamed that he would find the King of Sweden in Livonia. He believed his hands were more than full enough elsewhere with the King of Denmark; he was quite unaware that the Peace of Travendal, which had been signed on the very day of the departure of the Russian troops, had been already forced upon his ally. He started off gayly at the head of his bombardier company, full of expectation of an easy victory. When he arrived before the town, on September 23d, he was astounded to find any preparations for serious defence. A regular siege had to be undertaken, and when, after a month of preparations, the Russian batteries at last opened fire, they made no impression whatever. The artillery was bad, and yet more badly served. A second month passed, during which Peter waited and hoped for some piece of luck, either for an offer to capitulate or for the arrival of Repnin's force. What did happen was that on the night of November 17th news came that within twenty-four hours the King of Sweden would be at Narva. That very night Peter fled from his camp, leaving the command to the Prince de Croy. None of the arguments brought forward by the sovereign and his apologists in justification of this step appears to me to hold water. The necessity pleaded for an interview with the Duke of Poland, the Czar's desire to hasten on Repnin's march, are mere pitiful excuses. Langen and Hallart, the generals sent by Augustus to observe the military operations in Livonia, gravely reported that the Czar had been obliged to go to Moscow to receive a Turkish envoy--who was not expected for four months! The Emperor's envoy, Pleyer, is nearer the mark when he says the sovereign obeyed the entreaties of his advisers, who considered the danger too great for him to be permitted to remain. And Hallart himself, speaking of these same counsellors, whether ministers or generals, does not hesitate to declare, in his rough soldierly language, that "they have about as much courage as a frog has hair on his belly." The Russian army, disconcerted by the unexpected resistance of the Swedes, ill-prepared for resistance, ill-commanded, ill-lodged, and ill-fed, was already demoralized to the last extent. The arrival of Charles caused a panic, and from that panic Peter, the most impressionable of men, was the first to suffer. The startling rapidity with which Charles had rid himself of the weakest of his three adversaries, under the very walls of Copenhagen, would have been less astonishing to Peter if the young sovereign had better realized the conditions under which he and his allies had begun a struggle in which, at first sight, their superiority appeared so disproportionate. King Frederick had reckoned without the powers which had guaranteed the recent Treaty of Altona, by which the safety of Holstein was insured; without the Hanoverian troops, and those of Luneburg, which at once brought succor to Toeningen; without the Anglo-Dutch fleet, which forced his to seek shelter under the walls of Copenhagen, and thus permitted the King of Sweden to cross the Sound unmolested, and land quietly in Zealand; and finally, he reckoned--and for this he may well be excused--without that which was soon to fill all Europe with terror and amazement: the lucky star and the military genius of Charles XII. This monarch, born in 1682, who had slain bears when he was sixteen, and at eighteen was a finished soldier, greedy for glory and battle and blood, was the last representative of that race of men who, between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, held all Central Europe in their iron grip; fierce warriors who steeped Germany and Italy in fire and blood, fought their way from town to town, and hamlet to hamlet; giving no truce and showing no mercy; who lived for war and by war; grew old and died in harness in a very atmosphere of carnage, with bodies riddled with wounds, with hands stained with abominable crimes, but with spirits calm and unflinching to the last. Standing on the threshold of the new period he was the superb and colossal incarnation of that former one, which, happily for mankind, was to disappear in his person. Count Guiscard, who as envoy from the King of France accompanied him on his first campaign, describes him thus: "The King of Sweden is of tall stature; taller than myself by almost a head; he is very handsome, he has fine eyes and a good complexion, his face is long, his speech a little thick. He wears a small wig tied behind in a bag, a plain stock, without cravat, a very tight jerkin of plain cloth, with sleeves as narrow as our waistcoat sleeves, a narrow belt above his jerkin, with a sword of extraordinary length and thickness, and almost perfectly flat-soled shoes--a very strange style of dress for a prince of his age." In order to reach Narva with his eight thousand men, Charles, after having crossed a tract of desert country, was obliged, at a place called Pyhaioggi, to cross a narrow valley divided by a stream, which, if it had been fortified, must have stopped him short. The idea occurred to Gordon, but Peter would not listen to him, and it was not till the very last moment that he sent Sheremetief, who found the Swedes just debouching into the valley, received several volleys of grape-shot and retired in disorder. The mad venture had succeeded. But Charles' farther advance involved the playing of a risky game. His men were worn out, his horses had not been fed for two whole days. Still he went on; he reached Narva, formed his Swedes into several attacking columns, led one himself, and favored by a sudden hurricane which drove showers of blinding snow into his adversaries' faces, threw himself into their camp and mastered the place in half an hour. The only resistance he met was offered by the two regiments of the guard. All the rest fled or surrendered. A few Russians were drowned in the Narva. "If the river had been frozen," said Charles discontentedly, "I do not know that we should have contrived to kill a single man." It was a total breakdown; the army had disappeared, and the artillery. The very sovereign was gone, and with him the country's honor. That had sunk out of sight amid the scornful laughter with which Europe hailed this undignified defeat. The Czar was in full flight. All Peter's plans of conquest, his dreams of European expansion and of navigating the northern seas, his hopes of glory, his faith in his civilizing mission, had utterly faded. And he himself had collapsed upon their heaped-up ruins. Onward he fled, feeling the Swedish soldiers on his heels. He wept, he sued for peace, vowing he would treat at once and submit to any sacrifice; he sent imploring appeals to the States-General of Holland, to England and to the Emperor, praying for mediation. But swiftly he recovered possession of his faculties. Then, raising his head--through the golden haze with which his insufficient education, the infatuation inherent to his semi-oriental origin, and his inexperience, had filled his eyes, through the rent of that mighty catastrophe and that cruel lesson--he saw and touched the truth at last! He realized what he must set himself to do if he was to become that which he fain would be. There must be no more playing at soldiers and sailors; no more of that farce of power and glory, in which, till now, he had been the chief actor; no more aimless adventure, undertaken in utter scorn of time and place. He must toil now in downright earnest; he must go forward, step by step; measure each day's effort, calculate each morrow's task, let each fruit ripen ere he essayed to pluck it; learn patience and dogged perseverance. He did it all. He found means within him and about him to carry out his task. The strong, long-enduring, long-suffering race of which he came endowed him with the necessary qualities, and gave him its own inexhaustible and never-changing devotion and self-sacrifice. Ten armies may be destroyed, he will bring up ten others to replace them, no matter what the price. His people will follow him and die beside him to the last man, to the last morsel of bread snatched from its starving jaws. A month hence, the fugitive from Narva will belong to a vanished, forgotten, almost improbable past; the future victor of Poltava will have taken his place. Of the Russian army, as it had originally taken the field, about twenty-three thousand men remained--a certain number of troops--the cavalry under Sheremetief's command, and Repnin's division. The Czar ordered fresh levies. He melted the church-bells into cannon. In vain the clergy raised the cry of sacrilege; he never faltered for a moment. He went hither and thither giving orders and active help; rating some, encouraging others, inspiring everyone with some of his own energy--that energy which his misfortune had spurred and strengthened. Yet, Byzantine as he was by nature, he could not resist the temptation to endeavor to mislead public opinion. Matvieief was given orders to draw up his own special description of the battle of Narva and its consequences, for the benefit of the readers of the _Gazette de Hollande_ and of the memoranda which he himself addressed to the States-General. The Swedes, according to this account, had been surrounded by a superior force within the Russian camp, and had there been forced to capitulate; after which event, certain Russian officers, who had desired to pay their respects to the King of Sweden, had been treacherously seized by his orders. Europe only laughed, but in later years this pretended capitulation, and the supposed Swedish violation of it, were to serve Peter as a pretext for violating others, to which he himself had willingly consented. At Vienna, too, Count Kaunitz listened with a smile while Prince Galitzin explained that the Czar "needed no victories to prove his military glory." Yet, when the vice-chancellor inquired what conditions the Czar hoped to obtain from his victorious adversary, the Russian diplomat calmly claimed the greater part of Livonia, with Narva, Ivangrod, Kolyvan, Koporie, and Derpt--and future events were to prove that he had not asked too much. Before long this boldness began to reap its own reward. To begin with, Charles XII made no immediate attempt to pursue his advantage on Russian soil; Peter had the joy of seeing him plunge into the depths of the Polish plains. The King of Sweden's decision, which, we are told, did not tally with his generals' opinion, has been severely criticised. Guiscard thought it perfectly justifiable, so long as the King had not rid himself of Augustus, by means of the peace which this Prince appeared more than willing to negotiate, through the mediation of Guiscard himself. But Charles turned a deaf ear to the French diplomat's prayers and remonstrances. He feared, declared Guiscard, "he might run short of enemies," and as he could not advance on Russia and leave the Saxons and Poles in his rear, he desired--and here doubtless he was right--first of all to insure his line of communication, and of possible retreat. Thus, by his own deed, he strengthened and cemented an alliance which had already been shaken by common defeat. Augustus, repulsed by the Swedish King, threw himself into Peter's arms, and in February, 1701, the common destinies of the Czar and the King of Poland were once more bound together. A fresh treaty was signed at the Castle of Birze, close to Dunaburg. The year 1701 was a hard one for Peter. The junction between the army, which he had contrived after some fashion to put on a war footing, and the Saxon troops of Augustus, only resulted in the complete defeat of the allied forces under the walls of Riga, on July 3d. In the month of June the Moscow Kremlin caught fire; the state offices (_prikaz_) with their archives, the provision-stores, and palaces, were all devoured by the flames. The bells fell from the tower of Ivan the Great, and the heaviest, which weighed over a hundred tons, was broken in the fall. But in midwinter Sheremetief contrived to surprise Schlippenbach with a superior force, and defeated him at Erestfer, December 29th. Peter's delight, and his wild manifestations of triumph, may easily be imagined. He did not content himself with exhibiting the few Swedish prisoners who had fallen into his hands at Moscow, in a sort of imitation Roman triumph; his practical mind incited him to make use of them in another way, and Cornelius von Bruyn, who had lived long enough in the country to be thoroughly acquainted with its customs, calmly reports that the price of war captives, which had originally been three or four florins a head, rose as high as twenty and thirty florins. Even foreigners now ventured to purchase them, and entered into competition in the open market. On July 18, 1702, Sheremetief won a fresh victory over Schlippenbach--30,000 Russians defeated 8000 Swedes. According to Peter's official account of the battle, 5000 of his enemies were left dead on the field, while Sheremetief lost only 400 men. This report made Europe smile, but the Livonians found it no laughing matter. Volmar and Marienburg fell into the hands of the victor, who ravaged the country in the most frightful fashion. The Russians had not as yet learned any other form of warfare, and, as we may suppose, the idea that he might ever possess these territories had not yet occurred to Peter. His mind, indeed, was absorbed elsewhere. His old fancies and whims were strong upon him, and he left Apraxin to rage on the banks of the Neva, in Ingria, on the very spot where his future capital was to stand, while he himself gave all his time and strength to the building of a few wretched ships at Archangel. It was not till September, when the ice had driven him out of the northern port, that he returned to the west and took up his former course. He reached the Lake of Ladoga, sent for Sheremetief, and the end he was to pursue for many a long year seems at last to have taken firm root in his hitherto unstable mind. He laid siege to Noteburg, where he found a garrison of only four hundred fifty men, and on December 11, 1702, he rechristened the little fortress he had captured, by a new and symbolic name, "Schluesselburg" (Key of the Sea). Next came the capture of Nienschantz, at the very mouth of the Neva, in April, 1703, a personal success for the captain of Bombardiers, Peter Mikhailoff, who there brought his batteries into play. A month later the artilleryman had become a sailor, and had won Russia's first naval victory. Two regiments of the guard manned thirty boats, surrounded two small Swedish vessels, which, in their ignorance of the capture of Nienschantz, had ventured close to the town, took possession of them, and murdered their crews. The victor's letters to his friends are full of the wildest and most childish delight, and there was, we must admit, some reason for this joy. He had reconquered the historic estuary, through which, in the ninth century, the first Varegs had passed southward, toward Grecian skies. On the 16th of the following May wooden houses began to rise on one of the neighboring islets. These houses were to multiply, to grow into palaces, and finally to be known as St. Petersburg. Peter's conquests and newly founded cities disturbed Charles XII but little. "Let him build towns; there will be all the more for us to take!" Peter and his army had so far, where Charles was concerned, had to do only with small detachments of troops, scattered apart and thus foredoomed to destruction. The Russians took advantage of this fact to pursue their successes, strengthening and intrenching themselves both in Ingria and Livonia. In July, 1704, Peter was present at the taking of Derpt. In August he had his revenge for his disaster at Narva, and carried the town after a murderous assault. Already in November, 1703, a longed-for guest had appeared in the mouth of the Neva, a foreign trading-vessel laden with brandy and salt. Menshikoff, the Governor of _Piterburg_, entertained the captain at a banquet, and presented him with five hundred florins for himself, and thirty crowns for each of his sailors. Meanwhile Charles XII tarried in Poland, where Augustus' affairs were going from bad to worse. A diet convened at Warsaw in February, 1704, proclaimed his downfall. After the disappearance of James Sobieski, whose candidature was put a stop to by an ambuscade, into which the dethroned King lured the son of the deliverer of Vienna, Charles, who was all-powerful, put forward that of Stanislaus Lesczynski. Though he gave little thought just then to Russia and to the Russian sovereign, the Czar was beginning to be alarmed as to the consequences which the Swedish King's position in Poland and in Saxony might entail on himself. Charles was sure to end by retracing his steps, and an encounter between Sheremetief and Loewenhaupt, at Hemauerthorf in Courland (July 15, 1705), clearly proved that the Russian army, unless in the case of disproportionate numerical superiority over the enemy, was not yet capable of resisting well-commanded Swedish troops. On this occasion Sheremetief lost all his infantry and was himself severely wounded. What then was Peter to do? He must work on, increase his resources, and add to his experience. If Sheremetief and his likes proved unequal to their task, he must find foreign generals and instructors, technical and other; he must keep patience, he must avoid all perilous encounters, he must negotiate, and try to obtain peace, even at the price of parting with some of the territory he had conquered. The years between 1705 and 1707 were busy ones for him. A treaty of peace among his enemies took him by surprise and found him quite unprepared. He soon made good his mistakes, took a swift decision, and adopted the course which was infallibly to bring him final victory. He evacuated Poland, retired backward, and, pushing forward the preparations which Charles' long stay in Saxony had permitted him to carry on with great activity, he resolved that the battle should be fought on his ground, and at his chosen time. He took fresh patience, he resolved to wait, to wear out his adversary, to draw back steadily and leave nothing but a void behind him. Thus he would force the enemy to advance across the desert plains he had deliberately devastated, and run the terrible risk, which had always driven back the ancient foes of his country, whether Turks, Tartars, or Poles--a winter sojourn in the heart of Russia. This was to be the final round of the great fight. The Czar, as he expressed it, was to set ten Russians against every Swede, and time and space and cold and hunger were to be his backers. Charles, the most taciturn general who ever lived, never revealed the secret inspiration which drove him to play his adversary's game, by marching afresh on Grodno. During 1707 he seemed to give the law to Europe, from his camp in Saxony. France, which had been vanquished at Blenheim and Ramillies, turned a pleading glance toward him, and the leader of the victorious allies, Marlborough himself, solicited his help. Charles may have had an idea of making Grodno his base for a spring attack on the Czar's new conquests in the North. This supposition would seem to have been the one accepted by Peter, if we may judge by the orders given, just at this time, to insure the safety of Livonia and Ingria, by completing their devastation; and these very orders may have induced the King of Sweden to abandon his original design, in favor of another, the wisdom of which is still contested by experts, but which, it cannot be denied, was of noble proportions. Charles, too, had found an ally to set against those natural ones with which Russia had furnished the Czar, and he had found him within the borders of the Czar's country. The name of this ally was Mazeppa. The stormy career of the famous hetman, so dramatic, both from the historic and domestic point of view--from that adventure with the _pan_ Falbowski, so naively related by Pasek, down to the romance with Matrena Kotchoubey, which colored the last and tragic incidents of his existence--is so well known that I will not narrate it here, even in the concisest form. Little Russia was then passing through a painful crisis--the consequence of Shmielnicki's efforts at emancipation, which had been warped and perverted by Russian intervention. The Polish lords, who formerly oppressed the country, had been replaced by the Cossacks, who not only ground down the native population, but railed at and quarrelled with their own chief. The hetmans and the irregular troops were at open war, the first striving to increase their authority and make their power hereditary, the others defending their ancient democratic constitution. The Swedish war increased Mazeppa's difficulties. He found himself taken at a disadvantage between the claims of the Czar, who would fain have his Cossacks on every battle-field in Poland, Russia, and Livonia, and the resistance of the Cossacks themselves, who desired to remain in their own country. Being himself of noble Polish birth, brought up by the Jesuits, having served King John Casimir of Poland, and sworn allegiance to the Sultan, he saw no reason for sacrificing his interests, much less his life, for Peter's benefit. The approach of Charles XII made him fear he might, like his predecessor Nalevaiko, be deserted by his own followers, and given up to the Poles. The appearance of Charles on the Russian frontier forced him to a definite resolution, and, in the spring of 1708, his emissaries appeared at Radoshkovitse, southeast of Grodno, where Charles had established his head-quarters. The King of Sweden's idea, at that decisive moment, would seem to have been to take advantage of the hetman's friendly inclination, to find his way into the heart of Russia, using the rich Southern Provinces as his base, to stir up, with Mazeppa's help, the Don Cossacks, the Astrakhan Tartars, and, it may have been, the Turks themselves, and thus attack the Muscovite power in the rear. Then Peter would have been forced back upon his last intrenchments, at Moscow or elsewhere, while General Luebecker, who was in Finland with fourteen thousand men, fell on Ingria and on St. Petersburg, and Leszcynski's Polish partisans, with General Krassow's Swedes, held Poland. It was a mighty plan, indeed, but at the very outset it was sharply checked. Mazeppa insisted on certain conditions, and these conditions Charles thought too heavy. The hetman agreed that Poland should take the Ukraine and White Russia, and that the Swedes should have the fortresses of Mglin, Starodoub, and Novgorod-Sievierski, but he himself insisted on being apportioned Polotsk, Vitebsk, and the whole of Courland, to be held in fief. Thus the negotiations were delayed. Meanwhile Charles, perceiving that he was not strong enough to make a forward movement, made up his mind to send for Loewenhaupt, who was in Livonia, and who was to bring him sixteen thousand men and various stores. But the Swedish hero had not reckoned fairly with distance and with time. Many precious days, the best of the season, fled by before his orders could be obeyed. And, for the first time, he showed signs of uncertainty and irresolution which were all too quickly communicated to those under his command. Loewenhaupt grew slower than usual. Luebecker slackened his activity, and Mazeppa began to play his double game again: prudently preparing his Cossacks to revolt, in the name of the ancient customs, national privileges, and church laws, which Peter's reforms had infringed; fortifying his own residence at Batourin, and accumulating immense stores there, but still continuing to pay court to the Czar, wearing the German dress, flattering the sovereign's despotic taste by suggesting plans which would have annihilated the last vestiges of local independence, and accepting gifts sent him by Menshikoff. And so the summer passed away. A winter campaign became inevitable, and the abyss which Peter's unerring eye had scanned began to gape. It was not till June that Charles XII left Radoshkovitse, and marched eastward to Borisov, where he crossed the Berezina. Menshikoff and Sheremetief made an attempt to stop him, on July 3d, as he was crossing a small river called the Bibitch, near Holovtchin. A night manoeuvre, and a wild bayonet charge, led by the King himself, carried him once more to victory. The town of Mohilef opened its gates to the Swedes, but there Charles was forced to stay, and lose more time yet waiting for Loewenhaupt. He marched again, early in August, in a southerly direction, and his soldiers soon found themselves in the grip of one of Peter's allies. They were driven to support themselves by gathering ears of corn, which they ground between two stones. Sickness began to thin their ranks. Their three doctors, so the fierce troopers said, were "brandy, garlic, and death"! Loewenhaupt had reached Shklof, and was separated from the invading army by two streams, the Soja and the Dnieper, between which Peter had taken up his position. The Swedish general, after having successfully passed the Dnieper, was met at Liesna, on October 9th, by a force three times as large as his own, and Peter was able, on the following day, to report a complete victory to his friends: "8500 men dead on the field, without mentioning those the Kalmucks have hunted into the forest, and 700 prisoners!" According to this reckoning, Loewenhaupt, who could not have brought more than 11,000 troops into action, should have been left without a man; as a matter of fact, he reached Charles with 6700, after a flank march which all military experts consider a marvel. But, not being able to find a bridge across the Soja, he was forced to abandon his artillery and all his baggage, and he led his starving troops into a famine-stricken camp. There was bad news, too, from Ingria, where Luebecker had also been defeated, losing all his baggage and three thousand first-class troops. Charles grew so disconcerted that he is reported to have confessed to Gyllenkrook, his quartermaster-general, that he was all at sea, and no longer had any definite plan. On October 22d he reached Mokoshin on the Desna, on the borders of the Ukraine, where he had expected to meet Mazeppa. But the old leader broke his appointment. He still desired to temporize and was loath to take any decisive resolution. He was driven to take one at last, by the Cossacks about him, who were alarmed at the idea of the Russians following the Swedes into the Ukraine. It would be far better, so they thought, to join the latter against the former. One of these Cossacks, Voinarovski, who had been sent by the hetman to Menshikoff, had returned with most terrifying news. He had overheard the German officers on the favorite's staff, speaking of Mazeppa and his followers, say: "God pity those poor wretches; to-morrow they will all be in chains!" Mazeppa, when he heard this report, "raged like a whirlwind," hurried to Batourin to give the alarm, and then crossed the Desna and joined the Swedish army. It was too late. The popular sentiment, on which both he and Charles had reckoned to promote an insurrectionary movement, confused by the tergiversations and the ambiguous actions of the hetman, had quite gone astray and lost all consistency. All Mazeppa could reckon upon was a body of two thousand faithful troops; not enough even to defend Batourin, which Menshikoff snatched from him a few days later--thus depriving the Swedish army of its last chance of revictualling. When the fortresses of Starodoub and Novgorod-Sievierski closed their gates against him, the whole of the Ukraine slipped from the grasp of the turncoat chief and his new allies. His effigy was first hung and then dragged through the streets of Glouhof in Peter's presence; another hetman, Skoropadski, was appointed in his place, and then came winter--a cruel winter, during which the very birds died of cold. By the beginning of 1709 Charles' effective strength had dwindled to nearly twenty thousand men. The Russians did not dare to attack him as yet, but they gathered round him in an ever-narrowing circle. They carried his advanced posts, they cut his lines of communication. The King of Sweden, to get himself mere elbow-room, was driven to begin his campaign in the month of January. He lost one thousand men and forty-eight officers in taking the paltry town of Wespjik (January 6th). By this time the game, in Mazeppa's view, was already lost, and he made an attempt to turn his coat again; offering to betray Charles into Peter's hands if Peter would restore him his office. The bargain was struck, but a letter from the old traitor, addressed to Leszcynski, chanced to fall into the Czar's hands, and made him draw back, in the conviction that Mazeppa was utterly unreliable. In March, the near approach of the Swedish army, then advancing on Poltava, induced the Zaporoje Cossacks to join it. But the movement was a very partial one, and Peter soon put it down, by means of a series of military executions, mercilessly carried out by Menshikoff, and of various manifestoes against the foreign heretics, "who deny the doctrines of the true religion, and spit on the picture of the Blessed Virgin." The capture of Poltava thus became the last hope of Charles and his army. If they could not seize the town, they must all die of hunger. The fortifications of the place were weak, but the besieging army was sorely changed from that which had fought under the walls of Narva. It had spent too long a time in fat quarters, in Saxony and Poland, to be fit to endure this terrible campaign. Like the Russian army at Narva, it was sapped by demoralization before it was called on to do any serious fighting. Even among the Swedish staff, and in the King's intimate circle, all confidence in his genius and his lucky star had disappeared. His best generals, Rehnskold and Gyllenkrook, his chancellor Piper, and Mazeppa himself were against any prolongation of the siege, which promised to be a long one. "If God were to send down one of his angels," he said, "to induce me to follow your advice, I would not listen to him!" An ineradicable illusion, the fruit of the too easy victories of his early career, prompted him to undervalue the forces opposed to him. He knew, and would acknowledge, nothing of that new Russia, the mighty upstanding colossus, which Peter had at last succeeded in raising up in his path. According to some authorities, Mazeppa, in his desire to replace Batourin by Poltava, as his own personal appanage, encouraged him in this fatal resolution. But it may well have been that retreat had already become impossible. It was long before Peter made up his mind to intervene; he was still distrustful of himself, desperately eager to increase his own resources, and with them his chances of victory. On his enemy's side, everything contributed to this result. By the end of June all the Swedish ammunition was exhausted, the invaders could use none of their artillery and hardly any of their fire-arms, and were reduced to fighting with cold steel. On the very eve of the decisive struggle, they were left without a leader. During a reconnaissance on the banks of the Vorskla, which ran between the hostile armies, Charles, always rash and apt to expose himself unnecessarily, was struck by a bullet. "It is only in the foot," he said, smiling, and continued his examination of the ground. But, when he returned to camp he fainted, and Peter, reckoning on the moral effect of the accident, at once resolved to cross the river. A report, as a matter of fact, ran through the Swedish camp that the King, convinced of the hopelessness of the situation, had deliberately sought death. Yet ten more days passed by, in the expectation of an attack which the Russians did not dare to make. It was Charles who took action at last, informing his generals, on June 26th (July 7th) that he would give battle on the following morning. He himself was still in a very suffering condition, and made over the command to Rehnskold, a valiant soldier but a doubtful leader, for he did not possess the army's confidence, and, according to Lundblad, "hid his lack of knowledge and strategical powers under gloomy looks and a fierce expression." After the event, as was so commonly the case with vanquished generals, he was accused of treachery. The truth would seem to be that Charles' obstinate reserve, and habit of never confiding his plans and military arrangements to any third person, had ended by gradually depriving his lieutenants of all power of independent action. In his presence they were bereft of speech and almost of ideas. All Rehnskold did was to rage and swear at everyone. Peter, meanwhile, neglected nothing likely to insure success. He even went so far as to dress the Novgorod regiment--one of his best--in the coarse cloth _(siermiaga)_ generally reserved for newly joined recruits, in the hope of thus deceiving the enemy. This stratagem, however, completely failed. In the very beginning of the battle, Rehnskold fell on the regiment, and cut it to pieces. The Russian centre was confided to Sheremetief, the right wing to General Ronne, the left to Menshikoff. Bruce commanded the artillery, and the Czar, as usual, retired modestly to the head of a single regiment. But this was a mere disguise; in real fact, he was everywhere, going hither and thither, in the forefront of the battle, and lavishing effort in every direction. A bullet passed through his hat, another is said to have struck him full on the breast. It was miraculously stopped by a golden cross, set with precious stones, given by the monks on Mount Athos to the Czar Feodor, and which his successor habitually wore. This cross, which certainly bears the mark of some projectile, is still preserved in the Ouspienski monastery, at Moscow. The heroism and sovereign contempt of death betrayed by Charles were worthy of himself. Unable to sit a horse, he caused himself to be carried on a litter, which, when it was shattered by bullets, was replaced by another made of crossed lances. But he was nothing but a living standard, useless, though sublime. The once mighty military leader had utterly disappeared. The battle was but a wild conflict, in which the glorious remnants of one of the most splendid armies that had ever been brought together; unable to use its arms, leaderless, hopeless of victory, and soon overwhelmed and crushed by superior numbers, struggled for a space, with the sole object of remaining faithful to its king. At the end of two hours Charles himself left the field of battle. He had been lifted onto the back of an old horse which his father had formerly ridden, and which was called _Brandklepper_ ("Run to the Fire"), because he was always saddled when a fire broke out in the city. This charger followed the vanquished hero into Turkey, was taken by the Turks at Bender, sent back to the King, taken again at Stralsund in 1715, returned to its owner once more, and died in 1718--the same year as his master--at the age of forty-two. Poniatowski, the father of the future King of Poland, who was following the campaign as a volunteer--Charles had refused to take any Polish troops with him on account of their want of discipline--rallied one of Colonel Horn's squadrons to escort the King, and received seventeen bullets through his leather kaftan while covering the royal retreat. Field Marshal Rehnskold, Piper the chancellor, with all his subordinates, over one hundred fifty officers, and two thousand soldiers fell into the victor's hands. The Russians' joy was so extreme that they forgot to pursue the retreating enemy. Their first impulse was to sit down and banquet. Peter invited the more important prisoners to his own table, and toasted the health of his "masters in the art of war." The Swedes, who still numbered thirteen thousand men, had time to pause for a moment in their own camp, where Charles summoned Loewenhaupt, and, for the first time in his life, was heard to ask for advice--"What was to be done?" The general counselled him to burn all wagons, mount his infantry soldiers on the draught-horses and beat a retreat toward the Dnieper. On June 30th the Russians came up with the Swedish army at Perevolotchna, on the banks of the river, and, the soldiers refusing to fight again, Loewenhaupt capitulated; but the King had time to cross to the other side. Two boats lashed together carried his carriage, a few officers, and the war-chests which he had filled in Saxony. Mazeppa contrived to find a boat for himself, and loaded it with two barrels of gold. At Kiev, whither Peter proceeded from Poltava, a solemn thanksgiving was offered up in the church of St. Sophia, and a Little Russia monk, Feofan Prokopovitch, celebrated the recent victory in a fine flight of eloquence: "When our neighbors hear of what has happened, they will say it was not into a foreign country that the Swedish army and the Swedish power ventured, but rather into some mighty sea! They have fallen in and disappeared, even as lead is swallowed up in water!" The Sweden of Gustavus Adolphus had indeed disappeared. Charles XII was ere long to be a mere knight-errant at Bender. The Cossack independence, too, was a thing of the past. Its last and all too untrustworthy representative was to die in Turkey before many months were out--of despair, according to Russian testimony--of poison voluntarily swallowed, according to Swedish historians. The poison story has a touch of likelihood about it, for Peter certainly proposed to exchange Mazeppa's person for that of the chancellor Piper. The cause of the Leszcynski, too, was dead. It was to be put forward again by France, but for the benefit of France alone; and with the Leszcynski cause, Poland itself had passed away and lay a lifeless corpse on which the vultures were soon to settle. Out of all these ruins rose the Russian power, its northern hegemony, and its new European position, which henceforth were daily to increase and reach immense, immoderate proportions. Europe played a special part in the festivities which graced the return of the victors to Moscow, a few months later. European ideas, traditions, and forms appeared in the triumphal procession, and served as trappings for the trophies of victory. Peter, playing the part of Hercules, and conquering a Swedish Juno, in a _cortège_ in which Mars figured, attended by furies and by fauns, was a fit symbol of the alliance of Russia with the Graeco-Latin civilization of the West. Old Muscovy--Eastern and Asiatic--was numbered with the dead. %CAPTURE OF PORT ROYAL[1]% FRANCE SURRENDERS NOVA SCOTIA TO ENGLAND A.D. 1710 DUNCAN CAMPBELL [Footnote 1: From Duncan Campbell's _History of Canada_.] Each time that England and France quarrelled in Europe their colonies became engaged in strife. In 1690, when William III fought Louis XIV the able Governor of Canada, Frontenac, despatched his Indian allies to ravage New England, while with rare military skill he defended himself and his province. He could not, however, prevent the capture of Port Royal (now Annapolis) in Nova Scotia. This great fortress, the pride of Louis XIV, was attacked by the New England colonists under Sir William Phips, the Governor of Massachusetts, and was captured by a most dashing attack. When England and France made peace, Port Royal was restored to the French, much to the dissatisfaction of the English colonists, who saw clearly that as soon as another war arose they would have to make the assault again. During the era of Queen Anne's War (1702-1713) French and Indian forays and incursions were frequent on the borders of Acadia and New England. Britain, meanwhile, was desirous of limiting the growth of France in the New World, and, with the provocation that had been given the New England colonies by the murderous raids of the French and Abenaquis Indians on her towns and border settlements, the English colonists retaliated by attempting, in 1704 and 1707, to recapture Acadia. They finally succeeded in 1710 under General Nicholson. The story of this expedition will be found appended in Campbell's narrative, as well as the account given of the disastrous failure of Admiral Sir Hovenden Walker's formidable expedition in 1711 up the St. Lawrence with the design of assaulting Québec. On the capture by the New England colonies of Port Royal, and the expulsion of its French garrison, the place became an English fortress and was renamed Annapolis Royal, in honor of Queen Anne. In perusing the history of Nova Scotia, the reader is struck with the frequency with which the country, or, in other words, the forts, passed from the French to the English, and _vice versa_. As a rule, permanent retention was not contemplated. Hence we find that when Port Royal was taken by Phips, he departed without leaving a solitary man to defend it. A few days after the expedition had left, the Chevalier de Villebon, the newly appointed French Governor, arrived, and if accompanied by the means, had a favorable opportunity of putting it once more in a state of defence and retaining it as a French stronghold. But Phips was not far off, and he therefore deemed it prudent, considering the small force at his disposal, to retire to the river St. John, where he remained for some years, destroying New England vessels and organizing schemes for the consolidation of French authority in the province. In the mean time Villebon showed his temper toward the New Englanders by building a chapel on the disputed territory, and driving their fishermen from the coast of Nova Scotia. Villebon was succeeded by Brouillan, in 1700, and not only was an enemy to the fishermen, but actually afforded protection to pirates who preyed on the trade of Massachusetts, which inspired a degree of hostility in New England that, on the accession of Queen Anne, in 1702, the declaration of war which followed was hailed in that colony with demonstrations of joy. The New Englanders had a long catalogue of grievances unredressed, hostile attacks unrevenged, and were more determined than ever to put forth their strength for the expulsion of the French from the province. In 1704 a preliminary expedition was despatched by them to the coast of Nova Scotia, consisting of a ship of forty-two and another of thirty-two guns, a number of transports and whale-boats, on board of which were upward of five hundred men, under the command of Colonel Church, whose instructions were to destroy settlements, and where dams existed to deluge the cultivated ground and make as many prisoners as possible. One detachment visited Minas, and spread desolation and ruin in that fertile region, through which Brouillan passed on his way to Annapolis, representing the people as living like true republicans, not acknowledging royal or judicial authority, and able to spare eight hundred hogsheads of wheat yearly for exportation, and as being supplied with abundance of cattle. Another detachment went to Port Royal, which they deemed it prudent not to attack. Brouillan having died in 1706, M. Subercase was appointed governor. In the spring of 1707 another expedition was sent from New England to attack Port Royal. It consisted of twenty-three transports and the province galley, convoyed by a man-of-war of fifty guns, on which were embarked two regiments of militia, under Colonels Wainwright and Hilton. The expedition arrived at the entrance to Port Royal on June 6th. A landing was soon effected; but Subercase's dispositions for resistance were so able that the English found it impossible to make any impression on the defences, and, after losing eighty men, the troops were reembarked and proceeded to Casco Bay, from which place the commanders communicated with the Governor of New England and waited orders. The failure of the expedition caused great indignation in New England, and the Governor immediately resolved to strengthen the army with a hundred recruits and to order a second attack. Accordingly the expedition again sailed for Port Royal, when Subercase was in a far more formidable position than formerly. After a siege of fifteen days, in which the English officers displayed unaccountable cowardice, the ships retired, having lost sixteen men, while the French had only three men killed and wounded. Subercase immediately proceeded to strengthen his position in anticipation of a third attack. A bomb-proof powder magazine was accordingly constructed, capable of containing sixty thousand pounds of powder, and the fort was otherwise improved. This Governor, who had formed a high estimate of the climate, soil, and general resources of the province, was one of the ablest appointed under French rule. He made urgent appeals to the French government to colonize the country on a large scale, pointing out the advantages that would follow; but all his suggestions were disregarded, and he had the mortification, notwithstanding his zeal and personal sacrifices in the service of his country, to receive less encouragement and support from the home government than any of his predecessors. In the year 1710 great preparations were made for the conquest of Canada and Nova Scotia. The New York House of Assembly sent a petition to Queen Anne, praying for such assistance as would expel the French entirely from the country. Colonel Vetch is said to have inspired this application, and to have submitted to the British government a plan of attack. Promises of liberal support are said to have been made, which, however, the government was tardy in affording. The command of the New England forces was intrusted to Francis Nicholson, who was appointed Governor of New England, under Sir Edmund Andros, in 1688, being Governor of New York in 1689, and in the following year Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia. In 1692 he was transferred to the government of Maryland, and in 1698 sent back to Virginia as Governor-in-Chief, at which time he held the rank of colonel in the army. Nicholson was an earnest advocate of a confederation of the British North American provinces for purposes of defence, to which the people of Virginia were popularly opposed. Nicholson sailed from Boston on September 18, 1710, with a fleet of about thirty-six vessels, including five transports from England, conveying a considerable force, composed of troops supplied by Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, which arrived at Port Royal on September 24th. Subercase was not in a condition to resist so formidable a force; hence we find him writing to the French minister that the garrison is dispirited, and praying for assistance in men and money. The strait to which he was reduced is indicated by the following passage: "I have had means," he says, "by my industry to borrow wherewith to subsist the garrison for these two years. I have paid what I could by selling all my movables. I will give even to my last shirt, but I fear that all my pains will prove useless if we are not succored during the month of March or early in April, supposing the enemy should let us rest this winter." But it was far from the intention of the enemy to let them rest; for three days after the despatch of the communication in which the passage quoted occurred, Nicholson sent a summons to the Governor requiring the immediate delivery of the fort, and in the event of non-compliance, expressing his resolution to reduce it by force of her majesty's arms. No reply having been sent to the summons, Nicholson prepared to land his troops, to which Subercase offered no resistance, as he could not trust the garrison beyond the walls of the fort on account of the discontent induced by the universal conviction of their inability to oppose the English, who mustered to the number of upward of three thousand, exclusive of seamen, to which force the Governor could not oppose more than three hundred fighting men. In the mean time the garrison became disorganized and many desertions took place, when the Governor, yielding to necessity, opened a communication with Nicholson with the view to capitulation. The articles were, in the circumstances, highly favorable to the garrison. They provided that the soldiers should march out with their arms and baggage, drums beating and colors flying; that they should be conveyed to Rochelle, and that the inhabitants within three miles of Port Royal should be permitted to remain on their lands, with their corn, cattle, and furniture, for two years, if so disposed, on their taking the oath of allegiance to the Queen of Great Britain. The destitute condition of the garrison was manifested by their tattered garments and absence of provisions necessary to sustain them even for a few days. In conformity with the terms of the capitulation four hundred eighty men in all were transported to Rochelle, in France. A garrison, consisting of two hundred marines and two hundred fifty New England volunteers, was left in Port Royal, under Colonel Vetch, as governor--General Nicholson returning to Boston with the fleet. The English, sensible of the disastrous consequences resulting from the policy hitherto adopted of abandoning Port Royal after having taken repeated possession of it, had now resolved to retain it permanently. The Acadians were alarmed at the indications of permanent occupancy which they witnessed, and evinced a degree of hostility which caused the Governor to adopt such measures as were calculated to convince them that they must act in virtue of their temporary allegiance to the British crown, as became faithful subjects. The restraints imposed were galling to the French, and they despatched a messenger with a letter to the Governor of Canada, referring to their general misery under British rule, and praying to be furnished with the means of leaving a country where they could not enjoy absolute freedom, but the letter contained no specific charges. In the hope of regaining the fort, and impressed with the importance in the mean time of intensifying Indian hostility to English rule, the Canadian Governor sent messengers to the French missionaries to exert their influence in that direction. The consequence was that parties sent out to cut wood were attacked, and that travelling beyond the fort was rendered dangerous. Eighty men sent from the garrison on that service were attacked by the Indians, who killed about thirty of the party, taking the rest prisoners. Vaudreuil, the Governor of Canada, had made preparations to assist in the recapture of the fort, but intelligence of a strong force being in preparation to attack Canada prevented the accomplishment of his purpose. General Nicholson, on leaving Port Royal, went to England, for the purpose of inducing the Government to adopt measures for the thorough conquest of Canada, preparations for that end being in progress in New England. His appeal was cordially responded to, and a fleet of twelve line-of-battle ships, with storeships and transports, and having eight regiments and a train of artillery on board, the whole commanded by Admiral Walker, left England on April 28, 1711, arriving in Boston, June 25th. If his formidable force, which consisted of sixty-eight vessels in all, having about six thousand fighting-men on board, left Boston on July 30th, arriving at Gaspé, August 18th, where wood and water were taken in. They sailed thence on the 20th. The pilots seem to have been incompetent, for on August 23d the ships got into difficulties in a fog, losing in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, near Egg Island, eight transports and eight hundred eighty-four men. At a council of war it was determined to abandon the enterprise, and intelligence of the resolution was sent to General Nicholson, who had left Albany with an army for the purpose of attacking Montreal, and who consequently had the mortification of being obliged to return immediately. On September 4th the fleet arrived at Spanish Bay and anchored in front of Lloyd's Cove. It is questionable if the noble harbor of Sydney has ever since presented so lively a spectacle as on this occasion. Admiral Walker was instructed if he succeeded in taking Québec, to attack Placentia, in Newfoundland, but at a council of war it was declared impracticable to make any attempt against that place, while from the condition of the stronghold it could have been easily taken. On his return Walker was the laughing-stock of the nation. Literary squibs and pamphlets were showered upon him, and his attempts at a vindication of his conduct only rendered him the more ridiculous. He stood in the estimation of the nation in precisely the same position as Sir John Cope, the commander of the force sent to attack Prince Charles Edward Stuart on his march from the north of Scotland, in 1745, to Edinburgh, who, after having held a council of war, resolved to march in the opposite direction from that in which the enemy was to be found, and whose consummate folly or cowardice in doing so is a standing national joke. The severe contests in which France and Britain were almost continually engaged required occasional breathing-time. Hence, notwithstanding the series of brilliant victories gained by Marlborough, the war had become unpopular, and the governmental policy had to be assimilated to the national will. France was equally desirous of peace, and no great difficulty was experienced in coming to terms. In the preparation of previous treaties, France had succeeded in making the cession to her of any portion of North American territory wrested from her a fundamental condition of agreement. Great Britain had hitherto shown a degree of pliability, in yielding to the desire of her great opponent, in this matter, which seems unaccountable, and certainly incompatible with British interests; but the representations of the New Englanders as to the impolicy of such procedure were so urgent and unanswerable that the Government had resolved that the period of vacillation was past, and that the exercise of firmness in the permanent retention of Nova Scotia was necessary. Hence, in the celebrated Treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, it was provided that all Nova Scotia or Acadia should be yielded and made over to the Queen of Great Britain and to her crown forever, together with Newfoundland, France retaining possession of Cape Breton. General Nicholson, having been appointed governor of Nova Scotia in 1714, as well as commander-in-chief, Queen Anne addressed a graceful letter to him, dated June 23, 1713, in which, after alluding to her "good brother," the French King, having released from imprisonment on board his galleys such of his subjects as were detained there professing the Protestant religion, she desired to show her appreciation of his majesty's compliance with her wishes by ordering that all Frenchmen in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland who should desire to remain should be permitted to retain their property and enjoy all the privileges of British subjects; and if they chose to remove elsewhere, they were at liberty to dispose of their property by sale ere they departed. Meanwhile the Acadians, as well as the inhabitants of Newfoundland, were pressed by the French Governor of Louisburg, M. de Costabelle, to remove to Cape Breton, which the great body of the latter did. The Acadians, however, could not appreciate the advantages to be gained in removing from the fertile meadows of the Annapolis Valley to a soil which, however excellent, required much labor to render it fit for cultivation. It appears that they sent a deputation to examine the island and report as to its adaptability for agricultural purposes, for one of their missionaries, addressing M. de Costabelle, the Governor, says that from the visits made they were satisfied there were no lands in Cape Breton suitable for the immediate maintenance of their families, since there were not meadows sufficient to nourish their cattle, from which they derived their principal support. He at the same time represents the Indians--who had been also desired to remove--as being of opinion that living as they did by the chase, the island was quite insufficient for that purpose, as well as from its narrow limits, equally unfitted for the exercise of their natural freedom. But while declining to leave Nova Scotia, the Acadians expressed a firm determination to continue loyal to the King of France, affirming that they would never take the oath of allegiance to the crown of England, to the prejudice of what they owed to their King, their country, and their religion, and intimating their resolution, in the event of any attempt to make them swerve from their fidelity to France, or to interfere with the exercise of their religion, to leave the country and betake themselves to Cape Breton, then called the Ile Royale. And they there remained until 1755, at which time the English and New England colonists finally drove forth and dispersed them with hateful cruelty. %CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY EMBRACING THE PERIOD COVERED IN THIS VOLUME% A.D. 1661-1715 JOHN RUDD, LL.D. Events treated at length are here indicated in large type; the numerals following give volume and page. Separate chronologies or the various nations, and of the careers of famous persons, will be found in the INDEX VOLUME, with volume and page references showing where the several events are fully treated. A.D. %1661%. Execution of the Marquis of Argyle. Burning of the _League and Covenant_ by the hangman, in all parts of England. Episcopacy restored in Scotland. In France Louis XIV assumes personal rule; Colbert begins his ministry. See "Louis XIV ESTABLISHES ABSOLUTE MONARCHY," xii, i. %1662%. Sale of Dunkirk to the French by Charles II. Passage of a new Act of Uniformity; ejectment of nonconformist ministers from their livings, in England. A charter given the Connecticut and New Haven colonies. %1663%. Hungary overrun by the Turks under Koprili. Foundation of the French Academy of Inscriptions. The Carolinas granted by charter to Clarendon and others. %1664%. Passage of the Conventicle Act in England, directed against nonconformists or dissenters. Victory of the united forces of Germany, France, and Italy, under Montecucoli, general of Leopold I, at St. Gotthard, Hungary. Charles II grants the territory between the Connecticut and James rivers to his brother, James, Duke of York; New Amsterdam occupied and New Netherland taken by the English; New York is the name given to both province and city. James sells a portion of his domain, to which the title of "New Caesarea" was first given, afterward changed to New Jersey. See "NEW YORK TAKEN BY THE ENGLISH," xii, 19. East and West India companies formed in France; colonies planted in Cayenne, Martinique, Guadelupe, Ste. Lucia, and Canada. 1665. Continued persecution of dissenters in England by the passage of the Five-mile Act. War between England and Holland. Newton invents his methods of fluxions. Completion of the union of the Connecticut and New Haven colonies. Death of Philip IV; his son, Charles II, ascends the throne of Spain. "GREAT PLAGUE IN LONDON." See xii, 29. 1666. Great naval victory of the English over the Dutch, in the Downs. Resort to arms by the Scotch Covenanters; they are defeated. "DISCOVERY OF GRAVITATION." See xii, 51. War against England declared by France. Foundation of the Académie des Sciences, Paris. Burning of London. See "GREAT FIRE IN LONDON," xii, 45. William Penn joins the Society of Friends. 1667. Opening of the first fire-insurance office in London. Ravages up the Medway and Thames, England, by the Dutch, during negotiations for peace. Treaty of Breda; peace between England, Holland, France, Denmark. Publication of Milton's _Paradise Lost_. 1668. Triple alliance against France formed by England, Holland, and Sweden. Recognition by Spain of the independence of Portugal. Foundation of the mission of Sault Ste. Marie, by Father Marquette. Introduction of the art of dyeing into England by Brewer, who fled from Flanders before the French invaders. 1669. John Locke draws up a constitution for the government of the Carolinas. Candia surrenders to the Turks. Expedition of La Salle from the St. Lawrence to the West. Discovery of phosphorus by Brandt. 1670. A secret treaty (Dover) between Charles II of England and Louis XIV of France; Charles basely sells his allies, the Dutch, and engages himself to become a Catholic. Incorporation of the Hudson Bay Company. 1671. Leopold attempts the subjugation of the liberties of Hungary; his drastic methods include the execution of Frangepan, Nadasdy, and Zrinyi. Attempt of Colonel Blood to steal the English crown and regalia from the Tower; the King pardons and pensions him. "MORGAN, THE BUCCANEER, SACKS PANAMA." See xii, 66. Building of Greenwich Observatory. 1672. William III, Prince of Orange, has supreme power conferred on him by the Dutch. The De Witts massacred. See "STRUGGLE OF THE DUTCH AGAINST FRANCE AND ENGLAND," xii, 86. 1673. Passage in England of the Test Act, excluding dissenters and papists from all offices of government. Battle of Khotin; defeat of the Turks by John Sobieski. "DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI." See xii, 108. Occupation of New York and New Jersey by the Dutch. Joliet and Marquette make discoveries on the upper Mississippi. 1674. Peace between England and Holland; the former regains New Netherland. Occupation of Pondicherry by the French. John Sobieski elected to the Polish throne. 1675. "KING PHILIP'S WAR." See xii, 125. Battle of Fehrbellin; the Swedes, having invaded Brandenburg, are defeated by Frederick William. See "GROWTH OF PRUSSIA UNDER THE GREAT ELECTOR," xii, 138. Beginning of the building of St. Paul's, London, by Sir Christopher Wren. Leeuwenhoek discovers animalculae in various waters. 1676. Rebellion of Bacon in Virginia. Defeat of the Dutch admiral, De Ruyter, by the French, under Duquesne, off the Sicilian coast. Building of Versailles. 1677. William of Orange defeated by the French at Casel. Freiburg captured by the French. Mary, daughter of the Duke of York (James II), marries William of Orange. 1678. Invention of the Popish Plot by Titus Oates. Peace of Nimeguen between France, Spain, and Holland. First war between Russia and Turkey. Struggle of the Hungarians, under Tokolyi, against Austria. 1679. Persecution of the Covenanters in Scotland; they take up arms but are defeated by Monmouth, at Bothwell Bridge. Murder of the primate, Sharp. Passage in England of the Habeas Corpus Act. La Salle builds the Griffon on Niagara River. Peace of Nimeguen between France and the German Emperor. 1680. Beginning of the captivity of the Man with the Iron Mask. (Date uncertain.) Execution of Viscount Strafford for alleged participation in the Popish Plot. Alsace incorporated with French territory. The Whig and Tory parties first so named in England. 1681. Strasburg seized by Louis XIV. A patent by the crown granted to William Penn. See "WILLIAM PENN RECEIVES THE GRANT OF PENNSYLVANIA," xii, 153. Renewed persecution of Protestants in France. First museum of natural history in London. 1682. Attempt of Louis XIV to seize the Duchy of Luxemburg. Bossuet, in behalf of the French clergy, draws up a declaration which sets forth the liberties of the Gallican Church. Colonizing of Pennsylvania by William Penn; he founds Philadelphia; also, with other Friends, purchases East Jersey. Expedition of La Salle to the mouth of the Mississippi. See "DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI," xii, 108. Death of Czar Feodor III; his sister, Sophia, regent in the name of her brothers Ivan V, of weak intellect, and Peter I (Peter the Great). %1683%. A penny-post first established in London, by a private individual. Execution in England of Lord Russell and Algernon Sidney, for participation in the Rye House Plot. Siege of Vienna by the Turks. See "LAST TURKISH INVASION OF EUROPE," xii, 164. Attack on the Spanish Netherlands by Louis XIV. %1684%. Forfeiture of the charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company. Formation of the Holy League by Venice, Poland, Emperor Leopold I, and Pope Innocent XI against the Turks. Genoa bombarded by the French. Louis XIV forcibly occupies Luxemburg. An embassy sent from the King of Siam to France. Publication by Leibnitz of his invention of the differential calculus. (See Newton, 1665.) %1685%. Death of Charles II; his brother, James II, ascends the English throne. Insurrection of Argyle and Monmouth; they are both executed. Jeffries' Bloody Assizes. See "MONMOUTH'S REBELLION," xii, 172. Pillage of the coast of Peru by the buccaneers. "REVOCATION OF THE EDICT OF NANTES." See xii, 180. A demand made for the surrender of Connecticut's charter; it is hidden in Charter Oak. Bradford's printing-press arrives in Pennsylvania. See "ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF PRINTING," viii, i. %1686%. Attempt of James II to restore Romanism in the British domains; a camp established by him at Hounslow Heath. Revival of the Court of High Commission. League of Augsburg formed by William of Orange, by which the principal continental states unite to resist French encroachments. A bloody crusade waged by Louis XIV, and Victor Amadeus II of Savoy, against the Waldenses of Piedmont. Recovery of Buda by the Austrians from the Turks. Appointment of Sir Edmund Andros as Governor over the consolidated New England colonies. %1687%. Refusal of the University of Cambridge to admit Francis, a Benedictine monk, recommended by James II. Leopold I compels the Hungarian Diet to make the kingdom hereditary in the Hapsburg family. Battle of Mohacs; defeat of the Turks by the Duke of Lorraine. Capture of Athens by the Venetians. Appointment of Tyrconnel, a Roman Catholic, as Lord Deputy of Ireland. Publication of Newton's _Principia_. Assumption of power by Peter the Great, in Russia. 1688. Louis XIV declares war against Holland: he makes war on Germany. Capture of Philippsburg by the French. Battle of Enniskillen in Ireland. Landing in England of William of Orange, on invitation of the malcontents in that country. See "THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION," xii, 200. New York and New Jersey united with New England under Governor-General Sir Edmund Andros. 1689. William and Mary, she being daughter of the ex-king, are proclaimed King and Queen of England. Passage of the Bill of Rights. James II lands in Ireland; he unsuccessfully besieges Londonderry: battle of Newtown Butler, defeat of the Irish Catholics. Great Britain joins the League of Augsburg. Overthrow of Andros in New England. See "TYRANNY OF ANDROS IN NEW ENGLAND," xii, 241. At the instance of Louvois, his war minister, Louis XIV lays waste the Palatinate. Battle of Killiecrankie, Scotland; defeat of the government forces by the Highlanders; Claverhouse, their leader, slain. "MASSACRE OF LACHINE, CANADA." See xii, 248. "PETER THE GREAT MODERNIZES RUSSIA." See xii, 223. 1690. Battle of the Boyne. See "SIEGE OF LONDONDERRY," xii, 258. Presbyterianism reestablished in Scotland. Defence of Canada by Frontenac. James II leaves Ireland and returns to France. Destruction of Schenectady by the French and Indians. Conquest of Acadia and unsuccessful attempt on Québec by the English. John Locke publishes his _Essay Concerning the Human Understanding_. 1691. Overthrow of the Jacobites in Scotland. Battle of Salankeman; victory of Louis of Baden over the Turks. Execution in New York of Jacob Leisler. 1692. Union of the colonies of Plymouth and Massachusetts. Beginning of the witchcraft mania in New England. See "SALEM WITCHCRAFT TRIALS," xii, 268. The duchies of Hanover and Brunswick become an electorate; Ernest Augustus elector. Battle of La Hogue; the attempted French invasion of England defeated by the victory of the English and Dutch fleets. Massacre, at Glencoe, of the MacDonalds. 1693. Defeat of the English fleet, off Cape St. Vincent, by Tourville, admiral of the French fleet. Distress in France from famine and the expense of the war with England. Founding of the College of William and Mary, Virginia. Bradford's printing-press removed from Pennsylvania to New York. See "ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF PRINTING," viii, i. 1694. Attacks on the coast of France by the English. Death of Queen Mary, consort of William. Cessation of the censorship of the press in England. "ESTABLISHMENT OF THE BANK OF ENGLAND." See xii, 286. Peter the Great of Russia employs Brant, a Dutch shipwright, to build a vessel at Archangel. 1695. Peace arranged between France and Savoy. Azov captured from the Turks by Peter the Great. 1696. On the death of John Sobieski the Polish crown is purchased by Frederick Augustus, Elector of Saxony. 1697. Barcelona captured by the French. Peace of Ryswick between France, Holland, England, and Spain. Election of Francis I as King of Poland. Battle of Zenta; crushing defeat of the Turks by Leopold I. 1698. Foundation of Calcutta by the English. A Scotch colony established on the Isthmus of Darien: abandoned in 1700. Peter the Great recalled from England by a revolt of the Strelitz guards; he subdues and disbands them. Society for Propagating Christianity formed in London. Partition of Spain arranged between England, France, and the Netherlands. 1699. Iberville settles a French colony in Louisiana. See "COLONIZATION OF LOUISIANA," xii, 297. Reduction of the Turkish territories in Europe, by nearly one-half, arranged by the Peace of Carlowitz, between Turkey, Austria, Venice, and Poland. Peter the Great introduces the computation of time in Russia by the Christian era, but adheres to the old style, which still obtains in that country. 1700. Russia, Poland, and Denmark make joint war against Sweden. The army of Peter the Great overwhelmed at Narva, by Charles XII of Sweden. Foundation of the future Yale College, Connecticut. 1701. Frederick III of Brandenburg crowns himself King of Prussia. See "PRUSSIA PROCLAIMED A KINGDOM," xii, 310. Passage of the Act of Settlement in England; the Hanoverian succession founded. Beginning of the War of the Spanish Succession. Charles XII defeats the Poles and Saxons. 1702. Death of William III; Queen Anne succeeds to the throne of England. Command of the army of the States-General given to Marlborough, the English general. Battle of Vigo; naval victory of the English and Dutch over the Spaniards and French. Beginning of Queen Anne's War in America. Foundation of a French settlement on the Mobile River, Alabama. Charles XII occupies Warsaw; he defeats Augustus II at Klissow; Cracow entered by him. 1703. Methuen Treaty between England and Portugal, for facilitating commerce between those countries. Peter the Great lays the foundation of St. Petersburg. See "FOUNDING OF ST. PETERSBURG," xii, 319. Defeat of Augustus II by Charles XII at Pultusk. 1704. English conquest of Gibraltar from Spain. "BATTLE OF BLENHEIM." See xii, 327. At Boston is published the first newspaper in the American colonies of England. See "ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF PRINTING," viii, i. Sack, burning, and massacre of the inhabitants of Deerfield, Massachusetts, by French and Indians. Charles XII completes the subjugation of Poland. 1705. Failure of the French and Spaniards in an attempt to recapture Gibraltar. Invasion of Spain by the English under the Earl of Peterborough; capture of Barcelona. 1706. Battle of Ramillies; Marlborough defeats the French under Villeroi. Unsuccessful attempt of the French and Spaniards on Barcelona. Birth of Benjamin Franklin. 1707. Sanction of the Union of England and Scotland by the Scotch Parliament. See "UNION OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND," xii, 341. Charles XII subjugates Saxony; he dictates the Peace of Altranstaedt. 1708. Russia invaded by Charles XII. Battle of Oudenarde; victory of Marlborough and Prince Eugene over the Dukes of Burgundy and Venddme. 1709. Annihilation of the army of Charles XII at Poltava See "DOWNFALL OF CHARLES XII," xii, 352. Invasion of Sweden by the Danes. Recovery of Poland by Augustus II. 1710. Expulsion of the Danes from Sweden by Stenbock. Request of the Irish Parliament for union with that of Great Britain. "CAPTURE OF PORT ROYAL, CANADA." See xii, 373. 1711. After further successes in Flanders, Marlborough is removed from command; the Whig ministry falls in England. Under Walker, the English and New England forces make an unsuccessful attempt on Canada. Having taken up arms for Charles XII, the Turks nearly achieve the ruin of Peter the Great, whose army is hemmed in near the Pruth River; peace arranged, the Turks recovering Azov and other towns. %1712%. Peace conference at Utrecht. Newspapers come under the operation of the Stamp Act, in England; so many discontinue publication that it is called the "Fall of the Leaf." Second Toggenburg War between the Reformed and Catholic cantons of Switzerland. %1713%. Peace of Utrecht ending the War of the Spanish Succession. Great Britain acquires Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Gibraltar, Minorca, Hudson Bay, and the Isle of St. Kitts; with the title of king the Duke of Savoy is ceded Sicily by Spain, and by France, Savoy and Nice with certain fortified places; the King of Prussia exchanges the principality of Orange and Châlons for Spanish Gelderland, Neuchâtel, and Valengin; Spain cedes to Austria, Naples, Milan, Spanish Tuscany, and sovereignty over the Spanish Netherlands; the harbor and fortifications of Dunkirk to be destroyed. Charles I issues the Pragmatic Sanction securing succession to the female line in default of male issue. %1714%. Establishment of the Clarendon Press at Oxford, from the profits of Clarendon's _History of the Rebellion_. Death of Anne and accession in England of George (I), Elector of Hanover. Capture of Barcelona by the French and Spanish forces; the citizens deprived of their liberties. Fahrenheit invents his thermometer. %1715%. Jacobite rebellion in Britain in behalf of the Pretender. Death of Louis XIV; he is succeeded by his great-grandson, Louis XV; the Duke of Orléans regent. A Barrier Treaty made between Austria, England, and Holland; it gave the Dutch a right to garrison certain places in the Austrian Netherlands. 
19893	----	[Illustration: Murder of the favorite, Rizzio, at the feet of Mary Stuart, by her husband and associate conspirators Painting by Eug. Siberdt.] THE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS A COMPREHENSIVE AND READABLE ACCOUNT OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY, EMPHASIZING THE MORE IMPORTANT EVENTS, AND PRESENTING THESE AS COMPLETE NARRATIVES IN THE MASTER-WORDS OF THE MOST EMINENT HISTORIANS NON-SECTARIAN NON-PARTISAN NON-SECTIONAL ON THE PLAN EVOLVED FROM A CONSENSUS OF OPINIONS GATHERED FROM THE MOST DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARS OF AMERICA AND EUROPE, INCLUDING BRIEF INTRODUCTIONS BY SPECIALISTS TO CONNECT AND EXPLAIN THE CELEBRATED NARRATIVES. ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY, WITH THOROUGH INDICES, BIBLIOGRAPHIES, CHRONOLOGIES, AND COURSES OF READING EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ROSSITER JOHNSON, LL.D. ASSOCIATE EDITORS CHARLES F. HORNE, Ph.D. JOHN RUDD, LL.D. _With a staff of specialists_ _VOLUME X_ The National Alumni COPYRIGHT, 1905, By THE NATIONAL ALUMNI CONTENTS VOLUME X PAGE _An Outline Narrative of the Great Events_, xiii CHARLES F. HORNE _England Loses Her Last French Territory (A.D. 1558) Battle of St. Quentin_, 1 CHARLES KNIGHT _Reign of Elizabeth (A.D. 1558-1603)_, 8 HENRY R. CLEVELAND _John Knox Heads the Scottish Reformers (A.D. 1558)_, 21 P. HUME BROWN THOMAS CARLYLE _Mary Stuart: Her Reign and Execution (A.D. 1561-1587)_, 51 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE _Founding of St. Augustine (A.D. 1565) Massacre of the Huguenots in America_, 70 GEORGE R. FAIRBANKS _Revolt of the Netherlands against Spain Rise of the Gueux or Beggars (A.D. 1566)_, 81 FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER _Lepanto: Destruction of the Turkish Naval Power (A.D. 1571)_, 100 SIR WILLIAM STIRLING-MAXWELL _Massacre of St. Bartholomew (A.D. 1572)_, 119 HENRY WHITE ISAAC D'ISRAELI JNO. RUDD _Heroic Age of the Netherlands (A.D. 1573) Siege of Leyden_, 145 THOMAS HENRY DYER _Search for the Northwest Passage by Frobisher (A.D. 1576)_, 156 GEORGE BEST _Building of the First Theatre in England (A.D. 1576)_ 163 KARL MANTZIUS _Cossack Conquest of Siberia (A.D. 1581)_, 181 NIKOLAI M. KARAMZIN _First Colony of England Beyond Seas (A.D. 1583)_, 198 MOSES HARVEY _Assassination of William of Orange (A.D. 1584) Division of the Netherlands_, 202 JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY _Naming of Virginia: First Description of the Indians The Lost Colony (A.D. 1584)_, 211 ARTHUR BARLOW R. R. HOWISON _Drake Captures Cartagena He "Singes the King of Spain's Beard" at Cadiz (A.D. 1586-1587)_, 230 JULIAN CORBETT _Defeat of the Spanish Armada (A.D. 1588)_, 251 SIR EDWARD SHEPHERD CREASY _Henry of Navarre Accepts Catholicism He is Acknowledged King of France (A.D. 1593)_, 276 MAXIMILIEN DE BÉTHUNE, DUC DE SULLY _Culmination of Dramatic Literature in Hamlet (A.D. 1601)_, 287 JAMES O. HALLIWELL-PHILLIPPS _Downfall of Irish Liberty "Flight of the Earls" (A.D. 1603)_, 299 JUSTIN M'CARTHY _The Gunpowder Plot (A.D. 1605)_, 310 SAMUEL R. GARDINER _Cervantes' Don Quixote Reforms Literature (A.D. 1605)_, 325 HENRY EDWARD WATTS _Earliest Positive Discovery of Australia (A.D. 1606)_, 340 LOUIS BECKE WALTER JEFFERY _Settlement of Virginia (A.D. 1607) Charter under which America was Colonized_, 350 R. R. HOWISON _Founding of Quebec (A.D. 1608) Champlain Establishes French Power in Canada_, 366 H. H. MILES _Universal Chronology (A.D. 1558-1608)_, 387 JOHN RUDD LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS VOLUME X PAGE _Murder of the favorite, Rizzio, at the feet of Mary Stuart, by her husband and associate conspirators (page 56)_, Frontispiece Painting by Eug. Siberdt. _Catharine de' Medici, accompanied by her suite, issues from the gate of the Louvre the morning after the Massacre of St. Bartholomew_, 142 Painting by Ed. Debat-Ponsan. AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, CONNECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE GREAT EVENTS (AGE OF ELIZABETH AND PHILIP II) CHARLES F. HORNE Philip II succeeded his father Charles V on the throne of Spain. The vast extent of his domains, the absoluteness of his authority, and, above all, the enormous wealth that poured into his coffers from the Spanish conquests in America, made him the most powerful monarch of his time, the central figure of the age. It was largely because of Philip's personal character that the great religious struggle of the Reformation entered upon a new phase, became far more sinister, more black and deadly, extended over all Europe, and bathed the civilized world in blood. England stood forth as the centre of opposition against Philip, and under the unwilling leadership of Elizabeth entered on its epic period of heroism, was stimulated to that remarkable outburst of energy and intellect and power which we call the Elizabethan age. Philip, with a tenacity of purpose from which no fortune good or bad could lure him for a moment, pursued two objects throughout his reign (1555-1598), the reëstablishment of Catholicism over all Europe, and the extension so far as might be of his own personal authority. If we consider his personal ambition, we must count his reign a failure; for at his death his country had already fallen from its foremost rank in Europe and started on that process of decay which in later centuries has become so marked. If, however, we look to Philip's religious purpose, it is undeniable that during his reign Catholicism revived. Philip II, the Jesuits, the Council of Trent--these three were the powers by means of which the Roman Church beat back its foes, saved itself from what for a time had seemed a threatened extinction, and so far reëstablished its power that for over a century it appeared not improbable that Philip's purpose of reuniting Europe might be accomplished. Before the beginning of this reactionary wave, the North had become wholly Protestant. It has been estimated that nine-tenths of the people of Germany were of the new faith; half the population of France had adopted it; even in Italy protest and disbelief were widespread and active. Only in Spain did the Inquisition with firmest cruelty trample down each vestige of revolt. SPAIN AND GREAT BRITAIN The Inquisition was established in Italy, which, as we have seen, was really a Spanish possession. It was introduced into the Netherlands by Charles V (1550), but remained feebly merciful there until Philip, to whom we must at least give the credit of having been a sincere fanatic, insisted on its rigorous enforcement. Over England also Philip sought to extend his hand. There the eagerly Protestant Edward VI had died in 1553, and his Catholic sister Mary succeeded to the throne. Philip was wedded to her in 1554, even before he became King of Spain, and both he and she did their utmost to restore the kingdom to the Roman faith. So many Protestants were burned at the stake that England remembers the queen as "bloody Mary"; and so recklessly did she antagonize the spirit of her people that even her husband counselled her to a caution which she despised. He had no love for his cold, pale, embittered English wife, except as an instrument in his policy; and when he found that it was impossible for him, as her husband, to become King of England, he practically abandoned her, and returned to Spain. When his father's abdication gave him power in 1555, Philip's first active movement was against France. He sought to avenge his father's loss of Metz, and persuaded his English wife to join him in war against young Henry II. With his splendid Spanish troops Philip won a great victory at St. Quentin.[1] "Has he yet taken Paris?" cried his father eagerly when the news reached his secluded monastery. But Philip had not, he had erred from over-caution and given France time to recover. Two able generals, the great Protestant leader Coligny, and the dashing Catholic hero of Metz, Francis of Guise, held the Spaniards in check. Guise even seized Calais, and so snatched from England her last territory in France (1558). Its loss filled full the measure of poor Mary's unpopularity with her subjects and also of her own unhappiness. She had sacrificed everything for love of a husband who had no love for her. She died the same year. "They will find 'Calais,'" she said, "engraven on my heart."[2] [1] See _Battle of St. Quentin_, page 1. [2] See _England Loses Her Last French Territory_, page 1. Her Protestant sister, Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn, succeeded to the throne, and England with a cry of relief threw off the hated Spanish alliance. She was free again. Free, but in infinite danger. The Catholic Pope and Catholic Philip, remembering that the divorce under which Henry VIII married Anne Boleyn had never been admitted by the Church, declared Elizabeth illegitimate, and pointed to her cousin Mary Stuart of Scotland as the lawful ruler of England. Mary had been married to the French prince Francis II, who at this moment succeeded his father Henry II as king of France. Here was a chance indeed for Spain and France and Scotland all three to unite against Elizabeth and place a second Catholic Mary on England's throne. Many Englishmen themselves were still Catholic, and might easily have been persuaded to approve the change. That Elizabeth, by her cool and cunning diplomacy, managed to evade the threatened danger, has ever been held as little short of providential by the Protestants of the world.[3] In truth, however, each of the powers which might have assailed Elizabeth, had religious difficulties of its own to encounter. [3] See _Reign of Elizabeth_, page 8. In Scotland there was civil war. The Protestant faith had been slow of introduction there, but under the leadership of John Knox it had become at length supreme.[4] The Regent, mother of the young queen, Mary Stuart, had French troops to aid her against the reformers, but had been compelled to yield to their demands. When Queen Mary herself returned to rule Scotland after the death of her French husband, King Francis, she found her path anything but easy. A sovereign of one faith and a nation of another had not yet learned to endure each other, and there were queer doings in Scotland, wild nobles running off with the Queen, wilder fanatics lecturing at her in her own court, her French favorite assassinated, a new husband, a Scotch one, sent the same dark road, more civil war, imprisonments, romantic escapes. It ended in Mary's secret flight to England. She who had so nearly marched into the land a conqueror, entered it a fugitive supplicating Elizabeth's protection. The remainder of her life she passed in an English prison, and eighteen years later was executed on an only half-proven charge of conspiring against the rival who had kept her in such dreary durance.[5] [4] See _John Knox Heads the Scottish Reformers_, page 21. [5] See _Mary Stuart: Her Reign and Execution_, page 51. Let us not, however, judge Elizabeth too harshly. In reading only English history we are apt to do so, to fail in realizing the atmosphere that surrounded her, the spirit of the age throughout Europe. Statecraft, which had been grasping under Charles V and false under Francis I, seemed now to have adopted fully the maxims of Machiavelli, and pursued its ends by means wholly base, by subtle treacheries, secret murders and open massacre. The gloomy spirit of Philip II hung like blackest night over all the world. He hesitated at no crime which should advance his purposes. Where he might next strike, no man knew, until the blow had fallen. His dark secrecy and enormous power weighed as a nightmare upon the imaginations of men. We enter an age of plots. Elizabeth was unquestionably surrounded by them; and where so many existed, a thousand more were naturally suspected--leading on all sides to counterplots. Scotland had seen several assassinations. England guarded herself desperately against them. France, nearest to Spain's borders, suffered worst of all. Five times in succession did the chief leader of the state fall by sudden murder. In some of these crimes Philip had no part; in others he was plainly implicated. RELIGIOUS WARS OF FRANCE The early and unexpected death of Henry II of France (1559) had left the throne to one after another of his young and feeble sons. The first of these, Francis II, the husband of Mary Stuart, ruled only a year. He was completely under the control of the great Catholic family, the Guises, who began a vigorous attempt to suppress the Protestants of France, the Huguenots as they were called. But these Huguenots included many of the highest and ablest of the French nobility and did not yield easily to suppression. Francis II died, and the Queen-mother, Catherine de' Medici, became regent for her second son, Charles IX. At first Catherine feared the power of the Guises and encouraged the Huguenots; but Philip of Spain interfered here as everywhere in the Catholic behalf. A civil war broke out in 1562; and for over a generation France, divided against herself, became the theatre of repeated conflicts and savage massacres. She had no thought to give to other lands. The first of her chiefs to be assassinated was Francis of Guise, the great Catholic leader and general, shot by a Huguenot. Next the Catholics attempted the murder of Coligny. They failed at first, and Catherine de' Medici, who by this time had embraced fully the Catholic cause, planned the awful massacre of St. Bartholomew (1572). A marriage was arranged between the highest Huguenot in rank, the young prince Henry of Navarre, and a royal princess. This was supposed to mark the amicable ending of all disputes, and the chief Huguenots gathered gladly to Paris for the ceremony. Suddenly an army of assassins were let loose on them. Young Henry was spared, but Coligny and more than twenty thousand Huguenots were slain.[6] [6] See _Massacre of St. Bartholomew_, page 119. The massacre spread over all France. The Protestants rallied, stern and desperate, for defence and for revenge. The civil war was resumed again and again, with false peaces patched in between. Philip might well triumph at the utter anarchy into which he had helped to throw the kingdom which had been his father's rival. The feeble French king, Charles IX, died, in remorse and madness it is said, for having permitted the great massacre. Henry III, last of the sons of Catherine, ascended the throne, and was also guided by the dark genius of his Italian mother. He found the new Duke of Guise, head of the Catholic party, far more powerful than he, so caused his assassination. That roused the Catholics to war on the King; the Huguenots were also in arms under Henry of Navarre; there were now three parties to the strife. Queen Catherine died, worn out and despairing. King Henry was murdered in his turn, and with him perished the direct line of the royal house. Henry of Navarre was the nearest heir to the throne. Of course the Catholics would not consent to be ruled by this champion of the Huguenots; so again the strife went on. Henry proved himself a dashing and heroic leader, winning splendid battles. Spanish forces invaded the country, and he beat them, too. Though Protestant, he was recognized even by his foes as the national hero. At last he took that much-debated resolve, than which was never act more statesmanly. He became a Catholic. His opponents gladly laid down their arms; even fanatic Paris hailed him with extravagant delight. In 1598 he proclaimed the Edict of Nantes, granting safety and religious freedom to his former comrades, the Huguenots. The religious wars of France ended; the wisdom and power of one man had healed what seemed a hopeless confusion.[7] [7] See _Henry of Navarre Accepts Catholicism_, page 276. Under this great monarch, Henry IV, France resumed her former place of power in Europe. Her chief began planning grim revenge on Spain for all her injuries. And then he, too, fell by the assassin's knife (1610). REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS We have traced the French tumults to the end of the present period; let us go back to see why, with his chief foe so helpless, Philip II accomplished no more in extending his own power. It is one of the most amazing tales in history. Where he had thought himself most secure, there he failed. The foe which had seemed most helpless, proved his undoing. He had insisted on the enforcement of the Inquisition in the Netherlands. It is said that thirty thousand people perished there in its flames. Yet even with thirty thousand of their bravest gone, the Protestants refused submission. Gradually the temper of the oppressed people grew more and more bitter, till in 1566 they flared into open revolt. "The beggars," they were contemptuously called by the Spaniards, and they adopted the name as a badge of honor. Penniless, helpless they might be, yet they would fight.[8] [8] See _Rise of the Gueux or Beggars_, page 81. The cruel Alva was sent by Philip to suppress them, and for six years (1567-1573) his savagery and that of his brutal Spanish soldiers made the Netherlands a theatre of horror--and of heroism. The revolt in the southern provinces, now Belgium, was finally put down. The inhabitants there were mostly Catholics, and their strife was only against the general despotism and cruelty of Spain. But the North would never yield. The terrific siege of Leyden, with its accompanying horrors of starvation and defiance, is world-famed.[9] In 1581 Holland finally proclaimed its complete independence of Spain. [9] See _Siege of Leyden_, page 145. At enormous expense and waste of his American treasure, Philip II continued to pour troops and troops into the rebellious provinces. Their leader throughout had been the highest of their nobles, William of Orange, called "the silent." Philip openly proclaimed an enormous reward to the man who could reach and assassinate this obstacle in his path; and at last after repeated attempts the reward was earned (1584).[10] The fall of William ended all chance of the union of the northern and southern provinces; he had been the only man all trusted. But Holland under his son Maurice continued the strife even more bitterly. No sacrifice was too great for the heroic Dutch. Spain was exhausted at last; Philip II died a disappointed man. His son, Philip III, in 1609 consented sullenly to a truce--peace he would not call it--and it was many years before Spain formally acknowledged the independence of her defiant provinces. [10] See _Assassination of William of Orange_, page 202. SUCCESSES OF PHILIP Philip II had met also an even heavier defeat from Protestant England. But before speaking of this, let us look to his few successes. In 1580 he added Portugal to his dominions and so, temporarily at least, united the entire Spanish peninsula as one state. This gave him control over the vast Portuguese colonial possessions and over the rich trade with India and the isles beyond. Australia was probably touched more than once by his ships, though not definitely discovered until 1606.[11] [11] See _Earliest Positive Discovery of Australia_, page 340. It was under Philip that in 1564 the Spaniards extended their American settlements northward and founded St. Augustine, the first town within the present mainland of the United States. The French had attempted to plant a colony even earlier. At the first outbreak of their civil wars, some Huguenots had fled from persecution to the coast of Florida (1562). The Spaniards regarded this as an encroachment on their territories. Moreover, the intruders were heretics. They were attacked and massacred. It was partly to keep further Frenchmen off the coast that St. Augustine was founded.[12] [12] See _Founding of St. Augustine_, page 70. An even more important triumph came to Philip in 1571, when his ships, united with those of Venice and other states, gained a great naval victory over the Turks. This battle of Lepanto stands among the turning-points of history. It marks the checking of the Turkish power which for over two centuries had been rising steadily against Europe. Lepanto crushed the naval supremacy which the followers of Mahomet had more than once asserted over the Mediterranean. For another century and more they remained formidable on land, but at sea they never recovered their ascendency.[13] [13] See _Lepanto: Destruction of the Turkish Naval Power_, page 100. At Lepanto as a common soldier, fought Miguel de Cervantes, a Spaniard, who, toward the close of a roving life, settled down to literature in his native land, and after Philip's death wrote what was in many ways a satire upon that monarch's rule in Spain. Cervantes' _Don Quixote_ altered the taste of the whole literary world. Its influence spread from Spain to France and over all Europe. It was the death-song of ancient chivalry, the first book since the days of Dante to alter markedly the literary thought of man.[14] [14] See _Cervantes'_ Don Quixote _Reforms Literature_, page 325. Of the world farther eastward during this period we need say little. The fortunes of Germany, luckily for herself, had been separated from those of Spain at the abdication of Charles V. The Hapsburg possessions in Austria had been bequeathed to his brother Ferdinand; and both Ferdinand and his next successor as emperor of Germany abided by the conditions of that remarkable religious peace of Augsburg which had allowed every prince to settle the religion of his own domains. Although themselves Catholic, the Emperors were not strict in enforcing Catholicism even in their own Austrian domains. They reserved all their effort for the struggle against the Turks. Disputes between the leaders of the differing faiths did of course occur, but none reached an active stage until a later generation. Sweden rose greatly in importance. Poland declined. Russia was almost conquered by one or the other, a prey, like France, to civil wars. Yet some Cossacks in her service, wandering plunderers really, invaded Siberia, defeated the few scattered Tartar tribes, and annexed the entire waste of Northern Asia to the Russian crown. Never again was this to be a secretly growing, unknown world from which vast hordes might suddenly burst forth on Europe.[15] [15] See _Cossack Conquest of Siberia_, page 181. THE ELIZABETHAN AGE Turn now to England, emerging at last from the exhaustion of the Wars of the Roses to assert her place among the great powers of the world. Philip and Elizabeth, restrained by other anxieties, might maintain a hollow peace at home: they could not control the rising spirits of the English nation. English sailors, the most daring in the world, penetrated all seas. Spanish and Portuguese ships had been almost everywhere before them. The North was still half a century behind the South in progress. Yet the difference is worth noting. On the southern ships a few gallant, aristocratic leaders headed a crowd of trembling peasants, ever begging to be taken home, sometimes mutinying through very frenzy of fear. On England's ships each sailor was as stubborn and dauntless as his chief, differing from him only in the intellect to command. Such men as these were little like to accept Spanish claims to all the wealth of all the new lands of the world. They cruised at will, and fought the Spaniards successfully wherever found. Frobisher began the long and dreary search for the "northwest passage," by which the northern countries of Europe might send ships to round America and reach Asia as Magellan had done to southward.[16] Gilbert raised his country's standard over Newfoundland, England's first clearly established possession beyond seas.[17] The memory of the Cabots' voyages was revived, and in their name England claimed the North American coast. Sir Walter Raleigh attempted to plant a colony, and called the new land Virginia in honor of the Virgin Queen.[18] [16] See _Search for the Northwest Passage by Frobisher_, page 156. [17] See _First Colony of England beyond Seas_, page 198. [18] See _Naming of Virginia: The Lost Colony_, page 211. To Drake, greatest of all these wild adventurers, was it left to embroil his country utterly with Spain. He followed Magellan in circumnavigating the globe, and wherever he went he left a track of plundered Spanish settlements behind. Elizabeth was in despair; she alternately knighted him and threatened to hang him as a pirate. The Spaniards, re-reading his name, called him the Dragon. He was the terror of their seas. At last the long accumulating quarrel of religious and commercial motives reached a head. Philip began gathering in all his ports that vast "Invincible Armada," which was to assert his supremacy on sea as upon land, to crush England and Protestantism forever. This was the supreme effort of his life. There was no question as to where the blow would fall. Elizabeth knew it coming, not to be evaded by any policy or concessions. Drake knew it coming, and, taking time by the forelock, sailed boldly into the harbor of Cadiz to "singe the King of Spain's beard," destroyed all the ships and stores accumulated there.[19] But Cadiz was only one port among several where preparations were being hurried forward; there were others the hardy Dragon could not penetrate. The next year (1588) the "Invincible Armada" sailed for England. [19] See _Drake Captures Cartagena: He "Singes the King of Spain's Beard" at Cadiz_, page 230. The story of its destruction is too well known for repetition. This was England's proudest achievement. Philip accepted the terrific downfall of all his scheming and ambitions with a gallant calm. He had truly believed that Heaven wished him to reassert Catholicism. He accepted the storms which partly destroyed his fleet as the divine refusal of his aid. "You could not strive against the will of Heaven," he said kindly to his defeated admiral.[20] [20] See _Defeat of the Spanish Armada_, page 251. In England, the repeated plunderings of Spanish ships, and now this final victory, flooded the land with wealth and triumph. The internal improvement, the intellectual advance of the people, were prodigious. The "Elizabethan Age" is the most famed in English literature. The first English theatre was built in 1570, a crude and queer affair for cruder, queerer plays.[21] Yet, in perhaps that very armada year of 1588, Shakespeare began writing his remarkable plays. In 1601 the drama rose to its perfection in his _Hamlet_, the flower of English literary genius, accredited by some as the grandest new creation that ever came from the hand of man.[22] [21] See _Building of First Theatre in England_, page 163. [22] See _Culmination of Dramatic Literature in_ Hamlet, page 287. Elizabeth died in 1603. Her reign had seen also the final suppression of the Irish Catholics and their subjugation to the English crown. In the year of her death came the "Flight of the Earls," the mournful abandonment of Ireland by the last of the great lords who had fought for and now despaired of her independence.[23] [23] See _Downfall of Irish Liberty: "Flight of the Earls_," page 299. The age of Elizabeth can scarcely, however, be said to cease at her death. The English people had grown greater than their sovereign, and upon them the influences of their Spanish victory continued. Shakespeare is even more the Elizabethan age than Elizabeth, and his writings continued until 1611. Drake had died in 1596; Raleigh lived till 1618. Since Elizabeth was childless, she was succeeded on the throne by the Scotch king James VI (James I of England), son of the Mary Stuart whose claims had caused such trouble. James, removed from his mother's care, had been educated by his subjects as a Protestant, so he was welcome to England. The first step toward uniting the two halves of the island was made when they thus came under a common sovereign. The same atmosphere of plot and treachery which had surrounded Elizabeth reached also to her successor. In 1605 was unearthed the "Gunpowder Plot," a scheme to blow up James with all his chief ministers and subjects in the House of Parliament. The date of its discovery is still kept as a national holiday in England.[24] [24] See _The Gunpowder Plot_, page 310. Then in 1607 came the fruition of Raleigh's efforts and those of Drake, the beginning surely of a new era. Spain being no longer able to oppose, a new colony was sent out from England to Virginia. It settled at Jamestown, and began the successful colonization of the United States.[25] The next year, the French, supported by their great king Henry IV, made a similar beginning. Quebec was founded by them on the St. Lawrence.[26] The era of American discovery was over, and that of American settlement was come. [25] See _Settlement of Virginia_, page 350. [26] See _Founding of Quebec_, page 366. [FOR THE NEXT SECTION OF THIS GENERAL SURVEY SEE VOLUME XI] ENGLAND LOSES HER LAST FRENCH TERRITORY BATTLE OF ST. QUENTIN A.D. 1558 CHARLES KNIGHT From 1347, when it was taken by Edward III, Calais remained a stronghold of England until it was retaken for France by the Duke of Guise (François de Lorraine), in 1558. With the surrender of Calais the English lost their last foothold in French territory. Weary with the long tumults and wars of his reign, Charles V in 1555 resigned all his crowns to his son, Philip II of Spain, and his brother Ferdinand, King of Bohemia and Hungary. Pope Paul IV, wishing to subvert the Spanish power, entered into a league with Henry II of France against Philip. Guise, who had warred successfully with Charles V, against whom he defended Metz when it was won for France (1553), now espoused the papal cause. His main object was to recover Naples to his own family. Thus he became a leading actor in the events culminating in the capture of Calais. Throughout the reign of Philip II his chief aim was to restore the Roman Catholic religion in Protestant countries and to establish a uniform despotism over his dominions. In 1554 he had married Queen Mary of England, and after a short sojourn in that country, whose crown he vainly tried to obtain, and to whose people he was obnoxious, he returned to the Continent. Soon after "he was called to a destiny more suited to his proud and ambitious nature than to be the unequal partaker of sovereign power over a jealous insular people." In March, 1557, Philip returned to England. He came, not out of affection for his wife or of regard for his turbulent insular subjects, but to stir up the old English hatred of France and to drag the nation into a war for his personal advantage. The fiery Pope, Paul IV, panted for the freedom of Italy as it existed in the fifteenth century; he wanted to accomplish his wishes by an alliance with France; he would place French princes on the thrones of Milan and Naples. The Spaniards he pronounced as the spawn of Jews and Moors, the dregs of the earth. When there was a question of temporal dominion to be fought out, the Pope did not hesitate to wage war against that faithful son of the Church, King Philip; nor did King Philip hesitate to send the Duke of Alva, the exterminator of Protestants, to enter the Roman states and lay waste the territories of the Pope. Frane and Spain were upon the brank of open war when Philip arrived in England. He urged a declaration of war against France. There were grievances in the alleged encouragement which had been given in Wyat's rebellion, and in the lukewarmness with which Henry II met Queen Mary's desire that he should afford her the means of vengeance upon the exiles for religion who took shelter in France. The most recent complaint was that France had connived at the equipment of a force by Thomas Stafford, a refugee, who had invaded England with thirty-two followers and had surprised Scarborough castle. This adventurer claimed to be the house and blood of the Duke of Buckingham, who was beheaded in the times of Henry VIII. The proclamation which he issued from his castle of Scarborough, which he held only two days, was addressed to the English hatred of the Spaniards, rather than directed against the ecclesiastical persecution under which the country was suffering: "As the duke of Buckingham, our forefathers and predecessors, have always been defenders of the poor commonalty against the tyranny of princes, so should you have us at this juncture, most dearly beloved friends, your protector, governor, and defender against all your adversaries and enemies; minding earnestly to die rather, presently, and personally before you in the field, than to suffer you to be overrun so miserably with strangers, and made most sorrowful slaves and careful captives to such a naughty nation as Spaniards." Stafford and his band were soon made prisoners; and he was beheaded on Tower Hill, and three of his followers hanged, on May 25th. Seizing upon this absurd attempt as a ground of quarrel, war was declared against France on June 7th; and Philip quitted the country on July 6th, never to return. An English force of four thousand infantry, a thousand cavalry, and two thousand pioneers joined the Spanish army on the Flemish frontier. The army was partly composed of German mercenaries; the _lanzknechts_ and _reiters_, the pikemen and cavalry, who, at the command of the best paymaster, were the most formidable soldiers of the time. But the Spanish cavaliers were there, leading their native infantry; and there were the Burgundian lances. The army was commanded by Emanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, who had aspired to the hand of Elizabeth. Philip earnestly seconded his suit, but Mary, wisely and kindly, would not put a constraint upon her sister's inclinations. The wary Princess saw that the crown would probably be hers at no distant day; and she would not risk the loss of the people's affection by marrying a foreign Catholic. She had sensible advisers about her, who seconded her own prudence; and thus she kept safe amid the manifold dangers by which she was surrounded. The Duke of Savoy, though young, was an experienced soldier, and he determined to commence the campaign by investing St. Quentin, a frontier town of Picardy. The defence of this fortress was undertaken by Coligny, the Admiral of France, afterward so famous for his mournful death. Montmorency, the Constable, had the command of the French army. The garrison was almost reduced to extremity--when Montmorency, on August 10th, arrived with his whole force, and halted on the bank of the Somme. On the opposite bank lay the Spanish, the English, the Flemish, and the German host. The arrival of the French was a surprise, and the Duke of Savoy had to take up a new position. He determined on battle. The issue was the most unfortunate for France since the fatal day of Agincourt. The French slain amounted, according to some accounts, to six thousand; and the prisoners were equally numerous. Among them was the veteran Montmorency. On August 10th Philip came to the camp. Bold advisers counselled a march to Paris. The cautious King was satisfied to press on the siege of St. Quentin. The defence which Coligny made was such as might have been expected from his firmness and bravery. The place was taken by storm, amid horrors which belong to such scenes at all times, but which were doubled by the rapacity of troops who fought even with each other for the greatest share of the pillage. After a few trifling successes, the army of Philip was broken up. The German mercenaries; the _lanzknechts_ and _reiters_, the pikemen and cavalry, who, at the command of the best paymaster, were the most formidable soldiers of the time. But the Spanish cavaliers were there, leading their native infantry; and there were the Burgundian lances. The army was commanded by Emanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, who had aspired to the hand of Elizabeth. Philip earnestly seconded his suit, but Mary, wisely and kindly, would not put a constraint upon her sister's inclinations. The wary Princess saw that the crown would probably be hers at no distant day; and she would not risk the loss of the people's affection by marrying a foreign Catholic. She had sensible advisers about her, who seconded her own prudence; and thus she kept safe amid the manifold dangers by which she was surrounded. The Duke of Savoy, though young, was an experienced soldier, and he determined to commence the campaign by investing St. Quentin, a frontier town of Picardy. The defence of this fortress was undertaken by Coligny, the Admiral of France, afterward so famous for his mournful death. Montmorency, the Constable, had the command of the French army. The garrison was almost reduced to extremity--when Montmorency, on August 10th, arrived with his whole force, and halted on the bank of the Somme. On the opposite bank lay the Spanish, the English, the Flemish, and the German host. The arrival of the French was a surprise, and the Duke of Savoy had to take up a new position. He determined on battle. The issue was the most unfortunate for France since the fatal day of Agincourt. The French slain amounted, according to some accounts, to six thousand; and the prisoners were equally numerous. Among them was the veteran Montmorency. On August 10th Philip came to the camp. Bold advisers counselled a march to Paris. The cautious King was satisfied to press on the siege of St. Quentin. The defence which Coligny made was such as might have been expected from his firmness and bravery. The place was taken by storm, amid horrors which belong to such scenes at all times, but which were doubled by the rapacity of troops who fought even with each other for the greatest share of the pillage. After a few trifling successes, the army of Philip was broken up. The English and Germans were indignant at the insolence of the Spaniards; and the Germans were more indignant that their pay was not forthcoming. Philip was glad to permit his English subjects to take their discontents home. They had found out that they were not fighting the battle of England. The war between England and France produced hostilities between England and Scotland. Mary of Guise, the Queen Dowager and Regent of Scotland, was incited by the French king to invade England. The disposition to hostilities was accompanied by a furious outbreak of the Scottish borderers. They were driven back. But the desire of the Queen Dowager that England should be invaded was resisted by the chief nobles, who declared themselves ready to act on the defensive, but who would not plunge into war during their sovereign's minority. The alliance of France and Scotland was, however, completed, in the autumn of 1558, by the marriage between the Dauphin and the young Queen Mary, which was solemnized at Paris, in the Cathedral of Notre Dame. The Duke of Guise, the uncle of the Queen of Scots, at the beginning of 1558, was at the head of a powerful army to avenge the misfortune of St. Quentin. The project committed to his execution was a bold and patriotic one--to drive the English from their last stronghold in France. Calais, over whose walls a foreign flag had been waving for two centuries, was to France an opprobrium and to England a trophy. But it was considered by the English government as an indispensable key to the Continent--a possession that it would not only be a disgrace to lose, but a national calamity. The importance of Calais was thus described by Micheli, the Venetian ambassador, only one year before it finally passed from the English power: "Another frontier, besides that of Scotland, and of no less importance for the security of the kingdom, though it be separated, is that which the English occupy on the other side of the sea, by means of two fortresses, Calais and Guines, guarded by them (and justly) with jealousy, especially Calais, for this is the key and principal entrance to their dominions, without which the English would have no outlet from their own, nor access to other countries, at least none so easy, so short, and so secure; so much so that if they were deprived of it they would not only be shut out from the Continent, but also from the commerce and intercourse of the world. They would consequently lose what is essentially necessary for the existence of a country, and become dependent upon the will and pleasure of other sovereigns, in availing themselves of their ports, besides having to encounter a more distant, more hazardous, and more expensive passage; whereas, by way of Calais, which is directly opposite to the harbor of Dover, distant only about thirty miles, they can, at any time, without hinderance, even in spite of contrary winds, at their pleasure, enter or leave the harbor--such is the experience and boldness of their sailors--and carry over either troops or anything else for warfare, offensive and defensive, without giving rise to jealousy and suspicion; and thus they are enabled, as Calais is not more than ten miles from Ardres, the frontier of the French, nor farther from Gravelines, the frontier of the imperialists, to join either the one or the other, as they please, and to add their strength to him with whom they are at amity, in prejudice of an enemy. "For these reasons, therefore, it is not to be wondered at that, besides the inhabitants of the place, who are esteemed men of most unshaken fidelity, being the descendants of an English colony settled there shortly after the first conquest, it should also be guarded by one of the most trusty barons which the King has, bearing the title of deputy, with a force of five hundred of the best soldiers, besides a troop of fifty horsemen. It is considered by everyone as an impregnable fortress, on account of the inundation with which it may be surrounded, although there are persons skilled in the art of fortification who doubt that it would prove so if put to the test. For the same reason Guines is also reckoned impregnable, situated about three miles more inland, on the French frontier, and guarded with the same degree of care, though, being a smaller place, only by a hundred fifty men, under a chief governor. The same is done with regard to a third place, called Hammes, situated between the two former, and thought to be of equal importance, the waters which inundate the country being collected around." Ninety years later Calais was regarded in a very different light: "Now it is gone, let it go. It was but a beggarly town, which cost England ten times yearly more than it was worth in keeping thereof, as by the accounts in the exchequer doth plainly appear." The expedition against Calais was undertaken upon a report of the dilapidated condition of the works and the smallness of its garrison. It was not "an impregnable fortress," as Micheli says it was considered. The Duke of Guise commenced his attack on January 2d, when he stormed and took the castle of Ruysbank, which commanded the approach by water. On the 3d he carried the castle of Newenham bridge, which commanded the approach by land. He then commenced a cannonade of the citadel, which surrendered on the 6th. On the 7th the town capitulated. Lord Wentworth, the Governor, and fifty others remained as prisoners. The English inhabitants, about four thousand, were ejected from the home which they had so long colonized, but without any exercise of cruelty. "The Frenchmen," say the chroniclers, "entered and possessed the town; and forthwith all the men, women, and children were commanded to leave their houses and to go to certain places appointed for them to remain in, till order might be taken for their sending away. "The places thus appointed for them to remain in were chiefly four, the two churches of Our Lady and St. Nicholas, the deputy's house, and the stable, where they rested a great part of that day and one whole night and the next day till three o'clock at afternoon, without either meat or drink. And while they were thus in the churches and those other places the Duke of Guise, in the name of the French King, in their hearing made a proclamation charging all and every person that were inhabitants of the town of Calais, having about them any money, plate, or jewels to the value of one groat, to bring the same forthwith, and lay it down upon the high altars of the said churches, upon pain of death; bearing them in hand also that they should be searched. By reason of which proclamation there was made a great and sorrowful offertory. "While they were at this offertory within the churches, the Frenchmen entered into their houses and rifled the same, where were found inestimable riches and treasures; but especially of ordnance, armor, and other munitions. Thus dealt the French with the English in lieu and recompense of the like usage to the French when the forces of King Philip prevailed at St. Quentin; where, not content with the honor of victory, the English in sacking the town sought nothing more than the satisfying of their greedy vein of covetousness, with an extreme neglect of all moderation." Within the marches of Calais the English held the two small fortresses of Guines and Hammes. Guines was defended with obstinate courage by Lord Grey, and did not surrender till January 20th. His loss amounted to eight hundred men. From Hammes the English garrison made their escape by night. REIGN OF ELIZABETH A.D. 1558-1603 HENRY R. CLEVELAND Elizabeth's reign has been regarded by many writers as the most glorious period of England's career. There were no great land battles fought by English troops; but at sea those famous rovers, half pirates, Drake, Raleigh, and their like, definitely established that maritime supremacy which has ever since been their country's proudest boast. Moreover, the intellectual awakening of England which had taken place in the time of Henry VII and Henry VIII now bore fruit in a glorious literary outburst, which has made the Elizabethan Age the envy and despair of more recent literary periods. There were clearly marked causes for this brilliant and patriotic era. The indiscriminate marriages of Henry VIII had thrown more than a shadow of doubt upon the legitimacy of every one of his children. On his death he was succeeded, without serious dispute, by his only son, Edward VI. Edward did not live to manhood, but during his short reign his guardians pushed the land far in the direction of Protestantism. Unfortunately they plundered the common people cruelly and persecuted, though only in two cases to the point of burning, both Catholics and the more extreme Protestants. The early death of Edward left no male heir to the royal house. For the first time in English history there were none but women to claim the crown. Moreover, of these at least four had some show of right. They were Mary, the Catholic daughter of King Henry's first wife, and Elizabeth, his Protestant daughter by Anne Boleyn. Or, if both these were to be considered illegitimate, then came their cousins, Mary Stuart, descended from one of Henry's sisters, and Lady Jane Grey, from another. The friends of Lady Jane tried to raise her to the throne, but only succeeded in bringing her to the scaffold. The Catholic, Mary, was declared the rightful queen and ruled England for five years, during most of which she kept her half-sister Elizabeth in prison. Queen Mary was devoted to her religion. The fires which had burned in Henry's time were kindled again, but now for the torture of Protestants, bishops, and men of mark. Mary wedded the Catholic king and cruel fanatic Philip II of Spain, the most powerful monarch of Europe; so that only to her death and the reign of the persecuted Elizabeth could Protestant Englishmen look for relief. Thus the accession of the learned and coquettish Elizabeth brought far more than a mere promise of youth and pleasure; it was a bursting of the fetters of fear. The age of Elizabeth was preëminently distinguished by the operation of just principles, of generous sentiments, of elevated objects, and of profound piety. Elizabeth, it is true, was vindictive, arbitrary, and cruel. Two prevailing sentiments filled her mind and chiefly influenced her conduct throughout life. The first of these was the idea of prerogative. Any assumption of rights, any freedom of debate, any theological discussion or profession of sentiments which seemed to infringe on the sacred limits of royalty was sure to be visited with her severest wrath. She detested the Puritans, from whom she had suffered nothing, but whose republican spirit appeared to her at war with royalty in the abstract, far more than the papists, by whom her life had been made a life of danger and suffering, but who respected forms and ceremonies, and whose system encouraged reverence for the powers that be and loyal sentiment toward the person whom they regarded as the lawful sovereign. Nothing but the earnest entreaties of Cecil and the imminent danger of a French invasion could induce her to give assistance to the Scottish Protestants when they were persecuted by the Queen Regent. And even her hatred of Mary could not prevent her taking sides with that ill-fated Princess when the "Congregation" claimed the right of trying their sovereign for alleged crimes, after having deposed and imprisoned her. The other sentiment which in no small degree influenced the conduct of the great Queen was her excessive fondness for admiration as a woman. She filled her solitary throne with a dignity and a majesty which could not be surpassed; and it is difficult, if not impossible, to conceive of a character which should have strength and impetuosity enough, even if marriage could have given the right, to overawe her lion-like spirit and assume the reins of government in defiance of her will. Certain it is that no such prince then lived. But while the _queen_ resolutely excluded all human participation in the lonely eminence on which she stood, the _woman_ was constantly claiming the tribute of sympathy and admiration. Her eager desire was to be a heroine, a beauty, the queen of hearts, cynosure of gallants' eyes; to reign supreme in the court of love and chivalry; to be the watchword and war-cry of the knight and the theme of the troubadour. Here was the source of the unbounded flattery which was lavished upon her by courtiers, even to the latest years of her life, and which appears to have at times actually deceived her, in spite of her extraordinary penetration. To this sentiment are owing nearly all of the few instances of disaster and disappointment which occurred during her splendid reign. She preferred to risk the safety of her allies, and the cause of Protestantism on the Continent, rather than to refuse the command of her troops to her favorite, who had entreated it. To gratify another favorite and insure his glory she forgot her habitual economy, levied an army larger than she had ever supported, except at the time of the invasion, and sent it to Ireland under the command of a man who was utterly unfit for the place. And when, beset by enemies, harassed by defeat, and overwhelmed with shame, the impetuous and noble-hearted Essex rushed into the presence of majesty as a lover would have sought his mistress, her woman's heart forgave him all. Had this frame of mind continued, had not the resumed majesty of the queen condemned what the woman forgave, the world would have been spared the consummation of one of the most mournful tragedies in history, and the last days of Elizabeth might have been serene and happy, instead of being tortured with anguish and despair. The former of these sentiments made her an object of dread, the latter of ridicule; and both conspired to render her tyrannical. But she was not a tyrant in the full sense of the word. She never acted upon the nation with that degrading influence which is always the attendant of selfish, cold-hearted, and perfidious tyranny; she never had the power, and we doubt if she ever had the wish, to make slaves of her people. She understood the English character; she comprehended, appreciated, and admired its nobleness; and she had sagacity enough to see that this very character constituted her chief glory. A thorough and hearty affection subsisted between her and her people; an affection Which was increased and cemented by many circumstances of a nature not to be forgotten. As a nation, England had been persecuted, distressed, and trampled upon during the reign of Mary. The party which triumphed in the ascendency of the Roman Catholic religion was small; the great majority of the people were not very zealous in favor of one side or the other; they had been ready to welcome Protestantism under Edward VI, and they were not disposed to fight against the Church of Rome under Mary. The number of zealous papists, they who were in favor of the rack and the stake, was not more than a thirtieth part of the nation. The other twenty-nine parts, though perhaps nearly equally divided on the question of religion, condemned alike the bigotry of their melancholy sovereign and looked on with sorrowful indignation while the bloody Mary, assisted by a few narrow-minded bigots, was carrying on the infernal work of persecution. It was a sorrow and a shame to all true Englishmen, whether Catholic or Protestant; and the hated Philip felt the effects of their vengeance till the day of his death. In these times of tribulation there was one who shared in the common danger, suffering, and humiliation, and who, from the exalted rank which she occupied, and the station to which she seemed destined, was peculiarly an object of distrust and alarm to the bigots, who were exulting in their day of power. The gloom which overhung the whole country equally surrounded her; the fires of Smithfield and Oxford were kindled for her terror as for the terror of the people. She had been made to pass through that sorrowful passage from which few ever returned alive, the Traitor's Gate in the Tower of London. Her course was one and the same with that of the entire English nation; and the only light which shone upon the darkness, the only hope that cheered the universal despondency, the dependence of all real patriots, the trust of all friends of truth, and the pride of all free and honorable men were centred in the prison of Elizabeth. There is no bond so strong as the bond of common perils and sufferings; and, when the young Princess ascended the throne, it was amid the thankful acclamations of a liberated and happy people, who loved her for the dangers she had shared with them, and for whom she entertained the interest and affection due to fellow-sufferers. This feeling was prolonged in an uncommon manner throughout her reign; for it so happened that there was no danger which threatened the Queen during her whole life that was not equally formidable to the people. So difficult was the question of succession that the prudent Burleigh never ventured to express his mind upon the subject, and carried down to the grave the secret of his opinion. Any change would have been for the worse; as it would either have plunged the nation into a civil war or have placed a Roman Catholic prince on the throne. The dangers which menaced the crown of Elizabeth were alike formidable to the cause of freedom in England and of the Protestant religion in Europe. The invasion of England, which was attempted by the French under the Queen Regent of Scotland, and afterward the gigantic preparations of Philip, foreboded more than the ordinary horrors of an offensive warfare. These enemies came with the stake and the fagot in their hands; they came not merely to invade, but to convert; not merely to conquer, but to persecute; they were stimulated not merely by ambition, but by bigotry; they were prepared not merely to enslave, but to torture. It was therefore not a matter of indifference to the English nation whether Elizabeth were to be their queen or whether some other prince should ascend the throne. In her reign, and hers alone, they saw the hope of peace, freedom, and prosperity. Never, therefore, were nation and ruler more closely and firmly knit together. The sentiment of loyalty, consequently, was never more sincere and enthusiastic in the hearts of Englishmen than at that period. To the nation at large the Queen really appeared what the flattery of her courtiers and poets represented her. She was to them, in truth, the Gloriana of Fairyland; the magnificent, the undaunted, the proud descendant of a thousand years of royalty, and the "Imperial Votress." She was only a tyrant within the precincts of the court. There she reigned, it is true, with more than oriental despotism; and she seems to have delighted occasionally in torturing mean spirits by employing them upon such thankless offices as their hearts revolted from, though they had not the courage to refuse them. But beyond the immediate circle of the palace she was the queen and the mother of her people. To the nation at large, too, she was equally a heroine, a beautiful idol enshrined in their hearts. Living on "in maiden meditation fancy-free," rejecting the proposals of every prince, disregarding the remonstrances of her subjects, where marriage was spoken of, there was something in the very unapproachableness of her state which both commanded the respect and excited the imagination of her people. As a woman, they regarded her just as she wished them to regard her, as the throned Vestal, the watery Moon, whose chaste beams could quench the fiery darts of Cupid. She was to them, in fact, the Belphoebe of Spenser, "with womanly graces, but not womanly affections--passionless, pure, self-sustained, and self-dependent"; shining "with a cold lunar light and not the warm glow of day." This feeling was increased by the spirit of chivalry which still lingered in English society, and, like the setting sun, poured a flood of golden light over the court. The incense, then, that was offered to the Queen by such men as Spenser, Raleigh, Essex, Shakespeare, and Sidney, the most noble, chivalrous, and gifted spirits that ever gathered round a throne, is not to be judged of as the flattery which cringing courtiers pay to a dreaded tyrant; but rather as the outpouring of a general enthusiasm, the echo of the stirring voice of chivalry, and the expression of the feelings of a devoted yet free people. An age of tyranny is always an age of frivolity, of heartless levity, of dwarfish objects and pursuits, of dreadful contrasts--laughter amid mourning, rioting and wantonness amid judgments and executions; dancing and music at the hour of death. Such was the frivolity of the days of Nero; such was the mirth of the "death-dance" in the days of Robespierre. Nothing like this sickly and appalling joy could be seen in the times of Elizabeth. There were masques and balls and tournaments at the court, and gay revels as the stately Queen went from castle to castle, and palace to palace, in her visits to her princely subjects. But such amusements did not form the chief object or occupation of the court of Elizabeth. The Queen, and those who had grown up with her, had passed through too many dangers and witnessed too much suffering to allow them to become frivolous or very light-hearted. They had lived among scenes of cruelty, persecution, and death. Their childhood had witnessed the successive horrors of the reign of Henry VIII, and their youth had suffered from the bloody fanaticism of Mary. Sorrow and tribulation had overspread the morning of their life like a cloud. Miss Aikin, in the beginning of her charming work upon the court of Queen Elizabeth, has described the gorgeous procession which filed along the streets of London at the baptism of the infant princess. The same picture also forms the closing scene of Shakespeare's _Henry VIII_. As we look upon the gay and splendid train, marching in their robes of state, beneath silken canopies, and then glance our eye along the map of history till we trace almost every actor in the pageant to a bloody grave, we can scarcely believe that it is a scene of joy and festivity that we are witnessing. The angel of death seems to hover over them; there is something dreadful in their rejoicing; their gaudy robes, their mantles, their vases, their fringes of gold, assume the sable hue of the grave; and, instead of a baptismal train, it seems like a funeral procession descending to the tomb. The mournful scenes which the generation which grew up with Elizabeth had been compelled to witness, and the terror in which most of the leading characters in her reign had passed their youth, had undoubtedly tended to sober their minds and induce them to reflect much upon the great and solemn duties of life. The character of the age was stamped with the dignity which hallows tribulation, and with the force and nerve which the habitual contemplation of danger rarely fails to confer. The same causes undoubtedly promoted the religious spirit which prevailed. While bigotry and fanaticism appeared in a small portion of the nation, it is certain that the age of Elizabeth was marked by the general diffusion of a spirit of deep devotion. There was enough of chivalry left to keep alive the fervor which prevailed at an earlier period, and enough of intelligence to temper this fervor into rational religion. The feeling of shame at professing faith and devoutness was the growth of a later day; it was unknown in those times. The gayest courtier that chanted his love-song in the ear of the high-born maiden, and the gravest statesman who debated at the table of the privy council, were alike penetrated with devotional sentiment, and alike ready to offer up prayers and thanksgiving to the Most High. We are perfectly aware that the outward signs of piety displayed by a few principal characters are not a faithful index of the state of religion at any period. It is not fair to infer, because Elizabeth devoutly commended herself to the care of the Almighty when forsaken, friendless, an orphan, alone, and helpless, she was landed at the foot of the Traitor's Stairs in the Tower of London, or because she returned to the same gloomy fortress when a triumphant queen, to offer up her praise and gratitude to God for his marvellous mercies, that she lived in a pious age. Neither are we to regard it as a sure indication of the prevailing spirit, when Burleigh solemnly commends his son to the Almighty in his letter of advice; when the chivalrous Sidney is found composing a prayer, which, for solemnity, grandeur, and devotion, is scarcely surpassed in the English liturgy; when the adventurous Raleigh displays an amount of knowledge on sacred subjects that might be the envy of an Oxford professor of theology, or when the city of London presents to the young Queen, on the day of her coronation and in the midst of her glittering pageantry, the Bible, as the most appropriate and acceptable offering. These are not certain signs of a religious age; but they would pass for something at any period, even if they were mere hypocrisy. They would show that religion was held in such respect and by so numerous a class somewhere, as to make it worth while for the Queen and her court to assume at least the outward badges of piety. But they have additional force when we reflect at the same time that, at the period when they were manifested, the Reformation was making a gradual but sure progress in England; that the question of religion occupied every intelligent mind and affected the interests of every family; that the lives and fortunes of millions, the fate of kingdoms, and the progress of intellectual freedom throughout the civilized world were inseparably connected with the cause of Protestantism. If bigotry and fanaticism had been prevalent in England, and the opposing party of Romanist and Reformer nearly equal, there would have been witnessed in that country during the sixteenth century a succession of atrocities and horrors compared with which the wars of the white and red roses were bloodless. If; on the other hand, the great mass of the nation had been indifferent, with regard not merely to forms, but to religion itself, we should not have seen the outward show of piety in the highest ranks; we should not have seen a house of commons legislating in favor of Edward's liturgy, and a nation turning to worship in their vernacular tongue. Nothing but a widely diffused spirit of piety can account for the character of those miracles of literature which made the days of Elizabeth glorious, and which are stamped with nothing more strongly than their deep and wise religion. Moreover, in the age of Elizabeth, England was more distinguished for patriotism than any nation in civilized Europe. On the Continent the feeling of nationality was absorbed, and the distinction of language, laws, and country absolutely lost, in the zeal for religious belief. Nations, which for centuries had been enemies, were found leagued against their natural allies; inhabitants of the same state were divided, and at war with each other; the prophecy was literally fulfilled that "the brother shall betray the brother to death, and the father the son, and children shall rise up against their parents, and shall cause them to be put to death." "The Palatine," says Schiller, "now forsakes his home to go and fight on the side of his fellow-believer of France, against the common enemy of their religion. The subject of the King of France draws his sword against his native land, which had persecuted him, and goes forth to bleed for the freedom of Holland. Swiss is now seen armed for battle against Swiss, and German against German, that they may decide the succession of the French throne on the banks of the Loire or the Seine. The Dane passes the Eider, the Swede crosses the Baltic, to burst the fetters which are forged for Germany." Nothing of this kind was seen in England. The number of Catholics who preferred the triumph of their party to the welfare of their country was too small to be of any consideration. A few fanatics in the college at Rheims, and a few romantic champions of the unhappy Queen of Scots, were the only domestic enemies whom Elizabeth had to fear. With a great majority of the Romanists, the love of country prevailed over all religious distinctions; and, when the invasion was threatened by Philip, they united cordially with the Protestants in the defence of their native land; they enlisted as volunteers in the army and navy; they equipped vessels at their own charge, armed their tenants and vassals, encouraged their neighbors and prepared, heart and hand, for a desperate resistance of the common foe. The energies of the nation were naturally brought into vigorous action by the great objects, interests, and enterprises which the times presented. The effects of the Reformation were felt just enough to produce a bold and free exercise of thought, without kindling the passions to fierce excitement. The storm which burst with all its fury on the Continent, wrapping nations in the flames of civil war, prostrating, withering, and overwhelming civil institutions, and marking its path with desolation did but exert a salutary influence in England. The lightning was seen flashing in the distant horizon, the rolling thunder could be heard afar off, but the fury of the storm fell at a distance; the atmosphere was purified and the soil refreshed, and the rainbow was glittering in the heavens. Never in the history of England had there been a time when energy and wisdom were more needed than that period. The nation was compelled, by irresistible force of circumstances, to stand forth as the champion of Protestantism. The eyes of all civilized countries were fixed upon her; some, with imploring looks; some, glaring upon her with jealousy, fierceness, and settled hatred. Enemies were springing up, with whom peace was hopeless. A popish princess was heir to the throne of Scotland, with a powerful ally ready to support her pretensions to the English crown. On the Continent were allies, whom England was compelled to support at the risk of a war with the mightiest empire that had risen since the fall of Rome. And an armament was preparing for the invasion of Britain, of an extent that seemed to render resistance hopeless, by a monarch whose resources appeared inexhaustible, while Ireland was in open rebellion and ready to receive the Spanish fleets into her ports. From all these difficulties and impending calamities, the nation gathered a harvest of glory that alone would make her name famous forever. It is with a feeling of joy and exultation that we trace the history of England during these years of terror and of triumph. We behold her extricating herself from embarrassments that seemed endless, and turning them into the means of safety; encouraging and supporting her allies without exhausting her own resources, and finally crushing the vast engines which were put into operation for her destruction. The blood quickens in our veins, as we read of the wisdom and the sublime moral courage, of the daring adventure, the romantic enterprise, the chivalrous bravery, and the brilliant triumphs of that age of great men. We see Cecil and Wotton negotiating with Scotland so wisely as to win the confidence and affection of that nation, and to destroy the influence of France in that country forever; Walsingham, fathoming the secrets of the French court, or watching in silence, but certainty, the progress of conspiracies at home, and crushing them on the eve of maturity; the Queen, with a prudence which seems almost sublime, rejecting a second time the proffer of the sovereignty of Holland; Drake, circumnavigating the earth, and returning laden with the spoils of conquered fleets and provinces; Cavendish, coming up the Thames to London, with sails of damask and cloth of gold, and his men arrayed in costly silks; Lancaster, dashing his boats to pieces on the strand of Pernambuco, that he might leave his men no alternative but death or victory; Raleigh, plunging into the fire of the Spanish galleots, and fighting his way through overwhelming numbers, with a courage that rivalled the incredible tales of chivalry, planting colonies in the pleasantest vales of the New World, or ascending the Orinoco in search of the fabled Dorado; Sidney, gallantly returning from battle on his war-horse, though struggling with the agony of his death-wound, and giving the cup of cold water to the wounded soldier, with those noble words which would alone be enough to preserve his memory forever; Essex, tossing his cap into the sea for very joy when the command is given, in compliance with his earliest entreaties, for the assault on Cadiz, and with that failing of memory so becoming to a brave man, forgetting the cautions of his sovereign, and rushing into the thickest of the fight; the naval supremacy of England completely established by the defeat of the Armada, and the great deep itself made a monument of the nation's glory. The boast of the age of Elizabeth was the splendid specimens of humanity which it produced. "There were giants in those days." Individuals seemed to condense in themselves the attainments of hosts. The accomplishments and prowess of the men of those times inspire us with something like the feeling of wonder with which the soldier of the present day handles the sword of Robert Bruce, or the gigantic armor of Guy of Warwick. When we read the beautiful verses "addressed to the author of the _Faerie Queene_," by Raleigh, it is difficult to believe that they were penned by the same person whose system of tactics was adopted so triumphantly at the Spanish invasion; who was equally eminent as a general, a seaman, an explorer, and a historian; and who shone unsurpassed for knightly graces and accomplishments amid the stars of the court. Such instances were not rare and prodigious. Raleigh was not the Crichton of his age; if the compliment belongs to anyone peculiarly, it is Sidney; but as we read over the list of distinguished persons to whom Spenser addressed dedicatory stanzas to be "sent with the _Faerie Queene_," we become more and more at a loss to distinguish the greatest among them; and we could believe that many ages had been searched for so noble a catalogue. The principles which formed society were precisely such as were best calculated for the finest developments of character. The old high, fervid spirit of chivalry was not lost; there were the same sense of honor, the same knightly bearing, the same passion for glory, and the same admiration for courage and prowess that had prevailed in the earlier days of its sway. But these were tempered by milder and more attractive virtues and accomplishments; the clerkly learning, which had held so humble a rank in the days when nobles could scarcely sign their names, had now risen into far higher estimation. Great warriors were now no longer ashamed to know how to read and write; on the contrary, the possession of learning and literature, the delicate arts of poetry and music, the graces of conversation and manners, were now as requisite to the full accomplishment of the knight, as his horsemanship, or his skill in the management of his lance. In a word, the sterner characteristics of the ancient knight were softened down, in the age of Elizabeth, into the more perfect and graceful attributes of the gentleman. The perfect gentleman was more completely exhibited in the days of Elizabeth than at any time before; for the chivalry and the accomplishments which were then united in the same individual, had been formerly divided between the noble and the churchman or the clerk. Were we called upon to characterize the age in which Spenser lived, by a single word, we could find none that would better express its combined attributes, than the word which the poet uses in describing his principal hero: "In the person of Prince Arthure," says he in his letter to Raleigh, "I set forth magnificence." The age of Elizabeth was distinguished by magnificence, in the highest sense of the word, by the most brilliant display of great qualities of all kinds; and the hero of the _Faerie Queene_ seems to be the personification of the splendid attributes of the age. A prevailing sentiment, in the mind of Spenser, was the perfectness of character to which the gentlemen of his time aspired, and on this model he fashioned his hero. He observes that "the general end, therefore, of all the books is to fashion a gentleman or noble person in gentle and virtuous discipline." And again, "I labor to pourtraict in Arthure, before he was King, the image of a brave knight, perfected in the twelve moral virtues." And as we read the gorgeous description of the prince, when he first meets the forsaken Una, we could fancy that the magnificent characteristics of the golden age of England had blended together, and blazed forth in one dazzling form before us. JOHN KNOX HEADS THE SCOTTISH REFORMERS A.D. 1559 P. HUME BROWN THOMAS CARLYLE In the year of Martin Luther's death (1546) Protestant doctrines were preached in Scotland by George Wishart. This reformer was burned at St. Andrew's, in the same year (March 12th), at the instigation of Cardinal Beaton. Two months later the Cardinal himself, who practically controlled the Scottish government, was murdered in the castle of St. Andrew's. Beaton's death was "fatal to the Catholic religion and to the French interest in Scotland." The interest of France was represented by the Queen Regent, Mary of Lorraine, also called Mary of Guise, daughter of Claude, Duke of Guise. She was the widow of James V of Scotland, and mother of Mary Stuart, now four years old and living in France. During his brief season of Protestant preaching, Wishart had deeply impressed a scholar, then forty years of age, who gave up his calling as teacher, and in 1547 began to preach the reformed religion at St. Andrew's. This was John Knox. From this moment dates the birth of the Protestant Reformation in Scotland. Knox was imprisoned by the French (1547-1549), was released, and for two years preached at Berwick. For several years now he lived a life of many vicissitudes, partly in Great Britain and partly on the Continent, and by his sermons and writings powerfully influenced the growth of the Protestant faith. While at Geneva, where he was much influenced by Calvin, in 1558, he published his _First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women_, a denouncement which brought him into bitter antagonism with the Queen Regent and with other Catholic authorities in England and France. In 1559 the Queen Regent took active steps for repressing the Congregation, as the whole body of Scotch Protestants were called, and in the same year Knox returned once more to Scotland, there to perform a work which made his name perhaps second only to that of Luther among the personal forces of the Reformation. The first of the following accounts shows Knox and his followers in the midst of their warfare against the Regent's repressive policy. In the second we have one of Carlyle's most fervent eulogies, for to him Knox is the priestly hero enacting a glorious part. P. HUME BROWN The year 1559 began ominously for the success of the Queen Regent's policy of suppression. To this point national feeling and religious conviction had been the driving-forces of the coming revolution. But, as is the case in all national upheavals, there were likewise economic forces at work which were none the less potent because they were obscured behind the dramatic development of sensational events. A remarkable document, the author of which is unknown, gave striking expression to this aspect of the Scottish Reformation. It was entitled the _Beggars' Summons_, and purported to come from "all cities, towns, and villages of Scotland." On January 1, 1559, this terrible manifesto, breathing the very spirit of revolution, was found placarded on the gates of every religious establishment in Scotland. The _Summons_ begins as follows: "The blind, crooked, lame, widows, orphans, and all other poor visited by the hand of God as may not work, to the flocks of all friars within this realm, we wish restitution of wrongs past, and reformation in times coming, for salutation." It may be sufficient to quote the concluding passage of this extraordinary effusion, and it is a passage which should never be out of mind in any estimate of the forces that were about to effect the great cataclysm in the national life: "Wherefore, seeing our number is so great, so indigent, and so heavily oppressed by your false means that none taketh care of our misery, and that it is better to provide for these our impotent members which God hath given us, to oppose to you in plain controversy, than to see you hereafter, as ye have done before, steal from us our lodging, and ourselves in the mean time to perish and die for want of the same; we have thought good, therefore, ere we enter in conflict with you, to warn you in the name of the great God by this public writing, affixed on your gates where ye now dwell, that ye remove forth of our said hospitals betwixt this and the feast of Whitsunday next, so that we, the only lawful proprietors thereof, may enter thereto, and afterward enjoy the commodities of the Church which ye have heretofore wrongfully holden from us; certifying that if ye fail, we will at the said term, in whole number and with the help of God and assistance of his saints on earth, of whose ready support we doubt not, enter and take possession of our said patrimony, and eject you utterly forth of the same. Let him, therefore, that before hath stolen, steal no more; but rather let him work with his hands, that he may be helpful to the poor." The inflammatory statements of revolutionaries must be taken for what they are worth; but there is abundant evidence to prove that the above indictment of the national Church was not without foundation in fact. It has been computed that one-half of the wealth of the country was in possession of the clergy; and we have the testimony of unimpeachable witnesses to the unworthy uses to which it was put. Hector Boece, John Major, and Ninian Winzet were all three faithful sons of the Church, and all three cried aloud at the venality, avarice, and luxurious living of the higher clergy. "But now, for many years," wrote Major, "we have been shepherds whose only care it is to find pasture for themselves, men neglectful of the duties of religion. By open flattery do the worthless sons of our nobility get the governance of convents _in commendam_, and they covet these ample revenues, not for the good help that they thence might render to their brethren, but solely for the high position that these places offer." To the same effect Ninian Winzet wrote after the judgment had come. "The special roots of all mischief," he says, "be the two infernal monsters, pride and avarice, of the which unhappily has up-sprung the election of unqualified bishops and other pastors in Scotland." This spectacle of the national Church, with its disproportionate wealth and its selfish, incompetent, and often degraded officials, could not but be a growing offence to the developing intelligence of the nation; and to quicken this feeling there were minor grievances which were an ancient ground of complaint on the part of the laity against their spiritual advisers. On every important event of his life the poor man was harassed by exactions which Sir David Lyndsay has so keenly touched in his _Satire of the Three Estates_. Says the Pauper in the interlude: "Quhair will ye find that law, tell gif ye can, To tak thine ky, fra ane pure husbandman? Ane for my father, and for my wyfe ane uther, And the third cow, he tuke fra Mald my mother." And Diligence replies: "It is thair law, all that they have in use, Tocht it be cow, sow, ganer, gryse, or guse." If the poor had these grounds of discontent, the rich likewise had theirs; and they made bitter complaint against the protracted processes in the consistorial courts, and the frequent appeals to the Roman Curia, by which both their means and their patience were exhausted. It was in the face of feelings such as these that, in the spring of 1559, the Queen Regent entered on her new line of policy toward her refractory subjects. Her first steps were taken with her usual prudence. A provincial council of the clergy was summoned to meet on March 1st for the express purpose of dealing with the religious difficulty. It was the last provincial council of the ancient Church that was to meet in Scotland; and, if the expression of its good intentions could have availed, the Church might yet have been saved. All that its worst enemies had said of its shortcomings was frankly admitted, and admirable decrees were passed with a view to a speedy and effective reform. But the hour had passed when the mere reform of life and doctrine would have sufficed to meet the desires of the new spiritual teachers. As was speedily to be seen, it was revolution and not reform on which these new teachers were now bent with an ever-growing confidence that their triumph was not far off. A double order issued by the Regent toward the end of March brought her face to face with the consequences of her changed policy. Unauthorized persons were forbidden to preach, and the lieges were commanded to observe the festival of Easter after the manner ordained by the Church. The preachers disregarded both edicts and were summoned to answer for their disobedience. It was now seen that the Regent was no longer in the mood for temporizing; and the Congregation despatched two of their number, the Earl of Glencairn and Sir Hew Campbell, sheriff of Ayr, to deprecate her wrath. Their reception must have taught them that times were now changed since the days when the Regent deemed it necessary to conciliate their party. "In despite of you and your ministers both," she told the two deputies, "they shall be banished out of Scotland, albeit they preached as truly as ever did St. Paul." When they reminded her of her previous promises, she replied in words that were never forgotten, and which her grandson, James VI, recalled and laid to heart in his own dealings with his subjects. "It became not subjects," she said, "to burden their princes further than it pleaseth them to keep the same." For a time, however, she consented to stay further action against the preachers. But, if she were to carry out the task she had undertaken, she must sooner or later make trial of her strength against what had now become actual rebellion. In Perth, Dundee, and Montrose the Protestant preachers, with the approval and countenance of the constituted authorities, openly proceeded with their work of spreading their new opinions. At length the Regent took the step which was to be the beginning of the end of the Catholic Church in Scotland. She summoned the preachers to appear before her at Stirling on May 10th, and on this occasion it was recognized by both parties that the moment for decisive action had come. To be ready for all contingencies, a numerous body of Protestant gentlemen from Angus and the Mearns, all, it is specially noted, "without armor," took up their quarters at Perth, where they were immediately joined by another contingent from Dundee. With this last body came John Knox, who on May 20th had finally returned to his native country. All through their contest with the Regent, the Protestant leaders took up the position that they were acting in strict accordance with the law of the land. With the formidable following now at their back, they might have marched on Stirling and gained a temporary advantage by their show of strength. What they actually did was to send Erskine of Dun to the Regent to lay their demands once more before her. As she was not yet in a position to enforce her will, she again agreed to postpone action against the preachers. It was the misfortune of her position from the beginning of the struggle that Mary of Lorraine was driven to subterfuges which made impossible any permanent understanding with her discontented subjects; and it was of evil omen for the success of her policy that she now allowed herself to commit a serious breach of faith. In the teeth of her promise to Erskine, she proclaimed the preachers as outlaws when they failed to appear at Stirling on the day appointed for their trial. The news of the Regent's breach of faith was the immediate occasion of the first stroke in the Scottish Reformation. The day after the outlawry John Knox preached a sermon in the parish church of Perth, his theme being the idolatries of Rome, and the duty of Christian men to put an end to them. At the close of the sermon, when the majority of the audience had left the church, a priest proceeded to celebrate mass. A forward boy made a protesting remark; the priest struck him; the boy retaliated by throwing a stone which broke an image, and immediately the church was in an uproar. In a few moments not "a monument of idolatry" was left in the building. The news of these doings spread through the town, and the "rascal multitude" took up the work. There had been old quarrels between the town and the religious orders; and so early as 1543 a violent assault had been made on the Blackfriars' monastery. But on the present occasion the work done was at once more extensive and more thorough. The main onslaught was directed toward the monasteries of the Dominicans and the Franciscans and the Charterhouse Abbey; and within two days, says Knox, "the walls only did remain of these great edifications." There was now no alternative but the sword, and both parties at once took action accordingly. In support of the French troops which were at her disposal, the Regent ordered levies from Clydesdale, Stirlingshire, and the Lothians to meet her at Stirling on May 24th. On their part the insurgents strengthened the defences of Perth--according to Buchanan, the only walled town in Scotland--and addressed themselves to their brethren in Ayrshire for instant succor. As they were now engaged in what might be construed as rebellion, they took steps to justify themselves in the eyes of the world. In three manifestoes, probably the work of Knox, they addressed respectively the Regent, D'Oysel, the French ambassador, and the whole Scottish nobility. In view of the past history of Scotland the insurgents could present a case which possessed sufficient plausibility. It had been the exception for the reign of a Scottish king to pass without some more or less serious revolt on the ground of his alleged misgovernment. Even during the reign with which we are dealing, there had been a fair precedent for the late proceedings of the Congregation. At the outset of the reign, the Earl of Arran was giving away the country to England and to heresy; Beaton and the French party had taken up arms against him, and undone all his actions to which they objected. But as Mary of Lorraine was now governing the country, the danger of a French conquest was much more serious than had been the danger of conquest by England. On the ground that the state was in peril, therefore, there was ample justification for the action of the Protestant leaders. With regard to religion, the good of the commonwealth might easily be urged as a plea for the most drastic dealing with the national Church. By the admission of its own officials the Church had become a scandal, alike from the character of the clergy and its general neglect of its duties as a spiritual body. For at least a century the scandal had been growing; and good citizens had been forced to the conclusion that their accredited spiritual guides were either unable or unwilling to set their house in order. But the time demanded deeds more than words. With a force of about eight thousand French and Scots, D'Oysel, the Regent's chief adviser, advanced to Auchterarder, some twelve miles from Perth. With this formidable force behind her, the Regent naturally expected that her rebellious subjects would be disposed to abate their demands. To learn what terms they would now be willing to accept, she sent to Perth the lord James Stewart, Lord Sempill, and the Earl of Argyle. They were told that the town would be surrendered if assurance were given of freedom of worship and security to the worshippers. As a reply to these demands, the Regent despatched the lyon king-of-arms to make proclamation that all should "avoid the toune under pane of treasone." At this moment, however, the Earl of Glencairn, at the head of a body of two thousand five hundred Ayrshire Protestants, made his way to within six miles of Perth. Thus checkmated, the Regent was again driven to a compromise; and on the conditions that she should quarter no French troops in the town, and grant perfect freedom of worship, the gates were at length thrown open to her. Thus closed the first act of the drama of the Scottish Reformation. This good understanding was of short duration. Again the action of the Regent gave rise to an accusation of broken pledges. She kept to the letter of the late compact, but she evaded its spirit. She did not quarter French troops in the town, but she occupied it with Scottish soldiers in French pay, and, in further disregard of her pledges, treated the Protestants with a harshness which gave rise to bitter complaint on the part of their leaders. Argyle and the lord James, the two most prominent of these leaders, had accompanied her into Perth (May 29th), but, indignant at these proceedings, they secretly quitted the town and at once took action to make good their protests. Summoning the Protestant gentlemen of Angus and the Mearns to meet them in St. Andrew's on June 3d, they proceeded to that town, as the best centre of action after Perth. In St. Andrew's as in Perth it is John Knox who is again the outstanding figure. Here his preaching was attended by the same notable results. The monasteries of the Dominicans and the Franciscans were practically demolished by the mob, and with the approval of the magistrates every church in the town was stripped of its ornaments. Meanwhile the Regent had not been idle, and was now at Falkland with a force led by D'Oysel and Châtelherault. Confident in their strength, those two leaders marched toward Cupar, with the intention of dealing with St. Andrew's. But again they discovered that they had miscalculated the resources of the insurgents. Issuing from St. Andrew's, with little over a hundred horse, Argyle and the lord James were speedily reënforced by contingents from Lothian and Fife, which raised their numbers to above three thousand men. Thus strengthened, they took up their position on Cupar Muir, and awaited the approach of the Regent's forces. But in number these forces were now inferior to those of the enemy; and, as many of the French soldiers were Huguenots and secretly sympathized with their fellow-believers, the issue of the battle could not but be doubtful. Again, therefore, there was no alternative for the Regent but to temporize. It was agreed that there should be a truce of eight days, that the Regent's forces now in Fife should be removed from that county, and that, during the armistice, an attempt should be made to effect some permanent understanding. The new arrangement proved as hollow as the first. In point of fact, it was borne in on both parties that the struggle had but begun, and that the sword only could end it. Already, therefore, both were looking for external support wherewith to crush their opponents. The very day after the compact at Cupar, D'Oysel wrote to the French ambassador in London that only a body of French troops could maintain the Regent's authority. On their part the Protestant leaders now entered on those negotiations with England which eventually led to results that gave Scotland definitely to Protestantism and united the destinies of the two nations. Meanwhile, however, the Regent and her revolted subjects had to fight their own battles. The truce effected nothing, and it had no sooner expired than hostilities recommenced. The first object of the leaders of the Congregation was to relieve their brethren in Perth, and on June 24th they sat down before that place in such numbers that it immediately and unconditionally surrendered. Perth, Dundee, and St. Andrew's were now in their hands; but, having gone thus far, their only hope lay in giving still further proof of the strength of their cause. It was reported that the Regent meant to stop their progress southward of Stirling bridge; but, before she could effect her object, they entered that town with the consent of the majority of the citizens. By June 29th they were in possession of the capital, whence Mary of Lorraine had fled to the castle of Dunbar. The cause of the Congregation now appeared to be triumphant, but it contained elements of weakness of which everyone was aware and which speedily became manifest. The acts of violence which had attended the revolt were filling the law-abiding citizens with dismay. The destruction of church property in Perth and St. Andrew's had been followed by similar excesses elsewhere. Especially disquieting had been what had occurred at Scone immediately after the surrender of Perth. In defiance of the protests of Knox, the lord James, and Argyle, the reformers of Dundee had sacked and burned to the ground the abbey and palace of that village--an outrage which Knox himself regretted in the interest of his own cause. It was a further source of weakness to the Congregation that their actions easily lent themselves to misconstruction and misrepresentation. The Regent industriously spread the plausible report both at home and abroad that their religious professions were a mere pretext, and that their real object was to overthrow herself and to make the lord James their king. But, above all, the nature of the host that supported them was such that it invariably failed them when their need was the greatest. The men who composed it had to leave their daily business in town and country; and, as they received no pay and their own affairs demanded their attention, their military service did not extend beyond a few weeks. The Protestant leaders had no sooner taken possession of Edinburgh than their following began to dwindle. During the first week their numbers amounted to over seven thousand men; by the third week they had diminished to one thousand five hundred. In these circumstances the Regent had only to bide her time, and her opportunity must come. On July 23d her troops, led by D'Oysel and Châtelherault, marched on Leith, which they reached on the morning of the 24th. As had been anticipated, neither that town nor the capital itself was in a position to offer any effectual resistance; and the leaders of the Congregation at once proposed a conference for the discussion of terms. Accordingly, the Duke and the Earl of Huntly on the one side, and Argyle, the lord James, and Glencairn on the other, met on the east slope of the Calton hill and agreed to the following adjustment: The Congregation were to give up the coining-irons, of which they had taken possession, and they were to evacuate Edinburgh within twenty-four hours. The town was to be left free to choose its own religion; no French troops were to be introduced. The Protestants were to be allowed complete liberty of worship, but were to abstain from violence against the old religion, and these arrangements were to hold till the 10th of the following January. By this concession of liberty to worship according to their own consciences the Protestants had apparently attained the main object for which they had risen, but they well knew that they would enjoy this liberty only so long as they were strong enough to enforce it. On leaving Edinburgh, therefore, they proceeded to Stirling, where they came to an agreement as to their future plan of action. As a necessary precaution for their immediate security, they entered into a bond of mutual defence and concerted counsels. Above all, they determined to spare no pains to win support from England, which, as itself now a Protestant country, could not look on with indifference while they were engaged in a life-and-death struggle with France and Rome. An event that had lately happened gave a new impulse to French action in Scotland. On July 10th Henry II had been accidentally killed in a tournament; and Mary Stuart, the niece of the Guises, was now Queen of France. It was with greater zeal than ever, therefore, that the Guises sought to direct Scottish affairs according to their own interests. In the beginning of August the Protestant lords took a decided step: they sent John Knox to England with instructions that might serve as a basis of a treaty between England and the Congregation. The instructions were that if England would assist them against France, the Congregation would agree to a common league against that country. Knox only went as far as Berwick; but he brought home a letter containing a reply to the Protestant overtures from Elizabeth's secretary, Sir William Cecil. The reply was discouraging; but it contained a practical suggestion, by which, however, the Protestant leaders were either unwilling or unable to profit. If it was money they were in need of, Cecil told them, that need present no difficulty; if they would but do as Henry VIII did with the monasteries, they would have enough money and to spare. The English Queen was, in truth, in a position that demanded the wariest going. Two-thirds of her own subjects were Catholics, and it would be an evil example to set them if she were to assist rebels in another country. Moreover, the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis, concluded in the previous April, debarred her from hostile demonstration against France. But the peril from French ascendency in Scotland could not be ignored, and by the gradual pressure of events Elizabeth was driven to support a course which in her heart she abhorred. Shortly after Cecil's communication, the veteran diplomatist, Sir Ralph Sadler, came down to Scotland with a commission to effect a secret arrangement with the Protestant leaders, and brought with him three thousand pounds to distribute to the best of his wisdom. What the Guises meant speedily became apparent. About the middle of August a thousand French soldiers landed at Leith; and, as they were accompanied by their wives and children, the object of their coming could not be misunderstood. If the leaders of the Congregation, therefore, were not to lose all the ground they had lately gained, a time for vigorous action had again come. As had been previously concerted, they met at Stirling on September 10th and took counsel as to their further action. Here they were joined by an ally who, by his rank and his claims, was of the first importance to their cause. This was the Earl of Arran, the eldest son of the Duke of Châtelherault, who, a few months previously, had been forced to flee from France by reason of his Protestant sympathies. The value of the new confederate was soon realized. Passing to Hamilton palace, the insurgent leaders there met the Duke himself, to whom they held out such alluring prospects that he openly identified himself with their cause. During these transactions at Hamilton, alarming news came of the doings of the Regent. It was reported that she was busily engaged in fortifying Leith--a proceeding, the Congregation maintained, in direct violation of the late treaty. Disregarding their protest, she steadily proceeded with the work; and, as she was strengthened by a new contingent of eight hundred French men-at-arms, her position by the middle of autumn was such as to excite alarm alike in Scotland and England. Again there was no arbitrament but by the sword. On October 16th the insurgent leaders entered Edinburgh with the intention of laying siege to Leith, where the Regent had taken refuge as the safest place in the kingdom. One of their earliest steps was the most audacious they had yet taken. They formally deposed Mary of Lorraine from the regency, on the ground that she had ruled as a tyrant and was betraying the country to a foreign enemy. But they soon found that they had taken a task beyond their strength. Their force amounted to but eight thousand men, most of whom were "cuntrie fellows" with no experience in war, and whose service could not extend beyond a few weeks. To this undisciplined host was opposed a garrison of three thousand trained soldiers, with the command of the sea and intrenched in a town fortified after the best military art of the time. Fortune, moreover, was against the Congregation from the first. A new instalment of one thousand pounds, secretly sent by Elizabeth, was cleverly seized by James, Earl of Bothwell, afterward the notorious helpmate of Mary Stuart. Their arms, also, met with no success. While a detachment of their troops was in pursuit of Bothwell, the enemy found their opportunity and made their way even into the streets of Edinburgh; and on November 25th the reformers sustained so severe a reverse that the capital was no longer a safe place for them. They had no money to pay the few mercenaries whom they had hired; the town was tired of them; and the earl Marischal, who had charge of the castle, held resolutely aloof. As at the close of their previous rising, the leaders held a council at Stirling to determine their future policy; before they entered on their deliberations, Knox was called upon to preach a sermon--Knox, of whom it was said that he "put more life" into those who heard him "than five hundred trumpets continually blustering" in their ears. The deliberations that succeeded took a sufficiently practical shape. Young Maitland of Lethington, who had lately deserted the Regent for the Congregation, was despatched to England with offers that might induce Elizabeth to give direct support to the cause of Protestantism in Scotland. As to their own future action, the lords made the following arrangement: Châtelherault, Argyle, Glencairn, and the lords Boyd and Ochiltry were to make their head-quarters in Glasgow; while Arran, the lord James, the lords Rothes and Ruthven, and John Knox were to act from St. Andrew's as their centre. Their counsels at an end, they separated with the intention of reassembling at Stirling on December 16th. They had thus tried two falls with the Regent, and in both they had been worsted: the third trial of strength was to have a different ending. The Regent was not slow to follow up her advantage. She took possession of the capital two days after the Congregation had quitted it, and she tried hard, but in vain, to persuade the earl Marischal to surrender the castle. The arrival of fresh reënforcements from France at the beginning of December enabled her to abandon her defensive policy and to take decisive measures for the suppression of revolt. On Christmas Day, while the Protestant lords were in council at Stirling, two detachments of her troops, commanded by D'Oysel, drove them precipitately from the town. Pursuing his advantage, D'Oysel despatched his troops across Stirling bridge into Fife, and he himself with another detachment crossed from Leith, apparently with the object of gaining possession of St. Andrew's. The task proved a hard one. At every step he was beset by the Scots under Argyle and the lord James. "The said Earl and Lord James," says Knox, "for twenty-one days they lay in their clothes; their boots never came off; they had skirmishing almost every day; yea, some days, from morn to even." Yet, in the teeth of all obstacles, D'Oysel steadily forced his way to within six miles of St. Andrew's, where Knox and his friends had all but abandoned hope. But unexpected deliverance was at hand. On January 23, 1560, a fleet of strange vessels appeared at the mouth of the Frith of Forth. As a French fleet had been expected for some weeks, D'Oysel concluded that his armament had come at last. He was soon undeceived. Under his eyes the strangers seized two ships bearing provisions from Leith to his own camp. The strange vessels were an advanced squadron of a fleet sent by Elizabeth to block the Frith of Forth against further succors from France. It was now D'Oysel who was in extremities; and before he found himself safe in Linlithgow he had vivid experience at once of the rigors of a Scotch winter and of the savage hate which his countrymen had come to inspire in the nation which for three centuries had called them friends and allies. Meanwhile, the mission of Maitland to the English court was about to lead to one of the most notable compacts in the national history. At Berwick-on-Tweed, the lord James Stewart, Lord Ruthven, and three other Scottish commissioners met the Duke of Norfolk and concluded a treaty (February 27th) which was to insure the eventual triumph of the Congregation, to make Scotland a Protestant country, and at a later day a constituent part of a Greater Britain. The treaty was in effect a bond of mutual defence against France--Elizabeth having reluctantly consented that an English army should at once enter Scotland and assist the Congregation in driving the French soldiery out of the country. While her revolted subjects were thus making strong their hands against her, fortune was otherwise deserting the cause of the Regent. A great French armament, which was to have brought over a force sufficient to crush all opposition, had been driven back by a succession of storms; and she herself was already stricken with the disease which was soon to carry her off. In these circumstances there was but one course open to her--to fall back on the policy of self-defence and patient waiting on events. After one somewhat wanton expedition against Glasgow and the Hamiltons, her troops finally (March 29th) retired within the fortifications of Leith, and she herself at her special request was received into the castle of Edinburgh. On April 4th the English and Scottish hosts joined forces at Prestonpans, and on the 6th they sat down before Leith. The spectacle was one suggestive of many reflections; English and Scots, immemorial foes, were fighting side by side against the ancient friend of the one, the ancient enemy of the other. There could not be a more memorable illustration of the saying that "events sometimes mount the saddle and ride men." Even with their united strength the allies had a formidable task before them. At the outset of the siege the English amounted to about nine thousand men, the Scots to ten thousand; but before many weeks had gone, these numbers had dwindled to a half. With this force the English commander, Lord Gray, had to besiege a town defended by four thousand trained soldiers and fortified by the most skilful engineers of the time. Two severe reverses sustained by the allies prove that in discipline and skill they were no match for the enemy. On April 14th the French sallied from the town, and, breaking through the English trenches, slew two hundred men. A combined assault on the town (May 7th) was brilliantly repulsed--the English and Scots leaving eight hundred dead and wounded in the trenches. It was not long before all three parties were sick of the contest. The Guises had their hands full at home and needed every soldier they had; Elizabeth heartily disliked the task of assisting rebel subjects and grudged every penny that was spent in it; and the Congregation had never been in a position to support a protracted war. The death of the Regent on June 10th must have quickened the desire of the Guises for peace; for where she had failed to effect their purposes no one else was likely to succeed. Alike by her own character and gifts and by the momentous policy of which she was the agent, Mary of Lorraine is one of the remarkable figures in Scottish history. It was her misfortune--a misfortune due to her birth and connections--that she found herself from the first in direct antagonism to the natural development of the country of her adoption, and that the circumstances in which she ruled were such as to bring into prominence the least worthy traits of the proud race from which she sprang. Yet in personal appearance, as in courage and magnificence, she was the true sister of Henry of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine, "the Pope and King of France." Construed to a larger and more charitable sense than that in which they were written, the words of Knox fitly enough sum up her career. She was "unhappy--to Scotland--from the first day she entered into it unto the day she finished her unhappy life." On June 16th commissioners arrived from England and France with powers to effect an arrangement between the contending parties. From England came Cecil and Dr. Wotton, Dean of Canterbury and York; and from France, Monluc, Bishop of Valence, and Charles de Rochefoucauld, Sieur de Randan. From the beginning, the French representatives gave it to be understood that any treaty that might be made was exclusively between England and France; the Congregation were rebel subjects with whom their prince could in no wise treat. After many difficulties that more than once threatened to put an end to further negotiations, a settlement was at length reached (July 6th). The final arrangement signally proved how hopeless the Guises were of their immediate prospects in Scotland. Mary and Francis were to desist from using the arms of England; no Frenchman was henceforth to hold any important office in Scotland; the fortifications of Leith were to be demolished; and the French soldiers, with the exception of one hundred twenty, were at once to be sent home in their own country. Till the return of Mary the government was to be intrusted to twelve persons, of whom she was to appoint seven and the estates five. In the treaty no arrangement was made regarding religion; but, with the powers now placed at their disposal, there could be little doubt how the Protestant leaders would interpret the omission. Thus had Elizabeth and the Congregation gained every point for which they had striven; and their victory may be said to have determined the future, not only of Britain, but of Protestantism. So far as Scotland is concerned, the treaty of Edinburgh marks the central point of her history. It now remained to be seen to what uses the Protestant party would put their victory. The simultaneous departure of the French and English troops relieved them from all restraint; and four days later the great deliverance was signalized by a solemn thanksgiving in the Church of St. Giles. For the effectual spreading of the Protestant doctrine, preachers were planted in various parts of the country--Knox being appointed to the principal charge in Edinburgh. But it was the approaching assembly of the estates to which all men were looking with hopes or fears, according to their desires and interests. The estates met on August 3d, but it was not till the 8th that the attendance was complete. It was to be the most important national assembly in the history of the Scottish people; and the numbers of the different classes who flocked to it showed that the momentous nature of the crisis was fully realized. Specially noteworthy was the crowd of smaller barons from all parts of the country. So unusual was the appearance of these persons that it had almost been forgotten that their right to sit as representatives dated from as far back as the reign of James I. A question raised, as to the legality of an assembly which met independently of the summons or the presence of the sovereign, was decisively set aside; and the House addressed itself to the great issues involved in the late revolution. The question of religion, as at the root of the whole controversy, took precedence of every other. The first proceeding showed the national instinct for the logical conduct of human affairs. The estates instructed the ministers to draw up a statement of Protestant doctrine, which might serve at once as a chart for their future guidance and a justification for their present and their future action. In four days the task (an easy one for Knox and his brother-ministers) was accomplished; and under twenty-five heads the estates had before them what was henceforth to be the creed of the majority of the Scottish people. Article by article the Confession was read and considered, and, after a feeble protest by the bishops of St. Andrew's, Dunkeld, and Dunblane, approved and ratified by an overwhelming majority of the estates. The way being thus cleared, the next step was the logical conclusion of all the past action of the Protestant leaders. In three successive acts, all passed in one day, it was decreed that the national Church should cease to exist. The first act abolished the jurisdiction of the Pope; the second condemned all practices and doctrines contrary to the new creed; and the third forbade the celebration of mass within the bounds of Scotland. The penalties attached to the breach of these enactments were those approved and sanctioned by the example of every country in Christendom. Confiscation for the first offence, exile for the second, and death for the third--such were to be the successive punishments for the saying or hearing of mass. Thus apparently had Knox and his fellow-workers attained the end of all their labors; and it is instructive to compare the history of their struggle with the experiences of other countries where the same religious conflicts had successively arisen. In Germany the terrible Peasants' War had been the direct result of Luther's revolt from Rome; and in England the ecclesiastical revolution had been followed by the religious atrocities of Henry VIII, by the anarchy under Edward VI, and by the remorseless fanaticism of Mary Tudor. While the Congregation was in the midst of its struggles with Mary of Lorraine, Philip II was dealing with heresy in Spain. How effectually he dealt with it is one of the notable chapters in the histories of nations. Here it is sufficient to recall a single fact in illustration of the relative experiences of Scotland and Spain. In 1559 Philip and his court, amid the applause of a crowd of above two hundred thousand from all parts of Castile, sanctioned with their presence the burning at Valladolid of a band of persons, mostly women, accused of the crime of heresy. In France the appearance of a new religion had evoked passions, alike among the people and their rulers, which were to give that country an evil preeminence in the ferocity of national and individual action. The _chambre ardente_, the Edict of Châteaubriand (1551), the massacre of Amboise (1560), the thirty years of intermittent civil war (1562-1592)--these were the events of frightful significance that mark the development of religious conflict in France. Compared with the tale of blood and confusion that has to be told of Germany, France, England, and Spain, the history of the Reformation in Scotland is a record of order and tranquillity. What is thrust upon us by the narrative of events in Scotland is the singular moderation alike of the representatives of the old and the new religion. Heretics had been burned indeed, but the number was inconsiderable compared with that of similar victims in other countries; and, even in the day of their triumph, the Scottish Protestants, in spite of the stern threat of their legislation, were guiltless of a single execution on the ground of religion. What is still more striking is, that difference of faith begot no fanatical hate among the mass of the people. In France and Spain men forgot the ties of blood and country in the blind fury of religious zeal, but in Scotland we do not find town arrayed against town and neighbor denouncing neighbor on the ground of a different faith. That this tolerance was not due to indifference the religious history of Scotland abundantly proves. It was in the convulsions attending the change of the national faith that the Scottish nation first attained to a consciousness of itself, and the characteristics it then displayed have remained its distinctive characteristics ever since. It is precisely the combination of a fervid temper with logical thinking and temperate action that have distinguished the Scottish people in all the great crises of their history. It soon appeared that the Protestant triumph was not so complete as it might have seemed. Those who saw furthest--and none was more keenly alive to the fact than Knox--were well aware that many a battle must yet be fought before the new temple they had built should stand secure against the assault of open enemies and equivocal friends. The inherent difficulties of the situation became speedily manifest. Mary and Francis refused to ratify the late measures--a fact, says Knox, "we little regarded or do regard." What he did regard, however, was the continued alliance and support of England; and he was now to learn that, having attained her own objects, Elizabeth was not disposed to be specially cordial in her future relations to the Protestants in Scotland. It had been for some time in the minds of the Protestant leaders that a marriage between Elizabeth and the Earl of Arran would be an excellent arrangement for both countries; and in October a commission was actually sent to make the proposal. The reply of Elizabeth was that "presently she was not disposed to marry." An important event made this rebuff additionally unwelcome: on December 5th, Francis II, the husband of Mary Stuart, unexpectedly died. Had her husband lived, Mary might have continued to live in France, which had been so long her home, and Scotland might have been left in large degree to settle its own affairs. Now the probability was that Mary would return to her own country, and with all the authority and prestige of a legitimate sovereign renew the battle that had been lost by her mother. It was, therefore, with gloomy forebodings that all sincere well-wishers to the Reformed Church in Scotland saw the close of this year of their apparent triumph. If there were these apprehensions from enemies, there was likewise a growing alarm from the attitude of lukewarm and dubious friends. The sincerity and good faith of all who had taken part in the late revolution were about to be subjected to the most stringent of tests. By the enactments of the preceding year the ancient Church had been swept away; but the work of rearing a new edifice in its place still remained to be accomplished. With this object the Protestant ministers had been intrusted with the task of drafting a constitution for a new church which should take the place of the old. The ministers had discharged their trust, and the result of their labors was laid before the estates which met in Edinburgh on January 15, 1561. The document presented to the estates was the famous _Book of Discipline_--the most interesting and in many respects the most important document in the history of Scotland. If any proof were needed that the revolt against the ancient Church was no ill-considered act of irresponsible men, we assuredly possess that proof in this extraordinary book. Though in its primary intention the scheme of its ecclesiastical polity, it is in fact the draft of a "republic," under which a nation should live its life on earth and prepare itself for heaven. It not only prescribes a creed, and supplies a complete system of church government: it suggests a scheme of national education, it defines the relation of church and state, it provides for the poor and unable, it regulates the life of households, it even determines the career of such as by their natural gifts were especially fitted to be of service to church or state. As we shall see, the suggestions of the _Book of Discipline_ were to be but imperfectly realized; yet, by defining the ideals and moulding the temper and culture of the prevailing majority of the Scottish people, it has been one of the great formative influences in the national development. It was on this memorable document that the estates were now to sit in judgment. In the case of the Confession of Faith they had been practically unanimous; but that had been a mere statement of abstract doctrines which involved no question of worldly interests, and might be subscribed with a light heart and with any degree of spiritual conviction. With the _Book of Discipline_ it was very different. The fundamental question that had to be answered in that book was the question of the "sustentation" of the new Church. The answer given was the most natural in the world: the reformed Church had an indisputable right to the entire inheritance of the Church it had displaced. There were, however, two formidable difficulties in the way of this claim. Without manifest injustice the ancient clergy could not be deprived wholesale of their means of subsistence. The second difficulty was also formidable. Of late years a considerable amount of Church property had passed into the hands of the nobles, barons, and gentry. Would these persons now be willing to lay their possessions at the feet of the ministers from whom they professed to have received the true Gospel? The proceedings of the convention left no doubt as to the answer. As in the preceding August, the assembly was a crowded one, but on this occasion there was no such unanimous action. "Some approved it," says Knox, "and willed the same have been set forth by law. Others, perceiving their carnal liberty and worldly commodity somewhat to be impaired thereby, grudged, insomuch that the name of _Book of Discipline_ became odious unto them. Everything that repugned to their corrupt affections was termed in their mocking 'devout imaginations.'" After long and heated debates, no definite conclusion was reached. A large number of the nobles and barons, however, signed the _Book_ as being "good and conformable to God's Word in all points"; but they signed it with a qualification that did them credit. The old clergy should be allowed to retain their livings on condition of their maintaining Protestant ministers in their respective districts. The denunciations of Knox have given an evil name to this convention of the estates, yet the act of spoliation to which he would have had them put their hands would have done little credit to a religion whose special claim was to have reproduced the purity and simplicity of the primitive gospel. While the supporters of the Reformation were thus divided among themselves, the prospect of the Queen's approaching return was further confounding their counsels. That she must be their open or their secret foe, they could have no manner of doubt. Her character and opinions had been formed under the immediate supervision of her uncle, the Cardinal of Lorraine; and to the French Protestants the Cardinal was already known as "_le tigre de France_." As a Catholic and as a Queen, her natural desire must be to undo the work of the late revolution, which she could only regard as the work of rebels and heretics. "Whenever she comes," wrote Randolph, the English resident, "I believe there will be a mad world." Mary might prove to be as able as her mother, and she would possess many advantages over Mary of Lorraine in any contest with her subjects. She was the legitimate sovereign of the country; and, now that the immediate danger from France was removed by the death of her husband, there was no reason why the national party, as distinguished alike from Catholic and Protestant, should not return to its natural allegiance. Moreover, though, with the help of England, Protestantism had triumphed in the late trial of strength, the great majority in the country--nobles, barons, and commons--were still on the side of the old religion. Even before her return Mary had clearly indicated the policy she intended to follow. In February she had sent deputies to the estates to urge the renewal of the ancient league with France--a step which, at their meeting in May, the estates decisively refused to take, as being the virtual abandonment of their cause. In view of her imminent return, Mary's supporters began to bestir themselves in a fashion that boded ill for the future peace of the country. At Stirling the bishops met in council to consider their best policy; and we have it from one of their own number that they were acting in concert with the earls Huntly, Athol, Crawford, Marischal, Sutherland, Caithness, and Bothwell. As the result of their counsels, a proposal was sent to Mary which she had the prudence to reject in her own interest as well as in the interest of her kingdom. The proposal was that she should land at some point on the northern coast where the earls would be ready to support her with twenty thousand men. As a safer course for the immediate future, Mary chose the advice proffered to her by the party for the present in the ascendant. Through the lord James Stewart as their deputy, the Protestant leaders urged upon her the necessity of leaving religion as she would find it, and of adopting as her advisers the persons now at the head of affairs. When at length, on August 19, 1561, Mary landed at Leith, it appeared that at least for the time she was content to take things as she found them. That she would accept them as definitive, no one, and least of all John Knox, could so far delude himself as to believe. THOMAS CARLYLE In the history of Scotland I can find properly but one epoch: we may say, it contains nothing of world-interest at all but this Reformation by Knox. A poor, barren country, full of continual broils, dissensions, massacrings; a people in the last state of rudeness and destitution, little better perhaps than Ireland at this day. Hungry, fierce barons, not so much as able to form any arrangement with each other _how to divide_ what they fleeced from these poor drudges; but obliged, as the Colombian Republics are at this day, to make of every alteration a revolution; no way of changing a ministry but by hanging the old ministers on gibbets: this is a historical spectacle of no very singular significance! "Bravery" enough, I doubt not; fierce fighting in abundance, but not braver or fiercer than that of their old Scandinavian Sea-king ancestors, whose exploits we have not found worth dwelling on! It is a country as yet without a soul: nothing developed in it but what is rude, external, semi-animal. And now, at the Reformation, the internal life is kindled, as it were, under the ribs of this outward material death. A cause, the noblest of causes, kindles itself, like a beacon set on high; high as Heaven, yet attainable from Earth, whereby the meanest man becomes not a Citizen only, but a Member of Christ's visible Church; a veritable hero, if he prove a true man! But to return: This that Knox did for his Nation, I say, we may really call a resurrection as from death. It was not a smooth business; but it was welcome surely, and cheap at that price, had it been far rougher. On the whole, cheap at any price--as life is. The people began to _live_: they needed first of all to do that, at what cost and costs soever. Scotch Literature and Thought, Scotch Industry; James Watt, David Hume, Walter Scott, Robert Burns: I find Knox and the Reformation acting in the heart's core of every one of these persons and phenomena; I find that without the Reformation they would not have been. Or what of Scotland? The Puritanism of Scotland became that of England, of New England. A tumult in the High Church of Edinburgh spread into a universal battle and struggle over all these realms; there came out, after fifty years' struggling, what we all call the "_Glorious_ Revolution," a _Habeas Corpus_ Act, Free Parliaments, and much else! Alas, is it not too true, that many men in the van do always like Russian soldiers, march into the ditch of Schweidnitz, and fill it up with their dead bodies, that the rear may pass over them dry-shod, and gain the honor? How many earnest, rugged Cromwells, Knoxes, poor Peasant Covenanters, wrestling, battling for very life, in rough miry places, have to struggle, and suffer, and fall, greatly censured, _bemired_--before a beautiful Revolution of Eighty-eight can step over them in official pumps and silk stockings, with universal three-times-three! It seems to me hard measure that this Scottish man, now after three hundred years, should have to plead like a culprit before the world; intrinsically for having been, in such a way as it was then possible to be, the bravest of all Scotchmen! Had he been a poor Half-and-half, he could have crouched into the corner, like so many others; Scotland had not been delivered; and Knox had been without blame. He is the one Scotchman to whom, of all others, his country and the world owe a debt. He has to plead that Scotland would forgive him for having been worth to it any million "unblamable" Scotchmen that need no forgiveness! He bared his breast to the battle; had to row in French galleys, wander forlorn in exile, in clouds and storms; was censured, shot at through his windows; had a right sore fighting life: if this world were his place of recompense, he had made but a bad venture of it. I cannot apologize for Knox. To him it is very indifferent, these two hundred and fifty years or more, what men say of him. But we, having got above all those details of his battle, and living now in clearness on the fruits of his victory, we, for our own sake, ought to look through the rumors and controversies enveloping the man, into the man himself. For one thing, I will remark that this post of Prophet to his Nation was not of his seeking; Knox had lived forty years quietly obscure, before he became conspicuous. He was the son of poor parents; had got a college education; become a priest; adopted the Reformation, and seemed well content to guide his own steps by the light of it, nowise unduly intruding it on others. He had lived as Tutor in gentlemen's families; preaching when any body of persons wished to hear his doctrine: resolute he to walk by the truth, and speak the truth when called to do it; not ambitious of more; not fancying himself capable of more. In this entirely obscure way he had reached the age of forty; was with the small body of Reformers who were standing siege in St. Andrew's Castle--when one day in their chapel, the preacher, after finishing his exhortation to these fighters in the forlorn hope, said suddenly, That there ought to be other speakers, that all men who had a priest's heart and gift in them ought now to speak; which gifts and heart one of their own number, John Knox the name of him, had: had he not? said the preacher, appealing to all the audience: what then is _his_ duty? The people answered affirmatively; it was a criminal forsaking of his post, if such a man held the word that was in him silent. Poor Knox was obliged to stand up; he attempted to reply; he could say no word; burst into a flood of tears, and ran out. It is worth remembering, that scene. He was in grievous trouble for some days. He felt what a small faculty was his for this great work. He felt what a baptism he was called to be baptized withal. He "burst into tears." Our primary characteristic of a hero, that he is sincere, applies emphatically to Knox. It is not denied anywhere that this, whatever might be his other qualities or faults, is among the truest of men. With a singular instinct he holds to the truth and fact; the truth alone is there for him, the rest a mere shadow and deceptive nonentity. However feeble, forlorn the reality may seem, on that and that only _can_ he take his stand. In the Galleys of the River Loire, whither Knox and the others, after their Castle of St. Andrew's was taken, had been sent as Galley-slaves--some officer or priest, one day, presented them an image of the Virgin Mother, requiring that they, the blasphemous heretics, should do it reverence. Mother? Mother of God? said Knox, when the turn came to him: This is no Mother of God: this is "a _pented bredd_"--a piece of wood, I tell you, with paint on it! She is fitter for swimming, I think, than for being worshipped, added Knox; and flung the thing into the river. It was not very cheap jesting there: but come of it what might, this thing to Knox was and must continue nothing other than the real truth; it was a _pented bredd_: worship it he would not. He told his fellow-prisoners, in this darkest time, to be of courage; the Cause they had was the true one, and must and would prosper; the whole world could not put it down. Reality is of God's making; it is alone strong. How many _pented bredds_, pretending to be real, are fitter to swim than to be worshipped! This Knox cannot live but by facts: he clings to reality as the shipwrecked sailor to the cliff. He is an instance to us how a man, by sincerity itself, becomes heroic; it is the grand gift he has. We find in Knox a good, honest, intellectual talent, no transcendent one; a narrow, inconsiderable man, as compared with Luther: but in heartfelt, instinctive adherence to truth, in _sincerity_, as we say, he has no superior; nay, one might ask, what equal he has? The heart of him is of the true Prophet cast. "He lies there," said the Earl of Morton at his grave, "who never feared the face of man." He resembles, more than any of the moderns, an old Hebrew Prophet. The same inflexibility, intolerance, rigid, narrow-looking adherence to God's truth, stern rebuke in the name of God to all that forsake truth: an old Hebrew prophet in the guise of an Edinburgh minister of the sixteenth century. We are to take him for that; not require him to be other. Knox's conduct to Queen Mary, the harsh visits he used to make in her own palace, to reprove her there, have been much commented upon. Such cruelty, such coarseness, fills us with indignation. On reading the actual narrative of the business, what Knox said, and what Knox meant, I must say one's tragic feeling is rather disappointed. They are not so coarse, these speeches, they seem to me about as fine as the circumstances would permit! Knox was not there to do the courtier; he came on another errand. Whoever, reading these colloquies of his with the Queen, thinks they are vulgar insolences of a plebeian priest to a delicate high lady, mistakes the purport and essence of them altogether. It was unfortunately not possible to be polite with the Queen of Scotland, unless one proved untrue to the Nation and Cause of Scotland. A man who did not wish to see the land of his birth made a hunting-field for intriguing, ambitious Guises, and the Cause of God trampled underfoot of falsehoods, formulas, and the Devil's Cause, had no method of making himself agreeable! "Better that women weep," said Morton, "than that bearded men be forced to weep." Knox was the constitutional opposition party in Scotland: the Nobles of the country, called by their station to take that post, were not found in it; Knox had to go, or no one. The hapless Queen; but the still more hapless Country, if _she_ were made happy! Mary herself was not without sharpness enough, among her other qualities: "Who are you," said she once, "that presume to school the nobles and sovereign of this realm?" "Madam, a subject born within the same," answered he. Reasonably answered! If the "subject" have truth to speak, it is not the "subject's" footing that will fail him here. We blame Knox for his intolerance. Well, surely it is good that each of us be as tolerant as possible. Yet, at bottom, after all the talk there is and has been about it, what is tolerance? Tolerance has to tolerate the _un_essential; and to see well what that is. Tolerance has to be noble, measured, just in its very wrath, when it can tolerate no longer. But, on the whole, we are not altogether here to tolerate! We are here to resist, to control, and vanquish withal. We do not "tolerate" Falsehoods, Thieveries, Iniquities, when they fasten on us; we say to them, Thou art false, thou art not tolerable! We are here to extinguish Falsehoods, and put an end to them, in some wise way! I will not quarrel so much with the way; the doing of the thing is our great concern. In this sense Knox was, full surely, intolerant. A man sent to row in French Galleys, and suchlike, for teaching the Truth in his own land, cannot always be in the mildest humor! I am not prepared to say that Knox had a soft temper; nor do I know that he had what we call an ill temper. An ill nature he decidedly had not. Kind, honest affections dwelt in the much-enduring, hard-worn, ever-battling man. That he _could_ rebuke Queens, and had such weight among those proud, turbulent Nobles, proud enough whatever else they were; and could maintain to the end a kind of virtual Presidency and Sovereignty in that wild realm, he who was only "a subject born within the same": this of itself will prove to us that he was found, close at hand, to be no mean, acrid man; but at heart a healthful, strong, sagacious man. Such alone can bear rule in that kind. They blame him for pulling down cathedrals, and so forth, as if he were a seditious, rioting demagogue: precisely the reverse is seen to be the fact, in regard to cathedrals and the rest of it, if we examine! Knox wanted no pulling-down of stone edifices; he wanted leprosy and darkness to be thrown out of the lives of men. Tumult was not his element; it was the tragic feature of his life that he was forced to dwell so much in that. Every such man is the born enemy of Disorder; hates to be in it: but what then? Smooth Falsehood is not Order; it is the general sum total of _Dis_order. Order is _Truth_--each thing standing on the basis that belongs to it: Order and Falsehood cannot subsist together. Withal, unexpectedly enough, this Knox has a vein of drollery in him; which I like much, in combination with his other qualities. He has a true eye for the ridiculous. His _History_, with its rough earnestness, is curiously enlivened with this. When the two Prelates, entering Glasgow Cathedral, quarrel about precedence; march rapidly up, take to hustling one another, twitching one another's rochets, and at last flourishing their crosiers like quarter-staves, it is a great sight for him everywhere! Not mockery, scorn, bitterness alone; though there is enough of that too. But a true, loving, illuminating laugh mounts up over the earnest visage; not a loud laugh; you would say, a laugh in the _eyes_ most of all. An honest-hearted, brotherly man; brother to the high, brother also to the low; sincere in his sympathy with both. He had his pipe of Bourdeaux too, we find, in that old Edinburgh house of his; a cheery social man, with faces that loved him! They go far wrong who think that this Knox was a gloomy, spasmodic, shrieking fanatic. Not at all: he is one of the solidest of men. Practical, cautious-hopeful, patient; a most shrewd, observing, quietly discerning man. In fact, he has very much the type of character we assign to the Scotch at present: a certain sardonic taciturnity is in him; insight enough; and a stouter heart than he himself knows of. He has the power of holding his peace over many things which do not vitally concern him--"They? what are they?" But the thing which does vitally concern him, that thing he will speak of; and in a tone the whole world shall be made to hear: all the more emphatic for his long silence. This Prophet of the Scotch is to me no hateful man! He had a sore fight of an existence; wrestling with Popes and Principalities; in defeat, contention, life-long struggle; rowing as a galley-slave, wandering as an exile. A sore fight: but he won it. "Have you hope?" they asked him in his last moment, when he could no longer speak. He lifted his finger, "pointed upward with his finger," and so died. Honor to him! His works have not died. The letter of his work dies, as of all men's; but the spirit of it never. One word more as to the letter of Knox's work. The unforgivable offence in him is, that he wished to set-up Priests over the head of Kings. In other words, he strove to make the Government of Scotland a _Theocracy_. This indeed is properly the sum of his offences, the essential sin; for which what pardon can there be? It is most true, he did, at bottom, consciously or unconsciously, mean a Theocracy, or Government of God. He did mean that Kings and Prime Ministers, and all manner of persons, in public or private, diplomatizing or whatever else they might be doing, should walk according to the Gospel of Christ, and understand that this was their Law, supreme over all laws. He hoped once to see such a thing realized; and the Petition, _Thy Kingdom come_, no longer an empty word. He was sore grieved when he saw greedy, worldly Barons clutch hold of the Church's property; when he expostulated that it was not secular property, that it was spiritual property, and should be turned to _true_ churchly uses, education, schools, worship; and the Regent Murray had to answer, with a shrug of the shoulders, "It is a devout imagination!" This was Knox's scheme of right and truth; this he zealously endeavored after, to realize it. If we think his scheme of truth was too narrow, was not true, we may rejoice that he could not realize it; that it remained, after two centuries of effort, unrealizable, and is a "devout imagination" still. But how shall we blame him for struggling to realize it? Theocracy, Government of God, is precisely the thing to be struggled for! All Prophets, zealous Priests, are there for that purpose. Hildebrand wished a Theocracy; Cromwell wished it, fought for it; Mahomet attained it. Nay, is it not what all zealous men, whether called Priests, Prophets, or whatsoever else called, do essentially wish, and must wish? That right and truth, or God's law, reign supreme among men, this is the Heavenly Ideal (well named in Knox's time, and namable in all times, a revealed "Will of God") toward which the Reformer will insist that all be more and more approximated. All true Reformers are by nature of them Priests, and strive for a Theocracy. MARY STUART: HER REIGN AND EXECUTION A.D. 1561-1587 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE Apart from the peculiar interest of her own life and reign, Mary Stuart is an important personage as having been the mother of the first sovereign of the Stuart line in England (James I). Historical critics take widely differing views of the conduct and character of the Queen of Scots, both in her individual life and her relation to public affairs. In the complications then involving the political and religious organizations of Europe, the play and counter-play of motives are difficult to follow, and just discrimination becomes at times almost impossible. In like manner, the troublous times in which Mary Stuart was called to act her part rendered her own way intricate and uncertain. A devotee of the Catholic faith, she was placed upon the throne of Scotland at the very hour when that country, under the powerful leadership of John Knox, was fast becoming Protestant. This state of affairs made her task as ruler in her own realm sufficiently trying. But her difficulties were increased by the inevitable antagonisms with her great Protestant rival, Elizabeth of England, and through the involved relations of Great Britain with Spain and Catholic Europe generally. These historical puzzles seem always to call for fresh explanation. No less perplexing are the circumstances into which this Queen was drawn by her marital relations and other personal entanglements. Upon all these matters Swinburne sheds light through the medium of a sound critical judgment, in a style no less conspicuous for its fascination than by reason of its illuminative power. Mary (1542-1587), Queen of Scots, daughter of King James V and his wife Mary of Lorraine, was born in December, 1542, a few days before the death of her father, heart-broken by the disgrace of his arms at Solway Moss, where the disaffected nobles had declined to encounter an enemy of inferior force in the cause of a king whose systematic policy had been directed against the privileges of their order, and whose representative on the occasion was an unpopular favorite appointed general in defiance of their ill-will. On the 9th of September following, the ceremony of coronation was duly performed on the infant. A scheme for her betrothal to Edward, Prince of Wales, was defeated by the grasping greed of his father, whose obvious ambition to annex the crown of Scotland at once to that of England aroused instantly the general suspicion and indignation of Scottish patriotism. In 1548 the Queen of six years old was betrothed to the dauphin Francis, and set sail for France, where she arrived August 15th. The society in which the child was thenceforward reared is known to readers of Brantome as well as that of Imperial Rome at its worst is known to readers of Suetonius or Petronius--as well as that of papal Rome at its worst is known to readers of the diary kept by the domestic chaplain of Pope Alexander VI. Only in their pages can a parallel be found to the gay and easy record which reveals, without sign of shame or suspicion of offence, the daily life of a court compared to which the court of King Charles II is as the court of Queen Victoria to the society described by Grammont. Debauchery of all kinds, murder in all forms, were the daily matter of excitement or of jest to the brilliant circle which revolved around Queen Catherine de' Medici. After ten years' training under the tutelage of the woman whose main instrument of policy was the corruption of her own children, the Queen of Scots, aged fifteen years and five months, was married to the eldest and feeblest of the brood on April 24, 1558. On November 17th, Elizabeth became Queen of England, and the princes of Lorraine--Francis the great Duke of Guise, and his brother the Cardinal--induced their niece and her husband to assume, in addition to the arms of France and Scotland, the arms of a country over which they asserted the right of Mary Stuart to reign as legitimate heiress of Mary Tudor. Civil strife broke out in Scotland between John Knox and the Queen Dowager--between the self-styled "Congregation of the Lord" and the adherents of the Regent, whose French troops repelled the combined forces of the Scotch and their English allies from the beleaguered walls of Leith, little more than a month before the death of their mistress in the castle of Edinburgh, on June 10, 1560. On August 25th Protestantism was proclaimed and Catholicism suppressed in Scotland by a convention of states assembled without the assent of the absent Queen. On December 5th Francis II died; in August, 1561, his widow left France for Scotland, having been refused a safe-conduct by Elizabeth on the ground of her own previous refusal to ratify the treaty made with England by her commissioners in the same month of the preceding year. She arrived nevertheless in safety at Leith, escorted by three of her uncles of the house of Lorraine, and bringing in her train her future biographer, Brantome, and Chastelard, the first of all her voluntary victims. On August 21st she first met the only man able to withstand her; and their first passage of arms left, as he has recorded, upon the mind of John Knox, an ineffaceable impression of her "proud mind, crafty wit, and indurate heart against God and his truth." And yet her acts of concession and conciliation were such as no fanatic on the opposite side could have approved. She assented, not only to the undisturbed maintenance of the new creed, but even to a scheme for the endowment of the Protestant ministry out of the confiscated lands of the Church. Her half-brother, Lord James Stuart, shared the duties of her chief counsellor with William Maitland of Lethington, the keenest and most liberal thinker in the country. By the influence of Lord James, in spite of the earnest opposition of Knox, permission was obtained for her to hear mass celebrated in her private chapel--a license to which, said the reformer, he would have preferred the invasion of ten thousand Frenchmen. Through all the first troubles of her reign the young Queen steered her skilful and dauntless way with the tact of a woman and the courage of a man. An insurrection in the North, headed by the Earl of Huntly under pretext of rescuing from justice the life which his son had forfeited by his share in a homicidal brawl, was crushed at a blow by the lord James against whose life, as well as against his sister's liberty, the conspiracy of the Gordons had been aimed, and on whom, after the father had fallen in fight and the son had expiated his double offence on the scaffold, the leading rebel's earldom of Murray was conferred by the gratitude of the Queen. Exactly four months after the battle of Corrichie, and the subsequent execution of a criminal whom she is said to have "loved entirely," had put an end to the first insurrection raised against her, Pierre de Boscosel de Chastelard, who had returned to France with the other companions of her arrival, and in November, 1562, had revisited Scotland, expiated with his head the offence of the misfortune of a second detection at night in her bedchamber. In the same month, twenty-five years afterward, the execution of his mistress, according to the verdict of her contemporaries in France, avenged the blood of a lover who had died without uttering a word to realize the apprehension which, according to Knox, had before his trial impelled her to desire her brother "that, as he loved her, he would slay Chastelard, and let him never speak word." And in the same month, two years from the date of Chastelard's execution, her first step was unconsciously taken on the road to Fotheringay, when she gave her heart at first sight to her kinsman Henry, Lord Darnley, son of Matthew Stuart, Earl of Lennox, who had suffered an exile of twenty years in expiation of his intrigues with England, and had married the niece of King Henry VIII, daughter of his sister Margaret, the widow of James IV, by her second husband, the Earl of Angus. Queen Elizabeth, with the almost incredible want of tact or instinctive delicacy which distinguished and disfigured her vigorous intelligence, had recently proposed as a suitor to the Queen of Scots her own low-born favorite, Lord Robert Dudley, the widower if not murderer of Amy Robsart; and she now protested against the project of marriage between Mary and Darnley. Mary, who had already married her kinsman in secret at Stirling castle with Catholic rites celebrated in the apartment of David Rizzio, her secretary for correspondence with France, assured the English ambassador, in reply to the protest of his mistress, that the marriage would not take place for three months, when a dispensation from the Pope would allow the cousins to be publicly united without offence to the Church. On July 29, 1565, they were accordingly remarried at Holyrood. The hapless and worthless bridegroom had already incurred the hatred of two powerful enemies, the Earls of Morton and Glencairn; but the former of these took part with the Queen against the forces raised by Murray, Glencairn, and others, under the nominal leadership of Hamilton, Duke of Châtelherault, on the double plea of danger to the new religion of the country, and of the illegal proceeding by which Darnley had been proclaimed king of Scots without the needful constitutional assent of the estates of the realm. Murray was cited to attend to the "raid" or array levied by the King and Queen, and was duly denounced by public blast of trumpet for his non-appearance. He entered Edinburgh with his forces, but failed to hold the town against the guns of the castle, and fell back upon Dumfries before the advance of the royal army, which was now joined by James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, on his return from a three years' outlawed exile in France. He had been accused in 1562 of a plot to seize the Queen and put her into the keeping of Earl of Arran, whose pretensions to her hand ended only when his insanity could no longer be concealed. Another new adherent was the son of the late Earl of Huntly, to whom the forfeited honors of his house were restored a few months before the marriage of his sister to Bothwell. The Queen now appealed to France for aid; but Castelnau, the French ambassador, replied to her passionate pleading by sober and earnest advice to make peace with the malcontents. This counsel was rejected, and in October, 1565, the Queen marched an army of eighteen thousand men against them from Edinburgh; their forces dispersed in face of superior numbers, and Murray, on seeking shelter in England, was received with contumely by Elizabeth, whose half-hearted help had failed to support his enterprise, and whose intercession for his return found at first no favor with the Queen of Scots. But the conduct of the besotted boy, on whom at their marriage she had bestowed the title of king, began at once to justify the enterprise and to play into the hands of all his enemies alike. His father set him on to demand the crown matrimonial, which would at least have assured him the rank and station of independent royalty for life. Rizzio, hitherto his friend and advocate, induced the Queen to reply by a reasonable refusal to this hazardous and audacious request. Darnley at once threw himself into the arms of the party opposed to the policy of the Queen and her secretary--a policy which at that moment was doubly and trebly calculated to exasperate the fears of the religious and the pride of the patriotic. Mary was invited if not induced by the King of Spain to join his league for the suppression of Protestantism; while the actual or prospective endowment of Rizzio with Morton's office of chancellor, and the projected attainder of Murray and his allies, combined to inflame at once the anger and the apprehension of the Protestant nobles. According to one account, Darnley privately assured his uncle George Douglas of his wife's infidelity; he had himself, if he might be believed, discovered the secretary in the Queen's apartment at midnight, under circumstances yet more unequivocally compromising than those which had brought Chastelard to the scaffold. Another version of the pitiful history represents Douglas as infusing suspicion of Rizzio into the empty mind of his nephew, and thus winning his consent to a deed already designed by others. A bond was drawn in which Darnley pledged himself to support the confederates who undertook to punish "certain privy persons" offensive to the state, "especially a stranger Italian called Davie"; another was subscribed by Darnley and the banished lords, then biding their time in Newcastle, which engaged him to procure their pardon and restoration, while pledging them to insure to him the enjoyment of the title he coveted, with the consequent security of an undisputed succession to the crown, despite the counter-claims of the house of Hamilton, in case his wife should die without issue--a result which, intentionally or not, he and his fellow-conspirators did all that brutality could have suggested to accelerate and secure. On March 9th the palace of Holyrood was invested by a troop under the command of Morton, while Rizzio was dragged by force out of the Queen's presence and slain without trial in the heat of the moment. The parliament was discharged by proclamation issued in the name of Darnley as king; and in the evening of the next day the banished lords, whom it was to have condemned to outlawry, returned to Edinburgh. On the following day they were graciously received by the Queen, who undertook to sign a bond for their security, but delayed the subscription until the next morning under plea of sickness. During the night she escaped with Darnley, whom she had already seduced from the party of his accomplices, and arrived at Dunbar on the third morning after the slaughter of her favorite. From thence they returned to Edinburgh on March 28th, guarded by two thousand horsemen under the command of Bothwell, who had escaped from Holyrood on the night of the murder, to raise a force on the Queen's behalf with his usual soldierly promptitude. The slayers of Rizzio fled to England, and were outlawed; Darnley was permitted to protest his innocence and denounce his accomplices; after which he became the scorn of all parties alike, and few men dared or cared to be seen in his company. On June 19th a son was born to his wife, and in the face of his previous protestations he was induced to acknowledge himself the father. But, as Murray and his partisans returned to favor and influence no longer incompatible with that of Bothwell and Huntly, he grew desperate enough with terror to dream of escape to France. This design was at once frustrated by the Queen's resolution. She summoned him to declare his reasons for it in the presence of the French ambassador and an assembly of the nobles; she besought him for God's sake to speak out, and not spare her; and at last he left her presence with an avowal that he had nothing to allege. The favor shown to Bothwell had not yet given occasion for scandal, though his character as an adventurous libertine was as notable as his reputation for military hardihood; but as the summer advanced, his insolence increased with his influence at court and the general aversion of his rivals. He was richly endowed by Mary from the greater and lesser spoils of the Church; and the three wardenships of the border, united for the first time in his person, gave the lord high admiral of Scotland a position of unequalled power. In the gallant discharge of its duties he was dangerously wounded by a leading outlaw, whom he slew in single combat; and while yet confined to Hermitage castle he received a visit of two hours from the Queen, who rode thither from Jedburgh and back through twenty miles of the wild borderland, where her person was in perpetual danger from the free-booters whom her father's policy had striven and had failed to extirpate. On January 22, 1567, the Queen visited her husband, who was ill at Glasgow, and proposed to remove him to Craigmillar castle, where he would have the benefit of medicinal baths; but instead of this resort he was conveyed on the last day of the month to the lonely and squalid shelter of the residence which was soon to be made memorable by his murder. Between the ruins of two sacred buildings, with the town hall to the south and a suburban hamlet known to ill-fame as the Thieves' Row to the north of it, a lodging was prepared for the titular King of Scotland, and fitted up with tapestries taken from the Gordons after the battle of Corrichie. On the evening of Sunday, February 9th, Mary took her last leave of the miserable boy who had so often and so mortally outraged her as consort and as queen. That night the whole city was shaken out of sleep by an explosion of gunpowder which shattered to fragments the building in which he should have slept and perished; and next morning the bodies of Darnley and a page were found strangled in a garden adjoining it, whither they had apparently escaped over a wall, to be despatched by the hands of Bothwell's attendant confederates. Upon the view which may be taken of Mary's conduct during the next three months depends the whole debatable question of her character. According to the professed champions of that character, this conduct was a tissue of such dastardly imbecility, such heartless irresolution, and such brainless inconsistency as forever to dispose of her time-honored claim to the credit of intelligence and courage. It is certain that just three months and six days after the murder of her husband she became the wife of her husband's murderer. On February 11th she wrote to the Bishop of Glasgow, her ambassador in France, a brief letter, of simple eloquence, announcing her providential escape from a design upon her own as well as her husband's life. A reward of two thousand pounds was offered by proclamation for discovery of the murderer. Bothwell and others, his satellites or the Queen's, were instantly placarded by name as the criminals. Voices were heard by night in the streets of Edinburgh calling down judgment on the assassins. Four days after the discovery of the bodies, Darnley was buried in the chapel of Holyrood with secrecy as remarkable as the solemnity with which Rizzio had been interred there less than a year before. On the Sunday following, Mary left Edinburgh for Seton palace, twelve miles from the capital, where scandal asserted that she passed the time merrily in shooting-matches, with Bothwell for her partner, against Lords Seton and Huntly; other accounts represent Huntly and Bothwell as left at Holyrood in charge of the infant Prince. Gracefully and respectfully, with statesmanlike yet feminine dexterity, the demands of Darnley's father for justice on the murderers of his son were accepted and eluded by his daughter-in-law. Bothwell, with a troop of fifty men, rode through Edinburgh defiantly denouncing vengeance on his concealed accusers. As weeks elapsed without action on the part of the royal widow, while the cry of blood was up throughout the country, raising echoes from England and abroad, the murmur of accusation began to rise against her also. Murray, with his sister's ready permission, withdrew to France. On April 21st Mary went to visit her child at Stirling, where his guardian, the Earl of Mar, refused to admit more than two women in her train. It was well known in Edinburgh that Bothwell had a body of men ready to intercept her on the way back, and carry her to Dunbar--not, as was naturally inferred, without good assurance of her consent. On April 24th, as she approached Edinburgh, Bothwell accordingly met her at the head of eight hundred spearmen, assured her--as she afterward averred--that she was in the utmost peril, and escorted her, together with Huntly, Lethington, and Melville, who were then in attendance, to Dunbar castle. On May 3d Lady Jane Gordon, who had become Countess of Bothwell on February 22d of the year preceding, obtained, on the ground of her husband's infidelities, a separation, which, however, would not under the old laws of Catholic Scotland have left him free to marry again. On the day when the first or Protestant divorce was pronounced, Mary and Bothwell returned to Edinburgh with every prepared appearance of a peaceful triumph. Lest her captivity should have been held to invalidate the late legal proceedings in her name, proclamation was made of forgiveness accorded by the Queen to her captor in consideration of his past and future services, and her intention was announced to reward them by further promotion; and on the same day (May 12th) he was duly created duke of Orkney and Shetland. The Duke, as a conscientious Protestant, refused to marry his mistress according to the rites of her Church, and she, the chosen champion of its cause, agreed to be married to him, not merely by a Protestant, but by one who before his conversion had been a Catholic bishop, and therefore should have been more hateful and contemptible in her eyes than any ordinary heretic, had not religion as well as policy, faith as well as reason, been absorbed or superseded by some more mastering passion or emotion. This passion or emotion, according to those who deny her attachment to Bothwell, was simply terror--the blind and irrational prostration of an abject spirit before the cruel force of circumstances and the crafty wickedness of men. Hitherto, according to all evidence, she had shown herself on all occasions, as on all subsequent occasions she indisputably showed herself, the most fearless, the most keen-sighted, the most ready-witted, the most high-gifted and high-spirited of women; gallant and generous, skilful and practical, never to be cowed by fortune, never to be cajoled by craft; neither more unselfish in her ends nor more unscrupulous in her practice than might have been expected from her training and her creed. But at the crowning moment of trial there are those who assert their belief that the woman who on her way to the field of Corrichie had uttered her wish to be a man, that she might know all the hardship and all the enjoyment of a soldier's life, riding forth "in jack and knapskull"--the woman who long afterward was to hold her own for two days together, without help of counsel, against all the array of English law and English statesmanship, armed with irrefragable evidence and supported by the resentment of a nation--showed herself devoid of moral and physical resolution; too senseless to realize the significance and too heartless to face the danger of a situation from which the simplest exercise of reason, principle, or courage must have rescued the most unsuspicious and inexperienced of honest women who was not helplessly deficient in self-reliance and self-respect. The famous correspondence produced next year in evidence against her at the conference of York may have been, as her partisans affirm, so craftily garbled and falsified by interpolation, suppression, perversion, or absolute forgery as to be all but historically worthless. Its acceptance or its rejection does not in any degree whatever affect, for better or for worse, the rational estimate of her character. The problem presented by the simple existence of the facts just summed up remains in either case absolutely the same. That the coarse and imperious nature of the hardy and able ruffian who had now become openly her master should no less openly have shown itself even in the first moments of their inauspicious union is what any bystander of common insight must inevitably have foreseen. Tears, dejection, and passionate expressions of a despair "wishing only for death," bore fitful and variable witness to her first sense of a heavier yoke than yet had galled her spirit and her pride. At other times her affectionate gayety would give evidence as trustworthy of a fearless and improvident satisfaction. They rode out in state together, and if he kept cap in hand as a subject she would snatch it from him and clap it on his head again; while in graver things she took all due or possible care to gratify his ambition by the insertion of a clause in their contract of marriage which made their joint signature necessary to all documents of state issued under the sign manual. She despatched to France a special envoy, the Bishop of Dunblane, with instructions setting forth at length the unparalleled and hitherto ill-requited services and merits of Bothwell, and the necessity of compliance at once with his passion and with the unanimous counsel of the nation--a people who would endure the rule of no foreign consort, and whom none of their own countrymen were so competent to control, alike by wisdom and by valor, as the incomparable subject of her choice. These personal merits and this political necessity were the only pleas advanced in a letter to her ambassador in England. But that neither plea would avail her for a moment in Scotland she had ominous evidence on the thirteenth day after her marriage, when no response was made to the usual form of proclamation for a raid or levy of forces under pretext of a campaign against the rievers of the border. On June 6th Mary and Bothwell took refuge in Borthwick castle, twelve miles from the capital, where the fortress was in the keeping of an adherent whom the diplomacy of Sir James Melville had succeeded in detaching from his allegiance to Bothwell. The fugitives were pursued and beleaguered by the Earl of Morton and Lord Hume, who declared their purpose to rescue the Queen from the thraldom of her husband. He escaped, leaving her free to follow him or to join the party of her professed deliverers. But whatever cause she might have since marriage to complain of his rigorous custody and domineering brutality was insufficient to break the ties by which he held her. Alone, in the disguise of a page, she slipped out of the castle at midnight, and rode off to meet him at a tower two miles distant, whence they fled together to Dunbar. The confederate lords on entering Edinburgh were welcomed by the citizens, and after three hours' persuasion Lethington, who had now joined them, prevailed on the captain of the castle to deliver it also into their hands. Proclamations were issued in which the crime of Bothwell was denounced, and the disgrace of the country, the thraldom of the Queen, and the mortal peril of her infant son were set forth as reasons for summoning all the lieges of the chief cities of Scotland to rise in arms on three hours' notice and join the forces assembled against the one common enemy. News of his approach reached them on the night of June 14th, and they marched before dawn with twenty-two hundred men to meet him near Musselburgh. Mary meanwhile had passed from Dunbar to Haddington, and thence to Seton, where sixteen hundred men rallied to her side. On June 15th, one month from their marriage day, the Queen and Bothwell, at the head of a force of fairly equal numbers but visibly inferior discipline, met the army of the confederates at Carberry hill, some six miles from Edinburgh. It was agreed that the Queen should yield herself prisoner, and Bothwell be allowed to retire in safety to Dunbar with the few followers who remained to him. Mary took leave of her first and last master with passionate anguish and many parting kisses; but in face of his enemies, and in hearing of the cries which burst from the ranks demanding her death by fire as a murderess and harlot, the whole heroic and passionate spirit of the woman represented by her admirers as a spiritless imbecile flamed out in responsive threats to have all the men hanged and crucified in whose power she now stood helpless and alone. She grasped the hand of Lord Lindsay as he rode beside her, and swore "by this hand" she would "have his head for this." In Edinburgh she was received by a yelling mob, which flaunted before her at each turn a banner representing the corpse of Darnley, with her child beside it, invoking on his knees the retribution of divine justice. From the violence of a multitude, in which women of the worst class were more furious than the men, she was sheltered in the house of the provost, where she repeatedly showed herself at the window, appealing aloud with dishevelled hair and dress to the mercy which no man could look upon her and refuse. At nine in the evening she was removed to Holyrood, and thence to the port of Leith, where she embarked under guard, with her attendants, for the island castle of Lochleven. On the 20th a silver casket containing letters and French verses, miscalled sonnets, in the handwriting of the Queen, was taken from the person of a servant who had been sent by Bothwell to bring it from Edinburgh to Dunbar. Even in the existing versions of the letters, translated from the lost originals and retranslated from this translation of a text which was probably destroyed in 1603 by order of King James on his accession to the English throne--even in these possibly disfigured versions, the fiery pathos of passion, the fierce and piteous fluctuations of spirit between love and hate, hope and rage and jealousy, have an eloquence apparently beyond the imitation or invention of art. Three days after this discovery Lord Lindsay, Lord Ruthven, and Sir Robert Melville were despatched to Lochleven, there to obtain the Queen's signature to an act of abdication in favor of her son, and another appointing Murray regent during his minority. She submitted, and a commission of regency was established till the return from France of Murray, who, on August 15th, arrived at Lochleven with Morton and Athol. According to his own account the expostulations as to her past conduct which preceded his admonitions for the future were received with tears, confessions, and attempts at extenuation or excuse; but when they parted next day on good terms, she had regained her usual spirits. Nor from that day forward had they reason to sink again, in spite of the close keeping in which she was held, with the daughters of the house for bedfellows. Their mother and the Regent's, her father's former mistress, was herself not impervious to her prisoner's lifelong power of seduction and subjugation. Her son George Douglas fell inevitably under the charm. A rumor transmitted to England went so far as to assert that she had proposed him to their common half-brother Murray as a fourth husband for herself; a later tradition represented her as the mother of a child by him. A third report, at least as improbable as either, asserted that a daughter of Mary and Bothwell, born about this time, lived to be a nun in France. It is certain that the necessary removal of George Douglas from Lochleven enabled him to devise a method of escape for the prisoner on March 25, 1568, which was frustrated by detection of her white hands under the disguise of a laundress. But a younger member of the household, Willie Douglas, aged eighteen, whose devotion was afterward remembered and his safety cared for by Mary at a time of utmost risk and perplexity to herself, succeeded on May 2d in assisting her to escape by a postern gate to the lake-side, and thence in a boat to the mainland, where George Douglas, Lord Seton, and others were awaiting her. Thence they rode to Seton's castle of Niddry, and next day to Hamilton palace, round which an army of six thousand men was soon assembled, and whither the new French ambassador to Scotland hastened to pay his duty. The Queen's abdication was revoked, messengers were despatched to the English and French courts, and word was sent to Murray at Glasgow that he must resign the regency, and should be pardoned in common with all offenders against the Queen. But on the day when Mary arrived at Hamilton, Murray had summoned to Glasgow the feudatories of the crown, to take arms against the insurgent enemies of the infant King. On the 13th of May the battle or skirmish of Langside determined the result of the campaign in three-quarters of an hour. Kirkaldy of Grange, who commanded the Regent's cavalry, seized and kept the place of vantage from the beginning, and at the first sign of wavering on the other side shattered at a single charge the forces of the Queen with a loss of one man to three hundred. Mary fled sixty miles from the field of her last battle before she halted at Sanquhar, and for three days of flight, according to her own account, had to sleep on the hard ground, live on oatmeal and sour milk, and fare at night like the owls, in hunger, cold, and fear. On the third day from the rout of Langside she crossed the Solway, and landed at Workington in Cumberland, May 16, 1568. On the 20th Lord Scrope and Sir Francis Knollys were sent from court to carry messages and letters of comfort from Elizabeth to Mary at Carlisle. On June 11th Knollys wrote to Cecil at once the best description and the noblest panegyric extant of the Queen of Scots--enlarging, with a brave man's sympathy, on her indifference to form and ceremony, her daring grace and openness of manner, her frank display of a great desire to be avenged of her enemies, her readiness to expose herself to all perils in hope of victory, her delight to hear of hardihood and courage, commending by name all her enemies of approved valor, sparing no cowardice in her friends, but above all things athirst for victory by any means at any price, so that for its sake pain and peril seemed pleasant to her, and wealth and all things, if compared with it, contemptible and vile. Mary was held a prisoner in England for seventeen years. In 1585 she was accused of favoring Anthony Babington's plot against the life of Elizabeth, her captor. Anthony Babington, in his boyhood a ward of Shrewsbury, resident in the household at Sheffield castle, and thus subjected to the charm before which so many victims had already fallen, was now induced to undertake the deliverance of the Queen of Scots by the murder of the Queen of England. It is maintained by those admirers of Mary who assume her to have been an almost absolute imbecile, gifted with the power of imposing herself on the world as a woman of unsurpassed ability, that, while cognizant of the plot for her deliverance by English rebels and an invading army of foreign auxiliaries, she might have been innocently unconscious that this conspiracy involved the simultaneous assassination of Elizabeth. In the conduct and detection of her correspondence with Babington, traitor was played off against traitor, and spies were utilized against assassins, with as little scruple as could be required or expected in the diplomacy of the time. As in the case of the casket letters, it is alleged that forgery was employed to interpolate sufficient evidence of Mary's complicity in a design of which it is thought credible that she was kept in ignorance by the traitors and murderers who had enrolled themselves in her service--that one who pensioned the actual murderer of Murray and a would-be murderer of Elizabeth was incapable of approving what her keen and practised intelligence was too blunt and torpid to anticipate as inevitable and inseparable from the general design. In August the conspirators were netted, and Mary was arrested at the gate of Tixall Park, whither Paulet had taken her under pretence of a hunting-party. At Tixall she was detained till her papers at Chartley had undergone thorough research. That she was at length taken in her own toils, even such a dullard as her admirers depict her could not have failed to understand; that she was no such dastard as to desire or deserve such defenders, the whole brief course of her remaining life bore consistent and irrefragable witness. Her first thought on her return to Chartley was one of loyal gratitude and womanly sympathy. She cheered the wife of her English secretary, now under arrest, with promises to answer for her husband to all accusations brought against him; took her new-born child from the mother's arms, and in default of clergy baptized it, to Paulet's Puritanic horror, with her own hands by her own name. The next or the twin-born impulse of her indomitable nature was, as usual in all times of danger, one of passionate and high-spirited defiance on discovering the seizure of her papers. A fortnight afterward her keys and her money were confiscated, while she, bedridden and unable to move her hand, could only ply the terrible weapon of her bitter and fiery tongue. Her secretaries were examined in London, and one of them gave evidence that she had first heard of the conspiracy by letter from Babington, of whose design against the life of Elizabeth she thought it best to take no notice in her reply, though she did not hold herself bound to reveal it. On September 25th she was removed to the strong castle of Fotheringay in Northamptonshire. On October 6th she was desired by letter from Elizabeth to answer the charges brought against her before certain of the chief English nobles appointed to sit in commission on the cause. In spite of her first refusal to submit, she was induced by the arguments of the vice-chamberlain, Sir Christopher Hatton, to appear before this tribunal on condition that her protest should be registered against the legality of its jurisdiction over a sovereign, the next heir of the English crown. On October 14 and 15, 1586, the trial was held in the hall of Fotheringay castle. Alone, "without one counsellor on her side among so many," Mary conducted the whole of her own defence with courage incomparable and unsurpassable ability. Pathos and indignation, subtlety and simplicity, personal appeal and political reasoning, were the alternate weapons with which she fought against all odds of evidence or inference, and disputed step by step every inch of debatable ground. She repeatedly insisted on the production of proof in her own handwriting as to her complicity with the project of the assassins who had expiated their crime on the 20th and 21st of the month preceding. When the charge was shifted to the question of her intrigues with Spain, she took her stand resolutely on her right to convey whatever right she possessed, though now no kingdom was left her for disposal, to whomsoever she might choose. One single slip she made in the whole course of her defence, but none could have been more unluckily characteristic and significant. When Burghley brought against her the unanswerable charge of having at that moment in her service, and in receipt of an annual pension, the instigator of a previous attempt on the life of Elizabeth, she had the unwary audacity to cite in her justification the pensions allowed by Elizabeth to her adversaries in Scotland, and especially to her son. It is remarkable that just two months later, in a conversation with her keepers, she again made use of the same extraordinary argument in reply to the same inevitable imputation, and would not be brought to admit that the two cases were other than parallel. But, except for this single instance of oversight or perversity, her defence was throughout a masterpiece of indomitable ingenuity, of delicate and steadfast courage, of womanly dignity and genius. Finally, she demanded, as she had demanded before, a trial either before the states of the realm lawfully assembled, or else before the Queen in council. So closed the second day of the trial; and before the next day's work could begin, a note of two or three lines hastily written at midnight informed the commissioners that Elizabeth had suddenly determined to adjourn the expected judgment and transfer the place of it to the star-chamber. Here, on October 25th, the commissioners again met; and one of them alone, Lord Zouch, dissented from the verdict by which Mary was found guilty of having, since the 1st of June preceding, compassed and imagined divers matters tending to the destruction of Elizabeth. This verdict was conveyed to her, about three weeks later, by Lord Buckhurst and Robert Beale, clerk of the privy council. At the intimation that her life was an impediment to the security of the received religion, "she seemed with a certain unwonted alacrity to triumph, giving God thanks, and rejoicing in her heart that she was held to be an instrument" for the restoration of her own faith. This note of exultation as in martyrdom was maintained with unflinching courage to the last. She wrote to Elizabeth and the Duke of Guise two letters of almost matchless eloquence and pathos, admirable especially for their loyal and grateful remembrance of all her faithful servants. Between the date of these letters and the day of her execution wellnigh three months of suspense elapsed. Elizabeth, fearless almost to a fault in face of physical danger, constant in her confidence even after discovery of her narrow escape from the poisoned bullets of household conspirators, was cowardly even to a crime in face of subtler and more complicated peril. She rejected with resolute dignity the intercession of French envoys for the life of the Queen Dowager of France; she allowed the sentence of death to be proclaimed, and welcomed with bonfires and bell-ringing throughout the length of England; she yielded a respite of twelve days to the pleading of the French ambassador, and had a charge trumped up against him of participation in a conspiracy against her life; at length, on February 1, 1587, she signed the death warrant, and then made her secretaries write word to Paulet of her displeasure that in all this time he should not of himself have found out some way to shorten the life of his prisoner, as in duty bound by his oath, and thus relieve her singularly tender conscience from the guilt of bloodshed. Paulet, with loyal and regretful indignation, declined the disgrace proposed to him in a suggestion "to shed blood without law or warrant"; and on February 7th the Earls of Shrewsbury and Kent arrived at Fotheringay with the commission of the council for execution of the sentence given against his prisoner. Mary received the announcement with majestic tranquillity, expressing in dignified terms her readiness to die, her consciousness that she was a martyr for her religion, and her total ignorance of any conspiracy against the life of Elizabeth. At night she took a graceful and affectionate leave of her attendants, distributed among them her money and jewels, wrote out in full the various legacies to be conveyed by her will, and charged her apothecary Gorion with her last messages for the King of Spain. In these messages the whole nature of the woman was revealed. Not a single friend, not a single enemy, was forgotten; the slightest service, the slightest wrong, had its place assigned in her faithful and implacable memory for retribution or reward. Forgiveness of injuries was as alien from her fierce and loyal spirit as forgetfulness of benefits; the destruction of England and its liberties by Spanish invasion and conquest was the strongest aspiration of her parting soul. At eight o'clock next morning she entered the hall of execution, having taken leave of the weeping envoy from Scotland, to whom she gave a brief message for her son; took her seat on the scaffold; listened with an air of even cheerful unconcern to the reading of her sentence; solemnly declared her innocence of the charge conveyed in it, and her consolation in the prospect of ultimate justice; rejected the professional services of Richard Fletcher, Dean of Peterborough; lifted up her voice in Latin against his in English prayer; and when he and his fellow-worshippers had fallen duly silent, prayed aloud for the prosperity of her own Church, for Elizabeth, for her son, and for all the enemies whom she had commended over night to the notice of the Spanish invader; then, with no less courage than had marked every hour and every action of her life, received the stroke of death from the wavering hand of the headsman. FOUNDING OF ST. AUGUSTINE MASSACRE OF THE HUGUENOTS IN AMERICA A.D. 1565 GEORGE R. FAIRBANKS Although Florida was discovered by Ponce de Leon as early as 1513, and was soon after visited by other Spanish explorers, no Spaniard gained permanent foothold there until after the middle of the sixteenth century. But when the Spaniards did secure such a foothold, it was to found the first permanent settlement on the mainland of the United States. The vast territory which the Spaniards named Florida was claimed by Spain in right of the discoveries of Columbus, the grant of the pope, and various expeditions to the region; by England in right of Cabot's discovery; and by France on account of Verrazano's voyage (1524) and "vague traditions" of French visitors to the coast. Following the early Spanish attempts at colonization, came the first Huguenot settlers from France, seeking refuge in the New World from persecution at home. What they did and what befell them in the Florida country, and how the founding of our oldest town, St. Augustine, was begun by their Spanish supplanters, is told by Fairbanks in an interesting and carefully verified account. The settlement of Florida had its origin in the religious troubles experienced by the Huguenots under Charles IX in France. Their distinguished leader, Admiral Coligny, as early as 1555, projected colonies in America, and sent an expedition to Brazil, which proved unsuccessful. Having procured permission from Charles IX to found a colony in Florida, a designation which embraced in rather an indefinite manner the whole country from the Chesapeake to the Tortugas, he sent an expedition in 1562 from France, under command of Jean Ribault, composed of many young men of good family. They first landed at the St. John's River, where they erected a monument, but finally established a settlement at Port Royal, South Carolina, and erected a fort. After some months, however, in consequence of dissensions among the officers of the garrison and difficulties with the Indians, this settlement was abandoned. In 1564 another expedition came out under the command of René de Laudonnière, and made their first landing at the River of Dolphins, being the present harbor of St. Augustine, and so named by them in consequence of the great number of dolphins (porpoises) seen by them at its mouth. They afterward coasted to the north, and entered the river St. John's, called by them the river May. Upon an examination of this river Laudonnière concluded to establish his colony on its banks, and, proceeding about two leagues above its mouth, built a fort upon a pleasant hill of "mean height," which, in honor of his sovereign, he named Fort Caroline. The colonists, after a few months, were reduced to great distress, and were about taking measures to abandon the country a second time, when Ribault arrived with reënforcements. It is supposed that intelligence of these expeditions was communicated by the enemies of Coligny to the court of Spain. Jealousy of the aggrandizement of the French in the New World, mortification for their own unsuccessful efforts in that quarter, and a still stronger motive of hatred to the faith of the Huguenot, induced the bigoted Philip II of Spain to despatch Pedro Menendez de Aviles, a brave, bigoted, and remorseless soldier, to drive out the French colony, and take possession of the country for himself. The compact made between the King and Menendez was, that he should furnish one galleon completely equipped, and provisions for a force of six hundred men; that he should conquer and settle the country. He obligated himself to carry one hundred horses, two hundred horned cattle, four hundred hogs, four hundred sheep and some goats, and five hundred slaves--for which he had a permission free of duties--the third part of which should be men, for his own service and that of those who went with him, to aid in cultivating the land and in building; that he should take twelve priests, and four fathers of the Jesuit order. He was to build two or three towns of one hundred families, and in each town should build a fort according to the nature of the country. He was to have the title of _Adelantado_ of the country, as also to be entitled a marquis (and his heirs after him), to have a tract of land, receive a salary of two thousand ducats, a percentage of the royal duties, and have the freedom of all the other ports of New Spain. His force consisted, at starting, of eleven sail of vessels, with two thousand six hundred men; but, owing to storms and accidents, not more than one-half arrived. He came upon the coast on August 28, 1565, shortly after the arrival of the fleet of Ribault. On September 7th Menendez cast anchor in the River of Dolphins, the harbor of St. Augustine. He had previously discovered and given chase to some of the vessels of Ribault off the mouth of the river May. The Indian village of Selooe then stood upon the site of St. Augustine, and the landing of Menendez was upon the spot where the city of St. Augustine now stands. Fra Francisco Lopez de Mendoza, the chaplain of the expedition, thus chronicles the disembarkation and attendant ceremonies: "On Saturday, September 8th, the day of the nativity of Our Lady, the General disembarked, with numerous banners displayed, trumpets and other martial music resounding, and amid salvos of artillery. "Carrying a cross, I proceeded at the head, chanting the hymn '_Te Deum Laudamus_.' The General marched straight up to the cross, together with all those who accompanied him; and, kneeling, they all kissed the cross. A great number of Indians looked upon these ceremonies, and imitated whatever they saw done. Thereupon the General took possession of the country in the name of his majesty. All the officers then took an oath of allegiance to him, as their general and as adelantado of the whole country." The name of St. Augustine was given, in the usual manner of the early voyagers, because they had arrived upon the coast on the day dedicated in their calendar to that eminent saint of the primitive Church, revered alike by the good of all ages for his learning and piety. The first troops who landed, says Mendoza, were well received by the Indians, who gave them a large mansion belonging to the chief, situated near the banks of the river. The engineer officers immediately erected an entrenchment of earth, and a ditch around this house, with a slope made of earth and fascines, these being the only means of defence which the country presents; for, says the father with surprise, "there is not a stone to be found in the whole country." They landed eighty cannon from the ships, of which the lightest weighed five hundred pounds. Menendez had by no means forgotten the errand upon which he principally came; and by inquiries of the Indians he soon learned the position of the French fort and the condition of its defenders. Impelled by necessity, Laudonnière had been forced to seize from the Indians food to support his famished garrison, and had thus incurred their enmity, which was soon to produce its sad results. The Spaniards numbered about six hundred combatants, and the French about the same; but arrangements had been made for further accessions to the Spanish force, to be drawn from Santo Domingo and Havana, and these were daily expected. It was the habit of those days to devolve almost every event upon the ordering of a special providence; and each nation had come to look upon itself almost in the light of a peculiar people, led like the Israelites of old by signs and wonders; and as in their own view all their actions were directed by the design of advancing God's glory as well as their own purposes, so the blessing of Heaven would surely accompany them in all their undertakings. So believed the crusaders on the plains of Palestine; so believed the conquerors of Mexico and Peru; so believed the Puritan settlers of New England--alike in their Indian wars and their oppressive social polity--and so believed, also, the followers of Menendez and of Ribault; and in this simple and trusting faith, the worthy chaplain gives us the following account of the miraculous escape and deliverance of a portion of the Spanish fleet: "God and his Holy Mother have performed another great miracle in our favor. The day following the landing of the General in the fort he said to us that he was very uneasy, because his galley and another vessel were at anchor, isolated and a league at sea, being unable to enter the port on account of the shallowness of the water, and that he feared that the French might come and capture or maltreat them. As soon as this idea came to him he departed, with fifty men, to go on board of his galleon. He gave orders to three shallops which were moored in the river to go out and take on board the provisions and troops which were on board the galleon. The next day, a shallop having gone out thither, they took on board as much of the provisions as they could, and more than a hundred men who were in the vessel, and returned toward shore; but half a league before arriving at the bar they were overtaken by so complete a calm that they were unable to proceed farther, and thereupon cast anchor and passed the night in that place. "The day following, at break of day, they raised anchor as ordered by the pilot, as the rising of the tide began to be felt. When it was fully light they saw astern of them, at the poop of the vessel, two French ships which during the night had been in search of them. The enemy arrived with the intention of making an attack upon them. The French made all haste in their movements, for our men had no arms on board, and had only embarked the provisions. When day appeared, and our people discovered the French, they addressed their prayers to Our Lady of _Bon Secours d'Utrera_, and supplicated her to grant them a little wind, for the French were already close up to them. They say that Our Lady descended herself upon the vessel; for the wind freshened and blew fair for the bar, so that the shallop could enter it. The French followed it; but as the bar had but little depth and their vessels were large, they were not able to go over it, so that our men and the provisions made a safe harbor. "When it became still clearer they perceived, besides the two vessels of the enemy, four others at a distance, being the same which we had seen in the port the evening of our arrival. They were well furnished with troops and artillery, and had directed themselves for our galleon and the other ship, which were alone at sea. In this circumstance God afforded us two favors: the first was, that the same evening after they had discharged the provisions and the troops I have spoken of, at midnight the galleon and the other vessel put to sea without being perceived by the enemy; the one for Spain, and the other for Havana for the purpose of seeking the fleet which was there; and in this way neither was taken. "The second favor, by which God rendered us a still greater service, was that on the day following the one I have described there arose a great storm, and so great a tempest that certainly the greater part of the French vessels must have been lost at sea; for they were overtaken upon the most dangerous coast I have ever seen, and were very close to the shore; and if our vessels, that is, the galleon and its consort, are not shipwrecked, it is because they were already more than twelve leagues off the coast, which gave them the facility of manoeuvring as well as they could, relying upon the aid of God to preserve them." Menendez had ascertained from the Indians that a large number of the French troops had embarked on board of the vessels which he had seen off the harbor, and he had good ground for believing that these vessels would either be cast helpless upon the shore, or be driven off by the tempest to such a distance as would render their return for some days impossible. He at once conceived the project of attacking the French fort upon the river May by land. The troops, having heard mass, marched out in order, preceded by twenty Biscayans and Asturians, having as their captain Martin de Ochoa, a leader of great fidelity and bravery, furnished with axes to open a road where they could not get along. At this moment there arrived two Indians, who said that they had been at the French six days before, and who "seemed like angels" to the soldiers, sent to guide their march. Halting for refreshment and rest wherever suitable places could be found, and the Adelantado always with the vanguard, in four days they reached the vicinity of the fort, and came up within a quarter of a league of it, concealed by a grove of pine trees. It rained heavily, and a severe storm prevailed. The place where they had halted was a very bad one and very marshy; but he decided to stop there, and went back to seek the rear-guard, lest they might lose their way. About ten at night the last of the troops arrived, very wet indeed, for there had been much rain during the four days; they had passed marshes with the water rising to their waists, and every night there was so great a flood that they were in great danger of losing their powder, their match-fire, and their biscuit; and they became desperate, cursing those who brought them there, and themselves for coming. Menendez pretended not to hear their complaints, not daring to call a council as to proceeding or returning, for both officers and soldiers went forward very unquietly. Remaining firm in his own resolve, two hours before dawn he called together the Master of the Camp and the captains, to whom he said that during the whole night he had sought of God and his Holy Mother that they would favor and instruct him what he should do most advantageous for their holy service; and he was persuaded that they had all done the same. "But now, gentlemen," he proceeded, "we must make some determination, finding ourselves exhausted, lost, without ammunition or provisions, and without the hope of relief." Some answered very promptly, "Why should they waste their time in giving reasons? for, unless they returned quickly to St. Augustine, they would be reduced to eating palmettos; and the longer they delayed, the greater trouble they would have." The Adelantado said to them that what they said seemed very reasonable, but he would ask them to hear some reasons to the contrary, without being offended. He then proceeded--after having smoothed down their somewhat ruffled dispositions, considerably disturbed by their first experience in encountering the hardships of such a march--to show them the danger of retreat was then greater than an advance would be, as they would lose alike the respect of their friends and foes; that if, on the contrary, they attacked the fort, whether they succeeded in taking it or not, they would gain honor and reputation. Stimulated by the speech of their general, they demanded to be led to the attack, and the arrangements for the assault were at once made. Their French prisoner was placed in the advance; but the darkness of the night and the severity of the storm rendered it impossible to proceed, and they halted in a marsh, with the water up to their knees, to await daylight. At dawn, the Frenchman recognized the country, and the place where they were, and where stood the fort; upon which the Adelantado ordered them to march, enjoining upon all, at the peril of their lives, to follow him; and coming to a small hill, the Frenchman said that behind that stood the fort, about three bow-shots distant, but lower down, near the river. The General put the Frenchman into the custody of Castaneda. He went up a little higher, and saw the river and one of the houses, but he was not able to discover the fort, although it was adjoining them; and he returned to Castaneda, with whom now stood the Master of the Camp and Ochoa, and said to them that he wished to go lower down, near to the houses which stood behind the hill, to see the fortress and the garrison, for, as the sun was now up, they could not attack the fort without a reconnaissance. This the Master of the Camp would not permit him to do, saying this duty appertained to him; and he went alone with Ochoa near to the houses, from whence they discovered the fort; and, returning with their information, they came to two paths, and leaving the one by which they came, they took the other. The Master of the Camp discovered his error, coming to a fallen tree, and turned his face to inform Ochoa, who was following him; and as they turned to seek the right path, he stopped in advance, and the sentinel discovered them, who imagined them to be French; but examining them he perceived they were unknown to him. He hailed, "Who goes there?" Ochoa answered, "Frenchmen." The sentinel was confirmed in his supposition that they were his own people, and approached them; Ochoa did the same; but seeing they were not French, the sentinel retreated. Ochoa closed with him, and with his drawn sword gave him a cut over the head, but did not hurt him much, as the sentinel fended off the blow with his sword; and the Master of the Camp, coming up at that moment, gave him a thrust, from which he fell backward, making a loud outcry. The Master of the Camp, putting his sword to his breast, threatened him with instant death unless he kept silence. They tied him thereupon, and took him to the General, who, hearing the noise, thought the Master of the Camp was being killed, and meeting with the Sergeant-major, Francisco de Recalde, Diego de Maya, and Andres Lopez Patino, with their standards and soldiers, without being able to restrain himself, he cried out, "Santiago! Upon them! Help of God, victory! The French are destroyed. The Master of the Camp is in their fort, and has taken it." Upon which, all rushed forward in the path without order, the General remaining behind, repeating what he had said many times; himself believing it to be certain that the Master of the Camp had taken with him a considerable force, and had captured the fort. So great was the joy of the soldiers, and such their speed, that they soon came up with the Master of the Camp and Ochoa, who was hastening to receive the reward of carrying the good news to the General of the capture of the sentinel. But the Master of the Camp, seeing the spirit which animated the soldiery, killed the sentinel, and cried out with a loud voice to those who were pressing forward, "Comrades! do as I do. God is with us;" and turned running toward the fort, and, meeting two Frenchmen on the way, he killed one of them, and Andres Lopez Patino the other. Those in the environs of the fort, seeing this tragedy enacted, set up loud outcries; and in order to know the cause of the alarm, one of the French within opened the postern of the principal gate, which he had no sooner done than it was observed by the Master of the Camp; and, throwing himself upon him, he killed him and entered the gate, followed by the most active of his followers. The French, awakened by the clamor, some dressed, others in their night-clothes, rushed to the doors of their houses to see what had happened; but they were all killed, except sixty of the more wary, who escaped by leaping the walls. Immediately the standards of the Sergeant-major and of Diego Mayo were brought in, and set up by Rodrigo Troche and Pedro Valdes Herrera, with two cavaliers, at the same moment. These being hoisted, the trumpets proclaimed the victory, and the band of soldiers who had entered opened the gates and sought the quarters, leaving no Frenchman alive. The Adelantado, hearing the cries, left Castaneda in his place to collect the people who had not come up, who were at least half the force, and went himself to see if they were in any danger. He arrived at the fort running; and as he perceived that the soldiers gave no quarter to any of the French, he shouted "that, at the penalty of their lives, they should neither wound nor kill any woman, cripple, or child under fifteen years of age." By which seventy persons were saved, the rest were all killed. Renato de Laudonnière, the commander of the fort, escaped, with his servant and some twenty or thirty others, to a vessel lying in the river. Such is the Spanish chronicle, contained in Barcia, of the capture of Fort Caroline. Its details in the main correspond with the account of Laudonnière, and of Nicolas Challeux, the author of the letter printed at Lyons, in France, under date of August, 1566, by Jean Saugrain. In some important particulars, however, the historians disagree. It has been already seen that Menendez is represented as having given orders to spare all the women, maimed persons, and all children under fifteen years of age. The French relations of the event, on the contrary, allege that an indiscriminate slaughter took place, and that all were massacred, without respect to age, sex, or condition; but as this statement is principally made upon the authority of a terrified and flying soldier, it is alike due to the probabilities of the case, and more agreeable to the hopes of humanity, to lessen somewhat the horrors of a scene which has need of all the palliation which can be drawn from the slightest evidences of compassion on the part of the stern and bigoted leader. Some of the fugitives from the fort fled to the Indians; and ten of these were given up to the Spaniards, to be butchered in cold blood, says the French account--to be sent back to France, says the Spanish chronicle. September 24th being the day of St. Matthew, the name of the fort was changed to San Matteo, by which name it was always subsequently called by the Spaniards; and the name of St. Matthew was also given by them to the river, now called St. John's, on which it was situated. The Spaniards proceeded at once to strengthen the fortress, deepening and enlarging the ditch, and raised and strengthened the ramparts and wall in such manner, says the boastful Mendoza, "that, if the half of all France had come to attack it, they could not have disturbed it;" a boast upon which the easy conquest of it by De Gourgues, three years subsequently, affords an amusing commentary. They also constructed, subsequently, two small forts at the mouth of the river, one on each side, which probably were located, the one on Batten Island, and the other at Mayport Mills. Leaving three hundred soldiers as a garrison under his son-in-law, De Valdez, Master of the Camp, who was now appointed governor of the fort, Menendez marched from St. Augustine, beginning now to feel considerable anxiety lest the French fleet, escaping from the tempest, might return and visit upon his own garrison at St. Augustine the fate of Fort Caroline. He took with him upon his return but fifty soldiers, and, owing to the swollen waters, found great difficulty in retracing his route. When within a league of St. Augustine, he allowed one of the soldiers to go forward to announce his victory and safe return. The garrison at St. Augustine had been in great anxiety respecting their leader, and from the accounts given by those who had deserted, they feared the total loss of the expedition. The worthy captain thus describes the return of Menendez: "The same day, being Monday, we saw a man coming, crying out loudly. I myself was the first to run to him for the news. He embraced me with transport, crying, 'Victory! Victory! The French fort is ours.' I promised him the present which the bearer of good news deserves, and gave him the best in my power. "At the hour of vespers our good General arrived, with fifty foot-soldiers very much fatigued. As soon as I learned that he was coming, I ran home and put on a new soutain, the best which I had, and a surplice, and, going out with a crucifix in my hand, I went forward to receive him; and he, a gentleman and a good Christian, before entering, kneeled and all his followers, and returned thanks to the Lord for the great favors which he had received. My companions and myself marched in front in procession chanting, so that we all returned with the demonstrations of joy." REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS AGAINST SPAIN RISE OF THE GUEUX OR BEGGARS A.D. 1566 FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER During the later mediæval and early modern periods, European states and provinces passed through many changes of political relation. In those times the territories comprised under the name of the Netherlands--embracing the present Holland and Belgium--belonged successively, in whole or in part, to different governments. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the region was united with Burgundy; in 1477 it passed to the Hapsburgs; and later it came under Spanish dominion. In the reign of Charles V the Protestant Reformation spread through the Netherlands, whose peoples shared in all the disputes and turbulences of that religious revolution. Often in great peril, the liberties of the Netherlands were more than ever endangered by the absorption of the provinces into the vast empire of Charles. The Emperor issued persecuting edicts against the Protestant inhabitants, introduced the Inquisition with its terrible _auto dafé_, which spared neither character nor sex, and by his severe oppression caused the people of the Netherlands to feel themselves "destined to perpetual slavery." The number of martyrs there during the reign of Charles has been estimated on high authority at one hundred thousand, although some modern historians place it far below. The Inquisition, at all events, did some of its most cruel work in the Netherlands during that period. Toward the end of Charles' reign the Netherlands secured a certain degree of exemption from these persecutions. Philip II, when he succeeded his father, Charles V, on the throne of Spain, renewed such favorable pledges to the Netherlands as the Emperor had given. But once in full power (1555), Philip began the "dark and bloody reign" which a few years later drove the Netherlander to their great revolt, under the lead of William, Prince of Orange, called "William the Silent." In 1563 William and the Counts of Egmont and Horn, members of the council of state, sent to Philip II a petition for the recall of Cardinal Granvella, adviser of the regent, Margaret of Parma, who was violently persecuting the Protestants. Although next year Granvella was recalled, Philip did not change his determination to destroy political and religious liberty in the Netherlands, and his continued oppressions provoked his subjects there to rise in self-defence. As Schiller's history of the revolt, here presented, covers only the preparatory stage, the brilliant summary, from another portion of his works, is added to give completeness to his account. A universal spirit of revolt pervaded the whole nation. Men began to investigate the rights of the subject, and to scrutinize the prerogative of kings. "The Netherlanders were not so stupid," many were heard to say, with very little attempt at secrecy, "as not to know right well what was due from the subject to the sovereign, and from the king to the subject; and that, perhaps, means would yet be found to repel force with force, although at present there might be no appearance of it." In Antwerp a placard was set up in several places calling upon the town council to accuse the King of Spain before the supreme court, at Spires, of having broken his oath and violated the liberties of the country, for Brabant, being a portion of the Burgundian circle, was included in the religious peace of Passau and Augsburg. About this time, too, the Calvinists published their confession of faith, and in a preamble, addressed to the King, declared that they, although a hundred thousand strong, kept themselves, nevertheless, quiet, and, like the rest of his subjects, contributed to all the taxes of the country; from which it was evident, they added, that of themselves they entertained no ideas of insurrection. Bold and incendiary writings were publicly disseminated, which depicted the Spanish tyranny in the most odious colors, and reminded the nation of its privileges and occasionally also of its powers.[1] [1] The Regent mentioned to the King a number (three thousand) of these writings. It is remarkable how important a part printing, and publicity in general, played in the rebellion of the Netherlands. Through this organ one restless spirit spoke to millions. Besides the lampoons, which for the most part were composed with all the low scurrility and brutality that were the distinguishing characteristics of most of the Protestant polemical writings of the time, works were occasionally published which defended religious liberty in the fullest sense of the word. The warlike preparations of Philip against the Porte, as well as those which, for no intelligible reason, Eric, Duke of Brunswick, about this time made in the vicinity, contributed to strengthen the general suspicion that the Inquisition was to be forcibly imposed on the Netherlands. Many of the most eminent merchants already spoke of quitting their houses and business, to seek in some other part of the world the liberty of which they were here deprived; others looked about for a leader, and let fall hints of forcible resistance and of foreign aid. That in this distressing position of affairs the Regent might be left entirely without an adviser and without support, she was now deserted by the only person who was at the present moment indispensable to her, and who had contributed to plunge her into this embarrassment. "Without kindling a civil war," wrote to her William of Orange, "it was absolutely impossible to comply now with the orders of the King. If, however, obedience was to be insisted upon, he must beg that his place might be supplied by another, who would better answer the expectations of his majesty and have more power than he had over the minds of the nation. The zeal which on every other occasion he had shown in the service of the crown would, he hoped, secure his present proceeding from misconstruction; for, as the case now stood, he had no alternative between disobeying the King and injuring his country and himself." From this time forth William of Orange retired from the council of state to his town of Breda, where, in observant but scarcely inactive repose, he watched the course of affairs. Count Horn followed his example. Egmont, ever vacillating between the republic and the throne, ever wearying himself in the vain attempt to unite the good citizen with the obedient subject--Egmont, who was less able than the rest to dispense with the favor of the monarch, and to whom, therefore, it was less an object of indifference, could not bring himself to abandon the bright prospects which were now opening for him at the court of the Regent. The Prince of Orange had, by his superior intellect, gained an influence over the Regent which great minds cannot fail to command from inferior spirits. His retirement had opened a void in her confidence, which Count Egmont was now to fill by virtue of that sympathy which so naturally subsists between timidity, weakness, and good nature. As she was as much afraid of exasperating the people by an exclusive confidence in the adherents of the crown as she was fearful of displeasing the King by too close an understanding with the declared leaders of the faction, a better object for her confidence could now hardly be presented than this very Count Egmont, of whom it could not be said that he belonged to either of the two conflicting parties. Up to this point the general peace had, it appears, been the sincere wish of the Prince of Orange, the Counts Egmont and Horn, and their friends. They had pursued the true interest of their sovereign as much as the general weal; at least their exertions and their actions had been as little at variance with the former as with the latter. Nothing had as yet occurred to make their motives suspected or to manifest in them a rebellious spirit. What they had done they had done in discharge of their bounden duty as members of a free state, as the representatives of the nation, as advisers of the King, as men of integrity and honor. The only weapons they had used to oppose the encroachments of the court had been remonstrances, modest complaints, petitions. They had never allowed themselves to be so far carried away by a just zeal for their good cause as to transgress the limits of prudence and moderation, which on many occasions are so easily overstepped by party spirit. But all the nobles of the republic did not now listen to the voice of that prudence, all did not abide within the bounds of moderation. While in the council of state the great question was discussed, whether the nation was to be miserable or not, while its sworn deputies summoned to their assistance all the arguments of reason and of equity, and while the middle classes and the people contented themselves with empty complaints, menaces, and curses, that part of the nation which of all seemed least called upon, and on whose support least reliance had been placed, began to take more active measures. We have already described a class of the nobility whose services and wants Philip, at his accession, had not considered it necessary to remember. Of these, by far the greater number had asked for promotion from a much more urgent reason than a love of the mere honor. Many of them were deeply sunk in debt, from which by their own resources they could not hope to emancipate themselves. When, then, in filling up appointments, Philip passed them over, he wounded them in a point far more sensitive than their pride. In these suitors he had by his neglect raised up so many idle spies and merciless judges of his actions, so many collectors and propagators of malicious rumor. As their pride did not quit them with their prosperity, so now, driven by necessity, they trafficked with the sole capital which they could not alienate--their nobility, and the political influence of their names; and brought into circulation a coin which only in such a period could have found currency--their protection. With a self-pride, to which they gave the more scope as it was all they could now call their own, they looked upon themselves as a strong intermediate power between the sovereign and the citizen, and believed themselves called upon to hasten to the rescue of the oppressed state, which looked imploringly to them for succor. This idea was ludicrous only so far as their self-conceit was concerned in it; the advantages which they contrived to draw from it were substantial enough. The Protestant merchants, who held in their hands the chief part of the wealth of the Netherlands, and who believed they could not at any price purchase too dearly the undisturbed exercise of their religion, did not fail to make use of this class of people, who stood idle in the market and ready to be hired. These very men, whom at any other time the merchants, in their pride of riches, would most probably have looked down upon, now appeared likely to do them good service through their numbers, their courage, their credit with the populace, their enmity to the Government, nay, through their beggarly pride itself and their despair. On these grounds they zealously endeavored to form a close union with them, and diligently fostered the disposition for rebellion, while they also used every means to keep alive their high opinions of themselves, and, what was most important, lured their poverty by well-applied pecuniary assistance and glittering promises. Few of them were so utterly insignificant as not to possess some influence, if not personally, yet at least by their relationship with higher and more powerful nobles; and, if united, they would be able to raise a formidable voice against the crown. Many of them had either already joined the new sect or were secretly inclined to it; and even those who were zealous Roman Catholics had political or private grounds enough to set them against the decrees of Trent and the Inquisition. All, in fine, felt the cause of vanity sufficiently powerful not to allow the only moment to escape them in which they might possibly make some figure in the republic. But much as might be expected from the coöperation of these men in a body, it would have been futile and ridiculous to build any hopes on any one of them singly; and the great difficulty was to effect a union among them. Even to bring them together, some unusual occurrence was necessary; and, fortunately, such an incident presented itself. The nuptials of Baron Montigny, one of the Belgian nobles, as also those of the prince Alexander of Parma, which took place about this time in Brussels, assembled in that town a great number of the Belgian nobles. On this occasion relations met relations; new friendships were formed and old renewed; and, while the distress of the country was the topic of conversation, wine and mirth unlocked lips and hearts, hints were dropped of union among themselves and of an alliance with foreign powers. These accidental meetings soon led to concealed ones, and public discussions gave rise to secret consultations. Two German barons, moreover, a Count of Holle and of Schwarzenberg, who happened at this time to be on a visit to the Netherlands, omitted nothing to awaken expectations of assistance from their neighbors. Count Louis of Nassau, too, had also, a short time before, visited several German courts to ascertain their sentiments.[2] It has even been asserted that secret emissaries of the admiral Coligny were seen at this time in Brabant; but this, however, may be reasonably doubted. [2] It was not without cause that the Prince of Orange suddenly disappeared from Brussels in order to be present at the election of a king of Rome in Frankfort. An assembly of so many German princes must have greatly favored a negotiation. If ever a political crisis was favorable to an attempt at revolution, it was the present: a woman at the helm of government; the governors of provinces disaffected themselves, and disposed to wink at insubordination in others; most of the state counsellors quite inefficient; no army to fall back upon; the few troops there were, long since discontented on account of the outstanding arrears of pay, and already too often deceived by false promises to be enticed by new; commanded, moreover, by officers who despised the Inquisition from their hearts, and would have blushed to draw a sword in its behalf; and lastly, no money in the treasury to enlist new troops or to hire foreigners. The court at Brussels, as well as the three councils, not only divided by internal dissensions, but in the highest degree venal and corrupt; the Regent without full powers to act on the spot, and the King at a distance; his adherents in the provinces few, uncertain, and dispirited; the faction numerous and powerful; two-thirds of the people irritated against popery and desirous of a change--such was the unfortunate weakness of the Government, and the more unfortunate still that this weakness was so well known to its enemies! In order to unite so many minds in the prosecution of a common object, a leader was still wanting, and a few influential names, to give political weight to their enterprise. The two were supplied by Count Louis of Nassau, and Henry Count Brederode, both members of the most illustrious houses of the Belgian nobility, who voluntarily placed themselves at the head of the undertaking. Louis of Nassau, brother of the Prince of Orange, united many splendid qualities, which made him worthy of appearing on so noble and important a stage. In Geneva, where he studied, he had imbibed at once a hatred to the hierarchy and a love to the new religion, and, on his return to his native country, had not failed to enlist proselytes to his opinions. The republican bias which his mind had received in that school kindled in him a bitter hatred of all that bore the Spanish name, which animated his whole conduct, and only left him with his latest breath. Popery and Spanish rule were in his mind identical, as indeed they were in reality; and the abhorrence which he entertained for the one helped to strengthen his dislike to the other. Closely as the brothers agreed in their inclinations and aversions, the ways by which each sought to gratify them were widely dissimilar. Youth and an ardent temperament did not allow the younger brother to follow the tortuous course through which the elder wound himself to his object. A cold, calm circumspection carried the latter slowly, but surely, to his aim; and with a pliable subtlety he made all things subserve his purpose; with a foolhardy impetuosity, which overthrew all obstacles, the other at times compelled success, but oftener accelerated disaster. For this reason William was a general, and Louis never more than an adventurer; a sure and powerful arm, if only it were directed by a wise head. Louis' pledge once given was good forever; his alliances survived every vicissitude, for they were mostly formed in a pressing moment of necessity, and misfortune binds more firmly than thoughtless joy. He loved his brother as dearly as he did his cause, and for the latter he died. Henry of Brederode, Baron of Viane and Burgrave of Utrecht, was descended from the old Dutch counts, who formerly ruled that province as sovereign princes. So ancient a title endeared him to the people, among whom the memory of their former lords still survived and was the more treasured the less they felt they had gained by the change. This hereditary splendor increased the self-conceit of a man upon whose tongue the glory of his ancestors continually hung, and who dwelt the more on former greatness, even amid its ruins, the more unpromising the aspect of his own condition became. Excluded from the honors and employments to which in his opinion his own merits and his noble ancestry fully entitled him--a squadron of light cavalry being all that was intrusted to him--he hated the Government, and did not scruple boldly to canvass and to rail at its measures. By these means he won the hearts of the people. Besides these two, there were others also from among the most illustrious of the Flemish nobles--the young Count Charles of Mansfeld, a son of that nobleman whom we have found among the most zealous royalists, the Count Kinlemburg, two counts of Bergen and of Battenburg, John of Marnix, Baron of Thoulouse, Philip of Marnix, Baron of St. Aldegonde, with several others, who joined the league, which about the middle of November, in the year 1565, was formed at the house of Von Hammes, king-at-arms of the Golden Fleece. Here it was that six men decided the destiny of their country--as formerly a few confederates consummated the liberty of Switzerland--kindled the torch of a forty-years' war, and laid the basis of a freedom which they themselves were never to enjoy. The objects of the league were set forth in the following declaration, to which Philip of Marnix was the first to subscribe his name: "Whereas certain ill-disposed persons, under the mask of a pious zeal, but in reality under the impulse of avarice and ambition, have by their evil counsels persuaded our most gracious sovereign the King to introduce into these countries the abominable tribunal of the Inquisition--a tribunal diametrically opposed to all laws human and divine, and in cruelty far surpassing the barbarous institutions of heathenism--which raises the inquisitors above every other power, and debases man to a perpetual bondage, and by its snares exposes the honest citizen to a constant fear of death, inasmuch as anyone--priest, it may be, or a faithless friend, a Spaniard or a reprobate--has it in his power at any moment to cause whom he will to be dragged before that tribunal, and to be placed in confinement, condemned and executed, without the accused ever being allowed to face his accuser or to adduce proof of his innocence--we, therefore, the undersigned, have bound ourselves to watch over the safety of our families, our estates, and our own persons. To this we hereby pledge ourselves, and to this end bind ourselves as a sacred fraternity, and vow with a solemn oath to oppose to the best of our power the introduction of this tribunal into these countries, whether it be attempted openly or secretly, and under whatever name it may be disguised. We at the same time declare that we are far from intending anything unlawful against the King our sovereign; rather is it our unalterable purpose to support and defend the royal prerogative, and to maintain peace, and, as far as lies in our power to put down all rebellion. In accordance with this purpose we have sworn, and now again swear, to hold sacred the Government, and to respect both in word and deed, which witness almighty God! "Further, we vow and swear to protect and defend one another, in all times and places, against all attacks whatsoever touching the articles which are set forth in this covenant. We hereby bind ourselves that no accusation of any of our followers, in whatever name it may be clothed, whether rebellion, sedition, or other wise, shall avail to annul our oath toward the accused or absolve us from our obligation toward him. No act which is directed against the Inquisition can deserve the name of a rebellion. Whoever, therefore, shall be placed in arrest on any charge, we here pledge ourselves to assist him to the utmost of our ability, and to endeavor by every allowable means to effect his liberation. In this, however, as in all matters, but especially in the conduct of all measures against the tribunal of the Inquisition, we submit ourselves to the general regulations of the league, or to the decision of those whom we may unanimously appoint our counsellors and leaders. "In witness hereof, and in confirmation of this our common league and covenant, we call upon the holy name of the living God, maker of heaven and earth and of all that are therein, who searches the hearts, the consciences, and the thoughts, and knows the purity of ours. We implore the aid of his holy spirit, that success and honor may crown our undertaking to the glory of his name and to the peace and blessing of our country!" This covenant was immediately translated into several languages and quickly disseminated through the provinces. To swell the league as speedily as possible, each of the confederates assembled all his friends, relations, adherents, and retainers. Great banquets were held, which lasted whole days--irresistible temptations for a sensual luxurious people, in whom the deepest wretchedness could not stifle the propensity for voluptuous living. Whoever repaired to these banquets--and everyone was welcome--was plied with officious assurances of friendship, and, when heated with wine, carried away by the example of numbers and overcome by the fire of a wild eloquence. The hands of many were guided while they subscribed their signatures; the hesitating were derided, the pusillanimous threatened, the scruples of loyalty clamored down; some even were quite ignorant what they were signing, and were ashamed afterward to inquire. To many whom mere levity had brought to the entertainment, the general enthusiasm left no choice, while the splendor of the confederacy allured the mean, and its numbers encouraged the timorous. The abettors of the league had not scrupled at the artifice of counterfeiting the signature and seals of the Prince of Orange, Counts Egmont, Horn, Megen, and others, a trick which won them hundreds of adherents. This was done especially with a view of influencing the officers of the army, in order to be safe in this quarter if matters should come at last to violence. The device succeeded with many, especially with subalterns, and Count Brederode even drew his sword upon an ensign who wished time for consideration. Men of all classes and conditions signed it. Religion made no difference. Roman Catholic priests even were associates of the league. The motives were not the same with all, but the pretext was similar. The Roman Catholics desired simply the abolition of the Inquisition and a mitigation of the edicts; the Protestants aimed at unlimited freedom of conscience. A few daring spirits only entertained so bold a project as the overthrow of the present Government, while the needy and indigent based the vilest hopes on a general anarchy. A farewell entertainment, which about this very time was given to the Counts Schwarzenberg and Holle in Breda, and another shortly afterward in Hogstraten, drew many of the principal nobility to these two places, and of these several had already signed the covenant. The Prince of Orange, Counts Egmont, Horn, and Megen were present at the latter banquet, but without any concert of design, and without having themselves any share in the league, although one of Egmont's own secretaries and some of the servants of the other three noblemen had openly joined it. At this entertainment three hundred persons gave in their adhesion to the covenant, and the question was mooted whether the whole body should present themselves before the Regent armed or unarmed, with a declaration or with a petition? Horn and Orange--Egmont would not countenance the business in any way--were called in as arbiters upon this point, and they decided in favor of the more moderate and submissive procedure. By taking this office upon them, they exposed themselves to the charge of having in no very covert manner lent their sanction to the enterprise of the confederates. In compliance, therefore, with their advice it was determined to present their address unarmed and in the form of a petition, and a day was appointed on which they should assemble in Brussels. The first intimation the Regent received of this conspiracy of the nobles was given by the Count of Megen soon after his return to the capital. "There was," he said, "an enterprise on foot; no less than three hundred of the nobles were implicated in it; it referred to religion; the members of it had bound themselves together by an oath; they reckoned much on foreign aid; she would soon know more about it." Though urgently pressed, he would give her no further information. "A nobleman," he said, "had confided it to him under the seal of secrecy, and he had pledged his word of honor to him." What really withheld him from giving her any further explanation was, in all probability, not so much any delicacy about his honor, as his hatred of the Inquisition, which he would not willingly do anything to advance. Soon after him, Count Egmont delivered to the Regent a copy of the covenant, and also gave her the names of the conspirators, with some few exceptions. Nearly at the same time the Prince of Orange wrote to her: "There was, as he had heard, an army enlisted, four hundred officers were already named, and twenty thousand men would presently appear in arms." Thus the rumor was intentionally exaggerated, and the danger was multiplied in every mouth. The Regent petrified with alarm at the first announcement of these tidings, and guided solely by her fears, hastily called together all the members of the council of state who happened to be then in Brussels, and at the same time sent a pressing summons to the Prince of Orange and Count Horn, inviting them to resume their seats in the senate. The members of the senate had not yet dispersed, when all Brussels resounded with the report that the confederates were approaching the town. They consisted of no more than two hundred horse, but rumor greatly exaggerated their numbers. Filled with consternation, the Regent consulted with her ministers whether it was best to close the gates on the approaching party or to seek safety in flight. Both suggestions were rejected as dishonorable; and the peaceable entry of the nobles soon allayed all fears of violence. The first morning after their arrival they assembled at Kuilemburg house, where Brederode administered to them a second oath, binding them, before all other duties, to stand by one another, and even with arms if necessary. At this meeting a letter from Spain was produced, in which it was stated that a certain Protestant, whom they all knew and valued, had been burned alive in that country by a slow fire. After these and similar preliminaries he called on them one after another, by name, to take the new oath, and renew the old one in their own names and in those of the absent. The next day, April 5, 1566, was fixed for the presentation of the petition. Their numbers now amounted to between three hundred and four hundred. Among them were many retainers of the high nobility, as also several servants of the King himself and of the Duchess. With the Counts of Nassau and Brederode at their head, and formed in ranks of four by four, they advanced in procession to the palace; all Brussels attended the unwonted spectacle in silent astonishment. Here were to be seen a body of men, advancing with too much boldness and confidence to look like supplicants, and led by two men who were not wont to be petitioners and, on the other hand, with so much order and stillness as do not usually accompany rebellion. The Regent received the procession, surrounded by all her counsellors and the Knights of the Fleece. "These noble Netherlanders," thus Brederode respectfully addressed her, "who here present themselves before your highness, wish in their own name, and of many others besides, who are shortly to arrive, to present to you a petition, of whose importance, as well as of their own humility, this solemn procession must convince you. I, as speaker of this body, entreat you to receive our petition, which contains nothing but what is in unison with the laws of our country and the honor of the King." "Never"--so ran the petition, which, according to some, was drawn up by the celebrated Balduin--"never had they failed in their loyalty to their King, and nothing now could be further from their hearts; but they would rather run the risk of incurring the displeasure of their sovereign than allow him to remain longer in ignorance of the evils with which their native country was menaced, by the forcible introduction of the Inquisition, and the continued enforcement of the edicts. They had long remained consoling themselves with the expectation that a general assembly of the states would be summoned to remedy these grievances; but now that even this hope was extinguished, they held it to be their duty to give timely warning to the Regent. They, therefore, entreated her highness to send to Madrid an envoy, well disposed, and fully acquainted with the state and temper of the times, who should endeavor to persuade the King to comply with the demands of the whole nation, and abolish the Inquisition, to revoke the edicts, and in their stead cause new and more humane ones to be drawn up at a general assembly of the states. But, in the mean while, until they could learn the King's decision, they prayed that the edicts and the operations of the Inquisition be suspended." "If," they concluded, "no attention should be paid to their humble request, they took God, the King, the Regent and all her counsellors to witness that they had done their part, and were not responsible for any unfortunate result that might happen." The following day the confederates, marching in the same order of procession, but in still greater numbers--Counts Bergen and Kuilemberg having in the interim joined them with their adherents--appeared before the Regent in order to receive her answer. It was written on the margin of the petition, and was to the effect "that entirely to suspend the Inquisition and the edicts, even temporarily, was beyond her powers; but in compliance with the wishes of the confederates, she was ready to despatch one of the nobles to the King, in Spain, and also to support their petition with all her influence. In the mean time she would recommend the inquisitors to administer their office with moderation; but in return, she should expect, on the part of the league, that they should abstain from all acts of violence, and undertake nothing to the prejudice of the Catholic faith." Little as these vague and general promises satisfied the confederates, they were, nevertheless, as much as they could have reasonably expected to gain at first. The granting or refusing of the petition had nothing to do with the primary object of the league. Enough for them at present that it was once recognized; enough that it was now, as it were, an established body, which by its power and threats might, if necessary, overawe the Government. The confederates, therefore, acted quite consistently with their designs, in contenting themselves with this answer, and referring the rest to the good pleasure of the King. As, indeed, the whole pantomime of petitioning had only been invented to cover the more daring plan of the league, until it should have strength enough to show itself in its true light; they felt that much more depended on their being able to continue this mask, and on the favorable reception of their petition, than on its speedily being granted. In a new memorial, which they delivered three days after, they pressed for an express testimonial from the Regent, that they had done no more than their duty, and been guided simply by their zeal for the service of the King. When the Duchess evaded a declaration, they even sent a person to repeat this request in a private interview. "Time alone and their future behavior," she replied to this person, "would enable her to judge of their designs." The league had its origin in banquets, and a banquet gave it form and perfection. On the very day that the second petition was presented, Brederode entertained the confederates in Kuilemberg house. About three hundred guests assembled; intoxication gave them courage, and their audacity rose with their numbers. During the conversation one of their number happened to remark that he had overheard the Count of Barlaimont whisper in French to the Regent, who was seen to turn pale on the delivery of the petitions, that "she need not be afraid of a band of beggars (_gueux_);" in fact, the majority of them had by their bad management of their incomes only too well deserved this appellation. Now, as the very name of their fraternity was the very thing which had most perplexed them, an expression was eagerly caught up, which, while it cloaked the presumption of their enterprise in humility, was at the same time appropriate to them as petitioners. Immediately they drank to one another under this name, and the cry "Long live the Gueux!" was accompanied with a general shout of applause. After the cloth had been removed, Brederode appeared with a wallet over his shoulder, similar to that which the vagrant pilgrims and mendicant monks of the time used to carry; and after returning thanks to all for their accession to the league, and boldly assuring them that he was ready to venture life and limb for every individual present, he drank to the health of the whole company out of a wooden beaker. The cup went round, and everyone uttered the same vow as he set it to his lips. Then one after the other they received the beggar's purse, and each hung it on a nail which he had appropriated to himself. The shouts and uproar attending this buffoonery attracted the Prince of Orange and Counts Egmont and Horn, who, by chance, were passing the spot at the very moment, and on entering the house were boisterously pressed by Brederode, as host, to remain and drink a glass with them.[3] [3] "But," Egmont asserted in his written defence, "we drank only one single small glass, and thereupon they cried, 'Long live the King and the Gueux!' This was the first time that I heard that appellation, and it certainly did not please me. But the times were so bad that one was often compelled to share in much that was against one's inclination, and I knew not but I was doing an innocent thing." The entrance of three such influential personages renewed the mirth of the guests, and their festivities soon passed the bounds of moderation. Many were intoxicated; guests and attendants mingled together without distinction, the serious and the ludicrous; drunken fancies and affairs of state were blended one with another in a burlesque medley; and the discussions on the general distress of the country ended in the wild uproar of a bacchanalian revel. But it did not stop here; what they had resolved on in the moment of intoxication, they attempted when sober to carry into execution. It was necessary to manifest to the people in some striking shape the existence of their protectors, and likewise to fan the zeal of the faction by a visible emblem; for this end nothing could be better than to adopt publicly this name of Gueux, and to borrow from it the tokens of the association. In a few days the town of Brussels swarmed with ash-gray garments, such as were usually worn by mendicant friars and penitents. Every confederate put his whole family and domestics in this dress. Some carried wooden bowls thinly overlaid with plates of silver, cups of the same kind, and wooden knives; in short, the whole paraphernalia of the beggar tribe, which they either fixed around their hats or suspended from their girdles. Round the neck they wore a golden or silver coin, afterward called the "Guesen penny," of which one side bore the effigy of the King, with the inscription "True to the King"; on the other side were seen two hands folded together, holding a wallet, with the words "as far as the beggar's scrip." Hence the origin of the name "Gueux," which was subsequently borne in the Netherlands by all who seceded from popery and took up arms against the King. A name decides the whole issue of things. In Madrid that was called rebellion which in Brussels was styled only a lawful remonstrance. The complaints of Brabant required a prudent mediator; Philip II sent an executioner, and the signal for war was given. An unparalleled tyranny assailed both property and life. The despairing citizens, to whom the choice of death was all that was left, chose the nobler one on the battle-field. A wealthy and luxurious nation loves peace, but becomes warlike as soon as it becomes poor. Then it ceases to tremble for a life which is deprived of everything that had made it desirable. In a moment the rage of rebellion seizes the most distant provinces; trade and commerce are at a standstill, the ships disappear from the harbors, the artisan abandons his workshop, the rustic his uncultivated fields. Thousands fled to distant lands; a thousand victims fell on the bloody field, and fresh thousands pressed on; for divine, indeed, must that doctrine be for which men could die so joyfully. All that was wanting was the last achieving hand, the enlightened enterprising spirit, to seize on this great political crisis and to mature the offspring of chance to the designs of wisdom. William the Silent devoted himself, a second Brutus, to the great cause of liberty. Superior to a timorous selfishness, he sent in to the throne his resignation of offices which devolved on him objectionable duties, and, magnanimously divesting himself of all his princely dignities, he descended to a state of voluntary poverty, and became but a citizen of the world. The cause of justice was staked upon the hazardous game of battle; but the sudden levies of mercenaries and peaceful husbandmen could not withstand the terrible onset of an experienced force. Twice did the brave William lead his dispirited troops against the tyrant, twice was he abandoned by them, but not by his courage. Philip II sent as many reënforcements as the dreadful importunity of his viceroy begged for. Fugitives whom their fatherland rejected sought a new country on the ocean, and turned to satisfy, on the ships of their enemy, the demon of vengeance and of want. Naval heroes were now formed out of corsairs, and a marine collected out of piratical vessels; and out of morasses arose a republic. Seven provinces threw off the yoke at the same time, to form a new, youthful state, powerful by its waters and its union and despair. A solemn decree of the whole nation deposed the tyrant, and the Spanish name disappeared from all the laws. For what had now been done no forgiveness remained; the republic became formidable, because it was no longer possible for her to retrace her steps; factions distracted her within; her terrible element, the sea itself, leaguing with her oppressors, threatened her very infancy with a premature grave. She felt herself succumb to the superior force of the enemy, and cast herself a suppliant before the most powerful thrones of Europe, begging them to accept a dominion which she herself could no longer protect. At last, but with difficulty--so despised at first was this state that even the rapacity of foreign monarchs spurned her opening bloom--a stranger deigned to accept their importunate offer of a dangerous crown. New hopes began to revive her sinking courage; but in this new father of his country, destiny gave her a traitor; and in the critical emergency, when the implacable foe was in full force before her very gates, Charles of Anjou invaded the liberties which he had been called to protect. The assassin's hand, too, tore the steersman from the rudder, and with William of Orange the career, seemingly, of the infant republic and all her guardian angels fled; but the ship continued to scud along in the storm, and the swelling canvas carried her safe without the steersman's help. Philip II missed the fruits of a deed which cost him his royal honor and perhaps also his self-respect. Liberty struggled on still with despotism in the obstinate and dubious contest; sanguinary battles were fought; a brilliant array of heroes succeeded each other on the field of glory; and Flanders and Brabant were the schools which educated generals for the coming century. A long, devastating war laid waste the open country; victor and vanquished alike were bathed in blood; while the rising republic of the waters gave a welcome to fugitive industry, and out of the ruins erected the noble edifice of its own greatness. For forty years a war lasted, whose happy termination was not to bless the dying eye of Philip; which destroyed one paradise in Europe, to create a new one out of its shattered fragments; which destroyed the choicest flower of military youth; and while it enriched more than a quarter of the globe, impoverished the possessor of the golden Peru. This monarch, who, even without oppressing his subjects, could expend nine hundred tons of gold, but who by tyrannical means extorted far more, heaped on his depopulated kingdom a debt of one hundred and forty millions of ducats. An implacable hatred of liberty swallowed up all these treasures and consumed in fruitless labor his royal life. But the Reformation throve amid the devastation of his sword, and over the blood of her citizens the banner of the new republic floated victorious. LEPANTO: DESTRUCTION OF THE TURKISH NAVAL POWER A.D. 1571 SIR WILLIAM STIRLING-MAXWELL By the defeat of the Turks in the naval fight near Lepanto their power was so seriously shaken that its decline may be reckoned to have begun with that event. For many years, under their great sultan Solyman, the Magnificent, they had kept Europe in terror of their assaults. They had taken a recognized place among European peoples. Before his alliance with Francis I of France (1534), Solyman had made himself master of Hungary, and by threatening Vienna he so alarmed Charles V that the Emperor agreed to the Peace of Nuremberg, in order that he might unite Protestants and Catholics against the Ottoman foe. Although Solyman withdrew before the united forces of the Christian empire, the Turks continued their depredations, especially on the coasts of Italy and Spain. Charles succeeded in repelling them there, and defeated them (1535) at Tunis, but they soon renewed their frightful ravages along the European shores. Finally, in the reign of Solyman's successor, Selim II, they were met with effectual resistance through the efforts of the Holy League formed in 1570 by Spain, Venice, and Pope Pius V. Selim in that year captured and pillaged Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus. In May, 1571, the League agreed upon a plan of action, and after a series of indecisive operations the allies accomplished their task in the manner described below. Their forces were commanded by Don John of Austria, a Spanish soldier, illegitimate son of Charles V. Don John had already (1569-1570) defeated the Moriscoes or Moors in Granada. Stirling-Maxwell is the authoritative historian of his remarkable career. Sir William's account of the important victory near Lepanto is one of our most interesting examples of military narration. The Gulf of Lepanto is a long inlet of irregular shape, extending east and west, and bounded on the north by the shores of Albania, the ancient Epirus, and on the south by the coast of Morea, and closed at its eastern end by the Isthmus of Corinth. The bold headland on the north side, guarded by the castle of Roumelia, and the lower promontory on the south with the castle of the Morea, advancing from the opposite shores into its waters, divide the long inlet into two unequal parts. The first of these parts consists of the mouth of the gulf and the lake-like basin, together forming the Gulf of Patras. The second is the long reach of waters within the castled headlands called the Gulf (anciently) of Corinth, and now of Epakte or Lepanto. When the hostile fleets came in sight of each other, that of the League was entering the gulf near its northern shore, while that of the Turk was about fifteen miles within its jaws, his vast crescent-shaped line stretching almost from the broad swampy shallows which lie beneath the Acarnanian mountains to the margin of the rich lowlands of the Morea. As the two armaments now advanced, each in full view of the other, the sea was somewhat high, and the wind, blowing freshly from the east, was in the teeth of the Christians. But in the course of the morning the waves of the gulf fell to a glassy smoothness, and the breeze shifted to the west, a change fortunate for the sailors of the League, which their spiritual teachers did not fail to declare a special interposition of God in behalf of the fleet which carried the flag of his vicar upon earth. At the sound of the signal gun each captain began to prepare his ship for action. By order of Don John of Austria the sharp peaks of the galleys, the spurs (_espolones_) as they were called, had been cut off, it being thought expedient to sacrifice those weapons of offence, which were somewhat uncertain in their operation, to insure the more effectual working of the guns on the forecastle and gangway; and the bulwarks had been strengthened, and heightened by means of boarding-nettings. In some vessels the rowers' benches were removed or planked over, to give more space and scope to the soldiers. Throughout the fleet the Christian slaves had their fetters knocked off and were furnished with arms, which they were encouraged to use valiantly by promises of freedom and rewards. Of the Moslem slaves, on the contrary, the chains which secured them to their places were carefully examined, and their rivets secured; and they were, besides, fitted with handcuffs, to disable them from using their hands for any purpose but tugging on the oar. The arquebusier, the musketeer, and the bombardier looked carefully to the state of their weapons, ammunition, and equipments; the sailor sharpened his pike and cutlass; the officer put on his strongest casque and his best-wrought cuirass; the stewards placed supplies of bread and wine in convenient places, ready to the hands of the combatants; and the surgeons prepared their instruments and bandages, and spread tables in dark and shaded nooks, for the use of the wounded. While these preparations occupied their subordinate officers, the chiefs of the armament repaired to the flag-ship to learn the final resolution and receive the last instructions of Don John of Austria. Some of these went for the purpose of combating that resolution and objecting to those instructions; for that eagerness to fight, which pervaded the soldiers and sailors, was not unanimously shared by their leaders. Veniero, although he had been hitherto very desirous of meeting the enemy, was now anxious and dispirited. Doria and Ascanio de la Corgnia reminded their young commander that the Turk, who was evidently bent upon fighting, had a convenient harbor and arsenal behind him at Lepanto; while for the fleet of the League, far from accessible ports, a disaster implied total destruction. Some of their colleagues ventured to advise Don John to retire while it was still in his power to do so. He refused to discuss a question which had been decided at Corfu. "Gentlemen," he said, "the time for counsel is past, and the time for fighting has come," and with these words dismissed them to their ships. While the galleys were taking up their positions, Don John of Austria, in complete armor and attended by Don Luis de Cordoba and his secretary Juan de Soto, transferred himself to a frigate remarkable for speed and armed with a single German gun, and ran along the line to the right of the flag-ship, embracing the whole extent of the right wing. As he neared each galley he addressed a few words of encouragement to the officers and men. He reminded the Venetians of the cruel outrages which the Republic had lately received from the Turk in the Adriatic, Corfu, and especially in Cyprus; and that now was the time to take signal vengeance; and he therefore bid them use their weapons as these recollections and the great opportunity required. To the Spaniards he said: "My children, we are here to conquer or to die as Heaven may determine. Do not let our impious foe ask us, 'Where is your God?' Fight in his holy name, and in death or victory you will win immortality." His words were eminently successful. They were in all cases received with enthusiastic applause. The soldiers and sailors were delighted and inspired by the gallant bearing and language of their young leader. As he left them, shipmates who had quarrelled as only shipmates can, and who had not spoken for weeks, embraced, and swore to conquer or to die in the sacred cause of Christ. As the two fleets approached--the Christians wafted gently onward by a light breeze, the Ottomans plying their oars to the utmost--the Turkish commander, who like Don John sailed in the centre of his line, fired a gun. Don John acknowledged the challenge and returned the salute. A second shot elicited a second reply. The two armaments had approached near enough to enable each to distinguish the individual vessels of the other and to scan their various banners and insignia. The Turks advanced to battle shouting and screaming and making a great uproar with ineffectual musketry. The Christians preserved complete silence. At a certain signal a crucifix was raised aloft in every ship in the fleet. Don John of Austria, sheathed in complete armor, and standing in a conspicuous place on the prow of his ship, now knelt down to adore the sacred emblem, and to implore the blessing of God on the great enterprise which he was about to commence. Every man in the fleet followed his example and fell upon his knees. The soldier, poising his firelock, knelt at his post by the bulwarks, the gunner knelt with his lighted match beside his gun. The decks gleamed with prostrate men in mail. In each galley, erect and conspicuous among the martial throng, stood a Franciscan or a Dominican friar, a Theatine or a Jesuit, in his brown or black robe, holding a crucifix in one hand and sprinkling holy water with the other, while he pronounced a general absolution, and promised indulgence in this life, or pardon in the next, to the steadfast warriors who should quit them like men and fight the good fight of faith against infidel. In the night between October 6th and 7th, 1571, about the same hour that the Christian fleet weighed anchor at Cephalonia, the Turks had left their moorings in the harbor of Lepanto. While Don John, baffled by the winds and waves, was beating off the Curzolarian Isles, the Pacha was sailing down the gulf before a fair breeze. Every Turk on board the Sultan's fleet believed that he was about to assist in conveying the armament of the Christian powers to the Golden Horn, in obedience to the commands of the Padishah. The soldiers and sailors, lately recruited by large reënforcements, were many of them fresh from quarters on shore. Officers and men were in the highest spirits, eager for the battle which they knew to be at hand, and in which they supposed their success to be certain. For although Ali was well informed as to the position and movements of the fleet of the League, he was no less mistaken as to the strength of the Christians than the Christians were as to his own. He had been more successful in pouring fictions into the ear of Don John than in obtaining accurate intelligence for himself. The Greek fishermen, in reporting to each leader the condition of his enemy, had, as we have seen, taken care to please and deceive both. Karacosh had indeed been present at the review of Gomenzia, but he had erred considerably in his reckoning of the numbers of the Christian fleet. Either by accident or design, he computed the vessels at fifty less than the real number, and he, besides, greatly underrated the weight of the artillery. Ali was still further deceived by the reports of three Spanish soldiers, captured on the shore near Gomenzia, where they had strayed too far from their boat. These prisoners assured the Pacha that the Christian fleet had not as yet been joined either by the great ships or the galeases, and that forty galleys, sent under Santa Cruz to Otranto for troops, and two galleys with which Andrade had gone on a cruise of observation, had not yet returned. This story confirmed the accounts both of Karacosh and the Greek fishermen. The Pacha was naturally no less anxious to meet Don John with Santa Cruz than Don John had been to meet the Pacha without the Viceroy of Algiers. It was no wonder, then, that the chiefs of the Turkish fleet led their galleys down the gulf in the ardent hope of speedily meeting with an enemy in whom they made certain of finding a rich and easy prey. The three hundred sail of the Sultan moved, as already described, in the form of an immense crescent, stretching nearly from shore to shore. When the Christian armament first came in sight, nothing was seen of it but the small vanguard of Cardona's Sicilian galleys, and a portion of the right wing under Doria. The rest was hidden by the rocky headlands at the north of the gulf. For a while this circumstance buoyed up the Turks in their belief that the force of the enemy was greatly inferior to their own. As, however, the long lines of the centre under Don John of Austria, and of the left wing under Barbarigo, came galley after galley into view, they began to discover their mistake. The men posted aloft were eagerly questioned by the officers as to the result of their observations, and their answers, always announcing accessions of strength to the Christians, led to misgivings, and to vehement denunciations against Karacosh for the inaccuracy of his report from Gomenzia. When Ali perceived that the Christians had adopted a long straight line of battle, he also caused his fleet to take the same order, drawing in the horns and advancing the centre of his crescent. As the fleets came nearer to each other, the leaders of the League were encouraged by observing that the enemy's rear was not covered by anything that could be called a reserve, but only by a number of small craft. Ali, on the contrary, was surprised to see the galeases which had been pushed forward by the Christians. He inquired what these _mahones_ were, and was told that they were not mahones, but galeases; the very vessels, in fact, which he had been led to believe had been separated from the enemy, and whose formidable artillery he did not expect to encounter. He also observed with concern the large number of the galleys which were Spanish, or western (_ponenirinas_, as they were called in the Levant), and of a stronger build than those which were constructed at Venice by the Orientals. He now saw that the victory was not to be so easy as he had anticipated, and that he must neglect no means that might avert defeat. A kind-hearted as well as a brave man, he had always been remarkable for the humanity with which he had cared for the unhappy Christian slaves who rowed his galley. He now walked forward to their benches and said to them in Spanish: "Friends, I expect you to-day to do your duty by me, in return for what I have done for you. If I win the battle, I promise you your liberty; if the day is yours, God has given it to you." When the fleets neared each other, and the Christians were all prostrate before their crucifixes and friars, and no sound was heard on their decks but the voices of the holy fathers, the Turks were indulging in every kind of noise which nature or art had furnished them with the means of producing. Shouting and screaming, they bade the Christians come on "like drowned hens" and be slaughtered; then they danced and stamped and clanged their arms; they blew trumpets, clashed cymbals, and fired volleys of useless musketry. When the Christians had ended their devotions and stood to their guns, or in their ordered ranks, each galley, in the long array, seemed on fire, as the noon-tide sun blazed on helmet and corselet, and pointed blades and pikes with flame. The bugles now sounded a charge, and the bands of each vessel began to play. Before Don John retired from the forecastle to his proper place on the quarter-deck, it is said by one of the officers, who had written an account of the battle, that he and two of his gentlemen, "inspired with youthful ardor, danced a galliard on the gun platform to the music of the fifes." The Turkish line, to the glitter of arms, added yet more splendor of color from the brilliant and variegated garb of the janizaries, their tall and fanciful crests and prodigious plumes, and from the multitude of flags and streamers which every galley displayed from every available point and peak. Long before the enemy were within range the Turkish cannon opened. The first shot that took effect carried off the point of the pennant of Don Juan de Cardona, who in his swiftest vessel was hovering along the line, correcting trifling defects of position and order, like a sergeant drilling recruits. About noon a flash was seen to proceed from one of the galeases of the Christian fleet. The shot was aimed at the flag-ship of the Pacha, conspicuous in the centre of the line, and carrying the sacred green standard of the Prophet. Passing through the rigging of the vessel, the ball carried off a portion of the highest of the three splendid lanterns which hung on the lofty stern as symbols of command. The Pacha, from his quarter-deck, looked up on hearing the crash, and perceiving the ominous mischief, said, "God grant we may be able to give a good answer to this question." The next shot split off a great piece of the poop of an adjacent galley. Of the six galeases four were soon pouring a murderous fire into the Turkish centre and right wing; the remaining two, which were intended to gall the left wing, having been rendered of little use, then and during the battle, by dexterous southerly movements of Aluch Ali. The balls from the galeases appeared to stop the vessels which they struck, and which seemed to have been met as by a wall. Two of them were speedily sunk by the terrible fire. Perceiving the great superiority of the galeases in weight of metal, Ali ordered his galleys not to attempt to attack them, but, avoiding them as well as they could, to push on against the galleys of the Christians. Obedience to this order, however necessary, produced great confusion in the Turkish line. The Pacha of Alexandria, who led the right wing, endeavored both to elude the galeases and circumvent his antagonists, the Venetians on the Christian left, by passing between them and the shore. Barbarigo observed the movement, and prepared to oppose by adopting it; but his pilots, inferior to those of Sirocco in local knowledge, dreading the shoals and shallows, did not stand toward the coast with sufficient boldness. The Pacha therefore effected his purpose with a few of his vessels and Barbarigo found himself placed between two fires; his own galley at one time being engaged by no less than eight Turkish vessels. As they approached the Christians, the Turks assailed them not only with cannon and musketry, but also with showers of arrows, many of which, from the wounds inflicted by them, were supposed to have been poisoned. As Barbarigo stood giving orders on his quarter-deck, he became a conspicuous mark; and the hail of arrows fell so thick around him that the great lantern which adorned the galley's stern was afterward found to be studded with their shafts. At length one of these ancient missiles pierced the left eye of the gallant commander and compelled his immediate removal below. The wound, in three days, proved mortal. His nephew, Marco Contarini, rushing to his assistance, was also slain. These untoward events for a moment paralyzed the efforts of the Venetians. The galley became the centre of so severe a fire that its defenders were more than once swept away, and it was in great danger of being taken. Frederigo Nano, however, who, by Barbarigo's desire, had assumed the command, succeeded in rallying his men, and not only beat off Sirocco, but made a prize of one of his best galleys and its commander, the corsair Kara Ali. The combat between the Turks and the Venetians seemed inspired by the intensest personal hatred; the Turks thirsting for fresh conquests, the Venetians for vengeance. That they might the more effectually use their weapons, many of the soldiers of St. Mark uncovered their faces and laid aside their shields. No quarter was given, and the slaughter was very great on both sides. One of the Sultan's galleys near the shore being very hard pressed, the Turks jumped overboard and escaped to land. Some of the Venetians followed and slew them as they ran to the cover of some rocks. One of these pursuers, being armed only with a stick, contrived with that simple weapon to pin his victim through the mouth to the ground, to the great admiration of his comrades. As the centre divisions of the two fleets closed with each other the wisdom of Don John in retrenching the fore-peaks of his vessels became abundantly apparent. The Turks had neglected to take this precaution; the efficiency of their forecastle guns was therefore greatly impaired. Their prows were also much higher than the prows of their antagonists. While their shot passed harmlessly over the enemy, his balls struck their galleys close to water-mark with fatal precision. The fire of the Christians was the more murderous because many of the Turkish vessels were crowded with soldiers both on the deck and below. Ali and Don John had each directed his helmsman to steer for the flag-ship of the enemy. The two galleys soon met, striking each other with great force. The left prow of the Pacha towered high above the lower forecastle of Don John, and his galley's peak was thrust through the rigging of the other vessel until its point was over the fourth rowing-bench. Thus linked together the two flag-ships became a battle-field which was strongly contested for about two hours. The Pacha had on board four hundred picked janizaries--three hundred armed with the arquebus and one hundred with the bow. Two galliots and ten galleys, all filled with janizaries, lay close astern, the galliots being connected with the Pacha's vessels by ladders, up which reënforcements immediately came when wanted. The galley of Pertau Pacha fought alongside. Don John's consisted of three hundred arquebusiers; but his forecastle artillery was, for reasons above mentioned, more efficient, while his bulwarks, like those of other Christian vessels, were protected from boarders by nettings and other devices with which the Turks had not provided themselves. Requesens, wary and watchful, lay astern with two galleys, from which he led fresh troops into the flag-ship from time to time. Alongside, Vaniero and Colonna were each hotly engaged with an antagonist. The combat between the two chiefs was on the whole not unequal, and it was fought with great gallantry on both sides. From the Turkish forecastle the arquebusiers at first severely galled the Christians. Don Lope de Figueroa, who commanded on the prow of the flag-ship, lost so many of his men that he was compelled to ask for assistance. Don Bernardino de Cardenas, who led a party to his aid, was struck on the chest by a spent ball from an esmeril, and in falling backward received injuries from which he soon expired. Considerable execution was also done by the Turkish arrows, with which portions of the masts and spars bristled. Several of these missiles came from the bow of the Pacha himself, who was probably the last commander-in-chief who ever drew a bowstring in European battle. But on the whole the fire of the Christians was greatly superior to that of the Turks. Twice the deck of Ali was swept clear of defenders, and twice the Spaniards rushed on board and advanced as far as the mainmast. At that point they were on each occasion driven back by the janizaries, who, though led by Ali in person, do not appear to have made good a footing on the deck of Don John. A third attempt was more successful. Not only did the Spaniards pass the mast, but they approached the poop and assailed it with a vigorous fire. The Pacha led on his janizaries to meet them, but it seems with small hope of making a successful resistance, for at the same moment he threw into the sea a small box which was supposed to contain his most precious jewels. A ball from an arquebuse soon afterward struck him in the forehead. He fell forward upon the gangway (_crucija_). A soldier from Malaga, seizing the body, cut off the head and carried it to Don John, who was already on board the Turkish vessel, leading a fresh body of men to the support of their comrades. The trophy was then raised on the point of a lance, to be seen by friend and foe. The Turks paused for a moment panic-stricken; the Christians shouted victory, and, hauling down the Turkish standard, hoisted a flag with a cross in its place. Don John ordered his trumpets to sound, and the good news was soon proclaimed in the adjacent galleys of the League. The Turks defended their flag-ship but feebly after the death of their Pacha. The vessel, which was the first taken, was in the hands of the Spaniards about two o'clock in the afternoon--about an hour and a half after the two leaders had engaged each other. A brigantine which had been employed in bringing up fresh troops, surrendered almost at the same time. The neighboring galleys of the Sultan had themselves been by this time too severely handled to render much assistance. Only one serious attempt was made to recover the ship of Ali or to avenge its loss. Several galleys from other parts of the line bore down at once upon Don John. The movement was perceived by Santa Cruz, whose vessels of reserve were still untouched. Dashing into the advancing squadron, he had the good-fortune to sink one galley by the force of his fire; and he immediately boarded another and put all the janizaries to the sword. Don John himself dealt with the remaining assailants. Vaniero and Colonna fought with great gallantry and success, and each vanquished the Turk who had engaged him. The brave old Admiral of Venice fairly earned the Doge's cap, which soon after crowned his hoary brow. He was often in the thickest of the fire; and when, in the absence of many of his men, who had boarded the Turkish flag-ship, his own was also boarded, he repulsed the assailants in person, and, fighting with all the vigor of youth, received a wound in the foot on the deck of the galley of Pertau Pacha, whither he had pursued his advantage. A second Turkish galley, advancing to attack Vaniero, was run into about midships and sunk by Giovanni Contarini. Giovanni de Loredano and Caterino Malipieri were less happy in the enemies whom they encountered, and perished in their sunken vessels. From the flag-ship of Genoa the young Prince of Parma, followed by a single Spanish soldier named Alonso Davalos, leaped into a Turkish galley, fought their way through its defenders without a wound, and might also boast of having, unaided, caused it to strike its flag. Two other Turks afterward surrendered to the Genoese flag-ship, the captain of which, Ettore Spinola, lost his life by an arrow. In the flag-ship of Savoy, under a captain named Leni, of remarkable courage, who was also severely wounded, the Prince of Urbino likewise greatly distinguished himself. The gallant Karacosh was compelled to surrender to Juan Bautista Cortez, a captain of the King of Spain, although his galley was defended by one hundred fifty picked janizaries and was one of the best built and equipped vessels in the fleet. The Eleugina of the Pope had the credit of taking the guard-ship of Rhodes; and the Toscana, also a papal galley, in making a prize of the vessel of the Turkish paymaster recovered to the pontifical squadron the flag-ship of the contingent of Pius IV in the unfortunate battle of Gerbi. The crowning achievement of the central division was performed by the Grand Commander, who attacked and captured after an obstinate and bloody contest, a fine galley, in which were the sons of the deceased Ali Pacha. These lads--Mahomet Bey, aged seventeen years, and Said Bey, aged thirteen--had been brought to sea by their father for the first time. Their capture was of importance, because the mother of one of them was a sister of Sultan Selim. Juan de Cardona, who sailed on the left of the right wing, finding no enemy opposed to him, brought his vessel round to the rear of the Turkish centre, and attacked Pertau Pacha, with whom Paolo Giordano Orsini was engaged in a somewhat unequal conflict. After a stout resistance the Christians entered the Turkish galley, out of which the Pacha, though wounded, succeeded in escaping in a boat. The right wing of the Christians and the Turkish left wing did not engage each other until some time after the other divisions were in deadly conflict. Doria and Aluch Ali were, each of them, bent on outmanoeuvring the other. The Algerine did not succeed, like Sirocco, in insinuating himself between his adversary and the shore. But the seamen whose skill and daring were the admiration of the Mediterranean were not easily baffled. Finding himself foiled in his first attempt, he slackened his course, and, threatening sometimes one vessel and sometimes another, drew the Genoese eastward, until the inferior speed of some of the galleys had caused an opening at the northern end of the Christian line. Upon this opening the crafty corsair immediately bore down with all the speed of his oars, and passed through it with most of his galleys. This evolution placed him in the rear of the whole Christian line of battle. On the extreme right of the centre division sailed Prior Giustiniani, the commodore of the small Maltese squadron. This officer had hitherto fought with no less success than skill, and had already captured four Turkish galleys. The Viceroy of Algiers had, the year before, captured three galleys of Malta, and was fond of boasting of being the peculiar scourge and terror of the Order of St. John. The well-known white cross banner, rising over the smoke of battle, soon attracted his eye and was marked for his prey. Wheeling round like a hawk, he bore down from behind upon the unhappy prior. The three war-worn vessels of St. John were no match for seven stout Algerines which had not yet fired a shot. The knights and their men defended themselves with a valor worthy of their heroic order. A youth named Bernardino de Heredia, son of the Count of Fuentes, signally distinguished himself; and a Saragossan knight, Geronimo Ramirez, although riddled with arrows like another St. Sebastian, fought with such desperation that none of the Algerine boarders cared to approach him until they saw that he was dead. A knight of Burgundy leaped alone into one of the enemy's galleys, killed four Turks, and defended himself until overpowered by numbers. On board the prior's vessel, when he was taken, he himself, pierced with five arrow wounds, was the sole survivor, except two knights, a Spaniard and a Sicilian, who, being senseless from their wounds, were considered as dead. Having secured the banner of St. John, Aluch Ali took the prior's ship in tow, and was making the best of his way out of a battle which his skilful eye soon discovered to be irretrievably lost. He had not, however, sailed far when he was in turn descried by the Marquess of Santa Cruz, who, with his squadron of reserve, was moving about redressing the wrongs of Christian fortune. Aluch Ali had no mind for the fate of Giustiniani, and resolved to content himself with the banner of Malta. Cutting his prize adrift, he plied his oars and escaped, leaving the prior grievously wounded to the care of his friends, and once more master, not only of his ship, but of three hundred dead enemies who cumbered the deck, a few living Algerine mariners who were to navigate the vessel, and some Turkish soldiers, from whom he had just purchased his life. This struggle cost the order, in killed alone, upward of thirty knights, among whom was the Grand Bailiff of Germany, commander-in-chief of its land forces. A few were also made prisoners, most of them desperately wounded. For one of them, Borgianni Gianfigliazzi, his relations at Florence, supposing him dead, performed funeral obsequies, in spite of which he returned home from captivity, and was afterward ambassador from the Grand Duke to Sultan Amurath. Two other knights, Mastrillo and Caraffa, finding themselves unsupported in an enemy's brigantine, had given themselves up, and had just bribed their captor to spare their lives and admit them to a ransom, when a Neapolitan galley coming by boarded the brigantine and turned their new master into their slave. The main body of the Turkish left wing, though long of engaging the Christian right, fought with perhaps greater fierceness than any other part of the fleet. The battle was raging in that part of the line with very doubtful aspect, when Don John of Austria found himself free from the attacks of the enemies immediately around him. Thither, therefore, he steered to the assistance of his comrades. The Turks, perceiving the approach of a succoring squadron, and surmising the disasters which had occurred in the centre, immediately gave way and dispersed. Sixteen of the Algerine galleys, however, retired together, and rallying at a little distance, adopted the tactics of their chief, by making a circuit toward the shore of the Morea, and endeavoring to sweep round upon the rear of the Christians. Their manoeuvres were closely watched by Don Juan de Cardona, who placed himself in their path with eight galleys. The encounter which took place between the two unequal squadrons was one of the bloodiest episodes of the battle. Cardona was completely successful, disabling some of his antagonists and putting the rest to flight. His loss was, however, very severe. His own galley suffered more damage than any vessel in the fleet which was not rendered absolutely unfit for service. The forecastle was a ruin; the bulwark and defences of all kinds were shattered to pieces; and the masts and spars were stuck full of arrows. Cardona himself, after escaping a ball from an arquebus, which was turned by a cuirass of fine steel given to him at Genoa by the Prince of Tuscany, received a severe wound in the throat, of which he died. Of the five hundred Sicilian soldiers who fought on board his galleys only fifty remained unwounded. Many of the officers were slain, and not one escaped without a wound. Others had suffered even greater loss. In the Florence, a papal galley, not only many knights of St. Stephen were killed, but also every soldier and slave; and the captain, Tommaso de' Medicis, himself severely wounded, found himself at the head of only seventeen wounded seamen. In the San Giovanni, another vessel of the Pope, the soldiers were also killed to a man, the rowing-benches occupied by corpses, and a captain laid for dead with two musket-balls in his neck. The Piamontesa of Savoy had likewise lost her commander and all of her soldiers and rowers. Although Doria, having suffered himself to be outmanoeuvred by Aluch Ali, and having failed to exchange a shot with that leader, could not claim any considerable part of the laurels of the day, he was nevertheless frequently engaged with other foes and made several prizes. He escaped without a wound, though he was covered with blood of a soldier killed by a cannon-ball close behind him. On the left wing of the Christian fleet, the battle, which had begun so unpropitiously, was also brought to a prosperous issue. The wound of Barbarigo transferred the command to the commissary Canale. Aided by Nano, who commanded Barbarigo's galley, Canale engaged and sunk the vessel of the Pacha of Alexandria. Mahomet Sirocco himself, severely wounded, was fished out of the sea by Gian Contarini, and sent on board Canale's galley. As the wound of the Turk appeared to be mortal, the Venetian relieved him from further suffering by cutting off his head. Marco Quirini likewise did gallant service, compelling several of the enemy to strike their flags. Of the remaining galleys many were run ashore by their crews, of whom the greater number were slain or drowned as they attempted to swim to land. The victory of the Christians at Lepanto was in a great measure to be ascribed to the admirable tactics of their chief. The shock of the Turkish onset was effectually broken by the dexterous disposition made of the galeases of Venice. Indeed, had the great ships been there to strengthen the sparse line formed by these six vessels, it is not impossible that the Turks would have failed in forcing their way through the wall of that terrible fire. Each Christian vessel, by the retrenchment of its peak, enjoyed an advantage over its antagonist in the freer play of its artillery. When, however, the galleys of Selim came to close combat with the galleys of the League, the battle became a series of isolated struggles which depended more upon individual mind and manhood than upon any comprehensive plan of far-seeing calculation. But Don John of Austria had the merit or the good-fortune of bringing his forces into action in the highest moral and material perfection; of placing admirable means in the hands of men whose spirit was in the right temper to use them. He struck his great blow at the happy moment when great dangers are cheerfully confronted and great things easily accomplished. His plan of battle was on the whole admirably executed. The galleys of the various confederates were so studiously intermingled that each vessel was incited to do its utmost by the spur of rivalry. Vaniero and Colonna deserve their full share of the credit of the day; and the gallant Santa Cruz, although at first stationed in the rear, soon found and employed his opportunity of earning his share of laurels. On Doria alone Roman and Venetian critics, and indeed public opinion, pronounced a less favorable verdict. His shoreward movement unquestionably had the effect of enabling Aluch Ali to cut the Christian line and fall with damaging force upon its rear, and of rendering the victory more costly in blood and less rich in prizes. This movement was ascribed to the desire of the Genoese to spare his own ships, and to secure a safe retreat for himself in case of a disaster; and he was further even taunted with cowardice for hauling down the gilded celestial sphere, the proud cognizance of his house, which usually surmounted his flag-staff. To the latter charge his friends replied that the sphere was taken down to secure it from injury, it being the gift of his wife, and that his ship was too well known to both the fleets to find safety in the want of her usual badge. The other accusations, they considered, were disposed of by the necessity of shaping his course according to the tactics of the Algerine, and abundantly refuted by the vigor and success with which he at last attacked the enemy. It is not improbable that the true explanation of his conduct is that offered by the captain of a Neapolitan galley, present at the battle, that he wished to gain an advantage over Aluch Ali by seamanship, and that the renegade, no less skilled in the game, played it on this occasion better than he. Although in numbers, both of men and vessels, the Sultan's fleet was superior to the fleet of the League, this superiority was more than counterbalanced by other important advantages possessed by the Christians. The artillery of the West was of greater power and far better served than the ordnance of the East; and its fire was rendered doubly disastrous by the thronged condition of the Turkish vessels. The lofty-peaked prows of these vessels seriously interfered, as we have already seen, with the working of their guns. A great number of their combatants were armed with the bow instead of the firelock, which placed them at an obvious disadvantage, except during heavy rains, which extinguished the match of the latter weapon. Of the Turks who carried the musket or arquebus few could handle them with the expertness of a Christian soldier. The advantages which the League derived from its galeases were heightened by the fact that a large proportion of its other vessels were superior to their antagonists. The galleys of the King of Spain were, in general, both more strongly built and more carefully protected against boarders than those of the Sultan. Even early in the battle the Moslems began to discover that they were overmatched. In many of the galleys the guns were at once silenced by the heavier artillery of the Christians, in whose hands the fire of the arquebus and the musket, when they came to close quarters, proved so withering that the enemy's deck was sometimes swept clean before they boarded, and the turbaned heads of the janizaries were seen crouching beneath the benches of the slaves. When the conflict was transferred to the Turkish decks, the Christians, however, found themselves fiercely met, and among other means of opposing their progress they perceived that the central gangway (_corsia_) had been torn up, or they slipped upon planking which had been smeared with butter, oil, or even, it is said, with honey, to render the footing insecure. So efficient were the nettings and other precautions with which Don John of Austria defended the bulwarks of his ships that he was able to inform Philip II that not a Turk had set foot upon a single deck belonging to his majesty. Such were some of the chief causes of the success of the arms of the League. In the sixteenth century, in a vast concourse of men of the South, hot from battle and largely leavened with priests and friars, it was natural that the victory should be by many ascribed to a more mysterious agency. In the opinion of these persons the Almighty had evidently been fighting on the side of the Pope and the Cross, although they would perhaps have demurred to the logical deduction from that opinion that at Cyprus he had steadily adhered to the drunken Sultan and the Crescent. It was not only in the victory that they saw the finger of Omnipotence, but in many accidents and incidents of the day. The wind, which wafted the Turks swiftly to destruction, changed at the precise moment when it was needed to aid the onset of the Christians. The boisterous sea also sank to smoothness in the special interest of the League. Of the clergy and friars who ministered on the Spanish decks to the wounded and dying, although some of them were struck, not one was killed. The Venetians were less fortunate, having four chaplains killed and three wounded; and the Pope likewise lost one of his friars, who died of his wounds soon after the battle. The churchmen exposed themselves as freely as the combatants, whom they encouraged from conspicuous posts either on deck or in the rigging, and sometimes by example as well as precept. A Spanish Capuchin, an old soldier, had tied his crucifix to a halbert, and, crying that Christ would fight for his faith, led the boarders of his galley over the bulwarks of her antagonist; after using his weapon manfully, he returned victorious and untouched. An Italian priest, with a great gilded crucifix in one hand and a sword in another, stood cheering on his spiritual sons, unharmed in the fiercest centre of the arrowy sleet and iron hail. A Roman Capuchin, finding his flock getting the worst of it, seized a boat-hook, and, pulling his peaked hood over his face, rushed into the fray, laid about him until he had slain seven Turks and driven the rest from the deck, and lived to call a smile to the thin lips of Pius V by telling the story of his prowess. The green banner of Mecca, brought from the Prophet's tomb, and unfurled from the main-top of Ali, was riddled with shot, which rendered illegible many of the sacred words with which it was embroidered. But the azure standard of the League, blessed by the supreme Pontiff and emblazoned with the image of the crucified Redeemer, remained untouched by bolt or bullet, although masts, spars, and shrouds around were torn and shattered from top to bottom. The battle was over about four o'clock in the afternoon. The rout of the centre and right wing of the Turk was complete. The vessels which composed these divisions were either sunk or taken, or they had singly sought safety in flight. A few galleys of the left wing still followed the banner of the Viceroy of Algiers. After hovering for a while near the coast of the Morea he made sail for St. Maura. Don John of Austria, with Doria and some other captains, gave him chase, but was compelled to desist for want of oarsmen. The pursuit, however, was not altogether unsuccessful, for several of the panic-stricken Algerines ran their galleys ashore, where some of them suffered shipwreck on the rocks. In the course of the night Aluch Ali and his little squadron of fugitives stole back from St. Maura to Lepanto. That harbor afforded a refuge to about nine-and-twenty vessels, most of them much shattered, the sole remains of the proud and confident armament which had so lately sailed out from between the two castles. MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW A.D. 1572 HENRY WHITE ISAAC D'ISRAELI JNO. RUDD Among the numberless butcheries which history, both ancient and modern, records, there has been none more remarkable in motive, execution, and number of victims than the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. It is scarcely less remarkable as being one of those historic crimes which defeat their own purpose by reacting against the perpetrators and advancing the cause of those who suffer outrage. The tragedy of St. Bartholomew's Day marked the culmination of the great struggle which devastated France in the latter half of the sixteenth century. During the reign of Francis I (1515-1547) and his immediate successors, Henry II (1547-1559), Francis II (1559-1560), and Charles IX (1560-1574), "the Huguenot (French Protestant) character was formed, and the nation gradually separated into two parties so fanatically hostile that the extermination of the weaker seemed the only possible means of reestablishing the unity of France." The "Puritans of France" were persecuted under all these kings. During the minority of Charles IX his mother, Catherine de' Medici, was regent, and throughout his reign she dictated the King's policy. Under this rule the persecutions continued with increasing violence. From 1562 to 1570 France was torn with civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. On the Protestant side the great leaders were the Prince of Condé, Admiral Coligny, and later Henry of Navarre. Condé was murdered in 1569. By the Peace of St. Germain (1570) the Huguenots received some favorable concessions. The weak Charles IX, now in fear of Philip II of Spain, was inclining to the Protestant side. Seconded by Coligny, he planned alliances with all the enemies of Philip in Europe. But Catherine overruled him. Charles and Coligny, however, had their way in the marriage of the King's sister, Margaret of Valois, to Henry of Navarre. Coligny now gained a stronger influence over the young Charles. He was followed by a large body of exulting Protestants to Paris, and the Catholic party, headed by Catherine, the Duke of Anjou, and the Guises, became greatly enraged. Of the terrible massacre which followed, and in which the number killed throughout France has been estimated at from twenty thousand to one hundred thousand, Coligny was the first victim. One attempt to assassinate him failed; he was only wounded; and the Queen-mother then plied her weak son with argument and persuasion in order to make him consent to the admiral's murder and to the massacre which had been arranged, with profound secrecy, for August 24th. She told him of a Huguenot plot, in which, at a signal from Coligny, conspirators were to rise throughout the kingdom, overturn the throne, take Charles himself prisoner, and destroy the Queen-mother and the Catholic nobility. She showed him some proofs, "forged or real," of his personal danger. As a counter-view to the intensely bitter picture of Catherine presented by most non-Catholic historians, and represented here by White, the explanation of Charles IX himself, in the letter furnished by D'Israeli, possesses a peculiar interest. HENRY WHITE The King sat moody and silent, biting his nails, as was his wont. He would come to no decision. He asked for proofs, and none was forthcoming, except some idle gossip of the streets and the foolish threats of a few hot-headed Huguenots. Charles had learned to love the admiral: could he believe that the gentle Coligny and that Rochefoucault, the companion of his rough sports, were guilty of this meditated plot? He desired to be the king of France--of Huguenots and Catholics alike--not a king of party. Catherine, in her despair, employed her last argument. She whispered in his ear, "Perhaps, sire, you are afraid." As if struck by an arrow, he started from his chair. Raving like a madman, he bade them hold their tongues, and with fearful oaths exclaimed: "Kill the admiral, if you like, but kill all the Huguenots with him--all--all--all--so that not one be left to reproach me hereafter. See to it at once--at once; do you hear?" And he dashed furiously out of the closet, leaving the conspirators aghast at his violence. But there was no time to be lost; the King might change his mind; the Huguenots might get wind of the plot. The murderous scheme must be carried out that very night, and accordingly the Duke of Guise was summoned to the Louvre. And now the different parts of the tragedy were arranged, Guise undertaking, on the strength of his popularity with the Parisian mob, to lead them to the work of blood. We may also imagine him begging as a favor the privilege of despatching the admiral in retaliation for his father's murder. The city was parted into districts, each of which was assigned to some trusty officer, Marshal Tavannes having the general superintendence of the military arrangements. The conspirators now separated, intending to meet again at ten o'clock. Guise went into the city, where he communicated his plans to such of the mob leaders as could be trusted. He told them of a bloody conspiracy among the Huguenot chiefs to destroy the King and the royal family and extirpate Catholicism; that a renewal of war was inevitable, but it was better that war should come in the streets of Paris than in the open field, for the leaders would thus be far more effectually punished and their followers crushed. He affirmed that letters had been intercepted in which the admiral had sought the aid of German reiters and Swiss pikemen, and that Montmorency was approaching with twenty-five thousand men to burn the city, as the Huguenots had often threatened. And, as if to give color to this idle story, a small body of cavalry had been seen from the walls in the early part of the day. Such arguments and such falsehoods were admirably adapted to his hearers, who swore to carry out the Duke's orders with secrecy and despatch. "It is the will of our lord the King," continued Henry of Guise, "that every good citizen should take up arms to purge the city of that rebel Coligny and his heretical followers. The signal will be given by the great bell of the Palace of Justice. Then let every true Catholic tie a white band on his arm and put a white cross in his cap, and begin the vengeance of God." Finding upon inquiry that Le Charron, the provost of the merchants, was too weak and tender-hearted for the work before him, the Duke suggested that the municipality should temporarily confer his power on the ex-provost Marcel, a man of very different stamp. About four in the afternoon Anjou rode through the crowded streets in company with his bastard brother Angoulême. He watched the aspect of the populace, and let fall a few insidious expressions in no degree calculated to quiet the turbulent passions of the citizens. One account says he distributed money, which is not probable, his afternoon ride being merely a sort of reconnaissance. The journals of the Hôtel de Ville still attest the anxiety of the court--of Catherine and her fellow-conspirator--that the massacre should be sweeping and complete. "Very late in the evening"--it must have been after dark, for the King went to lie down at eight, and did not rise until ten--the provost was sent for. At the Louvre he found Charles, the Queen-mother, and the Duke of Anjou, with other princes and nobles, among whom we may safely include Guise, De Retz, and Tavannes. The King now repeated to him the story of the Huguenot plot which had already been whispered abroad by Guise of Anjou, and bade him shut the gates of the city, so that no one could pass in or out, and take possession of the keys. He was also to draw up all the boats on the river bank and chain them together, to remove the ferry, to muster under arms the able-bodied men of each ward under their proper officers, and hold them in readiness at the usual mustering-places to receive the orders of his majesty. The city artillery, which does not appear to have been as formidable as the word would imply, was to be stationed at the Grève to protect the Hôtel de Ville or for any other duty required of it. With these instructions the provost returned to the Hôtel de Ville, where he spent great part of the night in preparing the necessary orders, which were issued "very early the next morning." There is reason for believing that these measures were simply precautions in case the Huguenots should resist and a bloody struggle should have to be fought in the streets of their capital. The municipality certainly took no part in the earlier massacres, whatever they may have done later. Tavannes complains of the "want of zeal" in some of the citizens, and Brantome admits that "it was necessary to threaten to hang some of the laggards." That evening the King had supped in public, and, the hours being much earlier than with us, the time was probably between six and seven. The courtiers admitted to witness the meal appear to have been as numerous as ever, Huguenots as well as Catholics, victims and executioners. Charles, who retired before eight o'clock, kept Francis, Count of La Rochefoucault, with him for some time, as if unwilling to part with him. "Do not go," he said; "it is late. We will sit and talk all night." "Excuse me, sire, I am tired and sleepy." "You must stay; you can sleep with my valets." But as Charles was rather too fond of rough practical jokes, the Count still declined, and went away, suspecting no evil, to pay his usual evening visit to the Dowager Princess of Condé. He must have remained some time in her apartments, for it was past twelve o'clock when he went to bid Navarre good-night. As he was leaving the palace a man stopped him at the foot of the stairs and whispered in his ear. When the stranger left. La Rochefoucault bade Mergey, one of his suite, to whom we are indebted for these particulars, return and tell Henry that Guise and Nevers were about the city. During Mergey's brief absence something more appears to have been told the Count, for he returned upstairs with Nancay, captain of the guard, who, lifting the tapestry which closed the entrance to Navarre's antechamber, looked for some time at the gentlemen within, playing at cards or dice, others talking. At last he said: "Gentlemen, if any one of you wishes to retire, you must do so at once, for we are going to shut the gates." No one moved, as it would appear, for at Charles' express desire, it is said--which is scarcely probable--these Huguenot gentlemen had gathered round the King of Navarre to protect him against any outrage of the Guises. In the court-yard Mergey found the guard under arms. "M. Rambouillet, who loved me," he continues, "was sitting by the wicket as I passed out. He took my hand, and with a piteous look said: 'Adieu, Mergey; adieu, my friend,' not daring to say more, as he told me afterward." Coligny's hotel had been crowded all day by visitors; the Queen of Navarre had paid him a visit, and most of the gentlemen in Paris, Catholic as well as Huguenot, had gone to express their sympathy. For the Frenchman is a gallant enemy and respects brave men; and the foul attempt upon the admiral, whom they had so often encountered on the battle-field, was felt as a personal injury. A council had been held that day, at which the propriety of removing in a body from Paris and carrying the admiral with them had again been discussed. Navarre and Condé opposed the proposition, and it was finally resolved to petition to the King "to order all the Guisians out of Paris, because they had too much sway with the people of the town." One Bouchavannnes, a traitor, was among them, greedily listening to every word, which he reported to Anjou, strengthening him in his determination to make a clean sweep that very night. As the evening came on, the admiral's visitors took their leave. Teligny, his son-in-law, was the last to quit his bedside. To the question whether the admiral would like any of them to keep watch in his house during the night, he answered, says the contemporary biographer, "that it was labor more than needed, and gave them thanks with very loving words." It was after midnight when Teligny and Guerchy departed, leaving Ambrose Paré and Pastor Merlin with the wounded man. There were besides in the house two of his gentlemen, Cornaton, afterward his biographer, and La Bonne; his squire Yolet, five Switzers belonging to the King of Navarre's guard, and about as many domestic servants. It was the last night on earth for all except two of that household. It is strange that the arrangements in the city, which must have been attended with no little commotion, did not rouse the suspicion of the Huguenots. Probably, in their blind confidence, they trusted implicitly in the King's word that these movements of arms and artillery, these postings of guards and midnight musters, were intended to keep the Guisian faction in order. There is a story that some gentlemen, aroused by the measured tread of the soldiers and the glare of torches--for no lamps then lit up the streets of Paris--went outdoors and asked what it meant. Receiving an unsatisfactory reply, they proceeded to the Louvre, where they found the outer court filled with armed men, who, seeing them without the white cross and the scarf, abused them as "accursed Huguenots," whose turn would come next. One of them who replied to this insolent threat, was immediately run through with a spear. This, if the incident be true, occurred about one o'clock on Sunday morning, August 24th, the festival of St. Bartholomew. Shortly after midnight the Queen-mother rose and went to the King's chamber, attended only by one lady, the Duchess of Nemours, whose thirst for revenge was to be satisfied at last. She found Charles pacing the room in one of those fits of passion which he at times assumed to conceal his infirmity of purpose. At one moment he swore he would raise the Huguenots and call them to protect their sovereign's life as well as their own. Then he burst out into violent imprecations against his brother Anjou, who had entered the room but did not dare say a word. Presently the other conspirators arrived--Guise, Nevers, Birague, De Retz, and Tavannes. Catherine alone ventured to interpose, and, in a tone of sternness well calculated to impress the mind of her weak son, she declared that there was now no turning back: "It is too late to retreat, even were it possible. We must cut off the rotten limb, hurt it ever so much; if you delay, you will lose the finest opportunity God ever gave man of getting rid of his enemies at a blow." And then, as if struck with compassion for the fate of her victims, she repeated in a low tone--as if talking to herself--the words of a famous Italian preacher, which she had often been heard to quote before: "_E la pieta lor ser crudele, e la crudelta lor ser pietosa_" ("Mercy would be cruel to them, and cruelty merciful"). Catherine's resolution again prevailed over the King's weakness, and, the final orders being given, the Duke of Guise quitted the Louvre, followed by two companies of arquebusiers and the whole of Anjou's guard. As soon as Guise had left, the chief criminals--each afraid to lose sight of the other, each needing the presence of the other to keep his courage up--went to a room adjoining the tennis-court overlooking the Place Bassecour. Of all the party--Charles, Catherine, Anjou, and De Retz--Charles was the least guilty and the most to be pitied. They went to the window, anxiously listening for the signal that the work of death had begun. Their consciences, no less than their impatience, made it impossible for them to sit calmly within the palace. Anjou's narrative continues: "While we were pondering over the events and the consequences of such a mighty enterprise, of which, to tell the truth, we had not thought much until then, we heard a pistol shot. The sound produced such an effect upon all three of us that it confounded our senses and deprived us of judgment. We were smitten with terror and apprehension of the great disorders about to be perpetrated." Catherine, who was a timid woman, adds Tavannes, would willingly have recalled her orders, and with that intent hastily despatched a gentleman to the Duke of Guise expressly desiring him to return and attempt nothing against the admiral. "It is too late," was the answer brought back; "the admiral is dead"--a statement at variance with other accounts. "Thereupon," continues Anjou, "we returned to our former deliberations, and let things take their course." Between three and four in the morning the noise of horses and measured tramp of foot-soldiers broke the silence of the narrow street in which Coligny lay wounded. It was the murderers seeking their victims: they were Henry of Guise with his uncle the Duke of Aumale, the bastard of Angoulême, and the Duke of Nevers, with other foreigners, Italian and Swiss, namely, Fesinghi (or Tosinghi) and his nephew Antonio, Captain Petrucci, Captain Studer of Winkelbach with his soldiers, Martin Koch of Freyberg, Conrad Burg, Leonard Grunenfelder of Glaris, and Carl Dianowitz, surnamed Behm (the Bohemian?). There were, besides, one Captain Attin, in the household of Aumale, and Sarlabous, a renegade Huguenot and commandant of Havre. It is well to record the names even of these obscure individuals who stained their hands in the best blood of France. De Cosseins, too, was there with his guard, some of whom he posted with their arquebuses opposite the windows of Coligny's hotel, that none might escape. Presently there was a loud knock at the outer gate--"Open in the King's name." La Bonne, imagining it to be a message from the Louvre, hastened with the keys, withdrew the bolt, and was immediately butchered by the assassins who rushed into the house. The alarmed domestics ran half awake to see what was the uproar: some were killed outright, others escaped upstairs, closing the door at the foot and placing some furniture against it. This feeble barrier was soon broken down, and the Swiss who had attempted to resist were shot. The tumult woke Coligny from his slumbers, and divining what it meant--that Guise had made an attack on the house--he was lifted from his bed, and, folding his _robe-de-chambre_ round him, sat down prepared to meet his fate. Cornaton entering the room at this moment, Ambrose Pare asked him what was the meaning of the noise. Turning to his beloved master he replied: "Sir, it is God calling us to himself. They have broken into the house, and we can do nothing." "I have been long prepared to die," said the admiral. "But you must all flee for your lives, if it be not too late; you cannot save me. I commit my soul to God's mercy." They obeyed him, but only two succeeded in making their way over the roofs. Pastor Merlin lay hid for three days in a loft, where he was fed by a hen, that every morning laid an egg within his reach. Pare and Coligny were left alone--Coligny looking as calm and collected as if no danger impended. After a brief interval of suspense the door was dashed open, and Cosseins, wearing a corselet and brandishing a bloody sword in his hand, entered the room, followed by Behm, Sarlabous, and others; a party of Anjou's Swiss guard, in their tricolored uniform of black, white, and green, keeping in the rear. Expecting resistance, the ruffians were for a moment staggered at seeing only two unarmed men. But his brutal instincts rapidly regaining the mastery, Behm stepped forward, and pointing his sword at Coligny's breast asked, "Are you not the admiral?" "I am, but, young man, you should respect my gray hairs, and not attack a wounded man. Yet what matters it? You cannot shorten my life except by God's permission." The German soldier, uttering a blasphemous oath, plunged his sword into the admiral's breast. "_Jugulumque parans, immota tonebat_ _Ora senex._" Others in the room struck him also, Behm repeating his blows until the admiral fell to the floor. The murderer now ran to the window and shouted into the court-yard, "It is all over." Henry of Guise, who had been impatiently ordering his creatures to make haste, was not satisfied. "Monsieur d'Angoulême will not believe it unless he sees him," returned the Duke. Behm raised the body from the ground, and dragged it to the window to throw it out; but life was not quite extinct, and the admiral placed his foot against the wall, faintly resisting the attempt. "Is it so, old fox?" exclaimed the murderer, who drew his dagger and stabbed him several times. Then, assisted by Sarlabous, he threw the body down. It was hardly to be recognized. The bastard of Angoulême--the chevalier as he is called in some of the narratives--wiped the blood from the face of the corpse. "Yes, it is he; I know him well," said Guise, kicking the body as he spoke. "Well done, my men," he continued, "we have made a good beginning. Forward--by the King's command." He mounted his horse and rode out of the court-yard, followed by Nevers, who cynically exclaimed as he looked at the body, "_Sic transit gloria mundi_." Tosinghi took the chain of gold--the insignia of his office--from the admiral's neck, and Petrucci, a gentleman in the train of the Duke of Nevers, cut off the head and carried it away carefully to the Louvre. Of all who were found in the house, not one was spared except Ambrose Paré, who was escorted in safety to the palace by a detachment of Anjou's guard. Coligny's headless trunk was left for some hours where it fell, until it became the sport of rabble children, who dragged it all round Paris. They tried to burn it, but did little more than scorch and blacken the remains, which were first thrown into the river, and then taken out again "as unworthy to be food for fish," says Claude Haton. In accordance with the old sentence of the Paris Parliament, it was dragged by the hangman to the common gallows at Montfaucon, and there hanged up by the heels. All the court went to gratify their eyes with the sight, and Charles, unconsciously imitating the language of Vitellius, said, as he drew near the offensive corpse, "The smell of a dead enemy is always sweet." The body was left hanging for a fortnight or more, after which it was privily taken down by the admiral's cousin, Marshal Montmorency, and it now rests, after many removals, in a wall among the ruins of his hereditary castle of Chatillon-sur-Loing. What became of the head no one knows. When Guise left the admiral's corpse lying in the court-yard, he went to the adjoining house, in which Teligny lived. All the inmates were killed, but he escaped by the roof. Twice he fell into the hands of the enemy, and twice he was spared; he perished at last by the sword of a man who knew not his amiable and inoffensive character. His neighbor La Rochefoucault was perhaps more fortunate in his fate. He had hardly fallen asleep when he was disturbed by the noise in the street. He heard shouts and the sound of many footsteps; and scarcely awake and utterly unsuspicious, he went to his bedroom door at the first summons in the King's name. He seems to have thought that Charles, indulging in one of his usual mad frolics, had come to punish him as he had punished others, like schoolboys. He opened the door and fell dead across the threshold, pierced by a dozen weapons. When the messenger returned from the Duke of Guise with the answer that it was "too late," Catherine, fearing that such disobedience to the royal commands might incense the King and awaken him to a sense of all the horrors that were about to be perpetrated in his name, privately gave orders to anticipate the hour. Instead of waiting until the matin bell should ring out from the old clock tower of the Palace of Justice, she directed the signal to be given from the nearer belfry of St. Germain l'Auxerrois. As the harsh sound rang through the air of that warm summer night, it was caught up and echoed from tower to tower, rousing all Paris from their slumbers. Immediately from every quarter of that ancient city uprose a tumult as of hell. The clanging of bells, the crashing doors, the rush of armed men, the musket-shots, the shrieks of their victims, and high over all the yells of the mob, fiercer and more pitiless than hungry wolves--made such an uproar that the stoutest hearts shrank appalled, and the sanest appear to have lost their reason. Women unsexed, men wanting but the strength of the wild beast, children without a single charm of youth or innocence, crowded the streets where rising day still struggled with the glare of a thousand torches. They smelt the odor of blood, and, thirsting to indulge their passions for once with impunity, committed horrors that have become the marvel of history. Within the walls of the Louvre, within the hearing of Charles and his mother, if not actually within their sight, one of the foulest scenes of this detestable tragedy was enacted. At daybreak, says Queen Margaret of Navarre, her husband rose to go and play tennis, with a determination to be present at the King's _lever_, and demand justice for the assault on the admiral. He left his apartment, accompanied by the Huguenot gentlemen who had kept watch around him during the night. At the foot of the stairs he was arrested, while the gentlemen with him were disarmed, apparently without any attempt at resistance. A list of them had been carefully drawn up, which the sire D'O, quartermaster of the guards, read out. As each man answered his name, he stepped into the court-yard, where he had to make his way through a double line of Swiss mercenaries. Sword, spear, and halberd made short work of them, and two hundred, according to Davila, of the best blood of France soon lay a ghastly pile beneath the windows of the palace. Charles, it is said, looked on coldly at the horrid deed, the victims appealing in vain to his mercy. Among the gentlemen they murdered were two who had been boldest in their language to the King not many hours before--Segur, Baron of Pardaillan, and Armand de Clermont, Baron of Pilles, who with stentorian voices called upon the King to be true to his word. De Pilles took off his rich cloak and offered it to someone whom he recognized: "Here is a present from the hand of De Pilles, basely and traitorously murdered." "I am not the man you take me for," said the other, refusing the cloak. The Swiss plundered their victims as they fell, and, pointing to the heap of half-naked bodies, described them to the spectators as the men who had conspired to kill the King and all the royal family in their sleep, and make France a republic. But more disgraceful than even this massacre was the conduct of some of the ladies in Catherine's train, of her "flying squadron," who, later in the day, inspected and laughed at the corpses as they lay stripped in the court-yard, being especially curious about the body of Soubise, from whom his wife had sought to be divorced on the ground of nullity of marriage. A few gentlemen succeeded in escaping from this slaughter. Margaret, "seeing it was daylight," and imagining the danger past of which her sister had told her, fell asleep. But her slumbers were soon rudely broken. "An hour later," she continues, "I was awoke by a man knocking at the door and calling, 'Navarre! Navarre!' The nurse, thinking it was my husband, ran and opened it. It was a gentleman named Léran, who had received a sword-cut in the elbow and a spear-thrust in the arm; four soldiers were pursuing him, and they all rushed into my chamber after him. Wishing to save his life, he threw himself upon my bed. Finding myself clasped in his arms, I got out on the other side; he followed me, still clinging to me. I did not know the man, and could not tell whether he came to insult me or whether the soldiers were after him or me. We both shouted out, being equally frightened. At last, by God's mercy, Captain de Nançay of the guards came in, and, seeing me in this condition, could not help laughing, although commiserating me. Severely reprimanding the soldiers for their indiscretion, he turned them out of the room, and granted me the life of the poor man who still clung to me. I made him lie down and had his wounds dressed in my closet until he was quite cured. While changing my night-dress, which was all covered with blood, the captain told me what had happened, and assured me that my husband was with the King and quite unharmed. He then conducted me to the room of my sister of Lorraine, which I reached more dead than alive. As I entered the anteroom, the doors of which were open, a gentleman named Bourse, running from the soldiers who pursued him, was pierced by a halberd three paces from me. I fell almost fainting into Captain de Nançay's arms, imagining the same thrust had pierced us both. Being somewhat recovered, I entered the little room where my sister slept. While there De Moissans, my husband's first gentleman, and Armagnac, his first _valet-de-chambre_, came and begged me to save their lives. I went and threw myself at the feet of the King and the Queen--my mother--to ask the favor, which they at last granted me." When Captain de Nançay arrived so opportunely, he was leaving the King's chamber, whither he had conducted Henry of Navarre and the Prince of Condé. The tumult and excitement had worked Charles up to such a pitch of fury that the lives of the princes were hardly safe. But they were gentlemen, and their first words were to reproach the King for his breach of faith. Charles bade them be silent--"_Messe ou mort_"--("Apostatize or die"). Henry demanded time to consider; while the Prince boldly declared that he would not change his religion: "With God's help it is my intention to remain firm in my profession." Charles, exasperated still more by this opposition to his will, angrily walked up and down the room, and swore that if they did not change in three days he would have their heads. They were then dismissed, but kept close prisoners within the palace. The houses in which the Huguenots lodged, having been registered, were easily known. The soldiers burst into them, killing all they found, without regard to age or sex, and if any escaped to the roof they were shot down like pigeons. Daylight served to facilitate a work that was too foul even for the blackest midnight. Restraint of every kind was thrown aside, and while the men were the victims of bigoted fury, the women were exposed to violence unutterable. As if the popular frenzy needed excitement, Marshal Tavannes, the military director of this deed of treachery, rode through the streets with dripping sword, shouting: "Kill! Kill! Bloodletting is as good in August as in May." One would charitably hope that this was the language of excitement, and that in his calmer moods he would have repented of his share in the massacre. But he was consistent to the last. On his death-bed he made a general confession of his sins, in which he did not mention the day of St. Bartholomew; and when his son expressed surprise at the omission, he observed, "I look upon that as a meritorious action, which ought to atone for all the sins of my life." The massacre soon exceeded the bounds upon which Charles and his mother had calculated. They were willing enough that the Huguenots should be murdered; but the murderers might not always be able to draw the line between orthodoxy and heresy. Things were fast getting beyond all control; the thirst for plunder was even keener than the thirst for blood. And it is certain that among the many ignoble motives by which Charles was induced to permit the massacre, was the hope of enriching himself and paying his debts out of the property of the murdered Huguenots. Nor were Anjou and others insensible to the charms of heretical property. Hence we find the provost of Paris remonstrating with the King about "the pillaging of the houses and the murders in the streets by the guards and others in the service of his majesty and the princes." Charles, in reply, bade the magistrates "mount their horses, and with all the force of the city put an end to such irregularities, and remain on the watch day and night." Another proclamation, countersigned by Nevers, was issued about five in the afternoon, commanding the people to lay down the arms which they had taken up "that day by the King's orders," and to leave the streets to the soldiers only--as if implying that they alone were to kill and plunder. The massacre, commenced on Sunday, was continued through that and the two following days. Capilupi tells us, with wonderful simplicity, "that it was a holiday, and therefore the people could more conveniently find leisure to kill and plunder." It is impossible to assign to each day its task of blood; in all but a few exceptional cases, we know merely that the victims perished in the general slaughter. Writing in the midst of the carnage, probably not later than noon on the 24th, the nuncio Salviati says: "The whole city is in arms; the houses of the Huguenots have been forced with great loss of life, and sacked by the populace with incredible avidity. Many a man to-night will have his horses and his carriage, and will eat and drink off plate, who had never dreamed of it in his life before. In order that matters may not go too far, and to prevent the revolting disorders occasioned by the insolence of the mob, a proclamation has just been issued, declaring that there shall be three hours in the day during which it shall be unlawful to rob and kill; and the order is observed, though not universally. You can see nothing in the streets but white crosses in the hats and caps of everyone you meet, which has a fine effect!" The nuncio says nothing of the streets encumbered with bleeding corpses, nothing of the cart-loads of bodies conveyed to the Seine, and then flung into the river, "so that not only were all the waters in it turned to blood, but so many corpses grounded on the bank of the little island of Louvre that the air became infected with the smell of corruption." The living, tied hand and foot, were thrown off the bridges. One man--probably a rag-gatherer--brought two little children in his creel, and tossed them into the water as carelessly as if they had been blind kittens. An infant, yet unable to walk, had a cord tied round its neck, and was dragged through the streets by a troop of children nine or ten years old. Another played with the beard and smiled in the face of the man who carried him; but the innocent caress exasperated instead of softened the ruffian, who stabbed the child, and with an oath threw it into the Seine. Among the earliest victims was the wife of the King's _plumassier_. The murderers broke into her house on the Notre-Dame bridge, about four in the morning, stabbed her, and flung her still breathing into the river. She clung for some time to the wooden piles of the bridge, and was killed at last with stones, her body remaining for four days entangled by her long hair among the woodwork. The story goes that her husband's corpse, being thrown over, fell against hers and set it free, both floating away together down the stream. Madeleine Briçonnet, the widow of Theobald of Yverni, disguised herself as a woman of the people, so that she might save her life, but was betrayed by the fine petticoat which hung below her coarse gown. As she would not recant, she was allowed a few moments' prayer, and then tossed into the water. Her son-in-law, the marquis Renel, escaping in his shirt, was chased by the murderers to the bank of the river, where he succeeded in unfastening a boat. He would have got away altogether but for his cousin Bussy d'Amboise, who shot him down with a pistol. One Keny, who had been stabbed and flung into the Seine, was revived by the reaction of the cold water. Feeble as he was he swam to a boat and clung to it, but was quickly pursued. One hand was soon cut off with a hatchet, and as he still continued to steer the boat down the stream, he was "quieted" by a musket-shot. One Puviaut, or Pluviaut, who met with a similar fate, became the subject of a ballad. Captain Moneins had been put into a safe hiding-place by his friend Fervacques, who went and begged the King to spare the life of the fugitive. Charles not only refused, but ordered him to kill Moneins if he desired to save his own life. Fervacques would not stain his own hands, but made his friend's hiding-place known. Brion, governor of the young Marquis of Conti, the Prince of Condé's brother, snatched the child from his bed, and, without stopping to dress him, was hurrying away to a place of safety, when the boy was torn from his arms, and he himself murdered before the eyes of his pupil. We are told that the child "cried and begged they would save his tutor's life." The houses on the bridge of Notre-Dame, inhabited principally by Protestants, were witnesses to many a scene of cruelty. All the inmates of one house were massacred, except a little girl, who was dipped stark naked in the blood of her father and mother and threatened to be served like them if she turned Huguenot. The Protestant booksellers and printers were particularly sought after. Spire Niquet was burned over a slow fire made out of his own books, and thrown lifeless, but not dead, into the river. Oudin Petit fell a victim to the covetousness of his son-in-law, who was a Catholic bookseller. Rene Bianchi, the Queen's perfumer, is reported to have killed with his own hands a young man, a cripple, who had already displayed much skill in goldsmith's work. This is the only man whose death the King lamented, "because of his excellent workmanship, for his shop was entirely stripped." Mezeray writes that seven hundred or eight hundred people had taken refuge in the prisons, hoping they would be safe "under the wings of Justice"; but the officers selected for this work had brought them into the fitly named "Valley of Misery," and there beat them to death with clubs and threw their bodies into the river. The Venetian ambassador corroborates this story, adding that they were murdered in batches of ten. Where all were cruel, some few persons distinguished themselves by especial ferocity. A gold-beater, named Crozier, one of those prison-murderers, bared his sinewy arm and boasted of having killed four thousand persons with his own hands. Another man--for the sake of human nature we would fain wish him to be the same--affirmed that unaided he had "despatched" eighty Huguenots in one day. He would eat his food with hands dripping with gore, declaring "that it was an honor to him, because it was the blood of heretics." On Tuesday a butcher, Crozier's comrade, boasted to the King that he had killed one hundred fifty the night before. Coconnas, one of the _mignons_ of Anjou, prided himself on having ransomed from the populace as many as thirty Huguenots, for the pleasure of making them abjure, and then killing them with his own hand, after he had "secured them for hell." About seven o'clock the King was at one of the windows of his palace, enjoying the air of that beautiful August morning, when he was startled by shouts of "Kill, kill!" They were raised by a body of guards, who were firing with much more noise than execution at a number of Huguenots who had crossed the river--"to seek the King's protection," says one account; "to help the King against the Guises," says another. Charles, who had just been telling his mother that "the weather seemed to rejoice at the slaughter of the Huguenots," felt all his savage instincts kindle at the sight. He had hunted wild beasts; now he would hunt men, and, calling for an arquebuse, he fired at the fugitives, who were fortunately out of range. Some modern writers deny this fact, on the ground that the balcony from which Charles is said to have fired was not built until after 1572. Were this true, it would only show that tradition had misplaced the locality. Brantome expressly says the King fired on the Huguenots--not from a balcony, but--"from his bedroom window." Marshal Tesse heard the story, according to Voltaire, from the man who loaded the arquebuse. Henault, in his _Abrégé chronologique_, mentions it with a "_dit-on_" and it is significant that the passage is suppressed in Latin editions. Simon Goulart, in his contemporary narrative, uses the same words of caution. Not many of the Huguenot gentlemen escaped from the toils so skilfully drawn round them on that fatal Saturday night: yet there were a few. The Count of Montgomery--the same who was the innocent cause of the death of Henry II--got away safe, having been forewarned by a friend who swam across the river to him. Guise set off in hot pursuit, and would probably have caught him up had he not been waiting for the keys of the city gate. Some sixty gentlemen, also, lodging near him in the Faubourg St. Germain, were the companions of his flight. Sully, afterward the famous minister of Henry IV, had a narrow escape. He was in his twelfth year, and had gone to Paris in the train of Joan of Navarre for the purpose of continuing his studies. "About three after midnight," he says, "I was awoke by the ringing of bells and the confused cries of the populace. My governor, St. Julian, with my _valet-de-chambre_, went out to know the cause; and I never heard of them afterward. They, no doubt, were among the first sacrificed to the public fury. I continued alone in my chamber, dressing myself, when in a few moments my landlord entered, pale and in the most utmost consternation. He was of the Reformed religion, and, having learned what was the matter, had consented to go to mass to save his life and preserve his house from being pillaged. He came to persuade me to do the same and to take me with him. I did not think proper to follow him, but resolved to try if I could gain the College of Burgundy, where I had studied; though the great distance between the house in which I then was and the college made the attempt very dangerous. Having disguised myself in a scholar's gown, I put a large prayer-book under my arm, and went into the street. I was seized with horror inexpressible at the sight of the furious murderers, running from all parts, forcing open the houses, and shouting out: 'Kill, kill! Massacre the Huguenots!' The blood which I saw shed before my eyes, redoubled my terror. I fell into the midst of a body of guards, who stopped and questioned me, and were beginning to use me ill, when, happily for me, the book that I carried was perceived and served me for a passport. Twice after this I fell into the same danger, from which I extricated myself with the same good-fortune. At last I arrived at the College of Burgundy, where a danger still greater than any that I had yet met with awaited me. The porter having twice refused me entrance, I continued standing in the midst of the street, at the mercy of the savage murderers, whose number increased every moment, and who were evidently seeking for their prey, when it came into my head to ask for La Faye, the principal of the college, a good man, by whom I was tenderly beloved. The porter, prevailed upon by some small pieces of money which I put in his hand, admitted me; and my friend carried me to his apartment, where two inhuman priests whom I heard mention 'Sicilian Vespers,' wanted to force me from him, that they might cut me in pieces, saying the order was, not to spare even infants at the breast. All the good man could do was to conduct me privately to a distant chamber, where he locked me up. Here I was confined three days, uncertain of my destiny, and saw no one but a servant of my friend's, who came from time to time to bring me provisions." Not until the second day does there appear to have been any remorse or pity for the horrors inflicted upon the wretched Huguenots. Elizabeth of Austria, the young Queen who hoped shortly to become a mother, interceded for Condé, and so great was her agitation and distress that her "features were quite disfigured by the tears she had shed night and day." And, the Duke of Alençon, a youth of by no means lovable character, "wept much," we are told, "over the fate of those brave captains and soldiers." For this tenderness he was so bitterly reproached by Charles and his mother that he was forced to keep out of their sight. Alençon was partial to Coligny, and when there was found among the admiral's papers a report in which he condemned appanages, the grants usually given by the crown to the younger members of the royal family, Catherine exultingly showed it to him--"See what a fine friend he was to you." "I know not how far he may have been my friend," replied the Duke, "but the advice he gave me was very good." If Mezeray is to be trusted, Charles broke down on the second day of the massacre. Since Saturday he had been in a state of extraordinary excitement, more like madness than sanity, and at last his mind gave way under the pressure. To his surgeon, Ambrose Paré, who kept at his side all through these dreadful hours, he said: "I do not know what ails me. For these two or three days past, both mind and body have been quite upset. I burn with fever; all around me grin pale blood-stained faces. Ah! Ambrose, if they had but spared the weak and innocent." A change, indeed, had come over him; be became more restless than ever, his looks savage, his buffoonery coarser and more boisterous. "_Ne mai poteva pigliar requie_" says Sigismond Cavalli. Like Macbeth, he had murdered sleep. "I saw the King on my return from Rochelle," says Brantome, "and found him entirely changed. His features had lost all the gentleness [_douceur_] usually visible in them." "About a week after the massacre," says a contemporary, "a number of crows flew croaking round and settled on the Louvre. The noise they made drew everybody out to see them, and the superstitious women infected the King with their own timidity. That very night Charles had not been in bed two hours when he jumped up and called for the King of Navarre, to listen to a horrible tumult in the air; shrieks, groans, yells, mingled with blasphemous oaths and threats, just as they were heard on the night of the massacre. The sound returned seven successive nights, precisely at the same hour." Juvenal des Ursins tells the story rather differently. "On August 31st I supped at the Louvre with Madame de Fiesque. As the day was very hot we went down into the garden and sat in an arbor by the river. Suddenly the air was filled with a horrible noise of tumultuous voices and groans, mingled with cries of rage and madness. We could not move for terror; we turned pale and were unable to speak. The noise lasted for half an hour, and was heard by the King, who was so terrified that he could not sleep the rest of the night." As for Catherine; knowing that strong emotions would spoil her digestion and impair her good looks, she kept up her spirits. "For my part," she said, "there are only six of them on my conscience;" which is a lie, for when she ordered the tocsin to be rung, she must have foreseen the horrors--perhaps not all the horrors--that would ensue. ISAAC D'ISRAELI An original document now lying before me, the autograph letter of Charles IX, will prove that that unparalleled massacre, called by the world religious, was, in the French cabinet, considered merely as political; one of those revolting state expedients which a pretended instant necessity has too often inflicted on that part of a nation which, like the under-current, subterraneously works its way, and runs counter to the great stream, till the critical moment arrives when one or the other must cease. The massacre began on St. Bartholomew Day, in August, 1572, lasted in France during seven days; that awful event interrupted the correspondence of our court with that of France. A long silence ensued; the one did not dare tell the tale which the other could not listen to. But sovereigns know how to convert a mere domestic event into a political expedient. Charles IX, on the birth of a daughter, sent over an ambassador extraordinary to request Elizabeth to stand as sponsor; by this the French monarch obtained a double purpose; it served to renew his interrupted intercourse with the silent Queen, and alarmed the French Protestants by abating their hopes, which long rested on the aid of the English Queen. The following letter, dated February 8, 1573, is addressed by the King to La Motte Fénelon, his resident ambassador at London. The King in this letter minutely details a confidential intercourse with his mother, Catherine de' Medici, who, perhaps, may have dictated this letter to the secretary, although signed by the King with his own hand. Such minute particulars could only have been known to herself. The Earl of Wolchester (Worcester) was now taking departure, having come to Paris on the baptism of the princess; and accompanied by Walsingham, our resident ambassador, after taking leave of Charles, had the following interview with Catherine de' Medici. An interview with the young monarch was usually concluded by a separate audience with his mother, who probably was still the directress of his councils. After Catherine de' Medici had assured the Earl of Worcester of her great affection for the Queen of England, and the King's strict intention to preserve it, she took this opportunity of inquiring of the Earl of Worcester the cause of the Queen his mistress' marked coolness toward them. The narrative becomes now dramatic. "On this, Walsingham, who always kept close by the side of the Count [Earl of Worcester], here took on himself to answer, acknowledging that the said Count had indeed been charged to speak on this head; and he then addressed some words in English to Worcester. And afterward the Count gave to my lady and mother to understand that the Queen his mistress had been waiting for an answer on two articles; the one concerning religion, and the other for an interview. "In regard to what has occurred these latter days, that he must have seen how it happened by the fault of the chiefs of those who remained here; for when the late admiral was treacherously wounded at Notre Dame, he knew the affliction it threw us into--fearful that it might have occasioned great troubles in this kingdom--and the diligence we used to verify judicially whence it proceeded; and the verification was nearly finished, when they were so forgetful as to raise a conspiracy, to attempt the lives of myself, my lady and mother, and my brothers, and endanger the whole state; which was the cause that to avoid this I was compelled, to my very great regret, to permit what had happened in Paris; but as he had witnessed, I gave orders to stop, as soon as possible, this fury of the people, and place everyone on repose. On this, the Sieur Walsingham replied to my lady and mother that the exercise of the said religion had been interdicted in this kingdom. To which she also answered that this had not been done but for a good and holy purpose; namely, that the fury of the Catholic people might the sooner be allayed, who else had been reminded of the past calamities, and would again have been let loose against those of the said religion had they continued to preach in this kingdom. Also should these once more fix on any chiefs, which I will prevent as much as possible, giving him clearly and pointedly to understand that what is done here is much the same as what has been done and is now practised by the Queen his mistress in her kingdom. For she permits the exercise but of one religion, although there are many of her people who are of another; and having also during her reign punished those of her subjects whom she found seditious and rebellious. It is true this has been done by the laws, but I, indeed, could not act in the same manner; for finding myself in such imminent peril, and the conspiracy raised against me and mine and my kingdom ready to be executed, I had no time to arraign and try in open justice as much as I wished, but was constrained, to my very great regret, to strike the blow [_lascher la main_] in what has been done in this city." This letter of Charles IX, however, does not here conclude. "My lady and mother" plainly acquaints the Earl of Worcester and Sir Francis Walsingham that her son had never interfered between their mistress and her subjects, and in return expects the same favor although, by accounts they had received from England, many ships were arming to assist their rebels at La Rochelle. "My lady and mother" advances another step, and declares that Elizabeth by treaty is bound to assist her son against his rebellious subjects; and they expect, at least, that Elizabeth will not only stop these armaments in all her ports, but exemplarily punish the offenders. I resume the letter. "And on hearing this, the said Walsingham changed color, and appeared somewhat astonished, as my lady and mother well perceived by his face; and on this he requested the Count of Worcester to mention the order which he knew the Queen his mistress had issued to prevent these people from assisting those of La Rochelle; but that in England, so numerous were the seamen and others who gained their livelihood by maritime affairs, and who would starve without the entire freedom of the seas, that it was impossible to interdict them." Such is the first letter on English affairs which Charles IX despatched to his ambassador, after an awful silence of six months, during which time La Motte Fénelon was not admitted into the presence of Elizabeth. The apology for the massacre of St. Bartholomew comes from the King himself, and contains several remarkable expressions, which are at least divested of that style of bigotry and exultation we might have expected: on the contrary, this sanguinary and inconsiderate young monarch, as he is represented, writes in a subdued and sorrowing tone, lamenting his hard necessity, regretting he could not have recourse to the laws, and appealing to others for his efforts to check the fury of the people, which he himself had let loose. Catherine de' Medici, who had governed from the tender age of eleven years, when he ascended the throne, might unquestionably have persuaded him that a conspiracy was on the point of explosion. Charles IX died young, and his character is unfavorably viewed by the historians. In the voluminous correspondence which I have examined, could we judge by state letters of the character of him who subscribes them, we must form a very different notion; they are so prolix and so earnest that one might conceive they were dictated by the young monarch himself! [Illustration: Catherine de Medici, accompanied by her suite, issues from the gate of the Louvre the morning after the massacre of St. Bartholomew Painting by Ed. Debat-Ponsan.] JNO. RUDD Popular error has done more injury to the memory of Catherine de' Medici than to that of any other woman famous in history. To understand Catherine, and the part she played on the stage of French politics, her training and the position she held must be understood. It is one thing to look upon her on the obverse as wholly without heart, a trafficker in human life, a ghoul who smiled with complacency on the victims of her hate, and another to look on the reverse of the medal. The Massacre of St. Bartholomew is pointed to as a crime--a religious crime. But is this true? It may not have been an act in accordance with twentieth-century morality, but bad, horrible indeed as it was, were there not extenuating circumstances attending it--looked upon in the light of that age? To Catherine de' Medici--perhaps justly--has been given the credit--or infamy, if you will--of its conception and execution. "Historians are privileged liars"--this is a truism as valid to-day as when expressed by its brilliant creator. The throne of France was saved by Catherine de' Medici, the royal power was maintained by her under such difficulties as few rulers would have withstood. She is painted by Catholic and Protestant writers alike as standing without the gates of the Louvre, the morning after the massacre, and there gloating over the bodies of the slain lying about the palace entrance. Apart from her political duty, as she understood it, and which meant the upholding of the monarchy, Catherine was a true woman; kind to her suite, faithful to her friends. She had none of the weaknesses of her sex; she lived chaste amid the debauchery of the most licentious court in Europe. The losses to art caused by the destructive Calvinists she replaced by erecting noble buildings and beautifying Paris. But she had the sense of royalty developed to the utmost; she defended it to the extreme. In France the opposition was always Protestant. It was her enemy, the enemy of the crown, the arch-enemy of France. It is laid to her charge that she coquetted with the Huguenots, whom she afterward slew. This there is no denying; she had but her craft with which to oppose the Guise faction, the various court cliques, and the Huguenots themselves. An expert at the game, she played one piece against another, skilfully avoiding the checkmate. Pawns might be lost, bishops fall to her hand, knights be unhorsed, but her king was secured. She could only triumph by cunning. A state cannot be governed by the same rule of morality as that which should govern individual conduct; it is impossible that it should be so. Professor Saintsbury says: "Every cool-headed student of history and ethics will admit that it was precisely the abuse of the principle at this time, and by the persons of whom Catherine de' Medici, if not the most blamable, _has had the most blame put on her_, that brought the principle itself into discredit."[1] [1] The author, not Professor Saintsbury, is responsible for the Italics. Casimir Périer, the noted French statesman, wrote, "All power is a permanent conspiracy." This is as true to-day in republican America as it was at that time in monarchical France. And it was not religion, as such, that led to the horrible scenes of that fatal August 24th; it was a move in the game of politics. Protestantism spelt republicanism; to one raised as Catherine had been, taught her life through by bitter experience, any means available, any course adopted, was righteous if it answered the purpose of saving the realm. Research into this period will amply repay the explorer with enlarged ideas of its meaning and its issues. Of the Queen-mother "naught extenuate nor aught set down in malice." Catherine compares more than favorably with Marie de' Medici, whom history has painted in brighter hue. Bigotry has blasted the name of one who for her time was at least the equal of any ruler in Europe. HEROIC AGE OF THE NETHERLANDS SIEGE OF LEYDEN A.D. 1573 THOMAS HENRY DYER Events followed one another rapidly after the rising of the Netherlanders in 1566. The organization of the Gueux ("beggars"), the league of noblemen pledged to resist the introduction of the Inquisition into the Low Countries by Philip II of Spain, had shown itself prepared for extreme action in self-defence. The name Gueux, first used in contempt, was borne in honor by the patriots in the ensuing war, which Philip conducted as a "war of extermination." In 1567 the Duke of Alva, a famous veteran of the wars of Charles V and of Philip, was sent to the Netherlands as governor, where his cruelties soon made him notorious. He established the court known as the Council of Blood, which first sat in September, 1567. In less than three months this tribunal put to death eighteen hundred persons, including Horn, Egmont, and other eminent patriots. As many as one hundred thousand of the population are said to have emigrated at this time to England. William of Orange, the great leader of the Netherlanders, refused to appear before the Council of Blood. He had resigned his offices, civil and military, and now retired to Dillenburg, still proclaiming his adhesion to the Protestant faith. But in 1568 he gathered two armies. Alva destroyed one of them, and the other was disbanded. In 1570 William issued letters of marque to seamen who were nicknamed "Sea Beggars," and bore a prominent part in the war of independence. In 1572 they captured Briel. That year Mons was captured by Louis of Nassau, William's brother, but in September it was retaken by Alva. In Dyer's narrative the subsequent course of events, to the Pacification of Ghent, is clearly and succinctly traced. Soon after the capture of Mons, Alva went to Brussels and left the conduct of the war to his son, Frederick de Toledo. Zutphen and Naarden successively yielded to Frederick's arms, and became the scenes of the most detestable violence. Alva ordered his son not to leave a single man alive in Zutphen, and to burn down all the houses--commands which were almost literally obeyed. The treatment of Naarden was still more revolting. The town had capitulated, and Don Julian Romero, an officer of Don Frederick's, had pledged his word that the lives and property of the inhabitants should be respected. Romero then entered the town with some five hundred musketeers, for whom the citizens provided a sumptuous feast; and he summoned the inhabitants to assemble in the Gast Huis Church, then used as a town hall. More than five hundred of them had entered the church when a priest, suddenly rushing in, bade them prepare for death. Scarcely had the announcement been made when a band of Spanish soldiers entered and, after discharging a volley into the defenceless crowd, attacked them sword in hand. The church was then fired and the dead and dying consumed together. But these cruelties only steeled the Hollanders to a more obstinate resistance; nor must it be concealed that in these _plusquam civilia bella_, where civil hatred was still further embittered by sectarian malignancy, the Dutch sometimes displayed as much savageness as their adversaries. Thus, during the struggle in Zealand, a surgeon at Veer cut out the heart of a Spanish prisoner, and, fixing it on the prow of a vessel, invited his fellow-townsmen to fix their teeth in it, an invitation with which many complied. The war was continued during the winter (1572-1573). In December the Spaniards marched to attack a fleet frozen up near Amsterdam. It was defended by a body of Dutch musketeers on skates, who, by the superior skill of their evolutions, drove the enemy back and killed great numbers of them. In consequence of this extraordinary combat, Alva ordered seven thousand pairs of skates, and directed his soldiers to be instructed in their use. Siege was then laid to Haarlem, which town, warned by the fate of Zutphen and Naarden, made a defence that astonished all Europe. A corps of three hundred respectable women, armed with musket, sword, and dagger, and led by Kenan Hasselaer, a widow lady of distinguished family, about forty-seven years of age, enrolled themselves among its defenders, and partook in some of the most fiercely contested actions. Battles took place upon Haarlem Lake, on which the Prince of Orange had more than a hundred sail of various kinds; till at length Bossu, whose vessels were larger, though less numerous, entirely defeated the Hollanders, and swept the lake in triumph (May 28, 1573). The siege had lasted seven months, and Frederick de Toledo, who had lost a great part of his army by hunger, cold, and pestilence, was inclined to abandon the enterprise; but he was kept to it by the threats of his father, and on the 12th of July Haarlem surrendered. Don Frederick had written a letter solemnly assuring the besieged that no punishment should be inflicted except on those who deserved it in the opinion of the citizens themselves, yet he was in possession of strict orders from his father to put to death the whole garrison, except the Germans, and also to execute a large number of the inhabitants. Between two and three thousand were slaughtered; three hundred were drowned in the lake tied by twos back to back. The resistance of Haarlem and other places determined Alva to try what might be done by an affectation of clemency; and on the 26th of July he issued a proclamation in which Philip was compared to a hen gathering its chickens under the parental wing. But in the same breath his subjects were admonished not to excite his rage, cruelty, and fury, and they were threatened that if his gracious offers of mercy were neglected, his majesty would strip bare and utterly depopulate the land, and cause it to be again inhabited by strangers. So ludicrous a specimen of paternal love was not calculated to excite much confidence in the breasts of the Hollanders, and Alkmaar, the next town to which Don Frederick laid siege, though defended only by eight hundred soldiers and thirteen hundred citizens against sixteen thousand veterans, also resolved to hold out to the last extremity. Enraged at this contempt of what he called his clemency, at Haarlem, Alva resolved to make Alkmaar an example of his cruelty, and he wrote to Philip that everyone in it should be put to the sword. But the inhabitants made a heroic defence and repulsed the besiegers in many a bloody assault; till at length the superstitious Spaniards, believing that the place was defended by the devil, whom they thought that the Protestants worshipped, refused to mount to the attack, suffering themselves rather to be run through the body by their officers; and Don Frederick, finding from an intercepted letter that the Prince of Orange contemplated cutting the dikes and flooding the country, in order to prevent the place from being surrendered, raised the siege (October 8th) after it had lasted seven weeks. About this time William published his _Epistle in the form of supplication to his Royal Majesty of Spain, from the Prince of Orange and States of Holland and Zealand_, which produced a profound impression. It demanded that the privileges of the country should be restored, and insisted on the recall of the Duke of Alva, whose atrocities were vigorously described and condemned. Orange, as stadtholder, was now acting as the King's representative in Holland, and gave all his orders in Philip's name. He had recently turned Calvinist, and in October publicly joined the Church at Dort. It was reserved for the two greatest princes of the age to alleviate by their apostasy, which, however, approached more nearly than the orthodoxy of their adversaries, the spirit of true Christianity, the evils inflicted on society by a consistent but bloody-minded and intolerant bigotry. The siege of Alkmaar was one of the last acts under Alva's auspices in the Netherlands, and formed a fitting termination to his career. He had himself solicited to be recalled, and in December, 1573, he was superseded by Don Luis de Requesens, Grand Commander of St. Jago. In fact, Philip had found this war of extermination too expensive for his exhausted treasury. Alva boasted on his journey back that he had caused eighteen thousand six hundred Netherlanders to be executed. He was well received by Philip, but soon after his return was imprisoned along with his son, Don Frederick; the latter for having seduced a maid of honor, his father for recommending him not to marry his victim. Alva was, however, subsequently released to undertake the conquest of Portugal. Requesens, the new Governor, had been vice-admiral to Don John of Austria, had distinguished himself at the battle of Lepanto, and had subsequently governed the Milanese with reputation. He was mild and just and more liberal than the generality of Spaniards, though inferior to Alva in military talent. He attempted immediately after his arrival in the Netherlands to bring about a peace through the mediation of St. Aldegonde, but Orange was too suspicious to enter into it. Requesens put down robbery and murder, but he was neither able to abrogate the Council of Blood nor to alleviate the oppressive taxes. Philip had selected him as governor of the Netherlands, as a pledge of the more conciliatory policy which he had thought it prudent to adopt; yet Requesens' hands were tied up with such injunctions as rendered all conciliation hopeless, and he was instructed to bring forward no measures which had not for their basis the maintenance of the King's absolute authority and the prohibition of all worship except the Roman Catholic. The Gueux de Mer were at this time most troublesome to the Spaniards, as their small vessels enabled them to penetrate up the rivers and canals. A naval action had been fought (October 11, 1573) on the Zuyder Zee between Count Bossu, who had collected a considerable fleet at Amsterdam, and the patriot admiral Dirkzoon, in which Bossu was completely defeated and taken prisoner. One of the first acts of Requesens was to send a fleet under Sancho Davila, Julian Romero, and Admiral Glimes to the relief of Middelburg, which had been besieged by the patriots upward of eighteen months and was now reduced to the last extremity. Orange visited the Zealand fleet under the command of Louis Boissot (January 20, 1574), and an action ensued a few days later, in which the Spaniards were completely beaten. Requesens himself beheld the action from the lofty dike of Schakerloo, where he stood all day in a drenching rain; and Romero, who had escaped by jumping out of a porthole, swam ashore and landed at the very feet of the Grand Commander. The Hollanders and Zealanders were now masters of the coast, but the Spaniards still held their ground in the interior of Holland. After raising the siege of Alkmaar, they had invested Leyden and cut off all communication between the Dutch cities. The efforts of the patriots were less fortunate on land, where they were no match for the Spanish generals and their veteran troops. It had been arranged that Louis of Nassau should march out of Germany with an army of newly levied recruits and form a junction with his brother William, who was at Bommel on the Waal. Toward the end of February, 1574, Louis encamped within four miles of Maestricht, with the design of taking that town; but finding that he could not accomplish this object, and having suffered some losses, he marched down the right bank of the Meuse to join his brother. When, however, he arrived at Mook, a village on the Meuse a few miles south of Nimwegen, he found himself intercepted by the Spaniards under Davila, who, having outmarched him on the opposite bank, had crossed the river at a lower point on a bridge of boats, and placed himself directly in his path. There was now no alternative but to fight, and battle was delivered on the following day on the heath of Mook, when fortune declared against the patriots. The gallant Louis, seeing that the day was lost, put himself at the head of a little band of troopers, and, accompanied by his brother Henry, and Duke Christopher, son of the Elector Palatine Frederick III, made a desperate charge in which they all perished, and were never heard of more. The only effect of Louis' invasion was to cause the Spaniards to raise the siege of Leyden; before which place, however, they afterward again sat down (May 26th). The defence of Leyden formed a worthy parallel to that of Haarlem and Alkmaar, and acquired for the garrison and the inhabitants the respect and admiration of all Europe. A modern historian has aptly observed that this was the heroic age of Protestantism. Never have the virtues which spring from true patriotism and sincere religious conviction been more strikingly developed and displayed. Leyden was defended by John van der Does, Lord of Nordwyck, a gentleman of distinguished family, but still more distinguished by his learning and genius, and his Latin poetry published under the name of Joannes Douza. The garrison of Leyden was small, and it relied for its defence chiefly on the exertions of the inhabitants. The revictualling of the city had been neglected after the raising of the first siege, and at the end of June it became necessary to put the inhabitants on short allowance; yet they held out more than three months longer. Orange, whose head-quarters were at Delft and Rotterdam, had no means of relieving Leyden except by breaking down the dikes on the Meuse and the Yssel, and thus flooding the country, a step which would involve the destruction of the growing crops, besides other extraordinary expenses; yet he succeeded in obtaining the consent of the Dutch States to this extreme and desperate measure. On the 3d of August he superintended in person the rupture of the dikes on the Yssel; at the same time the sluices of Rotterdam and Schiedam were opened; the flood began to pour over the land, while the citizens of Leyden watched with anxious eyes from the tower of Hengist the rising of the waters. A flotilla of two hundred flat-bottomed vessels had been provided, stored with provisions, and manned by two thousand five hundred veterans under the command of Boissot. But unexpected obstacles arose. Fresh dikes appeared above the water, and had to be cut through amid the resistance of the Spaniards. Twice the waters receded under the influence of the east wind, and left the fleet aground; twice it was floated again, as if by a providential interposition, by violent gales from the north and west, which accumulated on the coast the waters of the ocean. Meanwhile the besieged were suffering all the extremities of famine; the most disgusting garbage was used for food, and caused a pestilence which carried off thousands. In this extremity a number of the citizens surrounded the burgomaster, Adrian van der Werf, demanding with loud threats and clamors that he should either provide them with food or surrender the city to the enemy. To these menaces Adrian calmly replied, "I have taken an oath that I will never put myself or my fellow-citizens in the power of the cruel and perfidious Spaniards, and I will rather die than violate it." Then drawing his sword he offered it to the surrounding crowd and bade them plunge it in his bosom and devour his flesh if such an action could relieve them from their direful necessity. This extraordinary address filled the people with amazement and admiration and inspired them with a new courage. Their constancy was soon rewarded with deliverance. On the night of October 1st a fresh gale set in from the northwest; the ocean rushed furiously through the ruined dikes; the fleet had soon two feet of water, and sailed on their onward course amid storm and darkness. They had still to contend with the vessels of the enemy, and a naval battle was fought amid the boughs of orchards and the chimney-stacks of houses. But this was the last attempt at resistance on the part of the Spaniards. Appalled both by the constancy of their adversaries and by the rising flood, which was gradually driving them into a narrow circle, the Spaniards abandoned the two remaining forts of Zoetermonde and Lammen, which still stood between the fleet and the city. From the latter they fled in alarm at the noise of the falling of a large portion of the town walls which had been thrown down by the waters, and which in the darkness they luckily mistook for some operation of their adversaries; otherwise they might easily have entered and captured Leyden. The fleet of Boissot approached the city on the morning of October 3d. After the pangs of hunger were relieved the whole population repaired to church to return thanks to the Almighty for their deliverance. On October 4th another providential gale from the northeast assisted in clearing off the water from the land. In commemoration of this remarkable defence, and as a reward for the heroism of the citizens, was founded the University of Leyden, as well as a ten days' annual fair, free from all tolls and taxes. During this siege the Gueux had been again successful at sea. On May 30th Boissot defeated between Lilloo and Kalloo a Spanish fleet, took the admiral and three ships, and chased the rest into Antwerp. The bankrupt state of Philip II's exchequer, and the reverses which his arms had sustained, induced him to accept in the following year the proffered mediation of the emperor Maximilian, which he had before arrogantly rejected, and a congress was held at Breda from March till June, 1575. But the insurgents were suspicious, and Philip was inflexible; he could not be induced to dismiss his Spanish troops, to allow the meeting of the States-General, or to admit the slightest toleration in matters of religion; and the contest was therefore renewed with more fury than ever. The situation of the patriots became very critical when the enemy, by occupying the islands of Duyveland and Schouwen, cut off the communication between Holland and Zealand, especially as all hope of succor from England had expired. Toward the close of the year envoys were despatched to solicit the aid of Elizabeth, and to offer her, under certain conditions, the sovereignty of Holland and Zealand. Requesens sent Champagny to counteract these negotiations, which ended in nothing. The English Queen was afraid of provoking the power of Spain, and could not even be induced to grant the Hollanders a loan. The attitude assumed at that time by the Duke of Alençon in France also prevented them from entering into any negotiations with that Prince. In these trying circumstances William the Silent displayed the greatest firmness and courage. It was now that he is said to have contemplated abandoning Holland and seeking with its inhabitants a home in the New World, having first restored the country to its ancient state of a waste of waters, a thought, however, which he probably never seriously entertained, though he may have given utterance to it in a moment of irritation or despondency. On June 12, 1575, William had married Charlotte de Bourbon, daughter of the Duke of Montpensier. The Prince's second wife, Anne of Saxony, had turned out a drunken, violent character, and at length an intrigue which she formed with John Rubens, an exiled magistrate of Antwerp, and father of the celebrated painter, justified William in divorcing her. She subsequently became insane. Charlotte de Bourbon had been brought up a Calvinist, but at a later period, her father having joined the party of the persecutors, she took refuge with the Elector Palatine, and it was under these circumstances that she received the addresses of the Prince of Orange. The unexpected death of Requesens, who expired of a fever, March 5, 1576, after a few days' illness, threw the government into confusion. Philip II had given Requesens a _carte blanche_ to name his successor, but the nature of his illness had prevented him from filling it up. The government, therefore, devolved to the council of state, the members of which were at variance with one another; but Philip found himself obliged to intrust it _ad interim_ with the administration till a successor to Requesens could be appointed. Count Mansfeld was made commander-in-chief, but was totally unable to restrain the licentious soldiery. The Spaniards, whose pay was in arrear, had now lost all discipline. After the raising of the siege of Leyden they had beset Utrecht and pillaged and maltreated the inhabitants, till Valdez contrived to furnish their pay. No sooner had Requesens expired than they broke into open mutiny and acted as if they were entire masters of the country. After wandering about some time and threatening Brussels, they seized and plundered Alost, where they established themselves; and they were soon after joined by the Walloon and German troops. To repress their violence, the council of state restored to the Netherlands the arms of which they had been deprived, and called upon them by a proclamation to repress force by force, but these citizen-soldiers were dispersed with great slaughter by the disciplined troops in various rencounters. Ghent, Utrecht, Valenciennes, Maestricht were taken and plundered by the mutineers; and at last the storm fell upon Antwerp, which the Spaniards entered early in November, and sacked during three days. More than a thousand houses were burnt, eight thousand citizens are said to have been slain, and enormous sums in ready money were plundered. The whole damage was estimated at twenty-four million florins. The horrible excesses committed in this sack procured for it the name of the "Spanish Fury." The government was at this period conducted in the name of the State of Brabant. On September 5th De Hèze, a young Brabant gentleman who was in secret intelligence with the Prince of Orange, had, at the head of five hundred soldiers, entered the palace where the council of state was assembled, and seized and imprisoned the members. William, taking advantage of the alarm created at Brussels by the sack of Antwerp, persuaded the provisional government to summon the States-General, although such a course was at direct variance with the commands of the King. To this assembly all the provinces except Luxemburg sent deputies. The nobles of the southern provinces, although they viewed the Prince of Orange with suspicion, feeling that there was no security for them so long as the Spanish troops remained in possession of Ghent, sought his assistance in expelling them, which William consented to grant only on condition that an alliance should be effected between the northern and the southern, or Catholic, provinces of the Netherlands. This proposal was agreed to, and toward the end of September Orange sent several thousand men from Zealand to Ghent, at whose approach the Spaniards, who had valorously defended themselves for two months under the conduct of the wife of their absent general, Mondragon, surrendered and evacuated the citadel. The proposed alliance was now converted into a formal union, by the treaty called the Pacification of Ghent, signed November 8, 1576, by which it was agreed, without waiting for the sanction of Philip, whose authority, however, was nominally recognized, to renew the edict of banishment against the Spanish troops, to procure the suspension of the decrees against the Protestant religion, to summon the States-General of the northern and southern provinces, according to the model of the assembly which had received the abdication of Charles V, to provide for the toleration and practice of the Protestant religion in Holland and Zealand, together with other provisions of a similar character. About the same time with the Pacification of Ghent, all Zealand, with the exception of the island of Tholen, was recovered from the Spaniards. SEARCH FOR THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE BY FROBISHER A.D. 1576 GEORGE BEST Martin Frobisher, the English navigator, was born in Yorkshire about 1535. When a lad he went to sea, and seems early to have dreamed of a shorter route to China through the Arctic Ocean. He became the pioneer in the long search for a northwest passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific by the northern coasts of the American continent. He even contemplated the planting of English colonies on the Pacific shore of the New World. Columbus had found the western way to China barred by the continent of America. Magellan discovered a southwest passage around that continent. Half a century later Frobisher entered upon the northern quest. Frobisher was poorly educated, and wrote with difficulty. The narrative of his first voyage was written by George Best from an account furnished by Frobisher himself, whom Best accompanied on his second and third voyages. The present narrative has therefore all the value of a first-hand record, and it is included in the _Principal Navigations_ of Hakluyt. Although over two hundred voyages have now been made in search of this passage, which in 1850-1854 was achieved by Sir Robert McClure, the long-cherished hopes of its advantages have not been realized. The route, for commercial purposes, is thus far quite useless, owing to arctic conditions. Great gains, however, through these expeditions, have been made in scientific knowledge. Which thing being well considered and familiarly known to our General, Captain Frobisher, as well for that he is thoroughly furnished of the knowledge of the sphere and all other skills appertaining to the art of navigation, as also for the confirmation he hath of the same by many years' experience both by sea and land; and being persuaded of a new and nearer passage to Cataya[1] than by Cabo de Buona Sperança, which the Portugals yearly use, he began first with himself to devise, and then with his friends to confer, and laid a plain plot unto them that that voyage was not only possible by the northwest, but also, he could prove, easy to be performed. And further, he determined and resolved with himself to go make full proof thereof, and to accomplish or bring true certificate of the truth, or else never to return again; knowing this to be the only thing of the world that was left yet undone, whereby a notable mind might be made famous and fortunate. [1] Cathay (China). But although his will were great to perform this notable voyage,[2] whereof he had conceived in his mind a great hope by sundry sure reasons and secret intelligence, which here, for sundry causes, I leave untouched; yet he wanted altogether means and ability to set forward and perform the same. Long time he conferred with his private friends of these secrets, and made also many offers for the performing of the same in effect unto sundry merchants of our country, above fifteen years before he attempted the same, as by good witness shall well appear, albeit some evil-willers, which challenge to themselves the fruits of other men's labors, have greatly injured him in the reports of the same, saying that they have been the first authors of that action, and that they have learned him the way, which themselves as yet have never gone. But perceiving that hardly he was hearkened unto of the merchants, which never regard virtue without sure, certain, and present gains, he repaired to the court, from whence, as from the fountain of our common wealth, all good causes have their chief increase and maintenance, and there laid open to many great estates and learned men the plot and sum of his device. And among many honorable minds which favored his honest and commendable enterprise, he was specially bound and beholding to the Right Honorable Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick, whose favorable mind and good disposition hath always been ready to countenance and advance all honest actions, with the authors and executers of the same. And so by means of my lord his honorable countenance he received some comfort of his cause, and by little and little, with no small expense and pain, brought his cause to some perfection, and had drawn together so many adventurers and such sums of money as might well defray a reasonable charge to furnish himself to sea withal. [2] Further details of this voyage may be gathered from the log of Christopher Hall, master of the Gabriel, printed in Hakluyt. The present narrative, prefixed to Best's accounts of the second and third voyages, was preceded by a treatise intended to prove all parts of the earth, even the poles, equally habitable. He prepared two small barks of twenty and five-and-twenty ton apiece, wherein he intended to accomplish his pretended voyage. Wherefore, being furnished with the aforesaid two barks, and one small pinnace of ten ton burden, having therein victuals and other necessaries for twelve months' provision, he departed upon the said voyage from Blackwall, the 15. of June,[3] Anno Domini 1576. [3] The date is incorrect. Hall quitted his moorings at Ratcliffe on the 7th, and left Deptford on the 8th. In passing the royal palace of Greenwich, says Hall, "we shot off our ordnance, and made the best show we could. Her majesty, beholding the same, commended it, and bade us farewell, with shaking her hand at us out of the window." Gravesend was passed on the 12th. One of the barks wherein he went was named the Gabriel, and the other the Michael; and, sailing northwest from England upon the 11. of July he had sight of an high and ragged land, which he judged to be Frisland,[4] whereof some authors have made mention; but durst not approach the same by reason of the great store of ice that lay alongst the coast, and the great mists that troubled them not a little. Not far from thence he lost company of his small pinnace, which by means of the great storm he supposed to be swallowed up of the sea; wherein he lost only four men. Also the other bark, named the Michael, mistrusting the matter, conveyed themselves privily away from him, and returned home, with great report that he was cast away. [4] The land was Greenland. Friesland was the name given to the Faroe Islands in the voyage of the brothers Zeni. Hall saw the rocky spires of the coast "rising like pinnacles of steeples" in the afternoon sun. The worthy captain, notwithstanding these discomforts, although his mast was sprung and his topmast blown overboard with extreme foul weather, continued his course toward the northwest, knowing that the sea at length must needs have an ending and that some land should have a beginning that way; and determined therefore at the least to bring true proof what land and sea the same might be so far to the northwestward, beyond any that man hath heretofore discovered. And the 20. of July he had sight of an high land, which he called "Queen Elizabeth's Foreland,"[5] after her majesty's name. And sailing more northerly alongst that coast, he descried another foreland,[6] with a great gut, bay, or passage, dividing as it were two main lands or continents asunder. There he met with store of exceeding great ice all this coast along, and, coveting still to continue his course to the northward, was always by contrary wind detained overthwart these straits, and could not get beyond. [5] The northeast corner of the island to the north of Resolution Island. [6] The North Foreland, at the southeast corner of Hall's Island. Within few days after, he perceived the ice to be well consumed and gone, either there engulfed in by some swift currents or indrafts, carried more to the southward of the same straits, or else conveyed some other way; wherefore he determined to make proof of this place, to see how far that gut had continuance, and whether he might carry himself through the same into some open sea on the back side, whereof he conceived no small hope; and so entered the same the one-and-twentieth of July, and passed above fifty leagues therein, as he reported, having upon either hand a great main or continent. And that land upon his right hand as he sailed westward he judged to be the continent of Asia, and there to be divided from the firm of America, which lieth upon the left hand over against the same. This place he named after his name, "Frobisher's Straits,"[7] like as Magellanus at the southwest end of the world, having discovered the passage to the South Sea, where America is divided from the continent of that land, which lieth under the south pole, and called the same straits "Magellan's Straits." [7] Afterward called Frobisher Bay. After he had passed sixty leagues into this aforesaid strait, he went ashore, and found signs where fire had been made. He saw mighty deer, that seemed to be mankind, which ran at him; and hardly he escaped with his life in a narrow way, where he was fain to use defence and policy to save his life. In this place he saw and perceived sundry tokens of the peoples resorting thither. And being ashore upon the top of a hill, he perceived a number of small things fleeting in the sea afar off, which he supposed to be porpoises, or seals, or some kind of strange fish; but coming nearer, he discovered them to be men in small boats made of leather. And before he could descend down from the hill, certain of those people had almost cut off his boat from him, having stolen secretly behind the rocks for that purpose; where he speedily hastened to his boat, and bent himself to his halberd, and narrowly escaped the danger, and saved his boat. Afterward he had sundry conferences with them, and they came aboard his ship, and brought him salmon and raw flesh and fish, and greedily devoured the same before our men's faces. And to show their agility, they tried many masteries upon the ropes of the ship after our mariners' fashion, and appeared to be very strong of their arms and nimble of their bodies. They exchanged coats of seals' and bears' skins, and such like, with our men, and received bells, looking-glasses, and other toys in recompense thereof again. After great courtesy and many meetings, our mariners, contrary to their captain's direction, began more easily to trust them; and five of our men going ashore were by them intercepted with their boat, and were never since heard of to this day again; so that the captain being destitute of boat, bark, and all company, had scarcely sufficient number to conduct back his bark again. He could now neither convey himself ashore to rescue his men, if he had been able, for want of a boat; and again the subtle traitors were so wary, as they would after that never come within our men's danger. The captain, notwithstanding, desirous of bringing some token from thence of his being there, was greatly discontented that he had not before apprehended some of them; and, therefore, to deceive the deceivers, he wrought a pretty policy. For knowing well how they greatly delighted in our toys, and specially in bells, he rang a pretty loud bell, making signs that he would give him the same who would come and fetch it. And because they would not come within his danger for fear, he flung one bell unto them, which of purpose he threw short, that it might fall into the sea and be lost. And to make them more greedy of the matter he rang a louder bell, so that in the end one of them came near the ship side to receive the bell. Which when he thought to take at the captain's hand, he was thereby taken himself; for the captain, being readily provided, let the bell fall, and caught the man fast, and plucked him with main force, boat and all, into his bark out of the sea. Whereupon, when he found himself in captivity, for very choler and disdain he bit his tongue in twain within his mouth; notwithstanding, he died not thereof, but lived until he came in England, and then he died of cold which he had taken at sea. Now with this new prey, which was a sufficient witness of the captain's far and tedious travel toward the unknown parts of the world, as did well appear by this strange infidel, whose like was never seen, read, nor heard of before, and whose language was neither known nor understood of any, the said Captain Frobisher returned homeward, and arrived in England, in Harwich, the second of October following, and thence came to London, 1576, where he was highly commended of all men for his great and notable attempt, but specially famous for the great hope he brought of the passage to Cataya. And it is especially to be remembered that at their first arrival in those parts there lay so great store of ice all the coast along, so thick together, that hardly his boat could pass unto the shore. At length, after divers attempts, he commanded his company, if by any possible means they could get ashore, to bring him whatsoever thing they could first find, whether it were living or dead, stock or stone, in token of Christian possession, which thereby he took in behalf of the Queen's most excellent majesty, thinking that thereby he might justify the having and enjoying of the same things that grew in these unknown parts. Some of his company brought flowers, some green grass; and one brought a piece of black stone, much like to a sea coal in color, which by the weight seemed to be some kind of metal or mineral. This was a thing of no account in the judgment of the captain at first sight; and yet for novelty it was kept, in respect of the place from whence it came. After his arrival in London, being demanded of sundry his friends what thing he had brought them home out of that country, he had nothing left to present them withal but a piece of this black stone. And it fortuned a gentlewoman, one of the adventurer's wives, to have a piece thereof, which by chance she threw and burned in the fire, so long that at the length being taken forth, and quenched in a little vinegar, it glistened with a bright marquesite of gold. Whereupon the matter being called in some question, it was brought to certain gold-finers in London to make assay thereof, who gave out that it held gold, and that very richly for the quantity.[8] Afterward the same gold-finers promised great matters thereof if there were any store to be found, and offered themselves to adventure for the searching of those parts from whence the same was brought. Some that had great hope of the matter sought secretly to have a lease at her majesty's hands of those places, whereby to enjoy the mass of so great a public profit unto their own private gains. [8] The English assayers all pronounced the stone worthless. An Italian, Giovanni Baptista Agnello, reported it to contain gold. On being questioned as to how it was that he alone was able to produce gold from the stone, he is said to have replied, "_Bisogna safiere adular la natura_" ("Nature requires coaxing "). Agnello's assay necessarily involved the addition of other substances for the purpose of separating the gold; and it has been suggested that the gold produced by him was itself added during this process. There is no good reason for thinking so. Pyrites often contains a minute proportion of gold. Admitting the possibility of trickery in the case of the small specimen submitted to Agnello, it is incredible that the fraud should have been successfully repeated when the two hundred tons of mineral brought back by the second expedition came to be tested. The mineral undoubtedly contained gold, but not enough to pay for the carriage and working. In conclusion, the hope of more of the same gold ore to be found kindled a greater opinion in the hearts of many to advance the voyage again. Whereupon preparation was made for a new voyage against the year following, and the captain more specially directed by commission for the searching more of this gold ore than for the searching any further discovery of the passage. And being well accompanied with divers resolute and forward gentlemen, her majesty then lying at the Right Honorable the Lord of Warwick's house, in Essex, he came to take his leave; and kissing her highness' hands, with gracious countenance and comfortable words departed toward his charge. BUILDING OF THE FIRST THEATRE IN ENGLAND A.D. 1576 KARL MANTZIUS _A History of the Theatre_, the scholarly work of Mantzius, has had no time to become a classic--published 1904--but certainly the author has delved into his subject with a minuteness and presented it with a lively interest which fully justify the selection of his work for presentation here. The theatre has become so prominent an institution among us that its origin must be of interest to all; and the building of the first theatre is inextricably interwoven with the larger and vaguer story of the rise of the modern drama itself. The dramatic arts of Greece and Rome had never been wholly forgotten. Their traditions survived in Italy in the crude pantomime performances of the common people. Practically, however, the Middle Ages invented a new dramatic art of their own, developed from the gorgeous religious pantomime of the church services. The theatre was born of the cathedral; the stage, of the altar. The plays, at first purely religious, rapidly developed a comic side, which by degrees became their central theme. The moral purpose of the performance was forgotten; and the Church disowned its evil changeling. To none of these early plays can the term "drama" be accurately applied; for each and all of them lack plot. They are merely a series of disconnected scenes, pictures having small connection and less development. The idea of pursuing a single, slowly developing story to its climax and conclusion dawns upon the modern stage only with the English Elizabethan drama. Despite our imperfect knowledge of the plays and players of that time, one feels almost justified in saying that the modern drama was created about 1580 by Christopher Marlowe and was raised to the highest point of its development about 1600 by William Shakespeare. At the date of Shakespeare's birth, 1564, no permanent theatre as yet existed in England. But there had long existed a class of professional actors, descended partly from the mystery and the miracle-playing artisans of the Middle Ages, partly from the strolling players, equilibrists, jugglers, and jesters. Professional Italian actors, players of the _commedia dell'arte_, who in the sixteenth century spread their gay and varied art all over Europe, also supplied English players with that touch of professional technique in which their somewhat vacillating and half-amateurish arts were still wanting. While, however, as far as France is concerned, the Italian influence must strike everybody who studies the stage history of the country, the evidence of a fertilization of English scenic art by the commedia dell' arte is scanty. Yet I think it is sufficient to deserve more attention than has hitherto been bestowed upon it. In any case there is sufficient evidence to prove that Italian professional actors penetrated into England and exercised their art there. In January, 1577, an Italian comedian came to London with his company. The English called him Drousiano, but his real name was Drousiano Martinelli, the same who, with his brother Tristano, visited the court of Philip II, and there is no reason to suppose that he was either the first or the last of his countrymen who tried to carry off English gold from merry London. The typical Italian masks are quite well known to the authors of that period. Thus Thomas Heywood mentions all these doctors, zanies, pantaloons, and harlequins, in which the French, and still more the Italians, distinguished themselves. In Kyd's _Spanish Tragedy_, and in Ben Jonson's _The Case is Altered_, mention is made of the Italian improvised comedy, and a few of the well-known types of character in the dramatic literature of the time bear distinct traces of having been influenced by Italian masks, _e.g._, Ralph Roister Doister in Udall's comedy of that name; as well as the splendid Captain Bobadill and his no less amusing companion, Captain Tucca, in Ben Jonson's _Every Man in his Humour_ and _The Poetaster_, all of which are reproductions of the typical _capitano_. However, it is not these literary testimonies that I consider the most striking evidence of the influence of Italian professional technique on English professional actors. It is a remarkable discovery made by the highly esteemed Shakespearean archaeologist, Edmund Malone, about a century ago, in Dulwich College, that mine of ancient English dramatic research, founded by the actor Edward Alleyn. Among the notes left by the old pawnbroker and theatrical manager, Henslowe, and the various papers, letters, parts, accounts, etc., of his son-in-law, the famous and very wealthy actor Alleyn, among these rare documents, to which we owe a great part of our knowledge of the Shakespearean stage, Malone found four remarkable card-board tables, on which the plots of as many plays were put down, together with the names of the persons represented, their entrances and exits, cues for music, sonnets, etc. According to Collier's description, these tables--one of which only is preserved, the three others having disappeared through the carelessness and disorder which at that time prevailed in the Dulwich treasury--were about fifteen inches in length and nine in breadth. They were divided into two columns, and between these, toward the top of the table, there was a square hole for hanging it up on a hook or some such thing. They bore the following titles: 1. The Plotte of the Deade Man's Fortune. 2. The Plotte of the First Parte of Tamar Cain. 3. The Plotte of Frederick and Basilea. 4. The Plotte of the Second Parte of the Seven Deadlie Sinns. The last-mentioned play is known for certain to have been composed by the excellent comic actor, Richard Tarlton. Gabriel Harvey, the astrologist, and the implacable antagonist of Thomas Nash, tells us in his letters how Tarlton himself in Oxford invited him to see his celebrated play on _The Seven Deadly Sins_; Harvey asked him which of the seven was his own deadly sin, and he instantly replied, "By G----, the sinne of other gentlemen, lechery." Tarlton died in the year 1588, and some of the other plays, especially _The Dead Man's Fortune_, are considered to be a good deal older than his. They belong, therefore, to an early period of the English Renaissance stage. These four tables caused considerable trouble to Malone and his contemporary Steevens, as well as to later investigators, as they are without equals in the archæology of the English stage. If these men had known that such tables, containing the plot of the piece which was acted at the time, were always hung upon the stage of the Italian commedia dell' arte in order to assist the memory of the improvising actors, they would have seen instantly that their essential historical importance to us consists in their showing by documentary evidence how the early Elizabethan scenic art in its outer form was influenced and improved by the Italians. The fact that one of the principal characters in the oldest scenario, _The Dead Man's Fortune_, bears the name of "Panteloun" further confirms this supposition. This is not the place to investigate how far the English were influenced by Italian professional dramatic art. At any rate, the English national character differed too much from the Italian to allow it to receive more than an outward and formal stamp. And even this superficial effect is much less significant in England than in France. Still, we are certainly not mistaken in assuming that it helped to strengthen English dramatic art, which already possessed no small amount of power; and we may take it for granted that about the time of Shakespeare's birth London possessed a socially and professionally organized class of actors, in spite of the fact that they did not yet possess a theatre of their own. Before proper theatres were built, and after the time of the great mysteries, the actors found a refuge for their art chiefly in the inns, those splendid and expensive old public-houses which convey to our minds the idea of old-fashioned and picturesque comfort; where the nobility and clergy sought their quarters in winter, and where the carriers unloaded their goods in the large square yards, which were surrounded on all sides by the walls of the inn. On these walls there were galleries running all round, supported by wooden pillars and with steep picturesque ladders running up to them. It was in these yards of the Cross Keys in Gracechurch Street, of The Bull in Bishopsgate Street, La Belle Sauvage on Ludgate Hill, or the Tabbard Inn in Southwark that the actors set up their stages. Perhaps it was this very circumstance that became one of the indirect reasons why they finally were obliged to build a house for themselves. Certainly the inns offered advantages to the actors; they were meeting-places for the public, frequented by lords and other persons of distinction; probably the companies paid next to nothing for the use of them. In themselves they afforded good room for the audience, with a natural pit for ordinary people in the yard, and with more comfortable "boxes" for the more distinguished part of the audience on the surrounding balconies and at the windows facing the yard. On the other hand, these inn-theatres had their drawbacks. In the first place, the actors were not on their own ground, and so, after all, they were only tolerated. Secondly, it must have been very difficult for them to keep to regular prices, and especially to secure the payment of the entrance fee, as they had probably to collect the money during or after the performance, thus depending on the liberality of the public for their remuneration. And finally, worst of all, they were led into quarrels with the lord mayor and with the citizens. Indeed, it is not unlikely that these performances in the inns caused a good deal of noise and disturbance in the quarters where they took place, and that the joyous, but by no means refined or quiet, "pit," when going home, excited by one of Tarlton's jigs and by the strong ale of the inn, was not animated by very respectful feelings toward their sour Puritan fellow-citizens, who were scandalized as they watched "merry London" crowding past their windows. Nor is it improbable that these anything but respectful feelings vented themselves in some of the coarse expressions in which the plays of those times abound, where Puritanism, the sworn enemy, is concerned; "this barbarous sect," as it is called by a modern English author, "from whose inherited and contagious tyranny this nation is as yet but imperfectly released." It is certain, at any rate, that the Puritan citizens entertained a deep and sincere hatred of anything connected with plays and actors, and if it had been in their power to do what they liked, the world would once for all have been relieved of such pernicious and wicked vagabonds as William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and Ben Jonson. Fortunately, however, this power did not lie with the Puritans only. Luckily, this sect, which like a malicious growth seemed to have gathered to itself all the stubbornness, insensibility, and rude obstinacy of the nation, was counterbalanced by a refined and intellectual nobility, which was inspired by the new artistic and philosophical thought of the Renaissance, and seemed to foresee, if not fully to recognize, what a mine of poetry the English theatre of those times was destined to be. Thanks to men like Sir Francis Walsingham, Lords Leicester, Nottingham, Strange, and Sussex, the drama resisted for a time the violent and unwearied attacks of the Puritans. Most fortunately for the actors also, Queen Elizabeth, as well as her successors, James I and Charles I, was fond of plays and favorably inclined toward their performers. Elizabeth rendered a great service to the actors by placing them under the patronage of the nobility. The municipal authorities, who were frequently Puritan, considered neither dramatic art nor dramatic poetry as an acceptable means of livelihood; consequently, those who cultivated these noble arts easily exposed themselves to being treated as "masterless men," unless they could give a reference to some distinguished aristocratic name. The Queen ordered by law--in a statute which has often been misunderstood--"that all common players of interludes wandering abroad, other than players of interludes belonging to any baron of this realme, or any other honorable personage of greater degree, to be authorized to play under the hand and seale of arms of such baron or personage, shall be adjudged and deemed rogues and vagabonds"; in other words, the Queen urged all actors, for their own sakes, to place themselves under the patronage of some nobleman, in order to protect them against the persecution of the Puritan citizens. But even such mighty protection could not entirely shield them, and it was this very power of the London corporation to injure the actors that caused the establishment of the first London theatre. In the year 1572 the plague broke out in London; it killed many thousands of people, and kept recurring at certain intervals during the next twenty or thirty years, carrying horror and death with it. Under these circumstances all dramatic performances were prohibited for a time in London, a precaution which was reasonable enough, as the dense crowding of people might have helped to spread the disease. But the magistrate seems to have caught eagerly at this opportunity of interfering. In Harrison's _Description of England_ the event is reported as follows: "Plaies are banished for a time out of London, lest the resort unto them should ingender a plague, or rather disperse it, being already begonne. Would to God these comon plaies were exiled for altogether as seminaries of impiety, and their theatres pulled downe as no better than houses of baudrie. It is an evident token of a wicked time when plaiers wexe so rich that they can build suche houses. As moche I wish also to our comon beare baitinges used on the Sabaothe daies." We cannot help noticing the predilection of the Puritans for the coarse bear-fights, which in their opinion were only displeasing to God when performed on a Sabbath, whereas the playhouses at any time were no better than the "ill-famed stews" in Southwark. It cannot be denied, however, that under the prevailing circumstances it was quite right that the playhouses should be temporarily forbidden. But the sudden and unwarranted expulsion of all dramatic performances from the precincts of London a few years later, 1575, cannot be accounted for otherwise than by the increasing popularity which these plays enjoyed among the non-Puritan public, and the envy with which the clergy saw the people crowding much more to the places where actors interpreted the rising poets than to those where the preachers themselves enunciated their gloomy doctrine. In the year 1574 the actor James Burbage, with four other actors, all belonging to the retinue of the Earl of Leicester, had received permission from the Queen to perform all kinds of plays anywhere in England, "for the recreation of her beloved subjects as well as for her own comfort and pleasure, if it should please her to see them." Perhaps it was a counter-move on the part of the Puritan community when the lord mayor and the corporation in the following year straightway forbade all plays within the precincts of the town. If so, it proved a failure. James Burbage resolutely hired a liberty outside the city, and here, in 1576, on the premises of an ancient Roman Catholic priory, he built the first English playhouse, which he named "The Theatre." In the following year The Theatre gained an ally in "The Curtain," which was built in the same neighborhood, both, of course, causing great indignation among the Puritans. In 1577, the year after the first playhouse had been erected, there appeared a furious pamphlet, by John Northbrooke, against "dicing, dancing, plays and interludes as well as other idle pastimes." No doubt all possible means were taken to have plays forbidden and the playhouses pulled down, but though the attack of the Black Army never ceased for a moment, the Puritans did not succeed in getting the better of the theatres till the year 1642, when they acquired political power through the civil war; and, fortunately for the part of mankind which appreciates art, this precious flower of culture, one of the richest and most remarkable periods in the life of dramatic art, had developed into full bloom before the outbreak of the war. In a sermon of 1578 we read the following bitter and deep-drawn sigh by the clergyman John Stockwood: "Wyll not a fylthye playe wyth the blast of a trumpette sooner call thyther a thousande than an houres tolling of a bell bring to the sermon a hundred?--nay, even heere in the Citie, without it be at this place and some other certaine ordinarie audience, where shall you finde a reasonable company?--whereas, if you resort to the Theatre, The Curtayne, and other places of playes in the Citie, you shall on the Lord's Day have these places, with many other that I cannot reckon, so full as possible they can throng." That the bold defiance with which James Burbage and the other actors met the lord mayor and the corporation should prove so successful lay almost in the nature of things. The prohibition of plays within the bounds of the city of London did not mean that they were looked upon with animosity by the people, but merely that a majority of the corporation was unfriendly to them. It was soon shown that, though the wise city fathers could easily forbid the actors to perform their plays in London, they could not prevent the enthusiastic public from walking in crowds a mile out of town in order to see such performances, especially as people were quite accustomed to the journey. Burbage, who was a business-like man, had chosen his ground quite close to the public places, where the Londoners practised their open-air sports and amused themselves with tennis and football, stone-throwing, cock fights, and archery. Although Burbage called his new building "The Theatre," the title was not intended to mean _the_ theatre _par excellence_, for the word "theatre" was not then commonly used to denote a building in which dramatic representations were performed. It is more probable that he thought he had succeeded in choosing an elegant name with a certain suggestion of the old classics, which was euphonious and not quite common. The usual name for a theatre was the playhouse, a house intended for all kinds of games and sport, such as fencing, bear-fights, bull-fights, jigs, morris-dances, and pantomimes, as well as for dramatic performances. It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that the theatrical entertainments of those times were something more or less literary; anyhow, something quite apart from the dramatic performances of the present day. They were meant to satisfy mixed desires in the nation; but, besides satisfying its craving for beautiful, picturesque language, fine spectacles, and merry jests, they also gratified its desire for the display of physical strength, for shallow rhyming tricks and competitions, graceful exercises of the body, indeed for all that might be included under the notion of sport and give opportunity for betting. Therefore, the plays, properly so called, alternated with fights between animals, in which bears and bulls were baited by great blood-thirsty bulldogs, or with fencing-matches fought by celebrated English and foreign fencing-masters, with rope-dancing, acrobatic tricks, and boxing. Even the serious performances ended with a more or less absurd jig, in which the clown sang endless songs about the events of the day, and danced interminable morris-dances. Shakespeare and his contemporaries, whose works are now reckoned among the first literature--so much so that they are scarcely read any longer--at the time of which we are speaking were nothing but practical playwrights, and Shakespeare was so far from dreaming that the time would come when his plays would be counted among the most precious treasures of posterity that, as we know, he did not even take the trouble to have a printed edition of his works published. The many fighting-scenes in the plays of the time, in Shakespeare's among the rest, the wrestling-match in _As You Like It_, the duel between Macduff and Macbeth, the fencing-scene between Hamlet and Laertes, no doubt afforded opportunities for magnificent displays of skill in the use of arms and in physical exercises, and we may be sure that the spectators followed those scenes with an interest which was perhaps more of a sporting than of a literary nature. It was according to a well-calculated plan, therefore, that the elder Burbage erected his playhouse north of the city, in Finsbury Fields, where from ancient times the people had been accustomed to see and practise military exercises and other sports, and where the soldiers were still in the habit of practising archery and musketry. And it was with equally sound calculation that he gave the theatre its particular form, which remained essentially the same in all the playhouses of the Shakespearean period. Before the establishment of the permanent theatres there had long existed amphitheatres for the performance of fights between animals, the so-called "rings." These rings--the auditorium as well as the arena--were open all round, and the seats, like those of the ancient Greek theatre, were placed according to the natural formation of the ground. Burbage retained the circular amphitheatrical form; being a joiner as well as an actor and manager, he was no doubt his own architect in his new theatrical enterprise. But instead of the roofless, open-air auditorium, he constructed a covered circular wooden building with stories or galleries, which was made so as to contain a number of boxes for the distinguished and well-paying public, and which entirely enclosed the open, uncovered arena, which, as it recalled the inn-yards, was called the "yard," or afterward, perhaps on account of the high pitlike construction surrounding it, the "pit," whence the poorest and humblest spectators enjoyed the performances. Finally, he built a covered "tire-house"--or "tiring-house," as it was called in those times--for the actors, a place in which also all the requisites and the so-called "properties" were kept. This tiring-house stood within the circle, and its roof towered up above the auditorium. From the tiring-house the stage--a simple wooden platform resting on rams--was pushed forward, and it might be removed when the arena was to be used for fights between animals, etc., instead of dramatic performances. By this reform of the building--a reform which became epoch-making to the whole Shakespearean period--James Burbage obtained a threefold advantage: more comfortable seats for the more distinguished portion of the audience, where they were sheltered from wind and weather; the use of the house both for plays and the baiting of animals; and the power to oblige the public to pay their admission at certain doors of his building, which spared him the unpleasant and unsafe collection of money from spectators, who might not always be very willing to pay. But this result was not obtained without considerable expense. Though we are not so fortunate as to possess a drawing of the outside or inside of The Theatre, about the shape of which, therefore, we must partly draw our conclusions from analogy with other playhouses, we are comparatively well informed as to its outward history till it was pulled down, in 1598-1599. Thus we know that the enterprise cost James Burbage six hundred sixty-six pounds thirteen shillings fourpence, a considerable sum in those days, which would be equal to about eightfold that amount in our own time. This money Burbage borrowed of his father-in-law, John Braynes, to whom he had to pay high interest, and it represented only the cost of the building itself, for he did not buy the ground on which it stood. This ground belonged to one Giles Allen, and in the contract between him and Burbage it was settled, among other points, that if, in the course of the first ten years after the drawing up of the lease, Burbage spent a sum of two hundred pounds or more on the building, he should have a right to remove it after the expiration of the lease. The lease was drawn up in the year 1576, for a period of twenty-one years. In spite of many pecuniary difficulties, which the heavy rent and high interest naturally entailed on Burbage--who for some time even seems to have been obliged to mortgage his entire property--and innumerable annoyances from the Puritans, Burbage succeeded in keeping his theatre above water till the expiration of the lease and till his own death, which occurred in 1597. But before this date he had been negotiating with the proprietor, Giles Allen, about a prolongation of the lease. Allen, who was evidently as grasping as he was difficult to deal with, and who may not unjustly be suspected of having been an instrument in the hands of the Puritan authorities, had caused him a good deal of trouble in the course of years. On seeing how people crowded to the theatre, he had tried, for one thing, to press Burbage for a higher rent, and partly for religious, partly for moral reasons, had threatened to forbid the running of a playhouse on his property. The negotiations about the new lease had not come to an end when the elder Burbage died, and left his two sons, Cuthbert, who was a bookseller, and Richard, who was the leading actor of his time, not only burdened with the playhouse, the long lease of which had expired, but opposed by a proprietor with whom it was impossible to come to terms, and by a magistrate who was more eager than ever to deal a blow at the playhouses. In the same year, when the two brothers took on The Theatre, the lord mayor of London actually succeeded in inducing the privy council to issue an order of suppression against it and other playhouses. The order begins as follows: "Her Majestie being informed that there are verie greate disorders committed in the common playhouses both by lewd matters that are handled on the stages, and by resorte and confluence of bad people, hathe given direction that not onlie no playes shall be used within London or about the Citty, or in any public place, during this tyme of sommer, but that all those playhouses that are erected and built only for suche purposes shall be plucked downe, namelie The Curtayne and The Theatre nere to Shorditch, or any other within that county." It is not known whether the order was withdrawn or whether the disregard of it was winked at--the court very likely was not particularly inclined to see the sentence or condemnation carried out. At all events, neither The Curtain nor The Theatre was pulled down at the time. But the order shows how much power the Puritans possessed, and what difficulties the brothers Burbage had to contend with. They seem, however, to have inherited their father's resolute character. Since it seemed quite impossible to come to terms with the grasping proprietor, Allen, the brothers were sensible enough to avail themselves of the clause in the now expired lease, which permitted them to pull down and remove the buildings they had erected on the premises, in case they had spent at least two hundred pounds on them during the first ten years. This sum had been much exceeded at the time, and one day, to the great consternation and anger of the astonished Giles Allen, they simply removed The Theatre. One of the paragraphs in the account of the subsequent lawsuit between Allen and the Burbages gives a very vivid idea of this remarkable removal. Allen accuses Cuthbert Burbage of "unlawfully combininge and confederatinge himselfe with the sayd Richard Burbage, and one Peter Streat, William Smyth and divers other persons, to the number of twelve, to your subject unknowne, did aboute the eight and twentyth daye of December in the one and fortyth yeere of your Highnes raygne (1598) ryotouslye assemble themselves together, and then and there armed themselves with dyvers and manye unlawfull and offensive weapons, as, namelye, swordes, daggers, billes, axes, and such like, and so armed, did then repayre unto the sayd Theatre, and then and there, armed as aforesayd, in verye ryotous, outragious and forcyble manner, and contrarye to the lawes of your highnes realme, attempted to pull down the sayd Theatre, whereupon divers of your subjectes, servauntes, and farmers, there goinge aboute in peaceable manner to procure them to desist from that their unlawfull enterpryse, they the sayd ryotous persons aforesayd notwithstanding procured then therein with greate vyolence, not only then and there forcyblye and ryotouslye resisting your subjectes, servauntes, and farmers, but also then and there pulling, breaking, and throwing downe the sayd Theatre in verye outragious, violent, and riotous sort, to the great disturbance and terrefyeing not onlye of your subjectes sayd servauntes and farmers, but of divers others of your Majesties loving subjectes there neere inhabitinge; and having so done, did then alsoe in most forcible and ryotous manner take and carrye away from thence all the wood and timber thereof, unto the Bancksyde in the parishe of St. Marye Overyes, and there erected a newe playehouse with the sayd timber and wood." Such was the end of the first short-lived London playhouse. But the new house, which was built out of its materials on the "Bankside," was the celebrated "Globe," the name of which is inseparably connected with that of Shakespeare. As we said above, James Burbage, the creator of The Theatre, belonged to the company which played under the patronage of Lord Leicester, and therefore went under the name of "Lord Leicester's Servants" or "Men." The four other actors, who in 1574 received a royal license to act from Queen Elizabeth, were John Perkin, John Lanham, William Jonson, and Robert Wilson. While James Burbage was no doubt the leader of the company, Robert Wilson is supposed to have been its chief actor, at all events of comic parts, and he was the only one among the five who was also a dramatic author. Under his name, but after his death, Cuthbert Burbage published, in 1594, _The Prophecy of the Cobbler_; and among anonymous plays the following are ascribed to him: _Fair Eve, The Miller's Daughter from Manchester, The Three Ladies of London_, etc. Most likely some of Wilson's plays were acted in The Theatre. With this exception the internal history of this playhouse is rather obscure, and very little is known of its _répertoire_. A few titles may be found in contemporary literature, such as _The Blacksmith's Daughter_, mentioned by the Puritan Gosson in his _School of Abuse_, as "containing the treachery of Turks, the honorable bounty of a noble mind, the shining of virtue in distress," _The Conspiracy of Catilina, Cæsar and Pompey_, and _The Play about the Fabians_. All these must have belonged to the earliest répertoire of The Theatre, for Gosson's _School of Abuse_ appeared in 1579. It is of more interest that Thomas Lodge mentions the original pre-Shakespearean _Hamlet_ as having been acted in The Theatre. He speaks of one who "looks as pale as the visard of the ghost which cries so miserably at The Theatre, like an oister-wife, 'Hamlet revenge.'" The same company, originally "Lord Leicester's Servants," continued to act in The Theatre till it was pulled down. But the company several times changed its patron and consequently its name. In 1588 Lord Leicester died, and after his death Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange, became the patron of the company; till 1592, therefore, the actors were called "Lord Strange's Men." But in 1592 Lord Strange was created earl of Derby; consequently the troupe became for two years "The Earl of Derby's Men." In 1594 the Earl of Derby died, and Henry Carey, first Lord Hunsdon and lord chamberlain, undertook to become patron of the company, which, therefore, adopted the name of "The Lord Chamberlain's Servants." The son of Lord Hunsdon, George Carey, second Lord Hunsdon, after his father's death (in 1596) also inherited the patronage of the actors, and for almost a year they had to content themselves with being called "Lord Hunsdon's Men," until Lord Hunsdon became lord chamberlain, like his father, and allowed the company to resume the title of "The Lord Chamberlain's Servants," 1597. This name the actors retained until the accession of King James, in 1603, after which they were promoted to the title of "The King's Players"; this title put them in the first rank, which, indeed, they had long held in reality, and which they kept till the suppression of the playhouses in 1642. It is no slight task for one who desires to study theatrical affairs in the time of Shakespeare, to make himself acquainted with the varying names of the companies of actors; but without such knowledge it would be very difficult to pursue the thread of the history even of the leading companies. About the year 1590 our company received an addition in the person of a young man, who was not only a skilled and useful actor, but who also possessed the accomplishment of being able to adapt older plays to the taste of the times, and even proved to have the gift of writing tolerably good plays himself, though older and jealous colleagues might hint at their not being altogether original. This young man, whose capacities became of no slight use to the company and The Theatre, was named William Shakespeare. At this time the leading actors of The Theatre were the great tragedian Richard Burbage, who was then quite a young man, Henry Condell, and John Heminge, who continued to be the mainstays of the company. There was also the clown, Augustine Phillips, an excellent comic actor of the old school. These four became the most intimate friends of Shakespeare, and to Condell and Heminge posterity owes special gratitude, since it was they who, after the death of Shakespeare, undertook the publication of the first printed collection of his plays. It is impossible to decide definitely which of Shakespeare's plays belonged to the repertoire of The Theatre. It is probable that his first plays, _Love's Labor Lost, The Comedy of Errors, The Two Gentlemen of Verona_, and his first tragedy, _Romeo and Juliet_, saw the light on this stage between 1589 and 1591. Afterward, between 1594 and 1597, these were possibly increased by _A Midsummer Night's Dream, Richard the Second, King John, The Merchant of Venice_, and _Henry IV_. The repertoire of The Theatre also included the so-called "jigs," merry after-plays, mostly consisting of songs and dances, with frequent allusions to the events of the day, sneering at the Puritans, the magistrates, and other enemies of the playhouses. It has been briefly mentioned above that not long after the establishment of The Theatre--at the latest in the following year--this playhouse gained a companion in The Curtain, which thus became the second of its kind in London. The two playhouses were very close to each other, but for this very reason it seems natural to suppose that they were rather meant to support than to rival each other. They were like a kind of double-barrelled gun directed against the corporation, and they seem, indeed, to an equal extent, to have roused the anger of the Puritans, for they are generally mentioned together in the Puritan pamphlets directed against playhouses and all other wickedness. However, the history of The Curtain is almost unknown to us. While we know a good deal about the outward circumstances of The Theatre on account of the constant troubles which the Burbage family had to endure from the proprietor of the ground and the municipal authorities, and of the subsequent lawsuit, the reports we find about The Curtain are extremely meagre. We know neither when nor by whom it was built nor when it was pulled down. By a mistake which is natural enough, its name has been connected with the front curtain of the stage. We shall see later that no such curtain existed in the time of Shakespeare, and we do not know that the background draperies of that period had the fixed name of "curtain." Anyhow, the possibility of this derivation is absolutely excluded by the fact that the spot on which the second London playhouse was built, for some unknown reason, bore the name of "Curtayne Close." So the playhouse was simply named after the spot on which it was built. As long as The Theatre stood close beside it, the two companies shared almost the same fate. We have seen that in 1597 an order was issued to pull down both playhouses; this order, however, was never carried out. But after the removal of The Theatre to Bankside, The Curtain seems to have gone its own way. The actors, on the whole, were not afraid of pleading their cause from the stage, and of retorting on the attacks of their assailants by lashing them with the whip of caricature, and it seems that those of The Curtain had gone a little too far in their Aristophanic parodies of their worthy fellow-citizens and chief magistrate; for in May, 1601, the justices of the peace for the county of Middlesex received the following admonition from the privy council: "We doo understand that certaine players that used to recyte their playes at the Curtaine in Moorefeilds, do represent upon the stage in their interludes the persons of some gent of good desert and quality that are yet alive under obscure manner, but yet in such sorte that all the hearers may take notice both of the matter and the persons that are meant thereby. This beinge a thinge verye unfitte, offensive and contrary, to such direction as have been heretofore taken, that no plaies should be openly shewed but such as were first perused and allowed, and that minister no occasion of offence or scandall, wee do hereby require you that you do forthwith forbidd those players to whomsoever they appertaine that do play at the Curtaine in Moorefeildes to represent any such play, and that you will examine them who made that play and to shew the same unto you, and as you in your discrecions shall thincke the same unfitte to be publiquely shewed to forbidd them from henceforth to play the same eyther privately or publiquely; and if upon veiwe of the said play you shall finde the subject so odious and inconvenient as is informed, wee require you to take bond of the chiefest of them to aunswere their rashe and indiscreete dealing before us." We know nothing of the result of this prosecution, but we may be allowed to assume that it did not result in very severe measures. We seem to read a certain concealed sympathy in the writ of the great lords, and we cannot help suspecting that it was the Puritan citizens who felt themselves hit and who brought the complaint. If the lords had been the butt of the mockery, no doubt the proceeding of the actors would have appeared to them much worse than "rashe and indiscreete." Until the Globe theatre was built, the Burbages most likely possessed a share in The Curtain. At any rate, their company used that building alternately with their own; no doubt, for instance, during the period between the pulling down of The Theatre and the building of the Globe. During this period they played (as "The Lord Chamberlain's Men"), among other things, no less famous a piece than Ben Jonson's _Every Man in His Humour_, which, according to old tradition, was accepted on the recommendation of Shakespeare, after having been put aside contemptuously by the other leading actors. This splendid play had an enormous success. Of Shakespeare's plays, _Much Ado about Nothing_ and _The Second Part of King Henry IV_ were acted. There is scarcely any reason for assuming, with Halliwell-Phillipps and Ordish, that the first performance of _Henry V_ took place at The Curtain. At the appearance of this play, in 1599, the Globe theatre was built, and we cannot doubt that it was here that this popular play saw the light. So the frequently mentioned "wooden O" in the prologue does not allude to The Curtain, but to the Globe. The outward shape of The Curtain we must imagine to have been, like that of The Theatre, circular, and unroofed in the centre. It is generally supposed to have been somewhat smaller than Burbage's first theatre. The last period of the existence of The Curtain is enveloped in obscurity. But there is no reason to suppose that it did not continue to exist till all playhouses were put down, during the civil war, 1642-1647. If The Curtain was preserved as long as that, its life was longer than that of any other playhouse of the Shakespearean period. COSSACK CONQUEST OF SIBERIA A.D. 1581 NIKOLAI M. KARAMZIN[1] Siberia, the northern home of the Tartars, was little known, even to the Russians, until the latter part of the sixteenth century. The Cossack conquest of the western portion of the region now called Siberia opened that vast territory to Muscovite occupation, and gradually it has become known to the world as part of the Russian empire. [1] Translated by Chauncey C. Starkweather. Nothing certain is known of the origin of the Cossack tribes, and no final agreement has been reached as to the derivation of their name. According to later supposition, their nucleus was a body of refugees from the ancient Russian lands invaded by Tartars in the thirteenth century. Some of those refugees settled between the embouchures of the Ural River, others near the mouth of the Don. Driven by invasion to form themselves into a military organization, the Cossacks of the Don became a formidable confederacy. Since 1549 they have been under the protection of Russia, and have rendered great service to the empire. Although they have always, since the time of Ivan IV, called the "Terrible" (1547-1584), furnished valorous soldiers to Russia, the Cossacks of the Don have often rebelled and disowned her authority. Russian troops have frequently been ordered to exterminate them. During the last years of Ivan IV these Cossacks entered upon that eastern conquest which led to Russian expansion into Asia. Karamzin, the Russian historian, is the most eminent authority on this subject. Among the enterprising leaders of the Cossacks at this time were Iermak Timofeif, John Koltzo--condemned to death by the Czar--James Mikhailoff, Necetas Pan, and Matthew Meschteriak, all noted for their rare intrepidity. The Stroganoffs, having heard of the terror inspired by their audacity among peaceful travellers, as well as amid the nomad tribes of the neighborhood, proposed an honorable service to these five brave men. On April 6, 1579, they sent them presents, accompanied by a letter in which they urged them to quit an occupation unworthy of Christian soldiers, to leave the class of brigands, and to become warriors of the White Czar, the monarch of Muscovy; to seek, in fine, dangers exempt from dishonor, by making peace with God and Russia. "We have," they added, "lands and fortresses, but few soldiers; come and defend great Perm and the Christian countries of the North." At these propositions Iermak and his companions shed tears of emotion. The hope of effacing their disgrace by glorious deeds, by services rendered to the State, the idea of exchanging the title of audacious brigands for that of brave defenders of their country, caused a keen sensibility in these men, uncouth, if you will, but with hearts still susceptible of remorse. Unfurling their standard on the bank of the Volga, they made an appeal to their comrades, and assembled five hundred fifty bold partisans, at the head of whom they arrived, burning with zeal, in the presence of the Stroganoffs, who received them with joy, as the annalist relates. The desires of the former, the promises of the latter, were realized. The Cossack leaders became the bucklers of the Christian country. The infidels trembled at the aspect of death which met them wherever they dared to show themselves. Indeed, on July 22, 1581, the Cossacks completely overthrew the mirza Begouly, who at the head of seven hundred Vogulitches and Ostiaks, had ravaged the colonies founded upon the Silva and the Tchusovaya. This success was the forerunner of more considerable advantages. The Stroganoffs had in view not merely the defence of their cities, in calling the Cossacks to their service. When they had sufficiently tested the courage and fidelity of these warriors, and had learned the talent and boldness of Iermak Timofeif, their principal leader--of obscure origin, the annals say, but illustrious by his greatness of soul--they formed a troop especially composed of Tartars subject to Russia, of Lithuanians and of Germans, ransomed from captivity among the Nogais, for the latter brought, as a matter of custom in their encampments, the prisoners whom they made in war, as mercenaries of the Czar. In fine, after having made provisions of arms and of food, the Stroganoffs openly announced an expedition, which, under the orders of Iermak, should have Siberia for its objective point. The number of fighting men amounted to eight hundred forty, all animated with zeal and transported with joy. Some dreamed of honor, others thought of the spoils. The hope of meriting their pardon by the Czar inflamed the Cossacks, and the German or Polish captives, who sighed for liberty, considering Siberia the road to their fatherland. Iermak began by organizing his little army. He named the hetmans, subaltern officers, and appointed the brave John Koltzo as second in command. Long-boats were laden with munitions of war and food, light artillery and long arquebuses. He procured guides, interpreters, priests, had prayers said, and received the final instructions of the Stroganoffs. The latter were conceived in the following terms: "Go in peace to scour the country of Siberia and put to flight the impious Kutchum." After having taken the oath of valor and chastity, Iermak set out, on September 1, 1581, at the sound of warlike trumpets, on the Tchusovaya, and directed his march toward the Ural Mountains, preparing himself for great activity, without counting upon any assistance. This expedition was even made without the knowledge of the Czar, for the Stroganoffs, who had obtained the grant of the countries situated on the other side of the chain of rocky mountains, thought themselves able to dispense with soliciting of the Czar a new sanction for their important enterprise. We shall see that Ivan did not share this opinion. At the moment when the states of Kutchum were to become the conquest of the Russian Pizarro--as redoubtable for the savages as he of Spain, but less terrible for humanity--the Prince of Pelim with the Vogulitches, the Ostiaks, the Siberian Tartars, and the Bashkirs made a sudden irruption upon the borders of the Kama. He destroyed the Russian colonies near Tcherdin, Ussolie, as well as many other new fortresses of the Stroganoffs, and put to death or dragged into captivity a great number of Christians who were deprived of defenders. But at the news of the march of the Cossacks against Siberia he left our frontiers to fly to the defence of his own states. The crime of these depredations was laid to the Stroganoffs. Upon a report of Basile Pilepitsin, Governor of Tcherdin, Ivan wrote him that he was either unable on unwilling to look after the frontiers. "You have taken upon yourself," he added, "to recall proscribed Cossacks, true bandits, whom you have sent to make war upon Siberia. This enterprise, suited to irritate the Prince of Pelim and the sultan Kutchum, is a treason worthy of the last punishment! I command you to cause Iermak and his companions to start without delay for Perm and Ussolie on the Kama, where they may be able to efface their faults by forcing the Ostiaks and the Vogulitches to submission. You may retain at the most one hundred Cossacks for the security of your little towns. In case you shall not execute my commands to the letter, if in the future Perm has still to suffer the attacks of the Prince of Pelim or of the Sultan of Siberia, I shall overwhelm you with the weight of my disgrace and I shall have all those traitors of Cossacks hanged." This menacing despatch made the Stroganoffs tremble. Nevertheless, a brilliant, unexpected success justified their enterprise and changed into favor the wrath of their sovereign. In beginning the story of the exploits of Iermak we shall at first say that, like everything that is extraordinary, they have made a strong impression upon the imagination of the vulgar, and have given birth to many fables, which are confused in the traditions with the real facts. Under the title of "annals" they have led the historians themselves into error. It is thus, for instance, that some hundreds of warriors, led by Iermak, have been metamorphosed into an army, and, like the soldiers of Cortés or Pizarro, have been counted as thousands. The months became years. A somewhat difficult navigation appeared marvellous. Leaving at one side the fabulous assertions we shall, for the principal facts, base our statements upon official documents and on the most truthful contemporaneous account of a conquest which was, indeed, of a most surprising character. In the first place, the Cossacks ascended, for four days, the course of the Tchusovaya, rapid and sown with rocks, as far as the chain of the Ural Mountains. The two following days, in the shadow of the masses of stone with which the interior of these mountains is covered, they reached, by means of the river Serebrennaia, the passage called the "Route of Siberia." There they stopped, and, ignorant of what might next happen to them, they constructed for their safety a kind of redoubt to which they gave the name of _kokui_. They had so far found only deserts and a small number of inhabitants. Then they moved, towing their small crafts as far as the river of Iaravle. These places are, even to this day, marked by the monuments of Iermak; rocks, caverns, remains of fortifications, bear his name. It is asserted that the big boats abandoned by him between the Serebrennaia and the Barantcha are not, in our time, entirely decayed, and that lofty trees shade their ruins, half reduced to dust. By the Iaravle and the Taghil the Cossacks, reaching the Tura, which waters one of the provinces of the empire of Siberia, for the first time drew the sword of conquerors. At the place where the city of Turinsk now stands there then existed a little town, the domain of the prince Yepantcha. He commanded a large number of Tartars and Vogulitches, and received these audacious strangers with a hail of arrows, shot from the banks of the river, at the place where is seen the present village of Usseninovo; but, frightened by a discharge of artillery, he forthwith took flight. Iermak caused the town to be destroyed, of which the name alone remains, for the residents still give to Turinsk the name "Town of Yepantcha." The camps and villages situated along the Tura were devastated. The Cossack leaders having taken, at the mouth of the Tavda, an officer of Kutchum's, named Tausak, he, desirous of saving his life, communicated to them important information regarding the country. As the price of his frankness, his liberty was given him, and he hastened to announce to his master that the predictions of the soothsayers of Siberia were being realized, for according to some accounts these pretended sorcerers had for a long time proclaimed the near and inevitable downfall of this state by an invasion of Christians. Tausak spoke of the Cossacks as wonderful men and invincible heroes, lancing fire and thunder which penetrate through the cuirasses. Nevertheless, Kutchum, although deprived of sight, had a strong soul. He made ready to defend his country and his faith with courage. He at once gathered all his subjects, made his nephew Mahmetkul enter the campaign at the head of a large force of cavalry, and he himself threw up fortifications on the bank of the Irtisch, at the foot of the Tchuvache mountain, thus closing to the Cossacks the road to Isker. The conquest of Siberia resembles, in more than one regard, that of Mexico and Peru. Here, also, it was a handful of men who, by means of fire-arms, put to flight thousands of soldiers armed with arrows or javelins. For the Moguls, like the Tartars of the North, were ignorant of the use of gunpowder, and toward the end of the sixteenth century they still used the arms employed in the time of Genghis. Each one of Iermak's warriors faced a crowd of the enemy. If his bullet only killed one of them, the frightful detonation of his gun put to flight twenty or thirty. In the first combat, held on the bank of the Tobol, at a place called Babassan, Iermak, under shelter of intrenchments, checked by some discharges of musketry the impetuosity of ten thousand men of Mahmetkul's cavalry, who rushed forward to crush him. He at once attacks them himself, carries off a complete victory, and, opened, as far as the mouth of the Tobol, a route whose perils were not yet all dissipated. Indeed, from the height of the steep banks of the river called Dolojai-Yar the natives poured a shower of arrows on the boats of the Cossacks. Another less important affair took place sixteen versts from Irtysh, in a country governed by a tribal chief named Karatcha, situated on the shore of a lake which up to to-day bears the name of this intimate counsellor of the sovereign of Siberia. Iermak having made himself master of the enemy's camp, found rich booty there, consisting of provisions of all kinds, as well as a large number of tuns of honey, intended for the consumption of the sovereign. The third combat, on the Irtysh, was bloody, and stubbornly fought. It cost some companions of Iermak their lives, and served to prove how dear even to barbarians is the independence of their fatherland; for the defenders of Siberia displayed resolution and intrepidity. Nevertheless, they yielded the victory to the Russians toward the end of the day, awaiting a new battle, and without losing either courage or hope. The blind Kutchum left the fortifications in order to camp upon the Tchuvache mountain. Mahmetkul was intrusted with the guard of the intrenchments, and the Cossacks, who the same evening captured the little town of Atik-Murza, dared not take repose for fear of an attack. Already the troops of Iermak were visibly diminished. Some Cossacks had been killed and many wounded, and amid constant fatigues a great number of them had no strength nor valor left. The leaders profited by this night of unrest to hold a council on the course to take, and in this consultation the voice of the weaklings was heard. "We have satiated our vengeance," they said. "It is time to turn back. New combats will be dangerous for us, since very soon we shall be unable to conquer any more for lack of fighters." "Brothers," answered the leaders, "there is left only one road for us, and that is the one in the front of us. The rivers are already covered with ice. In turning our backs, we shall perish amid the snows. And if we were fortunate enough to get home to Russia, we should arrive there with the tarnish of perjury, for we have pledged ourselves to conquer Kutchum or to blot out our faults by a generous death. We have lived long with a dishonored reputation. Let us know how to die after having acquired a glorious one! It is God who awards the victory, and often to the weaker, blessed be his name!" "Amen!" responded the troop. At the first rays of the sun the Cossacks hurled themselves on the intrenchments through a cloud of arrows, crying, "God is for us!" The enemy themselves threw down their palisades at three different points. The Siberians rushed out sabre or lance in hand, and engaged in a hand-to-hand conflict which was disadvantageous for the warriors of Iermak, who were too inferior in numbers. Men fell on all sides: but the Cossacks, Germans, and Poles formed an unshakable wall, loaded their guns in good order, and, by a sustained attack, thinned the ranks of the enemy, whom they drove toward their intrenchments. Iermak and Koltzo, at the first line, accomplished prodigies of valor, repeating in a loud voice, "God is for us!" while the blind Kutchum, placed upon the mountain, in the midst of his imams and his mollahs, invoked Mahomet for the salvation of his true believers. Happily for the Russians, Mahmetkul, being wounded, was obliged to quit the fight, and the mirzas carried him in a skiff to the other bank of the Irtysh. At this news, consternation spread throughout the hostile army. Deprived of its leader it despaired of victory. The Ostiak princes take flight. They are followed by the Tartars. And Kutchum, learning that the Christian banners are already floating over the intrenchments, seeks his safety in the deserts of Ischim, having hardly had time to remove a part of his treasure from his capital city. This general and bloody battle decided the domination of the Russians from the chain of Ural Mountains to the shores of the Obi and the Tobol. It cost the Cossacks one hundred seven of their bravest warriors, and up to the present day prayers for the repose of their souls are offered in the Cathedral of Tobolsk. On October 27th Iermak, already illustrious for history, after returning thanks to heaven, made his triumphant entry into the town of Isker, or Sibir, situated on an elevation on the bank of the Irtysh. It was defended on one side by intrenchments and a deep moat; on the other, by a triple rampart. According to the annalist, the conquerers found immense riches in gold, silver, Asiatic cloth of gold, precious stones, furs, and so forth, which they shared among themselves like brothers. The town was entirely deserted. These warriors, who had just conquered a kingdom, did not see a single inhabitant here. They glutted themselves with gold and sables, and lacked for food. Nevertheless, three days later, they saw the Ostiaks arrive, led by their prince Bohar, who came to bring them presents and provisions, to take the oath of fidelity, and to ask for mercy and protection. Soon there also appeared a great number of Tartars with their women and children. They were accorded a gracious reception by Iermak. He quieted them and let them return to their camps, after demanding from them a small tribute. This man, recently the leader of a band of brigands, who had just showed himself to be an intrepid hero and a skilful captain, likewise employed his extraordinary genius in matters relating to administration and to military discipline. He inspired rude and savage peoples with an extreme confidence in a new power. He succeeded by a just severity in curbing his turbulent companions-in-arms, so that they dared not practise any vexations in a country conquered by their boldness and through a thousand dangers, at the extremity of the world. It is related that the inflexible Iermak, managing the Christian warriors in the combats, treated them with rigor for the least fault, and that he punished disobedience and fornication equally with death. He not only exacted complete submission from his whole troop, but also purity of soul, in order to render himself agreeable to the master of the earth and to the Master of heaven, persuaded that God would accord him the victory with a small number of virtuous warriors, rather than with a large number of hardened sinners. "His Cossacks," says the annalist of Tobolsk, "led a chaste life, on the march as well as during their stay in the capital of Siberia. Their battles were followed by prayer." But they were not yet at the end of their dangers. Some time passed without news of Kutchum, and the Cossack leaders, with no inquietude, gave themselves up to the pleasures of the chase in the neighborhood of the town. But Kutchum had drawn near, in spite of his wound, Mahmetkul had already remounted his horse, and on December 5th he unexpectedly fell on twenty Russians fishing in the Lake of Abalak, and massacred them all. As soon as Iermak heard of this surprise, he rushed in pursuit of the enemy, overtook them near Abalak, at the place where the borough town of Chamehin now stands, attacked and dispersed them. Then, having removed the bodies of his companions-in-arms, he buried them, with military honors, on the cope of Sauskan, near Isker, in the old cemetery of the Khans. The intensity of the cold, the dangerous snowstorms, the short winter days of these northern countries, did not permit him to think of new enterprises of any importance before the return of spring. While waiting, the peaceful submission of two princes of the Vogulitches, Ichberdei and Suklem, served soon to expand the possessions of the Cossacks. The first had his domains beyond the marsh of Eskalbin, on the banks of the Kuda or the Tavda. The second lived in the vicinity of Tobolsk. Both voluntarily offered to pay the _yassak_, or tribute in sable-skins, and took the oath of allegiance to Russia. Ichberdei was able to secure the special friendship of the Cossacks, to whom he gave his services as counsellor and guide in the unknown places. So the affairs of internal administration, the collecting of tribute, hunting and fishing, the returns from which were indispensable in a country without architecture, occupied Iermak until the month of April. Then a mirza informed him that the bold Mahmetkul had again approached the Irtysh and encamped near Vagai with a small band. The occasion was favorable; but in order to exterminate this indefatigable enemy, secrecy and celerity were more necessary than force. Consequently the Cossack leaders, having chosen sixty of their braves, furtively approached the camp of the Tartars, cut the throats of many in their sleep, took Mahmetkul prisoner, and led him in triumph to Isker. This capture caused Iermak great joy, for he was rid of an enemy full of audacity and courage, whom he might consider as an important hostage in his relations with the fugitive Kutchum. Although Mahmetkul was covered with the blood of Iermak's brothers-in-arms, the latter, abjuring all idea of personal vengeance, treated him with flattering consideration, while yet holding him under close watch. As Iermak already had his spies in the distant sections of Isker, he learned that Kutchum, struck with the reverses of Mahmetkul, was wandering in the deserts beyond the Ischim. This usurper was about to be attacked by Seidek--son of Bekbulat, Prince of Siberia, one of his victims--who was marching against him with numerous bands of Usbeks. Upon another side he found himself weakened by the defection of the mirza Karatcha, who, abandoning him in his misfortune, had drawn away a great part of his troops, and was getting ready to encamp in the country of Lym, near a large lake, above the junction of the Tara with the Irtysh. The news was of the nature to cause a lively satisfaction to the leader of the Cossacks, whose new enterprises were to be favored by the weakness of the principal enemy of Russia, as well as by the approach of spring. Iermak, leaving a part of his troop at Isker, embarked with the other part on the Irtysh, which he descended, navigating toward the north. The tribes of the neighborhood already recognized his power, so that he advanced without obstacles as far as the mouth of the Armidzianka, where he was stopped by Tartars who were still independent, and who, ensconced in a fortress, refused to surrender. The fortress was taken by assault, and the Cossack leaders shot or hanged the principal authors of an obstinacy dangerous for the Russians. Terrified, the rest of the inhabitants swore submission and fidelity to Russia, kissing a sabre dipped in blood. The present cantons of Ratzin, Karbin, and Turtass dared oppose no resistance. Farther on began the encampments of the Ostiaks and the Vogules of the Kuda. There, on the steep bank of the Irtysh their prince Demian, who had taken refuge in a fort with two thousand warriors ready to fight, rejected all Icrmak's propositions. According to the report of the annalist: "This little town possessed within its walls a golden idol which was supposed to have been brought from ancient Russia at the epoch when she embraced Christianity. The Ostiaks kept it in a vase filled with water which they drank to revive their courage. The Cossack leaders, having driven away the besieged forces with their artillery, entered the town, but they could not discover this precious idol." The conquerers now continued their navigation. They perceived a crowd of soothsayers who were offering a sacrifice to their famous idol of Ratscha, conjuring it to save them from these terrible strangers. The idol remained mute, the Russians advanced with their "thunder," and the frightened soothsayers ran to hide themselves in the thickness of the forests. It is there that the colony of Ratscha is found to-day, above the Demiansk. Farther on in the canton of Tzingal, at the place where the Irtysh, contracted by the mountains, precipitates its rapid course, a multitude of armed men awaited the Cossacks. But a discharge of musketry put them to flight, and the Cossacks took the little town of Nazym, where they found only women and children, stricken with terror and awaiting death. Iermak treated them with so much kindness that their fathers and husbands did not delay in coming to find him with a tribute. After reducing the cantons of Tarkhan to submission, the Cossacks entered the country of the most considerable of the Ostiak princes, named Samar. Allied with eight hundred other little princes, he was waiting for the Russians with firmness, in order to decide, by a battle, the lot of all the ancient country of Yugorie. Samar boasted of his courage and of his strength, but he forgot prudence, for he, his army and his guards, were plunged in sleep when at the hour of dawn the Cossacks attacked his camp. Awakened by the tumult, he rose, seized his arms, and fell, shot to death at the first volley. In an instant his troops dispersed, and the inhabitants agreed to pay tribute to Russia. Already Iermak had reached the shore of the Obi, an important river, concerning the course of which the ancient Novgorodians had some notions, but whose source and mouth, according to the Muscovite travellers of 1567, were hidden in unknown regions. Master of Nazym, principal town of the Ostiaks, and of many other fortresses, having in his power the Prince of Siberia, Iermak had to deplore the loss of one of his brave companions-in-arms, the hetman Necetas Pan, killed in an assault with some of the most intrepid Cossacks. He did not desire to penetrate farther into a country which only presented frozen deserts to him, places of desolation where during the summer the burning rays of the sun hardly warmed the surface of immense marshes covered with moss, and where bogs, hardened by the frost and strewed with the bones of mammoths, presented the aspect of a vast cemetery. Iermak appointed Alatscha, an Ostiak prince, as chief of the tribes of the Obi. Then he again took the road of the capital of Siberia, treated as a conqueror and a sovereign by his tributaries. He was received everywhere with demonstrations of absolute submission, as a redoubtable warrior endowed with a supernatural strength of soul. To the sound of warlike music, the Cossacks ascended the rivers. They disembarked clad in their finest raiment in order to astonish the inhabitants by their riches. Having thus assured the domination of Russia from Berezoff to Tobol, Iermak, satisfied and tranquil, arrived safely at Isker. Then only he announced to the Stroganoffs that with the aid of God he had been able to conquer the Sultan, had taken his capital, his states, his nephew, and had made his people take the oath of allegiance to Russia. At the same time he wrote to the Czar that his poor Cossacks, proscribed, troubled in conscience and given up to repentance, had braved death to reunite a vast state to Russia, in the name of Christ and of their great monarch, for ages upon ages and for as long a time as it might please God to prolong the existence of the universe. "They awaited," he added, "the orders of the Russian waywodes, to whom they were ready to deliver over the kingdom of Siberia, without any sort of condition, disposed to die for glory or upon a scaffold, according as it should please God and their master." Charged with this missive, the second of the leaders, John Koltzo, first companion of Iermak in the combats and in the councils, departed for Moscow, where he had been condemned to severe punishment as a state criminal, without fearing the solemn decree which threatened his life. Here we anticipate a question which seems natural enough. In announcing so late his successes to the Stroganoffs, did not Iermak, influenced by the easy conquest of Siberia, think, as some historians suppose, of reigning independently over that country? Although conqueror, his forces were diminishing every day, and was not the need of aid the only and true motive for his bearing toward Ivan? But how can it be imagined that this prudent leader should not have foreseen, at the beginning of his expedition, that a handful of rash men, abandoned by Russia, would in three or four years have been annihilated by battles or diseases; that in a rigorous climate they would succumb amid deserts and thick forests, impenetrable refuges of a savage and fierce population, whom fire-arms only could force to pay tribute to strangers? It is more probable that, not having been an eye-witness of the facts, the annalist established upon hypothesis the order in which they succeeded each other. Perhaps Iermak feared to boast too soon of his success, desiring, above all, to achieve the conquest of Siberia, which he thought he had done in driving Kutchum into the deserts and in establishing the limits of the Muscovite empire on the banks of the Obi. Transported with joy at the news they had just received from the hetmans, the Stroganoffs set out at once for Moscow, eager to communicate to the Czar all the details of this glorious enterprise. They urged him to finish the reduction of Siberia, simple private citizens like themselves not possessing the means to preserve so vast a conquest. The envoys of Iermak, John Koltzo and his companions, also appeared before the Prince to offer him the realm of Siberia, as well as the precious furs of sables, black foxes, and castors. These were, since a long time, the first transports of joy in gloomy Moscow. The Czar and the nation seemed to wake up. At court, on the great square, was repeated with intoxication, "God has sent a new empire to Russia!" Bells were rung, solemn thanks were returned to heaven, as at the epoch of Kazan and of Astrakhan, the happy time of the Czar's youth! Rumor exaggerated the glory of this conquest. There was no talk but of huge armies destroyed by the Cossacks, of a great number of peoples subjected by their valor, of the immense riches which they had found. In a word, Siberia seemed to have fallen from the sky for the Russians, and, to set off still further Iermak's success, it was forgotten that from time immemorial this country had been known to the Russians. The disgrace of the Cossacks gave place to honors. John Koltzo, bowing his head in humility before the Czar and the boyars, heard nothing but expressions of good-will, and of praise for his conduct and the name of valiant warrior. Greatly moved, he kissed the hand of the Czar, who caused to be given to him, as well as to the other envoys of Siberia, silver, cloth, and stuffs of value. Ivan immediately sent to Iermak Prince Simeon Bolkovsky and the officer John Glukoff with five hundred strelitz (infantry). He authorized John Koltzo to raise volunteers to go and establish himself in the new countries of Tobol, and ordered the Bishop of Vologda to send ten priests thither for the purpose of celebrating divine service. Prince Bolkovsky was ordered to take, in the spring, the boats of the Stroganoffs and embark on the Tchusovaya (river), to follow the traces of the hero of Siberia. These illustrious citizens, the real authors of this important acquisition to Russia, yielded it to the state. But in recompense, and as a reward for their services and their zeal, Ivan made to Simeon Bolkovsky a concession of two borough towns, the Great and Little Sol, on the Volga. Maxime and Necetas obtained the privilege of carrying on commerce in all their cities without paying any tax or duty. While awaiting good news from Russia, the conquerors of Siberia did not give themselves up to a sterile repose. They advanced by the Tavda as far as the country of the Vogulitches, and near the mouth of that river where the Tartar princes Labutan and Petschenieg held sway. In a bloody engagement Iermak put them to flight on the shores of a lake; and the annalist reports that at his time many human bones were still to be seen there. But the timid inhabitants of the cantons of Koschutz and of Tabarin paid the tribute demanded by the Cossack leader without a murmur. These peaceful savages lived in an absolute independence, having neither princes nor chiefs. They only gave their respect to certain rich men, whose wisdom was generally recognized, and took them as judges in their quarrels. They yielded an equal esteem to some pretended soothsayers. One of these, gazing upon Iermak with a holy terror, predicted long glory for him, but kept silence about his approaching death. Here fable creates new giants among the dwarfs of Vogulie, who are scarcely two archines in height. According to one of these stories, the Russians saw with surprise, near the town of Tabarin, a giant two fathoms tall, who seized a dozen men at a time and smothered them in his arms. Not being able to take him alive, they killed him with gunshots. On the whole, the relation of this latter expedition is not very authentic, and is only found in the supplement to the _Chronicles of Siberia_. One may also read there that, after having reached the marshes and forests of Pelim, dispersed the Vogulitches, and made numerous prisoners, Iermak sought to gather from the latter certain information regarding the roads which lead from the banks of the Upper Tavda to Perm, across a chain of rocky mountains, in order to discover a less dangerous and less difficult communication with Russia, but that it was impossible to open a road in deserts swampy in summer and buried under deep snows in winter. Iermak succeeded in increasing the number of his tributaries, and in extending his domains as far as the shore of Sosva, in the ancient country of Yugorie. He had enclosed in their limits the country of Kondinie, little known up to that time, although long placed among the titles of the Muscovite sovereigns. He then returned to the capital of Siberia, where he awaited the recompense of his glorious works. John Koltzo had arrived at Isker, charged with the bounties of the Czar, followed by Prince Bolkovsky with his warriors. The former gave rich presents to the leaders as well as to the soldiers. He was the bearer, for Iermak, of two cuirasses, a cup of silver, and a cloak which the Czar had worn himself. In a letter full of goodness, Ivan announced to the Cossacks his entire forgetfulness of their faults and the eternal recognition of Russia for their important services. He affirmed that he appointed Iermak prince of Siberia, commanding him to administer and govern that country, as he had already done up to that time; to establish order there, and, in fine, to consolidate there the supreme power of the Czar. On their side, the Cossacks rendered honors to the waywodes of Ivan as well as to all the strelitz. They made them presents of sables and treated them with all the luxury which their position permitted, preparing together for new enterprises. However, this happiness of Iermak and his companions was not of long duration; we touch upon the beginning of their reverses. In the first place, a fearful scurvy showed itself among the troops, a disease common to those who arrive in cold and damp climates, in savage and almost uninhabited countries. The strelitz were attacked first. Soon it was communicated to the Cossacks, many of whom lost their strength and their life. Next, winter brought a great dearth of food. The excessive cold, tempests, snow-storms, hindered the hunting and fishing as well as the arrival of grain from the neighboring encampments, some inhabitants of which occupied themselves with a poorly productive agriculture. Famine began to be felt; disease made progress and continually took off many victims, among whom was Prince Bolkovsky. They gave him an honorable funeral at Isker. The general weakness seized the heart of Iermak also. He feared not death, long accustomed to brave it, but he was afflicted with the idea of losing his conquest, of betraying the hopes of the Czar and of Russia. Happily this calamity ceased with spring. The atmospheric heat helped the cure of the diseases, and convoys of provisions restored plenty among the Russians. Then Iermak made Prince Mahmetkul start for Moscow, announcing to the Czar that, while all was going on well in Siberia, yet he asked immediately for more considerable aids than the first, in order to preserve his conquests and to be able to make new ones. Mahmetkul, faithful observer of the law of Mahomet, served afterward in the Russian armies. Iermak resolved to intimidate his enemies and to guarantee his safety for the future. To this effect, although he had but a feeble troop left, he undertook to pursue Karatcha, ascending the Irtysh in order to extend the possessions of Russia toward the east. He overthrew Prince Beghiche and captured his city, of which the ruins may still be seen on the shores of a sinuous lake, near the mouth of the Vogai. He made himself master of all the country which stretches as far as the Ischim, terrifying by his vengeance those who dared resist him, and sparing those who lay down their arms. In the country of Sargaty there lived an illustrious old man, a former Tartar chief, a hereditary judge of all the tribes since the first khan of Siberia. He made the act of submission as well as Prince Etichai, who governed the city of Tehend. The latter, bearing tribute to Iermak, presented his young daughter, betrothed to the son of Kutchum. But the hetman, a rigid observer of the laws of chastity, sent the young girl home. Near the mouth of the Ischim, a bloody quarrel arose between the soldiers of Iermak and the wild inhabitants of that wretched country, in which five brave Cossacks lost their lives. Their memory is still celebrated in the melancholy songs of Siberia. The little town of Tachatkan also fell into the power of the Russians. Their chief did not judge it advisable to attack a more important place, founded by Kutchum, on the banks of the lake Aussaklu. He penetrated as far as the shore of Chische, where the deserts begin; imposed tributes on this new conquest, and returned to take to Isker the spoils which were to be his last trophies. FIRST COLONY OF ENGLAND BEYOND SEAS A.D. 1583 MOSES HARVEY In the Elizabethan era, when maritime discovery was being actively pursued by England's adventurous spirits, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh, the founder of Virginia, took possession of Newfoundland, with feudal ceremony, in the name of the Virgin Queen. Sir Humphrey's expedition was barren of results in the way of colonization, and even in the way of discovery on the island; while it proved fatal to its leader, and those who sailed with him on the Squirrel, for on the return voyage to England the vessel foundered at sea, and only the companion-ship, the Golden Hind, reached the port of Falmouth, Devon. But the formal occupation of Newfoundland at that early period makes it the most ancient colony of the British crown, English settlement beginning shortly after Sir Humphrey Gilbert's visit, though interrupted between the years 1692 and 1713 by French attempts at conquest. Up to this time no attempt had been made to colonize Newfoundland or any of the neighboring lands. The hardy fishermen of various nationalities, among whom Englishmen were now much more numerous than formerly, were in the habit of frequenting the shores of the island during the summer and using the harbors and coves for the cure of their fish, returning home with the products of their toil on the approach of winter. Eighty-six years had passed away since Cabot's discovery, and we now arrive at the year 1583, a memorable date in the history of Newfoundland. On August 5th of that year there were lying in the harbor of St. John's thirty-six vessels belonging to various nations, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and English, all employed in fishing. In addition to these there were four English warships which had arrived the day before. They were the Delight, the Golden Hind, the Swallow, and the Squirrel. Early on this morning boats were lowered from the English ships, and the commanders and officers went on shore. Soon a goodly company had assembled on the beach, then lined by a few rough wooden huts and "flakes," or stages for drying cod. The rude inmates of these huts gathered round the company that landed from the English ships; and the captains and officers of the other vessels were there by special summons. A very curious and motley group was that which then stood on the beach of St. John's harbor--swarthy, bronzed sailors and fishermen of Spain, Portugal, and France, in the costumes of the sixteenth century. Soon a circle formed round one commanding figure--a man of noble presence, wearing the richly slashed and laced doublet, velvet cloak, trunk-hose, and gay hat and feather which constituted the dress of gentlemen in the days of Queen Elizabeth. This was no other than Sir Humphrey Gilbert, one of the gallant knights of Devonshire. He unrolled a parchment scroll, and proceeded to read the royal patent authorizing him to take possession of Newfoundland on behalf of his royal mistress, and exercise jurisdiction over it and all other possessions of the crown in the same quarter. Twig and sod were presented to him in feudal fashion, and, in the name of Queen Elizabeth, he solemnly annexed the island to the British Empire. The banner of England was then twisted on a flag-staff; the royal arms, cut in lead, were affixed to a wooden pillar, near the water's edge, and the ceremony was complete. The grant gave Sir Humphrey Gilbert jurisdiction for two hundred leagues in every direction, so that the limits included Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, part of Labrador, as well as the islands of Newfoundland, Cape Breton, and Prince Edward Island--a right royal principality. This Sir Humphrey Gilbert, the first settler in Newfoundland, who, with some two hundred fifty followers from Devonshire, had arrived with the view of making the western wilderness a home for Englishmen, was a son of Sir Otho Gilbert, of Compton castle, Torbay. His mother was a Champernoun of purest Norman descent, and "could probably boast of having in her veins the blood of Courtneys, Emperors of Byzant." Sir Otho had three sons by this lady, John, Humphrey, and Adrian, who all proved to be men of superior abilities. They were all three knighted by Elizabeth, a distinction which, coming from the hands of the great Queen, marked its recipient as a gentleman and a brave warrior. Sir Otho died, and his widow married Walter Raleigh, a gentleman of ancient blood but impoverished, and at the time living at Hayes, Devon. To her second husband the fair Champernoun bore a son whose fame was destined to be world-wide, and who, in a period more prolific of great men and great events than any before or since, played a gallant part, and was also knighted, as Sir Walter Raleigh, by Queen Bess. Thus Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh were half-brothers, each being trained in the simple and manly yet high-bred ways of English gentlemen. When Humphrey Gilbert grew up he embraced the profession of arms, and won high distinction in Continental and Irish wars. At length, in his mature manhood, he and his distinguished half-brother Raleigh formed the design of first colonizing Newfoundland, and then the neighboring islands and continent. Hence we find him on August 5, 1583, standing on the beach in the harbor of St. John's. Sir Walter Raleigh had embarked on the same expedition, but a contagious disease broke out on board his ship which compelled his return. The enterprise of Sir Humphrey Gilbert was worthy of a heroic and patriotic nobleman. It was, nevertheless, doomed to end in disaster and death. In prosecuting further explorations one of Sir Humphrey's vessels was wrecked and the whole crew perished. The little fleet had struggled with contrary winds for many days. Eventually the Delight, the largest vessel, drifted into the breakers on a lee shore and struck upon a rock. She went rapidly to pieces. Seventeen of the crew got into the longboat, and, after seven days, fifteen of them reached port. But the captain, Morris Browne, refused to leave the ship. "Mounting upon the highest deck," says the ancient chronicler, "he attained imminent death, so inevitable." The other vessels stood out to sea and saved themselves. As winter was approaching and provisions getting low, Sir Humphrey deemed it wise to steer for England. He had planted his flag on board the Squirrel, a little cockle-shell of ten tons, and though earnestly entreated to go on board the larger vessel, the Golden Hind, he refused to abandon his brave comrades. A great storm overtook them near the Azores. The Golden Hind kept as near the Squirrel as possible; and when in the midst of the tempest the crew saw the gallant knight sitting calmly on deck with a book before him, they heard him cry to his companions, "Cheer up, lads, we are as near heaven at sea as on land!" When the curtain of night shrouded the little bark, she and her gallant crew disappeared beneath the dark billows of the Atlantic. Thus perished Sir Humphrey Gilbert, scholar, soldier, colonizer, philosopher, one of the noblest of those brave hearts that sought to extend the dominion of England in the New World. To Newfoundland this sad loss was irreparable. Had Sir Humphrey lived to reach home, no doubt he and Sir Walter Raleigh would have renewed their efforts at colonization, and, profiting by past errors, would have settled in the island men of the right stamp. Sir Humphrey Gilbert's failure was the result of a succession of uncontrollable disasters. Fully appreciating the immense value of the fisheries of Newfoundland, he seems to have been thoroughly impressed with the idea that the right way of prosecuting those fisheries was to colonize the country, and conduct them on the spot, whereby he would have established a resident population, who would have combined fishing with the cultivation of the soil. It was a departure from this policy, and a determination, at the behest of selfish monopolists, to make the island a mere fishing-station, that postponed for many weary years the prosperity of the colony, blighting the national enterprise, and paralyzing the energies of the people. ASSASSINATION OF WILLIAM OF ORANGE DIVISION OF THE NETHERLANDS A.D. 1584 JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY Throughout the earlier period of the "heroic age of the Netherlands" William of Orange, the natural leader of his people, displayed qualities of foresight, prudence, and courage worthy of the position which he held. Without great generalship, "he knew how to wait and turn his reverses to account." His life was constantly in danger and was repeatedly attempted, but his resolution was never disturbed by fear. While meriting the surname of the "Silent," he expressed himself effectively in the decisive speech of action. The Pacification of Ghent (1576)--the union of the seventeen Netherland provinces, of which William was at the head--was of short duration. The northern provinces were Protestant, the southern mostly Catholic. Diverse trade interests also prevented perfect union. Compromise was attempted without avail. The Southern provinces acknowledged Philip II, while the seven Northern provinces--Holland, Zealand, Utrecht, Gelderland, Overyssel, Friesland, and Groningen--formed themselves (1579) into the Union of Utrecht, a federal republic, with William of Orange as stadtholder. A little later the Spanish government published a ban against the Prince and set a price upon his head. Many attempts against his life were made by assassins eager for the promised reward. How the treacherous end was finally compassed is told by Motley with all the dramatic realism necessary for a faithful description of the scene. In March, 1583, one Pietro Dordogno was executed in Antwerp for endeavoring to assassinate the Prince. Before his death he confessed that he had come from Spain solely for the purpose, and that he had conferred with La Motte, Governor of Gravelines, as to the best means of accomplishing his design. In April, 1584, Hans Hanzoon, a merchant of Flushing, had been executed for attempting to destroy the Prince by means of gunpowder concealed under his house in that city and under his seat in the church. He confessed that he had deliberately formed the intention of performing the deed, and that he had discussed the details of the enterprise with the Spanish ambassador in Paris. At about the same time one Le Goth, a captive French officer, had been applied to by the Marquis de Richebourg, on the part of Alexander of Parma, to attempt the murder of the Prince. Le Goth had consented, saying that nothing could be more easily done, and that he would undertake to poison him in a dish of eels, of which he knew him to be particularly fond. The Frenchman was liberated with this understanding, but, being very much the friend of Orange, straightway told him the whole story and remained ever afterward a faithful servant of the states. It is to be presumed that he excused the treachery to which he owed his escape from prison on the ground that faith was no more to be kept with murderers than with heretics. Within two years there had been five distinct attempts to assassinate the Prince, all of them with the privity of the Spanish government. A sixth was soon to follow. In the summer of 1584 William of Orange was residing at Delft, where his wife, Louisa de Coligny, had given birth, in the preceding winter, to a son, afterward the celebrated stadtholder Frederick Henry. The child had received these names from his two godfathers, the kings of Denmark and of Navarre, and his baptism had been celebrated with much rejoicing on June 12th, in the place of his birth. It was a quiet, cheerful, yet somewhat drowsy little city, that ancient burgh of Delft. The placid canals by which it was intersected in every direction were all planted with whispering, umbrageous rows of limes and poplars, and along these watery highways the traffic of the place glided so noiselessly that the town seemed the abode of silence and tranquillity. The streets were clean and airy, the houses well built, the whole aspect of the place thriving. One of the principal thoroughfares was called the Old Delft Street. It was shaded on both sides by lime-trees, which in that midsummer season covered the surface of the canal which flowed between them with their light and fragrant blossoms. On one side of this street was the "Old Kirk," a plain, antique structure of brick, with lancet windows, and with a tall, slender tower, which inclined, at a very considerable angle, toward a house upon the other side of the canal. That house was the mansion of William the Silent. It stood directly opposite the church, being separated by a spacious court-yard from the street, while the stables and other offices in the rear extended to the city wall. A narrow lane, opening out of Delft Street, ran along the side of the house and court in the direction of the ramparts. The house was a plain, two-storied edifice of brick, with red-tiled roof, and had formerly been a cloister dedicated to St. Agatha, the last prior of which had been hanged by the furious Lumey de la Marck.[1] [1] Francis, Duke of Anjou, the French accomplice of Catherine de' Medici in persecution of the Protestants, is elsewhere described by Motley as "the most despicable personage who had ever entered the Netherlands." The news of Anjou's death had been brought to Delft by a special messenger from the French court. On Sunday morning, July 8, 1584, the Prince of Orange, having read the despatches before leaving his bed, caused the man who had brought them to be summoned, that he might give some particular details by word of mouth concerning the last illness of the Duke. The courier was accordingly admitted to the Prince's bedchamber, and proved to be one Francis Guion, as he called himself. This man had, early in the spring, claimed and received the protection of Orange, on the ground of being the son of a Protestant at Besançon who had suffered death for his religion and of his own ardent attachment to the reformed faith. A pious, psalm-singing, thoroughly Calvinistic youth he seemed to be, having a Bible or a hymn-book under his arm whenever he walked the street, and most exemplary in his attendance at sermon and lecture. For the rest, a singularly unobtrusive personage, twenty-seven years of age, low of stature, meagre, mean-visaged, muddy-complexioned, and altogether a man of no account--quite insignificant in the eyes of all who looked upon him. If there were one opinion, in which the few who had taken the trouble to think of the puny, somewhat shambling stranger from Burgundy at all, coincided, it was that he was inoffensive, but quite incapable of any important business. He seemed well educated, claimed to be of respectable parentage, and had considerable facility of speech when any person could be found who thought it worth while to listen to him; but on the whole he attracted little attention. Nevertheless this insignificant frame locked up a desperate and daring character; this mild and inoffensive nature had gone pregnant seven years with a terrible crime, whose birth could not much longer be retarded. Francis Guion, the Calvinist, son of a martyred Calvinist, was in reality Balthazar Gérard, a fanatical Catholic, whose father and mother were still living at Villefans in Burgundy. Before reaching man's estate he had formed the design of murdering the Prince of Orange, "who, so long as he lived, seemed like to remain a rebel against the Catholic King, and to make every effort to disturb the repose of the Roman Catholic apostolic religion." When but twenty years of age he had struck his dagger with all his might into a door, exclaiming as he did so, "Would that the blow had been in the heart of Orange!" For this he was rebuked by a bystander, who told him it was not for him to kill princes, and that it was not desirable to destroy so good a captain as the Prince, who, after all, might one day reconcile himself with the King. The "inveterate deliberation," thus thoroughly matured, Gérard now proceeded to carry into effect. He came to Delft, obtained a hearing of Villers, the clergyman and intimate friend of Orange, and was somewhat against his will sent to France, to Maréchal Biron, who, it was thought, was soon to be appointed governor of Cambray. Through Orange's recommendation the Burgundian was received into the suite of Noel de Caron, Seigneur de Schoneval, then setting forth on a special mission to the Duke of Anjou. While in France Gérard could rest neither by day nor night, so tormented was he by the desire of accomplishing his project, and at length he obtained permission, upon the death of the Duke, to carry this important intelligence to the Prince of Orange. The despatches having been intrusted to him, he travelled post-haste to Delft, and, to his astonishment, the letters had hardly been delivered before he was summoned in person to the chamber of the Prince. Here was an opportunity such as he had never dared to hope for. The arch-enemy to the Church and to the human race, whose death would confer upon his destroyer wealth and nobility in this world, besides a crown of glory in the next, lay unarmed, alone, in bed, before the man who had thirsted seven long years for his blood. Balthazar could scarcely control his emotions sufficiently to answer the questions which the Prince addressed to him concerning the death of Anjou, but Orange, deeply engaged with the despatches, and with the reflections which their deeply important contents suggested, did not observe the countenance of the humble Calvinist exile, who had been recently recommended to his patronage by Villers. Gérard had, moreover, made no preparation for an interview so entirely unexpected, had come unarmed, and had formed no plan for escape. He was obliged to forego his prey when most within his reach, and, after communicating all the information which the Prince required, he was dismissed from the chamber. It was Sunday morning, and the bells were tolling for church. Upon leaving the house he loitered about the court-yard, furtively examining the premises, so that a sergeant of halberdiers asked him why he was waiting there. Balthazar meekly replied that he was desirous of attending divine worship in the church opposite, but added, pointing to his shabby and travel-stained attire, that, without at least a new pair of shoes and stockings, he was unfit to join the congregation. Insignificant as ever, the small, pious, dusty stranger excited no suspicion in the mind of the good-natured sergeant. He forthwith spoke of the wants of Gérard to an officer, by whom they were communicated to Orange himself, and the Prince instantly ordered a sum of money to be given him. Thus Balthazar obtained from William's charity what Parma's thrift had denied--a fund for carrying out his purpose. Next morning, with the money thus procured, he purchased a pair of pistols, or small carabines, from a soldier, chaffering long about the price because the vender could not supply a particular kind of chopped bullets or slugs which he desired. Before the sunset of the following day, that soldier had stabbed himself to the heart, and died despairing, on hearing for what purpose the pistols had been bought. On Tuesday, July 10, 1584, at about half-past twelve, the Prince, with his wife on his arm, and followed by the ladies and gentlemen of his family, was going to the dining-room. William the Silent was dressed upon that day, according to his usual custom, in very plain fashion. He wore a wide-leaved, loosely shaped hat of dark felt, with a silken cord round the crown--such as had been worn by the Beggars in the early days of the revolt. A high ruff encircled his neck, from which also depended one of the Beggars' medals, with the motto, "_Fidèles au roy jusqu'à la besace_," while a loose surcoat of gray frieze cloth, over a tawny leather doublet, with wide, slashed underclothes, completed his costume. Gérard presented himself at the doorway and demanded a passport. The Princess, struck with the pale and agitated countenance of the man, anxiously questioned her husband concerning the stranger. The Prince carelessly observed that "it was merely a person who came for a passport," ordering, at the same time, a secretary forthwith to prepare one. The Princess, still not relieved, observed in an undertone that "she had never seen so villanous a countenance." Orange, however, not at all impressed with the appearance of Gérard, conducted himself at table with his usual cheerfulness, conversing much with the burgomaster of Leewarden, the only guest present at the family dinner, concerning the political and religious aspects of Friesland. At two o'clock the company rose from table. The Prince led the way, intending to pass to his private apartments above. The dining-room, which was on the ground floor, opened into a little square vestibule, which communicated, through an arched passageway, with the main entrance into the court-yard. This vestibule was also directly at the foot of the wooden staircase leading to the next floor, and was scarcely six feet in width. Upon its left side, as one approached the stairway, was an obscure arch, sunk deep in the wall, and completely in the shadow of the door. Behind this arch a portal opened to the narrow lane at the side of the house. The stairs themselves were completely lighted by a large window, half way up the flight. The Prince came from the dining-room, and began leisurely to ascend. He had only reached the second stair, when a man emerged from the sunken arch, and, standing within a foot or two of him, discharged a pistol full at his heart. Three balls entered his body, one of which, passing quite through him, struck with violence against the wall beyond. The Prince exclaimed in French, as he felt the wound: "O my God, have mercy upon my soul! O my God, have mercy upon this poor people!" These were the last words he ever spoke, save that, when his sister, Catherine of Schwarzburg, immediately afterward asked him if he commended his soul to Jesus Christ, he faintly answered, "Yes." His master of the horse, Jacob van Maldere, had caught him in his arms as the fatal shot was fired. The Prince was then placed on the stairs for an instant, when he immediately began to swoon. He was afterward laid upon a couch in the dining-room, where in a few minutes he breathed his last in the arms of his wife and sister. The murderer succeeded in making his escape through the side door, and sped swiftly up the narrow lane. He had almost reached the ramparts, from which he intended to spring into the moat, when he stumbled over a heap of rubbish. As he rose he was seized by several pages and halberdiers, who had pursued him from the house. He had dropped his pistols upon the spot where he had committed the crime, and upon his person were found a couple of bladders, provided with a piece of pipe, with which he had intended to assist himself across the moat, beyond which a horse was waiting for him. He made no effort to deny his identity, but boldly avowed himself and his deed. He was brought back to the house, where he immediately underwent a preliminary examination before the city magistrates. He was afterward subjected to excruciating tortures; for the fury against the wretch who had destroyed the "father of the country" was uncontrollable, and William the Silent was no longer alive to intercede--as he had often done before--in behalf of those who assailed his life. The sentence pronounced against the assassin was execrable--a crime against the memory of the great man whom it professed to avenge. It was decreed that the right hand of Gérard should be burned off with a red-hot iron, that his flesh should be torn from his bones with pincers in six different places, that he should be quartered and disembowelled alive, that his heart should be torn from his bosom and flung in his face, and that, finally, his head should be taken off. Not even his horrible crime, with its endless consequences, not the natural frenzy of indignation which it had excited, could justify this savage decree, to rebuke which the murdered hero might have almost risen from the sleep of death. The sentence was literally executed on July 14th, the criminal supporting its horrors with the same astonishing fortitude. So calm were his nerves, crippled and half roasted as he was ere he mounted the scaffold, that, when one of the executioners was slightly injured in the ear by the flying from the handle of the hammer with which he was breaking the fatal pistol in pieces, as the first step in the execution--a circumstance which produced a general laugh in the crowd--a smile was observed upon Balthazar's face in sympathy with the general hilarity. His lips were seen to move up to the moment when his heart was thrown in his face. "Then," said a looker-on, "he gave up the ghost." The reward promised by Philip to the man who should murder Orange was paid to the heirs of Gérard. Parma informed his sovereign that the "poor man" had been executed, but that his father and mother were still living, to whom he recommended the payment of that "merced" which "the laudable and generous deed had so well deserved." This was accordingly done, and the excellent parents, ennobled and enriched by the crime of their son, received, instead of the twenty-five thousand crowns promised in the Ban, the three seigniories of Livermont, Hostal, and Dampmartin, in the Franche Comté, and took their place at once among the landed aristocracy. Thus the bounty of the Prince had furnished the weapon by which his life was destroyed, and his estates supplied the fund out of which the assassin's family received the price of blood. At a later day, when the unfortunate eldest son of Orange returned from Spain after twenty-seven years' absence, a changeling and a Spaniard, the restoration of those very estates was offered to him by Philip II provided he would continue to pay a fixed proportion of their rents to the family of his father's murderer. The education which Philip William had received, under the King's auspices, had, however, not entirely destroyed all his human feelings and he rejected the proposal with scorn. The estates remained with the Gérard family, and the patents of nobility which they had received were used to justify their exemption from certain taxes, until the union of Franche-Comté with France, when a French governor tore the documents in pieces and trampled them under foot. The life and labors of Orange had established the emancipated commonwealth upon a secure foundation, but his death rendered the union of all the Netherlands into one republic hopeless. The efforts of the malcontent nobles, the religious discord, the consummate ability, both political and military, of Parma, all combined with the lamentable loss of William the Silent to separate forever the Southern and Catholic provinces from the Northern confederacy. So long as the Prince remained alive, he was the father of the whole country, the Netherlands--saving only two Walloon provinces--constituting a whole. Notwithstanding the spirit of faction and the blight of the long civil war, there was at least one country, or the hope of a country, one strong heart, one guiding head, for the patriotic party throughout the land. Philip and Granvella were right in their estimate of the advantage to be derived from the Prince's death; in believing that an assassin's hand could achieve more than all the wiles which Spanish or Italian statesmanship could teach, or all the armies which Spain or Italy could muster. The pistol of the insignificant Gérard destroyed the possibility of a united Netherland state, while during the life of William there was union in the policy, unity in the history of the country. NAMING OF VIRGINIA: FIRST DESCRIPTION OF THE INDIANS THE LOST COLONY A.D. 1584 ARTHUR BARLOW R. R. HOWISON At the age of thirty-two Sir Walter Raleigh had already been connected with navigating and colonizing expeditions to North America. He was associated with the enterprise of his elder half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who in 1583 established at St. John's, Newfoundland, the first English colony beyond seas. Upon the death of Gilbert, in that year, Raleigh succeeded to his enterprise, and obtained from Queen Elizabeth, whose favorite he was, a charter of colonization. When next year he sent out his first expedition to find some suitable spot for a colony on the North American coast, Raleigh took warning from the unfortunate experiences of Gilbert in the northern latitudes, and directed his two commanders, Philip Amidas and Arthur Barlow, to take another route. They accordingly took the old way by the Canary Islands. History is fortunate in possessing Barlow's account of this voyage. It has, as one writer says, "all the freshness and gayety of an idyl. His description of the sweet smell wafted to the voyagers from the American shore, as from some delicate garden abounding with all kinds of odoriferous flowers, was noticed by Bacon, and utilized by Dryden to flatter one of his patrons." Howison's story of the ill-starred colony and the conjectural refuge of its remnants among the Croatan Indians of Virginia--as Raleigh named the whole region, including the present North Carolina--fittingly completes the history of Sir Walter's American enterprise. The failure of the colony has been freely charged to his own neglect, occasioned by the turning of his mind to more brilliant prospects presented by the illusory "El Dorado," whereby so many other adventurers were misled. ARTHUR BARLOW The 27. day of April, in the year of our redemption 1584, we departed the west of England, with two barks well furnished with men and victuals, having received our last and perfect directions by your letters, confirming the former instructions and commandments delivered by yourself at our leaving the river of Thames. And I think it a matter both unnecessary, for the manifest discovery of the country, as also for tediousness' sake, to remember unto you the diurnal of our course, sailing thither and returning; only I have presumed to present unto you this brief discourse, by which you may judge how profitable this land is likely to succeed, as well to yourself, by whose direction and charge, and by whose servants, this our discovery hath been performed, as also to her highness and the commonwealth. In which we hope your wisdom will be satisfied, considering that as much by us hath been brought to light as by those small means and number of men we had could anyway have been expected or hoped for. The tenth of May in this present year we arrived at the Canaries, and the tenth of June we were fallen with the islands of the West Indies, keeping a more southwesterly course than was needful, because we doubted about the current of the Bay of Mexico, disboguing between the Cape of Florida and Havana, had been of greater force than afterward we found it to be. At which islands we found the air very unwholesome, and our men grew for the most part ill-disposed: so that having refreshed ourselves with sweet water and fresh victual, we departed the twelfth day of our arrival here. These islands, with the rest adjoining, are so well known to yourself, and to many others, as I will not trouble you with the remembrance of them. The second of July we found shoal water, where we smelt so sweet and so strong a smell, as if we had been in the midst of some delicate garden, abounding with all kind of odoriferous flowers; by which we were assured that the land could not be far distant. And keeping good watch and bearing but slack sail, the fourth of the same month we arrived upon the coast, which we supposed to be a continent and firm land, and we sailed along the same one hundred twenty English miles before we could find any entrance, or river issuing into the sea. The first that appeared unto us we entered, though not without some difficulty, and cast anchor about three arquebuse-shot within the haven's mouth, on the left hand of the same; and after thanks given to God for our safe arrival thither, we manned our boats, and went to view the land next adjoining, and to take possession of the same in the right of the Queen's most excellent majesty, as rightful queen and princess of the same, and after delivered the same over to your use, according to her majesty's grant and letters-patent, under her highness' great seal. Which being performed, according to the ceremonies used in such enterprises, we viewed the land about us, being, whereas we first landed, very sandy and low toward the water's side, but so full of grapes as the very beating and surge of the sea overflowed them. Of which we found such plenty, as well there as in all places else, both on the sand and on the green soil on the hills as in the plains, as well on every little shrub as also climbing toward the tops of high cedars, that I think in all the world the like abundance is not to be found: and myself having seen those parts of Europe that most abound, find such difference as were incredible to be written. We passed from the sea side toward the tops of those hills next adjoining, being but of mean[1] height; and from thence we beheld the sea on both sides, to the north and to the south, finding no end any of both ways.[2] This land lay stretching itself to the west, which after we found to be but an island of twenty miles long and not above six miles broad. Under the bank or hill whereon we stood we beheld the valleys replenished with goodly cedar-trees, and having discharged our arquebuse-shot such a flock of cranes--the most part white--arose under us, with such a cry redoubled by many echoes, as if an army of men had shouted all together. [1] Middle. [2] Either way. This island had many goodly woods full of deer, coneys, hares, and fowl, even in the midst of summer, in incredible abundance. The woods were not such as you find in Bohemia, Moscovia, or Hercynia, barren and fruitless, but the highest and reddest cedars of the world, far bettering the cedars of the Azores, of the Indies, or Libanus; pines, cypress, sassafras, the lentisk, or the tree that beareth the mastic; the tree that beareth the rind of black cinnamon, of which Master Winter brought from the Straits of Magellan; and many other of excellent smell and quality. We remained by the side of this island two whole days before we saw any people of the country. The third day we espied one small boat rowing toward us, having in it three persons. This boat came to the island side, four arquebuse-shot from our ships; and there two of the people remaining, the third came along the shore side toward us, and we being then all within board, he walked up and down upon the point of the land next unto us. Then the master and the pilot of the admiral, Simon Ferdinando, and the captain, Philip Amidas, myself, and others, rowed to the land; whose coming this fellow attended, never making any shew of fear or doubt. And after he had spoken of many things, not understood by us, we brought him, with his own good liking, aboard the ships, and gave him a shirt, a hat, and some other things, and made him taste of our wine and our meat, which he liked very well; and after having viewed both barks, he departed, and went to his own boat again, which he had left in a little cove or creek adjoining. As soon as he was two bow-shot into the water he fell to fishing, and in less than half an hour he had laden his boat as deep as it could swim, with which he came again to the point of the land, and there he divided his fish into two parts, pointing one part to the ship and the other to the pinnace. Which, after he had, as much as he might, requited the former benefits received, departed out of our sight. The next day there came unto us divers boats, and in one of them the King's brother, accompanied with forty or fifty men, very handsome and goodly people, and in their behavior as mannerly and civil as any of Europe. His name was Granganimeo, and the King is called Wingina; the country, Wingandacoa, and now, by her majesty, Virginia. The manner of his coming was in this sort: he left his boats, altogether as the first man did, a little from the ships by the shore, and came along to the place over against the ships, followed with forty men. When he came to the place, his servants spread a long mat upon the ground, on which he sat down, and at the other end of the mat four others of his company did the like; the rest of his men stood round him somewhat afar off. When we came to the shore to him, with our weapons, he never moved from his place, nor any of the other four, nor never mistrusted any harm to be offered from us; but, sitting still, he beckoned us to come and sit by him, which we performed; and, being set, he made all signs of joy and welcome, striking on his head and his breast and afterward on ours, to shew we were all one, smiling and making shew the best he could of all love and familiarity. After he had made a long speech unto us we presented him with divers things, which he received very joyfully and thankfully. None of the company durst speak one word all the time; only the four which were at the other end spake one in the other's ear very softly. The King is greatly obeyed and his brothers and children reverenced. The King himself in person was at our being there sore wounded in a fight, which he had with the King of the next country, called "Piemacum," and was shot in two places through the body, and once clean through the thigh, but yet he recovered; by reason whereof, and for that he lay at the chief town of the country, being six days' journey off, we saw him not at all. After we had presented this his brother with such things as we thought he liked, we likewise gave somewhat to the other that sat with him on the mat. But presently he arose and took all from them and put it into his own basket, making signs and tokens that all things ought to be delivered unto him, and the rest were but his servants and followers. A day or two after this we fell to trading with them, exchanging some things that we had for chamois, buff, and deer skins. When we shewed him all our packet of merchandise, of all things that he saw a bright tin dish most pleased him, which he presently took up and clapped it before his breast, and after making a hole in the brim thereof and hung it about his neck, making signs that it would defend him against his enemies' arrows. For those people maintain a deadly and terrible war with the people and King adjoining. We exchanged our tin dish for twenty skins, worth twenty crowns or twenty nobles; and a copper kettle for fifty skins, worth fifty crowns. They offered us good exchange for our hatchets and axes, and for knives, and would have given anything for swords; but we would not depart with any. After two or three days the King's brother came aboard the ships and drank wine, and eat of our meat and of our bread, and liked exceedingly thereof. And after a few days overpassed, he brought his wife with him to the ships, his daughter, and two or three children. His wife was very well favored, of mean stature, and very bashful. She had on her back a long cloak of leather, with the fur side next to her body, and before her a piece of the same, About her forehead she had a band of white coral, and so had her husband many times. In her ears she had bracelets of pearls hanging down to her middle, whereof we delivered your worship a little bracelet, and those were of the bigness of good peas. The rest of her women of the better sort had pendants of copper hanging in either ear, and some of the children of the King's brother and other noblemen have five or six in either ear; he himself had upon his head a broad plate of gold, or copper; for, being unpolished, we knew not what metal it should be, neither would he by any means suffer us to take it off his head; but feeling it, it would bow very easily. His apparel was as his wife's, only the women wear their hair long on both sides, and the men but on one. They are of color yellowish, and their hair black for the most part; and yet we saw children that had very fine auburn and chestnut-colored hair. After that these women had been there, there came down from all parts great store of people, bringing with them leather, coral, divers kinds of dyes very excellent, and exchanged with us. But when Granganimeo, the King's brother, was present, none durst trade but himself, except such as wear red pieces of copper on their heads like himself; for that is the difference between the noblemen and the governors of countries, and the meaner sort. And we both noted there, and you have understood since by these men which we brought home, that no people in the world carry more respect to their king, nobility, and governors than these do. The King's brother's wife, when she came to us--as she did many times--was followed with forty or fifty women always. And when she came into the ship she left them all on land, saving her two daughters, her nurse, and one or two more. The King's brother always kept this order: as many boats as he would come withal to the ships, so many fires would he make on the shore afar off, to the end we might understand with what strength and company he approached. Their boats are made of one tree, either of pine or of pitch trees; a wood not commonly known to our people, nor found growing in England. They have no edge-tools to make them withal; if they have any they are very few, and those, it seems, they had twenty years since, which, as those two men declared, was out of a wrack, which happened upon their coast, of some Christian ship, being beaten that way by some storm and outrageous weather, whereof none of the people were saved, but only the ship, or some part of her, being cast upon the sand, out of whose sides they drew the nails and the spikes, and with those they made their best instruments. The manner of making their boats is thus: they burn down some great tree, or take such as are windfallen, and, putting gum and resin upon one side thereof, they set fire into it, and when it hath burned it hollow they cut out the coal with their shells, and ever where they would burn it deeper or wider they lay on gums, which burn away the timber, and by this means they fashion very fine boats, and such as will transport twenty men. Their oars are like scoops, and many times they set with long poles, as the depth serveth. The King's brother had great liking of our armor, a sword, and divers other things which we had, and offered to lay a great box of pearl in gage for them; but we refused it for this time, because we would not make them know that we esteemed thereof, until we had understood in what places of the country the pearl grew, which now your worship doth very well understand. He was very just of his promise: for many times we delivered him merchandise upon his word, but ever he came within the day and performed his promise. He sent us every day a brace or two of fat bucks, coneys, hares, fish the best of the world. He sent us divers kinds of fruits, melons, walnuts, cucumbers, gourds, pease, and divers roots, and fruits very excellent good, and of their country corn, which is very white, fair, and well tasted, and groweth three times in five months: in May they sow, in July they reap; in June they sow, in August they reap; in July they sow, in September they reap. Only they cast the corn into the ground, breaking a little of the soft turf with a wooden mattock or pick-axe. Ourselves proved the soil, and put some of our peas in the ground, and in ten days they were of fourteen inches high. They have also beans very fair, of divers colors, and wonderful plenty, some growing naturally and some in their gardens; and so have they both wheat and oats. The soil is the most plentiful, sweet, fruitful, and wholesome of all the world. There are above fourteen several sweet-smelling timber-trees, and the most part of their underwoods are bays and such like. They have those oaks that we have, but far greater and better. After they had been divers times aboard our ships, myself with seven more went twenty mile into the river that runneth toward the city of Skicoak, which river they call Occam; and the evening following we came to an island which they call Roanoak, distant from the harbor by which we entered seven leagues; and at the north end thereof was a village of nine houses built of cedar and fortified round about with sharp trees to keep out their enemies, and the entrance into it made like a turnpike very artificially.[3] When we came toward it, standing near unto the water's side, the wife of Granganimeo, the King's brother, came running out to meet us very cheerfully and friendly. Her husband was not then in the village. Some of her people she commanded to draw our boat on shore, for the beating of the billow. Others she appointed to carry us on their backs to the dry ground, and others to bring our oars into the house for fear of stealing. [3] The site of the colony established in the following year, 1585. When we were come into the utter room--having five rooms in her house--she caused us to sit down by a great fire, and after took off our clothes and washed them and dried them again. Some of the women plucked off our stockings and washed them, some washed our feet in warm water, and she herself took great pains to see all things ordered in the best manner she could, making great haste to dress some meat for us to eat. After we had thus dried ourselves, she brought us into the inner room, where she set on the board standing along the house some wheat like frumenty, sodden venison and roasted, fish sodden, boiled and roasted, melons raw and sodden, roots of divers kinds, and divers fruits. Their drink is commonly water, but while the grape lasteth they drink wine, and for want of casks to keep it, all the year after they drink water; but it is sodden with ginger in it, and black cinnamon, and sometimes sassafras, and divers other wholesome and medicinable herbs and trees. We were entertained with all love and kindness, and with as much bounty, after their manner, as they could possibly devise. We found the people most gentle, loving and faithful, void of all guile and treason, and such as live after the manner of the golden age. The people only care how to defend themselves from the cold in their short winter, and to feed themselves with such meat as the soil affordeth; their meat is very well sodden, and they make broth very sweet and savory. Their vessels are earthen pots, very large, white and sweet; their dishes are wooden platters of sweet timber. Within the place where they feed was their lodging, and within that their idol, which they worship, of whom they speak incredible things. While we were at meat, there came in at the gates two or three men with their bows and arrows from hunting, whom when we espied we began to look one toward another, and offered to reach our weapons; but as soon as she espied our mistrust, she was very much moved, and caused some of her men to run out, and take away their bows and arrows and break them, and withal beat the poor fellows out of the gate again. When we departed in the evening and would not tarry all night, she was very sorry, and gave us into our boat our supper half-dressed, pots and all, and brought us to our boat-side, in which we lay all night, removing the same a pretty distance from the shore. She perceived our jealousy, was much grieved, and sent divers men and thirty women to sit all night on the bank-side by us, and sent us into our boats fine mats to cover us from the rain, using very many words to entreat us to rest in their houses. But because we were few men, and, if we had miscarried, the voyage had been in very great danger, we durst not adventure anything, although there was no cause of doubt; for a more kind and loving people there cannot be found in the world, as far as we had hitherto had trial. Beyond this island there is the mainland, and over against this island falleth into this spacious water the great river called Occam by the inhabitants, on which standeth a town called Pomeiock, and six days' journey from the same is situate their greatest city, called Skicoak, which this people affirm to be very great; but the savages were never at it, only they speak of it by the report of their fathers and other men, whom they have heard affirm it to be above one hour's journey about. Into this river falleth another great river called Cipo, in which there is found great store of muscles, in which there are pearls; likewise there descendeth into this Occam another river called Nomopana, on the one side whereof standeth a great town called Chawanook, and the lord of that town and country is called Pooneno. This Pooneno is not subject to the King of Wingandacoa, but is a free lord. Beyond this country is there another king, whom they call Menatonon, and these three kings are in league with each other. Toward the southwest, four days' journey, is situate a town called Secotan, which is the southernmost town of Wingandacoa, near unto which six-and-twenty years past there was a ship cast away, whereof some of the people were saved, and those were white people, whom the country people preserved. And after ten days remaining in an out island unhabited, called Wocokon, they, with the help of some of the dwellers of Secotan, fastened two boats of the country together, and made masts unto them, and sails of their shirts, and having taken into them such victuals as the country yielded, they departed after they had remained in this out island three weeks. But shortly after, it seemed, they were cast away, for the boats were found upon the coast, cast a-land in another island adjoining. Other than these, there was never any people apparelled, or white of color, either seen or heard of among these people, and these aforesaid were seen only of the inhabitants of Secotan; which appeared to be very true, for they wondered marvellously when we were among them at the whiteness of our skins, ever coveting to touch our breasts and to view the same. Besides they had our ships in marvellous admiration, and all things else were so strange unto them, as it appeared that none of them had ever seen the like. When we discharged any piece, were it but an arquebuse, they would tremble thereat for very fear, and for the strangeness of the same, for the weapons which themselves use are bows and arrows. The arrows are but of small canes, headed with a sharp shell or tooth of a fish sufficient enough to kill a naked man. Their swords be of wood hardened; likewise they use wooden breast-plates for their defence; They have beside a kind of club, in the end whereof they fasten the sharp horns of a stag, or other beast. When they go to wars they carry about with them their idol, of whom they ask counsel, as the Romans were wont of the oracle of Apollo. They sing songs as they march toward the battle, instead of drums and trumpets. Their wars are very cruel and bloody, by reason whereof, and of their civil dissensions which have happened of late years among them, the people are marvellously wasted, and in some places the country left desolate. Adjoining to this country aforesaid, called Secotan, beginneth a country called Pomovik, belonging to another king, whom they call Piemacum; and this King is in league with the next King adjoining toward the setting of the sun, and the country Newsiok, situate upon a goodly river called Neus. These kings have mortal war with Wingina, King of Wingandacoa; but about two years past there was a peace made between the king Piemacum and the Lord of Secotan, as these men which we have brought with us to England have given us to understand; but there remaineth a mortal malice in the Secotans, for many injuries and slaughters done upon them by this Piemacum. They invited divers men, and thirty women of the best of his country, to their town to a feast, and when they were altogether merry, and praying before their idol--which is nothing else but a mere delusion of the devil--the captain or lord of the town came suddenly upon them, and slew them every one, reserving the women and children; and these two have oftentimes since persuaded us to surprise Piemacum his town, having promised and assured us that there will be found in it great store of commodities. But whether their persuasion be to the end they may be revenged of their enemies, or for the love they bear to us, we leave that to the trial hereafter. Beyond this island called Roanoak are many islands very plentiful of fruits and other natural increases, together with many towns and villages along the side of the continent, some bounding upon the islands, and some stretching up farther into the land. When we first had sight of this country, some thought the first land we saw to be the continent; but after we entered into the haven we saw before us another mighty long sea, for there lieth along the coast a tract of islands two hundred miles in length, adjoining to the ocean sea, and between the islands two or three entrances. When you are entered between them, these islands being very narrow for the most part, as in some places six miles broad, in some places less, in few more, then there appeareth another great sea, containing in breadth in some places forty, in some fifty, in some twenty miles over, before you come unto the continent; and in this enclosed sea there are above one hundred islands of divers bignesses, whereof one is sixteen miles long, at which we were, finding it a most pleasant and fertile ground, replenished with goodly cedars and divers other sweet woods, full of currants, of flax, and many other notable commodities which we at that time had no leisure to view. Besides this island there are many, as I have said, some of two, of three, of four, of five miles, some more, some less, most beautiful and pleasant to behold, replenished with deer, coneys, hares, and divers beasts, and about them the goodliest and best fish in the world, and in greatest abundance. Thus, sir, we have acquainted you with the particulars of our discovery made this present voyage, as far forth as the shortness of the time we there continued would afford us to take view of; and so contenting ourselves with this service at this time, which we hope hereafter to enlarge, as occasion and assistance shall be given, we resolved to leave the country, and to apply ourselves to return for England, which we did accordingly, and arrived safely in the west of England about the midst of September. And whereas we have above certified you of the country taken in possession by us to her majesty's use, and so to yours by her majesty's grant, we thought good for the better assurance thereof to record some of the particular gentlemen and men of account who then were present, as witnesses of the same, that thereby all occasion of cavil to the title of the country, in her majesty's behalf, may be prevented, which otherwise such as like not the action may use and pretend. Whose names are, Master Philip Amidas, Master Arthur Barlow, captains; William Greenville, John Wood, James Bromewich, Henry Greene, Benjamin Wood, Simon Ferdinando, Nicholas Petman, John Hughes, of the company. We brought home also two of the savages, being lusty men, whose names were Wanchese and Manteo. R. R. HOWISON Arrived in England, Barlow and Amidas immediately sought the Queen, and laid before her an account of their voyage and of its results. There was much of truth as a basis for their wondrous descriptions; but the sober observer will not fail to mark in this narrative the impress of imaginations heated by the novelty of their performance and the encouraging hope of their royal mistress. They spake of the land they had visited as an earthly paradise; its seas were tranquil and gemmed with green islands, on which the eye delighted to rest; its trees were lofty, and many of them would rival the odoriferous products of tropical soil; its fruits were so lavishly supplied by nature that art needed to do little more than gather them in summer and autumn, for the wants of the winter; its people were children of another age when virtue triumphed, and vice was yet unknown. The Court and the Queen were alike enlisted, and looked to this discovery as one of the brightest spots in her lustrous reign. For a land so distinguished in natural charms, and to which England designed to devote the expanding energies of her people, a name was to be found worthy of future love. The Queen selected "Virginia," and none can deplore the graceful choice. She remembered her own unmarried state; and connecting, it may be, with this the virgin purity which yet seemed to linger amid this favored region, she bestowed a name which has since interwoven itself with the most sensitive chords of a million hearts. Raleigh had now obtained the honor of knighthood and a seat in parliament; and deriving from this lucrative monopoly means for further effort, he made diligent preparation for despatching another fleet to Virginia. The second expedition consisted of seven vessels, large and small; and that gallant spirit, Sir Richard Grenville, himself was at its head. The war with Spain was now in progress, and the richly laden vessel from South America and the West Indies offered tempting prizes to English bravery. Sir Richard sailed from Plymouth, April 9, passed the Canaries and West Indies, captured two Spanish ships, ran imminent hazard of being wrecked on the dangerous headland now known as Cape Fear, and reached Wocpcon on June 26th. Manteo was brought back to his native land, and proved an invaluable guide and interpreter to his newly made friends. But their amicable relations with the natives were now to receive a rude shock, from which they never recovered. At Aquascogoc, an Indian stole from the adventurers a silver cup; and, on being detected, he did not return it as speedily as was desired (July 16). For this enormous offence the English burned the town and barbarously destroyed the growing corn. The affrighted inhabitants fled to the woods, and thus a poisoned arrow was planted in their bosoms, which rankled unto the end. A silver cup, in the eyes of European avarice, was a loss which could only be atoned by ruin and devastation; and had the unhappy savage stolen the only child of the boldest settler, a more furious vengeance could not have followed! To such conduct does America owe the undying hatred of the aboriginal tenants of her land, and the burden of infamy that she must bear when weighed in the scales of immaculate justice. A serious attempt was now made to found a colony. One hundred eight men were left on the island of Roanoke, comprising in their number some of the boldest hearts and many of the best cultivated minds that had left the mother-country. Among them was Thomas Heriot, whom Raleigh had sent out with a full knowledge of his scientific acquirements, his love of investigation, and his moral worth. Sir Richard Grenville returned to England, where he arrived in September, bringing with him a rich Spanish prize. The settlers, thus left to their own resources, seem to have done little in the all-important task of clearing the country and planting corn for future necessities. Ralph Lane had been appointed governor, a man uniting military knowledge with experience in the sea. He undertook several voyages of exploration, penetrated north as far as Elizabeth River and a town on Chesapeake Bay, and south to Secotan, eighty leagues from Roanoke. But his most famous expedition was up Albemarle Sound and the Chowan River, of his adventures in which he has himself given us a description in a letter preserved by Captain Smith. The King of the Chawanooks was known by the title of Menatonon. He was lame in one of his lower limbs, but his spirit seems to have been one of uncommon activity and shrewdness. He told the credulous English of a country, four days' journey beyond them, where they might hope for abundant riches. This country lay on the sea; and its king, from the waters around his island retreat, drew magnificent pearls in such numbers that they were commonly used in his garments and household conveniences. Instantly the fancies of the eager listeners were fired with the hope of attaining this wealth; and notwithstanding the scarcity of food, and the danger of an assault by "two or three thousand" savages, they continued to toil up the river. They labored on until they had nothing for sustenance except two dogs of the mastiff species and the sassafras leaves which grew in great abundance around them. Upon this inviting fare they were fain to nourish their bodies, while their souls were fed upon the hope of finally entering this region of pearls; but at length, in a state near to starvation, they returned to Roanoke, having made no discovery even so valuable as a copper spring high up the Chowan River, concerning which the Indians had excited their hopes. Thomas Heriot employed his time in researches more rational than those which sought for pearls amid the wilderness of America. He intermingled freely with the Indian tribes, studied their habits, their manners, their language, and origin. He sought to teach them a theology more exalted than the fancies of their singular superstition, and to expand their minds by a display of the instruments of European science. He acquired a vast fund of information as to the state of the original country, its people and its products, and to his labors we may yet be indebted in the progress of this narrative. But we have reason to believe that a great part of the colonists contributed nothing to the success of the scheme, and did much to render it fruitless. The natives, who had received the first adventurers with unsuspecting hospitality, were now estranged by the certain prospect of seeing their provisions taken away and their homes wrested from them by civilized pretenders. Wingina, the King of the country, had never been cordial, and he now became their implacable foe. Nothing but a superstitious reverence of the Bible, the fire-arms, and the medicinal remedies of the colonists restrained his earthly enmity; but at length, upon the death of his father, Ensenore, who had been the steady friend of the whites, he prepared for vengeance. In accordance with a custom common among the Indians, he had changed his name to Pemissapan, and now drew around him followers to aid in his scheme of death. Twenty or more were to surround the hut of Lane, drive him forth with fire, and slay him while thus defenceless. The leader destroyed, the rest of the colonists were to be gradually exhausted by starving, until they should fall an easy prey to the savages. But this well-concerted plan was betrayed to the English--a _rencontre_ occurred, and several Indians were slain. The settlers considered themselves justifiable in meeting the treachery of the foe by a stratagem, which drew Pemissapan and eight of his principal men within their reach, and they were all shot down in the skirmish (1586). But this success did not assuage the hunger of the famished colonists. They were reduced to extremity, when a seasonable relief appeared on their coasts (June 8th). While despair was taking possession of their bosoms, the white sails of a distant fleet were seen, and Sir Francis Drake, with twenty-three ships, was soon in their waters. He had been cruising in search of the Spaniards in the West Indies and had been directed by the Queen to visit the Virginia colony. His quick perception instantly discerned the wants of the settlers, and he provided for them a ship well stored with provisions and furnished with boats to serve in emergency. But a violent storm drove his fleet to sea and reduced to wreck the vessel intended to sustain the settlers. Their resolution gave way; it seemed as though divine and human power were united against them, and, in utter despondency, they entreated Drake to receive them in his fleet and carry them to England. He yielded to their wishes. They embarked June 18th, and July 27th they landed once more on the shores of their mother-land. Thus, after a residence of nearly twelve months in Virginia, the first colonists deserted the country which had been offered as containing all that the heart of man could desire. Little was gained by their abortive attempt beyond an increased knowledge of the New World, and another lesson in the great book of depraved human nature. It would be pleasing to the lover of Virginia to be able to record the final good-fortune of Walter Raleigh, but nothing resulted from his patent except successive disaster and an appalling consummation. The determined knight had sent a ship to seek the colony; and this arrived after the disheartened settlers had sailed with Sir Francis Drake, and, thus finding the island deserted, it returned to England. Two weeks afterward Sir Richard Grenville arrived with two ships well-appointed, but no flourishing settlement greeted his eager eyes. Unwilling to abandon the semblance of hope, he left fifteen men on the island, well provided with all things essential to their comfort, and then spread his sails for England (1587). In the succeeding year Raleigh prepared for another attempt. Convinced that the Bay of Chesapeake, which had been discovered by Lane, afforded greater advantages for a colony, he directed his adventurers to seek its shores, and gave them a character of corporation for the city of Raleigh--a name that North Carolina has since, with merited gratitude, bestowed upon her most favored town. John White assumed command of this expedition, and they were soon in the waters of Virginia (July 22d). The cape to which maritime terrors have given an expressive name threatened them with shipwreck, but at length they arrived in safety at Hatteras, and immediately despatched a party to Roanoke to seek the settlers left by Sir Richard Grenville. A melancholy silence pervaded the spot--the huts were yet standing, but rank weeds and vines had overspread them, and striven to reclaim to the wilderness the abortive efforts of human labor. Not one man could be found, but the bones of one unhappy victim told in gloomy eloquence of conflict and of death. From the reluctant statements of the natives, they gathered the belief that these men had either all perished under the attacks of overwhelming numbers, or had gradually wasted away under the approaches of disease and famine. A discovery so mournful held out no cheering prospects to the new adventurers; yet they determined to renew the attempt upon the island adjoining Hatteras. About one hundred fifteen persons were landed and prepared for their novel life. The Indians were no longer pacific; the spirit of Wingina had diffused itself through every bosom, and the unfortunate mistake, which caused the death of a friendly savage, contributed much to the general hostility. But amid so much that was unpropitious, two events occurred to shed a faint light upon their days (August 13th). Manteo, the faithful friend of the early visitors, was baptized with the simple though solemn rites of the Christian faith, and upon him was bestowed the sounding title of Lord of Dessamonpeake, and, a few days after, the first child of European parentage was born upon the soil of America. Eleanor, daughter of Governor White, had married Ananias Dare, and on August 18th she gave birth to a female, upon whom was immediately bestowed the sweet name of Virginia. It is sad to reflect that the gentle infant of an English mother, and the first whose eyes were opened upon the New World, should have been destined to a life of privation and to a death of early oblivion. But the colonists needed many things from the motherland, and determined to send the Governor to procure them. He was unwilling to leave them under circumstances so strongly appealing to his paternal heart, but yielded to the general wish and sailed on August 27th. But many causes now opposed his success in the mother-country. Spain was threatening a descent with her formidable Armada, and England was alive with preparations to meet the shock. Raleigh and Grenville entered with enthusiasm into the interests of their country, and were no longer in a state to furnish aid for a distant colony. Not until April 22, 1588, could they prepare two small barks for a voyage to Virginia, and these, drawn away by their eager thirst for Spanish prizes laden with Mexican gold, wandered from their route, and were driven back by superior enemies to their original ports. Yielding to his disappointment and mortification at these repeated disasters, and exhausted in money by his enormous outlays, Raleigh no longer hoped for success from his own exertions. Forty thousand pounds had been expended and no return had been made. On March 7, 1589, he assigned his patent to Thomas Smith, Richard Hakluyt, and others, who had the means and the experience of merchants, or rather he extended to them the rights enjoyed under his patent and exercised by him in giving the charter for the "City of Raleigh." With this assignment he gave one hundred pounds for the propagation of Christian principles among the savages of Virginia. But the energetic soul of Raleigh no longer ruled, and doubtful zeal impelled the assignees. Not until March, 1590, could Governor White obtain three ships for his purposes; and though their names might have incited him, by the motives both of earthly hope and religious trust, yet he preferred an avaricious cruise among the West India Isles to a speed which might, peradventure, have preserved the life of his daughter. He arrived at Hatteras August 15th, and sought the settlers left there three years before. The curling smoke of grass and trees in flame gave them encouragement, but they sought in vain their long-neglected friends. On the bark of a tree was found the word "Croatan," legibly inscribed, and White hoped, from the absence of the cross, which he himself had suggested as a sign of distress, that the settlers were still in being; but as they proceeded to Croatan a furious storm arose and drove them from the coast, and their dismayed spirits could find no relief except in a return to England. No lingering trace has ever marked the fate of this unhappy colony. The generous Raleigh in vain sent five successive messengers to seek and save. They were gone, and whither no tongue was left to tell. Modern ingenuity may be indulged in the forlorn suggestion that they were amalgamated among their savage neighbors, but sober thought will rather fear that they perished under the mingled weight of famine, of disappointed hope, and of Indian barbarity. DRAKE CAPTURES CARTAGENA HE "SINGES THE KING OF SPAIN'S BEARD" AT CADIZ A.D. 1586-1587 JULIAN CORBETT Sir Francis Drake (born in Devonshire about 1540; died in 1596), greatest of the Elizabethan seamen, has been the subject of perhaps equal praise and blame at the hands of the world's historians. So famous were his exploits, and so scanty the actual knowledge of them in his own time, that "he was not dead before his life became a fairy-tale." But history has distinguished fact from legend in the life of this naval hero, whose undisputed achievements have kept his name conspicuous among his country's foremost sea-fighters. He began his career in the coasting-trade, sailed with Sir John Hawkins in 1567, and three years later began privateering operations against the Spaniards in the New World, by way of making good the losses which they had inflicted upon him. These depredations on Spanish possessions were continued through many years, with occasional attacks upon the coast of Spain itself. "By Spanish historians," says an English writer, "these hostilities are represented as unprovoked in their origin, and as barbarous in their execution, and candor must allow that there is but too much justice in the complaint." Whether justifiable or not, these aggressive acts of Drake had much to do with the desire for revenge upon England which led Philip II to prepare for a great invasion of that country. Drake, on his return, in 1580, from the first English circumnavigation of the globe, was knighted by Queen Elizabeth. She now gave him important commands, and from this period at least his career may be regarded in connection with the regular service of his sovereign. In the autumn of 1585 Drake sailed with twenty-five ships against the Spanish Main, harrying the coasts of the West Indies and of northern South America. Cartagena, which he captured in 1586, was the chief port and stronghold of New Granada (now Colombia). By this feat, as also by his "singeing of the beard of the Spanish King" at Cadiz next year, he assailed with telling effect the power with which England was at once to be brought into more serious conflict. The mill of Philip's purpose went grinding on relentlessly. He invited a large fleet of English corn-ships to the relief of his famine-stricken provinces, and then, as they lay unsuspecting in his ports, he seized them every one. Never once was the growing armada out of his mind. This atrocious outrage was but to feed his monster, and swift and sharp was the retribution it earned. It was in the last days of May, and, ere June was out, far and near the seas were swarming with English privateers, and "The Dragon" was unchained. Fortified with letters of marque to release the embargoed vessels, Drake hoisted his flag at Plymouth on the Elizabeth Bonaventura, and there, by the end of July, "in all jollity and with all help and furtherance himself could wish," a formidable fleet gathered round him. Frobisher was his vice-admiral, Francis Knollys his rear-admiral, and Thomas Fenner his flag-captain. Christopher Carleill was there, too, as lieutenant-general, with a full staff and ten companies under him. No such privateering squadron had ever been seen before. It consisted of two battle-ships and eighteen cruisers, with their complement of store-ships and pinnaces; it was manned with a force of soldiers and sailors to the number of two thousand three hundred, and it is not surprising that constant difficulties delayed its departure. Yet delay was dangerous in the extreme. The Spanish party had again taken heart, and were whispering caution in the Queen's ear. Even Burghley grew nervous that she would repent; but at last he got sailing-orders sent off, and, with a sigh of relief, entered in his diary that Drake had gone. To his horror came back a letter from the admiral still dated from Plymouth, instead of from Finisterre, as he had hoped, and he sent down a warning to urge the immediate departure of the fleet. August wore away, and the equipment was still incomplete, when Drake, who was now in constant dread of a countermand, was alarmed by Sir Philip Sydney's suddenly appearing at Plymouth and announcing his intention of accompanying the expedition. Determined to have no more to do with courtiers and amateur soldiers, he secretly sent off a courier to betray the truant's escapade to the Court. He must even be suspected, in his desperation, of having set men in wait to intercept and destroy any orders that were not to his liking. The precaution was unnecessary. Sydney was peremptorily stopped, and ere any letter came to stay Drake, too, the wind had shifted northerly, and, all unready as he was, he cleared for Finisterre. There he arrived on September 26th. He was clear away, but that was all. He was short both of water and victuals. There had not even been time to distribute the stores he had, or to issue his general orders to the fleet. He smelt foul weather, too; and, determined to complete somewhere what he had left undone at Plymouth, he boldly ran in under the lee of the Bayona Islands in Vigo Bay. The old Queen's officers were aghast. Entirely dominated by the prestige of Spain, they believed that nothing could be done against her except by surprise, and they trembled to see their admiral thus recklessly fling his cards upon the table. But he knew what he was doing. As with sagacious bravado he had sprung ashore at Santa Marta, and had mocked the Spanish fleet in Cartagena harbor, so now before he struck he exulted that his unfleshed host should hear him shout "_En garde!_" to the King of Spain; that they should listen while he cried that England cared not for spying traitors, for she had nothing to conceal; that her fleets meant to sail when and where they would, and Philip might do his worst. It was a stroke of that divine instinct which marks out a hero from among able captains--the magic touch of a great leader of men, under which the dead fabric of an army springs into life and feels every fibre tingling with the strong purpose of its heart. Two leagues from the town of Bayona the fleet anchored; and resolved at once to display his whole strength, and exercise his men in their duties, Drake ordered out his pinnaces and boats for a reconnaissance in force. His boldness bore immediate fruit. The Governor sent off to treat, and by nightfall it was arranged that troops should land, and in the morning be allowed to water and collect what victuals they could. But at midnight the threatened storm rolled up. The troops were hurriedly reëmbarked; and, barely in time to escape disaster, the flotilla regained the ships. For three days the gale continued, threatening the whole fleet with destruction till it was got safely up above Vigo. There the whole of the boats in which the panic-stricken inhabitants had embarked their property were captured, and, though by this time the Governor of Bayona had arrived with a considerable force, he was compelled to permit Drake to carry out his purpose in peace. By October 8th he was out in the Bayona road again, waiting for a wind to waft him on his way, and it was reported at the Spanish court that he had gone toward the Indies. The consternation was universal. The Marquis of Santa Cruz, high admiral of Spain and the most renowned naval officer in Europe, declared that not only the African islands, but the whole Pacific coast, the Spanish Main, and the West Indies were at the corsair's mercy, and told his master that a fleet of forty sail must be instantly equipped for the pursuit. But though for another fortnight Drake rode defiantly at the Bayona anchorage, not a limb of Philip's inert machinery could be moved against him; and, while the chivalry of Spain chafed under their sovereign's deliberation, the second blow was struck. Madeira was passed by and the Canaries spared; for Palma, which Drake intended should revictual him, showed so bold a front that he would not waste time in trying to reduce it. It was on another point that his implacable glance was fixed. Five years ago at Santiago, the chief town of the Cape Verd Islands, young William Hawkins, a personal adherent of Drake's, had been made the victim of some such treachery as his father and captain had suffered together at Vera Cruz. From that hour it was doomed. In the middle of November the fleet arrived in the road and the troops landed. Threatened by Carleill from the heights above the valley where it lies, and from the sea by Drake, without a blow the town was abandoned to its fate. For ten days the island was scoured for plunder and provisions, and ere the month was out the anchorage was desolate and Santiago a heap of ashes. Drake's vengeance was complete, and, exulting like Gideon in the devastation that marked his course, he led his ships across the Atlantic. Is there a moment in history more tragic than that? For the first time since the ages began, a hostile fleet was passing the ocean--the pioneer of how many more that have gone and are yet to go--the forerunner of how much glory and shame and misery! What wonder if the curse of God seemed upon it? Hardly had it lost sight of land when it was stricken with sickness. In a few days some three hundred men were dead, and numbers of others prostrate and useless; but in unshaken faith, and with reverent wonder at the inscrutable will of Heaven, Drake never flinched or paused. His only thought was how to check the evil. At Dominica he got fresh provisions from the natives, and refreshed his sick with a few days on shore. At St. Christopher he again halted to spend Christmas and elaborate the details of his next move. The point where Philip was now to feel the weight of his arm was the fair city of Santo Domingo in Española. It was by far the most serious operation Drake had yet undertaken. Hitherto his exploits had been against places that were little more than struggling settlements, but Santo Domingo was indeed a city, stone-built and walled, and flanked with formidable batteries. It was held by a powerful garrison, as Drake learned from a captured frigate, and a naval force had been concentrated in the harbor for its defence. As the oldest town in the Indies, its renown had hitherto secured it from attack, and in Spain it was held the queen city of the colonial empire. The moral effect of its capture would be profound, and, besides, from Virginia the governor of Raleigh's new colony had sent home a fabulous report of its wealth. Drake was fully alive to the gravity of the task before him. His dispositions had never been so elaborate, and they evince at least a touch of that military genius which the strategists of the next century denied him. While the sick were recruiting he sent forward a squadron to reconnoitre, and, if possible, to open communications with the maroons who infested the hills. For three days the garrison was thus exhausted with constant alarms, and then on January 1, 1586, the whole fleet appeared in the bay. Night fell, and, as darkness closed the eyes of the harassed garrison, with the fleet all was activity. In boats and pinnaces the troops were being rapidly embarked, and soon Drake in person was piloting the flotilla for the surf-beaten shore. At a point within the bay, but some ten miles from the town, a practicable landing-place had been found. Watch-houses overlooked it, but watchmen there were none. Drake had got touch with the maroons. By his directions a party of them had stolen down from the hills, and as the sentries came out from the city in the evening, swiftly and silently they had been every one despatched. Thus, unseen and unmolested, the troops were successfully landed, and then, with pious and cheery farewells to Carleill, Drake returned to the fleet to prepare the ground for the surprise. In the morning he anchored in the road, ran out his guns, and proceeded to threaten a landing at a point close to that side of the town upon which Carleill was stealthily approaching in two parallel columns. As the Spaniards saw the fleet preparing the advance of the boats and pinnaces, the whole of the horse and a large force of foot marched out of the town to oppose the threatened attack, and took up a position fronting the sea, with their left resting on the town and the other flank exposed in the line of Carleill's advance. It was exactly what had been foreseen, and, ere the Spaniards had discovered that the movement from the fleet was merely a feint, the horse which were covering their exposed flank were flying before Carleill's musketeers. The surprise was complete. Taken in flank by Carleill, and threatened in the rear by his second column under Powell, the chief of the staff, the infantry could make no real resistance; and so rapidly was the English advance pushed home that the struggling mass of friend and foe entered pell-mell through the open gates of the town. For an hour, alarms of drum and trumpet mingling confusedly with the sounds of street-fighting reached the listening fleet as the two columns forced their way to meet upon the Plaza. But how they fared none could tell, till on a tower a white staff suddenly appeared, and in another moment the cross of St. George fluttered gayly out upon the breeze. With a roar of triumph the ships' guns saluted the signal of victory. The town was won. Though the garrison fled panic-stricken across the river on the far side of the city, and the citadel was evacuated in the night, the place was far too large to be occupied by the force at Drake's command. Following, therefore, the same tactics that had been successful at Nombre de Dios, he ordered the troops to intrench themselves in the Plaza and to occupy the principal batteries. In this way he held the city for a month. The plunder was disappointing. The city was already a hundred years old, and its day was done; for the reckless native policy of the colonists had almost ruined the island. It remained but to treat for a ransom. The Governor at once declared himself unable to meet the extravagant demands of the English admiral, and in order to bring him to terms Drake began to burn the town piecemeal. But so well was it built that little harm could be done, and every day his impatience increased. Once, in the course of the negotiations, he sent a boy with a flag of truce to the Spanish camp. A Spaniard, meeting the lad, so ill-treated him that he could barely crawl back to die at the admiral's feet. Then all the fury of Drake's nature burst forth. Two friars who were among the prisoners were immediately sent ashore and hanged by the provost-marshal on the scene of the crime. Another was despatched to the Spanish camp to declare that two more would be executed every morning until the offender was brought down and hanged on the spot by his own authorities. In hasty alarm the demand was complied with, and then the international dinners and the negotiations went on more smoothly. Convinced at last of the poverty of the colony, Drake accepted a ransom of twenty-five thousand ducats. The sum, which is equal to about fifty thousand pounds of our money, though little enough to satisfy the shareholders, was very serious for the enemy. For besides this loss the town had been stripped of everything worth carrying away by the troops and seamen. Two hundred forty guns were taken on board the English ships; and not only were they thoroughly refurnished from the Spanish stores, but for a month the whole expedition had lived in free quarters at the enemy's expense. The entire fleet which lay in the harbor fell into Drake's hands, and, with the exception of four of the finest galleons, was given to the flames. Besides the vessels which the Spaniards themselves had scuttled, two galleys with their tenders, fifteen frigates, and a galleon were thus destroyed, and hundreds of galley-slaves set free. "It was such a cooling to King Philip," said one in Europe as the news leaked out, "as never happened to him since he was King of Spain." But as yet Drake was far from done. In the middle of February, with his force recruited by the English prisoners he had freed, and with a troop of attendant prizes laden with his spoil, in undiminished strength he appeared before Cartagena. No city in America was more difficult of approach, but the memories of the old hard days were still green, when, storm-beaten, drenched, and chilled, without food or shelter, he had ridden in the harbor day after day in despite of all the Spaniards could do, and he knew it all like a pilot. The city was built close to the shore fronting west, and directly from its southern face an inlet of the sea stretched many leagues southward along the coast, forming a large lagoon. The long spit of land which separated this sheet of water from the sea was pierced by two natural channels. At the far end was the dangerous Bocca Chica, and some three miles from the city was a larger entrance known as the Bocca Grande. Between this entrance and the town a tongue of land ran out at right angles from the spit to the opposite shore, forming an inner harbor and barring all approach to the city from the outer part of the lagoon, except by a narrow channel which lay under the guns of a powerful fort on the mainland. On its northern and eastern faces the city was encircled by a broad creek, which ran round it from the inner harbor to the sea in such a way as to form a wide natural moat, rendering the city unapproachable from the mainland except by a bridge. This bridge was also commanded by the harbor fort, nor were land operations possible at any other point except from that part of the spit which lay between the city and the Bocca Grande. So finely, however, did this narrow down before the city could be reached, that between the inner harbor and the sea it was but fifty paces wide, and here the Spaniards had had time to prepare defences that looked impregnable. From shore to shore a formidable entrenchment completely barred the way; and not only was its front so staked and encumbered as to render a night attack impossible, but its approaches were swept by the guns and small-arms of a great galeas and two galleys which lay in the inner harbor. To a man so tender as Drake ever was for the lives of his men and the safety of his ships, to attack such a place might well have appeared hopeless; but the originality of the amphibious corsair at once descried a hole which had escaped all the science of the Spanish martialists. Instead of entering by the Bocca Grande, with consummate skill and daring he piloted the whole fleet through the dangerous channel at the extreme end of the lagoon. The only impression which so hazardous a movement could create in the minds of the Spaniards was that he was about to repeat his Santo Domingo operations, and land his troops there to attack from the mainland. Such an impression must have been confirmed as, moving up the lagoon, he anchored opposite the Bocca Grande and threatened the harbor fort with his boats; but Drake's project was far different. Instead of being landed on the mainland, Carleill with eight companies was quietly slipped ashore in the Bocca Grande, with instructions to make his way diagonally through the woods that covered the spit till he reached the seashore, and then, instead of advancing on the front of the intrenchments, to wade along through the wash of the surf till he was within striking distance of the Spanish position. Meanwhile Frobisher advanced with the flotilla against the harbor fort, and as soon as Carleill was heard in contact with the enemy's pickets he opened fire. The boat-attack was repulsed--indeed, it may only have been intended as what soldiers then called "a hot alarm"--but Carleill was completely successful. By the march through the surf he had not only evaded the obstacles which the enemy had so carefully prepared, but he had been covered from the fire of the galleys in the harbor, and had never so much as entered the fire-area of the heavily armed intrenchments. After a desperate struggle at push of pike, the position was carried by assault, and once more so hotly was the advantage pursued that in one rush the whole town was captured. The garrison fled across the bridge to the hills, and the next day, when Drake brought up the fleet to bear upon the fort, that also was evacuated. No success was ever better earned and few more richly rewarded. Cartagena was the capital of the Spanish Main, and though much younger than Santo Domingo it was far wealthier. It yielded rich loot for the men; and for his shareholders Drake, after a long negotiation, succeeded in exacting a ransom of a hundred ten thousand ducats, besides what he got for an adjacent monastery. Though to all this plunder Drake could add the consolation that he had destroyed the galleys and shipping which crowded the port, and blown up the harbor fort which the Spaniards had forgotten to include in the convention, he was still unsatisfied. Well knowing that by an advance up the Chagres River in his boats Panama lay at his mercy, he was resolved with its capture to crown the campaign; but as he lay in Cartagena the sickness, which had never really ceased, broke out again with new virulence, and made such havoc with his force that he had reluctantly to confess that Panama must wait. To capture it with the crippled means at his command was impossible, and the only question was whether Cartagena should be held till he could return with reënforcements. The soldiers declared themselves ready to undertake the task; but in a full council of war it was finally decided that no strategical advantage would be gained at all proportional to the risk that would be run in further weakening the fleet, and on the last day of March the signal to make sail home was flying from the Elizabeth Bonaventura. So severely, however, did they suffer from the weather and want of water that it was nearly two months before they reached the coast of Florida. Still Drake found time and energy to destroy and plunder the Spanish settlement at St. Augustine, and relieve Raleigh's exhausted colony in Virginia. With the remnants of the settlers on board, he weighed for England, and on July 28, 1586, he was writing from Plymouth to Lord Burghley laconically reporting his return; and, apologizing for having missed the Plate fleet by only twelve hours' sail--"the reason best known to God"--he declared that he and his fleet were ready at once to strike again in any direction the Queen would be pleased to indicate. "There is a very great gap opened," said Drake in his letter to Burghley, "very little to the liking of the King of Spain." That, with the calm request for orders, was his comment on a feat which changed the destinies of Europe. At its fullest flood he had stemmed the tide of Spanish empire. It was no less a thing than that. A few months ago all Europe had been cowering in confused alarm before the shadow of a new Roman empire. Ever since the first triumph of Luther, the cause of Reformation had been Steadily losing ground; on England and the Low Countries hung its only hope, and with the fall of Antwerp Europe saw itself on the eve of that "last great battle in the west" which must decide its fate for centuries. In despair of the result, each trembling power was trying to hide behind the other; each was thrusting its neighbor forward to break the coming blow; and Philip led the cheating till his hour should come. He was bent on crushing Elizabeth; and then, with one foot on the ruins of her kingdom, he meant to stamp down his rebellious Netherlands into the gloomy Catholicism in which his own dark soul was sunk. As the fruit of his splendid deliberation ripened, he strove to cheat Elizabeth into inactivity by a hope that peace might yet be purchased by the betrayal of the Netherlands. Then in laughing gusts came over the Atlantic the rumors of his exploits, till the full gale they heralded swept over Europe, whirling into oblivion a hundred intrigues and bending the prestige of Spain like a reed. The limitless possibilities of the new-born naval warfare had been demonstrated, and the lesson startled Europe like a revelation. An unmeasured force was added to statecraft, and a new power had arisen. The effect was immediate. Men saw the fountain of Spanish trade at England's mercy; they knew how narrowly the Plate fleet had escaped, and a panic palsied Philip's finance. The Bank of Seville broke; that of Venice was in despair; and the King of Spain, pointed at as a bankrupt, failed to raise a loan of half a million ducats. Parma was appalled. With his brilliant capture of Antwerp he had seen himself on the brink of that great exploit with which he hoped to crown his career; and now, instead of a host armed at all points for the invasion of England, he saw around him a broken army it was impossible to supply. In Germany the Protestant princes raised their heads, and, seeing dawn at last, began to shake off the lethargy into which despair had plunged them. England was wild with joy. Burghley himself was almost startled from his caution, and cried out with half a shudder that Drake was a fearful man to the King of Spain. For two years Philip had been at work upon his Armada. His ports were crowded with its details; his storehouses were bursting with its furniture; and Walsingham at last was able to convince the Queen, by a paper stolen from the very closet of the Pope, that it was upon her head the great engine was to crash. Her eyes were opened; and, infected for a moment with the warlike spirit into which her people and her Parliament had lashed themselves, she ordered Drake in 1587 to the coast of Spain. It was no longer as a privateer that he was to act. He held the rank of her majesty's admiral-at-the-seas, and William Borough, the comptroller of the navy, was his vice-admiral. Four of the Queen's largest battle-ships and two of her pinnaces were under his command, and the London merchants committed to his flag ten fine cruisers, with the famous Merchant Royal at their head. Besides these, he had six hundred tons of his own shipping, as well as some of the lord admiral's. In all, exclusive of tenders, there were twenty-three sail--five battle-ships, two first-class cruisers, seven of the second class, and nine gunboats large and small. With this fine force he was instructed to proceed to Cape St. Vincent, and by every means in his power to prevent the concentration of the several divisions of the Armada by cutting off their victuallers, and even destroying them in the ports where they lay. If the enemy sailed for England or Ireland, he was to hang on their skirts, cut off stragglers, and prevent a landing; and, finally, he was given a free hand to act against the East and West India convoys. Elizabeth was in a resolute mood. Drake's ideas of naval warfare were developing a step further, and the Queen for the moment listened. He was beginning dimly to grasp that the command of the sea was the first object for a naval power to aim at. It was because he had not command of the seas that he had been unable to retain his hold of Cartagena, for the troops which should have formed its garrison were wanted to defend his fleet. Wiser for the lesson, his aim was now to crush the Spanish navy, and then, in undisputed control of the sea, to gather in his harvest. The opposition were thoroughly alarmed, and, while Drake in hot haste was driving on his preparations, they left no stone unturned to get his orders modified. They tampered with his men, they whispered slanders in his mistress' ear, they frightened her with threats from abroad, they tempted her with offers of peace from Parma on the old disgraceful terms. For Walsingham, who, through thick and thin, was always at Drake's back, it was an unequal fight; with the stanchest of his party in disgrace for Mary's premature execution, he was single-handed against a host, and at last the friends of Spain prevailed. Early in April a messenger sped down to Plymouth with orders that operations were to be confined to the high seas. As Philip's ships were all snug in port, and could well remain there as long as Drake's stores allowed him to keep the sea, it was a complete triumph for Spain. But when the messenger dashed into Plymouth with the fatal packet he found the roadstead empty. Drake was gone. In vain at the last moment a number of his sailors had been induced to desert; he had filled their places with soldiers. In vain a swift pinnace was despatched in pursuit; Drake had taken care no orders should catch him, and, with his squadron increased by two warships from Lyme, was already off Finisterre, battling with a gale which drove the pinnace home. For seven days it raged and forced the fleet far out to sea. Still Drake held on in its teeth, and so well had he his ships in hand that on the 16th, within twenty-four hours after the gale had blown itself out, the whole fleet in perfect order was sailing gayly eastward past Cape St. Vincent. Eastward--for he had intelligence that Cadiz harbor was full of transports and store-ships, and on the afternoon of the 19th, as he entered the bay, he saw a forest of masts in the road behind the city. A council of war was summoned at once, and without asking their opinion he quietly told them he was going to attack. It was his usual manner of holding a council, but it took Borough's breath away. It shocked the old Queen's officer, and outraged his sense of what was due to his own reputation and experience and the time-honored customs of war. He wanted to talk about it and think about it, and find out first whether it was too dangerous. And there was certainly some excuse for his caution. Cadiz stands on a precipitous rock at the end of a low and narrow neck of land, some five miles in length, running parallel to the coast. Within this natural breakwater are enclosed an outer and an inner port; and so cumbered with shoals and rocks was the entrance from the sea that no ship could get in without passing under the guns of the town batteries, while access from the outer to the inner port was only to be gained by the Puntal passage, half a mile wide. Opposite Cadiz, on the other side of the outer harbor, was Port St. Mary, and within the Puntal channel, at the extreme end of the inlet, stood Port Royal. Both places, however, were so protected by shoals as to be unapproachable except to the port pilots. It was an ideal scene of action for galleys to develop their full capabilities. Two had already appeared to reconnoitre, and how many more there were no one could tell. Galleys, it must be remembered, were then considered the most formidable warships afloat, and quite invincible in confined waters or calms. By all the rules of war, on which Borough was the first authority in the service, to attack was suicide; but Drake had spent his life in breaking rules. He did not care. The enemy was there, his authority was in his pocket, the wind was fair, his officers believed in him, and as the sun sank low behind them the fleet went in. A scene of terror and confusion followed. Every ship in the harbor cut its cables and sought safety in flight, some to sea, some across the bay to St. Mary's, some through the Puntal passage to the inner harbor and Port Royal. To cover the stampede ten galleys came confidently out from under the Cadiz batteries. All was useless. While the chartered cruisers swooped on the fugitives, the Queen's ships stood in, to head off the advancing galleys, as coolly as though they had fought them a hundred times before. In a few minutes the English admiral had taught the world a new lesson in tactics. Galleys could only fire straight ahead; and, as they came on line abreast, Drake, passing with the Queen's four battle-ships athwart their course, poured in his heavy broadsides. Never before had such gunnery been seen. Ere the galleys were within effective range for their own ordnance they were raked and riddled and confounded, and to the consternation of the Spaniards they broke for the cover of the batteries. Two had to be hauled up to prevent their sinking; the rest were a shambles, and nothing was now thought of but how to protect the city from the assault which seemed inevitable. Hardly any troops were there: a panic seized the population; and Drake was left alone to do the work for which he had come. Beyond the batteries the fleet anchored with its prizes, plundering and scuttling with all its might, till the flood came in again. Then all that remained were fired, and, by the flare of the blazing hulks as they drifted clear with the tide, Drake moved the fleet into the mouth of the Puntal channel, out of range of the batteries. He himself took up a position seaward of the new anchorage, to engage the guns which the Spaniards were bringing down from the town and to keep off the galleys; for as yet the work was but half done. In the inner harbor lay the splendid galleon of the Marquis de Santa Cruz, and a crowd of great ships too big to seek the refuge of the shoals about Port Royal, and at daylight the Merchant Royal went boldly in, with all the tenders in company. Then, in spite of the labors of the past night, the plundering, scuttling, and burning began again. Outside, the galleys were making half-hearted demonstrations against the English anchorage, but they were easily kept at bay. By noon it was all over, and Drake attempted to make sail. In the past thirty-six hours he had entirely revictualled his fleet with wine, oil, biscuit, and dried fruits. He had destroyed some twelve thousand tons of shipping, including some of the finest vessels afloat, and four ships laden with provisions were in possession of his prize crews.[1] It was enough and more than enough. But the wind would not serve, and all day long he lay where he was, in sight of the troops that were now pouring along the isthmus into Cadiz. [1] In the official report the Spaniards admit the loss of twenty-four ships valued at one hundred seventy-two thousand ducats. This, it would seem, was all they dared tell the King. Again and again the galleys attempted to approach, and every time Drake's broadsides swept them back before they reached their effective range. Vainly, too, the Spaniards strove to post guns near enough to annoy the fleet. Nor did the struggle cease till at midnight a land-wind sprang up, and, brushing from his path the galleys that sought to block the way, Drake made sail. By two o'clock he had cleared the batteries and was safe outside without losing a single man. Boldly enough then the galleys gave chase, but, unfortunately, the wind suddenly shifted completely round. Drake at once went about, and the galleys fled in most undignified haste, leaving the English fleet to complete its triumph by anchoring unmolested in full view of the town. Such an exploit was without precedent. The chivalry of Spain was as enthusiastic in its admiration of Drake's feat of arms as it was disgusted at the cumbrous organization which condemned it to inactivity. A whole day Drake waited where he was, to try and exchange his prisoners for English galley-slaves, but, getting nothing but high compliments and dilatory answers for his pains, on the morrow he sailed. There was no time to lose. By his captures he had discovered the whole of Philip's plan. Out of the Mediterranean the divisions of Italy, Sicily, and Andalusia were to come and join the head-quarters at Lisbon, where the Grand Admiral of Spain, the Marquis de Santa Cruz, was busy with the bulk of the armada. At Cape St. Vincent was the road where ships coming out of the Straits waited for a wind to carry them north, and there he had resolved to take his stand, and fight everything that attempted to join Santa Cruz's flag in the Tagus. Such light airs prevailed that it was not till the end of the month that the fleet reached the road. By that time its water was exhausted, and, as every headland was crowned with works commanding the anchorage and the watering-places, Drake at once saw he must take them. In his usual off-hand way he summoned his council, and told them over the dinner-table what he was going to do. It was more than the vice-admiral's dignity and caution could endure. In high dudgeon he returned to his ship, and, in the midst of a gale which suddenly arose and drove the fleet to the north of the cape, he indited a long and solemn protest, not only against the contemplated operation, but against the unprecedented despotism with which Drake was conducting the whole expedition. Borough, though no doubt jealous of Drake, certainly believed he was doing nothing beyond his right and duty. He felt he had been attached to the expedition as the most complete sailor in the kingdom, and he valued and deserved his reputation. In the scientific knowledge of his art he was unrivalled, and he was the only officer in the service who had fought and won a purely naval action. No one, therefore, can fairly blame him for resenting the revolutionary manner in which his commander was ignoring him in contempt of the time-honored privileges of the council of war. Drake, in his hot self-confidence, thought otherwise. As he rode out the gale under the lee of St. Vincent, and the tempest howled through his rigging, once more there fell upon him the shadow of the tragedy which could never cease to darken his judgment. Already, in Cadiz harbor, he had thought his vice-admiral too careful of his ship when the shot were flying; and now he saw in him another Doughty sent by the friends of Spain to hang on his arm. "In persisting," he told Lord Burleigh, "he committed a double offence, not only against me, but it toucheth further." To his embittered sense the querulous protest was a treasonable attack on his own authority, and in his fury he brutally dismissed the old admiral from his command and placed him under arrest on his flag-ship. In vain the astonished veteran protested his innocence, apologized, and made submission. Drake would not listen. The ring of the heads-man's sword upon the desolate shores of Patagonia had deafened his ears to such entreaties forever. Two days later he was back in Lagos Bay, landing a thousand men for an attempt upon the town, but in the evening, after vainly endeavoring to induce the bodies of cavalry which hovered on their line of march to come within reach, the troops reëmbarked, reporting the place too strong to be taken by assault. Such reports were not to Drake's liking. It was no mere cross-raiding on which he was bent, but a sagacious stroke that was essential to the development of his new ideas. To get the command of the seas it was necessary that he should be able to keep the seas, and for this a safe anchorage and watering-places were necessary. In default of Lagos, strategy and convenience both indicated St. Vincent road for his purpose. It was commanded by forts, but that did not deter him; and, resolved to have his way, he next day landed in person near Cape Sagres. On the summit of the headland was a castle accessible on two sides only. The English military officers declared that a hundred determined men could hold it against the whole of Drake's force. But he would not listen; it commanded the watering-place, and he meant to have it. Detaching part of his force against a neighboring fort, which was at once evacuated, he himself advanced against the castle, and at the summit of the cliff found himself confronted with walls thirty feet high, bristling with brass guns and crowded with soldiers. The garrison had just been reënforced by that of the evacuated fort, and to every one but the admiral the affair was hopeless. He attacked with his musketeers, and, when they had exhausted their ammunition, in the name of his queen and mistress he summoned the place to surrender. In the name of his lord and master the Spanish captain laughed at him. Whereupon Drake, more obstinate than ever, sent down to the fleet for fagots, and began piling them against the outer gate to fire it. So desperate was the resistance that again and again the attempt failed. For two hours the struggle lasted. As fast as the defenders threw down the fire, the English piled it up again; and in the midst of the smoke and the bullets the admiral toiled like a common seaman, with his arms full of fagots and his face black with soot. How long his obstinacy would have continued it is impossible to say, but at the end of the two hours the Spanish commandant sank under his wounds and the garrison surrendered. Daunted by a feat which every one regarded as little short of a miracle, the castle and monastery of St. Vincent, together with another fort near it, capitulated at the magician's first summons, and left him in complete possession of the anchorage to water the fleet undisturbed. Having fired the captured strongholds, and tumbled their guns over the cliffs into the sea, Drake returned to the fleet to find the sailors had not been idle. Between St. Vincent and a village some nine miles to the eastward which they had been ordered to burn, they had taken forty-seven barks and caravels laden with stores for the Armada, and destroyed between fifty and sixty fishing-boats with miles of nets. The tunny-fishery, on which the whole of the adjacent country chiefly depended for its subsistence, was annihilated. For the time Drake's work on the Algarve coast was done, and, having watered the fleet and fished up the captured guns, he sailed for Lisbon. His own idea had been to land there and smite Philip's preparation at its heart, but this the Government had expressly forbidden. Still he hoped that the havoc he had made and the insults he had put on the Spanish coasts might goad Santa Cruz to come out and fight him. For three days he lay off Cascaes, in sight of Lisbon, threatening an attack and sending polished taunts to the Spanish admiral. He offered to convoy him to England if his course lay that way; he took prizes under his very nose; with his fleet in loose order he sailed up to the very entrance of the harbor; but, though seven galleys lay on their oars watching him from the mouth of the Tagus, Santa Cruz would not move, and Drake learned at last how deep was the wound he had inflicted. Philip's organization was now completely dislocated. The fleet at Lisbon was unmanned. Its crews had been shattered in Cadiz harbor, and the troops that were intended for it had been thrown into the defenceless city under the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, with orders that while Drake was on the coast not a man was to be moved. All thought of an attack on England was given up. It was even doubted whether by straining every nerve it would be possible to save the homeward-bound fleets from the Indies. The Italian squadrons were ordered to land their troops at Cartagena, and Philip hoped that by forced marches across the peninsula they might possibly arrive in time for Santa Cruz to sail before it was too late. Every one else looked on the convoys as doomed. For Drake, having assured himself that Santa Cruz could not stir, and that England was safe for a year at least, resolved to make for the Azores and wait for the prey that had so narrowly escaped him the year before. On the third day of his stay off the Tagus he took advantage of a northerly gale to run for the anchorage at St. Vincent, which he had made his own, and where he intended to water and refresh for the voyage. There, huddled under the lee of the cape, was found a fresh crowd of store-ships, which he seized. For nine days he lay there, rummaging the ships, taking in water, and sending the men ashore in batches to shake off the sickness with which, as usual, the fleet was attacked. Every day new prizes fell into his hands, and ere he sailed he had taken and destroyed forty more vessels and a hundred small craft. On May 22d he put to sea, and, as the news spread, a panic seized every commercial centre in the Spanish dominions. Half the merchants in Philip's empire saw ruin before them: the whole year's produce both of the East and West Indian trade was at Drake's mercy; and no one knew how Spain, with its resources already strained to the utmost, would survive the shock. Whatever might have been the result had these fears been realized, destiny seemed to have decided that in the Channel should be played the last great scene. Drake had not been two days out when a storm struck his fleet and scattered it over the face of the sea. For three days it raged with extraordinary fury. Drake's own flag-ship was in dire peril, and, when the heavens cleared, only three of the battle-ships and half a dozen smaller craft were together. Not a single merchant-ship was to be seen, and the Lion, Borough's flag-ship, on which he was still a prisoner, was missing too. Before leaving St. Vincent Drake had told Walsingham that he ought to have at least six more cruisers to do his work properly, and now two-thirds of what he had before were gone. Still he held on, hoping to find some of the missing ships at the rendezvous in the Azores. On the morning of June 8th St. Michael's was sighted, but not a sail had rejoined the flag except the Spy, one of the Queen's gunboats, with the captain and master of the Lion on board, and they reported that the crew of Borough's ship had mutinied and carried him home. Then, in the depth of his disappointment, Drake's fury blazed out anew. His fierce self-reliance and fanatic patriotism had taught him to see a traitor in every man that opposed him, and the bitter experience of his lifelong struggle against the enemies of his country and his creed could bring him but to one conclusion--Borough was the traitor who had ruined the greatest chance of his career! A jury was impanelled, the deserter tried for his life, found guilty, and condemned to death. It was little good except to relieve the admiral's anger. The splendid opportunity was gone; the fruit of his brilliant exploit was snatched from his lips; for, even had the remnant of his fleet been less shattered than it was, the great convoys were beyond its strength. The only hope was to hurry back to England and beg for reënforcements to fight Santa Cruz for the life-blood of Spain. Yet ere he sailed there was a consolation at hand. As he lay waiting for his shattered squadron to close up, fuming at traitors, and marvelling at the inscrutable will of Heaven, the dawn of June 9th lit up the gray sea and showed him a huge carack in the offing. On a smart breeze he gave chase. The carack kept her course, but, as Drake drew near, began displaying her colors nervously. Drake made not a sign in reply, but held on till he was within range. Then on a sudden, with a blaze of her ensigns and her broadside, the Elizabeth Bonaventura told the stranger what she was. Two of Drake's squadron threw themselves resolutely athwart-hawse of the enemy, and the rest, plying her hard with shot, prepared to run aboard her towering hull. But, ere they closed, her flag fluttered sadly down, and the famous San Filippe, the King of Spain's own East-Indiaman, the largest merchantman afloat, was a prize in Drake's hands. Well might he wonder now at God's providence, as with lightened heart he sailed homeward with his prize. For not only was it the richest ever seen in England before or since, not only was its cargo valued at over a million of our money, but in it were papers which disclosed to our merchants all the mysteries and richness of the East India trade. It was a revelation to English commerce. It intoxicated the soberest capitalists; and they knew no rest till they had formed the great East India Company, to widen the gap which Drake had opened, and to lay the foundation of our Indian Empire. DEFEAT OF THE SPANISH ARMADA A.D. 1588 SIR EDWARD SHEPHERD CREASY Two years after the accession of Queen Elizabeth to the throne of England, the Geneva Confession of Faith (Calvinistic) was adopted by the Scottish nation, which thus formally became Protestant. The aim of Mary, Queen of Scots, to restore the Catholic religion in that kingdom added many complications to her royal task, as well as to her personal fortunes. Her final condemnation and execution, 1587, for conspiracy against Elizabeth, occurred at a time when the shadow of Spanish supremacy was being cast broadly over Europe. The Spanish power was still attempting the subjugation of the Netherlands, and it was the ambition of Philip II to bring England also under his own sway and that of Rome. Elizabeth had given aid to Philip's rebellious subjects in the Netherlands, and Sir Francis Drake had committed many depredations upon Spain and her colonies. For the purpose of avenging these acts, as well as the death of Mary Stuart, and of overthrowing the Reformation in Great Britain, Philip gathered up all his strength and prepared to hurl a mighty naval force, the "Invincible Armada," against England. Creasy's masterly survey of the European situation at this period unfolds the Anglo-Spanish complications. His exhaustive account of the Armada and its ill-fated enterprise makes clear everything important in this famous passage of history. On the afternoon of July 19, 1588, a group of English captains was collected at the bowling green on the Hoe, at Plymouth, whose equals have never before or since been brought together, even at that favorite mustering-place of the heroes of the British navy. There was Sir Francis Drake, the first English circumnavigator of the globe, the terror of every Spanish coast in the Old World and the New; there was Sir John Hawkins, the rough veteran of many a daring voyage on the African and American seas and of many a desperate battle; there was Sir Martin Frobisher, one of the earliest explorers of the Arctic seas in search of the northwest passage. There was the high admiral of England, Lord Howard of Effingham, prodigal of all things in his country's cause, and who had recently had the noble daring to refuse to dismantle part of the fleet, though the Queen had sent him orders to do so in consequence of an exaggerated report that the enemy had been driven back and shattered by a storm. Lord Howard--whom contemporary writers describe as being of a wise and noble courage, skilful in sea matters, wary and provident, and of great esteem among the sailors--resolved to risk his sovereign's anger, and to keep the ships afloat at his own charge, rather than that England should run the peril of losing their protection. Another of our Elizabethan sea-kings, Sir Walter Raleigh, was at that time commissioned to raise and equip the land forces of Cornwall; but we may well believe that he must have availed himself of the opportunity of consulting with the lord admiral and the other high officers, which was offered by the English fleet putting into Plymouth; and we may look on Raleigh as one of the group that was assembled at the bowling green on the Hoe. Many other brave men and skilful mariners, besides the chiefs whose names have been mentioned, were there, enjoying, with true sailor-like merriment, their temporary relaxation from duty. In the harbor lay the English fleet with which they had just returned from a cruise to Corunna in search of information respecting the real condition and movements of the hostile armada. Lord Howard had ascertained that our enemies, though tempest-tossed, were still formidably strong; and, fearing that part of their fleet might make for England in his absence, he had hurried back to the Devonshire coast. He resumed his station at Plymouth, and waited there for certain tidings of the Spaniards' approach. A match at bowls was being played, in which Drake and other high officers of the fleet were engaged, when a small armed vessel was seen running before the wind into Plymouth harbor with all sails set. Her commander landed in haste, and eagerly sought the place where the English lord admiral and his captains were standing. His name was Fleming; he was the master of a Scotch privateer; and he told the English officers that he had that morning seen the Spanish Armada off the Cornish coast. At this exciting information the captains began to hurry down to the water, and there was a shouting for the ships' boats; but Drake coolly checked his comrades, and insisted that the match should be played out. He said that there was plenty of time both to win the game and beat the Spaniards. The best and bravest match that ever was scored was resumed accordingly. Drake and his friends aimed their last bowls with the same steady, calculating coolness with which they were about to point their guns. The winning cast was made; and then they went on board and prepared for action, with their hearts as light and their nerves as firm as they had been on the Hoe bowling green. Meanwhile the messengers and signals had been despatched fast and far through England, to warn each town and village that the enemy had come at last. In every seaport there was instant making ready by land and by sea; in every shire and every city there was instant mustering of horse and man. But England's best defence then, as ever, was in her fleet; and, after warping laboriously out of Plymouth harbor against the wind, the lord admiral stood westward under easy sail, keeping an anxious look-out for the armada, the approach of which was soon announced by Cornish fisher-boats and signals from the Cornish cliffs. It is not easy, without some reflection and care, to comprehend the full extent of the peril which England then ran from the power and the ambition of Spain, or to appreciate the importance of that crisis in the history of the world. Queen Elizabeth had found at her accession an encumbered revenue, a divided people, and an unsuccessful foreign war, in which the last remnant of our possessions in France had been lost; she had also a formidable pretender to her crown, whose interests were favored by all the Roman Catholic powers. It is true that, during the years of her reign which had passed away before the attempted invasion of 1588, she had revived the commercial prosperity, the national spirit, and the national loyalty of England. But her resources to cope with the colossal power of Philip II still seemed most scanty; and she had not a single foreign ally, except the Dutch, who were themselves struggling hard, and, as it seemed, hopelessly, to maintain their revolt against Spain. On the other hand, Philip II was absolute master of an empire so superior to the other states of the world in extent, in resources, and especially in military and naval forces as to make the project of enlarging that empire into a universal monarchy seem a perfectly feasible scheme; and Philip had both the ambition to perform that project and the resolution to devote all his energies and all his means to its realization. Since the downfall of the Roman Empire no such preponderating power had existed in the world. During the mediæval centuries the chief European kingdoms were slowly moulding themselves out of the feudal chaos; and though the wars with each other were numerous and desperate, and several of their respective kings figured for a time as mighty conquerors, none of them in those times acquired the consistency and perfect organization which are requisite for a long-sustained career of aggrandizement. After the consolidation of the great kingdoms they for some time kept each other in mutual check. During the first half of the sixteenth century the balancing system was successfully practised by European statesmen. But when Philip II reigned, France had become so miserably weak through her civil wars that he had nothing to dread from the rival state which had so long curbed his father, the Emperor Charles V. In Germany, Italy, and Poland he had either zealous friends and dependents or weak and divided enemies. Against the Turks he had gained great and glorious successes; and he might look round the Continent of Europe without discerning a single antagonist of whom he could stand in awe. Spain, when he acceded to the throne, was at the zenith of her power. The hardihood and spirit which the Aragonese, the Castilians, and the other nations of the peninsula had acquired during centuries of free institutions and successful war against the Moors had not yet become obliterated. Charles V had, indeed, destroyed the liberties of Spain; but that had been done too recently for its full evil to be felt in Philip's time. A people cannot be debased in a single generation; and the Spaniards under Charles V and Philip II proved the truth of the remark that no nation is ever so formidable to its neighbors, for a time, as a nation which, after being trained up in self-government, passes suddenly under a despotic ruler. The energy of democratic institutions survives for a few generations, and to it are superadded the decision and certainty which are the attributes of government when all its powers are directed by a single mind. It is true that this preter-natural vigor is short-lived: national corruption and debasement gradually follow the loss of the national liberties; but there is an interval before their workings are felt, and in that interval the most ambitious schemes of foreign conquest are often successfully undertaken. Philip had also the advantage of finding himself at the head of a large standing army in a perfect state of discipline and equipment, in an age when, except some few insignificant corps, standing armies were unknown in Christendom. The renown of the Spanish troops was justly high, and the infantry in particular was considered the best in the world. His fleet, also, was far more numerous and better appointed than that of any other European power; and both his soldiers and his sailors had the confidence in themselves and their commanders which a long career of successful warfare alone can create. Besides the Spanish crown, Philip succeeded to the kingdom of Naples and Sicily, the duchy of Milan, Franche-Comté, and the Netherlands. In Africa he possessed Tunis, Oran, the Cape Verd and the Canary islands; and in Asia, the Philippine and Sunda islands and a part of the Moluccas. Beyond the Atlantic he was lord of the most splendid portions of the New World, which Columbus found "for Castile and Leon." The empires of Peru and Mexico, New Spain, and Chile, with their abundant mines of the precious metals, Española and Cuba, and many other of the American islands were provinces of the sovereign of Spain. Whatever diminution the Spanish empire might have sustained in the Netherlands seemed to be more than compensated by the acquisition of Portugal, which Philip had completely conquered in 1580. Not only that ancient kingdom itself, but all the fruits of the maritime enterprises of the Portuguese, had fallen into Philip's hands. All the Portuguese colonies in America, Africa, and the East Indies acknowledged the sovereignty of the King of Spain, who thus not only united the whole Iberian peninsula under his single sceptre, but had acquired a transmarine empire little inferior in wealth and extent to that which he had inherited at his accession. The splendid victory which his fleet, in conjunction with the papal and Venetian galleys, had gained at Lepanto over the Turks, had deservedly exalted the fame of the Spanish marine throughout Christendom; and when Philip had reigned thirty-five years, the vigor of his empire seemed unbroken, and the glory of the Spanish arms had increased, and was increasing throughout the world. One nation only had been his active, his persevering, and his successful foe. England had encouraged his revolted subjects in Flanders against him, and given them the aid, in men and money, without which they must soon have been humbled in the dust. English ships had plundered his colonies; had defied his supremacy in the New World as well as the Old; they had inflicted ignominious defeats on his squadrons; they had captured his cities and burned his arsenals on the very coasts of Spain. The English had made Philip himself the object of personal insult. He was held up to ridicule in their stage plays and masks, and these scoffs at the man had--as is not unusual in such cases--excited the anger of the absolute King even more vehemently than the injuries inflicted on his power. Personal as well as political revenge urged him to attack England. Were she once subdued, the Dutch must submit; France could not cope with him; the empire would not oppose him; and universal dominion seemed sure to be the result of the conquest of that malignant island. There was yet another and a stronger feeling which armed King Philip against England. He was one of the sincerest and one of the sternest bigots of his age. He looked on himself, and was looked on by others, as the appointed champion to extirpate heresy and reestablish the papal power throughout Europe. A powerful reaction against Protestantism had taken place since the commencement of the second half of the sixteenth century, and he looked on himself as destined to complete it. The Reformed doctrines had been thoroughly rooted out from Italy and Spain. Belgium, which had previously been half Protestant, had been reconquered both in allegiance and creed by Philip, and had become one of the most Catholic countries in the world. Half Germany had been won back to the old faith. In Savoy, in Switzerland, and many other countries the progress of the Counter-reformation had been rapid and decisive. The Catholic league seemed victorious in France. The papal court itself had shaken off the supineness of recent centuries, and, at the head of the Jesuits and the other new ecclesiastical orders, was displaying a vigor and a boldness worthy of the days of Hildebrand or Innocent III. Throughout Continental Europe the Protestants, discomfited and dismayed, looked to England as their protector and refuge. England was the acknowledged central point of Protestant power and policy; and to conquer England was to stab Protestantism to the very heart. Sixtus V, the then reigning Pope, earnestly exhorted Philip to this enterprise. And when the tidings reached Italy and Spain that the Protestant Queen of England had put to death her Catholic prisoner, Mary, Queen of Scots, the fury of the Vatican and Escurial knew no bounds. Elizabeth was denounced as the murderous heretic whose destruction was an instant duty. A formal treaty was concluded in June, 1587, by which the Pope bound himself to contribute a million of scudi to the expenses of the war, the money to be paid as soon as the King had actual possession of an English port. Philip, on his part, strained the resources of his vast empire to the utmost. The French Catholic chiefs eagerly coöperated with him. In the seaports of the Mediterranean and along almost the whole coast from Gibraltar to Jutland the preparations for the great armament were urged forward with all the earnestness of religious zeal as well as of angry ambition. "Thus," says the German historian of the Popes,[1] "thus did the united powers of Italy and Spain, from which such mighty influences had gone forth over the whole world, now rouse themselves for an attack upon England! The King had already compiled, from the archives of Simancas, a statement of the claims which he had to the throne of that country on the extinction of the Stuart line; the most brilliant prospects, especially that of a universal dominion of the seas, were associated in his mind with this enterprise. Everything seemed to conspire to such an end--the predominancy of Catholicism in Germany, the renewed attack upon the Huguenots in France, the attempt upon Geneva, and the enterprise against England. At the same moment a thoroughly Catholic prince, Sigismund III, ascended the throne of Poland, with the prospect also of future succession to the throne of Sweden. But whenever any principle or power, be it what it may, aims at unlimited supremacy in Europe, some vigorous resistance to it, having its origin in the deepest springs of human nature, invariably arises. Philip II had to encounter newly awakened powers, braced by the vigor of youth and elevated by a sense of their future destiny. [1] Ranke. "The intrepid corsairs, who had rendered every sea insecure, now clustered round the coasts of their native island. The Protestants in a body--even the Puritans, although they had been subjected to as severe oppression as the Catholics--rallied round their Queen, who now gave admirable proof of her masculine courage and her princely talent of winning the affections and leading the minds and preserving the allegiance of men." Ranke should have added that the English Catholics at this crisis proved themselves as loyal to their Queen and true to their country as were the most vehement anti-Catholic zealots in the island. Some few traitors there were, but as a body, the Englishmen who held the ancient faith stood the trial of their patriotism nobly. The lord admiral himself was a Catholic, and--to adopt the words of Hallam--"then it was that the Catholics in every country repaired to the standard of the lord lieutenant, imploring that they might not be suspected of bartering the national independence for their religion itself." The Spaniard found no partisans in the country which he assailed, nor did England, self-wounded, "Lie at the proud foot of her enemy." For upward of a year the Spanish preparations had been actively and unremittingly urged forward. Negotiations were, during this time, carried on at Ostend, in which various pretexts were assigned by the Spanish commissioners for the gathering together of such huge masses of shipping, and such equipments of troops in all the seaports which their master ruled; but Philip himself took little care to disguise his intentions; nor could Elizabeth and her able ministers doubt but that this island was the real object of the Spanish armament. The peril that was wisely foreseen was resolutely provided for. Circular-letters from the Queen were sent round to the lord lieutenants of the several counties requiring them to "call together the best sort of gentlemen under their lieutenancy, and to declare unto them these great preparations and arrogant threatenings, now burst forth in action upon the seas, wherein every man's particular state, in the highest degree, could be touched in respect of country, liberty, wives, children, lands, lives, and--which was specially to be regarded--the profession of the true and sincere religion of Christ, and to lay before them the infinite and unspeakable miseries that would fall out upon any such change, which miseries were evidently seen by the fruits of that hard and cruel government holden in countries not far distant. "We do look," said the Queen, "that the most part of them should have, upon this instant extraordinary occasion, a larger proportion of furniture, both for horsemen and footmen, but especially horsemen, than hath been certified thereby to be in their best strength against any attempt, or to be employed about our own person or otherwise. Hereunto as we doubt not but by your good endeavors they will be the rather conformable, so also we assure ourselves that almighty God will so bless these their loyal hearts borne toward us, their loving sovereign, and their natural country, that all the attempts of any enemy whatsoever shall be made void and frustrate, to their confusion, your comfort, and to God's high glory."[2] [2] Strype, cited in Southey: _Naval History_. Letters of a similar kind were also sent by the council to each of the nobility and to the great cities. The Primate called on the clergy for their contributions; and by every class of the community the appeal was responded to with liberal zeal, that offered more even than the Queen required. The boasting threats of the Spaniards had roused the spirit of the nation, and the whole people "were thoroughly irritated to stir up their whole forces for their defence against such prognosticated conquests; so that in a very short time all her whole realm, and every corner, were furnished with armed men, on horseback and on foot; and those continually trained, exercised, and put into bands in warlike manner, as in no age ever was before in this realm. "There was no sparing of money to provide horse, armor, weapons, powder, and all necessaries; no, nor want of provision of pioneers, carriages, and victuals, in every county of the realm, without exception, to attend upon the armies. And to this general furniture every man voluntarily offered, very many their services personally without wages, others money for armor and weapons, and to wage soldiers--a matter strange, and never the like heard of in this realm or elsewhere. And this general reason moved all men to large contributions: that when a conquest was to be withstood wherein all should be lost, it was no time to spare a portion."[3] [3] Copy of contemporary letter in the Harleian Collection, quoted by Southey. Our lion-hearted Queen showed herself worthy of such a people. A camp was formed at Tilbury; and there Elizabeth rode through the ranks, encouraging her captains and her soldiers by her presence and her words. One of the speeches which she addressed to them during this crisis has been preserved; and, though often quoted, it must not be omitted here. "My loving people," she said, "we have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety to take heed how we commit ourselves to armed multitudes, for fear of treachery; but I assure you I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear! I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects; and therefore I am come among you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live or die among you all, to lay down for my God, for my kingdom, and for my people, my honor and my blood even in the dust. "I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England, too, and think it foul scorn that Parma, of Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm, to which, rather than any dishonor shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms; I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field. I know already, for your forwardness, you have deserved rewards and crowns: and we do assure you, on the word of a prince, they shall be duly paid you. In the mean time my lieutenant-general shall be in my stead, than whom never prince commanded a more noble or worthy subject, not doubting but by your obedience to my general, by your concord in the camp, and your valor in the field we shall shortly have a famous victory over those enemies of my God, of my kingdom, and of my people." Some of Elizabeth's advisers recommended that the whole care and resources of the government should be devoted to the equipment of the armies, and that the enemy, when he attempted to land, should be welcomed with a battle on the shore. But the wiser counsels of Raleigh and others prevailed, who urged the importance of fitting out a fleet that should encounter the Spaniards at sea, and, if possible, prevent them from approaching the land at all. In Raleigh's great work, the _History of the World_, he takes occasion, when discussing some of the events of the First Punic War, to give his reasonings on the proper policy of England when menaced with invasion. Without doubt we have there the substance of the advice which he gave to Elizabeth's council; and the remarks of such a man on such a subject have a general and enduring interest beyond the immediate crisis which called them forth. Raleigh says: "Surely I hold that the best way is to keep our enemies from treading upon our ground; wherein if we fail, then must we seek to make him wish that he had stayed at his own home. In such a case, if it should happen, our judgments are to weigh many particular circumstances that belong not unto this discourse. But making the question general, the positive, _Whether England, without the help of her fleet, be able to debar an enemy from landing_, I hold that it is unable so to do, and therefore I think it most dangerous to make the adventure; for the encouragement of a first victory to an enemy, and the discouragement of being beaten to the invaded, may draw after it a most perilous consequence. "Great difference I know there is, and a diverse consideration to be had, between such a country as France is, strengthened with many fortified places, and this of ours, where our ramparts are but the bodies of men. But I say that an army to be transported over sea, and to be landed again in an enemy's country, and the place left to the choice of the invader, cannot be resisted on the coast of England without a fleet to impeach it; no, nor on the coast of France or any other country, except every creek, port, or sandy bay had a powerful army in each of them to make opposition. "For let the supposition be granted that Kent is able to furnish twelve thousand foot, and that those twelve thousand be layed in the three best landing-places within that country, to wit, three thousand at Margat, three thousand at the Nesse, and six thousand at Foulkstone, that is, somewhat equally distant from them both, as also that two of these troops--unless some other order be thought more fit--be directed to strengthen the third, when they shall see the enemy's fleet to head toward it: I say, that notwithstanding this provision, if the enemy, setting sail from the Isle of Wight, in the first watch of the night, and towing their long boats at their stems, shall arrive by dawn of day at the Nesse, and thrust their army on shore there, it will be hard for those three thousand that are at Margat--twenty-and-four long miles from thence--to come time enough to reënforce their fellows at the Nesse. Nay, how shall they at Foulkstone be able to do it, who are nearer by more than half the way? seeing that the enemy, at his first arrival, will either make his entrance by force, with three or four shot of great artillery, and quickly put the first three thousand that are intrenched at the Nesse to run, or else give them so much to do that they shall be glad to send for help to Foulkstone, and perhaps to Margat, whereby those places will be left bare. "Now, let us suppose that all the twelve thousand Kentish soldiers arrived at the Nesse ere the enemy can be ready to disembark his army, so that he will find it unsafe to land in the face of so many prepared to withstand him, yet must we believe that he will play the best of his own game--having liberty to go which way he list--and, under covert of the night, set sail toward the east, where what shall hinder him to take ground either at Margat, the Downes, or elsewhere, before they at the Nesse can be well aware of his departure? "Certainly there is nothing more easy than to do it. Yea, the like may be said of Weymouth, Purbeck, Poole, and of all landing-places on the southwest; for there is no man ignorant that ships, without putting themselves out of breath, will easily outrun the soldiers that coast them. '_Les armeés ne volent point en poste_' ('Armies neither flye nor run post'), saith a marshal of France. And I know it to be true that a fleet of ships may be seen at sunset, and after it at the Lizard, yet by the next morning they may recover Portland, whereas an army of foot shall not be able to march it in six days. "Again, when those troops lodged on the sea-shores shall be forced to run from place to place in vain, after a fleet of ships, they will at length sit down in the midway and leave all at adventure. But say it were otherwise, that the invading enemy will offer to land in some such place where there shall be an army of ours ready to receive him; yet it cannot be doubted but that when the choice of all our trained bands, and the choice of our commanders and captains, shall be drawn together--as they were at Tilbury in the year 1588--to attend the person of the Prince, and for the defence of the city of London, they that remain to guard the coast can be of no such force as to encounter an army like unto that wherewith it was intended that the Prince of Parma should have landed in England. "For end of this digression, I hope that this question shall never come to trial: his majesty's many movable forts will forbid the experience. And although the English will no less disdain, than any nation under heaven can do, to be beaten upon their own ground, or elsewhere, by a foreign enemy, yet to entertain those that shall assail us, with their own beef in their bellies, and before they eat of our Kentish capons, I take it to be the wisest way--to do which his majesty, after God, will employ his good ships on the sea, and not trust in any intrenchment upon the shore." The introduction of steam as a propelling power at sea has added tenfold weight to these arguments of Raleigh. On the other hand, a well-constructed system of railways, especially of coast-lines, aided by the operation of the electric telegraph, would give facilities for concentrating a defensive army to oppose an enemy on landing, and for moving troops from place to place in observation of the movements of the hostile fleet, such as would have astonished Sir Walter, even more than the sight of vessels passing rapidly to and fro without the aid of wind or tide., The observation of the French marshal whom he quotes is now no longer correct. Armies can be made to pass from place to place almost with the speed of wings, and far more rapidly than any post-travelling that was known in the Elizabethan or any other age. Still, the presence of a sufficient armed force at the right spot, at the right time, can never be made a matter of certainty and, even after the changes that have taken place, no one can doubt but that the policy of Raleigh is that which England should ever seek to follow in defensive war. At the time of the armada, that policy certainly saved the country, if not from conquest, at least from deplorable calamities. If, indeed, the enemy had landed, we may be sure that he would have been heroically opposed. But history shows us so many examples of the superiority of veteran troops over new levies, however numerous and brave, that, without disparaging our countrymen's soldierly merits, we may well be thankful that no trial of them was then made on English land. Especially must we feel this when we contrast the high military genius of the Prince of Parma, who would have headed the Spaniards, with the imbecility of the Earl of Leicester, to whom the deplorable spirit of favoritism, which formed the great blemish on Elizabeth's character, had then committed the chief command of the English armies. The ships of the royal navy at this time amounted to no more than thirty-six; but the most serviceable merchant vessels were collected from all the ports of the country; and the citizens of London, Bristol, and the other great seats of commerce showed as liberal a zeal in equipping and manning vessels as the nobility and gentry displayed in mustering forces by land. The seafaring population of the coast, of every rank and station, was animated by the same ready spirit; and the whole number of seamen who came forward to man the English fleet was 17,472; the number of the ships that were collected was 191; and the total amount of their tonnage, 31,985. There was one ship in the fleet--the Triumph--of 1100 tons, one of 1000, one of 900, two of 800 each, three of 600, five of 500, five of 400, six of 300, six of 250, twenty of 200, and the residue of inferior burden. Application was made to the Dutch for assistance; and, as Stowe expresses it: "The Hollanders came roundly in with three-score sail, brave ships of war, fierce and full of spleen, not so much for England's aid as in just occasion for their own defence, these men foreseeing the greatness of the danger that might ensue if the Spaniard should chance to win the day and get the mastery over them; in due regard whereof, their manly courage was inferior to none." We have more minute information of the number and equipment of the hostile forces than we have of our own. In the first volume of Hakluyt's _Voyages_, dedicated to Lord Effingham, who commanded against the armada, there is given--from the contemporary foreign writer Meteran--a more complete and detailed catalogue than has perhaps ever appeared of a similar armament: "A very large and particular description of this navie was put in print and published by the Spaniards, wherein were set downe the number, names, and burthens of the shippes, the number of mariners and soldiers throughout the whole fleete; likewise the quantitie of their ordinance, of their armor, of bullets, of match, of gun-poulder, of victuals, and of all their navall furniture was in the saide description particularized. "Unto all these were added the names of the governours, captaines, noblemen, and gentlemen voluntaries, of whom there was so great a multitude that scarce was there any family of accompt, or any one principall man throughout all Spaine that had not a brother, sonne, or kinsman in that fleete; who all of them were in good hope to purchase unto themselves in that navie--as they termed it--invincible, endless glory and renown, and to possess themselves of great seigniories and riches in England and in the Low Countreys. But because the said description was translated and published out of Spanish into divers other languages, we will here only make an abridgement or brief rehearsal thereof. "Portugall furnished and set foorth under the conduct of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, generall of the fleete, 10 galeons, 2 zabraes, 1300 mariners, 3300 souldiers, 300 great pieces, with all requisite furniture. "Biscay, under the conduct of John Martines de Ricalde, admiral of the whole fleete, set forth 10 galeons, 4 pataches, 700 mariners, 2000 souldiers, 250 great pieces, etc. "Guipusco, under the conduct of Michael de Oquendo, 10 galeons, 4 pataches, 700 mariners, 2000 souldiers, 310 great pieces. "Italy, with the Levant islands, under Maitine de Vertendona, 10 galeons, 800 mariners, 2000 souldiers, 310 great pieces, etc. "Castile, under Diego Flores de Valdez, 14 galeons, 2 pataches, 1700 mariners, 2400 souldiers, and 380 great pieces, etc. "Andaluzia, under the conduct of Petro de Valdez, 10 galeons, 1 patache, 800 mariners, 2400 souldiers, 280 great pieces, etc. "Item, under the conduct of John Lopez de Medina, 23 great Flemish hulkes, with 700 mariners, 3200 souldiers, and 400 great pieces. "Item, under Hugo de Moncada, 4 galliasses, containing 1200 gally-slaves, 460 mariners, 870 souldiers, 200 great pieces, etc. "Item, under Diego de Mandrana, 4 gallies of Portugall, with 888 gally-slaves, 360 mariners, 20 great pieces, and other requisite furniture. "Item, under Anthonie de Mendoza, 22 pataches and zabraes, with 574 mariners, 488 souldiers, and 193 great pieces. "Besides the ships aforementioned, there were 20 caravels rowed with oares, being appointed to performe necessary services under the greater ships, insomuch that all the ships appertayning to this navie amounted unto the summe of 150, eche one being sufficiently provided of furniture and victuals. "The number of mariners in the saide fleete were above 8000, of slaves 2088, of souldiers 20,000--besides noblemen and gentlemen voluntaries; of great cast pieces, 2600. The aforesaid ships were of an huge and incredible capacitie and receipt, for the whole fleete was large enough to containe the burthen of 60,000 tunnes. "The galeons were 64 in number, being of an huge bignesse, and very flately built, being of marveilous force also, and so high that they resembled great castles, most fit to defend themselves and to withstand any assault, but in giving any other ships the encounter fair inferiour unto the English and Dutch ships, which can with great dexteritie wield and turne themselves at all assayes. The upper worke of the said galeons was of thicknesse and strength sufficient to beare off musket-shot. The lower worke and the timbers thereof were out of measure strong, being framed of plankes and ribs foure or five foote in thicknesse, insomuch that no bullets could pierce them but such as were discharged hard at hand, which afterward prooved true, for a great number of bullets were founde to sticke fast within the massie substance of those thicke plankes. Great and well-pitched cables were twined about the masts of their shippes, to strengthen them against the battery of shot. "The galliasses were of such bignesse that they contained within them chambers, chapels, turrets, pulpits, and other commodities of great houses. The galliasses were rowed with great oares, there being in eche one of them 300 slaves for the same purpose, and were able to do great service with the force of their ordinance. All these, together with the residue aforenamed, were furnished and beautified with trumpets, streamers, banners, warlike ensignes, and other such like ornaments. "Their pieces of brazen ordinance were 1600, and of yron a 1000. "The bullets thereto belonging were 120,000. "Item of gun-poulder, 5600 quintals; of matche, 1200 quintals; of muskets and kaleivers, 7000; of haleberts and partisans, 10,000. "Moreover, they had great stores of canons, double-canons, culverings and field-pieces for land services. "Likewise they were provided of all instruments necessary on land to conveigh and transport their furniture from place to place, as namely of carts, wheeles, wagons, etc. Also they had spades, mattocks, and baskets to set pioners on worke. They had in like sort great store of mules and horses, and whatsoever else was requisite for a land armie. They were so well stored of biscuit, that for the space of halfe a yeere they might allow eche person in the whole fleete halfe a quintall every moneth, whereof the whole summe amounteth unto an hundreth thousand quintals. "Likewise of wine they had 147,000 pipes, sufficient also for halfe a yeere's expedition. Of bacon, 6500 quintals. Of cheese, 3000 quintals. Besides fish, rise, beanes, pease, oile, vinegar, etc. "Moreover, they had 12,000 pipes of fresh water, and all other necessary provision, as namely candles, lanternes, lampes, sailes, hempe, oxe-hides, and lead to stop holes that should be made with the battery of gunshot. To be short, they brought all things expedient, either for a fleete by sea, or for an armie by land. "This navie--as Diego Pimentelli afterward confessed--was esteemed by the King himselfe to containe 32,000 persons, and to cost him every day 30,000 ducates. "There were in the said navie five terzaes of Spaniards--which terzaes the Frenchmen call regiments--under the command of five governours, termed by the Spaniards masters of the field, and among the rest there were many olde and expert souldiers chosen out of the garisons of Sicilie, Naples, and Terçera. Their captaines or colonels were Diego Pimentelli, Don Francisco de Toledo, Don Alonço de Luçon, Don Nicolas de Isla, Don Augustin de Mexia, who had eche of them thirty-two companies under their conduct. Besides the which companies, there were many bands also of Castilians and Portugals, every one of which had their peculiar governours, captaines, officers, colors, and weapons." While this huge armament was making ready in the southern ports of the Spanish dominions, the Duke of Parma, with almost incredible toil and skill, collected a squadron of war-ships at Dunkirk, and a large flotilla of other ships and of flat-bottomed boats for the transport to England of the picked troops which were designed to be the main instruments in subduing England. The design of the Spaniards was that the armada should give them, at least for a time, the command of the sea, and that it should join the squadron that Parma had collected off Calais. Then, escorted by an overpowering naval force, Parma and his army were to embark in their flotilla, and cross the sea to England, where they were to be landed, together with the troops which the armada brought from the ports of Spain. The scheme was not dissimilar to one formed against England a little more than two centuries afterward. As Napoleon, in 1805, waited with his army and flotilla at Boulogne, looking for Villeneuve to drive away the English cruisers and secure him a passage across the Channel, so Parma, in 1588, waited for Medina Sidonia to drive away the Dutch and English squadrons that watched his flotilla, and to enable his veterans to cross the sea to the land that they were to conquer. Thanks to Providence, in each case England's enemy waited in vain! Although the numbers of sail which the Queen's government and the patriotic zeal of volunteers had collected for the defence of England exceeded the number of sail in the Spanish fleet, the English ships were, collectively, far inferior in size to their adversaries', their aggregate tonnage being less by half than that of the enemy. In the number of guns and weight of metal the disproportion was still greater. The English admiral was also obliged to subdivide his force; and Lord Henry Seymour, with forty of the best Dutch and English ships, was employed in blockading the hostile ports in Flanders, and in preventing the Duke of Parma from coming out of Dunkirk. The Invincible Armada, as the Spaniards in the pride of their hearts named it, set sail from the Tagus on May 29th, but near Corunna met with a tempest that drove it into port with severe loss. It was the report of the damage done to the enemy by this storm which had caused the English Court to suppose that there would be no invasion that year. But, as already mentioned, the English admiral had sailed to Corunna, and learned the real state of the case, whence he had returned with his ships to Plymouth. The armada sailed again from Corunna on July 12th. The orders of King Philip to the Duke of Medina Sidonia were that he should, on entering the Channel, keep near the French coast, and, if attacked by the English ships, avoid an action and steer on to Calais roads, where the Prince of Parma's squadron was to join him. The hope of surprising and destroying the English fleet in Plymouth led the Spanish admiral to deviate from these orders and to stand across to the English shore; but, on finding that Lord Howard was coming out to meet him, he resumed the original plan, and determined to bend his way steadily toward Calais and Dunkirk, and to keep merely on the defensive against such squadrons of the English as might come up with him. It was on Saturday, July 20th, that Lord Effingham came in sight of his formidable adversaries. The armada was drawn up in form of a crescent, which from horn to horn measured some seven miles. There was a southwest wind, and before it the vast vessels sailed slowly on. The English let them pass by, and then, following in the rear, commenced an attack on them. A running fight now took place, in which some of the best ships of the Spaniards were captured; many more received heavy damage, while the English vessels, which took care not to close with their huge antagonists, but availed themselves of their superior celerity in tacking and manoeuvring, suffered little comparative loss. Each day added not only to the spirit, but to the number, of Effingham's force. Raleigh, Oxford, Cumberland, and Sheffield joined him; and "the gentlemen of England hired ships from all parts at their own charge, and with one accord came flocking thither as to a set field where glory was to be attained and faithful service performed unto their Prince and their country." Raleigh justly praises the English admiral for his skilful tactics: "Certainly he that will happily perform a fight at sea must be skilful in making choice of vessels to fight in: he must believe that there is more belonging to a good man of war upon the waters than great daring, and must know that there is a great deal of difference between fighting loose or at large and grappling. The guns of a slow ship pierce as well and make as great holes as those in a swift. To clap ships together, without consideration, belongs rather to a madman than to a man of war; for by such an ignorant bravery was Peter Strossie lost at the Azores when he fought against the Marquis of Santa Cruza. "In like sort had the Lord Charles Howard, admiral of England, been lost in the year 1588, if he had not been better advised than a great many malignant fools were that found fault with his demeanor. The Spaniards had an army aboard them, and he had none; they had more ships than he had, and of higher building and charging; so that, had he entangled himself with those great and powerful vessels, he had greatly endangered this kingdom of England; for twenty men upon the defences are equal to a hundred that board and enter; whereas, then, contrariwise, the Spaniards had a hundred for twenty of ours, to defend themselves withal. But our admiral knew his advantage, and held it; which had he not done, he had not been worthy to have held his head up." The Spanish admiral also showed great judgment and firmness in following the line of conduct that had been traced out for him; and on July 27th he brought his fleet unbroken, though sorely distressed, to anchor in Calais roads. But the King of Spain had calculated ill the number and the activity of the English and Dutch fleets. As the old historian expresses it: "It seemeth that the Duke of Parma and the Spaniards grounded upon a vain and presumptuous expectation that all the ships of England and of the Low Countreys would at the first sight of the Spanish and Dunkerk navie have betaken themselves to flight, yeelding them sea-room, and endeavoring only to defend themselues, their havens, and sea-coasts from invasion. "Wherefore their intent and purpose was, that the Duke of Parma, in his small and flat-bottomed ships, should, as it were under the shadow and wings of the Spanish fleet, convey ouer all his troupes, armor, and war-like provisions, and with their forces so united, should invade England; or while the English fleet were busied in fight against the Spanish, should enter upon any part of the coast, which he thought to be most convenient. Which invasion--as the captives afterward confessed--the Duke of Parma thought first to have attempted by the river of Thames; upon the bankes whereof having at the first arrivall landed twenty or thirty thousand of his principall souldiers, he supposed that he might easily have wonne the citie of London; both because his small shippes should have followed and assisted his land forces and also for that the citie it-selfe was but meanely fortified and easie to ouercome, by reason of the citizens' delicacie and discontinuance from the warres, who, with continuall and constant labor, might be vanquished, if they yielded not at the first assault."[4] [4] Hakluyt: _Voyages_. But the English and Dutch found ships and mariners enough to keep the armada itself in check, and at the same time to block up Parma's flotilla. The greater part of Seymour's squadron left its cruising-ground off Dunkirk to join the English admiral off Calais; but the Dutch manned about five-and-thirty sail of good ships, with a strong force of soldiers on board, all well seasoned to the sea-service, and with these they blockaded the Flemish ports that were in Parma's power. Still it was resolved by the Spanish admiral and the Prince to endeavor to effect a junction, which the English seamen were equally resolute to prevent; and bolder measures on our side now became necessary. The armada lay off Calais, with its largest ships ranged outside, "like strong castles fearing no assault, the lesser placed in the middle ward." The English admiral could not attack them in their position without great disadvantage, but on the night of the 29th he sent eight fire-ships among them, with almost equal effect to that of the fire-ships which the Greeks so often employed against the Turkish fleets in their war of independence. The Spaniards cut their cables and put to sea in confusion. One of the largest galeases ran foul of another vessel and was stranded. The rest of the fleet was scattered about on the Flemish coast, and when the morning broke it was with difficulty and delay that they obeyed their admiral's signal to range themselves round him near Gravelines. Now was the golden opportunity for the English to assail them, and prevent them from ever letting loose Palma's flotilla against England, and nobly was that opportunity used. Drake and Fenner were the first English captains who attacked the unwieldy leviathans; then came Fenton, Southwell, Burton, Cross, Raynor, and then the lord admiral, with Lord Thomas Howard and Lord Sheffield. The Spaniards only thought of forming and keeping close together, and were driven by the English past Dunkirk, and far away from the Prince of Parma, who, in watching their defeat from the coast, must, as Drake expressed it, have chafed like a bear robbed of her whelps. This was indeed the last and the decisive battle between the two fleets. It is, perhaps, best described in the very words of the contemporary writer, as we may read them in Hakluyt: "Upon the 29 of July in the morning, the Spanish fleet after the forsayd tumult, having arranged themselues againe into order, were, within sight of Greveling, most bravely and furiously encountered by the English, where they once again got the wind of the Spaniards, who suffered themselues to be deprived of the commodity of the place in Caleis road, and of the advantage of the wind neer unto Dunkerk, rather than they would change their array or separate their forces now conjoyned and united together, standing only upon their defence. "And albeit there were many excellent and warlike ships in the English fleet, yet scarce were there 22 or 23 among them all, which matched 90 of the Spanish ships in the bigness, or could conveniently assault them. Wherefore the English shippes using their prerogative of nimble steerage, whereby they could turn and wield themselues with the wind which way they listed, came often times very near upon the Spaniards, and charged them so sore that now and then they were but a pike's length asunder; and so continually giving them one broad side after another, they discharged all their shot, both great and small, upon them, spending one whole day, from morning till night, in that violent kind of conflict, untill such time as powder and bullets failed them. "In regard of which want they thought it convenient not to pursue the Spaniards any longer, because they had many great advantages of the English, namely, for the extraordinary bigness of their shippes, and also for that they were so neerely conjoyned, and kept together in so good array, that they could by no meanes be fought withall one to one. The English thought, therefore, that they had right well acquitted themselues in chasing the Spaniards first from Caleis, and then from Dunkerk, and by that means to have hindered them from joyning with the Duke of Parma his forces, and getting the wind of them, to have driven them from their own coasts. "The Spaniards that day sustained great loss and damage, having many of their shippes shot thorow and thorow, and they discharged likewise great store of ordinance against the English, who, indeed, sustained some hinderance, but not comparable to the Spaniards' loss; for they lost not any one ship or person of account; for very diligent inquisition being made, the Englishmen all the time wherein the Spanish navy sayled upon their seas, are not found to haue wanted aboue one hundred of their people; albeit Sir Francis Drake's ship was pierced with shot aboue forty times, and his very cabben was twice shot thorow, and about the conclusion of the fight, the bed of a certaine gentleman lying weary thereupon, was taken quite from under him with the force of a bullet. "Likewise, as the Earle of Northumberland and Sir Charles Blunt were at dinner upon a time, the bullet of a demy-culvering brake thorow the middest of their cabben, touched their feet, and strooke downe two of the standers-by. With many such accidents befalling the English shippes, which it were tedious to rehearse." It reflects little credit on the English government that the English fleet was so deficiently supplied with ammunition as to be unable to complete the destruction of the invaders. But enough was done to insure it. Many of the largest Spanish ships were sunk or captured in the action of this day. And at length the Spanish admiral, despairing of success, fled northward with a southerly wind, in the hope of rounding Scotland, and so returning to Spain without a further encounter with the English fleet. Lord Effingham left a squadron to continue the blockade of the Prince of Parma's armament; but that wise general soon withdrew his troops to more promising fields of action. Meanwhile the lord admiral himself, and Drake, chased the "vincible" armada, as it was now termed, for some distance northward; and then, when they seemed to bend away from the Scotch coast toward Norway, it was thought best, in the words of Drake, "to leave them to those boisterous and uncouth northern seas." The sufferings and losses which the unhappy Spaniards sustained in their flight round Scotland and Ireland are well known. Of their whole armada only fifty-three shattered vessels brought back their beaten and wasted crews to the Spanish coast, which they had quitted in such pageantry and pride. Some passages from the writings of those who took part in the struggle have been already quoted, and the most spirited description of the defeat of the armada which ever was penned may perhaps be taken from the letter which our brave vice-admiral Drake wrote in answer to some mendacious stories by which the Spaniards strove to hide their shame. Thus does he describe the scenes in which he played so important a part:[5] "They were not ashamed to publish, in sundry languages in print, great victories in words, which they pretended to have obtained against this realm, and spread the same in a most false sort over all parts of France, Italy, and elsewhere; when, shortly afterward, it was happily manifested in very deed to all nations, how their navy, which they termed invincible, consisting of one hundred forty sail of ships, not only of their own kingdom, but strengthened with the greatest argosies, Portugal carracks, Florentines, and large hulks of other countries, were by thirty of her majesty's own ships of war, and a few of our own merchants, by the wise, valiant, and advantageous conduct of the Lord Charles Howard, high admiral of England, beaten and shuffled together even from the Lizard in Cornwall, first to Portland, when they shamefully left Don Pedro de Valdez with his mighty ship; from Portland to Calais, where they lost Hugh de Moncado, with the galleys of which he was captain; and from Calais, driven with squibs from their anchors, were chased out of the sight of England, round about Scotland and Ireland; where, for the sympathy of their religion, hoping to find succor and assistance, a great part of them were crushed against the rocks, and those others that landed, being very many in number, were, notwithstanding, broken, slain, and taken, and so sent from village to village, coupled in halters to be shipped into England, where her majesty, of her princely and invincible disposition, disdaining to put them to death, and scorning either to retain or to entertain them, they were all sent back again to their countries, to witness and recount the worthy achievements of their invincible and dreadful navy. Of which the number of soldiers, the fearful burden of their ships, the commanders' names of every squadron, with all others, their magazines of provision, were put in print, as an army and navy irresistible and disdaining prevention; with all which their great and terrible ostentation, they did not in all their sailing round about England so much as sink or take one ship, barque, pinnace, or cock-boat of ours, or even burn so much as one sheep-cote on this land." [5] Strype, and the notes to the Life of Drake, in the _Biographia Britannica_. HENRY OF NAVARRE ACCEPTS CATHOLICISM HE IS ACKNOWLEDGED KING OF FRANCE A.D. 1593 MAXIMILIEN DE BÉTHUNE, DUC DE SULLY Few periods in French history are of greater interest and importance than that of which Sully treats in the following pages. Henry of Navarre is regarded by the French people as the most brilliant of all their kings in personal qualities and achievements; and his great accomplishment of ending the terrible religious wars of his country is one of the most conspicuous of the happier results in modern annals. Sully, whose account of these matters stands alone among those of contemporary narrators, was the friend and companion of Henry of Navarre, with whom he served in the wars. He also became famous as King Henry's minister of finance. After the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, the "Wars of the Huguenots" in France continued with fury. In 1573, the year following the massacre, by the Peace of La Rochelle Charles IX granted to the Protestants partial toleration. By the Peace of Monsieur, in 1576, Henry III granted them free exercise of their religion in all France except Paris. Among French Roman Catholics this treaty caused deep dissatisfaction, and in the same year they formed the Holy League--also called the Catholic League--for the purpose of wiping out the Huguenot party and raising the Guises to the throne. The League made an alliance with Philip II of Spain. Henry of Navarre, head of the Huguenot party after the death of Condé in 1569, became heir-presumptive to the throne of France in 1584. The Holy League, refusing to recognize his title, proclaimed the cardinal Charles de Bourbon heir-presumptive. On the death of Henry III, successor of Charles IX, in 1589, the League proclaimed Bourbon as king, under the title of Charles X. In the following year Henry of Navarre signally defeated the League at Ivry, but still the war went on. Battles and sieges, widespread intrigues, and frequent assassinations kept the kingdom in a condition of tumult and alarm. Disputes between the contending parties proved futile, debates in the States or legislative assembly of Paris availed nothing, and the successive "treaties" of the long war period failed to bring lasting peace. At length Henry decided to abjure the Protestant faith, and his abjuration was followed by the surrender to him of the chief cities of the kingdom (1593), including Paris. Still, although the King secured the general recognition of the Roman Catholics, and was crowned, as Henry IV, in July, 1594, war was continued by the League and its Spanish allies. In April, 1598, Henry issued the famous Edict of Nantes, whereby Huguenots were granted the political rights enjoyed by Catholics, and religious, military, and judicial concessions were made to the Protestants. This edict ended the long religious wars, and in May the Peace of Vervins with Spain and the League was concluded. The central event selected for this work is the securing by Henry of the sovereign power, whereby the end of these prolonged troubles was finally reached. Alternate succession of war and debates lasted all the time that the States of Paris continued to be held, and even till the day that the King abjured the Protestant religion. His intention of changing his religion now became daily more certain: many causes urged him to adopt this resolution, the principal of which (not to mention his conscience, of which he alone could be the true judge) were his grief for the miseries to which the people would still be exposed; his dread of the Catholics about his person; the powerful and subtle theological arguments of M. du Perron, added to his sweet and agreeable conversation; the artful connivance of some of the ministers and Huguenots in the cabinet, who were willing to profit by the times at any rate; the faithless ambition of many of the most powerful and distinguished among the Protestants, at the mercy of whom he dreaded falling, should the Catholics resolve to abandon him; the contempt which he had conceived against some of the zealous Catholics (and particularly M. d'O), on account of the insolent language they had used toward him; his desire of getting rid of them, and of one day making them suffer for their temerity; his dread lest the States, still sitting in Paris, might elect the Cardinal of Bourbon king, and marry him to the Infanta of Spain; finally, the fatigue and troubles he had endured from his youth, the hope of enjoying a life of ease and tranquillity for the future, added to the persuasions of some of his most faithful servants, among whom may be also reckoned his mistress,[1] the one by tears and supplications, the other by remonstrances: all these circumstances, I say, fixed him in his resolution of embracing the Catholic religion. [1] The Marchioness de Monceaux, who, D'Aubigné says, acted this part in the hope of becoming queen herself if Henry should be declared king. While these things were under consideration a great number of the larger towns, and Paris in particular, which were in the party of the League, being no longer able to endure the inconveniences and privations which the confusion of the times had occasioned--all commerce, internal as well as external, being at a stand, on account of the prohibitions against trading with the places in the King's interest--disturbances broke out among the people, who at last compelled their leaders to send a deputation to the King to request liberty to trade: M. de Belin was accordingly appointed for this purpose, and came to the King when he was either at Mantes or Vernon; but, notwithstanding all his arguments, the whole council opposed his request. There was not a Protestant there who appeared willing that he should grant it; and, what is still more surprising, it met with equal opposition from the Catholics, without their being able to assign a lawful, or even a plausible, reason for such a conduct. All these persons were perplexed in their debates, and perceived plainly that their opinion would signify nothing, yet could not prevail upon themselves to alter it. The King looking at me that moment, "Monsieur de Rosny," said he, "what makes you so thoughtful? Will not you speak your mind absolutely any more than the others?" I then began, and was not afraid to declare myself against all those who had voted, by maintaining that it was necessary not to hesitate a moment, but to endeavor to gain the affections of the people by kind treatment, as experience had proved that harsh measures were productive of no good consequences whatever. I therefore advised the King to grant them not only the liberty of trade, which they requested, but also a general truce, if, as the Count de Belin seemed to hint, they should desire it. To these I added many other reasons; but they only excited against me the hatred or contempt of most of the council, to whose decision the King was obliged to yield, and the Count de Belin returned without being able to gain anything. Henry, reflecting upon this refusal and judging that there wanted but little more of the same nature to alienate the people's affections from him without a possibility of regaining them, and to induce them to go over to the party of his enemies, he resolved to defer his abjuration no longer. He was now convinced that there was no probability of his subduing the reluctance of several of the Protestants, or of ever obtaining their free consent to this proceeding;[2] but that it was necessary to act independently of them, and hazard some murmurs, which would end in nothing. As for the Catholics of his party, the King endeavored only to remove their fears that, looking upon them as persons of whom he was already secure, he would apply himself wholly to gaining the rest by bestowing all rewards upon them. He therefore at last declared publicly that on July 20, 1593, he would perform his abjuration, and named the Church of St. Denis for this ceremony. [2] Henry IV was always sensible that his abjuration would expose him to great dangers, which made him write in this manner to Mademoiselle d'Estrées: "On Sunday I shall take a dangerous leap. While I am writing to you I have a hundred troublesome people about me, which makes me detest St. Denis as much as you do Mantes," etc. This declaration threw the League into confusion, and filled the hearts of the people and the Catholics of the royal party with joy. The Protestants, although they had expected it, discovered their discontent by signs and low murmurs, and did, for form's sake, all that such a juncture required of them, but they did not go beyond the bounds of obedience. All the ecclesiastics, with Du Perron, intoxicated with his triumph, at their head, flocked together; everyone was desirous of a share in this work. Du Perron, for whom I had obtained the bishopric of Evreux, thought he could not show his gratitude for it in a better manner than by exercising his functions of converter upon me. He accosted me with the air of a conqueror, and proposed to me to be present at a ceremony where he flattered himself he should shine with such powers of reasoning as would dissipate the profoundest darkness. "Sir," I replied, "all I have to do by being present at your disputes is to examine which side produces the strongest and most effectual arguments. The state of affairs, your number and your riches, require that yours should prevail." In effect they did. There was a numerous court at St. Denis, and all was conducted with great pomp and splendor. I may be excused from dwelling upon the description of this ceremony here, since the Catholic historians have been so prolix upon the subject. I did not imagine I could be of any use at this time, therefore kept myself retired, as one who had no interest in the show that was preparing, when I was visited by Du Perron, whom the Cardinal of Bourbon had sent to me to decide a dispute that had arisen on occasion of the terms in which the King's profession of faith should be conceived. The Catholic priests and doctors loaded it with all the trifles their heads were filled with, and were going to make it ridiculous, instead of a grave and solemn composition. The Protestant ministers, and the King himself, disapproved of the puerilities and trifles with which they had stuffed this instrument; and it occasioned debates which had like to have thrown everything again into confusion. I went immediately with Du Perron to the Cardinal of Bourbon, with whom it was agreed that those articles of faith which were disputed by the two churches should be admitted, but that all the rest should be suppressed as useless. The parties approved of this regulation; and the instrument was drawn up in such a manner that the King there acknowledged all the Roman tenets upon the Holy Scripture: the Church, the number and ceremonies of the sacraments, the sacrifices of the mass, transubstantiation, the doctrine of justification, the invocation of saints, the worship of relics and images, purgatory, indulgences, and the supremacy and power of the pope,[3] after which the satisfaction was general.[4] [3] Another act of equal validity, by which Henry IV acknowledged the pope's authority, is the declaration which he made after his conversion, that it was necessity and the confusion of affairs which obliged him to receive absolution from the prelates of France rather than from those of the Holy Father. [4] It was Renauld, or Beaune de Samblançai, Archbishop of Bourges, who received the King's abjuration; the Cardinal of Bourbon, who was not a priest, and nine other bishops assisted at the ceremony. Henry IV entering the Chapel of St. Denis, the Archbishop said to him, "Who are you?" Henry replied, "I am the King." "What is your request?" said the Archbishop. "To be received," said the King, "into the pale of the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church." "Do you desire it?" added the prelate. "Yes, I do desire it," replied the King. Then, kneeling, he said: "I protest and swear, in the presence of Almighty God, to live and die in the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion; to protect and defend it against all its enemies, at the hazard of my blood and life, renouncing all heresies contrary to this Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church." He afterward put this same confession in writing into the hands of the Archbishop, who presented him his ring to kiss, giving him absolution with a loud voice, during which _Te Deum_ was sung, etc. The ceremony of the King's abjuration was followed by a deputation of the Duke of Nevers to Rome, who, together with the Cardinal de Gondy and the Marquis de Pisany, was to offer the Pope the submission usual in such cases. Although this change was a mortal blow for the League, yet the Spaniards and the Duke of Mayenne still held out; they endeavored to persuade their partisans that there still remained resources capable of making it ineffectual; but they spoke at that time contrary to their own opinion, and this feigned confidence was only designed to obtain greater advantages from the King before he was securely fixed on the throne. This is not a mere conjecture, at least with regard to the King of Spain, since it is certain that he ordered Taxis and Stuniga to offer the King forces sufficient to reduce all the chiefs of the League and the Protestant party, without annexing any other condition to this offer than a strict alliance between the two crowns, and an agreement that the King should give no assistance to the rebels in the Low Countries. Philip II judged of Henry by himself, and considered his conversion only as the principle of a new political system, which made it necessary for him to break through his former engagements. It may not, perhaps, be useless to mention here an observation I have made on the conduct of Spain, which is, that although before and after the death of Catherine de' Medicis she had put a thousand different springs in motion, changed parties and interests as she thought most expedient to draw advantages from the divisions that shook this kingdom, yet the Protestant party was the only one to which she never made any application: she had often publicly protested that she never had the least intention to gain or suffer their alliance. It is by an effect of this very antipathy that the Spaniards have constantly refused the Reformed religion admission into their states--an antipathy which cannot be attributed to anything but the republican principles the Protestants are accused of having imbibed. The King being fully convinced that, to stifle the seeds of schism in his kingdom, it was necessary to give none of the different factions occasion to boast that his power was at their disposal, and that to reduce all parties he must be partial to none, he therefore steadily rejected these offers from Spain, and those which the Duke of Mayenne made him to the same purpose, but at that very time appeared willing to treat with any of the chiefs or cities of the League which would surrender, and to reward them in proportion to their readiness and services; and it was this prudent medium that he was resolved to persist in. Although he now professed the same religion as the League, yet his aversion to the spirit which actuated that party, and to the maxims by which they were governed, was not lessened; the very name only of the League was sufficient to kindle his anger. The Catholic Leaguers, supposing that his abjuration authorized them to abolish in those cities which depended upon them the edicts that were favorable to the Huguenots, the King caused them to be restored; and though in some places the Leaguers had obtained the consent even of the Huguenots themselves--determined to purchase peace at any price--for this purpose, yet, the Protestant party murmuring at it, Henry cancelled all that had been done to that effect,[5] and showed that it was his design to keep the balance even. [5] The King, on the 12th of December this year, held an assembly of the Protestants at Mantes, in which he publicly declared that his changing his religion should make no alteration in the affairs of the Protestants. And, the Calvinists having asked many things of him, he told them he could not comply with their requests, but that he would tolerate them. The Duke of Mayenne, finding that in this last scheme, which he had believed infallible, he was disappointed as well as in the rest, placed all his future dependence upon his old friends the Parisians, and neglected no method by which he might awaken their mutinous disposition; but so far was he from succeeding in this attempt that he could not hinder them from discovering their joy at what had just passed at St. Denis. They talked publicly of peace, and even in his presence; and he had the mortification to hear a proposal to send deputies to the King to demand a truce for six months, and they obliged him to give his consent to it. The truce for three months, which had been granted them at Surêne, had only inspired them with an inclination for a longer one. The King gave audience to the deputies in full council. The greatest number of those who composed it, listening to nothing but their jealousy of the Duke of Mayenne, whom they feared as a man that had the means in his power of purchasing favor and rewards, were of the opinion that no attention ought to be paid to this demand of the deputies, because the person who sent them persisted in his revolt against the King, even after his abjuration. Notwithstanding the justice of not confounding the Duke of Mayenne with the Parisians, I saw this advice was likely to be followed, and it certainly might have produced some very bad consequence. I therefore insisted so strongly upon the advantage of letting the people, already recovered from their first terrors, taste the sweets of a peace which would interest them still more in the King's favor, that this Prince declared he would grant the truce they demanded of him, but for the months of August, September, and October only. The next day a prodigious concourse of the populace of Paris assembled at St. Denis. The King showed himself to the people and assisted publicly at mass; wherever he turned his steps the crowd was so great that it was sometimes impossible to pierce through it, while every moment a million of voices cried, "Long live the King!" Everyone returned, charmed with the gracefulness of his person, his condescension, and that engaging manner which was natural to him. "God bless him!" said they, with tears in their eyes, "and grant that he may soon do the same in our Church of Notre Dame in Paris." I observed to the King this disposition of the people with regard to him; tender and sensible as he was, he could not behold this spectacle without strong emotions. Some months later, while on a mission for the King, I received from his majesty a letter, which concluded with these words: "Come to me at Senlis on the 20th of March, or at St. Denis on the 21st, that you may help to cry, 'Long live the King!' in Paris, and afterward we will do the same at Rouen." It was upon some correspondence the King carried on in Paris that he founded his hopes of being soon admitted there, and he was on his way thither from St. Denis when I joined him. His party in that city was so firmly united, and so many persons of equal courage and fidelity had joined it, that it was almost impossible but that it should succeed. Ever since the battle of Arques, when the Count of Belin was taken prisoner by the King's forces, and had an opportunity of discovering the great qualities of Henry contrasted with the weakness of his enemies, the Duke of Mayenne perceived the inclinations of the count to lean secretly toward the King. Full of this suspicion, he did not hesitate a moment about depriving him of the government of so considerable a city as Paris, and, seeking for a man whose fidelity to himself and the League could be depended upon, to whom he might intrust the care of this great city at a time when the necessity of his affairs obliged him to repair to the frontier of Picardy, he fixed upon Brissac and made him governor. Brissac, at first, answered his purposes perfectly well. The study of Roman history had inspired this officer, who valued himself greatly upon his penetration and judgment, with a very singular project, which was to form France into a republic upon the model of ancient Rome, and make Paris the capital of this new state. Had Brissac descended ever so little from these lofty ideas to an attention to particular applications, which in the greatest designs it is necessary to have some regard to, he would have perceived that there are circumstances under which a scheme, however happily imagined, may, by the nature of the obstacles which oppose it, by the difference of the genius and character of the people, by the force of those laws they have adopted, and by long custom, which, as it were, stamps a seal upon them, become alike chimerical and impracticable. Time only and long experience can bring remedies to defects in the customs of a state whose form is already determined; and this ought always to be attempted with a view to the plan of its original constitution: this is so certain that, whenever we see a state conducted by measures contrary to those made use of in its foundation, we may be assured a great revolution is at hand; nor does the application of the best remedies operate upon diseases that resist their force. Brissac did not go so far; he could not for a long time comprehend from whence the general opposition his designs met with proceeded, for he had explained himself freely to the nobles and all the chief partisans of the League; at last he began to be apprehensive for his own safety lest, while, without any assistance, he was laboring to bring his project to perfection, the King should destroy it entirely by seizing his capital. Possessed with this fear, the Roman ideas quickly gave place to the French spirit of those times, which was to be solicitous only for his own advantage. When self-interested motives are strengthened by the apprehension of any danger, there are few persons who will not be induced by them to betray even their best friend. Thus Brissac acted: he entered into the Count of Belin's resolutions, though from a motive far less noble and generous, and thought of nothing but of making the King purchase at the highest price the treachery he meditated against the Duke of Mayenne in his absence. St. Luc, his brother-in-law, undertook to negotiate with the King in his name, and having procured very advantageous conditions, Brissac agreed to admit Henry with his army into Paris in spite of the Spaniards. The troops of the League were absolutely at his disposal, and there was no reason to apprehend any opposition from the people. D'O lost no time in making application for the government of Paris and the Isle of France, and obtained his request; but now a conflict between his interest and ambition so perplexed this superintendent that, notwithstanding his new dignity, the reduction of Paris was among the number of those things he most feared should happen: he would have had it believed that the true motive of this fear was, lest the finances should become a prey to the men of the sword and gown, by whom, he said, the King, as soon as he was possessed of Paris, would be oppressed for the payment of pensions, appointments, and rewards. But this discourse deceived none but those who were ignorant of the advantage he found in keeping the affairs of the finances in their present state of confusion, and with what success he had hitherto labored for that purpose. The King, upon this occasion, put all the friends of the Count of Belin in motion, on whom he had no less dependence than upon Brissac, and at nine o'clock in the morning presented himself, at the head of eight thousand men, before the Porte Neuve, where the Mayor of Paris and the other magistrates received him in form. He went immediately and took possession of the Louvre, the Palace, the Great and Little Châtelet, and, finding no opposition anywhere, he proceeded even to the Church of Notre Dame, which he entered to return thanks to God for his success. His soldiers, on their part, fulfilled with such exactness the orders and intentions of their master that no one throughout this great city complained of having received any outrage from them. They took possession of all the squares and crossways in the street, where they drew up in order of battle. Everything was quiet, and from that day the shops were opened with all the security which a long-continued peace could have given. The Spaniards had now only the Bastille, the Temple, and the quarters of St. Anthony and St. Martin in their possession; and there they fortified themselves, being about four thousand in number, with the Duc de Feria and Don Diego d'Evora at their head, all greatly astonished at such unexpected news, and firmly resolved to defend themselves to the last extremity, if any attempts were made to force them from those advantageous posts. The King relieved them from their perplexity by sending to tell them that they might leave Paris and retreat in full security. He treated the Cardinals of Placentia and Pelleve with the same gentleness, notwithstanding the resentment he still retained for their conduct with regard to him. Soissons was the place whither these enemies of the King retired,[6] protected by a strong escort. His majesty then published a general pardon for all the French who had borne arms against him. When this sacrifice is not extorted by necessity, but, on the contrary, made at a time when vengeance has full liberty to satiate itself, it is not one of the least marks of a truly royal disposition. [6]The King had a mind to see them march out, and viewed them from a window over St. Denis' gate. They all saluted him with their hats off, bowing profoundly low. The King, with great politeness, returned the salute to the principal officers, adding these words: "Remember me to your master; go, I permit you, but return no more." This anecdote agrees with that in the _Memoirs for the History of France_, but is contradicted by the _Journal_ written by the same author. CULMINATION OF DRAMATIC LITERATURE IN "HAMLET" A.D. 1601 JAMES O. HALLIWELL-PHILLIPPS The tragedy of _Hamlet_ is generally regarded by critics as Shakespeare's masterpiece. Hence it is often referred to as the highest literary product of human genius. In the following discussion of the play, Mr. J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, the master and dean of later Shakespearean scholars, gives 1601 as the probable date of its first production. At that time Shakespeare was a London actor, and leading shareholder in the Globe Theatre, where his play was presumably produced. He had made his first big success some five years before with _Romeo and Juliet_, and was, so far as we can judge, on the high tide of financial prosperity. The profession of an actor carried with it in those days much discredit, but in his far-off home at Stratford, Shakespeare had in 1601 already begun to seek the repute of a country gentleman, and had purchased the finest house and estate in the little village. Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps' _Memoranda on Hamlet_ were never thrown into final shape by the author. Therefore the editors have taken such slight liberties in rearranging the order of his text as were necessary to make its discourse consecutive. The tragedy of _Hamlet_ is unquestionably the highest effort of artistic literary power yet given to the world. There is nothing to be found in real competition with it excepting in the other works of Shakespeare, but all are inferior to this great masterpiece. There is hardly a speech in the whole play which may not fairly be made the subject of an elaborate discourse, especially when viewed in connection with its bearings, however occasionally remote, on the character of Hamlet, the development of which appears to have been the chief object of the author, not only in the management of the plot, but in the creation of the other personages who are introduced. There is contemporary evidence to this effect in the _Stationers' Register_ of 1602 in the title there given--_The Revenge of Hamlet_. There was an old English tragedy on the subject of Hamlet which was in existence at least as early as the year 1589, in the representation of which an exclamation of the Ghost--"Hamlet, revenge!"--was a striking and well-remembered feature. This production is alluded to in some prefatory matter by Nash in the edition of Greene's _Menaphon_, issued in that year, here given: "I'le turne backe to my first text, of studies of delight, and talke a little in friendship with a few of our triuiall translators. It is a common practise now a daies amongst a sort of shifting companions that run through euery arte and thriue by none, to leaue the trade of _Nouerint_ whereto they were borne, and busie themselues with the indeuors of art, that could scarcelie latinize their necke-verse if they should haue neede; yet English _Seneca_ read by candle light yeeldes manie good sentences, as _Bloud is a beggar_, and so foorth: and if you intreate him faire in a frostie morning, he will afoord you whole _Hamlets_, I should say hand-fulls of tragical speeches." Another allusion occurs in Lodge's _Wits' Miserie_, "and though this fiend be begotten of his father's own blood, yet is he different from his nature; and were he not sure that jealousie could not make him a cuckold, he had long since published him for a bastard: you shall know him by this, he is a foule lubber, his tongue tipt with lying, his heart steeled against charity; he walks for the most part in black under color of gravity, and looks as pale as the visard of the ghost which cried so miserably at the theator like an oister-wife,' _Hamlet, revenge_'." Again, in Decker's _Satiromastix_, 1602: "_Asini_. 'Wod I were hang'd, if I can call you any names but Captaine and Tucca.' _Tuc._ 'No, fye'st, my name's _Hamlet, revenge_. Thou hast been at Parris Garden, hast not?' _Hor._ 'Yes, Captaine, I ha plaide Zulziman there'"; with which may be compared another passage in _Westward Hoe_, 1607--"I, but when light wives make heavy husbands, let these husbands play mad _Hamlet_ and crie, _revenge_." So, likewise, in Rowland's _Night Raven_, 1620, a scrivener, who has his cloak and hat stolen from him, exclaims, "I will not cry, _Hamlet, revenge_ my greeves." There is also reason to suppose that another passage in the old tragedy of _Hamlet_ is alluded to in Armin's _Nest of Ninnies_, 1608: "There are, as Hamlet sayes, things cald whips in store," a sentence which seems to have been well known and popular, for it is partially cited in the _Spanish Tragedie_, 1592, and in the _First Part of the Contention_, 1594. It seems, however, certain that all the passages above quoted refer to a drama of Hamlet anterior to that by Shakespeare, and the same which is recorded in Henslowe's _Diary_ as having been played at Newington in 1594 by "my Lord Admeralle and my lorde Chamberlen men, 9 of June, 1594, receved at Hamlet, viii, 5," the small sum arising from the performance showing most probably that the tragedy had then been long on the stage. As Shakespeare was a member of the Lord Chamberlain's Company at that time, it is certain that he must have been well acquainted with the older play of _Hamlet_, one of a series of dramas on the then favorite theme of revenge, aided by the supernatural intervention of a ghost. There are a few other early allusions to the first _Hamlet_ which appear to deserve quotation. "His father's empire and government was but as the _Poeticall Furie in a Stageaction_, compleat, yet with horrid and wofull Tragedies: a first, but no second to any _Hamlet_; and that now _Reuenge_, iust _Reuenge_ was coming with his Sworde drawne against him, his royall Mother, and dearest Sister to fill up those Murdering Sceanes."--Sir Thomas Smithe's _Voiage and Entertainment in Rushia_, 1605. "Sometimes would he overtake him and lay hands upon him like a catch-pole, as if he had arrested him, but furious Hamlet woulde presently eyther breake loose like a beare from the stake, or else so set his pawes on this dog that thus bayted him that, with tugging and tearing one another's frockes off, they both looked like mad Tom of Bedlam."--Decker's _Dead Terme_, 1608. "If any passenger come by and, wondering to see such a conjuring circle kept by hel-houndes, demaund what spirits they raise there, one of the murderers steps to him, poysons him with sweete wordes and shifts him off with this lye, that one of the women is falne in labor: but if any mad Hamlet, hearing this, smell villanie and rush in by violence to see what the tawny divels are dooing, then they excuse the fact, lay the blame on those that are the actors, and perhaps, if they see no remedie, deliver them to an officer to be lead to punishment."--Decker's _Lanthorne and Candle-light, or the Bellman's Second Nights-Walke_, 1609, a tract which was reprinted under more than one different title. Mr. Collier, in his _Farther Particulars_, 1839, cites a very curious passage--"a trout, Hamlet, with four legs"--which is given as a proverbial line in Clarke's _Paroemiologia Anglo-Latina_ (or _Proverbs English and Latin_), 1639. It is unnecessary to be too curious in searching for the exact meaning of the phrase, but, as Dr. Ingleby suggested to me, it is in all probability taken from the older play of _Hamlet_, which does not appear to have been entirely superseded at once by the new, or at least was long remembered by play-goers. The preceding notices may fairly authorize us to infer that the ancient play of _Hamlet_--1. Was written by either an attorney or an attorney's clerk, who had not received a university education; 2. Was full of tragical, high-sounding speeches; 3. Contained the passage "There are things called whips in store," spoken by Hamlet; 4. Included a very telling brief speech by the Ghost in the two words "Hamlet, revenge!" 5. Was acted at the theatre in Shoreditch and at the playhouse at Newington Butts; 6. Had for its principal character a hero exhibiting more general violence than can be attributed to Shakespeare's creation of Hamlet. As the older _Hamlet_ was performed by the Lord Chamberlain's Company in the year 1594, it is possible that Shakespeare might then have undertaken the part of the Ghost, a character he afterward assumed in his own tragedy. There is a curious inedited notice of this personage in Saltonstall's _Picturæ Loquentes_, 1635: "a chamberlaine is as nimble as Hamlet's ghost, heere and everywhere, and when he has many guests, stands most upon his pantofles, for hee's then a man of some calling." There are a number of critics, following the lead of Coleridge, who tells us that Shakespeare's judgment is commensurate with his genius; but they speak of the former generally as if it were always unfettered, and neglect to add that it was continually influenced by the conditions under which he wrote, and that it was often his task to discover a route to a successful result through the tortuous angularities of a preconceived foreground. There is every reason to believe that this was the case with the tragedy of _Hamlet_ and, if so, it is certain that no genius but that of Shakespeare could have moulded the inartistic materials of a rude original into that harmonious composition, which, although it has certainly been tampered with by the players, and is therefore not the perfect issue of his free inspiration, is the noblest drama the world is ever likely to possess. It must be recollected that in 1602 Shakespeare was in the zenith of his dramatic power. His tragedy of _Hamlet_ was produced on the stage either in 1601 or 1602, as appears from the entry of it on the books of the Stationers' Company on July 26, 1602: "James Robertes--Entered for his copie under the handes of Mr. Pasfeild and Mr. Waterson, warden, a booke called the _Revenge of Hamlett, Prince (of) Denmarke_, as yet was _latelie acted_ by the Lo: Chamberleyne his servantes." No copy of this date is known to exist, but a surreptitious and imperfect transcript of portions of the tragedy appeared in the following year under the title of "_The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke_. By William Shakespeare. As it hath been diuerse times acted by his Highnesse seruants in the Cittie of London: as also in the two Vniuersities of Cambridge and Oxford, and elsewhere. At London, printed for N. L. and Iohn Trundell, 1603." In the next year, 1604, N. L., who was Nicholas Ling, obtained by some means a playhouse copy of the tragedy, not a copy in the state in which it left the hands of the author, but representing in the main the genuine words of Shakespeare. It was published under the following title: "_The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke_. By William Shakespeare. Newly imprinted and enlarged to almost as much againe as it was, according to the true and perfect coppie. At London, Printed by I. R. for N. L., and are to be sold at his shoppe under Saint Dunston's Church in Fleetstreet, 1604." This impression was reissued in the following year, the title-page and a few leaves at the end, sigs. N. and O., being fresh-printed, the sole alteration in the former being the substitution of 1605 for 1604. _Hamlet_ is not mentioned by Meres in 1598, and it could not have been written before 1599, in which year the Globe was erected, there being a clear allusion to that theatre in act ii, sc. 2. The tragedy continued to be acted after Shakespeare's company commenced playing at the Blackfriars Theatre, it being alluded to in a manuscript list, written in 1660, of "some of the most ancient plays that were played at Blackfriars." According to Downes, Sir William Davenant, "having seen Mr. Taylor of the Black-Fryars Company act it, who, being instructed by the author, Mr. Shaksepeur, taught Mr. Betterton in every particle of it."--_Roscius Anglicanus_, 1708. Roberts, in his answer to Mr. Pope's _Preface on Shakespeare_, 1729, thinks that Lowin was the original Hamlet. The date of 1601 for the production of _Hamlet_ appears to suit the internal evidence very well. That evidence decidedly leads to the conclusion that it could not have been written long before that time, and, without placing too much reliance on the general opinion that Shakespeare entirely laid aside his earlier style of composition at some particular era, that year is probably about the latest in which he would have written in the strain of the following lines, which, taken by themselves, might be assigned to the period of the _Two Gentlemen of Verona_: "Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister; And keep you in the rear of your affection Out of the shot and danger of desire. The dearest maid is prodigal enough If she unmask her beauty to the moon: Virtue itself scapes not calumnious strokes: The canker galls the infants of the spring, Too oft before their buttons be disclos'd; And in the morn and liquid dew of youth Contagious blastments are most imminent. Be wary, then; best safety lies in fear; Youth to itself rebels, though none else near." Were it not that the elder play of _Hamlet_ did not belong to Shakespeare's company, these lines might lead to the conjecture that he had made some additions to it long before he wrote his own complete tragedy. There was once in existence a copy of Speght's edition of Chaucer, 1598, with manuscript notes by Gabriel Harvey, one of those notes being in the following terms: "The younger sort take much delight in Shakespeare's _Venus and Adonis_, but his _Lucrece_ and his tragedy of _Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke_, have it in them to please the wiser sort." This note was first printed in 1766 by Steevens, who gives the year 1598 as the date of its insertion in the volume, but, observed Dr. Ingleby, "we are unable to verify Steevens' note or collate his copy, for the book which contained Harvey's note passed into the collection of Bishop Percy, and his library was burned in the fire at Northumberland House." Under these circumstances one can only add the opinions of those who have had the opportunity of inspecting the volume. Firstly, from the letter of Percy to Malone, 1803: "In the passage which extols Shakespeare's tragedy, Spenser is quoted by name among our flourishing metricians. Now this edition of Chaucer was published in 1598, and Spenser's death is ascertained to have been in January, 1598-1599, so that these passages were all written in 1598, and prove that _Hamlet_ was written before that year, as you have fixed it." Secondly, from a letter from Malone to Percy, written also in 1803, in which he gives reasons for controverting this opinion: "When I was in Dublin I remember you thought that, though Harvey had written 1598 in his book, it did not follow from thence that his remarks were then written; whilst, on the other hand, I contended that, from the mention of Spenser, they should seem to have been written in that year; so that, like the two Reynoldses, we have changed sides and each converted the other; for I have now no doubt that these observations were written in a subsequent year. The words that deceive are 'our now flourishing metricians,' by which Harvey does not mean 'now living,' but now admired or in vogue; and what proves this is that in his catalogue he mixes the living and the dead, for Thomas Watson was dead before 1593. With respect to Axio Philus, I think you will agree with me hereafter that not Spenser, but another person, was meant. Having more than once named Spenser, there could surely be no occasion to use any mysterious appellation with respect to that poet. My theory is that Harvey bought the book in 1598 on its publication, and then sat down to read it, and that his observations were afterward inserted at various times. That passage, which is at the very end, and subjoined to Lydgate's catalogue, one may reasonably suppose was not written till after he had perused the whole volume." The tragedy of _Hamlet_ is familiarly alluded to more than once in the play of _Eastward Hoe_, printed in 1605, in a manner which indicates that the former drama was very well established in the memories of the audience. There is a parody on one of Ophelia's songs which is of some interest in regard to the question of the critical value of the quarto of 1604; the occurrence of the word "all" before "flaxen" showing that the former word was incorrectly omitted in all the early quartos excepting in that of 1603. One of the subordinate characters in _Eastward Hoe_ is a running-footman of the name of Hamlet, who enters in great haste to tell the coachman to be ready for his mistress, whereupon Potkin, a tankard-bearer, says: "Sfoote, Hamlet, are you madde? Whether run you nowe? You should brushe up my olde mistresse." There is an unsupported statement by Oldys to the effect that Shakespeare received but five pounds for his tragedy of _Hamlet_, but whether from the company who first acted it or from the publisher is not mentioned. This is the only information that has reached us respecting the exact emolument received by Shakespeare for any of his writings, but it cannot be accepted merely on such an authority. It is, however, worthy of remark that Greene parted with his _Orlando_ to the Queen's Players for twenty nobles; so the sum named appears to have been about the usual amount given for a play sold direct from the author to a company, but in all probability, when _Hamlet_ was produced, Shakespeare was playing at the Globe Theatre on shares. Notwithstanding the extreme length of the tragedy of _Hamlet_, there is such a marvellously concentrative power displayed in much of the construction and dialogue that, in respect to a large number of the incidents and speeches, a wide latitude of interpretation is admissible, the selection in those cases from possible explanations depending upon the judgment and temperament of each actor or reader. Hence it may be confidently predicted that no æsthetic criticisms upon this drama will ever be entirely and universally accepted, and as certainly that there will remain problems in connection with it which will be subjects for discussion to the end of literary time. Among the latter the reason or reasons which induced Hamlet to defer the fulfilment of his revenge may perhaps continue to hold a prominent situation, although the solution of that special mystery does not seem to be attended with difficulties equal to those surrounding other cognate inquiries which arise in the study of the tragedy. In respect to this drama, as to many others by the same author, the prophetic words of Leonard Digges may be usefully remembered--"Some second Shakespeare must of Shakespeare write." Until this miracle occurs, it is not likely that any æsthetic criticism on the tragedy will be successful; and certainly at present, notwithstanding the numbers of persons of high talent and genius who have discussed the subject, nothing has been, nor is likely to be, produced which is altogether satisfactory. The cause of this may perhaps to some extent arise from the latitude of interpretation the dramatic form of composition allows, to the appreciation of the minor details of a character, and the various plausible reasons that can often be assigned for the same line of action; something also may be due to the unconscious influence exercised by individual temperament upon the exposition of that character, and again much to the defective state of the text; but the reason of the general failure in _Hamlet_ criticism is no doubt chiefly to be traced to the want of ability to enter fully into the inspiration of the poet's genius. It may, however, be safely asserted that the simpler explanations are, and the less they are biassed by the subtleties of the philosophical critics, the more likely they are to be in unison with the intentions of the author. Take, for instance, the well-established fact that immodesty of expression, the recollection derived, it may often be, accidentally and unwillingly from oral sources during the previous life, is one of the numerous phases of insanity; and not only are the song-fragments chanted by Ophelia, but even the ribaldry addressed to her by Hamlet, in the play-scene, vindicated, there being little doubt that Shakespeare intended the simulated madness of the latter through his intellectual supremacy to be equally true to nature, the manners of his age permitting the delineation in a form which is now repulsive and inadmissible. The present favorite idea is that in Hamlet the great dramatist intended to delineate an irresolute mind depressed by the weight of a mission which it is unable to accomplish. This is the opinion of Goethe following, if I have noted rightly, an English writer in the _Mirror_ of 1780. A careful examination of the tragedy will hardly sustain this hypothesis. So far from Hamlet being indecisive, although the active principle in his character is strongly influenced by the meditative, he is really a man of singular determination, and, excepting in occasional paroxsyms, one of powerful self-control. His rapidity of decision is strikingly exhibited after his first interview with the Ghost. Perceiving at once how important it was that Marcellus, at all events, should not suspect the grave revelations that had been made, although they had been sufficient to have paralyzed one of less courage and resolution than himself, he outwits his companions by banter, treating the apparition with intentional and grotesque disrespect and jocularity at a moment when an irresolute mind would have been terrified and prostrated. Then Hamlet's powerful intellect not only enables him to recognize almost instantaneously the difficulties which beset his path, but immediately to devise a scheme by which some of them might be overcome. The compliance with the advice of his father's spirit, in strict unison with his own natural temperament, that the pursuit of his revenge was to harmonize with the dictates of his conscience, involving of course his duties to others, was attended by obstacles apparently insurmountable; yet all were to be removed before the final catastrophe, however acutely he might feel the effort of suppressing his desire for vengeance, that obligation the fulfilment of which was postponed by subtle considerations, and by fear lest precipitate action might leave him with "a wounded name." But this duty, it is important to observe, was never sought to be relinquished. The influences practically render delay a matter of necessity with him, and leaving a murderer to contend against one who, as he must have felt, would not have scrupled to design his assassination if at any moment safety could be in that way secured, his determination to assume the garb of insanity in the presence of the King and of those likely to divulge the secret, is easily and naturally explained. Hamlet is wildly impetuous in moments of excitement, so that his utterances are not invariably to be accepted as evidences of his general nature. Much of the difficulty in the interpretation of the tragedy arises from the oversight of accepting his soliloquies as continuous illustrations of his character, instead of being, as they mostly are, transient emanations of his subtle irritability. Even in the midst of his impetuosity the current of violent thought was subject to a controlling interruption by a sudden reaction arising from the influence of reason; but it was natural on occasions that, stirred by his desire for revenge, he should doubt the validity of his reasons for delay. A wide distinction also must be drawn in the matter of time for vengeance, between action resulting from sudden and that from remoter provocation. There seems to have been in Hamlet, so far as regards the commands of the apparition, an almost perpetual conflict between impulse and reason, each in its turn being predominant. The desire for revenge is at times so great that it is only by the strongest effort of will he resists precipitate action, then, losing no pretext to find causes for its exercise, overpowering the dictates of his penetrative genius. It is not rashness in Hamlet on one occasion and procrastination on another, but a power of instantaneous action that could be controlled by the very briefest period of reflection, the great feature in his intellect being a preternaturally rapid reflective power, and men of genius almost invariably do meditate before action. Among the numerous unsupported conjectures respecting this tragedy may be mentioned that, when Shakespeare drew the characters of, 1. Hamlet; 2. Horatio; 3. Claudius; 4. The Queen, he had in his mind, 1. The Earl of Essex or Sir Phillip Sydney or himself; 2. Lord Southampton or Fulke Greville; 3. The Earl of Leicester; 4. Mary, Queen of Scots. Although some of these suggestions are ingeniously supported, there is not one of them which rests on any kind of real evidence or external probability. Burbage was the first actor of Hamlet in Shakespeare's tragedy. His performance is spoken of in terms of high commendation, but there is no record of his treatment of the character, his delineation probably differing materially from that of modern actors. Stage tradition merely carries down the tricks of the profession, no actor entirely replacing another, and, in the case of Hamlet, hardly two of recent times, whose performances I have had the opportunity of witnessing, but who are or have been distinct in manner and expression, and even in idea. Few actors or readers can be found to agree respecting Shakespeare's conception of the character. This, however, may be safely asserted, that no criticism on Hamlet will ever be permanent which does not recognize the sublimity of his nature. Horatio understood Hamlet better than anyone, and his judgment of him doubtless expressed Shakespeare's own estimate: "Now cracks a noble heart--good night, sweet prince; And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!" A "noble heart" that ever shrank from an act that would have resulted in his own aggrandizement, for, although the monarchy was elective, not hereditary, the succession of Hamlet had been proclaimed by the King and tacitly accepted. DOWNFALL OF IRISH LIBERTY "FLIGHT OF THE EARLS" A.D. 1603 JUSTIN McCARTHY At the accession of Henry VIII to the English throne that portion of Ireland mainly colonized from England, the ruling country, was known as the English pale--that is, district. It comprised "the four shires" or counties of Dublin, Kildare, Meath, and Louth. Beyond this district the country was held by various Celtic clans ruled by their own chieftains. Early in Henry's reign the English lords began to show their independence of royal authority, and also to ally themselves with the native chieftains. Henry saw that the Irish, who had often before aimed at independence of England, were about to renew the struggle. He determined to forestall them, and sent one lord deputy after another to Ireland in charge of the royal interests. Disputes between his own representatives, and their doubtful loyalty, caused the King much trouble, and Irish affairs were far from being composed when Thomas Fitzgerald, tenth earl of Kildare, renounced his allegiance to Henry and headed an unsuccessful rebellion. Fitzgerald was executed at Tyburn in 1537. Matters were now further complicated by the introduction of the Reformation into Ireland. Most of the Irish people were stanch adherents of Catholicism, while some of the leading English Protestants in Ireland favored Irish nationality as strongly as did the Catholics. After the death of Henry VIII the religious troubles were intensified. Under Edward VI a severe policy was pursued against the Irish Catholics and Nationalists. After a brief reaction under Mary, the Catholic sovereign of England, the policy of suppression was renewed with still greater severity by Queen Elizabeth, and the condition of Ireland became one of chronic rebellion. This time of trouble called forth some powerful champions of the Irish national cause. One of these, Shane O'Neil, has been celebrated in many a popular ballad. The head of the house to which he belonged had acknowledged allegiance to Henry VIII and received the title of Earl of Tyrone. The English title carried with it, according to English law, the principle of hereditary succession; but when the first earl died, the clan of O'Neil refused to adopt the English practice, and, according to the Irish principle of tanistry, chose as his successor the member of the house for whom they had the highest regard. This was Shane O'Neil, who was a younger and not even a legitimate son of the Earl of Tyrone, but whose energy, courage, and strong national sentiments had already made him the hero of his sept. Shane O'Neil at once proclaimed himself the champion of Irish national independence. Queen Elizabeth, amid all her troubles with foreign states, had to pour large numbers of troops into Ireland, and these troops, as all historians admit, overran the country in the most reckless and merciless manner. Shane O'Neil, however, held his own, and began to prove himself a formidable opponent of English power. The evidence of history leaves little or no doubt that Elizabeth connived at a plot for the removal of O'Neil by assassination. This project did not come to anything, and the Queen tried another policy. She was a woman not merely of high intellect but also of artistic feeling, and it would seem as if the picturesque figure of Shane O'Neil had aroused some interest in her. She proposed to enter into terms with the new "Lord of Ulster," as he now declared himself, and invited him to visit her court in England. O'Neil seems to have accepted with great good-will this opportunity of seeing a life hitherto unknown to him, and he soon appeared at court. We read that O'Neil and his retainers presented themselves in their saffron-colored shirts and shaggy mantles, bearing battle-axes as their weapons, amid the stately gentlemen, the contemporaries of Essex and Raleigh, who thronged the court of the great Queen. A meeting took place on January 6, 1562. Froude tells us the effect produced upon the court by the appearance of O'Neil and his followers: "The council, the peers, the foreign ambassadors, bishops, aldermen, dignitaries of all kinds, were present in state, as if at the exhibition of some wild animal of the desert. O'Neil stalked in, his saffron mantle sweeping round and round him, his hair curling on his back and clipped short below the eyes, which gleamed from under it with a gray lustre, frowning, fierce, and cruel. Behind him followed his gallow-glasses, bareheaded and fair-haired, with shirts of mail which reached beneath their knees, a wolf's skin flung across their shoulders, and short, broad battle-axes in their hands." O'Neil made a formal act of submission to the Queen, and negotiations set in for a definite and lasting arrangement. Nothing came of it. O'Neil seems to have understood that he was acting under a promise of safe-conduct, and was to be confirmed in the ownership of his estates in return for his submission. But, whatever may have been the misunderstanding, it is certain that these terms were not carried out according to O'Neil's expectation. He was detained in London in qualified captivity, and was informed that he could only be restored to his lands when he had engaged to make war against his former allies the Scots, had pledged himself not to make war without the consent of the English government, and to set up no claim of supremacy over other chiefs in Ireland. O'Neil seems to have proved himself skilful as a diplomatist, and he greatly gratified the Queen by paying intense deference to all her suggestions, and even by modestly requesting that she would choose a wife for him. He seems to have agreed to what he did not intend to carry out. Some terms were understood to be arranged at last, and on May 5, 1562, a royal proclamation was issued declaring that in future he was to be regarded as a good and loyal subject of the Queen. Shane returned to Ireland, and made known to his friends that the articles of agreement had been forced upon him under peril of captivity or death, and that he could not regard them as binding. He went so far to maintain the terms of the treaty as to begin a war against the Scots, and sent the Queen a list of his captives in token of his sincerity. But he still insisted that he had never made peace with the Queen except by her own seeking; that his ancestors were kings of Ulster, and that Ulster was his kingdom and should continue to be his. He soon after applied to Charles IX, King of France, to send him five thousand men to assist him in expelling the English from Ireland. Then war set in again between the English Lord Deputy and Shane O'Neil. Defeated in many encounters, O'Neil again tried to make terms with the Queen, and again applied to the King of France for the help of an army to drive the English from Ireland and restore the Catholic faith. By this time the Scottish settlers in Ulster, who appear to have once been as much disliked by the English government as the Irish themselves, had turned completely against him. His end was not in keeping with his soldierly picturesque career. After a severe defeat he took refuge with some old tribal enemies of his, who at first professed to receive him as a friend and find a shelter for him. A quarrel sprang up at a drinking-festival during the June of 1567, and Shane and most of his companions were killed in the affray. It is not easy to come to a satisfactory estimate of the character of Shane O'Neil. Some English historians treat him as if he were a mere monster of treachery and violent crime. Most Irish legends and stories convert him into a perfect hero and patriot; while other Irish writers of graver order are inclined to dwell altogether upon the wrongs done to him, and the perfidies employed to ensnare him by those who acted for the English government. It is necessary to keep always in mind that, in their dealings with the Irish native populations, the English government only too frequently employed deception and treachery, thus giving the Irish chieftains what they considered warrant enough for playing a similar game. Shane O'Neil was very unscrupulous in his methods of dealing with his enemies; he was a man of sensuous passions and fierce hatreds, but he was gifted with splendid courage, a remarkable capacity for soldiership, and much of the diplomatist's or statesman's art. An Irish essayist, who writes with much judgment and moderation on the subject, describes Shane as "a thorough Celtic chief, not of the traditional type, but such as centuries of prolonged struggle for existence had made the chieftains of his nation." This seems the only fair standard by which to judge his career. No Irish family gave more trouble in its time to the English conquerors than did the O'Neils, and Shane O'Neil was in some of his qualities the most extraordinary man of the family. There were other O'Neils who bequeathed to their country's history a brighter and purer fame, and of whose characters we can form a common estimate with less chance of dispute, but in Shane O'Neil we see a genuine type of the ancestral Irish chieftain brought into dealings and antagonism with the advances and the emissaries of a newer civilization. This prolonged period of incessant war brought about the almost complete devastation of wide tracts of country in Ireland. Historians and poets tell the same sad story. Holinshed says that except in the cities or towns the traveller might journey for miles without meeting man, woman, child, or even beast. Edmund Spenser declared that the story of many among the inhabitants, and the picture one could see of their miserable state, was such that "any stony heart would rue the same." Mr. Froude affirms that in Munster alone there had been so much devastation that "the lowing of a cow or the sound of a ploughboy's whistle was not to be heard from Valentia to the Rock of Cashel." It was made a boast by at least one of those engaged in ruling Ireland on behalf of the Queen that he had reduced some of the populations so deeply down that they preferred slaughter in the field to death by starvation. When the supposed pacification of Munster was accomplished, the province was divided into separate settlements, to be held under the crown, at hardly more than a nominal quit-rent, by any loyal settlers who were willing to hold the land as vassals of the sovereign and fight for their lives. All these lands were obtained by the confiscation of the estates of the rebellious chieftains. A new deputy, Sir John Perrot, convened a parliament in Ireland. There was something farcical as well as grim in calling together a parliament under such conditions, when the delegates were supposed to be convened that they might give frank and sincere advice to the representative of the sovereign. Some of the Irish chieftains who had given their allegiance to the English sovereign not only accepted the Deputy's invitation, but actually presented themselves in full English costume. In former parliaments, when Irish chieftains were loyal enough to take part in the sittings, they still wore the costume of their septs; but now, after so many struggles, some of the Irish nobles thought they would do better by making a complete submission to the conqueror, and inaugurating the new season of peace and prosperity by adopting the costume of their rulers. This parliament naturally proved most obedient. Whatever the Deputy wished, it promptly adopted. More estates were confiscated to the Crown, and the land thus obtained was parcelled out on the cheapest terms of holding to English nobles, and also to mere English adventurers, who undertook to colonize it with workmen and traders from England. But it was soon found that English traders and laborers were not easily to be persuaded into the risks of a settlement under these conditions, and the new owners were compelled in most cases either to put up with such labor as the country afforded or to allow the soil to lie barren for the time. The scheme which the rulers had in mind--a scheme which meant nothing less than the substitution of an English for an Irish population--proved a failure. An English nobleman endowed with the spirit of adventure might be tempted to accept an estate in Ireland on the chance of making a brilliant career there, winning the favor of his sovereign, and becoming a great figure in the eyes of his own court and his own country. A mere adventurer might be as ready to try his fortunes in Ireland as in some unexplored part of the New World beyond the Atlantic. But the ordinary trader or working-man of English birth and ways did not at that time feel inclined to give up his business and his home to venture on a settlement in that wild western island, where all reports told him that every man's hand was against every other man, and that the loyal subjects of the Queen were hunted like wild game by the uncivilized Irish. Sir John Perrot was not a man qualified to make the situation any better than he had found it. A man of quick and violent temper, he succeeded in making enemies of some of the Irish chieftains who had lately been coming over to the service of the Crown, and converted some of his friends in office into his most bitter enemies. Sir John Perrot had to be withdrawn, and a new deputy appointed in his place. Such a representative of English government was not likely to encourage many of the Irish chieftains to accept the advances of an English deputy, or to believe that they could secure safety for themselves and their lands by submitting to his rule. The new Deputy, Sir William Russell, had a hard task before him. One of the most important and famous struggles made during these years against English dominion was led by Hugh O'Neil. This celebrated Irish leader was the grandson of that Shane O'Neil whom Henry VIII had created Earl of Tyrone. He had led thus far a very different life from that usually led by an Irish chieftain. The ruling powers were at first inclined to make a favorite of him, and confirmed him in his earldom and estates. He was brought over when very young to England, and we learn that even in the brilliant court of Queen Elizabeth he was distinguished for gifts and graces of body and mind. For a long time Tyrone seemed a loyal supporter of English rule. He commanded a troop in the Queen's service, and even took part in the suppression of risings in his own country, cooperating with the Earl of Essex in the Ulster wars and the settlement of Antrim. One romantic incident of his life brought him into personal antagonism with Sir Henry Bagnal, the Lord Marshal of Ireland. Hugh O'Neil had been left a widower, and he fell in love with Bagnal's beautiful sister. Bagnal highly disapproved of the match, but, as the lady was heart and soul in love with the Irish chieftain, her brother's opposition was vain. She eloped with her lover and married him. Bagnal became O'Neil's determined enemy. It may be that Sir Henry Bagnal did his best to prejudice the ruling authorities against O'Neil, and at that time no very substantial evidence was needed to set up a charge of treason against an Irish chieftain. Perhaps when O'Neil returned to his own country he was recalled to national sentiments by the sight of oppression there, and it is certain that he was roused to indignation by the arbitrary imprisonment of one of his kinsmen known as Red Hugh. When Red Hugh succeeded in escaping from prison he inspired Tyrone with a keen sense of his wrongs, and brought him into the temper of insurrection. O'Neil threw himself completely into the new movement for independence. A confederation of Irish chieftains was organized, and O'Neil took the command. He proved himself possessed of the most genuine military talents, and he could play the part of the statesman as well as of the soldier. The confederation of Irish chieftains soon became an embattled army, and the brothers-in-law met in arms as hostile commanders on the shores of the northern Blackwater. As one historian has well remarked, there was something positively Homeric about this struggle, in which the two men connected by marriage encountered each other as commanders of opposing armies. Events had been moving on since the marriage between Tyrone and Bagnal's sister. O'Neil's young wife had found her early grave before this last engagement between her husband and her brother. The army of Bagnal was completely defeated, and Bagnal was killed upon the field. For a time victory seemed to follow Tyrone. Before long the greater part of Ireland was in the hands of the Irish forces. The Earl of Essex was sent to Ireland at the head of the largest army ever despatched from England for the conquest of the island. But Essex does not seem to have made any serious effort. He appears to have had some idea of coming to terms with Tyrone. The two had a meeting, over which many pages of historical description and conjecture have been spent, but it is certain that, so far as Essex was concerned, neither peace nor war came of his intervention. He was recalled to London. His failure in Ireland, and the trouble it brought upon him in England, only drove him into the wild movements which led to his condemnation as a traitor and to his death on the scaffold. The place which Essex had so unsuccessfully endeavored to hold was given to Lord Mountjoy, who proved himself a more fitting man for the work. Mountjoy was a strong man, who made up his mind from the first that he was sent to Ireland to fight the Irish. He had a great encounter with Tyrone, and Tyrone was defeated. From that moment the fortunes of the struggle seem to have turned. The resources of the Irish were very limited, and it was almost certain that, if the English government carried on the war long enough, the Irish must sooner or later be defeated. It was a question of numbers and weapons and money, and in all these the English had an immense superiority. Tyrone had great hopes that a Spanish army would come to the aid of the Irish. A large Spanish force was actually despatched for the purpose, but the news of Tyrone's defeat reached the Spaniards on their arrival, and they promptly reëmbarked, and gave up what they considered a lost cause. Some of the Irish chiefs were compelled to surrender; others fled to Spain, in the hope of stirring up some movement there against England, or at least of finding a place of shelter. Ireland was suffering almost everywhere from famine, and in many districts famine of the most ghastly order. Tyrone found it impossible to carry on the struggle for independence under such terrible conditions. There was nothing for it but to surrender and come to terms as best he could with his conquering enemy. The times just then might have been regarded as peculiarly favorable for Tyrone. Queen Elizabeth was dead, and the son of Mary Stuart sat on the English throne. Tyrone made a complete surrender of his estates, pledged himself to enter into alliance with no foreign power against England, and even undertook to promote the introduction of English laws and customs into any part of Ireland over which he had influence. In return Tyrone received from the King the restoration of his lands and his title by letters-patent, and a free pardon for his campaigns against England. He was brought to London to be presented to King James, and was treated with great courtesy and hospitality. This aroused much anger among some of the older soldiers and courtiers in London, who did not understand why an Irish rebel should be treated as if he were a respectable member of society. Sir John Harrington expressed his opinions very freely in letters which are still preserved. "I have lived," he wrote, "to see that damnable rebel Tyrone brought to England, honored, and well liked. Oh! what is there that does not prove the inconstancy of worldly matters? I adventured perils by sea and land, was near starving, ate horseflesh in Munster, and all to quell that man, who now smileth in peace at those who did harass their lives to destroy him; and now doth Tyrone dare us, old commanders, with his presence and protection." When Tyrone returned to his own country he found that the reign of peace and reconciliation between England and Ireland was as far off as ever. Tyrone had believed it was fortunate for him to have made terms of peace in King James' reign and not in Elizabeth's. But he soon found that his hopes of a better time coming were premature. James no doubt thought it good policy to secure the allegiance of a man like Tyrone by apparently generous concessions. But he had no idea of adopting any policy toward Ireland other than the old familiar policy of striving to reduce her to the conditions of an English province, with English laws, customs, costumes, and religion. The King appears to have set his mind on the complete suppression of the national religion by the enforcement of the sternest penal laws against Catholics. He was determined also to blot out whatever remained of the old Brehon laws, still dear to the memories of the people, and still cherished among the sacred traditions of the country. When King James succeeded to the throne he promised the Irish that they should have the right of practising their religion, at least in private; but he soon recalled his promise, and made it clear that those who would retain the protection of the new ruling system must abjure the faith of their fathers. Those who were put into the actual government of the country saw that this policy could not be carried out without much resistance, and therefore decreed the complete disarmament of all Irish retainers who still acknowledged the leadership of the chieftains. One of the greatest of these chieftains, O'Donnell, Earl of Tyrconnel, was called upon to conform openly to the English Church, under pain of being proceeded against as a traitor. The state of things he found existing on his return to Ireland would naturally have driven Tyrone into rebellion, and the rulers of the country appear to have made up their minds that he must be planning some such rising. Tyrconnel was naturally regarded as an enemy of the same order, and the policy of the ruling powers was to anticipate their designs and condemn them in advance. Tyrone and Tyrconnel were accordingly proclaimed traitors to the King. The two earls determined that, as immediate insurrection had no chance of success, there was no safety for them but in prompt escape from the country. Then followed "the flight of the earls." Tyrone and Tyrconnel, with their families and many of their friends and retainers, nearly a hundred persons in all, made their escape in one vessel from the Irish shore, and for twenty-one days were at the mercy of the sea and of the equinoctial winds, for they sailed about the middle of September. A story characteristic of the faith which then filled the hearts of Irish chieftains is told. Tyrone fastened his golden crucifix to a string and drew it through the sea at the stern of the vessel, in the hope that the waves might thus be stilled. In the first week of October they landed on the shore of France and travelled on to Rouen, receiving nothing but kindness from the French. When King James heard of their flight he at once demanded from France the surrender of the earls, but Henry IV refused to surrender them. Henry received the exiles with gracious and friendly greeting, but it was not thought prudent by the earls, any more than by the French King, they should remain in France at the risk of involving the two countries in war. The earls, with their families and followers, went into Flanders and then on to Rome. Pope Paul V gave them a cordial welcome, and made liberal arrangements for their maintenance, while the King of Spain showed his traditional sympathy with Ireland by settling pensions on them. Tyrconnel died soon after, in the Franciscan Church of St. Pietro di Montorio, and was laid in his grave wrapped in the robe of a Franciscan friar. Tyrone lived for several years. He was filled in this later time by a passionate longing to see once more the loved country of his birth, and he appealed to the English government for permission to return to Ireland and live quietly there until the end came. His request was not granted. The English authorities, no doubt, felt good reason to believe that his return to Ireland would be the cause of profound and dangerous emotion among the people who loved him and whom he loved so well. His later years in Rome were literally darkened, because his sight, which had been for some time failing, soon left him to absolute blindness. He died on July 20, 1616, having lived a life of seventy-six years. Tyrone's body was laid to rest in the same church which held the body of his comrade Tyrconnel. Their graves are side by side. A modern writer tells us that the church which has become the tomb of the two exiled earls stands "where the Janiculum overlooks the glory of Rome, the yellow Tiber and the Alban Hills, the deathless Coliseum, and the stretching Campagna." "Raphael had painted his Transfiguration for the grand altar; the hand of Sebastiano del Piombo had colored the walls with the scourging of the Redeemer." The present writer has seen the graves, and even the merest stranger to the spirit of Irish history must feel impressed by the story of the two exiles who found their last resting-place enclosed by such a scene. THE GUNPOWDER PLOT A.D. 1605 SAMUEL R. GARDINER The "Gunpowder Plot" acquires importance from the fact that its anniversary, November 5th, is still celebrated in England with fire-crackers, burnings of "Guy Fawkes" scarecrows, and other patriotic manifestations. Historically the plot, being detected before its execution, ended in smoke, with no more terrible result than the execution of the conspirators. James I, son of the ill-starred Mary of Scotland, succeeded Elizabeth on the English throne in 1603, and held both England and Scotland under his sway. The English Catholics had been led to hope that James would be lenient toward their faith, but in this they were disappointed, and a few desperate followers of their religion united in the Gunpowder Plot. More than one attempt has been made to prove that this really amounted to very little, and was exaggerated by James' minister, the Earl of Salisbury, to justify the harshness of the Government toward Catholics. Father Gerard's book, _What was the Gunpowder Plot?_ is the strongest argument yet produced in favor of this view; but the fact remains undenied and undeniable that some sort of plot existed. We present here the latest summarizing of the matter (1897) by the standard English historian, Gardiner, confining the account almost wholly to Fawkes' own confessions. Before examining the evidence, it will be well to remind my readers what the so-called traditional story of the plot is, or, rather, the story which has been told by writers who have in the present century availed themselves of the manuscript treasures now at our disposal, and which are for the most part in the Public Record Office. With this object I cannot do better than borrow the succinct narrative of the _Edinburgh Review_.[1] [1] January, 1897, p. 192. "Early in 1604 the three men, Robert Catesby, John Wright, and Thomas Winter, meeting in a house at Lambeth, resolved on a Powder Plot, though, of course, only in outline. By April they had added to their number Wright's brother-in-law, Thomas Percy, and Guy Fawkes, a Yorkshire man of respectable family, but actually a soldier of fortune, serving in the Spanish army in the Low Countries, who was specially brought over to England as a capable and resolute man. Later on they enlisted Wright's brother Christopher, Winter's brother Robert, Robert Keyes, and a few more; but all, with the exception of Thomas Bates, Catesby's servant, men of family and for the most part of competent fortune, though Keyes is said to have been in straitened circumstances, and Catesby to have been impoverished by a heavy fine levied on him as a recusant.[2] [2] This is a mistake. The fine of three thousand pounds was imposed for his part in the Essex rebellion. "Percy, a second cousin of the Earl of Northumberland, then captain of the Gentleman Pensioners, was admitted by him into that body in--it is said--an irregular manner, his relationship to the earl passing in lieu of the usual oath of fidelity. The position gave him some authority and license near the court, and enabled him to hire a house, or part of a house, adjoining the House of Lords. From the cellar of this house they proposed to burrow under the House of Lords; to place there a large quantity of powder, and to blow up the whole when the King and his family were there assembled at the opening of Parliament. On December 11, 1604, they began to dig in the cellar, and after a fortnight's labor, having come to a thick wall, they left off work and separated for Christmas. "Early in January they began at the wall, which they found to be extremely hard, so that, after working for about two months,[3] they had not got more than half way through it. They then learned that a cellar actually under the House of Lords, and used as a coal cellar, was to be let; and as it was most suitable for their design, Percy hired it as though for his own use. The digging was stopped, and powder, to the amount of thirty-six barrels, was brought into the cellar, where it was stowed under heaps of coal or firewood, and so remained, under the immediate care of Guy Fawkes,[4] till, on the night of November 4, 1605--the opening of Parliament being fixed for the next day--Sir Thomas Knyvet, with a party of men, was ordered to examine the cellar. He met Fawkes coming out of it, arrested him, and on a close search found the powder, of which a mysterious warning had been conveyed to Lord Monteagle a few days before. On the news of this discovery the conspirators scattered, but by different roads rejoined each other in Warwickshire, whence, endeavoring to raise the country, they rode through Worcestershire, and were finally shot or taken prisoners at Holbeche in Staffordshire." [3] Off and on, a fortnight at the end of January and beginning of February, and then again probably for a very short time in March. [4] Fawkes was absent part of the time. It is this story that I now propose to compare with the evidence. First of all, let us restrict ourselves to the story told by Guy Fawkes himself in the five examinations to which he was subjected previously to his being put to the torture on November 9th, and to the letters, proclamations, etc., issued by the Government during the four days commencing with the 5th. From these we learn, not only that Fawkes' account of the matter gradually developed, but that the knowledge of the Government also developed; a fact which fits in very well with the "traditional story," but which is hardly to be expected if the Government account of the affair was cut-and-dried from the first. Fawkes' first examination took place on November 5th, and was conducted by Chief Justice Popham and Attorney-General Coke. It is true that only a copy has reached us, but it is a copy taken for Coke's use, as is shown by the headings of each paragraph inserted in the margin in his own hand. It is therefore out of the question that Salisbury, if he had been so minded, would have been able to falsify it. Each page has the signature (in copy) of "Jhon Jhonson," the name by which Fawkes chose to be known. The first part of the examination turns upon Fawkes' movements abroad, showing that the Government had already acquired information that he had been beyond sea. Fawkes showed no reluctance to speak of his own proceedings in the Low Countries, or to give the names of persons he had met there, and who were beyond the reach of his examiners. As to his movements after his return to England, he was explicit enough so far as he was himself concerned, and also about Percy, whose servant he professed himself to be, and whose connection with the hiring of the house could not be concealed. Fawkes stated that after coming back to England he "came to the lodging near the Upper House of Parliament," and "that Percy hired the house of Whynniard for £12 rent, about a year and a half ago"; that his master, before his own going abroad, _i.e._, before Easter, 1605, "lay in the house about three or four times." Further, he confessed "that about Christmas last," _i.e._, Christmas, 1604, "he brought in the night-time gunpowder [to the cellar under the Upper House of Parliament]."[5] Afterward he told how he covered the powder with fagots, intending to blow up the King and the Lords; and, being pressed how he knew that the King would be in the House on the 5th, said he knew it only from general report, and by the making ready of the King's barge; but he would have "blown up the Upper House whensoever the King was there." [5] The words between brackets are inserted in another hand. He further acknowledged that there was more than one person concerned in the conspiracy, and said he himself had promised not to reveal it, but denied that he had taken the sacrament on his promise. Where the promise was given he could not remember, except that it was in England. He refused to accuse his partners, saying that he himself had provided the powder, and defrayed the cost of his journey beyond sea, which was only undertaken "to see the country, and to pass away the time." When he went, he locked up the powder and took the key with him, and "one Gibbons' wife, who dwells thereby, had the charge of the residue of the house." Such is that part of the story told by Fawkes which concerns us at present. It is obvious that Fawkes, who, as subsequent experience shows, was no coward, had made up his mind to shield as far as possible his confederates, and to take the whole of the blame upon himself. He says, for instance, that Percy had only lain in the house for three or four days before Easter, 1605, a statement, as subsequent evidence proved, quite untrue; he pretends not to know, except from rumor and the preparation of the barge, that the King was coming to the House of Lords on the 5th, a statement almost certainly untrue. In order not to criminate others, and especially any priest, he denies having taken the sacrament on his promise, which is also untrue. What is more noticeable is that he makes no mention of the mine, about which so much was afterward heard, evidently--so at least I read the evidence--because he did not wish to bring upon the stage those who had worked at it. If indeed the passage which I have placed in square brackets be accepted as evidence, Fawkes did more than keep silence upon the mine. He must have made a positive assertion--soon afterward found to be untrue--that the cellar was hired several months before it really was. This passage is, however, inserted in a different hand from the rest of the document. My own belief is that it gives a correct account of a statement made by the prisoner, but omitted by the clerk who made the copy for Coke, and inserted by some other person. Nobody that I can think of had the slightest interest in adding the words, while they are just what Fawkes might be expected to say if he wanted to lead his examiners off the scent. At all events, even if these words be left out of account, it must be admitted that Fawkes said nothing about the existence of a mine. Though Fawkes kept silence as to the mine, he did not keep silence on the desperate character of the work on which he had been engaged. "And," runs the record, "he confesseth that when the King had come to the Parliament House this present day, and the Upper House had been sitting, he meant to have fired the match and have fled for his own safety before the powder had taken fire, and confesseth that, if he had not been apprehended this last night, he had blown up the Upper House when the King, Lords, Bishops, and others had been there, and saith that he spake for [and provided][6] those bars and crows of iron, some in one place, some in another, in London, lest it should be suspected, and saith that he had some of them in or about Gracious Street."[7] Fawkes here clearly takes the whole terrible design, with the exception of the mine, on his own shoulders. [6] Inserted in the same hand as that in which the words about the cellar were written. It will be observed that the insertion cannot serve anyone's purpose. [7] Gracechurch Street. Commissioners were now appointed to conduct the investigation further. They were: Nottingham, Suffolk, Devonshire, Worcester, Northampton, Salisbury, Mar, and Popham, with Attorney-General Coke in attendance. This was hardly a body of men who would knowingly cover an intrigue of Salisbury's. Worcester is always understood to have been professedly a Catholic; Northampton was certainly one, though he attended the King's service, while Suffolk was friendly toward the Catholics; and Nottingham, if he is no longer to be counted among them,[8] was at least not long afterward a member of the party which favored an alliance with Spain, and therefore a policy of toleration toward the Catholics. [8] On July 20-30, 1605, Father Creswell writes to Paul V that Nottingham showed him every civility "that could be expected from one who does not profess our holy religion." Before five of these commissioners--Nottingham, Suffolk, Devonshire, Northampton, and Salisbury--Fawkes was examined a second time on the forenoon of the 6th. In some way the Government had found out that Percy had had a new door made in the wall leading to the cellar, and they now drew from Fawkes an untrue statement that it was put in about the middle of Lent, that is to say, early in March, 1605.[9] They had also discovered a pair of brewer's slings, by which barrels were usually carried between two men, and they pressed Fawkes hard to say who was his partner in removing the barrels of gunpowder. He began by denying that he had had a partner at all, but finally answered that "he cannot discover the party, but"--_i.e._, lest--"he shall bring him in question." He also said that he had forgotten where he slept on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday in the week before his arrest. [9] The "cellar" was not really hired till a little before Easter, March 31st. Upon this James himself intervened, submitting to the Commissioners a series of questions with the object of drawing out of the prisoner a true account of himself, and of his relations to Percy. A letter had been found on Fawkes when he was taken, directed not to Johnson, but to Fawkes, and this among other things had raised the King's suspicions. In his third examination, on the afternoon of the 6th, in the presence of Northampton, Devonshire, Nottingham, and Salisbury, Fawkes gave a good deal of information, more or less true, about himself; and, while still maintaining that his real name was Johnson, said that the letter, which was written by a Mrs. Bostock in Flanders, was addressed to him by another name "because he called himself Fawkes," that is to say, because he had acquired the name of Fawkes as an alias. "If he will not otherwise confess," the King had ended by saying, "the gentler tortures are to be first used unto him, _et sic per gradus ad ima tenditur_." To us, living in the nineteenth century, these words are simply horrible. As a Scotchman, however, James had long been familiar with the use of torture as an ordinary means of legal investigation, while even in England, though unknown to the law, that is to say, to the practice of the ordinary courts of justice, it had for some generations been used not infrequently by order of the council to extract evidence from a recalcitrant witness, though, according to Bacon, not for the purpose of driving him to incriminate himself. Surely, if the use of torture was admissible at all, this was a case for its employment. The prisoner had informed the government that he had been at the bottom of a plot of the most sanguinary kind, and had acknowledged by implication that there were fellow-conspirators whom he refused to name. If, indeed, Father Gerard's view of the case, that the government, or at least Salisbury, had for some time known all about the conspiracy, nothing--not even the Gunpowder Plot itself--could be more atrocious than the infliction of torments on a fellow-creature to make him reveal a secret already in their possession. If, however, the evidence I have adduced be worth anything, this was by no means the case. What it shows is that on the afternoon of the 6th all that the members of the government were aware of was that an unknown number of conspirators were at large--they knew not where--and might at that very moment be appealing--they knew not with what effect--to Catholic land-owners and their tenants, who were, without doubt, exasperated by the recent enforcement of the penal laws. We may, if we please, condemn the conduct of the government which had brought the danger of a general Catholic rising within sight. We cannot deny that, at that particular moment, they had real cause of alarm. At all events, no immediate steps were taken to put this part of the King's orders in execution. Some little information, indeed, was coming in from other witnesses. In his first examination, on November 5th, Fawkes had stated that in his absence he locked up the powder, and "one Gibbons' wife who dwells thereby had the charge of the residue of the house." An examination of her husband on the 5th, however, only elicited that he, being a porter, had with two others carried three thousand billets into the vault. On the 6th, Ellen, the wife of Andrew Bright, stated that Percy's servant had, about the beginning of March, asked her to let the vault to his master, and that she had consented to abandon her tenancy of it if Mrs. Whynniard, from whom she held it, would consent. Mrs. Whynniard's consent having been obtained, Mrs. Bright, or rather Mrs. Skinner--she being a widow remarried subsequently to Andrew Bright--received two pounds for giving up the premises. The important point in this evidence is that the date of March, 1605, given as that on which Percy entered into possession of the cellar, showed that Fawkes' statement that he had brought powder into the cellar at Christmas, 1604, could not possibly be true. On the 7th Mrs. Whynniard confirmed Mrs. Bright's statement, and also stated that, a year earlier, in March, 1604, "Mr. Percy began to labor very earnestly with this examinate and her husband to have the lodging by the Parliament House, which one Mr. Henry Ferris, of Warwickshire, had long held before, and, having obtained the said Mr. Ferris' good-will to part from it after long suit by himself and great entreaty of Mr. Carleton, Mr. Epsley, and other gentleman belonging to the Earl of Northumberland, affirming him to be a very honest gentleman, and that they could not have a better tenant, her husband and she were contented to let him have the said lodging at the same rent Mr. Ferris paid for it." Mrs. Whynniard had plainly never heard of the mine; and that the Government was in equal ignorance is shown by the indorsement on the agreement of Ferris--or rather Ferrers--to make over his tenancy to Percy--"The bargain between Ferris and Percy for the bloody cellar, found in Winter's lodging." Winter's name had been under consideration for some little time, and doubtless the discovery of this paper was made on, or more probably before, the 7th. The Government, having as yet nothing but Fawkes' evidence to go upon, connected the hiring of the house with the hiring of the cellar, and at least showed no signs of suspecting anything more. On the same day, the 7th, something was definitely heard of the proceedings of the other plotters, who had either gathered at Dunchurch for the hunting-match, or had fled from London to join them, and a proclamation was issued for the arrest of Percy, Catesby, Rokewood, Thomas Winter, Edward[10] Grant, John and Christopher Wright, and Catesby's servant, Robert Ashfield. They were charged with assembling in troops in the counties of Warwick and Worcester, breaking into stables and seizing horses. Fawkes, too, was on that day subjected to a fourth examination. Not very much that was new was extracted from him. He acknowledged that his real name was Guy Fawkes, that--which he had denied before--he had received the sacrament not to discover any of the conspirators, and also that there had been at first five persons privy to the plot, and afterward five or six more "were generally acquainted that an action was to be performed for the Catholic cause, and saith that he doth not know that they were acquainted with the whole conspiracy." Being asked whether Catesby, the two Wrights, Winter, or Tresham, were privy, he refused to accuse any one. [10] Properly "John." That Fawkes had already been threatened with torture is known, and it may easily be imagined that the threats had been redoubled after this last unsatisfactory acknowledgment. On the morning of the 8th, however, Waad, who was employed to worm out his secrets, reported that little was to be expected. "I find this fellow," he wrote, "who this day is in a most stubborn and perverse humour, as dogged as if he were possessed. Yester-night I had persuaded him to set down a clear narration of all his wicked plots from the first entering to the same, to the end they pretended, with the discourses and projects that were thought upon amongst them, which he undertook [to do] and craved time this night to bethink him the better; but this morning he hath changed his mind and is [so] sullen and obstinate as there is no dealing with him." The sight of the examiners, together with the sight of the rack,[11] changed Fawkes' mind to some extent. He was resolved that nothing but actual torture should wring from him the names of his fellow-plotters, who so far as was known in London were still at large.[12] He prepared himself, however, to reveal the secrets of the plot so far as was consistent with the concealment of the names of those concerned in it. His fifth examination, on the 8th, the last before the one taken under torture on the 9th, gives to the inquirer into the reality of the plot all that he wants to know. [11] In _The King's Book_ it is stated that Fawkes was shown the rack, but never racked. Probably the torture used on the 9th was that of the manacles, or hanging up by the wrists or thumbs. [12] The principal ones were either killed or taken at Holbeche on that very day. "He confesseth," so the tale begins, "that a practice was first broken unto him against his majesty for the Catholic cause, and not invented or propounded by himself, and this was first propounded unto him about Easter last was twelvemonth, beyond the seas in the Low Countries, by an English layman,[13] and that Englishman came over with him in his company into England, and they two and three more[14] were the first five mentioned in the former examination. And they five resolving to do somewhat for the Catholic cause (a vow being first taken by all of them for secrecy), one of the other three[15] propounded to perform it with powder, and resolved that the place should be (where this action should be performed and justice done) in or near the place of the sitting of the Parliament, wherein Religion had been unjustly suppressed. This being resolved, the manner of it was as followeth: "First they hired the house at Westminster, of one Ferres, and having his house they sought then to make a mine under the Upper House of Parliament, and they began to make the mine in or about the 11 of December, and they five first entered into the works, and soone after took an other[16] to them, having first sworn him and taken the sacrament for secrecy; and when they came to the wall (that was about three yards thick) and found it a matter of great difficulty, they took to them an other in like manner, with oath and sacrament as aforesaid;[17] all which seven were gentlemen of name and blood, and not any was employed in or about this action (no, not so much as in digging and mining) that was not a gentleman. [13] Thomas Winter. [14] Catesby, Percy, and John Wright. [15] _I.e._, Catesby. In a copy forwarded to Edmondes by Salisbury (Stowe MSS. 168, fol. 223) the copyist had originally written "three or four more," which is altered to "three." [16] Christopher Wright. [17] Robert Winter. "And having wrought to the wall before Christmas, they ceased until after the holidays, and the day before Christmas (having a mass of earth that came out of the mine) they carried it into the garden of the said house, and after Christmas they wrought the wall till Candlemas, and wrought the wall half through; and saith that all the time while the other wrought, he stood as sentinel, to decry any man that came near; and when any man came near to the place, upon warning given by him they ceased until they had notice to proceed from him; and sayeth that they seven all lay in the house, and had shot and powder, and they all resolved to die in that place, before they yielded or were taken. "And, as they were working, they heard a rushing in the cellar, which grew by one Bright's selling of his coals,[18] whereupon this examinant, fearing they had been discovered, went into the cellar and viewed the cellar, and perceiving the commodity thereof for their purpose, and understanding how it would be letten, his master, Mr. Percy, hired the cellar for a year for £4 rent; and confesseth that after Christmas twenty barrels of powder were brought by themselves to a house, which they had on the bank side in hampers, and from that house removed the powder to the said house near the Upper House of Parliament; and, presently, upon hiring the cellar they themselves removed the powder into the cellar, and covered the same with fagots which they had before laid into the cellar. [18] This is an obvious mistake, as the widow Skinner was not at this time married to Bright, but one just as likely to be made by Fawkes himself as by his examiners. "After, about Easter, he went into the Low Countries (as he before hath declared in his former examination) and that the true purpose of his going over was, lest, being a dangerous man, he should be known and suspected, and in the mean time he left the key of the cellar with Mr. Percy, who in his absence caused more billets to be laid into the cellar, as in his former examination he confessed, and returned about the end of August, or the beginning of September, and went again to the said house, near to the said cellar, and received the key of the cellar again of one of the five,[19] and then they brought in five or six barrels of powder more into the cellar, which also they covered with billets, saving four little barrels covered with fagots, and then this examinant went into the country about the end of September. [19] Percy. "It appeareth the powder was in the cellar placed as it was found the 5 of November, when the Lords came to prorogue the Parliament, and sayeth that he returned again to the said house near the cellar on Wednesday the 30 of October. "_He confesseth he was at the Earl of Montgomery's marriage, but, as he sayeth, with no intention of evil, having a sword about him, and was very near to his Majesty and the Lords there present._[20] [20] The words in Italics are marked by pen-strokes across them for omission. "Forasmuch as they knew not well how they should come by the person of the Duke Charles, being near London, where they had no forces (if he had not been also blown up), he confesseth that it was resolved among them that the same day that this detestable act should have been performed, the same day should other of their confederacy have surprised the person of the Lady Elizabeth, and presently have proclaimed her Queen, _to which purpose a proclamation was drawn, as well to avow and justify the action, as to have protested against the Union, and in no sort to have meddled with religion therein, and would have protested also against all strangers_, and this proclamation should have been made in the name of the Lady Elizabeth. "Being demanded why they did not surprise the King's person, and draw him to the effecting of their purpose, sayeth that so many must have been acquainted with such an action as it would not have been kept secret. "He confesseth that if their purpose had taken effect, until they had had power enough, they would not have avowed the deed to be theirs; but if their power (for their defence and safety) had been sufficient, they themselves would then have taken it upon them. They meant also to have sent for the prisoners in the Tower to have come to them, of whom particularly they had some consultation. "He confesseth that the place of rendezvous was in Warwickshire, and that armour was sent thither, but the particular thereof he knows not. "He confesseth that they had consultation for the taking of the Lady Mary into their possession, but knew not how to come by her. "And confesseth that provision was made by some of the conspiracy of some armour of proof this last summer for this action. "He confesseth that the powder was bought by the common purse of the confederates. "L. Admiral [Earl of Nottingham] Earl of Salisbury L. Chamberlain [Earl of Suffolk] Earl of Mar Earl of Devonshire Lord Chief Justice [Popham][21] Earl of Northampton "Attended by Mr. Attorney-General [Coke]." [21] _G.P.B._, No. 49. In the Stowe copy the names of the commissioners are omitted, and a list of fifteen plotters added. As the paper was enclosed in a letter to Edmondes of the 14th, these might easily be added at any date preceding that. The 9th, the day on which Fawkes was put to the torture, brought news to the government that the fear of insurrection need no longer be entertained. It had been known before this that Fawkes' confederates had met on the 5th at Dunchurch on the pretext of a hunting-match,[22] and had been breaking open houses in Warwickshire and Worcestershire in order to collect arms. Yet so indefinite was the knowledge of the council that, on the 8th, they offered a reward for the apprehension of Percy alone, without including any of the other conspirators.[23] On the evening of the 9th[24] they received a letter from Sir Richard Walsh, the Sheriff of Worcestershire. [22] Probably, as Father Gerard suggests, what would now be known as a coursing-match. [23] _Proclamation Book, R.O._, p. 117. [24] A late postscript added to the letter to the ambassadors sent off on the 9th (_Winwood_, ii. 173) shows that before the end of the day Salisbury had learned even more of the details than were comprised in the sheriff's letter. "We think fit," he wrote, "with all speed to certify your Lordships of the happy success it hath pleased God to give us against the rebellious assembly in these parts. After such time as they had taken the horses from Warwick upon Tuesday night last,[25] they came to Mr. Robert Winter's house to Huddington upon Wednesday night,[26] where--having entered--[they] armed themselves at all points in open rebellion. They passed from thence upon Thursday morning[27] unto Hewell--the Lord Windsor's house--which they entered and took from thence by force great store of armour, artillery of the said Lord Windsor's, and passed that night into the county of Staffordshire unto the house of one Stephen Littleton, Gentleman, called Holbeche, about two miles distant from Stourbridge, whither we pursued, with the assistance of Sir John Foliot, Knight, Francis Ketelsby, Esquire, Humphrey Salway, Gentleman, Edmund Walsh, and Francis Conyers, Gentlemen, with few other gentlemen and the power and face of the country. [25] November 5th. [26] November 6th. [27] November 7th. "We made against them upon Thursday morning,[27] and freshly pursued them until the next day,[28] at which time, about twelve or one of the clock in the afternoon, we overtook them at the said Holbeche House--the greatest part of their retinue and some of the better sort being dispersed and fled before our coming, whereupon and after summons and warning first given and proclamation in his Highness's name to yield and submit themselves--who refusing the same, we fired some part of the house and assaulted some part of the rebellious persons left in the said house, in which assault one Mr. Robert Catesby is slain, and three others verily thought wounded to death whose names--as far as we can learn--are Thomas Percy, Gentleman, John Wright, and Christopher Wright, Gentlemen; and these are apprehended and taken: Thomas Winter Gentleman, John Grant Gentleman, Henry Morgan Gentleman, Ambrose Rokewood Gentleman, Thomas Ockley carpenter, Edmund Townsend servant to the said John Grant, Nicholas Pelborrow, servant unto the said Ambrose Rokewood, Edward Ockley carpenter, Richard Townsend servant to the said Robert Winter, Richard Day servant to the said Stephen Littleton, which said prisoners are in safe custody here, and so shall remain until your Honours good pleasures be further known. The rest of that rebellious assembly is dispersed, we have caused to be followed with fresh suite and hope of their speedy apprehension. We have also thought fit to send unto your Honours--according unto our duties--such letters as we have found about the parties apprehended; and so resting in all duty at your Honours' further command, we take leave, from Stourbridge this Saturday morning, being the ixth of this instant November 1605. "Your Honours' most humble to be commanded, "RICH. WALSH." [28] November 8th. CERVANTES' "DON QUIXOTE" REFORMS LITERATURE A.D. 1605 HENRY EDWARD WATTS Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra is the most celebrated of Spanish authors; but his fame rests upon a far more solid basis than merely that of having written the most readable and tender of humorous romances. He reformed literature. He tilted at windmills as truly as ever his hero did, and overthrew the false taste for wordy pomp and emptiness which was characteristic of his times. It was not only Spanish literature that felt the impulse of his warm, frank honesty and insight into life. All Europe was his debtor. Cervantes was an impoverished nobleman, that too common product of Spain in those days when her American gold fleets had begun to fail her. In his early manhood he was an author and then a soldier of fortune in Italy. He fought as a common soldier on one of the Genoese galleys in the great sea-fight of Lepanto, distinguished himself there by his heroism, and was three times wounded, crippled in one arm for life. Later he was captured by Algerian pirates, and was for five years a slave, ever planning and attempting escapes, a daring, dashing hero, the life and admiration of his fellow-captives. After his ransom and return to Spain, Cervantes once more took up literature, the amusement of his youth. He became a playwright and romancer. The government gave him a small position as a tax-collector, but with such good-natured carelessness did he handle this uncongenial employ that he had repeatedly to make good from his own pocket the losses he entailed upon the government. Even this unsatisfactory labor failed the impractical author about the period of the death of King Philip II (1598). He was imprisoned for debt, and sank into such abject poverty that he depended on his friends for bread. How much the gloomy Philip II is satirized in Cervantes' masterpiece has always been a disputed question. The accession of the new King, which had been hailed as "the light after darkness," had little effect on Cervantes' fortunes. Philip III, though he had some taste for letters, and was not without sprouts of kindliness in his heart, had been by education and by an over-strict regimen in youth debased, so that he was even more completely a slave to the priestly influence than his father had been, without any of his father's ability or force of character. The Duke of Lerma was "the Atlas who bore the burden of the monarchy."[1] He was a man, according to Quevedo, "alluring and dexterous rather than intelligent; ruled by the interested cunning of his own creatures but imperious with all others; magnificent, ostentatious; choosing his men only by considerations of his own special policy or from personal friendship." Under such a man, who ruled the King at his will, it was not likely that any portion of the royal benevolence should light on Miguel de Cervantes. Moreover, the crowd of suppliants at court was very great, their appetite stimulated doubtless by the flattering reports of the new King's liberal disposition. [1] The phrase was probably used by Cervantes in irony. It had been used by others before, and was a common form. A contemporary writer laments with pathetic zeal and pious indignation the lot of many famous captains and valiant soldiers, who, after serving the King all their lives and being riddled with wounds, were not only pushed aside into corners without any reward, but condemned to see unworthy men without merit loaded with benefits, merely through enjoying the favor of some minister or courtier.[2] The Duke of Lerma, as one who professed a contempt for all letters and learning, was even less likely to be influenced by Cervantes' literary merits than by his services as a soldier--services which had now become an old story. Disappointed in his hopes of preferment, Cervantes had to maintain himself and his family by the exercise of his pen--writing, as we learn, letters and memorials for those who needed them,[3] while busy upon his new book. [2] Fr. Sepulveda, quoted by Navarrete. [3] And "employed in various agencies and businesses," says Navarrete, vaguely. Without the gifts which are in favor at court--unskilled in the arts of solicitation--we can imagine, with a man of Cervantes' temperament, what a special hell it must have been--"in suing long to bide." About this time he seems almost to have dropped out of life. The four years between 1598 and 1602 are the obscurest in his story. We do not know where he lived or what he did. It was the crisis of the struggle with his unrelenting evil destiny. The presumption is that he was still in the South, engaged in his humble occupation of gathering rents, of buying grain for the use of the fleet, with intervals perhaps of social enjoyment among such friends as he had made at Seville; among whom is reckoned the painter Francisco de Pacheco. This was for our hero the darkest hour before the dawn. For already, according to my calculation, he must have begun to write _Don Quixote_, being now (1602) in his fifty-fifth year.[4] He had duly qualified himself, by personal experience, to tell the story of the adventures of him who sought to revive the spirit of the ancient chivalry. His own romance was ended. The pathetic lines of Goethe might seem to be written for his own case: "Wer nie sein Brod mit Thränen ass, Wer nicht die kummervollen Nächte Auf seinem Bette weinend sass, Der kennt euch nicht, ihr himmlischen Mächte."[5] [4] That _Don Quixote_ could not have been written before 1591 is proved by the mention in chapter vi of a book published in that year. That it must have been written subsequently to 1596 is proved by the reference in chapter xix to an incident which was not ended till September, 1596 (see Navarrete). There are other hints and allusions in the story which, I think, show that it could scarcely have been begun while Philip II was alive. [5] From _Wilhelm Meister, Lehrjahre_, chapter xii, thus Englished by Thomas Carlyle: "Who never ate his bread in sorrow, Who never spent the darksome hours Weeping and watching for the morrow, He knew you not, ye unseen Powers." Never had any man of letters to go through a severer ordeal. At last his genius found the true path for which it had been beating about so many years; but not until his prime of life had passed, when even that brave heart must have been chilled and that gay spirit deadened. In 1601 Philip III, at the instance of the Duke of Lerma, removed the court to the old capital of Castile, Valladolid--by nature far better situated for a metropolis than Madrid, which had been the choice of his grandfather, Charles V. Thither Cervantes repaired, in 1603, doubtless with some hope of gleaning some crumbs of the royal favor. He was no more fortunate with the new King than he had been with the old. Despairing of place or patronage, he turned, with his brave spirit unquenched as by the record sufficiently appears, to completing this new thing among books. _Don Quixote_ was probably finished by the beginning of 1604, though some further time elapsed, as it seems, before the author had courage to go to print. His genius had lain fallow for twenty years. He was now old, and had written nothing, or at least published nothing, since _Galatea_. What fame was left to him he had earned as a poet among many poets. As an author, if he was remembered at all, it was in a line wholly different from that which he now essayed. There is reason to believe that the manuscript of the new book was in circulation among those who called themselves the author's friends, as was the custom of the age, before he found a patron and a publisher.[6] The publisher was got at last in Francisco Robles, the King's printer, to whom the copyright was sold for ten years.[7] The patron appeared in the person of the Duque de Bejar, a nobleman described by a writer of that age--Cristobal de Mesa--as himself both a poet and a valiant soldier. The choice was not altogether a happy one, for the Duke of Bejar might be said to have an ancestral claim to be regarded as a patron of books of chivalries. It was to his great-grandfather that one of the silliest and most extravagant of the romances had been dedicated by the author, Feliciano de Silva, who is the writer specially ridiculed by Cervantes--the very book which is the subject of a parody in the opening chapter of _Don Quixote_.[8] The Duke of Bejar was noted, moreover, for his own uncommon affection for the books of chivalries then in fashion, and it is probable that he at first understood _Don Quixote_ to be one such as he was in the habit of reading. Learning of his mistake, he refused, it is said, the dedication, and withdrew his patronage from the author. Then, according to the pleasant story first told by Vicente de los Rios, was enacted that scene which has been so favorite a subject with modern artists. Cervantes begged of the Duke to give him a hearing before deciding against his book; upon which he was permitted to read a chapter, which the Duke found so much to his taste that he graciously readmitted the author into his favor and consented to receive the dedication. There is another tradition which imputes to the Duke's confessor--an ecclesiastic who must have had a cleaner nose for heterodoxy than most of his fellows--the original rejection of the dedication by the Duke, the alteration in its wording, and the subsequent neglect of the author.[9] The dedication which now does duty at the opening of the First Part of _Don Quixote_ I have shown to have been tampered with by someone bearing no good-will to Cervantes. [6] There are two curious pieces of evidence in proof that _Don Quixote_ was known before it was printed. In the first edition of the _Picara Justina_, composed by Francisco de Ubeda--the license to print which is dated August, 1604--there are some truncated verses, like those in the beginning of _Don Quixote_, in which _Don Quixote_ is mentioned by name as already famous (_Catalogo de Salva_, vol. ii, p. 157). Also in a private letter from Lope de Vega to his patron, the Duke of Sessa, there is a malignant allusion to Cervantes, speaking of poets. "There is none so bad as Cervantes, and none so foolish as to praise _Don Quixote_." The letter is dated August 4, 1604. [7] That seems to have been the usual period for which a book was licensed in that age. The sum which Cervantes received for his copyright is not recorded. [8] The Third Part of _Don Florisel de Niquea_ was dedicated to a former Duque de Bejar. See Salva's _Catalogo_, vol. ii, p. 14. [9] Cervantes is supposed to reflect on this meddlesome ecclesiastic in Part II, chap, xxxi, of _Don Quixote_, where there is a passage against those of the religious profession who "govern the houses of princes," written with a bitterness most unusual in our author. The privilege of publication is dated September 26th, and the _Tasa_ December 20,1604. The book itself, the First Part of _Don Quixote_ (it was not so called in the first edition, of course), was printed by Juan de la Cuesta during 1604, and published at Madrid in January, 1605.[10] The impression was very carelessly made, and swarms with blunders, typographical and otherwise, showing that it was not corrected or revised by the author. The press-work, however, is quite equal in execution to that of most books of that age. [10] Those who are fond of dwelling on coincidences may find one here of singular interest. The year during which _Don Quixote_ was being printed was also the year in which, according to the best authorities, Shakespeare was producing his perfected _Hamlet_. The two noblest works of human wit, their subjects bearing a curious affinity one to another, each the story of a mind disordered by the burden of setting the world right, were thus born in the same year. The reception which _Don Quixote_ met with on its first appearance was cordial beyond all precedent, and such as must have convinced the author, who was evidently doubtful of his new experiment, that here at last his genius had found its true field of exercise. The persons of culture, indeed, received the book coldly. The half-learned sneered at the title as absurd and at the style as vulgar. Who was this _ingenio lego_--this lay, unlearned wit--"a poor Latin-less author," which is what they said of Shakespeare--outside of the _cultos_ proper, of no university education--who had dared to parody the tastes of the higher circles? The envy and malice of all his rivals--especially of those who found themselves included in the satire--even the great Lope himself, the phoenix of his age, then at the height of his glory--spoke out, with open mouth, against the author. The chorus of dispraise was swelled by all those, persons chiefly of high station, whose fashion of reading had been ridiculed. A book, professing to be of entertainment, in which knights and knightly exercises were made a jest of--in which peasants, innkeepers, muleteers, and other vulgar people spoke their own language and behaved after their own fashion--was a daring innovation, all the more offensive because the laugh was directed at what was felt to be a national infirmity. Who was the bold man who, being neither courtier nor ecclesiastic, made sport for the world out of the weaknesses of _caballeros_? An old soldier of Lepanto, indeed! Lepanto was a name outworn. Spain was now in a new world. Crusades against the unbeliever, even those more popular ones which combined the saving of souls with the getting of gold, were long out of fashion. Lastly, the entire ecclesiastical body--the formidable phalanx of the endowed, with their patrons dependents, and dupes--though they were too dull to perceive and too dense to feel the shafts aimed at obscurantism and superstition, had something more than a suspicion that this book called _Don Quixote_ was a book to be discouraged. In spite of the frowns and sneers of the quality, however, and the ill-concealed disgust of the learned, _Don Quixote_ was received with unbounded applause by the common people.[11] Those best critics in every age and country, the honest readers, who were neither _bourgeois_ nor genteel, neither learned nor ignorant, welcomed the book with a joyous enthusiasm, as a wholly new delight and source of entertainment. Nothing like it had ever appeared before. It was an epoch-marking book, if ever there was one. [11] _Con general aplauso de las gentes_--he says in the Second Part of _Don Quixote_, speaking through the mouth of the Duchess. The legend, revived in the present age, that _Don Quixote_ hung fire on the first publication, and that the author wrote anonymously a tract called _El Buscapie_ (The Search-foot), in order to explain his story and its object, rests only upon the evidence of one Ruidiaz, and is contradicted by all the facts of the case. No such aid was necessary to push the sale of the book, whose purpose had been sufficiently explained by the author in his preface. The so-called _Buscapie_, published in 1848 by Adolfo de Castro, is an impudent forgery, which has imposed upon no one. It is the composition of Señor de Castro himself, who is a _farceur_, of some wit and more effrontery. Ticknor is even too serious in the attention which he bestows on Señor de Castro and his work, which an English publisher has thought worthy of a translation. The proud and happy author himself spoke of his success with a frank complacency which, in any other man, would savor of vanity. Some seven or eight editions of _Don Quixote_ are supposed to have been printed in the first year, of which six are now extant--two of Madrid, two of Lisbon, and two of Valencia.[12] The number of copies issued from the press in one year was probably in excess of the number reached by any book since the invention of printing.[13] But though all Spain talked of _Don Quixote_ and read _Don Quixote_, and though the book brought him much fame, some consolation, and a few good friends, it does not appear to have helped to mend the fortunes of Cervantes in any material degree. In accordance with the usual dispensation, the author derived the least benefit from his success. Francisco Robles and Juan de la Cuesta, doubtless, made a good thing of it; but to Miguel de Cervantes there must have come but a small share of the profit. The laws of copyright were, in that age, little regarded; and it may be questioned whether, in a book published in Madrid, they could be enforced outside of Castile. The pirates and the wreckers were busy upon _Don Quixote_ from its very earliest appearance; and its quick and plentiful reproduction in all the chief cities, not only of Spain but of the outside Spanish dominions, though highly flattering to the author, could not have greatly helped to lighten his life of toil and penury. [12] Señor Gayangos is of opinion that there were other editions of 1605 which have wholly perished; one probably at Barcelona, the press of which city was very active in that year; one at Pamplona, and probably one at Saragossa, which were capitals of old kingdoms. See also Señor Asensio's letter to the _Ateneo_, No. 23, p. 296; and the Bibliography of _Don Quixote_ at the end of this volume. [13] The ordinary _obrada_, or impression, of a book at this period, I am told by Señor Gayangos--and there can be no better authority--was 250 copies. But in the case of a popular book like _Don Quixote_ the impression would be larger--probably 500 copies. Supposing 8 editions to have been issued in 1605, there would thus have been printed 4,000 copies in the first year--a number unprecedently large in an age when readers were few and books a luxury. Taking the object of _Don Quixote_ to be, what Cervantes declared it--"the causing of the false and silly books of chivalries to be abhorred by mankind"--no book was ever so successful. The doughtiest knight of romance never achieved an adventure so stupendous as that which Miguel de Cervantes undertook and accomplished. With his pen, keener than the lance of Esplandian or Felixmarte, he slew the whole herd of puissant cavaliers, of very valiant and accomplished lovers. Before him went down the Florisandros and Florisels, the Lisuartes and Lepolemos, the Primaleons and the Polindos, and the whole brood of the invincible. Scarcely a single romance was printed, and not one was written, after the date of the publication of _Don Quixote_.[14] Such a revolution in taste was never accomplished by any single writer, in any age or country. [14] The last book of the kind written before _Don Quixote_, according to Clemencin, was _Policisne de Boecia_, published in 1602; but _La Toledana Discreta_, which is a romantic poem in _ottava rima_, was published in 1604, and a few chap-books and religious romances, of the slighter kind, afterward. A few words only are here needed, in the discussion of that question which has occupied so largely the ingenuity of writers, native and foreign, as to what was the object of Cervantes in writing _Don Quixote_. There are those who insist upon seeking in every work of humor or of wit some meaning other and deeper than in the book appears, as though it were impossible that an author should be disinterested or write merely out of the fulness of his heart or pride in his work. With Cervantes' own declaration, more than once repeated, of the purpose of his book the critics will not be content. So good a book must have had a better reason for being than Cervantes' dislike of the fantastic books of the later chivalry. Who, then, was the man--the original of Don Quixote? Against whom was the satire levelled? Of course nothing was then known to the world outside of poor Don Rodrigo de Pacheco, the Argamasillan _hidalgo_. Some great man Cervantes must have intended to ridicule. It was Charles V, said some. It was his son Philip, cried others--ignoring the absurdity of the Prudent one losing his wits through excessive reading of romances. It was the Duke of Lerma--or the Duke of Osuna--or some other great man, or Cervantes' wife's cousin, who opposed his marriage with Catalina. It was Ignatius Loyola--our own countryman, the good John Bowle, suggested. Surely these various theories are a little far-fetched and not a little grotesque and absurd. What there is in either of the two Spanish monarchs to liken him to the Knight of La Mancha it is difficult to see. Those who have looked upon that wonderful equestrian picture of Titian's in the Museo at Madrid, with its weird, weary, far-off expression, are irresistibly led to think of Don Quixote; but the converse is by no means so clear that on looking at Don Quixote we are tempted to think of that most unromantic of monarchs, Carlos Quinto.[15] His son is still more unlike his supposed portrait. As to the Duke of Lerma, they who can believe, on the faith of the cock-and-bull stories told by the Abbé Lenglet du Fresnoy and the Jesuit Rapin, that Cervantes satirized the all-powerful minister in revenge for personal injuries suffered at his hands, may be consigned to the same limbo with the believers in the Bacon-Shakespeare. The theory about Loyola, first mooted by Bowle, the English commentator, is of all, perhaps, not the least absurd. The one shred by which it hangs is a passage in _Don Quixote_ where the angry Biscayan, the adversary of Don Quixote, is made a native of Azpeitia--this being the name of the obscure village where Loyola was born. [15] The question is reopened in the _España Moderna_ (1894), by my good friend Asensio, who quotes from one of the histories of Charles V how that as a youth he would draw his sword and lay about him at the figures in the tapestry, and how once he was discovered teasing a caged lion with a stick. This is slender material on which to base the theory of Charles V being the original of Don Quixote. A sufficient answer to all these theories is that contained in the book itself. Surely no one has read _Don Quixote_ with profit to himself who has been unable to see that the hero is not one whom the author desired to revile or to malign. Never was a satire like this, which leaves us full of love and sympathy for the object. And why cannot we believe the author when he avers that never did his humble pen stoop to satire? He meant, of course, the satire of persons as distinguished from the reprehension and the ridicule of human follies and general vices. As a lampoon, _Don Quixote_ could hardly have endured to this day. The spirit which has given it eternal life is love, and not hate. To estimate the worth of the service performed by Cervantes--not in abolishing romance, as has been absurdly said, still less in discrediting chivalry, as with even a more perverse misconception of his purpose has been suggested, but in purging books of fiction of their grossness and their extravagance, and restoring romance to truth and to nature--we have to consider the enormous influence exercised by this pernicious literature over the minds of the people of Spain in the sixteenth century. The ceaseless wars with the Moors had trained the whole manhood of the nation to soldiership. The trade of fighting was familiar to every man of good birth, so that the word for "knight" (_caballero_) came to be synonymous with that for "gentleman." The constant exercise in arms made of chivalry, in Spain, a more solemn and serious calling than elsewhere. As a native writer says, with equal point and spirit, there was developed by the chronic war with the Moor a _caballerismo_--there is none but a Spanish word for a quality purely indigenous--essentially distinct from the gay, fantastic chivalry of the North. It extended to all classes of the people. It was not confined to the aristocracy. "Every Spaniard was a warrior, every warrior a noble, and every noble a knight of his country."[16] They had not to go far to seek for adventures. They had the Paynim at home: Mahound and Termagaunt were at their doors. There was a constant supply at hand of men of the wrong faith and alien habits--the delight in fighting whom was enhanced by the fact that they equally were possessed of the chivalric fervor, and, though Moors and misbelievers, gentlemen still and cavaliers.[17] The long and desperate struggle for existence evolved the highest qualities of the race. And small wonder it was that out of that fruitful soil which had grown the Cid and the warriors of the heroic age, who should be rightly classed as prechivalric, there sprung up that ranker produce, the knights-errant. Of these, the seekers after adventure, the bohemians of the knightly order, Spain, as her native historians boast, was the teeming mother. No other country in that age, or in the previous one, could show the world such a scene as that gravely enacted before King Juan II and his court, when eighty knights ran a-tilt with each other, and incurred serious loss of limb and permanent injury to their persons, in order that one of them might fulfil a fantastic vow made to his mistress.[18] [16] See the eloquent and judicious prologue to his _Romancero General_ by Don Agustin Duran. [17] "Caballeros granadinos, Aunque Moros, hijos d'algo." [18] See the account of the Paso Honroso, held at the instance of Suero de Quiñones, before Juan II, in 1434, at the bridge of Orbigo, near Leon, which is contained in Appendix D, vol. i, of my translation of _Don Quixote_. Knight-errantry, which was a caprice in France and in England, in Spain was a calling. No other country could afford such a field for it, and to no other society was it so well suited. The grave and wise Fernando de Pulgar, the counsellor and chronicler of Ferdinand and Isabella, speaks with complacency of the noblemen he knew who had gone into foreign countries in search of adventures, "so as to gain honor for themselves, and the fame of valiant and hardy knights for the gentlemen of Castile"--boasting that there were more Spanish knights of the errant sort than of any other nation. The romance of chivalry was the natural growth of this fashion of knight-errantry; and, like its parent, flourished nowhere so luxuriantly as in Spain. _Amadis Of Gaul_ and _Belianis Of Greece_ are, in fact, as much "racy of the soil" as _Don Quixote_ itself. There were some simple or devout enough to take the romance for a gospel, who believed in Amadis as much as in any other hero or saint. In the _Arte de Galanteria_, written by Francisco de Portugal about the close of the sixteenth century, it is mentioned that a Portuguese poet, Simon de Silveira, once swore upon the Evangelists that he believed the whole of _Amadis_ to be true history. This is capped by another story in the same book of how a certain knight came home from hunting and found his wife and daughters dissolved in tears. Asking them what was the matter--whether any child or relation was dead--they said "No; but Amadis is dead!" They had come to the 174th chapter of _Lisuarte of Greece_, where the old Amadis finally dies. The influence of the _Palmerins_ and of the Carlovingian romances, which form a class by themselves, was scarcely inferior to that of _Amadis_. _Palmerin of England_ himself, the patriarch of the family--that "Palm of England," as Cervantes calls him--may be placed second to his rival in merit. The difference in spirit is great between the two; for _Amadis_ really is, though in its present form of the fifteenth, of the fourteenth century, when chivalry was in its early prime; and _Palmerin_ was not written till the sixteenth century, when the true ideal of knighthood had already been dimmed by the lust of gold-seeking and religious adventure. Southey, perhaps, ranks _Palmerin_ too high in the literary scale by placing it on a level with _Amadis_, and averring that he knew "no romance and no epic in which suspense is so successfully kept up." Of their successors, the long line of sons, grandsons and nephews, each more valiant and puissant than the last, it must be said that they are as scant of beauty as of grace. In order to keep up the interest of their readers, the authors of the Primaleons and the Polindos--the Florisels and the Florisandos--were compelled to put in wonders on an ascending scale; to pile up adventure upon adventure; to make the dragons fiercer, the giants huger, the fighting more terrible, and the slaughter more bloody. The popular appetite, which craved for more and more excitement with every successive stimulant, could only be fed by inventions so monstrous that it is a wonder the stomach of the readers of romances of chivalry did not reject the nauseous aliment. Yet there is no evidence of any decline in the production of these books up to the date of the appearance of _Don Quixote_. It was to do battle with this brood of fabled monsters, against whom the pulpit and the parliament had preached and legislated in vain, that Cervantes took up his pen. The adventure was one reserved for his single arm; and it was achieved with a completeness of success such as must have astonished our hero himself, as we know by many signs that it disgusted and irritated many of his literary rivals. The true nature of the service performed, as well as Cervantes' motive in undertaking it, has been greatly misrepresented. Nothing can be more certain than that his aim in _Don Quixote_ was, primarily, to correct the prevailing false taste in literature. What moral and social results followed were the necessary consequences of the employment of his rare wit and humor on such a work. There is no reason to believe that Cervantes, at first, had any more serious intention than that which he avowed, namely, to give "a pastime to melancholy souls"[19] in destroying "the authority and influence which the books of chivalries have in the world and over the vulgar." That he was not impelled to this work by any antipathy to knightly romances as such--still less by any ambition to repress the spirit of chivalry, or to purge the commonwealth of social and political abuses--is abundantly proved by the whole tenor of his book, if not by the evidence of his life. His own tastes strongly inclined him to books of romance. Perhaps no one in that age had read more of those books, or was so deeply imbued with their spirit. [19] See the _Viaje del Parnaso_, chapter iv: "Y he dado en _Don Quixote_ pasatiempo Al pecho melancolico y mohino En cualquiera sazon, en todo tiempo." ("And I am he in _Quixote_ who has given A pastime for the melancholy soul In every age, and all time and season.") Why cannot we believe the author, when he thus plainly and candidly avows his purpose? The opinion of an acute Spanish writer, Don Vicente de Salva, on this point we hold to be a very sensible one--"Cervantes did not intend to satirize the substance and essence of books of chivalries, but only to purge away their follies and impossibilities." What is _Don Quixote_ itself, it is shrewdly added, but a romance of chivalry, "which has ruined the fortunes of its predecessors by being so immensely in advance of them"?[20] What was Cervantes' own last book, as we shall presently show, but in some kind a romance of chivalry--not free, alas! from some of the very errors he had himself burlesqued? Nay, what was Cervantes' own life but a romance of chivalry? [20] See the essay of Salva's in Ochoa, _Apuntes para una Biblioteca_, vol. ii, pp. 723-740. I know one great Spanish scholar who has never forgiven Cervantes for destroying the books of chivalries. But his anger is rather that of the bibliographer than of the critic or patriot. He has the best collection of those evil books in Europe. That, after all, the overthrow of the books of chivalries was but a small part of the good work which Cervantes performed in _Don Quixote_ is only to say that, like all great writers, he "builded better than he knew." The pen of the genius, as Heine says, is ever greater than the man himself. Rejecting all the many subtle and ingenious theories as to what was Cervantes' object in writing his book; that it was a crusade against enthusiasm, as even Heine seems to suspect; that it was a missionary tract, intended to destroy popery and throw down antichrist, as some, even bearded men, have dared to suggest; that it was a programme of advanced liberalism artfully veiled under a mask of levity, and, indeed, the forerunner of that gospel of sentimental cosmopolitanism since preached by other eminent persons supposed to resemble Cervantes in their characters or Don Quixote in their careers--I hold that the author wrote but out of the fulness of his own heart, giving us, by a happy impulse, a fable in which are transparently figured his own character, his own experiences, and his own sufferings. What is the key but this to the mystery which makes this book, on a purely local subject of passing interest, the book of humanity for all time--as popular out of Spain as among Spaniards? A mere burlesque would have died with the books which it killed. A satire survives only so long as the person or the thing satirized is remembered. But _Don Quixote_ lives, and, by a miracle of genius, keeps _Amadis_ and _Palmerin_ alive. The invention is the most simple, as it is the most original, in literature. From _Don Quixote_ dates an epoch in the art of fiction. For once Cervantes was happy in his opportunity. And what is the secret of his success? It is that this "child of his sterile, ill-cultured wit" is no creature of pure fancy, but fashioned in the very likeness of its parent, drawn out of his life, shaped after his pattern--an image of its creator. How could Cervantes' romance fail of holding the field against all the romances? It was his own life from which he drew--that life which had been a true knight-errantry. The hero himself, the enthusiast, nursed on visions of chivalry, who is ever mocked by fortune; the reviver of the old knighthood, who is buffeted by clowns and made sport of by the baser sort; who, in spite of the frequent blows, jeers, reverses, and indignities he receives, never ceases to command our love and sympathy--who is he but the man of Lepanto himself, whose life is a romance at least as various, eventful, and arduous; as full of hardships, troubles, and sadness; as prolific of surprising adventures and strange accidents, as the immortal story he has written? This is the key to _Don Quixote_, which, unless we use, we shall not reach to the heart of the mystery. EARLIEST POSITIVE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA A.D. 1606 LOUIS BECKE AND WALTER JEFFERY As shown by the authors of the following account, there is no lack of evidence that it was belief in a great southern land which led early geographers and sailors to belief in the existence of the Australian continent. Notwithstanding this, it is held by some students of the subject to be doubtful whether the first navigators who reached the shores of Australia set out with any expectation of discovering a great land in the south. Whether this was the case or not, it is argued that the earliest achievements in that quarter were either of no definite consequence or were imperfectly estimated by those who made or promoted the discoveries in connection with which not even their names have been preserved. The narrative of Becke and Jeffery, with its references to other leading authorities, furnishes the completest and most recent information on this subject available within the compass of a reasonably brief survey. Learned geographers have gone back to very remote times, even to the Middle Ages, and, by the aid of old maps, have set up ingenious theories showing that the Australian continent was then known to explorers. Some evidence had been adduced of a French voyage in which the continent was discovered in the youth of the sixteenth century, and, of course, it has been asserted that the Chinese were acquainted with the land long before Europeans ventured to go so far afloat. There is strong evidence that the west coast of Australia was touched by the Spanish and the Portuguese during the first half of the sixteenth century, and proof of its discovery early in the seventeenth century. At the time of these very early South Sea voyages the search, it should always be remembered, was for a great antarctic continent. The discovery of islands in the Pacific was, to the explorers, a matter of minor importance; New Guinea, although visited by the Portuguese in 1526, up to the time of Captain Cook was supposed by Englishmen to be a part of the mainland; and the eastern coast of Australia, though touched upon earlier and roughly outlined upon maps, remained unknown to them until Cook explored it. _Early Voyages to Australia_, by R.H. Major, printed by the Hakluyt Society in 1859, is still the best collection of facts, and contains the soundest deductions from them on the subject, and although ably written books have since been published, the industrious authors have added little or nothing in the way of indisputable evidence to that collected by Major. The belief in the existence of the Australian continent grew gradually and naturally out of a belief in a great southern land. G.B. Barton, in an introduction to his valuable Australian history, traces this from 1578, when Frobisher wrote: "Terra Australis seemeth to be a great, firm land, lying under and about the south pole, being in many places a fruitful soil, and is not yet thoroughly discovered, but only seen and touched on the north edge thereof by the travel of the Portiugales and Spaniards in their voyages to their East and West Indies. It is included almost by a parallel, passing at 40 degrees in south latitude, yet in some places it reacheth into the sea with great promontories, even into the tropic Capricornus. Only these parts are best known, as over against Capo d'buona Speranza (where the Portiugales see popinjayes commonly of a wonderful greatness), and again it is known at the south side of the Straight of Magellanies, and is called Terra del Fuego. It is thought this south land, about the pole Antarctic, is far bigger than the north land about the pole Arctic; but whether it be so or not, we have no certain knowledge, for we have no particular description thereof, as we have of the land under and about the north pole." Then Purchas, in 1578, says: "This land about the Straits is not perfectly discovered, whether it be continent or islands. Some take it for continent, and extend it more in their imagination than any man's experience toward those islands of Saloman and New Guinea, esteeming (of which there is great probability) that Terra Australis, or the Southern Continent, may for the largeness thereof take a first place in order and the first in greatness in the division and parting of the Whole World." The most important of the Spanish voyages was that made by De Quiros, who left Callao in December, 1605, in charge of an expedition of three ships. One of these vessels was commanded by Luis Vaez de Torres. De Quiros, who is believed to have been by birth a Portuguese, discovered several island groups and many isolated islands, among the former being the New Hebrides, which he, believing he had found the continent, named Tierra Australis del Espiritu Santo. Soon after, the ships commanded by De Quiros became separated from the other vessels, and Torres took charge. He subsequently found that the land seen was an island group, and so determined to sail westward in pursuance of the scheme of exploration. In about the month of August he fell in with a chain of islands--now called the Louisiade Archipelago and included in the British possession of New Guinea--which he thought, reasonably enough, was the beginning of New Guinea, but which really lies a little to the southeast of that great island. As he could not weather the group, he bore away to the southward, and his subsequent proceedings are here quoted from Burney's _Voyages_: "We went along three hundred leagues of coast, as I have mentioned, and diminished the latitude 2-1/2 degrees, which brought us into 9 degrees. From thence we fell in with a bank of from 3 to 9 fathoms, which extends along the coast to 7-1/2 south latitude; and the end of it is in 5 degrees. We could go no further on for the many shoals and great currents, so we were obliged to sail south-west in that depth to 11 degrees south latitude. There is all over it an archipelago of islands, without number, by which we passed; and at the end of the eleventh degree the bank became shoaler. Here were very large islands, and they appeared more to the southward. They were inhabited by black people, very corpulent and naked. Their arms were lances, arrows, and clubs of stone ill-fashioned. We could not get any of their arms. We caught in all this land twenty persons of different nations, that with them we might be able to give a better account to your Majesty. They give (us) much notice of other people, although as yet they do not make themselves well understood. We were upon this bank two months, at the end of which time we found ourselves in twenty-five fathoms and 5 degrees south latitude and ten leagues from the coast; and having gone 480 leagues here, the coast goes to the north-east. I did not search it, for the bank became very shallow. So we stood to the north." The "very large islands" seen by Torres were, no doubt, the hills of Cape York, the northernmost point of Australia, and so he, all unconsciously, had passed within sight of the continent for which he was searching. A copy of the report by Torres was lodged in the archives of Manila; and when the English took that city in 1762, Dalrymple, the celebrated geographer, discovered it, and gave the name of Torres Straits to what is now well known as the dangerous passage dividing New Guinea from Australia. De Quiros, in his ship, made no further discovery. He arrived on the Mexican coast in October, 1606, and did all he could to induce Philip III of Spain to sanction further exploration, but without success. Of the voyages of the Dutch in Australian waters much interesting matter is available. Major sums up the case in these words: "The entire period up to the time of Dampier, ranging over two centuries, presents these two phases of obscurity: that in the sixteenth century--the period of the Portuguese and Spanish discoveries--there are indications on maps of the great probability of Australia having already been discovered, but with no written documents to confirm them; while in the seventeenth century there is documentary evidence that its coasts were touched upon or explored by a considerable number of Dutch voyagers, but the documents immediately describing these voyages have not been found." The period of known Dutch discovery begins with the establishment of the Dutch East India Company, and a knowledge of the west coast of Australia grew with the growth of the Dutch colonies, but grew slowly, for the Dutchmen were too busy trading to risk ships and spend time and money upon scientific voyages. In January, 1644, Commodore Abel Janszoon Tasman was despatched upon his second voyage of discovery to the South Seas, and his instructions, signed by the Governor-General of Batavia, Antonio van Diemen, begin with a recital of all previous Dutch voyages of a similar character. From this document an interesting summary of Dutch exploration can be made. Tasman, in his first voyage, had discovered the island of Van Diemen, which he named after the then Governor of Batavia, but which has since been named Tasmania, after its discoverer. During this first voyage the navigator also discovered New Zealand, passed round the east side of Australia without seeing the land, and on his way home sailed along the northern shore of New Guinea. But to come back to the summary of Dutch voyages found in Tasman's instructions: During 1605 and 1606 the Dutch yacht Duyphen made two exploring voyages to New Guinea. On one trip, the commander, after coasting New Guinea, steered southward along the islands on the west side of Torres Straits to that part of Australia, a little to the west and south of Cape York, marked on modern maps as Duyphen Point, thus unconsciously--for he thought himself still on the west coast of New Guinea--making the first authenticated discovery of the continent. Dirk Hartog, in command of the Endragt, while on his way from Holland to the East Indies, put into what Dampier afterward called Shark's Bay, and on an island, which now bears his name, deposited a tin plate with an inscription recording his arrival, and dated October 25, 1616. The plate was afterward found by a Dutch navigator in 1697, and replaced by another, which, in its turn, was discovered in July, 1801, by Captain Hamelin, of the Naturaliste, on the well-known French voyage in search of the ill-fated La Perouse. The Frenchman copied the inscription, and nailed the plate to a post, with another recording his own voyage. These inscriptions were a few years later removed by De Freycinet, and deposited in the museum of the Institute of Paris. Hartog ran along the coast a few degrees, naming the land after his ship, and was followed by many other voyagers at frequent intervals down to the year 1727, from which time Dutch exploration has no more a place in Australian discovery. During the one hundred twenty-two years of which we have records of their voyages, although the Dutch navigators' work, compared with that done by Cook and his successors, was of small account, yet, considering the state of nautical science, and that the ships were for the most part Dutch East Indiamen, the Dutch names which still sprinkle the north and the west coasts of the continent show that from Cape York in the extreme north, westward of the great Australian Bight in the south, the Dutchmen had touched at intervals the whole coast line. But before leaving the Dutch period there are one or two voyages that, either on account of their interesting or important character, deserve brief mention. In 1623 Arnhem's Land, now the northern district of the northern territory of South Australia, was discovered by the Dutch yachts Pesa and Arnhem. This voyage is also noteworthy on account of the massacre of the master of the Arnhem and eight of his crew by the natives while they were exploring the coast of New Guinea. In 1627 the first discovery of the south coast was made by the Gulde Zeepard, and the land then explored, extending from Cape Leeuwin to the Nuyts Archipelago, on the South Australian coast, was named after Peter Nuyts, then on board the ship on his way to Batavia, whence he was sent to Japan as ambassador from Holland. In the year 1628 a colonizing expedition of eleven vessels left Holland for the Dutch East Indies. Among these ships was the Batavia, commanded by Francis Pelsart. A terrible storm destroyed ten of the fleet, and on June 4, 1629, the Batavia was driven ashore on the reef still known as Houtman's Abrolhos, which had been discovered and named by a Dutch East Indiaman some years earlier--probably by the commander of the Leeuwin, who discovered and named after his ship the cape at the southwest point of the continent. The Batavia, which carried a number of chests of silver money, went to pieces on the reef. The crew of the ship managed to land upon the rocks, and saved some food from the wreck, but they were without water. Pelsart, in one of the ship's boats, spent a couple of weeks in exploring the inhospitable coast in the neighborhood, in the hope of discovering water, but found so little that he ultimately determined to attempt to make Batavia and from there bring succor to his ship's company. On July 3d he fell in with a Dutch ship off Java and was taken on to Batavia. From there he obtained help and returned to the wreck, arriving at the Abrolhos in the middle of September; but during the absence of the commander the castaways had gone through a terrible experience, which is related in Therenot's _Recueil de Voyages curieux_, and translated into English in Major's book, from which the following is extracted: "While Pelsart is soliciting assistance, I will return to those of the crew who remained on the island; but I should first inform you that the supercargo, named Jerome Cornelis, formerly an apothecary at Haarlem, had conspired with the pilot and some others, when off the coast of Africa, to obtain possession of the ship and take her to Dunkirk, or to avail themselves of her for the purpose of piracy. This supercargo remained upon the wreck ten days after the vessel had struck, having discovered no means of reaching the shore. He even passed two days upon the mainmast, which floated, and, having from thence got upon a yard, at length gained the land. In the absence of Pelsart, he became commander, and deemed this a suitable occasion for putting his original design into execution, concluding that it would not be difficult to become master of that which remained of the wreck, and to surprise Pelsart when he should arrive with the assistance which he had gone to Batavia to seek, and afterward to cruise in these seas with his vessel. To accomplish this it was necessary to get rid of those of the crew who were not of his party; but before inbruing his hands with blood he caused his accomplices to sign a species of compact, by which they promised fidelity one to another. The entire crew was divided (living upon) between three islands; upon that of Cornelis, which they had named the graveyard of Batavia, was the greatest number of men. "One of them, by name Weybehays, a lieutenant, had been despatched to another island to seek for water, and having discovered some after a search of twenty days he made the preconcerted signal by lighting three fires, but in vain, for they were not noticed by the people of Cornelis' company, the conspirators having during that time murdered those who were not of their party. Of these they killed thirty or forty. Some few saved themselves upon pieces of wood, which they joined together, and, going in search of Weybehays, informed him of the horrible massacre that had taken place. "Having with him forty-five men, he resolved to keep upon his guard, and to defend himself from their assassins if they should make an attack upon his company, which in effect they designed to do, and to treat the other party in the same manner; for they feared lest their company, or that which remained upon the third island, should inform the commander upon his arrival, and thus prevent the execution of their design. They succeeded easily with the party last mentioned, which was the weakest, killing the whole of them, excepting seven children and some women. They hoped to succeed as easily with Weybehays' company, and in the mean while broke open the chests of merchandise which had been saved from the vessel. Jerome Cornelis caused clothing to be made for his company out of the rich stuffs which he found therein, choosing to himself a bodyguard, each of whom he clothed in scarlet, embroidered with gold and silver. Regarding the women as part of the spoil, he took one for himself, and gave one of the daughters of the minister to a principal member of his party, abandoning the other three for public use. He drew up also certain rules for the future conduct of his men. "After these horrible proceedings he caused himself to be elected captain-general by a document which he compelled all his companions to sign. He afterward sent twenty-two men in two shallops to destroy the company of Weybehays, but they met with a repulse. Taking with him thirty-seven men, he went himself against Weybehays, who received him at the water's edge as he disembarked, and forced him to retire, although the lieutenant and his men had no weapons but clubs, the ends of which were armed with spikes. "Finding force unavailing, the mutineer had recourse to other means. He proposed a treaty of peace, the chaplain, who remained with Weybehays, drawing up the conditions. It was agreed to with this proviso, that Weybehays' company should remain unmolested, and they, upon their part, agreed to deliver up a little boat in which one of the sailors had escaped from the island where Cornelis was located to that of Weybehays, receiving in return some stuffs for clothing his people. During his negotiations Cornelis wrote to certain French soldiers who belonged to the lieutenant's company, offering to each a sum of money to corrupt them, with the hope that with this assistance he might easily compass his design. His letters, which were without effect, were shown to Weybehays, and Cornelis, who was ignorant of their disclosure, having arrived the next day with three or four others to find Weybehays and bring him the apparel, the latter caused him to be attacked, killed two or three of the company, and took Cornelis himself prisoner. One of them, by name Wouterlos, who escaped from this rout, returned the following day to renew the attack, but with little success. "Pelsart arrived during these occurrences in the frigate Sardam. As he approached the wreck he observed smoke from a distance, a circumstance that afforded him great consolation, since he perceived by it that his people were not all dead. He cast anchor, and threw himself immediately into a skiff with bread and wine, and proceeded to land on one of the islands. Nearly at the same time a boat came alongside with four armed men. Weybehays, who was one of the four, informed him of the massacre, and advised him to return as speedily as possible to his vessel, for that the conspirators designed to surprise him, having already murdered twenty-five persons, and to attack him with two shallops, adding that he himself had that morning been at close quarters with them. Pelsart perceived at the time the two shallops coming toward him, and had scarcely got on board his vessel before they came alongside. "He was surprised to see the people covered with embroidery of gold and silver, and weapons in their hands, and demanded of them why they approached the vessel armed. They replied that they would inform him when they came on board. He commanded them to cast their arms into the sea or otherwise he would sink them. Finding themselves compelled to submit, they threw away their weapons, and, being ordered on board, were immediately placed in irons. One of them, named Jan de Bremen, confessed that he had put to death or assisted in the assassination of twenty-seven persons. The same evening Weybehays brought his prisoner on board. "On September 18th the captain and the master pilot, taking with them ten men of Weybehays' company, passed over in boats to the island of Cornelis. Those who still remained thereon lost all courage as soon as they saw them, and allowed themselves to be placed in irons." Pelsart remained another week at the Abrolhos, endeavoring to recover some of the Batavia's treasure, and succeeded in finding all but one chest. The mutineers were tried by the officers of the Sardam, and all but two were executed before the ship left the scene of their awful crime. The two men who were not hanged were put on shore on the mainland, and were probably the first Europeans to end their lives upon the continent. Dutch vessels for many years afterward sought for traces of the marooned seamen, but none was ever discovered. The 1644 voyage of Tasman was made expressly for the purpose of exploring the north and northwestern shores of the continent, and to prove the existence or otherwise of straits separating it from New Guinea. Tasman's instructions show this, and prove that while the existence of the straits was suspected, and although Torres had unconsciously passed through them, they were not known. Tasman explored a long length of coast line, establishing its continuity from the extreme northwestern point, Arnhem Land, as far as the twenty-second degree of south latitude, Exmouth Gulf. He failed to prove the existence of Torres Straits; but to him, it is generally agreed, is due the discovery and naming of the Gulf of Carpentaria--Carpenter, in Tasman's time, being president at Amsterdam of the Dutch East India Company--and the naming of a part of North Australia, as he had previously named the island to the south, after Van Diemen. From this voyage dates the name "New Holland." The great stretch of coast lines embracing his discoveries became known to his countrymen as Hollandia Nova, a name which, in its English form, was adopted for the whole continent, and remained until it was succeeded by the more euphonious name of Australia. Tasman continued doing good service for the Dutch East India Company until his death, about 1659, at Batavia. SETTLEMENT OF VIRGINIA CHARTER UNDER WHICH AMERICA WAS COLONIZED A.D. 1607 R. R. HOWISON As the first of the original English colonies in North America, Virginia enjoys a primacy in our history which, however other sectional claims may be contested, is beyond dispute. The name Virginia, which in 1584 Sir Walter Raleigh gave to his settlement on the Carolina coast, at first covered an indefinite extent of the great central territory of the continent. After the failure and disappearance of Raleigh's colony, no further attempts were made to settle the region until 1606, when new interest in American colonization had been aroused in England. The credit for awakening this interest is given to Bartholomew Gosnold, an English navigator who, in 1602, sailed directly west and in May reached Cape Cod. Then, coasting along New England, he found and named Martha's Vineyard, and in July returned to England. English adventurers were so much impressed with his enthusiastic reports and his arguments in favor of new endeavors to occupy western lands, that they began to urge a fresh undertaking. Gosnold's views were strongly supported by the geographer Richard Hakluyt, "to whom America owes a heavy debt of gratitude." There were numerous offers of money and service, and when application was made to King James I he was quite ready to sanction the project. He is said to have thought of the profits that might return to him and also of the satisfaction to be found in being rid of the "turbulent spirits" sure to be drawn into the enterprise. On April 10, 1606, James I issued a patent to Sir Thomas Gates, Sir George Somers, Richard Hakluyt, and others with them associated, under which they proposed to embark upon their eagerly sought scheme. This royal grant deserves our close attention, as it will explain the nature of the enterprise and the powers originally enjoyed by those who entered upon it. Selecting for the scene of operations the beautiful belt of country lying between the thirty-fourth and forty-fifth parallels of north latitude, the King certainly provided an ample field for the success of the patentees. This tract extends from Cape Fear to Halifax, and embraces all the lands between its boundaries in North America, except perhaps the French settlement in Arcadia, which had already been so far matured as to come under the excluding clause of the patent. For colonizing this extensive region the King appointed two companies of adventurers--the first consisting of noblemen, knights, gentlemen, and others in and about the city of London, which, through all its subsequent modifications, was known by the title of the London Company; the other consisted of knights, gentlemen, merchants, and others in and about the town of Plymouth, and was known as the Plymouth Company, though its operations were never extensive and were at last utterly fruitless. To the London adventurers was granted exclusive right to all the territory lying between the thirty-fourth and thirty-eighth parallels and running from the ocean to an indefinite extent westward into the wilds of America, even to the waters of the Pacific. They were also allowed all the islands, fisheries, and other marine treasures within one hundred miles directly eastward from their shores and within fifty miles from their most northern and most southern settlements, following the coast to the northeast or southwest, as might be necessary. Within these limits ample jurisdiction was conferred upon them. To the Plymouth Company were granted in like manner the land and appurtenances between the forty-first and forty-fifth parallels. Thus the whole region between thirty-eight and forty-one was left open to the enterprise of both companies; but to render angry collision impossible, the charter contained the judicious clause above noted, by which each colony might claim exclusive right fifty miles north or south of its extreme settlements, and thus neither could approach within one hundred miles of the other. The hope of gold and silver from America was yet clinging with tenacity to the English mind. James grants to the companies unlimited right to dig and obtain the precious and other metals, but reserves to himself one-fifth of all the gold and silver and one-fifteenth of all the copper that might be discovered. Immediately after this clause we find a section granting to the councils for the colonies authority to coin money and use it among the settlers and natives. This permission may excite some surprise when we remember that the right to coin has been always guarded with peculiar jealousy by English monarchs, and that this constituted one serious charge against the Massachusetts colony in the unjust proceedings by which her charter was wrested from her in subsequent years. To the companies was given power to carry settlers to Virginia and plant them upon her soil, and no restriction was annexed to this authority except that none should be taken from the realm upon whom the King should lay his injunction to remain. The colonists were permitted to have arms and to resist and repel all intruders from foreign states; and it was provided that none should trade and traffic within the colonies unless they should pay or agree to pay to the treasurers of the companies 2½ per cent, on their stock in trade if they were English subjects, and 5 per cent, if they were aliens. The sums so paid were to be appropriated to the company for twenty-one years from the date of the patent, and afterward were transferred to the crown. James never forgot a prospect for gain, and could not permit the colonists to enjoy forever the customs which, as consumers of foreign goods, they must necessarily have paid from their resources. The jealous policy which at this time forbade the exportation, without license, of English products to foreign countries, has left its impress upon this charter. The colonists were, indeed, allowed to import all "sufficient shipping and furniture of armour, weapons, ordinance, powder, victual, and all other things necessary," without burdensome restraint; but it was provided that if any goods should be shipped from England or her dependencies "with pretence" to carry them to Virginia, and should afterward be conveyed to foreign ports, the goods there conveyed and the vessel containing them should be absolutely forfeited to his majesty, his heirs and successors. The lands held in the colonies were to be possessed by their holders under the most favorable species of tenure known to the laws of the mother-country. King James had never admired the military tenure entailed upon England by the feudal system, and he had made a praiseworthy though unsuccessful effort to reduce them all to the form of "free and common soccage," a mode of holding land afterward carried into full effect under Charles II, and which, if less pervaded by the knightly spirit of feudal ages, was more favorable to the holder and more congenial with the freedom of the English constitution. This easy tenure was expressly provided for the lands of the new country; and it is a happy circumstance that America has been little affected even by the softened bonds thus early imposed upon her. But how shall these colonial subjects be governed? and from whom shall they derive their laws? These were questions to which the vanity and the arbitrary principles of the King soon found a reply. Two councils were to be provided, one for each colony, and each consisting of thirteen members. They were to govern the colonists according to such laws, ordinances, and instructions as should afterward be given by the King himself, under his sign manual and the privy seal of the realm of England; and the members of the council were to be "ordained, made, and removed from time to time," as the same instructions should direct. In addition to these provincial bodies a council of thirteen, likewise appointed by the King, was to be created in England, to which was committed the general duty of superintending the affairs of both colonies. And to prove the pious designs of a monarch whose religion neither checked the bigotry of his spirit nor the profaneness of his language it was recited in the preamble of this charter that one leading object of the enterprise was the propagation of Christianity among "such people as yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worship of God, and might in time be brought to human civility and to a settled and quiet government." Such was the first charter of James to the colony of Virginia. We will not now pause to consider it minutely either for praise or for blame. With some provisions that seem to be judicious, and which afterward proved themselves to be salutary, it embraces the most destructive elements of despotism and dissension. The settlers were deprived of the meanest privilege of self-government, and were subjected to the control of a council wholly independent of their own action, and of laws proceeding directly or indirectly from the King himself. The Parliament of England would have been a much safer depositary of legislative power for the colonists than the creatures of a monarch who held doctrines worthy of the Sultan of Turkey or the Czar of the Russian empire. But all parties seemed well satisfied with this charter, and neither the King nor the adventurers had before their minds the grand results that were now giving birth. The patentees diligently urged forward preparations for the voyage, and James employed his leisure hours in preparing the instructions and code of laws contemplated by the charter. His wondrous wisdom rejoiced in the task of acting the modern Solon, and penning statutes which were to govern the people yet unborn; and neither his advisers nor the colonists seemed to have reflected upon the enormous exercise of prerogative herein displayed. The adventurers did not cease to be Englishmen in becoming settlers of a foreign clime, and the charter had expressly guaranteed to them "all liberties, franchises, and immunities" enjoyed by native-born subjects of the realm. Even acts of full Parliament bind not the colonies unless they be expressly included, and an English writer of subsequent times has not hesitated to pronounce this conduct of the royal law-maker in itself illegal (November 20th). But James proceeded with much eagerness to a task grateful alike to his vanity and his principles of government. By these articles of instruction, the King first establishes the general council, to remain in England, for the superintendence of the colonies. It consisted originally of thirteen, but was afterward increased to nearly forty, and a distinction was made in reference to the London and Plymouth companies. In this body we note many names which were afterward well known both in the interests of America and the mother-land. Sir William Wade, lieutenant of the Tower of London; Sir Thomas Smith, Sir Oliver Cromwell, Sir Herbert Croft, Sir Edwin Sandys, and others formed a power to whom were intrusted many of the rights of the intended settlement. They were authorized, at the pleasure and in the name of his majesty, to give directions for the good government of the settlers in Virginia, and to appoint the first members of the councils to be resident in the colonies. These resident councils thus appointed, or the major part of them, were required to choose from their own body a member, not being a minister of God's Word, who was to be president, and to continue in office for a single year. They were authorized to fill vacancies in their own body, and, for sufficient cause, to remove the president and elect another in his stead; but the authority to "increase, alter, or change" these provincial councils was reserved as a final right to the King. The Church of England was at once established, and the local powers were to require that the true word and service of God, according to her teachings, should be preached, planted, and used, not only among the settlers, but, as far as possible, among the sons of the forest. The crimes of the rebellion, tumults, conspiracy, mutiny, and sedition, as well as murder, incest, rape, and adultery, were to be punished with death, without benefit of clergy. To manslaughter, clergy was allowed. These crimes were to be tried by jury, but the president and council were to preside at the trial--to pass sentence of death--to permit no reprieve without their order, and no absolute pardon without the sanction of the King, under the great seal of England. But with the exception of these capital felonies, the president and council were authorized to hear and determine all crimes and misdemeanors, and all civil cases, without the intervention of a jury. These judicial proceedings were to be summary and verbal, and the judgment only was to be briefly registered in a book kept for the purpose. For five years succeeding the landing of the settlers, all the results of their labor were to be held in common, and were to be stored in suitable magazines. The president and the council were to elect a "cape merchant" to superintend these public houses of deposit, and two clerks to note all that went into or came out from them, and every colonist was to be supplied from the magazines by the direction and appointment of these officers or of the council. The adventurers of the first colony were to choose from their number one or more companies, each to consist of at least three persons, to reside in or near London, and these were to superintend the general course of trade between the mother-country and her distant daughter, and direct it into such channels as would be most advantageous to both. No person was to be admitted to reside in the colonies but such as would take oath of obedience to the King, in the ample form provided for by a statute passed early in the reign of James, and any rash offenders who should attempt to withdraw from allegiance to his majesty was to be imprisoned until reformation, or else sent to England, there to receive "condign punishment." The president and councils, or the major part of them, were empowered, from time to time, to make, ordain, and constitute laws, ordinances, and officers for the better government of the colony, provided that none of these laws affected life or limb in the settlers. Their enactments were also required to be, in substance, consonant to the jurisprudence of England, and the King or the council in the mother-country was invested with absolute power at any time to rescind and make void the acts of the provincial councils. As the colonists should increase in population and influence the King reserves to himself the right to legislate for them; but condescends to restrict his law-making energies to such action as might be "consonant to the law of England or the equity thereof." And to show his tender feelings toward the aborigines, whose lands he was so deliberately appropriating to the use of his subjects, his majesty requires that they shall be treated with all kindness and charity and that all proper means should be used to bring them to "the knowledge of God and the obedience of the King, his heirs and successors, under such severe pains and punishments as should be inflicted by the respective presidents and councils of the several colonies." On these kindly ordinances the philosophic reader will not fail to observe the impress of the man. The stern penalty of death visited the crimes of rebellion and conspiracy, which aimed a blow at sovereign power, and even the popular tumult, which kings have so much cause to dread, was stilled by the same bloody monitor; yet arson and burglary were left to the discretion of the councils. Adultery was punished with death--a penalty never inflicted even in England, except during a time of puritanic zeal, which offered God a service without knowledge. In the eye of divine purity the offender, by this crime, may be the vilest of the vile, but if the Redeemer of the world refused to denounce the punishment of death against one taken in the act, it devolved not on this Scottish Draco to render it a capital crime. The whole legislative power is vested in the council, without any reference to the interests or the rights of the people whom they were to govern, and the King retains absolute control over the present and future laws of the colony, thus rendering their great distance from his face the best protection they could have against his tyranny. The trial by jury was required for capital felonies and manslaughter; but all inferior offences and every civil interest, however overwhelming in importance to the colonist, were to be summarily decided upon by the provincial councils. In the same space it would have been difficult to compress more absurd concession and of ruinous restraint. The clause requiring all things to be held in common was destructive of the most powerful stimulus that urges man to labor; the semblance of mercy which forbade war upon the savages often held the hand of the settler when raised in self-defence; and the church establishment, forced by the arm of the law upon reckless adventurers, made religion a hated bondage and the tithe-gatherer more odious than the author of evil. But notwithstanding the defects and deformities of a charter which, in modern times, would have been indignantly rejected as an invasion of the rights of man, the London Company eagerly prepared for their proposed scheme of settlement. Sir Thomas Smith was elected treasurer--a gentleman who had amassed great wealth by merchandise, who was one of the assignees under Raleigh's patent, and was soon afterward made governor of the East India Company. Much has been said against him; but he was a man of public spirit and expanded views, and urged forward the enterprise with his influence and his contributions. The means of the company were at first very limited; three ships only were prepared, the largest of which was of not more than one hundred tons burden, and Christopher Newport was selected for the command. He was a navigator of some renown, principally derived from a voyage of destruction against the Spaniards in 1592; but he was a vain and affected character, little calculated for decisive and manly action. Instructions were prepared, but the King, with his accustomed profundity of folly, directed that they should be sealed in a box, and not opened until the voyagers arrived upon the coasts of Virginia. In the vessels there embarked, beyond the regular crews, one hundred five persons, to form the settlement. And it does not seem extravagant to assert that Virginia has felt, through all her subsequent history, the influence of these first settlers in giving a peculiar bias to her population. Besides the six gentlemen intended for the council, and Mr. Robert Hunt, a minister of the gospel, we find the names of more than fifty cavaliers, who are carefully reckoned in the shipping list as "gentlemen," and who were better fitted for the adventures of the drawing-room than for the rude scenes of the American forest. Disappointed in hope and reduced in fortune, these restless wanderers sought the New World with desire for exciting adventure and speedy wealth. Among them was George Percy, a member of a noble family and brother to the Earl of Northumberland. In this singular band we note but eleven professed laborers, four carpenters, one blacksmith, one bricklayer, and one mason: but we are not surprised to find a barber to aid in making the toilet of the "gentlemen," a tailor to decorate their persons, and a drummer to contribute to their martial aspirations! Thus prepared with the elements of a refined colony, Newport set sail from Blackwall, December 19, 1606. Adverse winds kept him long upon the coast of England, and with disappointment came discord and murmuring among the voyagers. The preacher suffered with weakening disease, but his soothing counsels alone preserved peace among this wild company. Instead of following Gosnold's former voyage immediately across the Atlantic, they sailed by the Canaries and West Indies; and while in full route, the dissensions among the great men raged so furiously that Captain John Smith was seized and committed to close confinement on the false charge that he intended to murder the council and make himself King of Virginia. Arriving at length near the coast of America, their false reckoning kept them in suspense so alarming that Ratcliffe, commander of one of the barks, was anxious to bear away again for England. But heaven, by its storms, contributed more to the settlements of Virginia than men by their infatuated counsels (1607). A furious tempest drove them all night under bare poles, and on April 26th they saw before them the broad inlet into the Bay of Chesapeake. The cape to the south they honored with the name of Henry, from the Prince of Wales, a noble youth, whose character gave the fairest promise of a career of high-souled action, whose love to Raleigh was only succeeded by his father's hatred, and whose early death gave England cause for unaffected mourning. The northern headland was called Charles, from the King's second son, who afterward succeeded to his throne. As they passed the first cape a desire for recreation possessed them--and thirty, without arms, went on shore; but they were soon attacked by five savages, and two of the English were dangerously hurt. This inhospitable treatment promised but little for future peace. The sealed box was now opened, and it was found that Bartholomew Gosnold, John Smith, Edward Maria Wingfield, Christopher Newport, John Ratcliffe, John Martin, and George Kendall were named as members of the Provincial Council. Sailing leisurely up the beautiful expanse of water to which the Indians had given a name that Europeans have never violated, the voyagers were charmed with the prospect before them. The season was mild, and nature had fully assumed that emerald robe of spring. On either side the distant land presented a scene of tranquil verdure, upon which the eye might rejoice to repose. The noble bay received into its bosom the waters of many broad streams, which descended from the highlands faintly visible in the dim horizon. Green islands saluted them at times as they advanced and invited their approach by their peaceful loveliness. At length they reached the mouth of the magnificent river, that tempted them too strongly to be resisted. This was the "Powhatan" of the Indians; and no true lover of Virginia can cease to deplore the change which robbed this graceful stream of a title pregnant with all the associations of Indian valor and of the departed glory of their empire, and bestowed a name that can only recall a royal pedant and a timid despot! Seventeen days were employed in searching for a spot suited to a settlement (May 13th). At length they selected a peninsula, on the north side of the river, about forty miles from its mouth, and immediately commenced the well-known city of Jamestown. A commendable industry seems at first to have prevailed. The council contrived a fort, the settlers felled the trees, pitched their tents, prepared gardens, made nets for the fish which abounded in the river, and already began to provide clapboards to freight the ships on their return to England. But these fair promises of good were destined to a speedy betrayal. Already discord prevailed in their counsels, and a flagrant act of injustice had been committed, which soon recoiled upon the heads of its authors. We have heretofore mentioned the name of John Smith among the persons nominated for the council, and have spoken of the violent imprisonment to which he was subjected during the outward voyage. Jealousy of his merit and commanding talents did not stop at this point. He was excluded from his place in the council, and an entry was made in their records detailing the alleged reason for this act. John Smith is the hero of the romantic destinies that attended the early life of Virginia; and the historian who would attempt to tell of her fortunes and yet neglect his story would be recreant to his trust. Nations have generally owed their brightest days of power or of happiness to the genius of a single person--directing their energies, subduing their follies, enlightening their seasons of early ignorance. Assyria has had her Semiramis, China her Confucius, Arabia her Mahomet, England her Alfred; and were we required to point to the man to whom America is principally indebted for the care of her infant years, we would not hesitate to name the heroic spirit who now appears before us. His talent for command excited the mean jealousy of inferior souls, only that his merit might appear brighter by contrast. If we have aught to urge against him, it is that he met the treachery of the Indians with a severe spirit, but too much akin to that of the Spaniards in the South. Yet we cannot reproach him with undeserved cruelty or with deliberate falsehood, and the stern demands of his circumstances often rendered inevitable acts which would otherwise have been ungrateful to his soul. When the council was constituted, Edward Maria Wingfield was elected president--a man who always proved an inveterate enemy to Smith, and who speedily attracted the hatred even of his accomplices by his rapacity, his cowardice, and his selfish extravagance. Smith demanded a trial, but the council feared to trust their wretched charge to an impartial jury, and pretended, in mercy to him, to keep him under suspension. But their own incompetence soon brought his talents into demand. He accompanied Newport upon an exploring voyage up the river, and ascended to the residence of King Powhatan, a few miles below the falls, and not far from the spot now occupied by the city of Richmond. The royal seat consisted of twelve small houses, pleasantly placed on the north bank of the river, and immediately in front of three verdant islets. His Indian majesty received them with becoming hospitality, though his profound dissimulation corresponded but too well with the treacherous designs of his followers. He had long ruled with sovereign sway among the most powerful tribes of Virginia, who had been successively subdued by his arms, and he now regarded with distrust the event of men whom his experience taught him to fear and his injuries to detest. On their return to Jamestown they found that, during their absence, the Indians had made an attack upon the settlement, had slain one boy, and wounded seventeen men. The coward spirit of Wingfield had caused this disaster. Fearful of mutiny he refused to permit the fort to be palisaded or guns to be mounted within. The assault of the savages might have been more fatal, but happily a gun from the ships carried a crossbar-shot among the boughs of a tree above them, and, shaking them down upon their heads, produced great consternation. The frightened wretches fled in dismay from an attack too mysterious to be solved, yet too terrible to be withstood. After this disaster the fears of Wingfield were overruled--the fort was defended by palisades, and armed with heavy ordnance, the men were exercised, and every precaution was used to guard against a sudden attack or a treacherous ambuscade. Smith had indignantly rejected every offer held out to him by the artifices of the council. He now again demanded a trial in a manner that could not be resisted. The examination took place and resulted in his full acquittal. So evident was the injustice of the president that he was adjudged to pay to the accused two hundred pounds, which sum the generous Smith immediately devoted to the store of the colony. Thus elevated to his merited place in the council, he immediately devised and commenced active schemes for the welfare of the settlers, and on June 15th Newport left the colony, and set forth on his voyage of return to England. Left to their own resources, the colonists began to look with gloomy apprehension upon the prospect before them. While the ships remained, they enjoyed sea-stores, which to them were real luxuries, but now they had little whereupon to feast, except a miserable compound of wheat and barley boiled with water, and even to the larger portion of this the worms successfully laid claim. Crabs and oysters were sought with indolent greediness, and this unwholesome fare, with the increasing heats of the season, produced sickness, which preyed rapidly on their strength. The rank vegetation of the country pleased the eye, but it was fatal to the health. In ten days hardly ten settlers were able to stand. Before the month of September fifty of their number were committed to the grave, and among them we mark, with sorrow, the name of Bartholomew Gosnold. The gallant seaman might have passed many years upon the stormy coasts of the continent, but he sank among the first victims who risked their lives for colonization. To this scene of distress and appalling mortality the president Wingfield lived in sumptuous indifference. His gluttony appropriated to itself the best provisions the colony could afford--"oatmeal, sacke, oyle, aqua vitae, beefe, egges, or whatnot"--and, in this intemperate feasting, it seemed as though his valueless life were only spared that he might endure the disgrace he so richly merited. Seeing the forlorn condition of the settlement he attempted to seize the pinnace, which had been left for their use by Newport, and make his escape to England. These outrages so wrought upon the council that they instantly deposed him, expelled his accomplice, Kendall, and elected Ratcliffe to the presidency. Thus their body, consisting originally of seven, was reduced to three. Newport had sailed, Gosnold was dead, Wingfield and Kendall were in disgraced seclusion. Martin, Ratcliffe, and Smith alone remained. They seem to have felt no desire to exercise their right of filling their vacant ranks. The first had a nominal superiority, but the genius of the last made him the very soul of the settlement. It is related by the best authority that in this dark crisis, when their counsels were distracted, their hopes nearly extinguished, their bodies enfeebled from famine and disease, the savages around them voluntarily brought in such quantities of venison, corn, and wholesome fruits that health and cheerfulness were at once restored. Their condition now brought them in almost daily contact with the aborigines. Ratcliffe and Martin were alike incompetent, and Smith assumed the guidance of affairs. Finding their provisions again nearly exhausted, he went with a party down the river to Kecoughtan to obtain supplies from the natives. Savage irony was all they received; a handful of corn and a piece of bread were offered in exchange for swords and muskets. The Indians came against them in numbers, frightfully dressed, and bearing their okee in the form of a monstrous idol, stuffed with moss, and hung with chains and copper. But they were received with a volley of pistol-shot. The omnipotent okee fell to the earth, and with him several of his worshippers. The rest fled to the woods, and, finding resistance vain, they brought quantities of corn, venison, turkeys, and wild-fowl, and received in exchange beads, copper, hatchets, and their discomfited deity. During the absence of the ruling mind, Wingfield and Kendall seduced a few sailors and made another attempt to carry off the bark to England. At the critical moment Smith returned, and, instantly directing the cannon of the fort against them, commanded submission. A skirmish ensued, and the seditious Kendall lost his life. A similar effort to the settlement was soon made by Captain Gabriel Archer and the imbecile President Ratcliffe, and again the decision of Smith arrested them and forced them to their duty. He was ever prompt, and hesitated not at any measures required to govern his turbulent compeers. And now the winter came on, and with it immense numbers of swans, geese, and ducks, which covered the rivers and afforded delightful food to the settlers. They daily feasted upon them, and enjoyed in abundance the peas, pumpkins, persimmons, and other vegetable treasures which the season matured. But Smith could not be contented with a life of inactivity, however plentifully supplied. The council had ungratefully charged him with negligence, in not searching for the head of the Chickahominy, and his own adventurous spirit urged him to renewed enterprise. He prepared his boat for a voyage, and, in a season of uncommon rigor, he set forth upon an expedition destined to add greatly to the fame of his already wonderful career. The Chickahominy falls into the James not many miles above the site of Jamestown. It flows through a very fertile region, and upon its banks were native settlements well supplied with the stores of savage labor. Up this stream Smith urged his boat with great perseverence, cutting through trunks of trees and matted underwood which opposed his progress. At length, finding the obstacles to increase, he left the boat in a broad bay, where Indian arrows could not reach her, and, strictly forbidding the crew to leave her, he pressed on, with two Englishmen and two Indians, eager to penetrate with their canoe the swamps beyond them. Hardly had he disappeared before the disobedient seamen left the boat and sought amusement upon the shore. Opecancanough, an Indian chief of great subtlety and courage, was near with a lurking band of savages, and, instantly seizing his advantage, he made prisoner George Cassen, one of this party, and obtained from him full information as to the movements of Captain Smith. The cowardice of Cassen did not save him. The savages put him to death with cruel tortures, and then pursued their more dreaded foe. Smith had now penetrated twenty miles into the marshes; and, leaving the two Englishmen in the canoe, he went forward with an Indian guide. The savages found the two men sunk in stupid slumber by the side of the canoe, and shot them to death with arrows ere they could escape. But they had now to encounter a superior being. Two hundred savages, approaching with fatal intent, caused no dismay in the heart of Smith. Binding the Indian guide firmly to his arm, he used him as a shield to preserve him from the arrows of the enemy, and with his musket he brought two of them dead to the ground. He would perhaps have reached the canoe--the savages fell back appalled by his courage--but while in full retreat he sunk to the middle in a swamp from which his utmost efforts could not extricate him. Excessive cold froze his limbs and deprived him of strength, yet the Indians dared not approach him until he threw away his arms and made signals of submission. Then they drew him out, and, chafing his benumbed body, speedily restored him to activity. His self-possession was never lost for a moment. Discovering that Opecancanough was the chief, he presented to him a small magnetic dial, and made the simple savages wonder at the play of the needle beneath the glass surface. On this excursion he was made prisoner, and he himself assures us was saved by the Indian maiden Pocahontas. After a captivity of seven weeks he returned to Jamestown, with increased knowledge of savage life and manners. He treated his Indian guides with great kindness and gave them two heavy guns and a millstone for the monarch. But the present was too heavy for his strength, and when one of the cannons was discharged among the boughs of a tree, and crashing of wood and ice was heard, the timid natives declined any further interference with agents so formidable. The absence of Smith had caused disorder and insubordination in the colony. The pinnace had again been seized, and again he was obliged to level the guns of the fort against her and compel submission. He was now personally assailed by a charge replete with stupid malignity. Some, who believed themselves skilled in the Levitical law, accused him of being the cause of the death of Emry and Robinson, the two unfortunate men whom the Indians had slain, and, with this pretext, they clamored for capital punishment. To their insane charge Smith replied by taking the accusers into custody, and by the first vessel he sent them for trial to England. By his courage, his address, and his firmness he now wielded great influence with the Indians, and proved the salvation of the settlement. FOUNDING OF QUEBEC CHAMPLAIN ESTABLISHES FRENCH POWER IN CANADA A.D. 1608 H. H. MILES From the period of Cartier's and Roberval's expeditions nearly fifty years elapsed before France renewed her efforts to colonize the New World. About the year 1598 the lucrative fur trade began to be encouraged by Henry IV, of France, who in the brief respite from religious wars was turning his attention to colonization and commerce. In 1603 Samuel de Champlain, a French naval officer of high character and chivalrous instincts, made his first voyage to Canada in company with M. Pontegravé, a merchant of St. Malo, and together they pushed their way up the St. Lawrence as far as the rapids above Montreal, which Champlain named Lachine (_à la Chine_), for he thought he had at last found a waterway to China. In 1608 he proceeded to found at Stadacona (Quebec) a fixed trading-post of the Merchant Company, in whose service he had again come to the country. Champlain brought with him among the colonists a number of artisans, who, on the magnificent headland of Quebec, erected a fort which was to become the refuge of the sadly menaced little European colony, and was long the centre of French influence and dominion in the New World. The rivalries of various commercial companies and the conflicting colonial policy of France seriously retarded settlement and were a great vexation to Champlain. Moreover, his quarrels with the powerful Iroquois Indians, as here related by Dr. Miles, secretary of the Quebec Council of Instruction, long prevented the southward extension of French power in America. In 1627 Cardinal Richelieu, prime minister to Louis XIII, cancelled the old trading-charters, and established the Company of One Hundred Associates, with power to trade throughout New France from Florida to Hudson Bay. By the terms of the charter the "Hundred Associates" were given the sole right to engage in the fur trade, with control over the shore and inland fishing and of all commerce with the French settlements in the country. In return for this monopoly the company agreed to carry out mechanics and tradesmen to the colony, to settle within a specified period some six thousand colonists, and to make provision for the support of a certain number of Catholic clergy. The French King, at the same time, made Champlain governor, so that he finished his life in the service of the colony he had founded. Samuel de Chaplain, who must be regarded as the real founder of the Canadian colony, was already a noted man when invited by De Chates (or De Chastes), commandant of Dieppe, to take part in the enterprise for colonizing New France. He had served in the French marine at the Antilles, and also in the South of France against the Spaniards, and De Chates had met him at court. He was a man of noble and virtuous disposition, chivalrous, and inspired with a deep sense of religion, and at that time about thirty-six years of age. It will also be seen that Champlain was gifted with qualities which endeared him both to his own followers and to the native Indians of Canada. He was of good address--always able, when he desired it, to render himself acceptable to the highest personages in France, so as to secure a willing attention to his representations. Such was the man who, under the auspices of De Chates and of M. de Monts, first made his appearance in New France, in whose early annals he figured conspicuously upward of thirty years. In 1603 Champlain, in conjunction with Pontegravé, made his first voyage to the St. Lawrence. At Tadoussac they left their ships and ascended the river in boats to the then farthest attainable point--the Sault St. Louis, now known as the Rapids, above the city of Montreal. The features of the country, so far as they could be examined from the river, were carefully observed. The Indian towns of Carrier's time, Stadacona and Hochelaga, were no longer in existence; but Champlain regarded with attention the scenery around their sites. Hochelaga is not even mentioned by him, although, acting as Carrier had done nearly seventy years before, he ascended Mount Royal in order to obtain a good view. Returning to Tadoussac, where their three small vessels had been left, Champlain and Pontegravé, toward autumn, set sail for France. De Chates had died during their absence, and the company formed by him was already almost broken up. Champlain, however, prepared a narrative, and a map to illustrate what he had seen, and submitted these for the information of Henry (IV of France), who expressed his willingness to countenance the resumption of plans for settling the country. Almost immediately afterward the company was reorganized by M. de Monts. He also was a Huguenot, patriotic, of great abilities and experience, and possessing much influence at court, without which he could not have surmounted impediments that were purposely raised against his designs from the first. The King, unmoved by the objections to De Monts, appointed him lieutenant-general of the North American territory between 40° and 46° north latitude, with instructions to establish colonists, cultivate the soil, search for mines of gold and silver, build forts and towns, and with power to confer grants of land, as well as the exclusive right of trading with the natives in furs and all kinds of merchandise. Although a Protestant, while De Monts and his friends were to enjoy the free exercise of their religion, he was bound by the charter to provide for the conversion of the natives, and their training, exclusively, in the principles and worship of the Church of Rome. The King was the more willing to grant a charter on these terms, because De Monts and his company were to bear all the costs that might be incurred in their enterprise. Preparations were then made for the despatch of an expedition on a larger scale than any that had yet left France for America. Early in the spring of 1604 De Monts set sail with four vessels, well manned, and equipped with all means requisite both for carrying on the fur trade and for starting a colony at any place that might be judged suitable. He had under him Champlain and Pontegravé, also a French nobleman named Poutrincourt, who was going out to settle with his family in America, and the subsequently celebrated historian Lescarbot. Two of the ships were specially intended for the fur traffic, and in the first instance to scour the coasts and inlets for the purpose of driving away or capturing all persons found illegally trading with the natives. The other two ships had on board the intending colonists; among whom were soldiers and workpeople, priests, ministers, and some gentleman volunteers. This expedition did not steer for Canada, but for that part of New France then called Acadia (Nova Scotia), De Monts being under the impression that he should there find localities more favorable for settlement than by ascending the St. Lawrence. But it carried with it those whom Lescarbot justly styled "the hope of Canada"; for besides De Monts, there were Champlain and Pontegravé, and probably many of inferior grade, whose participation in this attempt to found an Acadian colony must have greatly assisted in rendering their future services more valuable elsewhere. The effort at colonization in Acadia may be said to have been sustained under many vicissitudes during about nine years until the year 1613; but long before this the attention and services of Champlain and Pontegravé were withdrawn. De Monts lost his charter in 1606, about which time Champlain having, in conjunction with Pontegravé, made a number of maritime excursions from Port Royal, and some geographical discoveries, during the previous two years, became urgent for the renewal of attempts up the river St. Lawrence, which he never ceased to represent as offering a more favorable field for enterprise than the shores of Acadia. In 1607, therefore, De Monts procured the restoration of his charter for the space of one year; and, following Champlain's suggestions, turned his attention to Canada. Two vessels were fitted out and despatched in April, 1608. Arriving at Tadoussac in June, Champlain left his colleague there to traffic with the natives, while he continued his route up the river, until he came to the place where Cartier and his companions had wintered in 1535. Champlain landed, and having ascended some distance from the mouth of the St. Charles toward the promontory now called Cape Diamond, judged the situation favorable for permanent settlement. Artisans, provisions, merchandise, arms, and tools were brought on shore, and a commencement made in the work of constructing wooden buildings and defences. At the same time preparations were made for cultivating the ground and for testing the productiveness of the soil by sowing various seeds brought from France. In these operations, begun on July 3, 1608, Champlain had in view the establishment of a fixed trading-station for the advantage of the company he represented, as well as the more immediate purpose of providing for the security and accommodation of his people during the ensuing winter. But on the site of these rude works the city of Quebec grew up in after-times. Champlain is, therefore, entitled to be regarded as its founder, and the date last mentioned as that of its foundation. During the autumn the works were continued, Champlain himself superintending them with indefatigable activity. Pontegravé returned to France with the results of the season's traffic at Tadoussac. Champlain's experience, previously acquired at Port Royal, doubtless was of service in giving effect to his forethought and energy as regards preparations for the winter; for it is recorded that the thirty persons composing his party were comfortably protected from the ordinary rigors of the climate. On the return of spring Champlain's activity of disposition did not suffer him to await the coming of Pontegravé from France. He set out at once up the St. Lawrence. Meeting parties of Indians belonging to Algonquin and Huron tribes, he entered into friendly communication with them. Between these tribes and the Iroquois, or Five Nations, a state of warfare subsisted. Champlain, on his part, desired to secure the friendship of those natives who were to be the more immediate neighbors of the French on the St. Lawrence, while the Algonquins and Hurons were equally solicitous about forming an alliance with the Europeans for the sake of aid against their enemies. An understanding was soon established. The Indians engaged to visit the French trading-posts with abundance of furs for the purposes of traffic, and promised to assist Champlain with facilities for exploring their country westward. On the other hand, Champlain undertook to help them in their conflicts with the Iroquois. In pursuance of this agreement the French, under Champlain, first intervened in Indian warfare. Returning to Quebec, Champlain procured reënforcements and supplies for his establishment from Pontegravé, who had by this time arrived at Tadoussac from France. Before the end of May he set out again on his way up the river to join his Indian allies, and to accompany them into the country of their enemies, the Iroquois. During the twenty-seven years following the foundation of Quebec, the history of the colony consists almost exclusively of the personal history of Champlain, its founder, upon whose own memoirs we are dependent chiefly for authentic information. They present details of romantic incidents, of courage, fortitude, and virtue, of sagacity, and of indefatigable industry, of self-denial and patience, which will always entitle him to a high rank among the celebrated in the annals of mankind. In pursuance of the alliance he had entered into with the aborigines of Canada, as well as for the purpose of extending his discoveries, he engaged in three different warlike expeditions into the country of the Iroquois, viz., in the years 1609, 1611, and 1615. In his first expedition he passed with a body of Algonquins and Montagnais up the river Richelieu, which then, and subsequently, was the principal route followed by the Iroquois when making incursions into Canada. He discovered that this river formed the outlet of the waters of a beautiful lake, which he was the first of Europeans to behold, and which he called "Lake Champlain," after his own name. He was now in parts frequented by the Iroquois. According to Champlain's description it was a region abounding in game, fish, beavers, bears, and other wild animals. Not far from the site upon which, long afterward, Fort Ticonderoga was constructed, the invaders fell in with a body of two hundred Iroquois, who were easily beaten and put to flight, chiefly owing to the chivalrous valor of Champlain, and the terror inspired by fire-arms used by him and his two attendant Frenchmen. Here Champlain witnessed for the first time the cruelties and horrors attendant upon Indian warfare; and he appears to have exerted his utmost influence vainly in endeavoring to save the wounded and captive Iroquois from being tortured. To his indignant remonstrances the conquerors turned a deaf ear, alleging that they were only inflicting upon their enemies the sufferings which their own people had often endured at their hands, and which were reserved for themselves should they ever fall into the power of the Iroquois. After this the allies made their way back to the St. Lawrence, when the Hurons and Algonquins returned to their settlements toward the Ottawa region, while Champlain and the Montagnais descended the river to Quebec. The battle with the Iroquois took place on July 30, 1609, so that upward of two and a half months had been occupied in the campaign. In September following Champlain set sail for France, accompanied by Pontegravé. Before he left Quebec he made all the arrangements in his power for the safety of those left to winter there. A trustworthy commander was appointed; and in order to prevent the necessity of outdoor labor during the time of severe cold, a supply of fuel was provided in the autumn; for it was supposed that exposure and hard work combined were among the causes of the terrible malady which had afflicted Champlain's people in the winter of 1608. On his arrival in France he reported his adventures and the condition of New France to the King, by whom he was treated with the utmost consideration and kindness. Nevertheless, owing to opposition and clamor, it was found impossible to bring about the renewal of the charter, which had expired. In spite of this, De Monts succeeded in procuring the means of fitting out two vessels in the spring of 1610, in which Champlain and Pontegravé set sail from Harfleur about the middle of April, and arrived at Tadoussac on May 26th. At Quebec Champlain found his people in good health and undiminished numbers, the winter having been passed through without the endurance of any particular hardship. His Indian allies, also, the Hurons, Algonquins, and Montagnais, were eagerly waiting for him to rejoin them in another attack upon the Iroquois. In the middle of June Champlain, with a few Frenchmen, left Quebec and proceeded up the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the river Richelieu. Near to this, on ascending that river, and employing the services of scouts, it was found that a body of Iroquois had established themselves in a post fortified by means of great trees which had been felled, so that their branches, interlaced with each other, presented a strong wall of defence. The Algonquins and Montagnais immediately commenced an attack; when, although assisted by the French, with their arquebuses, it was for a long time found impossible to force an entrance into the position. In the end, however, the Iroquois fled, leaving fifteen of their number prisoners. The conquerors had three killed and about fifty wounded, among whom was Champlain himself. Again was he compelled to witness the perpetration of the most revolting cruelties upon the unfortunate Iroquois captured by his allies, whom he could not restrain, although now regarded by them with feelings amounting to veneration. Champlain was now in a position to do something toward forwarding his own plans through the good-will and assistance of the Hurons and Algonquins. To extend the knowledge of the country westward, and to find out a passage through the continent to China, were to him as much objects of desire as they had been to Cartier before him. The Indian chiefs promised to furnish all the facilities he required; and they placed in his care a young Huron, whom he afterward took to Paris. At the same time a young Frenchman was intrusted to a chief named Iroquet, for the purpose of learning the Algonquin language, and of visiting the lakes, rivers, and mines which were stated to exist in the interior of the country. When these arrangements had been made Champlain and his allies parted. On arriving at Quebec he learned the sad intelligence of the death of his powerful friend and patron, King Henry IV, who had been assassinated three months before in the streets of Paris. Although the season was not far advanced he immediately took his departure for France, accompanied by Pontegravé. In the spring of 1611 Champlain returned to Canada.[1] During the winter, although it was now impossible to recover the exclusive privileges which had formerly been accorded to his company, he and Pontegravé had again succeeded in procuring the means of equipping several vessels. De Monts still enjoyed the title of "lieutenant-general of New France," but was greatly crippled in his resources and influence in consequence of the King's death, and the large expenses attendant on previous undertakings in connection with the establishments in Acadia, at Tadoussac, and Quebec. But the most discouraging circumstance, which now cut off all hope of redeeming his losses, was the virtual throwing open of the peltry trade in the St. Lawrence, of which the traders belonging to French maritime ports availed themselves in considerable numbers; for when Champlain and Pontegravé arrived out at Tadoussac, toward the end of May, they found traders already there doing business with the savages, and that others had preceded them in the river above, as far as the rapids near Hochelaga. Champlain hastened to the latter place, with the determination of establishing there a trading-station for the benefit of the company. Temporary structures were begun near the site of the future city of Montreal; ground was cleared, and seeds sown, in order to test the fruitfulness of the soil. He proposed to erect a fort on an island, called by him St. Helen's, after the name of his wife. [1] About the end of 1610 or early in 1611 Champlain, in Paris, espoused a very youthful lady, named Hélène Boullé, daughter of the King's private secretary. She was a Huguenot, though subsequently converted by her husband. She visited Canada in 1620, and remained about four years. Champlain went to France before winter, and was there detained nearly two years by the affairs of the company. Although his zeal and his hopes of founding a colony never flagged, even De Monts retired from participation in further undertakings, owing to the uncertainties attendant upon the peltry traffic, and the losses incurred. It appears that Champlain deemed it indispensably necessary for the colony, and for the trading company with which it might be connected, to possess, as chief, some personage in France who had influence and rank at court; therefore, on the retirement of De Monts, the Count de Soissons was applied to, and afterward the Prince Henri de Condé. Condé being created viceroy of New France, Champlain was appointed his lieutenant.[2] Much time was then occupied in negotiations, with the object of effecting a compromise with the merchants and traders of Dieppe, St. Malo, Rochelle, and Rouen. In the end some kind of arrangement was made, securing for the wants of the colony at Quebec a certain portion of the results of the fur traffic to be paid by traders; but it seems that no perfectly satisfactory arrangement was practicable at that time, owing to the state of affairs at the court of France, which would not renew the former exclusive privileges. [2] This nomination of Champlain as lieutenant of the Viceroy of New France was dated October 15, 1612; hence, in lists of official functionaries of Canada, this date is frequently put as that on which the rule of governors commenced, Champlain being set down as the first. Early in May, 1613, Champlain arrived at Quebec. The people whom he had left there in 1611 had passed the two preceding winters without any notable occurrence and free from suffering or disease. After a short delay he proceeded up the river to Sault St. Louis, at the foot of the Rapids, where he expected to find many of his former Indian friends assembled in readiness for traffic. In fact, his mind was now intent upon a long journey of exploration westward, in company with some returning chiefs. But this season few Indians came, which Champlain attributed to misconduct on the part of the traders the previous year while he was absent in France. Taking with him two canoes, manned by four Frenchmen and an Indian guide, he contrived to pass the Rapids and to surmount all the other difficulties of a first passage up the river Ottawa, until he arrived at Île Allumettes, where resided a friendly chief named Tessouat, who received him with cordial hospitality, and celebrated his unexpected visit by giving a grand entertainment. Champlain requested canoes and people to conduct him and his attendants on the way to Lake Nipissing, whence, according to information of Nicolas du Vignau, who had passed the previous winter with Tessouat, there was a practicable route to the North Sea, from which, it was believed, the coveted passage to China would be found. Champlain's hopes rose with this information, but before he could act upon it Du Vignau was proved to be an impostor. Champlain, therefore, with reluctance, sorrowfully commenced his journey homeward to Quebec, whence, toward the latter part of August, he again sailed for France, in order to promote the interests of the colony, so much dependent on the course of events in the mother-country. In April, 1615, Champlain sailed from Harfleur with several vessels having on board supplies for the colony--artisans and laborers, together with four persons of the religious order of Franciscans, called Récollets. The latter took out with them the appliances and ornaments that might be required for the use of portable chapels and places of worship in the wilderness, and which had been provided at the cost of religious persons in France. Immediately on his arrival in Canada, about the beginning of June, he took steps for establishing regular religious services at the three principal trading-posts--Quebec, Three Rivers, and Tadoussac--at the first of which places a sort of council was held, consisting of himself, the four Récollets, and "the most intelligent persons in the colony." The arrangements agreed upon comprised, in addition to dispositions of a permanent nature at the three principal localities named above, the sending forward one of the Récollets, Joseph le Caron, into the distant regions occupied by the Huron tribes, which up to this time had not been visited by any European.[3] Thus, under Champlain's auspices, were the first foundations laid for establishing in Canada the faith and services of the Church of Rome; and especially, in the first instance, for commencing the "missions to the Indians," which have survived the vicissitudes of more than two centuries, and subsist to this day in forms and localities regulated by the progress of civilization on this continent. [3] Henceforward the history of the colony, as well as that of the gradual extension of discovery westward, is inseparably associated with the proceedings of the religious missionaries, who were the real pioneers of French influence among the tribes of the interior. During the winter of 1618 the colony was reduced to the verge of extinction through the defection of its fickle allies, the Indians. The station at Three Rivers had become to them a great place of resort; and while many hundreds of savages were assembled there a quarrel occurred at Quebec between some Indians and colonists, the particulars of which have not been very clearly transmitted. But the result was similar to that which had been experienced in the time of Jacques Cartier, for the Indians became discontented and hostile, manifesting a disposition to take advantage of the helplessness of the handful of Europeans established in their midst. Two Frenchmen were murdered, and this outrage was followed by a conspiracy, which was entered into by the Indians at Three Rivers, with the object of consummating the destruction of the entire colony. The Récollet brother Duplessis discovered the plot, and, while the French at Quebec remained closely shut up in their fort, contrived to disconcert it. In the end the savages, who seem to have had originally no very serious cause of offence, proposed a reconciliation, which was acceded to by the French, on condition that the case of the murderers should be decided on Champlain's return, and that in the mean time hostages should be given. Champlain's absence continued for the space of about three years, as he did not return to Quebec until July, 1620. By this time the course of events had taken a favorable turn. The Viceroy Condé regained his liberty, and, in consideration of a sum of money, surrendered his viceroyalty in favor of the Duke of Montmorency, a godson of the late King. Montmorency confirmed Champlain in his post of lieutenant-general, and the King himself, Louis XIII, favored him with royal letters expressing his recognition of the appointment and of his services. Thus fortified, and charged by the new viceroy to return to Quebec and improve the defences of the colony, Champlain induced a number of persons to embark with him for the purpose of settling in the country. He himself arranged all his private affairs and took out with him his wife and several relations. The return of Champlain, accompanied by Madame Champlain, then only twenty-two years of age, was celebrated at Quebec with all the manifestations of rejoicing and of respect that it was possible for the people to evince. It was an epoch in the history of the colony. The Indian savages were especially delighted with the amiable demeanor and the beauty of Madame Champlain,[4] who at once set about learning their language, and in many ways testified her concern in their welfare. She soon became able to instruct their children, using their native tongue, in the principles of the Catholic religion; for, though formerly a Huguenot, she was now a devout adherent of the church to which her husband belonged. Champlain found the edifices at Quebec in a dilapidated condition, so that his first care was to effect repairs on the magazine, the old fort, and other buildings, as well as to provide temporary quarters for his family. Steps were also taken for commencing a structure extensive enough to afford protection to all the inhabitants and the interests of the company, in case of serious attack from any enemy, and so situated as to command the harbor. The site chosen was that now known as "Durham Terrace," where, subsequently, when Champlain's design was practically carried out, the famous Fort St. Louis stood--the residence and official head-quarters of many governors of Canada. [4] According to the custom of the ladies of that time, Madame Champlain wore a small mirror suspended from her girdle. The untutored natives who approached her were astonished at perceiving themselves reflected from the glass, and circulated among themselves the innocent conceit that she cherished in her heart the recollection of each one of them. Champlain might have now enjoyed a period of comparative repose but for two causes of anxiety which soon pressed themselves upon his attention. The first of these was his knowledge of the cruel state of war subsisting between the Iroquois and the natives of Canada. In 1620 the former made incursions in considerable force, and, although few or none of them at that time approached Quebec, they pressed hard upon the Algonquins higher up the river, and lay in wait for his former allies, the Hurons, whom they slaughtered without mercy as they descended with the products of the chase for the purpose of trading with the French at Three Rivers, Quebec, and Tadoussac. The injury to French interests, apart from the necessity for being always on the alert to defend themselves in case of attack from these barbarians, may be imagined. Champlain, as the only recourse open to him, made appeals to the company and to the court of France for succor. In the course of 1622 and the following year several additional priests and brothers of the order of Récollets came out to Canada, among whom was Gabriel Sagard, the historian, who, along with Le Caron, departed as missionaries into the Huron settlements beyond Lake Simcoe. These two priests rendered most valuable services to the colony in becoming the influential promoters of peace with the Iroquois in 1624. They had labored to confirm in the minds of the Huron people a disposition to come to terms with their fierce adversaries, between whom and themselves unceasing hostilities had been waged ever since the period of Champlain's third and unsuccessful expedition against the cantons. The war had proved harassing to all the parties concerned--the French, the Iroquois, the Hurons, the Algonquins, and minor tribes--and all were more or less inclined to accede to proposals for a general cessation of strife. Caron and Sagard accompanied a flotilla of sixty Huron canoes down the Ottawa and St. Lawrence to Three Rivers, at which place, in the presence of Champlain, it was intended to agree upon and ratify a general treaty. On the way to this rendezvous they were joined by twenty-five canoes bearing the Iroquois deputies and thirteen of the Algonquins. The preliminaries having been arranged, happily without the occurrence of quarrels so likely to take place in such a concourse of individuals belonging to different nations, the ceremonies and customary distribution of presents were followed by a mutual interchange of stipulations, rendered intelligible to all by means of interpreters. The final result was a treaty of peace, to which the chief contracting parties were the French, the Hurons, the Algonquins, and the Iroquois, who agreed thenceforward to remain on peaceable terms with each other. The peace thus established was not of long duration. In the mean time the improvements projected by Champlain in 1620 were steadily prosecuted. Very extensive repairs and additions to former structures, and a number of new ones, were completed or in progress. The De Caëns and the Governor, notwithstanding the difference of their religious views, continued throughout to discharge their respective functions in a manner that denoted mutual respect and personal friendship. Yet, from whatever cause, the number of inhabitants, exclusive of a few factors or agents at the trading-posts, and the Frenchmen who from choice had taken up their abodes among the Indian tribes, remained less than sixty. In fact, every person who bestowed a transient thought upon Canada placed a very low estimate upon it as a country fit for settlement, excepting Champlain himself, whose faith in the future of his colony seems never to have wavered. In August, 1624, Champlain made arrangements for revisiting France, where fresh dissensions had arisen in regard to the company's rights and privileges. His chief purpose was to again urge at home an appeal for a more generous support in behalf of his undertakings. The Récollets, also, having found themselves utterly unequal to the occupation of their immense and constantly increasing field of missionary work, had determined to appeal for aid to some of the religious communities of France, and, with this view, deputed Sagard and a priest to sail for Europe in the suite of the Governor. Before his departure Champlain nominated the younger De Caën commandant at Quebec during his absence, and gave instructions that the works in progress should be prosecuted with the utmost vigor, especially the completion of the Fort St. Louis. These preparations being made, he set sail on August 15, 1624, accompanied by his wife and the two Récollet deputies. Champlain, having accomplished all that seemed at that time attainable in France, returned to Quebec in the summer of 1626, accompanied by the priest Le Caron, and his brother-in-law, Boullé, as his lieutenant. He found the works scarcely advanced beyond the condition in which he had left them two years before. His people also were in a somewhat enfeebled condition. They had been ill-supplied with necessaries the preceding season, owing to the neglect of the company to furnish what was requisite for their comfort and plentiful support during the winter of 1625. Notwithstanding the exertions which had been made by Champlain to prevent a recurrence of the former sufferings of the colony owing to the neglect of the company, he and his people were doomed to struggle on precisely as heretofore. Scarcely any land had been cleared, so that it was impossible by means of agriculture alone to provide against famine in the winter. Nevertheless, the requisite supplies were furnished by the company's agents in the most niggardly manner. Its neglect became worse and worse, until, in the winter of 1626, there was an actual dearth of provisions at Quebec. In the spring of 1627 De Caën's vessels brought out, as usual, a certain supply of necessaries. But when the summer had passed away, and autumn came, although the season of traffic had been very profitable, the ships departed, leaving the establishments in the colony very insufficiently provisioned. The colony contained but one farmer--Louis Hebert[5]--who could maintain himself and those dependent on him by the cultivation of the ground. But about fifty persons had to endure the rigors of the winter of 1627 on short allowance; and such became their plight that even Champlain's patience and powers of endurance were severely exercised. When at length the arrival of spring afforded some sources of relief, derived from hunting and fishing, Champlain and his unfortunate colonists at Quebec were amazed to find that De Caën's ships came not as usual with succors. With infinite anxiety they contrived to subsist until the month of July, when it became known that the river below the Island of Orleans was in possession of the English, at that time enemies to France. In fact, on July 10, 1628, Champlain received a summons from Sir David Kirke, then at Tadoussac, with several ships under his command, to surrender the fort and station of Quebec. Notwithstanding his weakness, which would have prevented him from offering any effectual resistance had Kirke followed up his summons by an attack upon the place, Champlain responded with dignity and firmness, declaring that he would defend his post. Kirke, therefore, for the present, deferred his hostile intentions upon Quebec, and contented himself with adopting measures to intercept supplies and succor from France. [5] He died in the course of this season. Champlain, in his memoirs, mentions him with approbation and respect. Cut off from communication with France, Champlain exhorted his now isolated band of priests, colonists, and laborers to follow his own example of patience and courage. A single small ship, with very scanty supplies, succeeded in making its passage good through the English vessels to Quebec, with intelligence that at least ten months must elapse before adequate succor from France could be expected to reach the harbor. To cope with the present emergency, and to prevent absolute starvation, measures were taken to crop all the cleared ground in the neighborhood. At the same time recourse was had to hunting and fishing for the purpose of collecting food for the ensuing winter, and Champlain's brother-in-law, Eustache Boullé, was despatched with a small vessel and twelve men down to Gaspé, in the hope of falling in with French fishing-vessels and procuring intelligence and assistance. Some steps were also taken for obtaining aid from the Abnaquis. These responded favorably, promising to furnish maintenance sufficient for about three-fifths of Champlain's people until succor should arrive. The other Indians, however, the Montagnais and Algonquins, took advantage of the emergency, and manifested, both in demeanor and hostile acts, their enmity to the French. Having contrived to sustain a precarious existence up to the middle of July, 1629, the French witnessed, instead of the expected fleet from France, the English, under Louis and Thomas Kirke, brothers of Sir David, who remained at Tadoussac, making their appearance off Point Levi. Provisions were very scarce, as well as ammunition and all other means of defence; and there seemed to be no prospect of immediate succor. He had with him only sixteen persons who could in any sense be styled combatants. An officer landed, bringing with him very liberal terms, upon which Champlain and his followers might honorably surrender a post which, in their circumstances, was utterly untenable. Champlain and Pontegravé, who was present, acceded, and the conditions having been ratified by Sir David Kirke at Tadoussac, the English, without resistance, took possession of the fort, magazine, and habitations of Quebec. Before actually yielding up his post, the high-minded Champlain went on board the vessel of Captain Louis Kirke, and stipulated for the security of the place of worship and quarters of the Jesuits and Récollets, as well as for the protection of the property of the widow Hebert and her son-in-law, Couillard. On July 24, 1629, Champlain and the priests, together with all who chose to depart, embarked on board the vessel of Thomas Kirke, and after some delay at Tadoussac, were carried to England, and thence suffered to pass into France.[6] [6] When Champlain, accompanied by Pontegravé, went on board Louis Kirke's vessel, on the 20th, he demanded to be shown the commission from the King of England in virtue of which the seizure of the country was made. The two, as being persons whose reputation had spread throughout Europe, were received with profound respect; and after Champlain's request relative to the commission had been complied with, it was stipulated that the inhabitants should leave with their arms and baggage, and be supplied with provisions and means of transport to France. About four days were needed to procure the sanction of the admiral, David Kirke, at Tadoussac, and then Champlain, with a heavy heart, attended by his followers, embarked in the English ship. He says in his memoirs--"Since the surrender every day seems to me a month." On the way down the St. Lawrence, Emery de Caën was met, above Tadoussac, in a vessel with supplies for Quebec. Kirke is said to have desired Champlain to use his influence with De Caën to induce him to surrender without resistance, which, however, the noble-minded man declined. Bazilli was reported to be in the gulf with a French fleet, but nevertheless De Caën felt obliged to surrender, as the Kirkes had two ships to oppose his one. De Caën told Champlain that he believed peace was already signed between the two crowns. Thus ended, for the time, Champlain's effort to found and establish a colony at Quebec--an attempt persevered in during twenty years, in spite of discouragement and obstacles which would have conquered the zeal of any man of that age excepting Champlain, who alone, even now, when taken prisoner and carried out of the country, did not despair of ultimate success.[7] [7] A few, by Champlain's advice, accepted the offers of the English to remain under their protection in the possession of their habitations and clearings. They were to enjoy the same privileges as the English themselves. A number of the French traders also remained, but betook themselves to the west and into the Huron country, where they lived with the Indians until the country was restored to France, about three years subsequently. Louis Kirke was left in command at Quebec. Cardinal Richelieu, the prime minister of Louis XIII, founded the society called the "Company of the One Hundred Associates." It was established, not merely to put an end to the various obstacles and evils under which the colony languished, but also to place its future upon a strong and durable basis. Its organization was completed in the year 1627, and the first expedition under its auspices was entered upon in 1628, but proved an entire failure, owing to the English having then the control of the St. Lawrence, and capturing or destroying the vessels sent out under M. de Roguemont. Then occurred, as we have described, the surrender of Quebec and the other stations, and their occupation by the English under the Kirkes. The existence of the new company, and its government of the affairs of the colony can scarcely be said to have commenced, practically, until the year 1632, when New France was, by treaty with England, restored to the French authorities. Pursuant to arrangements, Emery de Caën, furnished with instructions from the Government of France, and with an order signed by the King of England, superseded Thomas Kirke at Quebec on July 13,1632. On landing with the priests who were sent out on board De Caën's vessels, it was found that much injury had been done in the place. Fire, violence, and wilful neglect had been instrumental in destroying nearly all the buildings, including those of the Jesuits and Récollets. It was also found that the old friends of the French--the Montagnais and other Indians--had been much corrupted by the traders with whom they had held intercourse during the three preceding years. The fort itself remained uninjured, and afforded shelter to all while the work of reconstructing habitations and a place of worship was carried on. In the mean time Champlain made preparations in France for carrying out colonists, merchandise, ammunition, and provisions. The company furnished him with three vessels, well equipped, and armed with cannon. With these, having on board about two hundred persons, he arrived at Quebec on May 23, 1633, and landed amid manifestations of great joy on the part of the French inhabitants, more especially of those who had remained in the country after his forced departure. From the moment of his return to Canada until his decease, Champlain occupied himself diligently in providing for the material progress of the colony, and at the same time coöperated heartily in all measures for securing its religious welfare, and for converting the savages. While occupied with various duties appertaining to his position, about October 10, 1635, Champlain was laid prostrate by a stroke of paralysis. In his last illness, he was attended by his friend and spiritual adviser, Charles Lalemant, the author of the _Relation of 1626_, and, during the previous ten years, a most efficient coadjutor in his work. At length, on Christmas Day, 1635, the pious and amiable founder of Quebec breathed his last, bequeathing his blessing to his bereaved people, together with the memory of his virtues and of his great services. CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY EMBRACING THE PERIOD COVERED IN THIS VOLUME A.D. 1558-1608 JOHN RUDD, LL.D. Events treated at length are here indicated in large type; the numerals following give volume and page. Separate chronologies of the various nations, and of the careers of famous persons, will be found in the Index Volume, with volume and page references showing where the several events are fully treated. A.D. 1558. Calais, the last English possession in France, taken by De Guise. See "ENGLAND LOSES HER LAST FRENCH TERRITORY," X, 1. Death of Bloody Queen Mary; accession of Elizabeth in England. See "REIGN OF ELIZABETH," X, 8. Marriage of the Dauphin, Francis, with Mary Stuart, Queen of the Scots. Battle of Gravelines; victory of the Spaniards, under Egmont, over the French. 1559. A new act of supremacy passed in England, firmly establishing Protestantism. Treaty of peace (Cateau-Cambrécis) between England, France, and Spain. Iconoclastic outbreaks in Scotland, due to the teachings of John Knox. See "JOHN KNOX HEADS THE SCOTTISH REFORMERS," X, 21. Institution of the papal _Index Librorum Prohibitorum_. 1560. Conspiracy of Amboise, by the Huguenots, for the overthrow of the Guises, in France; death of Francis II, Charles IX succeeds; Catherine de' Medici controls the government as regent. Arrest of Condé. Queen Elizabeth of England and the Scottish Reformers conclude a pact of alliance. Death of the Regent, Mary of Guise; Mary Stuart and her husband, Francis II, arrange the treaty of Edinburgh with Elizabeth and the Reformers. Passing by the Scotch Parliament of the Statutes of Reformation. 1561. Queen Mary Stuart returns to Scotland. See "MARY STUART: HER REIGN AND EXECUTION," X, 51. Rebellion of Shane O'Neil in Ireland. Edict against the Reformers, now called Huguenots; Condé and Coligny prepare to take up arms. 1562. Submission and pardon of Shane O'Neil. Edict of St. Germain; it grants toleration to the Huguenots; massacre of Huguenots at Vassy and other cities; defeat of the Huguenot army under Condé and Coligny. Attempted settlement of the Huguenots on the coast of South Carolina. 1563. Assassination of the Duc de Guise at the siege of Orléans. Publication of the Thirty-nine Articles in England.[1] [1] See 1552. Publication by the Calvinists of the Heidelberg Catechism. Beginning of the construction of the Escurial, Spain, by Philip II. 1564. Death of Ferdinand I; Maximilian II succeeds in the German empire, the archduchy of Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia. Settlement of a Huguenot colony on the St. John's River, Florida. See "FOUNDING OF ST. AUGUSTINE," X, 70. Birth of Shakespeare. 1565. Marriage of Queen Mary Stuart with Darnley. See "MARY STUART: HER REIGN AND EXECUTION," X, 51. Brilliant defence of Malta by La Valette against the Turks, led by Mustapha Pacha. Massacre of the Huguenots in Florida. See "FOUNDING OF ST. AUGUSTINE," X, 70. 1566. A petition of rights presented to the Regent by nobles of the Netherlands. See "REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS AGAINST SPAIN," X, 81. Moscow sacked by the Crim Tartars. Murder of Rizzio by Darnley. See "MARY STUART: HER REIGN AND EXECUTION," X, 51. 1567. Defeat and assassination of Shane O'Neil. Renewal of the civil-religious war in France; Battle of St. Denis. Murder of Darnley; Mary marries Bothwell; she is imprisoned and compelled to resign the crown. See "MARY STUART: HER REIGN AND EXECUTION," X, 51. Organization of the "Council of Blood" by the Duke of Alva, on his arrival in the Netherlands as Spanish governor. Founding of the Royal Exchange, London. 1568. Peace of Longjumeau with the Huguenots; assembling of Protestant leaders at La Rochelle. Thousands of the better classes of the Netherlands take refuge in England from the persecutions of the Spaniards. Execution of Egmont and Horn at Brussels; arms taken against the Spaniards by Louis of Nassau and William of Orange, his brother. 1569. Insurrection of Roman Catholics in England. Battle of Jarnac; defeat of the Huguenots; Condé taken and shot; Coligny defeated at Moncontour. Under the sovereignty of the Medici is created the grand duchy of Tuscany out of the Florentine dominions. 1570. Murra, Regent of Scotland, assassinated; the English invade that country; Earl Lennox made regent. Revolt of the Moors in Spain crushed by John of Austria. 1571. Battle of Lepanto; the Holy League, consisting of Spain, Venice, and the Pope, wins a great victory over the Turks. See "BATTLE OF LEPANTO," X, 100. Dumbarton, the main stronghold of the adherents of Mary Stuart, falls into the possession of the Earl of Lennox. The Thirty-nine Articles are made binding on the clergy of the Church of England. 1572. Trial, condemnation, and execution of the Duke of Norfolk for conspiracy, in England. Marriage of Margaret of Valois, sister of Charles IX, with Henry of Navarre; Massacre of St. Bartholomew. See "MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW," X, 119. Rising of the Dutch against their Spanish oppressors; recognition of the authority of William of Orange. 1573. Successful defence of La Rochelle; the treaty of La Rochelle grants toleration to the Huguenots. Haarlem reduced by the Spaniards; they besiege Leyden. See "HEROIC AGE OF THE NETHERLANDS," X, 145. Building of Manila which is made the seat of the Spanish viceroy in the Philippines. 1574. Coronation of Henry, Duke of Anjou, as King of Poland; he becomes King of France on the death of his brother, Charles IX; he abandons Poland. 1575. Queen Elizabeth of England is offered the sovereignty of the Netherlands. Foundation of the University of Leyden, in commemoration of the siege and relief of that city. Stephen Bathori, Prince of Transylvania, elected king of Portugal. 1576. Devastation of Italy by the plague; Titian, the painter, is one of the victims. First voyage of Frobisher in search of a northwest passage. See "SEARCH FOR THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE BY FROBISHER," X, 156. Organization by Henry, Duke of Guise, of the Catholic League against the Huguenots. Appointment of Don John of Austria as governor of the Netherlands, by his half-brother, Philip II of Spain. "BUILDING OF THE FIRST THEATRE IN ENGLAND." See X, 163. 1577. Peace of Bergerac, the sixth one between Henry III and the Huguenots. Many of Titian's finest works destroyed in a great fire at Venice. Sailing of Sir Francis Drake on his circumnavigation of the globe. 1578. Treaty of alliance concluded between England and the Netherlands. Invasion of Morocco by King Sebastian of Portugal; he is defeated and slain at Alcazar-Quivir. Battle of Gembloux; great victory of Don John; on his death the Duke of Parma succeeds as Spanish governor of the Netherlands. Attempt of the Norwegians to interrupt the English commerce with Archangel; Queen Elizabeth asserts the right freely to navigate all seas. 1579. Union of Utrecht; foundation of the Dutch Republic. A force of Spaniards invade Ireland. Confinement of Tasso as a lunatic by the Duke of Ferrara. 1580. Persecution by the Protestants of Jesuits and seminary priests in England. Outlawry of William of Orange, by Philip II of Spain, inviting his assassination. Seizure of Portugal by Philip II. 1581. Conquest of Siberia by the Cossacks. See "COSSACK CONQUEST OF SIBERIA," x, 181. Declaration of independence formally issued by the Seven United Provinces of the Netherlands. Founding of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. 1582. Reformation of the calendar by Gregory XIII. October 5th of this year is made October 15th. 1583. Gilbert takes possession of Newfoundland for Queen Elizabeth. See "FIRST COLONY OF ENGLAND BEYOND SEAS," x, 198. Failing in his treacherous attempt on Antwerp the Duke of Anjou retires into France, covered with disgrace. 1584. Assassination of William, Prince of Orange, at the instigation of Philip II of Spain. See "ASSASSINATION OF WILLIAM OF ORANGE," x, 202. Alliance between Philip II and the Catholic League. Queen Elizabeth dismisses the Spanish ambassador Mendoza. Having embraced Protestantism the Archbishop of Cologne is expelled his territories. Visit of Sir Walter Raleigh's men to South Carolina; the name Virginia given to the district. See "NAMING OF VIRGINIA: FIRST DESCRIPTION OF THE INDIANS," x, 211. 1585. Renewal of the war against the Huguenots, the "War of the Three Henrys." Capture of Antwerp by Parma; an English army sent to aid the Dutch. Attack on the Spanish settlements in the West Indies by a powerful English fleet under Drake and Frobisher. Ambassadors from Japan received at Rome by Pope Gregory XIII. Coaches first used in England. 1586. An unsuccessful settlement made by Raleigh's men on Roanoke Island. Trial and condemnation of Mary Stuart. See "MARY STUART: HER REIGN AND EXECUTION," X, 51. Conspiracy of Babbington against Queen Elizabeth. Drake returns with an immense booty; he takes back the Virginian colonists; they introduce potatoes and tobacco into England. 1587. Henry of Navarre defeats the army of Henry III at Coutras. Sigismund Vasa elected King of Poland. Expedition of Drake against the Spanish harbors. See "DRAKE CAPTURES CARTAGENA," X, 230. Cabal of "the Sixteen" in Paris. 1588. Publication of the first English newspaper, by Lord Burghley, _The English Mercury_. It announced the defeat of the Invincible Armada. See "DEFEAT OF THE SPANISH ARMADA," X, 251. Revolt against Henry III in Paris; "Day of the Barricades." 1589. End of the Valois line in France; inauguration of the Bourbon dynasty. Invention of the stocking-knitting frame by Lee, of Cambridge, England. 1590. Battle of Ivry; Henry IV defeats the Catholic League; he lays siege to Paris, which is relieved by the Duke of Parma. Establishment of the first paper-mill in England. Publication of three books of Spenser's _Faerie Queene_, the _Arcadia_ of Sidney, and part of Marlowe's _Tamburlane_. 1591. Elizabeth sends an army to assist Henry IV in France; it besieges Rouen; it is relieved by Parma. 1592. Introduction of the sale of books at the fair of Leipsic. Building of the Théâtre Français at Paris. Abolishment of Episcopacy and establishment of Presbyterianism in Scotland. 1593. "HENRY OF NAVARRE ACCEPTS CATHOLICISM." See X, 276. Severe enactments against the recusants in England. Conformation to Catholicism by Henry IV; Pope Clement VIII refuses to absolve him. The Parliament of Paris declares against foreign interference and female succession. Publication of Shakespeare's _Venus and Adonis_. 1594. Jesuits expelled Paris. Coronation of Henry IV at Chartres; Paris opens its gates to him. 1595. Declaration of war against Spain by Henry IV. 1596. Crushing defeat of the Austrians by the Turks in Hungary. Writing of _Romeo and Juliet_ by Shakespeare. Capture of Cadiz by Essex and Howard. 1597. Rebellion in Ireland of Tyrone. Abolition of the Hanseatic League's privileges in England. 1598. Toleration granted to the Huguenots. Treaty of Vervins, securing peace between France and Spain. Founding of the Bodleian Library at Oxford, England. Shakespeare performs in his own plays at the new Globe theatre, London. 1599. Essex sent to Ireland to crush the rebellion there; he treats with the rebel leader. Attempt of Sigismund Vasa to establish Catholicism in Sweden; he loses the crown. 1600. Establishment of the English East India Company. Invasion and occupation of Savoy by the French; marriage of Henry IV with Marie de' Medici. Giordano Bruno burned in Rome as an obstinate heretic. 1601. Suppression of the rebellion in Ireland; complete tranquillity restored by Mountjoy, Elizabeth's general. Commencement of the siege of Ostend by Archduke Albert of Austria. Enactment of the earliest "poor law in England." 1602. Beheading of the Due de Biron for conspiring against King Henry IV. Failure of the Duke of Savoy in an attempt to seize Geneva. Attempted settlement of Bartholomew Gosnold on the coast of Massachusetts. 1603. Death of Queen Elizabeth; James VI of Scotland succeeds as James I, King of Great Britain. "DOWNFALL OF IRISH LIBERTY." See X, 299. Committal to the Tower of Sir Walter Raleigh, on a charge of conspiring to place Arabella Stuart on the English throne. Publication of Shakespeare's _Hamlet_. See "CULMINATION OF DRAMATIC LITERATURE IN 'HAMLET,'" X, 287. A French colony founded at Port Royal, Acadia; now Nova Scotia. 1604. Conference at Hampton Court between English prelates and Puritans, James I presiding. Ostend surrenders to the Spanish general, Spinola. 1605. Detection of the Gunpowder Plot. See "THE GUNPOWDER PLOT," X, 310. Publication of Bacon's _Advancement of Learning_. Cervantes' _Don Quixote_, Part I, published. See "CERVANTES' 'DON QUIXOTE' REFORMS LITERATURE," X, 325. Death of the Russian Czar, Boris Godunoff; Fedor, his son, is dethroned; his successor being the first Pseudo-Demetrius. This impostor pretended to be Demetrius, a son of Ivan IV, who was put to death by Boris Godunoff in 1591. Battle of Bassorah; defeat of the Turks by Abbas the Great, of Persia. 1606. A patent granted to the London and Plymouth companies for the purpose of American colonization. Dethronement of the first Pseudo-Demetrius; he is slain; Shinski succeeds as Basil V. Discovery of Australia by the Portuguese. See "EARLIEST POSITIVE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA," X, 340. 1607. Naval victory of the Hollanders over the Spaniards off Cape St. Vincent. Foundation of Jamestown, Virginia. See "SETTLEMENT OF VIRGINIA," X, 350. 1608. Ireland secures an improved government from James I; the forfeited lands in Ulster are offered to Protestant settlers. Foundation of Quebec by the French. See "FOUNDING OF QUEBEC," X, 366. Formation of the Evangelical Union by the Protestant German states. END OF VOLUME X 
27562	----	[Illustration: Jeanne d'Arc stands, banner in hand, during the coronation of Charles VII before the high altar at Rheims. Painting by J. E. Lenepveu.] THE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS +------------------------------------------------------+ | A COMPREHENSIVE AND READABLE ACCOUNT OF THE WORLD'S | | HISTORY, EMPHASIZING THE MORE IMPORTANT EVENTS, AND | | PRESENTING THESE AS COMPLETE NARRATIVES IN THE | | MASTER-WORDS OF THE MOST EMINENT HISTORIANS | +------------------------------------------------------+ NON-SECTARIAN NON-PARTISAN NON-SECTIONAL +------------------------------------------------------+ | ON THE PLAN EVOLVED FROM A CONSENSUS OF OPINIONS | | GATHERED FROM THE MOST DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARS OF | | AMERICA AND EUROPE, INCLUDING BRIEF INTRODUCTIONS BY | | SPECIALISTS TO CONNECT AND EXPLAIN THE CELEBRATED | | NARRATIVES, ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY, WITH THOROUGH | | INDICES, BIBLIOGRAPHIES, CHRONOLOGIES, AND COURSES | | OF READING | +------------------------------------------------------+ EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ROSSITER JOHNSON, LL.D. ASSOCIATE EDITORS CHARLES F. HORNE, Ph.D. JOHN RUDD, LL.D. _With a staff of specialists_ _VOLUME VII_ The National Alumni COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY THE NATIONAL ALUMNI CONTENTS VOLUME VII page _An Outline Narrative of the Great Events_, xiii CHARLES F. HORNE _Dante Composes the_ Divina Commedia _(A.D. 1300-1318)_, 1 RICHARD WILLIAM CHURCH _Third Estate Joins in the Government of France (A.D. 1302)_, 17 HENRI MARTIN _War of the Flemings with Philip the Fair of France (A.D. 1302)_, 23 EYRE EVANS CROWE _First Swiss Struggle for Liberty (A.D. 1308)_, 28 F. GRENFELL BAKER _Battle of Bannockburn (A.D. 1314)_, 41 ANDREW LANG _Extinction of the Order of Knights Templars Burning of Grand Master Molay (A.D. 1314)_, 51 F. C. WOODHOUSE HENRY HART MILMAN _James van Artevelde Leads a Flemish Revolt Edward III of England Assumes the Title of King of France (A.D. 1337-1340)_, 68 FRANÇOIS P. G. GUIZOT _Battles of Sluys and Crécy (A.D. 1340-1346)_, 78 SIR JOHN FROISSART _Modern Recognition of Scenic Beauty Crowning of Petrarch at Rome (A.D. 1341)_, 93 JACOB BURCKHARDT _Rienzi's Revolution in Rome (A.D. 1347)_, 104 RICHARD LODGE _Beginning and Progress of the Renaissance (Fourteenth to Sixteenth Century)_, 110 JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS _The Black Death Ravages Europe (A.D. 1348)_, 130 J. F. C. HECKER GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO _First Turkish Dominion in Europe Turks Seize Gallipoli (A.D. 1354)_, 147 JOSEPH VON HAMMER-PURGSTALL _Conspiracy and Death of Marino Falieri at Venice (A.D. 1355)_, 154 MRS. MARGARET OLIPHANT _Charles IV of Germany Publishes His Golden Bull (A.D. 1356)_, 160 SIR ROBERT COMYN _Insurrection of the Jacquerie in France (A.D. 1358)_, 164 SIR JOHN FROISSART _Conquests of Timur the Tartar (A.D. 1370-1405)_, 169 EDWARD GIBBON _Dancing Mania of the Middle Ages (A.D. 1374)_, 187 J. F. C. HECKER _Election of Antipope Clement VII Beginning of the Great Schism (A.D. 1378)_, 201 HENRY HART MILMAN _Genoese Surrender to Venetians (A.D. 1380)_, 213 HENRY HALLAM _Rebellion of Wat Tyler (A.D. 1381)_, 217 JOHN LINGARD _Wycliffe Translates the Bible into English (A.D. 1382)_ 227 J. PATERSON SMYTH _The Swiss Win Their Independence Battle of Sempach (A.D. 1386-1389)_ 238 F. GRENFELL BAKER _Union of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway (A.D. 1397)_, 243 PAUL C. SINDING _Deposition of Richard II Henry IV Begins the Line of Lancaster (A.D. 1399)_, 251 JOHN LINGARD _Discovery of the Canary Islands and the African Coast Beginning of Negro Slave Trade (A.D. 1402)_, 266 SIR ARTHUR HELPS _Council of Constance (A.D. 1414)_, 284 RICHARD LODGE _Trial and Burning of John Huss The Hussite Wars (A.D. 1415)_, 294 RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH _The House of Hohenzollern Established in Brandenburg (A.D. 1415)_, 305 THOMAS CARLYLE _Battle of Agincourt English Conquest of France (A.D. 1415)_, 320 JAMES GAIRDNER _Jeanne d'Arc's Victory at Orleans (A.D. 1429)_, 333 SIR EDWARD S. CREASY _Trial and Execution of Jeanne d'Arc (A.D. 1431)_, 350 JULES MICHELET _Charles VII Issues His Pragmatic Sanction Emancipation of the Gallican Church (A.D. 1438)_, 370 W. HENLEY JERVIS RENÉ F. ROHRBACHER _Universal Chronology (A.D. 1301-1438)_, 385 JOHN RUDD LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS VOLUME VII page _Jeanne d'Arc stands, banner in hand, during the coronation of Charles VII, before the high altar at Rheims (page 347)_, Frontispiece Painting by J. E. Lenepveu. _Richard II resigns the crown of England to Henry, Duke of Lancaster, son of John of Gaunt, at London_, 262 Painting by Sir John Gilbert. AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, CONNECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE GREAT EVENTS (FROM DANTE TO GUTENBERG: THE EARLIER RENAISSANCE) CHARLES F. HORNE Fifty years ago the term "renaissance" had a very definite meaning to scholars as representing an exact period toward the close of the fourteenth century when the world suddenly reawoke to the beauty of the arts of Greece and Rome, to the charm of their gayer life, the splendor of their intellect. We know now that there was no such sudden reawakening, that Teutonic Europe toiled slowly upward through long centuries, and that men learned only gradually to appreciate the finer side of existence, to study the universe for themselves, and look with their own eyes upon the life around them and the life beyond. Thus the word "renaissance" has grown to cover a vaguer period, and there has been a constant tendency to push the date of its beginning ever backward, as we detect more and more the dimly dawning light amid the darkness of earlier ages. Of late, writers have fallen into the way of calling Dante the "morning star of the Renaissance"; and the period of the great poet's work, the first decade of the fourteenth century, has certainly the advantage of being characterized by three or four peculiarly striking events which serve to typify the tendencies of the coming age. In 1301 Dante was driven out of Florence, his native city-republic, by a political strife. In this year, as he himself phrases it, he descended into hell; that is, he began those weary wanderings in exile which ended only with his life, and which stirred in him the deeps that found expression in his mighty poem, the _Divina Commedia_.[1] Throughout his masterpiece he speaks with eager respect of the old Roman writers, and of such Greeks as he knew--so we have admiration of the ancient intellect. He also speaks bitterly of certain popes, as well as of other more earthly tyrants--so we have the dawnings of democracy and of religious revolt, of government by one's self and thought for one's self, instead of submission to the guidance of others. More important even than these in its immediate results, Dante, while he began his poem in Latin, the learned language of the time, soon transposed and completed it in Italian, the corrupted Latin of his commoner contemporaries, the tongue of his daily life. That is, he wrote not for scholars like himself, but for a wider circle of more worldly friends. It is the first great work in any modern speech. It is in very truth the recognition of a new world of men, a new and more practical set of merchant intellects which, with their growing and vigorous vitality, were to supersede the old. In that same decade and in that same city of Florence, Giotto was at work, was beginning modern art with his paintings, was building the famous cathedral there, was perhaps planning his still more famous bell-tower. Here surely was artistic wakening enough. If we look further afield through Italy we find in 1303 another scene tragically expressive of the changing times. The French King, Philip the Fair, so called from his appearance, not his dealings, had bitter cause of quarrel with the same Pope Boniface VIII who had held the great jubilee of 1300. Philip's soldiers, forcing their way into the little town of Anagni, to which the Pope had withdrawn, laid violent hands upon his holiness. If measured by numbers, the whole affair was trifling. So few were the French soldiers that in a few days the handful of towns-folk in Anagni were able to rise against them, expel them from the place and rescue the aged Pope. He had been struck--beaten, say not wholly reliable authorities--and so insulted that rage and shame drove him mad, and he died. Not a sword in all Europe leaped from its scabbard to avenge the martyr. Religious men might shudder at the sacrilege, but the next Pope, venturing to take up Boniface's quarrel, died within a few months under strong probabilities of poison; and the next Pope, Clement V, became the obedient servant of the French King. He even removed the seat of papal authority from Rome to Avignon in France, and there for seventy years the popes remained. The breakdown of the whole temporal power of the Church was sudden, terrible, complete. INCREASING POWER OF FRANCE Following up his religious successes, Philip the Fair attacked the mighty knights of the Temple, the most powerful of the religious orders of knighthood which had fought the Saracens in Jerusalem. The Templars, having found their warfare hopeless, had abandoned the Holy Land and had dwelt for a generation inglorious in the West. Philip suddenly seized the leading members of the order, accused it of hideous crimes, and confiscated all its vast wealth and hundreds of strong castles throughout France. He secured from his French Pope approval of the extermination of the entire order and the torture and execution of its chiefs. Whether the charges against them were true or not, their helplessness in the grip of the King shows clearly the low ebb to which knighthood had fallen, and the rising power of the monarchs. The day of feudalism was past.[2] We may read yet other signs of the age in the career of this cruel, crafty King. To strengthen himself in his struggle against the Pope, he called, in 1302, an assembly or "states-general" of his people; and, following the example already established in England, he gave a voice in this assembly to the "Third Estate," the common folk or "citizens," as well as to the nobles and the clergy. So even in France we find the people acquiring power, though as yet this Third Estate speaks with but a timid and subservient voice, requiring to be much encouraged by its money-asking sovereigns, who little dreamed it would one day be strong enough to demand a reckoning of all its tyrant overlords.[3] Another event to be noted in this same year of 1302 took place farther northward in King Philip's domains. The Flemish cities Ghent, Liège, and Bruges had grown to be the great centres of the commercial world, so wealthy and so populous that they outranked Paris. The sturdy Flemish burghers had not always been subject to France--else they had been less well to-do. They regarded Philip's exactions as intolerable, and rebelled. Against them marched the royal army of iron-clad knights; and the desperate citizens, meeting these with no better defence than stout leather jerkins, led them into a trap. At the battle of Courtrai the knights charged into an unsuspected ditch, and as they fell the burghers with huge clubs beat out such brains as they could find within the helmets. It was subtlety against stupidity, the merchant's shrewdness asserting itself along new lines. King Philip had to create for himself a fresh nobility to replenish his depleted stock.[4] The fact that there is so much to pause on in Philip's reign will in itself suggest the truth, that France had grown the most important state in Europe. This, however, was due less to French strength than to the weakness of the empire, where rival rulers were being constantly elected and wasting their strength against one another. If Courtrai had given the first hint that these iron-clad knights were not invincible in war, it was soon followed by another. The Swiss peasants formed among themselves a league to resist oppression. This took definite shape in 1308 when they rebelled openly against their Hapsburg overlords.[5] The Hapsburg duke of the moment was one of two rival claimants for the title of emperor, and was much too busy to attend personally to the chastisement of these presumptuous boors. The army which he sent to do the work for him was met by the Swiss at Morgarten, among their mountain passes, overwhelmed with rocks, and then put to flight by one fierce charge of the unarmored peasants. It took the Austrians seventy years to forget that lesson, and when a later generation sent a second army into the mountains it was overthrown at Sempach. Swiss liberty was established on an unarguable basis.[6] A similar tale might be told of Bannockburn, where, under Bruce, the Scotch common folk regained their freedom from the English.[7] Courtrai, Morgarten, Bannockburn! Clearly a new force was growing up over all Europe, and a new spirit among men. Knighthood, which had lost its power over kings, seemed like to lose its military repute as well. The development of the age was, of course, most rapid in Italy, where democracy had first asserted itself. In its train came intellectual ability, and by the middle of the fourteenth century Italy was in the full swing of the intellectual renaissance.[8] In 1341 Petrarch, recognized by all his contemporary countrymen as their leading scholar and poet, was crowned with a laurel wreath on the steps of the Capitol in Rome. This was the formal assertion by the age of its admiration for intellectual worth. To Petrarch is ascribed the earliest recognition of the beauty of nature. He has been called the first modern man. In reading his works we feel at last that we speak with one of our own, with a friend who understands.[9] THE PERIOD OF DISASTER Unfortunately, however, the democracy of Italy proved too intense, too frenzied and unbalanced. Rienzi established a republic in Rome and talked of the restoration of the city's ancient rule. But he governed like a madman or an inflated fool, and was slain in a riot of the streets.[10] Scarce one of the famous cities succeeded in retaining its republican form. Milan became a duchy. Florence fell under the sway of the Medici. In Venice a few rich families seized all authority, and while the fame and territory of the republic were extended, its dogeship became a mere figurehead. All real power was lodged in the dread and secret council of three.[11] Genoa was defeated and crushed in a great naval contest with her rival, Venice.[12] Everywhere tyrannies stood out triumphant. The first modern age of representative government was a failure. The cities had proved unable to protect themselves against the selfish ambitions of their leaders. In Germany and the Netherlands town life had been, as we have seen, slower of development.[13] Hence for these Northern cities the period of decay had not yet come. In fact, the fourteenth century marks the zenith of their power. Their great trading league, the Hansa, was now fully established, and through the hands of its members passed all the wealth of Northern Europe. The league even fought a war against the King of Denmark and defeated him. The three northern states, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, fell almost wholly under the dominance of the Hansa, until, toward the end of the century, Queen Margaret of Denmark, "the Semiramis of the North," united the three countries under her sway, and partly at least upraised them from their sorry plight.[14] On the whole this was not an era to which Europe can look back with pride. The empire was a scene of anarchy. One of its wrangling rulers, Charles IV, recognizing that the lack of an established government lay at the root of all the disorder, tried to mend matters by publishing his "Golden Bull," which exactly regulated the rules and formulæ to be gone through in choosing an emperor, and named the seven "electors" who were to vote. This simplified matters so far as the repeatedly contested elections went; but it failed to strike to the real difficulty. The Emperor remained elective and therefore weak.[15] Moreover, in 1346 the "Black Death," most terrible of all the repeated plagues under which the centuries previous to our own have suffered, began to rear its dread form over terror-stricken Europe.[16] It has been estimated that during the three years of this awful visitation one-third of the people of Europe perished. Whole cities were wiped out. In the despair and desolation of the period of scarcity that followed, humanity became hysterical, and within a generation that oddest of all the extravagances of the Middle Ages, the "dancing mania," rose to its height. Men and women wandered from town to town, especially in Germany, dancing frantically, until in their exhaustion they would beg the bystanders to beat them or even jump on them to enable them to stop.[17] France and England were also in desolation. The long "Hundred Years' War" between them began in 1340. France was not averse to it. In fact, her King, Philip of Valois, rather welcomed the opportunity of wresting away Guienne, the last remaining French fief of the English kings. France, as we have seen, was regarded as the strongest land of Europe. England was thought of as little more than a French colony, whose Norman dukes had in the previous century been thoroughly chastised and deprived of half their territories by their overlord. To be sure, France was having much trouble with her Flemish cities, which were in revolt again under the noted brewer-nobleman, Van Artevelde,[18] yet it seemed presumption for England to attack her--England, so feeble that she had been unable to avenge her own defeat by the half-barbaric Scots at Bannockburn. But the English had not nearly so small an opinion of themselves as had the rest of Europe. The heart of the nation had not been in that strife against the Scots, a brave and impoverished people struggling for freedom. But hearts and pockets, too, welcomed the quarrel with France, overbearing France, that plundered their ships when they traded with their friends the Flemings. The Flemish wool trade was at this time a main source of English wealth, so Edward III of England, than whom ordinarily no haughtier aristocrat existed, made friends with the brewer Van Artevelde, and called him "gossip" and visited him at Ghent, and presently Flemings and English were allied in a defiance of France. By asserting a vague ancestral claim to the French throne, Edward eased the consciences of his allies, who had sworn loyalty to France; and King Philip had on his hands a far more serious quarrel than he realized.[19] In England's first great naval victory, Edward destroyed the French fleet at Sluys and so started his country on its wonderful career of ocean dominance. Moreover, his success established from the start that the war should be fought out in France and not in England.[20] Then, in 1346, he won his famous victory of Crécy against overwhelming numbers of his enemies. It has been said that cannon were effectively used for the first time at Crécy, and it was certainly about this time that gunpowder began to assume a definite though as yet subordinate importance in warfare. But we need not go so far afield to explain the English victory. It lay in the quality of the fighting men. Through a century and a half of freedom, England had been building up a class of sturdy yeomen, peasants who, like the Swiss, lived healthy, hearty, independent lives. France relied only on her nobles; her common folk were as yet a helpless herd of much shorn sheep. The French knights charged as they had charged at Courtrai, with blind, unreasoning valor; and the English peasants, instead of fleeing before them, stood firm and, with deadly accuracy of aim, discharged arrow after arrow into the soon disorganized mass. Then the English knights charged, and completed what the English yeomen had begun. Poitiers, ten years later, repeated the same story; and what with the Black Death sweeping over the land, and these terrible English ravaging at will, France sank into an abyss of misery worse even than that which had engulfed the empire. The unhappy peasantry, driven by starvation into frenzied revolt, avenged their agony upon the nobility by hideous plunderings and burnings of the rich châteaux.[21] A partial peace with England was patched up in 1360; but the "free companies" of mercenary soldiers, who had previously been ravaging Italy, had now come to take their pleasure in the French carnival of crime, and so the plundering and burning went on until the fair land was wellnigh a wilderness, and the English troops caught disease from their victims and perished in the desolation they had helped to make. By simply refusing to fight battles with them and letting them starve, the next French king, Charles V, won back almost all his father had lost; and before his death, in 1380, the English power in France had fallen again almost to where it stood at the beginning of the war. Edward III had died, brooding over the emptiness of his great triumph. His son the Black Prince had died, cursing the falsity of Frenchmen. England also had gone through the great tragedy of the Black Death and her people, like those of France, had been driven to the point of rebellion--though with them this meant no more than that they felt themselves over-taxed.[22] The latter part of the fourteenth century must, therefore, be regarded as a period of depression in European civilization, of retrograde movement during which the wheels of progress had turned back. It even seemed as though Asia would once more and perhaps with final success reassert her dominion over helpless Europe. The Seljuk Turks who, in 1291, had conquered Acre, the last European stronghold in the Holy Land, had lost their power; but a new family of the Turkish race, the one that dwells in Europe to-day, the Osmanlis, had built up an empire by conquest over their fellows, and had begun to wrest province after province from the feeble Empire of the East. In 1354 their advance brought them across the Bosporus and they seized their first European territory.[23] Soon they had spread over most of modern Turkey. Only the strong-walled Constantinople held out, while its people cried frantically to the West for help. The invaders ravaged Hungary. A crusade was preached against them; but in 1396 the entire crusading army, united with all the forces of Hungary, was overthrown, almost exterminated in the battle of Nicopolis. Perhaps it was only a direct providence that saved Europe. Another Tartar conqueror, Timur the Lame, or Tamburlaine, had risen in the Far East.[24] Like Attila and Genghis Khan he swept westward asserting sovereignty. The Sultan of the Turks recalled all his armies from Europe to meet this mightier and more insistent foe. A gigantic battle, which vague rumor has measured in quite unthinkable numbers of combatants and slain, was fought at Angora in 1402. The Turks were defeated and subjugated by the Tartars. Timur's empire, being founded on no real unity, dissolved with his death, and the various subject nations reasserted their independence. Yet Europe was granted a considerable breathing space before the Turks once more felt able to push their aggressions westward. THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE Toward the close of this unlucky fourteenth century a marked religious revival extended over Europe. Perhaps men's sufferings had caused it. Many sects of reformers appeared, protesting sometimes against the discipline, sometimes the doctrines, of the Church. In Germany Nicholas of Basel established the "Friends of God." In England Wycliffe wrote the earliest translation of the Bible into any of our modern tongues.[25] The Avignon popes shook off their long submission to France and returned to Italy, to a Rome so desolate that they tell us not ten thousand people remained to dwell amid its stupendous ruins. Unfortunately this return only led the papacy into still deeper troubles. Several of the cardinals refused to recognize the Roman Pope and elected another, who returned to Avignon. This was the beginning of the "Great Schism" in the Church.[26] For forty years there were two, sometimes three, claimants to the papal chair. The effect of their struggles was naturally to lessen still further that solemn veneration with which men had once looked up to the accepted vicegerent of God on earth. Hitherto the revolt against the popes had only assailed their political supremacy; but now heresies that included complete denial of the religious authority of the Church began everywhere to arise. In England Wycliffe's preachings and pamphlets grew more and more opposed to Roman doctrine. In Bohemia John Huss not only said, as all men did, that the Church needed reform, but, going further, he refused obedience to papal commands.[27] In short, the reformers, finding themselves unable to purify the Roman Church according to their views, began to deny its sacredness and defy its power. At length an unusually energetic though not oversuccessful emperor, Sigismund, the same whom the Turks had defeated at Nicopolis, persuaded the leaders of the Church to unite with him in calling a grand council at Constance.[28] This council ended the great schism and restored order to the Church by securing the rule of a single pope. It also burned John Huss as a heretic, and thereby left on Sigismund's hands a fierce rebellion among the reformer's Bohemian followers. The war lasted for a generation, and during its course all the armies of Germany were repeatedly defeated by the fanatic Hussites.[29] Another interesting performance of the Emperor Sigismund was that, being deep in debt, he sold his "electorate" of Brandenburg to a friend, a Hohenzollern, and thus established as one of the four chief families of the empire those Hohenzollerns who rose to be kings of Prussia and have in our own day supplanted the Hapsburgs as emperors of Germany.[30] Also worth noting of Sigismund is the fact that during the sitting of his Council of Constance he made a tour of Europe to persuade all the princes and various potentates to join it. When he reached England he was met by a band of Englishmen who waded into the sea to demand whether by his imperial visit he meant to assert any supremacy over England. Sigismund assured them he did not, and was allowed to land. We may look to this English parade of independence as our last reminder of the old mediæval conception of the Emperor as being at least in theory the overlord of the whole of Europe. LATTER HALF OF THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR By this time England had in fact recovered from her period of temporary disorder and depression. King Richard II, the feeble son of the Black Prince, had been deposed in 1399,[31] and a new and vigorous line of rulers, the Lancastrians, reached their culmination in Henry V (1415-1422). Henry revived the French quarrel, and paralleled Crécy and Poitiers with a similar victory at Agincourt.[32] The French King was a madman, and, aided by a civil war among the French nobility, Henry soon had his neighbor's kingdom seemingly helpless at his feet. By the treaty of Troyes he was declared the heir to the French throne, married the mad King's daughter, and dwelt in Paris as regent of the kingdom.[33] The Norman conquest of England seemed balanced by a similar English conquest of France. But the chances of fate are many. Both Henry and his insane father-in-law died in the same year, and while Henry left only a tiny babe to succeed to his claims, the French King left a full-grown though rather worthless son. This young man, Charles VII, continued to deny the English authority, from a safe distance in Southern France. He made, however, no effort to assert himself or retrieve his fortunes; and the English captains in the name of their baby King took possession of one fortress after another, till, in 1429, Orleans was the only French city of rank still barring their way from Charles and the far south.[34] Then came the sudden, wonderful arousing of the French under their peasant heroine, Jeanne d'Arc, and her tragic capture and execution.[35] At last even the French peasantry were roused; and the French nobles forgot their private quarrels and turned a united front against the invaders. The leaderless English lost battle after battle, until of all France they retained only Edward III's first conquest, the city of Calais. France, a regenerated France, turned upon the popes of the Council of Constance, and, remembering how long she had held the papacy within her own borders, asserted at least a qualified independence of the Romans by the "Pragmatic Sanction" which established the Gallican Church.[36] This semi-defiance of the Pope was encouraged by King Charles, who, in fact, made several shrewd moves to secure the power which his good-fortune, and not his abilities, had won. Among other innovations he established a "standing army," the first permanent body of government troops in Teutonic Europe. By this step he did much to alter the mediæval into the modern world; he did much to establish that supremacy of kings over both nobles and people which continued in France and more or less throughout all Europe for over three centuries to follow. Another sign of the coming of a new and more vigorous era is to be seen in the beginning of exploration down the Atlantic coast of Africa by the Portuguese, and their discovery and settlement of the Canary Isles. As a first product of their voyages the explorers introduced negro slavery into Europe[37]--a grim hint that the next age with increasing power was to face increasing responsibilities as well. An even greater change was coming, was already glimmering into light. In that same year of King Charles' Pragmatic Sanction (1438), though yet unknown to warring princes and wrangling churchmen, John Gutenberg, in a little German workshop, had evolved the idea of movable type, that is, of modern printing. From his press sprang the two great modern genii, education and publicity, which have already made tyrannies and slaveries impossible, pragmatic sanctions unnecessary, and which may one day do as much for standing armies. DANTE COMPOSES THE "DIVINA COMMEDIA" A.D. 1300-1318 RICHARD WILLIAM CHURCH Out of what may be called the civil and religious storm-and-stress period through which the Middle passed into the modern age, there came a great literary foregleam of the new life upon which the world was about to enter. From Italy, where the European ferment, both in its political and its spiritual character, mainly centred, came the prophecy of the new day, in a poet's "vision of the invisible world"--Dante's _Divina Commedia_--wherein also the deeper history of the visible world of man was both embodied from the past and in a measure predetermined for the human race. Dante's great epic was called by him a comedy because its ending was not tragical, but "happy"; and admiration gave it the epithet "divine." It is in three parts--_Inferno_ (hell), _Purgatorio_ (purgatory), and _Paradiso_ (paradise). It has been made accessible to English readers in the metrical translations of Carey, Longfellow, Norton, and others, and in the excellent prose version (_Inferno_) of John Aitken Carlyle, brother of Thomas Carlyle. Dante (originally Durante) Alighieri was born at Florence in May, 1265, and died at Ravenna September 14, 1321. Both the _Divina Commedia_ and his other great work, the _Vita Nuova_ (the new life), narrate the love--either romantic or passionate--with which he was inspired by Beatrice Portinari, whom he first saw when he was nine years old and Beatrice eight. His whole future life and work are believed to have been determined by this ideal attachment. But an equally noteworthy fact of his literary career is that his works were produced in the midst of party strifes wherein the poet himself was a prominent actor. In the bitter feuds of the Guelfs and Ghibellines he bore the sufferings of failure, persecution, and exile. But above all these trials rose his heroic spirit and the sublime voice of his poems, which became a quickening prophecy, realized in the birth of Italian and of European literature, in the whole movement of the Renaissance, and in the ever-advancing development of the modern world. Church's clear-sighted interpretations of the mind and life of Dante, and of the history-making _Commedia_, attest the importance of including the poet and his work in this record of Great Events. The _Divina Commedia_ is one of the landmarks of history. More than a magnificent poem, more than the beginning of a language and the opening of a national literature, more than the inspirer of art and the glory of a great people, it is one of those rare and solemn monuments of the mind's power which measure and test what it can reach to, which rise up ineffaceably and forever as time goes on marking out its advance by grander divisions than its centuries, and adopted as epochs by the consent of all who come after. It stands with the _Iliad_ and Shakespeare's plays, with the writings of Aristotle and Plato, with the _Novum Organon_ and the _Principia_, with Justinian's Code, with the Parthenon and St. Peter's. It is the first Christian poem; and it opens European literature, as the _Iliad_ did that of Greece and Rome. And, like the _Iliad_, it has never become out of date; it accompanies in undiminished freshness the literature which it began. We approach the history of such works, in which genius seems to have pushed its achievements to a new limit. Their bursting out from nothing, and gradual evolution into substance and shape, cast on the mind a solemn influence. They come too near the fount of being to be followed up without our feeling the shadows which surround it. We cannot but fear, cannot but feel ourselves cut off from this visible and familiar world--as we enter into the cloud. And as with the processes of nature, so it is with those offsprings of man's mind by which he has added permanently one more great feature to the world, and created a new power which is to act on mankind to the end. The mystery of the inventive and creative faculty, the subtle and incalculable combinations by which it was led to its work, and carried through it, are out of reach of investigating thought. Often the idea recurs of the precariousness of the result; by how little the world might have lost one of its ornaments--by one sharp pang, or one chance meeting, or any other among the countless accidents among which man runs his course. And then the solemn recollection supervenes that powers were formed, and life preserved, and circumstances arranged, and actions controlled, and thus it should be; and the work which man has brooded over, and at last created, is the foster-child too of that "Wisdom which reaches from end to end, strongly and sweetly disposing of all things." It does not abate these feelings that we can follow in some cases and to a certain extent the progress of a work. Indeed, the sight of the particular accidents among which it was developed--which belong perhaps to a heterogeneous and wildly discordant order of things, which are out of proportion and out of harmony with it, which do not explain it; which have, as it seems to us, no natural right to be connected with it, to bear on its character, or contribute to its accomplishment; to which we feel, as it were, ashamed to owe what we can least spare, yet on which its forming mind and purpose were dependent, and with which they had to conspire--affects the imagination even more than cases where we see nothing. We are tempted less to musing and wonder by the _Iliad_, a work without a history, cut off from its past, the sole relic and vestige of its age, unexplained in its origin and perfection, than by the _Divina Commedia_, destined for the highest ends and most universal sympathy, yet the reflection of a personal history, and issuing seemingly from its chance incidents. The _Divina Commedia_ is singular among the great works with which it ranks, for its strong stamp of personal character and history. In general we associate little more than the name--not the life--of a great poet with his works; personal interest belongs more usually to greatness in its active than its creative forms. But the whole idea and purpose of the _Commedia_, as well as its filling up and coloring, are determined by Dante's peculiar history. The loftiest, perhaps, in its aim and flight of all poems, it is also the most individual; the writer's own life is chronicled in it, as well as the issues and upshot of all things. It is at once the mirror to all time of the sins and perfections of men, of the judgments and grace of God, and the record, often the only one, of the transient names, and local factions, and obscure ambitions, and forgotten crimes of the poet's own day; and in that awful company to which he leads us, in the most unearthly of his scenes, we never lose sight of himself. And when this peculiarity sends us to history, it seems as if the poem which was to hold such a place in Christian literature hung upon and grew out of chance events, rather than the deliberate design of its author. History, indeed, here, as generally, is but a feeble exponent of the course of growth in a great mind and great ideas. It shows us early a bent and purpose--the man conscious of power and intending to use it--and then the accidents among which he worked; but how the current of purpose threaded its way among them, how it was thrown back, deflected, deepened by them, we cannot learn from history. It presents a broken and mysterious picture. A boy of quick and enthusiastic temper grows up into youth in a dream of love. The lady of his mystic passion dies early. He dreams of her still, not as a wonder of earth, but as a saint in paradise, and relieves his heart in an autobiography, a strange and perplexing work of fiction--quaint and subtle enough for a metaphysical conceit; but, on the other hand, with far too much of genuine and deep feeling. It is a first essay; he closes it abruptly as if dissatisfied with his work, but with the resolution of raising at a future day a worthy monument to the memory of her whom he has lost. It is the promise and purpose of a great work. But a prosaic change seems to come over his half-ideal character. The lover becomes the student--the student of the thirteenth century--struggling painfully against difficulties, eager and hot after knowledge, wasting eyesight and stinting sleep, subtle, inquisitive, active-minded and sanguine, but omnivorous, overflowing with dialectical forms, loose in premise and ostentatiously rigid in syllogism, fettered by the refinements of half-awakened taste and the mannerisms of the Provençals. Boethius and Cicero and the mass of mixed learning within his reach are accepted as the consolation of his human griefs; he is filled with the passion of universal knowledge, and the desire to communicate it. Philosophy has become the lady of his soul--to write allegorical poems in her honor, and to comment on them with all the apparatus of his learning in prose, his mode of celebrating her. Further, he marries; it is said, not happily. The antiquaries, too, have disturbed romance by discovering that Beatrice also was married some years before her death. He appears, as time goes on, as a burgher of Florence, the father of a family, a politician, an envoy, a magistrate, a partisan, taking his full share in the quarrels of the day. Beatrice reappears--shadowy, melting at times into symbol and figure--but far too living and real, addressed with too intense and natural feeling, to be the mere personification of anything. The lady of the philosophical Canzoni has vanished. The student's dream has been broken, as the boy's had been; and the earnestness of the man, enlightened by sorrow, overleaping the student's formalities and abstractions, reverted in sympathy to the earnestness of the boy, and brooded once more on that saint in paradise, whose presence and memory had once been so soothing, and who now seemed a real link between him and that stable country "where the angels are in peace." Round her image, the reflection of purity and truth and forbearing love, was grouped that confused scene of trouble and effort, of failure and success, which the poet saw round him; round her image it arranged itself in awful order--and that image, not a metaphysical abstraction, but the living memory, freshened by sorrow, and seen through the softening and hallowing vista of years, of Beatrice Portinari--no figment of imagination, but God's creature and servant. A childish love, dissipated by heavy sorrow--a boyish resolution, made in a moment of feeling, interrupted, though it would be hazardous to say, in Dante's case, laid aside, for apparently more manly studies, gave the idea and suggested the form of the "sacred poem of earth and heaven." And the occasion of this startling unfolding of the poetic gift, of this passage of a soft and dreamy boy into the keenest, boldest, sternest of poets, the free and mighty leader of European song, was, what is not ordinarily held to be a source of poetical inspiration--the political life. The boy had sensibility, high aspirations, and a versatile and passionate nature; the student added to this energy, various learning, gifts of language, and noble ideas on the capacities and ends of man. But it was the factions of Florence which made Dante a great poet. The connection of these feuds with Dante's poem has given to the Middle-Age history of Italy an interest of which it is not undeserving in itself, full as it is of curious exhibitions of character and contrivance, but to which politically it cannot lay claim, amid the social phenomena, so far grander in scale and purpose and more felicitous in issue, of other western nations. It is remarkable for keeping up an antique phase, which, in spite of modern arrangements, it has not yet lost. It is a history of cities. In ancient history all that is most memorable and instructive gathers round cities; civilization and empire were concentrated within walls; and it baffled the ancient mind to conceive how power should be possessed and wielded by numbers larger than might be collected in a single market-place. The Roman Empire, indeed, aimed at being one in its administration and law; and it was not a nation nor were its provinces nations, yet everywhere but in Italy it prepared them for becoming nations. And while everywhere else parts were uniting and union was becoming organization--and neither geographical remoteness nor unwieldiness of number nor local interests and differences were untractable obstacles to that spirit of fusion which was at once the ambition of the few and the instinct of the many; and cities, even where most powerful, had become the centres of the attracting and joining forces, knots in the political network--while this was going on more or less happily throughout the rest of Europe, in Italy the ancient classic idea lingered in its simplicity, its narrowness and jealousy, wherever there was any political activity. The history of Southern Italy, indeed, is mainly a foreign one--the history of modern Rome merges in that of the papacy; but Northern Italy has a history of its own, and that is a history of separate and independent cities--points of reciprocal and indestructible repulsion, and within, theatres of action where the blind tendencies and traditions of classes and parties weighed little on the freedom of individual character, and citizens could watch and measure and study one another with the minuteness of private life. Dante, like any other literary celebrity of the time, was not less from the custom of the day than from his own purpose a public man. He took his place among his fellow-citizens; he went out to war with them; he fought, it is said, among the skirmishers at the great Guelf victory at Campaldino; to qualify himself for office in the democracy, he enrolled himself in one of the guilds of the people, and was matriculated in the "art" of the apothecaries; he served the state as its agent abroad; he went on important missions to the cities and courts of Italy according to a Florentine tradition, which enumerates fourteen distinct embassies, even to Hungary and France. In the memorable year of jubilee, 1300, he was one of the priors of the Republic. There is no shrinking from fellowship and coöperation and conflict with the keen or bold men of the market-place and council hall, in that mind of exquisite and, as drawn by itself, exaggerated sensibility. The doings and characters of men, the workings of society, the fortunes of Italy, were watched and thought of with as deep an interest as the courses of the stars, and read in the real spectacle of life with as profound emotion as in the miraculous page of Vergil; and no scholar ever read Vergil with such feeling--no astronomer ever watched the stars with more eager inquisitiveness. The whole man opens to the world around him; all affections and powers, soul and sense, diligently and thoughtfully directed and trained, with free and concurrent and equal energy, with distinct yet harmonious purposes, seek out their respective and appropriate objects, moral, intellectual, natural, spiritual, in that admirable scene and hard field where man is placed to labor and love, to be exercised, proved, and judged. The outlines of this part of Dante's history are so well known that it is not necessary to dwell on them; and more than the outlines we know not. The family quarrels came to a head, issued in parties, and the parties took names; they borrowed them from two rival factions in a neighboring town, Pistoia, whose feud was imported into Florence; and the Guelfs became divided into the Black Guelfs, who were led by the Donati, and the White Guelfs, who sided with Cerchi. It is still professed to be but a family feud, confined to the great houses; but they were too powerful and Florence too small for it not to affect the whole Republic. The middle classes and the artisans looked on, and for a time not without satisfaction, at the strife of the great men; but it grew evident that one party must crush the other and become dominant in Florence; and of the two, the Cerchi and their White adherents were less formidable to the democracy than the unscrupulous and overbearing Donati, with their military renown and lordly tastes; proud not merely of being nobles, but Guelf nobles; always loyal champions, once the martyrs, and now the hereditary assertors, of the great Guelf cause. The Cerchi, with less character and less zeal, but rich, liberal, and showy, and with more of rough kindness and vulgar good-nature for the common people, were more popular in Guelf Florence than the _Parte Guelfa_; and, of course, the Ghibellines wished them well. Both the contemporary historians of Florence lead us to think that they might have been the governors and guides of the Republic--if they had chosen, and had known how; and both, though condemning the two parties equally, seem to have thought that this would have been the best result for the state. But the accounts of both, though they are very different writers, agree in their scorn of the leaders of the White Guelfs. They were upstarts, purse-proud, vain, and coarse-minded; and they dared to aspire to an ambition which they were too dull and too cowardly to pursue, when the game was in their hands. They wished to rule; but when they might, they were afraid. The commons were on their side, the moderate men, the party of law, the lovers of republican government, and for the most part the magistrates; but they shrank from their fortune, "more from cowardice than from goodness, because they exceedingly feared their adversaries." Boniface VIII had no prepossessions in Florence, except for energy and an open hand; the side which was most popular he would have accepted and backed. But he said, "_Io non voglio perdere gli uomini perle femminelle_."[38] If the Black party furnished types for the grosser or fiercer forms of wickedness in the poet's hell, the White party surely were the originals of that picture of stupid and cowardly selfishness, in the miserable crowd who moan and are buffeted in the vestibule of the Pit, mingled with the angels who dared neither to rebel nor be faithful, but "were for themselves"; and whoever it may be who is singled out in the _setta dei cattivi_, for deeper and special scorn--he, "Che fece per vilta il gran rifinto,"[39] the idea was derived from the Cerchi in Florence. Of his subsequent life, history tells us little more than the general character. He acted for a time in concert with the expelled party, when they attempted to force their way back to Florence; he gave them up at last in scorn and despair; but he never returned to Florence. And he found no new home for the rest of his days. Nineteen years, from his exile to his death, he was a wanderer. The character is stamped on his writings. History, tradition, documents, all scanty or dim, do but disclose him to us at different points, appearing here and there, we are not told how or why. One old record, discovered by antiquarian industry, shows him in a village church near Florence, planning with the Cerchi and the White party an attack on the Black Guelfs. In another, he appears in the Val di Magra, making peace between its small potentates; in another, as the inhabitant of a certain street in Padua. The traditions of some remote spots about Italy still connect his name with a ruined tower, a mountain glen, a cell in a convent. In the recollections of the following generation, his solemn and melancholy form mingled reluctantly, and for a while, in the brilliant court of the Scaligers; and scared the women, as a visitant of the other world, as he passed by their doors in the streets of Verona. Rumor brings him to the West--with probability to Paris, more doubtfully to Oxford. But little that is certain can be made out about the places where he was honored and admired, and, it may be, not always a welcome guest, till we find him sheltered, cherished, and then laid at last to rest, by the lords of Ravenna. There he still rests, in a small, solitary chapel, built, not by a Florentine, but a Venetian. Florence, "that mother of little love," asked for his bones, but rightly asked in vain. His place of repose is better in those remote and forsaken streets "by the shore of the Adrian Sea," hard by the last relics of the Roman Empire--the mausoleum of the children of Theodosius, and the mosaics of Justinian--than among the assembled dead of St. Croce, or amid the magnificence of Santa Maria del Fiore. The _Commedia_, at the first glance, shows the traces of its author's life. It is the work of a wanderer. The very form in which it is cast is that of a journey, difficult, toilsome, perilous, and full of change. It is more than a working out of that touching phraseology of the Middle Ages in which "the way" was the technical theological expression for this mortal life; and "viator" meant man in his state of trial, as "comprehensor" meant man made perfect, having attained to his heavenly country. It is more than merely this. The writer's mind is full of the recollections and definite images of his various journeys. The permanent scenery of the _inferno_ and _purgatorio_, very variously and distinctly marked, is that of travel. The descent down the sides of the Pit, and the ascent of the Sacred Mountain, show one familiar with such scenes--one who had climbed painfully in perilous passes, and grown dizzy on the brink of narrow ledges over sea or torrent. It is scenery from the gorges of the Alps and Apennines, or the terraces and precipices of the Riviera. Local reminiscences abound. The severed rocks of the Adige Valley--the waterfall of St. Benedetto; the crags of Pietra-pana and St. Leo, which overlook the plains of Lucca and Ravenna; the "fair river" that flows among the poplars between Chiaveri and Sestri; the marble quarries of Carrara; the "rough and desert ways between Lerici and Turbia," and whose towery cliffs, going sheer into the deep sea at Noli, which travellers on the Corniche road some thirty years ago may yet remember with fear. Mountain experience furnished that picture of the traveller caught in an Alpine mist and gradually climbing above it; seeing the vapors grow thin, and the sun's orb appear faintly through them; and issuing at last into sunshine on the mountain top, while the light of sunset was lost already on the shores below: "Ai raggi, morti gia' bassi lidi,"[40] or that image of the cold dull shadow over the torrent, beneath the Alpine fir: "Un' ombra smorta Qual sotto foglie verdi e rami nigri Sovra suoi freddi rivi, l'Alpe porta;"[41] or of the large snowflakes falling without wind among the mountains: "d'un cader lento Piovean di fuoco dilatate falde Come di neve in Alpe senza vento."[42] Of these years, then, of disappointment and exile the _Divina Commedia_ was the labor and fruit. A story in Boccaccio's life of Dante, told with some detail, implies, indeed, that it was begun, and some progress made in it, while Dante was yet in Florence--begun in Latin, and he quotes three lines of it--continued afterward in Italian. This is not impossible; indeed, the germ and presage of it may be traced in the _Vita Nuova_. The idealized saint is there, in all the grace of her pure and noble humbleness, the guide and safeguard of the poet's soul. She is already in glory with Mary the Queen of Angels. She already beholds the face of the Ever-blessed. And the _envoye_ of the _Vita Nuova_ is the promise of the _Commedia_. "After this sonnet" (in which he describes how beyond the widest sphere of heaven his love had beheld a lady receiving honor and dazzling by her glory the unaccustomed spirit)--"After this sonnet there appeared to me a marvellous vision, in which I saw things which made me resolve not to speak more of this blessed one until such time as I should be able to indite more worthily of her. And to attain to this, I study to the utmost of my power, as she truly knows. So that it shall be the pleasure of Him, by whom all things live, that my life continue for some years, I hope to say of her that which never hath been said of any woman. And afterward, may it please him, who is the Lord of kindness, that my soul may go to behold the glory of her lady, that is, of that blessed Beatrice, who gloriously gazes on the countenance of Him, _qui est per omnia secula benedictus_." It would be wantonly violating probability and the unity of a great life to suppose that this purpose, though transformed, was ever forgotten or laid aside. The poet knew not, indeed, what he was promising, what he was pledging himself to--through what years of toil and anguish he would have to seek the light and the power he had asked; in what form his high venture should be realized. But the _Commedia_ is the work of no light resolve, and we need not be surprised at finding the resolve and the purpose at the outset of the poet's life. We may freely accept the key supplied by the words of the _Vita Nuova_. The spell of boyhood is never broken, through the ups and downs of life. His course of thought advances, alters, deepens, but is continuous. From youth to age, from the first glimpse to the perfect work, the same idea abides with him, "even from the flower till the grape was ripe." It may assume various changes--an image of beauty, a figure of philosophy, a voice from the other world, a type of heavenly wisdom and joy--but still it holds, in self-imposed and willing thraldom, that creative and versatile and tenacious spirit. It was the dream and hope of too deep and strong a mind to fade and come to naught--to be other than the seed of the achievement and crown of life. But with all faith in the star and the freedom of genius, we may doubt whether the prosperous citizen would have done that which was done by the man without a home. Beatrice's glory might have been sung in grand though barbarous Latin to the _literati_ of the fourteenth century; or a poem of new beauty might have fixed the language and opened the literature of modern Italy; but it could hardly have been the _Commedia_. That belongs, in its date and its greatness, to the time when sorrow had become the poet's daily portion and the condition of his life. But such greatness had to endure its price and its counterpoise. Dante was alone--except in his visionary world, solitary and companionless. The blind Greek had his throng of listeners; the blind Englishman his home and the voices of his daughters; Shakespeare had his free associates of the stage; Goethe, his correspondents, a court, and all Germany to applaud. Not so Dante. The friends of his youth are already in the region of spirits, and meet him there--Casella, Forese; Guido Cavalcanti will soon be with them. In this upper world he thinks and writes as a friendless man--to whom all that he had held dearest was either lost or imbittered; he thinks and writes for himself. So comprehensive in interest is the _Commedia_. Any attempt to explain it, by narrowing that interest to politics, philosophy, the moral life, or theology itself, must prove inadequate. Theology strikes the keynote; but history, natural and metaphysical science, poetry, and art, each in their turn join in the harmony, independent, yet ministering to the whole. If from the poem itself we could be for a single moment in doubt of the reality and dominant place of religion in it, the plain-spoken prose of the _Convito_ would show how he placed "the Divine Science, full of all peace, and allowing no strife of opinions and sophisms, for the excellent certainty of its subject, which is God," is single perfection above all other sciences, "which are, as Solomon speaks, but queens or concubines or maidens; but she is the 'Dove,' and the 'perfect one'--'Dove,' because without stain of strife; 'perfect,' because perfectly she makes us behold the truth, in which our soul stills itself and is at rest." But the same passage shows likewise how he viewed all human knowledge and human interests, as holding their due place in the hierarchy of wisdom, and among the steps of man's perfection. No account of the _Commedia_ will prove sufficient which does not keep in view, first of all, the high moral purpose and deep spirit of faith with which it was written, and then the wide liberty of materials and means which the poet allowed himself in working out his design. Doubtless his writings have a political aspect. The "great Ghibelline poet" is one of Dante's received synonymes; of his strong political opinions, and the importance he attached to them, there can be no doubt. And he meant his poem to be the vehicle of them, and the record to all ages of the folly and selfishness with which he saw men governed. That he should take the deepest interest in the goings-on of his time is part of his greatness; to suppose that he stopped at them, or that he subordinated to political objects or feelings all the other elements of his poem, is to shrink up that greatness into very narrow limits. Yet this has been done by men of mark and ability, by Italians, by men who read the _Commedia_ in their own mother tongue. It has been maintained as a satisfactory account of it--maintained with great labor and pertinacious ingenuity--that Dante meant nothing more by his poem than the conflicts and ideal triumphs of a political party. The hundred cantos of that vision of the universe are but a manifesto of the Ghibelline propaganda, designed, under the veil of historic images and scenes, to insinuate what it was dangerous to announce; and Beatrice, in all her glory and sweetness, is but a specimen of the jargon and slang of Ghibelline freemasonry. When Italians write thus, they degrade the greatest name of their country to a depth of laborious imbecility, to which the trifling of schoolmen and academicians is as nothing. It is to solve the enigma of Dante's works by imagining for him a character in which it is hard to say which predominates, the pedant, mountebank, or infidel. After that we may read Voltaire's sneers with patience, and even enter with gravity on the examination of Father Hardouin's historic doubts. The fanaticism of an outraged liberalism, produced by centuries of injustice and despotism, is but a poor excuse for such perverse blindness. Dante was not a Ghibelline, though he longed for the interposition of an imperial power. Historically he did not belong to the Ghibelline party. It is true that he forsook the Guelfs, with whom he had been brought up, and that the White Guelfs, with whom he was expelled from Florence, were at length merged and lost in the Ghibelline party; and he acted with them for a time. But no words can be stronger than those in which he disjoins himself from that "evil and foolish company," and claims his independence-- "A te fia bello Averti fatto parte per te stesso."[43] Dante, by the _Divina Commedia_, was the restorer of seriousness in literature. He was so by the magnitude and pretensions of his work, and by the earnestness of its spirit. He first broke through the prescription which had confined great works to the Latin, and the faithless prejudices which, in the language of society, could see powers fitted for no higher task than that of expressing, in curiously diversified forms, its most ordinary feelings. But he did much more. Literature was going astray in its tone, while growing in importance; the _Commedia_ checked it. The Provençal and Italian poetry was, with the exception of some pieces of political satire, almost exclusively amatory, in the most fantastic and affected fashion. In expression, it had not even the merit of being natural; in purpose, it was trifling; in the spirit which it encouraged, it was something worse. Doubtless it brought a degree of refinement with it, but it was refinement purchased at a high price, by intellectual distortion and moral insensibility. But this was not all. The brilliant age of Frederick II, for such it was, was deeply mined by religious unbelief. However strange this charge first sounds against the thirteenth century, no one can look at all closely into its history, at least in Italy, without seeing that the idea of infidelity--not heresy, but infidelity--was quite a familiar one; and that, side by side with the theology of Aquinas and Bonaventura, there was working among those who influenced fashion and opinion, among the great men, and the men to whom learning was a profession, a spirit of scepticism and irreligion almost monstrous for its time, which found its countenance in Frederick's refined and enlightened court. The genius of the great doctors might have kept in safety the Latin schools, but not the free and home thoughts which found utterance in the language of the people, if the solemn beauty of the Italian _Commedia_ had not seized on all minds. It would have been an evil thing for Italian, perhaps for European, literature if the siren tales of the _Decameron_ had not been the first to occupy the ears with the charms of a new language. Dante's all-surveying, all-embracing mind was worthy to open the grand procession of modern poets. He had chosen his subject in a region remote from popular thought--too awful for it, too abstruse. He had accepted frankly the dogmatic limits of the Church, and thrown himself with even enthusiastic faith into her reasonings, at once so bold and so undoubting--her spirit of certainty, and her deep contemplations on the unseen and infinite. And in literature, he had taken as guides and models, above all criticism and all appeal, the classical writers. But with his mind full of the deep and intricate questions of metaphysics and theology, and his poetical taste always owing allegiance to Vergil, Ovid, and Statius--keen and subtle as a schoolman--as much an idolater of old heathen art and grandeur as the men of the Renaissance--his eye is yet as open to the delicacies of character, to the variety of external nature, to the wonders of the physical world--his interest in them as diversified and fresh, his impressions as sharp and distinct, his rendering of them as free and true and forcible, as little weakened or confused by imitation or by conventional words, his language as elastic and as completely under his command, his choice of poetic materials as unrestricted and original, as if he had been born in days which claim as their own such freedom and such keen discriminative sense of what is real in feeling and image--as if he had never felt the attractions of a crabbed problem of scholastic logic, or bowed before the mellow grace of the Latins. It may be said, indeed, that the time was not yet come when the classics could be really understood and appreciated; and this is true, perhaps fortunate. But admiring them with a kind of devotion, and showing not seldom that he had caught their spirit, he never attempts to copy them. His poetry in form and material is all his own. He asserted the poet's claim to borrow from all science, and from every phase of nature, the associations and images which he wants; and he showed that those images and associations did not lose their poetry by being expressed with the most literal reality. THIRD ESTATE JOINS IN THE GOVERNMENT OF FRANCE A.D. 1302 HENRI MARTIN[44] At the commencement of the fourteenth century, when the power of Philip IV of France (surnamed the "Fair") was at its height, contentions arose between him and Pope Boniface VIII over the taxation of the clergy, and the right of nomination to vacant bishoprics and benefices within the dominions of the French King. Affairs reached a crisis when Philip laid claim to the county of Melgueil, which the Bishop of Maguelonne held in fief from the holy see. Boniface provoked Philip by a chiding bull, and added to the provocation by sending to the King, as negotiator in their differences, Bernard de Saisset, whom the Pope, in spite of the King, had created Bishop of Pamiers. This tactless prelate made matters worse by an arrogant attitude, and afterward spoke of the King, who received him in sombre silence, as "that debaser of coinage, that proud and dumb image that knows nothing but to stare at people without saying anything." Ignoring his ambassadorial privileges, Philip had him arrested and imprisoned as a French subject, on a charge of treason, heresy, and blasphemy, and sent his chancellor, Peter Flotte, and William de Nogaret, to the Pope, to demand the prelate's degradation and deprivation of his see. The Pope, who meanwhile had launched his famous "Ausculta, fili," bull, received Philip's ambassadors, but their interview was marked by a violent scene: "My power!" exclaimed the Pope, "the spiritual power embraces and includes the temporal power!" "So be it!" replied Flotte, "but your power is verbal; that of the King, real." To deliberate on the remedies for the abuses of which he deemed the King guilty, the Pope summoned all the superior clergy of France to an assembly at Rome. Philip and his council resolved to fight the enemy with its own weapons, to enlist public opinion on their side, and to shelter themselves behind a great national manifestation; the three estates of France were convoked at Notre Dame in Paris, the 10th of April, 1302, to take cognizance of the differences between the King and the Pope. For the first time since the establishment of the kingdom of France, the town deputies were called to sit in a body in a national assembly, alongside of prelates and barons; this great event was the official acknowledgment of the middle class as the "Third Estate," and attested that henceforth the villages, the towns, the communities formed a collective entity, a political order. It is a singular thing that the first states-general was freely convoked by the most despotic of the kings of the Middle Ages, and that he had the idea to seek in them moral power and support. The attempt would seem foolhardy in a prince so little popular as Philip the Fair; but Philip in reality risked nothing, and knew it; the feudality did not possess sufficient union, the people did not have enough force to profit on this occasion against the Crown. Besides, the Pope was more unpopular than the King, and had been so for a much longer time; the nobility, which, since the reign of St. Louis, had coalesced to resist clerical jurisdiction, had not changed in sentiment; as to the people, filled with the remembrance of St. Louis, they loved the King still, better than the Pope, notwithstanding the oppressions of Philip, and besides it was easy to foresee that the mayors, consuls, aldermen, jurats or magistrates, who were to represent their cities in the great assembly at Paris, dazzled with the unaccustomed _rôle_ to which they were called, and desirous to please the King in their personal interest or in that of their towns, would be under the control of the adroit lawyers who were prepared to work on their minds and to direct the debates. The bull, nevertheless, if its exact tenor had been known, might well have produced in many respects a contrary effect to the wishes of the King. The reproaches of Boniface touching the debasement of the coinage and the royal exactions, reproaches which so irritated Philip, might have met with other sentiments from the townsmen. The chancellor, Peter Flotte, foresaw this; he distributed among the public, instead of the original bull, a species of _résumé_ in which he had assembled, in a few lines, in the crudest terms, the most exorbitant pretensions of Boniface, at the same time suppressing everything which touched on the troubles of the nation against the King. "Boniface, bishop, servant of the servants of God, to Philip, King of the French; fear God and observe his commandments. We want you to know that you are subject to us temporarily as well as spiritually; that the collation of the benefices and the prebends--revenues attached to the canonical positions--do not belong to you in any way; that if you have care of the vacant benefices, it is to reserve their revenue for their successors; that if you have misapplied any of these benefices, we declare that collation invalid and revoke it, declaring as heretics all those who think otherwise. "Given in the Lateran in the month of December, etc." At the same time they caused to be circulated a pretended answer to the pretended bull: "Philip, by the Grace of God, King of the French, to Boniface, who gives out that he is sovereign pontiff, little or no salutations! May your very great Fatuity know that we are subject to no one as regards temporal power: that the collation of vacant churches and prebends belongs to us by Royal Right; that the incomes belong to us; that the collations made and to be made by us are valid in the past and in the future, and that we will manfully protect their possessors toward and against all. Those who think otherwise we take to be fools and insane." This brutal letter was not destined to be sent to its address, but to abase the pontifical dignity, or at least the person of the Pope, in the eyes of the French public. The spirit of the people must have been greatly changed if this end could be thus attained by a means which formerly would have drawn universal indignation on the head of the sacrilegious monarch. The attack of Philip, on the contrary, was completely effectual. The prelates arrived at the states-general timid, irresolute, neutralized by the difficulties of their position between the King and the Pope; the lords and the townsmen hastened thither irritated against the bull, heated by the violence of the royal answer. The members of the assembly were influenced each by the other according to their arrival; the pungent and wily eloquence of Peter Flotte did the rest. The chancellor, as the first of the great crown officers and the king's chief justice, opened the states by a long harangue in which, speaking in the name of Philip, he exposed with much force and ingenuity the enterprises of the court of Rome and its wrongs toward the kingdom and the Church. "The Pope confers the bishoprics and the rectories on strangers and unknown individuals who never become residents. The prelates no longer have benefices to give to nobles whose ancestors founded the churches, and to other lettered persons; from which results also that gifts are no longer given to the churches. The Pope imposes on the churches and benefices pensions, subsidies, exactions of all kinds. The bishops are kept from their ministry, being obliged to go to the holy see to carry presents--always presents. All these abuses have done nothing but increase under the actual pontificate, and increase every day--conditions that can no longer be tolerated. That is why I command you as your master and pray you as your friend to give me counsel and help." The Chancellor added that the King had resolved, on his own initiative, to remedy the encroachments that his officers had made on the rights of the Church, and would have done so sooner had he not feared the appearance of submitting to the menaces and orders of the Pope, who pretended to reduce to a condition of vassalage the most noble kingdom of France, which had never been raised but from God. Peter Flotte dwelt especially on this latter argument, and appealed in turn to the interests of the nobility and of the clergy, and to national pride. The fiery Count of Artois arose, and exclaimed that even if the King submitted to the encroachments of the Pope, the nobility would not suffer them, and that the gentry would never acknowledge any temporal superior other than the King. The nobility and the Third Estate confirmed these words by their acclamations, and swore to sacrifice their properties and lives to defend the temporal independence of the kingdom. A Norman advocate, named Dubosc, procurator of the commune of Coutances, accused the Pope, in writing, of heresy for having wanted to despoil the King of the independence of the crown which he held from God. The embarrassment of the clergy was extreme; the members of the Church, fearing to be crushed in the crash between King and Pope, asked time for deliberation; their declaration in the assembly then being held, was insisted upon; already cries arose around them that whoever did not subscribe to the oath would be held as an enemy of the State; they acquiesced, satisfied apparently by an appearance of violence which would serve them for an excuse at Rome. They acknowledged themselves obliged, in common with the other orders, to defend the rights of the King and of the kingdom, whether they held estates from the King or not; then they prayed the King to be allowed to go to the council convoked by the Pope; the King and the barons declared themselves formally opposed. The three orders then separated, so as to write to the court at Rome each its own side of the affair; the letters of the nobility and of the Third Estate--which as may be imagined were all prepared in advance by the agents of the King, and were only subscribed to and sealed by the assistants--were addressed, not to the Pope, but to the college of cardinals. The despatch of the barons expresses rudely the tortuous and unreasonable enterprises of him who, at present, is at the seat and government of the Church, and declares that neither the nobility nor the universities nor the people require correction or imposition of any trouble, whether by the authority of the Pope or anyone else--unless it be from their sire, the King. This letter is signed, not only by the principal lords of the kingdom, but also by several great barons of the empire. The epistle of the mayors, aldermen, jurats, consuls, universities, communes, and communities of the towns of the kingdom of France has not been preserved. It is known only, by the answer that the cardinals made, that it was conceived in the same spirit as the letter of the barons. The letter of the clergy is quite in another style: the clerks address their very holy father and very holy sire, the Pope; expose to him the complaints of the King and of the nobility; the necessity in which they find themselves engaged to defend the King's rights, and the anger of the laity; the imminent rupture of France with the Roman Church--and even of the people with the clergy in general--and conjure the highest prudence of the Pope to conserve the ancient union by revoking the convocation of the ecclesiastical council. The states-general were dissolved immediately after the unique _séance_ which had so well responded to the desires of the King. The means employed to attain this result were not entirely loyal, nor was public opinion altogether free; it was but slightly enlightened on the grave debates that the authorities affected to submit to it. Nevertheless it was an important matter, this call to the French nation, and it must be acknowledged that the genius of France responded in proclaiming national independence, and in repelling the intervention of the court of Rome in the internal politics of the country. WAR OF THE FLEMINGS WITH PHILIP THE FAIR OF FRANCE A.D. 1302 EYRE EVANS CROWE Toward the beginning of the thirteenth century the people of Flanders, whose country had been for centuries a feudal dependency of France, were considerably advanced in wealth and importance. They had become restive under the French rule, and their discontent ripened into settled hostility. Common commercial interests drew them into friendship with England, and in the quarrel between Philip the Fair and Edward I, 1295, concerning Edward's rule in Guienne (Aquitaine) the Flemings allied themselves with the English King. In 1297 Philip invaded Flanders and gained several successes against the Flemings, who were feebly aided by King Edward. In 1299 the two kings settled their quarrel, and the Flemings were left to the vengeance of Philip, for in the pacification the court of Flanders was not included. A French army entered the Flemish territory, inflicted two defeats upon the Count's troops, and received the submission of the Count. Philip annexed Flanders to his crown and appointed a governor over the Flemings. In less than two years they rose in furious revolt. The insurrection began at Bruges, May 18, 1302, when over three thousand Frenchmen in that city were massacred by the insurgents. This massacre was called the "Bruges Matins." Such an outrage upon the French crown could not but bring upon the Flemings all the forces that Philip was able to muster. The two leading actions of the ensuing war--that at Courtrai, known as the "Battle of the Spurs," on account of the number of gilt spurs captured by the Flemings, and the engagement at Mons-la-Puelle--are described in the course of the narrative which follows. As a result of the battle of Courtrai the French nobility were nearly destroyed, and Philip found it necessary to recreate his titled bodies. The Flemings prepared to resist the storm. They chose Guy of Juliers, grandson of the Count of Flanders, to be their commander. Though a cleric, he did not hesitate to obey the call, in order to avenge his family, so cruelly betrayed by the French King. His brother, made prisoner at Furnes by the Count d'Artois, had perished in that rude Prince's keeping. His first attempt was to induce the people of Ghent to join the insurrection, but its rich burgesses preferred French rule to that of the Count of Flanders. Bruges, however, was supported by all the lesser and maritime towns of Flanders. Guy of Namur, a son of the Count, who had escaped to Germany, also returned with a body of soldiers from that country, and reassured the Flemings. These surprised one of the ducal manors, in which were five hundred French, and then took Courtrai, occupying the town, but not the castle. It was immediately besieged, as well as that of Cassel, the people of Ypres rallying to the French cause. The French garrison of the town of Courtrai sent pressing messengers for aid, and Robert of Artois marched with seven thousand knights and forty thousand foot, of which one-fourth were archers. The Flemish were but twenty thousand, of which none but the chiefs had horses. Neither was their armor nor their weapons of a perfect kind, the latter being a lance like a boar-spear, or a knotted stick pointed with iron, and called in Flemish a "good day." The princes of Juliers and Namur posted their combatants on the road which leads from Courtrai to Ghent, behind a canal that communicated with the river Lys. A priest came with the host, but, there being no time to receive the communion, each man took some earth in his mouth. The counts then knighted Pierre Konig and the chiefs of bands, and took their station on foot with the rest. The French had nine battalions or divisions, their archers or light troops being Lombards or Navarrese and Provençals. These the constable placed foremost, to commence the fight and harass the Flemings by their missiles. But the Count d'Artois overruled this manoeuvre, and called it a Lombard trick, reproaching the Constable de Nesle with appreciating the Flemings too highly because of his connection with them. (He had married a daughter of the Count of Flanders.) "If you advance as far as I shall," replied the Count, "you will go far enough, I warrant." So saying he put spurs to his horse and led on his knights; on which the Count d'Artois and the French squadrons charged also. This formidable cavalry could not reach the Flemings, but fell one over the other into the canal, which they had not perceived, and which was five fathoms wide and three deep. The Flemish counts, seeing the disorder, instantly passed the canal on either side to take advantage of it, and fell on the discomfited French. The battle was but a massacre. Numbers of the French nobles perished--the Count d'Artois, Godfrey of Brabant and his son, the counts of Eu and of Albemarle, the Constable and his brother, De Tanquerville, Pierre Flotte, the Chancellor, and Jacques de St. Pol--in all some six thousand knights. Louis of Clermont and one or two others escaped, to the damage of their reputation. This battle of Courtrai was fought on July 11, 1302. Had the war not been one exclusively of defence on the part of the Flemings, or had they had ambitious and adventurous chiefs, such a disaster might have endangered the throne of France. It was the Flemish democracy which had conquered, and its chiefs contented themselves with reducing the remaining cities, and expelling the gentry and rich citizens as of French inclinations. This reaction extended from Flanders into Brabant and Hainault. Philip in the mean time exerted all his activities and resources. Had he been an English king he would have called his parliament together, and have found national support and national supplies. The French King preferred having recourse to a recoinage. In 1294 he had forbidden any persons to keep plate unless they possessed an annual revenue of six thousand livres. He now ordered his bailies to deliver up their plate, and all non-functionaries to send half of theirs. Those who did so received payment in the new coin, and lost one-half thereby. A tax of one-fifth, or 20 per cent., of the annual revenue was levied on the land, and a twentieth was levied on the movable property. In the following year the King found it more advantageous to order that all prelates and barons should, for every five hundred livres of yearly revenue in land, furnish an armed and mounted gentleman for five months' service, while the non-noble was to furnish and keep up six infantry soldiers (_sergens de pied_) for every hundred hearths. This decree was a return to feudal military service, occasioned, no doubt, by the general disaffection caused by the raising of the war supplies in money. As if to recompense all classes for the severity of the exaction, Philip published an _ordonnance_ of reform for the protection of both laymen and ecclesiastics from the arbitrary encroachments or interference of his officers. Having thus set his realm in order, and collected an army of seventy thousand men at Arras, the King marched to meet the Flemings, who in equal force had mustered in the vicinity of Dovai. They kept, as at Courtrai, on the defensive; and the King of France, too cautious to attack them, allowed the whole autumn to pass, and returned to France after a campaign as inefficient as inglorious. Philip had been long involved in a controversy with Pope Boniface VIII, and the quarrel still continued. It was not till some time after the battle of Courtrai that the King at last, delivered from the menacing hostility of Rome, had leisure to turn his mind and efforts again toward Flanders. During the year 1303 he had sought to keep the Flemings at bay by bodies of Lombard and Tuscan infantry, whom his Florentine banker persuaded him to hire, and by Amadeus V, Duke of Savoy, who brought soldiers of that country to his aid. Although the long lances and more perfect armor of these troops gave them some advantage over the Flemings, the latter took and burned Therouanne, overran Artois, and laid siege to Tournai. Amadeus of Savoy, unable to overcome the Flemings by arms, recommended Philip to do so by treaty, and the King accordingly concluded a pacification, one condition of which was that the Count of Flanders should be released from prison to negotiate terms of fresh accommodation. The Flemings received the aged Count with respect; but he brought no terms which they were willing to accept; and he returned, as he had pledged his word, to captivity at Compiègne, where he soon after died. For the campaign of the following year Philip, in lieu of Italian infantry, took sixteen Genoese galleys into his pay, commanded by Rainier de Grimaldi. This admiral passed through the Straits of Gibraltar and assailed the maritime towns and shipping of Flanders. Guy of Namur mustered to oppose them a fleet of greater numbers; but the Genoese, accustomed to naval warfare, defeated the Flemings and took Guy of Namur prisoner. Philip, at the same time, assembled a large army at Tournai, and marched to Mons-la-Puelle, near Lille, where the Flemings, to the number of seventy thousand, were encamped within a circumvallation of cars and chariots. There was no Robert of Artois on this occasion to precipitate a rash onslaught, and by Philip's order the southern light troops harassed the Flemings all day with arrows and missiles, allowing them no repose. Toward the evening many of the French withdrew to refresh themselves and take off their armor; the King himself was of this number; the Flemings, perceiving this slackness, and divining the cause, poured forth from their encampment in three divisions, which at first drove all before them, and reached as far as the King's tent, then in full preparation for supper. The monarch himself, without armor or helmet, was fortunately not recognized; his secretary, De Boville, and two Parisians of the name of Gentien, whom Philip had always about his person, were slain before his eyes. The King withdrew, but it was to arm, mount on horseback, and cry out to his followers to stand their ground. He himself, says Villani, "one of the strongest and best made men of his time," fought valiantly until his brother Charles and most of the barons, recovering from the first panic, came to his rescue, and the Flemings were finally repulsed and put to the rout. William of Juliers fell on the side of the Flemings; the son of the Duke of Burgundy and many others on that of the French. Philip immediately laid siege to Lille, deeming the Flemings totally discomfited. They had, however, rallied, obtained reënforcements at Bruges and at Ghent, and in three weeks appeared to the number of fifty thousand before the King's camp at Lille, crying for battle. Philip called a council, and observed that "even a victory would be dearly purchased over a party so desperate." The Duke of Brabant and the Count of Savoy therefore undertook to negotiate with the Flemings, and Philip consented to grant them fair terms. He recognized their independent rights, agreed to liberate Robert, eldest son of Guido, Count of Flanders, as well as all those in captivity. He granted Robert and his son the fiefs which belonged to him in France, especially that of Nevers, and promised to give him investiture of the County of Flanders. The Flemings, on their side, consented to pay two hundred thousand livres, and to leave the King of France in possession of the three towns of Lille, Douai, and Béthune, that part of Flanders in which French was spoken. It was thus, at least, that the French interpreted the treaty, while the Flemings afterward alleged that French Flanders was merely a pledge for the payment of the money, not an alienation to the crown of France. FIRST SWISS STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY A.D. 1308 F. GRENFELL BAKER Owing to the fact that the house of Hapsburg had its origin in Switzerland, the accession of Rudolph I, founder of the Hapsburg dynasty, to the throne of Germany (1273), with the virtual headship of the Holy Roman Empire, was an event of great importance in the history of the Swiss cantons. To this day the paternal domains whence the Hapsburg family takes its name are a part of Swiss territory. The local administration, as well as such imperial offices as still remained in the free communities of Switzerland, were largely in the hands of this family long before it gave sovereigns to the empire itself. Its chiefs were the chosen champions or advocates of the district. Of the Swiss communities Uri seems to have first established its freedom within the empire, and in that canton liberty was most completely preserved from the perils that always threatened Switzerland in this period. Under Rudolph it was at first the policy of the empire to secure the attachment of the Swiss by making the two other cantons, Schwyz and Unterwalden, similarly independent. But toward the end of his reign the policy of Rudolph was so influenced by ambition for territorial expansion that the Swiss began to feel an encroachment upon their independence. In 1291, the year of Rudolph's death, the three cantons, fearing danger to their interests in the new settlement of the crown, formed a league for mutual protection and coöperation. The very parchment on which the terms of this union were written "has been preserved as a testimony to the early independence of the Forest Cantons, the Magna Charta of Switzerland." The formation of this confederacy may be regarded as the first combined preparation of the Swiss for that great struggle in defence of their liberties, in the history of which fact and legend, as shown in Baker's discriminating narrative, are romantically blended. The empire passed out of the Hapsburg control when Rudolph died, but the family again got possession of it in 1298, when Rudolph's son Albert was elected German king. In the following account the relations of Switzerland and Austria, under the renewed Hapsburg sovereignty, are circumstantially set forth. There can be little doubt that most of the many stories related by the Swiss of the cruelty and extortion of the Austrian bailies are wholly or in great part devoid of a historical basis of truth, as are the dates given for their occurrence. They doubtless sprang from the very natural feelings of hatred the mountaineers of the Forest State felt against a foreign master, who was probably only too ready to punish them for the part they took against him in the struggle for the imperial throne. Indeed, it was not till about two centuries after this period that any reference to the alleged cruelties of the Austrians can be found in the local records, though legends about them have been plentiful. Many and various are the stories that have come down to our times of the oppression and licentiousness of the bailies, most of which have probably gained much color by constant repetition, even if they were not wholly created by imagination and hatred of the Austrian rule. According to these accounts, the local despots imposed exorbitant fines for trivial offences, and frequently sent prisoners to Zug and Lucerne to be tried by Austrian judges. They levied enormously increased taxes and imports on every commodity, and exacted payment in the most merciless manner; they openly violated the liberties of the people, and chose every occasion to insult and degrade them. An oft-quoted instance of their cruelty is recorded of a bailie named Landenburg, who publicly reproved a peasant for living in a house above his station. On another occasion, having fined an old and much respected laborer, named Henry of Melchi, a yoke of oxen for an imaginary offence, the Governor's messenger jeeringly told the old man, who was lamenting that if he lost his cattle he could no longer earn his bread, that if he wanted to use a plough he had better draw it himself, being only a vile peasant. To this insult Henry's son Arnold responded by attacking the messenger and breaking his fingers, and then, fearing lest his act should bring down some serious punishment, fled to the mountains, and left his aged father to Landenburg's vengeance. The bailie confiscated his little property, imposed a heavy fine, and finally burned out both his eyes. The hot irons used in this barbarous punishment, the Swiss are fond of saying, went deeper than the tyrant intended, and penetrated to the hearts and aroused the sympathies of their ancestors to perform such acts of heroism that tyranny fled in fear from the land. The conduct of Arnold, however, can hardly at this period of his life warrant the eulogies bestowed upon his memory, though he subsequently figures as one of the "Men of Ruetli." Landenburg lived in a castle near Sarnen, in Unterwalden, where his imperious temper, his exactions, his cruelties, and his debaucheries aroused a universal feeling of hatred among the peasants, that culminated in his expulsion and the destruction of his stronghold. The latter is popularly believed to have occurred on January 1, 1308. As the bailie left his castle to attend mass, some forty determined peasants, who had already bound themselves by oath to free their country at a solemn meeting on the steep promontory over the Lake of Lucerne known as the Ruetli, appeared before him carrying sheep, fowls, and other customary presents, and thus gained admission to the castle. No sooner were they past the gates than, drawing the weapons they had till then concealed beneath their clothes, they disarmed the guard and took possession of the fortress. Other conspirators were admitted, and the people at once rose in revolt. Landenburg, hearing while still at church of what had occurred, managed to effect his escape, and fled to Lucerne. Of the other bailies, Gessler and Wolfenschiess are believed to have excited even more hatred than their colleague Landenburg, and to have exceeded him in acts of savage cruelty and vicious living. One example out of many similar ones will show the spirit in which the Swiss traditions have treated the memory of Wolfenschiess. On a certain day, finding that a peasant named Conrad, of Baumgarten, whose wife he had frequently tried in vain to seduce, was absent from home, Wolfenschiess entered Conrad's house and ordered his wife to prepare him a bath, at the same time renewing with ardor his former proposals. With the cunning of her sex, the wife feigned to be willing to accede to his wishes, and on the pretence of retiring to another room to undress sped to her husband, who quickly returned and slew Wolfenschiess while he was still in the bath. After this exploit an entrance was effected into the bailies' castle of Rotzberg by one of the conspirators, who was in the habit of paying nightly visits to a servant living in the castle, by means of a rope attached to her window, and who then admitted his companions, who were lying concealed in the moat. But, probably in consequence of his supposed connection with the legend of William Tell, the bailie to whom the name of Gessler has been given stands out more prominently in Swiss history than any other. Gessler's residence, according to tradition, was a strongly fortified castle built in the valley of Uri, near Altorf, and this he named Zwing Uri ("Uri's Restraint"). He used every means that cruelty or avarice could suggest in his conduct as governor, and incurred additional hatred from the methods he adopted to discover the members of a secret conspiracy he believed existed against him in the district. With this object in view, Gessler caused a pole, surmounted with the ducal cap of Austria, to be set up in the market-place at Altorf, before which emblem of authority he ordered every man to uncover and do reverence as he passed. The refusal of a peasant to obey this command, his arrest, trial, and condemnation to pierce with an arrow an apple placed on his own child's head, his dexterity in performing this feat, his escape from his enemies, his murder of the tyrant Gessler, the solemn compact sworn at Ruetli, and the revolutionary events that followed form the motive of the much-celebrated legend of William Tell. The mythical hero of this shadowy romance has long embodied in his person the virtues of the typical avenger of the wrongs of the poor and the oppressed against the tyranny of the rich and the powerful; his name has been honored and his manly deeds have been lauded in prose and verse by thousands in many lands for many centuries, exciting doubtless many a noble deed of self-denial, and spurring to the forefront many a popular act of patriotic daring. In Switzerland certainly this picturesque representative of liberty has done much to mould the political life, if not also to write many pages of the history of the people, and that in spite of the questionable morality of the received narrative of his career, and its unquestionable untruth. The emergence of the Swiss from slavery to freedom, as in the case of all other nations, was undoubtedly a gradual process, and there is now every reason for believing that the narrative relating to William Tell and the other heroes who are said to have been the prime instruments in the expulsion of the Austrian bailies from the districts of the Waldstaette are purely apocryphal, with a possible substratum of actual fact. It is sad for an individual, and still more so for a nation, to lose the illusions of youth, if not of innocence, and to awake to the knowledge of an unbeautiful reality, bereft of all fictitious adornment. When, however, the naked truth can be discovered--and that is seldom the case--it must be faced; if the national or individual mind cannot receive it, the fault lies with the immaturity or morbid condition of the former, not with the material of the latter. As the legend of William Tell is more devoid of actual historical foundation, and is more widely known and believed than are the many others related as the records of events happening at the period from which the Swiss date their independence, it may be as well to devote some little space to its consideration. All the local records that might possibly throw some light on the existence and career of Tell have now been thoroughly searched by many impartial and competent scholars, as well as by enthusiastic partisans, with the invariable result that, till a considerable lapse of years after the presumed date of their deaths, not one particle of evidence has been discovered tending to prove the identity of either William Tell or of the tyrant Gessler. On the other hand, many local authorities, as early as the beginning of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when the story was fully established, have gone out of their way to deny its truth and prove its entire falsity from their own researches. Materials, indeed, are many relating to the events that befell the Waldstaette during their conflicts with the bailies, whom they succeeded in expelling from their country; and it seems in the highest degree improbable that, had Tell and his friends lived and taken so prominent a part in effecting their country's freedom as is popularly assigned to them, they should have been entirely ignored by all contemporary writers, as well as by subsequent ones, for a hundred and fifty or two hundred years--yet such is the case. William Tell is supposed to have performed his heroic deeds in or about the year 1291, and not till between 1467 and 1474 are his acts recorded, when in a collection of the traditions of the Canton of Unterwalden, transcribed by a notary at Sarnen, an account is given of the apple episode and the subsequent escape of the famous archer, and his murder of Gessler, though nothing is said of his having taken part in a league to free his country or of his being the founder of the confederation. A little prior to the compilation of the _White Book of Sarnen_, as this collection is called, an anonymous poet composed a _Song of the Origin of the Confederation_, in which, although no reference is made to Gessler, the other details are related concerning William Tell shooting at the apple, the revolt of the peasants, the expulsion of the bailies, and the formation of a patriotic league. It is, of course, quite possible that a Gessler was killed by the peasants, as the name was common enough at the time, but no member of that family--the records of which have now been most carefully traced--held any office under the Austrians at that period in any of the Waldstaette, nor is it at all probable that Austrian bailies governed the districts later than 1231. Neither is it possible for a bailie named Gessler to have occupied the castle at the date assigned, the ruins of which have so long been pointed out as being those of his former abode. So, also, the celebrated Tell's Chapel on the Vier Waldstaette See, at Kuesnach, was certainly not built to commemorate the exploits of Schiller's and Rossini's Swiss hero. "The fact is that in Gessler we are confronted by a curious case of confusion in identity. At least three totally different men seem to have been blended into one in the course of an attempt to reconcile the different versions of the three cantons. Felix Hammerlin, of Zurich, in 1450, tells of a Hapsburg governor being on the little island of Schwanan, in the lake of Lowerz, who seduced a maid of Schwyz, and was killed by her brothers. Then there was another person, strictly historical, Knight Eppo, of Kuesnach, who, while acting as bailiff for the Duke of Austria, put down two revolts of the inhabitants in his district, one in 1284 and another in 1302. Finally, there was the tyrant bailiff mentioned in the ballad of Tell, who, by the way, a chronicler, writing in 1510, calls, not Gessler, but the Count of Seedorf. These three persons were combined, and the result was named Gessler." Moreover, it is extremely doubtful whether the green plateau of the Ruetli below Seelisberg, and some six hundred and fifty feet above the lake, with its miraculous springs, ever witnessed the patriotic gathering of the thirty-three peasants who, tradition asserts, there formed the league against Austrian rule, or heard the solemn oath they and their leaders, Stauffacher, Fuerst, and Arnold, mutually swore. In all probability the legend of Tell and the apple originated in Scandinavia, and was brought by the Alemanni into Switzerland; as into other lands. Saxo Grammaticus, in the _Withina Saga_, places the scene of a very similar story in that country, some three hundred years before the appearance of the Swiss version, and tells of a certain Danish king named Harold, the counterpart of Gessler, and one Toki, who played the same _rôle_ enacted by Tell. Like legends are also related of Olaf, Eindridi, and an almost identical one to that of William Tell of Egil, who, being ordered by King Nidung to shoot an apple off the head of the son of the former, took two arrows from his quiver and prepared to obey. On the King asking why he had selected two arrows, Egil replied, "To shoot thee, tyrant, with the second, should the first fail." Neither are similar narratives absent from the legends of other countries. Thus Reginald Scott says: "Puncher shot a penny on his son's head, and made ready another arrow to have slain the Duke of Rengrave, who commanded it." So also similar incidents occur in the tales of Adam Bell, _Clym of the Clough_, and William of Claudeslie in the _Percy Ballads_, and in the legends of many places in Northern Europe. On this subject Sir Francis Adams mentions, in a note to his valuable book on the Swiss Confederation, that a well-known citizen of Berne, in answer to his inquiry as to whether Tell ever existed, replied: "Not in Switzerland. If you travel in the Hasli districts you will find a distinct race of men, who are of Scandinavian origin, and I believe that their ancestors brought the legend with them." To this it may be added that philologists have long since traced the rude dialect of Oberhasli to its Scandinavian sources, and the physical characteristics of the people mark them as of different racial origin from those around them. At the period these events were in progress, or, rather, about the time that the Austrian bailies were expelled, toward the close of the thirteenth century, the Emperor's[45] attention was too fully occupied conducting a war against the Bishop of Basel to allow him to enforce his authority among the revolted Waldstaette. He did not, however, allow the peasants for long to enjoy the fruits of their energetic and successful action, as some six months later he headed a large army with which he intended to enforce obedience. The expedition thus begun led to Albert's tragic death, and reared another step leading to the final independence of the Swiss. On reaching Baden, in the Aargau, a halt was made in order to deliberate on the best mode of punishing the rebels. Here a general council of nobles decided, after careful deliberation, on the route to be taken, and the nature of the measures best calculated to enforce Albert's authority. On May 1, 1308, the Emperor, with a few followers, returned to Rheinfelden, in order to visit the Empress Elizabeth, preparatory to marching against the Waldstaette. Shortly before this time Albert had had a violent quarrel with his nephew John, son of Duke Rudolph of Swabia, touching the youth's paternal inheritance, which he persistently declined to allow John to take possession of, and whom he had, moreover, publicly insulted by offering him a coronet of twigs as the only recompense for his just claims. In spite of this quarrel Albert allowed John and four of his fastest friends to occupy a place in his suite when he left Baden to visit his consort. Albert's disregard of his nephew's resentment was further shown when the party arrived on the bank of the Reuss, as he allowed him, with his friends, to accompany him in the boat in which he crossed the river. The passage was made in safety, but just as the Emperor was stepping on shore near the town of Windisch, John and three of his companions struck him down with their swords, and after inflicting a number of severe wounds left him for dead. The unhappy monarch expired a few minutes after in the arms of a passing peasant woman. All this bloody scene took place in full view of the Emperor's train on the opposite side of the river, though no one apparently was able to render him assistance, probably from the absence of boats and the suddenness of the tragedy. The murderers succeeded in making good their escape, though two of them were afterward captured and executed, as were also a number of innocent people believed to be participators in the conspiracy. John himself was more fortunate, for, disguised as a monk, he managed for many years to hide his identity, and, after wandering in Tuscany unsuspected, eventually died in a monastery at Pisa. Albert's daughter Agnes, Queen of Hungary, "a woman unacquainted with the milder feelings of piety, but addicted to a certain sort of devotional habits and practices by no means inconsistent with implacable vindictiveness," fearfully avenged his murder. This woman appears to have been seized with a perfectly demoniacal mania for blood and revenge. Aided by those in authority, who feared lest a widespread conspiracy had been formed, she seized, on the slightest suspicion, hundreds of innocent victims and put them to death with all the ferocity of a famished beast. Members of nearly a hundred noble families, and at least a thousand persons of lower rank, of every age and of both sexes, fell beneath her savage vengeance. She is said to have further whetted her appetite for horrors by wading, at Fahrwangen, in the blood of sixty-three innocent knights, exclaiming the while, "This day we bathe in May-dew." But at last, after several months, even the implacable bloodthirstiness of the Hungarian Queen was satisfied, and the massacre ceased. Over the spot where Albert met his death Agnes built a monastery; she named it Koenigsfelden and enriched it with the spoils of her victims. Here she took up her abode for the remainder of her life, and for nearly fifty years practised the most rigid asceticism, and here, by the side of her parents, she was eventually buried. Koenigsfelden stood on the road from Basel to Baden and Zurich, and within sight of the castle of Hapsburg, the cradle of the house of Austria. Strenuous efforts were made by Albert's widow to obtain the succession to the imperial throne for her son, Frederick, Duke of Austria, but the choice of the prince-electors, headed by the Archbishop of Mainz, fell on Count Henry of Luxemburg, a liberal-minded and generous noble, who was accordingly crowned, under the title of Henry VII. During the short reign of this monarch he proved himself a wise and generous friend to the Swiss, whose privileges he confirmed. He made no effort to reimpose local governors on the people of the Waldstaette, but, on the contrary, confirmed the charters of Schwyz and Uri, granted one to Unterwalden, and acknowledged jurisdiction. After Henry's death, in 1313, civil war once more divided the empire through the rival contentions of Ludwig (Louis) of Bavaria and Albert's son, Frederick of Austria. In this contest the powerful monastery of Einsiedeln sided with the Austrian candidate, and through its influence induced the Bishop of Constance to place the large portion of Switzerland supporting the Bavarian cause under a sentence of excommunication. Between Einsiedeln and the Waldstaette there had long existed a feeling of bitter hostility, the canons resenting the independent spirit displayed by the peasants, and the latter remembering the many acts of arbitrary oppression they and their ancestors had suffered at the instance of the abbey. Indeed, actual hostilities were only prevented by the friendly, though interested, mediation of the citizens of Zurich, who were most anxious to preserve tranquillity in the territories of both, in order to allow their trade with Italy over the St. Gothard being carried on. They also favored peace, because since the Hapsburgs had refused permission to the peasants to enter Lucerne, these had been in the habit of bringing their cattle and dairy produce through Einsiedeln to the monks of Zurich. The action of the monks, however, in bringing about the serious sentence of excommunication so roused the spirit of the mountaineers that, headed by their Landammann, Werner Stauffacher, they attacked and captured the abbey, ransacked the whole building from cellar to altar, and carried off the monks captive to the town of Schwyz. This daring and sacrilegious act led Frederick--the hereditary avoyer of the abbey--to place the Waldstaette under the further punishment of the "ban of the empire." Both these sentences were alike fruitless in bringing the peasants to submission to the house of Austria. Shortly after, on Ludwig ascending the throne, the "ban" was removed by the new monarch, and, with the aid of the Archbishop of Mainz, the Metropolitan of Constance in 1315, the excommunication was also revoked. The triumph of Ludwig's claims over those of Frederick began that long series of deadly conflicts between the Swiss and the house of Austria that led the two nations for so many years to regard each other as natural and implacable enemies. At this time Austria was governed by Duke Leopold, a man of arrogant, passionate temper, of unscrupulous ambition, and brutal cruelty, according to the Swiss chronicles, but who, from other accounts, does not appear specially to have deserved this character. His hatred of the Swiss was greatly increased by their action in opposing his brother, Frederick, in the late contest. No sooner, indeed, were the troubles of that contest over than he prepared to wreak his vengeance, and once for all crush the power and independence of the Forest States, and, as he declared, "trample the audacious rustics under his feet." Rapidly collecting his forces, Leopold soon found himself at the head of fifteen thousand or twenty thousand well-armed men, including a large body of heavily equipped cavalry. These latter were then looked upon as the main strength of an army. Most of the ancient nobility of Hapsburg, Kyburg, and Lenzburg rallied to his banners, besides many of the lesser nobles and a contingent from Zurich, the citizens of which, deserting their natural allies, had formed a treaty with Austria. Against this formidable array the men of Schwyz, Uri, and Unterwalden were only able to muster some fourteen hundred men, who, however, made up for their want of weapons and discipline by the geographical advantages of the country, by their patriotism, unity, and determined bravery. Nothing now seemed to intervene between the Swiss and imminent destruction, when, viewing with a compassion, most rare in those days, the impending fate of the heroic mountaineers, the powerful Count of Toggenborg tried to negotiate a peace with the Duke. Leopold's terms, however, were so humiliating and evidently so insincere that nothing came of these proposals. On November 3, 1315, Leopold's army reached Baden, where a council was held to determine upon the details of the campaign, a campaign having for its object, as the Duke openly declared, "the extirpation of the whole race of the people of Waldstaette." The difficulties of the enterprise now began to show themselves, as several of Leopold's followers, being well acquainted with the nature of the country and the characters of the inhabitants, pointed out that both would offer a determined resistance. Finally, relying upon their numbers and superior arms, it was settled to march on Schwyz, through the Sattel Pass by Morgarten, making Zug the base of operations; and while a false attack should be threatened on the side of Arth, Unterwalden should be attacked from Lucerne, as well as by a large force under the Count of Strasburg by way of the Bruenig. Leopold himself was to lead the main army and enter Schwyz through the pass. Had these operations remained secret, or been carried out successfully, the course of Swiss history would probably have been very different from what it was; but fortunately for the cause of freedom, the Austrian plans became known in time, and failed signally when put to the test. According to ancient chronicles, as the Confederates were hurrying to repel the feint from Arth, a friendly Austrian baron, named Henry of Huenenberg, shot an arrow amid them bearing the message, "Guard Morgarten on the eve of St. Othmar." Be this as it may, the Swiss collected their little band on the Sattel, between which mountain and the eastern shore of the Lake of Egeri is situated the ever-memorable Pass of Morgarten. Here, on the night of November 14th, they collected a number of loose bowlders and tree-trunks, and then, having offered up prayers for the preservation of their country, they awaited with resolution the coming struggle. With the first dawn of morning the Austrian army--the first that ever entered the country--made its appearance in the pass, headed by Duke Leopold and his formidable cavalry. Suddenly, when the whole narrow defile was blocked with horse and foot, thousands of heavy stones and trees were hurled among them from the neighboring heights, where the peasant band, forming the Swiss force, lay concealed. The suddenness and vigor of this unexpected attack quickly threw the first ranks of the invaders into confusion, and caused a panic to seize the horses, many of which in their fright turned and trampled down the men behind. Rapidly the panic increased as the showers of missiles came tearing down, and soon the whole army was in a state of wild terror and confusion--a condition greatly assisted by the slippery nature of the ground. Then, with wild shouts, and brandishing their iron-studded clubs and their formidable halberts and scythes, down the mountain-side rushed, with the fury of their native avalanche, the heroic Confederates; and falling on their foes literally slew them by thousands. Many hundreds of the Austrians perished in the lake, the men of Zurich alone making a stand, and falling each where he fought. Few succeeded in effecting their escape from what was little less than a general butchery. On that memorable day all the flower of Austria's nobility lay dead within the country they had hoped so easily to conquer. The Duke, with a handful of followers, alone survived, and even these were forced to undergo many perils before they eventually arrived in safety at Winterthur. Neither were the other attacks, under the Count of Strasburg and the forces from Lucerne, more successful for the invaders. Both armies were repulsed with enormous loss by the men of Unterwalden, who gave no quarter, many of their opponents being their own countrymen from the estates of the abbey of Interlaken. After these signal victories the Swiss, according to ancient custom, offered up a solemn thanksgiving to almighty God for their success and the overthrow of their enemies; and then, having laden themselves with the spoils of the dead, they returned to their humble occupations, whence the defence of their country and their lives had called them away. Among the Swiss, Morgarten has always taken the first place in the long record of heroic victories that since 1315 has made the fame of Swiss arms second to none in Europe. This victory at once brought the Waldstaette out of their long obscurity, and placed them in the front rank as powerful and respected states in Switzerland. Leopold, on his return to Austria, was so satisfied with the ability of the "audacious rustics" to defend themselves that he made no further attempt to enter their country. BATTLE OF BANNOCKBURN A.D. 1314 ANDREW LANG After the submission of Scotland in 1303, at the end of Wallace's heroic struggle, Edward I undertook to complete the union of that kingdom with England. "But the great difficulty," says a historian, "in dealing with the Scots was that they never knew when they were conquered; and just when Edward hoped that his scheme for union was carried out, they rose in arms once more." The Scottish leader now was Robert Bruce, Lord of Annandale and Earl of Carrick. He had acted with Wallace, but afterward swore fealty to Edward. Still later he united with William Lamberton, Bishop of St. Andrews, against the English King. Edward heard of their compact while Bruce was in London, and the Scot fled to Dumfries. There, 1306, in the Church of the Gray Friars, he had an interview with John Comyn, called the Red Comyn--Bruce's rival for the Scottish throne--which ended in a violent altercation and the killing of Comyn by Bruce with a dagger. Next to the Baliols, Bruce was now nearest heir to the throne, and March 27, 1306, he was crowned. Edward now determined to take more vigorous measures than ever against the Scots. He denounced as traitors all who had participated in the murder of Comyn, and declared that all persons taken in arms would be put to death. He made great preparations for subduing Scotland, but while leading his army into that country, 1307, he died at Burgh-on-the-Sands, near Carlisle. Meanwhile Bruce, who ranks with Wallace as a Scottish hero, had suffered some reverses at the hands of the English. Under the Earl of Pembroke, in 1306, they took Perth and drove Bruce into the wilds of Athol. In the same year, at Dairy, Bruce was defeated by Comyn's uncle, Macdougal, Lord of Lorn, and escaped to Ireland. But in 1307 Bruce returned to Scotland and carried on the war against Edward II. The English were driven out of the strong places one by one; war alternated with diplomacy through several years; and at last came a crisis which roused the English government to a supreme effort. Stirling castle still held out, besieged by Edward Bruce, Robert's brother, 1313, but its surrender was promised by Mowbray, the governor, in the event of his not being relieved before June 24, 1314. The relieving of Stirling meant for the English a new invasion of Scotland. On both sides the strongest efforts were made--on the one side to relieve the castle, on the other to strengthen its besiegers. The opposing forces met in battle at Bannockburn, June 24, 1314, an action which has never been better described than in this characteristic recital by Professor Lang. Bannockburn, like the relief of Orleans, or Marathon, was one of the decisive battles of the world. History hinged upon it. If England had won, Scotland might have dwindled into the condition of Ireland--for Edward II was not likely to aim at a statesmanlike policy of union, in his father's manner. Could Scotland have accepted union at the first Edward's hands; could he have refrained from his mistreatment as we must think it of Baliol, the fortunes of the isle of Britain might have been happier. But had Scotland been trodden down at Bannockburn, the fortunes of the isle might well have been worse. The singular and certain fact is that Bannockburn was fought on a point of chivalry, on a rule in a game. England must "touch bar," relieve Stirling, as in some child's pastime. To the securing of the castle, the central gate of Scotland, north and south, England put forth her full strength. Bruce had no choice but to concentrate all the power of a now, at last, united realm, and stand just where he did stand. His enemies knew his purpose: by May 27th writs informed England that the Scots were gathering on heights and morasses inaccessible to cavalry. If ever Edward showed energy, it was in preparing for the appointed Midsummer Day of 1314. The _Rotuli Scotiæ_ contain several pages of his demands for men, horses, wines, hay, grain, provisions, and ships. Endless letters were sent to master mariners and magistrates of towns. The King appealed to his beloved Irish chiefs, O'Donnells, O'Flyns, O'Hanlens, MacMahons, M'Carthys, Kellys, O'Reillys, and O'Briens, and to _Hiberniæ Magnates, Anglico genere ortos_, Butlers, Blounts, De Lacys, Powers, and Russels. John of Argyll was made admiral of the western fleet, and was asked to conciliate the Islesmen, who, under Angus Og, were rallying to Bruce. The numbers of men engaged on either side in this war cannot be ascertained. Each kingdom had a year within which to muster and arm. "Then all that worthy were to fight Of Scotland, set all hale their might;" while Barbour makes Edward assemble not only "His own chivalry That was so great it was ferly," but also knights of France and Hainault, Bretagne and Gascony, Wales, Ireland, and Aquitaine. The whole English force is said to have exceeded one hundred thousand, forty thousand of whom were cavalry, including three thousand horses "barded from counter to tail," armed against stroke of sword or point of spear. The baggage train was endless, bearing tents, harness, "and apparel of chamber and hall," wine, wax, and all the luxuries of Edward's manner of campaigning, including _animalia_, perhaps lions. Thus the English advanced from Berwick, "Banners rightly fairly flaming, And pencels to the wind waving." On June 23d Bruce heard that the English host had streamed out of Edinburgh, where the dismantled castle was no safe hold, and were advancing on Falkirk. Bruce had summoned Scotland to tryst in Torwood, whence he could retreat at pleasure, if, after all, retreat he must. The Fiery Cross, red with blood of a sacrificed goat, must have flown through the whole of the Celticland. Lanarkshire, Douglasdale, and Ettrick Forest were mustered under the banner of Douglas, the mullets not yet enriched with the royal heart. The men of Moray followed their new earl, Randolph, the adventurous knight who scaled the rock of the castle of the Maidens. Renfrewshire, Bute, and Ayr were under the _fesse chequy_ of young Walter Stewart. Bruce had gathered his own Carrick men, and Angus Og led the wild levies of the Isles. Of stout spearmen and fleet-footed clansmen Bruce had abundance; but what were his archers to the archers of England, or his five hundred horse under Keith the mareschal, to the rival knights of England, Hainault, Guienne, and Almayne? Battles, however, are won by heads, as well as by hearts and hands. The victor of Glen Trool and Cruachen and London Hill knew every move in the game, while Randolph and Douglas were experts in making one man do the work of five. Bruce, too, had choice of ground, and the ground suited him well. To reach Stirling the English must advance by their left, along the so-called German way, through the village of St. Nian's, or by their right, through the Carse, partly enclosed, and much broken, in drainless days, by reedy lochans. Bruce did not make his final dispositions till he learned that the English meant to march by the former route. He then chose ground where his front was defended, first by the little burn of Bannock, which at one point winds through a cleugh with steep banks, and next by two morasses, Halbert's bog and Milton bog. What is now arable ground may have been a loch in old days, and these two marshes were then impassable by a column of attack. Between Charter's Hall--where Edward had his head-quarters--and Park's Mill was a marge of firm soil, along which a column could pass, in scrubby country, and between the bogs was a sort of bridge of dry land. By these two avenues the English might assail the Scottish lines. These approaches Bruce is said to have rendered difficult by pitfalls, and even by caltrops to maim the horses. He determined to fight on foot, the wooded country being difficult for horsemen, and the foe being infinitely superior in cavalry. His army was arranged in four "battles," with Randolph to lead the vaward and watch against any attempt to throw cavalry into Stirling. Edward Bruce commanded the division on the right, next the Torwood. Walter Stewart, a lad, with Douglas led the third division. Bruce himself and Angus Og, with the men of Carrick and the Celts, were in the rear. Bruce had no mind to take the offensive, and as at the Battle of the Standard, to open the fight with a charge of impetuous mountaineers. On Sunday morning mass was said, and men shrived them. "They thought to die in the mêlée, Or else to set their country free." They ate but bread and water, for it was the vigil of St. John. News came that the English had moved out of Falkirk, and Douglas and the Steward brought tidings of the great and splendid host that was rolling north. Bruce bade them make little of it in the hearing of the army. Meanwhile Philip de Mowbray, who commanded in Stirling, had ridden forth to meet and counsel Edward. His advice was to come no nearer; perhaps a technical relief was held to have already been secured by the presence of the army. Mowbray was not heard--"the young men" would not listen. Gloucester, with the van, entered the park, where he was met, as we shall see, and Clifford, Beaumont, and Sir Thomas Grey, with three hundred horsemen, skirted the wood where Randolph was posted, a clear way lying before them to the castle of Stirling. Bruce had seen this movement, and told Randolph that "a rose of his chaplet was fallen," the phrase attesting the King's love of chivalrous romance. To pursue horsemen with infantry seemed vain enough; but Randolph moved out of cover, thinking perhaps that knights adventurous would refuse no chance to fight. If this was his thought, he reckoned well. Beaumont cried to his knights, "Give ground, leave them fair field." Grey hinted that the Scots were in too great force, and Beaumont answered, "If you fear, fly!" "Sir," said Sir Thomas, "for fear I fly not this day!" and so spurred in between Beaumont and D'Eyncourt and galloped on the spears. D'Eyncourt was slain, Grey was unhorsed and taken. The three hundred lances of Beaumont then circled Randolph's spearmen round about on every side, but the spears kept back the horses. Swords, maces, and knives were thrown; all was done as by the French cavalry against the British squares at Waterloo, and all as vainly. The hedge of steel was unbroken, and, in the hot sun of June, a mist of dust and heat brooded over the battle. "Sic mirkness In the air above them was" as when the sons of Thetis and the Dawn fought under the walls of windy Troy. Douglas beheld the distant cloud, and rode to Bruce, imploring leave to hurry to Randolph's aid. "I will not break my ranks for him," said Bruce; yet Douglas had his will. But the English wavered, seeing his line advance, and thereon Douglas halted his men, lest Randolph should lose renown. Beholding this the spearmen of Randolph, in their turn, charged and drove the weary English horse and their disheartened riders. Meanwhile Edward had halted his main force to consider whether they should fight or rest. But Gloucester's party, knowing nothing of his halt, had advanced into the wooded park; and Bruce rode down to the right in his armor, and with a gold coronal on his basnet, but mounted on a mere palfrey. To the front of the English van, under Gloucester and Hereford, rode Sir Henry Bohun, a bow-shot beyond his company. Recognizing the King, who was arraying his ranks, Bohun sped down upon him, apparently hoping to take him. "He thought that he should dwell lightly, Win him, and have him at his will." But Bruce, in this fatal movement, when history hung on his hand and eye, uprose in his stirrups and clove Bohun's helmet, the axe breaking in that stroke. It was a desperate but a winning blow: Bruce's spears advanced, and the English van withdrew in half superstitious fear of the omen. His lords blamed Bruce, but "The King has answer made them none, But turned upon the axe-shaft, wha Was with the stroke broken in twa." "_Initium malorum hoc_" ("This was the beginning of evil"), says the English chronicler. After this double success in the Quatre Bras of the Scottish Waterloo, Bruce, according to Barbour, offered to his men their choice of withdrawal or of standing it out. The great general might well be of doubtful mind--was to-morrow to bring a second and a more fatal Falkirk? The army of Scotland was protected, as Wallace's army at Falkirk had been, by difficult ground. But the English archers might again rain their blinding showers of shafts into the broad mark offered by the clumps of spears, and again the English knights might break through the shaken ranks. Bruce had but a few squadrons of horse--could they be trusted to scatter the bowmen of the English forests, and to escape a flank charge from the far heavier cavalry of Edward? On the whole, was not the old strategy best, the strategy of retreat? So Bruce may have pondered. He had brought his men to the ring, and they voted for dancing. Meanwhile the English rested on a marshy plain "_outre_-Bannockburn" in sore discomfiture, says Gray. He must mean south of Bannockburn, taking the point of view of his father, at that hour captive in Bruce's camp. He tells us that the Scots meant to retire "into the Lennox, a right strong country"--this confirms, in a way, Barbour's tale of Bruce suggesting retreat--when Sir Alexander Seton, deserting Edward's camp, advised Bruce of the English lack of spirit, and bade him face the foe next day. To retire, indeed, was Bruce's, as it had been Wallace's, natural policy. The English would soon be distressed for want of supplies; on the other hand, they had clearly made no arrangements for an orderly retreat if they lost the day; with Bruce this was a motive for fighting them. The advice of Seton prevailed; the Scots would stand their ground. The sun of Midsummer Day rose on the rite of the mass done in front of the Scottish lines. Men breakfasted, and Bruce knighted Douglas, the Steward, and other of his nobles. The host then moved out of the wood, and the standards rose above the spears of the soldiers. Edward Bruce held the right wing; Randolph the centre; the left, under Douglas and the Steward, rested of St. Ninian's. Bruce, as he had arranged, was in reserve with Carrick and the Isles. "Will these men fight?" asked Edward, and Sir Ingram assured him that such was their intent. He advised that the English should make a feigned retreat, when the Scots would certainly break their ranks-- "Then prick we on them hardily." Edward rejected his old ruse, which probably would not have beguiled the Scottish leader. The Scots then knelt for a moment of prayer, as the Abbot of Inchafray bore the crucifix along the line; but they did not kneel to Edward. His van, under Gloucester, fell on Edward Bruce's division, where there was hand-to-hand fighting, broken lances, dying chargers, the rear ranks of Gloucester pressing vainly on the front ranks, unable to deploy for the straitness of the ground. Meanwhile, Randolph's men moved forward slowly with extended spears, "as they were plunged in the sea" of charging knights. Douglas and the Steward were also engaged, and the "hideous shower" of arrows was ever raining from the bows of England. This must have been the crisis of the fight, according to Barbour, and Bruce bade Keith with his five hundred horse charge the English archers on the flank. The bowmen do not seem to have been defended by pikes; they fell beneath the lances of the mareschal, as the archers of Ettrick had fallen at Falkirk. The Scottish archers now took heart, and loosed into the crowded and reeling ranks of England, while the flying bowmen of the south clashed against and confused the English charge. Then Scottish archers took to their steel sparths--who ever loved to come to hand strokes--and hewed into the mass of the English, so that the field, whither Bruce brought up his reserves to support Edward Bruce on the right, was a mass of wild, confused fighting. In this mellay the great body of the English army could deal no stroke, swaying helplessly as southern knights or northern spears won some feet of ground. So, in the space between Halbert's bog and the burn, the mellay rang and wavered, the long spears of the Scottish ranks unbroken and pushing forward, the ground before them so covered with fallen men and horses that the English advance was clogged and crushed between the resistance in front and the pressure behind. "God will have a stroke in every fight," says the romance of Malory. While the discipline was lost, and England was trusting to sheer weight and "who will pound longest," a fresh force, banners displayed, was seen rushing down the Gillies' Hill, beyond the Scottish right. The English could deem no less than that this multitude were tardy levies from beyond the Spey, above all when the slogans rang out from the fresh advancing host. It was a body of yeomen, shepherds, and camp-followers, who could no longer remain and gaze when fighting and plunder were in sight. With blankets fastened to cut saplings for banner-poles, they ran down to the conflict. The King saw them, and well knew that the moment had come: he pealed his ensenye--called his battle-cry--faint hearts of England failed; men turned, trampling through the hardy warriors who still stood and died; the knights who rode at Edward's rein strove to draw him toward the castle of Stirling. But now the foremost knights of Edward Bruce's division, charging on foot, had fought their way to the English King and laid hands on the rich trappings of his horse. Edward cleared his way with strokes of his mace; his horse was stabbed, but a fresh mount was found for him. Even Sir Giles de Argentine, the best knight on ground, bade Edward fly to Stirling castle. "For me, I am not of custom to fly," he said, "nor shall I do so now. God keep you!" Thereon he spurred into the press, crying "Argentine!" and died among the spears. None held his ground for England. The burn was choked with fallen men and horses, so that folk might pass dry-shod over it. The country people fell on and slew. If Bruce had possessed more cavalry, not an Englishman would have reached the Tweed. Edward, as Argentine bade him, rode to Stirling, but Mowbray told him that there he would be but a captive king. He spurred south, with five hundred horse, Douglas following with sixty, so close that no Englishman might alight, but was slain or taken. Laurence de Abernethy, with eighty horse, was riding to join the English, but turned, and with Douglas, pursued them. Edward reached Dunbar, whence he took boat for Berwick. In his terror he vowed to build a college of Carmelites, students in theology. It is Oriel College to-day, with a Scot for provost. Among those who fell on the English side were the son of Comyn, Gloucester, Clifford, Harcourt, Courtenay, and seven hundred other gentlemen of coat-armor were slain. Hereford (later), with Angus, Umfraville, and Sir Thomas Grey, was among the prisoners. Stirling, of course, surrendered. The sun of Midsummer Day set on men wounded and weary, but victorious and free. The task of Wallace was accomplished. To many of the combatants not the least agreeable result of Bannockburn was the unprecedented abundance of the booty. When campaigning Edward denied himself nothing. His wardrobe and arms; his enormous and apparently well-supplied array of food wagons; his ecclesiastical vestments for the celebration of victory; his plate; his siege artillery; his military chests, with all the jewelry of his young minion knights, fell into the hands of the Scots. Down to Queen Mary's reign we read, in inventories, about costly vestments "from the fight at Bannockburn." In Scotland it rained ransoms. The _Rotuli Scotiæ_, in 1314 full of Edward's preparation for war, in 1315 are rich in safe-conducts for men going into Scotland to redeem prisoners. One of these, the brave Sir Marmaduke Twenge, renowned at Stirling bridge, hid in the woods on Midsummer's Night, and surrendered to Bruce next day. The King gave him gifts and set him free unransomed. Indeed, the clemency of Bruce after his success is courteously acknowledged by the English chroniclers. This victory was due to Edward's incompetence, as well as to the excellent dispositions and indomitable courage of Bruce, and to "the intolerable axes" of his men. No measures had been taken by Edward to secure a retreat. Only one rally, at "the Bloody Fauld," is reported. The English fought widely, their measures being laid on the strength of a confidence which, after the skirmishes of Sunday, June 23d, they no longer entertained. They suffered what, at Agincourt, Crécy, Poitiers, and Verneuil, their descendants were to inflict. Horses and banners, gay armor and chivalric trappings, were set at naught by the sperthes and spears of infantry acting on favorable ground. From the dust and reek of that burning day of June, Scotland emerged a people, firm in a glorious memory. Out of weakness she was made strong, being strangely led through paths of little promise since the day when Bruce's dagger-stroke at Dumfries closed from him the path of returning. EXTINCTION OF THE ORDER OF KNIGHTS TEMPLARS BURNING OF GRAND MASTER MOLAY A.D. 1314 F. C. WOODHOUSE H. H. MILMAN The quarrel between Philip the Fair of France and Pope Boniface VIII, concerning the taxation of the clergy, and the right of nomination to vacant bishoprics within the dominions of Philip, had far-reaching effects. It led, in 1302, to the convocation of the first properly so-called Parliament in France, to offset the actions of the Pope, who excommunicated the King; and also to an expedition into Italy of a small body of French troops which made the Pope prisoner at Agnani, but were subsequently expelled with great loss of life. The Pope was reinstated, but died shortly afterward from brain fever; he was succeeded by Benedict XI, whom the King of France sought to placate, but unsuccessfully. Within nine months Benedict died, presumably from poison, and Philip, by his intrigues, was enabled to secure the election to the pontificate of Bertrand de Goth, who became pope as Clement V, and was pledged to the service of the French King. Philip, who had obstructed the operations of commerce by debasing the coin of the realm to meet the exigencies of the state, was always in want of money. His cupidity was excited by the wealth of the order of Knights Templars, and, emboldened by his successes over the spiritual power, he now entered upon the career of intrigue which resulted in the destruction and plunder of the order. The famous Order of the Temple of Jerusalem, founded in 1118 by a small band of nine French knights, sworn to protect Christian pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre, had become, in almost every kingdom of the West, a powerful, wealthy, semimilitary, semimonastic republic, governed by its own laws, animated by the closest corporate spirit, under the severest internal discipline, an all-pervading organization, independent alike of the civil power and of the spiritual hierarchy. During two centuries as crusaders, the knights fought valiantly and shed their blood in defence of the Sepulchre of our Lord, earning the devout admiration of Western Christendom, and receiving splendid endowments of lands, castles, and riches of all kinds as contributions to the cause of the holy wars. But despite their valor, Mahometan persistency prevailed, and the total expulsion of the Templars, with the rest of the Christian establishments from Palestine, followed the downfall of Acre in 1291. F. C. WOODHOUSE The loss of Palestine led indirectly to the ruin of the order of the Templars. The record is one of the dark episodes of history, encompassed with contradictions, full of surprises, painful to contemplate, whatever view may be taken, whichever side espoused. It is difficult to understand how an order of men who for nearly two hundred years earned the thanks and praise of Christendom for their bravery and devotion; who had shed blood like water to defend the places dearest to all Christian hearts; who had been recruited from the noblest families in every country in Europe, and had had princes of royal blood in their ranks; who claimed to act upon the purest and most exalted Christian principles; and who proved the sincerity of their professions by their lives of self-sacrifice, and their deaths, for the cause they had taken up; who had been honored and favored and dowered with gifts and privileges, in gratitude for their exploits--should suddenly have fallen into the blackest crimes. So it is no less difficult to understand how public opinion should turn against them as it did, and how all Europe should set itself to disgrace and despoil, to malign and execrate, those who had so long been its favorites and its champions. It is not easy to understand this, and it is painful to read the story in its sad and miserable details. But there are other pages of history that more or less correspond with this; and there are well-known characteristics of human nature that explain how such revulsions of feeling come about. It has never been found difficult to get up a case against those whom the great and powerful have made up their minds to destroy. The best men are fallible and have their weak side. Large bodies of men must contain some unworthy members. A long history can hardly be without blots, mistakes, and crimes. No man's life, if narrowly scrutinized by an unfavorable and prejudiced criticism, but will afford ground for accusation. Then, too, facts may be perverted, circumstances may be made to bear a meaning that does not really belong to them, and fear and torture may force the weak to say anything that they are required. And, finally, the evidence and the judgment of those who have everything to gain by the condemnation of those whom they accuse, must always be viewed with suspicion by sober and truth-loving minds. Moreover, in judging the Templars, we must not forget the lapse of time and the change of circumstances that separate our age from theirs. After the loss of Acre a chapter of the surviving Templars was gathered, and James de Molay, preceptor of England, was elected grand master. One more attempt was made to recover a footing in the Holy Land, but it was defeated with great loss to the order, and all hope of restoring the Latin kingdom in Palestine seems to have been abandoned. The occupation of the Templars was gone. They had been banded together to fight upon the sacred soil of Palestine, and to defend pilgrims, but now they had been driven out of the country, and they could no longer execute their mission or fulfil their vows. We soon hear of them being engaged in civil or international wars, which seems to be a violation of their oath not to draw sword upon any Christian. Thus we read of Templars fighting on the side of the King of England, in the battle of Falkirk, 1298, and similar occurrences are recorded in the French wars of the time. Those against whom the Templars fought would not be slow to complain of them. But the real cause of the downfall of the Templars was probably the enormous wealth of the order. There had not been wanting indications for some years of covetous eyes and itching hands turned toward the possession of the Knights. Sometimes complaints were made because the rents of their estates were all sent out of the country; sometimes the grievance alleged was that they were exempted from paying taxes and other levies, civil and ecclesiastical. Sometimes open acts of spoliation were committed upon their property, and that even by royal hands. But it was in France that the final attack was made. Philip the Fair was king at this time, a man of bad character and unscrupulous as to the means by which he attained his ends. The country was exhausted and the treasury empty, and the idea seems to have occurred to him, as it did later to Henry VIII of England under similar circumstances, that an easy way to fill his own purse was to put his hand into the purses of others. But even kings cannot appropriate the property of a religious order without offering some apology or justification to the world. And so it began to be whispered that the Holy Land would never have been lost to Christendom if its sworn defenders had not failed in their Christian character. The whole blame of the defeat of the crusades was laid upon the Templars. It was said they had treacherously betrayed the Christian cause, that they had treated with the enemy, and by their personal sins, especially by secret, unhallowed rites, had provoked the just wrath of God, and so brought about the ruin of the dominion of the Cross in the East. When Ahab has determined to put Naboth to death, that he may seize his coveted vineyard, it is not difficult to find witness that he is a blasphemer of God and a traitor to the King; and so Philip found his first tool in a man guilty of a multitude of crimes, who secured his own pardon by a denunciation of the Templars. But even a king could not ruin a great religious order without the aid of the ecclesiastical authorities. The Templars had always been favored and protected by the popes, and nothing was in itself so likely to evoke that protection again as an attack upon the order by the secular powers. But Philip was prepared for this. The Pope of the day, Clement V, had been a subject of his own. As bishop of Bordeaux, he owed his election to the pontificate to Philip's own intrigues, and had been easily induced to quit Rome and live in France, so as to be more completely under the dictation of the King. Moreover, the majority of the cardinals were also French and entirely devoted to the King's interests. Clement V was one of the worst of those miserable men who have from time to time disgraced the papal chair, and was guilty of almost every crime. There are, indeed, authorities worthy of credit who assert that before his election he had been made to promise to perform six favors to the King, and that the last was not to be divulged till the time for its execution came. This last was then found to be the suppression of the order of the Templars. There was no difficulty, under these circumstances, in getting the so-called sanction of the Church for an inquiry into the crimes of which the Templars were accused. Accordingly, in 1307, Philip issued letters to his officers throughout the kingdom, commanding them to seize all the Templars on a certain day, that they might be tried for crimes of which he and the Pope had satisfied themselves they were guilty. They had apostatized from the Christian religion, worshipped idols in their secret meetings, and had been guilty of horrible and shameful offences against God, the Church, the State, and humanity itself. Philip professed the most pious horror at what he had discovered; he lamented the grievous necessity laid upon him, and urged upon the guilty men the expediency of a full and immediate confession of their wicked doings as the only way to secure pardon and escape the just and extreme penalty of such outrageous wickedness. It was during the night of October 13, 1307, that the King's orders were executed. Every house of the Templars in the dominions of the King of France was suddenly surrounded by a strong force, and all the Knights and members of the order were simultaneously taken prisoners. At the same time a strenuous endeavor was made to arouse popular indignation against the order. The regular and secular clergy were commanded to preach against the Templars, and to describe the horrible enormities that were practised among them. It is incredible to us in these days that such charges should be made, and still more that they should actually be believed. It was said that the Templars worshipped some hideous idol in their secret assemblies, that they offered sacrifices to it of infants and young girls, and that although every one saw them devout, charitable, and regular in their religious duties, people were not to be misled by these things, for this was only a cloak intended to deceive the world and conceal their secret rites and obscene orgies. It was hoped that some confession of guilt might be readily obtained from some of the weaker brethren in order to receive the pardon which was promised by the King. But no such confession was made. All the prisoners denied the charges brought against them. Then the usual mediæval expedient was resorted to, and torture was used to extort acknowledgments of guilt. The unhappy Templars in Paris were handed over to the tender mercies of the tormentors with the usual results. One hundred and forty were subjected to trial by fire. The details preserved are almost too horrible to be related. The feet of some were fastened close to a hot fire till the very flesh and even the bones were consumed. Others were suspended by their limbs, and heavy weights attached to them to make the agony more intense. Others were deprived of their teeth; and every cruelty that a horrible ingenuity could invent was used. While this was going on, questions were asked, and offers of pardon were made if they would acknowledge themselves or others guilty of the monstrous wickednesses which were detailed to them. At the same time forged letters were read, purporting to come from the grand master himself, exhorting them to make a full confession, and declarations were made of the confessions which were said to have been already freely given by other members of the order. What wonder, then, that the usual consequences followed. Those who had strong will and indomitable courage stood firm and endured the slow martyrdom till death released them, maintaining to the last their own innocence, and the innocence of their order, of the crimes with which they were charged. But some weaker men broke down. In hope of release from the agony which they could not endure, they confessed anything and everything that was required of them, and these things were at once written down as grave facts and made matter of accusation of others. Often these unhappy men almost immediately recanted, and as soon as the torture ceased withdrew their confessions, and repeated their original denial of the accusations one and all. We have long ago ceased to set any value upon confessions extorted by torture, and the system has happily been abolished by all civilized nations, but in those days this was not understood; torture was relied upon as a means of extracting truth from unwilling witnesses when all other means failed; indeed, it was simpler and more expeditious than the calling of many witnesses, the testing of evidence by cross-examination, and other surer but slower methods; and especially when conviction, not truth, was the end in view, torture was a welcome and efficacious ally. All this was but too sadly exemplified in the proceedings against the Templars in France. No sooner were those who had made confessions of guilt while under torture released from their tormentors than they disavowed their forced admissions and proclaimed their innocence and the purity of their order, appealing to history and the testimony of their own day for evidence of their courage and devotion to the Catholic faith. Upon hearing of this Philip immediately ordered the rearrest of the Templars, and, proceeding against them as relapsed heretics, they were condemned to be burned alive. In Paris alone one hundred and thirteen suffered this terrible punishment, and many more were burned in other towns. In Spain, Portugal, and Germany, proceedings were taken against the order; their property was confiscated, and in some cases torture was used; but it is remarkable that it was only in France, and in those places where Philip's influence was powerful, that any Templar was actually put to death. Everywhere else the monstrous charges were declared to be unproved, and the order was declared innocent of heresy and sacrilegious rites. In October, 1311, a council was held at Vienna to dissolve the Order of the Temple, but the majority of the bishops were decidedly opposed to such a proceeding against so ancient and illustrious an order, till its members had been heard in their own defence in a fair and open trial. The Pope was furious at this and dismissed the council, and in the following year, 1312, by a papal brief, abolished the order and forbade its reconstitution. The property of the order in France was nominally made over to the Hospitallers, but Philip laid claim to an immense sum for the expenses of the prosecution, and by this and other means he obtained what he had all along desired--the greatest part of the possessions of the order. Similar proceedings took place in other countries. In some, new orders were founded in the place of the Templars, with the sovereign at their head, by which means the estates came into the possession of the Crown as completely as if they had been actually confiscated. In France the Templars who survived their torture and the horrors of their prisons were either executed or left to linger out a miserable existence in their dungeons till death released them. The grand master and a few other brethren of the highest rank were thus kept in prison for five years. They were then taken to Notre Dame in Paris, and required to give verbal assent to the confessions which had been extorted from them under torture. But the grand master, James de Molay, the grand preceptor, and some others seized the opportunity of declaring their innocence, and disowning the alleged confessions as forgeries. The old veterans stood up in the church before the assembled multitude, and, raising their chained hands to heaven, declared that whatever had been confessed to the detriment of the illustrious order was only forced from them by extreme agony and fear of death, and that they solemnly and finally repudiated and revoked all such admissions. On hearing of this, Philip ordered their immediate execution, and the same evening the last grand master of the Temple and his faithful comrades were burned to death at a slow fire. Impartial men had formed their own judgment, and a very strong feeling prevailed that justice had not been done. It was remarked that those who had been foremost in the proceedings against the Templars came to a speedy and miserable end. The Pope, the kings of France and of England, and others, all soon followed their victims and died violent or shameful deaths. We have somewhat anticipated the order of events, and must return to the earlier stage of the proceedings against the Templars. As soon as Philip had determined upon his own course of action, he desired to find countenance for it by stirring up other sovereigns to imitate it. He therefore wrote letters to the kings of other European states, informing them of his discovery of the guilt of the Templars, and urging them to adopt a similar course in their own dominions. The Pope, too, summoned the grand master to France, but with every mark of respect, and so got him into his power before the terrible proceedings against the members of his order were made public. The King of England, Edward II, acted with prudence. He expressed his unbounded astonishment at the contents of the French King's letter, and at the particulars detailed to him by an agent specially sent to him by Philip, but he would do no more at the time than promise that the matter should receive his serious attention in due course. He wrote at the same time to the kings of Portugal, Aragon, Castile, and Sicily, telling them of the extraordinary information he had received respecting the Templars, and declaring his unwillingness to believe the dreadful charges brought against them. He referred to the services rendered to Christendom by the order, and to its unblemished reputation ever since it was founded. He urged upon his fellow-sovereigns that nothing should be done in haste, but that inquiry should be made in due and solemn legal form, expressing his belief that the order was guiltless of the crimes alleged against it, and that the charges were merely the result of slander and envy and of a desire to appropriate the property of the order. At the same time Edward wrote to the Pope in similar terms. He declared that the Templars were universally respected by all classes throughout his dominions as pious and upright men, and begged the Pope to promote a just inquiry which should free the order from the unjust slander and injuries to which it was being subjected. But hardly was this letter despatched than Edward received another from the Pope, which had crossed his own on its way, calling upon him to imitate Philip, King of France, in proceeding against the Templars. The Pope professed great distress and astonishment that an order that had so long enjoyed the respect and gratitude of the Church for its worthy deeds in defence of the faith should have fallen into grievous and perfidious apostasy. He then narrated the commendable zeal of the King of France in rooting out the secrets of these men's hidden wickedness, and gave particulars of some of their confessions of the crimes with which they had been charged. He concluded by commanding the King of England to pursue a similar course, to seize and imprison all members of the order on one day, and to hold, in the Pope's name, all the property of the order till it should be determined how it was to be disposed of. King Edward, notwithstanding his recent declaration of confidence in the integrity of the Templars, yielded obedience to this missive of the Pope. Whether he was overawed by the authority of the Pontiff, and deferred his own opinion to that of so great a personage, or whether, as some suppose, he desired to give the Templars a fair and honorable trial, and the opportunity of clearing themselves; or whether he gave way to the evil counsels of those who whispered that the great wealth of the Templars would be useful to the Crown, and that he might avail himself of the opportunity of taking all--as his predecessors had taken some--of their treasure; whatever may have been his real motive, and the cause of his change of conduct, it is certain that he issued an order for the arrest of the Templars, and the seizure of all their estates, houses, and property. The greatest caution and secrecy were adopted. Instructions were sent to all the sheriffs throughout England to hold themselves in readiness to execute certain orders which would be given to them by trusty persons on that day. Similar arrangements were made in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales; and on January 8, 1308, every Templar was simultaneously arrested. It was not till October in the following year that any trial took place. All this time the Templars had been suffering the miseries of imprisonment. More than two hundred men of high rank, many of them veterans who had fought and bled in Palestine, and who were now grown old and feeble after a life of hardship and privation, maimed with wounds, bronzed with exposure to the Eastern sun, languished under the tender mercies of jailers, with no opportunity of defending themselves or of raising up friends to say a word for them. Some were foreigners who happened to be in England on the business of the order. A few managed to evade the vigilance of the King's emissaries, notwithstanding the secrecy and suddenness of the arrest, and escaped in various disguises to the wild and remote mountain districts of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. The court appointed by the Pope commenced its proceedings in London, in October, 1309, under the presidency of the Bishop of London. Several French ecclesiastics had come over to take their seat upon the bench as judges--an ill omen for the English Templars. After the usual preliminaries, which were long and tedious, the articles of accusation were read. They stated that those who were received into the order of the Knights of the Temple did, at their reception, formally deny Jesus Christ and renounce all hope of salvation through him; that they trampled and spat upon the cross; that they worshipped a cat(!); that they denied the sacraments, and looked only to the grand master for absolution; that they possessed and worshipped various idols; that they practised a variety of cruel, degrading, and filthy customs and rites; that the grand master and many of the brethren had confessed to these things even before they had been arrested. Such is a brief summary of the accusation, the original documents of which have happily come down to us. It is not easy for us to understand how such a farrago of absurdity, profanity, and indecency could ever have been gravely produced in a so-called court of justice in England as a state paper--a bill of indictment against a body of noblemen and gentlemen; against an order that for two hundred years had been the right arm of the Church and the defender of Christianity against its most dangerous and ruthless enemies. No writer of fiction would have ventured on inventing such a trial, and no one unacquainted with mediæval history would credit the record that grave prelates and learned judges drew up such a document, and then set themselves to prove the truth of its monstrous allegations by the use of torture. Students of the Middle Ages know well that such things were done in those days. They remember Savonarola and Beatrice Cenci in Italy, Jeanne d'Arc in France, Abbot Whiting and others in England. They call to mind the cruelties and exactions practised so often upon the Jews in every country in Europe; and with the contemporary records in their hands, they do not hesitate to accept as undoubted historical fact what would otherwise be rejected as a slander upon humanity and an outrage upon common-sense. If the Templars had been accused of the crimes vulgarly supposed to attach themselves to religious orders; if they had been charged with falling into the sins to which poor human nature by its frailty is liable; if erring members had been denounced, men who had entered the order through disappointment, or from some other unworthy motive, men such as Sir Walter Scott depicts in his imaginary Templar, Brian de Bois Guilbert, in his novel, _Ivanhoe_, we might well believe that some at least of the accusations against them were true. It is singular that no such charges are alleged against the Templars, though they were freely brought, two hundred years later, against the regular monks by the commissioners of Henry VIII. This fact has been noticed by most thoughtful historians, and has been considered to tell strongly in the tribunal of equity in favor of the Templars. Instead of these probable or possible crimes, we find nothing but monstrous charges of sorcery, idolatry, apostasy, and such like, instances of which we know are to be found in those strange times; but which it seems altogether unlikely would infect a large body whose fundamental principle was close adherence to Christianity; a body which was spread all over the world, and which included in its ranks such a multitude and variety of men and of nationalities, among whom there must have been, to say the least, some sincere, upright, and godly men who would have set themselves to root out such miserable errors, or, if they were found to be ineradicable, would have left the order as no place for them. Even Voltaire acknowledges that such an indictment destroys itself. It recoils upon its framers, and proves nothing but their intense hatred of their victims and their total unfitness to sit as judges. When this extraordinary paper had been read, the prisoners were asked what they had to say to it, and, as might be expected, they at once and unanimously declared that they and their order were absolutely guiltless of the crimes of which they were accused. After this the prisoners were examined one by one. It would be tedious to follow the long and wearisome questionings and to record the replies given by the several brethren of the Temple during their trial in London. One and all agreed in denying the existence of the horrible and ridiculous rites which were said to be used at the reception of new members; and whether they had been received in England or abroad, detailed the ceremonies that were used, and showed that they were substantially the same everywhere. The candidate was asked what he desired, and on replying that he desired admission to the order of the Knights of the Temple, he was warned of the strict and severe life that was demanded of members of the order; of the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience; and, moreover, that he must be ready to go and fight the enemies of Christ even to the death. Others related details of the interior discipline and regulations of the order, which were stern and rigorous, as became a body that added to the strictness of the convent the order and system of a military organization. Many of the brethren had been nearly all their lives in the order, some more than forty years, a great part of which had been spent in active service in the East. The witnesses who were summoned were not members of the order, and had only hearsay evidence to give. They had _heard_ this and that report, they _suspected_ something else, they had been _told_ that certain things had been said or done. Nothing definite could be obtained, and there was no proof whatever of any of the extravagant and incredible charges. Similar proceedings took place in Lincoln and York, and also in Scotland and Ireland; and in all places the results were the same, and the matter dragged on till October, 1311. Hitherto torture had not been resorted to; but now, in accordance with the repeated solicitations of the Pope, King Edward gave orders that the imprisoned Templars should be subjected to the rack in order that they might be forced to give evidence of their guilt. Even then there seems to have been reluctance to resort to this cruel and shameful treatment, and a series of delays occurred, so that nothing was done till the beginning of the following year. The Templars, having been now three years in prison, chained, half-starved, threatened with greater miseries here, and with eternal damnation hereafter; separated from one another, without friend, adviser, or legal defence, were now removed to the various jails in London and elsewhere, and submitted to torture. We have no particular record of the horrible details, but some evidence was afterward adduced which was said to have been obtained from the unhappy victims during their agony. It was such as was desired; an admission of the truth of the monstrous accusations that were detailed to them, which had been obtained, for the most part, from their tortured brethren in France. In April, 1311, these depositions were read in the court, in the presence of the Templars, who were required to say what they could allege in their defence. They replied that they were ignorant of the processes of law, and that they were not permitted to have the aid of those whom they trusted and who could advise them, but that they would gladly make a statement of their faith and of the principles of their order. This they were permitted to do, and a very simple and touching paper was produced and signed by all the brethren. They declared themselves, one and all, good Christians and faithful members of the Church, and they claimed to be treated as such, and openly and fairly tried if there were any just cause of complaint against them. But their persecutors were by no means satisfied. Fresh tortures and cruelties were resorted to to force confessions of guilt from these worn-out and dying men. A few gave way, and said what they were told to say; and these unhappy men were produced in St. Paul's Cathedral shortly afterward, and made to recant their errors, and were then "reconciled to the Church." A similar scene was enacted at York. The property of the Templars in England was placed under the charge of a commission at the time that proceedings were commenced against them, and the King very soon treated it as if it were his own, giving away manors and convents at his pleasure. A great part of the possessions of the order was subsequently made over to the Hospitallers. The convent and church of the Temple in London were granted, in 1313, to Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, whose monument is in Westminster Abbey. Other property was pawned by the King to his creditors as security for payment of his debts; but constant litigation and disputes seem to have pursued the holders of the ill-gotten goods. Some of the surviving Templars retired to monasteries, others returned to the world and assumed secular habits, for which they incurred the censures of the Pope. HENRY HART MILMAN The tragedy of the Templars had not yet drawn to its close. The four great dignitaries of the order, the grand master Du Molay, Guy, the commander of Normandy, son of the Dauphin of Auvergne, the commander of Aquitaine, Godfrey de Gonaville, the great visitor of France, Hugues de Peraud, were still pining in the royal dungeons. It was necessary to determine on their fate. The King and the Pope were now equally interested in burying the affair forever in silence and oblivion. So long as these men lived, uncondemned, undoomed, the order was not extinct. A commission was named: the Cardinal-Archbishop of Albi, with two other cardinals, two monks, the Cistercian Arnold Novelli, and Arnold de Fargis, nephew of Pope Clement, the Dominican Nicolas de Freveauville, akin to the house of Marigny, formerly the King's confessor. With these the Archbishop of Sens sat in judgment on the Knights' own former confessions. The grand master and the rest were found guilty, and were to be sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. A scaffold was erected before the porch of Notre Dame. On one side appeared the two cardinals; on the other the four noble prisoners, in chains, under the custody of the Provost of Paris. Six years of dreary imprisonment had passed over their heads; of their valiant brethren the most valiant had been burned alive; the recreants had purchased their lives by confession; the Pope, in a full council, had condemned and dissolved the order. If a human mind--a mind like that of Du Molay--could be broken by suffering and humiliation, it must have yielded to this long and crushing imprisonment. The Cardinal-Archbishop of Albi ascended a raised platform: he read the confessions of the Knights, the proceedings of the court; he enlarged on the criminality of the order, on the holy justice of the Pope, and the devout, self-sacrificing zeal of the King; he was proceeding to the final, the fatal sentence. At that instant the grand master advanced; his gesture implored silence; judges and people gazed in awestruck apprehension. In a calm, clear voice Du Molay spoke: "Before heaven and earth, on the verge of death, where the least falsehood bears like an intolerable weight upon the soul, I protest that we have richly deserved death, not on account of any heresy or sin of which ourselves or our order have been guilty, but because we have yielded, to save our lives, to the seductive words of the Pope and of the King; and so by our confessions brought shame and ruin on our blameless, holy, and orthodox brotherhood." The cardinals stood confounded; the people could not suppress their profound sympathy. The assembly was hastily broken up; the Provost was commanded to conduct the prisoners back to their dungeons. "To-morrow we will hold further counsel." But on the moment that the King heard these things, without a day's delay, without the least consultation with the ecclesiastical authorities, he ordered them to death as relapsed heretics. On the island in the Seine, where now stands the statue of Henry IV, between the King's garden on one side and the convent of the Augustinian monks on the other, the two pyres were raised--two out of the four had shrunk back into their ignoble confessions. It was the hour of vespers when these two aged and noble men were led out to be burned; they were tied each to the stake. The flames kindled dully and heavily; the wood, hastily piled up, was green or wet; or in cruel mercy the tardiness was designed that the victims might have time, while the fire was still curling round their extremities, to recant their bold recantation. But there was no sign, no word of weakness. Du Molay implored that the image of the Mother of God might be held up before him, and his hands unchained, that he might clasp them in prayer. Both, as the smoke rose to their lips, as the fire crept up to their vital parts, continued solemnly to aver the innocence and the Catholic faith of the order. The King himself sat and beheld, it might seem without remorse, this hideous spectacle; the words of Du Molay might have reached his ears. But the people looked on with far other feelings. Stupor kindled into admiration; the execution was a martyrdom; friars gathered up their ashes and bones and carried them away, hardly by stealth, to consecrated ground; they became holy relics. The two who wanted courage to die pined away their miserable life in prison. The wonder and the pity of the times which immediately followed, arrayed Du Molay not only in the robes of the martyr, but gave him the terrible language of a prophet. "Clement, iniquitous and cruel judge, I summon thee within forty days to meet me before the throne of the Most High!" According to some accounts this fearful sentence included the King, by whom, if uttered, it might have been heard. The earliest allusion to this awful speech does not contain that striking particularity, which, if part of it, would be fatal to its credibility, _i.e._, the precise date of Clement's death. It was not till the year after that Clement and King Philip passed to their account. The fate of these two men during the next year might naturally so appal the popular imagination, as to approximate more closely the prophecy and its accomplishment. At all events it betrayed the deep and general feeling of the cruel wrong inflicted on the order; while the unlamented death of the Pope, the disastrous close of Philip's reign, and the disgraceful crimes which attainted the honor of his family seemed as declarations of heaven as to the innocence of their noble victims. JAMES VAN ARTEVELDE LEADS A FLEMISH REVOLT EDWARD III OF ENGLAND ASSUMES THE TITLE OF KING OF FRANCE A.D. 1337-1340 FRANÇOIS P. G. GUIZOT Having defeated the Flemings at Mons-la-Puelle in 1304, Philip the Fair of France found that they were unsubdued and ready to renew their war against him. Therefore he very soon acknowledged their independence under their count, Robert de Béthune. But Philip continually violated the treaty he had made, and just before his death (1314) he again began hostilities against Flanders. Little of historical importance occurred in that country between the death of Philip the Fair and the accession of Philip of Valois (1328). His first act was to take up the cause of Louis de Nevers, then Count of Flanders, whom the independent burghers of most of the chief cities had united to deprive of his territories, leaving him only Ghent for a refuge. In the first year of his reign Philip gained a victory over the Flemish "weavers" at Cassel, and laid all Flanders at the feet of its rejected count. In 1338 began the Hundred Years' War, arising from the claim of Edward III of England to the French throne. Edward's most important measure in preparation for the war was the securing of an alliance with the Flemish burghers, whose French count, Louis de Nevers, had gained nothing in their affections through the humiliation of Cassel, which confirmed his rule. The hated count showed his hostility to Edward, as well as his spite against his own subjects, by various petty acts which interfered with the commerce and industry of both Flanders and England. At last, by prohibiting the exportation of wool to Flanders, Edward reduced the Flemings to despair and forced them to fling themselves into his arms. Many of them emigrated to England, where they helped to lay the foundation of manufactures. But the Flemish towns burst into insurrection and proceeded to organized action in the manner here related by Guizot, who draws largely upon the narrative of Froissart. The Flemings bore the first brunt of that war which was to be so cruel and so long. It was a lamentable position for them; their industrial and commercial prosperity was being ruined; their security at home was going from them; their communal liberties were compromised; divisions set in among them; by interest and habitual intercourse they were drawn toward England, but the Count, their lord, did all he could to turn them away from her, and many among them were loath to separate themselves entirely from France. "Burghers of Ghent, as they chatted in the thoroughfares and at the cross-roads, said one to another that they had heard much wisdom, to their mind, from a burgher who was called James van Artevelde, and who was a brewer of beer. They had heard him say that, if he could obtain a hearing and credit, he would in a little while restore Flanders to good estate, and they would recover all their gains without standing ill with the King of France or the King of England. "These sayings began to get spread abroad insomuch that a quarter or half the city was informed thereof, especially the small folk of the commonalty, whom the evil touched most nearly. They began to assemble in the streets, and it came to pass that one day, after dinner, several went from house to house calling for their comrades, and saying, 'Come and hear the wise man's counsel.' On December 26, 1337, they came to the house of the said James van Artevelde, and found him leaning against his door. Far off as they were when they first perceived him, they made him a deep obeisance, and 'Dear sir,' they said, 'we are come to you for counsel; for we are told that by your great and good sense you will restore the country of Flanders to good case. So tell us how.' "Then James van Artevelde came forward, and said: 'Sirs comrades, I am a native and burgher of this city, and here I have my means. Know that I would gladly aid you with all my power, you and all the country; if there were here a man who would be willing to take the lead, I would be willing to risk body and means at his side; and if the rest of ye be willing to be brethren, friends, and comrades to me, to abide in all matters at my side, notwithstanding that I am not worthy of it, I will undertake it willingly.' Then said all with one voice: 'We promise you faithfully to abide at your side in all matters and to therewith adventure body and means, for we know well that in the whole countship of Flanders there is not a man but you worthy so to do.'" Then Van Artevelde bound them to assemble on the next day but one in the grounds of the monastery of Biloke, which had received numerous benefits from the ancestors of Sohier of Courtrai, whose son-in-law Van Artevelde was. This bold burgher of Ghent, who was born about 1285, was sprung from a family the name of which had been for a long while inscribed in their city upon the register of industrial corporations. His father, John van Artevelde, a cloth-worker, had been several times over-sheriff of Ghent, and his mother, Mary van Groete, was great-aunt to the grandfather of the illustrious publicist called in history Grotius. James van Artevelde in his youth accompanied Count Charles of Valois, brother of Philip the Handsome, upon his adventurous expeditions in Italy, Sicily, and Greece, and to the island of Rhodes; and it had been close by the spots where the soldiers of Marathon and Salamis had beaten the armies of Darius and Xerxes that he had heard of the victory of the Flemish burghers and workmen attacked in 1302, at Courtrai, by the splendid army of Philip the Handsome. James van Artevelde, on returning to his country, had been busy with his manufactures,[46] his fields, the education of his children, and Flemish affairs up to the day when, at his invitation, the burghers of Ghent thronged to the meeting on December 28, 1337, in the grounds of the monastery of Biloke. There he delivered an eloquent speech, pointing out unhesitatingly but temperately the policy which he considered good for the country. "Forget not," he said, "the might and the glory of Flanders. Who, pray, shall forbid that we defend our interests by using our rights? Can the King of France prevent us from treating with the King of England? And may we not be certain that if we were to treat with the King of England, the King of France would not be the less urgent in seeking our alliance? Besides, have we not with us all the communes of Brabant, of Hainault, of Holland, and of Zealand?" The audience cheered these words; the commune of Ghent forthwith assembled, and on January 3, 1337, reëstablished the offices of captains of parishes according to olden usage, when the city was exposed to any pressing danger. It was carried that one of these captains should have the chief government of the city; and James van Artevelde was at once invested with it. From that moment the conduct of Van Artevelde was ruled by one predominant idea: to secure free and fair commercial intercourse for Flanders with England, while observing a general neutrality in the war between the kings of England and France, and to combine so far all the communes of Flanders in one and the same policy. And he succeeded in this twofold purpose. On April 29, 1338, the representatives of all the communes of Flanders--the city of Bruges numbering among them a hundred and eight deputies--repaired to the castle of Mâle, a residence of Count Louis, and then James van Artevelde set before the Count what had been resolved upon among them. The Count submitted, and swore that he would thenceforth maintain the liberties of Flanders in the state in which they had hitherto existed. In the month of May following a deputation, consisting of James van Artevelde and other burghers appointed by the cities of Ghent, Bruges, and Ypres scoured the whole of Flanders, from Bailleul to Termonde, and from Ninove to Dunkirk, "to reconcile the good folk of the communes to the Count of Flanders, as well for the Count's honor as for the peace of the country." Lastly, on June 10, 1338, a treaty was signed at Anvers between the deputies of the Flemish communes and the English ambassadors, the latter declaring: "We do all to wit that we have negotiated the way and substance of friendship with the good folk of the communes of Flanders, in form and manner hereinafter following: "First, they shall be able to go and buy the wools and other merchandise which have been exported from England to Holland, Zealand, or any other place whatsoever; and all traders of Flanders who shall repair to the ports of England shall there be safe and free in their persons and their goods, just as in any other place where their ventures might bring them together. "_Item_, we have agreed with the good folk and with all the common country of Flanders that they must not mix nor intermeddle in any way, by assistance in men or arms, in the wars of our lord the King and the noble Sir Philip of Valois (who holdeth himself for King of France)." Three articles following regulated in detail the principles laid down in the first two, and, by another charter, Edward III ordained that "all stuffs marked with the seal of the city of Ghent might travel freely in England without being subject according to ellage and quality to the control to which all foreign merchandise was subject." Van Artevelde was right in telling the Flemings that, if they treated with the King of England, the King of France would be only the more anxious for their alliance. Philip of Valois and even Count Louis of Flanders, when they got to know of the negotiations entered into between the Flemish communes and King Edward, redoubled their offers and promises to them. But when the passions of men have taken full possession of their souls, words of concession and attempts at accommodation are nothing more than postponements or lies. Philip, when he heard about the conclusion of a treaty between the Flemish communes and the King of England, sent word to Count Louis "that this James van Artevelde must not, on any account, be allowed to rule or even live, for if it were so for long, the Count would lose his land." The Count, very much disposed to accept such advice, repaired to Ghent and sent for Van Artevelde to come and see him at his hotel. He went, but with so large a following that the Count was not at the time at all in a position to resist him. He tried to persuade the Flemish burgher that "if he would keep a hand on the people so as to keep them to their love for the King of France, he having more authority than anyone else for such a purpose, much good would result to him; mingling, besides, with this address, some words of threatening import." Van Artevelde, who was not the least afraid of the threat, and who at heart was fond of the English, told the Count that he would do as he had promised the communes. "Hereupon he left the Count, who consulted his confidants as to what he was to do in this business, and they counselled him to let them go and assemble their people, saying that they would kill Van Artevelde secretly or otherwise. And, indeed, they did lay many traps and made many attempts against the captain; but it was of no avail, since all the commonalty was for him." When the rumor of these projects and these attempts was spread abroad in the city, the excitement was extreme, and all the burghers assumed white hoods, which was the mark peculiar to the members of the commune when they assembled under their flags; so that the Count found himself reduced to assuming one, for he was afraid of being kept captive at Ghent, and, on the pretext of a hunting-party, he lost no time in gaining his castle of Mâle. The burghers of Ghent had their minds still filled with their late alarm when they heard that by order, it was said, of the King of France--Count Louis had sent and beheaded at the castle of Rupelmonde, in the very bed in which he was confined by his infirmities, their fellow-citizen Sohier of Courtrai, Van Artevelde's father-in-law, who had been kept for many months in prison for his intimacy with the English. On the same day the Bishop of Senlis and the Abbot of St. Denis had arrived at Tournai, and had superintended the reading out in the market-place of a sentence of excommunication against the Ghentese. It was probably at this date that Van Artevelde in his vexation and disquietude assumed in Ghent an attitude threatening and despotic even to tyranny. "He had continually after him," says Froissart, "sixty or eighty armed varlets, among whom were two or three who knew some of his secrets. When he met a man whom he hated or had in suspicion, this man was at once killed, for Van Artevelde had given this order to his varlets: 'The moment I meet a man, and make such and such a sign to you, slay him without delay, however great he may be, without waiting for more speech.' In this way he had many great masters slain. And as soon as these sixty varlets had taken him home to his hotel, each went to dinner at his own house; and the moment dinner was over they returned and stood before his hotel and waited in the street until that he was minded to go and play and take his pastime in the city, and so they attended him to supper-time. "And know that each of these hirelings had _per diem_ four groschen of Flanders for their expenses and wages, and he had them regularly paid from week to week. And even in the case of all that were most powerful in Flanders, knights, esquires, and burghers of the good cities, whom he believed to be favorable to the Count of Flanders, them he banished from Flanders and levied half their revenues. He had levies made of rents, of dues on merchandise and all the revenues belonging to the Count, wherever it might be in Flanders, and he disbursed them at his will, and gave them away without rendering any account. And when he would borrow of any burghers on his word for payment, there was none that durst say him nay. In short there was never in Flanders, or in any other country, duke, count, prince, or other who can have had a country at his will as James van Artevelde had for a long time." It is possible that, as some historians have thought, Froissart, being less favorable to burghers than to princes, did not deny himself a little exaggeration in this portrait of a great burgher-patriot transformed by the force of events and passions into a demagogic tyrant. While the Count of Flanders, after having vainly attempted to excite an uprising against Van Artevelde, was being forced, in order to escape from the people of Bruges, to mount his horse in hot haste, at night and barely armed, and to flee away to St. Omer, Philip of Valois and Edward III were preparing on either side, for the war which they could see drawing near. Philip was vigorously at work on the Pope, the Emperor of Germany, and the princes neighbors of Flanders, in order to raise obstacles against his rival or rob him of his allies. He ordered that short-lived meeting of the states-general about which we have no information left us, save that it voted the principle that "no talliage could be imposed on the people if urgent necessity or evident utility should not require it, and unless by concession of the estates." Philip, as chief of feudal society rather than of the nation which was forming itself little by little around the lords, convoked at Amiens all his vassals great and small, laic or cleric, placing all his strength in their coöperation, and not caring at all to associate the country itself in the affairs of his government. Edward, on the contrary, while equipping his fleet and amassing treasure at the expense of the Jews and Lombard usurers, was assembling his parliament, talking to it "of this important and costly war," for which he obtained large subsidies, and accepting, without making any difficulty, the vote of the commons' house, which expressed a desire "to consult their constituents upon this subject, and begged him to summon an early parliament, to which there should be elected, in each county, two knights taken from among the best landowners of their counties." The King set out for the Continent; the parliament met and considered the exigences of the war by land and sea, in Scotland and in France; traders, shipowners, and mariners were called and examined; and the forces determined to be necessary were voted. Edward took the field, pillaging, burning, and ravaging, "destroying all the country for twelve or fourteen leagues in extent," as he himself said in a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury. When he set foot on French territory, Count William of Hainault, his brother-in-law and up to that time his ally, came to him and said that "he would ride with him no farther, for that his presence was prayed and required by his uncle the King of France, to whom he bore no hate, and whom he would go and serve in his own kingdom, as he had served King Edward on the territory of the Emperor, whose vicar he was," and Edward wished him "Godspeed!" Such was the binding nature of feudal ties that the same lord held himself bound to pass from one camp to another according as he found himself upon the domains of one or the other of his suzerains in a war one against the other. Edward continued his march toward St. Quentin, where Philip had at last arrived with his allies the kings of Bohemia, Navarre, and Scotland, "after delays which had given rise to great scandal and murmurs throughout the whole kingdom." The two armies, with a strength, according to Froissart, of a hundred thousand men on the French side, and forty-four thousand on the English, were soon facing one another, near Buironfosse, a large burgh of Picardy. A herald came from the English camp to tell the King of France that the King of England "demanded of him battle. To which demand," says Froissart, "the King of France gave willing assent and accepted the day which was fixed at first for Thursday the 21st, and afterward for Saturday the 25th of October, 1339." To judge from the somewhat tangled accounts of the chroniclers and of Froissart himself, neither of the two kings was very anxious to come to blows. The forces of Edward were much inferior to those of Philip; and the former had accordingly taken up, as it appears, a position which rendered attack difficult for Philip. There was much division of opinion in the French camp. Independently of military grounds, a great deal was said about certain letters from Robert, King of Naples, "a mighty necromancer and full of mighty wisdom, it was reported, who, after having several times cast their horoscopes, had discovered, by astrology and from experience, that, if his cousin, the King of France, were to fight the King of England, the former would be worsted." "In thus disputing and debating," says Froissart, "the time passed till full mid-day. A little afterward a hare came leaping across the fields, and rushed among the French. Those who saw it began shouting and making a great halloo. Those who were behind thought that those who were in front were engaging in battle; and several put on their helmets and gripped their swords. Thereupon several knights were made; and the Count of Hainault himself made fourteen, who were thenceforth nicknamed Knights of the Hare." Whatever his motive may have been, Philip did not attack; and Edward promptly began a retreat. They both dismissed their allies; and during the early days of November Philip fell back upon St. Quentin, and Edward went and took up his winter-quarters at Brussels. For Edward it was a serious check not to have dared to attack the King whose kingdom he made a pretence of conquering; and he took it grievously to heart. At Brussels he had an interview with his allies and asked their counsel. Most of the princes of the Low Countries remained faithful to him and the Count of Hainault seemed inclined to go back to him; but all hesitated as to what he was to do to recover from the check. Van Artevelde showed more invention and more boldness. The Flemish communes had concentrated their forces not far from the spot where the two kings had kept their armies looking at one another; but they had maintained a strict neutrality, and at the invitation of the Count of Flanders, who promised them that the King of France would entertain all their claims, Artevelde and Breydel, the deputies from Ghent and Bruges, even repaired to Courtrai to make terms with him. But as they got there nothing but ambiguous engagements and evasive promises, they let the negotiation drop, and, while Count Louis was on his way to rejoin Philip at St. Quentin, Artevelde with the deputies from the Flemish communes started for Brussels. Edward, who was already living on very confidential terms with him, told him that "if the Flemings were minded to help him to keep up the war and go with him whithersoever he would take them, they should aid him to recover Lille, Douai, and Béthune, then occupied by the King of France. Artevelde, after consulting his colleagues, returned to Edward, and, 'Dear sir,' said he, 'you have already made such requests to us, and verily, if we could do so while keeping our honor and faith, we would do as you demand: but we be bound, by faith and oath, and on a bond of two millions of florins entered into with the Pope, not to go to war with the King of France without incurring a debt to the amount of that sum and a sentence of excommunication; but if you do that which we are about to say to you, if you will be pleased to adopt the arms of France, and quarter them with those of England, and openly call yourself King of France, we will uphold you for the true King of France; you, as King of France, shall give us quittance of our faith; and then we will obey you as King of France, and will go whithersoever you shall ordain.'" This prospect pleased Edward mightily: but "it irked him to take the name and arms of that of which he had as yet won no title." He consulted his allies. Some of them hesitated; but "his most privy and especial friend," Robert d'Artois, strongly urged him to consent to the proposal. So a French prince and a Flemish burgher prevailed upon the King of England to pursue, as in assertion of his avowed rights, the conquest of the kingdom of France. King, prince, and burgher fixed Ghent as their place of meeting for the official conclusion of the alliance; and there, in January, 1340, the mutual engagement was signed and sealed. The King of England "assumed the arms of France quartered with those of England," and thenceforth took the title of King of France. BATTLES OF SLUYS AND CRÉCY A.D. 1340-1346 SIR JOHN FROISSART[47] The sea fight of Sluys began the Hundred Years' War between England and France. It is also memorable as England's first great naval victory. The origin of the war lay in the Salic Law, which excludes women from the throne of France. This overruled the claims of Queen Isabella of England, and her son Edward III in 1328, when the twelve peers and barons of France unanimously gave the crown to Isabella's cousin, Philip of Valois, who ascended the throne as Philip VI of France. Edward III ingeniously maintained that though the Salic Law prevented his mother from filling the throne, it did not destroy the rights of her male descendants, and he early entertained the project of enforcing this contention; but it was not until 1337 that he felt able to assert formally his claim to the French crown and to assume the title of king of France. The following year, with a considerable body of troops to support his presumed rights, he crossed to the Continent, and passed the winter at Antwerp among the Flemings who had taken up his cause, and with whom, as well as with the Emperor-King of Germany, he effected aggressive alliances. He made a formal declaration of war in 1339, beginning hostilities which were prolonged into the Hundred Years' War, and which as a contest of the English kings for the sovereignty of France produced a series of important revolutions in the fortunes of that country. The first serious action of the war was a naval battle at Sluys, near the Belgian frontier just northeast of Bruges, June 23, 1340. King Edward and his entire navy sailed from the Thames June 22, and made straight for Sluys. Sir Hugh Quiriel and other French officers, with over one hundred and twenty large vessels, were lying near Sluys for the purpose of disputing the English King's passage. Froissart, with his usual terseness, has graphically recorded the combat which ensued. A more important victory was that won in the land battle at Crécy in 1346, which, however, simply paved the way to the capture of Calais, for it was not until the battle of Poitiers, ten years later, that Edward made any progress toward the conquest of France. In 1346, after landing with a force of troops at Cape La Hogue, Edward reduced Cherbourg, Carentan, and Caen, and, with the intention of crossing the Seine at Rouen, commenced his march on Calais, where he was to be joined by his Flemish allies. Philip, making a rapid march from Paris to Amiens, had posted detachments of soldiers along the right bank of the river Somme, guarding every ford, breaking down every bridge, and gradually shutting up the invaders in the narrow space between the Somme and the sea. Edward sent out his marshals with their battalions to find a passage, but they were unsuccessful, until a peasant led them to the tidal ford of Blanchetaque. Although desperately opposed by fully twelve thousand French, under the Norman baron Sir Godémar du Fay, they effected a crossing, and, marching on, encamped in the fields near Crécy. The King of France with the main body of his troops had taken up his quarters in Abbeville. BATTLE OF SLUYS When the King's fleet was almost got to Sluys, they saw so many masts standing before it that they looked like a wood. The King asked the commander of his ship what they could be, who answered that he imagined they must be that armament of Normans which the King of France kept at sea and which had so frequently done him much damage, had burned his good town of Southampton, and taken his large ship the Christopher. The King replied: "I have for a long time wished to meet with them, and now, please God and St. George, we will fight them; for, in truth, they have done me so much mischief that I will be revenged on them if it be possible." The King drew up all his vessels, placing the strongest in the front, and on the wings his archers. Between every two vessels with archers there was one of men-at-arms. He stationed some detached vessels as a reserve, full of archers, to assist and help such as might be damaged. There were in this fleet a great many ladies from England, countesses, baronesses, and knights' and gentlemen's wives, who were going to attend on the Queen at Ghent. These the King had guarded most carefully by three hundred men-at-arms and five hundred archers. When the King of England and his marshals had properly divided the fleet, they hoisted their sails to have the wind on their quarter, as the sun shone full in their faces, which they considered might be of disadvantage to them, and stretched out a little, so that at last they got the wind as they wished. The Normans, who saw them tack, could not help wondering why they did so, and said they took good care to turn about, for they were afraid of meddling with them. They perceived, however, by his banner, that the King was on board, which gave them great joy, as they were eager to fight with him; so they put their vessels in proper order, for they were expert and gallant men on the seas. They filled the Christopher, the large ship which they had taken the year before from the English, with trumpets and other warlike instruments, and ordered her to fall upon the English. The battle then began very fiercely; archers and cross-bowmen shot with all their might at each other, and the men-at-arms engaged hand to hand. In order to be more successful, they had large grapnels, and iron hooks with chains, which they flung from ship to ship, to moor them to each other. There were many valiant deeds performed, many prisoners made, and many rescues. The Christopher, which led the van, was recaptured by the English, and all in her taken or killed. There were then great shouts and cries, and the English manned her again with archers and sent her to fight against the Genoese. This battle was very murderous and horrible. Combats at sea are more destructive and obstinate than upon the land, for it is not possible to retreat or flee--everyone must abide his fortune and exert his prowess and valor. Sir Hugh Quiriel and his companions were bold and determined men, had done much mischief to the English at sea and destroyed many of their ships; this combat, therefore, lasted from early in the morning until noon, and the English were hard pressed, for their enemies were four to one, and the greater part men who had been used to the sea. The King, who was in the flower of his youth, showed himself on that day a gallant knight, as did the earls of Derby, Pembroke, Hereford, Huntingdon, Northampton, and Gloucester; the Lord Reginald Cobham, Lord Felton, Lord Bradestan, Sir Richard Stafford, the Lord Percy, Sir Walter Manny, Sir Henry de Flanders, Sir John Beauchamp, Sir John Chandos, the Lord Delaware, Lucie Lord Malton, and the Lord Robert d'Artois, now called Earl of Richmond. I cannot remember all the names of those who behaved so valiantly in the combat; but they did so well that, with some assistance from Bruges and those parts of the country, the French were completely defeated, and all the Normans and the others killed or drowned, so that not one of them escaped. This was soon known all over Flanders; and when it came to the two armies before Thin-l'Evêque, the Hainaulters were as much rejoiced as their enemies were dismayed. After the King had gained this victory, which was on the eve of St. John's Day, he remained all that night on board of his ship before Sluys, and there were great noises with trumpets and all kinds of other instruments. The Flemings came to wait on him, having heard of his arrival and what deeds he had performed. The King inquired of the citizens of Bruges after Jacob van Artevelde, and they told him he was gone to the aid of the Earl of Hainault with upward of sixty thousand men, against the Duke of Normandy. On the morrow, which was Midsummer Day, the King and his fleet entered the port. As soon as they were landed, the King, attended by crowds of knights, set out on foot on a pilgrimage to our Lady of Ardemburg, where he heard mass and dined. He then mounted his horse and went that day to Ghent, where the Queen was, who received him with great joy and kindness. The army and baggage, with the attendants of the King, followed him by degrees to the same place. BATTLE OF CRÉCY The two battalions of the marshals came, on Friday in the afternoon, to where the King was, and they fixed their quarters, all three together, near Crécy in Ponthieu. The King of England, who had been informed that the King of France was following him, in order to give him battle, said to his people: "Let us post ourselves here, for we will not go farther before we have seen our enemies. I have good reason to wait for them on this spot; as I am now upon the lawful inheritance of my lady mother, which was given her as her marriage portion, and I am resolved to defend it against my adversary, Philip de Valois." On account of his not having more than an eighth part of the forces which the King of France had, his marshals fixed upon the most advantageous situation, and the army went and took possession of it. He then sent his scouts toward Abbeville, to learn if the King of France meant to take the field this Friday, but they returned and said they saw no appearance of it; upon which he dismissed his men to their quarters with orders to be in readiness by times in the morning and to assemble in the same place. The King of France remained all Friday in Abbeville, waiting for more troops. He sent his marshals, the Lord of St. Venant and Lord Charles of Montmorency, out of Abbeville, to examine the country and get some certain intelligence of the English. They returned about vespers with information that the English were encamped on the plain. That night the King of France entertained at supper in Abbeville all the princes and chief lords. There was much conversation relative to war; and the King entreated them after supper that they would always remain in friendship with each other; that they would be friends without jealousy, and courteous without pride. The King was still expecting the Earl of Savoy, who ought to have been there with a thousand lances, as he had been well paid for them at Troyes in Champaign, three months in advance. The King of England encamped this Friday in the plain, for he found the country abounding in provisions, but, if they should have failed, he had plenty in the carriages which attended on him. The army set about furbishing and repairing their armor, and the King gave a supper that evening to the earls and barons of his army, where they made good cheer. On their taking leave the King remained alone with the lords of his bedchamber; he retired into his oratory, and, falling on his knees before the altar, prayed to God that if he should combat his enemies on the morrow, he might come off with honor. About midnight he went to bed and, rising early the next day, he and the Prince of Wales heard mass and communicated. The greater part of his army did the same, confessed, and made proper preparations. After mass, the King ordered his men to arm themselves, and assemble on the ground he had before fixed on. He had enclosed a large park near a wood, on the rear of his army, in which he placed all his baggage wagons and horses. This park had but one entrance; his men-at-arms and archers remained on foot. The King afterward ordered, through his constable and his two marshals, that the army should be divided into three battalions. In the first he placed the young Prince of Wales, and with him the earls of Warwick and Oxford, Sir Godfrey de Harcourt, the Lord Reginald Cobham, Lord Thomas Holland, Lord Stafford, Lord Mauley, the Lord Delaware, Sir John Chandos, Lord Bartholomew Burgherst, Lord Robert Neville, Lord Thomas Clifford, Lord Bourchier, Lord Latimer, and many other knights and squires. There might be, in this first division, about eight hundred men-at-arms, two thousand archers, and a thousand Welshmen. They advanced in regular order to their ground, each lord under his banner and pennon and in the centre of his men. In the second battalion were the Earl of Northampton, the Earl of Arundel, the lords Roos, Willoughby, Basset, St. Albans, Sir Lewis Tufton, Lord Multon, Lord Lascels, and many others; amounting, in the whole, to about eight hundred men-at-arms and twelve hundred archers. The third battalion was commanded by the King, and was composed of about seven hundred men-at-arms and two thousand archers. The King then mounted a small palfrey, having a white wand in his hand, and, attended by his two marshals on each side of him, he rode at a footpace through all the ranks, encouraging and entreating the army that they would guard his honor and defend his right. He spoke this so sweetly and with such a cheerful countenance that all who had been dispirited were directly comforted by seeing and hearing him. When he had thus visited all the battalions it was near ten o'clock; he retired to his own division, and ordered them all to eat heartily and drink a glass after. They ate and drank at their ease, and, having packed up pots, barrels, etc., in the carts they returned to their battalions according to the marshals' orders, and seated themselves on the ground, placing their helmets and bows before them, that they might be the fresher when their enemies should arrive. On Saturday the King of France rose betimes, and heard mass in the monastery of St. Peter's in Abbeville, where he was lodged; having ordered his army to do the same, he left that town after sunrise. When he had marched about two leagues from Abbeville, and was approaching the enemy, he was advised to form his army in order of battle and to let those on foot march forward that they might not be trampled on by the horses. The King, upon this, sent off four knights, Lord Moyne of Bastleberg, Lord of Noyers, Lord of Beaujeu, and the Lord of Aubigny, who rode so near to the English that they could clearly distinguish their position. The English plainly perceived they were come to reconnoitre them; however, they took no notice of it, but suffered them to return unmolested. When the King of France saw them coming back, he halted his army; and the knights, pushing through the crowd, came near the King, who said to them, "My lords, what news?" They looked at each other, without opening their mouths, for neither chose to speak first. At last the King addressed himself to the Lord Moyne, who was attached to the King of Bohemia, and had performed very many gallant deeds, so that he was esteemed one of the most valiant knights in Christendom. Lord Moyne said: "Sir, I will speak, since it pleases you to order me, but under the correction of my companions. We have advanced far enough to reconnoitre your enemies. Know, then, that they are drawn up in three battalions, and are waiting for you. I would advise, for my part--submitting, however, to better counsel--that you halt your army here and quarter them for the night; for before the rear shall come up and the army be properly drawn out, it will be very late; your men will be tired and in disorder, while they will find your enemies fresh and properly arrayed. On the morrow you may draw up your army more at your ease and may reconnoitre at leisure on what part it will be most advantageous to begin the attack; for, be assured, they will wait for you." The King commanded that it should be so done, and the two marshals rode, one toward the front, and the other to the rear, crying out, "Halt banners, in the name of God and St. Denis." Those that were in the front halted, but those behind said they would not halt until they were as forward as the front. When the front perceived the rear pressing on they pushed forward, and neither the King nor the marshals could stop them, but they marched without any order until they came in sight of their enemies. As soon as the foremost rank saw them they fell back at once in great disorder, which alarmed those in the rear, who thought they had been fighting. There was then space and room enough for them to have passed forward, had they been willing so to do; some did so, but others remained shy. All the roads between Abbeville and Crécy were covered with common people, who, when they were come within three leagues of their enemies, drew their swords, bawling out, "Kill, kill," and with them were many great lords that were eager to make show of their courage. There is no man--unless he had been present--that can imagine or describe truly the confusion of that day; especially the bad management and disorder of the French, whose troops were out of number. The English were drawn up in three divisions and seated on the ground. On seeing their enemies advance they rose up and fell into their ranks. That of the Prince was the first to do so, whose archers were formed in the manner of a portcullis, or harrow, and the men-at-arms in the rear. The earls of Northampton and Arundel, who commanded the second division, had posted themselves in good order on his wing, to assist and succor the Prince if necessary. You must know that these kings, earls, barons, and lords of France did not advance in any regular order, but one after the other, or any way most pleasing to themselves. As soon as the King of France came in sight of the English his blood began to boil, and he cried out to his marshals, "Order the Genoese forward and begin the battle, in the name of God and St. Denis." There were about fifteen thousand Genoese cross-bowmen, but they were quite fatigued, having marched on foot that day six leagues, completely armed and with their cross-bows. They told the constable they were not in a fit condition to do any great things that day in battle. The Earl of Alençon, hearing this, said, "This is what one gets by employing such scoundrels, who fall off when there is any need for them." During this time a heavy rain fell, accompanied by thunder and a very terrible eclipse of the sun, and before this rain a great flight of crows hovered in the air over all those battalions, making a loud noise. Shortly afterward it cleared up and the sun shone very bright, but the Frenchmen had it on their faces and the English on their backs. When the Genoese were somewhat in order and approached the English they set up a loud shout[48] in order to frighten them, but they remained quite still and did not seem to attend to it. They then set up a second shout and advanced a little forward, but the English never moved. They hooted a third time, advancing with their cross-bows presented and began to shoot. The English archers then advanced one step forward and shot their arrows with such force and quickness that it seemed as if it snowed. When the Genoese felt these arrows, which pierced their arms, heads, and through their armor, some of them cut the strings of their cross-bows; others flung them on the ground and all turned about and retreated quite discomfited. The French had a large body of men-at-arms on horseback, richly dressed, to support the Genoese. The King of France seeing them thus fall back cried out, "Kill me those scoundrels, for they stop up our road without any reason." You would then have seen the above-mentioned men-at-arms lay about them, killing all they could of these runaways. The English continued shooting as vigorously and quickly as before; some of their arrows fell among the horsemen, who were sumptuously equipped, and, killing and wounding many, made them caper and fall among the Genoese, so that they were in such confusion they could never rally again. In the English army there were some Cornish and Welshmen on foot who had armed themselves with large knives. These, advancing through the ranks of the men-at-arms and archers, who made way for them, came upon the French when they were in this danger, and, falling upon earls, barons, knights, and squires, slew many; at which the King of England was afterward much exasperated. The valiant King of Bohemia was slain there. He was called Charles of Luxembourg, for he was the son of the gallant king and emperor Henry of Luxembourg. Having heard the order of the battle, he inquired where his son, Lord Charles, was. His attendants answered that they did not know, but believed he was fighting. The King said to them: "Gentlemen, you are all my people, my friends and brethren-at-arms this day; therefore, as I am blind,[49] I request of you to lead me so far into the engagement that I may strike one stroke with my sword." The knights replied that they would directly lead him forward, and, in order that they might not lose him in the crowd, they fastened all the reins of their horses together and put the King at their head, that he might gratify his wish and advance toward the enemy. Lord Charles of Bohemia--who already signed his name as King of Germany and bore the arms--had come in good order to the engagement, but when he perceived that it was likely to turn out against the French he departed. The King, his father, had rode in among the enemy, and made good use of his sword, for he and his companions had fought most gallantly. They had advanced so far that they were all slain, and on the morrow they were found on the ground, with their horses all tied together. The Earl of Alençon advanced in regular order upon the English, to fight with them; as did the Earl of Flanders in another part. These two lords, with their detachments--coasting, as it were, the archers--came to the Prince's battalion, where they fought valiantly for a length of time. The King of France was eager to march to the place were he saw their banners displayed, but there was a hedge of archers before him. He had that day made a present of a handsome black horse to Sir John of Hainault, who had mounted on it a knight called Sir John de Fusselles, that bore his banner. The horse ran off with him and forced its way through the English army, and, when about to return, stumbled and fell into a ditch and severely wounded him. He would have been dead if his page had not followed him round the battalions and found him unable to rise. He had not, however, any other hinderance than from his horse; for the English did not quit the ranks that day to make prisoners. The page alighted and raised him up, but he did not return the way he came, as he would have found it difficult from the crowd. This battle, which was fought on the Saturday, between La Broyes and Crécy, was very murderous and cruel, and many gallant deeds of arms were performed that were never known. Toward evening many knights and squires of the French had lost their masters. They wandered up and down the plain, attacking the English in small parties. They were soon destroyed, for the English had determined that day to give no quarter nor hear of ransom from anyone. Early in the day some French, Germans, and Savoyards had broken through the archers of the Prince's battalion and had engaged with the men-at-arms; upon which the second battalion came to his aid, otherwise he would have been hard pressed. The first division, seeing the danger they were in, sent a knight in great haste to the King of England, who was posted upon an eminence near a windmill. On the knight's arrival he said: "Sir, the Earl of Warwick, Lord Reginald Cobham, and the others who are about your son are vigorously attacked by the French. They entreat that you would come to their assistance with your battalion, for, if their numbers should increase, they fear he will have too much to do." The King replied, "Is my son dead, unhorsed, or so badly wounded that he cannot support himself?" "Nothing of the sort, thank God," rejoined the knight, "but he is in so hot an engagement that he has great need of your help." The King answered: "Now, Sir Thomas, return back to those that sent you, and tell them from me not to send again for me this day, or expect that I shall come, let what will happen, as long as my son has life; and say that I command them to let the boy win his spurs; for I am determined, if it please God, that all the glory and honor of this day shall be given to him and to those into whose care I have intrusted him." The knight returned to his lords, and related the King's answer, which mightily encouraged them and made them repent they had ever sent such a message.[50] It is a certain fact that Sir Godfrey de Harcourt, who was in the Prince's battalion, having been told by some of the English that they had seen the banner of his brother engaged in the battle against him, was exceedingly anxious to save him; but he was too late, for he was left dead on the field, and so was the Earl of Aumarle, his nephew. On the other hand, the earls of Alençon and of Flanders were fighting lustily under their banners and with their own people, but they could not resist the force of the English, and were slain, as well as many other knights and squires that were attending on or accompanying them. The Earl of Blois, nephew to the King of France, and the Duke of Lorraine, his brother-in-law, with their troops, made a gallant defence; but they were surrounded by a troop of English and Welsh and slain in spite of their prowess. The Earl of St. Pol and the Earl of Auxerre were also killed, as well as many others. Late after vespers, the King of France had not more about him than sixty men--every one included. Sir John of Hainault, who was of the number, had once remounted the King; for his horse had been killed under him by an arrow. He said to the King: "Sir, retreat while you have an opportunity and do not expose yourself so simply. If you have lost this battle, another time you will be the conqueror." After he had said this, he took the bridle of the King's horse and led him off by force, for he had before entreated him to retire. The King rode on until he came to the castle of La Broyes, where he found the gates shut, for it was very dark. The King ordered the governor of it to be summoned. He came upon the battlements and asked who it was that called at such an hour. The King answered: "Open, open, governor! It is the fortune of France!" The governor, hearing the King's voice, immediately descended, opened the gate and let down the bridge. The King and his company entered the castle, but he had only with him five barons, Sir John of Hainault, Lord Charles of Montmorency, Lord Beaujeu, Lord Aubigny, and Lord Montfort. The King would not bury himself in such a place as that, but, having taken some refreshments, set out again with his attendants about midnight, and rode on, under the direction of guides--who were well acquainted with the country--until about daybreak, when he came to Amiens, where he halted. The English never quitted their ranks in pursuit of anyone, but remained on the field, guarding their position and defending themselves against all who attacked them. The battle was ended at the hour of vespers. When, on Saturday night, the English heard no more hooting or shouting, nor any more crying out to particular lords or their banners, they looked upon the field as their own and their enemies as beaten. They made great fires, and lighted torches because of the obscurity of the night. King Edward then came down from his post, who all that day had not put on his helmet, and with his whole battalion advanced to the Prince of Wales, whom he embraced in his arms and kissed, and said: "Sweet son, God give you good perseverance; you are my son, for most loyally have you acquitted yourself this day. You are worthy to be a sovereign." The Prince bowed down very low and humbled himself, giving all the honor to the King, his father. The English, during the night, made frequent thanksgivings to the Lord for the happy issue of the day, and without rioting, for the King had forbidden all riot or noise. On Sunday morning there was so great a fog that one could scarcely see the distance of half an acre. The King ordered a detachment from the army, under the command of the two marshals--consisting of about five hundred lances and two thousand archers--to make an excursion and see if there were any bodies of French troops collected together. The quota of troops from Rouen and Beauvais had that morning left Abbeville and St. Ricquier in Ponthieu to join the French army, and were ignorant of the defeat of the preceding evening. They met this detachment, and, thinking they must be French, hastened to join them. As soon as the English found who they were, they fell upon them and there was a sharp engagement. The French soon turned their backs and fled in great disorder. There were slain in this flight in the open fields, under hedges and bushes, upward of seven thousand; and had it been clear weather, not one soul would have escaped. A little time afterward this same party fell in with the Archbishop of Rouen and the great Prior of France, who were also ignorant of the discomfiture of the French, for they had been informed that the King was not to fight before Sunday. Here began a fresh battle; for those two lords were well attended by good men-at-arms. However, they could not withstand the English, but were almost all slain, with the two chiefs who commanded them; very few escaping. In the morning the English found many Frenchmen who had lost their road on Saturday and had lain in the open fields, not knowing what was become of the King or their own leaders. The English put to the sword all they met; and it has been assured to me for fact that of foot soldiers, sent from the cities, towns, and municipalities, there were slain, this Sunday morning, four times as many as in the battle of Saturday. This detachment, which had been sent to look after the French, returned as the King was coming from mass, and related to him all that they had seen and met with. After he had been assured by them that there was not any likelihood of the French collecting another army, he sent to have the number and condition of the dead examined. He ordered on this business Lord Reginald Cobham, Lord Stafford, and three heralds to examine their arms, and two secretaries to write down all the names. They took much pains to examine all the dead, and were the whole day in the field of battle, not returning but just as the King was sitting down to supper. They made him a very circumstantial report of all they had observed, and said they had found eighty banners, the bodies of eleven princes, twelve hundred knights, and about thirty thousand common men. MODERN RECOGNITION OF SCENIC BEAUTY CROWNING OF PETRARCH AT ROME A.D. 1341 JACOB BURCKHARDT The beauty of nature, of natural scenery amid mountains, fields, and lakes, seems to have passed unheeded during early mediæval times. Even in the ancient days of classic culture it apparently attracted very little notice, except from an occasional poet. The present attitude of enthusiasm, which leads thousands of tourists to flock to Switzerland or to Niagara every year, is wholly a modern development. This development of what is almost a new sense in man certainly deserves notice. To fix an exact date for its beginning is, of course, impossible, but it is generally regarded as a product of the Italian Renaissance, and Burckhardt, seeking for its slow unfolding, traces it back to Petrarch, who, in his poetry, speaks of nature repeatedly. Petrarch's poetry was so highly valued by the Italians that they unanimously agreed to confer upon the author a laurel crown. This was a revival of the old Greek method of honoring poets, and as such it was felt by the Italians a specially fitting way to proclaim their reviving interest in art. So a great public gathering was arranged at Rome, and the laurel was with elaborate ceremonies placed on Petrarch's brow. The recipient of this new and distinguished honor is regarded as second only to Dante in Italian literature. In addition to his world-famed sonnets to Laura, he wrote much-admired Latin poems, and was a scholar of high repute. His enthusiasm for the ancient Greek and Latin authors made him the central figure in that revival of classic learning which at this time began in Italy. Petrarch, who lives in the memory of most people nowadays chiefly as a great Italian poet, owed his fame among his contemporaries far rather to the fact that he was a kind of living representative of antiquity, that he imitated all styles of Latin poetry, endeavored by his voluminous historical and philosophical writings not to supplant, but to make known, the works of the ancients, and wrote letters that, as treatises on matters of antiquarian interest, obtained a reputation which to us is unintelligible, but which was natural enough in an age without handbooks. Petrarch himself trusted and hoped that his Latin writings would bring him fame with his contemporaries and with posterity, and thought so little of his Italian poems that, as he often tells us, he would gladly have destroyed them if he could have succeeded thereby in blotting them out from the memory of men. It was the same with Boccaccio. For two centuries, when but little was known of the _Decameron_ north of the Alps, he was famous all over Europe simply on account of his Latin compilations on mythology, geography, and biography. One of these, _de Genealogia Deorum_, contains in the fourteenth and fifteenth books a remarkable appendix, in which he discusses the position of the then youthful humanism with regard to the age. We must not be misled by his exclusive references to _poesia_, as closer observation shows that he means thereby the whole mental activity of the poet-scholars. This it is whose enemies he so vigorously combats--the frivolous ignoramuses who have no soul for anything but debauchery; the sophistical theologian to whom Helicon, the Castalian fountain, and the grove of Apollo were foolishness; the greedy lawyers, to whom poetry was a superfluity, since no money was to be made by it; finally the mendicant friars, described periphrastically, but clearly enough, who made free with their charges of paganism and immorality. Then follow the defence of poetry, the proof that the poetry of the ancients and of their modern followers contains nothing mendacious, the praise of it, and especially of the deeper and allegorical meanings which we must always attribute to it, and of that calculated obscurity which is intended to repel the dull minds of the ignorant. And finally, with a clear reference to his own scholarly work, the writer justifies the new relation in which his age stood to paganism. The case was wholly different, he pleads, when the Early Church had to fight its way among the heathen. Now--praised be Jesus Christ!--true religion was strengthened, paganism destroyed, and the victorious Church in possession of the hostile camp. It was now possible to touch and study paganism almost (_fere_) without danger. Boccaccio, however, did not hold this liberal view consistently. The ground of his apostasy lay partly in the mobility of his character, partly in the still powerful and widespread prejudice that classical pursuits were unbecoming in a theologian. To these reasons must be added the warning given him in the name of the dead Pietro Petroni by the monk Gioacchino Ciani to give up his pagan studies under pain of early death. He accordingly determined to abandon them, and was only brought back from this cowardly resolve by the earnest exhortations of Petrarch, and by the latter's able demonstration that humanism was reconcilable with religion. There was thus a new cause in the world, and a new class of men to maintain it. It is idle to ask if this cause ought not to have stopped short in its career of victory, to have restrained itself deliberately, and conceded the first place to purely national elements of culture. No conviction was more firmly rooted in the popular mind than that antiquity was the highest title to glory which Italy possessed. There was a symbolical ceremony familiar to this generation of poet-scholars which lasted on into the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, though losing the higher sentiment which inspired it--the coronation of the poets with the laurel wreath. The origin of this system in the Middle Ages is obscure, and the ritual of the ceremony never became fixed. It was a public demonstration, an outward and visible expression of literary enthusiasm, and naturally its form was variable. Dante, for instance, seems to have understood it in the sense of a half-religious consecration; he desired to assume the wreath in the baptistery of San Giovanni, where, like thousands of other Florentine children, he had received baptism. He could, says his biographer, have anywhere received the crown in virtue of his fame, but desired it nowhere but in his native city, and therefore died uncrowned. From the same source we learn that the usage was till then uncommon, and was held to be inherited by the ancient Romans from the Greeks. The most recent source to which the practices could be referred is to be found in the Capitoline contests of musicians, poets, and other artists, founded by Domitian in imitation of the Greeks and celebrated every five years, which may possibly have survived for a time the fall of the Roman Empire; but as few other men would venture to crown themselves, as Dante desired to do, the question arises, To whom did this office belong? Albertino Mussato was crowned at Padua in 1310 by the Bishop and the rector of the university. The University of Paris, the rector of which was then a Florentine, 1341, and the municipal authorities of Rome competed for the honor of crowning Petrarch. His self-elected examiner, King Robert of Anjou, would gladly have performed the ceremony at Naples, but Petrarch preferred to be crowned on the Capitol by the senator of Rome. This honor was long the highest object of ambition, and so it seemed to Jacobus Pizinga, an illustrious Sicilian magistrate. Then came the Italian journey of Charles IV, whom it amused to flatter the vanity of ambitious men, and impress the ignorant multitude by means of gorgeous ceremonies. Starting from the fiction that the coronation of poets was a prerogative of the old Roman emperors, and consequently was no less his own, he crowned, May 15, 1355, the Florentine scholar Zanobi della Strada at Pisa, to the annoyance of Petrarch, who complained that the barbarian laurel had dared adorn the man loved by the Ausonian muses, and to the great disgust of Boccaccio, who declined to recognize this _laurea Pisana_ as legitimate. Indeed, it might be fairly asked with what right this stranger, half Slavonic by birth, came to sit in judgment on the merits of Italian poets. But from henceforth the emperors crowned poets whenever they went on their travels; and in the fifteenth century the popes and other princes assumed the same right, till at last no regard whatever was paid to place or circumstances. Outside the sphere of scientific investigation, there is another way to draw near to nature. The Italians are the first among modern peoples by whom the outward world was seen and felt as something beautiful. The power to do so is always the result of a long and complicated development, and its origin is not easily detected, since a dim feeling of this kind may exist long before it shows itself in poetry and painting, and thereby becomes conscious of itself. Among the ancients, for example, art and poetry had gone through the whole circle of human interests before they turned to the representation of nature, and even then the latter filled always a limited and subordinate place. And yet, from the time of Homer downward, the powerful impression made by nature upon man is shown by countless verses and chance expressions. The Germanic races which founded their states on the ruins of the Roman Empire were thoroughly and specially fitted to understand the spirit of natural scenery; and though Christianity compelled them for a while to see in the springs and mountains, in the lakes and woods, which they had till then revered, the working of evil demons, yet this transitional conception was soon outgrown. By the year 1200, at the height of the Middle Ages, a genuine, hearty enjoyment of the external world was again in existence, and found lively expression in the minstrelsy of different nations, which gives evidence of the sympathy felt with all the simple phenomena of nature--spring with its flowers, the green fields, and the woods. But these pictures are all foreground, without perspective. Even the crusaders, who travelled so far and saw so much, are not recognizable as such in these poems. The epic poetry, which describes armor and costumes so fully, does not attempt more than a sketch of outward nature; and even the great Wolfram von Eschenbach scarcely anywhere gives us an adequate picture of the scene on which his heroes move. From these poems it would never be guessed that their noble authors in all countries inhabited or visited lofty castles, commanding distant prospects. Even in the Latin poems of the wandering clerks, we find no traces of a distant view--of landscape properly so called; but what lies near is sometimes described with a glow and splendor which none of the knightly minstrels can surpass. To the Italian mind, at all events, nature had by this time lost its taint of sin, and had shaken off all trace of demoniacal powers. St. Francis of Assisi, in his _Hymn to the Sun_, frankly praises the Lord for creating the heavenly bodies and the four elements. The unmistakable proofs of a deepening effect of nature on the human spirit begin with Dante. Not only does he awaken in us by a few vigorous lines the sense of the morning airs and the trembling light on the distant ocean, or of the grandeur of the storm-beaten forest, but he makes the ascent of lofty peaks, _with_ the only possible object of enjoying the view--the first man, perhaps, since the days of antiquity who did so. In Boccaccio we can do little more than infer how country scenery affected him; yet his pastoral romances show his imagination to have been filled with it. But the significance of nature for a receptive spirit is fully and clearly displayed by Petrarch--one of the first truly modern men. That clear soul--who first collected from the literature of all countries evidence of the origin and progress of the sense of natural beauty, and himself, in his _Ansichten der Natur_, achieved the noblest masterpiece of description--Alexander von Humboldt, has not done full justice to Petrarch; and, following in the steps of the great reaper, we may still hope to glean a few ears of interest and value. Petrarch was not only a distinguished geographer--the first map of Italy is said to have been drawn by his direction--and not only a reproducer of the sayings of the ancients, but felt himself the influence of natural beauty. The enjoyment of nature is, for him, the favorite accompaniment of intellectual pursuits; it was to combine the two that he lived in learned retirement at Vaucluse and elsewhere, that he from time to time fled from the world and from his age. We should do him wrong by inferring from his weak and undeveloped power of describing natural scenery that he did not feel it deeply. His picture, for instance, of the lovely Gulf of Spezzia and Porto Venere, which he inserts at the end of the sixth book of the _Africa_, for the reason that none of the ancients or moderns had sung of it, is no more than a simple enumeration, but the descriptions in letters to his friends of Rome, Naples, and other Italian cities in which he willingly lingered, are picturesque and worthy of the subject. Petrarch is also conscious of the beauty of rock scenery, and is perfectly able to distinguish the picturesqueness from the utility of nature. During his stay among the woods of Reggio, the sudden sight of an impressive landscape so affected him that he resumed a poem which he had long laid aside. But the deepest impression of all was made upon him by the ascent of Mont Ventoux, near Avignon. An indefinable longing for a distant panorama grew stronger and stronger in him, till at length the accidental sight of a passage in Livy, where King Philip, the enemy of Rome, ascends the Haemus, decided him. He thought that what was not blamed in a gray-headed monarch might be well excused in a young man of private station. The ascent of a mountain for its own sake was unheard of, and there could be no thought of the companionship of friends or acquaintances. Petrarch took with him only his younger brother and two country people from the last place where he halted. At the foot of the mountain an old herdsman besought him to turn back, saying that he himself had attempted to climb it fifty years before, and had brought home nothing but repentance, broken bones, and torn clothes, and that neither before nor after had anyone ventured to do the same. Nevertheless, they struggled forward and upward, till the clouds lay beneath their feet, and at last they reached the top. A description of the view from the summit would be looked for in vain, not because the poet was insensible to it, but, on the contrary, because the impression was too overwhelming. His whole past life, with all its follies, rose before his mind; he remembered that ten years ago that day he had quitted Bologna a young man, and turned a longing gaze toward his native country; he opened a book which then was his constant companion, the _Confessions_ of St. Augustine, and his eye fell on the passage in the tenth chapter, "and men go forth, and admire lofty mountains and broad seas and roaring torrents and the ocean and the course of the stars, and forget their own selves while doing so." His brother, to whom he read these words, could not understand why he closed the book and said no more. Some decades later, about 1360, Fazio degli Uberti describes, in his rhyming geography, the wide panorama from the mountains of Auvergne, with the interest, it is true, of the geographer and antiquarian only, but still showing clearly that he himself had seen it. He must, however, have ascended higher peaks, since he is familiar with facts which only occur at a height of ten thousand feet or more above the sea--mountain-sickness and its accompaniments--of which his imaginary comrade Solinus tries to cure him with a sponge dipped in essence. The ascents of Parnassus and Olympus, of which he speaks, are perhaps only fictions. In the fifteenth century, the great masters of the Flemish school, Hubert and Johann van Eyck, suddenly lifted the veil from nature. Their landscapes are not merely the fruit of an endeavor to reflect the real world in art, but have, even if expressed conventionally, a certain poetical meaning--in short, a soul. Their influence on the whole art of the West is undeniable, and extended to the landscape-painting of the Italians, but without preventing the characteristic interest of the Italian eye for nature from finding its own expression. On this point, as in the scientific description of nature, Æneas Sylvius is again one of the most weighty voices of his time. Even if we grant the justice of all that has been said against his character, we must, nevertheless, admit that in few other men was the picture of the age and its culture so fully reflected, and that few came nearer to the normal type of the men of the early Renaissance. It may be added parenthetically that even in respect to his moral character he will not be fairly judged if we listen solely to the complaints of the German Church, which his fickleness helped to balk of the council it so ardently desired. He here claims our attention as the first who not only enjoyed the magnificence of the Italian landscape, but described it with enthusiasm down to its minutest details. The ecclesiastical state and the South of Tuscany--his native home--he knew thoroughly, and after he became pope he spent his leisure during the favorable season chiefly in excursions to the country. Then at last the gouty man was rich enough to have himself carried in a litter through the mountains and valleys; and when we compare his enjoyments with those of the popes who succeeded him, Pius, whose chief delight was in nature, antiquity, and simple but noble architecture, appears almost a saint. In the elegant and flowing Latin of his _Commentaries_ he freely tells us of his happiness. His eye seems as keen and practised as that of any modern observer. He enjoys with rapture the panoramic splendor of the view from the summit of the Alban hills--from the Monte Cavo--whence he could see the shores of St. Peter from Terracina and the promontory of Circe as far as Monte Argentaro, and the wide expanse of country round about, with the ruined cities of the past, and with the mountain chains of central Italy beyond; and then his eye would turn to the green woods in the hollows beneath, and the mountain lakes among them. He feels the beauty of the position of Todi, crowning the vineyards and olive-clad slopes, looking down upon distant woods and upon the valley of the Tiber, where towns and castles rise above the winding river. The lovely hills about Siena, with villas and monasteries on every height, are his own home, and his descriptions of them are touched with a peculiar feeling. Single picturesque glimpses charm him, too, like the little promontory of Capo di Monte that stretches out into the Lake of Bolsena. "Rocky steps," we read, "shaded by vines, descend to the water's edge, where the evergreen oaks stand between the cliffs, alive with the song of thrushes." On the path round the Lake of Nemi, beneath the chestnuts and fruit-trees, he feels that here, if anywhere, a poet's soul must awake--here in the hiding-place of Diana! He often held consistories or received ambassadors under huge old chestnut-trees, or beneath the olives on the greensward by some gurgling spring. A view like that of a narrowing gorge, with a bridge arched boldly over it, awakens at once his artistic sense. Even the smallest details give him delight through something beautiful, or perfect, or characteristic in them--the blue fields of waving flax, the yellow gorge which covers the hills, even tangled thickets, or single trees, or springs, which seem to him like wonders of nature. The height of his enthusiasm for natural beauty was reached during his stay on Monte Amiata, in the summer of 1462, when plague and heat made the lowlands uninhabitable. Half way up the mountain, in the old Lombard monastery of San Salvatore, he and his court took up their quarters. There, between the chestnuts which clothe the steep declivity, the eye may wander over all Southern Tuscany, with the towers of Siena in the distance. The ascent of the highest peak he left to his companions, who were joined by the Venetian envoy; they found at the top two vast blocks of stone one upon the other--perhaps the sacrificial altar of a prehistorical people--and fancied that in the far distance they saw Corsica and Sardinia rising above the sea. In the cool air of the hills, among the old oaks and chestnuts, on the green meadows where there were no thorns to wound the feet and no snakes or insects to hurt or to annoy, the Pope passed days of unclouded happiness. For the _segnatura_, which took place on certain days of the week, he selected on each occasion some new shady retreat "_novas in convallibus fontes et novas inveniens umbras, quæ dubiam jacerent electionem_." At such times the dogs would perhaps start a great stag from his lair, who, after defending himself a while with hoofs and antlers, would fly at last up the mountain. In the evening the Pope was accustomed to sit before the monastery on the spot from which the whole valley of the Paglia was visible, holding lively conversations with the cardinals. The courtiers, who ventured down from the heights on their hunting expeditions, found the heat below intolerable, and the scorched plains like a very hell, while the monastery, with its cool, shady woods, seemed like an abode of the blessed. All this is genuine modern enjoyment, not a reflection of antiquity. As surely as the ancients themselves felt in the same manner, so surely, nevertheless, were the scanty expressions of the writers whom Pius knew insufficient to awaken in him such enthusiasm. The second great age of Italian poetry, which now followed at the end of the fifteenth century, as well as the Latin poetry of the same period, is rich in proofs of the powerful effect of nature on the human mind. The first glance at the lyric poets of that time will suffice to convince us. Elaborate descriptions, it is true, of natural scenery are very rare, for the reason that, in this energetic age, the novels and the lyric or epic poetry had something else to deal with. Bojardo and Ariosto paint nature vigorously, but as briefly as possible, and with no effort to appeal by their descriptions to the feelings of the reader, which they endeavor to reach solely by their narrative and characters. Letter-writers and the authors of philosophical dialogues are, in fact, better evidences of the growing love of nature than the poets. The novelist Bandello, for example, observes rigorously the rules of his department of literature; he gives us in his novels themselves not a word more than is necessary on the natural scenery amid which the action of his tales takes place, but in the dedications which always precede them we meet with charming descriptions of nature as the setting for his dialogues and social pictures. Among letter-writers, Aretino unfortunately must be named as the first who has fully painted in words the splendid effect of light and shadow in an Italian sunset. We sometimes find the feeling of the poets, also, attaching itself with tenderness to graceful scenes of country life. Tito Strozza, about the year 1480, describes in a Latin elegy the dwelling of his mistress. We are shown an old ivy-clad house, half hidden in trees, and adorned with weather-stained frescoes of the saints, and near it a chapel, much damaged by the violence of the river Po, which flowed hard by; not far off, the priest ploughs his few barren roods with borrowed cattle. This is no reminiscence of the Roman elegists, but true modern sentiment. It may be objected that the German painters at the beginning of the sixteenth century succeed in representing with perfect mastery these scenes of country life, as, for instance, Albrecht Durer, in his engraving of the prodigal son. But it is one thing if a painter, brought up in a school of realism, introduces such scenes, and quite another thing if a poet, accustomed to an ideal or mythological framework, is driven by inward impulse into realism. Besides which, priority in point of time is here, as in the descriptions of country life, on the side of the Italian poets. RIENZI'S REVOLUTION IN ROME A.D. 1347 R. LODGE When for nearly forty years Rome had been deserted by the popes, who had betaken themselves in 1309 to a long residence at Avignon, France, and when the Eternal City was virtually without an imperial government--the Teutonic emperors having likewise abandoned her--she fell back upon the memories of her great past, recalling the glories of her ancient supremacy and the means whereby it had been established and maintained. Whatever might promise to restore it she was ready to welcome. At this time the real masters of Rome were the princes or barons dwelling in their fortified castles outside or in their strong palaces within the city. Over the northern district, near the Quirinal, reigned the celebrated old family of the Colonnas; while along the Tiber, from the Campo-di-Fiore to the Church of St. Peter, extended the sway of the new family of the Orsini. Other members of the nobility, in the country, held their seats in small fortified cities or castles. Under such domination Rome had become almost deserted. "The population of the seven-hilled city had come down to about thirty thousand souls." When at peace with one another--which was rarely--the barons exercised over the citizens and serfs a combined tyranny, while the farmers, travellers, and pilgrims were made victims of their plunder. At this period Petrarch--that "first modern man"--wrote to Pope Clement VI that Rome had become the abode of demons, the receptacle of all crimes, a hell for the living. "It was in these circumstances that a momentary revival of order and liberty was effected by the most extraordinary adventurer of an age that was prolific in adventurers." This was Cola Di Rienzi, who was born in Rome about 1313, and who is sometimes styled "an Italian patriot." In his ambitious endeavor to reinstate the Cæsarean power in Italy he appears alternately in the figure of a hero and the character of a charlatan. Believing himself the founder of a new era, he was inflamed by his successes, and ended in "mystical extravagances and follies which could not fail to cause his ruin." Cola Di Rienzi was born of humble parents, though he afterward tried to gratify his own vanity and to gain the ear of Charles IV by claiming to be the bastard son of Henry VII. A wrong which he could not venture to avenge excited his bitter hostility against the baronage, while the study of Livy and other classical writers inspired him with regretful admiration for the glories of ancient Rome. He succeeded in attracting notice by his personal beauty and by the rather turgid eloquence which was his chief talent. In 1342 he took the most prominent part in an embassy from the citizens to Clement VI; and though he failed to induce the Pope to return to Rome, which at that time he seems to have regarded as the panacea for the evils of the time, he gained sufficient favor at Avignon to be appointed papal notary. From this time he deliberately set himself to raise the people to open resistance against their oppressors, while he disarmed the suspicions of the nobles by intentional buffoonery and extravagance of conduct. On May 20, 1347, the first blow was struck. Rienzi, with a chosen band of conspirators, and accompanied by the papal vicar, who had every interest in weakening the baronage, proceeded to the Capitol, and, amid the applause of the mob, promulgated the laws of the _buono stato_. He himself took the title of tribune, in order to emphasize his championship of the lower classes. The most important of his laws were for the maintenance of order. Private garrisons and fortified houses were forbidden. Each of the thirteen districts was to maintain an armed force of a hundred infantry and twenty-five horsemen. Every port was provided with a cruiser for the protection of merchandise, and the trade on the Tiber was to be secured by a river police. The nobles watched the progress of this astonishing revolution with impotent surprise. Stefano Colonna, who was absent on the eventful day, expressed his scorn of the mob and their leader. But a popular attack on his palace convinced him of his error and forced him to fly from the city. Within fifteen days the triumph of Rienzi seemed to be complete, when the proudest nobles of Rome submitted and took an oath to support the new constitution. But the suddenness of his success was enough to turn a head which was never of the strongest. The Tribune began to dream of restoring to the Roman Republic its old supremacy. And for a moment even this dream seemed hardly chimerical. Europe was really dazzled by the revival of its ancient capital. Louis of Hungary and Joanna of Naples submitted their quarrel to Rienzi's arbitration. Thus encouraged, he set no bounds to his ambition. He called upon the Pope and cardinals to return at once to Rome. He summoned Louis and Charles, the two claimants to the Imperial dignity, to appear before his throne and submit to his tribunal. His arrogance was shown in the pretentious titles which he assumed and in the gorgeous pomp with which he was accompanied on public and even on private occasions. On August 15th, after bathing in the porphyry font in which the emperor Constantine had been baptized, he was crowned with seven crowns representing the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost. His most loyal admirer prophesied disaster when the Tribune ventured on this occasion to blasphemously compare himself with Christ. Rienzi's government deteriorated with his personal character. It had at first been liberal and just; it became arbitrary and even treacherous. His personal timidity made him at once harsh and vacillating. The heads of the great families, whom he had invited to a banquet, were seized and condemned to death on a charge of conspiracy. But a sudden terror of the possible consequences of his action caused him to relent, and he released his victims just as they were preparing for execution. His leniency was as ill-timed as his previous severity. The nobles could no longer trust him, and their fear was diminished by the weakness which they despised while they profited by it. They retired from Rome and concerted measures for the overthrow of their enemy. The first attack, which was led by Stefano Colonna, was repulsed almost by accident; but Rienzi, who had shown more cowardice than generalship, disgusted his supporters by his indecent exultation over the bodies of the slain. And there was one fatal ambiguity in Rienzi's position. He had begun by announcing himself as the ally and champion of the papacy, and Clement VI had been willing enough to stand by and watch the destruction of the baronage. But the growing independence and the arrogant pretensions of the Tribune exasperated the Pope. A new legate was despatched to Italy to denounce and excommunicate Rienzi as a heretic. The latter had no longer any support to lean upon. When a new attack was threatened, the people sullenly refused to obey the call to arms. Rienzi had not sufficient courage to risk a final struggle. On December 15th he abdicated and retired in disguise from Rome. His rise to power, his dazzling triumph, and his downfall were all comprised within the brief period of seven months. For the next few years Rienzi disappeared from view. According to his own account he was concealed in a cave in the Apennines, where he associated with some of the wilder members of the sect of the Fraticelli and probably imbibed some of their tenets. Rome relapsed into anarchy, and men's minds were distracted from politics by the ravages of the black death. The great jubilee held in Rome in 1350 became a kind of thanksgiving service of those whom the plague had spared. It is said that Rienzi himself visited the scene of his exploits without detection among the crowds of pilgrims. But he was destined to reappear in a more public and disastrous manner. In his solitude his courage and his ambition revived, and he meditated new plans for restoring freedom to Rome and to Italy. The allegiance to the Church, which he had professed in 1347, was weakened by the conduct of Clement VI and by the influence of the Fraticelli, and he resolved in the future to ally himself with the secular rather than with the ecclesiastical power, with the Empire rather than with the papacy. In August, 1351, he appeared in disguise in Prague and demanded an audience of Charles IV. To him he proposed the far-reaching scheme which he had formed during his exile. The Pope and the whole body of clergy were to be deprived of their temporal power; the petty tyrants of Italy were to be driven out; and the Emperor was to fix his residence in Rome as the supreme ruler of Christendom. All this was to be accomplished by Rienzi himself at his own cost and trouble. Charles IV listened with some curiosity to a man whose career had excited such universal interest, but he was the last man to be carried away by such chimerical suggestions. The introduction into the political proposals of some of the religious and communistic ideas of the Fraticelli gave the Emperor a pretext for committing Rienzi to the Archbishop of Prague for correction and instruction. The Archbishop communicated with the Pope, and on the demand of Clement VI Charles agreed to hand Rienzi over to the papal court on condition that his life should be spared. In 1352 Rienzi was conveyed to Avignon and thrust into prison. He owed his life perhaps less to the Emperor's request than to the opportune death of Clement VI in this year. The new Pope, Innocent VI, was more independent of French control than his immediate predecessors. The French King was fully occupied with internal disorders and with the English war. Thus the Pope was able to give more attention to Italian politics, which were sufficiently pressing. The independence and anarchy of the Papal States constituted a serious problem, but the danger of their subjection to a foreign power was still more serious. In 1350 the important city of Bologna had been seized by the Visconti of Milan, and the progress of this powerful family threatened to absorb the whole of the Romagna. Innocent determined to resist their encroachments and at the same time to restore the papal authority, and in 1353 he intrusted this double task to Cardinal Albornoz. Albornoz, equally distinguished as a diplomatist and as a military commander, resolved to ally the cause of the papacy with that of liberty. His programme was to overthrow the tyrants as the enemies both of the people and of the popes, and to restore municipal self-government under papal protection. His attention was first directed to the city of Rome, which, after many vicissitudes since 1347, had fallen under the influence of a demagogue named Baroncelli. Baroncelli had revived to some extent the schemes of Rienzi, but had declared openly against papal rule. To oppose this new tribune, Albornoz conceived the project of using the influence of Rienzi, whose rule was now regretted by the populace that had previously deserted him. The Pope was persuaded to release Rienzi from prison and to send him to Rome, where the effect of his presence was almost magical. The Romans flocked to welcome their former liberator, and he was reinstalled in power with the title of senator, conferred upon him by the Pope. But his character was not improved by adversity, and his rule was more arbitrary and selfish than it had been before. The execution of the _condottiere_, Fra Moreale, was an act of ingratitude as well as of treachery. Popular favor was soon alienated from a ruler who could no longer command either affection or respect, and, in a mob rising, Rienzi was put to death, October 8, 1354. But his return had served the purpose of Albornoz. Rome was preserved to the papacy, and the cardinal could proceed in safety with his task of subduing the independent tyrants of Romagna. Central Italy had not yet witnessed the general introduction of mercenaries, and the native populations still fought their own battles. The policy of exciting revolts among the subject citizens was completely successful, and by 1360 almost the whole of Romagna had submitted to the papal legate. His triumph was crowned in this year, when, by skilful use of quarrels among the Visconti princes, he succeeded in recovering Bologna. BEGINNING AND PROGRESS OF THE RENAISSANCE FOURTEENTH TO SIXTEENTH CENTURY JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS The new birth or resurrection known as the "Renaissance" is usually considered to have begun in Italy in the fourteenth century, though some writers would date its origin from the reign of Frederick II, 1215-1250; and by this Prince--the most enlightened man of his age--it was at least anticipated. Well versed in languages and science, he was a patron of scholars, whom he gathered about him, from all parts of the world, at his court in Palermo. At all events the Renaissance was heralded through the recovery by Italian scholars of Greek and Roman classical literature. When the movement began, the civilization of Greece and Rome had long been exerting a partial influence, not only upon Italy, but on other parts of mediæval Europe as well. But in Italy especially, when the wave of barbarism had passed, the people began to feel a returning consciousness of their ancient culture, and a desire to reproduce it. To Italians the Latin language was easy, and their country abounded in documents and monumental records which symbolized past greatness. The modern Italian spirit was produced through the combination of various elements, among which were the political institutions brought by the Lombards from Germany, the influence of chivalry and other northern forms of civilization, and the more immediate power of the Church. That which was foreshadowed in the thirteenth century became in the fourteenth a distinct national development, which, as Symonds, its most discerning interpreter, shows us, was constructing a model for the whole western world. The word "renaissance" has of late years received a more extended significance than that which is implied in our English equivalent--the "revival of learning." We use it to denote the whole transition from the Middle Ages to the modern world; and though it is possible to assign certain limits to the period during which this transition took place, we cannot fix on any dates so positively as to say between this year and that the movement was accomplished. To do so would be like trying to name the days on which spring in any particular season began and ended. Yet we speak of spring as different from winter and from summer. The truth is that in many senses we are still in mid-Renaissance. The evolution has not been completed. The new life is our own and is progressive. As in the transformation scene of some pantomime, so here the waning and the waxing shapes are mingled; the new forms, at first shadowy and filmy, gain upon the old; and now both blend; and now the old scene fades into the background; still, who shall say whether the new scene be finally set up? In like manner we cannot refer the whole phenomena of the Renaissance to any one cause or circumstance, or limit them within the field of any one department of human knowledge. If we ask the students of art what they mean by the Renaissance, they will reply that it was the revolution effected in architecture, painting, and sculpture by the recovery of antique monuments. Students of literature, philosophy, and theology see in the Renaissance that discovery of manuscripts, that passion for antiquity, that progress in philology and criticism, which led to a correct knowledge of the classics, to a fresh taste in poetry, to new systems of thought, to more accurate analysis, and finally to the Lutheran schism and the emancipation of the conscience. Men of science will discourse about the discovery of the solar system by Copernicus and Galileo, the anatomy of Vesalius, and Harvey's theory of the circulation of the blood. The origination of a truly scientific method is the point which interests them most in the Renaissance. The political historian, again, has his own answer to the question. The extinction of feudalism, the development of the great nationalities of Europe, the growth of monarchy, the limitation of the ecclesiastical authority, and the erection of the papacy into an Italian kingdom, and in the last place the gradual emergence of that sense of popular freedom which exploded in the Revolution: these are the aspects of the movement which engross his attention. Jurists will describe the dissolution of legal fictions based upon the False Decretals, the acquisition of a true text of the Roman code, and the attempt to introduce a rational method into the theory of modern iurisprudence, as well as to commence the study of international law. Men whose attention has been turned to the history of discoveries and inventions will relate the exploration of America and the East, or will point to the benefits conferred upon the world by the arts of printing and engraving, by the compass and the telescope, by paper and by gunpowder; and will insist that at the moment of the Renaissance all the instruments of mechanical utility started into existence, to aid the dissolution of what was rotten and must perish, to strengthen and perpetuate the new and useful and life-giving. Yet neither any one of these answers, taken separately, nor indeed all of them together, will offer a solution of the problem. By the term "renaissance," or new birth, is indicated a natural movement, not to be explained by this or that characteristic, but to be accepted as an effort of humanity for which at length the time had come, and in the onward progress of which we still participate. The history of the Renaissance is not the history of arts or of sciences or of literature or even of nations. It is the history of the attainment of self-conscious freedom by the human spirit manifested in the European races. It is no mere political mutation, no new fashion of art, no restoration of classical standards of taste. The arts and the inventions, the knowledge and the books which suddenly became vital at the time of the Renaissance, had long lain neglected on the shores of the dead sea which we call the Middle Ages. It was not their discovery which caused the Renaissance. But it was the intellectual energy, the spontaneous outburst of intelligence, which enabled mankind at that moment to make use of them. The force then generated still continues, vital and expansive, in the spirit of the modern world. How was it, then, that at a certain period, about fourteen centuries after Christ, to speak roughly, humanity awoke as it were from slumber and began to live? That is a question which we can but imperfectly answer. The mystery of organic life defeats analysis. Whether the subject of our inquiry be a germ-cell, or a phenomenon so complex as the commencement of a new religion, or the origination of a new disease, or a new phase in civilization, it is alike impossible to do more than to state the conditions under which the fresh growth begins, and to point out what are its manifestations. In doing so, moreover, we must be careful not to be carried away by words of our own making. Renaissance, Reformation, and Revolution are not separate things, capable of being isolated; they are moments in the history of the human race which we find it convenient to name; while history itself is one and continuous, so that our utmost endeavors to regard some portion of it, independently of the rest, will be defeated. A glance at the history of the preceding centuries shows that, after the dissolution of the fabric of the Roman Empire, there was no possibility of any intellectual revival. The barbarous races which had deluged Europe had to absorb their barbarism; the fragments of Roman civilization had either to be destroyed or assimilated; the Germanic nations had to receive culture and religion from the effete people they had superseded. It was further necessary that the modern nationalities should be defined, that the modern languages should be formed, that peace should be secured to some extent, and wealth accumulated, before the indispensable _milieu_ for a resurrection of the free spirit of humanity could exist. The first nation which fulfilled these conditions was the first to inaugurate the new era. The reason why Italy took the lead in the Renaissance was that Italy possessed a language, a favorable climate, political freedom, and commercial prosperity, at a time when other nations were still semibarbarous. Where the human spirit had been buried in the decay of the Roman Empire, there it arose upon the ruins of that Empire; and the papacy--called by Hobbes the ghost of the dead Roman Empire, seated, throned, and crowned, upon the ashes thereof--to some extent bridged over the gulf between the two periods. Keeping steadily in sight the truth that the real quality of the Renaissance was intellectual--that it was the emancipation of the reason for the modern world--we may inquire how feudalism was related to it. The mental condition of the Middle Ages was one of ignorant prostration before the idols of the Church--dogma and authority and scholasticism. Again, the nations of Europe during these centuries were bound down by the brute weight of material necessities. Without the power over the outer world which the physical sciences and useful arts communicate, without the ease of life which wealth and plenty secure, without the traditions of a civilized past, emerging slowly from a state of utter rawness, each nation could barely do more than gain and keep a difficult hold upon existence. To depreciate the work achieved for humanity during the Middle Ages would be ridiculous. Yet we may point out that it was done unconsciously--that it was a gradual and instinctive process of becoming. The reason, in a word, was not awake; the mind of man was ignorant of its own treasures and its own capacities. It is pathetic to think of the mediæval students poring over a single ill-translated sentence of Porphyry, endeavoring to extract from its clauses whole systems of logical science, and torturing their brains about puzzles more idle than the dilemma of Buridan's donkey, while all the time, at Constantinople and at Seville, in Greek and Arabic, Plato and Aristotle were alive, but sleeping, awaiting only the call of the Renaissance to bid them speak with voice intelligible to the modern mind. It is no less pathetic to watch tide after tide of the ocean of humanity sweeping from all parts of Europe, to break in passionate but unavailing foam upon the shores of Palestine, whole nations laying life down for the chance of seeing the walls of Jerusalem, worshipping the sepulchre whence Christ had risen, loading their fleet with relics and with cargoes of the sacred earth, while all the time, within their breasts and brains, the spirit of the Lord was with them, living but unrecognized, the spirit of freedom which ere long was destined to restore its birthright to the world. Meanwhile the Middle Age accomplished its own work. Slowly and obscurely, amid stupidity and ignorance, were being forged the nations and the languages of Europe. Italy, France, Spain, England, Germany took shape. The actors of the future drama acquired their several characters, and formed the tongues whereby their personalities should be expressed. The qualities which render modern society different from that of the ancient world were being impressed upon these nations by Christianity, by the Church, by chivalry, by feudal customs. Then came a further phase. After the nations had been moulded, their monarchies and dynasties were established. Feudalism passed by slow degrees into various forms of more or less defined autocracy. In Italy and Germany numerous principalities sprang into preëminence; and though the nation was not united under one head, the monarchical principle was acknowledged. France and Spain submitted to a despotism, by right of which the king could say, "_L'état c'est moi_." England developed her complicated constitution of popular right and royal prerogative. At the same time the Latin Church underwent a similar process of transformation. The papacy became more autocratic. Like the king the pope began to say, "_L'Église c'est moi_." This merging of the mediæval state and mediæval church in the personal supremacy of king and pope may be termed the special feature of the last age of feudalism which preceded the Renaissance. It was thus that the necessary milieu was prepared. The organization of the five great nations, and the levelling of political and spiritual interests under political and spiritual despots, formed the prelude to that drama of liberty of which the Renaissance was the first act, the Reformation the second, the Revolution the third, and which we nations of the present are still evolving in the establishment of the democratic idea. Meanwhile it must not be imagined that the Renaissance burst suddenly upon the world in the fifteenth century without premonitory symptoms. Far from that, within the Middle Age itself, over and over again, the reason strove to break loose from its fetters. Abelard, in the twelfth century, tried to prove that the interminable dispute about entities and words was founded on a misapprehension. Roger Bacon, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, anticipated modern science, and proclaimed that man, by use of nature, can do all things. Joachim of Flora, intermediate between the two, drank one drop of the cup of prophecy offered to his lips, and cried that "the gospel of the Father was past, the gospel of the Son was passing, the gospel of the Spirit was to be." These three men, each in his own way, the Frenchman as a logician, the Englishman as an analyst, the Italian as a mystic, divined the future but inevitable emancipation of the reason of mankind. Nor were there wanting signs, especially in Provence, that Aphrodite and Phoebus and the Graces were ready to resume their sway. We have, moreover, to remember the Cathari, the Paterini, the Fraticelli, the Albigenses, the Hussites--heretics in whom the new light dimly shone, but who were instantly exterminated by the Church. We have to commemorate the vast conception of the emperor Frederick II, who strove to found a new society of humane culture in the South of Europe, and to anticipate the advent of the spirit of modern tolerance. He, too, and all his race were exterminated by the papal jealousy. Truly we may say with Michelet that the sibyl of the Renaissance kept offering her books in vain to feudal Europe. In vain, because the time was not yet. The ideas projected thus early on the modern world were immature and abortive, like those headless trunks and zoöphytic members of half-moulded humanity which, in the vision of Empedocles, preceded the birth of full-formed man. The nations were not ready. Franciscans imprisoning Roger Bacon for venturing to examine what God had meant to keep secret; Dominicans preaching crusades against the cultivated nobles of Provence; popes stamping out the seed of enlightened Frederick; Benedictines erasing the masterpieces of classical literature to make way for their own litanies and lurries, or selling pieces of the parchment for charms; a laity devoted by superstition to saints and by sorcery to the devil; a clergy sunk in sensual sloth or fevered with demoniac zeal--these still ruled the intellectual destinies of Europe. Therefore the first anticipations of the Renaissance were fragmentary and sterile. Then came a second period. Dante's poem, a work of conscious art, conceived in a modern spirit and written in a modern tongue, was the first true sign that Italy, the leader of the nations of the West, had shaken off her sleep. Petrarch followed. His ideal of antique culture as the everlasting solace and the universal education of the human race, his lifelong effort to recover the classical harmony of thought and speech, gave a direct impulse to one of the chief movements of the Renaissance--its passionate outgoing toward the ancient world. After Petrarch, Boccaccio opened yet another channel for the stream of freedom. His conception of human existence as a joy to be accepted with thanksgiving, not as a gloomy error to be rectified by suffering, familiarized the fourteenth century with that form of semipagan gladness that marked the real Renaissance. In Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio Italy recovered the consciousness of intellectual liberty. What we call the Renaissance had not yet arrived; but their achievement rendered its appearance in due season certain. With Dante the genius of the modern world dared to stand alone and to create confidently after its own fashion. With Petrarch the same genius reached forth across the gulf of darkness, resuming the tradition of a splendid past. With Boccaccio the same genius proclaimed the beauty of the world, the goodliness of youth, and strength and love and life, unterrified by hell, unappalled by the shadow of impending death. It was now, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, when Italy had lost, indeed, the heroic spirit which we admire in her communes of the thirteenth, but had gained instead ease, wealth, magnificence, and that repose which springs from long prosperity, that the new age at last began. Europe was, as it were, a fallow field, beneath which lay buried the civilization of the Old World. Behind stretched the centuries of mediævalism, intellectually barren and inert. Of the future there were as yet but faint foreshadowings. Meanwhile, the force of the nations who were destined to achieve the coming transformation was unexhausted, their physical and mental faculties were unimpaired. No ages of enervating luxury, of intellectual endeavor, of life artificially preserved or ingeniously prolonged, had sapped the fibre of the men who were about to inaugurate the modern world. Severely nurtured, unused to delicate living, these giants of the Renaissance were like boys in their capacity for endurance, their inordinate appetite for enjoyment. No generations, hungry, sickly, effete, critical, disillusioned, trod them down. Ennui and the fatigue that springs from scepticism, the despair of thwarted effort, were unknown. Their fresh and unperverted senses rendered them keenly alive to what was beautiful and natural. They yearned for magnificence and instinctively comprehended splendor. At the same time the period of satiety was still far off. Everything seemed possible to their young energy; nor had a single pleasure palled upon their appetite. Born, as it were, at the moment when desires and faculties are evenly balanced, when the perceptions are not blunted, nor the senses cloyed, opening their eyes for the first time on a world of wonder, these men of the Renaissance enjoyed what we may term the first transcendent springtide of the modern world. Nothing is more remarkable than the fulness of the life that throbbed in them. Natures rich in all capacities and endowed with every kind of sensibility were frequent. Nor was there any limit to the play of personality in action. We may apply to them what Browning has written of Sordello's temperament: "A footfall there Suffices to upturn to the warm air Half-germinating spices, mere decay Produces richer life, and day by day New pollen on the lily-petal grows, And still more labyrinthine buds the rose." During the Middle Ages man had lived enveloped in a cowl. He had not seen the beauty of the world, or had seen it only to cross himself, and turn aside and tell his beads and pray. Like St. Bernard travelling along the shores of Lake Leman, and noticing neither the azure of the waters nor the luxuriance of the vines, nor the radiance of the mountains with their robe of sun and snow, but bending a thought-burdened forehead over the neck of his mule--even like this monk, humanity had passed, a careful pilgrim, intent on the terrors of sin, death, and judgment, along the highways of the world, and had not known that they were sightworthy, or that life is a blessing. Beauty is a snare, pleasure a sin, the world a fleeting show, man fallen and lost, death the only certainty, judgment inevitable, hell everlasting, heaven hard to win, ignorance is acceptable to God as a proof of faith and submission, abstinence and mortification are the only safe rules of life--these were the fixed ideas of the ascetic mediæval Church. The Renaissance shattered and destroyed them, rending the thick veil which they had drawn between the mind of man and the outer world, and flashing the light of reality upon the darkened places of his own nature. For the mystic teaching of the Church was substituted culture in the classical humanities; a new ideal was established, whereby man strove to make himself the monarch of the globe on which it is his privilege as well as destiny to live. The Renaissance was the liberation of humanity from a dungeon, the double discovery of the outer and the inner world. An external event determined the direction which this outburst of the spirit of freedom should take. This was the contact of the modern with the ancient mind, which followed upon what is called the Revival of Learning. The fall of the Greek empire in 1453, while it signalized the extinction of the old order, gave an impulse to the now accumulated forces of the new. A belief in the identity of the human spirit under all manifestations was generated. Men found that in classical as well as biblical antiquity existed an ideal of human life, both moral and intellectual, by which they might profit in the present. The modern genius felt confidence in its own energies when it learned what the ancients had achieved. The guesses of the ancients stimulated the exertions of the moderns. The whole world's history seemed once more to be one. The great achievements of the Renaissance were the discovery of the world and the discovery of man. Under these two formulas may be classified all the phenomena which properly belong to this period. The discovery of the world divides itself into two branches--the exploration of the globe, and that systematic exploration of the universe which is in fact what we call science. Columbus made known America in 1492; the Portuguese rounded the Cape in 1497; Copernicus explained the solar system in 1507. It is not necessary to add anything to this plain statement, for, in contact with facts of such momentous import, to avoid what seems like commonplace reflection would be difficult. Yet it is only when we contrast the ten centuries which preceded these dates with the four centuries which have ensued that we can estimate the magnitude of that Renaissance movement by means of which a new hemisphere has been added to civilization. In like manner, it is worth while to pause a moment and consider what is implied in the substitution of the Copernican for the Ptolemaic system. The world, regarded in old times as the centre of all things, the apple of God's eye, for the sake of which were created sun and moon and stars, suddenly was found to be one of the many balls that roll round a giant sphere of light and heat, which is itself but one among innumerable suns, attended each by a _cortège_ of planets, and scattered--how, we know not--through infinity. What has become of that brazen seat of the old gods, that paradise to which an ascending Deity might be caught up through clouds, and hidden for a moment from the eyes of his disciples? The demonstration of the simplest truths of astronomy destroyed at a blow the legends that were most significant to the early Christians by annihilating their symbolism. Well might the Church persecute Galileo for his proof of the world's mobility. Instinctively she perceived that in this one proposition was involved the principle of hostility to her most cherished conceptions, to the very core of her mythology. Science was born, and the warfare between scientific positivism and religious metaphysics was declared. Henceforth God could not be worshipped under the forms and idols of a sacerdotal fancy; a new meaning had been given to the words "God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." The reason of man was at last able to study the scheme of the universe, of which he is a part, and to ascertain the actual laws by which it is governed. Three centuries and a half have elapsed since Copernicus revolutionized astronomy. It is only by reflecting on the mass of knowledge we have since acquired, knowledge not only infinitely curious, but also incalculably useful in its application to the arts of life, and then considering how much ground of this kind was acquired in the ten centuries which preceded the Renaissance, that we are at all able to estimate the expansive force which was then generated. Science, rescued from the hands of astrology, geomancy, alchemy, began her real life with the Renaissance. Since then, as far as to the present moment, she has never ceased to grow. Progressive and durable, science may be called the first-born of the spirit of the modern world. Thus by the discovery of the world is meant on the one hand the appropriation by civilized humanity of all corners of the habitable world, and on the other the conquest by science of all that we now know about the nature of the universe. In the discovery of man, again, it is possible to trace a twofold process. Man in his temporal relations, illustrated by pagan antiquity, and man in his spiritual relations, illustrated by biblical antiquity: these are the two regions, at first apparently distinct, afterward found to be interpenetrative, which the critical and inquisitive genius of the Renaissance opened for investigation. In the former of these regions we find two agencies at work--art and scholarship. During the Middle Ages the plastic arts, like philosophy, had degenerated into barren and meaningless scholasticism--a frigid reproduction of lifeless forms copied technically and without inspiration from debased patterns. Pictures became symbolically connected with the religious feelings of the people, formulas from which to deviate would be impious in the artist and confusing to the worshipper. Superstitious reverence bound the painter to copy the almond eyes and stiff joints of the saints whom he had adored from infancy; and, even had it been otherwise, he lacked the skill to imitate the natural forms he saw around him. But with the dawning of the Renaissance a new spirit in the arts arose. Men began to conceive that the human body is noble in itself and worthy of patient study. The object of the artist then became to unite devotional feeling and respect for the sacred legend with the utmost beauty and the utmost fidelity of delineation. He studied from the nude; he drew the body in every posture; he composed drapery, invented attitudes, and adapted the action of his figures and the expression of his faces to the subject he had chosen. In a word, he humanized the altar-pieces and the cloister frescoes upon which he worked. In this way the painters rose above the ancient symbols and brought heaven down to earth. By drawing Madonna and her son like living human beings, by dramatizing the Christian history, they silently substituted the love of beauty and the interests of actual life for the principles of the Church. The saint or angel became an occasion for the display of physical perfection, and to introduce _un bel corpo ignudo_ into the composition was of more moment to them than to represent the macerations of the Magdalen. Men thus learned to look beyond the relique and the host, and to forget the dogma in the lovely forms which gave it expression. Finally, when the classics came to aid this work of progress, a new world of thought and fancy, divinely charming, wholly human, was revealed to their astonished eyes. Thus art, which had begun by humanizing the legends of the Church, diverted the attention of its students from the legend to the work of beauty, and lastly, severing itself from the religious tradition, became the exponent of the majesty and splendor of the human body. This final emancipation of art from ecclesiastical trammels culminated in the great age of Italian painting. Gazing at Michelangelo's prophets in the Sistine Chapel, we are indeed in contact with ideas originally religious. But the treatment of these ideas is purely, broadly human, on a level with that of the sculpture of Phidias. Titian's "Virgin Received into Heaven," soaring midway between the archangel who descends to crown her and the apostles who yearn to follow her, is far less a Madonna Assunta than the apotheosis of humanity conceived as a radiant mother. Throughout the picture there is nothing ascetic, nothing mystic, nothing devotional. Nor did the art of the Renaissance stop here. It went further, and plunged into paganism. Sculptors and painters combined with architects to cut the arts loose from their connection with the Church by introducing a spirit and a sentiment alien to Christianity. Through the instrumentality of art, and of all the ideas which art introduced into daily life, the Renaissance wrought for the modern world a real resurrection of the body which, since the destruction of the pagan civilization, had lain swathed up in hair-shirts and cerements within the tomb of the mediæval cloister. It was scholarship which revealed to men the wealth of their own minds, the dignity of human thought, the value of human speculation, the importance of human life regarded as a thing apart from religious rules and dogmas. During the Middle Ages a few students had possessed the poems of Vergil and the prose of Boethius--and Vergil at Mantua, Boethius at Pavia, had actually been honored as saints--together with fragments of Lucan, Ovid, Statius, Cicero, and Horace. The Renaissance opened to the whole reading public the treasure-houses of Greek and Latin literature. At the same time the Bible, in its original tongues, was rediscovered. Mines of oriental learning were laid bare for the students of the Jewish and Arabic traditions. What we may call the Aryan and the Semitic revelations were for the first time subjected to something like a critical comparison. With unerring instinct the men of the Renaissance named the voluminous subject-matter of scholarship _Litteræ Humaniores_ ("the more human literature"), the literature that humanizes. There are three stages in the history of scholarship during the Renaissance. The first is the age of passionate desire. Petrarch poring over a Homer he could not understand, and Boccaccio in his maturity learning Greek, in order that he might drink from the well-head of poetic inspiration, are the heroes of this period. They inspired the Italians with a thirst for antique culture. Next comes the age of acquisition and of libraries. Nicholas V, who founded the Vatican Library in 1453, Cosmo de' Medici, who began the Medicean collection a little earlier, and Poggio Bracciolini, who ransacked all the cities and convents of Europe for manuscripts, together with the teachers of Greek, who in the first half of the fifteenth century escaped from Constantinople with precious freights of classic literature, are the heroes of this second period. It was an age of accumulation, of uncritical and indiscriminate enthusiasm. Manuscripts were worshipped by these men, just as the reliques of the Holy Land had been adored by their great-grandfathers. The eagerness of the crusades was revived in this quest of the holy grail of ancient knowledge. Waifs and strays of pagan authors were valued like precious gems, revelled in like odoriferous and gorgeous flowers, consulted like oracles of God, gazed on like the eyes of a beloved mistress. The good, the bad, and the indifferent received an almost equal homage. Criticism had not yet begun. The world was bent on gathering up its treasures, frantically bewailing the lost books of Livy, the lost songs of Sappho--absorbing to intoxication the strong wine of multitudinous thoughts and passions that kept pouring from those long buried amphoræ of inspiration. What is most remarkable about this age of scholarship is the enthusiasm which pervaded all classes in Italy for antique culture. Popes and princes, captains of adventure and peasants, noble ladies and the leaders of the _demi-monde_ alike became scholars. There is a story told by Infessura which illustrates the temper of the times with singular felicity. On April 18, 1485, a report circulated in Rome that some Lombard workmen had discovered a Roman sarcophagus while digging on the Appian Way. It was a marble tomb, engraved with the inscription "Julia, Daughter of Claudius," and inside the coffer lay the body of a most beautiful girl of fifteen years, preserved by precious unguents from corruption and the injury of time. The bloom of youth was still upon her cheeks and lips; her eyes and mouth were half open; her long hair floated round her shoulders. She was instantly removed--so goes the legend--to the Capitol; and then began a procession of pilgrims from all the quarters of Rome to gaze upon this saint of the old pagan world. In the eyes of those enthusiastic worshippers, her beauty was beyond imagination or description. She was far fairer than any woman of the modern age could hope to be. At last Innocent VIII feared lest the orthodox faith should suffer by this new cult of a heathen corpse. Julia was buried secretly and at night by his direction, and naught remained in the Capitol but her empty marble coffin. The tale, as told by Infessura, is repeated in Matarazzo and in Nantiporto with slight variations. One says that the girl's hair was yellow, another that it was of the glossiest black. What foundation for the legend may really have existed need not here be questioned. Let us rather use the _mythus_ as a parable of the ecstatic devotion which prompted the men of that age to discover a form of unimaginable beauty in the tomb of the classic world. Then came the third age of scholarship--the age of the critics, philologers, and printers. What had been collected by Poggio and Aurispa had now to be explained by Ficino, Poliziano, and Erasmus. They began their task by digesting and arranging the contents of the libraries. There were then no short cuts of learning, no comprehensive lexicons, no dictionaries of antiquities, no carefully prepared _thesauri_ of mythology and history. Each student had to hold in his brain the whole mass of classical erudition. The text and the canon of Homer, Plato, Aristotle, and the tragedians had to be decided. Greek type had to be struck. Florence, Venice, Basel, and Paris groaned with printing-presses. The Aldi, the Stephani, and Froben toiled by night and day, employing scores of scholars, men of supreme devotion and of mighty brain, whose work it was to ascertain the right reading of sentences, to accentuate, to punctuate, to commit to the press, and to place, beyond the reach of monkish hatred or of envious time, that everlasting solace of humanity which exists in the classics. All subsequent achievements in the field of scholarship sink into insignificance beside the labors of these men, who needed genius, enthusiasm, and the sympathy of Europe for the accomplishment of their titanic task. Vergil was printed in 1470, Homer in 1488, Aristotle in 1498, Plato in 1512. They then became the inalienable heritage of mankind. But what vigils, what anxious expenditure of thought, what agonies of doubt and expectation, were endured by those heroes of humanizing scholarship, whom we are apt to think of merely as pedants! Which of us now warms and thrills with emotion at hearing the name of Aldus Manutius or of Henricus Stephanus or of Johannes Froben? Yet this we surely ought to do; for to them we owe in a great measure the freedom of our spirit, our stores of intellectual enjoyment, our command of the past, our certainty of the future of human culture. This third age in the history of the Renaissance scholarship may be said to have reached its climax in Erasmus; for by this time Italy had handed on the torch of learning to the northern nations. The publication of his _Adagia_ in 1500 marks the advent of a more critical and selective spirit, which from that date onward has been gradually gaining strength in the modern mind. Criticism, in the true sense of accurate testing and sifting, is one of the points which distinguish the moderns from the ancients; and criticism was developed by the process of assimilation, comparison, and appropriation, which was necessary in the growth of scholarship. The ultimate effect of this recovery of classic culture was, once and for all, to liberate the intellect. The modern world was brought into close contact with the free virility of the ancient world, and emancipated from the thraldom of improved traditions. The force to judge and the desire to create were generated. The immediate result in the sixteenth century was an abrupt secession of the learned, not merely from monasticism, but also from the true spirit of Christianity. The minds of the Italians assimilated paganism. In their hatred of mediæval ignorance, in their loathing of cowled and cloistered fools, they flew to an extreme, and affected the manner of an irrevocable past. This extravagance led of necessity to a reaction--in the North, of Puritanism; in the South, to what has been termed the Counter-Reformation effected under Spanish influences in the Latin Church. But Christianity, that most precious possession of the modern world, was never seriously imperilled by the classical enthusiasm of the Renaissance; nor, on the other hand, was the progressive emancipation of the reason materially retarded by the reaction it produced. The transition at this point to the third branch in the discovery of man, the revelation to the consciousness of its own spiritual freedom, is natural. Not only did scholarship restore the classics and encourage literary criticism; it also restored the text of the Bible, and encouraged theological criticism. In the wake of theological freedom followed a free philosophy, no longer subject to the dogmas of the Church. To purge the Christian faith from false conceptions, to liberate the conscience from the tyranny of priests, and to interpret religion to the reason, has been the work of the last centuries; nor is this work as yet by any means accomplished. On the one side, Descartes and Bacon and Spinoza and Locke are sons of the Renaissance, champions of new-found philosophical freedom; on the other side, Luther is a son of the Renaissance, the herald of new-found religious freedom. The whole movement of the Reformation is a phase in that accelerated action of the modern mind which at its commencement we call the Renaissance. It is a mistake to regard the Reformation as an isolated phenomenon, or as a mere effort to restore the Church to purity. The Reformation exhibits, in the region of religious thought and national politics, what the Renaissance displays in the sphere of culture, art, and science--the recovered energy and freedom of humanity. We are too apt to treat of history in parcels, and to attempt to draw lessons from detached chapters in the biography of the human race. To observe the connection between the several stages of a progressive movement of the human spirit, and to recognize that the forces at work are still active, is the true philosophy of history. The Reformation, like the revival of science and of culture, had its mediæval anticipations and foreshadowings. The heretics whom the Church successfully combated in North Italy, in France, and in Bohemia were the precursors of Luther. The scholars prepared the way in the fifteenth century. Teachers of Hebrew, founders of Hebrew type--Reuchlin in Germany, Alexander in Paris, Von Hutten as a pamphleteer, and Erasmus as a humanist--contribute each a definite momentum. Luther, for his part, incarnates the spirit of revolt against tyrannical authority, urges the necessity of a return to the essential truth of Christianity as distinguished from the idols of the Church, and asserts the right of the individual to judge, interpret, criticise, and construct opinion for himself. The veil which the Church had interposed between humanity and God was broken down. The freedom of the conscience was established. The principles involved in what we call the Reformation were momentous. Connected on the one side with scholarship and the study of texts, it opened the path for modern biblical criticism. Connected on the other side with intolerance of mere authority, it led to what has since been named rationalism--the attempt to reconcile the religious tradition with the reason, and to define the logical ideas that underlie the conceptions of the popular religious conscience. Again, by promulgating the doctrine of personal freedom, and by connecting itself with national politics, the Reformation was linked historically to the Revolution. It was the Puritan Church in England, stimulated by the patriotism of the Dutch Protestants, which established our constitutional liberty and introduced in America the general principle of the equality of men. This high political abstraction, latent in Christianity, evolved by criticism, and promulgated as a gospel in the second half of the eighteenth century, was externalized in the French Revolution. The work that yet remains to be accomplished for the modern world is the organization of society in harmony with democratic principles. Thus what the word Renaissance really means is new birth to liberty--the spirit of mankind recovering consciousness and the power of self-determination, recognizing the beauty of the outer world and of the body through art, liberating the reason in science and the conscience in religion, restoring culture to the intelligence, and establishing the principle of political freedom. The Church was the schoolmaster of the Middle Ages. Culture was the humanizing and refining influence of the Renaissance. The problem for the present and the future is how, through education, to render culture accessible to all--to break down that barrier which in the Middle Ages was set between clerk and layman, and which in the intermediate period has arisen between the intelligent and ignorant classes. Whether the Utopia of a modern world in which all men shall enjoy the same social, political, and intellectual advantages be realized or not, we cannot doubt that the whole movement of humanity, from the Renaissance onward, has tended in this direction. To destroy the distinctions, mental and physical, which nature raises between individuals, and which constitute an actual hierarchy, will always be impossible. Yet it may happen that in the future no civilized man will lack the opportunity of being physically and mentally the best that God has made him. It remains to speak of the instruments and mechanical inventions which aided the emancipation of the spirit in the modern age. Discovered over and over again, and offered at intervals to the human race at various times and on divers soils, no effective use was made of these material resources until the fifteenth century. The compass, discovered according to tradition by Gioja of Naples in 1302, was employed by Columbus for the voyage to America in 1492. The telescope, known to the Arabians in the Middle Ages, and described by Roger Bacon in 1250, helped Copernicus to prove the revolution of the earth in 1530, and Galileo to substantiate his theory of the planetary system. Printing, after numerous useless revelations to the world of its resources, became an art in 1438; and paper, which had long been known to the Chinese, was first made of cotton in Europe about 1000 and of rags in 1319. Gunpowder entered into use about 1320. As employed by the Genius of the Renaissance, each one of these inventions became a lever by means of which to move the world. Gunpowder revolutionized the art of war. The feudal castle, the armor of the knight and his battle-horse, the prowess of one man against a hundred, and the pride of aristocratic cavalry trampling upon ill-armed militia, were annihilated by the flashes of the cannon. Courage became more a moral than a physical quality. The victory was delivered to the brain of the general. Printing has established, as indestructible, all knowledge, and disseminated, as the common property of everyone, all thought; while paper has made the work of printing cheap. Such reflections as these, however, are trite and must occur to every mind. It is far more to the purpose to repeat that not the inventions, but the intelligence that used them, the conscious calculating spirit of the modern world, should rivet our attention when we direct it to the phenomena of the Renaissance. In the work of the Renaissance all the great nations of Europe shared. But it must never be forgotten that, as a matter of history, the true Renaissance began in Italy. It was there that the essential qualities which distinguish the modern from the ancient and the mediæval world were developed. Italy created that new spiritual atmosphere of culture and of intellectual freedom which has been the life-breath of the European races. As the Jews are called the chosen and peculiar people of divine revelation, so may the Italians be called the chosen and peculiar vessels of the prophecy of the Renaissance. In art, in scholarship, in science, in the mediation between antique culture and the modern intellect, they took the lead, handing to Germany and France and England the restored humanities complete. Spain and England have since done more for the exploration and colonization of the world. Germany achieved the labor of the Reformation almost single-handed. France has collected, centralized, and diffused intelligence with irresistible energy. But if we return to the first origins of the Renaissance, we find that, at a time when the rest of Europe was inert, Italy had already begun to organize the various elements of the modern spirit, and to set the fashion whereby the other great nations should learn and live. THE BLACK DEATH RAVAGES EUROPE A.D. 1348 J. F. C. HECKER[51] GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO Different parts of the oriental world have been mentioned as the probable locality of the first appearance of the plague or pestilence known as the "black death," but its origin is most generally referred to China, where, at all events, it raged violently about 1333, when it was accompanied at its outbreak by terrestrial and atmospheric phenomena of a destructive character, such as are said to have attended the first appearance of Asiatic cholera and other spreading and deadly diseases; from which it has been conjectured that through these convulsions deleterious foreign substances may have been projected into the atmosphere. But while for centuries the nature and causes of the black death have been subjects of medical inquiry in all countries, it remained for our own time to discover a more scientific explanation than those previously advanced. The malady is now identified by pathologists with the bubonic plague, which at intervals still afflicts India and other oriental lands, and has in recent years been a cause of apprehension at more than one American seaport. It is called _bubonic_--from the Greek _boubon_ ("groin")--because it attacks the lymphatic glands of the groins, armpits, neck, and other parts of the body. Among its leading symptoms are headache, fever, vertigo, vomiting, prostration, etc., with dark purple spots or a mottled appearance upon the skin. Death in severe cases usually occurs within forty-eight hours. Bacteriologists are now generally agreed that the disorder is due to a bacillus identified by investigators both in India and in western countries. The first historic appearance of the black death in Europe was at Constantinople, A.D. 543. But far more widespread and terrible were its ravages in the fourteenth century, when they were almost world-wide. Of the dreadful visitation in Europe then, we are fortunate to have the striking account of Dr. Hecker, which follows. The name "black death" was given to the disease in the more northern parts of Europe--from the dark spots on the skin above mentioned--while in Italy it was called _la mortalega grande_ ("the great mortality"). From Italy came almost the only credible accounts of the manner of living, and of the ruin caused among the people in their more private life, during the pestilence; and the subjoined account of what was seen in Florence is of special interest as being from no less an eye-witness than Boccaccio. J. F. C. HECKER The nature of the first plague in China is unknown. We have no certain intelligence of the disease until it entered the western countries of Asia. Here it showed itself as the oriental plague with inflammation of the lungs; in which form it probably also may have begun in China--that is to say, as a malady which spreads, more than any other, by contagion; a contagion that in ordinary pestilences requires immediate contact, and only under unfavorable circumstances of rare occurrence is communicated by the mere approach to the sick. The share which this cause had in the spreading of the plague over the whole earth was certainly very great; and the opinion that the black death might have been excluded from Western Europe, by good regulations, similar to those which are now in use, would have all the support of modern experience, provided it could be proved that this plague had been actually imported from the East; or that the oriental plague in general, whenever it appears in Europe, has its origin in Asia or Egypt. Such a proof, however, can by no means be produced so as to enforce conviction. The plague was, however, known in Europe before nations were united by the bonds of commerce and social intercourse; hence there is ground for supposing that it sprung up spontaneously, in consequence of the rude manner of living and the uncultivated state of the earth; influences which peculiarly favor the origin of severe diseases. We need not go back to the earlier centuries, for the fourteenth itself, before it had half expired, was visited by five or six pestilences. If, therefore, we consider the peculiar property of the plague, that in countries which it has once visited it remains for a long time in a milder form, and that the epidemic influences of 1342, when it had appeared for the last time, were particularly favorable to its unperceived continuance, till 1348, we come to the notion that in this eventful year also, the germs of plague existed in Southern Europe, which might be vivified by atmospherical deteriorations. Thus, at least in part, the black plague may have originated in Europe itself. The corruption of the atmosphere came from the East; but the disease itself came not upon the wings of the wind, but was only excited and increased by the atmosphere where it had previously existed. This source of the black plague was not, however, the only one; for, far more powerful than the excitement of the latent elements of the plague by atmospheric influences was the effect of the contagion communicated from one people to another, on the great roads, and in the harbors of the Mediterranean. From China, the route of the caravans lay to the north of the Caspian Sea, through Central Asia to Tauris. Here ships were ready to take the produce of the East to Constantinople, the capital of commerce and the medium of connection between Asia, Europe, and Africa. Other caravans went from India to Asia Minor, and touched at the cities south of the Caspian Sea, and lastly from Bagdad, through Arabia to Egypt; also the maritime communication on the Red Sea, from India to Arabia and Egypt, was not inconsiderable. In all these directions contagion made its way; and doubtless Constantinople and the harbors of Asia Minor are to be regarded as the _foci_ of infection; whence it radiated to the most distant seaports and islands. To Constantinople the plague had been brought from the northern coast of the Black Sea, after it had depopulated the countries between those routes of commerce and appeared as early as 1347, in Cyprus, Sicily, Marseilles, and some of the seaports of Italy. The remaining islands of the Mediterranean, particularly Sardinia, Corsica, and Majorca, were visited in succession. _Foci_ of contagion existed also in full activity along the whole southern coast of Europe, when, in January, 1348, the plague appeared in Avignon, and in other cities in the South of France and North of Italy, as well as in Spain. The precise days of its eruption in the individual towns are no longer to be ascertained; but it was not simultaneous; for in Florence the disease appeared in the beginning of April; in Cesena, the 1st of June; and place after place was attacked throughout the whole year; so that the plague, after it had passed through the whole of France and Germany, where, however, it did not make its ravages until the following year, did not break out till August in England; where it advanced so gradually that a period of three months elapsed before it reached London. The northern kingdoms were attacked by it in 1349; Sweden, indeed, not until November of that year, almost two years after its eruption in Avignon. Poland received the plague in 1349, probably from Germany, if not from the northern countries; but in Russia it did not make its appearance until 1351, more than three years after it had broken out in Constantinople. Instead of advancing in a northwesterly direction from Tauris and from the Caspian Sea, it had thus made the great circuit of the Black Sea, by way of Constantinople, Southern and Central Europe, England, the northern kingdoms and Poland, before it reached the Russian territories; a phenomenon which has not again occurred with respect to more recent pestilences originating in Asia. We have no certain measure by which to estimate the ravages of the black plague. Let us go back for a moment to the fourteenth century. The people were yet but little civilized. Human life was little regarded; governments concerned not themselves about the numbers of their subjects, for whose welfare it was incumbent on them to provide. Thus, the first requisite for estimating the loss of human life--namely, a knowledge of the amount of the population--is altogether wanting. Cairo lost daily, when the plague was raging with its greatest violence, from ten thousand to fifteen thousand, being as many as, in modern times, great plagues have carried off during their whole course. In China, more than thirteen millions are said to have died; and this is in correspondence with the certainly exaggerated accounts from the rest of Asia. India was depopulated. Tartary, the Tartar kingdom of Kaptschak, Mesopotamia, Syria, Armenia, were covered with dead bodies; the Kurds fled in vain to the mountains. In Caramania and Cæsarea, none was left alive. On the roads, in the camps, in the caravansaries, unburied bodies were seen; and a few cities only remained, in an unaccountable manner, free. In Aleppo, five hundred died daily; twenty-two thousand people and most of the animals were carried off in Gaza within six weeks. Cyprus lost almost all its inhabitants; and ships without crews were often seen in the Mediterranean, as afterward in the North Sea, driving about and spreading the plague wherever they went on shore. It was reported to Pope Clement, at Avignon, that throughout the East, probably with the exception of China, twenty-three million eight hundred and forty thousand people had fallen victims to the plague. Lübeck, which could no longer contain the multitudes that flocked to it, was thrown into such consternation on the eruption of the plague that the citizens destroyed themselves, as if in frenzy. When the plague ceased, men thought they were still wandering among the dead, so appalling was the livid aspect of the survivors, in consequence of the anxiety they had undergone, and the unavoidable infection of the air. Many other cities probably presented a similar appearance; and small country towns and villages, estimated at two hundred thousand population, were bereft of all their inhabitants. In many places in France not more than two out of twenty of the inhabitants were left alive. Two queens, one bishop, and great numbers of other distinguished persons fell a sacrifice to it, and more than five hundred a day died in the Hôtel-Dieu, under the faithful care of the religious women, whose disinterested courage, in this age of horror, displayed the most beautiful traits of human virtue. The church-yards were soon unable to contain the dead, and many houses, left without inhabitants, fell to ruins. In Avignon, the Pope found it necessary to consecrate the Rhone, that bodies might be thrown into the river without delay, as the church-yards would no longer hold them. In Vienna, where for some time twelve hundred inhabitants died daily, the interment of corpses in the church-yards and within the churches was forthwith prohibited, and the dead were then arranged in layers, by thousands, in six large pits outside the city. In many places it was rumored that plague patients were buried alive, and thus the horror of the distressed people was everywhere increased. In Erfurt, after the church-yards were filled, twelve thousand corpses were thrown into eleven great pits; and the like might be stated with respect to all the larger cities. Funeral ceremonies, the last consolation of the survivors, were everywhere impracticable. In all Germany there seem to have died only one million two hundred and forty-four thousand four hundred and thirty-four inhabitants; this country, however, was more spared than others. Italy was most severely visited. It is said to have lost half its inhabitants; in Sardinia and Corsica, according to the account of John Villani, who was himself carried off by the black plague, scarcely a third part of the population remained alive; and the Venetians engaged ships at a high rate to retreat to the islands; so that, after the plague had carried off three-fourths of her inhabitants, their proud city was left forlorn and desolate. In Florence it was prohibited to publish the numbers of the dead and to toll the bells at their funerals, in order that the living might not abandon themselves to despair. In England most of the great cities suffered incredible losses; above all, Yarmouth, in which seven thousand and fifty-two died; Bristol, Oxford, Norwich, Leicester, York, and London, where, in one burial-ground alone, there were interred upward of fifty thousand corpses, arranged in layers, in large pits. It is said that in the whole country scarcely a tenth part remained alive. Morals were deteriorated everywhere, and public worship was, in a great measure, laid aside, in many places the churches being bereft of their priests. The instruction of the people was impeded, covetousness became general; and when tranquillity was restored, the great increase of lawyers was astonishing, to whom the endless disputes regarding inheritances offered a rich harvest. The want of priests, too, throughout the country, operated very detrimentally upon the people. The lower classes were most exposed to the ravages of the plague, while the houses of the nobility were, in proportion, much more spared. The sittings of parliament, of the king's bench, and of most of the other courts were suspended as long as the malady raged. Ireland was much less heavily visited than England. The disease seems to have scarcely reached the mountainous districts of that kingdom; and Scotland, too, would, perhaps, have remained free had not the Scots availed themselves of the misfortune of the English, to make an irruption into their territory, which terminated in the destruction of their army, by the plague and by the sword, and the extension of the pestilence, through those who escaped, over the whole country. In England the plague was soon accompanied by a fatal murrain among the cattle. Of what nature this murrain may have been can no more be determined than whether it originated from communication with the plague patients or from other causes. There was everywhere a great rise in the price of food. For a whole year, until it terminated in August, 1349, the black plague prevailed and everywhere poisoned the springs of comfort and prosperity. In other countries it generally lasted only half a year, but returned frequently in individual places. Spain was uninterruptedly ravaged by the black plague till after the year 1350, to which the frequent internal feuds and the wars with the Moors not a little contributed. Alfonso XI, whose passion for war carried him too far, died of it at the siege of Gibraltar, March 26, 1350. He was the only king in Europe who fell a sacrifice to it. The mortality seems to have been less in Spain than in Italy, and about as considerable as in France. The whole period during which the black plague raged with destructive violence in Europe was, with the exception of Russia, from 1347 to 1350. The plagues which in the sequel often returned until 1383, we do not consider as belonging to the "great mortality." The premature celebration of the Jubilee, to which Clement VI cited the faithful to Rome 1350, during the great epidemic, caused a new eruption of the plague, from which it is said that scarcely one in a hundred of the pilgrims escaped. Italy was, in consequence, depopulated anew; and those who returned spread poison and corruption of morals in all directions. The changes which occurred about this period in the North of Europe are sufficiently memorable. In Sweden two princes died--Haken and Canute, half-brothers of King Magnus; and in Westgothland alone four hundred and sixty-six priests. The inhabitants of Iceland and Greenland found in the coldness of their inhospitable climate no protection against the southern enemy who had penetrated to them from happier countries. The plague wrought great havoc among them. In Denmark and Norway, however, people were so occupied with their own misery that the accustomed voyages to Greenland ceased. In Russia the black plague did not break out until 1351, after it had already passed through the South and North of Europe. The mortality was extraordinarily great. In Russia, too, the voice of nature was silenced by fear and horror. In the hour of danger, fathers and mothers deserted their children, and children their parents. Of all the estimates of the number of lives lost in Europe, the most probable is that altogether a fourth part of the inhabitants were carried off. It may be assumed, without exaggeration, that Europe lost during the black death twenty-five million inhabitants. That her nations could so quickly recover from so fearful a visitation, and, without retrograding more than they actually did, could so develop their energies in the following century, is a most convincing proof of the indestructibility of human society as a whole. To assume, however, that it did not suffer any essential change internally, because in appearance everything remained as before, is inconsistent with a just view of cause and effect. Many historians seem to have adopted such an opinion; hence, most of them have touched but superficially on the "great mortality" of the fourteenth century. We for our part are convinced that in the history of the world the black death is one of the most important events which have prepared the way for the present state of Europe. He who studies the human mind with attention, and forms a deliberate judgment on the intellectual powers which set people and states in motion, may, perhaps, find some proofs of this assertion in the following observations. At that time the advancement of the hierarchy was, in most countries, extraordinary; for the Church acquired treasures and large properties in land, even to a greater extent than after the crusades; but experience has demonstrated that such a state of things is ruinous to the people, and causes them to retrograde, as was evinced on this occasion. After the cessation of the black plague, a greater fecundity in women was everywhere remarkable; marriages were prolific; and double and treble births were more frequent than at other times. After the "great mortality" the children were said to have got fewer teeth than before; at which contemporaries were mightily shocked, and even later writers have felt surprise. Some writers of authority published their opinions on this subject. Others copied from them, without seeing for themselves, and thus the world believed in the miracle of an imperfection in the human body which had been caused by the black plague. The people gradually consoled themselves after the sufferings which they had undergone; the dead were lamented and forgotten; and in the stirring vicissitudes of existence the world belonged to the living. The mental shock sustained by all nations during the prevalence of the black plague is without parallel and beyond description. In the eyes of the timorous, danger was the certain harbinger of death; many fell victims to fear on the first appearance of the distemper, and the most stout-hearted lost their confidence. The pious closed their accounts with the world; their only remaining desire was for a participation in the consolations of religion. Repentance seized the transgressor, admonishing him to consecrate his remaining hours to the exercise of Christian virtues. Children were frequently seen, while laboring under the plague, breathing out their spirit with prayer and songs of thanksgiving. An awful sense of contrition seized Christians everywhere; they resolved to forsake their vices, to make restitution for past offences, before they were summoned hence, to seek reconciliation with their Maker, and to avert, by self-chastisement, the punishment due to their former sins. Human nature would be exalted could the countless noble actions which, in times of most imminent danger, were performed in secret, be recorded for future generations. They, however, have no influence on the course of worldly events. They are known only to silent eye-witnesses, and soon fall into oblivion. But hypocrisy, illusion, and bigotry stalk abroad undaunted; they desecrate what is noble, they pervert what is divine, to the unholy purposes of selfishness; which hurries along every good feeling in the false excitement of the age. Thus it was in the years of this plague. In the fourteenth century the monastic system was still in its full vigor, the power of the religious orders and brotherhoods was revered by the people, and the hierarchy was still formidable to the temporal power. It was, therefore, in the natural constitution of society that bigoted zeal, which in such times makes a show of public acts of penance, should avail itself of the semblance of religion. But this took place in such a manner that unbridled, self-willed penitence degenerated into luke-warmness, renounced obedience to the hierarchy, and prepared a fearful opposition to the Church, paralyzed as it was by antiquated forms. While all countries were filled with lamentations and woe, there first arose in Hungary, and afterward in Germany, the Brotherhood of the Flagellants, called also the Brethren of the Cross, or Cross-bearers, who took upon themselves the repentance of the people for the sins they had committed, and offered prayers and supplications for the averting of this plague. This order consisted chiefly of persons of the lower class, who were either actuated by sincere contrition or who joyfully availed themselves of this pretext for idleness and were hurried along with the tide of distracting frenzy. But as these brotherhoods gained in repute, and were welcomed by the people with veneration and enthusiasm, many nobles and ecclesiastics ranged themselves under their standard; and their bands were not unfrequently augmented by children, honorable women, and nuns. They marched through the cities with leaders and singers, their heads covered as far as the eyes, their look fixed on the ground, with every token of contrition and mourning. They were robed in sombre garments, with red crosses on the breast, back, and cap, and bore triple scourges, tied in three or four knots, in which points of iron were fixed. Tapers and magnificent banners of velvet and cloth of gold were carried before them; wherever they made their appearance they were welcomed by the ringing of bells, and the people flocked from all quarters to listen to their hymns and witness their penance. In 1349 two hundred Flagellants first entered Strasburg, where they were hospitably lodged by the citizens. Above a thousand joined the brotherhood, which now separated into two bodies, for the purpose of journeying to the north and to the south. Adults and children left their families to accompany them; till, at length, their sanctity was questioned and the doors of houses and churches were closed against them. At Spires two hundred boys, of twelve years of age and under, constituted themselves into a brotherhood of the Cross, in imitation of the children who, about a hundred years before, had united, at the instigation of some fanatic monks, for the purpose of recovering the Holy Sepulchre. All the inhabitants of this town were carried away by the delusion; they conducted the strangers to their houses with songs of thanksgiving, to regale them for the night. The women embroidered banners for them, and all were anxious to augment their pomp; and at every succeeding pilgrimage their influence and reputation increased. All Germany, Hungary, Poland, Bohemia, Silesia, and Flanders did homage to them; and they at length became as formidable to the secular as to the ecclesiastical power. The influence of this fanaticism was great and threatening. The appearance, in itself, was not novel. As far back as the eleventh century many believers in Asia and Southern Europe afflicted themselves with the punishment of flagellation. The author of the solemn processions of the Flagellants is said to have been St. Anthony of Padua (1231). In 1260 the Flagellants appeared in Italy as _Devoti_. "When the land was polluted by vices and crimes, an unexampled spirit of remorse suddenly seized the minds of the Italians. The fear of Christ fell upon all; noble and lowly, old and young, and even children of five years of age marched through the streets with no covering but a scarf round the waist. They each carried a scourge of leathern thongs, which they applied to their limbs, amid sighs and tears, with such violence that the blood flowed from the wounds. Not only during the day, but even by night and in the severest winter, they traversed the cities with burning torches and banners, in thousands and tens of thousands, headed by their priests, and prostrated themselves before the altars. The melancholy chant of the penitent alone was heard; enemies were reconciled; men and women vied with each other in splendid works of charity, as if they dreaded that divine omnipotence would pronounce on them the doom of annihilation." But at length the priests resisted this dangerous fanaticism, without being able to extirpate the illusion, which was advantageous to the hierarchy, as long as it submitted to its sway. The processions of the Brotherhood of the Cross undoubtedly promoted the spreading of the plague; and it is evident that the gloomy fanaticism which gave rise to them would infuse a new poison into the already desponding minds of the people. Still, however, all this was within the bounds of barbarous enthusiasm; but horrible were the persecutions of the Jews, which were committed in most countries with even greater exasperation than in the twelfth century, during the first crusades. In every destructive pestilence the common people at first attribute the mortality to poison. On whom, then, was vengeance so likely to fall as on the Jews, the usurers and the strangers who lived at enmity with the Christians? They were everywhere suspected of having poisoned the wells[52] or infected the air, and were pursued with merciless cruelty. These bloody scenes, which disgraced Europe in the fourteenth century, are a counterpart to a similar mania of the age which was manifested in the persecutions of witches and sorcerers; and, like these, they prove that enthusiasm, associated with hatred and leagued with the baser passions, may work more powerfully upon whole nations than religion and legal order; nay, that it even knows how to profit by the authority of both, in order the more surely to satiate with blood the swords of long-suppressed revenge. The persecution of the Jews commenced in September and October, 1348, at Chillon, on the Lake of Geneva, where the first criminal proceedings were instituted against them, after they had long before been accused by the people of poisoning the wells; similar scenes followed in Bern and in Freiburg, in 1349. Under the influence of excruciating suffering, the tortured Jews confessed themselves guilty of the crime imputed to them; and it being affirmed that poison had in fact been found in a well at Zofingen, this was deemed a sufficient proof to convince the world; and the persecution of the abhorred culprits thus appeared justifiable. Already in the autumn of 1348 a dreadful panic, caused by this supposed poisoning, seized all nations; in Germany, especially, the springs and wells were built over, that nobody might drink of them or employ their contents for culinary purposes; and for a long time the inhabitants of numerous towns and villages used only river and rain-water. The city gates were also guarded with the greatest caution: only confidential persons were admitted; and if medicine or any other article which might be supposed to be poisonous was found in the possession of a stranger--and it was natural that some should have these things by them for private use--he was forced to swallow a portion of it. By this trying state of privation, distrust, and suspicion the hatred against the supposed poisoners became greatly increased, and often broke out in popular commotions, which only served still further to infuriate the wildest passions. The noble and the mean fearlessly bound themselves by an oath to extirpate the Jews by fire and sword, and to snatch them from their protectors, of whom the number was so small that throughout all Germany but few places can be mentioned where these unfortunate people were not regarded as outlaws and martyred and burned. Solemn summonses were issued from Bern to the towns of Basel, Freiburg in Breisgau, and Strasburg, to pursue the Jews as poisoners. The burgomasters and senators, indeed, opposed this requisition; but in Basel the populace obliged them to bind themselves by an oath to burn the Jews and to forbid persons of that community from entering their city for the space of two hundred years. Upon this, all the Jews in Basel, whose number could not have been inconsiderable, were enclosed in a wooden building, constructed for the purpose, and burned, together with it, upon the mere outcry of the people, without sentence or trial, which, indeed, would have availed them nothing. Soon after the same thing took place at Freiburg. A regular diet was held at Bennefeld, in Alsace, where the bishops, lords, and barons, as also deputies of the counties and towns, consulted how they should proceed with regard to the Jews; and when the deputies of Strasburg--not, indeed, the bishop of this town, who proved himself a violent fanatic--spoke in favor of the persecuted, as nothing criminal was substantiated against them, a great outcry was raised, and it was vehemently asked why, if so, they had covered their wells and removed their buckets? A sanguinary decree was resolved upon, of which the populace, who obeyed the call of the nobles and superior clergy, became but the too willing executioners. Wherever the Jews were not burned they were at least banished; and so being compelled to wander about, they fell into the hands of the country people, who, without humanity and regardless of all laws, persecuted them with fire and sword. At Eslingen, the whole Jewish community burned themselves in their synagogue; and mothers were often seen throwing their children on the pile, to prevent their being baptized, and then precipitating themselves into the flames. In short, whatever deeds fanaticism, revenge, avarice, and desperation, in fearful combination, could instigate mankind to perform, were executed in 1349, throughout Germany, Italy, and France, with impunity and in the eyes of all the world. It seemed as if the plague gave rise to scandalous acts and frantic tumults, not to mourning and grief; and the greater part of those who, by their education and rank, were called upon to raise the voice of reason, themselves led on the savage mob to murder and to plunder. The humanity and prudence of Clement VI must on this occasion also be mentioned to his honor. He not only protected the Jews at Avignon, as far as lay in his power, but also issued two bulls in which he declared them innocent, and he admonished all Christians, though without success, to cease from such groundless persecutions. The emperor Charles IV was also favorable to them, and sought to avert their destruction wherever he could; but he dared not draw the sword of justice, and even found himself obliged to yield to the selfishness of the Bohemian nobles, who were unwilling to forego so favorable an opportunity of releasing themselves from their Jewish creditors, under favor of an imperial mandate. Duke Albert of Austria burned and pillaged those of his cities which had persecuted the Jews--a vain and inhuman proceeding which, moreover, is not exempt from the suspicion of covetousness; yet he was unable, in his own fortress of Kyberg, to protect some hundreds of Jews, who had been received there, from being barbarously burned by the inhabitants. Several other princes and counts, among whom was Ruprecht of the Palatinate, took the Jews under their protection, on the payment of large sums; in consequence of which they were called "Jew-masters," and were in danger of being attacked by the populace and by their powerful neighbors. These persecuted and ill-used people--except, indeed, where humane individuals took compassion on them at their own peril, or when they could command riches to purchase protection--had no place of refuge left but the distant country of Lithuania, where Boleslav V, Duke of Poland, 1227-1279, had before granted them liberty of conscience; and King Casimir the Great, 1333-1370, yielding to the entreaties of Esther, a favorite Jewess, received them, and granted them further protection; on which account that country is still inhabited by a great number of Jews, who by their secluded habits have, more than any people in Europe, retained the manners of the Middle Ages. GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO When the evil had become universal in Florence, the hearts of all the inhabitants were closed to feelings of humanity. They fled from the sick and all that belonged to them, hoping by these means to save themselves. Others shut themselves up in their houses, with their wives, their children and households, living on the most costly food, but carefully avoiding all excess. None was allowed access to them; no intelligence of death or sickness was permitted to reach their ears; and they spent their time in singing and music and other pastimes. Others, on the contrary, considered eating and drinking to excess, amusements of all descriptions, the indulgence of every gratification, and an indifference to what was passing around them as the best medicine, and acted accordingly. They wandered day and night from one tavern to another, and feasted without moderation or bounds. In this way they endeavored to avoid all contact with the sick, and abandoned their houses and property to chance, like men whose death-knell had already tolled. Amid this general lamentation and woe, the influence and authority of every law, human and divine, vanished. Most of those who were in office had been carried off by the plague, or lay sick, or had lost so many members of their families that they were unable to attend to their duties; so that thenceforth everyone acted as he thought proper. Others, in their mode of living, chose a middle course. They ate and drank what they pleased, and walked abroad; carrying odoriferous flowers, herbs, or spices, which they smelt at from time to time, in order to invigorate the brain and to avert the baneful influence of the air, infected by the sick and by the innumerable corpses of those who had died of the plague. Others carried their precaution still further, and thought the surest way to escape death was by flight. They therefore left the city; women as well as men abandoning their dwellings and their relations, and retiring into the country. But of these, also, many were carried off, most of them alone and deserted by all the world, themselves having previously set the example. Thus it was that one citizen fled from another--a neighbor from his neighbors--a relation from his relations; and in the end, so completely had terror extinguished every kindlier feeling that the brother forsook the brother, the sister the sister, the wife her husband, and at last even the parent his own offspring, and abandoned them, unvisited and unsoothed, to their fate. Those, therefore, that stood in need of assistance fell a prey to greedy attendants; who, for an exorbitant recompense, merely handed the sick their food and medicine, remained with them in their last moments, and then not unfrequently became themselves victims to their avarice, and lived not to enjoy their extorted gain. Propriety and decorum were extinguished among the helpless sick. Females of rank seemed to forget their natural bashfulness, and committed the care of their persons, indiscriminately, to men and women of the lowest order. No longer were women, relatives or friends, found in the houses of mourning, to share the grief of the survivors; no longer was the corpse accompanied to the grave by neighbors and a numerous train of priests, carrying wax tapers and singing psalms, nor was it borne along by other citizens of equal rank. Many breathed their last without a friend to comfort them in their last moments; and few indeed were they who departed amid the lamentations and tears of their friends and kindred. Instead of sorrow and mourning, appeared indifference, frivolity, and mirth; this being considered, especially by the females, as conducive to health. Seldom was the body followed by even ten or twelve attendants; and instead of the usual bearers and sextons, hirelings of the lowest of the populace undertook the office for the sake of gain; and accompanied by only a few priests, and often without a single taper, it was borne to the very nearest church, and lowered into the first grave that was not already too full to receive it. Among the middling classes, and especially among the poor, the misery was still greater. Poverty or negligence induced most of these to remain in their dwellings or in the immediate neighborhood; and thus they fell by thousands; and many ended their lives in the streets by day and by night. The stench of putrefying corpses was often the first indication to their neighbors that more deaths had occurred. The survivors, to preserve themselves from infection, generally had the bodies taken out of the houses and laid before the doors, where the early morn found them in heaps, exposed to the affrighted gaze of the passing stranger. It was no longer possible to have a bier for every corpse--three or four were generally laid together; husband and wife, father and mother, with two or three children, were frequently borne to the grave on the same bier; and it often happened that two priests would accompany a coffin, bearing the cross before it, and be joined on the way by several other funerals; so that instead of one, there were five or six bodies for interment. FIRST TURKISH DOMINION IN EUROPE TURKS SEIZE GALLIPOLI A.D. 1354 JOSEPH VON HAMMER-PURGSTALL[53] During the early years of the fourteenth century a new Mahometan realm was established on the ruins of the Seljukian and Byzantine power in Asia Minor. Osman,[54] or Othman, the founder of this realm, which is regarded as the original Ottoman empire, subdued a great part of Asia Minor, and in the year of his death 1326, his son Orkhan captured Prusa (now Brusa) and Nicomedia. In 1330 he took Nicæa--then second only to Constantinople in the Greek or Byzantine empire--and six years later he defeated the Turkish Prince of Karasi, the ancient Mysia, and annexed his territory, including the capital, Berghama, the ancient Pergamus, to the Ottoman dominions, thus securing nearly the whole of North-western Asia Minor. During the reign of Orkhan the Ottomans made frequent passages of the Hellespont for the purpose of extending their power into Europe. After fifteen invasions without any permanent conquest, in 1354 Orkhan and his son Suleiman perceived an opportunity by which they prepared themselves to profit--civil war was raging in the Byzantine empire, where John Palæologus was striving to deprive the emperor Cantacuzenus of his throne. The plan whereby the Ottomans secured a foothold in Europe which soon enabled them to establish a permanent sovereignty on the peninsula of Gallipoli was executed by Suleiman with a military skill which gave his name a conspicuous place in Turkish history. On the meridional shore of the Sea of Marmora, at the entrance of the Hellespont, is perceived the peninsula of Kapoutaghi--the ancient, almost insular Cyzicus, a Milesian colony. At the neck of the isthmus, where it joins the mainland, there where are seen to-day the ruins of Aidindjik, formerly arose Cyzicus, a city celebrated in the history of Persia and of Rome, of ancient Greece and of the Byzantine empire. This port, one of the most commercial of the Asiatic coast, possessed, like Rhodes, Marseilles, and Carthage, two military arsenals and an immense granary, each placed under the special superintendence of an architect. The annals of this town have been enriched by the passage of the Argonauts and of the Goths, by the siege of Mithridates and by the assistance received from the Romans under the leadership of Lucullus. Granted its freedom by the latter as a reward for its fidelity, Cyzicus was shortly afterward deprived of its privileges for having neglected the service of the temple of Augustus. Under the Byzantines it became the capital of the province of Hellespont and the metropolitan see of Mysia and of all the territory of Troy. On Mount Dyndimos, at the gates of Cyzicus, arose the temple of the great mother, the goddess Ida, whose worship had been established by the Argonauts, and who was venerated at Cyzicus as at Pessinunte, in the form of an aërolite, a sacred stone, which under the reign of King Attalus was carried to Rome, and installed in the city by all the matrons, preceded by Scipio the Younger. The inhabitants of the peninsula adored also Cybele, Proserpine, and Jupiter, who, according to a fabulous tradition, had given the town of Cyzicus to the wife of Pluto, as dower. Emperor Hadrian embellished this town with the largest and the finest of the temples of paganism. The columns of this edifice, all of one piece, were four ells (fifteen and one-half feet) in circumference and fifty ells (one hundred and ninety-five feet) in height. In 1354 Suleiman, the son of Orkhan, Governor of ancient Mysia, a province recently conquered by the Turks, was seized with admiration by the aspect of the majestic ruins of Cyzicus. The broken columns, the marbles prone on the sward, recalled to him the ruins of the palace of the Queen of Saba Balkis, erected by the order of Solomon, the remains of Istakhr (Persepolis), and of Tadmor (Palmyra). One evening when seated by the sea-shore, he saw, by the light of the moon (Aidindjik, the crescent moon), the porticoes and peristyles reflected in the waves. Clouds passed along the surface of the sea, and he imagined that he saw these ruined palaces and temples arise from the deep, and a fleet navigate the waters. Around him arose mysterious voices whose sound mingled with the murmur of the waves, while the moon, which at this moment shone in the east, seemed to unite Asia and Europe by a silver ribbon. It was she who, emerging formerly from the bosom of Edebali,[55] had come to hide herself in that of Osman. The remembrance of the fantastic vision, which had presaged a universal domination to his ancestor, inflamed the courage of Suleiman, and made him resolve to unite Europe and Asia by transporting the Ottoman power from the shores of Asia Minor to the strands of the Greek empire, and thus to realize the dream of Osman. Suleiman consulted immediately with Adjebeg, Ghazi-Fazil, Ewrenos, and Hadji-Ilbeki, ancient vizier of the Prince of Karasi, who had been his assistants in the government of Mysia. All confirmed him in his resolution. Adjebeg and Ghazi-Fazil the same night went to Gouroudjouk and took ship to make a reconnaissance in the environs of Tzympe, situated a league and a half from Gallipoli, opposite Gouroudjouk. A Greek prisoner whom they brought with them to Asia informed Suleiman of the abandoned and unprepared state of the place, and offered himself as a guide to surprise the garrison. Suleiman immediately had two rafts constructed of trees united by thongs of bull skins, and made the attempt the following night, with thirty-nine of his most intrepid companions in arms. Arrived before the fortress, they scaled the walls by mounting on an immense dung-heap, and took possession of it easily, owing to the inhabitants being all absent in the fields engaged in harvesting. Suleiman then hastened to send to Asia all the ships which he found in the port, to transport soldiers to Tzympe; and three days after, the fortress contained a garrison of three thousand Ottomans. In the mean while Cantacuzenus, unable to resist any longer the forces assembled against him by his young rival, John Palæologus, asked the assistance of Orkhan. Orkhan sent him the conqueror of Tzympe, an auxiliary whose support later became more troublesome to the Emperor than it was useful against his enemy. Ten thousand Turkish cavaliers disembarked near Ainos, at the _embouchure_ of Maritza (Hebrus), defeated the auxiliary troops which John Palæologus had drawn from Moesia and from the Triballiens, ravaged Bulgaria, and repassed into Asia, loaded with spoil. Cantacuzenus, more at his ease after the departure of the conquering horde, negotiated with Suleiman the ransom of Tzympe. Scarcely had he sent the ten thousand ducats agreed upon, when a commissary of the Ottoman Prince arrived bringing him the keys; but at the same time a terrific earthquake devastated the towns on the Thracian coasts. The inhabitants who did not find death in the destruction of their dwellings went with the garrisons to seek refuge against the destroying scourge and the barbarity of the Turks in the towns and the castles which the catastrophe had spared. But torrents of rain, snow, and a glacial temperature killed the women and the children on the road. As to the men, they fell into the power of Orkhan's soldiers, who were awaiting their passage. Thus the Ottomans found a powerful auxiliary in the warring elements. From that time they believed that God himself favored their projects. Adjebeg and Ghazi-Fazil, whom Suleiman had left in front of Gallipoli, penetrated into that town by the large breaches that the earthquake had made in the walls, and took possession of it, owing to the confusion which reigned among the inhabitants. Gallipoli, the key of the Hellespont, the commercial _entrepôt_ of the Black Sea and of the Mediterranean, is celebrated in history by the siege that it sustained against Philip of Macedon, and by the revolt of the Catalans or Mogabars who, half a century before the disaster, braved with impunity the power of the Greek Emperor and made it the centre of their piracies. The tombs of the two Ottoman chiefs are still seen to-day. These two mausoleums are much visited by Mussulman pilgrims, and the reason of this pious veneration is due to the fact that here in this sacred place lie the ashes of the two generations to whom the Ottoman empire owes the conquest of a town, the possession of which facilitated the passing of the Turks into Europe. For the same reason all the surrounding country, which, during the blockade of the town, Adjebeg and his lieutenant Ghazi-Fazil had put to fire and sword, received the name of Adje Owa. The two beys, taking advantage of the terror caused by so many disasters, penetrated into the deserted towns and established themselves. On the news of these conquests Suleiman, who then was at Bigha (Pegæ), refused to restore Tzympe, and, far from being contented with the peaceful possession of the territory invaded by his hordes, dreamed of extending the boundaries, and for this purpose sent over to Europe numerous colonies of Turks and Arabs. One of his first cares was to raise the walls of Gallipoli and other strong places devastated by the earthquake; among the number were Konour, whose commander, called Calaconia by the Ottoman historians, was hanged by order of Suleiman at the doors of the castle; the fort of Boulair, before which Suleiman received, as a presage of his future glory, the bonnet of a dervish Mewlewi; Malgara, renowned for its trade in honey; Ipsala (ancient Cypsella) on the Marizza; and lastly Rodosto, now Tekourtaghi, ancient residence of Besus, King of Thrace, and the place of exile where died in modern times the Hungarian Francis Rakoczy, Prince of Transylvania, and his partisans. All these towns and strong places fell into the power of the Ottomans in the course of the year 1357; they served them as starting-bases for their excursions, which they pushed as far as Hireboli (Chariupolis) and Tschorli (Tzurulum). Cantacuzenus, too weak to stop the progress of the Turks, complained of this violation of the peace. Orkhan excused his son, saying that it was not force of arms which had opened the gates of the towns of the Greek empire, but the divine will manifested by the earthquake. The Emperor made representations that he was not agitating to know whether it was by the gates or by the breaches that Suleiman had penetrated into the places in question, but whether or not he possessed them legitimately. Orkhan then asked a delay for reflection, and subsequently promised that he would request his son to return the towns that he occupied, if Cantacuzenus, on his side, would engage to pay him a sum of forty thousand ducats. At the same time he invited him to an interview to meet Suleiman on the Gulf of Nicomedia. But the Sultan pretending to be ill, the Emperor returned to Byzantium, without having obtained anything. Orkhan now found himself in one of the happiest of political situations. The division of sovereign authority between Cantacuzenus and his pupil John Palæologus, and their continual wars, allowed him to address one or the other according as his interests and the circumstances demanded. It was thus that John Palæeologus, ally of the Genoese, undertook to deliver from captivity to Phoceus, the son of Orkhan, Khalil or Kasim, whom the governor Calothes surrendered for a ransom of one hundred thousand pieces of gold and the concession of the glorious title of Panhypersebastos ("very venerable"). The service that John had rendered did not prevent Orkhan from sending to Abydos a body of troops to rescue the son of Cantacuzenus, Mathias, then at war with the Bulgarians. From the epoch when the Ottomans made durable conquests in the Greek empire, Asia each spring threw new hordes into Europe, until the time when the successors of Orkhan had extended their domination from the shores of the Sea of Marmora to those of the Danube. The conquest of Gallipoli, which had opened the gate of the Greek empire and the whole of the European continent to the Ottomans, was announced by "letters of victory" to the neighboring princes of Orkhan, whose father had divided with Osman the heritage of the Seljukian sultans. The use of these "letters of victory" has been preserved to this day in Turkey, and their style, already so pompous in the days of Orkhan, has become so proudly emphatic that this kind of document to-day is not the least curious of those which belong to the annals of the Turkish nation. Orkhan left to his son, Suleiman Pacha, and Hadji-Ilbeki the charge of preserving the conquests made in Europe; Suleiman established his residence at Gallipoli, and Ilbeki at Konour. The first overran the country as far as Demitoka; the second as far as Tschorli and Hireboli. Adjebeg received in fief the valley which still bears his name. But Suleiman enjoyed for only a few years the fruits of his conquests. One day while hunting wild geese between Boulair and Sidi-Kawak, that is to say near the palatine of the Cid, and following at a gallop the flight of his falcon, he fell so violently from his horse (1359) as to be instantly killed. His body was deposited, not in the mausoleum of the Osman family at Prusa, where he had caused a mosque to be erected in the quarter of the confectioners, but near the mosque of Boulair, also founded by him. Orkhan, to perpetuate the exploits of his son, caused a tomb to be built to his memory on the shore of the Hellespont, the only one which, during more than a century, was erected in memory of an Ottoman prince on Greek soil. Of all the sepulchres of Turkish heroes which the national historians mention with holy respect, that of the founder of the Ottoman power in Europe is the most venerated and the most frequented by pilgrims. It is still to be seen to the north of the embouchure of the Hellespont. Tradition attributes yet another victory to Suleiman after his death. At the head of a troop of celestial heroes, mounted on white horses, encircled by a brilliant aureole, he is said to have vanquished an army of infidels. The love of the marvellous, so general among orientals, the leaning which all people have to make heaven intervene in the deeds relating to their origin, alone can explain this tradition, for it would be useless to seek any historic fact which could have given it birth. According to this tradition, thirty thousand Christians appeared in the Hellespont on a fleet of sixty-one vessels; one half disembarked at Touzla and the other at Sidi-Kawak; it was this latter body which was cut in pieces by the celestial troop led by Suleiman. The Ottoman historians who relate this miracle have evidently borrowed the apparition of these vessels from the First or the Second Crusade of the Europeans against the Turks, and have transported them from the waters of Smyrna to those of Gallipoli, for the greater glory of Suleiman Pacha. Neither the history of Byzantium nor that of the crusades offers the slightest trace of this event. CONSPIRACY AND DEATH OF MARINO FALIERI AT VENICE A.D. 1355 MRS. MARGARET OLIPHANT Marino Falieri was born at Venice about 1278, and was elected doge in 1354. For many years the government of the republic, under an oligarchy, had been arbitrarily dominated by the Council of Ten, an assembly that, after serving a special purpose for which it was created, was declared permanent in 1325 and became a formidable tribunal. Professing to guard the republic the Ten in fact destroyed its liberties, disposed of its finances, overruled the constitutional legislators, suppressed and excluded the popular element from all voice in public affairs, and finally reduced the nominal prince--the doge--to a mere puppet or an ornamental functionary, still called "head of the state." At the time when Falieri entered upon his dogeship the city in all quarters was pervaded by the spies of this great oligarchy, which seized and imprisoned citizens, and even put them to death, secretly, without itself being answerable to any authority. The most notable event in the annals of this extraordinary Venetian government is that which forms the story of Marino Falieri himself. His conspiracy with the plebeians to assassinate the oligarchs and make himself actual ruler of the state had the double motive of a personal grievance and the sense of a political wrong. The fate of this old man has been made the subject of tragedies by Byron (1820), Casimir Delavigne (1829), and Swinburne (1885). The novel, _Doge und Dogaressa_, by Ernst Theodor Hoffmann, was inspired by the same dramatic figure. Of historical accounts, the following--in Mrs. Oliphant's best manner--is justly regarded as the most impressive which has hitherto appeared in English. Marino Falieri had been an active servant of Venice through a long life. He had filled almost all the great offices which were intrusted to her nobles. He had governed her distant colonies, accompanied her armies in that position of _proveditore_, omnipotent civilian critic of all the movements of war, which so much disgusted the generals of the republic. He had been ambassador at the courts of both emperor and pope, and was serving his country in that capacity at Avignon when the news of his election reached him. It is thus evident that Falieri was not a man used to the position of a lay figure, although at seventy-six the dignified retirement of a throne, even when so encircled with restrictions, would seem not inappropriate. That he was of a haughty and hasty temper seems apparent. It is told of him that, after waiting long for a bishop to head a procession at Treviso where he was _podesta_ ("chief magistrate"), he astonished the tardy prelate by a box on the ear when he finally appeared, a punishment for keeping the authorities waiting. Old age to a statesman, however, is in many cases an advantage rather than a defect, and Falieri was young in vigor and character, and still full of life and strength. He was married a second time to presumably a beautiful wife much younger than himself, though the chroniclers are not agreed even on the subject of her name, whether she was a Gradenigo or a Contarini. The well-known story of young Steno's insult to this lady and to her old husband has found a place in all subsequent histories, but there is no trace of it in the unpublished documents of the state. The story goes that Michel Steno, one of those young and insubordinate gallants who are a danger to every aristocratic state, having been turned out of the presence of the Dogaressa for some unseemly freedom of behavior, wrote upon the chair of the Doge in boyish petulance an insulting taunt, such as might well rouse a high-tempered old man to fury. According to Sanudo, the young man, on being brought before the Forty,[56] confessed that he had thus avenged himself in a fit of passion; and regard having been had to his age and the "heat of love" which had been the cause of his original misdemeanor--a reason seldom taken into account by the tribunals of the state--he was condemned to prison for two months, and afterward to be banished for a year from Venice. The Doge took this light punishment greatly amiss, considering it, indeed, as a further insult. Sabellico says not a word of Michel Steno, or of this definite cause of offence, and Romanin quotes the contemporary records to show that though _Alcuni zovanelli fioli de gentiluomini di Venetia_ are supposed to have affronted the Doge, no such story finds a place in any of them. But the old man thus translated from active life and power, soon became bitterly sensible in his new position that he was _senza parentado_, with few relations, and flouted by the _giovinastri_, the dissolute young gentlemen who swaggered about the Broglio in their finery, strong in the support of fathers and uncles. That he found himself, at the same time, shelved in his new rank, powerless, and regarded as a nobody in the state where hitherto he had been a potent signior--mastered in every action by the secret tribunal, and presiding nominally in councils where his opinion was of little consequence--is evident. And a man so well acquainted, and so long, with all the proceedings of the state, who had seen consummated the shutting out of the people, and since had watched through election after election a gradual tightening of the bonds round the feet of the doge, would naturally have many thoughts when he found himself the wearer of that restricted and diminished crown. He could not be unconscious of how the stream was going, nor unaware of that gradual sapping of privilege and decreasing of power which even in his own case had gone further than with his predecessor. Perhaps he had noted with an indignant mind the new limits of the _promissione_, a narrower charter than ever, when he was called upon to sign it. He had no mind, we may well believe, to retire thus from the administration of affairs. And when these giovinastri, other people's boys, the scum of the gay world, flung their unsavory jests in the face of the old man who had no son to come after him, the silly insults so lightly uttered, so little thought of, the natural scoff of youth at old age, stung him to the quick. Old Falieri's heart burned within him at his own injuries and those of his old comrades. How he was induced to head the conspiracy, and put his crown, his life, and honor on the cast, there is no further information. His fierce temper, and the fact that he had no powerful house behind him to help to support his case, probably made him reckless. In April, 1355, six months after his arrival in Venice as doge, the smouldering fire broke out. Two of the conspirators were seized with compunction on the eve of the catastrophe and betrayed the plot--one with a merciful motive to serve a patrician he loved, the other with perhaps less noble intentions--and, without a blow struck, the conspiracy collapsed. There was no real heart in it, nothing to give it consistence; the hot passion of a few men insulted, the variable gaseous excitement of wronged commoners, and the ambition--if it was ambition--of one enraged and affronted old man, without an heir to follow him or anything that could make it worth his while to conquer. An enterprise more wild was never undertaken. It was the passionate stand of despair against force so overwhelming as to make mad the helpless, yet not submissive, victims. The Doge, who no doubt in former days had felt it to be a mere affair of the populace, a thing with which a noble ambassador and proveditore had nothing to do, a struggle beneath his notice, found himself at last, with fury and amazement, to be a fellow-sufferer caught in the same toils. There seems no reason to believe that Falieri consciously staked the remnant of his life on the forlorn hope of overcoming that awful and pitiless power, with any real hope of establishing his own supremacy. His aspect is rather that of a man betrayed by passion, and wildly forgetful of all possibility in his fierce attempt to free himself and get the upper hand. One cannot but feel in that passion of helpless age and unfriendedness, something of the terrible disappointment of one to whom the real situation of affairs had never been revealed before; who had come home triumphant to reign like the doges of old, and, only after the ducal cap was on his head and the palace of the state had become his home, found out that the doge--like the unconsidered plebeian--had been reduced to bondage; his judgment and experience put aside in favor of the deliberations of a secret tribunal, and the very boys, when they were nobles, at liberty to jeer at his declining years. The lesser conspirators, all men of the humbler sort--Calendario, the architect, who was then at work upon the palace, a number of seamen, and other little-known persons--were hanged; not like the greater criminals, beheaded between the columns, but strung up--a horrible fringe--along the side of the palazzo. The fate of Falieri himself is too generally known to demand description. Calmed by the tragic touch of fate, the Doge bore all the humiliations of his doom with dignity, and was beheaded at the head of the stairs where he had sworn the promissione on first assuming the office of doge. What a contrast was this from that triumphant day when probably he felt that his reward had come to him after the long and faithful service of years. Death stills disappointment as well as rage, and Falieri is said to have acknowledged the justice of his sentence. He had never made any attempt to justify or defend himself, but frankly and at once avowed his guilt and made no attempt to escape from its penalties. His body was conveyed privately to the Church of St. Giovanni and St. Paolo, the great "Zanipolo"--with which all visitors to Venice are familiar--and was buried in secrecy and silence in the _atrio_ of a little chapel behind the great church--where no doubt for centuries the pavement was worn by many feet with little thought of those who lay below. Even from that refuge his bones have been driven forth, but his name remains in the corner of the Hall of the Great Council, where--with a certain dramatic affectation--the painter-historians have painted a black veil across the vacant place. "This is the place of Marino Falieri, beheaded for his crimes," is all the record left of the Doge disgraced. Was it a crime? The question is one which it is difficult to discuss with any certainty. That Falieri desired to establish--as so many had done in other cities--an independent despotism in Venice, seems entirely unproved. It was the prevailing fear; the one suggestion which alarmed everybody and made sentiment unanimous. But one of the special points which are recorded by the chroniclers as working in him to madness, was that he was _senza parentado_--without any backing of relationship or allies--_i.e._, sonless, with no one to come after him. How little likely then was an old man to embark on such a desperate venture for self-aggrandizement merely. He had, indeed, a nephew who was involved in his fate, but apparently not so deeply as to expose him to the last penalty of the law. The incident altogether points more to a sudden outbreak of the rage and disappointment of an old public servant coming back from his weary labors for the state in triumph and satisfaction to what seemed the supreme reward; and finding himself no more than a puppet in the hands of remorseless masters, subject to the scoffs of the younger generation, with his eyes opened by his own suffering, perceiving for the first time what justice there was in the oft-repeated protest of the people, and how they and he alike were crushed under the iron heel of that oligarchy to which the power of the people and that of the Prince were equally obnoxious. The chroniclers of his time were so much at a loss to find any reason for such an attempt on the part of a man, _non abbiando alcum propinquo_, that they agree in attributing it to diabolical inspiration. It was more probably that fury which springs from a sense of wrong, which the sight of the wrongs of others raised to frenzy, and that intolerable impatience of the impotent which is more harsh in its hopelessness than the greatest hardihood. He could not but die for it, but there seems no more reason to characterize this impossible attempt as deliberate treason than to give the same name to many an alliance formed between prince and people in other regions--the king and commons of the early Stuarts, for example--against the intolerable exactions and cruelty of an aristocracy too powerful to be faced alone by either. CHARLES IV OF GERMANY PUBLISHES HIS GOLDEN BULL A.D. 1356 SIR ROBERT COMYN The Golden Bull of Charles IV of Germany, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, first published at the Diet of Nuremberg in 1356, was a charter--sometimes called the "Magna Charta of Germany"--regulating the election of the emperor. It was called "golden" because the seal attached to the parchment on which it was engrossed was of gold instead of the customary lead. In a diet at Metz in the same year six additional clauses were promulgated. By some historians the origin of the imperial electoral college is assigned to the year 1125, when at the election of Lothair II certain of the nobles and church dignitaries made a selection of candidates to be voted for. But until the promulgation of the Golden Bull the constitution and prerogatives of the college were never definitely ascertained. The personal traits and the languid reign of Charles IV have been treated by historians with derision. He forgot the general welfare of the empire in his eagerness to enrich his own house and aggrandize his paternal kingdom of Bohemia. The one remarkable law which emanated from him, and whereby alone his reign is distinguished in the constitutional history of the empire, is that embodied in the Golden Bull. By this instrument the dignity of the electors was greatly enhanced, and the disputes which had arisen between members of the same house as to their right of suffrage were terminated. The number of electors was absolutely restricted to seven. After a solemn invocation of the Trinity, a reprobation of the seven deadly sins, and a pointed allusion to the seven candlesticks and the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, the Golden Bull proceeds to the subject of the imperial election. It provides, in the first place, for the safe conduct of the seven electors to and from Frankfort-on-the-Main, which is fixed as the place of election; it directs the archbishop of Mainz to summon the electors upon the death of the emperor, and regulates the manner in which their proxies are to be appointed; it enjoins the citizens of Frankfort to protect the assembled electors; and forbids them to admit any stranger into the city during the election. It next prescribes the form of oath to be taken by the electors; and also forbids them to quit the city before the completion of the election; and after thirty days restricts their diet to bread and water. A majority of votes is to decide the election; and in case any elector obtain three votes, his own vote is to be taken in his favor. The precedence of the electors is thus settled: First, the archbishops of Mainz, Cologne, and Treves; then the King of Bohemia, the Count Palatine, the Duke of Saxony, and the Margrave of Brandenburg. The Elector of Treves is to vote first; then the Elector of Cologne; then the secular electors; and the Elector of Mainz is finally to collect the votes and deliver his own. The Elector of Cologne is to perform the coronation. At all feasts the Margrave of Brandenburg, as grand chamberlain, is to present the Emperor with water to wash; the King of Bohemia, as cup-bearer, is to offer the goblet of wine; the Count Palatine, as grand steward, is to set the first dish on the table; and the Duke of Saxony is to officiate as grand marshal. The Count Palatine and the Duke of Saxony are declared vicars of the empire during the vacancy of the throne. An exclusive jurisdiction is guaranteed to the electors; and their precedence over all other princes of Germany is enforced. The right of voting is vested in the eldest son of a deceased elector, provided he have attained the age of eighteen; and during the minority, the guardianship and vote are vested in the next kinsman of the deceased. If one of the lay electorates become vacant by default of heirs, it shall revert to the Emperor, and be by him disposed of--Bohemia excepted, where the vacancy is to be supplied by ancient mode of election. The electors are invested with the possession of all mines discovered within their respective territories. They are authorized to give refuge to the Jews, and to receive dues payable within their states. They are also privileged to coin money, and to purchase lands subject to the feudal rights of the sovereign. A yearly assembly of the electors, in one of the imperial cities, is enjoined. All privileges granted to any city or community prejudicial to the rights of the electors are revoked. All fraudulent resignations of fiefs by vassals, with intent to attack their lords, are declared void. All leagues, associations, and confederacies, not sanctioned by law, are made punishable by fine; and all burgesses and subjects of princes and nobles are to adhere to their original subjection, and not to claim any rights or exemptions as burgesses of any city unless actually domiciled therein. Challenges, with design of destroying another's property or committing any outrage, are prohibited; and all challenges are to be given three days before the onset. The forms of summoning electors, and of their delegation of proxies, are laid down. And the right of voting, as well as all other rights, is declared inseparably incident to the electoral principality. On grand occasions the Duke of Saxony is to carry the sword; the Count Palatine, the globe; the Margrave of Brandenburg, the sceptre. In celebrating mass before the Emperor, the benedictions are to be pronounced by the senior spiritual elector present. All persons conspiring against the lives of the electors are declared guilty of leze-majesty, and shall forfeit their lives and possessions. The lives of their sons, though justly forfeited, are spared only by the particular bounty of the Emperor; but they are declared incapable of holding any property, honor, or dignity, and doomed to perpetual poverty. The daughters are permitted to enjoy one-fourth of their mother's succession. The secular principalities, Bohemia, the Palatinate, the duchy of Saxony, and the margravate of Brandenburg, are declared indivisible and entire, descendible in the male line. On all the solemn occasions the electors shall attend the Emperor, and the arch-chancellors shall carry the seals. And the bull then proceeds minutely to point out the manner in which the electors are to exercise their ministerial functions at the imperial banquet; and regulates the order and disposition of the imperial and electoral tables. Frankfort is again declared as the place of election; Aix-la-Chapelle, of coronation; and Nuremberg, for holding the first royal court. The electors are exempted from all payments on receiving their fiefs from their sovereign. But other princes are to pay certain fees, etc., to the imperial officers. Lastly, the secular electors are enjoined to instruct their sons in the Latin, Italian, and Slavonic tongues. At the final promulgation of the bull in the Diet of Metz the Emperor and Empress feasted, in the presence of the dauphin (Charles V) and the legate of Pope Innocent VI, with all the pageantry and ceremonies prescribed by the new ordinances. The imperial tables were spread in the grand square of the city; Rudolph, Duke of Saxe-Wittenberg, attended with a silver measure of oats, and marshalled the order of the company; Louis II, Margrave of Brandenburg, presented to the Emperor the golden basin, with water and fair napkins; Rupert, Count Palatine, placed the first dish upon the table; and the Emperor's brother, Wenceslaus, representing the King of Bohemia, officiated as cup-bearer. Lastly, the princes of Schwarzburg and the deputy huntsman came with three hounds amid the loud din of horns, and carried up a stag and a boar to the table of the Emperor. INSURRECTION OF THE JACQUERIE IN FRANCE A.D. 1358 SIR JOHN FROISSART The defeat of the French under King John II, at Poitiers, by the British forces of Edward, the Black Prince, September 19, 1356, aroused great indignation among the common people of France, with scorn of the nobility; for these leaders, with an army of sixty thousand, had fled before an enemy whom they outnumbered seven to one. In the next assembly of the states-general the bourgeois obtained a preponderance so intolerable to the nobles that they withdrew to their homes. A little later the deputies of the clergy also retired, leaving only the representatives of the cities--among whom the supremacy of the members from Paris was generally accepted--to deal with the affairs of the kingdom. At this point appeared a man who in an age "so uncivilized and sombre," says Pierre Robiquet, "by wonderful instinct laid down and nearly succeeded in obtaining the adoption of the essential principles on which modern society is founded--the government of the country by elected representatives, taxes voted by representatives of the taxpayers, abolition of privileges founded upon right of birth, extension of political rights to all citizens, and subordination of traditional sovereignty to that of the nation." This man was Étienne Marcel, provost of the merchants of Paris--that is to say, mayor of the municipality, whom eminent historians have called the greatest personage of the fourteenth century. During a career of three years his name dominates French history--a brief ascendency, but of potent influence. His endeavor, in Thierry's view, "was, as it were, a premature attempt at the grand designs of Providence, and the mirror of the bloody changes of fortune through which those designs were destined to advance to their accomplishment under the impulse of human passions." After the disaster of Poitiers, Marcel finished the fortifications of Paris and barricaded the streets, and in the assembly there he presided over the bourgeois--the Third Estate. In the growing conflict between the two other estates--nobles and clergy--and the third, Marcel armed the bourgeois and began an open revolution, thus organizing the commune for carrying out his designs. The nobles were meanwhile laying heavier miseries upon the peasantry, and in the spring of 1358 occurred the rising of the Jacquerie, here described by Froissart, whose brilliant narrative is to be read in the light of modern critical judgment, which regards it as an exaggeration both of the numbers of the insurgents and their atrocities, while Froissart had no capacity for understanding the conditions which explain, if they do not also justify, the present revolt. This outbreak, to which Marcel gave his support, was enough to ruin his cause, and he died in a massacre, July 31, 1358, having failed "because the time was not yet ripe," and because the violence to which he lent his sanction was overcome by stronger violence. A marvellous and great tribulation befell the kingdom of France, in Beauvoisis, Brie, upon the river Marne, in the Laonnois, and in the neighborhood of Soissons. Some of the inhabitants of the country towns assembled together in Beauvoisis, without any leader; they were not at first more than one hundred men. They said that the nobles of the kingdom of France, knights and squires, were a disgrace to it, and that it would be a very meritorious act to destroy them all; to which proposition everyone assented, and added, shame befall him that should be the means of preventing the gentlemen from being wholly destroyed. They then, without further counsel, collected themselves in a body, and with no other arms than the staves shod with iron which some had, and others with knives, marched to the house of a knight who lived near, and, breaking it open, murdered the knight, his lady, and all the children, both great and small; they then burned the house. After this, their second expedition was to the strong castle of another knight, which they took, and, having tied him to a stake, many of them violated his wife and daughter before his eyes; they then murdered the lady, her daughter, and the other children, and last of all the knight himself, with much cruelty. They destroyed and burned his castle. They did the like to many castles and handsome houses; and their numbers increased so much that they were in a short time upward of six thousand. Wherever they went they received additions, for all of their rank in life followed them, while everyone else fled, carrying off with them their ladies, damsels, and children ten or twenty leagues distant, where they thought they could place them in security, leaving their houses, with all their riches in them. These wicked people, without leader and without arms, plundered and burned all the houses they came to, murdered every gentleman, and violated every lady and damsel they could find. He who committed the most atrocious actions, and such as no human creature would have imagined, was the most applauded and considered as the greatest man among them. I dare not write the horrible and inconceivable atrocities they committed on the persons of the ladies. Among other infamous acts they murdered a knight, and, having fastened him to a spit, roasted him before the eyes of his wife and his children, and forced her to eat some of her husband's flesh, and then knocked her brains out. They had chosen a king among them, who came from Clermont in Beauvoisis. He was elected as the worst of the bad, and they denominated him "Jacques Bonhomme."[57] These wretches burned and destroyed in the county of Beauvoisis, and at Corbie, Amiens, and Montdidier, upward of sixty good houses and strong castles. By the acts of such traitors in the country of Brie and thereabout, it behooved every lady, knight, and squire, having the means of escape, to fly to Meaux, if they wished to preserve themselves from being insulted and afterward murdered. The Duchess of Normandy, the Duchess of Orleans, and many other ladies had adopted this course. These cursed people thus supported themselves in the countries between Paris, Noyon, and Soissons, and in all the territory of Coucy, in the County of Valois. In the bishoprics of Noyon, Laon, and Soissons there were upward of one hundred castles and good houses of knights and squires destroyed. When the gentlemen of Beauvoisis, Corbie, Vermandois, and of the lands where these wretches were associated, saw to what lengths their madness had extended, they sent for succor to their friends in Flanders, Hainault, and Bohemia; from which places numbers soon came and united themselves with the gentlemen of the country. They began therefore to kill and destroy these wretches wherever they met them, and hung them up by troops on the nearest trees. The King of Navarre even destroyed in one day, near Clermont in Beauvoisis, upward of three thousand; but they were by this time so much increased in numbers that, had they been all together, they would have amounted to more than one hundred thousand. When they were asked for what reason they acted so wickedly, they replied, they knew not, but they did so because they saw others do it, and they thought that by this means they should destroy all the nobles and gentlemen in the world. At this period the Duke of Normandy, suspecting the King of Navarre, the provost of merchants and those of his faction--for they were always unanimous in their sentiments--set out from Paris, and went to the bridge at Charenton-upon-Marne, where he issued a special summons for the attendance of the crown vassals, and sent a defiance to the provost of merchants and to all those who should support him. The provost, being fearful he would return in the night-time to Paris--which was then unenclosed--collected as many workmen as possible from all parts, and employed them to make ditches all around Paris. He also surrounded it by a wall with strong gates. For the space of one year there were three hundred workmen daily employed; the expense of which was equal to maintaining an army. I must say that to surround with a sufficient defence such a city as Paris was an act of greater utility than any provost of merchants had ever done before; for otherwise it would have been plundered and destroyed several times by the different factions. At the time these wicked men were overrunning the country, the Earl of Foix, and his cousin the Captal of Buch were returning from a crusade in Prussia. They were informed, on their entering France, of the distress the nobles were in; and they learned at the city of Chalons that the Duchess of Orleans and three hundred other ladies, under the protection of the Duke of Orleans, were fled to Meaux on account of these disturbances. The two knights resolved to go to the assistance of these ladies, and to reënforce them with all their might, notwithstanding the Captal was attached to the English; but at that time there was a truce between the two kings. They might have in their company about sixty lances. They were most cheerfully received, on their arrival at Meaux, by the ladies and damsels; for these Jacks and peasants of Brie had heard what number of ladies, married and unmarried, and young children of quality were in Meaux; they had united themselves with those of Valois and were on their road thither. On the other hand, those of Paris had also been informed of the treasures Meaux contained, and had set out from that place in crowds. Having met the others, they amounted together to nine thousand men. Their forces were augmenting every step they advanced. They came to the gates of the town, which the inhabitants opened to them and allowed them to enter; they did so in such numbers that all the streets were quite filled, as far as the market-place, which is tolerably strong, but it required to be guarded, though the river Marne nearly surrounds it. The noble dames who were lodged there, seeing such multitudes rushing toward them, were exceedingly frightened. On this, the two lords and their company advanced to the gate of the market-place, which they had opened, and, marching under the banners of the Earl of Foix and Duke of Orleans, and the pennon of the Captal of Buch, posted themselves in front of this peasantry, who were badly armed. When these banditti perceived such a troop of gentlemen, so well equipped, sally forth to guard the market-place, the foremost of them began to fall back. The gentlemen then followed them, using their lances and swords. When they felt the weight of their blows, they, through fear, turned about so fast they fell one over the other. All manner of armed persons then rushed out of the barriers, drove them before them, striking them down like beasts, and clearing the town of them; for they kept neither regularity nor order, slaying so many that they were tired. They flung them in great heaps into the river. In short, they killed upward of seven thousand. Not one would have escaped if they had chosen to pursue them farther. On the return of the men-at-arms, they set fire to the town of Meaux, burned it; and all the peasants they could find were shut up in it, because they had been of the party of the Jacks. Since this discomfiture which happened to them at Meaux, they never collected again in any great bodies; for the young Enguerrand de Coucy had plenty of gentlemen under his orders, who destroyed them, wherever they could be met with, without mercy. CONQUESTS OF TIMUR THE TARTAR A.D. 1370-1405 EDWARD GIBBON Timur, better known as Tamerlane ("Timur the Lame"), was born in Central Asia--probably in the village of Sebzar, near Samarkand, in Transoxiana (Turkestan). He is supposed to have been descended from a follower of Genghis Khan, founder of the Mongol empire; or, as some say, directly, by the mother's side, from Genghis himself. He is the Tamerlaine or Tamburlaine of Marlowe and other dramatists. Gibbon introduces him in the _Decline and Fall_, apparently because fascinated with the subject, although he gives as a historical reason the fact that Timur's triumph in Asia delayed the final fall of Constantinople--taken by the Turks in 1453. In early youth the future ruler of so vast an empire was engaged in struggles for ascendency with the petty chiefs of rival tribes. His boundless ambition early conceived the conquest and monarchy of the world; his wish was "to live in the memory and esteem of future ages." He was born in a period of anarchy, when the crumbling kingdoms of the Asiatic dynasties were no longer able to resist the adventurous spirit determined to occupy the new field of military triumph which opened before him. At the age of twenty-five Timur was hailed as the deliverer of his country. When he chose Samarkand as the capital of his dominion, he declared his purpose to make that dominion embrace the whole habitable earth; and at the height of his power he ruled from the Great Wall of China to the centre of Russia on the north, while his sovereignty extended to the Mediterranean and the Nile on the west, and on the east to the sources of the Ganges. In his own person he united twenty-seven different sovereignties, and nine several dynasties of kings gave place to the unparalleled conqueror, who won by the sword a larger portion of the globe than Cyrus or Alexander, Cæsar or Attila, Genghis Khan, Charlemagne, or Napoleon. It was believed in the family and empire of Timur that he himself composed the _Commentaries_ of his life and the _Institutions_ of his government, which, however, were probably the work of his secretaries. These manuscripts have been of great service to historians in their study of Timur's career. At the age of thirty-four, and in a general diet, Timur was invested with imperial command, but he affected to revere the house of Genghis; and while the emir Timur reigned over Zagatai and the East, a nominal khan served as a private officer in the armies of his servant. Without expatiating on the victories of thirty-five campaigns, without describing the lines of march which he repeatedly traced over the continent of Asia, I shall briefly represent Timur's conquests in Persia, Tartary, and India, and from thence proceed to the more interesting narrative of his Ottoman war. No sooner had Timur reunited to the patrimony of Zagatai the dependent countries of Karizme and Kandahar than he turned his eyes toward the kingdoms of Iran or Persia. From the Oxus to the Tigris that extensive country was without a lawful sovereign. Peace and justice had been banished from the land above forty years; and the Mongol invader might seem to listen to the cries of an oppressed people. Their petty tyrants might have opposed him with confederate arms: they separately stood and successively fell; and the difference of their fate was only marked by the promptitude of submission or the obstinacy of resistance. Ibrahim, Prince of Shirwan or Albania, kissed the footstool of the imperial throne. His peace offerings of silks, horses, and jewels were composed, according to the Tartar fashion, each article of nine pieces; but a critical spectator observed that there were only eight slaves. "I myself am the ninth," replied Ibraham, who was prepared for the remark: and his flattery was rewarded by the smile of Timur. Shah Mansur, Prince of Fars, or the proper Persia, was one of the least powerful, but most dangerous, of his enemies. In a battle under the walls of Shiraz, he broke, with three or four thousand soldiers, the _coul_, or main body, of thirty thousand horse, where the Emperor fought in person. No more than fourteen or fifteen guards remained near the standard of Timur; he stood firm as a rock, and received on his helmet two weighty strokes of a cimeter; the Mongols rallied; the head of Mansur was thrown at his feet; and he declared his esteem of the valor of a foe by extirpating all the males of so intrepid a race. From Shiraz his troops advanced to the Persian Gulf; and the richness and weakness of Ormus were displayed in an annual tribute of six hundred thousand dinars of gold. Bagdad was no longer the city of peace, the seat of the caliphs; but the noblest conquest of Khulagu could not be overlooked by his ambitious successor. The whole course of the Tigris and Euphrates, from the mouth to the sources of those rivers, was reduced to his obedience; he entered Edessa; and the Turcomans of the black sheep were chastised for the sacrilegious pillage of a caravan of Mecca. In the mountains of Georgia the native Christians still braved the law and the sword of Mahomet; by three expeditions he obtained the merit of the _gazie_, or holy war; and the Prince of Tiflis became his proselyte and friend. A just retaliation might be urged for the invasion of Turkestan, or the Eastern Tartary. The dignity of Timur could not endure the impunity of the Getes: he passed the Sihun, subdued the kingdom of Kashgar, and marched seven times into the heart of their country. His most distant camp was two months' journey to the northeast of Samarkand; and his emirs, who traversed the river Irtysh, engraved in the forests of Siberia a rude memorial of their exploits. The conquest of Kiptchak, or the Western Tartary, was founded on the double motive of aiding the distressed and chastising the ungrateful. Toctamish, a fugitive prince, was entertained and protected in his court; the ambassadors of Auruss Khan were dismissed with a haughty denial, and followed on the same day by the armies of Zagatai; and their success established Toctamish in the Mongol empire of the North. But, after a reign of ten years, the new Khan forgot the merits and the strength of his benefactor--the base usurper, as he deemed him, of the sacred rights of the house of Genghis. Through the gates of Derbent he entered Persia at the head of ninety thousand horse: with the innumerable forces of Kiptchak, Bulgaria, Circassia, and Russia, he passed the Sihun, burned the palaces of Timur, and compelled him, amid the winter snows, to contend for Samarkand and his life. After a mild expostulation and a glorious victory the Emperor resolved on revenge; and by the east and the west of the Caspian and the Volga he twice invaded Kiptchak with such mighty powers that thirteen miles were measured from his right to his left wing. In a march of five months they rarely beheld the footsteps of man; and their daily subsistence was often trusted to the fortune of the chase. At length the armies encountered each other; but the treachery of the standard-bearer, who, in the heat of action, reversed the imperial standard of Kiptchak, determined the victory of the Zagatais and Toctamish--I speak the language of the _Institutions_--gave the tribe of Toushi to the wind of desolation. He fled to the Christian Duke of Lithuania, again returned to the banks of the Volga, and, after fifteen battles with a domestic rival, at last perished in the wilds of Siberia. The pursuit of a flying enemy carried Timur into the tributary provinces of Russia; a duke of the reigning family was made prisoner amid the ruins of his capital; and Yelets, by the pride and ignorance of the orientals, might easily be confounded with the genuine metropolis of the nation. Moscow trembled at the approach of the Tartar. Ambition and prudence recalled him to the south, the desolate country was exhausted, and the Mongol soldiers were enriched with an immense spoil of precious furs, of linen of Antioch, and of ingots of gold and silver. On the banks of the Don, or Tanais, he received a humble deputation from the consuls and merchants of Egypt, Venice, Genoa, Catalonia, and Biscay, who occupied the commerce and city of Tana, or Azov, at the mouth of the river. They offered their gifts, admired his magnificence, and trusted his royal word. But the peaceful visit of an emir, who explored the state of the magazines and harbor, was speedily followed by the destructive presence of the Tartars. The city of Tana was reduced to ashes; the Moslems were pillaged and dismissed; but all the Christians who had not fled to their ships were condemned either to death or slavery. Revenge prompted him to burn the cities of Sarai and Astrakhan, the monuments of rising civilization; and his vanity proclaimed that he had penetrated to the region of perpetual daylight, a strange phenomenon, which authorized his Mahometan doctors to dispense with the obligation of evening prayer. When Timur first proposed to his princes and emirs the invasion of India or Hindustan, he was answered by a murmur of discontent: "The rivers! and the mountains and deserts! and the soldiers clad in armor! and the elephants, destroyers of men!" But the displeasure of the Emperor was more dreadful than all these terrors; and his superior reason was convinced that an enterprise of such tremendous aspect was safe and easy in the execution. He was informed by his spies of the weakness and anarchy of Hindustan: the _subahs_ of the provinces had erected the standard of rebellion; and the perpetual infancy of Sultan Mahmud was despised even in the harem of Delhi. The Mongol army moved in three great divisions, and Timur observes with pleasure that the ninety-two squadrons of a thousand horse most fortunately corresponded with the ninety-two names or epithets of the prophet Mahomet. Between the Jihun and the Indus they crossed one of the ridges of mountains which are styled by the Arabian geographers the "Stony Girdles of the Earth." The highland robbers were subdued or extirpated; but great numbers of men and horses perished in the snow; the Emperor himself was let down a precipice on a portable scaffold--the ropes were one hundred and fifty cubits in length--and before he could reach the bottom, this dangerous operation was five times repeated. Timur crossed the Indus at the ordinary passage of Attock, and successively traversed, in the footsteps of Alexander, the Punjab, or five rivers, that fall into the master stream. From Attock to Delhi the high road measures no more than six hundred miles; but the two conquerors deviated to the southeast; and the motive of Timur was to join his grandson, who had achieved by his command the conquest of Multan. On the eastern bank of the Hyphasis, on the edge of the desert, the Macedonian hero halted and wept; the Mongol entered the desert, reduced the fortress of Batnir, and stood in arms before the gates of Delhi, a great and flourishing city, which had subsisted three centuries under the dominion of the Mahometan kings. The siege, more especially of the castle, might have been a work of time; but he tempted, by the appearance of weakness, the Sultan Mahmud and his wazir to descend into the plain, with ten thousand cuirassiers, forty thousand of his foot-guards, and one hundred and twenty elephants, whose tusks are said to have been armed with sharp and poisoned daggers. Against these monsters, or rather against the imagination of his troops, he condescended to use some extraordinary precautions of fire and a ditch, of iron spikes and a rampart of bucklers; but the event taught the Mongols to smile at their own fears; and as soon as these unwieldy animals were routed, the inferior species (the men of India) disappeared from the field. Timur made his triumphal entry into the capital of Hindustan, and admired, with a view to imitate, the architecture of the stately mosque; but the order or license of a general pillage and massacre polluted the festival of his victory. He resolved to purify his soldiers in the blood of the idolaters, or Gentoos, who still surpass, in the proportion of ten to one, the numbers of the Moslems. In this pious design he advanced one hundred miles to the northeast of Delhi, passed the Ganges, fought several battles by land and water, and penetrated to the famous rock of Cupele, the statue of the cow,[58] that _seems_ to discharge the mighty river, whose source is far distant among the mountains of Tibet. His return was along the skirts of the northern hills; nor could this rapid campaign of one year justify the strange foresight of his emirs, that their children in a warm climate would degenerate into a race of Hindus. It was on the banks of the Ganges that Timur was informed, by his speedy messengers, of the disturbances which had arisen on the confines of Georgia and Anatolia, of the revolt of the Christians, and the ambitious designs of the sultan Bajazet. His vigor of mind and body was not impaired by sixty-three years and innumerable fatigues; and, after enjoying some tranquil months in the palace of Samarkand, he proclaimed a new expedition of seven years into the western countries of Asia. To the soldiers who had served in the Indian war he granted the choice of remaining at home or following their prince; but the troops of all the provinces and kingdoms of Persia were commanded to assemble at Ispahan and wait the arrival of the imperial standard. It was first directed against the Christians of Georgia, who were strong only in their rocks, their castles, and the winter season; but these obstacles were overcome by the zeal and perseverance of Timur: the rebels submitted to the tribute or the _Koran_; and if both religions boasted of their martyrs, that name is more justly due to the Christian prisoners, who were offered the choice of abjuration or death. On his descent from the hills the Emperor gave audience to the first ambassadors of Bajazet, and opened the hostile correspondence of complaints and menaces, which fermented two years before the final explosion. Between two jealous and haughty neighbors, the motives of quarrel will seldom be wanting. The Mongol and Ottoman conquests now touched each other in the neighborhood of Erzerum and the Euphrates; nor had the doubtful limit been ascertained by time and treaty. Each of these ambitious monarchs might accuse his rival of violating his territory, of threatening his vassals and protecting his rebels; and, by the name of rebels, each understood the fugitive princes, whose kingdoms he had usurped and whose life or liberty he implacably pursued. In their victorious career Timur was impatient of an equal, and Bajazet was ignorant of a superior. In his first expedition, Timur was satisfied with the siege and destruction of Sebaste, a strong city on the borders of Anatolia. He then turned aside to the invasion of Syria and Egypt, where the military republic of the mamelukes still reigned. The Syrian emirs were assembled at Aleppo to repel the invasion; they confided in the fame and discipline of the mamelukes, in the temper of their swords and lances of the purest steel of Damascus, in the strength of their walled cities, and in the populousness of sixty thousand villages; and instead of sustaining a siege, they threw open their gates and arrayed their forces in the plain. But these forces were not cemented by virtue and union, and some powerful emirs had been seduced to desert or betray their more loyal companions. Timur's front was covered with a line of Indian elephants, whose turrets were filled with archers and Greek fire; the rapid evolutions of his cavalry completed the dismay and disorder; the Syrian crowds fell back on each other; many thousands were stifled or slaughtered in the entrance of the great street; the Mongols entered with the fugitives; and after a short defence the impregnable citadel of Aleppo was surrendered by cowardice or treachery. Among the suppliants and captives, Timur distinguished the doctors of the law, whom he invited to the dangerous honor of a personal conference. The Mongol Prince was a zealous Mussulman; but his Persian schools had taught him to revere the memory of Ali and Hasan; and he had imbibed a deep prejudice against the Syrians as the enemies of the son of the daughter of the apostle of God. To these doctors he proposed a captious question, which the casuists of Samarkand and Herat were incapable of resolving. "Who are the true martyrs, of those who are slain on my side or on that of my enemies?" But he was silenced, or satisfied, by the dexterity of one of the cadis of Aleppo, who replied, in the words of Mahomet himself, that the motive, not the ensign, constitutes the martyr; and that the Moslems of either party who fight only for the glory of God may deserve that sacred appellation. The true succession of the caliphs was a controversy of a still more delicate nature; and the frankness of a doctor, too honest for his situation, provoked the Emperor to exclaim: "Ye are as false as those of Damascus: Moawiyah was a usurper, Yezid a tyrant, and Ali alone is the lawful successor of the Prophet." A prudent explanation restored his tranquillity, and he passed to a more familiar topic of conversation. "What is your age?" said he to the cadi. "Fifty years." "It would be the age of my eldest son: you see me here," continued Timur, "a poor, lame, decrepit mortal. Yet by my arms has the Almighty been pleased to subdue the kingdoms of Iran, Turan, and the Indies. I am not a man of blood; and God is my witness that in all my wars I have never been the aggressor, and that my enemies have always been the authors of their own calamity." During this peaceful conversation the streets of Aleppo streamed with blood and reëchoed with the cries of mothers and children, with the shrieks of violated virgins. The rich plunder that was abandoned to his soldiers might stimulate their avarice; but their cruelty was enforced by the peremptory command of producing an adequate number of heads, which, according to his custom, were curiously piled in columns and pyramids. The Mongols celebrated the feast of victory, while the surviving Moslems passed the night in tears and in chains. I shall not dwell on the march of the destroyer from Aleppo to Damascus, where he was rudely encountered, and almost overthrown, by the armies of Egypt. A retrograde motion was imputed to his distress and despair; one of his nephews deserted to the enemy; and Syria rejoiced in the tale of his defeat, when the Sultan was driven, by the revolt of the mamelukes, to escape with precipitation and shame to his palace of Cairo. Abandoned by their Prince, the inhabitants of Damascus still defended their walls; and Timur consented to raise the siege if they would adorn his retreat with a gift or ransom, each article of nine pieces. But no sooner had he introduced himself into the city, under color of a truce, than he perfidiously violated the treaty, imposed a contribution of ten millions of gold, and animated his troops to chastise the posterity of those Syrians who had executed, or approved, the murder of the grandson of Mahomet. After a period of seven centuries Damascus was reduced to ashes, because a Tartar was moved by religious zeal to avenge the blood of an Arab. The losses and fatigues of the campaign obliged Timur to renounce the conquest of Palestine and Egypt; but in his return to the Euphrates he delivered Aleppo to the flames and justified his pious motive by the pardon and reward of two thousand sectaries of Ali, who were desirous to visit the tomb of his son. I have expatiated on the personal anecdotes which mark the character of the Mongol hero, but I shall briefly mention that he erected, on the ruins of Bagdad, a pyramid of ninety thousand heads; again visited Georgia; encamped on the banks of the Araxes; and proclaimed his resolution of marching against the Ottoman Emperor. Conscious of the importance of the war, he collected his forces from every province; eight hundred thousand men were enrolled on his military list, but the splendid commands of five and ten thousand horse may be rather expressive of the rank and pension of the chiefs than of the genuine number of effective soldiers. In the pillage of Syria the Mongols had acquired immense riches; but the delivery of their pay and arrears for seven years more firmly attached them to the imperial standard. During this diversion of the Mongol arms, Bajazet had two years to collect his forces for a more serious encounter. They consisted of four hundred thousand horse and foot whose merit and fidelity were of an unequal complexion. We may discriminate the janizaries, who have been gradually raised to an establishment of forty thousand men; a national cavalry (the _spahis_ of modern times); twenty thousand cuirassiers of Europe, clad in black and impenetrable armor; the troops of Anatolia, whose princes had taken refuge in the camp of Timur: and a colony of Tartars, whom he had driven from Kiptchak, and to whom Bajazet had assigned a settlement in the plains of Adrianople. The fearless confidence of the Sultan urged him to meet his antagonist; and, as if he had chosen that spot for revenge, he displayed his banner near the ruins of the unfortunate Sebaste. In the mean while Timur moved from the Araxes through the countries of Armenia and Anatolia. His boldness was secured by the wisest precautions; his speed was guided by order and discipline; and the woods, the mountains, and the rivers were diligently explored by the flying squadrons, who marked his road and preceded his standard. Firm in his plan of fighting in the heart of the Ottoman kingdom, he avoided their camp, dexterously inclined to the left, occupied Cæsarea, traversed the salt desert and the river Halys, and invested Angora; while the Sultan, immovable and ignorant in his post, compared the Tartar swiftness to the crawling of a snail. He returned on the wings of indignation to the relief of Angora; and as both generals were alike impatient for action, the plains round that city were the scene of a memorable battle, which has immortalized the glory of Timur and the shame of Bajazet. For this signal victory the Mongol Emperor was indebted to himself, to the genius of the moment, and the discipline of thirty years. He had improved the tactics, without violating the manners, of his nation, whose force still consisted in the missile weapons and rapid evolutions of a numerous cavalry. From a single troop to a great army, the mode of attack was the same; a foremost line first advanced to the charge, and was supported in a just order by the squadrons of the great vanguard. The general's eye watched over the field, and at his command the front and rear of the right and left wings successively moved forward in their several divisions, and in a direct or oblique line; the enemy was pressed by eighteen or twenty attacks; and each attack afforded a chance of victory. If they all proved fruitless or unsuccessful, the occasion was worthy of the Emperor himself, who gave the signal of advancing to the standard and main body, which he led in person. But in the battle of Angora, the main body itself was supported, on the flanks and in the rear, by the bravest squadrons of the reserve, commanded by the sons and grandsons of Timur. The conqueror of Hindustan ostentatiously showed a line of elephants, the trophies rather than the instruments of victory; the use of the Greek fire was familiar to the Mongols and Ottomans; but had they borrowed from Europe the recent invention of gunpowder and cannon, the artificial thunder, in the hands of either nation, must have turned the fortune of the day. In that day Bajazet displayed the qualities of a soldier and a chief; but his genius sunk under a stronger ascendant; and, from various motives, the greatest part of his troops failed him in the decisive moment. His rigor and avarice had provoked a mutiny among the Turks; and even his son Solyman too hastily withdrew from the field. The forces of Anatolia, loyal in their revolt, were drawn away to the banners of their lawful princes. His Tartar allies had been tempted by the letters and emissaries of Timur, who reproached their ignoble servitude under the slaves of their fathers; and offered to their hopes the dominion of their new, or the liberty of their ancient, country. In the right wing of Bajazet the cuirassiers of Europe charged with faithful hearts and irresistible arms; but these men of iron were soon broken by an artful flight and headlong pursuit; and the janizaries, alone, without cavalry or missile weapons, were encompassed by the circle of the Mongol hunters. Their valor was at length oppressed by heat, thirst, and the weight of numbers; and the unfortunate Sultan, afflicted with the gout in his hands and feet, was transported from the field on the fleetest of his horses. He was pursued and taken by the titular Khan of Zagatai; and, after his capture and the defeat of the Ottoman powers, the kingdom of Anatolia submitted to the conqueror, who planted his standard at Kiotahia, and dispersed on all sides the ministers of rapine and destruction. Mirza Mehemmed Sultan, the eldest and best beloved of his grandsons, was despatched to Bursa, with thirty thousand horse; and such was his youthful ardor that he arrived with only four thousand at the gates of the capital, after performing in five days a march of two hundred and thirty miles. Yet fear is still more rapid in its course; and Solyman, the son of Bajazet, had already passed over to Europe with the royal treasure. The spoil, however, of the palace and city was immense; the inhabitants had escaped; but the buildings, for the most part of wood, were reduced to ashes. From Bursa, the grandson of Timur advanced to Nice, even yet a fair and flourishing city; and the Mongol squadrons were only stopped by the waves of the Propontis. The same success attended the other mirzas and emirs in their excursions, and Smyrna, defended by the zeal and courage of the Rhodian knights, alone deserved the presence of the Emperor himself. After an obstinate defence, the place was taken by storm; all that breathed was put to the sword; and the heads of the Christian heroes were launched from the engines, on board of two caracks, or great ships of Europe, that rode at anchor in the harbor. The Moslems of Asia rejoiced in their deliverance from a dangerous and domestic foe and a parallel was drawn between the two rivals, by observing that Timur, in fourteen days, had reduced a fortress which had sustained seven years the siege, or at least the blockade, of Bajazet. The "iron cage" in which Bajazet was imprisoned by Timur, so long and so often repeated as a moral lesson, is now rejected as a fable by the modern writers, who smile at the vulgar credulity. They appeal with confidence to the Persian history of Sherefeddin Ali, according to which has been given to our curiosity in a French version, and from which I shall collect and abridge, a more specious narrative of this memorable transaction. No sooner was Timur informed that the captive Ottoman was at the door of his tent than he graciously stepped forward to receive him, seated him by his side, and mingled with just reproaches a soothing pity for his rank and misfortune. "Alas!" said the Emperor, "the decree of fate is now accomplished by your own fault; it is the web which you have woven, the thorns of the tree which yourself have planted. I wished to spare, and even to assist, the champion of the Moslems. You braved our threats; you despised our friendship; you forced us to enter your kingdom with our invincible armies. Behold the event. Had you vanquished, I am not ignorant of the fate which you reserved for myself and my troops. But I disdain to retaliate; your life and honor are secure; and I shall express my gratitude to God by my clemency to man." The royal captive showed some signs of repentance, accepted the humiliation of a robe of honor, and embraced with tears his son Musa, who, at his request, was sought and found among the captives of the field. The Ottoman princes were lodged in a splendid pavilion; and the respect of the guards could be surpassed only by their vigilance. On the arrival of the harem from Bursa, Timur restored the queen Despina and her daughter to their father and husband; but he piously required that the Servian princess, who had hitherto been indulged in the profession of Christianity, should embrace, without delay, the religion of the Prophet. In the feast of victory, to which Bajazet was invited, the Mongol Emperor placed a crown on his head and a sceptre in his hand, with a solemn assurance of restoring him with an increase of glory to the throne of his ancestors. But the effect of this promise was disappointed by the Sultan's untimely death. Amid the care of the most skilful physicians, he expired of an apoplexy, about nine months after his defeat. The victor dropped a tear over his grave; his body, with royal pomp, was conveyed to the mausoleum which he had erected at Bursa; and his son Musa, after receiving a rich present of gold and jewels, of horses and arms, was invested by a patent in red ink with the kingdom of Anatolia. Such is the portrait of a generous conqueror, which has been extracted from his own memorials and dedicated to his son and grandson, nineteen years after his decease; and, at a time when the truth was remembered by thousands, a manifest falsehood would have implied a satire on his real conduct. Weighty, indeed, is this evidence, adopted by all the Persian histories; yet flattery, more especially in the East, is base and audacious; and the harsh and ignominious treatment of Bajazet is attested by a chain of witnesses. I am satisfied that Sherefeddin Ali has faithfully described the first ostentatious interview, in which the conqueror, whose spirits were harmonized by success, affected the character of generosity. But his mind was insensibly alienated by the unseasonable arrogance of Bajazet; and Timur betrayed a design of leading his royal captive in triumph to Samarkand. An attempt to facilitate his escape, by digging a mine under the tent, provoked the Mongol Emperor to impose a harsher restraint; and in his perpetual marches, an iron cage on a wagon might be invented, not as a wanton insult, but as a rigorous precaution. But the strength of Bajazet's mind and body fainted under the trial, and his premature death might, without injustice, be ascribed to the severity of Timur. From the Irtysh and Volga to the Persian Gulf, and from the Ganges to Damascus and the Archipelago, Asia was in the hands of Timur; his armies were invincible, his ambition was boundless, and his zeal might aspire to conquer and convert the Christian kingdoms of the West, which already trembled at his name. He touched the utmost verge of the land; but an insuperable, though narrow, sea rolled between the two continents of Europe and Asia; and the lord of so many myriads of horse was not master of a single galley. The two passages of the Bosporus and Hellespont, of Constantinople and Gallipoli, were possessed, the one by the Christians, the other by the Turks. On this great occasion they forgot the difference of religion, to act with union and firmness in the common cause; the double straits were guarded with ships and fortifications; and they separately withheld the transports which Timur demanded of either nation, under the pretence of attacking their enemy. At the same time they soothed his pride with tributary gifts and suppliant embassies, and prudently tempted him to retreat with the honors of victory. Solyman, the son of Bajazet, implored his clemency for his father and himself; accepted, by a red patent, the investiture of the kingdom of Romania, which he already held by the sword; and reiterated his ardent wish of casting himself in person at the feet of the king of the world. The Greek Emperor--either John or Manuel--submitted to pay the same tribute which he had stipulated with the Turkish Sultan, and ratified the treaty by an oath of allegiance, from which he could absolve his conscience so soon as the Mongol arms had retired from Anatolia. But the fears and fancy of nations ascribed to the ambitious Tamerlane a new design of vast and romantic compass; a design of subduing Egypt and Africa, marching from the Nile to the Atlantic Ocean, entering Europe by the Straits of Gibraltar, and, after imposing his yoke on the kingdoms of Christendom, of returning home by the deserts of Russia and Tartary. This remote, and perhaps imaginary, danger was averted by the submission of the Sultan of Egypt, the honors of the prayer and the coin attested at Cairo the supremacy of Timur; and a rare gift of a giraffe, or camelopard, and nine ostriches, represented at Samarkand the tribute of the African world. Our imagination is not less astonished by the portrait of a Mongol, who, in his camp before Smyrna, meditates, and almost accomplishes, the invasion of the Chinese empire. Timur was urged to this enterprise by national honor and religious zeal. He received a perfect map and description of the unknown regions, from the source of Irtysh to the Wall of China. During the preparations, the Emperor achieved the final conquest of Georgia; passed the winter on the banks of the Araxes; appeased the troubles of Persia; and slowly returned to his capital, after a campaign of four years and nine months. On the throne of Samarkand he displayed, in a short repose, his magnificence and power; listened to the complaints of the people; distributed a just measure of rewards and punishments; employed his riches in the architecture of palaces and temples; and gave audience to the ambassadors of Egypt, Arabia, India, Tartary, Russia, and Spain, the last of whom presented a suit of tapestry which eclipsed the pencil of the oriental artists. A general indulgence was proclaimed; every law was relaxed, every pleasure was allowed; the people was free, the sovereign was idle; and the historian of Timur may remark that, after devoting fifty years to the attainment of empire, the only happy period of his life was the two months in which he ceased to exercise his power. But he soon awakened to the cares of government and war. The standard was unfurled for the invasion of China; the emirs made their report of two hundred thousand, the select and veteran soldiers of Iran and Turan; their baggage and provisions were transported by five hundred great wagons and an immense train of horses and camels; and the troops might prepare for a long absence, since more than six months were employed in the tranquil journey of a caravan from Samarkand to Peking. Neither age nor the severity of the winter could retard the impatience of Timur; he mounted on horseback, passed the Sihun on the ice, marched seventy-six parasangs (three hundred miles) from his capital, and pitched his last camp in the neighborhood of Otrar, where he was expected by the angel of death. Fatigue and the indiscreet use of iced water accelerated the progress of his fever; and the conqueror of Asia expired in the seventieth year of his age, 1405, thirty-five years after he had ascended the throne of Zagatai. His designs were lost; his armies were disbanded; China was saved; and, fourteen years after his decease, the most powerful of his children sent an embassy of friendship and commerce to the court of Peking. The fame of Timur has pervaded the East and West; his posterity is still invested with the imperial title; and the admiration of his subjects, who revered him almost as a deity, may be justified in some degree by the praise or confession of his bitterest enemies. Although he was lame of a hand and foot, his form and stature were not unworthy of his rank; and his vigorous health, so essential to himself and to the world, was corroborated by temperance and exercise. In his familiar discourse he was grave and modest; and if he was ignorant of the Arabic language, he spoke with fluency and elegance the Persian and Turkish idioms. It was his delight to converse with the learned on topics of history and science; and the amusement of his leisure hours was the game of chess, which he improved or corrupted with new refinements. In his religion he was a zealous, though not perhaps an orthodox, Mussulman; but his sound understanding may tempt us to believe that a superstitious reverence for omens and prophecies, for saints and astrologers, was only affected as an instrument of policy. In the government of a vast empire, he stood alone and absolute, without a rebel to oppose his power, a favorite to seduce his affections, or a minister to mislead his judgment. Timur might boast that at his accession to the throne Asia was the prey of anarchy and rapine, while under his prosperous monarchy a child, fearless and unhurt, might carry a purse of gold from the East to the West. Such was his confidence of merit that from this reformation he derived an excuse for his victories and a title to universal dominion. The four following observations will serve to appreciate his claim to the public gratitude; and perhaps we shall conclude that the Mongol Emperor was rather the scourge than the benefactor of mankind. If some partial disorders, some local oppressions, were healed by the sword of Timur, the remedy was far more pernicious than the disease. By their rapine, cruelty, and discord the petty tyrants of Persia might afflict their subjects; but whole nations were crushed under the footsteps of the reformer. The ground which had been occupied by flourishing cities was often marked by his abominable trophies--by columns, or pyramids of human heads. Astrakhan, Karizme, Delhi, Ispahan, Bagdad, Aleppo, Damascus, Bursa, Smyrna, and a thousand others were sacked or burned or utterly destroyed in his presence and by his troops; and perhaps his conscience would have been startled if a priest or philosopher had dared to number the millions of victims whom he had sacrificed to the establishment of peace and order. His most destructive wars were rather inroads than conquests. He invaded Turkestan, Kiptchak, Russia, Hindustan, Syria, Anatolia, Armenia, and Georgia, without a hope or a desire of preserving those distant provinces. From thence he departed laden with spoil; but he left behind him neither troops to awe the contumacious nor magistrates to protect the obedient natives. When he had broken the fabric of their ancient government, he abandoned them in their evils which his invasion had aggravated or caused; nor were these evils compensated by any present or possible benefits. The kingdoms of Transoxiana and Persia were the proper field which he labored to cultivate and adorn as the perpetual inheritance of his family. But his peaceful labors were often interrupted, and sometimes blasted, by the absence of the conqueror. While he triumphed on the Volga or the Ganges, his servants, and even his sons, forgot their master and their duty. The public and private injuries were poorly redressed by the tardy rigor or inquiry and punishment; and we must be content to praise the _Institutions_ of Timur as the specious idea of a perfect monarchy. Whatsoever might be the blessings of his administration, they evaporated with his life. To reign, rather than to govern, was the ambition of his children and grandchildren--the enemies of each other and of the people. A fragment of the empire was upheld with some glory by Sharokh, his youngest son; but after his decease the scene was again involved in darkness and blood; and before the end of a century Transoxiana and Persia were trampled by the Usbegs from the north, and the Turcomans of the black and white sheep. The race of Timur would have been extinct if a hero, his descendant in the fifth degree, had not fled before the Usbeg arms to the conquest of Hindustan. His successors--the great Mongols--extended their sway from the mountains of Cashmere to Cape Comorin, and from Kandahar to the Gulf of Bengal. Since the reign of Aurungzebe, their empire has been dissolved; their treasures of Delhi have been rifled by a Persian robber; and the richest of their kingdoms is now possessed by a company of Christian merchants, of a remote island in the Northern Ocean. DANCING MANIA OF THE MIDDLE AGES A.D. 1374 J. F. C. Hecker[59] The black death, which originated in Central China about 1333, appeared on the Mediterranean littoral in 1347, ravaged the island of Cyprus, made the circuit of the Mediterranean countries, spread throughout Europe northward as far as Iceland, and in 1357 appeared in Russia, where it seems to have been checked by the barrier of the Caucasus. Scarce had its effects subsided, and the graves of its 25,000,000 victims were hardly closed, when it was followed by an epidemic of the dance of St. John, or St. Vitus, which like a demoniacal plague appeared in Germany in 1347, and spread over the whole empire and throughout the neighboring countries. The dance was characterized by wild leaping, furious screaming, and foaming at the mouth, which gave to the individuals affected all the appearance of insanity. The epidemic was not confined to particular localities, but was propagated by the sight of the sufferers, and for over two centuries excited the astonishment of contemporaries. The Netherlands and France were equally affected; in Italy the disease became known as _tarantism_, it being supposed to proceed from the bite of the tarantula, a venomous spider. Like the St. Vitus' dance in Germany, tarantism spread by sympathy, increasing in severity as it took a wider range; the chief cure was music, which seemed to furnish magical means for exorcising the malady of the patients. The epidemic subsided in Central Europe in the seventeenth century, but diseases approximating to the original dancing mania have occurred at various periods in many parts of Europe, Africa, and the United States. Nathaniel Pearce, an eye-witness, who resided nine years in Abyssinia early in the nineteenth century, gives a graphic account of a similar epidemic there, called _tigretier_, from the Tigré district, in which it was most prevalent. In France, from 1727 to 1790, an epidemic prevailed among the Convulsionnaires, who received relief from brethren in the faith known as Secourists, very much after the rough methods administered to the St. John's dancers and to the _tarantati_. About the same period nervous epidemics of a similar character, largely propagated by sympathy, were very prevalent in the Shetland Islands and in various parts of Scotland, but were for the most part eradicated by cold-water immersion. An epidemic of _chorea sancti Viti_, recorded by Felix Robertson of Tennessee (Philadelphia, 1805), found vent in an unparalleled blaze of enthusiastic religion, which spread with lightning-like rapidity in almost every part of Tennessee and Kentucky, and in various parts of Virginia, in 1800, being distinguished by uncontrollable and infectious muscular contractions, gesticulations, crying, laughing, shouting, and singing. To similar epidemics are attributed the uncontrollable acts which, till late in the nineteenth century, were a feature of North American camp meetings for divine service in the open air, and which exhibited the same form of mental disturbance as did the St. Vitus' dance in mediæval Europe. So early as the year 1374, assemblages of men and women were seen at Aix-la-Chapelle who had come out of Germany, and who, united by one common delusion, exhibited to the public both in the streets and in the churches the following strange spectacle. They formed circles hand in hand, and, appearing to have lost all control over their senses, continued dancing, regardless of the bystanders, for hours together in wild delirium, until at length they fell to the ground in a state of exhaustion. They then complained of extreme oppression, and groaned as if in the agonies of death, until they were swathed in cloths bound tightly round their waists, upon which they again recovered, and remained free from complaint until the next attack. This practice of swathing was resorted to on account of the tympany which followed these spasmodic ravings, but the bystanders frequently relieved patients in a less artificial manner, by thumping and trampling upon the parts affected. While dancing they neither saw nor heard, being insensible to external impressions through the senses, but were haunted by visions, their fancies conjuring up spirits whose names they shrieked out; and some of them afterward asserted that they felt as if they had been immersed in a stream of blood, which obliged them to leap so high. Others, during the paroxysm, saw the heavens open and the Saviour enthroned with the Virgin Mary, according as the religious notions of the age were strangely and variously reflected in their imaginations. Where the disease was completely developed, the attack commenced with epileptic convulsions. Those affected fell to the ground senseless, panting and laboring for breath. They foamed at the mouth, and suddenly springing up began their dance amid strange contortions. Yet the malady doubtless made its appearance very variously, and was modified by temporary or local circumstances, whereof non-medical contemporaries but imperfectly noted the essential particulars, accustomed as they were to confound their observation of natural events with their notions of the world of spirits. It was but a few months ere this demoniacal disease had spread from Aix-la-Chapelle, where it appeared in July, over the neighboring Netherlands. In Liège, Utrecht, Tongres, and many other towns of Belgium the dancers appeared with garlands in their hair, and their waists girt with cloths, that they might, as soon as the paroxysm was over, receive immediate relief on the attack of the tympany. This bandage was, by the insertion of a stick, easily twisted tight. Many, however, obtained more relief from kicks and blows, which they found numbers of persons ready to administer; for, wherever the dancers appeared, the people assembled in crowds to gratify their curiosity with the frightful spectacle. At length the increasing number of the affected excited no less anxiety than the attention that was paid to them. In towns and villages they took possession of the religious houses; processions were everywhere instituted on their account and masses were said and hymns were sung, while the disease itself, of the demoniacal origin of which no one entertained the least doubt, excited everywhere astonishment and horror. In Liège the priests had recourse to exorcisms, and endeavored, by every means in their power, to allay an evil which threatened so much danger to themselves; for the possessed, assembling in multitudes, frequently poured forth imprecations against them and menaced their destruction. They intimidated the people also to such a degree that there was an express ordinance issued that no one should make any but square-toed shoes, because these fanatics had manifested a morbid dislike to the pointed shoes which had come into fashion immediately after the "great mortality," in 1350. They were still more irritated at the sight of red colors, the influence of which on the disordered nerves might lead us to imagine an extraordinary accordance between this spasmodic malady and the condition of infuriated animals; but in the St. John's dancers this excitement was probably connected with apparitions consequent upon their convulsions. There were likewise some of them who were unable to endure the sight of persons weeping. The clergy seemed to become daily more and more confirmed in their belief that those who were affected were a kind of sectarians, and on this account they hastened their exorcisms as much as possible, in order that the evil might not spread among the higher classes, for hitherto scarcely any but the poor had been attacked, and the few people of respectability among the laity and clergy who were to be found among them were persons whose natural frivolity was unable to withstand the excitement of novelty, even though it proceeded from a demoniacal influence. Some of the affected had indeed themselves declared, when under the influence of priestly forms of exorcism, that, if the demons had been allowed only a few weeks more time, they would have entered the bodies of the nobility and princes, and through these have destroyed the clergy. Assertions of this sort, which those possessed uttered while in a state which may be compared with that of magnetic sleep, obtained general belief, and passed from mouth to mouth with wonderful additions. The priesthood were, on this account, so much the more zealous in their endeavors to anticipate every dangerous excitement of the people, as if the existing order of things could have been seriously threatened by such incoherent ravings. Their exertions were effectual, for exorcism was a powerful remedy in the fourteenth century; or it might perhaps be that this wild infatuation terminated in consequence of the exhaustion which naturally ensued from it; at all events, in the course of ten or eleven months the St. John's dancers were no longer to be found in any of the cities of Belgium. The evil, however, was too deeply rooted to give way altogether to such feeble attacks. A few months after this dancing malady had made its appearance at Aix-la-Chapelle, it broke out at Cologne, where the number of those possessed amounted to more than five hundred, and about the same time at Metz, the streets of which place are said to have been filled with eleven hundred dancers. Peasants left their ploughs, mechanics their workshops, housewives their domestic duties, to join the wild revels, and this rich commercial city became the scene of the most ruinous disorder. Secret desires were excited, and but too often found opportunities for wild enjoyment; and numerous beggars, stimulated by vice and misery, availed themselves of this new complaint to gain a temporary livelihood. Girls and boys quitted their parents, and servants their masters, to amuse themselves at the dances of those possessed, and greedily imbibed the poison of mental infection. Gangs of idle vagabonds, who understood how to imitate to the life the gestures and convulsions of those really affected, roved from place to place seeking maintenance and adventures, and thus, wherever they went, spreading this disgusting spasmodic disease like a plague; for in maladies of this kind the susceptible are infected as easily by the appearance as by the reality. At last it was found necessary to drive away these mischievous guests, who were equally inaccessible to the exorcisms of the priests and the remedies of the physicians. It was not, however, until after four months that the Rhenish cities were able to suppress these impostors, which had so alarmingly increased the original evil. In the mean time, when once called into existence, the plague crept on, and found abundant food in the tone of thought which prevailed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and even, though in a minor degree, throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth, causing a permanent disorder of the mind, and exhibiting, in those cities to whose inhabitants it was a novelty, scenes as strange as they were detestable. Strasburg was visited by the dancing plague, or St. Vitus' dance,[60] in the year 1418, and the same infatuation existed among the people there as in the towns of Belgium and the Lower Rhine. Many who were seized at the sight of those affected, excited attention at first by their confused and absurd behavior, and then by their constantly following the swarms of dancers. These were seen day and night passing through the streets, accompanied by musicians playing on bagpipes, and by innumerable spectators attracted by curiosity, to which were added anxious parents and relations, who came to look after those among the misguided multitude who belonged to their respective families. Imposture and profligacy played their part in this city also, but the morbid delusion itself seems to have predominated. On this account religion could only bring provisional aid, and therefore the town council benevolently took an interest in the afflicted. They divided them into separate parties, to each of which they appointed responsible superintendents to protect them from harm and perhaps also to restrain their turbulence. They were thus conducted on foot and in carriages to the chapels of St. Vitus, near Zabern and Rotestein, where priests were in attendance to work upon their misguided minds by masses and other religious ceremonies. After divine worship was completed, they were led in solemn procession to the altar, where they made some small offering of alms, and where it is probable that many were, through the influence of devotion and the sanctity of the place, cured of this lamentable aberration. It is worthy of observation, at all events, that the dancing mania did not recommence at the altars of the saint, and that from him alone assistance was implored, and through his miraculous interposition a cure was expected, which was beyond the reach of human skill. The personal history of St. Vitus is by no means unimportant in this matter. He was a Sicilian youth, who, together with Modestus and Crescentia, suffered martyrdom at the time of the persecution of the Christians, under Diocletian, in the year 303. The legends respecting him are obscure, and he would certainly have been passed over without notice among the innumerable apocryphal martyrs of the first centuries, had not the transfer of his body to St. Denis, and thence, in the year 836, to Corvey, raised him to a higher rank. From this time forth, it may be supposed that many miracles were manifested at his new sepulchre, which were of essential service in confirming the Roman faith among the Germans, and St. Vitus was soon ranked among the fourteen saintly helpers (_Nothhelfer_ or _Apotheker_). His altars were multiplied, and the people had recourse to them in all kinds of distresses, and revered him as a powerful intercessor. As the worship of these saints was, however, at that time stripped of all historical connections, which were purposely obliterated by the priesthood, a legend was invented at the beginning of the fifteenth century, or perhaps even so early as the fourteenth, that St. Vitus had, just before he bent his neck to the sword, prayed to God that he might protect from the dancing mania all those who should solemnize the day of his commemoration, and fast upon its eve, and that thereupon a voice from heaven was heard, saying, "Vitus, thy prayer is accepted." Thus St. Vitus became the patron saint of those afflicted with the dancing plague, as St. Martin of Tours was at one time the succorer of persons in smallpox. The connection which John the Baptist had with the dancing mania of the fourteenth century was of a totally different character. He was originally far from being a protecting saint to those who were attacked, or one who would be likely to give them relief from a malady considered as the work of the devil. On the contrary, the manner in which he was worshipped afforded an important and very evident cause for its development. From the remotest period, perhaps even so far back as the fourth century, St. John's Day was solemnized with all sorts of strange and rude customs, of which the originally mystical meaning was variously disfigured among different nations by super-added relics of heathenism. Thus the Germans transferred to the festival of St. John's Day an ancient heathen usage, the kindling of the _Nodfyr_, which was forbidden them by St. Boniface, and the belief subsists even to the present day that people and animals that have leaped through these flames, or their smoke, are protected for a whole year from fevers and other diseases, as if by a kind of baptism by fire. Bacchanalian dances, which have originated in similar causes among all the rude nations of the earth, and the wild extravagancies of a heated imagination, were the constant accompaniments of this half-heathen, half-Christian festival. At the period of which we are treating, however, the Germans were not the only people who gave way to the ebullitions of fanaticism in keeping the festival of St. John the Baptist. Similar customs were also to be found among the nations of Southern Europe and of Asia,[61] and it is more than probable that the Greeks transferred to the festival of John the Baptist, who is also held in high esteem among the Mahometans, a part of their Bacchanalian mysteries, an absurdity of a kind which it but too frequently met with in human affairs. How far a remembrance of the history of St. John's death may have had an influence on this occasion we would leave learned theologians to decide. It is of importance here to add only that in Abyssinia, a country entirely separated from Europe, where Christianity has maintained itself in its primeval simplicity against Mahometanism, John is to this day worshipped as protecting saint of those who are attacked with the dancing malady. In these fragments of the dominion of mysticism and superstition, historical connection is not to be found. When we observe, however, that the first dancers in Aix-la-Chapelle appeared in July with St. John's name in their mouths, the conjecture is probable that the wild revels of St. John's Day, A.D. 1374, gave rise to this mental plague, which thenceforth has visited so many thousands with incurable aberration of mind and disgusting distortions of body. This is rendered so much the more probable because some months previously the districts in the neighborhood of the Rhine and the Maine had met with great disasters. So early as February both these rivers had overflowed their banks to a great extent; the walls of the town of Cologne, on the side next the Rhine, had fallen down, and a great many villages had been reduced to the utmost distress. To this was added the miserable condition of Western and Southern Germany. Neither law nor edict could suppress the incessant feuds of the barons, and in Franconia especially the ancient times of club law appeared to be revived. Security of property there was none; arbitrary will everywhere prevailed; corruption of morals and rude power rarely met with even a feeble opposition; whence it arose that the cruel, but lucrative, persecutions of the Jews were in many places still practised, through the whole of this century, with their wonted ferocity. Thus, throughout the western parts of Germany, and especially in the districts bordering on the Rhine, there was a wretched and oppressed populace; and if we take into consideration that among their numerous bands many wandered about whose consciences were tormented with the recollection of the crimes which they had committed during the prevalence of the black plague, we shall comprehend how their despair sought relief in the intoxication of an artificial delirium. There is hence good ground for supposing that the frantic celebration of the festival of St. John, A.D. 1374, only served to bring to a crisis a malady which had been long impending; and if we would further inquire how a hitherto harmless usage, which like many others had but served to keep up superstition, could degenerate into so serious a disease, we must take into account the unusual excitement of men's minds and the consequences of wretchedness and want. The bowels, which in many were debilitated by hunger and bad food, were precisely the parts which in most cases were attacked with excruciating pain, and the tympanitic state of the intestines points out to the intelligent physician an origin of the disorder which is well worth consideration. The dancing mania of the year 1374 was, in fact, no new disease, but a phenomenon well known in the Middle Ages, of which many wondrous stories were traditionally current among the people. In the year 1237, upward of a hundred children were said to have been suddenly seized with this disease at Erfurt, and to have proceeded dancing and jumping along the road to Arnstadt. When they arrived at that place they fell exhausted to the ground, and, according to an account of an old chronicle, many of them, after they were taken home by their parents, died, and the rest remained affected to the end of their lives with the permanent tremor. Another occurrence was related to have taken place on the Mosel bridge at Utrecht, on June 17, 1278, when two hundred fanatics began to dance, and would not desist until a priest passed who was carrying the host to a person that was sick, upon which, as if in punishment of their crime, the bridge gave way, and they were all drowned. A similar event also occurred, so early as the year 1027, near the convent church of Kolbig, not far from Bernburg. According to an oft-repeated tradition, eighteen peasants, some of whose names are still preserved, are said to have disturbed divine service on Christmas Eve by dancing and brawling in the church-yard, whereupon the priest, Ruprecht, inflicted a curse upon them, that they should dance and scream for a whole year without ceasing. This curse is stated to have been completely fulfilled, so that the unfortunate sufferers at length sank knee deep into the earth, and remained the whole time without nourishment, until they were finally released by the intercession of two pious bishops. It is said that upon this they fell into a deep sleep, which lasted three days, and that four of them died; the rest continuing to suffer all their lives from a trembling of their limbs.[62] It is not worth while to separate what may have been true and what the addition of crafty priests in this strangely distorted story. It is sufficient that it was believed, and related with astonishment and horror, throughout the Middle Ages, so that, when there was any exciting cause for this delirious raving, and wild rage for dancing, it failed not to produce its effects upon men whose thoughts were given up to a belief in wonders and apparitions. This disposition of mind, altogether so peculiar to the Middle Ages, and which, happily for mankind, has yielded to an improved state of civilization and the diffusion of popular instruction, accounts for the origin and long duration of this extraordinary mental disorder. The good sense of the people recoiled with horror and aversion from this heavy plague, which, whenever malevolent persons wished to curse their bitterest enemies and adversaries, was long after used as a malediction.[63] The indignation also that was felt by the people at large against the immorality of the age was proved by their ascribing this frightful affliction to the inefficacy of baptism by unchaste priests, as if innocent children were doomed to atone, in after years, for this desecration of the sacrament administered by unholy hands. We have already mentioned what perils the priests in the Netherlands incurred from this belief. They now, indeed, endeavored to hasten their reconciliation with the irritated and at that time very degenerate people by exorcisms, which, with some, procured them greater respect than ever, because they thus visibly restored thousands of those who were affected. In general, however, there prevailed a want of confidence in their efficacy, and then the sacred rites had as little power in arresting the progress of this deeply rooted malady as the prayers and holy services subsequently had at the altars of the greatly revered martyr St. Vitus. We may, therefore, ascribe it to accident merely, and to a certain aversion to this demoniacal disease, which seemed to lie beyond the reach of human skill, that we meet with but few and imperfect notices of the St. Vitus' dance in the second half of the fifteenth century. The highly colored descriptions of the sixteenth century contradict the notion that this mental plague had in any degree diminished in its severity, and not a single fact is to be found which supports the opinion that any one of the essential symptoms of the disease, not even excepting the tympany, had disappeared, or that the disorder itself had become milder in its attacks. The physicians never, as it seems, throughout the whole of the fifteenth century, undertook the treatment of the dancing mania, which, according to the prevailing notions, appertained exclusively to the servants of the Church. Against demoniacal disorders they had no remedies, and though some at first did promulgate the opinion that the malady had its origin in natural circumstances, such as a hot temperament, and other causes named in the phraseology of the schools, yet these opinions were the less examined, as it did not appear worth while to divide with a jealous priesthood the care of a host of fanatical vagabonds and beggars. It was not until the beginning of the sixteenth century that the St. Vitus' dance was made the subject of medical research, and stripped of its unhallowed character as a work of demons. This was effected by Paracelsus, that mighty, but as yet scarcely comprehended, reformer of medicine, whose aim it was to withdraw diseases from the pale of miraculous interpositions and saintly influences, and explain their causes upon principles deduced from his knowledge of the human frame. "We will not, however, admit that the saints have power to inflict diseases, and that these ought to be named after them, although many there are who in their theology lay great stress on this supposition, ascribing them rather to God than to nature, which is but idle talk. We dislike such nonsensical gossip as is not supported by symptoms, but only by faith, a thing which is not human, whereon the gods themselves set no value." Such were the words which Paracelsus addressed to his contemporaries, who were as yet incapable of appreciating doctrines of this sort; for the belief in enchantment still remained everywhere unshaken, and faith in the world of spirits still held men's minds in so close a bondage that thousands were, according to their own conviction, given up as a prey to the devil; while, at the command of religion as well as of law, countless piles were lighted, by the flames of which human society was to be purified. Paracelsus divides the St. Vitus' dance into three kinds: First, that which arises from imagination (_Vitista_, _chorea imaginativa_, _æstimativa_), by which the original dancing plague is to be understood; secondly, that which arises from sensual desires, depending on the will (_chorea lasciva_); thirdly, that which arises from corporeal causes (_chorea naturalis_, _coacta_), which, according to a strange notion of his own, he explained by maintaining that in certain vessels which are susceptible of an internal pruriency, and thence produce laughter, the blood is set in commotion, in consequence of an alteration in the vital spirits, whereby involuntary fits of intoxicating joy, and a propensity to dance, are occasioned. To this notion he was, no doubt, led from having observed a milder form of St. Vitus' dance, not uncommon in his time, which was accompanied by involuntary laughter, and which bore a resemblance to the hysterical laughter of the moderns, except that it was characterized by more pleasurable sensations, and by an extravagant propensity to dance. There was no howling, screaming, and jumping, as in the severer form; neither was the disposition to dance by any means insuperable. Patients thus affected, although they had not a complete control over their understandings, yet were sufficiently self-possessed, during the attack, to obey the directions which they received. There were even some among them who did not dance at all, but only felt an involuntary impulse to allay the internal sense of disquietude, which is the usual forerunner of an attack of this kind, by laughter, and quick walking carried to the extent of producing fatigue. This disorder, so different from the original type, evidently approximates to the modern chorea, or rather is in perfect accordance with it, even to the less essential symptom of laughter. A mitigation in the form of the dancing mania had thus clearly taken place at the commencement of the sixteenth century. On the communication of the St. Vitus' dance by sympathy, Paracelsus, in his peculiar language, expresses himself with great spirit, and shows a profound knowledge of the nature of sensual impressions, which find their way to the heart--the seat of joys and emotions--which overpower the opposition of reason; and while "all other qualities and natures" are subdued, incessantly impel the patient, in consequence of his original compliance, and his all-conquering imagination, to imitate what he has seen. On his treatment of the disease we cannot bestow any great praise, but must be content with the remark that it was in conformity with the notions of the age in which he lived. For the first kind, which often originated in passionate excitement, he had a mental remedy, the efficacy of which is not to be despised, if we estimate its value in connection with the prevalent opinions of those times. The patient was to make an image of himself in wax or resin, and by an effort of thought to concentrate all his blasphemies and sins in it. "Without the intervention of any other person, to set his whole mind and thoughts concerning these oaths in the image;" and when he had succeeded in this, he was to burn the image, so that not a particle of it should remain.[64] In all this there was no mention made of St. Vitus, or any of the other mediatory saints, which is accounted for by the circumstance, that, at this time, an open rebellion against the Romish Church had begun, and the worship of saints was by many rejected as idolatrous. For the second kind of St. Vitus' dance, Paracelsus recommended harsh treatment and strict fasting. He directed that the patients should be deprived of their liberty, placed in solitary confinement, and made to sit in an uncomfortable place, until their misery brought them to their senses and to a feeling of penitence. He then permitted them gradually to return to their accustomed habits. Severe corporal chastisement was not omitted; but, on the other hand, angry resistance on the part of the patient was to be sedulously avoided, on the ground that it might increase his malady, or even destroy him; moreover, where it seemed proper, Paracelsus allayed the excitement of the nerves by immersion in cold water. On the treatment of the third kind we shall not here enlarge. It was to be effected by all sorts of wonderful remedies, composed of the quintessences; and it would require, to render it intelligible, a more extended exposition of peculiar principles than suits our present purpose. About this time the St. Vitus' dance began to decline, so that milder forms of it appeared more frequently, while the severer cases became more rare; and even in these, some of the important symptoms gradually disappeared. Paracelsus makes no mention of the tympanites as taking place after the attacks, although it may occasionally have occurred; and Schenck von Graffenberg, a celebrated physician of the latter half of the sixteenth century, speaks of this disease as having been frequent only in the time of his forefathers. ELECTION OF ANTIPOPE CLEMENT VII Beginning of the Great Schism A.D. 1378 HENRY HART MILMAN In 1308 Pope Clement V, a Frenchman, under the influence of King Philip the Fair, of France, transferred the papal chair from Rome to Avignon, a possession of the holy see beyond the Alps, in Philip's dominions. The sojourn there of Clement and his successors, which continued until 1376, is known as the "Babylonish captivity" of the popes. Rome, from the first, was angry at this loss of supremacy, and aimed at recovering her prestige; and throughout the Christian world--France alone excepted--it was regarded as a scandal that the chair of St. Peter should rest on any soil but that of the Eternal City; but the French kings, and the cardinals of France--outnumbering all others in the sacred college--were determined to retain the pontifical seat in their own territory. During the pontificate of Gregory XI (1371-1378) Italy was torn by civil dissensions; the "free companies"--bands of organized marauders--ravaged the country with fire and sword, plundering Guelf and Ghibelline alike. Gregory's legates in the government of the ecclesiastical states rendered themselves so odious to the people by their immorality and rapacity that a league of the more powerful political factions was formed for throwing off the yoke of the "absentee" papal rulers. This was the beginning of the War of Liberation (1375) that was to shake the papal power in Italy to its very foundations. Gregory saw that, in order to preserve even a vestige of temporal power in the Italian states, he must act with crushing vigor. He therefore sent the cardinal legate, Robert, of Geneva--afterward Antipope Clement VII--into Italy with a company of Breton adventurers dreaded for their ferocity, and trained to plunder in the terrible wars of France. In spite of the atrocities committed by Robert and his hirelings, the revolt continued with unabated fury, and at last Gregory was constrained to return in person to Italy with the purpose of pacifying the turbulent forces. He entered Rome, January 17, 1377; but after a year of futile effort he died, leaving the confusion worse than he found it. Since, according to ecclesiastical law, the election of a new pope must be held at the place of the last pontiff's decease, great clamor arose among the Romans, whose demands were seconded throughout Europe, for the election of a Roman pope and the ending of the "Babylonish captivity." The history of the Great Schism and election of the rival pontiffs is nowhere to be found in better form of narrative than that of Milman, which here follows. Gregory XI had hardly expired when Rome burst out into a furious tumult. A Roman pope, at least an Italian pope, was the universal outcry. The conclave must be overawed; the hateful domination of a foreign, a French pontiff, must be broken up, and forever. This was not unforeseen. Before his death Gregory XI had issued a bull conferring the amplest powers on the cardinals to choose, according to their wisdom, the time and the place for the election. It manifestly contemplated their retreat from the turbulent streets of Rome to some place where their deliberations would not be overborne, and the predominant French interest would maintain its superiority. On the other hand there were serious and not groundless apprehensions that the fierce Breton and Gascon bands, at the command of the French cardinals, might dictate to the conclave. The Romans not only armed their civic troops, but sent to Tivoli, Velletri, and the neighboring cities; a strong force was mustered to keep the foreigners in check. Throughout the interval between the funeral of Gregory and the opening of the conclave, the cardinals were either too jealously watched, or thought it imprudent to attempt flight. Sixteen cardinals were present at Rome, one Spaniard, eleven French, four Italians. The ordinary measures were taken for opening the conclave in the palace near St. Peter's. Five Romans, two ecclesiastics and three laymen, and three Frenchmen were appointed to wait upon and to guard the conclave. The Bishop of Marseilles represented the great chamberlain, who holds the supreme authority during the vacancy of the popedom. The chamberlain, the Archbishop of Arles, brother of the Cardinal of Limoges, had withdrawn into the castle of St. Angelo, to secure his own person and to occupy that important fortress. The nine solemn days fully elapsed, on the 7th of April they assembled for the conclave. At that instant (inauspicious omen!) a terrible flash of lightning, followed by a stunning peal of thunder, struck through the hall, burning and splitting some of the furniture. The hall of conclave was crowded by a fierce rabble, who refused to retire. After about an hour's strife, the Bishop of Marseilles, by threats, by persuasion, or by entreaty, had expelled all but about forty wild men, armed to the teeth. These ruffians rudely and insolently searched the whole building; they looked under the beds, they examined the places of retreat. They would satisfy themselves whether any armed men were concealed, whether there was any hole, or even drain through which the cardinals could escape. All the time they shouted: "A Roman pope! we will have a Roman pope!" Those without echoed back the savage yell. Before long appeared two ecclesiastics, announcing themselves as delegated by the commonalty of Rome; they demanded to speak with the cardinals. The cardinals dared not refuse. The Romans represented, in firm but not disrespectful language, that for seventy years the holy Roman people had been without their pastor, the supreme head of Christendom. In Rome were many noble and wise ecclesiastics equal to govern the Church: if not in Rome, there were such men in Italy. They intimated that so great were the fury and determination of the people that, if the conclave should resist, there might be a general massacre, in which probably they themselves, assuredly the cardinals, would perish. The cardinals might hear from every quarter around them the cry: "A Roman pope! if not a Roman, an Italian!" The cardinals replied, that such aged and reverend men must know the rules of the conclave; that no election could be by requisition, favor, fear, or tumult, but by the interposition of the Holy Ghost. To reiterated persuasions and menaces they only said: "We are in your power; you may kill us, but we must act according to God's ordinance. To-morrow we celebrate the mass for the descent of the Holy Ghost; as the Holy Ghost directs, so shall we do." Some of the French uttered words which sounded like defiance. The populace cried: "If ye persist to do despite to Christ, if we have not a Roman pope, we will hew these cardinals and Frenchmen in pieces." At length the Bishop of Marseilles was able to entirely clear the hall. The cardinals sat down to a plentiful repast; the doors were finally closed. But all the night through they heard in the streets the unceasing clamor: "A Roman pope, a Roman pope!" Toward the morning the tumult became more fierce and dense. Strange men had burst into the belfry of St. Peter's; the clanging bells tolled as if all Rome was on fire. Within the conclave, the tumult, if less loud and clamorous, was hardly less general. The confusion without and terror within did not allay the angry rivalry, or suspend that subtle play of policy peculiar to the form of election. The French interest was divided; within this circle there was another circle. The single diocese of Limoges, favored as it had been by more than one pope, had almost strength to dictate to the conclave. The Limousins put forward the Cardinal de St. Eustache. Against these the leader was the Cardinal Robert of Geneva, whose fierce and haughty demeanor and sanguinary acts as legate had brought so much of its unpopularity on the administration of Gregory XI. With Robert were the four Italians and three French cardinals. Rather than a Limousin, Robert would even consent to an Italian. They on the one side, the Limousins on the other, had met secretly before the conclave: the eight had sworn not on any account to submit to the election of a traitorous Limousin. All the sleepless night the cardinals might hear the din at the gate, the yells of the people, the tolling of the bells. There was constant passing and repassing from each other's chamber, intrigues, altercations, manoeuvres, proposals advanced and rejected, promises of support given and withdrawn. Many names were put up. Of the Romans within the conclave two only were named, the old Cardinal of St. Peter's, the Cardinal Jacobo Orsini. The Limousins advanced in turn almost every one of their faction; no one but himself thought of Robert of Geneva. In the morning the disturbance without waxed more terrible. A vain attempt was made to address the populace by the three cardinal priors; they were driven from the windows with loud derisive shouts, "A Roman! A Roman!" For now the alternative of an Italian had been abandoned; a Roman, none but a Roman, would content the people. The madness of intoxication was added to the madness of popular fury. The rabble had broken open the Pope's cellar and drunk his rich wines. In the conclave the wildest projects were started. The Cardinal Orsini was to dress up a Minorite friar (probably a Spiritual) in the papal robes, to show him to the people, and so for themselves to effect their escape to some safe place and proceed to a legitimate election. The cardinals, from honor or from fear, shrunk from this trick. At length both parties seemed to concur. Each claimed credit for first advancing the name--which most afterward repudiated--of the Archbishop of Bari, a man of repute for theologic and legal erudition, an Italian, but a subject of the Queen of Naples, who was also Countess of Provence. They came to the nomination. The Cardinal of Florence proposed the Cardinal of St. Peter's. The Cardinal of Limoges arose: "The Cardinal of St. Peter's is too old. The Cardinal of Florence is of a city at war with the holy see. I reject the Cardinal of Milan as the subject of the Visconti, the most deadly enemy of the Church. The Cardinal Orsini is too young, and we must not yield to the clamor of the Romans. I vote for Bartholomew Prignani, Archbishop of Bari." All was acclamation; Orsini alone stood out; he aspired to be the pope of the Romans. But it was too late; the mob was thundering at the gates, menacing death to the cardinals, if they had not immediately a Roman pontiff. The feeble defences sounded as if they were shattering down; the tramp of the populace was almost heard within the hall. They forced or persuaded the aged Cardinal of St. Peter's to make a desperate effort to save their lives. He appeared at the window, hastily attired in what either was or seemed to be the papal stole and mitre. There was a jubilant and triumphant cry: "We have a Roman pope, the Cardinal of St. Peter's. Long live Rome! Long live St. Peter!" The populace became even more frantic with joy than before with wrath. One band hastened to the Cardinal's palace, and, according to the strange usage, broke in, threw the furniture into the streets, and sacked it from top to bottom. Those around the hall of conclave, aided by the connivance of some of the cardinals' servants within, or by more violent efforts of their own, burst in in all quarters. The supposed pope was surrounded by eager adorers; they were at his feet; they pressed his swollen, gouty hands till he shrieked from pain, and began to protest, in the strongest language, that he was not the pope. The indignation of the populace at this disappointment was aggravated by an unlucky confusion of names. The Archbishop was mistaken for John of Bari, of the bedchamber of the late pope, a man of harsh manners and dissolute life, an object of general hatred. Five of the cardinals, Robert of Geneva, Acquasparta, Viviers, Poitou, and De Verny, were seized in their attempt to steal away, and driven back, amid contemptuous hootings, by personal violence. Night came on again; the populace, having pillaged all the provisions in the conclave, grew weary of their own excesses. The cardinals fled on all sides. Four left the city; Orsini and St. Eustache escaped to Vicovaro, Robert of Geneva to Zagarolo, St. Angelo to Guardia; six, Limoges, D'Aigrefeuille, Poitou, Viviers, Brittany, and Marmoutiers, to the castle of St. Angelo; Florence, Milan, Montmayeur, Glandève, and Luna, to their own strong fortresses. The Pope lay concealed in the Vatican. In the morning the five cardinals in Rome were assembled round him. A message was sent to the bannerets of Rome, announcing his election. The six cardinals in St. Angelo were summoned; they were hardly persuaded to leave their place of security; but without their presence the Archbishop would not declare his assent to his elevation. The Cardinal of Florence, as dean, presented the Pope-elect to the sacred college, and discoursed on the text, "Such ought he to be, an undefiled high-priest." The Archbishop began a long harangue, "Fear and trembling have come upon me, the horror of great darkness." The Cardinal of Florence cut short the ill-timed sermon, demanding whether he accepted the pontificate. The Archbishop gave his assent; he took the name of Urban VI. _Te Deum_ was intoned; he was lifted to the throne. The fugitives returned to Rome. Urban VI was crowned on Easter Day, in the Church of St. John Lateran. All the cardinals were present at the august ceremony. They announced the election of Urban VI to their brethren who had remained in Avignon. Urban himself addressed the usual encyclic letters, proclaiming his elevation, to all the prelates in Christendom. None could determine how far the nomination of the Archbishop of Bari was free and uncontrolled by the terrors of the raging populace; but the acknowledgment of Urban VI by all the cardinals, at his inauguration in the holy office--their assistance at his coronation without protest, when some at least might have been safe beyond the walls of Rome--their acceptance of honors, as by the cardinals of Limoges, Poitou, and Aigrefeuille--the homage of all--might seem to annul all possible irregularity in the election, to confirm irrefragably the legitimacy of his title. Not many days had passed, when the cardinals began to look with dismay and bitter repentance on their own work. "In Urban VI," said a writer of these times (on the side of Urban as rightful pontiff), "was verified the proverb--None is so insolent as a low man suddenly raised to power." The high-born, haughty, luxurious prelates, both French and Italian, found that they had set over themselves a master resolved not only to redress the flagrant and inveterate abuses of the college and of the hierarchy, but also to force on his reforms in the most hasty and insulting way. He did the harshest things in the harshest manner. The Archbishop of Bari, of mean birth, had risen by the virtues of a monk. He was studious, austere, humble, a diligent reader of the Bible, master of the canon law, rigid in his fasts; he wore haircloth next his skin. His time was divided between study, prayer, and business, for which he had great aptitude. From the poor bishopric of Acherontia he had been promoted to the archbishopric of Bari, and had presided over the papal chancery in Avignon. The monk broke out at once on his elevation in the utmost rudeness and rigor, but the humility changed to the most offensive haughtiness. Almost his first act was a public rebuke in his chapel to all the bishops present for their desertion of their dioceses. He called them perjured traitors. The Bishop of Pampeluna boldly repelled the charge; he was at Rome, he said, on the affairs of his see. In the full consistory Urban preached on the text, "I am the Good Shepherd," and inveighed in a manner not to be mistaken against the wealth and luxury of the cardinals. Their voluptuous banquets were notorious--Petrarch had declaimed against them. The Pope threatened a sumptuary law that they should have but one dish at their table: it was the rule of his own order. He was determined to extirpate simony. A cardinal who should receive presents he menaced with excommunication. He affected to despise wealth. "Thy money perish with thee!" he said to a collector of the papal revenue. He disdained to conceal the most unpopular schemes; he declared his intention not to leave Rome. To the petition of the bannerets of Rome for a promotion of cardinals, he openly avowed his design to make so large a nomination that the Italians should resume their ascendency over the Ultramontanes. The Cardinal of Geneva turned pale and left the consistory. Urban declared himself determined to do equal justice between man and man, between the kings of France and England. The French cardinals, and those in the pay of France, heard this with great indignation. The manners of Urban were even more offensive than his acts. "Hold your tongue!" "You have talked long enough!" were his common phrases to his mitred counsellors. He called the Cardinal Orsini a fool. He charged the Cardinal of St. Marcellus of Amiens, on his return from his legation in Tuscany, with having robbed the treasures of the Church. The charge was not less insulting for its justice. The Cardinal of Amiens, instead of allaying the feuds of France and England, which it was his holy mission to allay, had inflamed them in order to glut his own insatiable avarice by draining the wealth of both countries in the Pope's name. "As Archbishop of Bari, you lie," was the reply of the high-born Frenchman. On one occasion such high words passed with the Cardinal of Limoges that but for the interposition of another cardinal the Pope would have rushed on him, and there had been a personal conflict. Such were among the stories of the time. Friends and foes agree in attributing the schism, at least the immediate schism, to the imprudent zeal, the imperiousness, the ungovernable temper of Pope Urban. The cardinals among themselves talked of him as mad; they began to murmur that it was a compulsory, therefore invalid, election. The French cardinals were now at Anagni: they were joined by the Cardinal of Amiens, who had taken no part in the election, but who was burning under the insulting words of the Pope, perhaps not too eager to render an account of his legation. The Pope retired to Tivoli; he summoned the cardinals to that city. They answered that they had gone to large expenses in laying in provisions and making preparations for their residence in Anagni; they had no means to supply a second sojourn in Tivoli. The Pope, with his four Italian cardinals, passed two important acts as sovereign pontiff. He confirmed the election of Wenceslaus, son of Charles IV, to the empire; he completed the treaty with Florence by which the republic paid a large sum to the see of Rome. The amount was seventy thousand florins in the course of the year, one hundred and eighty thousand in four years, for the expenses of the war. They were relieved from ecclesiastical censures, under which this enlightened republic, though Italian, trembled, even from a pope of doubtful title. Their awe showed perhaps the weakness and dissensions in Florence rather than the papal power. The cardinals at Anagni sent a summons to their brethren inviting them to share in their counsels concerning the compulsory election of the successor to Gregory XI. Already the opinions of great legists had been taken; some of them, that of the famous Baldus, may still be read. He was in favor of the validity of the election. But grave legal arguments and ecclesiastical logic were not to decide a contest which had stirred so deeply the passions and interests of two great factions. France and Italy were at strife for the popedom. The Ultramontane cardinals would not tamely abandon a power which had given them rank, wealth, luxury, virtually the spiritual supremacy of the world, for seventy years. Italy, Rome, would not forego the golden opportunity of resuming the long-lost authority. On the 9th of August the cardinals at Anagni publicly declared, they announced in encyclic letters addressed to the faithful in all Christendom, that the election of Urban VI was carried by force and the fear of death; that through the same force and fear he had been inaugurated, enthroned, and crowned; that he was an apostate, an accursed antichrist. They pronounced him a tyrannical usurper of the popedom, a wolf that had stolen into the fold. They called upon him to descend at once from the throne which he occupied without canonical title; if repentant, he might find mercy; if he persisted he would provoke the indignation of God, of the apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, and all of the saints, for his violation of the Spouse of Christ, the common Mother of the Faithful. It was signed by thirteen cardinals. The more pious and devout were shocked at this avowal of cowardice; cardinals who would not be martyrs in the cause of truth and of spiritual freedom condemned themselves. But letters and appeals to the judgment of the world, and awful maledictions, were not their only resources. The fierce Breton bands were used to march and to be indulged in their worst excesses under the banner of the Cardinal of Geneva. As Ultramontanists it was their interest, their inclination, to espouse the Ultramontane cause. They arrayed themselves to advance and join the cardinals at Anagni. The Romans rose to oppose them; a fight took place near the Ponte Salario, three hundred Romans lay dead on the field. Urban VI was as blind to cautious temporal as to cautious ecclesiastical policy. Every act of the Pope raised him up new enemies. Joanna, Queen of Naples, had hailed the elevation of her subject the Archbishop of Bari. Naples had been brilliantly illuminated. Shiploads of fruit and wines, and the more solid gift of twenty thousand florins, had been her oblations to the Pope. Her husband, Otho of Brunswick, had gone to Rome to pay his personal homage. His object was to determine in his own favor the succession to the realm. The reception of Otho was cold and repulsive; he returned in disgust. The Queen eagerly listened to suspicions, skilfully awakened, that Urban meditated the resumption of the fief of Naples, and its grant to the rival house of Hungary. She became the sworn ally of the cardinals at Anagni. Honorato Gaetani, Count of Fondi, one of the most turbulent barons of the land, demanded of the Pontiff twenty thousand florins advanced on loan to Gregory XI. Urban not only rejected the claim, declaring it a personal debt of the late Pope, not of the holy see, he also deprived Gaetani of his fief, and granted it to his mortal enemy, the Count San Severino. Gaetani began immediately to seize the adjacent castles in Campania, and invited the cardinals to his stronghold at Fondi. The Archbishop of Arles, chamberlain of the late Pope, leaving the castle of St. Angelo under the guard of a commander who long refused all orders from Pope Urban, brought to Anagni the jewels and ornaments of the papacy, which had been carried for security to St. Angelo. The prefect of the city, De Vico, Lord of Viterbo, had been won over by the Cardinal of Amiens. The four Italian cardinals still adhered to Pope Urban. They labored hard to mediate between the conflicting parties. Conferences were held at Zagarolo and other places; when the French cardinals had retired to Fondi, the Italians took up their quarters at Subiaco. The Cardinal of St. Peter's, worn out with age and trouble, withdrew to Rome, and soon after died. He left a testamentary document declaring the validity of the election of Urban. The French cardinals had declared the election void; they were debating the next step. Some suggested the appointment of a coadjutor. They were now sure of the support of the King of France, who would not easily surrender his influence over a pope at Avignon, and of the Queen of Naples, estranged by the pride of Urban, and secretly stimulated by the Cardinal Orsini, who had not forgiven his own loss of the tiara. Yet even now they seemed to shrink from the creation of an antipope. Urban precipitated and made inevitable this disastrous event. He was now alone; the Cardinal of St. Peter's was dead; Florence, Milan, and the Orsini stood aloof; they seemed only to wait to be thrown off by Urban, to join the adverse faction. Urban at first declared his intention to create nine cardinals; he proceeded at once, and without warning, to create twenty-six.[65] By this step the French and Italian cardinals together were now but an insignificant minority. They were instantly one. All must be risked or all lost. On September 20th, at Fondi, Robert of Geneva was elected pope in the presence of all the cardinals (except St. Peter's) who had chosen, inaugurated, enthroned, and for a time obeyed Urban VI. The Italians refused to give their suffrages, but entered no protest. They retired into their castles and remained aloof from the schism. Orsini died before long at Tagliacozzo. The qualifications which, according to his partial biographer, recommended the Cardinal of Geneva, were rather those of a successor to John Hawkwood or to a duke of Milan, than of the apostles. Extraordinary activity of body and endurance of fatigue, courage which would hazard his life to put down the intrusive pope, sagacity and experience in the temporal affairs of the Church; high birth, through which he was allied with most of the royal and princely houses of Europe; of austerity, devotion, learning, holiness, charity, not a word. He took the name of Clement VII; the Italians bitterly taunted the mockery of this name, assumed by the captain of the Breton Free Companies--by the author, it was believed, of the massacre at Cesena. So began the schism which divided Western Christendom for thirty-eight years. Italy, excepting the kingdom of Joanna of Naples, adhered to her native pontiff; Germany and Bohemia to the pontiff who had recognized King Wenceslaus as emperor; England to the pontiff hostile to France;[66] Hungary to the pontiff who might support her pretentions to Naples; Poland and the Northern kingdoms, with Portugal, espoused the same cause. France at first stood almost alone in support of her subject, of a pope at Avignon instead of at Rome. Scotland only was with Clement, because England was with Urban. So Flanders was with Urban because France was with Clement. The uncommon abilities of Peter di Luna, the Spanish cardinal (afterward better known under a higher title), detached successively the Spanish kingdoms, Castile, Aragon, and Navarre, from allegiance to Pope Urban. GENOESE SURRENDER TO VENETIANS A.D. 1380 HENRY HALLAM Prolonged commercial rivalry between Genoa and Venice brought them to a state of bitter jealousy which led to furious wars. In the second half of the twelfth century Genoa established her power on the Black Sea, and aimed at a commercial monopoly in that region. This aroused the Venetians to anger and led to open hostilities. The first war growing out of these antagonisms between the two republics began in 1257, and throughout the rest of the thirteenth century hostilities were almost continuous. In 1351 the Venetians formed an alliance against Genoa with the Greeks and Aragonese, and, in the ensuing war, the advantage gained by Genoa was confirmed by a treaty of peace in 1355. But this peace lasted only until 1378, when a dispute arose between Genoa and Venice in relation to the island of Tenedos, in the Ægean Sea, of which the Venetians had taken possession. The Venetians, having denounced Genoa as false to all its oaths and obligations, formally declared war in April, after several acts of hostility had occurred in the Levant. Of all the wars between the rival states, this was the most remarkable and led to the most important consequences. Genoa did not stand alone in this war. A formidable confederacy was raised against Venice, which had given provocation to many enemies. Of this Francis Carrara, seignior of Padua, and the King of Hungary were the leaders. But the principal struggle was, as usual, upon the waves. During the winter of 1378 a Genoese fleet kept the sea, and ravaged the shores of Dalmatia. The Venetian armament had been weakened by an epidemic disease, and when Vittor Pisani, their admiral, gave battle to the enemy, he was compelled to fight with a hasty conscription of landsmen against the best sailors in the world. Entirely defeated, and taking refuge at Venice with only seven galleys, Pisani was cast into prison, as if his ill-fortune had been his crime. Meanwhile the Genoese fleet, augmented by a strong reënforcement, rode before the long natural ramparts that separate the lagunes of Venice from the Adriatic. Six passages intersect the islands which constitute this barrier, besides the broader outlets of Brondolo and Fossone, through which the waters of the Brenta and the Adige are discharged. The Lagoon itself, as is well known, consists of extremely shallow water, unnavigable for any vessel except along the course of artificial and intricate passages. Notwithstanding the apparent difficulties of such an enterprise, Pietro Doria, the Genoese admiral, determined to reduce the city. His first successes gave him reason to hope. He forced the passage, and stormed the little town of Chioggia, built upon the inside of the isle bearing that name, about twenty-five miles south of Venice. Nearly four thousand prisoners fell here into his hands--an augury, as it seemed, of a more splendid triumph. In the consternation this misfortune inspired at Venice, the first impulse was to ask for peace. The ambassadors carried with them seven Genoese prisoners, as a sort of peace-offering to the admiral, and were empowered to make large and humiliating concessions, reserving nothing but the liberty of Venice. Francis Carrara strongly urged his allies to treat for peace. But the Genoese were stimulated by long hatred, and intoxicated by this unexpected opportunity of revenge. Doria, calling the ambassadors into council, thus addressed them: "Ye shall obtain no peace from us, I swear to you, nor from the lord of Padua, till first we have put a curb in the mouths of those wild horses that stand upon the place of St. Mark. When they are bridled you shall have enough of peace. Take back with you your Genoese captives, for I am coming within a few days to release both them and their companions from your prisons." When this answer was reported to the senate, they prepared to defend themselves with the characteristic firmness of their government. Every eye was turned toward a great man unjustly punished, their admiral, Vittor Pisani. He was called out of prison to defend his country amid general acclamations. Under his vigorous command the canals were fortified or occupied by large vessels armed with artillery; thirty-four galleys were equipped; every citizen contributed according to his power; in the entire want of commercial resources--for Venice had not a merchant-ship during this war--private plate was melted; and the senate held out the promise of ennobling thirty families who should be most forward in this strife of patriotism. The new fleet was so ill-provided with seamen that for some months the admiral employed them only in manoeuvring along the canals. From some unaccountable supineness, or more probably from the insuperable difficulties of the undertaking, the Genoese made no assault upon the city. They had, indeed, fair grounds to hope its reduction by famine or despair. Every access to the Continent was cut off by the troops of Padua; and the King of Hungary had mastered almost all the Venetian towns in Istria and along the Dalmatian coast. The doge Contarini, taking the chief command, appeared at length with his fleet near Chioggia, before the Genoese were aware. They were still less aware of his secret design. He pushed one of the large round vessels, then called _cocche_, into the narrow passage of Chioggia which connects the Lagoon with the sea, and, mooring her athwart the channel, interrupted that communication. Attacked with fury by the enemy, this vessel went down on the spot, and the Doge improved his advantage by sinking loads of stones until the passage became absolutely unnavigable. It was still possible for the Genoese fleet to follow the principal canal of the Lagoon toward Venice and the northern passages, or to sail out of it by the harbor of Brondolo; but, whether from confusion or from miscalculating the dangers of their position, they suffered the Venetians to close the canal upon them by the same means they had used at Chioggia, and even to place their fleet in the entrance of Brondolo so near to the Lagoon that the Genoese could not form their ships in line of battle. The circumstances of the two combatants were thus entirely changed. But the Genoese fleet, though besieged in Chioggia, was impregnable, and their command of the land secured them from famine. Venice, notwithstanding her unexpected success, was still very far from secure; it was difficult for the Doge to keep his position through the winter; and if the enemy could appear in open sea, the risks of combat were extremely hazardous. It is said that the senate deliberated upon transporting the seat of their liberty to Candia, and that the Doge had announced his intention to raise the siege of Chioggia, if expected succors did not arrive by January 1, 1380. On that very day Carlo Zeno, an admiral who, ignorant of the dangers of his country, had been supporting the honor of her flag in the Levant and on the coast of Liguria, appeared with a reënforcement of eighteen galleys and a store of provisions. From that moment the confidence of Venice revived. The fleet, now superior in strength to the enemy, began to attack them with vivacity. After several months of obstinate resistance, the Genoese--whom their republic had ineffectually attempted to relieve by a fresh armament--blocked up in the town of Chioggia, and pressed by hunger, were obliged to surrender. Nineteen galleys only, out of forty-eight, were in good condition; and the crews were equally diminished in the ten months of their occupation of Chioggia. The pride of Genoa was deemed to be justly humbled; and even her own historian confesses that God would not suffer so noble a city as Venice to become the spoil of a conqueror. Though the capture of Chioggia did not terminate the war, both parties were exhausted, and willing, next year, to accept the mediation of the Duke of Savoy. By the peace of Turin, Venice surrendered most of her territorial possessions to the King of Hungary. That Prince and Francis Carrara were the only gainers. Genoa obtained the isle of Tenedos, one of the original subjects of dispute--a poor indemnity for her losses. Though, upon a hasty view, the result of this war appears more unfavorable to Venice, yet in fact it is the epoch of the decline of Genoa. From this time she never commanded the ocean with such navies as before; her commerce gradually went into decay; and the fifteenth century--the most splendid in the annals of Venice--is, till recent times, the most ignominious in those of Genoa. But this was partly owing to internal dissensions, by which her liberty, as well as glory, was for a while suspended. REBELLION OF WAT TYLER A.D. 1381 JOHN LINGARD Richard II, of England, at eleven years of age, succeeded to a heritage of foreign complications and wars, which were a legacy from the reign of his grandfather, Edward III. At the request of the commons, the lords, in the King's name, appointed nine persons to be a permanent council, and it was resolved that during the King's minority the appointment of all the chief officers of the crown should be with the parliament. The administration was conducted in the King's name, and the whole system was for some years kept together by the secret authority of the King's uncles, especially of the Duke of Lancaster, who was in reality the regent. France, Scotland, and Castile continued their hostilities against England, and during the first two years of Richard's reign the ministers had no difficulty in obtaining ample grants of money to carry on the wars. In the third year the expense of the campaign in Brittany compelled them to solicit yet additional aid. Various methods of taxation failing to raise the amount required, the commons, in great discontent, demanded alterations in the council, and after long debate reluctantly consented to the imposition of a new and unusual tax of three groats[67] on every person, male and female, above fifteen years of age. For the relief of the poor it was provided that in the cities and towns the aggregate amount should be divided among the inhabitants according to their abilities, so that no individual should pay less than one groat, or more than sixty groats for himself and his wife. Parliament thereupon was dismissed; but the collection of the tax gave rise to an insurrection which threatened the life of the King and the existence of the government. At this period [1381] a secret ferment seems to have pervaded the mass of the people in many nations of Europe. Men were no longer willing to submit to the impositions of their rulers, or to wear the chains which had been thrown round the necks of their fathers by a warlike and haughty aristocracy. We may trace this awakening spirit of independence to a variety of causes, operating in the same direction; to the progressive improvement of society, the gradual diffusion of knowledge, the increasing pressure of taxation, and above all to the numerous and lasting wars by which Europe had lately been convulsed. Necessity had often compelled both the sovereigns and nobles to court the good-will of the people; the burghers in the towns and inferior tenants in the country had learned, from the repeated demands made upon them, to form notions of their own importance; and the archers and foot-soldiers, who had served for years in the wars, were, at their return home, unwilling to sit down in the humble station of bondmen to their former lords. In Flanders the commons had risen against their Count Louis, and had driven him out of his dominions; in France the populace had taken possession of Paris and Rouen, and massacred the collectors of the revenue. In England a spirit of discontent agitated the whole body of the villeins, who remained in almost the same situation in which we left them at the Norman Conquest. They were still attached to the soil, talliable at the will of the lord, and bound to pay the fines for the marriage of their females, to perform customary labor, and to render the other servile prestations incident to their condition. It is true that in the course of time many had obtained the rights of freemen. Occasionally the king or the lord would liberate at once all the bondmen on some particular domain, in return for a fixed rent to be yearly assessed on the inhabitants. But the progress of emancipation was slow; the improved condition of their former fellows served only to embitter the discontent of those who still wore the fetters of servitude; and in many places the villeins formed associations for their mutual support, and availed themselves of every expedient in their power to free themselves from the control of their lords. In the first year of Richard's reign a complaint was laid before parliament that in many districts they had purchased exemplifications out of the _Domesday Book_ in the king's court, and under a false interpretation of that record had pretended to be discharged of all manner of servitude both as to their bodies and their tenures, and would not suffer the officers of their lords either to levy distress or to do justice upon them. It was in vain that such exemplifications were declared of no force, and that commissions were ordered for the punishment of the rebellious. The villeins, by their union and perseverance, contrived to intimidate their lords, and set at defiance the severity of the law. To this resistance they were encouraged by the diffusion of the doctrines so recently taught by Wycliffe, that the right of property was founded in grace, and that no man, who was by sin a traitor to God, could be entitled to the services of others; at the same time itinerant preachers sedulously inculcated the natural equality of mankind, and the tyranny of artificial distinctions; and the poorer classes, still smarting under the exactions of the late reign, were by the impositions of the new tax wound up to a pitch of madness. Thus the materials had been prepared; it required but a spark to set the whole country in a blaze. It was soon discovered that the receipts of the treasury would fall short of the expected amount; and commissions were issued to different persons to inquire into the conduct of the collectors, and to compel payment from those who had been favored or overlooked. One of these commissioners, Thomas de Bampton, sat at Brentwood in Essex; but the men of Fobbings refused to answer before him; and when the chief justice of the common pleas attempted to punish their contumacy, they compelled him to flee, murdered the jurors and clerks of the commission, and, carrying their heads upon poles, claimed the support of the nearest townships. In a few days all the commons of Essex were in a state of insurrection, under the command of a profligate priest, who had assumed the name of Jack Straw. The men of Kent were not long behind their neighbors in Essex. At Dartford one of the collectors had demanded the tax for a young girl, the daughter of a tyler. Her mother maintained that she was under the age required by the statute; and the officer was proceeding to ascertain the fact by an indecent exposure of her person, when her father, who had just returned from work, with a stroke of his hammer beat out the offender's brains. His courage was applauded by his neighbors. They swore that they would protect him from punishment, and by threats and promises secured the coöperation of all the villages in the western division of Kent. A third party of insurgents was formed by the men of Gravesend, irritated at the conduct of Sir Simon Burley. He had claimed one of the burghers as his bondman, refused to grant him his freedom at a less price than three hundred pounds, and sent him a prisoner to the castle of Rochester. With the aid of a body of insurgents from Essex, the castle was taken and the captive liberated. At Maidstone they appointed Wat the tyler, of that town, leader of the commons of Kent, and took with them an itinerant preacher of the name of John Ball, who for his seditious and heterodox harangues had been confined by order of the archbishop. The mayor and aldermen of Canterbury were compelled to swear fidelity to the good cause; several of the citizens were slain; and five hundred joined them in their intended march toward London. When they reached Blackheath their numbers are said to have amounted to one hundred thousand men. To this lawless and tumultuous multitude Ball was appointed preacher, and assumed for the text of his first sermon the following lines: "When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?" He told them that by nature all men were born equal; that the distinction of bondage and freedom was the invention of their oppressors, and contrary to the views of their Creator; that God now offered them the means of recovering their liberty, and that, if they continued slaves, the blame must rest with themselves; that it was necessary to dispose of the archbishop, the earls and barons, the judges, lawyers, and questmongers; and that when the distinction of ranks was abolished, all would be free, because all would be of the same nobility and of equal authority. His discourse was received with shouts of applause by his infatuated hearers, who promised to make him, in defiance of his own doctrines, archbishop of Canterbury and chancellor of the realm. By letters and messengers the knowledge of these proceedings was carefully propagated through the neighboring counties. Everywhere the people had been prepared; and in a few days the flame spread from the southern coast of Kent to the right bank of the Humber. In all places the insurgents regularly pursued the same course. They pillaged the manors of their lords, demolished the houses, and burned the court rolls; cut off the heads of every justice and lawyer and juror who fell into their hands; and swore all others to be true to King Richard and the commons; to admit of no king of the name of John; and to oppose all taxes but fifteenths, the ancient tallage paid by their fathers. The members of the council saw, with astonishment, the sudden rise and rapid spread of the insurrection; and, bewildered by their fears and ignorance, knew not whom to trust or what measures to pursue. The first who encountered the rabble on Blackheath was the Princess of Wales, the King's mother, on her return from a pilgrimage to Canterbury. She liberated herself from danger by her own address; and a few kisses from "the fair maid of Kent" purchased the protection of the leaders, and secured the respect of their followers. She was permitted to join her son, who, with his cousin Henry, Earl of Derby, Simon, Archbishop of Canterbury and Chancellor, Sir Robert Hales, master of the Knights of St. John and treasurer, and about one hundred sergeants and knights had left the castle of Windsor, and repaired for greater security to the Tower of London. The next morning the King in his barge descended the river to receive the petitions of the insurgents. To the number of ten thousand, with two banners of St. George, and sixty pennons, they waited his arrival at Rotherhithe; but their horrid yells and uncouth appearance so intimidated his attendants, that instead of permitting him to land, they took advantage of the tide, and returned with precipitation. Tyler and Straw, irritated by this disappointment, led their men into Southwark, where they demolished the houses belonging to the Marshalsea and the king's bench, while another party forced their way into the palace of the Archbishop at Lambeth, and burned the furniture with the records belonging to the chancery. The next morning they were allowed to pass in small companies, according to their different townships, over the bridge into the city. The populace joined them; and as soon as they had regaled themselves at the cost of the richer inhabitants, the work of devastation commenced. They demolished Newgate, and liberated the prisoners; plundered and destroyed the magnificent palace of the Savoy, belonging to the Duke of Lancaster; burned the temple with the books and records; and despatched a party to set fire to the house of the Knights Hospitallers at Clerkenwell, which had been lately built by Sir Robert Hales. To prove, however, that they had no views of private emolument, a proclamation was issued forbidding any one to secrete part of the plunder; and so severely was the prohibition enforced that the plate was hammered and cut into small pieces, the precious stones were beaten to powder, and one of the rioters, who had concealed a silver cup in his bosom, was immediately thrown, with his prize, into the river. To every man whom they met they put the question, "With whom holdest thou?" and unless he gave the proper answer, "With King Richard and the commons," he was instantly beheaded. But the principal objects of their cruelty were the natives of Flanders. They dragged thirteen Flemings out of one church, seventeen out of another, and thirty-two out of the Vintry, and struck off their heads with shouts of triumph and exultation. In the evening, wearied with the labor of the day, they dispersed through the streets, and indulged in every kind of debauchery. During this night of suspense and terror, the Princess of Wales held a council with the ministers in the Tower. The King's uncles were absent; the garrison, though perhaps able to defend the place, was too weak to put down the insurgents; and a resolution was taken to try the influence of promises and concession. In the morning the Tower Hill was seen covered with an immense multitude, who prohibited the introduction of provisions, and with loud cries demanded the heads of the chancellor and treasurer. In return, a herald ordered them, by proclamation, to retire to Mile End, where the King would assent to all their demands. Immediately the gates were thrown open. Richard with a few unarmed attendants rode forward; the best intentioned of the crowd followed him, and at Mile End he saw himself surrounded with sixty thousand petitioners. Their demands were reduced to four: the abolition of slavery; the reduction of the rent of land to fourpence the acre; the free liberty of buying and selling in all fairs and markets; and a general pardon for past offences. A charter to that effect was engrossed for each parish and township; during the night thirty clerks were employed in transcribing a sufficient number of copies; they were sealed and delivered in the morning; and the whole body, consisting chiefly of the men of Essex and Hertfordshire, retired, bearing the King's banner as a token that they were under his protection. But Tyler and Straw had formed other and more ambitious designs. The moment the King was gone, they rushed, at the head of four hundred men, into the Tower. The Archbishop, who had just celebrated mass, Sir Robert Hales, William Apuldore, the King's confessor, Legge, the farmer of the tax, and three of his associates, were seized, and led to immediate execution.[68] As no opposition was offered, they searched every part of the Tower, burst into the private apartment of the Princess, and probed her bed with their swords. She fainted, and was carried by her ladies to the river, which she crossed in a covered barge. The royal wardrobe, a house in Carter Lane, was selected for her residence. The King joined his mother at the wardrobe; and the next morning, as he rode through Smithfield with sixty horsemen, encountered Tyler at the head of twenty thousand insurgents. Three different charters had been sent to that demagogue, who contemptuously refused them all. As soon as he saw Richard, he made a sign to his followers to halt, and boldly rode up to the King. A conversation immediately began. Tyler, as he talked, affected to play with his dagger; at last he laid his hand on the bridle of his sovereign; but at the instant Walworth, the Lord Mayor, jealous of his design, plunged a short sword into his throat. He spurred his horse, rode about a dozen yards, fell to the ground, and was despatched by Robert Standish, one of the King's esquires. The insurgents, who witnessed the transaction, drew their bows to revenge the fall of their leader, and Richard would inevitably have lost his life had he not been saved by his own intrepidity. Galloping up to the archers he exclaimed: "What are ye doing, my lieges? Tyler was a traitor. Come with me, and I will be your leader." Wavering and disconcerted, they followed him into the fields of Islington, whither a force of one thousand men-at-arms, which had been collected by the Lord Mayor and Sir Robert Knowles, hastened to protect the young King; and the insurgents, falling on their knees, begged for mercy. Many of the royalists demanded permission to punish them for their past excesses; but Richard firmly refused, ordered the suppliants to return to their homes, and by proclamation forbade, under pain of death, any stranger to pass the night in the city. On the southern coast the excesses of the insurgents reached as far as Winchester; on the eastern, to Beverley and Scarborough; and, if we reflect that in every place they rose about the same time, and uniformly pursued the same system, we may discover reason to suspect that they acted under the direction of some acknowledged though invisible leader. The nobility and gentry, intimidated by the hostility of their tenants, and distressed by contradictory reports, sought security within the fortifications of their castles. The only man who behaved with promptitude and resolution was Henry Spenser, the young and warlike Bishop of Norwich. In the counties of Norfolk, Cambridge, and Huntington tranquillity was restored and preserved by this singular prelate, who successively exercised the offices of general, judge, and priest. In complete armor he always led his followers to the attack; after the battle he sat in judgment on his prisoners; and before execution he administered to them the aids of religion. But as soon as the death of Tyler and the dispersion of the men of Kent and Essex were known, thousands became eager to display their loyalty; and knights and esquires from every quarter poured into London to offer their services to the King. At the head of forty thousand horse he published proclamations, revoking the charters of manumission which he had granted, commanding the villeins to perform their usual services, and prohibiting illegal assemblies and associations. In several parts the commons threatened to renew the horrors of the late tumult in defence of their liberties; but the approach of the royal army dismayed the disaffected in Kent; the loss of five hundred men induced the insurgents of Essex to sue for pardon; and numerous executions in different counties effectually crushed the spirit of resistance. Among the sufferers were Lister and Westbroom, who had assumed the title and authority of kings in Norfolk and Suffolk; and Straw and Ball, the itinerant preachers, who have been already mentioned, and whose sermons were supposed to have kindled and nourished the insurrection.[69] When the parliament met, the two houses were informed by the Chancellor, that the King had revoked the charters of emancipation, which he had been compelled to grant to the villeins, but at the same time wished to submit to their consideration whether it might not be wise to abolish the state of bondage altogether. The minds of the great proprietors were not, however, prepared for the adoption of so liberal a measure; and both lords and commons unanimously replied that no man could deprive them of the services of their villeins without their consent; that they had never given that consent, and never would be induced to give it, either through persuasion or violence. The King yielded to their obstinacy; and the charters were repealed by authority of parliament. The commons next deliberated, and presented their petitions. They attributed the insurrection to the grievances suffered by the people from: 1. The purveyors, who were said to have exceeded all their predecessors in insolence and extortion; 2. From the rapacity of the royal officers in the chancery and exchequer, and the courts of king's bench and common pleas; 3. From the banditti, called maintainers, who, in different counties, supported themselves by plunder, and, arming in defence of each other, set at defiance all the provisions of the law; and 4. From the repeated aids and taxes, which had impoverished the people and proved of no service to the nation. To silence these complaints, a commission of inquiry was appointed; the courts of law and the King's household were subjected to regulations of reform, and severe orders were published for the immediate suppression of illegal associations. But the demand of a supply produced a very interesting altercation. The commons refused, on the ground that the imposition of a new tax would goad the people to a second insurrection. They found it, however, necessary to request of the King a general pardon for all illegal acts committed in the suppression of the insurgents, and received for answer that it was customary for the commons to make their grants before the King bestowed his favors. When the subsidy was again pressed on their attention they replied that they should take time to consider it, but were told that the King would also take time to consider of their petition. At last they yielded; the tax upon wool, wool-fells, and leather was continued for five years, and in return a general pardon was granted for all loyal subjects, who had acted illegally in opposing the rebels, and for the great body of the insurgents, who had been misled by the declamations of the demagogues. WYCLIFFE TRANSLATES THE BIBLE INTO ENGLISH A.D. 1382 J. PATERSON SMYTH It may safely be said that no greater service has been rendered at once to religion and to literature than the translation of the Bible into the English tongue. This achievement did not indeed, like that of Luther's German translation, come as it were by a single stroke. Luther's Bible caused him to be regarded as the founder of the present literary language of Germany--New High German--which his translation permanently established. The English Bible, on the other hand, was the growth of centuries. But to the contributions of able hands through many generations, during which the English language itself passed through a wonderful formative development, the incomparable beauty of King James' version owes its existence, and our literature its greatest ornaments. It is impossible to say when the first translation of any part of the Bible into English was made. No English Bible of earlier date than the fourteenth century has ever been found. But translations, even of the whole Bible, older than Wcyliffe's are, by at least two eminent witnesses, said to have existed. "As for olde translacions, before Wycliffe's time," says Sir Thomas More, "they remain lawful and be in some folkes handes." "The hole byble," he declares (_Dyalogues_, p. 138, ed. 1530), "was long before Wycliffe's days, by vertuous and well learned men, translated into the English tong." And Cranmer, in his prologue to the second edition of the "Great Bible," bears testimony equally explicit to the translation of Scripture "in the Saxons tongue." And when that language "waxed olde and out of common usage," he says, the Bible "was again translated into the newer language." There has never been any means of testing these statements, which were probably due to some inexplicable error. Abundant evidence exists relating to many Saxon and later translations of various parts of the Bible before the time of Wycliffe. Among the most notable of the early translators were the Venerable Bede and Alfred the Great. Some portions of Scripture were likewise translated into Anglo-Norman in the thirteenth century. Some of the early fragments are still preserved in English libraries. Three versions of the Psalter in English, from the early years of the fourteenth century, still exist, one of which was by Richard Rolle, the Yorkshire hermit, who also translated the New Testament. But so far as known, the first complete Bible in English was the work of John Wycliffe, assisted by Nicholas de Hereford--whom some would name first in this partnership, though the product of their joint labors is known as "Wycliffe's Bible." John Wycliffe, the "Morning Star of the Reformation," was born near Richmond, Yorkshire, about 1324. He became a fellow, and later master of Balliol College, Oxford, afterward held several rectorships--the last being that of Lutterworth, upon which he entered in 1374. For opposing the papacy and certain church doctrines and practices, he was condemned by the university, and his followers--known as Lollards--were persecuted. Something of his life in connection with these matters is fitly dealt with by Smyth in connection with his account of the famous translation. After the early Anglo-Saxon versions comes a long pause in the history of Bible translation. Amid the disturbance resulting from the Danish invasion there was little time for thinking of translations and manuscripts; and before the land had fully regained its quiet the fatal battle of Hastings had been fought, and England lay helpless at the Normans' feet. The higher Saxon clergy were replaced by the priests of Normandy, who had little sympathy with the people over whom they came, and the Saxon manuscripts were contemptuously flung aside as relics of a rude barbarism. The contempt shown to the language of the defeated race quite destroyed the impulse to English translation, and the Norman clergy had no sympathy with the desire for spreading the knowledge of the Scriptures among the people, so that for centuries those Scriptures remained in England a "spring shut up, a fountain sealed." Yet this time must not be considered altogether lost, for during those centuries England was becoming fitted for an English Bible. The future language of the nation was being formed; the Saxon and Norman French were struggling side by side; gradually the old Saxon grew unintelligible to the people; gradually the French became a foreign tongue, and with the fusion of the two races a language grew up which was the language of united England. Passing, then, from the quiet death-beds of Alfred and of Bede, we transfer ourselves to the great hall of the Blackfriars' monastery, London, on a dull, warm May day in 1378, amid purple robes and gowns of satin and damask, amid monks and abbots, and bishops and doctors of the Church, assembled for the trial of John Wycliffe, the parish priest of Lutterworth. The great hall, crowded to its heavy oaken doors, witnesses to the interest that is centred in the trial, and all eyes are fixed on the pale, stern old man who stands before the dais silently facing his judges. He is quite alone, and his thoughts go back, with some bitterness, to his previous trial, when the people crowded the doors shouting for their favorite, and John of Gaunt and the Lord Marshal of England were standing by his side. He has learned since then not to put his trust in princes. The power of his enemies has rapidly grown; even the young King (Richard II) has been won over to their cause, and patrons and friends have drawn back from his side, whom the Church has resolved to crush. The judges have taken their seats, and the accused stands awaiting the charges to be read, when suddenly there is a quick cry of terror. A strange rumbling sound fills the air, and the walls of the judgment hall are trembling to their base--the monastery and the city of London are being shaken by an earthquake! Friar and prelate grow pale with superstitious awe. Twice already has this arraignment of Wycliffe been strangely interrupted. Are the elements in league with this enemy of the Church? Shall they give up the trial? "No!" thunders Archbishop Courtenay, rising in his place. "We shall not give up the trial. This earthquake but portends the purging of the kingdom; for as there are in the bowels of the earth noxious vapors which only by a violent earthquake can be purged away, so are these evils brought by such men upon this land which only by a very earthquake can ever be removed. Let the trial go forward!" What think you, reader, were the evils which this pale ascetic had wrought, needing a very earthquake to cleanse them from the land? Had he falsified the divine message to the people in his charge? Was he turning men's hearts from the worship of God? Was his priestly office disgraced by carelessness or drunkenness or impurity of life? Oh, no. Such faults could be gently judged at the tribunal in the Blackfriars' hall. Wycliffe's was a far more serious crime. He had dared to attack the corruptions of the Church, and especially the enormities of the begging friars; he had indignantly denounced pardons and indulgences and masses for the soul as part of a system of gigantic fraud; and worst of all, he had filled up the cup of his iniquity by translating the Scriptures into the English tongue; "making it," as one of the chroniclers angrily complains, "common and more open to laymen and to women than it was wont to be to clerks well learned and of good understanding. So that the pearl of the Gospel is trodden under foot of swine." The feeling of his opponents will be better understood if we notice the position of the Church in England at the time. The meridian of her power had been already passed. Her clergy as a class were ignorant and corrupt. Her people were neglected, except for the money to be extorted by masses and pardons, "as if," to quote the words of an old writer, "God had given his sheep, not to be pastured, but to be shaven and shorn." This state of things had gone on for centuries, and the people like dumb, driven cattle had submitted. But those who could discern the signs of the times must have seen now that it could not go on much longer. The spread of education was rapidly increasing, several new colleges having been founded in Oxford during Wycliffe's lifetime. A strong spirit of independence, too, was rising among the people. Already Edward III and his parliament had indignantly refused the Pope's demand for the annual tribute to be sent to Rome. It was evident that a crisis was near. And, as if to hasten the crisis, the famous schism of the papacy had placed two popes at the head of the Church, and all Christendom was scandalized by the sight of the rival "vicars of Jesus Christ" anathematizing each other from Rome and Avignon, raising armies and slaughtering helpless women and children, each for the aggrandizing of himself. The minds of men in England were greatly agitated, and Wycliffe felt that at such a time the firmest charter of the Church would be the open Bible in her children's hands; the best exposure of the selfish policy of her rulers, the exhibiting to the people the beautiful, self-forgetting life of Jesus Christ as recorded in the Gospels. "The sacred Scriptures," he said, "are the property of the people, and one which no one should be allowed to wrest from them. Christ and his apostles converted the world by making known the Scriptures to men in a form familiar to them, and I pray with all my heart that through doing the things contained in this book we may all together come to the everlasting life." This Bible translation he placed far the first in importance of all his attempts to reform the English Church, and he pursued his object with a vigor and against an opposition that remind one of the old monk of Bethlehem and his Bible a thousand years before. The result of the Blackfriars' synod was that after three days' deliberation Wycliffe's teaching was condemned, and at a subsequent meeting he himself was excommunicated. He returned to his quiet parsonage at Lutterworth--for his enemies dared not yet proceed to extremities--and there, with his pile of old Latin manuscripts and commentaries, he labored on at the great work of his life, till the whole Bible was translated into the "modir tongue," and England received for the first time in her history a complete version of the Scriptures in the language of the people. And scarce was his task well finished when, like his great predecessor Bede, the brave old priest laid down his life. He himself had expected that a violent death would have finished his course. His enemies were many and powerful; the Primate, the King, and the Pope were against him--with the friars, whom he had so often and so fiercely defied; so that his destruction seemed but a mere question of time. But while his enemies were preparing to strike, the old man "was not, for God took him." It was the close of the old year, the last Sunday of 1384, and his little flock at Lutterworth were kneeling in hushed reverence before the altar, when suddenly, at the time of the elevation of the sacrament, he fell to the ground in a violent fit of the palsy, and never spoke again until his death on the last day of the year. In him England lost one of her best and greatest sons, a patriot sternly resenting all dishonor to his country, a reformer who ventured his life for the purity of the Church and the freedom of the Bible--an earnest, faithful "parson of a country town," standing out conspicuously among the clergy of the time. "For Cristè's lore and his apostles twelve He taughte--and first he folwede it himselve." Here is a choice specimen from one of the monkish writers of the time describing his death: "On the feast of the passion of St. Thomas of Canterbury, John Wycliffe, the organ of the devil, the enemy of the Church, the idol of heretics, the image of hypocrites, the restorer of schism, the storehouse of lies, the sink of flattery, being struck by the horrible judgment of God, was seized with the palsy throughout his whole body, and that mouth which was to have spoken huge things against God and his saints, and holy Church, was miserably drawn aside, and afforded a frightful spectacle to beholders; his tongue was speechless and his head shook, showing painfully plainly that the curse which God had thundered forth against Cain was also inflicted on him." Some time after his death a petition was presented to the Pope, which to his honor he rejected, praying him to order Wycliffe's body to be taken out of consecrated ground and buried in a dunghill. But forty years after, by a decree of the Council of Constance, the old reformer's bones were dug up and burned, and the ashes flung into the little river Swift which "runneth hard by his church at Lutterworth." And so, in the often-quoted words of old Fuller, "as the Swift bear them into the Severn, and the Severn into the narrow seas, and they again into the ocean, thus the ashes of Wycliffe is an emblem of his doctrine, which is now dispersed all over the world." But it is with his Bible translation that we are specially concerned. As far as we can learn, the whole Bible was not translated by the reformer. About half the Old Testament is ascribed to Nicholas de Hereford, one of the Oxford leaders of the Lollards; the remainder, with the whole of the New Testament, being done by Wycliffe himself. About eight years after its completion the whole was revised by Richard Purvey, his curate and intimate friend, whose manuscript is still in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. Purvey's preface is a most interesting old document, and shows not only that he was deeply in earnest about his work, but that he thoroughly understood the intellectual and moral conditions necessary for its success. "A simpel creature," he says, "hath translated the Scripture out of Latin into Englische. First, this simpel creature had much travayle with divers fellows and helpers to gather many old Bibles and other doctors and glosses to make one Latin Bible. Some deal true and then to study it anew the texte and any other help he might get, especially Lyra on the Old Testament, which helped him much with this work. The third time to counsel with olde grammarians and old divines of hard words and hard sentences how they might best be understood and translated, the fourth time to translate as clearly as he could to the sense, and to have many good fellows and cunnying at the correcting of the translacioun. A translator hath great nede to studie well the sense both before and after, and then also he hath nede to live a clene life and be full devout in preiers, and have not his wit occupied about worldli things that the Holy Spyrit author of all wisdom and cunnynge and truthe dresse him for his work and suffer him not to err." And he concludes with the prayer, "God grant to us all grace to ken well and to kepe well Holie Writ, and to suffer joiefulli some paine for it at the laste." Like all the earlier English translations, Wycliffe's Bible was based on the Latin Vulgate of St. Jerome; and this is the great defect in his work, as compared with the versions that followed. He was not capable of consulting the original Greek and Hebrew even if he had access to them--in fact, there was probably no man in England at the time capable of doing so; and therefore, though he represents the Latin faithfully and well, he of course handed on its errors as faithfully as its perfections. But, such as it is, it is a fine specimen of fourteenth-century English. He translated not for scholars or for nobles, but for the plain people, and his style was such as suited those for whom he wrote--plain, vigorous, homely, and yet with all its homeliness full of a solemn grace and dignity, which made men feel that they were reading no ordinary book. He uses many striking expressions, such as (II Tim. ii. 4): "No man holding knighthood to God, wlappith himself with worldli nedes;" and many of the best-known phrases in our present Bible originated with him; _e.g._, "the beame and the mote," "the depe thingis of God," "strait is the gate and narewe is the waye," "no but a man schall be born againe," "the cuppe of blessing which we blessen," etc. Here is a specimen from Wycliffe's Gospels: In thilke dayes came Joon Baptist prechynge in the desert of Jude, saying, Do ye penaunce: for the kyngdom of heuens shall neigh. Forsothe this is he of whom it is said by Ysaye the prophete, A voice of a cryinge in desert, make ye redy the wayes of the Lord, make ye rightful the pathes of hym. Forsothe that like Joon hadde cloth of the beeris of cameylis and a girdil of skyn about his leendis; sothely his mete weren locustis and hony of the wode. Thanne Jerusalem wente out to hym, and al Jude, and al the cuntre aboute Jordan, and thei weren crystened of hym in in Jordon, knowlechynge there synnes. It is somewhere recorded that at a meeting in Yorkshire recently a long passage of Wycliffe's Bible was read, which was quite intelligible throughout to those who heard. It will be seen that this specimen (Matt. iii. 1-6) is not divided into verses. Verse division belongs to a much later period, and, though convenient for reference, it sometimes a good deal spoils the sense. The division into chapters appears in Wycliffe's as in our own Bibles. This chapter division had shortly before been made by a cardinal Hugo, for the purpose of a Latin concordance, and its convenience brought it quickly into use. But, like the verse division, it is often very badly done, the object aimed at seeming to be uniformity of length rather than any natural division of the subject. Sometimes a chapter breaks off in the middle of a narrative or an argument, and, especially in St. Paul's epistles, the incorrect division often becomes misleading. The removal as far as possible of these divisions is one of the advantages of the Revised Version to be noticed later on. The book had a very wide circulation. While the Anglo-Saxon versions were confined for the most part to the few religious houses where they were written, Wycliffe's Bible, in spite of its disadvantage of being only manuscript, was circulated largely through the kingdom; and, though the cost a good deal restricted its possession to the wealthier classes, those who could not hope to possess it gained access to it too, as well through their own efforts as through the ministrations of Wycliffe's "pore priestes." A considerable sum was paid for even a few sheets of the manuscript, a load of hay was given for permission to read it for a certain period one hour a day,[70] and those who could not afford even such expenses adopted what means they could. It is touching to read such incidents as that of one Alice Collins, sent for to the little gatherings "to recite the Ten Commandments and parts of the epistles of SS. Paul and Peter, which she knew by heart." "Certes," says old John Foxe in his _Book of Martyrs_, "the zeal of those Christian days seems much superior to this of our day, and to see the travail of them may well shame our careless times." But it was at a terrible risk such study was carried on. The appearance of Wycliffe's Bible aroused at once fierce opposition. A bill was brought into parliament to forbid the circulation of the Scriptures in English; but the sturdy John of Gaunt vigorously asserted the right of the people to have the Word of God in their own tongue; "for why," said he, "are we to be the dross of the nations?" However, the rulers of the Church grew more and more alarmed at the circulation of the book. At length Archbishop Arundel, a zealous but not very learned prelate, complained to the Pope of "that pestilent wretch, John Wycliffe, the son of the old Serpent, the forerunner of Antichrist, who had completed his iniquity by inventing a new translation of the Scriptures"; and, shortly after, the Convocation of Canterbury forbade such translations, under penalty of the major excommunication. "God grant us," runs the prayer in the old Bible preface, "to ken and to kepe well Holie Writ, and to suffer joiefulli some paine for it at the laste." What a meaning that prayer must have gained when the readers of the book were burned with the copies round their necks, when men and women were executed for teaching their children the Lord's Prayer and Ten Commandments in English, when husbands were made to witness against their wives, and children forced to light the death-fires of their parents, and possessors of the banned Wycliffe Bible were hunted down as if they were wild beasts! Thus did Wycliffe, in his effort for the spread of the Gospel of Peace, bring, like his Master fourteen centuries before, "not peace, but a sword." Every bold attempt to let in the light on long-standing darkness seems to result first in a fierce opposition from the evil creatures that delight in the darkness, and the weak creatures weakened by dwelling in it so long. It is not till the driving back of the evil and the strengthening of the weak, as the light gradually wins its way, that the true results can be seen. It is, to use a simile of a graceful modern writer,[71] "As when you raise with your staff an old flat stone, with the grass forming a little hedge, as it were, around it as it lies. Beneath it, what a revelation! Blades of grass flattened down, colorless, matted together, as if they had been bleached and ironed; hideous crawling things; black crickets with their long filaments sticking out on all sides; motionless, slug-like creatures; young larvæ, perhaps more horrible in their pulpy stillness than in the infernal wriggle of maturity. But no sooner is the stone turned and the wholesome light of day let in on this compressed and blinded community of creeping things than all of them that have legs rush blindly about, butting against each other and everything else in their way, and end in a general stampede to underground retreats from the region poisoned by sunshine. Next year you will find the grass growing fresh and green where the stone lay--the ground-bird builds her nest where the beetle had his hole--the dandelion and the buttercup are growing there, and the broad fans of insect-angels open and shut over their golden disks as the rhythmic waves of blissful consciousness pulsate through their glorified being. "The stone is ancient error, the grass is human nature borne down and bleached of all its color by it, the shapes that are found beneath are the crafty beings that thrive in the darkness, and the weak organizations kept helpless by it. He who turns the stone is whosoever puts the staff of truth to the old lying incubus, whether he do it with a serious face or a laughing one. The next year stands for the coming time. Then shall the nature which had lain blanched and broken rise in its full stature and native lines in the sunshine. Then shall God's minstrels build their nests in the hearts of a new-born humanity. Then shall beauty--divinity taking outline and color--light upon the souls of men as the butterfly, image of the beatified spirit rising from the dust, soars from the shell that held a poor grub, which would never have found wings unless that stone had been lifted." THE SWISS WIN THEIR INDEPENDENCE BATTLE OF SEMPACH A.D. 1386-1389 F. Grenfell Baker For two generations after the victory of the Swiss over the Austrians at Morgarten (1315), which was followed by the renewal of the Swiss Confederation of 1291, the leagued cantons were favored with growth and internal development. To the original cantons--Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden--were added (1332-1353) Lucerne, Zurich, Glarus, Zug, and Bern. The Confederation acknowledged no superior but the Emperor of Germany. In 1375 there was an irruption into Switzerland of a horde of irregular soldiers under Enguerrand de Courcy, son-in-law of Edward III of England. The mother of De Courcy was a daughter of Leopold I, Duke of Austria, and through her De Courcy claimed several Swiss towns. As the present Austrian Duke, Leopold II, who held nominal suzerainty over Switzerland, refused to give them up, De Courcy invaded Swiss territory with a large force and a fury which at first threw the country into panic. But at last the Swiss recovered their old spirit of bravery, and in many severe encounters they either killed or chased out of the country the whole ruthless host of invaders. This war is known in Swiss chronicles as the _Guglerkrieg_, either from the pointed spikes on the helmets of the Swiss soldiers or from the cowls which many of them wore. It is also called the "English War," although De Courcy's men were nearly all from the Continent and Wales. The Swiss soon had need of their old military prowess, which this defence of their country against foreign invaders had freshly put to the proof. By the victory of Sempach, July 9, 1386, their independence was practically won, and by later acts of valor and statesmanship they made it secure for many years. Austria's conduct soon began once more to disturb the Swiss, and to threaten a renewal of hostilities. Her first act of importance was the conquest of the Tyrol, after which, under pretence of benefiting the pilgrims to Einsiedeln,[72] but in reality to separate Glarus from Zurich, she built a bridge across the lake at Rapperschwyl. The possession of this bridge by Austria acted as a perpetual hinderance to Zurich's trade with the South, and was accordingly greatly resented by the city. Austria's position, as ruler in so many burghs that, from their situation and the nationality of their inhabitants, were essentially Swiss, also acted as a never-ending source of trouble. Her rule was both harsh and unjust, and, as a result, her local governors were extremely unpopular. In 1386 the anti-Austrian feeling in Switzerland had grown to such a pitch that popular outbreaks against her authority were, in many centres, of frequent occurrence, and war appeared inevitable. From Lucerne came the final troubles that precipitated the country again into a conflict with Austria. Previous to the actual declaration of war, constant collisions in the neighborhood of Lucerne had for some time past taken place, with all the horrors and savagery of war. In 1385 a body of men from Lucerne attacked and demolished the castle town of Rothenburg, the residence of an Austrian bailie. Next, both Entlibuch and Sempach, at the instigation of Lucerne, revolted against her Austrian rulers, expelled the bailies, and entered into alliances with the city. Lucerne herself commenced extending her territories by the purchase of Wiggis, and--contrary to her treaty stipulations--admitted a number of Austrian subjects into the privileges of citizenship. Austria retaliated by attacking Richensee, a small Lucerne town containing a garrison of some two hundred soldiers. This she carried by assault and destroyed, massacring the inhabitants of all ages and of both sexes. Other reprisals on both sides followed in quick succession, in which immense numbers of victims perished. Soon both the Duke, Leopold II, and the Confederates were fully prepared, and the former took the field with a large army. After menacing Zurich, the Duke, accompanied by many nobles from Germany, France, and North Italy, headed some six thousand picked men, and marched upon Lucerne. On his way he burned Willisau and several smaller towns, where his troops committed every form of excess. On July 9th a portion of his forces appeared before the walls of Sempach, while another division menaced Zurich. At Sempach the Confederates mustered to the help of Lucerne, but were only able to bring about sixteen hundred men, taken chiefly from the Forest States. In spite of their disparity in numbers, the Confederates determined to risk an encounter. The decisive and brilliant battle of Sempach, the second of the long roll of victories that mark the prowess of the Swiss, is thus described by an old writer: "The Swiss order of battle was angular, one soldier followed by two, these by four, and so on. The Swiss were all on foot, badly armed, having only their long swords and their halberds, and boards on their left arms with which to parry the blows of their adversaries, and they could at first make no impression on the close ranks of the Austrians, all bristling with spears. But Anthony zer Pot, of Uri, cried to his men to strike with their halberds on the shafts of the spears, which he knew were made hollow to render them lighter, and, at the same time, Arnold von Winkelried, a knight from Unterwalden, devoting himself for his country, cried out: 'I'll open a way for you, Confederates!' and, seizing as many spears as he could grasp in his arms, dragged them down with his whole weight and strength upon his own bosom, and thus made an opening for his countrymen to penetrate the Austrian ranks. "This act of heroism decided the victory. The Swiss rushed into the gap made by Winkelried, and, having now come to close quarters with their enemies, their bodily strength and the lightness of their equipment gave them a great advantage over the heavily armed Austrians, who were already fainting under the heat of a July sun. The very closeness of the array of the Austrian men-at-arms rendered them incapable either of advancing or falling back, and, the grooms who held their horses having taken flight, panic seized them, they broke their ranks, and were hewed down by the Swiss halberds in frightful numbers. Duke Leopold was urged by those around him to save his life, but he scorned the advice, and, seeing the banner of Austria in danger, rushed to save it, and was killed in the attempt. The rout then became general, but the Swiss had the humanity, or the policy, not to pursue their enemies, of whom otherwise not one, perhaps, would have escaped. The loss of the Austrians amounted to two thousand men, including six hundred and seventy-six noblemen, three hundred and fifty of whom wore coroneted helmets. Most of them were buried at Koenigsfelden, with their leader Leopold. The Swiss lost two hundred men in this memorable battle, the second in which they had defeated a duke of Austria at the head of his chivalry." After Sempach the men of Glarus set about making themselves a free people. One of their first acts was the capture of Wesen and the expulsion of its Austrian soldiers. This was followed by a truce, which lasted till 1388, when Leopold's sons recommenced the war with fresh fury. Wesen was recaptured by the admission of a number of soldiers in disguise, who opened the gates to their comrades without and massacred all the chief Swiss leaders. Some months later the men of Glarus inflicted a severe defeat on the Austrians at the little town of Naefels, within their state. In this important combat three hundred and fifty men of Glarus, together with fifty from Schwyz, posted themselves on the heights above the town, and, as the Austrians advanced, suddenly hurled down masses of stones that soon caused a panic. Then, following the successful tactics employed at Morgarten, the Swiss rushed down on the disordered mass--said to consist of fifteen thousand soldiers, but probably about half that number--and dealt death on every side. A precipitate flight of the invaders followed, but they were met near Wesen by a fresh body of seven hundred Glarus peasants, who completed the victory. Though Bern took no part in the battle of Sempach, after that victory she entered actively into the war, and overran the Austrian dependencies in Freiburg and Valengrin. She drove the Duke's followers out of Rapperschwyl, annexed Nidau and Bueren, and conquered the upper Simmenthal. At length, both sides being weary of war and carnage, a peace was signed for seven years in 1389, with the condition that Bern should restore Nidau and Bueren. This peace was in 1394 further prolonged for twenty years. These treaties brought great benefits to Switzerland in many ways. Glarus and Zug obtained their formal freedom from Austrian rule in payment of a moderate sum of money; Schwyz received the town and abbey of Einsiedeln (1397); Lucerne purchased Sempach and Entlibuch from the Duke, as also other towns; but chief of all, the political power of the Hapsburgs came to an end in Switzerland. An important feature of this period was the lessened influence of the Emperor of Germany in Swiss affairs, and the gradual withdrawal of the Swiss from the position they so long occupied as subject-vassals of the empire. This was especially seen toward the close of the fourteenth century, when the Emperor, being pressed for money, sold his rights over several important Swiss districts to their inhabitants, and thus forfeited all authority over them. But chief of all the memorable events of this time was the close it brought to the long and bloody struggle between Austria and Switzerland. At length the heroism and persevering patriotism of the Swiss effected the liberation of their country from Austrian rule, and henceforth the dukes ceased to attempt to enforce their claims, and tacitly acknowledged their defeat. The Swiss states from this period, moreover, began to be known, not as an unimportant portion of the German empire, but as a separate country, Die Schweiz, from the prominent part taken by Schwyz in initiating the freedom of the land. UNION OF DENMARK, SWEDEN, AND NORWAY A.D. 1397 PAUL C. SINDING Canute the Great, King of England and Denmark, by successful wars added almost the whole of Norway to his dominions. At his death in 1035 his kingdoms were divided, and fell into anarchy and discord for two centuries, until the tyrant Black Geert, who had driven out Christopher II, and been for fourteen years the virtual sovereign of Denmark, was assassinated by the Danish patriot Niels Ebbeson. Christopher's third son, Waldemar, surnamed Atterdag, because he used to say when a misfortune happened, "To-morrow it is again day," was recalled from Bavaria and crowned king as Waldemar IV. He commenced at once with vigor and marked success the improvement of the internal conditions of the country, and strove to encompass his chief ambition, the reunion of the ancient Danish possessions. By marrying his daughter Margaret to Hakon VI, King of Norway and son of Magnus Smek, King of Sweden, Waldemar laid a basis for a junction of the three great Scandinavian kingdoms. The union was realized under the administration of his illustrious and sagacious daughter, Margaret, known as the "Semiramis of the North." Waldemar Atterdag left no direct male issue. But his two grandsons, Albert the Younger, of Mecklenburg, a son of Ingeborg, Waldemar's eldest daughter, and of Henry of Mecklenburg; and Olaf, a son of Margaret, his younger daughter, and of Hakon VI of Norway, were now claiming the hereditary succession to the throne. One party declared for Olaf, but, as he was the son of the younger daughter, his claim was very doubtful. But because the house of Mecklenburg had acted with hostility toward Denmark, and Olaf had expectation of Norway and claims to the crown of Sweden, as a grandson of Magnus Smek, Denmark was, by his election, in hopes of one day seeing the three crowns united on the same head. It was therefore not long before this important affair was determined. The preference was given Olaf, who, although only six years of age, was, under the name of Olaf V, elected king of Denmark, under the guardianship of Margaret his mother; and after the death of his father Hakon VI, he became also king of Norway, the two kingdoms thus being united. This union, till the expiration of four hundred and thirty-four years, was not dissolved. When Olaf V, seven years after, died in Falsterbo, both kingdoms elected Margaret their queen, though custom had not yet authorized the election of a female. During the reign of this great Princess, who deservedly has been called the "Semiramis of the North," Denmark and Norway exercised in Europe an influence the effects of which were long felt throughout the Scandinavian countries with their vast extent and rival races. She united wisdom and policy with courage and determination, had strength of mind to preserve her rectitude without deviation, and her efforts were crowned by divine Providence with success. She is justly considered one of the most illustrious female rulers in history. Her renown even reached the Byzantine emperor Emanuel Palæologus, who called her _Regina sine exemplo maxima_. But under her successors--destitute of her high sense of duty, great ability, and consistent virtue--her triumphs proved a snare instead of a blessing. The great union she created dissolved in a short time, and its downfall was as sudden as its elevation had been extraordinary. She was born in 1353. Her father was, as we have seen, Waldemar Atterdag, her mother Queen Hedevig, and she became queen of Denmark and Norway in 1387. She was no sooner elected queen of Denmark, and homaged on the hill of Sliparehog, near Lund, in Ringsted, Odensee, and Wiborg, than she sailed to Norway to receive their homage. But a remarkable occurrence is mentioned by historians as occurring about this time. A report prevailed that King Olaf, the Queen's son, was not dead; it was propagated by the nobility, and very likely set on foot by them, in order to punish Margaret for her liberality to the clergy. An impostor claimed the crown of Denmark and Norway, and gained credit every day by making discoveries which could only be known to Olaf and his mother. Margaret, however, proved him to be a son of Olaf's nurse. Olaf had a large wart between his shoulders--a mark which did not appear on the impostor. The false Olaf was seized, broken on the wheel, and publicly burned at a place between Falsterbo and Skanor, in Sweden, and Margaret continued uninterruptedly her regency. But the Queen, not wishing to contract a new marriage, and comprehending the importance of having a successor elected to the throne, proposed her nephew, Eric, Duke of Pomerania. This proposal the clergy and nobility approved, and they elected him to be king of Denmark and Norway after Margaret's death. Meanwhile Albert, King of Sweden, having, on account of his preference given to German favorites, incurred the hatred of his people, the Swedes requested Margaret to assist them against him, which she promised to do if they in return would make her queen of Sweden. Moreover, Albert had highly offended the Danish Queen; had, though hardly able to govern his own kingdom, assumed the title "king of Denmark," and laid claim to Norway, too; and when she blamed him for it he had answered her disdainfully. In a letter he had used foul and abusive language, calling her "a king without breeches," and the "abbot's concubine" (_abbedfrillen_), on account of her particular attachment to a certain abbot of Soro, who was her spiritual director. It is, however, true, that her intimacy with this monk gave room for some suspicion that her privacies with him were not all employed about the care of her soul. Afterward, to ridicule her yet more, King Albert sent her a hone to sharpen her needles, and swore not to put on his nightcap until she had yielded to him. But under perilous circumstances Margaret was never at a loss how to act. She acted here with the utmost prudence, trying first to gain the favor of the peers of the state, and solemnly promising to rule according to the Swedish laws. War now broke out between Albert and Margaret, whose army was commanded by Jvar Lykke. The encounter of the two armies--about twelve thousand men on each side--took place at Falkoping, September 21, 1388. A furious battle was fought, in which the victory for a long while hung in suspense. But Margaret's good fortune prevailed; Albert was routed and his army cut to pieces, and Margaret was now mistress of Sweden. While this was passing, the Queen tarried in Wordingborg Sjelland, ardently desiring to learn the result. But no sooner did she hear that the victory was gained, and the Swedish King and his son Eric taken prisoners, than she hastened to Bahus, in Sweden, where the King and his son were brought before her. Lost in joy and amazement at having her enemy in her power, the Queen now retorted upon King Albert with revilings, and she made him wear a large nightcap of paper--a retaliation proportioned to his offensive words. He and his son were thereupon brought to Lindholm, a castle in Skane, where they were kept prisoners for seven years. When they entered the castle, a dark, square room was assigned them, and when the King said, "I hope that this torture against a crowned head will only last a few days," the jailer replied: "I grieve to say that the Queen's orders are to the contrary; anger not the Queen by any bravado, else you will be placed in the irons, and if these fail we can have recourse to sharper means." To the excessive self-love, intemperance, conceitedness, and want of foresight which had characterized all his actions, the unhappy Albert had to ascribe his present situation. The year following, the Queen stormed the important city of Calmar, yet siding with the imprisoned King. She made several wise alliances with Richard II of England, and other potentates, and concluded a truce for two years with the princes of Mecklenburg, and the cities of Rostock and Wismar, which had begun to raise fresh levies in favor of the unfortunate Albert. This period expired, she laid siege to Stockholm and other fortified places, of which John, Duke of Mecklenburg, and other friends of the imprisoned King had become masters. But the cause of Albert was little forwarded, and Margaret gained ground every day. She compelled the capital to surrender to her and do homage to her as its sovereign; whereafter a peremptory peace was concluded on Good Friday, which restored tranquillity to the three kingdoms. The imprisoned King and his son were delivered up to the Hanseatic towns, and they obtained their liberty for sixty thousand ounces of silver, upon condition that they should resign all claims to Sweden if the amount were not paid within three years. As soon as the King and his son were delivered to the deputies, they solemnly swore to a strict observance of this article, the Hanse towns engaging themselves to guarantee the treaty. The money, however, not being paid by the stipulated time, Margaret became undisputed sovereign of Sweden, the third Scandinavian kingdom. About this time the "Victuals Brethren," so called because they brought victuals from the Hanse towns to Stockholm while besieged, began to imperil Denmark, plundering the Danish and Norwegian coasts, and destroying all commercial business along the Baltic. But Margaret ordered the harbors of the maritime towns to be blockaded, thus putting a quick stop to their cruelties and piracies. The Queen's principal care was now to visit the different provinces, to administer justice and redress grievances of every kind. Among other salutary regulations, the affairs of commerce were not forgotten. It was, for instance, decreed that all manner of assistance should be given to foreign merchants and sailors, particularly in case of misfortune and shipwreck, without expectation of reward; and that all pirates should be treated with the greatest rigor. Eric of Pomerania was, as we have said, elected to be king of Denmark and Norway after Margaret's death. But wishing to have him also elected her successor to the Swedish throne, Margaret brought him to Sweden, and introduced him to the deputies, one by one, whom she requested to confirm his election to the succession. The majesty of the Queen's person, the strength of her arguments, and the sweetness of her eloquence gained over the deputies, who, on July 22, 1396, elected him at Morastone by Upsala, to succeed her also in Sweden. But Margaret, soon discovering his inability and impetuousness, took pains to remedy these defects, as much as possible, by procuring for him as a wife the intelligent and virtuous princess Philippa, a daughter of Henry V of England, and shortly after had got Catharine, her niece and Eric's sister, married to Prince John, a son of the German emperor Ruprecht; John being promised the Scandinavian crowns if Eric of Pomerania should die childless. Thus having strengthened and consolidated her power by influential connections and relationships, the Queen, upon whose head the three northern crowns were actually united, now proceeded to realize the great plan she had long cherished--to get a fundamental law established for a perpetual union of the three large Scandinavian kingdoms. The realization of this purpose immortalized her, securing for her the admiration of the world, whose most eminent historians do not hesitate to surname her the "Great," and to compare her with the loftiest Greek and Roman heroes and statesmen. On June 17, 1397, Margaret summoned to an assembly at Calmar, in the province of Smaland, Sweden, the clergy and the nobility of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, and established, by their aid and consent, a fundamental law. This was the law so celebrated in the North under the name of the "Union of Calmar," and which afterward gave birth to wars between Sweden and Denmark that lasted a whole century. It consisted of three articles. The first provided that the three kingdoms should thenceforward have but one and the same king, who was to be chosen successively by each of the kingdoms. The second article imposed upon the sovereign the obligation of dividing his time equally between the three kingdoms. The third, and most important, decreed that each kingdom should retain its own laws, customs, senate, and privileges of every kind; that the highest officers should be natives; that any alliance concluded with foreign potentates should be obligatory upon all three kingdoms when approved by the council of one kingdom; and that, after the death of the King, his eldest son, or, if the King died childless, then another wise, intelligent, and able prince, should be chosen common monarch; and if anyone, because of high treason, was banished from one kingdom, then he should be banished from them all. A month after, on the Queen's birthday, July 13th, a legitimate charter was drawn up, to which the Queen subscribed and put her seal; on which occasion Eric of Pomerania was anointed and crowned by the archbishops of Upsala and Lund as king of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. The _Te Deum_ was sung in the churches of Calmar, the assembly crying out: "_Hæcce unio esto perpetua! Longe, longe, longe, vivat Margarethe, regina Daniæ, Norvegiæ et Sveciæ!_" This strict union of the three large states became a potent bulwark for their security, and made them, in more than one century, the arbiter of the European system; the three nations of the northern peninsula presenting a compact and united front, that could bid defiance to any foreign aggression. Although Eric of Pomerania was elected king, and in 1407 passed his minority, Margaret continued governing until the day of her death. "You have done all well," wrote the people to her, "and we value your services so highly that we would gladly grant you everything." The union of the three Scandinavian kingdoms having been established in Calmar, all her efforts were now aimed at regaining the duchy of Schleswig, which circumstances had compelled her to resign to Gerhard IV, Count of Holstein. For such a reunion with Schleswig a favorable opportunity appeared, when Gerhard was killed in an expedition against the Ditmarshers, leaving behind three sons in minority. Elizabeth, Gerhard's widow, fled to Margaret for succor against her violent brother-in-law, Bishop Henry of Osnabrueck. Margaret, fond of fishing in foul water, was very willing to help her, but availed herself of the opportunity to annex successively different parts of Schleswig. The dethroned Swedish King, Albert, never able to forget his anger toward Margaret or her severity against him, and continually cherishing a hope of reascending the Swedish throne, and considering the Union of Calmar a breach of peace, contrived to make the Swedish people displeased with her, and thought it a suitable time to revolt from her dominion. He established a strong camp before Visby, the capital of the island of Gulland, having six thousand foot and, at some distance, nine thousand horse. Determined to engage before their junction could take place, the Queen's commander-in-chief, Abraham Broder, immediately advanced until in sight of the enemy, and then endeavored to gain possession of Visby and the ground near by. In this he was so far successful that Albert and his army had to leave the camp and conclude a truce. But nevertheless he did not till after a lapse of seven years give up his hope of remounting the throne of Sweden, making a final peace with Margaret, and henceforward living in Gadebush, Mecklenburg, where in 1412 he closed his inglorious life. Soon after, October 27th, Queen Margaret died on board a ship in the harbor of Flensburg, at the age of fifty-nine, after an active and notable reign of thirty-seven years. Her funeral was attended with the greatest solemnity, and her corpse was brought to the Cathedral of Roeskilde, where Eric of Pomerania, her successor, in 1423, caused her likeness to be carved in alabaster. Her acts show her character. She displayed judiciousness united with circumspection; wisdom in devising plans, and perseverance in executing them; skill in gaining the confidence of the clergy and peasantry, and thereby counterbalancing the imperious nobility. On the whole she applied herself to the civilization of her three kingdoms, and to their improvement by excellent laws, the great aim of which was to undermine the nobility. She pursued the plan of her great father to recall all rights to the crown lands, which during the reign of her weak and inefficient predecessors had been granted to the nobility. The prosecution of this plan for the perfect subversion of the feudal aristocracy was unfortunately interrupted by her death; her imprudent and weak successor having no power to restrain the turbulent spirit of a factious nobility. DEPOSITION OF RICHARD II HENRY IV BEGINS THE LINE OF LANCASTER A.D. 1399 JOHN LINGARD Richard II, son of Edward the Black Prince, succeeded his grandfather, Edward III, on the throne of England in 1377, when Richard was but ten years old. During his minority the government was intrusted to a council of twelve, but for some years it was mainly controlled by Richard's uncles, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester. War with France, then in progress, entailed great expenditures, which were increased by court extravagance, and at length burdensome taxes led to popular uprisings. These became most serious in the great revolt of the peasants led by Wat Tyler, in 1381. Richard appeared among the insurgents and granted them concessions. From this time the King became more active in his government, and in 1386 John of Gaunt withdrew to the Continent. About the same time the Duke of Gloucester headed a coalition of the baronial party in opposition to the sovereign; but in 1389 Richard suddenly declared himself of age and gave a check to their designs. For eight years he ruled with moderation as a constitutional monarch. But in 1396 Richard married Isabella, daughter of Charles VI of France, and henceforth seems to have adopted French ideas, and to have made pretensions in the direction of absolutism. He proceeded to arbitrary prosecutions which led to the violent death of several leading nobles. Richard also quarrelled with Henry, son of John of Gaunt, whom as Duke of Lancaster he succeeded in 1399. The year before, Richard had banished Henry for ten years--fearing him as a possible rival. The history of the remaining months of Richard's reign is crowded with the events which rapidly led to the ending of the direct line of the Plantagenets and the beginning of the line of Lancaster. In Shakespeare's _Richard II_--the first of his historical plays--the poet, following Holinshed's chronicle, presents not only a skilful dramatic construction of the recorded incidents of the reign, but also a finely discriminated portrait of Richard's much debated character as man and monarch. Richard now saw himself triumphant over all his opponents. Even his uncles, through affection or fear, seconded all his measures. He had attained what seems for some time to have been the great object of his policy. He had placed himself above the control of the law. By the grant of a subsidy for life he was relieved from the necessity of meeting his parliament; with the aid of his committee, the members of which proved the obsequious ministers of his will, he could issue what new ordinances he pleased; and a former declaration by the two houses, that he was as free as any of his predecessors, was conveniently interpreted to release him from the obligations of those statutes which he deemed hostile to the royal prerogative. But he had forfeited all that popularity which he had earned during the last ten years; and the security in which he indulged hurried him on to other acts of despotism, which inevitably led to his ruin. He raised money by forced loans; he compelled the judges to expound the law according to his own prejudices or caprice; he required the former adherents of Gloucester to purchase and repurchase charters of pardon; and, that he might obtain a more plentiful harvest of fines and amercements, put at once seventeen counties out of the protection of the law, under the pretence that they had favored his enemies. The Duke of Lancaster did not survive the banishment of his son more than three months; and the exile expected to succeed by his attorneys to the ample estates of his father. But Richard now discovered that his banishment, like an outlawry, had rendered him incapable of inheriting property. At a great council, including the committee of parliament, it was held that the patents granted, both to him and his antagonist, were illegal, and therefore void; and all the members present were sworn to support that determination. Henry Bowet, who had procured the patent for the duke of Hereford, was even condemned, for that imaginary offence, to suffer the punishment of treason; though, on account of his character, his life was spared on condition that he should abjure the kingdom forever. This iniquitous proceeding seems to have exhausted the patience of the nation. Henry--on the death of his father he had assumed the title of duke of Lancaster--had long been the idol of the people; and the voluntary assemblage of thousands to attend him on his last departure from London might have warned Richard of the approaching danger. The feeling of their own wrongs had awakened among them a spirit of resistance; the new injury offered to their favorite pointed him out to them as their leader. Consultations were held; plans were formed; the dispositions of the great lords were sounded; and the whole nation appeared in a ferment. Yet it was in this moment, so pregnant with danger, that the infatuated monarch determined to leave his kingdom. His cousin and heir, the Earl of March, had been surprised and slain by a party of Irish; and, in his eagerness to revenge the loss of a relation, he despised the advice of his friends, and wilfully shut his eyes to the designs of his enemies. Having appointed his uncle, the Duke of York, regent during his absence, the King assisted at a solemn mass at Windsor, chanted a collect himself, and made his offering. At the door of the Church he took wine and spices with his young Queen; and, lifting her up in his arms, repeatedly kissed her, saying, "Adieu, madam, adieu till we meet again." From Windsor, accompanied by several noblemen, he proceeded to Bristol, where the report of plots and conspiracies reached him, and was received with contempt. At Milford Haven he joined his army, and, embarking in a fleet of two hundred sail, arrived in a few days in the port of Waterford. His cousin the Duke of Albemarle had been ordered to follow with a hundred more; and three weeks were consumed in waiting for that nobleman, whose delay was afterward attributed to a secret understanding with the King's enemies. At length Richard led his forces from Kilkenny against the Irish. Several of the inferior chiefs hastened barefoot and with halters round their necks to implore his mercy; but M'Murchad spurned the idea of submission, and boasted that he would extirpate the invaders. He dared not indeed meet them in open combat; but it was his policy to flee before them, and draw them into woods and morasses, where they could neither fight with advantage nor procure subsistence. The want of provisions and the clamor of the soldiers compelled the King to give up the pursuit, and to direct his march toward Dublin; and M'Murchad, when he could no longer impede their progress, solicited and obtained a parley with the Earl of Gloucester, the commander of the rear-guard. The chieftain was an athletic man; he came to the conference mounted on a gray charger, which had cost him four hundred head of cattle, and brandished with ease and dexterity a heavy spear in his hand. He seemed willing to become the nominal vassal of the King of England, but refused to submit to any conditions. Richard set a price on his head, proceeded to Dublin, and at the expiration of a fortnight was joined by the Duke of Albemarle with men and provisions. This seasonable supply enabled him to recommence the pursuit of M'Murchad; but while he was thus occupied with objects of inferior interest in Ireland, a revolution had occurred in England, which eventually deprived him both of his crown and his life. When the King sailed to Ireland, Henry of Bolingbroke, the new Duke of Lancaster, resided in Paris, where he was hospitably entertained, but at the same time narrowly watched, by the French monarch. About Christmas he offered his hand to Marie, one of the daughters of the Duke of Berry. The jealousy of Richard was alarmed; the Earl of Salisbury hastened to Paris to remonstrate against the marriage of a daughter of France with an English "traitor," and, suiting his conduct to his words, the envoy, having accomplished his object, returned without deigning to speak to the exile. While Henry was brooding over these injuries, the late Primate, or nominal Bishop of St. Andrews, secretly left his house at Cologne, and in the disguise of a friar procured an interview with the Duke at the Hotel de Vinchester. The result of their meeting was a determination to return to England during the King's absence. To elude the suspicions of the French ministers, Henry procured permission to visit the Duke of Bretagne; and, on his arrival at Nantes, hired three small vessels, with which he sailed from Vannes to seek his fortune in England. His whole retinue consisted only of the Archbishop, the son of the late Earl of Arundel, fifteen lances, and a few servants. After hovering for some days on the eastern coast, he landed at Ravenspur in Yorkshire, and was immediately joined by the two powerful earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland; before whom, in the White Friars at Doncaster, he declared upon oath that his only object was to recover the honors and estates which had belonged to his father, and bound himself not to advance any claim to the crown. The Duke of York, to whom the King had intrusted the government during his absence, was accurately informed of his motions, and had summoned the retainers of the crown to join the royal standard at St. Albans. There is, however, reason to believe that he was not hearty in the cause which it was his duty to support. He must have viewed with pity the unmerited misfortunes of one nephew, and have condemned the violent and thoughtless career of the other; and from the fate of his brother Gloucester, and the cruel and unjust treatment of the only son of his brother, John of Gaunt, he could not draw any very flattering conclusion with respect to the stability of his own family. Whether it was from suspicion of his fidelity, or from the disinclination of the chief barons to draw the sword against one who demanded nothing more than his right, the favorites of Richard became alarmed for their own safety. The Earl of Wiltshire, with Bussy and Greene, members of the committee of parliament, had been appointed to wait on the young Queen at Wallingford; but they suddenly abandoned their charge, and fled with precipitation to Bristol. York himself followed with the army in the same direction. It might be that, to relieve himself from responsibility, he wished to be in readiness to deliver up the command on the expected arrival of Richard from Ireland; but at the same time he left open the road from Yorkshire to the metropolis, and allowed the adventurer to pursue his object without impediment. Henry was already on his march. The snowball increased as it rolled along, and the small number of forty followers, with whom he had landed, swelled by the time that he had reached St. Albans to sixty thousand men. He was preceded by his messengers and letters, stating not only his own wrongs, but also the grievances of the people, and affirming that the revenue of the kingdom had been let out to farm to the rapacity of Scrope, Bussy, and Greene. In all those lordships which had been the inheritance of his family he was received with enthusiasm; in London by a procession of the clergy and people, with addresses of congratulation, and presents, and offers of service. His stay in the capital was short. Having flattered the citizens, and confirmed them in their attachment to his person, he turned to the west, and entered Evesham, on the same day on which York reached Berkeley. After an interchange of messages they met in the church of the castle; and, before they separated, the doom of Richard was sealed. That the regent consented to the actual deposition of his nephew does not necessarily follow; he might only have sought his reformation by putting it out of his power to govern amiss; but he betrayed the trust which had been reposed to him, united his force with that of Henry, and commanded Sir Peter Courtenay, who held the castle of Bristol for the King, to open its gates. That officer, protesting that he acknowledged no authority in the Duke of Lancaster, obeyed the mandate of the regent. The next morning the three fugitives, the Earl of Wiltshire, Bussy, and Greene, were executed by order of the constable and marshal of the host. The Duke of York remained at Bristol; Henry with his own forces proceeded to Chester to secure that city, and awe the men of Cheshire, the most devoted adherents of the King. We may now return to Richard in Ireland. It must appear strange, but Henry had been in England a fortnight before the King, in consequence, it was said, of the tempestuous weather, had heard of his landing. The intelligence appears to have provoked indignation as much as alarm. "Ha!" he exclaimed, "fair uncle of Lancaster, God reward your soul! Had I believed you, this man would not have injured me. Thrice have I pardoned him; this is his fourth offence." But he referred the matter to his council, and was advised to cross over to England immediately with the ships which had brought the reënforcement under the Duke of Albemarle. That nobleman, however, insidiously, as it was afterward pretended, diverted him from this intention. The Earl of Salisbury received orders to sail immediately with his own retainers, a body of one hundred men, and to summon to the royal standard the natives of Wales. Richard promised to follow in the fleet from Waterford in the course of six days. The Earl obeyed; the men of Wales and Cheshire answered the call; and a gallant host collected at Conway. But Richard appeared not according to his promise; distressing reports were circulated among the troops; and the royalists, having waited for him almost a fortnight, disbanded in spite of the fears and entreaties of their commander. At last, on the eighteenth day, the King arrived in Milford Haven with the dukes of Albemarle, Exeter, and Surrey, the Earl of Worcester, the bishops of London, Lincoln, and Carlisle, and several thousands of the troops who had accompanied him to Ireland. With such a force, had it been faithful, he might have made a stand against his antagonist; but on the second morning, when he arose, he observed from his window that the greater part had disappeared. A council was immediately summoned, and a proposal made that the King should flee by sea to Bordeaux; but the Duke of Exeter objected that to quit the kingdom in such circumstances was to abdicate the throne. Let them proceed to the army at Conway. There they might bid defiance to the enemy; or at all events, as the sea would still be open, might thence set sail to Guienne. His opinion prevailed; and at nightfall the King, in the disguise of a Franciscan friar, his two brothers of Exeter and Surrey, the Earl of Gloucester, the Bishop of Carlisle, Sir Stephen Scrope, and Sir William Feriby, with eight others, stole away from the army, and directed their route toward Conway. Their flight was soon known. The royal treasure, which Richard left behind him, was plundered; Albemarle, Worcester, and most of the leaders hastened to pay their court to Henry; the rest attempted in small bodies to make their way to their own counties, but were in most instances plundered and ill-treated by the Welsh. The royal party with some difficulty, but without any accident, reached Conway, where, to their utter disappointment, instead of a numerous force, they found only the Earl of Salisbury with a hundred men. In this emergency the King's brothers undertook to visit Henry at Chester, and to sound his intentions; and during their absence Richard, with the Earl of Salisbury, examined the castles of Beaumaris and Carnarvon; but finding them without garrisons or provisions, the disconsolate wanderers returned to their former quarters. When the two dukes were admitted into the presence of Henry, they bent the knee and acquainted him with their message from the King. He took little notice of Surrey, whom he afterward confined in the castle, but, leading Exeter aside, spoke with him in private, and gave him, instead of the hart, the King's livery, his own badge of the rose. But no entreaties could induce him to allow them to return. Exeter was observed to drop a tear when the Duke of Albemarle said to him tauntingly: "Fair cousin, be not angry. If it please God, things shall go well." The immediate object of Henry was to secure the royal person. He was gratified to learn from the envoys the place of Richard's retreat, and detained them at Chester, that the King, instead of making his escape, might await their return. His first care was to take possession of the treasure which the King had deposited in the strong castle of Holt; his next, to despatch the Earl of Northumberland at the head of four hundred men-at-arms and a thousand archers to Conway, with instructions not to display his force, lest the King should put to sea, but by artful speeches and promises to draw him out of the fortress and then make him prisoner. The Earl took possession in his journey of the castles of Flint and Rhuddlan, and a few miles beyond the latter, placing his men in concealment under a rock, rode forward with only five attendants to Conway. He was readily admitted, and, to the King's anxious inquiries about his brothers, replied that he had left them well at Chester, and had brought a letter from the Duke of Exeter. In it that nobleman said, or rather was made to say, that full credit might be given to the offers of the bearer. These offers were, that Richard should promise to govern and judge his people by law; that the dukes of Exeter and Surrey, the Earl of Salisbury, the Bishop of Carlisle, and Maudelin, the King's chaplain, should submit to a trial in parliament, on the charge of having advised the assassination of Gloucester; that Henry should be made grand justiciary of the kingdom, as his ancestors had been for a hundred years; and that, on the concession of these terms, the Duke should come to Flint, ask the King's pardon on his knees, and accompany or follow him to London. Richard consulted his friends apart. He expressed his approbation of the articles, but bade them secretly be assured that no consideration should induce him to abandon them on their trial, and that he would grasp the first opportunity of being revenged on his and their enemies--"for there were some among them whom he would flay alive; whom he would never spare for all the gold in the land." Northumberland was then sworn to the observance of the conditions. He took his oath on the host; and, "like Judas," says the writer, "perjured himself on the body of our Lord." As Northumberland departed to make arrangements for the interview at Flint, the King said to him: "I rely, my lord, on your faith. Remember your oath, and the God who heard it." Soon afterward he followed with his friends and their servants, to the number of twenty-two. They came to a steep declivity, to the left of which was the sea, and on the right a lofty rock overhanging the road. The King dismounted, and was descending on foot, when he suddenly exclaimed: "I am betrayed. God of Paradise, assist me! Do you not see banners and pennons in the valley?" Northumberland with eleven others met them at the moment and affected to be ignorant of the circumstance. "Earl of Northumberland," said the King, "if I thought you capable of betraying me, it is not too late to return." "You cannot return," the Earl replied, seizing the King's bridle; "I have promised to conduct you to the Duke of Lancaster." By this time he was joined by a hundred lances, and two hundred archers on horseback; and Richard, seeing it impossible to escape, exclaimed: "May the God, on whom you laid your hand, reward you and your accomplices at the last day!" and then, turning to his friends, added: "We are betrayed; but remember that our Lord was also sold and delivered into the hands of his enemies." They dined at Rhuddlan, and reached Flint in the evening. The King, as soon as he was left with his friends, abandoned himself to the reflections which his melancholy situation inspired. He frequently upbraided himself with his past indulgence to his present opponent: "Fool that I was!" he exclaimed: "thrice did I save the life of this Henry of Lancaster. Once my dear uncle his father, on whom the Lord have mercy! would have put him to death for his treason and villany. God of Paradise! I rode all night to save him; and his father delivered him to me, to do with him as I pleased. How true is the saying that we have no greater enemy than the man whom we have preserved from the gallows! Another time he drew his sword on me, in the chamber of the Queen, on whom God have mercy! He was also the accomplice of the Duke of Gloucester and the Earl of Arundel; he consented to my murder, to that of his father, and of all my council. By St. John, I forgave him all; nor would I believe his father, who more than once pronounced him deserving of death." The unfortunate King rose after a sleepless night, heard mass, and ascended the tower to watch the arrival of his opponent. At length he saw the army, amounting to eighty thousand men, winding along the beach till it reached the castle and surrounded it from sea to sea. He shuddered and wept, and cursed the Earl of Northumberland, but was called down by the arrival of Archbishop Arundel, the Duke of Albemarle, and the Earl of Worcester. They knelt to Richard, who, drawing the prelate apart, held a long conversation with him. After their departure he again mounted the tower, and, surveying the host of his enemies, exclaimed: "Good Lord God! I commend myself into thy holy keeping, and cry thee mercy, that thou wouldst pardon all my sins. If they put me to death I will take it patiently, as thou didst for us all." Northumberland had ordered dinner, and the Earl of Salisbury, the Bishop and the two knights, Sir Stephen Scrope and Sir William Feriby, sat with the King at the same table by his order; for since they were all companions in misfortune, he would allow no distinction among them. While he was eating, unknown persons entered the hall, insulting him with sarcasms and threats. As soon as he rose, he was summoned into the court to receive the Duke of Lancaster. Henry came forward in complete armor, with the exception of his helmet. As soon as he saw the King he bent his knee, and, advancing a few paces, he repeated his obeisance with his cap in his hand. "Fair cousin of Lancaster," said Richard, uncovering himself, "you are right welcome." "My lord," answered the Duke, "I am come before my time. But I will show you the reason. Your people complain that for the space of twenty or two-and-twenty years you have ruled them rigorously; but, if it please God, I will help you to govern better." The King replied, "Fair cousin, since it pleaseth you, it pleaseth us well." Henry then addressed himself successively to the Bishop and to the knights, but refused to notice the Earl. The King's horses were immediately ordered; and two lean and miserable animals were brought out, on which Richard and Salisbury mounted, and amid the flourish of trumpets and shouts of triumph followed the Duke into Chester. At Chester writs were issued in the King's name for the meeting of parliament and the preservation of the peace. Henry dismissed the greater part of his army, and prepared to conduct his prisoner to the capital. At Lichfield Richard seized a favorable moment to let himself down from his window, but was retaken in the garden, and from that moment was constantly guarded by ten or twelve armed men. In the neighborhood of London they separated. Henry, accompanied by the mayor and principal citizens, proceeded to St. Paul's, prayed before the high altar, and wept a few minutes over the tomb of his father. The King was sent to Westminster, and thence on the following day to the Tower, and, as he went along, was greeted with curses and the appellation of "the bastard," a word of ominous import, and prophetic of his approaching degradation. When the Duke first landed in England, he had sworn on the Gospels that his only object was to vindicate his right to the honors and possessions of the house of Lancaster. If this was the truth, his ambition had grown with his good-fortune. He now aspired to exchange the coronet of a duke for the crown of a king. Can we believe that he would meet with opposition from his associates, the Percy family? Yet so we are assured. They, however, by their perfidy, had given themselves a master. Their retainers had been already dismissed; and the friends of Richard abhorred them as the worst of traitors. They had therefore no resource but to submit, and to second the design of Lancaster. After several consultations it was resolved to combine a solemn renunciation of the royal authority on the part of Richard with an act of deposition on the part of the two houses of parliament, in the hope that those whose scruples should not be satisfied with the one, might acquiesce in the other. To obtain the first, the royal captive was assailed with promises and threats. Generally he abandoned himself to lamentation and despair; occasionally he exerted that spirit which he had formerly displayed. "Why am I thus guarded?" he asked one day. "Am I your king or your prisoner?" "You are my king, sir," replied the Duke with coolness; "but the council of your realm has thought proper to place a guard about you." [Illustration: Richard II resigns the crown of England to Henry, Duke of Lancaster, son of John of Gaunt, at London. Painting by Sir John Gilbert.] On the day before the meeting of parliament a deputation of prelates, barons, knights, and lawyers waited on the captive in the Tower, and reminded him that in the castle of Conway, while he was perfectly his own master, he had promised to resign the crown on account of his own incompetency to govern. On his reply that he was ready to perform his promise, a paper was given him to read, in which he was made to absolve all his subjects from their fealty and allegiance, to renounce of his own accord all kingly authority, to acknowledge himself incapable of reigning, and worthy for his past demerits to be deposed, and to swear by the holy Gospels that he would never act, nor, as far as in him lay, suffer any other person to act, in opposition to this resignation. He then added, as from himself, that if it were in his power to name his successor, he would choose his cousin of Lancaster, who was present, and to whom he gave his ring, which he took from his own finger. Such is the account of this transaction inserted by the order of Henry in the rolls of parliament; an account the accuracy of which is liable to strong suspicion. It is difficult to believe that Richard had so much command over his feelings as to behave with that cheerfulness which is repeatedly noticed in the record; and the assertion that he had promised to resign the crown when he saw Northumberland in the castle of Conway, is not only contradictory to the statement of the two eye-witnesses, but also in itself highly improbable. From the fate of Edward II, with which he had so often been threatened, he must have known that it was better to flee to his transmarine dominions, which were still open to him, than to resign his crown and remain a prisoner in the custody of his successor. The next day the two houses met amid a great concourse of people in Westminster hall. The Duke occupied his usual seat near the throne, which was empty and covered with cloth of gold. The resignation of the King was read; each member, standing in his place, signified his acceptance of it aloud; and the people with repeated shouts expressed their approbation. Henry now proceeded to the second part of his plan, the act of deposition. For this purpose the coronation oath was first read; thirty-three articles of impeachment followed, in which it was contended that Richard had violated that oath; and thence it was concluded that he had by his misconduct forfeited his title to the throne. Of the articles, those which bear the hardest on the King are: the part which he was supposed to have had in the death of the Duke of Gloucester, his revocation of the pardons formerly granted to that Prince and his adherents, and his despotic conduct since the dissolution of parliament. Of the remainder, some are frivolous; many might, with equal reason, have been objected to each of his predecessors; and the others rest on the unsupported assertion of men whose interest it was to paint him in the blackest colors. No opposition had been anticipated, nor is any mentioned on the rolls; but we are told that the Bishop of Carlisle, to the astonishment of the Lancastrians, rose and demanded for Richard what ought not to be refused to the meanest criminal, the right of being confronted with his accusers; and for parliament what it might justly claim, the opportunity of learning from the King's own mouth whether the resignation of the crown, which had been attributed to him, were his own spontaneous act. If Merks actually made such a speech, he must have stood alone; no one was found to second it; the house voted the deposition of Richard; and eight commissioners, ascending a tribunal erected before the throne, pronounced him degraded from the state and authority of king, on the ground that he notoriously deserved such punishment, and had acknowledged it under his hand and seal on the preceding day. Sir William Thirnyng, chief justice, was appointed to notify the sentence to the captive, who meekly replied that he looked not after the royal authority, but hoped his cousin would be good lord to him. The rightful possessor was now removed from the throne. But, supposing it to be vacant, what pretensions could Henry of Lancaster advance to it? By the law of succession it belonged to the descendants of Lionel, the third son of Edward III; and their claim, it is said, had been formally recognized in parliament. All waited in anxious suspense till the Duke, rising from his seat, and forming with great solemnity the sign of the cross on his forehead and breast, pronounced the following words: "In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I, Henry of Lancaster, challenge this realm of England, and the crown, with all the members and appurtenances, as that I am descended by right line of blood, coming from the good lord King Henry III, and through that right that God, of his grace, hath sent me with help of my kin and of my friends to recover it; the which realm was in point to be undone for default of governance and undoing of good laws." In these extraordinary terms did Lancaster advance his pretensions, artfully intermixing an undefined claim of inheritance[73] with those of conquest and expediency, and rather hinting at each than insisting on either. But, however difficult it might be to understand the ground, the object of his challenge was perfectly intelligible. Both houses admitted it unanimously; and, as a confirmation, Henry produced the ring and seal which Richard had previously delivered to him. The Archbishop of Canterbury now took him by the hand, and led him to the throne. He knelt for a few minutes in prayer on the steps, arose, and was seated in it by the two archbishops. As soon as the acclamations had subsided, the Primate, stepping forward, made a short harangue, in which he undertook to prove that a monarch in the vigor of manhood was a blessing, a young and inexperienced prince was a curse to a people. At the conclusion the King rose. "Sirs," said he, "I thank God, and you, spiritual and temporal, and all estates of the land; and do you to wit, it is not my will that no man think that by way of conquest I would disinherit any man of his heritage, franchises, or other rights that him ought to have, nor put him out of that that he has and has had by the good laws and customs of the realm; except those persons that have been against the good purpose and the common profit of the realm." With the authority of Richard had expired that of the parliament and of the royal officers. Henry immediately summoned the same parliament to meet again in six days, appointed new officers of the crown, and as soon as he had received their oaths retired in state to the royal apartments. Thus ended this eventful day, with the deposition of Richard of Bordeaux, and the succession of his cousin, Henry of Bolingbroke. DISCOVERY OF THE CANARY ISLANDS AND THE AFRICAN COAST BEGINNING OF NEGRO SLAVE TRADE A.D. 1402 SIR ARTHUR HELPS The Canary Islands--the "Elysian Fields" and "Fortunate Islands" of antiquity--have perhaps figured in fabulous lore more extensively than any others, and have been discovered, invaded, and conquered more frequently than any country in the world. There has scarcely been a nation of any maritime enterprise that has not had to do with them, and in one manner or another made its appearance in them. During the period following the death of ancient empires, the Canary Islands lay hidden in the general darkness which fell upon the world. With the modern revival came new and greater mariners, and the islands were once more discovered. It is well to note the connection between these modern rediscoveries and the origin of negro slavery. In Europe the old pagan slavery existed in many nations, and in the early Christian centuries underwent many modifications through the advance of the new religion and civilization. The modern form of slavery began with the first importation of negroes into Europe, as shown in the following account, from which it appears that the history of modern slavery begins with the history of African discovery. Petrarch is referred to by Viera to prove that the Genoese sent out an expedition to the Canary Islands. Las Casas mentions that an English or French vessel bound from France or England to Spain was driven by contrary winds to these Islands, and on its return spread abroad in France an account of the voyage. The information thus obtained--or perhaps in other ways of which there is no record--stimulated Don Luis de la Cerda, Count of Clermont, great-grandson of Don Alonzo the Wise of Castile, to seek for the investiture of the crown of the Canaries, which was given to him with much pomp by Clement VI, at Avignon, in 1344, Petrarch being present. This sceptre proved a barren one. The affairs of France, with which state the new King of the Canaries was connected, drew off his attention; and he died without having visited his dominions. The next authentic information that we have of the Canary Islands is that, in the times of Don Juan I of Castile, and of Don Enrique, his son, these islands were much visited by the Spaniards. In 1399, we are told, certain Andalusians, Biscayans, Guipuzcoans, with the consent of Don Enrique, fitted out an expedition of five vessels, and making a descent on the island of Lanzarote, one of the Canaries, took captive the King and Queen, and one hundred and seventy of the islanders. Hitherto there had been nothing but discoveries, rediscoveries, and invasions of these islands; but at last a colonist appears upon the scene. This was Juan de Béthencourt, a great Norman baron, lord of St. Martin le Gaillard in the County of Eu, of Béthencourt, of Granville, of Sancerre, and other places in Normandy, and chamberlain to Charles VI of France. Those who are at all familiar with the history of that period, and with the mean and cowardly barbarity which characterized the long-continued contests between the rival factions of Orleans and Burgundy, may well imagine that any Frenchman would then be very glad to find a career in some other country. Whatever was the motive of Juan de Béthencourt, he carried out his purpose in the most resolute manner. Leaving his young wife, and selling part of his estate, he embarked at Rochelle in 1402, with men and means for the purpose of conquering, and establishing himself in, the Canary Islands. It is not requisite to give a minute description of this expedition. Suffice it to say that Béthencourt met with fully the usual difficulties, distresses, treacheries, and disasters that attach themselves to this race of enterprising men. After his arrival at the Canaries, finding his means insufficient, he repaired to the court of Castile, did acts of homage to the King, Enrique III, and afterward renewed them to his son Juan II, thereby much strengthening the claim which the Spanish monarchs already made to the dominion of these islands. Béthencourt, returning to the islands with renewed resources, made himself master of the greater part of them, reduced several of the natives to slavery, introduced the Christian faith, built churches, and established vassalage. On the occasion of quitting his colony in A.D. 1405, he called all his vassals together, and represented to them that he had named for his lieutenant and governor Maciot de Béthencourt, his relation; that he himself was going to Spain and to Rome to seek for a bishop for them; and he concluded his oration with these words: "My loved vassals, great or small, plebeians or nobles, if you have anything to ask me or to inform me of, if you find in my conduct anything to complain of, do not fear to speak; I desire to do favor and justice to all the world." The assembly he was addressing contained none of the slaves he had made. We are told, however, and that by eye-witnesses, that the poor natives themselves bitterly regretted his departure, and, wading through the water, followed his vessel as far as they could. After his visit to Spain and to Rome, he returned to his paternal domains in Normandy, where, while meditating another voyage to his colony, he died in 1425. Maciot de Béthencourt ruled for some time successfully; but afterward, falling into disputes with the Bishop, and his affairs generally not prospering, he sold his rights to Prince Henry of Portugal--also, as it strangely appears, to another person--and afterward settled in Madeira. The claims to the government of the Canaries were, for many years, in a most entangled state; and the right to the sovereignty over these islands was a constant ground of dispute between the crowns of Spain and Portugal. Thus ended the enterprise of Juan de Béthencourt, which, though it cannot be said to have led to any very large or lasting results, yet, as it was the first modern attempt of the kind, deserves to be chronicled before commencing with Prince Henry of Portugal's long-continued and connected efforts in the same direction. The events also which preceded and accompanied Béthencourt's enterprise need to be recorded, in order to show the part which many nations, especially the Spaniards, had in the first discoveries on the coast of Africa. We now turn to the history of the discoveries made, or rather caused to be made, by Prince Henry of Portugal. This Prince was born in 1394. He was the third son of John I of Portugal and Philippa, the daughter of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. That good Plantagenet blood on the mother's side was, doubtless, not without avail to a man whose life was to be spent in continuous and insatiate efforts to work out a great idea. Prince Henry was with his father at the memorable capture of Ceuta, the ancient Septem, in 1415. This town, which lies opposite to Gibraltar, was of great magnificence, and one of the principal marts in that age for the productions of the East. It was here that the Portuguese nation first planted a firm foot in Africa; and the date of this town's capture may, perhaps, be taken as that from which Prince Henry began to meditate further and far greater conquests. His aims, however, were directed to a point long beyond the range of the mere conquering soldier. He was especially learned, for that age of the world, being skilled in mathematical and geographical knowledge. And it may be noticed here that the greatest geographical discoveries have been made by men conversant with the book knowledge of their own time. A work, for instance, often seen in the hands of Columbus, which his son mentions as having had much influence with him, was the learned treatise of Cardinal Petro de Aliaco (Pierre d'Ailly), the _Imago Mundi_. But to return to Prince Henry of Portugal. We learn that he had conversed much with those who had made voyages in different parts of the world, and particularly with Moors from Fez and Morocco, so that he came to hear of the Azeneghis, a people bordering on the country of the negroes of Jalof. Such was the scanty information of a positive kind which the Prince had to guide his endeavors. Then there were the suggestions and the inducements which to a willing mind were to be found in the shrewd conjectures of learned men, the fables of chivalry, and, perhaps, in the confused records of forgotten knowledge once possessed by Arabic geographers. The story of Prister John, which had spread over Europe since the crusades, was well known to the Portuguese Prince. A mysterious voyage of a certain wandering saint, called St. Brendan, was not without its influence upon an enthusiastic mind. Moreover, there were many sound motives urging the Prince to maritime discovery; among which, a desire to fathom the power of the Moors, a wish to find a new outlet for traffic, and a longing to spread the blessings of the faith may be enumerated. The especial reason which impelled Prince Henry to take the burden of discovery on himself was that neither mariner nor merchant would be likely to adopt an enterprise in which there was no clear hope of profit. It belonged, therefore, to great men and princes, and among such he knew of no one but himself who was inclined to it. The map of the world being before us, let us reduce it to the proportions it filled in Prince Henry's time: let us look at our infant world. First, take away those two continents, for so we may almost call them, each much larger than a Europe, to the far west. Then cancel that square, massive-looking piece to the extreme southeast; happily there are no penal settlements there yet. Then turn to Africa: instead of that form of inverted cone which it presents, and which we now know there are physical reasons for its presenting, make a cimetar shape of it, by running a slightly curved line from Juba on the eastern side to Cape Nam on the western. Declare all below that line unknown. Hitherto, we have only been doing the work of destruction; but now scatter emblems of hippogriffs and anthropophagi on the outskirts of what is left in the map, obeying a maxim, not confined to the ancient geographers only--where you know nothing, place terrors. Looking at the map thus completed, we can hardly help thinking to ourselves, with a smile, what a small space, comparatively speaking, the known history of the world has been transacted in, up to the last four hundred years. The idea of the universality of the Roman dominions shrinks a little; and we begin to fancy that Ovid might have escaped his tyrant. The ascertained confines of the world were now, however, to be more than doubled in the course of one century; and to Prince Henry of Portugal, as to the first promoter of these vast discoveries, our attention must be directed. This Prince, having once the well-grounded idea in his mind that Africa did not end where it was commonly supposed, namely, at Cape Nam (Not), but that there was a world beyond that forbidding negative, seems never to have rested until he had made known that quarter of the globe to his own. He fixed his abode upon the promontory of Sagres, at the southern part of Portugal, whence, for many a year, he could watch for the rising specks of white sail bringing back his captains to tell him of new countries and new men. We may wonder that he never went himself; but he may have thought that he served the cause better by remaining at home and forming a centre whence the electric energy of enterprise was communicated to many discoverers, and then again collected from them. Moreover, he was much engaged in the public affairs of his country. In the course of his life he was three times in Africa, carrying on war against the Moors; and at home, besides the care and trouble which the state of the Portuguese court and government must have given him, he was occupied in promoting science and encouraging education. In 1415, as before noticed, he was at Ceuta. In 1418 he was settled on the promontory of Sagres. One night in that year he is thought to have had a dream of promise, for on the ensuing morning he suddenly ordered two vessels to be got ready forthwith, and to be placed under the command of two gentlemen of his household, Joham Gonçalvez Zarco and Tristam Vaz, whom he ordered to proceed down the Barbary coast on a voyage of discovery. A contemporary chronicler, Azurara, whose work has recently been discovered and published, tells the story more simply, and merely states that these captains were young men, who, after the ending of the Ceuta campaign, were as eager for employment as the Prince for discovery; and that they were ordered on a voyage having for its object the general molestation of the Moors, as well as that of making discoveries beyond Cape Nam. The Portuguese mariners had a proverb about this cape--"He who would pass Cape Not, either will return or not"; intimating that, if he did not turn before passing the cape, he would never return at all. On the present occasion it was not destined to be passed; for these captains, Joham Gonçalvez Zarco and Tristam Vaz, were driven out of their course by storms, and accidentally discovered a little island, where they took refuge, and from that circumstance called the island Porto Santo. "They found there a race of people living in no settled polity, but not altogether barbarous or savage, and possessing a kindly and most fertile soil." I give this description of the first land discovered by Prince Henry's captains, thinking it would well apply to many other lands about to be found out by his captains and by other discoverers. Joham Gonçalvez Zarco and Tristam Vaz returned. Their master was delighted with the news they brought him, more on account of its promise than its substance. In the same year he sent them out again, together with a third captain, named Bartholomew Perestrelo, assigning a ship to each captain. His object was not only to discover more lands, but also to improve those which had been discovered. He sent, therefore, various seeds and animals to Porto Santo. This seems to have been a man worthy to direct discovery. Unfortunately, however, among the animals some rabbits were introduced into the new island; and they conquered it, not for the Prince, but for themselves. Hereafter, we shall find that they gave his people much trouble, and caused no little reproach to him. We come now to the year 1419. Perestrelo, for some unknown cause, returned to Portugal at that time. After his departure, Joham Gonçalvez Zarco and Tristam Vaz, seeing from Porto Santo something that seemed like a cloud, but yet different--the origin of so much discovery, noting the difference in the likeness--built two boats, and, making for this cloud, soon found themselves alongside a beautiful island, abounding in many things, but most of all in trees, on which account they gave it the name of "Madeira" (Wood). The two discoverers entered the island at different parts. The Prince, their master, afterward rewarded them with the captaincies of those parts. To Perestrelo he gave the island of Porto Santo to colonize it. Perestrelo, however, did not make much of his captaincy, but after a strenuous contest with the rabbits, having killed an army of them, died himself. This captain has a place in history as being the father-in-law of Columbus, who, indeed, lived at Porto Santo for some time, and here, on new-found land, meditated far bolder discoveries. Joham Gonçalvez Zarco and Tristam Vaz began the cultivation of their island of Madeira, but met with an untoward event at first. In clearing the wood, they kindled a fire among it, which burned for seven years, we are told; and in the end, that which had given its name to the island, and which, in the words of the historian, overshadowed the whole land, became the most deficient commodity. The captains founded churches in the island; and the King of Portugal, Don Duarte, gave the temporalities to Prince Henry, and all the spiritualities to the Knights of Christ. While these things were occurring at Madeira and at Porto Santo, Prince Henry had been prosecuting his general scheme of discovery, sending out two or three vessels each year, with orders to go down the coast from Cape Nam, and make what discoveries they could; but these did not amount to much, for the captains never advanced beyond Cape Bojador, which is situated seventy leagues to the south of Cape Nam. This Cape Bojador was formidable in itself, being terminated by a ridge of rocks with fierce currents running round them, but was much more formidable from the fancies which the mariners had formed of the sea and land beyond it. "It is clear," they were wont to say, "that beyond this cape there is no people whatever; the land is as bare as Libya--no water, no trees, no grass in it; the sea so shallow that at a league from the land it is only a fathom deep; the currents so fierce that the ship which passes that cape will never return;" and thus their theories were brought in to justify their fears. This outstretcher--for such is the meaning of the word _bojador_--was, therefore, as a bar drawn across that advance in maritime discovery which had for so long a time been the first object of Prince Henry's life. The Prince had now been working at his discoveries for twelve years, with little approbation from the generality of persons; the discovery of these islands, Porto Santo and Madeira, serving to whet his appetite for further enterprise, but not winning the common voice in favor of prosecuting discoveries on the coast of Africa. The people at home, improving upon the reports of the sailors, said that "the land which the Prince sought after was merely some sandy place like the deserts of Libya; that princes had possessed the empires of the world, and yet had not undertaken such designs as his, nor shown such anxiety to find new kingdoms; that the men who arrived in those foreign parts--if they did arrive--turned from white into black men; that the King Don John, the Prince's father, had endowed foreigners with land in his kingdom, to break it up and cultivate it--a thing very different from taking the people out of Portugal, which had need of them, to bring them among savages to be eaten, and to place them upon lands of which the mother country had no need; that the Author of the world had provided these islands solely for the habitation of wild beasts, of which an additional proof was that those rabbits the discoverers themselves had introduced were now dispossessing them of the island." There is much here of the usual captiousness to be found in the criticism of bystanders upon action, mixed with a great deal of false assertion and premature knowledge of the ways of Providence. Still, it were to be wished that most criticism upon action was as wise; for that part of the common talk which spoke of keeping their own population to bring out their own resources had a wisdom in it which the men of future centuries were yet to discover throughout the peninsula. Prince Henry, as may be seen by his perseverance up to this time, was not a man to have his purposes diverted by such criticism, much of which must have been, in his eyes, worthless and inconsequent in the extreme. Nevertheless, he had his own misgivings. His captains came back one after another with no good tidings of discovery, but with petty plunder gained, as they returned from incursions on the Moorish coast. The Prince concealed from them his chagrin at the fruitless nature of their attempts, but probably did not feel it less on that account. He began to think: Was it for him to hope to discover that land which had been hidden from so many princes? Still, he felt within himself the incitement of "a virtuous obstinacy," which would not let him rest. Would it not, he thought, be ingratitude to God, who thus moved his mind to these attempts, if he were to desist from his work, or be negligent in it? He resolved, therefore, to send out again Gil Eannes, one of his household, who had been sent the year before, but had returned, like the rest, having discovered nothing. He had been driven to the Canary Islands, and had seized upon some of the natives there, whom he brought back. With this transaction the Prince had shown himself dissatisfied; and Gil Eannes, now intrusted again with command, resolved to meet all dangers rather than to disappoint the wishes of his master. Before his departure, the Prince called him aside and said: "You cannot meet with such peril that the hope of your reward shall not be much greater; and in truth, I wonder what imagination this is that you have all taken up--in a matter, too, of so little certainty; for if these things which are reported had any authority, however little, I would not blame you so much. But you quote to me the opinions of four mariners, who, as they were driven out of their way to Frandes or to some other ports to which they commonly navigated, had not, and could not have used, the needle and the chart; but do you go, however, and make your voyage without regard to their opinion,--and, by the grace of God, you will not bring out of it anything but honor and profit." We may well imagine that these stirring words of the Prince must have confirmed Gil Eannes in his resolve to efface the stain of his former misadventure. And he succeeded in doing so; for he passed the dreaded Cape Bojador--a great event in the history of African discovery, and one that in that day was considered equal to a labor of Hercules. Gil Eannes returned to a grateful and most delighted master. He informed the Prince that he had landed, and that the soil appeared to him unworked and fruitful; and, like a prudent man, he could not tell of foreign plants, but had brought some of them home with him in a barrel of the new-found earth--plants much like those which bear in Portugal the roses of Santa Maria. The Prince rejoiced to see them, and gave thanks to God, "as if they had been the fruit and sign of the promised land; and besought Our Lady, whose name the plants bore, that she would guide and set forth the doings in this discovery to the praise and glory of God and to the increase of his holy faith." After passing the Cape of Bojador there was a lull in Portuguese discovery, the period from 1434 to 1441 being spent in enterprises of very little distinctness or importance. Indeed, during the latter part of this period, the Prince was fully occupied with the affairs of Portugal. In 1437 he accompanied the unfortunate expedition to Tangier, in which his brother Ferdinand was taken prisoner, who afterward ended his days in slavery to the Moor. In 1438, King Duarte dying, the troubles of the regency occupied Prince Henry's attention. In 1441, however, there was a voyage which led to very important consequences. In that year Antonio Gonçalvez, master of the robes to Prince Henry, was sent out with a vessel to load it with skins of "sea-wolves," a number of them having been seen, during a former voyage, in the mouth of a river about fifty-four leagues beyond Cape Bojador. Gonçalvez resolved to signalize his voyage by a feat that should gratify his master more than the capture of sea-wolves; and he accordingly planned and executed successfully an expedition for capturing some Azeneghi Moors, in order, as he told his companions, to take home "some of the language of that country." Nuño Tristam, another of Prince Henry's captains, afterward falling in with Gonçalvez, a further capture of Moors was made, and Gonçalvez returned to Portugal with his spoil. In the same year Prince Henry applied to Pope Martin V, praying that his holiness would grant to the Portuguese crown all that it could conquer, from Cape Bojador to the Indies, together with plenary indulgence for those who should die while engaged in such conquests. The Pope granted these requests. "And now," says a Portuguese historian, "with this apostolic grace, with the breath of royal favor, and already with the applause of the people, the Prince pursued his purpose with more courage and with greater outlay." In 1442 the Moors whom Antonio Gonçalvez had captured in the previous year promised to give black slaves in ransom for themselves if he would take them back to their own country; and the Prince, approving of this, ordered Gonçalvez to set sail immediately, "insisting as the foundation of the matter, that if Gonçalvez should not be able to obtain so many negroes (as had been mentioned) in exchange for the three Moors, yet that he should take them; for whatever number he should get, he would gain souls, because the negroes might be converted to the faith, which could not be managed with the Moors." Gonçalvez obtained ten black slaves, some gold-dust, a target of buffalo-hide, and some ostrich eggs in exchange for two of the Moors, and, returning with his cargo, excited general wonderment on account of the color of the slaves. These, then, we may presume, were the first black slaves that had made their appearance in the peninsula since the extinction of the old slavery. I am not ignorant that there are reasons for alleging that negroes had before this era been seized and carried to Seville. The _Ecclesiastical and Secular Annals_ of that city, under the date 1474, record that negro slaves abounded there, and that the fifths levied on them produced considerable gains to the royal revenue; it is also mentioned that there had been traffic of this kind in the days of Don Enrique III, about 1399, but that it had since then fallen into the hands of the Portuguese. The chronicler states that the negroes of Seville were treated very kindly from the time of King Enrique, being allowed to keep their dances and festivals; and that one of them was named _mayoral_ of the rest, who protected them against their masters and before the courts of law, and also settled their own private quarrels. There is a letter from Ferdinand and Isabella in the year 1474 to a celebrated negro, Juan de Valladolid, commonly called the "Negro Count," nominating him to this office of mayoral of the negroes, which runs thus: "For the many good, loyal, and signal services which you have done us, and do each day, and because we know your sufficiency, ability, and good disposition, we constitute you mayoral and judge of all the negroes and mulattoes, free or slaves, which are in the very loyal and noble city of Seville, and throughout the whole archbishopric thereof, and that the said negroes and mulattoes may not hold any festivals nor pleadings among themselves, except before you, Juan de Valladolid, negro, our judge and mayoral of the said negroes and mulattoes; and we command that you, and you only, should take cognizance of the disputes, pleadings, marriages, and other things which may take place among them, forasmuch as you are a person sufficient for that office, and deserving of your power, and you know the laws and ordinances which ought to be kept, and we are informed that you are of noble lineage among the said negroes." But the above merely shows that in the year 1474 there were many negroes in Seville, and that laws and ordinances had been made about them. These negroes might all, however, have been imported into Seville since the Portuguese discoveries. True it is that in the times of Don Enrique III, and during Béthencourt's occupation of the Canary Islands, slaves from thence had been brought to France and Spain; but these islanders were not negroes, and it certainly may be doubted whether any negroes were imported into Seville previous to 1443. Returning to the course of Portuguese affairs, a historian of that nation informs us that the gold obtained by Gonçalvez "awakened, as it always does, covetousness"; and there is no doubt that it proved an important stimulus to further discovery. The next year Nuño Tristam went farther down the African coast; and, off Adeget, one of the Arguim Islands, captured eighty natives, whom he brought to Portugal. These, however, were not negroes, but Azeneghis. The tide of popular opinion was now not merely turned, but was rushing in full flow, in favor of Prince Henry and his discoveries. The discoverers were found to come back rich in slaves and other commodities; whereas it was remembered that, in former wars and undertakings, those who had been engaged in them had generally returned in great distress. Strangers, too, now came from afar, scenting the prey. A new mode of life, as the Portuguese said, had been found out; and "the greater part of the kingdom was moved with a sudden desire to follow this way to Guinea." In 1444 a company was formed at Lagos, who received permission from the Prince to undertake discovery along the coast of Africa, paying him a certain portion of any gains which they might make. This has been considered as a company founded for carrying on the slave trade; but the evidence is by no means sufficient to show that its founders meant such to be its purpose. It might rather be compared to an expedition sent out, as we should say in modern times, with letters of marque, in which, however, the prizes chiefly hoped for were not ships nor merchandise, but men. The only thing of any moment, however, which the expedition accomplished was to attack successfully the inhabitants of the islands Nar and Tider, and to bring back about two hundred slaves. I grieve to say that there is no evidence of Prince Henry's putting a check to any of these proceedings; but, on the contrary, it appears that he rewarded with large honors Lançarote, one of the principal men of this expedition, and received his own fifth of the slaves. Yet I have scarcely a doubt that the words of the historian are substantially true--that discovery, not gain, was still the Prince's leading idea. We have an account from an eye-witness of the partition of the slaves brought back by Lançarote, which, as it is the first transaction of the kind on record, is worthy of notice, more especially as it may enable the reader to understand the motives of the Prince and of other men of those times. It is to be found in the _Chronicle_, before referred to, of Azurara. The merciful chronicler is smitten to the heart at the sorrow he witnesses, but still believes it to be for good, and that he must not let his mere earthly commiseration get the better of his piety. "O thou heavenly Father," he exclaims, "who, with thy powerful hand, without movement of thy divine essence, governest all the infinite company of thy holy city, and who drawest together all the axles of the upper worlds, divided into nine spheres, moving the times of their long and short periods as it pleases thee! I implore thee that my tears may not condemn my conscience, for not its law, but our common humanity, constrains my humanity to lament piteously the sufferings of these people (slaves). And if the brute animals, with their mere bestial sentiments, by a natural instinct, recognize the misfortunes of their like, what must this by human nature do, seeing thus before my eyes this wretched company, remembering that I myself am of the generation of the sons of Adam! The other day, which was the eighth of August, very early in the morning, by reason of the heat, the mariners began to bring to their vessels, and, as they had been commanded, to draw forth those captives to take them out of the vessel: whom, placed together on that plain, it was a marvellous sight to behold; for among them there were some of a reasonable degree of whiteness, handsome and well made; others less white, resembling leopards in their color; others as black as Ethiopians, and so ill-formed, as well in their faces as their bodies, that it seemed to the beholders as if they saw the forms of a lower hemisphere. "But what heart was that, how hard soever, which was not pierced with sorrow, seeing that company: for some had sunken cheeks, and their faces bathed in tears, looking at each other; others were groaning very dolorously, looking at the heights of the heavens, fixing their eyes upon them, crying out loudly, as if they were asking succor from the Father of nature; others struck their faces with their hands, throwing themselves on the earth; others made their lamentations in songs, according to the customs of their country, which, although we could not understand their language, we saw corresponded well to the height of their sorrow. But now, for the increase of their grief, came those who had the charge of the distribution, and they began to put them apart one from the other, in order to equalize the portions, wherefore it was necessary to part children and parents, husbands and wives, and brethren from each other. Neither in the partition of friends and relations was any law kept, only each fell where the lot took him. O powerful Fortune! who goest hither and thither with thy wheels, compassing the things of the world as it pleaseth thee, if thou canst, place before the eyes of this miserable nation some knowledge of the things that are to come after them, that they may receive some consolation in the midst of their great sadness! and you others who have the business of this partition, look with pity on such great misery, and consider how can those be parted whom you cannot disunite! Who will be able to make this partition without great difficulty? for while they were placing in one part the children that saw their parents in another, the children sprang up perseveringly and fled to them; the mothers enclosed their children in their arms and threw themselves with them on the ground, receiving wounds with little pity for their own flesh, so that their offspring might not be torn from them! "And so, with labor and difficulty, they concluded the partition, for, besides the trouble they had with the captives, the plain was full of people, as well of the place as of the villages and neighborhood around, who in that day gave rest to their hands, the mainstay of their livelihood, only to see this novelty. And as they looked upon these things, some deploring, some reasoning upon them, they made such a riotous noise as greatly to disturb those who had the management of this distribution. The Infante was there upon a powerful horse, accompanied by his people, looking out his share, but as a man who for his part did not care for gain, for, of the forty-six souls which fell to his fifth, he speedily made his choice, as all his principal riches were in his contentment, considering with great delight the salvation of those souls which before were lost. And certainly his thought was not vain, for as soon as they had knowledge of our language they readily became Christians; and I, who have made this history in this volume, have seen in the town of Lagos young men and young women, the sons and grandsons of those very captives, born in this land, as good and as true Christians as if they had lineally descended, since the commencement of the law of Christ, from those who were first baptized." The good Azurara wished that these captives might have some foresight of the things to happen after their death. I do not think, however, that it would have proved much consolation to them to have foreseen that they were almost the first of many millions to be dealt with as they had been; for, in this year 1444, Europe may be said to have made a distinct beginning in the slave trade, henceforth to spread on all sides, like the waves upon stirred water, and not, like them, to become fainter and fainter as the circles widen. In 1445 an expedition was fitted out by Prince Henry himself, and the command given to Gonsalvo de Cintra, who was unsuccessful in an attack on the natives near Cape Blanco. He and some other of the principal men of the expedition lost their lives. These were the first Portuguese who died in battle on that coast. In the same year the Prince sent out three other vessels. The captains received orders from the Infante, Don Pedro, who was then Regent of Portugal, to enter the river D'Oro, and make all endeavors to convert the natives to the faith, and even, if they should not receive baptism, to make peace and alliance with them. This did not succeed. It is probable that the captains found negotiation of any kind exceedingly tame and apparently profitless in comparison with the pleasant forays made by their predecessors. The attempt, however, shows much intelligence and humanity on the part of those in power in Portugal. That the instructions were sincere is proved by the fact of this expedition returning with only one negro, gained in ransom, and a Moor who came of his own accord to see the Christian country. This same year 1445 is signalized by a great event in the progress of discovery along the African coast. Dinis Dyaz, called by Barros and the historians who followed him Dinis Fernandez, sought employment from the Infante, and, being intrusted by him with the command of a vessel, pushed boldly down the coast, and passed the river Sanaga (Senegal), which divides the Azeneghis--whom the first discoverers always called Moors--from the negroes of Jalof. The inhabitants were much astonished at the presence of the Portuguese vessel on their coasts, and at first took it for a fish or a bird or a phantasm; but when in their rude boats--hollowed logs--they neared it, and saw that there were men in it, judiciously concluding that it was a more dangerous thing than fish or bird or phantasm, they fled. Dinis Fernandez, however, captured four of them off that coast, but as his object was discovery, not slave-hunting, he went on till he discovered Cape Verd, and then returned to his country, to be received with much honor and favor by Prince Henry. These four negroes taken by Dinis Fernandez were the first taken in their own country by the Portuguese. That the Prince was still engaged in high thoughts of discovery and conversion we may conclude from observing that he rewarded and honored Dinis Fernandez as much as if he had brought him large booty; for the Prince "thought little of whatever he could do for those who came to him with these signs and tokens of another greater hope which he entertained." In this case, as in others, we should do great injustice if we supposed that Prince Henry had any of the pleasure of a slave-dealer in obtaining these negroes: it is far more probable that he valued them as persons capable of furnishing intelligence, and, perhaps, of becoming interpreters, for his future expeditions. Not that, without these especial motives, he would have thought it anything but great gain for a man to be made a slave, if it were the means of bringing him into communion with the Church. After this, several expeditions, which did not lead to much, occupied the Prince's time till 1447. In that year a fleet, large for those times, of fourteen vessels, was fitted out at Lagos by the people there, and the command given by Prince Henry to Lançarote. The object seems to have been, from a speech that is recorded of Lançarote's, to make war upon the Azeneghi Moors, and especially to take revenge for the defeat before mentioned which Gonsalvo de Cintra suffered in 1445 near Cape Blanco. That purpose effected, Lançarote went southward, extending the discovery of the coast to the Gambia. In the course of his proceedings on that coast we find again that Prince Henry's instructions insisted much upon the maintenance of peace with the natives. Another instance of the same disposition on his part deserves to be especially recorded. The expedition had been received in a friendly manner at Gomera, one of the Canary Islands. Notwithstanding this kind reception, some of the natives were taken prisoners. On their being brought to Portugal, Prince Henry had them clothed and afterward set at liberty in the place from which they had been taken. This expedition under Lançarote had no great result. The Portuguese went a little farther down the coast than they had ever been before, but they did not succeed in making friends of the natives, who had already been treated in a hostile manner by some Portuguese from Madeira. Neither did the expedition make great spoil of any kind. They had got into feuds with the natives, and were preparing to attack them, when a storm dissipated their fleet and caused them to return home. It appears, I think, from the general course of proceedings of the Portuguese in those times, that they considered there was always war between them and the Azeneghi Moors--that is, in the territory from Ceuta as far as the Senegal River; but that they had no declared hostility against the negroes of Jalof, or of any country farther south, though skirmishes would be sure to happen from ill-understood attempts at friendship on the one side, and just or needless fears on the other. The last public enterprise of which Prince Henry had the direction was worthy to close his administration of the affairs relating to Portuguese discovery. He caused two ambassadors to be despatched to the King of the Cape Verd territory, to treat of peace and to introduce the Christian faith. One of the ambassadors, a Danish gentleman, was treacherously killed by the natives, and upon that the other returned, having accomplished nothing. Don Alfonso V, the nephew of Prince Henry, now took the reins of government, and the future expeditions along the coast of Africa proceeded in his name. Still it does not appear that Prince Henry ceased to have power and influence in the management of African affairs; and the first thing that the King did in them was to enact that no one should pass Cape Bojador without a license from Prince Henry. Some time between 1448 and 1454 a fortress was built in one of the islands of Arguim, which islands had already become a place of bargain for gold and negro slaves. This was the first Portuguese establishment on the coast of Africa. It seems that a system of trade was now established between the Portuguese and the negroes. COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE A.D. 1414 RICHARD LODGE During the forty years of the second great schism in the Roman Catholic Church, 1378-1417, different parties adhered to different popes, of whom there were sometimes two or more simultaneously in office. The French cardinals preferred Avignon--to which the holy see had been removed in 1309--as the seat of the pope, the Italian cardinals preferred Rome, and two lines of popes were consequently chosen. This division proved extremely injurious to the papal power and authority. Meanwhile there were various efforts for reform in the Church, among the most notable movements being those led by John Wycliffe in England and John Huss on the Continent. At last a council was called to decide who was the rightful claimant to the papal throne. The council assembled at Pisa, Italy, in 1409, but recognized neither of the then rival popes--Gregory XII and Benedict XIII--Alexander V being elected in their stead. The deposed popes, however, would not give up their rule, and so the action of the council added to the difficulty, since there were now three popes instead of two. Alexander V died ten months after his election, and the cardinals chose as his successor Cardinal Cossa, who took the name of John XXIII. The Church remained as much divided as before. In 1412 Pope John, who was a shrewd and politic man, opened at Rome a council for the reformation of the Church, but there seems to have been little serious purpose either on the part of John himself or of the ecclesiastics who assembled; and practically nothing was done. John was more concerned about his political relations with various sovereigns. He was at war with Ladislaus, King of Naples, who soon drove him from Rome. John fled to Florence, and appealed to Sigismund, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, for assistance. But the Emperor would aid him only on condition that the Pope should summon a new council to some German city, in order to end the schism. At last John issued a formal summons for a council to meet at Constance on November 1, 1414. Before it assembled, Ladislaus died, and Sigismund determined to conduct the council in the interest of his imperial dignity and that of the German kingship, which he also held. The Council of Constance, like that of Pisa, had two very obvious questions to consider: (1) The restoration of unity; and (2), if the reforming party could have its way, the reform of the Church in its head and members. But circumstances forced the council to consider a third question, which had never been even touched in the discussions at Pisa. This was reformation in its widest sense; not merely a constitutional change in the relations of pope and hierarchy, but a vital change in dogma and ritual. This question was brought to the front by the so-called Hussite movement in Bohemia. The fundamental issues involved were those which have been at the bottom of most subsequent disputes in the Christian Church. How far was the Christianity of the day unlike the Christianity to be found in the record of Christ and his apostles? And the difference, if any, was it a real and necessary difference consequent on the development of society, or was it the result of abuses and innovations introduced by fallible men? The orthodox took their stand upon the unity and authority of the Church. The Church was the true foundation of Christ and the inheritor of his spirit. Therefore what the Church believed and taught, that alone was the true Christian doctrine; and the forms and ceremonies of the Church were the necessary aids to faith. The reformers, on the other hand, looked to Scripture for the fundamental rules of life and conduct. Any deviation from these rules, no matter on what authority, must be superfluous and might very probably be harmful. The Council of Constance is one of the most notable assemblies in the history of the world. In the number and fame of its members, in the importance of its objects, and, above all, in the dramatic interest of its records, it has few rivals. It is like the meeting of two worlds, the old and the new, the mediæval and the modern. We find there represented views which have hardly yet been fully accepted, which have occupied the best minds of succeeding centuries; at the same time, the council itself and its ceremonial carry us back to the times of the Roman Empire, when church and state were scarcely yet dual, and when Christianity was coextensive with one united empire. At Constance all the ideas, religious and political, of the Middle Ages seem to be put upon their trial. If that trial had ended in condemnation, there could be no fitter point to mark the division between mediæval and modern history. But the verdict was acquittal, or at least a partial aquittal; and the old system was allowed, under modified conditions, a lease of life for another century. It must not be forgotten that there were great secular as well as ecclestiasical interests involved in the council. Princes and nobles were present as well as cardinals and prelates. The council may be regarded not only as a great assembly of the Church, but also as a great diet of the mediæval empire. The man who had done more than anyone to procure the summons of the council, and whose interests were most closely bound up in its success, was Sigismund, King of the Romans and potential Emperor. He was eager to terminate the schism, and to bring about such a reform in the Church as would prevent the recurrence of similar scandals. But his motive in this was not merely disinterested devotion to the interests of the Church. He wished to revive the prestige of the Holy Roman Empire, and to gratify his own personal vanity by posing as the secular head of Christendom and the arbiter of its disputes. More especially he wished to restore the authority of the monarchy in Germany, and to put an end to that anarchic independence of the princes of which the recent schism was both the illustration and the result. In pursuing this aim he was confronted by the champions of "liberty" and princely interests, who were represented at Constance by the Archbishop of Mainz and Frederick of Hapsburg, Count of Tyrol. The Archbishop, John of Nassau, had been prominent in effecting and prolonging the schism in the Empire. He was a firm supporter of John XXIII, and had no interest in attending the council except to thwart the designs of the King, whom he had been the last to accept. Frederick of Tyrol was the youngest son of that duke Leopold who had fallen at Sempach in the war with the Swiss. Of his father's possessions Frederick had inherited Tyrol and the Swabian lands, and the propinquity of his territories made him a powerful personage at Constance. His family was the chief rival of the house of Luxemburg for ascendency in Eastern Germany, and he himself seems to have cherished a personal grudge against Sigismund. To these enemies Sigismund could oppose two loyal allies, the elector palatine Lewis, who had completely abandoned the anti-Luxemburg policy pursued by his father, Rupert, and Frederick of Hohenzollern, the most prominent representative of national sentiment in Germany, who had already given in Brandenburg an example of that restoration of order which he wished Sigismund to effect throughout his dominions. Of the clerical members of the council the most prominent at the commencement was the pope John XXIII. He had been forced by his difficulties in Italy to issue the summons, but as the time for the meeting approached he felt more and more misgiving. His object was to maintain himself in office; but he was conscious that neither Sigismund nor the cardinals would hesitate to throw him over if he stood in the way of the restoration of unity. He therefore allied himself with Sigismund's opponents, the Elector of Mainz and Frederick of Tyrol, and spared no pains to bring about dissension between Sigismund and the council. The assembled clergy may be divided roughly into two parties, the reformers, and the conservative or ultramontane party. The reformers were not in favor of any radical change in the Church. They were, if anything, more vehemently opposed than their antagonists to the doctrines of Wycliffe and Huss. Such reform as they desired was aristocratic rather than democratic. They had no intention of weakening the authority of the Church; but within the Church they desired to remove gross abuses, and to strengthen the hierarchy as against the papacy. Their chief contention was that a general council has supreme authority, even over the pope, and they wished such councils to meet at regular intervals. By this means papal absolutism would be limited by a sort of oligarchical parliament within the Church. The conservatives, on the other hand, consisting chiefly of the cardinals and Italian prelates, had no wish to alter a system under which they enjoyed material advantages. Their object, as it had been at Pisa, was to restore the union of the Church, but to defeat, or at any rate postpone, any schemes of reform. The council was opened on November 5th, but the meeting was only formal, and no real business was transacted for a month. Meanwhile Huss had been followed to Constance by the representatives of the orthodox party in Bohemia, who brought a formidable list of charges against the reformer. John XXIII at once saw in this an opportunity for embroiling the council with Sigismund. Adroitly keeping himself in the background, he allowed the cardinals to take the lead in the matter. They summoned Huss to appear before them, and in spite of his protest that he was only answerable to the whole council, they committed him to prison. The news that his safe-conduct had been so insultingly disregarded reached Sigismund as he was starting for Constance after the coronation ceremony at Aachen. He arrived on Christmas Day, and at once demanded that Huss should be released. The Pope excused himself, and threw the blame on the cardinals. To the King's right to protect his subject the cardinals opposed their duty to suppress heresy. In high dudgeon, Sigismund declared that he would leave the council to its fate, and actually set out on his return journey. The Pope was jubilant at the success of his wiles. But Sigismund's friends, and especially Frederick of Hohenzollern, urged him not to sacrifice the interests of Germany and of Christendom for the sake of a heretic. This advice, and the feeling that his personal reputation was staked on the success of the council, triumphed. Sigismund returned to Constance, and Huss remained a prisoner. From this moment John XXIII began to despair. The Pope's position became worse when the council, copying the procedure of the universities, began to discuss matters, not in a general assembly, but each nation separately. This deprived John of the advantage which he hoped to gain from the numerical majority of Italian prelates attending the council. Four nations organized themselves: Italians, French, Germans, and English. Over the last three John XXIII had no hold whatever. To his disgust they treated him, not as the legitimate pope, whose authority was to be vindicated against his rivals, but as one of three schismatic popes, whose retirement was a necessary condition of the restoration of unity. When he tried to evade their demand, they brought unanswerable charges against his personal character and threatened to depose him. He tried to disarm hostility by declaring his readiness to resign if the other popes would do the same. His promise was welcomed with enthusiasm, but neither Sigismund nor his supporters were softened by it. In spite of the vehement protests of the Elector of Mainz that he would obey no pope but John XXIII, the proposal was made to proceed to a new election. John had to fall back upon his last expedient. If he departed from Constance he might throw the council into fatal confusion; at the worst he could maintain himself as an antipope, as Gregory and Benedict had done against the Council of Pisa. His ally Frederick of Tyrol was prepared to assist him. Frederick arranged a tournament outside the walls; and while this absorbed public interest, the Pope escaped from Constance in the disguise of a groom, and made his way to Schaffhausen, a strong castle of the Hapsburg Count. For the moment John XXIII seemed not unlikely to gain his end. Constance was thrown into confusion by the news of his flight. The mob rushed to pillage the papal residence. The Italian and Austrian prelates prepared to leave the city, and the council was on the verge of dissolution. But Sigismund's zeal and energy succeeded in averting such a disaster. He restored order in the city, persuaded the prelates to remain, and took prompt measures to punish his rebellious vassal. An armed force under Frederick of Hohenzollern succeeded in capturing not only John XXIII, but also Frederick of Tyrol. The latter was compelled to undergo public humiliation, and to hand over his territories to his suzerain on condition that his life should be spared. No such exercise of imperial power had been witnessed in Germany since the days of the Hohenstaufen, and Sigismund chose this auspicious moment to secure a powerful supporter within the electoral college by handing over the electorate of Brandenburg to Frederick of Nuremberg, April 30, 1415. He thus established a dynasty which was destined to play a great part in German history, and ultimately to create a new German empire. The unsuccessful flight of John XXIII not only enabled Sigismund to assume a more authoritative position in the council and in Germany; it also sealed his own fate. The council had no longer any hesitation in proceeding to the formal deposition of the Pope May 29, 1415. As the two popes who had been deposed at Pisa had never been recognized at Constance, the Church was now without a head. But instead of hastening to fill the vacancy, the council turned aside to the suppression of heresy and the trial of Huss. On three occasions, the 5th, 7th, and 8th of June, Huss was heard before a general session. No point in his teaching excited greater animadversion than his contention that a priest, whether pope or prelate, forfeited his office by the commission of mortal sin. With great cunning his accusers drew him on to extend this doctrine to temporal princes. This was enough to complete the alienation of Sigismund, and after the third day's trial he was the first to pronounce in favor of condemnation. The last obstacle in the way of the prosecution was thus removed, and Huss was burned in a meadow outside the city walls on July 6, 1415. With the death of Huss ends the first and most eventful period of the Council of Constance. Within these seven or eight months Sigismund and the reforming party, thanks to the division of the council into nations, seemed to have gained a signal success. Sigismund had purchased his triumph by breaking his pledge to Huss, and for this he was to pay a heavy penalty in the subsequent disturbances in Bohemia. But for the moment these were not foreseen, and Sigismund was jubilantly eager to prosecute his scheme. Warned by the experience of its predecessor at Pisa, the Council of Constance was careful not to put too much trust in paper decrees. John XXIII was not only deposed, but a prisoner. Gregory XII had given a conditional promise of resignation, and had so few supporters as to be of slight importance. But Benedict XIII was still strong in the allegiance of the Spanish kingdoms, and unless they could be detached from his cause there was little prospect of ending the schism. This task Sigismund volunteered to undertake, and he also proposed to avert the impending war between England and France, to reconcile the Burgundian and Armagnac parties in the latter country, and to negotiate peace between the King of Poland and the Teutonic Knights. It would, indeed, be a revival of the imperial idea if its representative could thus act as a general mediator in European quarrels. The council welcomed the offer with enthusiasm, and showed their loyalty to Sigismund by deciding to postpone all important questions till his return. And this decision was actually adhered to. During the sixteen months of Sigismund's absence--July 15, 1415, to January 27, 1417--only two prominent subjects were considered by the council. One was the trial of Jerome of Prague, which was a mere corollary of that of Huss, and ended in a similar sentence. The other was the thorny question raised by the proposed condemnation of the writings of Jean Petit, a Burgundian partisan who had defended the murder of the Duke of Orleans. The leader of the attack upon Jean Petit was Gerson, the learned and eloquent chancellor of the University of Paris. But so completely had the matter become a party question, and so great was the influence of the Duke of Burgundy, that the council could not be induced to go further than a general condemnation of the doctrine of lawful tyrannicide; and Gerson's activity in the matter provoked such ill-will that after the close of the council he could not venture to return to France, which was then completely under Burgundian and English domination. It is impossible to narrate here the story of Sigismund's journey, though it abounds with illustrations of his impulsive character and of the attitude of the western states toward the imperial pretensions. It furnished conclusive proofs, if any were needed, that however the council, for its own ends, might welcome the authority of a secular head, national sentiment was far too strongly developed to give any chance of success to a projected revival of the mediæval empire. As regards his immediate object, Sigismund was able to achieve some results. He failed to induce Benedict XIII to abdicate, but the quibbles of the veteran intriguer exhausted the patience of his supporters, and at a conference at Narbonne the Spanish kings agreed to desert him and to adhere to the Council of Constance, December, 1415. But Sigismund's more ambitious schemes came to nothing. So far from preventing a war between England and France, he only forwarded an alliance between Henry V and the Duke of Burgundy; and though he may have done this in the hope of forcing peace upon France, the result was to make the war more disastrous and prolonged. When Sigismund reappeared in Constance, January 27, 1417, he found that the state of affairs both in Germany and in the council had altered for the worse. Frederick of Tyrol had returned to his dominions and had been welcomed by his subjects. The Archbishop of Mainz had renewed his intrigues, and an attempt had even been made to release John XXIII. With the Elector Palatine, formerly his loyal supporter, Sigismund had quarrelled on money matters, and it seemed possible that the four Rhenish electors would form a league against Sigismund as they had done against Wenceslaus in 1400. Still more galling was his loss of influence in the council. The adhesion of the Spanish kingdoms had been followed by the arrival of Spanish prelates, who formed a fifth nation and strengthened the party opposed to reform. The war between England and France had created a quarrel between the two nations at Constance, and the French deserted the cause they had once championed rather than vote with their enemies. Sigismund could only rely upon the English and the Germans; and the question which agitated the council was one of vital importance. Which was to come first, the election of a new pope or the adoption of a scheme of ecclesiastical reform? The conservatives contended that the Church could hardly be said to exist without its head; that no reform would be valid until the normal constitution of the Church was restored. On the other hand, it was urged that no reform was possible unless the supremacy of a general council was fully recognized; that certain questions could be more easily discussed and settled during a vacancy; that if the reforms were agreed upon, a new pope could be pledged to accept them, whereas a pope elected at once could prevent all reform. Party spirit ran extremely high, and it seemed almost impossible to effect an agreement. Sigismund was openly denounced as a heretic, while he in turn threatened to imprison the cardinals for contumacy. But gradually the balance turned against the reformers. Some of the leading German bishops were bribed to change their votes. The head of the English representatives, Robert Hallam, Bishop of Salisbury, died at the critical moment, and the influence of Henry Beaufort, the future cardinal, induced the English nation to support an immediate election. It was agreed that a new pope should be chosen at once, and that the council should then proceed to the work of reform. But the only preliminary concession that Sigismund and his party could obtain was the issue of a decree in October, 1417, that another council should meet within five years, a second within seven years, and that afterward a council should be regularly held every ten years. For the new election it was decided that the twenty-three cardinals should be joined by thirty delegates of the council, six from each nation. The conclave met on November 8th, and three days later their choice fell upon Cardinal Oddo Colonna, who took the name of Martin V. Even the defeated party could not refrain from sharing in the general enthusiasm at the restoration of unity after forty years of schism. But their fears as to the ultimate fate of the cause of reform were fully justified. Soon after his election Martin declared that it was impious to appeal to a council against a papal decision. Such a declaration, as Gerson said, nullified the acts of the councils of Pisa and Constance, including the election of the Pope himself. In their indignation the members made a strong appeal to the Pope to fulfil the conditions agreed upon before his election. But Martin had a weapon to hand which had been furnished by the council itself. It was the division into nations that had led to the fall of John XXIII, and it was the same division into nations that had ruined the prospects of reform. The Pope now drew up a few scanty articles of reform, which he offered as separate concordats to the French, Germans, and English. It was a dangerous expedient for a pope to adopt, because it seemed to imply the separate existence of national churches; but it answered its immediate purpose. Martin could contend that there was no longer any work for the council to do, and he dissolved it in May, 1418. He set out for Italy, where a difficult task awaited him. Papal authority in Rome had ceased with the flight of John XXIII in 1414. Sigismund offered the Pope a residence in some Germany city, but Martin wisely refused. The support of his own family, the Colonnas, enabled him to reënter Rome in 1421. By that time almost all traces of the schism had disappeared. Gregory XII was dead; John XXIII had recently died in Florence; Benedict XIII still held out in his fortress of Peniscola, but was impotent in his isolation. TRIAL AND BURNING OF JOHN HUSS THE HUSSITE WARS A.D. 1415 RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH Among the heralds of the Reformation, John Wycliffe, the English Protestant who antedated Protestantism by a century and a half, holds the first position in order of time. For many years after the death of Wycliffe the movement which he began continued to be, as it was at first, confined to England; but at length it was to acquire a wider significance and to enter upon its European extension. Not long after his own day the spirit of Wycliffe--even before knowledge of his work had crossed the Channel--had come to a new birth on the Continent. And when some sparks of Wycliffe's own fire were blown over the half of Europe--even as far as Bohemia--the kindred fires which had long burned in spite of all suppression were quickened into a living and a spreading flame. While then there was a direct and vital influence from the work of the English reformer which gave to his teachings partial identity with those of his Bohemian successors, the movement led by these was still quite independent and national. The central figure of the Bohemian Reformation was John Huss, or Hus, the son of a peasant. He was born in 1369 at Husinetz--of which his own name is a contraction--in Southern Bohemia. The principal events of his life, from the time that he took his degree at the University of Prague until his death at the stake, July 6, 1415, will be found in Trench's sympathetic but discriminating narrative. If we look for the proper forerunners of Huss, his true spiritual ancestors, we shall find them in his own land, in a succession of earnest and faithful preachers--among these Militz (d. 1374) and Janow (d. 1394) stand out the most prominently--who had sown seed which could hardly have failed to bear fruit sooner or later, though no line of Wycliffe's writings had ever found its way to Bohemia. This land, not German, however it may have been early drawn into the circle of German interests, with a population Slavonic in the main, had first received the faith through the preaching of Greek monks. The Bohemian Church probably owed to this fact that, though incorporated from the first with the churches of the West, uses and customs prevailed in it--as the preaching in the mother tongue, the marriage of the clergy, communion in both kinds--which it only slowly and unwillingly relinquished. It was not till the fourteenth century that its lines were drawn throughout in exact conformity with those of Rome. All this deserves to be kept in mind; for it helps to account for the kindly reception which the seed sown by the later Bohemian reformers found, falling as this did in a soil to which it was not altogether strange. John Huss took in the year 1394 his degree as bachelor of theology in that University of Prague upon the fortunes of which he was destined to exercise so lasting an influence; and four years later, in 1398, he began to deliver lectures there. Huss had early taken his degree in a school higher than any school of man's. He himself has told us how he was once careless and disobedient, how the word of the Cross had taken hold of him with strength, and penetrated him through and through as with a mighty purifying fire. What he had learned in the school of Christ he could not keep to himself. Holding, in addition to his academical position, a lectureship founded by two pious laymen for the preaching of the Word in the Bohemian tongue (1401), he soon signalized himself by his diligence in breaking the bread of life to hungering souls, and his boldness in rebuking vice in high places as in low. So long as he confined himself to reproving the sins of the laity, he found little opposition, nay, rather support and applause. But when he brought the clergy and monks also within the circle of his condemnation, and began to upbraid them for their covetousness, their ambition, their luxury, their sloth, and for other vices, they turned resentfully upon him, and sought to undermine his authority, everywhere spreading reports of the unsoundness of his teaching. Let us see on what side he mainly exposed himself to charges such as these. Many things had recently wrought together to bring into nearness countries geographically so remote from one another as Bohemia and England. Anne, wife of our second Richard, was a sister of Wenceslaus, King of Bohemia. The two flourishing universities of Oxford and Prague were bound together by their common zeal for Realism. This may seem to us but a slight and fantastic bond; it was in those days a very strong one indeed. Young English scholars studied at Prague, young Bohemian at Oxford. Now, Oxford, long after Wycliffe's death, was full of interest for his doctrine; and among the many strangers sojourning there, it could hardly fail that some should imbibe opinions and bring back with them books of one whom they had there learned to know and to honor. Thus Jerome, called of Prague, on his return from the English university, gave a new impulse to the study of Wycliffe's writings, bearer as he was of several among these which had not hitherto travelled so far. This man, whose fortunes were so tragically bound up with those of Huss, who should share with him in the same fiery doom, was his junior by several years; his superior in eloquence, in talents, in gifts--for certainly Huss was not a theologian of the first order; speculative theologian he was not at all--but notably his inferior in moderation and practical good-sense. Huss never shared in his friend's indiscriminate admiration of Wycliffe. When, in 1403, some forty-five theses, which either were or professed to be drawn from the writings of the English reformer, were brought before the university, that they might be condemned as heretical, Huss expressed himself with extreme caution and reserve. Many of these, he affirmed, were true when a man took them aright; but he could not say this of all. Not first at the Council of Constance, but long before, he had refused to undertake the responsibility of Wycliffe's teaching on the holy eucharist. But he did not conceal what he had learned from Wycliffe's writings. By these there had been opened to him a deeper glimpse into the corruptions of the Church, and its need of reformation in the head and in the members, than ever he had before obtained. His preaching, with the new accesses of insight which now were his, more than ever exasperated his foes. While matters were in this strained condition, events took place at Prague which are too closely connected with the story that we are telling, exercised too great an influence in bringing about the issues that lie before us, to allow us to pass them by, even though they may prove somewhat long to relate. The University of Prague, though recently founded--it only dated back to the year 1348--was now, next after those of Paris and Oxford, the most illustrious in Europe. Saying this I say much; for we must not measure the influence and authority of a university at that day by the influence and authority, great as these are, which it may now possess. This university, like that of Paris, on the pattern of which it had been modelled, was divided into four "nations"--four groups, that is, or families of scholars--each of these having in academical affairs a single collective vote. These nations were the Bavarian, the Saxon, the Polish, and the Bohemian. This does not appear at first an unfair division--two German and two Slavonic; but in practical working the Polish was so largely recruited from Silesia and other German or half-German lands that its vote was in fact German also. The Teutonic votes were thus as three to one, and the Bohemians, in their own land and in their own university, on every important matter hopelessly outvoted. When, by aid of this preponderance, the university was made to condemn the teaching of Wycliffe in those forty-five points, matters came to a crisis. Urged by Huss--who as a stout patriot, and an earnest lover of the Bohemian language and literature, had more than a theological interest in the matter--by Jerome, by a large number of the Bohemian nobility, King Wenceslaus published an edict whereby the relations of natives and foreigners were completely reversed. There should be henceforth three votes for the Bohemian nation, and only one for the three others. Such a shifting of the weight certainly appears as a redressing of one inequality by creating another. At all events it was so earnestly resented by the Germans, by professors and students alike, that they quitted the university in a body, some say of five thousand and some of thirty thousand, and founded the rival University of Leipsic, leaving no more than two thousand students at Prague. Full of indignation against Huss, whom they regarded as the prime author of this affront and wrong, they spread throughout Germany the most unfavorable reports of him and of his teaching. This exodus of the foreigners had left Huss, who was now rector of the university, with a freer field than before. But church matters at Prague did not mend; they became more confused and threatening every day, until presently Huss stood in open opposition with the hierarchy of his time. Pope John XXIII, having a quarrel with the King of Naples, proclaimed a crusade against him, with what had become a constant accompaniment of this--indulgences to the crusaders. But to denounce indulgences, as Huss with fierce indignation did now, was to wound Pope John in a most sensitive part. He was excommunicated at once, and every place which should harbor him stricken with an interdict. While matters were in this frame the Council of Constance was opened, which should appease all the troubles of Christendom and correct whatever was amiss. The Bohemian difficulty could not be omitted, and Huss was summoned to make answer at Constance for himself. He had not been there four weeks when he was required to appear before the Pope and cardinals, November 18, 1414. After a brief informal hearing he was committed to harsh durance, from which he never issued as a free man again. Sigismund, the German King and Emperor-elect, who had furnished Huss with a safe-conduct which should protect him, "going to the Council, tarrying at the Council, returning from the Council," was absent from Constance at the time, and heard with real displeasure how lightly regarded this promise and pledge of his had been. Some big words, too, he spoke, threatening to come himself and release the prisoner by force; but, being waited on by a deputation from the council, who represented to him that he, as a layman, in giving such a safe-conduct had exceeded his powers, and intruded into a region which was not his, Sigismund was convinced, or affected to be convinced. Doubtless the temptations to be convinced were strong. Had he insisted on the liberation of Huss, the danger was imminent that the council, for which he had labored so earnestly, would be broken up on the plea that its rightful freedom was denied it. He did not choose to run this risk, preferring to leave an everlasting blot upon his name. Some modern sophists assure us that this safe-conduct--or free pass, as they prefer to call it--engaged the imperial word for Huss' safety in going to the council, but for nothing more--a most perfidious document, if this is all which it undertook; for the words--I quote the more important of them in the original Latin--are as follows: "_ut ei transire, stare, morari, redire permittatis_." But the treachery was not in the document, and nobody at the time attempted to find it there. If this had not engaged the honor of the Emperor, what cause of complaint would he have had against the cardinals as having entangled him in a breach of his word? what need of their solemn ambassage to him? Untrue also is the assertion that this was so little regarded by Huss himself as a safe-conduct covering the whole period during which he should be exposed to the malice of his enemies that he never appealed to it or claimed protection from it. He did so appeal at this second formal hearing, June 7th, the first at which Sigismund was present. "I am here," he there said, "under the King's promise that I should return to Bohemia in safety"; while at his last, by a look and by a few like words, he brought the royal word-breaker to a blush, evident to all present, July 6th. But to return a little. More than seven months elapsed before Huss could obtain a hearing before the council. This was granted to him at last. Thrice heard, June 5, 7, 8, 1415--if, indeed, such tumultuary sittings, where the man speaking for his life, and for much more than his life, was continually interrupted and overborne by hostile voices, by loud cries of "Recant, recant!" may be reckoned as hearings at all--he bore himself, by the confession of all, with courage, meekness, and dignity. The charges brought against him were various; some so far-fetched as that urged by a Nominalist from the University of Paris--for Paris was Nominalist now--namely, that as a Realist he could not be sound on the doctrine of the eucharist. Others were vague enough, as that he had sown discord between the church and the state. Nor were accusations wanting which touched a really weak point in his teaching, namely, the subjective aspect which undoubtedly some aspects of it wore; as when he taught that not the baptized, but the predestinated to life, constituted the Church. Beset as he was by the most accomplished theologians of the age, the best or the worst advantage was sure to be made of any vulnerable side which he exposed. But there were charges against him with more in them of danger than these. The point which was really at issue between him and his adversaries concerned the relative authority of the Church and of Scripture. What they demanded of him was a retractation of all the articles brought against him, with an unconditional submission to the council. Some of the articles, he replied, charged him with teaching things which he had never taught, and he could not by this formal act of retractation admit that he had taught them. Let any doctrine of his be shown to be contrary to God's holy Word, and he would retract it; but such unconditional submission he could not yield. His fate was now sealed--that is, unless he could be induced to recant; in which event, though he did not know it, his sentence would have been degradation from the priesthood and a lifelong imprisonment. Many efforts up to the last moment were made by friend and foe to persuade him to this, but in vain. And now once more, July 6th, he is brought before the council, but this time for sentence and for doom. The sentence passed, his suffering begins. The long list of his heresies, among which they are not ashamed to include many which he has distinctly repudiated, is read out in his hearing. He is clothed with priestly garments, that these, piece by piece, and each with an appropriate insult malediction, may be stripped from him again. The sacred vessels are placed in his hands, that from him, "accursed Judas that he is," they may be taken again. There is some difficulty in erasing his tonsure; but this difficulty with a little violence and cruelty is overcome. A tall paper cap, painted over with flames and devils, and inscribed "Heresiarch," is placed upon his head. This done, and his soul having been duly delivered to Satan, his body is surrendered to the secular arm. One last touch is not wanting. As men bind him to the stake, attention is called to the fact that his face is turned to the east. This honor must not be his, upon whom no sun of righteousness shall ever rise. He is unfastened, and refastened anew. All is borne with perfect meekness, in the thought and in the strength of Him who had borne so much more for sinners, the Just for the unjust; and so, in his fire-chariot of a painful martyrdom, Huss passes from our sight. Some may wonder that he, a reformer, should have been so treated by a council, itself also reforming, and with a man like Gerson--_Doctor Christianissimus_ was the title he bore--virtually at its head. But a little consideration will dispel this surprise, and lead us to the conclusion that a council less earnestly bent on reforms of its own would probably have dealt more mildly with him. His position and theirs, however we may ascribe alike to him and to them a desire to reform the Church, were fundamentally different. They, when they deposed a pope, where they proclaimed the general superiority of councils over popes, had no intention of diminishing one jot the Church's authority in matters of faith, but only of changing the seat of that authority, substituting an ecclesiastical aristocracy for an ecclesiastical monarchy--or despotism, as long since it had grown to be. And thus the more earnest the council was to carry out a reformation in discipline, the more eager was it also to make evident to all the world that it did not intend to touch doctrine, but would uphold this as it had received it. It is not then uncharitable to suspect that the leading men of the council--like those reformers at Geneva who a century and a half later, 1553, sent Servetus to the stake--were not sorry to be able to give so signal an evidence of their zeal for the maintenance of the faith which they had received, as thus, in the condemnation of Huss, they had the opportunity of doing. Nor may we leave altogether out of account that the German element must of necessity have been strong in a council held on the shores of the Bodensee; while in his vindication of Bohemian nationality, perhaps an excessive vindication, Huss had offended and embittered the Germans to the uttermost. If any had flattered themselves that with the death of Huss the Reformation in Bohemia had also received its death-blow, they had not long to wait for a painful undeception. Words fail to describe the tempest of passionate indignation with which the tidings of his execution, followed within a year by that of Jerome, were received there. Both were honored as martyrs, and already, in the fierce exasperation of men's spirits against the authors of their doom, there was a prophecy of the unutterable woes which were even at the door. Some watchword by which his followers could know and be known--this watchword, if possible, a spell of power like that which Luther had found in the doctrine of justification by faith--was still wanting. One, however, was soon found; which indeed had this drawback, that it concerned a matter disciplinary rather than doctrinal, yet having a real value as a visible witness for the rights of the laity in the Church of Christ. So far as we know, Huss had not himself laid any special stress on communion under both kinds; but in 1414--he was then already at Constance--the subject had come to the forefront at Prague; and, being consulted, Huss had entirely approved of such communion as most conformable to the original institution and to the practice of the primitive Church. On the other hand, the council, learning the agitation of men's spirits in this direction, had declared what is called the "Concomitance"--that is, that wherever one kind was present, there was also the other, which being so, nothing was, indeed, withholden from the communicant through the withholding of the cup. At the same time the council had solemnly condemned as a heretic everyone who refused to submit himself to the decision of the Church in this matter, June 15, 1415. But there was no temper of submission in Bohemia--least of all when the University of Prague gave its voice in favor of this demand. Wenceslaus, the well-intentioned but poor-spirited King, was quite unable to keep peace between the rival factions, and could only slip out of his difficulties by dying, August 16, 1419. Sigismund, his brother, was also his successor; but of one thing the Bohemians were at this time resolved; namely, that the royal betrayer of his word should not reign over them. And thus a condition of miserable anarchy followed, and, in the end, of open war; which, lasting for eleven years, could be matched by few wars in the cruelties and atrocities by which on both sides it was disgraced. In Ziska, their blind chief, the Hussites had a leader with a born genius for war. It was he who invented the movable wagon-fortress whereof we hear so much, against which the German chivalry would break as idle waves upon a rock. Three times crusading armies--for this name they bore, thinking with no serious opposition to enforce the decrees of the council--invaded Bohemia, to be thrice driven back with utter defeat, disgrace, and loss; the Hussites, who for a long while were content with merely repelling the invaders, after a while, and as the only way of conquering a peace, turning the tables, and wasting with fire and sword all neighboring German lands. A conflict so hideous could not long be waged without a rapid deterioration of all who were engaged in it. The spirit of Huss more and more departed from those who called themselves by his name. Intestine strifes devoured their strength. There were first the Moderates--Calixtines, Utraquists, or "Those of Prague," they were called--who, weary of the long struggle, were willing to return to the bosom of the Church if only the cup (_calix_), and thus communion under both kinds (_sub utraque_), were guaranteed to them, with two or three secondary matters. Not so the Taborites, who drew their name from a mountain fastness which they fortified and called Mount Tabor. These, the Ultras, the democratic radical party, separating themselves off as early as 1419, had left Huss and his teaching very far behind. Ignoring the whole historical development of Christianity, they demanded that a clean sweep should be made of everything in the Church's practice for which an express and literal warrant in Scripture could not be found. When at the Council of Basel an agreement was patched up with the Calixtines on the footing which I have just named, 1433, a few further promises being thrown in which might mean anything and, as the issue proved, did mean nothing, the Taborites would not listen to the compromise. Again they appealed to arms: but now their old comrades and allies had passed to the other side; and, defeated in battle, 1434, their stronghold taken and destroyed, 1453, their political power forever broken, they, too, as so many before and since, were doomed to learn that violence is weakness in disguise, and that the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. Whether the Church of Rome made the concessions to the Calixtines which she did, with the intention of retracting them at the first opportunity, it is impossible to say. This, however, is certain, that half a dozen years had scarcely elapsed before these concessions were brought into question and dispute; while, in less than thirty, Pope Pius II formally withdrew altogether the papal recognition of them, 1462; though a struggle for their maintenance, not always unsuccessful, lasted on into the century ensuing. It was in truth a melancholy close of a movement so hopefully begun. And yet not altogether the close; for, indeed, nothing, in which any elements of true heroism are mingled, so disappears as to leave no traces of itself behind. If it does no more, it serves to feed the high tradition of the world--that most precious of all bequests to the present age from the ages which are behind it. But there was more than this. If much was consumed, yet not all. Something--and that the best worth the saving--was saved from the fires, having first been purified in them. The stormy zealots, as many as had taken the sword, had for the most part perished by the sword. But there were some who made for themselves a better future than the sword could have ever made. A feeble remnant, extricating themselves from the wreck and ruin of their party, and having been taught of God in his severest school, pious Calixtines, too, that were little content with the Compacts of Basel, a few stray Waldensians mingling with them, all these, drawing together in an evil time, refashioned and reconstituted themselves in humblest guise, though not in guise so humble that they could escape the cruel attentions of Rome. Seeking to build on a true scriptural foundation, with a scheme of doctrine, it may be, dogmatically incomplete--even as that of Huss himself had been--with their episcopate lost and never since recovered, the Unitas Fratrum, the Moravian Brethren, trampled and trodden down, but overcoming now, not by weapons of carnal warfare, but by the blood of the Cross, lived on to hail the breaking of a fairer dawn, and to be themselves greeted as witnesses for God, who in a dark and gloomy day, and having but a little strength, had kept his word, and not denied his name. THE HOUSE OF HOHENZOLLERN ESTABLISHED IN BRANDENBURG A.D. 1415 THOMAS CARLYLE The German princely family of Hohenzollern, which ruled over Brandenburg from 1415, has furnished the kings of Prussia since 1701, and since 1871 those kings have also been German emperors. The Hohenzollerns were originally owners of a castle on the Upper Danube, at no great distance from the ancestral seat of the Hapsburg family. They acquired influence at the court of Swabia, and in 1192 had established themselves in Nuremberg, where in that year Frederick I became burggraf. When Rudolph I, founder of the house of Hapsburg, finally defeated his rival, Ottocar of Bohemia (1278), his cause was saved by the assistance of a Hohenzollern--Frederick of Nuremberg. The Hohenzollerns made fortunate marriages and shrewd purchases and the descendants of Frederick I, succeeding to his burggravate, in the course of time acquired great estates in Franconia, Moravia, and Burgundy. Through their increasing wealth--whereby in the fifteenth century they had gained a position similar to that of the present Rothschilds--and by use of their political abilities, they attained commanding influence in the councils of the German princes. Such was the eminence of this powerful family at the time when they acquired the electorate of Brandenburg, the nucleus of the present kingdom of Prussia. Brandenburg was a district formerly inhabited by the Wends, a Slavic people, from whom it was taken in 926 by Henry the Fowler, King of Germany, of which kingdom it afterward became a margravate. Its first margrave was Albert the Bear, under whom, about 1150, it was made an electorate; from Albert's line it passed to Louis the Bavarian, in 1319; and in 1371 it was transferred to Charles (Karl) IV. On the death of Charles, his son and successor Wenzel (Wenceslaus) relinquished Brandenburg to his brothers, as told by Carlyle, who in his own pictorial manner describes the subsequent complications which finally resulted in giving that possession to the ancestors of the present ruling house of Germany. Karl[74] left three young sons, Wenzel, Sigismund, Johann; and also a certain nephew much older; all of whom now more or less concern us in this unfortunate history. Wenzel, the eldest son, heritable Kurfuerst of Brandenburg as well as King of Bohemia, was as yet only seventeen, who nevertheless got to be kaiser--and went widely astray, poor soul. The nephew was no other than Margrave Jobst of Moravia, now in the vigor of his years and a stirring man: to him, for a time, the chief management in Brandenburg fell, in these circumstances. Wenzel, still a minor, and already Kaiser and King of Bohemia, gave up Brandenburg to his two younger brothers, most of it to Sigismund, with a cutting for Johann, to help their appanages; and applied his own powers to govern the Holy Roman Empire, at that early stage of life. To govern the Holy Roman Empire, poor soul--or rather "to drink beer and dance with the girls"; in which, if defective in other things, Wenzel had an eminent talent. He was one of the worst kaisers and the least victorious on record. He would attend to nothing in the Reich; "the Prag white beer, and girls" of various complexion, being much preferable, as he was heard to say. He had to fling his poor Queen's Confessor into the river Moldau--Johann of Nepomuk, Saint so called, if he is not a fable altogether; whose Statue stands on Bridges ever since, in those parts. Wenzel's Bohemians revolted against him; put him in jail; and he broke prison, a boatman's daughter helping him out, with adventures. His Germans were disgusted with him; deposed him from the kaisership; chose Rupert of the Pfalz; and then, after Rupert's death, chose Wenzel's own brother Sigismund in his stead--left Wenzel to jumble about in his native Bohemian element, as king there, for nineteen years longer, still breaking pots to a ruinous extent. He ended by apoplexy, or sudden spasm of the heart; terrible Ziska,[75] as it were, killing him at second hand. For Ziska, stout and furious, blind of one eye and at last of both, a kind of human rhinoceros driven mad, had risen out of the ashes of murdered Huss, and other bad papistic doings, in the interim; and was tearing up the world at a huge rate. Rhinoceros Ziska was on the Weissenberg, or a still nearer hill of Prag since called Ziska-berg (Ziska Hill); and none durst whisper of it to the King. A servant waiting at dinner inadvertently let slip the word: "Ziska there? Deny it, slave!" cried Wenzel, frantic. Slave durst not deny. Wenzel drew his sword to run at him, but fell down dead: that was the last pot broken by Wenzel. The hapless royal ex-imperial phantasm self-broken in this manner. Poor soul, he came to the kaisership too early; was a thin violent creature, sensible to the charms and horrors of created objects; and had terrible rhinoceros ziskas and unruly horned cattle to drive. He was one of the worst kaisers ever known--could have done Opera Singing much better--and a sad sight to Bohemia. Let us leave him there: he was never actual Elector of Brandenburg, having given it up in time; never did any ill to that poor country. The real Kurfürst of Brandenburg all this while was Sigismund, Wenzel's next brother, under tutelage of cousin Jobst or otherwise--a real and yet imaginary, for he never himself governed, but always had Jobst of Mähren or some other in his place there. Sigismund was to have married a daughter of Burggraf Friedrich V;[76] and he was himself, as was the young lady, well inclined to this arrangement. But the old people being dead, and some offer of a king's daughter turning up for Sigismund, Sigismund broke off; and took the king's daughter, King of Hungary's--not without regret then and afterward, as is believed. At any rate, the Hungarian charmer proved a wife of small merit, and a Hungarian successor she had was a wife of light conduct even; Hungarian charmers, and Hungarian affairs, were much other than a comfort to Sigismund. As for the disappointed princess, Burggraf Friedrich's daughter, she said nothing that we hear; silently became a Nun, an Abbess: and through a long life looked out, with her thoughts to herself, upon the loud whirlwind of things, where Sigismund (oftenest an imponderous rag of conspicuous color) was riding and tossing. Her two brothers also, joint Burggraves after their father's death, seemed to have reconciled themselves without difficulty. The elder of them was already Sigismund's brother-in-law; married to Sigismund's and Wenzel's sister--by such predestination as we saw. Burggraf Johann III was the name of this one; a stout fighter and manager for many years; much liked, and looked to, by Sigismund, as indeed were both the brothers, for that matter; always, together or in succession, a kind of right hand to Sigismund. Frederick (Friedrich), the younger Burggraf, and ultimately the survivor and inheritor (Johann having left no sons), is the famed Burggraf Friedrich VI the last and notablest of all the Burggraves--a man of distinguished importance, extrinsic and intrinsic; chief or among the very chief of German public men in his time; and memorable to Posterity, and to this history, on still other grounds! But let us not anticipate. Sigismund, if appanaged with Brandenburg alone, and wedded to his first love, not a king's daughter, might have done tolerably well there; better than Wenzel, with the empire and Bohemia, did. But delusive Fortune threw her golden apple at Sigismund too; and he, in the wide high world, had to play strange pranks. His father-in-law died in Hungary, Sigismund's first wife his only child. Father-in-law bequeathed Hungary to Sigismund, who plunged into a strange sea thereby; got troubles without number, beatings not a few, and had even to take boat, and sail for his life down to Constantinople, at one time. In which sad adventure Burggraf Johann escorted him, and as it were tore him out by the hair of the head. These troubles and adventures lasted many years; in the course of which, Sigismund, trying all manner of friends and expedients, found in the Burggraves of Nuremberg, Johann and Friedrich, with their talents, possessions, and resources, the main or almost only sure support he got. No end of troubles to Sigismund, and to Brandenburg through him, from this sublime Hungarian legacy. Like a remote fabulous golden fleece, which you have to go and conquer first, and which is worth little when conquered. Before ever setting out (1387), Sigismund saw too clearly that he would have cash to raise: an operation he had never done with, all his life afterward. He pawned Brandenburg to cousin Jobst of Mähren; got "twenty thousand Bohemian gulden"--I guess, a most slender sum, if Dryasdust would but interpret it. This was the beginning of pawnings to Brandenburg; of which when will the end be? Jobst thereby came into Brandenburg on his own right for the time, not as tutor or guardian, which he had hitherto been. Into Brandenburg; and there was no chance of repayment to get him out again. Jobst tried at first to do some governing; but finding all very anarchic, grew unhopeful; took to making matters easy for himself. Took, in fact, to turning a penny on his pawn-ticket; alienating crown domains, winking hard at robber barons, and the like--and after a few years, went home to Moravia, leaving Brandenburg to shift for itself, under a Statthalter (Viceregent, more like a hungry land-steward), whom nobody took the trouble of respecting. Robber castles flourished; all else decayed. No highway not unsafe; many a Turpin with sixteen quarters, and styling himself Edle Herr (noble gentleman), took to "living from the saddle": what are Hamburg pedlers made for but to be robbed? The towns suffered much; any trade they might have had, going to wreck in this manner. Not to speak of private feuds, which abounded _ad libitum_. Neighboring potentates, Archbishop of Magdeburg and others, struck in also at discretion, as they had gradually got accustomed to do, and snapped away some convenient bit of territory, or, more legitimately, they came across to coerce, at their own hand, this or the other Edle Herr of the Turpin sort, whom there was no other way of getting at, when he carried matters quite too high. "Droves of six hundred swine"--I have seen (by reading in those old books) certain noble gentlemen, "of Putlitz," I think, driving them openly, captured by the stronger hand; and have heard the short querulous squeak of the bristly creatures: "What is the use of being a pig at all, if I am to be stolen in this way, and surreptitiously made into ham?" Pigs do continue to be bred in Brandenburg: but it is under such discouragements. Agriculture, trade, well-being and well-doing of any kind, it is not encouragement they are meeting here. Probably few countries, not even Ireland, have a worse outlook, unless help come. Jobst came back in 1398, after eight years' absence; but no help came with Jobst. The Neumark of Brandenburg, which was brother Johann's portion, had fallen home to Sigismund, brother Johann having died; but Sigismund, far from redeeming old pawn-tickets with the Neumark, pawned the Neumark too--the second pawnage of Brandenburg. Pawned the Neumark to the Teutsch Ritters "for sixty-three thousand Hungarian gulden" (I think, about thirty thousand pounds), and gave no part of it to Jobst; had not nearly enough for himself and his Hungarian occasions. Seeing which, and hearing such squeak of pigs surreptitiously driven, with little but discordant sights and sounds everywhere, Jobst became disgusted with the matter; and resolved to wash his hands of it, at least to have his money out of it again. Having sold what of the domains he could to persons of quality, at an uncommonly easy rate, and so pocketed what ready cash there was among them, he made over his pawn-ticket, or properly he himself repawned Brandenburg to the Saxon potentate, a speculative moneyed man, Markgraf of Meissen, "Wilhelm the Rich," so called. Pawned it to Wilhelm the Rich--sum not named; and went home to Moravia, there to wait events. This is the third Brandenburg pawning: let us hope there may be a fourth and last. And so we have now reached that point in Brandenburg history when, if some help does not come, Brandenburg will not long be a country, but will either get dissipated in pieces and stuck to the edge of others where some government is, or else go waste again and fall to the bisons and wild bears. Who now is Kurfürst of Brandenburg, might be a question. "I unquestionably!" Sigismund would answer, with astonishment. "Soft, your Hungarian Majesty," thinks Jobst: "till my cash is paid may it not probably be another?" This question has its interest: the Electors just now (1400) are about deposing Wenzel; must choose some better Kaiser. If they wanted another scion of the house of Luxemburg--a mature old gentleman of sixty; full of plans, plausibilities, pretensions--Jobst is their man. Jobst and Sigismund were of one mind as to Wenzel's going; at least Sigismund voted clearly so, and Jobst said nothing counter: but the Kurfürsts did not think of Jobst for successor. After some stumbling, they fixed upon Rupert Kur-Pfalz (Elector Palatine, Ruprecht von der Pfalz) as Kaiser. Rupert of the Pfalz proved a highly respectable Kaiser; lasted for ten years (1400-10), with honor to himself and the Reich. A strong heart, strong head, but short of means. He chastised petty mutiny with vigor, could not bring down the Milanese Visconti, who had perched themselves so high on money paid to Wenzel; could not heal the schism of the Church (double or triple Pope, Rome-Avignon affair), or awaken the Reich to a sense of its old dignity and present loose condition. In the late loose times, as antiquaries remark, most members of the Empire, petty princes even and imperial towns, had been struggling to set up for themselves; and were now concerned chiefly to become sovereign in their own territories. And Schilter informs us it was about this period that most of them attained such rather unblessed consummation; Rupert of himself not able to help it, with all his willingness. The people called him "Rupert Klemm (Rupert Smith's-vise)," from his resolute ways; which nickname--given him not in hatred, but partly in satirical good-will--is itself a kind of history. From historians of the Reich he deserves honorable regretful mention. He had for Empress a sister of Burggraf Friedrich's; which high lady, unknown to us otherwise, except by her tomb at Heidelberg, we remember for her brother's sake. Kaiser Rupert--great-grandson of that Kur-Pfalz who was Kaiser Ludwig's elder brother--is the culminating point of the Electors Palatine; the highest that Heidelberg produced. Ancestor of those famed Protestant "Palatines"; of all the Palatines or Pfalzes that reign in these late centuries. Ancestor of the present Bavarian Majesty; Kaiser Ludwig's race having died out. Ancestor of the unfortunate Winterkönig, Friedrich, King of Bohemia, who is too well known in English history--ancestor also of Charles XII of Sweden, a highly creditable fact of the kind to him. Fact indisputable: a cadet of Pfalz-Zweibrück (Deux-Ponts), direct from Rupert, went to serve in Sweden in his soldier business; distinguished himself in soldiering; had a sister of the great Gustaf Adolf to wife; and from her a renowned son, Karl Gustaf (Christiana's cousin), who succeeded as King; who again had a grandson made in his own likeness, only still more of iron in his composition. Enough now of Rupert Smith's-vise; who died in 1410, and left the Reich again vacant. Rupert's funeral is hardly done, when, over in Preussen, far off in the Memel region, place called Tannenberg, where there is still "a church-yard to be seen," if little more, the Teutsch Ritters had, unexpectedly, a terrible defeat; consummation of their Polish miscellaneous quarrels of long standing; and the end of their high courses in this world. A ruined Teutsch Ritterdom, as good as ruined, ever henceforth. Kaiser Rupert died May 18th; and on July 15th, within two months, was fought that dreadful "Battle of Tannenburg," Poland and Polish King, with miscellany of savage Tartars and revolted Prussians, versus Teutsch Ritterdom; all in a very high mood of mutual rage; the very elements, "wild thunder, tempest and rain deluges," playing chorus to them on the occasion. Ritterdom fought lion-like, but with insufficient strategic and other wisdom, and was driven nearly distracted to see its pride tripped into the ditch by such a set. Vacant Reich could not in the least attend to it; nor can we further at present. Jobst and Sigismund were competitors for the Kaisership; Wenzel, too, striking in with claims for reinstatement: the house of Luxemburg divided against itself. Wenzel, finding reinstatement not to be thought of, threw his weight, such as it was, into the scale of cousin Jobst. The contest was vehement, and like to be lengthy. Jobst, though he had made over his pawn-ticket, claimed to be Elector of Brandenburg; and voted for himself. The like, with still more emphasis, did Sigismund, or Burggraf Friedrich acting for him: "Sigismund, sure, is Kur-Brandenburg, though under pawn!" argued Friedrich--and, I almost guess, though that is not said, produced from his own purse, at some stage of the business, the actual money for Jobst, to close his Brandenburg pretension. Both were elected (majority contested in this manner); and old Jobst, then above seventy, was like to have given much trouble; but happily in three months he died; and Sigismund became indisputable. In his day Jobst made much noise in the world, but did little or no good in it. He was thought "a great man," says one satirical old Chronicler; and there "was nothing great about him but the beard." "The cause of Sigismund's success with the Electors," says Kohler, "or of his having any party among them, was the faithful and unwearied diligence which had been used for him by the above-named Burggraf Friedrich VI of Nuremberg, who took extreme pains to forward Sigismund to the Empire; pleading that Sigismund and Wenzel would be sure to agree well henceforth, and that Sigismund, having already such extensive territories (Hungary, Brandenburg, and so forth) by inheritance, would not be so exact about the Reichs-tolls and other imperial incomes. This same Friedrich also, when the election fell out doubtful, was Sigismund's best support in Germany, nay almost his right hand, through whom he did whatever was done." Sigismund is Kaiser, then, in spite of Wenzel. King of Hungary, after unheard-of troubles and adventures, ending some years ago in a kind of peace and conquest, he has long been. King of Bohemia, too, he at last became; having survived Wenzel, who was childless. Kaiser of the Holy Roman Empire, and so much else: is not Sigismund now a great man? Truly the loom he weaves upon, in this world, is very large. But the weaver was of headlong, high-pacing, flimsy nature; and both warp and woof were gone dreadfully entangled! This is the Kaiser Sigismund who held the Council of Constance; and "blushed visibly," when Huss, about to die, alluded to the letter of safe-conduct granted him, which was issuing in such fashion. Sigismund blushed; but could not conveniently mend the matter--so many matters pressing on him just now. As they perpetually did, and had done. An always-hoping, never-resting, unsuccessful, vain and empty Kaiser. Specious, speculative; given to eloquence, diplomacy, and the windy instead of the solid arts; always short of money for one thing. He roamed about, and talked eloquently; aiming high, and generally missing. Hungary and even the Reich have at length become his, but have brought small triumph in any kind; and instead of ready money, debt on debt. His Majesty has no money, and his Majesty's occasions need it more and more. He is now (1414) holding this Council of Constance, by way of healing the Church, which is sick of three simultaneous popes and of much else. He finds the problem difficult; finds he will have to run into Spain, to persuade a refractory pope there, if eloquence can (as it cannot): all which requires money, money. At opening of the council, he "officiated as deacon"; actually did some kind of litanying "with a surplice over him," though Kaiser and King of the Romans. But this passage of his opening speech is what I recollect best of him there: "Right reverend Fathers, _date operam ut illa nefanda schisma eradicetur_," exclaims Sigismund, intent on having the Bohemian schism well dealt with--which he reckons to be of the feminine gender. To which a cardinal mildly remarking, "_Domine, schisma est generis neutrius_ (schisma is neuter, your Majesty)," Sigismund loftily replies: "_Ego sum Rex Romanus et super grammaticam_ (I am King of the Romans, and above Grammar)!" For which reason I call him in my note-books Sigismund Super Grammaticam, to distinguish him in the imbroglio of kaisers. How Jobst's pawn-ticket was settled I never clearly heard; but can guess it was by Burggraf Friedrich's advancing the money, in the pinch above indicated, or paying it afterward to Jobst's heirs whoever they were. Thus much is certain: Burggraf Friedrich, these three years and more (ever since July 8, 1411) holds Sigismund's deed of acknowledgment "for one hundred thousand gulden lent at various times"; and has likewise got the Electorate of Brandenburg in pledge for that sum; and does himself administer the said Electorate till he be paid. This is the important news; but this is not all. The new journey into Spain requires new money; this council itself, with such a pomp as suited Sigismund, has cost him endless money. Brandenburg, torn to ruins in the way we saw, is a sorrowful matter; and, except the title of it, as a feather in one's cap, is worth nothing to Sigismund. And he is still short of money; and will forever be. Why could not he give up Brandenburg altogether; since, instead of paying, he is still making new loans from Burggraf Friedrich; and the hope of ever paying were mere lunacy! Sigismund revolves these sad thoughts too, amid his world-wide diplomacies, and efforts to heal the Church. "Pledged for one hundred thousand gulden," sadly ruminates Sigismund; "and fifty thousand more borrowed since, by little and little; and more ever needed, especially for this grand Spanish journey!" these were his sad thoughts. "Advance me, in a round sum, two hundred and fifty thousand more," said he to Burggraf Friedrich, "two hundred and fifty thousand more, for my manifold occasions in this time--that will be four hundred thousand in whole--and take the Electorate of Brandenburg to yourself, Land, Titles, Sovereign, Electorship and all, and make me rid of it!" That was the settlement adopted, in Sigismund's apartment at Constance, on April 30, 1415; signed, sealed, and ratified--and the money paid. A very notable event in World-History; virtually completed on the day we mention. The ceremony of investiture did not take place till two years afterward, when the Spanish journey had proved fruitless, when much else of fruitless had come and gone and Kaiser and council were probably more at leisure for such a thing. Done at length it was by Kaiser Sigismund in almost gala, with the Grandees of the Empire assisting, and august members of the council and world in general looking on; in the big square or market-place of Constance, April 17, 1417; is to be found described in Rentsch, from Nauclerus and the old news-mongers of the times. Very grand indeed: much processioning on horseback, under powerful trumpet-peals and flourishes; much stately kneeling, stately rising, stepping backward (done well, _zierlich_, on the Kurfürst's part); liberal expenditure of cloth and pomp; in short, "above one hundred thousand people looking on from roofs and windows," and Kaiser Sigismund in all his glory. He was on a high platform in the market-place, with stairs to it; the illustrious Kaiser--red as a flamingo, "with scarlet mantle and crown of gold,"--a treat to the eyes of simple mankind. What sum of modern money, in real purchasing power, this "four hundred thousand Hungarian Gold Gulden" is, I have inquired in the likely quarters without result; and it is probable no man exactly knows. The latest existing representative of the ancient gold gulden is the ducat, worth generally a half-sovereign in English. Taking the sum at that latest rate, it amounts to two hundred thousand pounds; and the reader can use that as a note of memory for the sale-price of Brandenburg with all its lands and honors--multiplying it perhaps by four or six to bring out its effective amount in current coin. Dog cheap, it must be owned, for size and capability; but in the most waste condition, full of mutiny, injustice, anarchy, and highway robbery; a purchase that might have proved dear enough to another man than Burggraf Friedrich. But so, at any rate, moribund Brandenburg has got its Hohenzollern Kurfürst, and started on a new career it little dreamt of; and we can now, right willingly, quit Sigismund and the Reichs-History, leave Kaiser Sigismund to sink or swim at his own will henceforth. His grand feat in life, the wonder of his generation, was this same Council of Constance; which proved entirely a failure; one of the largest wind-eggs ever dropped with noise and travail in this world. Two hundred thousand human creatures, reckoned and reckoning themselves the elixir of the intellect and dignity of Europe. Two hundred thousand--nay some, counting the lower menials and numerous unfortunate females, say four hundred thousand--were got congregated into that little Swiss town; and there as an Ecumenic Council, or solemnly distilled elixir of what pious intellect and valor could be scraped together in the world, they labored with all their select might for four years' space. That was the Council of Constance. And except this transfer of Brandenburg to Friedrich of Hohenzollern, resulting from said council, in the quite reverse and involuntary way, one sees not what good result it had. They did, indeed, burn Huss; but that could not be called a beneficial incident; that seemed to Sigismund and the council a most small and insignificant one. And it kindled Bohemia, and kindled Rhinoceros Ziska, into never-imagined flame of vengeance; brought mere disaster, disgrace, and defeat on defeat to Sigismund, and kept his hands full for the rest of his life, however small he had thought it. As for the sublime four years' deliberations and debates of this Sanhedrim of the Universe--eloquent debates, conducted, we may say, under such extent of wig as was never seen before or since--they have fallen wholly to the domain of Dryasdust; and amount, for mankind at this time, to zero plus the burning of Huss. On the whole, Burggraf Friedrich's Electorship, and the first Hohenzollern to Brandenburg, is the one good result. Burggraf Friedrich, on his first coming to Brandenburg, found but a cool reception as Statthalter. He came as the representative of law and rule; and there had been many helping themselves by a ruleless life, of late. Industry was at a low ebb, violence was rife; plunder, disorder, everywhere; too much the habit for baronial gentlemen to "live by the saddle," as they termed it, that is, by highway robbery in modern phrase. The towns, harried and plundered to skin and bone, were glad to see a Statthalter, and did homage to him with all their heart. But the baronage or squirearchy of the country were of another mind. These, in the late anarchies, had set up for a kind of kings in their own right. They had their feuds; made war, made peace, levied tolls, transit dues; lived much at their own discretion in these solitary countries; rushing out from their stone towers ("walls fourteen feet thick"), to seize any herd of "six hundred swine," and convoy of Lübeck or Hamburg merchant goods, that had not contented them in passing. What were pedlers and mechanic fellows made for, if not to be plundered when needful? Arbitrary rule, on the part of these noble robber lords! And then much of the crown domains had gone to the chief of them--pawned (and the pawn-ticket lost, so to speak), or sold for what trifle of ready money was to be had, in Jobst and Company's time. To these gentlemen a Statthalter coming to inquire into matters was no welcome phenomenon. Your Edle Herr (noble lord) of Putlitz, noble lords of Quitzow, Rochow, Maltitz, and others, supreme in their grassy solitudes this long while, and accustomed to nothing greater than themselves in Brandenburg, how should they obey a Statthalter? Such was more or less the universal humor in the squirearchy of Brandenburg; not of good omen to Burggraf Friedrich. But the chief seat of contumacy seemed to be among the Quitzows, Putlitzes, above spoken of; big squires in the district they call the Priegnitz, in the country of the sluggish Havel River, northwest from Berlin a forty or fifty miles. These refused homage, very many of them; said they were "incorporated with Böhmen"; said this and that; much disinclined to homage; and would not do it. Stiff, surly fellows, much deficient in discernment of what is above them and what is not: a thick-skinned set; bodies clad in buff leather; minds also cased in ill habits of long continuance. Friedrich was very patient with them; hoped to prevail by gentle methods. He "invited them to dinner"; "had them often at dinner for a year or more:" but could make no progress in that way. "Who is this we have got for a Governor?" said the noble lords privately to each other: "A Nuremberger Tand" (Nuremberg plaything--wooden image, such as they make at Nuremberg), said they, grinning, in a thick-skinned way: "If it rained Burggraves all the year round, none of them would come to luck in this country;" and continued their feuds, toll-levyings, plunderings, and other contumacies. Seeing matters come to this pass after above a year, Burggraf Friedrich gathered his Frankish men-at-arms; quietly made league with the neighboring Potentates, Thüringen and others; got some munitions, some artillery together--especially one huge gun, the biggest ever seen, "a twenty-four pounder," no less; to which the peasants, dragging her with difficulty through the clayey roads, gave the name of Faule Grete (Lazy or Heavy Peg); a remarkable piece of ordnance. Lazy Peg he had got from the Landgraf of Thüringen, on loan merely; but he turned her to excellent account of his own. I have often inquired after Lazy Peg's fate in subsequent times; but could never learn anything distinct; the German Dryasdust is a dull dog, and seldom carries anything human in those big wallets of his! Equipped in this way, Burggraf Friedrich (he was not yet Kurfürst, only coming to be) marches for the Havel Country (early days of 1414); makes his appearance before Quitzow's strong house of Friesack, walls fourteen feet thick: "You, Dietrich von Quitzow, are you prepared to live as a peaceable subject henceforth? to do homage to the laws and me?" "Never!" answered Quitzow, and pulled up his drawbridge. Whereupon Heavy Peg opened upon him, Heavy Peg and other guns; and, in some eight-and-forty hours, shook Quitzow's impregnable Friesack about his ears. This was in the month of February, 1414, day not given: Friesack was the name of the impregnable castle (still discoverable in our time); and it ought to be memorable and venerable to every Prussian man. Burggraf Friedrich VI, not yet quite become Kurfürst Friedrich I, but in a year's space to become so, he in person was the beneficent operator; Heavy Peg and steady human insight, these were clearly the chief implements. Quitzow being settled--for the country is in military occupation of Friedrich and his allies, and except in some stone castle a man has no chance--straightway Putlitz or another mutineer, with his drawbridge up, was battered to pieces, and his drawbridge brought slamming down. After this manner, in an incredibly short period, mutiny was quenched; and it became apparent to noble lords, and to all men, that here at length was a man come who would have the laws obeyed again, and could and would keep mutiny down. BATTLE OF AGINCOURT ENGLISH CONQUEST OF FRANCE A.D. 1415-1420 JAMES GAIRDNER King Henry V of England, son of Henry IV, was born in 1387, and two years later was made prince of Wales. In 1401-1408 he was engaged against the Welsh rebels under Owen Glendower, and in 1410 became captain of Calais. His youthful period is represented--probably with much exaggeration, to which Shakespeare, in _Henry IV_, contributed--as full of wild and dissolute conduct, but as king he was distinguished for his courage, ability, and enterprise. Henry was crowned in 1413, about seventy-five years after the beginning of the Hundred Years' War between England and France, which arose from the claim of Edward III to the French throne. For some years a feud had been raging in France between the houses of Burgundy and Orleans, the rival parties being known as Burgundians and Armagnacs. Led by Simonet Caboche, a butcher, adherents of the Armagnacs rose with great fury against the Burgundians. This was in the first year of Henry's reign, and to him and other rulers Charles VI of France appealed in order to prevent them from aiding the outbreak, which was soon quelled by the princes of the blood and the University of Paris. Order in France was restored by the Duke of Orleans, and the Duke of Burgundy withdrew to Flanders. But war between the two factions was soon after renewed, and both sides sought the alliance of England. In these contentions and appeals for his interference Henry saw an opportunity for pressing his designs to recover what he claimed as the French inheritance of his predecessors. In 1414, as the heir of Isabella, mother of his great-grandfather Edward, he formally demanded the crown of France. The French princes refused to consider his claim. Henry modified his demands, but after several months of negotiation, with no promise of success, he prepared for renewal of the ancient war. The claim made by Edward III to the French crown had been questionable enough. That of Henry was certainly most unreasonable. Edward had maintained that though the Salic Law, which governed the succession in France, excluded females from the throne, it did not exclude their male descendants. On this theory Edward himself was doubtless the true heir to the French monarchy. But even admitting the claims of Edward, his rights had certainly not descended to Henry V, seeing that even in England neither he nor his father was true to the throne by lineal right. A war with France, however, was sure to be popular with his subjects, and the weakness of that country from civil discord seemed a favorable opportunity for urging the most extreme pretensions. To give a show of fairness and moderation the English ambassadors at Paris lessened their demands more than once, and appeared willing for some time to renew negotiations after their terms had been rejected. But in the end they still insisted on a claim which in point of equity was altogether preposterous, and rejected a compromise which would have put Henry in possession of the whole of Guienne and given him the hand of the French King's daughter Catharine with a marriage portion of eight hundred thousand crowns. Meanwhile Henry was making active preparations for war, and at the same time carried on secret negotiations with the Duke of Burgundy, trusting to have him for an ally in the invasion of France. At length, in the summer of 1415, the King had collected an army and was ready to embark at Southampton. But on the eve of his departure a conspiracy was discovered, the object of which was to dethrone the King and set aside the house of Lancaster. The conspirators were Richard, Earl of Cambridge, Henry, Lord Scrope of Masham, and a knight of Northumberland named Sir Thomas Grey. The Earl of Cambridge was the King's cousin-german, and had been recently raised to that dignity by Henry himself. Lord Scrope was, to all appearance, the King's most intimate friend and counsellor. The design seems to have been formed upon the model of similar projects in the preceding reign. Richard II was to be proclaimed once more, as if he had been still alive; but the real intention was to procure the crown for Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, the true heir of Richard, whom Henry IV had set aside. At the same time the Earl of March himself seems hardly to have countenanced the attempt; but the Earl of Cambridge, who had married his sister, wished, doubtless, to secure the succession for his son Richard, as the Earl of March had no children. Evidently it was the impression of some persons that the house of Lancaster was not even yet firmly seated upon the throne. Perhaps it was not even yet apparent that the young man who had so recently been a gamesome reveller was capable of ruling with a firm hand a king. But all doubt on this point was soon terminated. The commissioners were tried by a commission hastily issued, and were summarily condemned and put to death. The Earl of March, it is said, revealed the plot to the King, sat as one of the judges of his two brother peers, and was taken into the King's favor. The Earl of Cambridge made a confession of his guilt. Lord Scrope, though he repudiated the imputation of disloyalty, admitted having had a guilty knowledge of the plot, which he said it had been his purpose to defeat. The one nobleman, in consideration of his royal blood, was simply beheaded; the other was drawn and quartered. We hear of no more attempts of the kind during Henry's reign. With a fleet of one thousand five hundred sail Henry crossed the sea and landed without opposition at Chef de Caux, near Harfleur, at the mouth of the Seine. The force that he brought with him was about thirty thousand men, and he immediately employed it in laying siege to Harfleur. The place was strong, so far as walls and bulwarks could make it, but it was not well victualled, and after a five-weeks' siege it was obliged to capitulate. But the forces of the besieged were thinned by disease as well as actual fighting. Dysentery had broken out in the camp, and, though it was only September, they suffered bitterly from the coldness of the nights; so that, when the town had been won and garrisoned, the force available for further operations amounted to less than half the original strength of the invading army. Under the circumstances it was hopeless to expect to do much before the winter set in, and many counselled the King to return to England. But Henry could not tolerate the idea of retreat or even of apparent inaction. He sent a challenge to the Dauphin, offering to refer their differences to single combat; and when no notice was taken of this proposal, he determined to cut his way, if possible, through the country to Calais, along with the remainder of his forces. It was a difficult and hazardous march. Hunger, dysentery, and fever had already reduced the little band to less than nine thousand men, or, as good authorities say, to little more than six thousand. The country people were unfriendly, their supplies were cut off on all sides, and the scanty stock of provisions with which they set out was soon exhausted. For want of bread, many were driven to feed on nuts, while the enemy harassed them upon the way and broke down the bridges in advance of them. On one or two occasions, having repulsed an attack from a garrison town, Henry demanded and obtained from the governor a safe-conduct and a certain quantity of bread and wine, under threat of setting fire to the place if refused. In this manner he and his army gradually approached the river Somme at Blanche Tache, where there was a ford by which King Edward III had crossed before the battle of Crécy. But while yet some distance from it, they received information from a prisoner that the ford was guarded by six thousand fighting men, and, though the intelligence was untrue, it deterred him from attempting the passage. They accordingly turned to the right and went up the river as far as Amiens, but were still unable to cross, till, after following the course of the river about fifty miles farther, they fortunately came upon an undefended ford and passed over before their enemies were aware. Hitherto their progress had not been without adventures and skirmishes in many places. But the main army of the French only overtook them when they had arrived within about forty-five miles of Calais. On the night of October 24th they were posted at the village of Maisoncelles, with an enemy before them five or six times their number, who had resolved to stop their further progress. Both sides prepared for battle on the following morning. The English, besides being so much inferior in numbers, were wasted by disease and famine, while their adversaries were fresh and vigorous, with a plentiful commissariat. But the latter were overconfident. They spent the evening in dice-playing and making wagers about the prisoners they should take; while the English, on the contrary, confessed themselves and received the sacrament. Heavy rain fell during the night, from which both armies suffered; but Henry availed himself of a brief period of moonlight to have the ground thoroughly surveyed. His position was an admirable one. His forces occupied a narrow field hemmed in on either side by hedges and thickets, so that they could only be attacked in front, and were in no fear of being surrounded. Early on the following morning Henry arose and heard mass; but the two armies stood facing each other for some hours, each waiting for the other to begin. The English archers were drawn up in front in form of a wedge, and each man was provided with a stake shod with iron at both ends, which being fixed into the ground before him, the whole line formed a kind of hedge bristling with sharp points, to defend them from being ridden down by the enemy's cavalry. At length, however, Henry gave orders to commence the attack, and the archers advanced, leaving their stakes behind them fixed in the ground. The French cavalry on either side endeavored to close them in, but were soon obliged to retire before the thick showers of arrows poured in upon them, which destroyed four-fifths of their numbers. Their horses then became unmanageable, being plagued with a multitude of wounds, and the whole army was thrown into confusion. Never was a more brilliant victory won against more overwhelming odds. One sad piece of cruelty alone tarnished the glory of that day's action, but it seems to have been dictated by fear as a means of self-preservation. After the enemy had been completely routed in front, and a multitude of prisoners taken, the King, hearing that some detachments had got round to his rear, and were endeavoring to plunder his baggage, gave orders to the whole army to put their prisoners to death. The order was executed in the most relentless fashion. One or two distinguished prisoners afterward were taken from under heaps of slain, among whom were the dukes of Orleans and Bourbon. Altogether, the slaughter of the French was enormous. There is a general agreement that it was upward of ten thousand men, and among them were the flower of the French nobility. That of the English was disproportionately small. Their own writers reckon it not more than one hundred altogether, some absurdly stating it as low as twenty or thirty, while the French authorities estimate it variously from three hundred to one thousand six hundred. Henry called his victory the battle of Agincourt, from the name of a neighboring castle. The army proceeded in excellent order to Calais, where they were triumphantly received, and after resting there awhile recrossed to England. The news of such a splendid victory caused them to be welcomed with an enthusiasm that knew no bounds. At Dover the people rushed into the sea to meet the conquerors, and carried the King in their arms in triumph from his vessel to the shore. From thence to London his progress was like one continued triumphal procession, and the capital itself received him with every demonstration of joy. The progress of the English arms in France did not, for a long time, induce the rival factions in that country to suspend the civil war among themselves. But at length some feeble efforts were made toward a reconciliation. The Council of Constance having healed the divisions in the Church by the election of Martin V as pope in place of the three rival popes deposed, the new Pontiff despatched two cardinals to France to aid in this important object. By their mediation a treaty was concluded between the Queen, the Duke of Burgundy, and the Dauphin; but it was no sooner published than the Count of Armagnac and his partisans made a vehement protest against it and accused of treason all who had promoted it. On this, Paris rose in anger, took part with the Burgundians, fell upon all the leading Armagnacs, put them in prison, and destroyed their houses. The Dauphin was only saved by one of Armagnac's principal adherents, Tannegui du Châtel, who carried him to the Bastille. The Bastille, however, was a few days after stormed by the populace, and Du Châtel was forced to withdraw his charge to Melun. The Armagnac party, except those in prison, were entirely driven out of Paris. But even this did not satisfy the rage of the multitude. Riots continued from day to day, and, a report being spread that the King was willing to ransom the captives, the people broke open the prisons and massacred every one of the prisoners. The Count of Armagnac, his chancellor, and several bishops and officers of state were the principal victims; but no one, man or woman, was spared. State prisoners, criminals, and debtors, even women great with child, perished in this indiscriminate slaughter. Almost the whole of Normandy was by this time in possession of the English; but Rouen, the capital of the duchy, still held out. It was a large city, strongly fortified, but Henry closed it in on every side until it was reduced to capitulate by hunger. At the beginning of the siege the authorities took measures to expel the destitute class of the inhabitants, and several thousands of poor people were thus thrown into the hands of the besiegers, who endeavored to drive them back into the town. But the gates being absolutely shut against them, they remained between the walls and the trenches, pitifully crying for help and perishing for want of food and shelter, until, on Christmas Day, when the siege had continued nearly five months, Henry ordered food to be distributed to them "in the honor of Christ's nativity." Those within the town, meanwhile, were reduced to no less extremities. Enormous prices were given for bread and even for the bodies of dogs, cats, and rats. The garrison at length were induced to offer terms, but Henry for some time insisted on their surrendering at discretion. Hearing, however, that a desperate project was entertained of undermining the wall and suddenly rushing out upon the besiegers, he consented to grant them conditions, and the city capitulated on January 19th. The few places that remained unconquered in Normandy then opened their gates to Henry; others in Maine and the Isle of France did the same, and the English troops entered Picardy on a further career of conquest. Both the rival factions were now seriously anxious to stop the progress of the English, either by coming at once to terms with Henry or by uniting together against him; and each in turn first tried the former course. The Dauphin offered to treat with the King of England; but Henry demanding the whole of those large possessions in the north and south of France which had been secured to Edward III by the treaty of Bretigni, he felt that it was impossible to prolong the negotiation. The Duke of Burgundy then arranged a personal interview at Meulan between Henry on the one side and himself and the French Queen on behalf of Charles, at which terms of peace were to be adjusted. The Queen brought with her the princess Catharine, her daughter, whose hand Henry himself had formerly demanded as one of the conditions on which he would have consented to forbear from invading France. It was now hoped that if he would take her in marriage he would moderate his other demands. But Henry, for his part, was altogether unyielding. He insisted on the terms of the treaty of Bretigni, and on keeping his own conquests besides, with Anjou, Maine, Touraine, and the sovereignty over Brittany. Demands so exorbitant the Duke of Burgundy did not dare to accept, and as a last resource he and the Dauphin agreed to be reconciled and to unite in defence of their country against the enemy. They held a personal interview, embraced each other, and signed a treaty by which they promised each to love the other as a brother, and to offer a joint resistance to the invaders. A further meeting was arranged to take place about seven weeks later to complete matters and to consider their future policy. France was delighted at the prospect of internal harmony and the hope of deliverance from her enemies. But at the second interview an event occurred which marred all her prospects once more. The meeting had been appointed to take place at Montereau, where the river Yonne falls into the Seine. The Duke, remembering doubtless how he had perfidiously murdered the Duke of Orleans, allowed the day originally appointed to pass by, and came to the place at last after considerable misgivings, which appear to have been overcome by the exhortations of treacherous friends. When he arrived he found a place railed in with barriers for the meeting. He nevertheless advanced, accompanied by ten attendants, and, being told that the Dauphin waited for him, he came within the barriers, which were immediately closed behind him. The Dauphin was accompanied by one or two gentlemen, among whom was his devoted servant, Tannegui du Châtel, who had saved him from the Parisian massacre. This Tannegui had been formerly a servant of Louis, Duke of Orleans, whose murder he had been eagerly seeking an opportunity to revenge; and as the Duke of Burgundy knelt before the Dauphin, he struck him a violent blow on the head with a battle-axe. The attack was immediately followed up by two or three others, who, before the Duke was able to draw his sword, had closed in around him and despatched him with a multitude of wounds. The effect of this crime was what might have been anticipated. Nothing could have been more favorable to the aggressive designs of Henry, or more ruinous to the party of the Dauphin, with whose complicity it had been too evidently committed. Philip, the son and heir of the murdered Duke of Burgundy, at once sought means to revenge his father's death. The people of Paris became more than ever enraged against the Armagnacs, and entered into negotiations with the King of England. The new Duke Philip and Queen Isabel did the same, the latter being no less eager than the former for the punishment of her own son. Within less than three months they made up their minds to waive every scruple as to the acceptance of Henry's most exorbitant demands. He was to have the princess Catharine in marriage, and, the Dauphin being disinherited, to succeed to the crown of France on her father's death. He was also to be regent during King Charles' life; and all who held honors or offices of any kind in France were at once to swear allegiance to him as their future sovereign. Henry, for his part, was to use his utmost power to reduce to obedience those towns and places within the realm which adhered to the Dauphin or the Armagnacs. A treaty on this basis was at length concluded at Troyes in Champagne on May 21, 1420, and on Trinity Sunday, June 2d, Henry was married to the princess Catharine. Shortly afterward the treaty was formally registered by the states of the realm at Paris, when the Dauphin was condemned and attainted as guilty of the murder of the Duke of Burgundy and declared incapable of succeeding to the crown. But the state of affairs left Henry no time for honeymoon festivities. On the Tuesday after his wedding he again put himself at the head of his army, and marched with Philip of Burgundy to lay siege to Sens, which in a few days capitulated. Montereau and Melun were next besieged in succession, and each, after some resistance, was compelled to surrender. The latter siege lasted nearly four months, and during its continuance Henry fought a single combat with the governor in the mines, each combatant having his vizor down and being unknown to the other. The governor's name was Barbason, and he was one of those accused of complicity in the murder of the Duke of Orleans; but in consequence of this incident, Henry saved him from the capital punishment which he would otherwise have incurred on his capture. Toward the end of the year Henry entered Paris in triumph with the French King and the Duke of Burgundy. He there kept Christmas, and shortly afterward moved with his Queen into Normandy on his return into England. He held a parliament at Rouen to confirm his authority in the duchy, after which he passed through Picardy and Calais, and, crossing the sea, came by Dover and Canterbury to London. By his own subjects, and especially in the capital, he and his bride were received with profuse demonstrations of joy. The Queen was crowned at Westminster with great magnificence, and afterward Henry went a progress with her through the country, making pilgrimages to several of the more famous shrines in England. But while he was thus employed, a great calamity befell the English power in France, which, when the news arrived in England, made it apparent that the King's presence was again much needed across the Channel. His brother, the Duke of Clarence, whom he had left as his lieutenant, was defeated and slain at Beaugé in Anjou by an army of French and Scots, a number of English noblemen being also slain or taken prisoners. This was the first important advantage the Dauphin had gained, and the credit of the victory was mainly due to his Scotch allies. For the Duke of Albany, who was regent of Scotland, though it is commonly supposed that he was unwilling to give needless offence to England lest Henry should terminate his power by setting the Scotch King at liberty, had been compelled by the general sympathy of the Scots with France to send a force under his son the Earl of Buchan to serve against the English. The service which they did in that battle was so great that the Earl of Buchan was created, by the Dauphin, constable of France. Again Henry crossed the sea with a new army, having borrowed large sums for the expenses of the expedition. Before he left England he made a private treaty with his prisoner King James of Scotland, promising to let him return to his country after the campaign in France on certain specified conditions, among which it was agreed that he should take the command of a body of troops in aid of the English. James had accompanied him in his last campaign, and Henry had endeavored to make use of his authority to forbid the Scots in France from taking part in the war, but they had refused to acknowledge themselves bound to a king who was a captive. By this agreement, however, Henry obtained real assistance and coöperation from his prisoner, whom he employed, in concert with the Duke of Gloucester, in the siege of Dreux, which very soon surrendered. He himself meanwhile marched toward the Loire to meet the Dauphin, and took Beaugency; then, returning northward, first reduced Villeneuve on the Yonne, and afterward laid siege to Meaux on the Marne. The latter place held out for seven months, and while Henry lay before it he received intelligence that his Queen had borne him a son at Windsor, who was christened Henry. The city of Meaux surrendered on May 10, 1422. The Governor, a man who had been guilty of great cruelties, was beheaded, and his head and body were suspended from a tree on which he himself had caused a number of people to be hanged as adherents of the Duke of Burgundy. Henry was now master of the greater part of the North of France, and his Queen came over from England to join him, with reënforcements under his brother the Duke of Bedford. But he was not permitted to rest; for the Dauphin, having taken from his ally the Duke of Burgundy the town of La Charté on the Loire, proceeded to lay siege to Côsne, and, Philip having applied to Henry for assistance, he sent forward the Duke of Bedford with his army, intending shortly to follow himself. This demonstration was sufficient. The Dauphin felt that he was too weak to contend with the united English and Burgundian forces, and he withdrew from the siege. Henry, however, was disabled from joining the army by a severe attack of dysentery; and though he had at first hoped that he might be carried in a litter to head-quarters, he soon found that his illness was far too serious to permit him to carry out his intention. He was accordingly conveyed back to Vincennes, near Paris, where he grew so rapidly worse that it was evident his end was near. In a few brief words to those about him he declared his will touching the government of England and France after his death, until his infant son should be of age. The regency of France he committed to the Duke of Bedford, in case it should be declined by the Duke of Burgundy. That of England he gave to his other brother, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. To his two uncles, Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, and Thomas Beaufort, Duke of Exeter, he intrusted the guardianship of his child. He besought all parties to maintain the alliance with Burgundy, and never to release the Duke of Orleans and the other prisoners of Agincourt during his son's minority. Having given these instructions he expired, on the last day of August, 1422. His death was bewailed both in England and France with no ordinary regret. The great achievements of his reign made him naturally a popular hero; nor was the regard felt for his memory diminished when, under the feeble reign of his son, all that he had gained was irrecoverably lost again, so that nothing remained of all his conquests except the story of how they had been won. Those past glories, indeed, must have seemed all the brighter when contrasted with a present which knew but disaster abroad and civil dissension at home. The early death of Henry also contributed to the popular estimate of his greatness. It was seen that in a very few years he had subdued a large part of the territory of France. It was not seen that in the nature of things this advantage could not be maintained, and that even the greatest military talents would not have succeeded in preserving the English conquests. Nor can it be said that Henry's success, extraordinary as it was, was altogether owing to his own abilities. That he exhibited great qualities as a general cannot be denied; but these would have availed him little if the rival factions in France had not been far more bitterly opposed to each other than to him. Indeed, it is difficult after all to justify, even as a matter of policy, his interference in French affairs, except as a means of diverting public attention from the fact that he inherited from his father but an indifferent title even to the throne of England. And though success attended his efforts beyond all expectation, he most wilfully endangered the safety not only of himself, but of his gallant army, when he determined to march with reduced forces through the enemy's country from Harfleur to Calais. It was a rashness nothing less than culpable, but in his own interests rashness was good policy. Unless he could succeed in desperate enterprises against tremendous odds and so make himself a military hero and a favorite of the multitude, his throne was insecure. He succeeded; but it was only by staking everything upon the venture--his own safety and that of his army, which, if the French had exercised but a little more discretion, would inevitably have been cut to pieces or made prisoners to a man. JEANNE D'ARC'S VICTORY AT ORLEANS A.D. 1429 Sir Edward Shepherd Creasy In the Hundred Years' War between England and France, a critical period was reached when Henry V, in 1415, won the battle of Agincourt, and five years later, by the treaty of Troyes, secured the succession to the French throne on the death of Charles VI. Both monarchs dying in 1422, Charles VII was proclaimed King of France, and Henry's son--Henry VI--succeeded to his father's throne. France now realized that her condition was wellnigh hopeless, for the greater part of her territory was in the hands of her enemies. When the English began the siege of Orleans the extinction of French independence seemed to be inevitable. The chivalry of France had been wasted in terrible wars, and the spirits of her soldiers were daunted by repeated disaster. The English king had been proclaimed in Paris, and the "native prince was a dissolute trifler, stained with the assassination of the most powerful noble of the land."[77] Anarchy and brigandage everywhere prevailed, and the condition of the peasantry was too wretched to be described. "Such," says Lamartine, "was the state of the nation when Providence showed it a savior in a child." This child was Jeanne d'Arc, called _La Pucelle_ ("the Maid"--more fully, "the Maid of Orleans"), whose character and services to her country made her, perhaps, the most illustrious heroine of history. She was born at Domremy, in the northeast part of France, January 6, 1412. All that is essential concerning her personality and life prior to the great achievement recorded here will be found in Creasy's own introduction to his spirited account of the victory at Orleans. Orleans was looked upon as the last stronghold of the French national party. If the English could once obtain possession of it, their victorious progress through the residue of the kingdom seemed free from any serious obstacle. Accordingly, the Earl of Salisbury, one of the bravest and most experienced of the English generals, who had been trained under Henry V, marched to the attack of the all-important city; and, after reducing several places of inferior consequence in the neighborhood, appeared with his army before its walls on the 12th of October, 1428. The city of Orleans itself was on the north side of the Loire, but its suburbs extended far on the southern side, and a strong bridge connected them with the town. A fortification, which in modern military phrase would be termed a _tête-du-pont_, defended the bridge head on the southern side, and two towers, called the _Tourelles_, were built on the bridge itself, at a little distance from the tête-du-pont. Indeed, the solid masonry of the bridge terminated at the Tourelles; and the communication thence with the tête-du-pont and the southern shore was by means of a drawbridge. The Tourelles and the tête-du-pont formed together a strong-fortified post, capable of containing a garrison of considerable strength; and so long as this was in possession of the Orleannais, they could communicate freely with the southern provinces, the inhabitants of which, like the Orleannais themselves, supported the cause of their dauphin against the foreigners. Lord Salisbury rightly judged the capture of the Tourelles to be the most material step toward the reduction of the city itself. Accordingly, he directed his principal operations against this post, and after some severe repulses he carried the Tourelles by storm on the 23d of October. The French, however, broke down the arches of the bridge that were nearest to the north bank, and thus rendered a direct assault from the Tourelles upon the city impossible. But the possession of this post enabled the English to distress the town greatly by a battery of cannon which they planted there, and which commanded some of the principal streets. It has been observed by Hume that this is the first siege in which any important use appears to have been made of artillery. And even at Orleans both besiegers and besieged seem to have employed their cannons merely as instruments of destruction against their enemy's _men_, and not to have trusted to them as engines of demolition against their enemy's walls and works. The efficacy of cannon in breaching solid masonry was taught Europe by the Turks a few years afterward, at the memorable siege of Constantinople. In our French wars, as in the wars of the classic nations, famine was looked on as the surest weapon to compel the submission of a well-walled town; and the great object of the besiegers was to effect a complete circumvallation. The great ambit of the walls of Orleans, and the facilities which the river gave for obtaining succors and supplies, rendered the capture of the town by this process a matter of great difficulty. Nevertheless, Lord Salisbury, and Lord Suffolk, who succeeded him in command of the English after his death by a cannon-ball, carried on the necessary works with great skill and resolution. Six strongly-fortified posts, called _bastilles_, were formed at certain intervals round the town, and the purpose of the English engineers was to draw strong lines between them. During the winter, little progress was made with the intrenchments, but when the spring of 1429 came, the English resumed their work with activity; the communications between the city and the country became more difficult, and the approach of want began already to be felt in Orleans. The besieging force also fared hardly for stores and provisions, until relieved by the effects of a brilliant victory which Sir John Fastolf, one of the best English generals, gained at Rouvrai, near Orleans, a few days after Ash Wednesday, 1429. With only sixteen hundred fighting men, Sir John completely defeated an army of French and Scots, four thousand strong, which had been collected for the purpose of aiding the Orleannais and harassing the besiegers. After this encounter, which seemed decisively to confirm the superiority of the English in battle over their adversaries, Fastolf escorted large supplies of stores and food to Suffolk's camp, and the spirits of the English rose to the highest pitch at the prospect of the speedy capture of the city before them, and the consequent subjection of all France beneath their arms. The Orleannais now, in their distress, offered to surrender the city into the hands of the Duke of Burgundy, who, though the ally of the English, was yet one of their native princes. The regent Bedford refused these terms, and the speedy submission of the city to the English seemed inevitable. The dauphin Charles, who was now at Chinon with his remnant of a court, despaired of continuing any longer the struggle for his crown, and was only prevented from abandoning the country by the more masculine spirits of his mistress and his Queen. Yet neither they nor the boldest of Charles' captains could have shown him where to find resources for prolonging war; and least of all could any human skill have predicted the quarter whence rescue was to come to Orleans and to France. In the village of Domremy, on the borders of Lorraine, there was a poor peasant of the name of Jacques d'Arc, respected in his station of life, and who had reared a family in virtuous habits and in the practice of the strictest devotion. His eldest daughter was named by her parents Jeannette, but she was called Jeanne by the French, which was Latinized into Johanna, and Anglicized into Joan. At the time when Jeanne first attracted attention, she was about eighteen years of age. She was naturally of a susceptible disposition, which diligent attention to the legends of saints and tales of fairies, aided by the dreamy loneliness of her life while tending her father's flocks, had made peculiarly prone to enthusiastic fervor. At the same time, she was eminent for piety and purity of soul, and for her compassionate gentleness to the sick and the distressed. The district where she dwelt had escaped comparatively free from the ravages of war, but the approach of roving bands of Burgundian or English troops frequently spread terror through Domremy. Once the village had been plundered by some of these marauders, and Jeanne and her family had been driven from their home, and forced to seek refuge for a time at Neufchâteau. The peasantry in Domremy were principally attached to the house of Orleans and the Dauphin, and all the miseries which France endured were there imputed to the Burgundian faction and their allies, the English, who were seeking to enslave unhappy France. Thus, from infancy to girlhood, Jeanne had heard continually of the woes of the war, and had herself witnessed some of the wretchedness that it caused. A feeling of intense patriotism grew in her with her growth. The deliverance of France from the English was the subject of her reveries by day and her dreams by night. Blended with these aspirations were recollections of the miraculous interpositions of heaven in favor of the oppressed, which she had learned from the legends of her Church. Her faith was undoubting; her prayers were fervent. "She feared no danger, for she felt no sin," and at length she believed herself to have received the supernatural inspiration which she sought. According to her own narrative, delivered by her to her merciless inquisitors in the time of her captivity and approaching death, she was about thirteen years old when her revelations commenced. Her own words describe them best. "At the age of thirteen, a voice from God came to her to help her in ruling herself, and that voice came to her about the hour of noon, in summer-time, while she was in her father's garden. And she had fasted the day before. And she heard the voice on her right, in the direction of the church; and when she heard the voice, she saw also a bright light." Afterward St. Michael and St. Margaret and St. Catharine appeared to her. They were always in a halo of glory; she could see that their heads were crowned with jewels; and she heard their voices, which were sweet and mild. She did not distinguish their arms or limbs. She heard them more frequently than she saw them; and the usual time when she heard them was when the church bells were sounding for prayer. And if she was in the woods when she heard them, she could plainly distinguish their voices drawing near to her. When she thought that she discerned the heavenly voices, she knelt down, and bowed herself to the ground. Their presence gladdened her even to tears, and after they departed she wept because they had not taken her with them back to paradise. They always spoke soothingly to her. They told her that France would be saved, and that she was to save it. Such were the visions and the voices that moved the spirit of the girl of thirteen; and as she grew older, they became more frequent and more clear. At last the tidings of the siege of Orleans reached Domremy. Jeanne heard her parents and neighbors talk of the sufferings of its population, of the ruin which its capture would bring on their lawful sovereign, and of the distress of the Dauphin and his court. Jeanne's heart was sorely troubled at the thought of the fate of Orleans; and her "voices" now ordered her to leave her home, and warned her that she was the instrument chosen by heaven for driving away the English from that city, and for taking the Dauphin to be anointed king at Rheims. At length she informed her parents of her divine mission, and told them that she must go to the Sire de Baudricourt, who commanded at Vaucouleurs, and who was the appointed person to bring her into the presence of the King, whom she was to save. Neither the anger nor the grief of her parents, who said that they would rather see her drowned than exposed to the contamination of the camp, could move her from her purpose. One of her uncles consented to take her to Vaucouleurs, where De Baudricourt at first thought her mad, and derided her, but by degrees was led to believe, if not in her inspiration, at least in her enthusiasm, and in its possible utility to the Dauphin's cause. The inhabitants of Vaucouleurs were completely won over to her side by the piety and devoutness which she displayed, and by her firm assurance in the truth of her mission. She told them that it was God's will that she should go to the King, and that no one but her could save the kingdom of France. She said that she herself would rather remain with her poor mother and spin; but the Lord had ordered her forth. The fame of "the Maid," as she was termed, the renown of her holiness and of her mission, spread far and wide. Baudricourt sent her with an escort to Chinon, where the dauphin Charles was dallying away his time. Her "voices" had bidden her assume the arms and the apparel of a knight; and the wealthiest inhabitants of Vaucouleurs had vied with each other in equipping her with war-horse, armor, and sword. On reaching Chinon, she was, after some delay, admitted into the presence of the Dauphin. Charles designedly dressed himself far less richly than many of his courtiers were apparelled, and mingled with them, when Jeanne was introduced, in order to see if the holy Maid would address her exhortations to the wrong person. But she instantly singled him out, and, kneeling before him, said: "Most noble Dauphin, the King of Heaven announces to you by me that you shall be anointed and crowned king in the city of Rheims, and that you shall be his vicegerent in France." His features may probably have been seen by her previously in portraits, or have been described to her by others; but she herself believed that her "voices" inspired her when she addressed the King, and the report soon spread abroad that the holy Maid had found the King by a miracle; and this, with many other similar rumors, augmented the renown and influence that she now rapidly acquired. The state of public feeling in France was now favorable to an enthusiastic belief in a divine interposition in favor of the party that had hitherto been unsuccessful and oppressed. The humiliations which had befallen the French royal family and nobility were looked on as the just judgments of God upon them for their vice and impiety. The misfortunes that had come upon France as a nation were believed to have been drawn down by national sins. The English, who had been the instruments of heaven's wrath against France, seemed now, by their pride and cruelty, to be fitting objects of it themselves. France in that age was a profoundly religious country. There was ignorance, there was superstition, there was bigotry; but there was _faith_--a faith that itself worked true miracles, even while it believed in unreal ones. At this time, also, one of those devotional movements began among the clergy in France, which from time to time occur in national churches, without it being possible for the historian to assign any adequate human cause for their immediate date or extension. Numberless friars and priests traversed the rural districts and towns of France, preaching to the people that they must seek from heaven a deliverance from the pillages of the soldiery and the insolence of the foreign oppressors. The idea of a providence that works only by general laws was wholly alien to the feelings of the age. Every political event, as well as every natural phenomenon, was believed to be the immediate result of a special mandate of God. This led to the belief that his holy angels and saints were constantly employed in executing his commands and mingling in the affairs of men. The Church encouraged these feelings, and at the same time sanctioned the concurrent popular belief that hosts of evil spirits were also ever actively interposing in the current of earthly events, with whom sorcerers and wizards could league themselves, and thereby obtain the exercise of supernatural power. Thus all things favored the influence which Jeanne obtained both over friends and foes. The French nation, as well as the English and the Burgundians, readily admitted that superhuman beings inspired her; the only question was whether these beings were good or evil angels; whether she brought with her "airs from heaven or blasts from hell." This question seemed to her countrymen to be decisively settled in her favor by the austere sanctity of her life, by the holiness of her conversation, but still more by her exemplary attention to all the services and rites of the Church. The Dauphin at first feared the injury that might be done to his cause if he laid himself open to the charge of having leagued himself with a sorceress. Every imaginable test, therefore, was resorted to in order to set Jeanne's orthodoxy and purity beyond suspicion. At last Charles and his advisers felt safe in accepting her services as those of a true and virtuous Christian daughter of the holy Church. It is, indeed, probable that Charles himself and some of his counsellors may have suspected Jeanne of being a mere enthusiast, and it is certain that Dunois and others of the best generals took considerable latitude in obeying or deviating from the military orders that she gave. But over the mass of the people and the soldiery her influence was unbounded. While Charles and his doctors of theology, and court ladies, had been deliberating as to recognizing or dismissing the Maid, a considerable period had passed away during which a small army, the last gleanings, as it seemed, of the English sword, had been assembled at Blois, under Dunois, La Hire, Xaintrailles, and other chiefs, who to their natural valor were now beginning to unite the wisdom that is taught by misfortune. It was resolved to send Jeanne with this force and a convoy of provisions to Orleans. The distress of that city had now become urgent. But the communication with the open country was not entirely cut off: the Orleannais had heard of the holy Maid whom Providence had raised up for their deliverance, and their messengers earnestly implored the Dauphin to send her to them without delay. Jeanne appeared at the camp at Blois, clad in a new suit of brilliant white armor, mounted on a stately black war-horse, and with a lance in her right hand, which she had learned to wield with skill and grace. Her head was unhelmeted, so that all could behold her fair and expressive features, her deep-set and earnest eyes, and her long black hair, which was parted across her forehead, and bound by a ribbon behind her back. She wore at her side a small battle-axe, and the consecrated sword, marked on the blade with five crosses, which had at her bidding been taken for her from the shrine of St. Catharine at Fierbois. A page carried her banner, which she had caused to be made and embroidered as her voices enjoined. It was white satin, strewn with _fleurs-de-lis_, and on it were the words "JHESUS MARIA," and the representation of the Saviour in his glory. Jeanne afterward generally bore her banner herself in battle; she said that though she loved her sword much, she loved her banner forty times as much; and she loved to carry it, because it could not kill anyone. Thus accoutred, she came to lead the troops of France, who looked with soldierly admiration on her well-proportioned and upright figure, the skill with which she managed her war-horse, and the easy grace with which she handled her weapons. Her military education had been short, but she had availed herself of it well. She had also the good sense to interfere little with the manoeuvres of the troops, leaving these things to Dunois and others whom she had the discernment to recognize as the best officers in the camp. Her tactics in action were simple enough. As she herself described it, "I used to say to them, 'Go boldly in among the English,' and then I used to go boldly in myself." Such, as she told her inquisitors, was the only spell she used, and it was one of power. But, while interfering little with the military discipline of the troops, in all matters of moral discipline she was inflexibly strict. All the abandoned followers of the camp were driven away. She compelled both generals and soldiers to attend regularly at confessional. Her chaplain and other priests marched with the army under her orders; and at every halt, an altar was set up and the sacrament administered. No oath or foul language passed without punishment or censure. Even the roughest and most hardened veterans obeyed her. They had put off for a time the bestial coarseness which had grown on them during a life of bloodshed and rapine; they felt that they must go forth in a new spirit to a new career, and acknowledged the beauty of the holiness in which the heaven-sent Maid was leading them to certain victory. Jeanne marched from Blois on the 25th of April with a convoy of provisions for Orleans, accompanied by Dunois, La Hire, and the other chief captains of the French, and on the evening of the 28th they approached the town. In the words of the old chronicler Hall: "The Englishmen, perceiving that thei within could not long continue for faute of vitaile and pouder, kepte not their watche so diligently as thei were accustomed, nor scoured now the countrey environed as thei before had ordained. Whiche negligence the citizens shut in perceiving, sent worde thereof to the French captaines, which, with Pucelle, in the dedde tyme of the nighte, and in a greate rayne and thundere, with all their vitaile and artillery, entered into the citie." When it was day, the Maid rode in solemn procession through the city, clad in complete armor, and mounted on a white horse. Dunois was by her side, and all the bravest knights of her army and of the garrison followed in her train. The whole population thronged around her; and men, women, and children strove to touch her garments or her banner or her charger. They poured forth blessings on her, whom they already considered their deliverer. In the words used by two of them afterward before the tribunal which reversed the sentence, but could not restore the life of the virgin-martyr of France, "the people of Orleans, when they first saw her in their city, thought that it was an angel from heaven that had come down to save them." Jeanne spoke gently in reply to their acclamations and addresses. She told them to fear God, and trust in him for safety from the fury of their enemies. She first went to the principal church, where _Te Deum_ was chanted; and then she took up her abode at the house of Jacques Bourgier, one of the principal citizens, and whose wife was a matron of good repute. She refused to attend a splendid banquet which had been provided for her, and passed nearly all her time in prayer. When it was known by the English that the Maid was in Orleans, their minds were not less occupied about her than were the minds of those in the city; but it was in a very different spirit. The English believed in her supernatural mission as firmly as the French did, but they thought her a sorceress who had come to overthrow them by her enchantments. An old prophecy, which told that a damsel from Lorraine was to save France, had long been current, and it was known and applied to Jeanne by foreigners as well as by the natives. For months the English had heard of the coming Maid, and the tales of miracles which she was said to have wrought had been listened to by the rough yeomen of the English camp with anxious curiosity and secret awe. She had sent a herald to the English generals before she marched for Orleans, and he had summoned the English generals in the name of the most High to give up to the Maid, who was sent by heaven, the keys of the French cities which they had wrongfully taken; and he also solemnly adjured the English troops, whether archers or men of the companies of war or gentlemen or others, who were before the city of Orleans, to depart thence to their homes, under peril of being visited by the judgment of God. On her arrival in Orleans, Jeanne sent another similar message; but the English scoffed at her from their towers, and threatened to burn her heralds. She determined, before she shed the blood of the besiegers, to repeat the warning with her own voice; and accordingly she mounted one of the boulevards of the town, which was within hearing of the Tourelles, and thence she spoke to the English, and bade them depart, otherwise they would meet with shame and woe. Sir William Gladsdale--whom the French call "Glacidas"--commanded the English post at the Tourelles, and he and another English officer replied by bidding her go home and keep her cows, and by ribald jests that brought tears of shame and indignation into her eyes. But, though the English leaders vaunted aloud, the effect produced on their army by Jeanne's presence in Orleans was proved four days after her arrival, when, on the approach of reënforcements and stores to the town, Jeanne and La Hire marched out to meet them, and escorted the long train of provision wagons safely into Orleans, between the bastiles of the English, who cowered behind their walls instead of charging fiercely and fearlessly, as had been their wont, on any French band that dared to show itself within reach. Thus far she had prevailed without striking a blow; but the time was now come to test her courage amid the horrors of actual slaughter. On the afternoon of the day on which she had escorted the reënforcements into the city, while she was resting fatigued at home, Dunois had seized an advantageous opportunity of attacking the English bastile of St. Loup, and a fierce assault of the Orleannais had been made on it, which the English garrison of the fort stubbornly resisted. Jeanne was roused by a sound which she believed to be that of her heavenly voices; she called for her arms and horse, and, quickly equipping herself, she mounted to ride off to where the fight was raging. In her haste she had forgotten her banner; she rode back, and, without dismounting, had it given to her from the window, and then she galloped to the gate whence the sally had been made. On her way she met some of the wounded French who had been carried back from the fight. "Ha!" she exclaimed, "I never can see French blood flow without my hair standing on end." She rode out of the gate, and met the tide of her countrymen, who had been repulsed from the English fort, and were flying back to Orleans in confusion. At the sight of the holy Maid and her banner they rallied and renewed the assault, Jeanne rode forward at their head, waving her banner and cheering them on. The English quailed at what they believed to be the charge of hell; St. Loup was stormed, and its defenders put to the sword, except some few, whom Jeanne succeeded in saving. All her woman's gentleness returned when the combat was over. It was the first time that she had ever seen a battlefield. She wept at the sight of so many bleeding corpses; and her tears flowed doubly when she reflected that they were the bodies of Christian men who had died without confession. The next day was Ascension Day, and it was passed by Jeanne in prayer. But on the following morrow it was resolved by the chiefs of the garrison to attack the English forts on the south of the river. For this purpose they crossed the river in boats, and after some severe fighting, in which the Maid was wounded in the heel, both the English bastiles of the Augustins and St. Jean de Blanc were captured. The Tourelles were now the only posts which the besiegers held on the south of the river. But that post was formidably strong, and by its command of the bridge it was the key to the deliverance of Orleans. It was known that a fresh English army was approaching under Fastolfe to reënforce the besiegers, and, should that army arrive while the Tourelles were yet in the possession of their comrades, there was great peril of all the advantages which the French had gained being nullified, and of the siege being again actively carried on. It was resolved, therefore, by the French to assail the Tourelles at once, while the enthusiasm which the presence and the heroic valor of the Maid had created was at its height. But the enterprise was difficult. The rampart of the tête-du-pont, or landward bulwark, of the Tourelles was steep and high, and Sir John Gladsdale occupied this all-important fort with five hundred archers and men-at-arms, who were the very flower of the English army. Early in the morning of the 7th of May some thousands of the best French troops in Orleans heard mass and attended the confessional by Jeanne's orders, and then crossing the river in boats, as on the preceding day, they assailed the bulwark of the Tourelles "with light hearts and heavy hands." But Gladsdale's men, encouraged by their bold and skilful leader, made a resolute and able defence. The Maid planted her banner on the edge of the fosse, and then, springing down into the ditch, she placed the first ladder against the wall and began to mount. An English archer sent an arrow at her, which pierced her corselet and wounded her severely between the neck and shoulder. She fell bleeding from the ladder; and the English were leaping down from the wall to capture her, but her followers bore her off. She was carried to the rear and laid upon the grass; her armor was taken off, and the anguish of her wound and the sight of her blood made her at first tremble and weep. But her confidence in her celestial mission soon returned: her patron saints seemed to stand before her and reassure her. She sat up and drew the arrow out with her own hands. Some of the soldiers who stood by wished to stanch the blood by saying a charm over the wound; but she forbade them, saying that she did not wish to be cured by unhallowed means. She had the wound dressed with a little oil, and then, bidding her confessor come to her, she betook herself to prayer. In the mean while the English in the bulwark of the Tourelles had repulsed the oft-renewed efforts of the French to scale the wall. Dunois, who commanded the assailants, was at last discouraged, and gave orders for a retreat to be sounded. Jeanne sent for him and the other generals, and implored them not to despair. "By my God," she said to them, "you shall soon enter in there. Do not doubt it. When you see my banner wave again up to the wall, to your arms again! the fort is yours. For the present, rest a little and take some food and drink." "They did so," says the old chronicler of the siege, "for they obeyed her marvellously." The faintness caused by her wound had now passed off, and she headed the French in another rush against the bulwark. The English, who had thought her slain, were alarmed at her reappearance, while the French pressed furiously and fanatically forward. A Biscayan soldier was carrying Jeanne's banner. She had told the troops that directly the banner touched the wall they should enter. The Biscayan waved the banner forward from the edge of the fosse, and touched the wall with it, and then all the French host swarmed madly up the ladders that now were raised in all directions against the English fort. At this crisis the efforts of the English garrison were distracted by an attack from another quarter. The French troops who had been left in Orleans had placed some planks over the broken arch of the bridge, and advanced across them to the assault of the Tourelles on the northern side. Gladsdale resolved to withdraw his men from the landward bulwark, and concentrate his whole force in the Tourelles themselves. He was passing for this purpose across the drawbridge that connected the Tourelles and the tête-du-pont, when Jeanne, who by this time had scaled the wall of the bulwark, called out to him, "Surrender! surrender to the King of Heaven! Ah, Glacidas, you have foully wronged me with your words, but I have great pity on your soul and the souls of your men." The Englishman, disdainful of her summons, was striding on across the drawbridge, when a cannon-shot from the town carried it away, and Gladsdale perished in the water that ran beneath. After his fall, the remnant of the English abandoned all further resistance. Three hundred of them had been killed in the battle and two hundred were made prisoners. The broken arch was speedily repaired by the exulting Orleannais, and Jeanne made her triumphal reëntry into the city by the bridge that had so long been closed. Every church in Orleans rang out its gratulating peal; and throughout the night the sounds of rejoicing echoed, and the bonfires blazed up from the city. But in the lines and forts which the besiegers yet retained on the northern shore, there was anxious watching of the generals, and there was desponding gloom among the soldiery. Even Talbot now counselled retreat. On the following morning the Orleannais, from their walls, saw the great forts called "London" and "St. Lawrence" in flames, and witnessed their invaders busy in destroying the stores and munitions which had been relied on for the destruction of Orleans. Slowly and sullenly the English army retired; and not before it had drawn up in battle array opposite to the city, as if to challenge the garrison to an encounter. The French troops were eager to go out and attack, but Jeanne forbade it. The day was Sunday. "In the name of God," she said, "let them depart, and let us return thanks to God." She led the soldiers and citizens forth from Orleans, but not for the shedding of blood. They passed in solemn procession round the city walls, and then, while their retiring enemies were yet in sight, they knelt in thanksgiving to God for the deliverance which he had vouchsafed them. Within three months from the time of her first interview with the Dauphin, Jeanne had fulfilled the first part of her promise, the raising of the siege of Orleans. Within three months more she had fulfilled the second part also, and had stood with her banner in her hand by the high altar at Rheims, while he was anointed and crowned as king Charles VII of France. In the interval she had taken Jargeau, Troyes, and other strong places, and she had defeated an English army in a fair field at Patay. The enthusiasm of her countrymen knew no bounds; but the importance of her services, and especially of her primary achievement at Orleans, may perhaps be best proved by the testimony of her enemies. There is extant a fragment of a letter from the regent Bedford to his royal nephew, Henry VI, in which he bewails the turn that the war has taken, and especially attributes it to the raising of the siege of Orleans by Jeanne. Bedford's own words, which are preserved in Rymer, are as follows: "And alle thing there prospered for you til the tyme of the Siege of Orleans taken in hand God knoweth by what advis. At the whiche tyme, after the adventure fallen to the persone of my cousin of Salisbury, whom God assoille, there felle, by the hand of God as it seemeth, a great strook upon your peuple that was assembled there in grete nombre, caused in grete partie, as y trowe, of lakke of sadde beleve, and of unlevefulle doubte, that thei hadde of a disciple and lyme of the Feende, called the Pucelle, that used fals enchantments and sorcerie. "The whiche strooke and discomfiture nott oonly lessed in grete partie the nombre of your peuple there, but as well withdrewe the courage of the remenant in merveillous wyse, and couraiged your adverse partie and ennemys to assemble them forthwith in grete nombre." When Charles had been anointed king of France, Jeanne believed that her mission was accomplished. And in truth the deliverance of France from the English, though not completed for many years afterward, was then insured. The ceremony of a royal coronation and anointment was not in those days regarded as a mere costly formality. It was believed to confer the sanction and the grace of heaven upon the prince, who had previously ruled with mere human authority. Thenceforth he was the Lord's Anointed. Moreover, one of the difficulties that had previously lain in the way of many Frenchmen when called on to support Charles VII was now removed. He had been publicly stigmatized, even by his own parents, as no true son of the royal race of France. The queen-mother, the English, and the partisans of Burgundy called him the "Pretender to the title of Dauphin"; but those who had been led to doubt his legitimacy were cured of their scepticism by the victories of the holy Maid and by the fulfilment of her pledges. They thought that heaven had now declared itself in favor of Charles as the true heir of the crown of St. Louis, and the tales about his being spurious were thenceforth regarded as mere English calumnies. With this strong tide of national feeling in his favor, with victorious generals and soldiers round him, and a dispirited and divided enemy before him, he could not fail to conquer, though his own imprudence and misconduct, and the stubborn valor which the English still from time to time displayed, prolonged the war in France until the civil Wars of the Roses broke out in England, and left France to peace and repose. TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF JEANNE D'ARC A.D. 1431 Jules Michelet After her victory at Orleans (1429), Jeanne d'Arc "knelt before the French King in the cathedral of Rheims, and shed tears of joy." She felt that she had fulfilled her mission, and she desired to return to her home at Domremy. But King Charles VII persuaded her to remain with the army. "She still heard her heavenly voices, but she now no longer thought herself the appointed minister of heaven to lead her countrymen to certain victory." She expected but one year more of life; but she still bravely faced the future with its perils. The Maid took part in the capture of Laon, Soissons, Compiègne, and other places, and, in the attack on Paris, September, 1429, which she prematurely urged, was severely wounded. In a sally from Compiègne, where she was besieged by Burgundians, she was taken prisoner May 24, 1430, and held until November, when for a large payment in money she was surrendered to the English, who took her to Rouen, their real capital in France. On January 3, 1431, by order of King Henry VI of England, Jeanne was placed in the hands of Peter Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, who had already moved to have her delivered up to the Inquisition of France, as demanded by the University of Paris. The Bishop proceeded to form at Rouen a "court of justice" for her trial, and on February 21st the Maid was brought before her judges--"Norman priests and doctors of Paris"--in the chapel of Rouen castle. The trial lasted until May 30th, forty sittings being held--some of them in Jeanne's prison, where for a time she was kept in an iron cage. Commanded to take "an oath to tell the truth about everything as to which she should be questioned," she replied: "Perchance you may ask me things I would not tell you. I do not like to take an oath to tell the truth save as to matters which concern the faith." She fearlessly tried to guard against violation of what she considered her right to be silent. In "this odious and shameful trial," says Guizot, "the judges' prejudiced servility and scientific subtlety were employed for three months to wear out the courage or overreach the understanding of a young girl of nineteen, who made no defence beyond holding her tongue or appealing to God, who had dictated to her that which she had done." Formal accusation was made under twelve heads or articles, based on the preliminary examination, and the trial proceeded to its merciless end. In Passion Week, Jeanne d'Arc fell sick. Her temptation began, no doubt, on Palm Sunday. A country girl, born on the skirts of a forest, and having ever lived in the open air of heaven, she was compelled to pass this fine Palm Sunday in the depths of a dungeon. The grand "succor" which the Church invokes came not for her; the "doors did not open." They were opened on the Tuesday, but it was to lead the accused to the great hall of the castle, before her judges. They read to her the articles which had been founded on her answers, and the Bishop previously represented to her "that these doctors were all churchmen, clerks, and well read in law, divine and human; that they were all tender and pitiful, and desired to proceed mildly, seeking neither vengeance nor corporal punishment, but solely wishing to enlighten her, and put her in the way of truth and of salvation; and that, as she was not sufficiently informed in such high matters, the Bishop and the Inquisitor offered her the choice of one or more of the assessors to act as her counsel." The accused, in presence of this assembly, in which she did not descry a single friendly face, mildly answered: "For what you admonish me as to my good, and concerning our faith, I thank you; as to the counsel you offer me, I have no intention to forsake the counsel of our Lord." The first article touched the capital point, submission. She replied: "Well do I believe that our holy Father, the bishops, and others of the Church are to guard the Christian faith and punish those who are found wanting. As to my deeds, I submit myself only to the Church in heaven, to God and the Virgin, to the sainted men and women in paradise. I have not been wanting in regard to the Christian faith, and trust I never shall be." And, shortly afterward, "I would rather die than recall what I have done by our Lord's command." What illustrates the time, the uninformed mind of these doctors, and their blind attachment to the letter without regard to the spirit is that no point seemed graver to them than the sin of having assumed male attire. They represented to her that, according to the canons, those who thus change the habit of their sex are abominable in the sight of God. At first she would not give a direct answer, and begged for a respite till the next day, but her judges insisted on her discarding the dress; she replied "that she was not empowered to say when she could quit it." "But if you should be deprived of the privilege of hearing mass?" "Well, our Lord can grant me to hear it without you." "Will you put on a woman's dress, in order to receive your Saviour at Easter?" "No; I cannot quit this dress; it matters not to me in what dress I receive my Saviour." After this she seems shaken, asks to be at least allowed to hear mass, adding, "I won't say but if you were to give me a gown such as the daughters of the burghers wear, a very _long gown_." It is clear she shrank, through modesty, from explaining herself. The poor girl durst not explain her position in prison or the constant danger she was in. The truth is that three soldiers slept in her room, three of the brigand ruffians called _houspilleurs_;[78] that she was chained to a beam by a large iron chain, almost wholly at their mercy; the man's dress they wished to compel her to discontinue was all her safeguard. What are we to think of the imbecility of the judge, or of his horrible connivance? Besides being kept under the eyes of these wretches, and exposed to their insults and mockery, she was subjected to espial from without. Winchester,[79] the Inquisitor, and Cauchon had each a key to the tower, and watched her hourly through a hole in the wall. Each stone of this infernal dungeon had eyes. Her only consolation was that she was at first allowed interviews with a priest, who told her that he was a prisoner and attached to Charles VII's cause. Loyseleur, so he was named, was a tool of the English. He had won Jeanne's confidence, who used to confess herself to him; and, at such times, her confessions were taken down by notaries concealed on purpose to overhear her. It is said that Loyseleur encouraged her to hold out, in order to insure her destruction. The deplorable state of the prisoner's health was aggravated by her being deprived of the consolations of religion during Passion Week. On the Thursday, the sacrament was withheld from her; on that selfsame day on which Christ is universal host, on which he invites the poor and all those who suffer, she seemed to be forgotten. On Good Friday, that day of deep silence, on which we all hear no other sound than the beating of one's own heart, it seems as if the hearts of the judges smote them, and that some feeling of humanity and of religion had been awakened in their aged scholastic souls; at least it is certain that, whereas thirty-five of them took their seats on the Wednesday, no more than nine were present at the examination on Saturday; the rest, no doubt, alleged the devotions of the day as their excuse. On the contrary, her courage had revived. Likening her own sufferings to those of Christ, the thought had roused her from her despondency. She agreed to "defer to the Church militant, provided it commanded nothing impossible." "Do you think, then, that you are not subject to the Church which is upon earth, to our holy father the Pope, to the cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and prelates?" "Yes, certainly, our Lord served." "Do your voices forbid your submitting to the Church militant?" "They do not forbid it, our Lord being served _first_." This firmness did not desert her once on the Saturday; but on the next day, the Sunday, Easter Sunday! what must her feelings have been? What must have passed in that poor heart when, the sounds of the universal holiday enlivening the city, Rouen's five hundred bells ringing out with their joyous peals on the air, and the whole Christian world coming to life with the Saviour, she remained with death! Could she who, with all her inner life of visions and revelations, had not the less docilely obeyed the commands of the Church; could she, who till now had believed herself in her simplicity "a good girl," as she said, a girl altogether submissive to the Church--could she without terror see the Church against her? After all, what, who was she, to undertake to gainsay these prelates, these doctors? How dared she speak before so many able men--men who had studied? Was there not presumption and damnable pride in an ignorant girl's opposing herself to the learned--a poor, simple girl, to men in authority? Undoubtedly fears of the kind agitated her mind. On the other hand, this opposition is not Jeanne's, but that of the saints and angels who have dictated her answers to her, and, up to this time, sustained her. Wherefore, alas! do they come no more in this pressing need of hers? Wherefore is the so long promised deliverance delayed? Doubtless the prisoner has put these questions to herself over and over again. There was one means of escaping; this was, without expressly disavowing, to forbear affirming, and to say, "It seems to me." The lawyers thought it easy for her to pronounce these few simple words; but in her mind, to use so doubtful an expression was in reality equivalent to a denial; it was abjuring her beautiful dream of heavenly friendships, betraying her sweet sisters on high. Better to die. And indeed, the unfortunate, rejected by the visible, abandoned by the invisible, by the Church, by the world, and by her own heart, was sinking. And the body was following the sinking soul. It so happened that on that very day she had eaten part of a fish which the charitable Bishop of Beauvais had sent her, and might have imagined herself poisoned. The bishop had an interest in her death; it would have put an end to this embarrassing trial, would have got the judge out of the scrape; but this was not what the English reckoned upon. The Earl of Warwick, in his alarm, said: "The King would not have her by any means die a natural death. The King has bought her dear. She must die by justice and be burned. See and cure her." All attention, indeed, was paid her; she was visited and bled, but was none the better for it, remaining weak and nearly dying. Whether through fear that she should escape thus and die without retracting, or that her bodily weakness inspired hopes that her mind would be more easily dealt with, the judges made an attempt while she was lying in this state, April 18th. They visited her in her chamber, and represented to her that she would be in great danger if she did not reconsider, and follow the advice of the Church. "It seems to me, indeed," she said, "seeing my sickness, that I am in great danger of death. If so, God's will be done; I should like to confess, receive my Saviour, and be laid in holy ground." "If you desire the sacraments of the Church, you must do as good Catholics do, and submit yourself to it." She made no reply. But, on the judge's repeating his words, she said: "If the body die in prison, I hope that you will lay it in holy ground; if you do not, I appeal to our Lord." Already, in the course of these examinations, she had expressed one of her last wishes. _Question_: "You say that you wear a man's dress by God's command, and yet, in case you die, you want a woman's shift?" _Answer_: "All I want is to have a long one." This touching answer was ample proof that, in this extremity, she was much less occupied with care about life than with the fears of modesty. The doctors preached to their patient for a long time; and he who had taken on himself the especial care of exhorting her, Master Nicolas Midy, a scholastic of Paris, closed the scene by saying bitterly to her, "If you don't obey the Church, you will be abandoned for a Saracen." "I am a good Christian," she replied meekly; "I was properly baptized, and will die like a good Christian." The slowness of these proceedings drove the English wild with impatience. Winchester had hoped to bring the trial to an end before the campaign; to have forced a confession from the prisoner, and have dishonored King Charles. This blow struck, he would recover Louviers, secure Normandy and the Seine, and then repair to Basel to begin another war--a theological war--to sit there as arbiter of Christendom, and make and unmake popes. At the very moment he had these high designs in view, he was compelled to cool his heels, waiting upon what it might please this girl to say. The unlucky Cauchon happened at this precise juncture to have offended the chapter of Rouen, from which he was soliciting a decision against the Pucelle; he had allowed himself to be addressed beforehand as "My lord the Archbishop." Winchester determined to disregard the delays of these Normans, and to refer at once to the great theological tribunal, the University of Paris. While waiting for the answer, new attempts were made to overcome the resistance of the accused; and both stratagem and terror were brought into play. In the course of a second admonition, May 2d, the preacher, Master Châtillon, proposed to her to submit the question of the truth of her visions to persons of her own party. She did not give in to the snare. "As to this," she said, "I depend on my Judge, the King of heaven and earth." She did not say this time, as before, "On God and the Pope." "Well, the Church will give you up, and you will be in danger of fire, both soul and body. You will not do what we tell you until you suffer body and soul." They did not stop at vague threats. On the third admonition, which took place in her chamber, May 11th, the executioner was sent for, and she was told that the torture was ready. But the manoeuvre failed. On the contrary, it was found that she had resumed all, and more than all, her courage. Raised up after temptation, she seemed to have mounted a step nearer the source of grace. "The angel Gabriel," she said, "has appeared to strengthen me; it was he--my saints have assured me so. God has been ever my master in what I have done; the devil has never had power over me. Though you should tear off my limbs and pluck my soul from my body, I would say nothing else." The spirit was so visibly manifested in her that her last adversary, the preacher Châtillon, was touched, and became her defender, declaring that a trial so conducted seemed to him null. Cauchon, beside himself with rage, compelled him to silence. The reply of the University arrived at last. The decision to which it came on the twelve articles was that this girl was wholly the devil's; was impious in regard to her parents; thirsted for Christian blood, etc. This was the opinion given by the faculty of theology. That of law was more moderate, declaring her to be deserving of punishment, but with two reservations: (1) In case she persisted in her nonsubmission; (2) if she were in her right senses. At the same time the university wrote to the Pope, to the cardinals, and to the King of England, lauding the Bishop of Beauvais and setting forth, "there seemed to it to have been great gravity observed, and a holy and just way of proceeding, which ought to be most satisfactory to all." Armed with this response, some of the assessors[80] were for burning her without further delay; which would have been sufficient satisfaction for the doctors, whose authority she rejected, but not for the English, who required a retraction that should defame King Charles. They had recourse to a new admonition and a new preacher, Master Pierre Morice, which was attended by no better result. It was in vain that he dwelt upon the authority of the University of Paris, "which is the light of all science." "Though I should see the executioner and the fire there," she exclaimed, "though I were in the fire, I could only say what I have said." It was by this time the 23d of May, the day after Pentecost; Winchester could remain no longer at Rouen, and it behooved to make an end of the business. Therefore it was resolved to get up a great and terrible public scene, which should either terrify the recusant into submission, or, at the least, blind the people. Loyseleur, Châtillon, and Morice were sent to visit her the evening before, to promise her that, if she would submit and quit her man's dress, she should be delivered out of the hands of the English, and placed in those of the Church. This fearful farce was enacted in the cemetery of St. Ouen, behind the beautifully severe monastic church so called, and which had by that day assumed its present appearance. On a scaffolding raised for the purpose sat Cardinal Winchester, the two judges, and thirty-three assessors, of whom many had their scribes seated at their feet. On another scaffold, in the midst of _huissiers_[81] and torturers, was Jeanne, in male attire, and also notaries to take down her confessions, and a preacher to admonish her; and, at its foot, among the crowd, was remarked a strange auditor, the executioner upon his cart, ready to bear her off as soon as she should be adjudged his. The preacher on this day, a famous doctor, Guillaume Erard, conceived himself bound, on so fine an opportunity, to give the reins to his eloquence; and by his zeal he spoiled all. "O noble house of France," he exclaimed, "which wast ever wont to be protectress of the faith, how hast thou been abused to ally thyself with a heretic and schismatic!" So far the accused had listened patiently; but when the preacher, turning toward her, said to her, raising his finger: "It is to thee, Jeanne, that I address myself; and I tell thee that thy King is a heretic and schismatic," the admirable girl, forgetting all her danger, burst forth with, "On my faith, sir, with all due respect, I undertake to tell you, and to swear, on pain of my life, that he is the noblest Christian of all Christians, the sincerest lover of the faith and of the Church, and not what you call him." "Silence her," called out Cauchon. The accused adhered to what she had said. All they could obtain from her was her consent to submit herself to the Pope. Cauchon replied, "The Pope is too far off." He then began to read the sentence of condemnation, which had been drawn up beforehand, and in which, among other things, it was specified: "And furthermore, you have obstinately persisted, in refusing to submit yourself to the holy Father and to the council," etc. Meanwhile, Loyseleur and Erard conjured her to have pity on herself; on which the Bishop, catching at a shadow of hope, discontinued his reading. This drove the English mad; and one of Winchester's secretaries told Cauchon it was clear that he favored the girl--a charge repeated by the Cardinal's chaplain. "Thou art a liar," exclaimed the Bishop. "And thou," was the retort, "art a traitor to the King." These grave personages seemed to be on the point of going to cuffs on the judgment-seat. Erard, not discouraged, threatened, prayed. One while he said, "Jeanne, we pity you so!" and another, "Abjure or be burned!" All present evinced an interest in the matter, down even to a worthy catchpole (huissier), who, touched with compassion, besought her to give way, assuring her that she should be taken out of the hands of the English and placed in those of the Church. "Well, then," she said, "I will sign." On this Cauchon, turning to the Cardinal, respectfully inquired what was to be done next. "Admit her to do penance," replied the ecclesiastical prince. Winchester's secretary drew out of his sleeve a brief revocation, only six lines long--that which was given to the world took up six pages--and put a pen in her hand, but she could not sign. She smiled and drew a circle: the secretary took her hand and guided it to make a cross. The sentence of grace was a most severe one: "Jeanne, we condemn you, out of our grace and moderation, to pass the rest of your days in prison, on the bread of grief and water of anguish, and so to mourn your sins." She was admitted by the ecclesiastical judge to do penance, no doubt, nowhere save in the prisons of the Church. The ecclesiastic _in pace_, however severe it might be, would at the least withdraw her from the hands of the English, place her under shelter from their insults, save her honor. Judge of her surprise and despair when the Bishop coldly said, "Take her back whence you brought her." Nothing was done; deceived on this wise, she could not fail to retract her retractation. Yet, though she had abided by it, the English in their fury would not have allowed her to escape. They had come to St. Ouen in the hope of at last burning the sorceress, had waited panting and breathless to this end; and now they were to be dismissed on this fashion, paid with a slip of parchment, a signature, a grimace. At the very moment the Bishop discontinued reading the sentence of condemnation, stones flew upon the scaffolding without any respect for the Cardinal. The doctors were in peril of their lives as they came down from their seats into the public place; swords were in all directions pointed at their throats. The more moderate among the English confined themselves to insulting language--"Priests, you are not earning the King's money." The doctors, making off in all haste, said tremblingly, "Do not be uneasy, we shall soon have her again." And it was not the soldiery alone, not the English mob, always so ferocious, which displayed this thirst for blood. The better born, the great, the lords, were no less sanguinary. The King's man, his tutor, the Earl of Warwick, said like the soldiers: "The King's business goes on badly; the girl will not be burned." According to English notions, Warwick was the mirror of worthiness, the accomplished Englishman, the perfect gentleman. Brave and devout, like his master, Henry V, and the zealous champion of the Established Church, he had performed the pilgrimage to the Holy Land, as well as many other chivalrous expeditions. With all his chivalry, Warwick was not the less savagely eager for the death of a woman, and one who was, too, a prisoner of war. The best and the most looked-up-to of the English was as little deterred by honorable scruples as the rest of his countrymen from putting to death on the award of priests, and by fire, her who had humbled them by the sword. The Jews never exhibited the rage against Jesus which the English did against the Pucelle. It must be owned that she had wounded them cruelly in the most sensible part--in the simple but deep esteem they have for themselves. At Orleans the invincible men-at-arms, the famous archers, Talbot at their head, had shown their backs; at Jargeau, sheltered by the good walls of a fortified town, they had suffered themselves to be taken; at Patay they had fled as fast as their legs would carry them, fled before a girl. This was hard to be borne, and these taciturn English were forever pondering over the disgrace. They had been afraid of a girl, and it was not very certain but that, chained as she was, they felt fear of her still, though, seemingly, not of her, but of the devil, whose agent she was. At least, they endeavored both to believe and to have it believed so. But there was an obstacle in the way of this, for she was said to be a virgin; and it was a notorious and well-ascertained fact that the devil could not make a compact with a virgin. The coolest head among the English, Bedford,[82] the regent, resolved to have the point cleared up; and his wife, the Duchess, intrusted the matter to some matrons, who declared Jeanne to be a maid; a favorable declaration which turned against her by giving rise to another superstitious notion; to wit, that her virginity constituted her strength, her power, and that to deprive her of it was to disarm her, was to break the charm, and lower her to the level of other women. The poor girl's only defence against such a danger had been wearing male attire; though, strange to say, no one had ever seemed able to understand her motive for wearing it. All, both friends and enemies, were scandalized by it. At the outset, she had been obliged to explain her reasons to the woman of Poitiers; and when made prisoner, and under the care of the ladies of Luxemburg, those excellent persons prayed her to clothe herself as honest girls were wont to do. Above all, the English ladies, who have always made a parade of chastity and modesty, must have considered her so disguising herself monstrous and insufferably indecent. The Duchess of Bedford sent her female attire; but by whom? By a man, a tailor. The fellow, with impudent familiarity, was about to pass it over her head, and, when she pushed him away, laid his unmannnerly hand upon her--his tailor's hand on that hand which had borne the flag of France. She boxed his ears. If women could not understand this feminine question, how much less could priests! They quoted the text of a council held in the fourth century, which anathematized such changes of dress; not seeing that the prohibition specially applied to a period when manners had been barely retrieved from pagan impurities. The doctors belonging to the party of Charles VII, the apologists of the Pucelle, find exceeding difficulty in justifying her on this head. One of them--thought to be Gerson--makes the gratuitous supposition that the moment she dismounted from her horse, she was in the habit of resuming woman's apparel; confessing that Esther and Judith had had recourse to more natural and feminine means for their triumphs over the enemies of God's people. Entirely preoccupied with the soul, these theologians seem to have held the body cheap; provided the letter, the written law, be followed, the soul will be saved; the flesh may take its chance. A poor and simple girl may be pardoned her inability to distinguish so clearly. On the Friday and the Saturday the unfortunate prisoner, despoiled of her man's dress, had much to fear. Brutality, furious hatred, vengeance, might severally incite the cowards to degrade her before she perished, to sully what they were about to burn. Besides, they might be tempted to varnish their infamy by a "reason of state," according to the notions of the day--by depriving her of her virginity they would undoubtedly destroy that secret power of which the English entertained such great dread, who perhaps might recover their courage when they knew that, after all, she was but a woman. According to her confessor, to whom she divulged the fact, an Englishman, not a common soldier, but a _gentleman_, a lord, patriotically devoted himself to this execution--bravely undertook to violate a girl laden with fetters, and, being unable to effect his wishes, rained blows upon her. "On the Sunday morning, Trinity Sunday, when it was time for her to rise--as she told him who speaks--she said to her English guards, 'Leave me, that I may get up.' One of them took off her woman's dress, emptied the bag in which was the man's apparel, and said to her, 'Get up.' 'Gentlemen,' she said, 'you know that dress is forbidden me; excuse me, I will not put it on.' The point was contested till noon; when, being compelled to go out for some bodily want, she put it on. When she came back, they would give her no other, despite her entreaties." In reality, it was not to the interest of the English that she should resume her man's dress, and so make null and void a retractation obtained with such difficulty. But at this moment, their rage no longer knew any bounds. Saintrailles had just made a bold attempt upon Rouen. It would have been a lucky hit to have swept off the judges from the judgment seat, and have carried Winchester and Bedford to Poitiers; the latter was, subsequently, all but taken on his return, between Rouen and Paris. As long as this accursed girl lived, who beyond a doubt continued in prison to practise her sorceries, there was no safety for the English; perish she must. The assessors, who had notice instantly given them of her change of dress, found some hundred English in the court to obstruct their passage; who, thinking that if these doctors entered they might spoil all, threatened them with their axes and swords, and chased them out, calling them "traitors of Armagnacs." Cauchon, introduced with much difficulty, assumed an air of gayety to pay his court to Warwick, and said with a laugh, "She is caught." On the Monday he returned, along with the Inquisitor and eight assessors, to question the Pucelle, and ask her why she had resumed that dress. She made no excuse, but, bravely facing the danger, said that the dress was fitter for her as long as she was guarded by men, and that faith had not been kept with her. Her saints, too, had told her "that it was great pity she had abjured to save her life." Still, she did not refuse to resume woman's dress. "Put me in a seemly and safe prison," she said; "I will be good, and do whatever the Church shall wish." On leaving her the Bishop encountered Warwick and a crowd of English; and to show himself a good Englishman he said in their tongue, "Farewell, farewell." This joyous adieu was about synonymous with "Good evening, good evening; all's over." On the Tuesday, the judges got up at the Archbishop's palace a court of assessors as they best might; some of them had assisted at the first sittings only, others at none; in fact, composed of men of all sorts, priests, legists, and even three physicians. The judges recapitulated to them what had taken place, and asked their opinion. This opinion, quite different from what was expected, was that the prisoner should be summoned, and her act of abjuration be read over to her. Whether this was in the power of the judges is doubtful. In the midst of the fury and swords of a raging soldiery, there was in reality no judge, and no possibility of judgment. Blood was the one thing wanted; and that of the judges was, perhaps, not far from flowing. They hastily drew up a summons, to be served the next morning at eight o'clock; she was not to appear, save to be burned. Cauchon sent her a confessor in the morning, brother Martin l'Advenu, "to prepare her for her death, and persuade her to repentance. And when he apprised her of the death she was to die that day, she began to cry out grievously, to give way, and tear her hair: 'Alas! am I to be treated so horribly and cruelly? must my body, pure as from birth, and which was never contaminated, be this day consumed and reduced to ashes? Ha! ha! I would rather be beheaded seven times over than be burned on this wise! Oh! I make my appeal to God, the great judge of the wrongs and grievances done me!'" After this burst of grief, she recovered herself and confessed; she then asked to communicate. The brother was embarrassed; but, consulting the Bishop, the latter told him to administer the sacrament, "and whatever else she might ask." Thus, at the very moment he condemned her as a relapsed heretic, and cut her off from the Church, he gave her all that the Church gives to her faithful. Perhaps a last sentiment of humanity awoke in the heart of the wicked judge; he considered it enough to burn the poor creature, without driving her to despair, and damning her. Besides, it was attempted to do it privately, and the eucharist was brought without stole and light. But the monk complained, and the Church of Rouen, duly warned, was delighted to show what it thought of the judgment pronounced by Cauchon; it sent along with the body of Christ numerous torches and a large escort of priests, who sang litanies, and, as they passed through the streets, told the kneeling people, "Pray for her." After partaking of the communion, which she received with abundance of tears, she perceived the Bishop, and addressed him with the words, "Bishop, I die through you." And, again, "Had you put me in the prisons of the Church, and given me ghostly keepers, this would not have happened. And for this I summon you to answer before God." Then, seeing among the bystanders Pierre Morice, one of the preachers by whom she had been addressed, she said to him, "Ah, Master Pierre, where shall I be this evening?" "Have you not good hope in the Lord?" "Oh! yes; God to aid, I shall be in paradise." It was nine o'clock: she was dressed in female attire, and placed on a cart. On one side of her was brother Martin l'Advenu; the constable, Massieu, was on the other. The Augustine monk, Brother Isambart, who had already displayed much charity and courage, would not quit her. Up to this moment the Pucelle had never despaired, with the exception, perhaps, of her temptation in the Passion Week. While saying, as she at times would say, "These English will kill me," she in reality did not think so. She did not imagine that she could ever be deserted. She had faith in her King, in the good people of France. She had said expressly: "There will be some disturbance, either in prison or at the trial, by which I shall be delivered, greatly, victoriously delivered." But though King and people deserted her, she had another source of aid, and a far more powerful and certain one from her friends above, her kind and dear saints. When she was assaulting St. Pierre, and deserted by her followers, her saints sent an invisible army to her aid. How could they abandon their obedient girl, they who had so often promised her "safety and deliverance"? What then must her thoughts have been when she saw that she must die; when, carried in a cart, she passed through a trembling crowd, under the guard of eight hundred Englishmen armed with sword and lance? She wept and bemoaned herself, yet reproached neither her King nor her saints. She was only heard to utter, "O Rouen, Rouen! must I then die here?" The term of her sad journey was the old market-place, the fish-market. Three scaffolds had been raised; on one was the episcopal and royal chair, the throne of the Cardinal of England, surrounded by the stalls of his prelates; on another were to figure the principal personages of the mournful drama, the preacher, the judges, and the bailiff, and, lastly, the condemned one; apart was a large scaffolding of plaster, groaning under a weight of wood--nothing had been grudged the stake, which struck terror by its height alone. This was not only to add to the solemnity of the execution, but was done with the intent that, from the height to which it was reared, the executioner might not get at it save at the base, and that to light it only, so that he would be unable to cut short the torments and relieve the sufferer, as he did with others, sparing them the flames. On this occasion the important point was that justice should not be defrauded of her due or a dead body be committed to the flames; they desired that she should be really burned alive, and that, placed on the summit of this mountain of wood, and commanding the circle of lances and of swords, she might be seen from every part of the market-place. There was reason to suppose that being slowly, tediously burned, before the eyes of a curious crowd, she might at last be surprised into some weakness, that something might escape her which could be set down as a disavowal, at the least some confused words which might be interpreted at pleasure, perhaps low prayers, humiliating cries for mercy, such as proceed from a woman in despair. The frightful ceremony began with a sermon. Master Nicolas Midy, one of the lights of the University of Paris, preached upon the edifying text: "When one limb of the Church is sick, the whole Church is sick." He wound up with the formula: "Jeanne, go in peace; the Church can no longer defend thee." The ecclesiastical judge, the Bishop of Beauvais, then benignly exhorted her to take care of her soul and to recall all her misdeeds, in order that she might awaken to true repentance. The assessors had ruled that it was the law to read over her abjuration to her; the Bishop did nothing of the sort. He feared her denials, her disclaimers. But the poor girl had no thought of so chicaning away life; her mind was fixed on far other subjects. Even before she was exhorted to repentance, she had knelt down and invoked God, the Virgin, St. Michael, and St. Catharine, pardoning all and asking pardon, saying to the bystanders, "Pray for me!" In particular, she besought the priests to say each a mass for her soul. And all this so devoutly, humbly, and touchingly that, sympathy becoming contagious, no one could any longer contain himself; the Bishop of Beauvais melted into tears, the Bishop of Boulogne sobbed, and the very English cried and wept as well, Winchester with the rest. Might it be in this moment of universal tenderness, of tears, of contagious weakness, that the unhappy girl, softened, and relapsing into the mere woman, confessed that she saw clearly she had erred, and that, apparently, she had been deceived when promised deliverance? This is a point on which we cannot implicitly rely on the interested testimony of the English. Nevertheless, it would betray scant knowledge of human nature to doubt, with her hopes so frustrated, her having wavered in her faith. Whether she confessed to this effect in words is uncertain; but I will confidently affirm that she owned it in thought. Meanwhile the judges, for a moment put out of countenance, had recovered their usual bearing, and the Bishop of Beauvais, drying his eyes, began to read the act of condemnation. He reminded the guilty one of all her crimes, of her schism, idolatry, invocation of demons, how she had been admitted to repentance, and how, "seduced by the Prince of Lies, she had fallen, O grief! 'like the dog which returns to his vomit.' Therefore, we pronounce you to be a rotten limb, and, as such, to be lopped off from the Church. We deliver you over to the secular power, praying it at the same time to relax its sentence and to spare you death and the mutilation of your members." Deserted thus by the Church, she put her whole trust in God. She asked for the cross. An Englishman handed her a cross which he made out of a stick; she took it, rudely fashioned as it was, with not less devotion, kissed it, and placed it under her garments, next to her skin. But what she desired was the crucifix belonging to the Church, to have it before her eyes till she breathed her last. The good huissier Massieu and Brother Isambart interfered with such effect that it was brought her from St. Sauveur's. While she was embracing this crucifix, and Brother Isambart was encouraging her, the English began to think all this exceedingly tedious; it was now noon at least; the soldiers grumbled, and the captains called out: "What's this, priest; do you mean us to dine here?" Then, losing patience, and without waiting for the order from the bailiff, who alone had authority to dismiss her to death, they sent two constables to take her out of the hands of the priests. She was seized at the foot of the tribunal by the men-at-arms, who dragged her to the executioner with the words, "Do thy office." The fury of the soldiery filled all present with horror; and many there, even of the judges, fled the spot, that they might see no more. When she found herself brought down to the market-place, surrounded by English, laying rude hands on her, nature asserted her rights and the flesh was troubled. Again she cried out, "O Rouen, thou art then to be my last abode!" She said no more, and, in this hour of fear and trouble, did not sin with her lips. She accused neither her King nor her holy ones. But when she set foot on the top of the pile, on viewing this great city, this motionless and silent crowd, she could not refrain from exclaiming, "Ah! Rouen, Rouen, much do I fear you will suffer from my death!" She who had saved the people, and whom that people deserted, gave voice to no other sentiment when dying--admirable sweetness of soul!--than that of compassion for it. She was made fast under the infamous placard, mitred with a mitre on which was read, "Heretic, relapser, apostate, idolater." And then the executioner set fire to the pile. She saw this from above and uttered a cry. Then, as the brother who was exhorting her paid no attention to the fire, forgetting herself in her fear for him, she insisted on his descending. The proof that up to this period she had made no express recantation is, that the unhappy Cauchon was obliged--no doubt by the high satanic will which presided over the whole--to proceed to the foot of the pile, obliged to face his victim to endeavor to extract some admission from her. All that he obtained was a few words, enough to rack his soul. She said to him mildly what she had already said: "Bishop, I die through you. If you had put me into the Church prisons, this would not have happened." No doubt hopes had been entertained that, on finding herself abandoned by her King, she would at last accuse and defame him. To the last, she defended him: "Whether I have done well or ill, my King is faultless; it was not he who counselled me." Meanwhile the flames rose. When they first seized her, the unhappy girl shrieked for holy _water_--this must have been the cry of fear. But, soon recovering, she called only on God, on her angels and her saints. She bore witness to them, "Yes, my voices were from God, my voices have not deceived me." The fact that all her doubts vanished at this trying moment must be taken as a proof that she accepted death as the promised deliverance; that she no longer understood her salvation in the Judaic and material sense, as until now she had done, that at length she saw clearly; and that, rising above all shadows, her gifts of illumination and of sanctity were at the final hour made perfect unto her. The great testimony she thus bore is attested by the sworn and compelled witness of her death, by the Dominican who mounted the pile with her, whom she forced to descend, but who spoke to her from its foot, listened to her, and held out to her the crucifix. There is yet another witness of this sainted death, a most grave witness, who must himself have been a saint. This witness, whose name history ought to preserve, was the Augustine monk already mentioned, Brother Isambart de la Pierre. During the trial he had hazarded his life by counselling the Pucelle, and yet, though so clearly pointed out to the hate of the English, he persisted in accompanying her in the cart, procured the parish crucifix for her, and comforted her in the midst of the raging multitude, both on the scaffold where she was interrogated and at the stake. Twenty years afterward, the two venerable friars, simple monks, vowed to poverty and having nothing to hope or fear in this world, bear witness to the scene we have just described: "We heard her," they say, "in the midst of the flames invoke her saints, her archangel; several times she called on her Saviour. At the last, as her head sunk on her bosom, she shrieked, 'Jesus!'" "Ten thousand men wept. A few of the English alone laughed, or endeavored to laugh. One of the most furious among them had sworn that he would throw a fagot on the pile. Just as he brought it she breathed her last. He was taken ill. His comrades led him to a tavern to recruit his spirits by drink, but he was beyond recovery. 'I saw,' he exclaimed, in his frantic despair, 'I saw a dove fly out of her mouth with her last sigh.' Others had read in the flames the word 'Jesus,' which she so often repeated. The executioner repaired in the evening to Brother Isambart, full of consternation, and confessed himself; he felt persuaded that God would never pardon him. One of the English King's secretaries said aloud, on returning from the dismal scene: 'We are lost; we have burned a saint.'" Though these words fell from an enemy's mouth, they are not the less important, and will live, uncontradicted by the future. Yes, whether considered religiously or patriotically, Jeanne d'Arc was a saint. Where find a finer legend than this true history? Still, let us beware of converting it into a legend; let us piously preserve its every trait, even such as are most akin to human nature, and respect its terrible and touching reality.[83] CHARLES VII ISSUES HIS PRAGMATIC SANCTION EMANCIPATION OF THE GALLICAN CHURCH A.D. 1438 W. H. JERVIS R. F. ROHRBACHER "No two words," says Smedley, "convey less distinct meaning to English ears than 'pragmatic sanction.' Perhaps 'a well-considered ordinance' may in some degree represent them, _i.e._, an ordinance which has been fully discussed by men practised in state affairs." Carlyle defines "pragmatic sanction" as "the received title for ordinances of a very irrevocable nature, which a sovereign makes in affairs that belong wholly to himself, or what he reckons his own rights." A dictionary definition calls it "an imperial edict operating as a fundamental law." The term was probably first applied to certain decrees of the Byzantine emperors for regulating their provinces and towns, and later it was given to imperial decrees in the West. In the present case it is applied to the limitations set to the power of the pope in France. In the Council of Constance, 1414-1418, at which decrees were passed subordinating the pope as well as the whole Church to the authority of a general council, Gallican or French opinion on this subject won its first great victory. But this triumph introduced into the Western Church an element of strife which resulted in calamities scarcely less grave than those of the Great Schism of 1378-1417, during which different parties adhered to rival popes. From the Council of Constance may be dated the formal divergence of the Gallican from the Ultramontane or strictly Roman church government. Pope Martin V, who was elected by the Council of Constance after it had deposed John XXIII, Gregory XII, and Benedict XIII, is generally considered to have assented to all its decrees. In 1431, on the death of Martin V, Eugenius IV succeeded to the papal throne. A council had been convened at Pavia in 1423. After a few weeks it was transferred to Siena, and subsequently to Basel. Fearing that it would follow the policy of Constance, Eugenius (1431) attempted to dissolve it and to have it reconvened at Bologna under his own eye. A rupture followed between Pope and council, resulting in years of confused strife. In all this confusion our historians, Jervis and Rohrbacher, distinguish the leading events, the most significant of which was the issuing of the Pragmatic Sanction by Charles VII of France. This ordinance is known, from the place of its promulgation, as the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, and is sometimes called the "Palladium of France," also the "Magna Charta of the Gallican Church." W. HENLEY JERVIS The position assumed by the Gallican Church at this junction was peculiar and in some respects questionable. It declared decidedly in favor of the Council of Basel; many French prelates repaired thither, and ambassadors were sent by the King, Charles VII, to Pope Eugenius, to beseech him to support the authority of the synod, and to protest against its dissolution. The fathers stood firm at their posts, appealing to the principles solemnly asserted at Constance, that the pope is bound in certain specified cases to submit to an ecumenical council, and that the latter cannot be translated, prorogued, or dissolved without its own consent. The gift of infallibility, they affirmed, resides in the collective Church. It does not belong to the popes, several of whom have erred concerning the faith. The Church alone has authority to enact laws which are binding on the whole body of the faithful. Now, the authority of general councils is identical with that of the Church. This was expressly determined by the Council of Constance, and acknowledged by Pope Martin V. The pope is the ministerial head of the Church, but he is not its absolute sovereign; on the contrary, facts prove that he is subject to the jurisdiction of the Church; for well-known instances are on record of popes being deposed on the score of erroneous doctrine and immoral life, whereas no pope has ever attempted to condemn or excommunicate the Church. Both the pope and the Church have received authority to bind and loose; but the Church has practically exerted that authority against the pope, whereas the latter has never ventured to take any such step against the Church. In fine, the words of Christ himself are decisive of the question--"If any man neglect to hear the Church, let him be unto you as a heathen man and a publican." This injunction was addressed to St. Peter equally with the rest of the disciples. The council proceeded to cite Eugenius by a formal monition to appear in person at Basel; and on his failing to comply, they signified that on the expiration of a further interval of sixty days ulterior means would be put in force against him. Their firmness, added to the pressing solicitations of the emperor Sigismund, at length induced the Pope to yield. He reconciled himself with the council in December, 1433; acknowledged that it had been legitimately convoked; approved its proceedings up to that date; and cancelled the act by which he had pronounced its dissolution. Elated by their triumph, the Basilian fathers commenced in earnest the task of Church reform, and passed several decrees of a character vexatious to the Pope, particularly one for the total abolition of annates. A second breach was the consequence. Eugenius, under pretence of furthering the negotiation then pending for the reunion of the Greek and Latin branches of the Church, published in 1437 a bull dissolving the Council of Basel, and summoning another to meet at Ferrara. The assembly at Basel retorted by declaring the Pope contumacious, and suspending him from the exercise of all authority. Both parties proceeded eventually to the last extremities. The council, after proclaiming afresh, as "Catholic verities," that a general council has power over the pope, and cannot be transferred or dissolved but by its own act, passed a definitive sentence in its thirty-fourth session, June 25, 1439, deposing Eugenius from the papal throne. The Pope retaliated by stigmatizing the Fathers of Basel as schismatical and heretical, cancelling their acts, and excommunicating their president, the Cardinal Archbishop of Arles. Meanwhile an energetic and independent line of action was adopted by the Government in France. The Crown, in concert with the heads of the Church, availed itself of a train of events, which had so seriously damaged the prestige of the papacy to make a decisive advance in the path of practical reform and to establish the long-cherished Gallican privileges on a secure basis. For this purpose Charles VII assembled a great national council at Bourges, in July, 1438, at which he presided in person, surrounded by the princes of his family and by all the most eminent dignitaries spiritual and temporal; and here was promulgated the memorable ordinance known as the "Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges." The French Church, it must be observed, did not recognize the deposition of Pope Eugenius, but adhered to his obedience, rejecting Felix V, whom the Council of Basel elected to succeed him, as a pretender. It continued, nevertheless, to support the council and to assert its supreme legislative authority. Hence there arises a considerable difficulty _in limine_ as to the character of the proceedings at Bourges. For the deposition of Eugenius was either a rightful and valid exercise of conciliar authority or it was not. If it was not--if the council had wrongfully or uncanonically condemned the successor of Peter--how could it be infallible? and when should its legislation in any other particulars be indisputable? On the other hand, if the deposition was a valid one, with what consistency could the French continue to regard Eugenius as their legitimate pastor? It was a knotty dilemma. The position, however, though logically open to objections, was not without its practical advantages. For, since France maintained a good understanding with both the contending parties, both found it conducive to their interests to send deputations to the Council of Bourges: Pope Eugenius, with a view to obtain its support for the rival council which he had opened at Ferrara; the Fathers of Basel, in order to make known their decrees, which, as agreeing with the received doctrine of Gallican theologians, would, it was hoped, meet with a cordial welcome throughout France. The assembly at Bourges did not fail to profit by these exceptional circumstances. It accepted the decrees of Basel, yet not absolutely, but after critical examination and with certain modification; a course which, by implication, asserted a right to legislate for the concerns of the French Church even independently of a general council acknowledged to be orthodox. The following explanation of this proceeding was inserted in the preamble of the celebrated statute agreed upon by the authorities at Bourges. It is there stated that this policy was adopted, "not from any hesitation as to the authority of the Council of Basel to enact ecclesiastical decrees, but because it was judged advisable, under the circumstances and requirements of the French realm and nation." So that it appears, on the whole, that while the French professed great zeal on this occasion for the dogma of the superiority of a general council over the pope, the principle practically illustrated at Bourges was that of a supremacy of a national council over every other ecclesiastical authority. Such were the anomalies which arose out of the strange necessities of the time. The Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges embraces twenty-three articles. The first treats of the authority of general councils, and of the time and manner of convening and celebrating them. The second relates to ecclesiastical elections, which are enjoined to be made hereafter in strict accordance with the canons, by the cathedral, collegiate, and conventual chapters. Reserves, annates, and "expective graces" are abolished; the rights of patrons are to be respected, provided their nominees be graduates of the universities and otherwise well qualified. The pope retains only a veto in case of unfitness or uncanonical election, and the nominations to benefices "_in curia vacantia_," _i.e._, of which the incumbents may happen to die at Rome or within two days' journey of the pontifical residence. The king and other princes may occasionally _recommend_ or _request_ the promotion of persons of special merit, but without threats or violent pressure of any kind. Other articles regulate the order of ecclesiastical appeals, which, with the exception of the "_causa majores_" specified by law, and those relating to the elections in cathedral and conventual churches, are henceforth to be decided on the spot by the ordinary judges; appeals are to be carried in all cases to the court immediately superior; no case to be referred to the pope "_omisso medio_," _i.e._, without passing through the intermediate tribunals. The remaining clauses consist of regulations for the performance of divine service, and various matters of discipline. The reader will remember that Pope Eugenius, on the occasion of his temporary reconciliation with the Council of Basel in 1433, expressed his approbation of all its synodal acts up to that date; and this sanction of their validity is held by Gallicans to extend to the period of the second and final rupture in 1437. It follows that the provisions of the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, so far as they coincide with the decrees of Basel prior to 1437, were authorized by the holy see; and this includes them all, with two exceptions. The Pragmatic Sanction was registered by the Parliament of Paris on July 13, 1439; becoming thereby part of the statute law of France. Its publication caused universal satisfaction throughout the kingdom. At Rome, on the other hand, it was indignantly censured and resolutely opposed. Eugenius IV vainly strove to obtain the King's consent to an alteration of some of its details. Nicholas V protested against it without effect; but the superior genius and subtle measures of Pius II were more successful. This Pontiff denounced the Pragmatic at the Council of Mantua in 1460 as "a blot which disfigured the Church of France; a decree which no ecumenical council would have passed nor any pope have confirmed; a principle of confusion in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Since it had been in force, the laity had become the masters and judges of the clergy; the power of the spiritual sword could no longer be exerted except at the good pleasure of the secular authority. The Roman pontiff, whose diocese embraced the world, whose jurisdiction is not bounded even by the ocean, possessed only such extent of power in France as the parliament might see fit to allow him." The ambassadors of Charles VII, however, reminded his holiness that the Pragmatic Sanction was founded on the canons of Constance and Basel, which had been ratified by his predecessors; and when the Pope proceeded to threaten France with the interdict, and to prohibit all appeal from his decisions to a future council, the King caused his procureur-general, Jean Dauvet, to publish an official protest against these acts of violence, concluding with a solemn appeal to the judgment of the Church Catholic assembled by the representation. While awaiting that event, Charles declared himself resolved to uphold the laws and regulations which had been sanctioned by previous councils. Louis XI, urged by alternate menaces, entreaties, and flattery from Rome, revoked the Pragmatic Sanction shortly after his accession. This step accorded well with his own arbitrary temper; for he could not endure the privilege of free election by the cathedral and monastic chapters; nor was he less jealous of the influence exerted, under the shelter of that privilege, by the high feudal nobility in the disposal of church preferment. He seems to have expected, moreover, that while ostensibly conceding the right of patronage to the apostolic see, he should be able to retain the real power in his own hands. The event disappointed his calculations. No sooner was the decree of Bourges rescinded than the Pope resumed and enforced his claim to the provision of benefices in France. Simony and the whole train of concomitant abuses reappeared more scandalously than ever; and Louis found himself despised by his subjects as the dupe of papal artifice. The parliamentary courts, meanwhile, assumed a determined attitude in defence of the right of election guaranteed by the Pragmatic Sanction. They pronounced the abolition of that act illegal, and treated it as null and void; they insisted on their own authority in entertaining appeals against ecclesiastical abuses; they eagerly supported anyone who showed a disposition to withstand the pretensions of Rome in the matter of patronage. The King, smarting under the trickery of the Pope, made no attempt to restrain them in this line of conduct; and the result was that the repeal of the Pragmatic Sanction was never fully executed, having never been legalized by the forms of the constitution. On the other hand, the popes so far maintained the advantage they had extorted from Louis that the ancient franchise of the Church as to elections became virtually extinct in France. Things remained in this unsettled state during the reigns of Louis XI, Charles VIII, and Louis XII. The latter Prince, on coming to the throne, published an edict reëstablishing the Pragmatic Sanction; and this step, added to his ambitious enterprises in Italy, brought him into hostile collision with Pope Julius II. The King, unwilling to make war on the head of the Church without some semblance of ecclesiastical sanction, convoked a council at Tours in September, 1510, and consulted the clergy on a series of questions arising out of the disturbed state of his relations with Rome. They decided, in accordance with the known views and wishes of the sovereign, that it is lawful for an independent prince, if unjustly attacked, to defend himself against the pope by force of arms; to withdraw for a time from his obedience; to take possession of the territory of the Church, not with the purpose of retaining it, but as a temporary measure of self-protection; and to resist the pretensions of the pontiff to powers not rightfully belonging to him. Citations to appear in Rome might, under such circumstances, be safely disregarded; as also papal censures, which would be null and void. If the emergency should arise, the council added, the king ought to be governed by the ancient principles of ecclesiastical law, as confirmed and reënacted by the Pragmatic Sanction. The Gallican clergy sent a deputation to Pope Julius on this occasion to entreat him to adopt a more conciliatory policy toward the princes of Christendom; and they determined, in case their advice should be fruitless, to demand the convocation of a general council to take cognizance of the Pope's conduct, and prescribe the measures necessary for the guidance and welfare of the Church. An ecclesiastical congress, calling itself a council-general, but altogether unworthy of that august title, was held, in fact, in the following year at Pisa, under the auspices of the King of France and the emperor Maximilian. The Pope refused to appear there, and convoked a rival synod at Rome, summoning the cardinals who had authorized the meeting at Pisa to present themselves at his court within sixty days. On the expiration of this term he publicly excommunicated them, degraded them from their dignity, and deprived them of their preferments. Thus the Western Church once more exhibited the spectacle of a "house divided against itself," as during the scandalous strife between the synods of Basel and Florence; and for some time a formal schism appeared imminent. The so-called Council of Pisa consisted of the four rebellious cardinals, twenty Gallican prelates, several abbots and other dignitaries, the envoys of the King of France, deputies from some of the French universities, and a considerable number of doctors of the Faculty of Paris. This assembly justified its position on the ground that there are extraordinary cases in which a council may be called without the intervention of the pope; and that, since the present Pontiff had neglected to obey the decree of the Council of Constance which enjoined a similar celebration at the interval of every ten years, the cardinals were bound to take the initiative in the matter, according to a solemn engagement which they had made in the conclave when Julius was elected. After repeating the stereotyped formula concerning the supreme authority of general councils, and the imperative necessity of a reformation of the Church in its head and in its members, the fathers addressed themselves professedly to the herculean task thus indicated; but little or nothing was effected of any practical importance. RENÉ FRANÇOIS ROHRBACHER[84] Charles held an assembly at Bourges in the month of July, 1438. He attended this himself, with the Dauphin, his son, afterward Louis XI, many princes of the blood, and other nobles, with a great number of bishops and doctors of the Church. The deputies of Pope Eugenius IV and those of the prelates of Basel were heard one after another. The result of this Assembly of Bourges was an ordinance and twenty-three articles which were called the "Pragmatic Sanction," a name introduced under the ancient emperors. In this were adopted, sometimes with modifications, most of the decrees of Basel. Among them the first was conceived in these terms: "General councils shall be held every ten years, and the pope, according to the opinion of the council which is closing, shall designate the place of the next council, which cannot be changed except for most important reasons and by the advice of the cardinals. As to the authority of the general council, the decrees published at Constance are renewed, by which it is said that the general council holds its power immediately from Jesus Christ; that all persons, even of papal dignity, are subject to it in that which regards the faith, the extirpation of schism, and the reformation of the Church in the head and in the members; and that all must obey it, even the pope, who is punishable if he transgresses it. Consequently, the Council of Basel states that it is legitimately assembled in the Holy Ghost, and that no one, not even the pope, can dissolve, transfer, nor prolong it, without the consent of the fathers of the council." The other articles may be reduced principally to the following propositions: Canonical elections shall be held, and the pope shall not reserve the bishoprics and other elective benefices. Expectant pardons shall be abolished. Graduates shall be preferred to others in the conferring of benefices, and for this reason they shall suggest their degrees during Lent. All ecclesiastical causes of the provinces at a distance of four days' journey from Rome shall be tried in the place where they arise, except major causes and those of churches which are immediately dependent on the holy see. In the case of appeals, the order of the tribunals shall be preserved. No one shall ever appeal to the pope without passing previously through the intermediate tribunal. If anyone, believing himself injured by an intermediate tribunal subject to the pope, makes an appeal to the holy see, the pope shall name the judges from the same places, unless there should be important reasons for bringing the cause directly to Rome. Frivolous appeals are punished. The celebration of divine service is regulated and spectacles in churches are forbidden. The abuse of ecclesiastical censures is repressed, and it is declared that no one is obliged to shun excommunicated persons, unless they have been proclaimed by name, or else that the censure shall be so notorious that it cannot be denied or excused. Such are the principal matters of the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges. It was registered at the Parliament of Paris, July 13, 1439; but the King ordered its execution from the day of its date, 1438. The Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges had a little defect; it was radically null; for every contract is null which is not consented to by both of the contracting parties. Now the Pragmatic Sanction was a contract between the churches of France and the pope to regulate their mutual relations. The consent of the pope to it was therefore absolutely necessary, the more especially as he was the superior. For if one must admit that a general council is superior to the pope, the Assembly of Bourges was certainly not a general council. Moreover, the first use that it made of its Pragmatic Sanction was to break it--and happily. In its first articles, it had recognized the Council of Basel as ecumenical and as superior to Pope Eugenius IV, with obligation to everyone to obey its decrees. Now, the following year, 1439, the Council of Basel deposes Eugenius IV, and substitutes for him Felix V, with obligation to everyone, under penalty of anathema, to reject the first and submit to the second. Nevertheless France does neither the one nor the other; she continues to recognize Eugenius IV, and derides the pope of Ripaille and of Basel, as she will declare in a new assembly of Bourges in 1440. Above certain laws which men write on sheets of paper, with a goose-quill and ink, they bear in themselves another law, written by the hand of God, and which is good sense. Happy the nations which never depart from this living and general law, or which, at least, know enough to return to it promptly! Accordingly, September 2, 1440, in the new Assembly of Bourges, King Charles VII published a declaration by which he commanded all his subjects to yield obedience to Pope Eugenius, with prohibition to recognize another pope or to circulate among the public any letters or despatches bearing the name of any other one whomsoever who pretended to the pontificate. Nevertheless, Monsieur de Savoie, for so Charles VII called the antipope, was united to him by ties of blood. This declaration of the King and of the Assembly of Bourges was religiously observed in all France, except in the University of Paris, where they declared openly enough for the antipope. The reason of this is very simple: the doctors of the Church in Paris dominated in the mob of Basel, the antipope was of their own creation, and their colleagues of Paris could not fail to recognize him. As for King Charles VII, at the close of the year 1441 he sent an embassy to Pope Eugenius to ask the convocation of a general council which should put an end to the troubles of Christendom. The principal orator was the Bishop of Meaux, Pierre de Versailles, formerly Bishop of Digne, and originally a monk of the Abbey of St. Denis. He had an audience in full consistory December 16th, and he spoke to the Pope in the following terms: "The most Christian King, our master, implores your assistance, most holy Father, or rather it is the entire people of the faithful who address to you these words of Scripture: '_Be our leader and our prince._' Not that any one among us doubts that you have not the princedom in the Church; for we know that the state of the Church was constituted monarchical by Jesus Christ himself; but we ask you to be _our prince_ by functions of zeal and by considerateness. We pray you to manage wisely the boat of St. Peter, in the midst of the tempests by which it is buffeted. The princes of the Church, most holy Father, ought not to resemble those of the nations. The latter have frequently no other rule of government than their own will; on the contrary, the princes of the Church ought to temper the use of their authority; and it is for that that the holy fathers have established laws and canons. Now, here is the source of the ills which afflict the Church. There are two extremes: one consists in exercising ecclesiastical authority as the princes of the nations exercise theirs, without rule and without measure; the other is the enterprise of those who, in order to correct its abuses, have desired to annihilate authority, who have denied that supreme power rests in the Church, who have given this power to the multitude, who have changed the entire ecclesiastical order in destroying the monarchy which God placed there, to substitute for it democracy or aristocracy, who have arrived, not only with respect to the leader but also with respect to doctrine, at the point of causing an execrable schism among the faithful. "These considerations, most holy Father, have touched the most Christian King; and to mitigate these two extremes, he has resolved to solicit the convocation of a general council. That of Basel pushed the second extreme too far when it undertook to suppress the truth as to the supreme power in one alone. That of Florence, which you are now holding, has well elucidated this truth, as may be seen in the decree concerning the Greeks; but it has determined upon nothing to temper the use of this power. This has caused many to believe it too near to the first extremity. A third will be able, therefore, to take the just mean and restore everything to order. "I shall be told, no doubt, that there is no more need of general councils; that there have been enough of them up to this time; that the Roman Church suffices to terminate all controversies; that a prince does not willingly intrust his rights to the multitude; that we would be again exposed, by the convocation of another council, to the movements which agitated the assembly at Basel; but, in order to answer that, it is sufficient to cast our eyes upon the present state of the Church. There should rest in you, most holy Father, and in all other prelates, two kinds of authority; one of divine power and institution, the other of confidence in the people and of good reputation. The first, although it cannot fail you, has, however, to be amenable to the second, and you will obtain this by means of a general council, not such a one as that of Basel, but such as the most Christian King asks; that is to say, a council which shall be held at your order, and which shall be regulated according to the decrees of the holy fathers. Such an assembly will not be a confused multitude; and your monarchical power, which comes from heaven, which is attested by the Gospel, which is recognized by the saints and by the universal Church, will not be exposed to any danger." The orator then shows how dangerous it is to refuse the convocation of this council, dwelling long upon the enterprises of the prelates of Basel, whom he emphatically blames, even to the extent of saying that, from their practice and their maxims, there is no more peace possible in the Church, and that a great many are asking if this schism be not that great apostasy of which St. Paul spoke to the Thessalonians, and which should open the door to the Antichrist. He finishes the address by this declaration: "I have desired to say all this in public, most holy Father, in order to make known to you the upright intentions of the King my master in the present affair. He does not attach himself to flesh and blood, but he hears the voice of the celestial Father. From this source he learns to recognize you and to revere you as the sovereign pontiff and the head of all Christians, the vicar of Jesus Christ, conformably with the doctrine of the saints and of the whole Church. And because he sees that these truths are obscured to-day, he asks for the call of the general council. In this he equally manifests his justice and his piety. "As for your person, most holy Father, he has sentiments for you which pass the limits of ordinary filial affection. He always speaks of you with consideration. He does not like to have others speak otherwise. He conceives the most favorable hopes of you. He counts upon it that, after having reconciled all the orientals to the Roman Church, you will also reëstablish the affairs of the Occident." This discourse certainly did honor to the good sense of France. In spite of the intrigues of the learned doctors of the university, the King and the episcopacy early and clearly remarked the revolutionary and anarchistic tendency of Basel. As for the amicably regulating relation of the churches of France with the holy see to remedy certain abuses, the thing was not difficult. It would have been sufficient to send some more bishops to Florence like the Bishop of Meaux. All would have been very quickly arranged, to the satisfaction of everybody, and the example of France would have drawn the rest of the Occident. But to desire a third council was not of the same wisdom. Thus the Pope took good care not to consent to it. In 1444 Eugenius IV created the Dauphin of France, who was afterward King Louis XI, grand gonfalonier of the Roman Church, granting him a pension of fifteen thousand florins, to be taken annually from the apostolic chamber. The Dauphin made an expedition to the gates of Basel, where he overcame a corps of Swiss and spread consternation among those who were still at the pretended council. This expedition was followed by a long truce between France and England; an event which was considered as the prelude to a good peace. In order to obtain from God this good, so necessary and so much desired, there were public fêtes at Paris, among others a solemn procession in which were carried all the holy relics of the city. In November, 1446, King Charles VII, being at Tours, made with his council a plan of accommodation between the two parties that divided the Church. It arranged that all the censures published on one side and the other should be revoked; that Pope Eugenius should be recognized by all as before the schism; that Monsieur de Savoie, called Felix by his adherents, should renounce the popedom; that he should hold the highest rank in the Church, next to the person of the Pope, and that his partisans should be also maintained in their dignities, grades, and benefices. CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY EMBRACING THE PERIOD COVERED IN THIS VOLUME A.D. 1301-1438 JOHN RUDD, LL.D Events treated at length are here indicated in large type; the numerals following give volume and page. Separate chronologies of the various nations, and of the careers of famous persons, will be found in the INDEX VOLUME, with volume and page references showing where the several events are fully treated. A.D. 1301. In Hungary the crown becomes elective; end of the Arpad dynasty. Dante begins writing his _Divine Comedy_, See "DANTE COMPOSES THE DIVINA COMMEDIA," vii, 1. 1302. Philip the Fair convenes the first meeting of the States-General of France. See "THIRD ESTATE JOINS IN THE GOVERNMENT OF FRANCE," vii, 17. Dante and his party banished from Florence. See "DANTE COMPOSES THE DIVINA COMMEDIA," vii, 1. Comyn is appointed regent by the Scots, who make another effort to regain their independence. Pope Boniface VIII issues a bull against Philip the Fair, who burns it, accuses him of simony and heresy, and refuses to acknowledge him as pope. Battle of Courtrai; the Flemings defeat the French. See "WAR OF THE FLEMINGS WITH PHILIP THE FAIR OF FRANCE," vii, 23. 1303. Pope Boniface VIII is surprised at Anagni by William de Nogaret, King Philip's adviser; after being kept for some days a prisoner he is rescued and allowed to return to Rome, where he dies. Scotland submits to Edward I of England. Andronicus Palæologus, the Byzantine Emperor, engages the Catalan Grand Company to aid him against the Turks.[85] 1304. Roger di Flor defeats the Mongols, enters Philadelphia, and stations himself at Ephesus. 1305. Wallace, "Hero of Scotland," is executed. See "EXPLOITS AND DEATH OF WILLIAM WALLACE, THE HERO OF SCOTLAND," vi, 369. Beginning of the so-called Babylonish Captivity, being the establishment of the papal court at Lyons, France. 1306. A grandson of the first claimant, Robert Bruce, is crowned King of Scotland; he dispossesses the English of a great part of Scotland. On complaint of the nobility and gentry the use of sea-coal is prohibited in London. 1307. Death of Edward I; his son, Edward II, succeeds to the English throne. Charges against the Knights Templars. See "EXTINCTION OF THE ORDER OF KNIGHTS TEMPLARS," vii, 51. 1308. Albert of Austria assassinated by his nephew; Henry VII, Count of Luxemburg, elected emperor of Germany. Origin of the Swiss confederations according to common traditions.[86] See "FIRST SWISS STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY," vii, 28. 1309. Pope Clement V removes the papal court from Rome to Avignon, France. Rhodes captured from the Turks by the Knights of St. John. 1310. Fifty Knights Templars are burned in Paris. Expedition of Henry VII of Germany into Italy to restore the imperial authority. He obtains the throne of Bohemia for his son John, inaugurating the Luxemburg dynasty. 1311. Fifteenth general council (Council of Vienne); it suppresses the order of Knights Templars, and condemns the Beghards (Beguins), a begging order of monks and nuns. Matteo Visconti secures the sovereignty of Milan. Walter de Brienne quarrels with the Catalans and is defeated and slain by them; they conquer the duchy of Athens and appoint Roger Deslau grand duke. 1312. Henry VII unsuccessful in an attempt on Florence. Gaveston, a foreigner and favorite of the King, and who for some years had made himself obnoxious to the barons and people of England, is made prisoner and beheaded; peace ensues between Edward II and his barons. Robert, King of Naples, seizes the principal forts in Rome; Henry VII is, notwithstanding, crowned emperor in the Lateran Church by three cardinals. 1313. In conjunction with the Genoese and Sicilians, Emperor Henry VII prepares to attack Robert of Naples, but dies suddenly. Birth of Boccaccio. 1314. Defeat of the English by the Scots under Robert Bruce. See "BATTLE OF BANNOCKBURN," vii, 41. Louis of Bavaria and Frederick, son of the late Albert of Austria, are elected by opposite parties to the crown of Germany; they make war on each other. Ireland invaded by Edward Bruce, a Scottish adventurer, and a younger brother of Robert Bruce. Louis X succeeds his father, Philip IV, in France. Molay, grand master of the Knights Templars, is burned at the stake in Paris. See "EXTINCTION OF THE ORDER OF KNIGHTS TEMPLARS," vii, 51. 1315. Louis Hutin, King of France, emancipates all serfs within the royal domains on payment of a just surrender charge. A great victory achieved by the Swiss over the Austrians, under Leopold (brother of Frederick the Handsome) at Morgarten. 1316. Edward Bruce crowned king of Ireland. Establishment of the Salic law excluding females and their descendants from the throne of France. A predominance of French cardinals, created by Pope Clement V, secures the election of another French pope, and the continuance of the papal see at Avignon. The new pope, John XXII, appoints eight more cardinals, of whom seven are French. 1317. Birger, King of the Swedes, murders his two brothers and causes a rebellion of his people. 1318. Battle of Dundalk; Edward Bruce defeated and slain by Lord Birmingham; end of the war in Ireland. Giotto, a friend of Dante, famous in Italy; he was the first painter of portraits from life. 1319. Pope John XXII excommunicates Robert Bruce of Scotland; the Scotch Parliament resists all papal interference in its affairs. 1320.[87] The Old English poem _Cursor Mundi_ composed. It was founded on Cædmon's paraphrase of the book of Genesis. 1321. Death of Dante while in exile at Ravenna. 1322. Philip V dies; he is succeeded by his brother, Charles IV, on the throne of France. Louis the Bavarian triumphs over his rival Frederick of Austria, who is captured. Queen Isabella, while resident in the Tower of London, first sees Mortimer, who is brought there a prisoner. Sir John Mandeville, an English exile in France, sets out on his eastern travels. 1323. Louis of Bavaria invests his son with the margraviate of Brandenburg. 1324. Commencement of Queen Isabella's guilty intimacy with Mortimer. Birth of Wycliffe.[88] Pope John XXII excommunicates Louis the Bavarian. 1325. Birth of John Gower, poet, and friend of Chaucer. 1326. Burgesses are first admitted into the Scotch Parliament. Isabella, Queen of Edward II, and Earl Mortimer invade England; the King is captured and imprisoned in Kenilworth castle. 1327. King Edward II is deposed by parliament; Edward III, his son, succeeds. Edward II is brutally murdered by his keepers. Louis V, the Bavarian, of Germany heads an expedition into Italy; he proclaims the deposition of Pope John XXII; he is forced to retreat after being crowned in Rome. 1328. Independence of Scotland recognized by Edward III of England. Accession of Philip VI of France, the first of the house of Valois. Birth of Chaucer.[88] 1329. Death of Robert Bruce; his infant son, David, succeeds to the Scotch throne. 1330. Orkham, Sultan of the Turks, captures Nicæa. Queen Isabella and Mortimer are surprised in Nottingham castle[89]; he is executed at Tyburn; Isabella is confined during her life at Castle Rising. 1331. John Kempe takes his servants and apprentices from Flanders to join the weaving colony already founded at Norwich, England. 1332. Edward Balliol claims the crown of Scotland; he invades that country with an English army. The young King, David, takes refuge in France. Lucerne joins the Swiss confederacy. 1333. Edward III of England invades Scotland; he defeats the Scotch at Halidon Hill and captures Berwick, which is annexed to England. Casimir the Great, last king of the Piast line, succeeds to the throne of Poland. 1334. Denmark in a state of anarchy; Gerard, Count of Holstein, exercises a disputed power as regent. 1335. The house of Austria becomes possessed of Carinthia. 1336. Birth of Timur (Tamerlane) the Tartar. 1337. Edward III of England obtains the support of Van Artevelde; he obtains money by grants from parliament and confiscating the wealth of the Lombard merchants. See "JAMES VAN ARTEVELDE LEADS A FLEMISH REVOLT," vii, 68. Birth of Froissart, the chronicler, at Valenciennes. 1338. Beginning of the wars of Edward III against France; he sails with a fleet of five hundred ships; lands his army at Antwerp. See "BATTLE OF SLUYS AND CRÉCY," vii, 78. Declaration of the Electors at Rense that Germany is an independent empire over which the Pope has no jurisdiction; the diet at Frankfort ratifies the manifesto. 1339. France invaded by Edward III of England; beginning of the Hundred Years' War. Genoa elects its first doge, Simone Boccanera. A body of disbanded mercenaries form themselves into the first _condottiere_ company known in Italy. The word means a captain or leader, the _condottieri_ those under the leader. They were free lances, open to serve under any flag. 1340. Edward destroys a large French fleet at Sluys; beginning of England's naval power. See "BATTLE OF SLUYS AND CRÉCY," vii, 78. War between the Hanseatic League and Denmark; the Danes defeated. 1341. Death of John III of Brittany; his brother, John of Montfort, and his niece, Jeanne de Penthièvre, wife of Charles of Blois, contest the succession; England supports the former, France the latter. Edward Balliol retires on the return of David II to Scotland. Petrarch is crowned with laurel at Rome. See "MODERN RECOGNITION OF SCENIC BEAUTY," vii, 93. 1342. Edward III pursues his campaign in Brittany; he relieves Hennebonne, besieged by the French. Walter de Brienne, Duke of Athens, becomes sovereign lord of Florence. Accession of Louis, called the Great, to the throne of Hungary, on the death of King Charles Robert, his father. 1343. Expulsion from Florence of the Duke of Athens; popular government restored. A truce of three years arranged between England and France by the mediation of the papal legates. 1344. Breach of the truce between England and France; Earl Derby defeats Count de Lisle and reduces a great part of Perigord. A Turkish fleet is destroyed at Pallene by the Knights of Rhodes, who assist in the capture of Smyrna by the Venetians and the King of Cyprus. Masham, an Englishman, first discovers the Madeira Islands. In England, parliament, by the Statute of Provisors, forbids the interference of the pope in bestowing benefices and livings in England. 1345. Fall and death of James Van Artevelde at Ghent. 1346. Battle of Crécy; cannon said to have been first used by the English. See "BATTLES OF SLUYS AND CRÉCY," vii, 78. At the instance of Pope Clement VI, Charles of Luxemburg (Charles IV) is elected emperor of Germany in opposition to Louis the Bavarian. David Bruce invades England; he is vanquished and made prisoner at Neville's Cross. Servia at the zenith of her power; the ruler, Stephen Dushan, assumes the imperial title. 1347. Calais captured by Edward III. Death of Louis the Bavarian; he is succeeded by Charles IV, whose title is disputed until 1349. Queen Joanna I of Naples has her dominions invaded by Louis the Great of Hungary to avenge the murder of her husband, Andrew, brother of Louis, supposedly at her instigation. See "RIENZI'S REVOLUTION IN ROME," vii, 104. 1348. About this time begins the Renaissance in Italy. See "BEGINNING AND PROGRESS OF THE RENAISSANCE," vii, 110. Founding of the University of Prague, the first in Germany. Pope Clement VI purchases Avignon from Queen Joanna I of Naples. The plague stalks in Europe. See "THE BLACK DEATH RAVAGES EUROPE," vii, 130. 1349. Institution (or revival, see A.D. 1192) of the Order of the Garter in England. Dauphiny annexed to France on condition that the King's eldest son should be called the dauphin. 1350. Death of Philip VI; his son, John the Good, succeeds to the French throne. 1351. Zurich joins the Swiss confederation. Paganino Doria, commanding the Genoese fleet, plunders many Venetian towns on the Adriatic. 1352. A statute of præmunire still further limits the papal power in England. Naval battle in the Bosporus between the Genoese, under Paganino Doria, and the Venetians, Byzantines, and Catalans under Niccola Pisano; the latter are defeated, and concede the entire command of the Black Sea to the Genoese. 1353. Alliance of Genoa with Louis of Hungary; their fleet, under Antonino Grinaldi, defeated; in despair the Genoese place themselves under the protection of John Visconte. Bern joins the league of Swiss cantons. 1354. Downfall and death of Rienzi. See "RIENZI'S REVOLUTION IN ROME," vii, 104. Paganino Doria captures or destroys the Venetian fleet in the Morea; their admiral, Pisano, is captured. Beginning of Turkish dominion in Europe. See "FIRST TURKISH DOMINION IN EUROPE," vii, 136. 1355. King Charles of Navarre is treacherously seized and imprisoned in France; his brother Philip, and Geoffry d'Harcourt, make an alliance with Edward III; the war is renewed. Marino Falieri, Doge of Venice, beheaded. See "CONSPIRACY AND DEATH OF MARINO FALIERI AT VENICE," vii, 154. 1356. Battle of Poitiers; John II, King of France, taken prisoner by Edward, the Black Prince; the Dauphin, Charles, escapes and assumes the government of France during his father's captivity. Emperor Charles defines the duties of the electors of Germany. See "CHARLES IV OF GERMANY PUBLISHES HIS GOLDEN BULL," vii, 160. Wycliffe publishes his _Last Age of the Court_. 1357. London enthusiastically welcomes the Prince of Wales (the Black Prince) on his return with his prisoners; King Edward III concludes a treaty with the captive French King, which the Dauphin rejects. Popular movement in Paris under Stephen Marcel; meeting of the States-general of France. 1358. Violent commotions in France. See "INSURRECTION OF THE JACQUERIE IN FRANCE," vii, 164. By a treaty of peace the Venetians resign Dalmatia and Istria to the King of Hungary; they agree to style their doge Duke of Venice only. 1359. Edward III again invades France, his terms of peace not being accepted. 1360. England and France conclude the treaty of Bretigny; King John II is set at liberty on payment of a heavy ransom. Outbreak of the Children's Plague in England. 1361. End of the first ducal house of Burgundy. Adrianople is conquered by Sultan Amurath I of Turkey. All military operations in Europe suspended by the virulence of the plague. 1362. Edward III grants Aquitaine to his son, the Black Prince; he also celebrates his fiftieth birthday by a general amnesty and a confirmation of Magna Charta. Conjectured beginning of Langland's _Vision of Piers Plowman_, a noted allegorical and satirical poem.[90] 1363. Disbanded English soldiers enter the service of the Pisans, and obtain a victory for them over the Florentines. 1364. Death of King John the Good of France, in Savoy palace, London; his son, Charles V, succeeds; Du Guesclin, his general, defeats the English and the army of Charles the Bad at Cocherel. Du Guesclin is afterward defeated and captured by the English, under Sir John Chandos; besides the capture of Du Guesclin, Charles of Blois is slain. The house of Montfort secures Brittany. Treaty of union between Bohemia and Austria. Chaucer writes his _Canterbury Tales_. 1365. Pedro the Cruel, the epithet "cruel" being given him mainly for the murder of his brother, Don Fadrique, becomes so odious to his subjects that Henry of Trastamare, his brother, revives his claim to the throne of Leon and Castile; Du Guesclin takes command of his forces. University of Vienna founded. 1366. Pedro the Cruel driven from his throne. Pope Urban V claims the tribute which had previously been paid by England; an act of parliament resists the demand; it further declares the concessions made by King John to be illegal and invalid. Tamerlane (Timur the Tartar), reviver of the great Mongol empire, inaugurates his conquests. 1367. Edward the Black Prince, having espoused the cause of Pedro the Cruel, attacks and dethrones Henry of Trastamare; Pedro is restored to the throne, but refuses the stipulated pay to his allies, who leave him to his fate. Passage of the Kilkenny Statute; it forbade any Englishman to use an Irish name, to speak the Irish language, to adopt the Irish dress, or to allow the cattle of an Irishman to graze on his lands; it also made it high treason to marry a native. 1369. King Charles V breaks the Anglo-French treaty; the Hundred Years' War reopened. 1370. End of the Piast dynasty, Poland, caused by the death of Casimir the Great; Louis the Great, King of Hungary, succeeds. Timur the Tartar extends his domains. See "CONQUESTS OF TIMUR THE TARTAR," vii, 169. 1371. Robert II ascends the throne and founds the Stuart dynasty in Scotland, on the death of David Bruce.[91] A petition of the English Parliament to the King that he employ no churchmen in any office of the state, and threatening to resist by force the oppressions of papal authority. 1373. Henry of Castile invades Portugal, besieges Lisbon, and compels Ferdinand to sign a treaty of peace. Birth of John Huss.[92] 1374. A strange plague, the dancing mania, appears in Europe. See "DANCING MANIA OF THE MIDDLE AGES," vii, 187. Wycliffe is appointed one of the seven ambassadors to represent to the Pope the grievances of the Church of England. 1375. A general council of citizens of Florence declares "liberty paramount to every other consideration"; it appoints the "Seven Saints of War," which effectually resist aggression. 1376. Death of Edward the Black Prince. Gregory XI abandons Avignon as the papal residence. 1377. Rome again becomes the home of the papal court. Gregory XI orders proceedings against Wycliffe, the English reformer. Death of Edward III; his grandson, Richard II, succeeds to the English throne. 1378. Wenceslaus becomes emperor of Germany on the death of his father, Charles IV. Rival popes elected. See "ELECTION OF ANTIPOPE CLEMENT VII: BEGINNING OF THE GREAT SCHISM," vii, 201. 1379. Pietro Doria, at the head of the Genoese fleet, defeats the Venetian fleet off Pola; Chioggia is captured and Venice threatened. A poll-tax imposed on the people of England; this led directly to a revolution. War of the rival papal factions in Rome. Revolt of the White Hoods (_Les Chaperons blancs_) in Flanders; the workmen of Ghent, when they revolted against the Duke of Burgundy, adopted a white hood as their badge. 1380. Establishment in Germany of post messengers. Surrender of the Genoese fleet and army at Chioggia. See "GENOESE SURRENDER TO VENETIANS," vii, 213. 1381. Overthrow of Joanna I of Naples by Charles Durazzo (Charles the Little). An act of parliament surreptitiously obtained against heretics in England. Exasperated by the poll-tax the people of England revolt. See "REBELLION OF WAT TYLER," vii, 217. Insurrection of the Maillotins against the new tax on bread in Paris. They were so called because they armed themselves with _maillets de fer_ ("iron malls") when they attacked the arsenal, put to death the officers, and set the prisoners at large. Philip van Artevelde rises to power in Flanders. 1382. Queen Joanna I of Naples is put to death in prison. "WYCLIFFE TRANSLATES THE BIBLE INTO ENGLISH." See vii, 227. Led by Philip van Artevelde the people of Ghent triumph over their ruler, Count Louis II; Bruges is captured and looted by them; Artevelde is acclaimed governor; a French army advances and defeats the forces of Artevelde, who is slain, and Louis is restored. 1384. Flanders is incorporated in the dukedom of Burgundy; Artois and Franche Comté are also acquired by Philip the Bold of Burgundy. 1385. Scotland fruitlessly invaded by Richard II of England. John the Great ascends the throne of Portugal; he defeats the Castilians at Aljubarota. 1386. Victory of the Swiss over the Austrians at Sempach. See "THE SWISS WIN THEIR INDEPENDENCE," vii, 238. Hedvige, Queen of Poland, marries Duke of Jagellon, of Lithuania, uniting the states and establishing the Jagellon dynasty; as sovereign of Poland he is styled Ladislaus II. The Lithuanians abandon paganism. Founding of the University of Heidelberg. A regency, that of the Duke of Gloucester, is imposed upon Richard II of England. 1387. Consultation of Richard II at Nottingham with the judges; the regency commission is declared a criminal act. A brother of Emperor Wenceslaus, Sigismund, becomes king of Hungary. Birth of Fra Angelico (Guido di Pietri), the great friar-painter. 1388. Battle of Otterburne (Chevy Chase); an English-Scotch encounter in a private feud, not a national quarrel; the Earl of Douglas slain; Henry Percy captured by the Scots. At Naefels the Austrians are defeated by the Swiss. 1389. Bulgaria and Servia conquered by the Turks under Amurath I at the decisive battle of Kosovo; he is slain. Death of Pope Urban VI; Boniface succeeds; the schism continues. Albert, King of Sweden, defeated and made prisoner by Queen Margaret, who reigns over the three Scandinavian kingdoms. 1390. War of Florence with Milan. Robert III ascends the throne of Scotland. 1392. Fits of insanity seize the young King of France, Charles VI; cards are invented, or introduced, to amuse him during his lucid intervals. 1394. Birth of Prince Henry of Portugal, known as the "Navigator." 1395. Milan is created a hereditary duchy by Emperor Wenceslaus for Giovanni Galeazzo Visconti. 1396. Battle of Nicopolis; the Christian defenders of Hungary suffer a great defeat at the hands of the Turkish sultan Bajazet I. 1397. Scandinavia united under one crown. See "UNION OF DENMARK, SWEDEN, AND NORWAY," vii, 243. 1398. Mortimer, Earl of March, presumptive heir to the English throne and governor of Ireland, slain by a rebel force in that island. Froissart writes his _Chronicles_. 1399. Deposition of Richard II of England; Henry Bolingbroke founds the house of Lancaster. See "DEPOSITION OF RICHARD II," vii, 251. After a long struggle for the possession of Naples between Ladislaus and Louis II of Anjou, it ends in the triumph of Ladislaus. 1400. A great revolt of the Welsh is headed by Owen Glendower. Emperor Wenceslaus is deposed. Rupert of the Palatinate elected to the throne of Germany. 1401. Parliament ordains the burning of Lollards in England. Barcelona bank (earliest existing bank) established. 1402. Battle of Homildon Hill; victory of the Percys, a noble northern English family, over the Scots. License by royal letters-patent given to the "_Confrerie de la Passion_" to exhibit sacred dramas, or _Mysteries_, in France. "DISCOVERY OF THE CANARY ISLANDS AND THE AFRICAN COAST." See vii, 266. Tamerlane (Timur the Tartar) defeats and captures Bajazet at Angora. 1403. Battle of Shrewsbury; Henry IV defeats the Percys, who had allied themselves with Glendower to place the Earl of March on the English throne; Harry Percy (Hotspur) slain. 1404. Queen Margaret of Sweden claims Schleswig and Holstein on the death of Gerard VI. 1405. Pisa sold to Florence by the Visconti. An English act of parliament prohibits anyone not possessing twenty shillings a year in land from apprenticing his sons to any trade. Venice conquers Verona and Padua. Prince James Stuart, afterward James I, heir to the crown of Scotland, captured by the English. 1406. Pisa compelled to submit to Florence after a year of war. Gerson, chancellor of the University of Paris, proposes a general council to terminate the schism in the Church.[93] 1407. France distracted by the animosities of her leading families; Louis, Duke of Orleans, is assassinated by John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy. 1408. Valentina, widow of the Duke of Orleans, demands justice on her husband's assassins; the Duke of Burgundy declared an enemy of the state; he occupies Paris and drives out the royal court. 1409. Council of Pisa; both popes refuse to appear; they are deposed and Alexander V is elected. University of Leipsic founded. 1410. Death of Rupert of the Palatinate, Emperor of Germany. Jagellon (Ladislaus II), King of Poland, vanquishes the Teutonic Knights. 1411. Battle of Harlow; defeat of the Scotch Lord of the Isles and the highland clans. Sigismund elected emperor of Germany. John Huss excommunicated and forbidden to preach. University of St. Andrew's, Scotland, founded. 1412. For insulting the chief justice of England the Prince of Wales is committed to prison. Birth of Jeanne d'Arc, the Maid of Orleans. 1413. Death of Henry IV; Henry V ascends the English throne; he discards his dissolute associates and reforms his conduct. Ladislaus takes forcible possession of Rome and most of the papal states. 1414. The Seventeenth general council. See "COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE," vii, 284. Joanna II succeeds her brother Ladislaus of Naples on his death. 1415. "TRIAL AND BURNING OF JOHN HUSS." See vii, 294. John the Great of Portugal conquers Ceuta; he discards the use of the Julian period and introduces the computation of time from the Christian era. Brandenburg is acquired by the house of Hohenzollern. See "THE HOUSE OF HOHENZOLLERN ESTABLISHED IN BRANDENBURG," vii, 305. "BATTLE OF AGINCOURT." See vii, 320. 1416. Jerome of Prague burned. Alfonso the Wise, so called for his patronage of letters, ascends the throne of Aragon on the death of his father, Ferdinand the Just. 1417. Pope Martin V elected by the Council of Constance; end of the schism. Sir John Oldcastle, the "Good Lord Cobham," after four years' hiding is captured and burned as a heretic in London. Gypsies appear in Transylvania; they are believed to have been low-caste Hindus expelled by Timur in the fourteenth century. 1418. Close of the Council of Constance. See "COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE," vii, 284. A great massacre in Paris of the Armagnacs by the populace, the partisans of John the Fearless of Burgundy; the Dauphin and his adherents transfer their seat of government to Poitiers. 1419. Surrender of Rouen to the English. John the Fearless, beguiled by a treaty, meets the Dauphin, who has him assassinated. Storming of the town-hall of Prague by the Hussites; outbreak of the Hussite wars. Madeira first reached by the Portuguese, who sail under the command of Henry the Navigator. 1420. Henry V, King of England, made successor to the French throne. See "BATTLE OF AGINCOURT," vii, 320. Sigismund besieges the Hussites in Prague; he is defeated by them, led by John Ziska. Joanna II of Naples, who summons to her aid Alfonso V of Aragon, is attacked by Louis III of Anjou. 1421. Second crusade against the Bohemian Hussites. 1422. Death of Henry V of England and Charles VI of France; the former is succeeded by his infant son; he is proclaimed King of England and France; his uncles, the Duke of Gloucester, regent in England, and the Duke of Bedford in France; Charles VII, son of Charles VI, is proclaimed by the French. Constantinople besieged by Amurath II, Sultan of Turkey. 1423. Frederick the Warlike, Margrave of Misnia, assumes the electorate of Saxony and establishes the house of Wettin. 1424. James I of Scotland, released after a captivity of nineteen years, marries a daughter of the Earl of Somerset; he assumes the government of Scotland. John Ziska is succeeded by Procopius the Great as head of the Taborites, a division of the Hussites. 1425. Accession of John Palæologus II as emperor of Byzantium. John and Hulbert van Eyck, masters of the early Flemish school, invent painting in oil. 1426. Lübeck and the Baltic Hanse Towns support the Duke of Holstein against Eric XIII of Sweden. Great Hussite victory at Aussig. 1427. The Hussites extend their conquests in Saxony and Meissen; they gain a victory at Mies. 1428. Orleans, France, besieged by the English. Death of John de' Medici, founder of the illustrious family at Florence. 1429. Coronation of Charles VII of France at Rheims. Jeanne d'Arc relieves Orleans. See "JEANNE D'ARC'S VICTORY AT ORLEANS," vii, 333. Refusal of the Hussites to treat for peace with Emperor Sigismund. Antipope Clement VIII abdicates and ends the Great Schism. 1430. Institution of the Golden Fleece by Philip, Duke of Burgundy, on his marriage with Isabella, daughter of King John of Portugal, and in commemoration of the manufacturing prosperity of the Netherlands. 1431. Jeanne d'Arc dishonorably and inhumanly burned at Rouen. See "TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF JEANNE D'ARC," vii, 350. Council of Basel. Pope Martin V succeeded by Eugenius IV. 1432. Prince Henry's navigators discover and take possession of the Azores for the Portuguese. Opening of the trade of the north to the English and Dutch by the wars of the Hanse Towns, and Holstein, with Denmark. 1433. Treaty of the Council of Basel with the section of the Hussites called Calixtines; this satisfies them and they secede from the Hussite league. 1434. Cosmo de' Medici recalled to Florence; his party triumphant. Organization of the national church (Utraquist) in Bohemia. First exploration of the west coast of Africa by the Portuguese. The Calixtines join the imperial army and defeat the Taborites at Bohmisch-Brod. 1435. Treaty of Arras between France and Burgundy; the latter withdraws from the English party. Death of the Duke of Bedford. 1436. A settlement effected between Emperor Sigismund and the Hussites by the treaty of Iglau; he is recognized as king of Bohemia. Charles VII, the French King, recovers Paris from the English. Eric, by a treaty of peace, relinquishes the greater part of Schleswig to the Duke of Holstein and makes concessions at Stockholm which restore tranquillity in Sweden. 1437. Death of Emperor Sigismund; election of Albert of Austria to the throne of Hungary. Murder of James I; his son, James II, succeeds him on the throne of Scotland. Pope Eugenius IV is summoned to appear before the Council of Basel to answer various charges brought against him; he issues a bull dissolving the council; he calls another at Ferrara, whither he invites the Greek Emperor to attend and arrange for the union of the two churches. 1438. Pragmatic Sanction of Charles VII; it secures the liberty of the Gallican Church. See "CHARLES VII ISSUES HIS PRAGMATIC SANCTION," vii, 370. Coronation of Albert II, King of Hungary; recognized by the Diet of Frankfort. [1] See _Dante Composes the Divina Commedia_, page 1. [2] See _Extinction of the Order of Knights Templars_, page 51. [3] See _The Third Estate Joins in the Government of France_, page 17. [4] See _War of the Flemings with Philip the Fair_, page 23. [5] See _First Swiss Struggle for Liberty_, page 28. [6] See _The Swiss Win Their Independence_, page 238. [7] See _Battle of Bannockburn_, page 41. [8] See _Beginning and Progress of the Renaissance_, page 110. [9] See _Crowning of Petrarch at Rome_, page 93. [10] See _Rienzi's Revolution in Rome_, page 104. [11] See _Conspiracy and Death of Marino Falieri at Venice_, page 154. [12] See _Genoese Surrender to Venetians_, page 213. [13] See _Rise of the Hanseatic League_, vol. vi, page 214. [14] See _Union of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway_, page 243. [15] See _Charles IV of Germany Publishes His Golden Bull_, page 160. [16] See _The Black Death Ravages Europe_, page 130. [17] See _Dancing Mania of the Middle Ages_, page 187. [18] See _James van Artevelde Leads a Flemish Revolt_, page 68. [19] See _Edward III of England Assumes the Title of King of France_, page 68. [20] See _Battles of Sluys and Crécy_, page 78. [21] See _Insurrection of the Jacquerie in France_, page 164. [22] See _Rebellion of Wat Tyler_, page 217. [23] See _Turks Seize Gallipoli_, page 147. [24] See _Conquests of Timur the Tartar_, page 169. [25] See _Wycliffe Translates the Bible into English_, page 227. [26] See _Election of Antipope Clement VII_, page 201. [27] See _Trial and Burning of John Huss_, page 294. [28] See _Council of Constance_, page 284. [29] See _The Hussite Wars_, page 294. [30] See _The House of Hohenzollern Established in Brandenburg_, page 305. [31] See _Deposition of Richard II_, page 251. [32] See _Battle of Agincourt_, page 320. [33] See _English Conquest of France_, page 320. [34] See _Jeanne d'Arc's Victory at Orleans_, page 333. [35] See _Trial and Execution of Jeanne d'Arc_, page 350. [36] See _Charles VII Issues his Pragmatic Sanction_, page 370. [37] See _Discovery of the Canary Islands: Beginning of Negro Slave Trade_, page 266. [38] "I am not going to lose the men for the old women." [39] "The coward who the great refusal made." [40] "The beams on the low shores now lost and dead." [41] "A death-like shade--Like that beneath black boughs and foliage green O'er the cold stream in Alpine glens display'd." [42] "O'er all the sandy desert falling slow, Were shower'd dilated flakes of fire, like snow On Alpine summits, when the wind is low." [43] "So will a greater fame redound to thee, To have formed a party by thyself alone." [44] Translated by Charles Leonard-Stuart. [45] This Emperor was Albert I, son of Rudolph I. [46] James van Artevelde was called "the Brewer of Ghent," because, although born an aristocrat, he was enrolled in the Guild of Brewers. [47] Translated from the French by Thomas Johnes. [48] Lord Berners' account of the advance of the Genoese is somewhat different from this; he describes them as _leaping_ forward with a _fell_ cry. The whole passage is so spirited and graphic that we give it entire: "Whan the genowayes were assembled toguyder and beganne to aproche, they made a great leape and crye to abasshe thenglysshmen, but they stode styll and styredde nat for all that. Than the genowayes agayne the seconde tyme made another leape and a fell crye and stepped forwarde a lytell, and thenglysshmen remeued nat one fote; thirdly agayne they leapt and cryed, and went forthe tyll they came within shotte; than they shotte feersly with their crosbowes. Than thenglysshe archers stept forthe one pase and lette fly their arowes so hotly and so thycke that it semed snowe. Whan the genowayes felte the arowes persynge through heedes, armes, and brestes, many of them cast downe their crosbowes and did cutte their strynges and retourned dysconfited. Whan the frenche kynge sawe them flye away, he said, Slee these rascals, for they shall lette and trouble us without reason; than you shoulde haue sene the men of armes dasshe in among them and kylled a great nombre of them; and euerstyll the englysshmen shot where as they sawe thyckest preace, the sharpe arowes ranne into the men of armes and into their horses, and many fell horse and men amonge the genowayes, and whan they were downe they coude nat relyne agayne; the preace was so thycke that one ouerthrewe a nother. And also amonge the englysshemen there were certayne rascalles that went a fote with great knyues, and they went in among the men of armes and slewe and murdredde many as they lay on the grounde, both erles, barownes, knyghts, and squyers, whereof the kyng of Englande was after dyspleased, for he had rather they had been taken prisoners." [49] His blindness was supposed to be caused by poison, which was given to him when engaged in the wars of Italy. [50] The following is Lord Berners' version of this narration: "In the mornyng the day of the batayle certayne frenchemen and almaygnes perforce opyned the archers of the princes batayle, and came and fought with the men at armes hande to hande. Than the second batayle of thenglyshe men came to socour the prince's batayle, the whiche was tyme, for they had as than moche ado, and they with the prince sent a messangar to the kynge who was on a lytell wyndmill hill. Than the knyght sayd to the kyng, Sir therle of Warwyke and therle of Cafort [Stafford] Sir Reynolde Cobham and other such as be about the prince your sonne are feersly fought with all, and are sore handled, wherefore they desire you that you and your batayle woll come and ayde them, for if the frenchemen encrease as they dout they woll your sonne and they shall have moche a do. Than the kynge sayde, is my sonne deed or hurt or on the yerthe felled? No, sir, quoth the knight, but he is hardely matched wherfore he hath nede of your ayde. Well sayde the kyng, retourne to hym and to them that sent you hyther, and say to them that they sende no more to me for any adventure that falleth as long as my sonne is alyve; and also say to them that they suffer hym this day to wynne his spurres, for if God be pleased, I woll this iourney be his and the honoure therof and to them that be aboute hym. Than the knyght retourned agayn to them and shewed the kynges wordes, the which greatly encouraged them, and repoyned in that they had sende to the kynge as they dyd." [51] Translated from the German by B. G. Babington. [52] Thucydides, in his account of the earlier plague in Athens, B.C. 430, says, "It was supposed that the Peloponnesians had poisoned the cisterns." [53] Translated from the French by Charles Leonard-Stuart. [54] Osman is the real Turkish name, which has been corrupted into Othman. The descendants of his subjects style themselves Osmanlis--corrupted into Ottoman. [55] Edebali, a Mussulman prophet and saint, whose daughter Osman married. [56] A criminal tribunal, of which Steno himself was president. [57] "Jacques Bonhomme." Froissart takes this for the name of an individual, but it is the common nickname--like "Hodge" or "Giles"--of the French peasantry. It is said that the term was applied by the lords of the manor to their villeins or serfs, in derision of their awkwardness and patient endurance of their lot. The "King who came from Clermont"--the leader of the Jacquerie--was William Karl or Callet. [58] A most wonderful scene. The B'hagiratha or Ganges issues from under a very low arch at the foot of the grand snow-bed. The illiterate mountaineers compare the pendent icicles to Mahodeva's hair. Hindoos of research may formerly have been here; and if so, one cannot think of any place to which they might more aptly give the name of a cow's mouth than to this extraordinary _débouché_. [59] Translated from the German by B. G. Babington. [60] "Chorus Sancti Viti, or St. Vitus' dance; the lascivious dance, Paracelsus calls it, because they that are taken with it can do nothing but dance till they be dead or cured. It is so called for that the parties so troubled were wont to go to St. Vitus for help; and, after they had danced there awhile, they were certainly freed. 'Tis strange to hear how long they will dance, and in what manner, over stools, forms, and tables. One in red clothes they cannot abide. Musick above all things they love; and therefore magistrates in Germany will hire musicians to play to them, and some lusty, sturdy companions to dance with them. This disease hath been very common in Germany, as appears by those relations of Schenkius, and Paracelsus in his book of madness, who brags how many several persons he hath cured of it. Felix Platerus (_de Mentis Alienat._ cap. 3) reports of a woman in Basel whom he saw, that danced a whole month together. The Arabians call it a kind of palsie. Bodine, in his fifth book, speaks of this infirmity; Monavius, in his last epistle to Scoltizius, and in another to Dudithus, where you may read more of it."--_Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy._ [61] The Bishop Theodoret of Cyrus in Syria states that, at the festival of St. John, large fires were annually kindled in several towns, through which men, women, and children jumped; and that young children were carried through by their mothers. He considered this custom as an ancient Asiatic ceremony of purification, similar to that recorded of Ahaz, in II Kings, xvi. 3. Zonaras, Balsamon, and Photius speak of the St. John's fires in Constantinople, and the first looks upon them as the remains of an old Grecian custom. Even in modern times fires are still lighted on St. John's Day in Brittany and other remote parts of Continental Europe, through the smoke of which the cattle are driven in the belief that they will thus be protected from contagious and other diseases, and in these practices protective fumigation originated. That such different nations should have had the same idea of fixing the purification by fire on St. John's Day is a remarkable coincidence, which perhaps can be accounted for only by its analogy to baptism. [62] Beckmann makes many other observations on this well-known circumstance. The priest named is the same who is still known in the nursery tales of children as the _Knecht Ruprecht_. [63] _Dass dir Sanct Veitstanz ankomme_ ("May you be seized with St. Vitus' dance"). [64] "This proceeding was, however, no invention of his, but an imitation of a usual mode of enchantment by means of wax figures (_peri cunculas_). The witches made a wax image of the person who was to be bewitched; and in order to torment him, they stuck it full of pins, or melted it before the fire. The books on magic, of the Middle Ages, are full of such things; though the reader who may wish to obtain information on this subject need not go so far back. Only eighty years since, the learned and celebrated Storch, of the school of Stahl, published a treatise on witchcraft, worthy of the fourteenth century."--_Treatise on the Diseases of Children._ [65] Some authorities give twenty-nine. [66] Selden, in his _Table Talk_, says: "There was once, I am sure, a parliamentary pope. Pope Urban was made pope in England by act of parliament, against Pope Clement: the act is not in the _Book of Statutes_, either because he that compiled the book would not have the name of the Pope there, or else he would not let it appear that they meddled with any such thing; but it is upon the rolls." [67] A groat equalled fourpence, or eight cents. [68] In Walsingham may be seen a long account of the death of the Archbishop, page 250. His head was carried in triumph through the streets on the point of a lance, and fixed on London bridge. That it might be the better known, the hat or bonnet worn by him was nailed to the skull. [69] When Tresilian, one of the judges, tried the insurgents at St. Alban's, he impanelled three juries of twelve men each. The first was ordered to present all whom they knew to be the chiefs of the tumult, the second gave their opinion on the presentation of the first, and the third pronounced the verdict of guilty or not guilty. It does not appear that witnesses were examined. The juries spoke from their personal knowledge. Thus each convict was condemned on the oaths of thirty-six men. At first, on account of the multitude of executions, the condemned were beheaded: afterward they were hanged and left on the gibbet as objects of terror; but as their bodies were removed by their friends, the King ordered them to be hanged in chains, the first instance in which express mention of the practice is made. According to Holinshed the executions amounted to fifteen hundred. [70] The readers, as might be expected, often surreptitiously copied portions of special interest. One is reminded of the story in ancient Irish history of a curious decision arising out of an incident of this kind nearly a thousand years before, which seems to have influenced the history of Christianity in Britain. St. Columb, on a visit to the aged St. Finian in Ulster, had permission to read in the Psalter belonging to his host. But every night while the good old saint was sleeping, the young one was busy in the chapel writing by a miraculous light till he had completed a copy of the whole Psalter. The owner of the Psalter, discovering this, demanded that it should be given up, as it had been copied unlawfully from his book; while the copyist insisted that, the materials of labor being his, he was entitled to what he had written. The dispute was referred to Diarmad, the King at Tara, and his decision (genuinely Irish) was given in St. Finian's favor. "To every book," said he, "belongs its son-book [copy], as to every cow belongs her calf." Columb complained of the decision as unjust, and the dispute is said to have been one of the causes of his leaving Ireland for Iona. [71] Oliver Wendell Holmes: _Autocrat of the Breakfast-table._ [72] A town in Schwyz. The name means a "hermitage." St. Meinrad, according to legend, lived there (ninth century) as a hermit. It is a celebrated pilgrim resort.--ED. [73] He descended from Henry III both by father and mother. But he could not claim by the father's side, because the young Earl of March was sprung from the Duke of Clarence, the elder brother of John of Gaunt; nor by the mother's side, because she was sprung from Edmund of Lancaster, a younger brother of Edward I. It was pretended that Edmund was the elder brother, but deformed in body, and therefore set aside with his own consent. If we may believe Hardyng, Henry on September 21st produced in council a document to prove the seniority of Edmund over Edward, but that the contrary was shown by a number of unanswerable authorities. [74] Charles IV. [75] Allusion to John Ziska, leader of the Hussites, who waged a fierce war against Wenzel and the empire. [76] Head of the House of Hohenzollern, Burggraves of Nuremberg. [77] This was the Dauphin, afterward Charles VII, whose brother Jean, Duke of Burgundy, had, in 1407, procured the murder of the Duke of Orleans. [78] To _houspiller_ is to maul, pull about, abuse, "worry like a dog"; hence the name _houspilleur_. [79] The English cardinal, most powerful ecclesiastic of the time. [80] Assistant judges. [81] Tipstaffs, constables. [82] The Duke of Bedford (John of Lancaster), third son of Henry IV of England, was regent of England and France, which office he assumed on the death of Henry V, in 1422. [83] The memory of Jeanne d'Arc was long and shamefully traduced by descendants of those enemies of France whom she baffled. Even Shakespeare (_Henry VI_) is so unjust to her--refining upon the brutal calumnies of the historians--as to grieve his most loving critics. It remained for the opening years of the twentieth century to see the Maid canonized by the Church which, as the agent of her country's foes, was instrumental in her destruction.--ED. [84] Translated by Chauncey C. Starkweather, M.A., LL.B. [85] The Catalan Grand Company was a formidable body of mercenary soldiers; it arose in Sicily during the wars that followed the Sicilian Vespers. [86] See 1291. [87] Date uncertain. [88] Date uncertain. [89] A specimen of an early speaking-tube exists, connecting the room said to have been occupied by Isabella with the old brewhouse, now a tavern, by means of which Mortimer was wont to communicate with his mistress. The castle stands upon a mount of 280 feet, sheer rock, and the brewhouse is at its base. A peculiarity of the tube, bored through the live rock, is an elbow-joint, which is a puzzle to scientists. [90] Date uncertain. [91] Often erroneously given as 1370, neglecting the fact that, by the old manner of reckoning, the year began on March 25th. [92] Date uncertain. [93] By the French it is claimed that Jean Charlier de Gerson was the author of _de Imitatione Christi_, usually attributed to Thomas à Kempis. END OF VOLUME VII 
42224	----	[Illustration: _THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI._ Reproduced for our Members through the courtesy of The Newberry Library, Chicago This illuminated manuscript represents the work done by French monks in the early part of the fourteenth century. The border, containing as it does many grotesque figures scattered through its foliage, indicates this, as also the style of the faces in the miniature work. This is taken from one of the many "Book of Hours" and was the page used for the "Sext Hour," a full description of illuminated manuscript will be found Part IX, page 101. "COPYRIGHT BY THE DELPHIAN SOCIETY, CHICAGO"] THE WORLD'S PROGRESS WITH ILLUSTRATIVE TEXTS FROM MASTERPIECES OF EGYPTIAN, HEBREW, GREEK, LATIN, MODERN EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN LITERATURE FULLY ILLUSTRATED EDITORIAL STAFF VERY REV. J. K. BRENNAN Missouri GISLE BOTHME, M.A. University of Minnesota CHAS. H. CAFFIN New York JAMES A. CRAIG, M.A., B.D., PH.D. University of Michigan MRS. SARAH PLATT DECKER Colorado ALCÉE FORTIER, D.LT. Tulane University ROSWELL FIELD Chicago BRUCE G. KINGSLEY Royal College of Organists, England D. D. LUCKENBILL, A.B., PH.D. University of Chicago KENNETH MCKENZIE, PH.D. Yale University FRANK B. MARSH, PH.D. University of Texas DR. HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE New York W. A. MERRILL, PH.D., L.H.D. University of California T. M. PARROTT, PH.D. Princeton University GRANT SHOWERMAN, PH.D. University of Wisconsin H. C. TOLMAN, PH.D., D.D. Vanderbilt University I. E. WING, M.A. Michigan VOL. I THE DELPHIAN SOCIETY COPYRIGHT 1913 BY THE DELPHIAN SOCIETY CHICAGO COMPOSITION, ELECTROTYPING, PRINTING AND BINDING BY THE W. B. CONKEY COMPANY HAMMOND, INDIANA TABLE OF CONTENTS PART I. PAGE The Delphian Course of Reading VIII Prehistoric Man; Customs and Occupations. Dawn of Civilization XIV EGYPT. Prefatory Chapter 13 CHAPTER I. Its Antiquity; Story of Joseph, Physical Geography, Prehistoric Egypt 20 CHAPTER II. Sources of Egyptian History; Herodotus' Account of Egypt 31 CHAPTER III. Pyramid Age; Early Egyptian Kings; Construction of Pyramids 37 CHAPTER IV. Age of Darkness; Middle Empire; Reigns of Amenemhet I. and III.; Description of Labyrinth 43 CHAPTER V. Egypt under the Shepherd Kings; Beginning of the New Empire; Conquests of Thutmose I. 51 CHAPTER VI. First Egyptian Queen; Temple of Hatshepsut; Expedition to Punt 57 CHAPTER VII. Military Kings; Hymn of Victory; Worship of the Solar Disk; Temple of Karnak 64 CHAPTER VIII. Nineteenth Dynasty; Egypt under Ramses the Great; Twentieth Dynasty; Priest Rule; Ethiopian Kings 72 CHAPTER IX. Social Life in Egypt; Houses, Dress, Family Life 85 CHAPTER X. Sports and Recreations 96 CHAPTER XI. Agriculture and Cattle Raising; Arts and Crafts; Egyptian Markets; Military Affairs 100 CHAPTER XII. Schools and Education; Egyptian Literature 112 CHAPTER XIII. Religion of Ancient Egypt; Hymn to the Nile; Egyptian Temples and Ceremonies 119 CHAPTER XIV. Art and Decoration 133 CHAPTER XV. Tombs and Burial Customs 138 CHAPTER XVI. Excavations in Egypt; Discoveries of W. M. Flinders Petrie 144 _Descriptions of Egypt._ Description of the Nile 153 Feast of Neith 155 Karnak 159 Memphis 161 Hymn to the God Ra 163 _Egyptian Literature._ An Old Kingdom Book of Proverbs 164 The Voyage of the Soul 168 The Adventures of the Exile Sanehat 171 The Song of the Harper 179 _Present Day Egypt._ Alexandria 181 Cairo 182 Egyptian Museum 185 Suez Canal 187 BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA. Prefatory Chapter 193 CHAPTER I. Early Civilization of Asia; Recovery of Forgotten Cities 201 CHAPTER II. Sources of Babylonian and Assyrian History; Physical Geography 211 CHAPTER III. Prehistoric Chaldea; Charms and Talismans; Semitic Invasion 218 CHAPTER IV. City-States Before the Rise of Babylon; Hymn to the Moon-God 227 CHAPTER V. Dominance of Babylon 232 CHAPTER VI. Beginnings of Assyrian Empire; Conquest of Asshurnatsirpal 237 CHAPTER VII. Assyria a Powerful Empire; Hebrew Account of the War with Assyria 245 CHAPTER VIII. Last Years of Assyrian Dominance 256 CHAPTER IX. Chaldean Empire in Babylonia 264 CHAPTER X. Social Life in Mesopotamia. The Babylonian and Assyrian Compared; Their Houses and Family Life 270 CHAPTER XI. Morality of the Ancient Babylonians 276 CHAPTER XII. Literature and Learning; Deluge Story 283 CHAPTER XIII. Clothing Worn by Assyrians and Babylonians; Their Food 293 CHAPTER XIV. Architecture and Decoration 300 CHAPTER XV. Religious Customs 307 CHAPTER XVI. The Laboring Classes; Professions 317 CHAPTER XVII. The Medes 328 CHAPTER XVIII. Condition of Persia Before the Age of Cyrus; Cyrus the Great and the Persian Empire 332 CHAPTER XIX. War with Greece 340 CHAPTER XX. Manners and Customs of the Persians; Their Religion 346 CHAPTER XXI. Contributions of Babylonia, Assyria and Persia to Modern Civilization 357 _Assyrian Literature._ Chaldean Account of the Deluge 361 Descent of Ishtar to Hades 367 Gyges and Assurbanipal 371_a_ Purity 371_c_ Zoroaster's Prayer 371_d_ THE HEBREWS AND THEIR NEIGHBORS. CHAPTER I. Syria 372 CHAPTER II. The Land of Phoenicia; Reign of Hiram; Invasion of Asshurbanipal 378 CHAPTER III. Phoenician Colonies and Commerce 390 CHAPTER IV. Occupations and Industries; Literature and Learning; Religion 399 CHAPTER V. Physical Geography of Palestine; Climate and Productivity 408 CHAPTER VI. Effects of Geographical Conditions upon the Hebrews 418 CHAPTER VII. Sources of Hebrew History 426 CHAPTER VIII. Condition of the Hebrews Prior to Their Occupation of Canaan 434 CHAPTER IX. Era of the Judges 441 CHAPTER X. Morality of the Early Hebrews 448 CHAPTER XI. Causes Leading to the Establishment of the Kingdom. David's Lament; His Reign. Solomon Rules; King Solomon and the Bees 453 CHAPTER XII. After the Division of the Kingdom; End of Israel 469 Description of Illustrations 483 [Illustration: MAP OF ANCIENT EGYPT] FULL PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS PART I. PAGE ILLUMINATED MISSAL Frontispiece DISTANT VIEW OF THE PYRAMIDS 44 NEAR VIEW OF PYRAMIDS AND SPHINX 68 TOURISTS SCALING THE GREAT PYRAMID 92 COLUMN AND PYLON OF KARNAK 124 BEAUTIFUL ISLAND OF PHILEA 148 WINDOWS OF A HAREM 172 SHIP OF THE DESERT (Photogravure) 192 WINGED LION 236 MUSICIANS AND ATTENDANTS IN THE GARDEN OF ASSHURBANIPAL 284 SWORD-MAKER OF DAMASCUS 348 THE RIVER JORDAN 392 JAPPA HARBOR 432 ROSES OF SHARON 464 MAP OF ANCIENT EGYPT VI THE DELPHIAN COURSE OF READING Two thousand years before the sight of a new world burst upon the view of the Genoese mariner, there existed in north-central Greece a sanctuary famous in three continents. Located in mountainous Phocis, in a natural amphitheater, overhung by frowning rocks and reached only through mysterious caves, was the Oracle of Delphi. Here in remote times Apollo was believed to reveal his wishes to men through the medium of a priestess, speaking under the influence of vaporous breath which rose from a yawning fissure. Her utterances were not always coherent and were interpreted to those seeking guidance by Apollo's priests. As its fame spread, the number of visitors to Delphi increased. More priests were needed to counsel and advise. Although the first blind faith in earlier deities lessened, the prestige of Delphi was nevertheless preserved. Apollo's priests became better versed in the affairs of Greece and the surrounding countries; their assistants became familiar with all vital issues, and thus intelligent replies were given to unceasing inquiries. In time the Greek divinities were almost forgotten and Christianity became the state religion, yet the Oracle of Delphi continued to draw men unto it until the fifth Christian century. Ancient writers have left us abundant accounts of journeyings made thither by potentates and kings, and have described at length the rich offerings left by them in gratitude. The humble were seldom mentioned by early writers and it remained for the last few years to bring to light little leaden tablets--valueless from the standpoint of plunderers, earth-covered and revealed only by the excavator's spade--silent testimonials of appeals made to the oracle by the common people. It is difficult for us today to understand the powerful influence which the Delphian Oracle exercised for a thousand years in Greece. This might fittingly be compared to that wielded by the Church in the Middle Ages. Here questions of international importance were brought, policies determined, and the balance delicately turned for peace or war. Nor were questions of the humblest slighted. Any interference on the part of one state designed to deny citizens of another free access to Delphi precipitated serious trouble. There is no doubt but that implicit faith directed the first visitors to Delphi and beyond question this faith to some extent survived. The peasant accepted literally the presence of deity as many a worshipper today regards the statue, not as a symbol, but as the very Christ. However, there have been in all ages the discerning who have distinguished between the symbol and that symbolized, and certainly the keen, alert Greeks did not remain blind adherents of antiquated conceptions. The wisdom of the Delphian priests was revered and their judgments accepted much in the same way as were those of the seers who taught the children of Israel at the city gates. The Oracle of Delphi became potent--a name with which to conjure. We know full well today that no priestess upon a tripod can reveal to us the secrets of the future. A thorough understanding of the past must be the safest guide for coming years. No vapor can inspire sudden revelations--the result only of faithful effort and earnest thought. Yet the story of the ancient oracle charms us still and when a name was sought for a national organization, that had for its avowed purpose the promotion of educational interests in a continent, none was deemed more suitable than that which for so many years cast its gracious spell from one sea to another. Each new decade brings new needs, and the conditions of fifty years ago were wholly different from those confronting us today. Ours is an age characterized by intensity, strenuous effort and tireless exertion. Leisure seems to have disappeared from our national life and to be remembered only when reviewing pleasant stories of other times. Educators complain that we are neglecting the wisdom of the past--that the enduring thoughts of men as preserved to us in their writings have ceased to be familiar. The thoughtful deplore the loss of culture, courtesy and old-time chivalry. Frequently the critics fail to look beneath the surface for reasons leading to the very evident result. The truth is that in no previous age have the hearts of people been more sensitive to injustice, more united for fair dealing between man and man, more eager for the best the world can offer. But we are living in a transition period; social and industrial conditions have not yet crystallized in their new forms sufficiently to permit the wider opportunity for cultivation and reflection which must necessarily overtake us in time. At present people accumulate fine libraries and rarely read them; for their shelves they seek the best--for their diversion the lightest and most transient literature. Few are there who do not dream of a happy time when it shall be their delight to browse among their books and find companionship in them. Still the years fly by relentlessly and many who are not mere theorists are sounding a warning: This time so fondly anticipated will never come to many of the present generation; seize today; snatch a brief moment for the consideration of enduring thoughts; do not merely provide for the temporal wants and leave the soul famishing. Dr. Eliot, late president of Harvard, in repeated lectures and addresses has voiced this crying need. "From the total training during childhood there should result in the child a taste for interesting and improving reading, which should direct and inspire its subsequent intellectual life. That schooling which results in this taste for good reading, however unsystematic or eccentric the schooling may have been, has achieved a main end of elementary education; and that schooling which does not result in implanting this permanent taste has failed. Guided and animated by this impulse to acquire knowledge, and exercise his imagination through reading, the individual will continue to educate himself all through life. Without that deep-rooted impulsion he will soon cease to draw on the accumulated wisdom of the past and the new resources of the present, and, as he grows older, he will live in a mental atmosphere which is always growing thinner and emptier. Do we not all know many people who seem to live in a mental vacuum--to whom, indeed, we have great difficulty in attributing immortality, because they apparently have so little life except that of the body? _Fifteen minutes a day of good reading would have given any one of this multitude a really human life._"[1] To meet this condition, which prevails throughout the length and breadth of our land, to stimulate a deeper interest, quicken a latent appreciation and facilitate the use of brief periods of freedom for self-improvement, the Delphian Society was organized and the Delphian Course of Reading made possible. Believing that only a comprehensive course could meet the requirements of the day and prove acceptable to a large number of people, the Delphian Society has included those subjects which are now offered in the curriculums of our leading colleges and universities--history, literature, philosophy, poetry, fiction, drama, art, ethics, music. Mathematics, being in its higher forms essential to few, has been omitted; languages, requiring the aid of a teacher, and such sciences as make laboratories necessary, are not included. None of these subjects possess purely cultural qualities. Technical information has no place whatever in such a scheme. The branches of human interest which remain are those of vital importance to everyone. Not only is the list of subjects widely inclusive, but the method of treatment has been carefully considered. Finding the beginnings of most modern activities in antiquity, the Delphian Course presents the gradual unfoldment of each subject from earliest times to our own. The distance between an imitation of the hunt, as found among the diversions of primitive people, and a modern play is great, and yet no complete idea of the latter can be acquired without some conception of dramatic origins. The crude picture drawn upon the sooty hide which formed a hut in early times and the crowning masterpiece of a Raphael present extremes, and yet he who would follow the gradual growth of painting realizes that each has its place in the progress of art. Only in comparatively recent times has the value of each link which form the long chain of development been understood. No amount of heterogenous reading can compare with the systematic tracing of one subject from its early manifestations to its present forms. Correlation of topics presents wonderful possibilities. If we become interested, for example, in society as portrayed in the earliest English novels, how much more shall we then appreciate the canvases of Hogarth, which depict the same social conditions. If the age of idealism in literature be under consideration, the productions of contemporaneous artists grow to have for us a new significance. It is a mistake to imagine that relaxation and diversion are obtainable only from reading matter of the day. Oscar Kuhms calls attention to the fact that "to spend hours over illustrated magazines, Sunday newspapers, and the majority of popular novels, has very little to do with the art of reading in its larger sense." To a far greater extent than is generally imagined, the inordinate reading of magazines accounts for the host of superficial readers of our generation. To see how temporary is their interest one needs only to examine journals three or four years old. The pleasures of travel may be greatly enhanced by definite knowledge of countries visited--their recorded past, the manner of life of those who dwelt within them and those now populating them; ruins, old temples, surviving art, make slight appeal to those wholly unfamiliar with the ages that produced them. The enjoyment of a play is more poignant for the one who has in mind the changes which plays and playhouses have witnessed. There is something impressive in the thought that for ages audiences have been thus held spellbound. Four centuries before the Christian era imposing dramas and keenly satirical comedies were given before larger assemblies than modern theatres could accommodate. Only in modern times has a curtain separated the players and spectators. Formerly the favored sat upon the stage itself; in the Elizabethan playhouse the majority stood throughout an entire performance. Sentences in Shakespeare's plays are meaningless without taking these facts into account. Some extended acquaintance with pictures would put an end to comments made not infrequently by critics that the spectacle of groups of people today in attendance upon an art exhibit supplies an astonishing sight. The majority--so it has been stated--find a number in their catalogues, search frantically about for a picture so designated, and when they discover it, sigh with satisfaction and begin the search for another--"for all the world as though they were indulging in a simple hunting game!" Why Raphael painted so many Madonnas, why Watteau seems to have known only the gay and carefree--these are simple questions which many might find perplexing to adequately explain. The traveler whose time in a foreign land is limited does not seek the commonplace and unattractive; he does not try to compass all a city might have to show in the brief period he can spend there; rather, he obtains the guidance of those more familiar with the locality, and gives his attention to the best it has to offer. So if our time for reading and self-improvement must be brief, we shall find small satisfaction in wasting it blindly searching for what may satisfy. Educators are usually less pressed by insidious cares and more free to give their devotion to favorite subjects. It is a mistake to suppose one reads chiefly for information. We read to develop our insight into the mystery of life; to gain an individual viewpoint; to establish our standards of conduct and modify our standard of judgment. Reading which is mere diversion can never bestow this power. If those adopting the Delphian Course as the basis of their reading find that with its aid they are enabled to accomplish more satisfying results; if they finally discover that with its guidance one can make more intelligent use of his own library; if a love for things worth while--the lasting and enduring thoughts and sentiments of men--increases, and the desire for wider knowledge is aroused--the hopes and ambitions of the Delphian Society shall have been largely realized. FOOTNOTES: [1] Eliot: Educational Reform. [Illustration: PRIMITIVE DRAWING OF MAN.] PREHISTORIC MAN The word _prehistoric_ means, literally, _before history begins_, and by prehistoric man we mean those human beings who lived upon the earth before records were kept. History, properly so called, does not begin until civilization is reached. The roaming of savage people over land in search of food has little or no importance for the student of history, although knowledge of a people in its savage state may throw some light upon its future development. While prehistoric ages are the concern of the archaeologist rather than the historian, we shall find that historic ages owe a great debt to prehistoric ages, and with this aspect of the matter the historian has deep interest. The science of geology teaches us that the earth has not always possessed its present familiar appearance. On the contrary, countless years were consumed in molding it to its present shape, and even yet it is undergoing constant change. It is supposed that in the beginning all was a chaotic heap of Matter. In the words of a familiar story: "The earth was not solid, the sea was not liquid, nor the air transparent. All lay in confusion." In some mysterious way,--that nobody understands--Motion was started in this chaotic whole. Gradually the mass became more and more compact; at the same time it became very hot. Revolving on an imaginary axis, the mass grew rounder and rounder, flattening slightly at the poles, or the ends of the axis. Gradually the surface of the mass cooled, and cooling, formed the earth's crust. Because it did not cool evenly, but shrunk to fit the still molten mass, this surface or crust was left with deep crevasses and high ridges. This marked irregularity was further increased by mighty upheavals caused by pressure of heat from within. Thus were many of the mountains formed. This process, so slightly indicated here, extended over a vast period of time. It is supposed that later, for a protracted period, rain fell. When the age of rain had passed, the deep depressions in the earth's surface were left filled with water--our present oceans and some of the seas. It would be impossible for us to review rapidly all the stages through which the earth passed in its making. Suffice it to say that conditions upon it were not always favorable to life as we know it. In course of long geological ages--perhaps millions and millions of years--forests of trees, plants, shrubs and flowers sprang up and covered the bare earth. Last of all, probably, _man_ appeared. How all these things came about no one understands, but it is generally accepted that they occurred in an order similar to that just given. It would be useless for us to inquire into all the reasons that have led to these conclusions, but the most important one has been _evidences within the earth itself_. Men who work deep down in mines know that as they descend lower and lower, the temperature rises, until there is a noticeable difference between the temperature at the entrance of a mine and at its lowest point. Moreover, not infrequently volcanoes pour forth streaming lava, smoke and fire accompanying the eruption. While such evidences lead to the conclusion that the temperature of its interior is very high, still there are many reasons for believing that the earth is a solid mass. From the examination of the various earth strata, their composition and the evidences each bears of the conditions under which it was formed, we learn of periods of rain, heat and cold prevailing. All these facts belong to the realm of geology however, and concern us here only as they have concerned the progress of mankind. These same earth layers or strata which preserve eloquent testimony regarding the earth's development, contain also remains of prehistoric men--men who lived in the far away time before records were made and of which the rocks alone give testimony. Of the beginnings of the human race we know nothing. Many scientists, notably Darwin and his followers, have sought to show that man evolved from some lower animal life, in a way similar to that in which we find some plant or flower perfected from inferior origin. Whether the theory of man's evolution from some lower animal will ever be shown to be true the future alone can tell. Nevertheless the scholarly world today has generally accepted the evolutionary view of life and the world. Buried within the earth along river-beds, around cliffs, in mounds and many other places, have been found remains of primitive man. While the beginnings of the human race, as has been said, are utterly unknown, the earliest stage of which we have knowledge has been called the Paleolithic Age,--the age of the River-drift Man. Whether we accept the theory of man's evolution from the lower animal kingdom or not, we must admit that the earliest Paleolithic people of whom we have knowledge differed but little from the wild beasts. They lived in caves along rivers,--natural retreats where wild animals might have taken refuge. They lived on berries, roots, fish and such small game as they could kill by blows. They did not cook their food, but devoured raw meat much as did the wild beasts. They did not even bury their dead. From the stones accessible to them they selected their weapons, chipping them roughly. The crude weapons of this period have given it the name of the Rough Stone Age. The Paleolithic man, or man of the Rough Stone age, did not try to tame the beasts he encountered. He stood in great fear of those with whose strength he was not able to combat. He feared especially strange beings like himself, and with his family dwelt apart from others so far as possible. He did not plant nor gather stores for the future; thus when food failed in his vicinity, he was obliged to roam on until he came upon a fresh supply of acorns, berries, roots and small animals. Any cave served for his dwelling. He protected himself from cold by a covering made from the skin of the beast he had slain. He had few belongings and these were scarcely valued, being easily replaced. It is not difficult to see why the man of the Rough Stone Age preferred to live by the side of some river. In early times, before paths were worn through the forests, travel was easiest along the river bed. Food was more abundant here, for fish inhabited the streams and thither also animals came to drink, and in the reeds by the river's side, birds and wild fowl breeded. Moreover, man was a timid creature and feared to venture far inland. From all this we see that man in his primitive state gave little promise of his future development. For how long a time he continued in this stage, we cannot estimate. Yet we find a decided improvement in the latter part of this Paleolithic Age, for fire and its uses became known. This brought about a wonderful change. The man of the Paleolithic or Rough Stone Age was followed by the man of the Neolithic Age--the cliff dweller. He exchanged a home by the river for one higher up; secure in some elevated cliff, the Neolithic man lived, away from molesting beasts. Again, the stone weapons were greatly improved. No longer were they rough; on the contrary, they were now polished smooth. Ingenious from the beginning, man found that sharp edges of stone were more useful than blunt ones, that smooth handles were more convenient than irregular stones with no handles at all. For this reason, this period has been called the Smooth Stone Age. Other improvements no less momentous had been wrought. Food was now cooked, and as a result, man grew a little less ferocious. He had less fear of the wild beasts than before, and domesticated some of them. No longer was he wholly dependent upon such food as nature provided, for he had learned how to sow grain and gather it. He had learned how to fashion bowls and other receptacles of clay. He now buried his dead with weapons and other useful articles, proving that he believed that the dead still had need of such things. We must not, however, suppose that he believed in immortality, for the evidence shows that his conception of a hereafter was very vague. In most cases the care for and fear of the dead ceased a few years after their burial. Before the close of this period men had journeyed far from abject savagery. Finally we come to the Metal--sometimes called the Bronze--Age. The discovery of metal proved the greatest boon, for now it was possible to make sharp tools and weapons. Hitherto the mere cutting down of a tree had taken a prodigious time. With a bronze ax, it could be quickly accomplished. Progress made rapid strides after this invaluable discovery. Nor this alone. Having learned to domesticate the beasts, men passed from a purely hunting into a pastoral stage. Having learned to reap and sow, it became convenient to have a fixed habitation. Instead of dwelling apart, it proved safest to settle in hamlets or villages. In other words, man had become _civilized_, and with the dawn of civilization we find the dawn of history. From this cursory view of the three important stages in prehistoric times, it is possible to derive mistaken notions. For example, there was never a time when stone was the only material available to man. Wood, ivory and shell were probably always known and frequently procurable. Neither is it to be supposed that each of these periods broke off abruptly or that they extended over all lands simultaneously. Quite on the contrary, stages in human development are never abrupt, and changes come about unnoticed. In nature results are slowly attained and there are no sharp distinctions between them. The three divisions of Rough and Smooth Stone and Metal Ages refer to conditions of progress--not to periods of time. The Egyptians had passed through all three stages before the dawn of history; the American Indians were in the Smooth Stone Age when Columbus discovered America; and in Central Australia there are tribes today just emerging from the Smooth Stone period. The rapidity with which a tribe passes from one to another of these stages depends upon the natural conditions of the country, contact with outside peoples and many other factors. When written records enable us to weigh the true and the false, to sift out fact from fiction and legend from verified event, several nations had come into possession of a very fair degree of civilization. They had settled homes in towns and villages, recognized some form of government, understood the uses of fire, planted crops and garnered them, spun, wove and made pottery; they had attained considerable skill in the working of metals, had domestic animals and cultivated plants; they possessed a spoken, and sometimes a written, language and had attained no little skill in decorative art. A rich legacy was this for historic ages. Surely there is interest for the historian in this remote time that lies clouded still by much uncertainty. Let us consider some of these more important attainments and try to see how naturally men grew to master them and how in obscure ages the human race travelled so far on the high road to progress. DISCOVERY OF FIRE. We have already noted that there was a time when fire was unknown. How then could the Paleolithic man, thrown wholly upon his own observation and resources, come upon this discovery, which was to work such changes for the future? Only from his observance of natural phenomena. When storms swept over desert and plain, vivid lightning flashed, and occasionally some tree was struck by the bolt and flamed up, greatly to the astonishment and alarm of the unknowing mind. At other times, volcanic eruptions occurred, and dry leaves and forests caught on fire from flying cinders. In the natural course of events, men soon found that the warmth of burning wood was agreeable, that fire at night allowed them to keep watch over possible invaders--whether man or wild beasts--and that the interior of a tree's trunk could be more easily removed by burning than by laborious scraping out with stone implements. Having once tasted roasted flesh, a desire for cooked food was probably developed. Such a valued possession as fire proved, needed to be carefully tended, and when it was exhausted, human ingenuity set to work to create it anew. It is not unlikely that sparks occasionally struck out from flint when it was being chipped into shape for a weapon or implement. Necessity and desire have always worked wonders, and primitive man learned shortly to produce the vital spark, both by friction and by drilling. Having mastered the art of fire-making, many innovations were consequent upon it. Some fixed habitation was necessary if the coals were to be kept covered from day to day, and from meal to meal. Cooked foods gradually took the place of raw ones; in cold weather the family grew to gather around the fire, where meals were prepared and warmth was to be found. When the family, clan or tribe removed to a new home, coals were carried to kindle the fire upon the new hearth. When men journeyed abroad in the night, they carried torches to guide them; when they labored at home, fire grew indispensable for baking their clay pottery, smelting their ore, and manifold purposes. While fire became one of man's aids, it wrought a decided change in the position of woman. Before its discovery, man and woman had probably gone side by side, sharing alike dangers and hardships. With its acquisition, some one was required to stay to watch lest it go out, and thus was developed the fireside and the home. "The fire has made the home. We have heard much in these later days about woman's position. We are assured that she has not all her rights. Now, there can be little doubt that the primitive woman had all her rights. It is probable that she was as free as her husband to kill the wild beasts, catch fish, fight her savage neighbors, eat the raw meat which she tore by main strength from the carcass of the lately slain beast. The beginning of woman's slavery was the discovery of the fire. The value of fire known and the need of feeding it recognized, it became necessary that someone should stay by it to tend it. Notwithstanding the fact that woman had all her rights and was free to come and go as she would, it was still true that, on account of children and certain physical peculiarities, the woman was more naturally the one who would remain behind to care for the feeding of the flame. Before that, men and women wandered from place to place, thoughtless of the night. After that, a place was fixed to which man returned after the day's hunt. It was the beginning of the home."[1] THE HOUSE. The man of the Paleolithic Age crept into any cave that offered shelter from the storm and molesting beasts. Such caves were plentiful along the river's bank. Here today, elsewhere tomorrow, little heed was given to the particular shelter in which he took refuge. With the possession of fire, a fixed home became desirable. Even so, caves still remain the homes of men for a long period of time. The Neolithic man sought an abode farther away from the main highway--the river. In cliffs towering above the river bed--sometimes away from streams altogether, he scooped out a cave similar to the ones occupied by his ancestors. Thus in many countries remains are found of a race of cliff-dwellers. In ancient Greece, for example, have been found evidences of people living thus, and Indians in Mexico and Arizona three thousand years later were discovered in similar dwellings. With a settled life, and cultivation of the soil, man frequently was forced to provide a home for himself. The material from which he made it depended upon the resources of the locality. In Egypt and Babylonia, sun-baked mud huts afforded the simplest, least expensive structures, both in point of time and labor. Among pastoral tribes, tents formed of animal skins sewed together were easiest to provide. This was the usual shelter also of the American Indians and other hunting tribes. The Laplander found cakes of ice suited for his home, while man in the tropics quickly constructed a shelter from the huge palm leaves, available on every hand. "Of all places for studying construction of huts, Africa is the very best. There one may see samples of everything that can be thought of in the way of circular houses; built of straw, sticks, leaves, matting; of one room or of many; large or small; crude or wonderfully artistic and carefully made. They may be permanent constructions to be occupied for years or temporary shelter for a single night; they may consist of frameworks made of light poles over which are thrown mats or sheets of various materials and which after using can be taken apart, packed away, and transported."[2] From lightly built, temporary dwellings, it was but a short step to the more substantial, more enduring ones. Stone houses, dwellings made of timber and of brick, as the country afforded, replaced the earlier homes, and when written records bring the full light of knowledge upon the life of nations, in the matters of constructing dwelling places, several peoples had become proficient. FOOD. It would be difficult to discover any plant or animal life which had not served at some period for food. Primitive man knew nothing about harmful plants, and only by long experience did he learn to avoid such as worked him woe. No insect or animal is so repulsive but that it has been appropriated by the food-hunter in some age and country, and things today which we would refuse in time of distress were used as a matter of course by earlier people. Nature supplied acorns, berries, roots, fruits, fish and plenty of game. All these articles were at first eaten in their native state. When fire became well known, cooked foods grew in favor. It is supposed that these were at first roasted. To suspend meat over a fire or make a large opening in the ground, cover the floor with stones, heat these very hot, then remove the fire and bake the food, these are the most primitive--as well, perhaps, as the most satisfactory--ways known to us. Boiling was probably a later method, and this was not done as we boil food today. Rather, stones were heated very hot and tossed into kettles of water. In this way the water was brought to a boiling point and the food cooked. CULTIVATED PLANTS. Before men learned to cultivate plants and to domesticate animals, subsistence was always an uncertain matter. They roamed about in one vicinity until nature could no longer supply their needs, then left the exhausted land to recover itself while new territory afforded means for satisfying hunger. After fire became such a potent factor, as we have seen, a fixed abode was desirable. It fell to the lot of women to stay and tend the hearth. Shut off from the long expeditions undertaken by men, they soon learned to make as much as possible of the space around about their homes. Sticks were sometimes placed around plants or bushes to protect them from the careless step until their fruits matured. Occasionally plants were dug up and replanted nearer the hut. The garden and grain field were but natural results of this spirit of husbanding the stores provided by mother earth. While women were the first to domesticate plants in the simple way just indicated, not much came of it until men adopted the idea and carried it further. With sharp sticks they scratched the soil and with the help of animals they trod in the seeds. Irrigation was sometimes needed--as in Egypt--to insure good crops. Thus from slight beginnings developed the agriculture of the world. With reasonable labor and painstaking, the tiller of the soil could be sure of a living for himself and his family, and before historic records illumine the life of several nations, farming was well understood. Indeed it is safe to say that until very recent times methods followed by tillers of the soil in quite a number of countries advanced very little upon those of the prehistoric man. It is interesting to trace the history of present day foods, grains, vegetables and fruits, with the attempt to ascertain where each was native. All have been greatly improved by cultivation and not alone our varieties, but even distinct fruits and plants have resulted from man's propagation. Often the original species have been vastly improved. For example, the potato was a native of Chili. Found there in the sixteenth century of our era, it was described as "watery, insipid, but with no bad taste when cooked." It is supposed that it was taken from some Spanish ship to Virginia, and in the latter part of the same century carried to Europe. Its cultivation has spread over many countries, and from a small, watery tuber it has been brought to large size, mealiness and taste agreeable to the palate. Even today it flourishes in its wild state in Chili and Peru. The cabbage was once a weed, growing on rocks by the seashore. By man's care it has been developed to the vegetable widely used today; moreover, its blossom has been exaggerated until a wholly new vegetable in the form of the cauliflower is the result. "When we visit a vegetable garden or see fresh, attractive fruits offered in market or inspect the wonders shown upon the tables of county fairs and agricultural shows, we seldom realize how truly they are all the work of man.... "One of the most wonderful illustrations of what man can do in changing nature is seen in the case of the peach. Some time, long ago, perhaps in Western Asia, grew a wild tree which bore fruits, at the center of which were the hardest of hard pits, containing the bitterest of kernels; over this hard stone was a thin layer of flesh--bitter, stringy, with almost no juice, and which, as it ripened, separated, exposing to view the contained seed; such was nature's gift. Man taking it found that it contained two parts which might by proper treatment be made of use for food--the thin external pulp and the bitter inner pit. He has improved both. Today we eat the luscious peaches with their thick, soft, richly-flavored juicy flesh--they are _one_ product of man's patient ingenuity. Or we take the soft shelled almond with its sweet kernel; it is the old pit improved and changed by man: in the almond, as it is raised at present, we care nothing for the pulp and it has almost vanished. The peach and almond are the same in nature; the differences they now betray are due to man."[3] Many of the grains were known and grown by prehistoric man. Millet, wheat and barley were known in earliest recorded times in Egypt; these grains were also cultivated before historic times. Oats and rye were early plant products. Corn was native to America and unknown to the antiquity of the Old World. Several of our vegetables, such as the radish, carrot, turnip, beet and onion, were early grown for food. The lemon, orange, fig and olive were all native to Asia. Many flowers are mentioned by early writers and they too were unquestionably carefully tended in remote times. It is a subject for pleasant investigation to find out where flowers, cultivated in some countries, grow wild in others. DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS. Desiring to provide food for time of want, primitive man learned to keep a wounded animal instead of at once killing it. Quite naturally it might come about that such a creature would grow less wild and become a pet. Realizing the advantage of confining animals, enclosures were probably thrown around herds of goats, deer or sheep. Ingenious man soon seized upon these half tamed beasts to help him in his work. Their use being proven, he would not rest until he had tamed them to his hand. The dog was the first dumb friend of men, accompanying them upon the hunt and aiding in bringing game to bay. The oldest friend, the dog, has also proven the most faithful of the animal kingdom. When history dawned, the dog, cow, sheep, goat, donkey, and pig were already domesticated. The horse was less commonly known in remote times. All these animals were originally small and not to be compared with their present day descendants. DRESS IN PREHISTORIC TIMES. Among primitive people dress is invariably a simple matter. In warm countries little clothing is needed, and even in colder lands, ornaments are valued above mere protection from the elements. It has been well established that love of decoration has been a powerful factor with primitive tribes, and that to this passion the habit of wearing clothing can largely be traced. Skins of wild beasts were often used by early men as protection from the cold, but it will be remembered that the Indians found by early discoverers in America were very scantily clad, although furs were available on every hand. Yet the Indian, who braved the winter's blast unclad, was eager to barter his all for glass beads, scarlet cloth, or little trinkets with which he could ornament himself. The habits of different tribes and peoples have differed considerably; some have adopted clothing earlier than others; some still go unclad. Generally speaking, we may note that during the hunting stage, if men have worn clothing except for ornamentation, it has been the skins of animals; as spinning and weaving have become known, coarse, home-made stuffs have come into use. In Egypt, linens were early woven; in northern countries, woolen stuffs were made. Feathers, furs, fabrics woven of grasses or reeds, leaves, shells, teeth, tusks and metal ornaments have held varying favor for decorative purposes. ART. At first thought it seems surprising that art can be ultimately traced back to the self-ornamentation of the savage; yet this is probably true. The earliest people of whom we know loved to paint their bodies; the American Indians made ready for feast or war by painting their bodies in startling colors, and the tribes lowest today in the social scale--tribes of Central Australia--have a similar practice. Dark skinned tribes have frequently painted themselves with white; fair skinned tribes with dark colors. The use of colors among primitive peoples is an interesting study, and it is significant to note that red has always been a favorite. "Red--and particularly yellowish red--is the favorite color of the primitive as it is the favorite color of nearly all peoples. We need only observe our children to satisfy ourselves how little taste on this point has changed. In every box of water colors the saucer that contains the cinnabar red is the first one emptied; and 'if a child expresses a particular liking for a color, it is nearly always a bright dazzling red. Even adults, notwithstanding the modern impoverishment and blunting of the color sense, still, as a rule, feel the charm of red.'... It may be questioned whether the strong effect of red is called out by the direct impression of the color, or by certain associations. Many animals have a feeling for red similar to that of man. Every child knows that the sight of a red cloth drives oxen and turkeys into the most passionate excitement.... As to the primitive peoples, one circumstance is here significant above all others. Red is the color of blood, and men see it, as a rule, precisely when their emotional excitement is greatest--in the heat of the chase and of the battle. In the second place, all the ideas that are associated with the use of the red color come strongly into play--recollections of the excitement of the dance and combat. Notwithstanding all these considerations, painting with red would hardly have been so generally diffused in the lowest stages of civilization if the red coloring material had not been everywhere so easily and so abundantly procurable. Probably the first red with which the primitive man painted himself was nothing else than the blood of the wild beast or the enemy he had slain. At present most of the decoration is done with a red ochre, which is very abundant nearly everywhere, and is commonly obtained through exchange by those tribes in whose territory it is wanting."[4] The difficulty found in this means of decoration is that it is not lasting. However skillfully the savage covers himself with solid coloring or design, a short time only and his labor is effaced. To overcome this trouble, tattooing was devised. By this means the color was placed beneath the skin and thus not subject to change. Very elaborate patterns were sometimes worked out and the man so ornamented was far more attractive in the eyes of his fellowmen. Next to the personal adornment of primitive peoples comes the decoration of their weapons and implements and the patterns in their handicrafts, such as basketry and mattings. Generally speaking those are in imitation of nature, and more, imitation of human and animal forms. Heretofore it has not been unusual to dismiss these as merely geometrical designs. Surely they were never such in the mind of the ancient worker. He copied things that he saw around him--copied them awkwardly no doubt, but nevertheless certainly. Some of these patterns we can recognize; others defy us. For example, the waving line has been interpreted to represent the course of the serpent; the herring bone pattern originated as a copy of the feather. Sometimes the patterns copy the skin markings of some animal or serpent; sometimes they imitate the scales of a fish. Very seldom have these early artists attempted to copy plants or flowers. Sometimes the bone knife bears an excellent drawing of a bird or fish; occasionally the whole object has been given the form of some living creature, as, for example, bone needle cases have come to us which have the form of fish or birds. Shields, knives, bows and arrows, and weapons of whatever sort often bore some picture, more or less decorative. Such a picture upon an arrow enabled the savage to identify as his game some animal that died some distance from where it was wounded. Clubs and throw-sticks remain whereupon is scratched the picture of some familiar animal--a kangaroo, a snake, or a fish. But the pictures painted by primeval man were not limited to those which adorned their weapons and implements. The _hide_ pictures, or pictures painted or scratched upon hides are very interesting. Generally the hide used for this purpose was a portion of the hut. During times when inclement weather forced the early tribesman to remain inside for shelter, it may be, merely for diversion he occupied himself by scratching some picture upon the soot-covered skin that formed his hut. A tooth or bit of flint furnished him with a tool. Or again, a piece of charcoal, snatched from the hearth, furnished him means of picturing some scene upon a fresh skin. Figures of men and animals, drawn in outline, make up the picture. Now a battle, now a hunting scene may be delineated. The Eskimo brings into his picture some of the round snow huts, with the animals which he hunts--bears, walruses, and the like. In detail and accuracy of outline the tribes still in the hunting stage greatly excel those which have developed into a settled farming people. Nor is this difficult to understand. The success of the hunter depends in no small degree upon his ability to follow the faint foot-prints of the game. He must be susceptible to many indications wholly unseen by the casual eye. The keen vision of the uncivilized hunter is well recognized. When he no longer needs this wonderful sight to accomplish his daily tasks, it disappears. For this reason we find a fidelity to nature in the pictures of the early hunting peoples which is missed in the productions of more highly developed peoples. Finally we may gather these conclusions from the facts known of primitive art--or of art among primitive peoples. While no great masterpieces remain as models for future generations, it is among prehistoric men that art had its beginnings. Nor is it possible to sweep aside the art of this remote period, relegating it to the realm of the curious alone. Recent scholarly investigators in this field have reached far different conclusions, finding here the indications of man's artistic possibilities and the promise for the future. "The agreement between the artistic works of the rudest and of the most cultivated peoples is not only in breadth but also in depth. Strange and inartistic as the primitive forms of art sometimes appear at the first sight, as soon as we examine them more closely, we find that they are formed according to the same laws as govern the highest creations of art.... The emotions represented in primitive art are narrow and rude, its materials are scanty, its forms are poor and coarse, but in its essential motives, means, and aims, the art of the earliest times is at one with the art of all times."[5] RELIGION OF PREHISTORIC MEN. We have found that men of earliest times had no belief in a future life. They did not even bury their dead. The man of the Smooth Stone Age had advanced greatly in this respect. He buried his dead with weapons and implements which he imagined would be as useful in the next world as they had proven during the earthly life. The question arises consequently, how did the idea of a future existence, of a soul apart from the body, have its origin among men? The answer is, through dreams and visions. We understand today that dreams frequently result from physical derangement. In early times, under the unwholesome conditions that prevailed, men dreamed more constantly and vividly than they do now. Having feasted immoderately, the man lay down to sleep. While he slept, he dreamed--dreamed perchance of a hunt that seemed very real to him. When he awakened, he related his experiences, but his companions insisted that he had not been absent. He had to explain the matter in some way, so he fancied that he was not one, but _two_, and that it was his _other self_ that had been fortunate in the chase. Again, he would dream of one of his dead relatives. Not understanding the stuff that dreams are made of, or that dreams were less real than life, he inferred that his dead relative had returned to him for the time being, and that he still lived in some way. We can understand his condition the better if we think of the child who has dreamed and has been either pleased or terrified with his dream. The idea of another existence awakened, ancestor worship was a natural result. The early man who had developed a religious sense, worshipped two different kinds of forces; the forces of nature, and his ancestors. The savage bowed down to the stick that tripped him in the forest. He could not understand how such a small object could possess power to throw him and since it apparently did possess it, he worshipped it. The sun brought light and warmth. By its presence man was benefited. Therefore, primeval man worshipped the sun. Ancestor worship was inspired by quite different motives. If it were true that the dead lived on, then it must be possible for them to work one's weal or woe. If the dead were cared for and ministered unto, they would be appeased and would have no desire to bring trouble or misfortune upon the survivor. The taboo held an important place in early religious beliefs and practices. A taboo is a prohibition laid upon some object or some performance, with the superstitious idea that injury will follow if the object be used or the performance done. Some of the tribes of Central Australia, today in the Smooth Stone stage of development, hold the idea that the meat of the emu may be eaten only by the elders of the tribe. For women, therefore, there is a taboo on this meat, and its use by them would be regarded as a great sacrilege. The early Hebrews had a similar taboo, recorded in the earliest set of commandments preserved by them. It was "Thou shalt not seethe the kid in its mother's milk." This does not mean one of many foolish meanings worked into it, but rather that the early Hebrews for some reason had placed this taboo on kid cooked in milk. The use of beans was similarly tabooed by Pythagoras and forbidden to his followers. A study of the taboo is interesting indeed. The _totem_ was important to the primitive man. A totem is an animal or species of animal from which a social circle derives its origin. One clan owed its being to a black hawk, another to an eagle, and so on. No one of a clan would kill its totem, or in other words, there was a taboo placed upon the totem. Of course this taboo affected only the one clan. Early religion consisted for the most part in certain observances--not so much in formulated beliefs. To be sure, the primeval man believed that harm would overtake him if he failed to perform certain ceremonies, but it was the performance or the refraining from the performance that was important. Among the earliest people associated into tribes there were distinct moral requirements. There were some people who were not to be killed, except upon due provocation, while to kill those of other tribes brought great glory. Again, it was not right to lie to those of one's own tribe, but to others one might lie at all times. "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," was the primitive way of viewing injury, and yet when history sheds its light upon certain nations of antiquity, some of them had already come into the transition state, where damages might be given if satisfactory to the injured. The Babylonians afford an excellent example of this condition. CONCLUSION. Each individual passes through many of the stages through which the race has come. A child may pass in a week or a month through a stage covering centuries in the development of the race, but nevertheless he experiences it clearly for the time being. The savage personified everything around him. If he struck himself against a tree, he was angry with the tree that had hurt him, and he tried to hurt the tree in revenge. The child today falls against a chair and hits the chair that hurt him. Now just as the child by such experiences, scarcely noted by others, realized far less by himself, comes into the clear vision of manhood, so by similar experiences the whole race has come to its present development. We are too prone to smile at the conceptions of the primitive world, and, grown wise with the flight of centuries, cast aside the beliefs of early ages when men adjusted themselves to life. Let us reflect then upon the attainments of prehistoric man and attempt to fathom how great a debt historic peoples owe him. In view of his achievements, we must grant that by his efforts civilization was greatly aided. The stepping stones on which he rose from abject savagery to higher things stand out sharply in spite of absence of records and scant remains. The rough pioneering had been done, in a great measure, and not alone the rudiments of civilization but evidences of culture were plainly visible at the dawn of history, properly so-called. [Illustration: ABORIGINAL ROCK-CARVINGS.] FOOTNOTES: [1] Starr: Some First Steps in Human Progress, p. 28. [2] Starr: Some First Steps in Human Progress, p. 151. [3] Starr: Some First Steps in Human Progress, p. 80. [4] The Beginnings of Art, Grosse, p. 61. [5] The Beginnings of Art, Grosse, p. 307. * * * * * [Illustration] EGYPTIAN AFTERGLOW. "'Tis sunset hour on Egypt's arid plains. Each mighty pyramid, with purpling crest, Looms dark against the glory in the west. Swiftly the heaven's beauty dies and wanes, Till sudden darkness its rich splendor stains. Then slowly, dawn-like, on the shadows rest Faint crimsons, violets, tint to tint soft pressed; They brighten, glow, then fade and darkness reigns." P. F. CAMP. EGYPT PREFATORY CHAPTER There never was a time when men were so intensely interested in origins and development as they are today. Our biologists are studying life in all its forms, from the single cell to the highest mammal. Our psychologists are studying mind--what consciousness is; how attention, habit, memory are formed. Our physicists, not content with studying gravitation, heat, light, electricity, etc., are inquiring into the very nature of matter itself, and, together with the astronomers and geologists, are telling us not only how the earth, but also how the universe came to be. Our anthropologists, ethnologists and sociologists are just as actively and patiently inquiring into the origins of customs, institutions, law, religion, society. The historian is no longer content to rehearse a story because it is interesting; he insists upon getting at the original documents, at the facts in the case, not at theories. The savage, when asked why he observes a certain custom or performs some ceremony whose meaning he does not know, replies that his ancestors did the same. To inquire beyond this seems to him more than useless. Until the beginning of our modern scientific age the answer to similar questions among ourselves--as it still is among the Chinese, would have been, "it is written," "thus saith the Lord," "Aristotle, Plato or St. Augustine thought so and so about the matter." But today all is different. We are no longer content to know what is written, or what somebody thinks about a subject, we insist upon demonstrating or having some one demonstrate for us, the proposition put forward. We want the "facts." Our whole system of education encourages pupils to perform experiments and thus verify the statements they may find in their text-books on chemistry, physics and other subjects. It is the inductive method which gives the pupil the facts and encourages him to draw his own conclusions. But what has Egypt to offer the modern man? Does it interest any but specialists and archaeologists? Apparently it does, for every year sees an increase of tourists in the Nile valley. It is true many go there because of the ideal climate or because it has become the fashion to do so. But if we look at the matter more closely, do we not see other, deeper reasons? Is it not true that many go because in their youth they had read about the pyramids and the wonderful temples of Egypt, and because now when they have the opportunity they desire to see these for themselves? The architect, the engineer, the contractor, all are interested in these masses of masonry. Again, when we are beginning to reclaim the desert areas in our western states, Egypt with its system of irrigation, older than history, arouses a new interest. The fact is that in spite of our practical nature, as some would put it, or rather, as we prefer to have it, because of our intensely practical nature, we are beginning to feel the necessity of inquiring into the activities of other peoples, be they past or present, not only because such inquiry will satisfy our curiosity or enliven our dull moments, but because of the lasting benefit we derive from it. We insist upon knowing the people who have achieved, who have accomplished things, and surely the pyramids alone would demonstrate that the ancient Egyptians belonged to this class. _Man attained to civilization for the first time in the Nile valley._ We study the natives of Australia and Africa for social origins. It is here we can gather most information about the primitive forms of marriage and the growth of the family; about the beginnings of dress and ornament; about primitive warfare, magic, religion and early forms of tribal government. Just as we pay special attention to the development of the mind of the child in the study of psychology, so we feel that the best way to study the complex features of our civilization is to observe the simpler life of the savage. But the child becomes a man while the savage has not yet developed a civilization before our eyes. The growth of the race is slow. It is only when we are able to observe a race through a period of thousands of years that it is possible to see it grow from infancy to manhood. We can follow our own ancestors from the time they had advanced little beyond the stage of savagery, but it is to be observed that they did not _develop_ but _borrowed_ their civilization. Of the beginnings of the Greeks and Romans, whose civilization our ancestors took over, we know but little, but in the case of the Egyptians matters are different. We are able, by means of archaeological, monumental and inscriptional remains to follow them as they developed in the Nile valley, unassisted by any outside civilization--for none existed, the world's first great civilized state. "It may appear paradoxical to affirm that it is in arid districts, where agriculture is most arduous, that agriculture began; yet the affirmation is not to be gainsaid but rather supported by history, and is established beyond reasonable doubt by the evidence of desert organisms and organizations."[1] This lesson drawn from the life of the Papago Indians might just as well have been drawn from Egyptian life. Egypt is practically rainless, but the soil of the Nile valley, ever renewed by the silt deposited by the yearly inundation, yields enormous returns provided only man uses his energy and ingenuity. Long before our written records begin the Egyptians had developed an extensive system of irrigation. Thus by arduous toil, organized and watched over by the growing state, Egypt developed an enormous agricultural wealth--the foundation upon which her civilization was built. With Egypt it was not a question of the "conservation" but of the development of her natural resources. The Egyptian was forced to keep up a continuous struggle with nature and as a result he was always practical. Egypt has been called the mother of the mechanical arts. It is not surprising that the imaginative Greeks, when they became acquainted with the material civilization of Egypt, her pyramids and temples, her system of irrigation, her craftsmanship, conceived an exaggerated opinion of the wisdom of the Egyptians. Even today we hear surmises of "lost arts" which were used in the construction of the pyramids. But we know better. The pyramids were built by the brawn of tens of thousands of serfs, without the use, it would seem, of even a pulley; not even the roller seems to have been known. On the other hand, we have only to visit the museums here and abroad--especially the one in Cairo, to realize the marvellous skill the Egyptian workman acquired in the carving of wood, ivory and stone, and in the working of metals. Our architects are studying the products of the greatest geniuses Egyptian culture produced, and our students of design may learn many a lesson from the workmanship of her artisans. Not long since it was not unusual to see ridicule heaped upon the theories of the "high-brows" by our farmers, manufacturers and other "practical" men. Probably our system of education _was_ at fault. Nevertheless, these same farmers, manufacturers and other practical men are beginning to realize the importance of the researches and investigations of the specialists. We cannot hope to compete with the industries of the Germans which rest upon a scientific basis, as long as ours are conducted by "rule-of-thumb" methods. There is no better opportunity offered anywhere for observing the limitations of an exclusively practical system of education than the study of Egyptian learning. The Egyptian regarded learning as a means to an end, and that end was never the increase of the sum of human knowledge or the advancement of humankind, but always freedom from manual labor. Next to a few folk songs, preserved in the decorations of Fifth Dynasty tombs--by mere accident, for a scribe would never have thought of preserving them, the oldest literature of the Egyptians which has come down to us consists of the precepts of Kagemni and Ptah-hotep.[2] This wisdom of the viziers of the Pharaohs of the Fourth and Fifth Dynasties, is similar to that of the books of instruction from all periods of Egyptian history, and consists largely of rules of conduct. The sole object of an education was to obtain a position as scribe or secretary of higher or lower rank in the government service, and this could only be done by gaining and keeping the favor of the Pharaoh or of one of his officials. These scribes never weary of telling of the superiority of their calling over that of the man who must labor with his hands, who is like a heavily laden ass driven by the scribes. Of course we too recognize the gulf fixed between the educated and the unlettered, but we try to bridge it. It is not probable that many of the laboring classes knew more than the barest elements of reading and writing. The Egyptian script was exceedingly cumbrous, and probably few would have seen any use in mastering it, even if they had had the time, unless they intended to enter upon a scribal career. Of course many such careers were open, for the elaborate bureaucratic system of administration demanded the services of a host of secretaries and overseers. In time these constituted a distinct middle class, largely recruited, we may be sure, from the laboring class below. The Egyptian was always ready to recognize and reward ability, no matter where it was found. Now a word about the limitations of such a view of education. As already indicated, the object of an education was to gain a government position. In Egypt, as elsewhere, the chief end of government, in the eyes of the officials at least, was the collection of revenues. Taxes were in kind and as a result the work of the scribe consisted in finding out the amount of the harvest and deducting the king's share. The extensive mining and building operations conducted by the Pharaohs required the services of hundreds of scribes and overseers to superintend the work and distribute the rations of the armies of workmen employed in these projects. In this work the scribe developed a remarkable facility with figures. But he never advanced beyond concrete examples. Multiplication and division in our sense of the terms were unknown to him, their places were taken by addition and subtraction. For example: to multiply seven by nine, the Egyptian scribe would proceed, 1·7=7, 2·7=14, 2·14=28, 2·28=56, etc. That is he always doubled the last figure. It was nothing but addition. He wrote his results as follows: 1 7 2 14 4 28 8 56 16 112 and then found which of the numbers of the first column added together would give the sum 9. These were 8 and 1. He then added the corresponding numbers in the second column and got the result, 56+7=63. So 50÷7 would have looked like this: 50-28=22; 22-14=8; 8-7=1. The result was (4+2+1) sevens with 1 as remainder. The Egyptian scribe could not handle fractions other than those with one as numerator. Two-thirds was the only exception. The Egyptian knew that the area of a rectangle was to be found by multiplying the two adjacent sides together, and that the area of a right angled triangle was equal to half the area of a rectangle whose base and altitude were equal respectively to the sides adjacent to the right angle. When his problem was to find the area of an isosceles triangle he applied the same rule, that is, multiplied the base by one of the sides and divided by two. Here theory might have helped him, had he been able to develop it. He never reached the conception of base and altitude. His rule for finding the area of a circle is worth mentioning. He took the diameter, subtracted one-ninth of it therefrom, and squared the result. In a word, he had not come far from the correct value of [Greek: pi]. But the Egyptian always dealt with concrete examples, he never was able to generalize and carry his mathematics into the theoretical. As a result he never attained scientific accuracy. Not that he did not set himself difficult problems. Indeed many of them are so complicated that they required an immense amount of reckoning, by his methods, to solve. Without giving his solution, let me add one more of his problems: "A man owns 7 cats; each cat eats 7 mice daily; each mouse eats 7 ears of grain; each ear contains 7 grains; each grain gives a sevenfold return in the harvest. What is the sum of the cats, mice, ears and grains?" The Egyptians observed the stars. They had names for all of the principal constellations; knew the circumpolar stars from those which at times disappeared below the horizon, but they never seem to have noticed the difference between fixed stars and planets. They invented a calendar with a year of 365 days as early as 4241 B.C. This was based upon the heliacal rising of Sirius (Sothis) coincident with the beginning of the inundation. But they never discovered, or if they did, never bothered about the fact that their year was one-fourth of a day too short. They were deeply interested in medicine, and their recipes prescribe everything that can be swallowed. Many of these were borrowed by the Greeks and from them have come down into the folk-medicine of modern Europe. No doubt many of their remedies were helpful, but magic always played the most important rôle in their medicine, as it does among all primitive peoples and as it did in our own until the beginning of our modern scientific age. The progress made by the Egyptians in the development of a purer conception of religion will be discussed at length in the body of this volume, especially on pages 131 and following. The Egyptians were not far from monotheism. But the Egyptian culture must be studied as a whole. Time was when the study of the civilization of Egypt, Babylonia and Assyria, together with that of the Hebrews, was regarded as a sort of introduction to the study of history, which began with the Greeks and Romans. Much was said of the immovable East. It was supposed that progress was exceedingly slow there as compared with that in the West. But our wider knowledge of the history and life of these peoples shows how false this conception was. We can trace Egyptian civilization from its beginnings in the palaeolithic and neolithic ages; see it develop from many petty states into an absolute monarchy; follow it as it emerges after a period of anarchy into a Feudal Age, and as it rises after two centuries of foreign oppression into a mighty empire pushing its southern frontier away into Nubia and its northern one to the Euphrates. Meanwhile we are not neglecting to study the economic and intellectual forces at work. Society has been developing steadily. A monotheistic religion has been growing up. But Egypt has reached her zenith and the age of decline sets in. In time she falls before foreign invasion, because she has used up her vitality. Her civilization is not to be studied as a preliminary to anything else, but as the achievement of a gifted race. Of course we are to compare her progress with that of other peoples, to see the faults of, but also to appreciate the good in, her culture. FOOTNOTES: [1] W. J. McGee, "The Beginning of Agriculture," American Anthropologist, 8, 375. [2] See page 164. EGYPT. [Illustration: THE SPIRAL DECORATION OF SCARABS.] CHAPTER I. ITS ANTIQUITY. Among Old Testament stories familiar throughout the Christian World, a general favorite with boys and girls from their earliest years is the story of Joseph--a seventeen year old lad, the son of his father's later life, and most loved of all his children. In Genesis we may read how his brothers became jealous of Joseph because of Jacob's care for him, and their anger increased when the boy related a dream wherein he had seen himself exalted to high position while his family and all the world did honor to him. His people led a pastoral life, and when the dry season came, the older brothers went away with the flocks in search of fresh pastures. Soon the father grew anxious to hear from them, and sent Joseph to locate them and then return to tell him how they fared. After some searching, Joseph drew near the flocks and was seen afar by his brothers. They were now many miles from home, and what they might do was not likely to reach the ears of those who knew them. So they plotted to kill Joseph and ascribe the deed to some wild beast. Reuben, more compassionate, urged that they should not have this awful crime upon their hands, but suggested instead that they cast him into a pit, from which plight, we are told, Reuben intended to deliver him. The others yielded to his plea, and Joseph was cast into the pit. Shortly after, a caravan came in sight, passing on its way to Egypt. At once a surer way of disposing of Joseph suggested itself--they would sell him as a slave and free themselves from further responsibility in the matter. The company of merchantmen drew nearer, journeying with their spices and their wares. To them Joseph was sold, and with them he "went down into Egypt." His varying fortune for the next few years is briefly told. Now we see him a trusted servant, given responsibility and acquitting himself with credit; then upon false accusation, he is cast into prison, but even here he wins the confidence of his jailer. Here too, he establishes a fame for the interpretation of dreams, which ability is soon noised abroad. So widely did it become known that when the king's counsellors were unable to explain his repeated vision, from prison walls Joseph was summoned to reveal its hidden meaning. He thereupon foretold the seven years of plenty and the seven years of famine through which the land of Egypt would soon pass. The king, impressed with his wisdom and sincerity, chose him steward of the realm. All know the outcome of the tale--how Joseph soon became second in importance to the king himself, trusted, depended upon and loved; how he bought up the heavy yield of grain throughout the realm for seven years and hoarded it in "store cities," until he ceased to chronicle the amount, so vast it was. Then when the years of famine came, he sold again to those who would buy, and when their money was exhausted, he took their flocks, their lands and their slaves as security--yes, even the service of citizens was pledged to the king in exchange for food. It was during these tedious years of want that Joseph learned of his family, when the same brothers who had done him so much injury came into Egypt to buy grain, and through his generosity they were united once more, and at his invitation brought their families to dwell near him. The king commanded that they be well provided for and they prospered and increased in number. Years passed and Jacob died, and at last Joseph himself. Then we are told there came to the throne a king "who knew not Joseph." He looked with dismay upon a foreign people growing up within his country, whose traditions, customs, and religious beliefs were wholly unlike those of his own nation. Then followed the years of oppression when he sought to exterminate the race with relentless work and cruel persecution. Within recent years, one of the "store cities," supposed by some scholars to have been built by the Hebrews during this period of their life in Egypt, has been unearthed--verifying the account of their bondage as preserved to us in the book of Genesis. It is difficult for us to realize the vast antiquity of Egypt. When Joseph as a seventeen year old boy came with that band of merchantmen into its borders more years had passed over its civilization than have passed since Homer told his stories of gods and heroes to the Hellenes who gathered around to hear him. The three great pyramids had stood in their majestic calm under more moons than have risen and set since Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judea; and the Sphinx had watched, for how many years men cannot tell. When we come to the land of Egypt, we are appalled by its age. America was discovered about five hundred years ago; England has been inhabited for more than twenty hundred years, but Egypt counts its history back for thousands of years and loses itself in tradition and legendary periods preceding these. The story of Joseph, told in Genesis, the book of earliest Biblical tradition, records an incident early in the history of the Hebrews, but the Egyptians had already been governed by many ruling dynasties and had known the oppression of invading kings whom they had at last driven from the throne. They had built colossal structures which were to perpetuate the memories of their mighty kings as well as to provide their everlasting tombs, and these stand today the marvel of all who gaze upon their vast proportions. They had developed a complex religious system, and had reached some perfection in decorative art. Egypt had long been the granary of the civilized world and consequently of great importance from an economic standpoint. The Nile, that wonderful river which caused Herodotus to exclaim: "Egypt is the gift of the Nile!"--a sentiment quoted ever since by all who have written about the country or the river--had cut down its river bed and had already built up a rich soil in the valley by its deposits, left by the overflow of countless seasons. We look today upon the cathedrals of Europe, standing as they have since the Norman conquest, even, in some instances antedating it, and we exclaim that the builders of these impressive edifices built for ages to come. Yet in Egypt the pyramids have stood for almost five thousand years, and it is safe to say that they will proclaim to many millenniums more, the wealth and power of the Pharaohs who raised them for their everlasting abodes. Hundreds of years dwindle in the contemplation of thousands, and these are ever before the student of Egyptian history. PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF EGYPT. Egypt is located in the northeastern corner of Africa. To the east lies the Isthmus of Suez--the pathway to Asia, and the Red Sea--separated by a range of mountains from the Valley of the Nile. To the south lies Nubia, and to the west stretches away for hundreds of weary miles the Sahara, the old bed of an extinct ocean. Egypt is by no means the country it is sometimes represented to be on geographical maps. That Egypt someone has called a "geographical fiction." On the contrary, it has always consisted simply of the Nile valley and delta. It is about one-half as large again as the state of Massachusetts, containing approximately 12,000 square miles. The Nile is unlike any river of our land. It takes its rise in a chain of lakes near the Equator. These lakes lie in a heavy rain belt and at a certain season the rainfall is so constant that the river is greatly swollen. It is joined by tributaries which in turn are overflowing with the melting snows of mountains wherein they take their rise, and altogether the main river continues so to increase that it overflows its channel and spreads out into the valley on either side. In America we know how disastrous spring floods frequently become, but here the overflow is violent, tearing down bridges and embankments, bringing injury rather than benefit to the land. In Egypt the rise of the Nile is gradual; dwellings are built on elevations of land or on the outskirts of the valley. Without the yearly inundation there would be no food to maintain the dense population of the country. During the period of high water the Nile is heavily loaded with mud. When the river recedes, this fertile silt is left upon the surface of the land. This, and this alone, has made the land of Egypt different from the deserts on either side of it. And now we see how truly Herodotus spoke when he exclaimed that Egypt is the gift of the Nile. Containing about the same number of miles as our state of Maryland, for numberless years this little country has been the granary for surrounding lands. Thus may we judge of its remarkable fertility. Much of the loam which the river has brought down has been spread over the valley, but a considerable amount has been emptied each year at the mouth of the stream, forming in course of time a _delta_,--so called by the Greeks from its resemblance to their letter _delta_. Because of its long threading valley and this delta, Egypt has sometimes been likened to a lily; the delta representing the flower and the valley the stem. After flowing four thousand miles, the waters of the Nile find their way at last to the Mediterranean Sea, and towards this sea the land gradually slopes. Passing southward through Egypt from the Mediterranean, one journeys more than a hundred miles through the delta. This great plain has been formed entirely of the mud washed down by the mighty river. Each year for countless ages it has been extended at least eight feet farther into the sea, and thus its area continues to increase. This portion of the country, or this delta, is frequently referred to as Lower Egypt. Continuing south, one enters the valley. This narrow strip of fertile land measures about six hundred miles from the apex, or southern extremity of the delta, to the first cataract. The bed of the Nile is very irregular in its upper course and falls over ten cataracts in its downward flow before the southern boundary of Upper Egypt is reached. In width the valley varies from one to ten miles. This portion of the country is known as Upper Egypt. Imagine, if you can, a river flowing through a valley skirted on either side by deserts whose boundaries are so abruptly marked that one may stand with one foot in the fertile, life-producing valley, and with the other in the shifting sands of desert waste. On the east lies the Arabian desert, while the many colored peaks of a lofty mountain range form a well nigh impassable barrier between it and the Red Sea, save where famous mountain passes lead to the waters beyond. Nubian mountains, to the south, supplied most of the gold and precious ore used by the ancient Egyptians, and were held in greatest dread by those taken in captivity, for the work within them was relentless and none ever returned when once sent to join the hopeless, heartsick throng of laborers employed by the king to develop the mines. The Sahara west of the valley is not a flat region, but is made up of shifting sands, hills and rocks of limestone. It is plain that the Valley of the Nile was once a part of this desert, but the river, with its tremendous volume, set to work to cut down its bed. The channel, so worn down, is the present valley. "Egypt is the temporarily uncovered bed of the Nile, which it reclaims and recovers during a portion of each year, when Egypt disappears from view, save where human labor has by mounds and embankments formed artificial islands that raise their heads above the waste of waters, for the most part crowned with buildings."[1] It is plain, as we note the nature of the land through which the great river flows, that no rich soil would be accumulated from the banks it washes in its downward course. We must look to the high tablelands where the two large tributaries, the Blue Nile and the Atbara, have their beginnings, to find the mountain loam that has given the valley a fertile soil, thirty feet in depth, and has built up the grain-producing delta, one hundred miles in length and more in breadth. Again and again we are forced to remember that Egypt is indeed the gift of the Nile. YEARLY RISE OF THE NILE. This brings us back once more to the subject of the inundations. Early in June the Nile begins to rise below the first cataract. In July it has become swollen throughout its course. The highest water mark is reached about September fifteenth. By the first of November the river begins to recede and is at low water again by the last of January, although it continues to diminish until the following June. Nilometers are used to register the river's rise. These are wells in which the water can fluctuate freely, with a stone column in the center marked as a scale. The _ell_ is the unit of measure, being equal to about twenty-one and one-third inches. At low water the river registers about seven ells. If during the inundation sixteen ells are reached, all Egypt is supplied with water and fine crops are assured throughout the land. NILOMETERS. From earliest times the rise of the Nile was closely watched, and nilometers, which were under the special protection of the State, constructed. Today these water gauges are under the inspection of government officials. Taxes have always been apportioned according to the amount of the inundation, and it has been to the interest of the government, naturally, that these be as heavy as possible. For this reason it has often been claimed, both in ancient and modern times, that the official report of the high water mark greatly exceeded the actual rise. There is no rainfall in the valley and little in the delta, so whatever moisture Egypt receives must come from the Nile. The entire valley is not of equal elevation but becomes higher as it spreads out on either side, and so a vast system of irrigation must be maintained to make good crops possible. Large sums have been expended in the construction of dams, embankments and canals to contain the water after the river recedes, allowing the amount thus retained to be drawn off as it is needed. From canals it is drawn off into trenches for still higher land, and artificial means of various kinds have always been employed to lift the water from one level to another. It is estimated that tens of thousands of men and boys are constantly engaged in this elevation of water from one level to another, in order that farms throughout the valley may receive the necessary moisture and fertility. As rapidly as one crop is harvested, the soil is made ready for another, so that as many as five crops are frequently harvested in a year on a given acreage. INFLUENCE OF TOPOGRAPHY. With a sea on the north, mountains on the east, cataracts to the south and a desert on the west, what would be the natural effect upon the inhabitants of physical conditions such as these prevailing in the land of Egypt? They determined that the Egyptians would be left to develop their civilization unmolested for the most part by outside influences. Such physical features account for the fact that for hundreds of years that was a land, not of war, but of peace. Think for a moment what natural boundaries have meant to nations of Europe. England's isolation has been largely due to her stormy channel, while the independence of the Swiss is accounted for by their inaccessible mountain home. Austria, on the other hand, has known the disastrous effects of repeated invasions, while Poland has lost her identity and has been appropriated by her neighbors because of unfortunate situation and the lack of natural defenses. Not only did the topography of the land surface determine the political fortunes of the ancient Egyptians in a large degree; it materially influenced the very temperament of the people. Many civilizations have developed in lands broken by hills and valleys, plains and plateaus, dotted with lakes, skirted by forests, bays, inlets and a thousand irregularities of nature. Few trees grow in Egypt and few wild flowers are found. Each spot that might have become a tangled thicket was early appropriated by the practical tiller of the soil. The valley has always supported too dense a population to permit of wilds and abandoned corners, and only that remains uncultivated which has proved too marshy for grain production. Possessing no timber suitable for ship-building, the Nile dwellers did not become sailors. Their communication from one part of the country to the other was established by means of small boats or donkey paths. Rain was scanty and mud huts sufficed to shelter the people. While constant attention was required to maintain an extensive system of irrigation, the soil was so fertile and the climate so favorable that two, three and even more crops per year were possible. Nature worked with--not against--man. "A serene temper, and a reliance in nature were fostered. A submissiveness was developed which allowed the king to turn all into a fighting people, or into a body of forced laborers." The absence of nearly all that inspires, that stimulates the energy and quickens the imagination may largely account for the placid temperament of the ancient Egyptians. Passing their lives in a land of slightly varying processes, they could imagine nothing more satisfactory for a hereafter than a shadowy land wherein they might till the soil as of yore, only water should always reach the needs of the remotest, and perplexities removed, each should complete his yearly circuit through eternity. PREHISTORIC EGYPT. Long before northern Africa acquired its present land surface, made up so largely of deserts, it is believed that the portion which we call Egypt was a fertile country, visited by frequent rains. It is possible that the Nile did not exist; at least, it had not eroded its present channel, and the fertility of the soil was due to causes other than yearly inundations. This, we must remember, was many geological ages ago and cannot be computed in years at all. Remains of rude flint implements are scattered over the heights of the desert plateau to the west of the Nile valley. The people who used these lived in settlements, traces of many of which have been found; but of their relation to the later inhabitants of Egypt we know nothing. They belong to the field of archaeology rather than to history. Climatic changes took place in Africa. Gradually the country assumed its present surface of desert and valley. It is supposed that Libyan tribes came from northwestern Africa and settled in Egypt; these were joined later by Asiatic hordes who crossed the Isthmus of Suez in search of better pastures for their flocks, or because of some shifting of the tribes in their rear. This inference, based upon the Semitic elements in the grammar and vocabulary of the language of the earliest Egyptian inscriptions, has been raised almost beyond doubt by the latest researches. From the mingling of these Asiatic tribes with others already established in western Africa, sprang, so it is believed, the early Egyptians. The Egyptians, however, like the ancient Greeks, regarded themselves as autochthonous. Roughly speaking, prehistoric events in Egypt include all those preceding the year 4000 B.C., and our knowledge of them has been gathered from the disclosures of excavated tombs. While a discussion of the Egyptian religion will be taken up later on, some slight knowledge of it is necessary at the start. The Egyptian of both early and later periods believed firmly in a future life, but he believed further that the future welfare of the soul depended wholly upon the preservation of the body. This belief led him to study how best to preserve the dead body, and to bring embalming to such an art that tombs opened today, after the flight of five thousand years, reveal bodies in complete states of preservation. Again, it was believed that the same needs would be felt in the future life as had been experienced during the earthly career. For this reason, foods, vessels of pottery, weapons, and even toilet preparations for personal adornment, were enclosed in the tomb. From a study of the contents of these ancient tombs most that is at present known of the ancient Egyptian has been ascertained. When many implements furnished with ivory handles are found in these tombs, together with occasional pictures of elephants scratched on bone and bits of pottery, even those of us who are neither antiquarians nor historians might infer that the elephant was contemporaneous with the prehistoric Egyptian. Pictures of boats, of animals and men, decorating pieces of pottery, throw light upon this early civilization. From all remains recovered in tombs antedating the year 4000 B.C. the following conclusions have been reached: these primitive people reached considerable skill in the making of pottery and stone receptacles. From copper they made knives and implements; they built very fair river boats, wove coarse fabrics, although skins of wild animals usually constituted their clothing: they hunted and fished and were to some extent an agricultural people. At this remote time Egypt was not the one united country it later became. It was composed of nomes, or districts, of which the late lists give 22 for Upper and 20 for Lower Egypt. Their number probably varied considerably during the course of Egyptian history. In early times each nome probably had been the home of an independent tribe, having its own chief and its own religious customs. Gradually, however, powerful chieftains conquered other nomes, until just before our written records begin, the two more or less compact kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt were established. Throughout Egyptian history each locality held to its peculiar religious beliefs, and although there was always a state religion and a state god, dearer to the hearts of men were the deities of their own vicinity; and it is possible to trace several religions in the one composite system of later years. By 4300 B.C. the men of the Delta had divided the year into 365 days, and again into twelve months of thirty days each, with five extra days for sacred festival. For six thousand years, then, the calendar which we use has experienced little change. Take it all in all, the Egyptians of this age had traveled far from the state of savagery. [Illustration: ROYAL CROWNS.] FOOTNOTES: [1] Rawlinson; Ancient Egypt, p. 6. [Illustration: CLEOPATRA.] CHAPTER II. SOURCES OF EGYPTIAN HISTORY. The study of prehistoric man is largely a matter of conjecture and has little interest for any save the archaeologist and antiquarian. There is yet so much uncertainty regarding historic periods in Egypt that the general reader must leave prehistoric ages to others. Reaching authentic ages, in addition to the remains discovered within old tombs, we are aided by written records, and these fall into three classes: facts regarding Egypt as recounted in the Old Testament; writings of the Greeks; inscriptions of the ancient Egyptians themselves. The light thrown upon the subject by old Hebrew writers is slight. They chronicled the history of their own people and mentioned other nations only when in some way the Hebrews came into contact with them. Hebrew traditions, customs, and religion differing wholly from those of Egypt, at best there would have been but little understanding between them. Biblical comment upon Egyptian life is slight. In connection with the story of Joseph we find that some facts concerning the land unwittingly creep into the narrative. Modern discovery has verified such facts as are recounted, and buried and forgotten cities have been sought and located from mere mention of them in some Old Testament passage. Thus the Bible is rightly included with the sources of Egyptian history. So far as treatment of Egypt by Greek writers is concerned, we can stop for only the most important. Best known are the works of Herodotus, who lived about five hundred years before the Christian era. He was the first to bring forward the historical style of writing and for this reason he has been called the Father of History. Herodotus journeyed to Egypt and abode there some little time. He did not understand the language of the country and depended largely upon priests who spoke Greek for his information. He apparently believed all they told him, and likewise accepted the tales with which his guides entertained him, incorporating all their marvelous stories into his writings. Consequently much that is found in his works cannot be credited. Whatever he himself saw and understood he recounted with simplicity and truth, as recent discoveries have proved. It is easy today to point out the failings of Herodotus and to wonder that he was so ready to credit all he heard, but judged by the age in which he lived, his writings may be the better understood. We are told that portions of his works were read by him at the Olympian Games, and that those who listened received his stories with enthusiasm. To the imaginative Greeks no report was too fanciful to find credence. They delighted in the unusual and strange, and they made up the audiences for which Herodotus wrote. It is not surprising, then, that the Father of History brought back to his countrymen the unique stories he heard concerning the Egyptians--a people whose life and customs were thought by foreigners until long years after, to be deeply shrouded in mystery. More valuable has proved the work of Manetho, an Egyptian priest who wrote in Greek. He is said to have made a complete list of Egyptian kings from records preserved in the temples. This list has been lost and only portions quoted from time to time by later writers have come down to us. These fragments have been of much service to students of Egyptology. It was Manetho who divided the history of his country into three periods: the Old Empire, Middle Empire, and New Empire. He also treated the past by dynasties rather than years. These general divisions have been retained by all subsequent historians. Those who are not specialists in Egyptology are apt to be confused by the widely divergent systems of chronology found in the different histories of Egypt, or they reach the conclusion that all is uncertainty in this field. This is not the place to enter into a discussion of this difficult technical problem. Suffice it to say that in the opinion of the best scholars, Eduard Meyer, the great historian of the Ancient Orient, has said the last word on this subject. Contrary opinions notwithstanding, the accession of Menes and the beginning of the dynasties cannot be placed before 3400 B.C., nor can the beginning of the twelfth dynasty have been earlier than 2000 B.C.* Coming lastly to monumental inscriptions, we approach the difficulties of the Egyptian language. Let us try to understand why it proved so difficult for scholars who read Hebrew, Greek and Latin, together with some older tongues, to comprehend the language of the Nile dwellers. In prehistoric times the Egyptians understood one another but it was long before they had any means of expressing their thoughts in writing. It may have occurred to them finally that the pictures which they drew for decorative purposes might be used to convey messages, and thus they began to express simple meanings, using pictures rather than symbols. Sometimes to make doubly sure the meaning of several pictures, they added another which combined the meaning of all into one. These added pictures have been called determinitives, and the pictures used to convey meanings in this way are known as hieroglyphics. There was something very attractive and decorative about this method of writing by thus picturing out stories, and it was used extensively in tombs and temples. It became too elaborate, however, for daily use, and gradually only the _main outlines_ of the original pictures were used to represent the idea or word. This system of writing was more practical for constant, everyday needs than the more ornamental hieroglyphics. It is known as the hieratic writing. Finally, late in the history of Egypt, these hieratics were very much abbreviated, mere dots and lines being substituted. This cursory system is known as _demotic_ writing. It was adopted by the people generally, and might perhaps be compared to modern shorthand. To make the whole more complicated still, all three methods were used for different purposes contemporaneously. Hundreds of years passed; the language of the ancient Egyptians was forgotten and so, indeed, were the people themselves. In modern times the learning of ancient peoples was revived and their writings eagerly read. Quite naturally students wished to know something of the earliest civilizations, particularly of the civilization of the Nile valley. Here they were confronted by what seemed baffling indeed. Three forms of writing used contemporaneously, even interchangeably, defied all effort to decipher them. Attempts were made to explain certain inscriptions, but these explanations were found later to have been far astray. In 1799, one of Napoleon's soldiers, while excavating in the mouth of the Rosetta, came upon a stone which bore a royal decree written in three ways: in hieroglyphics, in demotic and in Greek. This supplied a key at last, and scholars set themselves to the task of deciphering ancient Egyptian writings. Other inscriptions written in two or more languages were found and verified the conclusions reached earlier in the translation of the Rosetta Stone. In recent years a large number of inscriptions from tombs and temples have been read and many rolls of papyrus have been translated. This has enabled historians to read back, step by step, into far away ages, and to carry the thread of Egyptian civilization to its beginnings. Maspero, Eduard Meyer, Breasted, Petrie and other painstaking students of Egyptology have given their lives to the task of unraveling the past, both by deciphering inscriptions and unearthing forgotten cities. From the tireless efforts of men like these, tombs hidden for centuries have been recovered, temples and colonnades laid bare of drifting sands, inscriptions transcribed and translated, and volumes of scholarly material written for the special student, while at the same time the general reader may find much of interest concerning the life of a remarkable people whose works have borne testimony through the ages. HERODOTUS. The following lines are taken from the pages of Herodotus wherein he relates what he saw and heard when he visited Egypt nearly twenty-five hundred years ago. "There is no country in all the whole world that hath in it more marvelous things or greater works of buildings and the like than hath the land of Egypt. And as the heavens in this land are such as other men know not--for in the upper parts there falls not rain but once in a thousand years or more, and in the lower parts not often--and the river is different from all other rivers in the earth, seeing that it overflows in the summer and is at its least in the winter, so also do the manners of the Egyptians differ from the manners of all other men. For among them the women buy and sell in the market but the men sit at home and spin. And even in this matter of spinning they do not as others, for others push the shuttle in the loom from below upward, but these men push it from above downward. Also the men carry burdens on their heads, but the women carry them on their shoulders. And the women pray to none, neither god or goddess, but the men pray to all. And there is no duty laid on a son to succor father or mother, if it be not his pleasure to do it, but on a daughter there is laid, whether she will or no. "In the matter of mourning for the dead, these folks have a strange custom, for they let grow the hair upon the head and chin when they mourn, but are shaven at other times. And whereas other men hold themselves better than the beasts, the Egyptians have these in great honor, keeping them in their houses, aye, and worshipping them. Nor do they eat the food of other men, holding it a shame to be fed on wheat and barley which others use, and eating the grain of millet only; and the dough that is made of it this they knead, trampling it with their feet; but mud and like things they are wont to take up with their hands.... "Now as to the beasts and the honor in which the Egyptians hold them, there are many strange things to be told. The crocodile some of the Egyptians hold to be sacred, but not all. And in every city where they hold it, as in Thebes and in the cities round the lake Moeris, they keep one crocodile to which they do special honor. This they train to be tame to the hand, and they put earrings of glass and gold into his ears, and bracelets on his forefeet, and give it a portion of food day by day, and make offerings to it, and when it dies they embalm it and bury it in the sacred sepulchres. But the people that dwell in the city of Elphantine count them not to be sacred at all, but slay and eat them.... "The cat the Egyptians hold in great honor. Of this beast there is a very marvelous thing to be told. When it chanceth that a house is burning a strange madness cometh upon the cats, for they are very desirous to leap into the fire. And the Egyptians set guards round the place if by any means they may keep the cats from their purpose; nor do they care to quench the fire, if so be that they may do this; but the cats nevertheless, making their way through them, or leaping over them, have their will and so perish. Over this the Egyptians make great lamentation. If a cat die in the course of nature, all that are in that house shave their eyebrows only, but all dwellers in a house where a dog dies shave their heads and whole bodies. The cats, when they are dead, they carry away for burial to the city of Bubastis, but the dogs they bury each in the city where he dies, only in the holy sepulchres.... "For food the Egyptians have bread made of millet as has been said before. They have wine made of barley, for the vine groweth not in their land. Of birds they eat doves and pigeons, and such small kinds as there are in the country. "... Such of the Egyptians as dwell in the marshes of the river have also for food the seed of the water-lilies, which grow abundantly when the river overfloweth the plains. This seed is like to the seed of a poppy, and they make of it loaves which they bake with fire, having first dried it in the sun. Also the root of this water-lily (which they call the lotus) may be eaten, being round, and of the bigness of an apple. Other lilies there are growing in the river, like to roses, which have a fruit very like to a wasp's comb, and in it many seeds of the bigness of an olive, which the men eat both green and dry. Also these marsh folk gather the reeds, and use the upper part for other things, as for the making of paper and the like, but the lower part, as much as a cubit's length from the ground they eat. "All the Egyptians worship not the same gods, but Isis and Osiris they all worship and this Osiris is the same as he whom the Greeks call Bacchus or Dionysus, and his feast is in all things like to that which the Greeks keep to their God, only that there is no acting of plays. As for Isis the Greeks call her Demeter, that is to say, being interpreted, Mother Earth.... "Let so much then be said about the Egyptians and their customs and manner of life, and the gods whom they worship." [Illustration: EGYPTIAN NUMERATION.] CHAPTER III. THE PYRAMID AGE. Menes was the king who succeeded in accomplishing the unification of Egypt. We are told by Manetho that he was at first chief or governor of the eighth nome of Upper Egypt, whose capital city was Thinis, and being ambitious, subdued the surrounding nomes, until at last all Egypt was brought under his control. No doubt earlier chieftains had begun the work of conquest and left the completion to Menes, whose personality and executive strength were sufficient to efface the reigns of his predecessors. Having brought the Delta under his control and crowned himself with the white crown of Upper and the red crown of Lower Egypt, Menes realized that a capital for such a straggling kingdom as his would best be centrally located. He therefore fixed upon a site just south of the apex of the delta and built the city of Memphis. Quite possibly there was a settlement here before this time. It happened that the Nile flowed close to the western hills in this locality. The king knew well that his capital would be safer and the more easily protected were the river between it and possible Asiatic invaders on the east. So he undertook what has ever since been regarded as a bold feat of engineering; he built a high embankment across the Nile and compelled the stream to seek a new course farther east. Filling in the old channel, he built a wall around the new city, caused a temple to be at once erected to Ptah, the ancient deity of the locality, and shortly a town grew up around it. Thus we see the beginnings of the Old Empire, so called by Manetho and subsequent historians. For convenience scholars sometimes group Dynasties I. and II. and Dynasties III. to VI. together. The first period (3400-2980 B.C.) is called the Thinite age because the rulers of these two dynasties came from Thinis. The name Old Kingdom is then limited to Dynasties III. to VI. (2980-2475 B.C.) It would be useless for us to attempt to become familiar with all these early kings--some fifty in number--with reigns varying from one to many years. Should we succeed in collecting the meager facts known of each we would have little to repay us for our trouble. It is more to the purpose that we know something about the period as a whole--its general characteristics and attainments. During this period hieroglyphic writing became widely used, having been but rarely known before the age of Menes. A line of forts was built along the Isthmus of Suez to stay invaders from Asia. Tribes on the south were brought into subjection and pledged service to Egypt in time of war. Stone quarries and mines were developed and granite ranges sought and found. In the sixth dynasty one man-of-war sufficed to accompany the transports sent to bring granite for the kings' tombs from the southland--a fact recorded with pride by the pharaohs, since it gave proof of their far reaching might. From earliest times the Egyptian kings were builders, particularly of tombs, which during the Old Empire took the form of pyramids. Of far greater importance than the earthly abode was thought to be the tomb--the dwelling place for eternal years, consequently tombs and temples received the attention of Egypt's kings in early as well as later times. In 1897 the tomb of Menes was discovered. It was a brick-lined pit containing an inner chamber of wood. Around the mummy of the pharaoh had been placed the bodies of different members of his household. Similar to this were royal tombs until the Third dynasty, when stone was first used. To the kings of the Fourth dynasty belong the famous pyramids, unsurpassed by any subsequently built, and still today the wonder of the world. The Egyptians always located their cemeteries toward the west. Into the west the sun sank at night, and by the same way the soul started upon its long journey to the realm of Osiris, god of the future world. The irregularity of the Nile usually made it possible for the city of the living to grow up on its eastern bank, while across the stream, on the west shore, lay the City of the Dead. To the west of Memphis lay its cemetery or Necropolis, and while this remained the capital of Egypt, the pyramid-shaped tomb remained in favor. Sometimes the pyramid tombs were small; sometimes they were large. More than sixty have been found, and large numbers have doubtless disappeared for all time. Three, however, were made so prodigious in size as to cast into obscurity all the rest, and these have come to be called the "three Pyramids of Gizeh," quite as though they were sole examples of their kind. Khufu was builder of the largest; this is generally called "the Great Pyramid." His son Khafre built the one next in size, known as the "Second Pyramid," while the third, much smaller than these, was built by Menkure. Were we indifferent to the political development of Egypt, we would still wish to learn about these mammoth structures which are scaled each season by wondering tourists, and have excited the admiration and awe of travelers since the time of Herodotus. It is difficult to realize the vast size of these piles, and we can do so only by comparing them to things with which we are familiar. The base of the largest pyramid covers thirteen acres of ground, solid masonry; it was originally 482 feet high. Since it is almost one solid mass of stone, it is not difficult to credit the statement of Herodotus that it took 100,000 men twenty years to build it, an additional ten years being necessary to quarry the stone and bring it to the chosen site. "The tradition recorded by Herodotus as to the labor employed, is so entirely reasonable for the execution of such work, that we cannot hesitate to accept it. It is said that a hundred thousand men were levied for three months at a time (i. e. during the three months of the inundation, when ordinary labor is at a standstill); and on this scale the pyramid-building lasted twenty years." How complete must have been the organization of a government which could promote such an extensive project as this! How entirely were the resources of the empire at the disposal of the king when free citizens could be impressed to satisfy the vanity of the proud pharaoh! To have supported 100,000 non-producing men must of itself have taxed the treasury. The rulers who built these majestic tombs wished to make their names immortal, as well as to preserve their bodies from harm and decay. This first they certainly accomplished, but in light of modern investigation, when each stone lifted into place has been estimated to have cost at least one human life, these proud pharaohs elicit less admiration and commendation than they doubtless thought to win. Three kinds of stone were used in the construction of these pyramids. The inner part, or core, was formed of material plentiful near the building site. This was a spongy limestone that was not durable if exposed to the elements, but adequate when covered with other stone. The successive layers, put on in the form of steps, were of stone brought from across the river, having been quarried in the mountains on the east. It has been conjectured that a causeway was laid from the mountains to the side of the pyramid, and that blocks of stone were dragged by men this distance. Finally, the beautiful granite used for outer casing was found near the southern border of Egypt, floated down the stream when the water was high, and having been polished like a mirror, was fitted over the rougher stone. 2,300,000 blocks, averaging two and one-half tons each, were used for the construction of the largest pyramid. "If we had so much stone, what could one do with it?" is asked in The Boy Travelers in Egypt. And it is answered: "You could build a wall four feet high and two feet thick--a good wall for a farm or a garden--all the way from New York to Salt Lake City, and were New York in danger of an attack and desired to surround the whole of Manhattan Island--21 miles--with a wall forty feet high and twenty feet thick, here would be material to do it." Rawlinson tries to bring its size home to us by comparing it to structures with which we are familiar. He says: "In height it exceeds the capitol at Washington by nearly 200 feet, and its cubic contents would provide a city of 22,000 houses solidly built of stone having walls a foot thick, twenty feet frontage and thirty feet deep, thirty feet high, allowing one-third for dividing walls." For several hundred years the Mohammedans have occupied Egypt and they have taken away quantities of stone from the lesser pyramids, from temples and other ancient structures of Memphis, to be used in their mosques and buildings in Cairo, near-by. The outer casing of the Great Pyramid, beautiful granite as hard as iron, was removed to build the large mosque of this comparatively modern city. The removal of this casing has left the under layers bare, and these, step-like in appearance, are annually scaled by tourists. With the help of Arab guides, one may ascend to the very top of the huge pile, gaining thence a splendid view of the surrounding country. Even the pyramids left cased in granite are no longer smooth. The weathering of ages has roughened their sides and dulled their polish. They are of a tawny orange color and gleam by certain lights like gigantic piles of gold. Within the pyramids were chambers for the remains of kings and their families and chambers for friends to gather for worship--for after his death, an Egyptian king was worshipped as a god. Even a spacious gallery was provided near the top of the Great Pyramid, in order that air might circulate freely and thus keep the tomb dry. The ambitious, short-sighted Fourth dynasty kings exhausted the resources of their realm. During the Fifth and Sixth dynasties the pyramids became smaller. Even the long-suffering land of the Nile could no longer muster vast forces to provide huge abiding places for the pharaohs. Marvelous temples would still be erected, and wonderful feats of architecture accomplished, but the passion for tremendous tombs had in a measure spent itself. "The essential feeling of all the earliest work is a rivalry with nature. In other times buildings have been placed either before a background of hills, so as to provide a natural setting to them, or crowning some natural height. But the Egyptian consented to no such tame co-operation with natural features. He selected a range of desert hills over a hundred feet high, and then subdued it entirely, making of it a mere pedestal for pyramids, which were more than thrice as high as the native hill on which they stood. There was no shrinking from a comparison with the work of nature; but, on the contrary, an artificial hill was formed which shrunk its natural basis by comparison, until it seemed a mere platform for the work of man. "This same grandeur of idea is seen in the vast masses used in construction. Man did not then regard his work as a piling together of stones, but as the erection of masses that rivalled those of nature. If a cell or chamber was required, each side was formed of one single stone.... If a building was set up, it was an artificial hill in which chambers were carved out after it was piled together.... "The sculptor's work, and the painter's, show the same sentiment. They did not make a work of art to please the taste as such; but they rivalled nature as closely as possible. The form, the expression, the colouring, the glittering transparent eye, the grave smile, all are copied as if to make an artificial man. The painter mixed his half-tints and his delicate shades, and dappled over the animals, or figured the feathers of birds, in a manner never attempted in the later ages. The embalmer built up the semblance of the man in resins and cloth over his shrunken corpse, to make him as nearly as possible what he was when alive. "In each direction man then set himself to supplement, to imitate, to rival or to exceed, the works of nature. Art, as the gratification of an artificial taste and standard, was scarcely in existence; but the simplicity, the vastness, the perfection, and the beauty of the earliest works place them on a different level to all the workers of art and man's device in later ages. They are unique in their splendid power, which no self-conscious civilization has ever rivalled, nor can hope to rival; and in their enduring greatness they may last till all the feebler works of man have perished."[1] FOOTNOTES: [1] Petrie; History of Egypt, Vol. I, p. 66. [Illustration] CHAPTER IV. THE AGE OF DARKNESS. With the close of the Sixth dynasty, records practically cease, and few indeed are the facts established regarding those kings whom Manetho included in his Seventh and Eighth dynasties. From earliest times each nome had been the seat of some noble family--the descendants of chieftains, possibly, or perhaps the recipients of royal land grants. Certain it is that each nome had its noble family of wide estate, from whose number the governor was usually chosen, as was also the high priest of the local temple. By the end of the Sixth dynasty, the claimants to the throne were not strong enough to hold together the land they aspired to rule; they maintained their capital at Memphis, but neither the Delta or Upper Egypt recognized their sway. On the contrary, each prince in his own nome tried to increase his individual strength at the expense of the general government. Asiatic invaders seem to have strengthened themselves in the Delta, while to the south Theban princes came into prominence. During the period which Manetho accorded to the Ninth and Tenth dynasties, a prince often bought the favor and assistance of as many nobles as he was able, and with his united forces established himself in his own vicinity. The vast resources which had been so completely at the command of the Fourth dynasty kings were now divided among many petty nobles, each seeking to aggrandize himself. Naturally, no costly tombs could be constructed to perpetuate the memories of these who now aspired to Egypt's throne; the tombs which had to satisfy were less enduring, and this no doubt explains why so few remains of the period have come to light in recent years. The thread of history is almost lost during the age of darkness which included the Seventh, Eighth, Ninth and Tenth dynasties. Shut off from the disclosures of tombs, Egyptologists have turned to the mines and quarries. All kings of importance have there left traces of their operations, but the mines contain no tablets, no decrees, no records of quarrying undertaken in these years, save here and there an inscription indicating that some noble carried on work within them on his own behalf. It is probable that the land passed through a most trying experience in the time intervening between the Old and the beginning of the Middle Empire, when neither property, possessions, nor life itself were safe throughout the land, but anarchy, strife and turmoil were everywhere rife. The kings maintained their capital at Heracleopolis, but they were in continual struggle with the princes of Thebes. How great had been the confusion we may judge when one of the Tenth dynasty rulers takes pride in recording the fact that order had characterized his reign. "Every official was at his post, there was no fighting, nor any shooting an arrow. The child was not smitten beside his mother, nor the citizen beside his wife. There was no evil-doer nor any one doing violence against his house. When night came, he who slept on the road gave me praise, for he was like a man in his house; the fear of my soldiers was his protection."[1] THE MIDDLE EMPIRE.[2] Order and prosperity returned to Egypt after years of darkness and confusion. Thebes superseded Memphis as the center of political life. Great material development characterized the beginning of what Manetho designated as the Middle Empire. Before taking up the work of the early Theban kings, let us learn something of the locality wherein they dwelt. [Illustration: DISTANT VIEW OF THE PYRAMIDS.] Memphis, as has been shown, was located conveniently to both Upper and Lower Egypt, while the Nile protected the city from sudden Asiatic attacks. What then were the points of advantage for Thebes, lying 400 miles farther south? "Here the usually narrow valley of the Nile opens into a sort of plain or basin. "The mountains on either side of the river recede, as though by common consent, and leave between themselves and the river's bank a broad amphitheater, which in each case is a rich green plain--a soil of the most productive character--dotted with doom and date palms, sometimes growing single, sometimes collected into clumps or groves. On the western side the Libyan range gathers itself up into a single considerable peak, which has an elevation of 1,200 feet On the east the desert-wall maintains its usual level character, but is pierced by valleys conducting to the coast of the Red Sea. The situation was one favorable for commerce. On the one side was the nearest route through the sandy desert to the Lesser Oasis, which commanded the trade of the African interior; on the other the way led through the valley of Hammamat, rich with ... valuable and rare stones, to a district abounding in mines of gold, silver and lead, and thence to the Red Sea coast, from which, even in very early times, there was communication with the opposite coast of Arabia, the region of gums and spices."[3] Such being the location of Thebes, we shall see that it grew until in time it became the mightiest city of the ancient world. With the establishment of the Eleventh dynasty (_Ca._ 2160-2000 B.C.), the work of reuniting and re-establishing a centralized government began. The Delta had to be reclaimed from invaders who had gained the upper hand while the land was divided against itself. Unity being at last secured, rulers were free to launch out upon other enterprises. One of the later kings had a deep well provided for those who served in the quarries; another sent an expedition of 3,000 men to bring back stone for his tomb. These men were also instructed to go beyond the quarries--to Punt, which must have lain on the Somali coast of East Africa, and bring back products of that region. The expedition set out under the leadership of a nobleman whose report has fortunately come down to us. It states that his men built stations and made wells along their route, to the lasting benefit of those who might journey thence. Part of the detachment was left to quarry stone, while the rest proceeded to Punt and procured spices, gums, precious woods, and rare animals. After noting their safe return, the prince adds: "Never was brought down the like thereof for the king's court; never was done the like of this by any king's confidant sent out since the time of the god. I did this for the majesty of my lord because he so much loved me."[4] The Twelfth dynasty (2000-1788 B.C.) brought forth some of Egypt's ablest kings. Their creative ability was perhaps not excelled by subsequent pharaohs. Amenemhet I. (2000-1970 B.C.) proved himself strong enough to curb the power of the feudal princes. These hereditary nobles had probably received gifts of land from earlier kings in recognition of loyal service. The estates passed from father to son, and while the central government had been weak, the princes became more and more aggressive. They fortified themselves, each in his nome, retained large retinues of officials, servants, militia and realized vast incomes from extensive tracts of arable land. It was neither possible nor prudent to remodel the entire system, but Amenemhet I. undertook to modify it. Whenever one of these landed princes died, the king himself chose from the heirs the one who should succeed him. Naturally, he selected one whose loyalty to himself and to the government was unquestioned. Again, the boundaries of the nomes had never been officially determined, and during the years of confusion, strong nobles had infringed upon the possessions of weaker ones. The king made a tour through the country, heard all complaints of such encroachments, and decided the limits of all disputed boundaries. This did much to restrict the strength of ambitious princes. His son, coming to the throne, subdued the Nubians on the south and extended the empire to the second cataract; but it was left for Sesostris III. to make this conquest sure, and then to post his decree along the river. "This is the southern frontier; fixed in the eighth year of the reign of his majesty. Usurtasen [Sesostris], ever living. Let it not be permitted to any negro to pass this boundary northward, either on foot or by boat; nor any sort of cattle, oxen, goats, or sheep belonging to the negroes. Except when any negro comes to trade in the land of Aken, or on any business, let him be well treated. But without allowing boats of the negroes to pass Heh northward forever."[5] In gratitude to the king for thus securing to them safety by repulsing the negroes, the Egyptians sang extravagant hymns to Sostostris. Some of these have been rendered into English, and are regarded as excellent specimens of Egyptian poetry. The following is one of these songs: "Twice joyful are the gods, Thou hast established their offerings. Twice joyful are thy princes, Thou hast formed their boundaries. Twice joyful are thy ancestors before thee, Thou hast increased their portions. Twice joyful is Egypt at thy strong arm, Thou hast guarded the ancient order. Twice joyful are the aged with thy administration, Thou hast widened their possessions. Twice joyful are the two regions with thy valor, Thou hast caused them to flourish. Twice joyful are thy young men of support, Thou hast caused them to flourish. Twice joyful are thy veterans, Thou hast caused them to be vigorous. Twice joyful are the two lands in thy might, Thou hast guarded their walls. Twice joyful be thou, O Horus! widening thy boundary, Mayest thou renew an eternity of life."[6] AMENEMHET III. The greatest name of the Twelfth dynasty is that of Amenemhet III. (1849-1801 B.C.). He directed his attention to internal improvements. Realizing the dire effects upon Egypt when the Nile failed to supply sufficient water or when too much water was forthcoming, he studied various ways of controlling the river. Once or twice in a century the rainfall, always heavy in the Abyssinian highlands, is yet greater; the river rises rapidly to unexpected heights and works general havoc. Or sometimes the supply may be less than usual. Having watched the stream with anxious eyes for many a week, the people behold it recede, although only the adjacent plains have been refreshed and upper portions of the valley lie parched and lifeless, while famine stares Egypt in the face. Amenemhet III. believed that a vast reservoir might regulate the supply, receiving the water when it was at high flood and giving it out once more when the stream was low. He looked about for a natural depression and found it to the west of Memphis, beyond a narrow range of hills. Canals were made leading into this basin and Lake Moeris was the result. Some hundreds of square miles were gained by this new means of irrigation and the tract thus made arable, became royal domain. The district is known as the Fayoum. Near its entrance Amenemhet III. built his pyramid. It differed from earlier tombs in that the chamber destined to receive his mummy was reached by passages even more secret and winding than ordinary. False doors were placed here and there to mislead any who might attempt to molest the body. Under his direction, a wonderful building was constructed. It was called the Labyrinth. Being about 800 feet wide and 1,000 feet long, it contained 1,500 rooms above the ground and as many more below it. There were many courts with numerous doors leading from them and Strabo, a Greek geographer, who saw it long after Amenemhet had taken his journey to the realm of Osiris, said that the ceilings and sides of the rooms were made from single stones! It is believed that the king planned this structure to serve as a great capitol for his kingdom, and that there were suites of halls for every nome, with chapels for their gods. A vast number of chambers would naturally be required for this, and probably there was no thought of making the building baffling or bewildering, as the name labyrinth now signifies. This was counted among the wonders of the ancient world, but, like the city built around it, disappeared ages ago. Herodotus has left us a description of the huge building, written to inform his countrymen of a structure more remarkable than anything they could boast. When he saw it, almost five hundred years before the time of Christ, it was still in perfect condition. "I visited the place," he says, "and found it to surpass description; for if all the walls and other great works of the Greeks could be put together into one, they would not equal this Labyrinth. The pyramids likewise surpass description, and are severally equal to a number of the greatest works of the Greeks; but the Labyrinth surpasses the pyramids. It has twelve courts, all of them roofed, with gates exactly opposite one another, six looking to the north, and six to the south. A single wall surrounds the whole building. It contains two different sorts of chambers, half of them under ground, and half above ground, the latter built upon the former; the whole number is three thousand, of each kind fifteen hundred. The upper chambers I myself passed through and saw, and what I say of them is from my own observation; of the underground chambers I can only speak from report, for the keepers of the building could not be induced to show them; since they contain, they said, the sepulchres of the kings who built the labyrinth, and also those of the sacred crocodiles. Thus it is from hearsay only that I can speak of them; but the upper chambers I saw with my own eyes, and found them to excel all other human productions; for the passages through the houses and the varied windings of the paths across the courts, excited in me infinite admiration, as I passed from these colonnades into fresh houses, and again from these into courts unseen before. The roof was, throughout, of stone, like the walls; and the walls were carved all over with figures; every court was surrounded with a colonnade, which was built of white stone, exquisitely fitted together. At the corner of the Labyrinth stands a pyramid, forty fathoms high, with large figures engraved upon it, which is entered by a subterranean passage." In comparison with the Old Empire kings, those of the Middle Empire seem to us much more modern in spirit. Instead of merging the whole population into instruments to work out the pharaoh's fancy, instead of squandering the riches of the land and the lives of subjects to provide mammoth tombs which should eternalize the ruler's memory and flame forth his power and greatness unto succeeding generations, the farsighted Twelfth dynasty kings devoted their time and resources to the improvement of their kingdom. Wells were dug; roads constructed; public buildings erected; fortifications strengthened; frontiers extended. The attention of the monarch was directed to the commercial prosperity of the realm, to the agricultural conditions and their improvement--in short, the best years of the Middle Empire were years of material gain for the Nile dwellers, wherein men developed the arts of peace, and the valley testified to wise administration. Through a second period of depression a nation was to look back upon the age of its material progress with longing eyes, and still better, to retain even under adverse conditions standards of government and life which would later be recovered. After the death of the great king, called Amenemhet the Good by his grateful subjects, none appeared able to adequately fill his place, and his glorious reign was overshadowed by a second period of darkness. FOOTNOTES: [1] Trans. by Breasted, Hist. Egypt, 149. The approximate dates of this period are: Dynasties VII. and VIII. _Ca._ 2475-2445 B.C.; Dynasties XI. and X. _Ca._ 2475-2160 B.C. [2] Dynasties XI. and XII. 2160-1788 B.C. [3] Rawlinson, Ancient Egypt, 95. [4] Trans. by Breasted, Ancient Records, I, §483. [5] Petrie, Hist. of Egypt, Vol. I, 181. [6] Petrie, Hist. of Egypt, Vol. I, 182. [Illustration] CHAPTER V. THE SHEPHERD KINGS.[1] The Thirteenth dynasty kings were not sufficiently strong to hold intact the kingdom which passed into their hands. Soon again the feudal princes of nome and city were contending with one another for additional power. The Fourteenth dynasty rulers had their capital in Xois, a Delta city. Both dynasties lasted but a brief time, filled with unrest and contention. We can imagine into what state Egypt fell when a negro of Nubia, of a race despised by the Egyptians, set himself up as their king. Several princes ruled at the same time in various portions of the realm. Sources of information for these chaotic years are scanty; no monuments have come down to us, the inference being that the resources and energies of the land were required for more immediate needs than the erection of costly tombs for rulers of disputed right. The whole country must have suffered greatly. The system of irrigation set in order by Amenemhet III. required both national supervision and national funds for its maintenance. As neither could have been forthcoming, the food production must have been materially diminished. Engaged in civil war, Egypt soon fell a prey to foreign invaders. For hundreds of years it had been not unusual for Syrian bands to ask permission to settle within Egyptian borders. In the tomb of a provincial governor of Upper Egypt has been found a painting which portrays a company of seventeen Bedouins bringing presents to the nobleman and asking that they be allowed to locate in his dominion. In Genesis we read concerning Abram: "And Abram journeyed, going still toward the south. And there was a famine in the land of Canaan; and Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there; for the famine was grievous in the land." Since Abram was rich in cattle and in gold, he undoubtedly brought many of his family and followers to dwell with him in the land of plenty. Similar incidents were common. If the rainfall was short in Canaan, in the territory of the Hittites or even in Arabia, Egypt was ever regarded as a last resort. The Nile never failed to supply water for the flocks; here, too, it was customary to store grain in royal store-cities, in order that in time of need Egypt could sell advantageously to her neighbors. In a pastoral age, such favorable conditions as these were highly prized. The Pharaohs diligently fortified their frontiers, and it must not be supposed that in times of peace foreigners were allowed to come at will into the land. There were, on the contrary, officers stationed along the boundaries to apprehend any who wished to enter, to receive their requests and forward them to the governor of the nome. Until he was heard from, strangers were detained on the border. It seems to have been usual, however, to admit such petitioners unless it was thought that they might become a menace to the state. It naturally came about, therefore, that the tribes on the east looked with envious eyes upon the rich valley of the Nile, and when Egypt was disrupted, her resources and soldiers no longer at the command of one ruler but divided among several contending nobles--each of whom valued his personal interests above those of his country--while anarchy and disorder infested the coveted land, an overwhelming host of Semitic hordes poured into the Delta, spreading thence into the valley. Before them Egypt was helpless. Asia and Egypt as well were inhabited in early times by many wandering or nomadic tribes. A tribe dwelt in one locality while pasturage was good, and when it was exhausted, would move on to new fields. Sometimes the tribe in possession of one district would learn that other tribes were drawing near, and in an age when strangers were considered enemies, this would furnish sufficient pretext for starting out on the march again. Periods of unrest sometimes swept over vast areas; in such a time as this, perhaps, Asiatic tribes poured into Egypt. In her pitiable plight, the country lay an easy prey to such invaders, who Manetho tells us numbered a quarter of a million. It is said that they took possession without a battle. Just who they were or where they came from is not known. We now know that the Hittites invaded Babylonia during the reign of Samsu-ditana, the last king of the First Dynasty of Babylon, and that this was the indirect cause of the fall of this dynasty (about 1750 B.C.). Scholars are beginning to suspect that the invasion of Egypt at this time was either led by the Hittites or due to Hittite pressure back of the tribes in Syria-Palestine. Their kings were called Hyksos, and from a doubtful etymology of this name they are still styled the "Shepherd kings." The invading conquerors put many of the Egyptians to death, taking their wives and children into slavery. Worshipping gods of their own, they hated the gods of the Egyptians and destroyed many temples and monuments. Generally speaking, they remained in the Delta and the Fayoum, the Theban princes ruling in the south as their vassals. Gradually these fierce Asiatics took on the civilization of the land they had invaded. They donned Egyptian dress, spoke and wrote as the Egyptians, and built temples much like theirs. The country rallied from its recent disaster and life became not unlike that of earlier times. In time the Theban nobles increased in power; the Hyksos--or their descendants in the Delta--grew alarmed lest the native princes might become powerful enough to force them from the throne they had usurped. Determined to check any threatening strength on the part of the Egyptians, the foreigners tried to bring about open conflict, sure themselves of victory. At first the Theban princes sought to avert war, but the demands of the Hyksos grew heavier. There was a folk-story to the effect that the usurping king in the Delta sent word to the Theban prince that the noise of the sacred hippopotami in the pools and canals allowed him rest neither by night or day, and must be disposed of. However simple this appears, it may easily signify that the final break came because of religious difficulties. Roused at last, the Egyptians determined to drive the invaders from their land. This occurred during the Seventeenth dynasty--for Manetho continues his list of Egyptian kings throughout the period of foreign rule. The Asiatics were driven north, and the first pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty, King Ahmose (1580-1350 B.C.), gathered a vast army and forced them beyond his borders. Five years were consumed in accomplishing this, and in the end many of the foreigners were reduced to slavery. Summing up the results of the invasion of the Hyksos, we may note that Egypt learned much during her period of oppression Before the invasion, her fighting had been confined to the defense of her frontiers. Asiatic and African, and the tribes with which she had waged war had been her inferiors. In the Asiatic tribes she had at last met a people more skillful in military affairs than she. They used horses and chariots, and their mode of warfare was superior to the clumsy, undisciplined efforts of the Nile-dwellers. It was by adopting their methods that Egypt finally succeeded in expelling them from the land. Hereafter we find the horse and chariot used extensively in Egyptian wars. Another important result was the elimination of the feudal lords. They had opposed both the Hyksos and the successful king Ahmose, and fighting for personal interests alone, had most of them perished in the conflict. The vast areas which had been their portion reverted to the crown and became royal domain. It has been thought that Joseph served under one of the foreign kings, and that the conditions spoken of at the close of his career--when all Egypt was subdued and at the command of the Pharaoh--coincide with the situation shortly after the feudal lords had disappeared as a political factor. All this is, however, doubtful. In marked contrast with the gloom of long years under foreign oppression shines the splendor of the New Empire. THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW EMPIRE.[2] The wide differences which we have noted concerning dates accepted by various Egyptologists disappear as we approach the Christian era, and there is general agreement that the sixteenth century before Christ saw the dawn of the New Empire which had its beginning when the independence of Egypt was established and Hyksos rule thrown off. Petrie calls this the most glorious page in Egyptian history. Ahmose had much to do before the safety of the government was assured. While he pursued the Hyksos into Asia, crippling their allies, the Ethiopians infringed upon his southern border. Three different expeditions had to be sent against them before they were reduced to submission. Then only did the king find opportunity to direct his attention to the domestic concerns of the kingdom. Thebes, the capital, was given first consideration in the matter of building and adornment. The foundations for the famous temple of Karnak, of which we shall hear more at length, were begun. Ahmose's son succeeded him, but aside from putting down an uprising of the troublesome Ethiopians, little of importance attached to his administration. It was left for Ahmose's grandson, Thutmose[3] I., to give Egypt the position she was to occupy among the nations for many years. Thutmose I. was instinctively a soldier. Coming to the throne when a mere boy, the Ethiopians made war directly, thinking they could easily overcome so inexperienced a king. Thutmose at once gave indication of his capacity by marching immediately into their territory and defeating them with tremendous slaughter. To prevent further annoyance from these people the king divided their country into districts and over each he placed an Egyptian official. Thus the land of Kush became an Egyptian province. Having now a well organized army, Thutmose pressed into Asia--for the experience of Ahmose had shown that rich plunder there awaited the victor. Some tribes yielded voluntarily to Egypt; others were forced to yield. Although the king penetrated some distance east of the Euphrates, these districts were not permanently won for Egypt. On the contrary, we shall find that subsequent pharaohs did over and over again what this king attempted, and for this reason: each time a nation was conquered, Thutmose withdrew his soldiers from it, imposing tribute and asking hostages. So long as the tribute was forthcoming, the tribe was left undisturbed. This gave wide opportunity for the conquered peoples to unite among themselves and make attempts to shake off control whenever a new ruler succeeded to the throne of Egypt. This proved eventually a most extravagant policy for Thutmose to have followed. Henceforth Egypt had to take her place as a military power, and with her every new aspiring nation had to reckon. When we recall the peaceful Egyptians of early times, secluded in their quiet valley, disliking foreigners and having as little intercourse with them as possible, we realize what a change had been wrought in them by their contact with the Hyksos during the years of their oppression. Egypt's future was largely marked out by Thutmose I., as later reigns demonstrated. Perhaps his greatness has not been wholly appreciated. "The greatness of Thutmose[3] I. has scarcely been sufficiently recognized by historians. It may be true that he did not effect much; but he broke ground in a new direction; he set an example which led on to grand results. To him it was due that Egypt ceased to be the isolated, unaggressive power that she had remained for perhaps ten centuries, that she came boldly to the front and aspired to bring Asia into subjection. Henceforth she exercised a potent influence beyond her borders--an influence which affected, more or less, all the western Asiatic powers. She had forced her way into the comity of the great nations. Henceforth whether it was for good or for evil, she had to take her place among them, to reckon with them, as they reckoned with her, to be a factor in the problem which the ages had to work out--what should be the general march of events, and what states and nations should most affect the destiny of the world."[4] FOOTNOTES: [1] Dynasties XIII to XVIII, including the Hyksos, 1788-1580 B.C. [2] Dynasties XVIII to XX, 1580-1090 B.C. [3] Usually written Thothmes. The form Thutmose is, however, nearer the original. [4] Rawlinson, Ancient Egypt, 168. CHAPTER VI. THE EARLIEST QUEEN IN HISTORY. We now come upon a story in Egyptian history. It might easily begin with "Once upon a time," and better still, it is true. Of course we all know that when people live hundreds and thousands of years in a country and reach a high degree of civilization, when they build noble structures, become proficient in art, write books, and have developed a high degree of culture, their lives have been full of absorbing experiences, just as ours are today, and we may be sure that these Egyptians, who sometimes seem a bit monotonous in the light of recorded history, would be interesting enough did we know more about their daily lives. In many families it has been customary to keep a family record--in the Bible often, sometimes in special record books. The habit is less prevalent than it once was, but we have doubtless all seen such records and recall that they generally include births, marriages and deaths occurring in the family. From them, however, one could get no idea in years to come of the happy holiday gatherings, social pleasures, and family celebrations frequently enjoyed. It is somewhat the same with nations. They leave momentous events in their history carved in marble, painted on canvas or written in whatever fashion they have known; but it is left largely to us to weave in the rest of the story as best we may--and too often this part is neglected. People long since vanished seem too often like unreal creatures, who fought in wars, established dynasties, enjoyed periods of peace and suffered in times of tumult, and these events appear to be fitted together like the pieces of a puzzle. Had historians keener imaginations they might bring these ancient people before us as distinctly human, so that, like the characters of Dickens and Scott, they would abide in our memories. But then you see, someone would suggest that this was no longer history. However, the world has seen a few queens who have apparently determined to relegate dullness and monotony to kings--as for themselves they would have none of it. Such was Good Queen Bess of England, and such also was Queen Hatshepsut of long-forgotten Egypt. Thutmose I. had been a great warrior; he had subdued the Nubians and Ethiopians in Africa, and then, roused to a spirit of conquest, he had pushed into Asia, revenged the indignities inflicted upon his people by the Hyksos, and had made his power felt far beyond the Euphrates. When no longer able to rule, he left the widest empire the world had yet seen to his daughter Hatshepsut, aged twenty-four, and to his seventeen year old son. Hatshepsut had inherited her father's great ability and tireless energy; the son was weak and purposeless. His untimely death gave occasion for many both then and since to wonder if his vindictive sister did all she could to save him. Certain it is that Queen Hatshepsut rallied sufficiently from the shock of his death to reign for many years. It was very disconcerting to a nation so strongly held by tradition and veneration for established customs as was Egypt, to have a woman on the throne of the Pharaohs. This is amusingly shown in temples where her loyal supporters sought to lessen prejudices felt because she was a woman by portraying pictures designed to show that her birth had been attended by special marks of favor and of prophecy on the part of the gods. In these, however, she is often represented as a _boy_. She seems to have regretted not having been a man, and no doubt the matter was constantly thrust before her and she was forced to feel how greatly this placed her at a disadvantage among her subjects. She seems to have made heroic efforts to modify the differences in sex as much as possible by assuming a beard and by having herself represented in art in a king's official dress. Furthermore, a bewildering use of pronouns seem to have been employed concerning her, and such phrases as: "his majesty herself," and others similar have come down to us. Great benefits came to Egypt when the ruler's attention was directed from conquest to internal improvements, and these last occupied the energy of this capable queen throughout her reign. Instead of erecting pyramids or tombs, she at once began to build a temple in which she might be worshipped after death--for in Egypt a ruler was worshipped as a god after his death. Nor would Hatshepsut have her temple like those around her. Rather, a site was chosen out of Thebes, where the hills rose to quite an elevation. A series of four terraces, each having its beautiful colonnade, led to the temple itself, which was hewn out of the rocky hill. The young queen wished to build such a temple as she fancied might have been sacred to Amon--the ancient deity of Thebes--in his own land of Punt, on the East African coast. It was a myth of the Egyptians that long before they existed, the gods abode in the land of Punt, called by them the Holyland, or God's land. Tradition held that in this land the myrrh tree was sacred to Amon, and so one day Queen Hatshepsut announced to her ministers that the god Amon had revealed to her his desire that here in Thebes, before the new temple, his favorite myrrh tree should grow. Now myrrh incense for offerings had been procured from merchantmen who brought their spices into Egypt, and the tree itself grew only in Punt, which lay to the furthermost corner of the ancient world. However, the queen was determined to satisfy the god--and incidentally, perhaps, her own fancy. So, nothing daunted, her subjects set to work to construct a fleet suitable for the journey necessary for procuring the incense-bearing tree. It is supposed that some canal connected the river with the Red Sea; whether or not this was the case, the ships were built at Thebes, and there is no record of their having been carried over land to the port. They were fitted out with both sails and oars, so that the expedition might not be hindered by calm weather. Beside the oarsmen and the crew, soldiers accompanied the fleet to give protection should it be needed. After many days the ships came at last to the Holy Land, or Punt. Messengers were dispatched to the native king with presents from Queen Hatshepsut and a request that he acknowledge the sovereignty of Egypt, and allow her subjects to bring back products from his land--especially the coveted incense-tree. The king was delighted with the gifts and made up a procession to go down to the shore and meet the Egyptians. He had a funny little dwarf wife, belonging, it is supposed, to one of the dwarf tribes of interior Africa. She on her donkey, her three children, the king and several of his chiefs, proceeded to the shore to greet the strangers. They were led to the native houses--curious round huts built on piles and entered only by ladders, while palm and incense trees sheltered their occupants from the hot rays of the tropical sun. The travelers were treated royally throughout their sojourn in the land of Punt, and were allowed to exchange the products they had brought from the valley of the Nile for the native products--such as ebony, ivory, incense, leopard skins, metals, and the much desired myrrh trees. At length the Egyptians were ready to set sail for the home land, and now some of the natives, the dwarf queen, some of the chief men and others decided to return with them and see the queen of great renown; so with these for passengers, the ships cleared port. Upon arrival, their return was the occasion for a gala-day at the capital. The state troops were out on parade, the veterans of the expedition formed in procession with the thirty-one myrrh trees which had been carefully packed and shielded under awning from the sun's rays; the strange animals from Punt--dogs, baboons, monkeys, a tame leopard with his keeper, natives who gave their war dance, the dwarf queen of Punt, who with her chief men brought gifts to Hatshepsut--all these made up a great spectacle sufficiently absorbing to the throngs who filled the streets of Thebes. All went to the temple where Queen Hatshepsut made offerings to Amon, and then the myrrh trees were planted before his temple. It would be interesting to know how many of these thirty-one trees withstood the radical change, but probably trees which had occasioned such a national outlay had no choice but to flourish. Queen Hatshepsut felt a natural pride in the result of her expedition which had the effect of establishing lasting trade between the two countries, to the benefit of both. She did not wish it to be forgotten, and so had the whole story depicted on the walls of her temple by artists who probably accompanied the fleet. There some of the pictures may still be seen. The first portrays the embarking of the Egyptian fleet. An inscription before it reads: "These are the ships which the wind brought along with it. The voyage on the sea, the attainment of the longed-for aim in the Holy Land, the happy arrival of the Egyptian soldiers in the land of Punt, according to the arrangement of Amon, King of the gods, Lord of the terrestrial thrones in Thebes, in order to bring to him the treasures of the whole land in such quantities as will satisfy him. This was done by the Queen of Egypt, the daughter of the Sun, never has anything similar been done in the times of a former king in this country."[1] The second scene shows the reception in Punt; the third, the traffic; the fourth picture, the loading of ships for the return. Men are seen bringing trees and other products of Punt on board. This inscription reads: "The loading of the ships of transport with a great quantity of the magnificent products of Arabia,[2] with all kinds of precious woods of the Holy Land, with heaps of incense, resin, with verdant incense trees, with ebony, with pure ivory, with gold, and silver from the land of Amon, with tesep-wood and the cassia bark, incense, hounds, skins of leopards, apes, monkeys, with women and children. Never has a coming been made like this by any king since the creation of the world." The fifth is the "Return to Thebes." The accompanying inscription: "Excursion completed satisfactorily; happy arrival at Thebes to the joy of the Egyptian soldiers. The princes of Punt after arrival in this country, bringing with them costly things of the Arabian[2] land, such as never had yet been brought by any Egyptian king, for the Supreme Majesty of the god Amon-Ra, Lord of the terrestrial thrones." The sixth scene represents the presentation of the tribute of Punt to the Queen, while princes of that land kneeling before her ask for peace. "Homage to thy countenance, O Queen of Egypt, Sun, Beaming like the sun-disk After your mistress, who is Arabia's[2] mistress." In the seventh painting the Queen offers gifts to Amon; the eighth shows the weighing of the incense; the ninth, the formal announcement of the successful expedition before Amon, and the tenth and last, the formal announcement of the happy issue before the Egyptian court. Other paintings which adorn the walls of this temple, depicting the birth of the Queen and the guardianship exercised over her by the goddess Hathor, while less famous are quite as indelible and interesting from a social standpoint. This temple in its architectural conception was a departure from Egyptian models. It impresses us with its fine proportion and the skillful use of the colonnade. It has not long been accessible to visitors, having been uncovered only in the last few years. Other building enterprises were undertaken by Queen Hatshepsut, notably the erection of two obelisks of polished granite in honor of Amon. Possessing some tributary territory in Asia and Punt and maintaining a policy of peace, the national revenue was much increased. The proud queen left a record of her kingdom's prosperity chronicled in stone: "My southern boundary is as far as Punt; my eastern boundary as far as the marshes of Asia, and the Asiatics are in my grasp; my western boundary is as far as the mountain of Manu (or the sunset); my fame is among the Sand dwellers altogether. The myrrh of Punt has been brought to me, all the luxurious marvels of this country were brought to my palace in one collection. They have brought me the choicest products, of cedar, of juniper, and of meru-wood; all the goodly sweet woods of God's-land. I brought the tribute of Libya, consisting of ivory and seven hundred tusks which were there, numerous panther skins of five cubits along the back and four cubits wide."[3] In addition to new structures, Queen Hatshepsut repaired temples fallen in decay. In one of these temples she caused to be written: "I have restored that which was in ruins, I have raised up that which was unfinished since the Asiatics were in the midst of the Northland, and the barbarians in the midst of them, overthrowing that which had been made while they ruled in ignorance of Ra."[4] Thutmose III., a younger brother--a mere child at the death of his father--grew restless at being held so long from the throne by his ambitious sister. The sudden death of the queen again raised the question as to whether the sovereign had died as a result of court intrigue. Certain it is that Thutmose III. retaliated for the restraint the queen had exercised over him by commanding that her name be stricken from all the monuments she had erected, his own to be substituted. Fortunately his workmen followed his instructions so badly that it has been possible to read the original name in many cases, and thus possible to trace the career of the world's earliest recorded queen. Thus have later ages been able to realize how well Queen Hatshepsut met the requirements of her day, and to appreciate her courage in overcoming the prejudices which as a woman on the throne of the Pharaohs she is sure to have encountered. [Illustration: QUEEN HATSHEPSUT.] FOOTNOTES: [1] These inscriptions are translated in Records of the Past, ed. by Sayce, Vol. X. [2] The translation is to be corrected to Punt. [3] Trans. by Breasted, History of Egypt, 280. [4] Ibid. CHAPTER VII. GREAT MILITARY KINGS. The accession of a new king was the signal for Asiatic nations, long held in tribute, to revolt from a servitude that had always been galling to their pride. Thutmose III. at once established his reputation as a king of prompt decision and strength by marching immediately into the revolting territories and defeating the league formed against him. During his reign of some fifty years he is reputed to have carried on nineteen campaigns. The wealth of Egypt was materially increased by these expeditions which were frequently marauding excursions rather than open-battle victories. "Altogether Thothmes [Thutmose] III. is said to have carried off from the subject countries about 11,000 captives, 1,670 chariots, 3,639 horses, 4,491 of the larger cattle, more than 35,000 goats, silver to the amount of 3,940 pounds, and gold to the amount of 9,954 pounds. He also conveyed to Egypt from the conquered lands enormous quantities of corn and wines, together with incense, balsam, honey, ivory, ebony, and other rare woods, lapis lazuli, furniture, statues, vases, dishes, basins, tent-poles, bows, habergeons, fruit-trees, live birds, and monkeys! With a curiosity which was insatiable, he noted all that was strange or unusual in the lands which he visited, and sought to introduce the various novelties into his own proper country. Two unknown kinds of birds, and a variety of the goose, which he found in Mesopotamia, and transported from the valley of the Khabour to that of the Nile, are said to have been 'dearer to the king than anything else.' His artists had instructions to make careful studies of the different objects, and to represent them faithfully on his monuments. We see on these 'water-lilies as high as trees, plants of a growth like cactuses, all sort of trees and shrubs, leaves, flowers, and fruits, including melons and pomegranates; oxen and calves also figure, and among them a wonderful animal with three horns. There are likewise herons, sparrow-hawks, geese and doves.' All these appear gaily intermixed in the pictures, as suited the simple childlike conception of the artist. An inscription tells the intention of the monarch. 'Here,' it runs, 'are all sorts of plants and all sorts of flowers of the Holy Land, which the king discovered when he went to the land of Ruten to conquer it. Thus says the king--I swear by the sun, and I call to witness my father Amon, that all is plain truth; there is no trace of deception in that which I relate. What the splendid soil brings forth in the way of production I have portrayed in these pictures, with the intention of offering them to my father Amon, as a memorial for all times.'"[1] Egypt had now become so powerful that many of the Phoenician cities voluntarily came under her protection, thinking in this way they could best secure safety for their extensive commerce on the seas. The Phoenicians were the middle-men for antiquity and desired above all to keep their triremes safe from sea pirates. Seeking the protection of the greatest world power, in this age they turned to Egypt. A vast amount of Asiatic plunder found its way to the temples as offerings to the gods who were supposed to have made victory possible. This accumulation of wealth within the temples proved a most important factor in strengthening the priesthood--a power with which the future had to reckon. A song of victory, composed in honor of Thutmose III., is preserved in the temple of Karnak. The god Amon is supposed to be speaking. We may be sure that it was not wholly the flattery of priests, written to appease the ruler, but that it embodied the general opinion as to the power bestowed by the god upon the king, who was his representative upon earth. HYMN OF VICTORY.[2] (_Amon speaking._) I have come, causing thee to smite the princes of Zahi; I have hurled them beneath thy feet among their highlands. I have caused them to see thy majesty as lord of radiance, So that thou hast shone in their faces like my image. I have come, causing thee to smite the Asiatics, Thou hast made captive the heads of the Asiatics of Retenu. I have caused them to see thy majesty equipped with thy adornment When thou takest the weapons of war in the chariot. I have come, causing thee to smite the eastern land, Thou hast trampled those who are in the districts of God's-Land. I have caused them to see thy majesty like a circling star, When it scatters its flame in fire, and gives forth its dew. I have come, causing thee to smite the western land, Keftyew and Cyprus are in terror. I have caused them to see thy majesty as a young bull, Firm of heart, ready-horned, irresistible. I have come, causing thee to smite those who are in their marshes, The lands of Mitanni tremble under fear of thee. I have caused them to see thy majesty as a crocodile, Lord of fear in the water, unapproachable. I have come, causing thee to smite those who are in their isles; Those who are in the midst of the Great Green (sea) hear thy roarings. I have caused them to see thy majesty as an avenger, Who rises upon the back of his slain victim.... I have come, causing thee to smite the uttermost ends of the lands, The circuit of the Great Circle (Okeanos) is included in thy grasp. I have caused them to see thy majesty as a lord of wing (hawk), Who seizeth upon that which he seeth, as much as he desires. I have come, causing thee to smite the Nubian Troglodytes, As far as Shat (they) are in thy grasp. I have caused them to see thy majesty as thy two brothers.[3] I have united their two arms for thee in victory. Thy two sisters,[4] I have set them as protection behind thee, The arms of my majesty are above, warding off evil. I have caused thee to reign, my beloved son, Horus, Mighty Bull, Shining in Thebes, whom I have begotten in uprightness of heart. Thutmose, living forever, who hast done for me all that my ka desired; Thou hast erected my dwelling as an everlasting work, Enlarging and extending it more than the past which has been. Thou hast fêted the beauty of Amon-Re, Thy monuments are greater than those of any king who has been. When I commanded thee to do it, I was satisfied therewith; I established thee upon the Horus-throne of millions of years. Thutmose III. left his individuality strongly stamped upon the empire his military skill had welded together. Tribute poured into his coffers from all the petty nations throughout western Asia, from the tribes of the Sahara, and lands south of Egypt. He was probably without question the greatest military leader the country ever produced, and he was a tireless builder. The great temple of Amon in the city of Thebes was his pride and many other temples were built and restored by him. He was succeeded by his son, but no very important event claims our attention until the accession of his great grandson, Amenhotep IV. The beautiful Queen Tiy was the mother of this monarch. There is no foundation for the oft repeated assertion that she was of foreign, probably Asiatic, origin. Maspero's belief that she was of Egyptian (perhaps obscure) origin is most probable. We may well believe that she exercised considerable power over her son, but we have no evidence for asserting that it was from her that he received the new religion which he attempted to force upon the country, as a result of which the whole land was thrown into a tumult. We have already seen that Egypt was originally composed of many little states, each independent of the rest and each having its own religious system and customs. As the many states were assimilated into one, a state religion resulted, into which the main elements of each local cult were combined. Although the people throughout the land worshipped the state god, the local gods were always more particularly endeared to the masses. Now had Amenhotep IV. desired to change the state god, the official deity, the people would have accepted the change readily, but when he attempted to sweep away the entire religious system of his realm and substitute an utterly new system, the masses could not understand such a radical change. They were enraged at what they considered an indignity put upon their gods and the gods of their fathers. Realizing how impossible it would be to accomplish his reform in the ancient city of Thebes, the king determined to change his capital. Thebes had long been the religious as well as the political center, and the worship of Amon was fundamentally associated with the city. In order to set up the worship of one deity, Aton--the Solar Disk--in place of Amon, with the complex system of deities, Amenhotep IV. went north of Thebes and began the construction of a new capital[5] which was never completed. Its name signified "The Horizon of the Solar Disk." Within this new capital the new religion was to be firmly established and thence spread throughout the realm. Just what teachings this religion embodied is not now understood. While the sun was worshipped in a new form as Aton, this may have been merely symbolic of one God--one Spirit, felt to be one and alone. Acceptance of the Solar Disk religion necessitated an abandoning of all earlier deities, especially the powerful Amon, and his name was commanded to be stricken from all monuments throughout the land. The result of this religious crusade was a total failure. Amenhotep IV. realized how great was the innovation he sought to make, but he underestimated the strength of the priests of Amon, the treasures of whose temple at Thebes were loaded with the spoil of Asia. This "reform" while in line with the theology, was utterly at variance with the popular religion of the day. Angered beyond measure by the injury to their faith, the people rose up against the new teaching. The old-time worship was reinstated, the former deities elevated to their former dignity, and the Eighteenth dynasty which had begun so auspiciously came to an end in confusion and disorder. [Illustration: GREAT PYRAMID, SPHINX AND TEMPLE OF ARMACHIS.] KARNAK. The temple of Karnak belongs to both the Eighteenth and Nineteenth dynasties. Thutmose III., Amenhotep II. and Amenhotep III. each added rooms to the great structure, although it was left for Seti I. to build the crowning Hall of Pillars. Three centuries witnessed its erection and many kings contributed to its greatness. Most famous of all Theban architecture, it is still mighty in its ruins. Karnak is the name of one of the four districts into which the irregular Nile divided the city of Thebes. From this district, or ward, the great temple dedicated to Amon--ancient deity of Thebes--took its name. In some ways, perhaps, the temples of Egypt corresponded to the temples of the Greeks, or even to modern churches, yet there were material differences. Indeed, the similarity is slight. Modern churches are supposedly places of worship; Greek temples were erected in honor of Greek gods and thither offerings were brought by a trusting people. Egyptian temples were built by rulers in honor of some god whose help and protection they believed had enabled them to put down their enemies and given their country its victories and prosperity. While a temple was erected especially in honor of some particular deity, as Karnak was dedicated to Amon, other deities might have shrines within it. While it did honor to the god whose protection had allowed the ruler to rise triumphantly above all obstacles, yet it was the glory of the king that the temple exalted--his pictures adorned the walls, his deeds were set forth in minute detail, his courage in war and relentless energy in times of peace,--these were carved in stone and written in hieroglyphics until it was difficult to find a section of wall, a column, a stone ceiling unadorned. Hymns of victory were inscribed in the temples; songs of praise and fulsome flattery not infrequently were composed by the priests. Sometimes the god who presided over the temple seems to have been well nigh lost sight of, yet even so, honor was accorded him, since the king was his representative on earth. Because Karnak received the particular care of many kings, it is one of the most interesting temples to study, apart from its beauty, its stupendous size and proportions. Lists of dimensions are seldom interesting, and yet, unless we compare the size of Egyptian structures to others known to us, we fail utterly to grasp the tremendous scale on which these people built. We have mentioned the avenue, more than a mile in length, guarded on either side with sphinxes, which connected this temple with one built by Queen Hatshepsut. This avenue led finally to a gateway, flanked on both sides by towers. Either of these towers were themselves spacious enough to have contained a temple. The temple court was enclosed by a wall 25 feet thick and varying from 60 to 100 feet in height. Vast wealth was stored in the temple, and this wall made it possible, in an age before gunpowder, to protect the place from sudden attacks--always possible contingencies. The temple itself was 1,180 feet long and 600 feet wide, and was composed of many rooms and halls built by various kings. We shall give attention to one alone--the famous Hall of Pillars. Often has it been said that to describe this hall and do it justice exceeds the power of mortals. It is on such a vast scale that modern times have produced no structures with which to compare it. The Hall of Pillars was originally 329 feet long and 170 feet in width. Through its center were placed two rows of columns, six in each row. Excluding pedestal and capital, these measured 60 feet in height and in circumference were so large that should six men stand with arms extended, fingers touching, they could scarcely encompass one. Seven rows of pillars, somewhat smaller, were placed on either side of these; the ceiling was supported by all these columns and was formed of mammoth blocks of stone. Finally the entire interior was covered with sculptures, paintings, and hieroglyphics--all recounting the exploits of the king who built the hall. In a similar fashion the entire temple was ornamented. King succeeded king and each burned with ambition to exceed the skill of his predecessor. Room after room was added to Karnak and the original plan greatly expanded. Seti I. however built on such a tremendous plan that none other eclipsed him, and the Hall of Pillars remains today a mighty monument to a mighty ruler. [Illustration: AMMON-RA, THE GREAT GOD OF THEBES.] FOOTNOTES: [1] Rawlinson, Ancient Egypt, 196. [2] Breasted, Ancient Records, II, §§ 658f. [3] Horus and Set. [4] Isis and Nephthys. [5] On the site of the modern Tell el-Amarna, about a hundred and sixty miles south of Cairo, on the east bank of the Nile. Here the famous Tell el-Amarna Letters were discovered in 1887. CHAPTER VIII. THE NINETEENTH DYNASTY.[1] Before Seti I., founder of the Nineteenth dynasty, succeeded to the throne, peace and order had been once more restored to Egypt. One important change had crept into the military life of the country, which was to lead to trouble later on. Heretofore, Egypt had depended solely upon her national troops to protect her borders and maintain her position as first among the nations. Now her armies were increased by mercenaries--foreign soldiers hired to do her fighting for her. History has shown that uniformly when a people ceases to depend upon its own citizens for the main strength of its army, taking instead hired soldiers who fight simply for the love of fighting and for gain, serving one cause today and another tomorrow,--whenever a nation has adopted this policy of providing its armed forces, its years of strength are numbered. So it was in Egypt. Troops from Libya, from Nubia and Ethiopia made up her armies. During times of peace they returned to their kindred and gave glowing accounts of the vast wealth of the Nile valley. It came about naturally then, that African, as well as Asiatic, tribes looked with longing eyes upon the coveted country and stood ready at the first sign of internal weakness to revolt and share the spoils. Strong rulers of the Nineteenth dynasty held their possessions intact, and foreign nations bided the time when the first sign of weakness should be the signal for action. The immediate successor of Thutmose III. had little trouble in keeping Syria in subjection. Taxes regularly reached Thebes. During the reigns of the Amenhoteps, III. and IV., the Hittites began pushing south from Asia Minor and organizing the revolt against Egypt. Upon ascending the throne Seti I. found it expedient to push into western Asia and quell a vigorous uprising. He was one of Egypt's most capable and farsighted kings, and being as well a fearless warrior, he carried all before him. He struck terror to the hearts of his enemies and returned home to find the Libyans threatening his western borders. After defeating their chiefs with great slaughter, Seti I. received a large number of their soldiers into his army as mercenaries. This did very well for the time, but before four hundred years had passed, their chiefs had become powerful enough to snatch the throne of Egypt from its rightful claimants. Like most Egyptian rulers, Seti I. was a builder. From earliest years in Egypt, imposing structures had supplied surest means by which a monarch could leave evidences of his power. The position of chief architect to the king had been filled by princes, who held it as a post of honor. Often the king's sons planned temples for the king's construction, and not infrequently gave personal supervision to their erection. During the last period of civil disorder, many public monuments and temples had fallen into decay. These Seti I. caused to be restored. He invariably adhered to the original ideas of the builder, adding but an inscription to show that by him they were restored. In this respect his course differed widely from that of many of the Egyptian kings, notably Ramses II., who boldly appropriated scores of temples and monuments, substituting his name for that of the original builder. Frequently his workmen did their task so badly that the first name has been deciphered. In other cases, the true builder of the temple is now uncertain. It was this king who erected the Hall of Pillars, of which we have just learned. While temples were erected and restored throughout the land, much of his attention was directed to Thebes--the great and splendid city so long the capital of Egypt. Thebes was built on the east side of the river. On this side dwelt the pharaohs, the wealthy, and the poor. Here too were the shops, the places of business and amusement. In fact, all the interests of living, pulsing Thebes were centered here. On this side also, in the district of Karnak, was the great temple of Amon. South of it rose the palace of the king; around this were mansions of the wealthy, while in the narrow streets reaching into the desert lived those of moderate and limited means. South of Karnak lay the district of Luxor, and along the river between these two districts stood the mud huts of the poor. Crossing the Nile to the western bank, one came into radically different surroundings. Here lay the City of the Dead. This was quite unlike any cemetery of modern times. Here were temples, tombs of kings and queens, tombs of the wealthy and the prosperous citizens, and the symbolic lake of the dead. Here were the unpretentious tombs of the masses. Nor was this all. We have seen that the Egyptian felt it necessary to supply his dead with all the necessities of life, such as food, furniture, and ornaments. Here, then, were the shops where such things might be obtained. Here were the embalmers, the makers of linen used by them; here lived the priests who said prayers over each finger and toe of the deceased and made the body ready for its everlasting home. On the west bank of the river lay a city in itself very different from the living one across the water. Funeral processions constantly wended their way to this City of the Dead; wails and lamentations often mingled in the air with songs of the priests at their devotions. At sunset the gates admitting to this portion of Thebes were locked and guarded against bands of robbers who laid in wait for the riches enclosed in the tombs. The tombs reached out to the rocky range of hills on the west and were with difficulty protected. Ancient Thebes extended some miles in each direction and covered considerable territory. Little today remains to mark its early splendor. The ruins at Karnak, the ancient mounds of Luxor, topped by a squalid Arab village, some tombs opened, some still hidden by the sands, are left. Much excavating has been done in this so-called "Valley of the Kings." Strabo and other early writers left some description of the original city, but aside from such records, little is left today to indicate the glories of that Thebes which was for hundreds of years the pride of Egyptian kings. RAMSES. Seti I. was followed by his son, the famous Ramses II., or Ramses the Great. Recent historians claim that this king has been given undue prominence, and that he was outranked by several Egyptian monarchs, including his own father. While this is probably true, it would seem that this pharaoh was as popular as any king who ruled in Egypt. He was young and handsome when he ascended the throne, and possessed a power of winning people to himself. That he was filled with self-pride, no one can deny. He attached his name, as we have seen, to every temple and monument where it was possible, and scattered statues of himself broadcast. Yet the only poem that suggests the epic in all Egyptian literature is the one known as "Pentuar's Poem," in which his bravery at the battle of Kadesh was sung. Ramses had penetrated into Asia to bring the revolting tribes back to submission. During this particular battle, he became separated from his body guard and suddenly found himself facing 2,500 charioteers alone. His personal bravery on that occasion was splendid; his soldiers pressed on to him quickly, but his daring was seen by them and greatly admired. The poem of Pentuar was written to celebrate the king's courage in this crisis. PENTUAR'S POEM.[2] "Then the King stood forth, and, radiant with courage, He looked like the Sun-god armed and eager for battle. The noble steeds that bore him into the struggle-- 'Victory to Thebes' was the name of one, and the other Was called 'contented Nura'--were foaled in the stables Of him we call 'the elect,' 'the beloved of Amon,' 'Lord of truth,' the chosen vicar of Ra. Up sprang the king and threw himself on the foe, The swaying ranks of the contemptible Cheta. He stood alone--alone, and no man with him. As thus the king stood forth all eyes were upon him, And soon he was enmeshed by men and horses, And by the enemy's chariots, two thousand five hundred, The foe behind hemmed him in, and enclosed him. Dense the array of the contemptible Cheta, Dense the swarm of warriors out of Arad, Dense the Mysian host, the Pisidian legions. Every chariot carried three bold warriors, All his foes, and all allied like brothers. "'Not a prince is with me, not a captain, Not an archer, none to guide my horses! Fled the riders! fled my troops and horse-- By my side not one is now left standing.' 'Great father Amon, I have known thee well, And can the father thus forget his son? Have I in any deed forgotten Thee? Have I done aught without Thy high behest, Or moved or staid against Thy sovereign will? Great am I--mighty are the Egyptian kings-- But in the sight of Thy commanding might, Small as the chieftain of a wandering tribe. Immortal Lord, crush Thou this unclean people; Break Thou their necks, annihilate the heathen. And I--have I not brought Thee many victims, And filled Thy temple with the captive folk? And for Thy presence built a dwelling place That shall endure for countless years to come? Thy garners overflow with gifts from me. "'I offer Thee the world to swell Thy glory, And thirty thousand mighty steers have shed Their smoking blood on fragrant cedar piles. Tall gateways, flag-decked masts, I raised to Thee, And obelisks from Abu I have brought, And built Thee temples of eternal stone. For Thee my ships have brought across the sea The tribute of the nations. This I did-- When were such things done in former time? For dark the fate of him who would rebel Against Thee; though Thy sway is just and mild. My father, Amon--as an earthly son His earthly father--so I call on Thee. Look down from heaven on me, beset by foes, By heathen foes, the folk that know Thee not. The nations have combined against Thy son; I stand alone--alone, and no man with me. My foot and horse are fled, I called aloud And no one heard--in vain I called to them. And yet I say: the sheltering care of Amon Is better succor than a million men, Or than ten thousand knights, or than a thousand Brothers and sons though gathered into one. And yet I say: the bulwarks raised by men However strong, compared to Thy great works Are but vain shadows, and no human aid Avails against the foe--but thy strong hand. The counsel of Thy lips shall guide my way; I have obeyed whenever Thou hast ruled; I call on Thee--and, with my fame, Thy glory Shall fill the world, from farthest east to west.' "Yea, his cry rang forth even far as Hermonthis, And Amon himself appeared at his call; and gave him His hand and shouted in triumph, saying to the pharaoh 'Help is at hand, O Rameses. I will uphold thee-- I thy father am he who now is thy succor, Bearing thee in my hands. For stronger and readier I than a hundred thousand mortal retainers; I am the Lord of victory loving valor. I rejoice in the brave and give them good counsel, And he whom I counsel certainly shall not miscarry.' "Then like Menth, with his right he scattered the arrows, And with his left he swung his deadly weapon, Felling the foe--as his foes are felled by Baal. The chariots were broken and the drivers scattered, Then was the foe overthrown before his horses. None found a hand to fight; they could not shoot, Nor dared they hurl the spear, but fled at his coming-- Headlong into the river." Having quelled the disturbances incident to his accession--for a change of rulers was generally the occasion for tribes held in tribute to seek their freedom--Ramses was free to devote the remainder of his reign, some forty years, to internal improvements. New cities, embankments, fortresses, statues, obelisks and temples absorbed his untiring interest. He seems to have been especially fond of grotto temples,--those hewn out of rocky hills or mountain sides. Most beautiful of these was the temple of Abu Simbel, guarded by four famous statues of this king. They stand today much as they stood three thousand years ago. One who has gazed upon the unaltering expression of these sentinels says of them: "The artists who wrought the statues were ... daunted by no difficulties of scale. Giants themselves, they summoned these giants from out the solid rock and endowed them with superhuman strength and beauty. They sought no quarried blocks of syenite or granite for their work. They fashioned no models of clay. They took a mountain and fell upon it like Titans and hollowed and carved it as though it were a cherry stone; and left it for the feebler men of after ages to marvel at forever. One great hall and fifteen spacious chambers they hewed out from the heart of it, then smoothed the rugged precipice toward the river, and cut four huge statues with their faces to the sunrise, two to the right and two to the left of the doorway, there to keep watch to the end of time. "These tremendous warders sit sixty-six feet high, without the platform under their feet. They measure across the chest twenty-five feet and four inches.... If they stood up, they would tower to a height of at least eighty-three feet, from the soles of their feet to the tops of their enormous double-crowns."[3] To estimate the cost of all those tremendous undertakings in human life would be impossible. It is believed by some that Ramses II. was the pharaoh of the oppression of the Hebrews. However, during his administration they were well fed and while their tasks were hard, they were not harder than those of other workmen similarly employed. It was left for his son and successor to make their lot so grievous that a deliverer was raised up to lead them out of bondage. Regard for human life, compassion for the lowly, and the spirit of humanity were qualities almost unknown in antiquity. The importance of the individual has only in modern times come to be acknowledged. At the period of which we are studying, there was no restraint upon the will of the sovereign. To satisfy his ambition and to gratify his pride, hundreds of thousands of slaves, captives, and impressed citizens were continually sacrificed. Some were driven to the mines: others were harnessed to huge blocks of stone to draw them from the quarry mountain to the building site; some were set to work in the brick fields, and over all were placed overseers to goad the workers on, giving little rest or respite. Regarding the Hebrews, it must be remembered that before the Nineteenth dynasty, they prospered in the land of Egypt. A new king who "knew not Joseph" looked with disfavor upon these foreign people waxing strong within his borders. Feeling that they might become a menace to the country, he determined to exterminate them by dint of excessive work. One of the "store-cities" built by them under these circumstances has been unearthed. It was surrounded by a wall thirty feet thick, which enclosed about twelve acres. Besides a temple, the enclosure contained subterranean cellars built of sun-dried brick. The bricks themselves confirm the biblical version of the story. While some are mixed with straw, as was customary, others were mixed with leaves and reeds--indicating that straw was no longer supplied. Still others were made simply of sun-dried mud. Ramses II. so covered the land with his works and monuments of his greatness, that his personality has stamped itself everywhere. It caught the attention of early writers and has ever since impressed itself upon the traveller, so that this king has been exalted to a prominent place in Egyptian history. Best known of Egypt's kings, for that reason, possibly, he has been most popular. At length Merneptah ruled in his father's stead. Few qualities did he possess to awaken admiration. When his armies were forced to face an invasion of African tribes, reinforced by mercenary troops, he remained in camp while his soldiers won victory for him. The god Ptah, so he explained, had commanded him to stay inside. This did not deter him from taking full credit for the successes. Upon his monuments were inscribed records similar to this: "These people were meditating to do evil to Egypt. They were as grasshoppers. Lo, I vanquished them; I slaughtered them, making a spoil of their country." It is supposed that at this time Moses came to the relief of Israel, and asked permission for his people to withdraw a few days into the desert to offer sacrifices to their God. This was the occasion for the king both to deny the request and to double the tasks meted out to the brickmakers by withholding straw and requiring the same amount of work to be accomplished as before. Then, according to the Hebrew version, grievous plagues were sent upon Egypt, and only when the king's son, with the other first born, was stricken in the night, did the monarch concede to the entreaties of his own people and bid the Hebrews depart from his land. The story is familiar to all--how when he came to think of the six hundred thousand valued bonds-people of which he was now bereft, he dispatched the flower of Egyptian charioteers to prevent the Hebrews crossing the Red Sea and bring them back to do his bidding. To these despairing people to whom light seemed about to dawn, the fact that they were able to cross over while the Egyptian horses were ensnared and drowned, seemed a miracle enacted for their deliverance. It has since been noted that similar tidal action at this point has sometimes repeated itself. To the Hebrews, believing firmly in the inspired mission of Moses, it was regarded later as an example of how for the dutiful "all things work together for good." TWENTIETH DYNASTY.[4] Ramses III. was the first important ruler of the Twentieth dynasty. He and his immediate successors were able to hold intact the vast empire won by earlier kings. We hear no more of aggressive wars for conquest. However, the time had come when Egypt did well when she maintained such territories as belonged to her. Men of Crete, other islanders and sea-faring people, made common cause against the Asiatic shore early in this reign. Ramses watched their progress until they attacked the Egyptian province of Palestine. Not willing to lose this, the pharaoh marched against the plundering bands and utterly routed them, taking many captives. Three other campaigns were directed by this king, but they were carried on to defend Egyptian borders and hold together tributary provinces. Like his father, Ramses III. was a builder. Like him, too, he appropriated earlier temples and monuments for his own fame and glory. He built a fleet on the Red Sea, continued the profitable commercial intercourse with Punt, and caused a large reservoir to be constructed in Palestine. Another thing he did, which all histories have been careful to chronicle: he ordered trees and shrubs to be systematically planted throughout the realm. In a land where for months together the sun pours its hot rays down on a defenseless people, he tried to bring rest and cooling shade where both were sorely needed. We have often noted the growing power of the priesthood in Egypt, and have seen that a large amount of the booty and tribute which flowed into the country from Asia found its way to the temples. An inventory of the resources of the temples during this reign has come down to us in a statement prepared by Ramses III., known now as the Papyrus Harris. From this it appears that the temples owned 107,000 slaves--or 2 per cent of the entire population; they possessed 750,000 acres, or over 15 per cent of all the arable land in the valley. Some 500,000 head of cattle, over 80 vessels, 53 workshops and shipyards, brought an annual income; and 169 towns in Egypt Kush and Syria were theirs. All this property in a land of less than 10,000 square miles and possibly 6,000,000 people, was exempt from taxation. The lion's share of all this wealth fell to the temples sacred to Amon. The priests of Amon had charge of it, and as time went on, they came to be regarded as superior to other priestly orders and their High Priest became the head of all priesthoods in the realm. Of all the temple estates, Amon owned two-thirds. In slaves, this god owned seven times as many as any other; of the cattle, more than four-fifths; of the ships, all but five; of the workshops, forty-six of the fifty-three were his. Regarding Amon's coffers, Ramses had inscribed: "I have filled its treasury with the products of the land of Egypt: gold, silver, every costly stone by the hundred thousand. Its granary was overflowing with barley and wheat; its lands, its herds, their multitudes were like the sands of the shore. I taxed for it the Southland as well as the Northland; Nubia and Syria came to it, bearing their impost."[5] In showering all these princely gifts upon Amon, Ramses was but following the example set by his forefathers. The kings themselves held the priests somewhat in fear, believing that they had influence with the gods and could indirectly influence not only their earthly prosperity but their future welfare. While this lavish wealth overflowed the coffers of the temples, we find the workmen in the service of the government, laboring in the City of the Dead--the Necropolis--having to resort to strikes, or in older phraseology, "having to lie at home," because their monthly rations were not forthcoming. The revenue of the government had, apparently, become the spoils for corrupt officials who sought to increase their personal incomes at the expense of the public treasury. Repeatedly starving laborers left their work and started with their families to leave Thebes, whereupon part of their rations would be given them and they would be urged to continue at their tasks! Nor was this all. Records have come down to us of bands of robbers who made a profession of rifling tombs of the dead. Worse still, cases for trial were frequently dismissed because officials themselves and priests of lesser position were sharing in the booty! Some of the Ramessides removed their ancestors from the original tombs and had all placed in a shaft where guards could keep watch over them. It was next to impossible to protect the wide-reaching City of the Dead, but it was worse than useless to attempt such a thing when those supposed to lend protection were themselves participating in the robberies. After the death of Ramses III., his descendants to the number of ten succeeded him. Then the High Priest of Amon snatched the power from Ramses XIII., taking the title of king as well as the authority which he already held. For some time the kings had been practically subservient to him. For almost a hundred and fifty years priests ruled in Egypt.[6] Under priestly rule the government was quite as corrupt as it had been previously. Discontent on the part of the workmen, bold robberies of tombs, were the order of the day. First Libyan, then Ethiopian chiefs gained possession of the throne. The country fell apart; the days of Egypt's glory were gone. From this time forward her political power was at an end. To be sure, Ethiopian kings took on Egyptian civilization--as a matter of fact, their country had long been Egyptianized. They tried to rule as pharaohs before them had done, worshipping Egyptian gods and keeping temples in repair. To the average citizen, life was no doubt much as it had been in former periods. But the old ideas were steadily falling away. The Assyrians invaded the country, and later, the Persians under Cambyses conquered it. Now and then a native prince would temporarily get control and repulse the Libyans and Ethiopians on the west and Asiatic peoples on the east. Such reactions and returns to the old order were short-lived, and like the sudden glow of dying embers, bespoke an approaching end. Foreign people and foreign influences pushed into the valley. Especially did they come from Greece. We have seen that rapid change and quick assimilation were alien to the nature of the Egyptian. While the Greeks gained much by this contact, their coming served but to make briefer the remaining years of Egyptian life. Greek learning was taught and Greek religion spread into the valley. Finally with the conquest of Alexander in 331 B.C., the prevailing element in the land became Greek and so remained until Rome extended her sway over all the ancient world. When we think that each succeeding invasion was the occasion for destruction; when plunder and fire vied with each other in despoiling the conquered land; when later the few temples which had withstood these experiences were robbed of their contents, and obelisks, monuments and statues were scattered among the nations of the earth, to satisfy personal gratification, we can no longer wonder that so little remains of that Egypt we have been studying. After the period of the priest-kings, the history of Egypt belongs to the history of Assyria, Babylonia, Greece and Rome, and no longer concerns us in our attempt to become acquainted with the "earliest nations." We feel some way that the end of Egypt's political power should have been more splendid than it was--more worthy of her former dignity and strength, and almost regret that the masses of her citizens had not met their final repulse in some desperate rally to drive invaders from their borders. But the end had been long drawn out. Generations of alien rule had accustomed the people to accept this as a natural condition. Rawlinson puts it well: "As it was, Egypt sank ingloriously at the last--her art, her literature, her national spirit decayed and almost extinct--paying, by her early disappearance from among the nations of the earth, the penalty of her extraordinarily precocious greatness."[7] Such being a brief survey of her political achievements, we turn now to the life and customs of her people. [Illustration: OSIRIS] FOOTNOTES: [1] 1350-1205 B.C. [2] Records of the Past, ed. Dr. Burch. The author is unknown, but the poem is known by the name of a scribe who once copied the production. [3] Edwards: A Thousand Miles Up the Nile, 262 [4] 1200-1090 B.C. [5] Breasted: History of Egypt, 493; trans. [6] Twenty-first Dynasty, 1090-945 B.C. [7] Rawlinson: Ancient Egypt, 402. SOCIAL LIFE IN EGYPT CHAPTER IX. INTRODUCTORY. The social life of ancient peoples has for many greater interest than their political development. Before the days of Greece self-government was unknown, and the king embodied in himself the government. Upon his personal character, his foresight and statesmanship, the weal of the country depended. For this reason, as we trace the political fortunes of one nation and another in antiquity, we find that the story consists largely of the doings of the monarch. When kings were strong and ambitious, wide activities characterized their reigns; when they were weak, unprincipled and selfish, their periods were less brilliant. In any case, one feels how powerless were the masses--how utterly at the will of the sovereign. To be sure, even in antiquity, it ill behooved a ruler to disregard his subjects altogether, but conditions had to be extreme before they would assert themselves against him. Apart from a nation's political life, however, there is always a greater life--the life of the people, regardless of their political relations. One never exists without the other, and one is influenced by the other; but the social body includes each and every one, whether of low or high estate, while the political body may include but a portion of a nation's people. Again, in spite of bad government, the selfishness of kings, even in spite of invasions of the enemy, the daily life of the great majority of early people varied but little. They procured food and clothing, cared for their children, worked at their various callings, as civilized beings have done in all ages. Certain peculiar customs are to be found among each nation, and it is these very peculiarities, probably, that relieves what might otherwise become a monotonous repetition. We cannot too often recall that the recorded history of ancient Egypt extended over three thousand years. The manner of life, dress, customs, etc., changed considerably in that long period, and just as we divide the social life of England into various epochs--such as social conditions under Saxon kings, during Norman rule, in Elizabethan years, etc.--so, for any protracted investigation of social Egypt, we would find it necessary to make several divisions of the subject. The greatest source of knowledge for Egyptian social life is of course the tombs. From their contents and from the pictures that adorn their walls much has been ascertained. To be sure, many details are yet lacking, and Egyptologists seek still for answers to unanswered queries. Many recovered remains have not yet been classified, and rolls of papyri lie still untranslated, so undoubtedly the future will make many contributions to what has already been worked out. Nevertheless, even now many aspects of the life of the old Nile-dwellers have been reconstructed with considerable degree of certainty. These recent conclusions have proven the ancient Egyptian to have been quite a different creature from what he was long supposed. Until late years it was believed that he was a solemn, serious individual, overwhelmed with an ever-present thought of death, for which many of his acts in life prepared him. This idea was mistaken. The religion of the ancient Egyptian led him into many curious ways, beyond a doubt, but he was withal a contented person who found some humor in life. The happenings of his earthly career were as potent to him as ours are to us. The study of history should do one thing for us at least: it should teach us to find strong similarities between the people we see around us today and those of whom we read and study in antiquity. The normal human being has in all ages been governed by certain controlling interests, passions and desires, has pulsed with the vigor of life and its manifold interests--as we do now and as the Egyptian did, five thousand years ago. HOUSES. In strong contrast with the solid, substantial tombs and temples were the private dwellings. No need was felt to make these enduring. Rather, they were constructed in such a way as to allow free circulation of air and to preserve coolness. The walls were thin, being made of stucco, mud brick, or wood. The outside of the house was decorated in gay colors, and was hung with brightly tinted carpets or mattings. Similar coverings adorned the inner walls. Many pictures of ancient Egyptian houses have been found in tomb pictures. It is apparent that the well-to-do citizen desired seclusion for his home. An outer wall usually surrounded the house and out buildings. The general plan of houses for people of comfortable means was this: a gateway, often of cedar, gave entrance into a court. The gate was kept locked, save when the keeper opened it to allow visitors to enter or depart. Crossing the court--of varying size--one entered a vestibule, guarded by a porter. This vestibule led directly to the dining hall, the largest and most important room in the house. Sleeping apartments for the family were reached through a second vestibule and the kitchen, store-rooms, and servants' apartments, though joined on one side, were separated from the main portion of the house by an inner court. Often the houses were two stories in height. Generally a stairway led to the roof, which was used for many purposes when the heat of the sun was passed. The wealthy required many buildings. One would be set aside for the women; another contained reception halls for distinguished guests; a third, store-rooms and supplies; and besides these there might be several stables and separate quarters for slaves and servants. Service was cheap and slaves plentiful, so people of even moderate means had numerous assistants. The elaborate estate of the wealthy was exceeded by the magnificence of the pharaoh, who frequently constructed his own city, as it was called. Here the king might have plenty of land and surround himself with as many buildings as he chose, enclosing the whole by a wall. In bitter contrast to this royal splendor was the squalor of the poor, whose shelter was a tiny hut built of sun-dried mud. For those whose incomes permitted, the garden was the favorite spot. This we would naturally expect in a country where out of door life is interrupted only in the middle of the day by the intense heat. In the garden, trees, shrubs, and many kinds of flowers were planted. Its size depended upon the prosperity of the owner. Sometimes the court, however tiny, provided all the garden plot he possessed; sometimes extensive grounds included flower-gardens, date orchards, and sycamore groves, while summer houses and artificial ponds were scattered over wide areas. Small wonder was it that the "pious Egyptian hoped his soul, as its supreme felicity, would return to sit under the trees he had planted, by the side of the ponds he had dug, there to enjoy the refreshing breeze from the north." The Egyptians were passionately fond of flowers. They grew them in their gardens, filled their houses with the blossoms, used them lavishly at their feasts and carved them on their tombs and in their temples. They sought ever to increase their varieties, originally few, and we have seen that the kings often prized new specimens found in other lands above their tribute. "Everywhere on the monuments we meet with flowers; bouquets of flowers are presented to the gods; the coffins are covered with wreaths of flowers; flowers form the decoration of the houses, and all the capitals of the pillars are painted in imitation of their colored petals. The Egyptian also loved shady trees. He not only prayed that the 'Nile should bestow every flowering plant in their season' upon his departed soul, but also that his soul might sit 'on the boughs of the trees that he had planted, and enjoy the cool air in the shade of his sycamore.' The arable fields, the shadeless woods of palms, the bare mud soil, scarcely provided the scenery which he most admired; he therefore tried to supply the want by landscape gardening. In the oldest periods there were parks and gardens; and the gentleman of ancient Egypt talked with pride of his shady trees, his sweet-smelling plants, and his cool tanks. All the sentiments with which we regard the woods and meadows of nature, the Egyptian felt towards his well kept garden; to him it was the dwelling place of love, and his trees were the confidants of lovers. "On the 'festival day of the garden,' that is on the day when the garden was in full bloom, the wild fig-tree calls to the maiden to come into the shade of the fig leaves as a trysting place: "The little Sycamore, Which she planted with her hand She begins to speak, And her (words are as) drops of honey. She is charming, her bower is green, Greener than the (papyrus). She is laden with fruit, Redder than the ruby, The color of her leaves is as glass, Her stem is as the color of the opal.... It is cool in her shadow. She sends her letter by a little maiden, The daughter of her chief gardener She makes her haste to her beloved: Come and linger in the (garden) ... The servants who belong to thee Come with the dinner things; They are bringing beer of every (kind), With all manner of bread, Flowers of yesterday and of today, And all kinds of refreshing fruit. Come, spend this festival day And tomorrow and the day after tomorrow Sitting in my shadow. Thy companion sits at thy right hand, Thou dost make him drink, And then thou dost follow what he says.... I am of a silent nature And I do not tell what I see I do not chatter."[1] Having attractive grounds as a setting, the houses of the wealthy Egyptians were also attractive indoors. The dining room was the important room of the house. Guests generally sat on stools when dining. When ladies gathered for a banquet, they frequently sat on costly rugs spread upon the floor. Servants or slaves served those assembled from a large table loaded with tempting viands. The Egyptian seems no longer far away and mummy-like when we learn that he was fond of good things to eat. Roast goose was a favorite dish; bread and beer were constantly in demand, quite as they are in Germany today. In naming over the dishes he hoped to supply his departed, in a tomb we may read: five kinds of birds, sixteen kinds of bread and cake, six varieties of wine, and eleven different fruits. The bread, molded into fancy shapes, was made of barley and wheat. Grapes were generally grown, and fig trees too. Tame monkeys were trained to go into the high branches of the fig trees and throw down the fruit. Many specimens of ancient household furniture have been found in Egyptian tombs, such as chairs, couches, tables and bedsteads. In the sleeping apartments, high couches were reached by steps. Wooden headrests took the place of pillows. These were used in order that the wigs and elaborate head dresses might not be disturbed while the wearers slept. The student who would make an exhaustive study of the Egyptian house and its contents must go to the museums where discovered articles have been preserved, or at least to the detailed descriptions of these given by Maspero and other Egyptologists. We could not well leave a consideration of the subject however, without giving brief attention to the dwellings of the poor, who in every age and country have made up a large part of the population. The fellah of today lives much as did the peasant of antiquity. His dwelling was a hut built of mud and roofed with palm leaves. While the poorest had but one room, those who were more industrious, perhaps, might have two or three. Once or twice in a century, rain would fall. Then these huts would dissolve and flow away. When the storm ceased, all the family would set to work, level off the spot and construct a new dwelling from sun-dried mud, which after being exposed to the heat of a few days, would be as good as ever. This leveling of huts, whether caused by storms, or because it was easier to build a new house than cleanse the old one, has elevated the land in many parts of Egypt. Frequently it is the case that peasants have dwelt so long on the sites of buried cities, that the explorer who today would reach the original settlement must tunnel down through many layers of sun-dried mud, once the dwellings of the poor. FAMILY LIFE. It is frequently said that the test of a nation's civilization is the position accorded to woman. Applying this test to Egypt, her civilization would rank well with nations of modern times as well as with those contemporaneous with her. From the earliest times of which we have record, Egyptian women were the companions and trusted counsellors of their husbands. During the New Empire it was the boast of one of the Ramessides that any woman might go alone and unveiled as far in any direction as she wished, confident that she would not be accosted nor disturbed. Two customs prevailed in ancient Egypt that are contrary to the moral standards of our day: one was the practice of a brother marrying his sister; the second, a husband having more than one wife. Early peoples did not regard these practices in the light of modern opinion. The Hebrews, for example, frequently took two or more wives, and the same habit obtained among the Babylonians and Assyrians. Among pastoral tribes of the present day this custom survives. In all cases, _one_ woman was regarded as the legitimate wife, and her children were heirs to their father's estate, while children by his other wives might or might not be recognized by the father as his heirs, according to his pleasure. As a rule, only the well-to-do Egyptian could afford the luxury of two wives, so that polygamy was not common among the lower classes. There seems to have been little friction in the Egyptian household between the several wives. Stories have come down to us of women who cared enough for other wives of their husbands to name children for them. Certain marks of honor were the right of the first wife and were conceded as a matter of course. The marriage of those close of kin was quite usual. The word _sister_ in Egypt came to be used interchangeably for wife or sister. In this land it appears to have frequently resulted that a boy and girl, brought up in the same family, having similar ideas and interests, married and lived happily together in their married life. Multifarious were the duties of a wife of the middle class. She cared for the family, spun and wove, sent the little ones to school and took them a lunch at mid-day. She drew water at the nearest pool, ground corn into meal and made the meal into cakes; she drove the cattle to pasture and collected the fuel. What did not this mother do? It is little wonder that from lack of care and nourishment, large numbers of children died before they became ten years of age. Those who lived were indeed the survival of the fittest, and aside from a disease of the eye--brought on by the glaring sand and burning sun--they were generally healthy and equal to any hardship. Marrying young, women were often grandmothers at thirty. Although they faded early, they did not suffer in their position in the family on that account. Great respect was shown them while they lived, and after their death they were worshipped--for the Egyptian always worshipped his ancestors. Believing that the soul lived on, it might work harm for the surviving relatives and friends unless appeased with marked consideration. This desire to escape possible harm by satisfying the departed appears to have been the strong motive inducing ancient peoples to worship the dead. The children were left with the mother until almost four years of age. Dolls and other toys found buried in the tombs with little ones show that they, in those far away times, were quite like children who have lived since. When four, they were sent to an elementary school. If at ten the son had evinced any special ability that would justify educating him, he was put into a school maintained by the priests. Here he was trained for a scribe unless his early promise was borne out by rapid progress, in which case he was educated for the priesthood. If by the age of ten he had given no special evidence of ability, he was taught a trade. The old idea that caste was strongly marked in Egypt is not only misleading but untrue. Class distinctions were closely drawn in Egypt, as they are today, even in America. The average child born in the slums of a city seldom comes to importance. The son of a day laborer rarely marries into the wealthy or so-called "old families." The reason for this is not so much that there is objection in America to the humblest born rising to any height, but that the opportunities for progress to one born into such surroundings are few. It was somewhat similar in Egypt. Chances for rapid advance were by no means as favorable then as now, but nevertheless, there are many cases on record where men attained high official position in spite of great social disadvantages. [Illustration: TOURISTS SCALING THE GREAT PYRAMID.] The affection of the Egyptians for their children was almost universal. Large families were desired, even by those in moderate circumstances. Indeed it was necessary that families be perpetuated, for thus alone would family tombs be kept up and respect be shown those who had departed. Among all people who worship ancestors, children are especially desired and to be bereft of them is the greatest hardship and affliction. In spite of all that has been said of the respect paid to women, the happy domestic relations in Egypt and the affection for children, it is doubtful whether or not there was much home life as we today understand the phrase. The importance of the individual is a modern conception. The will of the king was paramount in Egypt and all citizens were first of all subservient to his wishes. Less security, less freedom in pursuing one's own course probably resulted in brief periods of family unity. Surely such must have been the result of early marriages which took children from their parents at a tender age. DRESS. Suppose for a moment that some unforseen catastrophe should wipe out the inhabitants of England, and future generations attempted to reconstruct their history, from the age of King Arthur and his knights to the peaceful days of Edward the Seventh. After working out an outline of their political development, suppose it should be asked, But how did these people dress? Think of the variety of costumes that have been popular since the Round Table days! Who could describe them all? The task would be disheartening indeed. And yet, far more years sped over Egypt than England has yet known. Living in a warm country, the Egyptian required simpler raiment than the Englishman. In early times a short, scant skirt was worn by both men and women--the children were generally not clothed at all. This skirt, which formed the foundation of all the later, more elaborate dress, changed in style from one age to another. Sometimes it was scantier than at other times and it varied in length. During the Sixth dynasty, either by means of pressing, or by some device, the front of the skirt was made to assume a stiff, triangular appearance. As pictured on the tombs, it looks like a three-cornered apron. In the Old Empire, the great lords threw a panther skin across their shoulders, when, as Erman expresses it, "they wished to appear in full dress." In the Middle Empire people of high position wore two skirts, the under one short and of heavy linen; the outer skirt so sheer that the contour of the body was quite visible. By the Eighteenth dynasty it had become customary to clothe the upper portion of the body. Even now the arms were left free. The king appeared occasionally in a mantle and the nobles also donned mantles for festival days. Working people always clothed in the simplest fashion. All garments were frequently discarded in the field, as they impeded rapid movement. The supersensitive modesty of our day which cries out against a low bodice or lace hose, even raises objection at undraped marble statues, had no part in the thought of these simple-hearted, pure-minded people; yet they showed a fitting sense of decorum and dignity. It was the men in Egypt who delighted in finery and showy costumes, while the dress of the women was plainer and remained almost wholly unaltered for centuries together. Their usual garment during the later periods was a close fitting gown reaching from under the arms to the ankles, and mistress and maid were dressed much alike. In the New Empire a cloak was added, but it and the gown beneath were of sheerest linen procurable. As time went on, garments of both men and women were elaborately embroidered. The ancient Egyptian desired to preserve absolute cleanliness. Scenes characteristic of washing day have been pictured on many a tomb. The chief washer was assisted by others who beat the clothes, wrung them out, bleached and dried them. It was the desire to be clean which led these people to shave their heads and beards. Wigs of curled wool and others of long hair are constantly seen in the old pictures, although it sometimes appears that these covered heads already crowned by a natural growth. While they shaved off the beard as something unclean, the Egyptians still shared in the idea common to oriental peoples that a beard gives added dignity, hence the king and men of rank wore artificial beards on state occasions. Even Queen Hatshepsut assumed one when she wished to appear regal. Sandals and foot gear were not popular at any time, although men of the higher classes wore them when they walked abroad. Men and women alike donned necklaces and bracelets, while women wore anklets also. Earrings were introduced by foreigners and rings seem to have been confined to seal rings. Walking sticks were carried as badges of honor and each style of stick indicated a degree of social rank. The Egyptians painted their faces, rouged their lips, blackened their eyes, and oiled their hair and bodies. At a feast a slave would bring a ball soaked in oil for each guest, place it on his head, in order that the oil might gently percolate through the hair of the banqueter during the meal. The dead were provided with many kinds of oil, perfumes, and rouges for use of the double, or ka. Probably many allowed their hair to grow long, for we find physicians taxed to their utmost to supply concoctions which would produce heavy growths of hair, strengthen it and prevent it from turning grey. All these remedies are found in old papyri: To prevent the hair turning grey: "The blood of a black calf, cooked in oil--a salve." Or this: "Two parts of bloods, horn of a black cow, warm it up for a salve." When the hair fell out: "Take fat of the lion, of the hippopotamus, the crocodile, the cat, the snake, and the ibex." To strengthen the hair: "Anoint it with the tooth of a donkey crushed in honey." Or try this: "Boil the hoof of a donkey in oil together with a dog's foot, and some date kernels." [Illustration: VIEW OF MANSION, FROM THE TOMB OF ANNA, EIGHTEENTH DYNASTY.] FOOTNOTES: [1] Erman: Life in Ancient Egypt, 193. CHAPTER X. SPORTS AND RECREATIONS. The pastimes and diversions of any people fall easily in two divisions; those which are adapted to the open air, and those enjoyed indoors. The popular outdoor sports among the Egyptians were hunting, fishing and boating, while the banquet with its attendant dancing and music, helped them to pass those hours when Amon, god of the sun, concealed, reigned over all. The wealthy Egyptian liked to take his wife or family in his light boat and wander at will among the reeds and marshy plants abounding in the little streams and lakes left still undrained. It was fine sport to flit in and out among the tall papyrus, rouse a flock of birds and bring some of them down with the boomerang. Fishes were plentiful in the streams, and the sportsman chose to get them with a two-pointed spear. If he became expert, he could spear two at once--one on either point. To be sure, the game dealers, requiring large numbers of fish and fowl, caught both in a net. Only the noble or the well-to-do had time to indulge in hunting and fishing for mere diversion. In the tomb pictures, gentlemen are shown seated in their gardens, on costly rugs, it may be, leisurely spearing fish in their own artificial ponds. This was too simple a process for any but the most indolent, and did not appeal to the true sportsman who loved the natural streams. Great was the attraction of these marshy lakes. "Much of the country formerly covered by marshes and tropical forests was already arable land. At the same time old river beds remained; stretches of marsh and half-stagnant water, overgrown as of old with papyrus reeds, offered shelter to the hippopotamus, the crocodile and to numberless water-birds. This was the happy hunting ground of the great lords of ancient Egypt, the oft-mentioned 'backwaters,' the 'bird tanks of pleasure.' They played the same part in Egyptian life as the forest in German folk lore; the greatest delight perhaps that an Egyptian knew was to row in a light boat between the beautiful waving tufts of the papyrus reeds, to pick the lotus flowers, to start the wild birds and then knock them over with the throw-stick, to spear the great fish of the Nile and even the hippopotamus, with the harpoon. Pictures of all periods exist representing these expeditions, and we have but to glance at them in order to realize how much the Egyptians loved these wild districts, and how much poetry they found in them."[1] Danger mingled with sport in capturing the larger game--the hippopotamus and crocodile. Pictures of crocodile hunts have not been found. Probably they were not painted, because in certain parts of Egypt these animals were held sacred to some god, and even those who did not share this belief might not have cared to record the killing of them in the tomb. No such feeling existed concerning the hippopotamus and he who was successful in securing one seldom failed to have the hunt pictured in his tomb. You will remember that in ancient Egypt, each person built his own tomb during his life time, and so decided for himself for what he was to be remembered. The deserts and mountains on either side offered game to the hunter. Gazelles, antelopes, foxes, hares, and other small animals, such as rabbits, abounded. Did one crave greater adventure, he might follow the leopard and the lion. It was quite the custom for the wealthy man, who followed the chase for sport, to collect wild animals and add them to the menagerie usually found on the large estates. Here were elephants and baboons from Asia, giraffes from the upper Nile, lions, leopards, hyenas and gazelles from the deserts. Some became quite tame and were taught tricks. Lions were favorite pets, and kings often took them along on their campaigns. Monkeys were found in almost every household; and since hunting was so popular, various kinds of hounds were more numerous than other species of dogs. In addition to the small canoe in which he hunted water birds, the nobleman usually had a large, square-sailed, double-masted boat in which he would take his family and friends for an evening sail down the river. His musicians would accompany him, and dispense sweet strains on their harps and lutes, in harmony with the quiet waters. Feasting was popular alike with men and women. Music and dancing were invariably furnished as means of entertainment. Many pictures of the banquet remain. Sometimes ladies in elaborate toilettes are shown, partaking of all sorts of dainties, while dancing girls move gracefully before them, beating time to the music which accompanied them. Sometimes the dances were intricate; one of them pictured in a tomb seems to represent papyrus reeds, swaying in the wind. Others were yet more elaborate. Music was popular among all classes. Flutes, lutes and harps are shown in the tomb pictures. Singing often accompanies the harp. Among the superintendents of "all the most beautiful pleasures of the king" were superintendents of singing. Thus it seems royalty, at least, did not trust to inspiration for entertainment, but prudently had it arranged and rehearsed in advance. At Memphis there is said to have been a school where music was taught to girls. Some games of chance were popular in Egypt. Checkers was known and a picture remains wherein Ramses II. is playing the game with his daughter. It remains to speak of certain other customs of the feast. The ladies would come together to make their toilets, rouging their lips, blackening their eyes, offering one another their flowers to smell, and examining each other's jewelry. "The serving boys and girls go round, offering ointment, wreaths, perfumes, and bowls of wine. They challenge the guests at the same time to 'celebrate the joyful day' by the enjoyment of the pleasure of the present moment; the singers also continually repeat the same as the refrain to their song. They sing to the guests as they quaff the wine: 'Celebrate the joyful day! Let sweet odours and oils be placed for thy nostrils, Wreaths of lotus flowers for the limbs And for the bosom of thy sister, dwelling in thy heart Sitting beside thee. Let song and music be made before thee. Cast behind thee all cares and mind thee of pleasure, Till cometh the day when we drew towards the land That loveth silence.' or: 'Put myrrh on thy head, array thyself in fine linen, Anointing thyself with the true wonders of God. Adorn thyself with all the beauty thou canst. With a beaming face celebrate the joyful day and rest not therein For no one can take away his goods with him, Yea, no one returns again, who has gone hence.'"[2] The men banqueted alone. Dancing and music diverted them during the feast. It was customary to pass the image of a mummy around at the feast, while words similar to these were repeated: "Look upon this and know, even as it is, so shalt thou be--for all must die." This in no way dampened the pleasures of the night; rather, each sought to enjoy to its fullest capacity the fleeting hours. [Illustration: FACADE OF A HOUSE TOWARD THE STREET. SECOND THEBAN PERIOD.] FOOTNOTES: [1] Erman: Life in Ancient Egypt, 235. [2] Erman: Life in Ancient Egypt, 255. CHAPTER XI. AGRICULTURE AND CATTLE RAISING. Owing to the inexhaustible fertility of the Nile valley, fine crops were always forthcoming on the land reached by the annual overflow. The rich mud deposited by the flood left the productive qualities of the soil restored, and it was never necessary to leave the fields lie fallow. However, the ground had not only to be merely reached by the river waters, but to be saturated, for rain seldom fell and whatever humidity was supplied the growing vegetation, came from the overflow. A system of irrigation brought the water in trenches as near each farm as possible. From these trenches, thousands of men and boys, employed throughout the country, lifted water in buckets to the higher land, that all the crops might receive sufficient moisture. As soon as the river receded, all the valley was astir with busy people, getting the ground ready for the grain and other seed. Implements of the farm were crude indeed, and crude they are today. A high official in recent times had a quantity of agricultural implements, such as are used by the most progressive farmers in America, imported into Egypt and endeavored to encourage the peasants to use them. Not they. What had served the needs of seven thousand years in their valley was deemed sufficient for them, and after some time, the entire outfit had to be sold for old iron. Pictures in tombs depict many scenes connected with grain production--from the plowing of the soil to the storing of the grain into granaries. From these pictures we are able to outline the daily life of the peasant. Their plows were crude, wooden implements, which at best did little more than scratch over the soil. Coarse clods of earth had to be broken with a sort of wooden hoe. Then the farmer scattered seed over the mellow ground, driving flocks of sheep across the fields to tread it in. Aside from the matter of irrigation, the crops needed little attention until the time for harvest. Then the grain was cut by a sickle, loaded on to donkeys and taken to the threshing-floor, located near the village. Here in early times it was trodden out by donkeys, driven back and forth over it. Later oxen were in greater favor for threshing. The grain was freed from chaff by throwing it up into the air rapidly. The grain fell straight down, while the chaff was blown forward. Now it was ready for the "scribes of the granary," who measured it and supervised it while being stored safely away. Sometimes the boats of a nobleman would ply back and forth for weeks together, bringing his heavy yield of millet and barley to his granaries. One word about the "corn" of Egypt. The Indian corn which we call corn today is a native American product, and was unknown to antiquity. Corn has been used as a common name for all grain. Wheat, barley and millet were the leading grains of Egypt. Taxes were paid in kind--in produce; so naturally, large quantities of grain were poured yearly into the coffers of the government. This was stored against times of need which occasionally fell upon Egypt. It was in one of these years when a famine swept over the east that Joseph's brothers came down into the valley to buy grain from government granaries. Little is known of the vegetables grown in antiquity. Probably many of those common today were raised. Melons were extensively grown; onions and cucumbers were probably known and the grape vine was extensively cultivated. Cattle raising was carried to some perfection. The Egyptians understood well the secrets of high breeding and produced especially fine specimens of cows and oxen. Being fond of all animals, they were partial to the ox, symbolic of great strength, and to the cow, sacred to Isis. As the lion, with its strength, has appealed to many people, so the ox was a favorite with the dwellers on the Nile. The herders made up a class by themselves. In the summer they drove the cattle up north, into the marshes, where pasture was good. The average Egyptian looked upon these men with deepest disgust, for they let their hair grow, and wore beards. They lived in portable reed huts. Their lives were quite primitive and they had a general unkempt appearance. They dressed very little, and their efforts to copy the Egyptian skirt in their stiff matting, afforded the townsman much amusement. They spent their idle time weaving papyrus reeds into mats, and wove boats from the same useful plant. When the fall came, they returned with their herds from the northern marshes. When they reached home, officials came to inspect the flocks. They noted the increase of the stock, all losses and other matters of interest to the owners. Records show that single proprietors sometimes owned as many as 1,300 cows, in addition to other cattle. Large flocks of sheep were kept, and goats were plentiful. Few pictures of pigs are to be seen, and those only in the New Empire period. The pig was objected to on religious grounds, as unclean. Their fondness for animals led the Egyptians to receive as many wild animals as possible into their flocks. These were fattened with the cattle. Mention is made of the ibex and antelope being especially valued when they had been fed for awhile with the herds. Birds were apparently not extensively domesticated. This was not necessary, for the bird-catchers could find any number of ducks and geese in the marshes, fatten them for a time, and supply them without the trouble of raising them. The goose was the favorite bird. Roast goose was a favorite dish and was offered as a delicacy to the gods. Pictures even show geese kept as pets, in the place of dogs or monkeys. While the whole civilization of Egypt was based on its agriculture and its cattle raising, the farmer and herder had no social standing. The tiller of the soil was regarded as an overworked creature who never became prosperous. The land was generally owned by great noblemen of wealth, who themselves received the profit. "The following sad sketch of the lot of the harvestmen was written by the compiler of a didactic letter, of which many copies are extant, and implies not only a personal opinion, but the general view of this matter: The worm has taken half of the food, the hippopotamus the other half; there were many mice in the fields, the locusts have come down and the cattle have eaten, and the sparrows have stolen. Poor miserable agriculturist! What was left on the threshing floor thieves made away with.... Then the scribe lands on the bank to receive the harvest, his followers carry sticks and the negroes carry palm rods. They say: 'Give up the corn'--and there is none there. Then they beat him as he lies stretched out and bound to the ground, they throw him into the canal and he sinks down, head under water.... This is, of course, an exaggerated picture, which is purposely overdrawn by the writer, in order to emphasize the striking contrast that he draws in his eulogy of the profession of scribe; in its main features, however, it gives us a very true idea, for the lot of the ancient peasant very much resembled that of the modern fellah. The latter labours and toils without enjoying the results of his own work. He earns a scanty subsistence, and, notwithstanding all his industry, he gains no great renown amongst his countrymen of the towns; the best they can say of him is, that he is worthy to be compared with his own cattle."[1] ARTISANS AND THEIR CRAFTS. Countries today can easily import such articles of manufacture as are not produced within their own boundaries. A single household may possess silk made in India, porcelain from China, curtains and laces from Belgium, cutlery from England, and some musical instruments made in Germany. All this was different in antiquity. Egypt long remained isolated. She developed a higher civilization than her neighbors, and what her people required had to be produced for the most part within her borders. It followed naturally that a wide variety of trades and crafts grew up in the limited valley of the Nile. To be sure, during her empire period many lands sent their choicest products as tribute, yet even then, Egyptians held first place in certain arts and crafts. There was little native wood in the valley. When the conquests of Thutmose I. established relations with Syria, woods were imported to some extent. Mummies have been found encased in the rare cedars of Lebanon. Generally speaking, however, substitutes had to be found for timber. Light boats were made from reeds, and for the making of larger ones, boatmakers became expert in joining together small pieces of wood, thus forming large boards, strong enough to bear severe strains. For some purposes, cartonage was substituted. This was composed of several layers of coarse linen glued together. It was used extensively for the manufacture of coffins. In veneering rare woods upon less costly foundations, the Egyptians far surpassed any modern efforts. Wood carvers reached a high degree of skill in fashioning little statuettes and images from wood, also in carving, with exquisite detail, tiny wooden amulets and ornaments. Handles of knives sometimes display the dexterity of the wood carvers. Even greater, perhaps, was their success in metal work. Bronze was commonly used for articles of every day use. Iron was known and was reserved more especially for weapons of warfare and for some kinds of knives. For a time, silver was more highly valued than gold, being more rare. Later it was found in greater quantities, and took rank with gold, or had even less value. Statues of the gods were made commonly in bronze, although many were fashioned from gold. The goldsmith was a person of good social standing. He made statues of the gods to adorn the temples and he cut and set jewels for royalty. The number of precious stones was quite extensive in Egypt. Diamonds, rubies and sapphires were seemingly unknown, but amethysts, emeralds, garnets, agates, jasper and lapis lazuli were available. The Egyptians, both men and women, were very fond of personal adornments, and jewelry was worn in profusion by the wealthy and to some extent by all. Amber, turquoise, coral and pearls were popular. Every man wore a seal ring--and this not merely as an ornament. Letters and documents were never signed in these ages--rather, one affixed his seal. The noble wore a costly ring; the citizen of humble position, one of slight value, but every one who expected to transact any business or carry on any correspondence wore a seal ring of some kind. Women, to the same extent, wore necklaces. Most elaborate ones have been discovered in the tombs of royalty; very simple ones adorned the necks of the humbler women, yet none was so poor as to lack a necklace altogether. Bracelets, anklets, hair combs and ornaments, amulets, chains, and scarabs were greatly in demand, and the goldsmiths of ancient Egypt attained great originality, skill and perfection in his art. So constant being the demand for inexpensive jewelry, remarkable skill was reached in imitating precious stones in glass. Indeed, it is difficult for experts today to determine in some cases whether the stone be real or imitated. In glass work, the Egyptians preferred colored glass to the clear. Whatever glass utensils remain are invariably colored. Blue was a favorite color. Thin layers of glass were used sometimes to decorate coffins. Blown glass was not made in early times, statements to the contrary notwithstanding. Pictures once supposed to represent glass blowers at work are now understood to depict one stage of metal working. Pottery was never brought to any high mark by the Nile dwellers. Clay utensils were used for only the most ordinary purposes, and the jars, bowls, and vases which remain give evidence of poor material having been used in the first place, indifferent labor in the next place, poor fire and little skill in ornamentation. These indifferent results were satisfactory enough for the commonest uses and for anything more, something in metal appears to have been demanded. Hunting being a favorite pastime, and cattle raising carried on to such a wide extent, Egypt became rich in skins. The skins of rarer animals were never shorn of the natural hair. This was dressed and used for coverings of couches and chairs--for shields and even garments. Skins of cattle were made into leather and worked up into sandals, straps and aprons for workmen. Pictures of boats are shown with leather sails, and leather was used for manifold purposes. The extensive use of linen for clothing necessitated a large production of flax. Those who wove--mostly women, in spite of Herodotus to the contrary--attained a high skill and dexterity in their work. Linen was generally kept white, and was frequently made so thin and sheer that the outlines of the body were visible through it. Of the condition and life of the average artisan, we know that he was allowed to hold no office under the government and had no political rights whatever. Every man was obliged by law to have some calling and to follow it, nor could he work at trades other than his own. This insured good work--always exacted by the Egyptians from their workmen who often received but meager food and no wages. Probably the highly prized work of the goldsmith was well paid. The Egyptians frequently paid for their goods in kind. Large numbers of laborers belonged to the state or the temples, and they were provided only the bare necessities of life. Some of these men knew how to chisel the hard granite which almost defies the strong steel of today; others could decorate tombs with animated scenes which still today retain their original colors. All these men lived in wretched poverty, in little mud huts, and often had to besiege their overseers for bread. It appears to have been customary to give these workmen their monthly rations at the beginning of the month. Probably the supply was scanty at best, and the hungry laborers made heavy inroads upon it during the first few days. Ere twenty days had passed they were often entirely out of meal for bread, to say nothing of oil and other necessities. Only a threat to appeal to the king would at times bring the needed food. The workmen maintained that the officers withheld from them their dues, only to add it to their own personal stores--a claim that was no doubt well founded, and needs no better proof than the granting of more food to those who united and ceased to work until supplies were forthcoming. MARKETS. For an understanding of the old Egyptian market we can do no better than read the description worked out by Maspero from scenes still existing in the tombs: "We ... suddenly emerge into the full sunshine of a noisy little square, where a market is being held. Sheep, geese, goats, asses, large-horned oxen, scattered in unequal groups in the center, are awaiting a purchaser. Peasants, fishermen, small retail dealers, squat several deep in front of the houses, displaying before them, in great rush baskets or on low tables, loaves of pastry, fruit, vegetables, fish, meat raw or cooked, jewels, perfumes, stuffs, all the necessities and all the superfluities of Egyptian life. "The customers stroll past and leisurely examine the quality of the commodities offered for sale; each carries something of his own manufacture in his hand--a new tool, some shoes, a mat, or a small box full of rings of copper, silver, even of gold, of the weight of an _outnou_ (a little over two ounces), which he proposes to barter for the objects he requires. Two customers stop at the same moment in front of a fellah, who exhibits onions and wheat in front of a basket. Instead of money, the first holds two necklets of glass or of many colored earthenware, the second a round fan with a wooden handle, and one of those triangular ventilators which the cooks use to quicken the fire. 'Here is a beautiful necklet which will please you, this is what you want,' cries the former; whilst the latter urges, 'Here is a fan and a ventilator.' However, the fellah, quite overcome by this double attack, methodically proceeds to first seize a string of beads for closer examination. 'Let me see it, that I may fix a price.' The one asks too much, the other too little; from concession to concession they finally come to terms, and settle the number of onions or the weight of corn which the necklet or fan may be worth. Elsewhere it is a question of bartering a pair of sandals or a row of enamelled beads for some perfume. 'Here,' urges the buyer, 'is a very strong pair of shoes.' But the seller does not require shoes for the moment, so he offers one of his small pots in exchange for a row of beads. 'It is delicious when a few drops are poured out,' he explains, with a persuasive air. A woman thrusts under the nose of a kneeling individual two jars, probably containing some ointment of her own manufacture. 'Here,' she cries, 'it smells sweet enough to entice thee.' Behind this group two men are discussing the value of a packet of fish-hooks; a woman, box in hand, is a vendor of bracelets and necklets; another woman endeavors to obtain a reduction upon the price of a fish, which is being dressed before her. "When it is a question of a large animal, or of objects of considerable value, the accounts become intricate. For instance, Ahmosou sells a bull for a mat, five measures of honey, eleven measures of oil, and seven objects of different kinds. Now, imagine the calculations which must have been made before he succeeded in establishing such a complicated balance.... The mat was estimated at 25 outnou, the honey at 4, the oil at 10, and so on, the whole weighing 119 outnou, which is not too dear for a beast in good condition. This custom of payment by one of the usual metals is so convenient, and dispenses with so many calculations, that it has been adopted even for the minor transactions of daily life. The butcher, the baker, the corn-chandler, all the small tradesmen prefer exchange for metal, which is of small compass and does not spoil, to exchange for objects, often bulky in size, which is liable to deteriorate if kept too long in the house. A pair of ducks is worth a quarter of an outnou in copper; a fan, a quarter; a bronze razor is worth a whole outnou; a pickaxe, two; a goat, two; an ox-head, half an outnou in silver; a leather bottle of fine wine, three outnou of gold.... "Two or three commercial streets or bazaars open from the other side of the square, and the crowd hastens towards them when it leaves the market. Nearly their whole length is filled with stalls and shops, in which not only Egypt, but the majority of the oriental nations display their most varied productions. Beautifully ornamented stuffs from Syria, Phoenician or Hittite jewellery, scented woods and gums from Punt and the Holy Lands; lapis and embroideries from Babylon; coral, gold, iron, tin and amber from the far-distant countries beyond the seas, are found scattered pell-mell amongst the native fine linen, jewels, glass-work and furniture. The shop is usually independent from the rest of the house, and is let separately. It is a small, square room, often a simple shed, widely open in front, and closed every evening by means of wooden shutters, held in place by cross-bars with one or two mats, one or two low stools, some shelves fixed to the wall, which hold the goods; perhaps behind the shop are one or two carefully closed rooms where the most valuable objects are stored. Most of the tradesmen are also manufacturers. They have apprentices or workmen who work for them, and they join them during the intervals between their sales.... Artisans of the same trade have usually a natural tendency to collect together, to dwell side by side in the same place--blacksmiths with blacksmiths, curriers with curriers, goldsmiths with goldsmiths, forming a small city in which objects of the same kind only are found."[2] THE BUSINESS OF WAR. It would be misleading to speak of the profession of war in Egypt, for the Egyptians were essentially unwarlike. In early times they lived in their isolated valley, and the nature of the country on either side of them was not such as to tempt them to reach out to conquer it. When Nubian and nomadic tribes stole their cattle and otherwise molested their outlying districts, it was a comparatively simple matter to repulse them and reduce their number. Such raids were not regular military campaigns--far from it. They were expeditions of plunder and pillage. "I have carried off their women and captured their men; for I marched to their well; I slew their oxen, cut down their corn and set fire to it." Thus did one pharaoh record his victory on a monument raised to commemorate it. War with tribes of this strength was not likely to elevate the military standard of Egypt. Contact with the Hyksos during the Middle Empire taught the Nile dwellers more of warfare than they had previously known. By superior use of arms these Asiatics were able to take possession of the land, which they held until, from the struggling feudal nobles, a ruler came forth, strong enough to establish himself and collect an army. By adopting the method of battle practised by the enemy, the Hyksos were at last driven from the valley, and were pursued far beyond their former borders. The New Empire saw a brief period of military successes, but they rested on a slight foundation. The Egyptians were naturally poor soldiers. A strong and fearless general was able to rouse them to action, and by meeting detached tribes, they were able to overcome them. Then with confidence born of success, they sometimes made a brilliant progress to the civilization of Mesopotamia. Asiatics had not yet learned the real nature of those to whom they offered tribute. When once it was learned, tribute was no longer forthcoming, or indeed, it was sometimes demanded by the Asiatics of Egypt. Of the life of a private soldier, we know very little. During times of peace he was a tiller of the soil, or a common laborer. He thought no hardship greater than that which compelled him to enter the service of an army. He regarded war as the greatest evil and was disheartened by the slightest defeat. This was poor material to convert into effective soldiers and only when the Egyptian king received a large number of mercenaries into his ranks was his army particularly efficient. Many times several thousand soldiers were dispatched to escort workmen sent to obtain granite for the king's tomb. It is probable that their duties were less military than civil, for they no doubt were set to cutting out the granite from the quarry and assisted in transporting it to the building site. Of the equipment of the soldiers, it seems that in early times they carried simply a bow, wearing ostrich feathers on their heads as a token of victory. Later they carried shields and spears or battle axes. The order of battle in later times was to place chariots in the front and rear, with strong detachments of infantry between them. Ramses II. caused the whole story of his victory over the Hittite king at Kadesh to be painted in his temple. This is one of the best sources for military history during the New Empire. "We see how the soldiers of the 'first army of Amon' pitch their camp; the shields are placed side by side so as to construct a great four-cornered enclosure. One entrance only is left, and this is fortified with barricades and is defended by four divisions of infantry. In the middle of the camp a large square space indicates the position of the royal tent; the smaller tents of the officers surround it. The wide space between these tents and the outer enclosure serves as a camping-ground for the common soldiers and for the cattle, and here we see a series of life-like scenes, in the representation of which the Egyptian artist has evidently taken great delight. In one corner stands the rows of war-chariots; the horses are unharnessed and paw the ground contentedly, while they receive their food. Close by are posted the two-wheeled baggage cars; the oxen are looking round at the food, and do not appear to trouble themselves about the king's big tame lion, which has lain down near them wearied out. The most characteristic animal in the camp, however, is the donkey with his double panniers in which he has to carry the heavy sacks and jars of provisions. We meet with him here, there, and everywhere, in all manner of positions; for instance, he drops on his knee indignantly, as if he could carry his panniers no longer; he prances about when the soldiers want to lade him with the sacks; he lies down and brays, or he takes his ease rolling in the dust near his load. The boys, also, whose business it is to fasten up the donkeys to pegs, contribute to the general liveliness of the camp; in more than one place they have begun to quarrel about their work, and in their anger they beat each other with the pegs. Other boys belonging to the camp have to hang the baggage on posts, or to bring food for the soldiers, or to fetch the skins of water. These boys insist upon quarreling too; the skins are thrown down, and they use their fists freely. "In contrast to these scenes of daily life in the camp, we have on the other hand a representation of the wild confusion of battle. Close to the bank of the Orontes is the royal chariot, in which the king stands drawn up to his full height; behind and on each side the chariots of the Cheta[3] surround him; while many more are crossing the stream. The Egyptian chariots are indeed in the rear of the king, but in order to come to his help they would have first to force a way through the chariots of the Cheta. In the meantime, the Pharaoh fights by himself, and pours down such a frightful rain of arrows on the enemy that they fly in wild confusion. Hit by the arrows, their horses take fright, dash the chariots to pieces, and throw out the warriors, or they get loose and breaking through their own ranks, spread confusion everywhere. The dead and the wounded Cheta fall one upon another; those who escape the arrows of the king throw themselves into the Orontes and try to swim across to Kadesh, which is seen on the opposite bank surrounded by walls and trenches.... "Whilst the Pharaoh thus slays the Cheta, the prince of the latter people stands watching the battle from the corner between Kadesh and the Orontes in the midst of a mighty square of 8,000 foot soldiers of the elite of his troops; 'he does not come out to fight, because he is afraid before his Majesty, since he has seen his Majesty.' When he sees that the battle is lost, he says in admiration: 'He is as Sutech the glorious, Ba'al lives in his body.'"[4] FOOTNOTES: [1] Erman: Life in Ancient Egypt, 415. [2] Maspero: Ancient Egypt, 18. [3] That is, the Hittite king. [4] Erman: Life in Ancient Egypt, 529. CHAPTER XII. PRAISING LEARNING.[1] I have seen violence, I have seen violence, give thy heart after letters. I have seen one free from labors; consider there is not anything beyond letters. Love letters as thy mother. I make its beauty go in thy face. It is a greater possession than all besides. He who has commenced to avail himself is from his infancy a counsellor. He is sent to perform commissions. He who does not go is in sack-cloth. I have not seen a blacksmith on a commission, a founder who goes on an embassy. I have seen the blacksmith at his work at the mouth of the furnace. His fingers like things of crocodiles, he smells worse than the eggs of fishes. Every carpenter carrying tools,--is he more at rest than the laborer? I tell you the fisherman suffers more than any employment. Consider, is he not toiling on the river? he is mixed with the crocodiles. Should the clumps of papyrus diminish, then he is crying for help. If he has not been told that a crocodile is not there, terrors blind him. Consider, there is not an employment destitute of superior ones Except the scribe, who is first, for he knows letters; he is greater than they. Shouldst thou walk after great men, thou art to proceed with great knowledge. Do not say proud words. Be sealed in thyself alone. SCHOOLS AND EDUCATION. The Greek loved learning for itself alone. Not so the Egyptian. He, too, praised learning and considered no calling so worthy as that of the scribe. It was not because an education lifted one out of a sordid world to purer heights of knowledge, however, but rather, because the scribe was exempt from physical exertion, and if ambitious and persevering, might find all official doors open to him. A citizen wished his son to receive an education in order that he might occupy a position superior and less arduous than he could otherwise hope to fill. The lot of the laborer in Egypt was hard. Working constantly he could but provide himself and family with their scanty food and scanty clothing. At any time he might be pressed into public service and here he was fortunate if he received "one clean garment once a month," in addition to his monthly rations. Scribes were safe from physical toil. Quite naturally, it followed that a family would make every possible sacrifice that one of the children might be fitted for a life more safe and comfortable than the average. No higher ideal, no loftier motive seems to have actuated the parent than this: to qualify his son for an easy and lucrative position in life. There were elementary schools in Egypt in an early age. These were open to all children, who probably paid a small fee to the teacher. Gradually also, there grew up around the temples schools for the training of boys for the priesthood. As the empire grew and tribute was asked and received from many tribes and countries, many scribes--copyists and accountants--were needed in the service of the government, and schools were opened in connection with the court to educate boys to meet this new demand. Having spent a few years in the elementary school, the average boy was set to work to assist with the cattle, gather fuel, care for the ducks and geese about his home, and later was put to learn a trade--generally the trade of his father. However, if a boy showed special aptitude for learning or seemed more alert and clever than ordinary, he was sent to the school for scribes. Here the training was vigorous. The scribe would waken the youth, calling: "The books are already in the hands of thy companions, take hold of thy clothes and call for thy sandals!" Discipline was rigid indeed. An old adage held that a boy's ears are placed on his back--he hears if he is flogged. You will remember how complex were the Egyptian styles of writing--both hieroglyphic and demotic. Consequently to be able to read and write was considered a great accomplishment. Having mastered the art of writing, the youth was set next to copying. Many of the old copy books still exist, for it was customary to place them in the tomb with the deceased. Three pages a day was the usual lesson. "By the age of ten or twelve," says Maspero, "the child was ... apprenticed to a scribe in some office, who would undertake to make him a _learned scribe_. The boy accompanied his master to the office or work-yard, and there passed entire months copying letters, circulars, legal documents, or accounts, which he did not at first understand, but which he faithfully remembered.... The pupil copied and copied, the master inserted forgotten words, corrected the faults of spelling, and drew on the margin the signs or groups unskillfully traced. When the book was finished and the apprentice could write all the formulas from memory, the master entrusted him with the composition of a few letters, gradually increasing the number and adding new difficulties. As soon as he had fairly mastered the ordinary daily routine his education was ended, and an unimportant post was sought."[2] The Egyptians never investigated a subject until they reduced it to a science. A certain knowledge of geometry was necessary to determine boundaries of land, so valuable along the river that very small areas were sometimes in dispute. A knowledge sufficient for this purpose the Egyptians possessed, but they never delved deeper into the matter and became proficient in it. They studied astronomy and made charts of portions of the heavens. They studied arithmetic, but never, for example, wrote a fraction with a numerator larger than 1; instead of writing 2/3 or 5/8 they wrote: 1/3, 1/3; 1/2, 1/8. It has taken much patience and some ingenuity to understand problems found already worked out in the copy books. The subject of medicine was deemed important, but the ancient Egyptians knew nothing about it, generally speaking. Magic, drugs, herbs and incantations were used together. Believing that the welfare of the soul depended upon the preservation of the body, students never had the opportunity of dissecting bodies, either animal or human. They had no idea of the vital organs, and when they were successful in relieving a patient, it was when, like some old herb woman, they had learned the properties of healing plants and had watched their effects in many cases until they became skillful in administering them. When one was ill, it was thought that an evil spirit had entered his body. By magic words this must be driven out before recovery could be hoped for. Magic greatly aided medicine, according to this view. Here is a formula for a magic mixture: "Take two grains of incense, two fumigations, two jars of cedar oil, two jars of tas, two jars of wine, two jars of spirits of wine. Apply it at the place of thy heart. Thou art protected against the accidents of life; thou art protected against a violent death; thou art protected against fire; thou are not ruined on earth, and thou escapest in heaven." LITERATURE. Egypt seems to have been lacking in any considerable number of literary works. Records were kept in the temples; treatises on religion, magic and medicine have been found. The Book of the Dead was familiar to the living and indispensable to the departed. Some folk lore, hymns of worship and of victory, and a few stories, more or less complete, remain. Vast numbers of papyri have undoubtedly perished, but reference would probably be made in existing manuscripts to great productions, and these are lacking. Giving all credit to what has been recovered and allowing for the destruction of time, the fact remains that in literature Egypt was not productive. There are no literary remains antedating the Middle Empire; however, we have traces of folk songs and of myths which were earlier known. The old belief that the Egyptians had no secular literature was mistaken. Our greatest sources of knowledge regarding their literature have been the tombs and temples, and these were not places in which a people would have chosen to preserve its lighter literature. It is probable that just as the workmen sing today, while they work along the Nile, so too they chanted in earliest times. Under the most trying conditions in Egypt, laborers sang as they worked. The scribes did not think it worthy of their dignity to chronicle folk songs. Probably little thought was ever given to them. Occasionally a few lines are quoted beneath some tomb pictures to make it more vivid. "The herdsman wading in the mud as he drives his sheep over the fields from which the flood has not yet entirely retreated, says to his flock: 'In the water walks your shepherd with the fishes; with the catfish talketh he; with the fish he changeth greeting.' Another song accompanied the work equivalent to threshing. The ancient Egyptians, like the Israelites, did not use flails, but after scattering the corn on the threshing-floor, they drove oxen over it to tread out the grain. Then was sung with variations: 'Thresh, oh ye oxen! Thresh for yourselves! Oh ye oxen thresh for yourselves! Thresh straw for your fodder, thresh grain for your master. Take ye no rest, cool is the air this day.'"[3] Mythological tales grew out of an attempt to explain natural phenomena--the rising or setting sun, the struggle between light and darkness. All phenomena which attracted sufficient attention furnished material for myths. It has been observed for instance, that certain stars never set, whereas others after performing their courses sank below the horizon. The Egyptians expressed this by the myth of the Crocodile of the West, which fed upon the setting stars. "The sunrise and sunset, alternation of day and night, the solar drama in all its details, furnished the subject of Egyptian mythology. In other countries the sun-god rode in a chariot; in Egypt he rode in a boat. Hence the sky is considered an expanse of water, the Nile being the earthly representative. Seb is the earth, Nut the heaven. Osiris their son, is the sun and is wedded to Isis, the dawn. From their union sprang Horus, the Sun in his full strength. Set the destroyer, is another child of Seb and Nut. He is darkness and weds Nephthys, the Sunset. The contest between Seb and Osiris is the constant subject of mythological story." Traces of these early folk songs and early myths survived in Egyptian literature. The literature of the Middle Empire shows an eager interest in travel. Of the few books that remain from this period several relate adventures in distant parts. Most of the remaining literature belongs to the New Empire. Lyrical and didactic poems, stories, records and documents were then produced in considerable number. It would appear that the Egyptians never wrote a history of their country. Accounts, more or less in detail, cover several reigns, but nothing like a chronological treatise of their development was apparently undertaken. The New Empire knew far less of the Old Empire than we know today. In the realm of religious writing, the Book of the Dead was most important. Its negative confession to be made before the judges of the dead would imply a high degree of morality, but the truth was that it came into being in an early stage when words were thought identical with the thing itself. We find all peoples passing through a period when great importance was given the spoken word. "I have not been idle; I have not been intoxicated; I have not told secrets; I have not told falsehoods; I have not defrauded; I have not slandered; I have not caused tears; I have given food to the hungry; drink to the thirsty, and clothes to the naked." That confession was probably formulated in this early period when such stress was given to the spoken word. Later, when people understood the difference between the name and the thing itself the confession remained the same, because all things pertaining to religion are last to change. The _Precepts of Ptah-hotep_, prince of the Fifth dynasty, is one of the oldest known books in the world. It is now in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris and is made up of what would be equivalent to twenty printed pages of precepts written to admonish the young. The following indicate their nature: "Be not arrogant because of that which thou knowest, no artist being in possession of the perfection to which he should aspire." "If thou hast become great after having been little, harden not thy heart; thou art only the steward of the good things of God." "Let thy face be cheerful as long as thou livest; hast any one come out of the coffin after having once entered it?" Before leaving this brief consideration of Egyptian writing, we should understand what supplied the writing material of Egypt. The papyrus reeds have frequently been mentioned with no explanation of their use. From this word papyrus has been derived our word _paper_. The reeds grew thick along the sides of streams. Their stems were three cornered and about three inches wide at the base. By peeling off the outer tough green covering, a white pith was obtained. Splitting it and laying strips together, the edges lapping, and upon a surface so formed placing a second layer running the other way, sprinkling the whole with the muddy Nile water, and putting it all under a press made up the process of manufacturing a composition which could be cut into thin sheets. These afforded all the writing material known until the seventh century after Christ, when prepared skins, or parchment, were sometimes substituted. [Illustration: EGYPTIAN SCRIBES] FOOTNOTES: [1] From inscription on a tomb; trans. in "Dwellers on the Nile." [2] Maspero: Ancient Egypt, 9. [3] Popular Literature of Ancient Egypt. Wiedermann. CHAPTER XIII. RELIGION OF ANCIENT EGYPT. The life of the ancient Egyptians was in a great measure controlled by their religious beliefs. In prehistoric times, as has already been explained, each nome, or province, was independent, and was the home of some tribe or tribes. Just as we find the American Indian worshipping the stick that was powerful enough to throw him in the forest, so these primitive people worshipped animals and trees. Each animate object was conceived as possessing a soul or spirit, and this spirit accounted for the qualities or characteristics of the object--were they good or ill. A lion possessed savage tendencies--hence they would worship him and propitiate his spirit, and their attitude was the same toward the crocodile, the ram, the elephant, and many other animals. The date-palm brought them great blessings--therefore they would worship the tree and insure a continuance of these blessings. As time went on, they grew to worship gods, and to the gods these trees and animals, worshipped earlier on their own account, were thought sacred. Each village and town had its own local deity and special objects of worship, while the nome as a whole recognized gods of a more general character. In this way, each province of Upper Egypt--which was older in civilization than the Delta--and various portions of Lower Egypt, developed religions complete and independent of one another. After many hundred years, when all Egypt was united under one government and one king, the priests attempted to comprise these various beliefs into a common faith, to recognize the principal gods of all the nomes in the temples, and to evolve one religious system from the many local systems. This they never succeeded in fully accomplishing. They included in their lists some seventy deities, and harmonized some features of worship, but each locality clung to its ancient deity and several different religions can be traced throughout Egyptian history. Like most primitive people, the Egyptians worshipped the sun. This god revealed himself in many forms, but chiefly as Horus, represented by a falcon, and Re or Ra, represented by the Scarabaeus. Osiris ruled in the kingdom of the dead, and he was thought to be just and good. With his wife, Isis, and his son, Horus, he was worshipped throughout the land, while everywhere Set was regarded as the principle of Evil. Qeb was the god of Earth and Nut, his wife, the queen of the heavens, which in this connection signifies the skies. Their children were Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nebthet (Nephthys). Mat was the goddess of truth and justice. One finds similarities between some of these divinities and the divinities of the Greeks--as for example, Nut reminds one of Hera, and Set was feared as much as Pluto; but it is dangerous to make these comparisons, for the religious conceptions of the two nations were fundamentally different. The Egyptians usually represented their deities with human bodies and the heads of the animal sacred to each. So, for example, Horus always has the head of a sparrow-hawk; Thot, that of an Ibis, and so on. The prominent feature of this religion was the veneration of animals. It was believed that sometimes the god-spirit took up his abode within certain animals, and for this reason certain animals were regarded as sacred and were therefore, objects of worship. Ptah was the god of Memphis. He, it was believed, took the form of the Apis-bull, hence this bull was regarded as sacred. "The Apis bull dwelt in a temple of his own near the city, had his train of attendant priests, his meals of the choicest food, his grooms and currycombers who kept his coat clean and beautiful, his chamberlains who made up his bed, his cup-bearers who brought his water, and on certain days was led in a festive procession through the main streets of the town, so that the inhabitants might see him, and come forth from their dwellings and make obeisance. When he died he was carefully embalmed, and deposited, together with magnificent jewels and statuettes and vases, in a polished granite sarcophagus, cut out of a single block, and weighing between sixty and seventy tons. The cost of an Apis funeral amounted sometimes, as we are told, to as much as $100,000. Near Memphis the number of Apis bulls buried in this fashion was found to be sixty-four."[1] In another locality the crocodile was the object of adoration, because, as in the case of the Apis bull, it was believed that some god dwelt within it. "The crocodile was principally worshipped about Lake Moeris. A chosen number of these animals were kept in the temples, where they were given elegant apartments and treated to every luxury at public expense. Let us imagine a crocodile, fresh from a warm, sumptuous bath, anointed with the most precious ointments and perfumed with fragrant odors; its head and neck glittering with jeweled earrings and necklace, and its feet with bracelets wallowing on a rich and costly carpet to receive the worship of intelligent human beings! Its death was mourned as a public calamity; its body, wrapped in linen, was carried to the embalmers, attended by a train of people weeping and beating their breasts in grief; then having been expensively embalmed and bandaged in gaily colored mummy cloths, amid imposing ceremonies it was laid away in its rock sepulchre." For these absurdities the Egyptians were ridiculed by other nations of their own times. Their adoration of animals led to most degrading excesses. The cat was considered sacred throughout the land, and punishment of death was meted out to persons injuring one. WORSHIP OF THE NILE. HYMN TO THE NILE. Hail to thee O Nile! Thou shewest thyself in this land Coming in peace, giving life to Egypt; O Ammon (thou) leadest night into day, A leading that rejoices the heart! Overflowing the gardens created by Ra. Giving life to all animals; Watering the lands without ceasing, The way of heaven descending, Lover of food, bestower of corn, Giving light to every home, O Ptah! Bringer of food! Great Lord of provisions, Creator of all good things! Lord of terrors and of choicest joys! All are combined in him. He produceth grass for the oxen, Providing victims for every god. The choice incense is that which he supplies. Lord in both regions, He filleth the granaries, enricheth the storehouses, He careth for the state of the poor. Thou shinest in the city of the King; Then the householders are satiated with good things, The poor man laughs at the lotus. All things are perfectly ordered. Every kind of herb for thy children, If food should fail, All enjoyment is cast on the ground, The land falls in weariness. O inundation of Nile, offerings are made to thee: Oxen are slain to thee: Great festivals are kept for thee; Fowls of the field are caught for thee, Pure flowers are offered to thee. Offerings are made to every god As they are made unto the Nile. Incense ascends unto heaven, Oxen, bulls, fowls are burnt! Nile makes for himself chasms in the South; Unknown is his name in heaven, He doth not manifest his forms, Vain are all representations! Shine forth, shine forth, O Nile, shine forth Giving life to his oxen by the pastures, Giving life to men by his oxen, Shine forth in glory, O Nile! More natural seems to us the worship of the Nile. There was a certain beauty which we today can still appreciate in the festivals celebrated each year on the banks of the rising water--which alone brought happiness and prosperity to all. Hapi was the god of the Nile and he was worshipped alike throughout Upper and Lower Egypt. Hymns were chanted to him, as it was believed he might be importuned to rise high enough to insure sufficient water, while if neglected, only a partial flood might occur. One of these hymns was something like this: Hail to thee, Hapi Who descendeth upon earth And giveth life unto Egypt. Thou who art hidden in the unknown Whose waters spread upon the fields Which the sun-god hath created; And giveth life to all who are athirst. Thou, the Creator of corn, The Maker of barley---- Do thy waters cease to flow, Then are all mankind in misery; When thou wanest in heaven The gods and all living things perish. It would be useless for us to attempt to become familiar with all the Egyptian divinities. In the age when people conceived and worshipped them, the gods of a given locality were often unknown in a neighboring city, and the animals held to be sacred in one town might be eaten as food in another. In addition to all their deities, ancestors were worshipped by the Egyptians, and an altar was erected to the departed in every home. It was believed that the soul left the body after death in the form of a bird (ba), dwelled apart from the body, but would often return to it for nourishment and earthly comforts. In early days, therefore, food in great abundance was placed in the tomb, or the priests were paid to provide daily food for the deceased. Later it was felt that the ka--or that portion of the dead which required nourishment--was a mere shadow, a ghost, a phantom, and so pictures of things to eat would satisfy as well as the articles themselves. Carrying out this idea, the Egyptians pictured upon tomb walls all stages of growing grain, from the time the seed dropped upon the mellow soil until the ground flour was served in loaves for the feast; meat was shown, in all its forms: from the ox, feeding in the pasture, to the juicy roasts, made ready for the table. Such scenes as these adorned the interior chambers of the tomb; upon them, it was believed, the phantom-like ka might look and be appeased. In a recently excavated tomb, liquid honey was discovered. Meats too, encased for at least 3,000 years, for the sustenance of the deceased, were here, while a lengthy menu covered a wall, stating the amount of food at the disposal of the departed. 5,006 geese, so it read, were at his command, but the number 5,006 was simply written beneath one pictured goose! Beds, chairs, toilet articles, chariots, and countless other objects were left in the tomb of the well-to-do Egyptian, but were placed apart from the mummy, which was sealed up in a private apartment by itself, while a statue or image of the deceased was left near the belongings. It was believed that at death the ba--or soul--went on a long journey to the land where Osiris reigned, and so great were the dangers of the way that many amulets and charms were laid by the departed to assist him in passing the obstacles of the road he must needs encounter. He who arrived at last at the land of Peace, where the joys of life abided without the sorrows of earth, came into the presence of Osiris. Here he made a negative confession, similar to the following: "Hail unto you, ye lords of Truth! hail to thee, great god, lord of Truth and Justice! I have not committed iniquity against men! I have not oppressed the poor! I have not laid labor upon any free man beyond that which he wrought for himself! I have not starved any man! I have not caused any to weep!... There is no crime against me in this land of the Double Truth!" [Illustration: DROMOS AND SECOND PYLON, TEMPLE OF KARNAK.] These and many more denials of sin were made and it sometimes happened that the confession was inscribed on one wall of a tomb while elsewhere were shown captives taken in war, slaves oppressed by labor, and other incidents in the earthly career of the departed which lead us to infer that the gods were supposed to be too mighty to take notice of most remarkable contradictions. After the confession of the candidate for admission to the realm of Osiris, his good and evil deeds were weighed in a balance and if his virtues outweighed his failings, he was admitted to the land of the departed, a counterpart of his own Egypt. A vast priesthood was required to preside over a religious system so complex as that of Egypt and the priests gained great influence over the people. The reason for this is apparent when we consider the prevailing ideas of the country. The body of the dead must be preserved, for upon its preservation depended the fate of the soul. To this end the body must be properly embalmed and entombed. The embalmers were under the control and supervision of the priests. Again, the soul of the departed must be assisted upon its perilous journey to Osiris by prayers said over each finger and each portion of the body. These prayers could be offered only by the priests themselves. Such a condition as this gave the priesthood of Egypt an opportunity to make itself supreme in the land, and this opportunity it was quick to seize upon. TEMPLES. Many questions concerning Egyptian worship still remain unanswered. What part did the citizen take in the worship of his national gods? What effect did the worship of these gods have upon his life? We do not know--we cannot tell. It appears that his ancestral gods, worshipped at an altar in his own house, where of first importance. Some understanding of the temples and temple ceremonies cannot fail to throw light upon this old religion. Several of the old ruined temples may be seen today, standing like forest trees which have outlived their neighbors. There is not in all Egypt a temple perfectly preserved; but by locating here an avenue of approach, there, a gateway, finding courts in other places, and halls and chapels, one comes at length to piece the whole together and to get some conception of the original entirety of the ancient temple. In Greece the people built temples to their gods. In Egypt the king built them. Offerings were brought to the shrines of the Greek gods by every citizen in the land. In Egypt most of the gifts came from the king. To be sure there were special offerings made by all on feast days, but the king and the priests were alone responsible for the Egyptian temples; and while throngs accompanied processions thither on days of sacred festival, there is nothing to show that they had any part in the ceremonies. The general plan of the temple was this: an avenue of approach--varying in length, and lined usually on either side by rows of sphinxes--led to a gateway, guarded by towers. In the Old Empire these towers served for defense, and seem later to have been preserved for decorative purposes. The gate admitted one to a court, open to the sky and outlined by pillars. In direct line with the gateway was the entrance to a large hall, supported by columns and lighted by small openings under the roof. Within this hall were celebrated the sacred festivals. At the end of the hall a small chapel was built which contained an image of the god of the temple. Sometimes two other chapels were placed, one on each side of this, and contained images of the god's wife and son, or his wife and daughter. The images sometimes represented the animal sacred to the god, or, again, would have a human body and merely the head of the sacred animal or bird. Later an image of the god himself was attempted. The tiny room or cell wherein these were kept was called the Holy of Holies. Before the door were inscribed these words: Four times must he purify himself who enters here. Some temples were much more elaborate and complex than the simple one just described. The doors of these chapels were always left sealed, and whenever they were opened, a clay seal was affixed. Having purified himself, the priest would fill the hall with the smoke of incense, break the seal, open the door and fall down, offering incense and kissing the ground before the image. Then a hymn of praise was probably sung. RISE OF THE NILE. "King and Father, gift and giver, God revealed in form of river, Issuing perfect and sublime, From the fountain-head of time; "Whom eternal mystery shroudeth, Unapproached, untraced, unknown; Whom the Lord of heaven encloudeth With the curtains of his throne; "From the throne of heaven descending, Glory, power, and goodness blending, Grant us, ere the daylight dies, Token of thy rapid rise." Ha, it cometh! Furrowing, flashing, Red blood rushing o'er brown breast; Peaks and ridges, and dome dashing Foam on foam, crest on crest! But the time of times for wonder Is when ruddy sun goes under; And the dust throws, half afraid, Silver shuttles of long shade. Opens then a scene, the fairest Ever burst on human view; Once behold, and then comparest Nothing in the world thereto. Every skiff a big ship seemeth, Every bush with tall wings clad; Every man his good brain deemeth The only brain that is not mad. 'Tis the signal Thebes hath waited, Libyan Thebes, the hundred-gated; Rouse and robe thee, River-priest For thy dedication feast! --Blackmore: Florilla. RELIGIOUS CEREMONIES. The Egyptian believed that his god had needs similar to those he himself experienced. Consequently each day the god needed to be clothed and fed. "The priest laid his hands on him (the image of the god), he took off the old rouge and his former clothes, all of course with the necessary formulae. He then dressed the god in the robe called the Nems, saying: 'Come white dress! come white dress! come white eye of Horus, which proceeds from the town of Nechebt. The gods dress themselves with thee in thy name _Dress_, and the gods adorn themselves with thee in thy name _Adornment_.' The priest then dressed the god in the _great dress_, rouged him, and presented him with his insignia: the sceptre, the staff of ruler, and the whip, the bracelets and anklets, as well as the two feathers which he wore on his head, because 'he has triumphed over his enemies, and is more splendid than gods or spirits.' The god required further a collarette and an amulet, two red, two green, and two white bands; when these had been presented to him the priest might then leave the chapel."[2] Food and drink must needs be placed daily on his table. Lists of offerings made by the Ramesides have come down to us. One records offerings in the temple as follows: each day were received 3,220 loaves of bread, 24 cakes, 144 jugs of beer, 32 geese, besides honey, flowers and incense. This food was probably used to feed the corps of assistants around the temple--the priests, servants and laborers. On feast days the people sent offerings. A large number of loaves of bread are recorded on certain days; these probably came from the poorer people. Again, an overwhelming number of cakes and jugs of wine would indicate offerings from the wealthy. On feast days the king would himself perform part of the ceremonies, and as a king he would worship himself as a god. It sometimes seems as though the offerings and the ceremonies were made more to do honor to the king than to the god. When Ramses called for plans for a new grotto temple and heard the reports of his architects, an inscription tells us that he answered them after this fashion: "The temple we have in mind already lies hidden by the gods in yonder mountain. You have but to clear away the waste material and your work is done. See to it, however, that the deities Ra and Isis and Ptah and I are all represented in becoming size on the facade as guardians--two on each side of the pylon. And mark you: see that no god has choice of position over the king; let the likeness and the form of them all be mine. Osiris must man the eight piers which support the roof, and we four be seated in the sanctuary, side by side." Many buildings surrounded the temple, and the whole was enclosed by a wall. Various buildings were needed in order that all the functions of the temple could be performed. On one side was a court where the animals and birds intended for sacrifice were prepared. To the rear was a kitchen. The priests often received private revenues for providing food for the departed. This food as a rule was prepared in the kitchens of the temple. Dwellings for the priests, and the servants, store houses, granaries, the treasure house, gardens and an artificial lake lay within the temple wall. In the sacred lake the priests bathed, and in it they washed the vessels pertaining to the sanctuary. The priestly duties were manifold. Certain priests poured out drink offerings; others recited from holy books; others kept the annals of the temples. Their incomes were paid in kind--like all other obligations of the time. So many loaves of bread, so many jugs of wine, beer and cakes made up their annual revenue. While we may gain some feeble idea of these places of worship, built to do honor to the god--and to the king,--any description of them must necessarily be inadequate. "We may agree that neither the boldest imagination nor the most exact study, can enable us to form an adequate conception of the splendors of an Egyptian temple in its perfect state. The vast space it occupied; its lofty gateways; the long avenues of sphinxes; the glittering obelisks and the lifelike expressions of the monstrous statues, form a combination of the most imposing architectural grandeur. The æsthetic qualities of these structures cannot briefly be summed up. As we ponder them we shall be willing to acknowledge, for we shall discover, the exceptional constructive power of the ancient architects; we shall see how closely they followed Nature, and at times drew as well upon foreign art, though always preserving their own principles of form. There is always one grand imaginative vein running through all their work--which expresses the principal idea of their faith--_imperishability_. "The ancient Egyptians copied no one. Their art sprang from their surroundings. What they have left continues to baffle us in many ways. We may understand perspective better than they did; we are their superiors in the use of light and shadow. We dare to build higher, and we are willing to trust thousands of lives to walls which would be wrecked if a single Egyptian column should fall against them; but we do not yet understand how they lifted their great masses to such lofty places, nor do we know where their architects studied art."[3] Little has thus far been said of the sphinxes which ordinarily flanked the avenues leading up to these temples. These imaginary creatures were carved in stone, and having the body of a lion, had either the head of a ram or a human head. When the _Sphinx_ is mentioned reference is usually made to the huge stone monument lying near the Great Pyramid. This was a natural rock, to which was given, more or less accurately, the external appearance of that mythological animal. The head was sculptured; the body was sculptured; the body was formed of the rock itself, filled out where necessary, by rather clumsy masonry of limestone. The total height of the Sphinx is 65 feet. The ear measures 6 feet 5 inches; the nose, 5 feet 10 inches; the mouth, 7 feet 8 inches. Its ponderous human face, grave in its eternal repose, rising in the midst of desert wastes, has been a great puzzle to people for thousands of years. It was probably hewn out of the rock as a symbol of the power of some Pharaoh of the Pyramid-age. The sphinxes which lined approaches to the temples were of course much smaller than this, and were carved merely for decorative purposes. An Egyptian god was given the image of the sphinx, and whether it was in honor of him, or merely because the symbol was a favorite one, that so many of these mystic animals were used, is not known. A final word regarding the faith which prompted the building of the Egyptian temples should perhaps be added. We hear much about the absurd and corrupt side of the Egyptian religion, but few have taken the trouble to acquaint themselves with its brighter side. Our ideas on the subject have been determined largely by the writings of the Greeks and Romans who knew only the last decadent period of Egyptian history. The decipherment of the hieroglyphs has enabled us to study the contemporary documents and inscriptions, and as a result the religious ideas developed by the Egyptians have not only aroused our deepest interest, but are commanding our admiration. Like all other peoples in the same stage of culture, the primitive Egyptians feared and tried to render harmless, and perchance useful, the powers of nature, always mysterious because not understood. Thus arose the worship of natural phenomena, plants, animals and the dead. If we remember that among our own ignorant masses many of the religious ideas of our primitive forefathers survive in what we call superstition, we will not judge the common people of Egypt for holding fast to the beliefs of their ancestors, for it is true that they did so all through Egypt's long history. Hence the ridicule of the Greeks. But there is another side to the picture. No people has ever developed a culture like that of the Egyptians without also reaching a purer conception of God. Way back in the Fifth dynasty we find the beginnings of a monotheistic tendency in the religion of Egypt. Indeed even earlier the priests of Heliopolis had taught the idea of the unity of the deity who manifested himself in the creative energy of the Sun. The Pharaohs of the Fifth dynasty took up the cult of Re (or Ra) as this god was called, raising mighty obelisks on the edge of the desert back of Memphis, before which stood altars of alabaster under the open sky: for this god could not be represented by any image and consequently needed no temple, no house of god. As time went on this idea of the unity of the deity--largely, it is true, as a "mystery" understood only by the priests and other "initiated" ones, spread over the whole of Egypt. As a result the local deities, no matter what their origin, came to be regarded as manifestations of the one god Re, whose name was added to those of the local gods. We are all familiar with Amon of Thebes. This god, whose origin is very obscure, was of course a local deity, and when Thebes became the capital of the Empire, was raised to the kingship of all the gods. But it will be observed that to do this, the priests felt it necessary to identify him with Re and to speak of him henceforth not as Amon, but as Amon-Re. But this was not a step forward. The priests of Re had taught that god is one and might be worshiped anywhere. It was not even necessary to have temples. When, however, such a local divinity as Amon of Thebes was identified with Re, as one of this god's manifestations, he received all the attributes of the one god, but at the same time remained god of Thebes and the priests never raised any theological objections when the Pharaohs erected the mighty temples of that city for the glory of their god and the perpetuation of their own deeds. Indeed the Pharaohs regarded themselves as his viceroys on earth. The attempted "reform" of Amen-hotep IV., which, as we saw, was so disastrous for his line, was largely an attempt to restore the purer worship of the Sun-god, not as Re but as Aton. But the priests of Amon-Re, who had already looked with disfavor, which they dared not express, upon the claims of the earlier Pharaohs of the Eighteenth dynasty--Amen-hotep III. during his lifetime had gone so far as to build a temple in which he worshipped his own _ka_, broke with Amen-hotep IV., were persecuted by him after he had removed to his new city, but in the end were able to overthrow the dynasty and place upon the throne kings who would recognize them as the intermediaries between god and man. In the end they themselves seized the throne--and it was not long before Egyptian history was at an end. "God is the Eternal One. He is eternal and infinite; and endureth forever and ever. He hath endured for countless ages and He shall endure to all eternity. "No man knoweth how to know Him. His name remaineth hidden. His name, is a mystery unto His children. His names are innumerable; they are manifold and none knoweth their number." --_Trans. from Brugsch; quoted in Budge, Egyptian Religion._ FOOTNOTES: [1] See Mariette's Monuments of Upper Egypt. [2] Ancient Egypt, 274. [3] Edward Wilson, Scribner, Oct. '88. CHAPTER XIV. ART AND DECORATION. During the Old Empire certain rules regulating drawing were invented which were adhered to throughout the history of Egypt. The stiff, unnatural appearance of all Egyptian figures was due to strict observance of these rules, which became binding upon artists and prevented any perfection of art in the valley of the Nile. Egyptian painting consisted of mere outline sketching. The human body was first entirely drawn; then clothing was added. The artists knew no more of anatomy than did the physicians. They did not even follow each his own ideas, but there was _one_ established way of drawing the head, the arms, the limbs, and all felt obliged to hold to this conventional method. The extended arms show no elbows, the fingers no joints. An endeavor to draw the body in profile resulted in portions of it facing the spectator, other parts in profile, and still other sharing the characteristics of both positions. For many years the human figure, animals and birds could only extend the foot or arm--in case of a person--farthest away from the spectator, and each figure must be shown with the right side to the front. In course of time artists drew people of the lower classes with more freedom, but it would have been deemed disrespectful to have portrayed those of high rank in any but the conventional positions. Thus, in a picture of a noble being served by a slave, the latter might be drawn in a natural pose, while the noble still retained the stiff, grotesque position of early times. Again, the king was given colossal proportions, to indicate his power and strength, while children may be distinguished only by their tiny forms. Side by side with this conventional school of art there developed a realistic school that exercised greater freedom with the human body. Tomb pictures remain wherein persons are shown with their backs to the spectator, and in many positions not permissible according to established rules. However, these paintings are invariably in the tombs of the lower classes. It would not have been deemed fitting that such freedom be used in decorating the tombs of nobles, or of persons of high social standing. Artists of this school seem to have been in disfavor in ancient Egypt. To be sure, in the matter of portraying scenes where captives, slaves or the humble people were gathered, artists of the conventional school drew these with considerable degree of freedom and ease. In the same picture the king, or noble, or high official was represented according to the established custom. All Egyptian drawing of human figures, birds and animals is plain, and it is possible for any one today to read the stories of long series of tomb pictures--studying them out, one by one. However, when it came to representing a temple, a house, or a garden, the desire to show every portion of it resulted in some confusion. The artist was in doubt as to how to portray it all. "In treating such an important and complex object he wished if possible to show every part of it; he therefore did not draw the house from the front nor from the side, but made a picture of both sides together, and when the house had an upper story with three chambers, he put these three rooms close by also. He considered his duty accomplished when he had placed all the details before the spectator, but he did not care whether the spectator understood how these details fitted together. "We have to face another difficulty in order to comprehend these pictures; the Egyptian artist has no sense of proportion between the different parts of the representation. If, for instance, the king is standing in one of the rooms of the building in question, our artist would, regardless of truth, draw that room ten times as large as all the others together, and even in one picture he frequently changes his standard of measurement."[1] All pictures were painted, some only in outline, some entirely. The interiors of tombs were made to assume a gay appearance since tomb colors were always bright. Red, the color of the sun, and blue, the sky reflected in the Nile, were thought to be sacred. Sculpture served two needs: it furnished statues of the dead for relatives to worship, and statues of the kings and gods, with the animals sacred to each, for the ornamentation of the temples. Thus the scope of the sculptor was limited in the beginning. Furthermore, the proportion, form, color and expression of every statue was fixed by laws prescribed by the priests. The aim of the artist was in every case to show absolute repose. When we realize that many of the surviving monuments were chiseled from granite as hard as iron, upon which the artist could work with only a small metal chisel, we view them as monuments of the artist's untiring patience, as well as of kingly greatness and statues of the gods. These artists also knew how to make good use of poor material. In soft limestone their task was easier; scenes were frequently cut in this, covered with stucco and then painted. Inexpensive statues were often made in this way. Art seems at first to have taken rapid strides in Egypt, but after reaching a certain point, it was prevented by established laws, enforced by the priesthood, from going farther. So it deteriorated. Unfortunately we know little of the artists who wrought these works and nothing of the training they received. Decorative art, as developed by the dwellers on the Nile, has perhaps greater interest for the modern artist than their paintings or statuary. The modern conventional school of decorative art finds much to copy and adapt from patterns which survive in Egypt. In the first place, the hieroglyphics were in themselves decorative. They were often used as friezes, and never do we find them cut across figures, as was the case in Assyria. Among designs commonly called geometrical, but in the beginning the representation of something familiar, the zigzag line was popular. A double zigzag formed little squares, and by various arrangements, many combinations were possible. The scroll was also a favorite decoration. There was an old legend to the effect that the spiral represented the wanderings of the soul, but just what connection existed between the two--if indeed there had ever been one--was lost in distant ages. Coils, hooks, links and endless scrolls were used, and the fret patterns were but modifications of the spiral. The checkered design was originally worked out by the shepherds and herdsmen who wove baskets and mats of rushes. The source of one of the earliest imitations was the feather, with its variety of forms. Only a few flowers were copied. The lotus, papyrus, daisy, convolvulus, vine and palm were the only ones used to any great extent. By far the most popular of these was the lotus. This water lily has been worshipped in many countries. The Egyptians did not regard it as a national flower--by no means. It was considered the emblem of immortality. "The lotus is the symbol of 'life,' ... of resurrection. Bouquets of it were presented to guests at funerals. It was sometimes called the symbol of the Sun. 'The solar significance of the lotus is elementary and most important. A text reads: The Sun, which was from the beginning, rises like a hawk from the midst of its lotus bed. When the doors of its leaves open in sapphire-colored brilliancy, it has divided the night from the day.' "A confessional chapter of the Book of the Dead closes with the words: I am a pure lotus, issue of the field of the Sun.... The Egyptian idea of the resurrection and of a future life was connected with a worship of the creative and reproductive forces of nature, which were conceived and worshipped as solar in character and origin. It is the supposed passage of the sun at night through a lower world, during its return to the dawn of a following day which makes Osiris--the Sun at night--the God of the lower world and of the dead, hence himself represented as a mummy. As the God of the resurrection, his special and emphatic character, he represents the creative energy of the Sun-god. Hence, the lotus as attribute of Osiris is at once a symbol of the sun, of the resurrection, and of creative forces and power. Since the doctrine of a future life and a belief in a spirit world were ever present to the Egyptian mind, we cannot too strongly insist on the funeral symbolism of the lotus."[2] This brief explanation of the lotus' significance given by one who has made a detailed study of this particular Egyptian symbol, helps us to understand its universal use. It was pictured with the gods, given as offerings to them, employed as capitals for columns, and had many significant uses. It has been suggested that the bright yellow ovary stigmas of this water-lily, with its rayed appearance, might have been thought a symbol of the sun. As time went on, the flower developed into a monstrosity, and became so conventionalized that it has been difficult in many cases to determine what the artist intended to represent. The grape vine, with its fruit, was a popular decoration. Ceilings were often painted golden yellow, with vine leaves and bunches of grapes hanging down. In glazed work grapes, convolvulus and thistle were used. Golden stars on a blue-black background found favor as a ceiling decoration. In prehistoric times, ideas of ornamentation were often gained in curious ways. Jars of pottery were sometimes tied with a string to support them while drying. The string naturally left an impression in the clay. This suggested the notion of twisting the string and so obtaining not only an impression but a pattern. From this very illustration we may realize how completely many origins of decoration have been lost in obscurity. [Illustration: CEILING DECORATION.] FOOTNOTES: [1] Erman: Life in Ancient Egypt, 174. [2] Goodyear: Grammar of the Lotus. CHAPTER XV. TOMBS AND BURIAL CUSTOMS. We have seen in a former chapter that the Egyptians believed one to be composed of three parts: his earthly body, his soul, or ba, and his ka, the ghostlike phantom that grew up with him in life and after death experienced the same needs that he had known while living. All three parts were essential to the existence of any one of them. On this account the Egyptians made every effort to perpetuate the body and to provide necessities for the ka, lest the soul should wither up and be no more. Granting the truth of these beliefs, all that the Nile dwellers did in consequence of a faith in them was logical and natural. When an Egyptian was ill, a physician and one skilled in magic were summoned. They did what they could to restore him. When their efforts failed, they usually discovered that from his birth it had been decreed that he would meet with an early death, and in this ingenious way they maintained their influence unimpaired. Upon the death of a relative, all the women of the house rushed into the street with disheveled hair, shouting loud lamentations. In this way their loss was made public. Then they returned and the body was sent to the embalmer. Three methods of embalming were commonly employed. The most costly method involved seventy days and absorbed perhaps the total income of the year, unless the family was wealthy. The second was less costly and required less time; finally there was a comparatively inexpensive method which had to satisfy the poor. The vital organs and those parts of the body hardest to preserve were removed. This was strictly necessary according to later Egyptian ideas, yet so dreadful did they regard any mutilation of the body that the men who performed this task were intensely hated and considered as unclean. They were not allowed to mingle with other classes, nor could one rise out of his class. When they had done their work, they were stoned away from the house. The body was now put into a bath of chemicals to remain for many days. When at last it was taken out, it was filled with linen and sweet smelling powders and made to look as lifelike as possible. Then it was wrapped in linen bands, the quality of the linen used depending upon the purse of the family. "Each separate limb of the deceased was dedicated to a particular divinity by the aid of holy oils, charms and sentences; a specially prepared cloth was wrapped round each muscle, every drug and bandage owed its origin to some divinity, and the confusion of sounds, of disguised figures, and of various perfumes, had a stupefying effect on those who visited this chamber. It need not be said that the whole embalming establishment and its neighborhood was enveloped in a cloud of powerful resinous fumes, of sweet attar, of lasting musk, and of pungent spices." Prayers and magical charms were said, scarabs and amulets enclosed, and finally the body was placed in a coffin so constructed that it would stand upright, as though the person were standing erect. It was then taken home, and lamentations were made for some days. These finally gave way to festivals. Banquets were held in honor of the mummy, which was placed near the table and offered portions of food. Sometimes mummies were kept in the home for a long time, and were worshipped with the household gods. When at length the day for burial came, the family and friends accompanied the body across the Nile to the Necropolis. They took offerings with them,--food, furniture, toilet articles, and some literature--certainly some pages from the Book of the Dead. All the way across the river, the women wept. That the exhibition of grief might be sufficient, wailing women were hired to increase the lamentations. Seeing the sun which they worshipped disappear each night in the west, the Egyptians grew to think that it went to a mysterious country, the land of Osiris. In course of time they located the land of the Blest in the west, and where-ever possible, placed their tombs facing the west--the direction which the departed took for his long journey. All through the river ride the women cried: "To the West; to the West!" Upon reaching the place of burial, the priest performed certain ceremonies. Then the mummy in its coffin, and the jars containing the vital organs, were sealed up in the chamber prepared to receive them. There were always three essential parts to an Egyptian tomb: the chapel, or room used by the relatives to worship the deceased and bring him offerings; the sepulchral chamber which contained the mummy; and the serdab, or secret cell, where images of the deceased were sealed up for the ka to look upon, since the features of the earthly body were now changed by death. This secret chamber was connected by a small aperture with the chapel, in order that the smoke of burning incense and proffered prayers might be the more easily experienced by the Ka. On the west wall of the tomb was the stela, or a false door, upon which was engraved the name of the deceased, his parentage, titles, and a record of the offerings made to his ka. In early times offerings alone were made with no record of them, but as the people grew more enlightened, they realized that a time must come when even the best known would be forgotten and neglected. Therefore they conceived the notion of enumerating the articles of food contributed, believing that the ka would look upon the record and be satiated through the ages. Compared to the earthly abode, which was temporary, the tomb was eternal; hence the care that was lavished upon the tomb by the Egyptians. While yet young, a man began to build his final resting place. If he died before it was completed, some relative supervised its completion, but in most cases tombs left thus unfinished show signs of hasty conclusion. The survivor was chiefly interested in his own tomb, and could give but passing attention to that of the departed. In the Old Empire, tombs were constructed of brick masonry. The mummy was placed some distance below the brick work which was elevated a few feet above the ground. During the Middle Empire, grotto tombs came into favor. These were hewed out of the living rock. A large excavation was made and chambers were sometimes formed by masonry, sometimes hollowed from the rock itself. It was during this period that pictures of food offerings were made in addition to the food formerly offered alone. During the New Empire tombs were generally cut in rocks, and now it became customary to have the heart removed from the deceased and placed in a jar. The idea of reward and punishment was emphasized. "From the calm assurance of purely material happiness which the earliest Egyptian loved to dwell on, there developed a keener sense of the trials through which the soul must pass, together with a higher ideal of the future life, a strong conviction of the moral qualities and acts essential to the justification of the individual. Later this spiritual degenerated into a reliance upon ritual and formulas in a merely magical sense."[1] The nature of the burial depended upon the means of the family. The middle class interment was less pretentious than that of the noble, and the poor appropriated some old, neglected tomb, or paid for space in a public tomb. Even in such cases, some offerings were made. The burial of royalty was splendid, as tombs recently discovered in the Valley of the Kings have attested. Furniture, receptacles, toilet articles--even a boat and a chariot were in some cases provided. In the tombs of the wealthy were enclosed little images of servants, or "answerers." To the unimaginative Egyptian, the future world could only be a place, like his own Egypt, where he would sow and reap, under conditions most favorable. Water would be plentiful, and work would be so easy that it would be a joy to perform it. This satisfied the masses, who knew only how to reap and sow. But the wealthy had not been accustomed to cultivate the soil in this life and were not pleased with the prospect of doing so through countless ages. Lest such menial tasks be required of them in the realm of Osiris, they had with them these images of servants--these answerers--who might respond when they were called upon: "Here am I, thy servant." Thus the noble would have his work performed by others, as it had always been. Amulets and scarabs were also deposited with the mummy. The amulets were charms supposed to bring good luck, and the scarabs had a deeper significance. The word _scarab_ means _beetle_. A certain kind of beetle deposited its eggs in the sand. From the earth, in course of time, a fully developed beetle would come forth. The Egyptians, who knew nothing of insect life, believed the beetle, long since dead, had the power of restoring itself to life anew. Hence the scarab was an emblem of the resurrection and immortality. Just as the cross is a symbol dear to the hearts of Christians, so, to the followers of the Egyptian religion, the scarab was significant. It was made of various kinds of stone, variously colored, and was worn by the Egyptian during life, and buried with him at death. During periods when religious revivals were strong, large numbers of these emblems were produced; during ages when greater indifference to religious matters were shown, fewer seem to have been made. As little Greek vases have been found in all lands where Greek merchantmen went, so the Egyptian trade of antiquity can be traced by the little scarabs. Large collections of them have been made in recent years, and many are exhibited today in museums. In the New Empire, when it became necessary to remove the heart of the deceased, a sacred scarab was substituted in its place. The idea prompting such action was that the heart was sinful, and if removed, might not be able to testify against its owner. The scarab, being a symbol of faith, might be of some assistance. A copy of the Book of the Dead was supplied the deceased because it contained a list of the dangers his soul would have to meet in journeying to the abode of Osiris. The topography of the future world was included and all invocations to be uttered at different stages of the progress were given. Only with a perfect knowledge of all these things could the soul hope to reach the land of the blest. Advice was given him about meeting the forty-two judges of the western world, who judged him for forty-two sins. If his good deeds outweighed his shortcomings, he remained forever with Osiris; otherwise he was transformed into some unclean animal, and never knew the joys of eternal life. It has been estimated that some 200,000,000 people died in Upper Egypt during its active history and found a resting place in the favorite strip of desert less than 450 miles in length. Of course only the most substantial of the tombs are preserved. The dryness of the country has helped to preserve ancient monuments. It is small wonder that to the very poor, whose huts have always been in the Necropolis--the wealth concealed in tombs has always been a strong temptation. Records reach through the Middle and New Empires testifying that robbers pillaged tombs for jewelry and gold, and today the Arab traffics constantly in the spoils of the tombs--above which, in many cases, he lives. [Illustration: THE FUNERAL PROCESSION: THE WEAPONS AND JEWELS.] FOOTNOTES: [1] Blimmer: Essays on History, Religion and Art of Ancient Egypt. CHAPTER XVI. EXCAVATIONS IN EGYPT. We have spoken frequently of recent discoveries in Egypt, and of objects found within old tombs. The question naturally arises: Who makes these discoveries, and under what circumstances are the secrets of the tombs revealed? Modern excavations in Egypt are of recent date. In 1798 the military expedition of Napoleon Bonaparte drew attention to Egyptian monuments. One of his soldiers, excavating for some fortifications in the delta, discovered a stone covered with an inscription, and this was preserved. Being found near the mouth of the Rosetta river, it was called the Rosetta stone. The stone had been inscribed during the reign of Ptolemy III., a Greek king. Because some of his subjects in Egypt were Greeks and some Egyptians, he had caused the decree to be inscribed (1) in Greek, (2) in hieroglyphics, (3) in demotic. The Greek sentences were easily read, and since it seemed probable that the other writing simply repeated the decree, scholars set to work to decipher it. By 1832 they had prepared an Egyptian grammar and vocabulary. The earliest attempt at systematic investigation was begun in 1822, when the government of Tuscany sent a number of scholars into Egypt to study inscriptions. Champollian and Rosellini were among them. In 1840 Germany sent out an expedition under the leadership of Lepsius. This party began work at Memphis, among the pyramids. In course of time the Tuscan expedition supplied volumes of copied inscriptions and explanatory material. August Marietta went to Egypt in 1850 and was active there until 1880. He made the first great discovery when he came upon the burial place of the Apis bulls in Memphis. Sixty-four tombs were found, together with amulets and funeral ornaments. In 1857 he was made director of a new museum, which was founded at Cairo. He received the monopoly of the right to excavate in the vicinity of Thebes, and while he allowed others to study what was unearthed under his direction, he would not permit them to do any excavating. Maspero succeeded him as curator of the Cairo Museum. Into this museum has been placed all the great finds of recent years and here one who would make detailed study of ancient Egypt must go. As a result of his explorations in the valley of the Nile, and of his personal knowledge of all gifts made to the Cairo Museum, Maspero has prepared many books pertaining to the life of the ancient Egyptians. His conclusions are drawn entirely from the revelations of old monuments and remains, and are of first importance. Means have been provided by the Egyptian Exploration Fund and by the Egyptian Research Account to make it possible for young students to undertake explorations in behalf of public museums. Nothing found by those thus engaged can be sold, whether publicly or privately, but must be presented to some museum where people generally can have an opportunity to see and examine such objects. Reports of all discoveries are published at the earliest possible moment. In marked contrast to such generous principles have been the undertakings carried on by many who have used recovered objects for their personal profit, or have withheld knowledge of them indefinitely. W. M. Flinders Petrie, professor of Egyptology in University College, London, took charge of the expedition sent out by the Egypt Exploration Fund in 1884. Later he organized the Egyptian Research Account, in order to give young students an opportunity to do active work themselves. In late years Petrie has carried on his efforts alone. On the basis of his observations, discoveries and knowledge, he has prepared a history of Egypt, recently published. This is a chronological account of royal tombs unearthed by him, rather than a complete history of Egypt's development. Gardner, Griffith and Naville have been sent out at different times by the Egypt Exploration Fund, and have each prepared reports of their finds. The Tell el Amarna Letters should be mentioned with the great finds in Egypt. In 1887-8, Arabs, who were carrying off bricks for their houses, came upon a record chamber, containing many hundred letters inscribed on bricks. They were shown to experts who did not appreciate their value. They were put in sacks and carried around, from one place to another, with the hope of making something from their sale. When many of them had been ground to powder and others were hopelessly ruined, they were bought up by museums at London, Berlin, St. Petersburg and Cairo. They have since been translated and it appears that they belonged to the record chamber of the capital built by Amenhotep IV., and called by him the Horizon of the Solar Disk. As now translated, they are found to be letters written during the peaceful reign of Amenhotep III. and early in the reign of Amenhotep IV.; others recount the North Syrian war, and certain others, the Palestine war. They reveal the condition of the empire during the reign of the fanatical king who attempted to bring about a religious revolution at home, while hostile tribes assailed his empire on the east. The Tell el Amarna letters have done much to clear up a portion of Egyptian history, previously not understood. Their revelations have been supplemented by two wonderful discoveries made within the last two years: the discovered tomb of the parents of Queen Tiy--mother of Amenhotep IV., in 1905, and early in 1907, the tomb of Queen Tiy herself. These finds are so remarkable that we may well give them brief consideration. In recent years, Theodore M. Davis has undertaken systematic excavations in the Valley of the Kings--the great Necropolis west of Thebes--for the benefit of the Cairo Museum. This work has been directed by Archaeologist Quibell, maintained by the present Egyptian government. Quoting from one who was present at the exciting moment when the tomb of Queen Tiy's parents was opened: "Squeezing their way between the wall and rock ceiling, M. Maspero and Mr. Davis were soon in the midst of such a medley of tomb furniture that, in the glare of their lighted candles, the first effect was one of bewilderment. Gradually, however, one object after another detached itself from the shimmering mass, shining through the cool air, dust-free and golden. Against the wall to the left stood a chair, and beyond it a gilded coffin-cover lay upside down. In it was a conventional mask that gleamed golden through dark veiling; and the mummy whose head this mask had covered lay farther off, its body partly incased in gilded openwork. Against the wall to the right leaned two 'Osiris beds,' flat surfaces on which seed had been sown, which in sprouting, had outlined the figure of the god. Not far off, along the wall opposite the door, stood a row of sentry-boxes, each containing a statuette. In front of these rose the outermost case for a mummy. To the left stood a bed. Nearer again lay a silvered mummy case; and on this, and on a mummy beyond it, the second in the tomb, a shaft of cold blue light struck down from the outer day. "By day-light then, mingled with the light of flickering candle flames, the discoverers examined the second mummy. By candle light alone they searched the first. Both had been plundered by the thief of long ago. Throwing the mummy cases hither and yon, he had taken from both mummies everything of intrinsic value except a plate of gold closing the aperture through which the heart of one had been removed by the embalmers. Not a jewel, and only part of one necklace, remained of all those with which the dead must once have been bedecked. But if such trophies were lacking, others of surpassing splendor and significance still packed the tomb-chamber, from wall to wall. In the bottom of a mummy-case, from which the thief had removed the cover, he had left a cushion and a graceful alabaster vase. In another mummy-case he had neglected an alabaster jar and the cover of an embroidery-box which he must have carried across the chamber to a second bed, on which it now lay beside a superb gilded chair. Near by, where the floor suddenly fell one deep step to a lower level, he had thrown, among a multitude of sealed jars, half of the gilded openwork casing which had encircled one of the mummies. Near these jars again he had propped a coffin-cover against one corner of the tomb. Here, too, he had left a third bed and one of the most important finds in the tomb, a chariot, the curving front and wheel-rims of which shone through the darkness golden and scarlet. "Except for its broken pole and the partly bare spokes of its gilded wheels, this chariot was in perfect condition; with the yoke already found in the corridor and a whip soon to be discovered, it lacked nothing to be complete. "Maspero studied the hieroglyphics on their gleaming mummy-cases. 'Tioua,' he read after a time; and after further study he went on, 'Ioua, hereditary prince, chief friend among the friends of the sovereign.' There were the names of the dead in the tomb; and these dead, as Maspero therefore knew, had been the parents of Tiy, a queen of the eighteenth dynasty, whose changing of the national religion had once caused such uproar and violence that the burial of her parents in the sacred Valley of the Kings would have had to be hasty and secret. "The probable history of the tomb, accordingly, was clear. During a period of unrest Queen Tiy, who wished a royal burial for her father and mother, either chose an old tomb on which the work had been abandoned or stopped work on one which was being hewn out. In it she had placed the mummies, with their funeral offerings, till the tomb could be reopened and finished, or its contents transferred to a fitter resting place. Quiet times had perhaps never returned during her reign; and however that may be, the tomb had been reopened, not by Queen Tiy, but first by a robber, and now at last, by modern archaeologists."[1] [Illustration: BEAUTIFUL ISLAND OF PHILAE AND THE NILE.] Even more gratifying than the discovery just recounted was the finding of Queen Tiy herself. Again we can get into the spirit of the discovery best by reading the description of an eye-witness: "The excitement of entering a newly opened tomb is naturally considerable; but when the first inscriptions to be seen revealed the fact that the tomb of Queen Tiy, which had been so long sought for, had been found, a glamour was added to the moment which will not easily be forgotten by any of the party. Inside the tomb chamber the gold covered coffin and outer coffin, gleaming in the light of the electric lamps, formed a sight of surprising richness.... The mummy of the queen protruded from beneath the lip of the beautiful coffin, which was made in human form. A vulture-headed diadem of gold could just be seen passing around her head, and one could see here and there the shining sheets of gold in which the body was wrapped. There must have been thousands of dollars worth of gold-foil and leaf in the chamber, and the post-Akhnaton officials seem to have carried away many of the portable gold ornaments, probably amounting to many times that value. In a recess cut in the wall of the chamber stood four fine canopic vases of alabastrum, containing the queen's heart and intestines; and in one corner of the room there were several charming little pots and toilet utensils of blue glazed ware. One of these, in the form of a graceful girl carrying a pot upon her shoulder, is perhaps the most perfect specimen of miniature figure-molding known in Egypt.... "After the tomb had been opened for a few hours, the air, of course, became very much better, but its bad effects on the antiquities was at once discernible. Even before the first quick record had been finished, some of the scenes on the gold showed signs of dropping to pieces.... "It is to be hoped that most of the antiquities will be able to travel to Cairo, though their fragile condition makes it difficult to deal with them. Probably much of the rotten wood work, and even some of the fine reliefs on the gold-leaf, will have to be left in the tomb, which will be closed with Portland cement."[2] Greatest care has to be exercised to protect finds from the Arabs. In spite of the vigilance of the government, pilfering of the old Necropolis is constantly carried on. Every fragment or curio which might bring profit is snatched up by those in the employ of speculators. DIFFICULTIES CONFRONTING THE EXPLORER. Petrie has given in detail many of the difficulties which have confronted him in his excavations among ancient Egyptian tombs. On one occasion, in preference to living in an Arabian village, he hunted out an old tomb, occupied the three chambers above, where the deceased had been fed and worshipped, and with his guide as a guard in an adjoining tomb, found the place secure and comfortable. A little account of his experience in the summer of 1888, while excavating in the Fayoum, will give us some notion of the perplexities that often beset the archaeologist. Whenever possible, quotation is made from Petrie's own report. The district he selected--the Fayoum--calls to mind Amenemhet III., who first irrigated the region and thus added materially to the arable land of his country. To this particular section Petrie was drawn, because, as he explains: "The exploration of the pyramids of this district was my main object, as their arrangement, their dates, and their builders were yet unknown."[3] "So soon as we began to turn over the soil we found chips of sandstone colossi; the second day the gigantic nose of a colossus was found, as broad as a man's body; then pieces of carved thrones, and a fragment of inscription of Amenemhet III. It was evident that the two piles of stone had been the pedestals of colossal seated monolithic statues, carved in hard quartzite sandstone, and brilliantly polished. These statues faced northward, and around each was a courtyard wall with sloping outer face and red granite gateway in the north front The total height of the colossi was about 60 feet from the ground. The description of Herodotus, therefore, is accounted for; and it shows that he actually saw the figures, though from a distance, as any person who visited them closely would not have described them in such a manner."[4] Petrie took his corps of native workmen next to Hawara, for the pyramids there had not been opened in modern times. Finding no trace of an entrance, they tunneled for many weeks in the solid tomb. Finally a small opening was effected into the old chamber of the tomb, and there, by the flickering light of a candle, could be seen two empty sarcophagi. A modern canal has saturated this part of the land and the explorer was obliged to wade through mud to the tombs. Quoting from his description of what was found: "The pyramid had been elaborately arranged so as to deceive and weary the spoilers, and it had apparently occupied a great amount of labor to force an entrance." After explaining a dozen ways they had tried and failed, he says: "At last the way had been forced by breaking away a hole in the edge of the glassy-hard sandstone roofing block, and thus reaching the chamber and its sarcophagi. By a little widening of the spoilers' hole I succeeded in getting through it into the chamber. The water was up to the middle of my body, and so the exploration was difficult; but the floor was covered with rubbish and chips, which might contain parts of the funeral vessels, and therefore needed searching. The first day I got the coveted prize, a piece of alabaster vessel with the name of Amenemhet III., proving finally to whom the pyramid belonged. Still there was a puzzle as to the second sarcophagus, which had been built up between the great central one and the chamber side. On clearing in the chamber which led to the sepulchre, however, a beautiful altar of offerings in alabaster was found, covered with figures of the offerings all named, over a hundred, and dedicated to the king's daughter, Neferuptah.... The chamber itself is a marvellous work; nearly the whole height of it is carved out of a single block of hard quartzite sandstone, forming a huge tank in which the sarcophagus was placed. No trace of inscription exists on either the walls or the sarcophagi; and but for the funeral furniture, even the very name would not have been recovered."[5] Next they located what had in all probability been the old Labyrinth. No trace of the building itself could be discovered, but the vast extent showed it to have been larger than any temple known in Egypt. Pliny, a Roman historian, has told us that for centuries this Labyrinth served as a quarry for this section of the country, and that a small town of quarrymen lived near by. In the cemetery of Hawara, Petrie made some explorations. He succeeded in finding one tomb, which had been missed by the spoilers--this naturally was the coveted find. It belonged to the twenty-sixth dynasty, a period of the decline of Egyptian power. It was the tomb of a great noble, Horuta. Standing deep under water, it was more difficult to manage than usual. "But the sarcophagus itself was most difficult to open. The lid block was nearly two feet thick, and almost under water. It was too heavy for us to move entire, so some weeks were spent in cutting it in two. One piece was then raised, but it proved to be the foot end; and though I spent a day struggling with the inner coffins, sitting in the sarcophagus up to my nose in water, I yet could not draw them out from under the rest of the stone lid. So after some days the men raised that, enough to get one's head in between the under side of it and the water; and then I spent another gruesome day, sitting astride of the inner coffin, unable to turn my head under the lid without tasting the bitter brine in which I sat." At last the coffin was recovered. "Anxiously opening it, we found a slight inner coffin, and then the body of Horuta himself, wrapped in a network of beads of lazuli, beryl, and silver, this last decomposed.... Then came the last and longed-for scene, for which our months of toil had whetted our appetites--the unwrapping of Horuta. Bit by bit the layers of pitch and cloth were loosened, and row after row of magnificent amulets were disclosed, just as they were laid on in the distant past. The gold ring on the finger which bore his name and titles, the exquisitely inlaid gold birds, the chased gold figures, the lazuli statuettes delicately wrought, the polished lazuli and beryl and carnelian amulets finally engraved, all the wealth of talismanic armory, rewarded our eyes with a sight which has never been surpassed to archaeological gaze. No such complete and rich a series of amulets has been seen intact before; and as one by one they were removed all their positions were recorded, and they may now be seen lying in their original order in the Ghizeh Museum."[6] We have noted repeatedly the various articles found within the tombs, such as funeral furniture, vases, food, and amulets. Some rather unusual disclosures were brought to light in this old cemetery in the Fayoum. Children's toys, and their personal belongings were found entombed with their mummies. One tomb of a much later date than yet mentioned--of Roman Egypt indeed--contained one of the books of the Iliad. More valuable than any of these were wreaths of flowers with which the dead had been adorned. These were perfectly dried and from them and accounts given us by Pliny, the ancient flora of Egypt has been worked out by the patience and painstaking of noted botanists. FOOTNOTES: [1] Century, Nov., '05. [2] Century, Sept., '07. [3] Petrie: Ten Years' Digging in Egypt, 81. [4] Ibid. 82. [5] Petrie: Ten Years' Digging in Egypt, 86. [6] Petrie: Ten Years' Digging in Egypt, 93, ff. DESCRIPTIONS OF EGYPT. I. The Nile had overflowed its bed. The luxuriant corn fields and blooming gardens on its shores were lost beneath a boundless waste of waters; and only the gigantic temples and palaces of its cities (protected from the force of the water by dikes), and the tops of the tall palm-trees and acacias could be seen above its surface. The branches of the sycamores and plane-trees drooped and floated on the waves, but the boughs of the tall silver poplars strained upward, as if anxious to avoid the watery world beneath. The full moon had risen; her soft light fell on the Libyan range of mountains vanishing on the western horizon, and in the north the shimmer of the Mediterranean could faintly be discerned. Blue and white lotus flowers floated on the clear water, bats of all kinds darted softly through the still air, heavy with the scent of acacia-blossom and jasmine; the wild pigeons and other birds were at roost in the tops of the trees, while the pelicans, storks and cranes squatted in groups on the shore under the shelter of the papyrus reeds, and Nile-beans. The pelicans and storks remained motionless, their long bills hidden beneath their wings, but the cranes were startled by the mere beat of an oar, stretching their necks, and peering anxiously into distance, if they heard but the song of the boatmen. The air was perfectly motionless, and the unbroken reflection of the moon, lying like a silver shield on the surface of the water, proved that, wildly as the Nile leaps over cataracts, and rushes past the gigantic temples of Upper Egypt, yet on approaching the sea by different arms, he can abandon his impetuous course, and flow along in sober tranquility. On this moonlight night in the year 528 B.C. a bark was crossing the almost currentless canopic mouth of the Nile. On the raised deck at the stern of this boat an Egyptian was sitting to guide the long pole-rudder, and the half naked boatmen within were singing as they rowed.... As Phanes uttered these words they landed at the garden wall, washed by the Nile.... The garden of Rhodopis was as full of sound, and scent and blossom as a night in fairy land. It was one labyrinth of acanthus shrubs, yellow mimosa, the snowy gueldres rose, jasmine and lilac, red roses and laburnums, overshadowed by tall palm-trees, acacias and balsam-trees. Large bats hovered softly on their delicate wings over the whole, and sounds of mirth and song echoed from the river. This garden had been laid out by an Egyptian, and the builders of the Pyramids had already been celebrated for ages for their skill in horticulture. They well understood how to mark out neat flower-beds, plant groups of trees and shrubs in regular order, water the whole by aqueducts and fountains, arrange arbors and summer-houses, and even inclose the walks with artistically clipped hedges and breed gold-fish in stone basins.... At noon on the following day the same boat, which, the evening before, had carried the Athenian and the Spartan, stopped once more before Rhodopis' garden. The sun was shining so brightly, so warmly and genially in the dark blue Egyptian sky, the air was so pure and light, the beetles were humming so merrily, the boatmen singing so lustily and happily, the shores of the Nile bloomed in such gay, variegated beauty, and were so thickly peopled, the palm-trees, sycamores, bananas and acacias were so luxuriant in foliage and blossom, and over the whole landscape the rarest and most glorious gifts seemed to have been poured out with such divine munificence that a passerby must have pronounced it the very home of joy and gladness, a place from which sadness and sorrow had been forever banished. --_An Egyptian Princess._ DESCRIPTIONS OF EGYPT. II. The feast of Neith, called in Egyptian "the lamp-burning," was celebrated by a universal illumination, which began at the rising of the moon. The shores of the Nile looked like two long lines of fire. Every temple, house, and hut was ornamented with lamps, according to the means of its possessors. The porches of the country houses and the little towers on the larger buildings were all lighted up by brilliant flames, burning in pans of pitch and sending up clouds of smoke, in which the flags and pennons waved gently backward and forward. The palm-trees and sycamores were silvered by the moonlight and threw strange fantastic reflections onto the red waters of the Nile--red from the fiery glow of the houses on their shores. But, strong and glowing as was the light of the illumination, its rays had not power to reach the middle of the giant river where the boat was making its course and the pleasure party felt as if they were sailing in dark night between two brilliant days. Now and then a brightly lighted boat would come swiftly across the river and seem as it neared the shore to be cutting its way through a glowing stream of molten iron. Lotus-blossoms, white as snow, lay on the surface of the river, rising and falling with the waves and looking like eyes in the water. Not a sound could be heard from either shore. The echoes were carried away by the north wind and the measured stroke of the oars and the monotonous song of the rowers were the only sounds that broke the stillness of this strange night--a night robbed of its darkness.... The pyramids lay on the left bank of the Nile, in the silver moonshine, massive and awful, as if bruising the earth beneath them with their weight; the giant graves of mighty rulers. They seemed examples of man's creative power and at the same time warnings of the vanity and mutability of earthly greatness. For where was Chufu[1] now--the king who had cemented that mountain of stone with the sweat of his subjects? Where was the long-lived Chafra[2] who had despised the gods, and, defiant in the consciousness of his own strength, was said to have closed the gates of the temples in order to make himself and his name immortal by building a tomb of superhuman dimensions? Their empty sarcophagi are, perhaps, tokens that the judges of the dead found them unworthy of rest in the grave, unworthy of the resurrection, whereas, the builder of the third and most beautiful pyramid, Menkera,[3] who contented himself with a smaller monument, and reopened the gates of the temples, was allowed to rest in peace in his coffin of blue basalt. [1] Khufu. [2] Khafre. [3] Menkure. There they lay in the quiet night, these mighty pyramids, shone on by the bright stars, guarded by the watchmen of the desert--the gigantic sphinx--and overlooking the barren rocks of the Libyan stony mountains. At their feet slept the mummies of their faithful subjects.... But their boat sped on before the north wind; they left the city of the dead behind them and passed the enormous dikes built to protect the city of Menes from the violence of the floods; the city of the Pharaohs came in sight, dazzlingly bright with the myriads of flames which had been kindled in honor of the goddess Neith, and when at last the gigantic temple of Ptah appeared, the most ancient building of the most ancient land, the spell broke, their tongues were loosed, and they burst out into loud exclamations of delight. It was illuminated by thousands of lamps; a hundred fires burned on its pylons, its battlemented walls and roofs. Burning torches flared between the rows of sphinxes which connected the various gates with the main building, and the now empty house of the god Apis was so surrounded by colored fires that it gleamed like a white limestone rock in a tropical sunset. Pennons, flags and garlands waved above the brilliant picture; music and loud songs could be heard from below. --_Egyptian Princess._ DESCRIPTIONS OF EGYPT. III. By the walls of Thebes--the old city of a hundred gates--the Nile spreads to a broad river; the heights, which follow the stream on both sides, here take a more decided outline; solitary, almost cone-shaped peaks stand out sharply from the level background of the many-colored limestone hills, on which no palm-tree flourishes and in which no humble desert-plant can strike root. Rocky crevasses and gorges cut more or less deeply into the mountain range, and up to its ridge extends the desert, destructive of all life, with sand and stones, with rocky cliffs and reef-like, desert hills. Behind the eastern range the desert spreads to the Red Sea; behind the western it stretches without limit, into infinity. In the belief of the Egyptians beyond it lay the region of the dead.... In the fourteenth century before Christ--for to so remote a date we must direct the thoughts of the reader--impassable limits had been set by the hand of man, in many places in Thebes, to the inroads of the water; high dykes of stone and embankments protected the streets and squares, the temples and the palaces, from the overflow. Canals that could be tightly closed up led from the dykes to the land within, and smaller branch-cuttings to the gardens of Thebes. On the right, the eastern bank of the Nile, rose the buildings of the far-famed residence of the Pharaohs. Close by the river stood the immense and gaudy temples of the city of Amon; behind these and at a short distance from the Eastern hills--indeed at their very foot and partly even on the soil of the desert--were the palaces of the king and nobles, and the shady streets in which the high narrow houses of the citizens stood in close rows. Life was gay and busy in the streets of the capital of the Pharaohs. The western shore of the Nile showed quite a different scene. Here too there was no lack of stately buildings or thronging men; but while on the further side of the river there was a compact mass of houses, and the citizens went cheerfully and openly about their day's work, on this side there were solitary splendid structures, round which little houses and huts seemed to cling as children cling to the protection of a mother. And these buildings lay in detached groups.... And even more dissimilar were the slow-moving, solemn groups in the road-ways on this side, and the cheerful, confused throng yonder. There, on the eastern shore, all were in eager pursuit of labor or recreation, stirred by pleasure or by grief, active in deed and speech: here, in the west, little was spoken, a spell seemed to check the footsteps of the wanderer, a pale hand to sadden the bright glance of every eye, and to banish the smile from every lip. And yet many a gayly-dressed bark stopped at the shore, there was no lack of minstrel bands, grand processions passed on to the western heights; but the Nile boats bore the dead, the songs sung here were songs of lamentation, and the processions consisted of mourners following the sarcophagus. We are standing on the soil of the City of the Dead of Thebes. Nevertheless even here nothing is wanting for return and revival, for to the Egyptian his dead died not. He closed his eyes, he bore him to the Necropolis, to the house of the embalmer, or Kolchytes, and then to the grave; but he knew that the souls of the departed lived on; that the justified absorbed into Osiris floated over the Heavens in the vessel of the Sun; that they appeared on earth in the form they chose to take upon them, and that they might exert influence on the current of the lives of the survivors. So he took care to give a worthy interment to his dead, above all to have the body embalmed so as to endure long; and had fixed times to bring fresh offerings for the dead, of flesh and fowl, with drink-offerings and sweet-smelling essences, and vegetables and flowers. Neither at the obsequies nor at the offerings might the ministers of the gods be absent, and the silent City of the Dead was regarded as a favored sanctuary in which to establish schools and dwellings for the learned. So it came to pass that in the temples and on the site of the Necropolis, large communities of priests dwelt together, and close to the extensive embalming houses lived numerous Kolchytes, who handed down the secrets of their art from father to son. Besides these there were other manufactories and shops. In the former, sarcophagi of stone and of wood, linen bands for enveloping mummies, and amulets for decorating them, were made; in the latter, merchants kept spices and essences, flowers, fruits, vegetables and pastry for sale. Calves, gazelles, goats, geese, and other fowl were fed on inclosed meadow-plats, and the mourners betook themselves thither to select what they needed from among the beasts pronounced by the priests to be clean for sacrifice, and to have them sealed with the sacred seal. Many bought only a part of a victim at the shambles--the poor could not even do this. They bought only colored cakes in the shape of beasts, which symbolically took the place of the calves and geese which their means were unable to procure. In the handsomest shops sat servants of the priests, who received forms written on rolls of papyrus which were filled up in the writing room of the temple with those sacred verses which the departed spirit must know and repeat to ward off the evil genius of the deep, to open the gate of the under-world, and to be held righteous before Osiris and the forty-two assessors of the subterranean court of justice. What took place within the temples was concealed from view, for each was surrounded by a high inclosing wall with lofty, carefully closed portals, which were only opened when a chorus of priests came out to sing a pious hymn, in the morning to Horus the rising god, and in the evening to Turn the descending god. As soon as the evening hymn of the priests was heard, the Necropolis was deserted, for the mourners and those who were visiting the graves were required by this time to return to their boats, and to quit the City of the Dead. Crowds of men who had marched in the processions of the west bank hastened in disorder to the shore, driven on by the body of watchmen who took it in turns to do this duty and to protect the graves against robbers. The merchants closed their booths, then embalmers and workmen ended their day's work and retired to their houses, the priests returned to the temples, and the inns were filled with guests, who had come hither on long pilgrimages from a distance, and who preferred passing the night in the vicinity of the dead whom they had come to visit, to going across to the bustling noisy city on the further shore. The voices of the singers and of the wailing women were hushed, even the song of the sailors on the numberless ferryboats from the western shore of Thebes died away, its faint echo was now and then borne across on the evening air, and at last all was still. _Uarda._ KARNAK. "I am Karnak, and a thousand million men have lived and died Since open have my gates been thrown for kings through them to ride: My massive walls have echoed to the tread of Egypt's hosts, But now they are a skulking place for goblins and for ghosts." "I stand once more among those mighty columns, which radiate into avenues from whatever point one takes them. I see them swathed in coiled shadows and broad bands of light. I see them sculptured and painted with shapes of gods and kings, with blazonings of royal names, with sacrificial altars and forms of sacred beasts, and emblems of wisdom and truth. The shafts of these columns are enormous. I stand at the foot of one--or of what seems to be the foot; for the original pavement lies buried seven feet below.... It casts a shadow twelve feet in breadth--such a shadow as might be cast by a tower. The capital that juts out so high above my head looks as if it might have been placed there to support the heavens. It is carved in the semblance of a full-blown lotus, and glows with undying colors--colors that are still fresh, though laid on by hands that have been dust these three thousand years and more. It would take not six men, but a dozen, to measure round the curved lip of that stupendous lily. "Such are the twelve central columns. The rest (one hundred and twenty-two in number) are gigantic, too, but smaller. Of the roof they once supported, only the beams remain. Those beams are stone ... carved and painted, bridging the space from pillar to pillar, and patterning the trodden soil with bands of shadow. "Looking up and down the central avenue, we see at the one end a flame-like obelisk; at the other, a solitary palm against a back-ground of glowing mountain. To right, to left, showing transversely through long files of columns, we catch glimpses of colossal bas-reliefs lining the roofless walls in every direction. The king, as usual, figures in every group, and performs the customary acts of worship. The gods receive and approve him. Half in light, half in shadow, these slender, fantastic forms stand out sharp and clear and colorless; each figure some eighteen or twenty feet in height. They could scarcely have looked more weird when the great roof was in its place and perpetual twilight reigned. But it is difficult to imagine the roof on and the sky shut out. It all looks right as it is; and one feels, somehow, that such columns should have nothing between them and the infinite blue depths of heaven.... "How often has it been written, and how often must it be repeated, that the great hall at Karnak is the noblest architectural work ever designed and executed by human hands? One writer tells us that it covers four times the area occupied by the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. Another measures it against St. Peter's. All admit their inability to describe it; yet all attempt the description. To convey a concrete image of the place to one who has never seen it, is, however, as I have said, impossible. If it could be likened to this place or that, the task would not be so difficult; but there is, in truth, no building in the wide world to compare with it. The pyramids are more stupendous. The colosseum covers more ground. The parthenon is more beautiful. Yet in nobility of conception, in vastness of detail, in majesty of the highest order, the hall of pillars exceeds them every one. This doorway, these columns, are the wonder of the world. How was that lintel-stone raised? How were these capitals lifted? Entering among those mighty pillars, says a recent observer, 'you feel that you have shrunk to the dimensions and feebleness of a fly.' But I think you feel more than that. You are stupefied by the thought of the mighty men who made them. You say to yourself: 'There were indeed giants in those days.' "It may be that the traveler who finds himself for the first time in the midst of a grove of _Wellingtonia gigantea_ feels something of the same overwhelming sense of awe and wonder; but the great trees, though they have taken three thousand years to grow, lack the pathos and the mystery that comes of human labor. They do not strike their roots through six thousand years of history. They have not been watered with the blood and tears of millions. Their leaves know no sounds less musical than the singing of the birds, or the moaning of the night-wind as it sweeps over the highlands of Calaveras. But every breath that wanders down the painted aisles of Karnak seems to echo back the sighs of those who perished in the quarry, at the oar, and under the chariot-wheels of the conqueror." MEMPHIS. "And this is all that remains of Memphis, eldest of cities--a few huge rubbish-heaps, a dozen or so of broken statues, and a name! One looks round and tries in vain to realize the lost splendors of the place. Where is the Memphis that King Mena[1] came from Thinis to found--the Memphis of Chufu[2] and Chafra,[3] and all the early kings who built their pyramid-tombs in the adjacent desert? Where is the Memphis of Herodotus and Strabo? Where are those stately ruins which, even in the middle ages, extended over a space estimated at half a day's journey in every direction? One can hardly believe that a great city ever flourished on this spot, or understand how it should have been effaced so utterly. Yet here it stood--here where the grass is green, and the palms are growing, and the Arabs build their hovels on the verge of the inundation. The great colossus marks the site of the main entrance to the Temple of Ptah. It lies where it fell, and no man has moved it. That tranquil sheet of palm-fringed back-water, beyond which we catch a distant glimpse of the pyramids of Gizeh, occupies the basin of a vast artificial lake excavated by Mena. [1] Menes. [2] Khufu. [3] Khafre. "No capital in the world dates so far back as this or kept its place in history so long. Founded four thousand years before our era, it beheld the rise and fall of thirty-one dynasties; it survived the rule of the Persians, the Greek and the Roman; it was, even in its decadence, second only to Alexandria in population and extent; and it continued to be inhabited up to the time of the Arab invasion. It then became the quarry from which old Cairo was built; and as the new city rose on the eastern bank the people of Memphis quickly abandoned their ancient capital to desolation and decay.... "Memphis is a place to read about, and think about, and remember; but it is a disappointing place to see. To miss it, however, would be to miss the first link in the whole chain of monumental history which unites the Egypt of antiquity with the world of today. Those melancholy mounds and that heron-haunted lake must be seen, if only that they may take their due place in the picture gallery of one's memory." --_A Thousand Miles Up the Nile._ A HYMN TO THE GOD RA. Incline thine ear towards me, thou rising Sun, Thou who dost enlighten the two lands with beauty; Thou sunshine of mankind, chasing darkness from Egypt! Thy form is as that of thy father Ra rising in the heavens, Thy rays penetrate to the farthest lands. When thou art resting in thy palace, Thou hearest the words of all countries; For indeed thou hast millions of ears; Thine eye is clearer than the stars of heaven; Thou seest farther than the Sun. If I speak afar off, thine ear hears; If I do a hidden deed, thine eye sees it. O Ra, richest of beings, chosen of Ra, Thou king of beauty, giving breath to all. [Illustration] AN OLD KINGDOM BOOK OF PROVERBS. There is preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, a papyrus roll, which was discovered at Thebes by M. Prisse, and is now distinguished by his name. It was first described in 1857 by M. Chabas. The papyrus dates from the beginning of the Middle Kingdom (_Ca._ 2100 B.C.), and belongs to the rather extensive didactic literature of the Egyptians. According to the Egyptian custom, the words of the book were put into the mouth of a sage of the olden time, Ptah-hotep by name, who was said to have lived in the time of King Assa of the Fifth Dynasty (_Ca._ 2600 B.C.). There is no reason for doubting the correctness of the tradition. Of course it is not to be supposed that all of the proverbs really go back to Ptah-hotep. The author is stated to have been 110 years old, and his book opens with a remarkable description of old age. It proceeds in a style which recalls the Proverbs of Solomon, the Greek didactic poems, and even the homely "Poor Richard." It inculcates obedience, diligence, patience, and other virtues belonging to an official or servant. The Papyrus Prisse also contains the Proverbs of Kagemni, vizier of King Snefru (_Ca._ 2900 B.C.) of the Fourth Dynasty. PRECEPTS OF PTAH-HOTEP. The words of the Lord Prefect Ptah-Hotep, who lived in the reign of Assa, King of Northern and Southern Egypt, who liveth forever. Thus saith the Lord Ptah-Hotep: O Lord Osiris, whose feet are upon the crocodiles! A man waxeth old, his strength decayeth, he getteth in years, his youth fadeth away: Day by day the heart of an old man fainteth and is troubled: His eyes see not, his ears hear not, his power is lessened and abated: Behold, his mouth speaketh not as of yore, his mind is feeble, and remembereth not the deeds of yesterday: Yea, his whole body is afflicted, good is to him as evil, his tongue savoreth no longer. Alas, the old age of a man is full of misery, his nostrils drink not the breath of heaven, his lungs wax feeble, he delighteth neither to stand nor to be seated. Who shall give unto my tongue authority to utter unto the young men the counsels from of old? or who vouchsafeth unto me to declare the counsels received from on high? O Lord Osiris, let thy favor be poured out upon thy servant, and suffer that these evils be removed from those who are unenlightened. Then answered the Lord Osiris and said: Instruct them in the counsels from of old; for verily, wisdom from of old maketh the weak strong; knowledge giveth freedom to him that heareth; wisdom cries aloud, and the ear is not satisfied with hearing. Here beginneth the book of the wise sayings of the Lord Prefect Ptah-Hotep, the first-born, the son of the King, the well-beloved of the Lord: That the ignorant and the foolish may be instructed in the understanding of wisdom. Whoso giveth ear, to him shall these words be as riches; To him who heedeth them not, to the same shall come emptiness forever. Thus speaketh he, giving counsel unto his son. Be not thou puffed up with thy learning; honor the wise, neither withhold thou honor from the simple. The gates of art are closed unto none; whoso entereth thereat, though he seeketh perfection, yet shall he not find it. But the words of wisdom are hid, even as the emerald is hid in the earth, and adamant in the rock, which the slave diggeth up. Yield unto him whose strength is more than thine, who falleth upon thee in anger: be not thou inflamed, neither lay thy hands upon him; so shalt thou escape calamity. He is froward, it shall not profit thee to contend against him; be contained, and when he rageth against thee, oppose him not; so in the end shalt thou prevail over him. If one rail against thee, and flout thee, answer him not again, but be as one who cannot be moved; even so shalt thou overcome him. For the bystanders shall declare that he who, being provoked, holdeth his tongue, is greater than he who provoketh; and thou shalt be honored of those who have understanding. If thou do evil, being thereto commanded by one having authority over thee, the gods shall not condemn thee. Know the master, and the slave: be not froward: obey and reverence him to whom is given dominion over thee: None may know adversity, when it cometh, nor prosperity, when it shall relieve him, for the will of fate is hid from all: But he that abuseth his servant shall be confounded, and God who gave him authority shall suddenly take it away; and great shall be his overthrow. Be diligent, and do more than thy master commandeth thee; for the slothful servant shall be discomfited, and he that is idle shall be chidden. See thou neglect not thy household; if thou find opportunity to increase thy wealth improve it; business begetteth business, but poverty is the lot of the slothful. The wise traineth his child to walk devoutly and to serve the Lord; he maketh him obey his law, and do that which is bidden; so shall the love of the father be justified. The son of a man is flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone; let not thy heart be cold towards him. But if he be froward, and transgress thy law, and, being tempted of evil, turn himself from thy instruction, then do thou smite the mouth that smote thee. Delay not to bring the erring to obedience, and to chastise the rebellious; so shall he not stray from the path of righteousness, nor stumble among pitfalls. Hide not thy path, let not thy way be hidden; though thou stand in the council of thy master, declare the truth that is in thee. Be not as those who go backward, who eat the words of their own mouth, lest peradventure they offend: Be not like unto them; feigners, answering, He that perceiveth the error of others, the same is wise: when the wise man uplifteth his voice against error, deny him not, but keep silence; for surely none but the wise have understanding. If thou be wise guard thy house: honor thy wife, and love her exceedingly: feed her belly and clothe her back, for this is the duty of a husband. Give her abundance of ointment, fail not each day to caress her, let the desire of her heart be fulfilled: for verily he that is kind to his wife and honoreth her, the same honoreth himself. Withhold thy hand from violence, and thy heart from cruelty; softly entreat her and win her to thy way; consider her desires, and deny not the wish of her heart. Thus shalt thou keep her heart from wandering; but if thou harden thyself against her, she will turn from thee. Speak to her, yield her thy love, she will have respect unto thee; open thy arms, she will come unto thee. Blessed is the son who gives ear to the instruction of his father, for he shall escape error. Train thou thy son to obedience; his wisdom shall be pleasing unto the great. Let his mouth have respect to thy sayings; by obedience shall his wisdom be established. Day by day shall his walk be perfect; but error shall be the destruction of fools. The ignorant and the froward shall be overthrown, but knowledge shall uplift the wise. He that lacketh prudence and inclineth not his ear to instruction, the same worketh no good. He thinketh to discover knowledge in ignorance, and gain in that which profiteth nothing; he runneth to mischief, and wandereth in error, choosing those things which are rejected of the prudent; so subsisteth he on that which perisheth, and filleth his belly with the words of evil. Yea, he is brought to shame, seeking to be nourished with whatsoever the wise hold in abomination, shunning profitable things, led astray by much foolishness. [Illustration] THE VOYAGE OF THE SOUL. In the 15th chapter of "The Book of the Dead" we find an account of the passage of the soul in a boat across the firmament, to the abode of the blessed. This fable reappears in the religious writings of other nations, as, for instance, in, the Greek story of Charon, ferrying departed spirits across the Styx, and in the traditions of the ancient Mexicans. The soul is called by the Egyptians Osiris, in connection with the proper name of the individual (_N_), to indicate that the latter already partakes of the divine nature. Ra is the sun-god, approaching the west. The following translation is by P. Le Page Renouf: Here is the Osiris _N_. Come forth into Heaven, sail across the firmament and enter into brotherhood with the stars, let salutation be made to thee in the bark, let invocation be made to thee in the morning bark. Contemplate Ra within his Ark, and do thou propitiate his orb daily. See the fish in its birth from the emerald stream, and see the tortoise and its rotations. Let the offender (the dragon) fall prostrate, when he meditates destruction for me, by blows on his backbone. Ra springs forth with a fair wind; the evening bark speeds on and reaches the Haven. The crew of Ra are in exultation when they look upon him; the Mistress of Life, her heart is delighted at the overthrow of the adversary of her Lord. See thou Horus at the look-out at the bow, and at his sides Thoth and Maat. All the gods are in exultation when they behold Ra coming in peace to give new life to the hearts of the Chu, and here is the Osiris _N_ along with them. [_Litany._] Adored be Ra, as he setteth in the land of Life. Hail to thee, who hast come as Tmu, and hast been the creator of the cycle of the gods, _Give thou delicious breezes of the north wind to the Osiris N._ Hail to thee, who hast come as the Soul of souls, revered in Amenta, Hail to thee, who art above the gods, and who lightenest up Tuat with thy glories, Hail to thee, who comest in splendor, and goest around in thine orb, Hail to thee, who art mightier than the gods, who art crowned in Heaven and King in Tuat, Hail to thee, who openest the Tuat and disposest of all its doors, Hail to thee, supreme among the gods, and weigher of words in the nether world, Hail to thee, who art in thy Nest, and stirrest the Tuat with thy glory, Hail to thee, the great, the mighty, whose enemies are laid prostrate at their blocks, Hail to thee, who slaughterest the Sebau and annihilatest Apepi (the dragon). [After each invocation, the italicized line is repeated.] Horus openeth: the Great, the Mighty, who divideth the earths, the Great One who resteth in the Mountain of the West, and brighteneth up the Tuat with his glories and the Souls in their hidden abode, by shining into their sepulchres. By hurling harm against the foe thou hast utterly destroyed all the adversaries of the Osiris _N_. THE SOUL'S DECLARATION OF INNOCENCE. This declaration was to be made by the soul in the Judgment Hall of Osiris in the presence of the council of forty-two gods. The heart being weighed against the symbol of truth and found correct was then restored to the deceased who entered upon the life of the blessed. "O ye Lords of Truth! I have brought you truth. I have not privily done evil against mankind. I have not afflicted the miserable. I have not told falsehoods. I have had no acquaintance with sin. I have not made the laboring man do more than his daily task. I have not been idle. I have not been intoxicated. I have not been immoral. I have not calumniated a slave to his master. I have not caused hunger. I have not made to weep. I have not murdered. I have not defrauded. "I have not eaten the sacred bread in the temples. I have not cheated in the weight of the balance. I have not withheld milk from the mouths of sucklings. I have not slandered any one. I have not netted sacred birds. I have not caught the fish which typify them. I have not stopped running water. I have not robbed the gods of their offered haunches. I have not stopped a god from his manifestation. I have made to the gods the offerings that were their due. I have given food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, and clothes to the naked. I am pure! I am pure!" [Illustration: WEIGHING THE HEART IN THE JUDGMENT HALL OF OSIRIS.] THE ADVENTURES OF THE EXILE SANEHAT.[1] (2000 B.C.) The fact that three copies of this tale have been found indicates that it was popular. Sanehat was a high official, and probably a member of the royal family; but on the death of King Amenemhet, the founder of the twelfth dynasty, Sanehat, fearing for his life, fled to Syria and lived there many years. In his old age he desired to return, that he might die in his native land. The narrative was probably prepared for inscription on the wall of his tomb. The translation is from W. M. Flinders Petrie's "Egyptian Tales." In the thirtieth year, the month Paophi, the seventh day, the god entered his horizon, the King Sehotepabra flew up to heaven and joined the sun's disc, the follower of the god met his maker. The palace was silenced, and in mourning, the great gates were closed, the courtiers crouching on the ground, the people in hushed mourning. [Illustration] His majesty had sent a great army with the nobles to the land of the Temehu (Libya), his son and heir, the good god, King Usertesen,[2] as their leader. Now he was returning, and had brought away living captives and all kinds of cattle without end. The councillors of the palace had sent to the West to let the king know the matter that had come to pass in the inner hall. The messenger was to meet him on the road, and reach him at the time of evening: the matter was urgent. "A hawk had soared with his followers." Thus said he, not to let the army know of it. Even if the royal sons who commanded in that army sent a message, he was not to speak to a single one of them. But I was standing near, and heard his voice while he was speaking. I fled far away, my heart beating, my arms failing, trembling had fallen on all my limbs. I turned about in running to seek a place to hide me, and I threw myself between two bushes, to wait while they should pass by. Then I turned me toward the south, not wishing to come into this palace--for I knew not if war was declared--nor even thinking a wish to live after this sovereign. I turned my back to the sycamore, I reached Shi-Seneferu, and rested on the open field. In the morning I went on and overtook a man, who passed by the edge of the road. He asked of me mercy, for he feared me. By the evening I drew near to Kher-ahau (Cairo) and I crossed the river on a raft without a rudder. Carried by the west wind, I passed over to the east to the quarries of Aku and the land of the goddess Herit, mistress of the red mountain. Then I fled on foot, northward, and reached the walls of the prince, built to repel the Sati. I crouched in a bush for fear of being seen by the guards, changed each day, who watch on the top of the fortress. I took my way by night, and at the lighting of the day I reached Peten, and turned me toward the valley of Kemur. Then thirst hasted me on; I dried up, and my throat narrowed, and I said, "This is the taste of death." When I lifted up my heart and gathered strength, I heard a voice and the lowing of cattle. I saw men of the Sati, and one of them--a friend unto Egypt--knew me. He gave me water and boiled milk, and I went with him to his camp; they did me good, and one tribe passed me on to another. I passed on to Sun, and reached the land of Adim (Edom). [Illustration: HAREM WINDOW AND COURT. Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.] When I had dwelt there half a year Amu-an-shi--who is the prince of the Upper Tenu--sent for me and said: "Dwell thou with me that thou mayest hear the speech of Egypt." He said thus for that he knew of my excellence, and had heard tell of my worth, for men of Egypt who were there with him bore witness of me. Behold he said to me, "For what cause hast thou come hither? Has a matter come to pass in the palace? Has the king of the two lands, Sehetepabra, gone to heaven? What has happened about this is not known." But I answered with concealment, and said, "When I came from the land of the Temehu, and my desires were there changed in me, if I fled away it was not by reason of remorse that I took the way of a fugitive; I have not failed in my duty, my mouth has not said any bitter words, I have not heard any evil counsel, my name has not come into the mouth of a magistrate. I know not by what I have been led into this land." And Amu-an-shi said, "This is by the will of the god (King of Egypt), for what is a land like, if it know not that excellent god, of whom the dread is upon the lands of strangers, as they dread Sekhet in a year of pestilence?" I spake to him, and replied, "Forgive me, his son now enters the palace, and has received the heritage of his father. He is a god who has none like him, and there is none before him. He is a master of wisdom, prudent in his designs, excellent in his decrees, with good-will to him who goes or who comes; he subdued the land of strangers while his father yet lived in his palace, and he rendered account of that which his father destined him to perform. A king, he has ruled from his birth; he, from his birth, has increased births, a sole being, a divine essence, by whom this land rejoices to be governed. He enlarges the borders of the South; but he covets not the lands of the North; he does not smite the Sati, nor crush the Nemau-shau. If he descends here, let him know thy name, by the homage which thou wilt pay to his majesty. For he refuses not to bless the land which obeys him." And he replied to me, "Egypt is indeed happy and well settled; behold thou art far from it, but whilst thou art with me I will do good unto thee." And he placed me before his children, he married his eldest daughter to me, and gave me the choice of all his land, even among the best of that which he had on the border of the next land. It is a goodly land; Iaa is its name. There are figs and grapes; there is wine commoner than water; abundant is the honey, many are its olives; and all fruits are upon its trees; there is barley and wheat, and cattle of kinds without end. This was truly a great thing that he granted me, when the prince came to invest me, and establish me as prince of a tribe in the best of his land. I had my continual portion of bread and of wine each day, of cooked meat, of roasted fowl, as well as the wild game which I took, or which was brought to me, besides what my dogs captured. They made me much butter, and prepared milk of all kinds. I passed many years, the children that I had became great, each ruling his tribe. When a messenger went or came to the palace, he turned aside from the way to come to me; for I helped every man. I gave water to the thirsty, I set on his way him who went astray, and I rescued the robbed. The Sati who went far, to strike and turn back the princes of other lands, I ordained their goings; for the Prince of the Tenu for many years appointed me to be general of his soldiers. In every land which I attacked I played the champion, I took the cattle, I led away the vassals, I carried off the slaves, I slew the people, by my sword, my bow, my marches and my good devices. I was excellent to the heart of my prince; he loved me when he knew my power, and set me over his children when he saw the strength of my arms. A champion of the Tenu came to defy me in my tent: a bold man without equal, for he had vanquished the whole country. He said, "Let Sanehat fight with me;" for he desired to overthrow me, he thought to take my cattle for his tribe. The prince counseled with me. I said, "I know him not. I certainly am not of his degree, I hold me far from his place. Have I ever opened his door, or leaped over his fence? It is some envious jealousy from seeing me; does he think that I am like some steer among the cows, whom the bull overthrows? If this is a wretch who thinks to enrich himself at my cost, not a Bedawi fit for fight, then let us put the matter to judgment. Verily a true bull loves battle, but a vain-glorious bull turns his back for fear of contest; if he has a heart for combat, let him speak what he pleases. Will God forget what he has ordained, and how shall that be known?" I lay down; and when I had rested I strung my bow, I made ready my arrows, I loosened my dagger, I furbished my arms. At dawn the land of the Tenu came together; it had gathered its tribes and called all the neighboring people; it spake of nothing but the fight. Each heart burnt for me, men and women crying out; for each heart was troubled for me, and they said, "Is there another strong one who would fight with him? Behold the adversary has a buckler, a battle-axe, and an armful of javelins." Then I drew him to the attack; I turned aside his arrows, and they struck the ground in vain. One drew near to the other, and he fell on me, and then I shot him. My arrow fastened in his neck, he cried out, and fell on his face: I drove his lance into him, and raised my shout of victory on his back. Whilst all the men of the land rejoiced, I, and his vassals whom he had oppressed, gave thanks unto Mentu (the god of war). This prince, Amu-an-shi, embraced me. Then I carried off his goods and took his cattle, that which he had wished to do to me, I did even so unto him; I seized that which was in his tent, I spoiled his dwelling. As time went on I increased the richness of my treasures and the number of my cattle.... [But at last the exile desired to return to his native land, and sent a petition to the King of Egypt, asking permission.] Then the majesty of King Kheper-ka-ra, the blessed, spake upon this my desire that I had made to him. His majesty sent unto me with presents from the king, that he might enlarge the heart of his servant, like unto the province of any strange land; and the royal sons who are in the palace addressed themselves unto me. _Copy of the decree which was brought to lead me back into Egypt._ "The Horus, life of births, lord of the two crowns, King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Kheper-ka-ra, son of the Sun, Amen-em-hat, ever living unto eternity. Order for the follower Sanehat. Behold this order of the king is sent to thee to instruct thee of his will. "Now, although them hast gone through strange lands from Adim to Tenu, and passed from one country to another at the wish of thy heart--behold, what hast thou done, or what has been done against thee, that is amiss? Moreover, thou reviledst not; but if thy word was denied, thou didst not speak again in the assembly of the nobles, even if thou wast desired. Now, therefore, that thou hast thought on this matter which has come to thy mind, let thy heart not change again; for this thy Heaven (queen), who is in the palace is fixed, she is flourishing, she is enjoying the best in the kingdom of the land, and her children are in the chambers of the palace. "Leave all the riches that thou hast, and that are with thee, altogether. When thou shalt come into Egypt behold the palace, and when thou shalt enter the palace, bow thy face to the ground before the Great House; thou shalt be chief among the companions. And day by day behold thou growest old; thy vigor is lost, and thou thinkest on the day of burial. Thou shalt see thyself come to the blessed state, they shall give thee the bandages from the hand of Tait, the night of applying the oil of embalming. They shall follow thy funeral, and visit the tomb on the day of burial, which shall be in a gilded case, the head painted with blue, a canopy of cypress wood above thee, and oxen shall draw thee, the singers going before thee, and they shall dance the funeral dance. The weepers crouching at the door of thy tomb shall cry aloud the prayers for offerings: they shall slay victims for thee at the door of thy pit; and thy pyramid shall be carved in white stone, in the company of the royal children. Thus thou shalt not die in a strange land, nor be buried by the Amu; thou shalt not be laid in a sheep-skin when thou art buried; all people shall beat the earth, and lament on thy body when thou goest to the tomb." When this order came to me, I was in the midst of my tribe. When it was read unto me, I threw me on the dust, I threw dust in my hair; I went around my tent rejoicing and saying, "How may it be that such a thing is done to the servant, who with a rebellious heart has fled to strange lands? Now with an excellent deliverance, and mercy delivering me from death, thou shalt cause me to end my days in the palace." I made a feast in Iaa, to pass over my goods to my children. My eldest son was leading my tribe, all my goods passed to him, and I gave him my corn and all my cattle, my fruit, and all my pleasant trees. When I had taken my road to the south, and arrived at the roads of Horus, the officer who was over the garrison sent a messenger to the palace to give notice. His majesty sent the good overseer of the peasants of the king's domains, and boats laden with presents from the king for the Sati who had come to conduct me to the roads of Horus. I spoke to each one by his name, and I gave the presents to each as was intended. I received and I returned the salutation and I continued thus until I reached the city of Thetu (Thebes). When the land was brightened, and the new day began, four men came with a summons for me; and the four men went to lead me to the palace. I saluted with both my hands on the ground; the royal children stood at the courtyard to conduct me: the courtiers who were to lead me to the hall brought me on the way to the royal chamber. I found his majesty on the great throne in the hall of pale gold. Then I threw myself on the ground; this god, in whose presence I was, knew me not. He questioned me graciously, but I was as one seized with blindness, my spirit fainted, my limbs failed, my heart was no longer in my bosom, and I knew the difference between life and death. His majesty said to one of the companions, "Lift him up, let him speak to me." The royal children were brought in, and his majesty said to the queen, "Behold, Sanehat has come as an Amu, whom the Sati have produced." She cried aloud, and the royal children spake with one voice, saying before his majesty, "Verily it is not so, O king, my lord." Said his majesty, "It is verily he." Then they brought their collars, and their wands, and their sistra[A] in their hands, and displayed them before his majesty; and they sang-- "May thy hands prosper, O king; May the ornaments of the Lady of Heaven continue. May the goddess Nub give life to thy nostril; May the mistress of the stars favor thee, when thou sailest south and north. All wisdom is in the mouth of thy majesty; Thy uræus[B] is on thy forehead, thou drivest away the miserable. Thou art pacified, O Ra, lord of the lands; They call on thee as on the mistress of all. Strong is thy horn. Thou lettest fly thine arrow. Grant the breath to him who is without it; Grant good things to this traveller, Sanehat the Pedti, born in the land of Egypt, Who fled away from fear of thee, And fled this land from thy terrors. Does not the face grow pale, of him who beholds thy countenance; Does not the eye fear, which looks upon thee?" [A] The sistrum was a musical rattle, usually consisting of a thin oval metal band, crossed with metal rods and having a handle. See cut. p. 39. [B] The serpent, with raised, projecting head, which was an emblem of sovereignty. Said his majesty, "Let him not fear, let him be freed from terror. He shall be a Royal Friend amongst the nobles; he shall be put within the circle of the courtiers. Go ye to the chamber of praise to seek wealth for him." When I went out from the palace, the royal children offered their hands to me; we walked afterwards to the Great Gates. Years were removed from my limbs: I was shaved, and polled my locks of hair; the foulness was cast to the desert with the garments of the Nemau-shau. I clothed me in fine linen, and anointed myself with the fine oil of Egypt; I laid me on a bed. I gave up the sand to those who lie on it; the oil of wood to him who would anoint himself therewith. There was given to me the mansion of a lord of serfs, which had belonged to a royal friend. There many excellent things were in its buildings; all its wood was renewed. There were brought to me portions from the palace, thrice and four times each day; besides the gifts of the royal children, always, without ceasing. There was built for me a pyramid of stone amongst the pyramids. The overseer of the architects measured its ground; the chief treasurer wrote it; the sacred masons cut the well; the chief of the laborers on the tombs brought the bricks; all things used to make strong a building were there used. There were given to me peasants; there was made for me a garden, and fields were in it before my mansion, as is done for the chief royal friend. My statue was inlaid with gold, its girdle of pale gold; his majesty caused it to be made. Such honor is not done to a man of low degree. May I be in the favor of the king until the day shall come of my death. FOOTNOTES: [1] More correctly rendered as Sinuhe. [2] Sesostris. [Illustration] THE SONG OF THE HARPER. (Sixteenth century B.C.) The Song of the Harper was found in the tomb of the priest Neferhotep, near Thebes. It was designed to be sung on the anniversary of his death. He is shown sitting with his wife, son and daughter, while the harper chants. Other copies of this song have come down to us. _Ra_ or _Re_ is the general appellation of the Sun-god; _Tum_ or _Tmu_ denotes the Sun setting; _Shu_ is the light of the Sun in its life-giving function. Neferhotep, great and blessed, sleepeth; we protect his sleep. Since the day when Ra began his race, and Tum hastened to its ending, fathers have gone down to death, and children have arisen in their place. Even as Ra has his birth in the morning, fathers beget sons; Even as Tum begetteth night, mothers conceive and bring forth; The breath of the morning is in a man's nostrils; Man that is born of a woman vanisheth when his race is run. Holy Father, vouchsafe that the day return with blessing; Smell thou the fragrant oils that we pour on thy altars, receive the flowers that we bring for an offering. Lo, thy sister dwelleth in thy heart as in a temple; Give these lotus flowers into her arms, place them in her bosom; Lo, she sitteth at thy right hand; let the harp and the sound of singing be pleasing unto thee, and drive sorrow away. Rejoice even unto the day when we, pilgrims, enter Amenti, welcomed by him who went before us. Vouchsafe, O Lord, that the day come quickly; Pure of heart and deed was he whom we loved: The life of earth passeth away, even so passed he away; Behold, he was, and he is not, and no man knoweth his place. So hath it been, since Ra went forth, O Man, and so shall it be forever. The eyes of a man are opened, and are quickly closed again. His soul drinketh of the sacred waters, he drinketh with them that are gone of the waters of the River of Life. Give unto the poor, who cry to thee when the harvest faileth; so shall thy name be magnified forever. And to the feast of thy sacrifice multitudes shall come, worshipping; And the priest, clothed with a panther's skin, shall pour out wine unto thee; And shall offer cakes, and sing songs before thy altars, In that day when thy servants stand before Ra, the Sun-god. Shu shall bring forth the harvest in its season, And glory shall be thine, but destruction shall overtake the wicked. Return quickly, O Neferhotep, let the day of thy honor return: Lo, the works which thou didst upon earth, thou didst leave them in the day of thy going; Rich wast thou, but of thy riches only these ashes are left. In the day of thy going thou tarriedst not, nothing didst thou save in that day: Yea, though a man have much grain, yet the day of his poverty shall come; Death regardeth not his riches; Death heedeth not the pride of a man. Friends, the day of your going shall come; let your hearts have understanding. Whither ye go, thence shall ye not return forever. The upright man shall prosper, but the transgressor shall perish. Be ye just, for the just man shall be blessed. But neither the brave man, nor he that feareth, nor he that hath friends, nor the forsaken one, None shall escape the grave, no man small prevail against Death. Vouchsafe unto us, therefore, of thine abundance, and be thou blessed forever of Isis. PRESENT-DAY EGYPT ALEXANDRIA. Where East and West Meet. Alexandria is the great commercial center of the southern Mediterranean. Approached from the sea, the coast is so level that the city is not visible until the harbor is almost reached. Modern docks and warehouses are crowded along the shore. In spite of its modern appearance, Alexandria is an old city, founded by Alexander the Great, in 332 B.C. He evinced his usual insight and good judgment in the site chosen, it being sufficiently far west to escape the deposits brought down by the Nile and carried to sea by its various outlets. The only important city of all those founded by the great conqueror, Alexandria became a center of culture and education. Scholars and men of genius were encouraged to come here by the Ptolomies, who were determined to make the place a second Athens. A museum was founded and a library established, some 900,000 rolls of manuscript being accumulated. This we may feel sure embraced the wealth of ancient learning. When the city was besieged by the Romans in the time of Cæsar, this priceless collection of books was destroyed. The loss to the future was irreparable. However, an earnest effort was put forth to replace as many as possible of the writings, and for years scribes copied precious rolls sent them from other educational centers and from private collections. Indeed, it was plainly hinted by those best informed that the originals were never returned to rightful owners, but that copies were invariably returned and the original kept to grace the public library. When Omar overcame Egypt in the seventh century, he proclaimed the Koran sufficient for all, saying that it included whatever wisdom men needed. Whereupon he commanded the destruction of this second library. It is recorded that the contents were distributed among four thousand public baths of Alexandria and that fires were kept burning for six months before the books were consumed. Lovers of antiquity can never cease to regret these two wanton wastes of ancient literature. Pompey's Pillar[A] may be seen towering high above the city as one draws near. While its significance is not absolutely proved, nevertheless it is thought to have been erected in honor of Diocletian in the third century. It is made of red granite and was originally crowned by a statue. Aside from it and the catacombs, there is little to suggest the venerable age of the place. The catacombs were used here, as in Rome, by early Christians for interment. [A] The shaft is erroneously associated with Pompey. In many respects Alexandria is like certain European cities. Its streets are well paved, it has broad avenues in its newer sections, and the local activities center around a great public square, named after Mohammet Ali, who loved the place and did much to beautify it. Except for the ruinous policy of Saïd and Ismail, who involved their country in heavy debt, Alexandria would be a very wealthy metropolis, for its yearly shipment of cotton alone is nearly one million bales. Nevertheless, while as conspicuous a commercial center as Liverpool, its commerce is slight compared to what it was before shipping interests were diverted around the Cape of Good Hope. In no other locality can one see such a meeting of the nations. All languages are heard in a general babel around the harbor and in the streets. Numbering about three hundred and forty thousand people, its population includes Asiatics and Europeans of every description, who offer a striking contradiction to Kipling's couplet: "For East is East, and West is West, And never the twain shall meet." CAIRO. The ride from Alexandria to Cairo leads across the level plains of the delta. Fields of grain, occasional palms, scattering villages of mud huts, and the ever-evident canals make up the landscape. As one draws near the city a sight of the Pyramids is gained; then the suburbs of Cairo appear. Unlike Alexandria, Cairo is a comparatively modern city. The seaport was twelve hundred years old before a stone of Cairo had been set in place. Now having a population of about six hundred thousand, it, too, shows great diversity of people. While the Arabs make up the bulk of the inhabitants, representatives of all countries and climes are seen. The domed mosques stand on every hand, monuments to the teachings of Mohammed. Much as Venice attracts artists by its lavish display of color, Cairo also offers visions for one who is skillful with the brush. Its sapphire skies, gorgeous sunsets with their marvellous after-glow, the gleaming sands of the desert and Pyramids turned to gold in the setting sun, are intoxicating. It is the land of Arabian Nights, and slight imagination is required to make the visitor fancy himself back in story land. Strange and unfamiliar sights greet him everywhere; even the odor of the oriental city, incapable of description, is present when darkness has eliminated many of the scenes, and slumber has lessened many of the sounds. Although few spend much time in Alexandria, all visitors to Egypt devote as many days or weeks as may be possible to Cairo. From there one may visit the great Pyramids, going by train if limited in point of time; going by donkey or camel if fond of following historic customs. Here, too, one starts upon the trip up the Nile, without which any visit to Egypt would be incomplete. The bazaars afford much entertainment for the sojourner in Cairo. Even those who for some reason have made this city their abode for a protracted time never tire of the street scenes or the bazaars. Unlike our shops, each bazaar displays in a series of booths one commodity; rugs and carpets have a bazaar given up to them alone; jewels and ornaments are displayed at another, and so on. It would seem as if each article was priced according to the purse of the customer. It is impossible in oriental lands to shop expeditiously, as in western countries. The oriental makes bargains with his customers; he names a price considerably larger than he expects to receive; the would-be customer names another considerably less than he expects to pay; and sometimes for hours the bickering is continued, each satisfied in the end and probably far better pleased than if the matter had been speedily adjusted. Many festivals are observed in Egypt. The year is lunar: if New Year's Day be ascertained, it is very easy to account for the months, each being twenty-eight days in length. Within a period of thirty-three years a complete circuit is made and another begun. The fact that a given holiday was celebrated last year in one month proves immediately that this year it will fall at another time. Mohammedan feasts and fasts are strictly observed. The month of Ramadan is the holy month, corresponding in some measure to our Lent. None of the faithful will allow a morsel of food or a drop of water to pass their lips during that month from sunrise to sunset. But the moment the golden orb has fallen below the horizon the feasting begins, often to last throughout the night. When this month of daily fasting falls in the hot summer-time, the mortality is very great, not only because of immoderate indulgence through the night, but because of the suffering for lack of water through the day. The yearly departure of the caravan for Mecca is a remarkable sight. Every true Mohammedan hopes to some day make a pilgrimage to Mecca--the sacred city of his prophet. Each year those who are able set out upon their journey. A carpet which has been woven for this purpose is sent to the sacred shrine, to take the place of the one placed there the previous year. The procession of pilgrims winds through the streets of Cairo, witnessed by the entire population, who throng the streets to catch sight of the carpet and, if possible, to touch it Reaching Mecca, the carpet which has absorbed holiness during the past year is torn up, the pieces being distributed among the pilgrims, who treasure them as their dearest possessions. Upon his return home, each pilgrim is looked upon with envy and honor by his Mohammedan brethren. He and all who behold him know that his entrance into Paradise is secure; henceforward he is distinguished for his piety, and those less fortunate can but dream of the day when they, too, may be able to follow his worthy example. THE EGYPTIAN MUSEUM. Only in comparatively recent years have antiquities been adequately prized or cared for. Early in the nineteenth century Lord Elgin, then on diplomatic service to Turkey, was so dismayed by the spectacle of Parthenon fragments lying about unprotected on the Acropolis at Athens, that he succeeded in obtaining permission from the Sublime Porte to remove them to England. Subsequently the British Museum purchased them from him for much less than had been the expense incurred in removing and exporting them from Greece. Similarly, valuable recoveries in Egypt were left for private individuals to take away as they saw fit; sometimes they were finally collected by national museums, but quite as often they became the possessions of the favored few, or in some cases were even wholly lost. In 1863 Mariette obtained the exclusive right to excavate in Egypt He also awakened the government to the need of placing all recoveries under its exclusive control. Since the time of Napoleon scarcely a vessel had left Alexandria without carrying some priceless treasure to be added to the collections of the Louvre or the British Museum. In 1878 Mariette founded the Egyptian Museum at Balak, and for a long time it was known as the Balak Museum. Although small and without the slightest protection against fire, it nevertheless provided a place for antiques; some were merely stored in sheds, for lack of room, and others remained unclassified because there was no opportunity to display them. In 1889 the need for another building was keenly felt. Egypt could not build at this time, but the Palace of Gizeh was placed at the disposal of the collection. While somewhat larger than Balak, it was neither commodious nor safe. On the first day of April, 1897, the corner stone of a national museum was laid in Cairo by the Khedive. This substantial and fireproof building, constructed at a cost of almost $900,000, was completed November 15, 1902, and is now the repository of the largest and most valuable collection of Egyptian antiquities in the world. This museum has been fortunate in its curators--all men of scholarly attainments and well versed in Egyptian history. Mariette was succeeded by M. Maspero, whose voluminous work upon Egyptian history is well known to many. Later he resigned this position to resume his literary work in Europe, only to return by a fortunate circumstance in 1899, in time to supervise the transfer of the many priceless treasures to their present abode. Leaving the busy streets of Cairo, one turns from Mohammedan to ancient Egypt. On every hand the past looms up; pharaohs and beings of a period far remote populate this little world, and so far as life can express itself in material things, these are available for examination and study. The plan followed in the arrangement is the chronological one used also in the earlier buildings. The heavier objects have been given place on the ground floor; the lighter and smaller articles on the floor above. The first six rooms on the ground floor are devoted to the remains of the Old Empire--particularly of the fourth, fifth and sixth dynasties. The diorite statue of Khafra, so often shown in prints, is here; also the squatting statue of a scribe, second only in beauty to the one in the Louvre. The next series of rooms are given over to the remains of the Middle Empire. The statue of Amenemhet III, of the twelfth dynasty, is worthy of special mention. Moreover, statues and sphinxes of the Hyksos period are also found here. The New Empire left evidences of regal splendor, eclipsing all earlier periods; gilded chairs, chariots, dishes of gold and silver, as well as statues of the kings themselves attract attention. Other rooms record Egypt's decay--when Ethiopians ruled the land; the period of Egyptian Renaissance, productive of wonderful sculpture; the coming of Alexander and Greek supremacy; the period of Roman rule; and finally Byzantine Egypt. The second floor is the treasure house for the more varied remains. One may see the mummies of the priests of Ammon, funerary furniture, dolls and other toys, alabaster vases, domestic furniture, funerary barks, terra-cottas of the Græco-Roman period, statues of the gods, amulets and "answerers" and, most imposing of all perhaps, the royal mummies. In one of the rooms is an example of the finest surviving Egyptian painting: a picture of geese feeding. This, like other paintings of ancient Egypt, was found in an old tomb. The _Galerie des Bijoux_ is also on this upper floor. Some of its wonderful treasures rival the workmanship of Tiffany; others are even more perfect. The stones most frequently used were lapis lazuli, carnelian, jasper and garnets. The favorite ornaments were rings, collars, chains, amulets and bracelets. One might spend months in this museum and fail to exhaust its marvels. Few can do this, and for those whose visit to Cairo must be brief, it is better to see only a little and see it well than to attempt to hurriedly pass through all the rooms. The British Museum, the Louvre and the Metropolitan Museum in New York all have departments of Egyptian antiquities. Since the work of excavation and discovery still goes on, it may reasonably be expected that further light will be thrown upon the past by the labor of the next few years. For this reason only recent publications regarding the Nile dwellers have any great value. THE SUEZ CANAL. The Suez Canal has been the cause of Egypt's late international importance. It exemplifies several striking paradoxes. Opposed bitterly by England at first, it is now largely under her control; made possible by the heavy investments of the viceroy of Egypt, this country has no shipping today to profit by the canal nor does it receive any benefit whatever because of it. On the contrary, it has been the real cause of Egypt's loss of independence. Before the building of the canal began Egypt had no debt; while the viceroy acknowledged the suzerainty of the Sultan of Turkey, in a large measure he was free to conduct all internal affairs, and hoped in time to gain full sovereignty. The enormous amounts supplied by Viceroy Saïd for the canal with the idle hope of dazzling the eyes of Europe were the first of a long series of extravagances which so burdened his country with debt that progress finally ceased and activities became paralyzed. To protect their subjects, who had loaned money at a rate of interest prohibited in their own lands, European countries stepped in and assumed control of Egyptian finances. Today it is impossible to foresee how Egypt can regain the independence she has lost. In ancient times canals provided Egyptians access to the Red Sea. When the expedition was made to Punt during the early years of the New Empire, it is probable that ships built at Thebes were dispatched directly to the sea by means of some constructed water way. Again, we know that a canal was built two or three hundred years before the Christian Era and that Cleopatra tried to save the remnant of her fleet after the battle of Actium by means of it; but owing to its impaired condition and the low water at that season, her attempt failed. When Egypt became a Roman province a water way connecting the Red and Mediterranean seas was projected but not constructed. Napoleon was quick to see its opportunities during his Egyptian campaign and set his engineers to work upon the plan, which was abandoned upon his withdrawal from Africa. The idea prevailed that the two seas were of different levels. In 1847 England, France and Austria sent out a commission to ascertain the facts, and their surveys proved that the levels were the same. However, nothing was done and the matter was forgotten save by a French engineer by the name of De Lesseps, who continued to brood over the undertaking. In 1856, having unusual opportunities to cultivate the acquaintance of Viceroy Saïd, De Lesseps obtained from him a concession for the construction of a canal to join the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, it being distinctly stated that this should cost Egypt nothing, that fifteen per cent of the profits should fall to her share, and that in ninety-nine years, upon payment of the actual improvements made by the canal company along the banks, the canal should revert to Egypt. To prevent the importation of vast hordes of laborers, Saïd agreed to supply peasant labor at a nominal price, De Lesseps and his associates to provide them with adequate food and care; likewise to bring fresh water to the scene of action for their use. The concession was made conditional to the approval of the Sultan of Turkey, suzerain of Egypt, whose consent was to be obtained by De Lesseps without mediation of the viceroy. When it came to procuring capital sufficient to promote the enterprise, De Lesseps found it far more difficult than he had imagined. England had completed a railroad from Alexandria to Suez in 1858 and vigorously opposed the canal project; private funds might have been forthcoming from Englishmen but for the fact that the government disapproved so heartily; French capital was needed largely at home. The canal company issued 400,000 shares, which for some time went begging. De Lesseps finally persuaded Saïd to take 177,662 shares, which marked the beginning of Egypt's enslavement and at the same time the beginning of De Lesseps' success. Stock was readily sold now, and in 1859 the digging began. In 1863 Saïd died and Ismail became viceroy of Egypt. He fell into the mistake of his predecessor and became a willing victim for the canal company. The work upon the canal was but one-fourth completed; twenty-five thousand peasants had been impressed every three months, but their insufficient food and cruel treatment had resulted in the death of thousands. Protests were made by civilized countries everywhere--particularly did the English government take a stand for humane conditions, "her philanthropy and political interests being roused to simultaneous action." It is amusing to review articles written during the years when the canal was first discussed as a possibility, then as an actual undertaking. The following lines have been taken from a magazine published in 1860: "We have once more to advert to the monster folly of the nineteenth century. It is now understood that our government perceives the wisdom of leaving a project so insane to the fate and ridicule which inevitably await it. It was their opposition alone that gave it any importance, and by exciting the national prejudices of France, enabled the projectors to raise funds which they never could have got without it.... "The project is to cut a ship canal three hundred feet wide and thirty feet deep over ninety miles of flat sand. As the level of the Mediterranean and the Red Sea are the same, the canal will be near thirty feet below the level of both, and hence it will be a stagnant and in all likelihood a pestilential ditch.... "The Suez Canal will be begun but never completed nor half completed. Its wreck, as useless as the Pyramids, but far less interesting, will like to be exhibited to posterity probably under the name of the 'French Folly.'"[A] [A] Living Age, December, 1860. England's appeal to the Sublime Porte to have the work upon the canal stopped brought to light the fact that the Sultan's sanction to the undertaking had never been procured. The work done so far had followed very primitive methods, peasants digging the sand up by handsful, putting it in palm-leaf baskets and carrying these up the steep bank to empty. France made great effort to obtain the Sultan's approval, for the situation was critical. His reply was that he confirmed the concession granted by Viceroy Saïd, but that the work henceforth should not be done by impressed peasants. The company's treasury was again empty; it chose to hold the viceroy responsible for the predicament caused by the withdrawal of the peasants and brought him a bill for damages. The claims made could not have been substantiated in any court, for there was no contract, and the concession distinctly stated that the canal was to cost Egypt nothing. However, the viceroy was peculiarly situated; he was dreaming of a day when he might shake off the suzerainty of Turkey and be recognized by the powers as a monarch of independent might. Moreover, he valued the friendship of France--which was to cost him dear. He had been educated in Paris and hoped to make Cairo the Paris of Egypt. Refusing to pay the damages asked, De Lesseps prevailed upon him to submit the matter for arbitration and--strange as it may seem--the emperor of France was agreed upon, his judgment to be final. Napoleon III ruled that the clause wherein the viceroy had agreed to provide peasant labor amounted to a contract; that by the decree of the Sultan this labor was now unavailable; hence the company had suffered severe loss. The fact that the water was already filtering in from the sea, necessitating the use of dredges, was not brought to light. Not only sustaining the company's claim, he added other injuries which they had overlooked. The result was that the viceroy paid a large amount, which added to Egypt's rapidly increasing debt, and at the same time enabled the canal company to continue operations. In 1869 the canal was finished, and its completion was celebrated by sumptuous festivities. The Empress of France, Emperor of Austria, Crown Prince of Prussia, Prince of Wales, and many other important members of royalty were present. Forty-eight ships were required to convey the guests thither; the celebration lasted one month--the entire cost defrayed by the viceroy, or the Egyptian government. It amounted to about $21,000,000. It was for this occasion that Verdi wrote his opera Aïda, the great Egyptologist Mariette Bey studying ancient costumes and settings to give added interest and reality, while the Egyptian Museum supplied jewels for the gifted musicians brought from various parts of Europe to present the opera. A few years later it was found that the debt of Egypt amounted to over $450,000,000. Securities for this vast amount were held by English, French and German subjects. Even the stipulated fifteen per cent of the canal profits had been used as security; the Nile valley suffered from insufficient water supply, and the inflated price of cotton, obtaining during the Civil War in the United States, fell. In the face of impending ruin, something had to be done. At the clamorous demands of Europe, the Sultan deposed Ismail, whose reckless policy, together with that of Saïd, had brought this overwhelming trouble upon his country. The British government bought the stock held by the viceroy--177,662 shares--for $20,000,000, thus obtaining a controlling voice in the company. France and England established what was known as the "dual control" in Egypt, which continued until the revolt of 1882, at which time France refused to go to the extreme of bombarding Alexandria and withdrew--thus ending her control in Egyptian affairs. Since 1882 English "occupation" has continued and bids fair to continue for an indefinite time. It is even now evident that if the canal reverts to the Egyptian government upon the expiration of ninety-nine years, this may be a very different government from that which gave the original concession. From the standpoint of commercial history, few events have been more signal than the completion of the Suez Canal. Heretofore vessels have saved little except time by making use of it, for the tolls exacted have been equal to the expense of about three thousand miles ocean travel. One dollar and ninety cents per vessel tonnage and two dollars per passenger, crews excepted, have been required, thus making the cost of large vessels passing through amount sometimes to $10,000; $400 has been charged for a small yacht. However, it is now contemplated to make the tolls for both Panama and Suez canals uniform--one dollar and twenty cents per vessel tonnage and no charge for passengers being the proposed change. The distance has been greatly reduced by means of the canal; from England to Bombay lessened from 10,860 to 4,620 miles; from New York to Bombay from 11,520 to 7,920 miles. The Suez Canal is one hundred miles in length, four hundred twenty feet wide surface measure, and one hundred eight feet on the bottom; it was originally twenty-seven feet nine inches deep but has been since dredged to a depth of thirty-one feet, lakes making it deeper in some places. It takes about fifteen hours and forty minutes to pass through, electricity making night passage possible. The majority of ships passing through fly under the English flag; next in number are those sailing under the French flag; fewer still belonging to Germany. Except for passenger vessels and men of war, few United States crafts have been seen in these waters. However, in view of the opening of Panama, the shipping of this country may be expected to rapidly increase. [Illustration: _A "SHIP OF THE DESERT."_ Here one sees ladies of modern Cairo out taking the air--"smelling the air," as they call it. Since one of them has removed her veil, it is safe to conclude that they do not belong to the upper class. Brides are usually transported in such a conveyance as this upon their wedding day, and the tinkling bells and smart trappings of the camel add to the pleasure of the occasion.] * * * * * BABYLONIA AND HER NEIGHBORS PREFATORY CHAPTER "_Aus den fruehesten Anfaengen erklaeren sich die spaetesten Erscheinungen."--Heine._ If the German poet was justified in writing the words just quoted much more are we in repeating them. The interpretation of the present is to be sought in the light of the past. _Ex oriente lux_ is an old and familiar saying. In the last century there flashed from this quarter a light that astonished the world, and like the wise men of old, it came from the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates. The consequent increase in our knowledge has revolutionized much of the thought of the past, and so quietly has this been done that none but those who have been more particularly interested in the new discoveries are aware of the importance and extent of the changes made. Our views of ancient history, literature, life, religion have been greatly altered and enlarged. Europe and America have been for almost two millennia under the potent spell and inspiration of a little people who lived at the eastern end of the Mediterranean. Prophets and teachers arose among them who lifted the world off its hinges, set Greece, the home of intellect, to thinking anew, and uttered their messages through the successors of the Caesars. A wonderful people, indeed! How are they to be explained? Most certainly we must seek for their explanation in the light of their antecedents and racial affinities. It was, and is, no more possible to understand them and correctly interpret their literary remains, the Bible, apart from a knowledge of the great family of which they formed numerically only an insignificant part than it would be to understand the spirit and thought of the people of the United States if the early relations to Great Britain were unknown or ignored. The Old Testament, in its late written traditions, records that the ancestors of the Hebrews emigrated from Ur of the Chaldees, an ancient city, even in the days of Abraham, of southern Babylonia and a principal seat of the worship of the moon-god, Sin. But of the great family of the Semites--the Arabians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Canaanites, Aramaeans, Syrians, etc., little was known a century ago. Practically all scholarly interest in this group until the middle of the nineteenth century was confined to the literature and civilization of the Arabs since the Mohammedan era. No better evidence of the universal ignorance of this past, extending down to modern times, can be found than in Sir Isaac Newton's "Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended," published in 1728. This foremost scholar of his day writes, page 268: "However we must allow that Nimrod founded a kingdom at Babylon, and perhaps extended it into Assyria; but this kingdom was but of small extent, if compared with the empires that rose up afterwards; being only within the fertile plains of Chaldea, Chalonitis, and Assyria, watered by the Tigris and Euphrates; and if it had been greater, yet it was but of short continuance, it being the custom in those early ages for every father to divide his territories amongst his sons. So Noah was king of all the world, and Cham was king of all Afric, and Japhet of all Europe and Asia Minor." Nimrod, Noah, Ham and Japhet were all as truly historical persons to the great scientist Newton and his age as were David, Isaiah and the apostle Paul. More than a century and a half have passed since this famous son of a Lincolnshire farmer wrote his Chronology, but the limitations under which he wrote were destined to remain for succeeding historians until quite recently. Even trained historians have found it difficult within the last two or three decades to adjust themselves to the new discoveries. Not long ago serious writers contended that the world was created 4004 B.C., in six days of twenty-four hours each, and anathemas were in store for those that questioned it. Writing in 1855, Professor Lewis in his "Six Days of Creation," declares that the Biblical story of the Creation was given "by inspiration to the earliest times, and to the earliest men, and in the earliest language that was spoken on the globe."--Hebrew! Less than twenty-five years ago one of the present writers' colleagues in a theological seminary, was teaching his students that the use of the plural name for God in Hebrew, and the thrice repeated "Holy, holy, holy," furnished collateral evidence in support of the doctrine of The Trinity. He was quite unaware that the polytheistic Assyrians used the same thrice repeated _ashru, ashru, ashru_, in praise of their gods. Today scholars are agreed that the first twelve chapters of Genesis are largely a _refacimento_ of mythical deposit found among the Semites and genetically closely related to the Babylonian cosmologies and epic stories. The Hebrew writers purged the old myths of their polytheism, breathed into them a new spirit, and made them the bearers of higher religious truth. But Adam and Eve are as genuinely semitic mythical creations as _Adapa_, or _Eabani_ and Ukhat, the spouse of the latter, who, like Adam, was created out of clay. When we read in the 10th chapter of Joshua the account of Joshua's miraculous victory over the combined forces of the five Amoritic kings we can now parallel it with like marvels in Assyria: "And it came to pass as they fled before Israel ... that the Lord cast down great stones from heaven upon them unto Azekah, and they died: there were more who died with the hailstones than they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword." In the same way, the enemies of Esarhaddon are to be slain by the goddess of war, Ishtar. Owing to the political relations into which the people of Israel and Judah were brought to the empires of the Tigris and Euphrates valley, the compilers of the historical books of The O. T., and the prophets have given us incidental, valuable, but not always unprejudiced notices of their kinsmen to the East. The II. Book of Kings touches upon some noteworthy events from the time of Tiglathpileser II. including the fall of Israel and Judah. Characteristic of these notices is the complete omission of Sargon's name except in Isaiah 20:1, where until the discovery of the inscriptions it was thought to be an official title, although he was the one who completed the conquest of the northern kingdom, the "House of Omri," as he calls it, and deported its inhabitants. It is difficult indeed for an Assyriologist to imagine an Assyrian _rabshak_ speaking to the messengers of Hezekiah as that officer is reported to have done in II. Kings 18:25f.: "Am I now come up without the Lord against this place to destroy it? The Lord said unto me, Go up against this land and destroy it." This Yahwe (Lord) Isaiah declares the Assyrian blasphemed, an act, which, to say the least, was more in accord with his usual temper. Yahwe was no more in the estimation of Sennacherib than the gods of the petty principalities of Hamath and Arpad. The truth seems to be that the writer in the book of Kings makes the _rabshak_ speak as he is alleged to have spoken just as the babylonian priests declared that Cyrus had been called to the conquest of Babylon by the Babylonian god Marduk. The books, especially of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Nahum and Ezekiel, contain some interesting material upon the cultus of Babylonia. It is, however, the darker features that the prophets delight to draw, and the picture they present to us does not in all points resemble the one we find in the palaces of the kings. The animus displayed toward the enemy is far removed from the precept which enjoins that he shall be loved. The fourteenth chapter of Isaiah is a standing witness to the correctness of this observation. It is a magnificent paean of prophetic feeling, but it is necessary to observe that the fate of Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon, was not so wretched as here described. When Cyrus conquered the city he made Nabonidus governor. It may, however, be that this perfervid and vengeful utterance of irrepressible joy related originally to Sargon II., king of Assyria, conqueror of Samaria, who, as his successor Sennacherib tells us "was not buried in his house," and that after the fall of Babylon the latter name was interpolated. At all events this king, unlike "the kings of the nations," did not "sleep in his own house" (vss. 18-19), and the introductory verses are obviously late. Optimistic and pessimistic patriots who writhed under the domination of a foreign power, religious zealots conscious of their possession of a purer and practically religious faith, it is little wonder they portrayed only the harsher features of their spoilers and conquerors. The apocalyptic book of Daniel, so long interpreted as a sober recital of historic events, is distinctly and admittedly at variance on some points with the monumental records of Nebuchadnezzar, Nabonidus, and Cyrus. It would, however, be an unjustifiable inference were any one to conclude from the foregoing that the records of the Old Testament had all, or in great measure, been relegated to the hazy region of myth and fiction by the revelations of the contemporary records of the monuments. The historical presentation of events from the age of Saul onwards have on the whole received welcome corroboration. The inscriptions on stone and clay have confirmed the story of the parchment rolls, completing, amending, elucidating it and always enabling us to interpret it more accurately. Sufficient has been said in the foregoing to suggest the far-reaching importance of Babylonian and Assyrian archaeology and literature for the understanding of the Old Testament. We are able now not only to bring new material in contemporary documents to aid us in its study, we are able also to interpret the life and thought of its people in the light of the larger history, political, institutional, social, moral, legal and religious, of the great family to which Israel belonged. The life of the various members of the ancient semitic stock has been illuminated by the discoveries which began with Botta and Layard. The conditions existing in Canaan prior to the conquest, for example, became clear only with the discovery of the Tell-Amarna tablets in 1887. They were found in the palace of Amenophis on the bank of the Nile about 180 miles south of Cairo and they cast an unexpected light upon the period of the Exodus. Israel, her history, her conquests, her captivities and her religion no longer stand as things apart in which the supernatural has been imminent and active in a manner nowhere else discoverable in the history of the race. A "Thus saith Jehovah," however spiritual the content, can no longer be interpreted as essentially different from a divine communication from the gods of Israel's neighbors and kinsmen. While the Old Testament gave us some information about Babylonia and Assyria prior to the discoveries of their own monuments, a brief account of which is given in the following pages, it must be admitted that it has gained by these discoveries incomparably more than it gave. But we have learned not only about Israel and the Bible, we have learned also much about the earlier Amoritic inhabitants of Palestine who had entered there and spread into Egypt and Babylonia as early as the second half of the third millennium B.C. Much has been won from these records about Egypt and Ethiopia, about the peoples of Arabia, the Hittites, the Aramaeans, Armenians, Elamites, Medes and Persians as well as the early inhabitants of Babylonia, the Sumerians, the original inventors of the cuneiform writing, which was a later development of pictographic symbols. We have learned with astonishment of the advances made in Babylonia in early times in the arts and architecture. Deprived by the nature of their country, in which wood and stone were not to be found, we read of Gudea (Circa 3000 B.C.) bringing diorite from Magan, West Arabia, for his sculptures, some of which are now to be seen in the Louvre collection. The skill of the lapidarist in connection with the cunningly engraved cylinder seals is today the admiration of the best workers in the art of engraving, and the wounded lioness from the palace of Ashurbanipal in the seventh century B.C. is the best portrayal of animal life that has come to us from ancient times. As Professor Sayce has recently shown, the lamp in use in Greece in the historical age, and not before, and later borrowed by the Romans, and after the Greek conquest, by the Egyptians, was Babylonian in origin and a common utensil in Mesopotamia prior to the fourteenth century B.C. The composite symbols of Babylonia were adopted by the people of Western Asia. The eagle of the southern city-kingdom of Lagash (Telloh) was transported to the Hittites. The eagle symbol, wherever found, double-headed or single, is a bird from the land of Paradise. The winged horse is found upon Hittite seals, and from Asia passed over the Hellespont and became the Greek Pegasos. The native fetish deities of Asia Minor were replaced by gods in human form, and the idea of a trinity, or triad of deities, followed in the wake of Babylonian culture. In architecture the Babylonians invented the arch. This achievement had always been attributed to the Etruscans on the basis of the statements of the classical writers. But it was used by the Babylonians, as we now know, three thousand years before there is any evidence of its use on classical soil. Columnar construction dates back to the same period. Both the arch and the column were found in the buildings unearthed a few years ago at Nippur by the expeditions from the University of Pennsylvania. Owing to the dearth of wood and stone these pioneers in the arts of civilization were forced to have recourse to clay, the only material available. They therefore invented the pillar made of brick. Babylonia was the land _par excellence_ of brick buildings. Their land abounded in asphaltum and this they used instead of mortar, as the Hebrew writer tells us they did when they built the tower of Babel, "the temple with the lofty tower," in Babylon. "Their technical skill rested on scientific principles no less unattainable in modern architecture than the Grecian idea of beauty in the plastic art. The buildings which they constructed with brick must have been built according to rules and laws unknown to modern architecture, which views many of these ancient works with the same astonishment as is evoked by the pyramids of Egypt." Babylonia can at least claim to have made early advances in astronomical observations. The movements of the heavenly bodies were carefully watched from the earliest times and records made of them. Even in the late Roman period the Chaldeans were still looked upon as the founders of astronomy. It is true that Egypt had also at a very early age successfully cultivated this science and had introduced a practical calendar which began the year on the day when Sirius was first observed on the eastern horizon at sunrise 4200 years before the Christian era. Some Egyptologists hold that this calendar was the precursor of the Julian, which in turn was modified by Pope Gregory in 1582, thus giving us the Gregorian calendar which was adopted in England by the Calendar Amendment Act of 1751. But it is more probable that we are indebted to the Babylonians for our calendrical system, Greece and Rome borrowing from them. The naming of the days of the week after the sun and moon gods and the five planets known to them seems beyond dispute. It was they who divided the circle into 360 degrees in connection with their sexagesimal system of numerals, the day into 24 hours, and the hour into 60 minutes. The faces of our watches bear daily and hourly witness to our obligations to this old people of the land of Shinar. There are 24 hours in the day, but our time-pieces divide them into two periods of 12 hours each, just as the Babylonian day was reckoned as 12 _double_ hours. By what routes and means these transfers of scientific achievements were made from the mother-land of science to the peoples of Europe we are not yet able to decide. Further discoveries, however, will doubtless reveal still more clearly the historic connections of modern culture with the people of the Tigris and Euphrates valley who themselves speak of their cities as "ancient" before the deluge. All of this increase of knowledge hinted at in the preceding paragraphs, and all too briefly sketched in this work, is the acquisition of our own times. The Greeks, who in haughty disdain regarded all others as "barbarians," knew little of this ancient of days--nothing whatever of the great ruler Sargon I. or Hammurabi, imperialist and great law-giver fifteen hundred years before the enactment of the laws of Draco and Solon at Athens. Among the Greek writers Herodotus is the only one that can be considered as a direct source. He may have visited Babylon about the middle of the fifth century B.C. Much of what he has written, however, is clearly a matter of hearsay or romancing. The judgment passed on him by his contemporaries and successors was certainly not without foundation. His critics accused him, as the Arabian historians did Ibn Ishaq, the biographer of Mohammed, of direct falsification, and even a superficial study of his writings is sufficient to prove that the accusation was not without apparent warrant. One seeks in vain, for example, in the Babylonian literature for evidence of the custom, which he describes as one of the most beautiful and wisest of the Babylonians, of putting the marriageable girls once a year upon the market to be sold to the highest bidders! Naively he adds that this was an earlier custom that was no longer practised in his time. Of the history of Babylon he knew little--of its latest rulers and even of the great Nebuchadnezzar he had not an inkling as Tiele, the Dutch historian, has said. Ctesias, the Carian physician who lived for seventeen years at the Persian court of Artaxerxes Mnemon in the fourth century, did not know that Babylon had an independent existence. Those who followed were for the most part merely excerptors from those who preceded them. In view of the paucity and unreliability of the sources an impenetrable veil was drawn between us and the ancient orient. At last it has been lifted, and in the language of the old poets of Babylon, "brother again sees brother." [Illustration: CLAY JARS OF CHALDEA.] BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA CHAPTER I. EARLY CIVILIZATION OF ASIA. In studying the history of Babylonia and Assyria, our attention is drawn to one of the earliest inhabited portions of the globe--so far as is now known: to the valley of the Euphrates. Biblical tradition favored the view that this was the Cradle of the Human Race. Here the Yahvistic writer placed the fabled Garden of Eden, the best explanation he could devise for the origin of mankind. The valley was a regular thoroughfare for early tribes journeying to and from Arabia, and reaching out to the east, west, or north for new homes, often remaining for long succeeding generations in the fertile region itself. It was a land where men of various tongues and dialects met, only to again diverge. The effort of the Hebrew to explain how so many languages had come into being resulted in the story of the Tower of Babel. Before the beginnings of the Hebrew race as distinct from the general Semitic family, an old civilization had developed here in Chaldea. In connection with his worship, the Chaldean built high ziqqurats--temple-towers of from three to seven platforms, rising one above the other, each platform smaller than the one below. The story handed down from one generation of the Hebrews to another was that the Chaldeans had once tried to build a tower to reach the very heavens. Alarmed at their presumption, God confounded their speech so they could no longer understand one another. Thus was man punished and thus the various speeches originated. In following the history of the mixed race known as the Babylonians, and of those who pressed north of the home-country to found the state of Assyria, we shall become acquainted with the only great nation of antiquity whose civilization may have been older than that of the Egyptians. We have up reliable record of the Chinese until late in the third millennium, and their civilization, if more ancient still, was isolated at least, and affected no other people. When Thutmose I. penetrated to the valley of the Euphrates, some years after the expulsion of the Hyksos, he came upon a nation, of whose culture, script, and language, as the recently discovered Tell-el-Amarna tablets indicate, were already familiar to his own people. The recorded life of Egypt reaches back more than 6,000 years; civilization in Mesopotamia may have been more ancient. Many monuments have been unearthed in the sites of ancient cities which throw light upon great antiquity. In Egypt visible monuments have borne witness through long succeeding centuries of early strength; in Babylonia and Assyria the very site of cities was forgotten, and men no longer remembered where these two influential powers of antiquity had developed. Though in the last century only anything like a complete history of Egypt has been possible, yet evidences of a nation long since extinct, were preserved in temples and tombs, and hieroglyphics covering walls and columns indicated that whoever should discover their meaning would learn of their mighty builders. Far different was the case of Babylonia and Assyria. They too had once been proud and wealthy nations, taking foremost rank; their cities filled the valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris, and their fertile fields yielded even more abundantly than the rich Nile valley. Their palaces rose to the glory of their kings, and their commerce penetrated to every corner of the ancient world. Then changes came upon the life of antiquity. New peoples pushed to the front; the tide of commerce shifted into other channels. These nations were conquered by their yet stronger neighbors, and their temples and palaces, built not of enduring stone but of perishable brick, fell into heaps of nameless mounds. When the waters of the mighty rivers were no longer guided through canals to irrigate the land, the soil ceased to be productive. Desert sands spread over the desolate region and reclaimed wide areas which became the tenting ground for nomadic tribes. The very words of the late writer in the Book of Isaiah concerning these nations rang true through the ages: "And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there. But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces; and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged. "Then shall the Assyrian fall with the sword, not of a mighty man; and the sword, not of a mean man, shall devour him; but he shall flee from the sword, and his young men shall be discomfited. And he shall pass over to his stronghold for fear, and his princes shall be afraid of the ensign."[1] Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, disappeared suddenly. In Alexander's day its site was unknown. Babylon, however, was not destroyed by Cyrus, but continued its importance until the rise of its rival Seleucia, and was still inhabited in the Middle Ages. But the two nations were forgotten in the west for hundreds of years. Then with the dawn of peace and order in Europe during the later Middle Ages, came the desire to know about the past. Monks who made pilgrimages to the Holy Land, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, sometimes pressed farther east, and made mention of strange mounds seen in the valleys of these ancient rivers. Travelers told of curious inscriptions found among the ruins there. In rare cases, they even went to the length of copying one or two, with greater or less accuracy. It was left finally for the eighteenth century to locate the old sites of Babylonian cities, and for the nineteenth century to discover the hidden meaning of the wedge-shaped letters inscribed upon their ruins. To the patient efforts of the men who persisted in their difficult and often disheartening task of unearthing ruins, and to the scholars who toiled year after year to read the forgotten language these ruins brought to light, we owe most that is now known regarding the early inhabitants of the Euphrates valley. These nations, so long destroyed, their cities, so long abandoned, we shall try to bring before us as they have been reconstructed by historians in more pretentious volumes. Naturally, any account of the Babylonians and Assyrians will involve some consideration of their neighbors, whose civilizations developed by their side, and whose fortunes frequently mingled with theirs. THE RECOVERY OF FORGOTTEN CITIES. Were we to proceed at once to the development of the Babylonian and Assyrian states without first pausing to note what far-reaching efforts have been made to read their early civilization from their remains, entombed within the earth, we would deprive ourselves of one of the most interesting pages in modern historical research. Since the middle of the twelfth century we find references made to the ruins of Babylon and Nineveh, by monks and travellers who greatly confused the ancient cities, repeatedly mistaking Baghdad for Babylon. In 1613 there was published by an English nobleman an account of his distant travels. "Sir Anthony Sherley; His Relation of His Travels into Persia." This is what he wrote of these ancient capitals: "I will speak ... of Babylon; not to the intent to tell stories, either of the huge ruins of the first Towne or the splendour of the second, but because nothing doth impose anything in man's nature more than example--to shew the truth of God's word, whose vengeances, threatened by His Prophets, are truely succeeded in all those parts.... "All the ground on which Babylon was spred is left now desolate; nothing standing in that Peninsula between the Euphrates and the Tigris, but only part, and that a small part, of the greate Tower, which God hath suffered to stand (if man may speake so confidently of His greate impenetrable counsels) for an eternal testimony of His work in the confusion of Man's pride, and that Arke of Nebuchadnezzar for as perpetual a memory of his greate idolatry and condigne punishment.... "Nineve, that which God himself called That greate Citie, hath not one stone standing which may give memory of the being of a towne. One English mile from it is a place called Mosul, a small thing, rather to be a witness of the other's mightinesse and God's judgment than of any fashion of magnificence in it selfe."[2] These words struck the note which was to lead to extensive labors for discovery. Europe was at the time passing through a period of deep religious fervor, which was felt in many classes of society and walks of life, and people who cared not at all for the history of ancient nations were roused by the possibility offered to verify statements found in the Old Testament and prove its inspiration by showing the fulfillment of its prophecies. Although nothing of importance was accomplished at this time, the religious motive survived. The first systematic investigation was made by Claudius James Rich, appointed in 1811 as resident of the East India Company at Baghdad. He made a thorough examination of all the large mounds in that particular locality and prepared a survey of the most important ones. This proved very useful to those who came later to the field. He had besides made a small collection of finds at Hillah and Mosul--a box only three feet square--which were sent with his charts to the British Museum. These later furnished the inspiration to further exploration. In 1842 the French government sent Paul Emil Botta to Mosul as consular agent, and his name was destined to be connected with all discoveries made in Assyria during the early part of the nineteenth century. Stimulated by Julius Mohl, who had examined Rich's meagre but suggestive finds, he was the first to actually dig into the mounds of ruins. After coming upon nothing noteworthy during three months' excavation in Kujundjik, a peasant told him that strange objects had been found at Khorsabad, about four hours to the northeast, and thither Botta sent his workmen. The poor Arabian laborers of this region are ignorant Mohammedans, and they suspected that Botta was digging for gold, while they conceived the unique idea that the fragments bearing inscriptions, now and then brought to light, were charms which in some way guided him on to hidden treasure. The Turkish Pasha put all possible obstacles in his way, but the very first shaft Botta sank came upon the walls of an old palace--a find especially valuable at a time when only the most enthusiastic scholars had faith in the undertaking, and people generally regarded the project as misguided. No less than 209 rooms were laid bare by Botta and his successor, Victor Place. Austen Henry Layard, an English boy of Huguenot descent, had devoured all available books of travel and adventure. He came to the work of Assyrian exploration as an enthusiastic young man about the time of Botta's widely noised discovery. On November 9, 1845, Mr. Layard began to excavate at Nimrud, some distance south of Nineveh, and before the first day's work was done he had the promise, and, in part, the satisfaction of realizing his "visions of palaces under ground." He had discovered the North-West palace of Nimrud, built by Ashurnatsirpal, 884-861 B.C., upon the foundations of one laid by Shalmeneser, 1300 B.C. After a little more than a year and a half he returned to England having discovered no less than three palaces. The funds necessary for his work were obtained from Sir Stratford Canning, the English ambassador at Constantinople. In 1849 excavations were begun again with the assistance of Hormuzd Rassam at the expense of the British Museum. "The excavations carried on under these auspices, and with the powers Layard then possessed, were successful beyond his wildest dream. As the trenches followed round the walls of room after room they uncovered great slabs of alabaster, with which the chamber walls were wainscoted, and these were found to be richly carved in relief with scenes of hunting, of war, and of solemn ceremony. The very life of palace, camp and field in Assyrian days came back again before the astonished eyes of the explorer, while these received an addition to their verisimilitude by the discovery in some of the ruins of pieces of iron which had once formed parts of the same kind of armor as that portrayed on the reliefs, together with iron and bronze helmets, while in others were found vases and ornamentally carved pieces of ivory. Here were the pictures and there were the objects which they represented. As the trenches were dug deeper or longer, monuments carved or inscribed were found daily."[3] Whatever objects could be transported were sent to the British Museum in London, and went far to arouse interest and thus secure funds to enable Layard to continue his operations. During this expedition the palace of Sennacherib, the walls of which had been partly laid bare during the first period, was still further explored, and in addition to the valuable bas-reliefs an ancient library, consisting of thousands of clay tablets, was found in two of the rooms, and this was greatly increased by Rassam's discovery of the North-West palace in 1854. In 1850 William K. Loftus began his labors in this field, but none of his discoveries proved so valuable as his descriptions of various mounds, used as guides to this day. Concerning the appearance of the mounds he wrote: "I know of nothing more exciting or impressive than the first sight of one of these great Chaldean piles looming in solitary grandeur from the surrounding plains and marshes. A thousand thoughts and surmises concerning its past eventful history and origin--its gradual rise and rapid fall--naturally present themselves to the mind of the spectator. The hazy atmosphere of early morning is peculiarly favorable to considerations and impressions of this character, and the gray mist intervening between the gazer and the object of his reflections imparts to it a dreamy existence. This fairylike effect is heightened by mirage, which strangely and fantastically magnifies its form, elevating it from the ground, and causing it to dance and quiver in the rarefied air. No wonder, therefore, that the beholder is lost in pleasing doubt as to the actual reality of the apparition before him."[4] Of all the Assyrian discoveries which were crowded into the last century, unquestionably the most important was made by Rassam in 1852 and 1853 when he laid bare the magnificent palace of Assurbanipal, in which was found the royal library. Here the king had caused to be collected tablets embodying the literature of both Babylonia and Assyria, and numberless royal inscriptions of both states, from the earliest time. Owing to the circumstance of their having been inscribed upon tablets of clay, many had been destroyed as the building in which they were kept fell in ruins. Many were found in an almost perfect state of preservation and thousands of others have since been joined by the patient labors of scholars. At this point Assyrian excavations largely ceased, for it was felt that unless some understanding of these tablets could be gained, it was scarcely worth while to amass more of them at such great outlays. Archæologists realized that the inscriptions must be deciphered before funds would be forthcoming for fresh undertakings. We have seen how difficult a task Egyptologists had in discovering the meaning of the hieroglyphics, and how the Rosetta stone, giving one decree in three different languages, at last led to an understanding of the whole. The Babylonians and Assyrians used a series of wedge-shaped letters or symbols, which has given the name _cuneiform_ to their written language. These wedge-shaped signs were impressed on the clay by a stylus, and several of them are united to form a _syllabic_ character. There are about 400 of these complex syllabic signs in the syllabary, instead of 26 letters as in English. Where the writing on the tablets is very close, as it frequently is, it is often very difficult to read the signs correctly. In the earlier Babylonian period, moreover, the form differs from that of the later Babylonian and Assyrian period. To make the reading still more puzzling they are polyphonic, _i. e._, have several syllabic values, and are also used ideagraphically, _i. e._, may be used for entire words. If we should read _b_ either b, p, m, d, etc., and also for break, run, beside with only the context to guide us we would have a parallel case. There was no Rosetta stone to help this time, and the tablets long remained sealed books. We have only to look at a page of the characters to wonder that their meaning at last dawned upon the tireless workers. Prominent among linguists engaged upon Assyrian inscriptions were Sir Henry Rawlinson, Fox Talbot, Jules Oppert, and a talented Irish scholar by the name of Hincks. At last translations of certain inscriptions were offered by these men, but critics looked at the apparently meaningless signs and questioned the versions rendered. At least, they insisted, there was no way to prove that a meaning had not been worked into them, rather than out of them. Finally it was suggested that a single inscription, hitherto unread, be sent to the four scholars just mentioned, and that they be asked to return their renderings sealed, to a committee appointed to examine them. To the amazement of the world, the translations made were almost identical, differences occurring in those portions which the translators themselves had marked as uncertain. This was, indeed, a triumph for students of the Assyrian language, and compelled a general agreement that the cuneiform tongue had at last been mastered. Rapid advances were made after this test, which was made in 1857. The translation of numerous tablets was at once eagerly begun. George Smith, a young man engaged to copy inscriptions required by Rawlinson for some material he was about to publish, was not content to copy meaningless signs, but set to work to understand them. So rapidly did he advance in mastering the language that he became most helpful in classifying the tablets stored in the British Museum. In connection with his work there one incident deserves notice. The clay tablets had been removed as carefully as possible from the ruins of the library at Nineveh, and had been brought to the London Museum with as little mishap as could be expected. Some were perfect, some partly missing, some in fragments. One day George Smith came upon a deluge story which so strongly resembled the version given in the Old Testament that he was struck by the similarity. Now recent years have disclosed that the flood legend has been common among all Semitic peoples, but the fact was not established in the middle part of the last century. Finding many portions of the story lacking, Smith felt that he would like to go in search of them. The whole affair was widely published, and Edwin Arnold, then editor of the Daily Telegraph of London, became interested in it. Through his influence the Telegraph offered five thousand guineas to pay the expenses of an expedition to Nineveh, under the direction of George Smith, to recover, if possible, the missing portions of the story. In 1872, accordingly, Smith started out upon his search for the "Deluge Fragments," under contract to telegraph his experiences and discoveries to the London paper. When he actually came upon a fragment of the deluge epic, it was regarded in England as a great and unexpected triumph. Two other fragments were found, and then the Telegraph, probably thinking it had been sufficiently advertised, decided that its venture had succeeded, and Smith was recalled. Returning in 1873, he died in Assyria three years later of a fever contracted in the marshy, fever-breeding country. In recent years, excavations have been carried on in the valley of the Euphrates under auspices of the University of Pennsylvania. Most of this work has been done at Nippur, and accounts of the discoveries have been published. An agreement was made with the Turkish government to the effect that all remains uncovered be turned over to the Imperial Museum at Constantinople. So generous did the leaders of this college band prove in aiding the Turks to classify objects found, accepting no remuneration for their services, that the Sultan was pleased to present a large number of them to the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, where they are today exhibited. [Illustration: TRANSPORT OF TIMBER FOR SARGON'S PALACE. (The God Ea, represented in the lower left-hand corner as half man, half fish, escorts the fleet.)] FOOTNOTES: [1] Isaiah 13, 19-22; 31, 8-9. NOTE.--This is the A. V. version. It should read: The Assyrian shall fall by a sword, not a man's, And a sword, not a human one, shall devour him. [And he shall flee from the face of the sword, And his brave ones shall become tributary, And his rock he will run by in terror, And his princes in fright shall abandon their flag.] The destruction is to be _supernatural_, according to Isaiah. The lines in brackets are probably a later addition.--(CRAIG.) [2] Sherley: His Relation of His Travels Into Persia. [3] Rogers: Hist. of Babylonia and Assyria, 154. [4] Loftus: Travels and Researches in Chaldea and Susiana. CHAPTER II. SOURCES OF BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN HISTORY. In considering the four important sources of Babylonian and Assyrian history, we may note first, Old Testament writings. Unquestionably the Bible has gained more through Assyrian excavations than it has itself contributed to the history of that country. As has been said before, the Old Testament consists of Hebrew writings which portray various phases of Hebrew life, and mention is made of other nations only when the Chosen People by force of circumstances were thrown in direct contact with them. Since their kingdom was overcome by Babylonians, we could scarcely expect Hebrew writers to hold unprejudiced opinions regarding their own conquerors; nevertheless whatever facts concerning them crept into their writings have been verified by modern discovery. Much is often revealed in a few words, as is characteristic of Biblical expression. For example, see how much is condensed in the following sentence: "And the king of Egypt came not again any more out of his land: for the king of Babylon had taken from the river of Egypt unto the river Euphrates all that pertained to the king of Egypt." Not alone have the facts recorded in the Old Testament proved useful to those engaged in reconstructing the history of the Tigris-Euphrates nations, but the desire of religious adherents to confirm the truth and accuracy of ancient Hebrew writings has served as an incentive both to those who did the work and to those who by contributions made the task possible. The writings of the early Greeks concerning Babylonia and Assyria supply another source. Berosus was a Babylonian priest connected with a temple sacred to Bel. He lived during the fourth century before Christ, when Babylonia and Assyria had become Greek provinces. For the Antiochus he wrote a lengthy history of his country, which would have been of greatest value to us had it been preserved. Unfortunately it was destroyed, and only excerpts, made by Polyhistor and Apollodoras of the first century B.C., are now in existence. Herodotus devoted more than twenty chapters of his first volume to Babylonia, but owing to certain faults we have found characteristic of his writings, he has led some scholars to even declare that he never saw the country at all. While they cannot be wholly depended upon, his writings have some value. Other Greek writers have thrown so little light on Babylonian life that we shall not consider them here at all. Thirdly, we may mention Egyptian records as a source for Mesopotamian history. The Egyptian hieroglyphics and the cuneiform symbols of the Assyrian tongue were translated about the same time, so that little actual help was gained through Egyptian sources. Nevertheless, campaigns waged by Egyptian kings within the very borders of Asiatic countries, with detailed accounts as set forth upon the walls of Egyptian temples, cannot fail to aid in the reconstruction of Assyrian growth and development. Lastly and most important of all are the monuments and remains unearthed in Mesopotamia itself. More than one hundred thousand clay record tablets have been recovered; temples and palaces have been excavated, and within these were found alabaster slabs carved with many scenes characteristic of Assyrian life; armour, utensils and numerous other articles have each thrown some light upon the ancient civilization. The value of this first hand, or original material, is priceless indeed, since without it no detailed knowledge of these old kingdoms could ever have been hoped for. Explorations among the ruins are still carried on, and it is possible that the present century may add much to what has already been gained concerning the ancient dwellers in the once fertile valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris. PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA. If you will look closely at a map of the eastern hemisphere, you will see that a great tract of desert extends across northern Africa, and reaching beyond the Mediterranean Sea, the Isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea, traverses the entire width of Asia to the Pacific Ocean. This desert waste is so broken by plateaus and mountain ranges that its vast extent is scarcely realized. Rivers occasionally cross it, producing fertile valleys which, generally speaking, support the life of the whole area. We are now concerned with the location and topography of the ancient Babylonian and Assyrian kingdoms, and of those districts lying adjacent. North of the Persian Gulf some considerable distance, we find the Armenian mountains. These ranges are loftier than most in Western Asia, piercing high above the eternal snow-line. During winter their sides and gorges are massed with snow, which melts rapidly with the warmth of spring and heat of summer. The drainage of the mountains has resulted in many streams, which unite to form the Euphrates on the western slopes, and on the eastern slopes, form the Tigris. Ages ago these two rivers emptied into the Persian Gulf at points some distance from each other. But such heavy deposits of rich mountain loam have been brought down by the streams, that they have extended the land far into the gulf, pushing the water back for some hundred miles. Joining one another in the area thus formed, the waters of the two streams reach the gulf today as one mighty river with many mouths. We may judge how great changes this land-building process has wrought by the fact that the town of Ur, now nearly two hundred miles from the gulf, was a sea-port at the time of which we are now studying. The annual increase of the land is about 115 feet. Herodotus' statement that "Egypt is the gift of the Nile," might have been made with equal truth of the Euphrates and Babylonia. Here again an annual overflow refreshes a valley, while in antiquity a network of canals provided water, fertility, and humidity for districts sloping off gently on either side. Today this territory is held by the Turks, and with their ruinous policy of trying to extract all possible revenue from their lands while doing nothing to improve them, the old canals are abandoned, none others take their place, and the rivers wander today at will, leaving part of the area parched and unproductive, and converting the rest into fever-breeding swamps and marshes. The Euphrates is the longer of the two rivers. Taking its rise west of a lofty mountain, it receives several tributaries near its source, but none join it during the last eight hundred miles of its course. The snows melt gradually; in March the stream begins to overflow its channel; high water mark is reached by the first of June, and July finds the waters receding. This river is very winding in its course, at one place being but one hundred miles from the Mediterranean Sea and near Babylon running along within twenty-five miles of the Tigris, only to immediately branch off again to the south. Its entire length is about eighteen hundred miles, and most of the water is spent before it reaches the Gulf. The Tigris is somewhat different from its sister stream. Its name signifies "the swift," or the "arrowy," and indicates its rapid current, whereas the Euphrates flows more gently. Not so broad as the Euphrates, the Tigris is much deeper. On the east of the high mountains wherein this river has its rise, spring comes quickly; the water rises rapidly, and the period of its overflow is short. Beginning to rise in March, the first of May sees the high water mark, and by the last of June the stream is fast finding its usual volume. The territory between the Tigris and Euphrates the Greeks called Mesopotamia, meaning "between two rivers," but they applied the name to the northern portion of the district--the home of the Assyrians. As generally used today, the term Mesopotamia signifies the whole region. The southern portion, bordering on the Persian Gulf, has a deep alluvial soil, built up by the yearly deposit of the rivers. Like the valley of the Nile, it has been the repository of fine silt. This portion from its capital city Babylon was called Babylonia. As we might expect, this was the country first settled because it was the more accessible. Its wide, monotonous plains, enriched with the fertile mountain loam, afforded the most productive farm lands in the world. Herodotus told of their prodigious yield of grain: "This territory is of all that we know the best by far for producing grain; as to trees, it does not attempt to bear them, either fig, or vine or olive, but for producing grain it is so good that it returns as much as two-hundred-fold for the average, and, when it bears its best, it produces three-hundred-fold. The blades of the wheat and barley there grew to be four fingers broad; and from millet and sesame seed, how large a tree grows, I know myself, but shall not record, being well aware that even what has already been said relating to the crops produced has been enough to cause disbelief in those who have not visited Babylonia." Theophrastus wrote: "In Babylon the wheat fields are regularly mown twice, and then fed off with beasts to keep down the luxuriance of the leaf; otherwise the plant does not run to ear. When this is done the return in lands that are badly cultivated is fiftyfold, while in those that are well farmed it is a hundredfold." The land of Babylonia has been happily compared with the southern half of our state of Louisiana, which it resembles in marshy districts. Again it might be likened to the Egyptian Delta, being of course, larger,--something like Denmark in point of area. Possessing no rocks or mountains, the country seemed at first to be devoid of building material. It has been supposed that its primitive people first sheltered themselves in huts built of reeds which grew abundantly along the river banks. After awhile it was discovered that clay mud furnished a fair material when shaped into bricks and dried in the sun. A more enduring brick was later made by baking the brick in ovens. This oven-baked brick as well as the sun-dried brick constituted the great building material of Babylonia for all subsequent time. The district north of the alluvial line, enclosed by rivers and mountains, in time became the kingdom of Assyria. This region differed greatly from the southern land. It was made up of low ranges on the north, rolled gently to the south, and supplied excellent pasturage. Stone and material suitable to building purposes were available, but the people, accustomed to the clay bricks of their old home in Babylonia, never made use of the more substantial building stuff. Indeed the Assyrians were not at all of an inventive mind, as another illustration will plainly show. In Babylonia, because the ground was low and level, the people were obliged to construct artificial heights for building sites, thus to escape marshy exhalations and troublesome insects. They erected huge piles of sun-dried brick and crowned these with their palaces and temples. Now the Assyrians were in the beginning colonists who had gone out of the mother state to find less populated regions farther north. There were hills and elevations in abundance in Assyria, but holding to the custom they had so long followed, they continued to construct great foundations of bricks for their buildings. It is curious indeed to find them, throughout their history, expending time, labor and resources to produce what nature had already provided. Assyria was somewhat larger than Babylonia, and has been compared to the state of Illinois in size. While the northern mountains and the Gulf afforded definite boundaries, the limits to the east and west were never certain and both Babylonians and Assyrians pushed out in each direction as they became more powerful, contracting again if their strength weakened. On the west a desert separated them from the Mediterranean, and while various tribes held the country east of the Tigris in early times, the Medes later conquered the region east of Assyria, and Persia reached away to the southeast. There are two seasons in these valleys--the rainy period, lasting from November to March, and the dry season, filling out the remainder of the year. Babylonia was never subject to the cold storms of Assyria, and the kings of the latter country, after they conquered Babylonia, frequently maintained winter palaces in the old capital, Babylon. Summer is intensely hot near the Gulf. In recent years this has been a serious obstacle to confront those carrying on excavations here. In ancient times an extensive system of canals and ditches made it possible to keep the land under constant cultivation, thus preventing in a large measure the sand storms that now spread over the country, causing much suffering and even death. Under Turkish rule at present, the whole region is left desolate. In spite of Herodotus to the contrary, certain kinds of trees grew in Babylonia. The fig, apple, almond and walnut were native. The date palm ministered to the wants of the people in manifold ways. An old Persian poem sung of its 360 uses, while the Greeks claimed that it supplied the Babylonians with bread, wine, vinegar, honey, rope, fuel, wood for furniture, and food for cattle. A wide variety of grains and vegetables were produced. Wild animals were plentiful. The Mesopotamian lion was thought milder than its jungle cousin. Buffaloes were domesticated. Leopards, hyænas, wild boars, gazelles, foxes and hares were found, while birds and fishes abounded. Altogether this was a spot where life was favorable for man, and it was natural that wandering tribes that came thither should soon abandon their roving habits for the surer livelihood promised by a fixed home. [Illustration: SARGON'S STANDARD (WITH FIGURE OF ASSHUR).] CHAPTER III. PREHISTORIC CHALDEA. We have already noted that prehistoric periods are those preceding written records. Uncertainty enters into all attempts to reconstruct such a period for any people, and especially has this been true of Babylonia. However, when the library of Nineveh was unearthed, tablets were discovered which shed some light on those remote ages. The land we call Babylonia was once called Chaldea. So we shall call it during its prehistoric age--as we call the British Island Britain in the beginning of its history, and later, England. By the term Chaldea we are to understand that portion of the valleys which extended around the Persian Gulf. It was inhabited at the earliest period known. Probably its first settlers were a branch of the Turanian or Yellow Race, to which the Chinese, Japanese, Monguls and present-day Turks belong. That the Chaldeans came from some other locality into this land is not doubted, but from whence they came is not known. The southern part of Chaldea was called Shumir--the Hebrews writing it _Shinar_; the land immediately north they called Accad. The dwellers in both districts came from the same stock and spoke practically the same language. The name _Accad_ means mountains, or highlands, and it has been surmised that it may have attached to the inhabitants from some earlier home. These early people may have migrated to Chaldea five or six thousand years before the Christian era. Of their coming and first settlements, nothing is known. When we first learn of them, they had reached quite a degree of civilization, having canals for irrigating the lands unreached by the river; they had also devised the cuneiform system of writing--an advance on the picture system, earlier in use. The history of their strange symbols was probably this: in ages bygone they had invented a system of picture writing, as all primitive people seem to have done. As they advanced, too much time was required to copy the elaborate pictures in their entirety, and so the principal outlines were used to represent the pictures themselves. When these people migrated to Chaldea, and were reduced to clay tablets on which to write, it was easier to make straight lines than curved ones. In this way the written language continued to undergo changes until it was eventually made up of wedge-shaped symbols, one of the clear results of the use of the clay tablets. Our principal knowledge concerning the Chaldeans pertains to their religion, which is believed to have been one of the earliest religions of the world. The religious instinct seems to have been inborn with man. Some form and degree of worship has been found among all primitive people and is cruder or more elevated according to the stage of development. Primitive man felt himself able to cope with many of the conditions around him, but he soon found that the very agencies which helped might also injure him. The sun, whose light and warmth gave life to his growing crops, might also wither them with its intense heat. The rain which renewed and refreshed the fields, might come in torrents and lay them low. Gradually all these agencies were regarded as _Beings_, which must be importuned. The religion of the Chaldeans taught man how to guard himself against the harmful forces in the world, and every animate and inanimate thing was endowed with a spirit. A series of tablets treating of this ancient religion was recovered by Rassam, and they fall into three divisions: those treating of "Evil Spirits," others concerning diseases, and last, those devoted to prayers and hymns of praise. The Accadian conceived of the earth as resembling a huge, inverted bowl. The thickness represented the earth's crust; the hollow beneath was thought of as a bottomless pit, destined to be the final dwelling place of man, and was the abode of demons. Above the earth were two heavens; the higher, supported by a lofty mountain; the lower containing seven kind and friendly planets, which wandered at will through its wide domains. Opposed to these were seven fiery phantoms. Over all dwelt the great Spirit Ana. "Between the lower heaven and the surface of the earth is the atmospheric region, the realm of Mermer, the Wind, where he drives the clouds, rouses the storms, and whence he pours down the rain, which is stored in the great reservoir of Ana, in the heavenly Ocean. As to the earthly Ocean, it is fancied as a broad river, flowing all around the edge of the imaginary inverted bowl; in its waters dwells Ea, the great Spirit of the Earth and Waters, either in the form of a fish, whence he is frequently called "Ea the fish," or "the exalted fish," or on a magnificent ship, with which he travels around the earth, guarding and protecting it. "The minor spirits of the earth are not much spoken of except in a body, a sort of host or legion. All the more terrible are the seven spirits of the abyss, the Maskim, of whom it is said that, although their seat is in the depths of the earth, yet their voice resounds on the heights also; they reside at will in the immensity of space, 'not enjoying a good name either in heaven or on earth.' Their greatest delight is to subvert the orderly course of nature, to cause earthquakes, inundations, ravaging tempests."[1] The Maskim were ever feared and hated as is shown by the following, translated from one of the tablets: "They are seven! they are seven!--Seven are they in the depths of Ocean,--seven they are, disturbers of the face of Heaven.--They arise from the depths of Ocean, from hidden lurking-places.--They spread like snares.--Male they are not, female they are not. Wives they have not, children are not born to them.--Order they know not, nor beneficence;--prayers and supplications they hear not. Horses grown in the bowels of the mountains--foes of EA--they are throne-bearers of the gods--they sit in the roads and make them unsafe.--The fiends! The fiends! They are seven, they are seven, seven are they! "Spirit of Heaven, be they conjured! Spirit of Earth, be they conjured!" A CHARM. Seven are they, they are seven; In the caverns of ocean they dwell, They are clothed in the lightnings of heaven, Of their growth the deep waters can tell; Seven are they, they are seven. Broad is their way and their course is wide, Where the seeds of destruction they sow, O'er the tops of the hills where they stride, To lay waste the smooth highways below,-- Broad is their way and their course is wide. Man they are not, nor womankind, For in fury they sweep from the main, And have wedded no wife but the wind, And no child have begotten but pain,-- Man they are not, nor womankind. Fear is not in them, nor awe; Supplication they heed not, nor prayer, For they know no compassion nor law, And are deaf to the cries of despair,-- Fear is not in them, nor awe. Cursed they are, they are cursed, They are foes to wise EA'S name; By the whirlwind are all things dispersed On the paths of the flash of their flame,-- Cursed are they, they are cursed. Spirit of Heaven, oh help! Help, oh Spirit of Earth! They are seven, thrice said they are seven; For the gods they are Bearers of Thrones, But for men they are Breeders of Dearth And the authors of sorrows and moans. They are seven, thrice said they are seven. Spirit of Heaven, oh help! Help, oh Spirit of Earth! --_Rendered into verse by Dyer._ Besides these seven hated ones, there were numberless demons who could work all manner of evil for man. They were invisible and brought sickness, sorrow, insanity, and grief. No house was secure against them, and no bolt strong enough to keep them out. To contend against so much evil, it was necessary to employ conjurers and those skilled in magic, who by incantations and mixtures of herbs might discover the demons and put them to flight. Like the Egyptians, the Chaldeans believed that when one was ill, a demon had taken possession of his body, which must be driven out before recovery would be possible. As a result of this belief, the science of medicine never developed in Babylonia. Even in its advanced period, magicians treated the sick. Charms and talismans were in great demand to ward off demons. They were worn by the living and adorned the dead. Many articles of furniture were made to serve two purposes--as household conveniences or ornaments, and talismans. Thus the winged bulls which have been found guarding the portals of royal palaces were placed there to keep out demons who would manage in some way to creep in unless prevented by eternal vigilance. It was believed that certain of these demons were so forbidding in aspect that should they but catch sight of their own faces, they would be frightened away. Therefore a most dreadful demon was fashioned, as terrible and fierce as human ingenuity could conceive. This impersonated the south-west wind--the wind which brought burning heat and drought in its wake. An image thus made was placed in southwest windows, with the hope that the approaching demon might look upon himself and flee in terror. As time went on, the Chaldeans progressed in their religious beliefs, and the third series of tablets record prayers and hymns of adoration. Nothing was more natural than that they should worship the sun, as a manifestation of divinity which provided heat, light and life itself, for the children of the earth. Some of these hymns are beautiful in their conception. "O Sun, I have called unto thee in the bright heavens. In the shadow of the cedar art thou; Thy feet are on the summits--The countries have wished for thee, they have longed for thy coming, O Lord! Thy radiant light illumines all countries. Thou makest lies to vanish, thou destroyest the noxious influence of portents, omens, spells, dreams and evil apparitions; thou turnest wicked plots to a happy issue. "O Sun! thou hast stepped forth from the background of heaven, thou hast pushed back the bolts of the brilliant heaven,--yea, the gate of heaven. O Sun! above the land thou hast raised thy head! O Sun! thou hast covered the immeasurable space of heaven and countries!" The sun disappeared at evening tide, and during the night contended with the spirits of darkness. Some other protection was needed for man while darkness reigned. So fire was brought into existence, and was also regarded as worthy of worship: "Thou who drivest away the evil Maskim, who furtherest the well-being of life, who strikest the breast of the wicked with terror,--Fire, the destroyer of foes, dread weapon which drivest away Pestilence." Certain wandering Turanian tribes today cling to a religion much like the one so briefly described. Like their remote ancestors, they have conjurers instead of priests. When they had reached this stage of development, the Chaldeans were overpowered by a vast barbaric horde. THE STORY OF GENESIS RELATIVE TO THE FIRST SETTLEMENT IN SHUMIR. "And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of _Shinar_; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men builded. And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth; and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel;[2] because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth; and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth. * * * * * "And Nimrod was a mighty hunter before the Lord; wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calnch, in the land of Shinar. Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and Calah. And Resen between Nineveh and Calah; the same is a great city. * * * * * "And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his son's son, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there."--_Genesis 10 and 11._ The first great Semitic invasion took place probably about the beginning of the fourth millennium B.C., and it seems impossible to assign to it a more definite date. The later Babylonians, like the Chinese, gave great antiquity to their nation, reckoning back into hundreds of thousands of years. Their beginnings belonged to so remote a time that adding years inconceivably was but another way of saying that certain events happened very long ago, so long, indeed, that no record or monument remained to give evidence of events which had survived only in stories handed down, from father to son, for thousands of generations. Like the Hebrews and Arabs, these people belonged to the Semitic race, and from whence they came has long been a matter of conjecture. Scholars are now agreed that Arabia had been their home and that there they had lived as shepherds and herdsmen. They poured in overwhelming forces into the land of Chaldea, killing some of the inhabitants, driving others out of the country, and assimilating the rest. The Chaldeans had reached a much higher degree of culture than their conquerors, who rapidly took on the civilization of their adopted country. As in England the Saxon and Norman for some generations after the conquest pursued each his native life and customs, little influenced by the other, so in Chaldea at first the Semitic herdsman followed his pastoral life outside the brick-walled cities of the Chaldeans. Some have thought that an invasion of Cushites, or Ethiopians, had preceded the invasion of the Semites in Chaldea, and have claimed that the language, customs and culture in the land when conquered by the Semites was the result of a blending of Turanian and Ethiopian. The theory has been vigorously opposed by other authorities who contend that the invading Semites found only pure Turanian stock. However that may be, the civilization and culture of Chaldea, whether simply Turanian, or Turanian-Cushite, was soon taken on by the newcomers. Adopting the Chaldean language, they used it for all their inscriptions, writings and literature. Even after the speech of the people had become quite a different tongue, as a result of its assimilation with the Semitic, still in all written records the early Chaldean language--or Sumerian, as it is generally called--was alone used. Assyriologists have often noted that "while the language was Sumerian, the spirit of the writings was Semitic." Because the land of Chaldea was so accessible, and offered advantages so superior to surrounding countries--plentiful water and a fertile soil,--it became a veritable bee-hive of humanity. When the Semites first came thither, they were a fierce, warlike people; but soon, under new conditions, they became peace-loving, as the Turanians before them had been. Shortly they were unable to hold the valley against new tribes that unceasingly swarmed into the country. Prior to 2000 B.C. Ashur had been settled probably in part at least, by emigrants from the south who may have united with other Semites from North Mesopotamia and in time they founded the state of Assyria. Somewhat later, the ancestors of the Hebrews, according to one of the O. T. traditions, departed from the land of Chaldea for Harran in Mesopotamia, and later entered Canaan, on the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Each of these little bands founded states which developed such peculiar characteristics, that after the lapse of a few ages, it would scarcely have occurred to an observer that the ancestry, early environment, and traditions of all had been the same. It was not strange, then, that the Hebrews of later time, trying to account for the diversity of languages and nations, made this swarming valley the site of the scattering of the tribes and the confusion of tongues. Those who remained in Chaldea became a peaceful farming people, caring not at all for war. The Assyrians, while of the same stock, developed very differently. There were several reasons for this. First, their country was less accessible than Chaldea, whose shore was washed by the Persian Gulf, and so it suffered less from invasions, and was allowed to keep a more purely Semitic civilization. Again, having gone out from Chaldea before they became devoted to peaceful pursuits, the Assyrians retained and fostered their original warlike dispositions. The more temperate climate of Assyria was more invigorating and produced men of greater endurance than did the kingdom to the south. Both Chaldea and Assyria alike, developed small states, each led by a city in which had been built a temple sacred to some local deity. Each community was presided over by one who combined the duties of king and priest. Such was the condition of affairs when the first written records, more or less complete, bring some degree of certainty and less conjecture into the development of these nations. And here we arrive at the beginning of Mesopotamian history, properly so-called. [Illustration: A JAR-SHAPED COFFIN OF CLAY.] FOOTNOTES: [1] Ragozin: Chaldea. [2] This is a late popular etymology. Babel means "the gate of God," and has no connection with the Hebrew verb _balal_ "to confound." CHAPTER IV. CITY-STATES BEFORE THE RISE OF BABYLON. We have seen that the Chaldeans were in time assimilated with the invading Semites, producing eventually a new nation. It is not to be supposed that this was at once accomplished, or that the dawn of authentic history found such a process completed. Rather, the Chaldeans held tenaciously to the south, the Semites kept farther to the north, and for many centuries the two races fought for dominance in the valley. As early as 4500 B.C., a record inscribes one as "king of Kengi," but his kingdom probably included but a few cities added to his own. Several cities had been founded at a remote time and these now grew rapidly in importance. Each was built around a temple dedicated to some particular divinity. Eridu worshipped the god EA, father of waters; Ur was sacred to Sin, the moon-god, and later kings, of the dynasty of Ur, added the name Sin to their own, as for example, Ine-Sin, Pur-Sin. Larsam was sacred to the sun-god Shamash; Uruk to the goddess Ishtar; Nippur to En-lil, father of the gods, and so on. Each city believed that its god--Bel or Lord--was the greatest of all gods, and often its inhabitants were inspired to go out to conquer other cities and territories in order to extend the prestige of the local deity. Probably at the same time the people were stimulated to fight because certain cities had grown up in the very heart of the fertile valley, while others had been obliged to locate in poorer sections. Naturally these last looked with envious eyes upon the richer soil of their neighbors, and desired to win it for themselves. Each city watched for the first sign of weakness in her sister cities, and when it appeared, tried at once to incorporate them into her own domains. The political history of the Euphrates valley before the dominance of Babylon is the history of these cities as they grew into little states. Some grew strong; others weakened and became tributary to the more vigorous few. En-shag-kush-ana, "Lord of Kengiu," was the name of the first king to appear in the Babylonian records. Erech was probably his capital, and Nippur the religious center of his little kingdom. We have already connected Nippur with the excavations made by the University of Pennsylvania. The ruins there unearthed have enabled scholars to understand in the main sacred cities of Babylonia. En-shag-kush-ana was priest as well as king. Although his race was not mentioned, he was probably a Chaldean, like the people over whom he ruled. A little to the north, a Semitic kingdom with the city Kish as its head, was growing rapidly in power, and threatened to absorb even Erech itself. On this account, Chaldeans attacked it and gained the victory, whereupon their god, En-lil of Nippur was celebrated in festival and his temple received numerous trophies of the triumph, since he had enabled those of the south to overcome the cruder Semitic city. Their defeat only led the Semitic kingdom of Kish to strengthen its forces, and about 4000 B.C., under leadership of Lugalzaggisi, the vigor of the new race overcame the nearly expended force of the Chaldeans. This conquering Semitic king set forth his position thus: "Lugalzaggisi, king of Erech, king of the world, priest of Ana, hero of Nidaba, son of Ukush, he who is looked upon favorably by the faithful eye of En-lil. "When En-lil, Lord of the lands, invested Lugalzaggisi with the kingdom of the world, and granted him success before the world, when he filled the land with his power, and subdued the country from the rise of the sun to the setting sun--at that time he straightened his path from the lower sea of the Tigris and Euphrates to the upper sea, and granted him the dominion of everything from the rising sun to the setting of the sun, and caused the countries to dwell in peace."[1] For some generations the Semites now held the valley and the Chaldeans are lost sight of in surviving records. Then a southern kingdom, Shirpurla, with Sungir its chief city, became strong enough to throw off Semitic rule. This victory of the Chaldeans was widely celebrated in the annals of the waning race. Not only did they now gain the upper hand of all the cities in the valley, but they pushed into Elam, a kingdom to the east and dominated both it and its tributary lands. While comparisons in history may sometimes be misleading, they often aid the student to better understand certain conditions. There is some similarity between these two races in this valley contending for supremacy--the stronger being sometimes held in check, the weaker gradually losing ground--in certain aspects, it calls to mind the period in English history when Saxons, Jutes and Angles struggled for leadership. The Saxons had developed the higher civilization; the Danes were the more vigorous and aggressive. Sometimes the Saxons would be able to set up their king, again the Danes would enthrone one of their number. Now the waning light of Saxon power would seem to be well-nigh spent, when suddenly it would burst out again with a flame that would illumine all England, only again to be eclipsed by the fresh strength of the other nation. Not to push the comparison further, either country offers a fair example of the usual course events take whenever two races, somewhat equal in strength, seek to gain the upper hand in a given territory. A northern city, hitherto unmentioned, was to give the palm once more to the Semitic. Agade, the home-city of Shargani-shar-ali, or Sargon I. Many legends cluster around this king, an early Semitic hero. Since our knowledge of him comes mainly through legendary sources, it is difficult to separate the grain from the chaff. A tradition which in the course of history has been related many times of men in many lands, was told first of this Semitic king. "Sargon, the powerful king, King of Agade, am I. "My mother was of low degree, my father I did not know. "The brother of my father dwelt in the mountain. "My city was Azupirani, situated on the banks of the Euphrates. "(My) humble mother conceived me; in secret she brought me forth. "She placed me in a bask-boat of rushes; with pitch she closed my door. "She gave me over to the river, which did not (rise) over me. "The river bore me along; to Akki, the irrigator, it carried me. "Akki, the irrigator, ... brought me to land. "Akki, the irrigator, reared me as his own son. "Akki, the irrigator, appointed me his gardener. "While I was gardener, Ishtar looked on me with love. * * * * * "Four years I ruled the kingdom."[2] Sargon I. and his son, Naram Sin, had great capacity for organization. They were prolific builders, and bricks have been found bearing their names and titles. The material for their temples they brought some distance--the famous cedars of Lebanon forming the beams. Sargon was called "Lord of Nippur, Shirpurla, Kish, Babylon and Uruk." Naram Sin extended his sway to the Mediterranean on the west, east into Elam, and south into Arabia and the isles of the Persian Gulf. He took for the first time the title: "King of the Four World-Regions." His vast kingdom thus built up disappeared, however, as quickly as it came into being, and after some changes, Ur became the capital center. Three thousand eight hundred B.C. has been accepted as the date of Sargon's reign and this is the first definite date in Babylonian history. The kings of the Ur dynasty erected several temples, and because Ur was easy of access, they imported many of their building materials. Dolerite was brought from Arabia, cedar from Syria, gold and precious stones from the east. This town was sacred to Sin, the moon-god, and several hymns praising this deity have been found. Isin, Erech, and other cities strove now for leadership, and internal dissensions offered opportunity for the Elamites on the east, now advancing on a wave of prosperity, to invade the land. It is known that they advanced as far as Erech, and carried off a statue of the goddess Nana. They set up their own king, whose line continued on the throne for some time. One of these invading kings called himself: "exalter of Ur, king of Larsa, king of Sumer and Accad." Under Elamite administration, temples were built and the religious and commercial centers continued to grow. Of this whole period Maspero has said: "We have here the dust of history rather than history itself; here an isolated individual makes his appearance in the record of his name, to vanish when we attempt to lay hold of him; there the stem of a dynasty which breaks abruptly off, pompous preambles, devout formulas, dedications of objects of buildings, here or there the account of some battle, or the indication of some foreign country with which relations of friendship or commerce were maintained--these are the scanty materials of which to construct a narrative." To summarize the period as a whole, we may note that thus far no united kingdom had been evolved. To weld that together was the work of the next period. This was, on the other hand, an age of city-states, each one contesting for leadership. While the struggle began with the mere hope of annexing cities in the valley, it expanded to include outlying lands as well. The assimilation of the two races was, generally speaking, effected, and henceforth the Chaldeans disappear as a distinct element of the country, having been absorbed politically by the Semites. A PART OF A HYMN TO THE MOON-GOD.[3] (Composed in the city of Ur before the age of Abraham.) Father, long-suffering and full of forgiveness, Whose hands uphold the life of all mankind! First born, omnipotent, whose heart is immensity, There is none who may fathom it! In heaven, who is supreme? Thou alone, Thou art supreme. On earth, who is supreme? Thou alone, Thou art supreme. As for Thee, Thy will is made known in heaven, And the angels bow their faces. As for Thee, Thy will is made known upon earth, And the spirits kiss the ground. FOOTNOTES: [1] Hilprecht: Old Babylonian Inscriptions. [2] Trans. quoted by Goodspeed: Hist. of the Bab. and Assy., p. 62. [3] Translated by Sayce. CHAPTER V. DOMINANCE OF BABYLON, 2100-1100 B.C. In early times Babylon had not been a city of sufficient size to demand royal attention. No king had thought it of enough importance to include with his enumerated possessions, although in all probability, it was founded as early as 4000 B.C.--perhaps earlier still. Sumu-abi was its first king, but of him and his immediate successors, we know little. The sixth king was destined to bring greatness to his city and to the whole country--for it was he who united the many states of Babylonia into one strong kingdom and drove the usurping Elamites from the throne. Hammurabi, sixth king of Babylon, ruled in the twenty-first century B.C. His reign and the reigns of his family were regarded by the Babylonians as their "Golden Age." Down to the last days of Babylon, Babylonian kings emulated his example, modelling even their inscriptions after his. How Hammurabi freed the land from Elamite rule is not known, but his name was soon established as an able soldier. He assumed the titles: King of Sumer and Accad, King of the Four-Quarters of the World, King of Babylon. Having annexed all the little city-states to his original kingdom of Babylon, the capital city gave its name to the whole country. To make this union lasting, Hammurabi himself appointed officers of administration for each political division of the kingdom, and so made the entire system dependent upon the government at the capital. The pre-eminence now given the capital turned the tide of commerce and traffic from other places and made Babylon the great center, not only for matters of government, but for industrial and social life as well. Hammurabi was not only a distinguished warrior, but a statesman. When he had made secure his recently united kingdom, he turned to internal improvements. A post-envoy system for royal messages was established. This tended to make the roads and highways between different parts of the country safe. He established royal granaries in the valley of the Euphrates--as we have found them maintained in the valley of the Nile--to store grain for use in time of famine. As each succeeding city was exalted to leadership in Babylonia, we have found that the patron deity of that community rose to highest place in the pantheon. Originally, Marduk was accorded a minor position in the category of gods. By enabling Babylon to gain supremacy over all other cities, he had now proven himself greatest of all gods; so while Nippur and other religious centers, long established, retained their deities and their cults, there came forward a large priesthood devoted to the worship of Marduk. These priests, centered as they were around Babylon, probably had much to do with that city's rapid progress in becoming the center of culture, art and literary effort. Long years after, when the kings of warlike Assyria had added Babylonia to their numerous possessions, they turned to the archives of this city for its literary productions and one of the most productive periods was the reign of Hammurabi. Perhaps the most stupendous undertaking of this king was the construction of a vast canal which reclaimed a large tract of land, long unproductive. An inscription left by him has been found, and sets forth his effort in this fashion: "Hammurabi, the powerful king, king of Babylonia, ... when Anu and Bel gave unto me to rule the land of Sumer and Accad, and with their scepter filled my hands, I dug the canal Hammurabi, the Blessing-of-Men, which bringeth the water of the overflow into the land of Sumer and Accad. Its banks upon both sides I made arable land; much seed I scattered upon it. Lasting water I provided for the land of Sumer and Accad. The land of Sumer and Accad, its separated peoples I united, with blessings and abundance I endowed them, in peaceful dwellings I made them to live."[1] He was a tireless builder, spending much care in repairing old temples and constructing new ones. Indeed King Hammurabi stands forth, after four thousand years have passed, as a ruler of exceptional executive ability. Prosperity long attended his people because of the personal supervision he gave to all branches of the administration. Among the lasting benefits assured his subjects was means of getting legal redress. A court of appeals was instituted at Babylon to which any citizen might come to state his wrongs. He codified the laws of the land in 282 laws and inscribed them on monoliths, one of which was found ten years ago in Susa, whither it had been carried by the Elamites about 1100 B.C. In the prologue to the Code he states, "When Marduk sent me to rule the people ... I established law and justice in the land and promoted the welfare of the people." Long after his death his son and successors reaped the benefits of Hammurabi's splendid rule, and the memory of his strength and capacity held the country in check as long as his house endured. Probably for some time before the close of this prosperous era, which came to an end cir. 1700 B.C., mountaineers threatened the eastern borders, and the death of the last king of the dynasty was the occasion for an invasion of the Kassites, a people who emerged from Elam-Media. They seem to have been one of the many bands of mountaineers who gained a livelihood from the products of the mountainous regions and by frequent plundering raids directed against those living on either side of their strongholds. They well knew that Babylon's long devotion to the arts of peace had weakened her military strength, and regarded the time as favorable for winning the fertile valleys for themselves. At all events, they placed their king upon the throne. The inhabitants of southern Babylonia were never possessed of strong patriotism. So long as the land was allowed to rest in peace and the taxes were not increased, there seems to have been no especial interest on the part of the people generally as to who wore the crown. The material development of the country did not suffer long on this occasion, and for nearly 600 years the Kassite dynasty ruled in Babylon. They rapidly took on the culture of their newly acquired state, built temples and directed their attention to the prosperity of the land. As time went on, they wellnigh ceased to be regarded as usurpers. One of their kings set forth his titles thus: "I am Agumkakrime, the son of Tashshigurumash; the illustrious descendant of god Shuqamuna; called by Anu and Bel, Ea and Marduk, Sin and Shamash; the powerful hero of Ishtar, the warrior among the gods. "I am a king of wisdom and prudence; a king who grants hearing and pardon; the son of Tashshigurumash; the descendant of Abiru ... the crafty warrior; the first son of the great Agum; an illustrious, royal scion who holds the reins of the nation (and is) a mighty shepherd.... "I am king of the country of Kashshu and of the Akkadians; king of the wide country of Babylon, who settles the numerous people in Ashnunak; the King of Padan and Alman; the king of Gutium, a foolish nation; (a king) who makes obedient to him the four regions, and a favorite of the great gods." This enumeration of tributary lands shows these kings to have been good warriors. For a hundred years before the end of the Kassite dynasty, the kingdom of Assyria, founded before 3000 B.C. in all probability, was growing in strength and importance. When the Babylonians were unable to hold out against invading kings, naturally the Assyrians felt in no way bound to render the tribute they had paid Babylonia to usurping foreigners, and took advantage of the occasion to assert their sovereignty. As has been previously noted, the Assyrians were of pure Semitic stock, and, as their own artists represent them, apparently had not intermarried with the Chaldeans, as the Semites farther south had done. They were warlike in disposition, and knew neither the luxuries of the southern state nor its enervating climate. They had even become powerful enough to make treaties with the rulers of Babylon regarding disputed lands, and this fact in itself was significant. For some considerable period after the invasion of the Kassites, Assyria was concerned with her own affairs, but the time was coming when she would make her power felt in the mother country. Generally speaking, the Kassite rule was an age of peace. Among the Tell el Amarna letters, unearthed upon the ancient site of the "Horizon of the Sun's Disk," correspondence has been found between some of these Asiatic rulers and the kings of Egypt. The letters open with the preliminaries customary in oriental correspondence: "To Kadashman-Bel, king of Kardunyash, my brother; thus saith Amenophis, the great king, the king of Egypt, thy brother: with me it is well. May it be well with thee, with thy house, with thy wives, with thy children, with thy nobles, with thy horses and with thy chariots, and with thy land may it be well; with me may it be well, with my house with my wives, with my children, with my nobles, with my horses, with my chariots, with my troops, and with my land, may it be very well." Regarding this particular letter and others of the same period, Rogers says: "No historical material of great moment is offered in these letters. They reveal a period of relative peace and prosperity, and deal, in considerable measure, with the little courtesies and amenities of life. It is, for example, curious to find the Babylonian king reproving the king of Egypt for not having sent an ambassador to inquire for him when he was ill. When kings had time for such courtesies, and could only excuse themselves for failing to observe them on the ground of their ignorance of the illness, and the great distance to be covered on the journey, there must have been freedom from war and from all distress at home and abroad."[2] It was not destined to long continue peaceful, however. By 1285 B.C. the Assyrian king felt himself powerful enough to invade Babylonia. Penetrating even to the capital itself, he carried away the statue of the god Marduk--a great indignity. He allowed the Babylonia king to become his vassal. This state of affairs continued for seven years, whereupon the Babylonians succeeded in driving the Assyrians north again, taking from them some of the territory they had seized. When next the Assyrians threatened, the Semites instituted a revolution, forced the Kassites from the throne, and established the dynasty of Isin. Now began the struggle for supremacy in the valley, waged by two great nations. The strength of Babylonia was waning, but their king, Nebuchadnezzar I., held the kingdom together with a strong hand. He only delayed the inevitable. The future belonged to the more vigorous kingdom to the north, and to her power Babylonia soon fell subservient. To follow the main thread of activity in the Euphrates valley, we must now turn to Assyria, while the life so characteristic of Babylon continued until it could be said: "No capital in the world has ever been the center of so much power, wealth, and culture for so vast a period of time." [Illustration: WINGED LION.] FOOTNOTES: [1] Quoted in Rogers: Hist. of Baby. and Assy., 391. [2] Rogers: Hist. of Baby. and Assy., Vol I., p. 418. CHAPTER VI. BEGINNINGS OF THE ASSYRIAN EMPIRE. The beginnings of the Assyrian state are lost in obscurity. Nineveh was possibly founded before 3000 B.C., but like Babylon, its origin is not known. Asshur was long the important city of the country, overshadowing the later capital. About 1490 B.C. Thutmose III. pushed into Asia and roused the western portion of that continent with his conquests. Assyria, like many other weak states, hastened to send gifts to the conquering pharaoh. These signified submission, and Thothmes gave no further evidences of his military power. The next mention of Assyria occurs when the state had become sufficiently important to enter into a treaty with the Kassite king of Babylonia, regarding disputed territories. As we have already noted, Assyria, long subservient to the older kingdom, felt in no way bound to submit to the foreign rule of Kassite princes, and had already established her own independence, which was acknowledged by the Babylonian king when he negotiated a treaty with her. Later, the daughter of an Assyrian king was married to the king of Babylonia. Their son came to the throne at an early age, and the Babylonians, seeing an intrigue to allow Assyrian influences to dominate their land, made way with the boy-king, substituting another in his place. Thereupon the Assyrian ruler, grandfather of the murdered prince, invaded Babylonia, killed the monarch popularly crowned, and placed his own candidate upon the throne. The result of this Assyrian interference was not immediately important, but it was the first of a long series of difficulties between the two countries, which ended ultimately in the recognition of the Assyrian king as ruler of Babylonia as well. About 1290 B.C., troubles having again arisen, the northern king came once more to the city of Babylon, this time carrying away the statue of the god Marduk, as we have already seen. He left Assyrian officials in the land as his representatives. Seven years later, these were driven out by a popular uprising of the Babylonians, who seized certain outlying districts which had recently been appropriated by the Assyrians. When the Kassite princes were finally dethroned, Nebuchadnezzar I., of the dynasty of Isin, was strong enough to hold the Babylonian state intact against the power which constantly threatened at the north. To this point we had come in the preceding chapter, and this recast of the situation is made that we may have its essential features clearly in mind. Coming now to the reign of Tiglath-Pileser I., 1120 B.C., we meet one of the great warriors of antiquity, and with his administration, a new era opened for Assyria. The first five years of his reign were occupied with campaigns to the north, east, and west, in which directions tribes had been menacing the borders of his kingdom. In these campaigns we see the beginnings of those cruel, relentless punishments, amounting often to mere savagery,--which fill the pages of Assyrian history. These were meted out to all who failed to submit to Assyrian arms. An inscription commemorating the victories of the warrior says: "With their corpses I strewed the mountain passes and the heights. I took away their property, a countless booty. Six thousand warriors, the remnant of their army, who had fled before my arms, embraced my feet. I carried them away and counted them among the inhabitants of my own land." And again: "In those days, ... Asshur, the Lord, sent me, who knows no victor in war, no rival in battle, whose rule is righteous over the four quarters of the world, towards distant kingdoms on the shores of the Upper Sea, which knew not submission, and I went forth. Across impracticable heights and through precipitous defiles the inside of which no king had beheld before, I passed. Through sixteen mountain ridges I marched in my chariot where the ground was good; where it was inaccessible, I cleared away with axes, and bridges for the passage of my troops I constructed excellently well. I crossed the Euphrates.... Twenty-three kings of the land of Nairi, assembled their chariots and troops in the midst of their countries and came forth to do battle against me. By the impetuous onslaught of my mighty arms I conquered them. I destroyed their numerous armies like Raman's thundershower; with the corpses of their warriors I strewed the mountain heights and the enclosures of their cities as with straw. Their 120 chariots I destroyed in the battle; sixty kings of the lands of Nairi, with those who had come to their assistance, I pursued to the Upper Sea. Their great cities I took, their spoils, their possessions I carried off, their towns I burned with fire, I destroyed, laid them waste, made heaps of them and land for the plough. Numerous herds of steeds, colts, calves, and implements without number I carried home. The kings of the lands of the Nairi my hand captured alive, all of them. To these same kings I granted favor. Captive and bound, I released them before Shamash, my lord, and made them swear allegiance forever. Their children, the offspring of their royalty, I took as hostages. I imposed on them a tribute of 1,200 steeds and 2,000 bulls and dismissed them to their respective countries.... The vast lands of Nairi I took in all their extent, and all their kings I brought low to my feet." When five years, filled with similar campaigns, had passed, a large number of tribes paid tribute to Assyria. Before this period, Calab had served as capital. Tiglath-Pileser now rebuilt Asshur. Rare trees were brought from conquered lands, to beautify the town. Temples were restored, to the honor of the gods. Of the restoration of the temple of Ana and Adad, the king caused to be inscribed: "I built it from foundation to roof larger and grander than before, and erected also two great towers, fitting ornaments of their great divinities. The splendid temple, a brilliant and magnificent dwelling, the habitation of their joys, the house for their delight, shining as bright as the stars on heaven's firmament and richly decorated with ornaments through the skill of my artists, I planned, devised, and thought out, built and completed. I made its interior brilliant like the dome of the heavens; decorated its walls like the splendor of the rising stars, and make it grand with resplendent brilliancy. I reared its temple towers to heaven, and completed its roof with burned brick; located therein the upper terrace containing the chamber of their great divinities; and led into the interior Anu and Adad, the great gods, and made them to dwell in their lofty house, thus gladdening the heart of their great divinities."[1] The memory of this stern warrior lived long after his death, holding tribes in subjection and enabling his successors to rule in comparative peace. The greatness of the future kingdom has been attributed in no small measure to the foundations laid by Tiglath-Pileser I. A period of reaction followed. Tribute, which had been paid only for fear of a strong, well disciplined army, was no longer forthcoming. Babylonia and Assyria have left so few records for these years that they are almost sure to have been years of inaction. On the alluvial bottoms of Babylonia, a new dynasty arose, known as the dynasty of the Sea Lands. Both the rulers and the subjects they governed were comparatively newcomers, who easily gained the upper hand in the decadent state, especially as no interference came from Assyria. While the inertia of Babylonia allowed the latest comer to rule, so the inaction of Assyria allowed countries on the west--Syria and Palestine--to gain strength. On the north, the Armenians, a nation of traders, extended their territories and their commercial affairs. In 950 B.C. Tiglath-Pileser II. became king. From this time forward records become more numerous, and we are able to trace the stages of development with greater accuracy. Assyria once more wakened to her possibilities, while Babylonia continued in her helpless, prostrate condition. Nothing of note is chronicled until Asshur-natsirpal III. became king in 885 B.C. He promptly marched against the earlier conquered tribes on the north who no longer paid their tribute. He slaughtered a goodly number at the start, and this report spread like wildfire among the tribes, who hastened to send gifts. For some years he continued to bring countries under tribute, quelling revolts with such severity as only an Assyrian could have directed. One inscription is sufficient to let us understand his customary procedure: "I drew near to the city of Tela. The city was very strong; three walls surrounded it. The inhabitants trusted to their strong walls and numerous soldiers; they did not come down or embrace my feet. With battle and slaughter I assaulted and took the city. Three thousand warriors I slew in battle. Their booty and possessions, cattle, sheep, I carried away; many captives I burned with fire. Many of their soldiers I took alive; of some I cut off hands and limbs; of others the noses, ears, and arms; of many soldiers I put out the eyes. I reared a column of the living and a column of heads. I hung up on high their heads on trees in the vicinity of their city. Their boys and girls I burned up in the flame. I devastated the city, dug it up, in the fire burned it; I annihilated it."[2] Babylonia and nations on the east united against the relentless conqueror, but in vain. They were defeated and some of their cities laid waste. Having carried on campaigns in this fashion for some time, Asshur-natsirpal found himself at the head of a large army, well disciplined, invincible, inured to slaughter and devastation--a menace to the state if kept idle, and if disbanded, removing at a stroke the fear which prompted the payment of tribute. Something should perhaps be said of tribute, which we find kings demanding of all subjected people. The habit of compelling the payment of tribute was tolerated only in an age when might made right. None of the earliest nations gave anything in exchange for tribute exacted. No effort was made to defend tributary tribes from the attacks of other tribes. Tribute was merely the price paid by a people for the privilege of being in other respects left alone. A king who dreamed of a wide reaching empire, tried to bring as many nations as possible under his tribute. The payment of this tribute was the formal acknowledgment of the emperor's over-lordship. Until the age of Persian dominance, no monarch was able to do much more than compel the annual payment in joining alien territories to his own. Assyria attempted on a smaller scale what Persia effected, but little more than the _conception_ of a great empire was contributed by Assyria; it was given reality by Persian conquerors. Asshur-natsirpal realized the only course open to him was that of conquest, and to that he now turned. Setting out for the west, his march was a continual triumph. His reputation was so well established, and the strength of his army so well understood that tribes on either side sent gifts as soon as he drew near. Reaching the Euphrates, he was unable to make any adequate provision for the transportation of his troops. The Assyrians were an inland people and knew nothing of maritime affairs. Each soldier was expected to get himself across the stream, partly swimming, partly buoyed up by inflated skins of animals. Drawing near the Mediterranean Sea, he found that commerce occupied the people in that region to the exclusion of war. Indeed, they would pay heavily to avoid war, which seriously interfered with their trade. The king of the Hittites--once a nation of importance but at this time retaining little of its former strength--stated his position very frankly. His policy was direct and simple. He was willing to pay down the sum of twenty talents of silver, one hundred talents of copper, two hundred and fifty talents of iron, along with chains and beads of gold and much other treasure, if he were simply let alone.... National pride counted for nothing. The primary desire was to get the Assyrians out of the country as soon as possible; and well might they pay a heavy tribute to gain such a boon as that.[3] It was apparent that there would be no particular opportunity for military skill against people of such convictions as these. The Assyrian army moved on and at length drew near the green slopes of the Lebanon, in sight of the Mediterranean waters, dotted over by Phoenician ships, busily plying their trade. While no city was besieged, no blood shed, the effect was marked upon the entire region. All acknowledged Asshur-natsirpal as conqueror. In some cases, Assyrian officials were stationed to keep the home government in touch with these distant parts; in other places, Assyrian colonists were induced to settle, far from their native homes. Cities were walled by the labor of Assyrian soldiers, and were temporarily protected by Assyrian fortifications. While such demonstrations had a lasting effect on the western states, the Assyrian king, on his part, was deeply impressed by one thing, and this omened ill for their future; the people of this region cared more to protect their commerce than their country. They valued the protection of their wares above the honor and independence of their respective states. We shall see that this one fact as understood by the Assyrian king developed a definite western policy. Unable to supply military action for his troops, the king set them to cutting down trees--cedar, cypress, and juniper. These were taken to Assyria. The army returned home without approaching Damascus, where opposition was certain to be strong. Too much glory had been won to have it overshadowed by any chance issue. While the western conquest had been in progress, officers at home had been carrying out the king's plans by rebuilding Calah, and constructing a large canal. The king now returned to personally supervise the construction of a royal palace. "A palace for my royal dwelling-place, for the glorious seat of my royalty, I founded forever and splendidly planned it. I surrounded it with a cornice of copper. Sculptures of the creatures of land and sea carved in alabaster, I made and placed them at the doors. Lofty doorposts of ... wood I made, and sheathed them with copper and set them up in the gates. Thrones of costly woods, dishes of ivory containing silver, gold, lead, copper, and iron, the spoil of my hand, taken from conquered lands I deposited therein." In 860 B.C. Asshur-natsirpal died, leaving the future to regard him as the most ferocious king in all Assyrian history; yet he had accomplished more for his country than any of his predecessors, and left it more united and in a more prosperous condition. His son, Shalmaneser II., like the father, found himself obliged to keep an army active, collecting tributes and making fresh conquests. He repeated the westward march, and met an alliance formed against him at Damascus. To that city's forces were joined those of Israel and of Phoenicia. While their armies were defeated, no tribute was exacted, and this fact in itself shows that the victory was not complete. This first coalition formed against Assyria, made up of Mediterranean peoples, is important. Such a union might have effectually stayed the great military power of the age had not jealousies among the states themselves hindered permanent union. By 846 B.C. the alliance had been broken, and Jehu of Israel sent gifts to the Assyrian ruler. This furnished him his first hold on the independence of the Hebrews. The next hundred years saw a union of Babylonia and Assyria, and an attempt, on the part of one king at least, to blot out all differences between the two peoples by showing among other things that their religions were the same. To give weight to the claim, he constructed temples in Nineveh, after the model of those of Babylon. In the following chapter we shall note the height of Assyrian dominance and the proudest years of her history. [Illustration: FLOCKS AND CAPTIVE WOMEN CARRIED AWAY.] FOOTNOTES: [1] Quoted in Goodspeed, p. 171. [2] Quoted in Goodspeed, p. 197. [3] Rogers: Hist. of Baby. and Assy., Vol. II, 64. CHAPTER VII. ASSYRIA--A POWERFUL EMPIRE. A dynasty of weak kings followed and seemed to be leading Assyria on to ruin, but in 746 B.C. the people rose up in rebellion, driving them out and crowning a ruler selected by themselves. It is supposed that the one they chose had already proven his worth and capacity either at the head of a large division of the army, or possibly in the management of some Assyrian province. In any event, he was firmly established at once and spent no time trying to inspire his subjects with awe. His own name has not been recorded but he took the crown name of Tiglath-Pileser III., seeking to emulate him who had borne it first. He is the Pul of the Old Testament. Babylonia demanded first attention. The Armenians had established themselves in the southern part of the kingdom and threatened to crush out the old life and culture by their rapidly increasing numbers. Tiglath-Pileser III. was hailed by the native Babylonians as a deliverer. Forcing the usurpers back, he divided the former kingdom into four provinces, placing Assyrian governors over each. He also brought many captives into these provinces to make their homes, hoping in this way to weaken the national spirit which tried every little while to gain back old-time freedom for the state. The Medes on the east required some curbing, but their independence was not destroyed. These matters attended to, Tiglath-Pileser III. was free to give attention to the west. The city of Arpad stood in the way of Assyrian progress and since it refused tribute, it was besieged. The plucky town held out for two long years, but when finally taken, was laid waste with great slaughter. All neighboring tribes hastened to send tribute, and were incorporated into the Assyrian empire. Heretofore we have seen people brought under tribute and some faint efforts made to hold them. Now we have reached the imperial period of Assyrian development when the government, established at home, sought to increase its actual possessions abroad, and to bind them to the original kingdom with strong ties. An alliance had been made among the sea-coast states, with Judah at the head. This had been formed, of course, to stay the western tide of Assyrian power. Notwithstanding, the king of Samaria yielded the moment the Assyrian army drew near, paying the tribute with no display of force. Judah alone seems to have remained unyielding and undisturbed. Thirty thousand captives were brought into these districts to find new homes, while many of the natives were deported to make room for them. Several methods were employed by Assyria to make conquests lasting. If a tribe or city acknowledged the Assyrian king as conqueror, no recourse was made to arms; an annual tribute was usually imposed and an Assyrian governor placed in the territory to hold revolts in check and to generally represent the empire, of which the province was now a part. The native king was frequently allowed to rule over the people, even though his main duty in some instances seems to have been to raise the required tribute. If, on the other hand, a tribe or city resisted, a war or siege followed. One battle might reduce a tribe to submission; in the case of a city, all supplies were shut off, and eventually the inhabitants would be starved into surrender, whereupon, the city was often made "land for the plough" by the exasperated king, and the people subjected to all sorts of cruel punishments. When a kingdom was conquered, it was thought desirable to destroy its old patriotism by removing all chances for its development. With that end in view, some of its citizens would be sent out of the country to seek homes in other lands, while those from distant regions would be brought in to take their places. Naturally the newcomers knew nothing of the traditions of their newly found country and cared not at all to fight for them. In this way, nations ceased to retain their venerated customs, but as the kings often record: "I made them all to speak one language"--and that Assyrian. One far-reaching effect of this policy was that when a revolt did break out in some district, it no longer spread like wildfire in all directions, but the governor of the province was himself able to put down any uprising, and the colonists recently imported, caring nothing for the older inhabitants, could be depended upon to help him. Tiglath-Pileser III. turned now to Gaza, whose king fled to Egypt there to get aid in behalf of his state. Deserted, the city soon surrendered and the Assyrian king, having sent the old gods home to Assyria, installed Assyrian gods in the temples. Thence he marched to Palestine. He who had held out against Assyria before was dead and a weak king now ruled in Judah. Had the kings of Samaria and Damascus formed an alliance with Judah, the power of Assyria might yet have been broken; instead they united their forces to invade Judah and appropriate the territory of the weak king for themselves. Isaiah, the great statesman of the Hebrews, counselled the ruler in vain. To protect himself against his aggressive neighbors he appealed to Assyria for help. This drew Tiglath-Pileser III. to Samaria and Damascus, while Judah, sending gifts, was not at this time molested. The Samarians themselves rose up against their king. Having killed him, they asked the Assyrian ruler to allow Hoshea to rule over them as an Assyrian vassal. This sifted the opposition down to Damascus, which city prepared for a siege. Some five hundred outlying towns were laid waste and their inhabitants sent into other districts. Not all the army being constantly required to guard the besieged town, part of the troops marched into Arabia, demanding tribute and receiving it. In 732 B.C. Damascus fell and became an Assyrian province. By this time, Babylonia was in a state of turmoil. Under Assyrian government the people had at first been free to develop their arts of peace, and literature had flourished. Then the Chaldeans to the south, established originally in the region around the gulf, known once as Chaldea--tried again to rule the land. In 726 B.C. Tiglath-Pileser III. marched into Babylonia, where, taking the hands of the god Marduk, he was crowned king of Babylonia. According to the ancient custom, he who wore this crown must return each year and celebrate this same ceremony. Two years later Tiglath-Pileser having again performed the rites, died before the year elapsed. During the short reign which followed interest again reverted to the west. Hoshea refused to pay tribute in 725 B.C., looking to Egypt for help. He was taken captive and Samaria made ready for a siege. Strange to say, the town held out for three years and the king of Assyria died before it was taken. Sargon II. at once succeeded. (722-705 B.C.) He again was not of royal blood and he too chose a popular crown name. Samaria soon fell, and quite possibly neither the besieging army or the stricken town knew of any change in rulers. Twenty-seven thousand two hundred and ninety of the inhabitants of Samaria--the flower of the land,--were deported to the Median mountains, while colonists were brought in from Babylonia and other provinces to take their places. This loss it was impossible to retrieve. Assyrian governors were set over the land, now merely an Assyrian province. In 721 B.C. attention focused once more in Babylonia, where the Chaldeans had again usurped the crown. In the battle Sargon waged, the result was so indecisive that neither side gained much. The usurpers were simply checked. Suddenly an alliance was formed in the west, made up of stricken Samaria, Damascus and Gaza. Sargon marched rapidly west before their armies were ready, and defeated them separately and carried "the ten tribes into captivity." Now again more strangers were brought in, and more citizens sent out. It is little wonder, after all these mixtures of peoples, that in later years the Jews regarded the Samarians as not of their kin, but an inferior race, so that in the time of Christ one could say: "How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? For the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans!" It was during this campaign that the Hittite king was taken prisoner and his kingdom, once so powerful, was merged into the Assyrian Empire. Not long after, Hezekiah, king of Judah, attempted to stir up an opposition to the Assyrian tribute payment. Isaiah, the far-seeing statesman, again counselled against it,--vainly to be sure, yet constantly, for this was an unfavorable moment. As might have been foreseen, the coalition was short-lived. Sargon's work in time of peace was extensive. He built a palace, like his predecessors, but outdoing them, he constructed a royal city for its location. This was a custom new in Assyria, but we have seen that it was usual in Egypt, during the Middle and New Empires. Choosing a spot not far from Nineveh, at the base of a mountain, he had a rectangular area laid out, its corners pointing to the four cardinal points. First temples were built to the gods, whose favor he sought in every possible way, even going to the length of paying for the site of the city, and compensating those who asked no money. After the temples, the palace itself arose--built of ivory, palm-wood, cedar, cypress, having gates of wood overlaid with bronze. The eight gates of the city were named for the eight leading divinities, the walls for Asshur, and the ramparts for Niveb. An invocation was inscribed to the gods: "May Asshur bless this city, and this palace! May he invest these constructions with an eternal brightness! May he grant that they shall be inhabited until the remotest days! May the sculptured bull, the guarding spirit, stand forever before his face! May he keep watch here night and day, and may his feet never move from this threshold!" The palace is said to have contained "twenty-four bulls in relief and two miles of sculptured slabs." Since the work was only begun in 712 B.C., and he came to reside within in 707 B.C., he was apparently able to command a large army of workmen. This was the palace whose ruins Botta unearthed in 1846, and each part remaining appeared to be as perfect as workmanship could make it. The new city was peopled in a unique way. "People from the four quarters of the world, of foreign speech, of manifold tongues, who had dwelt in mountains and valleys, ... whom I, in the name of Asshur my lord, by the might of my arms had carried into captivity, I commanded to speak one language and settled them therein. Sons of Asshur of wise insight in all things, I placed over them, to watch over them; learned men and scribes to teach them the fear of God and the King." It is supposed that Sargon II. was murdered in 705 B.C. and his son Sennacherib succeeded to the throne. He had observed his father's difficulties in keeping order in Babylonia, and had concluded before ever he came to the throne that to indulge the pride of Babylon by longer conforming to her venerated custom of crowning her king each year--thus requiring his annual appearance,--was mere folly. He believed that Babylonia, whatever her history, was now an Assyrian province, and hence the king of Assyria was her king. So he himself did not go at all to Babylon, but was merely crowned in Nineveh as King of Assyria. Now the Babylonians, far from submitting to this train of logic, in course of a brief time, crowned their own king. Thereupon the Chaldeans, ever watchful for an opportunity to re-establish their power, set up a ruler in the same country, farther south. In 702 B.C., because of this confusion, Sennacherib marched to Babylon, laid waste many Chaldean cities, deported 200,000 people and crowned as king a young nobleman, Babylonian by birth but educated at the Assyrian court. Having so vigorously asserted his strength, he was soon needed in the west. The situation there was critical. Hezekiah, king of Judah, had successfully conducted a war against the Philistines, and was therefore regarded by his subjects as a great and mighty warrior. There was a strong faction in the kingdom who opposed the annual payment of tribute to Assyria and who believed that against them also Hezekiah might assert himself and free them from this hated tribute service. Isaiah, understanding the vast difference in the resources of the two countries, counselled against a war, but it remained for future generations to discern the clear, far sighted reasoning of this statesman, and the king, even had he chosen to heed good counsel, was shortly plunged into a war which was the popular demand of his people. Jerusalem prepared for a siege, and water was brought into the city from some distance by an aqueduct. Egypt promised aid, for the Ethiopian king who ruled that country and the native princes who were struggling to regain the throne, all felt that an opportunity opened in this way to win glory in Asia which should serve as a lever to them at home. Judah had yet to learn how fallen was this ancient state and how incapable of giving material assistance. The rebellion spread, for freedom was dear to nations in those days when submission meant at least heavy tributes, and often deportation and a dismantled country. In the city of Ekron the people, stirred by a hope of independence, seized the Assyrian governor and led him captive to Hezekiah. As usual, the Assyrian king made forced marches and appeared before he was expected and before the armies were massed, so he had the less difficult task of defeating each nation separately. Tyre, one of the rebel cities, was first attacked. It was not possible to materially injure her, since her defenses on the sea were strong; Sidon surrendered and an Assyrian ruler was set over the city; now many of the allies were consumed with fear and dropped out of the coalition, sending tribute with all haste. In Ekron those who had led the rebellion were killed or deported. As had long been the case, the Assyrian king was meeting with brief resistance. Judah held out, however. Hezekiah watched for re-enforcements from Egypt, but before they drew near, Sennacherib opened battle, winning with heavy losses. Hezekiah withdrew his forces into Jerusalem to undergo a siege, while the Assyrian army turned to meet Egyptian allies and captured the leaders. Forty-six cities around Jerusalem were taken, and when it seemed futile to longer hold out, Hezekiah sent an embassy to Sennacherib to ask for terms of peace. A sum of money approaching $1,000,000 in our money, was demanded, and although it was raised with difficulty in Judah, it was paid over to the conqueror. However, Hezekiah did not come out to meet Sennacherib and acknowledge him as overlord, and the Assyrian king, feeling that his victory was yet indecisive, dispatched his most trusted generals to demand the surrender of Jerusalem. Meanwhile he marched with the great mass of Assyrian forces to intercept more Egyptian armies now approaching. Encamping at Pelusium, a place noted for its plagues before that day and since, the army was stricken in the night. In a few days only a remnant of the great force remained and a homeward march was begun at once. The Hebrews, according to their custom, interpreted this issue to signify direct intervention of Providence in their behalf. Instead of being led captives of Assyrian provinces and having their land devastated, they gained fame and glory by the expedition. The Egyptians also claimed a victory--all because of the pestilence. The two accounts of the campaign, the Hebrew version of the story as chronicled in the Old Testament, and the Assyrian version, as translated from their tablets, are both so interesting that we quote them at length. Such differences as they show are easily explained in view of the standpoints of each writer. Returning home, Babylonia was found to be in a state of insubordination, having once more asserted her independence. Sennacherib now placed his own son on the throne, but still difficulties multiplied. At last the Babylonians united with the Chaldeans, their long-sworn enemies, against Assyria. At this juncture, in 689 B.C., Sennacherib determined to strike at the root of the trouble. He marched into the land and set fire to the city of Babylon, after plundering its temples and palaces. Over the desolate site of the city he then turned a canal, converting the region into a swamp. It is almost staggering even at this remote time to think of the pride and glory of Babylonian life, the splendor of its palaces, the wonder of its temples, being thus wantonly destroyed. Long periods of peace in the kingdom had given opportunity for art and literature to develop, and there can be no question that countless records of priceless worth were destroyed by the deed of this fierce Assyrian. The culture of Babylonia had indeed succumbed to the barbarism of Assyria. The inhabitants--scholars, artists, artisans, were taken captives, and deported to various points of the empire. The following reign saw all that was possible done to atone for this reckless act, but far beyond what we can now calculate, the loss was irreparable. HEBREW ACCOUNT OF THE WAR WITH ASSYRIA. "Now in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah did Sennacherib, king of Assyria, come up against all the fenced cities of Judah, and took them. And Hezekiah, king of Judah, sent to the king of Assyria to Lachish, saying, 'I have offended; return from me: that which thou puttest on me will I bear.' And the king of Assyria appointed unto Hezekiah, king of Judah, three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold. "And Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the house of the Lord, and in the treasures of the king's house. At that time did Hezekiah cut off the gold from the doors of the temple of the Lord, and from the pillars which Hezekiah, king of Judah, had overlaid, and gave it to the king of Assyria. "And the king of Assyria sent Tartan and Rabsaris and Rab-shakeh from Lachish to King Hezekiah with a great host against Jerusalem. And they went up and came to Jerusalem. And when they were come up they came and stood by the conduit of the upper pool, which is in the highway of the fuller's field. And when they had called to the king, there came out to them Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, which was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joan the son of Asaph, the recorder. "And Rab-shakeh said unto them: Speak ye now to Hezekiah, Thus saith the great king, the king of Assyria: What confidence is this wherein thou trusteth? Thou sayest (but they are vain words) I have counsel and strength for the war. Now on whom dost thou trust, that thou rebellest against me? "Now, behold, thou trusteth upon the staff of this bruised reed, even upon Egypt, on which if a man lean, it will go into his hand, and pierce it: so is Pharaoh, king of Egypt, unto all that trust on him. "But if ye say unto me, We trust in the Lord our God: is not that he, whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah hath taken away and hath said to Judah and Jerusalem, Ye shall worship before this altar in Jerusalem? "Now, therefore, I pray thee, give pledges to my lord the king of Assyria, and I will deliver thee two thousand horses, if thou be able on thy part to set riders upon them. How then wilt thou turn away the face of one captain of the least of my master's servants, and put thy trust on Egypt for chariots and for horsemen? Am I now come up without the Lord against this place to destroy it? The Lord said to me, Go up against this land, and destroy it. "Then said Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, and Shebna, and Joan, unto Rab-shakeh, Speak, I pray thee, to thy servants in the Syrian language; for we understand it: and talk not with us in the Jews' language in the ears of the people that are on the wall. But Rab-shakeh said unto them, Hath my master sent me to thy master, and to thee, to speak these words? hath he not sent me to the men which sit on the wall? Then Rab-shakeh stood and cried with a loud voice in the Jews' language, and spake, saying, Hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria: Thus saith the king, Let not Hezekiah deceive you: for he shall not be able to deliver you out of his hand. Neither let Hezekiah make you trust in the Lord, saying, The Lord will surely deliver us, and this city shall not be delivered into the hand of the king of Assyria: Harken not to Hezekiah: for thus saith the king of Assyria, Make an agreement with me by a present, and come out to me, and then eat ye every man of his own vine and every one of his own fig-tree, and drink ye every one the waters of his cistern: Until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of corn and wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of oil, olive and of honey, that ye may live, and not die: and harken not unto Hezekiah, when he persuadeth you, saying, The Lord will deliver us. Hath any of the gods of the nations delivered at all his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath, and of Arpad? where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivah? have they delivered Samaria out of mine hand? Who are they among all the gods of the countries, that have delivered their country out of mine hand, that the Lord should deliver Jerusalem out of mine hand? But the people held their peace, and answered him not a word: for the king's commandment was, saying, Answer him not.... "And Hezekiah prayed before the Lord, and said, ... O Lord our God, I beseech thee save thou us out of his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the Lord God, even thou only.... Therefore thus saith the Lord concerning the king of Assyria, He shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with shield, nor cast a bank against it. By the way that he came, by the same shall he return, and shall not come into this city, saith the Lord. For I will defend this city, to save it, for mine own sake, and for my servant David's sake. "And it came to pass that night that the angel of the Lord went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold they were all dead corpses. "So Sennacherib, king of Assyria, departed, and went and returned and dwelt at Nineveh."--_II. Kings, 18 and 19._ CONCERNING THE REVOLT OF JUDAH: FROM AN ASSYRIAN TABLET. "But as for Hezekiah of Judah, who had not submitted to my yoke, forty-six of his strong walled cities and the smaller cities round about them, without number, by the battering of rams, and the attack of war-engines, by making breaches by cutting through, and the use of axes, I besieged and captured. Two hundred thousand, one hundred and fifty people, small and great, male and female, horses, mules, asses, camels, cattle and sheep, without number, I brought forth from their midst and reckoned as spoil. (Hezekiah) himself I shut up like a caged bird in Jerusalem, his royal city. I threw up fortifications against him, and whoever came out of the gates of his city I punished. His cities, which I had plundered, I cut off from his land and gave to Mitinti, King of Ashdod, ... and made his territory smaller. To the former taxes, paid yearly, tribute, a present for my lordship, I added and imposed on him. Hezekiah himself was overwhelmed by the fear of the brilliancy of my lordship, and the Arabians and faithful soldiers whom he had brought in to strengthen Jerusalem, his royal city, deserted him. Thirty talents of gold, eight hundred talents of silver, precious stones, ... couches of ivory, thrones of elephant skin and ivory, _ushu_ and _urkarinu_ woods, of every kind, a heavy treasure, and his daughters, his palace women, male and female singers, to Nineveh, my lordship's city, I caused to be brought after me, and he sent his ambassador to give tribute and to pay homage." CHAPTER VIII. LAST YEARS OF ASSYRIAN GREATNESS. "And it came to pass, as Sennacherib was worshipping in the house of Nishroch his god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons smote him with the sword: and they escaped into the land of Armenia. And Esarhaddon his son reigned in his stead." Thus did the Hebrew chronicle the death of Sennacherib, and since Assyrian tablets recounting the dire plot have long since been destroyed, we are thrown wholly upon the fact as stated without explanation or detail. Esarhaddon, who succeeded to the throne in 680 B.C., had already acted as regent in Babylonia, and had there acquired deep veneration and love for the Babylonian past, as well as for its life and culture. He wished to win the favor of its people, scattered though they were, and so in addition to being crowned king of Assyria, he had himself proclaimed viceroy of Babylonia, for this office would not require his annual presence in celebration of the yearly rites. Thus had his grandfather done, and Sennacherib only had ruthlessly thrust aside the national prejudice. His father had laid Babylon waste, changing its very site into a swamp and scattering its proud people to the four winds. Esarhaddon immediately planned to rebuild the city and so far as possible, bring those departed back to their old homes. In an age given over to cruelty, devastations, selfish plots and intrigues, it is surprising to find that this king allowed no reflections to be cast upon his father's memory by condemning his Babylonian policy. He had it set forth on tablets that the gods had been displeased with the wrong doing of Babylon, and that a king, merely their instrument, had in this way visited divine wrath upon the heads of the people; while now, he, Esarhaddon, again acting as agent for the gods, ready once more to give their favor in hope of future obedience, would now rebuild the ancient capital. Slowly the city rose, more splendid and magnificent than before. First the old temples were replaced, and around these the city came into being. Chaldeans had taken possession of the land after the nation was disrupted. The new king now forced them back, restoring property wherever possible to its rightful owners. Such being the situation at home, abroad the state of affairs was critical. Tyre had not submitted, nor Judah. Sidon no longer paid tribute. Vast sums of money were needed to carry on the gigantic building project, and these commercial sea-port towns offered a rich reward to the conqueror. Having heard that Esarhaddon was determined to make a westward march, the sea-coast cities prepared to offer resistance. Sidon was besieged and held out for nearly three years. When at last it fell into the hands of the exasperated Assyrians, it was utterly destroyed. Both king and soldiers were infuriated by the long delay and plundered until weary. The walls of the town were broken down and cast into the sea; the luxurious homes of the merchantmen were stripped of their wealth and razed to the ground. The entire city was blotted out of existence. Then the king set about erecting a new town on its site, naming it for himself, and peopling it with those taken captive in the nearby mountains while the siege was carried on. Over all he placed an Assyrian governor, and then set out for Nineveh. Reaching his capital, he made a triumphal entry, laden with spoils, captives and cattle. Some of the noblest citizens of Sidon swelled his train. Gold, silver, precious stones, rare woods, dress-stuffs,--these had fallen to his share after three years of waiting. The siege of Tyre had been begun about the same time that Sidon was attacked, but Tyre was more favorably situated. She could not be cut off from the sea and so could not be starved into submission. Baal was king and he proposed to hold out against the besiegers. The Assyrians walled up the land side of the city and it was wholly cut off from its land commerce, so in the long run, it would have to yield. After a time, the siege was raised, but over-land commerce was no longer possible. Esarhaddon knew well that the frequent disturbances in Syria which so annoyed him and had so troubled previous reigns, were largely instigated by unceasing efforts of Egypt to stir the cities to rebellion, hoping in some unquiet times that she might gain a foothold in western Asia and share in the plunder of Syria, as pharaohs in early times had done. To understand her position it is necessary to go back and see how Egypt had fared after losing first place among the nations. The Ethiopians, having taken on Egyptian culture and customs centuries before, had gained political control as the country weakened. Native princes gained power in the nomes and tried incessantly to regain possession of the throne. As usual there was so much personal jealousy among them that concerted action was impossible. Egypt's name had stood for power and great resources so many centuries, that even though the state was weak--even tottering within, abroad it was still judged by its former strength. Assyrian rulers had doubtless known better its truer condition, for Sennacherib's generals told those of Judah that looking thence for aid was like leaning on a bruised reed. Esarhaddon determined to strike at the root of Syrian dissension, and in 673 B.C. led an army for the first time in Assyrian history against Egypt. An army met his own outside the borders and the result was indecisive. The Assyrians did not enter the land at all. Three years later they defeated an Egyptian army sent to meet them, crossed the border now unhindered, and marched rapidly to Memphis. The city, wholly unprepared for such unexpected attack, fell at once into their hands. It was plundered generally and laid waste. Unquestionably much of great historic value was wantonly destroyed by soldiers who were allowed to pillage at will. Statues of gods were removed to Nineveh, together with great booty--and this was the work of a man who deplored the loss of Babylon, and had undertaken to rebuild a capital not yet known when Memphis stood the wonder of the world! The Assyrians never outgrew their ferocity, their savage thirst for ravage and murder, and their culture in Assyria's most enlightened days was but a veneer encasing old tendencies, characteristics and desires. Over the twenty-one nomes, native princes were allowed to rule, as vassals of an Assyrian governor, set over the whole land. The king further undertook to change the names of ancient towns, giving them Assyrian names, but this never became a change at all--simply a useless attempt. The youngest world-power had now conquered the oldest. Surely these were years wherein chart-makers would have had a sorry time trying to indicate a nation's possessions. On its homeward march the Assyrian army made a raid into Arabia, but desert marches told quickly on the soldiers, and no lasting results came of it. At this point Assyrian possessions--even the original kingdom itself--were threatened alarmingly by a migration starting from the southern portion of present Russia. Thither had come the Medes in an early day, and now thousands upon thousands came pouring eastward in search of new and less crowded homes. It was hopeless to stay such an onset of troops--it would wear out many an army. Places vacated today would be filled shortly by those pressing in the rear. Besides, these people had no plan of conquest or occupation of the land. They simply spread out like so many hungry cattle, seeking food where it might be found. All that could be done was to turn aside the main stream of progress. These new comers settled down in Syria, reaching east to the land of the Medes and far beyond it. In spite of watchful care, many fertile lands were lost to Assyria. In 668 a second Egyptian campaign was planned by the king, but before starting out, he had his son, Asshur-banipal, recognized as regent of Babylonia. This was to cause much trouble in the future, because it once more divided the now united country, and made an opportunity for old jealousies to creep in again. On the march, Esarhaddon died, leaving the future to regard him as noblest among Assyrian kings--the most just and fair-minded of his race. Asshur-banipal who succeeded to the throne in 668 B.C., was naturally fond of learning and was a prodigious book-collector. By using that term for Assyrian days we mean of course a collector of clay tablets whereon were inscribed literary productions. The Egyptian campaign had already opened, for it was plain that the conquests of two years before were practically lost. Sea-coast towns in Egypt submitted at once. Little opposition was encountered in the Land of the Pyramids, and Assyrian government was soon re-instated. The suspicion of the generals was awakened by the simplicity of their task and withdrawing their army, they loitered not far away. No sooner had they left than the Assyrian government, tolerated in the presence of the army, was thrown off and old forms instituted. Now it was the Egyptian's turn to be surprised when the army, supposed to be far on its homeward march, reappeared in the land. The revolt was quickly put down, and the leaders killed with as great cruelty as ever blackened Assyrian pages. In 660 B.C. Egypt declared her independence and this was the first great loss of the Assyrian empire, soon to be followed by many more. Probably before this Tyre had been forced to yield, and the king had sent his son and daughter to the Assyrian court as an indication of submission. A raid was made into Media, some of its cities being taken and their inhabitants deported. For such experiences the Medes grew to hate the Assyrians with increasing fervor. Asshur-banipal was finding some difficulty in holding together the empire of his fathers, and when revolts occurred, they were put down with greatest severity. Babylonia had maintained peace for fifteen years, but the people clung to the traditions of their early history, and harked back to a time when Babylon was the greatest city of the world. Now, except for freedom from tribute, they ranked as any other Assyrian province. Encouraged by the feelings of those under him, the prince-regent conceived the notion of stirring up all the provinces to revolt at the same time, hoping that Babylonian independence might be gained in time of confusion. He was urged on to this course, which was misguided and ill timed, with little chance for success. Its only hope lay in keeping secret the plot so far as the Assyrian king was concerned. There were, however, many who would gladly try to benefit themselves by unearthing any plan for revolt. There might also be governors of provinces sufficiently far-sighted to have nothing to do with any treasonable plot, and these could not be expected to guard such a secret. At last the Chaldeans on the south, Palestine, some provinces of Syria and some Arabian tribes, promised help. The Babylonians were destined to learn how different was that from actually giving it. To allay any suspicions Asshurbanipal might have, an embassy of Babylonian nobles visited his court to give him assurance of his brother's loyalty. When the news came that the Babylonians had seized Ur and Uruk, the Assyrian king was much astonished. He spent some little time in complaint of his faithless brother; an inscription ran: "At that time Shamash-shum-ukin, the faithless brother, to whom I had done good, and whom I had established as king of Babylon, and for whom I had made every possible kind of royal decoration, and had given him, and had gathered together soldiers, horses, and chariots, and had intrusted them to him, and had given him cities, fields, and woods, and the men dwelling in them, even more than my father had commanded--even he forgot that favor I had shown him, and he planned evil. Outwardly with his lips he spoke friendly things, while inwardly his heart plotted rebellion." Asshur-banipal waited for a favorable omen before starting out to quell the rebellion, and it came at last in this way: "In those days a seer slept in the beginning of the night and dreamed a dream, thus: 'On the face of the Moon it is written: Whoever deviseth evil against Asshur-banipal, king of Asshur, makes enmity, a violent death I appoint for them. With the edge of the sword, the burning of fire, famine, and the judgment of the Pest-god, I will destroy their lives.' This I heard and trusted to the will of Sin, my lord. I gathered my army; against Shamash-Shum-ukin I directed the march." Help came to the revolting Babylonians from few of the promised allies. Arabia, Chaldea, and the land of the Elamites sent troops, but in the battle waged they suffered fearful defeat. Babylon underwent a severe siege and at last the king committed suicide. Then the gates of the city were thrown open and great was the slaughter. Asshur-banipal had himself proclaimed king, and pushed on to punish the allies for their part in the rebellion. Much of the land of the Elamites was laid waste, and left smoking by this man who patronized learning. The weakening of these people left Assyria open to attacks later from the Medes. The later years of Asshur-banipal's reign were filled with peaceful interests. He rebuilt the great palace of his father, and in one of its upper chambers was amassed the great number of tablets, referred to as the library of Nineveh. In 626 B.C. the king died. Our knowledge of the reigns immediately following is scanty. Babylonia asserted her independence and the Assyrian king had a difficult task to hold the empire together. Determined to recover the kingdom to the south, he marched against its capital while its king was distant with his army. Cut off from Babylon, the king appealed to the Medes for aid. They cared not at all to help the Babylonian, but they hated with undying hatred the very name of Assyria. Their numbers had often been increased by refugees, driven from their homes by Assyrian armies, and they themselves had experienced defeat at the hands of Assyrian troops. The possibility of crippling the great power of Asia stimulated them to aid the Babylonians. They soon repulsed the Assyrian army near Babylon and drove it north. Still they pursued the fleeing army and forced the king and his army to retire into Nineveh. At last the fate the Assyrians had so often meted out to others was measured out to them. Great wealth was stored in Nineveh, and this the besieging army wished for themselves. The walls were strong and were long defended, but an assault finally carried all before it. Nineveh, built by the wealth of spoils, beautified by plunder from the known world, became the spoils of the Medes, who stripped the temples and palaces and then set fire to the city. Nineveh fell in 606 B.C. The Assyrians were scattered to the four winds and grass grew over the once smoking ruins. Two hundred years later, when Xenophon led his army over this spot on his return to Greece, none knew that they passed over the site of the once great world-city. The civilization developed by the Babylonians had been passed on to the Assyrians. It was now left a heritage for the Chaldeans, to whom descended the legacies of both countries, and in turn they dominated the valley of the Euphrates. As for Assyrian greatness, so far-reaching and wide, the Hebrew told the story in poetic language centuries ago, and today none could set it forth more vividly. "Behold, the Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon with fair branches, and with a shadowing shroud, and of an high stature; and his top was among the thick boughs. The waters made him great, the deep set him up on high, with her rivers running round about his plants and sent out her little rivers unto all the trees of the field. Therefore his height was exalted above all the trees of the field, and his boughs were multiplied, and his branches became long because of the multitude of waters, when he shot forth. "All the fowls of heaven made their nests in his boughs, and under his branches did all the beasts of the field bring forth their young, and under his shadow dwelt all great nations. Thus was he fair in his greatness, in the length of his branches; for his root was by the great waters. The cedars in the garden of God could not hide him: the fir trees were not like his boughs, and the chestnut trees were not like his branches; nor any tree in the garden of God was like unto him in his beauty.... All the trees of Eden, that were in the garden of God, envied him.... "Strangers, the terrible of the nations, have cut him off, and have left him: upon the mountains and in all the valleys his branches are fallen, and his boughs are broken by all the rivers of the land; and all the people of the earth are gone down from his shadow, and have left him. Upon his ruin shall all the fowls of the heaven remain, and all the beasts of the field shall be upon his branches. To the end that none of all the trees by the waters exalt themselves for their height, neither shoot up their top among the thick boughs, neither their trees shall stand up in their height, all that drink water: for they are delivered unto death, to the nether parts of the earth, in the midst of the children of men, with them that go down to the pit."--_Ezekiel 31._ CHAPTER IX. THE CHALDEAN EMPIRE IN BABYLONIA. We have found frequent mention of the Chaldeans, and it is now necessary to understand just what was their position at the fall of Nineveh. The Chaldeans belonged to the Semitic race and their home had long been in the Sea-lands, which included districts in eastern Arabia as well as lands in Babylonia washed by the Persian Gulf. Originally a pastoral people, they had taken to trade and though long in Babylonia, they had not mingled greatly with others. They looked with envious eyes upon the fertile valley of the Euphrates and coveted the wealth of its cities. On this account they would willingly follow any leader who might enable them to gain these lands and riches for themselves. Because such a victory would unquestionably give kingship over the people, many of their princes made efforts to gain political control, causing no end of trouble to the Babylonian or Assyrian officials in charge of maintaining the peace. This makes clear the motive prompting the numerous attempts to usurp the government, already noted. The old Babylonians had received so many infusions of blood from the Elamites, Kassites, and colonists settled in their territory by different Assyrian rulers, that the pure Babylonian stock no longer existed to any extent, although Babylonian ideas, culture and characteristics had been absorbed by those who came to dwell in the land. The empire which now grew up in the valley was essentially Chaldean. It has been called the New Empire of Babylonia. Upon the death of Asshur-banipal, he who had previously been king-regent asserted himself as king of Babylonia, and so Nabopolassar has sometimes been called the founder of the New Chaldean Empire, although in truth he was merely one who declared Babylonian independence at a time when none were strong enough to dispute the claim. The empire, established in this way, followed Babylonian precedence in all matters. The kings concerned themselves with war only when compelled to do so, their works being works of peace--the building of temples, the construction of canals. One foreign war of some importance occurred during the first reign--the reign of Nabopolassar. Necho II., pharaoh of Egypt, desired to regain those Asiatic possessions which Thothmes III. and later warrior kings had won for the Nile kingdom. To this end he led an army north, demanding the submission of the sea-coast towns. Gaza was quickly won, and this city was key to the east. Tyre and Sidon would pay tribute to any nation rather than have their commerce again destroyed by war. Judah alone resisted. Too long had this little country held out against a various enemy to yield tribute upon demand. Josiah was now Judah's king. He led an army against the Egyptian forces but was repulsed and he himself killed. In confusion the Hebrew army fled to Jerusalem where a younger brother of Josiah was proclaimed king. The Egyptian pharaoh now collected a heavy fine from the people of Judah and he named a king for them in place of the one just popularly crowned. The old Assyrian empire, so long the fear of all nations, was now under control of three distinct peoples: the Chaldeans held the Euphrates valley, the Medes held the north, and Egypt had appropriated western Syria. Now the pharaoh determined to further extend his empire. He would reach the very banks of the Euphrates. This plan threatened the Chaldean state, and Nabopolassar being too old to undertake active service in the field, sent his son Nebuchadnezzar to meet the Egyptian force. This was soon put to flight. The Babylonian prince pursued and had not word come of the death of the king, his father, the Babylonian army would have been able to march victorious into Egypt. It was, however, more important to hold the kingdom at home than to pursue fleeing troops abroad, so the prince went home to be crowned Nebuchadnezzar II., king of Babylonian, and to enjoy one of the longest reigns in Babylonian history. The city of Babylon became his pride, and the erection of temples and palaces attracted him more than conquests. Notwithstanding, the kingdom of Judah compelled attention by refusing after three years' peace to longer pay tribute. The war-party in this little state seems often to have been strong and always to have been eager for independence, while its adherents were generally so blinded by their own enthusiasm that they were unable to estimate correctly their probable chance for success. Isaiah had long been dead. Jeremiah held his place of influence and he labored diligently to show his people the folly of their intent. He succeeded only in drawing censure upon himself and in 597 B.C., Nebuchadnezzar sent an army to besiege Jerusalem. The Judean king Jehoiakim, suddenly died, and a youth about eighteen years of age ascended the throne. He thought best to surrender, whereupon he, his mother and court, were taken as captives to Babylon, together with 7,000 soldiers and 1,000 artisans. The remainder of the inhabitants were left to pay tribute and remain subservient to Babylonian rule. In Egypt, Hophra had come to the throne. Like his predecessor, he longed for Syrian possessions, and now tried to stir up the sea-coast states to rebellion. No folly could have been plainer--for Judah it meant destruction itself to set its strength against the forces of Babylonia. Jeremiah thundered his bitterest reproaches. He sought vainly to bring his countrymen to their senses and save them from utter ruin. But the spirit of rebellion was abroad, and many times it has spread similarly through a land, drawing to its cause voices seldom heard, and kindling a desire which cannot be put down by cool argument and reason. So Jeremiah continued to grow in disfavor, and was finally held a prisoner by those he tried to aid. It has been pointed out with much force that the stricken nation of Judah had become the prey of neighboring tribes and that an insufferable situation impelled it to war, but Babylonia could alone protect it, and Babylonian protection was not to be won by rebellion against its rule. Egypt was to again prove the "bruised reed" which would fail utterly when leaned upon. From the Babylonian standpoint the situation was this: here was a little state which for hundreds of years had been the center of western dissensions. Its revolts had already cost Babylonia and Assyria dear in fighting men and tiresome sieges, and now it must be forever quelled if attention was to be given to home affairs. Crippling its strength would not avail, for that had been already tried. Trusting to the vows of its kings was manifestly useless, since the king who led the revolt had sworn by his mighty God to be faithful to Babylon. That solemn pledge he had now broken. Nothing short of laying waste the land and scattering the people would apparently put an end to the trouble. Moab, Ammon, Tyre and Sidon were now in league with Judah and Egyptian aid was promised. The war party in Jerusalem went about shouting that Jehovah was with them--no matter, seemingly, what folly they undertook. In 587 B.C. the Babylonian army besieged Jerusalem, intending to starve the city into submission. The siege was raised when Egyptian reinforcements drew near, long enough to defeat them and send them home in confusion. Then it went on again. In 586 B.C. the Babylonians broke through the walls of Jerusalem and the city was destroyed. The king who had broken faith was taken to Babylon and blinded, while his sons were slain. Such punishments as these had not been common with the old Babylonians, and they show that the Chaldeans were not of the ancient temperament,--merciful and kind. The best citizens of Jerusalem were taken captives, while the poorer ones were left to cultivate the soil. The great prophet Jeremiah was thought to be friendly to the government of Babylon, and was given permission to go where he would. He remained with the stricken band of Hebrews, who soon after journeyed into Egypt. Tyre, as an ally, was besieged but here the problem of cutting the city off from outside communication again arose. The siege lasted for thirteen years and in the end the city paid tribute. In 567 B.C. Nebuchadnezzar's army invaded Egypt, but it was merely a raid to terrorize the Egyptians and put an end to Egyptian interference. The king was now free to give his energy to internal affairs, and his attention was chiefly centered in building and beautifying Babylon. Notable among his undertakings were the walls of the city--counted among the seven wonders of the world. They were so well constructed that had they been defended, the city could never have been taken save by treachery inside the capital itself. In 562 B.C. Nebuchadnezzar died--the last great king of an ancient nation. Of the following reign little is known, the king being assassinated in the second year of his rule. Two other uneventful reigns followed, and then Nabonidus ascended the throne. This man was a student--not a king. He did one good service for future ages; being devoted to rebuilding the temples of the gods, he had his workmen excavate deep down into the old foundations of the temple of the sun-god in Sippar, which he says had not been seen for 3200 years, for the record-tablet, always placed in the corner. Then he caused a new tablet to be inserted, repeating the history of the temple and enumerating his repairs. Modern excavators have been greatly aided by these tablets of Nabonidus. While he was thus absorbed, his country was fast plunging on to ruin. His was an age when the mere existence of a nation depended upon its aggressive policy. While the entire resources of the country were being expended upon shrines sacred to the gods, there was neither time nor money for the maintenance of an army. Matters were allowed to take their own course for awhile, and later the king's son, Belshar-usur, or Belshazzar, was left to manage government concerns. For this reason, the Hebrews recorded him as the last Babylonian king, while in truth his father bore the kingly title. Even when danger threatened the state to such an extent that the scholar-king himself, poking around among his ancient record-tablets, was finally forced to take notice of it, he gave no thought to his kingdom or his subjects, but was simply alarmed for the safety of his statue-deities. These he had hurried into the capital from all parts of the land. So occupied was he lest perchance a god or two might some way escape him, that he had no time to prepare the city for attack, and in the end Babylon, the pride of its age, came into the hands of the conqueror without a blow! The fact was that there were many within the kingdom who would gladly welcome outside interference. The Hebrews had settled down in their quarter and had become the leading people of commerce and loaners of money. One commercial firm alone--Egibi & Sons--filled a place for that age not unlike the modern Rothschilds. These people, who may have been of Jewish descent, hated the king who had destroyed their city of Jerusalem and his descendants, and would willingly help any one who might rob Babylonian kings of their empire. It has been surmised that for aid rendered they were allowed to go back to their own country and rebuild Jerusalem on its early site. Not only were the Hebrews an element to be reckoned with; the priests of the Babylonian gods had been repeatedly offended by Nabonidus, and they too joined the opposition, beyond doubt. So great a city as Babylon had never before existed. No city since has had so long a history, and yet, without a blow struck in its defense, it passed into the possession of a people just taking on the ways of civilized life. It was little wonder that it fell shortly into ruins, soon to be grass-covered and like Nineveh, forgotten! Since 606 B.C. the Medes, conquerors of Assyria, had been extending their territory. They were now a people of strength, united under King Astyages. In the land earlier called Elam, now Persia, a great conqueror appeared--Cyrus the Great. He defeated the Medes under Astyages, and so rapidly did his empire come into being, that all civilized nations were roused to the danger of a world-conqueror. In 546 B.C. Egypt, Babylonia, Lydia and Sparta arrayed their forces against Cyrus, to check his power, but his camels put their cavalry to flight, and he won the decisive battle. Having annexed Asia Minor, he turned to Babylon. As we have seen, the city of Babylon might have held out indefinitely against attack, but when Belshazzar led an army against a detachment of Persian troops, none were left to defend the capital. The old tale of Herodotus that Cyrus turned the Euphrates out of its course and entered the city through its channel, is mere fiction. Such exertion was unnecessary, for the city gates swung open wide to the conqueror. And thus we come to the end of the political history of the Tigris-Euphrates states--a mere skeleton of framework, which we can now fill out with some account of their social, industrial and religious life. [Illustration: ASSYRIAN PALACE AT NINEVEH.] CHAPTER X. THE BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN COMPARED. To understand the Babylonian, we must take into consideration both the nature of his country and the origin of his race. Apart from these two important factors, the marked differences between himself and his Assyrian brother would not be clear. We have found that Babylonia was an alluvial plain, sloping gently to the Persian Gulf, and made fertile by the annual overflow and deposits of two rivers. As in Egypt, so here remarkable yields of grain rewarded the sower if he but supplied necessary moisture by maintaining a system of well-regulated canals. Regarding the origin of the Babylonians, we found that they sprang from a union of Semitics with the earlier Turanian settlers of the country, receiving later infusion of blood from the Kassites and Elamites. This intermingling of races and peoples resulted in a nation whose characteristics differed widely from the purer Semitic stock that peopled Assyria. "The Babylonian was a stout, thick-set man, somewhat short, with straight nose, wide nostrils, and square face. The Assyrian, on the other hand, was tall and muscular, his nose was slightly hooked, his lips were full, his eyes dark and piercing. His head and face showed an abundance of black curly hair.... "The Babylonian was essentially an irrigator and cultivator of the ground. The cuneiform texts are full of references to the gardens of Babylonia, and the canals by which they were watered. It was a land which brought forth abundantly all that was entrusted to its bosom.... But the fear of floods and the reclamation of the marsh lands demanded constant care and labor, the result being that the country population of Babylonia was, like the country population of Egypt, an industrious peasantry, wholly devoted to agricultural work, and disinclined to war and military operations. In the towns, where the Semitic element was stronger, a considerable amount of trade and commerce was carried on, and the cities on the sea-coast built ships and sent their merchantmen to distant lands.... "The character of the Assyrian was altogether different from that of the Babylonian. He was a warrior, a trader, and an administrator. The peaceful pursuits of the agricultural population of Babylonia suited him but little. His two passions were fighting and trading. But his wars, at all events in the later days of the Assyrian Empire, were conducted with a commercial object.... It was to destroy the trade of the Phoenician cities and to divert it into Assyrian hands, that the Assyrian kings marched their armies to the west; it was to secure the chief highways of commerce that campaigns were made into the heart of Arabia and Assyrian satraps were appointed in the cities of Syria. The Assyrian was indeed irresistible as a soldier, but the motive that inspired him was as much the interest of the trader as the desire for conquest."[1] Side by side with the Babylonian's farming concerns, grew his love for study and his development of the peaceful arts. An elementary education was general in Babylonia. As industry and commerce brought wealth and created thus a leisure class, education and learning flourished in Babylonian cities. Schools grew into prominence, and in the realm of astronomy and certain of the sciences, some advance was made by which the Greeks later profited. Quite the reverse was true in Assyria. A feverish desire for commercial gain and for military conquest prevented progress in the arts of peace. Learning was confined to a few--professional scribes supplied secretaries for the state and even wrote private letters for private citizens. When the luxuries of the ancient world could be won as tribute, the Assyrian scorned to produce them for himself. With blood unmixed with any peace-loving people, he retained the characteristics of his earlier Arabian home. He left the cultivation of the country to slaves and dwelt in cities, when war and trade left him intermittent periods at home. Both Babylonian and Assyrian were religious, but here again we find differences due to environment. The Babylonian, inheriting the conjuring and magic of the earlier Chaldean, possessed a religion which held him in constant dread of demons. The greatest aid and solace his religion afforded was to assist him in driving away foes which assailed him at every turn. The Assyrian on the contrary, showed the same proud bearing in his religious concerns as in other aspects of life. Asshur was his mighty God, strong in battle and unequaled in courage. Firm in his conviction that Asshur would give him victory, he went forth, like his Hebrew brother, to overcome all others and destroy other gods which offended the true God. In origin and traditions alike, the Assyrian and the Hebrew in early times present many similarities, and the religion of the one is comparable at many points with that of the other. HOUSES. It is supposed that in earliest times the dwellers in the Euphrates valley built their huts of reeds which grew in profusion along the river and the canals. These in time were replaced by huts of sun-dried brick. We have already learned that the low level plains of Babylonia afforded little or no stone for building purposes. Oven-dried brick was the most substantial building material known and this was so costly, on account of the scarcity of fuel, that only the temples, kings' palaces, and homes of the wealthy were made of it. The great majority of houses then, were constructed of clay mud, shaped in bricks and dried in the sun. The more pretentious dwellings of nobles and kings were placed on artificially constructed heights--huge piles of brickwork, in order to raise them above the gnats and the malaria-breeding fogs of the marshes. The huts of the poor were located wherever opportunity offered. While these contained but one or two rooms with small apertures in the clay walls for windows, and had no floor save the ground, the houses of the wealthy were frequently several stories high, the upper floors being reached by outside stairways. The use of the arch was known in Babylonia from 4000 B.C., a perfect keystone example having been found at Nippur by the University of Pennsylvania expedition. Windows were furnished with tapestries to exclude the storms and intense heat of noonday. Flat roofs supplied a place for the women to perform many household duties, or, if these were performed by slaves elsewhere, they sat here to embroider their tapestries and to chat with their friends. Here too, on hot nights, mattresses were thrown down for the hours of sleep. Wherever possible a garden surrounded the house. The pride of the Babylonian, as of the Egyptian, was his carefully tended garden, whether it was a tiny plot of land or a vast overhanging terrace like that of Babylon's queen. Streets were narrow and exceedingly dirty, for into them all refuse and rubbish from the houses accumulated. We learn that sometimes the entire street would be filled up to the very doors of the dwellings, and then, instead of clearing them out, an upper story was added to the houses, new doors provided, and the occupants started anew on a fresh elevation. In homes of the wealthy the furniture was simple, and in the huts of the poor it was scanty indeed. Chairs, stools, and tables were in use; a mat often constituted the bed, although pictures of most uncomfortable looking bedsteads have been preserved, these being possessed only by the wealthy. The Assyrians who went from Babylonia into their northern land, took with them the habits and customs there acquired. While stone was plentiful, they used it only for foundations, or for the less important portion of their buildings, continuing to make mud brick for the rest, as they had done before. While hills and elevations were now available on every hand, they still erected huge piles of brick or stone and crowned these by their buildings. The Assyrian blood, unmixed with other tribes or peoples, produced no ingenuity, no inventive genius. The Assyrian remained an imitator--never a creator. For this reason, we find close similarity between the houses of the two countries. Certain features which became inseparable with later architecture had their beginnings in Babylonia. In early times the roof which covered the mud hut was supported by dried palm stems; gradually a more substantial support was substituted, and in this way the column had its origin and was adopted and improved upon by the Greeks. Again, interior house decoration may be traced back to these Babylonian houses built of brick. In houses of the well-to-do, the unsightly bricks were covered by a coating of stucco and upon this were painted various scenes and ornamentations. In Assyria, slabs of soft lime-stone were used instead of the stucco, and figures of horses and men, hunting scenes and battles, were carved in bas-relief upon them. Indeed much of our knowledge concerning the life of the people has been gained from a study of the reliefs discovered in buried palaces. Regarding the daily lives of those who dwelt within these mud brick houses, we have less detailed information than concerning the ancient Egyptian. Fewer scenes of ordinary life were painted in the Tigris-Euphrates valleys, and whatever was entrusted to the clay stood far greater chance of being destroyed than that committed to Egyptian stone. FAMILY LIFE. In considering the family life, the position accorded to woman and the marriage laws and regulations are of first importance. In early times in Babylonia, a man received a dowry with his wife. Polygamy was not infrequent but a strong check was placed upon it by requiring the husband, in case of divorce, to return the wife's dowry to her and allow her to return home or maintain her own establishment. The income from the dowry was enjoyed by both husband and wife, but it remained the portion of the wife and could be willed according to her pleasure. In case of a woman's second marriage, her first dowry belonged to her, subject to the claim of her children for one-half of its value. In both Babylonia and Assyria married women enjoyed many liberties. They might carry on business enterprises, borrow or loan, manage their own property and dispose of it at their will. They could seek justice in the courts, and if they belonged to the middle classes, could come and go at pleasure. The women of noble families were more carefully guarded, and seldom appeared unattended in public. Girls who were not provided with dowries might be purchased and so become superior slaves of their husbands. Children might be sold by their parents and brothers might sell their sisters, but in these countries, slaves were not despised as inferiors and inhumanly treated. They were often adopted into families, and since those of noble birth were not infrequently taken captives in war, the slave might be superior to the owner. However, this last was not so common in Mesopotamia as it was later in Rome. The fact which alone assured slaves of good treatment was that there was generally no race difference to engender feeling between slave and master. Indeed one case is cited in those days of quickly reversed fortunes, where the slave in a few years became the master and his former owner became his property! Marriage was both a civil and a religious ceremony, and the contract was signed in the presence of a priest. In a code of Babylonian laws compiled about 2250 B.C., a law provided that "If a man has taken a wife and has not executed a marriage-contract, that woman is not a wife." Another provided for one who is helpless: "If a man has married a wife and a disease has seized her, if he is determined to marry a second wife, he shall marry her. He shall not divorce the wife whom the disease has seized. In the home they made together she shall dwell and he shall maintain her as long as she lives."[2] Both sons and daughters could inherit property, and according to Babylonian law, whosoever possessed property, could will it, or dispose of it, with certain well established restrictions. In case there were no children to inherit an estate, it was a common practice to adopt them. Thus families were prevented from dying out. Children were cared for, sent to school, taught trades or professions, and probably a certain amount of family life was enjoyed while they were growing up. The rights of each member of the family were definitely recognized by law. Home life as we today understand the phrase, was unknown in antiquity. We can contrast the condition in Babylonia, where the individual, instead of the family, was recognized by the law to that in Rome of a later time, when the family was the unit of the state, and the pater familias managed all family affairs without state interference or restriction. FOOTNOTES: [1] Sayce: Social Life Among the Assyrians and Babylonians, 18. [2] Johns: Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters, 56, 58. CHAPTER XI. MORALITY OF THE ANCIENT BABYLONIANS. For some years past, the French explorer De Morgan has been making extensive excavations at Susa, the capital of ancient Persia, and before the rise of Persia, the capital of Elam as early as 3000 B.C. In the winter of 1901-1902, having removed layers of earth containing ruins of Persian palaces, he reached deposits contemporary with some of the old Elamite kings. Here was discovered a stone monument inscribed with the code of Hammurabi. As we have seen, this king ruled Babylonia about 2000 B.C. He it was who united all the little city-states into one kingdom with its capital at Babylon. Proving himself a statesman as well as a warrior, he devoted himself to the welfare of his subjects. He repaired old canals and constructed new ones, restored the temples and above all, gave the country a uniform system of laws. These laws were not made by Hammurabi--generally speaking at least. They had been long established by custom and he merely codified such customs and earlier decisions into a system so that justice might be administered alike throughout the realm. The laws were then inscribed upon stone slabs and erected at certain places where the people could read them, and those who felt themselves injured might know what redress lay open to them. The particular stele unearthed by De Morgan had been set up originally in the town of Sippara. Later Elamite kings became powerful enough to invade Babylonia and lay the country under tribute. During this period, one Elamite king had removed the stone monument from Sippara and taken it home with his spoils. It had graced his triumphal procession upon his return and was set up at his capital. 49 columns of inscription were engraved upon it, but the Elamite king caused 5 to be removed and the stone to be re-polished, in order that his name might be therein inserted. For some reason this was forgotten or omitted. Of the 282 laws once carved upon the stele, all are still legible. Their discovery is most important for the history of ancient Babylonia, as it has enabled scholars to reconstruct the standards of morality and justice current when the country came into its first strength and power. We may be sure that these laws were in vogue much earlier than the time of Hammurabi and they lived on with little change for many years after. They without doubt furnished the basis for the legal code throughout the history of Babylonia, and without some knowledge of them we would never have been able to understand the civilization of the country as it is known today. It is comparable to the "Mosaic Code," which is made up of different strata from different periods, cir. 1000 B.C. to 500 B.C. The similarity between the two codes harks back to an early period when the two peoples had not yet left their Arabian home, and indicates general Semitic customs. Hammurabi's code "is concerned little, if at all, with religious matters; the chief content is almost entirely civil and criminal, dealing with such subjects as marriage, the family, property rights, agricultural and commercial activities." It is on the basis of these laws now translated that the morality of the ancient Babylonians has been worked out. We find that the people were on the borderland of retaliation, and punishments often took the form of fines. There was still the old tribal "group responsibility"--that is, the children often had to suffer for the sins of the father. Distinction was now made between intentional and unintentional injury. Trial by ordeal was sometimes allowed, especially when magic was thought to have been used. Death was a frequent punishment. Banishment might be inflicted. On the whole, the practices in Babylonia, before and after 2000 B.C., were not so severe as those common in England a century ago, when petty larceny was met by extreme punishment. The Babylonians carried the idea of contract and written agreement farther than any other ancient people. Understandings which are today made verbally between men were inscribed on clay tablets, duly impressed by the seals of the parties concerned, and carefully preserved. We find the law required receipts and written contracts as early as 2000 B.C. For example, "If a merchant has given to an agent corn, wool, oil, or any sort of goods to traffic with, the agent shall write down the money value, and shall return that to the merchant. The agent shall then take a sealed receipt for the money that he has given to the merchant. If the agent forgets and has not taken a sealed receipt for the money he gave to the merchant, money that has not been acknowledged by receipt shall not be put down in the accounts."[1] Regarding money given bankers: "If a man has given another gold, silver, or any goods whatever on deposit, all that he gives shall be shown to witnesses, and take a bond and so give on deposit. If he has given on deposit without witnesses and bonds, and has been defrauded where he made his deposit, he has no claim to prosecute."[2] "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth" was demanded by the Code of Hammurabi. "If a man has knocked out the eye of a patrician, his eye shall be knocked out. "If he has broken the limb of a patrician, his limb shall be broken. "If he has knocked out the eye of a plebeian or has broken the limb of a plebeian, he shall pay one mana of silver. "If a patrician has knocked out the tooth of a man that is his equal, his tooth shall be knocked out. If he has knocked out the tooth of a plebeian, he shall pay one-third of a mana of silver. "If a man has struck another in a quarrel, and caused him permanent injury, that man shall swear, 'I struck him without malice,' and shall pay the doctor."[3] Theft at a fire was made a capital offense. "If a fire has broken out in a man's house and one who has come to put it out has coveted the property of the householder and appropriated any of it, that man shall be cast into the self-same fire."[4] Fees of the surgeon were graded by law, and severe penalties were inflicted for unskillful operations. Probably these were not strictly enforced but were intended to prevent malpractice. Marriage laws and regulations governing inheritance were necessarily definite in a country where a man might have more than one wife. Since perpetuation of a family through adoption was frequent, laws protected both foster children and foster parents. "If a man has brought up a child, whom he has taken to be his son, but has not reckoned him with his sons, that foster child shall return to his father's house. "If a craftsman has taken a child to bring up and has taught him his handiwork, he shall not be reclaimed. If he has not taught him his handicraft, that foster child shall return to his father's house." Injury which today would necessitate the payment of damages, in ancient Babylonia might even be punished with death. "If a builder has built a house for a man, and has not made his work sound, and the house he built has fallen, and caused the death of its owner, that builder shall be put to death. If it is the owner's son that is killed, the builder's son shall be put to death. "If he has caused the loss of goods, he shall render back whatever he has destroyed. Moreover, because he did not make sound the house he built, and it fell, at his own cost he shall rebuild the house that fell." Workmen were required to do faithful work or make good consequent losses. "If a boatman has built a boat for a man, and has not made his work sound, and in that same year that boat is sent on a voyage and suffers damage, the boatman shall rebuild that boat, and, at his own expense, shall make it strong, or shall give a strong boat to the owner." In a land where the cultivation of the soil was the great industry, naturally many regulations refer to the lease of ground and the rent to be paid by the farmer to the owner of the estate. Because the very production of the soil depended upon the maintenance of canals, neglect in the care of the dikes was severely punished. "If a man has hired a field to cultivate and has caused no corn to grow on the field, he shall be held responsible for not doing the work on the field and shall pay an average rent. "If a man has given his garden to a gardener to farm, the gardener, as long as he holds the garden, shall give the owner of the garden two-thirds of the produce of the garden and shall take one-third himself. "If a man has neglected to strengthen his dike and has not kept his dike strong, and a breach has broken out in his dike, and the waters have flooded the meadow, the man in whose dike the breach has broken out shall restore the corn he has caused to be lost. If he be not able to restore the corn, he and his goods shall be sold, and the owners of the meadow whose corn the water has carried away shall share the money. "If a man has opened his runnel for watering and has left it open, and the water has flooded his neighbor's field, he shall pay him an average crop." That justice might be administered uniformly throughout the realm, courts were established in different cities, and Hammarabi insured the well-being of his subjects by further creating a court of appeals, held in Babylon. To this superior court anyone, thinking himself unfairly treated in the lower courts, might have a hearing. Perjury was severely punished. "If a man has borne false witness in a trial, or has not established the statement that he has made, if that case be a capital trial, that man shall be put to death. "If he has borne false witness in a civil law case, he shall pay the damages in that suit." Judges were always restricted by law and were held to strict account in administering justice. Any suspicion of bribery expelled the judge from his seat. "If a judge has given a verdict, rendered a decision, granted a written judgment, and afterwards has altered his judgment, that judge shall be prosecuted for altering the judgment he gave and shall pay twelvefold the penalty laid down in that judgment. Further, he shall be publicly expelled from his judgment-seat and shall not return nor take his seat with the judges at a trial." Other public servants were required to deal justly with the people. Governors of provinces who oppressed the inhabitants or in any way were unjust to those dependent upon them, laid themselves liable to a death sentence if charges against them could be proven. In the light of these laws we would conclude that the Babylonians had reached a high stage of morality when authentic history of their kingdom begins. Honesty, truth, fair-dealing,--these were demanded by the laws of the realm, and penalties attached to crimes violating them. One who was injured must bring his cause before a judge and allow disinterested persons to render a decision. Instead of retaliation upon the assailant, money was sometimes received as compensation for injury. In more flagrant cases, the law imposed the penalty of death. A man could not slander his neighbor without risk of punishment. "If the claimant of lost property has not brought the witnesses that know his lost property, he has been guilty of slander, he has stirred up strife, he shall be put to death. * * * * * "If a man has not his witnesses at hand, the judge shall set him a fixed time not exceeding six months, and if within six months he has not produced his witnesses, the man has lied; he shall bear the penalty of the suit." Protection was assured the weak and helpless by this code. It was customary to receive hostages as security for debt--the debtor's son and slave. Such a hostage was entitled to fair treatment and a law made it an offense to misuse him. "If a hostage has died of blows or want in the house of the creditor, the owner of the hostage shall prosecute his creditor, and if the deceased were free-born, the creditor's son shall be put to death; if a slave, the creditor shall pay one-third of a mana of silver, furthermore, he shall lose whatever it was that he lent." Regarding intemperance among the Babylonians, they used beer freely, but appear to have gone to no such excesses as were common among the Egyptians. The price of beer was fixed by law and an overcharge was punishable by drowning. The morality of the people seems to have been very slightly influenced by their religion. While all Semitics have been strongly religious people, the Babylonians had reached a certain degree of secularism in their religion. Their temples were financial centers for the country and were of more direct interest to the people because from them they might negotiate small loans to tide them over emergencies perhaps than because the deity of the locality had there his center of worship. A lengthy prologue setting forth the titles of Hammurabi and the gods that gave him power, preceded his code of laws. These were followed by an epilogue similar in nature. The king calls down curses upon any future ruler who should cause his wholesome regulations to be altered. "In the future, in days to come, at any time, let the king who is in the land, guard the words of righteousness which I have written on my stele. Let him not alter the judgment of the land which I judged nor the decisions I decided. Let him not destroy my bas-relief. If that man has wisdom and is capable of directing his land, let him attend to the words which I have written upon my stele, let him apprehend the path, the rule, the law of the land which I judged, and the decision I decided for the land, and so let him guide forward the black-headed race; let him judge their judgment and decide their decision, let him cut off from his land the proud and violent, let him rejoice in the flesh of his people."[5] Blessings were given him who should respect this code of laws and terrible curses heaped upon any who might disregard it. Much of Babylonia's prosperity appears to have resulted from the enforcement of these impartial judgments. [Illustration: BABYLONIAN BRICK. THE KING'S NAME AND TITLES WERE INSCRIBED ON EACH BRICK.] FOOTNOTES: [1] Johns: Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Letters and Contracts; Hammarabi's Code, 104, 105. [2] Ibid., 122, 123. [3] Ibid., 196, 197, 198, 201, 206. [4] Ibid., 25. [5] Johns: Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Letters and Contracts; Hammarabi's Code, 104, 105. CHAPTER XII. LITERATURE AND LEARNING. The Babylonians produced quite an extensive literature. Their writings treated of religion, mathematics, astronomy, astrology and geography, while some attempt was made to explain animal and plant life. History in Babylonia was limited almost wholly to royal inscriptions and lists of kings. In Assyria, on the other hand, the greater portion of the literature related to history, and the kings set forth the happenings of their reigns with directness and considerable detail. Diplomatic affairs, correspondence with Babylonia and foreign provinces, official letters, tribute lists and royal decrees, make up a large part of the surviving tablets. We have already spoken of the library of Asshurbanipal, or the Ninevan library, and have seen what a world of light was thrown upon Assyrian civilization when its surviving tablets were at last deciphered. Babylonia maintained libraries, however, before Nineveh was founded. These clustered, for reasons which we shall soon see, around the temples. At Erech were early collected writings which were concerned with the religion of the ancient Chaldeans, together with the myths and legends of the country. So many tablets were preserved in this temple that Erech was called the "city of books." A library, rich in mathematical lore, grew up at Larsa, another at Nippur, and still another at Cathah. Smaller libraries were attached to all the great temples. When we speak of "libraries" in Mesopotamia, collections of clay tablets are meant. Rooms were frequently provided within the temples for the storing of these clay books. The size of the tablet varied greatly. The largest were flat and about 9 by 6-1/2 inches; smaller ones were slightly convex, while tiny ones, not more than one inch long, containing but a line or two, have been found. Sometimes the lettering is so fine that it could have been done only with the aid of a lens, and it cannot be read without one. In these valleys, the cheapest, most available writing material was the soft clay, ever in evidence. When bricks had been partially dried in the sun, a substance was formed which readily received impressions, and these became firm as the tablet hardened. Both sides and sometimes the edges as well, were written upon, and little pegs of wood provided legs for the brick to rest upon when reversed, that the soft impressions might not be injured. To make the whole proof against fire and water, it was finally baked in an oven. When so treated, a material was made which proved more enduring against action of the elements than either parchment or papyrus. It is quite certain that papyrus and possibly parchment as well were used for writing purposes, especially in the later period, but no fragment of either has survived. Certain disadvantages attached to the cheap tablets. They were heavy and unwieldy to hold or carry, but more especially, they allowed no embellishments or lengthy descriptions. Owing to the laborious method of transcribing records, everything was of necessity abbreviated and simplified. Thus we see how one thing acts upon another--the country afforded only clay tablets for writing material; these, limited because of size and weight, curtailed speech and so influenced the style of expression. Occasionally one tablet constituted a book, but more often several tablets were needed to contain the entire writing. Thus the Deluge Story is the eleventh tablet, or chapter, of a series numbering twelve in all. Seventy tablets composed a single work on astronomy, while the three books comprising the earliest religious texts covered 200 tablets. Each tablet was carefully numbered and known by the first line of the book; as, for example, one work treated on the creation and began: "Formerly that which is above was not yet called the heaven;" so the first tablet of the series was entitled: "Formerly that which is above, No. 1;" the second, "Formerly that which is above, No. 2," and so on through the entire series. [Illustration: MUSICIANS AND ATTENDANTS IN THE GARDEN OF ASSHURBANIPAL.] The ancient Chaldeans believed that literature and the art of writing were gifts from the gods, and in the myth which to them explained how knowledge came into the world, it was numbered among the things taught them by the Man-Fish, Oannes. This is the myth as Berosus told it: "There was originally at Babylonia a multitude of men of foreign race who had colonized Chaldea, and they lived without order, like animals. But in the first year (of the new order of things) there appeared from out the Persian Gulf where it borders upon Babylonia, an animal endowed with reason, who was called Oannes. The whole body of the animal was that of a fish, but under the fish's head he had another head, and also feet below, growing out of his fish's tail, similar to those of a man; also human speech, and his image is preserved to this day. This being used to spend the whole day amidst men, without taking any food, and he gave them an insight into letters, and sciences, and every kind of art; he taught them how to found cities, to construct temples, to introduce laws and to measure land; he showed them how to sow seeds and gather in crops; in short, he instructed them in everything that softens manners and makes up civilization, so that from that time no one has invented anything new. Then, when the sun went down, this monstrous Oannes used to plunge back into the sea and spend the night in the midst of the boundless waves, for he was amphibious." It was believed that learning and letters were under the special protection of the gods, and for this reason it was fitting to preserve books in the temples. The libraries thus established were cared for by scribes and were open to the public. Many were engaged constantly in copying, repairing and taking care of the tablets. An order of celibate priests, not unlike the monks of the Middle Ages, devoted itself to the task of book-making, regarding the work as a pious undertaking. Among the most ancient books recovered is one containing bits of folk-lore, popular songs and maxims. One of the maxims runs: "Like an oven that is old Against thy foes be hard and strong." A fragment of a ploughman's song says: "My knees are marching--my feet are not resting; With no wealth of thy own--grain thou makest for me." The Creation legends were among the most ancient writings. "A plant had not been brought forth, a tree had not been created. A brick had not been made, a beam had not been formed. A house had not been built, a city had not been constructed. A city had not been made, earthly things had not been made glorious. Nipur had not been built, (its temple) E-kura had not been constructed. Erech had not been built, (its temple) E-Ana had not been constructed. The deep had not been made, Eridu had not been constructed. As for the glorious temple (of Eridu), the house of the gods, its seat had not been made. The whole of the lands, the sea also, (had not been formed). When within the sea the current was In that day Eridu was made. E-Sagila was constructed, E-Sagila which the god Lugal-du-azagga founded within the deep; Babylon (also) was built, E-Sagila was completed. The gods and the spirits of the earth were made altogether. The glorious city, the seat of the joy of their hearts, supremely they proclaimed. Merodack (Marduk) bound together the slime before the water. Dust he made and he poured it out with the flood. The gods were made to dwell in a seat of joy of heart. He created mankind. The god Aruru, the seed of mankind, they made with him. He made the beasts of the field and the living creatures of the desert. He made the Tigris and Euphrates, and set (them) in (their) places Well proclaimed he their name. The ussu-plant, the dittu-plant of the marshland, the reed and the forest he made. He made the verdure of the plain; The lands, the marshes, and the greensward also; Oxen, the young of the horse, the stallion, the mare, the sheep, the locust; Meadows and forests also. The he-goat and the gazelle brought forth to him."[1] Babylonian myths often took the form of epics. The epic of Gilgamesh was popular. Twelve tablets composed it, each corresponding to a zodiacal sign. The Deluge Story made up the eleventh chapter. Another epic, the Descent of Ishtar into Arallu, or Hades, was well known. Ishtar, herself a goddess, mourned a departed god, her consort, so greatly that she braved the terrors of the underworld to find him and to carry him water from the fountain of life, that he might rejoin her. This was the earliest form of a myth which later appeared in many lands. Astronomy had its birth in astrology--the so-called science which sought to discover the influences of the planets upon the destinies of mankind. This science was firmly believed in and strongly supported for centuries after the Christian era, and has its followers even today. Mathematics had a similar beginning. Geometrical figures were used for augury. In arithmetic, 60 was a favorite number for computation, and the division of a circle into seconds, minutes and degrees, dates from this time. Geography consisted merely of lists of seas, mountains, rivers, waters, nations, and cities then known. Grammars and dictionaries were plentiful because they were needed even at that time for an understanding of a language, already "dead," but still the language of literature. In the realm of history, royal inscriptions may be included. With the rise of Assyria these came to be more complete. Fewer set phrases, copied by each king from most ancient times, were used and more information was included concerning the subject at hand. For example, an inscription of Tiglathpileser I. (about 1100 B.C.) filled eight sides of a clay cylinder, and contained 809 lines. It consisted of (1) an invocation to the gods who had given him power; (2) set forth his titles and summed up the deeds of his reign; (3) 500 lines recounted the campaigns of his first year; (4) 200 lines described his royal hunts and his temples built and restored; (5) finally a blessing was pronounced upon those who shall honor his deeds and a curse is given those who ignore them. Both nations loved justice and delighted in formality. All kinds of agreements were put into writing and were duly witnessed. To the original code of laws in Babylonia, court decisions were added and together comprised the later law of the land. All important cases were abstracted and the decision of the judges given at length on tablets which have been preserved in many cases with the signature of the judge. The judges were appointed by the king. Priests were eligible, but others often served. There was probably a court in the vicinity of every important temple, which has given a general impression that the priests took entire charge of court proceedings. Education was much more widely diffused in Babylonia than in Assyria. In the former country both girls and boys seem to have received some elementary training in the art of reading and writing. Schools for the training of scribes were maintained in connection with each of the great temples. Tutors were doubtless employed in families of the nobility, but little is known of the training of the young. The art of writing was a difficult one to master and required the memorizing of a large number of symbols. There must have been much truth in the sentence found often in the children's copy-books: "He who would become a scribe must rise with the dawn." In the school of Sippara a tablet has been found which is supposed to have been either a medal or a diploma given by the school. An inscription upon it reads: "Whosoever has distinguished himself at the place of tablet writing shall shine as the light." The calling of the scribe was an honorable one and his social position was good. One indication that people of the better classes in Babylonia could write is to be found in the number of personal letters which have been found. These are not written, as in Assyria, in one uniform handwriting, but show many variations and degrees of perfection. In Assyria writing was a profession, and only trades-people whose business compelled them to understand rudimentary writing, public officials and the upper classes understood the art. Public scribes wrote many private letters, much in the same way as a lawyer of today might draw up some document, and to the letter so written, the sender affixed his seal. Learning was limited in the northern kingdom to the favored few. Some of the kings, notably Asshurbanipal, was a book collector and sent his men everywhere to gather up tablets of worth and antiquity. Letters which have been translated help to bring these early days before us. This one was probably sent by a lover to the object of his adoration: "To Bibea say, thus saith Gimil-Marduk: May Shamash and Marduk for my sake preserve thy health forever. I have sent for thy health. Tell me how thou art. I went to Babylon and did not see thee. I was greatly disappointed. Send me the reason of thy leaving, and let me be cheered. In Marchevan do thou come. For my sake keep well always."[2] The next is written by the captain of a river barge to King Sennacherib, concerning the transporting of colossal bulls. "To the king my lord, thy servant Asshur-mukin has ordered me to transport in boats the colossal bulls and cherubim of stone. The boats are not strong enough and are not ready. But if a present be kindly made to us, we will see that they are got ready, and ascend the river." If the writer of the third failed to have his request granted, it could scarcely be for lack of persistence in making it known. It is a letter written by a tenant to his landlord, and belongs to the age of Abraham: "To my lord say, thus saith Ibgatum thy servant: As, my lord, thou hast heard, the enemy has carried off my oxen. Never before have I sent to thee, my lord. Now I have caused a letter to be brought to thee, my lord, Do thou, my lord, send me one young cow. I will weigh out and send five shekels of silver to thee, my lord. My lord, what thou sayest, under the command of Marduk, thy protector, what pleases thee, no one can hinder thee, my lord. My lord, do thou make her worth the five shekels of silver that I have weighed out and sent to thee. Do thou, my lord, treat seriously this request, do not trifle with my wish. Let my lord not wonder at this request, which I send my lord. I am thy servant. I will do thy will, my lord. As to the young cow, which thou, my lord, dost send, let her be on credit, and either to Basu, or wherever is convenient to my lord, do thou send. With Iliikisham, my brother, let the young cow come. And I, in order that my lord should quickly consent and send the young cow, will forthwith weigh out and send fifteen shekels of silver to thee, my lord."[3] Sayce has suggested that the five shekels of silver was the amount he paid annually for the lease of his farm, and that he sent it at this time to further influence the landlord to grant his request. Another interpretation has been put upon it that he sent the five shekels as a payment down, but did not propose to pay the full price until he saw the particular cow sent him. Letters were enclosed generally in an envelope of clay. Powdered clay was sprinkled over the letter to prevent its clinging to the cover. Because the envelope of clay had to be broken before the letter was read, safety and privacy was proven by the unbroken cover. Again the tablet upon which the letter was inscribed was sometimes covered with a linen wrapper and the ends held by a seal--a lump of clay pressed down with the impression of the seal upon it. Few of these clay or linen envelopes have been found, for they were regarded as valueless and were cast aside. A very fair postal system was maintained in Mesopotamia. "Babylonian and Assyrian letters were treated much as ours are when they are put into a post-bag to which the seals of the post-office are attached. There were excellent roads all over Western Asia, with post-stations at intervals where relays of horses could be procured. Along these all letters to or from the king and the government were carried by royal messengers. It is probable that the letters of private individuals were also carried by the same hands.... The civilized and oriental world was bound together by a network of postal routes over which literary intercourse was perpetually passing. They extended from the Euphrates to the Nile and from the plateau of Asia Minor to the confines of Arabia. These routes followed the old lines of war and trade along which armies had marched and merchantmen had traveled for unnumbered generations. The Tell-el-Amarna tablets show that letter-writing was not confined to Assyria and Babylonia on the one hand, or to Egypt on the other. Wherever the ancient culture of Babylonia had spread, there had gone with it not only the cuneiform characters and the use of clay as a writing material, but the art of letter-writing as well."[4] Fifteen hundred and seventy-five letters alone were found in the library of Asshurbanipal, unearthed by Layard. This great Assyrian king sent scribes throughout Babylonia to visit ancient temples and copy tablets on which were preserved ancient writings. Some thirty thousand were collected before his death and they treated of all subjects known at that time. It was remarkable that when this splendid palace fell into ruins, many of these tablets remained uninjured, and, having laid undisturbed for twenty-five hundred years, were finally brought to light some fifty years ago to give the world of today their old-time messages. DELUGE STORY--COLUMN III. "The surface of the land like fire they wasted; they destroyed all life from the face of the land; to battle against men they brought the waters. Brother saw not his brother; men knew not one another. In heaven the gods feared the flood and hastened to ascend to the heaven of Anu. The gods, like dogs in the kennel, crouched down in a heap. Six days and nights ... the wind, the flood, and the storm go on overwhelming. The seventh day, when it approached, the flood subsided, the storm which had fought against men like an armed host was quieted. The sea began to dry, and the wind and the flood ended. I beheld the sea and uttered a cry, for the whole of mankind was turned to clay; like trunks the corpses floated. I opened the window, and light smote upon my face; I stopped and sat down; I wept; over my face flowed my tears. I beheld a shore beyond the sea; a district rose twelve times distant. On the mountain of Nizir the ship grounded; the mountain of Nizir stopped the ship, and it was not able to pass over it. The first day, the second day, the mountain of Nizir stopped the ship. The third day, the fourth day, the mountain of Nizir stopped the ship. The fifth day, the sixth day, the mountain of Nizir stopped the ship. The seventh day when it approached I sent forth a dove, and it left. The dove went in and returned and found no resting place, and it came back. Then I sent forth a swallow, and it left. The swallow went and returned, and found no resting place, and it came back. I sent forth a raven, and it left. The raven went, and saw the going down of the waters, and it approached, it waded, it croaked; it did not return. I sent the animals to the four winds; I sacrificed a sacrifice I built an altar on the peak of the mountain. I sent vessels ... by sevens; underneath them I spread reeds, cedar-wood, and herbs. The gods smelt the savour; the gods smelt the good savour; the gods gathered like flies over the sacrifices. Thereupon the great goddess at her approach lifted up the mighty bow which Anu had created according to his wishes. These gods, by my necklace, never will I forget." [Illustration: ISHTAR. FROM AN ASSYRIAN CYLINDER.] FOOTNOTES: [1] George Smith: Babylonia, 46. [2] Johns: Baby. and Assy. Laws, Letters and Contracts, 336. [3] Johns: Baby. and Assy. Laws, Letters and Contracts, 334. [4] Sayce: Life and Customs in Baby. and Assy., 228. CHAPTER XIII. CLOTHING. The Babylonians and Assyrians were very fond of dress. There were three essentials to Mesopotamian dress, and accessories depended upon the taste and purse of the wearer. A head-dress, a tunic and a robe were the main features of one's apparel, although all were not of necessity worn by the lower classes. The head-dress was frequently of felt and was some times quilted; the tunic was generally made of linen when worn in Babylonia and of wool in Assyria; the robe was long, falling to the ankles; it was often of wool and was finished with a deep fringe. The tunic and some times the robe as well were belted at the waist by a wide and elaborate girdle. Women's garments were similar to those worn by men, but their robes fell in more ample folds. Naturally fashions changed and a garment worn in the days of the Semitic invasion would have appeared odd and out of date in the age of Asshurbanipal. Early portraits of kings show them clad in thick quilted skirts falling to the ankles, while quilted turbans covered their heads. Later robes took the place of the skirt. Parasols were carried in Babylonia as protection against the heat, but in Assyria they gradually became the privilege of the royal family. In portraits of later Assyrian kings, the parasol is frequently shown. This custom may have been borrowed from Persia. Ordinarily no head-dress was worn by the lower classes in Babylonia unless, perhaps, to denote some special calling. Certain musicians appear with caps. The devotees of fashion probably donned head-dresses at pleasure. Jewelry was popular with both men and women, even the poor being adorned with necklaces, bracelets, anklets. Shoes and sandals were seldom worn in the southern kingdom. In Assyria, naturally a colder climate brought about some variations of dress. High boots and leather breeches were worn by the soldiers of later periods; shoes were needed to protect the feet from frosty ground, and cloaks were required in addition to the usual robe. Embroidered and imported robes, smart hats and other details of wearing apparel were characteristic of later periods when wealth and leisure gave opportunity for such indulgences. Certain it is that the simple tunic sufficed in early days, and rank was indicated by its greater or abbreviated length. The ancient Chaldeans or Sumerians always shaved their heads and faces. Influenced by this custom, the Babylonians did not wear long beards. The Assyrians, more purely Semitic, wore long ones and had hair dressers largely in the place of barbers, who curled both their beards and hair. A word should be said of the costumes of the priests. They may always be distinguished on the monuments by their long, flounced robes, reaching nearly to the ground. Because the goat was an animal of special sanctity, a goat-skin was invariably thrown over the shoulder--quite as the Egyptian priest wore the skin of a leopard. In connection with the jewelry worn by men, we may consider the little cylinders which served as seals. In Babylonia, because of the scarcity of stone, even tiny pebbles were valued, and it came to be the custom to have these cut in cylindrical shapes by expert stone-cutters. An opening was made throughout their length to allow a cord or chain to pass through. This attached the cylinder to the owner's wrist. Upon the round surface of the cylinder were engraved various designs and figures, and a few words explaining the identity of the wearer, name of his father and other noteworthy facts regarding him. His name was affixed, and with this he stamped his letters and all documents. To be without a cylinder was almost as inconvenient as to be without a name. The very poor, who could not afford such a seal, were obliged to make a nail-mark in the soft clay, while some one wrote the name of the person to whom that particular mark belonged. The possessor of a cylinder had only to pass it over the clay and his signature was made. Many of these little cylinders have been recovered, and some lack the name of an owner, showing that they had been made by a gem-cutter, but had not yet found a buyer. FOOD. Food was easily obtained in Mesopotamia, and consisted mainly of grains and dried fish. Cereals were made into little cakes and seasoned with dates or some other fruit. Fish and fowl were plentiful; many kinds of fruits and vegetables were grown, and wine and beer were universally used. Lacking the tomb-pictures of Egypt, we know less about the food and its preparation in the Euphrates valley. SPORTS AND PASTIMES. For our knowledge of ancient Babylonian and Assyrian life, we are dependent largely upon scenes depicted on palace walls, especially the walls of royal dwellings. These scenes commemorate the doings of the king particularly, and where laborers, slaves and the common people are shown at all, they are seen at work, building palaces and temples, marching to battle, swelling the triumphal processions, or they are cultivating the fields, storing away the grain--all to the glory of the realm and consequently to the king. Naturally then, we know little about the pastimes of the masses. They no doubt thronged the streets on festivals, for then they were free from work. Even labor on royal palaces--always pushed with all possible speed--was then suspended. Every day in the year had its own significance, but five days each month were of particular importance, being sacred to the gods, and were duly observed. Worship and merry-making were in a measure mingled. Other days for popular observance were those in which the king and the army returned from successful wars. A triumphal procession passed slowly through the streets on its way to the temple, where thanksgiving was rendered the gods who had made victory possible. Such occasions were always holidays, and the people in gay attire, gathered to witness the home-coming of their sovereign, and to gaze in wonder at the booty and the captives. Two recreations pictured on the palace walls were enjoyed only by the nobles and the wealthy classes--the hunt and the banquet. In modern times, when those in high position have occasionally laid down important matters for a brief while to seek recreation in hunting, fishing and out of door life, they have taken opportunity to throw off much of the conventionality surrounding their every-day life and have found some diversion in "roughing it,"--in sharing the varying fortune likely to befall those who leave the certain comforts of home for the uncertain conditions to be met away from the centers of civilization. Such was not at all the case with the kings of Assyria when they left their capitals to hunt the lion in its distant jungles and marshes. In the palace of Sennacherib and Asshurbanipal, hunts have been depicted throughout their progress. We may see the king marching out of the city in his state chariot, his charioteer at his side, while behind him an attendant holds high an embroidered parasol over his kingly head to protect him from the rays of the sun. Nobles accompany him on horses and they, together with the guards and retinue of servants, make up a small army. Goats and cattle are driven along, that his majesty and his nobles may have fresh milk and meat throughout their absence; a sumptuous tent shelters the king when the procession stops for the night, while each noble tries to pitch his tent near the more splendid one of his king. Maspero has graphically described the hunt. Some wild oxen have been discovered, and the king gives chase: "In less time than we can speak, three of the bulls are rolling on the ground, pierced with several arrows; the four others but slightly wounded, turn round and gallop towards the river. Asshurbanipal follows the largest of them, which he is almost sure is wounded in the shoulder; then gradually he overtakes it, skillfully drives his chariot beside it without checking speed, and laying aside his bow, grasps one of the poignards he wears in his belt. With one hand he seizes one of the animal's horns, with the other he plunges his weapon into his neck; the short, wide blade divides the spine, between the neck and shoulder, the bull falls like a stone. A flight of arrows arrests the fugitives before they can reach the water; the whole herd is killed, except the old bull that escaped at first. "The return to the camp is a triumphal march. As soon as the sentinels signal the arrival of the party, soldiers, slaves, women, all who are not bound by etiquette or military duty, hurry to meet it, and form two lines, watching the procession. The sight of the seven bulls, each carried by five or six men, almost causes them to forget the respect due to royalty. They exclaim upon the size of the animals, the strength of their horns, the savage aspect given by their manes; they praise their master's skill, and loudly thank the gods who have favored him with such rare and terrible game. Asshurbanipal has left his chariot in front of his tent, and now prepares to return thanks for his success to the lord Asshur and the lady Ishtar. Two priests with their harps are waiting to commence the hymns of praise. The bearers place the oxen side by side in a single line. The king, accompanied by his fly-flap and sunshade-bearers, stands on the right, the bow in his left hand. He takes the cup full of sacramental wine, which the vizier presents to him, touches it with his lips, then partly empties it over the victims whilst the musicians play. The same evening a messenger will start for Nineveh to have the new exploit graven upon stone. The picture will portray the departure, the chase, the death, the solemn entry, and an inscription placed above the last scene will tell posterity the name of the victor. 'I, Asshurbanipal, king of multitudes, king of Assyria, whose power is secured by Asshur and Beltis, I have killed seven oxen; I have strung the mighty bow of Ishtar, queen of battles, against them, I have made an offering over them and poured wine upon them.' "On the following day the dogs rouse three lions from their jungle. These are killed after having made a desperate resistance. The three bodies are carried back to the camp, then presented to Ishtar with the same ceremonies that had celebrated the triumph over the wild bulls, and the sculptors were ordered to represent the hand-to-hand struggle of the sovereign and his savage foe. 'I, Asshurbanipal, king of peoples, king of Assyria, alone on foot, in my majesty, I seized a lion of the desert by the ear; and by the mercy of Asshur and Ishtar, queen of battles, I pierced its loins with my lance, with mine own hands.'"[1] A banquet sometimes celebrated the return from a fine and successful hunt, but it faded into insignificance when compared with the one held after the return from a war of pillage and conquest. The entire population of the capital became temporary guests of the king. "After the procession, the day is passed in a perfect frenzy of joy by the whole nation. It is customary for all the inhabitants of the city, slaves and freemen, to eat and drink at the king's expense during the festival; this is a method of giving them a share of the booty. For seven days the palace gates are open to all comers. Many colored stuffs suspended over the walls by means of ropes have transformed the courts into immense banqueting halls. The crowd is coming and going from morning till night; the people install themselves upon state-seats and ask for whatever they like; the slaves have orders to give them anything they wish for, and to bring each person whatever he desires as many times as he asks for it. Women and children are admitted to these festivals as well as men. The soldiers kept in barracks by their duty are not forgotten; the king sends them the food and wine they cannot fetch for themselves in so great profusion that they have nothing to regret. The loaves disappear by thousands, by thousands also the oxen, sheep, goats, and birds of all kinds are sacrificed to satisfy the public appetite. But what they eat is nothing to what they drink. The Assyrian is sober in ordinary life, but he does not know how to stop if he once allows himself any excess. Wines of Assyria and Chaldea, wines from Elam, wines from Syria and Phoenicia, wines from Egypt, the skins are emptied as soon as opened, without visibly quenching the universal thirst. After one or two days no brain is strong enough to resist it, and Nineveh presents the extraordinary spectacle of a whole city in different degrees of intoxication; when the festival is over, several days are required before it resumes its usual aspect. Whilst the people are becoming tipsy outside, Asshurbanipal feasts the leading chiefs and the ministers of state within the palace. Unlike the common people, the nobles eat but little, so that few dishes of meat are set before them, but cakes and fruits of different kinds, grapes, dates, apples, pears, and figs are brought in continual relays, by long lines of slaves. On the other hand, they drink a great deal--with more refinement, perhaps, than the common people, but with equal avidity. The only persons who do not drink, or who drink little, through the necessity of retaining their sobriety, are the guards, the servants and the musicians. No festival is complete without the presence of singers, and the king's musicians conscientiously perform their finest melodies. Perhaps some one listened to them at the beginning of the feast, but now that the great silver bowls have been filled and emptied several times, their music is literally wasted. They may sing out of tune, or remain silent, just as they please, no one will listen or care. The court poet has placed the recital of the hero's life and exploits, from the hour of his birth until the day of his triumph, in his own mouth. He concluded by saying: "'I am a strong warrior, beloved of Asshur and Ishtar, the child of royalty. The gods have been gracious to me. The wheat has grown to five cubits, and its ears of corn are always one cubit long; during my reign, abundance has overflowed; during all the years of my reign, the divine blessing has been poured out upon me like a heavy dew. The gods have raised me higher than any king ever ascended before me. Whilst Asshur and Ishtar support me, who can prevail against me? My power is everlastingly founded by their hands, the duration of my race is established; they shall reign for many days, and for everlasting years.'"[2] [Illustration: ASSYRIAN KING IN ROYAL ROBES.] FOOTNOTES: [1] Maspero: Ancient Egypt and Assyria, 260. [2] Maspero: Ancient Egypt and Assyria, 368, ff. CHAPTER XIV. ARCHITECTURE AND DECORATION. Architecture is evolved from religion as well as from nature. Generally speaking, we find temples of worship to be the first buildings erected by every people. Because the Babylonians were limited by lack of other material to sun or kiln-dried brick, and the Assyrians, devoid of originality, limited themselves to the same baked clay, we would scarcely expect to find pleasing or artistic buildings in either state. Even in the dwellings of rich and poor, the great difference was one of size. It was impossible to make a clay wall very ornate, but the wealthy could have more walls and broader expanse of bricks. Size, or hugeness, then, signified superiority. It naturally followed that the temple, the noblest structure attempted by the Mesopotamians, was especially large, being called by a word which meant "mountain house." Large tracts of land were dedicated to the temples. Having been consecrated by libations of wine, oil and honey, the temple proper, consisting of halls or rooms surrounding an inner court, was first erected. Near this arose the ziggurat or tower, and many smaller buildings, not unlike private dwellings. These served as residences for the priests, for the temple school, store-houses for the sacred oil and other articles pertaining to worship, and many other purposes. The entire area was enclosed by a wall, and was ordinarily remote from the noises of the city. Within this large enclosure other walls surrounded buildings of special sanctity and importance. Within the temple proper was an inner room where the statue of the god was kept. This corresponded to the "holy of holies" in a Jewish synagogue, and was entered only by the priest or king. The ziggurat or mountain house--for this alone was massive and high--built as symbolic of the mountain form which the whole earth was supposed to assume, was a tower, some times three, some times five or even seven stories high. The remains of one of these ziggurats was discovered by Dr. Peters and his explorers at Nippur, and is supposed to have been built as early as 2700 B.C. The ziggurat at Borsippa had a base of earthwork 272 feet on each side, and was 26 feet high. Above this foundation arose two stories, 26 feet in height, each 42 feet less on a side than the story below. Four stories, each 15 feet high, followed, decreasing 42 feet on a side like the lower ones, and the last, or seventh, story, was just 29 feet square. Stairways wound around the outside of the tower, and it was thought pleasing to the gods that worshippers should ascend to the top. Each story was sacred to some particular god whose statue it contained while the shrine of the most important deity was placed on top. Sometimes each story was painted a different color. The mass of worshippers, however, assembled at the temple rather than the tower, and offerings were made at the base of the ziggurat instead of at the top. It was the ambition of the kings that the inner walls of their buildings, whether temples or palaces, should "shine like the sunlight," and to this end gold, silver and precious stones lent their gleams and glows to mural decorations. Next in importance to the temples were royal palaces, and in Assyria, where religion was given less prominence, the temple was a mere adjunct of the palace. Here again, a large inner court was surrounded by halls and rooms. The palace court was paved and decorated and upon the inner walls of the palace the skill of the artist was expended. The floors were made of tiles, and these followed ingenious patterns. Sometimes the floors were formed of bricks or tablets covered with inscriptions deeply cut; then molten metal--brass or bronze--was poured over the whole, and filling the depressions, caused the entire floor to look like a curious and intricate design. It was comparatively easy to lay floors and raise walls of bricks, but it was quite another thing to make roofs of them. The longest rafters were obtained from the cedars of Lebanon and these ranged from 30 to 40 feet in length. This practically determined the width of the halls and rooms, which seem to have been even four times their width in length. The monotony of the inner walls was relieved by alabaster reaching around the halls from twelve to fifteen feet above the floors, and held in place by strong iron clamps. On this soft, yielding substance were portrayed scenes in the life and exploits of the king--his campaigns, hunts, works of peace, and acts of worship. These were executed in bas-relief after the slabs were fitted into place. Above them extended a frieze perhaps three feet in width, made of tiles painted in delicate colors and laid in such a way as to form a picture or design. We miss the gaudy colors so popular in Egypt. It has been well said that the Assyrian artist sought to please by the elegance of his forms and the harmony of his hues--not to startle by a display of bright and strongly contrasted colors. The palace of Sennacherib, second only to the temple of Karnak in grandeur--covered an area of eight acres, and contained some eighty apartments. The palace of Sargon at Khorsabad had no less than 209 rooms. Of the scenes depicted on the slabs of alabaster in the state apartments Rawlinson writes at length: "The most striking characteristic of Sennacherib's ornamentation is its strong and marked realism. Mountains, rocks, trees, roads, rivers, lakes were regularly portrayed, an attempt being made to represent the locality, whatever it might be, as truthfully as the artist's skill and the character of his material rendered possible. The species of trees is distinguished, gardens, fields, ponds, reeds, are carefully represented; wild animals are introduced, as stags, boars and antelopes; birds fly from tree to tree, or stand over their nests, feeding the young who stretch up to them; fish disport themselves in the water; fishermen ply their craft; boatmen and agricultural laborers pursue their avocations; the scene is, as it were, photographed, with all its features. "In the same spirit of realism, Sennacherib chooses for artistic representation scenes of a commonplace and everyday character. The trains of attendants who daily enter his palace with game and locust for his dinner, and cakes and fruit for his dessert, appear on the walls of the passages exactly as they walked through his courts bearing the delicacies in which he delighted. Elsewhere he puts before us the entire process of carving and transporting a colossal bull, from the first removal of the huge stone in its rough state from the quarry to its final elevation on a palace mound, as part of the great gateway of a royal residence. We see the trackers dragging the rough block, supported on a low flat-bottomed boat, along the course of a river, disposed in gangs, each gang having a costume of its own which probably marked its nation, under taskmasters armed with staves, who urged on the labor with blows. The whole scene must be represented, and so the trackers are there, to the number of three hundred, each delineated with as much care as if he were not the exact image of ninety-nine others. We then observe the block transferred to land, and carved into the rough semblance of a bull, in which form it is placed on a rude sledge and conveyed along level land by gangs of laborers, arranged nearly as before, to the foot of the mound at whose top it has to be placed. The construction of the mound is elaborately represented. Brickmakers are seen moulding the bricks at its base, while workmen with baskets at their backs, full of earth, brick, stone, or rubbish toil up the ascent--for the mound is already half raised--and empty their burdens out upon the summit. The bull, still lying on its sledge, is then drawn up an inclined plane to the top by four gangs of laborers, in the presence of the monarch and his attendants. After this the carving is completed, and the colossus, having been raised into an upright position, is conveyed along the surface of the platform to the exact site which it is to occupy." Guarding the portals of the palaces stood the winged bulls and lions, in pairs. They were thought to ward off demons and to inspire awe in those who beheld them. They were formed with five legs, in order that the spectator, whether he viewed them from the front or side, might still see the usual four. Speaking of these great stone creatures, Layard wrote: "I used to contemplate for hours these mysterious emblems, and muse over their intent and history. What more noble forms could have ushered the people into the temple of their gods? What more sublime images could have been borrowed from nature by men who sought, unaided by the light of revealed religion, to embody their conception of the wisdom, power and ubiquity of a Supreme Being? They could find no better type of intellect and knowledge than the head of a man; of strength, than the body of a lion; of rapidity of motion than the wings of a bird. These winged human-headed lions were not idle creations, the offspring of mere fancy; their meaning was written upon them. They had awed and instructed races which flourished three thousand years ago. Through the portals which they guarded, kings, priests, and warriors had borne sacrifices to their altars long before the wisdom of the East had penetrated to Greece, and furnished its mythology with symbols long recognized by the Assyrian votaries. "They may have been buried, and their existence may have been unknown before the foundation of the Eternal City. For twenty-five centuries they had been hidden from the eye of man, and they now stood forth once more in their ancient majesty. But how changed was the scene around them! The luxury and civilization of a mighty nation had given place to the wretchedness and ignorance of a few half-barbarous tribes. The wealth of temples and the riches of the great cities had been succeeded by ruins and shapeless heaps of earth. Above the spacious hall in which they stood the plow had passed and the corn now waved. Egypt has monuments no less ancient and no less wonderful, but they have stood forth for ages to testify her early power and renown, while these before me had but now appeared to bear witness, in the words of the prophet, that once 'the Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon with fair branches.... Now is Nineveh desolate and dry like a wilderness, and flocks lie down in the midst of her.'" Babylon was probably the most beautiful city of antiquity. Nebuchadnezzar II. surrounded the capital with walls of such solidity that it is supposed the city could never have been taken by assault. His father began the fortifications, and it was left for the greatest Babylonian king to complete them and make them even more secure. Between the outer and inner walls, wide distances were left. Here trees and gardens were planted. This space was provided for nearby villagers in times of siege, and it was also intended that here fields of grain might be grown to sustain the population under such trying conditions. Herodotus described these walls: "And here I may not omit to tell the use to which the mould dug out of the great moat was turned, nor the manner wherein the wall was wrought. As fast as they dug the moat, the soil which they got from the cutting was made into bricks, and when a sufficient number were completed, they baked the bricks in kilns. Then they set to building and began with bricking the borders of the moat, after which they proceeded to construct the wall itself, using throughout for their cement hot bitumen, and interposed a layer of wattled reeds at every thirtieth course of the bricks." According to this writer the outer wall was 14 miles in circumference, 93 feet thick, and 370 feet in height, but it is supposed that he included the city of Borsippa, across the river, within the length of wall, and no doubt he computed the height to include the lofty towers built at intervals along the wall, to give sentinels a wide outlook over the country. These walls the Greeks included among the wonders of the world, and probably ancient warfare could not have destroyed them. The Hanging Gardens of this great city were also enumerated among the world's wonders. These are said to have been built by Nebuchadnezzar for his Median queen, who wearied of the dull, flat country of Babylonia, and pined for her mountain home. The lowest terrace arose some 500 feet square, and three other terraces, supported by arches and pillars, were constructed above it, each smaller than the one beneath. These four platforms or terraces were covered with soil drawn up in carts, and the earth was deep enough to grow large trees, as well as all kinds of plants and vines. A pump house was located on top, water being drawn from the river and forced all through the structure, while the pipes were carefully concealed. Broad stairways led up to the uppermost terraces where a residence was built for the favorite queen. Hanging gardens had been built in Nineveh by former kings, but none so splendid as these nor on so gigantic a scale. Seen from afar, overtowering the high walls of the city, their height accentuated by the vast expanse of level land, the effect was that of a low mountain, clothed in verdure and scenting the breeze with the blended fragrance of its beautiful flowers. The population of Babylon was probably above 500,000 and the city contained more wealthy families than any other in Asia. The houses of these added to the beauty of the place, while two royal palaces, one on either side of the Euphrates, exceeded all former splendor in the southland. Streets were laid out at right angles, and the more important ones terminated in high gates leading out of the city walls. These gates were made of cedar and covered with bronze plates. Well might Nebuchadnezzar exclaim: "Is not this great Babylon, which I have built for the royal dwelling-place, by the might of my power, and for the glory of my majesty?" And again: "For the astonishment of men I built this house; awe of the power of my majesty encompasses its walls. The temples of the great gods I made brilliant as the sun, shining as the day. In Babylon alone I raised the seat of my dominion, in no other city!" [Illustration: DECORATION IN ENAMELED TILES ON ONE OF THE GATES OF THE HAREM IN SARGON'S PALACE.] CHAPTER XV. RELIGION. We have learned something of the primitive religious ideas of the Chaldeans, or Sumerians, who originally occupied Babylonia. However, when the Babylonian religion is mentioned, reference is made to the later faith of the valley, and this resulted from a blending of the Sumerian beliefs and the religious system brought in by the Semitic invaders. The original inhabitants of the country, in their attempt to explain the forces of nature, had conceived that spirits belonged to animate as well as inanimate objects, and that these spirits had power to bless or injure. The rain could refresh the crops or it might wash them out of the earth; the sun could cause the grain to germinate or in a day could dry it up with withering heat. The evil which each spirit was likely to do so far exceeded the good that gradually these spirits were thought of as demons. It was a demon which took possession of a man and made him ill. Famines were brought by the south-west wind. In short, demons threatened on every hand, and only a diligent use of charms and frequent incantations could protect humanity and enable each to live out his days amidst such imminent dangers. Now it is evident that there is no trace of our conception of a god in all this, but the early Sumerians had also their gods which were likewise personifications of nature, and these were later adopted by the Babylonian Semites, who also took over the earlier beliefs about the various spirits. In the course of perhaps several hundred years from the blending of the two beliefs, with such changes as growing intelligence brought, the religion of the Babylonians was evolved. The Semites who pushed north and founded the state of Assyria, took with them the religion of the southern kingdom. In explaining further the religion of the southland, we must remember its early political situation. Instead of one united kingdom, it was made up of a number of little states under leadership of cities. The leading cities had grown up around the temple of some protecting deity whose favor was believed to extend over the immediate vicinity. Thus, for example, Sin, the Moon-god, was not only the patron deity of Ur, but of the whole state of which Ur was the capital city. To exalt its god, a state would reach out to incorporate another. The people thus conquered did not cease to worship their former deity but now gave homage to the god of their conquerors as well. When several little states were united, the greatest of their gods was the god of their strongest city, since he had clearly demonstrated his power by giving victory over the rest. In truth, it should be explained that such was the official god, for without doubt the masses knew little of political absorption and worshipped the god of their infancy rather than new gods honored by the state. In course of various unions, En-lil or Bel became the most important god in Babylonia and remained so until Babylon gained supremacy over all other states. Then Marduk, her ancient god, was given first place. A brief consideration of the leading Babylonian gods will help us to gain some insight into these early ideas and conceptions. As early as 3500 B.C., En-lil or Bel was worshipped in Nippur. The very name testifies to its Sumerian origin. Lil signifies _demon_, and En-lil was the _chief of spirits_. In one of the earliest inscriptions in Sumerian he is mentioned with _Anna_ and Enki, the gods of heaven and the abyss. These three made up the original triad and as such they continued throughout the later period as Bel Anu and Ea. Nippur became a strong political center and this made Bel principal god of the land until his powers were transferred to Marduk. Bel's consort, like the consorts of all Babylonian gods, was but a weak reflection of the god himself. Eridu was a seaport. Ea, god of "that which is below," was its local deity. He was first considered as god of the earth but the water was of greater commercial importance and gradually he grew to be regarded as god of the deep. From merely a local god, protecting Eridu, he extended his sway over all waters. In both Larsa and Sippar the sun-god Shamash, known among the Sumerians as _Utu_, was honored. No other deity enjoyed such continued popularity as the "god of day." From the earliest to the latest period he was hailed as the "god that gives light and life to all things, upon whose favor the prosperity of the fields and well-being of man depend." As light is opposed to darkness, so again light reveals wrong doing; for this reason this god of light became associated with justice. Sin, the Moon-god, was given prominence over Shamash, so far as official order of deities was concerned. Some renown attached to him because he was the father of Ishtar. Indeed from being the father of many gods and goddesses, he was remembered as father of this brilliant goddess, greater than all others. Sin was worshipped more extensively in early times. Ishtar, supreme goddess, mother of the gods, was first conceived as a mild, sympathetic mother-spirit, a goddess of love and care. In Assyria, however, she was regarded as goddess of war and battle, and was associated with Asshur in that connection. Nabu, the wise, all-knowing god, sacred in Borsippa, was also popular in literature and learning. In addition to being patron of intelligence and wisdom, he was also patron of agriculture. When his favor was given, storehouses were heaped high with grain; when his favor was withdrawn, famine afflicted the land. From the twelfth century B.C. onwards his name appears in royal names such as Nabo-polasar, Nebuchadnezzar, Nabo-nidus, and in the ninth century B.C. the worship of this god only was preached: "Put thy trust in Nebo; trust not in another God." The long proper names so constantly found in both Babylonia and Assyria were always compounded from several words and had some particular meaning--as, Sennacherib, or more correctly Sin-akhi-irib, meaning "Sin has multiplied brethren;" Buzur-Asshur--"a stronghold is Asshur;" Sargon or Sargina--Sar meaning king and gin, to establish, "I am the established king." Anu was the god of the heavens; Ramman the god of storm, and both held important places in the myths and stories of the people. In later times Ea was a deity of wide dominion. Father of Marduk, he was god of humanity. He gave wisdom, and as god of water, fountains were sacred to him. Oannes or Fish-Man was simply a name given him by Greek travellers. In time he was regarded as god of civilization, and nothing could have been more natural, for over the waters he protected came civilization to Chaldea, and progress was facilitated by navigation. Great works of art were ascribed to him; likewise he was god of the smith and of the sculptor. The great bulls were works of his hand. He was probably made father of Marduk in later years, when Babylon's god had been given first place in the nation, and the only way to reconcile all that was believed of Ea was to show that as father, his wisdom had descended to his son, Marduk. In addition to these leading deities, there was a host of minor ones but their enumeration would be useless for our purposes. One tablet in the British museum contained originally the names of nearly 1,800 gods. They were early local gods, and as their states were added to the kingdom, they were included in the temple lists to pacify their worshippers. The religious faith and worship for any one district was not complicated. Each little community had its patron deity and paid scant attention to the numerous gods of temple lists. In Assyria the political situation had been far different. No large number of petty states, each with its religious system, had united to form the kingdom; consequently we miss the numerous gods found in Babylonia. Asshur was the one great god of the northern people. Alone he stood, god of all. When Assyria entered upon her military career, Asshur was regarded as god of war, and because of repeated victory, grew very popular in this conception. His standard was carried into battle to encourage the soldiers; knowing that his mighty power was with them, they could not fail. The standard of Asshur, one of the earliest ensigns of the battle field, has its own interest for us. On top of a long pole, guarded on either side by huge wings, perhaps the wings of the eagle, a circle enclosed the figure of an archer, shooting an arrow. Seen afar by faltering troops, the standards of the national god gave new strength and inspired fresh hope of victory. The similarity between the religion of the Assyrians and the Hebrews has frequently been noted. Both nations were Semitic and hence their inheritances were the same. Their origin and early home was identical. The Hebrews, in course of their wanderings and experiences, grew to worship one God to the exclusion of all others. The Assyrians retained their warlike disposition, and worshipped one God as greater than all others, but they allowed other deities to be honored as well. Both nations with great regularity ascribed all their victories to the divinity they worshipped--nay, more by far, they attributed all their slaughters to the same deity. The Hebrews, during the period when as tribes they struggled for existence, treated their enemies with great cruelty. This was done, they insisted, to appease their God, or generally in furtherance of his direct command. Their brethren, the Assyrians, proceeded in exactly the same manner, and all their ruthless deeds were done to gratify Asshur and avenge the insults done him by revolts against his strength. One divinity commanded the outrages as much as the other, and they were but expressions of an early and barbarous development. Among the masses, the sacrifice was unquestionably that feature of worship best understood. It seems to have been an instinct born in man to make offerings to appease the wrath of a god, and to seek by the same means to win his favor. The priests acted as mediators between the people and the divinity. To a priest, the farmer, laborer, and slave as well as the noble and prince, brought each his offering, and such portions as were considered sacred were offered upon the altar. As the Egyptian provided food for the _ka_ of the deceased, so also the Babylonian provided it for the _zi_ of his dead. It is possible that the belief in the shadowy ka came originally from the valley of the Euphrates. Gods were supposed to visit their shrines at intervals and so food was placed for them. The masses of the people were so ignorant that it is entirely probable they regarded the image of the god as the god himself, and that they thought these images of clay and stone actually devoured the food they brought.[1] The more enlightened had no such crude notions, but realized that the god-spirit was something apart from anything they saw and worshipped. If we substitute the name of the Hebrew deity in place of the Babylonian god, worshippers of Judah might have used some of the hymns of prayer and praise used in Babylonia: "The heart of my lord is wroth; may it be appeased! O lord, my sins are many, my transgressions are great! The sin that I sinned I knew not, The transgression I committed I knew not, The lord in the wrath of his heart has regarded me, God in the fierceness of his heart has revealed himself to me. I sought for help and none took my hand; I wept, and none stood at my side; I cried aloud, and there was none that heard me. I am in trouble and hiding; I dare not look up. To my god, the merciful one, I turn myself, I utter my prayer; The sins I have sinned turn into a blessing; The transgressions I have committed let the wind carry away! Strip off my manifold wickedness as a garment! O my god, seven times seven are my transgressions: forgive my sins!" Another, written first to Sin of Ur, and later incorporated into the hymns of the nation: "Father, long-suffering and full of forgiveness, Whose hand upholdeth the life of all mankind! First-born, omnipotent, whose heart is immensity, and there is none who may fathom it! In heaven who is supreme? Thou alone, thou art supreme! On earth, who is supreme? Thou alone, thou art supreme! As for thee, thy will is made known in heaven, and the angels bow their faces. As for thee, thy will is made known upon earth, and the spirits below kiss the ground." Elsewhere we find Ashur appealed to as "lord of the gods, _who has created himself_." Services were many. Each day required its own offerings and ceremonies. The changes of the moon were watched and accompanied by peculiar services. Taboos were placed on certain days and on these no work was permitted. The priesthood was large. Besides the chief priests, there were elders, anointers,--who anointed the images of the gods and the vessels of the temple with sacred oil; priests who presided over the oracles and whose function it was to ascertain auspicious times for war and other prodigious undertakings, and seers, who interpreted dreams. Revenues of the temples came from offerings and more regularly, from the tithe, a tax paid by both king and subjects. In this way, the temples controlled property. Their lands were usually rented out. When Babylonia reached her age of greatest prosperity, the religion of the land had been greatly secularized, and the temples were important for their business significances quite as much as for their religious features. "The temple exerted an overwhelming financial influence in smaller towns. Only in certain large cities was it rivalled by a few great firms. Its financial status was that of the chief, if not the only, great capitalist. Its political influence was also great. This was largely enlisted on the side of peace at home and stability in business." Its great possessions resulted from the daily and monthly payments, from lands dedicated to the temple by devout ones, and from careful investment of revenues. "The temple was also a commercial institution of high efficiency. Their accumulations of all sorts of raw products were enormous. The temple let out or advanced all kinds of raw material, usually on easy terms. To the poor, as a charity, advances were made in times of a scarcity or personal want, to their tenants as part of the metayer system of tenure, to slaves who lived outside its precincts, and to contractors who took the material on purely commercial terms. The return was expected in kind, to the full amount of advance, or with stipulated interest.... "The temples did a certain amount of banking business. By this we mean that they held money on deposit against the call of the depositor. Whether they charged for safe-keeping or remunerated themselves by investing the bulk of their capital, reserving a balance to meet calls, does not appear.... "In certain circumstances the king's officials might borrow of the temples.... Some kings laid hands on the treasure of the temple for their own use. Doubtless this was done under bond to repay. The cases in which we read of such practices are always represented as a wrong.... "The temple could act in all the capacities of a private individual or a firm of traders."[2] The religion of Mesopotamia did not require the believer to preserve his dead, as in Egypt. Cremation was almost always resorted to, and for this reason we lack the tomb-finds, so elucidating in Egypt. The body was made ready for burial, with some food and other necessities, then it was partially burned, at least, and the remains entombed. The conditions of the country in Babylonia made cremation almost a necessity. While some degree of purity was occasionally reached in Mesopotamian conceptions of religion, and far-sighted and high-minded persons lived in both countries, there was much that was degrading in connection with the worship. All Babylonian classes were grossly superstitious and believed always in the demons. The incantations used to drive these away were not only countenanced by the priesthood, but were taught as a part of the established worship. Demons were of various kinds and possessed different degrees of power. They lurked in obscure places, ready to inflict themselves upon unhappy mortals. All diseases, all misfortunes were their doings. A sufferer exclaims: "They have used all kinds of charms to entwine me as a rope, to catch me as in a cage, to tie me as with cords, to overpower me as in a net, to twist me as with a sling, to tear me as a fabric, to throw me down as a wall." To this the conjurer replies: "But I by command of Marduk, the lord of charms, by Marduk, the master of bewitchment, Both the male and female witch as with ropes I will entwine, as in a cage I will catch, as with cords I will tie, as in a net I will overpower, as in a sling I will twist, as a fabric I will tear, as a wall throw them down." At this juncture, images of witches were burned by fire, having been tortured first by these specified actions. The ritual set forth water as a purification for some bewitchment. "Glittering water, pure water, Holy water, resplendent water, The water twice seven times may he bring, May he make pure, may he make resplendent. May the evil spirit depart, May he betake himself outside, Spirit of heaven, be thou invoked! Spirit of earth, be thou invoked! Another remedy was this: "White wool, which has been spun into thread, To attach it to his couch in front and at the top, Black wool which has been spun into thread To bind at his left side."[3] In addition to long lists of formulæ for driving away the demons of sickness, and famine and misfortune, a countless number of omens had to be taken into account if one wished success to accompany his undertakings. Some of these concerned the movement of heavenly bodies. "The moon and sun are balanced. The subjects will be faithful The king of the land will reign for a long time." Another brought a sense of danger in its day: "On the fifteenth day the sun and moon are seen together, A powerful enemy raises his weapons against the land, The enemy will smash the great gate of the city; The star of Anu appears bright-- The enemy will devastate." Or this: "The moon is seen out of season, Crops will be small. On the twelfth day the moon is seen together with the sun-- A strong enemy will devastate the land." A numerous list of omens pertained to the doings of animals. Stray dogs might bring disaster if they entered houses in unusual ways, and yet it was necessary that they frequent the streets. By-ways that they left were not thought lucky. The following omens have been translated from old tablets: "If a yellow dog enters a palace, it is a sign of distress. If a speckled dog enters a palace, the palace will give peace to the enemy. If a dog enters a palace and crouches on the couch, no one will enjoy that palace in peace. If a dog enters a temple, the gods will not enlarge the land. If a raven enters a man's house, that man will secure whatever he desires." All kinds of dreams were carefully tabulated, and were noted from time to time in connection with events in the dreamers' lives: "If in a dream a fish appear on a man's head, that man will be powerful." "If a mountain appear on a man's head, that man will be without a rival."[4] While all these omens were not directly connected with worship, they were consistent with the religious teaching of the time, and so are perhaps rightly considered here. The Babylonians were more religious than the Assyrians and their government was far more bound up in religious ceremonies. One fact alone bears out this statement: In Babylonia the king must each year celebrate anew the ceremony of taking his temporal power from the god Marduk by taking the hands of the god's image. This service took place on New Year's day, and no matter what might be the situation in other parts of the empire, to Babylon the king must come and observe the ancient custom would he remain possessor of the kingly crown. FOOTNOTES: [1] See the apocryphal story of Bel and the Dragon. [2] Johns: Baby. and Assy. Laws, Contracts and Letters, 211. [3] Jastrow: Babylonian Religion. [4] Jastrow: Babylonian Religion. [Illustration: The name Nebuchadnezzar in two forms of writing--as found on brick and in inscriptions.] CHAPTER XVI. THE LABORING CLASSES. Both slave and free labor existed in Babylonia, but, as has been previously said, there was no special prejudice felt towards the slave. He was often of the same nationality as the owner, was trusted, and often adopted into the family. Parents sold their children into slavery, and in hard times men would even sell themselves to obtain food and shelter. On the other hand, slaves might become free men and might rise to positions of high importance in the state. Having been a slave left no stigma to one who later became free. The slave might accumulate money and so purchase his freedom; freedom might be secured to him because of adoption into a family. While still in servitude he might appear as a witness or party in a suit, and his testimony was valued as much as though he were free. Nevertheless, while enjoying privileges unusual to one in slavery, he was still but a chattel given as security for a debt, offered as part of a dowry, or again, his services might be hired out for a given period, his earnings to go to his owner. Various measures were taken to protect the slave, as the Code of Hammurabi shows. Fines were imposed for any abuses suffered during a period when he was hired out. This served as a check upon those who otherwise might have caused him to overwork. Slaves made up quite a portion of the laborers, both in Babylonia and Assyria, although in the latter country less friendly relations seem to have existed between slave and owner, for the great mass of Assyrian slaves had been taken captives in war, and were foreigners, unaccustomed to the ways of the land, and less devoted, probably, to the interests of those who owned them. Few slaves were bought and sold with the land, and these generally belonged to temple lands. Private farms were worked by slaves privately owned. Free labor was available, but as a consequence of slavery, wages were low. The grazers were generally free men; they received large herds of cattle and flocks of sheep from several owners, and these they pastured for months together on the west slope of the Euphrates. Because the herds required constant protection from nomadic tribes of the desert, the grazers had to be men of responsibility. The oldest occupation of the Euphrates valley was agriculture. The soil yielded heavily and early won tribes away from their roving state. Taxes were always paid in kind, and grain was stored for times of scarcity in royal granaries. For the Babylonian, the year opened in the fall--in Tisri (September), the month of harvest. When his crops were harvested, the farmer paid his tax; if the land was farmed out, the owner paid the tax and the tenant paid his rent. New contracts for land were made at this time of the year. The ordinary arrangement between landlord and tenant seems to have been that he who rented should pay one-third of the year's produce for the use of the farm, and that he should keep all buildings and ditches in repair. This last stipulation was strongly enjoined, and a fine was inflicted did he fail in this particular. During the portion of the year when the usual round of sowing and reaping ceased, the canals and ditches needed attention. The entire prosperity of the soil depended upon the maintenance of the irrigation system. "Ploughing, harrowing, sowing, reaping, and threshing constituted the chief events of the agricultural year. The winters were not cold, and the Babylonian peasant was consequently not obliged to spend a part of the year indoors shivering over a fire. In fact fuel was scarce in the country; few trees were grown in it except the palm, and the fruit of the palm was too valuable to allow it to be cut down. When the ordinary occupations of the farmer had come to an end, he was expected to look after his farm buildings and fences, to build walls and clean out the ditches. "The ditches, indeed, were more important in Babylonia than in most other parts of the world. Irrigation was as necessary as in Egypt, though for a different reason. The Chaldean plain had originally been a marsh, and it required constant supervision to prevent it from being once more inundated by the waters and made uninhabitable. The embankments which hindered the overflow of the Euphrates and Tigris and kept them within carefully regulated channels, the canals which carried off the surplus water and distributed it over the country, needed continual attention. Each year, after the rains of the winter, the banks had to be strengthened or re-made and the beds of the canals cleared out. The irrigator, moreover, was perpetually at work; the rainy season did not last long, and during the rest of the year the land was dependent on the water supplied by the rivers and canals. Irrigation, therefore, formed a large and important part of the farmers' work, and the bucket of the irrigator must have been constantly swinging."[1] Large numbers of sheep were raised in these valleys, and the manufacture of wool into dress-stuffs, carpets, and tapestries, made Babylonia famous among the nations of her time. Her rugs and carpets were the pride of her people and large sums were paid for them. Scenes sculptured in bas-relief were seen in tapestries which lined the walls of wealthy homes. Vegetable dyes were used, and gayly colored flowers, bright hues and tints, made attractive decorations for interiors against dull back-grounds of brick. A large proportion of the industrial population was engaged in weaving, dyeing, and preparing these commodities for shops and other places of sale. Because of the constantly growing demand for wool, many were induced to raise sheep and to trade in the raw wool. Records show that Belshazzar, son of the king and heir to the Babylonian throne, was a wool-merchant on a large scale, his commercial interests being, of course, managed by others. The price of wool varied greatly, being sometimes high, sometimes low. It cost little in addition to the wages of the shepherd to pasture flocks west of the river during the greater part of the year, for pasturage there was free to all. For some months, to be sure, sheep had to be sheltered and fed inside enclosures, within or near the city. This was the costly part of sheep-raising. When the flocks were driven into town, toll per head was exacted at the city gate. Lists of the various tolls collected and turned into the general treasury show them altogether to have been considerable; not only were they collected of all who passed through the gates but a bridge toll was paid by whoever passed over the bridge connecting Babylon and Borsippa, across the river; all ships and sailing crafts, moreover, paid a toll to pass under the bridge. Enumerations of the trades of Babylonia have been found; these mention the trades of carpenter, smith, metal-worker, weaver, leather-worker, dyer, potter, brick-maker and vintner. The carpenter not only raised the beams and scaffolding of houses, but as well made whatever articles of furniture the times afforded. The brick-maker made tablets for inscriptions as well as bricks for building purposes. The brickyards were always on low land, near the river, where reeds, so useful in brick-making, were abundant. Building bricks were made in different sizes--some nearly a foot square by 2-1/2 inches thick; others about 15 by 15 and three inches in thickness. Chopped reeds were frequently mixed in the bricks themselves, and since the demand for them was constant, they were cultivated and grown in large areas. In a secluded corner of the brickyard, the fine tablets for literary purposes were produced; and here too, dishes and vases of pottery were molded and baked. Thus we see that great activity and divers interests attached to these yards given over to the manufacture of clay articles. The leather worker found material in abundance, owing to the extensive cattle raising. Harnesses, saddles, and shoes, beautifully decorated, were chief among leather commodities. The smith excelled in fashioning articles from gold, silver, copper and bronze. Ordinarily the metal was melted and run into molds of clay or stone. The customer usually furnished the ore and paid for the work upon it. Metal workers were held accountable for the excellence of their work, as is shown by guaranties found, whereby they promised to pay heavy fines if during a given term of years, their work should be found imperfect. The people of Babylonia never succeeded in mastering the bas-relief work, so effectively used in Assyrian palaces. Enamelled tiles took the place of these, and they were either painted in some design and glazed, or simply tinted. "Quite as old as the trade of the carver in ivory was that of the porcelain-maker. The walls of the palaces and temples of Babylonia and Assyria were adorned with glazed and enamelled tiles on which figures and other designs were drawn in brilliant colors; they were then covered with a metallic glaze and fired. Babylonia, in fact, seems to have been the original home of the enamelled tile and therefore with the manufacture of porcelain. It was a land of clay and not of stone, and while it thus became necessary to ornament the plain mud wall of the house, the clay brick itself, when painted and protected by a glaze, was made into the very best and most enduring of ornaments. The enamelled bricks of Chaldea and Assyria are among the most beautiful relics of Babylonian civilization that have survived to us, and those which are now in the Museum of the Louvre are unsurpassed by the most elaborate productions of modern skill." The trade of the vintner was lucrative. Wines were made from dates and grapes; beer was doubtless made from grain. It seems to have been the custom to supply laborers with beer with their daily rations. Organizations among workmen corresponded to the guilds of later years. Those who would learn a trade, whether freemen or slaves, had to serve as apprentices a certain time and learn the work thoroughly. Wages were always so low that they amounted to little. It has been estimated that the average wages of a workman was about 12s., or $3.00 a year; unskilled laborers were contented if merely supplied with food. In the reign of Cambyses a butcher is recorded to have been paid 75 cents for a month's work--freemen had always to compete with slave labor, and if only the employer furnished food and clothing, he could command any amount of labor. Babylonia early exchanged her grain and dates for the products of other lands. For example, teak-wood and cotton were brought from Arabia, cedar from Lebanon, marble from the east, gold from the peninsula of Sinai. Sometimes the raw materials were made up in Babylonia and returned to the lands from whence they came together with grain, rugs and cloth of wool. Because of her geographical position, Babylonia was able to command an important commercial position, importing and exporting constantly. "The mass of the people in Babylonia were employed in the two pursuits of commerce and agriculture. The commerce was both foreign and domestic. Great numbers of the Babylonians were engaged in the manufacture of those fabrics, particularly carpets and muslins, which Babylonia produced not only for her own use but also for the consumption of foreign lands. The ordinary trades and handicrafts practised in the East no doubt flourished in the country. A brisk import and export trade was constantly kept up, and promoted a healthful activity throughout the entire body politic. Babylonia is called 'a land of traffic' by Ezekiel, and Babylon 'a city of merchants.' The monuments show that from the very earliest times the people of the low country on the borders of the Persian Gulf were addicted to maritime pursuits and navigated the gulf freely, if they did not even venture on the open ocean.... "The products of the various countries of Western Asia flowed into Babylonia down the courses of the rivers. From Armenia came wine, gems, emery, and perhaps stone; from Phoenicia, tin, copper, musical instruments; from Media, silk, gold and ivory."[2] THE PROFESSIONS: THE BANKER. In ancient times, the money-lender was the banker, and lending money was foremost in Babylonian professions. Even members of the royal families were themselves heavy loaners and drew high rates of interest, although, to be sure, their business transactions were carried on by agents. The rate of interest varied greatly, being generally higher in Assyria. In Babylonia it might be 20%, or again 16%, and was rarely as low as 10%. Cases are on record in Assyria where 25% and 33-1/3% were exacted. As is still customary in the East, interest was computed monthly, and unless the borrower was well known and trusted, it was paid monthly. Security for the full amount was always required. A great firm of Babylon held a position in that country corresponding to that held by the Rothschilds in England, loaning to the state as well as to private individuals. Personal deeds and documents belonging to citizens were stored in the well-protected chambers of this firm as they are today kept in safety boxes in bank vaults. Banking firms continued for generations, and immense numbers of wills, deeds of sale, business contracts, leases, tax certificates, loans and marriage agreements accumulated within their chambers. SCRIBES. While each one pleaded his own case ordinarily, in the courts of Babylonia, pleas were frequently thrown into form beforehand by a scribe. These scribes performed duties discharged in later times by attorneys at law, as well as those which would of necessity fall to their share. In Babylonia they acted as librarians, authors and publishers, multiplying copies of books and selling them. In Assyria, where the art of reading and writing was not so generally known, they acted as private clerks and secretaries to a wide extent. MEDICINE. We have noted early in our study that medicine had but a small part in Babylonian life. Charms, magic and incantations in a large measure took its place. However, with acquaintance with Egypt, came an impulse to learn of a science which occupied a more important position in the valley of the Nile. While physicians came into prominence in later years, they were never wholly depended upon. The doctor was called to act in unison with the magician and conjurer unless, as was often the case, he himself united the two arts of healing. Herodotus and other travellers have testified to cases similar to the following: "Pressing forward and peeping over the heads of the people, we see a man stretched upon a mattress, and apparently just about to die. A few weeping friends kneel at his side, and we learn that he has been brought from his home, and laid down in the public market place, in the vain hope that some one may propose a remedy which will save his life. This custom, so strange to us, is common in Babylon, they say. When all else has failed, when doctors and sorcerers have done their best, the sick person is transported to the open square, and advice is asked from the crowd which is sure to gather. "Today, as ever, each has a different remedy to propose, though all are agreed as to the cause of illness. A demon possesses the man, of that there is no question. 'Come away, little one!' cries an old woman, drawing back her grandson. 'Go not too near, lest the evil spirit leave the man, and seize upon thee. Often have I seen it. Bel be praised that I have his image!' And she draws forth a little clay image of Bel, and hangs it carefully on the neck of her grandson. 'Hast thou tried the wool of a young sheep?' asks a woman of the sick man's wife. 'Let a sorcerer tie seven knots in it, on seven moonlight nights. Tie the strands around thy husband's neck, around his limbs, around his head. So shall his soul not leave his body.' "'Try the recipe of Asshurbanipal the Assyrian,' cries another. 'It is well known and never fails. Six different kinds of wood, a bit of snake skin, some wine, and a piece of ox flesh. Make a paste, and cause the sick man to swallow it.'[3] "A man hurries up with a handful of clay, and molds a little figure which he displays as the image of the sick man. We cannot see the resemblance, but the crowd presses forward and watches his motions with eager curiosity. He calls for a cup of wine, pours part of it over the image, and after drinking the rest, mutters an incantation. All in vain, while he is yet speaking, the family of the sick man raises a chorus of wails, in which the crowd joins. The man is dead; no charm can avail him more."[4] THE SOLDIER. We cannot speak of the vocation of the soldier as we speak of the regular professions of men, but any account of Assyria which failed to give some idea of the army, the very support and strength of that great empire, would be incomplete. At first, as in Babylonia, the soldiers when needed were recruited from peasants in the field. When the war was over, they would return to their usual tasks. However, Assyria with her many conquests felt the need of trained soldiers, proficient in military tactics. To the standing army which grew into a strong body, warriors taken captive in other lands were added. In course of a few generations a formidable army was thus brought into being, and the calling of a soldier became a regular profession. Men were required to give evidences of skill before they could take commands of regiments and even before they could command a company of ten. Maspero has made an extended study of military affairs in Assyria and we can do no better than follow the results he has reached in his investigation: "The Assyrian army is the best organized war machine that the world has yet seen.[5] It is superiority of weapons, not any superiority in courage and discipline, that has secured to the Ninevite kings since Sargon the priority over the Pharaohs of the Delta, of Thebes and Meroe. Whilst the Egyptians, as a rule, still fight without any protection, except the shield, the Assyrians are, so to speak, clothed in iron from head to foot. Their heavy infantry is composed of spearmen and archers, wearing a conical cap ornamented with two side pieces which protect the ears, a leather shirt covered with overlapping metal scales which protects the chest and the upper part of the arms, close fitting breeches, and boots laced in front. The spearmen carry spears six feet long, with an iron or bronze head, a short sword passed through their belt, and an immense metal shield, sometimes round and convex, sometimes rounded at the top and square at the bottom. The archers have no shields; they replace the spear by a bow and quiver, which hang over their back. Their light infantry also includes some spearmen, but they wear a helmet with a curved crest, and are provided with a small round wicker-work shield. The archers have no breastplate, and are associated either with slingers or with soldiers armed with clubs and double-edged axes. "The spearmen and archers of the line are usually of Assyrian origin or levied in the territories that have been subject to Assyria for a long time; the other troops are often recruited amongst tributary nations, and they wear their national costumes. They are arranged in companies, and manoeuvre with a regularity which foreigners themselves admire.... They march with extraordinary rapidity, leaving no stragglers or lame men behind them as they go, and their generals are not afraid to impose fatigues upon them to which the soldiers of other lands would quickly succumb. They either ford the rivers or swim across them upon inflated skins. In wooded countries, each company sends forward a certain number of pioneers, who fell the trees and clear a path. "The cavalry are divided into two corps, the chariot soldiers and the regular cavalry. The Assyrian war-chariot is much heavier and more massive than the Egyptian.... Like the Egyptian chariots, the Assyrians always charge in a regular line, and there are few troops in the world that can resist their first shock. When a battalion of the enemy sees them coming, rapid and light, their darts pointed, their bows strung, they usually disband immediately after the first volley of arrows, and run away. The line is then broken, and the chariots disperse over the plain, crushing the fugitives beneath their wheels, and trampling them under their horses' feet.... "Formerly the chariots were very numerous in the Assyrian armies. They are less used at the present day, but tradition gives them the post of honour and the king or the chief general always reserves for himself the privilege of leading them into the fight. It is the distinguished branch of the service, the one in which the princes and great nobles prefer to serve, and its weight often decides the fate of the battle. "Yet now the cavalry commences to rival it, if not in numbers, at least in importance.... The horse was at first ridden bareback; now it is covered with one cloth, or with a complete caparison similar to that of the chariot horses. All the cavalry wear helmets and cuirasses like the infantry of the line, but they have no shields; they replace the floating petticoat by cotton drawers. One-half of them carries the sword and lance, the other half is armed with a bow and sword. "The lance is eight or nine feet long, the bow is shorter than the bow used by the infantry, and the arrows are scarcely three feet long. Formerly each mounted archer was accompanied by a servant, mounted like himself, who led his horse during the battle so as to leave both his hands free. The art of riding has made such progress during the last few years that the servant has become useless, and has disappeared from the armies. Now lancers and bowmen are all trained to guide their steed by the pressure of the knees, and they may be seen galloping with flying reins, shooting their arrows as they go, or else halting suddenly, they quietly discharge the arrow, then turn and gallop off again.... "The proportion of the different services is always about the same. There are, on an average, one hundred foot soldiers to every ten cavalry and every single chariot; the infantry is really the queen of the Assyrian battles."[6] [Illustration: THRESHOLD--SLAB IN ASSHURBANIPAL'S PALACE.] FOOTNOTES: [1] Sayce: Baby. and Assy., 88. [2] Rawlinson: Babylonia. [3] This reminds one of the snails, etc., that were crushed and brewed in small beer for rickets in New England. See Alice Morse Earle, "Customs and Fashions in Old New England." [4] Arnold: Stories of Ancient Peoples, 123. [5] The narrative is set back in the days of Assyrian Empire. [6] Maspero: Ancient Egypt and Assyria, 320. CHAPTER XVII. THE MEDES. The Medes belonged to the Indo-European branch of the Aryan race. It is supposed that they came into Europe from the far east, and thence migrated to Asia, some time previous to 1000 B.C. They settled a mountainous tract to the east of Assyria, occupying a district rather larger than Babylonia and Assyria together. Because of its rugged mountains, narrow passes, and inclement winter weather, their country was easily defended against invaders. In the days of Assyrian dominance, the people of Media maintained uniform independence, notwithstanding the fact that military kings were annexing territories far and near with almost irresistible force. And so today, those who live in this district, remain comparatively free from the government which seeks to rule them. For the history of this ancient nation we are thrown almost wholly upon the writings of Herodotus, Xenophon and other Greek travellers, for as yet no antiquarian has attempted to recover Median past from mounds of buried ruins. Indeed the country has never been left desolate like Babylonia, but its cities fell to the share of others, and later generations, finding material for new buildings in the structures of their predecessors, have left no mounds to allure the historian and archæologist. Since rich finds in other lands have in recent years thrown unexpected light upon the past, it has been surmised that beneath the present cities, in this land of ancient Media, might be recovered monuments of her early life. So far, however, other fields have proven more inviting to the explorer and the excavator. In spite of the faults of credulence and exaggeration so characteristic of Herodotus, we must nevertheless turn to his writings and to those of Xenophon for Median history. We have noted that during the eighth century, Assyria made a raid into Media. The independence of the people was not disturbed however. This verifies the statement of Herodotus that the Medians made good soldiers, hardy and well able to defend their land. They were trained to a life of physical activity, inured to the hardships of a rigorous climate. Charging on horseback at full speed, they made a formidable defense. In their early conflicts they seem to have displayed excessive cruelty in war, showing no mercy to helpless women or innocent children. As for plunder, they cared little for it, and Isaiah refers to them as "the Medes who care not for silver, and as for gold, have no delight in it."[1] By frequent plundering raids into their territory, the Assyrians incurred the lasting hatred of the Medes, who, urged on by a spirit of revenge, united in 606 B.C. under a Median prince to aid the king of Babylonia against the Assyrian monarch. Having defeated the army, the Medes pursued, and shut the Assyrian force within the walls of Nineveh. Thereupon they made an assault upon the defenses of the city and carried the day. The capital of Assyria and all the wealthy cities of the realm were overrun, plundered and burned, while the surviving inhabitants were so widely scattered that we hear no more about them. Before this the Medes had cared little for luxury and ease, although they always delighted in a certain barbaric splendor. With the vast treasure of Nineveh their king now built a palace of extensive proportions. Its halls and pillars were of woods, its courts wide and the whole structure magnificent. No wood was left visible, all being concealed by a coating of silver tiles. Herodotus wrote thus of the palace walls: "The walls enclose the palace, rising in circles, one within the other. The plan of the place is that each of the walls should out-top the one beyond it by the battlements. The nature of the ground, which is a gentle slope, favors this arrangement in some degree, but it was mainly effected by art. The number of the circles is seven, the royal palace and the treasuries standing within the last. Of the outer wall, the battlements are white; of the next, black; of the third, scarlet; of the fourth, blue; of the fifth, orange; all these are covered with paint. The last two have their battlements coated respectively with silver and gold." We may gain some idea of the wealth represented by this building when we learn that the king of Persia carried away the greater portion of the gold and silver decorations for his palace; Alexander the Great removed the silver tiling from the roof, and some seventy years later another conqueror found about $5,000,000 worth of gold and silver plating overlooked by his predecessors. While no former palace may have exceeded this in actual outlay of wealth, others may have been more artistic, for the Medes reached no special architectural skill. After the Assyrian conquest, the Median nation soon became weak and degenerate. The people affected a life of luxury and idleness. The king lived amidst pomp and ostentatious seclusion; his courtiers and nobles gave themselves up to immoderate indulgences and amusements. While under Cyaxares and his father, Media had become a power in Asia, upon the death of this king, his son Astyages succeeded to the throne. He had grown up during the later years of ease and had no greater ambition than to rule the kingdom left him, no more animating impulses than to pass his days amid the ceremony and studied formality of the Median court. Astyages seems to have planned neither political activity nor personal diversion. He never joined in the hunts which were popular with his courtiers. Rather, he spent his leisure with such entertainment as his palace afforded and for his administration, depended wholly upon the reports of his officials. Such was Media when a Persian king, realizing the real situation, led an army against the country. In connection with our study of Persia we shall come again to the story of this conquest. Polygamy was always allowed by the code of Median laws and morals, while women seem to have been treated with a certain chivalrous attention and deference. The civilization of the land was similar to that of Persia, which nation, it is supposed, sprang originally from the same stock. No greater difference existed between the two peoples than might be found between two modern Teutonic nations. Education and learning was not valued in either country. Boys were taught to ride, to hunt, to shoot, and to become proficient in out of door sports rather than the arts of reading and writing. The religion was akin to that of Persia, and the faith of the Persians was singularly pure. They like the Hebrews, worshipped one God. No degrading ceremonies and teachings attached to their forms of worship, as was the case in Egypt and Babylonia. The most ancient writings of the Zenda-Vesta appear to embody the faith of the Medes, and these will be considered in connection with the religion of Persia. In conclusion, it may be said that the Medes were neither an inventive nor an ingenious people, nor did they develop a great civilization, culture, or literature. Indeed we are forced to the conclusion of Rawlinson: they scarcely contributed an idea or invention to the great store of knowledge transmitted by the past to the modern world. [Illustration: RUINS OF PERSEPOLIS.] FOOTNOTES: [1] Isa. 13, 17. The chapter is late, and, as Duhm says, the fact that the redactor ascribed it to Isaiah is instructive as regards the want of critical ability of the _diaskenasts_. Craig. CHAPTER XVIII. PERSIA BEFORE THE AGE OF CYRUS. The origin and early history of both Medes and Persians were similar. When first the Persians are mentioned in Assyrian annals, they had migrated to the region east of Assyria, inhabiting an indefinite district which later became part of the Median state. At this time--about the ninth century before the Christian era--they were not united under one king, but each clan followed the leadership of a chosen chieftain. As a result of an Assyrian attack, more than twenty of these chiefs brought tribute and acknowledged the supremacy of the great king. Nothing of importance is again heard of them until shortly before the fall of the Assyrian capital. They were then united into a kingdom, serving one ruler, and living in what has been called "Persia Proper," to distinguish the original state from the wide empire which was brought at length under Persian rule. While free to manage their internal affairs, they paid tribute to Media, now a vigorous and aggressive nation. It is plain then, that previous to the fall of Nineveh, the Persian state had taken no part in Asiatic affairs, and furthermore, was not yet free and independent. However, in less than one hundred years her people had gained control over the entire western portion of Asia, extending their rule from the Indus to the valley of the Nile, while only the little Greek nation held out against them on the west. Before entering upon a study of this rapid imperial expansion, it would be well for us to get some general impressions of the comparatively small territory in which the various Persian tribes became welded into a united people, and of the conditions in the original kingdom wherein the principles which were to temporarily dominate the ancient world were developed. Persia Proper consisted of an area of about 450 miles in length, and averaging 250 miles in width. It might have been roughly bounded on the south and west by the gulf which came to bear its name, while a desert reached off to the east and north, save where Persian territory touched upon the Median kingdom. A narrow strip of arid land lay between the gulf and a mountain range, making up perhaps one eighth of the entire area. The climate here is hot and dry, the soil marshy, producing little growth of any sort. The district east of this range was irregularly divided into highlands and valleys, lofty rocks and winding chasms. Wherever water was available, vegetation was luxuriant, making the wild scenery fantastic and attractive. Generally water was scarce, and most of the year the land lay parched and brown. "The region east of the range is of varied character. In places richly fertile, picturesque, and romantic almost beyond imagination, with lovely wooded dells, green mountain-sides, and broad plains suited for the production of almost any crops, it has yet on the whole a predominant character of sterility and barrenness, especially towards its more northern and eastern portions. The supply of water is everywhere scanty. Scarcely any of the streams are strong enough to reach the sea. After short courses they are either absorbed by the sand or end in small salt lakes, from which the superfluous water is evaporated. Much of the country is absolutely without streams, and would be uninhabitable were it not for the subterranean channels of spring-water. "The most remarkable feature of the country consists in the extraordinary gorges which pierce the great mountain-chain, and render possible the establishment of routes across that tremendous barrier. Scarped rocks rise almost perpendicularly on either side of the mountain streams, which descend rapidly with frequent cascades and falls. Along the slight irregularities of these rocks the roads are carried in zigzags, often crossing the streams from side to side by bridges of a single arch, which are thrown over profound chasms where the waters chafe and roar many hundred feet below. The roads have for the most part been artificially cut in the sides of the precipices, which rise from the streams sometimes to the height of 2,000 feet. Thus the country towards the edge of the plateau is peculiarly safe from attack, being defended on the north and east by vast deserts, and on the south by a mountain barrier of unusual strength and difficulty. "It is in these regions, which combine facility of defence with pleasantness of climate, that the principal cities of the district have at all times been placed."[1] It appears that nearly one-half of the kingdom was practically unsuited for habitation, being dry and producing little to sustain life. In these early times only two or three cities existed, small villages making up the remaining social centers, while peasants farmed limited portions of the outlying country where the water supply sufficed to maintain crops. Various fruits abounded in the mountainous regions. Peaches were native to the soil. Grapes grew in profusion, and corn and vegetables were plentiful. Along the coast fish might be found in large quantities and constituted a staple article of food throughout the land. The natural conditions were not sufficiently favorable to allow heavy yields of grain or to make agriculture foremost among the nation's activities. The Persians were active, vivacious people, lacking wholly the repose and dignified calm so characteristic of the English, for example. They concealed neither joy nor sorrow, and were immoderate in their expressions of both. Learning and education were given little attention. It has become a trite and well-known saying that "Persian boys were taught to ride, to shoot, and to speak the truth." The religion of the people placed truth first among the virtues. Their steadfast fidelity to a promise excited wonderment among the nations. Physical, rather than mental, development was sought, and while in the nation's later life the people gave themselves up to indolence, passing the hours with personal adornment and feasting, these pastimes did not characterize their early years. Like the Medes, Persian nobles had several wives, and polygamy was the rule rather than the exception. Women were kept in well-nigh complete seclusion, and no mention is made of them, nor are they seen in pictures adorning the palaces. The attitude assumed toward the sovereign influenced the very character of the people. "The Persian king held the same rank and position in the eyes of his subjects which the great monarch of Western Asia, whoever he might be, had always occupied from time immemorial. He was the lord and master, absolute disposer of their lives, liberties, and property; the sole fountain of law and right, incapable himself of doing wrong, irresponsible, irresistible--a sort of God on earth; one whose favor was happiness, at whose frown men trembled, before whom all bowed themselves down with the lowest and humblest obeisance. "The feeling of the Persian towards his king is one of which moderns can with difficulty form a conception. In Persia the monarch was so much the State, that patriotism itself was, as it were, swallowed up in loyalty; and an unquestioning submission, not only to the deliberate will, but to the merest caprice of the sovereign, was, by habit and education, so ingrained into the nature of the people that a contrary spirit scarcely ever manifested itself. In war the safety of the sovereign was the first thought, and the principal care of all. If the king suffered, all was lost; if the king escaped, the greatest calamities seemed light and could be endured with patience. The same cheerful submission characterized times of peace. It was here that their loyalty became a defect rather than a virtue. The voice of remonstrance, of rebuke, of warning, was unheard at Court. Tyranny was allowed to indulge unchecked in the wildest caprices and extravagances. The father, whose innocent son was shot before his eyes by the king in pure wantonness, instead of raising an indignant protest against the crime, felicitated him upon the excellence of his archery. Thus a tone of servility was engendered which, sapping self-respect, tended fatally to lower and corrupt the entire character of the people."[2] Such were the tendencies of the embryo state which under the leadership of a great ruler was soon to burst into sudden and brilliant flower, absorbing in a single campaign nations which had never before been united. CYRUS THE GREAT AND THE PERSIAN EMPIRE. In ages when monarchs were absolute in the foremost countries of the world, the personal ability of the king was a matter of far greater concern than we today realize. In modern times, political and social changes have had their beginnings in the conditions and desires of the people. In the remote years we are now studying, the people were less considered, and their wishes seldom heard. The personal character of the king determined the policy of the ancient state. We have already seen how the welfare--the very fate of Egypt, Babylonia and Assyria depended upon their rulers. Even more pronounced was this in Persia, where subjects, including nobles and princes, acted in unthinking submission to a degree unknown in other lands. In taking up the career of Cyrus the Great we are largely dependent upon the writings of Herodotus and Xenophon. Of Herodotus we have learned something, and concerning Xenophon we may note that besides being a writer and a traveller, he was also an experienced and able general. Herodotus lived some fifty years after the death of Cyrus, and Xenophon was thirty years younger than Herodotus. Both Greeks wrote at length of the great Persian King. When Astyages ascended the throne of Media, Persia was a mere tribute-paying kingdom, insignificant not only in political strength, but in social life, wealth, and culture. It is supposed that Cyrus was sent to the Median court as a hostage from a tribute land. His father ruled in Persia, and we are told that he was greatly impressed as a boy by the difference between the two countries. The subjects over whom his father ruled were many of them soldiers whose days were spent with training and physical exercise. They ate and drank moderately, and while they lacked the culture and refinement of the northern kingdom, they were just coming into the strength and vigour which the Medians lost upon their conquest of Assyria and subsequent abundance of wealth. Tradition pictures the youth clinging to the simple habits of his early life, and caring little for the pomp and ceremony around him. He delighted in riding and liked the hunt best of all amusements, while he shortly became the companion of Astyages during the king's leisure hours, bringing refreshing life and boyish candor into a degenerate court. Some years later Cyrus returned home and, shortly after, a faction of the Medes who had become devoted to the Persian prince and felt dissatisfied with the tyranny of their king, informed Cyrus that if he would bring an army against the Medes, they would cause the Median forces to desert to him. Another account says that Cyrus himself planned the conquest while at the Median court, and having feasted his attendants and led them to drink heavily, escaped to Persia, where he soon persuaded his father to march against the Medes. In either case, it would seem that the prince had learned the true condition of degenerated Media, and determined to free his own land from the hated tribute service--establishing its independence. In the battle which was waged against the two people, Astyages was taken captive, and when the majority of the soldiers went over to the Persian side, the remaining soldiers fled. Cyrus allowed Astyages to retain his own personal attendants, and permitted him to live in a style befitting his recent position. Under guard of Persian soldiers, he was free to go about at will. It is probable that Cyrus had at first no greater ambition than to free Persia from tribute imposed by Media, but the desire for conquest once awakened never ceases while lands remain unwon. In conquering Media, all territories of Assyria fell to Cyrus' portion. The Medes had held lands to the river Halys on the northwest. Beyond this boundary stream the empire of Lydia had been growing under the rule of Croesus. Croesus has become proverbial for his wealth. As he extended the boundaries of Lydia, he grew wealthier still, until his resources exceeded all estimate. Having lost a favorite son, he lived in seclusion until a sense of approaching danger roused him to defend his kingdom. The river Halys was a narrow stream--too small by far to prove a lasting barrier against an aggressive nation. To spare his land the ravages of war, Croesus determined to invade the land of his rival. He thought best to consult the oracle at Delphi before entering upon such a serious campaign. Having sent costly presents to Delphi, Croesus inquired whether or not it would be safe for him to proceed against Persia. The reply was that if Croesus crossed the Halys and carried war into Persia, a mighty kingdom would be overthrown, and that he would do well to form an alliance with the strongest Greek state. Regarding the answer as favorable, he sent word to Sparta that, since he was advised by the Delphian oracle to seek the strongest Greek state as an ally, he solicitated their assistance. These Spartans were unlike any soldiers we have yet met; they fought for glory, not for plunder. They were glad, of course, to be considered the strongest Grecian state, and sent the assistance asked. With such re-enforcements, Croesus crossed the Halys and met Cyrus who had known of the Lydian movement and was ready for an attack. The battle was fought near Pterie; both sides lost heavily, and Croesus thought Cyrus was too crippled to longer advance, so he himself returned to Sardis, his capital, to make plans for a new campaign the following year. Cyrus waited until the Lydian troops were largely disbanded, and then suddenly appeared before Sardis. Consternation swept over the Lydians, but they trusted to their cavalry which was numerous and well disciplined. Cyrus had also taken the Lydian cavalry into account, and had ordered his camels which carried the equipment of war, to face the horse, and if possible, to put them to flight. In the battle fought such was the result--the horses turned in confusion upon the charge of the camels, and the Lydian army withdrew into Sardis to undergo a siege. They expected to win in the long run, for they had sufficient stores of all kinds, and they hoped that outside aid would come sooner or later. Cyrus understood the danger of delay, and determined to carry the city by assault. By scaling a nearly perpendicular embankment, entrance to Sardis was gained, and Croesus fell into the hands of the great Persian conqueror. He was given considerate treatment. Few cruelties disfigure the pages of Persian history, and never were severe punishments meted out wholesale to captives in war. Those who betrayed confidence were harshly dealt with, and rebels seldom escaped, but the Persians were generally fair-minded. Cyrus was uniformly mild and generous, lacking the inordinate pride of most Oriental monarchs, treating his subjects with kindness. Croesus became one of his trusted companions, and accompanied him upon his later campaigns. The story of the funeral pyre is probably an invention of the Greeks, or, if it had any foundation whatever, it may be that Croesus requested such an honorable end in preference to swearing allegiance to an unknown conqueror. When measures had been taken for the government of Lydia, attention turned to Babylonia. There, as we have seen, the crown was worn by a king who was more interested in the temples of the gods than in the immediate welfare of his nation. His son Belshazzar made some defense outside the capital, but a faction within the city, out of sympathy with the existing government, allowed the Persians to take possession. Cyrus now allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem and there to rebuild their temple and to make their homes in the land of their fathers. For this reason the Hebrews had only words of praise for Cyrus. To the number of 49,697, with their property and possessions, they set upon their long march--a peaceful band which encountered no opposition throughout its course. The event stands unparalleled in history. Had Cyrus lived, he would doubtless have added Egypt to his empire. This was left for his son to accomplish. The great king fell fighting for territories in the north. In conclusion, it may be said that Cyrus is the first great conqueror we have so far met who was kind and humane. His policy towards the conquered stands out in marked relief to the butcheries and punishments which characterized Assyria. Notwithstanding, all charges of selfish motives which have belonged to those who have sought to become world-conquerors, attach to Cyrus. Urged on by personal vanity and hope of becoming supreme, he considered only the final issue and allowed his ambition to triumph over his nobler nature. Some years later Alexander emulated his example, and one hundred years ago Napoleon undertook the same gigantic task--greater in his day--of building up a world-empire. The motives prompting all three were the same, and in each case the empires, so quickly brought into being, vanished as quickly as they arose. FOOTNOTES: [1] Rawlinson: Persia. [2] Rawlinson: Persia. CHAPTER XIX. WAR WITH GREECE. Upon the death of Cyrus, in 529 B.C., his son Cambyses succeeded to the throne, while a younger brother Smerdis, was left to supervise certain provinces, according to his father's wishes. The conquest of Egypt had been planned by Cyrus and would undoubtedly have been undertaken by him had he lived. Cambyses at once began preparations to this end and these occupied some considerable period. This young prince who had just come into absolute power, apparently inherited all his father's failings and few of his virtues. He had never learned to control himself and that omened ill for those who became his subjects. His jealousy, suspicion, cruelty, and arrogant pride contrasted strikingly with the generous, kindly temperament of Cyrus. Before setting out for Egypt, he had his brother secretly murdered. No rumor of this crime reached his subjects, however. Egypt at this time was not able to defend herself against an army that had become experienced and confident under the command of Cyrus; consequently, the country fell rapidly into the hands of the new Persian king. Far from showing the leniency of his father toward the vanquished, he marked his victories with needless cruelty. The two great powers of Africa besides Egypt were the states of Ethiopia in the south, and Carthage in the northwest. Of the former we learned something in The Story of Egypt; of the latter we shall learn later on. Suffice it to say here that the Carthaginians were colonists of the Phoenicians, and, like them, were traders whose commerce penetrated to all lands washed by the Mediterranean Sea. When Egypt lay at his feet, Cambyses resolved to make himself supreme in the whole continent of Africa--only the northern portion of the continent was then known. Accordingly, he directed troops to advance against these two powers which he thought alone worthy of his notice. Now Carthage could only be taken by sea, and the king was limited to Phoenician vessels, manned by Phoenician sailors. These men promptly refused to make war on their own colony, whose interests were so closely interwoven with those of their country. Their stand must have been united and firm, for Cambyses found himself obliged to abandon his project. The expedition to the south was disheartening. The Persian soldiers were unused to the hot sands and intense sun of Nubia and great loss and discouragement overtook the army. Those who withstood the heat were too exhausted by the march to accomplish anything. The king remained in Egypt. He was constantly haunted by his crime against his brother. He realized his unpopularity with his subjects, and feared that disaster would at any time overtake him. His fears were shortly reflected in his soldiers, who having learned that they were no longer led by one who could bring victory in the face of opposing obstacles, lost heart and fought indifferently. Herodotus wrote at length concerning the conduct of Cambyses in Egypt and his stories were long credited. Tales were told of Cambyses' profaning Egyptian temples, desecrating the tombs of the dead, stabbing the apis-bull with his own sword, outraging the priests and inflicting such injury upon the nobles as only the madness which they attribute to him, could explain. In recent years these statements have been modified by investigation. An Egyptologist of first rank claims that the tale regarding the apis-bull was not well founded. Unquestionably Cambyses was brutal in his treatment of a mild and gentle people, and he may have easily incurred the wrath of the priesthood by his contempt for their religion, certain features of which he regarded as mere folly. It is also probable that his deeds have been greatly exaggerated by those who had cause to hate him for his interference with a land to which he had no just claim. Instead of being insane, he no doubt displayed his ungovernable temper and in moments of rage, gave orders which he would gladly have recalled in another mood. While Cambyses loitered in Egypt, a report spread through the empire that Smerdis had been crowned, and that Cambyses need no longer be regarded as king. One of the Magians, a priesthood of Persia which represented a more material form of worship than the teachings of Zoroaster allowed, had attempted to usurp the throne in Cambyses' absence. The real king, feeling depressed with his partial victory, doubting the fidelity of his army, confessed the murder of his brother to his ministers. Having thus disclosed the presumption of the pretender, Cambyses committed suicide. Darius, a prince of the house of Cyrus, was chosen to succeed. This was a choice likely to prove acceptable to the people, for he was the only legitimate heir to the throne. Herodotus explained with all gravity that the counsellors of state, of whose number Darius was one, agreed to determine the succession after this fashion: they would each go on horseback at sunrise to the city gate, and he whose horse neighed first should be proclaimed king! THE MAGIAN WAS KILLED. When the people finally learned the truth and realized how great a deception had been practised, they turned against his priesthood and instigated a general massacre. The worship they had established was cast aside and the purer faith of ancient Persia was restored. The pretender had compelled the Jews to cease labor on the new temple they were building in Jerusalem. Darius gave them permission to continue. So similar were the religions of the Hebrews and Persians, that there could be no friction between the two nations on that ground in an age when nearly all religions were polytheistic. Darius was long occupied with internal disturbances. Revolts were put down with severity. When the government of the empire was firmly established, it was superior to any before known in Asia. The whole empire was divided into satrapies, or provinces--each under a resident governor; these governors made frequent reports to the capital and the opportunity for revolts was slight. Internal concerns thus settled, Darius turned to conquest. He conducted a campaign in the east, pushing Persia's possessions to the banks of the Indus. It was natural that the king should have cast longing eyes westward, toward the beautiful isles and states of Greece. Long before the age of Cyrus, Greek colonists had settled in Asia Minor. They had fallen to the share of Persia when Lydia was conquered, and Darius had organized their local government so completely that the freedom-loving Greeks were oppressed by it and in 500 B.C. revolted. These Greek cities appealed to Athens for aid in their struggle for liberty. A few soldiers were sent, and with such aid they displaced the Persian government and destroyed Sardis. Darius sent an army to put down the revolt, and the city which had led the struggle was destroyed. The king of Persia now determined to punish Athens for having given help to the revolting Greek cities of Asia Minor. Accordingly, he fitted out an expedition to conquer Greece. The naval forces were wrecked in a storm and the land forces were routed by hostile tribes en route. A second expedition was prepared, more numerous and better equipped than the first. Before dispatching it, however, Darius sent heralds to the various Greek states to inquire if they would submit peacefully. They replied with great scorn. In 490 B.C. the Persian king sent 300,000 soldiers to conquer Greece. The battle of Marathon was fought, and owing to the skill of Miltiades, the Greeks won. Four years later Darius died and Xerxes ruled in his stead. To him was left the duty of wiping out the inglorious defeat of the Persian arms. Not until 480 B.C. were the armies ready for what was expected to be a great conquest. It has been said that never in the history of the world has such a motley array of soldiers been gathered together under one commander. All nations subservient to Persia were represented, and while Herodotus may have overstated their number, we may accept his statement that it was the largest force ever thus far marshalled together. At the defense of Thermopylæ the Persians learned the character of their opponents. A little band of three hundred Spartans under command of Leonidas held the entire Persian army at bay in a narrow pass for two days. When the army spread out over the land, the Greeks realized their inability to cope with it and decided to hazard all on a naval engagement. The famous battle of Salamis followed, in which 1,000 men-of-war belonging to the Persians were destroyed or put to flight by 300 Greek vessels. Xerxes watched the fight from a throne hastily constructed for him on the shore. When at night his naval forces withdrew to Asia, he could scarcely credit the outcome. Byron has immortalized the occasion in a stanza: "A king sate on the rocky brow Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis; And ships, by thousands, lay below, And men in nations--all were his! He counted them at break of day-- And when the sun set where were they?" Leaving a strong land force to conquer the Greeks the next year, Xerxes returned to Persia. By the following spring the Greeks had gathered their forces, and inspired by their glorious victory at Salamis, they defeated the Persian army in the battle of Platæa. Thereupon the Greek cities in Asia Minor asserted their freedom, and Greek independence shone forth triumphantly before the world. "But this glorious struggle and triumph of the few lifted to superhuman heroism by an ennobling moral principle, as against the merely brutal force of numbers, does not properly belong any more to the history of the East, nor to that of remote antiquity; it is the dawn of a new star in the West, and of times which, from their spirit, actors, and achievements, may almost be called modern. At the bottom of the new departure lies the difference between the ideals--the conceptions of beauty and dignity of the political and social life--set up by the Oriental and Western man: 'A good master!' is the prayer and ideal of the Asiatic. 'No master! Liberty at any price, as the highest good in itself!' is that of the Greek. And the Greek wins the day, for his own time, and for his own race, and for future times and races to come."[1] The following period, embracing nearly 150 years, was a time of decay and degeneracy. With Xerxes began the corruption of the Persian court--the licentiousness, assassinations, murders, and accompanying crimes which soon undermined the entire social order. Conditions were such that rulers were no longer strong, vigorous men, full of life and ambition--save indeed those usurpers who occasionally appropriated the reins of government. The days of Persian greatness were over, and under guidance of one or another of the princes, the state plunged on to ruin. In 336 B.C., Alexander, the young king of Macedonia, embarked upon his world conquests, and the Persian Empire merged into the Empire of Greece. [Illustration: THE PERSIAN KING (WITH ATTENDANTS).] FOOTNOTES: [1] Ragozin: Persia. CHAPTER XX. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS AMONG THE PERSIANS. There were wide differences between the civilization of the Persians and of the dwellers in the Tigris-Euphrates valleys. The Persian despised trade. His religion taught him to speak the truth, and he regarded commercial dealings as incompatible with this requirement. No shops made the principal streets in his country the scenes of hot disputes concerning prices and wares. The few shops which existed at all were tucked into obscure places on unfrequented by-ways. It naturally followed that there was an absence of those industrial centers which in Babylonia produced rare stuffs, delicate fabrics and ornaments. Swarms of slaves provided whatever was required by the wealthy, and it was the Persian's boast that his sword brought him the luxury of the world in tribute. It has been estimated that the total population of Persia did not exceed 2,000,000. A small proportion of these were peasants who tilled the arable soil. Agriculture was held honorable and was encouraged by the national religion. The great majority of men were soldiers. Since the soldier's life was thought to be worthy of a Persian, we may do well to consider whatever features characterized the service in this empire. Probably because of the mountainous country in which they dwelt, chariots were never popular with these people. Ordinarily they were impractical, being suited to plains and accessible places. Nevertheless a few were used and these were furnished with scythes attached to the axle. Chariots formed the front line of defense. Behind them the foot soldiers were arranged in squares, with cavalry on the wings. One commander--the king, if he were present,--gave commands to all from his position in the center. This was an evident fault, for, were he killed or in any way disabled, the entire army sometimes took fright and fled. When the charge was made, the chariots dashed ahead, hewing right and left. They seldom failed to break the solid line drawn up before them, whereupon the infantry and horse followed, taking advantage of the confusion thus wrought. If the regular line of Persian soldiery was broken or in any way disturbed, since they had no reinforcements in a second division, the battle was almost always lost. To prevent such an occurrence was their aim. It has been said that the Orientals of this time could not be trusted to fight unless they were well supported at the rear--hence the custom of forming one deep line. The native Persians were brave soldiers, but their ranks were generally composed largely of subjects levied throughout the empire. Scantily clothed Nubians fought with clubs and stones in the same army with well-equipped natives. Drawn up by nation, in native custom, it is not surprising that they presented a sight marvellous indeed to the foreigner. The contrast between Greek and Persian military tactics was marked. The Greeks trusted to their solid, heavily-armed phalanx; the Persians tried to equip themselves as lightly as possible, and trusted to their agility and swiftness of motion. Their leniency toward captives has been mentioned before. They found no delight in mere slaughter. Literature and learning had little part in the life of the average citizen. The boy was left with his mother until five years of age. Then his education began. He rose before dawn and was trained in running, throwing stones, and shooting with an arrow. At seven he was taught to ride, and in Persia this implied much. He must be able to spring on a horse running at full speed, to shoot accurately when under rapid motion. In course of a few years' practice it was not strange that a Persian was never so at ease as on his horse. Furthermore, he was compelled to endure severe hardships--sleeping under the open sky, eating only one meal in two days, making long marches, and swimming streams burdened with his weapons. At fifteen years of age he was considered a man and was enlisted in the army, where he ordinarily served until fifty. During the period of the Persian empire, a numerous body of officials made up the king's retinue. Besides the farmers, soldiers and officials, there were many slaves, who completed the social body. They performed all kinds of labor, built the palaces and made fine roads throughout the realm. The Persian court has probably never been excelled in ceremony and pomp. Ceremony surrounded the monarch during hours of retirement and seclusion as well as when before the public eye. "The officers in most close attendance on the monarch's person were, in war, his charioteer, his stool-bearer, his bow-bearer, and his quiver-bearer; in peace, his parasol-bearer, and his fan-bearer, who was also privileged to carry what has been termed the 'royal-handkerchief.' Among the officers of the Court, less closely attached to the person of the monarch than these, may be mentioned the steward of the household; the groom or master of the horse; the keeper of the women's department, the king's 'eyes' and 'ears'--persons whose business it was to keep him informed on all matters of importance; his scribes, who wrote his letters, his messengers who went his errands, his ushers, his tasters, who tried the various dishes set before him lest they should be poisoned; his cup-bearers, who handed him wine and tasted of it; his chamberlains who assisted him to bed; and his musicians, who amused him with song and harp. Besides these, the Court comprised various classes of guards, doorkeepers, huntsmen, grooms, cooks, and other domestic servants in abundance, together with a vast multitude of visitors, guests, princes, captives of rank, foreign refugees, ambassadors, and travellers. We are assured that the king fed daily within the precincts of his palace as many as 15,000 persons, and that the cost of each day's food was 400 talents. A thousand beasts were slaughtered for each repast, besides abundance of feathered game and poultry.... On all occasions the guests, if they liked, carried away any portion of the food set before them, conveying it to their homes where it served to support their families."[1] Prescribed etiquette governed everyone, from the king to his meanest subject. The august king must dine alone, or at best have with him the queen and her son. He could be approached only with certain ceremony. Ceremony and form were by no means confined to royalty and the court. Men of different rank met each other with established form and salutation; certain tasks could be performed only by persons who could perform no other tasks. This led to a large body of idlers around the court, ready to take part in any intrigue or conspiracy. They gathered around the homes of the wealthy as well as the palace of the king--water-bearers, adorners, awakers, and each rigidly confined himself to his single duty. [Illustration: DAMASCUS SWORD-MAKER. Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.] In early times the Persians indulged in a single meal each day. The custom continued later, but now the feast began with the morning and ceased only with night. The amount of wine a man could drink became his boast. In place of the regular habits, frugal fare and constant exercise of early times, were substituted the prolonged feast, all kinds of indulgencies, and idleness. The royal harem provided apartments for the king's several wives in early years. Towards the close of the empire, provision had to be made for some three hundred and sixty--if we may trust one writer. The jealousies, differences and intrigues which arose from this quarter can scarcely be imagined. Each wished her son to be given preference, and this ambition, together with the restlessness accompanying enforced seclusion, stimulated crime and fostered conspiracies. The favorite of the king might toy with the lives of his subjects--even with the lives of those dear to him, at will. No subject in the land had reason to think his life secure--least of all, he who was today powerful. For diversions--other than Court intrigues--the king turned to the hunt. Dice throwing was the national game, and the carving of wood was a frequent pastime. Since little was known of books, men were forced to find some means of passing hours unoccupied with national affairs or private concerns. Dress had been simple in early years. As time went on, it became more complex; even matters of cosmetics and perfumes were later deemed of weighty importance. There is more to attract us in the Persian state during years of its earlier simplicity, while yet the soldier found his deepest satisfaction in military skill, bodily exercise and great endurance, than in the period of imperial greatness, when the court of Persia exceeded in splendor anything since known. THE RELIGION OF PERSIA. Some time between 1000-650 B.C., it is supposed there lived a religious reformer by the name of Zarathushtra, or Zoroaster. Both his birth-place and birth-date are alike unknown, but it is supposed that he lived in Bactria, a country which reached indefinitely along the Caspian Sea. Little has come down to us concerning the great teacher himself. He early felt called to his religious mission. Retiring from the world, tradition says he lived for some years upon a remote mountain, and here a divine vision came to him. He communed with Ormuzd, the spirit of Good, and knew that his work was to reclaim man, who in blindness had wandered away from truth and light, and to bring him into new relationship with the divine spirit which was ever ready to win mankind to himself. At the age of thirty, Zoroaster was prepared to preach the new law. For ten years he wandered about, but found few to listen to him. His family and friends were gradually won to the faith he taught, and returning to the Caspian Sea region, he found more willing hearers. The conceptions from which he had evolved his faith were already accepted to some extent by those among whom he came. He taught that there were two spirits--Ormuzd or Good, embodying all truth, life, beauty, order, light; and Ahriman, or Evil, including all darkness, death, falsity and disorder. Life was a struggle between these two contending forces. "He laid before his people their own thoughts in all the pure transparency of crystal waters cleared from muddiness and unwholesome admixtures in the filter of his own transcendent and searching mind. He guided their groping hands, and made them grasp the truth for which they were blindly reaching. Such is the mission of every true prophet. Had the people not been ripe for his teaching, he could not have secured a hearing, or made himself understood; the people, on the other hand, could never have worked out unaided the ideal to which they were vaguely and only half-consciously drawn. They listened and understood, and were won, because, to use the expression of a great writer, they had in themselves the seed of the thoughts which the prophet expounded to them."[2] Seven times divine beings brought messages to Zoroaster. "They inculcate the doctrine of purity of body as well as of soul; they enjoin the care of useful animals, especially the cow and the dog; they emphasize the necessity of keeping the earth, the fire and the water undefiled; and from several of their ordinances we can see that Zoroaster was a civil reformer as well as a spiritual guide. Foremost among the commandments is the abhorrence of falsehood, the universal obligation to speak the truth. This is one of the most fundamental of the ethical tenets which form the basis of the entire ancient Persian religious system."[3] The writings which contained the teachings of Zoroaster are commonly known as the Zenda-Vesta. The name is misleading however, and should read Avesta-u-Zend, which translated means: "Law and Commentary." Among students the compilation is generally called the Avesta. Even a casual reading of the Old Testament reveals the fact that the various books composing it were written by different writers, writing under radically different circumstances, and at widely distant periods. The same is true of the Avesta. One of its books was probably written either by Zoroaster himself or under his supervision. This is the Gathas, or book of songs, and is the most ancient portion of the entire collection. Sermons, prayers, and sayings are therein contained, some of which possess poetic beauty and rare purity. Other books were added from time to time, until the Avesta is said to have been made up of twenty-one books, and to have covered 1,200 cowhides. When Alexander the Great conquered Persia in 332 B.C., elated by his victory, and having drunk heavily of wine, he allowed his soldiers to burn the capital, and with it perished much of greatest value. Most of the Persian literature was then destroyed, together with the noblest specimens of Persian architecture and decoration. While cities were few, it seems remarkable that the only copies of the Avesta were burned. For several centuries following, the teachings of this sacred book lived only in the memories of priests. Finally in 325 A.D., a council was called to take measures to have these ancient doctrines committed to writing. Naturally the result was fragmentary and incomplete. Only those portions of the original text which had been in daily use proved to be well remembered. These were mainly prayers and invocations. The priests in all probability, seized the opportunity to insert whatever forms of worship and modified beliefs they desired to emphasize. Their final effort, while far from satisfactory, embraces all which now remains of the religion of Zoroaster and his followers. In 636 A.D. the Mohammedan Arabs made a religious crusade and undertook to blot out the old Persian religion. Most of the descendants of the early nation yielded to the fire and sword. A small portion of them took refuge in India, where they were allowed to worship as they chose. Only with them was the Avesta preserved. These Parsis have been called "the ruins of a people, as their sacred books are the ruins of a religion." Of them Justi writes: "There is no religious body in the world whose practice is so completely in harmony with their moral code." The collection of Zend Fragments, commonly known as the Zend-Avesta, falls into two parts: The Avesta, properly so-called, which contains (1) compilations of religious laws and mythical tales; (2) collections of litanies for the sacrifice; (3) litanies and hymns written in a language older than the rest of the Avesta. Secondly, these writings contain the Small Avesta, made up of short prayers, recited by all the faithful. It was fitting that these collections of fragments be preserved, so far as possible, in their original dialect, but since these were no longer intelligible even to the educated, the Zend, or explanation--commentary--was attached in the prevailing tongue. Otherwise the greater portion of the work could not have been understood. Some of the creation stories were not included in the Avesta, but were gathered together with other myths in the Bundehesh. All worshippers are classified by the Avesta as followers of Ormuzd--Good,--or Ahriman--Evil. One could either stand for good or against it. "Now shall I proclaim unto you, O ye all that here approach me, what the wise should lay to their hearts; the songs of praise and the sacrificial rites which pious men pay the Lord, and the sacred truths and ordinances, that what was secret until now may appear in the light 'Hear with your ears that which is best, and test it with a clear understanding, before each man decides for himself between the two teachings.' "The two Spirits, the Twins, skilfully created, in the beginning, Good and Evil, in thought, in speech, in deed. And, between these two, the wise have made the right choice; not so the senseless. If, O men, you lay to your hearts these ordinances which Ormuzd instituted, and the good and evil, and the long torments which await the followers of falsehood, and the bliss that must come to the holders of the true faith, it will go well with you." Followers of Zoroaster abhorred idolatry. No image of their God corrupted their conceptions. In early times they built no temples, having only altars whereupon sacrifices were made. Darius often mentions Ahuramazda (Hormuzd) in his inscriptions as the highest god of the Persians, and it is highly probable that Cyrus was also a worshipper, a fact which made him sympathetic toward the religion of the Jews and accounts for his willingness that they rebuild a temple in Jerusalem for the worship of Yahweh. In later years, forms and symbols crept into the service, for abstract teachings did not hold the masses of the people. Fire was conceived to be a symbol of the God of Light, and even today there seems to be a certain charm in the conception that "a pure and undefiled flame is certainly the most sublime natural representation of Him who is in Himself Eternal Light." There must have been a sublimity in the sight of the pure flames, rising to heaven from the mountain-tops, while prayers and hymns of praise were poured out to the one great Spirit, by whatever name known. As days of degeneracy overtook Persia, the religion was affected by the general lassitude and decay. A modernized form of the early faith is found today among some 100,000 worshippers in Arabia and India. FOOTNOTES: [1] Rawlinson: Persia. [2] Ragozin: Media and Persia. [3] Jackson: Persia, the Land and Its History. A HYMN. "We worship Ahura Mazda (Ormuzd), the pure, the master of purity. "We praise all good thoughts, all good words, all good deeds which are or shall be; and we likewise keep clean, and pure all that is good. "O Ormuzd, thou true, happy being! We strive to think, to speak, and to do only such actions as may be best fitted to promote the two lives (the life of the body and of the soul). "We beseech the spirit of earth for the sake of these our best works to grant us beautiful and fertile fields, to the believer as well as to the unbeliever, to him who has riches as well as to him who has no possessions." FROM THE AVESTA. PART I. "O Maker of the material world, thou Holy One! Which is the first place where the Earth feels most happy?" Ahura Mazda, the Good Principle, answered: "It is the place whereon one of the faithful steps forward, O Zoroaster, with the holy wood in his hand,[1] the baresma in his hand,[2] the holy meat in his hand,[3] the holy mortar in his hand,[4] fulfilling the law with love, and beseeching aloud Mithra.[5]" "O Maker of the material world, thou Holy One! Which is the second place where the Earth feels most happy?" Ahura Mazda answered: "It is the place whereon one of the faithful erects a house with a priest therein, with cattle, with a wife, with children, and good herds within; and wherein afterwards the cattle go on thriving, holiness is thriving, fodder is thriving, the dog is thriving, the wife is thriving, the child is thriving, the fire is thriving, and every blessing of life is thriving." "O Maker of the material world, thou Holy One! Which is the third place where the Earth feels most happy?" Ahura Mazda answered: "It is the place where one of the faithful cultivates most corn, grass and fruit, O Zoroaster! where he waters ground that is too dry, and dries ground that is too wet." "O Maker of the material world, thou Holy One! Which is the fourth place where the Earth feels most happy?" Ahura Mazda answered: "It is the place where there is most increase of flocks and herds." "O Maker of the material world, thou Holy One! Which is the first place where the Earth feels sorest grief?" Ahura Mazda answered: "It is the neck of Arezura,[6] whereon the hosts of fiends rush forth to the burrow of the Drug.[7]" "O Maker of the material world, thou Holy One! Which is the second place where the Earth feels sorest grief?" Ahura Mazda answered: "It is the place where most corpses of dogs and of men lie buried." "O Maker of the material world, thou Holy One! Which is the fifth place where the Earth feels sorest grief?" Ahura Mazda answered: "It is the place whereon the wife and children of the faithful, O Zoroaster, are driven along the way of captivity, the dry, the dusty way, and lift up a voice of wailing." "O Maker of the material world, thou Holy One! Who is the first that rejoices the Earth with greatest joy?" Ahura Mazda answered: "It is he who digs out of it most corpses of dogs and men." FOOTNOTES: [1] Food for the altar fire. [2] Sacred twigs held by the priest while reciting prayers. [3] Meat for sacrifice. [4] Used for crushing the Haoma, an intoxicating plant, whose juice is used by the faithful. [5] God of good fields and pastures. [6] Mount at the gate of hell whence demons rush forth. [7] Hell. ANCIENT HYMN FROM THE AVESTA. "I am the Keeper; I am the Creator and the Maintainer; I am the Discerner; I am the most beneficent Spirit. My name is the bestower of health; my name is the best bestower of health. My name is the Holy; my name is the most Holy. My name is the Glorious; my name is the most Glorious. My name is the far-seeing; my name is the Farthest-seeing. My name is Holiness; my name is the Great one; my name is the good Sovereign; my name is the best of Sovereigns. My name is the Wise One; my name is the Wisest of the Wise; my name is He who does good for a long time. These are my names. And he who in this material world, O Zoroaster! shall recite and pronounce these names of mine either by day or by night; He who shall pronounce them when he rises up or when he lays him down; when he lays him down or when he rises up; when he binds on the sacred girdle, or when he unbinds the sacred girdle; when he goes out of his dwelling-place, or when he goes out of his town, or when he goes out of his country and comes into another country; _That_ man, neither in that day nor in that night shall be wounded by the weapons of the foe...; not the knife, not the cross-bow, not the arrow, not the sword, not the club, not the sling-stone shall reach him and wound him. But these names shall come in to keep him from behind and to keep him in front ... from the evil ones, bent on mischief, and from that fiend which is all death--Angra Mainyu. It will be as if there were a thousand men watching over one man." --_Trans. Zend-Avesta: Sacred Books of the East. Max Muller, ed. V._ 4, 23, 31. [Illustration: PART OF ARCHER'S FRIEZE IN AN ANCIENT PERSIAN PALACE.] CHAPTER XXI. CONTRIBUTIONS OF BABYLONIA, ASSYRIA AND PERSIA TO MODERN CIVILIZATION. It is often difficult to correctly estimate the power exerted by a statesman upon his country. The movements he has espoused, the reforms he may have championed, the institutions he helped to call into being, all stand as monuments to his memory. But the subtle effects of his influence, his personality and character upon his own generation and others still to come, are seldom understood or adequately judged. In the case of a nation the task becomes still more complicated, and we cannot today know how many of our ideas, inventions, and attainments have been shaped by nations whose light went out long centuries ago. Nevertheless, our inability to estimate these various inheritances aright need not deter us from an attempt to classify such bequeathments as are universally acknowledged, and we may be sure that the present world owes much to the earliest nations of Western Asia. Their contributions, however, have not come down to us directly, but have been passed along, like legends, from one people to another, until their present form scarcely suggests their origins. Let us consider first our indebtedness to Babylonia. In recent years discoveries in the Euphrates valley and the mastery of the cuneiform style of writing have given us masses of material wherefrom to reconstruct the past. Not only has light thus been thrown upon the early history of Babylonia and Assyria, but aid has been rendered biblical study. The tribal life of the Hebrews, and the civilization of other contemporary peoples has been better understood because of these revelations. However, acquisitions of the last century have had no part in molding modern civilization, and we pass on to matters of earlier significance. No people could have worked as diligently in the field of science as the Babylonians did and failed to leave important results of their investigations. "In _Geometry_ the Chaldeans made about the same progress as the Egyptians; in _Arithmetic_ more. Their notation combined the decimal and duodecimal systems. Sixty was a favorite unit, used as the hundred is by us. Scientific _Medicine_ was hindered by the belief in charms and amulets; and even _Astronomy_ was studied chiefly as a means of fortune-telling by the stars,--so that in Europe through the Middle Ages an astrologer was known as a Chaldean. However, the level plains and clear skies, as in Egypt, invited to an early study of the constellations, and some important progress was made. As we get from the Egyptians our year and months, so from the Chaldeans we get the week, with its 'day of rest for the heart,' as they called the seventh day, and the division of day and night into twelve hours each, with the subdivisions into minutes. They also invented the water clock and the sundial. They foretold eclipses, made star maps, and marked out on the heavens the apparent yearly path of the sun. The zodiacal 'signs' of our almanacs commemorate these early astronomers. Every great city had its lofty observatory and its royal astronomer; and in Babylon, in 331 B.C., Alexander the Great found a continuous series of observations running back nineteen hundred and three years. "To a degree peculiar among the ancients, the men of the Euphrates made practical use of their science. They understood the lever and pulley, and used the arch in vaulted drains and aqueducts. They invented the potter's wheel, and an excellent system of weights and measures. Their treatises on agriculture passed on their knowledge in that subject to the later Greeks and Arabs. They had surpassing skill in cutting gems, and in enameling and inlaying; and their looms produced the finest of muslins and of fleecy woolens, to which the dyer gave the most brilliant colors. In many such industries little advance has been made since, so far as results are concerned."[1] Certain unfortunate bequests were left by them. Babylonian belief in demons was handed down through the Hebrews, and in the Middle Ages took the form of the devil, with horns and a cloven foot. Their faith in magic and incantations also descended to Mediæval times, and as scientific interest superseded religious fervor, inspired men to search for the "philosopher's stone." The intensely practical turn of mind in Mesopotamia revealed itself in the literature, which was bare of imagery. Material beauty--artistic carpets, tapestries, and rugs, was developed, but for beauty of conceptions, we must turn to the Greeks. What did the war-loving, blood-thirsting Assyrians leave for future ages? At first the question seems not to be easily answered. One calls to mind their ravaging raids and unparalleled carnage, and remembering that their palaces and stores of inscribed tablets were recovered only within the last fifty years, their contributions are not so apparent. Yet, having studied the government enforced by Darius upon his empire, we are compelled to admit that he but improved upon the system evolved by the Assyrian kings, unknown before their time in Asia. Again, the very conquests themselves were helpful, in spite of their cruelty, for they brought the best civilization of their day to half-barbarous tribes who otherwise might have passed century after century before reaching the degree of progress so rudely thrust upon them. These conquests opened up routes of commerce, and trade has always exceeded all other factors as a civilizing force. To science the Assyrians appear to have made no contributions whatever. Coming to ancient Persia, we find a wholly different culture. The people of this country lacked the practical turn of mind so characteristic of the Babylonian, and his mercenary point of view was quite unknown to them. Persian literature, while scanty, embodied poetical conceptions, and several of the ancient poems possess much art. "The Persians had fancy and imagination, a relish for poetry and art, and they were not without a certain power of political combination. Yet we cannot justly ascribe to them any high degree of intellectual excellence. If the great work of Firdausi represents to us, as it probably does, the true spirit of their ancient poetry, their efforts were but of moderate merit. A tone of exaggeration, an imagination exuberant and unrestrained, a preference for glitter over solid excellence, a love of far-fetched conceits, characterize the Shahnameh; and, though we may ascribe something of this to the individuality of the poet, still the conviction presses upon us that there was a childish and grotesque character in the mass of old Persian poetry, which marked it as the creation of moderate rather than of high intellectual power, and prevents us from regarding it with the respect with which we view the labors of the Greeks and Romans, or again, of the Hebrews, in this department. A want of seriousness, a want of reality, and, again, a want of depth, characterize the poetry of Iran, whose bards do not touch the chords which rouse what is noblest and highest in our nature. They give us sparkle, prettiness, quaint and ingenious fancies, grotesque marvels, an inflated kind of human heroism; but they have none of the higher excellences of the poetic art, none of the divine fire which renders the true poet, and the true prophet, one."[2] The Persian religion was both noble and sublime, and its teaching concerning the two opposing forces of good and evil, affected the philosophy of the Greeks, and indirectly, the thought of the later Christian world. By carrying the plan of Assyrian conquest further, the Persians opened districts remote from social centers and helped the course of civilization. Their systematic government improved upon the one developed by Assyria in this particular: each governor was made supreme in his province under Assyrian administration, none other being accountable to the king for conditions in his territory. An opportunity thus offered for the governor to seize any favorable moment to shake off allegiance to the state and attempt to establish his own supremacy. Darius, on the other hand, posted troops in each satrapy, and both the commander of these troops and the governor were required to submit reports, and to act jointly in certain matters. In this way, one served as a check upon the other. Fine roads were built to allow rapid communication between the capital and distant provinces; these naturally facilitated commerce, and made travel safe--as one has graphically expressed it, "helped set the world a-mixing." A new day was dawning for humanity, and an age coming when one might look back to the infancy of the world, likening its progress to that of a man who has gained some perceptions, some ideas and experiences in childhood days which unconsciously but surely, influence his later life, illuminated by wider experiences and deeper truths. FOOTNOTES: [1] West: Ancient History. [2] Rawlinson: Persia. THE BOOK-STAMP OF SARDANAPALUS. Assurbanipal, or, as the Greeks called him, Sardanapalus, is supposed to have stored in his palace at Nineveh not less than 30,000 tablets. Upon every work in his library his ownership was stamped as follows: THE PALACE OF ASSURBANIPAL, KING OF REGIONS, KING OF MULTITUDES, KING OF ASSYRIA, TO WHOM THE GOD NEBO AND THE GODDESS TASMETI HAVE GRANTED ATTENTIVE EARS AND OPEN EYES TO DISCOVER THE WRITINGS OF THE SCRIBES OF MY KINGDOM, WHOM THE KINGS MY PREDECESSORS HAVE EMPLOYED. IN MY RESPECT FOR NEBO, THE GOD OF INTELLIGENCE, I HAVE COLLECTED THESE TABLETS; I HAVE HAD THEM COPIED; I HAVE MARKED THEM WITH MY NAME; AND I HAVE DEPOSITED THEM IN MY PALACE. THE CHALDEAN ACCOUNT OF THE DELUGE. This account was first translated by George Smith from the eleventh of a series of tablets describing the adventures of the mythical hero, Izdubar (or Gilgamish), supposed to be the same as Nimrod. The whole series of tablets relates his early life and exploits in hunting, his friendship with the faun Iabani, his victory over the tyrant Humbaba, the love of the Goddess Ishtar, his illness, the death of Iabani, his wanderings to find his ancestor, Hasisadra (or Pir-napishtim), who for his piety had been translated to the fellowship of the gods. This ancestor relates to Gilgamish the story of a great flood resembling in general outline the narrative in Genesis, but stamped with the impress of the Chaldean religion. Shamas was the Sun-god. The early literature of many nations contains stories of a universal flood, from which a favored family or individual alone escapes. None is more striking than the one deciphered from the clay tablets of Chaldea, or more nearly parallel to that of the Hebrew Scriptures. TABLET XI. OF THE GILGAMISH EPIC. The following translation is from Professor Craig: THE BABYLONIAN STORY OF THE DELUGE. Pir-napishtim saith to him, even to Gilgamish; I will relate to thee, Gilgamish, a secret story, And the decision of the gods I will tell thee. The city Shurippak, which thou knowest, Is situated on the shore of the Euphrates. This city was old when the gods within it Were moved to produce a flood, even the great gods. They were Anu, their father, The warrior Bel, their counsellor, Their throne-bearer, Ninib, Their leader, Ennugi, Ninigiazag (the god Ea) had spoken with them And their decree he repeated to the reed-house (saying): "Reed-house! reed-house! house-wall! house-wall![1] Reed-house, hear! and house-wall, consider! O man of Shurippak, son of Ubar-Tutu! Construct a house, build a ship, Abandon possessions, seek life, Property despise, and life save, Put seed of life of every kind into the ship. The ship which thou shalt build, even thou, Let be measured her dimensions: Let her breadth and length be equal, Upon the ocean launch her." I understood, and said to Ea, my lord: "Behold, my lord, what thou hast commanded I hold in reverence, I shall do. (But what) shall I answer the city, the people, and the elders?" Ea opened his mouth and speaketh, Saith unto his servant, unto me: "O man! Thus shalt thou say unto them: Bel has rejected me and cursed me. I shall dwell no more in your city, And upon Bel's ground I shall not set my face. But to the ocean shall I descend; with Ea, my lord, I shall dwell. Upon you he shall cause to pour out abundance, Game of birds and game of fishes, (Animals of all kinds); field-fruits in plenty, When in the evening the ruler of the darkness (?) Shall cause to rain upon you a heavy rain." As soon as dawn began to appear, (Five or six lines wanting) The weak (?) . . . . . . . . . . . The strong brought to (the building-place) what was necessary. On the fifth day I laid down her form. _Ina Kar-Hi-Sa_ one hundred and twenty cubits high were her walls, One hundred and twenty cubits likewise was the extent of her roof. Its outer frame I constructed, enclosed it.[2] I . . . . . . her six times. I divided . . . . . seven times. Its interior I divided nine times. Water plugs I beat into it on its inside. I provided a rudder (?) and what was needed I added. Six _sars_ of bitumen I spread on the outside (?). Three _sars_ of pitch (I spread) on the inside. Three _sars_ of basket-bearers brought oil. I left one _sar_ of oil which the offering consumed, Two _sars_ of oil the shipman stowed away. For the people I slaughtered oxen, I killed . . . . . every day. New w(ine, sesame) wine, oil and wine, Like the waters of the river (I gave the people to drink) And (held) a religious feast like unto the New-Year's Feast. I opened (?) . . . of anointing oil, my hand applied (it). (In the month) of Shamash, the great god, the ship was completed. Because . . . . . were difficult (Untranslatable) they brought above and below. . . . . . . two-thirds of it. All that I had I put on board of it. All that I had of silver I put on board of it. All that I had of gold I put on board of it. All that I had of seed of life of every kind I put on board of it. I caused to go up into the ship all my family and relatives. Cattle of the field, beasts of the field, all the craftsmen, I caused to go up. A definite time the god Shamash had appointed: The ruler of the darkness (?) at even-tide shall cause to rain a heavy rain, Enter thou (then) within the ship and close thy door." That appointed time came. The ruler of the darkness (?) at eventide rained a heavy rain. The appearance of that day I (fore)saw. To behold the day I had fear. I entered into the ship and closed my door. For the control of the ship to Puzur-Bel The great-house I gave over together with its store. With the first appearing of dawn There rises from the foundation of the heavens a black cloud, Ramman within it thunders. Nebo and Marduk march in front; Over mountain and plain march the throne-bearers. The _tar-kul-li_ the great Dibbarra tore away. Ninib advances, ruin he pours out. The Anunnaki bear aloft torches, With their brightness they set the land aflame. The dread of Ramman reaches to heaven. Everything bright he turneth to darkness. . . . the land like . . . he covered (?) One day the hurricane (raged), Violently it blew, the waters (covered?) the mountains. Like the (onslaught of) battle over mankind (they) came. Brother sees not (his) brother. Men are not discerned in heaven (_i. e._, by the gods). The gods were terrified by the flood, and Withdrew and ascended to the heaven of Anu. The gods dog-like cower, crouch on the wall (of heaven). Ishtar screams like a woman in travail. She cries aloud the lady of the gods, the sweet-voiced: "Verily the former race is turned to clay. Just as I in the assembly of the gods proclaimed evil, As I proclaimed in the assembly of the gods evil For the destruction of my people war I foretold, So, verily, will I bring forth my people Tho' like the fry of fishes they fill the sea." The gods, the highest of the Anunnaki weep with her. The gods are downcast, sit, and weep, Covered were their lips ... Six days and nights The wind prevailed, flood and storm overwhelmed the land. When the seventh day came the storm abated, the flood was overcome, Which had battled like a warring host; The sea calmed, the hurricane ceased, the flood was restrained, I beheld the sea, uttering a lamentation, Seeing that all mankind was turned to clay. When the light had fully dawned I prayed. I opened an airhole and light fell upon my cheeks. I bowed myself, I sat down, I wept. Over my cheeks ran my tears. I looked upon the far-spread waters of the sea. After twelve double-hours a peak arose, Towards the mountain of Nitsir the ship took its course. The mountain of Nitsir held the ship and let it not rise. One day, a second day, the mountain of Nitsir, _ditto_ A third day, a fourth day the " " " " A fifth day, a sixth day " " " " " When the seventh day arrived I brought forth a _dove_ and let it go. The dove went forth, flew to and fro, but A resting-place there was not, so it returned. Then I brought forth a _swallow_ and let it go, The swallow went forth, flew to and fro, but A resting-place there was not so it returned. (Then) I brought forth a _raven_ and let it go. The raven went forth, the disappearance of the waters he saw, He eats, caws, flies to and fro, and returns not. (Then) I brought forth to the four winds, I offered a sacrifice. I made an incense-offering on the top-most peak of the mountain. Seven and seven _adagur_-vessels I placed. Into them I cast reeds, cedar-wood, and The gods inhaled the good odour. The gods like flies swarmed about the offerer. As soon as the mistress of the gods arrived She lifted up the great jewels (?) that the god Anu had devised and made for her (and said) "These gods, by my _lapis lazuli_ necklace I shall not forget. These days, verily I shall reflect upon and never forget. The gods, let them go to the incense-offering. (But) let not Bel go to the incense-offering, Seeing that he did not reflect but caused the flood. And my people he counted for destruction. As soon as Bel arrived He saw the ship and Bel was sore angry, He waxed wroth against the gods, the Igigi. "Some soul has escaped" (he said), "Let no man survive the destruction." Ninib openeth his mouth and speaketh, He speaks to the warrior Bel: "Who but Ea doeth (this) thing? But Ea is wise in every undertaking." Ea openeth his mouth and speaketh, Saith to the warrior Bel: "Thou sage of the gods, warrior! Verily, verily, thou didst not reflect, and didst make a flood: Upon the sinner lay his sins, Upon the impious his impiety.[3] Spare, let him not be cut off, have mercy, let him (not be utterly destroyed). Instead of bringing on a flood, Let the lion come and reduce mankind. Instead of bringing on a flood, Let the hyaena come and reduce mankind. Instead of bringing on a flood, Let famine be sent and the land (reduced). Instead of bringing on a flood, Let the Pest-god come and destroy the land. As for me, I have not revealed the secret of the gods. I caused Atrahasis to see a vision and thus he learned the secret of the gods." Thereupon his counsel was taken And Bel ascended within the ship. Seized me by the hands and brought me up (to a point still higher). He brought up and made to bow beside me my wife, Turned us face to face, stood between us and blessed us: "In former times Pir-napishtim was human But henceforth Pir-napishtim and his wife shall be like us gods And Pir-napishtim shall dwell afar off at the mouth of the rivers." Then they took me and afar off at the mouth of the rivers they caused me to dwell. FOOTNOTES: [1] The house for its inhabitants. Compare Isaiah 1, 2: Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth. [2] The meaning here and in the next four lines is not clear. [3] This is evidence that the deluge, as in the Old Testament, was a punishment for sin, which some writers (not Assyriologists) have denied in the interest of an outgrown view of the Bible. THE DESCENT OF ISHTAR TO HADES. Ishtar was the Babylonian Venus or goddess of love. The story of her descent to Hades and return to the world of the living is found on a tablet now in the British Museum, and is perhaps the most poetical legend of the recovered Assyrian literature. It has been suggested that the story is the text of a religious drama, resembling the miracle-plays of mediaeval Europe. The legend shows no reason for Ishtar's desire to enter Hades, but it is easy to suppose that she went thither to rescue some beloved person. This supplies a connection with the familiar story of Venus and Adonis (or Tammuz), which the Greek writers declare to be of Syrian origin. The drama, if such it were, was probably part of the annual celebration of the return of Spring. Ninkigal, the Queen of Hades, corresponds to the Greek Persephone, and Latin Proserpina, the wife of Pluto. In like manner, Ea, the king of the gods, corresponds to Zeus or Jupiter, and the divine messenger to Hermes or Mercury. A BABYLONIAN EPIC--ISHTAR'S DESCENT TO HADES. (Translation by Professor Craig.) On the land without regress, the land (that thou knowest), Ishtar, Sin's daughter, did fix her attention, The daughter of Sin did fix her attention, On the dwelling of darkness, the abode of Irkalla, On the dwelling whose inhabitant comes no more out, On the road whose advancing knows no returning, On the house whose inhabitants removed from the light, Where they're nourished with dust and clay is their food, Where they see not the light, but in darkness are dwelling, And are clad like the birds with a covering of wings; On door and on bars lies the dust thickly gathered. Arrived at the door of the land without regress, To the porter in keeping, this order she giveth: Thou watcher of waters, throw open thy portal! Throw open thy portal, within will I enter! If the door be not opened that I may pass through it, The door will I shatter, its bolt break in pieces, Its sills will I burst, its doors tear asunder, The dead will I raise up, devourers and living, Even more than the living the dead will I raise up. The porter then opened his mouth and made answer, To the great goddess Ishtar, made answer the porter: "Withhold! O my lady, do not break it away, I go to Allatu, thy name to announce." The porter announced to the queen, to Allatu: "Thy sister, Ishtar, is come over these waters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ." When Allatu these tidings received (from the porter), Like a tamarisk cut she (bowed herself down) (?). Like a reed that is broken she (bent to the ground) (?). "What bringeth her heart to me, pray? What trouble? With this one forsooth (shall I share my dwelling?) As food eat the clay and as wine drink the water, Weep over men who their wives have abandoned, O'er maidens who mourn the embrace of their lovers, Weep o'er the infants destroyed e'er their day? Go! porter, throw open thy door--open to her! And treat her according to olden-time law." The porter departed, threw open his door; "O enter, my lady, a welcome in Hades! Palace of the land, that knows no returning, O let it rejoice in thy presence." The first door he caused her to enter, and halting, Removed the great crown from her head. "Why tak'st thou the great crown from my head, O porter?" "O enter, my lady, 'tis the law of Allatu." The next door he caused her to enter, and halting, The rings were removed from her ears. "Why tak'st thou the rings from my ears, O porter?" "O enter, my lady, 'tis the law of Allatu." The third door he caused her to enter, and halting, The necklace removed from her neck. "Why tak'st thou from my neck the necklace, O porter?" "O enter, my lady, 'tis the law of Allatu." The fourth door he caused her to enter, and halting, Her jewels removed from her breast. "Why tak'st thou from my breast the jewels, O porter?" "O enter, my lady, 'tis the law of Allatu." The fifth door he caused her to enter, and halting, The bearing-stone girdle he took off from her waist. "Why tak'st thou from my waist my gemmed-girdle, O porter?" "O enter, my lady, 'tis the law of Allatu." The sixth door he caused her to enter, and halting, Took the rings from her hands and her feet. "Why from hands and from feet take the rings, pray, O porter?" "O enter, my lady, 'tis the law of Allatu." The seventh door he caused her to enter, and halting, From her body her cincture removed. "Why take from my body my cincture, O porter?" "O enter, my lady, 'tis the law of Allatu." To the land without regress when Ishtar descended, Allatu beheld her and raged in her presence; Imprudently, boldly, did Ishtar attack her. Then opened Allatu her mouth and commanded, To Namtar, her servant, the order was given: "Go Namtar, confine her.... With disease of the eye, and the hip, and the foot, With disease of the heart, and the scalp, go smite Ishtar, Afflict her whole person!" After Ishtar, the goddess, had (been thus afflicted) (?) The bull no more covered the cow, nor ass gendered; No more in the street lay the man with the maiden; The man went asleep in his place, In her place slept the maiden. The god's-servant, Pap-su-kal, face down and sad-visaged, Was clothed in the garb of deep mourning. Shamash went, sorely wept before Sin, his father, His tears ran down before the king, Ea, Saying: "Ishtar's gone down to the land, and returns not. Since Ishtar's descent to the land without regress The bull no more covers the cow, nor ass genders; No more in the street lies the man with the maiden. The man falls asleep in his place, In her place sleeps the maiden." Then Ea created a male in his wisdom, The god's-servant, Uddushu-namir, created. "Go! Uddushu-namir, to land without regress, Seven doors of the land without regress be opened! Allatu behold thee, rejoice in thy presence! Her heart when at ease, and her spirit when joyful; In name of the great gods do thou adjure her: 'Thy head raise, to Hal-skin direct thy attention, O lady, I pray thee, Halziqu-skin give me; I desire to drink of the waters within it.'" This hearing, Allatu her sides smote, her nails bit. "Of me thou hast asked an impossible favor. Hence! Uddushu-namir, with curse will I curse thee; Thy food it shall be the foul mud of the city, From drains of the city shalt thou drink the water, The shade of the wall shall be thy dwelling, Thy place of abiding a stone-block shall build it. Confinement, privation, thy strength let them shatter." Allatu then opened her mouth and commanded, To Namtar, her servant, the order was given: "Go! Namtar, beat on the palace eternal! Go! rap on the stone slabs, those made out of _pa_-stone. Go! lead forth the spirits, on golden thrones set them, With water-of-life sprinkle Ishtar, the goddess, Lead her forth from my presence." Then went Namtar, beat on the palace eternal, And shook the stone slabs those made out of _pa_-stone; He led forth the spirits, on golden thrones set them, With water-of-life sprinkled Ishtar the goddess. Led her forth from her presence. Through first door he led her, gave to her her cincture. Through second door he led her, her rings he gave to her. Through third door he led her, gave back her gemmed-girdle. Through fourth door he led her, gave back her breast-jewels. Through fifth door he led her, gave to her her necklace. Through sixth door he led her, gave to her her ear-rings. Through seventh door he led her, the great crown gave to her. Here ends the descent of Ishtar. The priest continues: "If free she'll not free her, return with her to her And for Tammuz, her bridegroom in years that were youthful, Pour water e'en purest, with sweet balm (anoint him) And clothe him with garments, a flute (give unto him), Companions of Ishtar, let them wail with loud (wailing), The goddess, Belili, her treasure completed, High heaped are the eye-stones, her knees now supporteth, Her brother's complaint she then understanding, The great goddess Belili her treasures outpouring, She fills with the eye-stones the floor round about her (saying) 'My only one, brother mine, do me no evil.' When Tammuz with flute of fine lapiz discourseth, Then play with him joyfully flute of fine beryl, And play with him joyfully men mourners and women, The dead may arise the sweet incense inhaling." NOTE.--See Jastoon, "Religion of Babylonia and Assyria," page 563 ff., for a full discussion of this epic. [Illustration] GYGES AND ASSURBANIPAL. Gyges, king of Lydia, reigned B.C. 716-678. The Greek historian Herodotus has given an interesting account of him, but still more interesting is the following extract showing how he was regarded by the great king of Assyria, Assurbanipal (Sardanapalus). Gyges was the king of Lydia, a country beyond the seas, a distant land, of which the kings, my fathers, had never even heard the name. Assur, my divine generator, revealed my name to him in a dream, saying: "Assurbanipal, the king of Assyria; place thyself at his feet, and thou shalt conquer thy enemies in his name." The same day that he dreamed this dream, Gyges sent horsemen to salute me, and related to me the dream which he had had, by the mouth of his messengers. When the latter reached the frontiers of my empire and encountered the people of my empire, they said to him, "Who then art thou, stranger, whose land has never yet been visited by one of our couriers?" They sent him to Nineveh, the seat of my royalty, and brought him before me. The languages of the East and of the West, which Assur had given into my hand, none of those who spoke them could understand his language, and none of those who surrounded me had ever heard speech like unto it. In the space of my empire at last I found one who understood it, and he told me the dream. The same day that he placed himself at the feet of me, the king Assurbanipal, he defeated the Cimmerians, who oppressed the people of his land, who had not feared the kings, my fathers, and had not placed themselves at my feet. By the grace of Assur and Ishtar, the gods my masters, they took amidst the chiefs of the Cimmerians, whom he had defeated, two chiefs whom he chained heavily with manacles and fetters of iron, and he sent them to me with a rich present. Nevertheless the horsemen that he at first sent regularly to pay homage to me, he soon ceased to send. He would not obey the commands of Assur, my divine generator, but foolishly trusted in his own strength, and in the wishes of his heart. He sent his troops to the assistance of Psammetichus, king of Egypt, who had contemptuously thrown off my yoke. I heard this, and prayed to Assur and Ishtar: "May his body be thrown down before his enemies, and may his bones be dispersed." The Cimmerians, whom he had crushed in my name, reappeared and subjugated his whole land, and his son succeeded him upon the throne. The punishment which the gods, who are my strength, had drawn upon his father at my request, he told me by his messengers, and he placed himself at my feet, saying: "Thou art a king acknowledged by the gods. Thou cursedst my father, and misfortune fell upon him. Send me thy blessing, for I am thy servant, who fears thee, and will wear thy yoke." [Illustration] PURITY. "Purity is the best of all things; purity is the fairest of all things, even as thou hast said, O righteous Zarathustra." With these words the holy Ahura-Mazda rejoiced the holy Zarathustra: "Purity is for man, next to life, the greatest good; that purity which is procured by the law of Mazda to him who cleanses his own self with good thoughts, words and deeds." O Maker of the material world, thou Holy One! This law, this fiend-destroying law of Zarathustra, by what greatness, goodness, and fairness is it great, good, and fair above all other utterances? Ahura-Mazda answered: "As much above all other floods as is the sea, so much above all other utterances in greatness, goodness, and fairness is this law, this fiend-destroying law of Zarathustra. As much as a great stream flows swifter than a slender rivulet, so much above all other utterances in greatness, goodness, and fairness is this law, this fiend-destroying law of Zarathustra. As high as the great cypress tree stands above the small plants it overshadows, so high above all other utterances in greatness, goodness, and fairness is this law, this fiend-destroying law of Zarathustra. As high as heaven is above the earth that it compasses around, so high above all other utterances is this law, this fiend-destroying law of Zarathustra. "Therefore when the high priest has been applied to by a penitent, when any of the Magi has been applied to, whether for draona-service[A] that has been undertaken or that has not been undertaken, the priest has power to remit one-third of the penalty he had to pay: if he has committed any other evil deed, it is remitted by his repentance; if he has committed no other evil deed, he is absolved by his repentance forever and ever." [A] A service in honor of spirits or deceased persons in which small cakes (_draona_) are blessed in their name and eaten by those present. ZOROASTER'S PRAYER. This Gatha or hymn is supposed to be a prayer prescribed by Zoroaster for the teachers of his religion. The first verse is the prelude always used before reciting or chanting any of the Gathas in the Parsi religious service. A strengthening blessing is the thought, a blessing is the word, a blessing is the deed of the righteous Zarathustra. May the Bountiful Immortals accept and help on the chants. Homage to you, O sacred Gathas! With venerating desire for this gift of gracious help, O Mazda, and stretching forth my hands to Thee I pray for the first blessing of Thy bountiful Spirit; that is, I beseech of Thee that my actions toward all may be performed in Righteousness; and with this I implore from Thee the understanding of Thy Good Spirit, in order that I may propitiate the Soul of the Kine. And therefore, O Great Creator, the Living Lord! inspired by Thy Good Spirit, I approach You, and beseech of Thee to grant me as a bountiful gift for both the worlds, that of the body and that of mind, those attainments which are to be derived from the Divine Righteousness, and by means of which those who receive it may enter into beatitude and glory! O thou Divine Righteousness, and thou Good Spirit of Deity! I will worship you, and Ahura Mazda the first, for all of whom the pious ready mind within us is causing the imperishable Kingdom to advance. And while I thus utter my supplications to You, come Ye to my calls to help! Yea, I will approach You with my supplications, I who am delivering up my mind and soul to that heavenly Mount whither all the redeemed at last must pass, knowing full well the holy characteristics and rewards of the actions prescribed by Ahura Mazda. And so long as I am able and may have the power, so long will I teach Your people concerning these holy deeds to be done by them with faith toward God, and in the desire for the coming of the Divine Righteousness within their souls. And, thou Righteousness! when shall I see thee, knowing the Good Mind of God, and above all the Obedience of our lives which constitutes the way to the most beneficent Ahura Mazda? Asking this, I thus beseech thee, for with this holy word of supplication we best keep off with tongue the flesh-devouring fiends, the very sign and power of all spiritual foulness! * * * * * THE HEBREWS AND THEIR NEIGHBORS. CHAPTER I. SYRIA. Syria is the northern extremity of the Arabian peninsula. The word _Syria_ is a shortened form of _Assyria_, and was given by the Greeks, at first to the whole Assyrian empire, and later restricted to the strip of land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Euphrates valley. Today the name is applied to the region east of Palestine, reaching to the Taurus mountains on the north and on the south and west bounded by deserts. Its very location determined that this should never become the home of a united, homogeneous people. It has always been a highway connecting Asia and Africa and trade routes have extended through it since the earliest recorded ages. Egyptian armies pressing into Asia in an early day traversed its midst and so did those of somewhat later times pushing westward from Mesopotamia, bound upon foreign conquest. "Syria lies between two continents--Asia and Africa; between two primeval homes of men--the valleys of the Euphrates and the Nile; between two great centers of empire--Western Asia and Egypt; between all these, representing the Eastern and ancient world, and the Mediterranean, which is the gateway to the Western and modern world. Syria has been likened to a bridge between Asia and Africa--a bridge with the desert on one side and the sea upon the other; and, in truth, all the great invasions of Syria, with two exceptions, have been delivered across her northern and southern ends.... Syria is not only the bridge between Asia and Africa: she is the refuge of the drifting populations of Arabia. She has not only been the highroad of civilizations and the battle-field of empires, but the pasture and the school of innumerable little tribes. She has been not merely an open channel of war and commerce for nearly the whole world, but the vantage-ground and opportunity of the world's highest religions. In this strange mingling of bridge and harbour, of highroad and field, of battle-ground and sanctuary, of seclusion and opportunity--rendered possible through the striking division of her surface into mountain and plain--lies all the secret of Syria's history, under the religion which has lifted her fame to glory."[1] The country falls naturally into many small districts in which petty states have arisen but which never developed into strong kingdoms. These have left but scanty remains of their civilizations. We know nothing of Syria prior to 3500 B.C. There are evidences that this region, like Chaldea, was occupied first by a primitive people, probably belonging to the Turanian race. When a great Semitic outpouring from Arabia caused the ancient Chaldean nation to be engulfed by a vigorous people, Syria as well suffered an invasion. During years of Babylonian dominance, Syria fell to the share of Babylonian kings. "The land of the setting sun," as they called it, was named with their possessions. When Thutmose III. led his armies into Asia to avenge the insult done Egyptian honor when the Hyksos kings ruled the valley of the Nile, he established a certain supremacy over Syria which lasted for perhaps two centuries. He established several royal cities, or "halting places"--so called because his majesty tarried in them and directed the construction of fortifications. Tribute was exacted and was paid with some regularity until the time of Amenhotep IV. He was too occupied with religious reformation and the exaltation of the Solar Disk faith to give attention to his foreign possessions. The Tell-el-Amarna letters in many instances portray the condition of Syria when Egypt's name was no longer a protection and incoming tribes were plundering right and left.[2] The spirit of unrest was again abroad among the nations and the Hittites now invaded Western Asia. Who they were and from whence they came has never been satisfactorily settled. Certain it is they were not Semitic. They belonged to the great white race, but their history is still to be written. Part of the natives sided with them; part remained loyal to Egypt, and the rest attempted to establish their own independence. Commerce was interrupted, caravans were plundered, and civil strife was general throughout the land. In a brief time the Hittites made themselves supreme in Syria, which became known as the Land of the Hittites. About 1200 B.C. a fresh invasion brought several new tribes, among others, the Philistines. They again were probably not Semitics but of the Aryan race. The Hittite nation was now broken up into several small states, none of which became as powerful as the original nation. With the weakening of Hittite strength, opportunity arose for petty states to develop. The great powers left the country in peace for three or four hundred years, and Syrian states prospered and grew strong. The era of the Judges in Israel fell into this period, and between the Hebrews and certain Syrian tribes there was intermittent war. With the reign of Tiglath-Pileser I. Assyria launched forth on her career of conquest. In a westward march made by this conqueror, northern Syria yielded to Assyrian arms and offered tribute. Damascus alone was left undisturbed, for opposition was sure to be strong on the part of this ancient city. With some intervening years during which tribute could not be collected and when allegiance to Nineveh was denied, Assyrian influence dominated Syria, and frequently vigorous rule was enforced. When Assyria fell, the New Babylonian empire kept guard over the west. With the end of Babylonian rule, and the ascendency of Persia, Semitic dominance came to an end. Under Persia, and later under Greece, new states came into existence and Aryan rule began. In the ages with which we are at present concerned, however, Syria remained to the portion of Semitic tribes. We have found Arabia the original home of this race. Providing at best but a scanty living for her children, when tribes multiplied rapidly Arabia seems to have cast out a portion of her inhabitants to make room for the rest. Chaldea--later Babylonia--was peopled by such an outpouring, while at the same time tribes spread into Syria and settled spots which promised adequate food and pasturage. Later comers were compelled to journey past these occupied lands and seek lands farther west, or to overcome the natives and supplant them. Some one has aptly said that different tribes fitted themselves into the "shelves and corners of Syria," and that is just what they did. It would have been as impossible for Syria, with its irregular surfaces, to have produced one united nation as for Greece or Switzerland to have contained a people whose national concerns outweighed their local interests. Highland and lowland, plateau and plain, mountain range and valley--these at length were occupied by little clans or more numerous tribes, while the more exposed regions were open to the nomads who came like birds for a season, or tarried a few brief years and penetrated farther west, or who perhaps merely loitered on their way to Egypt--the land of water and abundant grain. "Syria is the northern and most fertile end of the great Semitic home--the peninsula of Arabia. But the Semitic home is distinguished by its central position in geography--between Asia and Africa, and between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean, which is Europe; and the _role_ in history of the Semitic race has been also intermediary. The Semitics have been the great middlemen of the world. Not second-rate in war, they have risen to the first rank in commerce and religion. They have been the carriers between East and West, they have stood between the great ancient civilizations and those which go to make up the modern world; while by a higher gift, for which their conditions neither in place nor in time fully account, they have been mediary between God and man, and proved the religious teachers of the world, through whom have come its three highest faiths, its only universal religions. Syria's history is her share in this great function of intermedium, which has endured from the earliest times to the present day."[3] "The head of Syria is Damascus," wrote Isaiah two thousand years ago. So it has since continued to be, with short periods of change. The venerable city, made possible and beautiful by the waters of the Abana, has survived many sacks and slaughters. It is sometimes called the oldest city in the world, meaning of course, the one of greatest age yet standing. Still it has few relics of antiquity. Old material has constantly been utilized in the construction of new buildings and monuments. Its position has often been commented upon. "It is an astonishing site for what is said to be the oldest, and is certainly the most enduring, city of the world. For it is utterly incapable of defence; it is remote from the sea and the great natural lines of commerce. From the coast of Syria it is double barred by those ranges of snow-capped mountains whose populations enjoy more tempting prospects to the north and west. But look east and you understand Damascus. "You would as soon think of questioning the site of New York or of San Francisco. Damascus is a great harbour of refuge upon the earliest sea man ever learned to navigate. It is because there is nothing but desert beyond, or immediately behind this site; because this river, the Abana, instead of wasting her waters on a slight extension of the fringe of fertile Syria, saves them in her narrow gorge till she can fling them well out upon the desert, and there, instead of slowly expending them on the doubtful possibilities of a province, lavishes all her life at once in the creation of a single great city, and straightway dies in face of the desert--it is because of all this that Damascus, so remote and so defenceless, has endured throughout human history, and must endure. Nineveh, Babylon and Memphis easily conquered her--she probably preceded them, and she has outlived them. She has been twice supplanted--by Antioch, and she has seen Antioch decay, by Baghdad, and Baghdad is forgotten. She has been many times sacked, and twice at least the effective classes of her population have been swept into captivity, but this has not broken the chain of her history. She was once capital of the world from the Atlantic to the Bay of Bengal, but the vast empire went from her and the city continued to flourish as before. Standing on the utmost edge of fertility, on the shore of the much-voyaged desert, Damascus is indispensable alike to civilization and to the nomads. Moreover, she is the city of the Mediterranean world which lies nearest to the far East, and Islam has made her the western port of Mecca."[4] Having traversed the desert wastes, the city of Damascus lies invitingly before the wearied traveller. There is an old tradition that Mohammet once approached the town and viewed it from neighboring hills. Before him lay its grateful shade and restful streets, its tide of busy life, its wealth, its diversions--behind him lay the monotonous sea of sand, its parching heat and treeless plains. The great religious teacher was apparently afraid to trust himself to the enticing influences of the city. He turned away, saying: "Man can enter Paradise but once; if I pass into Damascus I shall be excluded from the other Paradise reserved for the faithful." Our word _damask_ stands today in memory of the age when damask or Damascus silk, embroidered in richest colors, with threads of silver and gold, stood forth unmatched by fabrics of other lands. Today the word is ordinarily applied to round linen thread, woven in fruit, flower, or conventional designs, as was the silk originally. The swords of Damascus also gained world-renown. They were so thin that they could be tied into knots without injuring them in the least, and so strong that they would cut through iron or wood without being marred. A certain watery steel, more true and resistable than ordinary, made the "trusty sword of Damascus" popular in many lands. It lies beyond our province to trace the comings and goings of tribes within the land of Syria. At best Syrian history is fragmentary and is suited for the student of the Semitic race rather than the general reader. We shall happen upon facts connected with it as we study the history of the Hebrews, and the empire age of the Mesopotamian states. FOOTNOTES: [1] George Adam Smith: Historical Geog. of the Holy Land, 6. [2] Tell-el-Amarna Letters described in The Story of Babylonia and Assyria. [3] Smith: Hist. Geog. of Holy Land, 5. [4] Smith: Hist. Geog. of Holy Land, 642. CHAPTER II. THE LAND OF PHOENICIA. Geographically, Phoenicia was a small state. It lay between a spur of the Taurus mountains--Mt. Casius--on the north and Carmel on the south; washed by the Mediterranean Sea on the west, it was protected by a lofty mountain range on the east. These natural boundaries were important, since they shut in the land and sheltered it in a great measure from invasions and plundering raids. About 200 miles in length, Phoenicia ranged from one to thirty-five miles in width. A narrow sandy coast-belt skirted the western side and was covered with date-palms, which gave the region its name. Greek sailors, coasting along the eastern shore of the sea, saw the luxuriant palms from afar, and called the whole eastern coast Phoenike--Land of Palms. Later, learning more particularly of the various nations which dwelt therein, they restricted the name to the country we are now studying. East of the palm belt extend the fertile plains of Phoenicia. Here grew gardens, orchards and fields of grain, which made the district a veritable paradise. "'The cultivated tract presents for the most part an unbroken mass of corn, out of which rise here and there slight eminences in the midst of gardens and orchards--the sites of cities.' The gardens are gay with scarlet blossoms of the pomegranate, the orchards famous for the enormous oranges which diversify the green foliage of their shady groves."[1] Here was grown the food supply which supported the whole population of the country, generally speaking, while on the low hills which bounded the plain on the east, the vine, olive and mulberry were cultivated. At last, the high mountains arose, bare in spots and elsewhere covered with forest trees--oaks, chestnuts and the mighty cedars. Several streams, mountain-born, rushed down steep sides, furnished moisture and added fertility to the plains, then found their way to the sea. Chief of these in early times, as today, was the Litany. This river rises 10,000 feet above the sea, and "forces its way through Lebanon by a deep and narrow gorge, in which it frets and chafes many hundred feet below the eye of the spectator, descending precipitously, and at last debouching upon the plain by a ravine, about five miles northeast of Tyre. It has been compared to a 'monster serpent chained in the yawning gulf, where she writhes and struggles evermore to escape from her dark and narrow prison, but always in vain, save only near the sea-shore, where her windings reach a close.'"[2] Irregularities of the coast supplied harbors which would be quite inadequate for modern ships, but sufficed for the vessels of antiquity. Fringes of islets, near the shore, made refuge for sailors in time of storm in an age when no boats drew deep water, and when even the largest might be drawn up on the beach if necessary. The climate of Phoenicia varied according to the locality. That of the plain was mild and pleasant, while snow lay most of the year upon the mountain peaks rising easterly. The scenery of the narrow strip changes constantly as one journeys east or west. Islands of the Mediterranean invited the sailor to venture far out from his native shore, and at an early period the sea was dotted over by the merchant-ships of the Phoenicians. East, north and south high mountains offer a varied aspect to the traveller. The Lebanon range has always been notably beautiful. "The elevation rises gradually as we proceed north-ward, until the range culminates in the peaks above the cedars, which are estimated to attain a height of from nine thousand to ten thousand feet.... Garden cultivation carpets the base of the mountain; above this is, for the most part, a broad fringe of olive groves; higher up, the hill sides are carefully terraced, not an inch of ground being wasted; and among sharp cliffs and pointed rocks of a grey-white hue are strips of cornfields, long rows of dwarf mulberries, figs, apricots, apples, walnuts, and other fruit trees. Gorges, ravines, charming glens, deep valleys, diversify the mountain sides; here and there are tremendous chasms, with precipices that go sheer down for a thousand feet; tiny rivulets bound and leap from rock to rock and from terrace to terrace, forming chains of cascades, refreshing and fertilizing all around. In the deep gorges flow copious streams, shaded by overhanging woods of pines or cedars; and towards the summit are in several places magnificent cedar groves, remnants of the primeval forest which once clothed the greater part of the mountain. Above all towers the bare limestone of the dorsal ridge, always white enough to justify the name Lebanon (White Mountain), and for eight months of the year clothed with a mantle of snow."[3] Semitic tribes, journeying out of Arabia at a remote period, crossed into Chaldea, and after a sojourn which cannot now be estimated, worked their way westward to the region just described. In all probability Turanians held the territory. With these they intermingled and inter-married, while kinsmen coming later from the old Arabian home, kept the stock nearly pure Semitic. One of the oldest settlements was made at Sidon, the name of the town commemorating the earliest occupation of its people. _Sidon_ signifies _fishery_, and it is supposed that the first comers were fishermen. In later years when Sidon was the wealthiest city in Western Asia, and when her proud merchantmen had left nets to the portion of the humblest born, the early name stood in memory of primitive days. Sidon was built on the shore, while her natural harbor consisted of a little circlet of islands which afforded shelter for sailing crafts. An excellent harbor was constructed with this breakwater, but it is significant to note that Sidon's strongholds were on the shore. Some of her inhabitants at length departed from the mother-city and settled at Tyre, near the southern part of the Phoenician coast. The word _Tyre_ means _rock_, and while settlements were made on the shore as well, the famous city of antiquity was built on an island, half a mile from the mainland. This island was about two and one-half miles in width and was completely surrounded by a wall, one hundred feet high. With water around her and mighty walls as well, Tyre was wellnigh impregnable in times of siege. The little town of Dora grew up where shell-fish abounded. These were valued for a secretion they yielded which was made up into a dye of royal purple, world-renowned in ancient times. Gebal became famous for its shipyards. Tripolis gained celebrity as head of a league of cities made up of Tyre, Aradus and Tripolis. The Phoenicians left no history of their country. No other ancient people came in contact with so many nations and none had more material at hand from which to formulate a record of their time, but they were a nation of traders and appear to have been quite lacking in literature of their own and in chroniclers of any sort. Not only is there utter dearth of writings, but ruins and remains of Phoenician civilization are comparatively few. The Phoenicians built well, but their structures were either torn down by ruthless conquerors, or, like those of Carthage, became quarries for other nations. We are consequently forced to reconstruct their history from other sources--from writings of men of other lands, often hostile to them and so prejudiced in their point of view. The characteristic life of the Phoenicians led into the busy marts of men--not to the library or cloister, and a study of their history involves a study of the commerce of their time. It is doubtful whether the future can produce material for any complete history of Phoenicia. We know practically nothing of the prehistoric period in the country, and when reports of the nation begin, the people had already reached a high proficiency on the sea and possessed wealthy cities. The commercial spirit, so strong in the Semitic race seems to have reached its extreme expression in the people of this little state. If they possessed any aptitude for pursuits other than trading, we know little of them. In the periods known to us there was no national life nor government. Each city developed independently and appears to have had only commercial ambitions. The natural contour of the land allowed the people to build up a mighty system of trade which penetrated into every country known to antiquity, while their sea-ports remained long protected from aggressive rulers of Egypt and Mesopotamia. The Phoenician cities were mentioned as early as 1475 B.C., when Thutmose III. made his strength felt in Western Asia. They united with the Hittite nation against him, but were defeated and made gifts of submission. Sidon was the older city, and tradition has it that about 1200 B.C. the Philistines--earlier inhabitants of the country--fought a battle with Sidon and defeated her, whereupon some of her citizens escaped and founded Tyre. Quite as probable is a more recent supposition that Sidon, wealthy and given over to ease and pleasure, gradually weakened, while the younger and more vigorous town of Tyre became the leader. Hiram seems to have been the most renowned king of Tyre. He enlarged the island upon which the city stood. Filling in the lagoon between two islands, he joined them together, forming thus one large island. Being a prolific builder, he erected huge structures of stone, which together with wood, made up the building material of Phoenicia. For some time previous to his reign, Judah had been growing in strength. She had held out against the Philistines, and was being welded into a well organized state. Hiram considered it good policy to seek the friendship of Judah's king, and he and King David remained good friends. This same friendship was offered to Solomon when he succeeded his father as ruler of the Hebrews, and aid was given the Hebrews in the construction of their temple, Phoenician timber and skilled workmen being supplied. An account of the matter has come to us from the Hebrews: "And Hiram, king of Tyre, sent his servants unto Solomon; for he had heard that they had anointed him king in the room of his father: for Hiram was ever a lover of David. And Solomon sent to Hiram saying: 'Thou knowest how that David my father could not build an house unto the name of the Lord his God for the wars which were about him on every side, until the Lord put them under the soles of his feet. But now the Lord my God hath given me rest on every side, so that there is neither adversary nor evil occurrent. And behold, I purpose to build an house unto the name of the Lord my God, as the Lord spake unto David, my father, saying: 'Thy son whom I will set upon thy throne in thy room, he shall build an house unto my name. Now therefore command thou that they hew me cedar trees out of Lebanon; and my servants shall be with thy servants; and unto thee will I give hire for thy servants according to all that thou shalt appoint: for thou knowest that there is not among us any that can skill to hew timber like unto the Sidonians.' "And it came to pass, when Hiram heard the words of Solomon, that he rejoiced greatly, and said: 'Blessed be the Lord this day, which hath given unto David a wise son over this great people.' And Hiram sent to Solomon, saying: 'I have considered the things which thou sentest to me for; and I will do all thy desire concerning timber of cedar and concerning timber of fir. My servants shall bring them down from Lebanon unto the sea: and I will convey them by sea in floats unto the place that thou shalt appoint me, and I will cause them to be discharged there, and thou shalt receive them: and thou shalt accomplish my desire, in giving food for my household.' "So Hiram gave Solomon cedar trees and fir trees according to all his desire. And Solomon gave Hiram twenty thousand measures of wheat for food to his household, and twenty measures of pure oil: thus gave Solomon to Hiram year by year.... And there was peace between Hiram and Solomon; and they two made a league together.... And the king commanded and they brought great stones, costly stones, and hewed stones, to lay the foundation of the house. And Solomon's builders and Hiram's builders did hew them, and the stonequarriers: so they prepared timber and stones to build the house."[4] The temple stood at last a memorial to the skillful workmanship of Phoenicia as well as a tribute of honor to Jehovah, God of Israel. After the death of Hiram, during whose reign the country had prospered, the government soon passed from his family. A class of wealthy merchants had arisen in Tyre and they demanded official positions for themselves. The king they crowned became king of Sidon as well. Before 1000 B.C. exiles from Tyre, driven out for political reasons, founded Carthage, best known of all Phoenicia's colonies. As early as 880 B.C. danger threatened Phoenicia from Assyria. Protected by the efficient barrier of a mountain range, the commercial ports had been free to develop their trade without serious interruption. They immediately offered to pay tribute rather than fight, and Assyrian tablets recount products sent by them. By 727 B.C. the yoke of Assyria had become oppressive and Tyre revolted. A siege of five years followed and was at length raised with no result, for Tyre could not be cut off from the sea. About 680 B.C. Baal was crowned king of Tyre with the consent of the Assyrian ruler. Nevertheless, he shortly announced his independence and became a sturdy opponent of Assyrian aggression. In 668 B.C. Asshurbanipal led an army against the sea-coast cities, especially against the most powerful, Tyre. "Against Baal, King of Tyre, dwelling in the midst of the sea, I went, because my royal will he disregarded, and did not harken unto the words of my mouth. Towers round about him I raised, and over his people I strengthened the watch. On land and sea his forts I took; his going out I stopped. Brackish water and sea water their mouths drank to preserve their lives. With a strong blockade, which removed not, I besieged them; their spirits I humbled and caused to melt away; to my yoke I made them submissive." When Assyria was threatened by Median power, the cities on the coast again shook themselves free from the hated tribute and at this juncture Tyre rose to her greatest influence. About 600 B.C. Egypt tried to bring Western Asia under her dominance and under her direction Phoenician sailors circumnavigated Africa. Nebuchadnezzar determined to end rebellions in the west for all time and to bring the coast under Babylonian rule. Tyre held out against him and a siege of thirteen years ensued. The Hebrew prophet Ezekiel foretold the result: "Behold I am against thee, O Tyre, and will cause many nations to come up against thee, as the sea causeth his waves to come up. And they shall destroy the walls of Tyre, and break down her towers: I will also scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock.... "Behold I will bring upon Tyre Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, a king of kings, from the north with horses, and with chariots and with horsemen, and companies, and much people. He shall slay with the sword thy daughters in the field: and he shall make a fort against thee, and cast a mount against thee, and lift up the buckler against thee. And he shall set engines of war against thy walls, and with his axes he shall break down thy towers. By reason of the abundance of his horses their dust shall cover thee: thy walls shall shake at the noise of the horsemen, and of the wheels and of the chariots, when he shall enter into thy gates, as men enter into a city wherein is made a breach. With the hoofs of his horses shall he tread down all thy streets: he shall slay thy people by the sword, and thy strong garrisons shall go down to the ground. And they shall make a spoil of thy riches, and make a prey of thy merchandise: and they shall break down thy walls, and destroy thy pleasant houses: and they shall lay thy stones and thy timber and thy dust in the midst of the water. "And I will cause the noise of thy songs to cease; and the sound of thy harps shall be no more heard. And I will make thee like the top of a rock: thou shalt be a place to spread nets upon."[5] These prophecies were fulfilled, and having rallied again, and once more sent forth their merchant vessels, these cities fell shortly to the share of Persia. Cambyses depended wholly upon their navy, so that when Phoenician sailors refused to sweep down upon Carthage, he was obliged to abandon his idea of subduing that colony.[6] In 362 B.C. Sidon revolted against Persian oppression. When at last the fall of their city was at hand, 40,000 Sidonians shut themselves in their houses and set fire to them rather than become spoils for the conqueror. Some years later, when the young Macedonia conqueror, Alexander the Great, reached this district in course of his brief conquest, the Phoenician cities, wearied of Persian taxes, hailed his coming with joy. One after another, the towns sent presents until it was left for Tyre alone to do homage to the young monarch. Her citizens sent an embassy to meet him with a crown of gold and announced their willingness to do his bidding. Alexander replied that he was pleased by their action and would visit their city to offer sacrifices in their temple--for the Greeks identified the god of the Phoenicians with their Hercules. The reply being made known in the city, the people feared that some hidden purpose prompted the Greek to seek their island home, and they sent to him again saying that they would pay whatever tribute he exacted, but that they did not wish the Greek army to march through their streets. This angered Alexander and he announced that if the gates of Tyre did not open to him, he would open them by force. Tyre had withstood many a siege and she did not hesitate to take a firm stand. Carthaginians who chanced to be within her walls advised that help would be forthcoming were it needed, and it was supposed furthermore, that Persia would never see her empire turned over to the Greeks without a struggle. Above all, Tyre had faith in the strength of her walls and in her fleet. Sieges in the past had often failed because Tyre could not be approached by battering rams and engines of war. As has already been said, the island upon which the city stood lay one-half mile from the shore. Her harbors were the best on the Phoenician coast. One lay on the north side and was called the Sidonian harbor because it looked towards Sidon; the other was on the south side, and was called the Egyptian harbor since it faced the land of the pyramids. Stone piers ran out some considerable distance in the sea and made safe refuge for vessels in stormy weather. Rough winds might have made entrance to the port impossible had the harbor extended on one side only, hence the two harbors were early constructed and were connected by a canal, extending through the city, making it thus possible for a ship to enter by one harbor and clear port from the other. Now Alexander conceived the bold design of building a broad bridge or mole from the continent to the island, that he might bring his war engines up to the city walls. Forthwith, operations were started on the shore, in shallow water. Two rows of piles were driven 200 feet from each other and the intervening distance was filled in with earth and stone. When the mole reached out where the force of the current was felt, however, the earthwork was carried away as rapidly as it was built. Moreover, the Tyrians grasped his plan and harried the laborers continually. They brought their boats near enough to attack them and compel them to abandon their undertaking. The Greeks met this obstacle by preparing a curtain of hides to cover the workmen, and raised two lofty wooden towers wherein soldiers were stationed to charge upon ships interfering with the work. The citizens of Tyre thereupon equipped one of their largest transports as a fire-ship, and filling it with all sorts of combustible material, sent it floating against the Greek towers, a mass of fire. This was effectual, and Alexander returned from a temporary absence to find the work of weeks obliterated. This general never allowed confronting obstacles to baffle him, and under his personal supervision the labor began anew. The struggle had come to mean more than the subjection of an independent city--it signified Greek capacity and ingenuity against Asiatic opposition on the very threshold of a coveted continent. Earth, trees and stones were hurled rapidly into the sea, but Tyrian divers with grappling hooks dragged out whole trees and brush, destroying the solidity of the mass. Then Alexander realized that he could accomplish nothing without a navy. Without aid of a fleet he might be detained indefinitely with one obstinate city. He immediately levied vessels and crews from those towns which had already surrendered to him. As fate would have it, the Persian fleet came voluntarily into his hands and shortly 224 vessels were ready to move against Tyre. Under their protection the construction of the mole went on rapidly. Tyre soon understood that her only hope lay in chancing a sea battle. The number of ships against her was overwhelming, and after a gallant start, she was defeated. "The last chance was over--the last effort had failed--but the Tyrians would not give in any the more. They still met every attack upon the walls with a determined resistance, and with a fertility of resource that was admirable. To deaden the blows of the battering-ram, and the force of the stones hurled from the catapults, leather bags filled with sea-weed were let down from the walls at the point assailed. Wheels set in rapid motion intercepted the darts and javelins thrown into the town, turning them aside, or blunting, or sometimes breaking them. When the towers erected upon the mole were brought close up to the defences, and an attempt was made to throw bridges from them to the battlements, and thus to pass soldiers into the city, the Tyrians flung grappling-hooks among the soldiers on the bridges, which caught in the bodies of some, mangling them terribly, dragging their shields from others, and hauled some bodily into the air, dashing them against the wall or upon the ground. Masses of red-hot metal were prepared and hurled against the towers and against the scaling parties. Sand was heated to a glow and showered upon all who approached the foot of the walls: it penetrated through the joints of the armour, and caused such intolerable pain, that the coats of mail were torn off and flung aside, whereupon the sufferers were soon put _hors de combat_ by lance thrusts and missiles. The battering-rams were attacked by engines constructed for the purpose, which brought sharp scythes, attached to long poles, into contact with the ropes and thongs used in working them, and cut them through. Further, wherever the wall showed signs of giving way, the defenders began to construct an inner wall, to take the place of the outer one, when it should be demolished."[7] When the walls at length gave way and soldiers made an entrance into the town, they had to fight a battle in every house and win their ground in street and building, foot by foot. Ten thousand were massacred and thirty thousand women and children were sold into slavery. The city was left in 332 B.C. in a half-ruined condition with few inhabitants. In a few years Tyre rose again but the days of her greatness were gone. We have seen that during the first part of her history Phoenicia was left practically alone and during the later portion suffered repeated attacks. How can we account for the frequent despoiling of her proud cities during her later years? Owing to their position and consequent trade, the Phoenician cities became wealthy rapidly. They naturally attracted the notice of kings who were trying to carry on extensive projects at home. Those who conquered them, or who sought to do so, coveted their riches for the adornment of their own capitals or for some personal enterprise at home. So advantageous was the situation of these cities that, left crippled and in ruins by the enemy, or under less severe circumstances, forced to pay a heavy tribute, losses were quickly made good, and the stricken towns would soon again be amassing wealth. Having control of the greater portion of the commerce of their day, they were able to exchange commodities of slight value with nations who possessed gold or other precious wares and knew nothing of their value, save that they were thereby enabled to procure articles they desired. "Gold for brass, the worth of a hundred oxen for the value of nine,"--it was this opportunity, recognized and seized upon, which made it possible for this little strip of land to become the store-house of riches coveted by nations on all sides. Concerning the political history of Phoenicia we know little, as has already been said. When her wealthy cities were attacked by foreigners, these strangers have sometimes told the story from their own point of view, but so far as government in times of peace, local administration and kindred matters, material has not survived to allow its course of progress to be reconstructed. [Illustration: GROWTH OF THE ALPHABET.] FOOTNOTES: [1] Rawlinson: Phoenicia, 3. [2] Rawlinson: Phoenicia, 11. [3] Rawlinson: Phoenicia, 17. [4] I Kings, 5, 1-18. [5] Ezekiel 26, 3-14. [6] See The Story of the Persians. [7] Rawlinson; Phoenicia, 231. CHAPTER III. PHOENICIAN COLONIES AND COMMERCE. It is natural to consider Phoenicia's colonies in connection with her commerce, for while many nations have colonized regions remote for the purpose of extending their territory or perpetuating a faith, her outposts were opened solely for the benefit of trade. Phoenicia's colonies may be said to have been the outgrowth of her mercantile concerns, although in some instances, dissatisfaction with political conditions in the home city proved an additional incentive. Probably the first foreign settlement was made in Egypt. Desiring to control routes of trade in the valley of the Nile, Tyrians obtained permission to settle in Memphis. This settlement could hardly be called a colony in the ordinary sense of the word, for the home city exercised no political control over those of its subjects dwelling in Egypt--nor did it seek to do so. Phoenicia excelled in trade--not government. With this station at Memphis, Tyre was able to obtain not only products of the valley but those also which were brought into Egypt from the south. Ivory, ebony, skins, ostrich feathers, grain, pottery, glass--these and other commodities here available were shipped away for consumption in Italy, Greece and Asia Minor. The Egyptians, so resentful of foreigners ordinarily, appear to have found the Phoenicians unobjectionable and of actual service to them. The little colony was allowed to maintain its own customs, and it is supposed that a temple sacred to Astoreth was erected here as early as 1250 B.C. The islands west of Tyre were early peopled by Phoenicians, or, at least, contained Phoenician settlements. Timber suitable for ship-building was obtained in Cilicia, copper and precious stones in Cyprus, pine lumber and figs in Rhodes. Utica, on the Gulf of Tunis, was an early colony on the African side of the Mediterranean. Coasting alone this shore, the sea-farers came to Spain, where they established important trading points. They penetrated as far west as the Cornwall mines, which supplied an inexhaustible amount of tin. The islands off the Cornish coast they called the "Cassiterides" or Tin Islands. "Phoenician colonization--or colonization from Phoenicia Proper--was in all probability limited within the extremes of the Dardanelles to the north, Memphis to the south, and Gadeira and the Cassiterides to the west. It was less widely diffused than the Greek, and less generally spread over the coasts accessible to it. With a few exceptions, the colonies fall into three groups--first, those of the Eastern Mediterranean and Aegean, beginning with Cyprus and terminating with Cythera; secondly those of the Central Mediterranean, in North Africa, Sicily, and the adjacent islands; and thirdly, those of the Western Mediterranean, chiefly on the south coast of Spain, with perhaps a few on the opposite (African) shore. The other settlements, commonly called Phoenician on the eastern coast of Spain, in the Balearic Islands, in Corsica and Elba; and again those on the Western Africa coast, between the Straits of Gibraltar and the Cape de Verde, were Punic or Carthaginian, rather than Phoenician."[1] Finally something must be said of Carthage, for while her palmy days as well as her decline, were closely related to Roman history, her beginnings were inseparable with the mother-country. The word Carthage signifies _New City_, and the settlement was so named in all probability to distinguish it from Utica, founded 300 years before. 850 B.C. has been considered the latest possible date for the founding of the town, while many hold that it was settled as early as 1000 B.C. It matters little which is accepted, since the place was neither strong nor influential for many years after either date. Its citizens came originally from Tyre. The "New City" was built on what is now the Bay of Tunis, a little to the north-west of the present town of Tunis. Nothing, practically, is known of its early history. Kings ruled at first, but were later abolished. Polybius, a Greek historian, stated that he had seen a treaty made between Rome and Carthage as early as 509 B.C., by which the Carthaginians bound themselves not to injure any Latin city while the Romans were pledged not to interfere with Carthaginian markets in the western Mediterranean. Because of its fortunate position the city became very prosperous. The Greeks tried to divert some of its trade into their own channels, and later, Rome was its hated rival and continued to struggle with the city until she effected its downfall. "From the time when the first adventurers from the Syrian coast entered the sheltered inlets of the African shore--a remote period, even before Saul was made king of Israel and while Priam sat on the throne of Troy--down to the seventh century of the Christian era, when the Arabs passed over it like a whirlwind, this land has been the battlefield where destinies of nations have been sealed, and where heroes and warriors have sought their last resting place. The myths that surround its earliest development and shed a halo of romance over the career of its primitive races are somewhat obscured by the sterner facts of later times--by wars innumerable, wars of invasion and local disturbances, succeeded by a long period of piracy and power insured, and finally by neglect, abandonment, and decay. The legend of Dido still hangs over Carthage hill. The spirit of Hannibal haunts the fateful Zanca, and the banks of the Midjerda hold in everlasting memory the story of Regulus and his affrighted array. The air is full of myths and old-world stories which faithfully represent the traditions of the country in its varying fortunes; and slight as may be their connection with events in prehistoric times, yet they serve as foundations for a historic superstructure of never-failing interest. The earliest records are fragmentary, but we learn that the library of the Carthaginians, written in Phoenician characters, was presented by the Romans, after the fall of Carthage, to one of the kings of Numidia; and that Sallust, as pro-consul of that province in the time of Julius Cæsar, borrowed largely from it while writing his history of the Jugarthine war.... There is little doubt, however, that most of the earliest records passed to Alexandria, which became the rival of Athens as a seat of learning. With the burning of its library by the fanatical Arabs in the seventh century many a link between the old world and the new was severed, and reliable information concerning the laws and traditions, and the manners and customs of a people, who were the fathers of navigation and the founders of commerce, was swept away."[2] [Illustration: THE RIVER JORDAN.] Phoenician commerce was facilitated by the establishment of many out-posts, and while none other reached such size and importance as Carthage, several controlled routes which were almost as valuable. No modern account of that vast commerce approaches the one written long ago by the prophet Ezekiel, when Tyre was, or had just been, at the zenith of her power. "O thou that dwellest at the entry of the sea, which art the merchant of the people unto many isles, O Tyre, thou hast said: 'I am of perfect beauty.' "Thy borders are in the midst of the seas, thy builders have perfected thy beauty. They have made all thy ship boards of fir trees of Senir: they have taken cedars from Lebanon to make masts for thee. Of the oaks of Bashan have they made thine oars; the company of the Ashurites have made thy benches of ivory, brought out of the isles of Chittim. Fine linen with broidered work from Egypt was that which thou spreadest forth to be thy sail; blue and purple from the isles of Elishah was that which covered thee. "The inhabitants of Sidon and Arvad were thy mariners: thy wise men, O Tyre, that were in thee, were thy pilots. "The ancients of Gabal and the wise men thereof were in thee thy calkers: all the ships of the sea with their mariners were in thee to occupy thy merchandise. They of Persia and of Lud and of Phut were in thine army, thy men of war: they hanged the shield and helmet in thee; they set forth thy comeliness.... "Tarshish was thy merchant by reason of all kinds of riches; with silver, iron, tin and lead, they traded in thy fairs. "Javan, Tubal, and Meshech, they were thy merchants: they traded the persons of men and vessels of brass in thy market. They of the house of Togarmah traded in thy fairs with horses and horsemen and mules. The men of Dedan were thy merchants; many isles were the merchandise of thine hand: they brought thee for a present horns of ivory and ebony. Syria was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of the wares of thy making: they occupied in thy fairs with emeralds, purple, and broidered work, and fine linen, and coral, and agate. "Judah, and the land of Israel, they were thy merchants: they traded in thy market wheat of Minnith, and Pannag, and honey, and oil, and balm. Damascus was thy merchant in the multitude of the wares of thy making, for the multitude of all riches; in the wine of Helbon, and white wool. Dan also and Javan going to and fro occupied in thy fairs; bright iron, cassia, and calamus, were in thy market. Dedan was thy merchant in precious cloths for chariots. Arabia, and all the princes of Kedar, they occupied with thee in lambs, and rams, and goats: in these were they thy merchants. The merchants of Sheba and Raamah ... occupied in thy fairs with chief of all spices, and with all precious stones, and gold. "Haran, and Canneh, and Eden, the merchants of Sheba, Asshur, and Chilmad, were thy merchants. These were thy merchants in all sorts of things, in blue clothes, and broidered work, and in chests of rich apparel, bound with cords, and made of cedar, among thy merchandise. The ships of Tarshish did sing of thee in thy market: and thou wast made very glorious in the midst of the seas.... "When thy wares went forth out of the seas, thou filledst many people; thou didst enrich the kings of the earth with the multitude of thy riches and of thy merchandise."[3] The produce of the ancient world passed through routes controlled by Phoenicia, and she acted as middleman in its distribution. Commerce was of two kinds, overland, and by sea. Traffic by water greatly exceeded that by land, yet both were necessary and were mutually dependent upon one another. The products of interior Asia were brought, then as now, by caravans. Even today it is possible to see trains of caravans similar to those in the service of ancient Tyre, laden with costly wares, crossing the desert. Not only were spices and wares of Western Asia taken to Phoenician sea-ports for distribution, but Mesopotamia was supplied with articles from Europe and Africa by the same overland travel. "Imagine the arrival of a Tyrian caravan at Babylon. The travellers have been on the march for three or four months.... They have arrived weary, dusty, travel-stained. Their tents are pitched outside the town, not far from the banks of the river, or of a water-course derived from it, under the pleasant shadow of a grove of palms, near the northern gate of the great city. The tall necks of their camels are seen from a distance by the keen-eyed watchers of the gate-towers, and reported by them to the civic authorities, whence the secret soon oozes out and creates a bustle in the town. All are anxious to obtain some object of their desire from the long expected traders; but especially anxious are the great storekeepers and shopkeepers, who look to the occasion for the replenishing of their stock-in-trade for the next six months, or, it may be, even for the next year. But the weary travellers must have a night's rest ere they can be ready to open their market, must unload their camels and their mules, dispose their bales of goods as seems most convenient, and prepare themselves for the fatigues of commercial dealing by a light supper and a sound sleep ensuing thereupon. How glad are the camels to have the loads removed from their galled backs, to repose their weary limbs upon the green grass of the yellow sand, and to lay their tired necks along the ground! Not a moan is heard, scarcely a grunt, unless it be one of satisfaction. The mules, and the camels, and the horses of the wealthier sort, enjoy themselves equally. We hear the tinkling of their bells, as they shake themselves, freed from all their trappings but the head stall. Some are picketed about where the turf is richest, others contentedly munch the barley that has been placed before them in portable mangers, to reward them for the toils that they have gone through. Many prefer sleeping to eating, and, leaving their food untouched, stretch themselves upon the sward. Night falls--the stars come out--the traders sleep in their tents, with a stone or a bale of goods for their pillow--a profound hush sinks upon the camp, except for the occasional squeal of a skittish pair of mules, which have exchanged bites under cover of the darkness. "The camp, however, wakes up with the first gleam of dawn in the eastern sky. Each man busily sets about his proper work. Mules and horses are groomed and are arranged in rows, with their mangers in front, and their pack-saddles and trappings near at hand. Bales of goods are opened, and a display made of a portion of their contents. Meantime, the town gates have been unclosed, and in holiday apparel a gay crowd streams forth from them. Foremost come the loafers, hoping to make an honest penny by 'lending a hand,' or to make a dishonest one by filching some unguarded article. Then follow the ordinary customers and the petty traders whose arrangements have not been made beforehand. The last to appear are the agents of the great merchants, whose correspondents at Tyre have made them consignments of goods and sent the goods by the caravan to their destination; these clamor for invoices and bills of lading. But the noisiest and most pressing are the petty traders and the mere chance customers, who have a special need to supply, or covet a good bargain. With them what a chaffering there is! What a screaming and apparent quarrelling! One buyer wants a purple robe for half its value, another a Damascene blade for next to nothing, a third, a Greek statuette for half a shekel of silver. The seller asks at least four times the sum that he intends to take; the buyer exclaims, swears perhaps by the beard of his grandfather that he will not give a farthing more than he has offered; then relents, and doubtless doubles his bid; the seller comes down a little, but they are still 'miles apart,' so to speak; it takes an hour of talking, swearing, screaming, raving, before the _juste milieu_ is hit off, an agreement come to, and buyer and seller alike made happy by a conviction on the part of each that he has over-reached the other."[4] The companion picture to the caravan would be the merchant vessel on the seas, together with the eager anticipation that attended its arrival in port. The earliest portrayal of Phoenician boats show them to have been provided with oars and sails. From small crafts, partially cabined, built of unseasoned timber and poorly caulked, were gradually evolved the stately biremes, perfect in construction and equipment. The testimony of an eye-witness is vastly preferable to descriptions of moderns, however scholarly. The following description of Xenophon, a Greek general who often saw Phoenician vessels, contains valuable information regarding the degree of skill reached by these sea-farers in the equipment of their ships: "I think that the best and most perfect arrangement of things which I ever saw was when I went to look at the great Phoenician sailing vessel: for I saw the largest amount of naval tackling separately disposed in the smallest stowage possible. For a ship, as you well know, is brought to anchor, and again got under way, by a vast number of wooden implements, and of ropes, and sails the sea by means of a quantity of rigging, and is armed with a number of contrivances against hostile vessels, and carries about with it a large supply of weapons for the crew, and, besides, has all the utensils that a man keeps in his dwelling-house, for each of the messes. In addition, it is loaded with a quantity of merchandise, which the owner carries with him for his own profit. Now all the things which I have mentioned lay in a space not much bigger than a room that would conveniently hold ten beds. And I remarked that they severally lay in such a way that they did not obstruct one another, and did not require any one to look for them, and yet they were neither placed at random, nor entangled one with another, so as to consume time when they were suddenly wanted for use. Also I found the captain's assistant, who is called the 'look-out-man,' so well acquainted with the position of all the articles, and with the number of them, that even when at a distance he would tell where everything lay, and how many there were of each sort. Moreover, I saw this man, in his leisure moments, examining and testing everything that a vessel needs when at sea; so, as I was surprised, I asked him what he was about, whereupon he replied, 'Stranger, I am looking to see, in case anything should happen, how everything is arranged in the ship, and whether anything is wanting or is inconveniently situated; for when a storm arises at sea, it is not possible either to look for what is wanting, or to put to rights what is arranged awkwardly.'"[5] One mast and one sail seem to have been commonly used. The biremes and triremes were so-called because of their two or three banks of oars. The oarsmen sat in the hold, their oars passing through the vessel's side. Phoenician traffic was always most extensive by sea. Products of Egypt, Greece, Cyprus, Carthage, Spain, Britain, besides those of countless islands, were transported constantly by water. THE APPROACH OF A CARAVAN. "When spring-time flushes the desert grass, Our kafilas wind through the Khyber Pass. Lean are the camels, but fat the frails, Light are the purses but heavy the bales, As the snow-bound trade of the North comes down To the market-square of Peshawur town. In a turquoise twilight, crisp and chill, A kafila camped at the foot of the hill. Then blue smoke-haze of the cooking rose, And tent-peg answered to hammer-nose. And the picketed ponies shag and wild, Strained at their ropes as the feed was piled; And the bubbling camels beside the load Sprawled for a furlong adown the road; And Persian pussy-cats, brought for sale, Spat at the dogs from the camel-bale; And the tribesmen bellowed to hasten the food; And the camp-fires twinkled by Fort Junrood; And there fled on the wings of the gathering dusk A savour of camels and carpets and musk, A murmur of voices, a reek of smoke, To tell us the trade of the Khyber woke." --_Kipling: Ballad of the King's Jest._ FOOTNOTES: [1] Rawlinson: Phoenicia, 71. [2] Graham: Roman Africa, preface. [3] Ezekiel, 27. [4] Rawlinson: Phoenicia, 157, ff. [5] Xenophon: Aeconom., VIII., 11 CHAPTER IV. OCCUPATIONS AND INDUSTRIES. Of first concern among the industries of Phoenicia were her maritime activities. While many Phoenician voyages led from island to island, and from one port to another almost in sight, nevertheless the sailors frequently made trips that necessitated their steering away from the shore, and venturing out into the open sea. They probably made charts of the sea and acquired some elementary knowledge of nautical affairs. Their greatest undertaking was the circumnavigation of Africa. This was attempted when Neccho was pharaoh of Egypt and held Western Asia in temporary tribute. Hoping to find a water communication between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, he engaged Phoenician seamen to sail around Africa. Three years were consumed in the journey, since they had to land each year and grow food sufficient for the continuance of their voyage. When they returned, through the Straits of Gibraltar, they reported that the sun had been upon their right hand throughout the trip, which, Herodotus said: "others may perhaps believe, though I certainly do not." Little attention was given the matter until scholars began to investigate the possibility of the earth's rotundity, whereupon the information so long cast aside was once more noted. For the most part it is probably true that the art of navigation was but crudely developed, compared with the progress reached later by the Greeks. Yet the Greeks themselves were indebted to some extent to the earliest seamen of unquestioned courage and venturesome spirit. Of most vital importance were Phoenicia's activities in commerce and trade, to quite a degree dependent upon her control of the sea. "Gather now an idea of Phoenicia in the days of her greatest power. Station yourself upon the rocky island of Tyre, and turn your eyes toward the west. Were your vision powerful enough, you might see the towers of Phoenician settlements dotting the Grecian seas and lining the coast of Africa. Meeting for a moment at the Strait of Gibraltar, again the two lines would diverge to the north and to the south, encompassing the known seas. Turn now to the east, and you behold the caravans extending in long dark lines to the north and to the south. At the extremities of the Lebanon mountains, crossing the ridge, the lines divide and subdivide, like streams toward their sources, until they penetrate and permeate the jungles of India and the valleys of the Himalayas. Such was Phoenicia in her palmy days, garnering and distributing the produce and riches of the world."[1] Farming was also important. Products raised within Phoenicia were used chiefly for home consumption. Orchards, gardens, and grain-fields yielded abundant returns and provided the food supply of the population, save for fish, and such articles of luxury as were demanded by the citizens of the wealthy ports. The country was too small and its arable acreage too limited to admit of extensive agricultural pursuits. While the manufactories of the country were less important, they had an important place. Phoenicia was widely famed for the production of four distinct articles, in the making of which her people excelled. First of these was a purple dye. Other nations attempted to provide the same commodity but never equalled the perfection of the Tyrian dye. Large quantities of shell-fish yielding the precious fluid from which it was made, were found off the Tyrian coast. They were of two species. A little _sac_ containing a creamy secretion was opened in one, and the fluid carefully extracted. The other was ground up, shell and all. Both were necessary to produce the beautiful tints peculiar to Phoenician cloths. Their special processes of dyeing, exposing the materials to the different degrees of light while drying, as well as the chemical employed to make the colors fast, were secrets well guarded, so that no imitation could deceive when compared to the splendid purples of Tyre. Since dress fabrics and material for covering furniture were most desired in rich and costly hues, raw wool was extensively imported and woven to meet the ever increasing demand. Dress stuffs from Phoenicia were prized as booty or as tribute by the several countries which at different periods exacted homage from Tyre and Sidon. Sidon was famous for her glassware. Pliny the Elder, a Roman who wrote on History and Science during the first century of the Christian era, gave the tradition current in his day concerning the so-called "discovery of glass." "It is said that some Phoenician merchants, having landed on the shores of the river Belus, were preparing their meal, and not finding suitable stones for raising their saucepans, they used lumps of natrum contained in their cargo for the purpose. When the natrum was exposed to the action of the fire, it melted into the sand lying on the banks of the river, and they saw transparent streams of some unknown liquid trickling over the ground; this was the origin of glass." At least the tale is reasonable, and might have been the experience of people at different times. At all events, the art becoming known to the Phoenicians, they attained notable skill in imitating precious stones in colored glass. It was their experience that trinkets, such as beads, were in great favor among half-civilized tribes with whom they traded, and the satisfaction was mutual when a few strings of glass beads had been exchanged for skins, ivory and even gold. It is now believed that some of the rare glass-ware, treasured as Grecian in museums today, was really produced in Sidon. Articles fashioned of gold, silver and other metals were especially attractive. Such bits of jewelry as have been discovered--necklaces, bracelets, and rings, give evidence of a high degree of workmanship. Bowls, goblets, and dishes were elaborately wrought from metals, and while the decorative designs upon them were often borrowed from the Greeks or the Egyptians, the original was frequently improved upon. The following lines from the Iliad show how bits of Phoenician work were treasured among the Hellenes: "And then the son of Peleus placed in sight Prizes of swiftness,--a wrought silver cup That held six measures, and in beauty far Excelled all others known; the cunning hands Of the Sidonian artisans have given Its graceful shape, and over the dark sea Men of Phoenicia brought it, with their wares, To the Greek harbors; Achilles now Brought it before the assembly as a prize, For which, in honor of the friend he loved, The swiftest runners of the host should strive." Hebrew chroniclers have described the decoration of Solomon's temple--all wrought by Phoenician skill: "And King Solomon sent and fetched Hiram out of Tyre. He was a widow's son, ... and his father was a man of Tyre, a worker in brass: and he was filled with wisdom and understanding, and cunning to work all works in brass. And he came to King Solomon, and wrought all his work. "For he cast two pillars of brass, of eighteen cubits high apiece: and a line of twelve cubits did compass either of them about. And he made two capitals of molten brass, to set upon the tops of the pillars: the height of the one capital was five cubits, and the height of the other capital was five cubits. And nets of checker work, and wreaths of chain work, for the capitals which were upon the top of the pillars, seven for one capital and seven for the other capital. And he made the pillars, and two rows round about upon the one network, to cover the capitals that were upon the top, with pomegranates: and so did he for the other capital. And the capitals that were upon the top of the pillars were of lily work in the porch, four cubits.... And he set up the pillars in the porch of the temple: and he set up the right pillar and called the name thereof Jachin: and he sat up the left pillar and called the name thereof Boaz. And upon the top of the pillars was lily work: so was the work of the pillars finished. "And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from one brim to the other: it was round all about, and its height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about. And under the brim of it round about there were knobs compassing it.... It stood upon twelve oxen, three looking toward the north, and three looking toward west, and three looking toward the south, and three looking toward the east: and the sea was set above them, and all their hinder parts were inward. And it was an hand breadth thick, and the brim thereof was wrought like the brim of a cup, with flowers of lilies: it contained two thousand baths.... So Hiram made an end of doing all the work that he made King Solomon for the house of the Lord."[2] The Phoenicians never developed an imposing architecture. Timber was abundant on the mountain slopes, and was the principal building material. The great lack of architectural ruins in the country today may be largely accounted for by its perishability. Stone was also available, and appears to have been used chiefly for foundations, which were laid deep and skillfully constructed. City walls were built of stone, and a few remnants of these may yet be found. Gigantic stones of prodigious size were piled one upon another and often held in place by their own tremendous weight. In places where the solid blocks were joined together, they were united so evenly that the blade of a knife may not now be placed in the seam. Tyre and Sidon were both beautiful cities, as abundant evidence goes to testify. Carthage with her great structures of stone, became a quarry for Italy, but the Phoenicians were imitators and never developed a distinctive style of building. Their sculpture survives only in tombs. A few of these have been recovered. Some of the figures adorning the interiors of tombs are said to possess richness and beauty. Their artists made use of huge blocks, and for this reason their carving was in low relief, or gave such appearance. The Greeks, on the other hand, found gigantic blocks unwieldy, and took smaller stones for their embellishment. Consequently the grace and delicacy of Greek sculpture was not reached in Phoenicia. "It seems strange that these Canaanites or Phoenicians, the scorn of Israel, and the people against whom Joshua bent all his powers, should have enjoyed such an uncheckered career, making themselves sole navigators of every sea, and finally founding a city which stood unrivalled for more than 700 years. Through their hands ... passed grain, ivory, and skins from Libya; slaves from the Soudan, purple and cedar from Tyre, frankincense from Arabia, copper from Cyprus, iron from Elba, tin from Cornwall, wine from Greece, silver from Spain, and gold and precious stones from Malabar. As a nation of traders and navigators they established themselves on the coast, and wherever they settled, depots and factories of various kinds were erected. We do not find them in the interior of a country. Neither do we hear of alliances with the people with whom they came in contact, nor of their impressing barbarian tribes with any notions of the advantages of civilization. In the field of intellectual acquirements the Carthaginian, as the descendant of the Phoenician, has no place, and his skill in the gentler arts of life has no recognition. We find no native architecture, nor do we hear of any industrial art worth recording. Carthage, it is true, became the metropolis of their widespread kingdom, and one of the wealthiest cities of the world.... Temples and stately edifices adorned its streets, and the remains of great constructional works still attest the solid grandeur of the city. But the architecture was the work of Greek, not of Punic, artists; and the few sculptures of note, which may be assigned to a period anterior to the last Punic war, have nothing in common with the rude carvings which bear the impress of Carthaginian origin. On the other hand the art of navigation, the science of agriculture, the principles of trading, and a system of water supply combined with the construction of gigantic cisterns, which may still be seen at Carthage, and in the outskirts of many towns in North Africa, became Rome's heritage from Phoenicia."[3] LITERATURE AND LEARNING. Among the bequests of Phoenicia to mankind, first will always stand the giving of an alphabet to the world. It is true that other nations possessed a written language, but their symbols were generally so complicated and so numerous that they could hardly have become of general service. It was earlier assumed that the Phoenicians invented the alphabet which they spread among the nations around them, but now it is believed that they simply shortened and simplified symbols already in existence. Their alphabet was widely adopted, to be sure, not because it was most convenient, but because it was the only one known to many nations, who never came in direct contact with dwellers on the Nile or Mesopotamians. In Phoenicia's palmy days literature and learning were neglected--at least so far as can now be ascertained. It is not unlikely that scholars lived sometimes in the larger cities, and schools were probably maintained to some extent, but at all events, no remains of a Phoenician literature has come down to us, and it has been commonly surmised that no extensive literature ever existed. The nation was bent upon its commercial life, and only such knowledge as would be essential to traders was regarded as necessary. In later times, in the last century before Christ and in the first century of the new era, literary activity was more marked. We are told that there was a school of philosophy at Sidon, and the city became a literary center, but this had little to do with the period of Phoenician ascendency which practically ended with Greek dominance. RELIGION. Somewhat more is known of the religion of Phoenicia, but here again we are not able to trace its development in any complete sense, and most that has been recorded concerning it was written by foreigners whose attitude was uniformly hostile. It is now supposed by some scholars that the Phoenician religion was at first monotheistic, and that later the worship of many gods was common. The third stage in its progress would be the greater portion of the period known to us, when the gods of other peoples were allowed, by the side of those native to the country. In Carthaginian tombs images of Egyptian deities have been found side by side with those of ancient Tyre and Sidon. In the beginning, the Phoenician worship was probably one manifestation of the Sun-worship, common to Semitic peoples. The religion of any people is a matter of growth, invariably undergoing change, until it finally resembles but slightly what it was in the beginning. Thus the faith of Phoenicia underwent many changes during her 1500 years. It is agreed that the Phoenicians worshipped curiously shaped stones at an early period, believing that deities had their abode within them; plants also were importuned, to appease the spirit that dwelt within them and cause each to yield food. Finally the heavenly bodies became objects of worship, the sun being considered most important. There must always be something appealing in the adoration felt by primitive minds toward the sun. Most ancient people worshipped it in one form or another, and the planet was surrounded by unfathomable mystery in the infancy of the world. Baal was god of the sun, Astoreth, goddess of the moon. Baal symbolized the life-giving power of the sun as well as its destructive forces. Maleck or Molock was the god of fire. He was a god of cruelty and thirsted for blood. It was to satisfy some of his supposed cravings that the human sacrifices took place. The first-born child, pure maidens, favorite sons, were fed to the flames to appease his wrath. These sacrifices seem strange to us today, and nations of antiquity, immuned to cruelty and bloodshed, turned from these Phoenician customs in horror. An annual spring festival of great antiquity was celebrated. Probably in early times it lacked the feature of the human sacrifice which made it most objectionable later. Great forest trees were brought into the temple court and planted. From their branches were suspended animals, birds and all else intended for the sacrifice. After the images of the gods were marched around these trees, all was set on fire and consumed in a mighty conflagration. To make the celebration more impressive, human sacrifices were added, especially before some great undertaking, or upon the occasion of some national calamity. Astoreth was the great virgin goddess. In the beginning she was worshipped with simple rites. "Astoreth, whom the Phoenicians called Astarte, queen of heaven, with crescent horns; To whose bright image nightly by the moon Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs." In course of time the character of the goddess changed, and she was worshipped by most licentious practices. In addition to their own gods, the Phoenicians readily incorporated into their pantheon deities of those tribes and nations with whom they opened trade. Some years after Phoenicia ceased to be a power, a Carthaginian general made a treaty with the Emperor of Greece. The two are reported to have sworn by numerous deities that they would preserve it. "They swore by Zeus, Hera, and Apollo, by the tutelary deities of the Carthaginians, by Hercules, by the moon, and the earth, by rivers, meadows, and waters, by the gods of the allied armies, and the sun, by all the gods who ruled over Carthage, by all the gods who ruled over Macedon and the rest of Greece, and by all the gods of those who were present to ratify the treaty." At first the Phoenicians worshipped in the open air, with merely an altar of stone. Later they built elaborate and costly temples, but they still celebrated certain ceremonies out of doors, in groves or under the shade of trees. The religion of the Phoenicians was most innocent and attractive in its earliest stages. As it developed, with its numerous priesthood performing their bloody rites, and its necessary sacrifices, teaching cruelty and blunting the sensibilities of its adherents, it became very repulsive. Far from inculcating noble ideals, it made a virtue of renouncing dear ones to agony and death; and a people who from infancy grew accustomed to such scenes and such conceptions could never develop finest qualities of character. Wherever Phoenician vessels landed with their wares, there Phoenician gods and practices went also. The good done in spreading the habits of civilization to regions remote was mitigated by the harm done in spreading this abhorrent faith. Several Greek myths tell of maidens being sacrificed to some monster, such, for example, as Theseus and The Minotaur. These are believed to have had their origin in rumors of Phoenician sacrifices. The stories reached the shores of Greece in various forms and with the aid of Greek imaginations were woven into the tales as we know them. [Illustration: SHELLS OF THE SEA SNAIL FROM WHICH THE PURPLE DYE WAS MADE.] FOOTNOTES: [1] Boughton: History of Ancient Peoples. [2] I. Kings. 7. [3] Graham: Roman Africa, 1, 2. CHAPTER V. THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. It is essential that the student of Hebrew history understand the topography of Palestine, wherein the nation developed. Names of rivers, mountains, cities, in this historic land grow familiar from frequent repetition in the Bible, but where each was located, and what was its position relative to other oft-mentioned spots, are queries left unsettled by the average reader. Still more necessary is a general idea of the country as a whole, because the very formation of the land determined in a large measure the destiny of those who dwelt within it. Palestine is bounded on the north by the base of the Lebanons, on the east by the Arabian desert, on the south by the Wilderness of Judah--an extension of this desert--, and on the west by the Mediterranean Sea below Mount Carmel, while north of this mighty mountain the Phoenicians held the coast, although the Hebrews occupied the province of Galilee, east of the Phoenician shore. This celebrated land is scarcely more than 150 miles in length, and approximates 100 miles in breadth, yet every known variety of climate may be found within its confines. From regions lying 1300 feet below sea-level, with heat of the tropics, mountains rise to 9000 feet above the sea, with Alpine snows and cold. Palestine, like Greece or Switzerland, falls naturally into many small divisions, each shut off in a measure from the rest. This explains how it was possible for the Hebrews to occupy a considerable portion of the land while the Canaanites, earlier inhabitants of the country, remained undisturbed in other localities. It also explains the fact that for many years some of the Hebrews dwelt in tents and clung to their nomadic customs while no great distance away others of their kinsmen cultivated the vine and tilled the soil. While the shore of the Mediterranean was broken by several harbors along the Phoenician coast, south of Mount Carmel the shore reaches in a nearly straight line to Egypt. No havens invite ships to safety; no islands dot the rocky shore. To the Hebrew the sea was a frontier rather than a means for outside communication. So inhospitable was this coast that invasions of Palestine were made by land rather than sea. A rocky line of cliffs varying from thirty to one hundred feet makes landing impossible save at two or three artificially constructed modern ports. Six distinct land features are to be found in Palestine and deeply affected the people who dwelt there in antiquity. First of these is the Coast Plain, varying in width from two hundred yards to thirty miles. The northern portion of it was known as the Plain of Sharon; the southern portion, as the Plain of Philistia. The word _Sharon_ signifies "forest," and in an early day a dense wood of oaks covered the region and gave it this name. Only in the north has the forest been perpetuated to our day. The plain was formerly, and is still, productive. It contains gardens, orchards, and grain fields. Lacking the inspiring beauty of the high tablelands, it possesses a quiet charm of its own. Farther south, the Plain of Philistia stretches off in the direction of Egypt. This Coast Plain, falling for the most part into these two smaller plains, has been a continuation of the great highway between Egypt and Syria, and a famous war-path. For Egypt particularly, it was a simple matter to dispatch troops along the shore, to strike terror to less inaccessible inland districts. Today it lies in peaceful cultivation or in woodlands of low undergrowth. "The whole Maritime Plain possesses a quiet but rich beauty. If the contours are gentle the colors are strong and varied. Along almost the whole seaboard runs a strip of links and downs, sometimes of pure drifting sand, sometimes of grass and sand together. Outside this border of broken gold there is the blue sea, with its fringe of foam. Landward the soil is a chocolate brown, with breaks and gullies, now bare to their dirty white shingle and stagnant puddles, and now full of rich green reeds and rushes that tell of ample water beneath. Over corn and moorland a million flowers are scattered--poppies, pimpernels, anemones, the convolvulus and the mallow, the narcissus and blue iris--_roses of Sharon and lilies of the valley_. Lizards haunt all the sunny banks. The shimmering air is filled with bees and butterflies, and with the twittering of small birds, hushed now and then as the shadow of a great hawk blots the haze. The soft night is sprinkled thick with glittering fireflies."[1] Passing the sea and the Coast Plain, the Central Range rises high and extends throughout the entire length of Palestine, with some variations. In this great tableland lay the famous kingdom of the Hebrews--Judaea and Samaria. Judaea lay farther to the south and was separated from the Coast Plain by the Shephelah--a series of low foot-hills. The Hebrews built their western cities on these low hills rather than along the shore. In fact the frequent attacks of the Philistines left the Coast Plain only now and then in the hands of the Hebrews. The word _Shephelah_ has been thought to signify _lowlands_, and may have been applied in contrast to the highlands farther east. Ranging from five to fifteen miles in width, this elevated strip was the scene of constant warfare between the Hebrews and Philistines. Numerous valleys led across it, Ajalon being perhaps most famous. "The prevailing scenery of the region is of short, steep hillsides and narrow glens, with a very few great trees, and thickly covered by brushwood and oak-scrub--crags and scalps of limestone breaking through, and a rough grey torrent-bed at the bottom of each glen.... Caves, of course, abound--near the villages, gaping black dens for men and cattle, but up the unfrequented glens they are hidden by hanging bush, behind which you disturb only the wild pigeon. Bees murmur everywhere, larks are singing; and although in the maze of hills you may wander for hours without meeting a man, or seeing a house, you are seldom out of sound of the human voice, shepherds and ploughmen calling to their cattle and to each other across the glens. Higher up you rise to moorlands, with rich grass if there is a spring, but otherwise, heath, thorns, and rough herbs that scent the wind. Bees abound here, too, and dragon-flies, kites and crows; sometimes an eagle floats over the cliffs of Judaea. The sun beats strong, but you see and feel the sea; the high mountains are behind, at night they breathe upon these ridges gentle breezes, and the dews are very heavy. "Altogether it is a rough, happy land, with its glens and moors, its mingled brushwood and barley-fields; frequently under cultivation, but for the most part broken and thirsty, with few wells and many hiding places; just the home for strong border-men, like Samson, and just the theatre for that guerilla warfare, varied occasionally by pitched battles, which Israel and Philistia, the Maccabees and the Syrians, waged with each other."[2] At last the foot-hills merge into lofty mountains and series of plateaus, or table-lands, surrounded by high peaks, appear. Here was Judaea, the true home of the Hebrews. Farther north, and rising directly from the Coast Plain, without the intervening foot-hills, was Samaria. The physical outlines of this long, narrow range determined in advance that it would not permanently be politically united. Judaea was quite secure in her mountain heights. On the east her mountains descend abruptly to the lower Jordan and the Dead Sea; on the south lies the desert; on the east the low foot-hills, and on the north the table-land ends in ten miles of wild, waste land. "A desolate, fatiguing extent of rocky platforms and ridges, or moorland strewn with boulders, and fields of shallow soil thickly mixed with stone, they are a true border--more fit for the building of barriers than for the cultivation of food." Some parts of this stony plateau were fit for cultivation, but for the most part, Judaea was a pastoral land--a country of shepherds and herdsmen. Flocks of sheep fed on the moorlands in ancient times, as they do today. Water has always been scanty and is preserved in wells and cisterns for the cattle during months of drouth. Samaria possesses softer outlines and is a land beautified by nature. As Judaea was isolated and secure in her natural boundaries, so was Samaria open to approach. The "openness" of the land is constantly dwelt upon by those who picture its location. It was difficult to resist invasion and Samaria was attacked much more often than her sister to the south. Samaria was a fruitful land, yielding to cultivation; she lay open to influences on every hand, and was the first to receive fresh impulses and ideas. "Today, amid the peaceful beauty of the scene--the secluded vale covered with corn fields, through which the winding streams flash and glisten into the hazy distance, and the gentle hill rises without a scarp to the olives waving on its summit--it is possible to appreciate Isaiah's name for Samaria, _the crown of pride of Ephraim, the flower of his glorious beauty which is on the head of the fat valley_."[3] East of both countries and the Central Range which contained them, flows the Jordan. Geological ages ago it is supposed that a great sea occupied the valley of the Jordan and the regions on either side. Beneath its deep waters, layers of limestone accumulated. In course of time, mighty convulsions within the earth hurled these layers of rock in twain and threw them up on both sides, until the present mountain ranges were formed. At the same time a series of rocks were cast up diagonally across this region to the south, thus enclosing a portion of the salt waters within the basin so formed. Ages of rain and of glaciers followed and when these abated, the new surface was left to develop its system of drainage. The situation at present is almost identical with that in early Bible times. In the northern part of Palestine, at the base of the Lebanons, a series of streams, mountain-born, take a southernly direction and empty into a marshy pool known as Lake Huleh; from the southern part of this lake the river Jordan flows on to the Lake of Galilee, whence the stream once again issues forth, this time down a steep incline, giving it rapid impetus of motion, from whence comes its name: Jordan--the _Down-comer_. At last its valley widens and by several estuaries the river finally empties into the Dead Sea. The beauty attending many rivers of the earth is lacking in the Jordan. Cutting down its channels in a rift left already deep by eruption, this valley lies deep below the sea-level and is exceedingly hot. Malaria lurks in the jungles that border the river-sides, and at no time has the region been thickly populated. The river is not suited to irrigation, but certain portions of the valley are watered by its tributaries sufficiently to make gardens possible. The Dead Sea occupies the lowest portion of the valley. Soundings have shown it to be very deep. Not only are its waters heavily charged with salt, but other chemicals make yet more uninhabitable its basin. No fish or other form of life lives in its waters, which possess remarkable clearness and are intensely blue. Having no outlets save evaporation, and lying where heat is great, the sea is like a mighty caldron, above which a column of steam rises constantly. 6,000,000 tons of water are estimated to rise from it daily in the form of vapor. From its very nature, the Jordan was not a river to which a nation might become devoted--as, for example, the Egyptians were to their Nile. Nevertheless, no other stream has become so embodied into literature, or so endeared to a great religious world. The Hebrews regarded the Jordan as a boundary--a frontier. Significant is the fact that when it is mentioned in the Bible it is generally accompanied by some word meaning _over_ or _across_. _Over_ Jordan, _beyond_ the stream which because of its fever-breeding, lion-populated jungles and its strange sea, signified death, destruction, calamity, rather than life. _Beyond_ the Jordan, then, lay the Promised Land, flowing with milk and honey. East of the Jordan valley, the Eastern Range rises similarly to the Central Range on the west side. The plateaus of Moab and Gilead seem higher than the others, for whereas the Central Range rises gradually from a series of foothills to its exalted height, the Eastern Range rises abruptly from the extremely low river-valley. The Eastern Range is blessed with a temperate climate. Heat is always moderated by breezes which bring health and prosperity with them. The soil is fertile, sufficiently watered and very productive. It is a region where agriculture and grazing are followed, and natural conditions are favorable to both occupations. In spite of these advantages, the region lies exposed to the south and east. Desert tribes make life and fortune uncertain for the inhabitants. Even today, when conditions have been somewhat improved, those who grow crops in this region must pay tribute to wandering tribes who demand it, or lose their all. How much more precarious must life have been in those days when even among the most enlightened nations the hand of the plunderer was scarcely restrained at all. The Hebrew tribes which settled this plateau were in the beginning as strong as those that located farther east, but they could not maintain their individuality against the conditions that beset them. Sooner or later, they drifted with the restless hordes and lost their identity. One more natural division remains to be considered--the Plain of Esdraelon. Triangular in shape, one point lies north of Mt. Carmel, while the two long lines extend south-easterly, and meet the third near the river Jordan. It was this famous plain that gave access to the Central Range from the west--from the Coast Plain, approach to Samaria was not difficult by this means. The region is rather made up of a series of plains, broken by scattered mountains, yet permitting free passage from the sea to the river Jordan. An ancient route lay along this way. It has been called the key to Palestine, and over it came the enemies of Israel. Especially interesting is the following description, with the added explanation of a bit of ancient Hebrew poetry characterizing the region: "As you stand upon that last headland of Gilboa, 200 feet above the plain, ... the great triangle is spread before you. Along the north of it the steep brown wall of the Galilean hills, about 1000 feet high, runs almost due west, till it breaks out and down to the feet of Carmel, in the forest slopes just high enough to hide the Plain of Acre and sea. But over and past these slopes Carmel's steady ridge, deepening in blue the while, carries the eye out to its dark promontory above the Mediterranean. From this end of Carmel the lower Samarian hills, green with bush and dotted by white villages, run southeast to the main Samarian range, and on their edge, due south, seven miles across the bay, Jenin stands out with its minarets and palms.... But the rest of the plain is before you--a great expanse of loam, red and black, which in a more peaceful land would be one sea of waving wheat with island villages; but here is what its modern name implies, a free, wild prairie, upon which but one or two hamlets have ventured forth from the cover of the hills and a timid and tardy cultivation is only now seeking to overtake the waste of coarse grass and the thistly herbs that camels love. There is no water visible. The Kishon itself flows in a muddy trench, unseen five yards away. But here and there a clump of trees shows where a deep well is worked to keep a little orchard green through summer.... The roads have no limit to their breadth, but sprawl, as if at most seasons one caravan could not follow for mud on the path of another. But these details sink in a great sense of space, and of a level made almost absolute by the rise of hills on every side of it. It is a vast inland basin, and from it there breaks just at your feet, between Jezreel and Shunem, the valley Jordanwards,--breaks as visibly as river from lake, with a slope and almost the look of a current upon it.... From Jezreel you can appreciate everything in the literature and in the history of Esdraelon. "To begin with, you can enjoy that happiest sketch of a landscape and its history that was ever drawn in half a dozen lines, _Issachar_--to which the most of Esdraelon fell-- "Issachar is a large-limbed ass, Stretching himself between the sheepfolds: For he saw a resting-place that it was good, And the land that it was pleasant." "Such exactly is Esdraelon--a land relaxed and sprawling up among the hills to north, south and east, as you will see a loosened ass roll and stretch his limbs any day in the sunshine of a Syrian village yard. To the highlander looking down upon it, Esdraelon is room to stretch in and lie happy. Yet the figure of the ass goes further--the room must be paid for-- 'So he bowed his shoulder to bear And became a servant under task-work.' "The inheritors of this plain never enjoyed the highland independent of Manasseh or Naphtali. Open to east and west, Esdraelon was at distant intervals the war-path or battle-field of great empires.... Even when there has been no invasion to fear, Esdraelon has still suffered: when she has not been the camp of the foreigner she has served as the estate of her neighbors."[4] CLIMATE AND PRODUCTIVITY OF PALESTINE. As we might expect in a land possessing such a varied topography, nearly every known climate is represented in Palestine. Along the seashore the salt breezes of ocean blow; the climate of the Coast Plain is mild and pleasant, and favorable to the growth of gardens and orchards; within the Central Range itself several varieties of climate prevail, and in the low valley of the Jordan and in the region of the Dead Sea, the heat of the tropics obtains. The plateaus of the Eastern Range are visited by health-giving breezes, which moderate the atmosphere. Farther east and south extends the desert, with its parched sands and sultry air, yet in the very sight of these desert wastes rise snowy mountain peaks. "There are palms in Jericho and pine forests in Lebanon. In the Ghor, in summer, you are under a temperature of more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and yet you see glistening the snow-fields of Hermon. All the intermediate steps between these extremes the eye can see at one sweep from Carmel--the sands and palms of the coast; the wheat-fields of Esdraelon, the oaks and sycamores of Galilee; the pines, the peaks, the snows of Anti-Lebanon. How closely these differences lie to each other! Take a section of the country across Judaea. With its palms and shadoofs the Philistine Plain might be a part of the Egyptian Delta; but on the hills of the Shephelah which overlook it, you are in the scenery of Southern Europe; the Judaean moors which overlook them are like the barer uplands of Central Germany; the shepherds wear sheep-skin cloaks and live under stone roofs--sometimes the snow lies deep; a few miles farther east and you are down on the desert among the Bedouin, with their tents of hair and their cotton clothing; a few miles farther still, and you drop to torrid heat in the Jordan Valley; a few miles beyond that and you rise to the plateau of the Belka, where the Arabs say 'the cold is always at home.' Yet from Philistia to the Belka is scarcely seventy miles."[5] The year is divided into a wet and a dry season. The rains begin the last of October and are over by the last of March. These are called the "early" rains in the Old Testament. Showers which fall in the late spring are called the "latter" rains. From May until October the summer is dry. The vegetation is sustained in many places by the heavy dews. Water is not abundant and the rain-water which falls during the winter months is stored in wells and cisterns for use in the dry months. Flowers of many varieties are found through the land and range from those common to tropical and desert lands to those native to high altitudes. As in Egypt the fertile land borders upon the shifting desert sands, so in Palestine the strong contrasts between the productive and waste lands is the more marked because of their proximity. Palestine is not a land of heavy forests. To be sure, ages upon ages of habitation have divested many slopes of native timber, but evidences go to show that at no time since records began has the country been heavily forested. Today the woodlands are frequently mere undergrowth. Orchards are plentiful. The olive is most widely cultivated; apricots, figs, oranges, almond and walnut trees are grown, and the vine is grown extensively. Grain fields wave on the plains, in the valleys and lowlands, wheat, barley and millet being most abundant. Vegetables of many varieties are commonly raised. Beans, tomatoes, onions and melons are produced in large quantities. Grass is grown only on small areas, pasturage being for the most part found on the public land. During the summer months pasturage exists only near the large fountains or the carefully built cisterns. These are jealously guarded by their owners. In earlier times and now, to some extent, wells and pools are provided to preserve water falling during the winter, and these are for the use of all who come to them with their flocks and herds. We find no such condition here as in Egypt, where crops grow abundantly if the seeds be but once dropped into the ground. On the contrary, while grains, fruits and garden produce are generally grown, care and constant industry are required to bring forth good yields. Certain portions of the country are adapted to the art of husbandry, while others have always been better suited to cattle and sheep raising. So much of the tablelands is rocky and stony and unsuited for cultivation that no arable spots are allowed to go untended. FOOTNOTES: [1] George Adam Smith: Historical Geography of the Holy Land, 149. [2] George Adam Smith: Historical Geography of the Holy Land, 208. [3] George Adam Smith: Historical Geography of the Holy Land, 349. [4] George Adam Smith: Historical Geography of the Holy Land, 381. [5] George Adam Smith: Historical Geography of the Holy Land, 56. CHAPTER VI. EFFECTS OF GEOGRAPHICAL CONDITIONS UPON THE HEBREWS. Certain natural effects of the physical conditions upon the people in Palestine have been apparent as we traced the general land formation. It is evident that in an age when easy communication was essential to union, there could be no political unity among a people dwelling in a country so divided by mountains, plains, and valleys. Again, we would expect tribes settling the plateaus of the Central Range to develop differently from those peopling the fertile plain of Sharon. Indeed, within this range itself we have found that the inhabitants of austere Judaea led a life unlike that of more accessible Samaria. Other effects of natural conditions upon the Hebrews are evident, as we shall see. The very climate of Palestine seems to have had its influence in molding the religious thought of Israel. "The climate of Palestine is regular enough to provoke men to methodical labour for its fruits, but the regularity is often interrupted. The early rains or the latter rains fail, drought comes occasionally for two years in succession, and that means famine and pestilence. There are too, the visitations of the locust, which are said to be bad every fifth or sixth year, and there are earthquakes, also periodical in Syria. Thus a purely mechanical conception of nature as something certain and inevitable, whose processes are more or less under man's control, is impossible; and the imagination is roused to feel the presence of a will behind nature, in face of whose interruptions of the fruitfulness or stability of the land man is absolutely helpless. To such a climate, then, is partly due Israel's doctrine of Providence."[1] In Deuteronomy the contrast between Egypt, the land just left, and Palestine, to which Israel was then passing, is drawn, and the price of prosperity definitely given. "But the land, whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt, from whence ye came out, where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs: but the land, whither ye go to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven. A land which Jehovah thy God careth for: the eyes of Jehovah thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year. "And it shall come to pass, if ye shall harken diligently unto my commandments which I command you this day, to love Jehovah your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, that I will give you the rain of your land in his due season, the first rain and the latter rain, that thou mayest gather in thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil. And I will send grass in thy fields for thy cattle, that thou mayst eat and be full. Take heed to yourselves, that your heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them; and _then_ Jehovah's wrath be kindled against you and he shut up the heaven, that the land yield not her fruit; and lest ye perish quickly from off the good land which Jehovah giveth you."[2] The productivity of the soil had two important results in the development of the Hebrews. The first affected the very nature of their being, for it changed them from desert nomads into herders and small farmers. In place of the tent, they adopted the house, the _fixed_ habitation. Instead of wandering from pasture to pasture with their cattle and families, as they had done for generation upon generation before their sojourn in Egypt, they cultivated the land and found it overflowing with "milk and honey." In the Song of Moses this great transformation is pictured with vividness and beauty: "Remember the days of old, Consider the years of generation on generation. Ask thy father and he will show thee, Thine elders and they will tell thee. When the highest gave nations their heritage, When he sundered the children of men. He set the border of the tribes, By the number of the children of Israel. For the portion of Jehovah is his people, Jacob the measure of his heritage. He found him in a land of the desert, In a waste, in a howling wilderness. He encompassed him, He distinguished him, He watched him as the apple of His eye. As an eagle stirreth his nest, Fluttereth over his young, Spreadeth abroad his wings, taketh them, Beareth them up on his pinions, Jehovah alone led him And no strange god was with him. He made him to ride on the Land's high places, And to eat of the growth of the field. He gave him to suck honey from the cliff, And oil from the flinty rock. Cream of kine and milk of sheep, With lambs' fat and rams' Breed of Bashan and he-goats, With fat of the kidneys of wheat; And the blood of the grape thou drankest in foam!" While settlement in Palestine produced an advancement in civilization, it brought at the same time a lower plane of religious life and thought. With sudden plenty and no longer enforced abstinence of the desert, came a certain confusion and riot. The desert tends to inspire monotheistic ideas and conceptions; lands of varied aspect, such as Greece or Palestine, inspire polytheistic conceptions--divided power rather than unity. "The creed of the desert nomad is simple and austere--for nature about him is monotonous, silent, and illiberal. But Syria is a land of lavish gifts and oracles--where woods are full of mysterious speech, and rivers burst suddenly from the ground, where the freedom of nature excites, and seems to sanction, the passions of the human body, where food is rich, and men drink wine. The spirit and the senses are equally taken by surprise. _No one can tell how many voices a tree has who has not come up to it from the silence of the great desert...._ "But with the awe comes the sense of indulgence, and the starved instincts of the body break riotously forth.... All this is said to have happened to Israel from almost their first encampment in Canaan." "They moved him to jealousy with strange gods, With abominations provoked him to anger. They sacrificed to monsters undivine, Gods they had known not, New things, lately come in, Their fathers never had them in awe." One more effect of physical conditions may be noted here, leaving the rest to appear in connection with Israel's story--namely, the effect of the picturesqueness of the land upon these former desert nomads. For one who has made himself familiar with the beautiful places of earth, Palestine has its charm, but to people journeying thither from the wastes of desert, the land possesses matchless beauty. Before calling attention to the reflection of scenery to be found in ancient Hebrew writings, let us read the description of certain aspects of the country, as given by one who knows every foot of the land and has watched it in and out of season. "There is the coast-line from the headland of Carmel--northwards the Gulf of Haifa, with its yellow sands and palms, ... southwards Sharon with her scattered forest, her coast of sand and grass: westwards the green sea and the wonderful shadows of the clouds upon it--grey when you look at them with your face to the sun, but, with the sun behind you, purple, and more like Homer's 'wine-colored' water than anything I have seen on the Mediterranean. There is the _excellency of Carmel_ itself: wheat-fields climbing from Esdraelon to the first bare rocks, then thick bush and scrub, young ilex, wild olives and pines, with undergrowth of large purple thistles, mallows with blossoms like pelargoniums, stocks of hollyhocks, golden broom, honeysuckle, and convolvulus--then, between the shoulders of the mountain, olive-groves, their dull green mass banked by the lighter forest trees, and on the flanks the broad lawns, where in the shadow of great oaks you look far out to sea. There is the Lake of Galilee as you see it from Gadara, with the hills of Naphtali above it, and Hermon filling all the north. There, is the prospective of the Jordan Valley as you look up from over Jericho, between the bare ranges of Gilead and Ephraim, with the winding ribbon of the river's jungle, and the top of Hermon like a white cloud in the infinite distance. There is the forest of Gilead, where you ride, two thousand feet high, under the boughs of great trees creaking and rustling in the wind, with all Western Palestine before you. There is the moonlight view out of the bush on the northern flank of Tabor, the leap of the sun over the edge of Bashan, summer morning in the Shephelah, and sunset over the Mediterranean, when you see it from the gateway of the ruins on Samaria down the glistening Vale of Barley. Even in the barest provinces you get many a little picture that lives with you for life--a chocolate-coloured bank with red poppies against the green of the prickly pear hedge above it, and a yellow lizard darting across; a river-bed of pink oleanders flush with the plain; a gorge in Judaea, where you look up between limestone walls picked out with tufts of grass and black-and-tan goats cropping at them, the deep blue sky over all, and, on the edge of the only shadow, a well, a trough, and a solitary herdsman. "And then there are those prospects in which no other country can match Palestine, for no other has a valley like the Ghor, or a desert like that which falls from Judaea to the Dead Sea. There is the view from the Mount of Olives, down twenty miles of desert hill-tops to the deep blue waters, with the wall of Moab glowing on the further side like burnished copper, and staining the blue sea red with its light. There is the view of the Dead Sea through the hazy afternoon, when across the yellow foreground of Jeshimon the white Lisan rises like a pack of Greenland ice from the blue waters, and beyond it the Moab range, misty, silent and weird. There are the precipices of Masada and Engedi sheer from the salt coast. And, above all, there is the view from Engedi under the full moon, when the sea is bridged with gold, and the eastern mountains are black with a border of opal."[3] The literature of no other people has more vividly reflected a landscape than has that of the ancient Hebrews. Without some understanding of Palestine, one would fail to appreciate much that is beautiful in Hebrew poetry. While we shall touch upon this again in the consideration of Hebrew literature, some examples will sufficiently illustrate this point. Take, for example, a portion of the Hundred and Fourth Psalm: He sendeth forth springs into the valleys; They run among the mountains: They give drink to every beast of the field; The wild asses quench their thirst. By them the fowl of the heaven have their habitation, They sing around the branches. He watereth the mountains from his chambers: The earth is satisfied with the fruits of thy work. He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, And herb for the service of man: That he may bring forth food out of the earth, And wine that maketh glad the heart of man, And oil to make his face to shine, And bread that strengtheneth man's heart. The trees of Jehovah are satisfied; The cedars of Lebanon, which he hath planted; Where the birds make their nests: As for the stork, the fir trees are her house; The high mountains are for the wild goats; The rocks are a refuge for the conies. O Jehovah, how manifold are thy works! In wisdom hast thou made them all: The earth is full of thy riches. Yonder is the sea, great and wide, Wherein are things creeping innumerable, Both small and great beasts. There go the ships; There is leviathan, whom thou hast formed to take his pastime therein. These wait all upon thee, That thou mayest give them their meat in due season. This poem reflects general characteristics of the land. The next is a pastoral poem which could have been written only in Judaea. Its figures are pastoral throughout, and lack of acquaintance with the land wherein it was produced often causes one to miss the successive pictures it portrays. Reference is made to the Twenty-third Psalm, wherein the comparison of the shepherd with his sheep is maintained. "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want." Only a good faithful shepherd could lead his sheep in Judaea so that at no time would they want for care or food. "He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:" Pasturage was often scanty, and to lie always in _green_ pastures was the greatest boon that could befall the sheep. "He leadeth me beside the still waters." Not lakes, but cisterns or pools, constructed to hold the rains of winter for use in the dry months of summer. Unless these were carefully sought out in each new pasture, the sheep would suffer from thirst. "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; For thou art with me: Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." When one pasture was exhausted, it was necessary to journey to another. Danger lurked on every side. Did the sheep wander away, they were sure to be attacked by fierce animals, or stolen by other herders. The shepherd led the way amid all dangers, and his rod and staff gave assurance to the sheep some distance from him. "Thou preparest a table before me In the presence of mine enemies: Thou anointest my head with oil; My cup runneth over." The figure is not changed here, as some have supposed, and a banquet introduced. Quite on the contrary. In that land grew many poisonous herbs, likely to be unnoticed by the sheep. The shepherd watched to see that his flock found food free from these enemies. Then at last, when the night fell, and the flock was gathered into the fold, the shepherd stood by the door with a cup of oil in his hand ready to pour on the heads of weary, exhausted lambs, thus to refresh and revive them. Only a little could be spared for each one. To have a cup filled to overflowing was a wonderful blessing. So is the figure carried on to the end of the beautiful song, and only goodness and mercy could possibly attend one so protected. FOOTNOTES: [1] Smith: Historical Geography of Holy Land, 73. [2] Deuteronomy 11, 10. [3] Smith: Historical Geography, 94. CHAPTER VII. SOURCES OF HEBREW HISTORY. We may divide the sources of early Hebrew history into (1) Hebrew sources, and (2) sources supplied by contemporaneous nations and by archæology. The Hebrew sources are principally three: the historical books of the Old Testament, the Talmud, the writings of Josephus. The sources derived elsewhere are records and inscriptions throwing light upon the events of this ancient nation as chronicled by the Egyptians, Babylonians, and Assyrians, and statements of Greek travellers and writers bearing upon their later development. Moreover, in late years the spade of the excavator has unearthed ruins and remains which have added materially to previous knowledge of the subject and have established beyond any doubt facts previously unsettled. Before taking up a discussion of the historical books of the Old Testament--the first of the Hebrew sources,--it is necessary that we consider the compilation of the Bible, and understand how the many books which compose it were made up, and gathered into the one volume with which we are now familiar. Only in late years have people generally been ready to approach the study of the Bible in the spirit of modern investigation long applied to other fields of learning. While the reasons for this reluctance may not be at once apparent, they are not difficult to discover. During the Middle Ages religious teaching was guarded and kept alive by monks in the monasteries of Europe. Only with them was learning of any sort fostered and saved from extinction during the period known as the Dark Ages. The books which these monks studied, and the records and productions they committed to paper or parchment, were invariably written in Latin--a tongue unknown to the people at large. Since the Bible existed only in Latin, Hebrew or Greek, it was a sealed book to the masses, who knew it only through brief portions read and explained to them by the priests. After a time, translations were made, first of portions only, then the entire work was rendered in modern languages. Still it was not considered fitting to allow its contents to be generally known. Copies were chained to pulpits in the cathedrals and were opened by the priest alone. Those who might have been able to procure the costly copies were not permitted to do so. In the story of England we shall find that only a few centuries ago, to possess a Bible and read it aloud in the family was made an offense and was punishable if discovered. Thus a mystery attached to the Scriptures, instilled into the masses by those who guarded the ancient volume. The awe and reverence so aroused, clung to the Bible generations after its contents had become familiar to the Christian world. One scholar calls the Bible "literature smothered in reverence." Again, no other event can be cited throughout history which has had so great an effect upon the world as had the ministry of Christ, recorded at length in the New Testament. The doctrines he taught have been held sacred by his followers in all subsequent ages. The prophetic literature of the Old Testament had foretold the coming of some one who should restore Israel, and the ancient Hebrew nation looked with expectancy to the birth of one who should raise their kingdom to the rank of powerful nations of the earth. By some, Christ was identified with the one whose coming the prophets had proclaimed, and thus a continuity was found throughout the Bible--from the epic of creation in the beginning, to the birth and teaching of Christ, and the added records of his apostles. For many years the entire work was spoken of as the "Word of God," and equal reverence given the sixty-four books which compose it. A verse would be quoted from one chapter with no regard to its context quite as freely as from another. Sentences would be extracted from primitive Hebrew law and put side by side with portions of Christ's Sermon on the Mount, or Paul's letters to mission churches. Finally scholars began to exclaim against such crude and literal interpretation of the Scriptures. "Here," they exclaimed, "is a book embodying legends current among a Semitic people twenty-five hundred years before the birth of Christ; there are prayers and hymns of praise composed at varying periods and finally brought together into one collection; and once again, here is a series of letters written by early preachers of the gospel to their outlying churches, and you are culling a stanza here, a verse there, and a sentence in a third place, as though they were of equal value and had been written under similar circumstances!" Far from welcoming new light upon the subject of deep importance, a cry of indignation arose, from the clergy as well as laymen. It was argued that a scientific study of the Bible would be sure to detract from the force and influence of its teachings, and was in itself irreverent. But the spark of Promethean fire was not destined to go out--the spirit of investigation was abroad. The more scholars searched and studied, the more they were persuaded that a scientific exposition of the Bible would enhance rather than lessen its value. They saw that changing ideas in the book itself existed and had been passed over by those who did not understand them and who thought it their duty to blindly accept what they did not comprehend; while a broader conception was destined to lead to the establishment of profound religious truths, far more satisfying than the earlier blind belief. At last the facts these scholars derived, the methods they applied, the conclusions they reached, largely overcame prejudices of long standing, and it may safely be said that today only those people oppose a scientific study of the Bible who are themselves unfamiliar with scientific study in other fields of knowledge. With this explanation, the results of careful investigation of the Old Testament will henceforth be cited and used freely with no further comment, since by such study alone can we come into a true understanding of a wonderful literature and a remarkable people. The word _Bible_ means _books_, or a _library_. A considerable portion of Hebrew literature has herein been preserved to us. Originally these productions were written in the ancient Hebrew tongue, and had no connection with one another save that they treated of the same people at different stages of their development, and further, treated in some form--most of them, at least--of their faith. When these writings were first collected and bound together, more books were included than at present. Since then the collection has been edited and re-edited. Compilers have introduced notes in the text and assigned authorship of certain writings to those who were themselves mere compilers. Later still, it became customary to write books in verses; into this form the contents of the Scriptures were thrown. Instead of a narrative being given at length it was divided into verses, as in our Bibles at present used. Instead of a poem being reproduced in its original form, or a drama being divided by the speeches of its participants, both were cast into verses and numbered. Thus prose and poetry came to have the same appearance. "More than fifty books, the production of a large number of different authors representing periods of time extending over many centuries, are all comprehended between the covers of a single volume. There is no greater monument of the power of printing to diffuse thought than this fact, that the whole classic literature of one of the world's greatest peoples can be carried about in the hand or pocket. "But there is another side to the matter. A high price has been paid for this feat of manufacturing a portable literature: no less a price than the effacement from the books of the Bible of their whole literary structure. Where the literature is dramatic there are no names of speakers nor divisions of speeches; there are no titles to essays or poems, nor anything to mark where one poem or discourse ends and another begins. It is as if the whole were printed 'solid,' like a newspaper without newspaper headings. The most familiar English literature treated in this fashion would lose a great part of its literary interest; the writings of the Hebrews suffer still more through our unfamiliarity with many of the literary forms in which they were cast. Even this statement does not fully represent the injury done to this literature of the Bible by the traditional shape in which it is presented to us. Between the Biblical writers and our own times have intervened ages in which all interest in literary beauty was lost, and philosophic activity took the form of protracted discussions of brief sayings or 'texts.' Accordingly this solidified matter of Hebrew literature has been divided up into single sentences or 'verses,' numbered mechanically one, two, three, etc., and thus the original literary form has been further obscured. It is not surprising that to most readers the Bible has become, not a literature, but simply a store-house of pious 'texts.'"[1] We call certain books of the Old Testament _historical_, but this does not mean, in this case, that they were written with the sole object of chronicling the events of Hebrew progress. They were at the same time books of devotion, showing God's dealing with them, His chosen people. Before the ninth or eighth century B.C., records of Israel's past existed only in snatches of song and in traditions handed down by word of mouth from one generation to another. The Song of Deborah, preserved in the Book of Judges, belongs to a remote period; the legends of creation, common to the Semitic race, as related in Genesis were current from time immemorial. In the eighth century before Christ an effort was made in the "Schools of the Prophets" to compile the history of Israel, but the leading motive was rather to illustrate God's favor to them in the past by citing instances familiar to them all, and to prove that divine protection had been withdrawn from them when they had gone astray--as exemplified in their past, rather than to leave for future ages records of their heroic deeds and victories and civil administration. The result was that the historical writings prepared were based on ancient traditions, to be sure, but reflected the religious beliefs and the normal ideas of the age in which they were produced. The historical books include Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Joshua, Judges, I. and II. Samuel, I. and II. Kings, Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah. Other books, such as Isaiah, for example, include historical matter. "The first portion of the history, the biblical _Genesis_, gives us what that word implies--the Gradual Formation of the Chosen Nation. The next section on the Exodus (the biblical _Exodus_, _Leviticus_, _Numbers_), the Emigration of the Chosen People to the Land of Promise; with migration goes the gradual evolution into an organized nation, and the massing at this point of legal documents makes the Constitutional History of Israel. Under the name of The Judges (the biblical _Joshua_, _Judges_, part of _Samuel_) we next distinguish the Grand Transition: a people starting with theocracy, the government of an invisible God, comes to accept the rule of visible kings copied from nations around. But precisely at the time these kings begin there is established a regular order of 'prophets,' or interpreters for God, representing the old idea of theocracy: the fourth period of the history may be named as The Kings and The Prophets, a regular Government of Kings tempered by an Opposition of Prophets. Then comes the Exile: the witnessing of Israel for Jehovah has to be carried on in the land of strangers. There return from exile, not the whole people, but only those who are devoted to the service of God; not the Hebrew Nation, but the Jewish Church: and the final section is thus the Ecclesiastical History of _The Chronicles_. The spirit of the history is throughout made emphatic by story, or at times by fable or song. But in addition to the formal historic books we have to note two others: "_Deuteronomy_ gives us the Orations and Songs of Moses, emphasizing the crisis of the leader's Farewell to Israel. And in Isaiah we find a certain dramatic work, which, in connection with the deliverance from exile, reads a meaning into events such as strikes a unity through the whole career of the chosen people: it is an Epilogue to the History of Israel." The _Talmud_ has been mentioned as a second source of Hebrew history. The word itself means literally "learning," or "teaching." It is the name given a collection of Hebrew writings which were written primarily to explain and exemplify Jewish law. Two Talmuds were prepared, one in Babylon--known as the Babylonian Talmud, or the Talmud of the Eastern land; the other written in Jerusalem, known as the Talmud of the Western land. They were kept in the temples and added to and continued by rabbis through the first five centuries after the Christian era. The interest in them for the historian today centers around the traditions and legends introduced, these having been current among the Hebrews generations earlier. The Talmud is rich in folklore, and so possesses relative value from a historical standpoint. Third among Hebrew sources we have noted the Writings of Josephus. Josephus was a Jewish priest who lived in the first century after Christ. Not only was he himself a priest but for twenty-four generations before him his forefathers had presided in the temple. During his life, Palestine was held by the Romans, and he wrote the "Antiquities of the Jews," and a history of the Jewish War, to acquaint the people of his day with the story of his people. He claims to have found his material in the sacred books of the temple and frequently explains at length events merely mentioned in the Old Testament. His writings have been valued both in early and recent times. Among the sources elsewhere obtained, the records of contemporaneous nations are of first importance. The oppression of the Israelites under the Egyptian pharaoh, for example, is believed to find confirmation in scenes and inscriptions recently discovered in the valley of the Nile. In our study of Assyrian conquest, we have noted tribute lists and memorials celebrating victories over the Hebrew kingdoms, recovered among other ruins in Mesopotamia. The king of Babylonia finally left Jerusalem, the beautiful city of Palestine, demolished and well nigh abandoned. Thousands of her noblest citizens were taken captives to Babylon. This incident was naturally chronicled in Babylonian annals. Similar instances might be cited, but these serve to show ways in which material for Hebrew history may be gleaned from the records of nations that flourished by her side. Lastly we may note the results of archaeological research as supplying material for the reconstruction of Israel's past. In 1883 M. Naville opened a mound wherein was discovered a portion of what is supposed to have been Pithom--one of the two "store-cities," built by the Children of Israel while in bondage. The bricks still remaining verified the story as it has come down to us from the Hebrews themselves, in the Book of Exodus. The lower rows of bricks were mixed with straw; those laid in later were kneaded with stubble, and those last placed were formed simply of sun-dried mud. Explorations have been carried on recently in Jerusalem and elsewhere in Palestine, and some important discoveries have already been made. [Illustration: HARBOR OF JAPPA] In spite of these various means, we have scanty material at best for the reconstruction of Hebrew history. The Hebrews were unhistorical and did not appreciate, nor apparently care to preserve, their secular history. Records of priceless value were allowed to perish and we have today only extracts from them, or some simple phrase concerning them. It was the portion of Israel to tell the world of her religion and to leave to others the extolling of earthly successes and failures. The comments of alien nations are unsatisfactory, for their attitude was generally hostile, or at least, unsympathetic. Nevertheless, while questions remain unanswered and certain points disputed by authorities, we are able to follow with some degree of certainty the formation of the Hebrew nation and its political development. [Illustration: HIGH PRIEST.] FOOTNOTES: [1] Biblical Masterpieces, Moulton, Intro. CHAPTER VIII. THE HEBREWS PRIOR TO THEIR OCCUPATION OF CANAAN. Regarding the earliest period of Israel's existence there has been wide difference of opinion. Until recently there have been many who have accepted literally the early books of the Old Testament, composed hundreds of years after the events recorded took place, and the product of several writers, all of whom were filled with a desire to show the favor of God exemplified in every detail of Hebrew progress. If one takes the position that the history of the Hebrews is different from that of every other people in the world's history, if it be held that their development cannot be traced as the unfolding of all other peoples has been traced, then there is nothing more to be said--one can merely chronicle the wonders and marvel. If, on the other hand, one accepts the absolutely established historical fact that these people began as other nations began, in a very crude and primitive state, and came slowly into enlightenment as did nations contemporaneous with them, then the progress of the early Hebrews can be similarly followed. The conclusions which seem to be best substantiated are the ones we shall consider, noting at the same time that among authorities and scholars many differences of opinion still exist. It is generally conceded that about 1500 B.C. a company of Semitics, originally inhabiting Arabia, but for some years settlers in Mesopotamia, set out from the Euphrates valley--probably from Ur--and journeyed westward. The name Abraham is the one tradition gives as the leader of this company, which after the fashion of nomads, sought new pastures in districts less crowded than those of Chaldea. Among those who attached themselves to this migration appear to have been the ancestors of the tribes later known as the Moabites, Ammonites and Edomites. By slow stages this band of emigrants passed into Syria and reached at length the country we know as Palestine. At that time it was known as Canaan, and was the home of Semitics more or less closely related to the people we know as Phoenicians. The Canaanites and Phoenicians are often identified. As a matter of fact, the Canaanites were Phoenicians who occupied the country districts and, save for a common heritage, had little in common with those merchantmen who filled the great sea-ports of Phoenicia. The Moabites and Ammonites immediately settled the most fertile places in the plateaus of the Eastern Range, and continued the sheep-raising and cattle grazing to which they had long been accustomed. The Edomites also found homes for themselves. The few followers of Abraham appear to have continued their life as tent-dwellers in the southern part of Canaan. In course of time, they were re-enforced by a second company from Mesopotamia,--a tribe bearing the name of Jacob. The word Jacob means re-enforcement, and he is represented in the Old Testament as the father of twelve children, later spoken of as the twelve tribes of Israel. It was quite customary for Hebrew writers of a late period to treat the names of tribes as individuals, and to attribute to the individuals thus created characteristics peculiar to the patriarchal, or heroic age. "However plastic and distinct the individualities of Ishmael and Edom, Israel and Joseph may seem to us, they are all only personifications and representations of the races of tribes whose names they bear.... When Jacob and Laban together set up a boundary-stone upon Mount Gilead and make a solemn and sworn covenant that neither of them henceforth will pass this boundary with evil intent, it is perfectly plain that this is not a private agreement between father-in-law and son-in-law, but a legal regulation of tribal boundary rights between Israel and Aram."[1] Leadership of the whole band of Israelites was desired by the tribe of Joseph, which, failing to secure it, departed from the rest and journeyed to Egypt. Here, after some time, the other tribes gathered and settled a fertile district northeast of the Delta, and known by the name of Goshen. When these Israelites first came into Egypt, a great Semitic upheaval had taken place in the ancient world, and there seem to be reasons for thinking that the welcome given them was due to the fact that a Semitic pharaoh ruled in Egypt. In any event, they lived peaceably for two or three generations--how much longer we do not know--when the aspect of matters changed. The native rulers were restored and because Egypt was having difficulty with tribes in Western Asia, foreigners within her immediate borders were looked upon with suspicion. A large number of laborers were needed to carry on gigantic building projects, and the Israelites were suddenly impressed as public slaves, and set to work under armed guards. It was against all nature that desert nomads, accustomed to the freedom of the wide world, would long endure this servitude. The instincts of their ancestors would live on for many generations, although temporarily overpowered. After being ground down by the heel of the oppressor for a considerable number of years, they were at length incited by Moses to depart for the land still known to them by stories handed down from father to son--the land of Canaan. Moses, by birth a Hebrew, had been educated in the family of an Egyptian, but became an outlaw upon killing an Egyptian while defending one of his own kinsmen. Escaping to the land of the Midianites, he had drunk in the air of freedom and the instincts of his forefathers were stimulated into activity. He took on the religion of the Midianites and accepted Jahweh as his God. He grieved over the condition to which his people had fallen, and brooding over it, experienced a divine commission to restore them to freedom. Rallying them in the name of Jahweh, he led them out of the land of bondage. According to the Hebrew account, Egypt was at that particular time stricken by plagues, and the people, naturally superstitious, attributed their afflictions to the foreigners within their land. So incensed against them did they become that the ruler, in a moment of weakness, consented to their exodus. No sooner had they departed, however, than he bethought him of the laborers he had lost, and dispatched the flower of his cavalry to compel their return. A wind, blowing fiercely, made a fording of the Sea possible for the Israelites, but the cavalry, sent in pursuit, was engulfed and lost. This incident was seized upon as a mark of divine favor by these disheartened people, who saw direct intervention of Jahweh in their behalf. Thus the power of a supreme God was impressed upon their minds as long years of religious instruction could never have impressed it. For forty years the Children of Israel wandered in the desert, loitering here and there, finding their way between hostile tribes. During these years the figure of Moses stands forth with unfailing strength and courage. The people he had led thither were mere children, rendered dependent and unsteadfast by their long period of servitude. When difficulties beset them, they did not hesitate to turn upon their deliverer and reproach him, and to wish often to return to the land they had recently left, where food was always forthcoming, even though at the expense of liberty and self-respect. But Moses, with staunch heart and great patience, slowly organized them into a religious body, finding unity for them in the one God, Jahweh. Meanwhile a new generation was growing up among them; sons and daughters who were born in the air of freedom, assimilated new ideas more readily, were more steadfast in their purpose, and grew into greater self-reliance than their fathers knew. With this new spirit manifest, we see the possibilities of a dawning nation, and a more promising future. Not long before the exodus, incoming Philistines pressed the Canaanites farther east, and they in turn displaced the Moabites and Ammonites from their fertile homes in the Eastern Range. These Semitics remembered their old allies, now in the desert, and besought them for aid. The Israelites helped them defeat the Canaanites and then appropriated the fertile places for themselves. Soon, however, increasing numbers made it necessary to seek wider room, and the tribe of Judah crossed the Jordan and settled the tableland which afterwards bore its name. This settlement was not made without great effort, for the earlier inhabitants held tenaciously to the land. The tribes of Simeon and Levi tried to do likewise, but their treachery made them victims to the revenge of the Canaanites. The Levites disappeared as a tribe, but were perpetuated as a priestly order. The Simeonites became absorbed with the tribe of Judah. Reuben and Gad remained east of the Jordan, and the remaining tribes united under Joshua and made an attack upon the central part of Canaan. Jericho fell into their hands, also Ai and Bethel. When these most exposed places fell to their portion, the inhabitants of Gibeon, a Canaanite stronghold, grew alarmed for their own safety and craftily sought a treaty with the invaders. This becoming known among the league of Canaanite cities, banded together to drive out the Israelites, the members of the league were so incensed that they marched against the walls of Gibeon for thus deserting their common cause. The citizens of Gibeon appealed to the Hebrews for aid, and according to their treaty, Joshua led his army out to meet the forces of the besiegers. The Hebrews were accustomed to hand-to-hand conflicts, and to the heights; the Canaanites fought wherever possible with chariots, and naturally preferred the plains. At first it seemed as though the advantage belonged to the Canaanites, for they carried the battle into the plain, and had strong cities behind them. Nevertheless, a sudden rain made the earth so soft that their chariots availed them little, and when the rain changed to hail, their ranks were thrown into confusion. The book of Jashar, an ancient Hebrew work, has not been preserved but was apparently made up of old ballads and war songs. A fragment repeated in the book of Joshua recounts that Joshua, the famous Hebrew warrior, commanded the sun and moon to stand still until the battle ended. Some infer that he wished daylight to remain until the battle could be fought out; others hold that he wanted the darkness of the storm to continue, to further discomfit the Canaanites. "Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; And thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, Until the nation had avenged themselves of their enemies."[2] Victory belonged to the Israelites, and the seven tribes took possession of trans-Jordan regions. "But this does not mean that Israel was in full possession of the land: by far the best and most fertile portions of it, and especially the majority of the cities, whose strong fortifications made them impregnable to the primitive military skill of the Israelites, remained in possession of the Canaanites; it was chiefly the woody mountain chains of northern and middle Palestine that had come into the power of Israel, and the Canaanites had partly to be subdued by force and partly to be peacefully absorbed--a long and difficult task."[3] "Then sang Moses and the Children of Israel this song unto the Lord: "I will sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously: The horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength and song, And he is become my salvation: This is my God, and I will praise him; My father's God, and I will exalt him. (1) _Sung by Men._ "The Lord is a man of war: The Lord is his name. Pharaoh's chariots and his host hath he cast into the sea: And his chosen captains are sunk in the Red Sea. The deeps cover them: They went down into the depths like a stone. _Sung by Women._ "Sing ye to the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously: The horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea. (2) _Men._ "Thy right hand, O Lord, is glorious in power, Thy right hand, O Lord, dasheth in pieces the enemy. And in the greatness of thine excellency thou overthrowest Them that rise up against thee: Thou sendest forth thy wrath, it consumeth them as stubble And with the blast of thy nostrils the waters were piled up, The floods stood upright as an heap; The deeps were congealed in the heart of the sea. The enemy said, I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil: My lust shall be satisfied upon them; I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them Thou didst blow with thy wind, the sea covered them: They sank as lead in the mighty waters. _Women._ "Sing ye to the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously: The horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea. (3) _Men._ "Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the Gods? Who is like thee, glorious in holiness, Fearful in praises, doing wonders? Thou stretchest out thy right hand, The earth swallowed them. Thou in thy mercy hast led the people which thou hast redeemed: Thou hast guided them in thy strength to thy holy habitation. The peoples have heard, they tremble: Till thy people pass over, O Lord, Till the people pass over which thou hast purchased. Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance, The place, O Lord, which thou hast made for thee to dwell in, The sanctuary, O Lord, which thy hands have established. The Lord shall reign forever and ever. _Women._ "Sing ye to the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously: The horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea." --_Modern Reader's Bible._ FOOTNOTES: [1] History of the People of Israel; Cornill, 30. [2] Joshua, 10, 12. [3] History of People of Israel, 47. CHAPTER IX. THE ERA OF THE JUDGES. As we have seen, Joshua's victory left the conquest of Canaan but begun. It so happened that the great powers were too absorbed with their own affairs to expand by conquest, so the earlier inhabitants of Palestine and the Hebrews were left to fight out their difficulties as best they might. For some generations after the entrance of the Israelites into Canaan, confusion and disorder ruled. The invaders would win the heights in a given region, while around them in the plains and valleys, flourished hostile clans, often harassing and threatening their settlements. Years of peace would settle over the land, and the two peoples--Israelites and Canaanites--would intermarry, when again the old hatred would break out anew. The period following the death of Joshua has been called the "Era of the Judges." The simple statement of the ancient Hebrew chronicler makes clear the situation: "And there was no king in Israel; each man did that which was right in his own eyes." Our knowledge of this age is derived chiefly from the Book of Judges, which contains some of the earliest records of the Israelites. However, the material herein contained has not come down to us first hand. A prophet of later times selected such material as suited his purpose from records which were accessible to him. The writer or writers of the Book of Judges desired to inculcate religious truths--not to recount historical events. Such pictures of the life during those years which followed Hebrew occupation of Canaan as seemed best were fitted into phrases like these: "And the people of Israel did that which was evil in the sight of Jahweh, and Jahweh delivered them into the hands of their enemies." "The people of Israel cried unto Jahweh and He raised up to them a deliverer, and the land had rest." It seems to have been fortunately the case that the older material was incorporated into the phrases with little change, and from it one is able to get a very fair idea of the stage of progress to which the Hebrews had then arrived. Thirteen _Judges_ are mentioned in the Old Testament, and there were surely many more whose names were not recorded. In times of emergency, danger, attack or oppression, a clan, or several clans, one tribe or possibly two or three tribes, would voluntarily unite under some chosen chieftain, whose duties and powers were indefinite. If he were able to deliver them in their distress, they acknowledged him as their leader so long as he lived. When a similar occasion arose, it was met in a similar way. Since differences between clans, disputes between individuals, and various questions were referred to this chief for settlement, later writers named these men from this duty of referees, _Judges_. Their earliest title of "deliverer" was more expressive. The story of the several recorded judges may be read in the biblical book bearing that name. We shall consider the work of three--not necessarily the most important in Israel's history. Matters had become most threatening in Canaan. The Canaanites had united for a final reduction of Israel and were led by Sisera. This chief was victorious and seemed about to overcome the Hebrew tribes. The very existence of Israel was in gravest danger. The highways were unsafe, for these were held by the Canaanites who were preparing for a final stand. At this juncture Deborah, an inspired prophetess, called upon Barak, a chieftain of the north, to deliver the people. Intermarriage between the Israelites and Canaanites had become so common that it was useless to attempt to rally the early tribes--early distinctions were no longer closely drawn. So Deborah called on all who worshipped Jahweh to rally in His cause. The old enthusiasm was rekindled, and the Canaanites suffered a great defeat. Their king Sisera escaped and took refuge in the tent of a peasant woman. Trusting to her hospitality, he partook of refreshment she offered him. Asking simply for water, she gave him milk. When he fell asleep for a brief rest, she drove a tent-pin through his head, thus killing him. It has been fully observed that "only in an age of tents could such a deed have been thus extolled." The Canaanites never recovered the loss of that day's defeat, and their strength was permanently broken. The Song of Deborah, recorded in the Book of Judges, is one of the earliest writings in the Old Testament. It has recently been thrown again into its original verse form, and rings clear of an early age, echoing the spirit of a crude but vigorous race. DEBORAH'S SONG. _Men._ For that the leaders took the lead in Israel-- _Women._ For that the people offered themselves willingly-- _All._ Bless ye the Lord! PRELUDE. _Men._ Hear, O ye kings-- _Women._ Give ear, O ye princes-- _Men._ I, even I, will sing unto the Lord-- _Women._ I will sing praises to the Lord, the God of Israel. _All._ Lord, when thou wentest forth out of Seir, When thou marchedst out of the field of Edom, The earth trembled, the heavens also dropped, Yea, the clouds dropped water. The mountain flowed down at the presence of the Lord. Even yon Sinai at the presence of the Lord, the God of Israel. I. THE DESOLATION. _Men._ In the days of Shamgar, the son of Anath, In the days of Jael, The highways were unoccupied, And the travellers walked through byways; The rulers ceased in Israel, They ceased-- _Women._ Until that I, Deborah, arose, That I arose a mother in Israel. They chose new gods; Then was war in the gates: Was there a shield or spear seen Among forty thousand in Israel? _Men._ My heart is toward the governors of Israel-- _Women._ Ye that offered yourselves willingly among the people-- _All._ Bless ye the Lord! _Men._ Tell of it, ye that ride on white asses, Ye that sit on rich carpets, And ye that walk by the way:-- _Women._ Far from the noise of archers, In the places of drawing water:-- _All._ There shall they rehearse the righteous acts of the Lord, Even the righteous acts of his rule in Israel. II. THE MUSTER. _All._ The people of the Lord went down to the gates-- _Men._ Awake, awake, Deborah, Awake, awake, utter a song:-- _Women._ Arise, Barak, And lead thy captivity captive, thou son of Abinoan. _All._ Then came down a remnant of the nobles, The people of the Lord came down for me against the Mighty. _Women._ Out of Ephraim came down they whose root is in Amalek-- _Men._ After thee, Benjamin, among thy peoples-- _Women._ Out of Machir came down the governors-- _Men._ And out of Zubulum they that handle the marshal's staff-- _Women._ And the princes of Issachar were with Deborah-- _Men._ So was Issachar, so was Barak: _All._ Into the valley they rushed forth at his feet. _Men._ By the water courses of Reuben There were great resolves of heart. _Women._ Why satest thou among the sheepfolds, To hear the pipings for the flocks? _Men._ At the watercourses of Reuben There were great searchings of heart! _Women._ Gilead abode beyond Jordan-- _Men._ And Dan, why did he remain in ships? _Women._ Ashur sat still at the haven of the sea, And abode by his creeks. _Men._ Zubulum was a people that jeoparded their lives unto the death, And Naphtali upon the high places of the field. III. THE BATTLE AND THE ROUT. _Men._ The kings came and fought; Then fought the kings of Canaan, In Taanach by the waters of Megiddo:-- They took no gain of money. _Women._ They fought from heaven, The stars in their courses fought against Sisera. The river Kishon swept them away,-- That ancient river, the river Kishon! _Men._ O my soul, march on with strength! Then did the horsehoofs stamp By reason of the prancings, The prancings of their strong ones. _Women._ Curse ye, Meroz, said the angel of the Lord, Curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof; Because they came not to the help of the Lord, To the help of the Lord against the mighty! IV. THE RETRIBUTION. _Men._ Blessed above women shall Jael be the wife of Heber the Kenite, Blessed shall she be above women in the tent! He asked water, and she gave him milk; She brought him butter in a lordly dish. She put her hand to the nail, And her right hand to the workman's hammer; And with the hammer she smote Sisera. She smote through his head, Yea, she pierced and struck through his temples. At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay: At her feet he bowed, he fell: When he bowed, there he fell down dead! _Women._ Through the window she looked forth, and cried, The mother of Sisera, through the lattice, "Why is his chariot so long coming? Why tarry the wheels of his chariots?" Her wise ladies answered her, Yea, she returned answer to herself, "Have they not found, Have they not divided the spoils? A damsel, two damsels to every man; To Sisera a spoil of divers colors, A spoil of divers colors of embroidery, Of divers colors of embroidery on both sides, on the necks of the spoil!" _All._ So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord: But let them that love him be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might! Having overcome the Canaanites, the Israelites were not destined to long enjoy peace. Their own kinsmen, the Ammonites and Moabites looked with envy upon their good fortune in winning such desirable land and tried now to rob them of it. Notwithstanding the fact that the Israelites, Moabites and Ammonites had all a common ancestry, they were never on that account restrained from plundering one another's territories. Forced to take a definite stand against them, the Hebrews cast about for a leader. Jephthah was named. He was an outlaw, a bold border man, who belonged to the Hebrew race, and his bravery was unquestioned. When besought, he agreed to drive out the Ammonites on one condition only: that he be acknowledged chieftain after the battle. This being conceded, he led the Hebrew forces. It was in keeping with his rough, reckless nature that he should vow to sacrifice the first living thing he met upon his return were he victorious. The Ammonites were defeated and to Jephthah's utter consternation, his daughter, his only child, rushed forth to meet him. We are told that his vow was kept, and thus we know that human sacrifices were sometimes offered to Jahweh. During the era of the Judges, the Philistines on the southwest began to expand, upon land already settled by the Israelites. They overran the Plain of Sharon, and the Hebrews who had peopled the plain were driven into the hills. This crisis brought forth Samson, one of the chiefs who essayed to stay the power of these new enemies. He was a simple child of nature--a giant in strength, a weakling in steadfast purpose. He lacked the capacity to plan a campaign and execute it. The stories of his prodigious power, his feats pf physical endurance, are too well known to require repetition. They were lauded by his admirers and delighted in by the Israelites when directed against their enemies, but his blows were invariably given to avenge personal wrongs, and he left his people no farther on their way against the Philistines than he found them. The great difficulty during this period was that there was no tendency to hold long together. "Israel had within itself the worst of enemies and a germ of destruction. This was the proud sense of independence and the strongly-developed family feeling of the nomad, which did not immediately vanish from the national character with the surrender of the nomadic fashion of life. After the united effort under Joshua had but barely laid the foundation, the people again broke up into tribes and clans, which now aimlessly sought new places of settlement, each on its own account and unmindful of its neighbors."[1] This tendency to fall apart was the most dangerous sign of Israel's progress, and we shall see how it lasted through her history. Nevertheless, for the time being the lesson was learned that only by uniting against the enemy could victory be won. The era of the Judges so far impressed this truth upon the minds of the Hebrews that we note the beginnings of Hebrew unity. FOOTNOTES: [1] Hist. of People of Israel, 47. CHAPTER X. THE MORALITY OF THE HEBREWS PRIOR TO THE KINGDOM. It is a mistake to suppose that the lofty conceptions of Israel's later seers and prophets were manifest among the people from the earliest times. Quite the reverse was true. Like all primitive people, the Hebrews passed through the usual stages of development, religiously and morally. Sufficient evidence goes to show that they worshipped many gods in the beginning, as did other Semitics. Joshua once reminded them of their earlier faith: "Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor: and they served other gods."[1] "In many respects doubtless their religion was closely akin to that of neighboring Semitic people. They had their sacred pillars, trees, and other emblems of the divine power and presence; they carried with them _teraphim_, which were apparently images venerated as household gods. In many of their beliefs and practices they did not rise above the general level of their age."[2] During their long sojourn in Egypt, as might have been expected, they grew to worship Egyptian gods. "Cast ye away every man the abominations of his eyes, and defile not yourselves with the idols of Egypt."[3] The explanation which has seemed to make clear the unique development of the Hebrew above other Semitics, is this one--only recently offered. It is well-known that the Israelites were originally henotheists--that is, they believed in many gods--believed that many divinities were powerful, but they gave allegiance to one, the god of their tribe. This god belonged to their tribe, and shared its successes and failures. Now when Moses accepted Jahweh, God of the Midianites, he persuaded the Israelites to forsake the gods they were worshipping and give their homage to Jahweh. At the foot of Sinai he caused them to make a covenant with Jahweh: the God was to give them protection, and they were to worship him alone. Because he was an adopted God and not a member of their tribe, he was bound to protect them only when they served him faithfully. The adopted God could cast off his adopted people if they failed to fulfill their part of the contract. The Hebrews always said that they were a peculiar people. They repeatedly referred to the fact that God could cast them off if they were unloyal to him. Such a thing is unknown among other nations. No other God could cast off his people; he was one of them. This explains also why the Hebrews were always so ready to abandon their God and take on the gods of their neighbors. "In any case it is clear that Jahweh was not originally the god of Israel, but only became such in consequence of the work of Moses and of the events of the exodus.... "Israel's relation to Jahweh was unique.... He was not an ancestral god who stood in a natural and necessary relation to his people, like the gods of other Semitic tribes; but he was the god of Sinai and of Midian, who had come into connection with Israel only through his own free, moral choice. Israel belonged to him, not by birth, but by election. Its existence and its continuance were dependent upon his sovereign good pleasure, and he might cast it off as easily as he had adopted it. Under these circumstances he had the right to make conditions upon which his favour should depend such as other gods could not make. This fact does not explain the ethical character of the Mosaic religion; it explains only why an ethical religion was promulgated at this particular time."[4] It is the custom of all primitive people to ascribe their early laws and government to divine origin. This rule is seldom varied, and was adhered to by the ancient Hebrews. Instead of conceiving the God-Spirit as having endowed Moses with true insight, wise judgments, and high ideals, the Israelites believed that their Covenant had been dictated, word by word, by Jahweh, while it was further claimed that tablets with words inscribed upon them were given Moses by God himself. As a matter of fact, the earliest decalogue differed widely from the one best known. The commandments first given the people after they were led forth from Egypt were probably the ones recorded in the twenty-fourth chapter of Exodus, and were something like these: 1. Thou shalt worship no other god. 2. Thou shalt make thee no molten gods. 3. The feast of unleaven bread shalt thou keep. 4. Every firstling is mine. 5. Thou shalt keep the feast of the weeks. 6. Thou shalt keep the feast of the ingathering at the end of the year. 7. Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven. 8. The fat of my feast shall not be left over until the morning. 9. Thou shalt bring the best of the first fruits of thy land to the house of Jehovah thy God. 10. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk. Because Moses was known to the Israelites as a law-giver, laws passed long after his death were attributed to him, quite as laws which came into being years after the death of Hammurabit in Babylon were probably attributed to this great national law-giver. A company of slaves, escaping from servitude after serving for two or three generations, and having possessed but a crude civilization previous to that experience, would require only the simplest laws, and any one reading the various rules and regulations attributed to this period will easily see how crude was the stage of development which made such instruction necessary. As time went on, and the people advanced and became more enlightened, new laws were possible. These continued to be known as the "Laws of Moses," as laws in all early countries have been attributed to some renowned personage, to give them added force. In these early periods which we have been studying, the religion of the Hebrews possessed many features in common with those of surrounding nations. We read that the "Children of Israel walked through the fire," which means that they sacrificed their first-born in flames as offerings to their God. Jahweh was believed to be a jealous God, vindictive, demanding cruel treatment of captives, and fierce and relentless in battle. A man cannot get a higher ideal of God than that of a perfect human being, and this was an age when all ideas and ideals were crude. When the Hebrews settled Canaan, they learned much from the earlier inhabitants of the land. Becoming farmers, they quite naturally fell into the way of worshipping the god of harvests, and other agricultural deities of the Canaanites. The "high places" are repeatedly spoken of, these being places where other gods were worshipped. When roused by danger, they renewed their covenant with Jahweh and returned to more careful performance of their part of the early agreement. The system of polygamy was well established. Several of the patriarchs took two or more wives. If a man died childless, it was not only customary but a duty that the next in line should marry the widow and raise up seed to his memory. This is expressly shown by the story of Ruth, most attractive in its early simplicity. We learn more of the every day life of the Israelites in the period following Hebrew occupancy of Canaan from this little idyl than from any other source, or from all other sources combined. So far as germs of government and judicial administration of the people thus far discernible are concerned, they had seemingly not progressed farther than the instruction of Moses led them. The years spent in the wilderness after the exodus were very essential to the future welfare of the Hebrew nation. Their government--to whatever extent they possessed one--was closely allied to their religion. There were many experiences met with in these forty years which seemed to prove Jahweh's care and protection over them, and Moses was regarded as his representative on earth, who received his instructions from Jahweh and delivered them to his people. "His words were Jehovah's message to them. As he led them in their wilderness wandering, they felt themselves under the direct guidance of their God; he attended to the simple ritual of the desert sanctuary at Kadesh; to him, as the representative of Jehovah, were referred the more difficult cases of dispute which arose; his decisions had all the weight of Jehovah's authority. _In this way he laid down by practical illustration the principles of that civil and religious law which bears his name._ As these cases multiplied, he was led to constitute a rude patriarchal tribunal composed of the elders of the tribes. In this simple organization is found the germ of the Hebrew judicial and executive system. "Thus Moses was the man who under divine direction 'hewed Israel from the rock.' Subsequent prophets and circumstances chiselled the rough boulder into symmetrical form, but the glory of the creative act is rightly attributed to the first great Hebrew prophet. As a leader, he not only created a nation, but guided them through infinite vicissitudes to a land where they might have a settled abode and develop into a stable power; in so doing, he left upon his race the imprint of his own personality. As a judge, he set in motion forces which ultimately led to the incorporation of the principles of right in objective laws. As a priest, he first gave form to the worship of Jehovah. As a prophet, _he gathered together all that was best in the faith of his age and race_, and, fusing them, gave to his people a living religion."[5] Before the time of the monarchy, their darkest years were those wherein the Israelites departed from this Mosaic teaching; their best periods, those in which they assimilated it and attempted to carry it out. To whatever extent they developed strength and stability for their future nation before the birth of their kingdom, such strength came as a result of the Mosaic religious and moral teaching. FOOTNOTES: [1] Joshua, 24, 2. [2] Short Hist. of the Hebrews: Ottley, 26. [3] Ezekiel, 20, 7. [4] Early Hist. of Syria and Palestine: Paton, 139, 141. [5] Hist. of the Hebrew People: Kent Vol. I 44. CHAPTER XI. CAUSES LEADING TO THE KINGDOM. 1250 B.C. has been taken as an approximate date for the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, some placing the event still earlier. After the wandering in the desert, considerable time was spent winning Canaan from its earlier possessors before any settlement was possible. The twelfth century and first part of the eleventh before Christ were years of re-adjustment, the Israelites losing the habits of desert nomads and becoming tillers of the soil. In rocky districts they still raised sheep and cattle but acquired fixed homes. Warfare had been constant, but in later years had been carried on wholly by individual tribes, there being no concerted action. The tendency to divide and seek each its own peculiar interests had been apparent from the first, and the beginning of the eleventh century B.C. found the tribes prostrated as a result. The Canaanites no longer threatened them but the Philistines constantly grew bolder. When they pressed into the plain of Jezreel, the Israelites were forced to fight them, but lacking an able leader and sufficient numbers, they lost the day. Surviving instincts of earlier superstitious practices led them to bring the ark containing their covenant with Jehovah from its sanctuary at Shiloh, thinking this might aid them in a second struggle. "Let us fetch the ark of the covenant of Jehovah out of Shiloh unto us, that it may come among us, and save us out of the hand of our enemies." But instead of leading to victory, 30,000 Israelites fell upon the battle field and the sacred ark itself fell into the hands of the Philistines. "The Philistines burned and destroyed the temple at Shiloh, carried the captured sacred ark to the temple of their chief god, Dagon, and subjected the land, even to the Jordan; the people were disarmed and held in check by Philistine prefects and strongholds. And from all evidence this Philistine domination must have lasted a considerable time. Israel seemed paralyzed and submitted, though with gnashing of teeth."[1] When Israel lay stricken and at the mercy of her enemies on the west, the Ammonites thought the time favorable to lead a new attack for the purpose of recovering their earlier territories on the east. The town of Jabesh was first afflicted, and when its inhabitants offered to surrender, feeling helpless to overpower their ancient foes, the king of the Ammonites insolently replied that he would cause the right eye of each citizen of the town to be cast out, as a reproach to Israel. In the quaint expression of Josephus: "The king of the Ammonites sent ambassadors to them, commanding them either to deliver themselves up, on condition to have their right eyes plucked out, or to undergo a siege, and have their cities overthrown. He gave them their choice, whether they would cut off a small number of their body, or universally perish." Implored to grant them a few days respite, the king of the Ammonites scornfully conceded it, sure of his ultimate triumph. In Ephraim dwelt a seer, Samuel by name. He was a godly man, having rare purity of character and intense religious fervor. Dedicated when a child to the service of Jehovah, the course of his life had led him to catch the spirit of the great founder of the Hebrew nation and beyond him, to gain a broader conception of the great God-Spirit. He understood why his people were a prey to every neighbor, and knew better than most how much a firm leadership was needed by them. With eyes that saw far into the future, Samuel realized that the crying need was unity and concerted action. Now in these ancient days, unity meant kingship. Under strong kings, contemporary nations flourished, and a king was apparently necessary in Canaan. Saul, of the tribe of Benjamin, seeking his father's asses, approached the seer, whose prophetic powers were well known in his vicinity. The youth thought simply to invoke his aid in his private interests, but Samuel recognized in the broad-shouldered, well-proportioned Benjaminite one who might come to the rescue of stricken Israel. With prophetic vision, Samuel foretold coming events and anointed Saul as one chosen of Jehovah to rule the nation of His special care. Since he was not called immediately to action, Saul returned to his father's house, where he went about his ordinary duties. But the words of the seer had sunk deep into his heart. Indications of Israel's stricken condition were not wanting on every hand, and Saul brooded over her helplessness and his call to save his people. At length, when the citizens from mourning Jabesh visited his vicinity, vainly trying to rouse their kinsmen to action, Saul saw that his opportunity had come. Sympathy had been everywhere expressed by the Israelites, but they had suffered too many recent defeats to feel confidence in their ability to win. Saul hastily cut up a yoke of oxen, and sending these bloody tokens to the various tribes, he notified them that such treatment would be meted out to their flocks and herds unless they came to the relief of the trans-Jordan cities. Recognizing a leader at last, men quickly gathered. The desert tribe was surprised, defeated and pursued into its desert strongholds. Thereupon Saul was popularly proclaimed king, as it was now believed that he alone could save the Hebrews from the Philistines, who were heavily oppressing them. A king is ordinarily one who rules a kingdom, but in the case of Saul, a kingdom had first to be won. His encounters with the Philistines were successful, but his reign proved to be a continual campaign against them. Gradually Saul became estranged from Samuel, who represented the best element in Israel. Priests of a later period assigned the difference between them as having arisen over Saul's leniency toward his captives, but it is believed that instead it came naturally between two men whose ideals were wide apart. Saul was incapable of taking an exalted view of his people's mission, as did his priest and prophet. Beset on all sides by the enemy, estranged from Samuel and in general from the priesthood, Saul became moody and subject to fits of melancholia. To dispel these, David, son of Jesse, was brought from his father's flocks on the mountainside, to gladden the king's idle hours. David was accomplished upon the harp, and his music had power to quiet the restless king, who heaped favors and honors upon him--after the nature of his impulsive disposition. As armour-bearer to the king, David had frequent opportunities to distinguish himself, while he and the king's son Jonathan became fast friends. However, as David grew in favor with the people, Saul became intensely jealous of him. Where the kingship was but an experiment, popularity was important to a ruler. In his disordered brain, Saul conceived that a plot was being laid by his son and David, and as a result, David was obliged to flee for his life. He raised his standard as an outlaw chief, and all the dissatisfied element of the land flocked to his side. Yet even here David favored the people of Israel whenever he could; for protection he went into the service of the Philistine king of Gath, but we are told that when he was supposed to be fighting against the Hebrews, he was in reality fighting off their desert enemies. The division within the ranks of Israel once more gave opportunity to the watchful Philistines. They made ready for a final assault, and the moody and disheartened Saul prepared to fight them back. He was no longer able to rouse his kinsmen as at first. Many were discontented with his rule, and many favored David. Before the battle, Saul, grown more superstitious with the pressure of circumstance, visited the witch of Endor to learn by her art the issue of the battle. Never does the king, tall in stature and once confident, but now broken in spirit, appear more tragic. When she predicted defeat--and small art was needed to foretell such an apparent outcome--Saul felt that all was lost. One feels as when the voice of Cæsar spake unto Brutus in the great play: "Thou shalt see me at Philippi"--the battle is lost before it is begun. When all was lost, Saul gave his sword to his armour-bearer to stab him lest he fall into the hands of the enemy. When he lacked courage, he plunged it into his own breast. Both he and his noble son Jonathan went down on that fateful field, and so ended the first reign in Israel. David is believed to have composed his beautiful elegy "How are the Mighty Fallen" upon this occasion. DAVID'S LAMENT. Thy glory, O Israel, Is slain upon thy high places! How are the mighty-- Fallen! Tell it not in Gath, Publish it not in the streets of Ashkelon; Lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, Lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph. Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew nor rain upon you, Neither fields of offerings: For the shield of the mighty was vilely cast away, The shield of Saul, as of one not anointed with oil. From the blood of the slain, From the fat of the mighty, The bow of Jonathan turned not back, And the sword of Saul returned not empty. Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, And in their death they were not divided; They were swifter than eagles, They were stronger than lions. Ye daughters of Israel, Weep over Saul, Who clothed you in scarlet, Who put ornaments of gold upon your apparel. How are the mighty-- Fallen in the midst of the battle! O Jonathan, Slain upon thy high places. I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: Very pleasant hast thou been unto me: Thy love to me was wonderful, Passing the love of women. How are the mighty-- Fallen! And the weapons of war-- Perished! --_Modern Reader's Bible._ In the Old Testament itself are two contradictory estimates of the character of Saul. One was written by those who favored and cared for him; the other, by the faction which favored David. Later compilers have thrown the two together, and the result is that we must once more disentangle the two narratives and then judge between them. The following characterizations of him differ considerably, and yet have certain ideas in common: "Saul is one of the most tragic figures in history. A great and nobly endowed nature, heroic and chivalrous, inspired with fiery zeal, he finally accomplished nothing.... He lacked appreciation of the true character of Israel; in this regard tradition has given a wholly correct picture of him. He was exclusively a soldier, and was in a fair way to exchange Israel into a secular military state and thus divert it from its religious function in universal history. Saul may claim our deepest compassion and our heartiest sympathy, but the fall of his power was a blessing for Israel."[2] The second criticism upon the fallen king seems more fair and sympathetic: "Saul was a simple-minded, impulsive, courageous warrior; he was a loyal patriot who loved his people and was ready to give his life for them; his physical pre-eminence, combined with energy and enthusiasm, fitted him to lead a sudden attack and to awaken loyal support, while his intrepid courage kindled the same in others. But Saul was a son of that rude age whose roots were found in the period of the Judges. In a sense he was a child grown big. The position which he occupied demanded executive ability, tact, the power of organization, and, above all, patience and persistency. In these maturer qualities he was deficient; they are rarely the possession of fiery, impetuous natures. In addition, Saul was unable to understand and appreciate the higher religious experiences and ideals which were already becoming the possession of the more enlightened souls of seers like Samuel. As is frequently true with such a nature, Saul was superstitious. Circumstances tended to develop the darker rather than the brighter side of his character. The constant trials and cares of the court and battle-field daunted his enthusiasm, and induced those attacks of melancholia which obscured the nobler Saul and led him to commit acts which constantly increased the density of the clouds that gathered about his latter days. "When he fell at Gilboa, and the Philistines again became masters of northern and central Canaan, Saul's work seemed to be completely undone; _but its foundations were laid too deeply to be undermined by political changes_. Saul found the Hebrews ground down under Philistine dominance, broken in spirit, undisciplined, and little more than cowards. He united and aroused them to strike for independence. By his successes he inspired in them confidence and courage. In the severe training-school of Philistine warfare, he developed out of the cowards who had fled before the Philistine army to hide themselves in caves and cisterns, the hardy, brave warriors with whom David made his conquests. Above all, he taught the Hebrews by practical illustration, more clearly than ever before, that by union and union alone they could be free, and enjoy peace and prosperity. As is often the case, _the pioneer perished amidst seeming failure before he saw the ripe fruits of his labors; but his work was absolutely necessary_. David reaped the fruits of Saul's sowing, but the harvest would never have been so glorious without the pioneer's toils."[3] REIGN OF DAVID. Saul is supposed to have ruled not longer than eight or ten years. His youngest son, Eshbaal, was recognized as his natural successor. Abner, Saul's commander-in-chief, gave Eshbaal the support of whatever army survived, and he was established on the east side of the Jordan, while all the territory west of the river receded to the Philistines. David realized that he was in no position to assume control of the Hebrews at this juncture, for he had but a few hundred followers and he was sure to be welcomed by all the tribes only when his services were required for the common safety. Judah was deeply attached to him at this time, and he allowed himself to be made king of the tribe of Judah, and established himself at Hebron. As soon as Eshbaal felt sufficiently secure on the east of Jordan Abner was sent to overcome David and his followers, who had thus failed to recognize the kingship of Eshbaal. They suffered defeat and had to retreat across the river. The times were troublous and before eight years had passed, both Eshbaal and Abner were murdered. This left the way open for David, to whom the subjects of Eshbaal sent homage. The Philistines had considered the little kingdom of Saul's son unworthy of attention, but a kingdom on the west side of the river might prove a menace to their power, so they hastened to attack the newly crowned king. David marched against them and broke forever their strength. They retired into their earlier possessions and harassed Israel no more. One by one the old enemies of the Hebrews had to be reckoned with. The Moabites attacked the territory of David and were overcome and made vassals. On the north the Ammonites made a raid and were so completely defeated that we hear of them no more. On the south the Edomites made war, and their lands also became a Hebrew province. In all these wars, David was the defender of his people--never the aggressor, yet he left each tribe with no further desire to make war upon Israel. David was a statesman, and he saw at once that as king of the Hebrews, he must no longer remain isolated with his native tribe, in the vicinity to him most familiar. He saw that the site of Jerusalem was capable of excellent defense, and this he made his capital. "Jerusalem is situated pretty near the central part of the entire country, and belonging to none of the tribes it stood on neutral ground above them and their rivalries. When it is called the City of David this is no mere phrase, for Jerusalem is altogether the creation of David; and when we consider what Jerusalem was to the people of Israel, and through the people of Israel to all mankind, we shall recognize in the foundation of this City of David an event of world-wide importance." Israel had reached the highest pinnacle of its political power. David's kingdom was the most powerful one between the valley of the Euphrates and the Nile. While disturbances extended throughout the reign until within the last ten of David's forty years, yet the nation was saved from impending danger and was placed on a sure basis. Now it was that David allowed his personal desires to lead him into difficulties which followed him many years and which darkened the reign which had promised so much. An infatuation for Bath-sheba, wife of one of his officers, took possession of him, and caused him to make way with her husband who stood in his way. Like other Semitic and Oriental nations, the Hebrews were accustomed to take more than one wife, but the religion of Jehovah had been from the beginning a moral religion, and the more earnest among Israel's people could but be shocked by this action on the part of the king. Much has been made of David's remorse, but it was not so great but that he allowed the unscrupulous woman who had aided him in his wrongdoing to exercise a strong influence over him throughout his life. His sons seemed to feel no restraint upon them and added crimes to their house. Absalom, David's favorite son, took advantage of his father's loss of popularity to raise a revolt against him. This was easily put down, but the death of Absalom quite unnerved the king. Bath-sheba rested not until she had settled the succession upon her son, Solomon. Shortly after this decision was made known, David died, having reigned forty years. In realizing what all these years meant for Israel, we can never lose sight of the pioneer work of Saul which alone made possible the more brilliant one of his successor. "It is not possible to overestimate what David did for Israel: Israel as a people, as a representative of political life, as a concrete quantity in the development of universal history, as a nation in the fullest sense of the word, is exclusively his work. With this he completed what Moses had begun in quiet and inconspicuous labors on Sinai and at Kadesh. And all of this David created as it were out of nothing, under the most difficult conditions conceivable, with no other means than his own all-inspiring and all-compelling personality.... "David created Israel and at the same time raised it to its highest eminence; what Israel was under and through David it never again became. And so we can easily understand how the eyes of Israel rested in grateful reverence upon this figure, and how a second David became the dream of Israel's future. "True, the picture of David does not lack the traits of human frailty, which Israelitish tradition, with a truly admirable sincerity has neither suppressed nor palliated; but the charm which this personality exercised over all contemporaries without exception has not yet faded for us of later day; whoever devoted himself without prejudice to the contemplation of David's history and character cannot fail to like him. A saint and psalm-singer, as later tradition has represented him, he certainly was not; but we find in him, a truly noble human figure, which, in spite of all, preserved the tenderest and most fragrant bloom of its nature, perfect directness and simplicity; nowhere any posing, nothing theatrical, such as is always found in sham greatness; he always acts out what he is, but his unspoiled nature, noble at heart, generally comes very near to the right and good. At the same time the whole personality is touched with a breath of genuine piety and childlike trust in God, so that we can wholly comprehend how he appears to tradition as the ideal ruler, the king after God's own heart. "This king, who did more for the worldly greatness and earthly power of Israel than any one else, was a genuine Israelite in that he appreciated also Israel's religious destiny: he was no soldier-king, no conqueror and warrior of common stamp, no ruler like any one of a hundred others, but he is the truest incorporation of the unique character of Israel, a unique personality in the history of the world, and we understand how he could become the impersonation of an idea--how the highest and holiest that Israel hoped for and longed for appears at the Son of David."[4] We are shocked as we read of David's cruelty to captives, but in his ferocious treatment he was but following an instinct common to the Semitic race. It is to be remembered that he was but a brief time removed from the era of the Judges, when even Samuel, the far-seeing seer, and God-fearing man, hacked an enemy to pieces before the altar of Jehovah, to the supposed gratification of his God. David's faults were common to his age, and they were not looked upon by his contemporaries as we look upon them today, but his virtues and redeeming characteristics raised him far above the majority of Israel's people, and his reign was harked back to as most worthy in Hebrew annals. SOLOMON. Solomon was the son of David's fourth wife--Bathsheba. Selfish, devoid of principle and fond of intrigue, she influenced David to recognize her son as his successor, setting aside the right of an older son. It is not unlikely that David believed Solomon the more capable of serving Israel. Solomon had inherited his mother's selfishness and love of display. He soon caused the death of his brother, in order to make his crown secure. Having neither aptitude nor ability for war, fortifications took the place of active armies. The vassal-kingdoms which David had won were soon lost. Forts were erected at important border places, and the city of Jerusalem was strongly fortified. Oriental display and absolutism were emulated by the young king. He desired to set his kingdom on a footing with other kingdoms of his time, and, ignoring the early aims and mission of the Israelites, he made everything else subordinate to the exaltation of the court and king. Commercial alliances were made with neighboring peoples; wives were taken from many states--petty and great. Most flattering was thought to be the marriage alliance between the Hebrew king and a daughter of the pharaoh of Egypt, and elaborate apartments were provided her. In early times a king added materially to his property and prestige by making numerous alliances of this sort. David had deemed it best to do so and Solomon followed the principle on a much wider scale. Naturally ample funds were now required to meet the expenses of the court, and various means were provided to secure the necessary income. The whole kingdom was divided into twelve districts and each was required to defray the court's expenses for one month. Moreover, commercial enterprises were entered upon; toll was collected from the overland trade, and the king himself dealt heavily in horses, which he imported from Egypt and sold to the neighboring peoples at a good profit. Suddenly the little nation of Israelites, so long isolated and remote from the influences of wealth, was thrown open to outside contact on every hand. "Hitherto struggles within and hostility without had rendered the Hebrew peasants almost impervious to foreign influences; now, all at once, the bars were thrown down, and these came rushing in like a tidal wave. The horse took the place of the ass; metal weapons and tools supplanted the rude ones of flint and wood; walled cities arose on the sites of the primitive towns with their mud and stone hovels; the rude barracks of David grew into a palace; the simple gathering of followers about Saul, as he sat under his tamarisk-tree in Ramah, developed into a great Oriental court; luxuries undreamed of before came to be regarded as necessities; foreign spices, apes, peacocks, ivory, precious stones and woods aroused the curiosity and delighted the senses of the inhabitants of the gay capital."[5] Nations entering into commercial relations with Solomon expected as a matter of course that their gods would be welcomed in the land of the Hebrews. Many of the commercial treaties were cemented by marriage alliances, and the princesses who came into the king's harem brought their own forms of worship with them. Places of worship had to be provided for them, and the idolatry of later years may be traced back in a large measure to the laxity of this period. The adornment of Jerusalem demanded much of the king's attention. In place of the simple quarters which had sufficed for David, a noble palace arose. Apartments for the queens were needed. It has recently been insisted that instead of the three hundred and sixty wives credited to Solomon, he had but seventy, but a few more or less seem of little moment. The harem rivaled that of Persia, and the cost of maintaining so elaborate a court was out of all proportion to the resources of the kingdom. The people were taxed to the utmost. The Canaanites, who had long been permitted to live in peace by the side of the Hebrews, were now reduced to slavery and put at forced labor, quite as the Hebrews had been in Egypt. [Illustration: ROSES OF SHARON. Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.] Notwithstanding, many ties bound the people to their king. They took great pride in the splendor of their capital, and especially were they gratified by the erection of the temple in Jerusalem. Hither David had brought the ark of the covenant, which had been recovered from the Philistines, and here with due ceremony the center of the kingdom had already been made the religious center as well. It seems probable that to Solomon the temple was but a necessary adjunct to his court buildings. Among most ancient peoples temples were erected in connection with the king's palace. It gave added dignity and inspired wonder. To the masses it probably meant much more. Certainly it grew later to be the center for their religious enthusiasm and spirit. Nor was Solomon's popularity based alone upon his achievements. He had a way of awakening personal popularity. He attained a wide reputation for his so-called "wisdom." As we follow his reckless policy of plunging his country on to ruin, this far-famed wisdom is not at once apparent. It consisted in subtlety, quick wit, ready answers and apt sayings, so much in favor among all oriental peoples. His wisdom is well exemplified by the stories told of the visit of the Queen of Sheba to his court, and her tests as to the truth of his famed gift. It is probable that this Arabian queen came to negotiate commercial advantages-for her subjects, but we are told only the ostensible reason for her coming: to test the wisdom of Solomon, whose fame had reached her kingdom. The dusky queen of renowned beauty brought costly presents to the Hebrew king, and received high honor and attention at his court. Stories have survived of questions put to his majesty by this queen. Two bouquets were held out before him, apparently alike, yet one was just gathered from his garden, and the other had been fashioned by the maidens of the queen. The simple tale is told in a little poem entitled "King Solomon and the Bees," and we leave the verses to complete it. KING SOLOMON AND THE BEES. A TALE OF THE TALMUD. When Solomon was reigning in his glory, Unto his throne the Queen of Sheba came, (So in the Talmud you may read the story) Drawn by the magic of the monarch's fame, To see the splendors of his court, and bring Some fitting tribute to the mighty king. Nor this alone; much had her Highness heard What flowers of learning graced the royal speech; What gems of wisdom dropped with every word; What wholesome lessons he was wont to teach In pleasing proverbs, and she wished, in sooth, To know if Rumor spoke the simple truth. Besides, the queen had heard (which piqued her most) How through the deepest riddles he could spy; How all the curious arts that women boast Were quite transparent to his piercing eye; And so the queen had come--a royal guest-- To put the sage's cunning to the test. And straight she held before the monarch's view, In either hand, a radiant wreath of flowers; The one, bedecked with every charming hue, Was newly culled from Nature's choicest bowers; The other, no less fair in every part, Was the rare product of divinest art. "Which is the true, and which the false?" she said. Great Solomon was silent. All-amazed, Each wondering courtier shook his puzzled head, While at the garlands long the monarch gazed, As one who sees a miracle, and fain, For very rapture, ne'er would speak again. "Which is the true?" once more the woman asked, Pleased at the fond amazement of the king, "So wise a head should not be hardly tasked, Most learned liege, with such a trivial thing!" But still the sage was silent; it was plain A deepening doubt perplexed the royal brain. While thus he pondered, presently he sees, Hard by the casement,--so the story goes,-- A little band of busy, bustling bees, Hunting for honey in a withered rose. The monarch smiled, and raised his royal head; "Open the window!"--that was all he said. The window opened, at the king's command; Within the room the eager insects flew, And sought the flowers in Sheba's dexter hand! And so the king and all the courtiers knew _That_ wreath was Nature's; and the baffled queen Returned to tell the wonders she had seen. My story teaches (every tale should bear A fitting moral) that the wise may find In trifles light as atoms in the air, Some useful lesson to enrich the mind, Some truth designed to profit or to please,-- As Israel's king learned wisdom from the bees! --_Saxe._ Six little boys and six little girls, all dressed alike, with cropped heads, were led into the king's presence, and he was asked to tell which were girls and which boys. "Bring in basins of water," he commanded, "and bid them wash their hands." Now in that land the girls wore short sleeves and the boys long ones. Unthinking, the girls washed their arms as well, but the boys washed their hands alone. So were the spectators silently told which were which. Such ingenious answers as these established for Solomon his reputation for wisdom, and many of the wise sayings imputed to him are known now to have been the sayings of others. Before the king's death, murmurings were not uncommon because of the oppressive administration, and the high-minded of the religious body looked with grave misgivings upon the influx of foreign gods. Even to them the whole danger was not apparent. That was left for a period more remote to understand. When Solomon died, his son came forward as his successor. The usual custom among Semitics was for the crown to descend to the eldest son, but the kingship was a new institution in Israel and the people had held to the right of electing their king. They now gathered around Rehoboam, clamoring for promises. They recalled that his father had taxed them heavily and asked that he deal with them more leniently. Instead of answering such reasonable demands at once, the king told them he would make reply three days later. Meanwhile he counselled with his ministers--how should he meet the popular demand. The older men immediately pointed out the safer policy, but the younger ones held that he should resent the liberty the people had taken in making any demands whatever, and should assure them that his demands would be even greater than those of his father. Their folly prevailed. When the people heard his reply, they were momentarily grieved. Then all the tribes save two--Judah and Benjamin--withdrew and vowed they would no longer support the house of David. Solomon's son received the support of two tribes, and his kingdom was henceforth known by the name of Judaea, while the northern kingdom was called by the name of Israel. Having seen the dangers assailing the united kingdom, we realize at once the recklessness of the policy that divided it and set two kingdoms with lessened strength to hold their own among their neighbors. FOOTNOTES: [1] Hist. of the People of Israel: Cornill, 75. [2] Hist. of the People of Israel: Cornill, 83. [3] Hist. of the Hebrew People: Kent, Vol. I, 180. [4] Cornill: Hist. of People of Israel, 83. [5] Kent: Hist. of Hebrew People, 180. CHAPTER XII. AFTER THE DIVISION OF THE KINGDOM. While the arrogance of Rehoboam and the extravagances of Solomon were the direct causes of the disunion, yet other agencies had long been at work to bring it about. In the first place, natural land features divided the ridge on the west side of the Jordan into two distinct parts. Any permanent union was not probable. Again, the northern tribes inhabited the more prosperous district. Their resources were greater; and with the jealousies that always manifested themselves among the tribes, it was hardly to have been expected that they would indefinitely consent to be ruled by Judean kings. Moreover, during the reign of Solomon, Judah had been exempt from taxation. Into a Judean city had poured the wealth of the kingdom, while the hand of oppression, so heavy elsewhere, was unfelt alone in this province. Indignation had apparently reached a high pitch before Solomon's death, yet spokesmen for the northern tribes met with the new king and made a simple and reasonable demand for reduced taxes in turn for allegiance. A statesman might have held the kingdom intact, yet it is scarcely probable that union would have indefinitely endured. The royal messenger sent to reconcile the northern tribes after their withdrawal was so speedily stoned to death that the king fled for safety to Jerusalem. Jeroboam, an experienced general, was elected king of Israel--the northern kingdom, and hostilities between the two kingdoms were inevitable. Judah was somewhat protected--on the north by the new-formed state, on the east by the river and Dead Sea, on the south by the desert. On the other hand, Israel, with her traversable plains, lay open to approach from every side, and she it was who had to bear the brunt of outside attack for the next two centuries. A comparison of the two states at the outset shows Israel to have been first in natural resources, size and population; to have been second in unity and centralized government. Judah, with her limited area, scarcity of water, absence of fertile soil and scanty population, had marked advantage in her unity and hereditary kingship. There were ten tribes to be pacified in the north--only two in the south. In Israel the jealousies were so strong that it was the work of a moment for an influential prince to assassinate the reigning king and usurp the crown. Judah was crippled shortly after the division by an invasion of Egyptian forces. They penetrated into Israel as well, but treasure was greatest in Jerusalem. Three hundred golden shields, made by Solomon for his guards, were taken, together with the rich decoration of the temple. Rehoboam soon after had the ornaments of gold replaced by others of bronze, so the splendor of the temple was not greatly changed. For some time hostilities continued between the Hebrew kingdoms. Then danger from Syria, a rising state with Damascus at its head, made an alliance desirable to both kings. After the disunion, Jeroboam felt that it would be manifestly unsafe to allow the people of Israel to go to Jerusalem to celebrate their national festivals, lest they might be led to return to Judah's king. Consequently he established two sanctuaries, one at Bethel and one at Dan, instructing people to worship at the one nearest them. He caused a golden bull to be placed before the altar of each, thus violating the commandment forbidding graven images. Perhaps in so doing the king was merely symbolizing the strength of Jehovah. At an earlier period this would have been less objectionable, but the people had grown somewhat accustomed to worship without symbols, and this was plainly a retrogression. The imageless worship of Jehovah was one of its distinctive features, lifting it above that of surrounding peoples. While prophets of a later day denounced the act of Jeroboam, the priests of his own day were too near the change to discern its grave dangers. The kingdoms which centered at Damascus began to reach out for territory, and harassed Israel until the imperial growth of Assyria caused the withdrawal of Syrian troops to protect their own land. Left alone, the northern kingdom developed her own resources and attained a prosperity rivaling the time of Solomon. Meanwhile, Judah had been sheltered from outside wars and less affected by religious orders. The period intervening between the fall of Damascus and the wars of Tiglath-Pileser III. has been aptly called "Israel's Indian Summer." The outlying territories of David came once more under Hebrew rule, divided between the kingdoms of the north and south. Commerce, long abandoned, sprang up and rivaled its tide in Solomon's reign. Unfortunately, the social life of the people lacked its earlier simplicity, and there were tendencies within the kingdom itself which pointed to the disintegration of the state as surely as did the forces that were soon to approach its walled cities. First, recent wars had fallen most heavily upon the middle class. Small farmers, returning from campaigns of defense of Hebrew borders, found their estates run down, sometimes dismantled. Having no means of building them up again, they frequently sank into the peasantry. In periods of reaction, when property and commercial activity returned, it was the wealthy who were benefited, while the poor became poorer yet. In this way the middle class had practically disappeared. Such a loss would be serious enough to a state, but this was by no means all. The simplicity of living which had characterized the early years of the Hebrew nation had given way to extravagance and reckless waste on the part of the rich, throwing into powerful contrast the condition of the poor. The humbler classes were oppressed--not by foreign foes, but by the wealthy of their own state, and abandonment of any sympathy between social classes was one of the most alarming tendencies. The religious life of the country was at a low ebb. By the masses Jehovah was still regarded as God of the Hebrews--a tribal God, quite as Baal was god of the Phoenicians, or Asshur of the Assyrians. It was taught by the priests that Jehovah would cause the Hebrews to win against their enemies, since only by their triumphs was he honored. He was worshipped much as were the gods of other nations. Licentious customs borrowed from neighboring peoples, profaned the very temples, and undermined earlier religious simplicity. It was such a state of affairs that called forth the utterances of Amos and Hosea, from whose addresses we learn of social conditions in their day. In some hearts the religious mission of the Hebrews still remained the most sacred of all trusts. When evils of their age threatened to engulf them, certain clear-sighted ones were moved to rouse the people--to bring home to them the consequences sure to overtake their kingdom unless these glaring wrongs were corrected. Such a spirit was Amos, a simple, clear-minded shepherd, dwelling on the borderland between Israel and Judah, and closely observant of affairs in both states. Inspired to voice his protest against the corruption of his people, he left his flocks and journeyed to Bethel, the religious center of Israel. Reaching the temple on a feast day, he was confronted by riotous music and unseemly merriment, desecrating the temple itself. It was then he created a sensation by his passionate address, fragments of which are preserved to us in the biblical book which bears his name. Instead of offending at once by quick reproof, and thus losing a chance to be heard, he began by predicting misfortunes certain to overtake neighboring peoples because of their misdoings. In this way he won the attention and approval of an audience who liked to be told that they were the Chosen People, and Jehovah was with them, and that--apparently no matter what they did--he would not permit them to fail. Then Amos launched into the iniquity of Israel, and prophesied disasters sure to befall her. He uttered a new truth when he said that since the Hebrews had received special blessings from Jehovah, even more strictly would they be held to account for their shortcomings; that as their light had been greater than that bestowed upon their neighbors, so would the requirements be greater for them than for others. "Hear ye this word which I take up against you, even a lamentation, O house of Israel. "The virgin of Israel is fallen; she shall no more rise up; she is forsaken upon her land; there is none to raise her up. For thus saith the Lord God: The city that went out by a thousand shall leave an hundred, and that which went forth by an hundred shall leave ten, to the house of Israel. "For thus saith the Lord unto the house of Israel: Seek ye me, and ye shall live; but seek not Bethel nor enter into Gilgal; for Gilgal shall surely go into captivity, and Bethel shall come to nought. "Seek the Lord and ye shall live; lest he break out like fire in the house of Joseph, and devour it, and there be none to quench it. Ye who turn judgment to wormwood, and leave off righteousness in the earth, seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into morning and maketh the day dark with night; that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The Lord is his name.... "Forasmuch therefore as your treading is upon the poor, and ye take from him burdens of wheat: ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them. "For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins; they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right.... "Woe to them that are at ease in Zion, and trust in the mountains of Samaria, which are named chief of the nations, to whom the house of Israel came! "Ye that put far away the evil day, and cause the seat of violence to come near; that lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch themselves upon their couches, and eat the lambs out of the flock, and the calves out of the midst of the stall; that chant to the sound of the viol, and invent to themselves instruments of music like David; that drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with the chief ointments; but they are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph. "Therefore now shall they go captive with the first that go captive, and the banquet of them that stretched themselves shall be removed."--_Amos 5 and 6._ Not long after, Hosea came forward with the startling and altogether unpleasant message that Jehovah was not the God of the Hebrews alone, but of the whole world. That he was a God of righteousness, and rewarded it wherever found, and punished evil doing, regardless of the doer. He touched a new chord when he taught that God was love, full of compassion and plenteous in mercy. Heretofore _law_ had been the pivot around which religion centered, and the ritual was observed and the sacrifice provided. These attended to, Jehovah was supposed to be appeased. Hosea taught that the sacrifice of burnt offerings availed nothing--that the sacrifice demanded was "an humble and a contrite heart." A new era was dawning for the Hebrew faith, and truth-divining men grasped at fundamental principles, applicable alike to the whole world. It is not surprising that long years elapsed before such broad conceptions sank deep into the hearts of the Hebrew race. One of their kingdoms was scattered to the winds before these were comprehended, save, indeed, by a few, far-sighted minds; the other kingdom passed through the humiliation of captivity and exile and through these vicissitudes learned the truths from actual experience. "Hear ye this, O priests; and harken, ye house of Israel; and give ear, O house of the king; for judgment is toward you, because ye have been a snare on Mizpah, and a net spread upon Tabor.... "The pride of Israel doth testify to his face: therefore shall Israel and Ephraim fall in their iniquity; Judah also shall fall with them. They shall go with their flocks and with their herds to seek the Lord but they shall not find him; he hath withdrawn himself from them. They have dealt treacherously against the Lord: for they have begotten strange children: now shall a mouth devour them with their portions.... "O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee? O Judah, what shall I do unto thee? for your goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the early dew it goeth away.... "For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. But they like men have transgressed the covenant: there have they dealt treacherously against me.... "Israel hath cast off the thing that is good: the enemy shall pursue him. They have set up kings, but not by me: they have made princes, and I knew it not: of their silver and their gold have they made them idols, that they may be cut off. For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: it hath no stalk: the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up.... "They sacrifice flesh for the sacrifices of mine offerings, and eat it; but the Lord accepteth them not; now will he remember their iniquity and visit their sins: they shall return to Egypt. For Israel hath forgotten his Maker, and buildeth temples; and Judah hath multiplied fenced cities: but I will send a fire upon his cities, and it shall devour the palaces thereof.... "Ye have plowed wickedness, ye have reaped iniquity; ye have eaten the fruit of lies: because thou didst trust in thy way, in the multitude of thy mighty men.... "When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt. As they called them, so they went from them: they sacrificed unto Baalim, and burned incense to graven images. I taught Ephraim also to go, taking them by the arms; but they knew not that I healed them. I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love: and I was to them as they that take off the yoke on their jaws, and I laid meat unto them.... "O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in me is thine help. "O Israel, return unto the Lord thy God, for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity."--_Hosea, 5-14 chapters._ END OF ISRAEL. About 745 B.C. Tiglath-Pileser III. began his westward conquest, incorporating great areas into his already spacious empire. Heavy tribute was exacted from provinces so annexed. The amount required of the northern kingdom--now known by the name of its new capital, Samaria--was so great that the state soon drooped under the load. Egypt, desiring also a foothold in western Asia, employed agents to stir the conquered countries against Assyria, promising aid in case they would revolt, but meaning only to appropriate territory for the Nile kingdom should confusion make it possible. Because the tribute was grievous in Samaria, the party opposed to paying it desired an alliance with Egypt. Statesmen saw that such a movement was ill-timed, but their voices were drowned in the multitude. In 735 B.C. a coalition was formed by the sea-coast states against Assyria, and the revolting states refused the yearly tribute. Before the allies could rally, Tiglath-Pileser III. reached the west by forced marches, and defeated each state separately. Much land was laid waste, captives were taken, and Hosea, deemed loyal to the Assyrian government, was made king of Samaria. For ten years the annual levy was paid, but upon the death of the great Assyrian conqueror, Hosea yielded to the popular clamor for a revolt. He himself was soon taken prisoner, but Samaria prepared for a siege. It lasted nearly three years, during which time intense suffering afflicted the city. At last the capital fell to Sargon, who destroyed it, taking 27,290 of its noblest citizens captives, deporting them to distant points. An Assyrian governor was placed over the desolate land and Israel ceased to exist longer as a state. The Hebrew chronicler tells us that those taken into captivity took on the religions of the people among whom they settled. Generally speaking this was no doubt true. On the other hand, traditions have come down from other sources concerning families who continued to worship Jehovah as before. However, after a few generations, their descendants no doubt drifted away from the faith of the Hebrews. Thus ends the story of the ten tribes who broke away from the kingdom of Solomon's son and organized their own northern kingdom. While enduring prophecies and messages have been contributed by members of these tribes, their kingdom presented no such example as did the smaller state of Judah during the closing years of her national life. More accessible to outside influences, more ready to compromise, Israel's early religious fervor gradually abated. Some explanation for her inglorious end is to be found in the physical geography of her country. Before the fall of Samaria, Judah enjoyed years of material prosperity, with varying fortune. Shortly before the siege of the northern capital, Ahaz, a mere boy, succeeded to the Judah throne. Inexperienced in the affairs of state, he was nevertheless reluctant to heed the counsels of older advisers. Assyria was threatening like a huge monster on the eastern horizon and the only possible way to check her approach lay in organizing a strong coalition of the sea-coast states. Syria, instead of taking the initiative, joined with Israel for the purpose of invading Judea, and dividing the spoils between them. This fatal mistake led ultimately to the destruction of both aggressive countries. King Ahaz of Judaea, against the wise and urgent advice of Isaiah, offered allegiance to the Assyrian emperor in turn for protection against his neighbors, selling his countrymen into tribute slavery and despoiling the temple of its treasure for gifts of submission. Thus it happened that while Damascus and Samaria fell before the armies of Assyria, Jerusalem was not approached, nor Judaea invaded, although her king became a vassal of Tiglath-Pileser III. Under such trying conditions as these Isaiah came into national view and evinced qualities which have given him rank with the great statesmen of the world. Denouncing social wrongs, he was soon drawn into the affairs of the state. Taking no part in the politics of his day, he stood steadfastly for fidelity to the ideals of his race and faith. He appreciated the position that his country ought to occupy, knowing well that as a political power she could not hope to cope with even the secondary nations around her. Only by holding herself aloof from material considerations, and clinging tenaciously to the religious principles earlier evolved, could she come safely through the critical times encompassing her. Isaiah taught that it was for Judah to purge her worship of idolatrous practices which had drifted into it and to go forward with unfaltering faith in the ultimate dominance of right over wrong, justice over injustice. However he spoke to deaf ears, for the ideals for which he stood, the moderate measures for which he pleaded, were unpopular with the people at this time. For some years Judaea paid her tribute, thankful to be left undisturbed. Gradually a party sprang up which opposed the tribute payment, and during the reign of Hezekiah its adherents became numerous enough to control the policy of their nation. Babylonia was secretly planning a revolt which she desired to make general; accordingly ambassadors were dispatched to the court of Hezekiah--ostensibly to congratulate him on his recent recovery, but really to win him to this revolt, and to estimate the resources of his kingdom. About 702 B.C. all was ripe for the planned revolt, and Assyrian officials were refused the tribute. Sargon was dead and it was not expected that his son would prove so successful a warrior as he had been. But no sooner had news of the revolt reached Sennacherib than he pushed west, and reached the coast before the allies were prepared. Meeting them separately, they quickly melted away before his disciplined troops. Cities of Phoenicia and the Philistines surrendered, and armies spread into the valleys of Judaea, surrounding Jerusalem itself. Hezekiah was terrified into offering heavy tribute, stripping the temple of its remaining ornaments to provide the sum exacted by the emperor as the price of peace. Cities around about were being laid waste and their inhabitants carried into captivity. In spite of the booty sent him, Sennacherib felt that his victory over Jerusalem was incomplete, and turning to meet an Egyptian relief force approaching Judaea from the south, Sennacherib sent word to Hezekiah that, unless the city gates swung open to him on his return, he would storm its walls. It had been a grievous matter to provide the treasure already required by the Assyrian, and consternation filled Jerusalem, where little hope of holding out against the veteran troops could longer be entertained. With characteristic calm, Isaiah declared that deliverance for Zion would be forth-coming, and he took occasion to bring home to the people their deep corruption and idolatrous wanderings, while safety for them lay in devotion to Jehovah. For once the terrified Hebrews were ready to harken to any counsel that carried with it a promise of hope. The fate of Sennacherib's army is well known: how encamped in a fever-breeding swamp, it was stricken in a night. The few who escaped the plague, set out at once on a homeward march, and Jerusalem was left unmolested. As was their custom, the Hebrews attributed their escape to direct intervention of Jehovah in their behalf. The beautiful poem of Byron touching the incident, expresses well their convictions: DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB. The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, When the blue waves roll nightly on deep Galilee. Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green, That host with their banners at sun-set was seen; Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown, That host on the morrow lay withered and strewn. For the angel of death spread his wings on the blast, And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed; And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill, And their hearts but once heaved--and forever grew still. And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide, But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride; And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf, And cold as the spray of the rock beating surf. And there lay the rider, distorted and pale, With the dew on his brow and the rust on his mail; And the tents were all silent, the banners alone, The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown. And the widows of Asshur are loud in their wail, And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal; And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword, Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord! --_Byron._ Hezekiah was so affected by his marvellous deliverance, that he listened to the voice of Isaiah throughout the remainder of his days, and instigated both social and religious reforms. These were so radical that ere long a reaction set in. All religious practices were again tolerated and Isaiah and his followers were forbidden to preach to the people. This forced the prophet to give permanency to his messages by writing them down for future generations. It was now that the book of Deuteronomy was produced, known later as the Book of Law. Many of the rules therein laid down had cause for being in the conditions of the times. For example, every locality had possessed its own peculiar form of sacrifice and its own priesthood. To insure regularity of worship it was now provided that religious festivals should be solemnized only at the temple of Jerusalem, which city should be the religious center of the land. When in the time of Josiah another period of religious reform set in, this Book of Law, or Deuteronomy, was discovered in the temple where it had lain unnoticed. This gave occasion for a complete overturning of social and religious customs. As in previous periods of prosperity, the Hebrews had sunk into reckless extravagances and hopeless poverty; into idolatrous worship and gross immorality. The reforms instituted by Josiah were designed to recall the masses to paths outlined for them by their greatest teachers and prophets. "The full significance of this sweeping innovation can be appreciated only by a comparison with the practices which it supplanted. Hitherto sacrifices appear to have been offered anywhere and by any one; in fact, every animal slain was regarded as shared with the deity. At every town there was a _high place_ to which the people went, not only on feast days, but whenever they wished, through the priest, to have a disputed case settled, or to ascertain the divine will respecting their private matter. Religion entered into all their life. The enactments of Deuteronomy swept away the high places, placed a ban upon private sacrifice, and restricted all offerings to the Temple. A sharp distinction was thereby drawn between the laity and the priests, between secular and holy things. Religion henceforth became something formal, above and apart, rather than in all which concerned the nation or individual. Conventionality took the place of the old freedom and joyousness which had so often degenerated into laxness. The end desired by the reformers was attained. The narrowing of religion saved it from the shallowness of heathenism. The Jehovah who was worshipped in the Temple with jealously guarded forms was not in danger of being degraded to a level with the surrounding deities. That which henceforth constituted the Jewish church was divorced from the state, and so survived the downfall of the nation. Unfortunately the narrowing process did not cease after the crisis was past, so that its later effects were deplorable; but, measured in the light of existing circumstances, the reformation of Josiah marks the beginning of that movement which ultimately resulted in the complete elimination of the practical heathenism which had long threatened the extinction of the pure worship of Jehovah."[1] After the fall of Nineveh, Egyptian forces attempted to cross Palestine on their way to the east. Their progress was forbidden by the Judean king. In the battle which ensued Josiah was slain. This has been called the "most tragic event in Hebrew history." In the crude judgment of his day, the masses regarded his death as punishment for the destruction of the high places throughout the land. These were re-established, and for the moment it seemed that all the results of the late reformation were swept away. Egypt held Judah in tribute for three or four years. Then Babylonia defeated the Egyptian army and appropriated its conquests for the new Chaldean empire. About 597 B.C., tribute having been refused Nebuchadnezzar, he marched against Jerusalem and took the flower of her people into captivity. Those who were left foolishly planned a second revolt. Jeremiah filled the place once occupied by Isaiah, and he denounced the folly of the popular party with great force, vividly picturing the ruin a revolt would cause. His very life was in danger because of the boldness of his counsel, and at times he was held prisoner. Shortly again the armies of Babylonia stood before the walls of Jerusalem. The great king remembered the history of centuries wherein the resources of Assyria and Babylonia had been squandered in holding the western states. He resolved to settle the matter for all time, and the city of Jerusalem was utterly laid waste, while its inhabitants were for the most part deported to Babylonia. Jeremiah was left free to go wherever he chose, and he remained with the poor peasants who were left to till the soil. Shortly after the stricken band migrated to Egypt where they soon lost their identity. After the fall of Jerusalem in 586 B.C., the perpetuation of the Hebrew faith was left solely to those thousands of captives who had been sent to Babylon. Of all who had peopled the fair land of Israel and the hills of Judah, they alone remained to hold fast the inheritances of their fathers and to preserve the ancient faith. During the seventy years of their captivity it was the remembrance of their once proud nation and beloved Jerusalem, together with the hope of again returning to its hills, that sustained those stricken hearts and gave them courage. Living as much as possible to themselves, they held to their peculiar customs and in some ways were not materially changed by the enforced exile. However their religious conceptions underwent a marked change, and the experiences of the exile itself brought them finally into a fuller realization of the faith they had long followed blindly. FOOTNOTES: [1] Hist. of the Hebrew People: Vol. II, 180. * * * * * DESCRIPTION OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN PART I. DISTANT VIEW OF THE PYRAMIDS. This road leading from Cairo to the Pyramids is often spoken of as the "high road." Were it not built up in this way, communication would be cut off during the period of the inundation. Camels, "ships of the desert," are commonly used in Egypt. Arabs populate the land and are clamorous in their demands for coins from travelers. GREAT PYRAMID, SPHINX AND TEMPLE OF ARMACHIS. The great Pyramids had stood approximately 800 years when Abraham first came into the Delta; they had existed approximately 1500 years when Moses led the Israelites out of the land of bondage. The largest of the three is indeed stupendous, its base covering thirteen acres. In the foreground of the picture is seen the ruins of the Temple of Armachis. Like the Pyramids, the Sphinx has stood wrapped in mysterious silence these thousand years. The form of the Sphinx was very common in ancient Egypt, it being a symbolic representation of the king. The body of the lion symbolized his strength, or power; the human face was a portrait of the monarch. Shifting sands have accumulated to the breast of the body--said to be 140 feet long. Of the huge proportions one may judge from the fact that should a man stand upon the ear of the Sphinx his hand could not reach the top of the head. A little chapel of comparatively recent date has been placed between the paws of the lion. TOURISTS SCALING THE GREAT PYRAMID. The Great Pyramid was originally covered with blocks of the hardest granite. This casing was removed by the Mohammedans for use in building the mosque of Cairo. Thus removed, the blocks of building stone of which the huge pile is for the most part composed, were left exposed. Laid down in the form of steps, tourists today are able to climb to the very top. To be sure, some of these steps are shoulder high, but with much pulling by guides in front and some pushing from those behind, one may ascend in about half an hour. The splendid view over the valley and neighboring desert amply repay one for the discomforts of the climb. DROMOS (COLUMNS) AND SECOND PYLON (GATEWAY) TEMPLE OF KARNAK. The great temple of Karnak was begun by Seti I., and was enlarged by many succeeding Pharaohs. An avenue of rams led to the gateway, which was the last portion to be completed. Crossing a court, one came at length to the temple itself. The figures and letters carved on the stone may be plainly seen in this picture. BEAUTIFUL ISLAND OF PHILAE AND THE NILE. This templed island of Philae, known sometimes as "the pearl of Egypt," lies uppermost of a group of islands forming the first cataract. Isis was the local deity and to her a temple was built in remote times. Recently a great dam has been constructed near Philae to insure a larger supply of water for the valley. It has been estimated that $13,000,000 will accrue to Egypt annually by this means, but the island of Philae, with its beautiful temple, is thereby doomed. Indignant protests have been made from lovers of the beautiful in many lands, but the English government has shown itself more determined to insure the prompt payment of interest upon its bonds than to preserve monuments of antiquity. HAREM WINDOW AND COURT. As is well known, in all Mohammedan countries, women pass their lives in closest seclusion. Their quarters are provided in the upper story of the house, the windows being small indeed. Seldom going out, living their years in idleness, it is small wonder that these unfortunate creatures often resort to intrigues to absorb their interest. WINGED LION. These symbolic animals in stone were stationed at the portals of the royal palace and sometimes guarded the palaces of the wealthy in Assyria. The lion's body symbolized strength, the wings of the eagle, swiftness; the human head, human intelligence. It was believed that evil spirits would pause before such emblems of majesty, nor dare to enter. MUSICIANS AND ATTENDANTS IN THE GARDEN OF ASSHURBANIPAL. After the war was over, the king, satiated with booty and slaughter, sought the quieter pleasures of the banquet. This was frequently served in the royal garden, while musicians dispensed sweet strains of music. To make more animated the joyous occasion, the head of the defeated king or general was sometimes suspended from a nearby tree, so that the Assyrian ruler might exult over his own triumph as he drank his wine. DAMASCUS SWORD-MAKER. The swords of Damascus have always been famous. The ancient sword-makers understood a secret process of tempering steel which rendered it very pliable and at the same time imparted to it astonishing strength. THE RIVER JORDAN. The word _Jordan_ means "the down-comer," and truly a river which drops 3,000 feet in a course of 150 miles is indeed a "descender." In the spring the stream is brown and muddy, heavily charged as it is with debris from the mountains. Ships never journey far up or down the river. Below the level of the sea, the climate is hot and sultry and the region full of malaria. HARBOR OF JAPPA. Jappa is the old Joppa of Bible times. It is almost the only approach to a seaport that Palestine can claim, yet even here large boats must remain out in deep waters, and travelers for the Holy Land who enter in this way must climb down the side of the steamer and be rowed to shore in small boats. The sea is usually very rough at this point, adding to the general discomfort of the situation for travelers. ROSES OF SHARON. Palestine is beautiful with flowers in the spring. Narcissus, the "roses of Sharon," and Iris, "the lilies of the valley," grow in profusion over the foothills. 
6804	----	A GENERAL HISTORY FOR COLLEGES AND HIGH SCHOOLS. BY P. V. N. MYERS, A.M. [Illustration: VIEW OF THE ATTIC PLAINS, WITH A GLIMPSE OF THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS.--Frontispiece.] PREFACE. This volume is based upon my _Ancient History_ and _Mediæval and Modern History_. In some instances I have changed the perspective and the proportions of the narrative; but in the main, the book is constructed upon the same lines as those drawn for the earlier works. In dealing with so wide a range of facts, and tracing so many historic movements, I cannot hope that I have always avoided falling into error. I have, however, taken the greatest care to verify statements of fact, and to give the latest results of discovery and criticism. Considering the very general character of the present work, an enumeration of the books that have contributed facts to my narration, or have helped to mould my views on this or that subject, would hardly be looked for; yet I wish here to acknowledge my special indebtedness, in the earlier parts of the history, to the works of George Rawlinson, Sayce, Wilkinson, Brugsch, Grote, Curtius, Mommsen, Merivale, and Leighton; and in the later parts, and on special periods, to the writings of Hodgkin, Emerton, Ranke, Freeman, Michaud, Bryce, Symonds, Green (J. R.), Motley, Hallam, Thiers, Lecky, Baird, and Müller. Several of the colored maps, with which the book will be found liberally provided, were engraved especially for my _Ancient History_; but the larger number are authorized reproductions of charts accompanying Professor Freeman's _Historical Geography of Europe_. The Roman maps were prepared for Professor William F. Allen's _History of Rome_, which is to be issued soon, and it is to his courtesy that I am indebted for their use. The illustrations have been carefully selected with reference to their authenticity and historical truthfulness. Many of those in the Oriental and Greek part of the work are taken from Oscar Jäger's _Weltgeschichte_; while most of those in the Roman portion are from Professor Allen's forthcoming work on Rome, to which I have just referred, the author having most generously granted me the privilege of using them in my work, notwithstanding it is to appear in advance of his. Further acknowledgments of indebtedness are also due from me to many friends who have aided me with their scholarly suggestions and criticism. My warmest thanks are particularly due to Professor W.F. Allen, of the University of Wisconsin; to Dr. E.W. Coy, Principal of Hughes High School, Cincinnati; to Professor William A. Merrill, of Miami University; and to Mr. D. H. Montgomery, author of _The Leading Facts of History_ series. P. V. N. M. COLLEGE HILL, OHIO, July, 1889. TABLE OF CONTENTS. PREFACE LIST OF MAPS GENERAL INTRODUCTION: THE RACES AND THEIR EARLY MIGRATIONS PART I. ANCIENT HISTORY. SECTION I.--THE EASTERN NATIONS. CHAPTER I. India and China. 1. India. 2. China. II. Egypt. 1. Political History. 2. Religion, Arts, and General Culture. III. Chaldæa. 1. Political History. 2. Arts and General Culture. IV. Assyria. 1. Political History. 2. Religion, Arts, and General Culture. V. Babylonia. VI. The Hebrews. VII. The Phoenicians. VIII. The Persian Empire. 1. Political History. 2. Government, Religion, and Arts. SECTION II.--GRECIAN HISTORY. IX. The Land and the People. X. The Legendary or Heroic Age. XI. Religion of the Greeks. XII. Age of the Tyrants and of Colonization: the Early Growth of Sparta and of Athens. 1. Age of the Tyrants and of Colonization. 2. The Growth of Sparta. 3. The Growth of Athens. XIII. The Græco-Persian Wars. XIV. Period of Athenian Supremacy. XV. The Peloponnesian War: the Spartan and the Theban Supremacy. 1. The Peloponnesian War. 2. The Spartan and the Theban Supremacy. XVI. Period of Macedonian Supremacy: Empire of Alexander. XVII. States formed from the Empire of Alexander. XVIII. Greek Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting. 1. Architecture. 2. Sculpture and Painting. XIX. Greek Literature. 1. Epic and Lyric Poetry. 2. The Drama and Dramatists. 3. History and Historians. 4. Oratory. XX. Greek Philosophy and Science. XXI. Social Life of the Greeks. SECTION III.--ROMAN HISTORY. XXII. The Roman Kingdom. XXIII. The Early Roman Republic: Conquest of Italy. XXIV. The First Punic War. XXV. The Second Punic War. XXVI. The Third Punic War. XXVII. The Last Century of the Roman Republic. XXVIII. The Last Century of the Roman Republic (_concluded_). XXIX. The Roman Empire (from 31 B.C. to A.D. 180). XXX. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the West (A.D. 180-476). XXXI. Roman Civilization. 1. Architecture. 2. Literature, Philosophy, and Law. 3. Social Life. PART II. MEDIÆVAL AND MODERN HISTORY. INTRODUCTION. SECTION I.--MEDIÆVAL HISTORY. FIRST PERIOD.--THE DARK AGES. (From the Fall of Rome, A.D. 476, to the Eleventh Century.) XXXII. Migrations and Settlements of the Teutonic Tribes. XXXIII. The Conversion of the Barbarians. XXXIV. Fusion of the Latin and Teutonic Peoples. XXXV. The Roman Empire in the East. XXXVI. Mohammed and the Saracens. XXXVII. Charlemagne and the Restoration of the Empire in the West. XXXVIII. The Northmen. XXXIX. Rise of the Papal Power. SECOND PERIOD.--THE AGE OF REVIVAL. (From the opening of the Eleventh Century to the Discovery of America by Columbus, in 1492.) XL. Feudalism and Chivalry. 1. Feudalism. 2. Chivalry. XLI. The Norman Conquest of England. XLII. The Crusades. 1. Introductory: Causes of the Crusades. 2. The First Crusade. 3. The Second Crusade. 4. The Third Crusade. 5. The Fourth Crusade. 6. Close of the Crusades: Their Results. XLIII. Supremacy of the Papacy: Decline of its Temporal Power. XLIV. Conquests of the Turanian Tribes. XLV. Growth of the Towns: The Italian City-Republics. XLVI. The Revival of Learning. XLVII. Growth of the Nations: Formation of National Governments and Literatures. 1. England. 2. France. 3. Spain. 4. Germany. 5. Russia. 6. Italy. 7. The Northern Countries. SECTION II. MODERN HISTORY. INTRODUCTION THIRD PERIOD.--THE ERA OF THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION. (From the Discovery of America to the Peace of Westphalia, in 1648.) XLVIII. The Beginnings of the Reformation under Luther. XLIX. The Ascendency of Spain. 1. Reign of the Emperor Charles V. 2. Spain under Philip II. L. The Tudors and the English Reformation. 1. Introductory. 2. The Reign of Henry VII. 3. England severed from the Papacy by Henry VIII. 4. Changes in the Creed and Ritual under Edward VI. 5. Reaction under Mary. 6. Final Establishment of Protestantism under Elizabeth. LI. The Revolt of the Netherlands: Rise of the Dutch Republic. LII. The Huguenot Wars in France. LIII. The Thirty Years' War. FOURTH PERIOD.--THE ERA OF THE POLITICAL REVOLUTION. (From the Peace of Westphalia, in 1648, to the present time.) LIV. The Ascendency of France under the Absolute Government of Louis XIV. LV. England under the Stuarts: The English Revolution. 1. The First Two Stuarts. 2. The Commonwealth. 3. The Restored Stuarts. 4. The Orange-Stuarts. 5. England under the Earlier Hanoverians. LVI. The Rise of Russia: Peter the Great. LVII. The Rise of Prussia: Frederick the Great. LVIII. The French Revolution. 1. Causes of the Revolution: The States-General of 1789. 2. The National, or Constituent Assembly. 3. The Legislative Assembly. 4. The National Convention. 5. The Directory. LIX. The Consulate and the First Empire: France since the Second Restoration. 1. The Consulate and the Empire. 2. France since the Second Restoration. LX. Russia since the Congress of Vienna. LXI. German Freedom and Unity. LXII. Liberation and Unification of Italy. LXIII. England since the Congress of Vienna. 1. Progress towards Democracy. 2. Expansion of the Principle of Religious Equality. 3. Growth of the British Empire in the East. CONCLUSION: THE NEW AGE. INDEX, PRONOUNCING VOCABULARY, AND GLOSSARY LIST OF COLORED MAPS. 1. Ancient Egypt 2. The Tigris and the Euphrates 3. Lydia, Media, and Babylonia, c. B.C. 550 4. Greece and the Greek Colonies 5. Greece in the 5th Century B.C. 6. Dominions and Dependencies of Alexander, c. B.C. 323 7. Kingdoms of the Successors of Alexander, c. B.C. 300 8. Italy before the Growth of the Roman Power 9. Mediterranean Lands at the Beginning of Second Punic War 10. Roman Dominions at the End of the Mithridatic War, B.C. 64 11. The Roman Empire under Trajan, A.D. 117 12. Roman Empire divided into Prefectures 13. Europe in the Reign of Theodoric, c. A.D. 500 14. Europe in the Time of Charles the Great, 814 15. The Western Empire as divided at Verdun, 843 16. Spanish Kingdoms, 1360 17. Central Europe, 1360 18. The Spanish Kingdoms and their European Dependencies under Charles V 19. Europe in the 16th and 17th Centuries 20. The Baltic Lands, c. 1701 21. Central Europe, 1801 22. Sketch Map of Europe showing Principal Battles of Napoleon [Footnote: For the use of this map I am indebted to the courtesy of Mr. D. H. Montgomery, author of "Leading Facts of French History."] 23. Central Europe, 1810 24. Central Europe, 1815 25. South-Eastern Europe according to the Treaty of Berlin, 1878 26. Europe in 1880 GENERAL HISTORY. GENERAL INTRODUCTION: THE RACES AND THEIR EARLY MIGRATIONS. DIVISIONS OF HISTORY.--History is usually divided into three periods,-- Ancient, Mediæval, and Modern. Ancient History begins with the earliest nations of which we can gain any certain knowledge, and extends to the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, A.D. 476. Mediæval History embraces the period, about one thousand years in length, lying between the fall of Rome and the discovery of the New World by Columbus, A.D. 1492. Modern History commences with the close of the mediæval period and extends to the present time. [Footnote: It is thought preferable by some scholars to let the beginning of the great Teutonic migration (A.D. 375) mark the end of the period of ancient history. Some also prefer to date the beginning of the modern period from the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, A.D. 1453; while still others speak of it in a general way as commencing about the close of the 15th century, at which time there were many inventions and discoveries and a great stir in the intellectual world.] ANTIQUITY OF MAN.--We do not know when man first came into possession of the earth. We only know that, in ages vastly remote, when both the climate and the outline of Europe were very different from what they are at present, man lived on that continent with animals now extinct; and that as early as 4000 or 3000 B.C.,--when the curtain first rises on the stage of history,--in some favored regions, as in the Valley of the Nile, there were nations and civilizations already venerable with age, and possessing languages, arts, and institutions that bear evidence of slow growth through very long periods of time before written history begins. [Footnote: The investigation and study of this vast background of human life is left to such sciences as _Ethnology, Comparative Philology_, and _Prehistoric Archeology_.] THE RACES OF MANKIND.--Distinctions in form, color, and physiognomy divide the human species into three chief types, or races, known as the Black (Ethiopian, or Negro), the Yellow (Turanian, or Mongolian), and the White (Caucasian). But we must not suppose each of these three types to be sharply marked off from the others; they shade into one another by insensible gradations. There has been no perceptible change in the great types during historic times. The paintings upon the oldest Egyptian monuments show us that at the dawn of history, about five or six thousand years ago, the principal races were as distinctly marked as now, each bearing its racial badge of color and physiognomy. As early as the times of Jeremiah, the permanency of physical characteristics had passed into the proverb, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin?" Of all the races, the White, or Caucasian, exhibits by far the most perfect type, physically, intellectually, and morally. [Illustration: NEGRO CAPTIVES, From the Monuments of Thebes. (Illustrating the permanence of race characteristics.)] THE BLACK RACE.--Africa is the home of the peoples of the Black Race, but we find them on all the other continents, whither they have been carried as slaves by the stronger races; for since time immemorial they have been "hewers of wood and drawers of water" for their more favored brethren. THE YELLOW, OR TURANIAN RACE.--The term Turanian is very loosely applied by the historian to many and widely separated families and peoples. In its broadest application it is made to include the Chinese and other more or less closely allied peoples of Eastern Asia; the Ottoman Turks, the Hungarians, the Finns, the Lapps, and the Basques, in Europe; and (by some) the Esquimaux and American Indians. The peoples of this race were, it seems, the first inhabitants of Europe and of the New World; but in these quarters, they have, in the main, either been exterminated or absorbed by later comers of the White Race. In Europe, however, two small areas of this primitive population escaped the common fate--the Basques, sheltered among the Pyrenees, and the Finns and Lapps, in the far north; [Footnote: The Hungarians and Turks are Turanian peoples that have thrust themselves into Europe during historic times] while in the New World, the Esquimaux and the Indians still represent the race that once held undisputed possession of the land. The polished stone implements found in the caves and river-gravels of Western Europe, the shell-mounds, or kitchen-middens, upon the shores of the Baltic, the Swiss lake habitations, and the barrows, or grave-mounds, found in all parts of Europe, are supposed to be relics of a prehistoric Turanian people. Although some of the Turanian peoples, as for instance the Chinese, have made considerable advance in civilization, still as a rule the peoples of this race have made but little progress in the arts or in general culture. Even their languages have remained undeveloped. These seem immature, or stunted in their growth. They have no declensions or conjugations, like those of the languages of the Caucasian peoples. THE WHITE RACE AND ITS THREE FAMILIES.--The White Race embraces the historic nations. This type divides into three families,--the Hamitic, the Semitic, and the Aryan, or Indo-European (formerly called the Japhetic). The ancient Egyptians were the chief people of the Hamitic branch. In the gray dawn of history we discover them already settled in the Valley of the Nile, and there erecting great monuments so faultless in construction as to render it certain that those who planned them had had a very long previous training in the art of building. The Semitic family includes among its chief peoples the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians, the Hebrews, the Phoenicians, and the Arabians. We are not certain what region was the original abode of this family. We only know that by the dawn of history its various clans and tribes, whencesoever they may have come, had distributed themselves over the greater part of Southwestern Asia. It is interesting to note that the three great historic religions of the world,--the Hebrew, the Christian, and the Mohammedan,--the three religions that alone (if we except that of Zoroaster) teach a belief in one God, arose among peoples belonging to the Semitic family. The Aryan, or Indo-European, though probably the youngest, is the most widely scattered family of the White Race. It includes among its members the ancient Hindus, Medes, and Persians, the classic Greeks and Romans, and the modern descendants of all these nations; also almost all the peoples of Europe, and their colonists that have peopled the New World, and taken possession of other parts of the earth. MIGRATIONS OF THE ARYANS.--The original seat of the Aryan peoples was, it is conjectured [Footnote: Some scholars seek the primitive home in Europe], somewhere in Asia. At a period that cannot be placed later than 3000 B.C., the Aryan household began to break up and scatter, and the different clans to set out in search of new dwelling-places. Some tribes of the family spread themselves over the table-lands of Iran and the plains of India, and became the progenitors of the Medes, the Persians, and the Hindus. Other clans entering Europe probably by the way of the Hellespont, pushed themselves into the peninsulas of Greece and Italy, and founded the Greek and Italian states. Still other tribes seem to have poured in successive waves into Central Europe. The vanguard of these peoples are known as the Celts. After them came the Teutonic tribes, who crowded the former out on the westernmost edge of Europe--into Gaul and Spain, and out upon the British Isles. These hard-pressed Celts are represented to-day by the Welsh, the Irish, and the Highland Scots. Behind the Teutonic peoples were the Slavonic folk, who pushed the former hard against the Celts, and, when they could urge them no farther to the west, finally settled down and became the ancestors of the Russians and other kindred nations. Although these migratory movements of the various clans and tribes of this wonderful Aryan family began in the early morning of history, some five thousand or more years ago, still we must not think of them as something past and unrelated to the present. These movements, begun in those remote times, are still going on. The overflow of the population of Europe into the different regions of the New World, is simply a continuation of the prehistoric migrations of the members of the primitive Aryan household. Everywhere the other races and families have given way before the advance of the Aryan peoples, who have assumed the position of leaders and teachers among the families of mankind, and are rapidly spreading their arts and sciences and culture over the earth. EARLY CULTURE OF THE ARYANS.--One of the most fascinating studies of recent growth is that which reveals to us the customs, beliefs, and mode of life of the early Aryans, while they were yet living together as a single household. Upon comparing the myths, legends, and ballads of the different Aryan peoples, we discover the curious fact that, under various disguises, they are the same. Thus our nursery tales are found to be identical with those with which the Hindu children are amused. But the discovery should not surprise us. We and the Hindus are kinsmen, children of the same home; so now, when after a long separation we meet, the tales we tell are the same, for they are the stories that were told around the common hearth-fire of our Aryan forefathers. And when we compare certain words in different Aryan languages, we often find them alike in form and meaning. Thus, take the word _father_. This word occurs with but little change of form in several of the Aryan tongues. [Footnote: Sanscrit, _pitri_; Persian, _padar_; Greek, _pater_; Latin, _pater_; German, _vater_.] From this we infer that the remote ancestors of the now widely separated Aryan peoples once lived together and had a common speech. Our knowledge of the prehistoric culture of the Aryans, gained through the sciences of comparative philology and mythology, may be summed up as follows: They personified and worshipped the various forces and parts of the physical universe, such as the Sun, the Dawn, Fire, the Winds, the Clouds. The all-embracing sky they worshipped as the Heaven-Father (_Dyaus-Pitar_, whence Jupiter). They were herdsmen and at least occasional farmers. They introduced the sheep, as well as the horse, into Europe: the Turanian people whom they displaced had neither of these domestic animals. In social life they had advanced to that stage where the family is the unit of society. The father was the priest and absolute lord of his house. The families were united to form village-communities ruled by a chief, or patriarch, who was assisted by a council of elders. IMPORTANCE OF ARYAN STUDIES.--This picture of life in the early Aryan home, the elements of which are gathered in so novel a way, is of the very greatest historical value and interest. In these customs and beliefs of the early Aryans, we discover the germs of many of the institutions of the classical Greeks and Romans, and of the nations of modern Europe. Thus, in the council of elders around the village patriarch, political historians trace the beginnings of the senates of Greece and Rome and the national parliaments of later times. Just as the teachings of the parental roof mould the life and character of the children that go out from under its discipline, so have the influences of that early Aryan home shaped the habits, institutions, and character of those peoples and families that, as its children, went out to establish new homes in their "appointed habitations." RACES OF MANKIND, WITH CHIEF FAMILIES AND PEOPLES. BLACK RACE (Ethiopian, or Negro). Tribes of Central and Southern Africa, the Papuans and the Australians. (This group includes two great divisions, the Negroid and Australoid.) YELLOW RACE (Turanian, or Mongolian). (1) The Chinese, Burmese, Japanese, and other kindred peoples of Eastern Asia; (2) the Malays of Southeastern Asia, and the inhabitants of many of the Pacific islands; (3) the nomads (Tartars, Mongols, etc.) of Northern and Central Asia and of Eastern Russia; (4) the Turks, the Magyars, or Hungarians, the Finns and Lapps, and the Basques, in Europe; (5) the Esquimaux and the American Indians. Languages of these peoples are monosyllabic or agglutinative. (Note that the Malays and American Indians were formerly classified as distinct races.) WHITE RACE (Caucasian). Hamitic Family Egyptians, Libyans, Cushites. Semitic Family Chaldæans (partly Turanian) Assyrians, Babylonians, Canaanites (chiefly Semitic), Phoenicians, Hebrews, Arabs. Aryan, or Indo-European Family Indo-Iranic Branch Hindus, Medes, Persians. Græco-Italic Branch Greeks, Romans. Celtic Branch Gauls, Britons, Scots (Irish), Picts. Teutonic Branch High Germans, Low Germans, Scandinavians. Slavonic Branch Russians, Poles, etc. The peoples of modern Germany are the descendants of various Germanic tribes. The Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes represent the Scandinavian branch of the Teutonic family. The Irish, the Welsh, the Scotch Highlanders, and the Bretons of Brittany (anciently Armorica), in France, are the present representatives of the ancient Celts. The French, Spaniards, Portuguese, and Italians have sprung, in the main, from a blending of the Celts, the ancient Romans, and the Germanic tribes that thrust themselves within the limits of the Roman Empire in the West. The English are the descendants of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes (Teutonic tribes), slightly modified by interminglings with the Danes and Normans (also of Teutonic origin). (See _Mediæval and Modern History_, pp. 169- 178.) PART I. _ANCIENT HISTORY._ SECTION I.--THE EASTERN NATIONS. CHAPTER I. INDIA AND CHINA. 1. INDIA. THE ARYAN INVASION.--At the time of the great Aryan migration (see p. 4), some Aryan bands, journeying from the northwest, settled first the plains of the Indus and then occupied the valley of the Ganges. They reached the banks of the latter river as early probably as 1500 B.C. These fair-skinned invaders found the land occupied by a dark-skinned, non-Aryan race, whom they either subjugated and reduced to serfdom, or drove out of the great river valleys into the mountains and the half- desert plains of the peninsula. THE ORIGIN OF CASTES.--The conflict of races in Northern India gave rise to what is known as the system of castes; that is, society became divided into a number of rigid hereditary classes. There arose gradually four chief castes: (1) Brahmans, or priests; (2) warriors; (3) agriculturists and traders; and (4) serfs, or Sudras. The Brahmans were those of pure Aryan blood, while the Sudras were the despised and oppressed non-Aryan aborigines. The two middle classes, the warriors and the cultivators of the soil, were of mixed Aryan and non-Aryan blood. Below these several castes were the Pariahs, or outcasts, the most degraded of the degraded natives. [Footnote: At a later period, the Brahmans, in order to perpetuate their own ascendancy and to secure increased reverence for their order, incorporated among the sacred hymns an account of creation which gave a sort of divine sanction to the system of castes by representing the different classes of society to have had different origins. The Brahmans, the sacred books are made to say, came forth from the mouth of Brahma, the soldier from his arms, the farmer from his thighs, and the Sudra from his feet. ] The system of castes, modified however by various influences, particularly by the later system of Buddhism (see p. 11), has characterized Hindu society from the time the system originated down to the present, and is one of the most important facts of Indian history. THE VEDAS.--The most important of the sacred books of the Hindus are called the Vedas. They are written in the Sanscrit language, which is believed to be the oldest form of Aryan speech. The Rig-Veda, the most ancient of the books, is made up of hymns which were composed chiefly during the long period, perhaps a thousand years or more, while the Aryans were slowly working their way from the mountains on the northwest of India across the peninsula to the Ganges. These hymns are filled with memories of the long conflict of the fair-faced Aryans with the dark-faced aborigines. The Himalayas, through whose gloomy passes the early emigrants journeyed, must have deeply impressed the wanderers, for the poets often refer to the great dark mountains. BRAHMANISM.--The religion of the Indian Aryans is known as Brahmanism. This system gradually developed from the same germs as those out of which grew the Greek and Roman religions. It was at first a pure nature-worship, that is, the worship of the most striking phenomena of the physical world as intelligent and moral beings. The chief god was Dyaus-Pitar, the Heaven-Father. As this system characterized the early period when the oldest Vedic hymns were composed, it is known as the Vedic religion. In course of time this nature-worship of the Vedic period developed into a sort of pantheism, that is, a system which identifies God with the universe. This form of the Indian religion is known as Brahmanism. Brahma, an impersonal essence, is conceived as the primal existence. Forth from Brahma emanated, as heat and light emanate from the sun, all things and all life. Banish a personal God from the universe, as some modern scientists would do, leaving nothing but nature with her original nebula, her endless cycles, her unconscious evolutions, and we have something very like Brahmanism. A second, fundamental conception of Brahmanism is that all life, apart from Brahma, is evil, is travail and sorrow. We can make this idea intelligible to ourselves by remembering what are our own ideas of this earthly life. We call it a feverish dream, a journey through a vale of sorrow. Now the Hindu regards _all_ conscious existence in the same light. He has no hope in a better future; so long as the soul is conscious, so long must it endure sorrow and pain. This conception of all conscious existence as necessarily and always evil, leads naturally to the doctrine that it is the part of wisdom and of duty for man to get rid of consciousness, to annihilate himself, in a word, to commit soul-suicide. Brahmanism teaches that the only way to extinguish self and thus get rid of the burden of existence, is by re-absorption into Brahma. But this return to Brahma is dependent upon the soul's purification, for no impure soul can be re-absorbed into the primal essence. The necessary freedom from passion and the required purity of soul can best be attained by self-torture, by a severe mortification of the flesh; hence the asceticism of the Hindu devotee. As only a few in each generation reach the goal, it follows that the great majority of men must be born again, and yet again, until all evil has been purged away from the soul and eternal repose found in Brahma. He who lives a virtuous life is at death born into some higher caste, and thus he advances towards the longed-for end. The evil man, however, is born into a lower caste, or perhaps his soul enters some unclean animal. This doctrine of re-birth is known as the transmigration of souls (metempsychosis). Only the first three classes are admitted to the benefits of religion. The Sudras and the outcasts are forbidden to read the sacred books, and for any one of the upper classes to teach a serf how to expiate sin is a crime. BUDDHISM.--In the fifth century before our era, a great teacher and reformer, known as Buddha, or Gautama (died about 470 B.C.), arose in India. He was a prince, whom legend represents as being so touched by the universal misery of mankind, that he voluntarily abandoned the luxury of his home, and spent his life in seeking out and making known to men a new and better way of salvation. He condemned the severe penances and the self-torture of the Brahmans, yet commended poverty and retirement from active life as the best means of getting rid of desire and of attaining _Nirvana_, that is, the repose of unconsciousness. [Illustration: STATUE OF BUDDHA.] Buddha admitted all classes to the benefits of religion, the poor outcast as well as the high-born Brahman, and thus Buddhism was a revolt against the earlier harsh and exclusive system of Brahmanism. It holds somewhat the same relation to Brahmanism that Christianity bears to Judaism. Buddhism gradually gained the ascendancy over Brahmanism; but after some centuries the Brahmans regained their power, and by the eighth century after Christ, the faith of Buddha was driven out of almost every part of India. But Buddhism has a profound missionary spirit, like that of Christianity, Buddha having commanded his disciples to make known to all men the way to Nirvana and consequently during the very period when India was being lost, the missionaries of the reformed creed were spreading the teachings of their master among the peoples of all the countries of Eastern Asia, so that to-day Buddhism is the religion of almost one third of the human race. Buddha has probably nearly as many followers as both Christ and Mohammed together. During its long conflict with Buddhism, Brahmanism was greatly modified, and caught much of the gentler spirit of the new faith, so that modern Brahmanism is a very different religion from that of the ancient system; hence it is usually given a new name, being known as Hinduism. [Footnote: Among the customs introduced into Brahmanism during this period was the rite of Suttee, or the voluntary burning of the widow on the funeral pyre of her husband.] ALEXANDER'S INVASION OF INDIA (327 B.C.).--Although we find obscure notices of India in the records of the early historic peoples of Western Asia, yet it is not until the invasion of the peninsula by Alexander the Great in 327 B.C. that the history of the Indian Aryans comes in significant contact with that of the progressive nations of the West. From that day to our own its systems of philosophy, its wealth, and its commerce have been more or less important factors in universal history. Greece carried on an intellectual commerce with this country; Rome, and the Italian republics of the Middle Ages, a more material but not less important trade. Columbus was seeking a short all-sea route to this country when he found the New World. And in the upbuilding of the imperial greatness of the England of to-day, the wealth and trade of India have played no inconsiderable part. 2. CHINA. GENERAL REMARKS: THE BEGINNING.--China is the seat of a very old civilization, older perhaps than that of any other land save Egypt; yet Chinese affairs have not until recently exerted any appreciable influence upon the general current of history. All through ancient and mediæval times the country lay, vague and mysterious, in the haze of the world's horizon. During the Middle Ages the land was known to Europe under the name of Cathay. The beginning of the Chinese nation was a band of Turanian wanderers who came into the basin of the Yellow River, from the West, probably prior to 3000 B.C. These immigrants gradually pushed out the aborigines whom they found in the land, and laid the basis of institutions that have endured to the present day. DYNASTIC HISTORY.--The government of China since the remotest times has been a parental monarchy. The Emperor is the father of his people. But though an absolute prince, still he dare not rule tyrannically: he must rule justly, and in accordance with the ancient customs and laws. The Chinese have books that purport to give the history of the different dynasties that have ruled in the land from a vast antiquity; but these records are largely mythical and legendary. Everything is confused and uncertain until we reach the eighth or seventh century before our era; and even then we meet with little of interest in the dynastic history of the country until we come to the reign of Che Hwang-te (246-210 B.C.). This energetic ruler strengthened and consolidated the imperial power, and executed great works of internal improvement, such as roads and canals. As a barrier against the incursions of the Huns, he began the erection of the celebrated Chinese Wall, a great rampart extending for about 1500 miles along the northern frontier of the country. [Footnote: The Great Wall is one of the most remarkable works of man. "It is," says Dr. Williams, "the only artificial structure which would arrest attention in a hasty survey of the globe." It has been estimated that there is more than seventy times as much material in the wall as there is in the Great Pyramid of Cheops, and that it represents more labor than 100,000 miles of ordinary railroad. It was begun in 214(?) and finished in 204(?) B.C. It is twenty-five feet wide at base, and from fifteen to thirty feet high. Towers forty feet high rise at irregular intervals. In some places it is a mere earthen rampart; in others it is faced with brick; and then again it is composed of stone throughout.] From the strong reign of Che Hwang-te to the end of the period covered by ancient history, Chinese dynastic records present no matters of universal interest that need here occupy our attention. CHINESE WRITING.--It is nearly certain that the art of writing was known among the Chinese as early as 2000 B.C. The system employed is curiously cumbrous. In the absence of an alphabet, each word of the language is represented upon the written page by means of a symbol, or combination of symbols; this, of course, requires that there be as many symbols, or characters, as there are words in the language. The number sanctioned by good use is about 25,000; but counting obsolete characters, the number amounts to over 50,000. A knowledge of 5000 or 6000 characters, however, enables one to read and write without difficulty. The task of learning even this number might well be hopeless, were it not that many of the characters bear a remote resemblance to the objects for which they stand, and when once explained, readily suggest the thing or idea represented. The nature of the characters shows conclusively that the Chinese system of writing, like that of all others with which we are acquainted, was at first purely hieroglyphical, that is, the characters were originally simply rude outline pictures of material objects. Time and use have worn them to their present form. This Chinese system of representing thought, cumbrous and inconvenient as it is, is employed at the present time by one third of the human race. Printing from blocks was practised in China as early as the sixth century of our era, and printing from movable types as early as the tenth or eleventh century, that is to say, about four hundred years before the same art was invented in Europe. CHINESE LITERATURE: CONFUCIUS AND MENCIUS.--The most highly prized portion of Chinese literature is embraced in what is known as the Five Classics and the Four Books, called collectively the Nine Classics. The Five Classics are among the oldest books in the world. For some of the books an antiquity of 3000 years is claimed. The books embrace chronicles, political and ethical maxims, and numerous odes. One of the most important of the Classics is the so-called Book of Rites, said to date from 1200 B.C. The Four Books are of later origin than the Five Classics, having been written about the fifth and fourth centuries before the Christian era; yet they hardly yield to them in sacredness in the eyes of the Chinese. The first three of the series are by the pupils of the great sage and moralist Confucius (551-478 B.C.), and the fourth is by Mencius (371-288 B.C.), a disciple of Confucius, and a scarcely less revered philosopher and ethical teacher. The teachings of the Four Books may be summed up in the simple precept, "Walk in the Trodden Paths." Confucius was not a prophet, or revealer; he laid no claims to a supernatural knowledge of God or of the hereafter; he said nothing of an Infinite Spirit, and but little of a future life. His cardinal precepts were obedience to superiors, reverence for the ancients, and imitation of their virtues. He himself walked in the old paths, and thus added the force of example to that of precept. He gave the Chinese the Golden Rule, stated negatively: "What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others." During the reign of Che Hwang-te (see p. 13), Chinese literature suffered a great disaster. That despot, for the reason that the teachers in their opposition to him were constantly quoting the ancient writings against his innovations, ordered the chief historical books to be destroyed, and sentenced to death any one who should presume to talk about the proscribed writings, or even allude to the virtues of the ancients in such a way as to reflect upon his reforms. The contumacious he sent to work upon the Great Wall. But the people concealed the books in the walls of their houses, or better still hid them away in their memories; and in this way the priceless inheritance of antiquity was preserved until the storm had passed. INFLUENCE OF THIS LITERATURE AND OF THE SAGE CONFUCIUS.--It would be impossible to exaggerate the influence which the Nine Classics have had upon the Chinese nation. For more than 2000 years these writings have been the Chinese Bible. And as all of the Four Books, though they were not written by Confucius, yet bear the impress of his mind and thought, just as the Gospels teach the mind of Christ, a large part of this influence must be attributed to the life and teachings of that great Sage. His influence has been greater than that of any other teacher, excepting Christ and perhaps Buddha. His precepts, implicitly followed by his countrymen, have shaped their lives from his day to the present. The moral system of Confucius, making, as it does, filial obedience and a conformity to ancient customs primary virtues, has exalted the family life among the Chinese and given a wonderful stability to Chinese society. Chinese children are the most obedient and reverential to parents of any children in the world, and the Chinese Empire is the only one in all history that has prolonged its existence from ancient times to the present. But along with much good, one great evil has resulted from this blind, servile following of the past. The Chinese in strictly obeying the injunction to walk in the old ways, to conform to the customs of the ancients, have failed to mark out any new footpaths for themselves. Hence their lack of originality, their habit of imitation: hence the unchanging, unprogressive character of Chinese civilization. EDUCATION AND CIVIL SERVICE COMPETITIVE EXAMINATIONS.--China has a very ancient educational system. The land was filled with schools, academies, and colleges more than a thousand years before our era, and education is to-day more general among the Chinese than among any other pagan people. A knowledge of the sacred books is the sole passport to civil office and public employment. All candidates for places in the government must pass a competitive examination in the Nine Classics. This system is practically the same in principle as that which we, with great difficulty, are trying to establish in connection with our own civil service. THE THREE RELIGIONS,--CONFUCIANISM, TAOISM, AND BUDDHISM.--There are three leading religions in China,--Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. The great Sage Confucius is reverenced and worshipped throughout the Empire. He holds somewhat the same relation to the system that bears his name that Christ holds to that of Christianity. Taoism takes its name from Tao, which is made, like Brahma in Brahmanism, the beginning of all things. It is a very curious system of mystical ideas and superstitious practices. Buddhism was introduced into China about the opening of the Christian era, and soon became widely spread. There is one element common to all these religions, and that is the worship of ancestors. Every Chinese, whether he be a Confucianist, a Taoist, or a Buddhist, reverences his ancestors, and prays and makes offerings to their spirits. POLICY OF NON-INTERCOURSE.--The Chinese have always been a very self- satisfied and exclusive people. They have jealously excluded foreigners and outside influence from their country. The Great Wall with which they have hedged in their country on the north, is the symbol of their policy of isolation. Doubtless this characteristic of the Chinese has been fostered by their geographical isolation; for great mountain barriers and wide deserts cut the country off from communication with the rest of the Asiatic continent. And then their reverence for antiquity has rendered them intolerant of innovation and change. Hence, in part, the unwillingness of the Chinese to admit into their country railroads, telegraphs, and other modern improvements. For them to adopt these new- fangled inventions, would be like our adopting a new religion. Such a departure from the ways and customs of the past has in it, to their way of thinking, something akin to disrespect and irreverence for ancestors. CHAPTER II. EGYPT. 1. POLITICAL HISTORY. EGYPT AND THE NILE.--Egypt comprises the delta of the Nile and the flood- plains of its lower course. The whole land is formed of the deposits of the river; hence Herodotus, in happy phrase, called the country "the gift of the Nile." The delta country was known to the ancients as Lower Egypt; while the valley proper, reaching from the head of the delta to the First Cataract, a distance of six hundred miles, was called Upper Egypt. [Footnote: About seven hundred miles from the Mediterranean a low ledge of rocks, stretching across the Nile, forms the first obstruction to navigation in passing up the river. The rapids found at this point are termed the First Cataract. Six other cataracts occur in the next seven hundred miles of the river's course.] Through the same means by which Egypt was originally created, is the land each year still renewed and fertilized. The Nile, swollen by the heavy tropical rains about its sources, begins to rise in its lower parts late in June, and by October, when the inundation has attained its greatest height, the country presents the appearance of an inland sea. By the end of November the river has returned to its bed, and the fields, over which has been spread a film of rich earth, [Footnote: The rate of the fluviatile deposit is from three to five inches in a century. The surface of the valley at Thebes, as shown by the accumulations about the monuments, has been raised seven feet during the last seventeen hundred years.] present the appearance of black mud-flats. Usually the plow is run lightly over the soft surface, but in some cases the grain is sown upon the undisturbed deposit, and simply trampled in by flocks of sheep and goats driven over it. In a few weeks the entire land, so recently a flooded plain, is overspread with a sea of verdure, which forms a striking contrast to the desert sands and barren hills that rim the valley. [Illustration: ANCIENT EGYPT] CLIMATE.--In Lower Egypt, near the sea, the rainfall in the winter is abundant; but the climate of Upper Egypt is all but rainless, only a few slight showers falling throughout the year. This dryness of the Egyptian air is what has preserved through so many thousand years, in such wonderful freshness of color and with such sharpness of outline, the numerous paintings and sculptures of the monuments of the Pharaohs. The southern line of Egypt only just touches the tropics; still the climate, influenced by the wide and hot deserts that hem the valley, is semi-tropical in character. The fruits of the tropics and the cereals of the temperate zone grow luxuriantly. Thus favored in climate as well as in the matter of irrigation, Egypt became in early times the granary of the East. To it less favored countries, when stricken by famine,--a calamity so common in the East in regions dependent upon the rainfall,--looked for food, as did the families of Israel during drought and failure of crops in Palestine. DYNASTIES AND CHRONOLOGY.--The kings, or Pharaohs, that reigned in Egypt from the earliest times till the conquest of the country by Alexander the Great (332 B.C.), are grouped into thirty-one dynasties. Thirty of these we find in the lists of Manetho, an Egyptian priest who lived in the third century B.C., and who compiled a chronicle of the kings of the country from the manuscripts kept in the Egyptian temples. We cannot assign a positive date to the beginning of the First Dynasty, chiefly because Egyptologists are at a loss to know whether to consider all the dynasties of Manetho's list as successive or in part contemporaneous. Thus, it is held by some scholars that several of these families were reigning at the same time in the different cities of Upper and Lower Egypt; while others think that they all reigned at different epochs, and that the sum of the lengths of the several dynasties gives us the true date of the beginning of the political history of the country. Accordingly, some place the beginning of the First Dynasty at about 5000 B.C., while others put it at about 3000 B.C. The constantly growing evidence of the monuments is in favor of the higher figures. MENES, THE FIRST OF THE PHARAOHS.--Menes is the first kingly personage, shadowy and indistinct in form, that we discover in the early dawn of Egyptian history. Tradition makes him the founder of Memphis, near the head of the Delta, the site of which capital he secured against the inundations of the Nile by vast dikes and various engineering works. To him is ascribed the achievement of first consolidating the numerous petty principalities of Lower Egypt into a single state. THE FOURTH DYNASTY: THE PYRAMID KINGS (about 2700 B.C.).--The kings of the Fourth Dynasty, who reigned at Memphis, are called the Pyramid builders. Kufu I., the Cheops of the Greeks, was the first great builder. To him we can now positively ascribe the building of the Great Pyramid, the largest of the Gizeh group, near Cairo; for his name has been found upon some of the stones,--painted on them by his workmen before the blocks were taken from the quarries. The mountains of stone heaped together by the Pyramid kings are proof that they were cruel oppressors of their people, and burdened them with useless labor upon these monuments of their ambition. Tradition tells how the very memory of these monarchs was hated by the people. Herodotus says that the Egyptians did not like even to speak the names of the builders of the two largest pyramids. THE TWELFTH DYNASTY (about 2300 B.C.).--After the Sixth Dynasty, Egypt, for several centuries, is almost lost from view. When finally the valley emerges from the obscurity of this period, the old capital Memphis has receded into the background, and the city of Thebes has taken its place as the seat of the royal power. The period of the Twelfth Dynasty, a line of Theban kings, is one of the brightest in Egyptian hhistory. Many monuments scattered throughout the country perpetuate the fame of the sovereigns of this illustrious house. Egyptian civilization is regarded by many as having during this period reached the highest perfection to which it ever attained. THE HYSKOS, OR SHEPHERD KINGS (from about 2100 to 1650 B.C.).--Soon after the bright period of the Twelfth Dynasty, Egypt again suffered a great eclipse. Nomadic tribes from Syria crossed the eastern frontier of Egypt, took possession of the inviting pasture-lands of the Delta, and established there the empire of the Shepherd Kings. These Asiatic intruders were violent and barbarous, and destroyed or mutilated the monuments of the country. But gradually they were transformed by the civilization with which they were in contact, and in time they adopted the manners and culture of the Egyptians. It was probably during the supremacy of the Hyksos that the families of Israel found a refuge in Lower Egypt. They received a kind reception from the Shepherd Kings, not only because they had the same pastoral habits, but also, probably, because of near kinship in race. At last these intruders, after they had ruled in the valley four or five hundred years, were expelled by the Theban kings, and driven back into Asia. This occurred about 1650 B.C. The episode of the Shepherd Kings in Egypt derives great importance from the fact that these Asiatic conquerors were one of the mediums through which Egyptian civilization was transmitted to the Phoenicians, who, through their wide commercial relations, spread the same among all the early nations of the Mediterranean area. And further, the Hyksos conquest was an advantage to Egypt itself. The conquerors possessed political capacity, and gave the country a strong centralized government. They made Egypt in fact a great monarchy, and laid the basis of the power and glory of the mighty Pharaohs of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties. THE EIGHTEENTH DYNASTY (about 1650-1400 B.C.).--The revolt which drove the Hyksos from the country was led by Amosis, or Ahmes, a descendant of the Theban kings. He was the first king of what is known as the Eighteenth Dynasty, probably the greatest race of kings, it has been said, that ever reigned upon the earth. The most eventful period of Egyptian history, covered by what is called the New Empire, now opens. Architecture and learning seem to have recovered at a bound from their long depression under the domination of the Shepherd Kings. To free his empire from the danger of another invasion from Asia, Amosis determined to subdue the Syrian and Mesopotamian tribes. This foreign policy, followed out by his successors, shaped many of the events of their reigns. Thothmes III., one of the greatest kings of this Eighteenth Dynasty, has been called "the Alexander of Egyptian history." During his reign the frontiers of the empire reached their greatest expansion. His authority extended from the oases of the Libyan desert to the Tigris and the Euphrates. [Illustration: PHALANX OF THE KHITA: In the background, town protected by walls and moats.] Thothmes was also a magnificent builder. His architectural works in the valley of the Nile were almost numberless. He built a great part of the temple of Karnak, at Thebes, the remains of which form the most majestic ruin in the world. His obelisks stand to-day in Constantinople, in Rome, in London, and in New York. The name of Amunoph III. stands next after that of Thothmes III. as one of the great rulers and builders of the Eighteenth Dynasty. THE NINETEENTH DYNASTY (about 1400-1280 B.C.).--The Pharaohs of the Nineteenth Dynasty rival those of the Eighteenth in their fame as conquerors and builders. It is their deeds and works, in connection with those of the preceding dynasty, that have given Egypt such a name and place in history. The two great names of the house are Seti I. and Rameses II. One of the most important of Seti's wars was that against the Hittites (_Khita_, in the inscriptions) and their allies. The Hittites were a powerful non-Semitic people, whose capital was Carchemish, on the Euphrates, and whose strength and influence were now so great as to be a threat to Egypt. But Seti's deeds as a warrior are eclipsed by his achievements as a builder. He constructed the main part of what is perhaps the most impressive edifice ever raised by man,--the world-renowned "Hall of Columns," in the Temple of Karnak, at Thebes (see illustration, p. 32). He also cut for himself in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings, at the same place, the most beautiful and elaborate of all the rock-sepulchres of the Pharaohs (see p. 31). In addition to these and numerous other works, he began a canal to unite the Red Sea and the Nile,--an undertaking which was completed by his son and successor, Rameses II. [Illustration: SETI I. (From a photograph of the mummy.)] Rameses II., surnamed the Great, was the Sesostris of the Greeks. His is the most prominent name of the Nineteenth Dynasty. Ancient writers, in fact, accorded him the first place among all the Egyptian sovereigns, and made him the hero of innumerable stories. His long reign, embracing sixty- seven years, was, in truth, well occupied with military expeditions and the superintendence of great architectural works. His chief wars were those against the Hittites. Time and again is Rameses found with his host of war-chariots in their country, but he evidently fails to break their power; for we find him at last concluding with them a celebrated treaty, in which the chief of the Hittites is called "The Great King of the Khita" (Hittites), and is formally recognized as in every respect the equal of the king of Egypt. Later, Rameses marries a daughter of the Hittite king. All this means that the Pharaohs had met their peers in the princes of the Hittites, and that they could no longer hope to become masters of Western Asia. It was probably the fear of an invasion by the tribes of Syria that led Rameses to reduce to a position of grinding servitude the Semitic peoples that under former dynasties had been permitted to settle in Lower Egypt; for this Nineteenth Dynasty, to which Rameses II. belongs, was the new king (dynasty) that arose "which knew not Joseph" (Ex. i. 8), and oppressed the children of Israel. It was during the reign of his son Menephtha that the Exodus took place (about 1300 B.C.). [Illustration: RAMESES II. RETURNING IN TRIUMPH FROM SYRIA, with his chariot garnished with the heads of his enemies. (From the monuments of Karnak.)] THE TWENTY-SIXTH DYNASTY (666-527 B.C.).--We pass without comment a long period of several centuries, marked, indeed, by great vicissitudes in the fortunes of the Egyptian monarchs, yet characterized throughout by a sure and rapid decline in the power and splendor of their empire. During the latter part of this period Egypt was tributary to Assyria. But about 666 B.C., a native prince, Psammetichus I. (666-612 B.C.), with the aid of Greek mercenaries from Asia Minor, succeeded in expelling the Assyrian garrisons. Psammetichus thus became the founder of the Twenty- sixth Dynasty. The reign of this monarch marks a new era in Egyptian history. Hitherto Egypt had secluded herself from the world, behind barriers of jealousy, race, and pride. But Psammetichus being himself, it seems, of non-Egyptian origin, and owing his throne chiefly to the swords of Greek soldiers, was led to reverse the policy of the past, and to throw the valley open to the commerce and influences of the world. His capital, Sais, on the Canopic branch of the Nile, forty miles from the Mediterranean, was filled with Greek citizens; and Greek mercenaries were employed in his armies. This change of policy, occurring at just the period when the rising states of Greece and Rome were shaping their institutions, was a most significant event. Egypt became the University of the Mediterranean nations. From this time forward Greek philosophers, as in the case of Pythagoras and of Plato, are represented as becoming pupils of the Egyptian priests; and without question the learning and philosophy of the ancient Egyptians exerted a profound influence upon the quick, susceptible mind of the Hellenic race, that was, in its turn, to become the teacher of the world. The liberal policy of Psammetichus, while resulting in a great advantage to foreign nations, brought a heavy misfortune upon his own. Displeased with the position assigned Greek mercenaries in the army, the native Egyptian soldiers revolted, and two hundred thousand of the troops seceding in a body, emigrated to Ethiopia, whence no inducement that Psammetichus offered could persuade them to return. The son of Psammetichus, Necho II. (612-596 B.C.), the Pharaoh-Necho of the Bible, followed the liberal policy marked out by his father. To facilitate commerce, he attempted to reopen the old canal dug by Seti I. and his son, which had become unnavigable. After the loss of one hundred and twenty thousand workmen in the prosecution of the undertaking, Necho was constrained to abandon it; Herodotus says, on account of an unfavorable oracle. Necho then fitted out an exploring expedition for the circumnavigation of Africa, in hope of finding a possible passage for his fleets from the Red Sea to the Nile by a water channel already opened by nature, and to which the priests and oracles could interpose no objections. The expedition, we have reason to believe, actually accomplished the feat of sailing around the continent; for Herodotus, in his account of the enterprise, says that the voyagers upon their return reported that, when they were rounding the cape, the sun was on their right hand (to the north). This feature of the report, which led Herodotus to disbelieve it, is to us the very strongest evidence possible that the voyage was really performed. THE LAST OF THE PHARAOHS.--Before the close of his reign, Necho had come into collision with the king of Babylon, and was forced to acknowledge his supremacy. A little later, Babylon having yielded to the rising power of Persia, Egypt also passed under Persian authority (see p. 77). The Egyptians, however, were restive under this foreign yoke, and, after a little more than a century, succeeded in throwing it off; but the country was again subjugated by the Persian king Artaxerxes III. (about 340 B.C.), and from that time until our own day no native prince has ever sat upon the throne of the Pharaohs. Long before the Persian conquest, the Prophet Ezekiel, foretelling the debasement of Egypt, had declared, "There shall be no more a prince of the land of Egypt." [Footnote: Ezek. xxx. 13.] Upon the extension of the power of the Macedonians over the East (333 B.C.), Egypt willingly exchanged masters; and for three centuries the valley was the seat of the renowned Græco-Egyptian Empire of the Ptolemies, which lasted until the Romans annexed the region to their all- absorbing empire (30 B.C.). "The mission of Egypt among the nations was fulfilled; it had lit the torch of civilization in ages inconceivably remote, and had passed it on to other peoples of the West." 2. RELIGION, ARTS, AND GENERAL CULTURE. CLASSES OF SOCIETY.--Egyptian society was divided into three great classes, or orders,--priests, soldiers, and common people; the last embracing shepherds, husbandmen, and artisans. The sacerdotal order consisted of high-priests, prophets, scribes, keepers of the sacred robes and animals, sacred sculptors, masons, and embalmers. They enjoyed freedom from taxation, and met the expenses of the temple services with the income of the sacred lands, which embraced one third of the soil of the country. The priests were extremely scrupulous in the care of their persons. They bathed twice by day and twice by night, and shaved the entire body every third day. Their inner clothing was linen, woollen garments being thought unclean; their diet was plain and even abstemious, in order that, as Plutarch says, "their bodies might sit light as possible about their souls." Next to the priesthood in rank and honor stood the military order. Like the priests, the soldiers formed a landed class. They held one third of the soil of Egypt. To each soldier was given a tract of about eight acres, exempt from all taxes. They were carefully trained in their profession, and there was no more effective soldiery in ancient times than that which marched beneath the standard of the Pharaohs. THE CHIEF DEITIES.--Attached to the chief temples of the Egyptians were colleges for the training of the sacerdotal order. These institutions were the repositories of the wisdom of the Egyptians. This learning was open only to the initiated few. The unity of God was the central doctrine in this private system. They gave to this Supreme Being the very same name by which he was known to the Hebrews--_Nuk Pu Nuk_, "I am that I am." [Footnote: "It is evident what a new light this discovery throws on the sublime passage in Exodus iii. 14; where Moses, whom we may suppose to have been initiated into this formula, is sent both to his people and to Pharaoh to proclaim the true God by this very title, and to declare that the God of the highest Egyptian theology was also the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. The case is parallel to that of Paul at Athens."--Smith's _Ancient History of the East_, p. 196, note.] The sacred manuscripts say, "He is the one living and true God,... who has made all things, and was not himself made." The Egyptian divinities of the popular mythology were frequently grouped in triads. First in importance among these groups was that formed by Osiris, Isis (his wife and sister), and Horus, their son. The members of this triad were worshipped throughout Egypt. The god Set (called Typhon by the Greek writers), the principle of evil, was the Satan of Egyptian mythology. While the good and beneficent Osiris was symbolized by the life-giving Nile, the malignant Typhon was emblemized by the terrors and barrenness of the desert. [Illustration: MUMMY OF A SACRED BULL. (From a photograph.)] ANIMAL-WORSHIP.--The Egyptians regarded certain animals as emblems of the gods, and hence worshipped them. To kill one of these sacred animals was adjudged the greatest impiety. Persons so unfortunate as to harm one through accident were sometimes murdered by the infuriated people. The destruction of a cat in a burning building was lamented more than the loss of the property. Upon the death of a dog, every member of the family shaved his head. The scarabæus, or beetle, was especially sacred, being considered an emblem of the sun, or of life. Not only were various animals held sacred, as being the emblems of certain deities, but some were thought to be real gods. Thus the soul of Osiris, it was imagined, animated the body of some bull, which might be known from certain spots and markings. Upon the death of the sacred bull, or Apis, as he was called, a great search, accompanied with loud lamentation, was made throughout the land for his successor: for, the moment the soul of Osiris departed from the dying bull, it entered a calf that moment born. The calf was always found with the proper markings; but, as Wilkinson says, the young animal had probably been put to "much inconvenience and pain to make the marks and hair conform to his description." The body of the deceased Apis was carefully embalmed, and, amid funeral ceremonies of great expense and magnificence, deposited in the tomb of his predecessors. In 1851, Mariette discovered this sepulchral chamber of the sacred bulls. It is a narrow gallery, two thousand feet in length, cut in the limestone cliffs just opposite the site of ancient Memphis. A large number of the immense granite coffins, fifteen feet long and eight wide and high, have been brought to light. Many explanations have been given to account for the existence of such a debased form of worship among so cultured a people as were the ancient Egyptians. Probably the sacred animals in the later worship represent an earlier stage of the Egyptian religion, just as many superstitious beliefs and observances among ourselves are simply survivals from earlier and ruder times. JUDGMENT OF THE DEAD.--Death was a great equalizer among the Egyptians. King and peasant alike must stand before the judgment-seat of Osiris and his forty-two assessors. This judgment of the soul in the other world was prefigured by a peculiar ordeal to which the body was subjected here. Between each chief city and the burial-place on the western edge of the valley was a sacred lake, across which the body was borne in a barge. But, before admittance to the boat, it must pass the ordeal called "the judgment of the dead." This was a trial before a tribunal of forty-two judges, assembled upon the shore of the lake. Any person could bring accusations against the deceased, false charges being guarded against by the most dreadful penalties. If it appeared that the life of the deceased had been evil, passage to the boat was denied; and the body was either carried home in dishonor, or, in case of the poor who could not afford to care for the mummy, was interred on the shores of the lake. Many mummies of those refused admission to the tombs of their fathers have been dug up along these "Stygian banks." [Illustration: JUDGMENT OF THE DEAD: above, an ape-assessor scourges an evil soul, that has been changed into an unclean animal.] But this ordeal of the body was only a faint symbol of the dread tribunal of Osiris before which the soul must appear in the lower world. In one scale of a balance was placed the heart of the deceased; in the other scale, an image of Justice, or Truth. The soul stands by watching the result, and, as the beam inclines, is either welcomed to the companionship of the good Osiris, or consigned to oblivion in the jaws of a frightful hippopotamus-headed monster, "the devourer of evil souls." This annihilation, however, is only the fate of those inveterately wicked. Those respecting whom hopes of reformation may be entertained are condemned to return to earth and do penance in long cycles of lives in the bodies of various animals. This is what is known as the transmigration of souls. The kind of animals the soul should animate, and the length of its transmigrations, were determined by the nature of its sins. TOMBS.--The Egyptians bestowed little care upon the temporary residences of the living, but the "eternal homes" of the dead were fitted up with the most lavish expenditure of labor. These were chambers, sometimes built of brick or stone, but more usually cut in the limestone cliffs that form the western rim of the Nile valley; for that, as the land of the sunset, was conceived to be the realm of darkness and of death. The cliffs opposite the ancient Egyptian capitals are honeycombed with sepulchral cells. [Illustration: BRICK-MAKING IN ANCIENT EGYPT, (From Thebes.)] In the hills back of Thebes is the so-called Valley of the Tombs of the Kings, the "Westminster Abbey of Egypt." Here are twenty-five magnificent sepulchres. These consist of extensive rock-cut passages and chambers richly sculptured and painted. The subjects of the decorations of many of the tombs, particularly of the oldest, are drawn from the life and manners of the times. Thus the artist has converted for us the Egyptian necropolis into a city of the living, where the Egypt of four thousand years ago seems to pass before our eyes. THE PYRAMIDS.--The Egyptian pyramids, the tombs of the earlier Pharaohs, are the most venerable monuments that have been preserved to us from the early world. They were almost all erected before the Twelfth Dynasty. Although thus standing away back in the earliest twilight of the historic morning, nevertheless they mark, not the beginning, but the perfection of Egyptian art. They speak of long periods of growth in art and science lying beyond the era they represent. It is this vast and mysterious background that astonishes us even more than these giant forms cast up against it. [Illustration: THE GREAT HALL OF COLUMNS AT KARNAK.] Being sepulchral monuments, the pyramids are confined to the western side of the Nile valley (see p. 31). There are over thirty still standing, with traces of about forty more. The Pyramid of Cheops, the largest of the Gizeh group, near Cairo, rises from a base covering thirteen acres, to a height of four hundred and fifty feet. According to Herodotus, Cheops employed one hundred thousand men for twenty years in its erection. PALACES AND TEMPLES.---The earlier Memphian kings built great unadorned pyramids, but the later Theban monarchs constructed splendid palaces and temples. Two of the most prominent masses of buildings on the site of Thebes are called, the one the Temple of Karnak, and the other the Temple of Luxor, from the names of two native villages built near or within the ruined enclosures. The former was more than five hundred years in building. As an adjunct of the temple at Karnak was a Hall of Columns, which consisted of a phalanx of one hundred and sixty-four gigantic pillars. Some of these columns measure over seventy feet in height, with capitals sixty-five feet in circumference. [Illustration: STATUES OF MEMNON AT THEBES.] In Nubia, beyond the First Cataract, is the renowned rock-hewn temple of Ipsambul, the front of which is adorned with four gigantic portrait- statues of Rameses II., seventy feet in height. This temple has been pronounced the greatest and grandest achievement of Egyptian art. SCULPTURE: SPHINXES AND COLOSSI.--A strange immobility, due to the influence of religion, attached itself, at an early period, to Egyptian art. The artist, in the portrayal of the figures of the gods, was not allowed to change a single line in the conventional form. Hence the impossibility of improvement in sacred sculpture. Wilkinson says that Menes would have recognized the statue of Osiris in the Temple of Amasis. Plato complained that the pictures and statues in the temples in his day were no better than those made "ten thousand years" before. The heroic, or colossal size of many of the Egyptian statues excites our admiration. The two colossi at Thebes, known as the "Statues of Memnon," are forty-seven feet high, and are hewn each from a single block of granite. The appearance of these time-worn, gigantic figures, upon the solitary plain, is singularly impressive. "There they sit together, yet apart, in the midst of the plain, serene and vigilant, still keeping their untired watch over the lapse of ages and the eclipse of Egypt." One of these statues acquired a wide reputation among the Greeks and Romans, under the name of the "Vocal Memnon." When the rays of the rising sun fell upon the colossus, it emitted low musical tones, which the Egyptians believed to be the greeting of the statue to the mother-sun. [Footnote: It is probable that the musical notes were produced by the action of the sun upon the surface of the rock while wet with dew. The phenomenon was observed only while the upper part of the colossus, which was broken off by an earthquake, remained upon the ground. When the statue was restored, the music ceased.] The Egyptian sphinxes were figures having a human head and the body of a lion, symbolizing intelligence and power. The most famous of the sphinxes of Egypt is the colossal figure at the base of the Great Pyramid, at Gizeh, sculptured, some think, by Menes, and others, by one of the kings of the Fourth Dynasty. The immense statue, cut out of the native rock, save the fore-legs, which are built of masonry, is ninety feet long and seventy feet high. "This huge, mutilated figure has an astonishing effect; it seems like an eternal spectre. The stone phantom seems attentive; one would say that it hears and sees. Its great ear appears to collect the sounds of the past; its eyes, directed to the east, gaze, as it were, into the future; its aspect has a depth, a truth of expression, irresistibly fascinating to the spectator. In this figure--half statue, half mountain-- we see a wonderful majesty, a grand serenity, and even a sort of sweetness of expression." GLASS MANUFACTURE.--The manufacture of glass, a discovery usually attributed to the Phoenicians, [Footnote: The Phoenicians, being the carriers of antiquity, often received credit among the peoples with whom they traded, for various inventions and discoveries of which they were simply the disseminators.] was carried on in Egypt more than four thousand years ago. The paintings of the monuments represent glass-blowers moulding all manner of articles. Glass bottles, and various other objects of the same material, are found in great numbers in the tombs. Some of these objects show that the ancient Egyptians were acquainted with processes of coloring glass that secured results which we have not yet been able to equal. The Egyptian artists imitated, with marvellous success, the variegated hues of insects and stones. The manufacture of precious gems, so like the natural stone as to defy detection, was a lucrative profession. THE PAPYRUS PAPER.--The chief writing material used by the ancient Egyptians was the noted papyrus paper, manufactured from a reed which grew in the marshes and along the water-channels of the Nile. From the Greek names of this Egyptian plant, _byblos_ and _papyrus_, come our words "Bible" and "paper." The plant has now entirely disappeared from Egypt, and is found only on the Anapus, in the island of Sicily, and on a small stream near Jaffa, in Palestine. Long before the plant became extinct in Egypt an ancient prophecy had declared, "The paper reeds by the brooks ... shall wither, be driven away, and be no more." (Isa. xix. 7.) The costly nature of the papyrus paper led to the use of many substitutes for writing purposes--as leather, broken pottery, tiles, stones, and wooden tablets. FORMS OF WRITING.--The Egyptians employed three forms of writing: the _hieroglyphical_, consisting of rude pictures of material objects, usually employed in monumental inscriptions; the _hieratic_, an abbreviated or rather simplified form of the hieroglyphical, adapted to writing, and forming the greater part of the papyrus manuscripts; and the _demotic_, or _encorial_, a still simpler form than the hieratic. The last did not come into use till about the seventh century B.C., and was then used for all ordinary documents, both of a civil and commercial nature. It could be written eight or ten times as fast as the hieroglyphical form. KEY TO EGYPTIAN WRITING.--The key to the Egyptian writing was discovered by means of the Rosetta Stone. This valuable relic, a heavy block of black basalt, is now in the British Museum. It holds an inscription, written in hieroglyphic, in demotic, and in Greek characters. Champollion, a French scholar, by comparing the characters composing the words Ptolemy, Alexander, and other names in the parallel inscriptions, discovered the value of several of the symbols; and thus were opened the vast libraries of Egyptian learning. We have now the Ritual, or Book, of the Dead, a sort of guide to the soul in its journey through the underworld; romances, and fairy tales, among which is "Cinderella and the Glass Slipper"; autobiographies, letters, fables, and epics; treatises on medicine, astronomy, and various other scientific subjects; and books on history--in prose and verse--which fully justify the declaration of the Egyptian priests to Solon: "You Greeks are mere children, talkative and vain; you know nothing at all of the past." ASTRONOMY, GEOGRAPHY AND ARITHMETIC.--The cloudless and brilliant skies of Egypt invited the inhabitants of the Nile valley to the study of the heavenly bodies. And another circumstance closely related to their very existence, the inundation of the Nile, following the changing cycles of the stars, could not but have incited them to the watching and predicting of astronomical movements. Their observations led them to discover the length, very nearly, of the sidereal year, which they made to consist of 365 days, every fourth year adding one day, making the number for that year 366. They also divided the year into twelve months of thirty days each, adding five days to complete the year. This was the calendar that Julius Cæsar introduced into the Roman Empire, and which, slightly reformed by Pope Gregory XIII. in 1582, has been the system employed by almost all the civilized world up to the present day. The Greeks accounted for the early rise of the science of geometry among the Egyptians by reference to the necessity they were under each year of re-establishing the boundaries of their fields--the inundation obliterating old landmarks and divisions. The science thus forced upon their attention was cultivated with zeal and success. A single papyrus has been discovered that holds twelve geometrical theorems. Arithmetic was necessarily brought into requisition in solving astronomical and geometrical problems. We ourselves are debtors to the ancient Egyptians for much of our mathematical knowledge, which has come to us from the banks of the Nile, through the Greeks and the Saracens. MEDICINE AND THE ART OF EMBALMING.--The custom of embalming the dead, affording opportunities for the examination of the body, without doubt had a great influence upon the development of the sciences of anatomy and medicine among the Egyptians. That the embalmers were physicians, we know from various testimonies. Thus we are told in the Bible that Joseph "commanded the _physicians_ to embalm his father." The Egyptian doctors had a very great reputation among the ancients. Every doctor was a specialist, and was not allowed to take charge of cases outside of his own branch. As the artist was forbidden to change the lines of the sacred statues, so the physician was not permitted to treat cases save in the manner prescribed by the customs of the past; and if he were so presumptuous as to depart from the established mode of treatment, and the patient died, he was adjudged guilty of murder. Many drugs and medicines were used; the ciphers, or characters, employed by modern apothecaries to designate grains and drams are of Egyptian invention. The Egyptians believed that after a long lapse of time, several thousand years, the departed soul would return to earth and reanimate its former body; hence their custom of preserving the body by means of embalmment. In the processes of embalming, the physicians made use of oils, resin, bitumen, and various aromatic gums. The body was swathed in bandages of linen, while the face was sometimes gilded, or covered with a gold mask. As this, which was the "most approved method" of embalming, was very costly, the expense being equivalent probably to $1000 of our money, the bodies of the poorer classes were simply "salted and dried," wrapped in coarse mats, and laid in tiers in great trenches in the desert sands. [Illustration: PROFILE OF RAMESES II. (From a photograph of the mummy.)] Only a few years ago (in 1881) the mummies of Thothmes III., Seti I., and Rameses II., together with those of nearly all of the other Pharaohs of the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, Twentieth, and Twenty-first Dynasties, were found in a secret cave near Thebes. It seems that, some time in the 12th century B.C., a sudden alarm caused these bodies to be taken hastily from the royal tombs of which we have spoken (see p. 31), and secreted in this hidden chamber. When the danger had passed, the place of concealment had evidently been forgotten; so the bodies were never restored to their ancient tombs, but remained in this secret cavern to be discovered in our own day. The mummies were taken to the Boulak Museum, at Cairo, where they were identified by means of the inscriptions upon the cases and wrappings. Among others the body of Seti I. and that of Rameses II. were unbandaged (1886), so that now we may look upon the faces of the greatest and most renowned of the Pharaohs. The faces of both Seti and Rameses are so remarkably preserved, that "were their subjects to return to earth to-day they could not fail to recognize their old sovereigns." Both are strong faces, of Semitic cast, that of Rameses bearing a striking resemblance to that of his father Seti, and both closely resembling their portrait statues and profiles. Professor Maspero, the director-general of the excavations and antiquities of Egypt, in his official report of the uncovering of the mummies, writes as follows of the appearance of the face of Rameses: "The face of the mummy gives a fair idea of the face of the living king. The expression is unintellectual, perhaps slightly animal; but even under the somewhat grotesque disguise of mummification, there is plainly to be seen an air of sovereign majesty, of resolve, and of pride." [Footnote: On the finding and identification of the Pharaohs, consult two excellent articles in _The Century Magazine_ for May, 1887.] CHAPTER III. CHALDÆA. 1. POLITICAL HISTORY. BASIN OF THE TIGRIS AND EUPHRATES.-The northern part of the Tigris and Euphrates valley, the portion that comprised ancient Assyria, consists of undulating plains, broken in places by considerable mountain ridges. But all the southern portion of the basin, the part known as Chaldæa, or Babylonia, having been formed by the gradual encroachment of the deposits of the Tigris and Euphrates upon the waters of the Persian Gulf, is as level as the sea. During a large part of the year, rains are infrequent; hence agriculture is dependent mainly upon artificial irrigation. The distribution of the waters of the Tigris and the Euphrates was secured, in ancient times, by a stupendous system of canals and irrigants, which, at the present day, in a sand-choked and ruined condition, spread like a perfect network over the face of the country (see cut, p. 41). The productions of Babylonia are very like those of the Nile valley. The luxuriant growth of grain upon these alluvial flats excited the wonder of all the Greek travellers who visited the East. Herodotus will not tell the whole truth, for fear his veracity may be doubted. The soil is as fertile now as in the time of the historian; but owing to the neglect of the ancient canals, the greater part of this once populous district has been converted into alternating areas of marsh and desert. THE THREE GREAT MONARCHIES.--Within the Tigris-Euphrates basin, three great empires--the Chaldæan, the Assyrian, and the Babylonian-- successively rose to prominence and dominion. Each, in turn, not only extended its authority over the valley, but also made the power of its arms felt throughout the adjoining regions. We shall now trace the rise and the varied fortunes of these empires, and the slow growth of the arts and sciences from rude beginnings among the early Chaldæans to their fuller and richer development under the Assyrian and Babylonian monarchies. THE CHALDÆANS A MIXED PEOPLE.--In the earliest times Lower Chaldæa was known as Shumir, the Shinar of the Bible, while Upper Chaldæa bore the name of Accad. The original inhabitants were conjecturally of Turanian race, and are called Accadians. [Illustration: ANCIENT BABYLONIAN CANALS.] These people laid the basis of civilization in the Euphrates valley, so that with them the history of Asian culture begins. They brought with them into the valley the art of hieroglyphical writing, which later developed into the well-known cuneiform system. They also had quite an extensive literature, and had made considerable advance in the art of building. The civilization of the Accadians was given a great impulse by the arrival of a Semitic people. These foreigners were nomadic in habits, and altogether much less cultured than the Accadians. Gradually, however, they adopted the arts and literature of the people among whom they had settled; yet they retained their own language, which in the course of time superseded the less perfect Turanian speech of the original inhabitants; consequently the mixed people, known later as Chaldæans, that arose from the blending of the two races, spoke a language essentially the same as that used by their northern neighbors, the Semitic Assyrians. SARGON (SHARRUKIN) I. (3800? B.C.).--We know scarcely anything about the political affairs of the Accadians until after the arrival of the Semites. Then, powerful kings, sometimes of Semitic and then again of Turanian, or Accadian origin, appear ruling in the cities of Accad and Shumir, and the political history of Chaldæa begins. The first prominent monarch is called Sargon I. (Sharrukin), a Semitic king of Agade, one of the great early cities. An inscription recently deciphered makes this king to have reigned as early as 3800 B.C. He appears to have been the first great organizer of the peoples of the Chaldæan plains. Yet not as a warrior, but as a patron and protector of letters, is Sargon's name destined to a sure place in history. He classified and translated into the Semitic, or Assyrian tongue the religious, mythological, and astronomical literature of the Accadians, and deposited the books in great libraries, which he established or enlarged,--the oldest and most valuable libraries of the ancient world. The scholar Sayce calls him the Chaldæan Solomon. CONQUEST OF CHALDÆA BY THE ELAMITES (2286 B.C.).--While the Chaldæan kings were ruling in the great cities of Lower Babylonia, the princes of the Elamites, a people of Turanian race, were setting up a rival kingdom to the northeast, just at the foot of the hills of Persia. In the year 2286 B.C., a king of Elam, Kudur-Nakhunta by name, overran Chaldæa, took all the cities founded by Sargon and his successors, and from the temples bore off in triumph to his capital, Susa, the statues of the Chaldæan gods, and set up in these lowland regions what is known as the Elamite Dynasty. [Illustration: MAP OF THE TIGRIS AND EUPHRATES REGION.] More than sixteen hundred years after this despoiling of the Chaldæan sanctuaries, a king of Nineveh captured the city of Susa, and finding there these stolen statues, caused them to be restored to their original temples. The Chedorlaomer of Genesis, whose contact with the history of the Jewish patriarch Abraham has caused his name to be handed down to our own times in the records of the Hebrew people, is believed to have been the son and successor of Kudur-Nakhunta. CHALDÆA ECLIPSED BY ASSYRIA.--After the Elamite princes had maintained a more or less perfect dominion over the cities of Chaldæa for two or three centuries, their power seems to have declined; and then for several centuries longer, down to about 1300 B.C., dynasties and kings of which we know very little as yet, ruled the country. During this period, Babylon, gradually rising into prominence, overshadowed the more ancient Accadian cities, and became the leading city of the land. From it the whole country was destined, later, to draw the name by which it is best known--Babylonia. Meanwhile a Semitic power had been slowly developing in the north. This was the Assyrian empire, the later heart and centre of which was the great city of Nineveh. For a long time Assyria was simply a province or dependency of the lower kingdom; but about 1300 B.C., the Assyrian monarch Tiglathi-nin conquered Babylonia, and Assyria assumed the place that had been so long held by Chaldæa. From this time on to the fall of Nineveh in 606 B.C., the monarchs of this country virtually controlled the affairs of Western Asia. 2. ARTS AND GENERAL CULTURE. TOWER-TEMPLES.--In the art of building, the Chaldæans, though their edifices fall far short of attaining the perfection exhibited by the earliest Egyptian structures, displayed no inconsiderable architectural knowledge and skill. The most important of their constructions were their tower-temples. These were simple in plan, consisting of two or three terraces, or stages, placed one upon another so as to form a sort of rude pyramid. The material used in their construction was chiefly sun-dried brick. The edifice was sometimes protected by outer courses of burnt brick. The temple proper surmounted the upper platform. All these tower-temples have crumbled into vast mounds, with only here and there a projecting mass of masonry to distinguish them from natural hills, for which they were at first mistaken. CUNEIFORM WRITING.--We have already mentioned the fact that the Accadians, when they entered the Euphrates valley, were in possession of a system of writing. This was a simple pictorial, or hieroglyphical system, which they gradually developed into the cuneiform. In the cuneiform system, the characters, instead of being formed of unbroken lines, are composed of wedge-like marks; hence the name (from _cuneus_, a wedge). This form, according to the scholar Sayce, arose when the Accadians, having entered the low country, substituted tablets of clay for the papyrus or other similar material which they had formerly used. The characters were impressed upon the soft tablet by means of a triangular writing-instrument, which gave them their peculiar wedge-shaped form. The cuneiform mode of writing, improved and simplified by the Assyrians and the Persians, was in use about two thousand years, being employed by the nations in and near the Euphrates basin, down to the time of the conquest of the East by the Macedonians. BOOKS AND LIBRARIES.--The books of the Chaldæans were in general clay tablets, varying in length from one inch to twelve inches, and being about one inch thick. Those holding records of special importance, after having been once written over and baked, were covered with a thin coating of clay, and then the matter was written in duplicate and the tablets again baked. If the outer writing were defaced by accident or altered by design, the removal of the outer coating would at once show the true text. The tablets were carefully preserved in great public libraries. Even during the Turanian period, before the Semites had entered the land, one or more of these collections existed in each of the chief cities of Accad and Shumir. "Accad," says Sayce, "was the China of Asia. Almost every one could read and write." Erech was especially renowned for its great library, and was known as "the City of Books." [Illustration: CHALDÆAN TABLET.] THE RELIGION.--The Accadian religion, as revealed by the tablets, was essentially the same as that held today by the nomadic Turanian tribes of Northern Asia--what is known as Shamanism. It consisted in a belief in good and evil spirits, of which the latter held by far the most prominent place. To avert the malign influence of these wicked spirits, the Accadians had resort to charms and magic rites. The religion of the Semites was a form of Sabæanism,--that is, a worship of the heavenly bodies,--in which the sun was naturally the central object of adoration. When the Accadians and the Semites intermingled, their religious systems blended to form one of the most influential religions of the world--one which spread far and wide under the form of Baal worship. There were in the perfected system twelve primary gods, at whose head stood Il, or Ra. Besides these great divinities, there were numerous lesser and local deities. There were features of this old Chaldæan religion which were destined to exert a wide-spread and potent influence upon the minds of men. Out of the Sabæan Semitic element grew astrology, the pretended art of forecasting events by the aspect of the stars, which was most elaborately and ingeniously developed, until the fame of the Chaldæan astrologers was spread throughout the ancient world, while the spell of that art held in thraldom the mind of mediæval Europe. Out of the Shamanistic element contributed by the Turanian Accadians, grew a system of magic and divination which had a most profound influence not only upon all the Eastern nations, including the Jews, but also upon the later peoples of the West. mediæval magic and witchcraft were, in large part, an unchanged inheritance from Chaldæa. THE CHALDÆAN GENESIS.--The cosmological myths of the Chaldæans, that is, their stories of the origin of things, are remarkably like the first chapters of Genesis. [Illustration: ASSYRIAN TABLET WITH PARTS OF THE DELUGE LEGEND.] The discoveries and patient labors of various scholars have reproduced, in a more or less perfect form, from the legendary tablets, the Chaldæan account of the Creation of the World, of an ancestral Paradise and the Tree of Life with its angel guardians, of the Deluge, and of the Tower of Babel. [Footnote: Consult especially George Smith's _The Chaldæan Account of Genesis_; see also _Records of the Past_, Vol. VII. pp. 127, 131.] THE CHALDÆAN EPIC OF IZDUBAR.--Beside their cosmological myths, the Chaldæans had a vast number of so-called heroic and nature myths. The most noted of these form what is known as the Epic of Izdubar (Nimrod?), which is doubtless the oldest epic of the race. This is in twelve parts, and is really a solar myth, which recounts the twelve labors of the sun in his yearly passage through the twelve signs of the Chaldæan zodiac. This epic was carried to the West, by the way of Phoenicia and Asia Minor, and played a great part in the mythology of the Greeks and Romans. "The twelve labors of Heracles may be traced back to the adventures of Gisdhubar [Izdubar] as recorded in the twelve books of the great epic of Chaldæa." (Sayce.) SCIENCE.--In astronomy and arithmetic the Chaldæans made substantial progress. The clear sky and unbroken horizon of the Chaldæan plains, lending an unusually brilliant aspect to the heavens, naturally led the Chaldæans to the study of the stars. They early divided the zodiac into twelve signs, and named the zodiacal constellations, a memorial of their astronomical attainments which will remain forever inscribed upon the great circle of the heavens; they foretold eclipses, constructed sun-dials of various patterns, divided the year into twelve months, and the day and night into twelve hours each, and invented or devised the week of seven days, the number of days in the week being determined by the course of the moon. "The 7th, 14th, 19th, 21st, and 28th days of the lunar month were kept like the Jewish Sabbath, and were actually so named in Assyria." In arithmetic, also, the Chaldæans made considerable advance. A tablet has been found which contains the squares and cubes of the numbers from one to sixty. CONCLUSION.-This hasty glance at the beginnings of civilization among the primitive peoples of the Euphrates valley, will serve to give us at least some little idea of how much modern culture owes to the old Chaldæans. We may say that Chaldæa was one of the main sources--Egypt was the other--of the stream of universal history. CHAPTER IV. ASSYRIA. 1. POLITICAL HISTORY. TIGLATH-PILESER I. (1130-1110 B.C.).--It is not until about two centuries after the conquest of Chaldæa by the Assyrian prince Tiglathi-Nin (see p. 43), that we find a sovereign of renown at the head of Assyrian affairs. This was Tiglath-Pileser I., who came to the throne about 1130 B.C. The royal records detail at great length his numerous war expeditions, and describe minutely the great temples which he constructed. For the two centuries following the reign of Tiglath-Pileser, Assyria is quite lost to history; then it is again raised into prominence by two or three strong kings; after which it once more almost "drops below the historical horizon." TIGLATH-PILESER II. (745-727 B.C.).--With this king, who was a usurper, begins what is known as the Second Empire. He was a man of great energy and of undoubted military talent,--for by him the Assyrian power was once more extended over the greater part of Southwestern Asia. But what renders the reign of this king a landmark in Assyrian history, is the fact that he was not a mere conqueror like his predecessors, but a political organizer of great capacity. He laid the basis of the power and glory of the great kings who followed him upon the Assyrian throne. SARGON (722-705 B.C.).--Sargon was one of the greatest conquerors and builders of the Second Empire. In 722 B.C., he took Samaria and carried away the Ten Tribes into captivity beyond the Tigris. The larger part of the captives were scattered among the Median towns, where they became so mingled with the native population as to be inquired after even to this day as the "lost tribes." During this reign the Egyptians and their allies, in the first encounter (the battle of Raphia, 720 B.C.) between the empires of the Euphrates and the Nile valley, suffered a severe defeat, and the ancient kingdom of the Pharaohs became tributary to Assyria. Sargon was a famous builder. Near the foot of the Persian hills he founded a large city, which he named for himself; and there he erected a royal residence, described in the inscriptions as "a palace of incomparable magnificence," the site of which is now preserved by the vast mounds of Khorsabad. SENNACHERIB (705-681 B.C.).--Sennacherib, the son of Sargon, came to the throne 705 B.C. We must accord to him the first place of renown among all the great names of the Assyrian Empire. His name, connected as it is with the story of the Jews, and with many of the most wonderful discoveries among the ruined palaces of Nineveh, has become as familiar to the ear as that of Nebuchadnezzar in the story of Babylon. The fulness of the royal inscriptions of this reign enables us to permit Sennacherib to tell us in his own words of his great works and military expeditions. Respecting the decoration of Nineveh, he says: "I raised again all the edifices of Nineveh, my royal city; I reconstructed all its old streets, and widened those that were too narrow. I have made the whole town a city shining like the sun." Concerning an expedition against Hezekiah, king of Judah, he says: "I took forty-six of his strong fenced cities; and of the smaller towns which were scattered about I took and plundered a countless number. And from these places I captured and carried off as spoil 200,150 people, old and young, male and female, together with horses and mares, asses and camels, oxen and sheep, a countless multitude. And Hezekiah himself I shut up in Jerusalem, his capital city, like a bird in a cage, building towers round the city to hem him in, and raising banks of earth against the gates, so as to prevent escape." [Footnote: Rawlinson's _Ancient Monarchies_, Vol. II. p. 161.] While Sennacherib was besieging Jerusalem, the king of Egypt appeared in the field in the south with aid for Hezekiah. This caused Sennacherib to draw off his forces from the siege to meet the new enemy; but near the frontiers of Egypt the Assyrian host, according to the Hebrew account, was smitten by "the angel of the Lord," [Footnote: This expression is a Hebraism, meaning often any physical cause of destruction, as a plague or storm. In the present case, the destroying agency was probably a pestilence. ] and the king returned with a shattered army and without glory to his capital, Nineveh. Sennacherib employed the closing years of his reign in the digging of canals, and in the erection of a splendid palace at Nineveh. He was finally murdered by his own sons. [Illustration: SIEGE OF A CITY, SHOWING USE OF BATTERING-RAM. (From Nimrud.)] ASSHUR-BANI-PAL (668-626? B.C.).--This king, the Sardanapalus of the Greeks, is distinguished for his magnificent patronage of art and literature. During his reign Assyria enjoyed her Augustan age. But Asshur-bani-pal was also possessed of a warlike spirit. He broke to pieces, with terrible energy, in swift campaigns, the enemies of his empire. All the scenes of his sieges and battles he caused to be sculptured on the walls of his palace at Nineveh. These pictured panels are now in the British Museum. They are a perfect Iliad in stone. SARACUS OR ESARHADDON II. (?-606 B.C.).--Saracus was the last of the long line of Assyrian kings. His reign was filled with misfortunes for himself and his kingdom. For nearly or quite seven centuries the Ninevite kings had lorded it over the East. There was scarcely a state in all Western Asia that had not, during this time, felt the weight of their conquering arms; scarcely a people that had not suffered their cruel punishments, or tasted the bitterness of their servitude. But now swift misfortunes were bearing down upon the oppressor from every quarter. The Scythian hordes, breaking through the mountain gates on the north, spread a new terror throughout the upper Assyrian provinces; from the mountain defiles on the east issued the armies of the recent-grown empire of the Aryan Medes, led by the renowned Cyaxares; from the southern lowlands, anxious to aid in the overthrow of the hated oppressor, the Babylonians, led by the youthful Nebuchadnezzar, the son of the traitor viceroy Nabopolassar, joined, it appears, the Medes as allies, and together they laid close siege to the Assyrian capital. The operations of the besiegers seem to have been aided by an unusual inundation of the Tigris, which undermined a section of the city walls. At all events the place was taken, and dominion passed away forever from the proud capital [Footnote: Saracus, in his despair, is said to have erected a funeral pyre within one of the courts of his palace, and, mounting the pile with the members of his family, to have perished with them in the flames; but this is doubtless a poetical embellishment of the story.] (606 B.C.). Two hundred years later, when Xenophon with his Ten Thousand Greeks, in his memorable retreat (see p. 156), passed the spot, the once great city was a crumbling mass of ruins, of which he could not even learn the name. 2. RELIGION, ARTS, AND GENERAL CULTURE. RELIGION.--The Assyrians were Semites, and as such they possessed the deep religious spirit that has always distinguished the peoples of this family. In this respect they were very much like the Hebrews. The wars which the Assyrian monarchs waged were not alone wars of conquest, but were, in a certain sense, crusades made for the purpose of extending the worship and authority of the gods of Assyria. They have been likened to the wars of the Hebrew kings, and again to the conquests of the Saracens. As with the wars, so was it with the architectural works of these sovereigns. Greater attention, indeed, was paid to the palace in Assyria than in Babylonia; yet the inscriptions, as well as the ruins, of the upper country attest that the erection and adornment of the temples of the gods were matters of anxious and constant care on the part of the Assyrian monarchs. Their accounts of the construction and dedication of temples for their gods afford striking parallels to the Bible account of the building of the temple at Jerusalem by King Solomon. [Illustration: EMBLEM OF ASSHUR.] Not less prominently manifested is the religious spirit of these kings in what we may call their sacred literature, which is filled with prayers singularly like those of the Old Testament. As to the Assyrian deities and their worship, these were in all their essential characteristics so similar to those of the later Chaldæan system, already described (see p. 45), that any detailed account of them here is unnecessary. One difference, however, in the two systems should be noted. The place occupied by Il, or Ra, as the head of the Chaldæan deities, is in Assyria given to the national god Asshur, whose emblem was a winged circle with the figure of a man within, the whole perhaps symbolizing, according to Rawlinson, eternity, omnipresence, and wisdom. CRUELTY OF THE ASSYRIANS.--The Assyrians have been called the "Romans of Asia." They were a proud, martial, cruel, and unrelenting race. Although possessing, as we have just noticed, a deep and genuine religious feeling, still the Assyrian monarchs often displayed in their treatment of prisoners the disposition of savages. In common with most Asiatics, they had no respect for the body, but subjected captives to the most terrible mutilations. The sculptured marbles taken from the palaces exhibit the cruel tortures inflicted upon prisoners; kings are being led before their conqueror by means of hooks thrust through one or both lips; [Footnote: See 2 Chron. xxxiii. 10-13 (Revised Version).] other prisoners are being flayed alive; the eyes of some are being bored out with the point of a spear; and still others are having their tongues torn out. [Illustration: ASSYRIANS FLAYING THEIR PRISONERS ALIVE.] An inscription by Asshur-nazir-pal, found in one of the palaces at Nimrud, runs as follows: "Their men, young and old, I took prisoners. Of some I cut off the feet and hands; of others I cut off the noses, ears, and lips; of the young men's ears I made a heap; of the old men's heads I built a tower. I exposed their heads as a trophy in front of their city. The male children and the female children I burned in the flames." ROYAL SPORTS.--The Assyrian king gloried in being, like the great Nimrod, "a mighty hunter before the Lord." The monuments are covered with sculptures that represent the king engaged in the favorite royal sport. Asshur-nazir-pal had at Nineveh a menagerie, or hunting-park, filled with various animals, many of which were sent him as tribute by vassal princes. [Illustration: LION HUNT. (From Nineveh.)] REMAINS OF ASSYRIAN CITIES.--Enormous grass-grown mounds, enclosed by crumbled ramparts, alone mark the sites of the great cities of the Assyrian kings. The character of the remains arises from the nature of the building material. City walls, palaces, and temples were constructed chiefly of sun-dried bricks, so that the generation that raised them had scarcely passed away before they began to sink down into heaps of rubbish. The rains of many centuries have beaten down and deeply furrowed these mounds, while the grass has crept over them and made green alike the palaces of the kings and the temples of the gods. [Footnote: Lying upon the left bank of the Upper Tigris are two enormous mounds surrounded by heavy earthen ramparts, about eight miles in circuit. This is the site of ancient Nineveh, the immense enclosing ridges being the ruined city walls. These ramparts are still, in their crumbled condition, about fifty feet high, and average about one hundred and fifty in width. The lower part of the wall was constructed of solid stone masonry; the upper portion of dried brick. This upper and frailer part, crumbling into earth, has completely buried the stone basement. The Turks of to-day quarry the stone from these old walls for their buildings.] PALACE-MOUNDS AND PALACES.--In order to give a certain dignity to the royal residence, to secure the fresh breezes, and to render them more easily defended, the Assyrians, as well as the Babylonians and the Persians, built their palaces upon lofty artificial terraces, or platforms. These eminences, which appear like natural, flat-topped hills, were constructed with an almost incredible expenditure of human labor. The great palace-mound at Nineveh, called by the natives Koyunjik, covers an area of one hundred acres, and is from seventy to ninety feet high. Out of the material composing it could be built four pyramids as large as that of Cheops. Upon this mound stood several of the most splendid palaces of the Ninevite kings. [Illustration: RESTORATION OF A COURT IN SARGON'S PALACE AT KHORSABAD. (After Fergusson.)] The group of buildings constituting the royal residence was often of enormous extent; the various courts, halls, corridors, and chambers of the Palace of Sennacherib, which surmounted the great platform at Nineveh, covered an area of over ten acres. The palaces were usually one-storied. The walls, constructed chiefly of dried brick, were immensely thick and heavy. The rooms and galleries were plastered with stucco, or panelled with precious woods, or lined with enamelled bricks. The main halls, however, and the great open courts were faced with slabs of alabaster, covered with sculptures and inscriptions, the illustrated narrative of the wars and labors of the monarch. There were two miles of such sculptured panelling at Koyunjik. At the portals of the palace, to guard the approach, were stationed the colossal human-headed bulls. [Illustration: SCULPTURES FROM A GATEWAY AT KHORSABAD.] An important adjunct of the palace was the temple, a copy of the tower- temples of the Chaldæans. Its position is marked at present by a lofty conical mound rising amidst and overlooking the palace ruins. Upon the decay of the Assyrian palaces, the material forming the upper part of the thick walls completely buried and protected all the lower portion of the structure. In this way their sculptures and inscriptions have been preserved through so many centuries, till brought to light by the recent excavations of French and English antiquarians. THE ROYAL LIBRARY AT NINEVEH.--Within the palace of Asshur-bani-pal at Nineveh, Layard discovered what is known as the Royal Library. There were two chambers, the floors of which were heaped with books, like the Chaldæan tablets already described, The number of books in the collection has been estimated at ten thousand. The writing upon some of the tablets is so minute that it cannot be read without the aid of a magnifying glass. We learn from the inscriptions that a librarian had charge of the collection. Catalogues of the books have been found, made out on clay tablets. The library was open to the public, for an inscription says, "I [Asshur-bani-pal] wrote upon the tablets; I placed them in my palace for the instruction of my people." Asshur-bani-pal, as we have already learned, was the Augustus of Assyria. It was under his patronage and direction that most of the books were prepared and placed in the Ninevite collection. The greater part of these were copies of older Chaldæan tablets; for the literature of the Assyrians, as well as their arts and sciences, was borrowed almost in a body from the Chaldæans. All the old libraries of the low country were ransacked, and copies of their tablets made for the Royal Library at Nineveh. Rare treasures were secured from the libraries founded or enlarged by Sargon of Agade (see p. 42). In this way was preserved the most valuable portion of the early Chaldæan literature, which would otherwise have been lost to the world. The tablets embrace a great variety of subjects; the larger part, however, are lexicons and treatises on grammar, and various other works intended as text-books for scholars. Perhaps the most curious of the tablets yet found are notes issued by the government, and made redeemable in gold and silver on presentation at the king's treasury. From one part of the library, which seems to have been the archives proper, were taken copies of treaties, reports of officers of the government, deeds, wills, mortgages, and contracts. One tablet, known as "the Will of Sennacherib," conveys to certain priests some personal property to be held in trust for one of his sons. This is the oldest will in existence. CHAPTER V. BABYLONIA. BABYLONIAN AFFAIRS FROM 1300 TO 625 B.C.--During the six centuries and more that intervened between the conquest of the old Chaldæan monarchy by the Assyrian king Tiglathi-Nin and the successful revolt of the low countries under Nabopolassar (see pp. 43, 51), the Babylonian peoples bore the Assyrian yoke very impatiently. Again and again they made violent efforts to throw it off; and in several instances they succeeded, and for a time enjoyed home rulers. But for the most part the whole country as far as the "Sea," as the Persian Gulf is called in the inscriptions, was a dependency of the great overshadowing empire of the north. NABOPOLASSAR (625-604 B.C.).--Nabopolassar was the first king of what is called the New Babylonian Monarchy. When troubles and misfortunes began to thicken about the last Assyrian king, Saracus, he intrusted to the care of Nabopolassar, as his viceroy, the towns and provinces of the South. The chance now presented of obtaining a crown proved too great a temptation for the satrap's fidelity to his master. He revolted and became independent (625 B.C.). Later, he entered into an alliance with the Median king, Cyaxares, against his former sovereign (see p. 51). Through the overthrow of Nineveh and the break-up of the Assyrian Empire, the new Babylonian kingdom received large accessions of territory. NEBUCHADNEZZAR (604-561 B.C.).--Nabopolassar was followed by his renowned son Nebuchadnezzar, whose oppressive wars and gigantic architectural works rendered Babylon at once the scourge and the wonder of the ancient world. Jerusalem, having repeatedly revolted, was finally taken and sacked. The temple was stripped of its sacred vessels of silver and gold, which were carried away to Babylon, and the temple itself with the adjoining palace was given to the flames; the people, save a miserable remnant, were also borne away into the "Great Captivity" (586 B.C.). With Jerusalem subdued, Nebuchadnezzar pushed with all his forces the siege of the Phoenician city of Tyre, whose investment had been commenced several years before. In striking language the prophet Ezekiel (ch. xxix. 18) describes the length and hardness of the siege: "Every head was made bald, and every shoulder was peeled." After a siege of thirteen years, the city seems to have fallen into the hands of the Babylonian king, and his authority was now undisputed from the Zagros Mountains to the Mediterranean. The numerous captives of his many wars, embracing peoples of almost every nation in Western Asia, enabled Nebuchadnezzar to rival even the Pharaohs in the execution of enormous works requiring an immense expenditure of human labor: Among his works were the Great Palace in the royal quarter of the city; the celebrated Hanging Gardens; and gigantic reservoirs, canals, and various engineering works, embracing a vast system of irrigation that reached every part of Babylonia. In addition to all these works, the indefatigable monarch seems to have either rebuilt or repaired almost every city and temple throughout the entire country. There are said to be at least a hundred sites in the tract immediately about Babylon which give evidence, by inscribed bricks bearing his legend, of the marvellous activity and energy of this monarch. In the midst of all these gigantic undertakings, surrounded by a brilliant court of councillors and flatterers, the reason of the king was suddenly and mysteriously clouded. [Footnote: "Nebuchadnezzar fell a victim to that mental aberration which has often proved the penalty of despotism, but in the strange and degrading form to which physicians have given the name of lycanthropy; in which the patient, fancying himself a beast, rejects clothing and ordinary food, and even (as in this case) the shelter of a roof, ceases to use articulate speech, and sometimes persists in going on all-fours."--Smith's _Ancient History of the East_, p. 357.] After a period the cloud passed away, "the glory of his kingdom, his honor, and brightness returned unto him." But it was the splendor of the evening; for the old monarch soon after died at the age of eighty, worn out by the toils and cares of a reign of forty-three years, the longest, most memorable, and instructive in the annals of the Babylonian or Assyrian kings. THE FALL OF BABYLON.--In 555 B.C., Nabonadius, the last king of Babylon, began his reign. He seems to have associated with himself in the government his son Belshazzar, who shared with his father the duties and honors of royalty, apparently on terms of equal co-sovereignty. To the east of the valley of the Tigris and the Euphrates, beyond the ranges of the Zagros, there had been growing up an Aryan kingdom, the Medo-Persian, which, at the time now reached by us, had excited by its aggressive spirit the alarm of all the nations of Western Asia. For purposes of mutual defence, the king of Babylon, and Croesus, the well- known monarch of Lydia, a state of Asia Minor, formed an alliance against Cyrus, the strong and ambitious sovereign of the Medes and Persians. This league awakened the resentment of Cyrus, and, after punishing Croesus and depriving him of his kingdom (see p. 75), he collected his forces to chastise the Babylonian king. Anticipating the attack, Nabonadius had strengthened the defences of Babylon, and stationed around it supporting armies. But he was able to avert the fatal blow for only a few years. Risking a battle in the open field, his army was defeated, and the gates of the capital were thrown open to the Persians (538 B.C.). [Footnote: The device of turning the Euphrates, which Herodotus makes an incident of the siege, was not resorted to by Cyrus; but it seems that a little later (in 521-519 B.C.), the city, having revolted, was actually taken in this way by the Persian king Darius. Herodotus confused the two events.] With the fall of Babylon, the sceptre of dominion, borne for so many years by Semitic princes, was given into the hands of the Aryan peoples, who were destined, from this time forward, to shape the course of events, and control the affairs of civilization. THE GREAT EDIFICES OF BABYLON.--The deep impression which Babylon produced upon the early Greek travellers was made chiefly by her vast architectural works,--her temples, palaces, elevated gardens, and great walls. The Hanging Gardens of Nebuchadnezzar and the walls of the city were reckoned among the wonders of the world. [Illustration: BIRS-NIMRUD. (Ruins of the great Temple of the Seven Spheres, near Babylon.)] The Babylonians, like their predecessors the Chaldæans, accorded to the sacred edifice the place of pre-eminence among their architectural works. Sacred architecture in the time of Nebuchadnezzar had changed but little from the early Chaldæan models (see p. 44); save that the temples were now larger and more splendid, being made, in the language of the inscriptions, "to shine like the sun." The celebrated Temple of the Seven Spheres, at Borsippa, a suburb of Babylon, may serve as a representative of the later Babylonian temples. This structure was a vast pyramid, rising in seven consecutive stages, or platforms, to a height of over one hundred and fifty feet. Each of the stages was dedicated to one of the seven planets, or spheres. (The sun and moon were reckoned as planets.) The stages sacred to the sun and moon were covered respectively with plates of gold and silver. The chapel, or shrine proper, surmounted the uppermost stage. An inscribed cylinder discovered under the corner of one of the stages (the Babylonians always buried records beneath the corners of their public edifices), informs us that this temple was a restoration by Nebuchadnezzar of a very ancient one, which in his day had become, from "extreme old age," a heap of rubbish. This edifice in its decay has left one of the grandest and most impressive ruins in all the East. The Babylonian palaces and palace-mounds, in all essential features, were like those of the Assyrians, already described. The so-called Hanging Gardens excited the greatest admiration of the ancient Greek visitors to Babylon. They were constructed by Nebuchadnezzar, to please his wife Amytis, who, tired of the monotony of the Babylonian plains, longed for the mountain scenery of her native Media. The gardens were probably built somewhat in the form of the tower- temples, the successive stages being covered with earth, and beautified with rare plants and trees, so as to simulate the appearance of a mountain rising in cultivated terraces towards the sky. Under the later kings, Babylon was surrounded with stupendous walls. Herodotus affirms that these defences enclosed an area just fourteen miles square. A recently discovered inscription corroborates the statement of the historian. The object in enclosing such an enormous district seems to have been to bring sufficient arable ground within the defences to support the inhabitants in case of a protracted siege. No certain traces of these great ramparts can now be found. CHAPTER VI. THE HEBREWS. THE PATRIARCHAL AGE.--Hebrew history begins with the departure of Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees, about 2000 B.C. The story of Abraham and his nephew Lot, of Isaac and his sons Jacob and Esau, of the sojourn of the descendants of Jacob in Egypt, of the Exodus, of the conquest of Canaan and the apportionment of the land among the twelve tribes of Israel,--all this marvellous story is told in the Hebrew Scriptures with a charm and simplicity that have made it the familiar possession of childhood. THE JUDGES (from about 1300 to 1095 B.C.).--Along period of anarchy and dissension followed the conquest and settlement of Canaan by the Hebrews. "There was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes." During this time there arose a line of national heroes, such as Gideon, Jephthah, and Samson, whose deeds of valor and daring, and the timely deliverance they wrought for the tribes of Israel from their foes, caused their names to be handed down with grateful remembrance to following ages. These popular leaders were called Judges because they usually exercised judicial functions, acting as arbiters between the different tribes, as well as between man and man. Their exploits are narrated in the Book of Judges, which is a collection of the fragmentary, yet always interesting, traditions of this early and heroic period of the nation's life. The last of the Judges was Samuel, whose life embraces the close of the anarchical age and the beginning of the monarchy. FOUNDING OF THE HEBREW MONARCHY (about 1095 B.C.).--During the period of the Judges, the tribes of Israel were united by no central government. Their union was nothing more than a league, or confederation, which has been compared to the Saxon Heptarchy in England. But the common dangers to which they were exposed from the attacks of the half-subdued Canaanitish tribes about them, and the example of the great kingdoms of Egypt and Assyria, led the people to begin to think of the advantages of a closer union and a stronger government. Consequently the republic, or confederation, was changed into a kingdom, and Saul, of the tribe of Benjamin, a man chosen in part because of his commanding stature and royal aspect, was made king of the new monarchy (about 1095 B.C.). The king was successful in subduing the enemies of the Hebrews, and consolidated the tribes and settled the affairs of the new state. But towards the close of his reign, his reason became disturbed: fits of gloom and despondency passed into actual insanity, which clouded the closing years of his life. At last he and his three sons fell in battle with the Philistines upon Mount Gilboa (about 1055 B.C.). THE REIGN OF DAVID (about 1055-1015 B.C.).--Upon the death of Saul, David, son of Jesse, of the tribe of Judah, who had been previously anointed and encouraged to expect the crown by the prophet Samuel, assumed the sceptre. This warlike king transformed the pastoral and half-civilized tribes into a conquering people, and, in imitation of the monarchs of the Nile and the Euphrates, extended the limits of his empire in every direction, and waged wars of extermination against the troublesome tribes of Moab and Edom. Poet as well as warrior, David enriched the literature of his own nation and of the world with lyric songs that breathe such a spirit of devotion and trust that they have been ever since his day the source of comfort and inspiration to thousands. [Footnote: The authorship of the different psalms is a matter of debate, yet critics are very nearly agreed in ascribing the composition of at least a considerable number of them to David.] He had in mind to build at Jerusalem, his capital city, a magnificent temple, and spent the latter years of his life in collecting material for this purpose. In dying, he left the crown to Solomon, his youngest son, his eldest, Absalom, having been slain in a revolt against his father, and the second, Adonijah, having been excluded from the succession for a similar crime. THE REIGN OF SOLOMON (about 1015-975 B.C.).--Solomon did not possess his father's talent for military affairs, but was a liberal patron of architecture, commerce, and learning. He erected, with the utmost magnificence of adornment, the temple at Jerusalem, planned by his father David. King Hiram of Tyre, who was a close friend of the Hebrew monarch, aided him in this undertaking by supplying him with the celebrated cedar of Lebanon, and with Tyrian architects, the most skilled workmen at that time in the world. The dedication ceremonies upon the completion of the building were most imposing and impressive. Thenceforth this temple was the centre of the Jewish worship and of the national life. [Illustration: THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON. (A Restoration.)] For the purpose of extending his commerce, Solomon built fleets upon the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. The most remote regions of Asia and Africa were visited by his ships, and their rich and wonderful products made to contribute to the wealth and glory of his kingdom. Solomon maintained one of the most magnificent courts ever held by an oriental sovereign. When the Queen of Sheba, attracted by the reports of his glory, came from Southern Arabia to visit the monarch, she exclaimed, "The half was not told me." He was the wisest king of the East. His proverbs are famous specimens of sententious wisdom. He was versed, too, in botany, being acquainted with plants and trees "from the hyssop upon the wall to the cedar of Lebanon." But wise as was Solomon in his words, his life was far from being either admirable or prudent. In conformity with Asiatic custom, he had many wives--seven hundred, we are told--of different nationalities and religions. Through their persuasion the old monarch himself fell into idolatry, which turned from him the affections of his best subjects, and prepared the way for the dissensions and wars that followed his death. THE DIVISION OF THE KINGDOM (about 975 B.C.).--The reign of Solomon was brilliant, yet disastrous in the end to the Hebrew monarchy. In order to carry on his vast undertakings, he had laid most oppressive taxes upon his people. When Rehoboam, his son, succeeded to his father's place, the people entreated him to lighten the taxes that were making their very lives a burden. Influenced by young and unwise counsellors, he replied to the petition with haste and insolence: "My father," said he, "chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions." Immediately all the tribes, save Judah and Benjamin, rose in revolt, and succeeded in setting up, to the north of Jerusalem, a rival kingdom, with Jeroboam as its first king. This northern state, with Samaria as its capital, became known as the Kingdom of Israel; the southern, of which Jerusalem remained the capital, was called the Kingdom of Judah. Thus was torn in twain the empire of David and Solomon. United, the tribes might have maintained an empire capable of offering successful resistance to the encroachments of the powerful and ambitious monarchs about them. But now the land becomes an easy prey to the spoiler. It is henceforth the pathway of the conquering armies of the Nile and the Euphrates. Between the powerful monarchies of these regions, as between an upper and nether millstone, the little kingdoms are destined, one after the other, to be ground to pieces. THE KINGDOM OF ISRAEL (975?-722 B.C.).--The kingdom of the Ten Tribes maintained an existence for about two hundred and fifty years. Its story is instructive and sad. Many passages of its history are recitals of the struggles between the pure worship of Jehovah and the idolatrous service of the deities introduced from the surrounding nations. The cause of the religion of Jehovah, as the tribes of Israel had received it from the patriarch Abraham and the lawgiver Moses, was boldly espoused and upheld by a line of the most remarkable teachers and prophets produced by the Hebrew race, among whom Elijah and Elisha stand preeminent. The little kingdom was at last overwhelmed by the Assyrian power. This happened 722 B.C., when Samaria, as we have already narrated in the history of Assyria, was captured by Sargon, king of Nineveh, and the Ten Tribes were carried away into captivity beyond the Euphrates (see p. 48). From this time they are quite lost to history. The country, left nearly vacant by this wholesale deportation of its inhabitants, was filled with other subjects or captives of the Assyrian king. The descendants of these, mingled with the few Jews of the poorer class that were still left in the country, formed the Samaritans of the time of Christ. THE KINGDOM OF JUDAH (975?-586 B.C.).--This little kingdom, torn by internal religious dissensions, as was its rival kingdom of the north, and often on the very verge of ruin from Egyptian or Assyrian armies, maintained an independent existence for about four centuries. During this period, a line of eighteen kings, of most diverse character, sat upon the throne. Upon the extension of the power of Babylon to the west, Jerusalem was forced to acknowledge the suzerainty of the Babylonian kings. The kingdom at last shared the fate of its northern rival. Nebuchadnezzar, in revenge for an uprising of the Jews, besieged and captured Jerusalem, and carried away a large part of the people, and their king Zedekiah, into captivity at Babylon (see p. 58). This event virtually ended the separate and political life of the Hebrew race (586 B.C.). Henceforth Judah constituted simply a province of the empires--Babylonian, Persian, Macedonian, and Roman--which successively held sway over the regions of Western Asia, with, however, just one flicker of national life under the Maccabees, during a part of the two centuries preceding the birth of Christ. It only remains to mention those succeeding events which belong rather to the story of the Jews as a people than as a nation. Upon the capture of Babylon by the Persian king Cyrus (see p. 60), that monarch, who was kindly disposed towards the Jews that he there found captives, permitted them to return to Jerusalem and restore the temple. Jerusalem thus became again the centre of the old Hebrew worship, and, although shorn of national glory, continued to be the sacred centre of the ancient faith till the second generation after Christ. Then, in chastisement for repeated revolts, the city was laid in ruins by the Romans; while vast numbers of the inhabitants--some authorities say over one million--were slain, or perished by famine, and the remnant were driven into exile to different lands. Thus, by a series of unparalleled calamities and persecutions, the descendants of Abraham were "sifted among all nations"; but to this day they cling with a strange devotion and loyalty to the simple faith of their fathers. HEBREW RELIGION AND LITERATURE. The ancient Hebrews made little or no contribution to science. They produced no new order of architecture. In sculpture they did nothing: their religion forbade their making "graven images." Their mission was to teach religion. Here they have been the instructors of the world. Their literature is a religious one; for literature with them was simply a medium for the conveyance of religious instruction and the awakening of devotional feeling. The Hebrew religion, a pure monotheism, the teachings of a long line of holy men--patriarchs, lawgivers, prophets, and priests--stretching from Abraham down to the fifth century B.C., is contained in the sacred books of the Old Testament Scriptures. In these ancient writings, patriarchal traditions, histories, dramas, poems, prophecies, and personal narratives blend in a wonderful mosaic, which pictures with vivid and grand effect the various migrations, the deliverances, the calamities--all the events and religious experiences in the checkered life of the Chosen People. Out of this old exclusive, formal Hebrew religion, transformed and spiritualized by the Great Teacher, grew the Christian faith. Out of the Old Testament arose the New, which we should think of as a part of Hebrew literature: for although written in the Greek language, and long after the close of the political life of the Jewish nation, still it is essentially Hebrew in thought and doctrine, and the supplement and crown of the Hebrew Scriptures. Besides the Sacred Scriptures, called collectively, by way of pre- eminence, the Bible (The Book), it remains to mention especially the Apocrypha, embracing a number of books that were composed after the decline of the prophetic spirit, and which show traces, as indeed do several of the later books of the Bible, of the influence of Persian and Greek thought. These books are generally regarded by the Jews and Protestants as uncanonical, but in the main are considered by the Roman Catholics as possessing equal authority with the other books of the Bible. Neither should we fail to mention the Talmud, a collection of Hebrew customs and traditions, with the comments thereupon of the rabbis, a work held by most Jews next in sacredness to the Holy Book; the writings of Philo, an illustrious rabbi who lived at Alexandria just before the birth of Christ; and the _Antiquities of the Jews_ and the _Jewish Wars_ by the historian Josephus, who lived and wrote about the time of the taking of Jerusalem by Titus; that is, during the latter part of the first century after Christ. CHAPTER VII. THE PHOENICIANS. THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE.--Ancient Phoenicia embraced a little strip of broken sea-coast lying between the Mediterranean and the ranges of Mount Lebanon. One of the most noted productions of the country was the fine fir-timber cut from the forests that crowned the lofty ranges of the Lebanon Mountains. The "cedar of Lebanon" holds a prominent place both in the history and the poetry of the East. Another celebrated product of the country was the Tyrian purple, which was obtained from several varieties of the murex, a species of shell-fish, secured at first along the Phoenician coast, but later sought in distant waters, especially in the Grecian seas. The Phoenicians were of Semitic race, and of close kin to most of the so- called Canaanitish tribes. They were a maritime and trading people. TYRE AND SIDON.--The various Phoenician cities never coalesced to form a true nation. They simply constituted a sort of league, or confederacy, the petty states of which generally acknowledged the leadership of Tyre or of Sidon, the two chief cities. The place of supremacy in the confederation was at first held by Sidon, but later by Tyre. From the 11th to the 4th century B.C., Tyre controlled, almost without dispute on the part of Sidon, the affairs of Phoenicia. During this time the maritime enterprise and energy of her merchants spread the fame of the little island-capital throughout the world. She was queen and mistress of the Mediterranean. During all the last centuries of her existence, Phoenicia was, for the most part, tributary to one or another of the great monarchies about her. She acknowledged in turn the suzerainty of the Assyrian, the Egyptian, the Babylonian, the Persian, and the Macedonian kings. Alexander the Great, after a most memorable siege, captured the city of Tyre--which alone of all the Phoenician cities closed her gates against the conqueror--and reduced it to ruins (332 B.C.). The city never recovered from this blow. The larger part of the site of the once brilliant maritime capital is now "bare as the top of a rock,"--a place where the fishermen that still frequent the spot spread their nets to dry. PHOENICIAN COMMERCE.--When we catch our first glimpse of the Mediterranean, about 1500 B.C., it is dotted with the sails of Phoenician navigators. It was natural that the people of the Phoenician coast should have been led to a seafaring life. The lofty mountains that back the little strip of shore seemed to shut them out from a career of conquest and to prohibit an extension of their land domains. At the same time, the Mediterranean in front invited them to maritime enterprise; while the forests of Lebanon in the rear offered timber in abundance for their ships. The Phoenicians, indeed, were the first navigators who pushed out boldly from the shore and made real sea voyages. The longest voyages were made to procure tin, which was in great demand for the manufacture of articles in bronze. The nearest region where this metal was found was the Caucasus, on the eastern shore of the Euxine. The Phoenician sailors boldly threaded the Aegean Archipelago, passed through the Hellespont, braved the unknown terrors of the Black Sea, and from the land of Colchis brought back to the manufacturers of Asia the coveted article. Towards the close of the 11th century B.C., the jealousy of the Pelasgic states of Greece and of the Archipelago, that were now growing into maritime power, closed the Aegean Sea against the Phoenician navigators. They then pushed out into the Western Mediterranean, and opened the tin- mines of the Iberian (Spanish) peninsula. When these began to fail, these bold sailors passed the Pillars of Hercules, faced the dangers of the Atlantic, and brought back from those distant seas the tin gathered in the mines of Britain. PHOENICIAN COLONIES.--Along the different routes pursued by their ships, and upon the coasts visited by them, the Phoenicians established naval stations and trading-posts. Settlements were made in Cyprus, in Rhodes, and on other islands of the Aegean Sea, as well as in Greece itself. The shores of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica were fringed with colonies; while the coast of North Africa was dotted with such great cities as Utica, Hippo, and Carthage. Colonies were even planted beyond the Pillars of Hercules, upon the Atlantic seaboard. The Phoenician settlement of Gades, upon the western coast of Spain, is still preserved in the modern Cadiz. ARTS DISSEMINATED BY THE PHOENICIANS.--We can scarcely overrate the influence of Phoenician maritime enterprise upon the distribution of the arts and the spread of culture among the early peoples of the Mediterranean area. "Egypt and Assyria," says Lenormant, "were the birthplace of material civilization; the Canaanites [Phoenicians] were its missionaries." Most prominent of the arts which they introduced among all the nations with whom they traded was that of alphabetical writing. Before or during the rule of the Hyksos in Egypt, the Phoenician settlers in the Delta borrowed from the Egyptians twenty-two hieratic characters, which they passed on to their Asiatic kinsmen. These characters received new names, and became the Phoenician alphabet. Now, wherever the Phoenicians went, they carried this alphabet as "one of their exports." It was through them, probably, that the Greeks received it; the Greeks passed it on to the Romans, and the Romans gave it to the German peoples. In this way did our alphabet come to us from Old Egypt. The introduction of letters among the different nations, vast as was the benefit which the gift conferred upon peoples just beginning to make advances in civilization, was only one of the many advantages which resulted to the early civilization of Europe from the commercial enterprise of the Phoenicians. It is probable that they first introduced among the semi-civilized tribes of that continent the use of bronze, which marks an epoch in their growing culture. Articles of Phoenician workmanship are found in the earliest tombs of the Greeks, the Etruscans, and the Romans; and in very many of the manufactures of these peoples may be traced the influence of Phoenician art. GREAT ENTERPRISES AIDED BY THE PHOENICIANS.--While scattering the germs of civilization and culture broadcast over the entire Mediterranean area, the enterprising Phoenicians were also lending aid to almost every great undertaking of antiquity. King Hiram of Tyre furnished Solomon with artisans and skilled workmen, and with great rafts of timber from Lebanon, for building the splendid temple at Jerusalem. The Phoenicians also provided timber from their fine forests for the construction of the great palaces and temples of the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and the Egyptians. They built for the Persian king Xerxes the Hellespontine bridges over which he marched his immense army into Greece (see p. 81). They furnished contingents of ships to the kings of Nineveh and Babylon for naval operations both upon the Mediterranean and the Persian and Arabian gulfs. Their fleets served as transports and convoys to the expeditions of the Persian monarchs aiming at conquest in Asia Minor or in Europe. They formed, too, the naval branch of the armaments of the Pharaohs; for the Egyptians hated the sea, and never had a native fleet. And it was Phoenician sailors that, under the orders of Pharaoh-Necho, circumnavigated Africa (see p. 26)--an undertaking which, although attended perhaps with less advantage to the world, still is reckoned quite as remarkable, considering the remote age in which it was accomplished, as the circumnavigation of the globe by the Portuguese navigator Magellan, more than two thousand years later. CHAPTER VIII. THE PERSIAN EMPIRE 1. POLITICAL HISTORY. KINSHIP OF THE MEDES AND PERSIANS.--It was in very remote times, that some Aryan tribes, separating themselves from the other members of the Aryan family, sought new abodes on the plateau of Iran. The tribes that settled in the south became known as the Persians; while those that took possession of the mountain regions of the northwest were called Medes. The Medes, through mingling with native non-Aryan tribes, became quite different from the Persians; but notwithstanding this, the names of the two peoples were always very closely associated, as in the familiar legend, "The law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not." THE MEDES AT FIRST THE LEADING RACE.--Although the Persians were destined to become the dominant tribe of all the Iranian Aryans, still the Medes were at first the leading people. Cyaxares (625-585 B.C.) was their first prominent leader and king. We have already seen how, aided by the Babylonians, he overthrew the last king of Nineveh, and burned that capital (see p. 51). Cyaxares was followed by his son Astyages (585-558 B.C.), during whose reign the Persians, whom Cyaxares had brought into at least partial subjection to the Median crown, revolted, overthrew the Median power, and thenceforth held the place of leadership and authority. REIGN OF CYRUS THE GREAT (558-529 B.C.).--The leader of the revolt against the Medes was Cyrus, the tributary king of the Persians. Through his energy and soldierly genius, he soon built up an empire more extended than any over which the sceptre had yet been swayed by an Oriental monarch, or indeed, so far as we know, by any ruler before his time. It stretched from the Indus to the farthest limits of Asia Minor, and from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf, thus embracing not only the territories of the Median kingdom, but also those of the allied kingdoms of Lydia and Babylonia. The subjugation of Babylonia to the Persian authority has already been narrated (see p. 60). We will now tell how Cyrus gained the kingdom of Lydia. [Illustration: KINGDOMS OF LYDIA, MEDIA, AND BABYLONIA. C. B.C. 550] Lydia was a country in the western part of Asia Minor. It was a land highly favored by nature. It embraced two rich river valleys,--the plains of the Hermus and the Cayster,--which, from the mountains inland, slope gently to the island-dotted Aegean. The Pactolus, and other tributaries of the streams we have named, rolled down "golden sands," while the mountains were rich in the precious metals. The coast region did not at first belong to Lydia; it was held by the Greeks, who had fringed it with cities. The capital of the country was Sardis, whose citadel was set on a lofty and precipitous rock. The Lydians were a mixed people, formed, it is thought, by the mingling, in prehistoric times, of Aryan tribes that crossed the Aegean from Europe, with the original non-Aryan population of the country. The last and most renowned of the Lydian kings was Croesus. Under him the Lydian empire attained its greatest extension, embracing all the states of Asia Minor west of the Halys, save Lycia. The tribute Croesus collected from the Greek cities, which he subjugated, and the revenues he derived from his gold mines, rendered him the richest monarch of his times, so that his name has passed into the proverb "Rich as Croesus." Now Astyages, whom Cyrus had just overthrown, was the brother-in-law of this Croesus. When Croesus heard of his relative's misfortune, he resolved to avenge his wrongs. The Delphian oracle (see p. 104), to which he sent to learn the issue of a war upon Cyrus, told him that he "would destroy a great kingdom." Interpreting this favorably, he sent again to inquire whether the empire he should establish would prove permanent, and received this oracle: "Flee and tarry not when a mule [Footnote: The allusion is to the (traditional) mixed Persian and Median descent of Cyrus.] shall be king of the Medes." Deeming the accession of a mule to the Persian throne altogether impossible, he inferred the oracle to mean that his empire should last forever. Thus encouraged in his purpose, Croesus prepared to make war upon Persia. But he had miscalculated the strength and activity of his enemy. Cyrus marched across the Halys, defeated the Lydian army in the field, and after a short siege captured Sardis; and Lydia became a province of the new Persian empire. [Illustration: TOMB OF CYRUS THE GREAT. (Present Condition.)] There is a story which tells how Cyrus had caused a pyre to be erected on which to burn Croesus, but at the last moment was struck by hearing the unfortunate monarch repeatedly call the name of Solon. Seeking the meaning of this, he was told that Croesus in his prosperous years was visited by the Greek sage Solon, who, in answer to the inquiry of Croesus as to whether he did not deem him a happy man, replied, "Count no man happy until he is dead." Cyrus was so impressed with the story, so the legend tells, that he released the captive king, and treated him with the greatest kindness. This war between Croesus and Cyrus derives a special importance from the fact that it brought the Persian empire into contact with the Greek cities of Asia, and thus led on directly to that memorable struggle between Greece and Persia known as the Græco-Persian War. Tradition says that Cyrus lost his life while leading an expedition against some Scythian tribes in the north. He was buried at Pasargadæ, the old Persian capital, and there his tomb stands to-day, surrounded by the ruins of the magnificent buildings with which he adorned that city. The following cuneiform inscription may still be read upon a pillar near the sepulchre: "I am Cyrus, the king, the Akhæmenian." Cyrus, notwithstanding his seeming love for war and conquest, possessed a kindly and generous disposition. Almost universal testimony has ascribed to him the purest and most beneficent character of any Eastern monarch. REIGN OF CAMBYSES (529-522 B.C.).--Cyrus the Great left two sons, Cambyses and Smerdis: the former, as the oldest, inherited the sceptre, and the title of king. He began a despotic and unfortunate reign by causing his brother, whose influence he feared, to be secretly put to death. With far less ability than his father for their execution, Cambyses conceived even vaster projects of conquest and dominion. Asia had hitherto usually afforded a sufficient field for the ambition of Oriental despots. Cambyses determined to add the country of Africa to the vast inheritance received from his father. Upon some slight pretext, he invaded Egypt, captured Memphis, and ascended the Nile to Thebes. From here he sent an army of fifty thousand men to subdue the oasis of Ammon, in the Libyan desert. Of the vast host not a man returned from the expedition. It is thought that the army was overwhelmed and buried by one of those fatal storms, called simooms, that so frequently sweep over those dreary wastes of sand. After a short, unsatisfactory stay in Egypt, Cambyses set out on his return to Persia. While on his way home, news was brought to him that his brother Smerdis had usurped the throne. A Magian [Footnote: There were at this time two opposing religions in Persia: Zoroastrianism, which taught the simple worship of God under the name of Ormazd; and Magianism, a less pure faith, whose professors were fire-worshippers. The former was the religion of the Aryans; the latter, that of the non-Aryan portion of the population. The usurpation which placed Smerdis on the throne was planned by the Magi, Smerdis himself being a fire-priest.] impostor, Gomates by name, who resembled the murdered Smerdis, had personated him, and actually grasped the sceptre. Entirely disheartened by this startling intelligence, Cambyses in despair took his own life. REIGN OF DARIUS I. (521-486 B.C.).--The Persian nobles soon rescued the sceptre from the grasp of the false Smerdis, and their leader, Darius, took the throne. The first act of Darius was to punish, by a general massacre, the Magian priests for the part they had taken in the usurpation of Smerdis. [Illustration: CAPTIVE INSURGENTS BROUGHT BEFORE DARIUS. Beneath his foot is the Magus Gomates, the false Smerdis. (From the great Behistun Rock.)] With quiet and submission secured throughout the empire, Darius gave himself, for a time, to the arts of peace. He built a palace at Susa, and erected magnificent structures at Persepolis; reformed the administration of the government (see p. 82), making such wise and lasting changes that he has been called "the second founder of the Persian empire"; established post-roads, instituted a coinage for the realm, and upon the great rock of Behistun, a lofty smooth-faced cliff on the western frontier of Persia, caused to be inscribed a record of all his achievements. [Footnote: This important inscription is written in the cuneiform characters, and in three languages, Aryan, Turanian, and Semitic. It is the Rosetta Stone of the cuneiform writings, the key to their treasures having been obtained from its parallel columns.] And now the Great King, Lord of Western Asia and of Egypt, conceived and entered upon the execution of vast designs of conquest, the far-reaching effects of which were destined to live long after he had passed away. Inhospitable steppes on the north, and burning deserts on the south, whose shifting sands within a period yet fresh in memory had been the grave of a Persian army, seemed to be the barriers which Nature herself had set for the limits of empire in these directions. But on the eastern flank of the kingdom the rich and crowded plains of India invited the conqueror with promises of endless spoils and revenues; while on the west a new continent, full of unknown mysteries, presented virgin fields never yet traversed by the army of an Eastern despot. Darius determined to extend the frontiers of his empire in both these directions. At one blow the region of northwestern India known as the Punjab, was brought under Persian authority; and thus with a single effort were the eastern limits of the empire pushed out so as to include one of the richest countries of Asia--one which henceforth returned to the Great King an annual revenue vastly larger than that of any other province hitherto acquired, not even excepting the rich district of Babylonia. With an army numbering, it is said, more than 700,000 men, Darius now crossed the Bosphorus by means of a sort of pontoon bridge, constructed by Grecian architects, and passing the Danube by means of a similar bridge, penetrated far into what is now Russia, which was then occupied by Scythian hordes. The results of the expedition were the addition of Thrace to the Persian empire, and the making of Macedonia a tributary kingdom. Thus the Persian kings secured their first foothold upon the European continent. The most significant campaign in Europe was yet to follow. In 500 B.C., the Ionian cities in Asia Minor subject to the Persian authority revolted. The Greeks of Europe lent aid to their sister states. Sardis was sacked and burned by the insurgents. With the revolt crushed and punished with great severity, Darius determined to chastise the European Greeks, and particularly the Athenians, for their insolence in giving aid to his rebellious subjects. Herodotus tells us that he appointed a person whose sole duty it was daily to stir up the purpose of the king with the words, "Master, remember the Athenians." A large land and naval armament was fitted out and placed under the command of Mardonius, a son-in-law of Darius. The land forces suffered severe losses at the hands of the barbarians of Thrace, and the fleet was wrecked by a violent storm off Mount Athos, three hundred ships being lost (492 B.C.). Two years after this disaster, another expedition, consisting of 120,000 men, was borne by ships across the AEgean to the plains of Marathon. The details of the significant encounter that there took place between the Persians and the Athenians will be given when we come to narrate the history of Greece. We need now simply note the result,--the complete overthrow of the Persian forces by the Greeks under Miltiades (490 B.C.). Darius, angered beyond measure by the failure of the expedition, stirred up all the provinces of his vast empire, and called for new levies from far and near, resolved upon leading in person such an army into Greece that the insolent Athenians should be crushed at a single blow, and the tarnished glory of the Persian arms restored. In the midst of these preparations, with the Egyptians in revolt, the king suddenly died, in the year 486 B.C. REIGN OF XERXES I. (486-465 B.C.).--The successor of Darius, his son Xerxes, though more inclined to indulge in the ease and luxury of the palace than to subject himself to the hardship and discipline of the camp, was urged by those about him to an active prosecution of the plans of his father. After crushing the Egyptian revolt and another insurrection in Babylonia, the Great King was free to devote his attention to the distant Greeks. Mustering the contingents of the different provinces of his empire, Xerxes led his vast army over the bridges he had caused to be thrown across the Hellespont, crushed the Spartan guards at the Pass of Thermopylæ, pushed on into Attica, and laid Athens in ruins. But there fortune forsook him. At the naval battle of Salamis, his fleet was cut to pieces by the Grecian ships; and the king, making a precipitate retreat into Asia, hastened to his capital, Susa. Here, in the pleasures of the harem, he sought solace for his wounded pride and broken hopes. He at last fell a victim to palace intrigue, being slain in his own chamber (465 B.C.). END OF THE PERSIAN EMPIRE.--The power and supremacy of the Persian monarchy passed away with the reign of Xerxes. The last one hundred and forty years of the existence of the empire was a time of weakness and anarchy. This period was spanned by the reigns of eight kings. It was in the reign of Artaxerxes II., called Mnemon for his remarkable memory, that took place the well-known expedition of the Ten Thousand Greeks under Cyrus, the brother of Artaxerxes, an account of which will be given in connection with Grecian history (see chap. XV.). The march of the Ten Thousand through the very heart of the dominions of the Great King demonstrated the amazing internal weakness of the empire. Marathon and Salamis had shown the immense superiority of the free soldiery of Greece over the splendid but servile armies of Persia, that were often driven to battle with the lash. These disclosures invited the Macedonians to the invasion and conquest of the empire. In the year 334 B.C., Alexander the Great, king of Macedonia, led a small army of thirty-five thousand Greeks and Macedonians across the Hellespont. Three great battles--that of the Granicus, that of Issus, and that of Arbela--decided the fate of the Persian Empire. Darius III., the last of the Persian kings, fled from the field of Arbela, on the plains of Assyria, only to be treacherously assassinated by one of his own generals. The succeeding movements of Alexander, and the establishment by him of the short-lived Macedonian monarchy upon the ruins of the Persian state, are matters that properly belong to Grecian history, and will be related in a following chapter. 2. GOVERNMENT, RELIGION, AND ARTS. THE GOVERNMENT.--Before the reign of Darius I., the government of the Persian Empire was like that of all the great monarchies that had preceded it; that is, it consisted of a great number of subject states, which were allowed to retain their own kings and manage their own affairs, only paying tribute and homage, and furnishing contingents in time of war, to the Great King. We have seen how weak was this rude and primitive type of government. Darius I., who possessed rare ability as an organizer, remodelled the system of his predecessors, and actually realized for the Persian monarchy what Tiglath-Pileser II. had long before attempted, but only with partial and temporary success, to accomplish for the Assyrian. The system of government which Darius I. thus first made a real fact in the world, is known as the _satrapal_, a form represented to-day by the government of the Turkish Sultan. The entire kingdom was divided into twenty or more provinces, over each of which was placed a governor, called a satrap, appointed by the king. These officials held their position at the pleasure of the sovereign, and were thus rendered his subservient creatures. Each province contributed to the income of the king a stated revenue. There were provisions in the system by which the king might be apprised of the disloyalty of his satraps. Thus the whole dominion was firmly cemented together, and the facility with which almost sovereign states--which was the real character of the different parts of the empire under the old system--could plan and execute revolt, was removed. LITERATURE AND RELIGION: ZOROASTRIANISM.--The literature of the ancient Persians was mostly religious. Their sacred book is called the Zendavesta. The oldest part is named the Vendidad. This consists of laws, incantations, and mythical tales. [Illustration: THE KING IN COMBAT WITH A MONSTER. (From Persepolis.)] The religious system of the Persians, as taught in the Zendavesta, is known as Zoroastrianism, from Zoroaster, its founder. This great reformer and teacher is now generally supposed to have lived and taught about 1000 B.C. Zoroastrianism was a system of belief known as dualism. Opposed to the "good spirit," Ormazd (Ahura Mazda), there was a "dark spirit," Ahriman (Angro-Mainyus), who was constantly striving to destroy the good creations of Ormazd by creating all evil things--storm, drought, pestilence, noxious animals, weeds and thorns in the world without, and evil in the heart of man within. From all eternity these two powers had been contending for the mastery; in the present neither had the decided advantage; but in the near future Ormazd would triumph over Ahriman, and evil be forever destroyed. The duty of man was to aid Ormazd by working with him against the evil- loving Ahriman. He must labor to eradicate every evil and vice in his own bosom; to reclaim the earth from barrenness; and to kill all bad animals-- frogs, toads, snakes, lizards--which Ahriman had created. Herodotus saw with amazement the Magian priests armed with weapons and engaged in slaying these animals as a "pious pastime." Agriculture was a sacred calling, for the husbandman was reclaiming the ground from the curse of the Dark Spirit. Thus men might become co-workers with Ormazd in the mighty work of overthrowing and destroying the kingdom of the wicked Ahriman. The evil man was he who allowed vice and degrading passions to find a place in his own soul, and neglected to exterminate noxious animals and weeds, and to help redeem the earth from the barrenness and sterility created by the enemy of Ormazd. [Footnote: The belief of the Zoroastrians in the sacredness of the elements,--earth, water, fire, and air,--created a difficulty in regard to the disposal of dead bodies. They could neither be burned, buried, thrown into the water, nor left to decay in a sepulchral chamber or in the open air, without polluting one or another of the sacred elements. So they were given to the birds and wild beasts, being exposed on lofty towers or in desert places. Those whose feelings would not allow them thus to dispose of their dead, were permitted to bury them, provided they first encased the body in wax, to preserve the ground from contamination. The modern Parsees, or Fire-Worshippers, give their dead to the birds.] After death the souls of the good and the bad alike must pass over a narrow bridge: the good soul crosses in safety, and is admitted to the presence of Ahura Mazda; while the evil soul is sure to fall from the path, sharp as the edge of a scimitar, into a pit of woe, the dwelling- place of Ahriman. ARCHITECTURE.--The simple religious faith of the Persians discouraged, though it did not prohibit, the erection of temples: their sacred architecture scarcely included more than an altar and pedestal. The palace of the monarch was the structure that absorbed the best efforts of the Persian artist. In imitation of the inhabitants of the valley of the Euphrates, the Persian kings raised their palaces upon lofty terraces, or platforms. But upon the table-lands they used stone instead of adobe or brick, and at Persepolis, raised, for the substruction of their palaces, an immense platform of massive masonry, which is one of the most wonderful monuments of the world's ancient builders. This terrace, which is uninjured by the 2300 years that have passed since its erection, is about 1500 feet long, 1000 feet wide, and 40 feet high. The summit is reached by broad stairways of stone, pronounced by competent judges the finest work of the kind that the ancient or even the modern world can boast. [Illustration: THE RUINS OF PERSEPOLIS.] Surmounting this platform are the ruins of the palaces of several of the Persian monarchs, from Cyrus the Great to Artaxerxes Ochus. These ruins consist chiefly of walls, columns, and great monolithic door- and window- frames. Colossal winged bulls, copied from the Assyrians, stand as wardens at the gateway of the ruined palaces. Numerous sculptures in bas-relief decorate the faces of the walls, and these throw much light upon the manners and customs of the ancient Persian kings. The successive palaces increase, not only in size, but in sumptuousness of adornment, thus registering those changes which we have been tracing in the national history. The residence of Cyrus was small and modest, while that of Artaxerxes Ochus equalled in size the great palace of the Assyrian Sargon. TABLE OF KINGS OF MEDIA AND PERSIA. Kings of Media Phraortes. . . . . . . . . . . . ? -625 Cyaxares . . . . . . . . . . . . 625-585 Astyages . . . . . . . . . . . . 585-558 Kings of Persia Cyrus . . . . . . . . . . . . . 558-529 Cambyses . . . . . . . . . . . . 529-522 Pseudo-Smerdis . . . . . . . . . 522-521 Darius I. . . . . . . . . . . . 521-486 Xerxes I. . . . . . . . . . . . 486-465 Artaxerxes I. (Longimanus) . . . 465-425 Xerxes II. . . . . . . . . . . . 425 Sogdianus . . . . . . . . . . . 425-424 Darius II. (Nothus) . . . . . . 424-405 Artaxerxes II. (Mnemon) . . . . 405-359 Artaxerxes III. (Ochus) . . . . 359-338 Arses . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338-336 Darius III. (Codomannus) . . . . 336-330 SECTION II.--GRECIAN HISTORY CHAPTER IX. THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE. DIVISIONS OF GREECE.--Long arms of the sea divide the Grecian peninsula into three parts, called Northern, Central, and Southern Greece. Northern Greece included the ancient districts of Thessaly and Epirus. Thessaly consists mainly of a large and beautiful valley, walled in on all sides by rugged mountains. It was celebrated far and wide for the variety and beauty of its scenery. On its northern edge, lay a beautiful glen, called the Vale of Tempe, the only pass by which the plain of Thessaly could be entered from the north. The district of Epirus stretched along the Ionian Sea on the west. In the gloomy recesses of its forests of oak was situated the renowned Dodonean oracle of Zeus. Central Greece was divided into eleven districts, among which were Phocis, Boeotia, and Attica. In Phocis was the city of Delphi, famous for its oracle and temple; in Boeotia, the city of Thebes; and in Attica, the brilliant Athens. Southern Greece, or the Peloponnesus, was also divided into eleven provinces, of which the more important were Arcadia, embracing the central part of the peninsula; Achaia, the northern part; Argolis, the eastern; and Messenia and Laconia, the southern. The last district was ruled by the city of Sparta, the great rival of Athens. MOUNTAINS.--The Cambunian Mountains form a lofty wall along a considerable reach of the northern frontier of Greece, shutting out at once the cold winds and hostile races from the north. Branching off at right angles to these mountains is the Pindus range, which runs south into Central Greece. In Northern Thessaly is Mount Olympus, the most celebrated mountain of the peninsula. The ancient Greeks thought it the highest mountain in the world (it is 9700 feet in height), and believed that its cloudy summit was the abode of the celestials. South of Olympus, close by the sea, are Ossa and Pelion, celebrated in fable as the mountains which the giants, in their war against the gods, piled one upon another, in order to scale Olympus. Parnassus and Helicon, in Central Greece,--beautiful mountains clad with trees and vines and filled with fountains,--were believed to be the favorite haunts of the Muses. Near Athens are Hymettus, praised for its honey, and Pentelicus, renowned for its marbles. The Peloponnesus is rugged with mountains that radiate in all directions from the central country of Arcadia,--"the Switzerland of Greece." ISLANDS ABOUT GREECE.--Very much of the history of Greece is intertwined with the islands that lie about the mainland. On the east, in the Aegean Sea, are the Cyclades, so called because they form an irregular circle about the sacred isle of Delos, where was a very celebrated shrine of Apollo. Between the Cyclades and Asia Minor lie the Sporades, which islands, as the name implies, are sown irregularly over that portion of the Aegean. Just off the coast of Attica is a large island called by the ancients Euboea, but known to us as Negropont. Close to the Asian shores are the large islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos, and Rhodes. To the west of Greece lie the Ionian Islands, the largest of which was called Corcyra, now Corfu. The rugged island of Ithaca was the birthplace of Odysseus, or Ulysses, the hero of the _Odyssey_. Cythera, just south of the Peloponnesus, was sacred to Aphrodite (Venus), as it was here fable said she rose from the sea-foam. Beyond Cythera, in the Mediterranean, midway between Greece and Egypt, is the large island of Crete, noted in legend for its labyrinth and its legislator Minos. INFLUENCE OF COUNTRY.--The physical features of a country have much to do with the moulding of the character and the shaping of the history of its people. Mountains, isolating neighboring communities and shutting out conquering races, foster the spirit of local patriotism and preserve freedom; the sea, inviting abroad, and rendering intercourse with distant countries easy, awakens the spirit of adventure and develops commercial enterprise. Now, Greece is at once a mountainous and a maritime country. Abrupt mountain-walls fence it off into a great number of isolated districts, each of which in ancient times became the seat of a distinct community, or state. Hence the fragmentary character of its political history. The Hellenic states never coalesced to form a single nation. The peninsula is, moreover, by deep arms and bays of the sea, converted into what is in effect an archipelago. (No spot in Greece is forty miles from the sea.) Hence its people were early tempted to a sea-faring life. The shores of the Mediterranean and the Euxine were dotted with Hellenic colonies. Intercourse with the old civilizations of Egypt and Phoenicia stirred the naturally quick and versatile Greek intellect to early and vigorous thought. The islands strewn with seeming carelessness through the AEgean Sea were "stepping-stones," which invited the earliest settlers of Greece to the delightful coast countries of Asia Minor, and thus blended the life and history of the opposite shores. Again, the beauty of Grecian scenery inspired many of the most striking passages of her poets; and it is thought that the exhilarating atmosphere and brilliant skies of Attica were not unrelated to the lofty achievements of the Athenian intellect. THE PELASGIANS.--The historic inhabitants of the land we have described were called by the Romans Greeks, but they called themselves Hellenes, from their fabled ancestor Hellen. But the Hellenes, according to their own account, were not the original inhabitants of the country. They were preceded by a people whom they called Pelasgians. Who these folk were is a matter of debate. Some think that the Pelasgians and Hellenes were kindred tribes, but that the Hellenes, possessing superior qualities, gradually acquired ascendency over the Pelasgians and finally absorbed them. [Illustration: PREHISTORIC WALLS AT MYCENÆ. (The Lions' Gate.)] The Pelasgians were somewhat advanced beyond the savage state. They cultivated the ground, and protected their cities with walls. Remnants of their rude but massive masonry still encumber in places the soil of Greece. THE HELLENES.--The Hellenes were divided into four tribes; namely, the Ionians, the Dorians, the Achæans, and the Æolians. The Ionians were a many-sided, imaginative people. They developed every part of their nature, and attained unsurpassed excellence in art, literature, and philosophy. The most noted Ionian city was Athens, whose story is a large part of the history of Hellas. The Dorians were a practical, unimaginative race. Their speech and their art were both alike without ornament. They developed the body rather than the mind. Their education was almost wholly gymnastic and military. They were unexcelled as warriors. The most important city founded by them was Sparta, the rival of Athens. These two great Hellenic families divided Hellas [Footnote: Under the name Hellas the ancient Greeks included not only Greece proper and the islands of the adjoining seas, but also the Hellenic cities in Asia Minor, Southern Italy, Sicily, and elsewhere. "Wherever were Hellenes, there was Hellas."] into two rival parties, which through their mutual jealousies and contentions finally brought all the bright hopes and promises of the Hellenic race to utter ruin. The Achæans are represented by the Greek legends as being the predominant race in the Peloponnesus during the Heroic Age. The Æolians formed a rather ill-defined division. In historic times the name is often made to include all Hellenes not enumerated as Ionians or Dorians. These several tribes, united by bonds of language and religion, always regarded themselves as members of a single family. They were proud of their ancestry, and as exclusive almost as the Hebrews. All non-Hellenic people they called _Barbarians_ [Footnote: At first, this term meant scarcely more than "unintelligible folk"; but later, it came to express aversion and contempt.]. When the mists of antiquity are first lifted from Greece, about the beginning of the eighth century B.C., we discover the several families of the Hellenic race in possession of Greece proper, of the islands of the Ægean, and of the western coasts of Asia Minor. Respecting their prehistoric migrations and settlements, we have little or no certain knowledge. ORIENTAL IMMIGRANTS.--According to their own traditions the early growth of civilization among the European Hellenes was promoted by the settlement among them of Oriental immigrants, who brought with them the arts and culture of the different countries of the East. From Egypt, legend affirms, came Cecrops, bringing with him the arts, learning, and priestly wisdom of the Nile valley. He is represented as the builder of the citadel (the _Cecropia_) of what was afterwards the illustrious city of Athens. From Phoenicia Cadmus brought the letters of the alphabet, and founded the city of Thebes. The Phrygian Pelops, the progenitor of the renowned heroes Agamemnon and Menelaus, settled in the southern peninsula, which was called after him the Peloponnesus (the Island of Pelops). The nucleus of fact in all these legends is probably this,--that the European Greeks received the primary elements of their culture from the East through their Asiatic kinsmen. LOCAL PATRIOTISM OF THE GREEKS: THE CITY THE POLITICAL UNIT.--The narrow political sympathies of the ancient Greeks prevented their ever uniting to form a single nation. The city was with them the political unit. It was regarded as a distinct, self-governing state, just like a modern nation. A citizen of one city was an alien in any other: he could not marry a woman of a city not his own, nor hold property in houses or lands within its territory. A Greek city-state usually embraced, besides the walled town, a more or less extensive border of gardens and farms, a strip of sea-coast, or perhaps a considerable mountain-hemmed valley or plain. The _model_ city (or _state_, as we should say) must not be over large. In this, as in everything else, the ancient Greeks applied the Delphian rule-- "Measure in all things." "A small city," says one of their poets, "set upon a rock and well governed, is better than all foolish Nineveh." Aristotle thought that the ideal city should not have more than ten thousand citizens. CHAPTER X. THE LEGENDARY, OR HEROIC AGE. (From the earliest times to 776 B.C.) CHARACTER OF THE LEGENDARY AGE.--The real history of the Greeks does not begin before the eighth century B.C. All that lies back of that date is an inseparable mixture of myth, legend, and fact. Yet this shadowy period forms the background of Grecian history, and we cannot understand the ideas and acts of the Greeks of historic times without at least some knowledge of what they believed their ancestors did and experienced in those prehistoric ages. So, as a sort of prelude to the story we have to tell, we shall repeat some of the legends of the Greeks respecting their national heroes and their great labors and undertakings. But it must be carefully borne in mind that these legends are not history, though some of them may be confused remembrances of actual events. THE HEROES: HERACLES, THESEUS, AND MINOS.--The Greeks believed that their ancestors were a race of heroes of divine or semi-divine lineage. Every tribe, district, city, and village even, preserved traditions of its heroes, whose wonderful exploits were commemorated in song and story. Many of these personages acquired national renown, and became the revered heroes of the whole Greek race. Heracles was the greatest of the national heroes of the Greeks. He is represented as performing, besides various other exploits, twelve superhuman labors, and as being at last translated from a blazing pyre to a place among the immortal gods. The myth of Heracles, who was at first a solar divinity, is made up mainly of the very same fables that were told of the Chaldæan solar hero Izdubar (see p. 46). Through the Phoenicians, these stories found their way to the Greeks, who ascribed to their own Heracles the deeds of the Chaldæan sun-god. Theseus, a descendant of Cecrops, was the favorite hero of the Athenians, being one of their legendary kings. Among his great exploits was the slaying of the Minotaur,--a monster which Minos, king of Crete, kept in a labyrinth, and fed upon youths and maidens sent from Athens as a forced tribute. Minos, king of Crete, was one of the greatest tribal heroes of the Dorians. Legend makes him a legislator of divine wisdom, the suppressor of piracy in the Grecian seas, and the founder of the first great maritime state of Hellas. THE ARGONAUTIC EXPEDITION.--Besides the labors and exploits of single heroes, the legends of the Greeks tell of several memorable enterprises conducted by bands of heroes. Among these were the Argonautic Expedition and the Siege of Troy. The tale of the Argonautic Expedition is told with many variations in the legends of the Greeks. Jason, a prince of Thessaly, with fifty companion heroes, among whom were Heracles, Theseus, and Orpheus, the latter a musician of superhuman skill, the music of whose lyre moved brutes and stones, set sail in "a fifty-oared galley," called the _Argo_ (hence the name _Argonauts_, given to the heroes), in search of a "golden fleece" which was fabled to be nailed to a tree and watched by a dragon, in the Grove of Ares, on the eastern shores of the Euxine, an inhospitable region of unknown terrors. The expedition is successful, and, after many wonderful adventures, the heroes return in triumph with the sacred relic. Different meanings have been given to this tale. In its primitive form it was doubtless a pure myth of the rain-clouds; but in its later forms we may believe it to symbolize the maritime explorations in the eastern seas, of some of the tribes of Pelasgian Greece. THE TROJAN WAR (legendary date 1194-1184 B.C.).--The Trojan War was an event about which gathered a great circle of tales and poems, all full of an undying interest and fascination. Ilios, or Troy, was the capital of a strong empire, represented as Grecian in race and language, which had grown up in Asia Minor, along the shores of the Hellespont. The traditions tell how Paris, son of Priam, king of Troy, visited the Spartan king Menelaus, and ungenerously requited his hospitality by secretly bearing away to Troy his wife Helen, famous for her rare beauty. All the heroes of Greece flew to arms to avenge the wrong. A host of one hundred thousand warriors was speedily gathered. Agamemnon, brother of Menelaus and "king of men," was chosen leader of the expedition. Under him were the "lion-hearted Achilles," of Thessaly, the "crafty Ulysses" (Odysseus), king of Ithaca, Ajax, "the swift son of Oileus," the Telamonian Ajax, the aged Nestor, and many more--the most valiant heroes of all Hellas. Twelve hundred galleys bore the gathered clans from Aulis in Greece, across the Ægean to the Trojan shores. For ten years the Greeks and their allies hold in close siege the city of Priam. On the plains beneath the walls of the capital, the warriors of the two armies fight in general battle, or contend in single encounter. At first, Achilles is foremost in every fight; but a fair-faced maiden, who fell to him as a prize, having been taken from him by his chief, Agamemnon, he is filled with wrath, and sulks in his tent. Though the Greeks are often sorely pressed, still the angered hero refuses them his aid. At last, however, his friend Patroclus is killed by Hector, eldest son of Priam, and then Achilles goes forth to avenge his death. In a fierce combat he slays Hector, fastens his body to his chariot wheels, and drags it thrice around the walls of Troy. The city is at last taken through a device of the "crafty Ulysses." Upon the plain in sight of the walls is built a wooden statue of a horse, in the body of which are hidden several Grecian warriors. Then the Greeks retire to their ships, as though about to abandon the siege. The Trojans issue from the gates and gather in wondering crowds about the image. They believe it to be an offering sacred to Athena, and so dare not destroy it; but, on the other hand, misled by certain omens and by a lying Greek named Sinon, they level a place in the walls of their city, and drag the statue within. At night the concealed warriors issue from the horse, open the gates of the city to the Grecians, and Troy is sacked, and burned to the ground. The aged Priam is slain, after having seen his sons and many of his warriors perish before his face. Æneas, with his aged father, Anchises, and a few devoted followers, escapes, and, after long wanderings, becomes the fabled founder of the Roman race in Italy. It is a matter of difficulty to point out the nucleus of fact in this the most elaborate and interesting of the Grecian legends. Some believe it to be the dim recollection of a prehistoric conflict between the Greeks and the natives of Asia Minor, arising from the attempt of the former to secure a foothold upon the coast. That there really existed in prehistoric times such a city as Troy, has been placed beyond doubt by the excavations and discoveries of Dr. Schliemann. RETURN OF THE GRECIAN CHIEFTAINS.--After the fall of Troy, the Grecian chieftains and princes returned home. The poets represent the gods as withdrawing their protection from the hitherto favored heroes, because they had not respected the altars of the Trojans. So, many of them were driven in endless wanderings over sea and land. Homer's _Odyssey_ portrays the sufferings of the "much-enduring" Odysseus (Ulysses), impelled by divine wrath to long journeyings through strange seas. In some cases, according to the tradition, advantage had been taken of the absence of the princes, and their thrones had been usurped. Thus at Argos, Ægisthus had won the unholy love of Clytemnestra, wife and queen of Agamemnon, who on his return was murdered by the guilty couple. In pleasing contrast with this we have exhibited to us the constancy of Penelope, although sought by many suitors during the absence of her husband Ulysses. THE DORIAN INVASION, OR THE RETURN OF THE HERACLIDÆ (legendary date 1104 B.C.).--We set the tradition of the return of the Heraclidæ apart from the legends of the enterprises just detailed, for the reason that it undoubtedly contains quite a large historical element. The legend tells how Heracles, an Achæan, in the times before the Trojan War, ruled over the Peloponnesian Achæans. Just before that event his children were driven from the land. Eighty years after the war, the hundred years of exile appointed by the Fates having expired, the descendants of the hero, at the head of the Dorians from Northern Greece, returned, and with their aid effected the conquest of the greater part of the Peloponnesus, and established themselves as conquerors and masters in the land that had formerly been ruled by their semi-divine ancestor. This legend seems to be a dim remembrance of a prehistoric invasion of the Peloponnesus by the Dorians from the north of Greece, and the expulsion or subjugation of the native inhabitants of the peninsula. Some of the dispossessed Achæans, crowding towards the north of the Peloponnesus, drove out the Ionians who occupied the southern shore of the Corinthian Gulf, and settling there, gave the name _Achaia_ to all that region. Arcadia, in the centre of the Peloponnesus, was another district which did not fall into the hands of the Dorians. The people here, even down to the latest times, retained their primitive customs and country mode of life; hence _Arcadian_ came to mean rustic and artless. MIGRATIONS TO ASIA MINOR.--The Greek legends represent that the Dorian invasion of the Peloponnesus resulted in three distinct migrations from the mother-land to the shores of Asia Minor and the adjoining islands. The northwestern shore of Asia Minor was settled, mainly, by Aeolian emigrants from Boeotia. The neighboring island of Lesbos became the home and centre of Æolian culture in poetry and music. The coast to the south of the Æolians was occupied by Ionian emigrants, who, uniting with their Ionian kinsmen already settled upon that shore, built up twelve splendid cities (Ephesus, Miletus, etc.), which finally united to form the celebrated Ionian confederacy. South of the Ionians, all along the southwestern shore of Asia Minor, the Dorians established their colonies. They also settled the important islands of Cos and Rhodes, and conquered and colonized Crete. The traditions of these various settlements represent them as having been effected in a very short period; but it is probable that the movement embraced several centuries,--possibly a longer time than has been occupied by the English race in colonizing the different lands of the Western World. With these migrations to the Asiatic shores, the Legendary Age of Greece comes to an end. From this time forward we tread upon fairly firm historic ground. SOCIETY IN THE HEROIC AGE.--In Homeric times the Greeks were ruled by hereditary kings, who were believed to be of divine or superhuman lineage. The king was at once the lawgiver, the judge, and the military leader of his people. He was expected to prove his divine right to rule, by his courage, strength, wisdom, and eloquence. When he ceased to display these qualities, "the sceptre departed from him." The king was surrounded by an advisory council of chiefs or nobles. The king listened to what the nobles had to say upon any measure he might propose, and then acted according to his own will or judgment, restrained only by the time-honored customs of the community. Next to the council of chiefs, there was a general assembly, called the _Agora_, made up of all the common freemen. The members of this body could not take part in any debate, nor could they vote upon any question. This body, so devoid seemingly of all authority in the Homeric age, was destined to become the all-powerful popular assembly in the democratic cities of historic Greece. Of the condition of the common freemen we know but little; the legendary tales were concerned chiefly with the kings and nobles. Slavery existed, but the slaves did not constitute as numerous a class as they became in historic times. In the family, the wife held a much more honored position than she occupied in later times. The charming story of the constant Penelope, which we find in the _Odyssey_, assures us that the Homeric age cherished a chivalric feeling for woman. In all ranks of society, life was marked by a sort of patriarchal simplicity. Manual labor was not yet thought to be degrading. Ulysses constructs his own house and raft, and boasts of his skill in swinging the scythe and guiding the plow. Spinning and weaving were the chief occupations of the women of all classes. One pleasing and prominent virtue of the age was hospitality. There were no public inns in those times, hence a sort of gentle necessity compelled the entertainment of wayfarers. The hospitality accorded was the same free and impulsive welcome that the Arab sheik of to-day extends to the traveller whom chance brings to his tent. But while hospitable, the nobles of the heroic age were often cruel, violent, and treacherous. Homer represents his heroes as committing without a blush all sorts of fraud and villanies. Piracy was considered an honorable occupation. [Illustration: FORTY-OARED GREEK BOAT. (After a Vase Painting.)] Art and architecture were in a rudimentary state. Yet some advance had been made. The cities were walled, and the palaces of the kings possessed a certain barbaric splendor. Coined money was unknown; wealth was reckoned chiefly in flocks and herds, and in uncoined metals. The art of writing was probably unknown, at least there is no certain mention of it; and sculpture could not have been in an advanced state, as the Homeric poems make no mention of statues. The state of literature is shown by the poems of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_: before the close of the age, epic poetry had reached a perfection beyond which it has never been carried. Commerce was yet in its infancy. Although the Greeks were to become a great maritime people, still in the Homeric age they had evidently explored the sea but little. The Phoenicians then ruled the waves. The Greeks in those early times knew scarcely anything of the world beyond Greece proper and the neighboring islands and shores. Scarcely an echo of the din of life from the then ancient and mighty cities of Egypt and Chaldæa seems to have reached their ears. CHAPTER XI. RELIGION OF THE GREEKS. INTRODUCTORY.--Without at least some little knowledge of the religious ideas and institutions of the ancient Greeks, we should find very many passages of their history wholly unintelligible. Hence a few remarks upon these matters will be in place here. COSMOGRAPHY OF THE GREEKS.--The Greeks supposed the earth to be, as it appears, a plane, circular in form like a shield. Around it flowed the "mighty strength of the ocean river," a stream broad and deep, beyond which on all sides lay realms of Cimmerian darkness and terror. The heavens were a solid vault, or dome, whose edge shut down close upon the earth. Beneath the earth, reached by subterranean passages, was Hades, a vast region, the realm of departed souls. Still beneath this was the prison Tartarus, a pit deep and dark, made fast by strong gates of brass and iron. Sometimes the poets represent the gloomy regions beyond the ocean stream as the cheerless abode of the dead. The sun was an archer-god, borne in a fiery chariot up and down the steep pathway of the skies. Naturally it was imagined that the regions in the extreme east and west, which were bathed in the near splendors of the sunrise and sunset, were lands of delight and plenty. The eastern was the favored country of the Ethiopians [Footnote: There was also a western division of these people.], a land which even Zeus himself so loved to visit that often he was found absent from Olympus when sought by suppliants. The western region, adjoining the ocean stream, formed the Elysian Fields, the abodes of the souls of heroes and of poets. [Footnote: These conceptions, it will be understood, belong to the early period of Greek mythology. As the geographical knowledge of the Greeks became more extended, they modified considerably the topography not only of the upper- world, but also of the nether-world.] THE OLYMPIC COUNCIL.--There were twelve members of the celestial council, six gods and as many goddesses. The male deities were Zeus, the father of gods and men; Poseidon, ruler of the sea; Apollo, or Phoebus, the god of light, of music, and of prophecy; Ares, the god of war; Hephæstus, the deformed god of fire, and the forger of the thunderbolts of Zeus; Hermes, the wing-footed herald of the celestials, the god of invention and commerce, himself a thief and the patron of thieves. [Illustration: THE WORLD ACCORDING TO HOMER.] The female divinities were Hera, the proud and jealous queen of Zeus; Athena, or Pallas,--who sprang full-grown from the forehead of Zeus,--the goddess of wisdom, and the patroness of the domestic arts; Artemis, the goddess of the chase; Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, born of the sea-foam; Hestia, the goddess of the hearth; Demeter, the earth- mother, the goddess of grains and harvests. [Footnote: The Latin names of these divinities are as follows: Zeus = Jupiter; Poseidon = Neptune; Apollo = Apollo; Ares = Mars; Hephæstus = Vulcan; Hermes = Mercury; Hera = Juno; Athena = Minerva; Artemis = Diana; Aphrodite = Venus; Hestia = Vesta; Demeter = Ceres. These Latin names, however, are not the equivalents of the Greek names, and should not be used as such. The mythologies of the Hellenes and Romans were as distinct as their languages. Consult Rawlinson's _Religions of the Ancient World_.] These great deities were simply magnified human beings, possessing all their virtues, and often their weaknesses. They give way to fits of anger and jealousy. "Zeus deceives, and Hera is constantly practising her wiles." All the celestial council, at the sight of Hephæstus limping across the palace floor, burst into "inextinguishable laughter"; and Aphrodite, weeping, moves all to tears. They surpass mortals rather in power, than in size of body. They can render themselves visible or invisible to human eyes. Their food is ambrosia and nectar; their movements are swift as light. They may suffer pain; but death can never come to them, for they are immortal. Their abode is Mount Olympus and the airy regions above the earth. LESSER DEITIES AND MONSTERS.--Besides the great gods and goddesses that constituted the Olympian council there was an almost infinite number of other deities, celestial personages, and monsters neither human nor divine. Hades (Pluto) ruled over the lower realms; Dionysus (Bacchus) was the god of wine; the goddess Nemesis was the punisher of crime, and particularly the queller of the proud and arrogant; Æolus was the ruler of the winds, which he confined in a cave secured by mighty gates. There were nine Muses, inspirers of art and song. The Nymphs were beautiful maidens, who peopled the woods, the fields, the rivers, the lakes, and the ocean. Three Fates allotted life and death, and three Furies (Eumenides or Erinnyes) avenged crime, especially murder and unnatural crimes. The Gorgons were three sisters, with hair entwined with serpents. A single gaze upon them chilled the beholder to stone. Besides these there were Scylla and Charybdis, sea-monsters that made perilous the passage of the Sicilian Straits, the Centaurs, the Cyclops, Cerberus, the watch-dog of Hades, and a thousand others. Many at least of these monsters were simply personifications of the human passions or of the malign and destructive forces of nature. Thus, the Furies were the embodiment of an aroused and accusing conscience; the Gorgons were tempests, which lash the sea into a fury that paralyzes the affrighted sailor; Scylla and Charybdis were dangerous whirlpools off the coast of Sicily. To the common people at least, however, they were real creatures, with all the parts and habits given them by the poets. MODES OF DIVINE COMMUNICATION.--In the early ages the gods were wont, it was believed, to visit the earth and mingle with men. But even in Homer's time this familiar intercourse was a thing of the past--a tradition of a golden age that had passed away. Their forms were no longer seen, their voices no longer heard. In these later and more degenerate times the recognized modes of divine communication with men were by oracles, and by casual and unusual sights and sounds, as thunder and lightning, a sudden tempest, an eclipse, a flight of birds,--particularly of birds that mount to a great height, as these were supposed to know the secrets of the heavens,--the appearance or action of the sacrificial victims, or any strange coincidence. The art of interpreting these signs or omens was called the art of divination. ORACLES.--But though the gods might reveal their will and intentions through signs and portents, still they granted a more special communication of counsel through what were known as _oracles_. These communications, it was believed, were made by Zeus, and especially by Apollo, who was the god of prophecy, the Revealer. Not everywhere, but only in chosen places, did these gods manifest their presence and communicate the divine will. These favored spots were called oracles, as were also the responses there received. There were twenty-two oracles of Apollo in different parts of the Grecian world, but a much smaller number of those of Zeus. These were usually situated in wild and desolate spots--in dark forests or among gloomy mountains. The most renowned of the oracles was that of the Pelasgian Zeus at Dodona, in Epirus, and that of Apollo at Delphi, in Phocis. At Dodona the priests listened in the dark forests for the voice of Zeus in the rustling leaves of the sacred oak. At Delphi there was a deep fissure in the ground, which emitted stupefying vapors, that were thought to be the inspiring breath of Apollo. Over the spot was erected a splendid temple, in honor of the oracle. The revelation was generally received by the Pythia, or priestess, seated upon a tripod placed over the orifice. As she became overpowered by the influence of the prophetic exhalations, she uttered the message of the god. These mutterings of the Pythia were taken down by attendant priests, interpreted, and written in hexameter verse. Sometimes the will of Zeus was communicated to the pious seeker by dreams and visions granted to him while sleeping in the temple of the oracle. The oracle of Delphi gained a celebrity wide as the world: it was often consulted by the monarchs of Asia and the people of Rome in times of extreme danger and perplexity. Among the Greeks scarcely any undertaking was entered upon without the will and sanction of the oracle being first sought. Especially true was this in the founding of colonies. Apollo was believed "to take delight in the foundation of new cities." No colony could prosper that had not been established under the superintendence of the Delphian god. Some of the responses of the oracle contained plain and wholesome advice; but very many of them, particularly those that implied a knowledge of the future, were obscure and ingeniously ambiguous, so that they might correspond with the event however affairs should turn. Thus, Croesus is told that, if he undertake an expedition against Persia, he will destroy a great empire. He did, indeed;--but the empire was his own. The Delphian oracle was at the height of its fame before the Persian War; in that crisis it did not take a bold or patriotic stand, and its reputation was sensibly impaired. IDEAS OF THE FUTURE.--To the Greeks life was so bright and joyous a thing that they looked upon death as a great calamity. They therefore pictured life after death, except in the case of a favored few, as being hopeless and aimless. [Footnote: Homer makes the shade of the great Achilles in Hades to say:-- "I would be A laborer on earth, and serve for hire Some man of mean estate, who makes scant cheer, Rather than reign o'er all who have gone down To death."--_Od._ XI. 489-90 [Bryant's Trans.].] The Elysian Fields, away in the land of sunset, were, indeed, filled with every delight; but these were the abode only of the great heroes and benefactors of the race. So long as the body remained unburied, the soul wandered restless in Hades; hence the sacredness of the rites of sepulture. THE SACRED GAMES.--The celebrated games of the Greeks had their origin in the belief of their Aryan ancestors that the souls of the dead were gratified by such spectacles as delighted them during their earthly life. During the Heroic Age these festivals were simply sacrifices or games performed at the tomb, or about the pyre of the dead. Gradually these grew into religious festivals observed by an entire city or community, and were celebrated near the oracle or shrine of the god in whose honor they were instituted; the idea now being that the gods were present at the festival, and took delight in the various contests and exercises. Among these festivals, four acquired a world-wide celebrity. These were the Olympian, celebrated in honor of Zeus, at Olympia, in the Peloponnesus; the Pythian, in honor of Apollo, near his shrine and oracle at Delphi; the Nemean, in honor of Zeus, at Nemea; and the Isthmian, held in honor of Poseidon, on the isthmus of Corinth. THE OLYMPIAN GAMES.--Of these four festivals the Olympian secured the greatest renown. In 776 B.C. Coroebus was victor in the foot-race at Olympia, and as from that time the names of the victors were carefully registered, that year came to be used by the Greeks as the starting-point in their chronology. The games were held every fourth year, and the interval between two successive festivals was known as an Olympiad. The contests consisted of foot-races, boxing, wrestling, and other athletic games. Later, chariot-racing was introduced, and became the most popular of all the contests. The competitors must be of the Hellenic race; and must, moreover, be unblemished by any crime against the state or sin against the gods. Spectators from all parts of the world crowded to the festival. The victor was crowned with a garland of wild olive; heralds proclaimed his name abroad; his native city received him as a conqueror, sometimes through a breach made in the city walls; his statues, executed by eminent artists, were erected at Olympia and in his own city; sometimes even divine honor and worship were accorded to him; and poets and orators vied with the artist in perpetuating the name and deeds of him who had reflected undying honor upon his native state. INFLUENCE OF THE GRECIAN GAMES.--For more than a thousand years these national festivals exerted an immense influence upon the literary, social, and religious life of Hellas. They enkindled among the widely scattered Hellenic states and colonies a common literary taste and enthusiasm; for into all the four great festivals, excepting the Olympian, were introduced, sooner or later, contests in poetry, oratory, and history. During the festivals, poets and historians read their choicest productions, and artists exhibited their masterpieces. The extraordinary honors accorded to the victors stimulated the contestants to the utmost, and strung to the highest tension every power of body and mind. To this fact we owe some of the grandest productions of the Greek race. They moreover promoted intercourse and trade; for the festivals became great centres of traffic and exchange during the continuance of the games. They softened, too, the manners of the people, turning their thoughts from martial exploits and giving the states respite from war; for during the month in which the religious games were held it was sacrilegious to engage in military expeditions. In all these ways, though they never drew the states into a common political union, still they did impress a common character upon their social, intellectual, and religious life. THE AMPHICTYONIC COUNCIL.--Closely connected with the religious festivals were the so-called Amphictyonies, or "leagues of neighbors." These were associations of a number of cities or tribes for the celebration of religious rites at some shrine, or for the protection of some particular temple. Pre-eminent among all such unions was that known as the Delphic Amphictyony, or simply The Amphictyony. This was a league of twelve of the sub-tribes of Hellas, whose main object was the protection of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. Another of its purposes was, by humane regulations, to mitigate the cruelties of war. The so-called First Sacred War (600-590 B.C.) was a crusade of ten years carried on by the Amphictyons against the cities of Crissa and Cirrha for their robbery of the treasures of the Delphian temple. The cities were finally taken, levelled to the ground, and the wrath of the gods invoked upon any one who should dare to rebuild them. The spoils of the war were devoted to the establishment of musical contests in honor of the Delphian Apollo. Thus originated the renowned Pythian festivals, to which allusion has just been made. CHAPTER XII. AGE OF THE TYRANTS AND OF COLONIZATION: THE EARLY GROWTH OF SPARTA AND OF ATHENS. (776-500 B.C.) 1. AGE OF THE TYRANTS AND OF COLONIZATION. THE TYRANTS.--In the Heroic Age the preferred form of government was a patriarchal monarchy. The _Iliad_ says, "The rule of many is not a good thing: let us have one ruler only,--one king,--him to whom Zeus has given the sceptre." But by the dawn of the historic period, the patriarchal monarchies of the Achæan age had given place, in almost all the Grecian cities, to oligarchies or aristocracies. THE OLIGARCHIES GIVE WAY TO TYRANNIES.--The nobles into whose hands the ancient royal authority thus passed were often divided among themselves, and invariably opposed by the common freemen, who, as they grew in intelligence and wealth, naturally aspired to a place in the government. The issue of long contentions was the overthrow almost everywhere of oligarchical government and the establishment of the rule of a single person. Usually this person was one of the nobility, who held himself out as the champion of the people, and who with their help usurped the government. One who had thus seized the government was called a tyrant. By this term the Greeks did not mean one who rules harshly, but simply one who holds the supreme authority in the state illegally. Some of the Greek Tyrants were mild and beneficent rulers, though too often they were all that the name implies among us. But the Greeks always had an inextinguishable hatred of arbitrary rule; consequently the Tyrannies were, as a rule, short-lived, rarely lasting longer than three generations. They were usually violently overthrown, and the old oligarchies re-established, or democracies set up in their place. As a rule, the Dorian cities preferred oligarchical, and the Ionian cities democratical, government. The so-called Age of the Tyrants lasted from 650 to 500 B.C. Among the most noted of the Tyrants were the Pisistratidæ, at Athens, of whom we shall speak hereafter; Periander at Corinth (625-585 B.C.), who was a most cruel ruler, yet so generous a patron of artists and literary men that he was thought worthy of a place among the Seven Sages; and Polycrates, Tyrant of Samos (535-522 B.C.), who, with that island as a stronghold, and with a fleet of a hundred war-galleys, built up a sort of maritime kingdom in the AEgean, and for the space of more than a decade enjoyed such astonishing and uninterrupted prosperity, that it was believed his sudden downfall and death--he was allured to the Asian shore by a Persian satrap, and crucified--were brought about by the envy of the gods, [Footnote: Herodotus tells how Amasis of Egypt, the friend and ally of the Tyrant, becoming alarmed at his extraordinary course of good fortune, wrote him, begging him to interrupt it and disarm the envy of the gods, by sacrificing his most valued possession. Polycrates, acting upon the advice, threw into the sea a precious ring, which he highly prized; but soon afterwards the jewel was found by his servants in a fish that a fisherman had brought to the palace as a present for Polycrates. When Amasis heard of this, he at once broke off his alliance with the Tyrant, feeling sure that he was fated to suffer some terrible reverse of fortune. The event justified his worst fears.] who the Greeks thought were apt to be jealous of over-prosperous mortals. THE FOUNDING OF COLONIES.--The Age of the Tyrants coincides very nearly with the era of greatest activity in the founding of new colonies. Thousands, driven from their homes, like the Puritans in the time of the Stuart tyranny in England, fled over the seas, and, under the direction of the Delphian Apollo, laid upon remote and widely separated shores the basis of "Dispersed Hellas." The overcrowding of population and the Greek love of adventure also contributed to swell the number of emigrants. During this colonizing era Southern Italy became so thickly set with Greek cities as to become known as _Magna Græcia_, "Great Greece." Here were founded during the latter part of the eighth century B.C. the important Dorian city of Tarentum; the wealthy and luxurious Achæan city of Sybaris (whence the term _Sybarite_, meaning a voluptuary); the Great Crotona, distinguished for its schools of philosophy and its victors in the Olympian games. Upon the island of Sicily was planted, by the Dorian Corinth, the city of Syracuse (734 B.C.), which, before Rome had become great, waged war on equal terms with Carthage. In the Gulf of Lyons was established about 600 B.C. the important Ionian city of Massalia (Marseilles), the radiating point of long routes of travel and trade. On the African coast was founded the great Dorian city of Cyrene (630 B.C.), and probably about the same time was established in the Nile delta the city of Naucratis, through which the civilization of Egypt flowed into Greece. The tide of emigration flowed not only to the west and south, but to the north as well. The northern shores of the Ægean and those of the Hellespont and the Propontis were fringed with colonies. The Argonautic terrors of the Black Sea were forgotten or unheeded, and even those remote shores received their emigrants. Many of the settlements in that quarter were established by the Ionian city of Miletus, which, swarming like a hive, became the mother of more than eighty colonies. Through this wonderful colonizing movement, Greece came to hold somewhat the same place in the ancient Mediterranean world that England as a colonizer occupies in the world of today. Many of these colonies not only reflected honor upon the mother land through the just renown of their citizens, but through their singularly free, active, and progressive life, they exerted upon her a most healthful and stimulating influence. 2. THE GROWTH OF SPARTA. SITUATION OF SPARTA.--Sparta was one of the cities of the Peloponnesus which owed their origin or importance to the Dorian Invasion (see p. 96). It was situated in the deep valley of the Eurotas, in Laconia, and took its name Sparta (sown land) from the circumstance that it was built upon tillable ground, whereas the heart and centre of most Greek cities consisted of a lofty rock (the citadel, or acropolis). It was also called Lacedæmon, after an early legendary king. CLASSES IN THE SPARTAN STATE.--In order to understand the social and political institutions of the Spartans, we must first notice the three classes--Spartans (Spartiatæ), Perioeci, and Helots--into which the population of Laconia was divided. The Spartans proper were the descendants of the Dorian conquerors of the country. They composed but a small fraction of the entire population. Their relations to the conquered people were those of an army of occupation. Sparta, their capital, was simply a vast camp, unprotected by any walls until later and degenerate times. The martial valor of its citizens was thought its only proper defence. The Perioeci (dwellers-around), who constituted the second class, were the subjugated Achæans. They were allowed to retain possession of their lands, but were forced to pay tribute, and, in times of war, to fight for the glory and interest of their Spartan masters. The third and lowest class was composed of slaves, or serfs, called Helots. The larger number of these were laborers upon the estates of the Spartans. They were the property of the state, and not of the individual Spartan lords, among whom they were distributed by lot. Practically they had no rights which their Spartan masters felt bound to respect. It is affirmed that when they grew too numerous for the safety of the state, their numbers were thinned by a deliberate massacre of the surplus population. THE LEGEND OF LYCURGUS.--The laws and customs of the Spartans have excited more interest, perhaps, than any similar institutions of the ancient world. A mystery and halo were thrown about them by their being attributed to the creative genius of a single lawgiver, Lycurgus. Lycurgus, according to tradition, lived about the ninth century B.C. He is represented as acquainting himself with the laws and institutions of different lands, by converse with their priests and sages. He is said to have studied with great zeal the laws of Minos, the legendary lawgiver of the Cretans. Like the great legislator Moses, he became learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. After much opposition, a system of laws and regulations drawn up by Lycurgus was adopted by the Spartan people. Then, binding his countrymen by a solemn oath that they would carefully observe his laws during his absence, he set out on a pilgrimage to Delphi. In response to his inquiry, the oracle assured him that Sparta would endure and prosper as long as the people obeyed the laws he had given them. Lycurgus caused this answer to be carried to his countrymen; and then, that they might remain bound by the oath they had taken, he resolved never to return. He went into an unknown exile. THE KINGS, THE SENATE, AND THE POPULAR ASSEMBLY.--The so-called Constitution of Lycurgus provided for two joint kings, a Senate of Elders, and a Popular Assembly. The two kings corresponded in some respects to the two consuls in the later Roman republic. One served as a check upon the other. This double sovereignty worked admirably; for five centuries there were no attempts on the part of the Spartan kings to subvert the constitution. The power of the joint kings, it should be added, was rather nominal than real (save in time of war); so that while the Spartan government was monarchical in form, it was in reality an aristocracy, the Spartans corresponding very closely to the feudal lords of mediæval Europe. The Senate consisted of thirty elders. The powers of this body were at first almost unlimited. After a time, however, officers called ephors were elected by the Popular Assembly, and these gradually absorbed the powers and functions of the Senate, as well as the authority of the two associate kings. The Popular Assembly was composed of all the citizens of Sparta over thirty years of age. By this body laws were made, and questions of peace and war decided. In striking contrast to what was the custom at Athens, all matters were decided without debate. The Spartans were fighters, not talkers; they hated discussion. REGULATIONS AS TO LANDS AND MONEY.--At the time of Lycurgus the lands of Laconia had become absorbed by the rich, leaving the masses in poverty and distress. It is certain that the lawgiver did much to remedy this ruinous state of affairs. Tradition says that all the lands were redistributed, an equal portion being assigned to each of the nine thousand Spartan citizens, and a smaller and less desirable portion to each of the thirty thousand Perioeci,--but it is not probable that there was any such exact equalization of property. The Spartans were forbidden to engage in trade; all their time must be passed in the chase, or in gymnastic and martial exercise. Iron was made the sole money of the state. This, according to Plutarch, "was of great size and weight, and of small value, so that the equivalent for ten minæ (about $140) required a great room for its stowage, and a yoke of oxen to draw it." The object of this, he tell us, was to prevent its being used for the purchase of "foreign trumpery." THE PUBLIC TABLES.--The most peculiar, perhaps, of the Lycurgean institutions were the public meals. In order to correct the extravagance with which the tables of the rich were often spread, Lycurgus ordered that all the Spartan citizens should eat at public and common tables. Excepting the ephors, none, not even the kings, were excused from sitting at the common mess. One of the kings, returning from a long expedition, presumed to dine privately with his wife, but received therefor a severe reproof. A luxury-loving Athenian, once visiting Sparta and seeing the coarse fare of the citizens, is reported to have declared that now he understood the Spartan disregard of life in battle. "Any one," said he, "must naturally prefer death to life on such fare as this." EDUCATION OF THE YOUTH.--Children were considered as belonging to the state. Every infant was brought before the Council of Elders; and if it did not seem likely to become a robust and useful citizen, it was exposed in a mountain glen. At seven the education and training of the youth were committed to the charge of public officers, called boy-trainers. The aim of the entire course, as to the boys, was to make a nation of soldiers who should despise toil and danger and prefer death to military dishonor. Reading and writing were untaught, and the art of rhetoric was despised. Spartan brevity was a proverb, whence our word _laconic_ (from Laconia), implying a concise and pithy mode of expression. Boys were taught to respond in the fewest words possible. At the public tables they were not permitted to speak until questioned: they sat "silent as statues." As Plutarch puts it, "Lycurgus was for having the money bulky, heavy, and of little value; and the language, on the contrary, very pithy and short, and a great deal of sense compressed in a few words." But before all things else the Spartan youth was taught to bear pain unflinchingly. Often he was scourged just for the purpose of accustoming his body to pain. Frequently, it is said, boys died under the lash, without betraying their suffering by look or moan. Another custom tended to the same end as the foregoing usage. The boys were at times compelled to forage for their food. If detected, they were severely punished for having been so unskilful as not to get safely away with their booty. This custom, as well as the fortitude of the Spartan youth, is familiar to all through the story of the boy who, having stolen a young fox and concealed it beneath his tunic, allowed the animal to tear out his vitals, without betraying himself by the movement of a muscle. The Cryptia, which has been represented as an organization of young Spartans who were allowed, as a means of rendering themselves ready and expert in war, to hunt and kill the Helots, seems in reality to have been a sort of police institution, designed to guard against uprisings of the serfs. ESTIMATE OF THE SPARTAN INSTITUTIONS.--That the laws and regulations of the Spartan constitution were admirably adapted to the end in view,--the rearing of a nation of skilful and resolute warriors,--the long military supremacy of Sparta among the states of Greece abundantly attests. But when we consider the aim and object of the Spartan institutions, we must pronounce them low and unworthy. The true order of things was just reversed among the Lacedæmonians. Government exists for the individual: at Sparta the individual lived for the state. The body is intended to be the instrument of the mind: the Spartans reversed this, and attended to the education of the mind only so far as its development enhanced the effectiveness of the body as a weapon in warfare. Spartan history teaches how easy it is for a nation, like an individual, to misdirect its energies--to subordinate the higher to the lower. It illustrates, too, the fact that only those nations that labor to develop that which is best and highest in man make helpful contributions to the progress of the world. Sparta, in significant contrast to Athens, bequeathed nothing to posterity. THE MESSENIAN WARS.--The most important event in Spartan history between the age of Lycurgus and the commencement of the Persian War was the long contest with Messenia, known as the First and Second Messenian Wars (about 750-650 B.C.). Messenia was one of the districts of the Peloponnesus which, like Laconia, had been taken possession of by the Dorians at the time of the great invasion. It is told that the Spartans, in the second war, falling into despair, sent to Delphi for advice. The oracle directed them to ask Athens for a commander. The Athenians did not wish to aid the Lacedæmonians, yet dared not oppose the oracle. So they sent Tyrtæus, a poet-schoolmaster, who they hoped and thought would prove of but little service to Sparta. Whatever truth there may be in this part of the story, it seems indisputable that during the Second Messenian War, Tyrtæus, an Attic poet, reanimated the drooping spirits of the Spartans by the energy of his martial strains. Perhaps it would not be too much to say that Sparta owed her final victory to the inspiring songs of this martial poet. The conquered Messenians were reduced to serfdom, and their condition made as degrading and bitter as that of the Helots of Laconia. Many, choosing exile, pushed out into the western seas in search of new homes. Some of the fugitives founded Rhegium, in Italy; others, settling in Sicily, gave name and importance to the still existing city of Messina. GROWTH OF THE POWER OF SPARTA.--After having secured possession of Messenia, Sparta conquered the southern part of Argolis. All the southern portion of the Peloponnesus was now subject to her commands. On the north, Sparta extended her power over many of the villages, or townships, of Arcadia; but her advance in this direction having been checked by Tegea, one of the few important Arcadian cities, Sparta entered into an alliance with that city, which ever after remained her faithful friend and helper. This alliance was one of the main sources of Spartan preponderance in Greece during the next hundred years and more. Sparta was now the most powerful state in the Peloponnesus. Her fame was spread even beyond the limits of Hellas. Croesus, king of Lydia, sought an alliance with her in his unfortunate war with Persia, which just now was the rising power in Asia. 3. THE GROWTH OF ATHENS. THE ATTIC PEOPLE.--The population of Attica in historic times was essentially Ionian in race, but there were in it strains of other Hellenic stocks, besides some non-Hellenic elements as well. This mixed origin of the population is believed to be one secret of the versatile yet well- balanced character which distinguished the Attic people above all other branches of the Hellenic family. It is not the absolutely pure, but the mixed races, like the English people, that have made the largest contributions to civilization. THE SITE OF ATHENS.--Four or five miles from the sea, a flat-topped rock, about one thousand feet in length and half as many in width, rises with abrupt cliffs, one hundred and fifty feet above the level of the plains of Attica. The security afforded by this eminence doubtless led to its selection as a stronghold by the early Attic settlers. Here a few buildings, perched upon the summit of the rock and surrounded by a palisade, constituted the beginning of the capital whose fame has spread over all the world. THE KINGS OF ATHENS.--During the Heroic Age Athens was ruled by kings, like all the other Grecian cities. The names of Theseus and Codrus are the most noted of the regal line. [Illustration: THE ACROPOLIS AT ATHENS. (From a Photograph.)] To Theseus tradition ascribed the work of uniting the different Attic villages, or cantons, twelve in number, into a single city, on the seat of the ancient Cecropia (see p. 92). This prehistoric union, however or by whomsoever effected, laid the basis of the greatness of Athens. Respecting Codrus, the following legend is told: At one time the Dorians from the Peloponnesus invaded Attica. Codrus having learned that an oracle had assured them of success if they spared the life of the Athenian king, disguised himself, and, with a single companion, made an attack upon some Spartan soldiers, who instantly slew him. Discovering that the king of Athens had fallen by a Lacedæmonian sword, the Spartans despaired of taking the city, and withdrew from the country. THE ARCHONS (1050?-612 B.C.).--Codrus was the last king of Athens. His successor, elected by the nobles, was given simply the name of Archon, or Ruler, for the reason, it is said, that no one was thought worthy to bear the title of the divine Codrus. The real truth is, that the nobles were transforming the Homeric monarchy into an oligarchy, and to effect the change were taking away from the king his royal powers. At the outset there was but one Archon, elected for life; later, there were nine, chosen annually. Throughout these early times the government was in the hands of the nobles; the people, that is, the free farmers and artisans, having no part in the management of public affairs. The people at length demanded a voice in the government, or at least legal protection from the exactions and cruelties of the wealthy. THE LAWS OF DRACO (about 620 B.C.).--To meet these demands, the nobles appointed one of their own number, Draco, to prepare a code of laws. He reduced existing customs and regulations to a definite and written constitution, assigning to the smallest offence the penalty of death. This cruel severity of the Draconian laws caused an Athenian orator to say of them that "they were written, not in ink, but in blood." But for their harshness Draco was not responsible: he did not make them; their severity was simply a reflection of the harshness of those early times. THE REBELLION OF CYLON (612 B.C.).--Soon after the enactment of Draco's laws, which naturally served only to increase the discontent of the people, Cylon, a rich and ambitious noble, taking advantage of the state of affairs, attempted to overthrow the government and make himself supreme. He seized the citadel of the Acropolis, where he was closely besieged by the Archons. Finally the Archon Megacles offered the insurgents their lives on condition of surrender. They accepted the offer, but fearing to trust themselves among their enemies without some protection, fastened a string to a statue of Athena, and holding fast to this, descended from the citadel, into the streets of Athens. As they came in front of the altars of the Furies, the line broke; and Megacles, professing to believe that this mischance indicated that the goddess refused to shield them, caused them to be set upon and massacred. The people were alarmed lest the fierce anger of the avenging Furies had been incurred by the slaughter of prisoners in violation of a sacred oath and before their very altars. Calamities that now befell the state deepened their apprehension. Thus the people were inflamed still more against the aristocracy. They demanded and finally secured the banishment of the Alcmæonidæ, the family to which Megacles belonged. Even the bones of the dead of the family were dug up, and cast beyond the frontiers. The people further insisted upon a fresh revision of the laws and a share in the government. THE LAWS OF SOLON (594 B.C.).--Solon, a man held in great esteem by all classes, was chosen to draw up a new code of laws. He repealed many of the cruel laws of Draco; permitted the return of persons driven into exile; gave relief to the debtor class, especially to the poor farmers, whose little plots were covered with mortgages, by reducing the value of the money in which they would have to make payment; ordered those held in slavery for debt to be set free; and cancelled all fines payable to the state. These measures caused contentment and prosperity to take the place, everywhere throughout Attica, of previous discontent and wretchedness. CHANGES IN THE ATHENIAN CONSTITUTION.--The changes wrought by Solon in the political constitution of Athens were equally wise and beneficent. He divided all the citizens of Athens into four classes, according to their income. Only members of the first class could hold the office of Archon; and only those of the first three classes were eligible to the Council of Elders; but every member of all the classes had the right to vote in the popular assembly. Thus property instead of birth was made the basis of political rights. This completely changed the character of the government; it was no longer an exclusive oligarchy. A council known as the Council of the Four Hundred was created by Solon. Its chief duties were to decide what matters might be discussed by the public assembly, and to execute the resolutions of that body. THE TRIBUNAL OF THE AREOPAGUS.--Solon also enlarged the jurisdiction of the celebrated Tribunal of the Areopagus, a venerable council that from time out of memory had been held on the Areopagus, or Mars' Hill, near the Acropolis. The judges sat beneath the open sky, that they might not be contaminated, it is said, by the breath of the criminals brought before them. To this court was committed the care of morals and religion. It was in the presence of this venerable tribunal, six hundred years after Solon's time, that Paul stood when he made his eloquent defence of Christianity. THE PUBLIC ASSEMBLY.--The public assembly, under the constitution of Solon, was made the most important of all the institutions of the state. It was the fountain of all power. Contrary to the rule in Sparta, any citizen had the right not only of voting, but of speaking on any question which the assembly had a right to discuss. Six thousand citizens were required to constitute a quorum to transact business in cases of special importance. This popular assembly grew into vast importance in later times. By it were discussed and decided questions affecting the entire Hellenic world. These laws and institutions of Solon laid the basis of the Athenian democracy. THE TYRANT PISISTRATUS (560-527 B.C.).--Solon had the misfortune of living to see his institutions used to set up a tyranny, by an ambitious kinsman, his nephew Pisistratus. This man courted popular favor, and called himself the "friend of the people." One day, having inflicted many wounds upon himself, he drove his chariot hastily into the public square, and pretended that he had been thus set upon by the nobles, because of his devotion to the people's cause. The people, moved with sympathy and indignation, voted him a guard of fifty men. Under cover of raising this company, Pisistratus gathered a much larger force, seized the Acropolis, and made himself master of Athens. Though twice expelled from the city, he as often returned, and finally succeeded in getting a permanent hold of the government. The rule of the usurper was mild, and under him Athens enjoyed a period of great prosperity. He adorned the city with temples and other splendid buildings, and constructed great aqueducts. Just beyond the city walls, he laid out the Lyceum, a sort of public park, which became in after years the favorite resort of the philosophers and poets of Athens. He was a liberal patron of literature; and caused the Homeric poems to be collected and edited. He died 527 B.C., thirty-three years after his first seizure of the citadel. Solon himself said of him that he had no vice save ambition. EXPULSION OF THE TYRANTS FROM ATHENS (510 B.C.).--The two sons of Pisistratus, Hippias and Hipparchus, succeeded to his power. At first they emulated the example of their father, and Athens flourished under their parental rule. But at length an unfortunate event gave an entirely different tone to the government. Hipparchus, having insulted a young noble, was assassinated. Hippias escaped harm, but the event caused him to become suspicious and severe. His rule now became a tyranny indeed, and was brought to an end in the following way. After his last return to Athens, Pisistratus had sent the "accursed" Alcmæonidæ into a second exile. During this period of banishment an opportunity arose for them to efface the stain of sacrilege which was still supposed to cling to them on account of the old crime of Megacles. The temple at Delphi having been destroyed by fire, they contracted with the Amphictyons to rebuild it. They not only completed the work in the most honorable manner throughout, but even went so far beyond the terms of their contract as to use beautiful Parian marble for the front of the temple, when only common stone was required by the specifications. By this act the exiled family won to such a degree the favor of the priests of the sacred college, that they were able to influence the utterances of the oracle. The invariable answer now of the Pythia to Spartan inquirers at the shrine was, "Athens must be set free." Moved at last by the repeated injunctions of the oracle, the Spartans resolved to drive Hippias from Athens. Their first attempt was unsuccessful; but in a second they were so fortunate as to capture the two children of the tyrant, who, to secure their release, agreed to leave the city (510 B.C.). He retired to Asia Minor, and spent the rest of his life, as we shall learn hereafter, seeking aid in different quarters to re- establish his tyranny in Athens. The Athenians passed a decree of perpetual exile against him and all his family. THE REFORMS OF CLISTHENES (509 B.C.).--Straightway upon the expulsion of the Tyrant Hippias, there arose a great strife between the people, who of course wished to organize the government in accord with the constitution of Solon, and the nobles, who desired to re-establish the old aristocratical rule. Clisthenes, an aristocrat, espoused the cause of the popular party. Through his influence several important changes in the constitution, which rendered it still more democratical than under Solon, were now effected. Athenian citizenship was conferred upon _all the free inhabitants of Attica_. This made such a radical change in the constitution in the interest of the masses, that Clisthenes rather than Solon is regarded by many as the real founder of the Athenian democracy. OSTRACISM.--But of all the innovations or institutions of Clisthenes, that known as _ostracism_ was the most characteristic. By means of this process any person who had excited the suspicions or displeasure of the people could, without trial, be banished from Athens for a period of ten years. Six thousand votes cast against any person in a meeting of the popular assembly was a decree of banishment. The name of the person whose banishment was sought was written on a piece of pottery or a shell (in Greek _ostrakon_), hence the term _ostracism_. The original design of this institution was to prevent the recurrence of such a usurpation as that of the Pisistratidæ. The privilege and power it gave the people were often abused, and many of the ablest and best statesmen of Athens were sent into exile through the influence of some demagogue who for the moment had caught the popular ear. No stigma or disgrace attached to the person ostracized. The vote came to be employed, as a rule, simply to settle disputes between rival leaders of political parties. Thus the vote merely expressed political preference, the ostracized person being simply the defeated candidate for popular favor. The institution was short-lived. It was resorted to for the last time during the Peloponnesian War (417 B.C.). The people then, in a freak, ostracized a man whom all admitted to be the meanest man in Athens. This was regarded as such a degradation of the institution, as well as such an honor to the mean man, that never thereafter did the Athenians degrade a good man, or honor a bad one, by a resort to the measure. SPARTA OPPOSES THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY.--The aristocratic party at Athens was naturally bitterly opposed to all these democratic innovations. The Spartans, also, viewed with disquiet and jealousy this rapid growth of the Athenian democracy, and tried to overthrow the new government and restore Hippias to power. But they did not succeed in their purpose, and Hippias went away to Persia to seek aid of King Darius. His solicitations, in connection with an affront which the Athenians just now offered the king himself by aiding his revolted subjects in Ionia, led directly up to the memorable struggle known as the Græco-Persian wars. [Illustration: GREEK WARRIORS PREPARING FOR BATTLE.] CHAPTER XIII. THE GRÆCO-PERSIAN WARS. (500-479 B.C.) EXPEDITIONS OF DARIUS AGAINST GREECE.--In narrating the history of the Persians, we told how Darius, after having subdued the revolt of his Ionian subjects in Asia Minor, turned his armaments against the European Greeks, to punish them for the part they had taken in the capture and burning of Sardis. It will be recalled how ill-fated was his first expedition, which was led by his son-in-law Mardonius (see p. 80). Undismayed by this disaster, Darius issued orders for the raising and equipping of another and stronger armament. Meanwhile he sent heralds to the various Grecian states to demand earth and water, which elements among the Persians were symbols of submission. The weaker states gave the tokens required; but the Athenians and Spartans threw the envoys of the king into pits and wells, and bade them help themselves to earth and water. By the beginning of the year 490 B.C., another Persian army of 120,000 men had been mustered for the second attempt upon Greece. This armament was intrusted to the command of the experienced generals Datis and Artaphernes; but was under the guidance of the traitor Hippias. A fleet of six hundred ships bore the army from the coasts of Asia Minor over the Aegean towards the Grecian shores. After receiving the submission of the most important of the Cyclades, and capturing and sacking the city of Eretria upon the island of Euboea, the Persians landed at Marathon, barely one day's journey from Athens. Here is a sheltered bay, which is edged by a crescent-shaped plain, backed by the rugged ranges of Parnes and Pentelicus. Upon this level ground the Persian generals drew up their army, flushed and confident with their recent successes. THE BATTLE OF MARATHON (490 B.C.).--The Athenians were nerved by the very magnitude of the danger to almost superhuman energy. Slaves were transformed into soldiers by the promise of liberty. A fleet runner, Phidippides by name, was despatched to Sparta for aid. In just thirty-six hours he was in Sparta, which is one hundred and fifty miles from Athens. But it so happened that it lacked a few days of the full moon, during which interval the Spartans, owing to an old superstition, were averse to setting out upon a military expedition. They promised aid, but moved only in time to reach Athens when all was over. The Platæans, firm and grateful friends of the Athenians, on account of some former service, no sooner received the latter's appeal for help than they responded to a man. The Athenians and their faithful allies, numbering about ten thousand in all, under the command of Miltiades, were drawn up in battle array just where the hills of Pentelicus sink down into the plain of Marathon. The vast host of the Persians filled the level ground in their front. The fate of Greece and the future of Europe were in the keeping of Miltiades and his trusty warriors. Without waiting for the attack of the Persians, the Greeks charged and swept like a tempest from the mountain over the plain, pushed the Persians back towards the shore, and with great slaughter drove them to their ships. Miltiades at once despatched a courier to Athens with intelligence of his victory. The messenger reached the city in a few hours, but so breathless from his swift run that, as the people thronged eagerly around him to hear the news he bore, he could merely gasp, "Victory is ours," and fell dead. But the danger was not yet past. The Persian fleet, instead of returning to the coast of Asia, bore down upon Athens. Informed by watchers on the hills of the movements of the enemy, Miltiades immediately set out with his little army for the capital, which he reached just at evening, the battle at Marathon having been won in the forenoon of that same day. The next morning, when the Persian generals would have made an attack upon the city, they found themselves confronted by the same men who but yesterday had beaten them back from the plains of Marathon. Shrinking from another encounter with these citizen-soldiers of Athens, the Persians spread their sails, and bore away towards the Ionian shore. Thus the cloud that had lowered so threateningly over Hellas was for a time dissipated. The most imposing honors were accorded to the heroes who had achieved the glorious victory, and their names and deeds were transmitted to posterity, in song and marble. And as the gods were believed to have interposed in behalf of Greece, suitable recognition of their favor was made in gifts and memorials. A considerable part of the brazen arms and shields gathered from the battle-field was melted into a colossal statue of Athena, which was placed upon the Acropolis, as the guardian of Athens. RESULTS OF THE BATTLE OF MARATHON.--The battle of Marathon is reckoned as one of the "decisive battles of the world." It marks an epoch, not only in the life of Greece, but in that of Europe. Hellenic civilization was spared to mature its fruit, not for itself alone, but for the world. The battle decided that no longer the despotism of the East, with its repression of all individual action, but the freedom of the West, with all its incentives to personal effort, should control the affairs and mould the ideas and institutions of the future. It broke the spell of the Persian name, and destroyed forever the prestige of the Persian arms. It gave the Hellenic peoples that position of authority and pre-eminence that had been so long enjoyed by the successive races of the East. It especially revealed the Athenians to themselves. The consciousness of resources and power became the inspiration of their future acts. They performed great deeds thereafter because they believed themselves able to perform them. MILTIADES FALLS INTO DISGRACE.--The distinguished services Miltiades had rendered his country, made him the hero of the hour at Athens. Taking advantage of the public feeling in his favor, he persuaded the Athenians to put in his hands a fleet for an enterprise respecting the nature of which no one save himself was to know anything whatever. Of course it was generally supposed that he meditated an attack upon the Persians or their allies, and with full faith in the judgment as well as in the integrity of their favorite, the Athenians gave him the command he asked. But Miltiades abused the confidence imposed in him. He led the expedition against the island of Paros, simply to avenge some private wrong. The undertaking was unsuccessful, and Miltiades, severely wounded, returned to Athens, where he was brought to trial for his conduct. His never-to-be- forgotten services at Marathon pleaded eloquently for him, and he escaped being sentenced to death, but was subjected to a heavy fine. This he was unable to pay, and in a short time he died of his wound. The unfortunate affair left an ineffaceable blot upon a fame otherwise the most resplendent in Grecian story. ATHENS PREPARES FOR PERSIAN VENGEANCE.--Many among the Athenians were inclined to believe that the battle of Marathon had freed Athens forever from the danger of a Persian invasion. But there was at least one among them who was clear-sighted enough to see that that battle was only the beginning of a great struggle. This was Themistocles, a sagacious, versatile, and ambitious statesman, who labored to persuade the Athenians to strengthen their navy, in order to be ready to meet the danger he foresaw. Themistocles was opposed in this policy by Aristides, called the Just, a man of the most scrupulous integrity, who feared that Athens would make a serious mistake if she converted her land force into a naval armament. The contention grew so sharp between them that the ostracism was called into use to decide the matter. Six thousand votes were cast against Aristides, and he was sent into exile. It is related that while the vote that ostracized him was being taken in the popular assembly, an illiterate peasant, who was a stranger to Aristides, asked him to write the name of Aristides upon his tablet. As he placed the name desired upon the shell, the statesman asked the man what wrong Aristides had ever done him. "None," responded the voter; "I don't even know him; but I am tired of hearing him called 'the Just.'" After the banishment of Aristides, Themistocles was free to carry out his naval policy without any serious opposition, and soon Athens had the largest fleet of any Greek city, with a harbor at Piræus. XERXES' PREPARATIONS TO INVADE GREECE.--No sooner had the news of the disaster at Marathon been carried to Darius than he began to make gigantic preparations to avenge this second defeat and insult. It was in the midst of these plans for revenge that, as we have already learned, death cut short his reign, and his son Xerxes came to the throne (see p. 80). Urged on by his nobles, as well as by exiled Greeks at his court, who sought to gratify ambition or enjoy revenge in the humiliation and ruin of their native land, Xerxes, though at first disinclined to enter into a contest with the Greeks, at length ordered the preparations begun by his father to be pushed forward with the utmost energy. For eight years all Asia resounded with the din of preparation. Levies were made upon all the provinces that acknowledged the authority of the Great King, from India to the Hellespont. Vast contingents of vessels were furnished by the coast countries of the Mediterranean. Immense stores of provisions, the harvests of many years, were gathered into great storehouses along the intended line of march. While all these preparations were going on in Asia itself, Phoenician and Egyptian architects were employed in spanning the Hellespont with a double bridge of boats, which was to unite the two continents as with a royal highway. At the same time, the isthmus at Mount Athos, in rounding which promontory the admirals of Mardonius had lost their fleet, was cut by a canal, traces of which may be seen at this day. Three years were consumed in these gigantic works. With them completed, or far advanced, Xerxes set out from his capital to join the countless hosts that from all quarters of the compass were gathering at Sardis, in Asia Minor. DISUNION OF THE GREEKS: CONGRESS AT CORINTH (481 B.C.).--Startling rumors of the gigantic preparations that the Persian king was making to crush them were constantly borne across the Aegean to the ears of the Greeks in Europe. Finally came intelligence that Xerxes was about to begin his march. Something must now be done to meet the impending danger. Mainly through the exertions of Themistocles, a council of the Greek cities was convened at Corinth in the fall of 481 B.C. But on account of feuds, jealousies, and party spirit, only a small number of the states of Hellas could be brought to act in concert. Argos would not join the proposed confederation through hatred of Sparta; Thebes, through jealousy of Athens. The Cretans, to whom an embassy had been sent soliciting aid, refused all assistance. Gelon, the Tyrant of Syracuse, offered to send over a large armament, provided that he were given the chief command of the allied forces. His aid on such terms was refused. Thus, through different causes, many of the Greek cities held aloof from the confederation, so that only about fifteen or sixteen states were brought to unite their resources against the Barbarians; and even the strength of many of those cities that did enter into the alliance was divided by party spirit. The friends of aristocratical government were almost invariably friends of Persia, because a Persian victory in Greece proper meant what it had already meant in Ionia,--a suppression of the democracies as incompatible with the Persian form of government. Thus for the sake of a party victory, the aristocrats were ready to betray their country into the hands of the Barbarians. Furthermore, the Delphian oracle, aristocratical in its sympathies, was luke-warm and wavering, if not actually disloyal, and by its timid responses, disheartened the patriot party. But under the inspiration of Themistocles the patriots in convention at Corinth determined upon desperate resistance to the Barbarians. It was at first decided to concentrate a strong force in the Vale of Tempe, and at that point to dispute the advance of the enemy; but this being found impracticable, it was resolved that the first stand against the invaders should be made at the pass of Thermopylæ. The Spartans were given the chief command of both the land and the naval forces. The Athenians might fairly have insisted upon their right to the command of the allied fleet, but they patriotically waived their claim, for the sake of harmony. THE HELLESPONTINE BRIDGES BROKEN.--As the vast army of Xerxes was about to move from Sardis, intelligence came that the bridges across the Hellespont had been wrecked by a violent tempest. It is said that Xerxes, in great wrath, ordered the architects to be put to death, and the sea to be bound with fetters and scourged. The scourgers faithfully performed their duty, at the same time gratuitously cursing the traitorous and rebellious Hellespont with what Herodotus calls "non-Hellenic and blasphemous terms." Other architects spanned the channel with two stronger and firmer bridges. Each roadway rested upon a row of from three to four hundred vessels, all securely anchored like modern pontoons. The bridges were each about one mile in length, and furnished with high parapets, that the horses and cattle might not be rendered uneasy at sight of the water. PASSAGE OF THE HELLESPONT.--With the first indications of the opening spring of 480 B.C., just ten years after the defeat at Marathon, the vast Persian army was astir and concentrating from all points upon the Hellespont. The passage of this strait, as pictured to us in the inimitable narration of Herodotus, is one of the most dramatic of all the spectacles afforded by history. Before the passage commenced, the bridges were strewn with the sacred myrtle and perfumed with incense from golden censers, while the sea was placated with libations poured by the king himself. As the east reddened with the approach of day, prayers were offered, and the moment the rays of the sun touched the bridges the passage began. To avoid accidents and delays, the trains of baggage wagons and the beasts of burden crossed by one causeway, leaving the other free for the march of the army. The first of the host to cross was the sacred guard of the Great King, the Ten Thousand Immortals, all crowned with garlands as in festival procession. Preceding the king, the gorgeous Chariot of the Sun moved slowly, drawn by eight milk-white steeds. Herodotus affirms that for seven days and seven nights the bridges groaned beneath the living tide that Asia was pouring into Europe. [Footnote: According to Herodotus, the land and naval forces of Xerxes amounted to 2,317,000 men, besides about 2,000,000 slaves and attendants. It is believed that these figures are a great exaggeration, and that the actual number of the Persian army could not have exceeded 900,000 men.] BATTLE OF THERMOPYLÆ (480 B.C.).--Leading from Thessaly into Central Greece is a narrow pass, pressed on one side by the sea and on the other by rugged mountain ridges. At the foot of the cliffs break forth several hot springs, whence the name of the pass, Thermopylæ, or "Hot Gates." At this point, in accordance with the decision of the Corinthian Congress, was offered the first resistance to the progress of the Persian army. Leonidas, king of Sparta, with three hundred Spartan soldiers and about six thousand allies from different states of Greece, held the pass. As the Greeks were about to celebrate the Olympian games, which their religious scruples would not allow them to postpone, they left this handful of men unsupported to hold in check the army of Xerxes until the festival days should be past. The Spartans could be driven from their advantageous position only by an attack in front, as the Grecian fleet prevented Xerxes from landing a force in their rear. Before assaulting them, Xerxes summoned them to give up their arms. The answer of Leonidas was, "Come and take them." For two days the Persians tried to storm the pass. The Asiatics were driven to the attack by their officers armed with whips. But every attempt to force the way was repulsed; even the Ten Thousand Immortals were hurled back from the Spartan front like waves from a cliff. But an act of treachery on the part of a native Greek rendered unavailing all the bravery of the keepers of the pass. A by-way leading over the mountains to the rear of the Spartans was revealed to Xerxes. The startling intelligence was brought to Leonidas that the Persians were descending the mountain-path in his rear. He saw instantly that all was lost. The allies were permitted to seek safety in flight while opportunity remained. But to him and his Spartan companions there could be no thought of retreat. Death in the pass, the defence of which had been intrusted to them, was all that Spartan honor and Spartan law now left them. The next day, surrounded by the Persian host, they fought with desperate valor; but, overwhelmed by mere numbers, they were slain to the last man. With them also perished seven hundred Thespians who had chosen death with their companions. Over the bodies of the Spartan soldiers a monument was afterwards erected with this inscription: "Stranger, tell the Lacedæmonians that we lie here in obedience to their orders." THE BURNING OF ATHENS.-Athens now lay open to the invaders. The Peloponnesians, thinking of their own safety simply, commenced throwing up defences across the isthmus of Corinth, working day and night under the impulse of an almost insane fear. Athens was thus left outside to care for herself. Counsels were divided. The Delphian oracle had obscurely declared, "When everything else in the land of Cecrops shall be taken, Zeus grants to Athena that the _wooden walls_ alone shall remain unconquered, to defend you and your children." The oracle was believed to be, as was declared, "firm as adamant." But there were various opinions as to what was meant by the "wooden walls." Some thought the Pythian priestess directed the Athenians to seek refuge in the forests on the mountains; but Themistocles (who it is thought may have himself prompted the oracle) contended that the ships were plainly indicated. The last interpretation was acted upon. All the soldiers of Attica were crowded upon the vessels of the fleet at Salamis. The aged men, with the women and children, were carried out of the country to different places of safety. All the towns of Attica, with the capital, were thus abandoned to the conquerors. A few days afterwards the Persians entered upon the deserted plain, which they rendered more desolate by ravaging the fields and burning the empty towns. Athens shared the common fate, and her splendid temples sank in flames. Sardis was avenged. The joy in distant Susa was unbounded. THE NAVAL BATTLE OF SALAMIS (480 B.C.).--Just off the coast of Attica, separated from the mainland by a narrow passage of water, lies the island of Salamis. Here lay the Greek fleet, awaiting the Persian attack. To hasten on the attack before dissensions should divide the Greek forces, Themistocles resorted to the following stratagem. He sent a messenger to Xerxes representing that he himself was ready to espouse the Persian cause, and advised an immediate attack upon the Athenian fleet, which he represented as being in no condition to make any formidable resistance. Xerxes was deceived. He ordered an immediate attack. From a lofty throne upon the shore he himself overlooked the scene and watched the result. The Persian fleet was broken to pieces and two hundred of the ships destroyed. [Footnote: The entire Persian fleet numbered about seven hundred and fifty vessels; the Grecian, about three hundred and eighty-five ships, mostly triremes.] The blow was decisive. Xerxes, fearing that treachery might burn or break the Hellespontine bridges, instantly despatched a hundred ships to protect them; and then, leaving Mardonius with three hundred thousand men to retrieve the disaster of Salamis, and effect, as he promised to do, the conquest of the rest of Greece, the monarch set out on his ignominious retreat to Asia. [Footnote: On the very day of the battle of Salamis, Gelon of Syracuse gained a great victory over the Carthaginians at the battle of Himera, in the north of Sicily. So it was a memorable day for Hellas in the West as well as in the East.] THE BATTLES OF PLATÆA AND MYCALE (479 B.C.).--The next year the Persian fleet and army thus left behind in Europe were entirely destroyed, both on the same day--the army at Platæa, near Thebes, by the combined Greek forces under the Spartan Pausanias; and the fleet, including the Asiatic land forces, at Mycale, on the Ionian coast. The battles of Salamis, Platæa, and Mycale were the successive blows that shattered into fragments the most splendid armaments ever commanded by Asiatic despot. MEMORIALS AND TROPHIES OF THE WAR.--The glorious issue of the war caused a general burst of joy and exultation throughout all Greece. Poets, artists, and orators, all vied with one another in commemorating the deeds of the heroes whose valor had warded off the impending danger. Nor did the pious Grecians think that the marvellous deliverance had been effected without the intervention of the gods in their behalf. To the temple at Delphi was gratefully consecrated a tenth of the immense spoils in gold and silver from the field of Platæa; and within the sanctuary of Athena, upon the Acropolis at Athens, were placed the broken cables of the Hellespontine bridges, at once a proud trophy of victory, and a signal illustration of the divine punishment that had befallen the audacious and impious attempt to lay a yoke upon the sacred waters of the Hellespont. CHAPTER XIV. PERIOD OF ATHENIAN SUPREMACY. (479-431 B.C.) REBUILDING THE WALLS OF ATHENS.--After the Persians had been expelled from Greece, the first care of the Athenians was the rebuilding of their homes. Their next task was the restoration of the city walls. The exalted hopes for the future which had been raised by the almost incredible achievements of the past few months, led the Athenians to draw a vast circuit of seven miles about the Acropolis as the line of the new ramparts. The rival states of the Peloponnesus watched the proceedings of the Athenians with the most jealous interest. While they could not but admire Athens, they feared her. Sparta sent an embassy to dissuade the citizens from rebuilding the walls, hypocritically assigning as the cause of her interest in the matter her solicitude lest, in case of another Persian invasion, the city, if captured, might become a shelter and defence to the enemy. But the Athenians persisted in their purpose, and in a marvellously short time had raised the wall to such a height that they could defy interference. THEMISTOCLES' NAVAL POLICY.--Themistocles saw clearly that the supremacy of Athens among the Grecian states must be secured and maintained by her mastery of the sea. He had unbounded visions of the maritime power and glory that might come to her through her fleet, those "wooden walls" to which at this moment she owed her very existence; and he succeeded in inspiring his countrymen with his own enthusiasm and sanguine hopes. In the prosecution of his views, Themistocles persuaded the Athenians to enlarge the harbor of Piræus, the most spacious of the ports of Athens, and to surround the place with immense walls, far exceeding, both in compass and strength, those of the capital. He also led his countrymen to the resolution of adding each year twenty well-equipped triremes to their navy. This policy, initiated by Themistocles, was, as we shall see, zealously pursued by the statesmen that after him successively assumed the lead in Athenian affairs. HIS OSTRACISM.--Themistocles well deserved the honor of being called, as he was, the founder of the New Athens. But, although an able statesman, he was an unscrupulous man. He accepted bribes and sold his influence, thereby acquiring an enormous property. Finally he was ostracized (471 B.C.). After long wanderings, he became a resident at the court of the Persian king. Tradition affirms that Artaxerxes, in accordance with Persian usage, provided for the courtier exile by assigning to three cities in Asia Minor the care of providing for his table: one furnished bread, a second meat, and a third wines. It is told that one day, as he sat down to his richly loaded board, he exclaimed, "How much we should have lost, my children, if we had not been ruined!" THE CONFEDERACY OF DELOS (477 B.C.).--In order that they might be able to carry on the war more effectively against the Persians, the Ionian states of Asia Minor, the islands of the Ægean, and some of the states in Greece proper, shortly after the battle of Platæa, formed themselves into what is known as the Confederacy of Delos. Sparta, on account of her military reputation, had hitherto been accorded the place of pre-eminence and authority in all such alliances of the Hellenic cities. She had come, indeed, to regard herself as the natural guardian and leader of Greece. But at this time the unbearable arrogance of the Spartan general Pausanias, who presumed upon the great reputation he had gained at the battle of Platæa, led the states which had entered into the alliance to look to Athens to assume the position of leadership in the new confederacy. The lofty character of Aristides, who was now the most prominent Athenian leader, and his great reputation for fairness and incorruptible integrity, also contributed to the same result. He was chosen the first president of the league (477 B.C.), and the sacred island of Delos was made the repository of the common funds. What proportion of the ships and money needed for carrying out the purposes of the union should be contributed by the different states, was left entirely to the decision of Aristides, such was the confidence all had in his equity; and so long as he had control of the matter, none of the members of the alliance ever had cause of complaint. Thus did Sparta lose, and Athens gain, the place of precedence among the Ionian states. The Dorian states of the Peloponnesus, in the main, still looked to Sparta as their leader and adviser. All Greece was thus divided into two great leagues, under the rival leadership of Sparta and Athens. THE ATHENIANS CONVERT THE DELIAN LEAGUE INTO AN EMPIRE.--The Confederacy of Delos laid the basis of the imperial power of Athens. The Athenians misused their authority as leaders of the league, and gradually, during the interval between the formation of the union and the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, reduced their allies, or confederates, to the condition of tributaries and subjects. Athens transformed the league into an empire in the following manner. The contributions assessed by Aristides upon the different members of the confederation consisted of ships and their crews for the larger states, and of money payments for the smaller ones. From the first, Athens attended to this assessment matter, and saw to it that each member of the league made its proper contribution. After a while, some of the cities preferring to make a money payment in lieu of ships, Athens accepted the commutation, and then building the ships herself, added them to her own navy. Thus the confederates disarmed themselves and armed their master. Very soon the restraints which Athens imposed upon her allies became irksome, and they began to refuse, one after another, to pay the assessment in any form. Naxos, one of the Cyclades, was the first island to secede, as it were, from the league (466 B.C.). But Athens had no idea of admitting any such doctrine of state rights, and with her powerful navy forced the Naxians to remain within the union, and to pay an increased tribute. What happened in the case of Naxos happened in the case of almost all the other members of the confederation. By the year 449 B.C. only three of the island members of the league still retained their independence. Even before this date (probably about 457 B.C.) the Athenians had transferred the common treasury from Delos to Athens, and diverting the tribute from its original purpose, were beginning to spend it, not in the prosecution of war against the Barbarians, but in the execution of home enterprises, as though the treasure were their own revenue. Thus what had been simply a voluntary confederation of sovereign and independent cities, was converted into what was practically an absolute monarchy, with the Attic democracy as the imperial master. What made this servitude of the former allies of Athens all the more galling was the fact that they themselves had been compelled to forge the very chains which fettered them; for it was their money that had built and was maintaining the fleet by which they were kept in subjection and forced to do whatever might be the will of the Athenians. THE LEADERSHIP OF CIMON; HIS OSTRACISM.--One of the ablest and most popular of the generals who commanded the forces of the Athenians during this same period when they were enslaving their confederates, was Cimon, the son of Miltiades. He was one of those whose spirits had been fired by the exciting events attendant upon the Persian invasion. He had acquired a certain reputation, at the time of the abandonment of Athens, by being the first to hang up his bridle in the sanctuary of the Acropolis, thus expressing his resolution to place all his confidence in the fleet, as Themistocles advised. The popularity of Cimon at last declined, and he suffered ostracism, as had Aristides and Themistocles before him. His loss of public favor came about in this manner. In the year 464 B.C., a terrible earthquake destroyed a large portion of Sparta. In the panic of the appalling disaster the Spartans were led to believe that the evil had befallen them as a punishment for their recent violation of the Temple of Poseidon, from which some Helots who had fled to the sanctuary for refuge had been torn. The Helots, on their part, were quick to interpret the event as an intervention of the gods in their behalf, and as an unmistakable signal for their uprising. Everywhere they flew to arms, and, being joined by some of the Perioeci, furiously attacked their masters. The Spartans, after maintaining the bitter struggle for several years, finding themselves unable to reduce their former slaves to submission, were forced to ask aid of the other Grecian states. The great Athenian statesman Pericles implored his countrymen not to lend themselves to the building up of the power of their rival. But the aristocratic Cimon, who had always entertained the most friendly feelings for the Spartans, exhorted the Athenians to put aside all sentiments of enmity or jealousy, and to extend succor to their kinsmen. "Let not Greece," said he, "be lamed, and thus Athens herself be deprived of her yokefellow." The assembly voted as he advised, and so the Athenian forces fought for some time side by side with the Lacedæmonians. But the Spartans were distrustful of their Athenian allies, and fearing they might pass over to the side of the Helots, they dismissed them. The discourtesy of the act aroused the most bitter resentment at Athens. The party of Pericles took advantage of the exasperated feelings of the people to effect some important changes in the constitution in favor of the people, which made it almost purely democratical in character, and to secure the exercise of the ostracism against Cimon as the leader of the aristocratical party and the friend of Sparta (459 B.C.). THE AGE OF PERICLES (459-431 B.C.). GENERAL FEATURES OF THE AGE.--Under the inspiration of Pericles, the Athenian state now entered upon the most brilliant period of its history. The epoch embraces less than the lifetime of a single generation, yet its influence upon the civilization of the world can hardly be overrated. During this short period Athens gave birth to more great men--poets, artists, statesmen, and philosophers--than all the world besides has produced in any period of equal length. [Illustration: PERICLES.] Among all the great men of this age, Pericles stood pre-eminent. Such was the impression he left upon the period in which he lived, that it is called after him the Periclean Age. Yet Pericles' authority was simply that which talent and character justly confer. He ruled, as Plutarch says, by the art of persuasion. During the Periclean period the Athenian democracy was supreme. Every matter that concerned the empire was discussed and decided by the popular assembly. Never before had any people enjoyed such perfect political liberty as did the citizens of Athens at this time, and never before were any people, through so intimate a knowledge of public affairs, so well able to direct the policies of state. Every citizen, it is affirmed, was qualified to hold civil office. PERICLES FOSTERS THE NAVAL POWER OF ATHENS.--Cimon's policy had been to keep the Grecian cities united in order that they might offer effectual resistance to the Persian power. The aim of his rival Pericles was to maintain Athens as the leading state in Hellas, and to oppose the pretensions of Sparta. Accordingly he encouraged the Athenians to strengthen their naval armament and to perfect themselves in naval discipline, for with Themistocles he was convinced that the supremacy of Athens must depend chiefly upon her fleet. As a part of his maritime policy, Pericles persuaded the Athenians to build what were known as the Long Walls,--great ramparts between four and five miles in length,--which united Athens to the ports of Piræus and Phalerum. Later, as a double security, a third wall was built parallel to the one running to the former harbor. By means of these walls Athens and her ports, with the intervening land, were converted into a vast fortified district, capable in time of war of holding the entire population of Attica. With her communication with the sea thus secured, and with a powerful navy at her command, Athens could bid defiance to her foes on sea and land. [Illustration: ATHENS AND THE LONG WALLS.] EVENTS LEADING UP TO THE THIRTY YEARS' TRUCE.--At the same time that Pericles was making the maritime supremacy of Athens more secure, he was endeavoring to build up for her a land empire in Central Greece. As her influence in this quarter increased, Sparta became more and more jealous, and strove to counteract it, chiefly by enhancing the power of Thebes. The contest between the two rivals was long and bitter. It was ended by the well-known Peace of Pericles, or the Thirty Years' Truce (445 B.C.). By the terms of this treaty each of the rival cities was left at the head of the confederation it had formed, but neither was to interfere with the subjects or allies of the other, while those cities of Hellas which were not yet members of either league were to be left free to join either according to choice. The real meaning of the Truce was that Athens gave up her ambition to establish a land empire, and was henceforth to be content with supremacy on the seas. It meant further that Greece was to remain a house divided against itself; that democratic Athens must share with aristocratic Sparta the hegemony, or leadership, of the Hellenic cities. PERICLES ADORNS ATHENS WITH PUBLIC BUILDINGS.--Notwithstanding Pericles had failed to build up for Athens a land dominion, he had nevertheless succeeded in securing for her a place of proud pre-eminence in maritime Hellas. Athens having achieved such a position as she now held, it was the idea of Pericles that the Athenians should so adorn their city that it should be a fitting symbol of the power and glory of their empire. Nor was it difficult for him to persuade his art-loving countrymen to embellish their city with those masterpieces of genius that in their ruins still excite the admiration of the world. Upon the commanding site of the Acropolis was erected the unrivalled Parthenon. Various other edifices, rich with sculptures, were also erected there and in different parts of Athens, until the whole city took on a surprisingly brilliant and magnificent appearance. The whole world looked up to the Attic city with the same surprised wonder with which a century before it had regarded the city of Babylon as adorned by the power and wealth of the great Nebuchadnezzar. The Athenians secured the vast sums of money needed for the prosecution of their great architectural works, out of the treasury of the Delian confederacy. The allies naturally declaimed bitterly against this proceeding, complaining that Athens, with their money, was "gilding itself as a proud and vain woman decks herself out with jewels." But the answer of Pericles to them was, that the money was contributed to the end that the cities of the league should be protected from the Persians, and that so long as the Athenians kept the enemy at a distance they had a right to use the money as they pleased. The Citizens are taken into the Pay of the State.--It was a fixed idea of Pericles that in a democracy there should be not only an equal distribution of political rights among all classes, but also an equalization of the means and opportunities of exercising these rights, as well as an equal participation by all in social and intellectual enjoyments. In promoting his views Pericles carried to great length the system of payment for the most common public services. Thus, he introduced the custom of military pay; hitherto the Athenian soldier had served his country in the field as a matter of honor and duty. He also secured the payment of the citizen for serving as a juryman, as well as for his attendance upon the meetings of the popular assembly. Through his influence, also, salaries were attached to the various civil offices, the most of which had hitherto been unpaid positions. These various measures enabled the poorer citizens to enjoy, without an inconvenient sacrifice, their franchise in the popular assembly, and to offer themselves for the different magistracies, which up to this time had been practically open only to men of means and leisure. Furthermore, Pericles introduced or extended the practice of supplying all the citizens with free tickets to the theatre and other places of amusement, and of banqueting the people on festival days at the public expense. STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE.--Under Pericles Athens had become the most powerful naval state in the world. In one of his last speeches, made at the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, in which he recounts the resources of the Athenian empire, Pericles says to his fellow-citizens: "There is not now a king, there is not any nation in the universal world, able to withstand that navy which at this juncture you can launch out to sea." But the most significant feature of this new imperial power was the combination of these vast material resources with the most imposing display of intellectual resources that the world had ever witnessed. Never before had there been such a union of the material and intellectual elements of civilization at the seat of empire. Literature and art had been carried to the utmost perfection possible to human genius. Art was represented by the inimitable creations of Phidias and Polygnotus. The drama was illustrated by the incomparable tragedies of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and by the comedies of Aristophanes, while the writing of the world's annals had become an art in the graceful narrations of Herodotus. But there were elements of weakness in the splendid imperial structure. The subject cities of the empire were the slaves of Athens. To her they paid tribute. To her courts they were dragged for trial. Naturally they regarded Athens as the destroyer of Hellenic liberties, and watched impatiently for the first favorable moment to revolt, and throw off the hateful yoke that she had imposed upon them. Hence the Athenian empire rested upon a foundation of sand. Had Athens, instead of enslaving her confederates of the Delian league, only been able to find out some way of retaining them as allies in an equal union,--a great and perhaps impossible task in that age of the world,--as head of the federated Greek race, she might have secured for Hellas the sovereignty of the Mediterranean, and the history of Rome might have ended with the first century of the Republic. Furthermore, in his system of payment for the most common public services, and of wholesale public gratuities, Pericles had introduced or encouraged practices that had the same demoralizing effects upon the Athenians that the free distribution of grain at Rome had upon the Roman populace. These pernicious customs cast discredit upon labor, destroyed frugality, and fostered idleness, thus sapping the virtues and strength of the Athenian democracy. Illustrations of these weaknesses, as well as of the strength of the Athenian empire, will be afforded by the great struggle between Athens and Sparta known as the Peloponnesian War, the causes and chief incidents of which we shall next rehearse. CHAPTER XV. THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR: THE SPARTAN AND THE THEBAN SUPREMACY. 1. THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR (431-404 B.C.). CAUSES OF THE WAR.--During the closing years of the life of Pericles, the growing jealousy between Athens and Sparta broke out in the long struggle known as the Peloponnesian War. Pericles had foreseen the coming storm: "I descry war," said he, "lowering from the Peloponnesus." His whole later policy looked toward the preparation of Athens for the "irrepressible conflict." The immediate causes of the war were, first, the interference of Athens, on the side of the Corcyræans, in a quarrel between them and their mother city Corinth; and secondly, the blockade by the Athenians of Potidæa, on the Macedonian coast. This was a Corinthian colony, but it was a member of the Delian league, and was now being chastised by Athens for attempted secession. Corinth, as the ever-jealous naval rival of Athens, had endeavored to lend aid to her daughter, but had been worsted in an engagement with the Athenians. With affairs in this shape, Corinth, seconded by other states that had causes of complaint against Athens, appealed to Sparta, as the head of the Dorian alliance, for aid and justice. The Spartans, after listening to the deputies of both sides, decided that the Athenians had been guilty of injustice, and declared for war. The resolution of the Spartans was endorsed by the Peloponnesian confederation, and apparently approved by the Delphian oracle, which, in response to an inquiry of the Spartans as to what would be the issue of the proposed undertaking, assured them that "they would gain the victory, if they fought with all their might." COMPARISON OF THE RESOURCES OF SPARTA AND OF ATHENS.--The resources of Hellas were, at the outbreak of the war, very evenly divided between the two parties. With Sparta were all the states of the Peloponnesus, save Argos and Achaia, while beyond the Isthmus the Boeotian League, headed by Thebes, and other states were her allies. Together, these states could raise a land force of sixty thousand men, besides a considerable naval armament, Corinth being especially strong in ships. Athens commanded all the resources of the subject cities--about three hundred in number, with twice as many smaller towns--of her great maritime empire. Her independent allies were Chios, Lesbos, Corcyra, and other states. Of course the chief strength of Athens lay in her splendid navy. THE BEGINNING: ATTACK UPON PLATÆA BY THE THEBANS.--The first act in the long and terrible drama was enacted at night, within the walls of Platæa. This city, though in Boeotia, was under the protection of Athens, and would have nothing to do with the Boeotian League. Anxious to get possession of this place before the actual outbreak of the war which they saw to be inevitable, the Thebans planned its surprise and capture. Three hundred Thebans gained access to the unguarded city in the dead of night, and marching to the public square, summoned the Platæans to exchange the Athenian for a Boeotian alliance. The Platæans were upon the point of acceding to all the demands made upon them, when, discovering the small number of the enemy, they attacked and overpowered them in the darkness, and took a hundred and eighty of them prisoners. These captives they afterwards murdered, in violation, as the Thebans always maintained, of a sacred promise that their lives should be spared. This wretched affair at Platæa precipitated the war (431 B.C.). INVASION OF ATTICA: PESTILENCE AT ATHENS.--A Spartan army was soon overrunning Attica, while an Athenian fleet was ravaging the coasts of the Peloponnesus. Pericles persuaded the country people of Attica to abandon their villas and hamlets and gather within the defences of the city. He did not deem it prudent to risk a battle in the open fields. From the walls of Athens the people could see the flames of their burning villages and farmhouses, as the enemy ravaged the plains of Attica up to the very gates of the city. It required all the persuasion of Pericles to restrain them from issuing in a body from behind the ramparts and rushing to the defence of their homes. The second year the Lacedæmonians again ravaged the fields about Athens, and drove the Athenians almost to frenzy with the sight of the flame and smoke of such property as had escaped the destruction of the previous year. To increase their misery, a pestilence broke out within the crowded city, and added its horrors to the already unbearable calamities of war. No pen could picture the despair and gloom that settled over the city. Athens lost, probably, one-fourth of her fighting men. Pericles, who had been the very soul and life of Athens through these dark days, fell a victim to the plague (429 B.C.). In dying, he said he considered his greatest praise to be that "he had never caused an Athenian to put on mourning." After the death of Pericles the leadership of affairs at Athens fell into the hands of unprincipled demagogues, of whom Cleon was chief. The mob element got control of the popular assembly, so that hereafter we shall find many of its actions characterized neither by virtue nor wisdom. DESPERATE AND CRUEL CHARACTER OF THE WAR.--On both sides the war was waged with the utmost vindictiveness and cruelty. As a rule, all the men captured by either side were killed. In the year 428 B.C. the city of Mytilene, on the island of Lesbos, revolted from the Athenians. With the rebellion suppressed, the fate of the Mytileneans was in the hands of the Athenian assembly. Cleon proposed that all the men of the place, six thousand in number, should be slain, and the women and children sold as slaves. This infamous decree was passed, and a galley despatched bearing the sentence for execution to the Athenian general at Mytilene. By the next morning, however, the Athenians had repented of their hasty and cruel resolution. A second meeting of the assembly was hurriedly called; the barbarous vote was repealed; and a swift trireme, bearing the reprieve, set out in anxious haste to overtake the former galley, which had twenty-four hours the start. The trireme reached the island just in time to prevent the execution of the barbarous edict. The second resolution of the Athenians, though more discriminating than the first decree, was quite severe enough. Over one thousand of the nobles of Mytilene were killed, the city was destroyed, and the larger part of the lands of the island given to citizens of Athens. Still more unrelenting and cruel were the Spartans. In the summer of the same year that the Athenians wreaked such vengeance upon the Mytileneans, the Spartans and their allies captured the city of Platæa, put to death all the men, sold the women as slaves, and turned the site of the city into pasture-land. EVENTS LEADING UP TO THE PEACE OF NICIAS (421 B.C.).--Soon after the affair at Mytilene and the destruction of Platæa, an enterprising general of the Athenians, named Demosthenes, seized and fortified a point of land (Pylos) on the coast of Messenia. The Spartans made every effort to dislodge the enemy. In the course of the siege, four hundred Spartans under Brasidas, having landed upon a little island (Sphacteria), were so unfortunate as to be cut off from the mainland by the sudden arrival of an Athenian fleet. About three hundred of them were at last captured and taken as prisoners to Athens. But affairs now took a different turn; the Athenians were worsted (at the battle of Delium, 424 B.C.), and then much indecisive fighting followed. At last negotiations for peace were opened, which, after many embassies to and fro, resulted in what is known as the Peace of Nicias, from the prominent Athenian general who is supposed to have had most to do in bringing it about. The treaty arranged for a truce of fifty years. Each party was to give up to the other all prisoners and captured places. ALCIBIADES AND THE SICILIAN EXPEDITION (415-413 B.C.).--The Peace of Nicias was only a nominal one. Some of the allies of the two principal parties to the truce were dissatisfied with it, and consequently its terms were not carried out in good faith or temper on either side. So the war went on. For about seven years, however, Athens and Sparta refrained from invading each other's territory; but even during this period each was aiding its allies in making war upon the dependents or confederates of the other. Finally, hostilities flamed out in open and avowed war, and all Hellas was again lit up with the fires of the fratricidal strife. [Illustration: ALCIBIADES] The most prominent person on the Athenian side during this latter period of the struggle was Alcibiades, a versatile and brilliant man, but a reckless and unsafe counsellor. He was a pupil of Socrates, but he failed to follow the counsels of his teacher. His astonishing escapades only seemed to attach the people more closely to him, for he possessed all those personal traits which make men popular idols. His influence over the democracy was unlimited. He was able to carry through the popular assembly almost any measure that it pleased him to advocate. The more prudent of the Athenians were filled with apprehension for the future of the state under such guidance. The noted misanthrope Timon gave expression to this feeling when, after Alcibiades had secured the assent of the popular assembly to one of his impolitic measures, he said to him: "Go on, my brave boy, and prosper; for your prosperity will bring on the ruin of all this crowd." And it did, as we shall see. The most prosperous enterprise of Alcibiades, in the Timonian sense, was the inciting the Athenians to undertake an expedition against the Dorian city of Syracuse, in Sicily. The scheme that Alcibiades was revolving in his mind was a most magnificent one. He proposed that the Athenians, after effecting the conquest of Sicily, should make that island the base of operations against both Africa and Italy. With the Italians and Carthaginians subdued, the armaments of the entire Hellenic world outside of the Peloponnesus, were to be turned against the Spartans, who with one blow should be forever crushed, and Athens be left the arbiter of the destinies of Hellas. Alcibiades succeeded in persuading the Athenians to undertake at least the first part of the colossal enterprise. An immense fleet was carefully equipped and manned. [Footnote: It consisted of one hundred and thirty- four costly triremes, bearing thirty-six thousand soldiers and sailors. The commanders were Alcibiades, Nicias, and Lamachus. Later, Demosthenes was sent out with a reinforcement consisting of seventy-three triremes and five thousand soldiers.] Anxiously did those remaining behind watch the squadron as it bore away from the port of Athens. Could the watchers have foreseen the fate of the splendid armament, their anxiety would have passed into despair. "Athens itself was sailing out of the Piræus, never again to return." Scarcely had the expedition arrived at Sicily, before Alcibiades, who was one of the leading generals in command of the armament, was summoned back to Athens to answer a charge of impiety. [Footnote: Just upon the eve of the departure of the expedition, the numerous statues of Hermes scattered throughout the city were grossly mutilated. Alcibiades was accused of having had a hand in the affair, and furthermore of having mimicked the sacred rites of the Eleusinian mysteries.] Fearing to trust himself in the hands of his enemies at Athens, he fled to Sparta, and there, by traitorous counsel, did all in his power to ruin the very expedition he had planned. He advised the Spartans to send at once their best general to the Syracusans. They sent Gylippus, an able commander, whose generalship contributed largely to the total and irretrievable defeat that the Athenians finally suffered. Their fleet and army were both virtually annihilated. Seven thousand prisoners were crowded into the open stone quarries, where hundreds speedily died of exposure and starvation. Most of the wretched survivors were sold as slaves. The disaster was appalling and complete. The resources of Athens were wrecked. THE DECELEAN WAR: THE FALL OF ATHENS--While the Athenians were before Syracuse, the Spartans, acting upon the advice of Alcibiades, had taken possession of and fortified a strong and commanding position known as Decelea, in Attica, only twelve miles from Athens. This was a thorn in the side of Athens. Secure in this stronghold, the Spartans could annoy and keep in terror almost all the Attic plain. The occupation by the Spartans of this strategic point had such a determining influence upon the remainder of the Peloponnesian War, that this latter portion of it is known as the Decelean War (413-404 B.C.). Taking advantage of the terrible misfortunes of Athens, her subject-allies now revolted and fell away from her on every side. The Persians, ever ready to aid the Greeks in destroying one another, lent a willing ear to the solicitations of the traitor Alcibiades, and gave help to the Spartans. The Athenians put forth almost superhuman efforts to retrieve their fortunes. Had they been united among themselves, perhaps their efforts might not have been in vain. But the oligarchical party, for the sake of ruining the democracy were willing to ruin the empire. While the army was absent from Athens, they overturned the government, and established a sort of aristocratical rule (411 B.C.), under which affairs were in the hands of a council of Four Hundred. The Athenian troops, however, who were at Samos, would not recognize the new government. They voted themselves to be the true Athens, and forgetting and forgiving the past, recalled Alcibiades, and gave him command of the army, thereby well illustrating what the poet Aristophanes said respecting the disposition of the Athenians towards the spoiled favorite,--"They love, they hate, but cannot live without him." Alcibiades detached the Persians from the side of the Spartans, and gained some splendid victories for Athens. But he could not undo the evil he had done. He had ruined Athens beyond redemption by any human power. Constantly the struggle grew more and more hopeless. Alcibiades was defeated, and fearing to face the Athenians, who had deposed him from his command, sought safety in flight. Finally, at Ægospotami, on the Hellespont, the Athenian fleet was surprised and captured by the Spartans under Lysander (405 B.C.). The prisoners, three thousand in number, were massacred, and the usual rites of burial denied their bodies. The battle of Ægospotami sealed the fate of Athens. "That night," writes the historian Xenophon, referring to the night upon which the news of the woful disaster reached Athens, "That night no man slept." The towns on the Thracian and Macedonian coasts, and the islands of the Ægean belonging to the Athenian Empire, now fell into the hands of the Peloponnesians. Athens was besieged by sea and land, and soon forced to surrender. Some of the allies insisted upon the total destruction of the city, and the conversion of its site into pasture-land. The Spartans, however, with apparent magnanimity, declared that they would never consent thus "to put out one of the eyes of Greece." The real motive, doubtless, of the Spartans in sparing the city was their fear lest, with Athens blotted out, Thebes or Corinth should become too powerful. So the city itself was spared, but the fortifications of Piræus and the Long Walls were levelled to the ground, the work of demolition being begun to the accompaniment of festive music (404 B.C.). Sparta's power was now supreme. She had neither peer nor rival among all the Grecian states. Throughout the war she had maintained that her only purpose in warring against Athens was to regain liberty for the Grecian cities. We shall very soon see what sort of liberty it was that they enjoyed under her guardianship. RESULTS OF THE WAR.--"Never," says Thucydides, commenting upon the lamentable results of the Peloponnesian War, "Never had so many cities been made desolate by victories;... never were there so many instances of banishment; never so many scenes of slaughter either in battle or sedition." Athens was but the wreck of her former self. She had lost two hundred ships and sixty thousand men, including the killed among her allies. Things were just the reverse now of what they were at the time of the Persian invasion. When, with all Athens in ruins, Themistocles at Salamis was taunted by the Spartans with being a man without a city, he replied grandly, "Athens is here in her ships." But now the real Athens was gone; only the empty shell remained. And all the rest of Hellas showed the marks of the cruel war. Spots where once had stood large towns were now pasture-land. But more lamentable than all else besides, was the effect of the war upon the intellectual and moral life of the Greek race. The Grecian world had sunk many degrees in morality; while the vigor and productiveness of the intellectual and artistic life of Hellas, the centre and home of which had been Athens, were impaired beyond recovery. The achievements of the Greek intellect, especially in the fields of philosophic thought, in the century following the war were, it is true, wonderful; but these triumphs merely show, we may believe, what the Hellenic mind would have done for art and general culture, had it been permitted, unchecked, and under the favoring and inspiring conditions of liberty and self-government, to disclose all that was latent in it. 2. THE SPARTAN AND THE THEBAN SUPREMACY. SPARTAN SUPREMACY.--For just one generation following the Peloponnesian War (404-371 B.C.), Sparta held the leadership of the Grecian states. Aristocratical governments, with institutions similar to the Spartan, were established in the different cities of the old Athenian Empire. At Athens, the democratical constitution of Solon, under which the Athenians had attained their greatness, was abolished, and an oppressive oligarchy established in its stead. The Thirty Tyrants, however, who administered this government, were, after eight months' infamous rule, driven from the city, and the old democratic constitution, somewhat modified, was re- established (403 B.C.). It was during this period that Socrates, the greatest moralist and teacher of antiquity that Europe had produced, was condemned to death, because his teachings were thought contrary to the religion of the Athenians. To this era also belongs the well-known expedition of the Ten Thousand Greeks. EXPEDITION OF THE TEN THOUSAND (401-400 B.C.).--Cyrus, satrap of the Persian province of Asia Minor, thinking that his brother Artaxerxes held the throne unjustly, planned to wrest it from him. For carrying out this purpose, he raised an army composed of a hundred thousand Barbarians and about eleven thousand Greek mercenaries. With this force Cyrus set out from Sardis, in the spring of 401 B.C. He marched without opposition across Asia Minor and Mesopotamia to Babylonia, into the very heart of the Persian empire. Here, at Cunaxa, he was confronted by Artaxerxes with a force of more than half a million of men. The Barbarian allies of Cyrus were scattered at the first onset of the enemy; but the Greeks stood like a rampart of rock. Cyrus, however, was slain; and the other Greek generals, having been persuaded to enter into a council, were treacherously murdered by the Persians. The Greeks, in a hurried night meeting, chose new generals to lead them back to their homes. One of these was Xenophon, the popular historian of the expedition. Now commenced one of the most memorable retreats in all history. After a most harassing march over the hot plains of the Tigris and the icy passes of Armenia, the survivors reached the Black Sea, the abode of sister Greek colonies. THEBAN SUPREMACY (371-362 B.C.).--Throughout all the period of her supremacy, Sparta dealt selfishly and tyrannically with the other Grecian states. But at last the fiery resentment kindled by her oppressive measures inspired such a determined revolt against her as brought to an end her assumed supremacy over her sister cities. It was a city in Boeotia that led the uprising against Sparta. This was Thebes. The oligarchical government which the Lacedæmonians had set up in that capital was overthrown by Pelopidas at the head of the so-called Sacred Band, a company of three hundred select men who were bound by oath to stand by each other to the last. Pelopidas was seconded in all his efforts by Epaminondas, one of the ablest generals the Grecian race ever produced. Under the masterly guidance and inspiration of these patriot leaders, Thebes very soon secured a predominating influence in the affairs of Greece. It was Epaminondas who, when his enemies sought to disgrace and annoy him by electing him "public scavenger," made, in accepting the office, the memorable utterance, "If the office will not reflect honor upon me, I will reflect honor upon it." At Leuctra (371 B.C.) the Thebans earned the renown of being the most invincible soldiers in the world by completely overthrowing, with a force of six thousand men, the Spartan army of twice that number. This is said to have been the first time that the Spartans were ever fairly defeated in open battle. Their forces had been annihilated, as at Thermopylæ,--but annihilation is not defeat. From the victory of Leuctra dates the short but brilliant period of Theban supremacy. The year after that battle Epaminondas led an army into the Peloponnesus to aid the Arcadians, who had risen against Sparta. Laconia was ravaged, and for the first time Spartan women saw the smoke of fires kindled by an enemy. To strengthen Arcadia's power of resistance to Sparta, Epaminondas perfected a league among the hitherto isolated towns and cantons of the district. As the mutual jealousies of the leading cities prevented him from making any one of them the capital of the confederation, he founded Megalopolis, or the Great City, and made it the head of the union. In the pursuit of the same policy, Epaminondas also restored the independence of Messenia. But, moved by jealousy of the rapidly growing power of Thebes, Athens now formed an alliance with her old rival Sparta against her. Three times more did Epaminondas lead an army into the Peloponnesus. During his fourth and last expedition he fought with the Spartans and Athenians the great battle of Mantinea, in Arcadia. On this memorable field, Epaminondas led the Thebans once more to victory; but he himself was slain, and with him fell the hopes and power of Thebes (362 B.C.). All the states of Greece now lay exhausted, worn out by their endless domestic contentions and wars. There was scarcely sufficient strength left to strike one worthy blow against enslavement by the master destined soon to come from the North. CHAPTER XVI. PERIOD OF MACEDONIAN SUPREMACY: EMPIRE OF ALEXANDER. (338-323 B.C.) GENERAL STATEMENT.--Macedonia lay to the north of Greece proper. The ruling class of the country was probably of Hellenic race; at all events the Macedonian kings were allowed to take part in the Olympian games--a privilege accorded to none but pure Hellenes. Their efforts to spread Greek art and culture among their subjects, a race of rough but brave and martial men, unaccustomed to city life, had been so far successful that the country had, to a certain degree, become Hellenized. So this period of Macedonian supremacy upon which we are entering belongs to the history of the political life of the Greek race, as well as the eras marked by Athenian, Spartan, or Theban leadership. It was Hellenic institutions, customs, and manners, Hellenic language and civilization, that the Macedonians, in the extended conquests which we are about to narrate, spread over the world. [Footnote: Of course it was rather the outer forms than the real inner life and spirit of the old Greek civilization which were adopted by the non-Hellenic peoples of Egypt and Western Asia. Hence the resulting culture is given a special name, _Hellenism_, which, in Professor Jebbs' language, means,--"not '_being_ Hellenes,' or Greeks, but--'doing _like_ Hellenes'; and as the adjective answering to _Hellas_ is _Hellenic_, so the adjective answering to _Hellenism_ is _Hellenistic_."] It is this which makes the short-lived Macedonian empire so important in universal history. PHILIP OF MACEDON.--Macedonia first rose to importance during the reign of Philip II. (359-336 B.C.), better known as Philip of Macedon. He was a man of pre-eminent ability, of wonderful address in diplomacy, and possessed rare genius as an organizer and military chieftain. The art of war he had learned in youth as a hostage-pupil of Epaminondas of Thebes. He was the originator of the "Macedonian phalanx" a body as renowned in the military history of Macedonia as is the "legion" in that of Rome. With his kingdom settled and consolidated at home, Philip's ambition led him to seek the leadership of the Grecian states. He sought to gain his purpose rather by artful diplomacy and intrigue than by open force. In the use of these weapons he might have been the teacher of the Athenian Themistocles. THE SECOND SACRED WAR (355-346 B.C.).--Philip quickly extended his power over a large part of Thrace and the Greek cities of Chalcidice. Meanwhile he was, in the following way, acquiring a commanding position in the affairs of the states of Greece proper. The Phocians had put to secular use some of the lands which, at the end of the First Sacred War (see p. 108), had been consecrated to the Delphian Apollo. Taken to task and heavily fined for this act by the other members of the Delphian Amphictyony, the Phocians deliberately robbed the temple, and used the treasure in the maintenance of a large force of mercenary soldiers. The Amphictyons not being able to punish the Phocians for their impiety, were forced to ask help of Philip, who gladly rendered the assistance sought. The Phocians were now quickly subdued, their cities were destroyed, and the inhabitants scattered in villages and forced to pay tribute to the Delphian Apollo. The place that the Phocians had held in the Delphian Amphictyony was given to Philip, upon whom was also bestowed the privilege of presiding at the Pythian games. The position he had now secured was just what Philip had coveted, in order that he might use it to make himself master of all Greece. BATTLE OF CHÆRONEA (338 B.C.).--Demosthenes at Athens was one of the few who seemed to understand the real designs of Philip. His penetration, like that of Pericles, descried a cloud lowering over Greece--this time from the North. With all the energy of his wonderful eloquence, he strove to stir up the Athenians to resist the encroachments of the king of Macedon. He hurled against him his famous "Philippics," speeches so filled with fierce denunciation that they have given name to all writings characterized by bitter criticism or violent invective. At length the Athenians and Thebans, aroused by the oratory of Demosthenes and by some fresh encroachments of the Macedonians, united their forces, and met Philip upon the memorable field of Chæronea in Boeotia. The Macedonian phalanx swept everything before it. The Theban band was annihilated. The power and authority of Philip were now extended and acknowledged throughout Greece (338 B.C.). PLAN TO INVADE ASIA.--While the Greek states were divided among themselves, they were united in an undying hatred of the Persians. They were at this time meditating an enterprise fraught with the greatest importance to the history of the world. This was a joint expedition against Persia. The march of the Ten Thousand Greeks through the very heart of the dominions of the Great King had encouraged this national undertaking, and illustrated the feasibility of the conquest of Asia. At a great council of the Grecian cities held at Corinth, Philip was chosen leader of this expedition. All Greece was astir with preparation. In the midst of all, Philip was assassinated during the festivities attending the marriage of his daughter, and his son Alexander succeeded to his place and power (336 B.C.). ACCESSION OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT.--Alexander was only twenty years of age when he came to his father's throne. The spirit of the man is shown in the complaint of the boy when news of his father's victories came to him: "Friends," said he to his playmates, "my father will possess himself of everything and leave nothing for us to do." For about two years Alexander was busy suppressing revolts against his power among the different cities of Hellas, and chastising hostile tribes on the northern frontiers of Macedonia. Thebes having risen against him, he razed the city to the ground,--sparing, however, the house of the poet Pindar,--and sold thirty thousand of the inhabitants into slavery. Thus was one of the most renowned of the cities of Greece blotted out of existence. ALEXANDER CROSSES THE HELLESPONT (334 B.C.).--Alexander was now free to carry out his father's scheme in regard to the Asiatic expedition. In the spring of 334 B.C., he set out, at the head of an army numbering about thirty-five thousand men, for the conquest of the Persian empire. Now commenced one of the most remarkable and swiftly executed campaigns recorded in history. [Illustration: THE BATTLE OF ISSUS. (From a Mosaic found at Pompeii.)] Crossing the Hellespont, Alexander routed the Persians at the important battle of the Granicus, by which victory all Asia Minor was laid open to the invader. THE BATTLE OF ISSUS (333 B.C.).--At the northeast corner of the Mediterranean lies the plain of Issus. Here Alexander again defeated the Persian army, numbering six hundred thousand men. The family of Darius, including his mother, wife, and children, fell into the hands of Alexander; but the king himself escaped from the field, and hastened to his capital, Susa, to raise another army to oppose the march of the conqueror. SIEGE OF TYRE (332 B.C.).--Before penetrating to the heart of the empire, Alexander turned to the south, in order to effect the subjugation of Phoenicia, that he might command the Phoenician fleets and prevent their being used to sever his communication with Greece. The island-city of Tyre, after a memorable siege, was taken by means of a mole, or causeway, built with incredible labor through the sea to the city. Eight thousand of the inhabitants were slain, and thirty thousand sold into slavery--a terrible warning to those cities that should dare to close their gates against the Macedonian. ALEXANDER IN EGYPT.--With the cities of Phoenicia and the fleets of the Mediterranean subject to his control, Alexander easily effected the conquest of Egypt. The Egyptians, indeed, made no resistance to the Macedonians, but willingly exchanged masters. While in the country, Alexander founded, at one of the mouths of the Nile, a city called, after himself, Alexandria. The city became the meeting- place of the East and West; and its importance through many centuries attests the far-sighted wisdom of its founder. A less worthy enterprise of the conqueror was his expedition to the oasis of Siwah, located in the Libyan desert, where were a celebrated temple and oracle of Zeus Ammon. To gratify his own vanity, as well as to impress the superstitious barbarians, Alexander desired to be declared of celestial descent. The priests of the temple, in accordance with the wish of the king, gave out that the oracle pronounced Alexander to be the son of Zeus Ammon, and the destined ruler of the world. THE BATTLE OF ARBELA (331 B.C.).--From Egypt Alexander recommenced his march towards the Persian capital. He had received offers of peace from Darius, but to these he is said to have replied, "There cannot be two suns in the heavens." Pushing on, he crossed the Euphrates and the Tigris without opposition; but upon the plain of Arbela, not far from ancient Nineveh, he found his further advance disputed by Darius with an immense army. Again the Macedonian phalanx "cut through the ranks of the Persians as a boat cuts through the waves." The fate of Darius has been already narrated in our story of the last of the Persian kings (see p. 82). The battle of Arbela was one of the decisive combats of history. It marked the end of the long struggle between the East and the West, between Persia and Greece, and prepared the way for the spread of Hellenic civilization over all Western Asia. ALEXANDER AT BABYLON, SUSA, AND PERSEPOLIS.--From the field of Arbela Alexander marched south to Babylon, which opened its gates to him without opposition. Susa was next entered by the conqueror. Here he seized incredible quantities of gold and silver ($57,000,000, it is said), the treasure of the Great King. From Susa Alexander's march was next directed to Persepolis, where he secured a treasure more than twice as great ($138,000,000) as that found at Susa. Upon Persepolis Alexander wreaked vengeance, for all Greece had suffered at the hands of the Persians. Many of the inhabitants were massacred, and others sold into slavery; while the palaces of the Persian kings were given to the flames. Alexander, having thus overthrown the power of Darius, now began to regard himself, not only as his conqueror, but as his successor, and was thus looked upon by the Persians, He assumed the pomp and state of an Oriental monarch, and required the most obsequious homage from all who approached him. His Greek and Macedonian companions, unused to paying such servile adulation to their king, were much displeased at Alexander's conduct, and from this time on to his death, intrigues and conspiracies were being constantly formed among them against his power and life. CONQUEST OF BACTRIA.--Urged on by an uncontrollable desire to possess himself of the most remote countries of which any accounts had ever reached him, Alexander now led his army to the north, and, after subduing many tribes that dwelt about the Caspian Sea, boldly conducted his soldiers over the snowy passes of the Hindu Kush, and descended into the fair provinces of Bactria. During the years 329-328 B.C. Alexander conquered not only Bactria but Sogdiana, a country lying north of the Oxus. Among his captives here was a beautiful Bactrian princess, Roxana by name, who became his bride. Alexander's stay in Sogdiana was saddened by his murder of his dearest friend Clitus, who had saved his life at the Granicus. Both were flushed with wine when the quarrel arose; after the deed, Alexander was overwhelmed with remorse. CONQUESTS IN INDIA.--With the countries north of the Hindu Kush subdued and settled, Alexander recrossed the mountains, and led his army down upon the rich and crowded plains of India (327 B.C.). Here again he showed himself invincible, and received the submission of many of the native princes. The most formidable resistance encountered by the Macedonians was offered by a strong and wealthy king named Porus. Captured at last and brought into the presence of Alexander, his proud answer to the conqueror's question as to how he thought he ought to be treated was, "Like a king." The impulsive Alexander gave him back his kingdom, to be held, however, subject to the Macedonian crown. Alexander's desire was to extend his conquests to the Ganges, but his soldiers began to murmur because of the length and hardness of their campaigns, and he reluctantly gave up the undertaking. To secure the conquests already made, he founded, at different points in the valley of the Indus, Greek towns and colonies. One of these he named Alexandria, after himself; another Bucephala, in memory of his favorite steed; and still another Nicæa, for his victories. The modern museum at Lahore contains many relics of Greek art, dug up on the site of these Macedonian cities and camps. Alexander's return route lay through the ancient Gedrosia, now Beluchistan, a region frightful with burning deserts, amidst which his soldiers endured almost incredible privations and sufferings. After a trying and calamitous march of over two months, Alexander, with the survivors of his army, reached Carmania. Here, to his unbounded joy, he was joined by Nearchus, the trusted admiral of his fleet, whom he had ordered to explore the sea between the Indus and the Euphrates. To appropriately celebrate his conquests and discoveries, Alexander instituted a series of religious festivals, amidst which his soldiers forgot the dangers of their numberless battles and the hardships of their unparalleled marches, which had put to the test every power of human endurance. And well might these veterans glory in their achievements. In a few years they had conquered half the world, and changed the whole course of history. PLANS AND DEATH OF ALEXANDER.--As the capital of his vast empire, which now stretched from the Ionian Sea to the Indus, Alexander chose the ancient Babylon, upon the Euphrates. His designs were to push his conquests as far to the west as he had extended them to the east. Arabia, Carthage, Italy, and Spain were to be added to his already vast domains. Indeed, the plans of Alexander embraced nothing less than the union and Hellenizing of the world. Not only were the peoples of Asia and Europe to be blended by means of colonies, but even the floras of the two continents were to be intermingled by the transplanting of fruits and trees from one continent to the other. Common laws and customs, a common language and a common religion, were to unite the world into one great family. Intermarriages were to blend the races. Alexander himself married a daughter of Darius III., and also one of Artaxerxes Ochus; and to ten thousand of his soldiers, whom he encouraged to take Asiatic wives, he gave magnificent gifts. In the midst of his vast projects, Alexander was seized by a fever, brought on by his insane excesses, and died at Babylon, 323 B.C., in the thirty-second year of his age. His soldiers could not let him die without seeing him. The watchers of the palace were obliged to open the doors to them, and the veterans of a hundred battle-fields filed sorrowfully past the couch of their dying commander. His body was carried to Alexandria, in Egypt, and there enclosed in a golden coffin, and a splendid mausoleum was raised over it. His ambition for celestial honors was gratified in his death; for in Egypt and elsewhere temples were dedicated to him, and divine worship was paid to his statues. We cannot deny to Alexander, in addition to a remarkable genius for military affairs, a profound and comprehensive intellect. He had fine tastes, and liberally encouraged art, science, and literature. The artists of his times had in him a munificent patron; and to his preceptor Aristotle he sent large collections of natural-history objects, gathered in his extended expeditions. He had a kind and generous nature: he avenged the murder of his enemy Darius; and he repented in bitter tears over the body of his faithful Clitus. He exposed himself like the commonest soldier, sharing with his men the hardships of the march and the dangers of the battle-field. But he was self-seeking, foolishly vain, and madly ambitious of military glory. He plunged into shameful excesses, and gave way to bursts of passion that transformed a usually mild and generous disposition into the fury of a madman. The contradictions of his life cannot, perhaps, be better expressed than in the words once applied to the gifted Themistocles: "He was greater in genius than in character." RESULTS OF ALEXANDER'S CONQUESTS.--The remarkable conquests of Alexander had far-reaching consequences. They ended the long struggle between Persia and Greece, and spread Hellenic civilization over Egypt and Western Asia. The distinction between Greek and Barbarian was obliterated, and the sympathies of men, hitherto so narrow and local, were widened, and thus an important preparation was made for the reception of the cosmopolitan creed of Christianity. The world was also given a universal language of culture, which was a further preparation for the spread of Christian teachings. But the evil effects of the conquest were also positive and far-reaching. The sudden acquisition by the Greeks of the enormous wealth of the Persian empire, and contact with the vices and the effeminate luxury of the Oriental nations, had a most demoralizing effect upon Hellenic life. Greece became corrupt, and she in turn corrupted Rome. Thus the civilization of antiquity was undermined. CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY OF GRECIAN HISTORY TO THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT. Legendary Age The Trojan War, legendary date 1194-1184 The Dorians enter the Peloponnesus, about 1104 Early History of Sparta Lycurgus gives laws to Sparta, about 850 The Messenian Wars, about 750-650 Early History of Athens Rule of the Archons 1050-612 Rebellion of Cylon 612 Legislation of Solon 594 Pisistratus rules 560-527 Expulsion of the Pisistratidæ 510 Period of Græco-Persian War First Expedition of Darius (led by Mardonius) 492 Battle of Marathon 490 Battle of Thermopylæ 480 Battle of Salamis 480 Battles of Platæa and Mycale 479 Period of Athenian Supremacy Athens rebuilt 478 Aristides chosen first president of the Confederacy of Delos 477 Themistocles sent into exile 471 Ostracism of Cimon 459 Pericles at the head of affairs-- Periclean Age 459-431 Events of the Peloponnesian War Beginning of the Peloponnesian War 431 Pestilence at Athens 430 Expedition against Syracuse 415 Battle of Ægospotami 405 Close of the War 404 Period of Spartan Supremacy Rule of the Thirty Tyrants at Athens 404-403 Expedition of the Ten Thousand 401-400 Peace of Antalcidas 387 Oligarchy established at Thebes 382 Spartan power broken on the field of Leuctra 371 Period of Theban Supremacy Battle of Leuctra, which secures the supremacy of Thebes 371 Battle of Mantinea and death of Epaminondas 362 Period of Macedonian Supremacy Battle of Chæronea 338 Death of Philip of Macedon 336 Alexander crosses the Hellespont 334 Battle of Issus 333 Battle of Arbela 331 Death of Alexander at Babylon 323 CHAPTER XVII. STATES FORMED FROM THE EMPIRE OF ALEXANDER. DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE OF ALEXANDER.--There was no one who could wield the sword that fell from the hand of Alexander. It is told that, when dying, being asked to whom the kingdom should belong, he replied, "To the strongest," and handed his signet ring to his general Perdiccas. But Perdiccas was not strong enough to master the difficulties of the situation. [Footnote: Perdiccas ruled as regent for Philip Arridæus (an illegitimate brother of Alexander), who was proclaimed titular king.] Indeed, who is strong enough to rule the world? Consequently the vast empire created by Alexander's unparalleled conquests was distracted by quarrels and wars, and before the close of the fourth century B.C., had become broken into many fragments. Besides minor states, [Footnote: Two of these lesser states, Rhodes and Pontus, deserve special notice: RHODES.--Rhodes became the head of a maritime confederation of the cities and islands along the coasts of Asia Minor, and thus laid the basis of a remarkable commercial prosperity and naval power. PONTUS.--Pontus (Greek for _sea_), a state of Asia Minor, was so called from its position upon the Euxine. It was never thoroughly conquered by the Macedonians. It has a place in history mainly because of the lustre shed upon it by the transcendent ability of one of its kings, Mithridates the Great (120-63 B.C.), who for a long time made successful resistance to the Roman arms.] four well-defined and important monarchies arose out of the ruins. After the rearrangement of boundaries that followed the decisive battle of Ipsus (fought in Phrygia 301 B.C.), these principal states had the outlines shown by the accompanying map. Their rulers were Lysimachus, Seleucus Nicator, Ptolemy, and Cassander, who had each assumed the title of king. The great horn being broken, in its place came up four notable ones toward the four winds of heaven. [Footnote: Dan. viii. 8.] Lysimachus held Thrace and the western part of Asia Minor; Seleucus Nicator, Syria and the countries eastward to the Indus; Ptolemy ruled Egypt; and Cassander governed Macedonia, and claimed authority over Greece. [Footnote: Cassander never secured complete control of Greece, hence this country is not included in his domains as these appear upon the map.] After barely mentioning the fate of the kingdom of Lysimachus, we will trace very briefly the fortunes of the other three monarchies until they were overthrown, one after the other, by the now rapidly rising power of Rome. THRACE, OR THE KINGDOM OF LYSIMACHUS.--The kingdom of Lysimachus soon disappeared. He was defeated by Seleucus in the year 281 B.C., and his dominions were divided. The lands in Asia Minor were joined to the Syrian kingdom, while Thrace was absorbed by Macedonia. SYRIA, OR THE KINGDOM OF THE SELEUCIDÆ (312-63 B.C.).--This kingdom, during the two centuries and more of its existence, played an important part in the political history of the world. Under its first king it comprised nominally almost all the countries of Asia conquered by Alexander, thus stretching from the Hellespont to the Indus. Its rulers were called Seleucidæ, from the founder of the kingdom, Seleucus Nicator. Seleucus Nicator (312-280 B.C.), besides being a ruler of unusual ability, was a most liberal patron of learning and art. He is declared to have been "the greatest founder of cities that ever lived." Throughout his dominions he founded a vast number, some of which endured for many centuries. Antioch, on the Orontes, in Northern Syria, became, after Seleucia on the Tigris, the capital of the kingdom, and obtained an influence and renown as a centre of population and trade which have given its name a sure place in history. The successors of Seleucus Nicator led the kingdom through checkered fortunes. On different sides provinces fell away and became independent states. [Footnote: The most important of these were the following:--1. PERGAMUS.--This was a state in western Asia Minor, which became independent upon the death of Seleucus Nicator (280 B.C.). Favored by the Romans, it gradually grew into a powerful kingdom, which at one time embraced a considerable part of Asia Minor. Its capital, also called Pergamus, became a most noted centre of Greek learning and civilization. 2. PARTHIA.--Parthia was a powerful Turanian state that grew up east of the Euphrates River (from about 255 B.C. to 226 A.D.). Its kings were at first formidable enemies of the rulers of Syria, and later of the Romans, whom they never allowed to make any considerable conquest beyond the Euphrates.] Antiochus III. (223-187 B.C.), called "the Great," raised the kingdom for a short time into great prominence; but attempting to make conquests in Europe, and further, giving asylum to the Carthaginian general Hannibal, he incurred the fatal hostility of Rome. Quickly driven by the Roman legions across the Hellespont, he was hopelessly defeated at the battle of Magnesia (190 B.C.). After this, the Syrian kingdom was of very little importance in the world's affairs. At last, brought again into collision with Rome, the country was overrun by Pompey the Great, and became a part of the Roman Republic, 63 B.C. [Illustration: COIN OF ANTIOCHUS III. (THE GREAT).] [Illustration: PTOLEMY SOTER.] KINGDOM OF THE PTOLEMIES IN EGYPT (323-30 B.C.).--The Græco-Egyptian empire of the Ptolemies was by far the most important, in its influence upon the civilization of the world, of all the kingdoms that owed their origin to the conquests of Alexander. The founder of the house and dynasty was Ptolemy I., surnamed Soter (323-283 B.C.), one of Alexander's ablest generals. His descendants ruled in Egypt for nearly three centuries, a most important period in the intellectual life of the world. Under Ptolemy I., Alexandria became the great depot of exchange for the productions of the world. At the entrance of the harbor stood the Pharos, or light- house,--the first structure of its kind,--which Ptolemy built to guide the fleets of the world to his capital. This edifice was reckoned one of the Seven Wonders. But it was not alone the exchange of material products that was comprehended in Ptolemy's scheme. His aim was to make his capital the intellectual centre of the world--the place where the arts, sciences, literatures, and even the religions, of the world should meet and mingle. He founded the famous Museum, a sort of college, which became the "University of the East," and established the renowned Alexandrian Library. Poets, artists, philosophers, and teachers in all departments of learning were encouraged to settle in Alexandria by the conferring of immunities and privileges, and by gifts and munificent patronage. His court embraced the learning and genius of the age. Ptolemy II., Philadelphus (283-247 B.C.), followed closely in the footsteps of his father, carrying out, as far as possible, the plans and policies of the preceding reign. Under his successor, Ptolemy III., Euergetes (247-242 B.C.), the dominions of the Ptolemies touched their widest limits; while the capital Alexandria reached the culminating point in her fame as the centre of Hellenistic civilization. Altogether the Ptolemies reigned in Egypt almost exactly three centuries (323-30 B.C.). Those rulers who held the throne for the last two hundred years were, with few exceptions, a succession of monsters, such as even Rome in her worst days could scarcely equal. The usage of intermarriage among the members of the royal family,--a usage in which the Ptolemies followed what was a custom of the ancient Pharaohs,--led to endless family quarrels, which resulted in fratricide, matricide, and all the dark deeds included in the calendar of royal crime. The story of the renowned Cleopatra, the last of the house of the Ptolemies, will be told in connection with Roman history, to which it properly belongs. MACEDONIA AND GREECE.--From the time of the subjection of Greece by Philip and Alexander to the absorption of Macedonia into the growing dominions of Rome, the Greek cities of the peninsula were very much under the control or influence of the Macedonian kings. But the Greeks were never made for royal subjects, and consequently they were in a state of chronic revolt against this foreign authority. Thus, no sooner had they heard of the death of Alexander than several of the Grecian states rose against the Macedonian general Antipater, and carried on with him what is known as the Lamian War (323-321 B.C.). The struggle ended disastrously for the Greeks, and Demosthenes, who had been the soul of the movement, was forced to flee from Athens. He took refuge upon an island just off the coast of the Peloponnesus; but being still hunted by Antipater, he put an end to his own life by means of poison. [Illustration: THE DYING GAUL.] The next matter of moment in the history of Macedonia, was an invasion of the Gauls (279 B.C.), kinsmen of the Celtic tribes that about a century before this time had sacked the city of Rome. These savage marauders inflicted terrible suffering upon both Macedonia and Greece. But they were at last expelled from Europe, and settling in Asia Minor, they there gave name to the province of Galatia. The celebrated Greek sculpture, The Dying Gaul, popularly but erroneously called The Dying Gladiator, is a most interesting memorial of this episode in Greek history. Macedonia finally came in contact with a new enemy--the great military republic of the West. For lending aid to Carthage in the Second Punic War, she incurred the anger of Rome, and the result was that, after much intrigue and hard fighting, the country was brought into subjection to the Italian power. In the year 146 B.C. it was erected into a Roman province. The political affairs of Greece proper during the period we are considering were chiefly comprehended in the fortunes of two confederacies, or leagues, one of which was called the Achæan, and the other the Ætolian League. United, these two confederacies might have maintained the political independence of Greece; but that spirit of dissension which we have seen to be the bane of the Hellenic peoples caused them to become, in the hands of intriguing Rome, weapons first for crushing Macedonia, and then for grinding each other to pieces. Finally, in the year 146 B.C., the splendid city of Corinth was taken by the Roman army and laid in ashes. This was the last act in the long and varied drama of the political life of ancient Greece. Henceforth it constituted simply a portion of the Roman Empire. CONCLUSION.--We have now traced the political fortunes of the Hellenic race through about seven centuries of authentic history. In succeeding chapters it will be our pleasanter task to trace the more brilliant and worthy fortunes of the artistic and intellectual life of Hellas,--to portray, though necessarily in scanty outline, the achievements of that wonderful genius which enabled her, "captured, to lead captive her captor." CHAPTER XVIII. GREEK ARCHITECTURE, SCULPTURE, AND PAINTING. THE GREEK SENSE OF BEAUTY.--The Greeks were artists by nature. "Ugliness gave them pain like a blow." Everything they made was beautiful. Beauty they placed next to holiness; indeed, they almost or quite made beauty and right the same thing. They are said to have thought it strange that Socrates was good, seeing he was so unprepossessing in appearance. [Illustration: PELASGIAN MASONRY.] 1. ARCHITECTURE. PELASGIAN ARCHITECTURE.--The term Pelasgian is applied to various structures of massive masonry found in different parts of Greece, Italy, and Asia Minor. The origin of these works was a mystery to the earliest Hellenes, who ascribed them to a race of giants called Cyclops; hence the name Cyclopean that also attaches to them. These works exhibit three well-defined stages of development. In the earliest and rudest structures the stones are gigantic in size and untouched by the chisel; in the next oldest the stones are worked into irregular polygonal blocks; while in the latest the blocks are cut into rectangular shapes and laid in regular courses. The walls of the old citadels or castles of several Grecian cities exhibit specimens of this primitive architecture (see p. 90). ORDERS OF ARCHITECTURE.--There are three styles, or orders, of Grecian architecture--the Doric, the Ionic, and the Corinthian. They are distinguished from one another chiefly by differences in the proportions and ornamentation of the column. [Illustration: DORIC CAPITAL.] [Illustration: IONIC CAPITAL.] The Doric column is without a base, and has a simple and massive capital. At first the Doric temples of the Greeks were almost as massive as the Egyptian temples, but later they became more refined. The Ionic column is characterized by the spiral volutes of the capital. This form was borrowed from the Assyrians, and was principally employed by the Greeks of Ionia, whence its name. The Corinthian order is distinguished by its rich capital, formed of acanthus leaves. This type is made up of Egyptian, Assyrian, and Grecian elements. The addition of the acanthus leaves is said to have been suggested to the artist Callimachus by the pretty effect of a basket surrounded by the leaves of an acanthus plant, upon which it had accidentally fallen. The entire structure was made to harmonize with its supporting columns. The general characteristics of the several orders are well portrayed by the terms we use when we speak of the "stern" Doric, the "graceful" Ionic, and the "ornate" Corinthian. [Illustration: CORINTHIAN CAPITAL.] TEMPLE OF DIANA AT EPHESUS.--The temple of Diana at Ephesus was regarded as one of the wonders of the world. The original structure was commenced about the beginning of the sixth century B.C., and, according to Pliny, was one hundred and twenty years in process of building. Croesus gave liberally of his wealth to ornament the shrine. In the year 356 B.C., on the same night, it is said, that Alexander was born, an ambitious youth, named Herostratus, fired the building, simply to immortalize his name. Alexander offered to rebuild the temple, provided that he be allowed to inscribe his name upon it. The Ephesians gracefully declined the proposal by replying that it was not right for one deity to erect a temple to another. Alexander was obliged to content himself with placing within the shrine his own portrait by Apelles--a piece of work which cost $30,000. The value of the gifts to the temple was beyond all calculation: kings and states vied with one another in splendid donations. Painters and sculptors were eager to have their masterpieces assigned a place within its walls, so that it became a great national gallery of paintings and statuary. So inviolable was the sanctity of the temple that at all times, and especially in times of tumult and danger, property and treasures were carried to it as a safe repository. [Footnote: The Grecian temples were, in a certain sense, banks of deposit. They contained special chambers or vaults for the safe-keeping of valuables. The heaps of gold and silver relics discovered by Di Cesnola at Sunium, in the island of Cyprus, were found in the secret subterranean vaults of a great temple. The priests often loaned out on interest the money deposited with them, the revenue from this source being added to that from the leased lands of the temple and from the tithes of war booty, to meet the expenses of the services of the shrine. Usually the temple property in Greece was managed solely by the priests; but the treasure of the Parthenon at Athens formed an exception to this rule. The treasure here belonged to the state, and was controlled and disposed of by the vote of the people. Even the personal property of the goddess, the gold drapery of the statue (see p. 185), which was worth about $600,000, could be used in case of great need, but it must be replaced in due time, with a fair interest.] But the riches of the sanctuary proved too great a temptation to the Roman emperor Nero. He risked incurring the anger of the great Diana, and robbed the temple of many statues and a vast amount of gold. Later (in 262 A.D.), the barbarian Goths enriched themselves with the spoils of the shrine, and left it a ruin. THE DELPHIAN TEMPLE.--The first temple erected at Delphi over the spot whence issued the mysterious vapors (see p. 105) was a rude wooden structure. In the year 548 B.C., the temple then standing was destroyed by fire. All the cities and states of Hellas contributed to its rebuilding. Even the king of Egypt, Amasis, sent a munificent gift. More than half a million of dollars was collected; for the temple was to exceed in magnificence anything the world had yet seen. It will be recalled that the Athenian Alcmæonidæ were the contractors who undertook the rebuilding of the shrine (see p. 122). The temple was crowded with the spoils of many battle-fields, with the rich gifts of kings, and with rare works of art. Like the temple at Ephesus, the Delphian shrine, after remaining for many years secure, through the awe and reverence which its oracle inspired, suffered frequent spoliation. The greed of conquerors overcame all religious scruples. The Phocians robbed the temple of a treasure equivalent, it is estimated, to more than $10,000,000 with us (see p. 160); and Nero plundered it of five hundred bronze images. But Constantine (emperor of Rome 306-337 A.D., and founder of Constantinople) was the Nebuchadnezzar who bore off the sacred vessels and many statues as trophies to his new capital then rising on the Hellespont. THE ATHENIAN ACROPOLIS AND THE PARTHENON.--In the history of art there is no other spot in the world possessed of such interest as the flat-topped rock, already described, which constituted the Athenian Acropolis. We have seen that in early times the eminence was used as a stronghold. But by the fifth century B.C. the city had slipped down upon the plain, and the summit of the rock was consecrated to the temples and the worship of the deities, and came to be called "the city of the gods." During the period of Athenian supremacy, especially in the Periclean Age, Hellenic genius and piety adorned this spot with temples and statues that all the world has pronounced to be faultless specimens of beauty and taste. [Illustration: ATHENIAN YOUTH IN PROCESSION. (From the Frieze of the Parthenon.)] The most celebrated of the buildings upon the Acropolis was the Parthenon, the "Residence of the virgin-goddess Athena." This is considered the finest specimen of Greek architecture. It was designed by the architect Ictinus, but the sculptures that adorned it were the work of the celebrated Phidias. [Footnote: The subject of the wonderful frieze running round the temple was the procession which formed the most important feature of the Athenian festival known as the Great Panathenæa, which was celebrated every four years in honor of the patron-goddess of Athens. The larger part of the frieze is now in the British Museum, the Parthenon having been despoiled of its coronal of sculptures by Lord Elgin. Read Lord Byron's _The Curse of Minerva_. To the poet, Lord Elgin's act appeared worse than vandalism.] It was built in the Doric order, of marble from the neighboring Pentelicus. After standing for more than two thousand years, and having served successively as a Pagan temple, a Christian church, and a Mohammedan mosque, it finally was made to serve as a Turkish powder-magazine, in a war with the Venetians, in 1687. During the progress of this contest a bomb fired the magazine, and more than half of this masterpiece of ancient art was shivered into fragments. The front is nearly perfect, and is the most prominent feature of the Acropolis at the present time. [Illustration: RESTORATION OF THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS.] THE MAUSOLEUM AT HALICARNASSUS.--This structure was another of the Seven Wonders of the World. It was a monumental tomb designed to preserve the memory of Mausolus, king of Caria, who died 353 B.C. Its erection was prompted by the love and grief of his wife Artemisia. The combined genius of the most noted artists of the age executed the wish of the queen. It is the traditions of this beautiful structure that have given the world a name for all magnificent monuments raised to perpetuate the memory of the dead. THEATRES.--The most noted of Greek theatres was the Theatre of Dionysus at Athens, which was the model of all the others. It was semi-circular in form, and was partly cut in the rock on the southeastern slope of the Acropolis, the Greeks in the construction of their theatres generally taking advantage of a hillside. There were about one hundred rows of seats, the lowest one, bordering the orchestra, consisting of sixty-seven marble arm-chairs. The structure would hold thirty thousand spectators. [Illustration: THE THEATRE OF DIONYSUS AT ATHENS. (Restored by G. Rehlender.)] 2. SCULPTURE AND PAINTING. PROGRESS IN SCULPTURE: INFLUENCE OF THE GYMNASTIC ART.--Wood was the material first employed by the Greek artists. About the eighth century B.C. bronze and marble were generally substituted for the less durable material. With this change sculpture began to make rapid progress. [Illustration: PITCHING THE DISCUS, OR QUOIT (Discobolus.)] But what exerted the most positive influence upon Greek sculpture was the gymnastic art. The exercises of the gymnasium and the contests of the sacred games afforded the artist unrivalled opportunities for the study of the human form. "The whole race," as Symonds says, "lived out its sculpture and its painting, rehearsed, as it were, the great works of Phidias and Polygnotus, in physical exercises, before it learned to express itself in marble or in color." As the sacred buildings increased in number and costliness, the services of the artist were called into requisition for their adornment. At first the temple held only the statue of the god; but after a time it became, as we have already seen, a sort of national museum. The entablature, the pediments, and every niche of the interior of the shrine, as well as the surrounding grounds and groves, were peopled with statues and groups of figures, executed by the most renowned artists, and representing the national deities, the legendary heroes, victors at the public games, or incidents in the life of the state in which piety saw the special interposition of the god in whose honor the shrine had been reared. PHIDIAS.--Among all the great sculptors of antiquity, Phidias stands pre- eminent. He was an Athenian, and was born about 488 B.C. He delighted in the beautiful myths and legends of the Heroic Age, and from these he drew subjects for his art. It was his genius that created the wonderful figures of the pediments and the frieze of the Parthenon. [Illustration: ATHENA PARTHENOS. After a statue found at Athens in 1880, which is supposed to be a copy of the colossal statue of Athena by Phidias, described in the text.] The most celebrated of his colossal sculptures were the statue of Athena within the Parthenon, and that of Olympian Zeus in the temple at Olympia. The statue of Athena was of gigantic size, being about forty feet in height, and was constructed of ivory and gold, the hair, weapons, and drapery being of the latter material. The statue of Olympian Zeus was also of ivory and gold. It was sixty feet high, and represented the god seated on his throne. The hair, beard, and drapery were of gold. The eyes were brilliant stones. Gems of great value decked the throne, and figures of exquisite design were sculptured on the golden robe. The colossal proportions of this wonderful work, as well as the lofty yet benign aspect of the countenance, harmonized well with the popular conception of the majesty and grace of the "father of gods and men." It was thought a great misfortune to die without having seen the Olympian Zeus. [Footnote: Phidias avowed that he took his idea from the representation which Homer gives in the first book of the _Iliad_ in the passage thus translated by Pope:-- "He spake, and awful bends his sable brow, Shakes his ambrosial curls, and gives the nod, The stamp of fate, and sanction of the god. High heaven with reverence the dread signal took, And all Olympus to the centre shook." BULFINCH'S _Age of Fable_.] The statue was in existence for eight hundred years, being finally destroyed by fire in the fifth century A.D. [Illustration: HEAD OF THE OLYMPIAN ZEUS BY PHIDIAS.] Phidias also executed other works in both bronze and marble. He met an unworthy fate. Upon the famous shield at the feet of the statue of Athena in the Parthenon, among the figures in the representation of a battle between the Athenians and the Amazons, Phidias introduced a portrait of himself and also one of his patron Pericles. The enemies of the artist caused him to be prosecuted for this, which was considered an act of sacrilege. He died in prison (432 B.C.). POLYCLETUS.--At the same time that Phidias was executing his ideal representations of the gods, Polycletus the elder, whose home was at Argos, was producing his renowned bronze statues of athletes. Among his pieces was one representing a spear-bearer, which was so perfect as to be known as "the Rule." PRAXITELES.--This artist, after Polycletus, stands next to Phidias as one of the most eminent of Greek sculptors. His works were executed during the fourth century B.C. Among his chief pieces may be mentioned the "Cnidian Aphrodite." This stood in the Temple of Aphrodite at Cnidus, and was regarded by the ancients as the most perfect embodiment of the goddess of beauty. Pilgrimages were made from distant countries to Cnidus for the sake of looking upon the matchless statue. LYSIPPUS.--This artist is renowned for his works in bronze. He flourished about the middle of the fourth century B.C. His statues were in great demand. Many of these were of colossal size. Alexander gave the artist many orders for statues of himself, and also of the heroes that fell in his campaigns. [Illustration: THE LAOCOON GROUP.] THE RHODIAN COLOSSUS AND SCHOOLS OF ART.--The most noted pupil of Lysippus was Chares, who gave to the world the celebrated Colossus at Rhodes (about 280 B.C.). This was another of the wonders of the world. Its height was about one hundred and seven feet, and a man could barely encircle with his arms the thumb of the statue. [Footnote: The statue was not as large as the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor. The height of the latter is 151 feet.] After standing little more than half a century, it was overthrown by an earthquake. For nine hundred years the Colossus then lay, like a Homeric god, prone upon the ground. Finally, the Arabs, having overrun this part of the Orient (A.D. 672), appropriated the statue, and thriftily sold it to a Jewish merchant. It is said that it required a train of nine hundred camels to bear away the bronze. This gigantic piece of statuary was not a solitary one at Rhodes; for that city, next after Athens, was the great art centre of the Grecian world. Its streets and gardens and public edifices were literally crowded with statues. The island became the favorite resort of artists, and the various schools there founded acquired a wide renown. Many of the most prized works of Grecian art in our modern museums were executed by members of these Rhodian schools. The "Laocoön Group," found at Rome in 1506, and now in the Museum of the Vatican, is generally thought to be the work of three Rhodian sculptors. GREEK PAINTING.--Although the Greek artists attained a high degree of excellence in painting, still they probably never brought the art to the perfection which they reached in sculpture. One reason for this was that paintings were never, like statues, objects of adoration; hence less attention was directed to them. With the exception of antique vases and a few patches of mural decoration, all specimens of Greek painting have perished. Consequently our knowledge of Greek painting is derived chiefly from the descriptions of renowned works, by the ancient writers, and their anecdotes of great painters. POLYGNOTUS.--Polygnotus (flourished 475-455 B.C.) has been called the Prometheus of painting, because he was the first to give fire and animation to the expression of the countenance. "In his hand," it is affirmed, "the human features became for the first time the mirror of the soul." Of a Polyxena [Footnote: Polyxena was a daughter of the Trojan Priam, famous for her beauty and her sufferings.] painted by this great master, it was said that "she carried in her eyelids the whole history of the Trojan War." ZEUXIS AND PARRHASIUS.--These great artists lived and painted about 400 B.C. A favorite and familiar story preserves their names as companions, and commemorates their rival genius. Zeuxis, such is the story, painted a cluster of grapes which so closely imitated the real fruit that the birds pecked at them. His rival, for his piece, painted a curtain. Zeuxis asked Parrhasius to draw aside the veil and exhibit his picture. "I confess I am surpassed," generously admitted Zeuxis to his rival; "I deceived birds, but you have deceived the eyes of an experienced artist." APELLES.--Apelles, who has been called the "Raphael of antiquity," was the court painter of Alexander the Great. He was such a consummate master of the art of painting, and carried it to such a state of perfection, that the ancient writers spoke of it as the "art of Apelles." That Apelles, like Zeuxis and Parrhasius, painted life-like pictures is shown by the following story. In a contest between him and some rival artists, horses were the objects represented. Perceiving that the judges were unfriendly to him, and partial, Apelles insisted that less prejudiced judges should pronounce upon the merit of the respective pieces, demanding, at the same time, that the paintings should be shown to some horses that were near. When brought before the pictures of his rival, the horses exhibited no concern; but upon being shown the painting of Apelles, they manifested by neighing and other intelligent signs their instant recognition of the companions the great master had created. NOTE.--Recent excavations (1878-1886) on the site of ancient Pergamus, in Asia Minor, have brought to light a great Altar, dating seemingly from the second century B.C., whose sides were decorated with gigantic sculptures representing the Battle of the Giants against the Gods. The sculptures, which by some are placed next to those of the Parthenon, are now in the Berlin Museum. CHAPTER XIX. GREEK LITERATURE. 1. EPIC AND LYRIC POETRY. THE GREEKS AS LITERARY ARTISTS.--It was that same exquisite sense of fitness and proportion and beauty which made the Greeks artists in marble that also made them artists in language. "Of all the beautiful things which they created," says Professor Jebb, "their own language was the most beautiful." This language they wrought into epics, lyrics, dramas, histories, and orations as incomparable in form and beauty as their temples and statues. THE HOMERIC POEMS,--The earliest specimens of Greek poetry are the so- called "Homeric poems," consisting of the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. The subject of the _Iliad_ (from Ilios, Troy) is the "Wrath of Achilles." The _Odyssey_ tells of the long wanderings of the hero Odysseus (Ulysses) up and down over many seas while seeking his native Ithaca, after the downfall of Ilios. These poems exerted an incalculable influence upon the literary and religious life of the Hellenic race. The _Iliad_ must be pronounced the world's greatest epic. It has been translated into all languages, and has been read with an ever fresh interest by generation after generation for nearly 3000 years. Alexander, it is told, slept with a copy beneath his pillow,--a copy prepared especially for him by his preceptor Aristotle, and called the "casket edition," from the jewelled box in which Alexander is said to have kept it. We preserve it quite as sacredly in all our courses of classical study. The poem has made warriors as well as poets. It incited the military ambition of Alexander, of Hannibal, and of Cæsar; it inspired Virgil, Dante, and Milton. All epic writers have taken it as their model. [Illustration: HOMER.] DATE AND AUTHORSHIP OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.--Until the rise of modern German criticism, the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ were almost universally ascribed to a single bard named Homer, who was believed to have lived about the middle of the ninth or tenth century B.C., one or two centuries after the events commemorated in his poems. Though tradition represents many cities as contending for the honor of having been his birthplace, still he was generally regarded as a native of Smyrna, in Asia Minor. He travelled widely (so it was believed), lost his sight, and then, as a wandering minstrel, sang his immortal verses to admiring listeners in the different cities of Hellas. But it is now the opinion of many scholars that the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_, as they stand today, are not, either of them, the creation of a single poet. They are believed to be mosaics; that is, to be built up out of the fragments of an extensive ballad literature that grew up in an age preceding the Homeric. The "Wrath of Achilles," which forms the nucleus of the _Iliad_ as we have it, may, with very great probability, be ascribed to Homer, whom we may believe to have been the most prominent of a brotherhood of bards who flourished about 850 or 750 B.C. THE HESIODIC POEMS.--Hesiod, who lived a century or more after the age that gave birth to the Homeric poems, was the poet of nature and of real life, especially of peasant life, in the dim transition age of Hellas. The Homeric bards sing of the deeds of heroes, and of a far-away time when gods mingled with men. Hesiod sings of common men, and of every-day, present duties. His greatest poem, a didactic epic, is entitled _Works and Days_. This is, in the main, a sort of farmers' calendar, in which the poet points out to the husbandman the lucky and unlucky days for doing certain kinds of work, eulogizes industry, and intersperses among all his practical lines homely maxims of morality and beautiful descriptive passages of the changing seasons. LYRIC POETRY: PINDAR.--The Æolian island of Lesbos was the hearth and home of the earlier lyric poets. Among the earliest of the Lesbian singers was the poetess Sappho, whom the Greeks exalted to a place next to Homer. Plato calls her the Tenth Muse. Although her fame endures, her poetry, except some mere fragments, has perished. Anacreon was a courtier at the time of the Greek tyrannies. He was a native of Ionia, but passed much of his time at the court of Polycrates of Samos. He seems to have enjoyed to the full the gay and easy life of a courtier, and sung so voluptuously of love and wine and festivity that the term "Anacreontic" has come to be used to characterize all poetry over- redolent of these themes. But the greatest of the Greek lyric poets, and perhaps the greatest of all lyric poets of every age and race, was Pindar (about 522-443 B.C.). He was born at Thebes, but spent most of his time in the cities of Magna Græcia. Such was the reverence in which his memory was held that when Alexander, one hundred years after Pindar's time, levelled the city of Thebes to the ground on account of a revolt, the house of the poet was spared, and left standing amid the general ruin (see p. 161). The greater number of Pindar's poems were inspired by the scenes of the national festivals. They describe in lofty strains the splendors of the Olympian chariot-races, or the glory of the victors at the Isthmian, the Nemean, or the Pythian games. Pindar insists strenuously upon virtue and self-culture. With deep meaning he says, "Become that which thou art;" that is, be that which you are made to be. 2. THE DRAMA AND DRAMATISTS. ORIGIN OF THE GREEK DRAMA.--The Greek drama, in both its branches of tragedy and comedy, grew out of the songs and dances instituted in honor of the god of wine--Dionysus (the same as the Roman Bacchus). Tragedy (goat-song, possibly from the accompanying sacrifice of a goat) sprang from the graver songs, and comedy (village-song) from the lighter and more farcical ones. Gradually, recital and dialogue were added, there being at first but a single speaker, then two, and finally three, which last was the classical number. Thespis (about 536 B.C.) is said to have introduced this idea of the dialogue; hence the term "Thespian" applied to the tragic drama. [Illustration: BACCHIC PROCESSION.] Owing to its origin, the Greek drama always retained a religious character, and further, presented two distinct features, the chorus (the songs and dances) and the dialogue. At first, the chorus was the all- important part; but later, the dialogue became the more prominent portion, the chorus, however, always remaining an essential feature of the performance. Finally, in the golden age of the Attic stage, the chorus dancers and singers were carefully trained, at great expense, and the dialogue became the masterpiece of some great poet,--and then the Greek drama, the most splendid creation of human genius, was complete. THE THREE GREAT TRAGIC POETS.--There are three great names in Greek tragedy,--Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. These dramatists all wrote during the splendid period which followed the victories of the Persian war, when the intellectual life of all Hellas, and especially that of Athens, was strung to the highest tension. This lent nervous power and intensity to almost all they wrote, particularly to the tragedies of AEschylus and Sophocles. Of the two hundred and more dramas produced by these poets, only thirty-two have escaped the accidents of time. Æschylus (525-456 B.C.) knew how to touch the hearts of the generation that had won the victories of the Persian war; for he had fought with honor both at Marathon and at Salamis. But it was on a very different arena that he was destined to win his most enduring fame. Eleven times did he carry off the prize in tragic composition. The Athenians called him the "Father of Tragedy." [Illustration: ÆSCHYLUS.] The central idea of his dramas is that "no mortal may dare raise his heart too high,"--that "Zeus tames excessive lifting up of heart." _Prometheus Bound_ is one of his chief works. Another of his great tragedies is _Agamemnon_, thought by some to be his masterpiece. The subject is the crime of Clytemnestra (see p. 96). It is a tragedy crowded with spirit-shaking terrors, and filled with more than human crimes and woes. Nowhere is portrayed with greater power the awful vengeance with which the implacable Nemesis is armed. Sophocles (495-405 B.C.) while yet a youth gained the prize in a poetic contest with Æschylus. Plutarch says that Æschylus was so chagrined by his defeat that he left Athens and retired to Sicily. Sophocles now became the leader of tragedy at Athens. In almost every contest he carried away the first prize. He lived through nearly a century, a century, too, that comprised the most brilliant period of the life of Hellas. His dramas were perfect works of art. The leading idea of his pieces is the same as that which characterizes those of Æschylus; namely, that self-will and insolent pride arouse the righteous indignation of the gods, and that no mortal can contend successfully against the will of Zeus. [Illustration: SOPHOCLES.] Euripides (485-406 B.C.) was a more popular dramatist than either Æschylus or Sophocles. His fame passed far beyond the limits of Greece. Herodotus asserts that the verses of the poet were recited by the natives of the remote country of Gedrosia; and Plutarch says that the Sicilians were so fond of his lines that many of the Athenian prisoners, taken before Syracuse, bought their liberty by teaching their masters his verses. COMEDY: ARISTOPHANES.--Foremost among all writers of comedy must be placed Aristophanes (about 444-380 B.C.). He introduces us to the every-day life of the least admirable classes of Athenian society. Four of his most noted works are the _Clouds_, the _Knights_, the _Birds_, and the _Wasps_. In the comedy of the _Clouds_, Aristophanes especially ridicules the Sophists, a school of philosophers and teachers just then rising into prominence at Athens, of whom the satirist unfairly makes Socrates the representative. The aim of the _Knights_ was the punishment and ruin of Cleon, whom we already know as one of the most conceited and insolent of the demagogues of Athens. [Illustration: EURIPIDES.] The play of the _Birds_ is "the everlasting allegory of foolish sham and flimsy ambition." It was aimed particularly at the ambitious Sicilian schemes of Alcibiades; for at the time the play appeared, the Athenian army was before Syracuse, and elated by good news daily arriving, the Athenians were building the most gorgeous air-castles, and indulging in the most extravagant day-dreams of universal dominion. In the _Wasps_, the poet satirizes the proceedings in the Athenian law-courts, by showing how the great citizen-juries, numbering sometimes five or six hundred, were befooled by the demagogues. But Aristophanes was something more than a master of mere mirth-provoking satire and ridicule: many of the choruses of his pieces are inexpressibly tender and beautiful. [Illustration: HERODOTUS.] 3. HISTORY AND HISTORIANS. Poetry is the first form of literary expression among all peoples. So we must not be surprised to find that it was not until several centuries after the composition of the Homeric poems--that is, about the sixth century B.C.--that prose-writing appeared among the Greeks. Historical composition was then first cultivated. We can speak briefly of only three historians,--Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon,--whose names were cherished among the ancients, and whose writings are highly valued and carefully studied by ourselves. HERODOTUS.--Herodotus (about 484-402 B.C.), born at Halicarnassus, in Asia Minor, is called the "Father of History." He travelled over much of the then known world, visiting Italy, Egypt, and Babylonia, and as an eye- witness describes with a never-failing vivacity and freshness the wonders of the different lands he had seen. Herodotus lived in a story-telling age, and he is himself an inimitable story-teller. To him we are indebted for a large part of the tales of antiquity--stories of men and events which we never tire of repeating. He was over-credulous, and was often imposed upon by his guides in Egypt and at Babylon; but he describes with great care and accuracy what he himself saw. It is sometimes very difficult, however, to determine just what he actually did see with his own eyes and experience in his own person; for it seems certain that, following the custom of the story-tellers of his time, he often related as his own personal adventures the experiences of others, yet with no thought of deceiving. In this he might be likened to our modern writers of historical romances. The central theme of his great History is the Persian wars, the struggle between Asia and Greece. Around this he groups the several stories of the nations of antiquity. In the pictures which the artist-historian draws, we see vividly contrasted, as in no other writings, the East and the West, Persia and Hellas. THUCYDIDES.--Thucydides (about 471-400 B.C.), though not so popular an historian as Herodotus, was a much more philosophical one. He was born near Athens. A pretty story is told of his youth, which must be repeated, though critics have pronounced it fabulous. The tale is that Thucydides, when only fifteen, was taken by his father to hear Herodotus recite his history at the Olympian games, and that the reading and the accompanying applause caused the boy to shed tears, and to resolve to become an historian. [Illustration: THUCYDIDES.] Thucydides was engaged in military service during the first years of the Peloponnesian War; but, on account of his being unfortunate, possibly through his own neglect, the Athenians deprived him of his command, and he went into an exile of twenty years. It is to this circumstance that we are indebted for his invaluable _History of the War between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians_. Through the closest observation and study, he qualified himself to become the historian of what he from the first foresaw would prove a memorable war. "I lived," he says, "through its whole extent, in the very flower of my understanding and strength, and with a close application of my thoughts, to gain an exact insight into all its occurrences." He died before his task was completed. The work is considered a model of historical writing. Demosthenes read and re-read his writings to improve his own style; and the greatest orators and historians of modern times have been equally diligent students of the work of the great Athenian. XENOPHON.--Xenophon (about 445-355 B.C.) was an Athenian, and is known both as a general and a writer. The works that render his name so familiar are his _Anabasis_, a simple yet thrilling narrative of the Expedition of the Ten Thousand Greeks; and his _Memorabilia_, or Recollections of Socrates. This work by his devoted pupil is the most faithful portraiture that we possess of that philosopher. 4. ORATORY. INFLUENCE OF THE PUBLIC ASSEMBLY.--The art of oratory among the Greeks was fostered and developed by the democratic character of their institutions. The public assemblies of the democratic cities were great debating clubs, open to all. The gift of eloquence secured for its possessor a sure pre- eminence. The law-courts, too, especially the great jury-courts of Athens, were schools of oratory; for every citizen was obliged to be his own advocate and to defend his own case. Hence the attention bestowed upon public speaking, and the high degree of perfection attained by the Greeks in the difficult art of persuasion. Almost all the prominent Athenian statesmen were masters of oratory. THEMISTOCLES AND PERICLES.--We have already become acquainted with Themistocles and Pericles as statesmen and leaders of Athenian affairs during the most stirring period of the history of Athens. They both were also great orators, and to that fact were largely indebted for their power and influence. Thucydides has preserved the oration delivered by Pericles in commemoration of those who fell in the first year of the Peloponnesian War. It is an incomparable picture of the beauty and glory of Athens at the zenith of her power, and has been pronounced one of the finest productions of antiquity. The language of the address, as we have it, is the historian's, but the sentiments are doubtless those of the great statesman. It was the habit of Thucydides to put speeches into the mouths of his characters. DEMOSTHENES AND ÆSCHINES.--It has been the fortune of Demosthenes (385-322 B.C.) to have his name become throughout the world the synonym of eloquence. The labors and struggles by which, according to tradition, he achieved excellence in his art are held up anew to each generation of youth as guides of the path to success. His first address before the public assembly was a complete failure, owing to defects of voice and manner. With indomitable will he set himself to the task of correcting these. He shut himself up in a cave, and gave himself to the diligent study of Thucydides. That he might not be tempted to spend his time in society, he rendered his appearance ridiculous by shaving one side of his head. To correct a stammering utterance, he spoke with pebbles in his mouth, and broke himself of an ungainly habit of shrugging his shoulders by speaking beneath a suspended sword. To accustom himself to the tumult and interruptions of a public assembly, he declaimed upon the noisiest seashore. [Illustration: DEMOSTHENES.] These are some of the many stories told of the world's greatest orator. There is doubtless this much truth in them at least--that Demosthenes attained success, in spite of great discouragements, by persevering and laborious effort. It is certain that he was a most diligent student of Thucydides, whose great history he is said to have known by heart. More than sixty of his orations have been preserved. "Of all human productions they present to us the models which approach the nearest to perfection." The latter part of the life of Demosthenes is intertwined with that of another and rival Athenian orator, Æschines. For his services to the state, the Athenians proposed to award to Demosthenes a golden crown. Æschines opposed this. All Athens and strangers from far and near gathered to hear the rival orators; for every matter at Athens was decided by a great debate. Demosthenes made the grandest effort of his life. His address, known as the "Oration on the Crown," has been declared to be "the most polished and powerful effort of human oratory." Æschines was completely crushed, and was sent into exile, and became a teacher of oratory at Rhodes. He is said to have once gathered his disciples about him and to have read to them the oration of Demosthenes that had proved so fatal to himself. Carried away by the torrent of its eloquence, his pupils, unable to restrain their enthusiasm, burst into applause. "Ah!" said Æschines, who seemed to find solace in the fact that his defeat had been at the hands of so worthy an antagonist, "you should have heard the wild beast himself!" Respecting the orations of Demosthenes against Philip of Macedon, and the death of the eloquent patriot, we have already spoken (see pp. 160, 174). 5. THE ALEXANDRIAN AGE. The Alexandrian period of Greek literature embraces the time between the break-up of Alexander's empire and the conquest of Greece by Rome (300-146 B.C.). During this period Alexandria in Egypt was the centre of literary activity, hence the term _Alexandrian_, applied to the literature of the age. The great Museum and Library of the Ptolemies afforded in that capital such facilities for students and authors as existed in no other city in the world. [Illustration: IDEAL SCENE IN THE ALEXANDRIAN LIBRARY] But the creative age of Greek literature was over. With the loss of political liberty, literature was cut off from its sources of inspiration. Consequently the Alexandrian literature lacked freshness and originality. The writers of the period were grammarians, commentators, and translators,--in a word, book-worms. One of the most important literary undertakings of the age was the translation of the Old Testament into Greek. From the traditional number of translators (seventy) the version is known as the _Septuagint_ (Latin for seventy.) The work was probably begun by Ptolemy Philadelphus, and was completed under his successors. Among the poets of the period one name, and only one, stands out clear and pre-eminent. This is that of Theocritus, a Sicilian idyllist, who wrote at Alexandria under Ptolemy Philadelphus. His idyls are beautiful pictures of Sicilian pastoral life. CONCLUSION: GRÆCO-ROMAN WRITERS.--After the Roman conquest of Greece, the centre of Greek literary activity shifted from Alexandria to Rome. Hence Greek literature now passes into what is known as its Græco-Roman period (146 B.C.-527 A.D.). The most noted historical writer of the first part of this period was Polybius (about 203-121 B.C.), who wrote a history of the Roman conquests from 264 to 146 B.C. His work, though the larger part of it has reached us in a very mutilated state, is of great worth; for Polybius wrote of matters that had become history in his own day. He had lived to see the larger part of the world he knew absorbed by the ever-growing power of the Imperial City. Plutarch (b. about 40 A.D.), "the prince of ancient biographers," will always live in literature as the author of the _Parallel Lives_, in which, with great wealth of illustrative anecdotes, he compares or contrasts Greek and Roman statesmen and soldiers. CHAPTER XX. GREEK PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE. THE SEVEN SAGES; THE FORERUNNERS.--About the sixth century B.C. there lived and taught in different parts of Hellas many philosophers of real or reputed originality and wisdom. Among these were seven men, called the "Seven Sages," who held the place of pre-eminence. [Footnote: As in the case of the Seven Wonders of the World, ancient writers were not always agreed as to what names should be accorded the honor of enrolment in the sacred number. Thales, Solon, Periander, Cleobulus, Chilo, Bias, and Pittacus are, however, usually reckoned as the Seven Wise Men.] To them belongs the distinction of having first aroused the Greek intellect to philosophical thought. The wise sayings--such as "Know thyself" and "Nothing in excess"--attributed to them, are beyond number. The ethical maxims and practical proverbs ascribed to the sages, while, like the so-called proverbs of Solomon, they contain a vast amount of practical wisdom, still do not constitute philosophy proper, which is a systematic search for the reason and causes of things. They form simply the introduction or prelude to Greek philosophy. THE IONIC PHILOSOPHERS.--The first Greek school of philosophy grew up in the cities of Ionia, in Asia Minor, where almost all forms of Hellenic culture seem to have had their beginning. The founder of the system was Thales of Miletus (about 640-550 B.C.), who was followed by Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Heraclitus. One tenet held in common by all these philosophers was that matter and mind are inseparable; or, in other words, that all matter is animate. They never thought of the soul as something distinct and separable from matter as we do. Even the soul in Hades was conceived as having a body in every respect like that the soul possessed in the earthly life, only it was composed of a subtler substance. This conception of matter as being alive will help us to understand Greek mythology, which, it will be remembered, endowed trees, rivers, springs, clouds, the planets, all physical objects indeed, with intelligence and will. PYTHAGORAS.--Pythagoras (about 580-500 B.C.) was born on the island of Samos, whence his title of "Samian Sage." Probable tradition says that he spent many years of his early life in Egypt, where he became versed in all the mysteries of the Egyptians. He returned to Greece with a great reputation, and finally settled at Crotona, in Italy. Like many another ancient philosopher, Pythagoras sought to increase the reverence of his disciples for himself by peculiarities of dress and manner. His uncut hair and beard flowed down upon his shoulders and over his breast. He never smiled. His dress was a white robe, with a golden crown. For the first years of their novitiate, his pupils were not allowed to look upon their master. They listened to his lectures from behind a curtain. _Ipse dixit_, "he himself said so," was the only argument they must employ in debate. It is to Pythagoras, according to legend, that we are indebted for the word _philosopher_. Being asked of what he was master, he replied that he was simply a "philosopher," that is, a "lover of wisdom." Pythagoras held views of the solar system that anticipated by two thousand years those of Copernicus and his school. He taught, only to his most select pupils however, that the earth is a sphere; and that, like the other planets, it revolves about a central globe of fire. From him comes the pretty conceit of the "music of the spheres." He imagined that the heavenly spheres, by their swift, rolling motions, produced musical notes, which united in a celestial melody, too refined, however, for human ears. He taught the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, an idea he had doubtless brought from Egypt. Because of this belief the Pythagoreans were strict vegetarians, abstaining religiously from the use of all animal food. ANAXAGORAS.--Anaxagoras (499-427 B.C.) was the first Greek philosopher who made _mind_, instead of necessity or chance, the arranging and harmonizing force of the universe. "Reason rules the world" was his first maxim. Anaxagoras was the teacher in philosophy of Pericles, and it is certain that that statesman was greatly influenced by the liberal views of the philosopher; for in his general conceptions of the universe, Anaxagoras was far in advance of his age. He ventured to believe that the moon was somewhat like the earth, and inhabited; and taught that the sun was not a god, but a glowing rock, as large, probably, as the Peloponnesus. But for his audacity, the philosopher suffered the fate of Galileo in a later age; he was charged with impiety and exiled. Yet this did not disturb the serenity of his mind. In banishment he said, "It is not I who have lost the Athenians, but the Athenians who have lost me." EMPEDOCLES AND DEMOCRITUS.--In the teachings of Empedocles (about 492-432 B.C.) and Democritus (about 460-370 B.C.) we meet with many speculations respecting the constitution of matter and the origin of things which are startlingly similar to some of the doctrines held by modern scientists. Empedocles, with the evolutionists of to-day, taught that the higher forms of life arise out of the lower; Democritus conceived all things to be composed of invisible atoms, all alike in quality, but differing in form and combination. THE SOPHISTS.--The Sophists, of whom the most noted were Protagoras, Gorgias, and Prodicus, were a class of philosophers or teachers who gave instruction in rhetoric and the art of disputation. They travelled about from city to city, and contrary to the usual custom of the Greek philosophers, took fees from their pupils. They were shallow but brilliant men, caring more for the dress in which the thought was arrayed than for the thought itself, more for victory than for truth; and some of them inculcated a selfish morality. The better philosophers of the time despised them, and applied to them many harsh epithets, taunting them with selling wisdom, and accusing them of boasting that they could "make the worse appear the better reason." SOCRATES.--Volumes would not contain what would be both instructive and interesting respecting the lives and works of the three great philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. We can, however, accord to each only a few words. Of these three eminent thinkers, Socrates (469-399 B.C.), though surpassed in grasp and power of intellect by both Plato and Aristotle, has the firmest hold upon the affections of the world. Nature, while generous to the philosopher in the gifts of soul, was unkind to him in the matter of his person. His face was ugly as a satyr's, and he had an awkward, shambling walk, so that he invited the shafts of the comic poets of his time. He loved to gather a little circle about him in the Agora or in the streets, and then to draw out his listeners by a series of ingenious questions. His method was so peculiar to himself that it has received the designation of the "Socratic dialogue." He has very happily been called an _educator_, as opposed to an _instructor_. In the young men of his time Socrates found many devoted pupils. The youthful Alcibiades declared that "he was forced to stop his ears and flee away, that he might not sit down by the side of Socrates and grow old in listening." [Illustration: SOCRATES.] Socrates was unfortunate in his domestic relations. Xanthippe, his wife, seems to have been of a practical turn of mind, and unable to sympathize with the abstracted ways of her husband. This great philosopher believed that the proper study of mankind is man, his favorite maxim being "Know Thyself"; hence he is said to have brought philosophy from the heavens and introduced it to the homes of men. Socrates held the Sophists in aversion, and in opposition to their selfish expediency taught the purest system of morals that the world had yet known, and which has been surpassed only by the precepts of the Great Teacher. He thought himself to be restrained from entering upon what was inexpedient or wrong by a tutelary spirit. He believed in the immortality of the soul and in a Supreme Ruler of the universe, but sometimes spoke slightingly of the temples and the popular deities. This led to his prosecution on the double charge of blasphemy and of corrupting the Athenian youth. The fact that Alcibiades had been his pupil was used to prove the demoralizing tendency of his teachings. He was condemned to drink the fatal hemlock. The night before his death he spent with his disciples, discoursing on the immortality of the soul. PLATO.--Plato (429-348 B.C.), "the broad-browed," was a philosopher of noble birth, before whom in youth a brilliant career in the world of Greek affairs opened; but, coming under the influence of Socrates, he resolved to give up all his prospects in politics and devote himself to philosophy. Upon the condemnation and death of his master he went into voluntary exile. In many lands he gathered knowledge and met with varied experiences. He visited Sicily, where he was so unfortunate as to call upon himself the resentment of Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, through having worsted him in an argument, and also by an uncourtly plainness of speech. The king caused him to be sold into slavery as a prisoner of war. Being ransomed by a friend, he found his way to his native Athens, and established a school of philosophy in the Academy, a public garden close to Athens. Here amid the disciples that thronged to his lectures, he passed the greater part of his long life,--he died 348 B.C., at the age of eighty-one years,--laboring incessantly upon the great works that bear his name. [Illustration: PLATO.] Plato imitated in his writings the method of Socrates in conversation. The discourse is carried on by questions and answers, hence the term _Dialogues_ that attaches to his works. He attributes to his master, Socrates, much of the philosophy that he teaches: yet his _Dialogues_ are all deeply tinged with his own genius and thought. In the _Republic_ Plato portrays his conception of an ideal state. He was opposed to the republic of Athens, and his system, in some of its main features, was singularly like the Feudal System of Mediæval Europe. The _Phædo_ is a record of the last conversation of Socrates with his disciples--an immortal argument for the immortality of the soul. Plato believed not only in a future life (post-existence), but also in pre-existence; teaching that the ideas of reason, or our intuitions, are reminiscences of a past experience. [Footnote: In the following lines from Wordsworth we catch a glimpse of Plato's doctrine of pre-existence:-- "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, Nor yet in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory, do we come From God, who is our home."--_Ode on Immortality_.] Plato's doctrines have exerted a profound influence upon all schools of thought and philosophies since his day. In some of his precepts he made a close approach to the teachings of Christianity. "We ought to become like God," he said, "as far as this is possible; and to become like Him is to become holy and just and wise." ARISTOTLE.--As Socrates was surpassed by his pupil Plato, so in turn was Plato excelled in certain respects by his disciple Aristotle, "the master of those who know." In him the philosophical genius of the Hellenic intellect reached its culmination. He was born in the Macedonian city of Stagira (384 B.C.), and hence is frequently called the "Stagirite." As in the case of Socrates, his personal appearance gave no promise of the philosopher. His teacher, Plato, however, recognized the genius of his pupil, and called him the "Mind of the school." After studying for twenty years in the school of Plato, Aristotle became the preceptor of Alexander the Great. When Philip invited him to become the tutor of his son, he gracefully complimented the philosopher by saying in his letter that he was grateful to the gods that the prince was born in the same age with him. Alexander became the liberal patron of his tutor, and aided him in his scientific studies by sending him large collections of plants and animals, gathered on his distant expeditions. At Athens the great philosopher delivered his lectures while walking about beneath the trees and porticoes of the Lyceum; hence the term _peripatetic_ (from the Greek _peripatein_, "to walk about") applied to his philosophy. [Illustration: ARISTOTLE.] Among the productions of his fertile intellect are works on rhetoric, logic, poetry, morals and politics, physics and metaphysics. For centuries his works were studied and copied and commented upon by both European and Asiatic scholars, in the schools of Athens and Rome, of Alexandria and Constantinople. Until the time of Bacon in England, for nearly two thousand years, Aristotle ruled over the realm of mind with a despotic sway. All teachers and philosophers acknowledged him as their guide and master. ZENO AND THE STOICS.--We are now approaching the period when the political life of Hellas was failing, and was being fast overshadowed by the greatness of Rome. But the intellectual life of the Greek race was by no means eclipsed by the calamity that ended its political existence. For centuries after that event the poets, scholars, and philosophers of this intellectual people led a brilliant career in the schools and universities of the Roman world. From among all the philosophers of this long period, we can select for brief mention only a few. And first we shall speak of Zeno and Epicurus, who are noted as founders of schools of philosophy that exerted a vast influence upon both the thought and the conduct of many centuries. Zeno, founder of the celebrated school of the Stoics, lived in the third century before our era (about 362-264). He taught at Athens in a public porch (in Greek, _stoa_), from which circumstance comes the name applied to his disciples. The Stoical philosophy was the outgrowth, in part at least, of that of the Cynics, a sect of most rigid and austere morals. The typical representative of this sect is found in Diogenes, who lived, so the story goes, in a tub, and went about Athens by daylight with a lantern, in search, as he said, of a _man_. The Cynics were simply a race of pagan hermits. The Stoics inculcated virtue for the sake of itself. They believed--and it would be very difficult to frame a better creed--that "man's chief business here is to do his duty." They schooled themselves to bear with perfect composure any lot that destiny might appoint. Any sign of emotion on account of calamity was considered unmanly and unphilosophical. Thus, when told of the sudden death of his son, the Stoic replied, "Well, I never imagined that I had given life to an immortal." Stoicism became a favorite system of thought with certain classes of the Romans, and under its teachings and doctrines were nourished some of the purest and loftiest characters produced by the pagan world. It numbered among its representatives, in later times, the illustrious Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, and the scarcely less renowned and equally virtuous slave Epictetus. In many of its teachings it anticipated Christian doctrines, and was, in the philosophical world, a very important preparation for Christianity. [Illustration: EPICURUS.] EPICURUS AND THE EPICUREANS.--Epicurus (342-270 B.C.), who was a contemporary of Zeno, taught, in opposition to the Stoics, that _pleasure_ is the highest good. He recommended virtue, indeed, but only as a means for the attainment of pleasure; whereas the Stoics made virtue an end in itself. In other words, Epicurus said, "Be virtuous, because virtue will bring you the greatest amount of happiness"; Zeno said, "Be virtuous, because you ought to be." Epicurus had many followers in Greece, and his doctrines were eagerly embraced by many among the Romans during the corrupt period of the Roman empire. Many of these disciples carried the doctrines of their master to an excess that he himself would have been the first to condemn. Allowing full indulgence to every appetite and passion, their whole philosophy was expressed in the proverb, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." No pure or exalted life could be nourished in the unwholesome atmosphere of such a philosophy. Epicureanism never produced a single great character. THE SKEPTICS; PYRRHO.--About the beginning of the third century B.C. skepticism became widespread in Greece. It seemed as though men were losing faith in everything. Many circumstances had worked together in bringing about this state of universal unbelief. A wider knowledge of the world had caused many to lose their faith in the myths and legends of the old mythologies. The existence of so many opposing systems of philosophy caused men to doubt the truth of any of them. Many thoughtful minds were hopelessly asking, "What is truth?" Pyrrho (about 360-270 B.C.) was the doubting Thomas of the Greeks. He questioned everything, and declared that the great problems of the universe could not be solved. He asserted that it was the duty of man, and the part of wisdom, to entertain no positive judgment on any matter, and thus to ensure serenity and peace of mind. The disciples of Pyrrho went to absurd lengths in their skepticism, some of them even saying that they asserted nothing, not even that they asserted nothing. They doubted whether they doubted. THE NEO-PLATONISTS.--Neo-Platonism was a blending of Greek philosophy and Oriental mysticism. It has been well called the "despair of reason," because it abandoned all hope of man's ever being able to attain the _highest_ knowledge through reason alone, and looked for a Revelation. The centre of this last movement in Greek philosophical thought was Alexandria in Egypt, the meeting-place, in the closing centuries of the ancient world, of the East and the West. Philo the Jew (b. about 30 B.C.), who labored to harmonize Hebrew doctrines with the teachings of Plato, was the forerunner of the Neo- Platonists. But the greatest of the school was Plotinus (A.D. 204-269), who spent the last years of his life at Rome, where he was a great favorite. CONFLICT BETWEEN NEO-PLATONISM AND CHRISTIANITY.--While the Neo-Platonists were laboring to restore, in modified form, the ancient Greek philosophy and worship, the teachers of Christianity were fast winning the world over to a new faith. The two systems came into deadly antagonism. Christianity triumphed. The gifted and beautiful Hypatia, almost the last representative of the old system of speculation and belief, was torn to pieces in the streets of Alexandria by a mob of fanatic Christian monks (A.D. 415). Finally the Roman emperor Justinian forbade the pagan philosophers to teach their doctrines (A.D. 529). This imperial edict closed forever the Greek schools, in which for more than a thousand years the world had received instruction upon the loftiest themes that can engage the human mind. The Greek philosophers, as living, personal teachers, had finished their work; but their systems of thought will never cease to attract and influence the best minds of the race. SCIENCE AMONG THE GREEKS. The contributions of the Greek observers to the physical sciences have laid us under no small obligation to them. Some of those whom we have classed as philosophers, were careful students of nature, and might be called scientists. The great philosopher Aristotle wrote some valuable works on anatomy and natural history. From his time onward the sciences were pursued with much zeal and success. Especially did the later Greeks do much good and lasting work in the mathematical sciences. MATHEMATICS: EUCLID AND ARCHIMEDES.--Alexandria, in Egypt, became the seat of the most celebrated school of mathematics of antiquity. Here, under Ptolemy Lagus, flourished Euclid, the great geometer, whose work forms the basis of the science of geometry as taught in our schools at the present time. Ptolemy himself was his pupil. The royal student, however, seems to have disliked the severe application required to master the problems of Euclid, and asked his teacher if there was not some easier way. Euclid replied, "There is no royal road to geometry." In the third century B.C., Syracuse, in Sicily, was the home of Archimedes, the greatest mathematician that the Grecian world produced. ASTRONOMY.--Among ancient Greek astronomers, Aristarchus, Hipparchus, and Claudius Ptolemy are distinguished. Aristarchus of Samos, who lived in the third century B.C., held that the earth revolves about the sun as a fixed centre, and rotates on its own axis. He was the Greek Copernicus. But his theory was rejected by his contemporaries and successors. Hipparchus, who flourished about the middle of the second century B.C., was, through his careful observations, the real founder of scientific astronomy. He calculated eclipses, catalogued the stars, and wrote several astronomical works of a really scientific character. Claudius Ptolemy lived in Egypt about the middle of the second century after Christ. His great reputation is due not so much to his superior genius as to the fortunate circumstance that a vast work compiled by him, preserved and transmitted to later times almost all the knowledge of the ancients on astronomical and geographical subjects. In this way it has happened that his name has become attached to various doctrines and views respecting the universe, though these probably were not originated by him. The phrase _Ptolemaic system_, however, links his name inseparably with that conception of the solar system set forth in his works, which continued to be the received theory from his time until Copernicus-- fourteen centuries later. Ptolemy combated the theory of Aristarchus in regard to the rotation and revolution of the earth; yet he believed the earth to be a globe, and supported this view by exactly the same arguments that we to-day use to prove the doctrine. CHAPTER XXI. SOCIAL LIFE OF THE GREEKS. EDUCATION.--Education at Sparta, where it was chiefly gymnastic, as we have seen (p. 115), was a state affair; but at Athens and throughout Greece generally, the youth were trained in private schools. These schools were of all grades, ranging from those kept by the most obscure teachers, who gathered their pupils in some recess of the street, to those established in the Athenian Academy and Lyceum by such philosophers as Plato and Aristotle. [Illustration: A GREEK SCHOOL. (After a vase-painting.)] It was only the boys who received education. These Grecian boys, Professor Mahaffy imagines, were "the most attractive the world has ever seen." At all events, we may believe that they were trained more carefully and delicately than the youth among any other people before or since the days of Hellenic culture. In the nursery, the boy was taught the beautiful myths and stories of the national mythology. At about seven he entered school, being led to and from the place of training by an old slave, who bore the name of _pedagogue_, which in Greek means a guide or leader of boys--not a teacher. His studies were grammar, music, and gymnastics, the aim of the course being to secure a symmetrical development of mind and body alike. Grammar included reading, writing, and arithmetic; music, which embraced a wide range of mental accomplishments, trained the boy to appreciate the masterpieces of the great poets, to contribute his part to the musical diversions of private entertainments, and to join in the sacred choruses and in the pæan of the battlefield. The exercises of the palestræ and the gymnasia trained him for the Olympic contests, or for those sterner hand- to-hand battle-struggles, in which so much depended upon personal strength and dexterity. Upon reaching maturity, the youth was enrolled in the list of citizens. But his graduation from school was his "commencement" in a much more real sense than with the average modern graduate. Never was there a people besides the Greeks whose daily life was so emphatically a discipline in liberal culture. The schools of the philosophers, the debates of the popular assembly, the practice of the law-courts, the religious processions, the representations of an unrivalled stage, the Panhellenic games--all these were splendid and efficient educational agencies, which produced and maintained a standard of average intelligence and culture among the citizens of the Greek cities that probably has never been attained among any other people on the earth. Freeman, quoted approvingly by Mahaffy, says that "the average intelligence of the assembled Athenian citizens was higher than that of our [the English] House of Commons." SOCIAL POSITION OF WOMAN.--Woman's social position in ancient Greece may be defined in general as being about half-way between Oriental seclusion and Western freedom. Her main duties were to cook and spin, and to oversee the domestic slaves, of whom she herself was practically one. In the fashionable society of Ionian cities, she was seldom allowed to appear in public, or to meet, even in her own house, the male friends of her husband. In Sparta, however, and in Dorian states generally, she was accorded much greater freedom, and was a really important factor in society. The low position generally assigned the wife in the home had a most disastrous effect upon Greek morals. She could exert no such elevating or refining influence as she casts over the modern home. The men were led to seek social and intellectual sympathy and companionship outside the family circle, among a class of women known as Hetairæ, who were esteemed chiefly for their brilliancy of intellect. As the most noted representative of this class stands Aspasia, the friend of Pericles. The influence of the Hetairæ was most harmful to social morality. THEATRICAL ENTERTAINMENTS.--Among the ancient Greeks the theatre was a state establishment, "a part of the constitution." This arose from the religious origin and character of the drama (see p. 193), all matters pertaining to the popular worship being the care and concern of the state. Theatrical performances, being religious acts, were presented only during religious festivals, and were attended by all classes, rich and poor, men, women, and children. The women, however, except the Hetairæ, were, it would seem, permitted to witness tragedies only; the comic stage was too gross to allow of their presence. The spectators sat under the open sky; and the pieces followed one after the other in close succession from early morning till nightfall. [Illustration: GREEK TRAGIC FIGURE.] There were companies of players who strolled about the country, just as the English actors of Shakespeare's time were wont to do. While the better class of actors were highly honored, ordinary players were held in very low esteem. The tragic actor increased his height and size by wearing thick-soled buskins, an enormous mask, and padded garments. The actor in comedy wore thin-soled slippers, or socks. The _sock_ being thus a characteristic part of the make-up of the ancient comic actor, and the _buskin_ that of the tragic actor, these foot coverings have come to be used as the symbols respectively of comedy and tragedy, as in the familiar lines of Dryden:-- "Great Fletcher never treads in buskins here, Nor greater Jonson dares in socks appear." The theatre exerted a great influence upon Greek life. It performed for ancient Greek society somewhat the same service as that rendered to modern society by the pulpit and the press. During the best days of Hellas the frequent rehearsal upon the stage of the chief incidents in the lives of the gods and the heroes served to deepen and strengthen the religious faith of the people; and later, in the Macedonian period, the theatre was one of the chief agents in the diffusion of Greek literary culture over the world. BANQUETS AND SYMPOSIA.--Banquets and drinking-parties among the Greeks possessed some features which set them apart from similar entertainments among other peoples. The banquet proper was partaken, in later times, by the guest in a reclining position, upon couches or divans, arranged about the table in the Oriental manner. After the usual courses, a libation was poured out and a hymn sung in honor of the gods, and then followed that characteristic part of the entertainment known as the _symposium_. The symposium was "the intellectual side of the feast." It consisted of general conversation, riddles, and convivial songs rendered to the accompaniment of the lyre passed from hand to hand. Generally, professional singers and musicians, dancing-girls, jugglers, and jesters were called in to contribute to the merrymaking. All the while the wine- bowl circulated freely, the rule being that a man might drink "as much as he could carry home without a guide,--unless he were far gone in years." Here also the Greeks applied their maxim, "Never too much." The banqueters usually consumed the night in merry-making, sometimes being broken in upon from the street by other bands of revellers, who made themselves self-invited guests. OCCUPATION.--The enormous body of slaves in ancient Greece relieved the free population from most of those forms of labor classed as drudgery. The æsthetic Greek regarded as degrading any kind of manual labor that marred the symmetry or beauty of the body. At Sparta, and in other states where oligarchical institutions prevailed, the citizens formed a sort of military class, strikingly similar to the military aristocracy of Feudal Europe. Their chief occupation was martial and gymnastic exercises and the administration of public affairs. The Spartans, it will be recalled, were forbidden by law to engage in trade. In other aristocratic states, as at Thebes, a man by engaging in trade disqualified himself for full citizenship. In the democratic states, however, speaking generally, labor and trade were regarded with less contempt. A considerable portion of the citizens were traders, artisans, and farmers. Life at Athens presented some peculiar features. All Attica being included in what we should term the corporate limits of the city, the roll of Athenian citizens included a large body of well-to-do farmers, whose residence was outside the city walls. The Attic plains, and the slopes of the half-encircling hills, were dotted with beautiful villas and inviting farmhouses. And then Athens being the head of a great empire of subject cities, a large number of Athenian citizens were necessarily employed as salaried officials in the minor positions of the public service, and thus politics became a profession. In any event, the meetings of the popular assembly and the discussion of matters of state engrossed more or less of the time and attention of every citizen. Again, the great Athenian jury-courts, which were busied with cases from all parts of the empire, gave constant employment to nearly one fourth of the citizens, the fee that the juryman received enabling him to live without other business. It is said that, in the early morning, when the jurymen were passing through the streets to the different courts, Athens appeared like a city wholly given up to the single business of law. Furthermore, the great public works, such as temples and commemorative monuments, which were in constant process of erection, afforded employment for a vast number of artists and skilled workmen of every class. In the Agora, again, at any time of the day, a numerous class might have been found whose sole occupation, as in the case of Socrates, was to talk. The writer of the "Acts of the Apostles" was so impressed with this feature of life at Athens that he summarized the habits of the people by saying, "All the Athenians, and strangers which were there, spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new thing." (Chap. xvii. 21.) SLAVERY.--There was a dark side to Greek life. Hellenic art, culture, refinement--"these good things were planted, like exquisite exotic flowers, upon the black, rank soil of slavery." The proportion of slaves to the free population in many of the states was astonishingly large. In Corinth and Ægina there were ten slaves to every freeman. In Attica the proportion was four to one; that is to say, out of a population of about 500,000, 400,000 were slaves. [Footnote: The population of Attica in 317 B.C. is reckoned at about 527,000. That of Athens in its best days was probably not far from 150,000.] Almost every freeman was a slave owner. It was accounted a real hardship to have to get along with less than half a dozen slaves. This large class of slaves was formed in various ways. In the prehistoric period, the fortunes of war had brought the entire population of whole provinces into a servile condition, as in certain parts of the Peloponnesus. During later times, the ordinary captives of war still further augmented the ranks of these unfortunates. Their number was also largely added to by the slave traffic carried on with the barbarian peoples of Asia Minor. Criminals and debtors, too, were often condemned to servitude; while foundlings were usually brought up as slaves. The relation of master and slave was regarded by the Greek as being, not only a legal, but a natural one. A free community, in his view, could not exist without slavery. It formed the natural basis of both the family and the state,--the relation of master and slave being regarded as "strictly analogous to the relation of soul and body." Even Aristotle and other Greek philosophers approved the maxim that "slaves are simply domestic animals possessed of intelligence." They were regarded as just as necessary in the economy of the family as cooking utensils. In general, Greek slaves were not treated harshly--judging their treatment by the standard of humanity that prevailed in antiquity. Some held places of honor in the family, and enjoyed the confidence and even the friendship of their master. Yet at Sparta, where slavery assumed the form of serfdom, the lot of the slave was peculiarly hard and unendurable. If slavery was ever justified by its fruits, it was in Greece. The brilliant civilization of the Greeks was its product, and could never have existed without it. As one truthfully says, "Without the slaves the Attic democracy would have been an impossibility, for they alone enabled the poor, as well as the rich, to take a part in public affairs." Relieving the citizen of all drudgery, the system created a class characterized by elegant leisure, refinement, and culture. We find an almost exact historical parallel to all this in the feudal aristocracy of mediæval Europe. Such a society has been well likened to a great pyramid, whose top may be gilded with light, while the base lies in dark shadows. The civilization of ancient Hellas was splendid and attractive, but it rested with a crushing weight upon all the lower orders of Greek society. SECTION III. ROMAN HISTORY. CHAPTER XXII. THE ROMAN KINGDOM. (Legendary Date, 753-509 B.C.) DIVISIONS OF ITALY.--The peninsula of Italy, like that of Greece, divides itself into three parts--Northern, Central, and Southern Italy. The first comprises the great basin of the Po, lying between the Alps and the Apennines. In ancient times this part of Italy included three districts-- Liguria, Gallia Cisalpina, which means "Gaul on this (the Italian) side of the Alps," and Venetia. The countries of Central Italy were Etruria, Latium, and Campania, facing the Western, or Tuscan Sea; Umbria and Picenum, looking out over the Eastern, or Adriatic Sea; and Samnium and the country of the Sabines, occupying the rough mountain districts of the Apennines. Southern Italy comprised the countries of Apulia, Lucania, Calabria, and Bruttium. Calabria occupied the "heel," and Bruttium formed the "toe," of the peninsula. This part of Italy, as we have already learned, was called Magna Græcia, or "Great Greece," on account of the number and importance of the Greek cities that during the period of Hellenic supremacy were established in these regions. The large island of Sicily, lying just off the mainland on the south, may be regarded simply as a detached fragment of Italy, so intimately has its history been interwoven with that of the peninsula. In ancient times it was the meeting-place and battleground of the Carthaginians, Greeks, and Romans. EARLY INHABITANTS OF ITALY.--There were, in early times, three chief races in Italy--the Italians, the Etruscans, and the Greeks. The Italians, a branch of the Aryan family, embraced many tribes (Latins, Umbrians, Sabines, Samnites, etc.), that occupied nearly all Central Italy. The Etruscans, a wealthy, cultured, and maritime people of uncertain race, dwelt in Etruria, now Tuscany. Before the rise of the Romans they were the leading race in the peninsula. Of the establishment of the Greek cities in Southern Italy, we have already learned in connection with Grecian History (p. 111). Some five hundred years B.C., the Gauls, a Celtic race, came over the Alps, and settling in Northern Italy, became formidable enemies of the infant republic of Rome. THE LATINS.--Most important of all the Italian peoples were the Latins, who dwelt in Latium, between the Tiber and the Liris. These people, like all the Italians, were near kindred of the Greeks, and brought with them into Italy those same customs, manners, beliefs, and institutions which we have seen to have been the common possession of the various branches of the Aryan household (see p. 5). There are said to have been in all Latium thirty towns, and these formed an alliance known as the Latin League. The city which first assumed importance and leadership among the towns of this confederation was Alba Longa, the "Long White City," so called because its buildings stretched for a great distance along the summit of a whitish ridge. THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME.--The place of preeminence among the Latin towns was soon lost by Alba Longa, and gained by another city. This was Rome, the stronghold of the Ramnes, or Romans, located upon a low hill on the south bank of the Tiber, about fifteen miles from the sea. The traditions of the Romans place the founding of their city in the year 753 B.C. The town was established, it would seem, as an outpost to guard the northern frontier of Latium against the Etruscans. Recent excavations have revealed the foundations of the old walls and two of the ancient gates. We thus learn that the city at first covered only the top of the Palatine Hill, one of a cluster of low eminences close to the Tiber, which, finally embraced within the limits of the growing city, became the famed "Seven Hills of Rome." From the shape of its enclosing walls, the original city was called _Roma Quadrata_, "Square Rome." THE EARLY ROMAN STATE: KING, SENATE, AND POPULAR ASSEMBLY.--The early Roman state seems to have been formed by the union of three communities. These constituted three tribes, known as Ramnes (the Romans proper, who gave name to the mixed people), Tities, and Luceres. Each of these tribes was divided into ten wards, or districts (_curiæ_); each ward was made up of _gentes_, or clans, and each clan was composed of a number of families. The heads of these families were called _patres_, or "fathers," and all the members patricians, that is, "children of the fathers." At the head of the nation stood the King, who was the father of the state. He was at once ruler of the people, commander of the army, judge and high priest of the nation, with absolute power as to life and death. Next to the king stood the Senate, or "council of the old men," composed of the "fathers," or heads of the families. This council had no power to enact laws: the duty of its members was simply to advise with the king, who was free to follow or to disregard their suggestions. The Popular Assembly (_comitia curiata_) comprised all the citizens of Rome, that is, all the members of the patrician families, old enough to bear arms. It was this body that enacted the laws of the state, determined upon peace or war, and also elected the king. CLASSES OF SOCIETY.--The two important classes of the population of Rome under the kingdom and the early republic, were the patricians and the plebeians. The former were the members of the three original tribes that made up the Roman people, and at first alone possessed political rights. They were proud, exclusive, and tenacious of their inherited privileges. The latter were made up chiefly of the inhabitants of subjected cities, and of refugees from various quarters that had sought an asylum at Rome. They were free to acquire property, and enjoyed personal freedom, but at first had no political rights whatever. The greater number were petty land-owners, who held and cultivated the soil about the city. A large part of the early history of Rome is simply the narration of the struggles of this class to secure social and political equality with the patricians. Besides these two principal orders, there were two other classes--clients and slaves. The former were attached to the families of patricians, who became their patrons, or protectors. The condition of the client was somewhat like that of the serf in the feudal system of the Middle Ages. A large clientage was considered the crown and glory of a patrician house. The slaves were, in the main, captives in war. Their number, small at first, gradually increased as the Romans extended their conquests, till they outnumbered all the other classes taken together, and more than once turned upon their masters in formidable revolts that threatened the very existence of the Roman state. THE LEGENDARY KINGS.--For nearly two and a half centuries after the founding of Rome (from 753 to 509 B.C., according to tradition), the government was a monarchy. To span this period, the legends of the Romans tell of the reigns of seven kings--Romulus, the founder of Rome; Numa, the lawgiver; Tullus Hostilius and Ancus Marcius, conquerors both; Tarquinius Priscus, the great builder; Servius Tullius, the reorganizer of the government and second founder of the state; and Tarquinius Superbus, the haughty tyrant, whose oppressions led to the abolition by the people of the office of king. The traditions of the doings of these monarchs and of what happened to them, blend hopelessly fact and fable. We cannot be quite sure even as to the names. Respecting Roman affairs, however, under the last three rulers (the Tarquins), who were of Etruscan origin, some important things are related, the substantial truth of which we may rely upon with a fair degree of certainty; and these matters we shall notice in the following paragraphs. GROWTH OF ROME UNDER THE TARQUINS.--The Tarquins extended their authority over the whole of Latium. The position of supremacy thus given Rome was naturally attended by the rapid growth in population and importance of the little Palatine city. The original walls soon became too strait for the increasing multitudes; new ramparts were built--tradition says under the direction of the king Servius Tullius--which, with a great circuit of seven miles, swept around the entire cluster of the Seven Hills. A large tract of marshy ground between the Palatine and Capitoline hills was drained by means of the Cloaca Maxima, the "Great Sewer," which was so admirably constructed that it has been preserved to the present day. It still discharges its waters through a great arch into the Tiber. The land thus reclaimed became the Forum, the assembling-place of the people. Upon the summit of the Capitoline Hill, overlooking the Forum, was built the famous sanctuary called the Capitol, or the Capitoline temple, where beneath the same roof were the shrines of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, the three great national deities. Upon the level ground between the Aventine and the Palatine was laid out the Circus Maximus, the "Great Circus," where were celebrated the Roman games. [Illustration: VIEW OF THE CAPITOLINE, WITH THE CLOACA MAXIMA. (A Reconstruction.)] NEW CONSTITUTION OF SERVIUS TULLIUS.--The second king of the Etruscan house, Servius Tullius by name, effected a most important change in the constitution of the Roman state. He did here at Rome just what Solon at about this time did at Athens (see p. 120). He made property instead of birth the basis of the constitution. The entire population was divided into five classes, the first of which included all citizens, whether patricians or plebeians, who owned twenty _jugera_ (about twelve acres) of land; the fifth and lowest embraced all that could show title to even two jugera. The army was made up of the members of the five classes; as it was thought right and proper that the public defence should be the care of those who, on account of their possessions, were most interested in the maintenance of order and in the protection of the boundaries of the state. The assembling-place of the military classes thus organized was on a large plain just outside the city walls, called the Campus Martius, or "Field of Mars." The meeting of these military orders was called the _comitia centuriata_, or the "assembly of hundreds." [Footnote: This assembly was not organized by Servius Tullius, but it grew out of the military organization he created.] This body, which of course was made up of patricians and plebeians, gradually absorbed the powers of the earlier patrician assembly (_comitia curiata_). THE EXPULSION OF THE KINGS.--The legends make Tarquinius Superbus, or Tarquin the Proud, the last king of Rome. He is represented as a monstrous tyrant, whose arbitrary acts caused both patricians and plebeians to unite and drive him and all his house into exile. This event, according to tradition, occurred in the year 509 B.C., only one year later than the expulsion of the tyrants from Athens (see p. 122). So bitterly did the people hate the tyranny they had abolished that it is said they all, the nobles as well as the commons, bound themselves by most solemn oaths never again to tolerate a king. We shall hereafter see how well this vow was kept for nearly five hundred years. THE ROMAN RELIGION. THE CHIEF ROMAN DEITIES.--The basis of the Roman religious system was the same as that of the Grecian: the germs of its institutions were brought from the same early Aryan home. At the head of the Pantheon stood Jupiter, identical in all essential attributes with the Hellenic Zeus. He was the special protector of the Roman people. To him, together with Juno and Minerva, was consecrated, as we have already noticed, a magnificent temple upon the summit of the Capitoline Hill, overlooking the Forum and the city. Mars, the god of war, standing next in rank, was the favorite deity and the fabled father of the Roman race, who were fond of calling themselves the "children of Mars." They proved themselves worthy offspring of the war-god. Martial games and festivals were celebrated in his honor during the first month of the Roman year, which bore, and still bears, in his honor, the name of March. Janus was a double-faced deity, "the god of the beginning and the end of everything." The month of January was sacred to him, as were also all gates and doors. The gates of his temple were always kept open in time of war and shut in time of peace. The fire upon the household hearth was regarded as the symbol of the goddess Vesta. Her worship was a favorite one with the Romans. The nation, too, as a single great family, had a common national hearth in the Temple of Vesta, where the sacred fires were kept burning from generation to generation by six virgins, daughters of the Roman state. The Lares and Penates were household gods. Their images were set in the entrance of the dwelling. The Lares were the spirits of ancestors, which were thought to linger about the home as its guardians. ORACLES AND DIVINATION.--The Romans, like the Greeks, thought that the will of the gods was communicated to men by means of oracles, and by strange sights, unusual events, or singular coincidences. There were no true oracles at Rome. The Romans, therefore, often had recourse to those in Magna Græcia, even sending for advice, in great emergencies, to the Delphian shrine. From Etruria was introduced the art of the haruspices, or soothsayers, which consisted in discovering the divine mind by the appearance of victims slain for the sacrifices. THE SACRED COLLEGES.--The four chief sacred colleges, or societies, were the Keepers of the Sibylline Books, the College of Augurs, the College of Pontiffs, and the College of the Heralds. [Illustration: VESTAL VIRGIN.] A curious legend is told of the Sibylline Books. An old woman came to Tarquinius Superbus and offered to sell him, for an extravagant price, nine volumes. As the king declined to pay the sum demanded, the woman departed, destroyed three of the books, and then, returning, offered the remainder at the very same sum that she had wanted for the complete number. The king still refused to purchase; so the sibyl went away and destroyed three more of the volumes, and bringing back the remaining three, asked the same price as before. Tarquin was by this time so curious respecting the contents of the mysterious books that he purchased the remaining volumes. It was found upon examination that they were filled with prophecies respecting the future of the Roman people. The books were placed in a stone chest, which was kept in a vault beneath the Capitoline temple; and special custodians were appointed to take charge of them and interpret them. The number of keepers, throughout the most important period of Roman history, was fifteen. The books were consulted only in times of extreme danger. The duty of the members of the College of Augurs was to interpret the omens, or auspices, which were casual sights or appearances, by which means it was believed that Jupiter made known his will. Great skill was required in the "taking of the auspices," as it was called. No business of importance, public or private, was entered upon without first consulting the auspices, to ascertain whether they were favorable. The public assembly, for illustration, must not convene, to elect officers or to enact laws, unless the auspices had been taken and found propitious. Should a peal of thunder occur while the people were holding a meeting, that was considered an unfavorable omen, and the assembly must instantly disperse. The College of Pontiffs was so called because one of the duties of its members was to keep in repair the bridges (_pontes_) over which the religious processions were accustomed to pass. This was the most important of all the religious institutions of the Romans; for to the pontiffs belonged the superintendence of all religious matters. In their keeping, too, was the calendar, and they could lengthen or shorten the year, which power they sometimes used to extend the office of a favorite or to cut short that of one who had incurred their displeasure. The head of the college was called Pontifex Maximus, or the Chief Bridge-builder, which title was assumed by the Roman emperors, and after them by the Christian bishops of Rome; and thus the name has come down to our own times. The College of Heralds had the care of all public matters pertaining to foreign nations. If the Roman people had suffered any wrong from another state, it was the duty of the heralds to demand satisfaction. If this was denied, and war determined upon, then a herald proceeded to the frontier of the enemy's country and hurled over the boundary a spear dipped in blood. This was a declaration of war. The Romans were very careful in the observance of this ceremony. SACRED GAMES.--The Romans had many religious games and festivals. Prominent among these were the so-called Circensian Games, or Games of the Circus, which were very similar to the sacred games of the Greeks (see p. 106). They consisted, in the main, of chariot-racing, wrestling, foot- racing, and various other athletic contests. These festivals, as in the case of those of the Greeks, had their origin in the belief that the gods delighted in the exhibition of feats of skill, strength, or endurance; that their anger might be appeased by such spectacles; or that they might be persuaded by the promise of games to lend aid to mortals in great emergencies. At the opening of the year it was customary for the Roman magistrate, in behalf of the people, to promise to the gods games and festivals, provided good crops, protection from pestilence, and victory were granted the Romans during the year. So, too, a general in great straits in the field might, in the name of the state, vow plays to the gods, and the people were sacredly bound by his act to fulfil the promise. Plays given in fulfilment of vows thus made were called votive games. Towards the close of the republic these games lost much of their religious character, and at last became degraded into mere brutal shows given by ambitious leaders for the purpose of winning popularity. CHAPTER XXIII. THE EARLY ROMAN REPUBLIC: CONQUEST OF ITALY, (509-264 B.C.) THE FIRST CONSULS.--With the monarchy overthrown and the last king and his house banished from Rome, the people set to work to reorganize the government. In place of the king, there were elected (by the _comitia centuriata_, in which assembly the plebeians had a place) two patrician magistrates, called consuls, [Footnote: That is, _colleagues_. Each consul had the power of obstructing the acts or vetoing the commands of the other. In times of great public danger the consuls were superseded by a special officer called a _dictator_, whose term of office was limited to six months, but whose power during this time was as unlimited as that of the kings had been.] who were chosen for one year, and were invested with all the powers, save some priestly functions, that had been held by the monarch during the regal period. In public each consul was attended by twelve servants, called lictors, each of whom bore an axe bound in a bundle of rods (_fasces_), the symbols of the authority of the consul to flog and to put to death. Within the limits of the city, however, the axe must be removed from the _fasces_, by which was indicated that no Roman citizen could be put to death by the consuls without the consent of the public assembly. Lucius Junius Brutus and Tarquinius Collatinus were the first consuls under the new constitution. But it is said that the very name of Tarquinius was so intolerable to the people that he was forced to resign the consulship, and that he and all his house were driven out of Rome. [Footnote: The truth is, he was related to the exiled royal family, and the people were distrustful of his loyalty to the republic.] Another consul, Publius Valerius, was chosen in his stead. SECESSION OF THE PLEBEIANS. FIRST SECESSION OF THE PLEBEIANS (494 B.C.).--Taking advantage of the disorders that followed the political revolution, the Latin towns which had been forced to acknowledge the supremacy of Rome rose in revolt, and the result was that almost all the conquests that had been made under the kings were lost. For a long time the little republic had to struggle hard for bare existence. [Illustration: LICTORS.] Troubles without brought troubles within. The poor plebeians, during this period of disorder and war, fell in debt to the wealthy class,--for the Roman soldier went to war at his own charge, equipping and feeding himself,--and payment was exacted with heartless severity. A debtor became the absolute property of his creditor, who might sell him as a slave to pay the debt, and in some cases even put him to death. All this was intolerable. The plebeians determined to secede from Rome and build a new city for themselves on a neighboring eminence, called afterwards the Sacred Hill. They marched away in a body from Rome to the chosen spot, and began making preparations for erecting new homes (494 B.C.). THE COVENANT AND THE TRIBUNES.--The patricians saw clearly that such a division must prove ruinous to the state, and that the plebeians must be persuaded to give up their enterprise and come back to Rome. The consul Valerius was sent to treat with the insurgents. The plebeians were at first obstinate, but at last were persuaded to yield to the entreaties of the embassy to return, being won to this mind, so it is said, by one of the wise senators, Menenius, who made use of the well-known fable of the Body and the Members. The following covenant was entered into, and bound by the most solemn oaths and vows before the gods: The debts of the poor plebeians were to be cancelled and those held in slavery set free; and two magistrates (the number was soon increased to ten), called tribunes, whose duty it should be to watch over the plebeians, and protect them against the injustice, harshness, and partiality of the patrician magistrates, were to be chosen from the commons. The persons of these officers were made sacred. Any one interrupting a tribune in the discharge of his duties, or doing him any violence, was declared an outlaw, whom any one might kill. That the tribunes might be always easily found, they were not allowed to go more than one mile beyond the city walls. Their houses were to be open night as well as day, that any plebeian unjustly dealt with might flee thither for protection and refuge. We cannot overestimate the importance of the change effected in the Roman constitution by the creation of this office of the tribunate. Under the protection and leadership of the tribunes, who were themselves protected by oaths of inviolable sanctity, the plebeians carried on a struggle for a share in the offices and dignities of the state which never ceased until the Roman government, as yet only republican in name, became in fact a real democracy, in which patrician and plebeian shared equally in all emoluments and privileges. CORIOLANUS.--The tradition of Coriolanus illustrates in what manner the tribunes cared for the rights of the common people and protected them from the oppression of the nobles. During a severe famine at Rome, Gelon, the King of Syracuse, sent large quantities of grain to the capital for distribution among the suffering poor. A certain patrician, Coriolanus by name, made a proposal that none of the grain should be given to the plebeians save on condition that they give up their tribunes. These officials straightway summoned him before the plebeian assembly, [Footnote: This was the _Concilium Tributum Plebis_, an assembly which came into existence about this time. It was made up wholly of plebeians, and was presided over by the tribunes. Later, there came into existence another tribal assembly, which was composed of patricians and plebeians, and presided over by consuls or prætors. Some authorities are inclined to regard these two assemblies as one and the same body; but others, among whom is Mommsen, with probably better reason, look upon them as two distinct organizations.] on the charge of having broken the solemn covenant of the Sacred Mount, and so bitter was the feeling against him that he was obliged to flee from Rome. He now allied himself with the Volscians, enemies of Rome, and even led their armies against his native city. An embassy from the Senate was sent to him, to sue for peace. But the spirit of Coriolanus was bitter and revengeful, and he would listen to none of their proposals. Nothing availed to move him until his mother, at the head of a train of Roman matrons, came to his tent, and with tears pleaded with him to spare the city. Her entreaties and the "soft prayers" of his own wife and children prevailed, and with the words "Mother, thou hast saved Rome, but lost thy son," he led away the Volscian army. CINCINNATUS MADE DICTATOR.--The enemies of Rome, taking advantage of the dissensions of the nobles and commons, pressed upon the frontiers of the republic on all sides. In 458 B.C., the Æquians, while one of the consuls was away fighting the Sabines, defeated the forces of the other, and shut them up in a narrow valley, whence escape seemed impossible. There was great terror in Rome when news of the situation of the army was brought to the city. The Senate immediately appointed Cincinnatus, a noble patrician, dictator. The ambassadors that carried to him the message from the Senate found him upon his little farm near the Tiber, at work behind the plough. Accepting the office at once, he hastily gathered an army, marched to the relief of the consul, captured the entire army of the Æquians, and sent them beneath the yoke. [Footnote: This was formed of two spears thrust firmly into the ground and crossed a few feet from the earth by a third. Prisoners of war were forced to pass beneath this yoke as a symbol of submission.] Cincinnatus then led his army back to Rome in triumph, laid down his office, and sought again the retirement of his farm. THE DECEMVIRS AND THE TABLES OF LAWS.--Written laws are always a great safeguard against oppression. Until what shall constitute a crime and what shall be its penalty are clearly written down and well known and understood by all, judges may render unfair decisions, or inflict unjust punishment, and yet run little risk--unless they go altogether too far--of being called to an account; for no one but themselves knows what the law or the penalty really is. Hence in all struggles of the people against the tyranny of the ruling class, the demand for written laws is one of the first measures taken by the people for the protection of their persons and property. Thus we have seen the people of Athens, early in their struggle with the nobles, demanding and obtaining a code of written laws (see p. 119). The same thing now took place at Rome. The plebeians demanded that a code of laws be drawn up, in accordance with which the consuls, who exercised judicial powers, should render their decisions. The patricians offered a stubborn resistance to their wishes, but finally were forced to yield to the popular clamor. A commission was sent to the Greek cities of Southern Italy and to Athens to study the Grecian laws and customs. Upon the return of this embassy, a commission of ten magistrates, who were known as decemvirs, was appointed to frame a code of laws (451 B.C.). These officers, while engaged in this work, were also to administer the entire government, and so were invested with the supreme power of the state. The patricians gave up their consuls and the plebeians their tribunes. At the end of the first year, the task of the board was quite far from being finished, so a new decemvirate was elected to complete the work. Appius Claudius was the only member of the old board that was returned to the new. The code was soon finished, and the laws were written on twelve tablets of brass, which were fastened to the rostrum, or orator's platform in the Forum, where they might be seen and read by all. These "Laws of the Twelve Tables" were to Roman jurisprudence what the good laws of Solon (see p. 120) were to the Athenian constitution. They formed the basis of all new legislation for many centuries, and constituted a part of the education of the Roman youth--every school-boy being required to learn them by heart. MISRULE AND OVERTHROW OF THE DECEMVIRS.--The first decemvirs used the great power lodged in their hands with justice and prudence; but the second board, under the leadership of Appius Claudius, instituted a most infamous and tyrannical rule. The result was a second secession of the plebeians to the Sacred Hill. This procedure, which once before had proved so effectual in securing justice to the oppressed, had a similar issue now. The situation was so critical that the decemvirs were forced to resign. The consulate and the tribunate were restored. Eight of the decemvirs were forced to go into exile; Appius Claudius and one other, having been imprisoned, committed suicide. CONSULAR, OR MILITARY TRIBUNES.--The overthrow of the decemvirate was followed by a long struggle between the nobles and the commons, which was an effort on the part of the latter to gain admission to the consulship; for up to this time only a patrician could hold that office. The contention resulted in a compromise. It was agreed that, in place of the two consuls, the people _might_ elect from either order magistrates, who should be known as "military tribunes with consular powers." These officers, whose numbers varied, differed from consuls more in name than in functions or authority. In fact, the plebeians had gained the office, but not the name (444 B.C.). THE CENSORS.--No sooner had the plebeians virtually secured admission to the consulship, than the jealous and exclusive patricians commenced scheming to rob them of the fruit of the victory they had gained. They effected this by taking from the consulate some of its most distinctive duties and powers, and conferring them upon two new patrician officers called censors. The functions of these magistrates were many and important. They took the census, and thus assigned to every man his position in the different classes of the citizens; and they could, for immorality or any improper conduct, not only degrade a man from his rank, but deprive him of his vote. It was their duty to watch the public morals and in case of necessity to administer wholesome advice. Thus we are told of their reproving the young Romans for wearing tunics with long sleeves-- an Oriental and effeminate custom--and for neglecting to marry upon arriving at a proper age. From the name of these Roman officers comes our word _censorious_, meaning fault-finding. The first censors were elected probably in the year 444 B.C.; about one hundred years afterwards, in 351 B.C., the plebeians secured the right of holding this office also. SIEGE AND CAPTURE OF VEII.--We must now turn to notice the fortunes of Rome in war. Almost from the founding of the city, we find its warlike citizens carrying on a fierce contest with their powerful Etruscan neighbors on the north. Veii was one of the largest and richest of the cities of Etruria. Around this the war gathered. The Romans, like the Grecians at Troy, attacked its walls for ten years. The length of the siege, and the necessity of maintaining a force permanently in the field, led to the establishment of a paid standing army; for hitherto the soldier had not only equipped himself, but had served without pay. Thus was laid the basis of that military power which was destined to effect the conquest of the world, and then, in the hands of ambitious and favorite generals, to overthrow the republic itself. [Illustration: ROMAN SOLDIER.] The capture of Veii by the dictator Camillus (396 B.C.) was followed by that of many other Etruscan towns. Rome was enriched by their spoils, and became the centre of a large and lucrative trade. The frontiers of the republic were pushed out even beyond the utmost limits of the kingdom before its overthrow. All that was lost by the revolution had been now regained, and much besides had been won. At this moment there broke upon the city a storm from the north, which all but cut short the story we are narrating. SACK OF ROME BY THE GAULS (390 B.C.).--We have already mentioned how, in very remote times, the tribes of Gaul crossed the Alps and established themselves in Northern Italy (see p. 223). While the Romans were conquering the towns of Etruria, these barbarian hordes were moving southward, and overrunning and devastating the countries of Central Italy. [Illustration: GAULS IN SIGHT OF ROME.] News was brought to Rome that they were advancing upon that city. A Roman army met them on the banks of the river Allia, eleven miles from the capital. The Romans were driven in great panic from the field. It would be impossible to picture the consternation and despair that reigned at Rome when the fugitives brought to the city intelligence of the terrible disaster. It was never forgotten, and the day of the battle of Allia was ever after a black day in the Roman calendar. The sacred vessels of the temples were buried; the eternal fires of Vesta were hurriedly borne by their virgin keepers to a place of safety in Etruria; and a large part of the population fled in dismay across the Tiber. No attempt was made to defend any portion of the city save the citadel. This stronghold was kept by a little garrison, under the command of the hero Marius Manlius. A tradition tells how, when the barbarians, under cover of the darkness of night, had climbed the steep rock and had almost effected an entrance to the citadel, the defenders were awakened by the cackling of some geese, which the piety of the famishing soldiers had spared, because these birds were sacred to Juno. News was now brought the Gauls that the Venetians were overrunning their possessions in Northern Italy. This led them to open negotiations with the Romans. For one thousand pounds of gold, according to the historian Livy, the Gauls agreed to retire from the city. As the story runs, while the gold was being weighed out in the Forum, the Romans complained that the weights were false, when Brennus, the Gallic leader, threw his sword also into the scales, exclaiming, "_Væ, victis!_" "Woe to the vanquished." Just at this moment, so the tale continues, Camillus, a brave patrician general, appeared upon the scene with a Roman army that had been gathered from the fugitives; and, as he scattered the barbarians with heavy blows, he exclaimed, "Rome is ransomed with steel and not with gold." According to one account Brennus himself was taken prisoner; but another tradition says that he escaped, carrying with him not only the ransom, but a vast booty besides. THE REBUILDING OF ROME.--When the fugitives returned to Rome after the withdrawal of the Gauls, they found the city a heap of ruins. Some of the poorer classes, shrinking from the labor of rebuilding their old homes, proposed to abandon the site and make Veii their new capital. But love for the old spot at last prevailed over all the persuasions of indolence, and the people, with admirable courage, set themselves to the task of rebuilding their homes. It was a repetition of the scene at Athens after the retreat of the Persians (see p. 136). The city was speedily restored, and was soon enjoying her old position of supremacy among the surrounding states. There were some things, however, which even Roman resolution and perseverance could not restore. These were the ancient records and documents, through whose irreparable loss the early history of Rome is involved in great obscurity and uncertainty. TREASON AND DEATH OF MANLIUS.--The ravages of the Gauls left the poor plebeians in a most pitiable condition. In order to rebuild their dwellings and restock their farms, they were obliged to borrow money of the rich patricians, and consequently soon began again to experience the insult and oppression that were ever incident to the condition of the debtor class at Rome. The patrician Manlius, the hero of the brave defence of the Capitol, now came forward as the champion of the plebeians. He sold the larger part of his estates, and devoted the proceeds to the relief of the debtor class. It seems evident that in thus undertaking the cause of the commons he had personal aims and ambitions. The patricians determined to crush him. He was finally brought to trial before the popular assembly, on the charge of conspiring to restore the office of king. From the Forum, where the people were gathered, the Capitol, which Manlius had so bravely defended against the barbarians, was in full sight. Pointing to the temples he had saved, he appealed to the gods and to the gratitude of the Roman people. The people responded to the appeal in a way altogether natural. They refused to condemn him. But brought to trial a second time, and now in a grove whence the citadel could not be seen, he was sentenced to death, and was thrown from the Tarpeian Rock. [Footnote: The Tarpeian Rock was the name given to the cliff which the Capitoline Hill formed on the side towards the Tiber (or towards the Palatine, according to some). It received its name from Tarpeia, daughter of one of the legendary keepers of the citadel. State criminals were frequently executed by being thrown from this rock.] This event occurred 384 B.C. PLEBEIANS ADMITTED TO THE CONSULSHIP.--For nearly half a century after the death of Manlius the most important events in the history of Rome centre about the struggle of the plebeians, for admission to those offices of the government whence the jealousy of the patricians still excluded them. The Licinian laws, so called from one of their proposers, the tribune C. Licinius, besides relieving the poor of usurious interest, and effecting a more just division of the public lands, also provided that consuls should be chosen yearly, as at first (see p. 238), and that one of the consuls should be a plebeian. This last provision opened to any one of the plebeian class the highest office in the state. The nobles, when they saw that it would be impossible to resist the popular demand, had recourse to the old device. They effected a compromise, whereby the judicial powers of the consuls were taken from them and conferred upon a new magistrate, who bore the name of prætor. Only patricians, of course, were to be eligible to this new office. They then permitted the Licinian laws to pass (367 B.C.). During the latter half of the fourth century B.C. (between the years 356- 300) the plebeians gained admittance to the dictatorship, the censorship, the prætorship, and to the College of Augurs and the College of Pontiffs. They had been admitted to the College of Priests having charge of the Sibylline books, at the time of the passing of the Licinian laws. With plebeians in all these positions, the rights of the lower order were fairly secured against oppressive and partisan decisions on the part of the magistrates, and against party fraud in the taking of the auspices and in the regulation of the calendar. There was now political equality between the nobility and the commonalty. WARS FOR THE MASTERY OF ITALY. THE FIRST SAMNITE WAR (343-341 B.C.).--The union of the two orders in the state allowed the Romans now to employ their undivided strength in subjugating the different states of the peninsula. The most formidable competitors of the Romans for supremacy in Italy were the Samnites, rough and warlike mountaineers who held the Apennines to the east of Latium. They were worthy rivals of the "children of Mars." The successive struggles between these martial races are known as the First, Second, and Third Samnite wars. They extended over a period of half a century, and in their course involved almost all the states of Italy. Of the first of this series of wars we know very little, although Livy wrote a long, but unfortunately very unreliable, narration of it. In the midst of the struggle, Rome was confronted by a dangerous revolt of her Latin allies, and, leaving the war unfinished, turned her forces upon the insurgents. REVOLT OF THE LATIN CITIES (340-338 B.C.).--The strife between the Romans and their Latin allies was simply the old contest within the walls of the capital between the patricians and the plebeians transferred to a larger arena. As the nobles had oppressed the commons, so now both these orders united in the oppression of the Latins--the plebeians in their bettered circumstances forgetting the lessons of adversity. The Latin allies demanded a share in the government, and that the lands acquired by conquest should be distributed among them as well as among Roman citizens. The Romans refused. All Latium rose in revolt against the injustice and tyranny of the oppressor. After about three years' hard fighting, the rebellion was subdued. The Latin League was now broken up. Some of the towns retained their independence (Tibur, Præneste, and Cora); some received full Roman citizenship (Aricia, Lanuvium, and Nomentum); while others received only the private rights of Roman citizens, the right of suffrage being withheld. SECOND AND THIRD SAMNITE WARS (326-290 B.C.).--In a few years after the close of the Latin contest, the Romans were at war again with their old rivals, the Samnites. Notwithstanding the latter were thoroughly defeated in this second contest, still it was not long before they were again in arms and engaged in their third struggle with Rome. This time they had formed a powerful coalition which embraced the Etruscans, the Umbrians, the Gauls, and other nations. Roman courage rose with the danger. The united armies of the league met with a most disastrous defeat (at Sentinum, 295 B.C.), and the power of the coalition was broken. One after another the states that had joined the alliance were chastised, and the Samnites were forced to acknowledge the supremacy of Rome. A few years later, almost all of the Greek cities of Southern Italy, save Tarentum, also came under the growing power of the imperial city. WAR WITH PYRRHUS (282-272 B.C.).--Tarentum was one of the most noted of the Hellenic cities of Magna Græcia. It was a seaport on the Calabrian coast, and had grown opulent through the extended trade of its merchants. The capture of some Roman vessels, and an insult offered to an envoy of the republic by the Tarentines, led to a declaration of war against them by the Roman Senate. The Tarentines turned to Greece for aid. Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, a cousin of Alexander the Great, who had an ambition to build up such an empire in the West as his renowned kinsman had established in the East, responded to their entreaties, and crossed over into Italy with a small army of Greek mercenaries and twenty war- elephants. He organized and drilled the effeminate Tarentines, and soon felt prepared to face the Romans. The hostile armies met at Heraclea (280 B.C.). It is said that when Pyrrhus, who had underestimated his foe, observed the skill which the Romans evinced in forming their line of battle, he exclaimed, in admiration, "In war, at least, these men are not barbarians." The battle was won for Pyrrhus by his war-elephants, the sight of which, being new to the Romans, caused them to flee from the field in dismay. But Pyrrhus had lost thousands of his bravest troops. Victories gained by such losses in a country where he could not recruit his army, he saw clearly, meant final defeat. As he looked over the battle-field, he is said to have turned to his companions and remarked, "Another such victory, and I must return to Epirus alone." He noticed also, and not without appreciating its significance, that the wounds of the Roman soldiers killed in the action were all in front. "Had I such soldiers," said he, "I should soon be master of the world." The prudence of the victorious Pyrrhus led him to send to the Romans an embassy with proposals of peace. When the Senate hesitated, its resolution was fixed by the eloquence of the aged Appius: "Rome," exclaimed he, "shall never treat with a victorious foe." The ambassadors were obliged to return to Pyrrhus unsuccessful in their mission. Pyrrhus, according to the Roman story-tellers, who most lavishly embellished this chapter of their history, was not more successful in attempts at bribery than in the arts of negotiation. Upon his attempting by large offers of gold to win Fabricius, who had been intrusted by the Senate with an important embassy, the sturdy old Roman replied, "Poverty, with an honest name, is more to be desired than wealth." After a second victory, as disastrous as his first, Pyrrhus crossed over into Sicily, to aid the Grecians there in their struggle with the Carthaginians. At first he was everywhere successful; but finally fortune turned against him, and he was glad to escape from the island. Recrossing the straits into Italy, he once more engaged the Romans, but at the battle of Beneventum suffered a disastrous and final defeat at the hands of the consul Curius Dentatus (274 B.C.). Leaving a sufficient force to garrison Tarentum, the baffled and disappointed king set sail for Epirus. He had scarcely embarked before Tarentum surrendered to the Romans (272 B.C.). This ended the struggles for the mastery of Italy. Rome was now mistress of all the peninsula south of the Arnus and the Rubicon. It was now her care to consolidate these possessions, and to fasten her hold upon them, by means of a perfect network of colonies and military roads. [Footnote: "Colonies were not all of the same character. They must be distinguished into two classes--the colonies of Roman citizens and the Latin colonies. The colonies of Roman citizens consisted usually of three hundred men of approved military experience, who went forth with their families to occupy conquered cities of no great magnitude, but which were important as military positions, being usually on the sea-coast. These three hundred families formed a sort of patrician caste, while the old inhabitants sank into the condition formerly occupied by the plebeians at Rome. The heads of these families retained all their rights as Roman citizens, and might repair to Rome to vote in the popular assemblies."--Liddell's _History of Rome_. The Latin colonies numbered about thirty at the time of the Second Punic War. A few of these were colonies that had been founded by the old Latin Confederacy; but the most were towns that had been established by Rome subsequent to the dissolution of the League (see p. 244). The term Latin was applied to these later colonies of purely Roman origin, for the reason that they enjoyed the same rights as the Latin towns that had retained their independence. Thus the inhabitants of a Latin colony possessed some of the most valuable of the private rights of Roman citizens, but they had no political rights at the capital.] CHAPTER XXIV. THE FIRST PUNIC WAR. (264-241 B.C.) CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIAN EMPIRE.--Foremost among the cities founded by the Phoenicians upon the different shores of the Mediterranean was Carthage, upon the northern coast of Africa. The city is thought to have had its beginnings in a small trading-post, established late in the ninth century B.C., about one hundred years before the founding of Rome. Carthage was simply another Tyre. She was mistress and queen of the Western Mediterranean. At the period we have now reached, she held sway, through peaceful colonization or by force of arms, over all the northern coast of Africa from the Greater Syrtis to the Pillars of Hercules, and possessed the larger part of Sicily, as well as Sardinia, Corsica, the Balearic Isles, Southern Spain, and scores of little islands scattered here and there in the neighboring seas. With all its shores dotted with her colonies and fortresses, and swept in every direction by the Carthaginian war-galleys, the Western Mediterranean had become a "Phoenician lake," in which, as the Carthaginians boasted, no one dared wash his hands without their permission. CARTHAGINIAN GOVERNMENT AND RELIGION.--The government of Carthage, like that of Rome, was republican in form. Corresponding to the Roman consuls, two magistrates, called Suffetes, stood at the head of the state. The Senate was composed of the heads of the leading families; its duties and powers were very like those of the Roman Senate. So well-balanced was the constitution, and so prudent was its administration, that six hundred years of Carthaginian history exhibited not a single revolution. The religion of the Carthaginians was the old Canaanitish worship of Baal, or the Sun. To Moloch,--another name for the fire-god,--"who rejoiced in human victims and in parents' tears," they offered human sacrifices. ROME AND CARTHAGE COMPARED.--These two great republics, which for more than five centuries had been slowly extending their limits and maturing their powers upon the opposite shores of the Mediterranean, were now about to begin one of the most memorable struggles of all antiquity--a duel that was to last, with every vicissitude of fortune, for over one hundred years. As was the case in the contest between Athens and Sparta, so now the two rival cities, with their allies and dependencies, were very nearly matched in strength and resources. The Romans, it is true, were almost destitute of a navy; while the Carthaginians had the largest and most splendidly equipped fleet that ever patrolled the waters of the Mediterranean. But although the Carthaginians were superior to the Romans in naval warfare, they were greatly their inferiors in land encounters. The Carthaginian territory, moreover, was widely scattered, embracing extended coasts and isolated islands; while the Roman possessions were compact, and confined to a single and easily defended peninsula. Again, the Carthaginian armies were formed chiefly of mercenaries, while those of Rome were recruited very largely from the ranks of the Roman people. And then the subject states of Carthage were mostly of another race, language, and religion from their Phoenician conquerors, and were ready, upon the first disaster to the ruling city, to drop away from their allegiance; while the Latin allies and Italian dependencies of Rome were close kindred to her in race and religion, and so, through natural impulse, for the most part remained loyal to her during even the darkest periods of her struggle with her rival. THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR.--Lying between Italy and the coast of Africa is the large island of Sicily. It is in easy sight of the former, and its southernmost point is only ninety miles from the latter. At the commencement of the First Punic War, the Carthaginians held possession of all the island save a strip of the eastern coast, which was under the sway of the Greek city of Syracuse. The Greeks and Carthaginians had carried on an almost uninterrupted struggle through two centuries for the control of the island. The Romans had not yet set foot upon it. But it was destined to become the scene of the most terrible encounters between the armaments of the two rivals. Pyrrhus had foreseen it all. As he withdrew from the island, he said, "What a fine battlefield we are leaving for the Romans and Carthaginians." In the year 264 B.C., on a flimsy pretext of giving protection to some friends, the Romans crossed over to the island. That act committed them to a career of foreign conquest destined to continue till their arms had made the circuit of the Mediterranean. The Syracusans and Carthaginians, old enemies and rivals though they had been, joined their forces against the insolent newcomers. The allies were completely defeated in the first battle, and the Roman army obtained a sure foothold upon the island. In the following year both consuls were placed at the head of formidable armies for the conquest of Sicily. A large portion of the island was quickly overrun, arid many of the cities threw off their allegiance to Syracuse and Carthage, and became allies of Rome. Hiero, king of Syracuse, seeing that he was upon the losing side, deserted the cause of the Carthaginians, and formed an alliance with the Romans, and ever after remained their firm friend. THE ROMANS GAIN THEIR FIRST NAVAL VICTORY (260 B.C.).--Their experience during the past campaigns had shown the Romans that if they were to cope successfully with the Carthaginians, they must be able to meet them upon the sea as well as upon the land. So they determined to build a fleet. A Carthaginian galley that had been wrecked upon the shores of Italy, served as a pattern. It is affirmed that, within the almost incredibly short space of sixty days, a growing forest was converted into a fleet of one hundred and twenty war galleys. The consul C. Duillius was entrusted with the command of the fleet. He met the Carthaginian squadron near the city and promontory of Mylæ, on the northern coast of Sicily. Now, distrusting their ability to match the skill of their enemy in naval tactics, the Romans had provided each of their vessels with a drawbridge. As soon as a Carthaginian ship came near enough to a Roman vessel, this gangway was allowed to fall upon the approaching galley; and the Roman soldiers, rushing along the bridge, were soon engaged in a hand-to-hand conflict with their enemies, in which species of encounter the former were unequalled. The result was a complete victory for the Romans. The joy at Rome was unbounded. It inspired in the more sanguine splendid visions of maritime command and glory. The Mediterranean should speedily become a Roman lake, in which no vessel might float without the consent of Rome. THE ROMANS CARRY THE WAR INTO AFRICA.--The results of the naval engagement at Mylæ encouraged the Romans to push the war with redoubled energy. They resolved to carry it into Africa. An immense Carthaginian fleet that disputed the passage of the Roman squadron was almost annihilated, and the Romans disembarked near Carthage. Regulus, one of the consuls who led the army of invasion, sent word to Rome that he had sealed up the gates of Carthage with terror. Finally, however, Regulus suffered a crushing defeat, and was made prisoner. A fleet which was sent to bear away the remnants of the shattered army was wrecked in a terrific storm off the coast of Sicily, and the shores of the island were strewn with the wreckage of between two and three hundred ships and with the bodies of one hundred thousand men. Undismayed at the terrible disaster that had overtaken the transport fleet, the Romans set to work to build another, and made a second descent upon the African coast. The expedition, however, accomplished nothing of importance; and the fleet on its return voyage was almost destroyed, just off the coast of Italy, by a tremendous storm. REGULUS AND THE CARTHAGINIAN EMBASSY.--For a few years the Romans refrained from tempting again the hostile powers of the sea, and Sicily became once more the battle-ground of the contending rivals. At last, having lost a great battle (battle of Panormus, 251 B.C.), the Carthaginians became dispirited, and sent an embassy to Rome, to negotiate for peace, or, if that could not be reached, to effect an exchange of prisoners. Among the commissioners was Regulus, who since his capture, five years before, had been held a prisoner in Africa. Before setting out from Carthage he had promised to return if the embassy were unsuccessful. For the sake of his own release, the Carthaginians supposed he would counsel peace, or at least urge an exchange of prisoners. But it is related, that upon arrival at Rome, he counselled war instead of peace, at the same time revealing to the Senate the enfeebled condition of Carthage. As to the exchange of prisoners, he said, "Let those who have surrendered when they ought to have died, die in the land which has witnessed their disgrace." The Roman Senate, following his counsel, rejected all the proposals of the embassy; and Regulus, in spite of the tears and entreaties of his wife and friends, turned away from Rome, and set out for Carthage to bear such fate as he well knew the Carthaginians, in their disappointment and anger, would be sure to visit upon him. The tradition goes on to tell how, upon his arrival at Carthage, he was confined in a cask driven full of spikes, and then left to die of starvation and pain. This part of the tale has been discredited, and the finest touches of the other portions are supposed to have been added by the story-tellers. LOSS OF TWO MORE ROMAN FLEETS.--After the failure of the Carthaginian embassy, the war went on for several years by land and sea with varying vicissitudes. At last, on the coast of Sicily, one of the consuls, Claudius, met with an overwhelming defeat. Almost a hundred vessels of his fleet were lost. The disaster caused the greatest alarm at Rome. Superstition increased the fears of the people. It was reported that just before the battle, when the auspices were being taken, and the sacred chickens would not eat, Claudius had given orders to have them thrown into the sea, irreverently remarking, "At any rate, they shall drink." Imagination was free to depict what further evils the offended gods might inflict upon the Roman state. The gloomiest forebodings might have found justification in subsequent events. The other consul just now met with a great disaster. He was proceeding along the southern coast of Sicily with a squadron of eight hundred merchantmen and over one hundred war galleys, the former loaded with grain for the Roman army on the island. A severe storm arising, the squadron was beaten to pieces upon the rocks. Not a single ship escaped. The coast for miles was strewn with broken planks, and with bodies, and heaped with vast windrows of grain cast up by the waves. CLOSE OF THE FIRST PUNIC WAR.--The war had now lasted for fifteen years. Four Roman fleets had been destroyed, three of which had been sunk or broken to pieces by storms. Of the fourteen hundred vessels which had been lost, seven hundred were war galleys,--all large and costly quinqueremes, that is, vessels with five banks of oars. Only one hundred of these had fallen into the hands of the enemy; the remainder were a sacrifice to the malign and hostile power of the waves. Such successive blows from an invisible hand were enough to blanch the faces even of the sturdy Romans. Neptune manifestly denied to the "Children of Mars" the realm of the sea. It was impossible for the six years following the last disaster to infuse any spirit into the struggle. In 247 B.C., Hamilcar Barcas, the father of the great Hannibal, assumed the command of the Carthaginian forces, and for several years conducted the war with great ability on the island of Sicily, even making Rome tremble for the safety of her Italian possessions. Once more the Romans determined to commit their cause to the element that had been so unfriendly to them. A fleet of two hundred vessels was built and equipped, but entirely by private subscription; for the Senate feared that public sentiment would not sustain them in levying a tax for fitting up another costly armament as an offering to the insatiable Neptune. This people's squadron, as we may call it, was intrusted to the command of the consul Catulus. He met the Carthaginian fleet under the command of the Admiral Hanno, near the Ægatian islands, and inflicted upon it a crushing defeat. The Carthaginians now sued for peace. A treaty was at length arranged, the terms of which required that Carthage should give up all claims to the island of Sicily, surrender all her prisoners, and pay an indemnity of 3200 talents (about $4,000,000), one-third of which was to be paid down, and the balance in ten yearly payments. Thus ended (241 B.C.), after a continuance of twenty-four years, the first great struggle between Carthage and Rome. CHAPTER XXV. THE SECOND PUNIC WAR. (2l8-201 B.C.) ROME BETWEEN THE FIRST AND THE SECOND PUNIC WAR. THE FIRST ROMAN PROVINCE.--For the twenty-three years that followed the close of the first struggle between Rome and Carthage, the two rivals strained every power and taxed every resource in preparation for a renewal of the contest. The Romans settled the affairs of Sicily, organizing all of it, save the lands belonging to Syracuse, as a province of the republic. This was the first territory beyond the limits of Italy that Rome had conquered, and the Sicilian the first of Roman provinces. But as the imperial city extended her conquests, her provincial possessions increased in number and size until they formed at last a perfect cordon about the Mediterranean. Each province was governed by a magistrate sent out from the capital, and paid an annual tribute, or tax, to Rome. ROME ACQUIRES SARDINIA AND CORSICA.--The first acquisition by the Romans of lands beyond the peninsula seems to have created in them an insatiable ambition for foreign conquests. They soon found a pretext for seizing the island of Sardinia, the most ancient and, after Sicily, the most prized of the possessions of the Carthaginians. The island, in connection with Corsica, which was also seized, was formed into a Roman province. With her hands upon these islands, the authority of Rome in the Western, or Tuscan Sea, was supreme. THE ILLYRIAN CORSAIRS ARE PUNISHED.--At about the same time, the Romans also extended their influence over the seas that wash the eastern shores of Italy. For a long time the Adriatic and Ionian waters had been infested with Illyrian pirates, who issued from the roadsteads of the northeastern coasts of the former sea. The Roman fleet chased these corsairs from the Adriatic, and captured several of their strongholds. Rome now assumed a sort of protectorate over the Greek cities of the Adriatic coasts. This was her first step towards final supremacy in Macedonia and Greece. WAR WITH THE GAULS.--In the north, during this same period, Roman authority was extended from the Apennines and the Rubicon to the foot of the Alps. Alarmed at the advance of the Romans, who were pushing northward their great military road, called the Flaminian Way, and also settling with discharged soldiers and needy citizens the tracts of frontier land wrested some time before from the Gauls, the Boii, a tribe of that race, stirred up all the Gallic peoples already in Italy, besides their kinsmen who were yet beyond the mountains, for an assault upon Rome. Intelligence of this movement among the northern tribes threw all Italy into a fever of excitement. At Rome the terror was great; for not yet had died out of memory what the city had once suffered at the hands of the ancestors of these same barbarians that were now again gathering their hordes for sack and pillage. An ancient prediction, found in the Sibylline books, declared that a portion of Roman territory must needs be occupied by Gauls. Hoping sufficiently to fulfil the prophecy and satisfy Fate, the Roman Senate caused two Gauls to be buried alive in one of the public squares of the capital. Meanwhile the barbarians had advanced into Etruria, ravaging the country as they moved southward. After gathering a large amount of booty, they were carrying this back to a place of safety, when they were surrounded by the Roman armies at Telamon, and almost annihilated (225 B.C.). The Romans, taking advantage of this victory, pushed on into the plains of the Po, captured the city which is now known as Milan, and extended their authority to the foot-hills of the Alps. CARTHAGE BETWEEN THE FIRST AND THE SECOND PUNIC WAR. THE TRUCELESS WAR.--Scarcely had peace been concluded with Rome at the end of the First Punic War, before Carthage was plunged into a still deadlier struggle, which for a time threatened her very existence. The mercenary troops, upon their return from Sicily, revolted, on account of not receiving their pay. Their appeal to the native tribes of Africa was answered by a general uprising throughout the dependencies of Carthage. The extent of the revolt shows how hateful and hated was the rule of the great capital over her subject states. The war was unspeakably bitter and cruel. It is known in history as "The Truceless War." At one time Carthage was the only city remaining in the hands of the government. But the genius of the great Carthaginian general Hamilcar Barcas at last triumphed, and the authority of Carthage was everywhere restored. THE CARTHAGINIANS IN SPAIN.--After the disastrous termination of the First Punic War, the Carthaginians determined to repair their losses by new conquests in Spain. Hamilcar Barcas was sent over into that country, and for nine years he devoted his commanding genius to organizing the different Iberian tribes into a compact state, and to developing the rich gold and silver mines of the southern part of the peninsula. He fell in battle 228 B.C. Hamilcar Barcas was the greatest general that up to this time the Carthaginian race had produced. As a rule, genius is not heritable; but in the Barcine family the rule was broken, and the rare genius of Hamilcar reappeared in his sons, whom he himself, it is said, was fond of calling the "lion's brood." Hannibal, the oldest, was only nineteen at the time of his father's death, and being thus too young to assume command, Hasdrubal, [Footnote: Not to be confounded with Hannibal's own brother Hasdrubal.] the son-in-law of Hamilcar, was chosen to succeed him. He carried out the unfinished plans of Hamilcar, extended and consolidated the Carthaginian power in Spain, and upon the eastern coast founded New Carthage as the centre and capital of the newly acquired territory. The native tribes were conciliated rather than conquered. The Barcine family knew how to rule as well as how to fight. HANNIBAL'S VOW.--Upon the death of Hasdrubal, which occurred 221 B.C., Hannibal, now twenty-six years of age, was by the unanimous voice of the army called to be their leader. When a child of nine years he had been led by his father to the altar; and there, with his hands upon the sacrifice, the little boy had sworn eternal hatred to the Roman race. He was driven on to his gigantic undertakings and to his hard fate, not only by the restless fires of his warlike genius, but, as he himself declared, by the sacred obligations of a vow that could not be broken. HANNIBAL ATTACKS SAGUNTUM.--In two years Hannibal extended the Carthaginian power to the Ebro. Saguntum, a Greek city upon the east coast of Spain, alone remained unsubdued. The Romans, who were jealously watching affairs in the peninsula, had entered into an alliance with this city, and taken it, with other Greek cities in that quarter of the Mediterranean, under their protection. Hannibal, although he well knew that an attack upon this place would precipitate hostilities with Rome, laid siege to it in the spring of 219 B.C. He was eager for the renewal of the old contest. The Roman Senate sent messengers to him forbidding his making war upon a city which was a friend and ally of the Roman people; but Hannibal, disregarding their remonstrances, continued the siege, and, after an investment of eight months, gained possession of the town. The Romans now sent commissioners to Carthage to demand of the Senate that they should give up Hannibal to them, and by so doing repudiate the act of their general. The Carthaginians hesitated. Then Quintus Fabius, chief of the embassy, gathering up his toga, said: "I carry here peace and war; choose, men of Carthage, which ye will have." "Give us whichever ye will," was the reply. "War, then," said Fabius, dropping his toga. The "die was now cast; and the arena was cleared for the foremost man of his race and his time, perhaps the mightiest military genius of any race and of any time." THE SECOND PUNIC WAR. HANNIBAL'S PASSAGE OF THE ALPS.--The Carthaginian empire was now stirred with preparations for the impending struggle. Hannibal was the life and soul of every movement. His bold plan was to cross the Pyrenees and the Alps and descend upon Rome from the north. [Illustration: HANNIBAL] With his preparations completed, Hannibal left New Carthage early in the spring of 218 B.C., with an army numbering about one hundred thousand men, and including thirty-seven war elephants. Crossing the Pyrenees and the Rhone, he reached the foot-hills of the Alps. Nature and man joined to oppose the passage. The season was already far advanced--it was October-- and snow was falling upon the higher portions of the trail. Day after day the army toiled painfully up the dangerous path. In places the narrow way had to be cut wider for the monstrous bodies of the elephants. Often avalanches of stone were hurled upon the trains by the hostile bands that held possession of the heights above. At last the summit was gained, and the shivering army looked down into the warm haze of the Italian plains. The sight alone was enough to rouse the drooping spirits of the soldiers; but Hannibal stirred them to enthusiasm by addressing them with these words: "Ye are standing upon the Acropolis of Italy; yonder lies Rome." The army began its descent, and at length, after toils and losses equalled only by those of the ascent, its thinned battalions issued from the defiles of the mountains upon the plains of the Po. Of the fifty thousand men and more with which Hannibal had begun the passage, barely half that number had survived the march, and these "looked more like phantoms than men." BATTLES OF THE TICINUS, THE TREBIA, AND LAKE TRASIMENUS.--The Romans had not the remotest idea of Hannibal's plans. With war determined upon, the Senate had sent one of the consuls, L. Sempronius Longus, with an army into Africa by the way of Sicily; while the other, Publius Cornelius Scipio, they had directed to lead another army into Spain. While the Senate were watching the movements of these expeditions, they were startled with the intelligence that Hannibal, instead of being in Spain, had crossed the Pyrenees and was among the Gauls upon the Rhone. Sempronius was hastily recalled from his attempt upon Africa, to the defence of Italy. Scipio, on his way to Spain, had touched at Massilia, and there learned of the movements of Hannibal. He turned back, hurried into Northern Italy, and took command of the levies there. The cavalry of the two armies met upon the banks of the Ticinus, a tributary of the Po. The Romans were driven from the field by the fierce onset of the Numidian horsemen. Scipio now awaited the arrival of the other consular army, which was hurrying up through Italy by forced marches. In the battle of the Trebia the united armies of the two consuls were almost annihilated. The Gauls, who had been waiting to see to which side fortune would incline, now flocked to the standard of Hannibal, and hailed him as their deliverer. The spring following the victory at the Trebia, Hannibal led his army, now recruited by many Gauls, across the Apennines, and moved southward. At Lake Trasimenus he entrapped the Romans under Flaminius in a mountain defile, where, bewildered by a fog that filled the valley, the greater part of the army was slaughtered, and the consul himself was slain. The way to Rome was now open. Believing that Hannibal would march directly upon the capital, the Senate caused the bridges that spanned the Tiber to be destroyed, and appointed Fabius Maximus dictator. In one respect only had events disappointed Hannibal's expectations. He had thought that all the states of Italy were, like the Gauls, ready to revolt from Rome at the first opportunity that might offer itself. But not a single city had thus far proved unfaithful to her. FABIUS "THE DELAYER."--The fate of Rome was now in the hands of Fabius. Should he risk a battle and lose it, the destiny of the capital would be sealed. He determined to adopt a more prudent policy--to follow and annoy the Carthaginian army, but to refuse all proffers of battle. Thus time might be gained for raising a new army and perfecting measures for the public defence. In every possible way Hannibal endeavored to draw his enemy into an engagement. He ravaged the fields far and wide and fired the homesteads of the Italians, in order to force Fabius to fight in their defence. The soldiers of the dictator began to murmur. They called him _Cunctator_, or "the Delayer." They even accused him of treachery to the cause of Rome. But nothing moved him from the steady pursuit of the policy which he clearly saw was the only prudent one to follow. THE BATTLE OF CANNÆ.--The time gained by Fabius enabled the Romans to raise and discipline an army that might hope successfully to combat the Carthaginian forces. Early in the summer of the year 216 B.C. these new levies, numbering 80,000 men, confronted the army of Hannibal, amounting to not more than half that number, at Cannæ, in Apulia. It was the largest army the Romans had ever gathered on any battle-field. But it had been collected only to meet the most overwhelming defeat that ever befell the forces of the republic. Through the skilful manoeuvres of Hannibal, the Romans were completely surrounded, and huddled together in a helpless mass upon the field, and then for eight hours were cut down by the Numidian cavalry. From fifty to seventy thousand were slain; a few thousand were taken prisoners; only the merest handful escaped, including one of the consuls. The slaughter was so great that, according to Livy, when Mago, a brother of Hannibal, carried the news of the victory to Carthage, he, in confirmation of the intelligence, poured down in the porch of the Senate- house, nearly a peck of gold rings taken from the fingers of Roman knights. EVENTS AFTER THE BATTLE OF CANNÆ.--The awful news flew to Rome. Consternation and despair seized the people. The city would have been emptied of its population had not the Senate ordered the gates to be closed. Never did that body display greater calmness, wisdom, prudence, and resolution. By word and act they bade the people never to despair of the republic. Little by little the panic was allayed. Measures were concerted for the defence of the capital, as it was expected that Hannibal would immediately march upon Rome. Swift horsemen were sent out along the Appian Way to gather information of the conqueror's movements, and to learn, as Livy expresses it, "if the immortal gods, out of pity to the empire, had left any remnant of the Roman name." The leader of the Numidian cavalry, Maharbal, urged Hannibal to follow up his victory closely, "Let me advance with the cavalry," said he, "and in five days thou shalt dine in the capital." But Hannibal refused to adopt the counsel of his impetuous general. Maharbal turned away, and, with mingled reproach and impatience, exclaimed, "Alas! thou knowest how to gain a victory, but not how to use one." The great commander, while he knew he was invincible in the open field, did not think it prudent to fight the Romans behind their walls. Hannibal now sent an embassy to Rome to offer terms of peace. The Senate, true to the Appian policy never to treat with a victorious enemy (see p. 245), would not even permit the ambassadors to enter the gates. Not less disappointed was Hannibal in the temper of the Roman allies. For the most part they adhered to the cause of Rome with unshaken loyalty through all these trying times. Some tribes in the South of Italy, however, among which were the Lucanians, the Apulians, and the Bruttians, went over to the Carthaginians. Hannibal marched into Campania and quartered his army for the winter in the luxurious city of Capua, which had opened its gates to him. Here he rested and sent urgent messages to Carthage for re- inforcements, while Rome exhausted every resource in raising and equipping new levies, to take the place of the legions lost at Cannæ. For several years there was an ominous lull in the war, while both parties were gathering strength for a renewal of the struggle. THE FALL OF SYRACUSE AND OF CAPUA.--In the year 216 B.C., Hiero, King of Syracuse, who loved to call himself the friend and ally of the Roman people, died, and the government fell into the hands of a party unfriendly to the republic. An alliance was formed with Carthage, and a large part of Sicily was carried over to the side of the enemies of Rome. The distinguished Roman general, Marcus Claudius Marcellus, called "the Sword of Rome," was intrusted with the task of reconquering the island. After reducing many towns, he at last laid siege to Syracuse. This noted capital was then one of the largest and richest cities of the Grecian world. For three years it held out against the Roman forces. It is said that Archimedes (see p. 213), the great mathematician, rendered valuable aid to the besieged with curious and powerful engines contrived by his genius. But the city fell at last, and was given over to sack and pillage. Rome was adorned with the rare works of Grecian art--paintings and sculptures--which for centuries had been accumulating in this the oldest and most renowned of the colonies of ancient Hellas. Syracuse never recovered from the blow inflicted upon her at this time by the relentless Romans. [Illustration: MARCELLUS, "The sword of Rome."] Capua must next be punished for opening her gates and extending her hospitalities to the enemies of Rome. A line of circumvallation was drawn about the devoted city, and two Roman armies held it in close siege. Hannibal, ever faithful to his allies and friends, hastened to the relief of the Capuans. Unable to break the enemy's lines, he marched directly upon Rome, as if to make an attack upon that city, hoping thus to draw off the legions about Capua to the defence of the capital. The "dread Hannibal" himself rode alongside the walls of the hated city, and, tradition says, even hurled a defiant spear over the defences. The Romans certainly were trembling with fear; yet Livy tells how they manifested their confidence in their affairs by selling at public auction the land upon which Hannibal was encamped. He in turn, in the same manner, disposed of the shops fronting the Forum. The story is that there were eager purchasers in both cases. Failing to draw the legions from Capua as he had hoped, Hannibal now retired from before Rome, and, retreating into the southern part of Italy, abandoned Capua to its fate. It soon fell, and paid the penalty that Rome never failed to inflict upon an unfaithful ally. The chief men in the city were put to death, and a large part of the inhabitants sold as slaves. Capua had aspired to the first place among the cities of Italy: scarcely more than the name of the ambitious capital now remained. Hasdrubal attempts to carry Aid to his Brother.--During all the years Hannibal was waging war in Italy, his brother Hasdrubal was carrying on a desperate struggle with the Roman armies in Spain. At length he determined to leave the conduct of the war in that country to others, and go to the relief of his brother, who was sadly in need of aid. Like Pyrrhus, Hannibal had been brought to realize that even constant victories won at the cost of soldiers that could not be replaced, meant final defeat. Hasdrubal followed the same route that had been taken by his brother Hannibal, and in the year 207 B.C. descended from the Alps upon the plains of Northern Italy. Thence he advanced southward, while Hannibal moved northward from Bruttium to meet him. Rome made a last great effort to prevent the junction of the armies of the two brothers. At the river Metaurus, Hasdrubal's march was withstood by a large Roman army. Here his forces were cut to pieces, and he himself was slain (207 B.C.). His head was severed from his body and sent to Hannibal. Upon recognizing the features of his brother, Hannibal exclaimed sadly, "Carthage, I see thy fate." WAR IN AFRICA: BATTLE OF ZAMA.--The defeat and death of Hasdrubal gave a different aspect to the war. Hannibal now drew back into the rocky peninsula of Bruttium, the southernmost point of Italy. There he faced the Romans like a lion at bay. No one dared attack him. It was resolved to carry the war into Africa, in hopes that the Carthaginians would be forced to call their great commander out of Italy to the defence of Carthage. Publius Cornelius Scipio, who after the departure of Hasdrubal from Spain had quickly brought the peninsula under the power of Rome, led the army of invasion. He had not been long in Africa before the Carthaginian Senate sent for Hannibal to conduct the war. At Zama, not far from Carthage, the hostile armies came face to face. Fortune had deserted Hannibal; he was fighting [Footnote: Son of the consul mentioned on page 259.] against fate. He here met his first and final defeat. His army, in which were many of the veterans that had served through all the Italian campaigns, was almost annihilated (202 B.C.). Scipio was accorded a splendid triumph at Rome, and given the surname Africanus in honor of his achievements. [Footnote: Some time after the close of the Second Punic War, the Romans, persuading themselves that Hannibal was preparing Carthage for another war, demanded his surrender of the Carthaginians. He fled to Syria, and thence to Asia Minor, where, to avoid falling into the hands of his implacable foes, he committed suicide by means of poison (183 B.C.).] [Illustration: PUBLIUS CORNELIUS SCIPIO (Africanus).] THE CLOSE OF THE WAR.--Carthage was now completely exhausted, and sued for peace. Even Hannibal himself could no longer counsel war. The terms of the treaty were much severer than those imposed upon the city at the end of the First Punic War. She was required to give up all claims to Spain and the islands of the Mediterranean; to surrender her war elephants, and all her ships of war save ten galleys; to pay an indemnity of five thousand talents at once, and two hundred and fifty talents annually for fifty years; and not to engage in any war without the consent of Rome. Five hundred of the costly Phoenician war galleys were towed out of the harbor of Carthage and burned in the sight of the citizens. Such was the end of the Second Punic, or Hannibalic War, as called by the Romans, the most desperate struggle ever maintained by rival powers for empire. CHAPTER XXVI. THE THIRD PUNIC WAR. (149-146 B.C.) EVENTS BETWEEN THE SECOND AND THE THIRD PUNIC WAR. The terms imposed upon Carthage at the end of the Second Punic War left Rome mistress of the Western Mediterranean. During the fifty eventful years that elapsed between the close of that struggle and the breaking-out of the last Punic war, her authority became supreme also in the Eastern seas. In a preceding chapter (see p. 170), while narrating the fortunes of the most important states into which the great empire of Alexander was broken at his death, we followed them until one after another they fell beneath the arms of Rome, and were successively absorbed into her growing kingdom. We shall therefore speak of them here only in the briefest manner, simply indicating the connection of their several histories with the series of events which mark the advance of Rome to universal empire. THE BATTLE OF CYNOSCEPHALÆ (197 B.C.).--During the Hannibalic War, Philip V. (III.) of Macedonia had aided the Carthaginians, or at least had entered into an alliance with them. He was now troubling the Greek cities which were under the protection of Rome. For these things the Roman Senate determined to punish him. An army under Flamininus was sent into Greece, and on the plains of Cynoscephalæ, in Thessaly, the Roman legion demonstrated its superiority over the unwieldy Macedonian phalanx by subjecting Philip to a most disastrous defeat (197 B.C.). The king was forced to give up all his conquests, and Rome extended her protectorate over Greece. THE BATTLE OF MAGNESIA (190 B.C.).--Antiochus the Great of Syria had at this time not only overrun all Asia Minor, but had crossed the Hellespont into Europe, and was intent upon the conquest of Thrace and Greece. Rome, that could not entertain the idea of a rival empire upon the southern shores of the Mediterranean, could much less tolerate the establishment in the East of such a colossal kingdom as the ambition of Antiochus proposed to itself. Just as soon as intelligence was carried to Italy that the Syrian king was leading his army into Greece, the legions of the republic were set in motion. Some reverses caused Antiochus to retreat in haste across the Hellespont into Asia, whither he was followed by the Romans, led by Scipio, a brother of Africanus. At Magnesia, Antiochus was overthrown, and a large part of Asia Minor fell into the hands of the Romans. Not yet prepared to maintain provinces so distant from the Tiber, the Senate conferred the new territory, with the exception of Lycia and Caria, which were given to the Rhodians, upon their friend and ally Eumenes, King of Pergamus (see p. 171). This "Kingdom of Asia," as it was called, was really nothing more than a dependency of Rome, and its nominal ruler only a puppet-king in the hands of the Roman Senate. Scipio enjoyed a magnificent triumph at Rome, and, in accordance with a custom that had now become popular with successful generals, erected a memorial of his deeds in his name by assuming the title of Asiaticus. [Illustration: PERSEUS, of Macedonia.] THE BATTLE OF PYDNA (168 B.C.).--In a few years Macedonia, under the leadership of Perseus, son of Philip V., was again in arms and offering defiance to Rome; but in the year 168 B.C. the Roman consul Æmilius Paulus crushed the Macedonian power forever upon the memorable field of Pydna. This was one of the decisive battles fought by the Romans in their struggle for the dominion of the world. The last great power in the East was here broken. The Roman Senate was henceforth recognized by the whole civilized world as the source and fountain of supreme political wisdom and power. We shall have yet to record many campaigns of the Roman legions; but these were efforts to suppress revolt among dependent or semi-vassal states, or were struggles with barbarian tribes that skirted the Roman dominions. THE DESTRUCTION OF CORINTH (146 B.C.).--Barely twenty years had passed after the destruction of the Macedonian monarchy before the cities and states that formed the Achæan League (see p. 175) were goaded to revolt by the injustice of their Roman protectors. In the year 146 B.C. the consul Mummius signalized the suppression of the rebellion by the complete destruction of the brilliant city of Corinth, the "eye of Hellas," as the ancient poets were fond of calling it. This fair capital, the most beautiful and renowned of all the cities of Greece after the fall of Athens, was sacked, and razed to the ground. Much of the booty was sold on the spot at public auction. Numerous works of art,--rare paintings and sculptures,--with which the city was crowded, were carried off to Italy. "Never before or after," says Long, "was such a display of the wonders of Grecian art carried in triumphal procession through the streets of Rome." THE THIRD PUNIC WAR. "CARTHAGE MUST BE DESTROYED."--The same year that Rome destroyed Corinth (146 B.C.), she also blotted her great rival Carthage from the face of the earth. It will be recalled that one of the conditions imposed upon the last-named city at the close of the Second Punic War was that she should, under no circumstances, engage in any war without the permission of the Roman Senate. Taking advantage of the helpless condition of Carthage, Masinissa, King of Numidia, began to make depredations upon her territories. She appealed to Rome for protection. The envoys sent to Africa by the Senate to settle the dispute, unfairly adjudged every case in favor of the robber Masinissa. In this way Carthage was deprived of her lands and towns. Chief of one of the embassies sent out was Marcus Cato the Censor. When he saw the prosperity of Carthage,--her immense trade, which crowded her harbor with ships, and the country for miles back of the city a beautiful landscape of gardens and villas,--he was amazed at the growing power and wealth of the city, and returned home convinced that the safety of Rome demanded the destruction of her rival. Never afterwards did he address the Romans, no matter upon what subject, but he always ended with the words, "Carthage must be destroyed" (_delenda est Carthago_). ROMAN PERFIDY.--A pretext for the accomplishment of the hateful work was not long wanting. In 150 B.C. the Carthaginians, when Masinissa made another attack upon their territory, instead of calling upon Rome, from which source the past had convinced them they could hope for neither aid nor justice, gathered an army, and resolved to defend themselves. Their forces, however, were defeated by the Numidians, and sent beneath the yoke. In entering upon this war without the consent of Rome, Carthage had broken the conditions of the last treaty. The Carthaginian Senate, in great anxiety, now sent an embassy to Italy to offer any reparation the Romans might demand. They were told that if they would give three hundred hostages, members of the noblest Carthaginian families, the independence of their city should be respected. They eagerly complied with this demand. But no sooner were these in the hands of the Romans than the consular armies, numbering eighty thousand men, secured against attack by the hostages so perfidiously drawn from the Carthaginians, crossed from Sicily into Africa, and disembarked at Utica, only ten miles from Carthage. The Carthaginians were now commanded to give up all their arms; still hoping to win their enemy to clemency, they complied with this demand also. Then the consuls made known the final decree of the Roman Senate-- "That Carthage must be destroyed, but that the inhabitants might build a new city, provided it were located ten miles from the coast." When this resolution of the Senate was announced to the Carthaginians, and they realized the baseness and perfidy of their enemy, a cry of indignation and despair burst from the betrayed city. THE CARTHAGINIANS PREPARE TO DEFEND THEIR CITY.--It was resolved to resist to the bitter end the execution of the cruel decree. The gates of the city were closed. Men, women, and children set to work and labored day and night manufacturing arms. The entire city was converted into one great workshop. The utensils of the home and the sacred vessels of the temples, statues, and vases were melted down for weapons. Material was torn from the buildings of the city for the construction of military engines. The women cut off their hair and braided it into strings for the catapults. By such labor, and through such means, the city was soon put in a state to withstand a siege. When the Romans advanced to take possession of the place, they were astonished to find the people they had just treacherously disarmed, with weapons in their hands, manning the walls of their capital, and ready to bid them defiance. THE DESTRUCTION OF CARTHAGE.--It is impossible for us here to give the circumstances of the siege of Carthage. For four years the city held out against the Roman army. At length the consul Scipio Æmilianus succeeded in taking it by storm. When resistance ceased, only 50,000 men, women, and children, out of a population of 700,000, remained to be made prisoners. The city was fired, and for seventeen days the space within the walls was a sea of flames. Every trace of building which the fire could not destroy was levelled, a plough was driven over the site, and a dreadful curse invoked upon any one who should dare attempt to rebuild the city. Such was the hard fate of Carthage. It is said that Scipio, as he gazed upon the smouldering ruins, seemed to read in them the fate of Rome, and, bursting into tears, sadly repeated the lines of Homer: "The day shall come in which our sacred Troy, And Priam, and the people over whom Spear-bearing Priam rules, shall perish all." The Carthaginian territory in Africa was made into a Roman province, with Utica as the leading city; and Roman civilization was spread rapidly, by means of traders and settlers, throughout the regions that lie between the ranges of the Atlas and the sea. WAR IN SPAIN. SIEGE OF NUMANTIA.--It is fitting that the same chapter which narrates the destruction of Corinth in Greece, and the blotting-out of Carthage in Africa, should tell the story of the destruction of Numantia in Spain. The expulsion of the Carthaginians from the Spanish peninsula really gave Rome the control of only a small part of that country. The war-like native tribes--the Celtiberians and Lusitanians--of the North and the West were ready stubbornly to dispute with the new-comers the possession of the soil. The war gathered about Numantia, the siege of which was brought to a close by Scipio Æmilianus, the conqueror of Carthage. Before the surrender of the place, almost all the inhabitants had met death, either in defence of the walls, or by deliberate suicide. The miserable remnant which the ravages of battle, famine, pestilence, and despair had left alive were sold into slavery, and the city was levelled to the ground (133 B.C.). The capture of Numantia was considered quite as great an achievement as the taking of Carthage. Scipio celebrated another triumph at Rome, and to his surname Africanus, which he had received for his achievements in Africa, added that of Numantinus. Spain became a favorite resort of Roman merchants, and many colonies were established in different parts of the country. As a result of this great influx of Italians, the laws, manners, customs, language, and religion of the conquerors were introduced everywhere, and the peninsula became rapidly Romanized. CHAPTER XXVII. THE LAST CENTURY OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. (133-31 B.C.) We have now traced the growth of the power of republican Rome, as through two centuries and more of conquest she has extended her authority, first throughout Italy, and then over almost all the countries that border upon the Mediterranean. It must be our less pleasant task now to follow the declining fortunes of the republic through the last century of its existence. We shall here learn that wars waged for spoils and dominion are in the end more ruinous, if possible, to the conqueror than to the conquered. THE SERVILE WAR IN SICILY (134-132 B.C.).--With the opening of this period we find a terrible struggle going on in Sicily between masters and slaves --or what is known as "The First Servile War." The condition of affairs in that island was the legitimate result of the Roman system of slavery. The captives taken in war were usually sold into servitude. The great number of prisoners furnished by the numerous conquests of the Romans caused slaves to become a drug in the slave-markets of the Roman world. They were so cheap that masters found it more profitable to wear their slaves out by a few years of unmercifully hard labor, and then to buy others, than to preserve their lives for a longer period by more humane treatment. In case of sickness, they were left to die without attention, as the expense of nursing exceeded the cost of new purchases. Some Sicilian estates were worked by as many as 20,000 slaves. That each owner might know his own, the poor creatures were branded like cattle. What makes all this the more revolting is the fact that many of these slaves were in every way the peers of their owners, and often were their superiors. The fortunes of war alone had made one servant and the other master. The wretched condition of these slaves and the cruelty of their masters at last drove them to revolt. The insurrection spread throughout the island, until 200,000 slaves were in arms, and in possession of many of the strongholds of the country. They defeated four Roman armies sent against them, and for three years defied the power of Rome. Finally, however, in the year 132 B.C., the revolt was crushed, and peace was restored to the distracted island. [Footnote: In the year 102 B.C. another insurrection of the slaves broke out in the island, which it required three years to quell. This last revolt is known as "The Second Servile War."] THE PUBLIC LANDS.--In Italy itself affairs were in a scarcely less wretched condition than in Sicily. When the different states of the peninsula were subjugated, large portions of the conquered territory had become public land (_ager publicus_); for upon the subjugation of a state Rome never left to the conquered people more than two-thirds of their lands, and often not so much as this. The land appropriated was disposed of at public sale, leased at low rentals, allotted to discharged soldiers, or allowed to lie unused. [Footnote: These land matters may be made plain by a reference to the public lands of the United States. The troubles in Ireland between the land-owners and their tenants will also serve to illustrate the agrarian disturbances in ancient Rome.] Now, it had happened that, in various ways, the greater part of the public lands had fallen into the hands of the wealthy. They alone had the capital necessary to stock and work them to advantage; hence the possessions of the small proprietors were gradually absorbed by the large landholders. These great proprietors, also, disregarding a law which forbade any person to hold more than five hundred jugera of land, held many times that amount. Almost all the lands of Italy, about the beginning of the first century B.C., are said to have been held by not more than two thousand persons; for the large proprietors, besides the lands they had secured by purchase from the government, or had wrested from the smaller farmers, claimed enormous tracts to which they had only a squatter's title. So long had they been left in undisturbed possession of these government lands that they had come to look upon them as absolutely their own. In many cases, feeling secure through great lapse of time,--the lands having been handed down through many generations,--the owners had expended large sums in their improvement, and now resisted as very unjust every effort to dispossess them of their hereditary estates. Money-lenders, too, had, in many instances, made loans upon these lands, and they naturally sided with the owners in their opposition to all efforts to disturb the titles. These wealthy "possessors" employed slave rather than free labor, as they found it more profitable; and so the poorer Romans, left without employment, crowded into the cities, especially congregating at Rome, where they lived in vicious indolence. The proprietors also found it to their interest to raise stock rather than to cultivate the soil. All Italy became a great sheep-pasture. Thus, largely through the workings of the public land system, the Roman people had become divided into two great classes, which are variously designated as the Rich and the Poor, the Possessors and the Non- Possessors, the Optimates (the "Best"), and the Populares (the "People"). We hear nothing more of patricians and plebeians. As one expresses it, "Rome had become a commonwealth of millionaires and beggars." For many years before and after the period at which we have now arrived, a bitter struggle was carried on between these two classes; just such a contest as we have seen waged between the nobility and the commonalty in the earlier history of Rome. The most instructive portion of the story of the Roman republic is found in the records of this later struggle. The misery of the great masses naturally led to constant agitation at the capital. Popular leaders introduced bill after bill into the Senate, and brought measure after measure before the assemblies of the people, all aiming at the redistribution of the public lands and the correction of existing abuses. THE REFORMS OF THE GRACCHI.--The most noted champions of the cause of the poorer classes against the rich and powerful were Tiberius and Caius Gracchus. These reformers are reckoned among the most popular orators that Rome ever produced. They eloquently voiced the wrongs of the people. Said Tiberius, "You are called 'lords of the earth' without possessing a single clod to call your own." The people made him tribune; and in that position he secured the passage of a law for the redistribution of the public lands, which gave some relief. It took away from Possessors without sons all the land they held over five hundred jugera; Possessors with one son might hold seven hundred and fifty jugera, and those with two sons one thousand. At the end of his term of office, Tiberius stood a second time for the tribunate. The nobles combined to defeat him. Foreseeing that he would not be re-elected, Tiberius resolved to use force upon the day of voting. His partisans were overpowered, and he and three hundred of his followers were killed in the Forum, and their bodies thrown into the Tiber (133 B.C.). This was the first time that the Roman Forum had witnessed such a scene of violence and crime. Caius Gracchus, the younger brother of Tiberius, now assumed the position made vacant by the death of Tiberius. It is related that Caius had a dream in which the spirit of his brother seemed to address him thus: "Caius, why do you linger? There is no escape: one life for both of us, and one death in defence of the people, is our fate." The dream came true. Caius was chosen tribune in 123 B.C. He secured the passage of grain-laws which provided that grain should be sold to the poor from public granaries, at half its value or less. This was a very unwise and pernicious measure. It was not long before grain was distributed free to all applicants; and a considerable portion of the population of the capital were living in vicious indolence and feeding at the public crib. Caius proposed other measures in the interest of the people, which were bitterly opposed by the Optimates; and the two orders at last came into collision. Caius sought death by a friendly sword (121 B.C.), and three thousand of his adherents were massacred. The consul offered for the head of Caius its weight in gold. "This is the first instance in Roman history of head-money being offered and paid, but it was not the last" (Long). The people ever regarded the Gracchi as martyrs to their cause, and their memory was preserved by statues in the public square. To Cornelia, their mother, a monument was erected, simply bearing the inscription, "The Mother of the Gracchi." THE WAR WITH JUGURTHA (111-106 B.C.).--After the death of the Gracchi there seemed no one left to resist the heartless oppressions and to denounce the scandalous extravagances of the aristocratic party. Many of the laws of the Gracchi respecting the public lands were annulled. Italy fell again into the hands of a few over-rich land-owners. The provinces were plundered by the Roman governors, who squandered their ill-gotten wealth at the capital. The votes of senators and the decisions of judges, the offices at Rome and the places in the provinces--everything pertaining to the government had its price, and was bought and sold like merchandise. Affairs in Africa at this time illustrate how Roman virtue and integrity had declined since Fabricius indignantly refused the gold of Pyrrhus. Jugurtha, king of Numidia, had seized all that country, having put to death the rightful rulers of different provinces of the region, who had been confirmed in their possessions by the Romans at the close of the Punic wars. Commissioners sent from Rome to look into the matter were bribed by Jugurtha. Even the consul Bestia, who had been sent into Africa with an army to punish the insolent usurper, sold himself to the robber. An investigation was ordered; but many prominent officials at Rome were implicated in the offences, and the matter was hushed up with money. The venality of the Romans disgusted even Jugurtha, who exclaimed, "O venal city, thou wouldst sell thyself if thou couldst find a purchaser!" In the year 106 B.C. the war against Jugurtha was brought to a close by Caius Marius, a man who had risen to the consulship from the lowest ranks of the people. Under him fought a young nobleman named Sulla, of whom we shall hear much hereafter. Marius celebrated a grand triumph at Rome. Jugurtha, after having graced the triumphal procession, was thrown into the Mamertine dungeon, beneath the Capitoline, where he died of starvation. INVASION OF THE CIMBRI AND TEUTONES.--The war was not yet ended in Africa before terrible tidings came to Rome from the north. Two mighty nations of "horrible barbarians," three hundred thousand strong in fighting-men, coming whence no one could tell, had invaded, and were now desolating, the Roman provinces of Gaul, and might any moment cross the Alps and pour down into Italy. The mysterious invaders proved to be two Germanic tribes, the Teutones and Cimbri, the vanguard of that great German migration which was destined to change the face and history of Europe. These intruders were seeking new homes. They carried with them, in rude wagons, all their property, their wives, and their children. The Celtic tribes of Gaul were no match for the newcomers, and fled before them as they advanced. Several Roman armies beyond the Alps were cut to pieces. The terror at Rome was only equalled by that occasioned by the invasion of the Gauls two centuries before. The Gauls were terrible enough; but now the conquerors of the Gauls were coming. Marius, the conqueror of Jugurtha, was looked to by all as the only man who could save the state in this crisis. Accompanied by Sulla as one of his most skilful lieutenants, Marius hastened into Northern Italy. The barbarians had divided into two bands. The Cimbri were to cross the Eastern Alps, and join in the valley of the Po the Teutones, who were to force the defiles of the Western, or Maritime Alps. Marius determined to prevent the union of the barbarians, and to crush each band separately. Anticipating the march of the Teutones, he hurried over the Alps into Gaul, and falling upon them at a favorable moment (at Aquæ Sextæ, not far from Marseilles, 102 B.C.), almost annihilated the entire host. Two hundred thousand barbarians are said to have been slain. Marius now recrossed the Alps, and, after visiting Rome, hastened to meet the Cimbri, who were entering the northeastern corner of Italy. He was not a day too soon. Already the barbarians had defeated the Roman army under the nobleman Catulus, and were ravaging the rich plains of the Po. The Cimbri, unconscious of the fate of the Teutones, sent an embassy to Marius, to demand that they and their kinsmen should be given lands in Italy. Marius sent back in reply, "The Teutones have got all the land they need on the other side of the Alps." The devoted Cimbri were soon to have all they needed on this side. A terrible battle almost immediately followed at Vercellæ (101 B.C.). The barbarians were drawn up in an enormous hollow square, the men forming the outer ranks being fastened together with chains, to prevent the lines being broken. This proved their ruin. More than 100,000 were killed and 60,000 taken prisoners to be sold as slaves in the Roman markets. Marius was hailed as the "Saviour of his Country." "The forlorn-hope of the German migration had performed its duty; the homeless people of the Cimbri and their comrades were no more" (Mommsen). Their kinsmen yet behind the Danube and the Rhine were destined to exact a terrible revenge for their slaughter. THE SOCIAL, OR MARSIC WAR (91-89 B.C.).--Scarcely was the danger of the barbarian invasion past, before Rome was threatened by another and greater evil arising within her own borders. At this time all the free inhabitants of Italy were embraced in three classes,--_Roman citizens_, _Latins,_ and _Italian allies_. The Roman citizens included the inhabitants of the capital and of the various Roman colonies planted in different parts of the peninsula (see p. 246, note), besides the people of a number of towns called _municipia;_ the Latins were the inhabitants of the Latin colonies (see p. 246, note); the Italian allies (_socii_) included the various subjugated races of Italy. The Social, or Marsic War (as it is often called on account of the prominent part taken in the insurrection by the warlike Marsians) was a struggle that arose from the demands of the Italian allies for the privileges of Roman citizenship, from which they were wholly excluded. Their demands were stubbornly resisted by both the aristocratic and the popular party at Rome. Some, however, recognized the justice of these claims of the Italians. The tribune Livius Drusus championed their cause, but he was killed by an assassin. The Italians now flew to arms. They determined upon the establishment of a rival state. A town called Corfinium, among the Apennines, was chosen as the capital of the new republic, and its name changed to Italica. Thus, in a single day, almost all Italy south of the Rubicon was lost to Rome. The Etrurians, the Umbrians, the Campanians, the Latins, and some of the Greek cities were the only states that remained faithful. [Illustration: COIN OF THE ITALIAN CONFEDERACY. (The Sabellian Bull goring the Roman Wolf.)] The greatness of the danger aroused all the old Roman courage and patriotism. Aristocrats and democrats hushed their quarrels, and fought bravely side by side for the endangered life of the republic. The war lasted three years. Finally Rome prudently extended the right of suffrage to the Latins, Etruscans, and Umbrians, who had so far remained true to her, but now began to show signs of wavering in their loyalty. Shortly afterwards she offered the same to all Italians who should lay down their arms within sixty days. This tardy concession to the just demands of the Italians virtually ended the war. It had been extremely disastrous to the republic. Hundreds of thousands of lives had been lost, many towns had been depopulated, and vast tracts of the country made desolate by those ravages that never fail to characterize civil contentions. In after-years, under the empire, the rights of Roman citizenship, which the most of the Italians had now so hardly won, were extended to all the free inhabitants of the various provinces, beyond the confines of Italy (see p. 327). THE CIVIL WAR OF MARIUS AND SULLA.--The Social War was not yet ended when a formidable enemy appeared in the East. Mithridates the Great, king of Pontus (see p. 170, note), taking advantage of the distracted condition of the republic, had encroached upon the Roman provinces in Asia Minor, and had caused a general massacre of the Italian traders and residents in that country. The number of victims of this wholesale slaughter has been variously estimated at from 80,000 to 150,000. The Roman Senate instantly declared war. A contest straightway arose between Marius and Sulla for the command of the forces. The sword settled the dispute. Sulla, at the head of the legions he commanded, marched upon Rome, entered the gates, and "for the first time in the annals of the city a Roman army encamped within the walls." The party of Marius was defeated, and he and ten of his companions were proscribed. Marius escaped and fled to Africa; Sulla embarked with the legions to meet Mithridates in the East (87 B.C.). [Illustration: MARIUS.] THE WANDERINGS OF MARIUS: HIS RETURN TO ITALY.--Leaving Sulla to carry on the Mithridatic War, we must first follow the fortunes of the outlawed Marius. The ship in which he embarked for Africa was driven back upon the Italian coast at Circeii, and he was captured. A Cimbrian slave was sent to despatch him in prison. The cell where Marius lay was dark, and the eyes of the old soldier "seemed to flash fire." As the slave advanced, Marius shouted, "Man, do you dare to kill Caius Marius?" The frightened slave dropped his sword, and fled from the chamber, half dead with fear. A better feeling now took possession of the captors of Marius, and they resolved that the blood of the "Saviour of Italy" should not be upon their hands. They put him aboard a vessel, which bore him and his friends to an island just off the coast of Africa. When he attempted to set foot upon the mainland near Carthage, Sextius, the Roman governor of the province, sent a messenger to forbid him to land. The legend says that the old general, almost choking with indignation, only answered, "Go, tell your master, that you have seen Marius a fugitive sitting amidst the ruins of Carthage." A successful move of his friends at Rome brought Marius back to the capital. He now took a terrible revenge upon his enemies. The consul Octavius was assassinated, and his head set up in front of the Rostrum. Never before had such a thing been seen at Rome--a consul's head exposed to the public gaze. The senators, equestrians, and leaders of the Optimate party fled from the capital. For five days and nights a merciless slaughter was kept up. The life of every man in the capital was in the hands of the revengeful Marius. If he refused to return the greeting of any citizen, that sealed his fate: he was instantly despatched by the soldiers who awaited the dictator's nod. The bodies of the victims lay unburied in the streets. Sulla's house was torn down, and he himself declared a public enemy. Rumors were now spread that Sulla, having overthrown Mithridates, was about to set out on his return with his victorious legions. He would surely exact speedy and terrible vengeance. Marius, old and enfeebled by the hardships of many campaigns, seemed to shrink from again facing his hated rival. He plunged into dissipation to drown his remorse and gloomy forebodings, and died in his seventy-first year (86 B.C.). SULLA AND THE MITHRIDATIC WAR.--When Sulla left Italy with his legions for the East, he knew very well that his enemies would have their own way in Italy during his absence; but he also knew that, if successful in his campaign against Mithridates, he could easily regain Italy, and wrest the government from the hands of the Marian party. We can here take space to give simply the results of Sulla's campaigns in the East. After driving the army of Mithridates out of Greece, Sulla crossed the Hellespont, and forced the king to sue for peace. He gave up his conquered territory, surrendered his war ships, and paid a large indemnity to cover the expenses of the war. [Illustration: SULLA.] With the Mithridatic War ended, Sulla wrote to the Senate, saying that he was now coming to take vengeance upon the Marian party,--his own and the republic's foes. The terror and consternation produced at Rome by this letter were increased by the accidental burning of the Capitol. The Sibylline books, which held the secrets of the fate of Rome, were consumed. Such an event, it was believed, could only foreshadow the most direful calamities to the state. THE PROSCRIPTIONS OF SULLA.--The returning army from the East landed in Italy. With his veteran legions at his back, Sulla marched into Rome with all the powers of a dictator. The leaders of the Marian party were proscribed, rewards were offered for their heads, and their property was confiscated. Sulla was implored to make out a list of those he designed to put to death, that those he intended to spare might be relieved of the terrible suspense in which all were now held. He made out a list of eighty, which was attached to the Rostrum. The people murmured at the length of the roll. In a few days it was extended to over three hundred, and grew rapidly, until it included the names of thousands of the best citizens of Italy. Hundreds were murdered, not for any offence, but because some favorites of Sulla coveted their estates. A wealthy noble coming into the Forum, and reading his own name in the list of the proscribed, exclaimed, "Alas! my villa has proved my ruin." The infamous Catiline, by having the name of a brother placed upon the fatal roll, secured his property. Julius Cæsar, at this time a mere boy of eighteen, was proscribed on account of his relationship to Marius; but, upon the intercession of friends, Sulla spared him: as he did so, however, he said warningly, and, as the event proved, prophetically, "There is in that boy many a Marius." Senators, knights, and wealthy land-owners fell by hundreds and by thousands; but the poor Italians who had sided with the Marian party were simply slaughtered by tens of thousands. Nor did the provinces escape. In Sicily, Spain, and Africa the enemies of the dictator were hunted and exterminated like noxious animals. It is estimated that the civil war of Marius and Sulla cost the republic over one hundred and fifty thousand lives. When Sulla had sated his revenge, he celebrated a splendid triumph at Rome, and the Senate enacted a law declaring all that he had done legal and right, caused to be erected in the Forum a gilded equestrian statue of the dictator, which bore the legend, "To Lucius Cornelius Sulla, the Commander Beloved by Fortune," and made him dictator for life. Sulla used his position and influence in recasting the constitution in the interest of the aristocratic party. After enjoying the unlimited power of an Asiatic despot for three years, he suddenly resigned the dictatorship, and retired to his villa at Puteoli, where he gave himself up to the grossest dissipations. He died the year following his abdication (78 B.C.). CHAPTER XXVIII. THE LAST CENTURY OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC (_concluded_). (133-31 B.C.) POMPEY THE GREAT IN SPAIN.--The fires of the Civil War, though quenched in Italy, were still smouldering in Spain. Sertorius, an adherent of Marius, had there stirred up the martial tribes of Lusitania, and incited a general revolt against the power of the aristocratic government at Rome. Cnæus Pompey, a rising young leader of the oligarchy, upon whom the title of Great had already been conferred as a reward for crushing the Marian party in Sicily and Africa, was sent into Spain to perform a similar service there. For several years the war was carried on with varying fortunes. At times the power of Rome in the peninsula seemed on the verge of utter extinction. Finally, the brave Sertorius was assassinated, and then the whole of Spain was quickly regained. Pompey boasted of having forced the gates of more than eight hundred cities in Spain and Southern Gaul. Throughout all the conquered regions he established military colonies, and reorganized the local governments, putting in power those who would be, not only friends and allies of the Roman state, but also his own personal adherents. How he used these men as instruments of his ambition, we shall learn a little later. SPARTACUS: WAR OF THE GLADIATORS.--While Pompey was subduing the Marian faction in Spain, a new danger broke out in the midst of Italy. Gladiatorial combats had become, at this time, the favorite sport of the amphitheatre. At Capua was a sort of training-school, from which skilled fighters were hired out for public or private entertainments. In this seminary was a Thracian slave, known by the name of Spartacus, who incited his companions to revolt. The insurgents fled to the crater of Vesuvius, and made that their stronghold. There they were joined by gladiators from other schools, and by slaves and discontented men from every quarter. Some slight successes enabled them to arm themselves with the weapons of their enemies. Their number at length increased to one hundred thousand men. For three years they defied the power of Rome, and even gained control of the larger part of Southern Italy. Four Roman armies sent against them were cut to pieces. But at length Spartacus himself was slain, and the insurgents were crushed. The rebellion was punished with Roman severity. The slaves that had taken part in the revolt were hunted through the mountains and forests, and exterminated like dangerous beasts. The Appian Way was lined with six thousand crosses, bearing aloft as many bodies--a terrible warning of the fate awaiting slaves that should dare to strike for freedom. THE ABUSES OF VERRES.--Terrible as was the state of society in Italy, still worse was the condition of affairs outside the peninsula. At first the rule of the Roman governors in the provinces, though severe, was honest and prudent. But during the period of profligacy and corruption upon which we have now entered, the administration of these foreign possessions was shamefully dishonest and incredibly cruel and rapacious. The prosecution of Verres, the proprætor of Sicily, exposed the scandalous rule of the oligarchy, into whose hands the government had fallen. For three years Verres plundered and ravaged that island with impunity. He sold all the offices, and all his decisions as judge. He demanded of the farmers the greater part of their crops, which he sold, to swell his already enormous fortune. Agriculture was thus ruined, and the farms were abandoned. Verres had a taste for art, and when on his tours through the island confiscated gems, vases, statues, paintings, and other things that struck his fancy, whether in temples or private dwellings. He even caused a Roman trader, for a slight offence, to be crucified, "the cross being set on the beach within sight of Italy, that he might address to his native shores the ineffectual cry 'I am a Roman citizen.'" Verres could not be called to account while in office; and it was doubtful whether, after the end of his term, he could be convicted, so corrupt and venal had become the members of the Senate, before whom all such offenders must be tried. Indeed, Verres himself openly boasted that he intended two thirds of his gains for his judges and lawyers, while the remaining one third would satisfy himself. At length, after Sicily had come to look as though it had been ravaged by barbarian conquerors, the infamous robber was impeached. The prosecutor was Marcus Tullius Cicero, the brilliant orator, who was at this time just rising into prominence at Rome. The storm of indignation raised by the developments of the trial caused Verres to flee into exile to Massilia, whither he took with him much of his ill-gotten wealth. WAR WITH THE MEDITERRANEAN PIRATES (66 B.C.).--The Roman republic was now threatened by a new danger from the sea. The Mediterranean was swarming with pirates. Roman conquests in Africa, Spain, and especially in Greece and Asia Minor, had caused thousands of adventurous spirits from those maritime countries to flee to their ships, and seek a livelihood by preying upon the commerce of the seas. The cruelty and extortions of the Roman governors had also driven large numbers to the same course of life. These corsairs had banded themselves into a sort of government, and held possession of numerous strongholds--four hundred, it is said--in Cilicia, Crete, and other countries. With a full thousand swift ships they scoured the waters of the Mediterranean, so that no merchantman could spread her sails in safety. They formed a floating empire, which Michelet calls "a wandering Carthage, which no one knew where to seize, and which floated from Spain to Asia." These buccaneers, the Vikings of the South, made descents upon the coast everywhere, plundered villas and temples, attacked and captured cities, and sold the inhabitants as slaves in the various slave-markets of the Roman world. They carried off merchants and magistrates from the Appian Way itself, and held them for ransom. At last the grain-ships of Sicily and Africa were intercepted, and Rome was threatened with the alternative of starvation or the paying of an enormous ransom. The Romans now bestirred themselves. Pompey was invested with dictatorial power for three years over the Mediterranean and all its coasts for fifty miles inland. An armament of five hundred ships and one hundred thousand men was intrusted to his command. The great general acted with his characteristic energy. Within forty days he had swept the pirates from the Western Mediterranean, and in forty-nine more hunted them from all the waters east of Italy, captured their strongholds in Cilicia, and settled the twenty thousand prisoners that fell into his hands in various colonies in Asia Minor and Greece. Pompey's vigorous and successful conduct of this campaign against the pirates gained him great honor and reputation. POMPEY AND THE MITHRIDATIC WAR.--In the very year that Pompey suppressed the pirates (66 B.C.), he was called to undertake a more difficult task. Mithridates the Great, led on by his ambition and encouraged by the discontent created throughout the Eastern provinces by Roman rapacity and misrule, was again in arms against Rome. He had stirred almost all Asia Minor to revolt. The management of the war was eventually intrusted to Pompey, whose success in the war of the pirates had aroused unbounded enthusiasm for him. In a great battle in Lesser Armenia, Pompey almost annihilated the army of Mithridates. The king fled from the field, and, after seeking in vain for a refuge in Asia Minor, sought an asylum beyond the Caucasus Mountains, whose bleak barriers interposed their friendly shield between him and his pursuers. Desisting from the pursuit, Pompey turned south and conquered Syria, Phoenicia, and Coele-Syria, which countries he erected into a Roman province. Still pushing southward, the conqueror entered Palestine, and after a short siege captured Jerusalem (63 B.C.). [Illustration: MITHRIDATES VI. (The Great) ] While Pompey was thus engaged, Mithridates was straining every energy to raise an army among the Scythian tribes with which to carry out a most daring project. He proposed to cross Europe and fall upon Italy from the north. A revolt on the part of his son Pharnaces ruined all his plans and hopes; and the disappointed monarch, to avoid falling into the hands of the Romans, took his own life (63 B.C.). His death removed one of the most formidable enemies that Rome had ever encountered. Hamilcar, Hannibal, and Mithridates were the three great names that the Romans always pronounced with respect and dread. POMPEY'S TRIUMPH.--After regulating the affairs of the different states and provinces in the East, Pompey set out on his return to Rome, where he enjoyed such a triumph as never before had been seen since Rome had become a city. The spoils of all the East were borne in the procession; 322 princes walked as captives before the triumphal chariot of the conqueror; legends upon the banners proclaimed that he had conquered 21 kings, captured 1000 strongholds, 900 towns, and 800 ships, and subjugated more than 12,000,000 people; and that he had put into the treasury more than $25,000,000, besides doubling the regular revenues of the state. He boasted that three times he had triumphed, and each time for the conquest of a continent--first for Africa, then for Europe, and now for Asia, which completed the conquest of the world. THE CONSPIRACY OF CATILINE.--While the legions were absent from Italy with Pompey in the East, a most daring conspiracy against the government was formed at Rome. Catiline, a ruined spendthrift, had gathered a large company of profligate young nobles, weighed down with debt and desperate like himself, and had deliberately planned to murder the consuls and the chief men of the state, and to plunder and burn the capital. The offices of the new government were to be divided among the conspirators. They depended upon receiving aid from Africa and Spain, and proposed to invite to their standard the gladiators in the various schools of Italy, as well as slaves and criminals. The proscriptions of Sulla were to be renewed, and all debts were to be cancelled. Fortunately, all the plans of the conspirators were revealed to the consul Cicero, the great orator. The Senate immediately clothed the consuls with dictatorial power with the usual formula, that they should take care that the republic received no harm. The gladiators were secured; the city walls were manned; and at every point the capital and state were armed against the "invisible foe." Then in the Senate-chamber, with Catiline himself present, Cicero exposed the whole conspiracy in a famous philippic, known as "The First Oration against Catiline." The senators shrank from the conspirator, and left the seats about him empty. After a feeble effort to reply to Cicero, overwhelmed by a sense of his guilt, and the cries of "traitor" and "parricide" from the senators, Catiline fled from the chamber, and hurried out of the city to the camp of his followers, in Etruria. In a desperate battle fought near Pistoria (62 B.C.), he was slain with many of his followers. His head was borne as a trophy to Rome. Cicero was hailed as the "Saviour of his Country." CÆSAR, CRASSUS, AND POMPEY.--Although the conspiracy of Catiline had failed, it was very easy to foresee that the downfall of the Roman republic was near at hand. Indeed, from this time on only the name remains. The basis of the institutions of the republic--the old Roman virtue, integrity, patriotism, and faith in the gods--was gone, having been swept away by the tide of luxury, selfishness, and immorality produced by the long series of foreign conquests and robberies in which the Roman people had been engaged. The days of liberty at Rome were over. From this time forward the government was really in the hands of ambitious and popular leaders, or of corrupt combinations and "rings." Events gather about a few great names, and the annals of the republic become biographical rather than historical. There were now in the state three men--Cæsar, Crassus, and Pompey--who were destined to shape affairs. Caius Julius Cæsar was born in the year 100 B.C. Although descended from an old patrician family, still his sympathies, and an early marriage to the daughter of Cinna, one of the adherents of Marius, led him early to identify himself with the Marian, or democratic party. In every way Cæsar courted public favor. He lavished enormous sums upon public games and tables. His debts are said to have amounted to 25,000,000 sesterces ($1,250,000). His popularity was unbounded. A successful campaign in Spain had already made known to himself, as well as to others, his genius as a commander. Crassus belonged to the senatorial, or aristocratic party. He owed his influence to his enormous wealth, being one of the richest men in the Roman world. His property was estimated at 7100 talents (about $7,500,000). With Pompey and his achievements we are already familiar. His influence throughout the Roman world was great; for, in settling and reorganizing the many countries he subdued, he had always taken care to reconstruct them in his own interest, as well as in that of the republic. The offices, as we have seen, were filled with his friends and adherents (see p. 285). This patronage had secured for him incalculable authority in the provinces. His veteran legionaries, too, were naturally devoted to the general who had led them so often to victory. THE FIRST TRIUMVIRATE.--What is known as the First Triumvirate rested on the genius of Cæsar, the wealth of Crassus, and the achievements of Pompey. It was a coalition or private arrangement entered into by these three men for the purpose of securing to themselves the control of public affairs. Each pledged himself to work for the interests of the others. Cæsar was the manager of the "ring," and through the aid of his colleagues secured the consulship (59 B.C.). CÆSAR'S CONQUESTS IN GAUL AND BRITAIN.--At the end of his consulship, the administration of the provinces of Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul was assigned to Cæsar. Already he was revolving in his mind plans for seizing supreme power. Beyond the Alps the Gallic and Germanic tribes were in restless movement. He saw there a grand field for military exploits, which should gain for him such glory and prestige as, in other fields, had been won and were now enjoyed by Pompey. With this achieved, and with a veteran army devoted to his interests, he might hope easily to attain that position at the head of affairs towards which his ambition was urging him. In the spring of 58 B.C. alarming intelligence from beyond the Alps caused Cæsar to hasten from Rome into Transalpine Gaul. Now began a series of eight brilliant campaigns directed against the various tribes of Gaul, Germany, and Britain. In his _Commentaries_ Cæsar himself has left us a faithful and graphic account of all the memorable marches, battles, and sieges that filled the years between 58 and 50 B.C. The year 55 B.C. marked two great achievements. Early in the spring of this year Cæsar constructed a bridge across the Rhine, and led his legions against the Germans in their native woods and swamps. In the autumn of the same year he crossed, by means of hastily constructed ships, the channel that separates the mainland from Britain, and after maintaining a foothold upon that island for two weeks withdrew his legions into Gaul for the winter. The following season he made another invasion of Britain; but, after some encounters with the fierce barbarians, recrossed to the mainland without having established any permanent garrisons in the island. Almost one hundred years passed away before the natives of Britain were again molested by the Romans (see p. 311). In the year 52 B.C., while Cæsar was absent in Italy, a general revolt occurred among the Gallic tribes. It was a last desperate struggle for the recovery of their lost independence. Vercingetorix, chief of the Arverni, was the leader of the insurrection. For a time it seemed as though the Romans would be driven from the country. But Cæsar's despatch and military genius saved the province to the republic. In his campaigns in Gaul, Cæsar had subjugated three hundred tribes, captured eight hundred cities, and slain a million of barbarians--one third of the entire population of the country. Another third he had taken prisoners. Great enthusiasm was aroused at Rome by these victories. "Let the Alps now sink," exclaimed Cicero: "the gods raised them to shelter Italy from the barbarians: they are now no longer needed." RESULTS OF THE GALLIC WARS.--The most important result of the Gallic wars of Cæsar was the Romanizing of Gaul. The country was opened to Roman traders and settlers, who carried with them the language, customs, and arts of Italy. Another result of the conquest was the checking of the migratory movements of the German tribes, which gave Græco-Roman civilization time to become thoroughly rooted, not only in Gaul, but also in Spain and other lands. RIVALRY BETWEEN CÆSAR AND POMPEY: CÆSAR CROSSES THE RUBICON.--While Cæsar was in the midst of his Transalpine wars, Crassus was leading an army against the Parthians, hoping to rival there the brilliant conquests of Cæsar in Gaul. But his army was almost annihilated by the Parthian cavalry, and he himself was slain (54 B.C.). His captors, so it is said, poured molten gold down his throat, that he might be sated with the metal which he had so coveted during life. In the death of Crassus, Cæsar lost his stanchest friend, one who had never failed him, and whose wealth had been freely used for his advancement. The world now belonged to Cæsar and Pompey. That the insatiable ambition of these two rivals should sooner or later bring them into collision was inevitable. Their alliance in the triumvirate was simply one of selfish convenience, not of friendship. While Cæsar was carrying on his campaigns in Gaul, Pompey was at Rome watching jealously the growing reputation of his great rival. He strove, by a princely liberality, to win the affections of the common people. On the Field of Mars he erected an immense theatre with seats for forty thousand spectators. He gave magnificent games, and set public tables; and when the interest of the people in the sports of the Circus flagged, he entertained them with gladiatorial combats. In a similar manner Cæsar strengthened himself with the people for the struggle which he plainly foresaw. He sought in every way to ingratiate himself with the Gauls; increased the pay of his soldiers; conferred the privileges of Roman citizenship upon the inhabitants of different cities in his province; and sent to Rome enormous sums of gold to be expended in the erection of temples, theatres, and other public structures, and in the celebration of games and shows that should rival in magnificence those given by Pompey. The terrible condition of affairs at the capital favored the ambition of Pompey. So selfish and corrupt were the members of the Senate, so dead to all virtue and to every sentiment of patriotism were the people, that even such patriots as Cato and Cicero saw no hope for the maintenance of the republic. The former favored the appointment of Pompey as sole consul for one year, which was about the same thing as making him dictator. "It is better," said Cato, "to choose a master than to wait for the tyrant whom anarchy will impose upon us." The "tyrant" in his and everybody's mind was Cæsar. Pompey now broke with Cæsar, and attached himself again to the old aristocratic party, which he had deserted for the alliance and promises of the triumvirate. The death at this time of his wife Julia, the daughter of Cæsar, severed the bonds of relationship at the same moment that those of ostensible friendship were broken. The Senate, hostile to Cæsar, now issued a decree that he should resign his office, and disband his Gallic legions by a stated day. The crisis had now come. Cæsar ordered his legions to hasten from Gaul into Italy. Without waiting for their arrival, at the head of a small body of veterans that he had with him at Ravenna, he crossed the Rubicon, a little stream that marked the boundary of his province. This was a declaration of war. As he plunged into the river, he exclaimed, "The die is cast." THE CIVIL WAR OF CÆSAR AND POMPEY (49-48 B.C.).--The bold movement of Cæsar produced great consternation at Rome. Realizing the danger of delay, Cæsar, without waiting for the Gallic legions to join him, marched southward. One city after another threw open its gates to him; legion after legion went over to his standard. Pompey and the Senate hastened from Rome to Brundisium, and thence, with about twenty-five thousand men, fled across the Adriatic into Greece. Within sixty days Cæsar made himself undisputed master of all Italy. Pompey and Cæsar now controlled the Roman world. It was large, but not large enough for both these ambitious men. As to which was likely to become sole master, it were difficult for one watching events at that time to foresee. Cæsar held Italy, Illyricum, and Gaul, with the resources of his own genius and the idolatrous attachment of his soldiers; Pompey controlled Spain, Africa, Sicily, Sardinia, Greece, and the provinces of Asia, with the prestige of his great name and the indefinite resources of the East. Cæsar's first care was to pacify Italy. His moderation and prudence won all classes to his side. Many had looked to see the terrible scenes of the days of Marius and Sulla re-enacted. Cæsar, however, soon gave assurance that life and property should be held sacred. He needed money; but, to avoid laying a tax upon the people, he asked for the treasure kept beneath the Capitol. Legend declared that this gold was the actual ransom-money which Brennus had demanded of the Romans, and which Camillus had saved by his timely appearance (see p. 241). It was esteemed sacred, and was never to be used save in case of another Gallic invasion. When Cæsar attempted to get possession of the treasure, the tribune Metellus prevented him; but Cæsar impatiently brushed him aside, saying, "The fear of a Gallic invasion is over: I have subdued the Gauls." With order restored in Italy, Cæsar's next movement was to gain control of the wheat-fields of Sicily, Sardinia, and Africa. A single legion brought over Sardinia without resistance to the side of Cæsar. Cato, the lieutenant of Pompey, fled from before Curio out of Sicily. In Africa, however, the lieutenant of Cæsar sustained a severe defeat, and the Pompeians held their ground there until the close of the war. Cæsar, meanwhile, had subjugated Spain. In forty days the entire peninsula was brought under his authority. Massilia had ventured to close her gates against the conqueror; but a brief siege forced the city to capitulate. Cæsar was now free to turn his forces against Pompey in the East. THE BATTLE OF PHARSALUS (48 B.C.).--From Brundisium Cæsar embarked his legions for Epirus. The armies of the rivals met upon the plains of Pharsalia, in Thessaly. The adherents of Pompey were so confident of an easy victory that they were already disputing about the offices at Rome, and were renting the most eligible houses fronting the public squares of the capital. The battle was at length joined. It proved Pompey's Waterloo. His army was cut to pieces. He himself fled from the field, and escaped to Egypt. Just as he was landing there, he was assassinated. The head of the great general was severed from his body; and when Cæsar, who was pressing after Pompey in hot pursuit, landed in Egypt, the bloody trophy was brought to him. He turned from the sight with generous tears. It was no longer the head of his rival, but of his old associate and son- in-law. He ordered the assassins to be executed, and directed that fitting obsequies should be performed over the body. CLOSE OF THE CIVIL WAR.--Cæsar was detained at Alexandria nine months in settling a dispute respecting the throne of Egypt. After a severe contest he overthrew the reigning Ptolemy, and secured the kingdom to the celebrated Cleopatra and a younger brother. Intelligence was now brought from Asia Minor that Pharnaces, son of Mithridates the Great, was inciting a revolt among the peoples of that region. Cæsar met the Pontic king at Zela, defeated him, and in five days put an end to the war. His laconic message to the Senate, announcing his victory, is famous. It ran thus: _Veni, vidi, vici_,--"I came, I saw, I conquered." Cæsar now hurried back to Italy, and thence proceeded to Africa, which the friends of the old republic had made their last chief rallying-place. At the great battle of Thapsus (46 B.C.) they were crushed. Fifty thousand lay dead upon the field. Cato, who had been the very life and soul of the army, refusing to outlive the republic, took his own life. CÆSAR'S TRIUMPH.--Cæsar was now virtually lord of the Roman world. Although he refrained from assuming the title of king, no Eastern monarch was ever possessed of more absolute power, or surrounded by more abject flatterers and sycophants. He was invested with all the offices and dignities of the state. The Senate made him perpetual dictator, and conferred upon him the powers of censor, consul, and tribune, with the titles of Pontifex Maximus and Imperator (whence Emperor). "He was to sit in a golden chair in the Senate-house, his image was to be borne in the procession of the gods, and the seventh month of the year was changed in his honor from Quintilis to Julius [whence our July]." His triumph celebrating his many victories far eclipsed in magnificence anything that Rome had before witnessed. In the procession were led captive princes from all parts of the world. Beneath his standards marched soldiers gathered out of almost every country beneath the heavens. Seventy-five million dollars of treasure were displayed. Splendid games and tables attested the liberality of the conqueror. Sixty thousand couches were set for the multitudes. The shows of the theatre and the combats of the arena followed one another in an endless round. "Above the combats of the amphitheatre floated for the first time the awning of silk, the immense velarium of a thousand colors, woven from the rarest and richest products of the East, to protect the people from the sun" (Gibbon). CÆSAR AS A STATESMAN.--Cæsar was great as a general, yet greater, if possible, as a statesman. The measures which he instituted evince profound political sagacity and surprising breadth of view. He sought to reverse the jealous and narrow policy of Rome in the past, and to this end rebuilt both Carthage and Corinth, and founded numerous colonies in all the different provinces, in which he settled about one hundred thousand of the poorer citizens of the capital. Upon some of the provincials he conferred full Roman citizenship, and upon others Latin rights (see p. 246, note), and thus strove to blend the varied peoples and races within the boundaries of the empire in a real nationality, with community of interests and sympathies. He reformed the calendar so as to bring the festivals once more in their proper seasons, and provided against further confusion by making the year consist of 365 days, with an added day for every fourth or leap year. Besides these achievements, Cæsar projected many vast undertakings, which the abrupt termination of his life prevented his carrying into execution. Among these was his projected conquest of the Parthians and the Germans. He proposed, in revenge for the defeat and death of his friend Crassus, to break to pieces the Parthian empire; then, sweeping with an army around above the Euxine, to destroy the dreaded hordes of Scythia; and then, falling upon the German tribes in the rear, to crush their power forever, and thus relieve the Roman empire of their constant threat. He was about to set out on the expedition against the Parthians, when he was struck down by assassins. THE DEATH OF CÆSAR.--Cæsar had his bitter personal enemies, who never ceased to plot his downfall. There were, too, sincere lovers of the old republic, who longed to see restored the liberty which the conqueror had overthrown. The impression began to prevail that Cæsar was aiming to make himself king. A crown was several times offered him in public by Mark Antony; but, seeing the manifest displeasure of the people, he each time pushed it aside. Yet there is no doubt that secretly he desired it. It was reported that he proposed to rebuild the walls of Troy, whence the Roman race had sprung, and make that ancient capital the seat of the new Roman empire. Others professed to believe that the arts and charms of the Egyptian Cleopatra, who had borne him a son at Rome, would entice him to make Alexandria the centre of the proposed kingdom. So many, out of love for Rome and the old republic, were led to enter into a conspiracy against the life of Cæsar with those who sought to rid themselves of the dictator for other and personal reasons. The Ides (the 15th day) of March, 44 B.C., upon which day the Senate convened, witnessed the assassination. Seventy or eighty conspirators, headed by Cassius and Brutus, both of whom had received special favors from the hands of Cæsar, were concerned in the plot. The soothsayers must have had some knowledge of the plans of the conspirators, for they had warned Cæsar to "beware of the Ides of March." On his way to the Senate- meeting that day, a paper warning him of his danger was thrust into his hand; but, not suspecting its urgent nature, he did not open it. As he entered the assembly chamber he observed the astrologer Spurinna, and remarked carelessly to him, referring to his prediction, "The Ides of March have come." "Yes," replied Spurinna, "but not gone." No sooner had Cæsar taken his seat than the conspirators crowded about him as if to present a petition. Upon a signal from one of their number their daggers were drawn. For a moment Cæsar defended himself; but seeing Brutus, upon whom he had lavished gifts and favors, among the conspirators, he exclaimed reproachfully, _Et tu, Brute!_--"Thou, too, Brutus!" drew his mantle over his face, and received unresistingly their further thrusts. Pierced with twenty-three wounds, he sank dead at the foot of Pompey's statue. FUNERAL ORATION by MARK ANTONY.--The conspirators, or "liberators," as they called themselves, had thought that the Senate would confirm, and the people applaud, their act. But both people and senators, struck with consternation, were silent. Men's faces grew pale as they recalled the proscriptions of Sulla, and saw in the assassination of Cæsar the first act in a similar reign of terror. As the conspirators issued from the assembly hall, and entered the Forum, holding aloft their bloody daggers, instead of the expected acclamations they were met by an ominous silence. The liberators hastened for safety to the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, going thither ostensibly for the purpose of giving thanks for the death of the tyrant. Upon the day set for the funeral ceremonies, Mark Antony, the trusted friend and secretary of Cæsar, mounted the rostrum in the Forum to deliver the usual funeral oration. He recounted the great deeds of Cæsar, the glory he had conferred upon the Roman name, dwelt upon his liberality and his munificent bequests to the people--even to some who were now his murderers; and, when he had wrought the feelings of the multitude to the highest tension, he raised the robe of Cæsar, and showed the rents made by the daggers of the assassins. Cæsar had always been beloved by the people and idolized by his soldiers. They were now driven almost to frenzy with grief and indignation. Seizing weapons and torches, they rushed through the streets, vowing vengeance upon the conspirators. The liberators, however, escaped from the fury of the mob, and fled from Rome, Brutus and Cassius seeking refuge in Greece. [Illustration: MARK ANTONY.] THE SECOND TRIUMVIRATE.--Antony had gained possession of the will and papers of Cæsar, and now, under color of carrying out the testament of the dictator, according to a decree of the Senate, entered upon a course of high-handed usurpation. He was aided in his designs by Lepidus, one of Cæsar's old lieutenants. Very soon he was exercising all the powers of a real dictator. "The tyrant is dead," said Cicero, "but the tyranny still lives." This was a bitter commentary upon the words of Brutus, who, as he drew his dagger from the body of Cæsar, turned to Cicero, and exclaimed, "Rejoice, O Father of your Country, for Rome is free." Rome could not be free, the republic could not be reestablished because the old love for virtue and liberty had died out from among the people--had been overwhelmed by the rising tide of vice, corruption, sensuality, and irreligion that had set in upon the capital. [Illustration: JULIUS CÆSAR. (From a Bust in the Museum of the Louvre.)] To what length Antony would have gone in his career of usurpation it is difficult to say, had he not been opposed at this point by Caius Octavius, the grand-nephew of Julius Cæsar, and the one whom he had named in his will as his heir and successor. Upon the Senate declaring in favor of Octavius, civil war immediately broke out between him and Antony and Lepidus. After several indecisive battles between the forces of the rival competitors, Octavius proposed to Antony and Lepidus a reconciliation. The three met on a small island in the Rhenus, a little stream in Northern Italy, and there formed a league known as the Second Triumvirate (43 B.C.). The plans of the triumvirs were infamous. They first divided the world among themselves: Octavius was to have the government of the West; Antony, that of the East; while to Lepidus fell the control of Africa. A general proscription, such as had marked the coming to power of Sulla (see p. 283), was then resolved upon. It was agreed that each should give up to the assassin such friends of his as had incurred the ill will of either of the other triumvirs. Under this arrangement Octavius gave up his friend Cicero,--who had incurred the hatred of Antony by opposing his schemes,-- and allowed his name to be put at the head of the list of the proscribed. The friends of the orator urged him to flee the country. "Let me die," said he, "in my fatherland, which I have so often saved!" His attendants were hurrying him, half unwilling, towards the coast, when his pursuers came up and despatched him in the litter in which he was being carried. His head was taken to Rome, and set up in front of the rostrum, "from which he had so often addressed the people with his eloquent appeals for liberty." It is told that Fulvia, the wife of Antony, ran her gold bodkin through the tongue, in revenge for the bitter philippics it had uttered against her husband. The right hand of the victim--the hand that had penned the eloquent orations--was nailed to the rostrum. Cicero was but one victim among many hundreds. All the dreadful scenes of the days of Sulla were re-enacted. Three hundred senators and two thousand knights were murdered. The estates of the wealthy were confiscated, and conferred by the triumvirs upon their friends and favorites. LAST STRUGGLE OF THE REPUBLIC AT PHILIPPI (42 B.C.).--The friends of the old republic, and the enemies of the triumvirs, were meanwhile rallying in the East. Brutus and Cassius were the animating spirits. The Asiatic provinces were plundered to raise money for the soldiers of the liberators. Octavius and Antony, as soon as they had disposed of their enemies in Italy, crossed the Adriatic into Greece, to disperse the forces of the republicans there. The liberators, advancing to meet them, passed over the Hellespont into Thrace. Tradition tells how one night a spectre appeared to Brutus and seemed to say, "I am thy evil genius; we will meet again at Philippi." At Philippi, in Thrace, the hostile armies met (42 B.C.). In two successive engagements the new levies of the liberators were cut to pieces, and both Brutus and Cassius, believing the cause of the republic forever lost, committed suicide. It was, indeed, the last effort of the republic. The history of the events that lie between the action at Philippi and the establishment of the empire is simply a record of the struggles among the triumvirs for the possession of the prize of supreme power. After various redistributions of provinces, Lepidus was at length expelled from the triumvirate, and then again the Roman world, as in the times of Cæsar and Pompey, was in the hands of two masters--Antony in the East, and Octavius in the West. ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.--After the battle of Philippi, Antony went into Asia for the purpose of settling the affairs of the provinces and vassal states there. He summoned Cleopatra, the fair queen of Egypt, to meet him at Tarsus, in Cilicia, there to give account to him for the aid she had rendered the liberators. She obeyed the summons, relying upon the power of her charms to appease the anger of the triumvir. She ascended the Cydnus in a gilded barge, with oars of silver, and sails of purple silk. Beneath awnings wrought of the richest manufactures of the East, the beautiful queen, attired to personate Venus, reclined amidst lovely attendants dressed to represent cupids and nereids. Antony was completely fascinated, as had been the great Cæsar before him, by the dazzling beauty of the "Serpent of the Nile." Enslaved by her enchantments, and charmed by her brilliant wit, in the pleasure of her company he forgot all else--ambition and honor and country. Once, indeed, Antony did rouse himself and break away from his enslavement to lead the Roman legions across the Euphrates against the Parthians. But the storms of approaching winter, and the incessant attacks of the Parthian cavalry, at length forced him to make a hurried and disastrous retreat. He hastened back to Egypt, and sought to forget his shame and disappointment amidst the revels of the Egyptian court. THE BATTLE OF ACTIUM (31 B.C.).--Affairs could not long continue in their present course. Antony had put away his faithful wife Octavia for the beautiful Cleopatra. It was whispered at Rome, and not without truth, that he proposed to make Alexandria the capital of the Roman world, and announce Cæsarion, son of Julius Cæsar and Cleopatra, as heir of the empire. All Rome was stirred. It was evident that a conflict was at hand in which the question for decision would be whether the West should rule the East, or the East rule the West. All eyes were instinctively turned to Octavius as the defender of Italy, and the supporter of the sovereignty of the Eternal City. Both parties made the most gigantic preparations. Octavius met the combined fleets of Antony and Cleopatra just off the promontory of Actium, on the Grecian coast. While the issue of the battle that there took place was yet undecided, Cleopatra turned her galley in flight. The Egyptian ships, to the number of fifty, followed her example. Antony, as soon as he perceived the withdrawal of Cleopatra, forgot all else, and followed in her track with a swift galley. Overtaking the fleeing queen, the infatuated man was received aboard her vessel, and became her partner in the disgraceful flight. The abandoned fleet and army surrendered to Octavius. The conqueror was now sole master of the civilized world. From this decisive battle (31 B.C.) are usually dated the end of the republic and the beginning of the empire. Some, however, make the establishment of the empire date from the year 27 B.C., as it was not until then that Octavius was formally invested with imperial powers. DEATHS OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.--Octavius pursued Antony to Egypt, where the latter, deserted by his army, and informed by a messenger from the false queen that she was dead, committed suicide. Cleopatra then sought to enslave Octavius with her charms; but, failing in this, and becoming convinced that he proposed to take her to Rome that she might there grace his triumph, she took her own life, being in the thirty-eighth year of her age. Tradition says that she effected her purpose by applying an asp to her arm. But it is really unknown in what way she killed herself. CHAPTER XXIX. THE ROMAN EMPIRE. (From 31 B.C. to A.D. 180.) REIGN OF AUGUSTUS CÆSAR (31 B.C. to A.D. 14).--The hundred years of strife which ended with the battle of Actium left the Roman republic, exhausted and helpless, in the hands of one wise enough and strong enough to remould its crumbling fragments in such a manner that the state, which seemed ready to fall to pieces, might prolong its existence for another five hundred years. It was a great work thus to create anew, as it were, out of anarchy and chaos, a political fabric that should exhibit such elements of perpetuity and strength. "The establishment of the Roman empire," says Merivale, "was, after all, the greatest political work that any human being ever wrought. The achievements of Alexander, of Cæsar, of Charlemagne, of Napoleon, are not to be compared with it for a moment." The government which Octavius established was a monarchy in fact, but a republic in form. Mindful of the fate of Julius Cæsar, who fell because he gave the lovers of the republic reason to think that he coveted the title of king, Octavius carefully veiled his really absolute sovereignty under the forms of the old republican state. The Senate still existed; but so completely subjected were its members to the influence of the conqueror that the only function it really exercised was the conferring of honors and titles and abject flatteries upon its master. All the republican officials remained; but Octavius absorbed and exercised their chief powers and functions. He had the powers of consul, tribune, censor, and Pontifex Maximus. All the republican magistrates--the consuls, the tribunes, the prætors--were elected as usual; but they were simply the nominees and creatures of the emperor. They were the effigies and figure-heads to delude the people into believing that the republic still existed. Never did a people seem more content with the shadow after the loss of the substance. [Illustration: AUGUSTUS.] The Senate, acting under the inspiration of Octavius, withheld from him the title of king, which ever since the expulsion of the Tarquins, five centuries before this time, had been intolerable to the people; but they conferred upon him the titles of Imperator and Augustus, the latter having been hitherto sacred to the gods. The sixth month of the Roman year was called Augustus (whence our August) in his honor, an act in imitation of that by which the preceding month had been given the name of Julius in honor of Julius Cæsar. The domains over which Augustus held sway were imperial in magnitude. They stretched from the Atlantic to the Euphrates, and upon the north were hemmed by the forests of Germany and the bleak steppes of Scythia, and were bordered on the south by the sands of the African desert and the dreary wastes of Arabia, which seemed the boundaries set by nature to dominion in those directions. Within these limits were crowded more than 100,000,000 people, embracing every conceivable condition and variety in race and culture, from the rough barbarians of Gaul to the refined voluptuary of the East. Octavius was the first to moderate the ambition of the Romans, and to council them not to attempt to conquer any more of the world, but rather to devote their energies to the work of consolidating the domains already acquired. He saw the dangers that would attend any further extension of the boundaries of the state. The reign of Augustus lasted forty-four years, from 31 B.C. to A.D. 14. It embraced the most splendid period of the annals of Rome. Under the patronage of the emperor, and that of his favorite minister Mæcenas, poets and writers flourished and made this the "golden age" of Latin literature. During this reign Virgil composed his immortal epic of the _Æneid_, and Horace his famous odes; while Livy wrote his inimitable history, and Ovid his _Metamorphoses_. Many who lamented the fall of the republic sought solace in the pursuit of letters; and in this they were encouraged by Augustus, as it gave occupation to many restless spirits that would otherwise have been engaged in political intrigues against his government. Augustus was also a munificent patron of architecture and art. He adorned the capital with many splendid structures. Said he proudly, "I found Rome a city of brick; I left it a city of marble." The population of the city at this time was probably about one million. Although the government of Augustus was disturbed by some troubles upon the frontiers, still never before, perhaps, did the world enjoy so long a period of general rest from the preparation and turmoil of war. Three times during this auspicious reign the gates of the Temple of Janus at Rome, which were open in time of war and closed in time of peace, were shut. Only twice before during the entire history of the city had they been closed, so constantly had the Roman people been engaged in war. It was in the midst of this happy reign, when profound peace prevailed throughout the civilized world, that Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judea. The event was unheralded at Rome; yet it was filled with profound significance, not only for the Roman empire, but for the world. The latter years of the life of Augustus were clouded both by domestic bereavement and national disaster. His beloved nephew Marcellus, and his two grandsons Caius and Lucius, whom he purposed making his heirs, were all removed by death; and then, far away in the German forest, his general Varus, who had attempted to rule the freedom-loving Teutons as he had governed the abject Asiatics of the Eastern provinces, was surprised by the barbarians, led by their brave chief Hermanu,--Arminius, as called by the Romans,--and his army destroyed almost to a man (A.D. 9). Twenty thousand of the legionaries lay dead and unburied in the tangled woods and morasses of Germany. The victory of Arminius over the Roman legions was an event of the greatest significance in the history of European civilization. Germany was almost overrun by the Roman army. The Teutonic tribes were on the point of being completely subjugated and Romanized, as had been the Celts of Gaul before them. Had this occurred, the entire history of Europe would have been changed; for the Germanic element is the one that has given shape and color to the important events of the last fifteen hundred years. Those barbarians, too, were our ancestors. Had Rome succeeded in exterminating or enslaving them, Britain, as Creasy says, would never have received the name of England, and the great English nation would never have had an existence. In the year A.D. 14, Augustus died, having reached the seventy-sixth year of his age. It was believed that his soul ascended visibly amidst the flames of the funeral pyre. By decree of the Senate divine worship was accorded to him, and temples were erected in his honor. One of the most important of the acts of Augustus, in its influence upon following events, was the formation of the Prætorian Guard, which was designed for a sort of body-guard to the emperor. In the succeeding reign this body of soldiers, about ten thousand in number, was given a permanent camp alongside the city walls. It soon became a formidable power in the state, and made and unmade emperors at will. REIGN OF TIBERIUS (A.D. 14-37).--Tiberius succeeded to an unlimited sovereignty. The Senate conferred upon him all the titles that had been worn by Augustus. One of the first acts of Tiberius gave the last blow to the ancient republican institutions. He took away from the popular assembly the privilege of electing the consuls and prætors, and bestowed the same upon the Senate, which, however, must elect from candidates presented by the emperor. As the Senate was the creation of the emperor, who as censor made up the list of its members, he was now of course the source and fountain of all patronage. During the first years of his reign, Tiberius used his practically unrestrained authority with moderation and justice, but soon yielding to the promptings of a naturally cruel, suspicious, and jealous nature, he entered upon a course of the most high- handed tyranny. He enforced oppressively an old law, known as the _law of majestas_, which made it a capital offence for any one to speak a careless word, or even to entertain an unfriendly thought, respecting the emperor. "It was dangerous to speak, and equally dangerous to keep silent," says Leighton, "for silence even might be construed into discontent." Rewards were offered to informers, and hence sprang up a class of persons called "delators," who acted as spies upon society. Often false charges were made, to gratify personal enmity; and many, especially of the wealthy class, were accused and put to death that their property might be confiscated. Tiberius appointed, as his chief minister and as commander of the prætorians, one Sejanus, a man of the lowest and most corrupt life. This officer actually persuaded Tiberius to retire to the little island of Capreæ, in the Bay of Naples, and leave to him the management of affairs at Rome. The emperor built several villas in different parts of the beautiful islet, and, having gathered a band of congenial companions, passed in this pleasant retreat the later years of his reign. Both Tacitus the historian and Suetonius the biographer tell many stories of the scandalous profligacy of the emperor's life on the island; but these tales, it should be added, are discredited by some. Meanwhile, Sejanus was ruling at Rome very much according to his own will. No man's life was safe. He even grew so bold as to plan the assassination of the emperor himself. His designs, however, became known to Tiberius; and the infamous and disloyal minister was arrested and put to death. After the execution of his minister, Tiberius ruled more despotically than ever before. Multitudes sought refuge from his tyranny in suicide. Death at last relieved the world of the monster. His end was probably hastened by his attendants, who are believed to have smothered him in his bed, as he lay dying. It was in the midst of the reign of Tiberius that, in a remote province of the Roman empire, the Saviour was crucified. Animated by an unparalleled missionary spirit, His followers traversed the length and breadth of the empire, preaching everywhere the "glad tidings." Men's loss of faith in the gods of the old mythologies, the softening and liberalizing influence of Greek culture, the unification of the whole civilized world under a single government, the widespread suffering and the inexpressible weariness of the oppressed and servile classes,--all these things had prepared the soil for the seed of the new doctrines. In less than three centuries the Pagan empire had become Christian not only in name, but also very largely in fact. This conversion of Rome is one of the most important events in all history. A new element is here introduced into civilization, an element which we shall find giving color and character to very much of the story of the eighteen centuries that we have yet to study. REIGN OF CALIGULA (A.D. 37-41).--Caius Cæsar, better known as Caligula, was only twenty-five years of age when the death of Tiberius called him to the throne. His career was very similar to that of Tiberius. After a few months spent in arduous application to the affairs of the empire, during which time his many acts of kindness and piety won for him the affections of all classes, the mind of the young emperor became unsettled, and he began to indulge in all sorts of insanities. The cruel sports of the amphitheatre possessed for him a strange fascination. When animals failed, he ordered spectators to be seized indiscriminately, and thrown to the beasts. He entered the lists himself, and fought as a gladiator upon the arena. In a sanguinary mood, he wished that "the people of Rome had but one neck." As an insult to his nobles, he gave out that he proposed to make his favorite horse, Incitatus, consul. He declared himself divine, and removing the heads of Jupiter's statues, put on his own. After four years the insane career of Caligula was brought to a close by some of the officers of the prætorian guard, whom he had wantonly insulted. REIGN OF CLAUDIUS (A.D. 4l-54).--The reign of Claudius, Caligula's successor, was signalized by the conquest of Britain. Nearly a century had now passed since the invasion of the island by Julius Cæsar, who, as has been seen (see p. 292), simply made a reconnoissance of the island and then withdrew. Claudius conquered all the southern portion of the island, and founded many colonies, which in time became important centres of Roman trade and culture. The leader of the Britons was Caractacus. He was taken captive and carried to Rome. Gazing in astonishment upon the magnificence of the imperial city, he exclaimed, "How can a people possessed of such splendor at home envy Caractacus his humble cottage in Britain?" Claudius distinguished his reign by the execution of many important works. At the mouth of the Tiber he constructed a magnificent harbor, called the Portus Romanus. The Claudian Aqueduct, which he completed, was a stupendous work, bringing water to the city from a distance of forty-five miles. The delight of the people in gladiatorial shows had at this time become almost an insane frenzy. Claudius determined to give an entertainment that should render insignificant all similar efforts. Upon a large lake, whose sloping bank afforded seats for the vast multitudes of spectators, he exhibited a naval battle, in which two opposing fleets, bearing nineteen thousand gladiators, fought as though in real battle, till the water was filled with thousands of bodies, and covered with the fragments of the broken ships. Throughout his life Claudius was ruled by intriguing favorites and unworthy wives. For his fourth wife Claudius married the "wicked Agrippina," who secured his death by means of a dish of poisoned mushrooms, in order to make place for the succession of her son Nero. REIGN OF NERO (A.D. 54-68).--Nero was fortunate in having for his preceptor the great philosopher and moralist Seneca; but never was teacher more unfortunate in his pupil. For five years Nero ruled with moderation and equity. He then broke away from the guidance of his tutor Seneca, and entered upon a career filled with crimes of almost incredible enormity. The dagger and poison--the latter a means of murder the use of which at Rome had become a "fine art," and was in the hands of those who made it a regular profession--were employed almost unceasingly, to remove persons that had incurred his hatred, or who possessed wealth that he coveted. It was in the tenth year of his reign that the so-called Great Fire laid more than half of Rome in ashes. It was rumored that Nero had ordered the conflagration to be lighted, and that from the roof of his palace he had enjoyed the spectacle, and amused himself by singing a poem which he had written, entitled the "Sack of Troy." Nero did everything in his power to discredit the rumor. To turn attention from himself, he accused the Christians of having conspired to destroy the city, in order to help out their prophecies. The doctrine which was taught by some of the new sect respecting the second coming of Christ, and the destruction of the world by fire, lent color to the charge. The persecution that followed was one of the most cruel recorded in the history of the Church. Many victims were covered with pitch and burned at night, to serve as torches in the imperial gardens. Tradition preserves the names of the Apostles Peter and Paul as victims of this Neronian persecution. As to Rome, the conflagration was a blessing in disguise. The city rose from its ashes as quickly as Athens from her ruins at the close of the Persian wars. The new buildings were made fireproof; and the narrow, crooked streets reappeared as broad and beautiful avenues. A considerable portion of the burnt region was appropriated by Nero for the buildings and grounds of an immense palace, called the "Golden House." It covered so much space that the people "maliciously hinted" that Nero had fired the old city, in order to make room for it. The emperor secured money for his enormous expenditures by new extortions, murders, and confiscations. No one of wealth knew but that his turn might come next. A conspiracy was formed among the nobles to relieve the state of the monster. The plot was discovered, and again "the city was filled with funerals." Lucan the poet, and Seneca, the old preceptor of Nero, both fell victims to the tyrant's rage. Nero now made a tour through the East, and there plunged deeper and deeper into every shame, sensuality, and crime. The tyranny and the disgrace were no longer endurable. Almost at the same moment the legions in several of the provinces revolted. The Senate decreed that Nero was a public enemy, and condemned him to a disgraceful death by scourging, to avoid which he instructed a slave how to give him a fatal thrust. His last words were, "What a loss my death will be to art!" Nero was the sixth and last of the Julian line. The family of the Great Cæsar was now extinct; but the name remained, and was adopted by all the succeeding emperors. GALBA, OTHO, AND VITELLIUS (A.D. 68-69).--These three names are usually grouped together, as their reigns were all short and uneventful. The succession, upon the death of Nero and the extinction in him of the Julian line, was in dispute, and the legions in different quarters supported the claims of their favorite leaders. One after another the three aspirants named were killed in bloody struggles for the imperial purple. The last, Vitellius, was hurled from the throne by the soldiers of Flavius Vespasian, the old and beloved commander of the legions in Palestine, which were at this time engaged in a war with the Jews. REIGN OF VESPASIAN (A.D. 69-79).--The accession of Flavius Vespasian marks the beginning of a period, embracing three reigns, known as the _Flavian Age_ (A.D. 69-96). Vespasian's reign was signalized both by important military achievements abroad and by stupendous public works undertaken at Rome. [Illustration: COIN OF VESPASIAN.] After one of the most harassing sieges recorded in history, Jerusalem was taken by Titus, son of Vespasian. The Temple was destroyed, and more than a million of Jews that were crowded in the city are believed to have perished. Great multitudes suffered death by crucifixion. The miserable remnants of the nation were scattered everywhere over the world. Josephus, the great historian, accompanied the conqueror to Rome. In imitation of Nebuchadnezzar, Titus robbed the Temple of its sacred utensils, and bore them away as trophies. Upon the triumphal arch at Rome that bears his name may be seen at the present day the sculptured representation of the golden candlestick, which was one of the memorials of the war. In the opposite corner of the empire a dangerous revolt of the Gauls was suppressed, and in the island of Britain the Roman commander Agricola subdued or crowded back the native tribes until he had extended the frontiers of the empire into what is now Scotland. Then, as a protection against the incursions of the Caledonians, the ancestors of the Scottish Highlanders, he constructed a line of fortresses from the Frith of Forth to the Frith of Clyde. Vespasian rebuilt the Capitoline temple, which had been burned during the struggle between his soldiers and the adherents of Vitellius; he constructed a new forum which bore his own name; and also began the erection of the celebrated Flavian amphitheatre, which was completed by his successor. After a most prosperous reign of ten years, Vespasian died A.D. 79, the first emperor after Augustus that did not meet with a violent death. [Illustration: TRIUMPHAL PROCESSION FROM THE ARCH OF TITUS: Showing the Seven-branched Candlestick and other Trophies from the Temple at Jerusalem.] At the last moment he requested his attendants to raise him upon his feet that he might "die standing," as befitted a Roman emperor. REIGN OF TITUS (A.D. 79-81).--In a short reign of two years Titus won the title, the "Delight of Mankind." He was unwearied in acts of benevolence and in bestowal of favors. Having let a day slip by without some act of kindness performed, he is said to have exclaimed reproachfully, "I have lost a day." Titus completed and dedicated the great Flavian amphitheatre begun by his father, Vespasian. This vast structure, which accommodated more than eighty thousand spectators, is better known as the Colosseum--a name given it either because of its gigantic proportions, or on account of a colossal statue of Nero which happened to stand near it. [Illustration: STREET IN POMPEII. (A Reconstruction.)] The reign of Titus, though so short, was signalized by two great disasters. The first was a conflagration at Rome, which was almost as calamitous as the Great Fire in the reign of Nero. The second was the destruction, by an eruption of Vesuvius, of the Campanian cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. The cities were buried beneath showers of cinders, ashes, and streams of volcanic mud. Pliny the elder, the great naturalist, venturing too near the mountain to investigate the phenomenon, lost his life. [Footnote: In the year 1713, sixteen centuries after the destruction of the cities, the ruins were discovered by some persons engaged in digging a well, and since then extensive excavations have been made, which have uncovered a large part of Pompeii, and revealed to us the streets, homes, theatres, baths, shops, temples, and various monuments of the ancient city--all of which presents to us a very vivid picture of Roman life during the imperial period, eighteen hundred years ago.] DOMITIAN--LAST OF THE TWELVE CÆSARS (A.D. 81-96).--Domitian, the brother of Titus, was the last of the line of emperors known as "the Twelve Cæsars." The title, however, was assumed by, and is applied to, all succeeding emperors; the sole reason that the first twelve princes are grouped together is because the Roman biographer Suetonius completed the lives of that number only. Domitian's reign was an exact contrast to that of his brother Titus. It was one succession of extravagances, tyrannies, confiscations, and murders. Under this emperor took place what is known in Church history as "the second persecution of the Christians." This class, as well as the Jews, were the special objects of Domitian's hatred, because they refused to worship the statues of himself which he had set up (see p. 322). The last of the Twelve Cæsars perished in his own palace, and by the hands of members of his own household. The Senate ordered his infamous name to be erased from the public monuments, and to be blotted from the records of the Roman state. THE FIVE GOOD EMPERORS: REIGN OF NERVA (A.D. 96-98).--The five emperors-- Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the two Antonines--that succeeded Domitian were elected by the Senate, which during this period assumed something of its former weight and influence in the affairs of the empire. The wise and beneficent administration of the government by these rulers secured for them the enviable distinction of being called "the five good emperors." Nerva died after a short reign of sixteen months, and the sceptre passed into the stronger hands of the able commander Trajan, whom Nerva had previously made his associate in the government. [Illustration: TRAJAN.] REIGN OF TRAJAN (A.D. 98-117).--Trajan was a native of Spain, and a soldier by profession and talent. His ambition to achieve military renown led him to undertake distant and important conquests. It was the policy of Augustus--a policy adopted by most of his successors--to make the Danube in Europe and the Euphrates in Asia the limits of the Roman empire in those respective quarters. But Trajan determined to push the frontiers of his dominions beyond both these rivers, scorning to permit Nature by these barriers to mark out the confines of Roman sovereignty. He crossed the Danube by means of a bridge, the foundations of which may still be seen, and subjugated the bold and warlike Dacian tribes lying behind that stream--tribes that had often threatened the peace of the empire. After celebrating his victories in a magnificent triumph at Rome, Trajan turned to the East, led his legions across the Euphrates, reduced Armenia, and wrested from the Parthians most of the territory which anciently formed the heart of the Assyrian monarchy. To Trajan belongs the distinction of extending the boundaries of the empire to the most distant points to which Roman ambition and prowess were ever able to push them. But Trajan was something besides a soldier. He had a taste for literature: Juvenal, Plutarch, and the younger Pliny wrote under his patronage; and, moreover, as is true of almost all great conquerors, he had a perfect passion for building. Among the great works with which he embellished the capital was the Trajan Forum. Here he erected the celebrated marble shaft known as Trajan's column. It is one hundred and forty-seven feet high, and is wound from base to summit by a spiral band of sculptures, containing more than twenty-five thousand human figures. The column is nearly as perfect to-day as when reared eighteen centuries ago. It was intended to commemorate the Dacian conquests of Trajan; and its pictured sides are the best, and almost the only, record we now possess of those wars. [Illustration: BESIEGING A DACIAN CITY. (From Trajan's Column.)] Respecting the rapid spread of Christianity at this time, the character of the early professors of the new faith, and the light in which they were viewed by the rulers of the Roman world, we have very important evidence in a certain letter written by Pliny the Younger to the emperor in regard to the Christians of Pontus, in Asia Minor, of which remote province Pliny was governor. Pliny speaks of the new creed as a "contagious superstition, that had seized not cities only, but the lesser towns also, and the open country." Yet he could find no fault in the converts to the new doctrines. Notwithstanding this, however, because the Christians steadily refused to sacrifice to the Roman gods, he ordered many to be put to death for their "inflexible obstinacy." Trajan died A.D. 117, after a reign of nineteen years, one of the most prosperous and fortunate that had yet befallen the lot of the Roman people. REIGN OF HADRIAN (A.D. 117-138).--Hadrian, a kinsman of Trajan, succeeded him in the imperial office. He possessed great ability, and displayed admirable moderation and prudence in the administration of the government. He gave up the territory conquered by Trajan in the East, and made the Euphrates once more the boundary of the empire in that quarter. He also broke down the bridge that Trajan had built over the Danube, and made that stream the real frontier line, notwithstanding the Roman garrisons were still maintained in Dacia. Hadrian saw plainly that Rome could not safely extend any more widely the frontiers of the empire. Indeed, so active and threatening were the enemies of the empire in the East, and so daring and numerous had now become its barbarian assailants of the North, that there was reason for the greatest anxiety lest they should break through even the old and strong lines of the Danube and the Euphrates, and pour their devastating hordes over the provinces. More than fifteen years of his reign were spent by Hadrian in making tours of inspection through all the different provinces of the empire. He visited Britain, and secured the Roman possessions there against the Picts and Scots by erecting a continuous wall across the island. Next he journeyed through Gaul and Spain, and then visited in different tours all the remaining countries bordering upon the Mediterranean. He ascended the Nile, and, traveller-like, carved his name upon the vocal Memnon. The cities which he visited he decorated with temples, theatres, and other monuments. In the year 131, the Jews in Palestine, who had in a measure recovered from the blow Titus had given their nation, broke out in desperate revolt, because of the planting of a Roman colony upon the almost desolate site of Jerusalem, and the placing of the statue of Jupiter in the Holy Temple. More than half a million of Jews perished in the useless struggle, and the survivors were driven into exile--the last dispersion of the race. The latter years of his reign Hadrian passed at Rome. It was here that this princely builder erected his most splendid structures. Among these was the Mole, or Mausoleum, of Hadrian, an immense structure surmounted by a gilded dome, erected on the banks of the Tiber, and designed as a tomb for himself. THE ANTONINES (A.D. 138-180).--Aurelius Antoninus, surnamed Pius, the adopted son of Hadrian, and his successor, gave the Roman empire an administration singularly pure and parental. Of him it has been said that "he was the first, and, saving his colleague and successor Aurelius, the only one of the emperors who devoted himself to the task of government with a single view to the happiness of his people." Throughout his long reign of twenty-three years, the empire was in a state of profound peace. The attention of the historian is attracted by no striking events, which, as many have not failed to observe, illustrates admirably the oft-repeated maxim, "Happy is that people whose annals are brief." Antoninus, early in his reign, united with himself in the government his adopted son Marcus Aurelius, and upon the death of the former (A.D. 161) the latter succeeded quietly to his place and work. His studious habits won for him the title of "Philosopher." He belonged to the school of the Stoics, and was a most thoughtful writer. His _Meditations_ breathe the tenderest sentiments of devotion and benevolence, and make the nearest approach to the spirit of Christianity of all the writings of Pagan antiquity. He established an Institution, or Home, for orphan girls; and, finding the poorer classes throughout Italy burdened by their taxes and greatly in arrears in paying them, he caused all the tax-claims to be heaped in the Forum and burned. The tastes and sympathies of Aurelius would have led him to choose a life passed in retirement and study at the capital; but hostile movements of the Parthians, and especially invasions of the barbarians along the Rhenish and Danubian frontiers, called him from his books, and forced him to spend most of the latter years of his reign in the camp. The Parthians, who had violated their treaty with Rome, were chastised by the lieutenants of the emperor, and Mesopotamia again fell under Roman authority. This war drew after it a series of terrible calamities. The returning soldiers brought with them the Asiatic plague, which swept off vast numbers, especially in Italy, where entire cities and districts were depopulated. In the general distress and panic, the superstitious people were led to believe that it was the new sect of Christians that had called down upon the nation the anger of the gods. Aurelius permitted a fearful persecution to be instituted against them, during which the famous Christian fathers and bishops, Justin Martyr and Polycarp, suffered death. It should be noted that the persecution of the Christians under the Pagan emperors, sprung from political rather than religious motives, and that this is why we find the names of the best emperors, as well as those of the worst, in the list of persecutors. It was believed that the welfare of the state was bound up with the careful performance of the rites of the national worship; and hence, while the Roman rulers were usually very tolerant, allowing all forms of worship among their subjects, still they required that men of every faith should at least recognize the Roman gods, and burn incense before their statues. This the Christians steadily refused to do. Their neglect of the service of the temple, it was believed, angered the gods, and endangered the safety of the state, bringing upon it drought, pestilence, and every disaster. This was the main reason of their persecution by the Pagan emperors. But pestilence and persecution were both forgotten amidst the imperative calls for immediate help that now came from the North. The barbarians were pushing in the Roman outposts, and pouring impetuously over the frontiers. To the panic of the plague was added this new terror. Aurelius placed himself at the head of his legions, and hurried beyond the Alps. For many years, amidst the snows of winter and the heats of summer, he strove to beat back the assailants of the empire. The efforts of the devoted Aurelius checked the inroads of the barbarians; but he could not subdue them, so weakened was the empire by the ravages of the pestilence, and so exhausted was the treasury from the heavy and constant drains upon it. At last his weak body gave way beneath the hardships of his numerous campaigns, and he died in his camp at Vindobona (now Vienna), in the nineteenth year of his reign (A.D. 180). The united voice of the Senate and people pronounced him a god, and divine worship was accorded to his statue. Never was Monarchy so justified of her children as in the lives and works of the Antonines. As Merivale, in dwelling upon their virtues, very justly remarks, "the blameless career of these illustrious princes has furnished the best excuse for Cæsarism in all after-ages." ROMAN EMPERORS FROM AUGUSTUS TO MARCUS AURELIUS. (From 31 B.C. to A.D. 180.) Augustus reigns . 31 B.C. to A.D. 14 Tiberius . . . . . . A.D. 14-37 Caligula . . . . . . . . 37-41 Claudius . . . . . . . . 41-54 Nero . . . . . . . . . 54-68 Galba . . . . . . . . 68-69 Otho . . . . . . . . . 69 Vitellius . . . . . . . 69 Vespasian . . . . . . . 69-79 Titus . . . . . . . . 79-81 Domitian . . . . . . . 81-96 Nerva . . . . . . . . 96-98 Trajan . . . . . . . . 98-117 Hadrian . . . . . . . 117-138 Antoninus Pius . . . . . 138-161 Marcus Aurelius . . . . 161-180 Verus associated with Aurelius 161-169 The first eleven, in connection with Julius Cæsar, are called the Twelve Cæsars. The last five (excluding Verus) are known as the Five Good Emperors. CHAPTER XXX. DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE WEST; BEGINNING OF THE GREAT GERMAN MIGRATION. (A.D. 180-476.) REIGN OF COMMODUS (A.D. 180-192).--Under the wise and able administration of "the five good emperors"--Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the two Antonines--the Roman empire reached its culmination in power and prosperity; and now, under the enfeebling influences of vice and corruption within, and the heavy blows of the barbarians without, it begins to decline rapidly to its fall. [Illustration: COMMODUS (as Hercules).] Commodus, son of Marcus Aurelius, and the last of the Antonines, was a most unworthy successor of his illustrious father. For three years, however, surrounded by the able generals and wise counsellors that the prudent administration of the preceding emperors had drawn to the head of affairs, Commodus ruled with fairness and lenity, when an unsuccessful conspiracy against his life seemed suddenly to kindle all the slumbering passions of a Nero. He secured the favor of the rabble with the shows of the amphitheatre, and purchased the support of the prætorians with bribes and flatteries. Thus he was enabled for ten years to retain the throne, while perpetrating all manner of cruelties, and staining the imperial purple with the most detestable debaucheries and crimes. Commodus had a passion for gladiatorial combats, and attired in a lion's skin, and armed with the club of Hercules, he valiantly set upon and slew antagonists arrayed to represent mythological monsters, and armed with great sponges for rocks. The Senate, so obsequiously servile had that body become, conferred upon him the title of the Roman Hercules, and also voted him the additional surnames of Pius and Felix, and even proposed to change the name of Rome and call it Colonia Commodiana. The empire was finally relieved of the insane tyrant by some members of the royal household, who anticipated his designs against themselves by putting him to death. "THE BARRACK EMPERORS."--For nearly a century after the death of Commodus (from A.D. 192 to 284), the emperors were elected by the army, and hence the rulers for this period have been called "the Barrack Emperors." The character of the period is revealed by the fact that of the twenty-five emperors who mounted the throne during this time all except four came to their deaths by violence. "Civil war, pestilence, bankruptcy, were all brooding over the empire. The soldiers had forgotten how to fight, the rulers how to govern." On every side the barbarians were breaking into the empire to rob, to murder, and to burn. THE PUBLIC SALE OF THE EMPIRE (A.D. 193).--The beginning of these troublous times was marked by a shameful proceeding on the part of the prætorians. Upon the death of Commodus, Pertinax, a distinguished senator, was placed on the throne; but his efforts to enforce discipline among the prætorians aroused their anger, and he was slain by them after a short reign of only three months. These soldiers then gave out notice that they would sell the empire to the highest bidder. It was, accordingly, set up for sale at the prætorian camp, and struck off to Didius Julianus, a wealthy senator, who gave $1000 to each of the 12,000 soldiers at this time composing the guard. So the price of the empire was about $12,000,000. But these turbulent and insolent soldiers at the capital of the empire were not to have things entirely their own way. As soon as the news of the disgraceful transaction reached the legions on the frontiers, they rose as a single man in indignant revolt. Each of the three armies that held the Euphrates, the Rhine, and the Danube, proclaimed its favorite commander emperor. The leader of the Danubian troops was Septimius Severus, a man of great energy and force of character. He knew that there were other competitors for the throne, and that the prize would be his who first seized it. Instantly he set his veterans in motion and was soon at Rome. The prætorians were no match for the trained legionaries of the frontiers, and did not even attempt to defend their emperor, who was taken prisoner and put to death after a reign of sixty-five days. REIGN OF SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS (A.D. 193-211).--One of the first acts of Severus was to organize a new body-guard of 50,000 legionaries, to take the place of the unworthy prætorians, whom, as a punishment for the insult they had offered to the Roman state, he disbanded, and banished from the capital, and forbade to approach within a hundred miles of its walls. He next crushed his two rival competitors, and was then undisputed master of the empire. He put to death forty senators for having favored his late rivals, and completely destroyed the power of their body. Committing to the prefect of the new prætorian guard the management of affairs at the capital, Severus passed the greater part of his long and prosperous reign upon the frontiers. At one time he was chastising the Parthians beyond the Euphrates, and at another, pushing back the Caledonian tribes from the Hadrian wall in the opposite corner of his dominions. Finally, in Britain, in his camp at York, death overtook him. REIGN OF CARACALLA (A.D. 211-217).--Severus conferred the empire upon his two sons, Caracalla and Geta. Caracalla murdered his brother, and then ordered Papinian, the celebrated jurist, to make a public argument in vindication of the fratricide. When that great lawyer refused, saying that "it was easier to commit such a crime than to justify it," he put him to death. Thousands fell victims to his senseless rage. Driven by remorse and fear, he fled from the capital, and wandered about the most distant provinces. At Alexandria, on account of some uncomplimentary remarks by the citizens upon his appearance, he ordered a general massacre. Finally, after a reign of six years, the monster was slain in a remote corner of Syria. [Illustration: CARACALLA.] Caracalla's sole political act of real importance was the bestowal of citizenship upon all the free inhabitants of the empire; and this he did, not to give them a just privilege, but that he might collect from them certain special taxes which only Roman citizens had to pay. Before the reign of Caracalla it was only particular classes of subjects, or the inhabitants of some particular city or province, that, as a mark of special favor, had, from time to time, been admitted to the rights of citizenship (see p. 280). By this wholesale act of Caracalla, the entire population of the empire was made Roman, at least in name and nominal privilege. "The city had become the world, or, viewed from the other side, the world had become the city" (Merivale). REIGN OF ALEXANDER SEVERUS (A.D. 222-235).--Severus restored the virtues of the Age of the Antonines. His administration was pure and energetic; but he strove in vain to resist the corrupt and downward tendencies of the times. He was assassinated, after a reign of fourteen years, by his seditious soldiers, who were angered by his efforts to reduce them to discipline. They invested with the imperial purple an obscure officer named Maximin, a Thracian peasant, whose sole recommendation for this dignity was his gigantic stature and his great strength of limbs. Rome had now sunk to the lowest possible degradation. We may pass rapidly over the next fifty years of the empire. [Illustration: TRIUMPH OF SAPOR OVER VALERIAN.] THE THIRTY TYRANTS (A.D. 251-268).--Maximin was followed swiftly by Gordian, Philip, and Decius, and then came what is called the "Age of the Thirty Tyrants." The imperial sceptre being held by weak emperors, there sprang up in every part of the empire, competitors for the throne--several rivals frequently appearing in the field at the same time. The barbarians pressed upon all the frontiers, and thrust themselves into all the provinces. The empire seemed on the point of falling to pieces. [Footnote: It was during this period that the Emperor Valerian (A.D. 253-260), in a battle with the Persians before Edessa, in Mesopotamia, was defeated and taken prisoner by Sapor, the Persian king. A large rock tablet (see cut above), still to be seen near the Persian town of Shiraz, is believed to commemorate the triumph of Sapor over the unfortunate emperor.] But a fortunate succession of five good emperors--Claudius, Aurelian, Tacitus, Probus, and Carus (A.D. 268-284)--restored for a time the ancient boundaries, and again forced together into some sort of union the fragments of the shattered state. THE FALL OF PALMYRA.--The most noted of the usurpers of authority in the provinces during the period of anarchy of which we have spoken, was Odenatus, Prince of Palmyra, a city occupying an oasis in the midst of the Syrian Desert, midway between the Mediterranean and the Euphrates. In gratitude for the aid he had rendered the Romans against the Parthians, the Senate had bestowed upon him titles and honors. When the empire began to show signs of weakness and approaching dissolution, Odenatus conceived the ambitious project of erecting upon its ruins in the East a great Palmyrian kingdom. Upon his death, his wife, Zenobia, succeeded to his authority and to his ambitions. This famous princess claimed descent from Cleopatra, and it is certain that in the charms of personal beauty she was the rival of the Egyptian queen. Boldly assuming the title of "Queen of the East," she bade defiance to the emperor of Rome. Aurelian marched against her, defeated her armies, and carried her a captive to Italy (273 A.D.). After having been led in golden chains in the triumphal procession of Aurelian, the queen was given a beautiful villa in the vicinity of Tibur, where, surrounded by her children, she passed the remainder of her checkered life. The ruins of Palmyra are among the most interesting remains of Græco-Roman civilization in the East. REIGN OF DIOCLETIAN (A.D. 284-305).--The reign of Diocletian marks an important era in Roman history. Up to this time the imperial government had been more or less carefully concealed under the forms and names of the old republic. The government now became an unveiled and absolute monarchy. Diocletian's reforms, though radical, were salutary, and infused such fresh vitality into the frame of the dying state as to give it a new lease of life for another term of nearly two hundred years. He determined to divide the numerous and increasing cares of the distracted empire, so that it might be ruled from two centres--one in the East and the other in the West. In pursuance of this plan, he chose as a colleague a companion soldier, Maximian, upon whom he conferred the title of Augustus. After a few years, finding the cares of the co-sovereignty still too heavy, each sovereign associated with himself an assistant, who took the title of Cæsar, and was considered the son and heir of the emperor. There were thus two Augusti and two Cæsars. Milan, in Italy, became the capital and residence of Maximian; while Nicomedia, in Asia Minor, became the seat of the court of Diocletian. The Augusti took charge of the countries near their respective capitals, while the younger and more active Cæsars were assigned the government of the more distant and turbulent provinces. The vigorous administration of the government in every quarter of the empire was thus secured. The authority of each of the rulers was supreme within the territory allotted him; but all acknowledged Diocletian as "the father and head of the state." [Illustration: DIOCLETIAN.] The most serious drawback to the system of government thus instituted was the heavy expense incident to the maintenance of four courts with their trains of officers and dependants. The taxes became unendurable, husbandry ceased, and large masses of the population were reduced almost to starvation. While the changes made in the government have rendered the name of Diocletian famous in the political history of the Roman state, the cruel persecutions which he ordered against the Christians have made his name in an equal degree infamous in ecclesiastical annals; for it was during this reign that the tenth--the last and severest--of the persecutions of the Church took place. By an imperial decree the churches of the Christians were ordered to be torn down, and they themselves were outlawed. For ten years the fugitives were hunted in forest and cave. The victims were burned, were cast to the wild beasts in the amphitheatre--were put to death by every torture and in every mode that ingenious cruelty could devise. But nothing could shake the constancy of their faith. They courted the death that secured them, as they firmly believed, immediate entrance upon an existence of unending happiness. The exhibition of devotion and constancy shown by the martyrs won multitudes to the persecuted faith. It was during this and the various other persecutions that vexed the Church in the second and third centuries that the Christians sought refuge in the Catacombs, those vast subterranean galleries and chambers under the city of Rome. Here the Christians lived and buried their dead, and on the walls of the chambers sketched rude symbols of their hope and faith. It was in the darkness of these subterranean abodes that Christian art had its beginnings. [Illustration: CHRIST AS THE GOOD SHEPHERD. (From the Catacombs.)] After a prosperous reign of twenty years, becoming weary of the cares of state, Diocletian abdicated the throne, and forced or induced his colleague Maximian also to lay down his authority on the same day. Galerius and Constantius were, by this act, advanced to the purple and made Augusti; and two new associates were appointed as Cæsars. Diocletian, having enjoyed the extreme satisfaction of seeing the imperial authority quietly and successfully transmitted by his system, without the dictation of the insolent prætorians or the interference of the turbulent legionaries, now retired to his country-seat at Salona, on the eastern shore of the Adriatic, and there devoted himself to rural pursuits. It is related that, when Maximian wrote him urging him to endeavor, with him, to regain the power they had laid aside, he replied: "Were you but to come to Salona and see the vegetables which I raise in my garden with my own hands, you would no longer talk to me of empire." REIGN OF CONSTANTINE THE GREAT (A.D. 306-337); THE EMPIRE BECOMES CHRISTIAN.--Galerius and Constantius had reigned together only one year, when the latter died at York, in Britain; and his soldiers, disregarding the rule of succession as determined by the system of Diocletian, proclaimed his son Constantine emperor. Six competitors for the throne arose in different quarters. For eighteen years Constantine fought to gain supremacy. At the end of that time every rival was crushed, and he was the sole ruler of the Roman world. Constantine was the first Christian emperor. He was converted to the new religion--such is the story--by seeing in the heavens, during one of his campaigns against his rivals, a luminous cross with this inscription: "With this sign you will conquer." He made the cross the royal standard; and the Roman legions now for the first time marched beneath the emblem of Christianity. By a decree issued from Milan A.D. 313, Christianity was made in effect the state religion; but all other forms of worship were tolerated. With the view of harmonizing the different sects that had sprung up among the Christians, and to settle the controversy between the Arians and the Athanasians respecting the nature of Christ,--the former denied his equality with God the Father,--Constantine called the first OEcumenical, or General Council of the Church, at Nicæa, a town of Asia Minor, A.D. 325. Arianism was denounced, and a formula of Christian faith adopted, which is known as the Nicene Creed. After the recognition of Christianity, the most important act of Constantine was the selection of Byzantium, on the Bosporus, as the new capital of the empire. One reason which led the emperor to choose this site in preference to Rome was the ungracious conduct towards him of the inhabitants of the latter city, because he had abandoned the worship of the old national deities. But there were political reasons for such a change. Through the Eastern conquests of Rome, the centre of the population, wealth, and culture of the empire had shifted eastward. The West--Gaul, Britain, Spain--was rude and barbarous; the East--Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor--was the abode of ancient civilizations from which Rome was proud to trace her origin. Constantine was not the first to entertain the idea of seeking in the East a new centre for the Roman world. The Italians were inflamed against the first Cæsar by the report that he intended to restore Ilium, the cradle of the Roman race, and make that the capital of the empire. Constantine organized at Byzantium a new Senate, while that at Rome sank to the obscure position of the council of a provincial municipality. Multitudes eagerly thronged to the new capital, and almost in a night the little colony grew into an imperial city. In honor of the emperor its name was changed to Constantinople, the "City of Constantine." Hereafter the eyes of the world were directed towards the Bosporus instead of the Tiber. To aid in the administration of the government, Constantine laid out the empire into four great divisions, called prefectures (see map), which were subdivided into thirteen dioceses, and these again into one hundred and sixteen provinces. The character of Constantine has been greatly eulogized by Christian writers, while pagan historians very naturally painted it in dark colors. It is probable that he embraced Christianity, not entirely from conviction, but partly from political motives. As the historian Hodgkin puts it, "He was half convinced of the truth of Christianity, and wholly convinced of the policy of embracing it." In any event, Constantine's religion was a strange mixture of the old and the new faith: on his medals the Christian cross is held by the pagan deity, Victory. In his domestic relations he was tyrannical and cruel. He died in the thirty-first year of his reign, leaving his kingdom to his three sons, Constans, Constantius, and Constantine. REIGN OF JULIAN THE APOSTATE (A.D. 361-363).--The parcelling out of the empire by Constantine among his sons led to strife and wars, which, at the end of sixteen years, left Constantius master of the whole. He reigned as sole emperor for about eight years, engaged in ceaseless warfare with German tribes in the West and with the Persians [Footnote: The great Parthian empire, which had been such a formidable antagonist of Rome, was, after an existence of five centuries, overthrown (A.D. 226) by a revolt of the Persians, and the New Persian, or Sassanian monarchy established. This empire lasted till the country was overrun by the Saracens in the seventh century A.D.] in the East. Constantius was followed by his cousin Julian, who was killed while in pursuit of the troops of Sapor, king of the Persians (A.D. 363). Julian is called the Apostate because he abandoned Christianity and labored to restore the pagan faith. In his persecution of the Christians, however, he could not resort to the old means--"the sword, the fire, the lions;" for, under the softening influences of the very faith he sought to extirpate, the Roman world had already learned a gentleness and humanity that rendered impossible the renewal of the Neronian and Diocletian persecutions. Julian's weapons were sophistry and ridicule, in the use of which he was a master. To degrade the Christians, and place them at a disadvantage in controversy, he excluded them from the schools of logic and rhetoric. Furthermore, to cast discredit upon the predictions of the Scriptures, Julian determined to rebuild the Temple at Jerusalem, which the Christians contended could not be restored because of the prophecies against it. He actually began excavations, but his workmen were driven in great panic from the spot by terrific explosions and bursts of flame. The Christians regarded the occurrence as miraculous; and Julian himself, it is certain, was so dismayed by it that he desisted from the undertaking. [Footnote: The explosions which so terrified the workmen of Julian are supposed to have been caused by accumulations of gases--similar to those that so frequently occasion accidents in mines--in the subterranean chambers of the Temple foundations.] It was in vain that the apostate emperor labored to uproot the new faith; for the purity of its teachings, the universal and eternal character of its moral precepts, had given it a name to live. Equally in vain were his efforts to restore the worship of the old Grecian and Roman divinities. Polytheism was a transitional form of religious belief which the world had now outgrown: Great Pan was dead. The disabilities under which Julian had placed the Christians were removed by his successor Jovian (A.D. 363-4), and the Christian worship was re- established. [Illustration: GERMANS CROSSING THE RHINE. (Drawing by Alphonse de Neuville.)] VALENTINIAN AND VALENS.--Upon the death of Jovian, Valentinian, the commander of the imperial guard, was elected emperor by a council of the generals of the army and the ministers of the court. He appointed his brother Valens as his associate in office, and assigned to him the Eastern provinces, while reserving for himself the Western. He set up his own court at Milan, while his brother established his residence at Constantinople. THE MOVEMENTS OF THE BARBARIANS.--The reigns of Valentinian and Valens were signalized by threatening movements of the barbarian tribes, that now, almost at the same moment, began to press with redoubled energy against all the barriers of the empire. The Alemanni (Germans) crossed the Rhine--sometimes swarming over the river on the winter's ice--and, before pursuit could be made, escaped with their booty into the depths of the German forests. The Saxons, pirates of the northern seas, who issued from the mouth of the Elbe, ravaged the coasts of Gaul and Britain, even pushing their light skiffs far up the rivers and creeks of those countries, and carrying spoils from the inland cities. In Britain, the Picts broke through the Wall of Antoninus, and wrested almost the entire island from the hands of the Romans. In Africa, the Moorish and other tribes, issuing from the ravines of the Atlas Mountains and swarming from the deserts of the south, threatened to obliterate the last trace of Roman civilization occupying the narrow belt of fertile territory skirting the sea. The barbarian tide of invasion seemed thus on the point of overwhelming the empire in the West; but for twelve years Valentinian defended with signal ability and energy, not only his own territories, but aided with arms and counsel his weaker brother Valens in the defence of his. Upon the death of Valentinian, his son Gratian succeeded to his authority (A.D. 375). THE GOTHS CROSS THE DANUBE.--The year following the death of Valentinian, an event of the greatest importance occurred in the East. The Visigoths (Western Goths) dwelling north of the Lower Danube, who had often in hostile bands crossed that river to war against the Roman emperors, now appeared as suppliants in vast multitudes upon its banks. They said that a terrible race, whom they were powerless to withstand, had invaded their territories, and spared neither their homes nor their lives. They begged permission of the Romans to cross the river and settle in Thrace, and promised, should this request be granted, ever to remain the grateful and firm allies of the Roman state. Valens consented to grant their petition on condition that they should surrender their arms, give up their children as hostages, and all be baptized in the Christian faith. Their terror and despair led them to assent to these conditions. So the entire nation, numbering one million souls,--counting men, women, and children,--were allowed to cross the river. Several days and nights were consumed in the transport of the vast multitudes. The writers of the times liken the passage to that of the Hellespont by the hosts of Xerxes. The enemy that had so terrified the Goths were the Huns, a monstrous race of fierce nomadic horsemen, that two centuries and more before the Christian era were roving the deserts north of the Great Wall of China (see p. 13). Migrating from that region, they moved slowly to the west, across the great plains of Central Asia, and, after wandering several centuries, appeared in Europe. They belonged to a different race (the Turanian) from all the other European tribes with which we have been so far concerned. Their features were hideous, their noses being flattened, and their cheeks gashed, to render their appearance more frightful, as well as to prevent the growth of a beard. Even the barbarous Goths called them "barbarians." Scarcely had the fugitive Visigoths been received within the limits of the empire before a large company of their kinsmen, the Ostrogoths (Eastern Goths), also driven from their homes by the same terrible Huns, crowded to the banks of the Danube, and pleaded that they might be allowed, as their countrymen had been, to place the river between themselves and their dreaded enemies. But Valens, becoming alarmed at the presence of so many barbarians within his dominions, refused their request; whereupon they, dreading the fierce and implacable foe behind more than the wrath of the Roman emperor in front, crossed the river with arms in their hands. At this moment the Visigoths, rising in revolt, joined their kinsmen that were just now forcing the passage of the Danube, and began to ravage the Danubian provinces. Valens despatched swift messengers to Gratian in the West, asking for assistance against the foe he had so imprudently admitted within the limits of the empire. THEODOSIUS THE GREAT (A.D. 379-395).--Gratian was hurrying to the help of his colleague Valens, when news of his defeat and death at the hands of the barbarians was brought to him, and he at once appointed as his associate Theodosius, known afterwards as the Great, and entrusted him with the government of the Eastern provinces. Theodosius, by wise and vigorous measures, quickly reduced the Goths to submission. Vast multitudes of the Visigoths were settled upon the waste lands of Thrace, while the Ostrogoths were scattered in various colonies in different regions of Asia Minor. The Goths became allies of the Emperor of the East, and more than 40,000 of these warlike barbarians, who were destined to be the subverters of the empire, were enlisted in the imperial legions. While Theodosius was thus composing the East, the West, through the jealous rivalries of different competitors for the control of the government, had fallen into great disorder. Theodosius twice interposed to right affairs, and then took the government into his own hands. For four months he ruled as sole monarch of the empire. FINAL DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE (A.D. 395).--The Roman world was now united for the last time under a single master. Just before his death, Theodosius divided the empire between his two sons, Arcadius and Honorius, assigning the former, who was only eighteen years of age, the government of the East, and giving the latter, a mere child of eleven, the sovereignty of the West. This was the final partition of the Roman empire--the issue of that growing tendency, which we have observed in its immoderately extended dominions, to break apart. The separate histories of the East and the West now begin. THE EASTERN EMPIRE.--The story of the fortunes of the Empire in the East need not detain us long at this point of our history. This monarchy lasted over a thousand years--from the accession to power of Arcadius, A.D. 395, to the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, A.D. 1453. It will thus be seen that the greater part of its history belongs to the mediæval period. Up to the time of the overthrow of the Empire in the West, the sovereigns of the East were engaged almost incessantly in suppressing uprisings of their Gothic allies or mercenaries, or in repelling invasions of the Huns and the Vandals. Frequently during this period, in order to save their own territories, the Eastern emperors, by dishonorable inducements, persuaded the barbarians to direct their ravaging expeditions against the provinces of the West. LAST DAYS OF THE EMPIRE IN THE WEST. FIRST INVASION OF ITALY BY ALARIC.--Only a few years had elapsed after the death of the great Theodosius, before the barbarians were trooping in vast hordes through all the regions of the West. First, from Thrace and Moesia came the Visigoths, led by the great Alaric. They poured through the Pass of Thermopylæ, and devastated almost the entire peninsula of Greece; but, being driven from that country by Stilicho, the renowned Vandal general of Honorius, they crossed the Julian Alps, and spread terror throughout all Italy. Stilicho followed the barbarians cautiously, and, attacking them at a favorable moment, inflicted a terrible and double defeat upon them at Pollentia and Verona (A.D. 402-403). The captured camp was found filled with the spoils of Thebes, Corinth, and Sparta. Gathering the remnants of his shattered army, Alaric forced his way with difficulty through the defiles of the Alps, and escaped. LAST TRIUMPH AT ROME (A.D. 404).--A terrible danger had been averted. All Italy burst forth in expressions of gratitude and joy. The days of the Cimbri and Teutones were recalled, and the name of Stilicho was pronounced with that of Marius. A magnificent triumph at Rome celebrated the victory and the deliverance. It was the last triumph that Rome ever saw. Three hundred times--such is asserted to be the number--the Imperial City had witnessed the triumphal procession of her victorious generals, celebrating conquests in all quarters of the world. LAST GLADIATORIAL COMBAT OF THE AMPHITHEATRE.--The same year that marks the last military triumph at Rome also signalizes the last gladiatorial combat in the Roman amphitheatre. It is to Christianity that the credit of the suppression of the inhuman exhibitions of the amphitheatre is entirely, or almost entirely, due. The pagan philosophers usually regarded them with indifference, often with favor. Thus Pliny commends a friend for giving a gladiatorial entertainment at the funeral of his wife. And when the pagan moralists did condemn the spectacles, it was rather for other reasons than that they regarded them as inhuman and absolutely contrary to the rules of ethics. They were defended on the ground that they fostered a martial spirit among the people and inured the soldier to the sights of the battlefield. Hence gladiatorial games were actually exhibited to the legions before they set out on their campaigns. Indeed, all classes appear to have viewed the matter in much the same light, and with exactly the same absence of moral disapprobation, that we ourselves regard the slaughter of animals for food. But the Christian fathers denounced the combats as absolutely immoral, and labored in every possible way to create a public opinion against them. The members of their own body who attended the spectacles were excommunicated. At length, in A.D. 325, the first imperial edict against them was issued by Constantine. This decree appears to have been very little regarded; nevertheless, from this time forward the exhibitions were under something of a ban, until their final abolition was brought about by an incident of the games that closed the triumph of Honorius. In the midst of the exhibition a Christian monk, named Telemachus, descending into the arena, rushed between the combatants, but was instantly killed by a shower of missiles thrown by the people, who were angered by this interruption of their sports. But the people soon repented of their act; and Honorius himself, who was present, was moved by the scene. Christianity had awakened the conscience and touched the heart of Rome. The martyrdom of the monk led to an imperial edict "which abolished forever the human sacrifices of the amphitheatre." INVASION OF ITALY BY VARIOUS GERMAN TRIBES.--While Italy was celebrating her triumph over the Goths, another and more formidable invasion was preparing in the North. The tribes beyond the Rhine--the Vandals, the Suevi, the Burgundians, and other peoples--driven onward by some unknown cause, poured in impetuous streams from the forests and morasses of Germany, and bursting the barriers of the Alps, overspread the devoted plains of Italy. The alarm caused by them among the Italians was even greater than that inspired by the Gothic invasion; for Alaric was a Christian, while Radagaisus, the leader of the new hordes, was a superstitious savage, who paid worship to gods that required the bloody sacrifice of captive enemies. By such efforts as Rome put forth in the younger and more vigorous days of the republic, when Hannibal was at her gates, an army was now equipped and placed under the command of Stilicho. Meanwhile the barbarians had advanced as far as Florence, and were now besieging that place. Stilicho here surrounded the vast host--variously estimated from 200,000 to 400,000 men--and starved them into a surrender. Their chief, Radagaisus, was put to death, and great multitudes of the barbarians that the sword and famine had spared were sold as slaves (A.D. 406). THE RANSOM OF ROME (A.D. 409).--Shortly after the victory of Stilicho over the German barbarians, he came under the suspicion of the weak and jealous Honorius, and was executed. Thus fell the great general whose sword and counsel had twice saved Rome from the barbarians, and who might again have averted similar dangers that were now at hand. Listening to the rash counsels of his unworthy advisers, Honorius provoked to revolt the 30,000 Gothic mercenaries in the Roman legions by a massacre of their wives and children, who were held as hostages in the different cities of Italy. The Goths beyond the Alps joined with their kinsmen to avenge the perfidious act. Alaric again crossed the mountains, and pillaging the cities in his way, led his hosts to the very gates of Rome. Not since the time of the dread Hannibal (see p. 263)--more than six hundred years before--had Rome been insulted by the presence of a foreign foe beneath her walls. The barbarians laying siege to the city, famine soon forced the Romans to sue for terms of surrender. The ambassadors of the Senate, when they came before Alaric, began, in lofty language, to warn him not to render the Romans desperate by hard or dishonorable terms: their fury when driven to despair, they represented, was terrible, and their number enormous. "The thicker the grass, the easier to mow it," was Alaric's derisive reply. The barbarian chieftain at length named the ransom that he would accept, and spare the city. Small as it comparatively was, the Romans were able to raise it only by the most extraordinary measures. The images of the gods were stripped of their ornaments of gold and precious stones, and even the statues themselves were melted down. SACK OF ROME BY ALARIC (A.D. 410).--Upon retiring from Rome, Alaric established his camp in Etruria. Here he was joined by great numbers of fugitive slaves, and by fresh accessions of barbarians from beyond the Alps. The Gallic king now demanded for his followers lands of Honorius, but the emperor treated all the proposals of the barbarian with foolish insolence. Rome paid the penalty. Alaric turned upon the devoted city, determined upon its sack and plunder. The barbarians broke into the capital by night, "and the inhabitants were awakened by the tremendous sound of the Gothic trumpet." Precisely eight hundred years had passed since its sack by the Gauls. During that time the Imperial City had carried its victorious standards over three continents, and had gathered within the temples of its gods and the palaces of its nobles the plunder of the world. Now it was given over for a spoil to the fierce tribes from beyond the Danube. Alaric commanded his soldiers to respect the lives of the people, and to leave untouched the treasures of the Christian temples; but the wealth of the citizens he encouraged them to make their own. For six days and nights the rough barbarians trooped through the streets of the city on their mission of pillage. Their wagons were heaped with the costly furniture, the rich plate, and the silken garments stripped from the palaces of the wealthy patricians and the temples of the gods. Amidst the license of the sack, the barbarian instincts of the robbers broke loose from all restraint, and the city was everywhere wet with blood, while the nights were lighted with burning buildings. EFFECTS OF THE DISASTER UPON PAGANISM.--The overwhelming disaster that had befallen the Imperial City produced a profound impression upon both Pagans and Christians throughout the Roman world. The former asserted that these unutterable calamities had fallen upon the Roman state because of the abandonment by the people of the worship of the gods of their forefathers, under whose protection and favor Rome had become the mistress of the world. The Christians, on the other hand, saw in the fall of the Eternal City the fulfilment of the prophecies against the Babylon of the Apocalypse. The latter interpretation of the appalling calamity gained credit amidst the panic and despair of the times. The temples of the once popular deities were deserted by their worshippers, who had lost faith in gods that could neither save themselves nor protect their shrines from spoliation. "Henceforth," says Merivale, "the power of paganism was entirely broken, and the indications which occasionally meet us of its continued existence are rare and trifling. Christianity stepped into its deserted inheritance. The Christians occupied the temples, transforming them into churches." THE DEATH OF ALARIC.--After withdrawing his warriors from Rome, Alaric led them southward. As they moved slowly on, they piled still higher the wagons of their long trains with the rich spoils of the cities and villas of Campania and other districts of Southern Italy. In the villas of the Roman nobles the rough barbarians spread rare banquets from the stores of their well-filled cellars, and drank from jewelled cups the famed Falernian wine. Alaric led his soldiers to the extreme southern point of Italy, intending to cross the Straits of Messina into Sicily, and, after subduing that island, to carry his conquests into the provinces of Africa. His designs were frustrated by his death, which occurred A.D. 412. With religious care his followers secured the body of their hero against violation by his enemies. The little river Busentinus, in Northern Bruttium, was turned from its course with great labor, and in the bed of the stream was constructed a tomb, in which was placed the body of the king, with his jewels and trophies. The river was then restored to its old channel, and, that the exact spot might never be known, the prisoners who had been forced to do the work were all put to death. THE BARBARIANS SEIZE THE WESTERN PROVINCES.--We must now turn our eyes from Rome and Italy to observe the movement of events in the provinces. In his efforts to defend Italy, Stilicho had withdrawn the last legion from Britain, and had drained the camps and fortresses of Gaul. The Wall of Antoninus was left unmanned; the passages of the Rhine were left unguarded; and the agitated multitudes of barbarians beyond these defences were free to pour their innumerable hosts into all the fair provinces of the empire. Hordes of Suevi, Alani, Vandals, and Burgundians overspread all the plains and valleys of Gaul. The Vandals pushed on into the south of Spain, and there occupied a large tract of country, which, in its present name of Andalusia, preserves the memory of its barbarian settlers. From these regions they crossed the Straits of Gibraltar, overran the Roman provinces of Northern Africa, captured Carthage (A.D. 439), and made that city the seat of the dread empire of the Vandals. The Goths, with Italy pillaged, recrossed the Alps, and establishing their camps in the south of Gaul and the north of Spain, set up in those regions what is known as the Kingdom of the Visigoths. In Britain, upon the withdrawal of the Roman legions, the Picts breaking over the Wall of Antoninus, descended upon and pillaged the cities of the South. The half-Romanized and effeminate provincials--no match for their hardy kinsmen who had never bowed their necks to the yoke of Rome--were driven to despair by the ravages of their relentless enemies, and, in their helplessness, invited to their aid the Angles and Saxons from the shores of the North Sea. These people came in their rude boats, drove back the invaders, and, being pleased with the soil and climate of the island, took possession of the country for themselves, and became the ancestors of the English people. INVASION OF THE HUNS: BATTLE OF CHALONS.--The barbarians that were thus overrunning and parcelling out the inheritance of the dying empire were now, in turn, pressed upon and terrified by a foe more hideous and dreadful in their eyes than were they in the sight of the peoples among whom they had thrust themselves. These were the non-Aryan Huns, of whom we have already caught a glimpse as they drove the panic-stricken Goths across the Danube. At this time their leader was Attila, whom the affrighted inhabitants of Europe called the "Scourge of God." It was declared that the grass never grew again where once the hoof of Attila's horse had trod. Attila defeated the armies of the Eastern emperor, and exacted tribute from the court of Constantinople. Finally he turned westward, and, at the head of a host numbering, it is asserted, 700,000 warriors, crossed the Rhine into Gaul, purposing first to ravage that province, and then to traverse Italy with fire and sword, in order to destroy the last vestige of the Roman power. The Romans and their Gothic conquerors laid aside their animosities, and made common cause against the common enemy. The Visigoths were rallied by their king, Theodoric; the Italians, the Franks, the Burgundians, flocked to the standard of the Roman general Ætius. Attila drew up his mighty hosts upon the plain of Chalons, in the north of Gaul, and there awaited the onset of the Romans and their allies. The conflict was long and terrible. Theodoric was slain; but at last fortune turned against the barbarians. The loss of the Huns is variously estimated at from 100,000 to 300,000 warriors. Attila succeeded in escaping from the field, and retreated with his shattered hosts across the Rhine (A.D. 451). This great victory is placed among the significant events of history; for it decided that the Christian Germanic races, and not the pagan Scythic Huns, should inherit the dominions of the expiring Roman Empire, and control the destinies of Europe. THE DEATH OF ATTILA.--The year after his defeat at Chalons, Attila again crossed the Alps, and burned or plundered all the important cities of Northern Italy. The Veneti fled for safety to the morasses at the head of the Adriatic (A.D. 452). Upon the islets where they built their rude dwellings, there grew up in time the city of Venice, the "eldest daughter of the Roman Empire," the "Carthage of the Middle Ages." The conqueror threatened Rome; but Leo the Great, bishop of the capital, went with an embassy to the camp of Attila, and pleaded for the city. He recalled to the mind of Attila the fact that death had overtaken the impious Alaric soon after he had given the Imperial City to be sacked, and warned him not to call down upon himself the like judgment of heaven. To these admonitions of the Christian bishop was added the persuasion of a golden bribe from the Emperor Valentinian; and Attila was induced to spare Southern Italy, and to lead his warriors back beyond the Alps. Shortly after he had crossed the Danube, he died suddenly in his camp. His followers gradually withdrew from Europe into the wilds of their native Scythia, or were absorbed by the peoples they had conquered. SACK OF ROME BY THE VANDALS (A.D. 455).--Rome had been saved a visitation from the spoiler of the North, but a new destruction was about to burst upon it by way of the sea from the South. Africa sent out another enemy whose greed for plunder proved more fatal to Rome than the eternal hate of Hannibal. The kings of the Vandal Empire in Northern Africa had acquired as perfect a supremacy in the Western Mediterranean as Carthage ever enjoyed in the days of her commercial pride. Vandal corsairs swept the seas and harassed the coasts of Sicily and Italy, and even plundered the maritime towns of the Eastern provinces. In the year 455 a Vandal fleet, led by the dread Genseric, sailed up the Tiber. Panic seized the people; for the name of Vandal was pronounced with terror throughout the world. Again the great Leo, who had once before saved his flock from the fury of an Attila, went forth to intercede in the name of Christ for the Imperial City. Genseric granted to the pious bishop the lives of the citizens, but said that the plunder of the capital belonged to his warriors. For fourteen days and nights the city was given over to the ruthless barbarians. The ships of the Vandals, which almost hid with their number the waters of the Tiber, were piled, as had been the wagons of the Goths before them, with the rich and weighty spoils of the capital. Palaces were stripped of their ornaments and furniture, and the walls of the temples denuded of their statues and of the trophies of a hundred Roman victories. From the Capitoline sanctuary were borne off the golden candlestick and other sacred articles that Titus had stolen from the Temple at Jerusalem. The greed of the barbarians was sated at last, and they were ready to withdraw. The Vandal fleet sailed for Carthage, bearing, besides the plunder of the city, more than 30,000 of the inhabitants as slaves. [Footnote: The fleet was overtaken by a storm and suffered some damage, but the most precious of the relics it bore escaped harm. "The golden candlestick reached the African capital, was recovered a century later, and lodged in Constantinople by Justinian, and by him replaced, from superstitious motives, in Jerusalem. From that time its history is lost." --Merivale.] Carthage, through her own barbarian conquerors, was at last avenged upon her hated rival. The mournful presentiment of Scipio had fallen true (see p. 271). The cruel fate of Carthage might have been read again in the pillaged city that the Vandals left behind them. FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE WEST (A.D. 476).--Only the shadow of the Empire in the West now remained. All the provinces--Illyricum, Gaul, Britain, Spain, and Africa--were in the hands of the Goths, the Vandals, the Franks, the Burgundians, the Angles and Saxons, and various other intruding tribes. Italy, as well as Rome herself, had become again and again the spoil of the insatiable barbarians. The story of the twenty years following the sack of the capital by Genseric affords only a repetition of the events we have been narrating. During these years several puppet emperors were set up by the different leaders of the invading tribes. A final seditious movement placed upon the shadow-throne a child of six years, named Romulus Augustus. Chiefly because of the imperial farce he was forced to play, this child-emperor became known as Augustulus, "the little Augustus." He had reigned only a year, when Odoacer, the leader of a tribe of German mercenaries, dethroned him, and abolishing the title of emperor, took upon himself the government of Italy. The Roman Senate now sent an embassy to Constantinople, with the royal vestments and the insignia of the imperial office, to represent to the Emperor Zeno that the West was willing to give up its claims to an emperor of its own, and to request that the German chief, with the title of "Patrician," might rule Italy as his viceroy. This was granted; and Italy now became in effect a province of the Empire in the East (A.D. 476). The Roman Empire in the West had come to an end, after an existence from the founding of Rome of 1229 years. [Illustration: THE APPIAN WAY. (From a photograph).] ROMAN EMPERORS FROM COMMODUS TO ROMULUS AUGUSTUS. (A.D. 180-476.) A.D. Commodus . . . . . . . . . . 180-192 Pertinax . . . . . . . . . . 193 Didius Julianus . . . . . . . 193 Septimius Severus . . . . . . 193-211 / Caracalla . . . . . . . . . 211-217 \ Geta . . . . . . . . . . . 211-213 Macrinus . . . . . . . . . . 2l7-218 Elagabalus . . . . . . . . . 218-222 Alexander Severus . . . . . . 222-235 Maximin . . . . . . . . . . . 235-238 Gordian III . . . . . . . . . 238-244 Philip . . . . . . . . . . . 244-249 Decius . . . . . . . . . . . 249-251 Period of the Thirty Tyrants. 251-268 Claudius . . . . . . . . . . 268-270 Aurelian . . . . . . . . . . 270-275 Tacitus . . . . . . . . . . . 275-276 Probus . . . . . . . . . . . 276-282 Carus . . . . . . . . . . . . 282-283 / Carinus . . . . . . . . . . 283-284 \ Numerian . . . . . . . . . 283-284 / Diocletian . . . . . . . . 284-305 \ Maximian . . . . . . . . . 286-305 / Constantius I . . . . . . . 305-306 \ Galerius . . . . . . . . . 305-311 Constantine the Great . . . . 306-337 Reigns as sole ruler .. . . 323-337 Constantine II . . . . .. . . 337-340 Constans I . . . . . . .. . . 337-350 Constantius II . . . . .. . . 337-361 Reigns as sole ruler .. . . 350-361 Julian the Apostate . . . . . 361-363 Jovian . . . . . . . . . . . 363-364 / Valentinian I . . . . . . . 364-375 \ Valens (in the East). . . . 364-378 Gratian . . . . . . . . . . . 375-383 Maximus . . . . . . . . . . . 383-388 Valentinian II . . . . .. . . 375-392 Eugenius . . . . . . . .. . . 392-394 Theodosius the Great . .. . . 379-395 Reigns as sole emperor. . . 394-395 FINAL PARTITION OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. (A.D. 395.) EMPERORS IN THE EAST. (From A.D. 395 to Fall of Rome.) A.D. Arcadius . . . . . . . . . . 395-408 Theodosius II. . . . . . . . 408-450 Marcian . . . . . . . . . . 450-457 Leo I . . . . . . . . . . . 457-474 Zeno . . . . . . . . . . . . 474-491 EMPERORS IN THE WEST. A.D. Honorius . . . . . . . . . . 395-423 Valentinian III. . . . . . . 425-455 Maximus . . . . . . . . . . 455 Avitus . . . . . . . . . . . 455-456 Count Ricimer creates and deposes emperors . . . . . 456-472 Romulus Augustus . . . . . . 475-476 CHAPTER XXXI. ARCHITECTURE, LITERATURE, LAW, AND SOCIAL LIFE AMONG THE ROMANS. 1. ARCHITECTURE. GREEK ORIGIN OF ROMAN ARCHITECTURE: THE ARCH.--The architecture of the Romans was, in the main, an imitation of Greek models. But the Romans were not mere servile imitators. They not only modified the architectural forms they borrowed, but they gave their structures a distinct character by the prominent use of the arch, which the Greek and Oriental builders seldom employed, though they were acquainted with its properties. By means of it the Roman builders vaulted the roofs of the largest buildings, carried stupendous aqueducts across the deepest valleys, and spanned the broadest streams with bridges that have resisted all the assaults of time and flood to the present day. SACRED EDIFICES.--The temples of the Romans were in general so like those of the Greeks that we need not here take time and space to enter into a particular description of them. Mention, however, should be made of their circular vaulted temples, as this was a style of building almost exclusively Italian. The best representative of this style of sacred edifices is the Pantheon at Rome, which has come down to our own times in a state of wonderful preservation. This structure is about 140 feet in diameter. The great concrete dome which vaults the building, is one of the boldest pieces of masonry executed by the master-builders of the world. CIRCUSES, THEATRES, AND AMPHITHEATRES.--The circuses of the Romans were what we should call race-courses. There were several at Rome, the most celebrated being the Circus Maximus, which was first laid out in the time of the Tarquins, and afterwards enlarged as the population of the capital increased, until it was capable of holding two or three hundred thousand spectators. [Illustration: THE ROMAN FORUM IN 1885] The Romans borrowed the plan of their theatres from the Greeks; their amphitheatres, however, were original with them. The Flavian Amphitheatre, known as the Colosseum, has already come under our notice (see p. 316). The edifice was 574 feet in its greatest diameter, and was capable of seating eighty-seven thousand spectators. The ruins of this immense structure stand to-day as "the embodiment of the power and splendor of the Roman Empire." AQUEDUCTS.--The aqueducts of ancient Rome were among the most important of the utilitarian works of the Romans. The water-system of the capital was commenced by Appius Claudius (about 313 B.C.), who secured the building of an aqueduct which led water into the city from the Sabine hills. During the republic four aqueducts in all were completed; under the emperors the number was increased to fourteen. [Footnote: Several of these are still in use.] The longest of these was about fifty-five miles in length. The aqueducts usually ran beneath the surface, but when a depression was to be crossed, they were lifted on arches, which sometimes were over one hundred feet high. These lofty arches running in long broken lines over the plains beyond the walls of Rome, are the most striking feature of the Campagna at the present time. THERMÆ, OR BATHS.--The greatest demand upon the streams of water poured into Rome by the aqueducts was made by the Thermæ, or baths. Among the ancients Romans, bathing, regarded at first simply as a troublesome necessity, became in time a luxurious art. Under the republic, bathing- houses were erected in considerable numbers. But it was during the imperial period that those magnificent structures to which the name of Thermæ properly attaches, were erected. These edifices were among the most elaborate and expensive of the imperial works. They contained chambers for cold, hot, tepid, sudatory, and swimming baths; dressing-rooms and gymnasia; museums and libraries; covered colonnades for lounging and conversation, extensive grounds filled with statues and traversed by pleasant walks; and every other adjunct that could add to the sense of luxury and relaxation. Being intended to exhibit the liberality of their builders, they were thrown open to the public free of charge. MEMORIAL ARCHITECTURE.--Among the memorial structures of the Romans, their triumphal arches are especially characteristic. These were modelled after the city gates, being constructed with single and with triple archways. Two of the most noted monuments of this character, and the most interesting because of their historic connections, are the Arch of Titus (see p. 315) and the Arch of Constantine, both of which are still standing. The Arch of Constantine was intended to commemorate the victory of that emperor over his rival Maxentius, which event established Christianity as the imperial and favored religion of the empire. [Illustration: ARCH OF CONSTANTINE.] 2. LITERATURE, PHILOSOPHY, AND LAW. RELATION OF ROMAN TO GREEK LITERATURE: THE POETS OF THE REPUBLICAN ERA.-- Latin literature was almost wholly imitative or borrowed, being a reproduction of Greek models; still it performed a most important service for civilization: it was the medium for the dissemination throughout the world of the rich literary treasures of Greece. It was the dramatic productions of the Greeks which were first studied and copied at Rome. Livius Andronicus, Nævius, Ennius, Plautus, and Terence, all of whom wrote under the republic, are the most noted of the Roman dramatists. Most of their plays were simply adaptations or translations of Greek masterpieces. Lucilius (born 148 B.C.) was one of the greatest of Roman satirists. The later satirists of the corrupt imperial era were his imitators. Besides Lucilius, there appeared during the later republican era only two other poets of distinguished merit, Lucretius and Catullus. Lucretius (95-51 B.C.) was an evolutionist, and in his great poem, _On the Nature of Things_, we find anticipated many of the conclusions of modern scientists. POETS OF THE AUGUSTAN AGE.--We have in another place (see p. 307) spoken of the effects of the fall of the republic upon the development of Latin literature. Many, who if the republican institutions had continued would have been absorbed in the affairs of state, were led, by the change of government, to seek solace for their disappointed hopes, and employment for their enforced leisure, in the graceful labors of elegant composition. Four names have cast an unfading lustre over the period covered by the reign of Augustus, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and Livy. So distinguished have these writers rendered the age in which they lived, that any period in a people's literature marked by unusual literary taste and refinement is called, in allusion to the Roman era, an _Augustan Age_. Of the three poets, Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, a word has already been said; of Livy we shall find place to say something a little later, under the head of the Roman historians. SATIRE AND SATIRISTS.--Satire thrives best in the reeking soil and tainted atmosphere of an age of selfishness, immorality, and vice. Such an age was that which followed the Augustan era at Rome. The throne was held by such imperial monsters as Caligula, Nero, and Domitian. The profligacy of fashionable life at the capital and the various watering-places of the empire, and the degradation of the court gave venom and point to the shafts of those who were goaded by the spectacle into attacking the immoralities and vices which were silently yet rapidly sapping the foundations of both society and state. Hence arose a succession of writers whose mastery of sharp and stinging satire has caused their productions to become the models of all subsequent attempts in the same species of literature. Two names stand out in special prominence--Persius and Juvenal, who lived and wrote during the last half of the first and the beginning of the second century of our era. ORATORY AMONG THE ROMANS.--"Public oratory," as has been truly said, "is the child of political freedom, and cannot exist without it." We have seen this illustrated in the history of republican Athens. Equally well is the same truth exemplified by the records of the Roman state. All the great orators of Rome arose under the republic. Roman oratory was senatorial, popular, or judicial. These different styles of eloquence were represented by the grave and dignified debates of the Senate, the impassioned and often noisy and inelegant harangues of the Forum, and the learned pleadings or ingenious appeals of the courts. Among the orators of ancient Rome, Hortensius, (114-50 B.C.), an eloquent advocate, and Cicero (106-43 B.C.) are easily first. HISTORIANS.--Ancient Rome produced four writers of history whose works have won for them a permanent fame--Cæsar, Sallust, Livy, and Tacitus. Of Cæsar and his _Commentaries on the Gallic War_, we have learned in a previous chapter. His _Commentaries_ will always be mentioned with the _Anabasis_ of Xenophon, as a model of the narrative style of writing. Sallust (86-34 B.C.) was the contemporary and friend of Cæsar. The two works upon which his fame rests are the _Conspiracy of Catiline_ and the _Jugurthine War_. Livy (59 B.C.-A.D. 17) was one of the brightest ornaments of the Augustan age. Herodotus among the ancient, and Macaulay among the modern, writers of historical narrative, are the names with which his is most frequently compared. His greatest work is his _Annals_, a history of Rome from the earliest times to the year 9 B.C. Unfortunately, all save thirty-five of the books [Footnote: It should be borne in mind that a book in the ancient sense was simply a roll of manuscript or parchment, and contained nothing like the amount of matter held by an ordinary modern volume. Thus Cæsar's _Gallic Wars_, which makes a single volume of moderate size with us, made eight Roman books.]--the work filled one hundred and forty- two volumes--perished during the disturbed period that followed the overthrow of the empire. Many have been the laments over "the lost books of Livy." As a chronicle of actual events, Livy's history, particularly in its earlier parts, is very unreliable; however, it is invaluable as an account of what the Romans themselves believed respecting the origin of their race, the founding of their city, and the deeds and virtues of their forefathers. The most highly prized work of Tacitus is his _Germania_, a treatise on the manners and customs of the Germans. Tacitus dwells with delight upon the simple life of the uncivilized Germans, and sets their virtues in strong contrast with the immoralities of the refined and cultured Romans. ETHICS, SCIENCE, AND PHILOSOPHY.--Under this head may be grouped the names of Seneca, Pliny the Elder, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus. Seneca (about A.D. 1-65), moralist and philosopher, has already come to our notice as the tutor of Nero (see p. 312). He was a disbeliever in the popular religion of his countrymen, and entertained conceptions of God and his moral government not very different from the doctrines of Socrates. Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23-79) is almost the only Roman who won renown as a naturalist. The only work of his that has been spared to us is his _Natural History_, a sort of "Roman Encyclopædia," embracing thirty- seven books. [Illustration: SENECA.] Marcus Aurelius the emperor and Epictetus the slave hold prominent places among the ethical teachers of Rome. Of the emperor as a philosopher we have already spoken (see p. 321). Epictetus (b. about 60 A.D.) was for many years a slave at the capital; but, securing in some way his freedom, he became a teacher of philosophy. Epictetus and Aurelius were the last eminent representatives and expositors of the philosophy of Zeno. Christianity, giving a larger place to the affections than did Stoicism, was already fast winning the hearts of men. WRITERS OF THE EARLY LATIN CHURCH.--The Christian authors of the first three centuries, like the writers of the New Testament, employed the Greek, that being the language of learning and culture. As the Latin tongue, however, came into more general use throughout the extended provinces of the Roman empire, the Christian authors naturally began to use the same in the composition of their works. Hence, almost all the writings of the Fathers of the Church, produced during the last two centuries of the empire, were composed in Latin. Among the many names that adorn the Church literature of this period may be mentioned Saint Jerome and Saint Augustine,--the former celebrated for his translation of the Scriptures into Latin, [Footnote: The _Vulgate_, which is the version still used in the Roman Catholic Church.] and the latter for his "City of God." This was truly a wonderful work. It was written just when Rome was becoming the spoil of the barbarians, and was designed to answer the charge of the pagans that Christianity, turning the hearts of the people away from the worship of the ancient gods, was the cause of the calamities that were befalling the Roman state. ROMAN LAW AND LAW LITERATURE.--Although the Latin writers in all the departments of literary effort which we have so far reviewed did much valuable work, yet the Roman intellect in all these directions was under Greek guidance. Its work was largely imitative. But in another department it was different. We mean, of course, the field of legal and political science. Here the Romans ceased to be pupils, and became teachers. Nations, like men, have their mission. Rome's mission was to give laws to the world. In the year 527 A.D. Justinian became emperor of the Roman empire in the East. He almost immediately appointed a commission, headed by the great lawyer Tribonian, to collect and arrange in a systematic manner the immense mass of Roman laws, and the writings of the jurists. The undertaking was like that of the Decemvirs in connection with the Twelve Tables (see p. 236), only far greater. The result of the work of the commission was what is known as the _Corpus Juris Civilis_, or "Body of the Civil Law." This consisted of three parts: the _Code_, the _Pandects_ and the _Institutes_, [Footnote: A later work called the _Novels_ comprised the laws of Justinian subsequent to the completion of the _Code_.] The Code was a revised and compressed collection of all the laws, instructions to judicial officers, and opinions on legal subjects, promulgated by the different emperors since the time of Hadrian; the Pandects (all-containing) were a digest or abridgment of the writings, opinions, and decisions of the most eminent of the old Roman jurists and lawyers. The Institutes were a condensed edition of the Pandects, and were intended to form an elementary text-book for the use of students in the great law-schools of the empire. The Body of the Roman Law thus preserved and transmitted was the great contribution of the Latin intellect to civilization. It has exerted a profound influence upon all the law-systems of Europe. Thus does the once little Palatine city of the Tiber still rule the world. The religion of Judea, the arts of Greece, and the laws of Rome are three very real and potent elements in modern civilization. 3. SOCIAL LIFE. EDUCATION.--Roman children were subject in an extraordinary manner to their father (_paterfamilias_). They were regarded as his property, and their life and liberty were in general at his absolute disposal. This power he exercised by usually drowning at birth the deformed or sickly child. Even the married son remained legally subject to his father, who could banish him, sell him as a slave, or even put him to death. It should be said, however, that the right of putting to death was seldom exercised, and that in the time of the empire the law put some limitations upon it. The education of the Roman boy differed from that of the Greek youth in being more practical. The Laws of the Twelve Tables were committed to memory; and rhetoric and oratory were given special attention, as a mastery of the art of public speaking was an almost indispensable acquirement for the Roman citizen who aspired to take a prominent part in the affairs of state. After the conquest of Magna Græcia and of Greece, the Romans were brought into closer relations than had hitherto existed with Greek culture. The Roman youth were taught the language of Athens, often to the neglect, it appears, of their native tongue. Young men belonging to families of means, not unusually went to Greece, just as the graduates of our schools go to Europe, to finish their education. Many of the most prominent statesmen of Rome, as for instance Cicero and Julius Cæsar, received the advantages of this higher training in the schools of Greece. Somewhere between the age of fourteen and eighteen the boy exchanged his purple-hemmed toga, or gown, for one of white wool, which was in all places and at all times the significant badge of Roman citizenship. SOCIAL POSITION OF WOMEN.--Until after her marriage, the daughter of the family was kept in almost Oriental seclusion. Marriage gave her a certain freedom. She might now be present at the races of the circus and the various shows of the theatre and the arena, a privilege rarely accorded to her before marriage. In the early virtuous period of the Roman state, divorce was unusual, but in later and more degenerate times, it became very common. The husband had the right to divorce his wife for the slightest cause, or for no cause at all. In this disregard of the sanctity of the family relation, may doubtless be found one cause of the degeneracy and failure of the Roman stock. PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS.--The entertainments of the theatre, the games of the circus, and the combats of the amphitheatre were the three principal public amusements of the Romans. These entertainments in general increased in popularity as liberty declined, the great festive gatherings at the various places of amusement taking the place of the political assemblies of the republic. The public exhibitions under the empire were, in a certain sense, the compensation which the emperors offered the people for their surrender of the right of participation in public affairs,--and the people were content to accept the exchange. Tragedy was never held in high esteem at Rome: the people saw too much real tragedy in the exhibitions of the amphitheatre to care much for the make-believe tragedies of the stage. The entertainments of the theatres usually took the form of comedies, farces, and pantomimes. The last were particularly popular, both because the vast size of the theatres made it quite impossible for the actor to make his voice heard throughout the structure, and for the reason that the language of signs was the only language that could be readily understood by an audience made up of so many different nationalities as composed a Roman assemblage. More important and more popular than the entertainments of the theatre were the various games, especially the chariot races, of the circus. But surpassing in their terrible fascination all other public amusements were the animal-baitings and the gladiatorial combats of the arena. The beasts required for the baitings were secured in different parts of the world, and transported to Rome and the other cities of the empire at an enormous expense. The wildernesses of Northern Europe furnished bears and wolves; Africa contributed lions, crocodiles, and leopards; Asia elephants and tigers. These creatures were pitted against one another in every conceivable way. Often a promiscuous multitude would be turned loose in the arena at once. But even the terrific scene that then ensued, became at last too tame to stir the blood of the Roman populace. Hence a new species of show was introduced, and grew rapidly into favor with the spectators of the amphitheatre. This was the gladiatorial combat. THE GLADIATORIAL COMBATS.--Gladiatorial games seem to have had their origin in Etruria, whence they were brought to Rome. It was a custom among the early Etruscans to slay prisoners upon the warrior's grave, it being thought that the spirit of the dead delighted in the blood of such victims. In time the condemned prisoners were allowed to fight and kill one another, this being deemed more humane than their cold-blooded slaughter. Thus it happened that sentiments of humanity gave rise to an institution which, afterwards perverted, became the most inhuman of any that ever existed among a civilized people. The first gladiatorial spectacle at Rome was presented by two sons at the funeral of their father, in the year 264 B.C. This exhibition was arranged in one of the forums, as there were at that time no amphitheatres in existence. From this time the public taste for this species of entertainment grew rapidly, and by the beginning of the imperial period had mounted into a perfect passion. It was now no longer the manes of the dead, but the spirits of the living, that they were intended to appease. At first the combatants were slaves, captives, or condemned criminals; but at last knights, senators, and even women descended into the arena. Training-schools were established at Rome, Capua, Ravenna, and other cities. Free citizens often sold themselves to the keepers of these seminaries; and to them flocked desperate men of all classes, and ruined spendthrifts of the noblest patrician houses. Slaves and criminals were encouraged to become proficient in this art by the promise of freedom if they survived the combats beyond a certain number of years. [Illustration: GLADIATORS. (After an old Mosaic.)] Sometimes the gladiators fought in pairs; again great companies engaged at once in the deadly fray. They fought in chariots, on horseback, on foot-- in all the ways that soldiers were accustomed to fight in actual battle. The contestants were armed with lances, swords, daggers, tridents, and every manner of weapon. Some were provided with nets and lassos, with which they entangled their adversaries, and then slew them. The life of a wounded gladiator was in the hands of the audience. If in response to his appeal for mercy, which was made by outstretching the forefinger, the spectators reached out their hands with thumbs turned down, that indicated that his prayer had been heard and that the sword was to be sheathed; but if they extended their hands with thumbs turned up, that was the signal for the victor to complete his work upon his wounded foe. Sometimes the dying were aroused and forced on to the fight by burning with a hot iron. The dead bodies were dragged from the arena with hooks, like the carcasses of animals, and the pools of blood soaked up with dry sand. These shows increased to such an extent that they entirely overshadowed the entertainments of the circus and the theatre. Ambitious officials and commanders arranged such spectacles in order to curry favor with the masses; magistrates were expected to give them in connection with the public festivals; the heads of aspiring families exhibited them "in order to acquire social position"; wealthy citizens prepared them as an indispensable feature of a fashionable banquet; the children caught the spirit of their elders and imitated them in their plays. The demand for gladiators was met by the training-schools; the managers of these hired out bands of trained men, that travelled through the country like opera troupes among us, and gave exhibitions in private houses or in the provincial amphitheatres. The rivalries between ambitious leaders during the later years of the republic tended greatly to increase the number of gladiatorial shows, as liberality in arranging these spectacles was a sure passport to popular favor. It was reserved for the emperors, however, to exhibit them on a truly imperial scale. Titus, upon the dedication of the Flavian Amphitheatre, provided games, mostly gladiatorial combats, that lasted one hundred days. Trajan celebrated his victories with shows that continued still longer, in the progress of which 10,000 gladiators fought upon the arena, and more than that number of wild beasts were slain. (For the suppression of the gladiatorial games, see p. 339.) STATE DISTRIBUTION OF CORN.--The free distribution of corn at Rome has been characterized as the "leading fact of Roman life." It will be recalled that this pernicious practice had its beginnings in the legislation of Caius Gracchus (see p. 276). Just before the establishment of the empire, over 300,000 Roman citizens were recipients of this state bounty. In the time of the Antonines the number is asserted to have been even larger. The corn for this enormous distribution was derived in large part from a grain tribute exacted of the African and other corn-producing provinces. The evils that resulted from this misdirected state charity can hardly be overstated. Idleness and all its accompanying vices were fostered to such a degree that we probably shall not be wrong in enumerating the practice as one of the most prominent causes of the demoralization of society at Rome under the emperors. SLAVERY.--A still more demoralizing element in Roman life than that of the state largesses of corn, was the institution of slavery. The number of slaves in the Roman state under the later republic and the earlier empire was probably as great or even greater than the number of freemen. The love of ostentation led to the multiplication of offices in the households of the wealthy, and the employment of a special slave for every different kind of work. Thus there was the slave called the _sandalio_, whose sole duty it was to care for his master's sandals; and another, called the _nomenclator_, whose exclusive business it was to accompany his master when he went upon the street, and give him the names of such persons as he ought to recognize. The price of slaves varied from a few dollars to ten or twenty thousand dollars,--these last figures being of course exceptional. Greek slaves were the most valuable, as their lively intelligence rendered them serviceable in positions calling for special talent. The slave class was chiefly recruited, as in Greece, by war, and by the practice of kidnapping. Some of the outlying provinces in Asia and Africa were almost depopulated by the slave hunters. Delinquent tax payers were often sold as slaves, and frequently poor persons sold themselves into servitude. Slaves were treated better under the empire than under the later republic (see p. 273), a change to be attributed doubtless to the softening influence of the Stoical philosophy and of Christianity. The feeling entertained towards this unfortunate class in the later republican period is illustrated by Varro's classification of slaves as "vocal agricultural implements," and again by Cato the Elder's recommendation that old and worn-out slaves be sold, as a matter of economy. Sick and hopelessly infirm slaves were taken to an island in the Tiber and left there to die of starvation and exposure. In many cases, as a measure of precaution, the slaves were forced to work in chains, and to sleep in subterranean prisons. Their bitter hatred towards their masters, engendered by harsh treatment, is witnessed by the well-known proverb, "As many enemies as slaves," and by the servile revolts and wars of the republican period. But from the first century of the empire there is observable a growing sentiment of humanity towards the bondsman. Imperial edicts take away from the master the right to kill his slave, or to sell him to the trader in gladiators, or even to treat him with any undue severity. This marks the beginning of a slow reform which in the course of ten or twelve centuries resulted in the complete abolition of slavery in Christian Europe. [Illustration: SARCOPHAGUS OF CORNELIUS SCIPIO BARBATUS (Consul 298 B.C.).] PART II. MEDIÆVAL AND MODERN HISTORY. INTRODUCTION. DIVISIONS OF THE SUBJECT.--As we have already noted, the fourteen centuries since the fall of the Roman empire in the West (A.D. 476) are usually divided into two periods,--the _Middle Ages_, or the period lying between the fall of Rome and the discovery of America by Columbus in 1492, and the _Modern Age_, which extends from the latter event to the present time. The Middle Ages, again, naturally subdivide into two periods,--the _Dark Ages_, and the _Age of Revival_; while the Modern Age also falls into two divisions,--the _Era of the Protestant Reformation_, and the _Era of the Political Revolution_. CHIEF CHARACTERISTICS OF THE FOUR PERIODS.--The so-called _Dark Ages_ embrace the years intervening between the fall of Rome and the opening of the eleventh century. The period was one of _origins_,--of the beginnings of peoples and languages and institutions. During this time arose the Papacy and Feudalism, the two great institutions of the Mediæval Ages. The _Age of Revival_ begins with the opening of the eleventh century, and ends with the discovery of America by Columbus in 1492. During all this time civilization was making slow but sure advances. The last century of the period, especially, was marked by a great revival of classical learning (known as the _Renaissance_, or New Birth), by improvements, inventions, and discoveries, which greatly stirred men's minds, and awakened them as from a sleep. The Crusades, or Holy Wars, were the most remarkable undertakings of the age. The _Era of the Reformation_ embraces the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth. The period is characterized by the great religious movement known as the Reformation, and the tremendous struggle between Catholicism and Protestantism. Almost all the wars of the period were religious wars. The last great combat was the Thirty Years' War in Germany, which was closed by the celebrated Peace of Westphalia, in 1648. After this date the disputes and wars between parties and nations were political rather than religious in character. The _Era of the Political Revolution_ extends from the Peace of Westphalia to the present time. This age is especially marked by the great conflict between despotic and liberal principles of government, resulting in the triumph of democratic ideas. The central event of the period is the French Revolution. Having now made a general survey of the ground we are to traverse, we must return to our starting-point,--the fall of Rome. RELATION OF THE FALL OF ROME TO WORLD-HISTORY.--The calamity which in the fifth century befell the Roman empire in the West is sometimes represented as having destroyed the treasures of the Old World. It was not so. All that was really valuable in the accumulations of antiquity escaped harm, and became sooner or later the possession of the succeeding ages. The catastrophe simply prepared the way for the shifting of the scene of civilization from the south to the north of Europe, simply transferred at once political power, and gradually social and intellectual preeminence, from one branch of the Aryan family to another,--from the Græco-Italic to the Teutonic. The event was not an unrelieved calamity, because, fortunately, the floods that seemed to be sweeping so much away were not the mountain torrent, which covers fruitful fields with worthless drift, but the overflowing Nile with its rich deposits. Over all the regions covered by the barbarian inundation a new stratum of population was deposited, a new soil formed that was capable of nourishing a better civilization than any the world had yet seen. THE THREE ELEMENTS OF CIVILIZATION.--We must now notice what survived the catastrophe of the fifth century, what it was that Rome transmitted to the new rulers of the world, the Teutonic race. This renders necessary an analysis of the elements of civilization. Modern civilization is the result of the blending of three historic elements,--the _Classical_, the _Hebrew_, and the _Teutonic_. By the classical element in civilization is meant that whole body of arts, sciences, literatures, laws, manners, ideas, and social arrangements,-- everything, in a word, save Christianity, that Greece and Rome gave to mediæval and modern Europe. Taken together, these things constituted a valuable gift to the new northern race that was henceforth to represent civilization. By the Hebrew element in history is meant Christianity. This has been the most potent factor in modern civilization. It has so colored the whole life, and so moulded all the institutions of the European people that their history is very largely a story of the fortunes and influences of this religion, which, first going forth from Judea, was given to the younger world by the missionaries of Rome. By the Teutonic element in history is meant of course the Germanic race. The Teutons were poor in those things in which the Romans were rich. They had neither arts, nor sciences, nor philosophies, nor literatures. But they had something better than all these; they had personal worth. Three prominent traits of theirs we must especially notice; namely, their capacity for civilization, their love of personal freedom, and their reverence for womanhood. The Teutons fortunately belonged to a progressive family of peoples. As Kingsley puts it, they came of a royal race. They were Aryans. It was their boundless capacity for growth, for culture, for civilization, which saved the countries of the West from the sterility and barbarism reserved for those of the East that were destined to be taken possession of by the Turanian Turks. The Teutons loved personal freedom. They never called any man master, but followed their chosen leader as companions and equals. They could not even bear to have the houses of their villages set close together. And again we see the same independent spirit expressed in their assemblies of freemen, in which meetings, all matters of public interest were debated and decided. In this trait of the Teutonic disposition lay the germ of representative government and of Protestant, or Teutonic Christianity. A feeling of respect for woman characterized all the northern, or Teutonic peoples. Tacitus says of the Germans that they deemed something sacred to reside in woman's nature. This sentiment guarded the purity and sanctity of the home. In their high estimation of the sacredness of the family relation, the barbarians stood in marked contrast with the later Romans. Our own sacred word _home_, as well as all that it represents, comes from our Teutonic ancestors. CELTS, SLAVONIANS, AND OTHER PEOPLES.--Having noticed the Romans and Teutons, the two most prominent peoples that present themselves to us at the time of the downfall of Rome, if we now name the Celts, the Slavonians, the Persians, the Arabians, and the Turanian tribes of Asia, we shall have under view the chief actors in the drama of mediæval and modern history. At the commencement of the mediæval era the Celts were in front of the Teutons, clinging to the western edge of the European continent, and engaged in a bitter contest with these latter peoples, which, in the antagonism of England and Ireland, was destined to extend itself to our own day. The Slavonians were in the rear of the Teutonic tribes, pressing them on even as the Celts in front were struggling to resist their advance. These peoples, progressing but little beyond the pastoral state before the Modern Age, will play only an obscure part in the events of the mediæval era, but in the course of the modern period will assume a most commanding position among the European nations. The Persians were in their old seat beyond the Euphrates, maintaining there what is called the New Persian Empire, the kings of which, until the rise of the Saracens in the seventh century, were the most formidable rivals of the emperors of Constantinople. The Arabians were hidden in their deserts; but in the seventh century we shall see them, animated by a wonderful religious fanaticism, issue from their peninsula and begin a contest with the Christian nations of the East and the West which, in its varying phases, was destined to fill a large part of the mediæval period. The Tartar tribes were buried in Central Asia. They will appear late in the eleventh century, proselytes for the most part of Mohammedanism; and, as the religious ardor of the Semitic Arabians grows cool, we shall see the Crescent upheld by these zealous converts of another race, and finally, in the fifteenth century, placed by the Turks upon the dome of St. Sophia in Constantinople. As the Middle Ages draw to a close, the remote nations of Eastern Asia will gradually come within our circle of vision; and, as the Modern Age dawns, we shall catch a glimpse of new continents and strange races of men beyond the Atlantic. SECTION I.--MEDIÆVAL HISTORY. FIRST PERIOD.--THE DARK AGES. (FROM THE FALL OF ROME, A.D. 476, TO THE ELEVENTH CENTURY.) CHAPTER XXXII. THE TEUTONIC KINGDOMS. INTRODUCTORY.--In connection with the history of the break-up of the Roman empire in the West, we have already given some account of the migrations and settlements of the German tribes. In the present chapter we shall relate briefly the political fortunes, for the two centuries following the fall of Rome, of the principal kingdoms set up by the German chieftains in the different provinces of the old empire. KINGDOM OF THE OSTROGOTHS (A.D. 493-554).--Odoacer will be recalled as the barbarian chief who dethroned the last of the Western Roman emperors (see p. 348). His feeble government in Italy lasted only seventeen years, when it was brought to a close by the invasion of the Ostrogoths (Eastern Goths) under Theodoric, the greatest of their chiefs, who set up in Italy a new dominion, known as the Kingdom of the Ostrogoths. The reign of Theodoric covered thirty-three years--years of such quiet and prosperity as Italy had not known since the happy era of the Antonines. The king made good his promise that his reign should be such that "the only regret of the people should be that the Goths had not come at an earlier period." The kingdom established by the rare abilities of Theodoric lasted only twenty-seven years after his death, which occurred A.D. 527. Justinian, emperor of the East, taking advantage of that event, sent his generals, first Belisarius and afterwards Narses, to deliver Italy from the rule of the barbarians. The last of the Ostrogothic kings fell in battle, and Italy, with her fields ravaged and her cities in ruins, was reunited to the empire (A.D. 554). KINGDOM OF THE VISIGOTHS (A.D. 415-711).--The Visigoths (Western Goths) were already in possession of Spain and Southern Gaul at the time of the fall of Rome. Being driven south of the Pyrenees by Clovis, king of the Franks, they held possession of Spain until the beginning of the eighth century, when the Saracens crossed the Straits of Gibraltar, destroyed the kingdom of Roderick, the last of the Gothic kings, and established throughout the country the authority of the Koran (A.D. 711). The Visigothic empire when thus overturned had lasted nearly three hundred years. During this time the conquerors had mingled with the old Romanized inhabitants of Spain, so that in the veins of the Spaniard of to-day is blended the blood of Iberian, Celt, Roman, and Teuton, together with that of the last comers, the Moors. KINGDOM OF THE BURGUNDIANS (A.D. 443-534).--The Burgundians, who were near kinsmen of the Goths, built up a kingdom in Southeastern Gaul. A portion of this ancient domain still retains, from these German settlers, the name of "Burgundy." The Burgundians soon came in collision with the Franks on the north, and were reduced by the Frankish kings to a state of dependence. KINGDOM OF THE VANDALS (A.D. 429-533).--We have already spoken of the establishment in North Africa of the kingdom of the Vandals, and told how, under the lead of their king Genseric, they bore in triumph down the Tiber the heavy spoils of Rome. (see p. 346). Being Arian Christians, the Vandals persecuted with furious zeal the orthodox party, the followers of Athanasius. Moved by the entreaties of the African Catholics, the Emperor Justinian sent his general Belisarius to drive the barbarians from Africa, and to restore that province to the bosom of the true Catholic Church. The expedition was successful, and Carthage and the fruitful fields of Africa were restored to the empire, after having suffered the insolence of the barbarian conquerors for the space of one hundred years. The Vandals remaining in the country were gradually absorbed by the old Roman population, and after a few generations no certain trace of the barbarian invaders could be detected in the physical appearance, the language, or the customs of the inhabitants of the African coast. The Vandal nation had disappeared; the name alone remained. [Illustration: CLOVIS AND THE VASE OF SOISSONS (After a drawing by Alphonse de Neuville.) [Footnote: The story of the Vase of Soissons illustrates at once the customs of the Franks and the power and personal character of their leader Clovis. Upon the division at Soissons of some spoils, Clovis asked his followers to set aside a rule whereby they divided the booty by lot, and to let him have a certain beautiful vase. One of his followers objected, and broke the vase to pieces with his battle-axe. Clovis concealed his anger at the time, but some time afterwards, when reviewing his troops, he approached the man who had offended him, and chiding him for not keeping his arms bright, cleft his head with a battle-axe, at the same time exclaiming, "Thus didst thou to the vase of Soissons."]] THE FRANKS UNDER THE MEROVINGIANS (A.D. 482-752).--The Franks, who were destined to give a new name to Gaul and form the nucleus of the French nation, made their first settlement west of the Rhine about two hundred years before the fall of Rome. The name was the common designation of a number of Teutonic tribes that had formed a confederation while dwelling beyond the Rhine. The Salian Franks were the leading tribe of the league, and it was from the members of their most powerful family, who traced their descent from Merovæus, a legendary sea-king of the Franks, that leaders were chosen by the free vote of all the warriors. After the downfall of Rome, Clovis, then chief of the Franks, conceived the ambition of erecting a kingdom upon the ruins of the Roman power. He attacked Syagrius, the Roman governor of Gaul, and at Soissons gained a decisive victory over his forces (A.D. 486). Thus was destroyed forever in Gaul that Roman authority established among its barbarous tribes more than five centuries before by the conquests of Julius Cæsar. During his reign, Clovis extended his authority over the greater part of Gaul, reducing to the condition of tributaries the various Teutonic tribes that had taken possession of different portions of the country. About a century and a half of discord followed his energetic rule, by the end of which time the princes of the house of Merovæus had become so feeble and inefficient that they were contemptuously called "do-nothings," and an ambitious officer of the crown, who bore the title of Mayor of the Palace, pushed aside his imbecile master, and gave to the Frankish monarchy a new royal line,--the Carolingian (see p. 404). KINGDOM OF THE LOMBARDS (A.D. 568-774).--The circumstances attending the establishment of the Lombards in Italy were very like those marking the settlement of the Ostrogoths. The Lombards (Langobardi), so called either from their long beards, or their long battle-axes, came from the region of the Upper Danube. In just such a march as the Ostrogoths had made nearly a century before, the Lombard nation crossed the Alps and descended upon the plains of Italy. After many years of desperate fighting, they wrested from the empire [Footnote: Italy, it will be borne in mind, had but recently been delivered from the hands of the Ostrogoths by the lieutenants of the Eastern emperor (see p. 372).] all the peninsula save some of the great cities, and set up in the country a monarchy which lasted almost exactly two centuries. The rule of the Lombard princes was brought to an end by Charlemagne, the greatest of the Frankish rulers (see p. 405); but the blood of the invaders had by this time become intermingled with that of the former subjects of the Roman empire, so that throughout all that part of the peninsula which is still called Lombardy after them, the people at the present day reveal, in the light hair and fair features which distinguish them from the inhabitants of Southern Italy, their partly German origin. THE ANGLO-SAXONS IN BRITAIN.--We have already seen how in the time of Rome's distress the Angles and Saxons secured a foothold in Britain (see p. 344). The advance of the invaders here was stubbornly resisted by the half-Romanized Celts of the island. At the end of a century and a half of fighting, the German tribes had gained possession of only the eastern half of what is now England. On the conquered soil they set up eight or nine, or perhaps more, petty kingdoms. For the space of two hundred years there was an almost perpetual strife among these states for supremacy. Finally Egbert, king of the West Saxons, brought all the other states into a subject or tributary condition, and became the first king of the English, and the founder of the long line of Saxon monarchs (A.D. 827). TEUTONIC TRIBES OUTSIDE THE EMPIRE.--We have now spoken of the most important of the Teutonic tribes that forced themselves within the limits of the Roman empire in the West, and that there, upon the ruins of the civilization they had overthrown, laid or helped to lay the foundations of the modern nations of Italy, Spain, France, and England. Beyond the boundaries of the old empire were still other tribes and clans of this same mighty family of nations,--tribes and clans that were destined to play great parts in European history. On the east, beyond the Rhine, were the ancestors of the modern Germans. Notwithstanding the immense hosts that the forests and morasses of Germany had poured into the Roman provinces, the Father-land, in the sixth century of our era, seemed still as crowded as before the great migration began. These tribes were yet savages in manners and for the most part pagans in religion. In the northwest of Europe were the Scandinavians, the ancestors of the modern Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians. They were as yet untouched either by the civilization or the religion of Rome. We shall scarcely get a glimpse of them before the ninth century, when they will appear as the Northmen, the dreaded corsairs of the northern seas. CHAPTER XXXIII. THE CONVERSION OF THE BARBARIANS. INTRODUCTORY.--The most important event in the history of the tribes that took possession of the Roman empire in the West was their conversion to Christianity. Many of the barbarians were converted before or soon after their entrance into the empire; to this circumstance the Roman provinces owed their immunity from the excessive cruelties which pagan barbarians seldom fail to inflict upon a subjected enemy. Alaric left untouched the treasures of the churches of the Roman Christians, because his own faith was also Christian (see p. 342). For like reason the Vandal king Genseric yielded to the prayers of Pope Leo the Great, and promised to leave to the inhabitants of the Imperial City their lives (see p. 346). The more tolerable fate of Italy, Spain, and Gaul, as compared with the hard fate of Britain, is owing, in part at least, to the fact that the tribes which overran those countries had become, in the main, converts to Christianity before they crossed the boundaries of the empire, while the Saxons, when they entered Britain, were still untamed pagans. CONVERSION OF THE GOTHS, VANDALS, AND OTHER TRIBES.--The first converts to Christianity among the barbarians beyond the limits of the empire were won from among the Goths. Foremost of the apostles that arose among them was Ulfilas, who translated the Scriptures into the Gothic language, omitting from his version, however, "the Book of Kings," as he feared that the stirring recital of wars and battles in that portion of the Word might kindle into too fierce a flame the martial ardor of his new converts. When the Visigoths, distressed by the Huns, besought the Eastern Emperor Valens for permission to cross the Danube, one of the conditions imposed upon them was that they should all be baptized in the Christian faith (see p. 336). This seems to have crowned the work that had been going on among them for some time, and thereafter they were called Christians. What happened to the Goths happened also to most of the barbarian tribes that participated in the overthrow of the Roman empire in the West. By the time of the fall of Rome, the Goths, the Vandals, the Suevi, the Burgundians, had all become proselytes to Christianity. The greater part of them, however, professed the Arian creed, which had been condemned by the great council of the church held at Nicæa during the reign of Constantine the Great (see p. 332). Hence they were regarded as heretics by the Roman Church, and all had to be reconverted to the orthodox creed, which was gradually effected. The remaining Teutonic tribes of whose conversion we shall speak,--the Franks, the Anglo Saxons, the Scandinavians, and the chief tribes of Germany,--embraced at the outset the Catholic faith. CONVERSION OF THE FRANKS.--The Franks, when they entered the empire, like the Angles and Saxons when they landed in Britain, were still pagans. Christianity gained way very slowly among them until a supposed interposition by the Christian God in their behalf led the king and nation to adopt the new religion in place of their old faith. The circumstances were these. In the year 496 of our era, the Alemanni crossed the Rhine and fell upon the Franks. A desperate battle ensued. In the midst of it, Clovis, falling upon his knees, called upon the God of the Christians, and solemnly vowed that if He would give victory to his arms, he would become his faithful follower. The battle turned in favor of the Franks, and Clovis, faithful to his vow, was baptized, and with him several thousand of his warriors. This incident illustrates how the very superstitions of the barbarians, their belief in omens and divine interpositions, contributed to their conversion. AUGUSTINE'S MISSION TO THE ANGLES AND SAXONS IN BRITAIN.--In the year 596 Pope Gregory I. sent the monk Augustine with a band of forty companions to teach the Christian faith in Britain. Gregory had become interested in the inhabitants of that remote region in the following way. One day, some years before his elevation to the papal chair, he was passing through the slave-market at Rome, and noticed there some English captives, whose fair features awakened his curiosity respecting them. Inquiring of what nation they were, he was told that they were called Angles. "Right," said he, "for they have an angelic face, and it becomes such to become co-heirs with the angels in heaven." A little while afterwards he was elected Pope, and still mindful of the incident of the slave-market, he sent to the Angles the embassy to which we have alluded. The monks were favorably received by the English, who listened attentively to the story the strangers had come to tell them, and being persuaded that the tidings were true, they burned the temples of Woden and Thor, and were in large numbers baptized in the Christian faith. THE CELTIC CHURCH.--It here becomes necessary for us to say a word respecting the Celtic Church. Christianity, it must be borne in mind, held its place among the Celts whom the Saxons crowded slowly westward. Now, during the very period that England was being wrested from the Celtic warriors, the Celtic missionaries were effecting the spiritual conquest of Ireland. Among these messengers of the Cross, was a zealous priest named Patricius, better known as Saint Patrick, the patron saint of the Irish. Never did any race receive the Gospel with more ardent enthusiasm. The Irish Church sent out its devoted missionaries into the Pictish Highlands, into the forests of Germany, and among the wilds of Alps and Apennines. "For a time it seemed," says the historian Green, "that the course of the world's history was to be changed; as if the older Celtic race that Roman and German had driven before them had turned to the moral conquest of their conquerors; as if Celtic, and not Latin, Christianity was to mould the destinies of the churches of the West." Among the numerous religious houses founded by the Celtic missionaries was the famous monastery established about A.D. 564 by the Irish monk Saint Columba, on the little isle of Iona, just off the Pictish coast. Iona became a most renowned centre of Christian learning and missionary zeal, and for almost two centuries was the point from which radiated light through the darkness of the surrounding heathenism. Fitly has it been called the Nursery of Saints and the Oracle of the West. RIVALRY BETWEEN THE ROMAN AND THE CELTIC CHURCH.--Now, from the very moment that Augustine touched the shores of Britain and summoned the Welsh clergy to acknowledge the discipline of the Roman Church, there had been a growing jealousy between the Latin and the Celtic Church, which by this time had risen into the bitterest rivalry and strife. So long had the Celtic Church been cut off from all relations with Rome, that it had come to differ somewhat from it in the matter of certain ceremonies and observances, such as the time of keeping Easter and the form of the tonsure. Furthermore, it was inclined to look upon St. John rather than upon St. Peter as the apostle of pre-eminence. THE COUNCIL OF WHITBY (A.D. 664).--With a view to settling the quarrel Oswy, king of Northumbria, called a synod composed of representatives of both parties, at the monastery of Whitby. The chief question of debate, which was argued before the king by the ablest advocates of both Churches, was the proper time for the observance of Easter. Finally Wilfred, the speaker for the Roman party, happening to quote the words of Christ to Peter, "To thee will I give the keys of the kingdom of heaven," the king asked the Celtic monks if these words were really spoken by Christ to that apostle, and upon their admitting that they were, Oswy said, "He being the door-keeper,... I will in all things obey his decrees, lest when I come to the gates of the kingdom of heaven, there should be none to open them." [Footnote: Bede's _Eccl. Hist._ III. 25.] The decision of the prudent Oswy gave the British Isles to Rome; for not only was all England quickly won to the Roman side, but the Celtic churches and monasteries of Wales and Ireland and Scotland soon came to conform to the Roman standard and custom. "By the assistance of our Lord," says the pious Latin chronicler, "the monks were brought to the canonical observation of Easter, and the right mode of the tonsure." THE ROMAN VICTORY FORTUNATE FOR ENGLAND.--There is no doubt but that it was very fortunate for England that the controversy turned as it did. For one of the most important of the consequences of the conversion of Britain was the re-establishment of that connection of the island with Roman civilization which had been severed by the calamities of the fifth century. As Green says,--he is speaking of the embassy of St. Augustine,-- "The march of the monks as they chanted their solemn litany was in one sense a return of the Roman legions who withdrew at the trumpet call of Alaric.... Practically Augustine's landing renewed that union with the western world which the landing of Hengest had destroyed. The new England was admitted into the older Commonwealth of nations. The civilization, art, letters, which had fled before the sword of the English conquerors returned with the Christian faith." Now all this advantage would have been lost had Iona instead of Rome won at Whitby. England would have been isolated from the world, and would have had no part or lot in that rich common life which was destined to the European peoples as co-heirs of the heritage bequeathed to them by the dying empire. A second valuable result of the Roman victory was the hastening of the political unity of England through its ecclesiastical unity. The Celtic Church, in marked contrast with the Latin, was utterly devoid of capacity for organization. It could have done nothing in the way of developing among the several Anglo-Saxon states the sentiment of nationality. On the other hand, the Roman Church, through the exercise of a central authority, through national synods and general legislation, overcame the isolation of the different kingdoms, and helped powerfully to draw them together into a common political life. THE CONVERSION OF GERMANY.--The conversion of the tribes of Germany was effected by Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and Frankish missionaries,--and the sword of Charlemagne (see p. 406). The great apostle of Germany was the Saxon Winfred, or Winifred, better known as St. Boniface. During a long and intensely active life he founded schools and monasteries, organized churches, preached and baptized; and at last died a martyr's death (A.D. 753). The christianizing of the tribes of Germany relieved the Teutonic states of Western Europe from the constant peril of massacre by their heathen kinsmen, and erected a strong barrier in Central Europe against the advance of the waves of Turanian paganism and Mohammedanism which for centuries beat so threateningly against the eastern frontiers of Germany. [Footnote: The conversion of Russia dates from about the close of the tenth century. Its evangelization was effected by the missionaries of Constantinople, that is, of the Greek, or Eastern Church. Of the Turanian tribes, only the Hungarians, or Magyars, embraced Christianity. All the other Turanian peoples that appeared on the eastern edge of Europe during the Middle Ages, came as pagan or Moslem enemies.] CHRISTIANITY IN THE NORTH.--The progress of Christianity in the North was slow: but gradually, during the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, the missionaries of the Church won over all the Scandinavian peoples. One important effect of their conversion was the checking of their piratical expeditions, which previously had vexed almost every shore to the south. By the opening of the fourteenth century all Europe was claimed by Christianity, save a limited district in Southern Spain held by the Moors, and another in the Baltic regions possessed by the still pagan Finns and Lapps. MONASTICISM.--It was during this very conflict with the barbarians that the Church developed the remarkable institution known as Monasticism, which denotes a life of seclusion from the world, with the object of promoting the interests of the soul. The central idea of the system is, that the body is a weight upon the spirit, and that to "mortify the flesh" is a prime duty. The monastic system embraced two prominent classes of ascetics: 1. Hermits, or anchorites, persons who, retiring from the world, lived solitary lives in desolate places; 2. Cenobites, or monks, who formed communities and lived under a common roof. St. Antony, an Egyptian ascetic, who by his example and influence gave a tremendous impulse to the strange enthusiasm, is called the "father of the hermits." The persecutions that arose under the Roman emperors, driving thousands into the deserts, contributed vastly to the movement. The cities of Egypt became almost emptied of their Christian population. About the close of the fourth century the cenobite system was introduced into Europe, and in an astonishingly short space of time spread throughout all the western countries where Christianity had gained a foothold. Monasteries arose on every side, in the wilds of the desert and in the midst of the crowded city. The number that fled to these retreats was vastly augmented by the disorder and terror attending the invasion of the barbarians and the overthrow of the empire in the West. With the view of introducing some sort of system and uniformity among the numerous communities, fraternities or associations were early organized and spread rapidly. The three essential vows required of their members were poverty, chastity, and obedience. The most celebrated of these fraternities was the Order of the Benedictines, so called from its founder St. Benedict (A.D. 480-543). This order became immensely popular. At one time it embraced about 40,000 abbeys. ADVANTAGES OF THE MONASTIC SYSTEM.--The early establishment of the monastic system in the Church resulted in great advantages to the new world that was shaping itself out of the ruins of the old. The monks became missionaries, and it was largely to their zeal and devotion that the Church owed her speedy and signal victory over the barbarians; they also became teachers, and under the shelter of the monasteries established schools which were the nurseries of learning during the Middle Ages; they became copyists, and with great care and industry gathered and multiplied ancient manuscripts, and thus preserved and transmitted to the modern world much classical learning and literature that would otherwise have been lost; they became agriculturists, especially the Benedictines, and by skilful labor converted the wilderness about their retreats into fair gardens, thus redeeming from barrenness some of the most desolate districts of Europe; they became further the almoners of the pious and the wealthy, and distributed alms to the poor and needy. Everywhere the monasteries opened their hospitable doors to the weary, the sick, and the discouraged. In a word, these retreats were the inns, the asylums, and the hospitals, mediæval Europe. Nor should we fail to mention how the asceticism of the monks checked those flagrant social evils that had sapped the strength of the Roman race, and which uncounteracted would have contaminated and weakened the purer peoples of the North; nor how, through its requirements of self-control and self- sacrifice, it gave prominence to the inner life of the spirit. CONCLUSION.--With a single word or two respecting the general consequences of the conversion to Christianity of the Teutonic tribes, we will close the present chapter. The adoption of a common faith by the European peoples drew them together into a sort of religious brotherhood, and rendered it possible for the continent to employ its undivided strength, during the succeeding centuries, in staying the threatening progress toward the West of the colossal Mohammedan power of the East. The Christian Church set in the midst of the seething, martial nations and races of Europe an influence that fostered the gentler virtues, and a power that was always to be found on the side of order, and usually of mercy. It taught the brotherhood of man, the essential equality in the sight of God of the high and the low, and thus pleaded powerfully and at last effectually for the freedom of the slave and the serf. It prepared the way for the introduction among the barbarians of the arts, the literature, and the culture of Rome, and contributed powerfully to hasten the fusion into a single people of the Latins and Teutons, of which important matter we shall treat in the following chapter. CHAPTER XXXIV. FUSION OF THE LATIN AND TEUTONIC PEOPLES. INTRODUCTORY.--Having seen how the Hebrew element, that is, the ideas, beliefs, and sentiments of Christianity, became the common possession of the Latins and Teutons, it yet remains to notice how these two races, upon the soil of the old empire, intermingled their blood, their language, their laws, their usages and customs, to form new peoples, new tongues, and new institutions. THE ROMANCE NATIONS.--In some districts the barbarian invaders and the Roman provincials were kept apart for a long time by the bitter antagonism of race, and a sense of injury on the one hand and a feeling of disdainful superiority on the other. But for the most part the Teutonic intruders and the Latin-speaking inhabitants of Italy, Spain, and Gaul very soon began freely to mingle their blood by family alliances. It is quite impossible to say what proportion the Teutons bore to the Romans. Of course the proportion varied in the different countries. In none of the countries named, however, was it large enough to absorb the Latinized population; on the contrary, the barbarians were themselves absorbed, yet not without changing very essentially the body into which they were incorporated. By the close of the ninth century the two elements had become quite intimately blended, and a century or two later Roman and Teuton have alike disappeared, and we are introduced to Italians, Spaniards, and Frenchmen. These we call Romance nations, because at base they are Roman. [Footnote: Britain did not become a Romance nation on account of the nature of the barbarian conquest of that island. The Romanized provincials, as has been seen, were there almost destroyed by the fierce Teutonic invaders.] THE FORMATION OF THE ROMANCE LANGUAGES.--During the five centuries of their subjection to Rome, the natives of Spain and Gaul forgot their barbarous dialects and came to speak a corrupt Latin. Now in exactly the same way that the dialects of the Celtic tribes of Gaul and of the Celtiberians of Spain had given way to the more refined speech of the Romans, did the rude languages of the Teutons yield to the more cultured speech of the Roman provincials. In the course of two or three centuries after their entrance into the empire, Goths, Lombards, Burgundians, and Franks had, in a large measure, dropped their own tongue, and were speaking that of the people they had subjected. But of course this provincial Latin underwent a great change upon the lips of the mixed descendants of the Romans and Teutons. Owing to the absence of a common popular literature, the changes that took place in one country did not exactly correspond to those going on in another. Hence, in the course of time, we find different dialects springing up, and by about the ninth century the Latin has virtually disappeared as a spoken language, and its place been usurped by what will be known as the Italian, Spanish, and French languages, all more or less resembling the ancient Latin, and all called Romance tongues, because children of the old Roman speech. PERSONAL CHARACTER OF THE TEUTONIC LEGISLATION.--The legislation of the barbarians was generally personal instead of territorial, as with us; that is, instead of all the inhabitants of a given country being subject to the same laws, there were different ones for the different classes of society. The Latins, for instance, were subject in private law only to the old Roman code, while the Teutons lived under the rules and regulations which they had brought with them from beyond the Rhine. Even among themselves the Teutons knew nothing of the modern legal maxim that all should stand equal before the law. The penalty inflicted upon the evil-doer depended, not upon the nature of his crime, but upon his rank, or that of the party injured. Thus slaves and serfs could be beaten and put to death for minor offences, while a freeman might atone for any crime, even for murder, by the payment of a fine, the amount of the penalty being determined by the rank of the victim. Among the Saxons the life of a king's thane was worth 1200 shillings, while that of a common free man was valued only one-sixth as high. ORDEALS.--The modes by which guilt or innocence was ascertained show in how rude a state was the administration of justice among the barbarians. One very common method of proof was by what were called ordeals, in which the question was submitted to the judgment of God. Of these the chief were the _ordeal by fire_, the _ordeal by water_, and the _ordeal by battle_. The _ordeal by fire_ consisted in taking in the hand a red-hot iron, or in walking blindfolded with bare feet over a row of hot ploughshares laid lengthwise at irregular distances. If the person escaped without serious harm, he was held to be innocent. Another way of performing the fire ordeal was by running through the flame of two fires built close together, or by walking over live brands; hence the phrase "to haul over the coals." The _ordeal by water_ was of two kinds, by hot water and cold. In the hot-water ordeal the accused person thrust his arm into boiling water, and if no hurt was visible upon the arm three days after the operation, the person was considered guiltless. When we speak of one's being "in hot water," we use an expression which had its origin in this ordeal. In the cold-water trial the suspected person was thrown into a stream or pond: if he floated, he was held guilty; if he sank, innocent. The water, it was believed, would reject the guilty, but receive the innocent into its bosom. The practice common in Europe until a very recent date of trying supposed witches by weighing them, or by throwing them into a pond of water to see whether they would sink or float, grew out of this superstition. The _trial by combat_, or _wager of battle_, was a solemn judicial duel. It was resorted to in the belief that God would give victory to the right. Naturally it was a favorite mode of trial among a people who found their chief delight in fighting. Even religious disputes were sometimes settled in this way. The modern duel may probably be regarded as a relic of this form of trial. The ordeal was frequently performed by deputy, that is, one person for hire or for the sake of friendship would undertake it for another; hence the expression "to go through fire and water to serve one." Especially was such substitution common in the judicial duel, as women and ecclesiastics were generally forbidden to appear personally in the lists. The champions, as the deputies were called, became in time a regular class in society, like the gladiators in ancient Rome. Religious houses and chartered towns hired champions at a regular salary to defend all the cases to which they might become a party. THE REVIVAL OF THE ROMAN LAW.--Now the barbarian law-system, if such it can be called, the character of which we have simply suggested by the preceding illustrations, gradually displaced the Roman law in all those countries where the two systems at first existed alongside each other, save in Italy and Southern France, where the provincials greatly outnumbered the invaders. But the admirable jurisprudence of Rome was bound to assert its superiority. About the close of the eleventh century, there was a great revival in the study of the Roman law as embodied in the _Corpus Juris Civilis_ of Justinian (see p. 358), and in the course of a century or two this became either the groundwork or a strong modifying element in the jurisprudence of almost all the peoples of Europe. What took place may be illustrated by reference to the fate of the Teutonic languages in Gaul, Italy, and Spain. As the barbarian tongues, after maintaining a place in those countries for two or three centuries, at length gave place to the superior Latin, which became the basis of the new Romance languages, so now in the domain of law the barbarian maxims and customs, though holding their place more persistently, likewise finally give way, almost everywhere and in a greater or less degree, to the more excellent law-system of the empire. Rome must fulfil her destiny and give laws to the nations. CHAPTER XXXV. THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE EAST. THE REIGN OF JUSTINIAN (A.D. 527-565).--During the fifty years immediately following the fall of Rome, the Eastern emperors struggled hard and doubtfully to withstand the waves of the barbarian inundation which constantly threatened to overwhelm Constantinople with the same awful calamities that had befallen the imperial city of the West. Had the new Rome--the destined refuge for a thousand years of Græco-Roman learning and culture--also gone down at this time before the storm, the loss to the cause of civilization would have been incalculable. Fortunately, in the year 527, there ascended the Eastern throne a prince of unusual ability, to whom fortune gave a general of such rare genius that his name has been allotted a place in the short list of the great commanders of the world. Justinian was the name of the prince, and Belisarius that of the soldier. The sovereign has given name to the period, which is called after him the "Era of Justinian." It will be recalled that it was during this reign that Africa was recovered from the Vandals and Italy from the Goths (see p. 372). These conquests brought once more within the boundaries of the empire some of the fairest lands of the West. But that which has given Justinian's reign a greater distinction than any conferred upon it by brilliant military achievements, is the collection and publication, under the imperial direction, of the _Corpus Juris Civilis_, or "Body of the Roman Law." This work is the most precious legacy of Rome to the modern world. In causing its publication, Justinian earned the title of "The Lawgiver of Civilization" (see p. 358). In the midst of this brilliant reign an awful pestilence, bred probably in Egypt, fell upon the empire, and did not cease its ravages until about fifty years afterwards. This plague was the most terrible scourge of which history has any knowledge, save perhaps the so called Black Death, which afflicted Europe in the fourteenth century. The number of victims of the plague has been estimated at 100,000,000. THE REIGN OF HERACLIUS (A.D. 610-641).--For half a century after the death of Justinian, the annals of the Byzantine empire are unimportant. Then we reach the reign of Heraclius, a prince about whose worthy name gather matters of significance in world-history. About this time Chosroes II., king of Persia, wrested from the empire the fortified cities that guarded the Euphratean frontier, and overran all Syria, Egypt, and Asia Minor. What was known as the True Cross was torn from the church at Jerusalem and carried off in triumph to Persia. In order to compel Chosroes to recall his armies, which were distressing the provinces of the empire, Heraclius, pursuing the same plan as that by which the Romans in the Second Punic War forced the Carthaginians to call Hannibal out of Italy (see p. 264), with a small company of picked men marched boldly into the heart of Persia, and in revenge for the insults heaped by the infidels upon the Christian churches, overturned the altars of the fire-worshippers and quenched their sacred flames. The struggle between the two rival empires was at last decided by a terrible combat known as the Battle of Nineveh (A.D. 627), which was fought around the ruins of the old Assyrian capital. The Persian army was almost annihilated. In a few days grief or violence ended the life of Chosroes. With him passed away the glory of the Second Persian Empire. The new Persian king negotiated a treaty of peace with Heraclius. The articles of this treaty left the boundaries of the two empires unchanged. THE EMPIRE BECOMES GREEK.--The two combatants in the fierce struggle which we have been watching, were too much absorbed in their contentions to notice the approach of a storm from the deserts of Arabia,--a storm destined to overwhelm both alike in its destructive course. Within a few years from the date of the Battle of Nineveh, the Saracens entered upon their surprising career of conquest, which in a short time completely changed the face of the entire East, and set the Crescent, the emblem of a new faith, alike above the fire-altars of Persia and the churches of the Empire. Heraclius himself lived to see--so cruel are the vicissitudes of fortune--the very provinces which he had wrested from the hands of the fire-worshippers, in the hands of the more insolent followers of the False Prophet, and the Crescent planted within sight of the walls of Constantinople. The conquests of the Saracens cut off from the empire those provinces that had the smallest Greek element and thus rendered the population subject to the emperor more homogeneous, more thoroughly Greek. The Roman element disappeared, and the court of Constantinople became Greek in tone, spirit, and manners. Hence, instead of longer applying to the empire the designation _Roman_, we shall from this on call it the _Greek_, or Byzantine empire. We shall trace no further as a separate story the fortunes of the Eastern emperors. In the eighth century the so-called Iconoclastic controversy [Footnote: See p. 417.] will draw our attention to them; and then again in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Crusades will once more bring their affairs into prominence, and we shall see a line of Latin princes seated for a time (from 1204 to 1261) upon the throne of Constantine. [Footnote: See p. 446.] Finally, in the year 1453, we shall witness the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, [Footnote: See p. 462.] which disaster closes the long and checkered history of the Græco-Roman empire in the East. CHAPTER XXXVI. MOHAMMED AND THE SARACENS. [Illustration: AN ARAB RIDER.] INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT.--The Arabs, or Saracens, who are now about to play their surprising part in history, are, after the Hebrews, the most important people of the Semitic race. Secure in their inaccessible deserts, the Arabs have never as a people bowed their necks to a foreign conqueror, although portions of the Arabian peninsula have been repeatedly subjugated by different races. RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF ARABIA BEFORE MOHAMMED.--Before the reforms of Mohammed, the Arabs were idolaters. Their holy city was Mecca. Here was the ancient and most revered shrine of the Caaba, where was preserved a sacred black stone believed to have been given by an angel to Abraham. But though the native tribes of the peninsula were idolaters, still there were many followers of other faiths; for Arabia at this time was a land of religious freedom. The altar of the fire-worshipper rose alongside the Jewish synagogue and the Christian church. The Jews especially were to be found everywhere in great numbers, having been driven from Palestine by the Roman persecutions. It was from the Jews and Christians, doubtless, that Mohammed learned many of the doctrines that he taught. MOHAMMED.--Mohammed, the great prophet of the Arabs, was born in the holy city of Mecca, about the year 570 of our era. He sprang from the distinguished tribe of the Koreishites, the custodians of the sacred shrine of the Caaba. Like Moses, he spent many years of his life as a shepherd. [Illustration: MOSQUE AND CAABA AT MECCA. (From a photograph.)] Mohammed possessed a deeply religious nature, and it was his wont often to retire to a cave a few miles from Mecca, and there spend long vigils in prayer. He declared that here he had visions, in which the angel Gabriel appeared to him, and made to him revelations which he was commanded to make known to his fellow-men. The sum of the new faith which he was to teach was this: "There is but one God, and Mohammed is his Prophet." Mohammed communicated the nature of his visions to his wife, and she became his first convert. At the end of three years his disciples numbered forty persons. THE HEGIRA (622).--The teachings of Mohammed at last aroused the anger of a powerful party among the Koreishites, who feared that they, as the guardians of the national idols of the Caaba, would be compromised in the eyes of the other tribes by allowing such heresy to be openly taught by one of their number, and accordingly plots were formed against his life. Barely escaping assassination, he fled to the city of Medina. This Hegira, or Flight, as the word signifies, occurred in the year 622, and was considered by the Moslems as such an important event in the history of their religion that they adopted it as the beginning of a new era, and from it still continue to reckon their dates. THE FAITH EXTENDED BY THE SWORD.--His cause being warmly espoused by the inhabitants of Medina, Mohammed threw aside the character of an exhorter, and assumed that of a warrior. He declared it to be the will of God that the new faith should be spread by the sword. Accordingly, the year following the Hegira, he began to attack and plunder caravans. The flames of a sacred war were soon kindled. The reckless enthusiasm of his wild converts was intensified by the assurance of the Apostle that death met in fighting those who resisted the true faith ensured the martyr immediate entrance upon the joys of Paradise. Within ten years from the time of the assumption of the sword by Mohammed, Mecca had been conquered, and the new creed established among all the tribes of Arabia. Mohammed died in the year 632. No character in all history has been the subject of more conflicting speculations than the Arabian Prophet. By some he has been called a self-deluded enthusiast, while others have denounced him as the boldest of impostors. We shall, perhaps, reconcile these discordant views, if we bear in mind that the same person may, in different periods of a long career, be both. THE KORAN AND THE DOCTRINES OF ISLAM.--Before going on to trace the conquests of the successors of Mohammed, we must form some acquaintance with the religion of the great Prophet. The doctrines of Mohammedanism, or Islam, which means "submission," are contained in the Koran, the sacred book of the Moslems. They declare that God has revealed himself through four holy men: to Moses he gave the Pentateuch; to David, the Psalms; to Jesus, the Gospels; and to Mohammed, the last and greatest of all the prophets, he gave the Koran. "There is no God save Allah," is the fundamental doctrine of Islamism, and to this is added the equally binding declaration that "Mohammed is the Prophet of Allah." The faithful Moslem must also believe in the sacredness and infallibility of the Koran. He is also required to believe in the resurrection and the day of judgment, and an after-state of happiness and of misery. Also he must believe in the absoluteness of the decrees of God,--that he foreordains whatsoever comes to pass, and that nothing man can do can change his appointments. The Koran, while requiring assent to the foregoing creed, inculcates the practice of four virtues. The first is prayer; five times each day must the believer turn his face towards Mecca and engage in devotion. The second requirement is almsgiving. The third is keeping the Fast of Ramadan, which lasts a whole month. The fourth duty is making a pilgrimage to Mecca. ABUBEKR, FIRST SUCCESSOR OF MOHAMMED (632-634).--Upon the death of Mohammed a dispute at once arose as to his successor; for the Prophet left no children, nor had he designated upon whom his mantle should fall. Abubekr, the Apostle's father-in-law, was at last chosen to the position, with the title of Caliph, or Vicar, of the Prophet, although many thought that the place belonged to Ali, the Prophet's cousin and son-in-law, and one of his first and most faithful companions. This question of succession was destined at a later period to divide the Mohammedan world into two sects, animated by the most bitter and lasting hostility towards each other. [Footnote: The Mohammedans of Persia, who are known as Shiites, are the leaders of the party of Ali; while the Turks, known as Sunnites, are the chief adherents of the opposite party.] During the first part of his caliphate, Abubekr was engaged in suppressing revolts in different parts of the peninsula. These commotions quieted, he was free to carry out the last injunction of the Prophet to his followers, which enjoined them to spread his doctrines by the sword, till all men had confessed the creed of Islam, or consented to pay tribute to the Faithful. THE CONQUEST OF SYRIA.--The country which Abubekr resolved first to reduce was Syria. A call addressed to all the Faithful throughout Arabia was responded to with the greatest alacrity and enthusiasm. From every quarter the warriors flocked to Medina, until the desert about the city was literally covered with their black tents, and crowded with men and horses and camels. After invoking the blessing of God upon the hosts, Abubekr sent them forward upon their holy mission. Heraclius made a brave effort to defend the holy places against the fanatical warriors of the desert, but all in vain. His armies were cut to pieces. Seeing there was no hope of saving Jerusalem, he removed from that city to Constantinople the True Cross, which he had rescued from the Persians (see p. 390). "Farewell, Syria," were his words, as he turned from the consecrated land which he saw must be given up to the followers of the False Prophet. THE CONQUEST OF PERSIA (632-641).--While one Saracen army was overrunning Syria, another was busy with the subjugation of Persia. Enervated as this country was through luxury, and weakened by her long wars with the Eastern emperors, she could offer but feeble resistance to the terrible energy of the Saracens. Soon after the conquest of Persia, the Arabs crossed the mountains that wall Persia on the north, and spread their faith among the Turanian tribes of Central Asia. Among the most formidable of the clans that adopted the new religion were the Turks. Their conversion was an event of the greatest significance, for it was their swords that were destined to uphold and to spread the creed of Mohammed when the fiery zeal of his own countrymen should abate, and their arms lose the dreaded power which religious fanaticism had for a moment imparted to them. THE CONQUEST OF EGYPT (638).--The reduction of Persia was not yet fully accomplished, when the Caliph Omar, the successor of Abubekr, commissioned Amrou, the chief whose valor had won many of the cities of Palestine, to carry the standard of the Prophet into the Valley of the Nile. Alexandria, after holding out against the arms of the Saracens for more than a year, was at length abandoned to the enemy. Amrou, in communicating the intelligence of the important event to Omar, wrote him also about the great Alexandrian Library, and asked him what he should do with the books. Omar is said to have replied: "If these books agree with the Koran, they are useless; if they disagree, they are pernicious: in either case they ought to be destroyed." Accordingly the books were distributed among the four thousand baths of the capital, and served to feed their fires for six months. THE CONQUEST OF NORTHERN AFRICA (643-689).--The lieutenants of the Caliphs were obliged to do much and fierce fighting before they obtained possession of the oft-disputed shores of North Africa. They had to contend not only with the Græco-Roman Christians of the coast, but to battle also with the idolatrous Moors of the interior. Furthermore, all Europe had begun to feel alarm at the threatening advance of the Saracens; so now Roman soldiers from Constantinople, and Gothic warriors from Italy and Spain hastened across the Mediterranean to aid in the protection of Carthage, and to help arrest the alarming progress of these wild fanatics of the desert. But all was of no avail. Destiny had allotted to the followers of the Apostle the land of Hannibal and Augustine. Carthage was taken and razed to the ground, and the entire coast from the Nile to the Atlantic, was forced to acknowledge the authority of the Caliphs. By this conquest all the countries of Northern Africa, whose history for a thousand years had been intertwined with that of the opposite shores of Europe, and which at one time seemed destined to share in the career of freedom and progress opening to the peoples of that continent, were drawn back into the fatalism, the despotism, and the stagnation of the East. From being an extension of Europe, they became once more an extension of Asia. ATTACKS UPON CONSTANTINOPLE.--Only fifty years had now passed since the death of Mohammed, but during this short time his standard had been carried by the lieutenants of his successors through Asia to the Hellespont on the one side, and across Africa to the Straits of Gibraltar on the other. From each of these two points, so remote from each other, the fanatic warriors of the desert were casting longing glances across those narrow passages of water which alone separated them from the single continent that their swift coursers had not yet traversed, or whence the spoil of the unbelievers had not yet been borne to the feet of the Vicar of the Prophet of God. We may expect to see the Saracens at one or both of these points attempt the invasion of Europe. The first attempt was made in the East (in 668), where the Arabs endeavored to gain control of the Bosporus, by wresting Constantinople from the hands of the Eastern emperors. But the capital was saved through the use, by the besieged, of a certain bituminous compound, called Greek Fire. In 716, the city was again besieged by a powerful Moslem army; but its heroic defence by the Emperor Leo III. saved the capital for several centuries longer to the Christian world. THE CONQUEST OF SPAIN (711).--While the Moslems were thus being repulsed from Europe at its eastern extremity, the gates of the continent were opened to them by treachery at the western, and they gained a foothold in Spain. At the great battle of Xeres (711), Roderic, the last of the Visigothic kings, was hopelessly defeated, and all the peninsula, save some mountainous regions in the northwest, quickly submitted to the invaders. Thus some of the fairest provinces of Europe were lost to Christendom for a period of nearly eight hundred years. No sooner had the subjugation of the country been effected than multitudes of colonists from Arabia, Syria, and North Africa crowded into the peninsula, until in a short time the provinces of Seville, Cordova, Toledo, and Granada became Arabic in dress, manners, language, and religion. INVASION OF FRANCE: BATTLE OF TOURS (732).--Four or five years after the conquest of Spain, the Saracens crossed the Pyrenees, and established themselves upon the plains of Gaul. This advance of the Moslem hosts beyond the northern wall of Spain was viewed with the greatest alarm by all Christendom. It looked as though the followers of Mohammed would soon possess all the continent. As Draper pictures it, the Crescent, lying in a vast semi-circle upon the northern shore of Africa and the curving coast of Asia, with one horn touching the Bosporus and the other the Straits of Gibraltar, seemed about to round to the full and overspread all Europe. In the year 732, exactly one hundred years after the death of the great Prophet, the Franks, under their renowned chieftain, Charles, and their allies met the Moslems upon the plains of Tours in the centre of Gaul, and committed to the issue of a single battle the fate of Christendom and the future course of history. The desperate valor displayed by the warriors of both armies was worthy of the prize at stake. Abderrahman, the Mohammedan leader, fell in the thick of the fight, and night saw the complete discomfiture of the Moslem hordes. The loss that the sturdy blows of the Germans had inflicted upon them was enormous, the accounts of that age swelling the number killed to the impossible figures of 375,000. The disaster at all events was too overwhelming to permit the Saracens ever to recover from the blow, and they soon retreated behind the Pyrenees. The young civilization of Europe was thus delivered from an appalling danger, such as had not threatened it since the fearful days of Attila and the Huns. The heroic Duke Charles who had led the warriors of Christendom to the glorious victory was given the surname _Martel_, the "Hammer," in commemoration of the mighty blows of his huge battle-axe. CHANGES IN THE CALIPHATE.--During the century of conquests we have traced, there were many changes in the caliphate. Abubekr was followed by Omar (634-644), Othman (644-655), and Ali (655-661), all of whom fell by the hands of assassins, for from the very first dissensions were rife among the followers of the Prophet. Ali was the last of the four so-called "Orthodox Caliphs," all of whom were relatives or companions of the Prophet. Moawiyah, a usurper, was now recognized as Caliph (661). He succeeded in making the office hereditary, instead of elective, as it hitherto had been, and thus established what is known as the dynasty of the Ommiades [Footnote: So called from Ommaya, an ancestor of Moawiyah.], the rulers of which family for nearly a century issued their commands from the city of Damascus. The house of the Ommiades was overthrown by the adherents of the house of Ali, who established a new dynasty (750), known as that of the Abbassides, so called from Abbas, an uncle of Mohammed. The new family, soon after coming to power, established the seat of the royal residence on the lower Tigris, and upon the banks of that river founded the renowned city of Bagdad, which was destined to remain the abode of the Abbasside Caliphs for a period of five hundred years,--until the subversion of the house by the Tartars of the North. The golden age of the caliphate of Bagdad covers the latter part of the eighth and the ninth century of our era, and was illustrated by the reign of the renowned Haroun-al-Raschid (786-809), the hero of the Arabian Nights. During this period science, philosophy, and literature were most assiduously cultivated by the Arabian scholars, and the court of the Caliphs presented in culture and luxury a striking contrast to the rude and barbarous courts of the kings and princes of Western Christendom. THE DISMEMBERMENT OF THE CALIPHATE.--"At the close of the first century of the Hegira," writes Gibbon, "the Caliphs were the most potent and absolute monarchs of the globe. The word that went forth from the palace at Damascus was obeyed on the Indus, on the Jaxartes, and on the Tagus." Scarcely less potent was the word that at first went forth from Bagdad. But in a short time the extended empire of the Abbassides, through the quarrels of sectaries and the ambitions of rival aspirants for the honors of the caliphate, was broken in fragments, and from three capitals--Bagdad upon the Tigris, Cairo upon the Nile, and Cordova upon the Guadalquivir-- were issued the commands of three rival Caliphs, each of whom was regarded by his adherents as the sole rightful spiritual and civil successor of the Apostle. All, however, held the great Arabian Prophet in the same reverence, all maintained with equal zeal the sacred character of the Koran, and all prayed with their faces turned toward the holy city of Mecca. SPREAD OF THE RELIGION AND LANGUAGE OF THE ARABS.--Just as the Romans Romanized the peoples they conquered, so did the Saracens Saracenize the populations of the countries subjected to their authority. Over a large part of Spain, over North Africa, Egypt, Syria, Babylonia, Persia, Northern India, and portions of Central Asia, were spread--to the more or less perfect exclusion of native customs, speech, and worship--the manners, the language, and the religion of the Arabian conquerors. [Footnote: Beyond the eastern edge of Mesopotamia, the Arabs failed to impress their language upon the subjected peoples, or in any way, save in the matter of creed, to leave upon them any important permanent trace of their conquests.] In Arabia no religion was tolerated save the faith of the Koran. But in all the countries beyond the limits of the peninsula, freedom of worship was allowed (save to _idolaters_, who were to be "rooted out"); unbelievers, however, must purchase this liberty by the payment of a moderate tribute. Yet notwithstanding this toleration, the Christian and Zoroastrian religions gradually died out almost everywhere throughout the domains of the Caliphs. [Footnote: The number of Guebers, or fire- worshippers, in Persia at the present time is estimated at from 50,000 to 100,000. About the same number may be counted in India, the descendants of the Guebers who fled from Persia at the time of the Arabian invasion. They are there called Parsees, from the land whence they came.] THE DEFECTS OF ISLAM.--Civilization certainly owes a large debt to the Saracens. They preserved and transmitted much that was valuable in the science of the Greeks and the Persians (see p. 472). They improved trigonometry and algebra, and from India they borrowed the decimal system of notation and introduced it into the West. Many of the doctrines of Islam, however, are most unfavorable to human liberty, progress, and improvement. It teaches fatalism, and thus discourages effort and enterprise. It allows polygamy and pelts no restraint upon divorce, and thus destroys the sanctity of the family life. It permits slavery and fosters despotism. It inspires a blind and bigoted hatred of race and creed, and thus puts far out of sight the salutary truth of the brotherhood of man. Because of these and other scarcely less prominent defects in its teachings, Islam has proved a blight and curse to almost every race embracing its sterile doctrines. Mohammedism is vastly superior, however, either to fetichism or idolatry, and consequently, upon peoples very low in the scale of civilization, it has an elevating influence. Thus, upon the negro tribes of Central Africa, where it is to-day spreading rapidly, it is acknowledged to have a civilizing effect. CHAPTER XXXVII. CHARLEMAGNE AND THE RESTORATION OF THE EMPIRE IN THE WEST. GENERAL REMARKS.--In the foregoing chapter we traced the rise and decline of the power of the Saracens. We saw the Semitic East roused for a moment to a life of tremendous energy by the miracle of religious enthusiasm, and then beheld it sinking rapidly again into inaction and weakness, disappointing all its early promises. Manifestly the "Law" is not to go forth from Mecca. The Semitic race is not to lead the civilization of the world. But returning again to the West, we discover among the Teutonic barbarians indications of such youthful energy and life, that we are at once persuaded that to them has been given the future. The Franks, who, with the aid of their confederates, withstood the advance of the Saracens upon the field of Tours, and saved Europe from subjection to the Koran, are the people that first attract our attention. It is among them that a man appears who makes the first grand attempt to restore the laws, the order, the institutions of the ancient Romans. Charlemagne, their king, is the imposing figure that moves amidst all the events of the times; indeed, is the one who makes the events, and renders the period in which he lived an epoch in universal history. The story of this era affords the key to very much of the subsequent history of Europe. HOW DUKE PEPIN BECAME KING OF THE FRANKS--Charles Martel, whose tremendous blows at Tours earned for him his significant surname (see p. 399), although the real head of the Frankish nation, was nominally only an officer of the Merovingian court. He died without ever having borne the title of king, notwithstanding he had exercised all the authority of that office. But Charles's son Pepin, called _le Bref_ (the Short), on account of his diminutive stature, aspired to the regal title and honors. He resolved to depose his titular master, and to make himself king. Not deeming it wise, however, to do this without the sanction of the Pope, he sent an embassy to represent to him the state of affairs, and to solicit his advice. Mindful of recent favors that he had received at the hands of Pepin, the Pope gave his approval to the proposed scheme by replying that it seemed altogether reasonable that the one who was king in power should be king also in name. This was sufficient. Chilperic--such was the name of the Merovingian king--was straightway deposed, and placed in a monastery; while Pepin, whose own deeds together with those of his illustrious father had done so much for the Frankish nation and for Christendom, was anointed and crowned king of the Franks (752), and thus became the first of the Carolingian line, the name of his illustrious son Charlemagne giving name to the house. BEGINNING OF THE TEMPORAL POWER OF THE POPES.--In the year 754 Pope Stephen II., who was troubled by the Lombards (see p. 374), besought Pepin's aid. Quick to return the favor which the head of the Church had rendered him in the establishment of his power as king, Pepin straightway crossed the Alps with a large army, expelled the Lombards from their recent conquests, and made a donation to the Pope of these captured cities and provinces (755). This famous gift may be regarded as having laid the basis of the temporal power of the Popes; for though Pepin probably did not intend to convey to the Papal See the absolute sovereignty of the transferred lands, after a time the Popes claimed this, and finally came to exercise within the limits of the donated territory all the rights and powers of independent temporal rulers. So here we have the beginning of the celebrated _Papal States_, and of the story of the Popes as temporal princes. ACCESSION OF CHARLEMAGNE.--Pepin died in the year 768, and his kingdom passed into the hands of his two sons, Carloman and Charles; but within three years the death of Carloman and the free votes of the Franks conferred the entire kingdom upon Charles, better known as Charlemagne, or "Charles the Great." HIS CAMPAIGNS.--Charlemagne's long reign of nearly half a century--he ruled forty-six years--was filled with military expeditions and conquests, by which he so extended the boundaries of his dominions, that at his death they embraced the larger part of Western Europe. He made fifty-two military campaigns, the chief of which were against the Lombards, the Saracens, and the Saxons. Of these we will speak briefly. Among Charlemagne's first undertakings was a campaign against the Lombards, whose king, Desiderius, was troubling the Pope. Charlemagne wrested from Desiderius all his possessions, shut up the unfortunate king in a monastery, and placed on his own head the iron crown of the Lombards. While in Italy he visited Rome, and, in return for the favor of the Pope, confirmed the donation of his father, Pepin (774). [Illustration: CHARLEMAGNE. (Head of a bronze equestrian statuette.)] In the ninth year of his reign Charlemagne gathered his warriors for a crusade against the Saracens in Spain. He crossed the Pyrenees, and succeeded in wresting from the Moslems all the northeastern corner of the peninsula. As he was leading his victorious bands back across the Pyrenees, the rear of his army under the lead of the renowned paladin Roland, while hemmed in by the walls of the Pass of Roncesvalles, was set upon by the wild mountaineers (the Gascons and Basques), and cut to pieces before Charlemagne could give relief. Of the details of this event no authentic account has been preserved; but long afterwards it formed the favorite theme of the tales and songs of the Troubadours of Southern France. But by far the greater number of the campaigns of Charlemagne were directed against the pagan Saxons, who almost alone of the German tribes still retained their ancient idolatry. Thirty years and more of his reign were occupied in these wars across the Rhine. Reduced to submission again and again, as often did the Saxons rise in desperate revolt. The heroic Witikind was the "second Arminius" (see p. 308) who encouraged his countrymen to resist to the last the intruders upon their soil. Finally, Charlemagne, angered beyond measure by the obstinacy of the barbarians, caused 4500 prisoners in his hands to be massacred in revenge for the contumacy of the nation. The Saxons at length yielded, and accepted Charlemagne as their sovereign, and Christianity as their religion. RESTORATION OF THE EMPIRE IN THE WEST (800).--An event of seemingly little real moment, yet, in its influence upon succeeding affairs, of the very greatest importance, now claims our attention. Pope Leo III. having called upon Charlemagne for aid against a hostile faction at Rome, the king soon appeared in person at the capital, and punished summarily the disturbers of the peace of the Church. The gratitude of Leo led him at this time to make a most signal return for the many services of the Frankish king. To understand his act a word of explanation is needed. For a considerable time a variety of circumstances had been fostering a growing feeling of enmity between the Italians and the emperors at Constantinople. Disputes had arisen between the churches of the East and those of the West, and the Byzantine rulers had endeavored to compel the Italian churches to introduce certain changes and reforms in their worship, which had aroused the most determined opposition of the Roman bishops, who denounced the Eastern emperors as schismatics and heretics. Furthermore, while persecuting the orthodox churches of the West, these unworthy emperors had allowed the Christian lands of the East to fall a prey to the Arabian infidels. Just at this time, moreover, by the crime of the Empress Irene, who had deposed her son Constantine VI., and put out his eyes, that she might have his place, the Byzantine throne was vacant, in the estimation of the Italians, who contended that the crown of the Cæsars could not be worn by a woman. Confessedly it was time that the Pope should exercise the power reposing in him as Head of the Church, and take away from the heretical and effeminate Greeks the Imperial crown, and bestow it upon some strong, orthodox, and worthy prince in the West. Now, among all the Teutonic chiefs of Western Christendom, there was none who could dispute the claims to the honor with the king of the Franks, the representative of a most illustrious house, and the strongest champion of the young Christianity of the West against her pagan foes. Accordingly, as Charlemagne was participating in the festivities of Christmas Day in the Cathedral of St. Peter at Rome, the Pope approached the kneeling king,-- who declared afterwards that he was wholly ignorant of the designs of his friend,--and placing a crown of gold upon his head, proclaimed him emperor of the Romans, and the rightful and consecrated successor of Cæsar Augustus and Constantine (800). The intention of Pope Leo was, by a sort of reversal of the act of Constantine, to bring back from the East the seat of the Imperial court; but what he really accomplished was a restoration of the line of emperors in the West, which 324 years before had been ended by Odoacer, when he dethroned Romulus Augustus and sent the royal vestments to Constantinople (see p. 348). We say this was what he actually effected; for the Greeks of the East, disregarding wholly what the Roman people and the Pope had done, maintained their line of emperors just as though nothing had occurred in Italy. So now from this time on for centuries there were two emperors, one in the East, and another in the West, each claiming to be the rightful successor of Cæsar Augustus. [Footnote: From this time on it will be proper for us to use the terms _Western_ Empire and _Eastern_ Empire. These names should not, however, be employed before this time, for the two parts of the old Roman Empire were simply administrative divisions of a single empire; we may though, properly enough, speak of the Roman empire _in_ the West, and the Roman empire _in_ the East, or of the Western and Eastern emperors. See Bryce's _Holy Roman Empire_. The Eastern Empire was destroyed by the Turks in 1453; the line of Western Teutonic emperors was maintained until the present century, when it was ended by the act of Napoleon in the dismemberment of Germany (1806).] CHARLEMAGNE'S DEATH; HIS WORK.--Charlemagne enjoyed the Imperial dignity only fourteen years, dying in 814. Within the cathedral at Aachen, in a tomb which he himself had built, the dead monarch was placed upon a throne, with his royal robes around him, his good sword by his side, and the Bible open on his lap. It seemed as though men could not believe that his reign was over; and it was not. By the almost universal verdict of students of the mediæval period, Charles the Great has been pronounced the most imposing personage that appears between the fall of Rome and the fifteenth century. His greatness has erected an enduring monument for itself in his name, the one by which he is best known--Charlemagne. Charlemagne must not be regarded as a warrior merely. His most noteworthy work was that which he effected as a reformer and statesman. He founded schools, reformed the laws, collected libraries, and extended to the Church a patronage worthy of a Constantine. In a word, he laid "the foundation of all that is noble and beautiful and useful in the history of the Middle Ages." DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE; TREATY OF VERDUN (843).--Like the kingdom of Alexander, the mighty empire of Charlemagne fell to pieces soon after his death. "His sceptre was the bow of Ulysses which could not be drawn by any weaker hand." After a troublous period of dissension arid war, the empire was divided, by the important Treaty of Verdun, among Charlemagne's three grandchildren,--Charles, Lewis, and Lothair. To Charles was given France; to Lewis, Germany; and to Lothair, Italy and the valley of the Rhone, together with a narrow strip of land extending from Switzerland to the mouth of the Rhine. With these possessions of Lothair went also the Imperial title. [Illustration: THE WESTERN EMPIRE As Divided at Verdun (843)] This treaty is celebrated, not only because it was the first great treaty among the European states, but also on account of its marking the divergence from one another, and in some sense the origin, of three of the great nations of modern Europe,--of France, Germany, and Italy. CONCLUSION.--After this dismemberment of the dominions of Charlemagne, the annals of the different branches of the Carolingian family become intricate, wearisome, and uninstructive. A fate as dark and woeful as that which, according to Grecian story, overhung the royal house of Thebes, seemed to brood over the house of Charlemagne. In all its different lines a strange and adverse destiny awaited the lineage of the great king. The tenth century witnessed the extinction of the family. CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE NORTHMEN. THE PEOPLE.--Northmen, Norsemen, Scandinavians, are different names applied in a general way to the early inhabitants of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. These people formed the northern branch of the Teutonic family. We cannot be certain when they took possession of the northern peninsulas, but it is probable that they had entered those countries long before Cæsar invaded Gaul. THE NORTHMEN AS PIRATES AND COLONIZERS.--For the first eight centuries of our era the Norsemen are hidden from our view in their remote northern home; but with the opening of the ninth century their black piratical crafts are to be seen creeping along all the coasts of Germany, Gaul, and the British Isles, and even venturing far up their inlets and creeks. Every summer these dreaded sea-rovers made swift descents upon the exposed shores of these countries, plundering, burning, murdering; then upon the approach of the stormy season, they returned to winter in the sheltered fiords of the Scandinavian peninsula. After a time the bold corsairs began to winter in the lands they had harried during the summer; and soon all the shores of the countries visited were dotted with their stations or settlements. These marauding expeditions and colonizing enterprises of the Northmen did not cease until the eleventh century was far advanced. The consequences of this wonderful outpouring of the Scandinavian peoples were so important and lasting that the movement has well been compared to the great migration of their German kinsmen in the fifth and sixth centuries. Europe is a second time inundated by the Teutonic barbarians. The most noteworthy characteristic of these Northmen was the readiness with which they laid aside their own manners, habits, ideas, and institutions, and adopted those of the country in which they established themselves. "In Russia they became Russians; in France, Frenchmen; in England, Englishmen." COLONIZATION OF ICELAND AND GREENLAND.--Iceland was settled by the Northmen in the ninth century, [Footnote: Iceland became the literary centre of the Scandinavian world. There grew up here a class of scalds, or bards, who, before the introduction of writing, preserved and transmitted orally the sagas, or legends, of the Northern races. About the twelfth century these poems and legends were gathered into collections known as the Elder, or poetic, Edda, and the Younger, or prose, Edda. These are among the most interesting and important of the literary memorials that we possess of the early Teutonic peoples. They reflect faithfully the beliefs, manners, and customs of the Norsemen, and the wild, adventurous spirit of their Sea-Kings.] and about a century later Greenland was discovered and colonized. In 1874 the Icelanders celebrated the thousandth anniversary of the settlement of their island, an event very like our Centennial of 1876. America was reached by the Northmen as early as the beginning of the eleventh century: the Vineland of their traditions was possibly some part of the New England coast. It is believed that these first visitors to the continent made settlements in this new land; but no certain remains of these exist. THE NORSEMEN IN RUSSIA.--While the Norwegians were sailing boldly out into the Atlantic and taking possession of the isles and coasts of the western seas, the Swedes were pushing their crafts across the Baltic and troubling the Slavonian tribes that dwelt upon the eastern shore of that sea. Either by right of conquest or through the invitation of the contentious Slavonian clans, the renowned Scandinavian chieftain Ruric acquired, in the year 862, kingly dignity, and became the founder of the first royal line of Russia, the successive kings of which family gradually consolidated the monarchy which was destined to become one of the foremost powers of Europe. THE DANISH CONQUEST OF ENGLAND.--The Danes began to make descents upon the English coast about the beginning of the ninth century. These sea-rovers spread the greatest terror through the island; for they were not content with plunder, but being pagans, they took special delight in burning the churches and monasteries of the now Christian Anglo-Saxons, or English, as we shall hereafter call them. After a time the Danes began to make permanent settlements in the land. The wretched English were subjected to exactly the same treatment that they had inflicted upon the Celts. Much need had they to pray the petition of the Litany of those days, "From the fury of the Northmen, Good Lord, deliver us." Just when it began to look as though they would be entirely annihilated or driven from the island by the barbarous intruders, the illustrious Alfred (871-901) came to the throne of Wessex. For six years the youthful king fought heroically at the head of his brave thanes; but each succeeding year the possessions of the English grew smaller, and finally Alfred and his few remaining followers were driven to take refuge in the woods and morasses. After a time, however, the affairs of the English began to brighten. The Danes were overpowered, and though allowed to hold the northeastern half of the land, still they were forced nominally to acknowledge the authority of the English king. For a full century following the death of Alfred, his successors were engaged in a constant struggle to hold in subjection the Danes already settled in the land, or to protect their domains from the plundering inroads of fresh bands of pirates from the northern peninsulas. In the end, the Danes got the mastery, and Canute, king of Denmark, became king of England (1016). For eighteen years he reigned in a wise and parental way. Altogether the Danes ruled in England about a quarter of a century (from 1016 to 1042), and then the old English line was restored in the person of Edward the Confessor. The great benefit which resulted to England from the Danish conquest, was the infusion of fresh blood into the veins of the English people, who through contact with the half-Romanized Celts, and especially through the enervating influence of a monastic church, had lost much of that bold, masculine vigor which characterized their hardy ancestors. SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTHMEN IN GAUL.--The Northmen began to make piratical descents upon the coasts of Gaul before the end of the reign of Charlemagne. Tradition tells how the great king, catching sight one day of some ships of the Northmen, burst into tears as he reflected on the sufferings that he foresaw the new foe would entail upon his country. The record of the raids of the Northmen in Gaul, and of their final settlement in the north of the country, is simply a repetition of the tale of the Danish forays and settlement in England. At last, in the year 918, Charles the Simple did exactly what Alfred the Great had done across the Channel only a very short time before. He granted the adventurous Rollo, the leader of the Northmen that had settled at Rouen, a considerable section of country in the north-west of Gaul, upon condition of homage and conversion. In a short time the barbarians had adopted the language, the manners, and the religion of the French, and had caught much of their vivacity and impulsiveness of spirit, without, however, any loss of their own native virtues. This transformation in their manners and life we may conceive as being recorded in their transformed name--_Northmen_ becoming softened into _Norman_. As has been said, they were simply changed from heathen Vikings, delighting in the wild life of sea-rover and pirate, into Christian knights, eager for pilgrimages and crusades. CHAPTER XXXIX. RISE OF THE PAPAL POWER. INTRODUCTION.--In an early chapter of our book we told how Christianity as a system of beliefs and precepts took possession of the different nations and tribes of Europe. We purpose in the present chapter to tell how the Christian Church grew into a great spiritual monarchy, with the bishop of Rome as its head. It must be borne in mind that the bishops of Rome put forth a double claim, namely, that they were the supreme head of the Church, and also the rightful, divinely appointed suzerain of all temporal princes, the "earthly king of kings." Their claim to supremacy in all spiritual matters was very generally acknowledged throughout at least the West as early as the sixth century, and continued to be respected by almost every one until the great Reformation of the sixteenth century, when the nations of Northern Europe revolted, denied the spiritual authority of the Pope, and separated themselves from the ancient ecclesiastical empire. The papal claim to supremacy in temporal affairs was never fully and willingly allowed by the secular rulers of Europe; yet during a considerable part of the Middle Ages, particularly throughout the thirteenth century, the Pope was very generally acknowledged by kings and princes as their superior and suzerain in temporal as well as in spiritual matters. EARLY ORGANIZATION OF THE CHURCH.--The Christian Church very early in its history became an organized body, with a regular gradation of officers, such as presbyters, bishops, metropolitans or archbishops, and patriarchs. There were at first four regular patriarchates, that is, districts superintended by patriarchs. These centred in the great cities of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, and Antioch. Jerusalem was also made an honorary patriarchate. PRIMACY OF THE BISHOP OF ROME.--It is maintained by some that the patriarchs at first had equal and coordinate powers; that is, that no one of the patriarchs had preeminence or authority over the others. But others assert that the bishop of Rome from the very first was regarded as above the others in dignity and authority, and as the divinely appointed head of the visible Church on earth. However this may be, the pontiffs of Rome began very early to _claim_ supremacy over all other bishops and patriarchs. This claim of the Roman pontiffs was based on several alleged grounds, the chief of which was that the Church at Rome had been founded by St. Peter himself, the first bishop of that capital, to whom Christ had given the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and had further invested with superlative authority as a teacher and interpreter of the Word by the commission, "Feed my Sheep;... feed my Lambs," thus giving into his charge the entire flock of the Church. This authority and preeminence conferred by the great Head of the Church upon Peter was held to be transmitted to his successor in the holy office. ADVANTAGE TO THE ROMAN BISHOPS OF THE MISFORTUNES OF THE EMPIRE.--The claims of the Roman bishops were greatly favored from the very first by the spell in which the world was held by the name and prestige of imperial Rome. Thence it had been accustomed to receive its commands in all temporal matters; how very natural, then, that thither it should turn for command and guidance in spiritual affairs. The Roman bishops in thus occupying the geographical and political centre of the world enjoyed a great advantage over all other bishops and patriarchs. Nor was this advantage lost when misfortune befell the imperial city. Thus the removal by Constantine the Great of the seat of government to the Bosporus (see p. 332), instead of diminishing the power and dignity of the Roman bishops, tended powerfully to promote their claims and authority. In the phrase of Dante, it "gave the Shepherd room." It left the pontiff the foremost personage of Rome. Again, when the barbarians came, there came another occasion for the Roman bishops to increase their influence, and to raise themselves to a position of absolute supremacy throughout the West. Rome's extremity was their opportunity. Thus it will be recalled how, mainly through the intercession of Leo the Great, the fierce Attila was persuaded to turn back and leave Rome unpillaged; and how, through the intercession of the same pious bishop, the savage Genseric was prevailed upon to spare the lives of the inhabitants of the city at the time of its sack by the Vandals (see pp. 346, 347). So when the emperors, the natural defenders of the capital, were unable to protect it, the unarmed pastor was able, through the awe and reverence inspired by his holy office, to render services that could not but result in bringing increased honor and dignity to the Roman See. But if the misfortunes of Rome tended to the enhancement of the reputation and influence of the Roman bishops, much more did the final downfall of the capital tend to the same end. Upon the surrender of the sovereignty of the West into the hands of the emperor of the East, the bishops of Rome became the most important persons in Western Europe, and being so far removed from the court at Constantinople, gradually assumed almost imperial powers. They became the arbiters between the barbarian chiefs and the Italians, and to them were referred for decision the disputes arising between cities, states, and kings. It is easy to understand how directly and powerfully these things tended to strengthen the authority and increase the influence of the Roman See. THE MISSIONS OF ROME.--Again, the early missionary zeal of the church at Rome made her the mother of many churches, all of whom looked up to her with affectionate and grateful loyalty. Thus the Angles and Saxons, won to the faith by the missionaries of Rome, conceived a deep veneration for the Holy See and became her most devoted children. To Rome it was that they made their most frequent pilgrimages, and thither they sent their offering of "St. Peter's penny." And when the Saxons became missionaries to their pagan kinsmen of the continent, they transplanted into the heart of Germany these same feelings of filial attachment and love. Thus was Rome exalted in the eyes of the children of the churches of the West, until Gregory II. (715-731), writing the Eastern emperor, could say that to these peoples the very statue of the founder of the Roman church seemed "a god on earth." THE ICONOCLASTS.--The dispute about the worship of images, known in church history as the Iconoclastic controversy, which broke out in the eighth century between the Greek churches of the East and the Latin churches of the West, drew after it far-reaching consequences as respects the growing power of the Roman pontiffs. Even long before the seventh century, the churches both in the East and in the West had become crowded with images or pictures of the apostles, saints, and martyrs, which to the ignorant classes at least were objects of adoration and worship. A strong party opposed to the use of images [Footnote: The so-called images of the Greek Church were not statues, but mosaics, or paintings. The Eastern Church has at no period sanctioned the use of sculptures in worship.] at last arose in the East. These reformers were given the name of Iconoclasts (image-breakers). Leo the Isaurian, who came to the throne of Constantinople in 717, was a most zealous Iconoclast. The Greek churches of the East having been cleared of images, the emperor resolved to clear also the Latin churches of the West of these symbols. To this end he issued a decree that they should not be used. The bishop of Rome not only opposed the execution of the edict, but by the ban of excommunication cut off the emperor and all the iconoclastic churches of the East from communion with the true Catholic Church. Though images were permanently restored in the Eastern churches in 842, still by this time other causes of alienation had arisen, and the breach between the two sections of Christendom could not now be closed. The final outcome was the permanent separation, about the middle of the eleventh century, of the churches of the East from those of the West. The former became known as the Greek, Byzantine, or Eastern Church; the latter as the Latin, Roman, or Catholic Church. The East was thus lost to the Roman See. But the loss was more than made good by fresh accessions of power in the West. In this quarrel with the Eastern emperors the Roman bishops cast about for an alliance with some powerful Western prince. We have already told the story of the friendship of the Carolingian kings and the Roman pontiffs, and of the favors they exchanged (see ch. xxxvii). Never did friends render themselves more serviceable to each other. The Popes made the descendants of Charles Martel kings and emperors; the grateful Frankish princes defended the Popes against all their enemies, imperial and barbarian, and dowering them with cities and provinces, laid the basis of their temporal sovereignty, which continued for more than a thousand years (until 1870). ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION: APPEALS TO ROME.--Charlemagne had recognized the principle, held from early times by the Church, that ecclesiastics should be amenable only to the ecclesiastical tribunals, by freeing the whole body of the clergy from the jurisdiction of the temporal courts, in criminal as well as civil cases. Gradually the bishops acquired the right to try all cases relating to marriage, trusts, perjury, simony, or concerning widows, orphans, or crusaders, on the ground that such cases had to do with religion. Even the right to try all criminal cases was claimed on the ground that all crime is sin, and hence can properly be dealt with only by the Church. Persons convicted by the ecclesiastical tribunals were subjected to penance, imprisoned in the monasteries, or handed over to the civil authorities for punishment. Thus by the end of the twelfth century the Church had absorbed, not only the whole criminal administration of the clergy, but in part that of the laity also. [Footnote: Hallam, _Middle Ages_, ch. vii.] Now the particular feature of this enormous extension of the jurisdiction of the Church tribunals which at present it especially concerns us to notice, is the establishment of the principle that all cases might be appealed or cited from the courts of the bishops and archbishops of the different European countries to the Papal See, which thus became the court of last resort in all cases affecting ecclesiastics or concerning religion. The Pope thus came to be regarded as the fountain of justice, and, in theory at least, the supreme judge of Christendom, while emperors and kings and all civil magistrates bore the sword simply as his ministers to carry into effect his sentences and decrees. THE PAPACY AND THE EMPIRE.--We must now speak of the relation of the Popes to the Emperors. About the middle of the tenth century Otto the Great of Germany, like a second Charlemagne, restored once more the fallen Imperial power, which now became known as the Holy Roman Empire, the heads of which from this on were the German kings (see p. 502). Here now were two world- powers, the Empire and the Papacy, whose claims and ambitions were practically antagonistic and irreconcilable. There were three different theories of the divinely constituted relation of the "World-King" and the "World-Priest." The first was that Pope and Emperor were each independently commissioned by God, the first to rule the spirits of men, the second to rule their bodies. Each reigning thus by original divine right, neither is set above the other, but both are to cooperate and to help each other. The special duty of the temporal power is to maintain order in the world and to be the protector of the Church. The second theory, the one held by the Imperial party, was that the Emperor was superior to the Pope. Arguments from Scripture and from the transactions of history were not wanting to support this view of the relation of the two world-powers. Thus Christ's payment of tribute money was cited as proof that he regarded the temporal power as superior to the spiritual; and again, his submission to the jurisdiction of the Roman tribunal was held to be a recognition on his part of the supremacy of the civil authority. Further, the gifts of Pepin and Charlemagne to the Roman See made the Popes, it was maintained, the vassals of the Emperors. The third theory, the one held by the Papal party, maintained that the ordained relation of the two powers was the subordination of the temporal to the spiritual authority. This view was maintained by such texts of Scripture as these: "But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man;" [Footnote: 1 Cor. ii. 15.] "See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out and to pull down, and to destroy and to throw down, to build and to plant." [Footnote: Jer. i. 10.] The conception was further illustrated by such comparisons as the following. As God has set in the heavens two lights, the sun and the moon, so has he established on earth two powers, the spiritual and the temporal; but as the moon is inferior to the sun and receives its light from it, so is the Emperor inferior to the Pope and receives all power from him. Again, the two authorities were likened to the soul and body; as the former rules over the latter, so is it ordered that the spiritual power shall rule over and subject the temporal. The first theory was the impracticable dream of lofty souls who forgot that men are human. Christendom was virtually divided into two hostile camps, the members of which were respectively supporters of the Imperial and the Papal theory. The most interesting and instructive chapters of mediæval history after the tenth century are those that record the struggles between Pope and Emperor, springing from their efforts to reduce to practice these irreconcilable theories. [Footnote: For a most admirable presentation of this whole subject, consult Bryce's _The Holy Roman Empire._] SECOND PERIOD.--THE AGE OF REVIVAL. (FROM THE OPENING OF THE ELEVENTH CENTURY TO THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA BY COLUMBUS IN 1492.) CHAPTER XL. FEUDALISM AND CHIVALRY. 1. FEUDALISM. FEUDALISM DEFINED.--Feudalism is the name given to a special form of society and government, based upon a peculiar military tenure of land which prevailed in Europe during the latter half of the Middle Ages, attaining, however, its most perfect development in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. A feudal estate, which might embrace a few acres or an entire province, was called a _fief_, or _feud_, whence the term Feudalism. The person granting a fief was called the _suzerain_, _liege_, or _lord;_ the one receiving it, his _vassal_, _liegeman_, or _retainer_. THE IDEAL SYSTEM.--The few definitions given above will render intelligible the following explanation of the theory of the Feudal System. In theory, all the soil of the country was held by the king as a fief from God (in practice, the king's title was his good sword), granted on conditions of fealty to right and justice. Should the king be unjust or wicked, he forfeited the kingdom, and it might be taken from him and given to another. According to Papal theorists it was the Pope who, as God's vicar on earth, had the right to pronounce judgment against a king, depose him, and put another in his place. In the same way that the king received his fief from God, so he might grant it out in parcels to his chief men, they, in return for it, promising, in general, to be faithful to him as their lord, and to serve and aid him. Should these men, now vassals, be in any way untrue to their engagement, they forfeited their fiefs, and these might be resumed by their suzerain and bestowed upon others. In like manner these immediate vassals of the king or suzerain might parcel out their domains in smaller tracts to others, on the same conditions as those upon which they had themselves received theirs; and so on down through any number of stages. We have thus far dealt only with the soil of a country. We must next notice what disposition was made of the people under this system. The king in receiving his fief was intrusted with sovereignty over all persons living upon it: he became their commander, their lawmaker, and their judge--in a word, their absolute and irresponsible ruler. Then, when he parcelled out his fief among his great men, he invested them, within the limits of the fiefs granted, with all his own sovereign rights. Each vassal became a virtual sovereign in his own domain. And when these great vassals divided their fiefs and granted them to others, they in turn invested their vassals with those powers of sovereignty with which they themselves had been clothed. Thus every holder of a fief became "monarch of all he surveyed." To illustrate the workings of the system, we will suppose the king or suzerain to be in need of an army. He calls upon his own immediate vassals for aid; these in turn call upon their vassals; and so the order runs down through the various ranks of retainers. The retainers in the lowest rank rally around their respective lords, who, with their bands, gather about their lords, and so on up through the rising tiers of the system, until the immediate vassals of the suzerain, or chief lord, present themselves before him with their graduated trains of followers. The array constitutes a feudal army,--a splendidly organized body in theory, but in fact an extremely poor instrument for warfare. Such was the ideal feudal state. It is needless to say that the ideal was never perfectly realized. The system simply made more or less distant approaches to it in the several European countries. ROMAN AND TEUTONIC ELEMENTS IN THE SYSTEM.--Like many another institution that grew up on the conquered soil of the empire. Feudalism was of a composite character; that is, it contained both Roman and Teutonic elements. The spirit of the institution was barbarian, but the form was classical. We might illustrate the idea we are trying to convey, by referring to the mediæval papal church. It, while Hebrew in spirit, was Roman in form. It had shaped itself upon the model of the empire, and was thoroughly imperial in its organization. Thus was it with Feudalism. Beneath the Roman garb it assumed, beat a German life. THE CEREMONY OF HOMAGE.--A fief was conferred by a very solemn and peculiar ceremony called homage. The person about to become a vassal, kneeling with uncovered head, placed his hands in those of his future lord, and solemnly vowed to be henceforth his man (Latin _homo_, whence "homage"), and to serve him faithfully even with his life. This part of the ceremony, sealed with a kiss, was what properly constituted the ceremony of homage. It was accompanied by an oath of fealty, and the whole was concluded by the act of investiture, whereby the lord put his vassal in actual possession of the land, or by placing in his hand a clod of earth or a twig, symbolized the delivery to him of the estate for which he had just now done homage and sworn fealty. THE RELATIONS OF LORD AND VASSAL.--In general terms the duty of the vassal was service; that of the lord, protection. The most honorable service required of the vassal, and the one most willingly rendered in a martial age, was military aid. The liegeman must always be ready to follow his lord upon his military expeditions; he must defend his lord in battle; if he should be unhorsed, must give him his own animal; and, if he should be made a prisoner, must offer himself as a hostage for his release. Among other incidents attaching to a fief were _escheat_, _forfeiture_, and _aids_. By Escheat was meant the falling back of the fief into the hands of the lord through failure of heirs. If the fief lapsed through disloyalty or other misdemeanor on the part of the vassal, this was known as Forfeiture. Aids were sums of money which the lord had a right to demand, in order to defray the expense of knighting his eldest son, of marrying his eldest daughter, or for ransoming his own person in case of captivity. The chief return that the lord was bound to make to the vassal as a compensation for these various services, was counsel and protection--by no means a small return in an age of turmoil and insecurity. DEVELOPMENT OF THE FEUDAL SYSTEM.--After the death of Charlemagne and the partition of his great empire among his feeble successors, it seemed as though the world was again falling back into chaos. The bonds of society seemed entirely broken. The strong oppressed the weak; the nobles became highway-robbers and marauders. It was this distracted state of things that, during the ninth and tenth centuries, caused the rapid development of the Feudal System. It was the only form of social organization, the only form of government that it was practicable to maintain in that rude, transitional age. All classes of society, therefore, hastened to enter the system, in order to secure the protection which it alone could afford. Kings, princes, and wealthy persons who had large landed possessions which they had never parcelled out as fiefs, were now led to do so, that their estates might be held by tenants bound to protect them by all the sacred obligations of homage and fealty. Again, the smaller proprietors who held their estates by allodial tenure voluntarily surrendered them into the hands of some neighboring lord, and then received them again from him as fiefs, that they might claim protection as vassals. They deemed this better than being robbed of their property altogether. Thus it came that almost all the allodial lands of France, Germany, Italy, and Northern Spain were, during the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, converted into feudal estates, or fiefs. Moreover, for like reasons and in like manner, churches, monasteries, and cities became members of the Feudal System. They granted out their vast possessions as fiefs, and thus became suzerains and lords. Bishops and abbots became the heads of great bands of retainers, and led military expeditions, like temporal chiefs. On the other hand, these same monasteries and towns, as a means of security and protection, did homage to some powerful lord, and thus came in vassalage to him. In this way were Church and State, all classes of society from the wealthiest suzerain to the humblest tenant, bound together by feudal ties. Everything was impressed with the stamp of Feudalism. CLASSES OF FEUDAL SOCIETY.--Besides the nobility, or the landed class, there were under the Feudal System three other classes, namely, _freemen_, _serfs_ or _villeins_, and _slaves._ These lower classes made up the great bulk of the population of a feudal state. The freemen were the inhabitants of chartered towns, and in some countries the yeomanry, or small farmers, who did not hold their lands by a regular feudal tenure. The serfs, or villeins, were the laborers who cultivated the ground. The peculiarity of their condition was that they were not allowed to move from the estate where they lived, and when the land was sold they passed with it just like any fixture. The slaves constituted a still lower class made up of captives in war or of persons condemned to bondage as a penalty for crime. These chattel slaves, however, almost disappeared before the thirteenth century, being converted into the lowest order of serfs, which was a step toward freedom. CASTLES OF THE NOBLES.--The lawless and violent character of the times during which Feudalism prevailed is well shown by the nature of the residences of the nobles. These were strong stone fortresses, usually perched upon some rocky eminence, and defended by moats and towers. France, Germany, Italy, Northern Spain, England, and Scotland, in which countries the Feudal System became most thoroughly developed, fairly bristled with these fortified residences of the nobility. One of the most striking and picturesque features of the scenery of many districts of Europe at the present time is the ivy-mantled towers and walls of these feudal castles, now falling into ruins. CAUSES OF THE DECAY OF FEUDALISM.--Chief among the various causes which undermined and at length overthrew Feudalism, were the hostility to the system of the kings and the common people, the Crusades, the revolt of the cities, and the introduction of fire-arms in the art of war. [Illustration: FEUDAL CASTLE AT ROUEN.] The Feudal System was hated and opposed by both the royal power and the people. Kings opposed it and sought to break it down, because it left them only the semblance of power. The people always hated it for the reason that under it they were regarded as of less value than the game in the lord's hunting-park. The Crusades, or Holy Wars, that agitated all Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries did much to weaken the power of the nobles; for in order to raise money for their expeditions, they frequently sold or mortgaged their estates, and in this way power and influence passed into the hands of the kings or of the wealthy merchants of the cities. Many of the great nobles also perished in battle with the Infidels, and their lands escheated to their suzerain, whose domains were thus augmented. The growth of the towns also tended to the same end. As they increased in wealth and influence, they became able to resist the exactions and tyranny of the lord in whose fief they happened to be, and eventually were able to secede, as it were, from his authority, and to make of themselves little republics (see p. 464). Again, the use of gunpowder in war hastened the downfall of Feudalism, by rendering the yeoman foot-soldier equal to the armor-clad knight. "It made all men of the same height." as Carlyle puts it. But it is to be noted that, though Feudalism as a system of government virtually disappeared during the latter part of the mediæval age, it still continued to exist as a social organization. The nobles lost their power and authority as rulers and magistrates, as petty sovereigns, but retained generally their titles, privileges, and social distinctions. DEFECTS OF THE FEUDAL SYSTEM.--Feudalism was perhaps the best form of social organization that it was possible to maintain in Europe during the mediæval period; yet it had many and serious defects, which rendered it very far from being a perfect social or political system. Among its chief faults may be pointed out the two following. First, it rendered impossible the formation of strong national governments. Every country was divided and subdivided into a vast number of practically independent principalities. Thus, in the tenth century France was partitioned among nearly two hundred overlords, all exercising equal and coordinate powers of sovereignty. The enormous estates of these great lords were again divided into about 70,000 smaller fiefs. In theory, as we have seen, the holders of these petty estates were bound to serve and obey their overlords, and these great nobles were in turn the sworn vassals of the French king. But many of these lords were richer and stronger than the king himself, and if they chose to cast off their allegiance to him, he found it impossible to reduce them to obedience. A second evil of the institution was its exclusiveness. It was, in theory, only the person of noble birth that could become the holder of a fief. The feudal lords constituted a proud and oppressive aristocracy. It was only as the lower classes in the different countries gradually wrested from the feudal nobility their special and unfair privileges, that a better form of society arose, and civilization began to make more rapid progress. GOOD RESULTS OF THE SYSTEM.--The most noteworthy of the good results springing from the Feudal System was the development among its privileged members of that individualism, that love of personal independence, which we have seen to be a marked trait of the Teutonic character (see p. 369). Turbulent, violent, and refractory as was the feudal aristocracy of Europe, it performed the grand service of keeping alive during the later mediæval period the spirit of liberty. It prevented Royalty from becoming as despotic as it would otherwise have become. Thus in England, for instance, the feudal lords held such tyrannical rulers as King John in check, until such time as the yeomen and the burghers were bold enough and strong enough alone to resist their despotically inclined sovereigns. In France, where, unfortunately, the power of the feudal nobles was broken too soon,--before the common people, the Third Estate, were prepared to take up the struggle for liberty,--the result was the growth of that autocratic, despotic Royalty which led the French people to the Revolution and the Reign of Terror. Another of the good effects of Feudalism was the impulse it gave to certain forms of polite literature. Just as learning and philosophy were fostered by the seclusion of the cloister, so were poetry and romance fostered by the open and joyous hospitalities of the baronial hall. The castle door was always open to the wandering singer and story-teller, and it was amidst the scenes of festivity within that the ballads and romances of mediæval minstrelsy and literature had their birth. Still another service which Feudalism rendered to civilization was the development within the baronial castle of those ideas and sentiments-- among others, a nice sense of honor and an exalted consideration for the female sex--which found their noblest expression in Chivalry, of which institution and its good effects upon the social life of Europe we shall now proceed to speak. 2. CHIVALRY. CHIVALRY DEFINED: ORIGIN OF THE INSTITUTION.--Chivalry has been, aptly defined as the "Flower of Feudalism." It was a military institution, or order, the members of which, called _knights_, were pledged to the protection of the church, and to the defence of the weak and the oppressed. Although the germs of the system may be found in society before the age of Charlemagne, still Chivalry did not assume its distinctive character until the eleventh century, and died out during the fifteenth. [Illustration: A KNIGHT IN FULL ARMOR. (Drawing by Alphonse de Neuville.)] Chivalry seems to have had France for its cradle. That country at least was its true home. There it was that it exhibited its most complete and romantic development. Yet its influence was felt everywhere and in everything. It colored all the events and enterprises of the latter half of the Middle Ages. The literature of the period is instinct with its spirit. The Crusades, or Holy Wars, the greatest undertakings of the mediæval ages, were predominantly enterprises of the Christian chivalry of Europe. TRAINING OF THE KNIGHT.--When Chivalry had once become established, all the sons of the nobility, save such as were to enter the holy orders of the Church, were set apart and disciplined for its service. The sons of the poorer nobles were usually placed in the family of some superior lord of renown and wealth, whose castle became a sort of school, where they were trained in the duties and exercises of knighthood. This education began at the early age of seven, the youth bearing the name of page or varlet until he attained the age of fourteen, when he acquired the title of squire or esquire. At the age of twenty-one the squire became a knight, being then introduced to the order of knighthood by a peculiar and impressive service. After a long fast and vigil, the candidate listened to a lengthy sermon on his duties as a knight. Then kneeling, as in the feudal ceremony of homage, before the lord conducting the services, he vowed to defend religion and the ladies, to succor the distressed, and ever to be faithful to his companion knights. His arms were now given to him, and his sword was girded on, when the lord, striking him with the flat of his sword on the shoulders or the neck, said, "In the name of God, of St. Michael, and of St. George, I dub thee knight: be brave, bold, and loyal." [Illustration: CONFERRING KNIGHTHOOD ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE.] Sometimes knighthood was conferred with less ceremony upon the battle- field, as the reward of signal bravery or address. THE TOURNAMENT.--The tournament was the favorite amusement of the age of Chivalry. It was a mimic battle between two companies of noble knights, armed usually with pointless swords or blunted lances. In the universal esteem in which the participants were held, it reminds us of the Sacred Games of the Greeks; while in the fierce and sanguinary character it sometimes assumed, especially before it was brought fully under the spirit of Chivalry, it recalls the gladiatorial combats of the Roman amphitheatre. [Illustration: A TOURNAMENT.] DECLINE OF CHIVALRY.--The fifteenth century was the evening of Chivalry. The decline of the system resulted from the operation of the same causes that effected the overthrow of Feudalism. The changes in the mode of warfare which helped to do away with the feudal baron and his mail-clad retainers, likewise tended to destroy knight errantry. And then as civilization advanced, new feelings and sentiments began to claim the attention, and to work upon the imagination of men. Governments, too, became more regular, and the increased order and security of society rendered less needful the services of the gallant knight in behalf of distressed maidens. INFLUENCE OF CHIVALRY.--The system of Chivalry had many vices, chief among which were its exclusive, aristocratic tendencies. An indignant writer declares that "it is not probable that the knights supposed they could be guilty of injustice to the lower classes." These were regarded with indifference or contempt, and considered as destitute of any claims upon those of noble birth as were beasts of burden or the game of the chase. It is always the young and beautiful lady of gentle birth whose wrongs the valiant knight is risking his life to avenge, always the smiles of the "queen of love and beauty" for which he is splintering his lance in the fierce tournament. The fostering of this aristocratic spirit was one of the most serious faults of Chivalry. But to speak of the beneficial, refining influences of Chivalry, we should say that it undoubtedly contributed powerfully to lift that sentiment of respect for the gentler sex that characterized all the Northern nations, into that reverence for womanhood which forms one of the distinguishing characteristics of the present age. Again, Chivalry did much towards producing that type of manhood among us which we rightly think to surpass any ever formed under the influences of antiquity. Just as Christianity gave to the world an ideal manhood which it was to strive to realize, so did Chivalry hold up an ideal to which men were to conform their lives. Men, indeed, have never perfectly realized either the ideal of Christianity or that of Chivalry; but the influence which these two ideals have had in shaping and giving character to the lives of men cannot be overestimated. Together, through the enthusiasm and effort awakened for their realization, they produced a new type of manhood, which we indicate by the phrase "a knightly and Christian character." [Illustration: LANDING IN ENGLAND OF WILLIAM OF NORMANDY. (From the Bayeux Tapestry.) ] CHAPTER XLI. THE NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. INTRODUCTORY.--The history of the Normans--the name, it will be recalled, of the transformed Scandinavians who settled in Northern Gaul (see p. 4l3)--is simply a continuation of the story of the Northmen. The most important of the enterprises of the Normans, and one followed by consequences of the greatest magnitude not only to the conquered people, but indirectly to the world, was their conquest of England. [Footnote: Not long before the Normans conquered England, they succeeded in gaining a foothold in the south of Italy, where they established a sort of republic, which ultimately included the island of Sicily. The fourth president of the commonwealth was the celebrated Robert Guiscard (d. 1085), who spread the renown of the Norman name throughout the Mediterranean lands. This Norman state, converted finally into a kingdom, lasted until late in the twelfth century (1194).] EVENTS LEADING UP TO THE CONQUEST.--In the year 1066 Edward the Confessor died, in whose person, it will be recalled, the old English line was restored after the Danish usurpation (see p. 412). Immediately the Witan, that is, the assembly of the chief men of the nation, in accordance with the dying wish of the king, chose Harold, Earl of the West Saxons, son of the famous Godwin, and the best and strongest man in all England, to be his successor. When the news of the action of the Witan and of Harold's acceptance of the English crown was carried across the channel to William, Duke of Normandy, he was really or feignedly transported with rage. He declared that Edward, who was his cousin, had during his lifetime promised the throne to him, and that Harold had assented to this, and by solemn oath engaged to sustain him. He now demanded of Harold that he surrender to him the usurped throne, threatening the immediate invasion of the island in case he refused. King Harold answered the demand by expelling from the country the Normans who had followed Edward into the kingdom, and by collecting fleets and armies for the defence of his dominions. While Harold was watching the southern coasts against the Normans, a Danish host appeared in the north, led by Tostig, the traitor brother of the English king, and Harold Hardrada, king of Norway. The English army in that quarter, attempting to withstand the invaders, was cut to pieces; and the important city of York fell into the hands of the Northmen. As soon as news of this disaster was borne to King Harold in the south, he instantly marched northward with his army, and at Stamford Bridge met the invaders, and there gained a decisive victory over them. THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS (1066).--The festivities that followed the victory of Stamford Bridge were not yet ended, when a messenger from the south brought to Harold intelligence of the landing of the Normans. Hurrying southward with his army, Harold came face to face with the forces of William at Senlac, a short distance from the port of Hastings. The battle soon opened--the battle that was to determine the fate of England. It was begun by a horseman riding out from the Norman lines and advancing alone toward the English army, tossing up his sword and skilfully catching it as it fell, and singing all the while the stirring battle-song of Charlemagne and Roland (see p. 405). The English watched with astonishment this exhibition of "careless dexterity," and if they did not contrast the vivacity and nimbleness of the Norman foe with their own heavy and clumsy manners, others at least have not failed to do so for them. The battle once joined, the conflict was long and terrific. The day finally went against the English. Harold fell, pierced through the eye by an arrow; and William was master of the field (1066). The conqueror now marched upon London, and at Westminster Abbey, on Christmas Day, 1066, was crowned and anointed king of England. [ILLUSTRATION: BATTLE OF HASTINGS. (From the Bayeux Tapestry.)] THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE LAND.--Almost the first act of William after he had established his power in England was to fulfil his promise to the nobles who had aided him in his enterprise, by distributing among them the unredeemed [Footnote: "When the lands of all those who had fought for Harold were confiscated, those who were willing to acknowledge William were allowed to redeem theirs, either paying money at once, or giving hostages for the payment."--Stubbs, Const. Hist. I. 258.] estates of the English who had fought at Hastings in defence of their king and country. Large as was the number of these confiscated estates, there would have been a lack of land to satisfy all, had not subsequent uprisings against the authority of William afforded him an opportunity to confiscate almost all the soil of England as forfeited by treason. Profiting by the lesson taught by the wretched condition of France, which country was kept in a state of constant turmoil by a host of feudal chiefs and lords many of whom were almost or quite as powerful as the king himself, William took care that in the distribution no feudatory should receive an entire shire, save in two or three exceptional cases. To the great lord to whom he must needs give a large fief, he granted, not a continuous tract of land, but several estates, or manors, scattered in different parts of the country, in order that there might be no dangerous concentration of property or power in the hands of the vassal. He also required of all the sub-vassals of the realm, in addition to their oath of allegiance to their own lord, an oath of fealty to the crown. This was a most important modification of feudal custom. On the Continent, the sub- tenant swore allegiance to his own lord simply, and was in duty bound to aid him in all his wars, even in one against the sovereign. But the oath of allegiance to himself exacted by William of all holders of fiefs, just reversed this, and made it the first duty of the sub-vassal, even in the case of a war between his lord and the king, to follow and obey the king. Furthermore, William denied to his feudatories the right of coining money or making laws; and by other wise restrictions upon their power, he saved England from those endless contentions and petty wars that were distracting almost every other country of Europe. THE NORMAN SUCCESSORS OF THE CONQUEROR.--For nearly three-quarters of a century after the death of William the Conqueror, England was ruled by Norman kings. [Footnote: William II., known as Rufus "the Red" (1087- 1100); Henry I., surnamed Beauclerc, "the good scholar" (1100-1135); and Stephen of Blois (1135-1154). William and Henry were sons, and Stephen a grandson, of the conqueror.] The latter part of this period was a troublous time. The succession to the crown coming into dispute, civil war broke out. The result of the contention was a decline in the royal power, and the ascendency of the Norman barons, who for a time made England the scene of the same feudal anarchy that prevailed at this time upon the Continent. Finally, in 1154, the Norman dynasty gave place to that of the Plantagenets. Under Henry II., the first king of the new house, and an energetic and strong ruler, the barons were again brought into proper subjection to the crown, and many castles which had been built without royal permission during the preceding anarchical period, and some of which at least were little better than robbers' dens, were destroyed. ADVANTAGES TO ENGLAND OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST.--The most important and noteworthy result of the Norman Conquest of England, was the establishment in the island of a strong centralized government. England now for the first time became a real kingdom. A second result of the Conquest was the founding of a new feudal aristocracy. Even to this day there is a great preponderance of Norman over English blood in the veins of the nobility of England. A third result was the bringing of England into more intimate relations with the nations of continental Europe, by which means her advance in art, science, and general culture was greatly promoted. [Illustration: CRUSADERS ON THE MARCH.] CHAPTER XLII. THE CRUSADES. (1096-1272.) 1. INTRODUCTORY: CAUSES OF THE CRUSADES. GENERAL STATEMENT.--The Crusades were great military expeditions undertaken by the Christian nations of Europe for the purpose of rescuing from the hands of the Mohammedans the holy places of Palestine. They were eight in number, the first four being sometimes called the Principal Crusades, and the remaining four the Minor Crusades. Besides these there were a Children's Crusade, and several other expeditions, which, being insignificant in numbers or results, are not usually enumerated. CAUSES OF THE CRUSADES.--Among the early Christians it was thought a pious and meritorious act to undertake a journey to some sacred place. Especially was it thought that a pilgrimage to the land that had been trod by the feet of the Saviour of the world, to the Holy City that had witnessed his martyrdom, was a peculiarly pious undertaking, and one which secured for the pilgrim the special favor and blessing of Heaven. The Saracen caliphs, for the four centuries and more that they held possession of Palestine, pursued usually an enlightened policy towards the pilgrims, even encouraging pilgrimages as a source of revenue. But in the eleventh century the Seljukian Turks, a prominent Tartar tribe, zealous proselytes of Islam, wrested from the caliphs almost all their Asiatic possessions. The Christians were not long in realizing that power had fallen into new hands. Pilgrims were insulted and persecuted in every way. The churches in Jerusalem were destroyed or turned into stables. Now, if it were a meritorious thing to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre, much more would it be a pious act to rescue the sacred spot from the profanation of infidels. This was the conviction that changed the pilgrim into a warrior,--this the sentiment that for two centuries and more stirred the Christian world to its profoundest depths, and cast the population of Europe in wave after wave upon Asia. Although this religious feeling was the principal cause of the Crusades, still there was another concurring cause which must not be overlooked. This was the restless, adventurous spirit of the Teutonic peoples of Europe, who had not as yet outgrown their barbarian instincts. The feudal knights and lords, just now animated by the rising spirit of chivalry, were very ready to enlist in an undertaking so consonant with their martial feelings and their new vows of knighthood. PREACHING OF PETER THE HERMIT.--The _immediate_ cause of the First Crusade was the preaching of Peter the Hermit, a native of Picardy, in France. Having been commissioned by Pope Urban II. to preach a crusade, the Hermit traversed all Italy and France, addressing everywhere, in the church, in the street, and in the open field, the crowds that flocked about him, moving all hearts with sympathy or firing them with indignation, as he recited the sufferings of their brethren at the hands of the infidels, or pictured the profanation of the holy places, polluted by the presence and insults of the unbelievers. THE COUNCILS OF PLACENTIA AND CLERMONT.--While Peter the Hermit had been arousing the warriors of the West, the Turks had been making constant advances in the East, and were now threatening Constantinople itself. The Greek emperor (Alexius Comnenus) sent urgent letters to the Pope, asking for aid against the infidels, representing that, unless assistance was extended immediately, the capital with all its holy relics must soon fall into the hands of the barbarians. Urban called a great council of the Church at Placentia, in Italy, to consider the appeal (1095), but nothing was effected. Later in the same year a new council was convened at Clermont, in France, Urban purposely fixing the place of meeting among the warm tempered and martial Franks. The Pope himself was one of the chief speakers. He was naturally eloquent, so that the man, the cause, and the occasion all conspired to achieve one of the greatest triumphs of human oratory. He pictured the humiliation and misery of the provinces of Asia; the profanation of the places made sacred by the presence and footsteps of the Son of God; and then he detailed the conquests of the Turks, until now, with all Asia Minor in their possession, they were threatening Europe from the shores of the Hellespont. "When Jesus Christ summons you to his defence," exclaimed the eloquent pontiff, "let no base affection detain you in your homes; whoever will abandon his house, or his father, or his mother, or his wife, or his children, or his inheritance, for the sake of my name, shall be recompensed a hundred-fold, and possess life eternal." Here the enthusiasm of the vast assembly burst through every restraint. With one voice they cried, _Dieu le volt! Dieu le volt!_ "It is the will of God! It is the will of God!" Thousands immediately affixed the cross to their garments, [Footnote: Hence the name Crusade given to the Holy Wars, from old French _crois_ cross.] as a pledge of their sacred engagement to go forth to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre. The fifteenth day of August of the following year was set for the departure of the expedition. 2. THE FIRST CRUSADE (1096-1099). MUSTERING OF THE CRUSADERS.--All Western Europe now rang with the cry, "He who will not take up his cross and follow me, is not worthy of me." The contagion of enthusiasm seized all classes; for while the religious feelings of the age had been specially appealed to, all the various sentiments of ambition, chivalry, love of license, had also been skilfully enlisted on the side of the undertaking. The council of Clermont had declared Europe to be in a state of peace, and pronounced anathemas against any one who should invade the possessions of a prince engaged in the holy war. By further edicts of the assembly, the debtor was released from meeting his obligations while a soldier of the Cross, and during this period the interest on his debt was to cease; and the criminal, as soon as he assumed the badge of the crusader, was by that act instantly absolved from all his sins of whatever nature. Under such inducements princes and nobles, bishops and priests, monks and anchorites, saints and sinners, rich and poor, hastened to enroll themselves beneath the consecrated banner. "Europe," says Michaud, "appeared to be a land of exile, which every one was eager to quit." THE VANGUARD.--Before the regular armies of the crusaders were ready to move, those who had gathered about Peter the Hermit, becoming impatient of delay, urged him to place himself at their head and lead them at once to the Holy Land. Dividing command of the mixed multitudes with a poor knight, called Walter the Penniless, and followed by a throng of about 80,000 persons, among whom were many women and children, the Hermit set out for Constantinople by the overland route through Germany and Hungary. Thousands of the crusaders fell in battle with the natives of the countries through which they marched, and thousands more perished miserably of hunger and exposure. Those that crossed the Bosporus were surprised by the Turks, and almost all were slaughtered. Thus perished the forlorn hope of the First Crusade. MARCH OF THE MAIN BODY.--Meanwhile there were gathering in the West disciplined armies composed of men worthy to be champions of the holy cause they had espoused. Godfrey of Bouillon, Duke of Lorraine, and Tancred, "the mirror of knighthood," were among the most noted of the leaders of the different divisions of the army. The expedition numbered about 700,000 men, of whom fully 100,000 were mailed knights. The crusaders traversed Europe by different routes and reassembled at Constantinople. Crossing the Bosporus, they first captured Nicæa, the Turkish capital, in Bithynia, and then set out across Asia Minor for Syria. The line of their dreary march between Nicæa and Antioch was whitened with the bones of nearly one-half their number. Arriving at Antioch, the survivors captured that place, and then, after some delays, pushed on towards Jerusalem. When at length the Holy City burst upon their view, a perfect delirium of joy seized the crusaders. They embraced one another with tears of joy, and even embraced and kissed the ground on which they stood. As they passed on, they took off their shoes, and marched with uncovered head and bare feet, singing the words of the prophet: "Jerusalem, lift up thine eyes, and behold the liberator who comes to break thy chains." The first assault made by the Christians upon the walls of the city was repulsed; but the second was successful, and the city was in the hands of the crusaders (1099). A terrible slaughter of the infidels now took place. For seven days the carnage went on, at the end of which time scarcely any of the Moslem faith were left alive. The Christians took possession of the houses and property of the infidels, each soldier having a right to that which he had first seized and placed his mark upon. FOUNDING OF THE LATIN KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM.--No sooner was Jerusalem in the hands of the crusaders than they set themselves to the task of organizing a government for the city and country they had conquered. The government which they established was a sort of feudal league, known as the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. At its head was placed Godfrey of Bouillon, the most valiant and devoted of the crusader knights. The prince refused the title and vestments of royalty, declaring that he would never wear a crown of gold in the city where his Lord and Master had worn a crown of thorns. The only title he would accept was that of "Defender of the Holy Sepulchre." Many of the crusaders, considering their vows fulfilled, now set out on their return to their homes, some making their way back by sea and some by land. Godfrey, Tancred, and a few hundred other knights, were all that stayed behind to maintain the conquests that had been made, and to act as guardians of the holy places. 3. THE SECOND CRUSADE (1147-1149). ORIGIN OF THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS OF KNIGHTHOOD.--In the interval between the Second and the Third Crusade, the two famed religious military orders, known as the Hospitallers and the Templars, [Footnote: The Hospitallers, or Knights of St. John, took their name from the fact that the organization was first formed among the monks of the Hospital of St. John, at Jerusalem; while the Templars, or Knights of the Temple, were so called on account of one of the buildings of the brotherhood occupying the site of Solomon's Temple.] were formed. A little later, during the Third Crusade, still another fraternity, known as the Teutonic Knights was established. The objects of all the orders were the care of the sick and wounded crusaders, the entertainment of Christian pilgrims, the guarding of the holy places, and ceaseless battling for the Cross. These fraternities soon acquired a military fame that was spread throughout the Christian world. They were joined by many of the most illustrious knights of the West, and through the gifts of the pious acquired great wealth, and became possessed of numerous estates and castles in Europe as well as in Asia. PREACHING OF ST. BERNARD; FAILURE OF THE CRUSADE.--In the year 1146, the city of Edessa, the bulwark of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem on the side towards Mesopotamia, was taken by the Turks, and the entire population was slaughtered, or sold into slavery. This disaster threw the entire West into a state of the greatest alarm, lest the little Christian state, established at such cost of tears and suffering, should be completely overwhelmed, and all the holy places should again fall into the hands of the infidels. The scenes that marked the opening of the First Crusade were now repeated in all the countries of the West. St. Bernard, an eloquent monk, was the second Peter the Hermit, who went everywhere, arousing the warriors of the Cross to the defence of the birthplace of their religion. The contagion of the holy enthusiasm seized not only barons, knights, and the common people, which classes alone participated in the First Crusade, but kings and emperors were now infected with the sacred frenzy. Conrad III., emperor of Germany, was persuaded to leave the affairs of his distracted empire in the hands of God, and consecrate himself to the defence of the sepulchre of Christ. Louis VII., king of France, was led to undertake the crusade through remorse for an act of great cruelty that he had perpetrated upon some of his revolted subjects. [Footnote: The act which troubled the king's conscience was the burning of thirteen hundred people in a church, whither they had fled for refuge.] The strength of both the French and the German division of the expedition was wasted in Asia Minor, and the crusade accomplished nothing. 4. THE THIRD CRUSADE (1189-1192). THE THREE LEADERS.--The Third Crusade was caused by the capture of Jerusalem (1187) by Saladin, the sultan of Egypt. Three of the great sovereigns of Europe, Frederick Barbarossa of Germany, Philip Augustus of France, and Richard I. of England, assumed the Cross, and set out, each at the head of a large army, for the recovery of the Holy City. The English king, Richard, afterwards given the title of _Coeur de Lion_, the "Lion-hearted," in memory of his heroic exploits in Palestine, was the central figure among the Christian knights of this crusade. He raised money for the enterprise by the persecution and robbery of the Jews; by the imposition of an unusual tax upon all classes; and by the sale of offices, dignities, and the royal lands. When some one expostulated with him on the means employed to raise money, he declared that "he would sell the city of London, if he could find a purchaser." DEATH OF FREDERICK BARBAROSSA: SIEGE OF ACRE.--The German army, attempting the overland route, was consumed in Asia Minor by the hardships of the march and the swords of the Turks. The Emperor Frederick, according to the most probable accounts, was drowned while crossing a swollen stream, and the most of the survivors of his army, disheartened by the loss of their leader, returned to Germany. The English and French kings finally mustered their forces beneath the walls of Acre, which city the Christians were then besieging. It is estimated that 600,000 men were engaged in the investment of the place. After one of the longest and most costly sieges they ever carried on in Asia, the crusaders at last forced the place to capitulate, in spite of all the efforts of Saladin to render the garrison relief. RICHARD AND SALADIN.--The knightly adventures and chivalrous exploits which mark the career of Richard in the Holy Land read like a romance. Nor was the chief of the Mohammedans, the renowned Saladin, lacking in any of those knightly virtues with which the writers of the time invested the character of the English hero. At one time, when Richard was sick with a fever, Saladin, knowing that he was poorly supplied with delicacies, sent him a gift of the choicest fruits of the land. And on another occasion, Richard's horse having been killed in battle, the sultan caused a fine Arabian steed to be led to the Christian camp as a present for his rival. For two years did Richard the Lion-hearted vainly contend in almost daily combat with his generous antagonist for the possession of the tomb of Christ. He finally concluded a truce of three years and eight months with Saladin, which provided that the Christians during that period should have free access to the holy places, and remain in undisturbed possession of the coast from Jaffa to Tyre. 5. THE FOURTH CRUSADE (1202-1204). CAPTURE OF CONSTANTINOPLE BY THE LATINS.--None of the Crusades after the Third effected much in the Holy Land; either their force was spent before reaching it, or they were diverted from their purpose by different objects and ambitions. The crusaders of the Fourth expedition captured Constantinople instead of Jerusalem. The circumstances were these: A usurper had seized upon the Byzantine throne. The rightful claimant, Alexius, besought the aid of the Frankish warriors to regain the sceptre. The Christian knights listened favorably to his appeals. The Venetians, in consideration of a share of the conquests that might be made, also joined their forces to those of the crusaders. Constantinople was taken by storm, and Alexius was invested with the Imperial authority. Scarcely was Alexius seated upon the throne, before the turbulent Greeks engaged in a revolt which resulted in his death. The crusaders now resolved to take possession of the capital, and set a Latin prince on the throne of Constantine. The determination was carried out. Constantinople was taken a second time by storm, and sacked, and Baldwin, Count of Flanders, was crowned Emperor of the East. The Latin empire thus established lasted only a little over half a century (1204-1261). The Greeks, at the end of this period, succeeded in regaining the throne, which they then held until the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453. 6. CLOSE OF THE CRUSADES: THEIR RESULTS. THE CHILDREN'S CRUSADE (1212).--During the interval between the Fourth and the Fifth Crusade, the epidemical fanaticism that had so long agitated Europe seized upon the children, resulting in what is known as the Children's Crusade. The preacher of this crusade was a child about twelve years of age, a French peasant lad, named Stephen, who became persuaded that Jesus Christ had commanded him to lead a crusade of children to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre. The children became wild with excitement, and flocked in vast crowds to the places appointed for rendezvous. Nothing could restrain them or thwart their purpose. "Even bolts and bars," says an old chronicler, "could not hold them." The movement excited the most diverse views. Some declared that it was inspired by the Holy Spirit, and quoted such Scriptural texts as these to justify the enthusiasm: "A child shall lead them;" "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast ordained praise." Others, however, were quite as confident that the whole thing was the work of the Devil. The great majority of those who collected at the rallying places were boys under twelve years of age, but there were also many girls. The German children, 50,000 in number, crossed the Alps, and marched down the Italian shores, looking for a miraculous pathway through the Mediterranean. From Brundusium 2000 or 3000 of the little crusaders sailed away into oblivion. Not a word ever came back from them. The French children--about 30,000 in number--set out from the place of rendezvous for Marseilles. Those that sailed from that port were betrayed, and sold as slaves in Alexandria and other Mohammedan slave markets. This remarkable spectacle of the children's crusade affords the most striking exhibition possible of the ignorance, superstition, and fanaticism that characterized the period. Yet we cannot but reverence the holy enthusiasm of an age that could make such sacrifices of innocence and helplessness in obedience to what was believed to be the will of God. The children's expedition marked at once the culmination and the decline of the crusading movement. The fanatic zeal that inspired the first crusaders was already dying out. "These children," said the Pope, referring to the young crusaders, "reproach us with having fallen asleep, whilst they were flying to the assistance of the Holy Land." THE MINOR CRUSADES: END OF THE KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM.--The last four expeditions--the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth--undertaken by the Christians of Europe against the infidels of the East, may be conveniently grouped as the Minor Crusades. They were marked by a less fervid and holy enthusiasm than that which characterized the first movements, and exhibit among those taking part in them the greatest variety of objects and ambitions. [Footnote: The _Fifth Crusade_ (1216-1220) was led by the kings of Hungary and Cyprus. Its strength was wasted in Egypt, and it resulted in nothing The _Sixth Crusade_ (1227-1229), headed by Frederick II. of Germany, succeeded in securing from the Saracens the restoration of Jerusalem, together with several other cities of Palestine. The _Seventh Crusade_ (1249-1254) was under the lead of Louis IX. Of France, surnamed the Saint. The _Eighth Crusade_ (1270-1272) was incited by the fresh misfortunes that, towards the close of the thirteenth century, befell the Christian kingdom in Palestine. The two principal leaders of the expedition were Louis IX. of France, and Prince Edward of England, afterwards Edward I. Louis directed his forces against the Moors about Tunis, in North Africa. Here the king died of the plague. Nothing was effected by this division of the expedition. The division led by the English prince, was, however, more fortunate. Edward succeeded in capturing Nazareth, and in compelling the sultan of Egypt to agree to a treaty favorable to the Christians (1272).] The flame of the Crusades had burned itself out, and the fate of the little Christian kingdom in Asia, isolated from Europe, and surrounded on all sides by bitter enemies, became each day more and more apparent. Finally the last of the places (Acre) held by the Christians fell before the attacks of the Mamelukes of Egypt, and with this event the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem came to an end (1291). The second great combat between Mohammedanism and Christianity was over, and "silence reigned along the shore that had so long resounded with the world's debate." RESULTS OF THE CRUSADES.--The Crusades kept all Europe in a tumult for two centuries, and directly and indirectly cost Christendom several millions of lives (from 2,000,000 to 6,000,000 according to different estimates), besides incalculable expenditures in treasure and suffering. They were, moreover, attended by all the disorder, license, and crime with which war is always accompanied. On the other hand, the Holy Wars were productive indirectly of so much and lasting good that they form a most important factor in the history of the progress of civilization. To show this to be so, we will speak briefly of their influence upon the Church, and upon the political, the social, the intellectual, and the material progress and development of the European nations. The Crusades contributed to increase the wealth of the Church and the power of the Papacy. Thus the prominent part which the Popes took in the enterprises naturally fostered their authority and influence, by placing in their hands, as it were, the armies and resources of Christendom, and accustoming the people to look to them as guides and leaders. As to the wealth of the churches and monasteries, this was augmented enormously by the sale to them, often for a mere fraction of their actual value, of the estates of those preparing for the expeditions, or by the out and out gift of the lands of such in return for prayers and pious benedictions. Again, thousands of the crusaders, returning broken in spirits and in health, sought an asylum in cloistral retreats, and endowed the establishments that they entered with all their worldly goods. Besides all this, the stream of the ordinary gifts of piety was swollen by the extraordinary fervor of religious enthusiasm which characterized the period into enormous proportions. In all these ways, the power of the Papacy and the wealth of the Church were vastly augmented. [Footnote: It should be said in regard to this increase in the riches of the Church and the authority of the Popes, that while Catholics count this as one of the good results of the Holy Wars, Protestants consider it as one of the evils of the movements, urging that it led to papal tyranny and to the corruption of monastic morals.] As to the political effects of the Crusades, they helped to break down the power of the feudal aristocracy, and to give prominence to the kings and the people. Many of the nobles who set out on the expeditions never returned, and their estates, through failure of heirs, escheated to the Crown; while many more wasted their fortunes in meeting the expenses of their undertaking. At the same time, the cities also gained many political advantages at the expense of the crusading barons and princes. Ready money in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was largely in the hands of the burgher class, and in return for the contributions and loans they made to their overlords, or suzerains, they received charters conferring special and valuable privileges. And under this head of the political effects of the Crusades, it should be noticed that, in checking the advance of the Turks, they postponed the fall of Constantinople for three centuries or more. This gave the young Christian civilization of Germany time to acquire sufficient strength to roll back the returning tide of Mohammedan invasion when it broke upon Europe in the fifteenth century. The effects of the Crusades upon the social life of the Western nations were marked and important. Giving opportunity for romantic adventure, they were one of the principal fostering influences of Chivalry; while by bringing the rude peoples of the West in contact with the culture of the East, they exerted upon them a general refining influence. The influence of the Crusades upon the intellectual development of Europe can hardly be overestimated. Above all, they liberalized the minds of the crusaders. Furthermore, the knowledge of the science and learning of the East gained by the crusaders through their expeditions, greatly stimulated the Latin intellect, and helped to awaken in Western Europe that mental activity which resulted finally in the great intellectual outburst known as the Revival of Learning (see p. 471). Among the effects of the Holy Wars upon the material development of Europe must be mentioned the spur they gave to commercial enterprise, especially to the trade and commerce of the Italian cities. During this period, Venice, Pisa, and Genoa acquired great wealth and reputation through the fostering of their trade by the needs of the crusaders, and the opening up of the East. The Mediterranean was whitened with the sails of their transport ships, which were constantly plying between the various ports of Europe and the towns of the Syrian coast. Moreover, various arts, manufactures, and inventions before unknown in Europe, were introduced from Asia. This enrichment of the civilization of the West with the "spoils of the East" we may allow to be emblemized by the famous bronze horses that the crusaders carried off from Constantinople, and set up before St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice. Lastly, the incentive given to geographical discovery led various travellers, such as the celebrated Italian, Marco Polo, and the scarcely less noted Englishman, Sir John Mandeville, to explore the most remote countries of Asia. Even that spirit of maritime enterprise and adventure which rendered illustrious the fifteenth century, inspiring the voyages of Columbus, Vasco de Gama, and Magellan, may be traced back to that lively interest in geographical matters awakened by the expeditions of the crusaders. CHAPTER XLIII. SUPREMACY OF THE PAPACY: DECLINE OF ITS TEMPORAL POWER. INTRODUCTORY.--In a previous chapter we traced the gradual rise of the spiritual and temporal power of the Papacy, and stated the several theories respecting its relation to secular rulers. In the present chapter, we purpose to follow its increasing power to the culmination of its authority in the thirteenth century, and then to speak of some of the circumstances that caused, or that marked, the decline of its temporal power. POPE GREGORY VII. (HILDEBRAND) AND HIS REFORMS.--One of the greatest promoters of the papal fortunes was Pope Gregory VII., perhaps better known as Hildebrand, the most noteworthy character after Charlemagne that the Middle Ages produced. In the year 1049 he was called from the cloisters of a French monastery to Rome, there to become the maker and adviser of Popes, and finally to be himself elevated to the pontifical throne, which he held from 1073 to 1080. Being a man of great force of character and magnificent breadth of view, he did much towards establishing the universal spiritual and temporal sovereignty of the Holy See. In carrying out his purpose of exalting the Papal See above all prelates and princes, Gregory, as soon as he became Pope, set about two important reforms,--the enforcement of celibacy among the secular clergy, and the suppression of simony. By the first measure he aimed to effect not only a much-needed moral reform, but, by separating the clergy from all the attachments of home and neighborhood and country, to render them more devoted to the interests of the Church. The second reform, the correction of simony, had for its ultimate object the freeing of the lands and offices of the Church from the control of temporal lords and princes, and the bringing of them more completely into the hands of the Roman bishop. The evil of simony [Footnote: By simony is meant the purchase of an office in the Church, the name of the offence coming from Simon Magus, who offered Paul money for the gift of working miracles.] had grown up in the Church in the following way: As the feudal system took possession of European society, the Church, like individuals and cities, assumed feudal relations. Thus, as we have already seen, abbots and bishops, as the heads of monasteries and churches, for the sake of protection, became the vassals of powerful barons or princes. When once a prelate had rendered homage for his estates, or temporalities, as they were called, these became thenceforth a permanent fief of the overlord, and upon the death of the holder could be re-bestowed by the lord upon whomsoever he chose. These Church estates and positions that thus came within the gift of the temporal princes were often given to unworthy court favorites, or sold to the highest bidder. So long as a considerable portion of the clergy sustained this vassal relation to the feudal lords, the Papal See could not hope to exercise any great authority over them. To remedy the evil, Gregory issued a decree that no ecclesiastic should do homage to a temporal lord, but that he should receive the ring and staff, the symbols of investiture, from the hands of the Pope alone. Any one who should dare disobey the decree was threatened with the anathemas of the Church. Such was the bold measure by which Gregory proposed to wrest out of the hands of the feudal lords and princes the vast patronage and immense revenues resulting from the relation they had gradually come to sustain to a large portion of the lands and riches of the Church. To realize the magnitude of the proposed revolution, we must bear in mind that the Church at this time was in possession of probably one-half of the lands of Europe. EXCOMMUNICATIONS AND INTERDICTS.--The principal instruments relied upon by Gregory for the carrying out of his reforms were Excommunication and Interdict. The first was directed against individuals. The person excommunicated was cut off from all relations with his fellow-men. If a king, his subjects were released from their oath of allegiance. Any one providing the accursed with food or shelter incurred the wrath of the Church. The Interdict was directed against a city, province, or kingdom. Throughout the region under this ban, the churches were closed; no bell could be rung, no marriage celebrated, no burial ceremony performed. The rites of baptism and extreme unction alone could be administered. These spiritual punishments rarely failed during the eleventh and twelfth centuries in bringing the most contumacious offender to a speedy and abject confession. This will appear in the following paragraph. GREGORY VII. AND HENRY IV. OF GERMANY.--The decree of Gregory respecting the relation of the clergy to the feudal lords created a perfect storm of opposition, not only among the temporal princes and sovereigns of Europe, but also among the clergy themselves. The dispute thus begun distracted Europe for centuries. Gregory experienced the most formidable opposition to his reforms in Germany. The Emperor Henry IV. refused to recognize his decree, and even called a council of the clergy of Germany and deposed him. Gregory in turn gathered a council at Rome, and deposed and excommunicated the emperor. This encouraged a revolt on the part of some of Henry's discontented subjects. He was shunned as a man accursed by heaven. His authority seemed to have slipped entirely out of his hands, and his kingdom was on the point of going to pieces. In this wretched state of his affairs there was but one thing for him to do,--to go to Gregory, and humbly sue for pardon and re-instatement in the favor of the Church. Henry sought the Pontiff at Canossa among the Apennines. But Gregory refused to admit the penitent to his presence. It was winter, and for three successive days the king, clothed in sackcloth, stood with bare feet in the snow of the court-yard of the palace, waiting for permission to kneel at the feet of the Pontiff and to receive forgiveness. On the fourth day the penitent king was admitted to the presence of Gregory, who re- instated him in favor--to the extent of removing the sentence of excommunication (1077). Henry afterwards avenged his humiliation. He raised an army, invaded Italy, and drove Gregory into exile at Salerno, where he died. His last words were, "I have loved justice and hated iniquity, and therefore I die in exile" (1085), But the quarrel did not end here. It was taken up by the successors of Gregory, and Henry was again excommunicated. After maintaining a long struggle with the power of the Church, and with his own sons, who were incited to rebel against him, he at last died of a broken heart (1106). THE POPES AND THE HOHENSTAUFEN EMPERORS.--In the twelfth century began the long and fierce contention--lasting more than a hundred years--between the Papal See and the emperors of the proud House of Hohenstaufen (see p. 504). It was simply the continuation and culmination of the struggle begun long before to decide which should be supreme, the "world-priest" or the "world-king." The outcome was the final triumph of the Roman bishops and the utter ruin of the Hohenstaufen. THE PAPACY AT ITS HEIGHT.--The authority of the Popes was at its height during the thirteenth century. The beginning of this period of papal splendor is marked by the accession to the pontifical throne of Innocent III. (1198-1216), the greatest of the Popes after Gregory VII. Under him was very nearly made good the papal claim that all earthly sovereigns were merely vassals of the Roman Pontiff. Almost all the kings and princes of Europe swore fealty to him as their overlord. "Rome was once more the mistress of the world." POPE INNOCENT III. AND PHILIP AUGUSTUS OF FRANCE.--One of Innocent's most signal triumphs in his contest with the kings of Europe was gained over Philip Augustus (1180-1223) of France. That king having put away his wife, Innocent commanded him to take her back, and forced him to submission by means of an interdict. "This submission of such a prince," says Hallam, "not feebly superstitious like his predecessor Robert, nor vexed with seditions, like the Emperor Henry IV., but brave, firm, and victorious, is perhaps the proudest trophy in the scutcheon of Rome." POPE INNOCENT III. AND KING JOHN OF ENGLAND.--Innocent's quarrel with King John (1199-1216) of England will afford another illustration of the power of the Popes. The See of Canterbury falling vacant, John ordered the monks who had the right of election to give the place to a favorite of his. They obeyed; but the Pope immediately declared the election void, and caused the vacancy to be filled with one of his own friends, Stephen Langton. John declared that the Pope's archbishop should never enter England as primate, and proceeded to confiscate the estates of the See. Innocent III. now laid all England under an interdict, excommunicated John, and incited the French king, Philip Augustus, to undertake a crusade against the contumacious rebel. The outcome of the matter was that John, like the German Emperor before him, was compelled to yield to the power of the Church. He gave back the lands he had confiscated, acknowledged Langton to be the rightful primate of England, and even went so far as to give England to the Pope as a perpetual fief. In token of his vassalage he agreed to pay to the Papal See the annual sum of 1000 marks. This tribute money was actually paid, though with very great irregularity, until the seventeenth year of the reign of Edward I. (1289). THE MENDICANTS, OR BEGGING FRIARS.--The authority of the immediate successors of Innocent III. was powerfully supported by the monastic orders of the Dominicans and Franciscans, established early in the thirteenth century. They were named after their respective founders, St. Dominic (1170-1221) and St. Francis (1182-1226). The principles on which these fraternities were established were very different from those which had shaped all previous monastic institutions. Until now the monk had sought cloistral solitude in order to escape from the world, and through penance and prayer and contemplation to work out his own salvation. In the new orders, the monk was to give himself wholly to the work of securing the salvation of others. Again, the orders were also as _orders_ to renounce all earthly possessions, and, "espousing Poverty as a bride," to rely entirely for support upon the alms of the pious. Hitherto, while the individual members of a monastic order must affect extreme poverty, the house or fraternity might possess any amount of communal wealth. The new fraternities grew and spread with marvellous rapidity, and in less than a generation they quite overshadowed all of the old monastic orders of the Church. The Popes conferred many and special privileges upon them, and they in turn became the staunchest friends and supporters of the Roman See. They were to the Papacy of the thirteenth century what the later order of the Jesuits was to the Roman Church of the seventeenth (see p. 528). REMOVAL OF THE PAPAL SEAT TO AVIGNON (1309).--Having now noticed some of the most prominent circumstances and incidents that marked the gradual advance of the bishops of Rome to almost universal political and ecclesiastical sovereignty, we shall next direct attention to some of the chief events that marked the decline of their temporal power, and prepared the way for the rejection, at a later date, by a large part of Christendom, of their spiritual authority. One of the severest blows given both the temporal and the spiritual authority of the Popes was the removal, in 1309, through the influence of the French king, Philip the Fair, of the papal chair from Rome to Avignon, in Provence, near the frontier of France. Here it remained for a space of about seventy years, an era known in Church history as the Babylonian Captivity. While it was established here, all the Popes were French, and of course all their policies were shaped and controlled by the French kings. "In that city," says Stille, "the Papacy ceased, in the eyes of a very large part of Christendom, to possess that sacred cosmopolitan character which no doubt had had much to do with the veneration and respect with which the Catholic authority had been regarded." THE GREAT SCHISM (1378).--The discontent awakened among the Italians by the situation of the papal court at length led to an open rupture between them and the French party. In 1378 the opposing factions each elected a Pope, and thus there were two heads of the Church, one at Avignon and the other at Rome. The spectacle of two rival Popes, each claiming to be the rightful successor of St. Peter and the sole infallible head of the Church, very naturally led men to question the claims and infallibility of both. It gave the reverence which the world had so generally held for the Roman See a rude shock, and one from which it never recovered. THE CHURCH COUNCILS OF PISA AND CONSTANCE.--Finally, in 1409, a general council of the Church assembled at Pisa, for the purpose of composing the shameful quarrel. This council deposed both Popes, and elected Alexander V. as the supreme head of the Church. But matters instead of being mended hereby were only made worse; for neither of the deposed pontiffs would lay down his authority in obedience to the demands of the council, and consequently there were now three Popes instead of two. In 1414 another council was called, at Constance, for the settlement of the growing dispute. Two of the claimants were deposed, and one resigned. A new Pope was then elected,--Pope Martin V. In his person the Catholic world was again united under a single spiritual head. The schism was outwardly healed, but the wound had been too deep not to leave permanent marks upon the Church. THE REVOLT OF THE TEMPORAL PRINCES.--Taking advantage of the declining authority of the Papal See, the temporal rulers in France, Germany, and England successively revolted, and freed themselves from the authority of the Papacy as touching political or governmental affairs. But it must be borne in mind that the princes or governments that at this time repudiated the temporal authority of the Papal See, did not think of challenging the claims of the Popes to recognition as the supreme head of the _Church_, and the rightful arbiters in all _spiritual_ matters. At the very time that they were striving to emancipate themselves from papal control in temporal matters, they were lending the Church all their strength to punish heresy and schism. Thus the Albigenses [Footnote: See p. 493.] in Southern France, the Lollards [Footnote: See p. 491.] in England, and the Hussites [Footnote: See p. 506.] in Bohemia, were extirpated or punished by the civil authorities, acting either in accordance with the then universal idea of how heresy should be dealt with, or in obedience to the commands of the Roman See. CHAPTER XLIV. CONQUESTS OF THE TURANIAN TRIBES. THE HUNS AND THE HUNGARIANS.--The Huns, of whom we have already told, were the first Turanians that during historic times pushed their way in among the peoples of Europe (see p. 345). The next Turanian invaders of Europe that we need here notice were the Magyars, or Hungarians, another branch of the Hunnic race, who in the ninth century of our era succeeded in thrusting themselves far into the continent, and establishing there the important Kingdom of Hungary. These people, in marked contrast to almost every other tribe of Turanian origin, adopted the manners, customs, and religion of the peoples about them-- became, in a word, thoroughly Europeanized, and for a long time were the main defence of Christian Europe against the Turkish tribes of the same race that followed closely in their footsteps. THE SELJUKIAN TURKS.--The Seljukian Turks, so called from the name of one of their chiefs, are the next Tartar people that thrust themselves prominently upon our notice. It was the capture of the holy places in Palestine by this intolerant race, and their threatening advance towards the Bosporus, that alarmed the Christian nations of Europe, and led to the First Crusade. The blows dealt the empire of the Seljuks by the crusaders, and disputes respecting the succession, caused the once formidable sovereignty to crumble to pieces, only, however, to be replaced by others of equally rapid growth, destined to as quick a decay. THE MONGOLS OR MOGULS.--While the power of the Seljukian Turks was declining in Western Asia, the Mongols, or Moguls, a fierce and utterly untamed Tartar tribe that first issued from the easternmost part of Chinese Tartary, were building up a new dynasty among the various tribes of the central portion of the continent. In the year 1156 was born their greatest chieftain, Temujin, afterwards named Genghis Khan, or "Universal Sovereign," the most terrible scourge that ever afflicted the human race. At the head of vast armies, made up of numerous Turanian hordes, he traversed with sword and torch a great part of Asia. It is estimated that his enormous empire was built up at the cost of fifty thousand cities and towns and five millions of lives,--a greater waste, probably, than resulted from all the Crusades. The successors of Genghis Khan still farther enlarged and strengthened the monarchy, so that it came to embrace, besides the best part of Asia, a considerable portion of Europe as well. At length the immoderately extended empire fell into disorder, and became broken into many petty states. It was restored by Tamerlane, or Timour the Lame (born about 1336), a descendant of Genghis Khan. With his wild Mongolian hordes he traversed anew almost all the countries that had been desolated by the sanguinary marches of his predecessors. The route of the barbarians was everywhere marked by ruined fields and burned villages. Asia has never recovered from the terrible devastation of the Mongol conquerors. Many districts, swarming with life, were entirely swept of their population by these destroyers of the race, and have remained to this day desolate as the tomb. The immense empire of Tamerlane crumbled to pieces after his death. One of its fragments had a remarkable history. This was the dynasty established in India, which became known as the Kingdom of the Great Moguls. This Mongol state lasted upwards of 300 years,--until destroyed by the English in the present century. The magnificence of the court of the Great Moguls at Delhi and Agra is one of the most splendid traditions of the East. THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE. FOUNDING OF THE EMPIRE.--The latest, most permanent, and most important of the Tartar sovereignties was established by the Ottoman Turks, who were an offshoot of the Seljukians. Gradually this martial race seized province after province of the Asiatic possessions of the Byzantine emperors. Through the quarrels that were constantly distracting Constantinople, they at last gained a foothold in Europe (1353). During the reign of Amurath I. (1360-1389), a large part of the country known as Turkey in Europe fell into their hands. CONQUESTS OF BAJAZET (1389-1403).--Amurath was followed by his son Bajazet who, by the rapid advance of his arms, spread the greatest alarm throughout Western Europe. The warriors of Hungary, Germany, and France united their armies to arrest his progress; but their combined forces, numbering 100,000 men, were cut to pieces by the sabres of the Turks on the fatal field of Nicopolis, in Bulgaria (1396). Bajazet now vowed that he would stable his horse in the Cathedral of St. Peter at Rome, and there seemed no power in Christendom to prevent the sacrilege. Before proceeding to fulfil his threat, however, Bajazet turned back to capture Constantinople, which he believed in the present despondent state of its inhabitants would make little or no resistance. Now it happened that just at this time Tamerlane was leading the Mongols on their career of conquest. He directed them against the Turks in Asia Minor, and Bajazet was forced to raise the siege of Constantinople, and hasten across the Bosporus, to check the advance in his dominions of these new enemies. The Turks and Mongols met upon the plains of Angora, where the former suffered a disastrous defeat (1402). The battle of Angora checked for a time the conquests of the Ottomans, and saved Constantinople to the Christian world for another period of fifty years. THE CAPTURE OF CONSTANTINOPLE (1453).--The Ottomans gradually recovered from the blow they had received at Angora. In the year 1421 they made another attempt upon Constantinople, but were unsuccessful. Finally, in the year 1453, Mohammed II., the Great, sultan of the Ottomans, laid siege to the capital, with an army of over 200,000 men. After a short investment, the place was taken by storm. The Cross, which since the time of Constantine the Great had surmounted the dome of St. Sophia, was replaced by the Crescent, which remains to this day. CHECK TO THE OTTOMAN ARMS.--The consternation which the fall of Byzantium created throughout Christendom was like the dismay which filled the world upon the downfall of Rome in the fifth century. All Europe now lay open to the Moslem barbarians, and there seemed nothing to prevent their marching to the Atlantic. But the warriors of Hungary made a valiant stand against the invaders, and succeeded in checking their advance upon the continent, while the Knights of St. John (see p. 443), now established in the island of Rhodes, held them in restraint in the Mediterranean. Mohammed II. did succeed in planting the Crescent upon the shores of Italy--capturing and holding for a year the city of Otranto, in Calabria; but by the time of the death of that energetic prince, the conquering energy of the Ottomans seems to have nearly spent itself, and the limits of their empire were not afterwards materially enlarged. The Turks have ever remained quite insensible to the influences of European civilization, and their government has been a perfect blight and curse to the countries subjected to their rule. They have always been looked upon as intruders in Europe, and their presence there has led to several of the most sanguinary wars of modern times. Gradually they are being pushed out from their European possessions, and the time is probably not very far distant when they will be driven back across the Bosporus, as their Moorish brethren were expelled long ago from the opposite corner of the continent by the Christian chivalry of Spain. CHAPTER XLV. GROWTH OF THE TOWNS: THE ITALIAN CITY-REPUBLICS. RELATION OF THE CITIES TO THE FEUDAL LORDS.--When Feudalism took possession of Europe, the cities became a part of the system. Each town formed a part of the fief in which it happened to be situated, and was subject to all the incidents of feudal ownership. It owed allegiance to its lord, must pay to him feudal tribute, and aid him in his war enterprises. As the cities, through their manufactures and trade, were the most wealthy members of the Feudal System, the lords naturally looked to them for money when in need. Their exactions at last became unendurable, and a long struggle broke out between them and the burghers, which resulted in what is known as the enfranchisement of the towns. It was in the eleventh century that this revolt of the cities against the feudal lords become general. During the course of this and the succeeding century, the greater number of the towns of the countries of Western Europe either bought, or wrested by force of arms, charters from their lords or suzerains. The cities thus chartered did not become independent of the feudal lords, but they acquired the right of managing, with more or less supervision, their own affairs, and were secured against arbitrary and oppressive taxation. This was a great gain; and as, under the protection of their charters, they increased in wealth and population, very many of them grew at last strong enough to cast off all actual dependence upon lord or suzerain, and became in effect independent states --little commonwealths. Especially was this true in the case of the Italian cities, and in a less marked degree in that of the German towns. RISE OF THE ITALIAN CITY-REPUBLICS.--The Italian cities were the first to rise to power and importance. Several things conspired to secure their early and rapid development, but the main cause of their prosperity was their trade with the East, and the enormous impulse given to this commerce by the Crusades. [Illustration: A MEDIÆVAL SIEGE, SHOWING BALLISTAE, ETC. (By Alphonse de Neuville.)] With wealth came power, and all the chief Italian cities became distinct, self-governing states, with just a nominal dependence upon the pope or the emperor. Towards the close of the thirteenth century, Northern and Central Italy was divided among about two hundred contentious little city- republics. Italy had become another Greece. THE ESTABLISHMENT OF TYRANNIES.--Just what happened among the contending republics of Greece took place in the case of the quarrelling city- commonwealths of Italy. Their republican constitutions were overthrown, and the supreme power fell into the hands of an ambitious aristocracy, or was seized by some bold usurper, who often succeeded in making the government hereditary in his family. Before the close of the fourteenth century almost all the republics of the peninsula had become converted into exclusive oligarchies or hereditary principalities. We shall now relate some circumstances, for the most part of a commercial character, which concern some of the most renowned of the Italian city- states. VENICE.--Venice, the most celebrated of the Italian republics, had its beginnings in the fifth century, in the rude huts of some refugees who fled out into the marshes of the Adriatic to escape the fury of the Huns of Attila (see p. 346). Conquests and negotiations gradually extended the possessions of the island-city until she came to control the coasts and waters of the Eastern Mediterranean in much the same way that Carthage had mastery of the Western Mediterranean at the time of the First Punic War. Even before the Crusades her trade with the East was very extensive, and by those expeditions was expanded into enormous proportions. [Illustration: PALACE OF THE DOGES. (From a photograph.)] Venice was at the height of her power during the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. Her supremacy on the sea was celebrated each year by the brilliant ceremony of "Wedding the Adriatic," by the dropping of a ring into the sea. The decline of Venice dates from the fifteenth century. The conquests of the Turks during that century deprived her of much of the territory she held east of the Adriatic, and finally the voyage of Vasco da Gama round the Cape of Good Hope (1497-8), showing a new path to India, gave a death- blow to her commerce. From this time forward, the trade of Europe with the East was to be conducted from the Atlantic ports of the continent instead of from those in the Mediterranean. GENOA.--Genoa, on the western coast of Italy, was the most formidable commercial rival of Venice. The period of her greatest prosperity dates from the recapture of Constantinople from the Latins by the Greeks in 1261; for the Genoese had assisted the Greek princes in the recovery of their throne, and as a reward were shown commercial favors by the Greek emperors. The jealousy with which the Venetians regarded the prosperity of the Genoese led to oft-renewed war between the two rival republics. For nearly two centuries their hostile fleets contended, as did the navies of Rome and Carthage during the First Punic War, for the supremacy of the sea. The merchants of Genoa, like those of Venice, reaped a rich harvest during the Crusades. Their prosperity was brought to an end by the irruption of the Mongols and Turks, and the capture of Constantinople by the latter in 1453. The Genoese traders were now driven from the Black Sea, and their traffic with Eastern Asia was completely broken up; for the Venetians had control of the ports of Egypt and Syria and the southern routes to India and the countries beyond--that is, the routes by way of the Euphrates and the Red Sea. FLORENCE.--Florence, although shut out, by her inland location upon the Arno, from engaging in those naval enterprises that conferred wealth and importance upon the coast cities of Venice and Genoa, became, notwithstanding, through the skill, industry, enterprise, and genius of her citizens, the great manufacturing, financial, literary, and art centre of the Middle Ages. The list of her illustrious citizens, of her poets, statesmen, historians, architects, sculptors, and painters, is more extended than that of any other city of mediæval times; and indeed, as respects the number of her great men, Florence is perhaps unrivalled by any city, excepting Athens, of the ancient or the modern world. [Footnote: In her long roll of fame we find the names of Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Macchiavelli, Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Amerigo Vespucci, and the Medici.] THE HANSEATIC LEAGUE.--From speaking of the Italian city-republics, we must now turn to say a word respecting the free cities of Germany, in which country, next after Italy, the mediæval municipalities had their most perfect development, and acquired their greatest power and influence. [Illustration: ROBBER KNIGHTS.] When, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the towns of Northern Europe began to extend their commercial connections, the greatest drawback to their trade was the general insecurity and disorder that everywhere prevailed. The trader who entrusted his goods designed for the Italian market to the overland routes was in danger of losing them at the hands of the robber nobles, who watched all the lines of travel, and either robbed the merchant outright, or levied an iniquitous toll upon his goods. The plebeian tradesmen, in the eyes of these patrician barons, had no rights which they felt bound to respect. Nor was the way to Italy by the Baltic and the North Sea beset with less peril. Piratical crafts scoured those waters, and made booty of any luckless merchantman they might overpower, or lure to wreck upon the dangerous shores. This state of things led some of the German cities, about the middle of the fourteenth century, to form, for the protection of their merchants, an alliance called the Hanseatic League. The confederation eventually embraced eighty-five of the principal towns of North Germany. In order to facilitate the trading operations of its members, the League established in different parts of the world trading-posts and warehouses. The four most noted centres of the trade of the confederation were the cities of Bruges, London, Bergen, and Novgorod. The League thus became a vast monopoly, which endeavored to control, in the interests of its own members, the entire commerce of Northern Europe. Among other causes of the dismemberment of the association may be mentioned the maritime discoveries of the fifteenth century, which disarranged all the old routes of trade in the north of Europe as well as in the south; the increased security which the formation of strong governments gave to the merchant class upon sea and land; and the heavy expense incident to membership in the association, resulting from its ambitious projects. All these things combined resulted in the decline of the power and usefulness of the League, and finally led to its formal dissolution about the middle of the seventeenth century. INFLUENCE OF THE MEDIÆVAL CITIES.--The chartered towns and free cities of the mediæval era exerted a vast influence upon the commercial, social, artistic, and political development of Europe. They were the centres of the industrial and commercial life of the Middle Ages, and laid the foundations of that vast system of international exchange and traffic which forms a characteristic feature of modern European civilization. Their influence upon the social and artistic life of Europe cannot be overestimated. It was within the walls of the cities that the civilization uprooted by the Teutonic invaders first revived. With their growing wealth came not only power, but those other usual accompaniments of wealth,-- culture and refinement. The Italian cities were the cradle and home of mediæval art, science, and literature. Again, these cities were the birthplace of political liberty, of representative government. It was the burghers, the inhabitants of the cities, that in England, in France, and in Germany finally grew into the Third Estate, or Commons, the controlling political class in all these countries. In a word, municipal freedom was the germ of national liberty. CHAPTER XLVI. THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING. By the Revival of Learning, in the most general sense, is meant the intellectual awakening of Europe after the languor and depression of the first mediæval centuries. In a narrower sense, however, the phrase is used to designate that wonderful renewal of interest in the old Greek and Latin authors which sprung up in Italy about the beginning of the fourteenth century. We shall use the expression in its most comprehensive sense, thus making the restoration of classical letters simply a part of the great Revival of Learning. SCHOLASTICISM AND THE SCHOOLMEN.--One of Charlemagne's most fruitful labors was the establishment of schools, in connection with the cathedrals and monasteries, throughout his dominions. Within these schools there grew up in the course of time a form of philosophy called, from the place of its origin, Scholasticism, while its expounders were known as Schoolmen. This philosophy was a fusion of Christianity and Aristotelian logic. It might be defined as being, in its later stages, an effort to reconcile revelation and reason, faith and philosophy. Viewed in this light, it was not altogether unlike that theological philosophy of the present day whose aim is to harmonize the Bible with the facts of modern science. The greatest of the Schoolmen appeared in the thirteenth century. Among them were Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Thomas Aquinas, and Duns Scotus. The most eminent of these was Thomas Aquinas (died 1274), who was called the "Angel of the Schools." He was the strongest champion of mediæval orthodoxy. His remarkable work, entitled the _Summa Theologica_, outlines and defends the whole scheme of Roman Catholic theology. The Schoolmen often busied themselves with the most unprofitable questions in metaphysics and theology, yet their discussions were not without good results. These debates sharpened the wits of men, created activity of thought and deftness in argument. The schools of the times became real mental gymnasia, in which the young awakening mind of Europe received its first training and gained its earliest strength. THE UNIVERSITIES.--Closely related to the subject of Scholasticism is the history of the universities, which, springing up in the thirteenth century, became a powerful agency in the Revival of Learning. They were for the most part expansions of the old cathedral and abbey schools, their transformation being effected largely through the reputation of the Schoolmen, who drew such multitudes to their lectures that it became necessary to reorganize the schools on a broader basis. Popes and kings granted them charters which conferred special privileges upon their faculties and students, as, for instance, exemption from taxation and from the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts. The celebrated University of Paris was the first founded, and that of Bologna was probably next in order. The usual course of study in the universities was divided into what was known as the _trivium_ and the _quadrivium_. The trivium embraced Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric; the quadrivium, Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, and Music. These constituted the seven liberal arts. Greek, Hebrew, and the physical sciences received but little attention. Medicine had not yet freed itself from the influence of magic and astrology, and alchemy had not yet given birth to chemistry. The Ptolemaic theory of the universe still held sway. However, in all these matters the European mind was making progress, was blindly groping its way towards the light. INFLUENCE OF THE SARACENS.--The progress of the Christian scholars of Europe in the physical sciences was greatly accelerated by the Saracens, who, during the Dark Ages, were almost the sole repositories of the scientific knowledge of the world. A part of this they gathered for themselves, for the Arabian scholars were original investigators, but a larger share of it they borrowed from the Greeks. While the Western nations were too ignorant to know the value of the treasures of antiquity, the Saracens preserved them by translating into Arabic the scientific works of Aristotle and other Greek authors; and then, when Europe was prepared to appreciate these accumulations of the past, gave them back to her. This learning came into Europe in part through the channel of the Crusades, but more largely, and at an earlier date, through the Arabian schools in Spain. Two of the greatest scholars of the thirteenth century, or perhaps of all the mediæval ages, Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus, owed very much of their scientific knowledge to the Arabians. EFFECTS OF THE CRUSADES.--Having in a previous chapter dwelt on the effects of the Crusades upon the intellectual development of the European peoples (see p. 449) there is no need that we here do more than refer to the matter, in order that we may fix in mind the place of the Holy Wars among the agencies that conspired to bring about the Revival of Learning. The stimulating, quickening, liberalizing tendency of these chivalric enterprises was one of the most potent forces concerned in the mental movement we are tracing. RISE OF MODERN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES.--Between the tenth and the fourteenth century the native tongues of Europe. began to form literatures of their own. We have already spoken of the formation and gradual growth of these languages (see p. 386). As soon as their forms became somewhat settled, then literature was possible, and all these speeches bud and blossom into song and romance. This formation of modern European languages and birth of native literatures, was one of the greatest gains in the interest of general intelligence; for the Schoolmen used the Latin language, and their discussions and writings consequently influenced only a limited class; while the native literatures addressed themselves to the masses, and thus stirred the universal mind and heart of Europe. THE REVIVAL OF CLASSICAL LEARNING.--About the beginning of the fourteenth century there sprung up in Italy a great enthusiasm for Greek and Latin literature and art. This is what is generally known as the Italian Renaissance, or the New Birth. The Renaissance divides itself as follows: 1. The revival of classical learning; 2. The revival of classical art. It is with the first only, the intellectual and literary phase of the movement, that we are now concerned. This feature of the movement is called _Humanism_, and the promoters of it are known as _Humanists_. [Footnote: That is, students of the _humanities_, or polite literature.] The real originator of the humanistic movement was Petrarch [Footnote: The great Florentine poet, Dante (1265-1321), was the forerunner of Humanism, but was not, properly speaking, a Humanist. His Divine Comedy is the "Epic of Mediævalism."] (1304-1374). His love for the old Greek and Latin writers was a passion amounting to a worship. He often wrote love-letters to his favorite authors. In one to Homer he laments the lack of taste among his countrymen, and declares that there are not more than ten persons in all Italy who could appreciate the Iliad. Next to Petrarch stands Boccaccio (1313-1375), as the second of the Humanists. [Illustration: DANTE. [Footnote: The great Florentine poet, Dante (1265- 1321), was the forerunner of Humanism, but was not, properly speaking, a Humanist. His Divine Comedy is the "Epic of Mediævalism."] (From Raphael's Disputation.)] Just as the antiquarians of to-day search the mounds of Assyria for relics of the ancient civilizations of the East, so did the Humanists ransack the libraries of the monasteries and cathedrals, and all the out-of-the-way places of Europe, for old manuscripts of the classic writers. The precious documents were found covered with mould in damp cellars, or loaded with dust in the attics of monasteries. This late search for these remains of classical authors saved to the world hundreds of valuable manuscripts which, a little longer neglected, would have been forever lost. Libraries were founded in which the new treasures might be stored, and copies of the manuscripts were made and distributed among all who could appreciate them. It was at this time that the celebrated Vatican Library was established by Pope Nicholas V. (1447-1455), one of the most generous promoters of the humanistic movement. This reviving interest in the literature of ancient Greece was vastly augmented by the disasters just now befalling the Greek empire (see p. 462). From every part of the crumbling state scholars fled before the approach of the barbarians, and sought shelter in the West, especially in Italy, bringing with them many valuable manuscripts of the old Greek masters, who were almost unknown in Western Europe, and always an enthusiasm for Greek learning. There was now a repetition of what took place at Rome upon the conquest of Greece in the days of the Republic. Italy was conquered a second time by the genius of Greece. Before the close of the fifteenth century, the enthusiasm for classical authors had infected the countries beyond the Alps. The New Learning, as it was called, found a place in the colleges and universities of Germany, France, and England. Greek was added to Latin as one of the requirements in a liberal education, and from that day to this has maintained a prominent place in all our higher institutions of learning. In Northern Europe, however, the humanistic movement became blended with other tendencies. In Italy it had been an exclusive passion, a single devotion to classical literature; but here in the North there was added to this enthusiasm for Græco-Roman letters an equal and indeed supremer interest in what we have called the Hebrew element in civilization (see p. 368). Petrarch hung over the pages of Homer; Luther pores over the pages of the Bible. The Renaissance, in a word, becomes the Reformation; the Humanist becomes the Reformer. EVIL AND GOOD RESULTS OF THE CLASSICAL REVIVAL.--There were some serious evils inherent in the classical revival. In Italy, especially, where the humanistic spirit took most complete possession of society, it was "disastrous to both faith and morals." The study of the old pagan writers produced the result predicted by the monks,--caused a revival of paganism. To be learned in Greek was to excite suspicion of heresy. With the New Learning came also those vices and immoralities that characterized the decline of classical civilization. Italy was corrupted by the new influences that flowed in upon her, just as Rome was corrupted by Grecian luxury and vice in the days of the failing republic. On the other hand, the benefits of the movement to European civilization were varied and positive. The classical revival gave to Europe, not only faultless literary models, but large stores of valuable knowledge. As Woolsey says, "The old civilization contained treasures of permanent value which the world could not spare, which the world will never be able or willing to spare. These were taken up into the stream of life, and proved true aids to the progress of a culture which is gathering in one the beauty and truth of all the ages." And to the same effect are the words of Symonds, who closes his appreciative review of the Italian Revival of Letters as follows: "Such is the Lampadephoria, or torch-race, of the nations. Greece stretches out her hand to Italy; Italy consigns the sacred fire to Northern Europe; the people of the North pass on the flame to America, to India, and the Australasian Isles." [Illustration: JOHN GUTENBERG.] PRINTING.--One of the most helpful agencies concerned in the Revival of Learning, was the invention of printing from movable blocks, or type,--the most important discovery, in the estimation of Hallam, recorded in the annals of mankind. For this improvement the world is probably indebted to John Gutenberg of Mentz (1438).[Footnote: Dutch writers maintain that the honor of the invention belongs to Costar of Haarlem.] The new art would have been much restricted in its usefulness had it not been for the bringing to perfection about this time of the art of making paper from linen rags. This article took the place of the costly parchment, and rendered it possible to place books within the reach of all classes. The first book printed from movable types was a Latin copy of the Bible, issued at Mentz, in Germany, between the years 1450 and 1455. The art spread rapidly, and before the close of the fifteenth century presses were busy in every country of Europe, multiplying books with a rapidity undreamed of by the patient copyists of the cloister. It is needless to dwell upon the tremendous impulse which the new art gave, not only to the humanistic movement, but to the general intellectual progress of the European nations. Without it, the Revival of Learning must have languished, and the Reformation could hardly have become a fact in history. Its instrument, the _press_, is fitly chosen as the symbol of the new era of intelligence and freedom which it ushered in. CHAPTER XLVII. GROWTH OF THE NATIONS.--FORMATION OF NATIONAL GOVERNMENTS AND LITERATURES. INTRODUCTORY.--The most important movement that marked the latter part of the Middle Ages was the grouping, in several of the countries of Europe, of the petty feudal states and half-independent cities and towns into great nations with strong centralized governments. This movement was accompanied by, or rather consisted in, the decline of Feudalism as a governmental system, the loss by the cities of their freedom, and the growth of the power of the kings. Many things contributed to this consolidation of peoples and governments, different circumstances favoring the movement in the several countries. In some countries, however, events were opposed to the centralizing tendency, and in these the Modern Age was reached without nationality having been found. But in England, in France, and in Spain circumstances all seemed to tend towards unity, and by the close of the fifteenth century there were established in these countries strong despotic monarchies. Yet even among those peoples where national governments did not appear, some progress was made towards unity through the formation of national languages and literatures, and the development of common feelings, sentiments, and aspirations, so that these peoples were manifestly only awaiting the opportunities of a happier period for the maturing of their national life. This rise of Monarchy and decline of Feudalism, this substitution of strong centralized governments in place of the feeble, irregular, and conflicting authorities of the feudal nobles, was a very great gain to the cause of law and good order. It paved the way for modern progress and civilization. 1. ENGLAND. GENERAL STATEMENT.--In preceding chapters we have told of the origin of the English people, and traced their growth under Saxon, Danish, and Norman rulers (see pp. 375, 411, 433). We shall, in the present section, tell very briefly the story of their progress under the Plantagenet kings, thus carrying on our narrative to the accession of the Tudors in 1485, from which event dates the beginning of the modern history of England. The era of the Plantagenets, which covers three hundred and thirty-one years, was a most eventful one in English history. The chief political matters that we shall notice were the wresting of Magna Charta from King John, the formation of the House of Commons, the Conquest of Wales, the Wars with Scotland, the Hundred Years' War with France, and the Wars of the Roses. [Footnote: The name Plantagenet came from the peculiar badge, a sprig of broom-plant (_plante de genet_), adopted by one of the early members of the House. Following is a table of the sovereigns of the family:-- Henry II.. . . . . . . 1154-1189 Richard I. . . . . . . 1189-1199 John . . . . . . . . . 1199-1216 Henry III. . . . . . . 1216-1272 Edward I . . . . . . . 1272-1307 Edward II. . . . . . . 1307-1327 Edward III . . . . . . 1327-1377 Richard II . . . . . . 1377-1399 HOUSE OF LANCASTER. Henry IV . . . . . . . 1399-1413 Henry V. . . . . . . . 1413-1422 Henry VI . . . . . . . 1422-1461 HOUSE OF YORK. Edward IV. . . . . . . 1461-1483 Edward V . . . . . . . 1483 Richard III. . . . . . 1483-1485] MAGNA CHARTA (1215).--Magna Charta, the "Great Charter," held sacred as the basis of English liberties, was an instrument which the English barons and clergy forced King John to grant, in which the ancient rights and privileges of the people were clearly defined and guaranteed. King John (1199-1216), the third of the Plantagenet line, was as tyrannical as he was unscrupulous and wicked. His course led to an open revolt of the barons, who were resolved upon the recovery of their ancient liberties. The tyrant was forced to bow to the storm he had raised. He met his barons at Runnymede, a meadow on the Thames, and there affixed his seal to the instrument that had been prepared to receive it. Among the important articles of the paper were the following: No freeman should be deprived of life, liberty, or property, "save by legal judgment of his peers." No taxes (save several feudal aids specified) should be imposed "save by the Common Council of the realm." [Footnote: This article respecting taxation was suffered to fall into abeyance in the reign of John's successor, Henry III., and it was not until about one hundred years after the granting of _Magna Charta_ that the great principle that the people should be taxed only through their representatives in Parliament, became fully established.] Besides these articles, which form the foundation of the English Constitution, there were others abolishing numerous abuses and confirming various time-honored rights and privileges of the towns and of different classes of freemen. The Great Charter was often disregarded and broken by despotic sovereigns; but the people always clung to it as the warrant and basis of their liberties, and again and again forced tyrannical kings to renew and confirm its provisions, and swear solemnly to observe all its articles. Considering the far-reaching consequences that resulted from the granting of _Magna Charta_,--the securing of constitutional liberty as an inheritance for the English-speaking race in all parts of the world,--it must always be considered the most important concession that a freedom- loving people ever wrung from a tyrannical sovereign. BEGINNING OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS (1265).--The reign of Henry III. (1216- 1272), John's son and successor, witnessed the second important step taken in English constitutional freedom. This was the formation of the House of Commons, Parliament having up to this time consisted of a single House, made up of nobles and bishops. It was again the royal misbehavior that led to this great change in the form of the English national assembly. Henry had violated his oath to rule according to the Great Charter, and had become even more tyrannical than his father. The indignant barons rose in revolt, and Henry and his son being worsted in a great engagement, known as the battle of Lewes (1264), were made prisoners. Simon de Montfort, a Frenchman, whom Henry had given a prominent position in the government, now assumed control of affairs. He issued, in the king's name, writs of summons to the nobles and bishops to meet in Parliament; and at the same time sent similar writs to the sheriffs of the different shires, directing them "to return two knights for the body of their county, with two citizens or burghers for every city and borough contained in it." This was the first time that plain untitled citizens or burghers had been called to take their place with the knights, lords, and bishops in the great council of the nation, to join in deliberations on the affairs of the realm. [Footnote: At first the Commons could only take part in questions relating to taxation, but gradually they acquired the right to share in all matters that might come before Parliament.] The Commons were naturally at first a weak and timorous body, quite overawed by the great lords, but were destined eventually to grow into the controlling branch of the British Parliament. CONQUEST OF WALES.--For more than a thousand years the Celtic tribes of Wales maintained among their mountain fastnesses an ever-renewed struggle with the successive invaders and conquerors of England--with Roman, Saxon, and Norman. They never submitted their necks to the Roman yoke, but they were forced to acknowledge the overlordship of some of the Saxon and Norman kings. They were restless vassals, however, and were constantly withholding tribute and refusing homage. When Edward I. came to the English throne in 1272, Llewellyn, the overlord of the Welsh chiefs, with the title of Prince of Wales, refused to render homage to the new king. War followed. Llewellyn was slain, and the independence of his race forever extinguished (1282). The title of the Welsh chieftain has ever since been borne by the eldest son of the English sovereign. WARS WITH SCOTLAND (1296-1328).--In 1285 the ancient Celtic line of Scottish chiefs became extinct. Thirteen claimants for the vacant throne immediately arose. Chief among these were Robert Bruce and John Balliol, distinguished noblemen of Norman descent, attached to the Scottish court. King Edward I. of England, who claimed suzerain rights over the Scottish realm, was asked to act as arbitrator, and decide to whom the crown should be given. He decided the question of the succession in favor of Balliol, who now took the crown of Scotland as the acknowledged vassal of the English sovereign. Edward's unjust demands on the Scottish king led him to cast off his feudal allegiance. In the war that followed, the Scots were defeated, and Scotland now fell back as a fief forfeited by treason, into the hands of Edward (1296). As a sign that the Scottish kingdom had come to an end, Edward carried off to London the royal regalia, and with this a large stone, known as the Stone of Scone, upon which the Scottish kings, from time out of memory, had been accustomed to be crowned. Legend declared that the relic was the very stone on which Jacob had slept at Bethel. The block was taken to Westminster Abbey, and there made to support the seat of a stately throne-chair, which to this day is used in the coronation ceremonies of the English sovereigns. It is said that the stone once bore this legend:-- "Should fate not fail, where'er this stone be found, The Scot shall monarch of that realm be crowned," which prophecy was fulfilled when James VI. of Scotland became James I. of England. [Footnote: "Whether the prophecy was actually inscribed on the stone may be doubted, though this seems to be implied, and on the lower side is still visible a groove which may have contained it; but the fact that it was circulated and believed as early as the fourteenth century, is certain."--Dean Stanley's _Memorials of Westminster Abbey_.] The two countries were not long united. The Scotch people loved too well their ancient liberties to submit quietly to this extinguishment of their national independence. Under the inspiration and lead of the famous Sir William Wallace, an outlaw knight, all the Lowlands were soon in determined revolt. It was chiefly from the peasantry that the patriot hero drew his followers. Wallace gained some successes, but at length was betrayed into Edward's hands. He was condemned to death as a traitor, and his head, garlanded with a crown of laurel, was exposed on London Bridge (1305). The romantic life of Wallace, his patriotic service, his heroic exploits, and his tragic death, at once lifted him to the place that he has ever since held, as the national hero of Scotland. The struggle in which Wallace had fallen, was soon renewed by the almost equally renowned hero Robert Bruce (grandson of the Robert Bruce mentioned on p. 482), who was the representative of the nobles, as Wallace had been of the common people. With Edward II. Bruce fought the great _Battle of Bannockburn_, near Stirling. Edward's army was almost annihilated (1314). It was the most appalling disaster that had befallen the arms of the English people since the memorable defeat of Harold at Hastings. The independence of Scotland really dates from the great victory of Bannockburn, but the English were too proud to acknowledge it until fourteen years more of war. Finally, in the year 1328, the young king Edward III. gave up all claim to the Scottish crown, and Scotland with the hero Bruce as its king, took its place as an independent power among the nations of Europe. The independence gained by the Scotch at Bannockburn was maintained for nearly three centuries,--until 1603,--when the crowns of England and Scotland were peacefully united in the person of James Stuart VI. of Scotland. During the greater part of these three hundred years the two countries were very quarrelsome neighbors. _The Hundred Years' War_ (1336-1453). CAUSES OF THE WAR.--The long and wasteful war between England and France, known in history as the Hundred Years' War, was a most eventful one, and its effects upon both England and France so important and lasting as to entitle it to a prominent place in the records of the closing events of the Middle Ages. Freeman likens the contest to the Peloponnesian War in ancient Greece. The war with Scotland was one of the things that led up to this war. All through that struggle, France, as the jealous rival of England, was ever giving aid and encouragement to the Scotch rebels. Then the English lands in France, for which the English king did homage to the French king as overlord, were a source of constant dispute between the two countries. Furthermore, upon the death of Charles IV., the last of the Capetian line, Edward III. laid claim, through his mother, to the French crown, in much the same way that William of Normandy centuries before had laid claim to the crown of England. THE BATTLE OF CRÉCY (1346).--The first great combat of the long war was the memorable battle of Crécy. Edward had invaded France with an army of 30,000 men, made up largely of English bowmen, and had penetrated far into the country, ravaging as he went, when he finally halted, and faced the pursuing French army near the village of Crécy, where he inflicted upon it a most terrible defeat; 1200 knights, the flower of French chivalry, and 30,000 foot-soldiers lay dead upon the field. The great battle of Crécy is memorable for several reasons, but chiefly because Feudalism and Chivalry there received their death-blow. The yeomanry of England there showed themselves superior to the chivalry of France. "The churl had struck down the noble; the bondsman proved more than a match, in sheer hard fighting, for the knight. From the day of Crécy, Feudalism tottered slowly but surely to its grave." The battles of the world were hereafter, with few exceptions, to be fought and won, not by mail-clad knights with battle-axe and lance, but by common foot- soldiers with bow and gun. THE CAPTURE OF CALAIS.--From the field of Crécy Edward led his army to the siege of Calais. At the end of a year's investment, the city fell into the hands of the English. The capture of this sea-port was a very important event for the English, as it gave them control of the commerce of the Channel, and afforded them a convenient landing-place for their expeditions of invasion into France. THE BATTLE OF POITIERS (1356).-The terrible scourge of the "Black Death," [Footnotes: The Black Death was so called on account of the black spots which covered the body of the person attacked. It was a contagious fever, which, like the pestilence in the reign of Justinian, entered Europe from the East, and made terrible ravages during the years 1347-49. In Germany over 1,000,000 persons fell victims to the plague, while in England, according to some authorities, one-half of the population was swept away. The pestilence was also especially severe in Florence, in Italy. Under the terror and excitement of the dreadful visitation, religious penitents, thinking to turn away the wrath of heaven by unusual penances, went about in procession, lacerating themselves with whips (hence they were called _flagellants_). This religious frenzy had its most remarkable manifestation in Germany.] which desolated all Europe about the middle of the fourteenth century, caused the contending nations for a time to forget their quarrel. But no sooner had a purer atmosphere breathed upon the continent than the old struggle was renewed with fresh eagerness. Edward III. planned a double invasion of France. He himself led an army through the already wasted provinces of the North, while the Black Prince with another army ravaged the fields of the South. As the Prince's army, numbering about 8000 men, loaded with booty, was making its way back to the coast, it found its path, near Poitiers, obstructed by a French army of 50,000. A battle ensued which proved for the French a second Crécy. The arrows of the English bowmen drove them in fatal panic from the field, which was strewn with 11,000 of their dead. [Illustration: CHARGE OF FRENCH KNIGHTS AND FLIGHT OF ENGLISH ARROWS.] BATTLE OF AGINCOURT (1415).--For half a century after the Peace [Footnote: The Treaty of Brétigny (1360).] that followed the battle of Poitiers there was a lull in the war. But while Henry V. (1413-1422) was reigning in England, France was unfortunate in having an insane king, Charles VI.; and Henry, taking advantage of the disorder into which the French kingdom naturally fell under these circumstances, invaded the country with a powerful army, defeated the French in the great battle of Agincourt (1415), and five years later concluded the Treaty of Troyes, in which, so discouraged had the French become, a large party agreed that the crown of France should be given to him upon the death of Charles. JOAN OF ARC.--But patriotism was not yet wholly extinct among the French people. There were many who regarded the concessions of the Treaty of Troyes as not only weak and shameful, but as unjust to the Dauphin Charles, who was thereby disinherited, and they accordingly refused to be bound by its provisions. Consequently, when the poor insane king died, the terms of the treaty were not carried out, and the war dragged on. The party that stood by their native prince, afterwards crowned as Charles VII., were at last reduced to most desperate straits. A great part of the northern section of the country was in the hands of the English, who were holding in close siege the important city of Orleans. But the darkness was the deep gloom that precedes the dawn. A strange deliverer now appears,--the famous Joan of Arc, Maid of Orleans. This young peasant girl, with imagination all aflame from brooding over her country's wrongs and sufferings, seemed to see visions and hear voices, which bade her undertake the work of delivering France. She was obedient unto the heavenly vision. The warm, impulsive French nation, ever quick in responding to appeals to the imagination, was aroused exactly as it was stirred by the voice of the preachers of the Crusades. Religious enthusiasm now accomplished what patriotism alone could not do. Received by her countrymen as a messenger from heaven, the maiden kindled throughout the land a flame of enthusiasm that nothing could resist. Inspiring the dispirited French soldiers with new courage, she forced the English to raise the siege of Orleans (from which exploit she became known as the Maid of Orleans), and speedily brought about the coronation of Prince Charles at Reims (1429). Shortly afterward she fell into the hands of the English, and was condemned and burned as a heretic and witch. But the spirit of the Maid had already taken possession of the French nation. From this on, the war, though long continued, went steadily against the English. Little by little they were pushed back and off from the soil they had conquered, until, by the middle of the fifteenth century, they were driven quite out of the country, retaining no foothold in the land save Calais (see p. 553). Thus ended the Hundred Years' War, in 1453, the very year which saw Constantinople fall before the Turks. EFFECTS UPON ENGLAND OF THE WAR.--The most lasting and important effects upon England of the war were the enhancement of the power of the Lower House of Parliament, and the awakening of a national spirit and feeling. The maintaining of the long and costly quarrel called for such heavy expenditures of men and money that the English kings were made more dependent than hitherto upon the representatives of the people, who were careful to make their grants of supplies conditional upon the correction of abuses or the confirming of their privileges. Thus the war served to make the Commons a power in the English government. Again, as the war was participated in by all classes alike, the great victories of Crécy, Poitiers, and Agincourt roused a national pride, which led to a closer union between the different elements of society. Normans and English were fused by the ardor of a common patriotic enthusiasm into a single people. The real _national_ life of England dates from this time. (For the effects of the war on France, see p. 494.) _The Wars of the Roses_ (1455-1485). GENERAL STATEMENT.--The Wars of the Roses is the name given to a long, shameful, and selfish contest between the adherents of the Houses of York and Lancaster, rival branches of the royal family of England. The strife, which was for place and power, was so named because the Yorkists adopted as their badge a white rose and the Lancastrians a red one. The battle of Bosworth Field (1485) marks the close of the war. In this fight King Richard III., the last of the House of York, was overthrown and slain by Henry Tudor, the Earl of Richmond, who was crowned on the field with the diadem which had fallen from the head of Richard, and saluted as King Henry VII., the first of the Tudors. THE EFFECTS OF THE WAR.--The most important result of the Wars of the Roses was the ruin of the baronage of England. One-half of the nobility was slain. Those that survived were ruined, their estates having been wasted or confiscated during the progress of the struggle. Not a single great house retained its old-time wealth and influence. The second result of the struggle sprung from the first. This was the great peril into which English liberty was cast by the ruin of the nobility. It will be recalled that it was the barons who forced the Great Charter from King John (see p. 479), and who kept him and his successors from reigning like absolute monarchs. Now that once proud and powerful baronage were ruined, and their confiscated estates had gone to increase the influence and patronage of the king. He being no longer in wholesome fear of Parliament, for the Commons were as yet weak and timid, did pretty much as he pleased, and became insufferably oppressive and tyrannical; raising taxes, for instance, without the consent of Parliament, and imprisoning and executing persons without due process of law. For the hundred years following the Wars of the Roses the government of England was rather an absolute than a limited monarchy. Not until the final Revolution of the seventeenth century (see Chap. LV.) did the people, by overturning the throne of the Stuarts, fully recover their lost liberties. _Growth of the English Language and Literature._ THE LANGUAGE.--From the Norman Conquest to the middle of the fourteenth century there were in use in England three languages: Norman French was the speech of the conquerors and the medium of polite literature; Old English was the tongue of the common people; while Latin was the language of the laws and records, of the church services, and of the works of the learned. Modern English is the Old English worn and improved by use, and enriched by a large infusion of Norman-French words, with less important additions from the Latin and other languages. It took the place of the Norman-French in the courts of law about the middle of the fourteenth century. At this time the language was broken up into many dialects, and the expression "King's English" is supposed to have referred to the standard form employed in state documents and in use at court. EFFECT OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST ON ENGLISH LITERATURE.--The blow that struck down King Harold and his brave thanes on the field of Hastings silenced for the space of about a century the voice of English literature. The tongue of the conquerors became the speech of the court, the nobility, and the clergy; while the language of the despised English was, like themselves, crowded out of every place of honor. But when, after a few generations, the down-trodden race began to re-assert itself, English literature emerged from its obscurity, and with an utterance somewhat changed--yet it is unmistakably the same voice--resumes its interrupted lesson and its broken song. CHAUCER (1328?-1400).--Holding a position high above all other writers of early English is Geoffrey Chaucer. He is the first in time, and, after Shakespeare, perhaps the first in genius, among the great poets of the English-speaking race. He is reverently called the "Father of English Poetry." Chaucer stands between two ages, the mediæval and the modern. He felt not only the influences of the age of Feudalism which was passing away, but also those of the new age of learning and freedom which was dawning. It is because he reflects his surroundings so faithfully in his writings, that these are so valuable as interpreters of the period in which he lived. Chaucer's greatest work is his _Canterbury Tales_, wherein the poet represents himself as one of a company of story-telling pilgrims who have set out from London on a journey to the tomb of Thomas Becket, at Canterbury. [Illustration: STATUE OF WYCLIFFE. (From the Luther Monument at Worms.)] WYCLIFFE AND THE REFORMATION (1324-1384).--Foremost among the reformers and religious writers of the period under review was Wycliffe, "The Morning Star of the Reformation." He gave the English people the first translation of the entire Bible in their native tongue. There was no press at that time to multiply editions of the book, but by means of manuscript copies it was widely circulated and read. Its influence was very great, and from its appearance may be dated the beginning of the Reformation in England. The followers of Wycliffe became known as "Lollards" (babblers), a term applied to them in derision. They grew to be very numerous, and threatened by their excesses and imprudent zeal the peace of the state. They were finally suppressed by force. 2. FRANCE. BEGINNING OF THE FRENCH KINGDOM.--The kingdom of France begins properly with the accession of the first of the Capetian rulers, late in the tenth century. The Merovingian and Carolingian kings were simply German princes reigning in Gaul. The Capetians held the throne for more than three centuries, when they were followed by the Valois kings. The last of the main line of the Valois family gave way to the first of the Valois-Orleans sovereigns in 1498, which date may be allowed to mark the beginning of modern French history. We shall now direct attention to the most important transactions of the period covered by the Capetian and Valois dynasties. Our aim will be to give prominence to those matters which concern the gradual consolidation of the French monarchy. _France under the Capetians_ (987-1328). [Footnote: Table of the Capetian Kings:-- Hugh Capet (the Great). . . 987--996 Robert II. (the Sage) . . . 996-1031 Henry I.. . . . . . . . . . 1031-1060 Philip I. . . . . . . . . . 1060-1108 Louis VI. (the Fat) . . . . 1108-1137 Louis VII. (the Young). . . 1137-1180 Philip II. (Augustus) . . . 1180-1223 Louis VIII. (Lion-hearted). 1223-1226 Louis IX. (the Saint) . . . 1226-1270 Philip III. (the Hardy) . . 1270-1285 Philip IV. (the Fair) . . . 1285-1314 Louis X. (the Stubborn) . . 1314-1316 Philip V. (the Tall). . . . 1316-1322 Charles IV.(the Handsome) . 1322-1328] The first Capetian king differed from his vassal counts and dukes simply in having a more dignified title; his power was scarcely greater than that of many of the lords who paid him homage as their suzerain. The fourth king of the line (Philip I.) confessed that he had grown gray while trying to capture a castle which stood within sight of Paris; and evidently he had abandoned all hope of getting possession of it, for he charged his son, to whom he one day pointed it out, to watch it well. How various events and circumstances--conquests, treaties, politic marriage alliances, and unjust encroachments--conspired to build up the power of the kings will appear as we go on. The most noteworthy events of the Capetian period were the acquisition by the French crown of the English possessions in France, the Holy Wars for the recovery of Jerusalem, the crusade against the Albigenses, and the creation of the States-General. Of these several matters we will now speak in order. THE ENGLISH POSSESSIONS IN FRANCE.--The issue of the battle of Hastings, in 1066, made William of Normandy king of England. He ruled that country by right of conquest. But we must bear in mind that he still held his possessions in France as a fief from the French king, whose vassal he was. This was the beginning of the possessions on the continent of the English kings. Then, when Henry, Count of Anjou, came to the English throne as the first of the Plantagenets, these territories were greatly increased by the French possessions of that prince. The larger part of Henry's dominions, indeed, was in France, almost the whole of the western coast of the country being in his hands; but for all of this he, of course, paid homage to the French king. As was inevitable, a feeling of intense jealousy sprang up between the two sovereigns. The French king was ever watching for some pretext upon which he might deprive his rival of his possessions in France. The opportunity came when King John, in 1199, succeeded Richard the Lion-hearted upon the English throne. That odious tyrant was accused, and doubtless justly, of having murdered his nephew Arthur. Philip Augustus, who then held the French throne, as John's feudal superior, ordered him to clear himself of the charge before his French peers. John refusing to do so, Philip declared forfeited all the lands he held as fiefs of the French Crown [Footnote: This was the second condemnation of John. A year before this time (in 1202), John having refused to answer a charge of tyranny preferred by the nobles of Poitou, Philip had declared his fief to be forfeited. It was in the turmoil which followed this sentence, that Arthur was taken prisoner by John and afterwards murdered.], and thereupon proceeded to seize Normandy and other possessions of John in the North of France, leaving him scarcely anything save the Duchy of Aquitaine in the South. The annexation of these large possessions to the crown of France brought a vast accession of power and patronage to the king, who was now easily the superior of any of his great vassals. THE FRENCH AND THE CRUSADES.--The age of the Capetians was the age of the Crusades. These romantic expeditions, while stirring all Christendom, appealed especially to the ardent, imaginative genius of the Gallic race. Three Capetian kings, Louis VII., Philip Augustus, and Louis IX., themselves headed several of the wild expeditions. It is the influence of the Crusades on the French monarchy that we alone need to notice in this place. They tended very materially to weaken the power and influence of the feudal nobility, and in a corresponding degree to strengthen the authority of the crown and add to its dignity. The way in which they brought about this transfer of power from the aristocracy to the king has been explained in the chapter on the Crusades (see p. 450). CRUSADE AGAINST THE ALBIGENSES (1207-1229).--During this age of religious enthusiasm holy wars were directed as well against heretics as infidels. In the South of France was a sect of Christians called Albigenses [Footnote: From _Albi_, the name of a city and district in which their tenets prevailed.], who had departed so far from the faith of the Church, and had embraced such dangerous social heresies, that Pope Innocent III. felt constrained to call upon the French king and his nobles to lead a crusade against them. The outcome was the almost total extirpation of the heretical sect, and the acquisition by the French crown of large and rich territories that were formerly the possessions of the Counts of Toulouse, the patrons of the heretics. CREATION OF THE STATES-GENERAL (1302).--The event of the greatest significance in the Capetian age was the admission, in the reign of Philip the Fair, of the commons to the feudal assembly, or council, of the king. This transaction is in French history what the first summoning of the House of Commons is in English (see p. 480). A dispute having arisen between Philip and the Pope respecting the control of the offices and revenues of the French Church, in order to rally to his support all classes throughout his kingdom, Philip called an assembly, to which he invited representatives of the burghers, or inhabitants of the cities (1302). The royal council had hitherto been made up of two estates only,--the nobles and the clergy; now is added what comes to be known as the _Tiers État_, or Third Estate, and henceforth the assembly is known as the _States-General_. Eventually, before the power of this Third Estate, we shall see the Church, the nobility, and the monarchy all go down, through revolution; just as in England we shall see clergy, nobles, and king gradually yield to the rising power of the English Commons. _France under the House of Valois_ (1328-1498). [Footnote: Names of the sovereigns of the main line of the House of Valois:-- Philip VI. . . . . . . . . . . . 1328-1350 John (the Good). . . . . . . . . 1350-1364 Charles V. (the Wise). . . . . . 1364-1380 Charles VI. (the Well-Beloved) . 1380-1422 Charles VII. (the Victorious). . 1422-1461 Louis XI. . . . . . . . . . . . 1461-1483 Charles VIII. (the Affable) . . 1483-1498] EFFECTS UPON FRANCE OF THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR.--The chief interest of that period of French history upon which we here enter attaches to that long struggle between England and France known as the Hundred Years' War. Having already, in connection with English affairs (see p. 484), touched upon the causes and incidents of this war, we shall here simply speak of the effects of the struggle on the French people and kingdom. Among these results must be noticed the almost complete prostration, by the successive shocks of Crécy, Poitiers, and Agincourt, of the French feudal aristocracy, which was already tottering to its fall through the undermining influences of the Crusades; the growth of the power of the king, a consequence, largely, of the ruin of the nobility; and, lastly, the awakening of a feeling of nationality, and the drawing together of the hitherto isolated sections of the country by the attraction of a common and patriotic enthusiasm. Speaking in a very general manner, we may say that by the close of the war Feudalism in France was over, and that France had become, partly in spite of the war but more largely by reason of it, not only a great monarchy, but a great nation. LOUIS XI. AND CHARLES THE BOLD OF BURGUNDY.--The foundations of the French monarchy were greatly enlarged and strengthened by the unscrupulous measures of Louis XI. (1461-1483), who was a perfect Ulysses in cunning and deceit. His maxim was, "He who knows how to deceive, knows how to reign." The great feudal lords that still retained power and influence, he brought to destruction one after another, and united their fiefs to the royal domains. Of all the vassal nobles ruined by the craft and cunning of Louis, the most famous and powerful was Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, with whom the French king was almost constantly warring, and against whom he was forever intriguing. Upon the death of the duke, Louis, without clear right, seized a great part of his dominions, which were almost large and rich enough to sustain the dignity of a king. By inheritance and treaty, Louis also gained large accessions of territory in the South of France, which gave his kingdom a wide frontage upon the Mediterranean, and made the Pyrenees its southern defence. INVASION OF ITALY BY CHARLES VIII.--Charles VIII., the son of Louis XI., was the last of the direct line of the Valois. Through the favor of a long series of circumstances, the persistent policy of his predecessors, and his own politic marriage, [Footnote: He married Anne of Brittany, and thus brought that large province, which had hitherto constituted an almost independent state, under the authority of the French crown.] he found himself at the head of a state that had been gradually transformed from a feudal league into a true monarchy. The strength of this kingdom he determined to employ in some enterprise beyond the limits of France. With a standing army, created by Charles VII during the latter years of the war with England, [Footnote: The paid force of infantry and cavalry created by Charles VII in 1448, was the first standing army in Europe, and the beginning of that vast military system which now burdens the great nations of that continent with the support of several millions of soldiers constantly under arms.] at his command, he invaded Italy, intent on the conquest of Naples,--to which he laid claim on the strength of some old bequest,--proposing, with that state subdued, to lead a crusade to the East against the Turks. He reached Naples in triumph, but was soon forced, with heavy losses, to retreat into France. This enterprise of Charles is noteworthy not only because it marks the commencement of a long series of brilliant yet disastrous campaigns carried on by the French in Italy, but also on account of Charles' army having been made up largely of paid troops instead of feudal retainers, which fact assures us that the Feudal System in France, as a governmental organization, had come to an end. _Beginnings of French Literature._ THE TROUBADOURS.--The contact of the old Latin speech in Gaul with that of the Teutonic invaders gave rise there to two very distinct dialects. These were the _Langue d'Oc_, or Provencal, the tongue of the South of France and of the adjoining regions of Spain and Italy; and the _Langue d'Oil_, or French proper, the language of the North. [Footnote: The terms _Langue d'Oc_ and _Langue d'Oil_ arose from the use of different words for _yes_, which in the tongue of the South was _oc_, and in that of the North _oil_.] About the beginning of the twelfth century, by which time the Provencal tongue had become settled and somewhat polished, literature in France first began to find a voice in the songs of the Troubadours, the poets of the South. It is instructive to note that it was the home of the Albigensian heresy, the land that had felt the influence of every Mediterranean civilization, that was also the home of the Troubadour literature. The Counts of Toulouse, the protectors of the heretics, were also the patrons of the poets. The same fierce persecution that uprooted the heretical faith of the Albigenses, also stilled the song of the Troubadours (see p. 493). The verses of the Troubadours were sung in every land, and to the stimulating influence of their musical harmonies the early poetry of almost every people of Europe is largely indebted. THE TROUVEURS.--These were the poets of Northern France, who composed in the _Langue d' Oil_, or Old French tongue. They flourished during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. While the compositions of the Troubadours were almost exclusively lyrical songs, those of the Trouveurs were epic, or narrative poems, called _romances_. They gather about three great names,--King Arthur, Alexander the Great, and Charlemagne. It will be noted that the poet story-tellers thus drew their material from the heroic legends of all the different races that blended to form the French nation, namely, the Celtic, the Græco-Roman, and the Teutonic. The influence of these French romances upon the springing literatures of Europe was most inspiring and helpful. Nor has their influence yet ceased. Thus in English literature, not only did Chaucer and Spenser and all the early island-poets draw inspiration from these fountains of continental song, but the later Tennyson, in his _Idylls of the King_, has illustrated the power over the imagination yet possessed by the Arthurian poems of the old Trouveurs. FROISSART'S CHRONICLES.--The first really noted prose writer in French literature was Froissart (1337-1410), whose entertaining credulity and artlessness, and skill as a story-teller, have won for him the title of the French Herodotus. Born, as he was, only a little after the opening of the Hundred Years' War, and knowing personally many of the actors in that struggle, it was fitting that he should become, as he did, the annalist of those stirring times. 3. SPAIN. The Beginnings of Spain.--When, in the eighth century, the Saracens swept like a wave over Spain, the mountains of Asturia, in the northwest corner of the peninsula, afforded a refuge for the most resolute of the Christian chiefs who refused to submit their necks to the Moslem yoke. These brave and hardy warriors not only successfully defended the hilly districts that formed their retreat, but gradually pushed back the invaders, and regained control of a portion of the fields and cities that had been lost. This work of reconquest was greatly furthered by Charlemagne, who, it will be recalled, drove the Saracens out of all the northeastern portion of the country as far south as the Ebro, and made the subjugated district a province of his great empire, under the name of the Spanish March. By the opening of the eleventh century several little Christian states, among which we must notice the names of Castile and Aragon, because of the prominent part they were to play in later history, had been established upon the ground thus recovered or always maintained. Castile was at first simply "a line of castles" against the Moors, whence its name. UNION OF CASTILE AND ARAGON (1479).--For several centuries the princes of the little states to which we have referred kept up an incessant warfare with their Mohammedan neighbors; owing however to dissensions among themselves, they were unable to combine in any effective way for the reconquest of their ancient possessions. But the marriage, in 1469, of Ferdinand, prince of Aragon, to Isabella, princess of Castile, paved the way for the union a little later of these two leading states. Thus the quarrels of these rival principalities were composed, and they were now free to employ their united strength in effecting what the Christian princes amidst all their contentions had never lost sight of,--the expulsion of the Moors from the peninsula. [Illustration: THE SPANISH KINGDOMS 1800.] THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA (1492).--At the time when the basis of the Spanish monarchy was laid by the union of Castile and Aragon, the Mohammedan possessions had been reduced, by the constant pressure of the Christian chiefs through eight centuries, to a very limited dominion in the south of Spain. Here the Moors had established a strong, well-compacted state, known as the Kingdom of Granada. As soon as Ferdinand and Isabella had settled the affairs of their dominions, they began to make preparation for the conquest of Granada, eager to signalize their reign by the reduction of this last stronghold of the Moorish power in the peninsula. The Moors made a desperate defence of their little state. The struggle lasted for ten years. City after city fell into the hands of the Christian knights, and finally the capital, Granada, pressed by an army of seventy thousand, was forced to surrender, and the Cross replaced the Crescent on its walls and towers (1492). The Moors, or Moriscoes, as they were called, were allowed to remain in the country and to retain their Mohammedan worship, though under many annoying restrictions. What is known as their _expulsion_ occurred at a later date (see p. 538). [Illustration: THE ALHAMBRA. PALACE OF THE MOORISH KINGS AT GRANADA. (From a photograph.)] The fall of Granada holds an important place among the many significant events that mark the latter half of the fifteenth century. It ended, after an existence of eight hundred years, the Mohammedan kingdom in the Spanish peninsula, and thus formed an offset to the progress of the Moslem power in Eastern Europe and the loss to the Christian world of Constantinople. It advanced Spain to the first rank among the nations of Europe, and gave her arms a prestige that secured for her position, influence, and deference long after the decline of her power had commenced. THE INQUISITION.--Ferdinand greatly enhanced his power by the active and tyrannical use of the Inquisition, a court that had been established by the Church for the purpose of detecting and punishing heresy. The chief victims of the tribunal were the Moors and Jews, but it was also directed against the enemies of the sovereign among the nobility and the clergy. The Holy Office, as the tribunal was styled, thus became the instrument of the most incredible cruelty. Thousands were burned at the stake, and tens of thousands more condemned to endure penalties scarcely less terrible. Queen Isabella, in giving her consent to the establishment of the tribunal in her dominions, was doubtless actuated by the purest religious zeal, and sincerely believed that in suppressing heresy she was discharging a simple duty, and rendering God good service. "In the love of Christ and his Maid- Mother," she says, "I have caused great misery. I have depopulated towns and districts, provinces and kingdoms." DEATH OF FERDINAND AND OF ISABELLA.--Queen Isabella died in 1504, and Ferdinand followed her in the year 1516, upon which latter event the crown of Spain descended upon the head of his grandson, Charles, of whom we shall hear much as Emperor Charles V. With his reign the modern history of Spain begins. _Beginnings of the Spanish Language and Literature._ THE LANGUAGE.--After the union of Castile and Aragon it was the language of the former that became the speech of the Spanish court. During the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella it gradually gained the ascendancy over the numerous dialects of the country, and became the national speech, just as in France the Langue d'Oil finally crowded out all other dialects. By the conquests and colonizations of the sixteenth century this Castilian speech was destined to become only less widely spread than the English tongue. THE POEM OF THE CID.--Castilian, or Spanish literature begins in the twelfth century with the romance-poem of the _Cid_ (that is, _Chief_, the title of the hero of the poem), one of the great literary productions of the mediæval period. This grand national poem was the outgrowth of the sentiments inspired by the long struggle between the Spanish Christians and the Mohammedan Moors. [Illustration: SARCOPHAGUS OF FERDINAND AND ISABELLA, AT GRANADA. (From a photograph.)] 4. GERMANY. BEGINNINGS OF THE KINGDOM OF GERMANY.--The history of Germany as a separate kingdom begins with the break-up of the empire of Charlemagne (see p. 408). Germany at that time comprised several groups of tribes,-- the Saxons, the Suabians, the Thuringians, the Bavarians, and the Franks. Closely allied in race, speech, manners, and social arrangements, all these peoples seemed ready to be welded into a close and firm nation; but, unfortunately, the circumstances tending to keep the several states or communities apart were stronger than those operating to draw them together, so that for a thousand years after Charlemagne we find them constituting hardly anything more than a very loose confederation, the members of which were constantly struggling among themselves for supremacy, or were engaged in private wars with the neighboring nations. [Footnote: During the mediæval period, Germany was under the following lines of kings and emperors:-- Carolingians. . . . . . . . . . . . . 843-911 Conrad of Franconia.. . . . . . . . . 911-918 Saxon Emperors. . . . . . . . . . . . 919-1024 Franconian Emperors . . . . . . . . . 1024-1125 Lothair of Saxony . . . . . . . . . . 1125-1137 Hohenstaufen Emperors . . . . . . . . 1138-1254 The Interregnum . . . . . . . . . . . 1254-1273 Emperors of different Houses. . . . . 1273-1438 Emperors of the House of Austria. . . 1438-] That which more than all else operated to prevent Germany from becoming a powerful, closely-knit nation, was the adoption by the German rulers of an unfortunate policy respecting a world-empire. This matter will be explained in the following paragraphs. RENEWAL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE BY OTTO THE GREAT (962).--When the dominions of Charlemagne were divided among his three grandsons (see p. 408), the Imperial title was given to Lothair, to whom fell Italy and the Rhine- land. The title, however, meant scarcely anything, carrying with it little or no real authority. Thus matters ran on for more than a century, the empty honor of the title sometimes being enjoyed by the kings of Italy, and again by those of Germany. But with the accession of the second of the Saxon line, Otto I., who was crowned king at Aachen in 936, there appeared among the princes of Europe a second Charlemagne. He was easily first among them all. Besides being king of Germany, he became, through, interference on request in the affairs of Italy, king of that country also. Furthermore, he wrested large tracts of land from the Slavonians, and forced the Danes, Poles, and Hungarians to acknowledge his suzerainty. Thus favored by fortune, he naturally conceived the idea of restoring once more the Roman empire, even as it had been revived by Charles the Great (see p. 406). So in 962, just a little more than a century and a half after the coronation at Rome of Charlemagne as emperor, Otto, at the same place and by the same papal authority, was crowned Emperor of the Romans. For a generation no one had borne the title. From this time on it was the rule that the German king who was crowned at Aachen had a right to be crowned king of Italy at Milan, and emperor at Rome (Freeman). Thus three crowns, and in time still more, came to be heaped upon a single head. CONSEQUENCES TO GERMANY OF THE REVIVAL OF THE EMPIRE.--The scheme of Otto respecting a world-empire was a grand one, but, as had been demonstrated by the failure of the attempt of Charlemagne, was an utterly impracticable idea. It was simply a dream, and never became anything more than a ghostly shadow. Yet the pursuit of this phantom by the German kings resulted in the most woeful consequences to Germany. Trying to grasp too much, these rulers seized nothing at all. Attempting to be emperors of the world, they failed to become even kings of Germany. While engaged in their schemes of foreign conquest, their home affairs were neglected, and their vassals succeeded in increasing their power and making it hereditary. Thus while the kings of England, France, and Spain were gradually consolidating their dominions, and building up strong centralized monarchies on the ruins of Feudalism, the sovereigns of Germany, neglecting the affairs of their own kingdom, were allowing it to become split up into a vast number of virtually independent states, the ambitions and jealousies of whose rulers were to postpone the unification of Germany for four or five hundred years--until our own day. Had the emperors inflicted loss and disaster upon Germany alone through their pursuit of this phantom, the case would not be so lamentable; but Italy was made the camping field of the Imperial armies, and the whole peninsula kept distracted with the bitter quarrels of Guelphs and Ghibellines (see p. 504), and thus the nationalization of the Italian people was also delayed for centuries. Germany received just one positive compensation for all this loss accruing from the ambition of her kings. This was the gift of Italian civilization, which came into the country through the connections of the emperors with the peninsula. GERMANY UNDER THE HOHENSTAUFEN EMPERORS (1138-1254).--The Hohenstaufen, or Suabian dynasty was a most notable line of emperors. The matter of chief importance in German history under the Hohenstaufen is the long and bitter conflict, begun generations before, that was waged between them and the Popes (see p. 455). Germany and Italy were divided into two great parties, known as Welfs and Waiblings, or, as designated in Italy, Guelphs and Ghibellines, the former adhering to the Pope, the latter to the Emperor. The issue of a century's contention was the complete ruin of the House of Hohenstaufen. The most noted ruler of the line was Frederick I. (1152-1190), better known as _Frederick Barbarossa_, from his red beard. He gave Germany a good and strong government, and gained a sure place in the affections of the German people, who came to regard him as the representative of the sentiment of German nationality. When news of his death was brought back from the East,--it will be recalled that he took part in the Third Crusade, and lost his life in Asia Minor (see p. 445),--they refused to believe that he was dead, and, as time passed, a tradition arose which told how he slept in a cavern beneath one of his castles on a mountain- top, and how, when the ravens should cease to circle about the hill, he would appear, to make the German people a nation united and strong. Frederick Barbarossa was followed by his son Henry VI. (1190-1197), who, by marriage, had acquired a claim to the kingdom of Sicily.[Footnote: The Hohenstaufen held the kingdom until 1265, when the Pope gave it as a fief to Charles I. of Anjou (brother of Louis IX. of France), who beheaded the rightful heir, the ill-starred boy Conradin, the last of the Hohenstaufen race (1268). Charles' oppressive rule led to a revolt of his island subjects, and to the great massacre known as the Sicilian Vespers (1282). All of the hated race of Frenchmen were either killed or driven out of the island.] Almost all his time and resources were spent in reducing that remote realm to a state of proper subjection to his authority. By thus leading the emperors to neglect their German subjects and interests, this southern kingdom proved a fatal dower to the Suabian house. By the close of the Hohenstaufen period, Germany was divided into two hundred and seventy-six virtually independent states, the princes and nobles having taken advantage of the prolonged absences of the emperors, or their troubles with the Popes, to free themselves almost completely from the control of the crown. There was really no longer either a German kingdom or a Roman empire. CATHEDRAL-BUILDING.--The age of the Hohenstaufen was the age of the Crusades, which is to say that it was the age of religious faith. The most striking expression of the spirit of the period, if we except the Holy Wars, is to be found in the sacred architecture of the time. The style of architecture first employed was the Romanesque, characterized by the rounded arch and the dome; but towards the close of the twelfth century this was superseded by the Gothic, distinguished by the pointed arch, the tower or the slender spire, and rich ornamentation. The enthusiasm for church-building was universal throughout Europe; yet nowhere did it find nobler or more sustained expression than in Germany. Among the most noted of the German cathedrals are the one at Strasburg, begun in the eleventh century, and that at Cologne, commenced in 1248, but not wholly finished until our own day (in 1880). RISE OF THE SWISS REPUBLIC.--The most noteworthy matters in German history during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, are the struggles between the Swiss and the dukes of Austria; the religious movement of the Hussites; and the growing power of the House of Austria. From early in the eleventh century, the country now known as Switzerland was a part of the Holy Roman Empire; but its liberty-loving people never acknowledged any man as their master, save the German emperor, to whom they yielded a merely nominal obedience. The dukes of Austria, princes of the empire, laid claim to a certain authority over them, and tried to make themselves masters in Switzerland. This led to a memorable struggle between the dukes and the brave mountaineers. To the early part of the contest belongs the legend of William Tell, which historical criticism now pronounces a myth, with nothing but the revolt as the nucleus of fact. In 1315, at the noted battle of Morgarten Pass, the Austrians suffered a severe defeat at the hands of the Swiss patriots. Later in the same century, the Austrians sustained another defeat on the memorable field of Sempach (1386). It was here, tradition says, that Arnold of Winkelried broke the ranks of the Austrians, by collecting in his arms as many of their lances as he could, and, as they pierced his breast, bearing them with him to the ground, exclaiming, "Comrades, I will open a road for you." Shortly after the battle of Sempach, the Eidgenossen, or Confederates, as the Swiss were at this time called, gained another victory over the Austrians at Wafels (1388), which placed on a firm basis the growing power of the League. THE HUSSITES.--About the beginning of the fifteenth century, the doctrines of the English reformer, Wycliffe (see p. 490) began to spread in Bohemia. The chief of the new sect was John Huss, a professor of the University of Prague. The doctrines of the reformer were condemned by the great Council of Constance, and Huss himself, having been delivered over into the hands of the civil authorities for punishment, was burned at the stake (1415). The following year Jerome of Prague, another reformer, was likewise burned. Shortly after the burning of Huss a crusade was proclaimed against his followers, who had risen in arms. Then began a cruel, desolating war of fifteen years, the outcome of which was the almost total extermination of the radical party among the Hussites. With the more moderate of the reformers, however, a treaty was made which secured them freedom of worship. [Illustration: CENTRAL EUROPE 1880.] THE IMPERIAL CROWN BECOMES HEREDITARY IN THE HOUSE OF AUSTRIA (1438).--In the year 1438, Albert, Duke of Austria, was raised by the Electors [Footnote: When, in the beginning of the tenth century, the German Carolingian line became extinct, the great nobles of the kingdom assumed the right of choosing the successor of the last of the house, and Germany thus became an elective feudal monarchy. In the course of time a few of the leading nobles usurped the right of choosing the king, and these princes became known as Electors. There were, at the end of the Hohenstaufen period, seven princes who enjoyed this important privilege, four of whom were secular princes and three spiritual.] to the Imperial throne. His accession marks an epoch in German history, for from this time until. the dissolution of the empire by Napoleon in 1806, the Imperial crown was regarded as hereditary in the Hapsburg [Footnote: The House of Austria is often so called from the Castle of Hapsburg in Switzerland, the cradle of the family.] family, the Electors, although never failing to go through the formality of an election, almost always choosing one of the members of that house as king. From the beginning of the practically uninterrupted succession upon the Imperial throne of the princes of the House of Austria, up to the close of the Middle Ages, the power and importance of the family steadily increased, until it seemed that Austria would overshadow all the other German states, and subject them to her sway; would, in a word, become Germany, just as Francia in Gaul had become France. But this, as we shall learn, never came about. [Illustration: GERMAN FOOT-SOLDIER (15th Century.)] The greatest of the Hapsburg line during the mediæval period was Maximilian I. (1493-1519). His reign is in every way a noteworthy one in German history, marking, as it does, a strong tendency to centralization, and the material enhancement of the Imperial authority. _Beginning of German Literature._ SONG OF THE NIBELUNGEN.--It was under the patronage of the Hohenstaufen that Germany produced the first pieces of a national literature. The "Song of the Nibelungen" is the great German mediæval epic. It was reduced to writing about 1200, being a recast, by some Homeric genius, perhaps, of ancient German and Scandinavian legends and lays dating from the sixth and seventh centuries. The hero of the story is Siegfried, the Achilles of Teutonic legend and song. THE MINNESINGERS.--Under the same emperors, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Minnesingers, or lyric poets, flourished. They were the "Troubadours of Germany." For the most part, refined and tender and chivalrous and pure, the songs of these poets tended to soften the manners and lift the hearts of the German people. 5. RUSSIA. BEGINNINGS OF RUSSIA.--We have seen how, about the middle of the ninth century, the Swedish adventurer Ruric laid, among the Slavonian tribes dwelling eastward from the Baltic, the foundation of what was destined to become one of the leading powers of Europe (see p. 411). The state came to be known as Russia, probably from the word _Ruotsi_ (corsairs?), the name given by the Finns to the foreigners. THE TARTAR CONQUEST.--In the thirteenth century an overwhelming calamity befell Russia. This was the overrunning and conquest of the country by the Tartar hordes (see p. 461). The barbarian conquerors inflicted the most horrible atrocities upon the unfortunate land, and for more than two hundred years held the Russian princes in a degrading bondage, forcing them to pay homage and tribute. This misfortune delayed for centuries the nationalization of the Slavonian peoples. RUSSIA FREED FROM THE MONGOLS.--It was not until the reign of Ivan the Great (1462-1505) that Russia,--now frequently called Muscovy from the fact that it had been reorganized with Moscow as a centre,--after a terrible struggle, succeeded in freeing itself from the hateful Tartar domination, and began to assume the character of a well-consolidated monarchy. Thus, by the end of the Middle Ages, Russia had become a really great power; but she was as yet too much hemmed in by hostile states to be able to make her influence felt in the affairs of Europe. Between her and the Caspian and Euxine were the Tartars; shutting her out from the Baltic were the Swedes and other peoples; and between her and Germany were the Lithuanians and Poles. 6. ITALY. NO NATIONAL GOVERNMENT.--In marked contrast to all those countries of which we have thus far spoken, unless we except Germany, Italy came to the close of the Middle Ages without a national or regular government. This is to be attributed in large part to that unfortunate rivalry between Pope and Emperor which resulted in dividing Italy into the two hostile camps of Guelph and Ghibelline. And yet the mediæval period did not pass without attempts on the part of patriot spirits to effect some sort of political union among the different cities and states of the peninsula. The most noteworthy of these movements, and one which gave assurance that the spark of patriotism which was in time to flame into an inextinguishable passion for national unity was kindling in the Italian heart, was that headed by the hero Rienzi, in the fourteenth century. RIENZI, TRIBUNE OF ROME (1347).--During the greater part of the fourteenth century the seat of the Papal See was at Avignon, beyond the Alps (see p. 457). Throughout this period of the "Babylonish captivity," Rome, deprived of her natural guardians, was in a state of the greatest confusion. The nobles terrorized the country about the capital, and kept the streets of the city itself in constant turmoil with their bitter feuds. In the midst of these disorders there appeared from among the lowest ranks of the people a deliverer in the person of one Nicola di Rienzi. Possessed of considerable talent and great eloquence, Rienzi easily incited the people to a revolt against the rule, or rather misrule, of the nobles, and succeeded in having himself, with the title of Tribune, placed at the head of a new government for Rome. Encouraged by the success that had thus far attended his schemes, Rienzi now began to concert measures for the union of all the principalities and commonwealths of Italy in a great republic, with Rome as its capital. He sent ambassadors throughout Italy to plead, at the courts of the princes and in the council chamber of the municipalities, the cause of Italian unity and freedom. The splendid dream of Rienzi was shared by other Italian patriots besides himself, among whom was the poet Petrarch, who was the friend and encourager of the "plebeian hero." But the moment for Italy's unification had not yet come. Not only were there hindrances to the national movement in the ambitions and passions of rival parties and classes, but there were still greater impediments in the character of the plebeian patriot himself. Rienzi proved to be an unworthy leader. His sudden elevation and surprising success completely turned his head, and he soon began to exhibit the most incredible vanity and weakness. The people withdrew from him their support, and he was finally assassinated. Thus vanished the dream of Rienzi and Petrarch, of the hero and the poet. Centuries of division, of shameful subjection to foreign princes,--French, Spanish, and Austrian,--of wars and suffering, were yet before the Italian people ere Rome should become the centre of a free, orderly, and united Italy. THE RENAISSANCE.--Though the Middle Ages closed in Italy without the rise there of a national government, still before the end of the period much had been done to awaken those common ideas and sentiments upon which political unity can alone safely repose. Literature and art here performed the part that war did in other countries in arousing a national spirit. The Renaissance (see p. 474) did much toward creating among the Italians a common pride in race and country; and thus this great literary and artistic enthusiasm was the first step in a course of national development which was to lead the Italian people to a common political life. Upon the literary phase of the Italian Renaissance we have said something in the chapter on the Revival of Learning (see p. 474); we shall here say just a word respecting the artistic side of the movement. The most splendid period of the art revival covered the latter part of the fifteenth century and the first half of the sixteenth. The characteristic art of the Renaissance in Italy was painting, although the æsthetic genius of the Italians also expressed itself both in architecture and sculpture. [Footnote: The four supreme masters of the Italian Renaissance were Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Michael Angelo (1475-1564), Raphael (1483- 1520), and Titian (1477-1576). All were great painters. Perhaps the one of greatest, at least of most varied, genius, was Michael Angelo, who was at once architect, painter, and sculptor. His grandest architectural triumph was the majestic dome of St. Peter's,--which work, however, he did not live to see completed.] The mediæval artists devoted themselves to painting instead of sculpture, for the reason that it best expresses the ideas and sentiments of Christianity. The art that would be the handmaid of the Church needed to be able to represent faith and hope, ecstasy and suffering,--none of which things can well be expressed by sculpture, which is essentially the art of repose. SAVONAROLA (1452-1498).--A word must here be said respecting the Florentine monk and reformer Girolamo Savonarola, who stands as the most noteworthy personage in Italy during the closing years of the mediæval period. Savonarola was at once Roman censor and Hebrew prophet. Such a preacher of righteousness the world had not seen since the days of Elijah. His powerful preaching alarmed the conscience of the Florentines. At his suggestion the women brought their finery and ornaments, and others their beautiful works of art, and piling them in great heaps in the streets of Florence, burned them as "vanities." Savonarola even persuaded the people of Florence to set up a sort of theocratic government, of which Christ was the acknowledged head. But at length the activity of his enemies brought about the reformer's downfall, and he was condemned to death, executed, and his body burned. Savonarola may be regarded as the last great mediæval forerunner of the reformers of the sixteenth century. 7. THE NORTHERN COUNTRIES. THE UNION OF CALMAR.--The great Scandinavian Exodus of the ninth and tenth centuries drained the Northern lands of some of the best elements of their population. For this reason these countries did not play as prominent a part in mediæval history as they would otherwise have done. The constant quarrels between their sovereigns and the nobility were also another cause of internal weakness. In the year 1397, by what is known as the Union of Calmar, the three kingdoms of Norway, Denmark, and Sweden were united under Margaret of Denmark, "the Semiramis of the North." The treaty provided that each country should make its own laws. But the treaty was violated, and though the friends of the measure had hoped much from it, it brought only jealousies, feuds, and wars. The Swedes arose again and again in revolt, and finally, under the lead of a nobleman named Gustavus Vasa, made good their independence (1523). During the seventeenth century, under the descendants and successors of the Liberator, Sweden was destined to play an important part in the affairs of the continent. Norway became virtually a province of Denmark, and the Norwegian nobles were driven into exile or killed. The country remained attached to the Danish Crown until the present century. SECTION II.--MODERN HISTORY. INTRODUCTION. As an introduction to the history of the Modern Age, we shall give a brief account of the voyages and geographical discoveries of Columbus, Vasco da Gama, and Magellan, and of the beginning of European conquests and settlements in the New World, inasmuch as these great events lie at the opening of the era and form the prelude of its story. DISCOVERY OF THE NEW WORLD BY COLUMBUS (1492).--Christopher Columbus was one of those Genoese navigators who, when Genoa's Asiatic lines of trade were broken by the irruption of the Turks (see p. 467), conceived the idea of reaching India by an ocean route. While others were endeavoring to reach that country by sailing around the southern point of Africa, he proposed the bolder plan of reaching this eastern land by sailing directly westward. The sphericity of the earth was a doctrine held by many at that day; but the theory was not in harmony with the religious ideas of the time, and so it was not prudent for one to publish too openly one's belief in the notion. [Illustration: COLUMBUS. (After the Yanez Portrait in the Madrid Library.)] In his endeavors to secure a patron for his enterprise, Columbus met at first with repeated repulse and disappointment. At last, however, he gained the ear of Queen Isabella of Spain; a little fleet was fitted out for the explorer,--and the New World was found. Columbus never received a fitting reward for the great service he had rendered mankind. Even the continent to which he had shown the way, instead of being called after him as a perpetual memorial, was named from a Florentine navigator, Amerigo Vespucci, whose chief claim to this distinction was his having published the first account of the new lands. [Illustration: THE OCEAN AND ISLANDS BETWEEN WESTERN EUROPE AND EASTERN ASIA. From the Globe of Martin Behaim, 1492. (Cathaja--China; Cipango = Japan.)] THE VOYAGE OF VASCO DA GAMA (1497-1498).--The favorable position of Portugal upon the Atlantic seaboard naturally led her sovereigns to conceive the idea of competing with the Italian cities for the trade of the East Indies, by opening up an ocean route to those lands. During all the latter part of the fifteenth century Portuguese sailors were year after year penetrating a little farther into the mysterious tropical seas, and exploring new reaches of the western coast of Africa. In 1487 the most southern point of the continent was reached, and was named the Cape of Good Hope, as the possibility of reaching India by sea now seemed assured. A decade later Vasco da Gama, a Portuguese admiral, doubled the Cape, crossed the Indian Sea, and landed on the coast of Malabar (1498). The discovery of a water-path to India effected, as we have already noticed (see p. 467), most important changes in the traffic of the world. It made the ports of Portugal and of other countries on the Atlantic seaboard the depots of the Eastern trade. "The front of Europe was suddenly changed." The Italian merchants were ruined. The great warehouses of Egypt and Syria were left empty. The traffic of the Mediterranean dwindled to insignificant proportions. Portugal established trading-posts and colonies in the East, and built up there a great empire,--like that which England is maintaining in the same region at the present day. THE VOYAGE AROUND THE GLOBE (1519-1522).--Upon the return of Columbus from his successful expedition, Pope Alexander VI., with a view to adjusting the conflicting claims of Spain and Portugal, divided the world by a meridian line drawn about midway through the Atlantic, and gave to the Spanish sovereigns all unclaimed pagan lands that their subjects might find west of this line, and to the Portuguese kings all new pagan lands discovered by Portuguese navigators east of the designated meridian. The determination on the part of the king of Spain to acquire title under the papal grant to the valuable Spice Islands of the Pacific by reaching them through sailing westward, led him to organize an expedition of discovery in the western seas. The little fleet was entrusted to the command of Magellan, a Portuguese admiral. Magellan directed his fleet in a southwesterly course across the Atlantic, hoping to find towards the south a break in the land discovered by Columbus. Near the most southern point of Patagonia he found the narrow strait that now bears his name, through which he pushed his vessel into the sea beyond. From the calm, unruffled face of the new ocean, so different from the stormy Atlantic, he gave to it the name _Pacific_. After a most adventurous voyage upon the hitherto untraversed waters of the new sea, the expedition reached the Spice Islands, and eventually arrived home, after an absence of over three years. For the first time men had gone around the globe that they had so long lived upon. The achievement of course settled forever the question as to the shape of the earth. It pushed aside all the old narrow geographical ideas, and broadened immensely the physical horizon of the world. CONQUEST OF MEXICO (1519-1521).--Soon after the discovery of the New World, Spanish settlements were established upon the islands in front of the Gulf of Mexico. Among the colonists here were constantly spread reports of a great and rich Indian monarchy upon the mainland to the west. These stories inflamed the imagination of the more adventurous among the settlers, and an expedition was organized and placed under the command of Hernando Cortez, for the conquest and "conversion" of the heathen nation. The expedition was successful, and soon the Spaniards were masters of the greater part of Mexico. The state that the conquerors destroyed was hardly an "empire," as termed by the Spanish writers, but rather a confederacy, somewhat like the Iroquois confederacy in the North. It embraced three tribes, of which the Aztecs were leaders. At the head of the league was a war-chief, who bore the name of Montezuma. The Mexican Indians had taken some steps in civilization. They employed a system of picture-writing, and had cities and temples. But they were cannibals, and offered human sacrifices to their gods. They had no knowledge of the horse or of the ox, and were of course ignorant of the use of fire-arms. THE CONQUEST OF PERU (1532-1536).--Shortly after the conquest of the Indians of Mexico, the subjugation of the Indians of Peru was also effected. The civilization of the Peruvians was superior to that of the Mexicans. Not only were the great cities of the Peruvian empire filled with splendid temples and palaces, but throughout the country were magnificent works of public utility, such as roads, bridges, and aqueducts. The government of the Incas, the royal, or ruling race, was a mild, parental autocracy. Glowing reports of the enormous wealth of the Incas,--the commonest articles in whose palaces, it was asserted, were of solid gold, reached the Spaniards by way of the Isthmus of Darien, and it was not long before an expedition was organized for the conquest of the country. The leader of the band was Francisco Pizarro, an iron-hearted, perfidious, and illiterate adventurer. Through treachery, Pizarro made a prisoner of the Inca Atahualpa. The captive offered, as a ransom for his release, to fill the room in which he was confined "as high as he could reach" with vessels of gold. Pizarro accepted the offer, and the palaces and temples throughout the empire were stripped of their golden vessels, and the apartment was filled with the precious relics. The value of the treasure is estimated at over $17,000,000. When this vast wealth was once under the control of the Spaniards, they seized it all, and then treacherously put the Inca to death (1533). With the death of Atahualpa the power of the Inca dynasty passed away forever. SPANISH COLONIZATION IN THE NEW WORLD.--Not until more than one hundred years after the discovery of the Western Hemisphere by Columbus, was there established a single permanent English settlement within the limits of what is now the United States, the portion of the New World destined to be taken possession of by the peoples of Northern Europe, and to become the home of civil and religious freedom. But into those parts of the new lands opened up by Spanish exploration and conquest there began to pour at once a tremendous stream of Spanish adventurers and colonists, in search of fortune and fame. It was a sort of Spanish migration. The movement might be compared to the rush of population from the Eastern States to California, after the announcement of the discovery there of gold, in 1848-9. Upon the West India Islands, in Mexico, in Central America, all along the Pacific slope of the Andes, and everywhere upon the lofty and pleasant table-lands that had formed the heart of the empire of the Incas, there sprang up rapidly great cities as the centres of mining and agricultural industries, of commerce and of trade. Thus did a Greater Spain grow up in the New World. It was, in a large measure, the treasures derived from these new possessions that enabled the sovereigns of Spain to play the imposing part they did in the affairs of Europe during the century following the discovery of America. [Footnote: After having robbed the Indians of their wealth in gold and silver, the slow accumulations of centuries, the Spaniards further enriched themselves by the enforced labor of the unfortunate natives. Unused to such toil as was exacted of them under the lash of worse than Egyptian task-masters, the Indians wasted away by millions in the mines of Mexico and Peru, and upon the sugar plantations of the West Indies. More than half of the native population of Peru is thought to have been consumed in the Peruvian mines. To save the Indians, negroes were introduced as a substitute for native laborers. This was the beginning of the African slave-trade in the New World. The traffic was especially encouraged by a benevolent priest named Las Casas (1474-1566), known as the "Apostle of the Indians." Thus the gigantic evil of African slavery in the Western Hemisphere, like the gladiatorial shows of the Romans, was brought into existence, or, rather, in its beginning was fostered, by a philanthropic desire and effort to mitigate human suffering.] FIRST PERIOD.--THE ERA OF THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION. (FROM THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA TO THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA, IN 1648.) CHAPTER XLVIII. THE BEGINNING OF THE REFORMATION UNDER LUTHER. GENERAL STATEMENT.--We have already indicated (see pp. 366-7), the two periods of modern history; namely, the _Era of the Protestant Reformation_ and the _Era of the Political Revolution_. We need here simply to remind the reader that the first period, extending from the opening of the sixteenth century to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, is characterized by the revolt of the nations of Northern Europe against the spiritual jurisdiction of Rome, and the great combat between Protestantism and Catholicism; and that the second period, running from the Peace of Westphalia to our own day, is distinguished by the contest between the people and their rulers, or, in other words, by the conflict between liberal and despotic principles of government. We shall now proceed to speak of the causes and general features of the Reformation, and in succeeding chapters shall follow its fortunes in the various countries of Europe. EXTENT OF ROME'S SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY AT THE OPENING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.--In a preceding chapter on the Papacy it was shown how perfect at one time was the obedience of the West, not only to the spiritual, but to the temporal, authority of the Pope. It was also shown how the papal claim of the right to dictate in temporal or governmental affairs was practically rejected by the princes and sovereigns of Europe as early as the fourteenth century (see p. 458). But previous to the opening of the sixteenth century there had been comparatively few--though there had been some, like the Albigenses in the South of France, the Wickliffites in England, and the Hussites in Bohemia--who denied the supreme and infallible authority of the bishops of Rome in all matters touching religion. Speaking in a very general manner, it would be correct to say that at the close of the fifteenth century all the nations of Western Europe professed the faith of the Latin, or Roman Catholic Church, and yielded spiritual obedience to the Papal See. CAUSES OF REFORMATION.--We must now seek the causes which led one-half of the nations of Europe to secede, as it were, from the Roman Catholic Church. The causes were many. Among others may be mentioned the great mental awakening which marked the close of the mediæval and the opening of the modern age; for the intellectual revival, though often spoken of, in so far as it concerned the Northern nations, as an effect of the religious revival, was in reality at once cause and effect. It hastened the Reformation, and was itself hastened by it. And in connection with the Revival of Learning must be mentioned the invention of printing as a powerful agency in the promotion of the religious movement. The press scattered broadcast over Europe, not only the Bible, but the writings of the men who had begun to doubt the scriptural authority for many of the doctrines and ceremonies of the Church,--such as devotion to the Virgin Mary, the invoking of saints, the use of images, confession to a priest, and the nature of the elements in the Eucharist. These writings of course stirred up debate, and led to questioning and criticism. A second cause was the existence of most serious scandals and abuses in the Church. During the fifteenth century, the morality of the Church was probably lower than at any other period in its history. The absolute necessity of its thorough reform in both "head and members" was recognized by all earnest and spiritual-minded men. The only difference of opinion among such was as to the manner in which the work of purification should be effected. A third cause may be found in the claims of the Popes to the right to interfere in the internal, governmental affairs of a nation; for, although these claims had been rejected by the sovereigns of Europe, they were nevertheless still maintained by the Roman bishops, and this caused the temporal princes to regard with great jealousy the papal power. But foremost among the proximate causes, and the actual _occasion_ of the revolution, was the controversy which arose about indulgences. These, in the Catholic Church, are remissions, to penitents, of punishment due for sin, upon the performance of some work of mercy or piety, or the payment of a sum of money. It is, and always has been, the theory of the Catholic Church, that the indulgence remits merely temporal penalties,-- that is, penalties imposed by ecclesiastical authority, and the pains of Purgatory,--and that it can take effect only upon certain conditions, among which is that of sincere repentance. Indulgences were frequently granted by various pontiffs, as a means of raising funds for pious enterprises. A considerable portion of the money for building the Cathedral of St. Peter at Rome was raised in this manner. TETZEL AND THE PREACHING OF INDULGENCES.--Leo X., upon his election to the papal dignity, in 1513, found the coffers of the Church almost empty; and, being in pressing need of money to carry on his various undertakings, among which was work upon St. Peter's, he had recourse to the then common expedient of a grant of indulgences. He delegated the power of dispensing these in Germany to the archbishop of Magdeburg, who employed a Dominican friar by the name of Tetzel as his deputy in Saxony. The archbishop was unfortunate in the selection of his agent. Tetzel carried out his commission in such a way as to give rise to great scandal. The language that he, or at least his subordinates, used, in exhorting the people to comply with the conditions of gaining the indulgences, one of which was a donation of money, was unseemly and exaggerated. The result was that erroneous views as to the effect of indulgences began to spread among the ignorant and credulous, some being so far misled as to think that if they only contributed this money to the building of St. Peter's at Rome they would be exempt from all penalty for sins, paying little heed to the other conditions, such as sorrow for sin, and purpose of amendment. Hence, many were led to declaim against the procedure of the zealous friar. These protests were the near mutterings of a storm that had long been gathering, and that was soon to shake all Europe from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. [Illustration: MARTIN LUTHER] MARTIN LUTHER.--Foremost among those who opposed and denounced Tetzel was Martin Luther (1483-1546), an Augustine monk, and a teacher of theology in the university of Wittenberg. He was of humble parentage, his father being a poor miner. The boy possessed a good voice, and frequently, while a student, earned his bread by singing from door to door. The natural bent of his mind, and, if we may believe a somewhat doubtful legend, the death of a friend struck down at his side by lightning, led him to resolve to enter a monastery and devote himself to the service of the Church. Before Tetzel appeared in Germany, Luther had already earned a wide reputation for learning and piety. THE NINETY-FIVE THESES.--The form which Church penances had taken in the hands of Tetzel and his associates, together with other circumstances, awakened in Luther's mind doubts and questionings as to many of the doctrines of the Church. Especially was there gradually maturing within him a conviction that the entire system of ecclesiastical penances and indulgences was unscriptural and wrong. His last lingering doubt respecting this matter appears to have been removed while, during an official visit to Rome in 1510, he was penitentially ascending on his knees the sacred stairs (_scala santa_) of the Lateran, when he seemed to hear an inner voice declaring, "The just shall live by faith." At length Luther drew up ninety-five theses, or articles, wherein he fearlessly stated his views respecting indulgences. These theses, written in Latin, he nailed to the door of the church at Wittenberg, and invited all scholars to examine and criticise them, and to point out if in any respect they were opposed to the teachings of the Word of God, or of the early Fathers of the Church (1517). By means of the press the theses were scattered with incredible rapidity throughout every country in Europe. BURNING OF THE PAPAL BULL (1520).--All the continent was now plunged into a perfect tumult of controversy. Luther, growing bolder, was soon attacking the entire system and body of teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. At first the Pope, Leo X., was inclined to regard the whole matter as "a mere squabble of monks," but at length he felt constrained to issue a bull against the audacious reformer (1520). His writings were condemned as heretical, and all persons were forbidden to read them; and he himself, if he did not recant his errors within sixty days, was to be seized and sent to Rome to be dealt with as an heretic. Luther in reply publicly burned the papal bull at one of the gates of Wittenberg. THE DIET OF WORMS (1521).--Leo now invoked the aid of the recently elected Emperor Charles the Fifth in extirpating the spreading heresy. The emperor complied by summoning Luther before the Diet of Worms, an assembly of the princes, nobles, and clergy of Germany, convened at Worms to deliberate upon the affairs of Germany, and especially upon matters touching the great religious controversy. Called upon in the Imperial assembly to recant his errors, Luther steadily refused to do so, unless his teachings could be shown to be inconsistent with the Bible. Although some wished to deliver the reformer to the flames, the safe-conduct of the emperor under which he had come to the Diet protected him. So Luther was allowed to depart in safety, but was followed by a decree of the assembly which pronounced him a heretic and an outlaw. But Luther had powerful friends among the princes of Germany, one of whom was his own prince, Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony. Solicitors for the safety of the reformer, the prince caused him to be seized on his way from the Diet by a company of masked horsemen, who carried him to the castle of the Wartburg, where he was kept about a year, his retreat being known only to a few friends. During this period of forced retirement from the world, Luther was hard at work upon his celebrated translation of the Bible. THE PEASANTS' WAR (1524-1525).--Before quite a year had passed, Luther was called from the Wartburg by the troubles caused by a new sect that had appeared, known as the Anabaptists, whose excesses were casting great discredit upon the whole reform movement. Luther's sudden appearance at Wittenberg gave a temporary check to the agitation. But in the course of two or three years the trouble broke out afresh, and in a more complex and aggravated form. The peasants of Suabia and Franconia, stung to madness by the oppressions of their feudal lords, stirred by the religious excitement that filled the air, and influenced by the incendiary preaching of their prophets Carlstadt and Muenzer, rose in revolt against the nobles and priests. Castles and monasteries were sacked and burned, and horrible outrages were committed. The rebellion was at length crushed, but not until one hundred thousand lives had been sacrificed, a large part of South Germany ravaged, and great reproach cast upon the reformers, whose teachings were held by their enemies to be the whole cause of the ferment. The Reformers are called Protestants. Notwithstanding all the efforts that were made to suppress the doctrines of Luther, they gained ground rapidly, and in the year 1529 another assembly, known as the Second Diet of Spires, was called to consider the matter. This body issued an edict forbidding all persons doing anything to promote the spread of the new doctrines, until a general council of the Church should have investigated them and pronounced authoritatively upon them. Seven of the German princes, and a large number of the cities of the empire, issued a formal _protest_ against the action of the Diet. Because of this protest, the reformers from this time began to be known as _Protestants_. CAUSES THAT CHECKED THE PROGRESS OF THE REFORMATION.--Even before the death of Luther, [Footnote: After the death of Luther, the leadership of the Reformation in Germany fell to Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560), one of Luther's friends and fellow-workers. Melanchthon's disposition was exactly the opposite of Luther's. He often reproved Luther for his indiscretion and vehemence, and was constantly laboring to effect, through mutual concessions, a reconciliation between the Roman Catholics and the Protestants.] which occurred in the year 1546, the Reformation had gained a strong foothold in most of the countries of Western Christendom, save in Spain and Italy, and even in these parts the new doctrines had made some progress. It seemed as if the revolt from Rome was destined to become universal, and the old ecclesiastical empire to be completely broken up. But several causes now conspired to check the hitherto triumphant advance of Protestantism, and to confine the movement to the Northern nations. Chief among these were the _divisions among the Protestants_, the _Catholic counter-reform_, the _increased activity of the Inquisition_, and the _rise of the Order of the Jesuits_. DIVISIONS AMONG THE PROTESTANTS.--Early in their contest with Rome, the Protestants became divided into numerous hostile sects. In Switzerland arose the Zwinglians (followers of Ulrich Zwingle, 1484-1531), who differed from the Lutherans in their views regarding the Eucharist, and on some other points of doctrine. The Calvinists were followers of John Calvin (1509-1564), a Frenchman by birth, who, forced to flee from France on account of persecution, found a refuge at Geneva, of which city he became a sort of Protestant pope. [Footnote: Calvin was, next after Luther, the greatest of the reformers. The doctrines of Calvin came to prevail very widely, and have exerted a most remarkable influence upon the general course of history. "The Huguenots of France, the Covenanters of Scotland, the Puritans of England, the Pilgrim Fathers of New England, were all the offspring of Calvinism."] The great Protestant communions quickly broke up into a large number of denominations, or churches, each holding to some minor point of doctrine, or adhering to some form of worship disregarded by the others, yet all agreeing in the central doctrine of the Reformation, "Justification by faith." [Illustration: JOHN CALVIN] Now the contentions between these different sects were sharp and bitter. The liberal-minded reformer had occasion to lament the same state of things as that which troubled the apostle Paul in the early days of Christianity. One said, I am of Luther; another said, I am of Calvin; and another said, I am of Zwingle. Even Luther himself denounced Zwingle as a heretic; and the Calvinists would have no dealings with the Lutherans. The influence of these sectarian divisions upon the progress of the Reformation was most disastrous. They afforded the Catholics a strong and effective argument against the entire movement as tending to uncertainty and discord. THE CATHOLIC COUNTER-REFORM.--While the Protestants were thus breaking up into numerous rival sects, the Catholics were removing the causes of dissension within the old Church by a thorough reform in its head and members, and by a clear and authoritative restatement of the doctrines of the Catholic faith. This was accomplished very largely by the labors of the celebrated Council of Trent (1545-1563). The correction of the abuses that had so much to do in causing the great schism, smoothed the way for the return to the ancient Church of thousands who had become alarmed at the dangers into which society seemed to drift when once it cast loose from anchorage in the safe harbor of tradition and authority. THE INQUISITION.--The Roman Catholic Church having purified itself and defined clearly its articles of faith, demanded of all a more implicit obedience than hitherto. The Inquisition, or Holy Office (see p. 500), now assumed new vigor and activity, and heresy was sternly dealt with. The tribunal was assisted in the execution of its sentences by the secular authorities in all the Romance countries, but outside of these it was not generally recognized by the temporal princes, though it did succeed in establishing itself for a time in the Netherlands and in some parts of Germany. Death, usually by burning, and loss of property were the penalty of obstinate heresy. Without doubt the Holy Office did much to check the advance of the Reformation in Southern Europe, aiding especially in holding Italy and Spain compactly obedient to the ancient Church. At this point, in connection with the persecutions of the Inquisition, we should not fail to recall that in the sixteenth century a refusal to conform to the established worship was regarded by all, by Protestants as well as by Catholics, as a species of treason against society, and was dealt with accordingly. Thus we find Calvin at Geneva consenting to the burning of Servetus (1553), because he published views that the Calvinists thought heretical; and in England we see the Anglican Protestants waging the most cruel, bitter, and persistent persecutions, not only against the Catholics, but also against all Protestants that refused to conform to the Established Church. THE JESUITS.--The Order of Jesuits, or Society of Jesus, was another most powerful agent concerned in the re-establishment of the threatened authority of the Papal See. The founder of the institution was St. Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556), a native of Spain. Loyola's object was to form a society, the devotion and energy of whose numbers should counteract the zeal and activity of the reformers. [Illustration: LOYOLA. (From a medal.)] As the well-disciplined, watchful, and uncompromising foes of the Protestant reformers, now divided into many and often hostile sects, the Jesuits did very much to bring about a reaction, to retrieve the failing fortunes of the papal power in Europe, and to extend the authority and doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church in all other parts of the world. Most distinguished of the missionaries of the order to pagan lands was Francis Xavier (1506-1552), known as the Apostle of the Indies. His labors in India, Japan, and other lands of the East were attended with astonishing results. OUTCOME OF THE REVOLT.--As in following chapters we are to trace the fortunes of the Reformation in the leading European countries, we shall here say only a word as to the issue of the great contest. The outcome of the revolt, very broadly stated, was the separation from the Roman Catholic Church of the Northern, or Teutonic nations; that is to say, of Northern Germany, of portions of Switzerland and of the Netherlands, of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, England, and Scotland. The Romance nations, namely, Italy, France and Spain, together with Celtic Ireland, adhered to the old Church. What this separation from Rome meant in the political realm is well stated by Seebohm: "It was the claiming by the civil power in each nation of those rights which the Pope had hitherto claimed within it as head of the great ecclesiastical empire. The clergy and monks had hitherto been regarded more or less as foreigners--that is, as subjects of the Pope's ecclesiastical empire. Where there was a revolt from Rome the allegiance of these persons to the Pope was annulled, and the civil power claimed as full a sovereignty over them as it had over its lay subjects. Matters relating to marriage and wills still for the most part remained under ecclesiastical jurisdiction, but then, as the ecclesiastical courts themselves became national courts and ceased to be Roman or papal, all these matters came under the control of the civil power." In a spiritual or religious point of view, this severance by the Northern nations of the bonds that formerly united them to the ecclesiastical empire of Rome, meant a transfer of their allegiance from the _Church_ to the _Bible_. The decrees of Popes and the decisions of Councils were no longer to be regarded as having divine and binding force; the Scriptures alone were to be held as possessing divine and infallible authority, and, theoretically, this rule and standard of faith and practice each one was to interpret for himself. Thus one-half of Western Christendom was lost to the Roman Church. Yet notwithstanding this loss, notwithstanding the earlier loss of the Eastern part of Christendom (see p. 417), and notwithstanding the fact that its temporal power has been entirely taken from it, the Papacy still remains, as Macaulay says, "not a mere antique, but full of life and youthful vigor." The Pope is to-day the supreme Head of a Church that, in the words of the brilliant writer just quoted, "was great and respected before Saxon had set foot on Britain, before the Frank had passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still flourished in Antioch, when idols were still worshipped in the temple of Mecca. And she may still exist in undiminished vigor when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's." CHAPTER XLIX. THE ASCENDENCY OF SPAIN. 1. REIGN OF THE EMPEROR CHARLES V. (1519-1556). CHARLES' DOMINIONS.--Charles I. of Spain, better known to fame as Emperor Charles V., was the son of Philip the Handsome, Archduke of Austria, and Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. He was "the converging point and heir of four great royal lines, which had become united by a series of happy matrimonial alliances." These were the houses of Austria, Burgundy, Castile, and Aragon. Before Charles had completed his nineteenth year, there were heaped upon his head, through the removal of his ancestors by death, the crowns of the four dynasties. But vast as were the hereditary possessions of the young prince, there was straightway added to these (in 1519), by the vote of the Electors of Germany, the sovereignty of the Holy Roman Empire. After this election he was known as _Emperor Charles V.,_ whereas hitherto he had borne the title of _Don Carlos I._ of Spain. CHARLES AND THE REFORMATION.--It is Charles' relations to the Lutheran movement which constitute the significant feature of his life and work. Here his policies and acts concerned universal history. It would hardly be asserting too much to say that Charles, at the moment he ascended the Imperial throne, held in his hands the fortunes of the Reformation, so far as regards the countries of Southern Europe. Whether these were to be saved to Rome or not, seemed at this time to depend largely upon the attitude which Charles should assume towards the reform movement. Fortunately for the Catholic Church, the young emperor placed himself at the head of the Catholic party, and during his reign employed the strength and resources of his empire in repressing the heresy of the reformers. [Illustration: THE SPANISH KINGDOMS And Their European Dependencies under Charles the Fifth] HIS TWO CHIEF ENEMIES.--Had Charles been free from the outset to devote all his energies to the work of suppressing the Lutheran heresy, it is difficult to see what could have saved the reform doctrines within his dominions from total extirpation. But fortunately for the cause of the reformers, Charles' attention, during all the first part of his reign, was drawn away from the serious consideration of Church questions, by the attacks upon his dominions of two of the most powerful monarchs of the times,--Francis I. (1515-1547) of France, and Solyman the Magnificent (1520-1566), Sultan of Turkey. Whenever Charles was inclined to proceed to severe measures against the Protestant princes of Germany, the threatening movements of one or both of these enemies, at times acting in concert and alliance, forced him to postpone his proposed crusade against heretics for a campaign against foreign foes. RIVALRY AND WARS BETWEEN CHARLES AND FRANCIS [Footnote: Table of Wars:-- First War (ended by Peace of Madrid). . 1521-1526 Second War (ended by Ladies' Peace) . . 1527-1529 Third War (ended by Truce of Nice). . . 1536-1538 Fourth War (ended by Peace of Crespy).. 1542-1544] (1521-1544).--Francis I. was the rival of Charles in the contest for Imperial honors. When the Electors conferred the title of emperor upon the Spanish monarch, Francis was sorely disappointed, and during all the remainder of his reign kept up a jealous and almost incessant warfare with Charles, whose enormous possessions now nearly surrounded the French kingdom. Italy was the field of much of the fighting, as the securing of dominion in that peninsula was the chief aim of each of the rivals. The so-called _First War_ between Francis and the emperor was full of misfortunes for Francis. His army was driven out of Northern Italy by the Imperial forces; his most skilful and trusted commander, the Constable of Bourbon, turned traitor and went over to Charles, and another of his most valiant nobles, the celebrated Chevalier Bayard, the knight _sans peur, sans reproche_, "without fear and without reproach," was killed; while, to crown all, Francis himself, after suffering a crushing defeat at Pavia, in Italy, was wounded and taken prisoner. In his letter to his mother informing her of the disaster, he is said to have laconically written, "All is lost save honor." He was liberated by the Peace of Madrid (1526). The most memorable incident of the _Second War_ between the king and the emperor, was the sack of Rome by an Imperial army, made up chiefly of Lutherans. Rome had not witnessed such scenes since the terrible days of the Goth and Vandal. In the _Third War_ Francis shocked all Christendom by forming an alliance with the Turkish Sultan, who ravaged with his fleets the Italian coasts, and sold his plunder and captives in the port of Marseilles. Thus was a Christian city shamefully opened to the Moslems as a refuge and a slave-market. The _Fourth War_, which was the last between the rivals, left their respective possessions substantially the same as at the beginning of the strife, in 1521. DISASTROUS EFFECTS OF THE WAR.--The results of these royal contentions had been extremely calamitous. For a quarter of a century they had kept nearly all Europe in a perfect turmoil, and by preventing alliances of the Christian states, had been the occasion of the severe losses which Christendom during this period suffered at the hands of the Turks. Hungary had been ravaged with fire and sword; Rhodes had been captured from the Knights of St. John; and all the Mediterranean shores pillaged, and thousands of Christian captives chained to the oars of Turkish galleys. [Footnote: The worst feature of this advance of the Sultan's authority in the Mediterranean was the growth, under his protection, of the power of the Algerian pirates. One of the chief strongholds of the pirates on the African coast was Tunis, which was held by the famous Barbarossa. In the interval between his second and third wars with Francis, Charles, with a large army and fleet, made an assault upon this place, defeated the corsair, and set free 20,000 Christian captives. For this brilliant and knightly achievement, the emperor received great applause throughout Europe. Just after his third war with Francis, the emperor made an unsuccessful and most disastrous assault upon Algiers, another stronghold of the corsairs.] PERSECUTION OF THE FRENCH PROTESTANTS BY FRANCIS.--The cessation of the wars between Francis and Charles left each free to give his attention to his heretical subjects. And both had work enough on hand; for while the king and the emperor had been fighting each other, the doctrines of the reformers had been spreading rapidly in all directions and among all classes. The severest blow dealt by Francis against the heretics of his kingdom fell upon the Vaudois, or Waldenses, [Footnote: So called from the founder of the sect, Peter Waldo, or Pierre de Vaux, who lived about the beginning of the thirteenth century.] the inhabitants of a number of hamlets in Piedmont and Provence. Thousands were put to death by the sword, thousands more were burned at the stake, and the land was reduced to a wilderness. Only a miserable remnant, who found an asylum among the mountains, were left to hand down their faith to later times. CHARLES' WARS WITH THE PROTESTANT GERMAN PRINCES.--Charles, on his part, turned his attention to the reformers in Germany. Inspired by religious motives and convictions, and apprehensive, further, of the effect upon his authority in Germany of the growth there of a confederacy of the Protestant princes, known as the League of Schmalkald, Charles resolved to suppress the reform movement by force. He was at first successful, but in the end, the war proved the most disastrous and humiliating to him of any in which he had engaged. Successive defeats of his armies forced him to give up his undertaking to make all his German subjects think alike in matters of religion. THE RELIGIOUS PEACE OF AUGSBURG (1555).--In the celebrated Diet of Augsburg, convened in 1555 to compose the distracted affairs of the German states, it was arranged and agreed that every prince should be allowed to choose between the Catholic religion and the Augsburg Confession, [Footnote: The "Augsburg Confession" was the formula of belief of the adherents of Luther. It was drawn up by the scholar Melanchthon, and laid before the Imperial Diet assembled at Augsburg by Charles V. in 1530.] and should have the right to make his religion the worship of his people. This, it will be noted, was simply toleration as concerns princes or governments. The people individually had no freedom of choice; every subject must follow his prince, and think and believe as he thought and believed. Of course, this was no real toleration. Even to the article of toleration as stated above, the Diet made one important exception. The Catholics insisted that _ecclesiastical_ princes, _i.e._, bishops and abbots who were heads of states, on becoming Protestants, should lose their offices and revenues; and this provision, under the name of the _Ecclesiastical Reservation_, was finally made a part of the treaty. This was a most fortunate article for the Catholics. ABDICATION AND DEATH OF CHARLES.--While the Diet of Augsburg was arranging the Religious Peace, the Emperor Charles was enacting the part of a second Diocletian (see p. 331). There had long been forming in his mind the purpose of spending his last days in monastic seclusion. The disappointing issue of his contest with the Protestant princes of Germany, the weight of advancing years, together with menacing troubles which began "to thicken like dark clouds about the evening of his reign," now led the emperor to carry this resolution into effect. Accordingly he abdicated in favor of his son Philip the crown of the Netherlands (1555), and that of Spain and its colonies (1556), and then retired to the monastery of San Yuste, situated in a secluded region in the western part of Spain (1556). [Illustration: EMPEROR CHARLES THE FIFTH. (After a painting by Angel Lizcano.)] In his retreat at Yuste, Charles passed the remaining short term of his life in participating with the monks in the exercises of religion, and in watching the current of events without; for Charles never lost interest in the affairs of the empire over which he had ruled, and Philip constantly had the benefit of his father's wisdom and experience. There is a tradition which tells how. Charles, after vainly endeavoring to make some clocks that he had about him at Yuste run together, made the following reflection: "How foolish I have been to think I could make all men believe alike about religion, when here I cannot make even two clocks keep the same time." This story is probably mythical. Charles seems never to have doubted either the practicability or the policy of securing uniformity of belief by force. While in retirement at Yuste, he expressed the deepest regret that he did not burn Luther at Worms. He was constantly urging Philip to use greater severity in dealing with his heretical subjects, and could scarcely restrain himself from leaving his retreat, in order to engage personally in the work of extirpating the pestilent doctrines, which he heard were spreading in Spain. 2. SPAIN UNDER PHILIP II. (1556-1598). PHILIP'S DOMAINS.--With the abdication of Charles V. the Imperial crown passed out of the Spanish line of the House of Hapsburg. [Footnote: The Imperial crown went to Charles' brother, Ferdinand, of Austria.] Yet the dominions of Philip were scarcely less extensive than those over which his father had ruled. All the hereditary possessions of the Spanish crown were of course his. Then just before his father's abdication gave him these domains, he had become king-consort of England by marriage with Mary Tudor. And about the middle of his reign he conquered Portugal and added to his empire that kingdom and its rich dependencies in Africa and the East Indies,--an acquisition which more than made good to the Spanish crown the loss of the Imperial dignity. After this accession of territory, Philip's sovereignty was acknowledged by more than 100,000,000 persons- probably as large a number as was embraced within the limits of the Roman empire at the time of its greatest extension. But notwithstanding that Philip's dominions were so extensive, his resources enormous, and many of the outward circumstances of his reign striking and brilliant, there were throughout the period causes at work which were rapidly undermining the greatness of Spain and preparing her fall. By wasteful wars and extravagant buildings Philip managed to dissipate the royal treasures; and by his tyrannical course in respect of his Moorish, Jewish, and Protestant subjects, he ruined the industries of the most flourishing of the provinces of Spain, and drove the Netherlands into a desperate revolt, which ended in the separation of the most valuable of those provinces from the Spanish crown. As the most important matters of Philip's reign--namely, his war against the revolted Netherlands, and his attempt upon England with his "Invincible Armada"--belong more properly to the respective histories of England and the Netherlands, and will be treated of in connection with the affairs of those countries (see pp. 558, 564), we shall give here only a very little space to the history of the period. PHILIP'S WAR WITH FRANCE.--Philip took up his father's quarrel with France. He was aided by the English, who were persuaded to this step by their queen, Mary Tudor, now the wife of the Spanish sovereign. Fortune favored Philip. The French were defeated in two great battles, and were forced to agree to the terms of a treaty (Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis, 1559) so advantageous to Spain as to give Philip great distinction in the eyes of all Europe. PHILIP'S CRUSADE AGAINST THE MOORS.--It will be recalled that after the conquest of Granada the Moors were still allowed the exercise of their religion (see p. 499). Philip conceived it to be his duty to impose upon them conditions that should thoroughly obliterate all traces of their ancient faith and manners. So he issued a decree that the Moors should no longer use their native tongue; and that they should give their children Christian names, and send them to Christian schools. A determined revolt followed. Philip repressed the uprising with terrible severity (1571). The fairest provinces of Spain were almost depopulated, and large districts relapsed into primeval wilderness. DEFEAT OF THE TURKISH FLEET AT LEPANTO (1571).--Philip rendered an eminent service to civilization in helping to stay the progress of the Turks in the Mediterranean. They had captured the important island of Cyprus, and had assaulted the Hospitallers at Malta, [Footnote: After the knights had been driven from the island of Rhodes by the Turks (see p. 532), Charles gave the survivors of the Order the island of Malta (1530).] which island had been saved from falling into the hands of the infidels only by the splendid conduct of the knights. All Christendom was becoming alarmed. Pope Pius V. called upon the princes of Europe to rally to the defence of the Church. An alliance was formed, embracing the Pope, the Venetians, and Philip II. An immense fleet was equipped, and put under the command of Don John of Austria, Philip's half-brother, a young general whose consummate ability had been recently displayed in the crusade against the Moors. The Christian fleet met the Turkish squadron in the Gulf of Lepanto, on the western coast of Greece. The battle was unequalled by anything the Mediterranean had seen since the naval encounters of the Romans and Carthaginians in the First Punic War. More than 600 ships and 200,000 men mingled in the struggle. The Ottoman fleet was almost totally destroyed. Thousands of Christian captives, who were found chained to the oars of the Turkish galleys, were liberated. All Christendom rejoiced as when Jerusalem was captured by the first crusaders. The battle of Lepanto holds an important place in history, because it marks the turning-point of the long struggle between the Mohammedans and the Christians, which had now been going on for nearly one thousand years. The Ottoman Turks, though they afterwards made progress in some quarters, never recovered the prestige they lost in that disaster, and their authority and power thenceforward steadily declined. [Footnote: After the battle of Lepanto the next most critical moment in the history of the Turkish conquests was in 1683. In that year the Turks besieged Vienna, and had all but secured the prize, when the city was relieved by the distinguished Polish general Sobieski.] THE DEATH OF PHILIP: LATER EVENTS.--In the year 1588 Philip made his memorable attempt with the so-called "Invincible Armada" upon England, at this time the stronghold of Protestantism. As we shall see a little later, he failed utterly in the undertaking (see p. 558). Ten years after this he died in the palace of the Escurial. With his death closed that splendid era of Spanish history which began with the discovery of the New World by Columbus. From this time forward the nation steadily declined in power, reputation, and influence. Thus, under Philip III. (1598-1621), a severe loss, and one from which they never recovered, was inflicted upon the manufactures and various other industries of Spain, by the expulsion of the Moors, or Moriscoes. More than half a million of the most intelligent, skilful, and industrious inhabitants of the Peninsula were driven into exile. And then in 1609, the Protestant Netherlands, whose revolt against the tyranny of Philip II. has been mentioned, virtually achieved their independence (see p. 570). In the secession of these provinces the Spanish crown lost her most valuable possessions, and she now sank rapidly to the position of a third or fourth rate power. [Footnote: The loss of the Netherlands was followed in 1639 by the loss of Portugal. During the latter part of the seventeenth century Spain was involved in disastrous wars with France, and suffered a decline of 8,000,000 in her population. After the revolt of her American colonies, in the early part of the present century, and her cession to the United States of Florida (in 1819), Spain was almost shorn--she still held Cuba and a few other patches of territory scattered about the world--of those rich and magnificent colonial possessions which had been her pride in the time of her ascendency.] [Illustration: EUROPE IN THE 16TH AND 17TH CENTURIES.] CHAPTER L. THE TUDORS AND THE ENGLISH REFORMATION. (1485-1603.) 1. INTRODUCTORY. THE TUDOR PERIOD.--The Tudor period [Footnote: The Tudor sovereigns were Henry VII. (1485-1509); Henry VIII. (1509-1547); Edward VI. (1547-1553); Mary (1553-1558); and Elizabeth (1558-1603).] in English history covers the sixteenth century, and overlaps a little the preceding and the following century. It was an eventful and stirring time for the English people. It witnessed among them great progress in art, science, and trade, and a literary outburst such as the world had not seen since the best days of Athens. But the great event of the period was the Reformation. It was under the Tudors that England was severed from the spiritual empire of Rome, and Protestantism firmly established in the island. To tell how these great results were effected will be our chief aim in the present chapter. THE ENGLISH REFORMATION FIRST A REVOLT AND THEN A REFORM.--The Reformation in England was, more distinctly than elsewhere, a double movement. First, England was separated violently from the ecclesiastical empire of Rome. All papal and priestly authority was cast off, but without any essential change being made in creed or mode of worship. This was accomplished under Henry VIII. Secondly, the English Church, thus rendered independent of Rome, gradually changed its creed and ritual. This was effected chiefly under Edward VI. So the movement was first a _revolt_ and then a _reform_. THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING IN ENGLAND.--The soil in England was, in a considerable measure, prepared for the seed of the Reformation by the labors of the Humanists (see p. 474). Three men stand preeminent as lovers and promoters of the New Learning. Their names are Colet, Erasmus, and More. Colet was leader and master of the little band. His generous enthusiasm was kindled at Florence, in Italy. It was an important event in the history of the Reformation when Colet crossed the Alps to learn Greek at the feet of the Greek exiles; for on his return to England he brought back with him not only an increased love for classical learning, but a fervent zeal for religious reform, inspired, it would seem, by the stirring eloquence of Savonarola (see p. 511). [Illustration: ERASMUS] Erasmus was probably superior in classical scholarship to any student of his times. "He bought Greek books first, and clothes afterwards." His Greek testament, published in 1516, was one of the most powerful agents concerned in bringing about the Reformation. Indeed, his relation to the reform movement is well indicated by the charge made against him by the enemies of the Reformation, who declared that "Erasmus laid the egg, and Luther hatched it." Thomas More was drawn, or rather forced, into political life, and of him and his writings we shall have occasion to speak hereafter, in connection with the reign of Henry VIII. (see p. 549). THE LOLLARDS.--Another special preparation for the entrance into England of the Reformation was the presence among the lower classes there of a considerable body of Lollards (see p. 491). Persecution had driven the sect into obscurity, but had not been able to extirpate the heresy. In holding the Scriptures as the sole rule of faith, and in the maintenance of other doctrines denounced by the Roman Catholic Church, the Lollards occupied a position similar to that held by the German reformers, and consequently, when the teachings of Luther were disseminated in England, they received them gladly. 2. THE REIGN OF HENRY VII. (1485-1509). THE UNION OF THE ROSES.--Henry VII. and his queen united the long-disputed titles of the two Roses [Footnote: Henry represented the claims of the House of Lancaster, and soon after his coronation he married the Princess Elizabeth, a daughter of Edward IV., and the representative of the claims of the House of York.] (see p. 488); but the bitter feelings engendered by the contentions of the rival families still existed. Particularly was there much smothered discontent among the Yorkists, which manifested itself in two attempts to place impostors upon the throne, both of which, however, were unsuccessful. BENEVOLENCES.--Avarice and a love of despotic rule were Henry's chief faults. Much of his attention was given to heaping up a vast fortune. One device adopted by the 'king for wringing money from his wealthy subjects was what was euphoniously termed _Benevolences_. Magna Charta forbade the king to impose taxes without the consent of Parliament. But Henry did not like to convene Parliament, as he wished to rule like the kings of the Continent, guided simply by his own free will. Furthermore, his title not being above question, it was his policy to relieve the poorer classes of the burden of tax-paying, in order to secure their good-will and support. So Benevolences were made to take the place of regular taxes. These were nothing more nor less than gifts extorted from the well-to-do, generally by moral pressure. One of Henry's favorite ministers, named Morton, was particularly successful in his appeals for gifts of this kind. To those who lived splendidly he would say that it was very evident they were quite able to make a generous donation to their sovereign; while to others who lived in a narrow and pinched way he would represent that their economical mode of life must have made them wealthy. This famous dilemma received the name of "Morton's Fork." MARITIME DISCOVERIES.--It was during this reign that great geographical discoveries enlarged the boundaries of the world. In 1492 Columbus announced to Europe the existence of land to the west. In 1497 Vasco da Gama sailed around the cape of Good Hope and found a water-road to the East Indies. The same year of this last enterprise, Henry fitted out a fleet under the command of John Cabot, a Venetian sailor doing business in England, and his son Sebastian, for exploration in the western seas. The Cabots first touched at Newfoundland (or Cape Breton Island), and then the following year Sebastian explored the coast they had run against, from that point to what is now Virginia or the Carolinas. They were the first Europeans, if we except the Northmen, to look upon the American continent, for Columbus at this time had seen only the islands in front of the Gulf of Mexico. These explorations of the Cabots were of great importance for the reason that they gave England a title to the best portion of the North American coast. FOREIGN MATRIMONIAL ALLIANCES.--The marriages of Henry's children must be noted by us here, because of the great influence these alliances had upon the after-course of English history. A common fear of France caused Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain and Henry to form a protective alliance. To secure the permanency of the union it was deemed necessary to cement it by a marriage bond. The Spanish Infanta was accordingly betrothed to Arthur, Prince of Wales. Unfortunately, the prince died soon after the celebration of the nuptials. The Spanish sovereigns, still anxious to retain the advantages of an English alliance, now urged that the young widow be espoused to Arthur's brother Henry, and the English king, desirous on his side to preserve the friendship of Spain, assented to the betrothal. A rule of the Church, however, which forbade a man to marry his brother's widow, stood in the way of this arrangement; but the queen- mother Isabella managed to secure a decree from the Pope granting permission in this case, and so the young widow was betrothed to Prince Henry, afterward Henry VIII. This alliance of the royal families of England and Spain led to many important consequences, as we shall learn. To relieve England of danger on her northern frontier, Henry steadily pursued the policy of a marriage alliance with Scotland. His wishes were realized when his eldest daughter Margaret became the wife of James IV., king of that realm. This was a most fortunate marriage, and finally led to the happy union of the two countries under a single crown (see p. 601). Henry VII. died in 1509, leaving his throne to his son Henry, an energetic and headstrong youth of eighteen years. 3. ENGLAND SEVERED FROM THE PAPACY BY HENRY VIII. (1509-1547). CARDINAL WOLSEY.--We must here, at the opening of Henry VIII.'s reign, [Footnote: In 1512, joining what was known as the Holy League,--a union against the French king, of which the Pope was the head,--Henry made his first campaign in France. While Henry was across the Channel, James IV. of Scotland thought to give aid to the French king by invading England. The Scottish army was met by the English force at Flodden, beneath the Cheviot Hills, and completely overwhelmed (1513). King James was killed, and the flower of the Scottish nobility were left dead upon the field. It was the most terrible disaster that had ever befallen the Scottish nation. Scott's poem entitled _Marmion, a Tale of Flodden Field_, commemorates the battle.] introduce his greatest minister, Thomas Wolsey (1471-1530). This man was one of the most remarkable characters of his generation. Henry VIII. elevated him to the office of Archbishop of York, and made him lord chancellor of the realm. The Pope, courting the minister's influence, made him a cardinal, and afterwards papal legate in England. He was now at the head of affairs in both State and Church. His revenues from his many offices were enormous, and enabled him to assume a style of living astonishingly magnificent. His household numbered five hundred persons; and a truly royal train, made up of bishops and nobles, attended him with great pomp and parade wherever he went. HENRY AS DEFENDER OF THE FAITH.--It was early in the reign of Henry VIII. that Martin Luther tacked upon the door of the Wittenberg church his epoch-making theses. England was stirred with the rest of Western Christendom. Henry wrote a Latin treatise replying to the articles of the audacious monk. The Pope, Leo X., rewarded Henry's Catholic zeal by conferring upon him the title of "Defender of the Faith" (1521). This title was retained by Henry after the secession of the Church of England from the Papal See, and is borne by his successors at this day, though they are "defenders" of quite a different faith from that in the defence of which Henry first earned the title. [Illustration: HENRY VIII. OF ENGLAND. (After a painting by Carl Piloty.)] HENRY SEEKS TO BE DIVORCED FROM CATHERINE.--We have now to relate some circumstances which changed Henry from a zealous supporter of the Papacy into its bitterest enemy. Henry's marriage with Catherine of Aragon had been prompted by policy and not by love. Of the five children born of the union, all had died save a sickly daughter named Mary. In these successive afflictions which left him without a son to succeed him, Henry saw, or feigned to see, a certain sign of Heaven's displeasure because he had taken to wife the widow of his brother. And now a new circumstance arose,--if it had not existed for some time previous to this. Henry conceived a violent passion for Anne Boleyn, a beautiful and vivacious maid of honor in the queen's household. This new affection so quickened the king's conscience, that he soon became fully convinced that it was his duty to put Catherine aside. [Footnote: Political considerations, without doubt, had much if not most to do in bringing Henry to this state of mind. He was ready to divorce Catherine and openly break with Spain, because the Emperor Charles V., to whom he had offered the hand of the Princess Mary, had married the Infanta of Portugal, and thus cast aside the English alliance. On this point consult Seebohm, _The Era of the Protestant Revolution_, pp. 178-180.] Accordingly, Henry asked the Pope, Clement VII., to grant him a divorce. The request placed Clement in a very embarrassing position; for if he refused to grant it, he would offend Henry; and if he granted it, he would offend Charles V., who was Catherine's relative. So Clement in his bewilderment was led to temporize, to make promises to Henry and then evade them. At last, after a year's delay, he appointed Cardinal Wolsey and an Italian cardinal named Campeggio as commissioners to hold a sort of court in England to determine the validity of Henry's marriage to Catherine. A year or more dragged along without anything being accomplished, and then Clement, influenced by the Emperor Charles, ordered Henry and Catherine both to appear before him at Rome. (Respecting appeals to Rome, see p. 418). THE FALL OF WOLSEY.--Henry's patience was now completely exhausted. Becoming persuaded that Wolsey was not exerting himself as he might to secure the divorce, he banished him from the court. The hatred of Anne Boleyn and of others pursued the fallen minister. He was deposed from all his offices save the archbishopric, and eventually was arrested on the charge of high treason. While on his way to London the unhappy minister, broken in spirits and health, was prostrated by a fatal fever. As he lay dying, he uttered these words, which have lived so long after him: "Had I served my God as diligently as I have served my king, He would not have given me over in my gray hairs" (1530). THOMAS CROMWELL.--A man of great power and mark now rises to our notice. Upon the disgrace of Wolsey, a faithful attendant of his named Thomas Cromwell straightway assumed in Henry's regard the place from which the Cardinal had fallen. He was just the opposite of Wolsey in caring nothing for pomp and parade. For the space of ten years this wonderful man shaped the policy of Henry's government. What he proposed to himself was the establishment of a royal despotism upon the ruin of every other power in the State. The executioner's axe was constantly wet with the blood of those who stood in his way, or who in any manner incurred his displeasure. It was to the bold suggestions of this man that Henry now listened, when all other means of gratifying his passion had been tried in vain. Cromwell's advice to the king was to waste no more time in negotiating with the Pope, but at once to renounce the jurisdiction of the Roman pontiff, proclaim himself Supreme Head of the Church in England, and then get a decree of divorce from his own courts. THE BREACH WITH ROME.--The advice of Cromwell was acted upon, and by a series of steps England was swiftly and forever carried out from under the authority of the Roman See. Henry first virtually cut the Gordian knot by a secret marriage with Anne Boleyn, notwithstanding a papal decree threatening him with excommunication should he dare to do so. Parliament, which was entirely subservient to Henry's wishes, now passed a law known as the Statute of Appeals, which made it a crime for any Englishman to carry a case out of the kingdom to the courts at Rome. Cranmer, a Cambridge doctor who had served Henry by writing a book in favor of the divorce, was, in accordance with the new programme, made archbishop of Canterbury. He at once formed a court, tried the case, and of course declared the king's marriage with Catherine null and void from the very first, and his union with Anne legal and right. THE ACT OF SUPREMACY (1534).--The decisive step had now been taken: the Rubicon had been crossed. The Pope issued a decree excommunicating Henry and relieving his subjects from their allegiance. Henry on his part called Parliament, and a celebrated bill known as the Act of Supremacy was passed (1534). This statute made Henry the Supreme Head of the Church in England, vesting in him absolute control over all its offices, and turning into his hands the revenues which had hitherto flowed into the coffers of the Roman See. A denial of the title given the king by the statute was made high treason. This statute laid the foundations of the Anglican Church. HENRY AS SUPREME HEAD OF THE CHURCH.--Henry now set up in England a little Popedom of his own. He drew up a sort of creed which everybody must believe, or at least pretend to believe. The doctrines of purgatory, of indulgences, of masses for the dead, of pilgrimages, of the adoration of images and relics, were condemned; but the doctrines of transubstantiation and of confession to a priest were retained. Every head of a family and every teacher was commanded to teach his children or pupils the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the new Creed. Thus was the English Church cared for by its self-appointed shepherd. What it should be called under Henry it would be hard to say. It was not Protestant; and it was just as far from being Catholic. THE SUPPRESSION OF THE MONASTERIES.--The suppression of the monasteries was one of Henry's most high-handed measures. Several things led him to resolve on the extinction of these religious houses. For one thing, he coveted their wealth, which at this time included probably one-fifth of the lands of the realm. Then the monastic orders were openly or secretly opposed to Henry's claims of supremacy in religious matters; and this naturally caused him to regard them with jealousy and disfavor. Hence their ruin was planned. In order to make the act appear as reasonable as possible, it was planned to make the charge of immorality the ostensible ground of their suppression. Accordingly two royal commissioners were appointed to inspect the monasteries, and make a report upon what they might see and learn. If we may believe the report, the smaller houses were conducted in a most shameful manner. The larger houses, however, were fairly free from faults. Many of them served as schools, hospitals, and inns, and all distributed alms to the poor who knocked at their gates. But the undoubted usefulness and irreproachable character of the larger foundations did not avail to avert the indiscriminate ruin of all. A bill was passed which at once dissolved between three and four hundred of the smaller monasteries, and gave all their property to the king (1536). The unscrupulous act stirred up a rebellion in the north of England, known as the "Pilgrimage of Grace." This was suppressed with great severity, and soon afterwards the larger monasteries were also dissolved, their possessors generally surrendering the property voluntarily into the hands of the king, lest a worse thing than the loss of their houses and lands should come upon them. [Footnote: Altogether there were 90 colleges, 110 hospitals, 2374 chantries and chapels, and 645 monasteries broken up. Such Roman Catholic church property as was spared at this time, was confiscated during the reign of Edward VI., and a portion of it used to establish schools and hospitals.] Pensions were granted to the dispossessed monks, which relieved in part the suffering caused by the proceeding. A portion of the confiscated wealth of the houses was used in founding schools and colleges, and a part for the establishment of bishoprics; but by far the greater portion was distributed among the adherents and favorites of the king. The leading houses of the English aristocracy of to-day, may, according to Hallam, trace the title of their estates back to these confiscated lands of the religious houses. Thus a new nobility was raised up whose interests led them to oppose any return to Rome; for in such an event their estates were liable of course to be restored to the monasteries. PERSECUTION OF CATHOLICS AND PROTESTANTS.--Our disapproval of Henry's unscrupulous conduct in compassing the ruin of the religious houses flames into hot indignation when we come to speak of his atrocious crimes against the lives and consciences of his subjects. The royal reformer persecuted alike Catholics and Protestants. Thus, on one occasion, three Catholics who denied that the king was the rightful Head of the Church, and three Protestants who disputed the doctrine of the real presence in the sacrament (a dogma which Henry had retained in his creed), were dragged on the same sled to the place of execution. The most illustrious of the king's victims were the learned Sir Thomas More and the aged Bishop Fisher, both of whom were brought to the block because their consciences would not allow them to acknowledge that the king was rightfully the Supreme Head of the Church of England. HENRY'S WIVES.--Henry's troubles with his wives form a curious and shameful page in the history of England's kings. Anne Boleyn retained the affections of her royal husband only a short time. She was charged with unfaithfulness and beheaded, leaving a daughter who became the famous Queen Elizabeth. The day after the execution of Anne the king married Jane Seymour, who died the following year. She left a son by the name of Edward, The fourth marriage of the king was to Anne of Cleves, who enjoyed her queenly honors only a few months. The king becoming enamoured of a young lady named Catherine Howard, Anne was divorced on the charge of a previous betrothal, and a new alliance formed. But Catherine was proved guilty of misconduct and her head fell upon the block. The sixth and last wife of this amatory monarch was Catherine Parr. She was a discreet woman, and managed to outlive her husband. HIS DEATH AND THE SUCCESSION.--Henry died in 1547. His many marriages and divorces had so complicated the question of the succession, that Parliament, to avoid disputes after Henry's death, had given him power, with some restrictions, to settle the matter by will. This he did, directing that the crown should descend to his son Edward and his heirs; in case Edward died childless, it was to go to Mary and her heirs, and then to Elizabeth and her heirs. LITERATURE UNDER HENRY VIII.: MORE'S UTOPIA.--The most prominent literary figure of this period is Sir Thomas More. The work upon which his fame as a writer mainly rests is his _Utopia_, or "Nowhere," a political romance like Plato's _Republic_ or Sir Philip Sidney's _Arcadia_. It pictures an imaginary kingdom away on an island beneath the equinoctial in the New World, then just discovered, where the laws, manners, and customs of the people were represented as being ideally perfect. In this wise way More suggested improvements in social, political, and religious matters: for it was the wretchedness, the ignorance, the social tyranny, the religious intolerance, the despotic government of the times which inspired the _Utopia_. More did not expect, however, that Henry would follow all his suggestions, for he closes his account of the Utopians with this admission: "I confess that many things in the commonwealth of Utopia I rather _wish_ than _hope_ to see adopted in our own." And, indeed, More himself, before his death, materially changed his views regarding religious persecution. Although in his book he had expressed his decided disapproval of persecution for conscience' sake, yet he afterwards, driven into reaction by the terrible excesses of the Peasants' War in Germany, and by other popular tumults which seemed to be the outgrowth of the Protestant movement, favored persecution, and advised that unity of faith be preserved by the use of force. 4. CHANGES IN THE CREED AND RITUAL UNDER EDWARD VI. (1547-1553). CHANGES IN THE CREED.--In accordance with the provisions of Henry's will, his only son Edward, by Jane Seymour, succeeded him. As Edward was but a child of nine years, the government was entrusted to a board of regents made up of both Protestants and Catholics. But the Protestants usurped authority in the body, and conducted the government in the interests of their party. The young king was carefully taught the doctrines of the reformers, and changes were made in the creed and service of the English Church which carried it still farther away from the Roman Catholic Church. By a royal decree all pictures, images, and crosses were cleared from the churches; the use of tapers, holy water, and incense were forbidden; the worship of the Virgin and the invocation of saints was prohibited; belief in purgatory was denounced as a superstition, and prayers for the dead were interdicted; the real or bodily presence of Christ in the bread and wine of the sacrament was denied; the prohibition against the marriage of the clergy was annulled (a measure which pleased the clergy and reconciled them to the other sweeping innovations); and the services of the Church, which had hitherto been conducted in Latin, were ordered to be said in the language of the people. In order that the provision last mentioned might be effectually carried out, the English Book of Common Prayer was prepared by Archbishop Cranmer, and the first copy issued in 1549. This book, which was in the main simply a translation of the old Latin service-books, with the subsequent change of a word here and a passage there to keep it in accord with the growing new doctrines, is the same that is used in the Anglican Church at the present time. In 1552 were published the well-known Forty-two Articles of Religion, which formed a compendious creed of the reformed faith. These Articles, reduced finally to thirty-nine, form the present standard of faith and doctrine in the Church of England. PERSECUTIONS TO SECURE UNIFORMITY.--These sweeping changes in the old creed and in the services of the Church would have worked little hardship or wrong had only everybody, as in More's happy republic, been left free to follow what religion he would. But unfortunately it was only away in "Nowhere" that men were allowed perfect freedom of conscience and worship. By royal edict all preachers and teachers were forced to sign the Forty- two Articles; and severe enactments, known as "Acts for the Uniformity of Service," punished with severe penalties any departure from the forms of the new prayer-book. The Princess Mary, who remained a firm and conscientious adherent of the old faith, was not allowed to have the Roman Catholic service in her own private chapel. Even the powerful intercession of the Emperor Charles V. availed nothing. What was considered idolatry in high places could not be tolerated. Many persons during the reign were imprisoned for refusing to conform to the new worship; while two at least were given to the flames as "heretics and contemners of the Book of Common Prayer." Probably a large majority of the English people were still at this time good Catholics at heart. 5. REACTION UNDER MARY (1553-1558). RECONCILIATION WITH ROME.--Upon the death of Edward, an attempt was made, in the interest of the Protestant party, to place upon the throne Lady Jane Grey, [Footnote: The leaders of this movement were executed, and Lady Jane Grey was also eventually brought to the block.] a grand-niece of Henry VIII.; but the people, knowing that Mary was the rightful heir to the throne, rallied about her, and she was proclaimed queen amidst great demonstrations of loyalty. Soon after her accession, she was married to Philip II. of Spain. [Illustration: MARY TUDOR.] Mary was an earnest Catholic, and her zeal effected the full reestablishment of the Catholic worship throughout the realm. Parliament voted that the nation should return to its obedience to the Papal See; and then the members of both houses fell upon their knees to receive at the hands of the legate of the Pope absolution from the sin of heresy and schism. The sincerity of their repentance was attested by their repeal of all the acts of Henry and of Edward by which the new worship had been set up in the land. The joy at Rome was unbounded. But not quite everything done by the reformers was undone. Parliament refused to restore the confiscated Church lands, which was very natural, as much of this property was now in the hands of the lords and commoners (see p. 548). Mary, however, in her zeal for the ancient faith, restored a great part of the property still in the possession of the crown, and refounded many of the ruined monasteries and abbeys. PERSECUTION OF THE PROTESTANTS.--With the reestablishment of the Roman worship, the Protestants in their turn became the victims of persecution. The three most eminent martyrs of what is known as the Marian persecutions were Latimer, Ridley, and Cranmer. Altogether, between two and three hundred persons suffered death, during this reign, on account of their religion. For the part she took in the persecutions that marked her reign, Mary should be judged not by the standard of our time, but by that of her own. Punishment of heresy was then regarded, by both Catholics and Protestants alike, as a duty which could be neglected by those in authority only at the peril of Heaven's displeasure. Believing this, those of that age could consistently do nothing less than labor to exterminate heresy with axe, sword, and fagot. THE LOSS OF CALAIS.--The marriage of Philip and Mary had been earnestly wished for by the Emperor Charles V., in order that Philip, in those wars with France which he well knew must be a part of the bequest which he should make to his son, might have the powerful aid of England. This was Philip's chief reason in seeking the alliance; and in due time he called upon Mary for assistance against the French king. The result of England's participation in the war was her mortifying loss of Calais (see p. 487), which the French, by an unexpected attack, snatched out of the hands of its garrison (1558). The unfortunate queen did not live out the year that marked this calamity, which she most deeply deplored. 6. FINAL ESTABLISHMENT OF PROTESTANTISM UNDER ELIZABETH (1558-1603). THE QUEEN.--Elizabeth was the daughter of Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn. She seems to have inherited the characteristics of both parents; hence the inconsistencies of her disposition. [Illustration: ENTRANCE OF QUEEN ELIZABETH INTO LONDON. (Showing the costumes of the time.)] When the death of Mary called Elizabeth to the throne, she was twenty-five years of age. Like her father, she favored the reformed faith rather from policy than conviction. It was to the Protestants alone that she could look for support; her title to the crown was denied by every true Catholic in the realm, for she was the child of that marriage which the Pope had forbidden under pain of the anathemas of the Church. Elizabeth possessed a strong will, indomitable courage, admirable judgment, and great political tact. It was these qualities which rendered her reign the strongest and most illustrious in the record of England's sovereigns, and raised the nation from a position of insignificance to a foremost place among the states of Europe. Along with her good and queenly qualities and accomplishments, Elizabeth had many unamiable traits and unwomanly ways. She was capricious, treacherous, unscrupulous, ungrateful, and cruel. She seemed almost wholly devoid of a moral or religious sense. Deception and falsehood were her usual weapons in diplomacy. "In the profusion and recklessness of her lies," declares Green, "Elizabeth stood without a peer in Christendom." HER MINISTERS.--One secret of the strength and popularity of Elizabeth's government was the admirable judgment she exercised in her choice of advisers. Around her Council-board she gathered the wisest and strongest men to be found in the realm. The most eminent of the queen's ministers was Sir William Cecil (Lord Burleigh), a man of great sagacity and ceaseless industry, to whose able counsel and prudent management is largely due the success of Elizabeth's reign. He stood at the head of the Queen's Council for forty years. His son Robert, Sir Nicholas Bacon, and Sir Francis Walsingham were also prominent among the queen's advisers. REESTABLISHMENT OF THE REFORMED CHURCH.--As Mary undid the work in religion of Henry and Edward, so now her work is undone by Elizabeth. The religious houses that had been reestablished by Mary were again dissolved, and Parliament, by two new Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity, relaid the foundations of the Anglican Church. The Act of Supremacy required all the clergy, and every person holding office under the crown, to take an oath declaring the queen to be the supreme governor of the realm in all spiritual as well as temporal things, and renouncing the authority or jurisdiction of any foreign prince or prelate. For refusing to take this oath, many Catholics during Elizabeth's reign suffered death, and many more endured within the Tower the worse horrors of the rack. The Act of Uniformity forbade any clergyman to use any but the Anglican liturgy, and required every person to attend the Established Church on Sunday and other holy days. For every absence a fine of one shilling was imposed. The persecutions which arose under this law caused many Catholics to seek freedom of worship in other countries. THE PROTESTANT NON-CONFORMISTS.--The Catholics were not the only persons among Elizabeth's subjects who were opposed to the Anglican worship. There were Protestant non-conformists--the Puritans and the Separatists--who troubled her almost as much as the Romanists. The Puritans were so named because they desired a _purer_ form of worship than the Anglican. To these earnest reformers the Church Elizabeth had established seemed but half-reformed. Many rites and ceremonies, such as wearing the surplice and making the cross in baptism, had been retained; and these things, in their eyes, appeared mere Popish superstitions. What they wanted was a more sweeping change, a form of worship more like that of the Calvinistic churches of Geneva, in which city very many of them had lived as exiles during the Marian persecution. They, however, did not at once withdraw from the Established Church, but remaining within its pale, labored to reform it, and to shape its doctrines and discipline to their notions. The Separatists were still more zealous reformers than the Puritans: in their hatred of everything that bore any resemblance to the Roman worship, they flung away the surplice and the Prayer-book, severed all connection with the Established Church, and refused to have anything to do with it. Under the Act of Conformity they were persecuted with great severity, so that multitudes were led to seek an asylum upon the continent. It was from among these exiles gathered in Holland that a little later came the passengers of the Mayflower,--the Pilgrim Fathers, who laid the foundations of civil liberty in the New World. MARY STUART, QUEEN OF SCOTS.--A large part of the history of Elizabeth's reign is intertwined with the story of her cousin, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots. Mary Stuart was the daughter of James V. of Scotland, and to her _in right of birth_--according to all Catholics who denied the validity of Henry's marriage with Anne Boleyn--belonged the English crown next, after Mary Tudor. Upon the death, in 1560, of her husband Francis II. of France, Mary gave up life at the French court, and returned to her native land. She was now in her nineteenth year. The subtle charm of her beauty seems to have bewitched all who came into her presence--save the more zealous of the Protestants, who could never forget that their young sovereign was a Catholic. The stern old reformer, John Knox, made her life miserable. He was a veritable Elijah, in whose eyes Mary appeared a modern Jezebel. He called her a "Moabite," and the "Harlot of Babylon," till she wept from sheer vexation. She dared not punish the impudent preacher, for she knew too well the strength of the Protestant feeling among her subjects. Other things now conspired with Mary's hated religion to alienate entirely the love of her people. Her second husband, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, was murdered. The queen was suspected of having some guilty knowledge of the affair. She was imprisoned and forced to abdicate in favor of her infant son James. Escaping from prison, Mary fled into England (1568). Here she threw herself upon the generosity of her cousin Elizabeth, and entreated aid in recovering her throne. But the part which she was generally believed to have had in the murder of her husband, her disturbing claims to the English throne, and the fact that she was a Catholic, all conspired to determine her fate. She was placed in confinement, and for nineteen years she remained a prisoner. During all this time Mary was the centre of innumerable plots and conspiracies on the part of the Catholics, which aimed at setting her upon the English throne. The Pope aided these conspirators by a bull excommunicating Elizabeth, denying her right to the crown she wore, and releasing her subjects from their allegiance. Events just now occurring on the continent tended to inflame the Protestants of England with a deadly hatred against Mary and her Catholic friends and abettors. In 1572 the Huguenots of France were slaughtered on St. Bartholomew's Day. In 1584 the Prince of Orange fell at the hands of a hired assassin. That there were daggers waiting to take the life of Elizabeth was well known. It was evident that so long as Mary lived the queen's life was in constant danger. In the feverish state of the public mind, it was natural that the air should be filled with rumors of plots of every kind. Finally, a carefully laid conspiracy to assassinate Elizabeth and place Mary on the throne, was unearthed. Mary was tried for complicity in the plot, was declared guilty, and, after some hesitation, feigned or otherwise, on the part of Elizabeth, was ordered to the block (1587). THE INVINCIBLE ARMADA.--The execution of Mary Stuart led immediately to the memorable attempt against England by the Spanish Armada. Before her death the Queen of Scots had bequeathed to Philip II. of Spain her claims to the English crown. To enforce these rights, to avenge the death of Mary, to punish Elizabeth for rendering aid to his rebellious subjects in the Netherlands, and to deal a fatal blow to the Reformation in Europe by crushing the Protestants of England, Philip resolved upon making a tremendous effort for the conquest of the heretical and troublesome island. Vast preparations were made for carrying out the project. Great fleets were gathered in the harbors of Spain, and a large army was assembled in the Netherlands to cooperate with the naval armament. The Pope, Sixtus V., blessed the enterprise, which was thus rendered a sort of crusade. These threatening preparations produced a perfect fever of excitement in England; for we must bear in mind that the Spanish king was at this time the most powerful potentate in Europe, commanding the resources of a large part of two worlds. Never did Roman citizens rise more splendidly to avert some terrible peril threatening the republic than the English people now arose as a single man to defend their island-realm against the revengeful and ambitious project of Spain. The imminent danger served to unite all classes, the gentry and the yeomanry, Protestants and Catholics. The latter might intrigue to set a Mary Stuart on the English throne, but they were not ready to betray their land into the hands of the hated Spaniards. [Illustration: SPANISH AND ENGLISH WAR-VESSELS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.] July 19, 1588, the Invincible Armada, as it was boastfully called, was first descried by the watchmen on the English cliffs. It swept up the channel in the form of a great crescent, seven miles in width from tip to tip of horn. The English fleet, commanded by Drake, Howard, and Lord Henry Seymour, disputed its advance. The light build and quick movements of the English ships gave them a great advantage over the clumsy, unwieldy Spanish galleons. The result was the complete defeat of the immense Armada, and the destruction of many of the ships. The remaining galleons sought to escape by sailing northward around the British Isles; but--a terrible tempest arising, many of the fleeing ships were dashed to pieces on the Scottish or the Irish shores. Barely one-third of the ships of the Armada ever reentered the harbors whence they sailed. When intelligence of the woeful disaster was carried to Philip, he simply said, "God's will be done; I sent my fleet to fight with the English, not with the elements." The destruction of the Invincible Armada was not only a terrible blow to Spanish pride, but an equally heavy blow to Spanish supremacy among the states of Europe. From this time on, Spain's prestige and power rapidly declined. As to England, she had been delivered from a great peril; and as to the cause of Protestantism, it was now safe. MARITIME AND COLONIAL ENTERPRISES.--The crippling of the naval power of Spain left England mistress of the seas. The little island-realm now entered upon the most splendid period of her history. The old Norse blood of her people, stirred by recent events, seemed to burn with a feverish impatience for maritime adventure and glory. Many a story of the daring exploits of English sea-rovers during the reign of Elizabeth seems like a repetition of some tale of the old Vikings. [Footnote: Among all these sea-rovers, half explorer, half pirate, Sir Francis Drake (1545-1595) was preeminent. Before the Armada days he had sailed around the globe (1577- 1579), and for the achievement had been knighted by Queen Elizabeth. The whole life of this sixteenth century Viking was spent in fighting the fleets of his sovereign's enemy, Philip II., in capturing Spanish treasure-vessels on the high sea, and in pillaging the warehouses and settlements on every Spanish shore in the Old and the New World.] Especially deserving of mention among the enterprises of these stirring and romantic times are the undertakings of Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618). Several expeditions were sent out by him for the purpose of making explorations and forming settlements in the New World. One of these, which explored the central coasts of North America, returned with such glowing accounts of the beauty and richness of the land visited, that, in honor of the Virgin Queen, it was named "Virginia." Sir Walter Raleigh sent two colonies to the new land, but they both failed to form permanent settlements. It is said that the returning colonists first acquainted the English with the Indian custom of smoking tobacco, and that Sir Walter Raleigh made the practice popular. This may be true; yet prior to this, Europeans had acquired a knowledge of the plant and some of its uses through Spanish explorers and settlers. At this same time also, the potato, likewise a native product of the New World, was introduced into the British Isles. THE QUEEN'S DEATH.--The closing days of Elizabeth's reign were, to her personally, dark and gloomy. She seemed to be burdened with a secret grief, [Footnote: In 1601 she sent to the block her chief favorite, the Earl of Essex, who had been found guilty of treason. She wished to spare him, and probably would have done so, had a token which he sent her from his prison reached her. Read the story as told in all the histories of England.] as well as by the growing infirmities of age. She died March 24, 1603, in the seventieth year of her age, and the forty-fifth of her reign. With her ended the Tudor line of English sovereigns. _Literature of the Elizabethan Era._ INFLUENCES FAVORABLE TO LITERATURE.--The years covered by the reign of Elizabeth constitute the most momentous period in history. It was the age when Europe was most deeply stirred by the Reformation. It was, too, a period of marvellous physical and intellectual expansion and growth. The discoveries of Columbus and Copernicus had created, as Froude affirms, "not in any metaphor, but in plain and literal speech, a new heaven and a new earth." The New Learning had, at the same time, discovered the old world--had revealed an unsuspected treasure in the philosophies and literatures of the past. No people of Europe felt more deeply the stir and movement of the times, nor helped more to create this same stir and movement, than the English nation. There seemed to be nothing too great or arduous for them to undertake. They made good their resistance to the Roman See; they humbled the pride of the strongest monarch in Christendom; they sailed round the globe, and penetrated all its seas. An age of such activity and achievement almost of necessity gives birth to a strong and vigorous literature. And thus is explained, in part at least, how the English people during this period should have developed a literature of such originality and richness and strength as to make it the prized inheritance of all the world. THE WRITERS.--To make special mention of all the great writers who adorned the Elizabethan era would carry us quite beyond the limits of our book. Having said something of the influences under which they wrote, we will simply add that this age was the age of Shakespeare and Spenser and Bacon. [Footnote: William Shakespeare (1564-1616); Edmund Spenser (1552?-1599); Francis Bacon (1561-1626). Shakespeare and Bacon, it will be noticed, outlived Elizabeth. Two other names hold a less prominent place,--that of Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), the courtly knight, who wrote the _Arcadia_, a sort of pastoral romance, and _A Defence of Poesy_, a work intended to counteract the Puritanical spirit then rising; and that of Richard Hooker (1553-1600), who in his _Ecclesiastical Polity_ defends the Anglican Church.] [Illustration: REDUCED FAC-SIMILE OF THE SIGNATURE OF QUEEN ELIZABETH] CHAPTER LI. THE REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS: RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC. (1572-1609.) THE COUNTRY.--The term Netherlands (low-lands) was formerly applied to all that low, marshy district in the northwest of Europe, sunk much of it below the level of the sea, now occupied by the kingdoms of Holland and Belgium. The entire strip of land is simply the delta accumulations of the Rhine and other rivers emptying into the North Sea. Originally it was often overflowed by its streams and inundated by the ocean. But this unpromising morass, protected at last by heavy dykes against the invasions of the ocean and the overflow of its streams, was destined to become the site of cities which at one period were the richest and most potent of Europe, and the seat of one of the foremost commonwealths of modern times. No country in Europe made greater progress in civilization during the mediæval era than the Netherlands. At the opening of the sixteenth century they contained a crowded and busy population of 3,000,000 souls. The ancient marshes had been transformed into carefully kept gardens and orchards. The walled cities alone numbered between two and three hundred. THE LOW COUNTRIES UNDER CHARLES V. (1515-1555).--The Netherlands were part of those possessions over which Charles V. ruled by hereditary right. Though Charles could not prevent the growth of Protestantism in Germany, he resolved to root out the heresy from his hereditary possessions of the Netherlands. By an Imperial edict he condemned to death all persons presuming to read the Scriptures, or even to discuss religious topics. The Inquisition was introduced, and thousands perished at the stake and upon the scaffold, or were strangled, or buried alive. But when Charles retired to the monastery at Yuste (see p. 534), the reformed doctrines were, notwithstanding all his efforts, far more widely spread and deeply rooted in the Netherlands than when he entered upon their extirpation by fire and sword. ACCESSION OF PHILIP II.--In 1555, in the presence of an august and princely assembly at Brussels, and amidst the most imposing and dramatic ceremonies, Charles V. abdicated the crown whose weight he could no longer bear, and placed the same upon the head of his son Philip (see p. 534), who was a most zealous Catholic. Philip remained in the Netherlands after his coronation four years, employing much of his time in devising means to root out the heresy of Protestantism. In 1559 he set sail for Spain, never to return. LONG LIVE THE BEGGARS.--Upon his departure from the Netherlands Philip entrusted their government to his half-sister, Margaret, Duchess of Parma, as Regent. Under the administration of Margaret (1559-1567) the persecution of the Protestants went on with renewed bitterness. Philip declared that "he would rather lose a hundred thousand lives, were they all his own, than allow the smallest deviation from the standards of the Roman Catholic Church." Thousands fled the country, many of the fugitives finding a home in England. At last the nobles leagued together for the purpose of resisting the Inquisition. They demanded of the Regent a redress of grievances. When the petition was presented to the Duchess, she displayed great agitation, whereupon one of her councillors exclaimed, "Madam, are you afraid of a pack of beggars?" The expression was carried to the nobles, who were assembled at a banquet. Immediately one of their number suspended a beggar's wallet from his neck, and filling a wooden bowl with wine, proposed the toast, "Long live the Beggars." The name was tumultuously adopted, and became the party designation of the patriot Netherlanders during their long struggle with the Spanish power. THE ICONOCLASTS (1566).--Affairs now rapidly verged towards violence and open revolt. The only reply of the government to the petition of the nobles was a decree termed the _Moderation_, which substituted hanging for burning in the case of condemned heretics. The pent-up indignation of the people at length burst forth in an uncontrollable fury. They gathered in great mobs, and arming themselves with whatever implements they could first seize, proceeded to demolish every image they could find in the churches throughout the country. The rage of the insurgents was turned in this direction, because in their eyes these churches represented the hated Inquisition under which they were suffering. Scarcely a church in all the Netherlands escaped. The monasteries, too, were sacked, their libraries burned, and the inmates driven from their cloisters. In the province of Flanders alone there were four hundred sacred buildings visited by the mob, and sacked. The tempest destroyed innumerable art treasures, which have been as sincerely mourned by the lovers of the beautiful as the burned rolls of the Alexandrian Library have been lamented by the lovers of learning. These image-breaking riots threw Philip into a perfect transport of rage. He tore his beard, and exclaimed, "It shall cost them dear! I swear it by the soul of my father!" THE DUKE OF ALVA AND WILLIAM OF ORANGE.--The year following the outbreak of the Iconoclasts, Philip sent to the Netherlands a veteran Spanish army, headed by the Duke of Alva. The duke was one of the ablest generals of the age; and the intelligence of his coming threw the provinces into a state of the greatest agitation and alarm. Those who could do so hastened to get out of the country. William the Silent, Prince of Orange, fled to Germany, where he began to gather an army of volunteers for the struggle which he now saw to be inevitable. Egmont and Horn, noblemen of high rank and great distinction, were seized, cast into prison, and afterwards beheaded (1568). The eyes of all Netherlanders were now turned to the Prince of Orange as their only deliverer. Towards the close of the year 1568, he marched from Germany against Alva, at the head of an army of 30,000 men, which he had raised and equipped principally at his own expense. The war was now fully joined. The struggle lasted for more than a generation,--for thirty-seven years. [Illustration: WILLIAM OF ORANGE (the Silent). (After a copper-plate by William Jacobz Delff, 1580-1638.)] The Spanish armies were commanded successively by the most experienced and distinguished generals of Europe,--the Duke of Alva, Don John of Austria (the conqueror of the Moors and the hero of the great naval fight of Lepanto), and the Duke of Parma; but the Prince of Orange coped ably with them all, and in the masterly service which he rendered his country, thus terribly assaulted, earned the title of "the Founder of Dutch Liberties." ISOLATION OF THE PROVINCES.--The Netherlanders sustained the unequal contest almost single-handed; for, though they found much sympathy among the Protestants of Germany, France, and England, they never received material assistance from any of these countries, excepting England, and it was not until late in the struggle that aid came from this source. Elizabeth did, indeed, at first furnish the patriots with secret aid, and opened the ports of England to the "Beggars of the Sea"; but after a time the fear of involving herself in a war with Philip led her to withhold for a long period all contributions and favors. As regards the German states, they were too much divided among themselves to render efficient aid; and just at the moment when the growing Protestant sentiment in France encouraged the Netherlanders to look for help from the Huguenot party there, the massacre of St. Bartholomew extinguished forever all hope of succor from that quarter (see p. 576). So the little revolted provinces were left to carry on unaided, as best they might, a contest with the most powerful monarch of Christendom. The details of this memorable struggle we must, of course, leave unnoticed, and hurry on to the issue of the matter. In so doing we shall pass unnoticed many memorable sieges and battles. [Footnote: Read in Motley's _Rise of the Dutch Republic_ the siege and sack of Harlem and the relief of Leyden.] PACIFICATION OF GHENT (1576).--The year 1576 was marked by a revolt of the Spanish soldiers, on account of their not receiving their pay, the costly war having drained Philip's treasury. The mutinous army marched through the land, pillaging city after city, and paying themselves with the spoils. The beautiful city of Antwerp was ruined. The horrible massacre of its inhabitants, and the fiendish atrocities committed by the frenzied soldiers, caused the awful outbreak to be called the "Spanish Fury." The terrible state of affairs led to an alliance between Holland and Zealand and the other fifteen provinces of the Netherlands, known in history as the Pacification of Ghent (1576). The resistance to the Spanish crown had thus far been carried on without concerted action among the several states, the Prince of Orange having hitherto found it impossible to bring the different provinces to agree to any plan of general defence. But the awful experiences of the Spanish Fury taught the necessity of union, and led all the seventeen provinces solemnly to agree to unite in driving the Spaniards from the Netherlands, and in securing full liberty for all in matters of faith and worship. William of Orange, with the title of Stadtholder, was placed at the head of the union. It was mainly the strong Catholic sentiment in the Southern provinces that had prevented such a union and pacification long before. THE UNION OF UTRECHT (1579).--With the Spanish forces under the lead first of Don John of Austria, the hero-victor of Lepanto, and afterwards of Prince Alexander of Parma, a commander of most distinguished ability, the war now went on with increased vigor, fortune, with many vacillations, inclining to the side of the Spaniards. Disaffection arose among the Netherlanders, the outcome of which was the separation, of the provinces. The Prince of Orange, seeing the impossibility of uniting all the states, devoted his efforts to effecting a confederation of the Northern ones. His endeavors were fortunately crowned with success, and the seven Protestant states of the North, [Footnote: The ten Catholic provinces of the South, although they continued their contest with Philip a little longer, ultimately submitted to Spanish tyranny. A portion of these provinces were absorbed by France, while the remainder, after varied fortunes amidst the revolutions and dynastic changes of the European states, finally became the present kingdom of Belgium] the chief of which were Holland and Zealand, by the treaty of Utrecht (1579), were united in a permanent confederation, known as the Seven United Provinces of the Netherlands. In this league was laid the foundation of the Dutch Republic. Fortunate would it have been for the Netherlands, could all of the states at this time have been brought to act in concert. Under the leadership of the Prince of Orange, the seventeen provinces might have been consolidated into a powerful nation, that might now be reckoned among the great powers of Europe. THE "BAN" AND THE "APOLOGY."--William of Orange was, of course, the animating spirit of the confederacy formed by the treaty of Utrecht. In the eyes of Philip and his viceroys he appeared the sole obstacle in the way of the pacification of the provinces and their return to civil and ecclesiastical obedience. In vain had Philip sent against him the ablest and most distinguished commanders of the age; in vain had he endeavored to detach him from the cause of his country by magnificent bribes of titles, offices, and fortune. Philip now resolved to employ assassination for the removal of the invincible general and the incorruptible patriot. He published a ban against the prince, declaring him an outlaw, and offering to any one who should kill him the pardon of all his sins, a title of nobility, and 25,000 gold crowns. The prince responded to the infamous edict in a remarkable paper, entitled "The Apology of the Prince of Orange,"--the most terrible arraignment of tyranny that was ever penned. The "Apology" was scattered throughout Europe, and everywhere produced a profound impression. The friends of the prince, while admiring his boldness, were filled with alarm for his safety. Their apprehensions, as the issue shows, were not unfounded. ASSASSINATION OF THE PRINCE OF ORANGE.--"The ban soon bore fruit." Upon the 10th day of July, 1584, five previous unsuccessful attempts having been made upon his life, the Prince of Orange was fatally shot by an assassin. The heirs of the murderer received substantially the reward which had been offered in the ban, being enriched with the estates of the prince, and honored by elevation to the ranks of the Spanish nobility. The character of William the Silent is one of the most admirable portrayed in all history. [Footnote: He was not, however, without faults. The most serious of these was his habit of dissimulation. Some charge to this the separation of the Northern and Southern provinces after the Pacification of Ghent. The Southern provinces would not trust the "double-dealer." For references to various writers on this point, consult Young's _History of the Netherlands_, p, 320.] His steadfast and unselfish devotion to the cause of his country deservedly won for him the love of all classes. His people fondly called him "Father William." PRINCE MAURICE: SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.--Severe as was the blow sustained by the Dutch patriots in the death of the Prince of Orange, they did not lose heart, but continued the struggle with the most admirable courage and steadfastness. Prince Maurice, a youth of seventeen years, the second son of William, was chosen Stadtholder in his place, and proved himself a worthy son of the great chief and patriot. The war now proceeded with unabated fury. The Southern provinces were, for the most part, in the hands of the Spaniards, while the revolutionists held control, in the main, of the Northern states. Substantial aid from the English now came to the struggling Hollanders. Queen Elizabeth, alarmed by the murder of the Prince of Orange,--for she well knew that hired agents of the king of Spain watched likewise for her life,--openly espoused the cause of the Dutch. Among the English knights who led the British forces sent into the Netherlands was the gallant Sir Philip Sidney, the "Flower of Chivalry." At the siege of Zutphen (1586), he received a mortal wound. A little incident that occurred as he rode from the field, suffering from his terrible hurt, is always told as a memorial of the gentle knight. A cup of water having been brought him, he was about to lift it to his lips, when his hand was arrested by the longing glance of a wounded soldier who chanced at that moment to be carried past. "Give it to him," said the fainting knight; "his necessity is greater than mine." PROGRESS OF THE WAR: TREATY OF 1609.--The circle of war grew more and more extended. France as well as England became involved, both fighting against Philip, who was now laying claims to the crowns of both these countries. The struggle was maintained on land and on sea, in the Old World and in the New. The English fleet, under the noted Sir Francis Drake (see p. 560, n.), ravaged the Spanish settlements in Florida and the West Indies, and intercepted the treasure-ships of Philip returning from the mines of Mexico and Peru; the Dutch fleet wrested from Spain many of her possessions in the East Indies and among the islands of the South Pacific. Europe at last grew weary of the seemingly interminable struggle, and the Spanish commanders becoming convinced that it was impossible to reduce the Dutch rebels to obedience by force of arms, negotiations were entered into, and by the celebrated treaty of 1609, comparative peace was secured to Christendom. The treaty of 1609 was in reality an acknowledgment by Spain of the independence of the United Provinces of the Netherlands, although the Spanish king was so unwilling to admit the fact of his being unable to reduce the rebel states to submission, that the treaty was termed simply "a truce for twelve years." Spain did not formally acknowledge their independence until forty years afterwards, in the Peace of Westphalia, at the end of the Thirty Years' War (1648) (see p. 586). DEVELOPMENT OF THE PROVINCES DURING THE WAR.--One of the most remarkable features of the war for Dutch independence was the vast expansion of the trade and commerce of the revolted provinces, and their astonishing growth in population, wealth, and resources, while carrying on the bitter and protracted struggle. When the contest ended, notwithstanding the waste of war, the number of inhabitants crowded on that little patch of sea-bottom and morass constituting the Dutch Republic, was equal to the entire population of England; that is to say, to three or four millions. But the home-land was only a small part of the dominions of the commonwealth. Through the enterprise and audacity of its bold sailors, it had made extensive acquisitions in the East Indies and other parts of the world, largely at the expense of the Spanish and the Portuguese colonial possessions. The commerce of the little republic had so expanded that more than one hundred thousand of its citizens found a home upon the sea. No idlers or beggars were allowed a place in the industrious commonwealth. And hand in hand with industry went intelligence. Throughout the United Provinces it was rare to meet with a person who could not both read and write. CHAPTER LII. THE HUGUENOT WARS IN FRANCE. (1562-1629.) BEGINNING OF THE REFORMATION IN FRANCE.--Before Luther posted his ninety- five theses at Wittenberg, there appeared in the University of Paris and elsewhere in France men who, from their study of the Scriptures, had come to entertain opinions very like those of the German reformer. The land which had been the home of the Albigenses was again filled with heretics. The movement thus begun received a fresh impulse from the uprising in Germany under Luther. The Reformation in France, as elsewhere, brought dissension, persecution, and war. We have already seen how Francis I., the second of the Valois- Orleans dynasty, [Footnote: The Valois-Orleans sovereigns, whose reigns cover the greater part of the period treated in the present chapter, were Louis XII. (1498-1515), Francis I. (1515-1547), Henry II. (1547-1559), Francis II. (1559-1560), Charles IX. (1560-1574), Henry III. (1574-1589). The successor of Henry III.--Henry IV.--was the first of the Bourbons.] waged an exterminating crusade against his heretical Waldensian subjects (see p. 533). His son and successor, Henry II., also conceived it to be his duty to uproot heresy; and it was his persecution of his Protestant subjects that sowed the seeds of those long and woful civil and religious wars which he left as a terrible legacy to his three feeble sons, Francis, Charles, and Henry, who followed him in succession upon the throne. At the time these wars began, which was about the middle of the sixteenth century, the confessors of the reformed creed, who later were known as Huguenots, [Footnote: This word is probably a corruption of the German _Eidgenossen_, meaning "oath-comrades" or "confederates."] numbered probably 400,000. The new doctrines found adherents especially among the nobility and the higher classes, and had taken particularly deep root in the South,--the region of the old Albigensian heresy. THE CATHOLIC AND THE HUGUENOT LEADERS.--The leaders of the Catholic party were the notorious Catherine de Medici, and the powerful chiefs of the family of the Guises. Catherine, the queen-mother of the last three Valois-Orleans sovereigns, was an intriguing, treacherous Italian. Nominally she was a Catholic; but only nominally, for it seems certain that she was almost destitute of religious convictions of any kind. What she sought was power, and this she was ready to secure by any means. When it suited her purpose, she favored the Huguenots; and when it suited her purpose better, she incited the Catholics to make war upon them. Perhaps no other woman ever made so much trouble in the world. She made France wretched through the three successive reigns of her sons, and brought her house to a shameful and miserable end. At the head of the family of the Guises stood Francis, Duke of Guise, a famous commander, who had gained great credit and popularity among his countrymen by many military exploits, especially by his capture of Calais from the English in the recent Spanish wars (see p. 553). By his side stood a younger brother Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine. Both of these men were ardent Catholics. Mary Stuart, the queen of the young king Francis II., was their niece, and through her they ruled the boy-king. The Pope and the king of Spain were friends and allies of the Guises. The chiefs of the Huguenots were the Bourbon princes, Anthony, king of Navarre, and Louis, Prince of Condé, who, next after the brothers of Francis II., were heirs to the French throne; and Gaspard de Coligny, Admiral of France. Anthony was not a man of deep convictions. He at first sided with the Protestants, probably because it was only through forming an alliance with them that he could carry on his opposition to the Guises. He afterwards went over to the side of the Catholics. A man of very different character was Admiral Coligny. Early in life he had embraced the doctrines of the reformers, and he remained to the last the trusted and consistent, though ill-starred, champion of the Protestants. THE CONSPIRACY OF AMBOISE (1560).--The foregoing notice of parties and their chiefs will render intelligible the events which we now have to narrate. The harsh measures adopted against the reformers by Francis II., who of course was entirely under the influence of the Guises, led the chiefs of the persecuted party to lay a plan for wresting the government from the hands of these "new Mayors of the Palace." The Guises were to be arrested and imprisoned, and the charge of the young king given to the Prince of Condé. The plot was revealed to the Guises, and was avenged by the execution of more than a thousand of the Huguenots. THE MASSACRE OF VASSY (1562).--After the short reign of Francis II. (1559- 1560), his brother Charles came to the throne as Charles IX. He was only ten years of age, so the queen-mother assumed the government in his name. Pursuing her favorite maxim to rule by setting one party as a counterpoise to the other, she gave the Bourbon princes a place in the government, and also by a royal edict gave the Huguenots a limited toleration, and forbade their further persecution. These concessions in favor of the Huguenots angered the Catholic chiefs, particularly the Guises; and it was the violation by the adherents of the Duke of Guise of the edict of toleration that finally caused the growing animosities of the two parties to break out in civil war. While passing through the country with a body of armed attendants, at a small place called Vassy, the Duke came upon a company of Huguenots assembled in a barn for worship. His retainers first insulted and then attacked them, killing about forty of the company and wounding many more. Under the lead of Admiral Coligny and the Prince of Condé, the Huguenots now rose throughout France. Philip II. of Spain sent an army to aid the Catholics, while Elizabeth of England extended help to the Huguenots. THE TREATY OF ST. GERMAIN (1570).--Throughout the series of lamentable civil wars upon which France now entered, both parties displayed a ferocity of disposition more befitting pagans than Christians. But it should be borne in mind that many on both sides were actuated by political ambition, rather than by religious conviction, knowing little and caring less about the distinctions in the creeds for which they were ostensibly fighting. [Footnote: What are usually designated as the _First_, _Second_, and _Third Wars_ were really one. The table below exhibits the wars of the entire period of which we are treating. Some make the Religious Wars proper end with the Edict of Nantes (1598); others with the fall of La Rochelle (1628). First War (ended by Peace of Amboise) . . . . . . . 1562-1563. Second War (ended by Peace of Longjumeau) . . . . . 1567-1568. Third War (ended by Peace of St. Germain) . . . . . 1568-1570. Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, Aug. 24. . . . . . . .1572. Fourth War (ended by Peace of La Rochelle). . . . . 1572-1573. Fifth War (ended by Peace of Chastenoy) . . . . . . 1574-1576. Sixth War (ended by Peace of Bergerac). . . . . . . . . .1577. Seventh War (ended by Treaty of Fleix). . . . . . . 1579-1580. Eighth War (War of the Three Henries) . . . . . . . 1585-1589. Henry of Bourbon, King of Navarre, secures the throne . .1589. Edict of Nantes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1598. Siege and fall of La Rochelle . . . . . . . . . . . 1627-1628. By the fall of La Rochelle the political power of the Huguenots was completely prostrated.] Sieges, battles, and truces followed one another in rapid and confusing succession. Conspiracies, treacheries, and assassinations help to fill up the dreary record of the period. The Treaty of St. Germain (in 1570) brought a short but, as it proved, delusive peace. The terms of the treaty were very favorable to the Huguenots. They received four towns,--among which was La Rochelle, the stronghold of the Huguenot faith,--which they might garrison and hold as places of safety and pledges of good faith. To cement the treaty, Catherine de Medici now proposed that the Princess Marguerite, the sister of Charles IX., should be given in marriage to Henry of Bourbon, the new young king of Navarre. The announcement of the proposed alliance caused great rejoicing among Catholics and Protestants alike, and the chiefs of both parties crowded to Paris to attend the wedding, which took place on the 18th of August, 1572. THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S DAY (Aug. 24, 1572).--Before the festivities which followed the nuptial ceremonies were over, the world was shocked by one of the most awful crimes of which history has to tell,--the massacre of the Huguenots in Paris on St. Bartholomew's Day. The circumstances which led to this fearful tragedy were as follows: Among the Protestant nobles who came up to Paris to attend the wedding was the Admiral Coligny. Upon coming in contact with Charles IX., the Admiral secured almost immediately an entire ascendency over his mind. This influence Coligny used to draw the king away from the queen-mother and the Guises. Fearing the loss of her influence over her son, Catherine resolved upon the death of the Admiral. The attempt miscarried, Coligny receiving only a slight wound from the assassin's ball. The Huguenots at once rallied about their wounded chief with loud threats of revenge. Catherine, driven on by insane fear and hatred, now determined upon the death of all the Huguenots in Paris as the only measure of safety. By the 23d of August, the plans for the massacre were all arranged. On the evening of that day, Catherine went to her son, and represented to him that the Huguenots had formed a plot for the assassination of the royal family and the leaders of the Catholic party, and that the utter ruin of their house and cause could be averted only by the immediate destruction of the Protestants within the city walls. The order for the massacre was then laid before him for his signature. The king at first refused to sign the decree, but, overcome at last by the representations of his mother, he exclaimed, "I agree to the scheme, provided not one Huguenot be left alive in France to reproach me with the deed." A little past the hour of midnight on St. Bartholomew's Day (Aug. 24, 1572), at a preconcerted signal,--the tolling of a bell,--the massacre began. Coligny was one of the first victims. After his assassins had done their work, they tossed the body out of the window of the chamber in which it lay, into the street, in order that the Duke of Guise, who stood below, might satisfy himself that his enemy was really dead. For three days and nights the massacre went on within the city. King Charles himself is said to have joined in the work, and from one of the windows of the palace of the Louvre to have fired upon the Huguenots as they fled past. The number of victims in Paris is variously estimated at from 3,000 to 10,000. With the capital cleared of Huguenots, orders were issued to the principal cities of France to purge themselves in like manner of heretics. In many places the instincts of humanity prevailed over fear of the royal resentment, and the decree was disobeyed. But in other places the orders were carried out, and frightful massacres took place. The entire number of victims throughout the country was probably between 20,000 and 30,000. The massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day raised a cry of execration in almost every part of the civilized world, among Catholics and Protestants alike. Philip II., however, is said to have received the news with unfeigned joy; while Pope Gregory XIII. caused a _Te Deum_, in commemoration of the event, to be sung in the church of St. Mark, in Rome. Respecting this it should in justice be said that Catholic writers maintain that the Pope acted under a misconception of the facts, it having been represented to him that the massacre resulted from a thwarted plot of the Huguenots against the royal family of France and the Catholic Church. REIGN OF HENRY III. (1574-1589).--The massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, instead of exterminating heresy in France, only served to rouse the Huguenots to a more determined defence of their faith. Throughout the last two years of the reign of Charles IX., and the fifteen succeeding years of the reign of his brother Henry III., the country was in a state of turmoil and war. At length the king, who, jealous of the growing power and popularity of the Duke of Guise, had caused him to be assassinated, was himself struck down by the avenging dagger of a Dominican monk. With him ended the House of Valois-Orleans. Henry of Bourbon, king of Navarre, who for many years had been the most prominent leader of the Huguenots, now came to the throne as the first of the Bourbon kings. ACCESSION OF HENRY IV. (1589).--Notwithstanding that the doctrines of the reformers had made rapid progress in France under the sons of Henry II., still the majority of the nation at the time of the death of Henry III. were Roman Catholics in faith and worship. Under these circumstances, we shall hardly expect to find the entire nation quietly acquiescing in the accession to the French throne of a Protestant prince, and he the leader and champion of the hated Huguenots. Nor did Henry secure without a struggle the crown that was his by right. The Catholics declared for Cardinal Bourbon, an uncle of the king of Navarre, and France was thus kept in the whirl of civil war. Elizabeth of England aided the Protestants, and Philip II. of Spain assisted the Catholics. HENRY TURNS CATHOLIC (1593).--After the war had gone on for about four years,--during which time was fought the noted battle of Ivry, in which Henry led his soldiers to victory by telling them to follow the white plume on his hat,--the quarrel was closed, for the time being, by Henry's abjuration of the Huguenot faith, and his adoption of that of the Roman Catholic Church (1593). Mingled motives led Henry to do this. He was personally liked even by the Catholic chiefs, and he was well aware that it was only his Huguenot faith that prevented their being his hearty supporters. Hence duty and policy seemed to him to concur in urging him to remove the sole obstacle in the way of their ready loyalty, and thus bring peace and quiet to distracted France. THE EDICT OF NANTES (1598).--As soon as Henry had become the crowned and acknowledged king of France, he gave himself to the work of composing the affairs of his kingdom. The most noteworthy of the measures he adopted to this end was the publication of the celebrated Edict of Nantes (April 15, 1598). This decree granted the Huguenots practical freedom of worship, opened to them all offices and employments, and gave them as places of refuge and defence a large number of fortified towns, among which was the important city of La Rochelle. The temporary hushing of the long-continued quarrels of the Catholics and Protestants by the adoption of the principle of religious toleration, paved the way for a revival of the trade and industries of the country, which had been almost destroyed by the anarchy and waste of the civil wars. France now entered upon such a period of prosperity as she had not known for many years. LOUIS XIII, AND HIS MINISTER, CARDINAL RICHELIEU.--Henry IV. was assassinated by a fanatic named Ravaillac, who regarded him as an enemy of the Roman Catholic Church. As his son Louis, who succeeded him as Louis XIII. (1610-1643), was a child of nine years, during his minority the government was administered by his mother, Mary de Medici. Upon attaining his majority, Louis took the government into his own hands. He chose, as his chief minister, Cardinal Richelieu, one of the most remarkable characters of the seventeenth century. From the time that Louis admitted the young prelate to his cabinet (in 1622), the ecclesiastic became the virtual sovereign of France, and for the space of twenty years swayed the destinies not only of that country, but, it might almost be said, those of Europe as well. [Illustration: CARDINAL RICHELIEU. (After a painting in the Louvre.)] Richelieu's policy was twofold: first, to render the authority of the French king absolute in France; secondly, to make the power of France supreme in Europe. To attain the first end, Richelieu sought to crush the political power of the Huguenots, and to trample out the last vestige of independence among the old feudal aristocracy; to secure the second, he labored to break down the power of both branches of the House of Hapsburg,--that is, of Austria and Spain. For nearly the life-time of a generation Richelieu, by intrigue, diplomacy, and war, pursued with unrelenting purpose these objects of his ambition. His own words best indicate how he proposed to use his double authority as cardinal and prime minister to effect his purpose: "I shall trample all opposition under foot," said he, "and then cover all errors with my scarlet robe." In the following paragraph we shall speak very briefly of the cardinal's dealings with the Huguenots, which feature alone of his policy especially concerns us at present. POLITICAL POWER OF THE HUGUENOTS CRUSHED.--In the prosecution of his plans, Cardinal Richelieu's first step was to break down the political power of the Huguenot chiefs, who, dissatisfied with their position in the government, and irritated by religious grievances, were revolving in mind the founding in France of a Protestant commonwealth like that which the Prince of Orange and his adherents had setup in the Netherlands. The capital of the new Republic was to be La Rochelle, on the southwestern coast of France. In 1627, an alliance having been formed between England and the French Protestant nobles, an English fleet and army were sent across the Channel to aid the Huguenot enterprise. Richelieu now resolved to ruin forever the power of these Protestant nobles who were constantly challenging the royal authority and threatening the dismemberment of France. Accordingly he led in person an army to the siege of La Rochelle, which, after a gallant resistance of more than a year, was compelled to open its gates to the cardinal (1628). That the place might never again be made the centre of resistance to the royal power, Louis ordered that "the fortifications be razed to the ground, in such wise that the plough may plough through the soil as through tilled land." The Huguenots maintained the struggle a few months longer in the south of France, but were finally everywhere reduced to submission. The result of the war was the complete destruction of the political power of the French Protestants. A treaty of peace, called the Edict of Grace, negotiated the year after the fall of La Rochelle, left them, however, freedom of worship, according to the provisions of the Edict of Nantes (see p. 578). The Edict of Grace properly marks the close of the religious wars which had desolated France for two generations (from 1562 to 1629). It is estimated that this series of wars and massacres cost France a million lives, and that between three and four hundred hamlets and towns were destroyed by the contending parties. RICHELIEU AND THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR.--When Cardinal Richelieu came to the head of affairs in France, there was going on in Germany the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), of which we shall tell in the following chapter. This was very much such a struggle between the Catholic and Protestant German princes as we have seen waged between the two religious parties in France. Although Richelieu had just crushed French Protestantism, he now gives aid to the Protestant princes of Germany, because their success meant the division of Germany and the humiliation of Austria. Richelieu did not live to see the end either of the Thirty Years' War or of that which he had begun with Spain; but this foreign policy of the great minister, carried out by others, finally resulted, as we shall learn hereafter, in the humiliation of both branches of the House of Hapsburg, and the lifting of France to the first place among the powers of Europe. CHAPTER LIII. THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. (1618-1648.) NATURE AND CAUSES OF THE WAR.--The long and calamitous Thirty Years' War was the last great combat between Protestantism and Catholicism in Europe. It started as a struggle between the Protestant and Catholic princes of Germany, but gradually involved almost all the states of the continent, degenerating at last into a shameful and heartless struggle for power and territory. The real cause of the war was the enmity existing between the German Protestants and Catholics. Each party by its encroachments gave the other occasion for complaint. The Protestants at length formed for their mutual protection a league called the Evangelical Union (1608). In opposition to the Union, the Catholics formed a confederation known as the Holy League (1609). All Germany was thus prepared to burst into the flames of a religious war. THE BOHEMIAN PERIOD OF THE WAR (1618-1623).--The flames that were to desolate Germany for a generation were first kindled in Bohemia, where were still smouldering embers of the Hussite wars, which two centuries before had desolated that land (see p. 506). A church which the Protestants maintained they had a right to build was torn down by the Catholics, and another was closed. The Protestants rose in revolt against their Catholic king, Ferdinand, elected a new Protestant king, [Footnote: Frederick V. of the Palatinate, son-in-law of James I. of England.] and drove out the Jesuits. The Thirty Years' War had begun (1618). Almost an exact century had passed since Luther posted his theses on the door of the court church at Wittenberg. It is estimated that at this time more than nine-tenths of the population of the empire were Protestants. The war had scarcely opened when, the Imperial office falling vacant, the Bohemian king, Ferdinand, was elected emperor. With the power and influence he now wielded, it was not a difficult matter for him to quell the Protestant insurrection in his royal dominions. The leaders of the revolt were executed, and the reformed faith in Bohemia was almost uprooted. THE DANISH PERIOD (1625-1629).--The situation of affairs at this moment in Germany filled all the Protestant rulers of the North with the greatest alarm. Christian IV., king of Denmark, supported by England and Holland, threw himself into the struggle as the champion of German Protestantism. He now becomes the central figure on the side of the reformers. On the side of the Catholics are two noted commanders,--Tilly, the leader of the forces of the Holy League, and Wallenstein, the commander of the Imperial army. What is known as the Danish period of the war now begins (1625). The war, in the main, proved disastrous to the Protestant allies, and Christian IV. was constrained to conclude a treaty of peace with the emperor (Peace of Lübeck, 1629), and retire from the struggle. By what is known as the Edict of Restitution (1629), the Emperor Ferdinand now restored to the Catholics all the ecclesiastical lands and offices in North Germany of which possession had been taken by the Protestants in violation of the terms of the Peace of Augsburg. This decree gave back to the Catholic Church two archbishoprics, twelve bishoprics, besides many monasteries and other ecclesiastical property. THE SWEDISH PERIOD (1630-1635): GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS, WALLENSTEIN, AND TILLY.--At this moment of seeming triumph, Ferdinand was constrained by rising discontent and jealousies to dismiss from his service his most efficient general, Wallenstein, who had made almost all classes, save his soldiers, his bitter enemies. In his retirement, Wallenstein maintained a court of fabulous magnificence. Wherever he went he was followed by an imperial train of attendants and equipages. He was reserved and silent, but his eye was upon everything going on in Germany, and indeed in Europe. He was watching for a favorable moment for revenge, and the retrieving of his fortunes. The opportunity which Wallenstein, inspired by faith in his star, was so confidently awaiting was not long delayed. Only a few months before his dismissal from the Imperial service, Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, with a veteran and enthusiastic army of 16,000 Swedes, had appeared in Northern Germany as the champion of the dispirited and leaderless Protestants. The Protestant princes, however, through fear of the emperor, as well as from lack of confidence in the disinterestedness of the motives of Gustavus, were shamefully backward in rallying to the support of their deliverer. But through an alliance formed just now with France, the Swedish king received a large annual subsidy from that country, which, with the help he was receiving from England, made him a formidable antagonist. The wavering, jealous, and unworthy conduct of the Protestant princes now led to a most terrible disaster. At this moment Tilly was besieging the city of Magdeburg, which had dared to resist the Edict of Restitution (see p. 583). Gustavus was prevented from giving relief to the place by the hindrances thrown in his way by the Electors of Brandenburg and Saxony, both of whom should have given him every assistance. In a short time the city was obliged to surrender, and was given up to sack and pillage. Everything was burned, save two churches and a few hovels. 30,000 of the inhabitants perished miserably. The cruel fate of Magdeburg excited the alarm of the Protestant princes. The Elector of Saxony now at once united his forces with those of the Swedish king. Tilly was defeated with great loss in the celebrated battle of Leipsic (1631), and Gustavus, emboldened by his success, pushed southward into the very heart of Germany. Attempting to dispute his march, Tilly's army was again defeated, and he himself received a fatal wound. In the death of Tilly, Ferdinand lost his most trustworthy general (1632). The Imperial cause appeared desperate. There was but one man in Germany who could turn the tide of victory that was running so strongly in favor of the Swedish monarch. That man was Wallenstein; and to him the emperor now turned. This strange man had been watching with secret satisfaction the success of the Swedish arms, and had even offered to Gustavus his aid, promising "to chase the emperor and the House of Austria over the Alps." [Illustration: DEATH OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS AT THE BATTLE OF LUTZEN.] To this proud subject of his, fresh from his dalliances with his enemies, the emperor now appealed for help. Wallenstein agreed to raise an army, provided his control of it should be absolute. Ferdinand was constrained to grant all that his old general demanded. Wallenstein now raised his standard, to which rallied the adventurers not only of Germany, but of all Europe as well. The array was a vast and heterogeneous host, bound together by no bonds of patriotism, loyalty, or convictions, but by the spell and prestige of the name of Wallenstein. With an army of 40,000 men obedient to his commands, Wallenstein, after numerous marches and counter-marches, attacked the Swedes in a terrible battle on the memorable field of Lutzen, in Saxony. The Swedes won the day, but lost their leader and sovereign (1632). Notwithstanding the death of their great king and commander, the Swedes did not withdraw from the war. Hence the struggle went on, the advantage being for the most part with the Protestant allies. Ferdinand, at just this time, was embarrassed by the suspicious movements of his general Wallenstein. Becoming convinced that he was meditating the betrayal of the Imperial cause, the emperor caused him to be assassinated (1634). This event marks very nearly the end of the Swedish period of the war. THE SWEDISH-FRENCH PERIOD (1635-1648).--Had it not been for the selfish and ambitious interference of France, the woeful war which had now desolated Germany for half a century might here have come to an end, for both sides were weary of it and ready for negotiations of peace. But Richelieu was not willing that the war should end until the House of Austria was thoroughly crippled. Accordingly he encouraged Oxenstiern, the Swedish chancellor, to persevere in carrying on the war, promising him the aid of the French armies. The war thus lost in large part its original character of a contest between the Catholic and the Protestant princes of Germany, and became a political struggle between the House of Austria and the House of Bourbon, in which the former was fighting for existence, the latter for national aggrandizement. THE TREATY OF WESTPHALIA (1648).--And so the miserable war dragged on. The earlier actors in the drama at length passed from the scene, but their parts were carried on by others. The year 1643, which marks the death of Richelieu, heard the first whisperings of peace. Everybody was inexpressibly weary of the war, and longed for the cessation of its horrors, yet each one wanted peace on terms advantageous to himself. The arrangement of the articles of peace was a matter of immense difficulty; for the affairs and boundaries of the states of Central Europe were in almost hopeless confusion. After five years of memorable discussion and negotiation, the articles of the celebrated Treaty of Westphalia, as it was called, were signed by the different European powers. The chief articles of this important treaty may be made to fall under two heads: (1) those relating to territorial boundaries, and (2) those respecting religion. As to the first, these cut short in three directions the actual or nominal limits of the Holy Roman Empire. Switzerland and the United Netherlands were severed from it; for though both of these countries had been for a long time practically independent of the empire, this independence had never been acknowledged in any formal way. The claim of France to the three cities of Metz, Toul, and Verdun in Lorraine, which places she had held for about a century, was confirmed, and a great part of Alsace was given to her. Thus on the west, on the southwest, and on the northwest, the empire suffered loss. Sweden was given cities and territories in Northern Germany which gave her control of a long strip of the Baltic shore, a most valuable possession. But these lands were not given to the Swedish king in full sovereignty; they still remained a part of the Germanic body, and the king of Sweden as to them became a prince of the empire. The changes within the empire were many, and some of them important. Brandenburg especially received considerable additions of territory. The articles respecting religion were even more important than those which established the metes and bounds of the different states. Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists were all put upon the same footing. The Protestants were to retain all the benefices and Church property of which they had possession in 1624. Every prince was to have the right to make his religion the religion of his people, and to banish all who refused to adopt the established creed: but such non-conformists were to have three years in which to emigrate. The different states of the empire were left almost independent of the emperor. They were given the right to form alliances with one another and with foreign princes; but not, of course, against the empire or emperor. This provision made Germany nothing more than a lax confederation, and postponed to a distant future the nationalization of the German states. EFFECTS OF THE WAR UPON GERMANY.--It is simply impossible to picture the wretched condition in which the Thirty Years' War left Germany. When the struggle began, the population of the country was 30,000,000; when it ended, 12,000,000. Many of the once large and flourishing cities were reduced to "mere shells." Two or three hundred ill-clad persons constituted the population of Berlin. The duchy of Würtemburg, which had half a million of inhabitants at the commencement of the war, at its close had barely 50,000. On every hand were the charred remains of the hovels of the peasants and the palaces of the nobility. The lines of commerce were broken, and some trades and industries were swept quite out of existence. The effects upon the fine arts, upon science, learning, and morals were even more lamentable. Painting, sculpture, and architecture were driven out of the land. The cities which had been the home of all these arts lay in ruins. Education was entirely neglected. For the lifetime of a generation, men had been engaged in the business of war, and had allowed their children to grow up in absolute ignorance. Moral law was forgotten. Vice, nourished by the licentious atmosphere of the camp, reigned supreme. "In character, in intelligence, and in morality, the German people were set back two hundred years." To all these evils were added those of political disunion and weakness. The title of emperor still continued to be borne by a member of the House of Austria, but it was only an empty name. By the Peace of Westphalia, the Germanic body lost even that little cohesion which had begun to manifest itself between its different parts, and became simply a loose assemblage of virtually independent states, of which there were now over two hundred. Thus weakened, Germany lost her independence as a nation, while the subjects of the numerous petty states became the slaves of their ambitious and tyrannical rulers. Worse than all, the overwhelming calamities that for the lifetime of a generation had been poured out upon the unfortunate land, had extinguished the last spark of German patriotism. Every sentiment of pride and hope in race and country seemed to have become extinct. CONCLUSION.--The treaty of Westphalia is a prominent landmark in universal history. It stands at the dividing line of two great epochs. It marks the end of the Reformation Era and the beginning of that of the Political Revolution. Henceforth men will fight for constitutions, not creeds. We shall not often see one nation attacking another, or one party in a nation assaulting another party, on account of a difference in religious opinion. [Footnote: The Puritan Revolution in England may look like a religious war, but we shall learn that it was primarily a political contest,--a struggle against despotism in the state.] But in setting the Peace of Westphalia to mark the end of the religious wars occasioned by the Reformation, we do not mean to convey the idea that men had come to embrace the beneficent doctrine of religious toleration. As a matter of fact, no real toleration had yet been reached--nothing save the semblance of toleration. The long conflict of a century and more, and the vicissitudes of fortune, which to-day gave one party the power of the persecutor and to-morrow made the same sect the victims of persecution, had simply forced all to the practical conclusion that they must tolerate one another,--that one sect must not attempt to put another down by force. But it required the broadening and liberalizing lessons of another full century to bring men to see that the thing they _must_ do is the very thing they _ought_ to do,--to make men tolerant not only in outward conduct, but in spirit. With this single word of caution, we now pass to the study of the Era of the Political Revolution, the period marked by the struggle between despotic and liberal principles of government. And first, we shall give a sketch of absolute monarchy as it exhibited itself in France under the autocrat Louis XIV. SECOND PERIOD.--THE ERA OF THE POLITICAL REVOLUTION. (FROM THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA IN 1648 TO THE PRESENT TIME.) CHAPTER LIV. THE ASCENDENCY OF FRANCE UNDER THE ABSOLUTE GOVERNMENT OF LOUIS XIV. (1643-1715.) THE DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS.--Louis XIV. stands as the representative of absolute monarchy. This indeed was no new thing in the world, but Louis was such an ideal autocrat that somehow he made autocratic government strangely attractive. Other kings imitated him, and it became the prevailing theory of government that kings have a "divine right" to rule, and that the people should have no part at all in government. According to this theory, the nation is a great family with the king as its divinely appointed head. The duty of the king is to govern like a father; the duty of the people is to obey their king even as children obey their parents. If the king does wrong, is harsh, cruel, unjust, this is simply the misfortune of his people: under no circumstances is it right for them to rebel against his authority, any more than for children to rise against their father. The king is responsible to God alone, and to God the people, quietly submissive, must leave the avenging of all their wrongs. Before the close of the period upon which we here enter, we shall see how this theory of the divine right of kings worked out in practice,--how dear it cost both kings and people, and how the people by the strong logic of revolution demonstrated that they are not children but mature men, and have a divine and inalienable right to govern themselves. THE BASIS OF LOUIS XIV.'s POWER.--The basis of the absolute power of Louis XIV. was laid by Cardinal Richelieu during the reign of Louis XIII. (see p. 580). Besides crushing the political power of the Huguenots, and thereby vastly augmenting the security and strength of the royal authority, the Cardinal succeeded, by various means,--by annulling their privileges, by banishment, confiscations, and executions,--in almost extinguishing the expiring independence of the old feudal aristocracy, and in forcing the once haughty and refractory nobles to yield humble obedience to the crown. In 1643, barely six months after the death of his great minister, Louis XIII. died, leaving the vast power which the Cardinal had done so much to consolidate, as an inheritance to his little son, a child of five years. THE ADMINISTRATION OF MAZARIN.--During the minority of Louis the government was in the hands of his mother, Anne of Austria, as regent. She chose as her prime minister an Italian ecclesiastic, Cardinal Mazarin, who, in his administration of affairs, followed in the footsteps of his predecessor, Richelieu, carrying out with great ability the comprehensive policy of that minister. France was encouraged to maintain her part--and a very glorious part it was, as war goes--in the Thirty Years' War, until Austria was completely exhausted, and all Germany indeed almost ruined. Even after the Peace of Westphalia, which simply concluded the war in Germany, France carried on the war with Spain for ten years longer, until 1659, when the Treaty of the Pyrenees, which gave the French the two provinces of Artois and Roussillon, asserted the triumph of France over Spain. Richelieu's plan had at last, though at terrible cost to France [Footnote: The heavy taxes laid to meet the expenses of the wars created great discontent, which during the struggle with Spain led to a series of conspiracies or revolts against the government, known as the _Wars of the Fronde_ (1648-1652). "Notwithstanding its peculiar character of levity and burlesque, the Fronde must be regarded as a memorable struggle of the aristocracy, supported by the judicial and municipal bodies, to control the despotism of the crown.... It failed;... nor was any farther effort made to resuscitate the dormant liberties of the nation until the dawning of the great Revolution."] and all Europe, been crowned with success. The House of Austria in both its branches had been humiliated and crippled, and the House of Bourbon was ready to assume the lead in European affairs. LOUIS XIV. ASSUMES THE GOVERNMENT.--Cardinal Mazarin died in 1661. Upon this event, Louis, who was now twenty-three years of age, became his own prime minister, and for more than half a century thereafter ruled France as an absolute and irresponsible monarch. He regarded France as his private estate, and seemed to be fully convinced that he had a divine commission to govern the French people. It is said that he declared, _L'État, c'est moi_, "I am the State," meaning that he alone was the rightful legislator, judge, and executive of the French nation. The States-General was not once convened during his long reign. Richelieu made Louis XIII. "the first man in Europe, but the second in his own kingdom." Louis XIV. was the first man at home as well as abroad. He had able men about him; but they served instead of ruling him. COLBERT.--Mazarin when dying said to Louis, "Sire, I owe everything to you; but I pay my debt to your majesty by giving you Colbert." During the first ten or twelve years of Louis's personal reign, this extraordinary man inspired and directed everything; but he carefully avoided the appearance of doing so. His maxim seemed to be, Mine the labor, thine the praise. He did for the domestic affairs of France what Richelieu had done for the foreign. So long as Louis followed the policy of Colbert, he gave France a truly glorious reign; but unfortunately he soon turned aside from the great minister's policy of peace, to seek glory for himself and greatness for France through new and unjust encroachments upon neighboring nations. THE WARS OF LOUIS XIV.--During the period of his personal administration of the government, Louis XIV. was engaged in four great wars: (1) A war respecting the Spanish Netherlands (1667-1668); (2) a war with Holland (1672-1678); (3) the War of the Palatinate (1689-1697); and (4) the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714). All these wars were, on the part of the French monarch, wars of conquest and aggression, or were wars provoked by his ambitious and encroaching policy. The most inveterate enemy of Louis during all this period was Holland, the representative and champion of liberal, constitutional government. THE WAR CONCERNING THE SPANISH NETHERLANDS (1667-1668).--Upon the death of Philip IV. of Spain (1665), Louis immediately claimed, in the name of his wife, portions of the Spanish Netherlands (see p. 568, n.). The Hollanders were naturally alarmed, fearing that Louis would also want to annex their country to his dominions. Accordingly they effected what was called the Triple Alliance with England and Sweden, checked the French king in his career of conquest, and, by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, forced him to give up much of the territory he had seized. THE WAR WITH HOLLAND (1672-1678).--The second war of the French king was against Holland, whose interference with his plans in the Spanish Netherlands, as well as some uncomplimentary remarks of the Dutch humorists on his personal appearance, had stirred his resentment. Before entering upon the undertaking which had proved too great for Philip II. with the resources of two worlds at his command, Louis, by means of bribes and the employment of that skilful diplomacy of which he was so perfect a master, prudently drew from the side of Holland both her allies (Sweden and England), even inducing the English king, Charles II., to lend him active assistance. Money also secured the aid of several princes of Germany. Thus the little commonwealth was left alone to contend against fearful odds. The brave Hollanders made a stout defence of their land. It was even seriously proposed in the States-General, that, rather than submit to the tyranny of this second Philip, they should open the dykes, bury the country and its invaders beneath the ocean, and taking their families and household goods in their ships, seek new homes in lands beyond the sea. The desperate resolve was in part executed; for with the French threatening Amsterdam, the dykes were cut, and all the surrounding fields were laid under water, and the invaders thus forced to retreat. The heroic resistance to the intruders made by the Hollanders in their half-drowned land, the havoc wrought by the stout Dutch sailors among the fleets of the allies, and the diplomacy of the Dutch statesmen, who, through skilful negotiations, detached almost all of the allies of the French from that side, and brought them into alliance with the republic,-- all these things soon put a very different face upon affairs, and Louis found himself confronted by the armies of half of Europe. For several years the war now went on by land and sea,--in the Netherlands, all along the Rhine, upon the English Channel, in the Mediterranean, and on the coasts of the New World. At length an end was put to the struggle by the Treaty of Nimeguen (1678). Louis gave up his conquests in Holland, but kept a large number of towns and fortresses in the Spanish Netherlands, besides the province of Franche-Comté and several Imperial cities on his German frontier. Thus Louis came out of this tremendous struggle, in which half of Europe was leagued against him, with enhanced reputation and fresh acquisitions of territory. People now began to call him the _Grand Monarch_. THE REVOCATION OF THE EDICTS OF NANTES (1685).--Louis now committed an act the injustice of which was only equalled by its folly,--an act from which may be dated the decline of his power. This was the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the well-known decree by which Henry IV. secured religious freedom to the French Protestants (see p. 578). By this cruel measure all the Protestant churches were closed, and every Huguenot who refused to embrace the Roman Catholic faith was outlawed. The persecution which the Huguenots had been enduring and which was now greatly increased in violence, is known as the _Dragonnades_, from the circumstance that _dragoons_ were quartered upon the Protestant families, with full permission to annoy and persecute them in every way "short of violation and death," to the end that the victims of these outrages might be constrained to recant, which multitudes did. Under the fierce persecutions of the _Dragonnades_, probably as many as three hundred thousand of the most skilful and industrious of the subjects of Louis were driven out of the kingdom. Several of the most important and flourishing of the French industries were ruined, while the manufacturing interests of other countries, particularly those of Holland and England, were correspondingly benefited by the energy, skill, and capital which the exiles carried to them. Many of the fugitive Huguenots found ultimately a refuge in America; and no other class of emigrants, save the Puritans of England, cast "Such healthful leaven 'mid the elements That peopled the new world." [Footnote: See Baird, _History of the Huguenot Emigration to America._] THE WAR OF THE PALATINATE (1689-1697).--The indirect results of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes were quite as calamitous to France as were the direct results. The indignation that the barbarous measure awakened among the Protestant nations of Europe enabled William of Orange to organize a formidable confederacy against Louis, known as the League of Augsburg (1686). Louis resolved to attack the confederates. Seeking a pretext for beginning hostilities, he laid claim, in the name of his sister-in-law, to portions of the Palatinate, and hurried a large army into the country, which was quickly overrun. But being unable to hold the conquests he had made, Louis ordered that the country be turned into a desert. The Huns of an Attila could not have carried out more relentlessly the command than did the soldiers of Louis. Churches and abbeys, palaces and cottages, villas and cities, were all given to the flames. This barbarous act of Louis almost frenzied Germany. Another and more formidable coalition, known as the "Grand Alliance," was now formed (1689). It embraced England, Holland, Sweden, Spain, the German emperor, the Elector Palatine, and the Electors of Bavaria and Saxony. For ten years almost all Europe was a great battle-field. Both sides at length becoming weary of the contest and almost exhausted in resources, the struggle was closed by the Treaty of Ryswick (1697). There was a mutual surrender of conquests made during the course of the war, and Louis had also to give up some of the places he had unjustly seized before the beginning of the conflict. [Illustration: DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH. (After a painting by F. Kneller.)] WAR OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION (1701-1714).--Barely three years passed after the Treaty of Ryswick before the great powers of Europe were involved in another war, known as the War of the Spanish Succession. The circumstances out of which the war grew were these: In 1700 the king of Spain, Charles II., died, leaving his crown to Philip of Anjou, a grandson of Louis XIV. "There are no longer any Pyrenees," was Louis's exultant epigram, meaning of course that France and Spain were now practically one. England and Holland particularly were alarmed at this virtual consolidation of these two powerful kingdoms. Consequently a second Grand Alliance was soon formed against France, the object of which was to dethrone Philip of Anjou and place upon the Spanish throne Charles, Archduke of Austria. The two greatest generals of the allies were the famous Duke of Marlborough (John Churchill), the ablest commander, except Wellington perhaps, that England has ever produced, and the hardly less noted Prince Eugene of Savoy. For thirteen years all Europe was shaken with war. During the progress of the struggle were fought some of the most memorable battles in European history,--Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet,--in all of which the genius of Marlborough and the consummate skill of Prince Eugene won splendid victories for the allies. Finally, changes wrought by death in the House of Austria brought the Archduke Charles to the imperial throne. This changed the whole aspect of the Spanish question, for now to place Charles upon the Spanish throne also would be to give him a dangerous preponderance of power, would be, in fact, to reestablish the great monarchy of Charles V. Consequently the Grand Alliance fell to pieces, and the war was ended by the treaties of Utrecht (1713) and Rastadt (1714). By the provisions of these treaties the Bourbon prince of Anjou was left upon the Spanish throne, but his kingdom was pared away on every side. Gibraltar and the island of Minorca were ceded to England; while Milan, Naples, Sardinia, and the Netherlands (Spanish) were given to Austria. France was forced to surrender to England considerable portions of her possessions in the New World,--Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the Hudson Bay territory. DEATH OF THE KING.--Amidst troubles, perplexities, and afflictions, Louis XIV.'s long and eventful reign was now drawing to a close. The heavy and constant taxes necessary to meet the expenses of his numerous wars, and to maintain an extravagant court, had bankrupted the country, and the cries of his wretched subjects clamoring for bread could not be shut out of the royal chamber. Death, too, had invaded the palace, striking down the dauphin, the dauphiness, and two grandsons of Louis, leaving as the nearest heir to the throne his great-grandson, a mere child. On the morning of September 1st, 1715, the Grand Monarch breathed his last, bequeathing to this boy of five years a kingdom overwhelmed with debt, and filled with misery, with threatening vices and dangerous discontent. THE COURT OF LOUIS XIV.--The Court sustained by the Grand Monarch was the most extravagantly magnificent that Europe has ever seen. Never since Nero erected his Golden House upon the burnt district of Rome, and ensconcing himself amid its luxurious appointments, exclaimed, "Now I am housed as a man ought to be," had prince or king so ostentatiously lavished upon himself the wealth of an empire. Louis had half a dozen palaces, the most costly of which was that at Versailles. Upon this and its surroundings he spent fabulous sums. The palace itself cost what would probably be equal to more than $100,000,000 with us. Here were gathered the beauty, wit, and learning of France. The royal household numbered fifteen thousand persons, all living in costly and luxurious idleness at the expense of the people. [Illustration: LOUIS XIV. IN HIS OLD AGE.] One element of this enormous family was the great lords of the old feudal aristocracy. Dispossessed of their ancient power and wealth, they were content now to fill a place in the royal household, to be the king's pensioners and the elegant embellishment of his court. As we might well imagine, the life of the French court at this period was shamefully corrupt. Vice, however, was gilded. The scandalous immoralities of king and courtiers were made attractive by the glitter of superficial accomplishment and by exquisite suavity and polish of manner. But notwithstanding its immorality, the brilliancy of the Court of Louis dazzled all Europe. The neighboring courts imitated its manners and emulated its extravagances. In all matters of taste and fashion France gave laws to the continent, and the French language became the court language of the civilized world. LITERATURE UNDER LOUIS XIV.--Louis gave a most liberal encouragement to men of letters, thereby making his reign the Augustan Age of French literature. In this patronage Louis was not unselfish. He honored and befriended poets and writers of every class, because he thus extended the reputation of his court. These writers, pensioners of his bounty, filled all Europe with their praises of the Great King, and thus made the most ample and grateful return to Louis for his favor and liberality. Almost every species of literature was cultivated by the French writers of this era, yet it was in the province of the Drama that the greatest number of eminent authors appeared. The three great names here are those of Corneille (1606-1684), Racine (1639-1699), and Molière (1622-1673). DECLINE OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY UNDER LOUIS XV.--The ascendency of the House of Bourbon passed away forever with Louis XIV. In passing from the reign of the Grand Monarch to that of his successor, Louis XV. (1715- 1774), we pass from the strongest and most brilliant reign in French history to the weakest and most humiliating. France took part, but usually with injury to her military reputation, in all the wars of this period. The most important of these were the War of the Austrian Succession (see p. 644), and the Seven Years' War (see p. 631), known in America as the French and Indian War, which resulted in the loss to France of Canada in the New World and of her Indian possessions in the Old. Though thus shorn of her colonial possessions in all quarters of the globe, France managed to hold in Europe the provinces won for her by the wars and the diplomacy of Louis XIV., and even made some fresh acquisitions of territory along the Rhenish frontier. But taken all together, the period was one of great national humiliation: the French fleet was almost driven from the sea; the martial spirit of the nation visibly declined; and France, from the foremost place among the states of Europe, fell to the position of a third or fourth rate power. CHAPTER LV. ENGLAND UNDER THE STUARTS: THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. (1603-1714.) I. THE FIRST TWO STUARTS. 1. _Reign of James the First_ (1603-1625). THE "DIVINE RIGHT" OF KINGS AND THE "ROYAL TOUCH."--With the end of the Tudor line (see p. 561), James VI. of Scotland, son of Mary Stuart, came to the English throne, as James I. of England. The accession of the House of Stuart brought England and Scotland under the same sovereign, though each country still retained its own Parliament. The Stuarts were firm believers in the doctrine of the "Divine Right" of kings. They held that hereditary princes are the Lord's anointed, and that their authority can in no way be questioned or limited by people, priest, or Parliament. James I.'s own words were, "As it is atheism and blasphemy to dispute what God can do, so it is high contempt in a subject to dispute what a king can do, or to say that the king cannot do this or that." This doctrine found much support in the popular superstition of the "Royal Touch." The king was believed to possess the power--a gift transmitted through the royal line of England from Edward the Confessor--of healing scrofulous persons by the laying on of hands. [Footnote: Consult Lecky, _A History of England in the Eighteenth Century_, Vol. I. p. 73. The French kings were also supposed to possess the same miraculous power, inherited, as most believed, from Louis the Saint.] It is simply the bearing of this strange superstition upon the doctrine of the divine right of kings that concerns us now. "The political importance of this superstition," observes Lecky, "is very manifest. Educated laymen might deride it, but in the eyes of the English poor it was a visible, palpable attestation of the indefeasible sanctity of the royal line. It placed the sovereignty entirely apart from the categories of mere human institutions." By bearing this superstition in mind, it will be easier for us to understand how so large a proportion of the people of England could support the Stuarts in their extravagant claims, and could sincerely maintain the doctrine of the sinfulness of resistance to the king. THE GUNPOWDER PLOT (1605).--In the third year of James's reign was unearthed a plot to blow up with gunpowder the Parliament Building, upon the opening day of the Session, when king, lords, and commons would all be present, and thus to destroy at a single blow every branch of the English Government. This conspiracy, known as the Gunpowder Plot, was entered into by a few Roman Catholics, because they were disappointed in the course which the king had taken as regards their religion. [Footnote: Though son of the Catholic Mary Stuart, James had been educated as a Protestant.] The leader of the conspiracy, Guy Fawkes, was arrested, and after being put to the rack, was executed. His chief accomplices were also seized and punished. The alarm created by the terrible plot led Parliament to enact some very severe laws against all the Roman Catholics of the realm. COLONIES AND TRADE SETTLEMENTS.--The reign of James I. is signalized by the commencement of that system of colonization which has resulted in the establishment of the English race in almost every quarter of the globe. In the year 1607 Jamestown, so named in honor of the king, was founded in Virginia. This was the first permanent English settlement within the limits of the United States. In 1620 some Separatists, or Pilgrims, who had found in Holland a temporary refuge from persecution, pushed across the Atlantic, and amidst heroic sufferings and hardships established the first settlement in New England, and laid the foundations of civil liberty in the New World. Besides planting these settlements in the New World, the English during this same reign established themselves in the ancient country of India. In 1612 the East India Company, which had been chartered by Elizabeth in 1600, established their first trading-post at Surat. This was the humble beginning of the gigantic English empire in the East. CONTEST BETWEEN JAMES AND THE COMMONS.--We have made mention of James's idea of the divine right of kingship. Such a view of royal authority and privileges was sure to bring him into conflict with Parliament, especially with the House of Commons. He was constantly dissolving Parliament and sending the members home, because they insisted upon considering subjects which he had told them they should let alone. The chief matters of dispute between the king and the Commons were the limits of the authority of the former in matters touching legislation and taxation, and the nature and extent of the privileges and jurisdictions of the latter. As to the limits of the royal power, James talked and acted as though his prerogatives were practically unbounded. He issued proclamations which in their scope were really laws, and then enforced these royal edicts by fines and imprisonment, as though they were regular statutes of Parliament. Moreover, taking advantage of some uncertainty in the law as regards the power of the king to collect customs at the ports of the realm, he laid new and unusual duties upon imports and exports. James's judges were servile enough to sustain him in this course, some of them going so far as to say that "the sea-ports are the king's gates, which he may open and shut to whom he pleases." As to the privileges of the Commons, that body insisted, among other things, upon their right to determine all cases of contested election of their members, and to debate freely all questions concerning the common weal, without being liable to prosecution or imprisonment for words spoken in the House. James denied that these privileges were matters of right pertaining to the Commons, and repeatedly intimated to them that it was only through his own gracious permission and the favor of his ancestors that they were allowed to exercise these liberties at all, and that if their conduct was not more circumspect and reverential, he should take away their privileges entirely. On one occasion, the Commons having ventured to debate certain matters of state which the king had forbidden them to meddle with, he, in reproving them, made a more express denial than ever of their rights and privileges, which caused them, in a burst of noble indignation, to enter upon their journal a brave protest, known as "The Great Protestation," which declared that "the liberties, franchises, privileges, and jurisdictions of Parliament are the ancient and undoubted birthright and inheritance of the subjects of England, and that the arduous and urgent affairs concerning the king, state, and defence of the realm ... are proper subjects and matter of council and debate in Parliament" (1621). When intelligence of this action was carried to the king, he instantly sent for the journal of the House, and with his own hands tore out the leaf containing the obnoxious resolution. Then he angrily prorogued Parliament, and even went so far as to imprison several of the members of the Commons. In these high handed measures we get a glimpse of the Stuart theory of government, and see the way paved for the final break between king and people in the following reign. King James died in the year 1625, after a reign as sovereign of England and Scotland of twenty-two years. LITERATURE.--One of the most noteworthy literary labors of the reign under review was a new translation of the Bible, known as _King James's Version_. This royal version is the one in general use at the present day. The most noted writers of James's reign were a bequest to it from the brilliant era of Elizabeth (see p. 560). Sir Walter Raleigh, the petted courtier of Elizabeth, fell on evil days after her death. On the charge of taking part in a conspiracy against the crown, he was sent to the Tower, where he was kept a prisoner for thirteen years. From the tedium of his long confinement, he found relief in the composition of a _History of the World_. He was at last beheaded. [Illustration: THE TOWER OF LONDON.] The close of the life of the great philosopher Francis Bacon, was scarcely less sad than that of Sir Walter Raleigh. He held the office of Lord Chancellor, and yielding to the temptations of the corrupt times upon which he had fallen, accepted bribes from the suitors who brought cases before him. He was impeached and brought to the bar of the House of Lords, where he confessed his guilt, pathetically appealing to his judges "to be merciful to a broken reed." He lived only five years after his fall and disgrace, dying in 1626. Bacon must be given the first place among the philosophers of the English- speaking race. His system is known as the _Inductive Method of Philosophy_. It insists upon experiment and a careful observation of facts as the only true means of arriving at a knowledge of the laws of nature. 2. _Reign of Charles the First_ (1625-1649). THE PETITION OF RIGHT (1628).--Charles I. came to the throne with all his father's lofty notions about the divine right of kings. Consequently the old contest between king and Parliament was straightway renewed. The first two Parliaments of his reign Charles dissolved speedily, because instead of voting supplies they persisted in investigating public grievances. After the dissolution of his second Parliament Charles endeavored to raise the money he needed to carry on the government, by means of "benevolences" and forced loans. But all his expedients failed to meet his needs, and he was compelled to fall back upon Parliament. The Houses met, and promised to grant him generous subsidies, provided he would sign a certain _Petition of Right_ which they had drawn up. Next after Magna Charta, this document up to this date is the most noted in the constitutional history of England. It simply reaffirmed the ancient rights and privileges of the English people as defined in the Great Charter and by the good laws of Edward I. and Edward III. Four abuses were provided against: (i) the raising of money by loans, "benevolences," taxes, etc., without the consent of Parliament; (2) arbitrary imprisonment; (3) the quartering of soldiers in private houses--a very vexatious thing; and (4) trial without jury. [Illustration: CHARLES I. (After a painting by A. Vandyke.)] Charles was as reluctant to assent to the Petition as King John was to affix his seal to the Magna Charta; but he was at length forced to give sanction to it by the use of the usual formula, "Let it be law as desired" (1628). CHARLES RULES WITHOUT PARLIAMENT (1629-1640).--It soon became evident that Charles was utterly insincere when he put his name to the Petition of Right. He immediately violated its provisions in attempting to raise money by forbidden taxes and loans. For eleven years he ruled without Parliament, thus changing the government of England from a government by king, lords, and commons, to what was in effect an absolute and irresponsible monarchy, like that of France or Spain. As is always the case under such circumstances, there were enough persons ready to aid the king in his schemes of usurpation. Prominent among his unscrupulous agents were his ministers Thomas Wentworth (Earl of Stafford) and William Laud. Wentworth devoted himself to establishing the royal despotism in civil matters; while Laud, who was made Archbishop of Canterbury, busied himself chiefly with exalting above all human interference the king's prerogatives in religious affairs as the supreme head of the English Church. All these high-handed and tyrannical proceedings of Charles and his agents were enforced by certain courts that had been wrested from their original purpose and moulded into instruments of despotism. These were known as the _Council of the North_, the _Star Chamber_, and the _High Commission Court_. [Footnote: The first was a tribunal established by Henry VIII., and was now employed by Wentworth as an instrument for enforcing the king's despotic authority in the turbulent northern counties of England. The Star Chamber was a court of somewhat obscure origin, which at this time dealt chiefly with criminal cases affecting the government, such as riot, libel, and conspiracy. The High Commission Court was a tribunal of forty-four commissioners, created in Elizabeth's reign to enforce the acts of Supremacy and Uniformity.] All of these courts sat without jury, and being composed of the creatures of the king, were of course his subservient instruments. Their decisions were unjust and arbitrary; their punishments, harsh and cruel. JOHN HAMPDEN AND SHIP-MONEY.--Among the illegal taxes levied during this period of tyranny was a species known as ship-money, so called from the fact that in early times the kings, when the realm was in danger, called upon the sea-ports and maritime counties to contribute ships and ship- material for the public service. Charles and his agents, in looking this matter over, conceived the idea of extending this tax over the inland as well as the sea-board counties. Among those who refused to pay the tax was a country gentleman, named John Hampden. The case was tried in the Exchequer Chamber, before all the twelve judges. All England watched the progress of the suit with the utmost solicitude. The question was argued by able counsel both on the side of Hampden and of the crown. Judgment was finally rendered in favor of the king, although five of the twelve judges stood for Hampden. The case was lost; but the people, who had been following the arguments, were fully persuaded that it went against Hampden simply for the reason that the judges stood in fear of the royal displeasure, and that they did not dare to decide the case adversely to the crown. The arbitrary and despotic character which the government had now assumed in both civil and religious matters, and the hopelessness of relief or protection from the courts, caused thousands to seek in the New World that freedom and security which was denied them in their own land. THE COVENANTERS.--England was almost ready to rise in open revolt against the unbearable tyranny. Events in Scotland hastened the crisis. The king was attempting to impose the English liturgy (slightly modified) upon the Scotch Presbyterians. At Edinburgh this led to a riot, one of the women worshippers throwing a stool at the bishop who attempted to read the service. The spirit of resistance spread. All classes, nobles and peasants alike, bound themselves by a solemn covenant to resist to the very last every attempt to make innovations in their religion. From this act they became known as Covenanters (1638). The king resolved to crush the movement by force, but he soon found that war could not be carried on without money, and was constrained to summon Parliament in hopes of obtaining a vote of supplies. But instead of making the king a grant of money, the Commons first gave their attention to the matter of grievances, whereupon Charles dissolved the Parliament. The Scottish forces crossed the border, and the king, helpless, with an empty treasury and a seditious army, was forced again to summon the two Houses. THE LONG PARLIAMENT.--Under this call met on November 3, 1640, that Parliament which, from the circumstance of its lasting over twelve years, became known as the Long Parliament. The members of the Commons of this Parliament were stern and determined men, who were resolved to put a check to the despotic course of the king. Almost the first act of the Commons was the impeachment and trial of Strafford and Laud, as the most prominent instruments of the king's tyranny and usurpation. Both were finally brought to the block. The three iniquitous and illegal courts of which we have spoken (see p. 607) were abolished. And the Commons, to secure themselves against dissolution before their work was done, enacted a law which provided that they should not be adjourned or dissolved without their own consent. CHARLES'S ATTEMPT TO SEIZE THE FIVE MEMBERS.--An act of violence on the part of Charles now precipitated the nation into the gulf of civil war, towards which events had been so rapidly drifting. With the design of overawing the Commons, the king made a charge of treason against five of the leading members, among whom were Hampden and Pym, and sent officers to effect their arrest; but the accused were not to be found. The next day Charles himself, accompanied to the door of the chamber by armed attendants, went to the House, for the purpose of seizing the five members; but, having been forewarned of the king's intention, they had withdrawn from the hall. The king was not long in realizing the state of affairs, and with the observation, "I see the birds have flown," withdrew from the chamber. Charles had taken a fatal step. The nation could not forgive the insult offered to its representatives. All London rose in arms. The king, frightened by the storm which he had raised, fled from the city to York. From this flight of Charles from London, may be dated the beginning of the Civil War (Jan. 10, 1642). Having now traced the events which led up to this open strife between the king and his people, we shall pass very lightly over the incidents of the struggle itself, and hasten to speak of the Commonwealth, to the establishment of which the struggle led. 3. _The Civil War_ (1642-1649). THE BEGINNING.--After the flight of the king, negotiations were entered into between him and Parliament with a view to a reconciliation. The demands of Parliament were that the militia, the services of the Church, the education and marriage of the king's children, and many other matters should be subject to the control of the two Houses. In making all these demands Parliament had manifestly gone to unreasonable and unconstitutional lengths; but their distrust of Charles was so profound, that they were unwilling to leave in his hands any power or prerogative that might be perverted or abused. Charles refused, as might have been and was expected, to accede to the propositions of Parliament, and unfurling the royal standard at Nottingham, called upon all loyal subjects to rally to the support of their king (Aug. 22, 1642). THE TWO PARTIES.--The country was now divided into two great parties. Those that enlisted under the king's standard--on whose side rallied, for the most part, the nobility, the gentry, and the clergy--were known as Royalists, or Cavaliers; while those that gathered about the Parliamentary banner were called Parliamentarians, or Roundheads, the latter term being applied to them because many of their number cropped their hair close to the head, simply for the reason that the Cavaliers affected long and flowing locks. The Cavaliers, in the main, favored the Established Church, while the Roundheads were, in general, Puritans. During the progress of the struggle the Puritans split into two parties, or sects, known as Presbyterians and Independents. For six years England now suffered even greater evils than those that marked that earlier civil strife known as the Wars of the Roses. OLIVER CROMWELL AND HIS "IRONSIDES."--The war had continued about three years when there came into prominence among the officers of the Parliamentary forces a man of destiny, one of the great characters of history,--Oliver Cromwell. During the early campaigns of the war, as colonel of a regiment of cavalry, he had exhibited his rare genius as an organizer and disciplinarian. His regiment became famous under the name of "Cromwell's Ironsides." It was composed entirely of "men of religion." Swearing, drinking, and the usual vices of the camp were unknown among them. They advanced to the charge singing psalms. During all the war the regiment was never once beaten. THE SELF-DENYING ORDINANCE (1645).--In the course of the war the Puritans, as has been said, became divided into two parties, the Presbyterians and the Independents. The former desired to reestablish a limited monarchy; the latter wished to sweep aside the old constitution and form a republic. In the third year of the war there arose a struggle as to which party should have control of the army. By means of what was called the "Self- denying Ordinance," which declared that no member of either House should hold a position in the army, the Independents effected the removal from their command of several conservative noblemen. Cromwell, as he was a member of the House of Commons, should also have given up his command; but the ordinance was suspended in his case, so that he might retain his place as lieutenant-general. Sir Thomas Fairfax was made commander-in-chief. Though Cromwell was nominally second in command, he was now really at the head of the army. THE "NEW MODEL."--Cromwell at once set about to effect the entire remodelling of the army on the plan of his favorite Ironsides. His idea was that "the chivalry of the Cavalier must be met by the religious enthusiasm of the Puritan." The army was reduced to 20,000 men--all honest, fervent, God-fearing, psalm-singing Puritans. When not fighting, they studied the Bible, prayed and sung hymns. Since Godfrey led his crusaders to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre, the world had not beheld another such army of religious enthusiasts. From Cromwell down to the lowest soldier of the "New Model," every man felt called of the Lord to strike down all forms of tyranny in Church and State. THE BATTLE OF NASEBY (1645).--The temper of the "New Model" was soon tried in the battle of Naseby, the decisive engagement of the war. The Royalists were scattered to the winds, and their cause was irretrievably lost. Charles escaped from the field, and ultimately fled into Scotland, thinking that he might rely upon the loyalty of the Scots to the House of Stuart; but on his refusing to sign the Covenant and certain other articles, they gave him up to the English Parliament. "PRIDE'S PURGE" (1648).--Now, there were many in the Parliament who were in favor of restoring the king unconditionally to his throne, that is, without requiring from him any guaranties that he would in the future rule in accordance with the constitution and the laws of the land. The Independents, which means Cromwell and the army, saw in this possibility the threatened ruin of all their hopes, and the loss of all the fruits of victory. A high-handed measure was resolved upon,--the exclusion from the House of Commons of all those members who favored the restoration of Charles. Accordingly, an officer by the name of Pride was stationed at the door of the hall, to arrest the members obnoxious to the army. One hundred and forty members were thus kept from their seats, and the Commons thereby reduced to about fifty representatives, all of whom of course were Independents. This performance was appropriately called "Pride's Purge." It was simply an act of military usurpation. TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF THE KING.--The Commons thus "purged" of the king's friends now passed a resolution for the immediate trial of Charles for treason. A High Court of Justice, comprising 150 members, was organized, before which Charles was summoned. Before the close of a week he was condemned to be executed "as a tyrant, traitor, murderer, and enemy of his country." II. THE COMMONWEALTH (1649-1660). ESTABLISHMENT OF THE COMMONWEALTH.--A few weeks after the execution of Charles, the Commons voted to abolish the Monarchy and the House of Lords, and to establish a republic, under the name of "The Commonwealth." The executive power was lodged in a Council of State, composed of forty-one persons. Of this body Bradshaw, an eminent lawyer, was the nominal, but Cromwell the real, head. TROUBLES OF THE COMMONWEALTH.--The republic thus born of mingled religious and political enthusiasm was beset with dangers from the very first. The execution of Charles had alarmed every sovereign in Europe. Russia, France, and Holland, all refused to have any communication with the ambassadors of the Commonwealth. The Scots, who too late repented of having surrendered their native sovereign into the hands of his enemies, now hastened to wipe out the stain of their disloyalty by proclaiming his son their king, with the title of Charles the Second. The impulsive Irish also declared for the Prince; while the Dutch began active preparations to assist him in regaining the throne of his unfortunate father. In England itself the Royalists were active and threatening. WAR WITH IRELAND.--The Commonwealth, like the ancient republic of Rome, seemed to gather strength and energy from the very multitude of surrounding dangers. Cromwell was made Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and sent into that country to crush a rising of the Royalists there. With his Ironsides he made quick and terrible work of the conquest of the island. Having taken by storm the town of Drogheda (1649), he massacred the entire garrison, consisting of three thousand men. About a thousand who had sought asylum in a church were butchered there without mercy. The capture of other towns was accompanied by massacres little less terrible. The conqueror's march through the island was the devastating march of an Attila or a Zinghis Khan. The following is his own account of the manner in which he dealt with the captured garrisons: "When they submitted, their officers were knocked on the head, and every tenth man of the soldiers killed, and the rest shipped for Barbadoes [to be sold into slavery]." WAR WITH SCOTLAND.--Cromwell was called out of Ireland by the Council to lead an army into Scotland. The terror of his name went before him, and the people fled as he approached. At Dunbar he met the Scotch army. Before the terrible onset of the fanatic Roundheads the Scots were scattered like chaff before the wind (1650). The following year, on the anniversary of the Battle of Dunbar, Cromwell gained another great victory over the Scottish army at Worcester, and all Scotland was soon after forced to submit to the authority of the Commonwealth. Prince Charles, after many adventurous experiences, escaped across the Channel into Normandy. CROMWELL EJECTS THE LONG PARLIAMENT (1653).--The war in Scotland was followed by one with the Dutch. While this war was in progress Parliament came to an open quarrel with the army. Cromwell demanded of Parliament their dissolution, and the calling of a new body. This they refused; whereupon, taking with him a body of soldiers, Cromwell went to the House, and after listening impatiently for a while to the debate, suddenly sprang to his feet, and, with bitter reproaches, exclaimed: "I will put an end to your prating. Get you gone; give place to better men. You are no Parliament. The Lord has done with you." The soldiers rushing in at a preconcerted signal, the hall was cleared, and the doors locked (1653). In such summary manner the Long Parliament, or the "Rump Parliament," as it was called in derision after Pride's Purge, was dissolved, after having sat for twelve years. So completely had the body lost the confidence and respect of all parties, that scarcely a murmur was heard against the illegal and arbitrary mode of its dissolution. THE LITTLE PARLIAMENT.--Cromwell now called a new Parliament, or more properly a convention, summoning, so far as he might, only religious, God- fearing men. The "Little Parliament," as generally called, consisted of 156 members, mainly religious persons, who spent much of their time in Scripture exegesis, prayer, and exhortation. Among them was a London leather-merchant, named Praise-God Barebone, who was especially given to these exercises. The name amused the people, and they nicknamed the Convention the "Praise-God Barebone Parliament." The Little Parliament sat only a few months, during which time, however, it really did some excellent work, particularly in the way of suggesting important reforms. It at length resigned all its powers into the hands of Cromwell; and shortly afterwards his council of army officers, fearing the country would fall into anarchy, persuaded him--though manifesting reluctance, he probably was quite willing to be persuaded--to accept the title of "Lord Protector of the Commonwealth." [Illustration: OLIVER CROMWELL] THE PROTECTORATE (1653-1659).--Cromwell's power was now almost unlimited. He was virtually a dictator. His administration was harsh and despotic. He summoned, prorogued, and dissolved parliaments. The nation was really under martial law. Royalists and active Roman Catholics were treated with the utmost rigor. A censorship of the Press was established. Scotland was overawed by strong garrisons. The Irish Royalists, rising against the "usurper," were crushed with remorseless severity. Thousands were massacred, and thousands more were transported to the West Indies to be sold as slaves. While the resolute and despotic character of Cromwell's government secured obedience at home, its strength and vigor awakened the fear as well as the admiration of foreign nations. He gave England the strongest, and in many respects the best, government she had had since the days of Henry VIII and Elizabeth. CROMWELL'S DEATH.--Notwithstanding Cromwell was a man of immovable resolution and iron spirit, he felt sorely the burdens of his government, and was deeply troubled by the perplexities of his position. With his constitution undermined by overwork and anxiety, fever attacked him, and with gloomy apprehensions as to the terrible dangers into which England might drift after his hand had fallen from the helm of affairs, he lay down to die, passing away on the day which he had always called his "fortunate day"--the anniversary of his birth, and also the anniversary of his great victories of Dunbar and Worcester (Sept. 3, 1658). RICHARD CROMWELL (1658-1659).--Cromwell with his dying breath had designated his son Richard as his successor in the office of the Protectorate. Richard was exactly the opposite of his father,--timid, irresolute, and irreligious. The control of affairs that had taxed to the utmost the genius and resources of the father was altogether too great an undertaking for the incapacity and inexperience of the son. No one was quicker to realize this than Richard himself, and after a rule of a few months, yielding to the pressure of the army, whose displeasure he had incurred, he resigned the Protectorate. Had he possessed one-half the energy and practical genius that characterized his father, the crown would probably have become hereditary in the family of the Cromwells, and their house might have been numbered among the royal houses of England. THE RESTORATION (1660).--For some months after the fall of the Protectorate the country trembled on the verge of anarchy. The gloomy outlook into the future, and the unsatisfactory experiment of the Commonwealth, caused the great mass of the English people earnestly to desire the restoration of the Monarchy. Prince Charles, towards whom the tide of returning royalty was running, was now in Holland. A race was actually run between Monk, the leader of the army, and Parliament, to see which should first present him with the invitation to return to his people, and take his place upon the throne of his ancestors. Amid the wildest demonstrations of joy, Charles stepped ashore on the island from which he had been for nine years an exile. As he observed the preparations made for his reception, and received from all parties the warmest congratulations, he remarked with pleasant satire, "It is my own fault that I did not come back sooner, for I find nobody who does not tell me he has always longed for my return." 1. _Puritan Literature_. IT LIGHTS UP THE RELIGIOUS SIDE OF THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION.--No epoch in history receives a fresher illustration from the study of its literature than that of the Puritan Commonwealth. To neglect this, and yet hope to gain a true conception of that wonderful episode in the life of the English people by an examination of its outer events and incidents alone, would, as Green declares, be like trying to form an idea of the life and work of ancient Israel from the _Kings_ and the _Chronicles_, without the _Psalms_ and the _Prophets_. The true character of the English Revolution, especially upon its religious side, must be sought in the magnificent Epic of Milton and the unequalled Allegory of Bunyan. Both of these great works, it is true, were written after the Restoration, but they were both inspired by the same spirit that had struck down Despotism and set up the Commonwealth. The Epic was the work of a lonely, disappointed Republican; the Allegory, of a captive Puritan. Milton (1608-1674) stands as the grandest representative of Puritanism. He was the greatest statesman of the Revolution, the stoutest champion of English liberties against the tyranny of the House of Stuart. After the beheading of Charles I. he wrote a famous work in Latin, entitled _The Defence of the English People_, in which he justified the execution of the king. The Restoration forced Milton into retirement, and the last fourteen years of his life were passed apart from the world. It was during these years that, in loneliness and blindness, he composed the immortal poems _Paradise Lost_ and _Paradise Regained_. The former is the "Epic of Puritanism." All that was truest and grandest in the Puritan character found expression in the moral elevation and religious fervor of this the greatest of Christian poems. John Bunyan (1628-1688) was a Puritan non-conformist. After the Restoration, he was imprisoned for twelve years in Bedford jail, on account of non-conformity to the established worship. It was during this dreary confinement that he wrote his _Pilgrim's Progress_, the most admirable allegory in English literature. The habit of the Puritan, from constant study of the Bible, to employ in all forms of discourse its language and imagery, is best illustrated in the pages of this remarkable work. III. THE RESTORED STUARTS. 1. _Reign of Charles the Second_ (1660-1685). PUNISHMENT OF THE REGICIDES.--The monarchy having been restored in the person of Charles II, Parliament extended a general pardon to all who had taken part in the late rebellion, save most of the judges who had condemned Charles I. to the block. Thirteen of these were executed with the revolting cruelty with which treason was then punished, their hearts and bowels being cut out of their living bodies. Others of the regicides were condemned to imprisonment for life. Death had already removed the great leaders of the rebellion, Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw, beyond the reach of Royalist hate; so vengeance was taken upon their bodies. These were dragged from their tombs in Westminster Abbey, hauled to Tyburn in London, and there, on the anniversary of Charles's execution, were hanged, and afterwards beheaded (1661). THE "NEW MODEL" IS DISBANDED.--This same Parliament, mindful of how the army had ruled preceding ones, took care to disband, as soon as possible, the "New Model." "With them," in the words of the historian Green, "Puritanism laid down the sword. It ceased from the long attempt to build up a kingdom of God by force and violence, and fell back on its truer work of building up a kingdom of righteousness in the hearts and consciences of men." On the pretext, however, that the disturbed state of the realm demanded special precautions on the part of the government, Charles retained in his service three carefully chosen regiments, to which he gave the name of Guards. These, very soon augmented in number, formed the nucleus of the present standing army of England. THE CONVENTICLE AND FIVE-MILE ACTS.--Early in the reign the services of the Anglican Church were restored by Parliament, and harsh laws were enacted against all non-conformists. Thus the Conventicle Act made it a crime punishable by imprisonment or transportation for more than five persons besides the household to gather in any house or in any place for worship, unless the service was conducted according to the forms of the Established Church. The Five-Mile Act forbade any non-conformist minister who refused to swear that it is unlawful to take arms against the king _under any circumstance_, and that he never would attempt to make any change in Church or State government, to approach within five miles of any city, corporate town, or borough sending members to Parliament. This harsh act forced hundreds to give up their homes in the towns, and, with great inconvenience and loss, to seek new ones in out-of-the-way country places. PERSECUTION OF THE COVENANTERS.--In Scotland the attempt to suppress conventicles and introduce Episcopacy was stubbornly resisted by the Covenanters, who insisted on their right to worship God in their own way. They were therefore subjected to most cruel and unrelenting persecution. They were hunted by English troopers over their native moors and among the wild recesses of their mountains, whither they secretly retired for prayer and worship. The tales of the suffering of the Scotch Covenanters at the hands of the English Protestants form a most harrowing chapter of the records of the ages of religious persecution. THE FIRE, THE PLAGUE, AND THE DUTCH WAR.--The years from 1664 to 1667 were crowded with calamities,--with war, plague, and fire. The poet Dryden not inaptly calls the year 1666, in which the Great Fire at London added its horrors to those of pestilence and war, the _Annus Mirabilis_, or "Year of Wonders." The war alluded to was a struggle between the English and the Dutch, which grew out of commercial rivalries (1664-1667). Just before the war began, the English treacherously seized the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam in America, and changed its name to New York in honor of the king's brother, the Duke of York. Early in the summer of 1665 the city of London was swept by a woeful plague, the most terrible visitation the city had known since the Black Death in the Middle Ages (see p. 485). Within six months 100,000 of the population perished. The plague was followed, the next year, by the great fire, which destroyed 13,000 houses, and a vast number of churches and public buildings. The fire was afterwards acknowledged to be, like the Great Fire at Rome in Nero's reign, a blessing in disguise. The burnt districts were rebuilt in a more substantial way, with broader streets and more airy residences, so that London became a more beautiful and healthful city than would have been possible without the fire. CHARLES'S INTRIGUES WITH LOUIS XIV.--Charles inclined to the Catholic worship, and wished to reestablish the Roman Catholic Church, because he thought it more favorable than the Anglican to such a scheme of government as he aimed to set up in England. In the year 1670 he made a secret treaty with the French king, the terms and objects of which were most scandalous. In return for aid which he was to render Louis in an attack upon Holland, he was to receive from him a large sum of money; and in case his proposed declaration in favor of the restoration of the Catholic Church produced any trouble in the island, the aid of French troops. The scheme was never consummated; but these clandestine negotiations, however, becoming an open secret, made the people very uneasy and suspicious. This state of the public mind led to a serious delusion and panic. THE "POPISH PLOT" (1678).--A rumor was started that the Catholics had planned for England a St. Bartholomew massacre. The king, the members of Parliament, and all Protestants were to be massacred, the Catholic Church was to be reestablished, and the king's brother James, the Duke of York, a zealous Catholic, was to be placed on the throne. Each day the reports of the conspiracy grew more exaggerated and wild. Informers sprang up on every hand, each with a more terrifying story than the preceding. One of these witnesses, Titus Oates by name, a most infamous person, gained an extraordinary notoriety in exposing the imaginary plot. Many Catholics, convicted solely on the testimony of perjured witnesses, became victims of the delusion and fraud. The excitement produced by the supposed plot led Parliament to pass what was called the Test Act, which excluded Catholics from the House of Lords. (They had already been shut out from the House of Commons by the oath of Supremacy, which was required of commoners, though not of peers.) The disability created by this statute was not removed from them until the present century,--in the reign of George the Fourth. ORIGIN OF THE WHIG AND TORY PARTIES.--Besides shutting Catholic peers out of Parliament, there were many in both houses who were determined to exclude the Duke of York from the throne. Those in favor of the measure of exclusion were called Whigs, those who opposed it Tories. [Footnote: For the meaning of the names Whig and Tory, see _Glossary_.] We cannot, perhaps, form a better general idea of the maxims and principles of these two parties than by calling the Whigs the political descendants of the Roundheads, and the Tories of the Cavaliers. Later, they became known respectively as Liberals and Conservatives. THE KING'S DEATH.--After a reign of just a quarter of a century, Charles died in 1685, and was followed by his brother James, whose rule was destined to be short and troubled. 2. _Reign of James the Second_ (1685-1688). JAMES'S DESPOTIC COURSE. [Footnote: James was barely seated upon the throne before the Duke of Monmouth, an illegitimate son of Charles II., who had been in exile in the Netherlands, asserted his right to the crown, and at the head of a hundred men invaded England. Thousands flocked to his standard, but in the battle of Sedgemoor (1685) he was utterly defeated by the royal troops. Terrible vengeance was wreaked upon all in any way connected with the rebellion. The notorious Chief Justice Jeffries, in what were called the "Bloody Assizes," condemned to death 320 persons, and sentenced 841 to transportation. Jeffries conducted the so-called trials with incredible brutality.]--James, like all the other Stuarts, held exalted notions of the divine right of kings to rule as they please, and at once set about carrying out these ideas in a most imprudent and reckless manner. Notwithstanding he had given most solemn assurances that he would uphold the Anglican Church, he straightway set about the reestablishment of the Roman Catholic worship. He arbitrarily prorogued and dissolved Parliament. The standing army, which Charles had raised to 10,000 men, he increased to 20,000, and placed Catholics in many of its most important offices. He formed a league against his own subjects with Louis XIV. The High Commission Court of Elizabeth, which had been abolished by Parliament, he practically restored in a new ecclesiastical tribunal presided over by the infamous Jeffries (see note, below). The despotic course of the king raised up enemies on all sides. No party or sect, save the most zealous Catholics, stood by him. The Tory gentry were in favor of royalty, indeed, but not of tyranny. Thinking to make friends of the Protestant dissenters, James issued a decree known as the Declaration of Indulgence, whereby he suspended all the laws against non- conformists. This edict all the clergy were ordered to read from their pulpits. Almost to a man they refused to do so. Seven bishops even dared to send the king a petition and remonstrance against his unconstitutional proceedings. The petitioners were thrust into the Tower, and soon brought to trial on the charge of "seditious libel." The nation was now thoroughly aroused, and the greatest excitement prevailed while the trial was progressing. Judges and jury were overawed by the popular demonstration, and the bishops were acquitted. The news of the result of the trial was received not only by the people, but by the army as well, with shouts of joy, which did not fail to reach even the dull ears of the king. THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.--The crisis which it was easy to see was impending was hastened by the birth of a prince, as this cut off the hope of the nation that the crown upon James's death would descend to his daughter Mary, now wife of the Prince of Orange, Stadtholder of Holland. The prospect of the accession in the near future of a Protestant and freedom loving Prince and Princess had reconciled the people to the misgovernment of their present despotic and Catholic sovereign. The appearance upon the stage of an infant prince gave a wholly different look to affairs, and, as we have said, destroyed all hope of matters being righted by the ordinary course of events. This led the most active of the king's opponents to resolve to bring about at once what they had been inclined to wait to have accomplished by his death. They sent an invitation to the Prince of Orange to come over with such force as he could muster and take possession of the government, pledging him the united and hearty support of the English nation. William accepted the invitation, and straightway began to gather his fleet and army for the enterprise. Meanwhile King James, in his blind and obstinate way, was rushing on headlong upon his own destruction. He seemed absolutely blind to the steady and rapid drift of the nation towards the point of open resistance and revolution. At last, when the sails of the Dutch fleet were spread for a descent upon the English shores, then the infatuated despot suddenly realized that absolute ruin was impending over his throne. He now adopted every expedient to avert the threatened evil. He restored to cities the charters he had wrongfully taken from them, reinstated magistrates in the positions from which they had been unjustly deposed, attempted to make friends with the bishops, and promised to sustain the Anglican Church and rule in accordance with the constitution of the realm. All concessions and promises, however, were in vain. They came too late. The king was absolutely deserted; army and people went over in a body to the Prince of Orange, whose fleet had now touched the shores of the island. Flight alone was left him. The queen with her infant child secretly embarked for France, where the king soon after joined her. The last act of the king before leaving England was to disband the army, and fling the Great Seal into the Thames, in order that no parliament might be legally convened. The first act of the Prince of Orange was to issue a call for a Convention to provide for the permanent settlement of the crown. This body met January 22, 1689, and after a violent debate declared the throne to be vacant through James's misconduct and flight. They then resolved to confer the royal dignity upon William and his wife Mary as joint sovereigns of the realm. But this Convention did not repeat the error of the Parliament that restored Charles II., and give the crown to the Prince and Princess without proper safeguards and guaranties for the conduct of the government according to the ancient laws of the kingdom. They drew up the celebrated Declaration of Rights, which plainly rehearsed all the old rights and liberties of Englishmen; denied the right of the king to lay taxes or maintain an army without the consent of Parliament; and asserted that freedom of debate was the inviolable privilege of both the Lords and the Commons. William and Mary were required to accept this declaration, and to agree to rule in accordance with its provisions, whereupon they were declared King and Queen of England. In such manner was effected what is known in history as the Revolution of 1688. 3. _Literature of the Restoration_. IT REFLECTS THE IMMORALITY OF THE AGE.--The reigns of the restored Stuarts mark the most corrupt period in the history of English society. The low standard of morals, and the general prodigacy in manners, especially among the higher classes, are in part attributable to the demoralizing example of a shockingly licentious and shameless court; but in a larger measure, perhaps, should be viewed as the natural reaction from the over-stern, repellent Puritanism of the preceding period. The Puritans undoubtedly erred in their indiscriminate and wholesale denunciation of all forms of harmless amusement and innocent pleasure. They not only rebuked gaming, drinking, and profanity, and stopped bear-baiting, but they closed all the theatres, forbade the Maypole dances of the people, condemned as paganish the observance of Christmas, frowned upon sculpture as idolatrous and indecent, and considered any bright color in dress as utterly incompatible with a proper sense of the seriousness of life. Now all this was laying too heavy a burden upon human nature. The revolt and reaction came, as come they must. Upon the Restoration, society swung to the opposite extreme. In place of the solemn-visaged, psalm-singing Roundhead, we have the gay, roistering Cavalier. Faith gives place to infidelity, sobriety to drunkenness, purity to profligacy, economy to extravagance, Bible-study, psalm-singing and exhorting to theatre-going, profanity, and carousing. The literature of the age is a perfect record of this revolt against the "sour severity" of Puritanism, and a faithful reflection of the unblushing immorality of the times. The book most read and praised by Charles II, and his court, and the one that best represents the spirit of the victorious party, is the satirical poem of _Hudibras_ by Samuel Butler. The object of the work is to satirize the cant and excesses of Puritanism, just as the _Don Quixote_ of Cervantes burlesques the extravagances and follies of Chivalry. So immoral and indecent are the works of the writers for the stage of this period that they have acquired the designation of "the corrupt dramatists." Among the authors of this species of literature was the poet Dryden. IV. THE ORANGE-STUARTS. 1. _Reign of William and Mary_ (1689-1702). THE BILL OF RIGHTS.--The Revolution of 1688, and the new settlement of the crown upon William and Mary, marks an epoch in the constitutional history of England. It settled forever the long dispute between king and Parliament--and settled it in favor of the latter. The Bill of Rights,-- the articles of the Declaration of Rights (see p. 624) framed into a law, --which was one of the earliest acts of the first Parliament under William and Mary, in effect "transferred sovereignty from the king to the House of Commons." It asserted plainly that the kings of England derive their right and title to rule, not from the accident of birth, but from the will of the people, and declared that Parliament might depose any king, exclude his heirs from the throne, and settle the crown anew in another family. This uprooted thoroughly the pernicious doctrine that princes have a divine and inalienable right to the throne of their ancestors, and when once seated on that throne rule simply as the vicegerents of God, above all human censure and control. We shall hear but little more in England of this monstrous theory, which for so long a time overshadowed and threatened the freedom of the English people. Mindful of Charles's attempt to reestablish the Roman Catholic worship, the framers of this same famous Bill of Rights further declared that all persons holding communion with the Church of Rome or uniting in marriage with a Roman Catholic, should be "forever incapable to possess, inherit, or enjoy the crown and government of the realm." Since the Revolution of 1688 no one of that faith has worn the English crown. The other provisions of the bill, following closely the language of the Declaration, forbade the king to levy taxes or keep an army in time of peace without the consent of Parliament; demanded that Parliament should be frequently assembled; reaffirmed, as one of the ancient privileges of both Houses, perfect freedom of debate; and positively denied the dispensing power of the crown, that is, the authority claimed by the Stuarts of exempting certain persons from the penalty of the law by a royal edict. All of these provisions now became inwrought into the English Constitution, and from this time forward were recognized as part of the fundamental law of the realm. SETTLEMENT OF THE REVENUE.--The articles of the Bill of Rights were made effectual by appropriate legislation. One thing which had enabled the Tudors and Stuarts to be so independent of Parliament was the custom which prevailed of granting to each king, at the beginning of his reign, the ordinary revenue of the kingdom during his life. This income, with what could be raised by gifts, benevolences, monopolies, and similar expedients, had enabled despotic sovereigns to administer the government, wage war, and engage in any wild enterprise just as his own individual caprice or passion might dictate. All this was now changed. Parliament, instead of granting William the revenue for life, restricted the grant to a single year, and made it a penal offence for the officers of the treasury to pay out money otherwise than ordered by Parliament. We cannot overestimate the importance of this change in the English Constitution. It is this control of the purse of the nation which has made the Commons--for all money bills must originate in the Lower House--the actual seat of government, constituting them the arbiters of peace and war. By simply refusing to vote supplies, they can paralyze instantly the arm of the king. [Footnote: For the _Mutiny Bill_, enacted at this time, see _Glossary_.] JAMES ATTEMPTS TO RECOVER THE THRONE: BATTLE OF THE BOYNE (1690).--The first years of William's reign were disturbed by the efforts of James to regain the throne which he had abandoned. In these attempts he was aided by Louis XIV., and by the Jacobites (from _Jacobus_, Latin for James), the name given to the adherents of the exiled king. The Irish gave William the most trouble, but in the decisive battle of the Boyne he gained a great victory over them, and soon all Ireland acknowledged his authority. PLANS AND DEATH OF WILLIAM.--The motive which had most strongly urged William to respond to the invitation of the English revolutionists to assume the crown of England, was his desire to turn the arms and resources of that country against the great champion of despotism, and the dangerous neighbor of his own native country, Louis XIV. of France. The conduct of Louis in lending aid to James in his attempts to regain his crown had so inflamed the English that they were quite ready to support William in his wars against him, and so the English and Dutch sailors fought side by side against the common enemy in the War of the Palatinate (see p. 595). A short time after the Peace of Ryswick, broke out the War of the Spanish Succession (see p. 596). William, as the uncompromising foe of the ambitious French king, urged the English to enter the war against France. An insolent and perfidious act on the part of Louis caused the English people to support their king in this plan with great unanimity and heartiness. The matter to which we refer was this. James II. having died at just this juncture of affairs, Louis, disregarding his solemn promises, at once acknowledged his son, known in history as the "Pretender," as "King of Great Britain and Ireland." Preparations were now made for the war thus provoked by the double sense of danger and insult. In the midst of these preparations William was fatally hurt by being thrown from his horse (1702). Mary had died in 1694, and as they left no children, the crown descended to the Princess Anne, Mary's sister, who had married Prince George of Denmark. 2. _Reign of Queen Anne_ (1702-1714). WAR OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION (1701-1714).--The War of the Spanish Succession covered the whole of the reign of Queen Anne. Of the causes and results of this war, and of England's part in it, we have spoken in connection with the reign of Louis XIV. (see p. 596); and so, referring the reader to the account of the contest there given, we shall pass to speak of another event of a domestic character which signalized the reign of Queen Anne. UNION OF THE PARLIAMENTS OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND (1707).--We refer to the union of England and Scotland into a single kingdom, under the name of Great Britain (1707). It was only the two _crowns_ that were united when James I. came to the English throne: now the two _Parliaments_ were united. From this time forward the two countries were represented by one Parliament, and in time the name "British" becomes the common designation of the inhabitants of England, Wales, and Scotland. The union was advantageous to both countries; for it was a union not simply of hands, but of hearts. DEATH OF QUEEN ANNE: THE SUCCESSION.--Queen Anne died in the year 1714, leaving no heirs. In the reign of William a statute known as the Act of Settlement had provided that the crown, in default of heirs of William and Anne, should descend to the Electress Sophia of Hanover (grandchild of James I.), or her heirs, "being Protestants." The Electress died only a short time before the death of Queen Anne; so, upon that event, the crown descended upon the head of the Electress's eldest son George, who thus became the founder of a new line of English sovereigns, the House of Hanover, or Brunswick, the family in whose hands the royal sceptre still remains. LITERATURE UNDER QUEEN ANNE.--The reign of Queen Anne is an illustrious one in English literature. Under her began to write a group of brilliant authors, whose activity continued on into the reign of her successor, George I. Their productions are, many of them, of special interest to the historian, because during this period there was an unusually close connection between literature and politics. Literature was forced into the service of party. A large portion of the writings of the era is in the form of political pamphlets, wherein all the resources of wit, satire, and literary skill are exhausted in defending or ridiculing the opposing principles and policies of Whig and Tory. The four most prominent and representative authors of the times were Alexander Pope (1688-1744), Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), Joseph Addison (1672-1719), and Daniel Defoe (1661-1731). In the scientific annals of the period the name of Sir Isaac Newton (1642- 1727) is most prominent. As the discoverer of the law of gravitation and the author of the _Principia_, his name will ever retain a high place among the few who belong through their genius or achievements to no single nation or age, but to the world. V. ENGLAND UNDER THE EARLIER HANOVERIANS. [Footnote: The sovereigns of the House of Hanover are George I. (1714- 1727); George II. (1727-1760); George III. (1760-1820); George IV. (1820- 1830); William IV. (1830-1837); Victoria.(1837-).] THE SOVEREIGN'S LOSS OF POLITICAL INFLUENCE.--The new Hanoverian king, George I. (1714-1727), was utterly ignorant of the language and the affairs of the people over whom he had been called to rule. He was not loved by the English, but he was tolerated by them for the reason that he represented Protestantism and those principles of political liberty for which they had so long battled with their Stuart kings. On account of his ignorance of English affairs the king was obliged to intrust to his ministers the practical administration of the government. The same was true in the case of George II. (1727-1760). George III. (1760-1820), having been born and educated in England, regained some of the old influence of former kings. But he was the last English sovereign who had any large personal influence in shaping governmental policies. Since his time the English government has been carried on in the name of the king by a prime minister, dependent upon the will of the House of Commons. This marks an important step in the process by which sovereignty has been transferred from the Crown to the People. (For later steps, see Chap. LXIII.) ENGLAND AND CONTINENTAL AFFAIRS.--It must be borne in mind that the Georges, while kings of England, were also Electors of Hanover in Germany. These German dominions of theirs caused England to become involved in continental quarrels which really did not concern her. Thus she was drawn into the War of the Austrian Succession (see p. 644) in which she had no national interest, and which resulted in no advantage to the English people. Hence these matters may be passed over by us without further notice here. THE PRETENDERS.--Several times during the eighteenth century the exiled Stuarts attempted to get back the throne they had lost. The last of these attempts was made in 1745, when the "Young Pretender" (grandson of James II.) landed in Scotland, effected a rising of the Scotch Highlanders, worsted the English at Preston Pans, and marched upon London. Forced to retreat into Scotland, he was pursued by the English, and utterly defeated at the battle of Culloden Moor,--and the Stuart cause was ruined forever. OLD FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR (1756-1763).--Just after the middle of the eighteenth century there broke out between the French and the English colonists in America the so-called Old French and Indian War. The struggle became blended with what in Europe is known as the Seven Years' War (see p. 645). At first the war went disastrously against the English,-- Braddock's attempt against Fort Du Quesne, upon the march to which he suffered his memorable defeat in the wilderness, being but one of several ill-starred English undertakings. But in the year 1757, the elder William Pitt (afterwards Earl of Chatham), known as "the Great Commoner," came to the head of affairs in England. Straightway every department of the government was infused with new vigor. His own indomitable will and persistent energy seemed to pass into every subordinate to whom he intrusted the execution of his plans. The war in America was brought to a speedy and triumphant close, the contest being virtually ended by the great victory gained by the English under the youthful Major-General Wolfe over the French under Montcalm upon the Heights of Quebec (1759). By the Treaty of Paris (1763) France ceded to England Canada and all her possessions in North America east of the Mississippi River, save New Orleans and a little adjoining land (which, along with the French territory west of the Mississippi, had already been given to Spain), and two little islands in the neighborhood of Newfoundland, which she was allowed to retain to dry fish on. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (1775-1783).--By a violation of one of the principles which the English people had so stoutly maintained against the Stuarts, the ruling powers in England now drove the American colonies to revolt. A majority in Parliament insisted upon taxing the colonists; the colonists maintained that taxation without representation is tyranny,-- that they could be justly taxed only through their own legislative assemblies. The Government refusing to acknowledge this principle, the colonists took up arms in defence of those liberties which their fathers had won with so hard a struggle from English kings on English soil. The result of the war was the separation from the mother-land of the thirteen colonies that had grown up along the Atlantic seaboard,--and a Greater England began its independent career in the New World. LEGISLATIVE INDEPENDENCE OF IRELAND (1782).--While the American War of Independence was going on, the Irish, taking advantage of the embarrassment of the English government, demanded legislative independence. Ireland had had a Parliament of her own since the time of the conquest of the island by the English, but this Irish Parliament was dependent upon the English Parliament, which claimed the power to bind Ireland by its laws. This the Irish patriots strenuously denied, and now, under the lead of the eloquent Henry Grattan, drew up a Declaration of Rights, wherein they demanded the legislative independence of Ireland. The principle here involved was the same as that for which the English colonists in America were at this time contending with arms in their hands. Fear of a revolt led England to grant the demands of the Irish, and to acknowledge the independence of the Irish Parliament. Thus both in America and in Ireland the principles of the Political Revolution triumphed. In Ireland, however, the legislative independence gained was soon lost (see Chap. LXIII.). CHAPTER LVI. THE RISE OF RUSSIA: PETER THE GREAT. (1682-1725.) GENERAL REMARKS.--The second great struggle between the principles of Liberalism and of Despotism, as represented by the opposing parties in the English Revolution, took place in France. But before proceeding to speak of the French Revolution, we shall first trace the rise of Russia and of Prussia, as these two great monarchies were destined to play prominent parts in that tremendous conflict. We left Russia at the close of the Middle Ages a semi-savage, semi-Asiatic power, so hemmed in by barbarian lands and hostile races as to be almost entirely cut off from intercourse with the civilized world (see p. 508). In the present chapter we wish to tell how she pushed her lines out to the seas on every side,--to the Caspian, the Euxine, and the Baltic. The main interest of our story gathers about Peter the Great, whose almost superhuman strength and energy lifted the great barbarian nation to a prominent place among the powers of Europe. ACCESSION OF PETER THE GREAT (1682).--The royal line established in Russia by the old Norseman Ruric (see p. 508), ended in 1589. Then followed a period of confusion and of foreign invasion, known as the Troublous Times, after which a prince of the celebrated house of Romanoff came to the throne. For more than half a century after the accession of the Romanoffs, there is little either in the genius or the deeds of any of the line calculated to draw our special attention. But towards the close of the seventeenth century there ascended the Russian throne a man whose capacity and energy and achievements instantly drew the gaze of his contemporaries, and who has elicited the admiration and wonder of all succeeding generations. This was Peter I., universally known as Peter the Great, one of the remarkable characters of history. He was but seventeen years of age when he assumed the full responsibilities of government. THE CONQUEST OF AZOF (1696).--At this time Russia possessed only one sea- port, Archangel, on the White Sea, which harbor for a large part of the year was sealed against vessels by the extreme cold of that high latitude. Russia, consequently, had no marine commerce; there was no word for _fleet_ in the Russian language. Peter saw clearly that the most urgent need of his empire was outlets upon the sea. Hence, his first aim was to wrest the Baltic shore from the grasp of Sweden, and the Euxine from the hands of the Turks. In 1695 Peter sailed down the Don and made an attack upon Azof; the key to the Black Sea, but was unsuccessful. The next year, however, repeating the attempt, he succeeded, and thus gained his first harbor on the south. [Illustration: PETER THE GREAT. (After a painting at Hampton Court, by G. Kneller, 1698.)] PETER'S FIRST VISIT TO THE WEST (1697-1698).--With a view to advancing his naval projects, Peter about this time sent a large number of young Russian nobles to Italy, Holland, and England to acquire in those countries a knowledge of naval affairs, forbidding them to return before they had become good sailors. Not satisfied with thus sending to foreign parts his young nobility, Peter formed the somewhat startling resolution of going abroad himself, and learning the art of ship-building by personal experience in the dockyards of Holland. Accordingly, in the year 1697, leaving the government in the hands of three nobles, he set out _incognito_ for the Netherlands. Upon arriving there he proceeded to Zaandam, a place a short distance from Amsterdam, and there hired out as a common laborer to a Dutch shipbuilder. Notwithstanding his disguise it was well enough known who the stranger was. Indeed there was but little chance of Peter's being mistaken for a Dutchman. The way in which he flew about, and the terrible energy with which he did everything, set him quite apart from the easy-going, phlegmatic Hollanders. To escape the annoyance of the crowds at Zaandam, Peter left the place, and went to the docks of the East India Company in Amsterdam, who set about building a frigate that he might see the whole process of constructing a vessel from the beginning. Here he worked for four months, being known among his fellow-workmen as Baas or Master Peter. It was not alone the art of naval architecture in which Peter interested himself; he attended lectures on anatomy, studied surgery, gaining some skill in pulling teeth and bleeding, inspected paper-mills, flour-mills, printing-presses, and factories, and visited cabinets, hospitals, and museums, thus acquainting himself with every industry and art that he thought might be advantageously introduced into his own country. From Holland Master Peter went to England to study her superior naval establishment. Here he was fittingly received by King William III., who had presented Peter while in Holland with a splendid yacht fully armed, and who now made his guest extremely happy by getting up for him a sham sea-fight. Returning from England to Holland, Peter went thence to Vienna, intending to visit Italy; but hearing of an insurrection at home, he set out in haste for Moscow. PETER'S REFORMS.--The revolt which had hastened Peter's return from the West was an uprising among the Strelitzes, a body of soldiers numbering 20,000 or 30,000, organized by Ivan the Terrible as a sort of imperial body-guard. In their ungovernable turbulence, they remind us of the Prætorians of Rome. The mutiny settled Peter in his determination to rid himself altogether of the insolent and refractory body. Its place was taken by a well-disciplined force trained according to the tactics of the Western nations. The disbanding of the seditious guards was only one of the many reforms effected by Peter. So intent was he upon thoroughly Europeanizing his country, that he resolved that his subjects should literally clothe themselves in the "garments of Western Civilization." Accordingly he abolished the long-sleeved, long-skirted Oriental robes that were at this time worn, and decreed that everybody save the clergy should shave, or pay a tax on his beard. We are told that Peter stationed tailors and barbers at the gates of Moscow to cut off the skirts and to train the beards of those who had not conformed to the royal regulations, and that he himself sheared off with his own hands the offending sleeves and beards of his reluctant courtiers. The law was gradually relaxed, but the reform became so general that in the best society in Russia at the present day one sees only smooth faces and the Western style of dress. As additional outgrowths of what he had seen, or heard, or had suggested to him on his foreign tour, Peter issued a new coinage, introduced schools, built factories, constructed roads and canals, established a postal system, opened mines, framed laws modelled after those of the West, and reformed the government of the towns in such a way as to give the citizens some voice in the management of their local affairs, as he had observed was done in the Netherlands and in England. CHARLES XII. OF SWEDEN.--Peter's history now becomes intertwined with that of a man quite as remarkable as himself, Charles XII. of Sweden, the "Madman of the North." Charles was but fifteen years of age when, in 1697, the death of his father called him to the Swedish throne. The dominions which came under his sway embraced not only Sweden, but Finland, and large possessions along the Southern Baltic,--territory that had been won by the arms of his ancestors. [Illustration: Map of the BALTIC ISLANDS] Taking advantage of Charles's extreme youth, three sovereigns, Frederick IV. of Denmark, Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, and Peter the Great of Prussia, leagued against him (1700), for the purpose of appropriating such portions of his dominions as they severally desired to annex to their own. THE BATTLE OF NARVA (1700).--But the conspirators had formed a wrong estimate of the young Swedish monarch. Notwithstanding the insane follies in which he was accustomed to indulge, he possessed talent; he had especially a remarkable aptitude for military affairs. With a well-trained force--a veteran army that had not yet forgotten the discipline of the hero Gustavus Adolphus--Charles now threw himself first upon the Danes, and in two weeks forced the Danish king to sue for peace; then he turned his little army of 8,000 men upon the Russian forces of 20,000, which were besieging the city of Narva, on the Gulf of Finland, and inflicted upon them a most ignominious defeat. The only comment of the imperturbable Peter upon the disaster was, "The Swedes will have the advantage of us at first, but they will teach us how to beat them." THE FOUNDING OF ST. PETERSBURG (1703).--After chastising the Czar [Footnote: Czar is probably a contraction of _Cæsar_. The title was adopted by the rulers of Russia because they regarded themselves as the successors and heirs of the Cæsars of Rome and Constantinople.] at Narva, the Swedish king turned south and marched into Poland to punish Augustus for the part he had taken in the conspiracy against him. While Charles was busied in this quarter, Peter was gradually making himself master of the Swedish lands on the Baltic, and upon a marshy island at the mouth of the Neva was laying the foundations of the great city of St. Petersburg, which he proposed to make the western gateway of his empire. The spot selected by Peter as the site of his new capital was low and subject to inundation, so that the labor requisite to make it fit for building purposes was simply enormous. But difficulties never dismayed Peter. In spite of difficulties the work was done, and the splendid city stands to-day one of the most impressive monuments of the indomitable and despotic energy of Peter. INVASION OF RUSSIA BY CHARLES XII.--Meanwhile Charles was doing very much as he pleased with the king of Poland. He defeated his forces, overran his dominions, and forced him to surrender the Polish crown in favor of Stanislaus Lesczinski (1706). With sufficient punishment meted out to Frederick Augustus, Charles was ready to turn his attention once more to the Czar. So marvellous had been the success attendant upon his arms for the past few years, nothing now seemed impossible to him. Deluded by this belief, he resolved to march into Russia and dethrone the Czar, even as he had dethroned the king of Poland. In 1708, with an army of barely 40,000 men, Charles marched boldly across the Russian frontier. At Pultowa the two armies met in decisive combat (1709). It was Charles's Waterloo. The Swedish army was virtually annihilated. Escaping with a few soldiers from the field, Charles fled southward, and found an asylum in Turkey. [Footnote: After spending five years in Turkey, Charles returned to Sweden, and shortly afterwards was killed at the siege of Frederickshall, in Norway (1718). At the moment of his death he was only thirty-six years of age. He was the strangest character of the eighteenth century. Perhaps we can understand him best by regarding him, as his biographer Voltaire says we must regard him, as an old Norse sea-king, born ten centuries after his time.] CLOSE OF PETER'S REIGN.--In 1721 the Swedish wars which had so long disturbed Europe were brought to an end by the Peace of Nystadt, which confirmed Russia's title to all the Southern Baltic lands that Peter had wrested from the Swedes. The undisputed possession of so large a strip of the Baltic seaboard vastly increased the importance and influence of Russia, which now assumed a place among the leading European powers. In 1723 troubles in Persia that resulted in the massacre of some Russians afforded Peter a pretext for sailing down the Volga and seizing the southern shore of the Caspian Sea, which now became virtually a Russian lake. This ended Peter's conquests. The Russian colossus now "stood astride, with one foot on the Baltic and the other upon the Caspian." Two years later, being then in his fifty-fourth year, Peter died of a fever brought on by exposure while aiding in the rescue of some sailors in distress, in the Gulf of Finland (1725). PETER'S CHARACTER AND WORK.--Peter's character stands revealed in the light of his splendid achievements. Like Charlemagne he was a despotic reformer. His theory of government was a rough, brutal one, yet the exclamation which broke from him as he stood by the tomb of Richelieu [Footnote: In 1716 Peter made a second journey to the West, visiting France, Denmark, and Holland.] discloses his profound desire to rule well: "Thou great man," he exclaimed, "I would have given thee half of my dominion to have learned of thee how to govern the other half." He planted throughout his vast empire the seeds of Western civilization, and by his giant strength lifted the great nation which destiny had placed in his hands out of Asiatic barbarism into the society of the European peoples. The influence of Peter's life and work upon the government of Russia was very different from what he intended. It is true that his aggressive, arbitrary rule strengthened temporarily autocratic government in Russia. He destroyed all checks, ecclesiastical and military, upon the absolute power of the crown. But in bringing into his dominions Western civilization, he introduced influences which were destined in time to neutralize all he had done in the way of strengthening the basis of despotism. He introduced a civilization which fosters popular liberties, and undermines personal, despotic government. REIGN OF CATHERINE THE GREAT (1762-1796).--From the death of Peter on to the close of the eighteenth century the Russian throne was held, the most of the time, by women, the most noted of whom was Catherine II., the Great, "the greatest woman probably," according to the admission of an English historian (McCarthy), "who ever sat on a throne, Elizabeth of England not even excepted." But while a woman of great genius, she had most serious faults of character, being incredibly profligate and unscrupulous. Carrying out ably the policy of Peter the Great, Catherine extended vastly the limits of Russian dominion, and opened the country even more thoroughly than he had done to the entrance of Western influences. The most noteworthy matters of her reign were the conquest of the Crimea and the dismemberment of Poland. [Illustration: CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA, IN HUSSAR UNIFORM. (After a painting by Schebanow.) ] It was in the year 1783 that Catherine effected the subjugation of the Crimea. The possession of this peninsula gave Russia dominion on the Black Sea, which once virtually secured by Peter the Great had been again lost through his misfortunes. Catherine greatly extended the limits of her dominion on the west at the expense of Poland, the partition of which state she planned in connection with Frederick the Great of Prussia and Maria Theresa of Austria. On the first division, which was made in 1772, the imperial robbers each took a portion of the spoils. In 1793 a second partition was made, this time between Russia and Prussia; and then, in 1795, after the suppression of a determined revolt of the Poles under the lead of the patriot Kosciusko, a third and final division among the three powers completed the dismemberment of the unhappy state, and erased its name from the roll of the nations. The territory gained by Russia in these transactions brought her western frontier close alongside the civilization of Central Europe. In Catherine's phrase, Poland had become her "door mat," upon which she stepped when visiting the West. Besides thus widening her empire, Catherine labored to reform its institutions and to civilize her subjects. Her labors in bettering the laws and improving the administration of the government, have caused her to be likened to Solon and to Lycurgus; while her enthusiasm for learning and her patronage of letters led Voltaire to say, "Light now comes from the North." By the close of Catherine's reign Russia was beyond question one of the foremost powers of Europe, the weight of her influence being quite equal to that of any other nation of the continent. CHAPTER LVII. THE RISE OF PRUSSIA: FREDERICK THE GREAT. (1740-1786.) THE BEGINNINGS OF PRUSSIA.--The foundation of the Prussian Kingdom was laid in the beginning of the seventeenth century (1611) by the union of two small states in the North of Germany. These were the Mark, or Electorate, of Brandenburg and the Duchy of Prussia. Brandenburg had been gradually growing into prominence since the tenth century. Its ruler at this time was a prince of the now noted House of Hohenzollern, and was one of the seven princes to whom belonged the right of electing the emperor. THE GREAT ELECTOR, FREDERICK WILLIAM (1640-1688).--Although this new Prussian power was destined to become the champion of German Protestantism, it acted a very unworthy and vacillating part in the Thirty Years' War. But just before the close of that struggle a strong man came to the throne, Frederick William, better known as the Great Elector. He infused vigor and strength into every department of the State, and acquired such a position for his government that at the Peace of Westphalia he was able to secure new territory, which greatly enhanced his power and prominence among the German princes. [Illustration: THE GREAT ELECTOR. (From a battle-piece.)] The Great Elector ruled for nearly half a century. He laid the basis of the military power of Prussia by the formation of a standing army, and transmitted to his son and successor a strongly centralized and despotic authority. HOW THE ELECTOR OF BRANDENBURG ACQUIRED THE TITLE OF KING.--Frederick III. (1688-1713), son of the Great Elector, was ambitious for the title of king, a dignity that the weight and influence won for the Prussian state by his father fairly justified him in seeking. He saw about him other princes less powerful than himself enjoying this dignity, and he too "would be a king and wear a crown." The recent elevation of William of Orange, Stadtholder of Holland, to royal honors in England (see p. 624), stimulated the Elector's ambition. It was necessary of course for Frederick to secure the consent of the emperor, a matter of some difficulty, for the Catholic advisers of the Austrian court were bitterly opposed to having an heretical prince thus honored and advanced, while the emperor himself was not at all pleased with the idea. But the War of the Spanish Succession was just about to open, and the emperor was extremely anxious to secure Frederick's assistance in the coming struggle. Therefore, on condition of his furnishing him aid in the war, the emperor consented to Frederick's assuming the new title and dignity _in the Duchy of Prussia_, which, unlike Brandenburg, did not form part of the empire. Accordingly, early in the year 1701, Frederick, amidst imposing ceremonies, was crowned and hailed as king at Königsberg. Hitherto he had been Elector of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia; now he is Elector of Brandenburg and King of Prussia. Thus was a new king born among the kings of Europe. Thus did the house of Austria invest with royal dignity the rival house of Hohenzollern. The event is a landmark in German, and even in European history. The cue of German history from this on is the growth of the power of the Prussian kings, and their steady advance to imperial honors, and to the control of the affairs of the German race. FREDERICK WILLIAM I. (1713-1740).-The son and successor of the first Prussian king, known as Frederick William I., was one of the most extraordinary characters in history. He was a strong, violent, brutal man, full of the strangest freaks, yet in many respects just the man for the times. He would tolerate no idlers. He carried a heavy cane, which he laid upon the back of every unoccupied person he chanced to find, whether man, woman, or child. Frederick William had a mania for big soldiers. With infinite expense and trouble he gathered a regiment of the biggest men he could find, which was known as the "Potsdam Giants,"--a regiment numbering 2400 men, some of whom were eight feet in height. Not only were the Goliaths of his own dominions impressed into the service, but big men in all parts of Europe were coaxed, bribed, or kidnapped by Frederick's recruiting officers. No present was so acceptable to him as a giant, and by the gift of a six- footer more than one prince bought his everlasting favor. Rough, brutal tyrant though he was, Frederick William was an able and energetic ruler. He did much to consolidate the power of Prussia, and at his death in 1740 left to his successor a considerably extended dominion, and a splendid army of 80,000 men. FREDERICK THE GREAT (1740-1786).--Frederick William was followed by his son Frederick II., to whom the world has agreed to give the title of "Great." Frederick had a genius for war, and his father had prepared to his hand one of the most efficient instruments of the art since the time of the Roman legions. The two great wars in which he was engaged, and which raised Prussia to the first rank among the military powers of Europe, were the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years' War. WAR OF THE AUSTRIAN SUCCESSION (1740-1748).--Through the death of Charles VI. the Imperial office became vacant on the very year that Frederick II. ascended the Prussian throne. Charles was the last of the direct male line of the Hapsburgs, and disputes straightway arose respecting the possessions of the House of Austria, which resulted in the long struggle known as the War of the Austrian Succession. Now, not long before the death of Charles, he had bound all the leading powers of Europe in a sort of agreement called the Pragmatic Sanction, by the terms of which, in case he should leave no son, all his hereditary dominions--that is, the kingdom of Hungary, the kingdom of Bohemia, the archduchy of Austria, and the other possessions of the House of Austria-- should be bestowed upon his daughter Maria Theresa. But no sooner was Charles dead than a number of princes immediately laid claim to greater or lesser portions of these territories. Prominent among these claimants was Frederick of Prussia, who claimed Silesia. [Footnote: Charles Albert, Elector of Bavaria, set up a claim to the Austrian States. France, ever the sworn enemy of the House of Austria, lent her armies to aid the Elector in making good his pretensions] Before Maria Theresa could arm in defence of her dominions, Frederick pushed his army into Silesia and took forcible possession of it. Queen Theresa, thus stripped of a large part of her dominions, fled into Hungary, and with all of a beautiful woman's art of persuasion appealed to her Hungarian subjects to avenge her wrongs. Her unmerited sufferings, her beauty, her tears, the little princess in her arms, stirred the resentment and kindled the ardent loyalty of the Hungarian nobles, and with one voice, as they rang their swords in their scabbards, they swore to support the cause of their queen with their estates and their lives. England and Sardinia also threw themselves into the contest on Maria Theresa's side. The war lasted until 1748, when it was closed by the Peace of Aix-la- Chapelle, which left Silesia in the hands of Frederick. THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR (1756-1763).--The eight years of peace which followed the war of the Austrian Succession were improved by Frederick in developing the resources of his kingdom and perfecting the organization and discipline of his army, and by Maria Theresa in forming a league of the chief European powers against the unscrupulous despoiler of her dominions. France, Russia, Poland, Saxony, and Sweden, all entered into an alliance with the queen. Frederick could at first find no ally save England,--towards the close of the struggle Russia came to his side,--so that he was left almost alone to fight the combined armies of the Continent. At first the fortunes of the war were all on Frederick's side. In the celebrated battles of Rossbach, Leuthen, and Zorndorf, he defeated successively the French, the Austrians, and the Russians, and startled all Europe into an acknowledgment of the fact that the armies of Prussia had at their head one of the greatest commanders of the world. His name became a household word, and everybody coupled with it the admiring epithet of "Great." But fortune finally deserted him. In sustaining the unequal contest, his dominions became drained of men. England withdrew her aid, and inevitable ruin seemed to impend over his throne and kingdom. A change by death in the government of Russia now put a new face upon Frederick's affairs. In 1762 Elizabeth of that country died, and Peter III., an ardent admirer of Frederick, came to the throne, and immediately transferred the armies of Russia from the side of the allies to that of Prussia. The alliance lasted only a few months, Peter being deposed and murdered by his wife, who now came to the throne as Catherine II. She reversed once more the policy of the Government; but the temporary alliance had given Frederick a decisive advantage, and the year following Peter's act, England and France were glad to give over the struggle and sign the Peace of Paris (1763). Shortly after this another peace (the Treaty of Hubertsburg) was arranged between Austria and Prussia, and one of the most terrible wars that had ever disturbed Europe was over. The most noteworthy result of the war was the exalting of the Prussian kingdom to a most commanding position among the European powers. FREDERICK'S WORK: PRUSSIA MADE A NEW CENTRE OF GERMAN CRYSTALLIZATION.-- The all-important result of Frederick the Great's strong reign was the making of Prussia the equal of Austria, and thereby the laying of the basis of German unity. Hitherto Germany had been trying unsuccessfully to concentrate about Austria; now there is a new centre of crystallization, one that will draw to itself all the various elements of German nationality. The history of Germany from this on is the story of the rivalry of these two powers, with the final triumph of the kingdom of the North, and the unification of Germany under her leadership, Austria being pushed out as entitled to no part in the affairs of the Fatherland. This story we shall tell in a subsequent chapter (see Chap. LXL). CHAPTER LVIII. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. (1789-1799.) 1. CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION: THE STATES-GENERAL OF 1789. INTRODUCTORY.--The French Revolution is in political what the German Reformation is in ecclesiastical history. It was the revolt of the French people against royal despotism and class privilege. "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," was the motto of the Revolution. In the name of these principles the most atrocious crimes were indeed committed; but these excesses of the Revolution are not to be confounded with its true spirit and aims. The French people in 1789 contended for those same principles that the English Puritans defended in 1640, and that our fathers maintained in 1776. It is only as we view them in this light that we can feel a sympathetic interest in the men and events of this tumultuous period of French history. CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION.--Chief among the causes of the French Revolution were the abuses and extravagances of the Bourbon monarchy; the unjust privileges enjoyed by the nobility and clergy; the wretched condition of the great mass of the people; and the revolutionary character and spirit of French philosophy and literature. To these must be added, as a proximate cause, the influence of the American Revolution. We shall speak briefly of these several matters. THE BOURBON MONARCHY.--We simply repeat what we have already learned, when we say that the authority of the French crown under the Bourbons had become unbearably despotic and oppressive. The life of every person in the realm was at the arbitrary disposal of the king. Persons were thrown into prison without even knowing the offence for which they were arrested. The royal decrees were laws. The taxes imposed by the king were simply robberies and confiscations. The public money, thus gathered, was squandered in maintaining a court the scandalous extravagances and debaucheries of which would shame a Turkish Sultan. THE NOBILITY.--The French nobility, in the time of the Bourbons, numbered about 80,000 families. The order was simply the remains of the once powerful but now broken-down feudal aristocracy of the Middle Ages. Its members were chiefly the pensioners of the king, the ornaments of his court, living in riotous luxury at Paris or Versailles. Stripped of their ancient power, they still retained all the old pride and arrogance of their order, and clung tenaciously to all their feudal privileges. Although holding one-fifth of the lands of France, they paid scarcely any taxes. THE CLERGY.--The clergy formed a decayed feudal hierarchy. They possessed enormous wealth, the gift of piety through many centuries. Over a third of the lands of the country was in their hands, and yet this immense property was almost wholly exempt from taxation. The bishops and abbots were usually drawn from the families of the nobles, being too often attracted to the service of the Church rather by its princely revenues and the social distinction conferred by its offices, than by the inducements of piety. These "patrician prelates" were hated alike by the humbler clergy and the people. THE COMMONS.--Below the two privileged orders of the State stood the commons, who constituted the chief bulk of the nation, and who numbered, at the commencement of the Revolution, probably about 25,000,000. It is quite impossible to give any adequate idea of the pitiable condition of the poorer classes of the commons throughout the century preceding the Revolution. The peasants particularly suffered the most intolerable wrongs. They were vexed by burdensome feudal regulations. Thus they were forbidden to fence their fields for the protection of their crops, as the fences interfered with the lord's progress in the hunt; and they were even prohibited from cultivating their fields at certain seasons, as this disturbed the partridges and other game. Being kept in a state of abject poverty, a failure of crops reduced them to absolute starvation. It was not an unusual thing to find women and children dead along the roadways. In a word, to use the language of one (Fénelon) who saw all this misery, France had become "simply a great hospital full of woe and empty of food." REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT OF FRENCH PHILOSOPHY.--French philosophy in the eighteenth century was sceptical and revolutionary. The names of the great writers Rousseau (1712-1778) and Voltaire (1694-1778) suggest at once its prevalent tone and spirit. Rousseau declared that all the evils which afflict humanity arise from vicious, artificial arrangements, such as the Family, the Church, and the State. Accordingly he would do away with these things, and have men return to a state of nature--that is, to simplicity. Savages, he declared, were happier than civilized men. The tendency and effect of this sceptical philosophy was to create hatred and contempt for the institutions of both State and Church, to foster discontent with the established order of things, to stir up an uncontrollable passion for innovation and change. INFLUENCE OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.--Not one of the least potent of the proximate causes of the French Revolution was the successful establishment of the American republic. The French people sympathized deeply with the English colonists in their struggle for independence. Many of the nobility, like Lafayette, offered to the patriots the service of their swords; and the popular feeling at length compelled Louis XVI to extend to them openly the aid of the armies of France. The final triumph of the cause of liberty awakened scarcely less enthusiasm and rejoicing in France than in America. In this young republic of the Western world the French people saw realized the Arcadia of their philosophers. It was no longer a dream. They themselves had helped to make it real. Here the Rights of Man had been recovered and vindicated. And now this liberty which the French people had helped the American colonists to secure, they were impatient to see France herself enjoy. "AFTER US, THE DELUGE."--The long-gathering tempest is now ready to break over France. Louis XV. died in 1774. In the early part of his reign his subjects had affectionately called him the "Well-beloved," but long before he laid down the sceptre, all their early love and admiration had been turned into hatred and contempt. Besides being overbearing and despotic, the king was indolent, rapacious, and scandalously profligate. During twenty years of his reign the king was wholly under the influence of the notorious Madame de Pompadour. The inevitable issue of this orgy of crime and folly seems to have been clearly enough perceived by the chief actors in it, as is shown by that reckless phrase so often on the lips of the king and his favorite--"After us, the Deluge." And after them, the Deluge indeed did come. The near thunders of the approaching tempest could already be heard when Louis XV. lay down to die. CALLING OF THE STATES-GENERAL (1789).--Louis XV. left the tottering throne to his grandson, Louis XVI., then only twenty years of age. He had recently been married to the fair and brilliant Marie Antoinette, archduchess of Austria. The king called to his side successively the most eminent financiers and statesmen (Maurepas, Turgot, Necker, and Calonne) as his ministers and advisers; but their policies and remedies availed little or nothing. The disease which had fastened itself upon the nation was too deep-seated. The traditions of the court, the rigidity of long-established customs, and the heartless selfishness of the privileged classes, rendered reform and efficient retrenchment impossible. In 1787 the king summoned the Notables, a body composed chiefly of great lords and prelates, who had not been called to advise with the king since the reign of Henry IV. But miserable counsellors were they all. Refusing to give up any of their feudal privileges, or to tax the property of their own orders that the enormous public burdens which were crushing the commons might be lightened, their coming together resulted in nothing. As a last resort it was resolved to summon the united wisdom of the nation,--to call together the States-General, the almost-forgotten assembly, composed of representatives of the three estates,--the nobility, the clergy, and the commons, the latter being known as the Tiers État, or Third Estate. On the 5th of May, 1789, a memorable date, this assembly met at Versailles. It was the first time it had been summoned to deliberate upon the affairs of the nation in the space of 175 years. It was now composed of 1,200 representatives, more than one-half of whom were deputies of the commons. The eyes of the nation were turned in hope and expectancy towards Versailles. Surely if the redemption of France could be worked out by human wisdom, it would now be effected. 2. THE NATIONAL, OR CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY (June 17, 1789-Sept. 30, 1791). THE STATE-GENERAL CHANGED INTO THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY.--At the very outset a dispute arose in the States-General assembly between the privileged orders and the commons, respecting the manner of voting. It had been the ancient custom of the body to vote upon all questions by orders; and thinking that this custom would prevail in the present assembly, the king and his counsellors had yielded to the popular demand and allowed the Third Estate to send to Versailles more representatives than both the other orders. The commons now demanded that the voting should be by individuals; for, should the vote be taken by orders, the clergy and nobility by combining could always outvote them. For five weeks the quarrel kept everything at a standstill. Finally the commons, emboldened by the tone of public opinion without, took a decisive, revolutionary step. They declared themselves the National Assembly, and then invited the other two orders to join them in their deliberations, giving them to understand that if they did not choose to do so, they should proceed to the consideration of public affairs without them. Shut out from the palace, the Third Estate met in one of the churches of Versailles. Many of the clergy had already joined the body. Two days later the nobility came. The eloquent Bailly, President of the Assembly, in receiving them, exclaimed, "This day will be illustrious in our annals; it renders the family complete." The States-General had now become in reality the _National Assembly_. STORMING OF THE BASTILE (July 14, 1789).--During the opening weeks of the National Assembly, Paris was in a state of great excitement. The Bastile was the old state prison, the emblem, in the eyes of the people, of despotism. A report came that its guns were trained on the city; that provoked a popular outbreak. "Let us storm the Bastile," rang through the streets. The mob straightway proceeded to lay siege to the grim old dungeon. In a few hours the prison fortress was in their hands. The walls of the hated state prison were razed to the ground, and the people danced on the spot. The key of the fortress was sent as a "trophy of the spoils of despotism" to Washington by Lafayette. The destruction by the Paris mob of the Bastile is in the French Revolution what the burning of the papal bull by Luther was to the Reformation. It was the death-knell not only of Bourbon despotism in France, but of royal tyranny everywhere. When the news reached England, the great statesman Fox, perceiving its significance for liberty, exclaimed, "How much is this the greatest event that ever happened in the world, and how much the best!" THE EMIGRATION OF THE NOBLES.--The fall of the Bastile left Paris in the hands of a triumphant mob. Those suspected of sympathizing with the royal party were massacred without mercy. The peasantry in many districts, following the example set them by the capital, rose against the nobles, sacked and burned their castles, and either killed the occupants or dragged them off to prison. This terrorism caused the beginning of what is known as the emigration of the nobles, their flight beyond the frontiers of France. "TO VERSAILLES."--An imprudent act on the part of the king and his friends at Versailles brought about the next episode in the progress of the Revolution. The arrival there of a body of troops was made the occasion of a banquet to the officers of the regiment. While heated with wine, the young nobles had trampled under foot the national tri-colored cockades, and substituted for them white cockades, the emblem of the Bourbons. The report of these proceedings caused in Paris the wildest excitement. Other rumors of the intended flight of the king to Metz, and of plots against the national cause, added fuel to the flames. Besides, bread had failed, and the poorer classes were savage from hunger. October 5th a mob of desperate women, terrible in aspect as furies, and armed with clubs and knives, collected in the streets of Paris, determined upon going to Versailles, and demanding relief from the king himself. All efforts to dissuade them from their purpose were unavailing, and soon the Parisian rabble was in motion. A horrible multitude, savage as the hordes that followed Attila, streamed out of the city towards Versailles, about twelve miles distant. The National Guards, infected with the delirium of the moment, forced Lafayette to lead them in the same direction. Thus all day Paris emptied itself into the royal suburbs. The mob encamped in the streets of Versailles for the night. Early the following morning they broke into the palace, killed two of the guards, and battering down doors with axes, forced their way to the chamber of the queen, who barely escaped with her life to the king's apartments. The timely arrival of Lafayette alone saved the entire royal family from being massacred. THE ROYAL FAMILY TAKEN TO PARIS--The mob now demanded that the king should return with them to Paris. Their object in this was to have him under their eye, and prevent his conspiring with the privileged orders to thwart the plans of the revolutionists. Louis was forced to yield to the demands of the people. The procession arrived at Paris in the evening. The royal family were placed in the Palace of the Tuileries, and Lafayette was charged with the duty of guarding the king, who was to be held as a sort of hostage for the good conduct of the nobles and foreign sovereigns while a constitution was being prepared by the Assembly. Such was what was called the "Joyous Entry" of October 6th. The palace at Versailles, thus stripped of royalty and left bespattered with blood, was never again to be occupied as the residence of a king of France. THE FLIGHT OF THE KING (June 20, 1791).--For two years following the Joyous Entry there was a comparative lull in the storm of the Revolution, The king was kept a sort of prisoner in the Tuileries. The National Assembly were making sweeping reforms both in Church and State, and busying themselves in framing a new constitution. The emigrant nobles watched the course of events from beyond the frontiers, not daring to make a move for fear the excitable Parisian mob, upon any hostile step taken by them, would massacre the entire royal family. Could the king only escape from the hands of his captors and make his way to the borders of France, then he could place himself at the head of the emigrant nobles, and, with foreign aid, overturn the National Assembly and crush the revolutionists. The flight was resolved upon and carefully planned. Under cover of night the entire royal family, in disguise, escaped from the Tuileries, and by post conveyance fled towards the frontier. When just another hour would have placed the fugitives in safety among friends, the Bourbon features of the king betrayed him, and the entire party was arrested and carried back to Paris. The attempted flight of the royal family was a fatal blow to the Monarchy. Many affected to regard it as equivalent to an act of abdication on the part of the king. The people now began to talk of a republic. THE CLUBS: JACOBINS AND CORDELIERS.--In order to render intelligible the further course of the Revolution we must here speak of two clubs, or organizations, which came into prominence about this time, and which were destined to become more powerful than the Assembly itself, and to be the chief instruments in inaugurating the Reign of Terror. These were the societies of the Jacobins and Cordeliers, so called from certain old convents in which they were accustomed to meet. The purpose of these clubs was to watch for conspiracies of the royalists, and by constant agitation to keep alive the flame of the Revolution. THE NEW CONSTITUTION.--The work of the National Assembly was now drawing to a close. On the 14th of September, 1791, the new constitution framed by that body, and which made the government of France a constitutional monarchy, was solemnly ratified by the king. The National Assembly, having sat nearly three years, then adjourned (Sept, 30, 1791). The first scene in the drama of the French Revolution was ended. 3. THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY (Oct. 1, 1791-Sept. 21, 1792). THE THREE PARTIES.--The new constitution provided for a national legislature to be called the Legislative Assembly. This body, comprising 745 members, was divided into three parties: the Constitutionalists, the Girondists, and the Mountainists. The Constitutionalists of course supported the new constitution, being in favor of a limited monarchy. The Girondists, so called from the name (_La Gironde_) of the department whence came the most noted of its members, wished to establish in France such a republic as the American colonists had just set up in the New World. The Mountainists, who took their name from their lofty seats in the assembly, were radical republicans, or levellers. Many of them were members of the Jacobin club or that of the Cordeliers. The leaders of this faction were Marat, Danton, and Robespierre,--names of terror in the subsequent records of the Revolution. WAR WITH THE OLD MONARCHIES.--The kings of Europe were watching with the utmost anxiety the course of events in France. They regarded the cause of Louis XVI. as their own. If the French people should be allowed to overturn the throne of their hereditary sovereign, who would then respect the divine rights of kings? The old monarchies of Europe therefore resolved that the revolutionary movement in France, a movement threatening all aristocratical and monarchical institutions, should be crushed, and that these heretical French doctrines respecting the Sovereignty of the People and the Rights of Man should be proved false by the power of royal armies. The warlike preparations of Frederick William III. of Prussia and the Emperor Francis II., awakened the apprehensions of the revolutionists, and led the Legislative Assembly to declare war against them (April 20, 1792). A little later, the allied armies of the Austrians and Prussians, numbering more than 100,000 men, and made up in part of the French emigrant nobles, passed the frontiers of France. Thus were taken the first steps in a series of wars which were destined to last nearly a quarter of a century, and in which France almost single-handed was to struggle against the leagued powers of Europe, and to illustrate the miracles possible to enthusiasm and genius. THE MASSACRE OF THE SWISS GUARDS (Aug. 10, 1792).--The allies at first gained easy victories over the ill-disciplined forces of the Legislative Assembly, and the Duke of Brunswick, at the head of an immense army, advanced rapidly upon Paris. An insolent proclamation which this commander now issued, wherein he ordered the French nation to submit to their king, and threatened the Parisians with the destruction of their city should any harm be done the royal family, drove the French people frantic with indignation and rage. The Palace of the Tuileries, defended by a few hundred Swiss soldiers, the remnant of the royal guard, was assaulted. A terrible struggle followed in the corridors and upon the grand stairways of the palace. The Swiss stood "steadfast as the granite of their Alps." But they were overwhelmed at last, and all were murdered, either in the building itself or in the surrounding courts and streets. THE MASSACRE OF SEPTEMBER ("JAIL DELIVERY").--The army of the allies hurried on towards Paris to avenge the slaughter of the royal guards and to rescue the king. The capital was all excitement. "We must stop the enemy," cried Danton, "by striking terror into the royalists." To this end the most atrocious measures were now adopted by the Extremists. It was resolved that all the royalists confined in the jails of the capital should be murdered. A hundred or more assassins were hired to butcher the prisoners. The murderers first entered the churches of the city, and the unfortunate priests who had refused to take oath to support the new constitution, were butchered in heaps about the altars. The jails were next visited, one after another, the persons confined within slaughtered, and their bodies thrown out to the brutal hordes that followed the butchers to enjoy the carnival of blood. The victims of this terrible "September Massacre," as it is called, are estimated at from six to fourteen thousand. Europe had never before known such a "jail delivery." It was the greatest crime of the French Revolution. DEFEAT OF THE ALLIES.--Meanwhile, in the open field, the fortunes of war inclined to the side of the revolutionists. The French generals were successful in checking the advance of the allies, and finally at Valmy (Sept. 20, 1792) succeeded in inflicting upon them a decisive defeat, which caused their hasty retreat beyond the frontiers of France. The day after this victory the Legislative Assembly came to an end, and the following day the National Convention assembled. 4. THE NATIONAL CONVENTION (Sept. 21, 1792-Oct. 26, 1795). PARTIES IN THE CONVENTION.--The Convention, consisting of seven hundred and forty-nine deputies, among whom was the celebrated freethinker, Thomas Paine, was divided into two parties, the Girondists and the Mountainists. There were no monarchists; all were republicans. No one dared to speak of a monarchy. THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE REPUBLIC (Sept. 21, 1792).--The very first act of the Convention on its opening day was to abolish the Monarchy and proclaim France a Republic. The motion for the abolition of Royalty was not even discussed. "What need is there for discussion," exclaimed a delegate, "where all are agreed? Courts are the hot-bed of crime, the focus of corruption; the history of kings is the martyrology of nations." All titles of nobility were also abolished. Every one was to be addressed simply as _citizen_. In the debates of the Convention, the king was alluded to as Citizen Capet, and on the street the shoeblack was called Citizen Shoeblack. The day following the Proclamation of the republic (Sept. 22, 1792) was made the beginning of a new era, the first day of the YEAR 1. That was to be regarded as the natal day of Liberty. A little later, excited by the success of the French armies,--the Austrians and Prussians had been beaten, and Belgium had been overrun and occupied,--the Convention called upon all nations to rise against despotism, and pledged the aid of France to any people wishing to secure freedom. TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF THE KING (Jan. 21, 1793).--The next work of the Convention was the trial and execution of the king. On the 11th of December, 1792, he was brought before the bar of that body, charged with having conspired with the enemies of France, of having opposed the will of the people, and of having caused the massacre of the 10th of August. The sentence of the Convention was immediate death. On Jan. 21, 1793, the unfortunate monarch was conducted to the scaffold. COALITION AGAINST FRANCE.--The regicide awakened the most bitter hostility against the French revolutionists, among all the old monarchies of Europe. The act was interpreted as a threat against all kings. A grand coalition, embracing Prussia, Austria, England, Sweden, Holland, Spain, Portugal, Piedmont, Naples, the Holy See, and later, Russia, was formed to crush the republican movement. Armies aggregating more than a quarter of a million of men threatened France at once on every frontier. While thus beset with foes without, the republic was threatened with even more dangerous enemies within. The people of La Vendee, in Western France, who still retained their simple reverence for Royalty, Nobility, and the Church, rose in revolt against the sweeping innovations of the revolutionists. To meet all these dangers which threatened the life of the new-born republic, the Convention ordered a levy, which placed 300,000 men in the field. The stirring Marseillaise Hymn, sung by the marching bands, awakened everywhere a martial fervor. THE FALL OF THE GIRONDISTS (June 2, 1793).--Gloomy tidings came from every quarter,--news of reverses to the armies of the republic in front of the allies, and of successes of the counter-revolutionists in La Vendée and other provinces. The Mountainists in the Convention, supported by the rabble of Paris, urged the most extreme measures. They proposed that the carriages of the wealthy should be seized and used for carrying soldiers to the seat of war, and that the expenses of the government should be met by forced contributions from the rich. The Girondists opposing these communistic measures, a mob, 80,000 strong, it is asserted, surrounded the Convention, and demanded that the Girondists be given up as enemies of the Republic. They were surrendered and placed under arrest, a preliminary step to the speedy execution of many of them during the opening days of the Reign of Terror, which had now begun. Thus did the Parisian mob purge the National Convention of France, as the army purged Parliament in the English Revolution (see p. 612). That mob were now masters, not only of the capital, but of France as well. There is nothing before France now but anarchy, and the dictator to whom anarchy always gives birth. _The Reign of Terror_ (June 2, 1793-July 27, 1794). OPENING OF THE REIGN OF TERROR.--As soon as the expulsion of the Moderates had given the Extremists control of the Convention, they proceeded to carry out their policy of terrorism. Supreme power was vested in the so- called Committee of Public Safety, which became a terrific engine of tyranny and cruelty. Marat was president of the Committee, and Danton and Robespierre were both members. The scenes which now followed are only feebly illustrated by the proscriptions of Sulla in ancient Rome (see p. 283). All aristocrats, all persons suspected of lukewarmness in the cause of liberty, were ordered to the guillotine. Hundreds were murdered simply because their wealth was wanted. Others fell, not because they were guilty of any political offence, but on account of having in some way incurred the personal displeasure of the dictators. CHARLOTTE CORDAY: ASSASSINATION OF MARAT (July 13,1793).--At this moment appeared the Joan of Arc of the Revolution. A maiden of Normandy, Charlotte Corday by name, conceived the idea of delivering France from the terrors of proscription and civil war, by going to Paris and killing Marat, whom she regarded as the head of the tyranny. On pretence of wishing to reveal to him something of importance, she gained admission to his rooms and stabbed him to the heart. She atoned for the deed under the knife of the guillotine. EVENTS AFTER THE DEATH OF MARAT.--The enthusiasm of Charlotte Corday had led her to believe that the death of Marat would be a fatal blow to the power of the Mountainists. But it only served to drive them to still greater excesses, under the lead of Danton and Robespierre. She died to stanch the flow of her country's blood; but, as Lamartine says, "her poniard appeared to have opened the veins of France." The flame of insurrection in the departments was quenched in deluges of blood. Some of the cities that had been prominent centres of the counter-revolution were made a terrible example of the vengeance of the revolutionists. Lyons was an object of special hatred to the tyrants. Respecting this place the Convention passed the following decree: "The city of Lyons shall be destroyed: every house occupied by a rich man shall be demolished; only the dwellings of the poor shall remain, with edifices specially devoted to industry, and monuments consecrated to humanity and public education." So thousands of men were set to work to pull down the city. The Convention further decreed that a monument should be erected upon the ruins of Lyons with this inscription: "Lyons opposed Liberty! Lyons is no more!" EXECUTION OF THE QUEEN AND OF THE GIRONDISTS.--The rage of the revolutionists was at this moment turned anew against the remaining members of the royal family, by the European powers proclaiming the Dauphin King of France. The queen, who had now borne nine months' imprisonment in a close dungeon, was brought before the terrible Revolutionary Tribunal, a sort of court organized to take cognizance of conspiracies against the republic, condemned to the guillotine, and straightway beheaded. Two weeks after the execution of the queen, twenty-one of the chiefs of the Girondists, who had been kept in confinement since their arrest in the Convention, were pushed beneath the knife. Hundreds of others followed. Day after day the carnival of death went on. Seats were arranged for the people, who crowded to the spectacle as to a theatre. The women busied their hands with their knitting, while their eyes feasted upon the swiftly changing scenes of the horrid drama. Most illustrious of all the victims after the queen was Madame Roland, who was accused of being the friend of the Girondists. Woman has always acted a prominent part in the great events of French history, because the grand ideas and sentiments which have worked so powerfully upon the imaginative and impulsive temperament of the men of France, have appealed with a still more fatal attraction to her more romantic and generously enthusiastic nature. SWEEPING CHANGES AND REFORMS.--While clearing away the enemies of France and of liberty, the revolutionists were also busy making the most sweeping changes in the ancient institutions and customs of the land. They hated these as having been established by kings and aristocrats to enhance their own importance and power, and to enthrall the masses. They proposed to sweep these things all aside, and give the world a fresh start. A new system of weights and measures, known as the metrical, was planned, and a new mode of reckoning time was introduced. The names of the months were altered, titles being given them expressive of the character of each. Each month was divided into three periods of ten days each, called decades, and each day into ten parts. The tenth day of each decade took the place of Sunday. The five odd days not provided for in the arrangement were made festival days. ABOLITION OF CHRISTIANITY.--With these reforms effected, the revolutionists next proceeded to the more difficult task of subverting the ancient institutions of religion. Some of the chiefs of the Commune of Paris declared that the Revolution should not rest until it had "dethroned the King of Heaven as well as the kings of earth." An attempt was made by the Extremists to have Christianity abolished by a decree of the National Convention; but that body, fearing such an act might alienate many who were still attached to the Church, resolved that all matters of creed should be left to the decision of the people themselves. [Illustration: THE GUILLOTINE ] The atheistic chiefs of the Commune of the capital now determined to effect their purpose through the Church itself. They persuaded the Bishop of Paris to abdicate his office; and his example was followed by many of the clergy throughout the country. The churches of Paris and of other cities were now closed, and the treasures of their altars and shrines confiscated to the State, Even the bells were melted down into cannon. The images of the Virgin and of the Christ were torn down, and the busts of Marat and other patriots set up in their stead. And as the emancipation of the world was now to be wrought, not by the Cross, but by the guillotine, that instrument took the place of the crucifix, and was called the Holy Guillotine. All the visible symbols of the ancient religion were destroyed. All emblems of hope in the cemeteries were obliterated, and over their gates were inscribed the words, "Death is eternal sleep." The madness of the Parisian people culminated in the worship of what was called the Goddess of Reason. A celebrated beauty, personating the Goddess, was set upon the altar of Notre Dame as the object of homage and adoration. The example of Paris was followed in many places throughout France. Churches were everywhere converted into temples of the new worship. The Sabbath having been abolished, the services of the temple were held only upon every tenth day. On that day the mayor or some popular leader mounted the altar and harangued the people, dwelling upon the news of the moment, the triumphs of the armies of the republic, the glorious achievements of the Revolution, and the privilege of living in an era when one was oppressed neither by kings on earth or by a King in heaven. FALL OF HÉBERT AND DANTON (March and April, 1794).--Not quite one year of the Reign of Terror had passed before the revolutionists, having destroyed or driven into obscurity their common enemy, the Girondists, turned upon one another with the ferocity of beasts whose appetite has been whetted by the taste of blood. During the progress of events the Jacobins had become divided into three factions, headed respectively by Danton, Robespierre, and Hébert. Danton, though he had been a bold and audacious leader, was now adopting a more conservative tone, and was condemning the extravagances and cruelties of the Committee of Public Safety, of which he had ceased to be a member. Hébert was one of the worst demagogues of the Commune, the chief and instigator of the Parisian rabble. He and his followers, the sans-culottes of the capital, would overturn everything and refound society upon communism and atheism. [Illustration: ROBESPIERRE] Robespierre occupied a position midway between these two, condemning alike the moderatism of Danton and the atheistic communism of Hebert. To make his own power supreme, he resolved to crush both. Hébert and his party were the first to fall, Danton and his adherents working with Robespierre to bring about their ruin, for the Moderates and Anarchists were naturally at bitter enmity. Danton and his friends were the next to follow. Little more than a week had passed since the execution of Hébert before Robespierre had effected their destruction, on the charge of conspiring with and encouraging the counter-revolutionists. With the Anarchists and Moderates both destroyed, Robespierre was now supreme. His ambition was attained. "He stood alone on the awful eminence of the Holy Mountain." But his turn was soon to come. WORSHIP OF THE SUPREME BEING.--One of the first acts of the dictator was to give France a new religion in place, of the worship of Reason. Robespierre wished to sweep away Christianity as a superstition, but he would stop at deism. He did not believe that a state could be founded on atheism. "Atheism," said he, "is aristocratic. The idea of a great being who watches over oppressed innocence, and who punishes triumphant guilt, is and always will be popular. If God did not exist, it would behoove man to invent him." Accordingly Robespierre offered in the Convention the following resolution: "The French people acknowledge the existence of the Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul." The decree was adopted, and the churches that had been converted into temples of the Goddess of Reason were now consecrated to the worship of the Supreme Being. THE TERROR AT PARIS.--At the very same time that Robespierre was establishing the new worship, he was desolating France with massacres of incredible atrocity, and ruling by a terrorism unparalleled since the most frightful days of Rome. With all power gathered in his hands, he overawed all opposition and dissent by the wholesale slaughters of the guillotine. The prisons of Paris and of the departments were filled with suspected persons, until 200,000 prisoners were crowded within these republican Bastiles. At Paris the dungeons were emptied of their victims and room made for fresh ones, by the swift processes of the Revolutionary Tribunal, which in mockery of justice caused the prisoners to be brought before its bar in companies of ten or fifty. Rank or talent was an inexpiable crime. "Were you not a noble?" asks the president of the court of one of the accused. "Yes," was the reply. "Enough; another," was the judge's verdict. And so on through the long list each day brought before the tribunal. The scenes about the guillotine were simply infernal. Benches were arranged around the scaffold and rented to spectators, like seats in a theatre. A special sewer had to be constructed to carry off the blood of the victims. In the space of a little over a month (from June 10th to July 17th) the number of persons guillotined at Paris was 1285, an average of 34 a day. MASSACRES IN THE PROVINCES.--While such was the terrible state of things at the capital, matters were even worse in many of the other leading cities of France. The scenes at Nantes, Bordeaux, Marseilles, and Toulon suggested, in their varied elements of horror, the awful conceptions of the "Inferno" of Dante. At Nantes the victims were at first shot singly or guillotined; but these methods being found too slow, more expeditious modes of execution were devised. To these were playfully given the names of "Republican Baptisms," "Republican Marriages," and "Battues." The "Republican Baptism" consisted in crowding a hundred or more persons into a vessel, which was then towed out into the Loire and scuttled. In the "Republican Marriages" a man and woman were bound together, and then thrown into the river. The "Battues" consisted in ranging the victims in long ranks, and mowing them down with discharges of cannon and musket. By these various methods fifteen thousand victims were destroyed in the course of a single month. The entire number massacred at Nantes during the Reign of Terror is estimated at thirty thousand. What renders these murders the more horrible is the fact that a considerable number of the victims were women and children. Nantes was at this time crowded with the orphaned children of the Vendéan counter-revolutionists. Upon a single night three hundred of these innocents were taken from the city prisons and drowned in the Loire. THE FALL OF ROBESPIERRE (July, 1794).--By such terrorism did Robespierre and his creatures rule France for a little more than three months. The awful suspense and dread drove many into insanity and to suicide. The strain was too great for human nature to bear. A reaction came. The successes of the armies of the republic, and the establishment of the authority of the Convention throughout the departments, caused the people to look upon the massacres that were daily taking place as unnecessary and cruel. They began to turn with horror and pity from the scenes of the guillotine. The first blow at the power of the dictator was struck in the Convention. A member dared to denounce him, upon the floor of the assembly, as a tyrant. The spell was broken. He was arrested and sent to the guillotine, with a large number of his confederates. The people greeted the fall of the tyrant's head with demonstrations of unbounded joy. The delirium was over. "France had awakened from the ghastly dream of the Reign of Terror (July 28, 1794)." THE REACTION.--The reaction which had swept away Robespierre and his associates continued after their ruin. The clubs of the Jacobins were closed, and that infamous society which had rallied and directed the hideous rabbles of the great cities was broken up. The deputies that had been driven from their seats in the Convention were invited to resume their places and the Christian worship was reestablished. NAPOLEON DEFENDS THE CONVENTION (Oct. 5, 1795).--These and other measures of the Convention did not fail of arousing the bitter opposition of the scattered forces of the Terrorists, as they were called; and on the 5th of October, 1795, a mob of 40,000 men advanced to the attack of the Tuileries, where the Convention was sitting. As the mob came on they were met by a storm of grape shot, which sent them flying back in wild disorder. The man who trained the guns was a young artillery officer, a native of the island of Corsica,--Napoleon Bonaparte. The Revolution had at last brought forth a man of genius capable of controlling and directing its tremendous energies. 5. THE DIRECTORY (Oct. 27, 1795-Nov. 9, 1799). THE REPUBLIC BECOMES AGGRESSIVE.--A few weeks after the defence of the Convention by Napoleon, that body declaring its labors ended, closed its sessions, and immediately afterwards the Councils and the Board of Directors provided for by the new constitution [Footnote: There were to be two legislative bodies,--the Council of Five Hundred and the Council of the Ancients, the latter embracing two hundred and fifty persons, of whom no one could be under fifty years of age. The executive power was vested in a board of five persons, which was called the Directory.] that had been framed by the Convention, assumed control of affairs. Under the Directory the republic, which up to this time had been acting mainly on the defensive, entered upon an aggressive policy. The Revolution, having accomplished its work in France, having there destroyed royal despotism and abolished class privilege, now set itself about fulfilling its early promise of giving liberty to all peoples (see p. 658). In a word, the revolutionists became propagandists. France now exhibits what her historians call her social, her communicative genius. "Easily seduced herself," as Lamartine says, "she easily seduces others." She would make all Europe like unto herself. Herself a republic, she would make all nations republics. Had not the minds of the people in all the neighboring countries been prepared to welcome the new order of things, the Revolution could never have spread itself as widely as it did. But everywhere irrepressible longings for social and political equality and freedom, born of long oppression, were stirring the souls of men. The French armies were everywhere welcomed as deliverers. Thus was France enabled to surround herself with a girdle of commonwealths. She conquered Europe not by her armies, but by her ideas. "An invasion of armies," says Victor Hugo, "can be resisted: an invasion of ideas cannot be resisted." The republics established were, indeed, short-lived; for the times were not yet ripe for the complete triumph of democratic ideas. But a great gain for freedom was made. The reestablished monarchies never dared to make themselves as despotic as those which the Revolution had overturned. THE PLANS OF THE DIRECTORY.--Austria and England were the only formidable powers that still persisted in their hostility to the republic. The Directors resolved to strike a decisive blow at the first of these implacable foes. To carry out their designs, two large armies, numbering about 70,000 each, were mustered upon the middle Rhine, and intrusted to the command of the two young and energetic generals Moreau and Jourdan, who were to make a direct invasion of Germany. A third army, numbering about 36,000 men, was assembled in the neighborhood of Nice, in South- eastern France, and placed in the hands of Napoleon, to whom was assigned the work of driving the Austrians out of Italy. NAPOLEON'S ITALIAN CAMPAIGN (1796-1797).--Straightway upon receiving his command, Napoleon, now in his twenty-seventh year, animated by visions of military glory to be gathered on the fields of Italy, hastened to join his army at Nice. He found the discontented soldiers almost without food or clothes. He at once aroused all their latent enthusiasm by one of those short, stirring addresses for which he afterwards became so famous. Then before the mountain roads were yet free from snow, he set his army in motion, and forced the passage of the low Genoese, or Maritime Alps. The Carthaginian had been surpassed. "Hannibal," exclaimed Napoleon, "crossed the Alps; as for us, we have turned them." Now followed a most astonishing series of French victories over the Austrians and their allies. As a result of the campaign a considerable part of Northern Italy was formed into a commonwealth under the name of the Cisalpine Republic. Genoa was also transformed into the Ligurian Republic. TREATY OF COMPO FORMIO (1797).--While Napoleon had been gaining his surprising victories in Italy, Moreau and Jourdan had been meeting with severe reverses in Germany, their invading columns having been forced back upon the Rhine by the Archduke Charles. Napoleon, having effected the work assigned to the army of Italy, now climbed the Eastern Alps, and led his soldiers down upon the plains of Austria. The near approach of the French to Vienna induced the emperor, Francis II., to listen to proposals of peace. An armistice was agreed upon, and a few months afterwards the important treaty of Campo Formio was arranged. By the terms of this treaty Austria ceded her Belgian provinces to the French Republic, surrendered important provinces on the west side of the Rhine, and acknowledged the Cisalpine Republic. With the treaty arranged, Napoleon set out for Paris, where a triumph and ovation such as Europe had not seen since the days of the old Roman conquerors, awaited him. NAPOLEON'S CAMPAIGN IN EGYPT (1798-1799).--The Directors had received Napoleon with apparent enthusiasm and affection; but at this very moment they were disquieted by fears lest the conqueror's ambition might lead him to play the part of a second Cæsar. They resolved to engage the young commander in an enterprise which would take him out of France. This undertaking was an attack upon England, which they were then meditating. Bonaparte opposed the plan of a direct descent upon the island as impracticable, declaring that England should be attacked through her Eastern possessions. He presented a scheme very characteristic of his bold, imaginative genius. This was nothing less than the conquest and colonization of Egypt, by which means France would be able to control the trade of the East, and cut England off from her East India possessions. The Directors assented to the plan, and with feelings of relief saw Napoleon embark from the port of Toulon to carry out the enterprise. Escaping the vigilance of the British fleet that was patrolling the Mediterranean, Napoleon landed in Egypt July 1, 1798. Within sight of the Pyramids, the French army was checked in its march upon Cairo by a determined stand of the renowned Mameluke cavalry. Napoleon animated the spirits of his men for the inevitable fight by one of his happiest speeches. One of the sentences is memorable: "Soldiers," he exclaimed, pointing to the Pyramids, "forty centuries are looking down upon you." The terrific struggle that followed is known in history as the "Battle of the Pyramids." Napoleon gained a victory that opened the way for his advance. The French now entered Cairo in triumph, and all Lower Egypt fell into their hands. Napoleon had barely made his entrance into Cairo, before the startling intelligence was borne to him that his fleet had been destroyed in the bay of Aboukir, at the mouth of the Nile, by the English admiral Nelson (Aug. 1, 1798). In the spring of 1799, Napoleon led his army into Syria, the Porte having joined a new coalition against France. He captured Gaza and Jaffa, and finally invested Acre. The Turks were assisted in the defence of this place by the distinguished English admiral, Sir Sidney Smith. [Footnote: The besieged were further assisted by a Turkish army outside. With these the French fought the noted Battle of Mount Tabor, in which they gained a complete victory.] All of Napoleon's attempts to carry the place by storm were defeated by the skill and bravery of the English commander. "That man Sidney," said Napoleon afterwards, "made me miss my destiny." Doubtless Napoleon's vision of conquests in the East embraced Persia and India. With the ports of Syria secured, he would have imitated Alexander, and led his soldiers to the foot of the Himalayas. Bitterly disappointed, Napoleon abandoned the siege of Acre, and led his army back into Egypt. There his worn and thinned ranks were attacked near Aboukir by a fresh Turkish army, but the genius of Napoleon turned threatened defeat into a brilliant victory. The enthusiastic Kleber, one of Napoleon's lieutenants, clasping his general in his arms, exclaimed, "Sire, your greatness is like that of the universe." ESTABLISHMENT OF THE TIBERINE, HELVETIC, AND PARTHENOPÆAN REPUBLICS.--We must turn now to view affairs in Europe. The year 1798 was a favorable one for the republican cause represented by the Revolution. During that year and the opening month of the following one, the French set up three new republics. First, they incited an insurrection at Rome, made a prisoner of the Pope, and proclaimed the Roman, or Tiberine, Republic. Then they invaded the Swiss cantons and united them into a commonwealth under the name of the Helvetic Republic. A little later the French troops drove the king of Naples out of his kingdom, and transformed that state into the Parthenopæan Republic. Thus were three new republics added to the commonwealths which the Revolution had already created. THE REACTION: NAPOLEON OVERTHROWS THE DIRECTORY (18th and 19th Brumaire). --Most of this work was quickly undone. Encouraged by the victory of Nelson over the French fleet in the battle of the Nile, the leading states of Europe had formed a new coalition against the French Republic. Early in 1779 the war began, and was waged in almost every part of Europe at the same time. The campaign was on the whole extremely disastrous to the French. They were driven out of Italy, and were barely able to keep the allies off the soil of France. The Tiberine and the Parthenopæan Republics were abolished. The reverses suffered by the French armies caused the Directory to fall into great disfavor. They were charged with having through jealousy exiled Napoleon, the only man who could save the Republic. Confusion and division prevailed everywhere. The royalists had become so strong and bold that there was danger lest they should gain control of the government. On the other hand, the threats of the Jacobins began to create apprehensions of another Reign of Terror. News of the desperate state of affairs at home reached Napoleon just after his victory in Egypt, following his return from Syria. He instantly formed a bold resolve. Confiding the command of the army in Egypt to Kleber, he set sail for France, disclosing his designs in the significant words, "The reign of the lawyers is over." Napoleon was welcomed in France with the wildest enthusiasm. A great majority of the people felt instinctively that the emergency demanded a dictator. Some of the Directors joined with Napoleon in a plot to overthrow the government. Meeting with opposition in the Council of Five Hundred, Napoleon with a body of grenadiers drove the deputies from their chamber (Nov. 9, 1799). The French Revolution had at last brought forth its Cromwell. Napoleon was master of France. The first French Republic was at an end, and what is distinctively called the French Revolution was over. Now commences the history of the Consulate and the First Empire,--the story of that surprising career, the sun of which rose so brightly at Austerlitz and set forever at Waterloo. CHAPTER LIX. THE CONSULATE AND THE FIRST EMPIRE: FRANCE SINCE THE SECOND RESTORATION. 1. THE CONSULATE AND THE EMPIRE (1799-1815). THE VEILED MILITARY DESPOTISM.--After the overthrow of the Directorial government, a new constitution--the fourth since the year 1789--was prepared, and having been submitted to the approval of the people, was heartily indorsed. This new instrument vested the executive power in three consuls, elected for a term of ten years, the first of whom really exercised all the authority of the Board. Napoleon, of course, became the First Consul. The other functions of the government were carried on by a Council of State, a Tribunate, a Legislature, and a Senate. But the members of all these bodies were appointed either directly or indirectly by the consuls, so that the entire government was actually in their hands, or, rather, in the hands of the First Consul. France was still called a republic, but it was such a republic as Rome was under Julius Cæsar or Augustus. The republican names and forms merely veiled a government as absolute and personal as that of Louis XIV.,--in a word, a military despotism. WARS OF THE FIRST CONSUL.--Neither Austria nor England would acknowledge the government of the First Consul as legitimate. In their view he was simply an upstart, a fortunate usurper. The throne of France belonged, by virtue of divine right, to the House of Bourbon. Napoleon mustered his soldiers. His plan was to deal Austria, his worst continental enemy, a double blow. A large army was collected on the Rhine, for an invasion of Germany. This was intrusted to Moreau. Another, intended to operate against the Austrians in Italy, was gathered at the foot of the Alps. Napoleon himself assumed command of this latter force. In the spring of the year 1800 Napoleon made his memorable passage of the Alps, and astonished the Austrian generals by suddenly appearing, with an army of 40,000 men, on the plains of Italy. Upon the renowned field of Marengo the Austrian army, which outnumbered that of the French three to one, was completely overwhelmed, and Italy lay for a second time at the feet of Napoleon (June 14, 1800). But at the moment Italy was regained, Egypt was lost. On the very day of the battle of Marengo, Kleber, whom Napoleon had left in charge of the army in Egypt, was assassinated by a Turkish fanatic, and shortly afterwards the entire French force was obliged to surrender to the English. The French reverses in Egypt, however, were soon made up by fresh victories in Europe. A few months after the battle of Marengo, Moreau gained a decisive victory over the Austrians at Hohenlinden, which opened the way to Vienna. The Emperor Francis II. was now constrained to sign a treaty of peace at Luneville, in which he allowed the Rhine to be made the eastern frontier of France (February, 1801). The emperor also recognized the Cisalpine, Ligurian, Helvetian, and Batavian republics. The following year England was also glad to sign a peace at Amiens (March, 1802). HIS WORKS OF PEACE: THE CODE NAPOLEON.--Having wrung from both England and Austria an acknowledgment of his government, Napoleon was now free to devote his amazing energies to the reform and improvement of the internal affairs of France. So at this time were begun by him those great works of various character which were continued through all the fifteen years of his supremacy. His great military road over the Alps by the Simplon Pass, surpasses in bold engineering the most difficult of the Roman roads, while many of his architectural works are the pride of France at the present day. [Illustration: CENTRAL EUROPE 1801] Taking up the work of the Revolution, he caused the laws of France to be revised and harmonized, producing the celebrated _Code Napoleon_, a work that is not unworthy of comparison with the _Corpus Juris Civilis_ of the Emperor Justinian. The influence of this Code upon the development of Liberalism in Western Europe is simply incalculable. It secured the work of the Revolution. It swept away the unequal, iniquitous, oppressive customs, regulations, decrees, and laws that were an inheritance from the feudal ages. It recognized the equality in the eye of the law of noble and peasant. "It is to-day the frame-work of law in France, Holland, Belgium, Western Germany, Switzerland, and Italy." Had Napoleon done nothing else save to give this Code to Europe, he would have conferred an inestimable benefit upon mankind. NAPOLEON MADE CONSUL FOR LIFE (1802).--As a reward for his vast services to France, and also in order that his magnificent schemes of reform and improvement might be pursued without fear of interruption, Napoleon was now, by a vote of the people, made Consul for Life, with the right to name his successor (August, 1802). Thus he moved a step nearer the coveted dignity of the Imperial title. NAPOLEON PROCLAIMED EMPEROR (1804).--A conspiracy against the life of the First Consul, and the increased activity of his enemies, caused the French people to resolve to increase his power, and secure his safety and the stability of his government, by placing him upon a throne. A decree conferring upon him the title of Emperor having been submitted to the people for approval was ratified by an almost unanimous vote, less than three thousand persons opposing the measure. SURROUNDING REPUBLICS CHANGED INTO KINGDOMS.--Thus was the First French Republic metamorphosed into an unveiled empire. We may be sure that the cluster of republics which during the Revolution sprang up around the great original, will speedily undergo a like transformation; for Napoleon was right when he said that a revolution in France is sure to be followed by a revolution throughout Europe. As France, a republic, would make all states republics, so France, a monarchy, would make all nations monarchies. Within five years from the time that the government of France assumed an imperial form, all the surrounding republics raised up by the revolutionary ideas and armies of France, had been transformed into monarchies dependent upon France, or had become a component part of the French Empire. [Footnote: The Cisalpine, or Italian Republic, was changed into a kingdom, and Napoleon, crowning himself at Milan with the iron crown of the Lombards, assumed the government of the state with the title of King of Italy (May 26, 1805). The Ligurian Republic, embracing Genoa and a portion of Sardinia, was made a part of France, while the Batavian Republic was changed into the Kingdom of Holland, and given by Napoleon to his brother Louis (June, 1806).] Thus was the political work of the Revolution undone. Political _liberty_ was taken away; the people were not yet ready for self-government. Social _Equality_ was left. THE WARS OF NAPOLEON.--It will not be supposed that the powers of Europe were looking quietly on while France was thus metamorphosing herself and all the neighboring countries. The colossal power which the soldier of fortune was building up, was a menace to all Europe. The empire was more dreaded than the republic, because it was a military despotism, and as such, an instrument of irresistible power in the hands of a man of such genius and resources as Napoleon. Coalition after coalition, always headed by England,--who had sworn a Punic hatred to the Napoleonic empire,--was formed by the monarchies of Europe against the "usurper," with the object of pressing France back within her original boundaries and setting up again the subverted throne of the Bourbons. From the coronation of Napoleon in 1804 until his final downfall in 1815, the tremendous struggle went on almost without intermission. It was the war of the giants. Europe was shaken from end to end by such armies as the world had not seen since the days of Xerxes. Napoleon, whose hands were upheld by a score of distinguished marshals, performed the miracles of genius. His brilliant achievements still dazzle, while they amaze, the world. To relate in detail the campaigns of Napoleon from Austerlitz to Waterloo would require the space of volumes. We shall simply indicate in a few brief paragraphs the successive steps by which he mounted to the highest pitch of power and fame, and then trace rapidly the decline and fall of his astonishing fortunes. AUSTERLITZ (1805): END OF THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE (1806).--The year following his coronation, Napoleon made a gigantic effort to break the coalition which England, Russia, Austria, and Sweden had formed against him. He massed an immense army at Boulogne, on the Channel, preparatory to an invasion of England; but the failure of his fleet to carry out its part of the plan, and intelligence of the approach of the Austrians and Russians towards the Rhenish frontier, caused him suddenly to transfer his troops to the opposite side of France. Without waiting for the attack of the allies, Napoleon flung his Grand Army, as it was called, across the Rhine, defeated the Austrians in the battle of Ulm, and marched in triumph through Vienna to the field of Austerlitz beyond, where he gained one of his most memorable victories over the combined armies of Austria and Russia, numbering more than 100,000 men (Dec. 2, 1805). This battle completely changed the map of Europe. Austria was forced to give up Venetia and other provinces about the head of the Adriatic, this territory being now added to the kingdom of Italy. Sixteen of the German states, declaring themselves independent of the empire, were formed into a league, called the _Confederation of the Rhine_, with Napoleon as Protector. Furthermore, the Emperor Francis II. was obliged to surrender the crown of the _Holy Roman Empire_, and thereafter to content himself with the title of _Emperor of Austria_. Thus did the Holy Roman Empire come to an end (1806), after having maintained an existence, since its revival by Otto the Great, of more than eight hundred years. The _Kingdom of Germany_, which was created by the partition of the empire of Charlemagne (see p. 408), now also passed out of existence, even in name. TRAFALGAR (Oct. 21, 1805).--Napoleon's brilliant victories in Germany were clouded by an irretrievable disaster to his fleet, which occurred only two days after the engagement at Ulm. Lord Nelson having met, near Cape Trafalgar on the coast of Spain, the combined French and Spanish fleets,-- Spain had become the ally of Napoleon,--almost completely destroyed the combined armaments. The gallant English admiral fell at the moment of victory. "Thank God, I have done my duty," were his last words. This decisive battle give England the control of the sea, and relieved her from all danger of a French invasion. Even the "wet ditch," as Napoleon was wont contemptuously to call the English Channel, was henceforth an impassable gulf to his ambition. He might rule the continent, but the sovereignty of the ocean and its islands was denied him. JENA AND AUERSTADT (1806).--Prussia was the state next after Austria to feel the weight of Napoleon's power. Goaded by insult, the Prussian king, Frederick William III., very imprudently threw down the gauntlet to the French emperor. Moving with his usual swiftness, Napoleon overwhelmed the armies of Frederick in the battles of Jena and Auerstadt, which were both fought upon the same day (Oct. 14, 1806). Thus the great military power consolidated by the genius of Frederick the Great, was crushed and almost annihilated. What had proved too great an undertaking for the combined powers of Europe during the Seven Years' War, Napoleon had effected in less than a month. EYLAU AND FRIEDLAND (1807).--The year following his victories over the Prussians, Napoleon led his Grand Army against the forces of the Czar, Alexander I., who had entered Prussia with aid for King Frederick. A fierce but indecisive battle at Eylau was followed, a little later in the same season, by the battle of Friedland, in which the Russians were completely overwhelmed (June 14, 1807). The Czar was forced to sue for peace. By the terms of the Treaty of Tilsit Prussia was stripped of more than half of her former dominions, a part of which was made into a new state, called the Kingdom of Westphalia, with Napoleon's brother, Jerome, as its king, and added to the Confederation of the Rhine; while Prussian Poland, reorganized and clumsily christened the "Grand Duchy of Warsaw," was given to Saxony. What was left of Prussia became virtually a dependency of the French empire. THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM: THE BERLIN AND MILAN DECREES.--While Napoleon was carrying on his campaigns against Prussia and Russia, he was all the time meditating vengeance upon England, his most uncompromising foe, and the leader or the instigator of the coalitions which were constantly being formed for the overthrow of his power. We have seen how the destruction of his fleet at Trafalgar dashed all his hopes of ever making a descent upon the British shores. Unable to reach his enemy directly with his arms, he resolved to strike her through her commerce. By two celebrated imperial edicts, called from the cities whence they were issued the Berlin and the Milan decree, he closed all the ports of the continent against English ships, and forbade any of the European nations from holding any intercourse with Great Britain, all of whose ports he declared in a state of blockade. So completely was Europe under the domination of Napoleon, that England's trade was by these measures very seriously crippled, and great loss and suffering were inflicted upon her industrial classes. We shall have occasion a little later to speak of the disastrous effects of the system upon the French empire itself. BEGINNING OF THE PENINSULAR WARS (1808).--One of the first consequences of Napoleon's "continental policy" was to bring him into conflict with Portugal. The prince regent of that country presuming to open its ports to English ships, Napoleon at once deposed him, and sent one of his marshals to take possession of the kingdom. The entire royal family, accompanied by many of the nobility, fled to Brazil, and made that country the seat of an empire which has endured to the present day. Having thus gained a foothold in the Peninsula, Napoleon now resolved to possess himself of the whole of it. Insolently interfering in the affairs of Spain, he forced the weak-minded Bourbon king to resign to him, as his "dearly beloved friend and ally," his crown, which he bestowed at once upon his brother, Joseph Bonaparte (1808). The throne of Naples, which Joseph had been occupying, [Footnote: Napoleon dethroned the Bourbons in Naples in 1805.] was transferred to Murat, Napoleon's brother-in-law. Thus did this audacious man make and unmake kings, and give away thrones and kingdoms. But the high-spirited Spaniards were not the people to submit tamely to such an indignity. The entire nation, from the Pyrenees to the Straits of Gibraltar, flew to arms. Portugal also arose, and England sent to her aid a force under Sir Arthur Wellesley, afterwards Duke of Wellington, and the hero of Waterloo. The French were soon driven out of Portugal, and pushed beyond the Ebro in Spain. Joseph fled in dismay from his throne, and Napoleon found it necessary to take the field himself, in order to restore the prestige of the French arms. He entered the Peninsula at the head of an army of 80,000 men, and scattering the Spaniards wherever he met them, entered Madrid in triumph, and reseated his brother upon the Spanish throne. Threatening tidings from another quarter of Europe now caused Napoleon to hasten back to Paris. SECOND CAMPAIGN AGAINST AUSTRIA (1809).--Taking advantage of Napoleon's troubles in the Peninsula, Francis I. of Austria, who had been watching for an opportunity to retrieve the disaster of Austerlitz, gathered an army of half a million of men, and declared war against the French emperor. But Austria was fated to suffer even a deeper humiliation than she had already endured. Napoleon swept across the Danube, and at the end of a short campaign, the most noted battles of which were those of Eckmuhl and Wagram, Austria was again at his feet, and a second time he entered Vienna in triumph. Austria was now still farther dismembered, large tracts of her possessions being ceded directly to Napoleon or given to the various neighboring states (1809). [Illustration: CENTRAL EUROPE, 1810] THE PAPAL STATES AND HOLLAND JOINED TO THE FRENCH EMPIRE.--That Napoleon cared but little for the thunders of the Church is shown by his treatment of the Pope. Pius VII. opposing his continental system, the emperor incorporated the Papal States with the French empire (1809). The Pope thereupon excommunicated Napoleon, who straightway arrested the Pontiff, dragged him over the Alps into France, and held him in captivity for four years. The year following the annexation of the Papal States to the French empire, Louis Bonaparte, king of Holland, who disapproved of his brother's continental system, which was ruining the trade of the Dutch, abdicated the crown. Thereupon Napoleon incorporated Holland with France, on the ground that it was simply "the sediment of the French rivers." NAPOLEON'S SECOND MARRIAGE (1810).--The year following his triumph over Francis I. of Austria, Napoleon divorced his wife Josephine, in order to form a new alliance, with Maria Louisa, Archduchess of Austria. The fond and faithful Josephine bowed meekly to the will of her lord, and went into sorrowful exile from his palace. Napoleon's object in this matter was to cover the reproach of his own plebeian birth, by an alliance with one of the ancient royal families of Europe, and to secure the perpetuity of his government by leaving an heir who might be the inheritor of his throne and fortunes. His hope seemed realized when, the year following his marriage with the Archduchess, a son was born to them, who was given the title of "King of Rome." NAPOLEON AT THE SUMMIT OF HIS POWER (1811).--Napoleon was now at the height of his marvellous fortunes. Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena, Friedland, and Wagram were the successive steps by which he had mounted to the most dizzy heights of military power and glory. The empire which he had built up stretched from the Baltic to Southern Italy, embracing France proper, Belgium, Holland, Northwestern Germany, Italy west of the Apennines as far south as Naples, besides large possessions about the head of the Adriatic. On all sides were allied, vassal, or dependent states. Several of the ancient thrones of Europe were occupied by Napoleon's relatives or favorite marshals. He himself was head of the kingdom of Italy, and Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine. Austria and Prussia were completely subject to his will. Russia and Denmark were his allies. [Illustration: NAPOLEON BONAPARTE] ELEMENTS OF WEAKNESS IN THE EMPIRE.--But splendid and imposing as at this moment appeared the external affairs of Napoleon, the sun of his fortunes, which had risen so brightly at Austerlitz, had already passed its meridian. There were many things just now contributing to the weakness of the French empire and foreboding its speedy dissolution. Founded and upheld by the genius of Napoleon, it depended solely upon the life and fortunes of this single man. The diverse elements it embraced were as yet so loosely joined that there could be no hope or possibility of its surviving either the misfortune or the death of its founder. Again, Napoleon's continental system, through the suffering and loss it inflicted upon all the maritime countries of Europe, had caused murmurs of discontent all around the circumference of the continent. This ruinous policy had also involved the French emperor in a terribly wasteful war with Spain, which country was destined--more truly than Italy, of which the expression was first used--to become "the grave of the French." Napoleon after his downfall himself admitted that his passage of the Pyrenees was the fatal misstep in his career. Furthermore, the conscriptions of the emperor had drained France of men, and her armies were now recruited by mere boys, who were utterly unfit to bear the burden and fatigue of Napoleon's rapid campaigns. The heavy taxes, also, which were necessary to meet the expenses of Napoleon's wars, and to carry on the splendid public works upon which he was constantly engaged, produced great suffering and discontent throughout the empire. And the crowd of deposed princes and dispossessed aristocrats in those states where Napoleon had promulgated his new code of equal rights (see p. 675), were naturally restless and resentful, and watchful for an opportunity to recover their ancient power and privileges. Even the large class in the surrounding countries that at first welcomed Napoleon as the representative of the French ideas of equality and liberty, and applauded while he overturned ancient thrones and aristocracies, which, like the monarchy and the feudal nobility in France swept away by the Revolution, had become unbearably proud, corrupt, and oppressive,--even these early adherents had been turned into bitter enemies through Napoleon's adoption of imperial manners, and especially by his setting aside his first wife, Josephine, in order that he might ally himself to one of the old royal houses of Europe, which act was looked upon as a betrayal of the cause of the people. Nothing save the prestige of Napoleon's name and the dread of his vengeance keeps his enemies at bay. Let the lion be wounded and a hundred enemies will spring upon him from every side. THE INVASION OF RUSSIA (1812-1813).--The signal for the uprising of Europe was the terrible misfortune which befell Napoleon in his invasion of Russia. The Czar having cast aside the old ties of alliance and friendship, and entered a coalition against France, Napoleon crossed the frontiers of Russia, at the head of what was proudly called the Grand Army, numbering more than half a million of men. The Russians threw themselves across the path of the invaders at Borodino, but their lines were swept back by the strong columns of the Grand Army, although the victory cost the French dear. Following closely the retreating enemy, the French pushed on towards the ancient Russian capital, Moscow. This city Napoleon had thought would supply food for his army, and shelter from the severity of the northern winter, which was now approaching. But to his astonishment he found the city deserted by its inhabitants; and scarcely had he established himself in the empty palace of the Czar (the Kremlin), before the city, probably fired by persons whom the Russians had left behind for this purpose, burst into flames. After, waiting about the ruins until the middle of October, in hopes that the Czar would accept proposals of peace, Napoleon was forced to give the command for the return of the army to France. The retreat was attended with incredible sufferings and horrors. The Russian winter setting in earlier than usual and with terrible severity, thousands of the French soldiers were frozen to death, and falling upon the snow traced with a long black line the trail of the retreating army. The spot of each bivouac was marked by the circles of dead around the watch-fires. Thousands more were slain by the wild Cossacks, who surrounded the retreating columns and harassed them day and night. The passage of the river Beresina was attended with appalling losses. Soon after the passage of this stream, Napoleon, conscious that the fate of his empire depended upon his presence in Paris, left the remnant of the army in charge of his marshals, and hurried by post to his capital. Marshal Ney, "the bravest of the brave," performed miracles in covering the retreat of the broken and dispirited columns. He was the last man, it is said, to cross the Niemen. His face was so haggard from care and so begrimed with powder, that no one recognized him. Being asked who he was, he replied, "I am the rear guard of the Grand Army." The loss by death of the French and their allies in this disastrous campaign is reckoned at about 300,000 men, [Footnote: The Russians took 100,000 prisoners, and about 100,000 recrossed the Niemen.] while that of the Russians is estimated to have been almost as large. "THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS" (Leipsic, 1813).--Napoleon's fortunes were buried with his Grand Army in the snows of Russia. His woeful losses emboldened the surrounding powers to think that now they could crush him. A sixth coalition was formed, embracing Russia, Prussia, England, and Sweden. Napoleon made gigantic efforts to prepare France for the struggle. By the spring of 1813 he was at the head of a new army, numbering over 300,000 men. [Illustration: MAP OF CENTRAL EUROPE, 1815] Falling upon the allied armies of the Russians and Prussians, first at Lutzen and then at Bautzen, he gained a decisive victory upon both fields. Austria now appeared in the lists, and at Leipsic the French were met by the leagued armies of Europe. So many were the powers represented upon the renowned field, that it is known in history as the "Battle of the Nations." The combat lasted three days. Napoleon was defeated, and forced to retreat into France. THE ABDICATION OF NAPOLEON (1814).--The armies of the allies now poured over all the French frontiers. Napoleon's tremendous efforts to roll back the tide of invasion were all in vain. As the struggle became manifestly hopeless, his most trusted officers deserted and betrayed him. Paris surrendered to the allies. Napoleon was forced to abdicate, and the ancient House of the Bourbons was reestablished in the person of a brother of Louis XVI., who took the title of Louis XVIII. Napoleon was banished to the little island of Elba in the Mediterranean, being permitted to retain his title of Emperor, and to keep about him a few hundred of his old guards. But Elba was a very diminutive empire for one to whom the half of Europe seemed too small, and we shall not be surprised to learn that Napoleon was not content with it. THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA (Sept., 1814-June, 1815).--After the overthrow of Napoleon, commissioners of the different European states met at Vienna to readjust the map of Europe. It was a great task to harmonize the conflicting claims that came before the convention, and to effect a settlement of the continent that should satisfy all parties. But after nearly a year of negotiations and debate, an agreement respecting the boundaries and relations of the various states was reached. As we shall hereafter, in connection with the history of the separate countries, have occasion to say something respecting the relations of each to the Congress, we shall here say but a word regarding the temper of the assembly and the general character of its work. The Vienna commissioners seemed to have had but one thought and aim--to put everything back as near as possible in the shape that it was in before the Revolution. They had no care for the people; the princes were their only concern. The crowd of thrones that Napoleon had overturned were righted, and the old despots were invited to remount them. Italy and Germany were divided among a horde of petty tyrants. In Spain and Naples the old Bourbon families were re-instated, and the former despotisms renewed. In short, the clock was set back to the hour when the Bastile was attacked. Everything that had happened since was utterly ignored. But the Revolution had destroyed privilege as expressed in the effete feudal aristocracies of Europe, and impaired beyond restoration the monstrous doctrine of the divine right of kings. An attempt to bring these things back again was an attempt to restore life to the dead,--to set up again the fallen Dagon in his place. Notwithstanding, the commissioners at Vienna, blind to the spirit and tendencies of the times, did set up once more the broken idol,--only, however, to see it flung down again by the memorable social upheavals of the next half century. The kings had had their Congress: the people were to have theirs,--in 1820 and '30 and '48. THE HUNDRED DAYS (March 20-June 29, 1815).--The allies who placed Louis XVIII. upon the French throne set back the boundaries of France as nearly as possible to the lines they occupied in 1792. In like manner the king himself, seemingly utterly oblivious to the spirit and tendencies of the times, as soon as he was in possession of the ancient inheritance of his family, began to put back everything just as it was before the reforms of the Revolution. He always alluded to the year he began to rule as the nineteenth of his reign, thus affecting to ignore entirely the government of the republic and of the empire. The result of this reactionary policy was widespread dissatisfaction throughout France. Many began to desire the return of Napoleon, and the wish was perhaps what gave rise to the report which was spread about that he would come back with the spring violets. In the month of March, 1815, as the commissioners of the various powers were sitting at Vienna rearranging the landmarks and boundaries obliterated by the French inundation, news was brought to them that Napoleon had escaped from Elba and was in France. At first the members of the Congress were incredulous, regarding the thing as a jest, and were with difficulty convinced of the truth of the report. Taking advantage of the general dissatisfaction with the rule of the restored Bourbons, Napoleon had resolved upon a bold push for the recovery of his crown. Landing with a few followers at one of the southern ports of France, he aroused all the country with one of his stirring addresses, and then immediately pushed on towards Paris. Never was the changeable, impulsive character of the French people better illustrated than now; and never was better exhibited the wonderful personal magnetism of Napoleon. His journey to the capital was one continuous ovation. One regiment after another, forgetting their recent oath of loyalty to the Bourbons, hastened to join his train. His old generals and soldiers embraced him with transports of joy. Louis XVIII., deserted by his army, was left helpless, and, as Napoleon approached the gates of Paris, fled from his throne. Napoleon desired peace with the sovereigns of Europe; but they did not think the peace of the continent could be maintained so long as he sat upon the French throne. For the seventh and last time the allies leagued their armies to crush the man of destiny. A million of men poured over the frontiers of France. Hoping to overwhelm the armies of the allies by striking them one after another before they had time to unite, Napoleon moved swiftly into Belgium with an army of 130,000, in order to crush there the English and Prussians. He first fell in with and defeated the Prussian army under Bluecher, and then faced the English at Waterloo (June 18, 1815). The story of Waterloo need not be told,--how all day the French broke their columns in vain on the English squares; how, at the critical moment at the close of the day, Bluecher with a fresh force of 30,000 Prussians turned the tide of battle; and how the famous Old Guard, that knew how to die but not how to surrender, made its last charge, and left its hitherto invincible squares upon the lost field. A second time Napoleon was forced to abdicate, and a second time Louis XVIII. was lifted by the allies upon his unstable throne. Bonaparte desired to be allowed to retire to America, but his enemies believed that his presence there would not be consistent with the safety of Europe. Consequently he was banished to the island of St. Helena, in the South Atlantic, and there closely guarded by the British until his death, in 1821. 2. FRANCE SINCE THE SECOND RESTORATION (1815-). CHARACTER OF THE PERIOD.--The history of France since the second restoration of the Bourbons may be characterized briefly. It has been simply a continuation of the Revolution, of the struggle between democratic and monarchical tendencies. The aim of the Revolution was to abolish privileges and establish rights,--to give every man lot and part in shaping the government under which he lives. These republican ideas and principles have, on the whole, notwithstanding repeated reverses, gained ground; for revolutions never move backward. There may be eddies and counter-currents in a river, but the steady and powerful sweep of the stream is ever onward towards the sea. Not otherwise is it with the great political and intellectual movements of history. THE REVOLUTION OF 1830.--Profiting by the lessons of The Hundred Days, Louis XVIII. ruled after the second restoration with reasonable heed to the results and changes effected by the Revolution. But upon the death of Louis in 1824 and the accession of Charles X., a reactionary policy was adopted. The new king seemed utterly incapable of profiting by the teachings of the Revolution. His blind, stubborn course gave rise to the saying, "A Bourbon learns nothing and forgets nothing." The result might have been foreseen. The people rose in revolt, and by one of those sudden movements for which Paris is so noted, the despot was driven into exile, and Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, was placed on the throne (1830). A new constitution was now given to France, and as Louis Philippe had travelled about the world considerably, and had experienced various vicissitudes of fortune,--having at one time been obliged to support himself by teaching mathematics,--the people regarded him as one of themselves, and anticipated much from their "Citizen King" and their reformed constitution. The French "July Revolution," as it is called, lighted the signal fires of liberty throughout Europe. In almost every country there were uprisings of the Liberals. Existing constitutions were so changed as to give the people a larger share in the government; and where there were no constitutions, original charters were granted. In some instances, indeed, the uprisings had no other result than that of rendering the despotic governments against which they were directed more cruel and tyrannical than they were before; yet, on the whole, a decided impulse was given to the cause of constitutional, republican government. [Footnote: It was at this time that Belgium became an independent state; for upon the downfall of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1815, the Congress of Vienna had made the Low Countries into a single kingdom, and given, the crown to a prince of the House of Orange. The Belgians now arose and declared themselves independent of Holland, adopted a liberal constitution, and elected Leopold I., of Saxe-Coburg, as their king (1831).] ESTABLISHMENT OF THE SECOND REPUBLIC (1848).--The reign of Louis Philippe up to 1848 was very unquiet, yet was not marked by any disturbance of great importance. But during all this time the ideas of the Revolution were working among the people, and the republican party was constantly gaining strength. Finally, in 1848, some unpopular measures of the government caused an uprising similar to that of 1830. Louis Philippe, under the assumed name of Mr. Smith, fled into England. The Second Republic was now established. An election being ordered, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of the great Napoleon, was chosen president of the new republic (Dec. 20, 1848). The truth of the first Napoleon's declaration, which we have before quoted, that a revolution in France is sure to be followed by a revolution throughout Europe, was now illustrated anew. Almost every throne upon the continent felt the shock of the French Revolution of 1848. The constitutions of many of the surrounding states again underwent great changes in the interest of the people and of liberty. "It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that during the month of March, 1848, not a single day passed without a constitution being granted somewhere." France had made another of her irresistible invasions of the states of Europe--"an invasion of ideas." THE SECOND EMPIRE (1852-1870).--The life of the Second Republic spanned only three years. By almost exactly the same steps as those by which his uncle had mounted the French throne, Louis Napoleon now also ascended to the imperial dignity, crushing the republic as he rose. Dissensions having arisen between the President and the Legislative Assembly, he suddenly dissolved that body, placed its leaders under arrest, and then appealed to the country to indorse what he had done. By a most extraordinary vote of 7,437,216 to 640,737 the nation approved of the President's _coup d'état_, and rewarded him for it by electing him President for ten years, which was virtually making him dictator. The next year he was made emperor, and took the title of Napoleon III. (1852). The important political events of the reign of Napoleon III. were the Crimean War (1853-1856), the Austro-Sardinian War (1859), and the Franco- Prussian War (1870-1871). The first and second of these wars need not detain us at this time, as we shall speak of them hereafter in connection with Russian and Italian affairs. The third war was with Prussia. The real causes of this war were French jealousy of the growing power of Prussia, and the Emperor's anxiety to strengthen his government in the affections of the French people by reviving the military glory of the reign of his great-uncle. The pretext upon which the war was actually declared was that Prussia was scheming to augment her influence by allowing a Prussian prince (Leopold of Hohenzollern) to become a candidate for the vacant throne of Spain (see p. 705). The French armies invaded Germany, but were pushed back by the Prussians and their allies, who followed the retreating enemy across the frontier, defeated one large French army at Gravelotte (Aug. 18, 1870) and imprisoned it in Metz, captured the strong fortress of Sedan,--making a prisoner here of the emperor himself, [Footnote: After the war Louis Napoleon found an asylum in England (at Chiselhurst), where he died January 9, 1873.]--and then advancing upon Paris, forced that city, after an investment of a few months, to capitulate (Jan. 28, 1871). The terms of the treaty that followed were that France should surrender to Germany the greater portion of the Rhenish provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, pay an indemnity of 5,000,000,000 francs (about $1,000,000,000), and consent to the occupation of certain portions of French territory until the fine was paid. The Red Republicans, or Communists, of Paris, indignant at the terms of the treaty, shut the gates of the city, and called the population to arms, declaring that the capital would never submit to see France thus dismembered and humiliated. A second reign of terror was now set up. The Tuileries, the Hotel de Ville, and many other public buildings were burned. The government at length succeeded in suppressing the Anarchists, and restoring order. THE THIRD REPUBLIC (1871).--The organization of the Third Republic was now completed. M. Thiers, the historian, was made its first president [Footnote: The successors of M. Thiers have been Marshal MacMahon (1873- 1879), M. Grévy (1879-1887), and M. Carnot (1887).] (Aug. 31, 1871). Since the establishment of the republic, its enemies have been busy and vigilant, hoping to see democratic institutions discredited and the monarchy revived. But it is believed that each succeeding year of republican government in France strengthens the faith of the French people in their ability to govern themselves, and that the history of France as a monarchy is ended. CHAPTER LX. RUSSIA SINCE THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA. ALEXANDER I. AND THE HOLY ALLIANCE.--Upon the downfall of Napoleon, Alexander I. (1801-1825) of Russia organized the celebrated union known as the _Holy Alliance_. This was a league embracing as its chief members Russia, Austria, and Prussia, the ostensible object of which was the maintenance of religion, peace, and order in Europe, and the reduction to practice in politics of the maxims of Christ. The several sovereigns entering into the union promised to be fathers to their people, to rule in love and with reference solely to the promotion of the welfare of their subjects, and to help one another as brothers to maintain just government and prevent wrong. All this had a very millennial look. But the "Holy Alliance" very soon became practically a league for the maintenance of absolute principles of government, in opposition to the liberal tendencies of the age. Under the pretext of maintaining religion, justice, and order, the sovereigns of the union acted in concert to suppress every aspiration among their subjects for political liberty. Yet, when Alexander founded the alliance, he meant all that he said. But conspiracies among his own subjects, and popular uprisings throughout Europe, all tended to create in him a revulsion of feeling. From an ardent apostle of liberal ideas, such as he was during all the earlier part of his reign, he was transformed into a violent absolutist, and spent all his later years in aiding the despotic rulers of Spain, Italy, and Germany to crush every uprising among their subjects for political freedom. This reactionary policy of Alexander caused bitter disappointment among the Liberals in Russia, the number of whom was large, for the Russian armies that helped to crush Napoleon came back from the West with many new and liberal ideas awakened by what they had seen and heard and experienced. THE RUSSO-TURKISH WAR OF 1828-1829.--In 1825 Alexander I. was succeeded by his brother Nicholas I. (1825-1855), "a terrible incarnation of autocracy." He carried out the later policy of his predecessor, and strove to shut out from his empire all the liberalizing influences of Western Europe. In 1828, taking advantage of the embarrassment of the Sultan through a stubborn insurrection in Greece, [Footnote: This was the struggle known as the "War of Grecian Independence." It was characterized by the most frightful barbarities on the part of the Turks. Lord Byron enlisted on the side of the Greeks. The result of the war was the freeing of Greece from Turkish rule. England, France, and Russia became the guardians of the little state, the crown of which was given to Prince Otto of Bavaria (Otto I., 1832-1862).] Nicholas declared war against the Ottoman Porte. The Balkans were quickly passed, and the victorious armies of the Czar were in full march upon Constantinople, when their advance was checked by the jealous interference of England and Austria, through whose mediation the war was brought to a close by the Peace of Adrianople (1829). Nicholas restored all his conquests in Europe, but held some provinces in Asia which gave him control of the eastern shore of the Euxine. Greece was liberated, and Servia became virtually independent of the Sultan. Thus the result of the contest was greatly to diminish the strength and influence of Turkey, and correspondingly to increase the power and prestige of Russia. REVOLUTION IN POLAND (1830-1832).--The Congress of Vienna (1815) re- established Poland as a constitutional kingdom dependent upon Russia. But the rule of the Czar over the Poles was tyrannical, and they were impatient of an opportunity to throw off the Russian yoke. The revolutionary movements of the year 1830 sent a wave of hope through Poland; the people arose and drove out the Russian garrisons. But the armies of the Czar quickly poured over the frontiers of the revolted state, and before the close of the year 1831 the Polish patriots were once more under the foot of their Russian master. It was a hard fate that awaited the unhappy nation. Their constitution was taken away, and Poland was made a province of the Russian empire (1832). Multitudes were banished to Siberia, while thousands more expatriated themselves, seeking an asylum in England, America, and other countries. Of all the peoples that rose for freedom in 1830 none suffered so cruel and complete an extinguishment of their hopes as did the patriot Poles.[Footnote: For Russia's part in the affairs of the revolutionary years 1848-49, see p. 702.] THE CRIMEAN WAR (1853-1856).--A celebrated phrase applied to the Ottoman Porte by the Czar Nicholas casts a good deal of light upon the circumstances that led to the Crimean War. "We have on our hands," said the Czar, "a sick man--a very sick man; I tell you frankly it would be a great misfortune if he should give us the slip some of these days, especially if it happened before all the necessary arrangements were made." Nicholas had cultivated friendly relations with the English government, and he now proposed that England and Russia, as the parties most directly interested, should divide the estate of the "sick man." England was to be allowed to take Egypt and Crete, while the Turkish provinces in Europe were to be taken under the protection of the Czar, which meant of course the complete absorption, in due time, of all Southeastern Europe into the Russian empire. A pretence for hastening the dissolution of the sick man was not long wanting. A quarrel between the Greek and Latin Christians at Jerusalem about the holy places was made the ground by Nicholas for demanding of the Sultan the admission and recognition of a Russian protectorate over all Greek Christians in the Ottoman dominions. The demand was rejected, and Nicholas prepared for war. The Sultan appealed to the Western powers for help. England and France responded to the appeal, and later Sardinia joined her forces to theirs. England, rejecting the Czar's proposal of a division of the dying man's estate, fought to prevent Russia from getting through the Bosporus to the Mediterranean, and thus endangering her route to her Eastern possessions. The French emperor fought to avenge Moscow, and to render his new imperial throne attractive to his people by surrounding it with the glamour of successful war. Sardinia was led to join England and France through the policy of the far-sighted Cavour, who would thus have the Sardinians win the gratitude of these powers, so that in the next conflict with Austria the Italian patriots might have some strong friends to help them. The main interest of the struggle centred about Sebastopol, in the Crimea, Russia's great naval and military depot, and the key to the Euxine. Around this strongly fortified place were finally gathered 175,000 soldiers of the allies. The siege, which lasted eleven months, was one of the most memorable and destructive in history. The Russian engineer Todleben earned a great fame through his masterly defence of the works. The English "Light Brigade" earned immortality in their memorable charge at Balaklava. The French troops, through their dashing bravery, brought great fame to the emperor who had sent them to gather glory for his throne. The Russians were at length forced to evacuate the place. They left it, however, a "second Moscow." The war was now soon brought to an end by the Treaty of Paris (1856). Every provision of the treaty had in view the maintenance of the integrity of the empire of the Sultan, and the restraining of the ambition of the Czar. Russia was given back Sebastopol, but was required to give up some territory at the mouth of the Danube, whereby her frontier was pushed back from that river; to abandon all claims to a protectorate over any of the subjects of the Porte; to agree not to raise any more fortresses on the Euxine nor keep upon that sea any armed ships, save what might be needed for police service. The Christian population of the Turkish dominions were placed under the guardianship of the great powers, who were to see that the Sublime Porte fulfilled its promise of granting perfect civil and religious equality and protection to all its subjects. EMANCIPATION OF THE SERFS (1858-1863).--Alexander II. (1855-1881), who came to the Russian throne in the midst of the Crimean War, abandoned the narrow and intolerant system of his predecessor Nicholas, and reverting as it were to the policy of Peter the Great, labored for popular reform, and for the introduction into his dominions of the ideas and civilization of Western Europe. The reform which will ever give his name a place in the list of those rulers who have conferred singular benefits upon their subjects, was the emancipation, by a series of imperial edicts, of the Russian serfs, who made up more than 45,000,000 of the population of the empire. More than half of these serfs belonged to the Crown, and were known as Crown peasants. The Crown serfs were only _nominal_ bondsmen, their servitude consisting in scarcely more than the payment of a light rent. The serfs of individual proprietors, however, might be designated as semi-slaves. Thus, their owners could flog them in case of disobedience, but could not sell them individually as slaves are sold; yet when a proprietor sold his estate, the whole community of serfs living upon it passed with it to the purchaser. Besides the emancipation measure, Alexander's name is associated with other reforms, the earlier part of his reign especially being characterized by a very liberal spirit. This liberal policy was followed until the revolt of the Poles in 1863, when Alexander was led to adopt a more reactionary policy, a policy which persistently pursued has yielded bitter fruit in Nihilism. THE RUSSO-TURKISH WAR OF 1877-1878.--Anxiously as the Treaty of Paris had provided for the permanent settlement of the Eastern Question, barely twenty-two years had passed before it was again up before Europe, and Russia and Turkey were again in arms. The Sultan could not or would not give to his Christian subjects that equal protection of the laws which he had solemnly promised should be given. The Moslem hatred of the Christians was constantly leading to disturbance and outrage. In 1860 there was a great massacre of Syrian Christians by the Druses and Turks, and in 1876 occurred in Bulgaria the so-called "Bulgarian atrocities," massacres of Christian men, women, and children, more revolting perhaps than any others of which history tells. The greatest indignation was kindled throughout Europe. The Russian armies were set in motion (1877). Kars in Asia Minor and Plevna in European Turkey fell into the hands of the Russians, and the armies of the Czar were once more in full march upon Constantinople, with the prospect of soon ending forever Turkish rule on European soil, when England, as in 1829, interfered, and by the movements of her iron-clads in the Bosporus again arrested the triumphant march of the Russians. [Illustration: SOUTH EASTERN EUROPE According to the Treaty of Berlin, 1878.] [Illustration: THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN. (By Anton von Werner, Prussian Court Painter)] The Treaty of Berlin (1878) adjusted once more the disorganized affairs of the Sublime Porte, and bolstered as well as was possible the "sick man." But he lost a good part of his estate. Out of those provinces of his dominions in Europe in which the Christian population was most numerous, there was created a group of wholly independent or half-independent states. The absolute independence of Roumania, Servia, and Montenegro was formally acknowledged; Bulgaria, north of the Balkans, was to enjoy self- government, but was to pay a tribute to the Porte; East Roumelia was to have a Christian governor, but was to remain under the dominion of the Sultan. The Balkans were thus made the northern boundary of the Turkish empire in Europe. Bosnia and Herzegovina were given to the Austro- Hungarian monarchy. Russia acquired some places in Armenia, and also received Bessarabia on the Lower Danube. In a word, Russia regained everything she had lost in the Crimean struggle, while Turkey was shorn of half her European possessions. There were left in Europe under the direct authority of the Sultan barely 5,000,000 subjects, of which number about one-half are Christians. England alone is responsible for the work of emancipation not having been made complete. NIHILISM AND THE EXILE SYSTEM.--Russian Nihilism is a smothered French Revolution. It is the form which Liberalism has taken under the repressions of a despotic autocracy; for the government of Russia is a perfect absolutism, the Czar alone being legislator, judge, and executive for the Russian nation of 85,000,000 souls. He makes laws, levies taxes, expends the revenue, and condemns his subjects to exile or death, according to his own will, without let or hindrance. The terrible character of the repressive measures of the government is revealed by the fact that during the years 1879 and 1880 sixty thousand persons were, _without trial_, sent into exile in Siberia. [Footnote: On the Exile System of Russia read the excellent series of articles by George Kennan in _The Century Magazine_ for 1888-9.] It is a principle of the extreme Nihilists, that assassination is a righteous means of reform. Within the last few years many attempts have been made upon the life of the reigning Czar. On March 13, 1881, Alexander II. was killed by means of a bomb filled with dynamite. The son of the murdered Czar who now came to the throne as Alexander III., immediately instituted a still more sternly repressive system than that pursued by his father, whom he seemed to regard as the victim of the over- liberal policy of the earlier years of his reign. It appears to be his determination to close his empire against the entrance of all liberal or progressive ideas, political, religious, and scientific, of Western Europe. A rigid censorship of the press is being maintained (1889), and the writings of such authors as Huxley, Spencer, Agassiz, Lyell, and Adam Smith, are forbidden circulation. There can be but one outcome to this contest between the "Autocrat of all the Russias" and his subjects. Either through wise concessions on the part of its rulers, or through the throes of a terrible revolution, like that of 1789 in France, the Russian empire will sooner or later come to possess a constitutional representative government. The Czar of Russia is simply fighting the hopeless battle that has been fought and lost by the despotic sovereigns of every other European country--a battle which has the same invariable issue, the triumph of liberal principles and the admission of the people to a participation in the government. CHAPTER LXI. GERMAN FREEDOM AND UNITY. FORMATION OF THE GERMAN CONFEDERATION (1815).--The German states, thirty- nine in number, were reorganized by the Congress of Vienna as a Confederation, with the emperor of Austria President of the league. A Diet formed of representatives, of the several states was to settle all questions of dispute between the members of the Confederation, and determine matters of general concern, In all affairs concerning itself alone, each state was to retain its independence. It might carry on war with foreign states, or enter into alliance with them, but it must do nothing to harm any member of the Confederation. The articles of union, in a spirit of concession to the growing sentiment of the times, provided that all sects of Christians should enjoy equal toleration, and that every state should establish a constitutional form of government. Under this scheme of union Germany was to rest half a century--until 1866. Though Austria was nominally head of the Confederation, Prussia was actually the most powerful member of the league. THE UPRISINGS OF 1830: FIRST STEP TOWARDS FREEDOM.--For a long time previous to the French Revolution there had been gradually forming among the German people a double sentiment--a longing for freedom and for unity. It was the influence of the rising patriotic party that had secured the provision in the act of confederation which required that all the princes of the union should give their states a representative form of government. But the faces of these rulers, like those of the restored Bourbons in France, were turned towards the past. They opposed all changes that should give the people any part in the government, and clung to the old order of things. We have seen what was the consequence of the reactionary policy of the Bourbons in France,--how in 1830 the people arose, drove out Charles X., and set upon the throne the "Citizen King," Louis Philippe. Events ran exactly the same course in Germany. The princes refused or neglected to carry out in good faith that article of the act of confederation which provided for representative governments in all the German states. The natural result was widespread discontent among the people. Consequently, when the French Revolution of 1830 occurred, a sympathetic thrill shot through Germany, and in places the popular party made threatening demonstrations against their tyrannical rulers. The princes of several of the smaller states were forced to give to their peoples the liberal constitutions that were demanded. Thus a little was gained for freedom, though after the flutter of the revolutionary year the princes again took up their retrograde policy, and did all in their power to check the popular movement and keep governmental matters out of the hands of the people. THE CUSTOMS UNION: FIRST STEP TOWARDS UNITY.--Just about this time the first step was taken towards the real union of the German states through the formation of what is known as the _Customs Union_. This was a sort of commercial treaty binding those states that became parties to it, and eventually all the states save Austria acceded to the arrangement, to adopt among themselves the policy of free trade; that is, there were to be no duties levied on goods passing from one state of the Union to another belonging to it. The greatest good resulting from the Union was, that it taught the people to think of a more perfect national union. And as Prussia was a prominent promoter and the centre of the trade confederation, it accustomed the Germans to look to her as their head and chief. UPRISING OF 1848: A SECOND STEP TOWARDS FREEDOM.--The history of Germany from the uprising of 1830 to that of 1848 may be summarized by saying that during all these years the people were steadily growing more and more earnest in their demands for liberal forms of government, while the princes, strangely blind to the spirit and tendency of the times, were stubbornly refusing all concessions that should take from themselves any of their power as absolute rulers. In some instances the constitutions already granted were annulled, or their articles were disregarded. Finally, in 1848, news flew across the Rhine of the uprising in France against the reactionary government of Louis Philippe, and the establishment by the French people of a new republic. The intelligence kindled a flame of excitement throughout Germany. The liberal party everywhere arose and demanded constitutional government. Almost all of the princes of the minor states yielded to the popular clamor, and straightway adopted the liberal measures and instituted the reforms demanded. In Austria and Prussia, however, the popular party carried their point only after demonstrations that issued in bloodshed. Prince Metternich, the celebrated prime minister of the Emperor of Austria, was forced to flee the country, because he had opposed so obstinately all the demands of the Liberals. The Revolution of 1848 thus effected much for the cause of liberal government in Germany. The movements of that revolutionary year brought into the hands of the people much more power than they had ever before exercised. HUNGARY: KOSSUTH.--Meanwhile the Austrian emperor was having serious trouble with his Hungarian subjects. Led by the distinguished orator Louis Kossuth, they had revolted, and declared their independence. A memorable struggle now followed (1848-1849), in which the patriotic Hungarians made a noble fight for freedom, but were at last overpowered and crushed by the combined Austrian and Russian armies. Hungary was made a second Poland. RIVALRY BETWEEN AUSTRIA AND PRUSSIA.--While the attention of Austria was directed to the suppression of the Hungarian rebels, Prussia proposed a plan for the unification of Germany, with herself as the head of the body, Austria being excluded from the confederation. Several of the states joined Prussia in this move, and an alliance called the "German Union" was formed. Austria watched with the greatest concern this bold move of her rival for leadership in German affairs, a move whereby she was to be pushed aside entirely, and just as soon as the Hungarian trouble was composed, she made a counter-move to that of Prussia, by forming a confederation of all those states which she could persuade to accept her leadership. The state of Germany at this moment, divided between the allies of Austria and those of Prussia, may be likened to the condition of Greece at the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, when the Hellenic states had grouped themselves, according to their sympathies, about Athens and Sparta. It does not require a second Pericles to see war lowering in the horizon. THE SEVEN WEEKS' WAR BETWEEN AUSTRIA AND PRUSSIA (1866).--The inevitable war which was to decide whether Austria or Prussia should be leader in German affairs came on apace. In the year 1861, Frederick William IV. of Prussia died, and his brother, already an old man of sixty, yet destined to be for more than a score of years the central figure in the movement for German unity, came to the Prussian throne as William I. (1861-1888). He soon called to his side the now distinguished Otto von Bismarck as his prime minister, a man of wonderful energy and decision, whose policies have shaped German affairs for a quarter of a century. He saw clearly enough how the vexed question between Austria and Prussia was to be settled--"by blood and iron." His appearance at the head of Prussian affairs marks an epoch in history. He was in disposition a conservative and despot, and the liberal party distrusted and hated him. Early in 1866 the war opened, the occasion of it being a dispute in regard to some petty Danish provinces (Schleswig and Holstein). Almost all of the lesser states grouped themselves about Austria. Prussia, however, found a ready ally in Italy (see p. 713), which served to divert a part of the Austrian forces. Yet it seemed an unequal contest, the population of Prussia at this time not being more than one-third (19,000,000) that of the states arrayed against her. But Bismarck had been preparing Prussia for the struggle which he had long foreseen, and now the little kingdom, with the best disciplined army in the world, headed by the great commander Von Moltke, was to astonish the world by a repetition of her achievements under the inspiration of Frederick the Great. The Prussian armies, numbering more than a quarter of a million of men, began to move about the middle of June. Battle followed battle in rapid succession. Almost every encounter proved a victory for the Prussians. On the third of July was fought the great battle of Sadowa, in Bohemia. It was Austria's Waterloo. The emperor was forced to sue for peace, and on the twenty-third day of August the Peace of Prague was signed. The long debate between Austria and Prussia was over. By the terms of the treaty Austria was shut out from participation in German affairs. Prussia was now without a rival in Germany. ESTABLISHMENT OF THE NORTH-GERMAN UNION (1867).--Now quickly followed the reorganization of the northern states of Germany into what was called the North-German Union, under the leadership of Prussia. Prussia was to have command of the entire military force of the several states composing the league, the Prussian king being President of the Union. A constitution was adopted which provided that the affairs of the confederation should be managed by a Diet, the members of which were to be chosen by the different states. Thus was a long step taken towards German unity. Bismarck's policy of "blood and iron," though seemingly rough and brutal, now promised to prove a cure indeed for all of Germany's troubles. Though so much had been effected, there was still remaining much to be desired. The states to the south of the Main--Baden, Bavaria, and Würtemberg--were yet wanting to complete the unification of the Fatherland. Many patriots both north and south of the dividing line earnestly desired the perfect union of North and South. But the Catholics of the southern states were bitterly opposed to Prussia's being exalted to the chief place in Germany, because she was Protestant, while many of the democratic party were loth to see Germany reconstructed under the supremacy of Prussia on account of the repressive and despotic character of her government. But the fervid enthusiasm awakened by another successful war serves to weld the states of both North and South into a firm and close union, and complete the work of Germany's unification. [Illustration: EUROPE 1880] THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR (1870-1871).--It will be recalled with what jealousy France viewed the rise to power of the House of Hohenzollern. All of her old bitter hostility to the House of Austria seems to have been transferred to her successful rival in the North. So when in 1870 the vacant throne of Spain was offered to Leopold, a member of the Hohenzollern family, the Emperor Napoleon III. affected to see in this a scheme on the part of the House of Hohenzollern to unite the interests of Prussia and of Spain, just as Austria and Spain were united, with such disastrous consequences to the peace of Europe, under the princes of the House of Hapsburg. Even after Leopold, to avoid displeasing France, had declined the proffered crown, the Emperor Napoleon demanded of King William assurance that no member of the House of Hohenzollern should ever become a candidate for the Spanish throne. The demand was rudely made, was refused, and the two nations rushed together in a struggle which was destined to prove terribly disastrous to France, and memorable to Germany for the glory and unity it won for her. The important thing for us to notice here is the enthusiasm that the war awakened not only throughout the states of the North-German Confederation, but among the states of the South as well, which placed their armies at the disposal of King William. The cause was looked upon as a national one, and a patriotic fervor stirred the hearts of all Germans alike. ESTABLISHMENT OF THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE (1871).--The astonishing successes of the German armies on French soil created among Germans everywhere such patriotic pride in the Fatherland, that all the obstacles which had hitherto prevented anything more than a partial union of the members of the Germanic body were now swept out of the way by an irresistible tide of national sentiment. While the siege of Paris was progressing, commissioners were sent by the southern states to Versailles, the headquarters of King William, to represent to him that they were ready and anxious to enter the North-German Union. Thus in rapid succession Baden, Bavaria, and Würtemberg were received into the Confederation, the name of which was now changed to that of the German Confederation. [Illustration: PROCLAMATION OF KING WILLIAM AS EMPEROR OF GERMANY, AT VERSAILLES, JANUARY, 1871. (By Anton von Werner, Prussian Court Painter.)] Scarcely was this accomplished, when, upon the suggestion of the king of Bavaria, King William, who now bore the title of _President_ of the Confederation, was given the title of _German Emperor_, which honor was to be hereditary in his family. On the 18th of January, 1871, within the Palace of Versailles,--the siege of Paris being still in progress,-- amidst indescribable enthusiasm, the Imperial dignity was formally conferred upon King William, and Germany became a constitutional Empire. Thus amidst the throes of war the free German _nation_ was born. The German people, after long centuries of division and servitude, had at last found Freedom and Unity. CHAPTER LXII. LIBERATION AND UNIFICATION OF ITALY. ITALY AT THE DOWNFALL OF NAPOLEON.--The Italian people, as being the most dangerously infected with the ideas of the Revolution, were, by the reactionary Congress of Vienna, condemned to the most strict and ignominious slavery. The former commonwealths were forbidden to restore their ancient institutions, while the petty principalities were handed over in almost every case to the tyrants or the heirs of the tyrants who had ruled them before the Revolution. Austria appropriated Venetia and Lombardy, and from Northern Italy assumed to direct the affairs of the whole peninsula. Tuscany, Modena, Parma, and Piacenza were given to princes of the House of Hapsburg. Naples was restored to its old Bourbon rulers. The Pope and Victor Emmanuel I., king of Sardinia, were the only native rulers. "Italy was divided on the map, but she had made up her mind to be one." The Revolution had sown the seeds of Liberty, and time only was needed for their maturing. The Cisalpine, the Ligurian, the Parthenopæan, the Tiberine republics (see pp. 668, 670), short-lived though they were, had awakened in the people an aspiration for self-government; while Napoleon's kingdom of Italy (see p. 676, n.), though equally delusive, had nevertheless inspired thousands of Italian patriots with the sentiment of national unity. Thus the French Revolution, disappointing as seemed its issue, really imparted to Italy her first impulse in the direction of freedom and of national organization. Arbitrary Rule of the Restored Princes.--The setting up of the overturned thrones meant, of course, the re-instating of the old tyrannies. The restored despots came back with an implacable hatred of everything French. They swept away all French institutions that were supposed to tend in the least to Liberalism. At Rome even vaccination and street-lamps, French innovations, were abolished. In Sardinia, nothing that bore the French stamp, nothing that had been set up by French hands, was allowed to remain. Even the French furniture in the royal palace at Turin was thrown out of the windows, and the French plants in the royal gardens were pulled up root and branch. THE CARBONARI: UPRISING OF 1820-1821.--The natural results of the arbitrary rule and retrogressive policy of the restored princes was deep and widespread discontent. The French Revolution, as we have said, had sown broadcast in Italy the seeds of liberty, and their growth could not be checked by the repressions of tyranny. An old secret organization, the members of which were known as, the Carbonari (charcoal-burners), formed the nucleus about which gathered the elements of disaffection. In 1820, incited by a revolution in Spain, the Carbonari raised an insurrection in Naples, and forced King Ferdinand, who was ruler of both Naples and Sicily, now united under the name of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, to grant his Neapolitan subjects what was known as the Spanish Constitution of 1812. But Prince Metternich (see p. 702), who had been watching the doings of the Liberal party in Naples, interfered to mar their plans. He reasoned that Lombardy and Venetia could be kept free from the contagion of Liberalism only by the stamping out of the infection wherever else in Italy it might show itself. Hence 60,000 Austrian troops were sent to crush the revolutionists. Ferdinand was re-instated in his former absolute authority, and everything was put back on the old footing. Meanwhile a similar revolution was running its course in Piedmont. King Victor Emmanuel I., rather than yield to the demands of his people for a constitutional government, gave up his crown, and was succeeded by his brother Charles Felix, who, by threatening to call to his aid the Austrian army, compelled his subjects to cease their clamor about kings ruling, not by the grace of God, but by the will of the people. THE REVOLUTION OF 1830-1831.--For just ten years all Italy lay in sullen vassalage to Austria. Then the revolutionary years of 1830-31 witnessed a repetition of the scenes of 1820-21. The revolution in France which placed Louis Philippe upon the French throne (see p. 688) sent a tremor of excitement and hope through all Italy. The centre of the revolution was the Papal States. But the presence of Austrian troops, who, "true to their old principle of hurrying with their extinguishers to any spot in Italy where a crater opened," had poured into Central Italy, resulted in the speedy quenching of the flames of the insurrection. THE THREE PARTIES: PLANS FOR NATIONAL ORGANIZATION.--Twice now had Austrian armies crushed the aspirations of the Italians after national unity and freedom. Italian hatred of these foreign intermeddlers who were causing them to miss their destiny, grew ever more intense, and "death to the Germans" became the watch-cry that united all the peoples of the peninsula. But while united in their deadly hatred of the Austrians, the Italians were divided in their views respecting the best plan for national organization. One party, known as "Young Italy," founded and inspired by the patriot Joseph Mazzini, wanted a republic; another party wanted a confederation of the various states, with the Pope as chief; while still a third wished to see Italy a constitutional monarchy, with the king of Sardinia at its head. THE REVOLUTION OF 1848-1849.--After the suppression of the uprising of 1830, until the approach of the momentous year of 1848, Italy lay restless under the heel of her oppressor. The republican movements throughout the continent of Europe which characterized that year of revolutions, inspired the Italian patriots to make another attempt to achieve independence and nationality. Everywhere throughout the peninsula they rose against their despotic rulers, and forced them to grant constitutions and institute reforms. But through the intervention of the Austrians and the French [Footnote: This interference by the French in Italian affairs was instigated by their jealousy of Austria, and by the anxious desire of Louis Napoleon to win the good-will of the Catholic clergy in France.] the third Italian revolution was thwarted. By the autumn of the year 1849 the Liberals were everywhere crushed, their leaders executed, imprisoned, or driven into exile, and the dream of Italy's unity and freedom dispelled by the hard present fact of renewed tyranny and foreign domination. Much, however, had been gained. The patriotic party had had revealed to itself its strength, and at the same time the necessity of united action, --of the adoption of a single policy. Henceforth the Republicans and Federalists were more inclined to give up as impracticable their plans of national organization, and with the Constitutionalists to look upon the kingdom of Sardinia as the only possible basis and nucleus of a free and united Italy. VICTOR EMMANUEL II., COUNT CAVOUR, AND GARIBALDI.--Sardinia was a state which had gradually grown into power in the northwest corner of the peninsula. The throne was at this time held by Victor Emmanuel II. (1849- 1878). To him it was that the hopes of the Italian patriots now turned. Nor were these hopes to be disappointed. Victor Emmanuel was the destined liberator of Italy, or perhaps it would be more correct to say that his was the name in which the achievement was to be effected by the wise policy of his great minister Count Cavour, and the reckless daring of the hero Garibaldi. Count Cavour was a man of large hopes and large plans. His single aim and purpose was the independence and unification of Italy. He was the genius of Italian liberty. Garibaldi, "the hero of the red shirt," was the knight-errant of Italian independence. Though yet barely past middle life, he had led a career singularly crowded with varied experiences and romantic adventures. Because of his violent republicanism, he had already been twice exiled from Italy. THE AUSTRO-SARDINIAN WAR (1859-1860).--The hour for striking another blow for the freedom of Italy had now arrived. In 1859 Count Cavour, in the pursuance of his national policy for Italy, having first made a secret arrangement with the French emperor, gave Austria to understand that unless she granted Lombardy and Venetia free government and ceased to interfere in the affairs of the rest of Italy, Sardinia would declare war against her. Of course the Austrian government refused to accede to the demand, and almost immediately war followed. The French emperor, actuated probably less by gratitude for the aid of the Sardinian contingent in the Crimean struggle (see p.726) than by jealousy of Austria and the promise of Savoy and Nice in case of a successful issue of the war, supported the Sardinians with the armies of France. The two great victories of Magenta and Solferino seemed to promise to the allies a triumphant march to the Adriatic. But just now the threatening attitude of Prussia and other German states, in connection with other considerations, led Napoleon to enter upon negotiations of peace with the Austrian emperor at Villafranca. The outcome was that Austria retained Venice, but gave up to Sardinia the larger part of Lombardy. The Sardinians were bitterly disappointed that they did not get Venetia, and loudly accused the French emperor of having betrayed their cause, since at the outset he had promised them that he would free Italy from the mountains to the sea. But Sardinia found compensation for Venice in the accession of Tuscany, Modena, Parma, and Romagna, the peoples of which states, having discarded their old rulers, besought Victor Emmanuel to permit them to unite themselves to his kingdom. Thus, as the result of the war, the king of Sardinia had added to his subjects a population of 9,000,000. One long step was taken in the way of Italian unity and freedom. SICILY AND NAPLES ADDED TO VICTOR EMMANUEL'S KINGDOM (1860).--The romantic and adventurous daring of the hero Garibaldi now added Sicily and Naples to the possessions of Victor Emmanuel, and changed the kingdom of Sardinia into the kingdom of Italy. The king of Naples and Sicily, Francis II., was a typical despot. In 1860 his subjects rose in revolt. Victor Emmanuel and his minister Cavour were in sympathy with the movement, yet dared not send the insurgents aid through fear of arousing the jealousy of Austria and of France. But Garibaldi, untrammelled by any such considerations, having gathered a band of a thousand or more volunteers, set sail from Genoa for Sicily, where upon landing he assumed the title of Dictator of Sicily for Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy, and quickly drove the troops of King Francis out of the island. Then crossing to the mainland, he marched triumphantly to Naples, whose inhabitants hailed him tumultuously as their Deliverer. The Neapolitans and Sicilians now voted almost unanimously for annexation to the Sardinian kingdom. The hero Garibaldi, having first met and hailed his Sovereign "King of Italy," surrendered his dictatorship, and retired to the island of Capri, in the bay of Naples. He had earned the lasting gratitude of his country. Thus was another great step taken in the unification of Italy. Nine millions more of Italians had become the subjects of Victor Emmanuel. There was now wanting to the complete union of Italy only Venetia and the Papal territories. VENETIA ADDED TO THE KINGDOM (1866).--The Seven Weeks' War which broke out between Prussia and Austria in 1866 afforded the Italian patriots the opportunity for which they were watching to make Venetia a part of the kingdom of Italy. Victor Emmanuel formed an alliance with the king of Prussia, one of the conditions of which was that no peace should be made with Austria until she had surrendered Venetia to Italy. The speedy issue of the war added the coveted territory to the dominions of Victor Emmanuel. Rome alone was now lacking to the complete unification of Italy. ROME BECOMES THE CAPITAL (1870).--After the liberation of Naples and Sicily the city of Turin, the old capital of the Sardinian kingdom, was made the capital of the new kingdom of Italy. In 1865 the seat of government was transferred to Florence. But the Italians looked forward to the time when Rome, the ancient mistress of the peninsula and of the world, should be their capital. The power of the Pope, however, was upheld by the French, and this made it impossible for the Italians to have their will in this matter without a conflict with France. But events soon gave the coveted capital to the Italian government. In 1870 came the sharp, quick war between France and Prussia, and the French troops at Rome were hastily summoned home. Upon the overthrow of the French Monarchy and the establishment of the Republic, Victor Emmanuel was informed that France would no longer sustain the Papal power. The Italian government at once gave notice to the Pope that Rome would henceforth be considered a portion of the kingdom of Italy, and forthwith an Italian army entered the city, which by a vote of 133,681 to 1,507 joined itself to the Italian nation. The family was now complete. Rome was the capital of a free and united Italy. July 2, 1871, Victor Emmanuel [Footnote: In the early part of the year 1878 Victor Emmanuel died, and his son came to the throne, with the title of Humbert 1., the second king of Italy.] himself entered the city and took up his residence there. END OF THE TEMPORAL POWER OF THE POPE.--Through the extension of the authority of the Italian government over the Papal states, the Pope was despoiled of the last vestige of that temporal power wherewith Pepin and Charlemagne had invested the Bishops of Rome more than a thousand years before (see p. 404). The Papal troops were disbanded, but the Pope, Pius IX., still retained all his spiritual authority, the Vatican with its 11,000 chambers being reserved to him as a place of residence. Just a few months before the loss of his temporal sovereignty a great Ecumenical Council of the Roman Catholic Church had proclaimed the doctrine of Papal Infallibility, which declares decrees of the Pope "on questions of faith and morals" to be infallible. CONCLUSION.--Although there has been much antagonism between the Vatican and the Quirinal, that is, between the Pope and the Italian government, still reform and progress have marked Italian affairs since the events of 1870. A public system of education has been established; brigandage has been suppressed; agriculture has been encouraged; while the naval and military resources of the peninsula have been developed to such an extent that Italy, so recently the prey of foreign sovereigns, of petty native tyrants, and of adventurers, is now justly regarded as one of the great powers of Europe. [Illustration: QUEEN VICTORIA ON THE DAY OF HER CORONATION.] CHAPTER LXIII. ENGLAND SINCE THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA. THE THREE CHIEF MATTERS.--English history since the close of the Napoleonic wars embraces a multitude of events. A short chapter covering the entire period will possess no instructive value unless it reduces the heterogeneous mass of facts to some sort of unity by placing events in relation with their causes, and thus showing how they are connected with a few broad national movements or tendencies. Studying the period in this way, we shall find that very many of its leading events may be summed up under the three following heads: 1. Progress towards democracy; 2. Expansion of the principle of religious equality; 3. Growth of the British Empire in the East. 1. PROGRESS TOWARDS DEMOCRACY. EFFECTS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION UPON LIBERALISM IN ENGLAND.--The French Revolution at first gave a fresh impulse to liberal tendencies in England. The English Liberals watched the course of the French Republicans with the deepest interest and sympathy. It will be recalled how the statesman Fox rejoiced at the fall of the Bastile, and what auguries of hope he saw in the event (see p. 652). The young writers Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey were all in sympathy with democratic sentiments, and inspired with a generous enthusiasm for political liberty and equality. But the wild excesses of the French Levellers terrified the English Liberals. There was a sudden revulsion of feeling. Liberal sentiments were denounced as dangerous and revolutionary. But in a few years after the downfall of Napoleon, the terrors of the French Revolution were forgotten. Liberal sentiments began to spread among the masses. The people very justly complained that, while the English government claimed to be a government of the people, they had no part in it. [Footnote: The English Revolution of 1688 transferred authority from the king to the Parliament. The elective branch of that body, however, rested upon a very narrow electoral basis. Out of 5,000,000 Englishmen who should have had a voice in the government, not more than 160,000 were voters, and these were chiefly of the rich upper classes. At the opening of the nineteenth century the number of electors in Scotland did not exceed 3000.] Now, it is instructive to note the different ways in which Liberalism was dealt with by the English government and by the rulers on the continent. In the continental countries the rising spirit of democracy was met by cruel and despotic repressions. The people were denied by their rulers all participation in the affairs of government. We have seen the result. Liberalism triumphed indeed at last, but triumphed only through Revolution. In England, the government did not resist the popular demands to the point of Revolution. It made timely concessions to the growing spirit of democracy. Hence here, instead of a series of revolutions, we have a series of reform measures, which, gradually popularizing the House of Commons, at last renders the English nation not alone in name, but in reality, a self-governing people. THE REFORM BILL OF 1832.--The first Parliamentary step in reform was taken in 1832. To understand this important act, a retrospective glance becomes necessary. When, in 1265, the Commons were first admitted to Parliament (see p. 480), members were called only from those cities and boroughs whose wealth and population fairly entitled them to representation. In the course of time some of these places dwindled in population, and new towns sprang up: yet the decayed boroughs retained their ancient privilege of sending members to Parliament, while the new towns were left entirely without representation. Thus Old Sarum, an ancient town now utterly decayed and without a single inhabitant, was represented in the Commons by two members. Furthermore, the sovereign, for the purpose of gaining influence in the Commons, had, from time to time, given unimportant places the right of returning members to the Lower House. In 1793 less than 200 electors, or voters, sent to the Commons 197 members. Of course, elections in these small or "pocket boroughs," as they were called, were almost always determined by the corrupt influence of the crown or of the resident lords. The Lower House of Parliament was thus filled with the nominees of the king, or of some great lord, or with persons who had bought the office, often with little effort at concealment. At the same time, such large, recently grown manufacturing towns as Birmingham and Manchester had no representation at all in the Commons. Agitation was begun for the reform of this corrupt and farcical system of representation. The contest between the Whigs and the Tories, or Liberals and Conservatives, was long and bitter. The Conservatives of course opposed all reform. Bill after bill was introduced into Parliament to correct the evil, but most of these, after having passed the Commons, were lost in the House of Lords. At last the public feeling became so strong and violent that the lords were forced to yield, and the Reform Bill of 1832 became a law. [Footnote: The popularizing of the House of Commons led to a series of acts of a popular character. Among them was an act (in 1833) for the abolition of slavery throughout the British colonies. 780,993 slaves in the British West Indies were freed at a cost to the English nation of L20,000,000.] By this act the electoral system of the kingdom was radically changed. Fifty-six of the "rotten boroughs" were disfranchised, and the 143 seats in the Lower House which they had filled were given to different counties and large towns. The bill also greatly increased the number of electors by extending the right of voting to all persons owning or leasing property of a certain value. We can scarcely exaggerate the importance of this Reform Bill. CHARTISM: THE REVOLUTIONARY YEAR OF 1848.--But while the Reform bill of 1832 was almost revolutionary in the principle it established, it went only a little way in the application of the principle. It admitted to the franchise the middle classes only. The great laboring class were given no part in the government. They now began an agitation,--characterized by much bitterness,--known as Chartism, from a document called the "People's Charter," which embodied the reforms they desired. These were "universal suffrage, vote by ballot, annual parliaments, the division of the country into equal electoral districts, the abolition of the property qualifications of members, and payment for their services." The agitation for these changes in the constitution went on with more or less violence until 1848. That year the Chartists, encouraged by the revolutions then shaking almost every throne on the European continent, indulged in riotous demonstrations which frightened the law-abiding citizens, and brought discredit upon themselves. Their organization now fell to pieces. The reforms, however, which they had labored to secure, were, in the main, desirable and just, and the most important of them have since been adopted and made a part of the English Constitution. THE REFORM BILL OF 1867.--The Reform Bill of 1867 was simply another step taken by the English government in the direction of the Reform Bill of 1832. Like that measure, it was passed only after long and violent agitation and discussion both without and within the walls of Parliament. Its main effect was the extension of the right of voting,--the enfranchisement of the great "fourth estate, or the masses." By it also a few small boroughs in England--for the bill did not concern either Ireland or Scotland, separate bills of somewhat similar provisions being framed for them--were disfranchised, and several new ones created. THE REFORM BILL OF 1884.--One of the conservative leaders, the Earl of Derby, in the discussions upon the Reform Bill of 1867, said, "No doubt we are making a great experiment, and taking a leap in the dark." Just seventeen years after the passage of that bill, the English people were ready to take another leap. But they were not now leaping in the dark. The wisdom and safety of admitting the lower classes to a participation in the government had been demonstrated. In 1884 Mr. Gladstone, then prime minister, introduced and pushed to a successful vote a new reform bill, more radical and sweeping in its provisions than any preceding one. It increased the number of voters from about 3,000,000 to about 5,000,000. The qualification of voters in the counties was made the same as that required of voters in the boroughs. Hence its effect was to enfranchise the great agricultural classes. ONLY THE FORMS OF MONARCHY REMAIN.--The English government is now in reality as democratic as our own. Only the forms of monarchy remain. It does not seem probable, that these can long withstand the encroachments of democracy. Hereditary privilege, as represented by the House of Lords and the Crown, is likely soon to be abolished. HOME RULE FOR IRELAND.--In connection with the above outline of the democratic movement in England, a word must be said about the so-called Home Rule movement in Ireland. The legislative independence secured by Ireland in 1782 (see p. 632), was maintained only a short time. In 1798, England being then engaged in war with the revolutionists of France, the Irish rose in revolt, with the purpose of setting up an Irish republic. The uprising was quelled, and then as a measure of security the Irish Parliament was abolished (1801) and Ireland given representation in the English Parliament, just as had been done in the case of Scotland at the time of the legislative union of England and Scotland (see p. 629). The Irish patriots bitterly resented this extinction of the legislative independence of Ireland, and denounced as traitors those members of the last Irish Parliament who, corrupted by the English minister, William Pitt (the younger), had voted away Irish liberties. Consequently from the day of the Union to the present, there has been more or less agitation for its repeal and the re-establishment of the old Irish Parliament. In 1841, under the inspiration of the eloquent Daniel O'Connell, Ireland was brought to the verge of insurrection, but the movement was suppressed. In 1886 Mr. Gladstone, then prime minister, introduced a bill in Parliament, granting a separate legislation to Ireland. This led to bitter debate both within and without the walls of Parliament, and at the present time (1889), the question of Home Rule for Ireland is the leading issue in English politics.[Footnote: Closely connected with this political question of Home Rule for Ireland, is the agrarian, or land trouble. At bottom, this is a matter that involves the right of private property in land, and touches questions that belong to the Industrial Age (see p. 729) rather than to that of the Political Revolution.] 2. EXPANSION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF RELIGIOUS EQUALITY. RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND RELIGIOUS EQUALITY.--Alongside the political movement traced in the preceding section has run a similar one in the religious realm. This is a growing recognition by the English people of the true principle of religious toleration. At the opening of the nineteenth century there was in England religious freedom, but no religious equality. That is to say, one might be a Catholic or a dissenter, if he chose to be, without fear of persecution. Dissent from the Established Church was not unlawful. But one's being a dissenter disqualified him from holding certain public offices. Where there exists such discrimination against any religious sect, or where any one sect is favored or sustained by the government, there of course is no religious equality, although there may be religious freedom. Progress in this direction, then, has consisted in the growth of a really tolerant spirit, which has led to the removal from Catholics, Protestant dissenters, and Jews all civil disabilities, and the placing of all sects on an absolute equality before the law. This is but a completion of the work of the Protestant Reformation. METHODISM AND ITS EFFECTS UPON TOLERATION.--One thing that helped to bring prominently forward the question of emancipating non-conformists from the civil disabilities under which they were placed, was the great religious movement known as Methodism, which during the latter part of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century revolutionized the religious life of England. [Footnote: The leaders of the movement were George Whitefield (1714-1770) and John Wesley (1703-1791). Whitefield became the leader of the _Calvinistic_ Methodists, and Wesley the founder of the sect known as _Wesleyans_. The Methodists at first had no thought of establishing a church distinct from the Anglican, but simply aimed to form within the Established Church a society of earnest, devout laymen, somewhat like that of the Young Men's Christian Association in our present churches. Petty persecution, however, eventually constrained them to go out from the established organization and form a Church of their own. This of course constituted them dissenters.] By vastly increasing the body of Protestant dissenters, Methodism gave new strength to the agitation for the repeal of the laws which bore so heavily upon them. DISABILITIES REMOVED FROM PROTESTANT DISSENTERS (1828).--One of the earliest and most important of the acts of Parliament in this century in recognition of the principle of religious equality, was the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts, in so far as they bore upon Protestant dissenters. These were acts passed in the reign of Charles II., which required every officer of a corporation, and all persons holding civil and military positions, to take certain oaths, and partake of the communion according to the rites of the Anglican Church. It is true that these laws were not now strictly enforced; nevertheless, the laws were invidious and vexatious, and the Protestant dissenters demanded their repeal. The result of the debate in Parliament was the repeal of such parts of the ancient acts as it was necessary to rescind in order to relieve Protestant dissenters,--that is, the provision requiring persons holding office to be communicants of the Anglican Church. DISABILITIES REMOVED FROM THE CATHOLICS (1829).--The bill of 1828 gave no relief to Catholics. They were still excluded from Parliament and various civil offices by the declarations of belief and the oaths required of office-holders,--declarations and oaths which no good Catholic could conscientiously make. They now demanded that the same concessions be made them that had been granted Protestant dissenters. The ablest champion of Catholic emancipation was the eloquent Daniel O'Connell, an Irish patriot. A threatened revolt on the part of the Irish Catholics hurried the progress of what was known as the _Catholic Emancipation Act_ through Parliament. This law opened all the offices of the kingdom, below the crown,--save that of Lord Chancellor of England and Ireland, the Viceroyalty of Ireland, and a few others,--to the Catholic subjects of the realm. DISABILITIES REMOVED FROM THE JEWS.--The Jews were still laboring under all the disabilities which had now been removed from Protestant dissenters and Catholics. In 1845 an act was passed by Parliament which so changed the oath required for admission to corporate offices--the oath contained the words "on the faith of a Christian"--as to open them to Jews. In 1858, after a long and unseemly struggle, the House of Commons was opened to the long-proscribed race; and about a quarter of a century later, the House of Lords admitted to a seat Baron Rothschild, the first peer of Hebrew faith that had ever sat in that body. DISESTABLISHMENT OF THE IRISH CHURCH (1869).--Forty years after the Catholic Emancipation Act, the English government took another great step in the direction of religious equality, by the disestablishment of the State Church in Ireland. The Irish have always and steadily refused to accept the religion which their English conquerors have somehow felt constrained to force upon them. The vast majority of the people are to-day and ever have been Catholics; yet up to the time where we have now arrived these Irish Catholics had been compelled to pay tithes and fees for the maintenance among them of the Anglican Church worship. Meanwhile their own churches, in which the great masses were instructed and cared for spiritually, had to be kept up by voluntary contributions. The proposition to do away with this grievance by the disestablishment of the State Church in Ireland was bitterly opposed by the Conservatives; but at length, after a memorable debate, the Liberals, under the lead of Bright and Gladstone, the latter then prime minister, carried the measure. This was in 1869, but the actual disestablishment was not to take place until the year 1871, at which time the Irish State Church, ceasing to exist as a state institution, became a free Episcopal Church. The historian May pronounces this "the most important ecclesiastical matter since the Reformation." PROPOSED DISESTABLISHMENT OF THE STATE CHURCH IN ENGLAND AND IN SCOTLAND. --The perfect application of the principle of religious equality demands, in the opinion of many English Liberals, the disestablishment of the State Church in England and in Scotland. [Footnote: The Established Church in Scotland is the Presbyterian.] They feel that for the government to maintain any particular sect, is to give the State a monopoly in religion. They would have the churches of all denominations placed on an absolute equality. Especially in Scotland is the sentiment in favor of disestablishment very strong. 3. GROWTH OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN THE EAST. THE CLEW TO ENGLAND'S FOREIGN POLICY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.--Seeking the main fact of modern English history, Professor Seeley [Footnote: J. R. Seeley, in his work entitled _The Expansion of England_.] finds it in the expansion of England. He says, in substance, that the expansion of England in the New World and in Asia is the formula which sums up for England the history of the last three centuries. As the outgrowth of this extension into remote lands of English population or influence, England has come successively into sharp rivalry with three of the leading powers of Europe, her competitors in the field of colonization or in the race for empire. The seventeenth century stands out as an age of intense rivalry between England and Spain; the eighteenth was a period of gigantic competition between England and France; while the nineteenth has been an age of jealous rivalry between England and Russia. England triumphed over Spain and France; it remains to be seen whether she will in like manner triumph over Russia. We have space simply to indicate how England's foreign policies and wars during the present century have grown out of her Eastern connections, and her fear of the overshadowing influence of the Colossus of the North. RISE OF THE ENGLISH POWER IN INDIA.--And first, we must say a word respecting the establishment of English authority in India. By the close of the seventeenth century the East India Company (see p. 603) had founded establishments at Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras, the three most important centres of English population and influence in India at the present time. The company's efforts to extend its authority in India were favored by the decayed state into which the Great Mogul Empire--founded in Northern India by the Tartar conquerors (see p. 461)--had fallen, and by the contentions of the independent native princes among themselves. For a long time it was a matter of doubt whether the empire to be erected upon the ruins of the Great Mogul Empire and of the contending native states should be French or English. About the middle of the eighteenth century the former had the stronger foothold in the peninsula, just as previous to the French and Indian War in the New World they had the stronger hold upon the North American continent. A terrible crime committed by the Nabob Surajah Dowlah of Bengal, a province lying along the lower courses of the Ganges, determined the fate not only of that native state, but of all India. Moved by jealousy of the growing power of the English, and encouraged by the French, the Nabob attacked and captured the English post at Calcutta. His one hundred and forty-six prisoners he crowded into a close dungeon, called the Black Hole. In the course of a sultry night the larger part of the unfortunate prisoners were suffocated. The crime was avenged by Robert Clive, the English commander at Madras. With only 100 English soldiers and 2000 sepoys (native soldiers in European employ), he sailed for Calcutta, recaptured that place, and on the memorable field of Plassey, scattered to the winds the Nabob's army of 60,000 (1757). The victory of Plassey established upon a firm basis the growing power of the Company. During the next one hundred years it extended its authority throughout almost every part of the peninsula. Many of the native princes were, and still are, allowed to retain their thrones, only they must now acknowledge the suzerainty or paramount authority of the English government. We will now speak briefly of the most important wars and troubles in which England has been involved through her interests in India. THE AFGHAN WAR OF 1838-1842.--One of the first serious wars into which England was drawn through her jealousy of Russia was what was known as the Afghan War. It was England's policy to maintain the Afghan state as a barrier between her East India possessions and Russia. Persuaded that the ruler of the Afghans, a usurper named Dost Mahommed, was inclined to a Russian alliance, the English determined to dethrone him, and put in his place the legitimate prince. This was done. The Afghans, however, resented this interference in their affairs. They arose in revolt, and forced the English army to retreat from the country. In the wild mountain passes leading from Afghanistan into India, the fleeing army, 16,000 in number, counting camp-followers, was cut off almost to a man. The English took signal vengeance. They again invaded the country, defeated the Afghans, punished some of their leaders, burned the chief bazaar of Cabul, and then withdrawing from the country, left the Afghans to themselves. OPIUM WAR WITH CHINA (1840-1842).--The next war incited by British interest in India was the so-called Opium War with China. During the first half of the present century the opium traffic between India and China grew into gigantic proportions, and became an important source of wealth to the British merchants, and of revenue to the Indian government. The Chinese government, however, awake to the enormous evils of the growing use of the narcotic, forbade the importation of the drug; but the British merchants, notwithstanding the imperial prohibition, persisted in the trade, and succeeded in smuggling large quantities of the article into the Chinese market. Finally, the government seized and destroyed all the opium stored in the warehouses of the British traders at Canton. This act, together with other "outrages," led to a declaration of war on the part of England. British troops now took possession of Canton, and the Chinese government, whose troops were as helpless as children before European soldiers, was soon forced to agree to the treaty of Nanking, by which the island of Hong-Kong was ceded to the English, several important ports were opened to British traders, and the perpetuation of the nefarious traffic in opium was secured. THE CRIMEAN WAR (1854-1856).--Scarcely was the Opium War ended before England was involved in a gigantic struggle with Russia,--the Crimean War, already spoken of in connection with Russian history. From our present standpoint we can better understand why England threw herself into the conflict on the side of Turkey. She fought to maintain the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, in order that her own great rival, Russia, might be prevented from seizing Constantinople and the Bosporus, and from that point controlling the affairs of Asia through the command of the Eastern Mediterranean. THE SEPOY MUTINY (1857-1858).--The echoes of the Crimean War had barely died away before England was startled by the most alarming intelligence from the country for the secure possession of which English soldiers had borne their part in the fierce struggle before Sebastopol. In 1857 there broke out in the armies of the East India Company what is known as the Sepoy Mutiny. The causes of the uprising were various. The crowd of deposed princes was one element of discontent. A widespread conviction among the natives awakened by different acts of the English, that their religion was in danger, was another of the causes that led to the rebellion. There were also military grievances of which the native soldiers complained. The mutiny broke out at Bengal. At different points, by preconcerted signals, the native regiments arose against their English officers and put them to death. [Footnote: The East India Company at this time had an army of nearly 300,000, of which number not more than 45,000 were English troops. The chief positions in the native regiments were held by English officers.] Delhi and Cawnpore were seized, and the English residents and garrisons butchered in cold blood. Fortunately many of the native regiments stood firm in their allegiance to the English, and with their aid the revolt was speedily quelled. At the close of the war, the government of India, by act of Parliament, was taken out of the hands of the East India Company and vested in the English crown. Since this transfer, the Indian government has been conducted on the principle that "English rule in India should be for India." [Footnote: Within the last two or three decades the country has undergone in every respect a surprising transformation. Life and property are now as secure in India as in England, The railways begun by the East India Company have been extended in every direction, and now bind together the most distant provinces of the empire. All the chief cities are united by telegraph. Lines of steamers are established on the Indus and the Ganges. Public schools have been opened, and colleges founded. Several hundred newspapers, about half published in the native dialects, are sowing Western ideas broadcast among the people. The introduction of European science and civilization is rapidly undermining many of the old superstitions, particularly the ancient system of caste.] LATER EVENTS: THE ENGLISH IN EGYPT.--It only remains for us to refer to some later matters which are more or less intimately connected with England's Eastern policy. In 1874 Mr. Disraeli, who had then just succeeded Mr. Gladstone as prime minister, purchased, for $20,000,000, the 176,000 shares which the Khedive of Egypt held in the Suez Canal. This was to give England more perfect control of this all-important gateway to her East India possessions. In 1878, towards the close of the Russo-Turkish War, England, it will be recalled, interfered in behalf of the Turks, and, by the presence of her iron-clads in the Bosporus, prevented the Russians from occupying Constantinople. In the treaty negotiations which followed, England received from Turkey the island of Cyprus. In the year 1882 political and financial reasons combined led the English government, now conducted by Gladstone, to interfere in the affairs of Egypt. A mutinous uprising against the authority of the Khedive having taken place in the Egyptian army, an expedition was sent out under the command of Lord Wolseley for the purpose of suppressing the revolt, and by the restoration of the authority of the Khedive to render secure the Suez Canal, and protect the interest of English bondholders in Egyptian securities. Three years later, in 1885, a second expedition had to be sent out to the same country. The Soudanese, subjects of the Khedive, encouraged by the disorganized condition of the Egyptian government, had revolted, and were threatening the Egyptian garrisons in the Soudan with destruction. Lord Wolseley was sent out a second time, to lead an expedition up the Nile to the relief of Khartoum, where General Gordon, a representative of the English government, was commanding the Egyptian troops, and trying--to use his own phrase--to "smash the Mahdi," the military prophet and leader of the Soudanese Arabs. The expedition arrived too late, Khartoum having fallen just before the advance relief party reached the town. The English troops were now recalled, and the greater part of the Soudan abandoned to the rebel Arabs. Further complications seem likely to grow out of England's presence in Egypt. CONCLUSION: THE NEW AGE. The Age of Material Progress, or the Industrial Age.--History has been well likened to a grand dissolving view. While one age is passing away another is coming into prominence. During the last fifty years the distinctive features of society have wholly changed. The battles now being waged in the religious and the political world are only faint echoes of the great battles of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. A new movement of human society has begun. Civilization has entered upon what may be called the Industrial Age, or the Age of Material Progress. The decade between 1830 and 1840 was, in the phrase of Herzog, "the cradle of the new epoch." In that decade several of the greatest inventions that have marked human progress were first brought to practical perfection. Prominent among these were ocean steam navigation, railroads, and telegraphs. [Footnote: Ploetz in his _Epitome of History_, instructively compares these inventions to the three great inventions or discoveries-- the magnetic needle, gunpowder, and printing--that ushered in the Modern Age.] In the year 1830 Stephenson exhibited the first really successful locomotive. In 1836 Morse perfected the telegraph. In 1838 ocean steamship navigation was first practically solved. The rapidity with which these inventions have been introduced into almost all parts of the world, partakes of the marvellous. Within the last fifty years the continents have been covered with a perfect network of railroads, constructed at an enormous cost of labor and capital. The aggregate length of the world's steam railways in 1883 was about 275,000 miles, sufficient, to use Mulhall's illustration, to girdle the earth eleven times at the equator, or more than sufficient to reach from the earth to the moon. The continental lines of railways are made virtually continuous round the world by connecting lines of ocean steamers. Telegraph wires traverse the continents in all directions, and cables run beneath all the oceans of the globe. By these inventions the most remote parts of the earth have been brought near together. A solidarity of commercial interests has been created. Thought has been made virtually cosmopolitan: a new and helpful idea or discovery becomes immediately the common possession of the world. Facilities for travel, by bringing men together, and familiarizing them with new scenes and different forms of society and belief, have made them more liberal and tolerant. Mind has been broadened and quickened. And by the virtual annihilation of time and space, governmental problems have been solved. The chief difficulties in maintaining a confederation of states widely separated have been removed, and such extended territories as those of the United States made practically as compact as the most closely consolidated European state. England, with her scattered colonies, may now, Professor Seeley thinks, well enough become a World Venice, with the oceans for streets. Furthermore, the steps of human progress have been accelerated a hundred-fold. The work of years, and of centuries even, is crowded into a day. Thus Japan, on the outskirts of the world, has been modified more by our civilization within the last decade or two, than Britain was modified by the civilization of Rome during the four hundred years that the island was connected with the empire. But a still more important feature of the new epoch is the use of steam engines, electric motors, and machinery in the manufactures and the various other industries of mankind. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the great manufactures of the world were in their infancy. Under the impulse of modern inventions they have been carried to seeming perfection at a bound. New motors and improved machinery have increased incalculably the productive forces of society. This enormous augmentation of the power of production is one of the most significant features of the age. The history of this wonderful age, so different from any preceding age, cannot yet be written, for no one can tell whether the epoch is just opening or is already well advanced. It may well be that we have already seen the greatest surprises of the age, and that the epoch is nearing its culmination, [Footnote: "It is probable," says Professor Ely, "that as we, after more than two thousand years, look back upon the time of Pericles with wonder and astonishment, as an epoch great in art and literature, posterity two thousand years hence will regard our era as forming an admirable and unparalleled epoch in the history of industrial invention." --_French and German Socialism in Modern Times._] and that other than material development--let us hope intellectual and moral development--will characterize future epochs. 
8896	----	Jim OConnor and Distributed Proofreaders Transcriber's Comment In the original text, the author sought, "by the use of different sorts of type, ... to introduced a considerable amount of detail without breaking the main current of the narrative, or making it too long". In the text below, paragraphs in the smallest type have been indented. OUTLINES OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY Designed as a Text-book and for Private Reading By George Park Fisher, D.D., LL.D. Professor in Yale University Inscribed by the author as a token of love and thankfulness to his daughter C. R. F. PREFACE. In writing this work I have endeavored to provide a text-book suited to more advanced pupils. My idea of such a work was, that it should present the essential facts of history in due order, and in conformity to the best and latest researches; that it should point out clearly the connection of events and of successive eras with one another; that through the interest awakened by the natural, unforced view gained of this unity of history, and by such illustrative incidents as the brevity of the narrative would allow to be wrought into it, the dryness of a mere summary should be, as far as possible, relieved; and that, finally, being a book intended for pupils and readers of all classes, it should be free from sectarian partiality, and should limit itself to well-established judgments and conclusions on all matters subject to party contention. Respecting one of the points just referred to, I can say that, in composing this work, I have myself been more than ever impressed with _the unity of history_, and affected by this great and deeply moving drama that is still advancing into a future that is hidden from view. I can not but hope that this feeling, spontaneous and vivid in my own mind, may communicate itself to the reader in his progress through these pages. The most interesting object in the study of history is, to quote Dr. Arnold's words, "that which most nearly touches the inner life of civilized man, namely, the vicissitudes of institutions, social, political, and religious." But, as the same scholar adds, "a knowledge of the external is needed before we arrive at that which is within. We want to get a sort of frame for our picture....And thus we want to know clearly the geographical boundaries of different countries, and their external revolutions. This leads us in the first instance to geography and military history, even if our ultimate object lies beyond." Something more is aimed at in the present work than the construction of this "frame," without which, to be sure, a student wanders about "vaguely, like an ignorant man in an ill-arranged museum." By the use of different sorts of type, it has been practicable to introduce a considerable amount of detail without breaking the main current of the narrative, or making it too long. By means of these additional passages, and by appending lists of books at the close of the several periods, the attempt has been made to aid younger students in carrying forward the study of history beyond the usual requirements of the class-room. I make no apology for the sketches presented of the history of science, literature, art, and of moral and material decline or improvement. Professor Seeley, in his interesting book on _The Expansion of England_, is disposed to confine history to the civil community, and to the part of human well-being which depends on that. "That a man in England," he tells us, "makes a scientific discovery or paints a picture, is not in itself an event in the history of England." But, of course, as this able writer himself remarks, "history may assume a larger or a narrower function;" and I am persuaded that to shut up history within so narrow bounds, is not expedient in a work designed in part to stimulate readers to wide and continued studies. One who has long been engaged in historical study and teaching, if he undertakes to prepare such a work as the present, has occasion to traverse certain periods where previous investigations have made him feel more or less at home. Elsewhere at least his course must be to collate authorities, follow such as he deems best entitled to credit, and, on points of uncertainty, satisfy himself by recurrence to the original sources of evidence. Among the numerous works from which I have derived assistance, the largest debt is due, especially in the ancient and mediæval periods, to Weber's _Lehrbuch der Weltgeschichte_, which (in its nineteenth edition, 1883) contains 2328 large octavo pages of well-digested matter. Duruy's _Histoire du Moyen Age_ (eleventh edition, 1882), and also his _Histoire des Temps Modernes_ (ninth edition), have yielded to me important aid. From the writings of Mr. E. A. Freeman I have constantly derived instruction. In particular, I have made use of his _General Sketch of European History_ (which is published in this country, under the title, _Outlines of History_), and of his lucid, compact, and thorough _History of European Geography_. The other writings, however, of this able and learned historian, have been very helpful. Mr. Tillinghast's edition of Ploetz's _Epitome_ I have found to be a highly valuable storehouse of historical facts, and have frequently consulted it with advantage. The superior accuracy of George's _Genealogical Tables_ is the reason why I have freely availed myself of the aid afforded by them. Professor (now President) C. K. Adams's excellent _Manual of Historical Literature_, to which reference is repeatedly made in the following pages, has been of service in preparing the lists of works to be read or consulted. Those lists, it hardly need be said, aim at nothing like a complete bibliography. No doubt to each of them other valuable works might easily be added. As a rule, no mention is made of more technical or abstruse writings, collections of documents, and so forth. The titles of but few historical novels are given. Useful as the best of these are, works of this class are often inaccurate and misleading; so that a living master in historical authorship has said even of Walter Scott, who is so strong when he stands on Scottish soil, that in his Ivanhoe "there is a mistake in every line." With regard, however, to historical fiction, including poems, as well as novels and tales, the student will find in Mr. Justin Winsor's very learned and elaborate monograph (forming a distinct section of the catalogue of the Boston Public Library), the most full information up to the date of its publication. Most of the historical maps, to illustrate the text of the present work, have been engraved from drawings after Spruner, Putzger, Freeman, etc. Of the ancient maps, several have been adopted (in a revised form) from a General Atlas. That the maps contain more places than are referred to in the text, is not a disadvantage. I wish to express my obligation to a number of friends who have kindly lent me aid in the revisal of particular portions of the proof-sheets of this volume. My special thanks are due, on account of this service, to Professor Francis Brown of the Union Theological School; to Professors W. D. Whitney, Tracy Peck, T. D. Seymour, W. H. Brewer, and T. R. Lounsbury, of Yale College; to Mr. A. Van Name, librarian of Yale College; and to Mr. W. L. Kingsley, to whose historical knowledge and unfailing kindness I have, on previous occasions, been indebted for like assistance. To other friends besides those just named, I am indebted for information on points made familiar to them by their special studies. G. P. F. PREFACE TO REVISED EDITION. The characteristics of this work are stated in the Preface to the First Edition, which may be read on page v and the next following pages of the present volume. The work has been subjected to a careful revision. The aim has been to make whatever amendments are called for by historical investigations in the interval since it was published. Besides corrections, brief statements have been woven here and there into the text. The revision has embraced the bibliography connected with the successive periods or chapters. Titles of books which are no longer of service have been erased. Titles of select recent publications, as well as of meritorious writings of a remoter past, have been inserted. In preparing this edition for the press I have not been without the advantage of aid from friends versed in historical studies. Professor Henry E. Bourne, of Western Reserve University, besides particular annotations, has prolonged the history so far as to include in its compass, in Chapter VII, the last decade of the nineteenth century and events as recent as the close of the South African War and the accession of President Roosevelt. Professor Charles C. Torrey, Ph.D., of Yale University, has placed in my hands notes of his own on Oriental History, a portion of history with which, as well as with the Semitic languages, he is conversant. It will not be for lack of painstaking if any part of the new edition fails, within the limits of its plan, to correspond to the present state of historical knowledge. G. P. F. Yale University, January, 1904. CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION PART I. ANCIENT HISTORY. _From the Beginning of Authentic History to the Migrations of the Teutonic Tribes (A.D. 375)_ DIVISION I. ORIENTAL HISTORY. INTRODUCTION SECTION I. CHINA AND INDIA. CHAPTER I.--CHINA CHAPTER II.--INDIA SECTION II. THE EARLIEST GROUP OF NATIONS. CHAPTER I.--EGYPT CHAPTER II.--ASSYRIA AND BABYLON CHAPTER III.--THE PHOENICIANS AND CARTHAGINIANS CHAPTER IV.--THE HEBREWS CHAPTER V.--THE PERSIANS DIVISION II. EUROPE. INTRODUCTION SECTION I. GRECIAN HISTORY. INTRODUCTION PERIOD I. GREECE PRIOR TO THE PERSIAN WARS. CHAPTER I.--THE PREHISTORIC AGE CHAPTER II.--THE FORMATION OF THE PRINCIPAL STATES PERIOD II. THE FLOURISHING ERA OF GREECE. CHAPTER I.--THE PERSIAN WARS CHAPTER II.--THE ASCENDENCY OF ATHENS CHAPTER III.--THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR CHAPTER IV.--RELATIONS WITH PERSIA: THE SPARTAN AND THEBAN HEGEMONY PERIOD III. THE MACEDONIAN ERA. CHAPTER I.--PHILIP AND ALEXANDER CHAPTER II.--THE SUCCESSORS OF ALEXANDER SECTION II. ROMAN HISTORY. INTRODUCTION PERIOD I. ROME UNDER THE KINGS AND THE PATRICIANS (753-304 B.C.). CHAPTER I.--ROME UNDER THE KINGS (753-509 B.C.) CHAPTER II.--ROME UNDER THE PATRICIANS (509-304 B.C.) PERIOD II. TO THE UNION OF ITALY (304-264 B.C.). CHAPTER I.--CONQUEST OF THE LATINS AND ITALIANS (304-282 B.C.) CHAPTER II.--WAR WITH PYRRHUS AND UNION WITH ITALY (282-264 B.C.) PERIOD III. THE PUNIC WARS. To the Conquest of Carthage and of the Greek States (264-146 B.C.) CHAPTER I.--THE FIRST AND SECOND PUNIC WARS (264-202 B.C.) CHAPTER II.--CONQUEST OF MACEDONIA: THE THIRD PUNIC WAR: THE DESTRUCTION OF CORINTH (202-146 B.C.) PERIOD IV. THE ERA OF REVOLUTION AND OF THE CIVIL WARS (146-3l B.C.). CHAPTER I.--THE GRACCHI: THE FIRST MITHRIDATIC WAR: MARIUS AND SULLA (146-78 B.C.) CHAPTER II.--POMPEIUS AND THE EAST: TO THE DEATH OF CRASSUS (78-53 B.C.) CHAPTER III.--POMPEIUS AND CAESAR: THE SECOND TRIUMVIRATE. PERIOD V. THE IMPERIAL MONARCHY. To the Migrations of the Teutonic Tribes (375 A.D.) CHAPTER I.--THE REIGN OF AUGUSTUS CHAPTER II.--THE EMPERORS OF THE AUGUSTAN HOUSE CHAPTER III.--THE FLAVIANS AND THE ANTONINES CHAPTER IV.--THE EMPERORS MADE BY THE SOLDIERS: THE ABSOLUTE MONARCHY: THE TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY PART II. MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. _From the Migrations of the Teutonic Tribes to the Fall of Constantinople (A.D. 375-1453)._ INTRODUCTION PERIOD I. TO THE CARLOVINGIAN LINE OF FRANK RULERS (A.D. 375-751). CHAPTER I.--CAUSES OF THE FALL OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE: THE TEUTONIC CONFEDERACIES CHAPTER II.--THE TEUTONIC MIGRATIONS AND KINGDOMS CHAPTER III.--THE EASTERN EMPIRE CHAPTER IV.--MOHAMMEDANISM AND THE ARABIC CONQUESTS PERIOD II. FROM THE CARLOVINGIAN LINE OF FRANK KINGS TO THE ROMANO-GERMANIC EMPIRE (A.D. 751-962). CHAPTER I.--THE CARLOVINGIAN EMPIRE TO THE DEATH OF CHARLEMAGNE (A.D. 814) CHAPTER II.--DISSOLUTION OF CHARLEMAGNE'S EMPIRE: RISE OF THE KINGDOMS OF FRANCE, GERMANY, AND ITALY CHAPTER III.--INVASIONS OF THE NORTHMEN AND OTHERS: THE FEUDAL SYSTEM PERIOD III. FROM THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE ROMANO-GERMANIC EMPIRE TO THE END OF THE CRUSADES (A.D. 962-1270). CHAPTER I.--THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE: PREDOMINANCE OF THE EMPIRE: TO THE CRUSADES (A.D. 1096) CHAPTER II.--THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE: PREDOMINANCE OF THE CHURCH: TO THE END OF THE CRUSADES (A.D. 1270) CHAPTER III.--ENGLAND AND FRANCE: THE FIRST PERIOD OF THEIR RIVALSHIP (A.D. 1066-1217) CHAPTER IV.--RISE OF THE BURGHER CLASS: SOCIETY IN THE ERA OF THE CRUSADES PERIOD IV. FROM THE END OF THE CRUSADES TO THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE (A.D. 1270-1453): THE DECLINE OF ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY: THE GROWTH OF THE NATIONAL SPIRIT AND OF MONARCHY. INTRODUCTION CHAPTER I.--ENGLAND AND FRANCE: SECOND PERIOD OF RIVALSHIP: THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR (A.D. 1339-1453) CHAPTER II.--GERMANY: ITALY: SPAIN: THE SCANDINAVIAN COUNTRIES: POLAND AND RUSSIA: HUNGARY: OTTOMAN TURKS: THE GREEK EMPIRE CHAPTER III.--THE COUNTRIES OF EASTERN ASIA PART III. MODERN HISTORY. _From the Fall of Constantinople_ (1453) _to the Present Time_ INTRODUCTION PERIOD I. FROM THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE TO THE REFORMATION (1453-1517). INTRODUCTION CHAPTER I.--FRANCE: ENGLAND: SPAIN: GERMANY: ITALY: THE OTTOMAN TURKS: RUSSIA: THE INVASIONS OF ITALY CHAPTER II.--INVENTION AND DISCOVERY: THE RENAISSANCE PERIOD II. THE ERA OF THE REFORMATION (1517-1648). INTRODUCTION CHAPTER I.--THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY: TO THE TREATY OF NUREMBERG (1517-1532) CHAPTER II.--THE REFORMATION IN TEUTONIC COUNTRIES: SWITZERLAND, DENMARK, SWEDEN, ENGLAND CHAPTER III.--THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY, FROM THE PEACE OF NUREMBERG TO THE PEACE OF AUGSBURG (1532-1555) CHAPTER IV.--CALVINISM IN GENEVA: BEGINNING OF THE CATHOLIC COUNTER-REFORMATION CHAPTER V.--PHILIP II., AND THE REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS CHAPTER VI.--THE CIVIL WARS IN FRANCE, TO THE DEATH OF HENRY IV. (1610) CHAPTER VII.--THE THIRTY-YEARS' WAR, TO THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA (1618-1648) CHAPTER VIII.--SECOND STAGE OF THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND: TO THE DEATH OF ELIZABETH (1547-1603) CHAPTER IX.--THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION AND THE COMMONWEALTH (1603-1658) CHAPTER X.--COLONIZATION IN AMERICA: ASIATIC NATIONS: CULTURE AND LITERATURE (1517-1648) PERIOD III. FROM THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION (1648-1789). INTRODUCTION CHAPTER I.--THE PREPONDERANCE OF FRANCE: FIRST PART OF THE REIGN OF LOUIS XIV. (TO THE PEACE OF RYSWICK, 1697): THE RESTORATION OF THE STUARTS: THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF 1688 CHAPTER II.--WAR OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION (TO THE PEACE OF UTRECHT, 1713): DECLINE OF THE POWER OF FRANCE: POWER AND MARITIME SUPREMACY OF ENGLAND CHAPTER III.--THE GREAT NORTHERN WAR: THE FALL OF SWEDEN: GROWTH OF THE POWER OF RUSSIA CHAPTER IV.--WAR OF THE AUSTRIAN SUCCESSION: GROWTH OF THE POWER OF PRUSSIA: THE DESTRUCTION OF POLAND CHAPTER V.--CONTEST OF ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN AMERICA: WAR OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE: THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES CHAPTER VI.--LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND RELIGION PERIOD IV. THE ERA OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION (1789-1815). INTRODUCTION CHAPTER I.--FROM THE ASSEMBLING OF THE STATES-GENERAL TO THE EXECUTION OF LOUIS XVI. (1789-1793) CHAPTER II.--FROM THE EXECUTION OF LOUIS XVI. TO THE FALL OF ROBESPIERRE (JAN. 21, 1793-JULY 27, 1794) CHAPTER III.--FROM THE FALL OF ROBESPIERRE TO THE EMPIRE OF NAPOLEON (1794-1804) CHAPTER IV.--FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE EMPIRE TO THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN (1804-1812) CHAPTER V.--FROM THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN (1812) TO THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA (1814-15) CHAPTER VI.--AMERICAN HISTORY IN THIS PERIOD (1789-1815) CHAPTER VII.--LITERATURE, ART, AND SCIENCE (1789-1815) PERIOD V. FROM THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA (1815) TO THE PRESENT TIME. INTRODUCTION CHAPTER I.--EUROPE, FROM THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA (1815) TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1830 CHAPTER II.--EUROPE, FROM THE REVOLUTION OF 1830 TO THE REVOLUTIONARY EPOCH OF 1848 CHAPTER III.--EUROPE, FROM THE REVOLUTIONS OF 1848 TO THE AUSTRO-PRUSSIAN WAR (1866) CHAPTER IV.--EUROPE, FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE AUSTRO-PRUSSIAN WAR TO THE END OF THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR (1866-1871) CHAPTER V.--EUROPE, FROM THE THIRD FRENCH REPUBLIC, AND THE UNION OF ITALY (1871) CHAPTER VI.--THE UNITED STATES SINCE 1815: THE SOUTH AMERICAN STATES: EASTERN ASIA CHAPTER VII.--THE LAST DECADE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY CHAPTER VIII.--DISCOVERY AND INVENTION: SCIENCE AND LITERATURE: PROGRESS OF HUMANE SENTIMENT: PROGRESS TOWARDS THE UNITY OF MANKIND LIST OF MAPS. THE WORLD AS KNOWN TO THE ANCIENTS PHYSICAL FEATURES OF ASIA ANCIENT EGYPT ANCIENT PALESTINE PHYSICAL FEATURES OF EUROPE ANCIENT GREECE AND THE AEGEAN ISLANDS GREEK AND PHOENICIAN COLONIES EMPIRE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT KINGDOMS OF THE SUCCESSORS OF ALEXANDER ANCIENT ITALY (NORTHERN PART) ANCIENT ITALY (SOUTHERN PART) ANCIENT ROMAN EMPIRE THE NEW NATIONS AFTER THE GREAT MIGRATIONS (ABOUT A.D. 500) EMPIRE OF THE SARACENS (ABOUT A.D. 750) EMPIRE OF CHARLEMAGNE EMPIRE OF CHARLEMAGNE A.D. 843 EMPIRE OF CHARLEMAGNE A.D. 887 CENTRAL EUROPE ABOUT A.D. 980 MEDITERRANEAN LANDS AT THE TIME OF THE CRUSADES FRANCE AND ENGLAND, A.D. 1154-1189 CENTRAL EUROPE, A.D. 1360 CENTRAL EUROPE, A.D. 1660 ITALY ABOUT THE MIDDLE OF IHE SIXTEENTH CENTURY EUROPE AT THE TIME OF NAPOLEON'S GREATEST POWER (ABOUT A.D. 1810) CENTRAL EUROPE IN 1815 EUROPE AFTER 1878 AUSTRO-HUNGARY SINCE 1878 FRANCE SINCE 1871 GERMAN EMPIRE SINCE 1871 TURKISH EMPIRE, GREECE, ETC., SINCE 1878 TERRITORIAL GROWTH OF THE UNITED STATES ASIA AT THE PRESENT TIME UNIVERSAL HISTORY. INTRODUCTION. DEFINITION OF HISTORY.--The subject of history is man. History has for its object to record his doings and experiences. It may then be concisely defined as a narrative of past events in which men have been concerned. To describe the earth, the abode of man, to delineate the different kingdoms of nature, and to inquire into the origin of them, or to explain the physical or mental constitution of human beings, is no part of the office of history. All this belongs to the departments of natural and intellectual science. But history, as we now understand the term, is more than a bare record of what men have done and suffered. It aims to point out the connection of events with one another. It seeks to explain the causes and the consequences of things that occur. It would trace the steps that mark the progress of the race, and of the different portions of it, through extended periods. It brings to light the thread which unites each particular stage in the career of a people, or of mankind as a whole, with what went before, and with what came after. NATIONS.--History has been called "the biography of a society." Biography has to do with the career of an individual. History is concerned with the successive actions and fortunes of a community; in its broadest extent, with the experiences of the human family. It is only when men are connected by the social bond, and remain so united for a greater or less period, that there is room for history. It is, therefore, with nations, in their internal progress and in their mutual relations, that history especially deals. Of mere clans, or loosely organized tribes, it can have little to say. History can go no farther than to explore their genealogy, and state what were their journeyings and habits. The nation is a form of society that rests on the same basis--a basis at once natural and part of a divine system--as the family. By a nation is meant a people dwelling in a definite territory, living under the same government, and bound together by such ties as a common language, a common religion, the same institutions and customs. The elements that enter into that national spirit which is the bond of unity, are multiple. They vary to a degree in different peoples. As individuals are not alike, and as the history of any particular community is modified and molded by these individual differences, so the course of the history of mankind is shaped by the peculiar characteristics of the various nations, and by their interaction upon one another. In like manner, groups of nations, each characterized by distinctive traits derived from affinities of race or of religion, or from other sources, act on each other, and thus help to determine the course of the historic stream. SCOPE OF HISTORY.--The rise and progress of _culture_ and _civilization_ in their various constituents is the theme of history. It does not limit its attention to a particular fraction of a people, to the exclusion of the rest. Governments and rulers, and the public doings of states,--such as foreign wars, and the struggles of rival dynasties,--naturally form a prominent topic in historical writings. But this is only one department in the records of the past. More and more history interests itself in the character of society at large, and in the phases through which it has passed. How men lived from day to day, what their occupations were, their comforts and discomforts, their ideas, sentiments, and modes of intercourse, their state as regards art, letters, invention, religious enlightenment,--these are points on which history, as at present studied and written, undertakes to shed light. POINTS OF VIEW.--An eminent German philosopher of our day, _Hermann Lotze_, intimates that there are five phases of human development, and hence five points of view from which the course of history is to be surveyed. These are the _intellectual_ (embracing the progress of truth and knowledge), the _industrial_, the _aesthetic_ (including art in all its higher ramifications), the _religious_, and the political. An able English scholar, _Goldwin Smith_, resolves the elements of human progress, and thus the most general topics of history, into three, "the moral, the intellectual, and the productive; or, _virtue_, _knowledge_, and _industry_." "But these three elements," he adds, "though distinct, are not separate, but closely connected with each other." THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY.--That there is, in some sense, a "reign of law" in the succession of human events, is a conviction warranted by observed facts, as well as inspired by religion. Events do not spring into being, disjoined from antecedents leading to them. Even turning-points in history, which seem, at the first glance, abrupt, are found to be dependent on previous conditions. They are perceived to be the natural issue of the times that have gone before. Preceding events have foreshadowed them. There are laws of historical progress which have their root in the characteristics of human nature. Ends are wrought out, which bear on them evident marks of design. History, as a whole, is the carrying out of a plan: "... through the ages one increasing purpose runs." _Augustine_ long ago argued, that he who has not left "even the entrails of the smallest and most insignificant animal, or the feather of a bird, or the little flower of a plant, or the leaf of a tree, without a harmony, and, as it were, a mutual peace among all its parts,--that God can never be believed to have left the kingdoms of men, their dominations and servitudes, outside of the laws of his providence." To discern the plan of history, and the causes or laws through which it is accomplished, as far as our limited capacity will allow, is the object of what is called the philosophy of history. FREEDOM AND LAW.--It must not be forgotten, however, that man is a free agent. History, although it is not an aimless process, is, nevertheless, not subject to the forces and laws which govern in the realm of matter. Physical analogies are not a literal image of what takes place in the sphere of intelligence and freedom. Moral evil, wherever it is a factor in history, has its origin in the will of man. In respect to it, the agency of God is permissive and overruling. Through his providence, order is made to emerge, a worthy goal is at last reached, despite the elements of disorder introduced by human perversity. Nor is progress continuous and unbroken. It is often, as one has said, a spiral rather than a straight line. It is not an unceasing advance: there are backward movements, or what appear to be such. Of particular nations it is frequently evident, that, intellectually and morally, as well as in power and thrift, they have sunk below a level once attained. Of the inscrutable blending of human freedom with a pre-ordained design, GUIZOT says: "Man advances in the execution of a plan which he has not conceived, and of which he is not even aware. He is the free and intelligent artificer of a work which is not his own." "Conceive a great machine, the design of which is centered in a single mind, though its various parts are intrusted to different workmen, separated from, and strangers to, each other. No one of them understands the work as a whole, nor the general result which he concurs in producing; but every one executes with intelligence and freedom, by rational and voluntary acts, the particular task assigned to him." (_Lectures on the History of Civilization_, Lect. xi.) PERSONAL POWER.--The progress of society has been inseparably connected with the agency of eminent persons. Signal changes, whether wholesome or mischievous, are linked to the names of individuals who have specially contributed to bring them to pass. The achievements of heroes stand out in as bold relief in authentic history as in the obscure era of myth and fable. Fruitful inventions, after the earlier steps in civilization are taken, are traceable to particular authors, exalted by their genius above the common level. So it is with the literary works which have exerted the deepest and most lasting influence. Nations have their pilots in war and in peace. Epochs in the progress of the fine arts are ushered in by individuals of surpassing mental power. Reforms and revolutions, which alter the direction of the historic stream, emanate from individuals in whose minds they are conceived, and by whose energy they are effected. The force thus exerted by the leaders in history is not accounted for by reference to general laws. Great men are not puppets moved by the spirit of the time. To be sure, there must be a preparation for them, and a groundwork of sympathy among their contemporaries: otherwise their activity would call forth no response. Independently of the age that gives them birth, their power would lose its distinctive form and hue: they would be incapable of influence. _Cromwell_ would not have been Cromwell had he been born in any other period of English history. Nor could he have played his part, being what he was, had not the religious and political struggles of England for generations framed a theater adapted to his talents and character. _Michael Angelo_ could not have arisen in a half-civilized tribe. His creative power would have found no field in a society rude, and blind to the attractions of art. Nevertheless, his power _was_ creative. Cromwell and Michael Angelo, and such as they, are not the passive organs, the mere outcome, of the communities in which they appear. Without the original thought and personal energy of leaders, momentous changes in the life of nations could never have taken place. A great man may be obliged to wait long for the answering sympathy which is required to give effect to his thoughts and purposes. Such a mind is said to be in advance of the age. Another generation may have to appear before the harvest springs from the seed that he has sown. Moreover, it is not true that great men, efficient leaders, come forward whenever there is an exigency calling for them, or an urgent need. Rather is it true that terrible disasters sometimes occur, at critical points in history, just for the lack of leaders fit for the emergency. THE MEANING OF HISTORY.--A thoughtful student can hardly fail to propose to himself the question, "What is the meaning of history? Why is this long drama with all that is noble and joyous in it, and with its abysses of sin and misery, enacted at all?" It is only a partial answer that one can hope to give to this grave inquiry, for the designs of Providence can not be fully fathomed. But, among the ends in view, the moral training of mankind stands forth with a marked prominence. The deliverance of the race from moral evil and error, and the building-up of a purified society, enriched with all the good that belongs to the ideal of humanity, and exalted by fellowship with God, is not only an end worthy in itself, but it is the end towards which the onward movement of history is seen to be directed. Hence, a central place in the course of history belongs to the life and work of Jesus Christ. No more satisfactory solution of this problem of the significance of history has ever been offered than that brought forward by the Apostle Paul in Acts xvii. 27, where he says that the nations of men were assigned to their places on the earth, and their duration as well as boundaries determined, "that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him." WORKS ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY.-(Professor C. K. ADAMS'S _Manual of Historical Literature_ (1882) is an excellent guide in historical reading. Briefer lists of works in _Methods of Teaching and Studying History_, edited by G. Stanley Hall.) _Books on the Philosophy of History_: R. FLINT, _The Philosophy of History_, vol. i.,--Writers on the subject in France and Germany. Vol. ii. will treat of England and Italy. The work is a critical review of the literature on the subject. Schlegel, _The Philosophy of History_; Shedd's _Lectures on the Philosophy of History_; Bunsen's _God in History_ (3 vols., 1870); LOTZE, _Mikrokosmus_, vol. iii, book vii.; Montesquieu's _Spirit of the Laws_; Buckle, _History of Civilization in England_ (2 vols.). This work is based on the denial of free-will, and the doctrine that physical influences,--climate, soil, food, etc.,--are the main causes of intellectual progress. Draper's _History of the Intellectual Development of Europe_(2 vols., 2d edition, 1876) is in the same vein. Opposed to this philosophy are GOLDWIN SMITH'S _Lectures on the Study of History_; C. Kingsley, in his _Miscellanies, The Limits of Exact Science as applied to History_; Froude, in _Short Studies_, vol. i., _The Science of History_; Lotze, as above; also, Flint, and Droysen, _Grundriss der Historik_. Hegel's _Philosophy of History_ has profound observations, but connected with an _a priori_ theory. HISTORICAL WRITING.--The beginning of historical writing was in the form of lists of kings, or bare records of battles, or the simple registration of other occurrences of remarkable interest. The Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Chinese, and other nations, furnish examples of this rudimental type of historical writing. More continuous annals followed; but these are meager in contents, and make no attempt to find links of connection between events. The ancient Hebrew historians are on a much higher plane, and, apart from their religious value, far surpass all other Asiatic histories. It was in _Greece_, the fountain-head of science, that history, as an art, first appeared. _Herodotus_, born early in the fifth century B.C., first undertook to satisfy curiosity respecting the past by a more elaborate and entertaining narrative. He begins his work thus: "These are the researches of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, which he publishes, in the hope of thereby preserving from decay the remembrance of what men have done, and of preventing the great and marvelous actions of the Greeks and the barbarians from losing their due meed of glory, and withal to put on record what were the grounds of their hostility." In Herodotus, history, owing to the inquiry made into the causes of events, begins to rise above the level of a mere chronicle, its primitive type. _Thucydides_, who died about 400 B.C., followed. He is far more accurate in his investigations, having a deep insight into the origin of the events which he relates, and is a model of candor. He, too, writes to minister to the inquisitive spirit of his countrymen, and of the generations that were to follow. He began to write his history of the war between the Athenians and the Peloponnesians while it was still going on, in the belief, he says, "that it would turn out great, and worthier of being recorded than any that had preceded it." The attention of historical writers was still confined to a particular country, or to insulated groups of events. Before there could spring up the idea of universal history, it was necessary that there should be a broader view of mankind as a whole. The ancient _Stoics_ had a glimpse of the race as a family, and of the nations as forming one complex unity. The conquests and extended dominion of Rome first suggested the idea of universal history. _Polybius_, a Greek in the second century B.C., had watched the progress of Rome, in its career of conquest, until "the affairs of Italy and Africa," as he says, "joined with those of Asia and Greece, and all moved together towards one fixed and single point." He tells us that particular histories can not give us a knowledge of the whole, more than the survey of the divided members of a body once endowed with life and beauty can yield a just conception of all the comeliness and vigor which it has received from Nature. To Polybius belongs the distinction of being the first to undertake a universal history. Christianity, with its doctrine of the unity of mankind, and with all the moral and religious teaching characteristic of the gospel, contributed effectively to the widening of the view of the office and scope of history. It is only in quite recent times that history has directed its attention predominantly to _social progress_, and to its causes and conditions. History, in its etymological sense (from the Greek, historia), meant the ascertaining of facts by inquiry; then, the results of this inquiry, the knowledge thus obtained. The work of Herodotus was "history" in the strictest sense: he acquired his information by travel and personal interrogation. The German philosopher, _Hegel_, has divided histories into three classes: 1. _Original histories_; i.e., works written by contemporaries of the events described, who share in the spirit of the times, and may have personally taken part in the transactions. Such are the works of Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon's Anabasis, Clarendon's History of the Great Rebellion in England, Caesar's Commentaries. 2. _Reflective histories_, where the author writes at a later point of time, on the basis of materials which he gathers up, but is not himself a partaker in the spirit of the age of which he treats. 3. _Philosophical histories_, which set forth the rational development of history in its inmost idea. Another classification is the following: 1. _Genealogies_, like the records of Manetho, the Egyptian priest. 2. _The chronicle_, following the chronological order, and telling the story in a simple, popular way. 3. _The "pragmatic"_ form of writing, which aims to explain by reference to the past some particular characteristic or phase of the present, and uses history to point a special moral lesson. 4. The form of history which traces the rise and progress of "_ideas_," tendencies, or ruling forces,--such as the idea of civil equality in early Rome or in modern France, the religious ideas of Mohammedanism, the idea of representative government, the idea of German unity, etc. A broad line of distinction has been drawn between "the old or _artistic_ type of history," and the new or _sociological_ type which belongs to the present century. The ancient historians represented the former type. They prized literary form. They aimed to interweave moral and political reflections. Polybius often interrupts his narrative to introduce remarks of this sort. But they were not, as a rule, diligent and accurate in their researches. And, above all, they had no just conception of society as a whole, and of the complex forces out of which the visible scene springs. The Greeks were the masters in this first or artistic form of history. The French Revolution was one stimulus to a profounder and more comprehensive method of studying history. The methods and investigations of natural science have had a decided influence in the same direction. THE SOURCES OF HISTORY.--History must depend for credence on credible evidence. In order to justify belief, one must either himself have seen or heard the facts related, or have the testimony, direct or indirect, of witnesses or of well-informed contemporaries. The sources of historic knowledge are mainly comprised in _oral tradition_, or in some form of _written records_. _Tradition_ is exposed to the infirmities of memory, and to the unconscious invention and distortion which grow out of imagination and feeling. Ordinarily, bare tradition, not verified by corroborative proofs, can not be trusted later than the second generation from the circumstances narrated. It ceases to be reliable when it has been transmitted through more than two hands. In the case of a great and startling event, like a destructive convulsion of nature or a protracted war, the authentic story, though unwritten, of the central facts, at least, is of much longer duration. There may be visible monuments that serve to perpetuate the recollection of the occurrences which they commemorate. _Institutions_ may exist--popular festivals and the like--which keep alive the memory of past events, and, in certain circumstances, are sufficient to verify them to generations far removed in time. Events of a stirring character, when they are embodied in _songs_ of an early date, may be transmitted orally, though in a poetic dress. Songs and legends, it may be added, even when they do not suffice to verify the incidents to which they refer, are valuable as disclosing the sentiments and habits of the times when they originated, or were cherished. The central fact, the nucleus of the tradition, may be historical when all the details belonging with it have been effaced, or have been superseded by other details, the product of imagination. The historical student is to distinguish between traditionary tales which are _untrustworthy throughout_, and traditions which have _their roots in fact_. Apart from oral tradition, the sources of historical knowledge are the following:-- 1. Contemporary registers, chronicles, and other documents, either now, or known to have been originally, in a manuscript form. 2. Inscriptions on monuments and coins. Such, for example, are the inscriptions on the monuments of Egypt and on the buried ruins of Nineveh and Babylon. Such are the ancient epitaphs, heathen and Christian, in the Roman catacombs. The study of ancient inscriptions of various sorts has thrown much light of late upon Grecian and Roman antiquity. 3. The entire literature of a people, in which its intellectual, moral, and social condition, at any particular era, is mirrored. 4. Material structures of every kind, as altars, tombs, private dwellings,--as those uncovered at Pompeii,--public edifices, civil and religious, paintings, weapons, household utensils. These all tell a story relative to the knowledge and taste, the occupations and domestic habits, and the religion, of a past generation or of an extinct people. 5 Language is a memorial of the past, of the more value since it is not the product of deliberate contrivance. _Comparative philology_, following languages back to their earlier stages and to the parent stocks, unveils the condition of society at remote epochs. It not only describes the origin of nations, but teaches something respecting their primitive state. 6. Histories written at former periods, but subsequently to the events described in them, are a secondary but valuable source of historical knowledge. This is especially true when their authors had access to traditions that were nearer their fountain, or to literary monuments which have perished. HISTORICAL CRITICISM.--Historical scholars are much more exacting as regards evidence than was formerly the case. The criticism of what purports to be proof is more searching. At the same time, what is called "historical divination" can not be altogether excluded. Learned and sagacious scholars have conjectured the existence of facts, where a gap in recorded history--"the logic of events"--seemed to presuppose them; and later discoveries have verified the guess. This is analogous to the success of Leverrier and Adams in inferring the existence of an unknown planet, which the telescope afterwards discovered. An example of historical divination on a large scale is furnished by the theories of the great German historian, _Niebuhr_, in respect to early Roman history. He propounded opinions, however, which in many particulars fail to obtain general assent at present. CREDIBILITY OF HISTORY.--At the opposite pole from credulity is an unwarrantable historical skepticism. The story is told of Sir Walter Raleigh, that when he was a prisoner in the Tower, and was engaged in writing his _History of the World_, he heard the sounds of a fracas in the prison-yard. On inquiry of those who were concerned in it, and were on the spot, he found so many contradictions in their statements that he could not get at the truth. Whereupon, it occurred to him as a vain thing to undertake to describe what had occurred on the vast theater of the world, when he could not ascertain the truth about an event occurring within a bow-shot. The anecdote simply illustrates, however, the difficulty of getting at the exact truth respecting details,--a difficulty constantly exemplified in courts of justice. The fact of the conflict in the court of the Tower, the general cause, the parties engaged, the consequences,--as, for example, what punishment was inflicted,--were undisputed. The great facts which influence the course of history, it is not difficult to ascertain. Moreover, as against an extravagant skepticism, it may be said that history provides us with a vast amount of authentic information which contemporaries, and even individual actors, were not possessed of. This is through the bringing to light of documents from a great variety of sources, many of which were secret, or not open to the view of all the leaders in the transactions to which they refer. The private correspondence of the Protestant leaders,--Luther, Melanchthon, Cranmer, etc.,--the letters of Erasmus, the official reports of the Venetian ambassadors, the letters of William the Silent and of Philip II., put us in possession of much information, which at the time was a secret to most of the prominent participants in the events of the sixteenth century. The correspondence of Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, John Adams, Wolcott, Pickering, etc., introduces us into the secret counsels of the American political leaders of that day. Numerous facts conveyed from one to another under the seal of privacy, and not known to the others, are thus revealed to us. On the nature and value of tradition, a very valuable discussion is that of EWALD, _History of Israel_, vol. i. pp. 13-38; Sir G. C. LEWIS, _ Essays on the Credibility of Early Roman History_, in which Niebuhr's conclusions are criticised; A. Bisset, _Essays on Historical Truth_. On the sources of history, Art. by GAIRDNER in _The Contemporary Review_, vol. xxxviii. HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY.--Political Geography, which describes the earth as inhabited, and as parceled out among nations, has a close relation to history. Without a distinct idea of the position of places and the boundaries of countries, historical narrations are enveloped in a sort of haze. _France_, for example, is a name with very different meanings at different dates in the past. Unless the varying uses of the word _Burgundy_ are understood, important parts of European history are left in confusion. PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY.--Even more helpful is _Physical Geography_, which surveys the earth in its three great divisions,--land, sea, and air,--without reference to lines of political demarkation. The configuration of the different portions of the globe, with the varieties of climate, the relations of mountain and plain, of land and water, have strongly affected the character of nations and the currents of history. In regions extremely hot or extremely cold man can not thrive, or build up a rich and enduring civilization. The occupations of a people are largely dependent on its situation,--whether it be maritime or away from the sea,--and on peculiarities of soil and temperature. The character of the Nile valley, and its periodical inundation, is a striking illustration of the possible extent of geographical influences. The peninsular and mountainous character of Greece went far to shape the form of Greek political society. The high plateau which forms the greater portion of Spain, with the fertile belts of valley on the Atlantic and Mediterranean border, have helped to determine the employments and the character of the Spanish people. Had the physical characteristics of the Spanish peninsula been essentially different, the success of Wellington in expelling the French, with the forces at his disposal, would not have been possible. Were there a chain of mountains along our Atlantic coast as near as are the Andes to the Pacific, what different results would have arisen from the English settlements in North America! The Alpine barrier in the north of Italy was indispensable to the building-up and maintenance of the dominion of ancient Rome. Of the great basin or plain between the Alps and the Apennines, open to the sea only on the east, through which flows one great river, fed by streams from the mountains on either side, Dr. Arnold says: "Who can wonder that this large and richly watered plain should be filled with flourishing cities, or that it should have been contended for so often by successful invaders?" While the agency of climate, soil, and other physical circumstances may easily be exaggerated, that agency must be duly considered in accounting for historical phenomena. The best historical Atlas is the copious German work of VON SPRUNER. FREEMAN'S _Historical Geography of Europe_ is a work of great value. DROVSEN'S _Allg. Hist. Atlas._ Smaller atlases are those of PUTZGER, Rhode, Appleton's _Hist. Atlas_, the _International_, and the _Collegiate_. Smaller still, Keith Johnston's Crown Atlases and Half-Crown Atlases. On Mediæval History, Labberton's Atlas; also, Koeppen: in Ancient Geography, SMITH'S work, KIEPERT'S, Long's. On Physical Geography, GUYOT'S text-books; Vaughan's _Connection between History and Physical Geography_, in _Contemp. Review_, vol. v.; Hall's _Methods of Studying History_, etc., p. 201 _seq._, _Encycl. Brit._, Art. _Geography_. CHRONOLOGY.--An exact method of establishing dates was slowly reached. The invention of eras was indispensable to this end. The earliest definite time for the dating of events was established at Babylon,--the era of Nabonassar, 747 B.C. The Greeks, from about 300 B.C., dated events from the first recorded victory at the Olympic games, 776 B.C. These games occurred every fourth year. Each Olympiad was thus a period of four years. The Romans, though not until some centuries after the founding of Rome, dated from that event; i.e., from 753 B.C. The Mohammedan era begins at the Hegira, or flight of Mohammed from Mecca, 622 A.D. The method of dating from the birth of Jesus was introduced by Dionysius Exiguus, a Roman abbot, about the middle of the sixth century. This epoch was placed by him about four years too late. This requires us to fix the date of the birth of Christ at 4 B.C. The day was the simplest and earliest division of time. The week has been in use for this purpose in the East from time immemorial. It was not introduced among the Romans until after the spread of Christianity in the Empire. The month was the earlier unit for periods of greater length. To make the lunar and the solar years correspond, and to determine the exact length of the solar year, was a work of difficulty, and was only gradually effected. _Julius_ _Cæsar_ reformed the calendar in 46 B.C., the date of the Julian era. This made the year eleven minutes too long. _Pope Gregory XIII_. corrected the reckoning, in 1582, by ordering Oct. 5th to be called the 15th, and instituted the "Gregorian calendar." The change, or the "New Style," was subsequently adopted by Great Britain (in 1752), and by the other Protestant nations. The difference for the present century between the Old and the New Style is twelve days: during the last century it was eleven. The Julian civil year began with Jan. 1. It was not until the eighteenth century that this became the uniform date for the commencement of the legal year among the Latin Christian nations. On the general subjects of chronology: _Encycl. Britt_., Arts. _Chronology_ and _Calendar_. Manuals of Reference: ROSSE'S _Index of Dates_ (1858); Haydn's _Dictionary of Dates_ (Vincent's edition, 1866); BLAIR'S _Chronological Tables_; Woodward and Cates, _Encycl. of Chronology_ (1872). ETHNOLOGY. Ethnology is a new science. Its function is to ascertain the origin and filiation, the customs and institutions, of the various nations and tribes which make up, or have made up in the past, the human race. In tracing their relationship to one another, or their genealogy, the sources of information are mainly three,--_physical characteristics, language_, and _written memorials_ of every sort. Ethnology is a branch of Anthropology, as this is a subdivision of Zoölogy, and this, again, of Biology. Ethnography differs from Ethnology in dealing more with details of description, and less with rational exposition. RACES OF MANKIND.--Authorities differ widely from one another in their classification of races. _Prichard_ made seven, which were reduced by _Cuvier_ to three; viz., _Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopic. Blumenbach_ made five, and _Pickering_ eleven. It is the Caucasian variety which has been chiefly distinguished in history, and active in the building-up of civilization. None of the numerous schemes of division, from a zoölogical point of view, however, are satisfactory. _Huxley_ has proposed a fourfold classification: 1. The Australoid, represented by the Australians and the indigenous tribes of Southern India. 2. The Negroid. 3. The Mongoloid. 4. The Xanthochroi, or fair whites, among whom are comprised most of the inhabitants of Northern Europe. To these are added a fifth variety, the Melanochroi, to which belong a part of the Celts, the Spaniards, Greeks, Arabs, etc. Of the various methods of race-division, _A. van Humboldt_ says: "We fail to recognize any typical sharpness of definition, or any general or well-established principle, in the division of these groups. The extremes of form and color are certainly separated, but without regard to the races which can not be included in any of these classes." (_Cosmos_, i. 365.) For example, black skin, woolly hair, and a negro-like cast of countenance, are not necessarily connected together. MONOGENISM.--Zoölogists, from the point of view of their own science, now more generally favor the _monogenist_ doctrine, which traces mankind to a single pair, than the polygenist, which assumed different centers of origin. The present tendencies of natural science, especially since Darwin, are favorable to the monogenist view. "The opinion of modern Zoölogists, whose study of the species and breeds of animals makes them the best judges, is against this view of the several origins of man, for two principal reasons. First, That all tribes of men, from the blackest to the whitest, the most savage to the most cultured, have such general likeness in the structure of their bodies and the working of their minds, as is easiest and best accounted for by their being descended from a common ancestry, however distant. Second, That all the human races, notwithstanding their form and color, appear capable of freely intermarrying, and forming crossed races of every combination, such as the millions of mulattoes and mestizoes sprung in the New World from the mixture of Europeans, Africans, and native Americans; this again points to a common ancestry of all the races of man. We may accept the theory of the unity of mankind as best agreeing with ordinary experience and scientific research." (Tylor's _Anthropology_, etc., pp. 5, 6.) EVIDENCE OF LANGUAGE.--Languages, through marked affinities, are grouped together into several great families, i. The _Aryan_, or Indo-European, of which the oldest known branch is the Sanskrit, the language in which the ancient books of the Hindus, the Vedas, were written. With the Sanskrit belong the Iranian or Persian, the Greek, the Latin or Italic, the Celtic, the Germanic or Teutonic (under which are included the Scandinavian tongues), the Slavonian or Slavo-Lettic. 2. The _Semitic_, embracing the communities described in Genesis as the descendants of Shem. Under this head are embraced, first, the Assyrian and Babylonian; secondly, the Hebrew and Phoenician, with the Syrian or Aramaic; and thirdly, the Arabic. The Phoenician was spread among numerous colonies, of which Carthage was the chief. The Arabic followed the course of Mohammedan conquest. It is the language of the northern border of Africa, and has strongly affected various other languages,--the Persian, Turkish, etc. 3. The _Turanian or Scythian_. This is an extensive family of languages. The Finno-Hungarian, which includes two cultivated peoples, the Fins and Hungarians; the Samoyed, stretching from the North Sea far eastward to the boundary between Russia and China; and the Turkish or Tartar, spreading from European Turkey over a great part of Central Asia, are connected together by family ties. They spring from one parent stock. Whether the Mongolian and the Tungusic--the last is the language of the Manchus--are also thus affiliated, is a point not absolutely settled. Besides these three great divisions, there are other languages, as the _Chinese_, and the monosyllabic tongues of south-eastern Asia, which possibly are connected lineally with it; the _Japanese_; the _Malay-Polynesian_, a well-developed family; the _Hamitic_ (of which the Egyptian or Coptic is the principal member); the _Dravidian_ or _South Indian_; the _South African_; the _Central African_; the _American Indian_ languages, etc. On language and the divisions of language, W. D. WHITNEY, _Language, and the Study of Language_ (1867), _Oriental and Linguistic Studies_ (two series, 1872-74), _Life and Growth of Language_ (1875); Art. _Philology_, in _Encycl. Brit_., vol. xviii.; Max Müller's _Lectures on the Science of Language_ (two series), and other writings by the same author. ETHNOLOGY AND HISTORY.--History is generally written from the political point of view. It is the history of nations considered separately and in relation to one another. There are, also, histories of culture. History, from a cultural point of view, without paying regard to national boundaries, seeks to unfold the rise and progress of arts and industry, of inventions, of customs, manners, and institutions. It is the history of culture and civilization. History, from the ethnological point of view, would describe the migrations and experiences of the different races of men, and the formation of the various nationalities by these races, through conquest and intermixture. Following the divisions of linguistic science, we should have, first, the _Egyptian_ race and their history. Then we should have the _Semitic_ race, in the three eras of their pre-eminence, and in their various branches. Then would come the _Aryan_, or Indo-European family, whose power, except when interrupted and partially broken by the Mohammedan conquests, has continued to dominate in history since the rise of the ancient Persian Empire. There have been three periods of Semitic ascendency,--the era of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires; that of the Phoenician cities and of Carthage (a Tyrian settlement), with their colonies; and that of the Arabic-Mohammedan Conquests. This last epoch falls within the Christian era. In this course of Semitic history would be embraced the narrative of the Israelites, and of their dispersion in ancient and in modern times. The Indo-European, or Aryan family, follows next in order. In recording its history, we should consider, first, its oldest representative of which we have knowledge,--the Indian race, with its literature, its social organization, and its religions, Brahmanism and Buddhism. Then come the Persians, with their religion founded by _Zoroaster_, and the Armenians. With the fall of the Ancient Persian Empire, the center of power was transferred from Asia to Europe, where it has since continued, though still in the hands of the same Aryan race. The history of the Greeks and of the Romans succeeds; then the history of the three races,--the Celtic, Teutonic, and Slavonian,--as they present themselves at the threshold of authentic history. The forming of the several nationalities of Europe would have to be traced: the Slavonian, including Russia and Poland; the Teutonic, comprising England, Holland, Germany, and the Scandinavian peoples (viz., Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland); the Romanic or Italic nations (viz., Portugal, Spain, Provence, Italy, Wallachia, the Grisons of Switzerland), which are the nations the basis of whose languages is the rustic or people's Latin of the middle ages. Such, in brief outline, is the method which history, from the point of view of race affinities, as these are indicated by language, would adopt. UNITY OF DESCENT.--Whether mankind are all descended from one pair--the _Monogenist_ view, or spring from more than one center of origin--the _Polygenist_ view, is a question which philological science can not answer. The facts of language are reconcilable with either doctrine. While cautious philologists are slow in admitting distinct affinities between the generic families of speech,--as the Semitic and Indo-European,--which would be indicative of a common origin, they agree in the judgment, that, on account of the mutability of language, especially when unwritten, and while in its earlier stages, no conclusion adverse to the monogenist doctrine can be drawn from the diversities of speech now existing, or that are known to have existed at any past time. As far as science is concerned, the decision of the question must be left to zoölogy. The tendencies of natural science at present, as we have said above, are strongly toward the monogenist view. The variety of physical characteristics not only affords no warrant for assuming diversity of species among men; they do not even imply diversity of parentage at the beginning. "Nothing," says Max Müller, "necessitates the admission of different independent beginnings for the _material_ elements" [the vocabulary] "of the Turanian, Semitic, and Aryan branches of speech." The same thing Müller affirms of "the formal elements" [the grammatical structure] "of these groups of languages." "We can perfectly understand how, either through individual influences or by the wear and tear of speech in its continuous working, the different systems of grammar of Asia and Europe may have been produced." (_Lectures on Language_, 1st series, p. 340.) The same conclusions are reached by Professor W. D. Whitney, who, while disclaiming for linguistic science the power to prove that the human race in the beginning formed one society, says, that it is "even far more demonstrable" that it can "never prove the variety of human races and origins." (_Life and Growth of Language_, p. 269.) We know that nations can learn and unlearn a language. The Irish, adopting the language of their English conquerors, is one of many examples of the same sort in history. What effects upon language took place, prior to recorded history, from the mingling of tribes and peoples, it is impossible to ascertain. The consequences to language, of mixture among different forms of speech, were like those which must have been produced upon the physical man from the mingling of diverse physical types in remote ages. Science, if it has no decided verdict to render, does not stand in conflict with the monogenist doctrine, which has generally been understood to be the teaching of the Scriptures. MYTHOLOGY. The polytheistic religions are in themselves a highly interesting part of the history of mankind. In the multiform character that belongs to them we find reflected the peculiar traits of the several peoples among whom they have arisen. The history of religion stands in a close connection with the development of the fine arts,--architecture and sculpture, painting, music, and also poetry. The earliest rhythmical utterance was in hymns to the gods. To worship, all the arts are largely indebted for their birth and growth. This, however, is only one of the ways in which religion is interwoven with the rise and progress of civilization. By _mythology_; we mean the collective beliefs of any tribe or nation respecting deities or semi-divine personages. Recent studies in language, or the science of _comparative philology_, have thrown light on the origin of mythology, and upon the affinities of different polytheistic religions with one another. Among various nations belonging to the same family (as, for example, the peoples of the _Aryan_ race), names of gods, and, to some extent, qualities and deeds attributed to them, have been identified. Myths are found to have traveled in different guises from land to land. At the same time, these discoveries have given rise to much unverified theory and conjecture. Too much stress has been laid, by certain writers, on _mistakes in language_ as a source of mythology. In the primitive stage of language, all nouns had a _gender_, either male or female; and verbs, even auxiliary verbs, it is alleged, expressed _activity_ of some sort. On the basis of these facts it has been inferred, that, at a later day, figurative expressions, descriptive of natural changes, were taken as literal; as if one should interpret the saying, "the sun follows the dawn," as meaning that one person pursues another. By this kind of misunderstanding, it has been thought, a throng of mythological tales arose. By some it is held that the names of animals, which had been given to ancestors, were interpreted literally by their savage descendants, or that traditions of having come from a certain _mountain_ or _river_ caused these natural objects to be mistakenly regarded as actual progenitors. These suggestions are of very limited value in solving the problem of the origin of the ethnic religions. Much, however, has been learned from observing the rites and beliefs of existing savage nations. Not a few religious notions and ceremonies, once in vogue among cultivated heathen peoples, may be plausibly considered a survival from a more remote and barbarous condition of society. That mythology is the product of a mere exaggeration of actual events, or is an allegorical picture, either of the operations of nature or of human traits, is an untenable and obsolete view. We shall not err in defining the main sources of the religions to be, _first_, the sense of dependence, and the yearning for the fellowship and favor of powers "not ourselves," by which the lot of men is felt to be determined; _secondly_, the effort to explain the world of nature above and beneath, and the occurrences of life; and _thirdly_, the personifying instinct which belongs to the childhood of nations as of individuals. This tendency leads to the attributing of conscious life to things inanimate. A like tendency may impel the savage and the child to ascribe mind to the lower animals. The fact that language, in its earlier stage, was charged with personal life and activity, is itself the work of the personifying instinct. When nature is thus personified, where there is no sense of its unity and no capacity to rise in faith to a living God above nature, the result is a multitude of divinities of higher and lower rank. _Myths_ respecting them are the spontaneous invention of unreflecting and uncritical, but imaginative, peoples. Thus they serve to indicate the range of ideas, and the moral spirit of those who originate and give credence to them. This is not the place to consider the question, What was the primitive religion of man? The earliest deities that history brings to our notice were not fetiches, but heavenly beings of lofty attributes. Whether the religions of savage tribes, in common with their low grade of intelligence, are, or are not, the result of _degeneracy_, is a question which secular history affords no means of deciding with confidence, It may be added, that, in historic eras, the mythopoeic fancy is not inactive. Stories of marvelous adventure clustered about the old Celtic King Arthur of England and the "knights of the Round-Table," and fill up the chronicles relating to Charlemagne. Wherever there is a person who kindles popular enthusiasm, myths accumulate. This is eminently true in an atmosphere like that which prevailed in the mediaeval period, when imagination and emotion were dominant. PREHISTORIC TIMES. PREHISTORIC RELICS.--Within the last half century, in various countries of Europe, and in other countries, also, which have been, earlier or later, seats of civilization, there have been found numerous relics of uncivilized races, which, at periods far remote, must have inhabited the same ground. Many of these antiquities are met with in connection with remains of fossil elephants, hyenas, bears, etc.,--with animals which no longer live in the regions referred to, and some of which have become wholly extinct. Dwelling-places of these far-distant peoples--such as caves and rock-shelters, and the remains of the lake-habitations that were built on piles, in Switzerland and elsewhere--sepulchers, camps, and forts, and an immense number of implements and ornaments of stone and metal, have been examined. The most ancient of these monuments carry us as far back as the era called by geologists the _Quaternary_ or _Drift_ period. THE THREE STAGES.--But there are marked distinctions in the relative age of the various relics referred to. They indicate different degrees of knowledge and skill; and this proof of a succession of peoples, or of stages of development, is confirmed by geological evidence. The prehistoric time is divided into _the Stone Age_, _the Age of Bronze_, and _the Age of Iron_, according as the implements in use were of one or another of these materials. But the Stone Age includes an _earlier_ and a _later_ sub-division. In the first and most ancient section, the weapons and utensils, mostly of flint, were very rude in their manufacture. This was the _Paleolithic Age_, where there are no signs of habitations constructed by the hand, or of domesticated plants and animals. Men lived in caves, and their vestments were the skins of beasts. Yet, among their implements are found fragments of bone, horn, ivory, and stone, on which are carved in outline, often with much skill, representations of the reindeer, the bear, the ox, and of other animals. In the _Neolithic_ period, there was a decided advance. Implements are better made and polished. There were domestic animals and cultivated plants. The lake-dwellings in Switzerland were well contrived for shelter and defense. Every hut had its hearth. It is probable that most of them were furnished with a loom for weaving. Fragments of pottery are found, and flax was grown and made into cord, nettings, etc. Stalls were constructed near the huts for the ox, the goat, the horse, sheep, and pigs. The lake-dwellers cultivated wheat and barley. The _Bronze Age_, when implements were made of copper or of a mixture of copper and tin, exhibits proof of decided improvement in various directions; and the _Age of Iron_, a still more marked advance. In the Swiss remains referred to are distinct traces of a transition from the Stone Age to the Age of Bronze, and then to the Age of Iron. The kitchen-middens, or shell-mounds, of Denmark belong exclusively to the Neolithic period. Where the transition was made from the Stone Age to the Age of Bronze, it apparently occurred in some cases by degrees, and peacefully; but sometimes by the incoming of an invading people more advanced. It should be observed that the lines of division between these periods are not sharply drawn: implements of stone continued to be used after the Bronze and even the Iron periods had been introduced. Nor were these several ages in one region contemporaneous with like conditions in every other. Moreover, it is not possible to find in all countries once civilized proofs of a passage through these successive eras. In Egypt, the evidences of a Stone Age are scanty. The most ancient human remains show that man in his physical characteristics was on a level with man at present. _Dr. Daniel Wilson_, speaking of the age of the Flint-folk, says: "It is of no slight importance to perceive that the interval which has wrought such revolutions in the earth" [involving great geological changes and mutations of climate] "as are recorded in the mammaliferous drift, shows man the same reasoning, tentative, and inventive mechanician, as clearly distinguished then from the highest orders of contemporary life of the Elephantine or Cave periods, as he is now from the most intelligent of the brute creation.... The oldest art-traces of the paleotechnic men of central France not only surpass those of many savage races, but they indicate an intellectual aptitude in no degree inferior to the average Frenchman of the nineteenth century." (_Prehistoric Man_, pp. 33, 34.) Literature.--Wilson, _Prehistoric Man_, etc. (2 vols., 1876); Joly, _Man before the Metals_ (1883); Keary, _The Dawn of History_. The writings of E. B. Tylor, _Primitive Culture_ (2 vols.), _Anthropology, Early History of Mankind_; his Art. _Anthropology, Encycl. Britt_.; Lubbock's _Prehistoric Times_, and his _Origin of Civilization_; Argyll, _The Unity of Nature _(1884); J. Geikie, _Prehistoric Europe_ (1881); Lyell, _The Antiquity of Man_; W. E. Hearn, _The Aryan Household_; L. H. Morgan, _Ancient Society_. THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN.--Science does not furnish us with the means of fixing the date of the first human inhabitants of the earth. But its various departments of investigation concur in pronouncing the interval between the creation of man and the present to be far longer than the traditional opinion has assumed. For the growth of language and its manifold ramifications; for the development of the different races of mankind, physically considered; for the geological changes since the beginning of the Stone Age in the regions where its relics are uncovered; for the rise of the most ancient civilization in Egypt as well as in Babylon and China,--it is thought that periods of very long duration are indispensable. As to the date of the Neolithic man, or of the last section of the Stone Age, Professor J. Geikie writes: "Any term of years I might suggest would be a mere guess; but I have written to little purpose, however, if the phenomena described in the preceding chapters have failed to leave the impression upon the reader, that the advent of Neolithic man in Europe must date back far beyond fifty or seventy centuries." (_Prehistoric Europe_, p. 558.) The chronology gathered from Genesis has been supposed to place the date of man's creation at a point far less remote. Usher's calculation, attached to the authorized English Version of the Bible, sets this date at 4004 B.C. The discussion of these questions of Scriptural chronology belongs to theology and biblical criticism. It may be observed here, however, that of the three forms in which Genesis is handed down to us,--the Hebrew text, the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the Septuagint, or ancient Greek translation,--no two agree in the numbers on which the estimate is founded. Hence Hales and Jackson, following the larger numbers in the genealogies of the Septuagint, place the date of the creation at a point about fourteen hundred years prior to that fixed upon by Usher. ANCIENT AND MODERN HISTORY. The periods of history are not divided from one another by merely chronological limits, according to intervals of time of a definite duration. Such a classification may be of use to the memory, but it is arbitrary in its character. The landmarks of history are properly placed at the turning-points where new eras take their start, whether the intervals between them are longer or shorter. Of these natural divisions, the most general and the most marked is that between ancient and modern history. Ancient history not only precedes modern in time: it is distinguished from the latter as relating to a by-gone state of things. Modern history, on the contrary, deals with an order of things now existing. Between the two there is this line of demarkation. History (with the exception of China and India, which require distinct consideration, as standing apart) begins with Egypt, and flows down in a continuous stream, until, in the fourth century A.D., the Roman Empire, into which the ancient civilized peoples were incorporated, was broken up. Then the new nations, especially the tribes of the Germanic race, took power into their hands; Christianity was established among them; out of the chaos of elements there emerged the European nations, with their offshoots,--the peoples at present on the stage of action. Ancient history had its center in the Mediterranean. It embraced the peoples who dwelt on the shores of that sea, in the three continents, and the nations that were brought into relations with them. The Roman Empire, the final outcome of ancient history, was "the monarchy of the Mediterranean." With the breaking-up of the Empire, new races, new centers of power, a universal religion in the room of national religions, and a new type of culture and civilization, were introduced. Invaluable legacies were handed over from the past, surviving the wreck of ancient civilization. There is, however, a unity in history: the transition from the ancient to the modern era was gradual. MEDIAEVAL AND LATER MODERN HISTORY. Since the fall of the Roman Empire, there has occurred no revolution to be compared with the circumstances and results of that event. An old world passed away, and a new world began to be. Yet the student, as he travels hitherward, arrives at another epoch of extraordinary change,--a period of ferment, when modern society in Europe takes on a form widely different from the character that had belonged to it previously. The long interval between _ancient_ history and _modern_ (in this more restricted sense of thes term) is styled the Middle Ages. Its termination may be found in the fifteenth century, and a convenient date to mark the boundary-line is the capture of Constantinople by the Turks (1453). History thus divides itself into three parts:-- Part I. Ancient History, to the migrations of the Germanic Tribes (375 A.D). Part II. Mediæval History, from A.D. 375 to the Fall of Constantinople (1453). PART III. Modern History, from 1453 until the present. Works on General History.--Ranke, _Universal History_; Ploetz, _Epitome of Ancient, Mediæval, and Modern History_ (Boston, 1884); Weber, _Weitgeschichte_ (2 vols.); Assmann, _Handbuch d. allgemeinen Geschichte_ (5 vols., 1853-1862); by the same, _Abriss d. allgem. Gesch._ (in 3 parts); Oncken, _Allgem. Geschichte in Einzeidarstellungen_ (a series of full monographs of high merit). Copious works on Universal History, in German, by Weber, Schlosser, Becker, Leo. Laurent, _Études sur l'Histoire de l'Humanitè_ (this is an extended series of historical dissertations),--_The Orient and Greece_ (2 vols.); _Rome_ (1 vol.); _Christianity_ (1 vol.), etc. Prévost-Paradol, _Essai sur l'Histoire Universelle_ (2 vols.: a suggestive critical survey of the course of history, with the omission of details). S. Willard, _Synopsis of History_. PART I. ANCIENT HISTORY. FROM THE BEGINNING OF AUTHENTIC HISTORY TO THE MIGRATIONS OF THE TEUTONIC TRIBES (A.D. 375). DIVISIONS OF ANCIENT HISTORY.--Ancient history separates itself into two main divisions. In the first the Oriental nations form the subject; in the second, which follows in the order of time, the European peoples, especially Greece and Rome, have the central place. The first division terminates, and the second begins, with the rise of Grecian power and the great conflict of Greece with the Persian Empire, 492 B.C. SECTIONS OF ORIENTAL HISTORY.--But Oriental history divides itself into two distinct sections. The first embraces China and India, nations apart, and disconnected from the Mediterranean and adjacent peoples. China and India have a certain bond of connection with one another through the spread in China of the Buddhistic religion. The second section includes the great empires which preceded, and paved the way for, European history; viz., Egypt, Babylonia and Assyria, and Persia. In this section, along the course of the historic stream, other nations which exercised a powerful influence, attract special attention, especially the Phoenicians and the Hebrews. All these Oriental peoples are so connected together that they stand in history as the _Earliest Group of Nations_. The historic narrative must be so shaped as to describe them in part singly, but, at the same time, in their mutual relations. Ancient history, from an _ethnographical_ point of view, would embrace two general divisions,--Eastern peoples and Western peoples. The first would comprise Egyptians (Hamitic); Jews, Babylonians, Assyrians, Phoenicians, Lydians (Semitic); Hindus, Bactrians, Medes, Persians (Aryan); Parthians, Chinese, Japanese. The second would include Celts, Britons, _Greeks_, _Romans_, Teutons (Aryan). (Ploetz, _Universal History_, p. 1.) From a _geographical_ point of view, ancient history would fall into three general divisions: I. Asia, including (1) India, (2) China (with Japan), (3) Babylonia and Assyria, (4) Phoenicia, (5) Palestine, (6) Media and Persia. II. Africa, including (1) Egypt, (2) Carthage. III. Europe including (1) Greece, with its states and colonies; (2) Italy. DIVISION I. ORIENTAL HISTORY. PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY.--Europe and Asia together form one vast continent, yet have a partial boundary between them in the Ural Mountains and River, and in the deep bed of the Caspian and Black seas. Asia, which extends from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific, and from the Arctic Sea to the Indian Ocean, embraces an immense plateau, stretching from the Black Sea to Corea. This plateau spreads like a fan as it advances eastward. It is traversed by chains of mountains, and bordered also by lofty mountains, of which the Himalayas is the principal range. From this girdle of mountains descend slopes which lead down into the lowlands. The great plateau is broken into two by the Hindu-Kush range. The eastern division, the extensive plateau of Central Asia, is bordered on the north by the barren plains of Siberia. In the lowlands on the east and south are included the fertile plains of Central China and of Hindustan. The plateau of eastern Asia has been the natural abode of nomad tribes, Tartars and Mongols, whose invading hosts have poured through the passes of the mountains into the inviting territories below. The plateau of western Asia, stretching westward from the Indus, is not so high as that of the east. It begins with the lofty tablelands of Iran, and extends, ordinarily at a less elevation, to the extremity of the continent. On the south lie the plains of Mesopotamia. Arabia is a low plateau of vast extent, connected by the plateau and mountains of Syria with the mountain region of Asia Minor. As might be expected, civilization sprang up in the alluvial valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, the Indus and the Ganges, and on the soil watered by the great rivers of China, the Hoang-Ho and the Yang-tse-Kiang. Egypt was looked on by the Ancients as a part of Asia. Its language was distinct from the languages of the African nations. The seat of its power and thrift was the valley of the Nile. The conflicts of the nations settled in the lowlands with the mountainous peoples, eager for spoil and conquest, are a characteristic feature of Oriental History. CHARACTER OF THE ASIATIC NATIONS.--Generalizations covering so wide a field are, of necessity, inexact. As a rule, in the oriental mind, the intuitive powers eclipse the severely rational and logical. Civilization--as, for example, in Egypt and China--attains to a certain grade, and is there petrified. Immobility belongs to the Eastern nations. Revolutions bring a change of masters, but leave character and customs unchanged. The sense of individuality has been less vivid, and freedom less understood or valued. Governments have taken the despotic form. Law has had its seat in the ruler's sovereign will. The ruler has been regarded as clothed with divine authority. Before him the subject prostrates himself with groveling servility. RELIGION IN ASIA.--Asia is the cradle of the principal religions of the world. Here _monotheism_ appears, as in the faith of the Hebrews, and in the Mohammedan revival of it in a less pure form. Here have flourished _polytheistic_ systems, each with its throng of divinities. In the east, _pantheism_, dropping out of the conception of the Deity the element of personality, has found a cherished home. PRIESTHOODS.--Connected with the controlling influence of religion have arisen the priesthoods,--sometimes ruling as an aristocratic caste or class, sometimes dividing power with the reigning despot, to whom sacred attributes are ascribed. LITERATURE AND ART.--The Oriental nature has been mirrored in the literature and art of the East. Its products lack the measure, the grace and symmetry, and the human interest, which characterize the creations of the European mind. In the mechanical arts, invention and discovery push on progress to a certain point, then languish and die out. SECTION I. CHINA AND INDIA. CHAPTER I. CHINA. China proper comprises less than half of the present Chinese Empire. It was called the land of Sinae or Seres by the ancients, and in the middle ages bore the name of Cathay. In the north of China are the broad alluvial plains, and in the north-eastern portion of the empire, an immense delta. The rest of the country is hilly and mountainous. The nucleus of the Chinese nation is thought to have been a band of immigrants, who are supposed by some to have started from the region south-east of the Caspian Sea, and to have crossed the head waters of the Oxus. They followed the course of the Hoang-Ho, or Yellow River, having entered the country of their adoption from the north-west; and they planted themselves in the present province of Shan-se. Although nomads, they had some knowledge of astronomy, brought from their earlier homes; and they quickly made for themselves settled abodes. The native tribes by degrees were extirpated or driven out. The new-comers cultivated grain. They raised flax, out of which they wove garments. LEGENDARY ERA, TO THE CHOW DYNASTY (1123 B.C.).--The early annals of the Chinese, like those of other nations, are made up of myth and fable. The annalists placed the date of the creation at a point more than two millions of years prior to Confucius. The intervening period they sought to fill up with lines of dynasties. Preceding the Chow dynasty, the chroniclers give ten epochs. Prior to the eighth of these, there are no traces of authentic history. To _Yew-Chaou She_ (the Nest-having) is given the credit of teaching the people to make huts of the boughs of trees. Fire was discovered by _Suy-jin-She_ (the Fire-producer), his successor. Another ruler (_Fuh-he_), whose date is fixed at 2852 B.C., discovered iron. He also divided the people into classes. His successor invented the plow. These tales, perhaps, retain vague reminiscences of the methods in which useful inventions originated, or of the order in which they appeared. With _Yaou_ (2356 B.C.) we reach the period where the narratives which were compiled many centuries later by Confucius, begin their story. In the mass of fable, there is a larger infusion of historical fact, which, however, it is well-nigh hopeless to separate from the fiction that is mingled with it. In that golden age, few laws were required. We are told that the house-door could safely be left open. Yaou extended the empire: he established fairs and marts over the land. During the reign of _Shun_, who followed him, a tremendous inundation is said to have occurred; and _Yu_, called "the Great," was energetic in draining off the waters. He ascended the throne in 2205 B.C. His degenerate successors provoked a revolt and the introduction of a new dynasty, called the _Shang_ dynasty, whose first Emperor, _Tang_ (1760 B.C.), had a wise and beneficent reign. Tyranny and disaster followed under the later kings of this house; until finally _Woo-Wang_, the first sovereign of the Chow dynasty, acceded to the throne (1123 B.C.). THE CHOW DYNASTY (1123-255 B.C.).--The traditions now become decidedly more trustworthy, although still largely mixed with fable. _Woo-Wang_ was brave and upright. Under him a momentous change in government took place. By him the kingdom was divided into seventy-two feudal states. Internal divisions and struggles resulted from this new political system. The Tartars availed themselves of the weakened condition of the nation, to make predatory incursions. In this period of disorder and danger, _Confucius_, the great teacher of China, was born (551 B.C.). His father was a district magistrate, and died when the son was only three years old. He was trained and taught by his mother. When she died, he gave up all employments to mourn for her, during three years. His only occupation during this period was study. A grave and learned youth, he at length resolved to become an instructor of his countrymen in the ancient writings, to which he was devoted. He was regular in all his ways, and never ate or drank to excess. He gathered about him scholars; his fame increased; and, in 500 B.C., he was made magistrate of _Chung-tu_ by the sovereign, Duke _Ting_, an office which he justly and discreetly administered for three years. Sometimes persecuted, he compared himself to a dog driven from his home. "I have the fidelity of that animal, and I am treated like it. But what matters the ingratitude of men? They can not hinder me from doing all the good that has been appointed me. If my precepts are disregarded, I have the consolation of knowing in my own breast that I have faithfully performed my duty." Both by his literary works and by the lessons taught to his disciples, he laid the foundation of a most powerful and lasting influence over his countrymen. He died in 478 B.C., at the age of seventy-three. _Laou-tsze_, another famous thinker, was a few years older than Confucius. "Three precious things," he said, "I prize, and hold fast,--humility, compassion, and economy." _Mencius_, a celebrated teacher and reformer, who followed in the path of Confucius, after a long life died in 289 B.C. One of his doctrines was, that the nature of man is good, and that evil is owing to education and circumstances. One of his maxims was, that the people can be led aright, but can not be taught the reasons for the guidance to which they are subjected. DYNASTY OF TSIN (255-206 B.C.).--Reverting to the course of Chinese history, the next grand epoch is the enthronement of the Tsin dynasty, in the person of the ruler of one of the provinces, which, in the intestine strife among the feudal princes, gained the victory. This was in 255 B.C. In this line belongs the famous Emperor _Che Hwang-te_, who, in 246 B.C., at the age of thirteen years, succeeded to the crown. His palace in his capital, the modern Se-gan Foo, the edifices which he built elsewhere, the roads and canals constructed by him, excited wonder. He routed and drove out the Tartar invaders, and put down the rebellion of the feudal princes. He enlarged the kingdom nearly to the limits of modern China proper. For the protection of the northern frontier he began the "Great Wall," which he did not live to finish. It was finished 204 B.C., ten years after it was begun. When finished, it was not less than fifteen hundred miles in length. It would reach "from Philadelphia to Topeka, or from Portugal to Naples." The innovations and maxims of government of Che Hwang-te were offensive to the scholars and the conservative class, who pointed the people to the heroes of the feudal days and to the glories of the past. For this reason, the monarch commanded that all books having reference to the history of the empire should be destroyed. He would efface the recollection of the old times. He would not allow his system to be undermined by tradition. The decree was obeyed, although hidden copies of many of the ancient writings were undoubtedly preserved. Numerous scholars were buried alive. His death, in 210 B.C., was followed by disturbances, growing out of the disaffection of the higher classes. In the civil war that ensued, his dynasty was subverted. The throne was next held by THE HAN RULERS (206 B.C.-22l A.D.).--Their sway, which lasted for four hundred years, covers a brilliant period in the Chinese annals. During the reign of _Ming-te_, 65 A.D., a deputation was sent to India, to obtain the sacred writings and authorized teachers of the Buddhistic religion, which had begun to spread among the Chinese. The power of the feudal lords was reduced. Northern Corea was conquered, and the bounds of the empire extended on the west as far as Russian Turkestan, In this period, there was a marked revival of learning and authorship. Then lived a famous public officer, _Yang Chên_, who, when asked to take a bribe, and assured that no one would know it, answered, "How so? Heaven would know, Earth would know, you would know, and I should know." Under this dynasty, a custom of burying slaves with the dead was abolished. BEGINNING IN 221 A.D., there followed the "era of the three kingdoms." It was an age of martial prowess, civil war, and bloodshed. This long period of division was interrupted in 265 A.D. by a re-union of the greater part of the empire for a brief period. But discord soon sprang up; and it was not until 590 A.D. that unity and order were restored by _Yang-Kian_, who founded the dynasty, named from his local dominion, _Suy_. RELIGION IN CHINA.--The ancient religion of China was polytheistic. The supreme divinity was called _Tien_ or _Shang-ti_. Tien signifies Heaven. Was Heaven, or Shang-ti--or the Lord--the visible heaven, the expanse above, clothed with the attribute of personality? This has been, and still is, the prevailing opinion of missionaries and scholars. Dr. _Legge_, however, holds that Tien is the lord of the heavens, a power above the visible firmament; and thus finds monotheism as the basis of the Chinese religious creed. The prevailing religions of China are three,--_Buddhism_ (which in its original form was brought in from India in the first century of the Christian era), _Confucianism_, and _Taouism_. It may be observed, that, in all these systems, there is but a vague sense of personality as inhering in the heavenly powers, in comparison with the creeds in vogue among heathen nations generally. Another fact to be noted is, that, in Chinese worship, the veneration for ancestors, a feeling inbred in the Chinese mind, is a very prominent and pervading element. Confucius did not profess to reveal things supernatural. His teaching is made up of moral and political maxims. He builds on the past, and always inculcates reverence for the fathers and for what has been. There is much wise counsel to parents and to rulers. His morality reaches its acme in the Golden Rule, which he gives, however, only in its negative relation: "Do not unto others what you would not that others should do unto you." Laou-tsze is a more speculative and mystical thinker. In his moral aphorisms, he approaches the theory of the ancient Stoics. TEH--i.e., virtue--is lauded. Teh proceeds from TAO. To explain what the Chinese sage means by Tao,--a word that signifies the "way,"--is a puzzle for commentators and inquirers. From Tao all things originate: they conform to Tao, and to Tao they return. There are noble maxims in Laou-tsze,--precepts enjoining compassion, and condemning the requital of evil with evil. Taouism is a type of religion which traces itself to the teaching of Laou-tsze. That teaching became mixed with wild speculations. Then certain Buddhistic rites and tenets were added to it. The result, finally, was a compound of knavery and superstition. Taouism is at once mystical and rationalistic in its tone. LITERATURE IN CHINA.--The Chinese language was crystallized, in the written form, in the monosyllabic stage of its development. Beginning in hieroglyphs, literal pictures of objects, and having no alphabet, it has so multiplied its characters and combinations of characters as to put great hindrances in the way of the acquisition of it. The utter absence of inflection may have crippled the development of poetry and of the drama, for which the Chinese have a natural taste. In these departments, Chinese productions do not rise above mediocrity. For this, however, the lack of imagination and of creative power is largely accountable. It is in the province of pure prose--as in historical narrations, topographical writings, such as geographies, and in the making of encyclopedias--that the Chinese have excelled. But the yoke of tradition has everywhere weighed heavily. In one sense, the Chinese have been a literary people. The system of competitive examinations for public offices has diffused through the nation a certain degree of book-learning; yet the masses have been kept in a state of ignorance. At the foundation of all learning are the "nine classics," which consist of five works, edited or written by Confucius, of which the "Shoo King," or Book of History, stands at the head, together with the four books written by his disciples and the disciples of Mencius. Great as have been the services of Confucius, his own slavish reverence for the past, so stamped upon his writings, has had the effect to cramp the development of the Chinese mind, and to fasten upon it the fetters of tradition. GOVERNMENT AND CIVILIZATION.--The government of China is "a patriarchal despotism." As father of his people, the king has absolute authority. The power of life and death is in his hand. Yet the right of revolution was taught by Confucius and Mencius, and the Chinese have not been slow to exercise it. The powers of the emperor are limited by ceremonial regulations, and by a body of precedents which are held sacred. He administers rule with the help of a privy council. Officers of every rank in the employ of the government constitute the aristocratic class of Mandarins, who are divided into different ranks. INVENTION.--Printing by wooden blocks was known in China as early as the sixth century A.D. Printing did not come into general use until the thirteenth century. The use of movable types, although devised, it is said, many centuries earlier, did not come into vogue until the seventeenth century. Gunpowder was used as early as 250 A.D., in the making of fire-crackers; but it was certainly as late as the middle of the twelfth century that it was first employed in war. The Chinese were early acquainted with the polarity of the loadstone, and used the compass in journeys by land long before that instrument was known in Europe. In various branches of manufactures,--as silk, porcelain, carved work in ivory, wood, and horn,--the Chinese, at least until a recent period, have been pre-eminent. In the mechanical arts their progress has been slow. Their crude implements of husbandry are in contrast with their exhibitions of skill in other directions. Although imitation long ago supplanted the activity of inventive talent, to China belongs the distinction of being a civilized land before the Christian nations of Europe had emerged into being. LITERATURE.--_The Middle Kingdom_, by S. WELLS WILLIAMS (2 vols.);_ Encycl. Brit.,_ Art. _China_ by Professor Douglas; Arts. _Confucius and Mencius_ by Dr. Legge; Legge,_ The Religions of China_; Richthofen, _China_(3 vols.); Giles, _Historic China, and Other Sketches_ (1882); Legge, _The Chinese Classics_; BOULGER, _History of China_ (1881-84); Thornton, _History of China_. JAPAN.--The authentic history of Japan belongs mainly in the modern period, since the tenth century A.D. The most ancient religion of Japan, designated by a term which means "the way of the gods," included a variety of objects of worship,--gods, deified men, the mikados, or chief rulers, regarded as "the sons of heaven," animals, plants, etc. Unquestioning obedience to the mikado was the primary religious duty. It was a state-religion. Buddhism, brought into the country in 552 A.D., spread, and became prevalent. The Japanese are a mixed race. Kiôto and the adjacent provinces are said to have been occupied by the conquerors. Prior to 660 B.C. we have no trustworthy history of the island. This is the date assigned by the Japanese to their hero, _Jimmu Tenno_, the first mikado, the founder of an unbroken line. For several centuries, however, the history is open to question. The tenth mikado, Sujin, is noted as a reformer, and promoter of civilization. An uncrowned princess, _Jingu-Kogo_ (201-269 A.D.), is famous for her military prowess. She suppressed a rebellion, and subdued Corea. _Ojin_, a celebrated warrior, is still worshiped as a god of war. The introduction of Chinese literature and civilization at this period, makes a turning-point in Japanese history. LITERATURE.--J. J. REIN, _Japan: Travels and Researches_, vol. I. (1881); E. J. Reed, _Japan_ (2 vols., 1880); Siebold, _Nippon_ (5 vols. 410, and plates); Kampfer, _History of Japan_ (2 vols. fol., 1728); _Encycl. Brit._, Art. _Japan_. CHAPTER II. INDIA. India is the central one of the three great peninsulas of Southern Asia. On the north is the mountainous region of the Himalayas, below which are the vast and fertile river plains, watered by the _Indus_, the _Ganges_, and other streams. On the south, separated from the Ganges by the Vindhyá range, is the hilly and mountainous tract called the Deccan. THE ARYAN INVADERS.--The history of India opens with glimpses of a struggle on the borders of the great rivers,--first of the Indus and then of the Ganges,--between an invading race, the Sanskrit-speaking Aryans from the north-west, and the dusky aborigines. These rude native tribes have left few relics but their tombs. Before they tenanted the soil, there dwelt upon it still earlier inhabitants, whose implements were of stone or bronze. The incoming people referred to above were of that Indo-European stock to which we belong. From their home, perhaps in central Asia, they moved in various directions. A part built up the Persian kingdom; another portion migrated farther, and were the progenitors of the Greek nation; and a third founded Rome. The Indian Aryans migrated southward from the headwaters of the Oxus at some time prior, doubtless, to 2000 B.C. Our knowledge of them is derived from their ancient sacred books, the _Vedas_; of these the oldest, the _Rig-Veda_, contains ten hundred and seventeen lyrics, chiefly addressed to the gods. Its contents were composed while the Aryans dwelt upon the Indus, and while they were on their way to the neighborhood of the Ganges. The Rig-Veda, therefore, exhibits this people in their earliest stage of religious and social development. They were herdsmen, but with a martial spirit, which enabled them by degrees to drive out the native tribes, and compel them to take refuge in the mountains on the north, or on the great southern plateau. Among them women were held in respect, and marriage was sacred. There are beautiful hymns written by ladies and queens. No such cruel custom as the burning of widows existed: it was of far later origin. They were acquainted with the metals. Among them were blacksmiths, coppersmiths, goldsmiths, carpenters, and other artisans. They fought from chariots, but had not come to employ elephants in war. They were settled in villages and in towns. Mention is made of ships, or river-boats, as in use among them. They ate beef, and drank a sort of fermented beer made from the _soma_ plant. THE VEDIC RELIGION.--The early religion of the Indian Aryans was quite different from the system that grew up later among them. We do not find in it the dreamy pantheism that appears afterwards. It is cheerful in its tone, quite in contrast with the gloomy asceticism which is stamped on it in after times. The head of each family is priest in his own household. It is only the great tribal sacrifice which is offered by priests set apart for the service. The worship is polytheistic, but not without tendencies to monotheism. The principal divinities are the powers of nature. The deities (_deva_) were the heavenly or the shining ones. "It was the beautiful phenomenon of light which first and most powerfully swayed the Aryan mind." The chief gods were the Father-heaven; Indra, the god of thunder and of rain, from whom the refreshing showers descended; Varuna, the encompassing sky; and Agni, the god of fire. Among these _Indra_, from his beneficence, more and more attracted worship. _Soma_, too, was worshiped; soma being originally the intoxicating juice of a plant. _Brihaspati_, the lord of prayer, personifying the omnipresent power of prayer, was adored. Thirty-three gods in all were invoked. The bodies of the dead were consumed on the funeral-pile. The soul survived the body, but the later doctrine of transmigration was unknown. All the attributes of sovereign power and majesty were collected in _Varuna_. No one can fathom him, but he sees and knows all. He is the upholder of order; just, yet the dispenser of grace, and merciful to the penitent. Worship is made up of oblations and prayers. It must be sincere. The gods will not tolerate deceit. They require faith. Of the last things and the last times the Rig-Veda hardly speaks. The Vedic hymns have much to say of the origin of things, but little, except in the last book, of the final issues. There are four Vedas,--the _Rig-Veda_, which has the body of hymns; the _Yajur-Veda_, in which the prescribed formulas to be used in acts of sacrifice are collected; the _Sama-Veda_, containing the chants; and the _Atharva-Veda_, a collection of hymns, in part of a later date. Besides, each Veda contains, as a second part, one or more Brâhmanas, or prose treatises on the ceremonial system. In addition, there are theological works supplementary, and of later origin,--the intermediate _Aranyakas_, and the _Upanishads_, which are of a speculative cast. Not only is nature--mountains, rivers, trees, etc.--personified in the Vedas: the animals--as the cow, the horse, the dog, even the apparatus of worship, the war-chariot, the plow, and the furrow--are addressed in prayer. The sacrificial fire is deified in _Agni_, the sacrificial drink in _Soma_. Indra has for his body-guards the _Maruts_, gods of the storm and lightning. He is a warlike god, standing in his chariot, but also a beneficent giver of all good gifts. _Varuna_ is the god of the vast luminous heavens, in their serene majesty. _Indra_, on the other hand, represents the atmosphere in its active and militant energy. The number of the gods is variously given. In passages, they are said to be many thousands. RITES.--There is no hierarchy among the gods. But there is a tendency to confuse the attributes of the different divinities. Occasionally, for the time being, one eclipses all the rest, and is addressed as if all others were forgotten. There is sometimes a tendency to regard them as all one, under different names. But this tendency develops itself later. Offerings consisted of rice, cakes, soma, etc. Victims also were sacrificed, the horse especially; also the goat, the buffalo, and other animals. Sacrifice purchases the gifts and favor of the gods. It is an expression of gratitude and dependence. It has, moreover, a deep, mysterious energy of an almost magical character. THE ARYANS ON THE GANGES.--Later, but earlier than 1000 B.C., we find that the Aryan invaders have moved onward in their career of conquest, and have planted themselves on the plains of the Ganges. A marvelous transformation has taken place in their social constitution, their religion, and in their general spirit. The caste system has sprung up, of which there are few traces in the Rig-Veda. In the first or lowest of these distinct classes are the _Sudras_, or despised serfs, who are the subjugated aborigines; the second, or next higher, class is composed of the tillers of the soil, who are of a lower rank than the third, the warrior caste. These, in turn, fall below the _Brahmans_, or priests, who, as rites of worship grew more complicated, and superstition increased, gained, though not without a struggle, a complete ascendency. This marks the beginning of the sacerdotal era. The tendency of the farmer caste was to decrease, until, in modern times, in various provinces they are hardly found. The supremacy of the Brahmans was largely owing to their eminence as the great literary caste. They arose out of the families by whom the hymns had been composed, and who managed the tribal sacrifices. They alone understood the language of the hymns and the ritual. _Brahman_, in the earliest Veda, signifies a worshiper. BRAHMINICAL PANTHEISM.--The polytheism of the earlier type of religion was converted into pantheism. _Brahma_, the supreme being, is impersonal, the eternal source of all things, from which all finite beings--gods, nature, and men--emanate. It is by _emanation_,--an outflow analogous to that of a stream from its fountain, in distinction from _creation_, implying will and self-consciousness,--that all derived existences emerge into being. With this doctrine was connected the belief in the transmigration of souls. All animated beings, including plants as well as animals, partake of the universal life which has its origin and seat in Brahma. Alienation from Brahma, finite, individual being, is evil. To work the way back to Brahma is the great aim and hope. Absorption in Brahma, return to the primeval essence, is the supreme good. The sufferings of the present are the penalty of sins committed in a pre-existent state. If they are not purged away, the soul is condemned to be embodied again and again,--it may be, in some repulsive animal. This process of metempsychosis might be repeated far into the indefinite future. With the doctrine of Brahma and of transmigration was connected the feeling that all life is sacred. The Brahman spared even trees and plants from destruction. Pollution or defilement might be contracted in a great variety of ways. There grew out of these ideas of sin, rigorous penances, most painful forms of self-torment. It was only by practices of this sort that there was hope of avoiding the retribution so much dreaded. THE BRAHMINICAL CODES.--The principal of these codes is the _Laws of Manu_. Manu was imagined to be the first human being, conceived of as a sage. This code is a digest compiled by the priests at a date unknown, but comprising in it materials of a very high antiquity. Hence, while exhibiting Brahmanism in its maturer form, it affords glimpses of society at a much earlier date. A second code was compiled not earlier than the second century A.D. These codes present Hindu law under three heads: (1) domestic and civil rights and duties, (2) the administration of justice, (3) purification and penance. In truth, the codes prescribe regulations for every department of life. The obligations of kings, of Brahmans, and of every other class, are defined in detail. One motive that is kept in view is to set forth and fortify the special privileges of the Brahminical order. THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE BRAHMINS.--In process of time, commentaries on the Vedas were multiplied. Discord arose in the interpretation of the sacred books. Out of this debate and confusion there emerged, in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C., several philosophical systems. These aimed to give peace to the soul by emancipating it from the bondage of matter, and by imparting a sense of independence of the body and of the external world. These old philosophies are preserved in the _Upanishads_, or Instructions. The main idea in these diverse systems--the _Sankhya_, the _Vedanta_, etc.--is, that the soul's notion of itself as separate from the supreme, impersonal being, is the fallen state. This duality must be overcome. Conscious of its identity with the Supreme, the soul enters into _yoga_, or the state of unison with the Infinite. He who is thus taken away from the illusions of sense, or the _yogin_, is free from the power of things perishable. Death brings a complete absorption into the source of all being. It is the bliss of personal extinction. This sort of philosophy attached great value to contemplation and self-renunciation. It led to a light esteem of ritual practices and ceremonies. BUDDHISM. The Brahminical system has not ceased to maintain its supremacy in India since the time when it was presented to view in the law-codes. But it has not escaped alteration and attack. New movements, religious and political, have appeared to modify its character. Of these, Buddhism is by far the most memorable. THE LIFE OF BUDDHA.--Of the life of Buddha we have only legendary information, where it is impossible to separate fact from romance. The date of his death was between 482 and 472 B.C. He was then old. He belonged to the family of Gautamas, who were said to be of the royal line of the Çâkyas, a clan having its seat about a hundred and thirty-seven miles north of Benares. The story is, that, brought up in luxury, and destined to reign, he was so struck with the miseries of mankind, that, at the age of twenty-nine, he left his parents, his young wife, and an only son, and retired to a solitary life to meditate upon the cause of human suffering. From Brahminical teachers he could obtain no solution of the problem. But after seven years of meditation and struggle, during which sore temptations to return to a life of sense and of ease were successfully resisted, he attained to truth and to peace. For forty-four years after this he is said to have promulgated his doctrine, gathering about him disciples, whom he charged with the duty of spreading it abroad. THE BUDDHISTIC DOCTRINE.--Buddhism was not a distinct revolt against the reigning system of religion. Buddha left theology to the Brahmans. Indra, Agni, and the other divinities, and the services rendered to them, he left untouched. Being an anchorite, he was not required to concern himself with the rites and observances in which others took part. His aim was practical. His doctrine, though resting on a theoretical basis, was propounded simply as a way of salvation from the burdens that oppressed the souls of men. Nor did he undertake a warfare against caste. The blessing of deliverance from the woes of life he opened to all without distinction. This was the limit of his opposition to caste. THE ROAD TO NIRVANA.--Buddha taught, (1) that existence is always attended with misery; (2) that all modes of misery result from passion, or desire unsatisfied; (3) that desire must be quenched; (4) that there are four steps in doing this, and thus of arriving at NIRVANA, which is the state in which self is lost and absorbed, and vanishes from being. These four ways are (1) the awakening to a perception of the nature and cause of evil, as thus defined; (2) the consequent quenching of impure and revengeful feelings; (3) the stifling of all other evil desires, also riddance from ignorance, doubt, heresy, unkindliness, and vexation; (4) the entrance into Nirvana, sooner or later, after death. The great boon which Buddha held out was escape from the horrors of transmigration. He attributed to the soul no substantial existence. It is the _Karma_, or another being, the successor of one who dies, the result and effect of all that he was, who re-appears in case of transmigration. Buddhism involved atheism, and the denial of personal immortality, or, where this last tenet was not explicitly denied, uncertainty and indifference respecting it. On the foundation of Buddha's teaching, there grew up a vast system of monasticism, with ascetic usages not less burdensome than the yoke of caste. The attractive feature of Buddhism was its moral precepts. These were chiefly an inculcation of chastity, patience, and compassion; the unresisting endurance of all ills; sympathy and efficient help for all men. DEIFICATION OF BUDDHA.--By the pupils of Buddha he was glorified. He was placed among the Brahminical gods, by whom he was served. A multitude of cloisters were erected in his honor, in which his relics were believed to be preserved. On the basis of the simpler doctrine and precepts of the founder, there accumulated a mass of superstitious beliefs and observances. THE SPREAD OF BUDDHISM.--After the death of Buddha, it is said that his disciples, to the number of five hundred, assembled, and divided his teaching into three branches,--his own words, his rules of discipline, and his system of doctrine. During the next two centuries Buddhism spread over northern India. One of the most conspicuous agents in its diffusion was _Asoka_, the king of Behar, who was converted to the Buddhistic faith, and published its tenets throughout India. His edicts, in which they were set forth, were engraved on rocks and pillars and in caves. He organized missionary efforts among the aborigines, using only peaceful means, and combining the healing of disease, and other forms of philanthropy, with preaching. He carried the Buddhistic faith as far as _Ceylon_. It spread over _Burmah_ (450 A.D.). _Siam_ was converted (638 A.D.), and _Java_ between the fifth and seventh centuries of our era. Through Central Asia the Buddhistic missionaries passed into _China_ in the second century B.C., and Buddhism became an established system there as early as 65 A.D. At present, this religion numbers among its professed adherents more than a third of the human race. THE BRAHMINICAL RE-ACTION.--In India Buddhism did not supplant the old religion. The Brahmans modified their system. They made their theology more plain to the popular apprehension. They took up Buddhistic speculations into their system. But they rendered their ceremonial practices more complex and more burdensome. Their ascetic rule grew to be more exacting and oppressive. In diffusing and making popular their system, customs, like the burning of widows, were introduced, which were not known in previous times. The divinities, _Brahma_, the author of all things, _Vishnu_ the preserver, and _Siva_ the destroyer, were brought into a relation to one another, as a sort of triad. Successive incarnations of Vishnu became an article of the creed, _Krishna_ being one of his incarnate names. For centuries Brahmanism and Buddhism existed together. Gradually Buddhism decayed, and melted into the older system; helping to modify its character, and thus to give rise to modern Hinduism. For ten centuries Buddhism, with multitudinous adherents abroad, has had no existence in the land of its birth. THE GREEK-ROMAN PERIOD.--In 327 B.C., _Alexander the Great_ advanced in his victorious career as far as India, entered the Punjab, which was then divided among petty kingdoms, and defeated one of the kings, _Porus_, who disputed the passage of the river Jhelum. The heat of the climate and the reluctance of his troops caused the Macedonian invader to turn back from his original design of penetrating to the Ganges. Near the confluence of the five rivers he built a town, Alexandria. He founded, also, other towns, established alliances, and left garrisons. On the death of Alexander (323 B.C.) and the division of his empire, Bactria and India fell to the lot of Seleucus Nicator, the founder of the Syrian monarchy. About this time a new kingdom grew up in the valley of the Ganges, under the auspices of _Chandra Gupti_, a native. After various conflicts, Seleucus ceded the Greek settlements in the Punjab to this prince, to whom he gave his daughter in marriage. The successors of Seleucus sent Græco-Bactrian expeditions into India. Thus Greek science and Greek art exerted a perceptible influence in Hindustan. During the first six centuries of the Christian era, Scythian hordes poured down into northern India. They were stoutly resisted, but effected settlements, and made conquests. The events as well as the dates of the long struggle are obscure. The non-Aryan races of India, both on the north and on the south of the Ganges, many of whom received the Buddhistic faith, were not without a marked influence--the precise lines of which it is difficult to trace--upon the history and life of India during the period of Greek and Scythic occupation and warfare. The _Dravidian_ people in southern India, made up of non-Aryans, number at present forty-six millions. LITERATURE.--Mill's _History of India_ (Wilson's edition, 9 vols.); MONIER WILLIAMS, _Indian Wisdom_; Max Müller's _History of Sanskrit Literature_; EARTH'S _The Religions of India_, 1882; _Encycl. Brit._, Arts. _India, Brahmanism, Buddhism_. SECTION II. THE EARLIEST GROUP OF NATIONS. CHAPTER I. EGYPT. THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE.--When the curtain that hides the far distant past is lifted, we find in the valley of the Nile a people of a dark color, tinged with red, and a peculiar physiognomy, who had long existed there. Of their beginnings, there is no record. It is not likely that they came down the river from the south, as some have thought; more probably they were of Asiatic origin. Their language, though it certainly shows affinities with the Semitic tongues in its grammar, is utterly dissimilar in its vocabulary: its modern descendant is the Coptic, no longer a spoken dialect. The Egyptians were of the Caucasian variety, but not white like the Lybians on the west. On the east were tribes of a yellowish complexion and various lineage, belonging to the numerous people whom the Egyptians designated as _Amu_. On the south, in what was called _Ethiopia_, was a negro people; and, also beyond them and eastward, a dusky race, of totally different origin, a branch of the widely diffused _Cushites_. THE NILE: DIVISIONS OF THE COUNTRY.--Egypt (styled by its ancient inhabitants, from the color of the soil deposited by the Nile, _Kem_ or the Black Land, and by the Hebrews called _Mizraim_) is the creation of the great river. "Egypt," says Herodotus, "is the gift of the Nile;" and this is not only true, as the historian meant it, physically, because it is the Nile that rescued the land from the arid waste by which it is bordered; but the course of Egyptian history--the occupations, habits, and religion of the people--was largely determined by the characteristics of the river. The sources of the Nile have had in all ages the fascination of mystery, and have been a fruitful theme for conjecture. It was reserved for modern explorers to ascertain that it takes its rise in equatorial Africa, in the two great lakes, the _Albert_ and _Victoria Nyanzas_. From that region, fed by few tributaries, it flows to the Mediterranean, a distance of two thousand miles, but breaks, as it nears the sea, into two main and several minor arms. These spread fruitfulness over the broad plain called, from its shape, the _Delta._ Above the Delta the fringe of productive land has a width of only a few miles on either side of the stream. Its fertility is due to the yearly inundation which, as the effect of the rainfall of Abyssinia, begins early in July, and terminates in November, when the river, having slowly risen in the interval to an average height of twenty-three or twenty-four feet, reaches in its gradual descent the ordinary level. This narrow belt of territory, annually enriched with a layer of fertile mud, is in striking contrast with the barren regions, parched by the sun, on either side, with the long chain of Arabian mountains that adjoin it on the east, and with the low hills of the Lybian desert on the west. By dikes, canals, and reservoirs, the beneficent river from the most ancient times has been made to irrigate the land above, where are the towns and dwellings of the people, and thus to extend and keep up its unrivaled fertility. The country of old was divided into two parts,--_Upper Egypt,_ as it is now called, with _Thebes_ for its principal city, extending from the first cataract, near _Syene,_ to the Memphian district; and _Lower Egypt,_ embracing the rest of the country on the north, including the Delta. The two divisions were marked by differences of dialect and of customs. The country was further divided into _nomes,_ or districts, about forty in all, but varying in number at different times. They were parted from one another by boundary stones. Each had its own civil organization, a capital, and a center of worship. EARLY CULTURE.--At a far remote day, there existed in Lower Egypt an advanced type of culture. Sepulchers, with their inscriptions and sculptures, were made of so solid material that they have remained to testify to this fact. When the pyramids were built, mechanical skill was highly developed, Egyptian art had reached a point beyond which it scarcely advanced, and the administration of government had attained substantially to the form in which it continued to exist. The use of writing, the division of the year, the beginnings of the sciences and of literature, are found in this earliest period. Egyptian culture, as far as we can determine, was not borrowed. It was a native product. The earliest period was the period of most growth. The prevailing tendency was to crystallize all arts and customs into definite, established forms, and to subject every thing to fixed rules. The desire to preserve what had been gained overmastered the impulses to progress: individuality and enterprise were blighted by an excessive spirit of conservatism. Moreover, the culture of the Egyptians never disengaged itself from its connection with every-day practical needs, or the material spirit that lay at its root. They did not, like the Greeks, soar into the atmosphere of theoretical science and speculation. They did not break loose from the fetters of tradition. THE HIEROGLYPHICS.--We owe our knowledge of ancient Egypt chiefly to hieroglyphical writing. The hieroglyphs, except those denoting numbers, were pictures of objects. The writing is of three kinds. The _first_, the hieroglyphical, is composed of literal pictures, as a circle, O, for the sun, a curved line for the moon, a pointed oval for the mouth. The _second_ sort of characters, the hieratic, and the _third_, the demotic, are curtailed pictures, which can thus be written more rapidly. They are seldom seen on the monuments, but are the writing generally found on the papyrus rolls or manuscripts. They are written from right to left. The hieroglyphs proper may be written either way, or in a perpendicular line. In the demotic, or people's writing, the characters are somewhat more curtailed, or abridged, than in the hieratic, or priestly, style. There were four methods of using the hieroglyphics in historical times. _First_, there were the primary, representational characters, the literal pictures. _Secondly_, the characters were used figuratively, as symbols. Thus a circle, O, meant not only the sun, but also "day"; the crescent denoted not only the moon, but also "a month;" a pen and inkstand signified "writing," etc. So one object was substituted for another analogous to it,--as the picture of a boot in a trap, which stood for "deceit." A conventional emblem, too, might represent the object. Thus, the hawk denoted the sun, two water-plants meant Upper and Lower Egypt. _Thirdly_, hieroglyphics were used as determinatives. That is, an object would be denoted by letters (in a way that we shall soon explain), and a picture be added _to determine_, or make clear, what was meant. After proper names, they designated the sex; after the names of other classes, as animals, they specified the particular genus. _Fourthly_, the bulk of the hieroglyphs are phonetic. They stand for sounds. The picture stood for the initial sound of the name of the object depicted. Thus the picture of an eagle, _akhôm_, represented "A." Unfortunately, numerous objects were employed for a like purpose, to indicate the same sound. Hence the number of characters was multiplied. The whole number of signs used in writing is not less than nine hundred or a thousand. The discovery of the Rosetta Stone--a large black slab of stone--with an identical inscription in hieroglyphics, in demotic and in Greek, furnished to _Champollion_ (1810) and to _Young_ the clew to the deciphering of the Egyptian writing, and thus the key to the sense of the monumental inscriptions. The Egyptian manuscripts were made of the pith of the byblus plant, cut into strips. These were laid side by side horizontally, with another layer of strips across them; the two layers being united by paste, and subjected to a heavy pressure. The Egyptians wrote with a reed, using black and red ink. SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE OF EGYPTIAN HISTORY.--These are (1) the inscriptions on the monuments. These, it must be remembered, are commonly in praise of the departed, and of their achievements. (2) The list of kings in the Turin papyrus, a very important Egyptian manuscript, discovered by Champollion. (3) _Manetho_. An Egyptian priest, he wrote, about 250 B.C., a history. Only his lists of dynasties are preserved as given in an Armenian version of _Eusebius_, a writer of the fourth century, and in _George Syncellus_, a writer of the eighth century, who professed to embody the statements of Eusebius and of another author, _Julius Africanus_, probably of the second century, who had also quoted the lists of Manetho. Manetho is of great importance; but we do not know accurately what his original text was, it being so differently reported. His details frequently clash with the monuments. Moreover, the method adopted by him in making his lists is, in essential points, subject to doubt. (4) The Greek historians. _Herodotus_ had visited Egypt (between 460 and 450 B.C.), and conferred with Egyptian priests. _Diodorus_, also, in the time of Julius Caesar, had visited Egypt. He is largely a copyist of Herodotus. (5) The Old Testament. Here we have many instructive references to Egypt. But, until Rehoboam, the kings of Egypt have in the Scriptures the general name of _Pharaoh_. Hence it is not always easy to identify them with corresponding kings on the Egyptian lists. CHRONOLOGY.--The date of the beginning of the first dynasty of Egyptian rulers is a controverted point; there are advocates of a longer and of a shorter chronology. The data are not sufficient to settle accurately the questions in dispute. Some judicious scholars put the beginning of _the first dynasty_ as early as 5000 B.C.; others have wished to bring it down even lower than 3000 B.C. Egyptian history, prior to the Persian conquest (525 B.C.), divides itself into three sections,--the _Old Empire_, having its seat at Memphis; the _Middle Empire_, following upon a period of strife and division, and embracing the rule of foreign invaders, _the Hyksos;_ and the _New Empire_, the era of conquest, by foreign power, and of downfall. The expedition of Shishak, king of Egypt, against Rehoboam, is ascertained, from both Egyptian and Hebrew sources, to have been not earlier than 971 B.C., and within twenty-five years of that date. The nineteenth Egyptian dynasty began about the year 1350 B.C. The Middle Empire is thought by some to have commenced as early as 2200 B.C.; by others as late as 1720 B.C. When we go backward into the Old Empire, the sources of uncertainty are multiplied. The main difficulty is to determine whether the lists of dynasties are _consecutive_ throughout, or in part _contemporary_. One class of scholars place the date of the first historic king, _Menes_, two or three thousand years earlier than the point assigned by the other class! The date of Menes given by _Böckh_ is 5702 B.C.; by _Lenormant_, 5004 B.C.; by _Brugsch_, 4455 B.C.; by _Lepsius_, 3852 B.C.; by _Bunsen_, 3623 or 3059 B.C.; _E. Meyer_ makes 3180 B.C. the lowest possible date for Menes; 3233 B.C. is the date assigned by _Duncker_. On the contrary, _R. S. Poole_ gives 2717 B.C.; _Wilkinson_, 2691 B.C.; and _G. Rawlinson_, between 2450 and 2250 B.C. There are no means of fully determining the controversy, as Rawlinson has shown (_History of Ancient Egypt_, vol. ii., p. 19). It appears to be well ascertained that Egyptian civilization was in being at least as far back as about 4000 B.C. THE POLITICAL SYSTEM.--The bulk of the people were farmers and shepherds, indisposed to war. The land was owned in large estates by the nobles, who were possessed of multitudes of serfs and of cattle. They had in their service, also, artisans, oarsmen, and traffickers. The centers of industry were the numerous cities. Here the nobles had their mansions, and the gods their temples with retinues of priests. But the Nomes had each its particular jurisdiction. The traces of two original communities are preserved in the mythological legends and in the titles of the kings. The oldest inscriptions discover to us a systematic organization of the state. The king is supreme: under him are the rulers of the two halves of the kingdom. He creates the army, and appoints its generals. The whole strength of the kingdom is given to him for the erection of the temples which he raises to the gods, or of the stupendous pyramid which is to form his sepulcher. The nobility make up his court; from them he selects his chief officers of state,--his secretary, his treasurer, his inspector of quarries, etc. The princes and princesses are educated in connection with the children of the highest nobles. A body-guard protects the monarch: he shows himself to the people only in stately processions. All who approach him prostrate themselves at his feet. He is the descendant of the gods. The Pharaohs are even looked upon as gods incarnate. They are clothed with all power on earth. When they die, they go to the gods; and rites of worship are instituted for them. That there was a well-ordered and efficient civil administration admits of no doubt. Whether there existed a thrifty middle class or not we can not decide. The tendency was for the child to follow the vocation of the parent, but there were no rigid barriers of caste. Not until the New Empire, was there an attempt to build up such a wall even about the priesthood. THE RELIGION.--With the Egyptians, religion was a matter of supreme and absorbing interest. There was a popular religion; and there arose early, in connection with it, an esoteric or secret doctrine relative to the gods and to the legends respecting them,--a lore that pertained especially to the priesthood. Moreover, while the religious system, from the earliest date, is polytheistic, we have proof that the educated class, sooner or later, put a monotheistic interpretation upon it, and believed in one supreme deity, of whom all the particular gods were so many forms and manifestations, or that one being under different names. Whether this more elevated faith preceded the reigning system, or was a later offspring of it, is a matter of dispute. For a long period the two co-existed, and without collision. The great divinities of Egypt are pre-eminently gods of light. They are associated with the SUN. With the agency of that luminary, with his rising and setting, they stand in a close relation. All Egypt worships the sun under the names of _Ra_ and _Horus_. Horus is the adversary of _Seth_ (called _Typhon_ by the Greeks), the god of darkness, and is born anew every morning to attack and conquer him. In honor of Ra, the lofty obelisks, or symbols of the sun's rays, are erected, each of which has its own name and priests. With the sun-gods are joined the goddesses of the heavens,--_Nut_, _Hather_, _Isis_, and others. But _Osiris_ became the most famous sun-god. His worship was originally at Abydos and Busiris. At length his cult spread over the whole land. In the legend, he is murdered by Seth; but Horus is his avenger. Horus conquers the power of darkness. Henceforward Osiris reigns in the kingdom of the West, the home of the dead. He is the sun in the realm of the shades. He receives the dead, is their protector, and the judge whose final award is blessedness or perpetual misery. The departed, if their lives have not been wicked, become one with him. They are each of them called by his name. To Osiris, all sepulchral inscriptions are addressed. His career, with the victory of the power of darkness over him, and his glorious revival in the regions of the West, typifies human life and destiny. The principal god at Memphis is _Ptah_, the primal divinity, the former of heaven and earth; yet, perhaps, a god of light, since he is styled by the Greeks, _Hephaestus_. At Thebes, _Ammon_ was revered as the king of the gods: he shared in the properties of the sun. _Thoth_ is the chief moon-god, who presides over the reckoning of time. He is the god of letters and of the arts, the author of sacred books. The Nile is worshiped under the name of _Hapi_, being figured as a man with pendent breasts, an emblem of the fertility of the river. The gods were often connected in triads, there being in each a father, a mother, and a son. To bring to them the right offerings, and to repeat the right formulas, was a matter of momentous concern. Homage was directed to the material objects with which the activity of the god was thought to be connected, and in which he was believed to be present. All nature was full of deities. There were sacred trees, stones, utensils. Above all, animals, in their mysterious life, were identified with the divinities. Worship was offered to the crocodile, the cat, the bull, etc. In the temples these creatures were carefully tended and obsequiously served. EMBALMING.--Believing that the soul survives death, the Egyptians linked its weal with the preservation of the body, from which they could not conceive its destiny to be wholly dissevered. Thus arose the universal practice of embalming, and of presenting, at intervals, offerings of food and drink to the departed. The tomb contains a room for sacred services to the dead. The most ancient structures are sepulchers. They were the germ of the pyramid, in which rested the sarcophagus of the king. RELIGION AND MORALITY.--The leading gods were held to be the makers of the world and of men, the givers of good, the rulers and disposers of all things. Morality was not separated from religion. The gods punished unrighteousness and inhumanity. In the age of the pyramid-builders, family life was not wanting in purity; the wife and mother was held in respect: monogamy prevailed. _Ma-t_ was the goddess of truth: in the myth of Osiris, it is in her hall that the dead are judged. THE PRIESTS.--The priests are the guardians of religious rites. They are acquainted with the origin and import of them. Their knowledge is communicated only to select believers. It was a body of traditions, guarded as a mysterious treasure. But the priests, certainly until a late period, do not control the king. The civil authority is uppermost. LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.--The most important Egyptian book that has come down to us is the _Book of the Dead._ It relates, in a mystical strain, the adventures of the soul after death, and explains how, by reciting the names and titles of numberless gods, and by means of other theological knowledge, the soul can make its way to the hall of Osiris. It is a monument of the pedantic and punctilious formalism of the Egyptian ritual. Most of the papyri that have been preserved are of a religious character. There are songs not void of beauty. The moral writings are of a decidedly higher grade. Works of fiction are constructed with considerable skill, and are sometimes not wanting in humor. Some of the hymns are not destitute of merit. It can not be doubted that there were important mathematical writings. Astronomical observations were very early made. In medicine, we have writings which prove that considerable proficiency was attained in this department. But here, as in other branches, the spirit was empirical rather than scientific in the higher sense; and the result was to petrify knowledge in an unalterable form. At length rules of medical treatment, with specific remedies, were definitely settled, from which it was a crime against the state to deviate. THE OLD EMPIRE (to about 2100 B.C.).--_Senoferu,_ who belongs to the third dynasty, is the first king who has left behind him a monumental inscription. A rock-tablet in the peninsula of Sinai gives him the title of conqueror. By some, the pyramid of Meydoun, built in three distinct stages to a height of 125 feet, is ascribed to him, and is believed to be his sepulcher. At Saccarah is a pyramid of like form, 200 feet in height. _Khufu,_ the Cheops of Herodotus, was the builder of the "Great Pyramid" of Ghizeh, the largest and loftiest building on earth. Its original perpendicular height was not less than 480 feet, the length of its side 764 feet, and the area covered by it more than thirteen acres. Near it are the small pyramids, which were the sepulchers of his wives and other relatives. The statues of _Khafra_ remain, and the wooden mummy-case of _Menkaura,_ with the myth of Osiris recorded on it. These were the builders of the two other most celebrated pyramids, the second and the third. With the long reign of _Unas_ closes the first era in Egyptian history. His unfinished pyramid, built of huge blocks of limestone, indicates that he died too soon to complete it. From this date, back to the epoch of _Senoferu_, are included nearly three centuries. In this period of prevalent peace, art had the opportunity to develop. The spirit of progress in this department had not yet been cramped by the "hieratic canon," the fixed rules set for artistic labor. There is evidence of considerable knowledge in anatomy and medicine. The myth of Osiris expanded, and his worship spread. With the sixth dynasty a new epoch begins. The most powerful monarch in this series is _Pepi_. He levied armies, conquered the negroes of Nubia, and waged war against the nomads of the eastern desert. The interval from the sixth to the tenth dynasty was marked by usurpations and insurrections. The district governors sought to make themselves independent. Monarchs rose and fell. Syrian invaders appear to have seized the occasion to attack the country. _Heliopolis_, with _Tum_ for its sun-god, is the center of the new symbolical lore of the priesthood. Power is transferred to _Thebes_, and _Ammon_ becomes the embodiment of the monotheistic conception, the supreme deity. The Theban ruling-house gradually extended its supremacy over the land. The kings of the twelfth dynasty have left their inscriptions everywhere, and of several of them gigantic portrait-statues remain. _Amenemhat I._ and his successors are prosperous sovereigns. They carry on a lively intercourse of trade with the small states of Syria, reaching possibly to Babylon. Under the twelfth dynasty, the valley of the upper Nile was conquered. _Usurtasen III._, in after times, was revered as the subduer of the Nubian land. By monarchs of this epoch, vast structures, like the temple of Ammon at Thebes and the temple of the Sun at Heliopolis, were erected. _Amenemhat III._ built the immense artificial reservoir, Lake Moeris, to receive and dispense the waters of the Nile. Under the twelfth dynasty is the blossoming period of literature. The carving of hieroglyphics and the execution of the details of art reach their perfection. It is the culminating point of Egyptian culture. THE MIDDLE EMPIRE (FROM ABOUT 2100 TO 1600 B.C.).--The season of prosperity under the twelfth dynasty was followed by anarchy and the downfall of the Theban rule. According to _Manetho_, it was under a king named _Timaos_ that a horde of invaders--the _Hyksos_, or _"shepherds"_--came in from the north, devastated the country, and made themselves its rulers. They were probably of Semitic descent, but nothing more is known as to their origin. In connection with them, Semitic, and in particular Canaanite, elements penetrated into Egypt, and left their traces in its language. The residence of their kings was _Tanis_, on the eastern Delta, a splendid city, which they still more adorned. They conquered Memphis, but their power was not permanently established in Lower Egypt. The duration of their control was a number of centuries,--how many can only be conjectured. It is believed by some scholars that either _Apepi,_ or _Nub_, kings of the Hyksos line, was the sovereign who made _Joseph_ his prime minister, and invited his family to settle in the land of Goshen. The elevation of a foreigner and a Semite to an exalted office is thought to be less improbable in connection with a Semitic dynasty. The New Empire (from 1600 to 525 B.C.).--The expulsion of the Hyksos was effected by _Aahmes I_., first king of the eighteenth dynasty. It was accomplished, however, not all at once, but gradually. From this event Egypt enters on a new stage in its career. It becomes a military, an aggressive, and a conquering state. Notwithstanding the enormous sacrifice of life that must have been involved in the erection of pyramids and in other public works, the Egyptians had not been a cruel people: compared with most Semitic peoples, they had been disposed to peace. But now a martial spirit is evoked. A military class arises. Wars for plunder and conquest ensue. The use of horses in battle is a new and significant fact. The character of the people changes for the worse. The priestly class become more compact and domineering. Temples are the principal edifices, in the room of massive sepulchers. Under _Thothmes I_. and his successors, especially _Thothmes III_., wars were successfully waged against the Syrians, and against the Ethiopians on the south. The palaces and temples of Thebes, including the gigantic structures at _Karnak_ and _Luxor_, are witnesses to the grandeur of these monarchs. The Egyptian arms were carried through Syria, and as far even as Nineveh. During the reigns of _Amenophis III_. and _Amenophis IV_., that is, in the latter half of the fifteenth century B.C., the _Amarna Letters_ (see p. 44) were written. Under the _Ramessides_, the conquests of Egypt reached their farthest limit. RAMSES II.--Ramses II., or Ramses the Great (1340-1273 B.C.),--who was called by the Greeks Sesostris, a name with which they linked many fabulous narratives,--is the most brilliant personage in Egyptian history. He is the first of the renowned conquerors, the forerunner of the Alexanders and Napoleons. His monuments are scattered over all Egypt. In his childhood he was associated on the throne with his father, himself a magnificent monarch, _Seti I_. In the seventh year of the sole reign of the son he had to encounter a formidable confederacy under the lead of the Syrian _Hittites_--the "Khita"--in the north-east, a powerful nation. How he saved himself by his personal valor, on the field of _Kadesh_, is celebrated in the Egyptian Iliad, the heroic poem of _Pentaur_. A subsequent treaty with this people is one of the most precious memorials of his reign. THE HITTITES.--Recent explorations have shown that the _Hittites_ of Scripture were families, or smaller communities, in Palestine, of a people whose proper seat was in northern Syria, especially the country lying along the Orontes; their territory being bounded on the east by the Euphrates, and extending westward into the Taurus Mountains. In one place they are spoken of as distant (Judg. i. 26). The "Khita" of the Egyptians, called "Khatti" by the Assyrians, were a civilized and powerful nation, whose sway was so extended that their outposts were at times on the western coast of Asia Minor. They were a non-Semitic people. The great victory of Ramses (1320 B.C.) was with difficulty won. The Hittites were also rivals of the Assyrians from an early period. At length Sargon captured their capital, _Carchemish_ (717 B.C.), and broke down their power. Numerous Hittite inscriptions have been discovered, written in a hieroglyphic script which has not yet (1903) been deciphered. Subsequently we find _Ramses_ in _Galilee_, as it was called later: we find him storming the city of _Askalon_ in Philistia, and in various military expeditions, in which he brought home with him multitudes of captives. The mighty temples which he built at Abydos, Thebes, and Memphis, and the gorgeous palace, "the House of Ramses," south of Karnak, were in keeping with other displays of his energy and magnificence. THE BONDAGE OF THE ISRAELITES.--Ramses II. has been generally believed to be "the Pharaoh of the oppression," under whom the Hebrews suffered; and his son _Menephthah_, to be the Pharaoh under whom the exodus took place. Recent discoveries have rendered these conclusions very doubtful, however. It is also quite uncertain how long the Egyptian bondage lasted. According to the Hebrew Old Testament, its duration was 430 years; according to the _Septuagint_, or Greek version, half that period (as implied in Gal. iii. 17). To THE PERSIAN CONQUEST.--From about 1500 to 1300 B.C., Egypt was the foremost nation in culture, arts, and military prowess. Under the later kings bearing the name of Ramses, the empire began to decay. The Ethiopians in the south revolted, and set up an independent kingdom, _Meroe_, of which _Napata_ was the capital. _Shishak_ (961-940 B.C.) aspired to restore the Egyptian rule in the East. He marched into Judæa, and captured and plundered Jerusalem. He made _Rehoboam_, king of Judah, a tributary, and strengthened Jeroboam, the ally of Egypt. He even led his forces across the valley of the Jordan. At length (730 B.C.) the Ethiopians gained the upper hand in Egypt. Their three kings form the twenty-fifth dynasty. As the power of Egypt was on the wane, the power of Assyria was more and more in the ascendant. _Shabak_ joined hands with _Hoshea_, king of Israel, but was defeated by the Assyrians, under _Sargon II_., in a pitched battle at _Raphia_, in which the superiority of the Asiatic kingdom was evinced. Later (701 B.C.) _Sennacherib_ defeated an Egyptian army, sent for the relief of Ekron, and made _Hezekiah_ a tributary. _Tirhakah,_ the ally of Hezekiah, continued the struggle. His army was saved from overthrow by the disaster which happened to Sennacherib's host in the neighboring camp on the eve of battle. Twenty years later, he was vanquished by an invading army under the son and successor of Sennacherib, _Esarhaddon._ The rule of the Ethiopian dynasty was subverted. The Assyrians intrusted the government to twenty governors, of whom the most were natives. Of these governors, one, then king of Sais, _Psammeticus I._ (663-616 B.C.), in alliance with Gyges, king of Lydia, and with the aid of Carians, Phoenicians, and Lycians, cast off the Assyrian yoke, and became sole ruler of Egypt. This epoch is marked by the introduction of numerous foreigners into the country, and by the exertion of a powerful and lasting Greek influence. _Neku II._--the _Necho_ of Scripture--(610-594 B.C.), the son of Psammeticus I., defeated _Josiah,_ king of Judah, at _Megiddo_ (608 B.C.); and Josiah fell in the battle. But, advancing to _Carchemish_ by the Euphrates, Neku, in turn, was vanquished by _Nebuchadnezzar,_ king of Babylon, which had now become the formidable power. The defeat of Neku ended Egyptian rule in the East. _Apries_ (588 B.C.), the _Hophra_ of Scripture, was dethroned by a revolt of his own soldiers, in a war with the Greeks of Cyrene, and was succeeded by _Aahmes,_ or _Amasis_ (570-526), under whose auspices foreigners, and especially Greeks, acquired an augmented influence. Egypt had escaped from permanent subjection to Assyria or Babylon; but a new empire, the Persian Empire of Cyrus, was advancing on the path to universal dominion. _Cyrus_ was too busy with other undertakings to attack Egypt; but _Cambyses,_ his successor, led an army into that country; and, having defeated _Psammeticus III.,_ at the battle of _Pelusium,_ he made it a Persian province (525 B.C.). LITERATURE.--See the list on p. 16. 1. Works on Oriental History as a whole: DUNCKER'S _History of Antiquity._ It includes, also, Greece. Lenormant and Chevalier, _Manual of the Ancient History of the East_ (2 vols.); G. Rawlinson, _The Five Great Monarchies_ (3 vols.), _The Sixth Great Monarchy_ (Parthia), _The Seventh Great Monarchy_ (the Sassanidæ), _The Origin of Nations_ (1 vol.), _Manual of Ancient History_ (1 vol.), _Egypt and Babylon_ (1 vol.). LENORMANT, _The Beginnings of History_ (1 vol.); P. Smith, _The Ancient History of the East_ (1 vol.), _History of the World_ (_Ancient History_, 3 vols.); Maspero, _History of the Ancient Orient_ (3 vols.); Doublier, _Gesch. des Alterthums_ (from the cultural point of view, 1 vol.); E. Meyer, _Gesch. des Alterthums._ 2. Works on the History of Egypt. BRUGSCH-BEY, _History of Egypt under the Pharaohs_ (2 vols.); G. Rawlinson, _History of Ancient Egypt_ (2 vols.);, _Aperçu de l'Histoire d'Egypte_ (1864), and numerous other writings; WILKINSON, _Manners and Customs of Egypt_ (3 vols.); ERMAN, _Egypt_; Petrie, _History of Egypt_; Erman, _Egyptian Life_ (1894); Birch, _Records of the Past_ (translations of Egyptian and Assyrian Monuments, 11 vols.), _Egypt from the Earliest Times_; Perrot and Chipiez, _History of Art in Ancient Egypt_ (1883); FERGUSSON'S _History of Architecture_; the great illustrative works of the French _savans_ under Napoleon I.; the great illustrated works of Rossellini, and the works of Lepsius; the novels of Ebers, _The Sisters; Uarda; The Egyptian Princess_. CHAPTER II. ASSYRIA AND BABYLON. THE GEOGRAPHY.--Assyria and Babylonia were geographically connected. They were inhabited by the same race, and, for the greater part of their history, were under one government. Babylonia comprised the lower basin of the _Euphrates_ and _Tigris,_ while Assyria included the hilly region along the upper and middle Tigris; the boundary being where the two rivers, in their long progress from their sources in the mountains of Armenia, at length approach one another at a place about three hundred and fifty miles from their outlet in the Persian Gulf. Both streams, in particular the Euphrates, annually flooded the adjacent territory, and by canals and dams were made to add to its productiveness. The shores of the Euphrates, after its descent from the plateau to the plains, were fertile beyond measure. Here the date-palm, whose juice as well as fruit were so highly prized, flourished. Even now wheat grows wild near the river's mouth. THE EARLY INHABITANTS.--The oldest inhabitants of this region of whom we have any knowledge were the _Sumerians,_ whose territory included both _Sumer_ ("Shinar"), or southern Babylonia, and _Akkad,_ or northern Babylonia. On the east were the _Elamites,_ with _Susa_ for their capital; to the north of these were the warlike _Kassites._ The Sumerians, who preceded the Semites in the occupancy of Babylonia, were of an unknown stock. They were the founders of Babylonian culture. Even by them the soil was skillfully cultivated with the help of dikes and canals. They were the inventors of the cuneiform writing. The cuneiform characters were originally pictures; but these were resolved into wedge-shaped characters of uniform appearance, the significance of which was determined by their position and local relation to one another. It is not known how long the Sumerian period lasted, nor even when it closed; the chronology of the earliest Semitic period is also very uncertain. The south-Babylonian kings _Urukagina,_ of _Shirpurla_ (Lagash), and _Enshagkushana,_ of a district which included _Nippur,_ are dated by most Assyriologists as early as 4000 B.C., or even earlier. Whether they were Sumerians, or Semites, is not certain; their inscriptions do not settle the question. It was probably not far from this time, however, that the one race supplanted the other. A Semitic people--coming either directly from the ancestral home, Arabia, or from a previous settlement in Mesopotamia, north-west of Babylonia--invaded the land and conquered the Sumerians. They planted themselves first in northern Babylonia, and then gradually extended their power over the districts on the south. The conquerors adopted the civilization of the conquered. The earliest Semitic kings all used the Sumerian dialect in their inscriptions. It was only by slow degrees that the native language was superseded by that of the new rulers. Later,--before the time of _Hammurabi_; see below,--these Semites carried their settlements northward, and became the founders of Assyria. SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE.--_Berosus_, a Babylonian priest, wrote a history of his country as early as 250 B.C. He was a trustworthy writer, as far as his means of knowledge went; but it is only fragments of his work that we possess, and these in inaccurate quotations, partly at second hand. Greek writers, as _Ctesias_, drew from Persian sources; and their narratives up to the later times of the Persian rule can not be relied on. The great source of knowledge is the rapidly increasing store of records in the cuneiform character. A vast number of inscriptions on stone and clay, representing nearly every department of literature, have been unearthed, and the material which they afford has already given us an extensive knowledge of Babylonian and Assyrian history. The site of _Nineveh_ has been extensively excavated, and we have, therefore, especially full information as to the history and literature of Assyria. Babylonian monuments in considerable number have more recently come to light. Aside from Nineveh and Babylon, especially important excavations have been undertaken at _Nifpur, Lagash_ (Telloh)--thus far the chief source of Sumerian material--and _Susa_. I. THE OLD KINGDOM OF BABYLON. EARLY HISTORY.--The history of ancient Babylonia is still very obscure, and the chronology only tentative. We see at first a number of independent cities, each ruled by a petty king, who was also a priest. Then appear groups of cities, one of which exercised sway over a more or less extended district. The center of power was now in Erech, now in Ur, or Babylon, or some other city, whose king ruled supreme over numerous vassal kings. Among the first important names known to us are those of _Sargon I._ (3800 B.C.), king of Agade, a great conqueror and builder, and his son, _Naram-sin_. Another great builder was _Gudea_, king of Shirpurla. Most conspicuous of all is _Hammurabi_ (2250 B.C.), king of Babylon, who is probably the "Amraphel" of Gen. xiv. His kingdom included not only the whole of Babylonia proper, but also Assyria, and probably even the "West Land" as far as the Mediterranean. The records show him to have been a truly great ruler, both in war and in peace. He is known to us chiefly from a collection of his _Letters_ to certain officials of his kingdom, and from his elaborate _Code_ of civil laws, found at Susa in 1899, and first published in 1902; perhaps the most important single monument of early civilization which has thus far come to light. The laws, written in the Babylonian (Semitic) language, and engraved on a stele of hard black stone, were about two hundred and eighty in number, and bear an interesting general resemblance to the old Hebrew laws, especially those preserved in Exodus xxi. and xxii. In the time of the kings _Kadashman-bel_ and _Burnaburiash II_. (about 1400 B.C.) falls the _Amarna Correspondence_ (see p. 40). At _Tell el-Amarna_, in upper Egypt, were unearthed, in 1887, more than three hundred clay tablets containing diplomatic dispatches, written in the cuneiform character, and nearly all in the Babylonian language. They were addressed to the Egyptian king, or to his ministers, and had been sent from various officials and royal personages in Babylonia, Assyria, Palestine (including a number of letters from _Abdi-khiba_ of _Jerusalem_), and other districts. They furnish a large amount of important information as to conditions in western Asia at that early period. An important _Kassite_ dynasty occupied the throne of Babylon from the eighteenth century to the twelfth century B.C. Under these Kassite rulers, the kingdom at length declined, while the neighboring Assyrian state had increased in power. Later still, apparently not earlier than the ninth century B.C., the _Chaldoeans_ (of Semitic stock?) pushed north-westward into Babylonia from their district about the mouth of the Euphrates, and eventually made themselves masters of the land. RELIGION AND SCIENCE.--If the events connected with old Babylon are less known, more is ascertained respecting its civilization. The groundwork, as was stated, was laid by the earlier conquered people. The religion of the Babylonians rested on the basis of the old Sumerian worship. There was homage to demons, powerful for good or for evil, who were brought together into groups, and were figured now as human beings, now as lions or other wild animals, or as dragons and that sort of monsters. Of the great gods, _Anu_, the god of the sky, was the father and king of all. _Sin_, the moon-god, a Sumerian divinity, at the outset had the highest rank. _Bel_, or _Baal_, however, a Semitic divinity, was the god of the earth, and particularly of mankind. _Ea_ was the god of the deep, and of the underworld. The early development of astrology and its great influence in old Babylon were closely connected with the supposed association of the luminaries above with the gods. The stars were thought to indicate at the birth of a child what his fortunes would be, and to afford the means of foretelling other remarkable events. _Ishtar_, a goddess of war and of love, was worshiped also under the name _Beltis_, the Greek _Mylitta_. This deity embodied the _generative principle_, the spring of fertility, whose beneficent agency was seen in the abundant harvest. She was clothed with sensual attributes, and propitiated with unchaste rites. It was in the worship of this divinity that the coarse and licentious side of the Semitic nature expressed itself. At the same time, there was an opposite ascetic side in the service of this deity. Her priests were eunuchs: they ministered at her altar in woman's attire. On the relation of the human soul to the gods, and its condition after death, there was little speculation. In general, the Babylonians were more interested in religion and worship, than the Assyrians. The former erected temples; the latter, palaces. The attainments of the early Babylonians in mathematics and astronomy were far beyond those of the Egyptians. They divided the year into twelve months, and arrived at the signs of the ecliptic or zodiac. The week they fixed at seven days by the course of the moon. They divided the day into twelve hours, and the hour into sixty minutes. They invented weights and measures, the knowledge of which went from them to the other Asiatic nations. Architecture, as regards taste, was in a rude state. In pottery, they showed much skill and ingenuity, and invented the potter's wheel. In the engraving of gems, and in the manufacture of delicate fabrics,--linen, muslin, and silk,--they were expert. Trade and commerce, favored by the position of Babylon, began to flourish. As regards literature, the libraries of Nineveh and Babylon, at a later day, contained many books translated from the early Sumerian language. Among them are the "Gilgamesh legends," in which is contained a story of the flood that resembles in essential features the account in Genesis. II. THE ASSYRIAN EMPIRE. GROWTH OF ITS POWER.--Assyria was even greater, as a conquering power, than Babylon. In the legends current among the Greeks, the building-up of the monarchy, and of Nineveh its capital, as well as of Babylon, is referred to the legendary heroes, _Ninus_ and his queen _Semiramis_. The name of Ninus is not recorded on the monuments, and is, perhaps, a kind of mythical personification of Assyrian conquests and grandeur; and the name of Semiramis does not appear until the ninth century B.C. She may have been a princess or even queen. Assyrian independence began before 2300 B.C. Between 1500 and 1400 B.C., Assyria was a weak state. It gained a brief mastery over Babylon through a conquest by _Tukulti-Ninib_ (1300 B.C.). _Tiglath-Pileser I_. (1100 B.C.) spread his conquests to the Mediterranean and the Caspian on the west, and south to the Persian Gulf. But these early acquisitions of Assyria were transient. There ensued a long interval, until the middle of the tenth century, when the monarchy was mostly confined within its own proper borders. A new series of strong and aggressive princes arose. The conflicts of Damascus and of the nations of Palestine with one another left room for the growth of the Assyrian might and for the spread of Assyrian dominion. _Asshur-nasir-pal_ (formerly called _Sardanapalus I._) levied tribute upon Tyre, and the other rich cities of the Syrian coast, and founded the Assyrian rule in _Cilicia_. About the middle of the eighth century, the kingdom of Israel, having renounced its vassalage to Assyria, in league with _Rezin_ of Damascus, the ruler of Syria, made war upon the kingdom of Judah. _Ahaz_, the Judaean king, against the protest of the prophet _Isaiah_, invoked the aid of the Assyrian monarch, _Tiglath-Pileser II_. The call was answered. The league was overthrown by him in a great battle fought near the Euphrates, and numerous captives, according to the Assyrian practice, were carried away from Samaria and Damascus. We are told that _Ahaz_, seeing the offerings made by Tiglath-Pileser at Damascus, commanded his priests at Jerusalem, despite the remonstrance of Isaiah, to make offerings to the Assyrian gods. Judah, as the result of these events, became tributary to Assyria. All Syria, together with Babylonia, which was then made up of several states, western Iran, and Armenia, were subdued by this Assyrian conqueror. He formally assumed the title of "King of Babylon." _Shalmaneser IV._ (727-722 B.C.), bent on completing the subjugation of Syria, subdued anew the revolted cities, and conquered, as it would seem, the island of _Cyprus_. Tyre alone, that is, the insular city of that name, withstood a siege of five years. _Hoshea_, the king of Israel (733-722 B.C.), in order to throw off the Assyrian yoke, sent an embassy to _Shabak_, the king of Egypt, to procure his assistance. Hearing of this, _Shalmaneser_ attacked Israel. After a siege of three years, Samaria, the capital, fell into the hands of _Sargon_, who had succeeded him, the kingdom of Israel was subverted, and a great part of the people dragged off into captivity. In 720 B.C., _Sargon_ encountered _Shabak_, in the great battle of _Raphia_, in southern Palestine, whom he defeated, and put to flight. He received tribute from Egypt, conquered a part of Arabia, and received the homage of the king of _Meroe_, who made a journey from Ethiopia to bow before him. The reign of _Sennacherib_ (705-681 B.C.) was an eventful one, both for Assyria and for the neighboring countries. _Hezekiah_, king of Judah, hoped with the aid of Egypt to achieve his independence. Sennacherib was obliged to raise the siege of Jerusalem, after Hezekiah had vainly sought to propitiate him with large offerings of silver and gold; but the Assyrian was prevented from engaging in battle with _Tirhaka_ of Egypt by a great calamity that befell his army. Against Babylon, which frequently revolted, he was more successful. "Berodach-baladan," as he is called in Scripture (2 Kings, chap. 20), who at an earlier day had sent an embassy from Babylon to Hezekiah, was overcome, and a new ruler enthroned in his place. _Esarhaddon_ (681-668 B.C.) not only restored the Assyrian sway over Syria, Phoenicia, Cyprus, Judah, and a part of Arabia, countries that lost no opportunity to shake off the cruel and hateful rule of Nineveh, but also conquered Egypt, and parceled it out among twenty governors. By Esarhaddon, or by his successor, _Manasseh_, king of Judah, was conquered, and carried off as a captive, but afterwards restored to his throne. Assyria was now at the summit of its power. _Asshur-bani-pal V._ (668-626 B.C.), called Sardanapalus, although he lost Egypt, confirmed the Assyrian power in the other subject states, and received tribute from _Lydia_, on the western border of Asia Minor. Under him, Assyrian art made its farthest advance. He was the builder of magnificent palaces. It is his library, dug up from the grave in which it had been buried for two and a half decades of centuries, that has yielded a vast amount of welcome information concerning Assyrian and Babylonian history far back into the Sumerian period. RELIGION AND ART.--It has been stated that the Assyrian culture was transplanted from Babylon. The religion was substantially the same, except that _Asshur_, the tutelary deity of the country, was made supreme. The Assyrians from the start were devoted to war, pillage, and conquest. Their unsparing cruelty and brutal treatment of their enemies are abundantly witnessed by their own monuments. They lacked the productive power in literature and art which belonged to the Babylonians. Although they might have built their edifices of stone, they generally made use of brick. Their sculptures in relief were much better than the full figures. They laid color upon their works in sculpture. But their art was merely a pictorial record of events. The sense of beauty and creative power were wanting. The more religious character of the Babylonians created a difference in the architecture of the two peoples. In gem-cutting both were singularly expert. The Assyrians gave less attention to the burial of the dead. They showed an aptitude for trade; and Nineveh, in the eighth and seventh centuries, was a busy mart. THE FALL OF ASSYRIA.--The first important blow at the Assyrian imperial rule was struck by the _Medes_. After nearly a century of resistance, they had been subdued (710 B.C.), and were subject to Assyria for a century after. In 640 B.C., they rose in revolt, under _Phraortes_, one of their native chiefs, who fell in battle. The struggle was continued by his son, _Cyaxares_. His plans were interrupted, however, by THE IRRUPTION OF THE SCYTHIANS (623 B.C.).--More than a century before, these wandering Asiatic tribes had begun to make predatory incursions into Asia Minor. When _Cyaxares_ was before Nineveh, they came down in greater force, and a horde of them, moving southward from the river Halys, invaded Syria. Jerusalem and the stronger cities held out against them, but the open country was devastated. They were met by _Psammeticus I._, king of Egypt, and bribed to turn back. They entered Babylonia; but _Nabopolassar_, the viceroy of Asshur-bani-pal (Sardanapalus), successfully defended the city of Babylon against their attacks. By _Cyaxares_, either these or another horde were defeated; but it was not until 605 B.C. that the region south of the Black Sea was cleared of them. The kingdom of _Lydia_ had now come to play an important part in the affairs of western Asia. Our first knowledge of the peoples of Asia Minor is from the Homeric poems (about 900 B.C.). The _Chalybeans_ were in Pontus; west of them, the _Amazonians_ and _Paphlagonians_; west of these, the _Mysians_; on the Hellespont, small tribes related to the _Trojans_; on the Ægean, the _Dardanians_ and the _Trojans_ (on the north), the _Carians_ and the _Lycians_ (on the south); on the north-east of these last, the _Phrygians_. A large portion of the early inhabitants of Asia Minor were _Semitic_, and closely related to the Syrians. Semitic divinities were worshiped; a goddess, _Mylitta_, under other names, was adored in Pontus, at Ephesus, in Phrygia, and in Lydia. The Lydians were of the Semitic race. _Cybele_, the female divinity whom they served, was the same deity whose altars were at Babylon, Nineveh, and Tyre. The rulers of the dynasty of the _Mermnadæ, Gyges_ and his successors, spread the Lydian dominion until it extended to the Hellespont, and included Mysia and Phrygia. _Alyattes_ was able to extirpate the Cimmerian hordes from the Sea of Azoff, who had overrun the western part of Asia Minor, and to make the Halys his eastern boundary. Gyges had been slain in the contest with those fierce barbarians, called in the Old Testament _Gomer_. At first he had sought help from the Assyrians, but he broke away from this dependence. Liberated from the troubles of the Scythian irruption, _Cyaxares_ formed an alliance with _Nabopolassar_, the viceroy in Babylon, who had revolted, and gained his independence. The Median ruler had subdued Armenia, and established his control as far as the Halys, making a treaty with Lydia. Now ensued the desperate conflict on which hung the fate of the Assyrian Empire. Nineveh was taken (606 B.C.) by the Medes under _Cyaxares_, and the Babylonians under _Nebuchadnezzar_, the son of Nabopolassar. The Grecian story of Sardanapalus burning himself on a lofty bier, is a myth. Assyria was divided by the _Tigris_ between the _Medes_ and _Babylonians._ THE THREE POWERS: EGYPT.--On the fall of Nineveh, there were three principal powers left on the stage of action, which were bound together by treaty, _Lydia, Media,_ and _Babylon._ Egypt proved itself unable to cope with Babylonian power. _Necho,_ during the siege of Nineveh, had attacked Syria, and defeated the Jews on the plain of Esdraelon, where king _Josiah_ was slain. He dethroned _Jehoahaz,_ Josiah's son, and enthroned _Jehoiakim_ in his stead. But when, in 605 B.C., he confronted Nebuchadnezzar at _Carchemish,_ and was defeated, he was compelled to give up Syria, and to retire within the boundaries of Egypt. III. THE NEW BABYLONIAN EMPIRE. TRIUMPS OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR.--Syria was now at the mercy of Nebuchadnezzar. He captured Jerusalem (597 B.C.), despoiled the temple and palace, and led away Jehoiakim as a captive. He placed on the throne of Judah Jehoiakim's uncle, _Zedekiah._ But this king, having arranged an alliance between Egypt and the Phoenician cities, revolted (590 B.C.), refusing to pay his tribute. Again Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem, but raised the siege, in order to drive home _Apries II._ (Hophra), the Egyptian ally of Zedekiah. The city was taken, the king's sons were killed in his presence, his own eyes were put out; and, after the temple and palace had been burned and the city sacked, he, with all the families of the upper class who had not escaped to the desert, was carried away to Babylon (586 B.C.). Tyre (the old city) in like manner was taken by assault (585 B.C.). By Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon was enlarged, and adorned on a scale of unequaled splendor. The new palace, with its "hanging gardens," the bridge over the Euphrates, the Median wall connecting the Euphrates and the Tigris on his northern boundary, and magnificent waterworks, are famous structures which belong to this reign. Wealth and luxury abounded. But vigor of administration fell away under his successors; and Babylon, after a dominion short when compared with the long sway of Nineveh, was conquered by _Cyrus,_ the Medo-Persian king, in 538 B.C. The last king was _Nabonetus._ THE CITY OF BABYLON.--Babylon was a city of the highest antiquity. The name (_Bab-ili,_ "Gate of God") is Semitic. The city is mentioned in the earliest cuneiform records, and from the time of Hammurabi was the chief city of the land. Destroyed by Sennacherib (690 B.C.), it was rebuilt by Esarhaddon, but not fully restored and adorned until the reigns of Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar. Babylon surpassed all ancient cities in size and magnificence. Its walls were forty miles in circumference. This extent of wall probably included Borsippa, or "Babylon the Second," on the right bank of the river. Babylon proper was mainly on the left. Within the walls were inclosed gardens, orchards, and fields: the space was only filled in part by buildings; but the whole area was laid out with straight streets intersecting one another at right angles, like the streets of Philadelphia. The wall was pierced by a hundred gates, probably twenty-five in each face. The Euphrates, lined with quays on both sides, and spanned with drawbridges, ran through the town, dividing it into two nearly equal parts. The city was protected without by a deep and wide moat. The wall was at least seventy or eighty feet in height, and of vast and unusual thickness. On the summit were two hundred and fifty towers, placed along the outer and inner edges, opposite to one another, but so far apart, according to Herodotus, that there was room for a four-horse chariot to pass between. The temple of _Bel_ was in a square inclosure, about a quarter of a mile both in length and breadth. The tower of the temple was ascended on the outside by an inclined plane carried around the four sides. An exaggerated statement of _Strabo_ makes its height six hundred and six feet. Possibly, this represents the length of the inclined plane. In the shrine on the top were a golden table and a couch; according to _Diodorus_, before the Persian conquest there were colossal golden images of three divinities, with two golden lions, and two enormous serpents of silver. It is thought that Herodotus may have described the splendid temple of _Nebo_ (now _Birs Nimrûd_), and have mistaken it, by reason of its enormous ruins, for the temple of _Bel_, which it rivaled in magnificence. The great palace is represented to have been larger than the temple of Bel, the outermost of its three inclosing walls being three miles in circumference. Its exterior was of baked brick. The "Hanging Gardens" was a structure built on a square, consisting of stages or stories, one above another, each supported by arches, and covered on the top, at the height of at least seventy-five feet, with a great mass of earth in which grew flowers and shrubs, and even large trees. The ascent to the top was by steps. On the way up were stately and elegant apartments. The smaller palace was on the other side of the river. LITERATURE.--Works on Oriental History mentioned on p. 42. Tiele, _Babylonisch-assyrische Geschichte_ (1888); Kaulen, _Assyrien und Babylonien_ (5th ed., 1899); Rogers, _History of Babylonia and Assyria_ (1901); Goodspeed, _History of the Babylonians and Assyrians_ (1902); King, Articles _Assyria_ and _Babylonia_ in the _Encyclopedia Biblica_; Sayce, _Babylonians and Assyrians: Life and Customs_ (1899); Schrader, _The Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament_; Jastrow, _Religion of Babylonia and Assyria_ (1898); Perrot & Chipiez, _Histoire de l'art dans l'antiquité_, vol. ii., _Chaldèe et Assyrie_. CHAPTER III. THE PHOENICIANS AND CARTHAGINIANS. PHOENICIA.--A narrow strip of territory separates the mountains of Syria and Palestine from the Mediterranean. Of this belt the northern part, west of Lebanon, about one hundred and fifty miles long, varies in width from five to fourteen miles. In some places the cliffs approach close to the sea. This belt of land was occupied by the first of the great maritime and commercial peoples of antiquity, the Phoenicians. Their language was Semitic, closely akin to Hebrew. COMMERCE AND PROSPERITY OF THE PHOENICIANS.--The most important of the Phoenician cities were Sidon--which was the first of them to rise to distinction and power--and Tyre, which became more famous as a mart, and comprised, besides the town on the coast, New Tyre, the city built on the neighboring rocky island. In New Tyre was the sanctuary of the tutelary god, _Melkart_. The spirit of trade stimulated ingenuity. The Phoenicians were noted for their glass, their purple dyes, their improved alphabet, and knowledge of the art of writing. In mining and in casting metals, in the manufacture of cloth, in architecture, and in other arts, they were not less proficient. From their situation they naturally became a seafaring race. Not only did they transport their cargoes of merchandise to the islands and shores of the Mediterranean, conveying thither not merely the fruits of their own industry and skill, but also the productions of the East: they ventured to steer their vessels beyond the Strait of Gibraltar; and, if they did not procure amber directly from the North Sea, they brought tin either directly from Cornwall or from the Scilly Islands. Through the hands of Phoenician merchants "passed the gold and pearls of the East, the purple of Tyre, slaves, ivory, lions' and panthers' skins from the interior of Africa, frankincense from Arabia, the linen of Egypt, the pottery and fine wares of Greece, the copper of Cyprus, the silver of Spain, tin from England, and iron from Elba." These products were carried wherever a market could be found for them. At the instigation of Necho, king of Egypt (610-594 B.C.), they are said to have made a three years' voyage round the southern cape of Africa. COLONIES: OPULENCE.-The Phoenicians were the first great colonizing nation of antiquity. It was the fashion of Assyrians and other conquerors to transport to their own lands multitudes of people, whom they carried away as captives from their homes. The Phoenicians--in this particular the forerunners of the Greeks and of the Dutch and the English--planted trading settlements in Cyprus and Crete, on the islands of the Ægean Sea, in southern Spain, and in North Africa. _Cadiz_, one of the oldest towns in Europe, was founded by these enterprising traders (about 1100 B.C.). _Tarshish_ was another of their Spanish settlements. "Ships of Tarshish," like the modern "East Indiamen," came to signify vessels capable of making long voyages. The coast of modern Andalusia and Granada belonged to the Phoenicians. Through caravans their intercourse was not less lively with the states on the Euphrates, with Nineveh and Babylon, as well as with Egypt. Tyre was a link between the East and the West. HIRAM: SETTLEMENT OF CARTHAGE.--The Tyrian power attained to its height under King _Hiram I._, the contemporary and ally of _Solomon_. Two Greek historians make his reign to extend from 969 to 936 B.C. The alliance with Solomon extended the traffic of Tyre, and increased its wealth. Hiram connected old and New Tyre by a bridge. The Tyrians adorned their city with stately palaces and temples, and built strong fortifications. Engrossed in manufactures and commerce, and delighting in the affluence thus engendered, the Phoenicians were not ambitious of conquest. Although conquerors upon the sea, they were not a martial people: like commercial states generally, they preferred peace. Of the people of Laish (Dan), it is said in the Book of Judges (xviii. 7), "They dwelt careless, after the manner of the Zidonians, quiet and secure." This pacific temper was coupled with a fervent attachment to their own land and to their countrymen wherever they went. But they lacked the political instinct. They did not appreciate liberty, and their love of traffic and of gain often made them prefer to pay tribute rather than to fight. Their colonies were factories, but were not centers of further conquest, or germs of political communities. When, the family of _Hiram_ was exterminated (about 850 B.C.) by the high-priest of the goddess Astarte, who seized on power, civil strife and disorder ensued. _Pygmalion_, the great-grandson of the high-priest, as it is related by a Grecian authority, slew his uncle, who was to marry Pygmalion's sister, _Elissa_. On account of this internal conflict, and from dread of the Assyrian power, a large number of the old families emigrated to North Africa, and founded Carthage (about 814 B.C.). The Phoenician cities were confederated together under hereditary kings, whose power was limited by the lay and priestly aristocracy. The common people, many of whom were skilled artisans, made themselves felt in some degree in public affairs. The mercantile class were influential. Thus there was developed a germinant municipal feeling and organization. The "strong city," Tyre, is mentioned in _Joshua_ xix. 29. In _Isaiah_ xxiii., Tyre is described as "the crowning city, whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers are the honourable of the earth." "He stretched out his hand over the sea, he shook the kingdoms." The fate of Babylon is pointed at by the Prophet, to show what Tyre had to expect from Assyria. Later, before the conquest by Nebuchadnezzar, _Ezekiel_ thus speaks of Tyre (chap, xxvii.): "They have taken cedars from Lebanon to make masts for thee." "Of the oaks of Bashan have they made thine oars." "Tarshish was thy merchant." RELIGION AND LETTERS.--A very prominent feature of the religion of the Phaenicians is the local character of their divinities. The word _baal_("lord" or "god") was not used in Phaenicia as the proper name of any one god. But such names as _Baal-sidon_, "Lord of Sidon," _Baal-libanon_, "God of Lebanon," etc., are common. _Astarte_ was the most common name for the local female divinities. The gods were often thought of as dwelling in stones, trees, and other objects; the worship of stone-pillars and sacred poles (_ashera_; translated "grove" in the English Bible) was especially common in Phaenicia. On the other hand, a "god of heaven" and a "goddess of heaven" were worshiped. In the religion of the Phaenicians, the more elevated ingredients of the Semitic heathenism are in the background. The sensual features of it are more prominent, and savage elements are introduced. It was more adapted to foster than to check lust and cruelty. To Astarte, maidens sacrifice their chastity. There was the same double ritual, made up of gross sensuality on the one hand, and of ascetic practices by the priesthood on the other, that belonged to the service of Mylitta at Babylon. Human sacrifice by fire was another horrible feature. Children, especially, were offered to _El _("god"; possibly also called _Melek_ (Moloch), "the king," as among the Hebrews). To appease him at Tyre and Carthage, girls and boys, sometimes in large numbers, and of the highest families, were cast into the flames; while the wailing of their relatives, if it was not stifled by themselves at the supposed demand of piety, was drowned by the sound of musical instruments. As late as 310 B.C., when Agathocles was besieging Carthage, and had reduced the city to the direst straits, we are told that the people laid two hundred boys of their noblest families upon the arms of the brazen image of the god, whence they were allowed to fall into the fire beneath. On similar occasions, even the head of the state sometimes offered himself as a sacrifice. _Hamilcar_, the Carthaginian, son of Hanno, in Sicily, when the tide of battle was turning against him, threw himself into the fire (480 B.C.). Juba, king of Numidia, prepared to do the same after the battle of Thapsus. Large and costly temples were built, generally in the Egyptian style. Such were the temples of _Melkart_ at Tyre and Cadiz, of _Eshmun_ at Sidon, and of "the Lady of Byblos" at that city. Nature--as dying in the autumn, and again reviving in the spring--is figured as the god _Adonisz_, who is honored first by a protracted season of mourning, and then by a joyous festival. The Phoenicians were not a literary people. Their alphabet (invented by them?) was the old Semitic alphabet. Every character represented a sound. From the Phaenicians it spread, and became the mother of most of the graphic systems now existing. Cadmus, however, by whom it was said to be carried to the Greeks, is a fabulous person. The alleged history of _Sanchuniathon_, which was published in Greek by _Philo_ of Byblus, in the second century A.D., is now generally believed to be the work of Philo himself. HISTORICAL EVENTS.--In the struggles against the Mesopotamian empires, the Phaenicians defended themselves with valor and perseverance. When _Sargon_ (722-705 B.C.) had subjugated their cities on the mainland, insular Tyre for five years repelled his assaults, although the conduits bringing fresh water from the shore were cut off, and the besieged were obliged to content themselves with the scanty supply to be gained from wells dug with great labor. Soon the Tyrian fleets regained their mastery on the sea. When Nebuchadnezzar captured old Tyre, and a multitude of its inhabitants shared the lot of the Jews, and were dragged off by the conqueror to the Euphrates, the island city withstood his attack for thirteen years, and did not yield until it extorted from him a treaty. But the power of resistance was weakened by the repeated invasions and domination of Nineveh and Babylon. Tyre submitted to Persia after the downfall of the Babylonian monarchy, and added her fleet to the Persian forces; although to the Phoenician towns was left a degree of freedom and their local government. Sidon, Tyre, and Arados had a council of their own, which met with their respective kings and senators at Tripolis, for the regulation of matters of common interest. Manufactures and commerce continued to flourish. Under the Persian supremacy, Sidon once more became the chief city. In the middle of the fourth century B.C., it revolted against the tyranny of the foreign governors. The Persian king, _Ochus_, ordered that the noblest citizens should be put to death; whereupon the inhabitants set the city on fire, and destroyed themselves and their treasures in the flames. Tyre remained, but ventured to resist _Alexander the Great_, after his conquest of the Persians, and by him was captured and partly demolished (332 B.C.). After the death of Alexander, the Phoenicians fell under the sway of the _Seleucidæ_ at Antioch, and, for a time, of the Egyptian _Ptolemies_. Both Tyre and Sidon were rebuilt, and flourished anew. It is probably to the third century B.C. that we should assign the native Sidonian dynasty which included the Kings _Eshmunazar I., Sedek-yaton, Tabnit, Bodashtart_, and _Eshmunazar II._, whose names are known to us from inscriptions. In the time of the last-named king, the cities Dor and Joppa, with the plain of Sharon, belonged to Sidon. CARTHAGINIAN HISTORY.--The most prominent of all the Phoenician settlements was Carthage. It had remarkable advantages of situation. Its harbor was sufficient for the anchorage of the largest vessels, and it had a fertile territory around it. These circumstances, in conjunction with the energy of its inhabitants, placed it at the head of the Phoenician colonies. In Carthage, there was no middle class. There were the rich landholders and merchants, and the common people. The government was practically an oligarchy. There were two kings or judges (_Shofetes_), with little power, and a _council_ or _senate_; possibly a second council also. But the senate and magistrates were subordinate to an aristocratic body, the _hundred judges_. The bulk of the citizens had little more than a nominal influence in public affairs. ASCENDENCY OF CARTHAGE.-When the Greeks (about 600 B.C.) spread their colonies, the rivals of the Phoenician settlements, in the west of the Mediterranean, Carthage was moved to deviate from the policy of the parent cities, and to make herself the champion, protector, and mistress of the Phoenician dependencies in all that region. Thus she became the head of a North-African empire, which asserted its supremacy against its Greek adversaries in Sicily and Spain, as well as in Lybia. When Tyre was subjugated by Persia, Carthage was strengthened by the immigration of many of the best Tyrian families. As the Tyrian strength waned, the Carthaginian power increased. _Syracuse_, in Sicily, became the first Greek naval power, and the foremost antagonist of the Carthaginian dominion. In 480 B.C., Carthage made war upon the Greek cities in Sicily. The contest was renewed from time to time. In the conflicts between 439-409 B.C., she confirmed her sway over the western half of the island. In later conflicts (317-275 B.C.), in which _Agathocles_, tyrant of Syracuse, was a noted leader of the Greeks, and, after his death, _Pyrrhus_, king of Epirus, was their ally, Carthage alternately lost and regained her Sicilian cities. But the result of the war was to establish her maritime ascendency. LITERATURE.--Works mentioned on pp. 16, 42: Pietschmann, _Geschichte der Phönizier_ (1889); Rawlinson, _History of Phoenicia_ (1889); E. Meycr, Art. _Phoenicia_ in the _Encycl. Bibl._; Perrot & Chipiez, _History of Art in Phoenicia and Cyprus_, 2 vols.; Renan, _Mission de Phenicie_ (1874); Meltzer, _Geschichte der Karthager_; F. W. Newman's _Defense of Carthage_. CHAPTER IV. THE HEBREWS. PECULIARITY OF THE HEBREWS.--While the rest of the nations worshiped "gods many and lords many," whom they confounded with the motions of the heavenly bodies, or with other aspects of nature, there was one people which attained to a faith in one God, the Creator and Preserver of the universe, who is exalted above nature, and whom it was deemed impious to represent by any material image. More than is true of any other people, religion was consciously the one end and aim of their being. To bring the true religion to its perfection, and to give it a world-wide diffusion and sway, was felt by them to be their heaven-appointed mission. The peculiarity of their faith made them stand alone, and rendered them exclusive, and intolerant of the surrounding idolatries. The mountainous character of their land, separated by Lebanon from Phoenicia, and by the desert from the nations on the East and South, was well adapted to the work which they had to fulfill in the course of history. THE PATRIARCHAL AGE.--The Israelites traced their descent from _Abraham_, who, to escape the infection of idolatry, left his home, which was in _Ur_ on the lower Euphrates, and came into the land of Canaan, where he led a wandering life, but became the father of a group of nations. According to the popular narrative, _Isaac_, his son by _Sarah_, was recognized as the next chief of the family; while _Ishmael_, Abraham's son by _Hagar_, became the progenitor of the _Arabians_. Of the two sons of Isaac, _Esau_, who was a huntsman, married a daughter of the native people: from him sprung the _Edomites_. _Jacob_ kept up the occupation of a herdsman. Of his twelve sons, _Joseph_ was an object of jealousy to the other eleven, by whom he was sold to a caravan of merchants on their way to Egypt. There, through his skill in interpreting dreams, he rose to high dignities and honors in the court of Pharaoh; and, by his agency, the entire family were allowed to settle oh the pasture-lands of _Goshen_ in northern Egypt (p. 40). Here in the neighborhood of _Heliopolis_, for several centuries, they fed their flocks. From Israel, the name given to Jacob, they were commonly called _Israelites_. The name _Hebrews_ was apparently derived from a word signifying "across the river" (Euphrates); but the original application is quite uncertain. THE EXODUS (see p. 41).--The time came when the Israelites were no longer well treated. A new Egyptian dynasty was on the throne. Their numbers were an occasion of apprehension. An Egyptian princess saved _Moses_ from being a victim of a barbarous edict issued against them. He grew to manhood in Pharaoh's court, but became the champion of his people. Compelled to flee, he received in the lonely region of _Mount Sinai_ that sublime disclosure of the only living God which qualified him to be the leader and deliverer of his brethren. A "strong east wind," parting the Red Sea, opened a passage for the Israelites, whom a succession of calamities, inflicted upon their oppressors by the Almighty, had driven Pharaoh (Menephthah?) to permit to depart in a body; but the returning waves ingulfed the pursuing Egyptian army. "The sea covered them: they sank as lead in the mighty waters." For a long period _Moses_ led the people about in the wilderness. They were trained by this experience to habits of order and military discipline. At _Horeb_, the Decalogue, the kernel, so to speak, of the Hebrew codes, the foundation of the religious and social life of the people, was given them under circumstances fitted to awaken the deepest awe. They placed themselves under Jehovah as the Ruler and Protector of the nation in a special sense. The worship of other divinities, every form of idolatry, was to be a treasonable offense. The laws of Jehovah were to be kept in the Ark of the Covenant, in the "Tabernacle," which was the sanctuary, and was transported from place to place. The priesthood was devolved on _Aaron_ and his successors, at the side of whom were their assistants, the _Levites_. The civil authority in each tribe was placed in the hands of the patriarchal chief and the "elders," the right of approval or of veto being left to the whole tribe gathered in an assembly. The heads of the tribes, with seventy representative elders, together with Aaron and Moses, formed a supreme council or standing committee. On particular occasions a congregation of all the tribes might be summoned. The ritual was made up of sacrifices and solemn festivals. The _Sabbath_ was the great weekly commemoration, a day of rest for the slave as well as for the master, for the toiling beast as well as for man. Every seventh year and every fiftieth year were sabbaths, when great inequalities of condition, which might spring up in the intervals, respecting the possession of land, servitude consequent on debts, etc., were removed. Hebrew Laws.--The Israelites, in virtue of their covenant with Jehovah, were to be a holy people, a nation of priests. They were thus to maintain fraternal equality. There was to be no enslaving of one another, save that which was voluntary and for a limited time. Only prisoners not of their race, or purchased foreigners, could be held as slaves. Every fiftieth year, land was to revert to its original possessor. In the sabbatical years the land was not to be tilled. What then grew wild might be gathered by all. There were careful provisions for the benefit of the poor. HEADS OF TRIBES.--The progenitors of the tribes, the sons of Jacob, as given in _Exodus_, were Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulon, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Joseph, and Benjamin. THE HEBREW RELIGION--Such, in brief, were the beginnings of a religion as unique as it was elevated in its character,--a religion which stood from the outset in mortal antagonism to the Egyptian worship of sun-gods, and to the star-worship, the service of Baal, and of sensual or savage divinities joined with him,--to that service which was diffused through the Semitic nations of western Asia. A people was constituted to be the guardian of this light, kindled in the midst of the surrounding darkness, to carry it down to later ages, and to make it finally, in its perfected form, the heritage of mankind. THE PROPHETS.--_Moses_ was not only a military leader and a legislator: he stands at the head of the _prophets_, the class of men who at different times, especially in seasons of national peril and temptation, along the whole course of Israelitish history, were raised up to declare the will of Jehovah, to utter the lessons proper to the hour, to warn evil-doers, and to comfort the desponding. CONQUEST OF CANAAN: THE ERA OF THE JUDGES.--Moses himself did not enter "the promised land," where the patriarchs were buried, and which the Israelites were to conquer. According to Deut. vii. 2, a war of extermination was commanded. The reason given for the command was that the people must avoid the contagion of idolatry, that it was the fit reward of the nation which they were bidden to dispossess. The word _"Canaanite"_ was used especially to designate the inhabitants of the coast region of Palestine. It was applied, however, to all the tribes, who were under thirty-one kings or chiefs, in the time of Joshua, There were six principal tribes,--the _Hittites_, _Hivites_, _Amorites_, _Jebusites_, _Perizzites_, and _Girgashites_. These, with the exception of the _Hittites_, and possibly the _Amtorites_, were Semitic in their language. The Canaanites had houses and vineyards. From them the Israelites learned agriculture. "They were in possession of fortified towns, treasures of brass, iron, gold, and foreign merchandise" Their religious rites were brutal and debasing,--"human sacrifice, licentious orgies, the worship of a host of divinities." On the death of Moses, _Joshua_ succeeded to the post of a leader. He defeated the _Amontes_ and other tribes on the east of the Jordan. After the first victories of Joshua, each tribe carried on for itself the struggle with Canaanites, victory over them being often followed by indiscriminate slaughter. It is plain, however, especially from the account in the first chapter of the Book of Judges, that there was a process of assimilation as well as one of conquest. The actual settlement was effected by peaceful as well as by warlike methods. Resistance was stubborn, and the progress of occupation slow. It was not until David's time, centuries after the invasion, that _Jebus_, the site of Jerusalem, was captured. This delay was due largely to a lack of union, not to a lack of valor. The strength of the Israelites was in their infantry. Hence they preferred to fight upon the hills, rather than to cope with horsemen and chariots on the plains below. THE PERIOD OF THE JUDGES.--The era of the Judges extends from about 1300 B.C. over at least two centuries. Powerful tribes--as _Moabites_, _Midianites_, _Ammonites_, _Philistines_--were unsubdued. The land was desolated by constant war. It was one sure sign of the prevailing disorder and anarchy, that "the highways were unoccupied, and the travelers walked through byways" (Judg. v. 6). Not unfrequently the people forgot Jehovah, and fell into idolatrous practices. In this period of degeneracy and confusion, men full of sacred enthusiasm and of heroic courage arose to smite the enemies of Israel, and to restore the observance of the law. Of these heroic leaders, _Deborah_, _Gideon_, _Jepththa_, and _Samson_ were the most famous. There remains the song of Deborah on the defeat and death of _Sisera_ (Judg. v.). The _Philistines_, on the western coast, captured the sacred ark,--an act that spread dismay among the Israelites. Then they pushed on their conquests as far as the Jordan, took away from the Israelites their weapons, and grievously oppressed them. The _Ammonites_ threatened the tribes on the east of the Jordan with a like fate. At this juncture, an effective leader and reformer appeared, in the person of _Samuel_, who had been consecrated from his youth up to the service of the sanctuary, and whose devotion to the law was mingled with an ardent patriotism. He roused the courage of the people, and recalled them to the service of Jehovah. In the "schools of the prophets" he taught the young the law, trained them in music and song, and thus prepared a class of inspiring teachers and guides to co-operate with the priesthood in upholding the cause of religion. THE MONARCHY: SAMUEL AND SAUL.--In the distracted condition of the country, the people demanded a king, to unite them, and lead them to victory, and to administer justice. They felt that their lack of compact organization and defined leadership placed them at a disadvantage in comparison with the tribes about. This demand _Samuel_ resisted, as springing out of a distrust of Jehovah, and as involving a rejection of Him. He depicted the burdens which regal government would bring upon them. Later history verified his prediction. A strong, centralized authority was not in harmony with the family and tribal government which was the peculiarity of their system. It brought in, by the side of the prophetic order, another authority less sacred in its claims to respect. Collisions between the two must inevitably result. But, whatever might be the ideal political system, the exigency was such that Samuel yielded to the persistent call of the people. He himself chose and anointed for the office a tall, brave, and experienced soldier, _Saul_. Successful in combat, the king soon fell into a conflict with the prophet, by failing to comply with the divine law, and by sparing, contrary to the injunction laid upon him, prisoners and cattle that he had captured. Thereupon Samuel secretly anointed _David_, a young shepherd of the tribe of Judah; thus designating him for the throne. The envy of Saul at the achievements of David, and at his growing popularity, coupled with secret suspicion of what higher honors might be in store for the valiant youth, embittered the king against him. David was befriended and shielded by _Jonathan_, Saul's son, who might naturally be looked upon as his suitable successor. The memorials of the friendship of these two youths, in the annals of that troublous time, are like a star in the darkest night. David was obliged to take refuge among the Philistines, where he led a band of free lances, whom the Philistines did not trust as auxiliaries, but who were inured by their daring combats for the struggles that came afterwards. Saul and Jonathan were slain, Saul by his own hand. For six years David was king in _Hebron_, over the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. The other tribes were ruled by Saul's son, _Ishbaal_ ('Ishbosheth'). At length David was recognized as king by all the tribes. Saul's family were exterminated. CHRONOLOGY.--There is much difficulty in settling the chronology in the early centuries of the regal period of Hebrew history. Apart from the questions which arise in comparing the biblical data, the information derived from Egyptian and especially from Assyrian sources has to be taken into account. Hence the dates given below must be regarded as open to revision as our knowledge increases. Assyriologists find that Shalmaneser II. received tribute from _Ahab_, King of Israel, 854 B.C., and from _Jehu_, 842 B.C.; that _Tiglath-Pileser III_ (745-727 B.C.) received tribute from _Menahem_ in 738 B.C. and that Samaria fell in 722 B.C. Assyriology, on the basis of its data, _as at present ascertained_, would make out a chronology something like the following: Era of the judges, 1300-1020; Saul, 1020-1000; David, 1000-960; Solomon, 960-930; Reho-boam, 930-914 (Jeroboam I., 930-910); Jehoshaphat, 870+-850 (Ahab, 875-853); Azanah (or Uzziah), 779-740 (Jehu, 842-815); (Jeroboam II., 783-743); (Menahem, 744-738). DAVID AND SOLOMON.--David's reign (about 1000-970 B.C.) is the period of Israel's greatest power. He extended his sway as far as the Red Sea and the Euphrates; he overcame Damascus, and broke down the power of the Philistines; he subdued the Moabites, Ammonites, and Edomites; he conquered the Jebusites, and made Jerusalem his capital and the center of national worship. A poet himself, he enriched the religious service, which he organized, by lyrics--some of them composed by himself--of unrivaled devotional depth and poetic beauty. He organized his military force as well, and established an orderly civil administration. His favorite son, _Absalom_, led away by ambition, availed himself of disaffection among the people to head a revolt against his father, but perished in the attempt. David left his crown to _Solomon_ at the close of a checkered life, marked by great victories, and by flagrant misdeeds done under the pressure of temptation. CHARACTERS OF SOLOMON'S REIGN.--Solomon's reign (about 970-933 B.C.) was the era of luxury and splendor. He sought to emulate the other great monarchs of the time. With the help of _Hiram_, king of Tyre, who furnished materials and artisans, he erected a magnificent temple on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem. He built costly palaces. He brought horses from Egypt, and organized a standing army, with its cavalry and chariots. He established a harem, bringing into it women from the heathen countries, whom he allowed in their idolatrous rites. He was even seduced to take part in them himself. Renowned for his knowledge and for his wisdom--which was admired by the _Queen of Saba_ (Sheba), who came to visit him from the Arabian coast--famous as the author of wise aphorisms, he nevertheless entailed disasters on his country. He established a sort of Oriental despotism, which exhausted its resources, provoked discontent, and tended to undermine morality as well as religion. THE DIVIDED KINGDOM.--The bad effect of Solomon's magnificence soon appeared. Before his death a revolt was made under the lead of _Jeroboam_, which was put down. Of _Rehoboam_, the successor of Solomon, the ten tribes north of Judah required pledges that their burdens should be lightened. In the room of the heads and elders of the tribes, the late king's officers had come in to oppress them with their hard exactions. The haughty young king spurned the demand for redress. The tribes cast off his rule, and made _Jeroboam I._ their king (about 933 B.C.). The temple was left in the hands of _Judah_ and _Benjamin_. The division of the kingdom into two, insured the downfall of both. The rising power of the Mesopotamian Empire could not be met without union. On the other hand, the concentration of worship at Jerusalem, under the auspices of the two southern tribes, may have averted dangers that would have arisen from the wider diffusion, and consequent exposure to corruption, of the religious system. The development and promotion of the true religion--the one great historical part appointed for the Hebrews--may have been performed not less effectively, on the whole, for the separation. HEATHEN RITES.--From this time the energetic and prolonged contest of the prophets with idolatry is a conspicuous feature, especially in the history of Israel, the northern kingdom. _Jeroboam_ set up golden calves at _Dan_ and _Bethel_, ancient seats of the worship of Jehovah. Wars with Judah and Damascus weakened the strength of Israel. The Egyptian king, _Shishak_, captured Jerusalem, and bore away the treasures collected by Solomon (p. 41). Under _Jehoshaphat_ (about 873-849 B.C.) the heathen altars were demolished and prosperity returned. STRUGGLE WITH IDOLATRY: ELIHAH AND ELISHA.--The contemporary of Jehoshaphat in the northern kingdom was _Ahab_ (about 876-854 B.C.). He expended his power and wealth in the building up of Baal-worship, at the instigation of the Tyrian princess, _Jezebel_, whom he had married. At Samaria, his capital, he raised a temple to Baal, where four hundred and fifty of his priests ministered. The priests of Jehovah who withstood these measures were driven out of the land, or into hiding-places. The austere and intrepid prophet _Elijah_ found refuge in _Mount Carmel_. The people, on the occasion of a famine, which he declared to be a divine judgment, rose in their wrath, and slew the priests of Baal. In a war--the third of a series--which Ahab waged against _Syria_, he still fought in his chariot, after he had received a mortal wound, until he fell dead. He had previously thrown the prophet _Micaiah_ into prison for predicting this result. By the marriage of _Athalia_, a daughter of Ahab and Jezebel, with Jehoshaphat's son, Baal-worship was introduced into Jerusalem. _Joram_ succeeded Ahab. The prophet _Elisha_, who followed in the steps of Elijah, anointed _Jehu_ "captain of the host of Joram." He undertook, with fierce and unsparing energy, to destroy Baal-worship, and to extirpate the house of Ahab, root and branch. The two kings of Israel and of Judah he slew with his own hand. The priests and servants of Baal were put to the sword. These conflicts reduced the strength of Israel, which fell a prey to Syria, until its power was revived by _Jeroboam II_. (783-743 B.C.). The death of _Athalia_ brought on the expulsion of the Phoenician idolatry from Jerusalem. The southern kingdom suffered from internal strife, and from wars with Israel, until _Uzziah_ (779-740 B.C.) restored its military strength, and caused agriculture and trade once more to flourish. THE ASSYRIAN CAPTIVITY.--The two kingdoms, in the ninth and eighth centuries, instead of standing together against the threatening might of Assyria, sought heathen alliances, and wasted their strength in mutual contention. Against these hopeless alliances, and against the idolatry and the formalism which debased the people, the prophets contended with intense earnestness and unflinching courage. _Amos_, called from feeding his flocks, inveighed against frivolity and vice, misgovernment and fraud, in Israel. _Hosea_ warned _Menahem_ (743-737 B.C.) against invoking the help of Assyria against Damascus, but in vain. He was terribly punished by what he suffered from the Assyrians; but Jotham (740-736 B.C.) and Ahaz (736-728 B.C.), the Judaean kings, successively followed his example. _Tiglath-Pileser_ made Judaea tributary. The Assyrian rites were brought into the temple of Jehovah. The service of Canaanitish deities was introduced. The one incorruptible witness for the cause of Jehovah was the fearless and eloquent prophet, _Isaiah_. Hosea, king of Israel, by his alliance with Egypt against _Sargon_, so incensed this most warlike of the Assyrian monarchs, that, when he had subdued the Phoenician cities, he laid siege to Samaria; and, having captured it at the end of a siege of three years, he led away the king and the larger part of his subjects as captives, to the Euphrates and the Tigris, and replaced them by subjects of his own (722 B.C.). The later Samaritans were the descendants of this mixed population. The Babylonian Captivity.--When _Sargon_, the object of general dread, died, _Hezekiah_, king of Judah (727-699 B.C.), flattered himself that it was safe to disregard the warnings of Isaiah, and, in the hope of throwing off the Assyrian yoke, made a treaty of alliance with the king of Egypt, and fortified Jerusalem. He abolished, however, the heathen worship in "the high places." _Sennacherib_, Sargon's successor, was compelled to raise the siege (p. 46). _Manasseh_ (698-643 B.C.), in defiance of the prophets, fostered the idolatrous and sensual worship, against which they never ceased to lift their voices. _Josiah_ (640-609 B.C.) was a reformer. As a tributary of Babylon, he sought to prevent _Necho_, king of Egypt, from crossing his territory, but was vanquished and slain at _Megiddo_, on the plain of Esdraelon. _Nebuchadnezzar's_ victory over Necho, at _Carchemish_, enabled the Babylonian king to tread in the footsteps of the Assyrian conquerors. The revolt of _Zedekiah_, which the prophet _Jeremiah_ was unable to prevent, and his alliance with Egypt, led to the Babylonian captivity of the Jews. In this period of national ruin, the prophetic spirit found a voice through _Jeremiah_ and _Ezekiel_. It was during the era of Assyrian and Babylonian invasion that the predictions of a MESSIAH, a great Deliverer and righteous Ruler who was to come, assumed a more definite expression. The spiritual character of _Isaiah's_ teaching has given him the name of "the evangelical prophet." _Cyrus_, the conqueror of Babylon, opened the way (538 B.C.) for the return of the exiles. A small part first came back under _Zerubbabel_, head of the tribe of Judah, who was made Persian governor. They began to rebuild the temple, which was finished in 516 B.C. Later (458 B.C.) _Ezra_ "the scribe" and _Nehemiah_ led home a larger body. The newly returned Jews were fired with a zeal for the observance of the Mosaic ritual,--a zeal which had been sharpened in the persecutions and sorrows of exile. The era of the _"hagiocracy,"_ of the supreme influence of the priesthood and the rigid adherence to the law, with an inflexible hostility to heathen customs, ensued. The spirit of which prophecy had been the stimulant, and partially the fruit, declined. The political independence of the land was gone for ever. The day of freedom under the _Maccabees_, after the insurrection (168 B.C.) led by that family against the Syrian successors of Alexander, was short. But Israel "had been thrown into the stream of nations." Its religious influence was to expand as its political strength dwindled. Its subjugation and all its terrible misfortunes were to serve as a means of spreading the leavening influence of its monotheistic faith. In the year 63 B.C., _Pompeius_ made the Jews tributary to the Romans. In the year 40 B.C., _Herod_ began to reign as a dependent king under Rome. _Hebrew Literature_.--The literature of the Hebrews is essentially religious in its whole motive and spirit. This is true even of their historical writings. The marks of the one defining characteristic of their national life--faith in Jehovah and in his sovereign and righteous control--are everywhere seen. Hebrew poetry is mainly lyrical. Relics of old songs are scattered through the historical books. In the _Psalms_, an anthology of sacred lyrics, the spirit of Hebrew poesy attains to its highest flight. Examples of didactic poetry are the Book of _Job_, and books like the _Proverbs_, composed mainly of pithy sayings or gnomes. Nowhere, save in the Psalms, does the spirit of the Hebrew religion and the genius of the people find an expression so grand and moving as in the _Prophets_, of whom _Isaiah_ is the chief. ART.--In art the Hebrews did not excel. The plastic arts were generally developed in connection with religion. But the religion of the Hebrews excluded all visible representations of deity. Nor were they proficients in science. "Israel was the vessel in which the water of life was inclosed, in which it was kept cool and pure, that it might thereafter refresh the world." The HISTORICAL BOOKS of the Old Testament comprise, first, the _Pentateuch_, which describes the origin of the Hebrew people, the exodus from Egypt, and the Sinaitic legislation. Questions pertaining to the date and authorship of these five books, and of the materials at the basis of them, are still debated among historical critics. It may be regarded as certain, however, that materials belonging to nearly every period of Hebrew literature, from the earliest times, are here combined. The early part of Genesis is designed to explain the genealogy of the Hebrews, and to show how, step by step, they were sundered from other peoples. The narratives in the first ten chapters--as the story of the creation, the flood, etc.--so strikingly resemble legends of other Semitic nations, especially the _Babylonians_and _Phoenicians_, as to make it plain that all these groups of accounts are historically connected with one another. But the Genesis narratives are distinguished by their freedom from the polytheistic ingredients which disfigure the corresponding narratives elsewhere. They are on the elevated plane of that pure theism which is the kernel of the Hebrew faith. This whole subject is elucidated by Lenormant, in _The Beginnings of History_ (1882). The Book of _Joshua_ relates the history of the conquest of Canaan; _Judges_, the tale of the heroic age of Israel prior to the monarchy; the Books of _Samuel_ and of _Kings_, of the monarchy in its glory and its decline; the Books of _Chronicles_ treat of parts of the same era, more from the point of view of the priesthood; _Ruth_ is an idyl of the narrative type; _Ezra_, _Nehemiah_, and _Esther_ have to do with the return of the Jews from exile, and the events next following. The POETIC WRITINGS include the _Psalter_, by many authors; the _Proverbs_ of Solomon and others; _Ecclesiastes_, which gives the sombre reflections of one who had tasted to the full the pleasures and honors of life; the _Canticles_, or _Song of Solomon_, which depicts a young woman's love in its constancy, and victory over temptation. The PROPHETS are divided into four classes: i. Those of the early period from the twelfth to the ninth century, including _Samuel_, _Elijah_, _Eliska_, etc, who have left no prophetical writings. 2. The prophets of the Assyrian age (800-700 B.C.), where belong _Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah,_ and _Nahum_. 3. The prophets of the Babylonian age, _Zephaniah, Jeremiah, Habakkuk, Ezekiel_. Here some scholars would place a part of _Isaiah_. 4. The post-exilian prophets, _Haggai, Zachariah, Malackt, Jonah., Daniel, Joel, Obadiah_, and considerable portions of _Isaiah_ and _Jeremiah_. The APOCRYPHAL BOOKS belong between the closing of the Old-Testament canon and the New Testament. They are instructive as to that intermediate period. The _first_ Book of _Maccabees_ is specially important for its historical matter; the Books of _Wisdom_ and the _Son of Sirach_ for their moral reflections and precepts. WORKS RELATING TO HEBREW HISTORY.--EWALD, _History of the Israelitish People_ (Eng. trans., 5 vols.); Milman, _History of the Jews_ (3 vols.); Stade, _Geschichte des Volkes Israel_ (2 vols., 1889); Renan, _History of the People of Israel_ (Eng. trans., 1896); Wellhausen. _Israelitische und judische Geschichte_ (3d ed., 1897); Kent, _History of the Hebrew People_ (1898); Guthe, _Geschichte des Volkes Israel_ (1899); the Art. _Israel_ by Wellhausen, in the _Encycl. Brit_., and the one by Guthe in the _Encycl. Bibl._ The historical works of Jewish scholars, Herzfeld, Jost, Zunz, Graetz, DERENBOURG, etc., are valuable. CHAPTER V. THE PERSIANS. In the western part of the plateau of Iran, which extends from the Suleiman Mountains to the plains of Mesopotamia, were the _Medes_. On the southern border of the same plateau, along the Persian Gulf, were the _Persians_. Both were offshoots of the Aryan family, and had migrated westward from the region of the upper Oxus, from Bactria, the original seat of their religion. RELIGION.--The ancient religion of the Iranians, including the Medes and Persians, was reduced to a system by the Bactrian sage, _Zoroaster_ (or Zarathustra), who, in the absence of authentic knowledge respecting him, may be conjecturally placed at about 1000 B.C. The _Zendavesta_, the sacred book of the Parsees, the adherents of this religion, is composed of parts belonging to very different dates. It is the fragment of a more extensive literature no longer extant. The Bactrian religion differed from that of their Sanskrit-speaking kindred on the Indus, in being a form of dualism. It grew out of a belief in good demons or spirits, and in evil spirits, making up two hosts perpetually in conflict with each other. At the head of the host of good spirits, in the Zoroastrian creed, was _Ormuzd_, the creator, and the god of light; at the head of the evil host, was _Ahriman_, the god of darkness. The one made the world good, the other laid in it all that is evil. The one is disposed to bless man, the other to do him harm. The conflict of virtue and vice in man is a contest for control on the part of these antagonistic powers. In order to keep off the spirits of evil, one must avoid what is morally or ceremonially unclean. He who lived pure, went up at death to the spirits of light. The evil soul departed to consort with evil spirits in the region of darkness. _Mithra_, the sun-god in the Zoroastrian system, is the equal, though the creature, of _Ormuzd_. Mithra is the conqueror of darkness, and so the enemy of falsehood. The Medes and Persians were fire-worshipers. To the good spirits, they ascribed life, the fruitful earth, the refreshing waters, fountains and rivers, the tilled ground, pastures and trees, the lustrous metals, also truth and the pure deed. To the evil spirits belonged darkness, disease, death, the desert, cold, filth, sin, and falsehood. The animals were divided between the two realms. All that live in holes, all that hurt the trees and the crops, rats and mice, reptiles of all sorts, turtles, lizards, vermin, and noxious insects, were hateful creatures of _Ahriman_. To kill any of these was a merit. The dog was held sacred; as was also the cock, who announces the break of day. In the system of worship, sacrifices were less prominent than in India. Prayers, and the iteration of prayers, were of great moment. THE MAGI.--The Zoroastrian religion was not the same at all times and in every place. The primitive Iranian emigrants were monotheistic in their tendencies. In their western abodes, they came into contact with worshipers of the elements,--fire, air, earth, and water. It is thought by many scholars, that the _Magian_ system, with its more defined dualism and sacerdotal sway, was ingrafted on the native religion of the Iranians through the influence of tribes with whom they mingled in Media. The Magi, according to one account, were charged by Darius with corrupting the Zoroastrian faith and worship. Whatever may have been their origin, they became the leaders in worship, and privy-counselors to the sovereign. They were likewise astrologers, and interpreters of dreams. They were not so distinct a class as the priests in India. A hereditary order, they might still bring new members into their ranks. From the Medes, they were introduced among the Persians. PERSIAN RELIGIOUS CUSTOMS.--Peculiar customs existed among the Medes in disposing of the dead. They were not to be cast into the fire or the water, or buried in the earth, for this would bring pollution to what was sacred; but their bodies were to be exposed in the high rocks, where the beasts and birds could devour them. Sacrifices were offered on hill-tops. Salutations of homage were made to the rising sun. On some occasions, boys were buried alive, as an offering to the divinities. In early times, there were no images of the gods. As far as they were introduced in later times, it was through the influence of surrounding nations. In the supremacy and the final victory, which, in the later form of Zoroastrianism, were accorded to _Ormuzd_, there was again an approach to monotheism. Hostility to deception of all sorts, and thus to stealing, was a Persian trait. _Herodotus_ says that the Persians taught their children to ride, to shoot the bow, and to speak the truth. To prize the pursuits of agriculture and horticulture, was a part of their religion. They allowed a plurality of wives, and concubines with them; but there was one wife to whom precedence belonged. Voluntary celibacy in man or woman was counted a flagrant sin. HISTORY.--The first authentic notice that we have of the MEDES shows them under Assyrian power. This is in the time of _Shalmaneser II._, 840 B.C. Their rise is coincident with the fall of Assyria. _Phraortes_ (647-625 B.C.) began the Median struggle for independence; although the name of _Deioces_ is given by _Herodotus_ as a previous king, and the builder of _Ecbatana_ the capital. It was reserved for _Cyaxares_ (625-585 B.C.), having delivered his land from the Scythian marauders (p. 47), to complete, in conjunction with the Babylonian king, _Nabopolassar_, the work of breaking down the Assyrian empire (p. 48). He brought under his rule the _Bactrians_, and the _Persians_ about _Pasargadæ_ and _Persepolis_, and made the _Halys_, dividing Asia Minor, the limit of his kingdom. His effeminate son, _Astyages_, lost what his father had won. The Persian branch of the Iranians gained the supremacy. _Cyrus_, the leader of the Persian revolt, by whom _Astyages_ was defeated, is described as related to him; but this story, as well as the account of his being rescued from death and brought up among shepherds, is probably a fiction. CYRUS.--In the sixth century B.C., this famous ruler and conqueror became the founder of an empire which comprised nearly all the civilized nations of Asia. During his reign of thirty years (559-530 B.C.), he annexed to his kingdom the two principal states, LYDIA and BABYLON. The king of Lydia was _Croesus_, whose story, embellished with romantic details, was long familiar as a signal example of the mutations of fortune. Doomed to be burned after the capture of _Sardis_, his capital, he was heard, just when the fire was to be kindled, to say something about _Solon_. In answer to the inquiry of Cyrus, whose curiosity was excited, he related how that Grecian sage, after beholding his treasures, had refused to call him the most fortunate of men, on the ground that "no man can be called happy before his death," because none can tell what disasters may befall him. Cyrus, according to the narrative, touched by the tale, delivered Croesus from death, and thereafter bestowed on him honor and confidence. There is another form of the tradition, which is deemed by some more probable. Croesus is said to have stood on a pyre, intending to offer himself in the flames, to propitiate the god _Sandon_, that his people might be saved from destruction; but he was prevented, it is said, by unfavorable auguries. The subjection of the Greek colonies on the Asia-Minor coast followed upon the subjugation of Lydia. From these colonies, the _Phocoeans_ went forth, and founded _Elea_ in Lower Italy, and Massilia (Marseilles) in Gaul. The Asian Greek cities were each allowed its own municipal rulers, but paid tribute to the Persian master. The conquest of _Babylon_ (538 B.C.), as it opened the way for the return to Jerusalem of the Jewish exiles, enabled Cyrus to establish a friendly people in Judaea, as a help in fortifying his sway in Syria, and in opening a path to _Egypt_. But in 529 he lost his life in a war which he was waging against the _Massagetae_, a tribe on the Caspian, allied in blood to the Scythians. There was a tradition that the barbarian queen, _Tomyris_, enraged that Cyrus had overcome her son by deceit, dipped the slain king's head in a skin-bag of blood, exclaiming, "Drink thy fill of blood, of which thou couldst not have enough in thy lifetime!" CAMBYSES.--The successor of Cyrus, a man not less warlike than he, but more violent in his passions, reigned but seven years (529-522 B.C.). His most conspicuous achievement was the conquest of EGYPT. One ground or pretext of his hostility, according to the tale of Herodotus, was the fact that Amasis, the predecessor of _Psammeticus III._, not daring to refuse the demand of his daughter as a wife, to be second in rank to the Persian queen, had fraudulently sent, either to Cambyses, or, before his time, to Cyrus, _Nitetis_, the daughter of the king who preceded him, Apries. Defeated at _Pelusium_, and compelled to yield up _Memphis_ after a siege, it is said that Psammeticus, the _Psammenitus_ of Herodotus, the unfortunate successor of the powerful Pharaohs, was obliged to look on the spectacle of his daughters in the garb of working-women, bearing water, and to see his sons, with the principal young nobles, ordered to execution. But this tale lacks confirmation. His cruelties were probably of a later date, and were provoked by the chagrin he felt, and the satisfaction manifested by the people, at the failure of great expeditions which he sent southward for the conquest of _Meroe_, and westward against the _Oasis of Ammon_. His armies perished in the Lybian deserts. Even the story of his stabbing the sacred steer (_Apis_), after these events, although it may be true, is not sanctioned by the Egyptian inscriptions. His attack upon Ammon probably arose, in part at least, from a desire to possess himself of whatever lay between Egypt and the Carthaginian territory. But the Phoenician sailors who manned his fleet refused to sail against their brethren in Carthage. _Cambyses_ assumed the title and character of an Egyptian sovereign. The story of his madness is an invention of the Egyptian priests. DARIUS (521-485 B.C.).--For a short time, a pretender, a Magian, who called himself _Smerdis_, and professed to be the brother of Cambyses, usurped the throne. Cambyses is said to have put an end to his own life. After a reign of seven months, during which he kept himself for the most part hidden from view, Smerdis was destroyed by a rising of the leading Persian families. Darius, the son of Hystaspes, of the royal race of the _Achaemenidae_, succeeded. He married _Atossa_, the daughter of Cyrus. The countries which composed an Oriental empire were so loosely held together that the death of a despot or the change of a dynasty was very likely to call forth a general insurrection. Darius showed his military prowess in conquering anew various countries, including Babylon, which had revolted. He made Arabia tributary, and spread the bounds of his vast empire as far as India and in North Africa. A mighty expedition which he organized against the Scythians on the Lower Danube failed of the results that were hoped from it. The barbarians wasted their own fields, filled up their wells, drove off their cattle, and fled as the army of Darius advanced. He returned, however, with the bulk of his army intact, although with a loss of prestige, and enrolled "the Scyths beyond the sea" among the subjects of his empire. His armies conquered the tribes of _Thrace_, so that he pushed his boundaries to the frontiers of Macedonia. The rebellion of the Greek cities on the Asia-Minor coast he suppressed, and harshly avenged. Of his further conflicts with the Greeks on the mainland, more is to be said hereafter. He had built _Persepolis_, but his principal seat of government appears to have been _Susa_. He did a great work in organizing his imperial system. The division into _satrapies_--large districts, each under a _satrap_, or viceroy--was a part of this work. He thus introduced a more efficient and methodical administration into his empire,--an empire four times as large as the empire of Assyria, which it had swallowed up. GOVERNMENT.--Persia proper corresponded nearly to the modern province of _Farsistan_ or _Fars_. The Persian Empire stretched from east to west for a distance of about three thousand miles, and was from five hundred to fifteen hundred miles in width. It was more than half as large as modern Europe. It comprised not less than two millions of square miles. Its population under Darius may have been seventy or eighty millions. He brought in uniformity of administration. In each satrapy, besides the satrap himself, who was a despot within his own dominion, there was at first a commander of the troops, and a secretary, whose business it was to make reports to the GREAT KING. These three officers were really watchmen over one another. It was through spies ("eyes" and "ears") of the king that he was kept informed of what was taking place in every part of the empire. At length it was found necessary to give the satraps the command of the troops, which took away one important check upon their power. There was a regular system of taxation, but to this were added extraordinary and oppressive levies. Darius introduced a uniform coinage. The name of the coin, "daric," is probably not derived from his name, however. Notwithstanding the government by satraps, local laws and usages were left, to a large extent, undisturbed. Great roads, and postal communication for the exclusive use of the government, connected the capital with the distant provinces. In this point the Persians set an example which was followed by the Romans. From _Susa_ to _Sardis_, a distance of about seventeen hundred English miles, stretched a road, along which, at proper intervals, were caravansaries, and over which the fleet couriers of the king rode in six or seven days. The king was an absolute lord and master, who disposed of the lives and property of his subjects without restraint. To him the most servile homage was paid. He lived mostly in seclusion in his palace. On great occasions he sat at banquet with his nobles. His throne was made of gold, silver, and ivory. All who approached him kissed the earth. His ordinary dress was probably of the richest silk. He took his meals mostly by himself. His fare was made up of the choicest delicacies. His seraglio, guarded by eunuchs, contained a multitude of inmates, brought together by his arbitrary command, over whom, in a certain way, the queen-mother presided. His chief diversions were playing at dice within doors, and hunting without. _Paradises_, or parks, walled in, planted with trees and shrubbery, and furnished with refreshing fountains and streams, were his hunting-ground. Such inclosures were the delight of all Persians. In war he was attended with various officers in close attendance on his person,--the stool-bearer, the bow-bearer, etc. In peace, there was another set, among whom was "the parasol-bearer,"--for to be sheltered by the parasol was an exclusive privilege of the king,--the fan-bearer, etc. There were certain privileged families,--six besides the royal clan of the _Achæmenidæ_, the chiefs of all of which were his counselors, and from whom he was bound to choose his legitimate wives. When the monarch traveled, even on military expeditions, he was accompanied by the whole varied apparatus of luxury which ministered to his pleasures in the court,--costly furniture, a vast retinue of attendants, of inmates of the harem, etc. ARMY AND NAVY.--The arms of the footman were a sword, a spear, and a bow. Persian bowmen were skillful. Persian cavalry, both heavy and light, were their most effective arm. The military leaders depended on the celerity of their horsemen and the weight of their numbers. It is doubtful whether they employed military engines. They were not wholly ignorant of strategy. Their troops were marshaled by nations, each in its own costume, the commander of the whole being in the center of the line of battle. The body-guard of the king was "the Immortals," a body of ten thousand picked footmen, the number being always kept intact. The enemies of the Persians, except in the case of rebels, were not treated with inhumanity. In this regard the Persians are in marked contrast with the Semitic ferocity of the Assyrians. Their navies were drawn from the subject-peoples. The _trireme_, with its projecting prow shod with iron, and its crew of two hundred men, was the principal, but not the only vessel used in sea-fights. LITERATURE AND ART.--A Persian youth was ordinarily taught to read, but there was little intellectual culture. Boys were trained in athletic exercises. It was a discipline in hardy and temperate habits. Etiquette, in all ranks of the people, was highly esteemed. The Persians, as a nation, were bright-minded, and not deficient in fancy and imagination. But they contributed little to science. Their religious ideas were an heirloom from remote ancestors. The celebrated Persian poet, _Firdousí_, lived in the tenth century of our era. His great poem, the _Shahnameh_, or Book of Kings, is a storehouse of ancient traditions. It is probable that the ancient poetry of the Persians, like this production, was of moderate merit. Of the Persian architecture and sculpture, we derive our knowledge from the massive ruins of _Persepolis_, which was burned by Alexander the Great, and from the remains of other cities. They had learned from Assyria and Babylon, but they display no high degree of artistic talent. They were not an intellectual people: they were soldiers and rulers. LITERATURE--Works mentioned on pp 16, 42; _Encycl. Brit.,_ Art. Persia; Vaux, Persia from the Monuments (1876); Nöldeke, _Aufsdtze zur persischen Geschichte_ (1887); Justi, _Geschichte trans_ (1900); Markham, _General Sketch of the History of Persia_ (1874). RETROSPECT. In Eastern Asia the _Chinese nation_ was built up, the principal achievement of the Mongolian race. Its influence was restricted to neighboring peoples of kindred blood. Its civilization, having once attained to a certain stage of progress, remained for the most part stationary. China, in its isolation, exerted no power upon the general course of history. Not until a late age, when the civilization of the Caucasian race should be developed, was the culture of China to produce, in the mingling of the European and Asiatic peoples, its full fruits, even for China herself. _India_--although the home of a Caucasian immigrant people, a people of the Aryan family too--was cut off by special causes from playing an effective part, either actively or passively, in the general historic movement. _Egypt_, from 1500 to 1300 B.C., was the leading community of the ancient world. But civilization in Egypt, at an early date, crystallized in an unchanging form. The aim was to preserve unaltered what the past had brought out. The bandaged mummy, the result of the effort to preserve even the material body of man for all future time, is a type of the leaden conservatism which pervaded Egyptian life. The pre-eminence of Egypt was lost by the rise of the Semitic states to increasing power. _Semitic_ arms and culture were in the ascendant for six centuries (1300 to 700 B.C.). _Babylonia_ shares with Egypt the distinction of being one of the two chief fountains of culture. From Babylonia, astronomy, writing, and other useful arts were disseminated among the other Semitic peoples. It was a strong state even before 2000 B.C. Babylon was a hive of industry, and was active in trade, a link of intercourse between the East and the West. But this function of an intermediate was discharged still more effectively by the _Phoenicians_, the first great commercial and naval power of antiquity. _Tyre_ reached the acme of its prosperity under _Hiram_, the contemporary of _Solomon_, about 1000 B.C. Meantime, among the Hebrew people, the foundations of the true religion had been laid,--that religion of monotheism which in future ages was to leaven the nations. Contemporaneously, the _Assyrian Monarchy_ was rising to importance on the banks of the Tigris. The appearance, "in the first half of the ninth century B.C., of a power advancing from the heart of Asia towards the West, is an event of immeasurable importance in the history of the world." The _Israelites_ were divided. About the middle of the eighth century B.C., both of their kingdoms lost their independence. Assyria was vigorous in war, but had no deep foundation of national life. "Its religion was not rooted in the soil, like that of Egypt, nor based on the observation of the sky and stars, like that of Babylon." "Its gods were gods of war, manifesting themselves in the prowess of ruling princes." The main instrument in effecting the downfall of Assyria was the _Medo-Persian_ power. Through the _Medes_ and _Persians_, the Aryan race comes forward into conspicuity and control. One branch of the Iranians of Bactria, entering _India_, through the agency of climate and other physical influences converted their religion into a mystical and speculative pantheism, and their social organization into a caste-system under the rule of a priesthood. The Medes and Persians, under other circumstances, in contact with tribes about them, turned their religion into a dualism, yet with a monotheistic drift that was not wholly extinguished. The conquest of Babylon by _Cyrus_ annihilated Semitic power. The fall of _Lydia_, the conquest of _Egypt_ by _Cambyses_, and the victories of _Darius_, brought the world into subjection to Persian rule. The dates of some of the most important historical events in this Section are as follow Menes, the first historic king of Egypt....... about 4000 B.C. Accession of Ramses II. to the Egyptian throne...... 1340 B.C. Rise of the Babylonian kingdom................ about 4000 B.C. Reign of Hiram at Tyre, and of Solomon........ about 950 B.C. Assyrian captivity: downfall of Israel............... 722 B.C. Fall of Nineveh...................................... 606 B.C. Babylonian captivity: downfall of Judah.............. 586 B.C. Reign of Cyrus begins................................ 559 B.C. Fall of Lydia: capture of Sardis..................... 546 B.C. Fall of Babylon...................................... 538 B.C. Reign of Darius begins............................... 521 B.C. BEGINNINGS OF CIVILIZATION.--In the history of _Western Asia_ we discern the beginnings of civilization and of the true religion. In the room of useless and destructive tribal warfare, great numbers are banded together under despotic rule. CITIES were built, where property and life could be protected, and within whose massive walls of vast circumference the useful arts and the rudiments of science could spring up. Trade and commerce, by land and sea, naturally followed. Thus nations came to know one another. Aggressive war and subjugation had a part in the same result. The power of the peoples of western Asia, the guardians of infant civilization, availed to keep back the hordes of barbarians on the north, or, as in the case of the great Scythian invasion (p. 47), to drive them back to their own abodes. DEFECTS OF ASIATIC CIVILIZATION.--But the civilization of the Asiatic empires had radical and fatal defects. The development of human nature was in some one direction, to the exclusion of other forms of human activity. As to knowledge, it was confined within a limit beyond which progress was slow. The _geometry_ of Egypt and the _astronomy_ of Babylon remained where the necessity of the pyramid-builders and the superstition of the astrologers had carried them. Even the art of war was in a rudimental stage. In battle, huge multitudes were precipitated upon one another. There are some evidences of strategy, when we reach the campaigns of Cyrus. But war was full of barbarities,--the destruction of cities, the expatriation of masses of people, the pitiless treatment of captives. _Architecture_ exhibits magnitude without elegance. Temples, palaces, and tombs are monuments of labor rather than creations of art. They impress oftener by their size than by their beauty. _Statuary_ is inert and massive, and appears inseparable from the buildings to which it is attached. _Literature_, with the exception of the Hebrew, is hardly less monotonous than art. The religion of the Semitic nations, the _Hebrews_ excepted, so far from containing in it a purifying element, tended to degrade its votaries by feeding the flame of sensual and revengeful passion. What but debasement could come from the worship of Astarte and the Phoenician El? The great empires did not assimilate the nations which they comprised. They were bound, but not in the least fused, together. Persia went farther than any other empire in creating a uniform administration, but even the Persian Empire remained a conglomerate of distinct peoples. ORIENTAL GOVERNMENT.--The government of the Oriental nations was a despotism. It was not a government of laws, but the will of the one master was omnipotent. The counterpart of tyranny in the ruler was cringing, abject servility in the subject. Humanity could not thrive, man could not grow to his full stature, under such a system. It was on the soil of Europe and among the Greeks that a better type of manhood and a true idea of liberty were to spring up. DIVISION II. EUROPE. PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY.--The Alps, continued on the west by the Pyrenees and the Cantabrian mountains, and carried eastward to the Black Sea by the Balkan range, form an irregular line, that separates the three peninsulas of Spain, Italy, and Greece from the great plain of central Europe. On the north of this plain, there is a corresponding system of peninsulas and islands, where the Baltic answers in a measure to the Mediterranean. This midland sea, which at once unites and separates the three continents, is connected with the Atlantic by the narrow Strait of Gibraltar, and on the east is continued in the Aegean Sea, or the Archipelago, which leads into the Hellespont, or the Strait of the Dardanelles, thence onward into the Propontis, or Sea of Marmora, and through the Bosphorus into the Black Sea, and the Sea of Azoff beyond. From the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean the Mediterranean is parted by a space which is now traversed by a canal. The irregularity of the coast-line is one of the characteristic features of the European continent. Especially are the northern shores of the Mediterranean indented by arms of the sea; and this, along with the numerous islands, marks out the whole region as remarkably adapted to maritime life and commercial intercourse. ITS INHABITANTS.--Europe was early inhabited by branches of the _Aryan_ race. The cradle or primitive seat of the Aryan family --from which its two main divisions, the European and the Asiatic, went forth--is not known. It is a matter of theory and debate. We find the _Graeco-Latin_ peoples on the south, the more central nations of _Celtic_ speech, the more northern _Teutons_, and in the north-east the _Slavonians_. But how all these Aryan branches are mutually related, and of the order and path of their prehistoric migrations, little is definitely known. The _Celts_ were evidently preceded by _non-Aryan_ inhabitants, of whom the _Basques_ in Spain and France are a relic. The _Celtiberians_ in Spain, as the name implies, were a mixture of the _Celts_ with the native non-Aryan _Iberians_. The _Greeks_ and the _Italians_ had a common ancestry, as we know by their languages; but of that common ancestry neither Greeks nor Latins in the historic period retained any recollection; nor can we safely affirm, that, of that earlier stock, they alone were the offspring. "All the known Indo-European languages," writes Professor Whitney, "are descended from a single dialect, which must have been spoken at some time in the past by a single limited community, by the spread and emigration of which--not, certainly, without incorporating also bodies of other races than that to which itself belonged by origin--it has reached its present wide distribution." "Of course, it would be a matter of the highest interest to determine the place and period of this important community, were there any means of doing so; but that is not the case, at least at present." "The condition of these languages is reconcilable with any possible theory as to the original site of the family." "One point is established, that 'the separation of the five European branches must have been later than their common separation from the two Asiatic branches,' the Iranians and Indians." (Whitney's _The Life and Growth of Language_, pp. 191, 193.) SECTION I. GRECIAN HISTORY. THE LAND.--"Greeks" is not a name which the people who bore it applied to themselves. It was a name given them by their kinsfolk, the Romans. They called themselves _Hellenes_, and their land they called _Hellas_. Hellas, or Greece proper, included the southern portion of the peninsula of which it is a part, the portion bounded on the north by Olympus and the Cambunian Mountains, and extending south to the Mediterranean. Its shores were washed on the east by the Aegean, on the west by the Adriatic, or Ionian Gulf. The length of Hellas was about two hundred and fifty English miles: its greatest width, measured on the northern frontier, or from Attica on a line westward, was about a hundred and eighty miles. It is somewhat smaller than Portugal. Along its coast are many deep bays. Long and narrow promontories run out into the sea. Thus a great length is given to the sea-coast, which abounds in commodious harbors. The tideless waters are safe for navigators. Scattered within easy distance of the shore are numerous islands of great fertility and beauty. So high and rugged are the mountains that communication between different places is commonly easier by water than by land. A branch of the Alps at the forty-second parallel of latitude turns to the south-east, and descends to _Toenarum_, the southern promontory. On either side, lateral branches are sent off, at short intervals, to the east and the west. From these in turn, branches, especially on the east, are thrown out in the same direction as the main ridge; that is, from north to south. Little room is left for plains of much extent. _Thessaly_, with its single river, the _Peneus_, was such a plain. There were no navigable rivers. Most of the streams were nothing more than winter-torrents, whose beds were nearly or quite dry in the summer. They often groped their way to the sea through underground channels, either beneath lakes or in passages which the streams themselves bored through limestone. The physical features of the country fitted it for the development of small states, distinct from one another, yet, owing especially to the relations of the land to the sea, full of life and movement. THE GRECIAN STATES.--The territory of Greece included (1) Northern Greece, comprising all north of the Malian (Zeitoum) and Ambracian (Arta) gulfs; (2) Central Greece, extending thence to the Gulf of Corinth; (3) the peninsula of Peloponnesus (Morea) to the south of the isthmus. The country was occupied, in the flourishing days of Greece, by not less than seventeen states. _Northern Greece_ contained two principal countries, _Thessaly_ and _Epirus_, separated from one another by the _Pindus_. Thessaly was the largest and most fertile of the Grecian states. The _Peneus_, into which poured the mountain streams, passed to the sea through a narrow gorge, the famous _Vale of Tempe_. In the mountainous region of _Epirus_ were numerous streams flowing through the valleys. Within it was the ancient _Dodona_, the seat of the oracle. _Magnesia_, east of Thessaly, on the coast, comprised within it the two ranges of _Ossa_ and _Pelion_. _Central Greece_ contained eleven states. _Malis_ had on its eastern edge the pass of _Thermopylae_. In _Phocis_, on the southern slope of Mount Parnassus, was _Delphi_. _Boeotia_ was distinguished for the number and size of its cities, the chief of which was _Thebes_. _Attica_ projected from Boeotia to the south-east, its length being seventy miles, and its greatest width thirty miles. Its area was only about seven hundred and twenty square miles. It was thus only a little more than half as large as the State of Rhode Island, which has an area of thirteen hundred and six square miles. Its only important town was _Athens_. Its rivers, the _Ilissus_ and the two _Cephissusses_, were nothing more than torrent courses. In _Southern Greece_ were eleven countries. The territory of _Corinth_ embraced most of the isthmus, and a large tract in Peloponnesus. It had but one considerable city, _Corinth_, which had two ports,--one on the Corinthian Gulf, _Lechoeum_, and the other on the Saronic Gulf, _Cenchreae_. _Arcadia_, the central mountain country, has been called the Switzerland of Peloponnesus. It comprised numerous important towns, as _Mantinea_, _Orchomenus_, and, in later times, _Megalopolis_. In the south-east was _Laconia_, with an area of about nineteen hundred square miles. It consisted mainly of the valley of the _Eurotas_, which lay between the lofty mountain ranges of _Parnon_ and _Taygetus_. "Hollow Lacedaemon" was a phrase descriptive of its situation. _Sparta_, the capital, was on the _Eurotas_, twenty miles from the sea. It had no other important city. _Argolis_, projecting into the sea, eastward of Arcadia, had within it the ancient towns of _Mycenae_ and _Argos_. THE ISLANDS.--It must be remembered that the waters between Europe and Asia were not a separating barrier, but a close bond of connection. There is scarcely a single point "where, in clear weather, a mariner would feel himself left in a solitude between sky and water; the eye reaches from island to island, and easy voyages of a day lead from bay to bay." Greek towns, including very ancient places, were scattered along the western coast of Asia Minor, between the mountains and the shore. The Aegean was studded with Greek islands. These, together with the islands in the Ionian Sea, on the west, formed a part of Greek territory. The principal island near Greece was _Euboea_, stretching for a hundred miles along the east coast of Attica, Boeotia, and Locris. On the opposite side of the peninsula, west of Epirus, was the smaller but yet large island of _Corcyra_ (Corfu). On the west, besides, were _Ithaca_, _Cephallenia_, and _Zacynthus_ (Zante); on the south, the _Oenussae_ Islands and _Cythera_; on the east, _Aegina_, _Salamis_, etc. From the south-eastern shores of Euboea and Attica, the _Cyclades_ and _Sporades_ extended in a continuous series, "like a set of stepping-stones," across the Aegean Sea to Asia Minor. From Corcyra and the Acroceraunian promontory, one could descry, in clear weather, the Italian coast. These were all littoral islands. Besides these, there were other islands in the northern and central Aegean, such as _Lemnos_, _Samothrace_, _Delos_, _Naxos_, etc.; and in the southern Aegean, _Crete_, an island mountainous but fertile, a hundred and fifty miles in length from east to west, and about fifteen in breadth, and containing more than two thousand square miles. The Greek race was still more widely diffused through the settlements in and about the western Mediterranean. THE BOND OF RACE.--The Greeks, or Hellenes, were not so much a nation as a united race. Politically divided, they were conscious of a fraternal bond that connected them, wherever they might be found, and parted them from the rest of mankind. Their sense of brotherhood is implied in the fabulous belief in a common ancestor named _Hellen_. Together with a fellowship in _blood_, there was a community in _language_, notwithstanding minor differences in dialect. Moreover, there was a common religion. They worshiped the same gods. They had the same ritual, and cherished in common the same beliefs respecting things supernatural. In connection with these ties of _blood_, of _language_, and of _religion_, they celebrated together great national festivals, like the Olympic games, in which Greeks from all parts of the world might take part, and into which they entered with a peculiar enthusiasm. As the Jews, following the impulses of a holier faith, went up to Jerusalem to celebrate as one family their sacred rites; so the Greeks repaired to hallowed shrines of Zeus or Apollo, assembling from afar on the plain of Olympia and at the foot of Parnassus. DIVISIONS OF GREEK HISTORY. Greek history embraces _three general periods_. The first is the formative period, and extends to the Persian wars, 500 B.C. The second period covers the flourishing era of Greece, from 500 B.C. to 359 B.C. The third is the Macedonian period, when the freedom of Greece was lost,--the era of Philip and Alexander, and of Alexander's successors. PERIOD I. is divided into (1) the mythical or prehistoric age, extending to 776 B.C.; (2) the age of the formation of the principal states. PERIOD II. includes (1) the Persian wars, 502-479 B.C.; (2) the period of Athenian supremacy, 478-431 B.C.; (3) the Peloponnesian war, 431-404 B.C., with the Spartan, followed by the Theban ascendency, 404-362 B.C. PERIOD III. includes (1) the reigns of Philip and Alexander, 359-323 B.C.; (2) the kingdoms into which the empire of Alexander was divided. PERIOD I. GREECE PRIOR TO THE PERSIAN WARS. CHAPTER I. THE PREHISTORIC AGE. ORIGIN OF THE GREEKS--Before the Hellenes parted from their Aryan ancestry, they had words for "father," "mother," "brother," "son," and "daughter," as well as for certain connections by marriage. They lived in houses, pastured flocks and herds, possessed dogs and horses. They had for weapons, the sword and the bow. "They knew how to work gold, silver, and copper; they could count up to a hundred; they reckoned time by the lunar month; they spoke of the sky as the 'heaven-father.'" The differences between the Greek and the Latin languages prove, also, that the Greeks and Italians, after their common progenitors broke off from the primitive Aryan stock, had long dwelt apart. The Greeks, when they first become known to us in historical times, consist of two great branches, the _Dorians_ and _Ionians,_ together with a less distinct branch, the _Aeolians,_ which differs less, perhaps, from the parent _Hellenes_ than do the two divisions just named. It is a probable opinion of scholars, that the halting-place of the Hellenes, whence, in successive waves, they passed over into Greece, was _Phrygia,_ in the north-west of Asia Minor. Preceding the Greeks both in northern Greece and in Peloponnesus, and spread over the coasts and islands of the Archipelago, was a people of whom they had an indistinct knowledge, whom they called _Pelasgians._ They were husbandmen or herdsmen. Their national sanctuary was at _Dodona,_ in Epirus. The "Cyclopean" ruins, composed of huge polygonal blocks of stone, which they left behind in various places, are the remnant of their walls and fortifications. The Greeks looked back on these Pelasgian predecessors as different from themselves. Yet no reminiscences existed of any hostility towards them. It is plausibly conjectured that this prehistoric people were emigrants from the region of Phrygia at a more ancient date, and that the Hellenes, a more energetic and gifted branch of the same stock, followed them, and, without force or conflict, became the founders and leaders of a new historic movement, in which the Pelasgians disappeared from view. In this second migration, the ancestors of the _Ionians_ went down from Phrygia to the coast of Asia Minor, and began the career which made them a maritime and commercial people. The _Dorians_ crossed over to the highlands of northern Greece, where they became hardy mountaineers, not addicted to the sea. The one tribe were to be eventually the founders of _Athens_; the other, of _Sparta_. Besides these two main tribes, the _Aeolians_ occupied Thessaly, Boeotia, Aetolia, and other districts. To them the _Achaeans_, who were supreme in Peloponnesus in the days of Homer, were allied. FOREIGN INFLUENCES.--Besides Phrygia, the legends of the Greeks bear traces of a foreign influence from _Phoenicia_ and _Egypt_. The Phoenicians were unquestionably early connected with the Greeks, first by commercial visits to Greek ports, to which they brought foreign merchandise. The story of _Cadmus_, who is said to have founded _Thebes_, and to have brought in the Phoenician alphabet, is fabulous. But it is probable, that, as early as the close of the ninth century B.C., the _alphabet_ was introduced by Phoenicians, and diffused over Greece. Another legend is that of _Cecrops_, conceived of later as an Egyptian, who is said to have built a citadel at Athens, and to have imported the seeds of civilization and religion. _Danaus_, another emigrant from Egypt, coming with his fifty daughters, is said to have built the citadel of _Argos_. In the later times, the Greeks were fond of tracing their knowledge of the arts to Egyptian sources. It is remarkable that the agents by whom germs of civilization were said to have been imported from abroad, though foreign, are nevertheless depicted as thoroughly Greek in their character. Whatever the Greeks may have owed to Egypt, it is probable was mainly derived from Ionians who had previously planted themselves in that country. THE DORIAN EMIGRATION.--It was in the prehistoric time that the Dorians left their homes in northern Greece, and migrated into Peloponnesus, where they proved themselves stronger than the Ionians and the Achaeans dwelling there. They left the Achaeans on the south coast of the Corinthian Gulf, in the district called Achaia. Nor did they conquer Arcadia. But of most of Peloponnesus they became masters. This is the portion of historic truth contained in the myth of the _Return of the Heraclidae_, the descendants of Hercules, to the old kingdom of their ancestor. MIGRATIONS TO ASIA MINOR.--The Dorian conquest is said to have been the cause of three distinct migrations to Asia Minor. The Achaeans, with their Aeolic kinsmen on the north, established themselves on the north-west coast of Asia Minor, _Lesbos_ and _Cyme_ being their strongholds, and by degrees got control in _Mysia_ and the _Troad_. Ionic emigrants from Attica joined their brethren on the same coast. The Dorians settled on the south-west coast; they also settled _Cos_ and _Rhodes_, and at length subdued _Crete_. The Dorian conquest of Peloponnesus, and the migrations just spoken of, were slow in their progress, and possibly stretched over centuries. CHARACTER OF THE GREEKS.--_Originality_ is a distinguishing trait of the Greeks. Whatever they borrowed from others they made their own, and reproduced in a form peculiar to themselves. They were never servile copyists. All the products of the Greek mind, whether in government, art, literature, or in whatever province of human activity, wear a peculiar stamp. When we leave Asiatic ground, and come into contact with the Greeks, we find ourselves in another atmosphere. A spirit of humanity, in the broad sense of the term, pervades their life. A regard for reason, a sense of order, a disposition to keep every thing within measure, is a marked characteristic. Their sense of form--including a perception of beauty, and of harmony and proportion--made them in politics and letters the leaders of mankind. "Do nothing in excess," was their favorite maxim. They hated every thing that was out of proportion. Their language, without a rival in flexibility and symmetry and in perfection of sound, is itself, though a spontaneous creation, a work of art. "The whole language resembles the body of an artistically trained athlete, in which every muscle, every sinew, is developed into full play, where there is no trace of tumidity or of inert matter, and all is power and life." The great variety of the spiritual gifts of this people, the severest formulas of science, the loftiest flights of imagination, the keenest play of wit and humor, were capable of precise and effective expression in this language "as in ductile play." The use of the language, so lucid and so nice in its discriminations, was itself an education for the young who grew up to hear it and to speak it. In a genial yet invigorating climate, in a land where breezes from the mountain and the sea were mingled, the versatile Greeks produced by physical training that vigor and grace of body which they so much admired; and they developed the civil polity, the artistic discernment, and the complex social life, which made them the principal source of modern culture. Their moral traits are not so admirable. As a race they were less truthful, and less marked for their courage and loyalty, than some other peoples below them in intellect. RELIGION.--In the early days, when Greece was open to foreign influences, the simple religion of the Aryan fathers was enlarged by new elements from abroad. The Tyrian deity, Melkart, appears at Corinth as _Melicertes_. Astarte becomes _Aphrodite_ (Venus), who springs from the sea. The myth of _Dionysus_ and the worship of _Demeter_ (Ceres) may be of foreign origin. _Poseidon_ (Neptune), the god of the sea, and _Apollo_, the god of light and of healing, whose worship carried in it cheer and comfort, though they were brought into Greece, were previously known to the lonians. By _Homer_ and _Hesiod_, the great poets of the prehistoric age, the gods in these successive dynasties, their offices and mutual relations, were depicted. In Hesiod they stand in a connected scheme or theogony. 1. There are the twelve great gods and goddesses of Olympus, who were named by the Greeks,--Zeus, Poseidon, Apollo, Arês, Hêphaestos, Hermês, Hêrê, Athênê, Artemis, Aphrodite, Hestia, Dêmêtêr. 2. Numerous other divinities, not included among the Olympic, but some not less important than the twelve. Such are Hadês, Hêlíos, Dionysus, the Charites, the Muses, the Nereids, the Nymphs, etc. 3. Deities who perform special service to the greater gods,--Iris, Hêbe, the Horae;, etc. 4. Deities whose personality is less distinct,--Atê, Eris, Thanatos, Hypnos, etc. 5. Monsters, progeny of the gods,--the Harpies, the Gorgons, Pegasus, Chimaera, Cerberus, Scylla and Charybdis, the Centaurs, the Sphinx. Below the gods are the demigods or heroes. LEGENDS OF HEROES.--The space which precedes the beginning of authentic records, the Greeks filled up with mythical tales, in which gods and heroes are the central figures. The heroes are partly of divine parentage. They are in near intercourse with the deities. Their deeds are superhuman, and embody those ideals of character and of achievement which the early Greeks cherished. The production of a lively imagination, before the dawn of the critical faculty or the growth of reflection, these tales may yet include a nucleus of historical incident or vague reminiscences of historical relations and changes. To attempt to extract these from the fictitious form in which they are embodied, is for the most part hopeless. The exploits of _Heracles_ (Hercules) have a prominent place in the legends. This hero of Argos submitted to serve a cruel tyrant, but, by prodigious labors (twelve in number), delivered men from dangerous beasts,--the Lernaean hydra, the Nemean lion, etc.,--and performed other miraculous services. _Theseus_, the national hero of Attica, cleared the roads of savage robbers, and delivered his country from bondage. _Minos_, the mythical legislator of Crete, cleared the sea of pirates, and founded a maritime state. Of the legendary stories, three of the most famous are _The Seven against Thebes The Argonautic Expedition_, and _The Trojan War_. I. _Laius_, king of Thebes, was told by an oracle that he should be killed by his son. He exposed him, therefore, as soon as he was born, on Mount Cithaeron. Saved by a herdsman, Oedipus was brought up by Polybus, king of Corinth, as his own son. Warned by the oracle that he should kill his father, and marry his mother, the son forsook Corinth, and made his abode at Thebes. Meeting Laius in a narrow pass, and provoked by his attendants, he slew them and him. At Thebes there was a female monster, the Sphinx, who propounded a riddle, and each day devoured a man until it should be solved. Oedipus won the prize which the Queen _Jocaste_ had offered; namely, the crown and her own hand to whomsoever should free the city. When his two sons and daughters had grown up, a pestilence broke out; and the oracle demanded that the murderer of Laius should be banished. Oedipus, in spite of the warnings of the blind priest, _Tiresias_, finds out the truth. He puts out his eyes, and is driven into exile by his sons, whom he curses. Under the guidance of his daughter _Antigone_, he finds a resting-place at _Colonus_, a suburb of Athens, in a grove of the _Eumenides_, whose function it was to avenge such crimes as his. He received expiation at the hands of _Theseus_, and died in a calm and peaceful way. This legend was the basis of some of the finest of the Greek dramas, "Oedipus Tyrannus," and the "Oedipus at Colonus" of _Sophocles_, and "The Seven against Thebes" of _Aeschylus_. The curse of Oedipus still rested on his sons. The story of _Antigone_, defying the tyrant _Creon_, and burying her slain brother, _Polynices_, is the foundation of the drama of _Sophocles_, bearing her name. Finally, the _Epigoni_, descendants of the Seven who had fought Thebes, captured and destroyed that city. 2. _Argonauts_ were described as a band of heroes, who, through perilous and unknown seas, sailed from Iolcos in Thessaly, in the ship "Argo," to Colchis, whence they brought away the golden fleece which had been stolen, and which they found nailed to an oak, and guarded by a sleepless dragon. _Jason_, the leader, was accompanied on his return by the enchantress, _Medea_, who had aided him. She, in order to delay their pursuers, killed her brother _Absyrtus_, and threw his body, piece by piece, into the sea. Her subsequent story involves various other tragic events. 3. The most noted of the legends is the story of the Trojan war. The deeds of the heroes of this war are the subject of the _Iliad_. _Paris_, son of Priam, king of _Ilios_ (Troy), in Asia Minor, carried off _Helen_, the wife of _Menelaus_, king of Sparta. To recover her, the Greeks united in an expedition against Troy, which they took after a siege of ten years. Agamemnon, Achilles, Odysseus (Ulysses), Ajax son of Telamon, and Ajax son of Oileus, Diomedes, and Nestor were among the chiefs on the Greek side. Troy had its allies. The "Odyssey" relates to the long journey of _Odysseus_ on his return to Ithaca, his home. That there was an ancient city, Troy, is certain. A conflict between the Greeks and a kindred people there, is probable. Not unlikely, there was a military expedition of Grecian tribes. Every thing beyond this is either plainly myth, or incapable of verification. UNIONS OF TRIBES.--During the period when the Greek population was dispersing itself in the districts which its different fractions occupied in the historic ages, there arose unions among tribes near one another, for religious purposes. They preceded treaties and alliances of the ordinary kind. Such tribes agreed to celebrate, in common, certain solemn festivals. Deputies of these tribes met at stated intervals to look after the temple and the lands pertaining to it. Out of these unions, there grew stipulations relative to the mode of conducting war and other matters of common interest. Treaties of peace and of mutual defense might follow. Thus arose combinations of states, in which one state, the strongest, would have the _hegemony_, or lead. This became an established characteristic of Greek political life. It was a system of federal unions under the headship of the most powerful member of the confederacy. When such a union was formed, it established a common worship or festival. THE DELPHIC AMPHICTYONY.--In the north of Greece, there was formed, in early times, a great religious union. It was composed of twelve tribes banded together for the worship of _Apollo_ at _Delphi_, and to guard his temple. It was called the Delphic Amphictyony, or "League of Neighbors." The members of this body agreed not to destroy one another's towns in war, and not to cut off running water from a town which they were besieging. THE DELPHIC ORACLE.--The sanctuary at Delphi, where the Amphictyonic Council met, became the most famous temple in Greece. Here the oracle of Apollo gave answers to those who came to consult that divinity. The priests who managed the temple kept themselves well informed in regard to occurrences in distant places. Their answers were often discreet and wholesome, but not unfrequently obscure and ambiguous, and thus misleading. In early times their moral influence in the nation promoted justice and fraternal feeling. In later times they lost their reputation for honesty and impartiality. In civil wars the priests were sometimes bribed to support one of the contending parties. THE HOMERIC POEMS.--Within the last century, there has been much discussion about the authorship of the two poems, the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. The place where they were composed, whether among the Ionians in Greece proper or in Asia Minor, is still a matter of debate. It was probably Asia Minor. Seven places contended for the honor of having given birth to the blind bard. But nothing is known of Homer's birthplace or history. It is doubtful whether the art of writing was much, if at all, in use among the Greeks at the time of the composition of the Iliad and Odyssey. We know that the custom existed of repeating poems orally by minstrels or _rhapsodists_ at popular festivals. This may have been the mode in which for a time the Homeric poems were preserved and transmitted. The Odyssey has more unity than the Iliad, and seems to be of a somewhat later date. The nucleus of the Iliad is thought by some scholars to be embedded in the group of poems which, it is supposed, constitute the work at present; but there is no evidence making it possible to identify any portion as the work of Homer. Whatever may be the truth on these questions, the Iliad and Odyssey present an invaluable picture of Greek life in the period when they were composed, which was probably as early as 900 B.C. SOCIAL LIFE IN THE HOMERIC AGE.--(1) _Government._ In the Homeric portraiture of Greek life, there are towns; but the tribe is predominant over the town. The tribe is ruled by a king, who is not like an Eastern despot, but has about him a council of chiefs, and is bound by the _themistes_, the traditional customs. There is, besides, the _agora_, or popular assembly, where debates take place among the chiefs, and to which their decisions, or rather the decision of the king, on whom it devolves finally to determine every thing, are communicated. Public speaking, it is seen, is practiced in the infancy of Greek society. (2) _Customs._ People live in hill-villages, surrounded by walls. Life is patriarchal, and, as regards the domestic circle, humane. Polygamy, the plague of Oriental society, does not exist. Women are held in high regard. Slavery is everywhere established. Side by side with piracy and constant war, and the supreme honor given to military prowess, there is a fine and bountiful hospitality which is held to be a religious duty. In the Homeric poems, there is often exhibited a noble refinement of thought and sentiment, and a gentle courtesy. (3) _Arts and Industry_. In war, the chariot is the engine: cavalry are unknown. The useful arts are in a rudimental stage. Spinning and weaving are the constant occupation of women. All garments are made at home: noble women join with their slaves in washing them in the river. The condition of the common freeman who took one temporary job after another, was miserable. Of the condition of those who pursued special occupations,--as the carpenter, the leather-dresser, the fisherman, etc.,--we have no adequate information. The principal metals were in use, and the art of forging them. There was no coined money: payment was made in oxen. But there is hereditary individual property in land, cultivated vineyards, temples of the gods, and splendid palaces of the chiefs. (4) _Geographical Knowledge._ In Homer, there is a knowledge of Greece, of the neighboring islands, and western Asia Minor. References to other lands are vague. The earth is a sort of flat oval, with the River Oceanus flowing round it. _Hesiod_ is better informed about places: he knows something of the Nile and of the Scythians, and of some places as far west as Syracuse. RELIGION IN THE HOMERIC AGE.--The Homeric poems give us a full idea of the early religious ideas and practices, (I) _The Nature of the Gods_.--The gods in Homer are human beings with greatly magnified powers. Their dwelling is in the sky above us: their special abode is Mount Olympus. They experience hunger, but feed on ambrosia and nectar. They travel with miraculous speed. Their prime blessing is exemption from mortality. Among themselves they are often discordant and deceitful. (2) _Relation of the Gods to Men_. They are the rulers and guides of nations. Though they act often from mere caprice or favoritism, their sway is, on the whole, promotive of justice. Zeus is supreme: none can contend with him successfully. The gods hold communication with men. They also make known their will and intentions by signs and portents,--such as thunder and lightning, or the sudden passing of a great bird of prey. They teach men through dreams. (3) _Service of the Gods_. Sacrifice and supplication are the chief forms of devotion. There is no dominant hierarchy. The temple has its priest, but the father is priest in his own household. (4) _Morals and Religion_. Morality is interwoven with religion. Above all, _oaths_ are sacred, and oath-breakers abhorred by gods as well as by men. In the conduct of the divinities, there are found abundant examples of unbridled anger and savage retaliation. Yet gentle sentiments, counsels to forbearance and mercy, are not wanting. The wrath of the gods is most provoked by lawless self-assertion and insolence. (5) _Propitiation: the Dead_. The sense of sin leads to the appeasing of the deities by offerings, attended with prayer. The offerings are gifts to the god, tokens of the honor due to him. The dead live as flitting shadows in Hades. _Achilles_ is made to say that he would rather be a miserable laborer on earth than to reign over all the dead in the abodes below. GREEK LITERATURE.--The chief types, both of poetry and of prose, originated with the Greeks. Their writings are the fountainhead of the literature of Europe. They prized simplicity: they always had an intense disrelish for obscurity and bombast. The earliest poetry of the Greeks consisted of _hymns_ to the gods. It was _lyrical_, an outpouring of personal feeling. The lyrical type was followed by the _epic_, where heroic deeds, or other events of thrilling interest, are the theme of song, and the personal emotion of the bard is out of sight through his absorption in the subject. Description flows on, the narrator himself being in the background. This epic poetry culminates in the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ (900-700 B.C.). Their verse is the hexameter. These poems move on in a swift current, yet without abruptness or monotony. They are marked by a simplicity and a nobleness, a refinement and a pathos, which have charmed all subsequent ages. _Homer_, far more than any other author, was the educator of the Greeks. There was a class called _Homeridae_, in _Chios_; but whether they were themselves poets, or reciters of Homer, or what else may have been their peculiar work, is not ascertained. There was, however, a class of _Cyclic_ poets, who took up the legends of Troy, and carried out farther the Homeric tales. _Hesiod_ was the founder of a more didactic sort of poetry. He is about a century later than the Iliad. Besides the _Theogony_, which treats of the origin of the gods and of nature, his _Works and Days_ relates to the works which a farmer has to do, and the lucky or unlucky days for doing them. It contains doctrines and precepts relative to agriculture, navigation, civil and family life. Hesiod was the first of a Boeotian school of poets. He lacks the poetic genius of Homer, and the vivacity and cheerfulness which pervade the Iliad and the Odyssey. CHAPTER II. THE FORMATION OF THE PRINCIPAL STATES. ARISTOCRATIC GOVERNMENT.--The early kings were obeyed as much for their personal qualities, such as valor and strength of body, as for their hereditary title. By degrees the noble families about the king took control, and the kingship thus gave way to the rule of an aristocracy. The priestly office, which required special knowledge, remained in particular families, as the _Eumolpidae_e at Athens,--families to whom was ascribed the gift of the seer, and to whom were known the _Eleusinian mysteries_. The nobles were landholders, with dependent farmers who paid rent. The nobles held sway over tillers of the soil, artisans and seamen, who constituted the people (the "demos"), and who had no share in political power. This state of things continued until the lower class gained more property and more knowledge; and the example of the colonial settlements, where there was greater equality, re-acted on the parent state. The struggle of the lower ranks for freedom was of long continuance. In all Greek cities, there were _Metoeci_, or resident foreigners without political rights, and also slaves from abroad. Free-born Greeks busied themselves with occupations connected with the fine arts, or with trade and commerce on an extended scale. They commonly eschewed all other employments, and especially menial labor. THE CONSTITUTION OF THE LYCURGUS.--According to the legend, disorders in Sparta following the Dorian conquest, and strife between the victors and the conquered, moved _Lycurgus_, a man of regal descent, to retire to Crete, where the old Dorian customs were still observed. On his return he gave to the citizens a constitution, which was held in reverence by the generations after him. To him, also, laws and customs which were really of later date, came to be ascribed. The Spartan population consisted (1) of the _Spartiatæ_, who had full rights, and those of less means,--both comprising the Dorian conquerors. They were divided into three Phylæ, or tribes, each composed of ten divisions (Obæ); (2) the _Periæci_, Achaeans who paid tribute on the land which they held, were bound to military service, but had no political rights; (3) the _Helots_, serfs of the State, who were divided among the Spartiatæ by lot, and cultivated their lands, paying to them a certain fraction of the harvest. The form of government established by Lycurgus was an aristocratic republic. The Council of Elders, twenty-eight in number, chosen for life by the Phylæ, were presided over by two hereditary kings, who had little power in time of peace, but unlimited command of the forces in war. The popular assembly, composed of all Spartiatæ of thirty years of age or upwards, could only decide questions without debate. Five _Ephors_, chosen yearly by the Phylæ, acquired more and more authority. Lycurgus is said to have divided the land into nine thousand equal lots for the families of the Spartiatæ, and thirty thousand for the Periceci. To keep down the helots required constant vigilance, and often occasioned measures of extreme cruelty. The _Crypteia_ was an organized guard of young Spartans, whose business it was to prevent insurrection. LAWS AND CUSTOMS.--The Spartan state was thus aristocratic and military. It took into its own hands the education of the young. Weak and deformed children were left to perish in a ravine of Taygetus, or thrust down among the Periceci. Healthy children at the age of seven were taken from their homes, to be reared under the supervision of the State. They had some literary instruction, but their chief training was in gymnastics. They were exercised in hunting and in drills; took their meals together in the _syssitia_ (the public mess), where the fare was rough and scanty; slept in dormitories together; and by every means were disciplined for a soldier's life. The Spartan men likewise fed at public tables, and slept in barracks, only making occasional visits to their own houses. No money was in circulation except iron: no one was permitted to possess gold or silver. Girls were separately drilled in gymnastic exercises and made to be as hardy as boys. Marriage was regulated by the State. There was more purity, and women had a higher standing, in Sparta than in other parts of Greece. The strength of the Spartan army was in the _hoplites_, or heavy-armed infantry. In battle, messmates stood together. Cowardice was treated with the utmost contempt. The rigorous subordination of the young to their elders was maintained in war as in peace. The legend held, that after this constitution of Lycurgus had been approved by the Delphian oracle, he made the citizens swear to observe it until he should return from a projected journey. He then went to Crete, and stayed there until his death. HEGEMONY OF SPARTA.--Having thus organized the body politic, Sparta took the steps which gave it the _hegemony_ in Peloponnesus and over all Greece. First, it conquered the neighboring state of _Messenia_ in two great wars, the first ending about 725 B.C., and the second about 650 B.C. In the first of these wars, the Messenians submitted to become tributary to Sparta, after their citadel, _Ithome_, had been captured, and their defeated hero, _Aristodemus_, had slain himself. Many of the vanquished Messenians escaped from their country to Arcadia and Argolis. Some of them fled farther, and founded _Rhegium_ in Lower Italy. In the second war, the Messenians revolted against the tyrannical rule of Sparta, and at first, under _Aristomenes_, were successful, but were afterwards defeated by the Spartans, who were inspirited for the conflict by the war-songs of the Athenian poet, _Tyrtaeus_. _Aristomenes_ fled to Rhodes. Most of his people were made helots. The _Arcadians_, after long resistance, succumbed, and came under the Spartan hegemony (about 600 B.C.). _Argos_, too, was obliged to renounce its claim to this position in favor of its Spartan antagonist, after its defeat by _Cleomenes_, the Lacedaemonian king, at Thyrea (549 B.C.). The _Argive League_ was dissolved, and Sparta gained the right to command in every war that should be waged in common by the Peloponnesian states, the right, also, to determine the contingent of troops which each should furnish, and to preside in the council of the confederacy. She now began to spread her power beyond Peloponnesus, entered into negotiations with _Lydia_ (555 B.C.), and actually sent an expedition to the coast of Asia (525 B.C.). Moreover as early as 510 B.C., by interfering in the affairs of the states north of the Corinthian isthmus, and with _Attica_ in particular, she sowed among the Athenians the seeds of a lasting enmity. GOVERNMENT IN ATHENS: DRACO.--According to the legend, _Codrus_, who died about 1068 B.C., was the last of the Athenian kings. The _Eupatrids_, the noble families, abolished monarchy, and substituted for the king an _Archon_, chosen for life by them out of the family of Codrus. The Eupatrids stood in a sort of patriarchal relation to the common people. The inhabitants were divided into four tribes. These were subdivided, first into _Brotherhoods_ and _Clans_, and secondly, into classes based on consanguinity, and classes arranged for taxation, military service, etc. The entire community comprised the _Nobles_,--in whose hands the political power was lodged,--the _Farmers_, and the _Artisans_. The farmers and the artisans might gather in the _Agora_, and express assent to public measures, or dissent. In process of time the archons came to be chosen not from the family of Codrus exclusively, but from the _Eupatrids_ generally. From 682 B.C. they were nine in number, and they served but for one year. The administration of justice was in the hands of the nobles, who were not restrained by a body of written laws. The archon _Draco_, about 621 B.C., in order to check this evil, framed a code which seemed harsh, though milder than the laws previously enforced. Later it was said of his laws that they were written in blood. This legislation was a concession to which the nobles were driven by an uprising. Their hard treatment of debtors, many of whom were deprived of their liberty, had stirred up a serious conflict between the people and their masters. A rebellion, led by _Cylon_, one of the Eupatrids, was put down, and punished by means involving treachery and sacrilege. The insurgents were slain clinging to the altars of the gods, where they had taken refuge. Not long after it became necessary to introduce other reforms at the advice of _Solon_, one of "the seven wise men of Greece." He had acquired popularity by recovering _Salamis_ from the Megarians, and in a sacred war against towns which had robbed the temple of Apollo at Delphi. LEGISLATION OF SOLON--The design of Solon was to substitute a better system for the tyrannical oligarchy, but, at the same time, to keep power mainly in the hands of the upper class. He divided the people into four classes, according to the amount of their income. To the richest of these the archonship, and admission into the _Areopagus_, were confined. A new council was established, which had the right to initiate legislation, composed of one hundred from each of the four old tribes, and annually elected by the body of the citizens. The _Ecclesia_, or assembly of the whole people, having the right to choose the archons and councilors, was revived. _Courts of Appeal_, with jury trials, were instituted. The old council of the _Areopagus_ was clothed with high judicial and executive powers. There were laws to relieve a portion of the debtors from their burdens, and to abolish servitude for debt. Every father was required to teach his son a handicraft. PARTIES IN ATHENS.--The legislation of Solon was a measure of compromise. It satisfied neither party. After journeys abroad, he passed his old age in Athens, and was a spectator of the rising contests between the discordant factions, which his constitution was only able for a time to curb. There were three parties,--a re-actionary party under _Lycurgus_, a progressive party led by _Pisistratus_, and a moderate or middle party under _Megacles_. THE TYRANTS.--At this time, in almost all of the Grecian states, monarchy had given place to aristocracy. The reign of an _oligarchy_, the unbridled sway of a few, was commonly the next step. Against this the people in different states,--the _demos_,--rose in revolt. The popular leader, or "demagogue," was some conspicuous and wealthy noble, who thus acquired supreme authority. In this way, in the seventh and sixth centuries, most of the states were ruled by "tyrants,"--a term signifying absolute rulers, whether their administration was unjust and cruel, or fair and mild. They endeavored to fortify their rule by collecting poets, artists, and musicians about them, for their own pleasure and for the diversion of the populace. Occasionally they gave the people employment in the erection of costly buildings. They formed alliances with one another and with foreign kings. Not unfrequently they practiced violence and extortion. The _oligarchies_ sought to dethrone them. Their overthrow often had for its result the introduction of popular sovereignty. Among the most noted tyrants were Periander of Corinth (625-585 B.C.), _Pittacus_ in Lesbos (589-579 B.C.), and _Polycrates_ in Samos (535-522 B.C.). The PISISTRATIDS.--The government of Athens, framed by Solon, was in effect a "timocracy," or rule of the rich. At the head of the popular party stood _Pisistratus_, a rich nobleman of high descent. He succeeded, by means of his armed guard, in making himself master of the citadel. Twice driven out of the city, he at length returned (538 B.C.), and gained permanent control by force of arms. He managed his government with shrewdness and energy. Industry and trade flourished. He decorated Athens with buildings and statues. Religious festivals he caused to be celebrated with splendor. He ruled under the legal forms by having _archons_ chosen to suit him. He died 527 B.C. _Hippias_, his son, governed with mildness until his younger brother and colleague in power, _Hipparchus_, was slain by the two friends, _Harmodius_ and _Aristogiton_. Then he gave the rein to revengeful passion, and laid upon the people burdensome taxes. _Hippias_ was driven out of the city by the _Alcmaeonidae_ and other exiled nobles, assisted by the Spartan king, _Cleomenes_ (510 B.C.). He fled to Asia Minor in order to secure Persian help. THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY.--Clisthenes, a brilliant man, the head of the Alcmaeonid family, connected himself with the popular party, and introduced such changes in the constitution as to render him the founder of the Athenian Democracy. The power of the archons was reduced. All of the free inhabitants of Attica were admitted to citizenship. New tribes, ten in number, each comprising ten _denes_, or hamlets, with their adjacent districts, superseded the old tribes. A _council of five hundred_, fifty from each tribe, supplanted Solon's council of four hundred. The courts of law were newly organized. The _Ostracism_ was introduced; that is, the prerogative of the popular assembly to decree by secret ballot, without trial, the banishment of a person who should be deemed to be dangerous to the public weal. Certain officers were designated by lot. Ten _Strategi_, one from each tribe, by turns, took the place of the _archon polemarchus_ in command of the army. EFFECT OF DEMOCRACY.--Under this system of free government, the energy of the Athenian people was developed with amazing rapidity. The spirit of patriotism, of zeal for the honor and welfare of Athens, rose to a high pitch. The power and resources of the city increased in a proportionate degree. Culture kept pace with prosperity. LYRICAL POETRY.--In the eighth century, when monarchy was declining, and the tendency to democracy began to manifest itself, a new style of poetry, different from the epic, arose. The narrative poems of minstrels were heard at the great religious festivals. But there was a craving for the expression of individual feeling. Hence, lyrical poetry re-appeared, not in the shape of religious songs, as in the old time, but in a form to touch all the chords of sentiment. Two new types of verse appeared,--the _Elegiac_ and the _Iambic_. At first the elegy was probably a lament for the dead. It was accompanied by the soft music of the Lydian flute. The instruments which the Greeks had used were string-instruments. The early Greek elegies related to a variety of themes,--as war, love, preceptive wisdom. The iambic meter was first used in satire. Its earliest master of distinction was _Arckilochus_ of Paros (670 B.C.). It was employed, however, in fables, and elsewhere when pointed or intense expression was craved. The earliest of the Greek elegists, _Callinus_ and _Tyrtaus_, composed war-songs. _Mimnermus, Solon, Theognis, Simonides_ of _Ceos_, are among the most famous elegists. Music developed in connection with lyric poetry. The Greeks at first used the four-stringed lyre. Terpander made an epoch (660 B.C.) by adding three strings. _Olympus_ and _Thaletas_ made further improvements. Greek lyric poetry flourished, especially from 670 to 440 B.C. The Aeolian lyrists of _Lesbos_ founded a school of their own. The two great representatives are _Alcaus_, who sang of war and of love, and _Sappho_, who sang of love. "Probably no poet ever surpassed Sappho as an interpreter of passion in exquisitely subtle harmonies of form and sound." _Anacreon_, an Ionian, resembled in his style the Aeolian lyrists. He was most often referred to by the ancients as the poet of sensuous feeling of every sort. The _Dorian_ lyric poetry was mostly choral and historic in its topics. Greek lyric poetry reaches the climax in _Simonides_ and _Pindar_. The latter was a Boeotian, but of Dorian descent. _Simonides_ was tender and polished; _Pindar_, fervid and sublime The extant works of Pindar are the _Epinicia_, or odes of victory. HISTORICAL WRITING.--This age witnesses the beginnings of historical writing. But the _logographers_, as they were called, only wrote prose epics. They told the story of the foundation of families and cities, reconciling as best they could the myths, so far as they clashed with one another. PHILOSOPHY: THE IONIAN SCHOOL.--The Greeks were the first to investigate rationally the causes of things, and to try to comprehend the world as a complete system. The earliest phase of this movement was on the side of physics, or natural philosophy. _Homer_ and _Hesiod_ had accounted for the operations of nature by referring them to the direct personal action of different divinities. The earliest philosophers brought in the conception of some kind of matter as the foundation and source of all things. The _Ionian School_ led the way in this direction. _Thales_ of Miletus (about 600 B.C.) made this primary substance to be _water_. _Anaximander_ (611-? B.C.) made all things spring out of a primitive stuff, without definite qualities, and without bounds. He taught that the earth is round, invented the sun-dial, engraved a map on a brass tablet, and made some astronomical calculations. _Anaximenes_ (first half, 6th C.) derived all things from _air_, which he made to be eternal and infinite. THE ELEATIC SCHOOL.--The _Eleatic School_ conceived of the world as one in substance, and held that the natural phenomena which we behold, in all their variety and change, are unreal. _Xenophanes_ (who flourished from 572 to 478 B.C.) asserted this. _Parmenides_ (504-460 B.C.) taught that succession, change, the manifold forms of things, are only _relative_; that is, are only our way of regarding the one universal essence. _Zeno_ sought to vindicate this theory logically by disproving the possibility of motion. OTHER PHILOSOPHERS.--Another set of philosophers attempted definitely to explain the appearances of things, the changing phenomena, which had been called unreal. _Heraclitus_ made the world to be nothing but these: There is no substratum of things: there is only an endless flux, a cycle. All things begin and end in fire, the symbol of what is real. _Empedocles_ ascribed all things to fire, air, earth, and water, which are wrought into different bodies by "love" and "hate;" or, as we should say, attraction and repulsion. _Democritus_ was the founder of the _Atomists_, who made all things spring out of the motions and combinations of primitive atoms. _Anaxagoras_ brought in intelligence, or reason, as giving the start to the development of matter,--this principle doing nothing more, however, and being inherent in matter itself. PYTHAGORAS.--A different spirit in philosophy belonged to _Pythagoras_ (580-500 B.C.), who was born in Samos, traveled extensively, and settled in Croton, in southern Italy. His theory was, that the inner substance of all things is number. Discipline of character was a prime object. Pythagoras was sparing in his diet, promoted an earnest culture, in which music was prominent, and gave rise to a mystical school, in which moral reform and religious fueling were connected with an ascetic method of living. COLONIES.--It was during the era of the oligarchies and tyrannies that the colonizing spirit was most active among the Greeks. Most of the colonies were established between 800 and 550 B.C. Their names alone would make a very long catalogue. They were of two classes: first, _independent communities_, connected, however, with the parent city by close ties of friendship; and secondly, _kleruchies_, which were of the nature of garrisons, where the settlers retained their former rights as citizens, and the mother city its full authority over them. In _Sicily_, on the eastern side, were the Ionian communities,--Naxos, Catana, etc. _Syracuse_ (founded by Corinth 734 B.C.), _Gela_, and _Agrigentum_, which were among the chief Dorian settlements, lay on the south-eastern and south-western coasts. The oldest Greek town in _Italy_ was _Cumae_ (not far from Naples), said to have been founded in 1050 B.C. _Tarentum_ (Dorian), _Sybaris_, and _Croton_ (Aeolic) were settled in the latter part of the eighth century. _Locri_ (Aeolic) and _Rhegium_ (Ionic) were on the south. The south-western portion of Italy was termed _Magna Graecia_. _Massilia_ (Marseilles) was founded by the Phocaean Ionians (about 600 B.C.). In the western Mediterranean the Greeks were hindered from making their settlements as numerous as they would have done, by the fact that Carthage and her colonies stood in the way. _Cyrene_, on the coast of Africa, was a Dorian colony (630 B.C.), planted from _Thera_, an earlier Spartan settlement. _Cyrene_ founded _Barca_. _Corcyra_ was colonized by Corinth (about 700 B.C.). Along the coast of Epirus were other Corinthian and Corcyrasan settlements. Chalcis planted towns in the peninsula of Chalcidice, and from thence to _Selymbria_ (or Byzantium), which was founded by Megara (657 B.C.). The northern shores of the Ægean and the Propontis, and the whole coast of the Euxine were strewn with Greek settlements. The Greek towns, especially _Miletus_, on the western coast of Asia Minor, themselves sent out colonies,--as _Cyzicus_ and _Sinope_, south of the Propontis and the Euxine. The foregoing statements give only a general idea of the wide extent of Greek colonization. An exhaustive statement of the Greek colonies is given in Rawlinson's _Manual of Ancient History_, p. 148 _seq_. See also Abbott, _A History of Greece_, I. 333 _seq_. PERIOD II. THE FLOURISHING ERA OF GREECE. CHAPTER I. THE PERSIAN WARS. THE IONIAN REVOLT.--Hardly were the Greeks in possession of liberty when they were compelled to measure their strength with the mighty Persian Empire. The cities of Asia Minor groaned under the tyranny of their Persian rulers, and sighed for freedom. At length, under propitious circumstances, _Miletus_ rose in revolt under the lead of _Aristagoras_. Alone of the Grecian cities, Athens, and Eretria on the island of Euboea, sent help. The insurrection was extinguished in blood: its leaders perished. Miletus was destroyed by the enemy 495 B.C.; and the Ionian towns were again brought under the Persian yoke, which was made heavier than before. The Persian monarch, _Darius_, swore vengeance upon those who had aided the rebellion. THE BATTLE OF MARATHON.--_Mardonius_, the son-in-law of Darius, moved with a fleet and an army along the Ægean coast. A storm shattered the fleet upon the rocky promontory of Athos, and the land force was partly destroyed by the Thracians. Mardonius retreated homeward. The heralds who came to demand, according to the Persian custom, "water and earth" of Athens and Sparta, were put to death. Enraged at these events, Darius sent a stronger fleet under _Datis_ and _Artaphernes_. They forced _Naxos_ and the other _Cyclades_ to submission, captured and destroyed _Eretria_, and sent off its inhabitants as slaves to the interior of Asia. Guided on their path of destruction by the Athenian refugee, _Hippias_, the Persians landed on the coast of Attica, and encamped on the shore adjacent to the plain of _Marathon_. The Athenians sent _Philippides_, one of the swiftest of couriers, to Sparta for assistance, who reached that city, a hundred and thirty-five or a hundred and forty miles distant, the next day after he started. He brought back for answer that the Spartans were deterred by religious scruples from marching to war before the full moon, which would be ten days later. There was a Greek, as well as a Judaic, Pharisaism. Left to themselves, the Athenians were fortunate in having for their leader _Miltiades_, an able and experienced soldier, who had been with the Persians in the Scythian campaign. At the head of the Athenian infantry, ten thousand in number, whose hearts were cheered before the onset by the arrival of a re-inforcement of one thousand men, comprising the whole fighting population of the little town of _Platæa_, Miltiades attacked the Persian army, ten times as large as his own. The Athenians ran down the gentle slope at Marathon, shouting their war-cry, or pæan, and, after a fierce conflict, drove the Persians back to their ships, capturing their camp with all its treasures (Sept. 12, 490 B.C.). This brilliant victory was not the end of danger. The Greek watchmen saw a treacherous signal, a glistening shield, on _Mount Pentelicus_, put there to signify to the Persians that Athens was open to their attack. In that direction, round Cape Sunium, the Persian fleet sailed. But _Miltiades_, by a rapid march of twenty-three miles, reached the city in season to prevent the landing. _Datis_ and _Artaphernes_ sailed away. The traitor, _Hippias_, died on the return voyage. The patriotic exultation of the Athenians was well warranted. Never did they look back upon that victory without a thrill of joyful pride. It proved what a united free people were capable of achieving. More than that, MARATHON was one of the decisive battles which form turning-points in the world's history. It was a mortal conflict between the East and the West, between Asia and Europe,--the coarse despotism under which individual energy is stifled, and the dawning liberty which was to furnish the atmosphere required for the full development and culture of the human mind. ARISTIDES AND THEMISTOCLES.--_Miltiades_ subsequently failed in an attempt against _Paros_, one of the Ægean islands which had submitted to the Persians, and which he sought to conquer. Accused of making false promises to the people, he was fined fifty talents, but died before the sum could be collected (489 B.C.). His son _Cimon_ paid the fine. The two leading men in Athens at that time were _Aristides_ and _Themistocles_. The former, from his uprightness, was styled "the just." _Themistocles_ was a man of genius, of an ambitious spirit, whom the laurels of _Miltiades_ robbed of sleep. Devoted to Athens, he was not scrupulous in regard to the means of advancing her prosperity and glory. Duplicity and intrigue were weapons in the use of which he was not less willing than expert. He aspired to make Athens a great naval and maritime power. _Aristides_ believed that the strength of the country lay in the landholders and in the land forces. In the attainment of public ends, he would not deviate from a straightforward course. Themistocles was by far the more captivating of the two men; and, in 484 B.C., Aristides was ostracised. Themistocles was thus left free to build up a powerful fleet. THE WAR WITH XERXES: THERMOPYLÆ.--_Darius_ died while he was preparing another grand expedition against Greece. He left his successor, _Xerxes_ (485 B.C.), to complete and carry out the plan. This proud monarch drew together from his immense dominions an army which tradition, as given in Herodotus, made to number one million seven hundred thousand men and a fleet of twelve hundred large vessels. He had for a counselor, _Demaratus_, a fugitive king of Sparta. The vast array of troops was assembled near _Sardes_, and thence marched to the _Hellespont_. Seven days were spent by this mighty gathering of nations in passing over the two bridges of boats. They marched through Thrace, Macedonia, and Thessaly, the Persian fleet proceeding along the coast. _Bæotia_ and several smaller states yielded without resistance. The most of the other Greek states, inspired by Themistocles, joined hands for defense under the hegemony of Sparta. In July, 480, the Persian army arrived at the narrow pass of _Thermopylæ_. There the Lacedæemonian king, _Leonidas_, with his three hundred Spartans and some thousands of allies, had taken his stand, to stem the vast current that was pouring down to overwhelm Greece. To the Persian command to give up their weapons, the "laconic" reply was given by Leonidas, "Come and get them." For several days the band of Spartans defended the pass, beating back the Persians, thousands of whom were slain, and repulsing, even, the ten thousand "immortals," who constituted the royal guard. At length a treacherous Greek showed the enemy a by-path, which enabled them to fall on the rear of the gallant troops, every one of whom fell, bravely fighting, with his weapon in his hand. A lion made of iron was afterwards placed on the spot where the heroes had died, "obedient to the commands of Sparta." The Persians pushed forward to _Athens_, and burned the city. All citizens capable of bearing arms were on board the fleet: the women, children, and movable property had been conveyed to _Salamis_, _Ægina_, and _Træzcne_. SALAMIS.--The Greek fleet, under the Spartan _Eurybiades_, had come from victory at Artemisium into the Gulf of Salamis. By means of a device of Themistocles, the Spartans were prevented from withdrawing their forces to the Corinthian isthmus, where they had built a wall for their own protection; and a sea-fight was brought on, of which the Athenians in Salamis, and Xerxes himself from a hill on the mainland, were anxious spectators (Sept. 27, 480). Once more the cause of civilization was staked on the issue of a conflict. The Greeks were completely victorious, and their land was saved. Xerxes hastily marched towards home, thousands of his army perishing on the way from hunger, cold, and fatigue. The _Spartiatæ_ gave to _Eurybiades_ the prize of valor, to _Themistocles_ an olive crown for his wisdom and sagacity. PLATÆA: MYCALE: EURYMEDON.--Xerxes left three hundred thousand men behind in Thessaly, under the command of _Mardonius_. In the spring, incensed at the proud rejection of his overtures, he marched to Athens, whose people again took refuge in Salamis. In the great battle of _Platæa_ (479 B.C.), the Greeks, led by the Spartan _Pausanias_, inflicted on him such a defeat that only forty thousand Persians escaped to the Hellespont. On the same day at _Mycale_, the Persian fleet was vanquished in a sharp encounter where a Spartan commanded, but where the Athenians were the most efficient combatants. Sestos, Lemnos, Imbros, and Byzantium were taken by the Greeks; and a double victory of _Cimon_, the son of Miltiades, at the Pamphylian river, _Eurymedon_, over both the land and naval forces of the Persians, brought the war to an end (467 B.C.). CHAPTER II. THE ASCENDENCY OF ATHENS. PAUSANIAS AND THEMISTOCLES.--Both of the generals by whom the Persians had been overcome, fell under the displeasure of the states to which they belonged. _Pausanias_ was so far misled by ambition as to engage in a negotiation with the Persians for the elevation of himself, by their aid, to supreme power in Greece. His plots were discovered, and he was compelled by his countrymen to starve to death in a temple to which he had fled for refuge. _Themistocles_ caused Athens to be surrounded by a wall, and built long walls from the city to the _Piræus_. This provoked the hatred of the Spartans, so jealous were they of the power of Athens. In conjunction with his Athenian enemies, they contrived to procure his banishment for ten years (471 B.C.). Themistocles fled to Persia, where he was treated with honor and favor. _Artaxerxes I._ gave him a princely domain in Asia Minor where he died (458 B.C.). Grave as his faults were, Themistocles was the founder of the historical greatness of Athens. CONFEDERACY OF DELOS.--It was through the influence of _Aristides_ that the confederacy of Delos was formed, in which the Grecian islands and seaports combined with Athens, and under her leadership, for the further prosecution of the war. By this means, the Athenians, already so efficient on the sea, were enabled still more to strengthen their fleet, and gradually to bring the Ægean islands and smaller maritime states under their sway. _Cimon_ rendered great service as a naval commander. He drove the Persians out of Thrace altogether, and he conquered _Scyros_. He wrested the Chersonese from the Persians, and freed the Greek cities on the coast. In the single battle on the _Eurymedon_, he sunk or captured two hundred galleys (467 B.C.). TO THE PEACE OF PERICLES.--Under the leadership of such men, the Athenian Republic became more and more powerful. _Ægina_, a rich and prosperous island, was conquered, and planted with Athenian colonists. _Megara_ became a dependency of Athens. Sparta, partly in consequence of a struggle with Argos, a state friendly to the Persians, and still more on account of an earthquake which laid the most of the city in ruins (465 B.C.), was so crippled as not to be able to check the progress of the rival community. She was even obliged to invoke Athenian help against the revolting Messenians and helots; but after the troops of Athens had joined them, the Spartans, jealous and afraid of what they might do, sent them back. This indignity led to the banishment of _Cimon_, who had favored the sending of the force, and to the granting of aid to the Spartans. The Spartans now did their best to reduce the strength and dominion of Athens by raising _Thebes_ to the hegemony over the Boeotian cities. Everywhere, in all the conflicts, Sparta was the champion of the _aristocratic_ form of government; Athens, of the _democratic_. The Athenians were defeated at _Tanagra_ (457 B.C.). This induced them to recall _Cimon_, a great general and a worthy citizen. Two months after her victory, Sparta was defeated by _Myronides_; and the Athenians became masters of Phocis, Locris, and Boeotia. Cimon brought about a truce between Athens and Sparta. He left his country on a high pinnacle of power and dominion. Nearly all the allies in the confederacy of Delos had fallen into the position of tributaries, whose heavy contributions were carried no longer to the sanctuary at Delos, but to the temple of Athena on the Acropolis, and who had no power to decide on questions of peace and war. The nobles, however, who were driven into exile in all conquered places, were the mortal enemies of Athens. At _Coronea_ (447 B.C.), the Boeotian refugees and aristocrats were so strong that the Athenians experienced a disastrous defeat. The peril of the situation moved _Pericles_ to secure, by astute management, a peace with Sparta, the terms of which were that each of the two cities was to maintain its hegemony within its own circle, and the several states were to attach themselves at their option to either confederacy. In market and harbor, there was to be a free intercourse of trade (445 B.C.). THE AGE OF PERICLES.--Pericles belonged to one of the principal Athenian families, but was democratic in his politics, and made himself a popular leader. By his influence the _Areopagus_ was stripped of high prerogatives that had belonged to it. He caused it to be enacted, that every citizen, when engaged in the public service, even in attending the popular assembly, should receive a stipend. For fifteen years, as the first citizen of Athens, with none of the trappings of power, he virtually ruled the commonwealth. One of his works was the building the third of the _long walls_ which protected the _Piræus_ and the neighboring ports on the land side, and connected them with Athens. His patriotism was as sincere as his talents were versatile and brilliant. He was at once a soldier, an orator, a statesman of consummate ability, and a man imbued with the best appreciation of letters and of art. In his hospitable house, where _Aspasia_ from Miletus, a beautiful and cultured woman, was his companion, men of genius found a welcome. Under him, Athens became the metropolis of literature, philosophy, and art for the whole Hellenic race, and, considering the influence of Athens, it might almost be said for mankind in all ages. Magnificent buildings--of which the _Parthenon_, the temple of Athena that crowned the Acropolis, whose ruins are the model of architectural perfection, was one--gave to the city an unrivaled beauty. _Sculpture_ vied with architecture in this work of adornment. _Phidias_, who wrought the frieze of the Parthenon, counted among his wonderful creations the colossal sitting statue of Zeus at Olympia. It was the blossoming season of the Greek intellect, as regards _literature_ and the _fine arts_. The _drama_ reached its perfection in the masterly tragedies of _Aeschylus, Sophocles,_ and _Euripides_, and in the comedies of _Aristophanes_. The Athenian community, through its political eminence, its intellectual character, so original and diversified, its culture,--such that almost every citizen was qualified for civil office,--has no parallel in history. It is the elevation, not of a select class of the citizens, but of the whole society, which gives to Athens its unique distinction. Public spirit and enterprise, which made her navy dominant in the Aegean and over the sea-coast of Asia Minor, went hand in hand with delight in eloquence and in the creations of genius. There was not, however, as some have affirmed, in the prevalent absorption in the affairs of state, a neglect of the labors of agriculture and of mechanical industry. THE ACROPOLIS--It was customary for a Greek town to be built about an acropolis,--an eminence by which it was commanded, and on which stood the citadel. On the acropolis at Athens were the buildings and statues in which the glory of Athenian art was impressively displayed. There were three edifices which excelled all the rest in splendor. On the south side of the elevated area was the _Parthenon_, built of Pentelic marble, two hundred and twenty-eight feet in length, and of faultless proportions. On the northern edge was the _Erechtheum_, an Ionic temple of extraordinary beauty. The _Propylcea_, approached by sixty marble steps, was a noble gateway: it stood on the western end of the acropolis, which it magnificently adorned. ATHENS--No other description of Athens, in the age of Pericles, equals his own in the _Funeral Oration_ (431 B.C.), as given by Thucydides, for those who had fallen in the war. It shows how an Athenian looked upon his city. "It is true that we are called a democracy; for the administration is in the hands of the many, and not of the few. But while the law secures equal justice to all alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognized; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the reward of merit. Neither is poverty a bar; but a man may benefit his country, whatever be the obscurity of his condition. There is no exclusiveness in our public life; and in our private intercourse we are not suspicious of one another, nor angry with our neighbor if he does what he likes: we do not put on sour looks at him, which, though harmless, are not pleasant. While we are thus unconstrained in our private intercourse, a spirit of reverence pervades our public acts: we are prevented from doing wrong by respect for authority and the laws, having an especial regard to those which are ordained for the protection of the injured, as well as to those unwritten laws which bring upon the transgressor of them the reprobation of the general sentiment. "And we have not forgotten to provide for our weary spirits many relaxations from toil. We have regular games and sacrifices throughout the year. At home the style of our life is refined, and the delight which we daily feel in all these things helps to banish melancholy. Because of the greatness of our city, the fruits of the whole earth flow in upon us; so that we enjoy the goods of other countries as freely as of our own. "Then, again, our military training is in many respects superior to that of our adversaries. Our city is thrown open to the world; and we never expel a foreigner, or prevent him from seeing or learning any thing of which the secret, if revealed to an enemy, might profit him. We rely not upon management or trickery, but upon our own hearts and hands. And in the matter of education, whereas they from early youth are always undergoing laborious exercises which are to make them brave, we live at ease, and yet are equally ready to face the perils which they face. And here is the proof,--the Lacedaemonians come into Attica, not by themselves, but with their whole confederacy following; we go alone into a neighbor's country; and, although our opponents are fighting for their homes, and we are on a foreign soil, we have seldom any difficulty in overcoming them. Our enemies have never yet felt our united strength. The care of a navy divides our attention, and on land we are obliged to send our own citizens everywhere. But they, if they meet and defeat a part of our army, are as proud as if they had routed us all; and, when defeated, they pretend to have been vanquished by us all. "If, then, we prefer to meet danger with a light heart, but without laborious training, and with a courage which is gained by habit, and not enforced by law, are we not greatly the gainers? since we do not anticipate the pain, although, when the hour comes, we can be as brave as those who never allow themselves to rest. And thus, too, our city is equally admirable in peace and war; for we are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes, and we cultivate the mind without loss of manliness. Wealth we employ, not for talk and ostentation, but when there is real use for it. To avow poverty with us is no disgrace: the true disgrace is in doing nothing to avoid it. An Athenian citizen does not neglect the State because he takes care of his own household, and even those of us who are engaged in business have a very fair idea of politics. We alone regard a man who takes no interest in public affairs, not as harmless, but as a useless character; and, if few of us are originators, we are all sound judges of policy. The great impediment to action is, in our opinion, not discussion, but the want of that knowledge which is gained by discussion preparatory to action. For we have a peculiar power of thinking before we act, and of acting too; whereas other men are courageous from ignorance, but hesitate upon reflection. And they are surely to be esteemed the bravest spirits who, having the clearest sense both of the pains and pleasures of life, do not on that account shrink from danger. In doing good, again, we are unlike others: we make our friends by conferring, not by receiving, favors. Now, he who confers a favor is the firmer friend, because he would fain by kindness keep alive the memory of an obligation; but the recipient is colder in his feelings, because he knows that in requiting another's generosity he will not be winning gratitude, but only paying a debt. We alone do good to our neighbors, not upon a calculation of interest, but in the confidence of freedom, and in a frank and fearless spirit. To sum up, I say that Athens is the school of Hellas, and that the individual Athenian in his own person seems to have the power of adapting himself to the most varied forms of action with the utmost versatility and grace. This is no passing and idle word, but truth and fact; and the assertion is verified by the position to which these qualities have raised the State. For in the hour of trial Athens alone among her contemporaries is superior to the report of her. No enemy who comes against her is indignant at the reverses which he sustains at the hands of such a city: no subject complains that his masters are unworthy of him. And we shall assuredly not be without witnesses; there are mighty monuments of our power, which will make us the wonder of this and of succeeding ages. We shall not need the praises of Homer or of any other panegyrist, whose poetry may please for the moment, although his representation of the facts will not bear the light of day; for we have compelled every land and every sea to open a path for our valor, and have everywhere planted eternal memorials of our friendship and of our enmity. Such is the city for whose sake these men nobly fought and died: they could not bear the thought that she might be taken from them, and every one of us who survive should gladly toil on her behalf." RELIGION.--We find in _Sophocles_ a much purer tone of moral and religious feeling than in _Homer_. Greek thought upon divine things is expanded and purified, (i) _Higher Conception of the Gods_. The gods are still conceived of as in bodily form. Their images abide in their temples. Take them away, and the god leaves his abode. The divinities need not be present, as in Homer, in order to exert their power. The monotheistic tendency is manifest. The "gods" are referred to as if a single agency were in the writer's mind. The regal sway of Zeus is emphasized. He is less subject to Fate. (2) _Divine Government_. The gods, especially _Zeus_, are the fountain of law. The righteousness of the divine government is especially evinced in the punishment of evil-doers. Transgressors generally, and not those of the worst class alone, as in Homer, are punished in _Hades_. Pride and insolence call down the vengeance of the gods. Unsleeping justice pursues the criminal. The theory of _Nemesis_, which pursues the prosperous, if they are proud, to their hurt and ruin, is held. (3) _Number of the Gods_. The number of divinities is multiplied as time advances. The worship of the heroes, children of the gods or goddesses, grows in importance. (4) _Revelation_. There was direct revelation, it was believed, by prophecy, uttered now in an ecstatic, and now in a tranquil, mood. _Oracles_ acquired a new and vast importance. (5) _Rites_. Visible objects of devotion were multiplied; religious ceremonies ramified in all directions; sacred processions, festivals, amusements involving religious observances, abounded. (6) _Morality_. Moral excellence centered in moderation and self-government, through which the individual keeps both his own nature as to its parts, and himself in relation to others, within due limits. This spirit includes temperance and justice. The stern spirit of law prevails: the requital of injuries is approved. Yet feelings of compassion find a beautiful expression. At Athens, there was public provision for orphans and for the help of the poor. (7) _Domestic Life: Patriotism_. The wife lived in retirement, and in submission to her husband. When he entertained friends at his table, she was absent; yet domestic affection was evidently strong. Every other duty merged in patriotism. The Greek placed a great gulf between himself and the "barbarian." He was conscious of higher intellectual gifts, superior culture, better customs. (8) _Sin. The Future Life_. There was a deeper sense of sin than in the Homeric era. There was a pathetic consciousness of the trouble and sorrow that beset human life. _Hades_ was regarded as a scene of trial and judgment, and of rewards as well as sufferings. The soul was not so closely identified with the body. Death was an object of gloomy anticipation. _Pericles_, in his funeral oration for the fallen patriots, is silent as to a future life. In the tragic poets, it is only the select few whose lot is blessed. As concerns the mass of the people, it is probable that the Homeric notions respecting the state of the dead still prevailed. Generally speaking, we are not warranted in ascribing the more elevated views of religion entertained by the best minds to the mass of the people. THE TRAGIC DRAMA.--The songs which were sung in the worship of Dionysus (dithyrambs) were accompanied with dance and pantomime. The custom followed of mingling speeches and dramatic action with these lyrics. The change is ascribed to _Thespis_ (about 536 B.C.), a little later than Solon. Thespis is said to have brought in the stage for the performers. The Greek theaters were large, open to the sky, and sometimes on sites which commanded fine views. There was the amphitheater, with graded seats for spectators, and the stage, together with the orchestra where the choir in song or musical recitation reflected the sympathies and views of the spectators of the play. At first there was only one actor, and, of course, a monologue. _Aeschylus_ is said to have brought in a second actor, and _Sophocles_ a third. These, with _Euripides_, were the three great dramatists of Greece. The choral song, which had been the chief thing, was made secondary to the dialogue. Aeschylus, at the age of forty-five, fought in the battle of Salamis; Sophocles, then fifteen years old, took part in the festival in honor of the victory; and Euripides was born, it was supposed, on the very day of the battle. These three brought the tragic drama to perfection. Of the productions of Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.), seven remain. They are inspired with the heroic and elevated mood which was engendered by the great struggle against the Persians. Of the numerous plays of Sophocles (495-406 B.C.), the number of those extant is also seven. They so combine vigor and force with refinement of thought and style that they are surpassed, if indeed they are equaled, by the literary products of no age or country. In Euripides (480-406 B.C.), while there is an insight into the workings of the heart, and the antique nobleness of sentiment, there is less simplicity, and there is manifest the less earnest and believing tone of the later day. In the dramas, the "unities" of time, place, and action are observed. The acts together seldom stretch over a single day. COMEDY--Comedy, in which _Aristophanes_ (452-388 B.C.), a great poet as well as a great wit, was the principal author, dealt largely in satire. Conspicuous men, and those active in public affairs, were represented on the stage in satirical pieces, so that they were at once identified. The spirit of the "old comedy" was patriotic, although it might be unjust, as in the case of Socrates, who was a target for the wit of Aristophanes. The "middle comedy" was nothing really distinct from the "new comedy." The "new comedy," in which Menander (342-290 B.C.) was an eminent author, ceased to present actual persons, and dealt with imaginary characters alone. Among the Greeks in Lower Italy and Sicily, mimes were much in vogue. GREEK ART: ARCHITECTURE--The Greeks more and more broke away in a free and joyous spirit from the stiff and conventional styles of Egyptian and Oriental art. In the room of the somber, massive edifices of Egypt, they combined symmetry and beauty with grandeur in the temples which they erected. The temples were originally colored within and without. Three styles were developed,--the _Doric_, the _Ionic_, and the _Corinthian_. In the _Doric_, the column and entablature have the most solid and simple form. The column has no other base than the common platform on which the pillars rest, and the capital that surmounts it is a plain slab. In the _Ionic_ style, the column has a distinct base, is more tall and slender, and its capital has two _volutes_, or spiral moldings. The capital of the _Corinthian_ column is peculiar, representing flower calices and leaves, "pointing upwards, and curving like natural plants." The _acanthus_, on account of its graceful form, was generally copied. The most ancient Doric temples, of a date prior to the Persian war, of which the ruined temple of Neptune at Paestum is one, are, in comparison with later edifices, of a severe and massive style. In the period extending from the Persian war to the Macedonian rule, the stern simplicity of the Doric is modified by the softer and more graceful character of the Ionic. The temple of _Theseus_ at Athens is an example. The _Parthenon_ was the most beautiful specimen of the Doric, which has appropriated the grace of the Ionic column without losing its own distinctive character. In the later period, after freedom was lost, there was much more ornamentation. It was then that the more decorated Corinthian style flourished. SCULPTURE.--Before the Persian wars, in the earliest sculpture the restraint of Egyptian and Oriental styles is perceptible in the sculptors, of whom Daedalus is the mythical representative. The oldest statues were of wood, which was subsequently covered with gold and ivory, or painted. The lofty style of _Phidias_ (488-432 B.C.), and of _Polycletus_ of Argos, became prevalent in the flourishing period of Greek liberty. _Myron_, to whom we owe the _Discobolus_ (Disk-Thrower), belongs to the school of Aegina. Statues were now made in brass and marble. They were everywhere to be seen. The pediments and friezes of the temples were covered with exquisitely wrought sculptures. The most beautiful sculptures that have come down from antiquity are the marbles of the Parthenon. The Greeks appreciated to the full the beauty of nature. They gave to their gods ideal human forms, in which were blended every attribute of majesty and grace which are conceived to belong to perfected humanity. Sculpture in Greece, as elsewhere, was ally to religion; "but whilst the religion of the Egyptians was a religion of the tomb, and their ideal world a gloomy spot peopled by sleeping lions, dreamy sphinxes, or weird unearthly monsters, the mythology of the Greeks, rightly understood, is an exquisite poem, the joint creation of the master-minds of infant Greece; and their art is a translation of that poem into visible forms of beauty." In the _third period_, which may be made to terminate with the death of _Alexander the Great_ (323 B.C.), there were masters in sculpture, among whom _Praxiteles_ and _Scopas_ are at the head. More and more, as we come down to the Roman period, while extraordinary technical perfection is still manifested, the loftier qualities of art tend to disappear. PAINTING.--In Greece, painting first ceased to be subordinate to architecture, and became independent. In early days, there was skill in the ornamentation of vases and in mural painting. Yet, with much spirit and feeling, there was a conventional treatment. The earliest artist of whom we know much is _Polygnotus_ (about 420 B.C.), whose groups of profile figures were described as remarkable for their life-like character and fine coloring. _Apollodorus_ of Athens was distinguished, but _Zeuxis_ of Heraclea is said to have been the first to paint movable pictures. He is famed for his marvelous power of imitation: the birds pecked at a bunch of grapes which he painted. But even he was outdone by _Parrhasius_. Zeuxis, however, had far higher qualities than those of a literal copyist. The most successful of the Greek painters was _Apelles_. Among his masterpieces was a painting of Venus rising from the waves, and a portrait of Alexander the Great. We have not in painting, as in sculpture, a store of monuments of Greek art; but the skill of the Greeks in painting fell behind their unequaled genius in molding the human form in bronze and marble. CHAPTER III. THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR. I. TO THE PEACE OF NICIAS (421 B.C.). TO THE DEATH OF PERICLES.--Wonderful as was the growth of Athens under Pericles, it is obvious that she stood exposed to two principal sources of danger. Her allies and dependants, the stay of that naval power in which her strength lay, were discontented with her spirit of domination and of extortion. The _Peloponnesian Alliance_, which was led by _Sparta_, the bulwark of the aristocratic interest, comprised, with the Dorian, most of the Aeolian states,--as Boeotia, Phocis, Locris, etc. Its military strength lay mainly in its heavy-armed infantry. Thus Sparta had the advantage of strong allies. The motive at the bottom of this alliance was what Thucydides tells was the real cause of the Peloponnesian war,--the jealousy which the growth of Athens excited in other states. This feeling really involved a conviction of the need of maintaining in Greece that which in modern times is called a "balance of power." When Greece was no longer one, as in the best days of the wars with Persia, but was divided into two opposite camps, watchful and jealous of one another, an occasion of conflict could not fail to arise. It was complained that Athens gave help to _Corcyra_ in a war with _Corinth_, its mother city, made war upon _Potidaea_ in Macedonia, a Corinthian colony, and also shut out _Megara_ from the harbors of Attica. The demands made by Sparta, which included the granting of independence to _Aegina_, were rejected. Attica was ravaged by Spartan troops, and the coast of Peloponnesus by the Athenian fleet (431 B.C.). This desolating warfare was kept up until a frightful pestilence broke out at Athens,--a plague having its origin in Egypt, and passing thence over Asia and the Greek islands. Two of the sons of Pericles died, and an accumulation of public burdens and private sorrows brought on his own death (Sept., 429). THE PESTILENCE.--The horrors of the pestilence are thus described in a celebrated passage of the best of the Greek historians, _Thucydides:_ "The crowding of the people out of the country into the city aggravated the misery, and the newly arrived suffered most. For, haying no houses of their own, but inhabiting, in the height of summer, stifling huts, the mortality among them was dreadful, and they perished in wild disorder. The dead lay as they had died, one upon another; while others, hardly alive, wallowed in the streets, and crawled about every fountain, craving for water. The temples in which they lodged were full of the corpses of those who died in them; for the violence of the calamity was such that men, not knowing where to turn, grew reckless of all law, human and divine. The customs which had hitherto been observed at funerals were universally violated, and they buried their dead, each one as best he could. Many, having no proper appliances, because the deaths in their household had been so frequent, made no scruple of using the burial-place of others. When one man had raised a funeral-pile, others would come, and, throwing on their dead first, set fire to it; or, when some other corpse was already burning, before they could be stopped, would throw their own dead upon it, and depart. "There were other and worse forms of lawlessness which the plague introduced at Athens. Men who had hitherto concealed their indulgence in pleasure, now grew bolder. For, seeing the sudden change,--how the rich died in a moment, and those who had nothing, immediately inherited their property,--they reflected that life and riches were alike transitory, and they resolved to enjoy themselves while they could, and to think only of pleasure. Who would be willing to sacrifice himself to the law of honor when he knew not whether he would ever live to be held in honor? The pleasure of the moment, and any sort of thing which conduced to it, took the place both of honor and of expediency: no fear of God or law of man deterred a criminal. Those who saw all perishing alike, thought that the worship or neglect of the gods made no difference. For offenses against human law, no punishment was to be feared: no one would live long enough to be called to account. Already a far heavier sentence had been passed, and was hanging over a man's head: before that fell, why should he not take a little pleasure?" TO THE TRUCE WITH SPARTA.--The loss of Pericles, coupled with the terrible calamities which had befallen Athens, let loose the winds of party passion. New leaders of the democracy, of whom _Cleon_ was the most noted, who lacked the refinement and self-restraint of Pericles, took his place. The Athenians were not able to save _Plataea_, to which they owed so much, from destruction at the hands of the _Spartans_ and _Boeotians_ (427 B.C.); but _Lesbos_ they recovered, and captured _Mytilene_, the bulk of whose citizens, against the will of Cleon, they spared. To the cruelties of war, which the revengeful temper of the Spartans promoted, there was added another plague at Athens, besides an earthquake, and tremendous rain-storms, alternating with drought. _Demosthenes_, a brave and enterprising Athenian general, took possession of Pylos in Messenia. The Spartans, under _Brasidas_, were on the island of _Sphacteria_ opposite; and their retreat was cut off by the fleet under _Nicias_, who was the leader of the more aristocratic faction at Athens. _Cleon_, made strategus in the room of Nicias, took Sphacteria by storm, contrary to general expectation, and brought home nearly three hundred Spartan prisoners. Athens had other successes; but when her forces had been defeated by the Boeotians at _Delium_, and Brasidas had captured _Amphipolis_, and when in a battle there (422 B.C.) Brasidas was victorious over _Cleon_, who fell during the flight, the aristocratic party, which was desirous of peace, gained the upper hand. _Nicias_ concluded a truce with Sparta for fifty years. Each party was to restore its conquests and prisoners. II. THE INFLUENCE OF ALCIBIADES. THE SICILIAN EXPEDITION.--From this time, _Alcibiades_, a relative of Pericles, but lacking his sobriety and disinterested spirit, plays an active part. Beautiful in person, rich, a graceful and effective orator, but restless and ambitious, he quickly acquired great influence. Three years after the peace of Nicias, he persuaded Athens to join a league of disaffected Peloponnesian allies of Sparta; but in the battle of _Mantinea_ (418 B.C.) the Spartans regained their supremacy. It was at the suggestion of Alcibiades that the Athenians undertook the great _Sicilian Expedition_, which resulted in the worst disasters they ever suffered. This expedition was aimed at the Dorian city of _Syracuse_, and the hope was that all Sicily might be conquered. It consisted of about forty thousand men, besides the sailors. The commanders were _Alcibiades_, _Nicias_, and _Lamachus_. Alcibiades was recalled to answer a charge of sacrilege. At Thurii he managed to escape and went over to the side of Sparta. _Gylippus_ went with a small Spartan fleet to aid Syracuse. The Athenians were repulsed in their attack on the city. Although re-inforced by land and naval forces under a gallant and worthy general, _Demosthenes_, they fought under great disadvantages, so that their fleet was destroyed in the Syracusan harbor. Their retreating forces on land were cut to pieces or captured. _Nicias_ and _Demosthenes_ died either at the hands of the executioner or by a self-inflicted death. NAVAL CONTESTS.--No such calamity had ever overtaken a Grecian army. The news of it brought anguish into almost every family in Athens. The Spartans had fortified the village of _Decelea_ in Attica, and sought on the sea, with Persian help, to annihilate the Athenian navy. The allies of Athens, _Chios_, _Miletus_, etc., revolted. The oligarchs at Athens overthrew the democratic constitution, and placed the Government in the hands of a _Council of Four Hundred_. The popular assembly was limited to five thousand members, and was never called together. The object was to make peace with Sparta. But the army before Samos, of which _Thrasybulus_, a patriotic man, was the leader, refused to accept this change of government. _Alcibiades_, who had left the Spartans out of anger on account of their treatment of him, was recalled, and assumed command. The oligarchical rule was overturned in four months after its establishment, and the democracy restored,--the assembly being still limited, however, to five thousand citizens. Three brilliant naval victories, the last at _Cyzicus_ (410 B.C.), were won over the Spartans by Alcibiades who came back to Athens in triumph (408 B.C.). _Lysander_ was the commander of the Spartan fleet on the coast of Asia Minor, and (407 B.C.) gained a victory over the Athenian ships during a temporary absence of Alcibiades. Alcibiades was not reëlected general. He now withdrew, and, three years later, died. The new Spartan admiral, _Callicratidas_, surrounded the Athenian fleet under _Conon_ at Mitylene. By very strenuous exertions of the Athenians, a new fleet was dispatched to the help of Conon; and in the battle of _Arginusæ_ (406 B.C.), the Peloponnesians were completely vanquished. The public spirit of Athens and the resources of a free people were never more impressively shown than in the prodigious efforts made by the Athenians to rise from the effect of the crushing disaster which befell the Sicilian expedition on which their hopes were centered. But these exertions only availed to furnish to coming generations an example of the heroic energy and love of country which are possible under free government. III. THE FALL OF ATHENS. _Lysander_ once more took command of the Spartan fleet. Shrewd in diplomacy, as well as skillful in battle, he strengthened his naval force by the aid of _Cyrus_ the Younger, the Persian governor in Asia Minor. Watching his opportunity, he attacked the Athenians at _Ægospotami_, opposite Lampsacus, when soldiers and sailors were off their guard (405 B.C.). Three thousand of them, who had not been slain in the assault, were slaughtered after they had been taken captive. _Conon_ escaped to Cyprus with only eight ships. One fast-sailing trireme carried the news of the overwhelming defeat to Athens. Lysander followed up his success cautiously, but with energy. Islands and seaports surrendered to him, and in them he established the aristocratic rule. The Athenians were shut in by land and by sea. A treacherous aristocratic faction within the walls was working in the interest of the Spartans. Famine conspired with other agencies to destroy the multitude of homeless and destitute people who had crowded into the city. Starvation compelled a surrender to the Spartan general. The long walls and fortifications were demolished by the ruthless conqueror, the work of destruction being carried on to the sound of the flute. All but twelve vessels were given up to the captors. The democratic system was subverted, and thirty men--the "_Thirty Tyrants_"--of the oligarchical party were established in power, with _Critias_, a depraved and passionate, though able, man, at their head (404-403 B.C.). They put a Spartan garrison in the citadel, and sought to confirm their authority by murdering or banishing all whom they suspected of opposition. _Thrasybulus_, a patriot, collected the democratic fugitives at _Phyle_, defeated the Thirty, and seized the _Piraeus_. Critias was slain. _Ten oligarchs_ of a more moderate temper were installed in power. In co-operation with the Spartan king, _Pausanias_, the two parties at Athens were reconciled. An amnesty was proclaimed, and democracy in a moderate form was restored, with a revision of the laws, under the archonship of _Euclides_ (403 B.C.). It was shortly after this change that the trial and death of _Socrates_ occurred, the wisest and most virtuous man of ancient times (399 B.C.). PHILOSOPHY: SOCRATES.--At the head of the Greek philosophers is the illustrious name of _Socrates_. He was the son of Sophroniscus, a sculptor, and was born 469 B.C., just as Pericles was assuming the leadership at Athens. Socrates was the founder of moral philosophy. He was original, being indebted for his ideas to no previous school. He was as sound in body as in mind. His appearance was unique. His forehead was massive, but his flat nose gave to his countenance an aspect quite at variance with the Greek ideal of beauty. He looked, it was said, like a satyr. He taught, in opposition to the _Sophists_, a class of men (including _Gorgias, Protagoras_, and others) who instructed young men in logic and grammar, taking fees,--which was contrary to the custom of the Greek philosophers,--and cultivating intellectual keenness and dexterity, often at the expense of depth and sincerity. Their work as thinkers was negative, being confined mainly to pointing out fallacies in existing systems, but providing nothing positive in the room of them. _Socrates_ had been called by the oracle at Delphi the wisest of men. He could only account for this by the fact, that, in contrast with others, he did not erroneously deem himself to be knowing. "Know thyself" was his maxim. His daily occupation was to converse with different classes, especially young men, on subjects of highest moment to the individual and to the state. By a method of quiet cross-examination, the "_Socratic irony_," he made them aware of their lack of clear ideas and tenable, consistent opinions, and endeavored to guide them aright. The _soul_ and its moral improvement was his principal subject. He asserted _Theism_ and the spiritual nature and obligations of religion, without calling in question the existence of the various divinities. He taught the doctrine of a universal _Providence_. Absolute loyalty to conscience, the preference of virtue to any possible advantage without it, he solemnly inculcated. He believed, perhaps not without a mingling of doubt, in the immortality of the soul. Taking no part in public affairs, he devoted his time to this kind of familiar instruction,--to teaching by dialogue, in compliance with what he believed to be an inward call of God. An impulse within him, which he called a divine "voice," checked him when he was about to take a wrong step. He was charged with corrupting the youth by his teaching, and with heresy in religion. His rebukes of the shallow and the self-seeking had stung them, and had made him many enemies. Such men as _Alcibiades_ and _Critias_, who had been among his hearers, but for whose misconduct he was really not in the least responsible, added to his unpopularity. The _Apology_, as given by Plato, contains the substance of his most impressive defense before his judges. He took no pains to placate them or his accusers, or to escape after he was convicted. Conversing with his disciples in the same genial, tranquil tone which he had always maintained, he drank the cup of hemlock, and expired (May, 399 B.C.). An account of his teaching and of his method of life is given by his loving scholar, _Xenophon_, in the _Memorabilia_. The dialogues of _Plato_, in which Socrates is the principal interlocutor, mingle with the master's doctrine the pupil's own thoughts and speculations. PLATO.--_Plato_ (427-347 B.C.), the foremost of the disciples of Socrates, founded the philosophical school known as the _Academy_ from the place where his pupils were wont to meet him. One of his prominent tenets was the doctrine of _ideas_ which he regarded as spiritual realities, intermediate between God and the world, of which all visible things are the manifestation. They are the shadow, so to speak, of which ideas are the substance. He defined virtue in man to be resemblance to God according to the measure of our ability. In the _Republic_, he sets forth his political views, and sketches the ideal state. More speculative than Socrates, Plato, from the wide range of his discussions, from their poetic spirit as well as their depth of thought, not less than their beauty of style, is one of the most inspiring and instructive of all authors. No other heathen writer presents so many points of affinity with Christian teaching. ARISTOTLE.--Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) studied under Plato, but elaborated a system of his own, which was on some points dissonant from that of his instructor. His investigations extended over the field of material nature, as well as over the field of mind and morals. With less of poetry and of lofty sentiment than Plato, he has never been excelled in intellectual clearness and grasp. He was possessed of a wonderful power to observe facts, and an equally wonderful talent for systemizing them, and reasoning upon them. He is the founder of the science of _Logic_. His treatises on _Rhetoric_ and on _Ethics_ have been hardly less important in their influence. His _Politics_ is a masterly discussion of political science, based on a diligent examination of the various systems of government. In truth, in all departments of research he exhibits the same capacity for scientific observation and discussion. In religion he was a theist; but he is less spiritual in his vein of thought, and more reserved in his utterances on this theme, than Plato. The names of these two philosophers have been very frequently coupled. Their influence, like their fame, is imperishable. LATER SCHOOLS: THE CYNICS.--The impulse given by Socrates gave rise to still other schools of philosophers. _Aristippus_ of Cyrene (about 380 B.C.) founded a sect which held that happiness is the chief end, the goal of rational effort. _Antisthenes_, who was born 422 B.C., and especially _Diogenes_, went to the opposite extreme, and founded the school of _Cynics_, who looked with disdain, not only on luxuries, but on the ordinary comforts of life, and inured themselves to do without them. Their manners were often as savage as their mode of living. HISTORICAL WRITINGS.--The three principal historical writers were _Herodotus_ (c. 484-0.425 B.C.), the charming but uncritical chronicler of what he heard and saw, by whom the interference of the gods in human affairs is devoutly credited; _Thucydides_, who himself took part in the Peloponnesian war, the history of which he wrote with a candor, a profound perception of character, an insight into the causes of events, a skill in arrangement, and a condensation and eloquence of style, which are truly admirable; and _Xenophon_, an author characterized by naturalness, simplicity, and a religious spirit. GREEK LIFE.--It will be convenient to bring together here some features of Greek life, (1) _Public Buildings and Dwellings_. The Greeks almost always preferred to live in cities. These grew up about an _Acropolis_, which was a fort on a hill, generally a steep crag. This was a place of refuge, and the site of the oldest temple. It became often, therefore, a sacred place from which private dwellings were excluded. At the nearest harbor, there would be a seaport town. The _Piraeus_ was more than four miles from Athens,--a mile farther than the nearest shore, but was chosen as being an excellent harbor. Sparta, alone, had no citadel,--the access from the plain being easily defended,--and no walls. The attractive buildings in a Greek town were the public edifices. Private houses, as to the exterior, were very plain, with flat roofs, with few stories, and low. Towards the street "the house looked like a dead wall with a strong door in it," It was built round an open court: in the case of the best houses, round two courts,--one bordered by apartments for the men, the other with the rooms for women. Bedrooms and sitting-rooms were small, admitting but little light. Fresco-painting on the walls and ceilings came to be common. The furniture of the house was plain and simple, but graceful and elegant in form. The poorer classes slept on skins; the richer, on woolen mattresses laid on girths. The Greeks lived so much in the open air that they took less pains with their dwellings. The public buildings were costly and substantially built. (2) _Meals, Gymnastics, etc._ The Greeks rose early. There are no notices of a morning bath. The first meal was light. It was succeeded, as was the custom at Rome, by calls on friends. Business might follow until noon, the hour of the _dèjeuner_, or breakfast, which, in the case of the rich, was a substantial meal. Later in the day, males went to the practice of gymnastics, which were followed, in later times, by a warm bath. Towards sunset came the principal meal of the day. Conversation and music, or the attending of a feast with friends, took up the evening; if there was a festal company, often the whole night. At the dinner-table, the Greeks reclined on couches. Ladies, if allowed to be present, and children, were required to sit. Spoons, sometimes knives, but never forks, were used. (3) _Costume: Use of Wine._ The dress of the Greeks, both of men and women, was simple and graceful. The men were generally bareheaded in the streets. In bad weather they wore close-fitting caps, and, in traveling, broad-brimmed hats. In Athens and Sparta they always carried walking-sticks. The use of wine was universal. It was always mixed with water. (4) _Slaves_. Slaves were regarded as chattels. No one objected to slavery as wrong. Slaves were better treated at Athens than elsewhere, but even at Athens they were tortured when their testimony was required. They were let out, sometimes by thousands, to work in pestiferous mines. (5) _Women and Children_. In Athens, the wife had seldom learned any thing but to spin and to cook. She lived in seclusion in her dwelling, and was not present with her husband at social entertainments, either at home or elsewhere. She had few if any legal rights, although at Athens she might bring a suit against her husband for ill-treatment. Concubinage was not condemned by public opinion. There was no law against exposing infants whom the parents did not wish to bring up,--that is, leaving them where they would perish. When found and brought up, they were the slaves of the person finding them. This cruelty was frequent in the case of daughters, or of offspring weak or deformed. There were toys and games for children. _Archytas_, a philosopher, was said to have invented the child's rattle. Dolls, hoops, balls, etc., were common playthings. Boys and girls played hide and seek, blind man's buff, hunt the slipper, etc. Older people played ball, and gambled with dice. (6) _Education_. The education of boys was careful; that of girls was neglected. The boy went to or from school under the care of a slave, called _pedagogue_, or leader. Teachers were of different social grades, from the low class which taught small children, to the professors of rhetoric and philosophy. It is needless to say how much stress was laid on gymnastic and aesthetic training. Boys read _Homer_ and other authors at an early age, committing much of them to memory. They were taught to play on the harp or the flute, and to sing. Lyric poems they learned by heart. _Music_ held a very high place in the esteem of the Greeks for its general influence on the mind. Running, wrestling, throwing the dart, etc., the games practiced at the public contests, were early taught. Boys at sixteen or eighteen came of age, and were enrolled as citizens. (7) _Musical Instruments: the Dance_. Instrumental music was common among the Greeks at games and meals, and in battle. They used no bows on the stringed instruments, but either the fingers or the _plectrum_,--a stick of wood, ivory, or metal. There were three sorts of stringed instruments, the lyre, the cithara (or zithern), and the harp. The wind-instruments were the pipe, the clarionet, and the trumpet. Besides these, there were clanging instruments which were used chiefly in religious ceremonies: such were castanets, the cymbal, and the tambourine. Dancing was originally connected with religious worship. Mimetic dances were a favorite diversion at feasts. There were warlike dances by men in armor, who went through the movements of attack and defense. In mimetic dances the hands and arms played a part. There were peaceful dances or choral dances, marked by rhythmic grace. Sometimes these were slow and measured, and sometimes more lively. Specially brisk were the dances at the festivals of Dionysus (Bacchus). Symbolic dances of a religious character, these Bacchic dances were the germ of the drama. Recitations were first introduced between hymns that attended the choric dances. Then, later, followed the dialogue. (8) _Weddings and Funerals_. Marriage was attended by a religious ceremonial. There was a solemn sacrifice and a wedding-feast. The bride was conveyed to her husband's house, accompanied on the way with music and song. When a person died, his body was laid out for one day, during which the relatives and hired mourners uttered laments round the bier. Burial was at the dawn of day. In later times, a coin was put into the mouth of the corpse, with which to pay his passage to the world below. There was a funeral procession, and at the tomb a solemn farewell was addressed to the deceased by name. There was then a funeral-feast. Mourning garments were worn for a short period. The dead were buried in the suburbs of the cities, generally on both sides of a highway. In the tomb many little presents, as trinkets and vases, were deposited. (9) _Courts of Law_. At law men pleaded their own causes, but might take advice or have their speeches composed for them by others. In some cases, friends were allowed to speak in behalf of a litigant. Men like _Demosthenes_ received large fees for services of this kind. There being no public prosecutor, informers were more numerous. They became odious under the name of _sycophants_, which is supposed to have been first applied to those who informed against breakers of an old law forbidding the exportation of figs from Athens. CHAPTER IV. RELATIONS WITH PERSIA.--THE SPARTAN AND THEBAN HEGEMONY. THE RETREAT OF THE TEN THOUSAND.--The _Anabasis_, the principal work of _Xenophon_, describes the retreat from the Tigris to the coast of Asia Minor, of a body of ten thousand mercenary Greek troops,--a retreat effected under his own masterly leadership. The Persian Empire, now in a process of decay, was torn with civil strife. _Xerxes_ and his eldest son had been murdered (465 B.C.). The story of several reigns which follow is full of tales of treason and fratricide. On the death of _Darius II_. (Darius Nothus) (423-404 B.C.), the younger _Cyrus_ undertook to dethrone his brother _Artaxerxes II_., and for that purpose organized, in Asia Minor, a military expedition, made up largely of hired Greek troops. At _Cunaxa_, not far from Babylon, Cyrus fell in the combat with his brother. The Persians enticed the Greek generals to come into their camp, and slew them. _Xenophon_, an Athenian volunteer who had accompanied the army, conducted the retreat of his countrymen, with whom he encountered incredible hardships in the slow and toilsome journey through _Armenia_ to _Trapezus_ (Trebizond), and thence to _Byzantium_. The story of this march, through snow, over rugged mountains, and across rapid currents, is told in the _Anabasis_. A very striking passage is the description of the joy of the Greeks when from a hilltop they first descried the Black Sea. The soldiers shouted, "The sea! the sea!" and embraced one another and their officers. THE CORINTHIAN WAR AND THE PEACE OF ANTALCIDAS.--_Tissaphernes_, the antagonist and successor of the younger _Cyrus_, was Persian governor in Asia Minor, and set out to bring under the yoke the Ionic cities which had espoused the cause of Cyrus. Sparta came to their aid, and King _Agesilaus_ defeated the Persians near the _Pactolus_ (395 B.C.). The Persians stirred up an enemy nearer home, by the use of gold, and the _Boeotians, Corinthians_, and _Argives_, jealous of Sparta, and resentful at the tyranny of her governors (harmosts), and joined by Athens, took up arms against the Lacedaemonians. _Lysander_ fell in battle with the allies (395 B.C.). The course of the war in which Conon, the Athenian commander, destroyed the Spartan fleet at _Cnidus_, made it necessary to recall Agesilaus. His victory at _Coronea_ (394 B.C.) did not avail to turn the tide in favor of Sparta. Conon rebuilt the long walls at Athens with the assistance of Persian money. The issue of the conflict was the _Peace of Antalcidas_ with Persia (387 B.C.). The Grecian cities of Asia Minor were given up to the Persians, as were the islands of _Clazomenae_ and _Cyprus_. With the exception of _Lemnos, Imbros_, and _Scyros_, which the Athenians were to control, all of the other states and islands were to be free and independent. This was a great concession to Persia. Greek union was broken up: each state was left to take care of itself as it best could. Antalcidas cared little for his country: his treaty was the natural result of Spartan aggressiveness and selfishness. CONTEST OF THEBES AND SPARTA.--The Spartans had fallen away from the old rules of life ascribed to Lycurgus. They were possessed by a greed for gold. There were extremes of wealth and poverty among them. After the treaty of Antalcidas, they still lorded it over other states, and were bent on governing in Peloponnesus. At length they were involved in a contest with _Thebes_. This was caused by the seizure of the _Cadmeia_, the Theban citadel, by the Spartan _Phoebidas_ acting in conjunction with an aristocratic party in Thebes (383 B.C.). The Theban democrats, who, under _Pelopidas_, made Athens their place of rendezvous, liberated Thebes, and expelled the Spartans from the Cadmeia. Hostile attempts of Sparta against Athens induced the Athenians to form a new confederacy (or symmachy) composed of seventy communities (378 B.C.); and, after they had gained repeated successes on the sea, the two states concluded peace. Athens had become alarmed at the increased power of Thebes, and was ready to go over to the side of Sparta, her old enemy. It was a feeling in favor of a balance of power like that which had prompted Sparta at the close of the Peloponnesian war, to refuse to consent to the destruction of Athens, which Thebes and Corinth had desired. _Cleombrotus_, king of Sparta, again invaded Boeotia. The principal Boeotian leader was _Epaminondas_, one of the noblest patriots in all Grecian history,--in his disinterested spirit and self-government resembling Washington. The Spartan king was defeated by him in the great battle of _Leuctra_ (371 B.C.), and was there slain. At this time the rage of party knew no bounds. The wholesale massacre of political antagonists in a city was no uncommon occurrence. THEBAN HEGEMONY.--The victory of Leuctra gave the hegemony to Thebes. Three times the Boeotians invaded the Spartan territory. They founded _Megalopolis_ in Arcadia, to strengthen the Arcadians against their Lacedæmonian assailants (370 B.C.). They also revived the _Messenian_ power, recalled the Messenians who had long been in exile, and founded the city of _Messene_. In the battle of _Mantinea_ (362 B.C.), _Epaminondas_, though victorious against the Spartans and their allies, was slain. Peace followed among the Grecian states, Sparta alone refusing to be a party to it. In the course of this intestine war, the Thebans had broken up the new maritime sway gained by them. PERIOD III. THE MACEDONIAN ERA. CHAPTER I. PHILIP AND ALEXANDER. THE MACEDONIANS.--The Greeks, exhausted by long-continued war with one another, were just in a condition to fall under the dominion of _Macedonia_, the kingdom on the north which had been ambitious to extend its power. The Macedonians were a mixed race, partly Greek and partly Illyrian. Although they were not acknowledged to be Greeks, their kings claimed to be of Greek descent, and were allowed to take part in the Olympian games. At first an inland community, living in the country, rough and uncultivated, made up mostly of farmers and hunters, they had been growing more civilized by the efforts of their kings to introduce Greek customs. _Archelaus_ (413-399 B.C.) had even attracted Greek artists and poets to his court. At the same time they were exerting themselves to extend their power to the sea. The people were hardy and brave. When _Epaminondas_ died, _Philip_ (359-336 B.C.) was on the Macedonian throne. He had lived three years at _Thebes_, and had learned much from Epaminondas, the best strategist and tactician of his day. The decline of public spirit in Greece had led the states to rely very much on mercenary troops, whose trade was war. Philip had a well-drilled standing army. Every thing was favorable to the gratification of his wish to make himself master of Greece. First he aimed to get possession of Greek cities in _Chalcidice_, of which _Olynthus_ was the chief. The Athenians had towns in that region, besides _Amphipolis_, which was formerly theirs. Philip contrived to make the Olynthians his allies; and then, crossing the river _Strymon_, he conquered the western part of _Thrace_, where there were rich gold mines. There, for purposes of defense, he founded the city of _Philippi_. THE SACRED WAR.--A pretext for interfering in the affairs of Greece, Philip found in the _Sacred War_ in behalf of the temple of Delphi, which had been forced to loan money to the _Phocians_ during a war waged by them against Thebes, to throw off the Theban supremacy. _Athens_ and _Sparta_ joined the Phocians. The Thessalian nobles sided with Philip. He gained the victory in his character of champion of the _Amphictyonic Council_, and took his place in that body, in the room of the Phocians (346 B.C.). But this was not accomplished until he had made peace with the Athenians, so that there was no Athenian force at the pass of Thermopylae to resist his progress. DEMOSTHENES.--The Athenians had placed themselves at the head of an _Aegean League_, and, had they managed with more spirit and prudence, they might have checked Philip. There was one man, worthy of the best days of Greece, who penetrated the designs of Philip, and exerted his great powers to stimulate his countrymen to a timely resistance. This was _Demosthenes_ (385-322 B.C.). He was the prince of the school of orators who had sprung up in these troublous times. Overcoming natural obstacles, he had trained himself with such assiduity that a place at the head of all orators, ancient and modern, is generally conceded to him. He was a great statesman, moved by a patriotic spirit: his speeches were for the welfare and salvation of the state. In 358 B.C., a war broke out between Athens and its maritime allies, in which Athens was unsuccessful. It was on the conquest of Thessaly by Philip, that _Demosthenes_ made against him the first of that series of famous speeches known as _Philippics_ (351 B.C.). In vain he urged the Athenians to rescue Olynthus. The inefficiency of the aid rendered, enabled Philip to conquer and destroy that city, and to sell its inhabitants as slaves (348 B.C.). Thirty cities he destroyed, and annexed all _Chalcidice_ to Macedon. A Macedonian party was formed at Athens, the foremost leader of which was _Aeschines_, not a good citizen, but an orator only second in rank to Demosthenes. They contended that it was futile to resist the advance of the Macedonian power. Demosthenes went at the head of an embassy to the Peloponnesian states which had taken sides with Philip, but his efforts to dissuade them from this suicidal policy were unavailing. What he wanted was a union of all Greeks against the common enemy, who was bent on robbing them of their liberty. He gathered, at length, a strong party about him at Athens. The overtures of peace from Philip, who was prosecuting his conquests in Thrace, were rejected. Athenian forces obliged the king to give up the siege of _Byzantium_ (341 B.C.). The consequent enlarged influence of Demosthenes was used by him to secure an increase of the fund for carrying on the war. But Philip had his paid supporters in all the Greek states. _Aeschines_ at Athens proved an efficient helper. A deputy at the _Amphictyonic Council_, in 338 B.C., he contrived to bring about another "holy war" against _Amphissa_ in Locris, the end being to give Philip the command. Philip seized _Elatea_, in the east of Phocis, which commanded the entrance to Boeotia and Attica. Dismay spread through Greece. _Demosthenes_ roused the Athenian assembly, where all were silent through fear, to confront Philip boldly, and himself went to Thebes, which he induced to form an alliance with Athens. But the allies were defeated at the fatal battle of _Chaeronea_ (August, 338 B.C.), where _Alexander_, Philip's youthful son, decided the fortune of the day by vanquishing the Theban "sacred band." Philip treated the Thebans with great severity. He placed a garrison in the _Cadmeia_. To Athens he granted favorable terms. Marching into Peloponnesus, he took from Sparta a large part of its territory, and apportioned it to the Messenians, Argives, and Arcadians. At a national assembly at _Corinth_, from which the Spartans were absent, Philip caused himself to be created leader of the Grecian forces against Persia, with the powers of a dictator. Each of the Greek states was to retain its autonomy; and a congress, to meet at Corinth, was to settle differences among them. Two years after the battle of Chaeronea, at the marriage festival of his daughter with the king of Epirus, Philip was assassinated by means of a conspiracy, in which his queen is thought to have been a partner. ALEXANDER THE GREAT.--Alexander was twenty years old when his father died. His bodily health and vigor qualified him for combats and toils which few soldiers in his army could endure. His energy, rapidity, and military skill lift him to a level with Hannibal and the foremost commanders of any age. He was not without a generous appreciation of art and literature. The great philosopher, _Aristotle_, was one of his tutors. For the eminent authors and artists of Greece he cherished a warm admiration. But his temper was passionate and imperious. _Homer_ was his delight, and in Homer he took Agamemnon for his model; but the direst act of cruelty done by Achilles--that of dragging _Hector_ after his chariot--he exceeded when he dragged _Batis_, a general who had opposed him, at the tail of his chariot through the streets of _Gaza_. Especially when his passions were inflamed by strong drink,--as at banquets, occasions where Macedonian princes before him had been wont to drink to excess,--he was capable of savage deeds. ALEXANDER IN GREECE: HIS ARMY.--At a congress in Corinth, Alexander was recognized as the leader and general of Greece. In the spring of 335 B.C., he made a campaign against the barbarous peoples north of Macedonia,--the Thracians, the Getae, and the Illyrians. A false report of his death led to an uprising of the Greeks. Quickly returning, he took vengeance on the _Thebans_ by razing their city to the ground, sparing only the temples and _Pindar's_ house, and by selling its thirty thousand inhabitants into slavery. Athens prayed for pardon, which was granted, even the demand for the surrender of Demosthenes and other leaders being revoked. All resistance in Greece was over. Alexander's hands were free to complete his preparations for the task of conquering the Persian Empire. His army was strong through its valor and discipline rather than its numbers. The Macedonian _phalanx_ was the most effective force which had hitherto been used in war. It was made up of foot soldiers drawn up in ranks, three feet apart, with spears twenty-one feet in length, held fifteen feet from the point. The length of the spears and the projection of so many in front of the first rank, gave to the phalanx a great advantage, although such a body of troops could be turned around with difficulty. Alexander began his battles with other troops, and used the phalanx for the decisive charge. Only native Macedonians served in the phalanx. This was the case, also, with _the Guard_, a body of infantry, and with two divisions of cavalry, one clad in heavy armor, and one in light. With these troops were Greek and barbarian soldiers, infantry and cavalry, and a division for hurling stones, which was used not only in sieges, but also in battles. There was a band of young Macedonian soldiers called _pages_, also a body-guard selected from these by promotion; and out of this the king chose his generals. The army consisted of not more than forty thousand men, but it was so organized as to be completely under the control of Alexander; and he was a military genius of the first order. THE CAMPAIGN OF ALEXANDER: TO THE BATTLE OF ISSUS.--In the spring of 334 B.C., Alexander crossed the _Hellespont_ at _Abydos_. At _Ilium_ (Troy) he performed various rites in honor of the heroes of the Trojan war, his romantic sympathy with whom was the principal tie between him and the Greeks. A Persian army disputed the passage of the _Granicus_. He was the first to enter the river, and in the battle displayed the utmost personal valor. His decisive victory caused nearly the whole of _Asia Minor_ to submit to him. _Halicarnassus_, and the few other towns that held out, were taken by storm. At _Tarsus_ he was cured by his physician, Philip, of a dangerous fever, brought on by a bath in the chilly waters of the river _Cydnus_. _Darius III_., the king of Persia, with a large army, approaching from the Euphrates, encountered him in a valley near _Issus_, in Cilicia. There (333 B.C.) was fought the memorable battle which settled the fate of the Persian Empire. The host of Darius was defeated with great slaughter; and his camp, with his treasures and his family, fell into the hands of the victor. TO THE BATTLE OF ARBELA.--After the victory of Issus, _Syria_ and _Phoenicia_ submitted, except _Tyre_, which was captured after a siege of seven months. Two thousand of the inhabitants were hung on the walls, and thirty thousand were sold into slavery. Gaza resisted, and there Alexander was severely wounded. After it was taken, he entered _Egypt_, and founded the city of ALEXANDRIA, in its consequences one of the most memorable acts of his life. He marched through _Lybia_ to the temple of _Jupiter Ammon_ (331 B.C.). Having thus subdued the lands on the west, he passed through _Palestine_ and _Syria_ by way of _Damascus_, crossed the _Euphrates_ and the _Tigris_, and met the Persian army in the plains of Gaugamela, near _Arbela_,--an army more than twenty times as large as his own (October, 331 B.C.). After a hotly contested battle, the Persians were routed, and their empire destroyed. TO THE INVASION OF INDIA.--_Babylon_ and _Susa_ with all their treasures, and, afterwards, _Persepolis_ and _Pasargadae_, fell into the conqueror's hands. He set fire to Persepolis, and sold its male inhabitants into slavery. He pursued _Darius_ into Media, Hyrcania, and Parthia, where the flying king was murdered by _Bessus_, one of his own nobles, that he might not give himself up to Alexander. He then marched east and south through _Persia_ and the modern _Afghanistan_. He tarried at _Prophthasia_ (Furrah) for two months. Here it was that he charged _Philotas_, one of his best officers, with a conspiracy against his life, and put him to death; and after this he ordered the murder of _Parmenio_, his best general, who had been a companion in arms of King Philip. Founding cities in different places as he advanced, he crossed the _Oxus_, marched through _Sogdiana_, and crossed the _Jaxartes_ (Sir-Daria). While at _Samarcand_, in a drunken revel, he slew _Clitus_, the friend who had saved his life in the battle of the Granicus. In a fit of remorse he went without food or drink for three days. In _Bactra_, the capital of _Bactria_, he married _Roxana_, a princess of the country. By this time his head was turned by his unexampled victories, conquests and power. He began to demand of his followers the cringing adulation that was paid to Oriental monarchs, and when it was denied was ready to inflict summary vengeance. TO THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER.--Crossing the eastern Caucasus (the _Hindu-Kush_), Alexander moved down the right bank of the _Indus_, subduing the tribes whom he met in his path. On the further side of the _Hydaspes_, he met the Indian prince _Porus_, whom he defeated and captured, and converted into an ally. He continued his marches and his line of victories as far as the river _Hyphasis_. Here the Macedonian troops would go no farther. Alexander turned back (327 B.C.), and with his army and fleet moved down the _Hydaspes_ to the _Indus_, and down the _Indus_ to the sea. _Nearchus_, his admiral, sailed along the shore to the west, while Alexander conducted the rest of the army amid infinite hardships through the desert, and finally met him on the coast. In the beginning of the year 325, he reached _Susa_. Here he plainly manifested his purpose of combining Macedonia and Greece with the East in one great empire. He adopted the Persian costume and ceremonial, and married both the daughter of _Darius III_. and the sister of _Artaxerxes III_. He prevailed on eighty of his Macedonian officers and ten thousand Macedonian soldiers to take Persian wives. For himself he exacted the homage paid to a divinity. These measures, looking to the amalgamation of Macedon and Greece with the East on terms of equality, were most offensive to the old comrades and subjects of Alexander. He was obliged to quell a mutiny, which he accomplished with consummate address and courage (July, 324 B.C.). In the marshes about Babylon, a place which he intended to make his capital, he contracted a fever, which was aggravated by daily revels, and which terminated his life (323 B.C.), after a reign of twelve years and eight months. INFLUENCE OF ALEXANDER.--The Persian Empire, when it was attacked by Alexander, was a gigantic body without much vitality. Yet to overcome it, there was requisite not only the wonderful military talents of the conqueror, but the vigilance and painstaking which equally characterized him. He has been called "an adventurer." To fight and to conquer, and to spread his dominion wherever there were countries to subdue, seems to have been his absorbing purpose. The most substantial result of his exploits, which read more like fable than authentic history, was to spread _Hellenism_,--to diffuse at least a tincture of Greek civilization, together with some acquaintance with the Greek language, over the lands of the East. This was a most important work in its bearing on the subsequent history of antiquity, and more remotely on the history of all subsequent times. CHAPTER II. THE SUCCESSORS OF ALEXANDER. DIVISIONS OF THE EMPIRE.--Alexander left no legitimate children. The child of Roxana, _Alexander the Younger_, was born after his father's death. The empire naturally fell to his principal generals, of whom _Perdiccas_, having command of the great army of Asia, had the chief power. He was obliged to content his military colleagues, which he did by giving to them provinces. The principal regents, or guardians, were soon reduced to three,--_Antipater_ and _Craterus_ in Europe, and _Perdiccas_. The government was carried on in the name of Roxana's son, and of _Arrhidaeus_, the half-brother of Alexander. But _Perdiccas_ soon found that each general was disposed to be in fact a king in his own dominion. He formed the plan of seizing the empire for himself. This combined the satraps against him. Perdiccas was supported by his friend _Eumenes_, but had against him _Antipater_ and _Craterus_, the other regents, and the powerful governors, _Ptolemy Lagi_ in Egypt, and _Antigonus_ in Phrygia, Lycia, and Pamphilia (322 B.C.). There followed a series of wars lasting for twenty-two years, involving numerous changes of sovereignty, and fresh partitions of territory. The rebellious satraps triumphed over the royalists, whose aim was to keep the empire intact for the family of Alexander. The ambition of _Antigonus_ to make himself the sole ruler, led to a league against him (315 B.C.). In a treaty of peace, _Cassander_, the son of Antipater, was to retain the government of Macedonia. By him _Roxana_ and the young _Alexander_ were put to death. In a second war against Antigonus, in which, as before, he was supported by his son, _Demetrius Poliorcetes_, they were completely defeated in the battle of _Ipsus_, in Phrygia (301 B.C.). Antigonus was slain: Demetrius fled to Greece. The result of this protracted contest was, that the Macedonian empire was broken into three principal states,--Macedonia under the _Antigonidae_, the descendants of Antigonus; Egypt under the _Ptolemies_; Syria under the _Seleucidae_. Besides these, there were the smaller kingdoms of _Pergamon_ and of _Bithynia_. Other states broke off from the Syrian realm of the Seleucidae. I. THE KINGDOM OF THE PTOLEMIES. PTOLEMY LAGI (323-285 B.C.).--When _Alexander_ transferred the seat of power in Egypt from Memphis to _Alexandria_, he accomplished results which he could not at all foresee. The Greek element became predominant in Egyptian affairs. A great stimulus was given to commerce and to foreign intercourse. The Egyptians themselves entered zealously into industrial pursuits. _Ptolemy Lagi_ (Soter), the first of the new sovereigns, was wise enough to guard his own territory, and even to establish his rule in _Palestine_, _Phoenicia_, and _Coele-Syria_, but to avoid extensive schemes of conquest. Cyrenaica, on the west of Egypt, and the intermediate Lybian tribes, he subdued. Ptolemy was an absolute monarch, but he retained prominent features in the old Egyptian administrative system, gave offices to Egyptians, and protected their religion. The most important civil stations and all military offices were reserved for Graeco-Macedonians: Alexandria was a Greek city. From the beginning he fostered learning and science. He set to work to collect a great library in a building connected with his palace. He founded the _Museum_, which was a college of professors. It attracted a great body of students, and became the university of the eastern world. Under the patronage of _Ptolemy_, mathematicians, poets, and critics of high repute flourished. Among the structures raised by him were the lighthouse of vast height on the island of _Pharos_, which was connected with the shore by a mole, or causeway, a mile in length; the _Soma_, or mausoleum, containing the body of _Alexander_; the _Temple of Serapis_, completed by his son; and the _Hippodrome_. PTOLEMY PHILADELPHIA.--_Ptolemy II_., surnamed _Philadelphus_ (285-247 B.C.), with less talent for war than his father, did much to encourage commerce, and was especially active in his patronage of learning. In this last province he did a greater work than his father. He greatly enlarged the library. He drew learned men to his court from all directions. In his time the Hebrew scriptures were translated into Greek, in the version called the _Septuagint_. Under his auspices _Manetho_ composed his _History of Egypt_. PTOLEMY EUERGETES.--_Ptolemy III_. (247-222 B.C.), surnamed _Euergetes_ (the benefactor), was the most enterprising and aggressive of this line of monarchs. Most of his conquests were not permanent, but some of them were. He was a patron of art and of literature. He raised Egypt to the highest pitch of prosperity that she ever enjoyed. The first three Ptolemies whose reigns had covered a century, were followed by a series of incompetent and depraved kings, nine in number. Ptolemy IV. (Philopator) (222-205 B.C.) was a weak and dissolute prince. In war with _Antiochus III_. (the Great) of Syria, he saved his kingdom; but his own subjects were rebellious and disaffected. _Ptolemy VI_. (Philometor) (181-148 B.C.) was a boy at his accession. His guardians engaged in war with Syria, which would have conquered Egypt but for the interposition of the Romans in his behalf (170 B.C.). II. MACEDON AND GREECE. When Alexander was in the far East, the Spartan king, _Agis III_. (330 B.C.), headed a revolt against _Antipater_; but Agis was vanquished and slain. The death of Alexander kindled the hope of regaining liberty among patriotic Greeks. Athens, under _Demosthenes_ and _Hyperides_, led the way. A large confederacy was formed. _Leosthenes_, the Greek commander, defeated Antipater, and shut him up within the walls of _Lamia_ (in Thessaly). But the Greeks were finally beaten at _Crannon_. Favorable terms were granted to their cities, except Athens and Aetolia. Twenty-one thousand citizens were deported from Athens to Thrace, Italy, and other places. The nine thousand richest citizens, with _Phocion_ at their head, the anti-democratic party, had all power left in their hands. Demosthenes, Hyperides, and other democratic leaders, were proscribed. _Demosthenes_ took refuge in the temple of Neptune, on the little island of _Calaurea_. Finding himself pursued by _Archias_, the officer of Antipater, he took poison, which he had kept by him in a quill, and died. Thus closed the life of an intrepid statesman who had served the cause of liberty and of his country through the direst perils and trials with unfaltering constancy. The democracy again acquired power temporarily, and _Phocion_ was condemned to death. _Cassander_, excluded from the Macedonian throne by his father, Antipater, supplanted _Polysperchon_, the regent (316 B.C.). He placed _Demetrius_ of _Phaleron_ in power at Athens over a democracy with restricted prerogatives. He was driven out by _Demetrius Poliorcetes_, who was helped by Athens to possess himself of Macedonia and of the most of Greece, but was compelled (287 B.C.) to give up his throne, which, however, was gained by his son, _Antigonus Gonatas_ (277 B.C.). THE ACHAEAN LEAGUE.--In 279 B.C., there occurred an irruption of the Gauls into Greece, "one of those vast waves of migration which from time to time sweep over the world." The Macedonian king, _Ptolemy Ceraunus_, was defeated by them in a great battle, captured, and put to death. It was two years before these marauders were driven out, and Macedonia acquired a settled government. This episode in history favored the growth of two leagues--the _Achaean League_ and the _Aetolian League_. In these leagues the several cities gave up to the central council much more power than Greek cities had been in the habit of granting in former unions. The Achaean League was at first made up of ten Achaean cities. About 240 B.C. _Aratus_ of Sicyon, who had brought _Sicyon_ into the league, delivered _Corinth_ from the Macedonians. To free Greek cities from subjection to them, was long a great object of the league. _Peloponnesus_, except Sparta, with _Athens_ and _Aegina_, joined it. THE AETOLIAN LEAGUE: WAR OF THE LEAGUES.--The rough Aetolians north of the Corinthian Gulf, semi-barbarous in their mode of life, formed another league, and got command of _Phocis_, _Locris_, and _Boeotia_. A praiseworthy attempt at reform was made in Sparta by the king, _Agis IV_. (240 B.C.), who was opposed by the rich, and put to death. _Cleomenes_, his successor, who had the same spirit as Agis, engaged in conflict with the Achaean League, which then called in Macedonian help (223 B.C.). It had to give up to Macedon the Corinthian citadel. _Sparta_ was overthrown. Soon a war between the two leagues broke out, when the Achaeans again called on the Macedonians for aid. These conflicts were followed by the interference of the Romans. THE EVIL OF FACTION.--The bane of Greece, from the beginning to the end of its history, was the suicidal spirit of disunion. Her power was splintered at many crises, when, if united, it might have saved the land from foreign tyranny. Her resources were drained, generation after generation, by needless local contests. She owed her downfall to the desolating influence of faction. III. THE SYRIAN KINGDOM. _Seleucus I_. (Nicator) (312-280 B.C.) was the founder of the Syrian kingdom. From Babylon he extended his dominion to the _Black Sea_, to the _Jaxartes_, and even to the _Ganges_, so far as to make the Indian prince, _Sandracottus_, acknowledge him as suzerain. From Babylon he removed his capital to _Antioch_ on the Orontes, which he founded,--a city destined to be the rival of Alexandria among the cities of the East. The effect of this removal, however, was to loosen his hold upon the Eastern provinces of his empire. _Seleucia_, on the west bank of the Tigris, he likewise founded, which became a great commercial city, but was outstripped later by the Parthian city opposite, _Ctesiphon_. The provinces beyond the Euphrates he committed to his son, _Antiochus_. With him (Antiochus I.) begins the decline of the empire through the influence of Oriental luxury and vice. Under him Syria lost the eastern part of Asia Minor through the invading Gauls, who converted northern Phrygia into _Galatia_, while north-western Lydia became the kingdom of _Pergamon_. _Antiochus II_. (261-246 B.C.) could not hold the provinces in subjection. The Parthian and Bactrian kingdoms began under his reign. _Antiochus III_. (the Great) (223-1876.0.) checked the Parthians and Bactrians, and expelled the Egyptians from Asia, but prepared for the downfall of the Syrian Empire by provoking the hostility of the Romans. BACTRIA, PARTHIA, PERGAMON, GALATIA.--_Bactria_, after it broke off from Syria, was under Greek princes until, having been weakened by the Parthians, it was conquered by the Scythians (134 B.C.). The _Parthians_ issued, as marauders, from the north border of _Iran_ (256 B.C.), under the _Arsacidae_. They gradually acquired civilization from contact with Greek culture, especially after they established the trading-city of _Ctesiphon_. About 200 B.C. the rulers of _Pontus_ made the Greek city of _Sinope_ their residence, and attained to a high degree of strength under _Mithridates VI_. (the Great). _Pergamon_ became a flourishing state under the Greek rule of _Attalus I_. (241 B.C.). It was famed for its wealth and its trade. _Eumenes II_. (197-159 B.C.) founded the library at Pergamon. For him parchment was improved, if not invented, the Egyptians having forbidden the exportation of papyrus. _Galatia_ was so named from the swarm of Gallic invaders (about 279 B.C.), who, after incursions in the East, which were continued for forty years, settled there, and by degrees yielded to the influences of Greek culture. PALESTINE: THE MACCABEES: THE IDUMAEAN PRINCES.--_Palestine_ fared comparatively well in the times when the _Ptolemies_ had control. Not so after it fell under the permanent sway of _Syria_. The Jews were surrounded and invaded by Gentilism. On three sides, there were Greek cities. The perils to which their religion was exposed by the heathen without, and by a lukewarm party within, made earnest Jews, the bulk of the people, more inflexible in their adherence to their law and customs. The party of the _Pharisees_ grew out of the intensity of the loyal and patriotic feeling which was engendered in the periods following the exile. The synagogues, centers of worship and of instruction scattered over the land, acted as a bulwark against the intrusion of heathen doctrine and heathen practices. The resistance to these dreaded evils came to a head when the Syrian ruler, _Antiochus Epiphanes_, embittered by his failures in conflict with Egypt, resolved to break down religious barriers among his subjects, and, for this end, to exterminate Jewish worship. In 168 B.C. he set up an altar to Jupiter in the temple at _Jerusalem_, and even compelled Jewish priests to immolate swine. Then the revolt broke out in which the family of Maccabees were the heroic leaders. _Judas Maccabees_ recovered the temple, but fell in battle (160. B.C.). Under his brother _Simon_, victory was achieved, and the independence of the nation secured. The chief power remained in the hands of this family, the _Asmonaean_ princes, until their degeneracy paved the way for Roman intervention under _Pompeius_. His adviser was the _Idumeaean_, _Antipater_, a Jewish proselyte, whose son _Herod_ was made king (39 B.C.). PHILOSOPHY: THE STOICS AND THE EPICUREANS.--In the Greek world the progress of investigation and reflection tended to produce disbelief in the old mythological system. Social confusion and degeneracy tended to undermine all religious faith. _Pyrrho_ (about 330 B.C.) brought forward the skeptical doctrine, that the highest wisdom is to doubt every thing. _Euhemrus_ (315 B.C.) interpreted the whole mythology as an exaggeration, by imagination and invention, of historical events which form its slender nucleus. With the loss of liberty and the downfall of the Greek states, philosophy became, so to speak, more _cosmopolitan_. It no longer exalted, in the same narrow spirit, the _Greek_ above the _barbarian_. It looked at mankind more as one community. This was a feature of the first of the two principal sects, the _Stoics_, of whom _Zeno_ (about 330 B.C.), and Chrysippus (280-207 B.C.) were the founders. They taught that _virtue_ is the _only good_; that is consists _in living according to nature_; that reason should be dominant, and tranquillity of spirit be maintained by the complete subjugation of feeling. The emotions are to be kept down by the force of and iron will. This is the Stoic _apathy_. The world is wisely ordered: whatever is, is right; yet the cause of all things is not personal. Mankind form on great community, "one city." The _Epicureans_, the second of the prominent sects,--so called from _Epicurus_, their founder (342-370 B.C.),--made _pleasure_ the chief good, which is to be secured by _prudence_, or such a regulation of our desires as will yield, on the whole, the largest fruit of happiness. They believed that the gods exist, but _denied Providence_. CULTURE.--In the Greek cities which were founded by the Macedonians, the political life and independence which Greece had enjoued did not exist. The "Hellenistic" literature and culture, as it is called, which followed, lacked the spontaneous energy and original spirit of the old time. The civilization was that of people not exclusively Greek in blood. _Alexandria_ was its chief seat. Poetry languished. It was _prose_--and prose in the form of _learned inquiries, criticism_, and _science_--that flourished. The path was the same as that marked out by Aristotle. _Theocritus_, born in Syracuse, or Cos, under _Ptolemy I._ (about 320 B.C.), had distinction as a pastoral or bucolic poet. _Euclid_, under _Ptolemy Soter_, systemized geometry. _Archimedes_, who died in 212 B.C., is said to have invented the screw, and was skillful in mechanics. _Eratosthenes_ founded descriptive astronomy and scientific chronology. "The Alexandrian age busied itself with literary or scientific research, and with setting in order what the Greek mind had done in its creative time." After Greece became subject to Rome (146 B.C.) the _Graeco Roman period_ in Greek literature begins. The Greek historian _Polybius_ stands on the border between the Alexandrian age and this next era. He was born about 210 B.C., and died about 128 B.C. LITERATURE.--Works mentioned on p. 16: Histories of Greece by GROTE (12 vols.) (democratic in his sympathies), E. CURTIUS (5 vols.), THIRLWALL (8 vols.), W. Smith (1 vol.), G. W. Cox. Busolt, _Griechische Geschichte_; Fyffe, _History of Greece_ (primer); Duncker, _History of Greece_ [separately published]; Abbott (2 vols.); Holm (4 vols.); Bury; Oman. On special periods: The writings of the ancient authors,--Herodotus (Rawlinson's translation, 4 vols.), Xenophon, THUCYDIDES (Jowett's translation, 2 vols.), Polybius, Plutarch's _Lives_. Schäfer, _Demosthenes und seine Zeit_ (3 vols.); DROYSEN, _Geschichte des Hellenismus_ (3 vols.); E. A. FREEMAN, _History of Federal Government_ (vol. i.); FINLAY, _History of Greece from the Conquest of the Romans_ (7 vols.); G. W. Cox, _History of Greece from the Earliest Period to the End of the Persian War_ (2 vols.), and _Lives of Greek Statesmen_ (1 vol.); Freeman, _History of Sicily_ (4 vols.). On special topics: BOECKH, _The Public Economy of Athens_; Coulanges, _The Ancient City_, etc.: Gõll, _Kulturbilder aus Hellas und Rom_ (3 vols.); Guhl and Koner, _The Life of the Greeks and Romans_, etc.; Green, _Greece and Greek Antiquities_ (primer); J. P. Mahaffy, _Social Life in Greece_, also _Rambles in Greece, Old Greek Education_, and _History of Greek Literature_ (2 vols.); Becker, _Charicles_ (a story illustrative of Greek life); F. A. Paley, _Greek Wit_ (2 vols.); Church, _Stories from Homer_; Black, _The Wise Men of Greece_; Neares, _Greek Anthology_ [in Ancient Classics for English Readers], _Chief Ancient Philosophies_ [Stoicism, etc.] (1 vol., 1880); Müller and Donaldson, _History of the Literature of Ancient Greece_ (3 vols.); Mure, _A Critical History of the Language and Literature of Ancient Greece_ (5 vols.); Jebb, _Attic Orators_ (2 vols.); Symonds, _The Greek Poets_ (2 vols.); G. F. Schömann, _The Antiquities of Greece_; Gladstone, _Studies on the Homeric Age_ and _Homer_; Lübke, _Outlines of the History of Art_; FERGUSSON, _History of Architecture_; D'Anvers, _Elementary History of Art_; Botsford, _Development of the Athenian Constitution_; W. W. Fowler, _The City-State of the Greeks and Romans_; Gilbert, _Constitutional Antiquities of Sparta and Athens_; Greenidge, _Handbook of Greek Constitutional History_; H. N. Fowler, _History of Greek Literature_; Marshall, _Short History of Greek Philosophy_; Gardner, _Handbook of Greek Sculpture_; Tarbell, History of Greek Art_; Tozer, _Primer of Classical Geography_; Kiepert, _Atlas Antiquus_; Cunningham, _Western Civilization_ (vol. 1); Smith (Wayte & Marindin), _Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities_ (2 vols., 1890); Seyffert (Nettleship and Sandys), _Dictionary of Classical Antiquities_. MACEDONIAN ROYAL HOUSES A.--House of Alexander the Great. (1) AMYNTAS II. | +--(4) PHILIP, _m._ | 1, Olympias; | | | +--ALEXANDER THE GREAT, _m._ | 1, Roxana; | | | +--(7) ALEXANDER. | | 2, Concubines. | | | +--Hercules. | | 2, Cleopatra; | | 3, Concubines. | | | +--(6) PHILIP ARRHIDAEUS, _m._ Eurydicé. | | | +--Thessalonica, _m._ Cassander. | | | +--Cynané _m._ Amyntas. | +--(2) ALEXANDER II. | +--(3) PERDICCAS III. | +--Amyntas, _m._ Cynané | +--Eurydicé, _m._ Philip Arrhidaeus. B.--House of Antipater. ANTIPATER. | +--(8) CASSANDER, _m._ Thessalonica. | | | +--(9) PHILIP II. | | | +--(10) ANTIPATER II. | | | +--(11) ALEXANDER. | | +--Philip. | +--Eurydicé, _m._ Ptolemy Lagi, | +--Phila, _m._ | 1, Craterus; | 2, Demetrius Poliorcetes. | +--Nicaea, _m._ Perdiccas. C.--House of Antigonus. Antigonus I. | | +--(12) DEMETRIUS I (Poliorcetes), _m._ | Phila, daughter of Antipater. | | | +--(13) Antigonus II (Gonatas), _m._ | | Phila, daughter of Seleucus Nicator. | | | | | +--(14) Demetrius II, _m._ | | 1, Stratonice; | | | | | +--(16) PHILIP III. | | | | | | | +--(17) PERSEUS, _m._ | | | | Laodicé, daughter of Seleucus Philopator. | | | | | | | +--Demetrius | | | | | +--Apama. | | | | 2, Phthia. | | | +--Craterus. | | | | | +--Alexander | | | +--Demetrius the Handsome. | | | | | +--Antigonus III (Doson), _m._ | | | Phthia, widow of Demetrius II | | | | | +--Echecrates, | | | | | +--Antigonus. | | | +--Stratonice, _m._ | | 1, Seleucus Nicator; | | 2, Antiochus Theus. | | | +--Phila. | +--Philip. [From Rawlinson's _Manual of Ancient History_.] SECTION II. ROMAN HISTORY. INTRODUCTION. PLACE OF ROME IN HISTORY.--Rome is the bridge which unites, while it separates, the ancient and the modern world. The history of Rome is the narrative of the building up of a single City, whose dominion gradually spread until it comprised all the countries about the Mediterranean, or what were then the civilized nations. "In this great empire was gathered up the sum total that remained of the religions, laws, customs, languages, letters, arts, and sciences of all the nations of antiquity which had successively held sway or predominance." Under the system of Roman government and Roman law they were combined in one ordered community. It was out of the wreck of the ancient Roman Empire that the modern European nations were formed. Their likeness to one another, their bond of fellowship, is due to the heritage of laws, customs, letters, religion, which they have received in common from Rome. THE INHABITANTS OF ANCIENT ITALY.--Until a late period in Roman history, the Apennines, and not the Alps, were the northern boundary of Italy. The most of the region between the Alpine range and the Apennines, on both sides of the Po, was inhabited by _Gauls_, akin to the Celts of the same name north of the Alps. On the west of Gallia were the _Ligurians_, a rough people of unknown extraction. People thought to be of the same race as the Ligurians dwelt in _Sardinia_ and in _Corsica_, and in a part of _Sicily_. On the east of Gallia were the Venetians, whose lineage is not ascertained. The Apennines branch off from the Alps in a southeasterly direction until they near the Adriatic, when they turn to the south, and descend to the extreme point of the peninsula, thus forming the backbone of Italy. On the west, in the central portion of the peninsula, is the hilly district called by the ancients, _Etruria_ (now Tuscany), and the plains of _Latium_ and _Campania_. What is now termed _Campania_, the district about Rome, is a part of ancient Latium. The _Etrurians_ differed widely, both in appearance and in language, from the Romans. They were not improbably _Aryans_, but nothing more is known of their descent. In the east, in what is now _Calabria_, and in _Apulia_, there was another people, the _Iapygians_, whose origin is not certain, but who were not so far removed from the Greeks as from the Latins. The southern and south-eastern portions of the peninsula were the seat of the _Greek_ settlements, and the country was early designated _Great Greece_. Leaving out the Etrurians, Iapygians, and Greeks, Italy, south of Gallia, was inhabited by nations allied to one another, and more remotely akin to the Greeks. These Italian nations were divided into an eastern and a western stock. The western stock, the _Latins_, whose home was in Latium, were much nearer of kin to the Greeks than were the eastern. The eastern stock comprised the _Umbrians_ and the _Oscans_. It included the Sabines, Samnites, and Lucanians. We are certain, that, "from the common cradle of peoples and languages, there issued a stock which embraced in common the ancestors of the Greeks and the Italians; that from this, at a subsequent period, the Italians branched off; and that these divided again into the western and eastern stocks, while, at a still later date, the eastern became subdivided into Umbrians and Oscans." (Mommsen's _History of Rome_, vol. i., p. 36.) ITALY AND GREECE.--In two important points, Italy is geographically distinguished from Greece. The sea-coast of Italy is more uniform, not being broken by bays and harbors; and it is not cut up, like Greece, by chains of mountains, into small cantons. The Romans had not the same inducement to become a sea-faring people; there were fewer cities; there was an opportunity for closer and more extended leagues. It is remarkable that the outlets of Greece were towards the east; those of Italy towards the west. The two nations were thus averted from one another: they were, so to speak, back to back. THE GREEKS AND ROMANS.--The Greeks and Romans, although sprung from a common ancestry, and preserving common features in their language, and to some extent in their religion, were very diverse in their natural traits. The Greeks had more genius: the Romans more stability. In art and letters the Romans had little originality. In these provinces they were copyists of the Greeks: they lacked ideality. They had, also, far less delicacy of perception, flexibility, and native refinement of manners. But they had more sobriety of character and more endurance. They were a _disciplined_ people; and in their capacity for discipline lay the secret of their supremacy in arms and of their ability to give law to the world. If they produced a much less number of great men than the Greeks, there was more widely diffused among Roman citizens a conscious dignity and strength. The Roman was naturally _grave_: the fault of the Greek was _levity_. _Versatility_ belonged to the Greek: _virility_ to the Roman. Above all, the sense of right and of justice was stronger among the Romans. They had, in an eminent degree, the political instinct, the capacity for governing, and for building up a political system on a firm basis. This trait was connected with their innate reverence for authority, and their habit of obedience. The noblest product of the Latin mind is the _Roman law_, which is the foundation of almost all modern codes. With all their discernment of justice and love of order, the Romans, however, were too often hard and cruel. Their history is stained here and there with acts of unexampled atrocity. In private life, too, when the rigor of self-control gave way, they sunk into extremes of vulgar sensuality. If, compared with the Greeks, they stood morally at a greater height, they might fall to a lower depth. THE ROMAN RELIGION.--The difference between the Greek and Roman mind was manifest in the sphere of religion. Before their separation from one another they had brought from the common hearthstone elements of worship which both retained. _Jupiter_, like _Zeus_, was the old Aryan god of the shining sky. But the Greek conception, even of the chief deity, differed from the Roman. When the Romans came into intercourse with the Greeks, they identified the Greek divinities with their own, and more and more appropriated the tales of the Greek mythology, linking them to their own deities. Of the early worship peculiar to the Romans, we know but little. But certain traits always belonged to the Roman religion. Their mood was too prosaic to invent a theogony, to originate stories of the births, loves, and romantic adventures of the gods, such as the Greek fancy devised. The Roman myths were heroic, not religious: they related to the deeds of valiant men. Their deities were, in the first place, much more abstract, less vividly conceived, less endowed with distinct personal characteristics. And, secondly, their service to the gods was more punctilious and methodical. It was regulated, down to the minutiæ, by fixed rules. Worship was according to law, was something due to the gods, and was discharged, like any other debt, exactly, and at the proper time. The Roman took advantage of technicalities in dealing with his gods: he was legal to the core. The word _religion_ had the same root as _obligation_. It denoted the bondage or service owed by man to the gods in return for their protection and favor; and hence the anxiety, or scrupulous watchfulness against the omission of what is required to avert the displeasure of the powers above. ORIGIN OF THE ROMANS.--The Romans attributed their origin to the mythical _Æneas_, who fled, with a band of fugitives, from the flames of _Troy_, and whose son, _Ascanius_, or _Iulus_, settled in _Alba Longa_, in Latium. What is known of the foundation of Rome is, that it was a settlement of Latin farmers and traders on the group of hills, seven in number, near the border of Latium, on the _Tiber_. It was the head of navigation for small vessels, and Rome was at first, it would seem, the trading-village for the exchange of the products of the farming-district in which it was placed. Such an outpost would be useful to guard Latium against the _Etrurians_ across the river. Of the three townships, or clans, which united to form Rome,--the _Ramnes_, the _Tities_, and the _Luceres_,--the first and third were Latin. The second, which was _Sabine_, blended with the Roman element, as the language proves. The clans, or tribes, in Latium together formed a league, the central meeting-place of which was at first _Alba Longa_. There is some reason to think that the Sabines were from _Cures_ near Rome. Certain it is that Rome, even at the outset, derived its strength from a combination of tribes. PERIOD I. ROME UNDER THE KINGS AND THE PATRICIANS. (753-304 B.C.) CHAPTER I. ROME UNDER THE KINGS (753-509 B.C.). CHARACTER OF THE LEGENDS.--There is no doubt that the Romans lived for a time under the rule of kings. These were not like the Greek kings, hereditary rulers, nor were they chosen from a single family. But the stories told in later times respecting the kings, their names and doings, are quite unworthy of credit. They rest upon no contemporary evidence or sure tradition. To say nothing of the miraculous elements that enter into the narratives, they are laden with other improbabilities, which prove them to be the fruit of imagination. They contain impossibilities in chronology. They ascribe laws, institutions, and religion, which were of slow growth, to particular individuals, apportioning to each his own part in an artificial way. Many of the stories are borrowed from the Greeks, and were originally told by them about other matters. In short, the Roman legends, including dates, such as are recorded in this chapter, are fabrications to fill up a void in regard to which there was no authentic information, and to account for beliefs and customs the origin of which no one knew. They are of service, however, in helping us to ascertain the character of the Roman constitution, and something about its growth, in the prehistoric age. THE LEGENDARY TALES.--_Romulus_ and _Remus_, so the legend runs, were sons of the god _Mars_ by _Rhea Silvia_, a priestess of Vesta, whose father, _Numitor_, had been slain by his wicked brother, _Amulius_, who thereby made himself king of Alba Longa. The twins, by his command, were put into a basket, and thrown into the Tiber. The cradle was caught by the roots of a fig-tree: a she-wolf came out, and suckled them, and _Faustulus_, a shepherd, brought them up as his own children. _Romulus_ grew up, and slew the usurper, _Amulius_. The two brothers founded a city on the banks of the Tiber where they had been rescued (753 B.C.). In a quarrel, the elder killed the younger, and called the city after himself, _Roma_. Romulus, to increase the number of the people, founded an asylum on the Capitoline Hill, which gave welcome to robbers and fugitives of all kinds. There was a lack of women; but, by a cunning trick, the Romans seized on a large number of Sabine women, who had been decoyed to Rome, with their fathers and brothers, to see the games. The angry Sabines invaded Rome. _Tarpeia_, the daughter of the Roman captain, left open for them a gate into the Capitoline citadel, and so they won the Capitol. In the war that followed, by the intervention of the Sabine women, the Romans and Sabines agreed to live peaceably together as citizens of one town, under _Romulus_ and the Sabine, _Tatius_. After the death of Tatius, _Romulus_ reigned alone, and framed laws for the two peoples. During a thunder-storm he was translated to the skies, and worshiped as the god _Quirinus_ (716 B.C.). After a year _Numa Pompilius_, a Sabine, was elected king (715-673 B.C.). He stood in close intercourse with the gods, was full of wisdom and of the spirit of peace. He framed the religious system, with its various offices and rites. The gates of the temple of _Janus_, closed only in peace, were shut during his mild reign. He died of old age, without illness or pain. The peaceful king was followed by the warlike king, _Tullus Hostilius_ (673-641 B.C.). War breaks out with _Alba_. The two armies face each other, and the contest is decided by the single combat of the three _Horatii_, champions of the Romans, and the three _Curiatii_, champions of Alba. One Roman, the victor and sole survivor, is led to Rome in triumph. Thus _Alba_ became subject to _Rome_. Afterwards Alba was destroyed, but the Albans became Roman citizens. The fourth king, _Ancus Marcius_ (641-616 B.C.), loved peace, but could not avoid war. He fought against four Latin towns, brought their inhabitants to Rome, and planted them on the _Aventine_ hill. He fortified the hill _Janiculum_, on the right bank of the Tiber, and connected it by a wooden bridge with the town. The next king was by birth an Etruscan. _Lucumo_ and his wife, _Tanaquil_, emigrated to Rome. Lucumo took the name of _Lucius Tarquinius_, was stout, valiant, and wise, a counselor of _Ancus_, and chosen after him, instead of one of the sons of Ancus, whose guardian he was. _Tarquinius Priscus_ (616-578 B.C.)--for so he was called--waged successful wars with the Sabines, Latins, and Etruscans. The _Etruscans_ owned him for their king, and sent a crown of gold, a scepter, an ivory chair, an embroidered tunic, a purple toga, and twelve axes in as many bundles of rods. He made a reform of the laws. He built the temple of Jupiter, or the Capitol, laid out the forum for a market-place, made a great sewer to drain the lower valleys of the city, leveled a race-course between the _Aventine_ and _Palatine_ hills, and introduced games like those of the Etruscans. Tarquinius was killed by the sons of Ancus; and _Servius Tullius_ (578-534 B.C.), the son of _Ocrisia_, a slave-woman, and of a god, was made king through the devices of _Tanaquil_. He united the seven hills, and built the wall of Rome. He remodeled the constitution by the census and the division of the centuries. Under him Rome joined the Latin league. He was murdered by his flagitious son-in-law, _Tarquinius Superbus_ (534-510 B.C.)--Tarquin the Proud. He ruled as a despot, surrounding himself with a bodyguard, and, upon false accusation, inflicting death on citizens whose property he coveted. By a treacherous scheme, he got possession of the town of _Gabii_. He waged war against the _Volscians_, a powerful people on the south of Latium. He adorned Rome with many buildings, and lived in pomp and extravagance, while the people were impoverished and helpless. The inspired _Sibyl_ of _Cumae_ offered him, through a messenger, nine books of prophecies. The price required excited his scorn, whereupon the woman who brought them destroyed three. She came back with the remaining six, which she offered at the same price. On being refused in the same manner, she destroyed another three. This led Tarquin to pay the price when she appeared the third time with the books that were left. They were carefully preserved to the end, that in times of danger the will of the gods might be learned. Another story told of the haughty king was, that, when he had grown old, and was frightened by dreams and omens, he sent his two sons to consult the oracle at Delphi. With them went his sister's son, _Junius_, who was called _Brutus_ on account of his supposed silliness, which was really feigned to deceive the tyrant. The offering which he brought to the Delphian god was a simple staff. His cousins, who laughed at him, did not know that it was stuffed with gold. The god, in answer to a question, said that he would reign at Rome who should first kiss his mother. _Brutus_ divined the sense of the oracle, pretended to stumble, and kissed the mother earth. The cruel outrage of _Sextus Tarquinius_, the king's son, of which _Lucretia_, the wife of their cousin, was the pure and innocent victim, caused the expulsion of the house of Tarquin, and the abolishing of regal government. Her father and husband, with Brutus and the noble _Publius Valerius Poplicola_, to whom she related "the deed of shame" wrought by Sextus, swore, at her request, to avenge her wrong. She herself plunged a dagger into her heart, and expired. _Brutus_ roused the people, and drove out the _Tarquins_. Two _consuls_ were appointed in the room of the king, who should rule for one year. _Brutus_ was one. When it was ascertained that his own sons had taken part in a conspiracy of the higher class to restore Tarquinius, the stern Roman gave orders to the lictors to scourge them, and to cut off their heads with the ax. Now the senate and people decreed that the whole race of Tarquinius should be banished for ever. Tarquinius went among the Etruscans, and secured the aid of the people of _Tarquinii_, and of _Veii_. In a battle, _Aruns_, the son of Tarquinius, and _Brutus_, both mounted, ran upon one another, and were slain. Each army marched to its home. Tarquinius then obtained the help of _Porsena_, king of the Etruscans, with a strong army. They took _Janiculum_; but _Horatius Cocles_, with two companions, posted himself at the entrance of the bridge, and kept the place, Horatius remaining until the bridge had been torn away behind him. He then, with his armor on, leaped into the river, and swam back to the shore. The town was hard pressed by the enemy and by famine. _Mucius Scaevola_ went into _Porsena's_ camp, resolved to kill him. But he slew another whom he mistook for the king. When threatened with death, he thrust his right hand into the fire, to show that he had no fear. _Porsena_, admiring his courage, gave him his freedom; and, on being informed that three hundred young Romans were sworn to undertake the same deed which _Mucius_ had come to perform, _Porsena_ made peace without requiring the restoration of Tarquinius. _Tarquinius_, not despairing, persuaded the _Tusculans_ and other _Latins_ to begin war against Rome. The Romans appointed a dictator to meet the exigency, _Marcus Valerius_. In a battle near _Lake Regillus_, when the Romans began to give way, the dictator invoked _Castor_ and _Pollux_, vowing to dedicate a temple to them in case he was victorious. Two young men on white chargers appeared at the head of the Roman troops, and led them to victory. _Tarquinius_ now gave up his effort, and went to _Cumae_ to the tyrant _Aristodemus_, where he lived until his death. TRUTH IN THE LEGENDS.--There are certain facts which are embedded in the legends. _Alba_ was at one time the head of the Latin confederacy. The _Sabines_ invaded Latium, settled on some of the hills of Rome, allied themselves with the _Romans_, and the two peoples were resolved into one federal state. This last change was a very important step. The tradition of a doubling of the senate and of two kings, _Romulus_ and _Taiius_, although not in literal form historical, is believed to be a reminiscence of this union. It is thought that the earliest royalty was priestly in its character, and that this was superseded by a military kingship. It is probable that the _Etruscans_ who had made much progress in civilization, in the arts and in manufactures, gained the upper hand in _Latium_. The insignia of the Roman kings were Etruscan. The Etruscan kings were driven out. There were advances in civilization under them, the division of the people into classes took place, and at that period structures like the "Servian" wall were built. PATRICIANS AND PLEBEIANS.--The Romans from the beginning were divided into the upper class, the _Patricians_, and the common people, or _Plebeians_, who were free, but, like the _perioeci_ and _metoeci_ in Greece, had no political rights. The plebeians, as they included the conquered class, were not all poor. A part of them, who were under the special protection of citizens, their _Patrons_, were called _Clients_. The patricians were the descendants of the first settlers and proprietors. Under the old constitution, ascribed in the legends to _Romulus_, the patricians alone formed the military force, and were styled the _Populus_. They were divided into _curiae_ (districts or wards), at first ten in number, and, after the union of the Romans with the _Tities_ and _Luceres_, thirty. Each _curia_ was divided into ten families, or _gentes_. The assembly of the citizens was called the _Comitia Curiata_. The _Comitia_ chose the _King_. The _Senate_ was a council of elders representing in some way the gentes. The clan, or _gens_, was always of great consequence among the Romans. Its name was a part of the proper name of every citizen. The particular or individual names in vogue were not numerous. The name of the gens was placed between the personal name, or the _praenomen_, and the designation of the special family (included in the gens). Thus in the case of Caius Julius Caesar, "Julius" was the designation of the gens, "Caesar," of the family, while "Caius" was the personal name. THE EARLY CONSTITUTION.--The "Servian constitution" made all land-owners, whether patrician or plebeian, subject to taxation, and obliged to do military service. The cavalry--the _Equites_, or knights,--was made up, by adding to the six patrician companies already existing, double the number from both classes. The infantry were organized without reference to rank, but were graded according to their property. The whole people were divided thus into five classes, and, when assembled, formed the _Comitia Centuriata_,--as being made up of the companies called "centuries," or "hundreds." At first this body was only consulted by the king in regard to offensive wars. Gradually it drew away more and more power from the _Comitia Curiata_, which consisted solely of patricians. Those who had no land were now distinguished from the land-owning plebeians. For the purposes of conscription, the city was divided into four _Tribes_, or wards. Every four years a _census_ was to be taken. MAGISTRATES.--When the kingship was abolished, and under the system that followed, the two _Consuls_ were to be patricians. They exercised regal power during their term of office. They appointed the senators and the two _Quaestors_, who came to have charge of the treasury, under consular supervision. The consuls were attended by twelve _Lictors_, who carried the _fasces_--bundles of rods fastened around an ax,--which symbolized the power of the magistrate to flog or to behead offenders. The _Comitia Centuriata_ acquired the right to elect the consuls, to hear appeals in capital cases from their verdicts, and to accept or reject bills laid before it. This was a great gain for the plebeians. Yet the patricians were strong enough in this assembly to control its action. On occasions of extraordinary peril, a _Dictator_ might be selected by one of the consuls, who was to have absolute authority for the time. The Senate commonly had an important part, however, in the selection of this officer. There was a _Master of Horse_ to command the knights under him. He was appointed by the dictator. RELIGION.--Worship in families was conducted by the head of the household, the _paterfamilias_, who offered the regular sacrifices. But, as regards the whole people, worship was under the direction of the pontiffs, with the chief pontiff, the _Pontifex Maximus_, at their head, and in the hands of the priests. These were all officers of the state, elected to their places, and entirely subordinate to the civil magistrates. The _pontiffs_ were not so much priests as they were guardians and interpreters of divine law. They were masters of sacred lore. They looked out that the numberless and complex rules in respect to religious observances should be strictly complied with. At the same time they had enough knowledge of astronomy to enable them to fix the days suitable for the transaction of business, public or private. They had the control of the calendar. The _Augurs_ consulted the will of the gods as disclosed in omens. The augur, his eyes raised to the sky, with his staff marked off the heavens into four quarters, and then watched for the passage of birds, from which he took the auspices. In early times, there was an implicit faith in these supposed indications of the will of the divinities; but this credulity passed away, and the auguries became a political instrument for helping forward the schemes of some person or party. Besides the college of pontiffs and the college of augurs, there was the college of _Fetiales_, who were the guardians of the public faith in relation to other peoples, and performed the rites attending the declaration of war or the conclusion of peace. The _Soothsayers_ (haruspices) were of Etruscan origin. They ascertained the will of the gods by inspecting the entrails of the slaughtered victims. The _Flamens_ were the priests having charge of the worship of particular divinities. The _Vestals_ were virgin priestesses of Vesta, who ministered in her temple, and kept the sacred fire from being extinguished. The chief gods worshiped by the Romans were _Jupiter_, god of the sky; his wife, _Juno_, the goddess of maternity; _Minerva_, the goddess of wisdom; _Apollo_, the god of augury and the arts; _Diana_, the goddess of the chase and archery; _Mars_, the god of war; _Bellona_, the goddess of war; _Vesta_, patron of the Roman state and of the national hearthstone; _Ceres_, the goddess of agriculture; _Saturnus_, the patron of husbandry; _Hercules_, the Greek god, early naturalized in Italy as the god of gain and of mercantile contracts; _Mercury_, the god of trade; _Neptune_ god of the sea. _Venus_ was an old Roman goddess, who presided over gardens, but gradually was identified with the Grecian _Aphrodite_. _Lares_ and _Penates_ were household divinities, guardians of the family. The Romans assigned a spirit to almost every thing. Each individual had his own protecting _genius_. _Janus_ was the god of beginnings, _Terminus_ was the god of the boundary, _Silvanus_ of the forest, _Vertumnus_ of the circling year. The farmer, in each part of his labor,--in harrowing, plowing, sowing, etc.,--invoked a spirit. So marriage, birth, and every natural event had each a sacred life of its own. Not less than forty-three distinct divinities are spoken of by name as having to do with the actions of a child. Thus the number of divinities was countless. Gods were great or small, according to the department of nature or of life where they severally were present and active. CHAPTER II. ROME UNDER THE PATRICIANS (509-304 B.C.). RIVALRY OF CLASSES.--The abolishing of royalty left Rome as "a house divided against itself." The power granted to the _Comitia Centuriata_ did not suffice to produce contentment. The patricians still decided every thing, and used their strength in an oppressive way. Besides the standing contest between the patricians and plebeians, there was great suffering on the side of the poorer class of plebeians. Many were obliged to incur debts; and their creditors enforced the rigorous law against them, loading them with chains, and driving their families from their homes. A great and constant grievance was the taking by the patricians of the public lands which had been obtained by conquest, for a moderate rent, which might not be paid at all. If they granted a share in this privilege to some rich plebeian houses, this afforded no help to the mass of the people, who were more and more deprived of the opportunity to till the smaller holdings in consequence of the employment of slaves. Yet the plebeians had to bear the burden of military service. At length they rose in a body, probably in returning from some victory, and encamped on a hill, the _Sacred Mount_, three miles from Rome, where they threatened to stay, and found another town. This bold movement led to an agreement. It was stipulated that they should elect magistrates from their own class, to be called _Tribunes of the People_, who should have the right to interpose an absolute veto upon any legal or administrative measure. This right each consul already had in relation to his colleague. To secure the commons in this new right, the tribunes were declared to be inviolable. Whoever used violence against them was to be an outlaw. The power of the tribunes at first was merely protective. But their power grew until it became controlling. One point where their authority was apt to be exerted was in the conscription, or military enrollment. This, if it were undertaken in an unfair way, they could stop altogether, and thus compel a change. THE PLEBEIAN ASSEMBLY.--Not far from this time, there was instituted a new assembly, the _Comitia of Tribes, or Comitia Tributa_. There was a new division of the people into tribes or wards,--first twenty, then twenty-one, and, later, thirty-five. In this comitia, the plebeians were at the outset, if not always, the exclusive voters. The patricians had their assembly, the _Comitia Curiata_. The Comitia of the Tribes, which was then controlled by the plebeians, chose the tribunes. By degrees, both the other assemblies lost their importance. The plebeian body more and more extended its prerogatives. Besides the tribunes, the _Aediles_, two in number, who were assistants of the tribunes, and superintended the business of the markets, were chosen by the _Comitia Tributa_. THE LAW OF CASSIUS.--The anxiety of the plebeians to be rid of the restrictions upon the holding and enjoyment of land, led to the proposal of a law for their relief by the consul _Spurius Cassius_ (486 B.C.). Of the terms of the law, we have no precise knowledge. We only know, that, when he retired from office, he was condemned and put to death by the ruling class. WAR WITH THE AEQUIANS AND THE VOLSCIANS.--About this time Rome concluded a league with the _Latins_, and soon after with another people, the _Hernicans_, who lived farther eastward, between the, Aequians and Volscians. It was a defensive alliance, in which Rome had the leading place. Then follow the wars with the _Aequians_ and _Volscians_, where the traditional accounts are mingled with many fictitious occurrences. There are two stories of special note,--the story of Coriolanus, and the story of Cincinnatus. It is related that a brave patrician, _Caius Marcius Coriolanus_, at a time when grain was scarce, and was procured with difficulty from Etruria and Sicily for the relief of the famishing, proposed that it should be withheld from the plebeians unless they would give up the tribunate. The anger of this class, and the contempt which he showed for it, caused him to be banished. Thereupon he went to the _Volscians_, and led an army against Rome,--an army too strong to be resisted. One deputation after another went out of the city to placate him, but in vain. At length _Veturia_, his mother, and _Volumnia_, his wife, at the head of a company of matrons, went to his camp, and entreated him. Their prayer he could not deny, but exclaimed, "O my mother! Rome thou hast saved, but thou hast lost thy son." He died among the Volscians (491 B.C.). The tale, certainly in most of its parts, is fictitious. For example, he is said to have been called _Coriolanus_, from having previously conquered _Corioli_; but such designations were not given among the Romans until centuries later. The story of _Cincinnatus_ in essential particulars is probably true. At a time when the Romans were hard pressed by the _Æquians_, the messengers of the Senate waited on Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, formerly a senator and a consul of renown in peace and war, and asked him to become dictator. They found him plowing in his field. He accepted the post, by his prudence and vigor delivered the state, and on the sixteenth day laid down his office, and went back to his farm. The time required by the hero for his task was doubtless much longer than the legend allows. There is an authentic tradition of a war with the _Etruscans_, who had retained certain towns on the Roman side of the Tiber. The Romans established a fort on the _Cremera_, not far from _Veii_, which was one of them. In the course of this struggle, it is said that all the _Fabii_,--a distinguished Roman family,--except one boy, were perfidiously slain. This is an exaggerated tale. A truce was concluded with _Veii_-in 474 B.C. for forty years, which left Rome free to fight her enemies on the east and south. THE DECEMVIRS.--The internal conflict of the patricians against the commons in Rome went on. In 471 B.C. the _Publilian Law_ was passed to establish fully the right of the plebeians alone to elect their tribunes, or to exclude the upper class from their comitia. The claims of the plebeians, who formed the greater part of the fighting men, rose. They demanded first, however, that they should have the same _private_ rights as the patricians, and that the laws should be made more efficient for their protection by being reduced to a code. This was the object of the _Terentilian Law_, proposed in 462. The result was a great dispute. Some concessions failed to satisfy the plebeians. Finally it was agreed that ten men, _Decemvirs_, should be chosen indiscriminately from both classes to frame a code, they, meantime, to supersede the consuls and tribunes in the exercise of the government (451 B.C.). They were to equalize the laws, and to write them down. The story of the mission to Athens for the study of the laws of _Solon_, is not worthy of credit. There is no doubt, however, that many obstacles were put in the way of the project by the conservative patricians, and that one of their order, _Appius Claudius_, took a prominent part, probably on the side of the people. VIRGINIUS.--Here comes in the story of _Virginia_. It is related that _Appius Claudius_ was an ambitious and bad man, who, being one of the decemvirs, wished to hold on to power. He conceived a base passion for the daughter of _Virginius_, a brave plebeian centurion, and claimed her on the pretense that she was the daughter of one of his slaves. Standing at his judgment-seat, _Virginius_, seeing that he could do nothing to save his child from the clutch of the villainous judge, plunged his dagger in her heart. This was the signal for another revolt of the people, which extorted the consent of the upper class to the sacred laws and the restoration of the tribuneship. It is a plausible theory that _Appius Claudius_ favored the plebeian claims, and that the tale told above is a later invention to his discredit. POLITICAL EQUALITY.--The laws of the twelve tables lay at the basis of all subsequent legislation in Rome, and were always held in reverence. The plebeians soon gained further advantages. In 449 B.C., it was ordained, under the consuls _Horatius_ and _Valerius_, that the plebeian assembly of tribes should be a sovereign assembly, whose enactments should be binding on the whole Roman people. In 445 B.C., the law of _Canuleius_ legalized marriage between the plebeians and patricians. This was an important step towards the closer union of the two classes. The executive power was still in the hands of the patricians. But in 444 a new office, that of _military tribunes_ with consular power, to be chosen from the plebeians, was established. By way of offset to this great concession, a new patrician office, that of _Censor_, was created. The function of the two censors, who were to be chosen by the _Comitia Centuriata_, was to take the census at short intervals, to make out the tax-lists, to appoint senators and knights, to manage the collection of taxes, to superintend public buildings, and, finally, to exercise an indefinite supervision over public manners and morals. These were very great powers. We find that considerable time elapsed before the plebeians actually realized the advantage which they had legally won in this compromise. About the year 400, they succeeded in electing several military tribunes. As early as 410 B.C. three out of the four treasurers, or paymasters (_quæstors_), were plebeians. About forty years after (367 B.C.), they obtained, by the _Licinian Laws_, the political equality for which they had so long contended. WAR WITH THE ETRUSCANS.--But before this result should be reached, other events of much consequence were to occur. The _Etruscans_, who were not only proficients in the arts, but were also active in trade and commerce, had been defeated at sea by the Greeks, in 474 B.C. But on the north they had a more formidable foe in the _Gauls_, by whom their power was weakened. The Romans took advantage of the situation to lay siege to _Veii_, which, after ten years, was captured by their general, _Marcus Furius Camillus_. The capture of other towns followed. It was told of _Camillus_ that _Falerii_ surrendered to him of its own accord, for his magnanimity in sending back a treacherous schoolmaster who had taken out to his camp the sons of the chief citizens. Camillas tied his hands behind him, and ordered the boys to flog him back into the city. Camillus was sent into exile, it was related, on a charge of injustice in dividing the booty obtained at Veii. INVASION OF THE GAULS.--But the Romans joined with the Etruscans in the attempt to drive back a dreaded enemy of both, the _Gauls_. In the battle of the _Allia_, a brook eleven miles north of Rome, on the 18th of July, 390 B.C., the Roman army was routed by them, and Rome left without the means of defense. All the people fled, except a few brave men, who shut themselves up in the Capitol, and, according to the tradition, some aged patricians, who, in their robes of state, waited for the enemy. The Gauls, under _Brennus_, rushed in, and plundered and burned the city. In later times the story was told, that, when the Gauls were climbing up to the Capitol secretly by night, the cackling of the geese awoke _Marcus Manlius_, and so the enemy was repulsed. There was another story, that, when the Romans were paying the ransom required by _Brennus_, and complained of false weight, the insolent Gaul threw his sword into the scale, exclaiming, "Woe to the conquered!" and that just then _Camillus_ appeared, and drove the Gauls out of the city. This is certain, that the Gauls retired of their own free will from their occupation of the city. The destruction of the temples involved the loss of early chronicles, which would have given us better information as to the times preceding. The city was rebuilt without much delay. THE LICINIAN LAWS.--The agitation for political reform soon commenced again. The _Licinian Laws_, which make an epoch in the controversy of parties, were proposed in 376, but were not passed until 367. Besides provisions for the relief of debtors and for limiting the number of acres of public lands to be held by an individual, it was enacted that the military tribuneship should be given up, and that at least one of the two consuls must be chosen from the plebeians. A new patrician office, the _praetorship_, was founded, the holders of which were to govern in the absence of the consuls. The patricians did not at once cease from the effort to keep the reins in their hands. Several times they broke the law, and put in two patrician consuls. They yielded at last, however; and, as early as the year 300, all Roman offices were open to all Roman citizens. The patrician order became a social, not a legal, distinction. A new sort of nobility, made up of both patricians and plebeians, whose families had longest held public offices, gradually arose. These were the _optimates_. The Senate became the principal executive body. It was recruited by the _censors_, principally from those who had held high stations and were upwards of thirty years old. One _censor_ was required to be a plebeian. The condition of the people was improved by other enactments, one of which (in 326 or 313) secured to the debtor his personal freedom in case he should transfer his property to the creditor. At about this time, there was a change in the constitution of the army. The sort of arms assigned was no longer to depend on property qualifications. There were to be three lines in battle,--the first two to carry a short spear (_pilum_), and the third the long lance (_hasta_). INFULENCE OF PARTY CONFLICTS.--The long contest of parties in Rome was an invaluable political education. It was attended with little bloodshed. It involved discussion on questions of justice and right, and on the best civil constitution. It was not unlike party conflicts in English history. It trained the Romans in a habit of judicious compromise, of perseverance in asserting just claims, and of yielding to just demands. PERIOD II. TO THE UNION OF ITALY. (304-264 B.C.) CHAPTER I. CONQUEST OF THE LATINS AND ITALIANS (304-282 B.C.). WARS WITH THE GAULS.--The increased vigor produced by the adjustment of the conflict of classes manifested itself in a series of minor wars. The Romans were now able to face the Gauls, who had permanently planted themselves in Northern Italy. Against them they waged four wars in succession, the last of which ended in a signal victory for the Roman side (367-349). Wars with the Etruscan cities brought the whole of Southern _Etruria_ under Roman rule (358-351). FIRST SAMNITE WAR.--The neighbor that was the hardest for the Romans to conquer was the nation of _Samnites_, who lived among the Apennines of Central Italy, east of Latium. The conflict with this tough tribe lasted, with intermissions, for fifty years. The immediate occasion of the struggle was the appeal of _Capua_--a Greek city in Campania in which Samnites had before settled--for help against their kinsmen in the mountains (343). This prayer the Romans granted when Capua had placed itself under their sway. In the first battle, the Romans under _Valerius Corvus_ won the day. A second Roman army was rescued from imminent danger by the heroism of the elder _Decius Mus_, and a Roman victory followed. After a third victory at _Suessula_, the Romans, on account of the threatening attitude of their Latin confederates, made peace. The Samnites, too, were involved in a war with _Tarentum_, a Greek city on the eastern coast. WAR WITH THE LATINS.--The Latins were not disposed to recognize Rome any longer as the head of the league. They demanded perfect equality and an equal share of the Roman public offices (340). In a battle near _Vesuvius_, the plebeian consul, _Decius Mus_, having devoted himself to death for his country, rode into the thickest ranks of the enemy, and perished, having secured victory for the Roman army. Before the battle, the patrician consul, _Titus Manlius_, punished his son with death for presuming to undertake, without orders, a military exploit, in which, however, he had succeeded. After a second victory of Manlius at _Trifanum_, the Latins were subdued (340), the league was broken up, and most of the cities were made subject to Rome, acquiring citizenship without the right of suffrage; but they were forbidden to trade or to intermarry with one another. Some became Roman colonies. Several had to cede lands, which were apportioned among Roman citizens. The beaks (_rostra_) of the old ships of _Antium_ ornamented the Roman forum. Colonies of Roman citizens were settled in the district of the _Volscii_ and in _Campania_. This was an example of the Roman method of separating vanquished places from one another, and of inclosing as in a net conquered territories. SECOND SAMNITE WAR.--The establishment by the Romans of the military colony of _Fregellae_, in connection with other encroachments, brought on the second Samnite war, which lasted for twenty-two years. The prize of the contest was really the dominion over Italy. A great misfortune befell the Roman arms in 321. The incautious consuls, _Veturinus_ and _Postumius_, allowed themselves to be surrounded in the _Caudine Pass_, where they were compelled to capitulate, swear to a treaty of peace, and give up six hundred Roman knights as hostages. The whole Roman army was compelled to pass under the yoke. The Roman Senate refused to sanction the treaty, and gave up the consuls, at their own request, in fetters to the Samnites. The Samnites refused to receive them, spared the hostages, and began the war anew. The Roman consuls, _Papirius Cursor_ and _Fabius Maximus_, gained a victory at _Capua_, drove the Samnites out of Campania, and reconquered _Fregellae_. A great military road, the _Appian Way_, the remains of which may still be seen, was built from _Rome_ to _Capua_ (312). The _Etruscan_ cities joined in the war against Rome. All Etruria was in arms to overcome the advancing power of the Romans. The coalition was broken by the great defeat of the Etrurians at the _Vadimonian Lake_, in 310. The Samnites had their numerous allies; but the obstinate valor of the Romans, who were discouraged by no reverses, triumphed. The capture of _Bovianum_, the capital of the Samnite league (305), ended the war. The Samnites sued for peace. The old treaties were renewed. In the course of this protracted struggle, various Roman colonies were established, and military roads were constructed. THIRD SAMNITE WAR.--Peace was not of long continuance. The Samnites once more armed themselves for a desperate conflict, having on their side the _Etruscans_, the _Umbrians_, and the _Gauls_ (300). The Italian peoples, which had been at war with one another, joined hands in this contest against the common enemy. A decisive battle was fought at _Sentinum_,--where _Decius Mus_ the younger, following his father's example, devoted himself to death,--resulting in the defeat of the Samnites, and of their allies (295). Soon after, the Samnite general, _Pontius_, fell into the hands of the Romans. The Samnites kept up the contest for several years. But in 290 they found that they could hold out no longer. The Romans secured themselves by fortresses and by colonies, the most important of which was that of _Venusia_, at the boundary of Samnium, Apulia, and Lucania, where they placed twenty thousand colonists. CHAPTER II. WAR WITH PYRRHUS AND UNION OF ITALY (282-264 B.C.). TARENTUM AND PYRRHUS.--The Samnites were overcome. The Greeks and Romans were now to come into closer intercourse with one another,--an intercourse destined to be so momentous in its effect on each of the two kindred races, and, through their joint influence, on the whole subsequent course of European history. _Alexander the Great_ had died too soon to permit him to engage in any plan of conquest in the West. In the wars of his successors the Romans had stood aloof. Now they were brought into conflict with a Greek monarch, _Pyrrhus_, king of Epirus, who was a relative of Alexander, and had married into the royal family of Egypt. He was a man of fascinating person and address, a brilliant and famous soldier, but adventurous, and lacking the coolness and prudence requisite to carry out his project of building up an Hellenic Empire in the western Mediterranean. In the war against the Samnite coalition, the _Lucanians_ had rendered decisive support to the Romans. This was one reason why _Tarentum_, the rich and prosperous Dorian city on the Tarentine Gulf, had been a spectator of the contest in which it had abundant occasion to feel a deep interest. Rome had given up to the Lucanians the non-Dorian Greek cities in that region. But when they sought to subdue _Thurii_, and the Thurines besought the help of Rome, offering to submit themselves to her, the Romans warned the Lucanians to desist. This led to another combination against Rome, in which they took part. A Roman army was destroyed by the _Senonian Gauls_. In consequence of this, the Romans slaughtered, or drove out of Umbria, this people, and, gaining other decisive victories, put their garrisons into _Locri_, _Crotona_, and _Thurii_. The Romans were already masters of Central Italy. Only the Greek cities on the south remained for them to conquer. It was high time for _Tarentum_ to bestir itself. It was from the side of Tarentum that the immediate provocation came. The Tarentines were listening to a play in the theater as ten Roman ships came into the harbor. Under a sudden impulse of wrath, a mob attacked them, and destroyed five of them. Even then the Romans were in no haste to engage in hostilities. The Tarentines themselves were divided as to the policy best to be pursued. But the war-party had the more voices. An embassy was dispatched to solicit the help of _Pyrrhus_. At Tarentum an embassy from Rome was treated with contempt. _Pyrrhus_ came over with a large army. He obliged the Tarentines themselves to arm, and to join his forces. EVENTS OF THE WAR.--The Romans were fully alive to the peril, and prepared to meet it. Even the proletarians, who were not liable to military service, were enrolled. The first great battle took place at _Heraclea_, near the little river Siris (280 B.C.). Then the Roman cohort and the Macedonian phalanx met for the first time. It was a collision of trained mercenary troops with the citizen soldiery of Rome. It was a struggle between the Greek and the Roman for the ascendency. The confusion caused by the elephants of _Pyrrhus_, an encounter with which was something new and strange to the Romans, turned the tide in his favor. "A few more such victories," said Pyrrhus, "and I am ruined." He desired peace, and sent _Cineas_ as a messenger to the Senate. But _Appius Claudius_, who had been consul and censor, and was now old and blind, begged them not to make peace as long as there was an enemy in Italy. _Cineas_ reported that he found the Senate "an assembly of kings." In the next year, the two armies, each with its allies numbering seventy thousand men, met at _Asculum_ (279). After a bloody conflict, _Pyrrhus_ remained in possession of the field, but with an enormous loss of men. The _Syracusans_ in Sicily, who had been hard pressed by the _Carthaginians_, now called upon him to aid them. He was not reluctant to leave Italy. The Romans captured all the cities on the south coast, except _Tarentum_ and _Rhegium_. After two years' absence, _Pyrrhus_ returned to Italy. His fleet, on the passage from Sicily, was defeated by the Carthaginians. At _Beneventum_, he was completely vanquished by the Romans, who captured thirteen hundred prisoners and four elephants. Pyrrhus returned to Epirus; and, after his death (272), _Milon_, who commanded the garrison left by him in _Tarentum_, surrendered the city and fortress. The Tarentines agreed to deliver up their ships and arms, and to demolish their walls. One after another of the resisting tribes yielded to the Romans, ceding portions of their territory, and receiving Roman colonies. In 266, the Roman sway was established over the whole peninsula proper, from the _Rubicon_ and the _Macra_ to the southern extremity of _Calabria_. CITIZENSHIP.--In order to understand Roman history, it is necessary to have a clear idea of the Roman system in respect to citizenship. All burgesses of Rome enjoyed the same rights. These were both _Public_ and _Private_. The private rights of a Roman citizen were (1) the power of legal marriage with the families of all other citizens; (2) the power of making legal purchases and sales, and of holding property; and (3) the right to bequeath and inherit property. The public rights were, (1) the power of voting wherever a citizen was permitted to vote; (2) the power of being elected to all offices. CONQUERED TOWNS.--"The Roman dominion in Italy was a dominion of a city over cities." With regard to conquered towns, there were, (i) Municipal cities (_municipia_) the inhabitants of which, when they visited Rome, could exercise all the rights of citizens. (2) Municipal cities which had the private, but not the public, rights of citizenship. Some of them chose their own municipal officers, and some did not. (3) _Latin Colonies_, as they were called. Lands ceded by conquered places were divided among poor Roman citizens, who constituted the ruling class in the communities to which they were transplanted. In the Latin colonies, the citizens had given up their _public_ rights as citizens. (4) Towns of a lower class, called _Praefectures_. In these, the principal magistrate was the _Prefect_, who was appointed by the _Praetor_ (_Praeter Urbanus_) at Rome. THE ALLIES (_Socii_).--These were a more favored class of cities. They had their relation to Rome defined by treaty. Generally they appointed their own magistrates, but were bound, as were all subject cities, to furnish auxiliary troops for Rome. THE LATIN FRANCHISE.--This was the privilege which was first given to the cities of _Latium_ and then to inhabitants of other places. It was the power, on complying with certain conditions, of gaining full citizenship, and thus of taking part in elections at Rome. ROMAN COLONIES.--The _Roman Colony_ (which is not to be confounded with the _Latin Colony_ referred to above) was a small body of Roman citizens, transplanted, with their families, to a spot selected by the government. They formed a military station. To them lands taken from the native inhabitants were given. They constituted the ruling class in the community where they were established. Their government was modeled after the government at Rome. They retained their rights as Roman burgesses, which they could exercise whenever they were in that city. By means of these colonies, planted in places wisely chosen, Italy was kept in subjection. The colonies were connected together by roads. The _Appian Way_, from _Rome_ to _Capua_, was built in the midst of the conflict with _Samnium_. It was made of large, square stones, laid on a platform of sand and mortar. In later times the Roman Empire was traversed in all directions by similar roads. PERIOD III. THE PUNIC WARS: TO THE CONQUEST OF CARTHAGE AND OF THE GREEK STATES. (264-146 B.C.) CHAPTER I. THE FIRST AND SECOND PUNIC WABS (264-202 B.C.). THE FIRST PUNIC WAR.--By dint of obstinacy, and hard fighting through long centuries, the Romans had united under them all Italy, or all of what was then known as Italy. It was natural that they should look abroad. The rival power in the West was the great commercial city of _Carthage_. The jealousy between Rome and Carthage had slumbered so long as they were threatened by the invasion of _Pyrrhus_, which was dangerous to both. _Sicily_, from its situation, could hardly fail to furnish the occasion of a conflict. The _Mamertines_, a set of Campanian pirates, had captured _Messana_. They were attacked by _Hiero II_., king of Syracuse. A part of them besought help of the Romans, and a part applied to the Carthaginians. The gravity of the question, whether Rome should enter on an untried path, the end of which no man could foresee, caused hesitation. The assemblies voted to grant the request. The Romans had begun as early as 311 to create a fleet. The ships which they now used, however, were mostly furnished by their South Italian allies. They crossed the channel, and drove out the Carthaginian garrison from _Messana_. The Carthaginians declared war (264). _Hiero_ was gained over to the side of the Romans; and after a bloody conflict, with heavy losses to both armies, the city of _Agrigentum_ was captured by the Romans. The Romans were novices on the sea, where the Carthaginians were supreme. Successful on the land, the former were beaten in naval encounters. One of the most characteristic proofs of the energy of the Romans is their creation of a fleet, at this epoch, to match that of their sea-faring enemies. Using, it is said, for a model, a Carthaginian vessel wrecked on the shore of Italy, they constructed quinqueremes, vessels with five banks of oars, furnished with bridges to drop on the decks of the hostile ships,--thus giving to a sea-fight a resemblance to a combat on land. At first, as might be expected, the Romans were defeated; but in 260, under the consul _Caius Duilius_, they won their first naval victory at _Mylae_, west of Messana. The Roman Senate decided to invade Africa. A fleet of three hundred and thirty vessels sailed under the command of the consul _M. Atilius Regulus_, which was met by a Carthaginian fleet at _Ecnomus_, on the south coast of Sicily. The Carthaginians were completely vanquished. The Romans landed at _Clupea_, to the east of Carthage, and ravaged the adjacent district. There _Regulus_ remained with half the army, fifteen thousand men. The Carthaginians sued for peace; but when he required them to surrender all their ships of war except one, and to come into a dependent relation to Rome, they spurned the proposal. Re-enforcing themselves with mercenaries from Greece under the command of the Spartan, _Xanthippus_, they overpowered and captured _Regulus_ in a battle at _Tunis_ (255). A Roman fleet, sent to _Clupea_ for the rescue of the troops, on the return voyage lost three-fourths of its ships in a storm. The Carthaginians, under _Hasdrubal_, resumed hostilities in Sicily. He was defeated by the consul _Caecilius Metellus_, at _Panormus_, who included among his captures one hundred elephants (251). The story of the embassy of _Regulus_ to Rome with the Carthaginian offer of peace, of his advising the Senate not to accept it, of his voluntary return according to a promise, and of his cruel death at the hands of his captors, is probably an invention of a later time. The hopes of the Romans, in consequence of their success at _Panormus_, revived; but two years later, under _Appius Claudius_ at _Drepanum_, they were defeated on sea and on land. Once more their naval force was prostrated. Warfare was now carried forward on land, where, in the south of Sicily, the Carthaginian leader, _Hamilcar Barca_, maintained himself against Roman attacks for six years, and sent out privateers to harass the coasts of Italy. Finally, at Rome, there was an outburst of patriotic enthusiasm. Rich men gave liberally, and treasures of the temples were devoted to the building of a new fleet. This fleet, under command of _C. Lutatius Catulus_, gained a decisive victory over the Carthaginian _Hanno_, at the Aegatian Islands, opposite _Lilybaeum_ (241). The Carthaginians were forced to conclude peace, and to make large concessions. They gave up all claim to Italy and to the neighboring small islands. They were to pay an indemnity, equal to four million dollars, in ten years. The western part of Sicily was now constituted a _province_, the _first_ of the Roman provinces. CONQUEST OF CISALPINE GUAL.--The Carthaginians were for some time busy at home in putting down a revolt of mercenary troops, whose wages they refused to pay in full. The Romans snatched the occasion to extort a cession of the island of _Sardinia_ (238), which they subsequently united with _Corsica_ in one province. They entered, about ten years later (229-228), upon an important and successful war against the _Illyrian pirates_, whose depredations on the coasts of the Adriatic and Ionian seas were very daring and destructive. The Greek cities which the pirates held were surrendered. The sway of the Romans in the Adriatic was secured, and their supremacy in _Corcyra_, _Epidamnus_, and other important places. The next contest was a terrific one with the _Cisalpine Gauls_, who were stirred up by the founding of Roman military colonies on the Adriatic, and by other proceedings of Rome. They called in the help of transalpine Gauls, and entered _Etruria_, on their way to Rome, with an army of seventy thousand men. They met the Roman armies near _Telamon_, south of the mouth of the Umbro, but were routed, with a loss of forty thousand men slain, and ten thousand men prisoners (225). The Romans marched northward, crossed the _Po_, and subdued the most powerful of the Gallic tribes, the _Insubrians_ (223). Other victories in the following year reduced the whole of upper Italy, with _Mediolanum_ (Milan) the capital of the _Insubrians_, under Roman rule. Fortresses were founded as usual, and the great _Flaminian_ and _Aemilian_ roads connected that region with the capital. Later, _Cisalpine Gaul_ became a Roman province. CARTHAGINIANS IN SPAIN.--Meantime Carthage endeavored in Southern Spain to make up for its losses. The old tribes, the _Celtiberians_ and _Lusitanians_ in the central and western districts, and the _Cantabrians_ and _Basques_ in the north, brave as they were, were too much divided by tribal feuds to make an effectual resistance. The national party at Carthage, which wished for war, had able leaders in _Hamilcar_ and his three sons. By the military skill of _Hamilcar_, and of _Hasdrubal_ his son-in-law, the Carthaginians built up a flourishing dominion on the south and east coasts. The Romans watched the growth of the Carthaginian power there with discontent, and compelled _Hasdrubal_ to declare in a treaty that the _Ebro_ should be the limit of Carthaginian conquests (226). At the same time Rome made a protective alliance with _Saguntum_, a rich and powerful trading-city on the south of that river. _Hasdrubal_ was murdered in 221; and the son of Hamilcar Barca, _Hannibal_, who was then only twenty-eight years old, was chosen by the army to be their general. He laid hold of a pretext for beginning an attack upon _Saguntum_, which he took after a stout resistance, prolonged for eight months (219). The demand of a Roman embassy at Carthage--that _Hannibal_ should be delivered up--being refused, Rome declared war. When the Carthaginian Council hesitated at the proposal of the Roman embassy, their spokesman, _Quintus Fabius_, said that he carried in his bosom peace or war: they might chose either. They answered, "We take what you give us;" whereupon the Roman opened his toga, saying, "I give you war!" The Carthaginians shouted, "So let it be!" THE SECOND PUNIC WAR.--When the treaty of _Catulus_ was made (241), all patriots at Carthage felt that it was only a truce. They must have seen that Rome would never be satisfied with any thing short of the abject submission of so detested and dangerous a rival. There was a peace party, an oligarchy, at Carthage; and it was their selfishness which ultimately brought ruin upon the state. But the party which saw that the only safety was in aggressive action found a military leader in _Hannibal_,--a leader not surpassed, and perhaps not equaled, by any other general of ancient or modern times. He combined skill with daring, and had such a command over men, that under the heaviest reverses his influence was not broken. If he was cruel, it is doubtful whether he went beyond the practices sanctioned by the international law of the time and by Roman example. When a boy nine years old, at his father's request he had sworn upon the altar never to be the friend of the Roman people. That father he saw fall in battle at his side. The oath he kept, for Rome never had a more unyielding or a more powerful enemy. HANNIBAL IN ITALY.--In the summer of 218, _Hannibal_ crossed the _Ebro_, conquered the peoples between the _Ebro_ and the _Pyrenees_, and, leaving his brother _Hasdrubal_ in Spain, pushed into _Gaul_ with an army of fifty thousand foot, twelve thousand horse, and thirty-seven elephants. He crossed the swift _Rhone_ in the face of the Gauls who disputed the passage, and then made his memorable march over the _Alps_, probably by the way now known as the _Little St. Bernard_ pass. Through ice and snow, climbing over crags and circling abysses, amid perpetual conflicts with the rough mountaineers who rolled stones down on the toiling soldiers, the army made its terrible journey into Northern Italy. Fifteen days were occupied in the passage. Half the troops, with all the draught-animals and beasts of burden, perished on the way. The _Cisalpine Gauls_ welcomed Hannibal as a deliverer. No sooner had the valiant consul, _Cornelius Scipio_, been defeated in a cavalry battle on the _Ticinus_, a northern branch of the _Po_ (218), and, severely wounded, retreated to _Placentia_, and his rash colleague, _Sempronius_, been defeated with great loss in a second battle on the _Trebia_, than the Gauls joined _Hannibal_, and reinforced him with sixty thousand troops inured to war. Hannibal, by marching through the swampy district of the _Arno_, where he himself lost an eye, flanked the defensive position of the Romans. The consul _Flaminius_ was decoyed into a narrow pass; and, in the battle of _Lake Trasumenus_ (217), his army of thirty thousand men was slaughtered or made prisoners. The consul himself was killed. All _Etruria_ was lost. The way seemed open to Rome; but, supported by the Latins and Italians, the Romans did not quail, or lower their mien of stern defiance. They appointed a leading patrician, _Quintus Fabius Maximus_, dictator. _Hannibal_, not being able to surprise and capture the fortress of _Spoletium_, preferred to march towards the sea-coast, and thence south into _Apulia_. His purpose was to open communication with _Carthage_, and to gain over to his support the eastern tribes of Italy. _Fabius, the Delayer (Cunctator)_, as he was called, followed and watched his enemy, inflicting what injuries he could, but avoiding a pitched battle. The Roman populace were impatient of the cautious, but wise and effective, policy of _Fabius_. In the following year (216) the consulship was given to _L. Aemilius Paulus_--who was chosen by the upper class, the _Optimates_--and _C. Terentius Varro_, who was elected by the popular party for the purpose of taking the offensive. _Varro_ precipitated a battle at _Cannae_, in Apulia, where the Romans suffered the most terrible defeat they had ever experienced. At the lowest computation, they lost forty thousand foot and three thousand horse, with the consul _Aemilius Paulus_, and eighty men of senatorial rank. No such calamity since the capture of Rome by the Gauls had ever occurred. The Roman Senate did not lose heart. They limited the time of mourning for the dead to thirty days. They refused to admit to the city the ambassadors of _Hannibal_, who came for the exchange of prisoners. With lofty resolve they ordered a levy of all who could bear arms, including boys and even slaves. They put into their hands weapons from the temples, spoils of former victories. They thanked _Varro_ that he had not despaired of the Republic. Some of the Italian allies went over to Hannibal. But all the Latin cities and all the Roman colonies remained loyal. The allies of Rome did not fall away as did the allies of Athens after the Syracusan disaster. It has been thought, that, if _Hannibal_ had followed up the victory at _Cannae_ by marching at once on the capital, the Roman power might have been overthrown. What might then have been the subsequent course of European history? Even the Roman school-boys, according to Juvenal, discussed the question whether he did not make a mistake in not attacking Rome. But it is quite doubtful whether he could have taken the city, or, even if he had taken it, whether his success would then have been complete. He took the wiser step of getting into his hands _Capua_, the second city in Italy. He may have hoped to seize a Campanian port, where he could disembark reinforcements "which his great victories had wrung from the opposition at home." _Hannibal_ judged it best to go into winter-quarters at _Capua_, where his army was in a measure enervated by pleasure and vice. _Carthage_ made an alliance with _Philip V_. of Macedonia, and with _Hiero_ of Syracuse. But fortune turned in favor of the Romans. At _Nola_, _Hannibal_ was repulsed by _Marcellus_ (215); and, since he could obtain no substantial help from home, he was obliged to act on the defensive. _Marcellus_ crossed into Sicily, and, after a siege of three years, captured _Syracuse_, which had been aided in its defense by the philosopher _Archimedes_. _Capua_, in 211, surrendered to the Romans, and was visited with a fearful chastisement. Hannibal's Italian allies forsook him, and his only reliance was on his brother in Spain. For a long time, the two brothers, _Publius_ and _Cnaeus Scipio_, maintained there the Roman cause successfully; but they were defeated and slain (212). SCIPIO: ZAMA.--_Publius Cornelius Scipio_, son of one and nephew of the other Scipio just named, a young man twenty-five years old, and a popular favorite, took the command, and gained important successes; but he could not keep _Hasdrubal_ from going to his brother's assistance in Italy. The Romans, however, were able to prevent a junction of his force with that of _Hannibal_; and _Hasdrubal_ was vanquished and slain by them in the battle of _Sena Gallica_, near the little river _Metaurus_ (207). _Scipio_ expelled the Carthaginians from Spain, and, having returned to Rome, was made consul (205). His plan was to invade Africa. He landed on the coast, and was joined by _Masinissa_, the king of Numidia, who had been driven from his throne by _Syphax_, the ally of Carthage. The defeat of the Carthaginians, and the danger of Carthage itself, led to the recall of _Hannibal_, who was defeated, in 202, by _Scipio_ in the decisive battle of _Zama_. Carthage made peace, giving up all her Spanish possessions and islands in the Mediterranean, handing over the kingdom of _Syphax_ to _Masinissa_, and agreeing to pay a yearly tribute equal to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, for fifty years, to destroy all their ships of war but ten, and to make no war without the consent of the Romans (201). _Scipio Africanus_, as he was termed, came back in triumph to Rome. The complete subjugation of _Upper Italy_ followed (200-191). CHAPTER II. CONQUEST OF MACEDONIA: THE THIRD PUNIC WAR: THE DESTRUCTION OF CORINTH (202-146 B.C.). PHILIP V.: ANTIOCHUS III.--The Romans were now dominant in the West. They were strong on the sea, as on the land. Within fifty years Rome likewise became the dominant power in the East. Philip V. of Macedon had made an alliance with Hannibal, but had furnished him no valuable aid. The Senate maintained that a body of Macedonian mercenaries had fought against the Romans at _Zama_. _Rhodes_ and _Athens_, together with _King Attalus_ of Pergamon, sought for help against _Philip_. The Romans were joined by the _Ætolians_, and afterwards by the _Achaians_. In 197, the consul _T. Quintius Flamininus_ defeated him at the battle of _Cynoscephalæ_ in Thessaly, and imposed upon him such conditions of peace as left him powerless against the interests of Rome. At the Isthmian games, amid great rejoicing, _Flamininus_ declared the Greek states independent. When they found that their freedom was more nominal than real, and involved a virtual subjection to Rome, the _Ætolians_ took up arms, and obtained the support of _Antiochus III_., king of Syria. Another grievance laid at the door of this king was the reception by him of _Hannibal_, a fugitive from Carthage, whose advice, however, as to the conduct of the war, _Antiochus_ had not the wisdom to follow. In 190 he was vanquished by a Roman army at _Magnesia_, under _L. Cornelius Scipio_, with whom was present, as an adviser, _Scipio Africanus_. He was forced to give up all his Asiatic possessions as far as the _Taurus_ mountains. The territory thus obtained, the Romans divided among their allies, _Pergamon_ and _Rhodes_. About seven years later (183), _Hannibal_, who had taken refuge at the court of _Prusias_, king of Bithynia, finding that he was to be betrayed, took poison and died. The ingratitude of his country, or of the ruling party in it, did not move him to relax his exertions against Rome. He continued until his death to be her most formidable antagonist, exerting in exile an effective influence in the East to create combinations against her. PERSEUS.--_Philip V_. laid a plan to avenge himself on the Romans, and regain his lost Macedonian territory. _Perseus_, his son, followed in the same path, having slain his brother _Demetrius_, who was a friend of Rome. The war broke out in 171. For several campaigns the management of the Roman generals was ill-judged; but at last _L. Æmilius Paulus_, son of the consul who fell at _Cannæ_, routed the Macedonians at the battle of _Pydna_. Immense spoils were brought to Rome by the conqueror. _Perseus_ himself, who had sat on the throne of Alexander, adorned the consul's triumphal procession through the streets of Rome. The cantons of Greece, where there was nothing but continual strife and endless confusion, were subjected to Roman influence. One thousand Achaians of distinction, among them the historian _Polybius_, were carried to Italy, and kept under surveillance for many years. The imperious spirit of Rome, and the deference accorded to her, is illustrated in the interview of _C. Popilius Lænas_, who delivered to _Antiochus IV_. of Syria a letter of the Senate, directing him to retire from before Alexandria. When that monarch replied that he would confer with his counselors on the matter, the haughty Roman drew a circle round him on the ground, and bade him decide before he should cross that line. _Antiochus_ said that he would do as the Senate ordered. THE THIRD PUNIC WAR.--The treaty with Carthage had bound that city hand and foot. Against the encroachments of _Masinissa_, the Carthaginians could do nothing; but at length they were driven to take up arms to repel them. This act the Romans pronounced a breach of the treaty (149). That stern old Roman, who in his youth had served against Hannibal, _M. Porcius Cato_, had been unceasing in his exhortation to destroy Carthage. He was in the habit of ending his speeches with the saying, "But I am of opinion that Carthage should be destroyed." The Roman armies landed at _Utica_. Their hard demands, which included the surrender of war-ships and weapons, were complied with. But when the Carthaginians were required to abandon their city, and to make a new settlement ten miles distant, they rose in a fury of patriotic wrath. The women cut off their hair to make bowstrings. Day and night the people worked, in forging weapons and in building a new fleet in the inner harbor. The Romans were repulsed; but _P. Scipio Æmilianus_, the adopted son of the first Scipio Africanus, shut in the city by land and by sea, and, in 146, captured and destroyed it. Its defenders fought from street to street, and from house to house. Only a tenth part of the inhabitants were left alive. These were sold into slavery. Carthage was set on fire, and almost entirely consumed. The fire burned for seventeen days. The remains of the Carthaginian wall, when excavated in recent times, "were found to be covered with a layer of ashes from four to five feet deep, filled with half-charred pieces of wood, fragments of iron, and projectiles." _Scipio_ would have preserved the city, but the Senate was inexorable. With the historian Polybius at his side, the Roman commander, as he looked down on the horrors of the conflagration, sorrowfully repeated the lines of Homer,-- "The day shall come when sacred Troy shall be leveled with the plain, And Priam and the people of that good warrior slain." "Assyria," he is said to have exclaimed, "had fallen, and Persia and Macedon. Carthage was burning: Rome's day might come next." Carthage was converted into a Roman province under the name of _Africa_. DESTRUCTION OF CORINTH.--The atrocious crime of the destruction of Carthage was more than matched by the contemporaneous destruction of _Corinth_. Another rising in Macedonia resulted, in 146, in the conversion of that ancient kingdom into a Roman province. The return to Greece of three hundred Achaian exiles who had been detained in Italy for sixteen years, strengthened the anti-Roman party in Greece, and helped to bring on war with the Achaian league. In 146, after the battle of _Leucopetra_, Corinth was occupied by the consul _L. Mummius_. The men were put to the sword; the women and children were sold at auction into slavery; all treasures, all pictures, and other works of art, were carried off to Rome, and the city was consigned to the flames. The other Greek cities were mildly treated, but placed under the governor of Macedonia, and obliged to pay tribute to Rome. At a later date Greece became a Roman province under the name of _Achaia_. THE PROVINCES.--At this epoch, there were eight provinces,--_Sicily_ (241), _Sardinia_ (238) and _Corsica_, two provinces in _Spain_ (205), _Cisalpine Gaul, Illyricum_ (168), _Africa_ (146), _Macedonia_ (146), and _Achaia_. The first four were governed by _Prætors_. Later, however, the judicial functions of the praetors kept them in Rome. At the end of the year, the prætor, on laying down his office at home, went as _proprætor_ to rule a province. But where there was war or other grave disturbances, the province was assigned to a _consul_ in office, or to a _proconsul_, who was either the consul of the preceding year, or an ex-consul, or an ex-prætor who was appointed proconsul. The provinces were generally organized by the conquering general and a senatorial commission. Some cities retained their municipal government. These were the "free cities." The taxes were farmed out to collectors called _publicans_, who were commonly of the equestrian order. The last military dictator was appointed in 216. In times of great danger, dictatorial power was given to a consul. LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY.--The intercourse of the Romans with the Greeks opened to the former a new world of art, literature, and philosophy, and a knowledge of other habits and modes of life. There were those who regarded the Greek authors and artists with sympathy, and showed an intelligent enthusiasm for the products of Greek genius. Under the patronage of the _Scipios_, Roman poets wrote in imitation of Greek models. Such were _Plautus_ (who died in 184), and the less original, but more refined, _Terence_ (185-159), who had been the slave of a senator. _Ennius_ (239-169), a Calabrian Greek, wrote epics, and also tragedies and comedies. Him the later Romans regarded as the father of their literature. The beginnings of historical writing--which go beyond mere chronicles and family histories--appear, as in the lost work on Roman history by _M. Portias Cato_ (Cato the Censor, 234-149). The great historian of this period, however, was the Greek _Polybius_. The Greek philosophy was introduced, in spite of the vigorous opposition of such austere conservatives as Cato. _Panaetius_ (185-112), the Stoic from _Rhodes_, had a cordial reception at Rome. The Stoic teaching was adapted to the Roman mind. The Platonic philosophy was brought in by _Carneades_. This was frequently more acceptable to orators and statesmen. Along with the _Stoic_, the _Epicurean_ school found adherents. Cato--who, although a historian and an orator, was, in theory and practice, a rigid man, with the simple ways of the old time--procured the banishment of_ Carneades_, together with _Critolaus_ the Peripatetic, and the Stoic _Diogenes_. The schools of oratory he caused to be shut up. He did what he could to prevent the introduction of the healing art, as it was practiced by the Greeks. He preferred the old-fashioned domestic remedies. THE STATE OF MORALS.--If the opposition of the Conservatives to Greek letters and philosophy was unreasonable, as it certainly proved futile, there was abundant ground for alarm and regret at the changes that were going on in morals and in ways of living. The conquest of Greece and of the East brought an amazing increase of wealth. Rome plundered the countries which she conquered. The _optimates_, the leading families, who held the chief offices in the state and in the army, grew very rich from the booty which they gained. They left their small dwellings for stately palaces, which they decorated with works of art, gained by the pillage of nations. They built villas in the country, with extensive grounds and beautiful gardens. Even women, released from the former strict subordination of the wife to her husband, indulged lavishly in finery, and plunged into gaieties inconsistent with the household virtues. The _optimates_, in order to enrich themselves further, often resorted to extortion of various sorts. In order to curry favor with the people, and thereby to get their votes, they stooped to flattery, and to demagogical arts which the earlier Romans would have despised. They provided games, at great expense, for the entertainment of the populace. In the room of the invigorating and of the intellectual contests, which had been in vogue among the Greeks, the Romans acquired an increasing relish for bloody gladiatorial fights of men with wild beasts, and of men against one another. Slaves multiplied to an enormous extent: "as cheap as a Sardinian" was a proverb. The race of plain farmers dwindled away. The trade in slaves became a flourishing branch of business. Field-hands toiled in fetters, and were often branded to prevent escape. If slaves ran away, and were caught, they might be crucified. If a householder were killed by a slave, all the slaves in his house might be put to death. As at Athens, the testimony of slaves was given under torture. Hatred to the master on the part of the slave was a thing of course. "As many enemies as slaves," was a common saying. NUMANTIAN WAR.--The intolerable oppression of the provinces occasionally provoked resistance. It was in _Spain_ that the Romans found it most difficult to quell the spirit of freedom. The _Lusitanians_ in the territory now called Portugal, under a gallant chieftain, _Viriathus_, maintained for nine years a war in which they were mostly successful, and were finally worsted only in consequence of the perfidious assassination of their leader (149-140). The _Celtiberians_, whose principal city, _Numantia_, was on the upper _Douro_, kept up their resistance with equal valor for ten years (143-133). On one occasion a Roman army of twenty thousand men was saved from destruction by engagements which the Senate, as after the surrender at the Caudine Forks, repudiated. In 133, after a siege of eighteen months, Numantia was taken by _Scipio Africanus Æmilianus_. It was hunger that compelled the surrender; and the noblest inhabitants set fire to the town, and slew themselves, to avoid falling into the hands of the enemy. PERGAMON.--More subservience the Romans found in the East. In the same year that the desperate resistance of the _Numantians_ was overcome, _Attalus III_., king of _Pergamon_, an ally of Rome, whose sovereignty extended over the greater part of _Asia Minor_, left his kingdom and all his treasures, by will, to the Roman people. There was a feeble struggle on the part of the expectant heir, but the Romans formed the larger part of the kingdom into a province. _Phrygia Major_ they detached, and gave to _Mithridates IV_., king of _Pontus_, who had helped them in this last brief contest. PERIOD IV. THE ERA OF REVOLUTION AND OF THE CIVIL WARS. (_146-31 B.C_.) CHAPTER I. THE GRACCHI: THE FIRST MITHRIDATIC WAR: MARIUS AND SULLA (146-78 B.C.). CONDITION OF ROME.--We come now to an era of internal strife. The Romans were to turn their arms against one another: Yet it is remarkable that the march of foreign conquest still went on. It was by conquests abroad that the foremost leaders in the civil wars rose to the position which enabled them to get control in the government at home. The power of the _Senate_ had been more and more exalted. Foreign affairs were mainly at its disposal. The increase in the number of voters in the _comitia_, and their motley character, made it more easy for the aristocracy to manage them. Elections were carried by the influence of largesses and by the exhibition of games. Practically the chief officers were limited to a clique, composed of rich families of both patrician and plebeian origin, which was diminishing in number, while the numbers of the lower class were rapidly growing larger. The gulf between the poor and the rich was constantly widening. The last Italian colony was sent out in 177 B.C., and the lands of Italy were all taken up. Slaves furnished labor at the cost of their bare subsistence. It was hard for a poor man to gain a living. Had the _Licinian Laws_ (p. 137) been carried out, the situation would have been different. The public lands were occupied by the members of some forty or fifty aristocratic families, and by a certain number of wealthy Italians. A great proletariate--a needy and disaffected lower class--was growing up, which boded no good to the state. TIBERIUS GRACCHUS.--This condition of things moved _Tiberius Gracchus_, the son of _Cornelia_, who was the daughter of the great _Scipio Africanus_, to bring forward his _Agrarian Laws_. The effect of them would have been to limit the amount of the public domain which any one man could hold, and to divide portions of it among poor citizens. In spite of the bitter opposition of the nobility, these laws were passed (133). But _Gracchus_ had been obliged to persuade the people to turn a tribune, who resisted their passage, out of office, which was an unconstitutional act. In order to carry out the laws, he would have to be re-elected tribune. But the _optimates_, led by the consul _Scipio Nasica_, had been still more infuriated by other proposals of _Gracchus_. They raised a mob, and slew him, with three hundred of his followers. This gave the democratic leaders a temporary advantage; but violent measures on their own side turned the current again the other way, and proceedings under the laws were quashed. CAIUS GRACCHUS.--The laws of _Caius Gracchus_, the brother of Tiberius, were of a more sweeping character. He caused measures to be passed, and colonies to be sent out, by decrees of the people, without any action of the Senate. He renewed the agrarian law. He caused a law to be passed for selling corn for less than the cost, to all citizens who should apply for it. He also caused it to be ordained, that juries should be taken from the knights, the _equites_, instead of the Senate. These were composed of rich men. The tendency of the law would be to make the equestrian order distinct, and thus to divide the aristocracy. The proposal (122), which was not passed, to extend the franchise to the Latins, and perhaps to the Italians, cost him his popularity, although the measure was just. The Senate gave its support to a rival tribune, _M. Livius Drusus_, who outbid _Gracchus_ in the contest for popular favor. In 121 _Gracchus_ was not made tribune. In the disorder that followed, he, with several hundred of his followers, was killed by the _optimates_. Before long most of his enactments were reversed. The law for the cheap sale of corn, the most unwise of his measures, continued. THE JUGURTHINE WAR.--An interval of tranquility followed. But the corruption of the ruling class was illustrated in connection with the Jugurthine war. _Jugurtha_, the adopted son of the king of _Numidia_, the ally of Rome, wishing the whole kingdom for himself, killed one of the sons of the late king, and made war upon the other, who applied to the Romans for help. The commission sent out by the Senate was bribed by _Jugurtha_. Not until he took the city of _Cirta_, and put to death the remaining brother, with all his army, was he summoned to Rome. There, too, his money availed to secure him impunity, although he caused a Numidian prince to be murdered in Rome itself. When the Romans finally entered on the war with _Jugurtha_, he bribed the generals, so that little was effected. The indignation of the people was raised to such a pitch that they would not leave the direction of the war in the hands of _Quintus Metellus_, whom the Senate had sent out, and who defeated _Jugurtha_ (108), but insisted on giving the chief command to one of his subordinate officers, _Caius Marius_ (107), the son of a peasant, wild and rough in his manners, but of extraordinary talents as a soldier. He brought the war to an end. _Jugurtha_ was delivered up by the prince with whom he had taken refuge to _L. Cornelius Sulla_, one of the generals under _Marius_, and in 105, with his two sons, marched in chains before the triumphal car of _Marius_ through the streets of Rome. _Marius_ was now the leader of the popular party, and the most influential man in Rome. THE CIMBRI AND TEUTONES.--The power of _Marius_ was augmented by his victories over the _Cimbri_ and the _Teutones_. These were hordes of barbarians who appeared in the Alpine regions, the _Cimbri_ being either _Celts_, or, like the _Teutones_, _Germans_. The _Cimbri_ crossed the Alps in 113, and defeated a Roman consul. They turned westward towards the Rhine, traversed Gaul in different directions, defeating through a series of years the Roman armies that were sent against them. These defeats the democratic leaders ascribed, not without reason, to the corrupt management of the aristocratic party. In 103 the _Cimbri_ and the _Teutones_ arranged for a combined attack on Italy. _Marius_ was made consul; and in order to meet this threatened invasion, which justly excited the greatest anxiety, he was chosen to this office five times in succession (104-100). Having repulsed the attack of the barbarians on his camp, he defeated them in two great battles, the first at _Aquce Sextice_ (Aix in Provence) in 102, and the second at _Vercellce_, in Upper Italy, in 101. These successes, which really saved Rome, made _Marius_ for the time the idol of the popular party. THE ARMY.--At about this time a great change took place in the constitution of the army. The occupation of a soldier had become a trade. Besides the levy of citizens, there was established a recruiting system, which drew into the ranks the idle and lazy, and a system of re-inforcements, by which cavalry and light-armed troops were taken from subject and vassal states. Thus there arose a military class, distinct, as it had not been of old, from the civil orders, and ready to act separately when its own interest or the ambition of favorite leaders might prompt. SATURNINUS.--_Marius_ lacked the judgment and the firmness required by a statesman, especially in troublous times. When _Saturninus_ and _Glaucia_ brought forward a series of measures of a radical character in behalf of the democratic cause, and the consul _Metellus_, who opposed them, was obliged to go into voluntary exile, _Marius_, growing ashamed of the factious and violent proceedings of the popular party, was partially won over to the support of the Senate. When _C. Memmius_, candidate for consul, was killed with bludgeons by the mob of _Saturninus_ and _Glaucia_, and there was fighting in the forum and the streets, he helped to put down these reckless innovators (99). But his want of hearty cooperation with either party made him hated by both. _Metellus_ was recalled from banishment. _Marius_ went to Asia, and visited the court of _Mithridates._ THE MURDER OF DRUSUS.--Nearly ten years of comparative quiet ensued. The long continued complaints of the Italians found at last a voice in the measures of _M. Livius Drusus,_ a tribune, who, in 91, proposed that they should have the right of citizenship. Two other propositions, one referring to the relations of the _Equites_ and the _Senate,_ and the other for a new division of lands, had been accepted by the people, but were by the Senate declared null. Before _Drusus_ could bring forward the law respecting Italian citizenship, he was assassinated. Neither Senate nor people was favorable to this righteous measure. THE ITALIAN OR SOCIAL WAR (90-88 B.C.).--The murder of _Drusus_ was the signal for an insurrection of the _Italian_ communities. They organized for themselves a federal republic. The peril occasioned by this great revolt reconciled for the moment the contending parties at Rome. In the North, where _Marius_ fought, the Romans were generally successful: in the South, the allies were at first superior; but in 89, in spite of _Sulla's_ bold forays, they were worsted. But it was by policy, more than by arms, that the Romans subdued this dangerous revolt. They promised full citizenship to those who had not taken part in the war, and to those who would at once cease to take part in it (90). Finally, when it was plain that Rome was too strong to be overcome, the conflict was ended by granting to the allies all that they had ever claimed (89). Rome had now made ALL ITALY (south of _Cisalpine Gaul_), except the _Samnites_ and _Lucanians,_ EQUAL WITH HERSELF. But Italy had been ravaged by desolating war: the number of small proprietors was more than ever diminished, and the army and the generals were becoming the predominant force in the affairs of the state. WAR WITH MITHRIDATES.--_Mithridates,_ king of Pontus, in the north-east of Asia Minor, was as ardent an enemy of the Romans as Hannibal had been. With the help of his son-in-law _Tigranes,_ king of Armenia, he had subdued the neighboring kings in alliance with Rome. The Asiatic states, who were ruled by the Romans, were impatient of the oppression under which they groaned. When checked by the Romans, _Mithridates_ had paused for a while, and then had resumed again his enterprise of conquest. In 88 the Grecian cities of Asia joined him; and, in obedience to his brutal order, all the Italians within their walls, not lelss than eighty thousand in number, but possibly almost double that number, were put to death in one day. The whole dominion of the Romans in the East was in jeopardy. MARIUS AND SULLA.--_Sulla_ was elected consul in 88, and was on the point of departing for Asia. He was a soldier of marked talents, a representative of the _aristocratic_ party, and was more cool and consistent in his public conduct than _Marius_. _Marius_ desired the command against _Mithridates_ for himself. _P. Sulpicius_, one of his adherents, brought forward a revolutionary law for incorporating the Italians and freedmen among the thirty-five tribes. The populace, under the guidance of the leaders of the Marian faction, voted to take away the command from _Sulla_, and to give it to _Marius_. _Sulla_ refused to submit, and marched his army to Rome. It was impossible to resist him. _Sulpicius_ was killed in his flight. _Marius_ escaped from Italy, and, intending to go to Africa, was landed at _Minturnae_. To escape pursuit, he had to stand up to the chin in a marsh. He was put in prison, and a Gaulish slave was sent to kill him. But when he saw the flashing eyes of the old general, and heard him cry, "Fellow, darest thou kill _Caius Marius_?" he dropped his sword, and ran. _Marius_ crossed to Africa. Messengers who were sent to warn him to go away, found him sitting among the ruins of Carthage. THE MARIANS IN ROME.--_Sulla_ restored the authority of the Senate. During _Sulla's_ absence, _Cinna_, the consul of the popular party, sought to revive the laws of _Sulpicius_ by violent means (87). Driven out of the city, he came back with an army which he had gathered in _Campania_, and with old Marius, who had returned from Africa. He now took vengeance on the leaders of the _Optimates_. For five days the gates were closed, and every noble who was specially obnoxious, and had not escaped, was killed by _Marius_, who marched through the streets at the head of a body of soldiers. In 86 _Marius_ and _Cinna_ were made consuls. _Sulla_ was declared to be deposed. _Marius_, who was now more than seventy years old, died (86). The fever of revenge, and the apprehension of what might follow on _Sulla's_ return, drove sleep from his eyelids. A brave soldier, he was incompetent to play the part of a statesman. He went to his grave with the curse of all parties resting upon him. RETURN OF SULLA.--_Sulla_ refused to do any thing against his adversaries at home, or for the help of the fugitive nobles who appealed to him, until the cause of the country was secure abroad. He captured _Athens_ in 86, defeated _Archelaus_, the general of _Mithridates_, in a great battle at _Chaeronea_; and, by this and subsequent victories, he forced _Mithridates_ to conclude peace, who agreed to evacuate the Roman province of Asia, to restore all his conquests, surrender eighty ships of war, and pay three thousand talents (84). _Sulla's_ hands were now free. In 83 he landed at _Brundisium_. He was joined by _Cneius Pompeius_, then twenty-three years old, with a troop of volunteers. _Sulla_ did not wish to fight the Italians. He issued a proclamation, therefore, giving them the assurance that their rights would not be impaired. This pledge had the desired effect. The army of the _Consuls_ largely outnumbered his own. _Sulla_ lingered in South Italy to make good his position there. The _Samnites_ joined the _Marians_, and moved upon Rome with the intent to destroy it. They were defeated before they could enter the city. The _Marians_ in Spain were defeated afterwards, as were the same party in _Sicily_ and _Africa_ by _Pompeius_. CRUELTY OF SULLA.--The cruelty of Sulla, after his victory, was more direful than Rome had ever witnessed. It appeared to spring from no heat of passion, but was cold and shameless. After a few days, there was a massacre of four thousand prisoners in the _Circus_. Their shrieks and groans were heard in the neighboring Temple of _Bellona_, where Sulla was in consultation with the Senate. Many thousands--not far from three thousand in Rome alone--were proscribed and murdered, and the property of all on these lists of the condemned was confiscated. THE LAWS OF SULLA.--In his character as _Dictator_, _Sulla_ remade the constitution, striking out the popular elements to a great extent, and concentrating authority in the _Senate_. The _Tribunes_ were stripped of most of their power. The _Senate_ alone could propose laws. In the Senate, the places in the juries were given back (p. 154). Besides these and other like changes, the right of suffrage was bestowed on ten thousand emancipated slaves; while _Italians_ and others, who had been on the Marian side, were deprived of it. In the year 80 B.C., _Sulla_ caused himself to be elected _Consul_. The next year he retired from office to his country estate, and gave himself up to amusements and sensual pleasure. A part of his time--for he was not without a taste for literature--he devoted to the writing of his memoirs, which, however, have not come down to us. He died in 78. CHAPTER II. POMPEIUS AND THE EAST: TO THE DEATH OF CRASSUS (78-53 B.C.). WAR WITH SERTORIUS.--Not many years after _Sulla's _death, his reforms were annulled. This was largely through the agency of _Cneius Pompeius_, who had supported _Sulla_, but was not a uniform or consistent adherent of the aristocratic party. He did not belong to an old family, but had so distinguished himself that Sulla gave him a triumph. Later he rose to still higher distinction by his conduct of the war against _Sertorius_ in Spain, a brave and able man of the Marian party, who was supported there for a long time by a union of Spaniards and Romans. Not until jealousy arose among his officers, and _Sertorius_ was assassinated, was the formidable rebellion put down (72). THE GLADIATORIAL WAR.--_Pompeius_ had the opportunity still further to distinguish himself on his way back from Spain. A gladiator, _Spartacus_, started a revolt among his companions. He called about him slaves and outlaws until with an army of one hundred thousand men he defeated the Roman generals, and threatened Rome itself. For two years they ravaged Italy at their will. They were vanquished by _Marcus Crassus_ in 71, in two battles, in the last of which _Spartacus fell_. The remnant of them, a body of five thousand men, who had nearly reached the Alps, were annihilated by _Pompeius_. POMPEIUS: CRASSUS: CICERO.--_Crassus_ was a man of great wealth and of much shrewdness. _Pompeius_ was bland and dignified in his ways, a valiant, though sometimes over-cautious, general. These two men, in 70 B.C., became consuls. They had resolved to throw themselves for support on the middle class at Rome. _Pompeius_, sustained by his colleague, secured the abrogation of some of the essential changes made by _Sulla_. The _Tribunes_ received back their powers, and the independence of the _Assembly of the Tribes_ was restored. The absolute power of the Senate over the law-courts was taken away. These measures were carried in spite of the resistance of that body. Pompeius was aided by the great advocate, _Marcus Tullius Cicero_. He was born at _Arpinum_ in 106 B.C., of an equestrian family. He had been a diligent student of law and politics, and also of the Greek philosophy, and aspired to distinction in civil life. He studied rhetoric under _Molo_, first at Rome and then at _Rhodes_, during a period of absence from Italy, which continued about two years. On his return (in 77 B.C.), he resumed legal practice. _Cicero_ was a man of extraordinary and various talents, and a patriot, sincerely attached to the republican constitution. He was humane and sensitive, and much more a man of peace than his eminent contemporaries. His foibles, the chief of which was the love of praise, were on the surface; and, if he lacked some of the robust qualities of the great Roman leaders of that day, he was likewise free from some of their sins. The captivating oratory of Cicero found a field for its exercise in the impeachment of _Verres_, whose rapacity, as Roman governor of Sicily, had fairly desolated that wealthy province. _Cicero_ showed such vigor in the prosecution that _Verres_ was driven into exile. This event weakened the senatorial oligarchy, and helped _Pompeius_ in his contest with it. WAR WITH THE PIRATES.--In 69 B.C., _Pompeius_ retired from office; but, two years later, he assumed command in the war against the pirates. These had taken possession of creeks and valleys in Western _Cilicia_ and _Pamphylia_, and had numerous fleets. Not confining their depredations to the sea, they plundered the coasts of Italy, and stopped the grain-ships on which Rome depended for food. _Pompeius_ undertook to exterminate this piratical community. By the _Gabinian Law_, he was clothed with more power than had ever been committed to an individual. He was to have absolute command over the Mediterranean and its coasts for fifty miles inland. He used this unlimited authority for war purposes alone, and, in three months, completely accomplished the work assigned him. He captured three thousand vessels, and put to death ten thousand men. Twenty thousand captives he settled in the interior of _Cilicia_. POMPEIUS IN THE EAST.--The success of Pompeius was the prelude to a wider extension of his power and his popularity. After the return of _Sulla_ from the East, another _Mithridatic War_ (83-81), the second in the series, had ended in the same terms of peace that had been agreed upon before (p. 157). In 74 the contest began anew against _Mithridates_, and _Tigranes_ of Armenia, his son-in-law. For a number of years _Lucullus_, the Roman commander, was successful; but finally _Mithridates_ regained what he had lost, and kept up his aggressive course. In 66 B.C., on a motion that was supported by _Cicero_, but opposed by the aristocratic party in the Senate, _Pompeius_ was made commander in the East for an indefinite term. So extensive powers had never before been committed to a Roman. He drove _Mithridates_ out of Pontus into Armenia. _Tigranes_ laid his crown at the feet of the Roman general, and was permitted to retain _Armenia_. _Mithridates_ fled beyond the Caucasus, and, in 63 B.C., committed suicide. _Pompeius_ overthrew the Syrian kingdom of the _Seleucidae_. He entered _Judaea_, captured Jerusalem from _Aristobulus_ the reigning prince, and placed his brother _Hyrcanus_ on the throne, who became tributary to Rome. _Pompeius_ with his officers entered the sanctuary of the temple, and was surprised to find there neither image nor statue. He established in the Roman territories in Asia the two provinces, _Pontus_ and _Syria_, and re-organized the province of _Cilicia_. Several kingdoms he allowed to remain under Roman protection. After this unexampled exercise of power and responsibility as the disposer of kingdoms, he slowly returned to Italy, dismissed his army at _Brundisium_, and entered the capital as a private citizen, where, in 61 B.C., he enjoyed a magnificent triumph that lasted for two days. THE ROMAN TRIUMPH.--The most coveted reward of a victorious general was a triumph. It was granted by a vote of the Senate and according to certain rules, some of which, however, were often relaxed. The general must have held the office of dictator, consul, or praetor; at least five thousand of the enemy must have been slain in a single battle; the war must have been against public foes, etc. The general, with his army, remained without the city until the triumph had been decreed by the Senate, which also assembled without the walls to deliberate on the question. The pageant itself, in later times, was of the most splendid character. It consisted of a procession which entered the "Triumphal Gate," and passed through the _Via Sacra_, up the Capitoline Hill to the Temple of Jupiter, where sacrifices were offered. In front were the Senate, headed by the magistrates. Then came a body of trumpeters, who immediately preceded the long trains of carriages and frames which displayed the spoils of conquest, including statues, pictures, gorgeous apparel, gold and silver, and whatever else had been borne away from the conquered people. Pictures of the country traversed or conquered, and models of cities and forts, were exhibited. Behind the spoils came flute-players, and these were followed by elephants and other strange animals. Next were the arms and insignia of the hostile leaders; and after them marched the leaders themselves and their kindred, and all the captives of less rank, in fetters. The crowns and other tributes voluntarily given to the general by Roman allies next appeared, and then the central figure of the procession, the _imperator_ himself, standing in a chariot drawn by four horses, clad in a robe embroidered with gold, and a flowered tunic, in his right hand a bough of laurel and in his left a scepter, with a wreath of laurel on his brow, and a slave standing behind, and holding a crown over his head. Behind him in the procession were his family, then the mounted _equites_ and the whole body of the infantry, their spears adorned with laurels, making the air ring with their shouts and songs. Meantime the temples were open, and incense was burned to the gods; buildings were decorated with festal garlands; the population, in holiday dress, thronged the steps of the public buildings and stages erected to command a view, and in every place where a sight of the pageant could be obtained. As the procession climbed the Capitoline Hill, some of the captives of rank were taken into the adjoining _Mamertine_ prison, and barbarously put to death. In the lower chamber of that ancient dungeon, which the traveler still visits, _Jugurtha_ and many other conquered enemies perished. After the sacrifices had been offered, the _imperator_ sat down to a public feast with his friends in the temple, and was then escorted home by a crowd of citizens. The _ovation_ was a lesser triumph. The general entered the city on foot, and the ceremonies were of a much inferior cast. CONSPIRACY OF CATILINE.--Meanwhile at Rome, the state had been endangered by the combination of democrats and anarchists in the conspiracy of _Catiline_. The well-contrived plot of this audacious and profligate man was detected and crushed by the vigilance and energy of the consul _Cicero_, whose four speeches on the subject, two to the Senate and two to the people, are among the most celebrated of all his orations. _Catiline_ was forced to fly from Rome; and several of his prominent accomplices were put to death by the advice of _Cato_ (the younger), the leader of the Senatorial party, and by the vote of the Senate. This was done without asking for the verdict of the people, and for this reason was not warranted by the law; but it was declared to be needful for the salvation of the state. The next year _Catiline_ was killed in battle, and his force dispersed by the army of the Senate. A turn of party feeling afterwards exiled _Cicero_ for departing from the law in the execution of the conspirators. JULIUS CAESAR.--Another person strong enough to be the rival of _Pompeius_ was now on the stage of action. This was _Caius Julius Caesar_, who proved himself to be, on the whole, the foremost man of the ancient Roman world. Caesar's talents were versatile, but in nothing was he weak or superficial. He was great as a general, a statesman, an orator, and an author. With as much power of personal command over men as _Hannibal_ had possessed, he was likewise an agreeable companion of men of letters and in general society. Every thing he did he appeared to do with ease. By his family connections he was naturally designated as the leader of the popular, Marian party. He was the nephew of _Marius_ and the son-in-law of _Cinna_. _Sulla_ had spared his life, although he had courageously refused to obey the dictator's command to put away his wife; but he had been obliged to quit Rome. At the funeral of _Julia_, the widow of _Marius_, he had been bold enough to exhibit the bust of that hero,--an act that involved risk, but pleased the multitude. He was suspected of being privy to _Catiline's_ plot, and in the Senate spoke against the execution of his confederates. In 65 he was elected _Aedile_, but his profuse expenditures in providing games plunged him heavily in debt; so that it was only by advances made to him by _Crassus_ that he was able, after being praetor, to go to _Spain_ (in 61), where, as propraetor, he first acquired military distinction. Prior to his sojourn in Spain, by his bold political conduct, in opposition to the Senate, and on the democratic side, he had made himself a favorite of the people. THE FIRST TRIUMVIRATE.--Pompeius was distrusted and feared by the Senate; but, on seeing that he took no measures to seize on power at Rome, they proceeded to thwart his wishes, and denied the expected allotments of land to his troops. The circumstances led to the formation of the first _Triumvirate_, which was an informal alliance between _Pompeius_, _Caesar_, and _Crassus_, against the Senatorial oligarchy, and for the protection and furtherance of their own interests. _Caesar_ became consul in 59 B.C. He gave his daughter _Julia_ in marriage to _Pompeius_. Gaul, both Cisalpine, and Transalpine (_Gallia Narbonensis_), was given to _Caesar_ to govern for five years. _Cato_ was sent off to take possession of the kingdom of _Cyprus_. _Cicero_, who was midway between the two parties, was exiled on motion of the radical tribune, _Clodius_. But the independent and violent proceedings of this demagogue led _Pompeius_ to co-operate more with the Senate. _Cicero_ was recalled (57 B.C.). A jealousy, fomented by the Senate, sprang up between _Pompeius_ and _Crassus_. By _Caesar's_ efforts, a better understanding was brought about between the triumvirs, and it was agreed that his own proconsulship should be prolonged for a second term of five years. _Pompeius_ received the _Spains_, and _Crassus_, who was avaricious, was made proconsul of _Syria_, and commander of the armies in the Oriental provinces. In an expedition against the _Parthians_ in 53, he perished. CAESAR IN GAUL.--The campaigns of _Caesar_ in Gaul covered a period of eight years. An admirable narrative of them is presented by himself in his _Commentaries_. THE GAULS.--The Gauls were _Celts_. The Celts were spread over the most of Gaul, over Britain and the north of Italy. In _Gaul_, there were three general divisions of people, each subdivided into tribes. These were the _Belgae_, the _Galli_, and the _Aquitani_, the last of whom, however, were not Celts, but, like the _Iberians_ in Spain, belonged to a _pre-Celtic_ race. The _Helvetii_ and _Vindelici_ were in Switzerland. The Celts of _Gaul_ had attained to a considerable degree of civilization. Their gods were the various objects of nature personified. Their divinities are described by Caesar as corresponding in their functions to the gods of Rome. Their priests were the _Druids_, a close corporation, but not hereditary. They not only conducted worship: they were the lawgivers, judges, and physicians of the people. They possessed a mysterious doctrine, which they taught to the initiated. They held a great yearly assembly for the trial of causes. The _Bards_ stood in connection with the Druidical order. In worship, human sacrifices were offered in large numbers, the victims being prisoners, slaves, criminals, etc. There were temples, but thick groves were the favorite seats of worship. _Caesar_ says that the Gauls were strongly addicted to religious observances. In their character they are described as brave and impetuous in an onset, but as lacking persistency. The Celts in _Britain_ were less civilized than their kinsfolk across the channel. But in their customs and religious beliefs and usages, they were similar to them. They probably came over from Gaul. CONQUEST OF GAUL.--The first victory of Caesar was in conflict with the Helvetii, who had invaded Gaul, and whom he drove back to their homes in the Alps. The Gallic tribes applied to him for help against the _Germans_, who had been led over the Rhine by _Ariovistus_, chief of the _Suevi_. Him _Caesar_ forced to return to the other side of the river. The Gallic tribes, fearing the power of Caesar, stirred up the _Belgae_, the most warlike of all the Gauls. These Csesar subdued, and also, with less difficulty, conquered the other nations of Gaul. _Twice_, in conflict with the Germans, he crossed the Rhine near _Bonn_ and _Andernach_ (55 and 53 B.C.). _Twice_, also (55 and 54 B.C.), he landed in _Britain_. On the second expedition he crossed the _Thames_. In 52 there was a general insurrection of the Gauls under _Vercingetorix_, a brave chieftain, to conquer whom required all of Caesar's strength and skill. The result of eight years of hard and successful warfare was the subjugation of all Gaul from the Rhine to the Pyrenees. The _Celts_ were subdued, and steps taken which resulted in their civilization. A barrier was placed in the way of the advance of the _Germans_, which availed for this end during several centuries. By his successes in Gaul, Csesar acquired a fame as a general, which partly eclipsed the glory previously gained by _Pompeius_ in the East. He became, also, the leader of veteran legions who were devoted to his interests. CHAPTER III. POMPEIUS AND CAESAR: THE SECOND TRIUMVIRATE. THE CIVIL WAR.--The rupture between _Pompeius_ and _Caesar_ brought on another civil war, and subverted the Roman republic. They were virtually regents. The triumvirs had arranged with one another for the partition of power. The death of _Crassus_ took away a link of connection which had united the two survivors. The death of _Julia_, the beautiful daughter of _Caesar_, in 54 B.C., had previously dissolved another tie. _Pompeius_ contrived to remain in Rome, and to govern Spain by legates. Each of the two rivals had his active and valiant partisans in the city. The spoils of Gaul were sent to be expended in the erection of costly buildings, and in providing entertainments for the populace. To _Pompey_, in turn, Rome owed the construction of the first stone theater, which was dedicated with unprecedented show and splendor. Bloody conflicts between armed bands of adherents of the two leaders were of daily occurrence. _Clodius_, an adherent of Caesar and a reckless partisan, was slain by _Milo_, in a conflict on the Appian Way. The Senate and the republicans, of whom _Cato_ was the chief, in order to curb the populace, and out of enmity to Caesar, allied themselves with _Pompeius_. It was determined to prevent him from standing as a candidate for the consulship, unless he should lay down his command, and come to Rome. He offered to resign his military power if _Pompeius_ would do the same. This was refused. Finally he was directed to give up his command in Gaul before the expiration of the time which had been set for the termination of it. This order, if carried into effect, would have reduced him to the rank of a private citizen, and have left him at the mercy of his enemies. The tribunes, including his devoted supporter, _Marcus Antonius_, in vain interposed the veto, and fled from the city. _Caesar_ determined to disobey the order of the Senate. His legions--two had been withdrawn on the false pretext of needing them for the Parthian war--clung to him, with the exception of one able officer, _T. Labienus_. _Caesar_ acted with great promptitude. He crossed the _Rubicon_, the boundary of the Gallic Cisalpine province, before _Pompeius_--who had declared, that with a stamp of his foot he could call up armed men from the ground--had made adequate preparations to meet him. The strength of _Pompeius_ was mainly in the _East_, the scene of his former glory; and he was, perhaps, not unwilling to retire to that region, taking with him the throng of aristocratic leaders, who fled precipitately on learning of the approach of _Caesar_. _Pompeius_ sailed from Brundisium to _Epirus_. _Cicero_, who had ardently desired an accommodation between the rivals, was in an agony of doubt as to what course it was right and best for him to take, since he saw reason to dread the triumph of either side. Reluctantly he decided to cast in his lot with the Senate and its newly gained champion. PHARSALUS: THAPSUS: MUNDA.--Caesar gained the advantage of securing the state treasure which _Pompeius_ had unaccountably left behind him, and was able to establish his power in _Italy_. Before pursuing Pompeius, he marched through _Gaul_ into _Spain_ (49 B.C.), conquered the Pompeian forces at _Ilerda_, and secured his hold upon that country. He then crossed the Adriatic, He encountered Pompeius, who could not manage his imprudent officers, on the plain of _Pharsalus_ (48 B.C.), where the senatorial army was completely overthrown. _Pompeius_ sailed for Egypt; but, just as he was landing, he was treacherously assassinated. His head was sent to _Caesar_, who wept at the spectacle, and punished the murderers. _Caesar_ gained friends everywhere by the exercise of a judicious clemency, which accorded with his natural disposition. He next went to _Egypt_. There he was met by _Cleopatra_, whose dazzling beauty captivated him. She reigned in conjunction with her younger brother, who, according to the Egyptian usage, was nominally her husband. The Egyptians were roused against Caesar, and, on one occasion, he saved his life by swimming; but he finally defeated and destroyed the Egyptian army. At _Zela_, in _Pontus_, he met and vanquished _Pharnaces_, the revolted son of _Mithridates_, and sent the laconic message, "Veni, vidi, vici" (I came, I saw, I conquered). Early in 46 he landed in _Africa_, and, at _Thapsus_, annihilated the republican forces in that region. A most powerful combination was made against him in _Spain_, including some of his old officers and legionaries, and the two sons of _Pompeius_. But in the hard-fought battle at _Munda_ (March, 45 B.C.), when Caesar was himself in great personal danger, he was, as usual, triumphant. CAESAR AS A CIVILIAN.--Marvelous as the career of Caesar as a general was, his merit as a civilian outstrips even his distinction as a soldier. He saw that the world could no longer be governed by the Roman rabble, and that monarchy was the only alternative. He ruled under the forms of the old constitution, taking the post of dictator and censor for life, and absorbing in himself the other principal republican offices. The whole tendency of his measures, which were mostly of a very wholesome character, was not only to remedy abuses of administration, but to found a system of orderly administration in which Rome should be not the sole _mistress_, but simply the _capital_, of the world-wide community which had been subjected to her authority. THE GOVERNMENT OF CAESAR.--Caesar made the _Senate_ an advisory body. He increased the number of senators, bringing in provincials as well as Roman citizens. He gave full citizenship to all the _Transpadane Gauls_, and to numerous communities in _Transalpine Gaul_, in _Spain_, and elsewhere. He established a wide-spread colonization, thus planting his veterans in different places abroad, and lessening the number of proletarians in Italy. He rebuilt _Carthage_ and _Corinth_. He re-organized the army, and the civil administration in the provinces. In the space of five years, while he was busy in important wars, he originated numerous governmental measures of the utmost value. THE MOTIVES OF CAESAR.--The designs of Caesar and of his party are to be distinguished from what they actually accomplished. Caesar was not impelled by a desire to improve the government of the provinces, in taking up arms against the Senate. Nor did he owe his success to the support of provincials; although, in common with the rest of the democratic party at Rome, he was glad to have them for allies. The custom had grown up of virtually giving to eminent generals, absolute power for extended intervals. This was done, for example, in the case of _Marius_, on the occasion of the invasion of the _Cimbrians_ and _Teutones_. In such exigencies, it was found necessary to create what was equivalent to a military dictatorship. The idea of military rule became familiar. The revolution made by Caesar was achieved by military organization, and was a measure of personal self-defense on his part. Being raised to the supreme power, he sought to rule according to the wise and liberal ideas which were suggested by the actual condition of the world, and the undesirableness of a continued domination of a single city, with such a populace as that of Rome. Before he could carry out his large schemes, he was cut down. ASSASSINATION OF CAESAR.--Caesar was tired of staying in Rome, and was proposing to undertake an expedition against the Parthians. Neither his clemency nor the necessity and the merits of the government sustained by him, availed to shield him against the machinations of enemies. The aristocratic party detested his policy. He was suspected of aiming at the title, as well as the power, of a king. A conspiracy made up of numerous senators who secretly hated him, of other individuals influenced by personal spite, and of republican visionaries like _Cassius_ and _Junius Brutus_, who gloried in what they considered tyrannicide, assaulted him on the ides of March (March 15, 44 B.C.) in the hall of _Pompeius_, whither he had come to a session of the Senate. He received twenty-three wounds, one of which, at least, was fatal, and fell, uttering, a tradition said, a word of gentle reproach to Brutus, one who had been counted a special friend. _Cicero_ had acquiesced in the new government, and eulogized _Caesar_ and his administration. But even he expressed his satisfaction at the event which left the republic without a master. An amnesty to those who slew Caesar was advocated by him, and decreed by the Senate. THE SECOND TRIUMVIRATE.--The Senate gave to the leading conspirators provinces; to _Decimus Brutus_, Cisalpine Gaul. But at Rome there was quickly a re-action of popular wrath against the enemies of Csesar, which was skillfully fomented by _Marcus Antonius_ in the address which he made to the people over his dead body, pierced with so many wounds. The people voted to give Cisalpine Gaul to _Antonius_, and he set out to take it from _Decimus Brutus_ by force of arms. _Cicero_ delivered a famous series of harangues against Antonius, called the _Philippics. Antonius,_ being defeated, fled to _Lepidus_, the governor of Transalpine Gaul. _Octavius_, the grand-nephew and adopted son of _Caesar_, a youth of eighteen, now became prominent, and at first was supported by the Senate in the hope of balancing the power of _Antonius_. But in October, 43, _Octavianus_ (as he was henceforward called), _Antonius,_ and _Lepidus_ together formed a second triumvirate, which became legal, by the ratification of the people, for the period of five years. A proscription for the destruction of the enemies of the three contracting parties was a part of this alliance. A great number were put to death, among them _Cicero_, a sacrifice to the vengeance of Antonius. War against the republicans was the necessary consequence. At _Philippi_ in Thrace, in the year 42, _Antonius_ and _Octavianus_ defeated _Brutus_ and _Cassius_, both of whom committed suicide. _Porcia_, the wife of _Brutus_, and the daughter of _Cato_, on hearing of her husband's death, put an end to her own life. Many other adherents of the republic followed the example of their leaders. The victors divided the world between themselves, _Antonius_ taking the east, _Octavianus_ the west, while to the weak and avaricious _Lepidus_, Africa was assigned; but he was soon deprived of his share by _Octavianus_. CIVIL WAR: ACTIUM.--_Antonius_ was enamoured of _Cleopatra_, and, following her to Egypt, gave himself up to luxury and sensual gratification. Civil war between _Octavianus_ and the followers of _Antonius_ in Italy (40, 41 B.C.) was followed by the marriage of _Octavia_, the sister of _Octavianus_, to _Antonius_. But after a succession of disputes between the two regents, there was a final breach. _Antonius_ (35) went so far as to give Roman territories to the sons of _Cleopatra_, and to send to _Octavia_ papers of divorce. The Senate, at the instigation of _Octavianus_, deprived his unworthy colleague of all his powers. War was declared against _Cleopatra_. East and West were arrayed in arms against one another. The conflict was determined by the naval victory of _Octavianus_at _Actium_ (Sept. 2, 31 B.C.). Before the battle was decided, _Cleopatra_ fled, and was followed by _Antonius_. When the latter approached _Alexandria_, _Antonius_, deceived by the false report that _Cleopatra_ had destroyed herself, threw himself upon his sword and died. _Cleopatra_, finding herself unable to fascinate the conqueror, but believing that he meant that she should adorn his public triumph at Rome, poisoned herself (30). _Egypt_ was made into a Roman province. The month _Sextilis_, on which _Octavianus_returned to Rome, received in honor of him the name of "August," from "Augustus," the "venerated" or "illustrious," the name given him in 27 B.C. by the Roman people and Senate. He celebrated three triumphs; and, for the third time since the city was founded, the Temple of Janus was closed. PERIOD V. THE IMPERIAL MONARCHY: _TO THE MIGRATIONS OF THE TEUTONIC TRIBES (375 A.D.)._ CHAPTER I. THE REIGN OF AUGUSTUS. AUGUSTUS AS A RULER.--The long-continued, sanguinary civil wars made peace welcome. _Augustus_ knew how to conceal his love of power under a mild exterior, and to organize the monarchy with a nominal adherence to republican forms. The controlling magistracies, except the censorship, were transferred to him. As _Imperator_, he had unlimited command over the military forces, and was at the head of a standing army of three hundred and forty thousand men. To him it belonged to decide on peace and war. The _Senate_ became the real legislative body, issuing _senatus-consulta_. There was also a sort of "cabinet council" chosen by him from its members. The authority of the _Tribunes_ belonged to him, and thus the popular assemblies became more and more a nullity. "The Senate was made up of his creatures; the people were won by bread and games; the army was fettered to him by means of booty and gifts." While the forms of a free state remained, all the functions of authority were exercised by the ruler. STATE OF THE EMPIRE.--(1) _Its Extent_. The Roman Empire extended from the Atlantic to the Euphrates, a distance of more than three thousand miles, and from the Danube and the English Channel--later, from the friths of Scotland--to the cataracts of the Nile and the African desert. Its population was somewhere from eighty millions to one hundred and twenty millions. It was composed of the _East_ and the _West_, a distinction that was not simply geographical, but included deeper characteristic differences. (2) _The Provinces_. The provinces were divided (27 B.C.) into the _proconsular_, ruled by the Senate, and the _imperial_, ruled by the legates of Augustus. His authority, however, was everywhere supreme. Over all the empire extended the system of Roman law, the rights and immunities of which belonged to Roman citizens everywhere. (3) _The Two Languages_. It was a _Romano-Hellenic_ monarchy. Local dialects remained; but the _Greek_ language was the language of commerce, and of polite intercourse in all places. The Greek tongue and Hellenic culture were the common property of the nations. The _Latin_ was prevalent west of the Adriatic. It was adopted in Africa, Spain, Gaul, and in other provinces. It was the language of courts and of the camp. (4) _Journeys and Trade_. The Roman territory was covered with a net-work of magnificent roads. Journeys for purposes of trade and from motives of curiosity were common. Religious pilgrimages to famous shrines were frequent. The safety and peace which followed upon the civil wars stimulated traffic and intercourse between the different regions united under the imperial government. LITERATURE.--The Augustan period was the golden age of Roman literature. Literary works were topics of conversation in social circles. Libraries were collected by the rich. The shops of booksellers were places of resort for cultivated people. There were active and liberal patrons of poets and of other men of letters. Such patrons were _Maecenas_, _Horace's_ friend, and _Augustus_ himself. Then favors were repaid by praises and flattery, as we see in the verses of _Horace_, _Virgil_, and especially of _Ovid_. The lectures of grammarians and rhetoricians, of philosophers and physicians, were largely attended. Literary societies were formed. Periodicals and bulletins were published, in which the proceedings of the Senate and of the courts were recorded. The business of _scribes_--copyists of manuscripts--engaged a vast number of persons. WRITINGS OF CICERO.--Cicero (106-43), in his philosophic writings, reproduces the thoughts and speculations of the Greek sages, in the manner of a cultivated and appreciative student. His speeches and his epistles, especially those to his friend, _Atticus_, lift the veil, as it were, and afford us most interesting glimpses of the civil and social life of the Romans of that day. THE POETS.--One of the most original of the Latin poets is _Lucretius_ (95-51 B.C.), whose poem "On the Nature of Things" is an effort to dispel superstitious fear by inculcating the Epicurean doctrine that the world is self-made through the movement and concussion of atoms, and that the gods leave it to care for itself. A contemporary of Lucretius, and a poet of equal merit, but in an altogether different vein, is _Catullus_. He is chiefly noted for his lyrics. _Virgil_ (70-19 B.C.), in the _Aeneid_, has produced a genuine Roman epic, although his dependence on Homer is obvious throughout, and in the _Bucolics_, and in particular in the _Georgics_, where he shows most originality, has made himself immortal as a pastoral poet. _Horace_ (65-8 B.C.), like most of the Roman authors, in many of his poems is inspired by his Greek models, but, in his _Satires_ and _Poetic Epistles_, expresses the character of his own genius. His "Odes," for their beauty and melody and the variety of their topics, rank among the best of all productions of their kind. _Ovid_ (43 B.C.-A.D. 18), in his chief work, the _Metamorphoses_, handled the mythical tales of the Greeks, and, in his poems on _Love_, likewise introduced many Grecian tales. He was much influenced by the Alexandrian poets. THE HISTORIANS.--In historical composition, most of the Roman authors had Greek patterns before their eyes. Nevertheless, _Livy_ (59 B.C.-A.D. 17), thirty-five of the one hundred and forty-two books of whose "Annals" have been preserved, and _Sallust_, to whom we are indebted for narratives of the conspiracy of Cataline and of the Jugurthine war, are far from being servile copyists. The simple and lucid but graceful style of the _Commentaries_ of _Caesar_ makes this work an example of the purest Latin prose. LAW WRITERS.--In one department, that of jurisprudence, the Romans were eminently original. The writings of the great jurists were simple and severe, and free from the rhetorical traits which Roman authors in other departments borrowed from the Greeks. OTHER AUTHORS.--Among other eminent authors of this period are the great Roman antiquary _Varro_ (116-27 B.C.); the elegiac poets, _Tibullus_ and _Propertius_; _Phaedrus_, the Roman Aesop; the historian, _Cornelius Nepos_; and the Greek historical writers of that day, _Diodore_ of Sicily and _Dionysius_ of Halicarnassus; also _Strabo_, the Greek geographer (64 B.C.-A.D. 24). THE INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY. THE JEWS AND THEIR DISPERSION.--There were three ancient peoples, each of which fulfilled an office of its own in history. The _Greeks_ were the intellectual people, the _Romans_ were founders in law and politics: from the _Hebrews_ the true religion was to spring. At the epoch of the birth of Jesus, the Hebrews, like the Greeks and Romans, were scattered abroad, and mingled with all other nations. Wherever they went they carried their pure monotheism, and built their synagogues for instruction in the law and for common worship. In the region of _Babylon_, a multitude of Jews had remained after the captivity. Two out of the five sections of _Alexandria_ were occupied by them. At _Antioch_ in Syria, the other great meeting-place of peoples of diverse origin and religion, they were very numerous. In the cities of Asia Minor, of Greece and Macedonia, in Illyricum and in Rome, they were planted in large numbers. Jewish merchants went wherever there was room for profitable trade. Generally regarded with aversion on account of their religious exclusiveness, they nevertheless made so many proselytes that the Roman philosopher, _Seneca_, said of them, "The conquered have given laws to the conquerors." Prophecy had inspired the Jews with an abiding and fervent expectation of the ultimate conquest of heathenism, and prevalence of their faith. If the hope of a temporal Messiah to free them from the Roman yoke, and to lead them to an external victory and dominion, burned in the hearts of most, there were some of a more spiritual mind and of deeper aspirations, who looked for One who should minister to the soul, and bring in a reign of holiness and peace. PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY AMONG THE HEATHEN.--In the heathen world, there was not wanting a preparation for such a Deliverer. The union of all the nations in the Roman Empire had lessened the mutual antipathy of peoples, melted down barriers of feeling as well as of intercourse, and weakened the pride of race. An indistinct sense of a common humanity had entered the breasts of men. Writers, like _Cicero_, talked of a great community, a single society of gods and men. The _Stoic philosophy_ had made this idea familiar. Mankind, it was said, formed one city. Along with this conception, precepts were uttered in favor of forbearance and fraternal kindness between man and man. In religion, there was a drift towards monotheism. The old mythological religion was decaying, and traditional beliefs as to divine things were dissolving. Many minds were yearning for something to fill the void,--for a more substantial ground of rest and of hope. They longed for a goal on which their aspirations might center, and to which their exertions might tend. The burden of sin and of suffering that rested on the common mass excited at least a vague yearning for deliverance. The Roman Empire, with all its treasures and its glory, failed to satisfy the hearts of men. The dreams of philosophy could not be realized on the basis of ancient society, where the state was every thing, and where no higher, more comprehensive and more enduring kingdom could spring into being. CHRIST AND THE APOSTLES.--Four years before the date assigned for the beginning of the Christian era, _Jesus_ was born. _Herod_, a tyrannical king, servile in his attitude toward the Romans, and subject to them, was then ruling over the Jews in Palestine. But, when Jesus began his public ministry, the kingship had been abolished, and Judaea was governed by the procurator, _Pontius Pilate_ (A.D. 26). Jesus announced himself as the _Messiah_, the founder of a kingdom "not of this world;" the members of which were to be brethren, having God for their Father. He taught in a tone of authority, yet with "a sweet reasonableness;" and his wonderful teaching was accompanied with marvelous works of power and mercy, as "he went about doing good." He attached to himself twelve disciples, among whom _Peter_, and the two brothers _James_ and _John_, were the men of most mark. These had listened to the preaching of _John_, the prophet of the wilderness, by whom Jesus had been recognized as the Christ who was to come. The ministry of the Christ produced a wide-spread excitement, and a deep impression upon humble and truth-loving souls. But his rebuke of the ruling class, the _Pharisees_, for their formalism, pretended sanctity, self-seeking, and enslavement to tradition, excited in them rancorous enmity. His disappointment of the popular desire for a political Messiah chilled the enthusiasm of the multitude, many of whom had heard him gladly. After about three years, he was betrayed by one of his followers, _Judas Iscariot_; was accused of heterodoxy and blasphemy before the Jewish Sanhedrim; the consent of Pilate to his death was extorted by a charge of treason based on the title of "king," which he had not refused; and he was crucified between two malefactors. Not many days elapsed before his disciples rallied from their despondency, and boldly and unitedly declared, before magistrates and people, that he had manifested himself to them in bodily form, in a series of interviews at definite places and times. They proclaimed his continued though invisible reign, his perpetual presence with them, and his future advent in power. In his name, and on the ground of his death, they preached the forgiveness of sins to all who should believe in him, and enter on a life of Christian obedience. In the year 33 or 34, the death of _Stephen_, the first martyr, at the hands of a Jewish mob, for a time dispersed the church at Jerusalem, and was one step towards the admission of the Gentiles to the privileges of the new faith. But the chief agent in effecting this result, and in thus giving to Christianity its universal character and mission, was the Apostle _Paul_, a converted Pharisee. _Antioch_ in Syria became the cradle of the Gentile branch of the church, and of the missions to the heathen, in which Paul was the leader; while _Peter_ was efficient in spreading the gospel among the Jews in Palestine and beyond its borders. By Paul numerous churches were founded in the course of three extended missionary journeys, which led him beyond Asia into Macedonia, Greece, and Illyricum. By him the gospel was preached from Jerusalem to Rome, where he died as a martyr under _Nero_ in 67 or 68. Not far from the same time, according to a credible tradition, Peter, also, was put to death at Rome. The preachers of the Christian faith pursued their work with a fearless and untiring spirit, and met the malignant persecution of the Jews and the fanatical assaults of the heathen with patient endurance and with prayer for the pardon and enlightenment of their persecutors. THE VICTORY OF THE GERMANS.--Augustus avoided war when he could. His aim was to defend the frontiers of the empire rather than to extend them. The Parthians were prevailed on to return of their own accord the standards and prisoners taken from the army of _Crassus_. But in Germany, _Drusus_, the brave step-son of _Augustus_, made four campaigns on the east of the Rhine, as far as the Weser and the Elbe. On his way back from the Elbe, a fall from his horse terminated his life (9 B.C.). His brother, _Tiberius_, managed to establish the Roman power over a part of the Germanic tribes on the right bank of the river (4 B.C.) Long before (27 B.C.) the western shore of the river had been formed into two provinces, _Upper_ and _Lower Germany_. An incapable and incautious general, _Quintilius Varus_, excited the freedom-loving Germans to revolt under the brave chief of the _Cherusci_, _Arminius_ (or Hermann). Three Roman legions were annihilated in the _Teutoburg_ forest, Varus taking his own life. The civil and military chiefs who were taken captive, the Germans slew as a sacrifice to their gods. The rest of the prisoners were made slaves. "Many a Roman from an equestrian or a senatorial house grew old in the service of a German farmer, as a servant in the house, or in tending cattle without." There in the forest of _Teutoburg_ the Germans practically won their independence. On hearing the bad news, Augustus, for several days, could only exclaim, "Varus! give me back my legions!" After the death of Augustus, in his seventy-sixth year, the noble son of Drusus, _Germanicus_, conducted three expeditions against _Arminius_ (A.D. 14-16), obtained a victory over him, and took his wife prisoner, who died in captivity; but the Romans permanently held only the left bank of the Rhine. ROMAN LIFE.--Various particulars characteristic of Roman ways have been, or will be, incidentally referred to. A few special statements may be given in this place. The Romans, like the Greeks, built a town round a height (or capitol) where was a stronghold (_arx_), a place of refuge. Here temples were erected. The _forum_, or market-place, was near by, where the courts sat, and where the people came together to transact business. The dwellings were on the sides of the hill, or on the plain beneath. The streets were narrow. The exterior of the houses was plain. They were of brick, generally covered with stucco, and whitewashed. Glass was too costly to be much used: hence the openings in the walls were few. When the space became valuable, as in Rome, the houses were built high. The chief room in the house was the _atrium_, which, in earlier times, was not only the common room but also the bedroom of the family. In the primitive dwellings it had been the only room. A passage led from it through a door-way into the street. In front and on both sides were apartments, and in the rear a walled court, or garden. Large houses had several inclosed courts. Rich men and nobles built magnificent palaces. The walls of Roman dwellings within were decorated with fresco-paintings, some of which at Pompeii are left in all their freshness. Round the dinner-table were couches, on which those who partook of the meal reclined. In other rooms chairs were plentifully supplied. Lamps were very numerous and of beautiful design, but the wick was so small that they gave but little light. There was little furniture in the _atrium_. Statues stood round the walls of this room, if the house were one of the better sort, and in open presses on the walls were the images or masks of the distinguished ancestors of the family. At a funeral of a member of the household they were worn in the procession by persons representing the deceased progenitors. DRESS.--The principal material of a Roman's dress was woolen cloth. The main article of wearing apparel for a man was the _toga_, thrown over the shoulders, and brought in folds round the waist in a way to leave the right arm free. Under it was a tunic. At the age of about seventeen, the boy publicly laid aside the _toga_ with a purple hem, and put on the white toga, the token of citizenship. Women wore a long tunic girded about the waist, with a tunic and a close-fitting vest beneath. Except on a journey or in an open theater, as a protection from the sun, neither men nor women wore any covering on the head. Women, when they walked abroad, wore veils which did not cover the face. The color and form of the shoes varied with the rank of the individual, and were significant of it. In the house, sandals were used. ORDER OF OCCUPATIONS.--The interval from sunrise to sunset was divided into twelve hours. The seventh hour of the day began at noon. At the third hour, there was usually a light meal, which was followed by business, or visits of friendship. The wealthy Roman was followed about the city by a throng of clients, who called on him with their morning greeting before he rose, and received their gift of food or money. At noon came the _prandium_, or more substantial breakfast. This was followed by a short sleep, in the case of those who were at leisure to take it. Then came games and physical exercise of various sorts. A favorite recreation, both for young and old, was ball-games. Exercise was succeeded by the bath, for which the Romans from the later times of the republic had a remarkable fondness. In private houses the bathing conveniences were luxurious. The emperors built magnificent bath-houses, which included gymnasia, and sometimes libraries. What is now called the Turkish bath was very much in vogue. Dinner, or the _cena_, the principal meal, was about midway between noon and sunset. The fork was not used at the table, but only in carving; but spoons, and sometimes, it would appear, knives, were used by the host and his guests. The food was so carved that it was usually taken with the fingers. At the table, the toga was exchanged for a lighter garment, and sandals were laid aside. The beverage was wine mixed with water. At banquets of the rich, after the dessert of fruit and cakes had been taken, there was, in later times, the _convivium_, or social "drinking-bout." Under the empire, this became often a scene of indecent revelry. The Roman dinner-table was not so likely as a Greek repast to be enlivened by flashes of intellect and of wit, or by music furnished by the guests. Musicians were more commonly hired performers, as were also the dancers. The Romans enjoyed games of chance. Playing with dice, and gambling along with it, became common. MARRIAGE AND THE HOUSEHOLD.--There were two kinds of marriage. By one the wife passed entirely out of the hands (_manus_) of the father into the hands of the husband, or under his control. There was frequently a religious rite (_confarreatio_); but, when this did not take place, the other customary ceremonies were essentially the same. At the betrothal the prospective bride was frequently presented with a ring, and with some more valuable gift, by the man whom she was to marry. In the household, notwithstanding the supreme authority of the husband, the wife had an honored position and an active influence. The children were, in law, the property of the father. Their lives were at his disposal. The mother had charge of their early training. The father took the principal charge of the young boy, taught him athletic exercises, and took him to the forum with him. Schools began to exist in the early period. Boys and girls studied together. The _pedagogue_ was the servant who accompanied the child to school, and conducted him home. Greek was studied. The law of the Twelve Tables was committed to memory. Virgil and Horace became school-books, along with Cicero and earlier writers. In the later republican period, Greeks took the business of teaching largely into their hands. There were flourishing schools of rhetoric managed both by Greek and by Latin teachers. Young Romans who could afford to do so went to Athens and other cities in the East for their university training. SLAVES.--Town-slaves were found in the richer families in great numbers (p. 152). They were not only employed in menial occupations: they were clerks, copyists, sculptors, architects, etc., as well as actors and singers. The work of the farm-slaves was harder. They were shut up in the night in large barracks, made partly under ground, into which was admitted but little light or air. They often worked in chains. In town and country both, the unlimited power of the master led to great severity and cruelty in the treatment of slaves. Women as well as men were often guilty of brutal harshness. Females as well as males were the sufferers. The town-slave, however, might be favored by his master: he might be allowed to save money of his own, and might, perhaps, buy his freedom, or receive it as a gift. During the holidays of the _Saturnalia_, slaves were allowed unusual privileges and pleasures. The _freedmen_ could become citizens, and were then eligible to any office. MAGISTRATES.--A Roman who sought office went round soliciting votes. This was called _ambitio_ (from _ambire_, to go round), whence is derived the English word _ambition_. He presented himself in public places in a toga specially whitened, and was hence called a _candidate_ (from _candida_, meaning _white_). He sought to get support by providing shows and games. The voting was by ballot. Magistrates had their seats of honor, which were made in a particular shape. In the different forms used in the trial of causes, there was one general practice,--the magistrate laid down the law, and referred the judgment as to the facts in the case to an umpire, either an individual or a special court. THE JULIAN IMPERIAL HOUSE. C. JULIUS CÆSAR, _m_. Aurelia. | +--C. JULIUS CÆSAR. | +--Julia, _m_. M. Atius Balbus. | +--Atia, _m_. C. Octavius. | +--C. Octavius (adopted as son by the will of Julius) became C. JULIUS CÆSAR OCTAVIANUS AUGUSTUS, _m_. 2, Scribonia; | +--Julia _m_. 2, M. Vipsanius Agrippa. | +--Agrippina, | _m_. Germanicus. | | | +--CAIUS (Caligula), | | _m_. Cæsonia, | | | | | +--Julia Drusilla. | | | +--Agrippina, | _m_. Cn. Domitius. | | | +--L. DOMITIUS NERO, | _m_. Poppæa Sabina. | | | +--Claudia Augusta. | +--Julia, _m_. Æmilius Paulus. | +--Æmilia Lepida, _m_. 1, CLAUDIUS; 2, Junius Silanus. | +--Junia Calvina, _m_. VITELLIUS. 3, Livia. | +--TIBERIUS (adopted as son by Augustus). THE CLAUDIAN IMPERIAL HOUSE. TIBERIUS CLAUDIUS NERO. _m_. Livia Drusilla (afterwards wife of AUGUSTUS). | +--TIBERIUS CLAUDIUS NERO. | +--Drusus Claudius Nero, _m_. Antonia, daughter of the Triumvir and niece of Augustus. | +--Germanicus, | _m_. Agrippina. | +--TI. CLAUDIUS DRUSUS, _m_. 5, Valeria Messalina. | +--Octavia, | _m_. NERO. | +--Britannicus. | +--By adoption, NERO. CHAPTER II. THE EMPERORS OF THE AUGUSTAN HOUSE. TIBERIUS.--During the long reign of the prudent _Augustus_, there was peace within the borders of the empire. He said of himself, that he "found Rome of brick, and left it of marble." This change may be taken as a symbol of the growth of material prosperity in the Roman dominions. But in his private relations, the emperor was less fortunate. His daughter _Julia_, a woman of brilliant talents, disgraced him by her immorality, and he was obliged to banish her. Her two elder sons died when they were young. The empire devolved on his adopted step-son _Tiberius_ (14-37), who endeavored to continue the same conservative policy. Tiberius was at first alarmed by mutinies among the troops in Pannonia and on the Rhine. The army of the Rhine urged _Germanicus_, the emperor's adopted son and probable successor, to lead it to Rome, promising to place him on the throne, but _Germanicus_ succeeded in quieting the disturbance. As there were during this reign no great wars, _Tiberius_ was able to devote himself more exclusively to the civil administration. He transferred from the popular assembly to the Senate the right of choosing the magistrates, emphasizing in this way the dual system that Augustus had created. The rights of the Senate he appeared scrupulously to respect. For the more effective government of the city of Rome he established there a permanent prefecture and brought together in a camp before the Viminal gate the nine prætorian cohorts. Unhappily this Prætorian Guard, which might serve to overawe the city mobs, might also interfere in the affairs of government. Indeed, a little later it had to be counted with in the choice of emperors. The notorious _Sejanus_ was prefect during a large part of this reign, and acquired so completely the confidence of Tiberius that he began to plot his overthrow. He had already caused _Drusus_, the son of Tiberius, to be poisoned in order to remove one obstacle. Finally the emperor discovered his plots and caused him to be arrested and put to death (31). For several years Tiberius had been living in retirement on the island of _Capreæ_. There his enemies represented him as given over to debauchery, while the lives of Roman citizens were never safe from his suspicions or from the accusations of the _delators_, men who presented formal charges of crime, there being no public prosecutors. Earlier in his reign _Tiberius_ had shown a serious purpose to improve the administration of justice, but with the lapse of years he became distrustful and cruel. He had, moreover, changed the law of treason so that to write or speak slightingly of the emperor was interpreted as conspiracy to bring the commonwealth into contempt and was punished with death. Although he was justly hated by the Roman nobles, in the provinces he was respected because he sought to protect them against extortion and to foster their general interests. He died in the year 37 at the age of seventy-eight. CALIGULA.--There was no law for the regulation of the succession. But the Senate, the prætorians, and the people united in calling to the throne _Caius_, the son of Germanicus (37-41). This ruler, called _Caligula_, at first mild and generous in his doings, soon rushed into such excesses of savage cruelty and monstrous vice that he was thought to be half-deranged. He was fond of seeing with his own eyes the infliction of tortures. His wild extravagance in the matter of public games and in building drained the resources of the empire. After four years, this madman was cut down by two of his guards whom he had grievously insulted. CLAUDIUS.--_Claudius_, the uncle and successor of _Caligula_, and the son of Drusus and Antonia, was not bad, but weak. He was a student and a recluse in his habits. His favorites and nearest connections were unprincipled. The depravity of his wife, _Messalina_, was such that he did right in sanctioning her death. The immoral and ambitious _Agrippina_, whom he next married, had an influence less malign. But she was unfaithful to her husband; and this fact, together with the fear she felt that _Nero_, her son by her first marriage, would be excluded from the throne, impelled her to the crime of taking the life of _Claudius_ by poison. NERO.--_Nero_ reigned from 54 to 68. He was the grandson of Germanicus, and had been the pupil of the philosopher _Seneca_, and of _Burrus_, an excellent man, the captain of the Prætorian Guard. The first five years of Nero's reign were honorably distinguished from the portion of it that followed. When a warrant for the execution of a criminal was brought to him, he regretted that he had ever learned to write. His first great crime was the poisoning of _Britannicus_, the son of _Claudius_. Nero became enamored of a fierce and ambitious woman, _Poppæa Sabina_. On the basis of false charges, he took the life of his wife, _Octavia_, the daughter of Claudius (A.D. 62). His criminal mother, Agrippina, after various previous attempts made by him to destroy her, was dispatched by his command (A.D. 59). His unbridled cruelty and jealousy moved him to order _Seneca_, one of the men to whom he owed most, to commit suicide. He came forward as a musician, and nothing delighted him so much as the applause rendered to his musical performances. He recited his own poems, and was stung with jealousy when he found himself outdone by _Lucan_. His eagerness to figure as a charioteer prompted him, early in his reign, to construct a circus in his own grounds on the _Vatican_, where he could exhibit his skill as a coachman to a throng of delighted spectators. At length he appeared, lyre in hand, on the stage before the populace. Senators of high descent, and matrons of noble family, were induced by his example and commands to come forward in public as dancers and play-actors. The public treasure he squandered in expensive shows, and in the lavish distribution of presents in connection with them. THE CHRISTIANS.--_Nero_ has the undesirable distinction of being the first of the emperors to persecute the Christians. In A.D. 64 a great fire broke out at Rome, which laid a third of the city in ashes. He was suspected of having kindled it; and, in order to divert suspicion from himself, he charged the crime upon the Christians, who were obnoxious, _Tacitus_ tells us, on account of their "hatred of the human race." Their withdrawal from customary amusements and festivals, which involved immorality or heathen rites, naturally gave rise to this accusation of cynical misanthropy. A great number were put to death, "and in their deaths they were made subjects of sport; for they were covered with the hides of wild beasts, and worried to death by dogs, or nailed to crosses, or set fire to, and, when day declined, were burned to serve for nocturnal lights." At length a feeling of compassion arose among the people for the victims of this wanton ferocity. Prior to this time, while the Christians were confounded with the Jews as one of their sects, they had been more protected than persecuted by the Roman authorities. Now that they were recognized as a distinct body,--the adherents of a new religion not identified with any particular nation, but seeking to spread itself everywhere,--they fell under the condemnation of Roman law, and were exposed to the hostility of magistrates, as well as to the wrath of the fanatical populace. Nero was a great builder. The ground which had been burnt over in the fire he laid out in regular streets, leaving open spaces, and limiting the height of the houses. But a large area he reserved for his "Golden House," which, with its lakes and shady groves, stretched over the ground on which the Coliseum afterwards stood, and as far as the Esquiline. THE CITY OF ROME.--Ancient Rome was mostly built on the left bank of the Tiber. It spread from the Palatine, the seat of the original settlement, over six other hills; so that it became the "city of seven hills." All of them appeared higher than they do now. Of these hills the Capitoline was the citadel and the seat of the gods. In earlier days, from a part of the summit, the Tarpeian Rock, criminals were hurled. In time the hill became covered with public edifices, of which the grandest was the Temple of "Capitoline Jupiter." On the Palatine were eventually constructed the vast palaces of the emperors, the ruins of which have been uncovered in recent times. The walls of _Servius Tullius_ encompassed the seven hills. The walls constructed by _Aurelian_ (270-275 A.D.), _Probus_, and _Honorius_ (402 A.D.), inclosed an area twelve miles in circumference. The streets were most of them narrow; and, to economize space, the houses were built very high. One of the finest, as well as most ancient, thoroughfares was the _Via Sacra_, which ran past the Coliseum, or the Flavian amphitheater, and under the Triumphal Arch of _Titus_, erected after the capture of Jerusalem, along the east of the Forum to the Capitol. There was a particular street in Rome where shoemakers and booksellers were congregated. The central part of the city was thronged, and noisy with cries of teamsters and of venders of all sorts of wares. The _fora_--one of which, the "Roman Forum," between the Capitoline and the Palatine, was the great center of Roman life--were open places paved, and surrounded with noble buildings,--temples, and _basilicas_, or halls of justice. The _fora_ were either places for the transaction of public business, or they served the purpose of modern market-places. Among the public buildings of note were the vast colonnades, places of resort both for business and for recreation. The sewers, and especially the aqueducts, were structures of a stupendous character. Among the most imposing edifices in ancient Rome were the baths. Those built by _Diocletian_ had room for three thousand bathers at once. In these establishments the beauty of the gardens and fountains without was on a level with the elegance of the interior furnishings, and with the attraction of the libraries, paintings, and sculptures, which added intellectual pleasure to the physical comfort for which, mainly, these gigantic buildings were constructed. Besides the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, there were many other temples, some of which were but little inferior to that majestic edifice. The triumphal arches--as that of _Titus_, already mentioned, which was built of Pentelic marble--and the commemorative columns--as the Column of _Trajan_, which stood in the forum that bears his name--were among the architectural wonders of the ancient capital of the world. The plain, named of old the _Campus Martius_, on the north-west side of the city, and bordering on the Tiber, contained, among the buildings and pleasure-grounds by which it was covered, the Pantheon, and the magnificent mausoleum of Augustus. On the south-west of the Coelian Hill, the Appian Way turns to the south-east, and passes out of the Appian Gate. It is skirted for miles with sepulchral monuments of ancient Romans, of which the circular tomb of _Metella Cæcilia_ is one of the most interesting. There are varying estimates of the population of ancient Rome. Probably the number of free inhabitants, in the early centuries of the empire, was not far from a million; and the slaves were probably almost as many. DEATH OF NERO: GALBA.--Growing jealous of the legates who commanded armies on the frontiers, _Nero_ determined to destroy them. They consequently revolted; and war between the troops of two of them issued in the death of _Vindex_, the general in Gaul. But _Galba_ was deputed to carry on the contest; and Nero, being forsaken even by his creature, _Tigellinus_, and the prætorians, at last gained courage to call on a slave to dispatch him, and died (A.D. 68) at the age of thirty. The principal events out of Italy, during his reign, were the revolt of the Britons under the brave queen _Boadicea_ (A.D. 61), and the suppression of it by _Suetonius Paulinus_; the war with the Parthians and Armenians, extending slightly the frontier of the empire; and the beginning of the Jewish war. Despite the corruption at Rome, her disciplined soldiers still maintained their superiority on the borders. OTHO: VITELLIUS.--With the death of Nero, the Augustan family came to an end. _Galba_ began the series of military emperors. A Roman of the old type, simple, severe, and parsimonious, he pleased nobody. The prætorians killed him, and elevated _Otho_, a profligate noble, to the throne; but he was obliged to contend with a rival aspirant, _Vitellius_, commander of the German legions, who defeated him, and became emperor A.D. 69. Vitellius was not only vicious, like his predecessor, but was cowardly and inefficient. The Syrian and Egyptian legions refused to obey so worthless a ruler, and proclaimed their commander, _Flavius Vespasian_, as emperor. As Vespasian's general, _Antonius_, approached Rome, _Vitellius_ renounced the throne, and declared his readiness to retire to private life. His adherents withstood him; and, in the struggle that followed between the two parties in the city, the Capitoline Temple was burned. The Flavian army took Rome, and _Vitellius_ was put to an ignominious death (A.D. 69). CHAPTER III. THE FLAVIANS AND THE ANTONINES. VESPASIAN: THE JEWISH WAR.--_Vespasian_, the first in the list of good emperors, restored discipline in the army and among the prætorians, instituted a reform in the finances, and erected the immense amphitheater now called the _Coliseum_, for the gladiatorial games. By his general, _Cerealis_, he put down the revolt in Germany and Eastern Gaul, and thus saved several provinces to the empire. _Civilis_, the leader of the rebellion, had aimed to establish an independent German principality on the west of the Rhine. Vespasian had begun the war with the Jews while _Nero_ reigned (A.D. 66). The Romans had to face a most energetic resistance. Among the captives taken by them in Galilee was the Jewish historian, _Josephus_. At the end of A.D. 67, all Galilee was subdued. The fanatical, or popular, party, the _Zealots_, got the upper hand at _Jerusalem_. The city was torn with the strife of violent factions. In A.D. 70 commenced the memorable siege by _Titus_, the son of Vespasian, the details of which are given by _Josephus_. The fall of the city was attended with the conflagration of the temple. Although the estimate given by _Josephus_ of the number that perished during the siege, which he places at eleven hundred thousand, is exaggerated, it is true that the destruction of life was immense. The inhabitants of the city who were not killed were sold as slaves. In _Britain_ a most competent officer--_Agricola_, the father-in-law of Tacitus--was made governor in A.D. 78. He conquered the country as far north as the _Tyne_ and the _Solway_, and built a line of forts across the isthmus between England and Scotland. TITUS (A.D. 79-81).--Vespasian's firm and beneficent reign was followed by the accession of _Titus_, who had been previously associated by his father with himself in the imperial office. Titus was mild in temper, but voluptuous in his tastes, and prodigal in expenditures. One of the marked events of his short reign was the destruction of the cities of _Pompeii_ and _Herculaneum_ by a great eruption of Vesuvius (A.D. 79). The uncovering of the streets and buildings of _Pompeii_ in recent times has added much to our knowledge of ancient arts and customs. A terrible fire and destructive pestilence at Rome were regarded as sent by the gods, not on account of the sins of the emperor, but of the nation. DOMITIAN (A.D. 81-96).--_Domitian_, the younger brother of _Titus_, succeeded him. By nature autocratic, he refused to share the government with the senate, as Augustus had planned. In order the more completely to control this body he assumed the censorship for life. In the latter part of his reign _Domitian_, like _Tiberius_, was gloomy and suspicious, and committed many acts of tyranny. He was killed by the freedmen of his own palace (A.D. 96). His war with the _Dacians_ on the Danube had been concluded by the dubious stipulation to pay them an annual tribute as a reward for abstaining from predatory incursions into _Moesia_ (A.D. 90). For the first time, Rome purchased peace of her enemies. _Domitian_ was guilty of persecuting the Christians, among whom, it is now known, was included at least one member of his own family, his niece, _Flavia Domatilla_, who was also allied to him by marriage. The epistle of _Clement_ of Rome, the oldest extant Christian writing after the Apostles, refers to the barbarities inflicted upon Christian disciples by this tyrant. NERVA (A.D. 96-98).--The Senate now took the initiative, and placed on the throne one of their own number, _Nerva_, an old man of mild and virtuous character. The administration was in every point in contrast with the preceding. But the best thing Nerva did was to provide for the curbing of the prætorians by appointing, with the concurrence of the Senate, a most competent man to be his colleague and successor. TRAJAN (A.D. 98-117).--_Trajan_ was a native of Spain, and had been brought up in the camp. He belongs among the very best of the Roman emperors. He upheld the ancient laws and institutions of the state. He provided for the impartial administration of justice. He restored freedom of speech in the Senate. He founded schools, and establishments for the care of orphans, facilitated commerce by building new roads, bridges, and havens, and adorned Rome with a public library, and with a new and magnificent forum, or market-place, where "Trajan's Column" was placed by Senate and people as a monument of his victories and services. He relished the society of literary men like the historian _Tacitus_. He was an intimate friend of _Pliny_ (the younger), whose correspondence while he was governor of _Bithynia_ throws much light upon the emperor's character and policy. Trajan's own manner of life was simple, and free from luxury. To the people he furnished lavishly the diversions which they coveted. He made an aggressive war against the _Dacians_ on the Danube, and constituted a new province of _Dacia_. He carried his arms into the _Parthian_ territory; and three new provinces--_Armenia, Mesopotamia_, and _Assyria_--were the fruit of his campaign in the East. In a letter to _Pliny_, he defined the policy to be pursued towards Christians, who had become very numerous in the region where _Pliny_ governed. The effect of the emperor's rescript was to place Christianity among the religions under the ban of the law. This decision was long in force, and guided the policy of future emperors towards the new faith. HADRIAN (A.D. 117-138).--Trajan was succeeded by _Hadrian_, a lover of peace,--a cultivated man, with extraordinary taste in the fine arts, and their generous patron. He was diligent and full of vigor in the transaction of public business. Although genial and affable, his temper was not so even as that of Trajan; and he was guilty of occasional acts of cruelty. He spent the larger portion of his reign in traveling through his dominions, personally attending to the wants and condition of his subjects. He constructed great works in different portions of the empire: in Rome, his Mausoleum (now the _Castle of St. Angelo_), and his grand temple of Rome and Venus. He began the wall connecting the Scottish friths. A fresh revolt broke out among the _Jews_ (A.D. 131), under a fanatic named _Bar-Cocaba_, which was suppressed in 135. _Jerusalem_ was razed to the ground; and the Jewish rites were forbidden within the new city of _Ælia Capitolina_, which the emperor founded on its site. This gave a finishing blow to the Jewish and Judaizing types of Christianity within the limits of the Church. ANTONINUS PIUS (A.D. 138-161).--_Antoninus Pius_ was the adopted son and successor of Hadrian. He was one of the noblest of princes, a man of almost blameless life. His reign was an era of peace, the golden age in the imperial history. He fostered learning, was generous without being prodigal, was firm yet patient and indulgent, and watched over the interests of his subjects with the care of a father. It is a sign of the happiness of his reign that it does not afford startling occurrences to the narrator. MARCUS AURELIUS (A.D. 161-180).--Hardly less eminent for his virtues was the next in the succession of sovereigns, _Marcus Aurelius_ (161-180). "A sage upon the throne," he combined a love of learning with the moral vigor and energy of the old Roman character, and with the self-government and serenity of the Stoic school, of the tenets of which he was a noble exemplar as well as a deeply interesting expounder. A philosopher was now on the throne; and his reign gives some countenance to the doctrine of Plato, that the world could be well governed only when philosophers should be kings, or kings philosophers. He endured with patience the grievous faults of his wife _Faustina_, and of his brother by adoption, and co-regent, _Lucius Verus_. He protected the eastern frontier against _Parthia_. In the war with the _Marcomanni_, he drove the German tribes back over the Danube, and gained a signal victory over the _Quadi_ in their own land. His great object was to strike terror into the barbarian enemies of the empire on the north, and prevent future incursions. Although victorious in many of his battles, he failed to accomplish this result. The danger from barbarian invasion increased with the lapse of time. Before his work was finished, _Marcus Aurelius_ died at _Vindobona_ (Vienna), in March, 180. During his reign, there was persecution of Christians. Especially the churches of _Lyons_ and _Vienne_ have left a record of their sufferings. The virtuous emperors, who were strenuous in their exertions to maintain the old laws and customs, were apt to be more severe in their treatment of Christians, whom they ignorantly regarded as a mischievous sect, than were those emperors who were men of looser principles. STATE OF MORALS.--The Roman Empire, in the declining days of heathenism, presented the spectacle of a flourishing civilization in contrast with extreme moral degeneracy. Rich and populous cities; stately palaces; beautiful works of art--as vases, statues, carved altars--on every hand; bridges and aqueducts, and noble highways, binding land to land; institutions of education in the provincial cities as well as in Rome; a thriving trade and commerce; a rapid spread of the Roman language, of the Roman legal system, and Roman culture and manners over the subject countries,--these are among the signs and fruits of civilization. But with all this outward prosperity and elegance, there was a growing sensuality, a decay of manly feeling, a disregard of the sanctity of the marriage tie, an insatiable hunger for wealth and for the pleasures of sense. One of the most corrupting features in the social condition was _slavery_. Every Roman of moderate means aspired to own at least a few slaves. Some owned from ten to twenty thousand, mostly field-hands. Many householders possessed as many as five hundred. _Horace_ gives it as a sign of the simplicity of his life as a bachelor, that he is waited on at table by only three slaves. Slave-holding among the Romans brought in temptations to all sorts of brutality and vice. It brought a poisonous atmosphere into every household. Nothing more clearly illustrates the moral degradation of this period than the character of the sports in which people of all ranks delighted. The most attractive theatrical performances came to be comedies, from the Greek and Latin plays of the same order, where scenes were introduced from the licentious stories of the Greek mythology. But the _Pantomime_, which was often of an unchaste and even obscene character, gradually usurped the place of every other exhibition on the stage. The chief amusements of the people of all classes were the _Circus_ and the _Arena_. In the _Circus_, before hundreds of thousands of spectators, nobles of ancient lineage competed in the chariot race. _Gladiatorial games_, which had first taken place at funerals, and in honor of deceased friends, acquired an almost incredible popularity. At the games instituted by _Augustus_, ten thousand men joined in these bloody combats. In the festivals under the auspices of _Trajan_, in A.D. 106, eleven thousand tame and wild animals were slain. Not satisfied with seeing pairs of men engage in mortal conflict, the Romans were eager to witness bloodshed on a larger scale. The emperors provided actual battles between hundreds and, in some cases, thousands of men, which were beheld by countless spectators. On an artificial lake in Cæsar's garden, _Augustus_ gave a sea-fight in which three thousand soldiers were engaged. The effect of these brutal spectacles of agony and death was inevitably to harden the heart. LITERATURE.--If the sanguinary fights in the arena excited little or no condemnation, the prevalence of various other sorts of immorality, at variance with the practice of better days, could not fail to call out different forms of censure. One of these forms of protest was through the _satirical poets_. Of these caustic writers, _Persius_ (34-62) is obscure and of a moderate degree of merit. _Juvenal_ (about 55-135), on the contrary, is spirited and full of force. _Martial_ (43-101), a Spaniard by birth, was the author of numerous short poems of a pithy and pointed character, called _epigrammata_. All these poets, if we make proper discount for the exaggeration of satire, are very instructive as to the manners and morals of their time. _Lucian_ (120-200), who wrote in Greek, the best known of whose works are his "Dialogues," touched with his broad humor a great many of the superstitions and follies of the day. The popular teachers in the imperial time were the _rhetoricians_, analogous to the Greek _Sophists_,--teachers of rhetoric and eloquence,--one of whom, _Quintilian_ (who was born about 40, and died about 118), was the first to receive from the public treasury a regular salary, and had among his pupils the younger _Pliny_ and the two grand-nephews of _Domitian_. The influence of the mania for rhetoric was more and more to impart an artificial character to literature and art. The epic poems of such writers as _Lucan_ and _Statitis_ are to a large extent imitations; although Lucan's principal poem, "Pharsalia," gives evidence of poetic talent. Where there was so little productive genius, it was natural that grammarians and commentators should abound. There was one great writer, the historian _Tacitus_ (about 54-117), who towers above his contemporaries, and in vigor and conciseness has seldom been equaled. The elder _Pliny_ (23-79), whose curiosity to witness the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 cost him his life, was a famous observer and author in natural history. His nephew, the younger _Pliny_, the friend of Trajan, has left to us ten books of "Epistles," which present an agreeable picture of the life and thoughts of a cultivated Roman gentleman. The philosopher _Seneca_, with the exception of _Marcus Aurelius_, the most eminent expositor of the Roman Stoic school, was a voluminous author. No ancient heathen writer has uttered so many thoughts and precepts which bear a resemblance to teachings of the New Testament. The study that nourished most in this period is _Jurisprudence_. It is the classic era of the jurists. Persons versed in the law were preferred by the emperors for high offices. Men who would have been statesmen under the Republic, found a solace and delight in legal studies. Among the most learned jurists of this era, were _Caius Papinian_, and _Ulpian_. Of the Greek writers, one of the most important is _Plutarch_ (about 50-120), whose "Lives," and "Essays" (or _Moralia_), are among the most delightful and instructive of all the works of antiquity. One of the noblest philosophical writers of that or of any other period is the Stoic _Epictetus_ (50-c.120). The two most popular systems of philosophy in the closing days of the Republic and the early period of the Empire, were the Stoic and the Epicurean. The severity of the Stoic doctrine was somewhat softened by its Roman teachers; but the rigorous self-control, the superiority to misfortune, and the contempt of death, which it recommended, found favor with noble Romans in dark days. _Cato_ and other champions of the falling Republic were disciples of this school. Later, New Platonism, of a mystical and contemplative type, secured many adherents. SKEPTICISM.--Long before the fall of the Republic, faith in the old mythology had begun to decline. This change followed upon an intimate contact of the Romans with the Greek religion. It was hastened by the familiarity acquired by the Romans with so great a variety of heathen systems. The decay of morality was attended with a spread of skepticism as regards the supernatural world altogether. In the course of the debate in the Roman Senate on the punishment of the confederates of _Catiline_, _Julius Caesar_ opposed their execution, on the ground that death puts an end to consciousness, and thus to all suffering. It does not appear that in that body, where _Cicero_ and _Cato_ were present, any one disputed this tenet. _Cicero_ in his philosophical essays advocates the doctrine of immortality by arguments, mostly gathered from Greek sources,--arguments some of which are of more and some of less weight. His correspondence, on the contrary, even in times of bereavement, affords no proof that this consoling truth had any practical hold upon his convictions. SUPERSTITION.--The spread of skepticism was attended, as time went on, with a re-action to the other extreme of superstition. Magic and sorcery came into vogue. There was an eagerness to become acquainted with Oriental religious rites, and to pay homage to deities worshiped in the East with mysterious ceremonies. Another tendency strongly manifest was towards what is called _syncretism_, or a mingling of different religious systems. It was hoped that the truth might be found by combining beliefs drawn from many different quarters. This eclectic drift was signally manifest in religion as well as in philosophy. CHAPTER IV. THE EMPERORS MADE BY THE SOLDIERS: THE ABSOLUTE MONARCHY. COMMODUS.--Rome had enjoyed good government for eighty-four years. This was owing to the fact that her sovereigns had been nominated to their office, instead of inheriting it. None of the emperors during this interval had male children. _Marcus Aurelius_ made the mistake of associating with him in power his son _Commodus_, who was eighteen years old when his father died, and reigned alone from 180 to 192. He began his despicable career as sole ruler by buying peace of the _Marcomanni_ and the _Quadi_. He turned out to be a detestable tyrant, who was likewise guilty of the worst personal vices. He was strangled in his bedroom by one of his concubines, _Marcia_, with the assistance of others, all of whom he was intending to kill. At this time the army, where there had been more energy and virtue than in any other class, began to decline in discipline. Society was growing more and more corrupt. It proves the inherent strength of the organization of the Roman Empire, that, amid all the causes of disintegration and decay, it lasted for two centuries longer. I. EMPERORS MADE BY THE SOLDIERS. We now enter upon a period of military license. The emperors are appointed by the soldiers. The rulers, when the soldiers fall out with them, are slain. In the course of ninety-two years, from 192 to 284, twenty-five emperors, with an average reign of less than four years for each, sat on the throne. Only two reigns exceeded ten years. Ten emperors perished by violence at the hands of the soldiers. A real advantage in this way of making emperors, was, that supreme power might thus devolve on able generals; but another, and a fatal result, was the demoralizing of the armies, by whose favor the rulers of the state were set up and pulled down. TO ALEXANDER SEVERUS (A.D. 222).--The assassins of Commodus, with the assent of the praetorians, made a worthy senator, _Pertinax_, emperor; but his honesty and frugality, and his disposition to maintain discipline among the soldiers, caused them to murder him three months after his accession (193). It is said that they then sold the imperial office at auction to a rich senator, but the leaders of the armies in different regions refused their consent. Of these, _Septimius Severus_ (193-211) made his way to the throne, and put down his rivals. The empire became a military despotism. A garrison of forty thousand troops, the prefect of whom was in power second only to the sovereign, took the place of the old prætorians. _Severus_ was a good general. In a war against the Parthians, he captured Ctesiphon, their capital. _Caracalla_, his son (211-217), was a base tyrant. He was murdered by the prætorian prefect, _Macrinus_, who reigned for a short time (217-218), but perished in consequence of his attempts to reform the discipline of the army. _Heliogabalus_ (218-222) was not more cruel than others had been, but his gross and shameless debauchery was without a precedent. POWER OF THE PROVINCES: DISCORD.--In the reign of _Caracalla_ is placed the Edict which gave the rights of citizenship to all the free inhabitants of the Roman Empire. The provinces had been steadily rising in power and influence. At Rome, among officials of the highest grade, as well as in the higher professions, there was a throng of provincials. The provinces were disposed to nominate emperors of their own. It was hard for the central authority to keep under control the frontier armies. To add to these sources of division, there was a growing jealousy between the East and West, owing to a difference in language, ideas, and interests. _Persia_ was soon to threaten the empire on the East, and Gothic barbarians to invade its territories. ALEXANDER SEVERUS: PERSIA.--_Alexander Severus_ (222-235) was a man of pure morals, and sincerely disposed to remedy abuses and to govern well. But the evils were too great for the moderate degree of vigor with which he was endowed. The overthrow of the _Parthian_ kingdom, in 226, created, in the _New Persian Monarchy_, a formidable enemy to Rome. Alexander did little more than check the advance of Persia. In a war against the Germans, he was slain by his own soldiers. TO DECIUS (A.D. 249).--The fierce and brutal _Maximin_, who had excited the soldiers of _Alexander Severus_ to mutiny, reigned from 235 to 238. The Senate roused itself to resist his advance into Italy; and he, and his son with him, were killed in his tent by his soldiers. _Gordian_ (238-244) at least held the frontier against the attacks of the Persians. _Philip_, an Arabian, probably a Roman colonist, after reigning from 244 to 249, was supplanted by _Decius_, whom his rebellious Moesian and Pannonian soldiers raised to power. DECIUS TO CLAUDIUS (A.D. 250-268).--The short reign of _Decius_ was marked by the first general persecution of the Christian Church. During his reign, the _Goths_ (A.D. 250) invaded the empire. They traversed _Dacia_, and crossed the Danube. They ravaged _Moesia_, and even made their way into Thrace. _Decius_ was defeated by them in _Moesia_, and slain. The peril of the empire continually increased. The German tribes on the north, the Goths on the Lower Danube and the Euxine, and Persia in the east, arrayed themselves in hostility. The reigns of _Valerian_ (253-260) and of his associate and successor, _Gallienus_ (260-268), were marked by continuous disaster. Numerous independent rulers--"the thirty tyrants"--established themselves, generally for a very short time, in different regions. In the East, one kingdom, the capital of which was _Palmyra_, and which had for a ruler _Zenobia_, the widow of its founder, lasted for ten years (264-273). The _Goths_ occupied _Dacia_, and from the Cimmerian Bosphorus sent out their predatory expeditions in all directions, plundering cities, including _Athens_ and _Corinth_, and carrying off immense booty to their homes south of the Danube. The _Persians_ conquered _Armenia_, took _Valerian_ prisoner, advanced into Syria, and burned Antioch. TO DIOCLETIAN (A.D. 284).--It would seem as if the Roman empire was on the verge of dissolution. But a series of vigorous emperors--among them _Claudius_ (268-270) and _Aurelian_ (270-275)--quelled rebellion within its borders, and re-established its boundaries; although _Aurelian_ gave up to the Goths _Dacia_, which had been of no benefit to the empire. _Probus_ (276-282) was a prudent as well as valiant ruler. _Carus_ (282-283) invaded Persia, captured _Seleucia_ and _Ctesiphon_, and might, perhaps, have completed the conquest of the country, but for his death. _Numerianus_ (283-284) was the last in the succession of rulers during this period of military control, of which the corruption of the army was the worst result. II. THE ABSOLUTE MONARCHY (TO A.D. 375). DIOCLETIAN.--Once more the gigantic and weakened frame of the Roman Empire was invigorated by a change in the character of the chief rulers and in the method of government. _Diocletian_ (284-305), one of a number of energetic emperors who were of Illyrian birth, first stripped the imperial office of its limitations, and converted it into an absolute monarchy. This new system was carried to its completion by _Constantine_. _Diocletian_ took from the Senate what political jurisdiction was left to it. He abolished the difference between the treasury of the state and the private coffers of the prince. The precedence of Rome was taken away by making other great cities to be seats of government. There were to be two emperors under the title of _Augustus_, with two _Caesars_ under them; and thus the empire was divided, for administrative purposes, into four parts. _Maximian_, the second Augustus, was to rule over Italy, Africa, and the islands, with _Milan_ for his residence. _Constantius Chlorus_ had the western provinces, --Spain, Gaul, and Britain. At _Nicomedia_, _Diocletian_, a man of imposing presence and of great talents as a statesman, exercised rule for twenty years with efficiency and success. The new system, if it involved the peril of strife among the regents, led to a more vigilant and efficient government in the different provinces, and provided for a peaceful succession to the throne. But the government came to resemble, in the omnipotence of the emperor, in the obsequious homage paid to him, and in the cringing manners of the court, an Oriental despotism. The old heathen religion was considered by conservative Romans to be an essential part of the imperial system, and indispensable to the unity of the empire. It was this view, in connection with other influences, which moved _Diocletian_, near the close of his reign, in 303, to set on foot a systematic persecution of the Christian Church, by a series of extremely severe and well-contrived measures, through which it was designed to extirpate the new religion. The last great persecution, in the reign of _Decius_, cruel though it had been, did not approach in severity this final effort to exterminate the disciples of the Christian faith, who had now become very numerous. Terrible sufferings were inflicted, but without avail. In 305 Diocletian, partly on account of a serious illness, formally abdicated, and obliged _Maximian_ to do the same. Civil wars followed, until _Constantine_, the son of _Constantius_, gained the supremacy, first as joint ruler with _Licinius_, who governed in the East, and then, after a bloody struggle which began in A.D. 314, as sole master of the empire (A.D. 323). CONSTANTINE (A.D. 306-337).--The career of _Constantine_ was stained by acts of cruelty towards members of his own family. In the closing period of his life, he was less just and humane than in earlier days. The change which had taken place in the imperial system was signally manifest in his removal of the seat of government to CONSTANTINOPLE, which was built up by him, and named in his honor. Placed between Europe and Asia, on a tongue of land where it was protected from assault, it was admirably suited for a metropolis. But the change of capital involved dangers for the western portions of the empire, exposed as they were to the assaults of the barbarians. The changes in the government begun by Diocletian were completed by Constantine. The empire was divided, for purposes of government, into four _prefectures_, each of which was subdivided into _dioceses_. _Constantine_ established, likewise, different classes of nobles, the type of modern systems of nobility. He organized the army afresh, under the _Master of the Horse_ and _Master of the Foot_, each, however, commanding, in action, both infantry and cavalry, and each having under him _dukes_ and _counts_. In short, the system of central and despotic administration, with subordinate rulers, which _Diocletian_ began, was perfected by _Constantine_. Diocletian, in order to fortify the imperial power against the army, had shared his power with "a cabinet of emperors," which his genius enabled him to control. To prevent the breaking up of the empire through the system of viceroys thus created to preserve it, Constantine separated the civil authority from the military as regards the subordinate rulers, while both functions were united in himself. He still further exalted his throne by giving it even more of an Oriental character, by creating a multitude of officials, who were satellites of the sovereign, and by becoming the secular head and guardian of the Christian Church. The arrangements of his court, with its grades of officials, from the chamberlain downwards, were after the Oriental pattern. THE DOWNFALL OF HEATHENISM. PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY.--The failure of the grand attempt of _Diocletian_ to exterminate Christianity was an indication of its coming triumph. Its progress had been gradual yet rapid, and, in its earlier stages especially, obscure. Of the labors of most of the apostles we know little. On the approach of the Jewish war (p. 180), the Apostle _John_, and other Christians with him, had repaired to Asia Minor. There, at _Ephesus_, this apostle lived until the reign of _Trajan_, and from that center exerted a wide influence, the traces of which are marked and various. The cities were the principal scenes of early missionary work. They were the "strategic points." In them it was easier for Christian preachers to gain a hearing, and in them they were exempt from the hindrance created by strange dialects. Wherever Christians went, even for purposes of trade or mechanical industry, they carried the seeds of the new doctrine. Even with regard to the churches of _Alexandria_ and _Carthage_, which became so flourishing, and in the case of the church at _Rome_ itself, we can not say how they were first planted. The exultant terms in which the ecclesiastical writers at the end, and even as early as the middle, of the second century speak of the increasing number of the converts, proves that the Christian cause was fast gaining ground. Its adherents were sometimes of the higher class, but mostly from the ranks of the poor. PERSECUTIONS.--Persecution from the side of the heathen began among the populace. Always when fire, tempest, or plague occurred, they were ascribed to the wrath of the heathen gods at the desertion of their altars, and the cry was for Christian blood. But Christianity, from the time of _Trajan_, was an illegal religion. Magistrates might at any time require Christians to do homage to the emperor's bust, or to burn incense to the old divinities. To make a proselyte of a Roman citizen, or to meet in private companies for worship, was unlawful. The persecutions by public authority have been said to be ten; but this number is too small if all of them are reckoned, and too large if only those of wide extent are included. The constancy with which even young women and children sometimes endured the torture, excited wonder in the beholders. Among the more noted martyrs are _Ignatius_, bishop of Antioch (116); _Polycarp_, bishop of Smyrna, who had been a pupil of the Apostle John, and was put to death in 155; and _Cyprian_, the aged bishop of Carthage, one of the leading ecclesiastics of the time, who suffered under _Valerian_ in 258. THE CHURCH UNDER CONSTANTINE.--The accession of Constantine made Christianity the predominant religion in the Roman Empire. His conversion was gradual. More and more he came to rely for support in his conflicts with his rivals upon the God of the Christians. The sign of the cross, which he said that he beheld in the sky, and which led him to make the cross his standard, may have been an optical illusion occasioned partly by his own mental state at the moment, when, after prayer, he was standing at noon-day in the door of his tent. He remained, like many others in that day, not without relics of the old beliefs, as is seen from inscriptions on his coins, and other evidences. His own baptism he deferred until he was near his end, on account of the prevalent idea that all previous guilt is effaced in the baptismal water. The edict of unrestricted toleration was issued from _Milan_ in 312. _Constantine_ did not proscribe heathenism. He forbade immoral rites, and rites connected with magic and sorcery. But, with this exception, heathen worshipers were not molested. But the emperor gave his zealous personal countenance to the Christian cause, and marks of his favor to its adherents. By the privileges and immunities which he granted to the Church and its ministers, he did more than he would have been likely to effect by the use of severity against its adversaries. ORGANIZATION OF THE CHURCH.--The early Christian societies were little republics, at first under the supervision of the apostles. Their organization shaped itself partly after the model of the synagogue, and partly from the pattern of the civil communities and the voluntary associations about them. In the apostolic age a body of _elders_ or _bishops_ and a body of _deacons_ in each church guided its affairs, while the members took an active part in the choice of their officers, and in the general direction of ecclesiastical proceedings. In the second century, when we get a distinct view of the churches after the obscure interval that follows the age of the apostles, we find that over the elders is a _bishop_, whose office grows in importance as the churches become larger, as the need of more compact organization is felt, and as the clergy become more and more distinct from the laity. The bishop of the city church acquires jurisdiction over the adjacent country churches. The bishop in the capital of each province comes to exercise a certain superintendence within the province. This is the _metropolitan_ system. More and more the bishops of the great cities, especially _Rome_, _Alexandria_, and _Antioch_, exercise a parallel supervision in larger divisions of the empire. This is the _patriarchal_ system. As early as the closing part of the second century, the catholic or universal church presents itself before us, conceived of as a unity which is made such by the hierarchy of bishops, and by connection with the apostolic sees,--the churches founded by the apostles in person. As the apostles were thought of as having a head in _Peter_, the bishops of Rome, who were looked on as his successors, had accorded to them a precedence over other bishops. The grandeur of Rome, the strength of the church there, its services to other churches in the empire, especially in the West, together with many other considerations additional to its alleged historic relation to Peter and to Paul, gave to the Roman See, as time went on, a growing and acknowledged pre-eminence. The custom of holding synods helped to build up the unity of the Church, and to give power and dignity to its officials. SECTS: THEOLOGY.--The Church from the beginning had to contend with opposing sects. There was a desire to amalgamate the Christian doctrine with other systems. On the _Jewish_ side, the _Ebionites_ clung to the Old Testament ritual observances, a part of them being bitterly hostile to the Apostle Paul, and another part, the _Nazareans_, not sharing this fanatical feeling, but still adhering to the Jewish ceremonies. On the other hand, the _Gnostics_ introduced a dualism, and ascribed to the _Demiurge_--a second deity, either subordinate to the supreme God, or antagonistic to him--the origination of this world and of the Old Testament religion. They made a compound of Christianity, Judaism, and heathen religion and speculation, each Gnostic sect giving to one or the other of these ingredients the preponderance in the strange and often fantastic medley. The controversy with heathenism was prosecuted with the pen. Of the numerous defenses of Christianity, now addressed to heathen rulers and now to its opponents in private stations, the most remarkable work in the first three centuries was the writing of _Origen_--who was the most eminent of the teachers of theology at _Alexandria_--in reply to _Celsus_. Origen, after scholarly labors so vast as to earn for him the title of the _Adamantine_, died in 254, in consequence of his sufferings in the Diocletian persecution. Two defenses of the Christian faith, composed about the middle of the second century by _Justin Martyr_, are specially instructive as to the state of Christian opinion and the customs of the Church. The first great center of theological activity was _Alexandria_, where philosophy was studied in a liberal spirit. In the East, the questions relative to the divinity of Jesus and the relation of the divine to the human nature, engrossed attention. In the West, it was the practical aspects of theology, the doctrine of sin and of the deliverance of the will by grace, which were chiefly discussed. The _Arian_ controversy grew out of the assertion by _Arius_, a presbyter of Alexandria, that Jesus was the first-made of all beings, the instrument of the creation of all other beings, but himself a creature. The leader of the orthodox opposition to this opinion was the famous Alexandrian archdeacon, afterwards bishop, _Athanasius_. This debate it was which led to the assembling, under the auspices of _Constantine_, of the _Council of Nicaea_ (A.D. 325), the first of a series of General Councils, for the adjudication of doctrinal disputes, that were held in this and the following centuries. The Arian doctrine was condemned at Nicaea, and, after a long contest in the period subsequent, was finally determined to be heretical. In the West, the main controversy was that raised by _Pelagius_, respecting the power of the will, the native character of men, and the agency of God in their conversion. In this debate, _Augustine_ (354-430), the most eminent theologian of the West, bishop of _Hippo_ in North Africa, was the renowned champion of the doctrine of _grace_ against what he considered an exaggerated assertion of _free-will_. Pelagianism was condemned in the West, and nominally in the East where views intermediate between the Pelagians and Augustinians commonly prevailed. The most eminent scholar contemporary with Augustine was _Jerome_, who died in 420, the author of the Latin version of the Scriptures, called the _Vulgate_. Preceding Augustine in North Africa, early in the third century, was _Tertullian_, a vigorous and fervid writer, who first made Latin the vehicle of theological discussion; and, a little later, _Cyprian_, whose works relate chiefly to church unity and hierarchical government, of which he was a devoted champion. Late in the second century, _Irenaeus_, bishop of Lyons in Gaul, one of the most eminent ecclesiastics of that day, composed an elaborate work against the Gnostic heresies. _Irenaeus_ had known _Polycarp_, a disciple of John the apostle. CHRISTIAN LIFE.--Passing within the sphere of Christian life, there can be no doubt that Christianity exerted a power, of which there had been no experience before, in reforming the character and conduct of those even who had been addicted to crime and vice. The fraternal feeling of Christians for one another impressed the heathen about them as something new and singularly attractive. It expressed itself in unstinted charity for those in poverty, and in helpfulness for all sorts of distress. The church was a home for the weary and friendless. In the strong reaction against the sensuality of a dissolute society, ascetic tendencies appeared, which, in process of time, issued in monasticism. _Anthony_ of Thebes, born about 250, was one of the earliest and most celebrated of the _Anchorites_, who chose a hermit life, and abjured all the luxuries of life and most of the comforts which belong to social existence. To the _Anchorites_ succeeded the _Caenobites_, societies of monks who dwelt in a common habitation under fixed rules; and these were naturally followed by _confederacies_ of such communities under one organization. The monastic vows were _poverty_, or the renunciation of property; _celibacy_, or abstinence from marriage; and _obedience_ to the conventual superior. Sometimes in the early centuries great evils and abuses sprang up in connection with monastic life. For example, monks might become fanatical and violent. But they furnished numerous examples of sincere piety, and of unselfish and intrepid self-sacrifice for the welfare of others. CHANGES IN WORSHIP.--As the Church grew in numbers and wealth, costly edifices were constructed for worship. The services within them became more elaborate. At length art was called in to adorn the Christian sanctuaries. Sculpture and painting were enlisted in the work of providing aids to devotion. Relics of saints and martyrs were cherished as sacred possessions. Religious observances were multiplied; and the Church, under the Christian emperors, with its array of clergy and of imposing ceremonies, assumed much of the stateliness and visible splendor that had belonged to the heathen system which it had supplanted. LAST DAYS OF HEATHENISM.--When Christianity had become powerful, its disciples forgot the precepts of their Master, and sometimes persecuted the heathen. Christian mobs demolished the old temples. The great temple of _Serapis_ in _Alexandria_ was destroyed, and the statue of the god was broken in pieces. _Theodosius I._ (379-395) made the celebration of heathen rites a capital offense, and confiscated the property by which heathen worship had been supported. Arians, too, he persecuted, but with less harshness. The Eastern emperor, _Justinian_, suppressed the school of New Platonic philosophers at Athens, and banished the teachers (529). Heathenism lingered in remote districts, and was hence called _paganism_, or the religion of rustics. The last adherents of the ancient religion inhabited in the seventh century remote valleys of the Italian islands. The oracles were for ever dumb. The old divinities were never more to be invoked. But it was not by force that heathenism was extirpated. If it had not lost its vitality, it would have survived the penal laws against it. It perished by the expulsive energy of a better faith. CAUSES OF THE TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY.--The causes of the spread and triumph of Christianity lie ultimately in the need which men feel of religion, especially in times of dread and distress, and in the intrinsic excellence which was felt to belong to Christianity. In the first and second centuries the dreary feeling engendered by the hollow skepticism that prevailed was favorable to the Christian cause. There was a void to be filled, and the gospel came to fill it. In the third century, when the progress of Christianity was specially rapid, there was a perceptible revival of religious feeling among the heathen; and this, too, operated to the advantage of the gospel. At least it must have done so in numerous instances. In that century the terrible plagues which desolated the empire, with the sufferings that sprung from wild anarchy and misgovernment, made the church a welcome asylum for the afflicted. In the _first_ place, Christianity was a religion. It was neither a merely speculative nor a merely moral system. It took hold of the supernatural. _Secondly_, it presented to a corrupt society a moral ideal of spotless perfection. _Thirdly_, it offered, in the doctrine of the cross, a welcome solace,--consolation in life, with a sense of reconciliation, and the hope of everlasting good. Other causes, such as _Gibbon_ enumerates, were operative. But these are themselves mostly _effects_ or _aspects_ of the gospel; or they were _auxiliary_, not _principal_, causes. CHRISTIANITY AND LIBERTY.--The founders of Christianity had no thought of becoming the authors of a political revolution. They had a very different purpose in view. To overthrow the existing order of society would have been equally unwise and impracticable. What was needed was a new spirit of justice and of love. The virtues that were called for then were the _passive_ virtues,--gentleness, forbearance, the calm endurance of ills of which there was no present remedy. The Christian spirit, therefore, did not evoke in the disciples of the new faith sentiments of liberty akin to those which had belonged to Greek and Roman heroes. Indirectly, however, Christianity brought into human society the germs of liberty. In the _first_ place, while it enjoined absolute submission to rulers, it made an exception whenever their commands should require disobedience to God's law. This position involved the denial to the state of that absolute supremacy accorded to it by the ancients. The allegiance to the state became a _qualified_ allegiance. _Secondly_, there arose within the state another community, which took into its hands, to a large extent, the regulation of social life. The boundaries of the two authorities might be indistinct, but there was a real division of control between them. It is true that tyranny might arise within the Christian organization itself: still, its very existence planted on the earth a principle of liberty, which was destined ultimately to work out the destruction of all tyranny, whether civil or religious. For the first time the rulers of the Roman world were faced by an opposition, meek yet too inflexible for all their power to overcome. This is the first stage in the history of modern liberty. The "heroic and invincible _Athanasius_" as _Milton_ styles him, boldly confronted _Constantine_ and his successors, and chose to spend twenty years of his life in voluntary or enforced exile rather than bow to their tyrannical decrees. _Ambrose_, the great archbishop of _Milan_, compelled the Emperor _Theodosius_--who, in a fit of anger had ordered a massacre at _Thessalonica_--to do penance before he could be admitted to the communion. Such occurrences indicate that the days of imperial omnipotence, even over unarmed subjects, were past. SUCCESSORS OF CONSTANTINE.--Constantine left his empire to his three unworthy sons. _Constantine_, the eldest, had the Western provinces for his share. He endeavored to wrest Italy from his brother _Constans_, but was slain at _Aquileia_ (340). This event left Constans the master of the entire West. He took up his abode in Gaul, where he was slain by _Magnentius_, the leader of a mutinous body of soldiers (350). _Constantius_ was at _Edessa_, engaged in war against the Persians. He marched westward, and routed Magnentius at _Mursia_, in Pannonia. This rival fled to Gaul, and was there attacked and destroyed. _Gallus_, the cousin of Constantius, was put to death for the murder of one of the emperor's officers (354). _Julian_, the brother of Gallus, was the sole remaining survivor of the family from which the emperor sprung. _Constantius_, under whom the whole empire was now for a few years (357-361) united, made a triumphal visit to Rome. He was the defender of the Arians, but he found it impossible to coerce the Roman Christians into the adoption of his opinion. The orthodox bishop whom he had banished, was restored. _Constantius_ was succeeded by his cousin _Julian_ (361-363), commonly called the _Apostate_. Fascinated by the heathen philosophy, and a secret convert to the old religion, he THE IMPERIAL HOUSE OF CONSTANTINE. CONSTANTIUS CHLORUS, _m_. 1, Helena; | +--CONSTANTINE I (the Great) _m_. 1, Minervina; 2, Fausta | +--CONSTANTINE II. | +--CONSTANTIUS II. | | | +--Constantia, | _m_. GRATIAN. | +--CONSTANS. | +--CONSTANTIA, _m_. | 1, Hannibalianus; | 2, GALLUS. | +--HELENA, _m_. JULIAN. 2, Theodora. | +--Constantius, _m_. | 1, Galla; | 2, Basilina. | | | +--GALLUS | | _m_. Constantia, widow of Hannibalianus. | | | +--JULIAN | _m_. Helena, daughter of Constantine I. | +--Constantia, _m_. LICINIUS. proved that its vitality was gone, by his ineffectual exertions to rescue it, and restore its predominance. He was not without merits as a ruler. He looked out for the impartial administration of justice: he revived discipline and a military spirit in the army, and sought to infuse a better spirit into the civil administration. While he avoided cruel persecution, he directed all his personal efforts to the weakening of the Christian cause. Julian led an expedition against the Persians. He sailed down the Euphrates to _Circesium_, and thence proceeded into the interior of Persia. He repulsed the enemy, but was slain while engaged in the pursuit. The soldiers on the field of battle chose one of his officers, _Jovian_ (363-364), who was a Christian, to be his successor. He conducted the retreat of the army. His reign lasted for only seven months. He showed no intolerance either towards Pagans or Arians, but he gave back to Christianity its former position. The army next chose _Valentinian I_. (364-375), the son of a Pannonian warrior, who associated with him, as emperor in the East, his brother _Valens_ (364-378). _Valens_ ruled from Constantinople. _Valentinian_ fixed his court at Milan, and sometimes at Treves. He was an unlettered soldier, but strict and energetic in the government of the state, as well as of the army. His time was mostly spent in conflict with the barbarians on the northern frontiers. He carried forward this contest with vigor on the Rhine and on the Danube. He trained up his son _Gratian_ to be his successor. The great event of the reign of Valens was the irruption of the _Huns_ into Europe, and the consequent invasion of the _Goths_, by whom _Valens_ was defeated and slain in 378. Several emperors followed, until, on the death of _Theodosius I._, (the Great) (395), the Roman Empire was divided. In 476, after successive invasions of barbarians had disorganized the western part of the Empire, the line of phantom emperors at Rome came to an end. The fourth century, in which these invasions--which overthrew the Western Empire, and transferred power to new races--occurred, forms the era of transition from ancient to mediaeval history. LITERATURE.--The general works on Ancient History (p. 16). _On Roman History as a whole_: MERIVALE'S _General History of Rome_ (from 753 B.C. to A.D. 476: 1 vol.); DURUY, _History of Rome,_ etc. (8 vols., 410); Wägner, _Rom_, etc. (3 vols.); Allen, _A Short Story of the Roman People_; FREEMAN, _Outlines of Roman History_. _On the Roman Republic_: MOMMSEN, _The History of Rome_ (4 vols.); LIDDELL, _A History of Rome,_ etc. (1 vol.); IHNE, _The History of Rome_ (Eng. trans., 3 vols.); Michelet, _History of the Roman Republic_ (1 vol., 12mo); Schwegler, _Römishce Geschichte_ (4 vols); How and Leigh, _A History of Rome_; Shuckburgh, _A History of Rome_. _On the Roman Empire:_ MERIVALE, _History of the Romans under the Empire_ (7 vols ); Seeley, _Roman Imperialism_ [three Lectures]; MOMMSEN, _The Provinces_ (5th volume of his History, 1885); Bury, _Students' Roman Empire_; Bury, _Later Roman Empire_ (2 vols.). _On special periods:_ IHNE, _Early Rome_ (1 vol.); T. Arnold, _History of Rome_ (3 vols; reaches into the second Punic war); Long, _The Decline of the Roman Republic_ (5 vols.); R. B. Smith, _Rome and Carthage_; MERIVALE, _The Roman Triumvirates_; T Arnold, _History of the Later Roman Commonwealth_ (2 vols.); GIBBON, _History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ (Smith's edition); FINLAY, _A History of Greece from the Conquest of the Romans to the Present Time_ (7 vols.); Dill, _Roman Society_ (5th century). Trollope, _Life of Cicero_ (2 vols.); FORSYTH, _Life of Cicero_ (2 vols.); Middleton's _Life of Cicero_; Froude, _Life of Caesar_ (1 vol.); Boissier, _Ciceron et ses Amis_ (1 vol., 12mo). _Treatises:_ Taylor, _Const, and Polit. History of Rome;_ KUHN, _Verfassung d. Römischen Städte_; GUHL AND KÖNER, _Life of the Greeks and Romans;_ Marquardt, _Handbuch d. Römischen Alterthümer_ (7 vols.); BECKER, _Gallus_ (an archaeological novel); Abbott, _Roman Political Institutions;_ Greenidge, _Roman Public Life;_ Preston and Dodge, _Private Life of the Romans;_ Madvig, _Verfassung und Verwaltung des Röm Staates_ (2 vols.); Lanciani (_Ancient Rome_, and others); Burn, _Rome and the Campagna;_ ZIEGLER, _Das alte Rom;_ Smith and Wace's _Dictionary of Christian Biography;_ Smith and Cheatham's _Dictionary of Christian Antiquities;_ FRIEDLÄNDER, _Sittengeschichte Roms_ (2 vols.); Histories of Roman Literature by Simcox. Cruttwell, SCHMITZ, Teuffel. Mac-Kail, Fowler. _On Early Christianity:_ The Lives of Jesus, by NEANDER, WEISS, Farrar, Edersheim, Andrews. Neander's _Planting and Training of the Church_. Works on the Life of St. Paul, by CONYBEARE AND HOWSON, by Lewins, by Farrar. Fisher's _The Beginnings of Christianity;_ Pressensé, _Early Days of Christianity_. Church Histories of NEANDER, GIESELER, SCHAFF, Robertson, HASE, Kurtz, ALZOG. UHLHORN, _Christian Charity in the Ancient Church;_ Ramsay, _The Church and the Roman Empire, before 170 A.D._ Reber, _History of Ancient Art;_ Wickoff, _Roman Art;_ see Dictionaries, p. 122. PART II. MEDIÆVAL HISTORY. INTRODUCTION. CHARACTER OF THE MIDDLE AGES.--The middle ages include the long interval between the first general irruption of the Teutonic nations towards the close of the fourth century, to the middle of the fifteenth century, when the modern era, with a distinctive character of its own, began. Two striking features are observed in the mediæval era. First, there was a mingling of the conquering Germanic nations with the peoples previously making up the Roman Empire, and a consequent effect produced upon both. The Teutonic tribes modified essentially the old society. On the other hand, there was a reaction of Roman civilization upon them. The conquered became the teachers and civilizers of the conquerors. Secondly, the Christian Church, which outlived the wreck of the empire, and was almost the sole remaining bond of social unity, not only educated the new nations, but regulated and guided them, to a large extent, in secular as well as religious affairs. Thus out of chaos, Christendom arose, a single homogeneous society of peoples. It was in the middle ages that the pontifical authority reached its full stature. The Holy See exercised the lofty function of arbiter among contending nations, and of leadership in great public movements, like the Crusades. Civil authority and ecclesiastical authority, emperors and popes, were engaged in a long conflict for predominance. Thus there are three elements which form the essential factors in Mediæval History,-the _Barbarian_ element, the _Roman_ element, with its law and civil polity, and with what was left of ancient arts and culture, and the _Christian_, or _Ecclesiastical_, element. As we approach the close of the mediæval era, a signal change occurs. The nations begin to acquire a more defined individuality; the superintendence of the church in civil affairs is more and more renounced or relinquished; there dawns a new era of invention and discovery, of culture and reform. PERIOD I. FROM THE MIGRATIONS OF THE TEUTONIC TRIBES TO THE CARLOVINGIAN LINE OF FRANK RULERS. (A.D. 375-751.) CHAPTER I. CAUSES OF THE FALL OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE: THE TEUTONIC CONFEDERACIES. GRADUAL OVERTHROW OF THE EMPIRE.--When we speak of the destruction of the Roman Empire by the barbarians, we must not imagine that it was sudden, as by an earthquake. It was gradual. Had the empire not been undermined from within, it would not have been overthrown from without. The Roman armies were recruited by bringing numerous barbarians into the ranks. At length whole tribes were suffered to form permanent settlements within the boundaries of the empire. A "king" with his entire tribe would engage to do military service in exchange for lands. More and more both the wealth and the weakness of Rome were exposed to the gaze of the Germanic nations. Their cupidity was aroused as their power increased. Meantime the barbarians were learning from their employers the art of war, and were gaining soldierly discipline. Their brave warriors rose to places of command. They made and unmade the rulers, and finally became rulers themselves. Another important circumstance is, that most of the Germanic tribes were converts to Christianity before they made their attacks and subverted the throne of the Cæsars. In fine, there was a long preparation for the great onset of the barbarian peoples in the fifth century. CAUSES OF THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE.--But the success of the barbarian invasions presupposes an internal decay in the empire. It was one symptom of a conscious decline, that the conquering spirit was chilled, and the policy was adopted of fixing the limits of the Roman dominion at the Rhine and the Danube. Rome now stood on the defensive. The great service of the imperial government, for which it was most valued, was to protect the frontiers. This partly accounts for the consternation of _Augustus_, when, in the forests of Germany, the legions of _Varus_ were destroyed (p. 172). The essential fact is, that Rome became unable to keep up the strength of its armies. _First_, there were lacking the men to fill up the legions. The civil wars had reduced the population in Italy and in other countries. The efforts of _Augustus_ to encourage marriage by bounties proved of little avail. _Secondly_, the class of independent Italian yeomen, which had made up the bone and sinew of the Roman armies, passed away. Slavery supplanted free labor. _Thirdly_, in the third century terrible plagues swept over the empire. In 166 a frightful pestilence broke out, from which, according to _Niebuhr_, the ancient world never recovered. It was only the first in a series of like appalling visitations. _Fourthly_, the death of liberty carried after it a loss of the virtue, the virile energy, by which Rome had won her supremacy. _Fifthly_, the new imperial system, after _Diocletian_, effective as it was for maintaining an orderly administration, drained the resources of the people. The municipal government in each town was put into the hands of _curiales_, or the owners of a certain number of acres. They were made responsible for the taxes, which were levied in a gross amount upon the town. The _fiscus_, or financial administration of the empire, was so managed that the civil offices became an intolerable burden to those who held them. Yet it was a burden from which there was no escape. One result was, that, while slaves were often made _coloni_,--that is, tillers or tenants, sharing with the owner the profits of tillage,--and thus had their condition improved, many freeholders sank to the same grade, which was a kind of serfdom. When to the exhausting taxation by government, there were added the disposition of large proprietors to despoil the poorer class of landholders, and from time to time the predatory incursions of barbarians, the small supply of Roman legionaries is easily accounted for. THREE RACES OF BARBARIANS.--While the empire, as regards the power of self-defense, was sinking, the barbarians were not only profiting by the military skill and experience of the Romans, but were forming military _unions_ among their several tribes. In the East, there was one civilized kingdom, _Persia_, the successor of the Parthian kingdom, but not powerful enough to be a rival,--certainly not in an aggressive contest. But northward and northeast of the Roman boundaries, there stretched "a vague and unexplored waste of barbarism," "a vast, dimly-known chaos of numberless barbarous tongues and savage races." A commotion among these numerous tribes, the uncounted multitudes spreading far into the plain of Central Asia, had begun as early as the days of Julius Caesar. They were made up of three races,--the _Teutons_, or _Germanic_ peoples; eastward of them, the _Slavonians_; and, farther beyond, the Asiatic _Scythians_. The Slavonians, an Aryan branch, like the Teutons, had their abodes in the space between Germany and the Volga. They were a pastoral and an agricultural race, of whose religion little is known. Their incursions and settlements belong to the sixth and seventh centuries, and to the history of the Eastern Empire. TEUTONIC CONFEDERACIES.--Of the confederacies of German tribes, the _Goths_ are first to be mentioned. In the third century they had spread over the immense territory between the Baltic and the Black seas. They were divided into the West Goths (_Visigoths_) and East Goths (_Ostrogoths_). Their force was augmented by the junction of kindred tribes. To the east of them, towards the Don, was a tribe of mixed race, the _Alani_. In the third century the Goths had made their terrible inroads into _Mæsia_ and _Thrace_, and the brave emperor _Decius_ had perished in the combat with them. They had pushed their marauding excursions as far as the coasts of Greece and Ionia. In the middle of the fourth century they were united, with their allied tribes, under the sovereignty of the East Gothic chieftain, _Hermanric_. A second league of Germanic peoples was the _Alemanni_, which included the formidable tribes called by Cæsar the _Suevi_, and who, after various incursions, had established themselves on the Upper Rhine, in what is now Baden, Würtemberg, and north-east in Switzerland, and in the region southward to the summits of the Alps. Their invasion of Italy in 255, when they poured through the passes of the Rhetian Alps, and penetrated as far as _Ravenna_, was repelled by _Aurelian_, afterwards emperor. A third confederacy was that of the _Franks_ (or Freemen) on the Lower Rhine and the Weser. In North Germany, between the Elbe and the Rhine, were the _Saxons_. The _Burgundians_, between the Saxons and the Alemanni, made their way to the same river near _Worms_. East of the Franks and Saxons, were the valiant _Lombards_, who made their way southwards to the center of Europe, and finally to the Danube. The _Frisians_ were situated on the shore of the North Sea and in the adjacent islands. North of the Saxons were the _Danes_ and other peoples of _Scandinavia_,--Teutons all, but a separate branch of the Teutonic household. To bold and warlike tribes, now banded together, such as were the Franks and the Alemanni, the Rhine, with its line of Roman cities and fortresses, could form no permanent barrier. When they crossed it, they might be driven back; but this was only to renew their expeditions at the first favorable moment. The prey which they saw near by, and of which they dreamed in the distance, was too enticing. No more could the Danube fence off the thronging nations; all of whom had heard, and some of whom had beheld, the wealth and luxury of the civilized lands. Beginning at the _Euxine_, and moving westward along the line of the _Danube_ and the _Rhine_, we find, at the end of the fourth century, that the six most prominent names of _Teutonic_ tribes are the _Goths_, _Vandals_, _Burgundians_, _Franks_, _Saxons_, and _Lombards_. Over the vast plains to the south and west of the Caspian are spread the _Huns_, who belong to one branch of the Scythian or Turanian group of nations. HABITS OF THE GERMANS.--We have notices of the Germans from _Julius Caesar_, the most full description of them in the _Germania_ of _Tacitus_. They were tall and robust, and seemed to the Romans, who were of smaller stature, as giants. Tacitus speaks of their "fiercely blue eyes." They lived in huts made of wood, and containing the cattle as well as the family. They tilled the soil, but their favorite employments were war and the chase. Capable of cruelty, they were still of a kindly temper, and fond of feasts and social gatherings, where they were apt to indulge in excessive drinking and in gambling. They were brave, and not without a delicate sense of honor. Family ties were sacred. The women were chaste, and were companions of their husbands, although subject to them. Most of the people were _freemen_, who were land-owners, and carried arms. The nobles were those of higher birth, but with no special privileges. The freemen owned _slaves_, who were either criminals or persons who had lost their freedom in gaming or prisoners of war. There were also _freedmen_ or _leti_, who held land of a superior. Many freedmen lived apart, but many were gathered in villages. The land about a village was originally held in common. Each village had a chief, and each collection of villages, or _hundred_, possessed a chief of high rank; and there was a "king," or head of the tribe. All these chieftains were elected by the freemen at assemblies periodically held. When the duke or general was chosen, he was raised on a shield on the shoulders of the men. The judges in the trial of causes sat, with assessors or jurymen around them, in the open air. But private injuries were avenged by the individual or by his family. One marked characteristic of the Germans was the habit of devoting themselves to the service of a military leader. They paid to him personal allegiance, and followed him in war. The Germans were, above all, distinguished by a strong sense of personal independence. If their mode of living resembled outwardly that of other savage races, yet in their free political life, and in the noble promise of their language even in its rudiments, the comparison does not hold. In their faithfulness, courage, and personal purity, they are emphatically contrasted with the generality of barbarous peoples. RELIGION OF THE GERMANS.--We know more of the Scandinavian religion through the _Eddas_, the Iliad of the Northmen, than of the religion of the Germans; but the two religions were closely allied. Among the chief gods worshiped by the Germans were _Woden_, called "Odin" in the North, the highest divinity, the god of the air and of the sky, the giver of fruits and delighting in battle; _Donar_ (Thor), the god of thunder and of the weather, armed with a hammer or thunderbolt; _Thiu_ (Tyr), a god of war, answering to Mars; _Fro_ (Freyr), god of love; and _Frauwa_ (Freya), his sister. Particular days were set apart for their worship. Their names appear in the names of the days of the week,--Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Sunday is the day of the sun, and Monday the day of the moon. Saturday alone is a name of Latin origin. Among the minor beings in the German mythology were fairies, elves, giants, and dwarfs. There were festivals to the gods. Their images were preserved in groves. Lofty trees were held sacred to divinities. The oak and the red ash were consecrated to _Donar_. Sacrifices, and among them human sacrifices, were offered to the gods. Their will was ascertained by means of the lot, the neighing of wild horses, and the flight of birds. Priests were not without influence, but were not a professional class, and were never dominant. Valiant warriors at death were admitted into Walhalla (the _hall of the slain_), where they sat at banquet with the gods. THE THEODOSIAN IMPERIAL HOUSE THEODOSIUS | +--THEODOSIUS I (the Great), _m._, | 1, Flaccilla; | 2, Galla sister of Valentinian II | | | +--Grantianus | | | +--Pulcheria | | | +--ARCADIUS | | _m._ Eudoxia | | | | | +--THEODOSIUS II | | | _m._ Eudocia | | | | | | | +--Eudoxia | | | | _m._ VALENTINIAN III | | | | | | | +--Flaccilla | | | | | +--Pulcheria | | | _m._ MARCIAN | | | | | +--Three other daughters | | | +--HONORIUS | | _m._ Maria, daughter of Stilicho | | | +--Placidia _m._ | 1, Adolphus; | 2, CONSTANTIUS | | | +--VALENTINIAN III, | | _m._ Eudoxia. | | | | | +--Eudoxia, _m._ | | | 1, Palladius, son of MAXIMUS; | | | 2, Huneric, son of GENSERIC. | | | | | | | +--Ideric | | | | | +--Placidia | | _m._ OLYBRIUS | | | +--Honoria | +--Honorius | +--Serena, | _m._ Stilicho | | | +--Maria | +--Thermantia [From Rawlinson's _Manual of Ancient History._] CHAPTER II. THE TEUTONIC MIGRATIONS AND KINGDOMS. THE GOTHS: THEODOSIUS I.--Towards the close of the fourth century, when _Valens_ (364-378) was reigning in the East, the _Huns_ moved from their settlements north of the Caspian, defeated the _Alans_, a powerful nation, and, compelling them to enter their service, invaded the empire of the _Ostrogoths_, then ruled by _Hermanric_. The Huns belonged to one branch of the Scythian race. They had migrated in vast numbers from Central Asia. Repulsive in form and visage, with short, thick bodies, and small, fierce eyes, living mostly on horseback or in their wagons, these terrible warriors, with their slings and bone-pointed arrows, struck terror into the nations whom they approached. The Gothic Empire fell. The Ostrogoths submitted, and Hermanric died, it is thought by his own hand. The _Visigoths_ crowded down to the Danube, and implored Valens to give them an asylum upon Roman territory. They had previously been converted to Christianity, mainly by the labors of _Ulphilas_, who had framed for them an alphabet, and translated nearly the whole Bible into their tongue. Fragments of this _Moeso-Gothic_ version are the oldest written monument in the Teutonic languages. Christianity was taught to them by Ulphilas in the Arian type; and this circumstance was very important, since it was the occasion of the spread of _Arianism_ among many other Teutonic peoples. Valens granted their request to cross the Danube, and, under _Fritigern_ and _Alavivus_, to settle in Moesia (376). By the connivance of the officers of Valens, they were allowed to retain their arms. The avarice of corrupt imperial governors provoked them to revolt; and, in the battle of _Adrianople_, Valens was defeated. The house into which the wounded emperor was carried was set on fire, and he perished. _Gratian_, who, since the death of Valentinian I. (375), had been the ruler of the West, summoned the valiant _Theodosius_ from his estate in Spain, to which he had been banished, to sustain the tottering empire. Gratian made him regent in the East. His father had cleared Britain of the Picts and Scots, and restored it to the empire. Under him the son had learned to be a soldier. He had been driven into retirement by court intrigues. He now accomplished, as well as it could be done, the mighty task laid upon him. He checked the progress of the Goths, divided them, incorporated some of them in the army, and dispersed the rest in Thrace, Moesia, and Asia Minor (382). Four years later forty-thousand Ostrogoths were received into the imperial service. Once Rome had conquered the barbarians, and planted its colonies among them; now, after they had proved their power, and gained boldness by victory, it received them within its own borders. The indolence and vice of _Gratian_ produced a revolution in the West. _Maximus_ was proclaimed imperator by the legions of Britain, and Gratian was put to death by his cavalry (383). After sanguinary conflicts, _Theodosius_ obtained, also, supreme power in the West. He gave to orthodoxy, in the strife with Arianism, the supremacy in the East; and, under his auspices, the _General Council of Constantinople_ re-affirmed the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity (381). In the ancient church he had a glory second only to that of Constantine. With the exception of his harsh and inquisitorial laws for the forcible suppression of Arianism and paganism, his legislation was generally wise and beneficent. ARCADIUS: HONORIUS.--Theodosius left the government of the East to his son _Arcadius_, then eighteen years of age, and that of the West to a younger son, _Honorius_. The empire of the East continued ten hundred and fifty-eight years after this division; that of the West, only eighty-one years. The Eastern Empire was defended by the barriers of the Danube and the Balkan mountains, by the strength of Constantinople, together with the care taken to protect it, and by the general tendency of the barbarian invasions westward. Rome, in the course of a half-century, was the object of four terrible attacks,--that of _Alaric_ and the Visigoths; of _Radagaisus_ with the Suevi, Vandals, and Alans; of _Genseric_ with the Vandals; of _Attila_ with the Huns. ALARIC IN ITALY.--The Visigoths made _Alaric_--the head of their most illustrious family, the Balti--their leader. _Honorius_ was controlled by the influence of _Stilicho_, a brave soldier, by birth a Vandal; _Arcadius_ was ruled by a Goth, _Rufinus_, a cunning and faithless diplomatist. Alaric and his followers were enraged at the withholding of the pay which was due to them yearly from _Arcadius_. _Rufinus_, in order to keep up his sway, and out of hostility to _Stilicho_, arranged that they should invade _Eastern Illyricum_, a province on which each of the emperors had claims, and which he feared that Stilicho would seize. They ravaged Thrace and Macedonia, passed through the undefended strait of Thermopylae, spared Athens, but devastated the rest of Greece. The only protector of the empire now was _Stilicho_, to whom Theodosius had committed the care of his two sons, and whose power was exercised in the West. He caused the perfidious _Rufinus_ to be put to death by _Gainas_, one of the Gothic allies of Arcadius. The place of the minister was taken by _Eutropius_, an Armenian who had been a slave. _Stilicho_ fought the Goths in two campaigns, but, perhaps from policy, suffered them to escape by the Strait of _Naupactus_ (_Lepanto_). To prevent further ravages, Arcadius had no alternative but to appoint _Alaric_ master-general or duke of Illyricum. This obliged _Stilicho_ to retire. Raised upon the shield, and thus made king by his followers, Alaric led them to the conquest of Italy. _Honorius_ fled for refuge from Milan to the impregnable fortress of _Ravenna_. Stilicho came to his relief, and defeated the Visigoths at _Pollentia_ (402). But Honorius copied the example of Arcadius, made Alaric a general, and gave him the commission to conquer Illyricum for the Western Empire. After his defeat, he was moving against Rome with his cavalry, when his retreat was purchased by a pension. It was when Honorius was celebrating his triumph at Rome that a monk named _Telemachus_ leaped into the arena to separate the gladiators. He was stoned to death by the spectators, but the result of his self-devotion was an edict putting a final stop to the gladiatorial shows. The emperor now fixed his residence, which had been at Milan, at _Ravenna_, a city that was covered on the land side by a wide and impassable morass, over which was an artificial causeway, easily destroyed in case it could not be defended. It had served him as an asylum during the invasion of Alaric. RADAGAISUS.--The empire was not long left in peace. _Alaric_ was a Christian, and partially civilized. _Radagaisus_ was a Goth, but a heathen and a barbarian. The _Suevi_ under his command, took their course southward from the neighborhood of the Baltic, and, drawing after them the _Burgundians, Vandals_, and _Alans_,--tribes which began to be alarmed by the hordes of _Huns_ that were gathering behind them,--advanced to the pillage of the empire. Leaving the bulk of their companions on the borders of the Rhine, two hundred thousand of them crossed the Alps, and made their way as far as _Florence_. _Stilicho_ once more saved Rome and the empire by forcing them back into the Apennines, where most of them perished from famine. _Radagaisus_ surrendered, and was beheaded. The news of this disaster moved the host which had been left behind, joined by the remainder of the army of Radagaisus, to make an attack upon _Gaul_. Despite the resistance of the Ripuarian Franks, to whom Rome had committed the defense of the Rhine, they crossed that river on the last day of the year 406. For two years Gaul was a prey to their ravages, until the Suevi, the Alans, and the Vandals, sought for fresh booty on the south of the Pyrenees (409). In Gaul they "destroyed the cities, ravaged the fields, and drove before them in a promiscuous crowd, the bishop, the senator, and the virgin, laden with the spoils of their houses and altars." Brief as was this period of devastation, it marks the severance of _Gaul_ from the empire. ALARIC AGAIN IN ITALY.--_Stilicho_ had kept up friendly relations with _Alaric_, and had retained in Italy thirty thousand barbarians in the pay of the empire. The brave general became an object of suspicion to _Honorius_, who caused him to be assassinated, and the wives and children of the barbarian troops to be massacred. The men fled to _Alaric_. He came back with them to avenge them. He appeared under the walls of Rome. "It was more than six hundred years since a foreign enemy had been there, and Hannibal had advanced so far, only to retreat." When the envoys of the Senate represented to Alaric how numerous was the population, he answered, "The thicker the hay, the easier it is mowed." But he consented to accept an enormous ransom, and retired to winter quarters in Tuscany. The court at Ravenna refused to assign lands to the Visigoths for a permanent settlement in Northern Italy. Alaric demanded the post of master-general of the Western armies. Once more he advanced to Rome, seized the "Port" of _Ostia_, and compelled the Senate to appoint _Attalus_, the prefect of the city, emperor. He besieged _Ravenna_ without effect, quarreled with Attalus, and deposed him, and for the third time marched upon Rome. Slaves within the city opened the Salarian gate to their countrymen, and on the 24th of August, 410, the sack of the city began. To add to the horrors of the scene, a terrific thunderstorm was raging. For three days Rome was given up to pillage. Only the Christian temples were respected, which were crowded by those who sought within them an asylum. Rome had been the center of Paganism. The scattering and destruction of its patrician families was the ruin of the old religion. Alaric did not long survive his victory. He died at _Consentia_ in _Bruttium_. He was buried under the little river _Basentius_, which was turned out of its course while the sepulcher was constructing, and then restored to its former channel. The slaves employed in the work were put to death, that the place of his burial might remain a secret (410). ATHAULF: WALLIA.--_Athaulf_ (called Adolphus), the brother and successor of Alaric, was an admirer of the empire. He enlisted in the service of _Honorius_, and married his sister, _Placidia_, who was in the hands of the Goths, either as a captive or as a hostage. He put down usurpers in the south of Gaul who had set themselves up as emperors, and entered _Spain_, in order to drive out the barbarians from that country. But he was assassinated (415). His successor, _Wallia_, carried forward his plans, in the name of Honorius, against the Alans, the Suevi, and the Vandals. He partly exterminated the Alans, chased the Suevi into the mountains on the north-west, and the Vandals into the district called after them, _Andalusia_. THREE BARBARIAN KINGDOMS.--The kingdom of the Suevi thus established (419), under the kings reigning from 438 to 455 conquered _Lusitania_, and would have subdued all Spain had they not been checked by the _Visigoths_. As a reward for their services, the latter received from Honorius, _Aquitaine_ in Gaul, as far as the Loire and the Rhone, with _Toulouse_ for their capital. They conquered the _Suevi_ in 456, and in 585 subjugated them; in 507 the Franks had driven them out of Gaul. Early in the fifth century the _Burgundian kingdom_ grew up in South-eastern Gaul. At the end of that century the Rhone was a Burgundian river. _Lyons_ and _Vienne_ were Burgundian cities. Thus in the first twenty years of the fifth century there arose _three_ barbarian kingdoms. Of these, that of the _Suevi_ soon vanished (585), being absorbed by the Visigoths; that of the _Burgundians_ continued until 534; while that of the _Visigoths_ in Spain lasted until the conquest by the Arabs in 711. CONQUEST OF AFRICA BY THE VANDALS.--_Honorius_ died in 423. He had shown himself a zealous defender of the Church against heresy, and was the author of edicts for the suppression of heathenism, and for the destruction of heathen temples and idols. But he had proved himself inefficient in the defense of the empire. His nephew _Valentinian III.,_ the son of _Placidia_ and of the general _Constantius_, whom she had married in 417, succeeded him; but he was only six years old, and for twenty-five years the government was carried on in his name by his unworthy mother. She had two able generals, _Aëtius_ and _Boniface_, whose discord was fatal in its effects. At the same time in the East, the government was managed by _Pulcheria_ for her brother, _Theodosius II.,_ who had succeeded _Arcadias_ in 408. _Aëtius_, who was a Hun, by insidious arts persuaded Placidia to recall _Boniface_, who was governor of Africa, at the same time that he advised Boniface to disobey the order which he represented as a sentence of death. Boniface sent to _Gonderic_, king of the Vandals in Spain,--who, after the retreat of the Visigoths, were strong in that country,--an offer of an alliance. _Genseric_, the Vandal leader, the brother and successor of _Gonderic_, landed in Africa in 429 with fifty thousand men. Too late the treachery of Aëtius was explained to Boniface. Genseric, with his allies, tribes of nomad Moors, defeated him in a bloody battle, and besieged _Hippo_ for fourteen months. _Augustine_, the bishop of Hippo, animated the courage of its defenders until his death in 430, in the seventy-sixth year of his age. Boniface was again defeated, and Hippo was taken. The Vandals pushed on their conquest, but eight years passed before _Carthage_ was reduced (439). _Valentinian_ had recognized by treaty the kingdom of the Vandals. _Genseric_ was characterized by genius and energy as well as by cruelty and avarice. He built up a navy, and made himself master of Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, and the Balearic Isles. He was able to defy Constantinople, on account of his control of the Mediterranean. At the same time he entered into relations with the barbarians in the north, in order that Aëtius, who endeavored to bring in some degree of order and obedience in the empire, might be checked and restrained on all sides. The Vandals were Arians, and made full use of the difference in faith as a motive for plundering and maltreating the orthodox Christians in Africa, whom their arms had subdued. ATTILA: CHALONS.--The enemy whom _Genseric_ invoked to make a diversion in his favor against the combined rulers of the East and of the West, was _Attila_. For a half-century the _Huns_ had halted, in their migration, in the center of Europe, and held under their sway the Ostrogoths, the Gepids, the Marcomanni, and other tribes. The empire of Attila extended from the Baltic to the north of the Danube, and as far east as the Volga. His name inspired terror wherever it was heard. He was styled "the scourge of God." The "sword of Mars"--the point of an ancient sword which, it was said, was discovered by supernatural means, and was presented to him--was deemed the symbol of his right to the dominion of the world. Yet, notwithstanding his fierce visage and haughty mien, he was an indulgent ruler of his own people, and not without pity and other generous traits. Such was the dread of him that it was said that no blade of grass grew on the path which his armies had traversed. First, he attacked _Theodosius II._ in the East, to force him to recall the troops which he had sent against _Genseric_. He crossed the Danube, destroyed seventy cities, and forced the Eastern emperor not only to pay a tribute heavier than he had paid before, but also to cede to the Huns the right bank of the river. Theodosius failed in a treacherous attempt to assassinate him through Attila's ambassador, _Edecon_, whom he had bribed. Attila discovered the plot, but pardoned with disdain the ambassadors of the emperor who went to him in his wooden palace in Pannonia. He contented himself with reproaching Theodosius with "conspiring, like a perfidious slave, against the life of his master." Regarding Constantinople as impregnable, he turned to the West. He demanded of the Western emperor the half of his states; and, moving to the Rhine with six hundred thousand barbarians, he crossed that river and the Moselle, advanced on his devastating path into the heart of _Gaul_, crossed the Seine, and laid siege to _Orleans_. Everywhere the inhabitants fled before him. The courage of the people in Orleans was sustained by their bishop, who at length, as the city was just falling into the hands of the assailants, saw a cloud of dust, and cried, "It is the help of God." It was _Aëtius_, who, on the death of Boniface, had thought it prudent to fly to the _Huns_, had come back to Italy at the head of sixty thousand men, obtained forgiveness of _Placidia_, and been made master-general of her forces. He had united to the Roman troops the barbarians who had occupied Gaul, the Visigoths under Theodoric, the Saxons, the Burgundians, the Ripuarian and the Salian Franks. On the Catalaunian fields, a vast plain near _Chalons_, whither _Attila_ now retreated to find room for the effective use of his cavalry, the two multitudinous armies, each composed of a motley collection of nations, met. It was, like the conflict at Marathon, one of the decisive battles of history. It was to determine whether the Aryan or the Scythian was to be supreme in Europe. The battle-field was strewn, it was said, with the bodies of a hundred and sixty thousand men,--an exaggeration indicating that the carnage was too great to be estimated. Attila was worsted. He encircled his camp with a rampart of wagons; and in the morning the victors saw him standing on the top of a mound composed of the trappings of horsemen, which was to serve as his funeral-pile, with torch-bearers at hand ready to light it in case of defeat. Aëtius was weakened by the withdrawal of the _Visigoths_: the allies did not venture to attack the lion standing thus at bay, but suffered him to return to Germany (451). ATTILA IN ITALY.--The next year _Attila_ invaded Upper Italy. He destroyed _Aquileia_, the inhabitants of which fled to the lagoons of the Adriatic, where their descendants founded _Venice_. Padua, Verona, and other cities were reduced to ashes. At Milan he saw a painting which represented the emperor on his throne, and the chiefs of the Huns prostrate before him. He ordered a picture to be painted in which the king of the Huns sat on the throne, and the emperor was at his feet. The Italians were without the means of defense. _Leo I._ (Leo the Great), bishop of Rome, at the risk of his life accompanied the emperor's ambassadors to Attila's camp. Their persuasions, with rich gifts and the promise of a tribute, availed. The army of Attila was weakened by sickness, and _Aëtius_ was approaching. The king of the Huns decided to retire to his forests. The apparition of the two apostles, _Peter_ and _Paul_, threatening the barbarian with instant death if he did not comply with the prayer of their successor, is the subject of one of the paintings of _Raphael_. Some months after he left Italy _Attila_ died at the royal village near the Danube, probably from the bursting of an artery during the night (453). The nations which he had subjugated regained their freedom. The chiefs of the Huns contended for the crown in conflicts which dissipated their strength. The expeditions of Attila were like a violent tempest,-- destructive for the moment, the traces of which soon disappear. About the name of _Attila_, there gathered cycles of traditions, Gallo-Roman or Italian, East German or Gothic, West German and Scandinavian, and Hungarian. Such traditions in Germany formed, later, the germ of the national epic, the _Nibelungen-lied_. They testify to the powerful impression which the hero of the Huns made on the memory and imagination of the different nations. GENSERIC.--_Attila_ did not see Rome; but _Genseric_, his ally, visited it with fire and sword (455). The emperor was _Petronius Maximus_, a senator, who had slain _Valentinian III._ as the penalty for a mortal offense. The weakness of Maximus as a ruler caused him to be destroyed by the populace. _Eudoxia_, the widow of Valentinian, whom Maximus had compelled to marry the author of her husband's death, had secretly implored the aid of the king of the Vandals. Once more _Leo_ showed his fearless spirit by going into the camp of the Vandal king, and interceding for Rome. He only succeeded, however, in mitigating to a limited extent the horrors that attended the pillage of the city by the fierce and greedy soldiers, the Vandals and Moors, who followed _Genseric_, For fourteen days (June 15-29, 455) Rome was given up to carnage and robbery. The conqueror carried off every thing of value that was capable of being transported. _Eudoxia_ was rudely stripped of her jewels, and with her two daughters, descendants of the great Theodosius, was conveyed away with the conqueror to Carthage. For twenty years longer _Genseric_ ruled over the Mediterranean in spite of the hostility of both empires. An expedition sent against him at the instigation of _Ricimer_, the Sueve, by the Eastern emperor _Leo_, was ill commanded by _Basiliscus_, and failed. But after the Vandal king died (477), his kingdom was torn by civil and religious disorders, and by the revolts of the Moors, and, fifty-seven years after the death of its founder, was conquered by the general of the Eastern Empire. FALL OF ROME: ODOACER.--After the death of _Maximus, Avitus_ was appointed emperor by the king of the Visigoths in Gaul. The barbarians hesitated to assume the purple themselves, but they determined on whom it should be bestowed. Of the emperors that succeeded, _Majorian_ (457-461)--who was raised to the throne by _Ricimer_, military leader of the German mercenaries in the Roman army--presents an instance of a worthy character in a corrupt time. At last another leader of mercenaries (_Orestes_, a Pannonian) made his son emperor,--a boy six years old, called _Romulus Augustulus_ (475). _Odoacer_, who commanded the Heruli, Rugii, and other federated tribes,--mercenaries to whom Orestes refused to grant a third part of the lands of Italy,--made himself ruler of that country. The Senate of Rome, in pursuance of his wishes, in an address to the Eastern emperor _Zeno_, declared that an emperor in the West was no longer necessary, and asked him to make Odoacer _patrician_, and prefect of the diocese of Italy. It was in this character--not as king, but in nominal subordination to _Zeno_, the head of the united Roman Empire--that Odoacer governed (476). For more than a half-century people had been accustomed to see the barbarians exercise supreme control, so that the extinguishment of the Western Empire was an event less marked in their eyes than it seemed to the view of subsequent ages. OSTROGOTHIC KINGDOM OF THEODORIC.--When _Odoacer_ had reigned twelve years, _Theodoric_, king of the Ostrogoths in _Moesia_,--who in his youth had lived at the court of Constantinople, had defended the Eastern emperor, but had been provoked to hostility to him,--was authorized by _Zeno_ to move upon Italy. A host consisting of two hundred thousand fighting-men, together with their families and goods, followed the Gothic leader. Defeated at _Verona_ (489), Odoacer was forced to make a treaty for a division of power, and to surrender _Ravenna_, where he had taken refuge; but very soon, in the tumult of a banquet, he was slain by Theodoric's own hand, either from fear of a rival, or because he suspected that Odoacer was plotting against him. From this time the long reign of Theodoric was one of justice and of peace. More by negotiation than by war, he extended his dominion so that it embraced Illyricum, Pannonia, Noricum, and Rhoetia, and, in the West, Southeastern Gaul (Provence). The Bavarians paid him tribute; the Alemanni invoked his assistance against the Franks, against whom he afforded succor to the Goths of Aquitaine. In his administration he showed reverence for the old imperial system, and for its laws and institutions. He fostered agriculture, manufactures, and trade. Although he could not write, he encouraged learning; and a learned Roman, _Cassiodorus_, he appointed to high offices. He permitted the Goths alone to bear arms. He caused to be compiled from the Roman law a collection of statutes for the Goths and for his new subjects, and established mixed tribunals for causes in which both were parties. Cassiodorus ascribes to Theodoric the words, "Let other kings seek to procure booty, or the downfall of conquered cities: our purpose is, with God's help, so to conquer that our subjects shall lament that they have too late come under our rule." He did what he could to promote peace among other barbarian nations. The prosperity of Italy, and the increase of its population, were a proof of the good government which it enjoyed. An Arian, he respected the Catholics, confirmed the immunities enjoyed by the churches, and generally allowed the Romans to elect their own bishop. He also protected the Jews. The persecution of the Arians in the East (524) by _Justin I._, awakened in his mind the belief that a conspiracy was forming against him. He accused _Boethius_ of being a partner in it, and adjudged him to death (524). While in prison at Pavia, this cultivated man, whom Theodoric had highly esteemed, composed a work on the "Consolations of Philosophy," which has made his name immortal in literature. The course of Theodoric at this time drew upon him the severe displeasure of his orthodox subjects. Soon after his death (526) his ashes were taken out of the tomb, and scattered to the winds. Hence nothing remains of his sepulcher at Ravenna but his empty mausoleum. Before the close of the century, as we shall see, another German tribe, the _Lombards_, founded a powerful state in Italy, which continued for more than two hundred years (568-774). THE FRANKS: CLOVIS.--When _Clovis_ (481-511), a warlike and ambitious chief of the Merovingian family of princes, became king of the Franks, they numbered but a few thousand warriors. The remnant of the Roman dominion on the Seine and the Loire he annexed, after having put to death _Syagrius_, the Roman governor, who was delivered up to him by the _Visigoths_. He made _Soissons_, and then _Paris_, the seat of his authority. A Salian Frank himself, he joined to himself the Ripuarian Franks on the Lower Rhine, and made war on the _Alemanni_, who were planted on both sides of the river. Before a battle (formerly thought to have been at _Tolbiac_), he vowed, that, if the victory were given him, he would worship the God of the Christians, of whom his wife _Clotilde_ was one. Clotilde was the niece of the Burgundian king, who was an Arian; but she was orthodox. The victory was won. Clovis, with three thousand of his nobles, was baptized by Remigius (_St. Remi_), Archbishop of Rheims. Hearing a sermon on the crucifixion, Clovis exclaimed, that, if he and his faithful Franks had been there, vengeance would have been taken on the Jews. He was a barbarian still, and the new faith imposed little restraint on his ambition and cruelty. But his conversion was an event of the highest importance. The Gallic church and clergy lent him their devoted support. The Franks were destined to become the dominant barbarian people. It was now settled that power was to be in the hands of Catholic--as distinguished from heretical Arian--Christianity. Clovis forced _Gundobald_, the Burgundian king, to become tributary, and to embrace the Catholic faith. He extended his kingdom to the Rhone on the east, and on the south (507-511), confined the Visigoths in Gaul to the strip of territory called _Septimania_, which they held for three centuries longer. _Brittany_ alone remained independent under its king. Clovis was hailed as the "most Christian king" and the second Constantine, and was made patrician and consul by the Eastern emperor _Anastasius_, in which titles, with their insignia, he rejoiced. In the closing part of his life he took care to destroy other Frank chieftains who might possibly undertake to dispute or divide with him his sovereignty. DISTRIBUTION OF TRIBES.--If we look at the map at the close of the fifth century, we find that all the western dominions of Rome are subject to Teutonic kings. The _Franks_, still retaining Western and Central Germany, rule in Northern Gaul, and are soon to extend their sway to the Pyrenees, and to conquer Burgundy. The _West Goths_ are the masters in Spain, and still hold Aquitaine, the most of which, however, is soon to be lost to the Franks. Italy and the lands north of the Alps and the Adriatic form the _East Gothic_ kingdom of _Theodoric_. Africa is governed by the Arian Vandals. To the north of the Franks, the tribes of Germany, which were never subject to Rome, have already begun their conquests in Britain. With the exception of Britain, which is falling under the power of the _Saxons_, and Africa, these countries are still nominally parts of the Roman Empire, of which Constantinople is the capital. In the east, the boundaries of the empire, notwithstanding the aggressions and insults which it has suffered, are but little altered. THE MEROVINGIANS.--The dominion of _Clovis_ was partitioned among his four sons (511). _Theodoric_, the eldest, in Rheims, ruled the Eastern Franks, in what soon after this time began to be called _Austrasia_, on both banks of the Rhine. _Neustria_, or the rest of the kingdom north of the Loire, was governed in parts by the other three. Theodoric gained by conquest the land of the Thuringians, whose king, _Hermanfrid_, he treacherously destroyed. A part of this land was given to the Saxons. The history of the Franks for half a century lacks unity. The several rulers rarely acted in concert. They made expeditions against the Burgundians, the Visigoths, and the Ostrogoths. Twice they attacked the _Burgundians_. The last time, in 534, they conquered them, deprived them of their national kings, and forced them to become Catholic. In 531 they made war on the Visigoths to avenge the wrongs inflicted on _Clotilde_, a princess of their family who suffered indignities at the hands of the Arian king _Amalaric_. They crossed the Pyrenees, and brought away Clotilde. A second division of the kingdom was made in 561 among the grandsons of Clovis, and consummated in 567. _Austrasia_, having Rheims for its capital, had a population chiefly German. _Neustria_, where the Gallo-Roman manners were adopted, had Soissons for its capital; and _Burgundy_ had its capital at Orleans. The population in both these last dominions was more predominantly Romano-Celtic, or "Romance." Family contests, and wars full of horrors,--in which the tragic feud of two women, _Brunhilde_ of Austrasia, a daughter of Athanagild, king of the Visigoths, and _Fredegunde_ of Neustria, played a prominent part,--ensued. In 613 _Clotaire II_. of Neustria united the entire kingdom. Brunhilde was captured, and put to death in a barbarous manner. The son of Clotaire, _Dagobert_, was a worthless king. The Frank sovereigns of the royal line are inefficient, and the virtual sovereignty is in the hands of the "Mayors of the Palace," the officers whose function it was to superintend the royal household, and who afterwards were leaders of the feudal retainers. The family of the _Pipins_, who were of pure German extraction, acquired the hereditary right to this office, first in Austrasia and later in Neustria. The descendants of _Pipin of Heristal_, as dukes of the Franks, had regal power, while the title of king was left to the Merovingian princes. The race of Pipin was afterwards called _Carolingians_, or _Karlings_. The preponderance of power at first had been with Neustria, but it shifted to the ruder and more energetic Austrasians. The battle of _Testry_, in which _Pipin_ of Heristal at their head overcame the Neustrians, determined the supremacy of Germany over France (687). His son and successor, _Charles Martel_ (715-741), made himself sole "Duke of the Franks;" and _Pipin the Short_ (741-768), the son of Charles Martel, became king, supplanting the Merovingian line (752). SAXON CONQUEST OF ENGLAND.--In the fourth century, when the power of Rome was declining, the Picts and Scots from the North began to make incursions into the Roman province of Britain. At the same time Teutonic tribes from the mouths of the Weser and the Elbe, began to land as marauders upon the coast. _Honorius_ withdrew the Roman troops from the island in 411; and it was conquered by these invading tribes, especially the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. They became one people, called _Anglo-Saxons_, Angles or _English_. They were fierce barbarians, who drove the Celts whom they did not kill or enslave--and whom they called _Welsh_, or strangers--into Wales and Cornwall. They formed kingdoms, the first of which, Kent, was the result of the coming of _Hengist_ and _Horsa_, whom _Vortigern_, the native prince, had invited to help him against the Picts (449). There were seven of these Saxon kingdoms (the _Heptarchy_), not all of which were at any one time regular communities. They were almost constantly at war with one another and with the natives. They had a king elected from the royal family. Freemen were either _Earls_ or _Churls_, the "gentle" or the "simple." The churl was attached to some one lord whom he followed in war. The _thanes_ were those who devoted themselves to the service of the king or some other great man. The thanes of the king became gentlemen and nobles. There were _thralls_, or slaves, either prisoners in war, or made slaves for debt or for crime. Connected with the king was a sort of Parliament, called the _Witenagemôt_, or Meeting of the Wise, composed originally of all freemen, and then of the great men, the _Ealdormen_, the king's thanes. After the Saxons were converted, the bishops and abbots belonged to it. In minor affairs, the "mark," or township, governed itself. CONVERSION OF THE SAXONS--The seven kingdoms, in the ninth century (828), were united under _Egbert_, who became king of Wessex in 802. He was called the king of England. Towards the Celtic Christians the heathen Saxons were hostile. The conversion of the Saxons was due to the labors of _Augustine_ and forty monks, whom _Gregory the Great_ (Gregory I.) sent to the island as missionaries in 597. Their first conversions were in Kent, whose king, _Ethelbert_, had married _Bertha_, the daughter of a Frankish king. Augustine, who had great success, became the first archbishop of _Canterbury_, and he consecrated a bishop of London. During the seventh century the other Saxon kingdoms were gradually converted. _York_ became a seat of a second archbishopric. While Britain had been cut off from close relations with the continent, the Celtic Church there had failed to keep pace with the changes of rite and polity which had taken place among Christians beyond the channel. The consequence was a strife on these points between the converted Saxons, who were devoted to the holy see, and the "Culdees" or Old British Christians. CONVERSION OF THE IRISH.--About the middle of the fifth century the gospel had been planted in Ireland, mainly by the labors of _Patrick_, who had been carried to that country from Scotland by pirates when he was a boy, and had returned to it as a missionary. The cloisters, and the schools connected with them, which he founded, flourished, became nurseries of study as well as of piety, and sent out missionaries to other countries of Western Europe. CHARACTER OF THE TEUTONIC KINGDOMS.--The Teutonic tribe was made up of freemen and of their dependents. The rights of freemen, such as the right to vote, continued; but these were modified as differences of rank and wealth arose. Their leaders in peace and war were the duke (_dux_), the count (_comes_, or _graf_), and the _herzog_ (duke of higher grade) over larger provinces. The companions of the king and the local chiefs grew into a nobility. Once or twice in the year there was a gathering of the freemen in assemblies, to decree war or to sanction laws. Land was partly held in common, partly by individuals either as tenants of the community, or as individual owners. The soil was shared in proportions by the conquerors and the conquered. THE CHURCH.--The Germanic tribes were generally more or less acquainted with the Romans, and were Christians by profession. They were subject to the influences of religion, of law, and of language, in the countries where they settled. Power passed from the Empire to the Church. The Church was strong in its moral force. Its bishops commanded the respect of the barbarians. They were moral and social leaders. In the period of darkness and of tempest, the voices of the Christian clergy were heard in accents of fearless rebuke and of tender consolation. In the cities of Italy and Gaul, the bishops, at the call of the people, informally took the first place in civil affairs. Remarkable men arose in the Church, who were conspicuous as ambassadors and peace-makers, as intercessors for the suffering, and courageous protectors of the injured. Such a man was _Leo the Great._ The barbarians were awed by the kingdom of righteousness, which, without exerting force, opposed to force and passion an undaunted front. There was often a conflict between their love of power and passionate impatience of control, and their reverence for the priest and for the gospel. They could not avoid feeling in some measure the softening and restraining influence of Christian teaching, and learning the lessons of the cross. Socially, the Church, as such, "was always on the side of peace, on the side of industry, on the side of purity, on the side of liberty for the slave, and protection for the oppressed. The monasteries were the only keepers of literary tradition: they were, still more, great agricultural colonies, clearing the wastes, and setting the example of improvement. They were the only seats of human labor which could hope to be spared in those lands of perpetual war." Nevertheless, the religious condition of the West, the condition of the Church and of the clergy, could not fail to be powerfully affected for the worse by the influx of barbarism, and the corrupting influence of the barbarian rulers. A great deterioration in the Church and in its ministry ensued after the first generation following the Germanic conquests passed away. This demoralization was more among the secular clergy than the monastic. The "History of the Franks," by _Gregory of Tours_ (540-594), is an instructive memorial of the times. He was himself an intrepid prelate, who did not quail before _Chilperic I_. and _Fredegunde_, but braved their wrath. Chilperic proposed to establish by his authority a new view of the Trinity of his own devising, but was resisted by Gregory, who told him that no one but a lunatic would embrace such an opinion. A still more crude reform of the alphabet, which the Frankish king contrived, and proposed to put in force by having existing books rewritten, Gregory effectually resisted. ROMAN LAW.--The barbarians were profoundly impressed by the system of Roman law. This they recognized as the rule for the Roman population in the different countries. More and more they incorporated its exact provisions into their own codes. Among the _West Goths_ in _Spain_ the two elements were ultimately fused into one body of laws (642-701). Under the _Franks_, the Roman municipal system was not extinguished; the Teutonic count or bishop standing in the room of the Roman president or consular, and a more popular body taking the place of the restricted municipality. The Roman civil polity, with its definite enactments for every relation in life and every exigency, was always at hand, and exercised an increasing control. STATE OF LEARNING.--The Latin language--the rustic Latin of the lower classes--was spoken by the conquered peoples. Latin was the language of the Church and of the Law. The consequence was, that the two languages, the tongue of the conquerors and of the Roman subjects, existed side by side in an unconscious struggle with one another. In the west and south of Europe, the victory was on the side of the Latin. The languages of these countries, the "Latin nations," grew out of the rustic dialects spoken in Roman times. In these nations the result of the mixture of the races was the final predominance of the Latin element in the civilization. In Gaul, the Franks yielded to Latin influences: _France_ was the product. With the fall of the empire, classical culture died out. The cathedral and cloister schools preserved the records of literature. The study of language, and the mental discrimination and refinement which spring from it and from literary discipline, passed away. Centuries of comparative illiteracy--dark centuries--followed. Yet the monks were often active in their own rude style of composition; and among them were not only good men, but men of eminent natural abilities, who were unconsciously paving the way for a better time. SAXON ENGLAND.--In England, by the Saxon conquest, a purely Teutonic kingdom was built up. The _Saxons_ were heathen, who had never felt the civilizing influence of Rome. The traces of the earlier state of things in the province which had long been sundered from the empire, they swept away in the progress of their conquest. CHAPTER III. THE EASTERN EMPIRE. RELIGIOUS DISPUTES.--While the West was beginning to recover from the shock of the barbarian invasions, society in the Eastern Empire was growing more enervated and corrupt. For a considerable period the Byzantine government was managed by the influence of women. Thus _Theodosius II_., the successor of Arcadius (408-450), was governed during his whole reign by his sister _Pulcheria_. In the East, there was an intense interest felt in the abstruse questions of metaphysical theology. The Greek mind was speculative; and eager and often acrimonious debate on such questions as were raised by _Nestorius_ respecting the two natures of the Saviour, was heard even in the shops and markets. The court meddled actively in these heated controversies, and was swayed to one party or the other by the theologians whom, for the time, it took into its favor. The emperors assumed the high prerogative of personally deciding in doctrinal disputes, and of dictating opinions to the clergy, who gradually lost their independence, and became abjectly subservient to the imperial will. THE HIPPODROME.--The rage for doctrinal dispute in the sixth century was only exceeded by the passions kindled in connection with the circus, or hippodrome, at Constantinople. In old Rome the competitors in the chariot-races were organized, the drivers wore their respective badges,--red, white, blue, or green,--and emperors of the baser sort, like _Caligula_ and _Caracalla_, visited the stables, and were enrolled on the lists of the rival factions. But in Constantinople the factions of the _blue_ and the _green_, not content with the contest of the race-course, were violent political parties in which courtiers and the emperor himself took sides. The animosity of the _blues_ and the _greens_ broke out in frequent bloody conflicts in the streets. Their respective adherents spread into the provinces. On one occasion, under _Justinian_, they raised a sedition called _Nika_ (from the watchword used by the combatants), which well-nigh subverted the throne. In this period the _body-guard_ of the emperor played a part resembling that of the old praetorians at Rome. JUSTINIAN.--A new dynasty began with _Justin I_., who succeeded _Anastasius_ in 518. A peasant from _Dardania_ (Bulgaria), who to the end of life was obliged to sign his name by means of an engraved tablet, but, from being prefect of the Guard, became emperor, Justin was still not without merit as a ruler. He educated his nephew, _Justinian I_. (527-565), and made him his successor. Justinian married _Theodora_, who had been a comedian and a courtesan, and was famous for her beauty. She was the daughter of _Acacius_, who had had the care of the wild beasts maintained by one of the factions of the circus. She joined the _blues_, and it was her brave spirit that prevented _Justinian_ from taking flight when he was in imminent danger from the revolt of the _Nika_. The most important proceedings and decisions in affairs of state were determined by her will. Outwardly correct in her life, and zealous for orthodoxy, her vigor of mind and cleverness were not without service to the government; but her vindictive passions had full indulgence. Justinian's reign was the most brilliant period in the Byzantine history after the time of Constantine. Under his despotic rule the last vestiges of republican administration were obliterated. His love of pomp and of extravagant expenditure, in connection with his costly wars, subjected the people to a crushing weight of taxation. WAR WITH PERSIA.--The brilliant achievements in war during Justinian's reign were owing to the skill and valor of his generals, especially of the hero _Belisarius_. After a hundred years of amity with Persia, war with that kingdom broke out once more under _Anastasius_ and _Justin_. _Belisarius_ saved the Asiatic provinces, and defended the empire on the east against _Cobad_, and against his successor, _Chosroes I_. (531-579), who was, perhaps, the greatest of the Persian kings of the _Sassanid_ dynasty. The "endless peace" made with him in 533 lasted but seven years. _Chosroes_ captured _Antioch_ in 540. The worst consequences of this success were again averted by _Belisarius_, who was recalled from Italy in all haste. In the treaty of 562, _Justinian_ ingloriously agreed to pay for the honor of being the protector of the Christians in Persia the annual tribute of thirty thousand pieces of gold. CONQUEST OF AFRICA--From a military point of view the conquests of _Justinian_ in Africa, in Italy, and in Spain, were the signal events of his reign. Victory proved fatal to the barbarian conquerors in those countries. They were weakened by the southern climate, by sensual indulgence, and by strife among themselves. Justinian was ready to profit by this diminished capacity of resistance. _Gelimer_, king of the _Vandals_, had put to death _Hilderic_, a kinsman of _Theodosius I_. The emperor made this an occasion of attacking the Vandal kingdom, which was distracted by religious differences and contention. _Belisarius_ sailed to Africa with a fleet of six hundred vessels, manned with twenty thousand sailors and fifteen thousand troops. Three months after landing he gained a decisive victory, and took possession of _Africa, Sardinia_, and the _Balearic Isles_ (534). He carried _Gelimer_ as a captive to Constantinople, and presented him to _Justinian_ and _Theodora_, seated side by side in the hippodrome to receive the triumphal procession in honor of the victor. The captive ruler could only exclaim, "Vanity, vanity! All is vanity!" CONQUEST OF ITALY.--Professedly to avenge the wrongs of _Amalasontha_, the ambitious and intriguing daughter of _Theodoric_, who had been killed as a consequence of the disaffection of the Goths, _Belisarius_ was sent to Italy. _Sicily_ was conquered (535), and _Naples_ and _Rome_ were taken (536). _Vitiges_, the new king of the Goths, united the forces of the nation; but he was driven to shut himself up in _Ravenna_, and Ravenna surrendered (540). The Goths had offered the sovereignty of the country to _Belisarius_. The jealousy of Justinian, and war with Persia, led to the recall of Belisarius before he could complete the work of conquest. The Goths under _Totila_, a nephew of the late king, regained the greater part of Italy. Belisarius (544-549) was sent for the second time to conquer that country. He gained important successes, and recaptured Rome; but he was feebly supported by the suspicious and envious ruler at Constantinople, and was at length called home. _Narses_, a eunuch, insignificant in person, but as crafty as he was brave, was commissioned to accomplish what Belisarius had not been allowed to effect. He entered Italy at the head of an army, made up mostly of Huns, Heruli, and other barbarians, and defeated _Totila_, who died of his wounds (552). The Ostrogothic kingdom fell. The Gothic warriors who survived had leave to quit the country with their property, they having taken an oath never to return. The Ostrogoths, as a nation, vanish from history. The EXARCHATE, or vice-royalty of the Eastern Empire, was established, with its seat at _Ravenna_. In _Spain_, Justinian obtained _Corduba, Assidona, Segontia_ (554), in reward of the assistance which he had rendered to _Athanagild_ against a competitor for the throne. Constantinople was saved by _Belisarius_ from a threatened attack of the _Bulgarians_, who had crossed the Danube on the ice (559). This great general, whose form and stature and benign manners attracted the admiration of the people, as his noble but poorly requited services gave him a right to the gratitude of the sovereign, was accused, in 563, of conspiracy against the life of Justinian. His property was confiscated, but his innocence was finally declared. The story that he was deprived of his eyes, and compelled to beg his bread, is not credited. He died in 565. A few months later _Justinian_ himself died at the age of eighty-three. He has been aptly compared, as to his personal character and the character of his reign, to Louis XIV. of France. Among the many structures which he reared was the temple of St. Sophia at Constantinople, and countless fortresses for the defense of the capital, of the Danube, and of other parts of the exposed frontier. THE CIVIL LAW.--Justinian's principal distinction in history grows out of his relation to legislation, and to the study of the law. He caused a famous lawyer, _Tribonian_, with the aid of a body of jurists, to make those collections of ancient law which are still in force in many countries. The _Code_ included the imperial constitutions and edicts in twelve books (527, 528). This was followed (533) by the _Institutes_, embracing the principles of Roman jurisprudence, which was to be studied in the schools of _Constantinople_, _Berytus_, and _Rome_; and the _Digest_, or _Pandects_, comprising the most valuable passages from the writings of the old jurists, that were deemed of authority. In this last work three million lines were reduced to a hundred and fifty thousand. Finally a fourth work, _The Novels_, embraced the laws of Justinian after the publication of the code (534-565). These works, taken together, form the Civil Law,--the _Corpus Juris Civilis_. They are the legacy of Rome to later times. Humane principles are incorporated into the civil law, but, likewise, the despotic system of imperialism. THE LOMBARDS IN ITALY.--In the great "Wandering of the Nations," the German tribe of _Lombards_, or Langobards, had made their way into _Pannonia_. To the east of them, in _Dacia_, there had arisen the kingdom of the _Gepidae_, a people akin to the _Goths_. In that region, also, were the Turanian _Avars_, with whom the Lombards allied themselves, and overthrew the kingdom of the Gepidæ. After the conquest of Italy, _Narses_ had established there the Byzantine system of rule and of grinding taxation. Discontent was the natural result. The enemies of _Narses_ at Constantinople persuaded _Justin II._ and his queen _Sophia_, who had great influence over him, that prudence demanded the recall of the able, but avaricious and obnoxious, governor. The queen was reported to have said, that "he should leave to men the exercise of arms, and return to his proper station among the women of the palace, where a distaff should be placed in the eunuch's hand." "I will spin her such a thread," Narses is said to have replied, "as she shall not unravel her life long." He forthwith invited the _Lombards_ into Italy, an invitation which they were not both to accept. _Alboin_ was their leader, who had married the beautiful _Rosamond_, daughter of the _Gepid_ king whom he had slain. Narses repented of his rash proceeding, but he died before he could organize a resistance to the invaders. These founded the great Lombard kingdom in the north of Italy, and the smaller Lombard states of _Spoleto_ and _Beneventum_. Ravenna,--the residence of the _Exarchs_,--Rome, Naples, and the island city of Venice, were centers of districts still remaining subject to the Greek emperor, as were also the southern points of the two peninsulas of Southern Italy, and, for the time, the three main islands. _Alboin_ was killed in 574 at the instigation of _Rosamond_, to whom, it was said, at a revel he had sent wine to drink in the skull of _Cunimund_, her father. The Lombards were not like the Goths. They formed no treaties, but seized on whatever lands they wanted, reserving to themselves all political rights. The new-comers were _Arian_ in religion, and partly heathen. There was little intermixture by marriage between the two classes of inhabitants. _Lombard_ and _Roman_ was each governed by his own system of law. Later, especially under the kings _Liutprand_, _Rachis_, and _Aistulf_ (749-756), this antagonism was much lessened, and the Roman law gained a preponderating influence in the Lombard codes. Gradually the power of the independent Lombard duchies increased. The strength of the Lombard kingdom was thus reduced. The Lombards more and more learned the arts of civilized life from the Romans, and shared in the trading and industrial pursuits of the cities. Their gradual conversion to Catholic Christianity brought the two peoples still nearer together. It was within half a century of the Lombard conquest that _Gregory I._ (Gregory the Great) held the papal office (590-604). AFTER JUSTINIAN.--During the century and a half that followed the death of Justinian, the history of the Byzantine court and empire is an almost unbroken tale of crime and degeneracy. The cruelty of such emperors as _Phocas_ (602-610) and _Justinian II_. surpasses the brutality of Nero and Domitian. The reign of _Heraclius_ is the only refreshing passage in this dreary and repulsive record. He led his armies in person in a series of campaigns against _Chosroes II_., the Persian king. At the very time when Constantinople was besieged in vain by a host of Persians and Avars, he conducted his forces into the heart of the Persian Empire; and in a great battle near _Nineveh_ in 627, he won a decisive victory. With the reign of _Heraclius_, the transient prosperity of the Greek Empire comes to an end. It was exhausted, even by its victories. Overwhelmed with taxation, it was ruined in its trade and industry. Despotism in the rulers, sensuality and baseness in rulers and subjects, undermined public and private virtue. In addition to other enemies on every side, it was attacked by the _Arabians_; and _Heraclius_ lived to see the loss of _Syria_ and of _Egypt_, and the capture of _Alexandria_, by these new assailants. CONTROVERSY ON IMAGE WORSHIP.--The period of theological debate, when at its height in the fourth and fifth centuries, whatever extravagances of doctrinal zeal attended it, dealt with themes of grave importance; and controversy was often waged by men of high ability and moral worth. After that time, there succeeded to the tempest an intellectual stagnation, under the blighting breath of despotism, coupled with the effect of a lassitude, the natural sequel of the long-continued disputation. But, in the eighth and ninth centuries, a new controversy took place, which convulsed the Eastern Empire, and extended to the West. The matter in dispute was the use of images in worship. Pictorial representations had been gradually introduced in the earlier centuries, but had been opposed, especially in Egypt and in the African Church. After the time of _Constantine_, they came by degrees into universal use. This formed a ground of reproach on the part of the _Mohammedans_. The warfare upon images was begun by _Leo III_., the Isaurian (717-741), a rough soldier with no appreciation of art, who issued an edict against them. The party of "image-breakers," or _iconoclasts_, had numerous adherents; and the opposite party of "image-worshipers," who had a powerful support from the monks in the convents, were ardent and inflexible in withstanding the imperial measures. Neither the remonstrances of _John of Damascus_, the last of the Greek Fathers, nor of the Roman bishop, made an impression on _Leo_. The agitation spread far and wide. Subsequent emperors followed in his path. At length, however, the Empress _Irene_ (780-802) restored image-worship; and, in 842, the Empress _Theodora_ finally confirmed this act. In the controversy, religious motives were active, but they were mingled on both sides with political considerations. The alienation of feeling on the part of the Roman bishops was one cause of the separation of Italy from the Greek Empire. LITERATURE AND CULTURE.--While there was a prevalence of illiteracy in the West, there continued in the Eastern Empire an interest in letters, and a respect for classical literature. Devoted Greek monks taught the Gospel to the _Bulgarians_ and to the Slavonian tribes on its borders. _Cyril_ and _Methodius_, faithful missionaries, gave the Bible to the _Moravians_ in their own tongue. In the seventh century, _John of Damascus_ compiled from the Greek Fathers a celebrated treatise on theology. But the period of original thought in theology, as elsewhere, had passed by. This work of the Damascene was made up chiefly of excerpts from the Fathers before him. In earlier days the church in the East had been served by erudite theologians of great talents and of great excellence, such as _Basil the Great_ (328-379), _Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzum_ (326-390); all of whom were liberal-minded men, strenuous defenders of orthodox doctrine, and yet not unfriendly to philosophical study. Of even wider fame was _John Chrysostom_ (347-407), a preacher of captivating eloquence and of an earnest Christian spirit, whose censure of the vices of the Byzantine court provoked the wrath of the Empress _Eudoxia_, and twice drove him into banishment. In the declining days of the empire, literary effort was mainly confined to compilations and comments. _Eusebius_, in the fourth century, had written a _History of the Church_, and a _Chronicle_, or General History; and, a century later (about 432), _Zosimus_ composed a _History_ in a spirit of antipathy to Christianity and of sympathy with the old religion. To _Procopius_ (who died about 565) we owe an interesting history of the times of _Justinian_. After the seventh century, all traces of life and spirit vanish from the pages of the Byzantine historians. In mathematics and astronomy, in architecture and mechanics, the Byzantine Greeks were the teachers of the Arabians and of the new peoples of the West. The Byzantine style of architecture was of a distinct type, and was widely diffused. THE SLAVONIC TRIBES.--In the sixth century the _Slavonian_ tribes come into view. The _Avars_ stirred up such a commotion among those tribes as the Huns had created among the Germans. The _Slaves_ were driven to the _northwest_, where later they came into relations with Germany; and to the _southwest_, where, as conquerors and as learners, they stood, in some degree, in relation to the Eastern Empire, in the same position as that of the Germans in reference to the Western. North and East of the Adriatic arose Slavonian States, as _Servia, Croatia, Carinthia. Istria_ and _Dalmatia_, except the cities on the coast, became Slavonic. The Slaves displaced the old _Illyrian_ race. In the seventh and eighth centuries, _Macedonia_ and _Greece_ were largely occupied by Slavonians. The _Bulgarians_ were a Turanian people, who mixed with the Slavonians, and adopted their language. In 895 the _Magyars_, a Turanian people, crowded into _Dacia_ and _Pannonia_; and thus the _Bulgarians_ were confined to the lands south of the Danube. The _Magyars_ formed the kingdom of _Hungary_. The Slavonian _Russians_ were cut off from the Southern tribes of the same race. CHAPTER IV. MOHAMMEDANISM AND THE ARABIC CONQUESTS. CONDITION OF ARABIA.--In the sixth century the influence of the Greek and of the Persian Empires, especially of the Persian, was prevalent in Arabia. It was then inhabited mostly by tribes either distinct or loosely bound together, and contained no independent state of any considerable importance. The Arabs of that day had "all the virtues and vices of the half-savage state, its revenge and its rapacity, its hospitality and its bounty." In the _Hejaz_ district--situated between fertile and more civilized _Yemen_, or Arabia Felix, in the south-west of the peninsula and the Sinaitic region,--and in _Nejd_ to the east of Hejaz, which were the two districts in which Islam and the Arabian Empire took their rise, dwelt tribes whose common sanctuary was the _Kaaba_ at _Mecca_, in the wall of which was the quadrangular black stone kissed by all devotees, and supposed to have been received from the angel Gabriel. The religion of the Arabs was polytheism in many different forms, in which idol-worship was prominent; but all agreed in acknowledging one supreme God, _Allah_, in whose name solemn oaths were taken. Once in the year the tribes gathered in Mecca for their devotions; and a great fair in the vicinity, attended by a poetical contest, made the city prosperous. The town was made up of separate _Septs_, or patriarchal families, each under its own head, of which septs the _Omayyads_ were of principal importance, and had charge of the _Kaaba_. _Mohammed_ belonged to the _Hashimites_, another and poorer branch of the leading tribe of _Koreish_. The _Koreishites_, by their trading-journeys to Syria, had acquired more culture then others, whether Bedouins, or residents of _Medina_. At the time when _Mohammed_ was born, which was probably in 572, the religion of the Arabs had sunk into idolatry or indifference. There were three hundred and sixty images in the Kaaba. But there were some who were called _hanifs_, who were serious and earnest, and turned away from idolatrous worship. Besides the _Sabian_ religion of the Persian sun-worshipers, the leading tenets and rites of Christianity and of Judaism, both in the degenerate types which they assumed on the Syrian borders, were not unfamiliar to Arabs dwelling in the caravan routes on the borders of the Red Sea. CAREER OF MOHAMMED.--_Mohammed_ was early left an orphan under the care of his uncle _Abu Talib_. In his youth he tended sheep, and gathered wild berries in the desert. In his twenty-fifth year he became the commercial agent of a wealthy widow, _Khadija_, made journeys for her into Palestine and Syria,--where he may have received religious knowledge and impressions from Christian monks and Jewish rabbis,--and, after a time, married her. He is described as having a commanding presence, with piercing eyes, fluent in speech, and with pleasing ways. Eventually he came into close contact with the _hanifs_. He followed the custom of retiring for meditation and prayer to the lonely and desolate _Mount Hira._ A vivid sense of the being of one Almighty God and of his own responsibility to God, entered into his soul. A tendency to hysteria in the East a disease of men as well as of women--and to epilepsy helps to account for extraordinary states of body and mind of which he was the subject. At first he ascribed his strange ecstasies, or hallucinations, to evil spirits, especially on the occasion when an angel directed him to begin the work of prophesying. But he was persuaded by _Khadija_ that their source was from above. He became convinced that he was a prophet inspired with a holy truth and charged with a sacred commission. His wife was his first convert. His faith he called _Islam_, which signifies "resignation to the divine will." His cousin _Ali_, his friend _Abubekr_, and a few others, believed in him. There is no doubt that the materials of Mohammed's creed were drawn from Jewish and Christian sources: _Abraham_ was the _hanif_, whose pure monotheism he claimed to re-assert; but the animating spirit was from within. The sum of his doctrine was, that there is only one God, and that Mohammed is the apostle of God. AFTER THE HEGIRA.--The _Koreishites_, the rulers and the elders, persecuted him. They flung out the reproach, that his adherents were from the poor or from the rank of slaves. This provoked him to denounce them, and to threaten them with the Divine judgment and with perdition. He lost his uncle in 619: his wife had died before. He had found sympathy with his claims from pious men from _Medina_. They offered him an asylum. Thither he went in 622, the date of his _Hijira_, or flight from Mecca, from which the Mohammedan calendar is reckoned. At Medina he won influence: he was frequently resorted to as an adviser, and as a judge to settle disputes. His activity in this direction was beneficent. His injunctions respecting the rights of property, and the protection due to women, were, in the main, discreet and wholesome. Naturally and speedily he became a political leader as well as a religious reformer. This new course on which he entered made a breach between him and the _Jews_, whom he had hoped to conciliate. He drew off from fellowship with them, made _Friday_ the principal day of public worship, and Mecca its principal seat. For the Jewish fast he substituted the month of _Ramadan_. His plan was to cement together the Arab tribes, superseding the old tie of blood by the new bond of fellowship in adherence to him. The project of a holy war to conquer and to crush the idolaters, and to establish his own authority, was the means to this end. _Mecca_ was the first object of assault. He attacked and plundered a Meccan caravan in 623. The next year he defeated the _Koreishites_ in the battle of _Bedr_. In the battle of _Ohod_ (625) his followers were worsted. Other conflicts ensued, with attacks on the _Jews_ in the intervals, until, in 630, he entered _Mecca_ at the head of ten thousand men, and destroyed all the idols. This event secured the adhesion of the Arabian tribes, together with the chiefs of _Yemen_ and of the other more civilized districts. Hearing that the Emperor _Heraclius_ was proposing to attack him, he went forth to meet him, but found that the rumor was false. He was preparing a new expedition against the _Greeks_ when he died, in 632. CHARACTER OF MOHAMMED.--From the time of the flight of Mohammed to Medina, the prophet turned more and more into the politician. Under the circumstances, this was, perhaps, an almost inevitable change. But one consequence was the bringing out of his natural vindictiveness, and the transformation of the enthusiast into the fanatic. Beginning as the prophet of Arabia, he came to think that he was the prophet of the whole world. There was a call to a wider warfare against idolatry. A crusade, partly political and partly religious, involved a mixture of craft and cruelty which exhibit his character in a new light. Yet it is probable that he always sincerely felt that his work in general was one to which he was called of God. Even the prosaic regulations and "orders of the day," which are placed in the _Koran_, if not the reproduction, in cataleptic visions, of his previous thoughts, may have been regarded by him as having a divine sanction. The extent of possible self-deception in so extraordinary a combination of qualities, it is not easy to define. His conduct was, for the most part, on a level with his precepts. There was one exception; he allowed not more than four wives to a disciple: he himself, at one time, had eleven. While _Khadija_ lived he was wedded to her alone. THE KORAN.--The Koran is regarded as the word of God by a hundred millions of disciples. It is very unequal in style. In parts it is vigorous, and here and there imaginative, but generally its tone is prosaic. Its narrative portions are chiefly about scriptural persons, especially those of the Old Testament. Mohammed's acquaintance with these must have been indirect, from rabbinical and apocryphal sources. _Adam_, _Noah_, _Abraham_, _Moses_, and _Christ_ are acknowledged as prophets. The deity of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity are repudiated. The miracles of Jesus are acknowledged. Mohammed does not claim for himself miraculous power. Predestination is taught, but this became a conspicuous tenet of Moslems after the death of the founder. The immortality of the soul is admitted, the pains of hell are threatened to the wicked and to "infidels;" and a sensual paradise is promised to the faithful, although it is declared that higher spiritual joys are the lot of the most favored. The faith of Mohammed was, in substance, Judaism, the religion of the Old Testament; power being set before holiness, however, in the conception of God, and the supernatural mission of _Mohammed_ substituted for the future Messianic reign of righteousness and peace, and coupled with the emphatic proclamation of the last judgment. The law in the Koran is a civil as well as a moral code. Notwithstanding his countenance of sensuality by his own practice, as well as by his legalizing of polygamy, and his notion of paradise, Mohammed elevated the condition of woman among the Arabs. Before there was unbridled profligacy: now there was a regulated polygamy. Severe prohibitions are uttered against thieving, usury, fraud, false witness; and alms-giving is emphatically enjoined. Strong drink and gambling were prohibited. The gem of the Koran is "The Lord's Prayer of the Moslems:" "In the name of God, the compassionate Compassioner, the Sovereign of the day of judgment. Thee do we worship, and of Thee do we beg assistance. Direct us in the right way; in the way of those to whom Thou hast been gracious, in whom there is no wrath, and who go not astray." THE ARABIC CONQUESTS: SYRIA, PERSIA, EGYPT.--Mohammed made no provision for the succession. The _Caliphs_, or "successors," combined in themselves civil, military and religious authority. They united the functions of emperor and pope. _Ali_, the husband of _Fatima_, Mohammed's favorite daughter, had hoped to succeed him. But, by the older companions of the prophet, _Abubekr,_ Mohammed's father-in-law was appointed. The _Shiites_ were supporters of Ali, while the _Sunnites_, who adhered to "the traditions of the elders," were against him. These two parties have continued until the present day; the _Persians_ being _Shiites_, and the _Turks, Sunnites_. Mohammed, before he died, was inflamed with the spirit of conquest. Full of the fire of fanaticism, mingled with a thirst for dominion and plunder, the Arabians rapidly extended their sway. These warriors, to their credit be it said, if terrible in attack, were mild in victory. Their two principal adversaries were the _Eastern Empire_ and _Persia_. Mohammedanism snatched from the empire those provinces in which the Greek civilization had not taken deep root, and it made its way into Europe. It conquered _Persia_, and became the principal religion of those Asiatic nations with which history mainly has to do. Mohammed had made a difference in his injunctions between heathen, apostates, and schismatics, all of whom were to embrace Islam or to perish, and Jews and Christians, to both of whom was given the choice of the Koran, tribute, or death. They must buy the right to exercise their religion, if they refused to say that "Allah is God, and Mohammed is His prophet." _Omar_ (634-644), the next caliph after _Abubekr_, and a leader distinguished alike for his military energy and his simplicity of manners and life, first brought all Arabia, which was impelled as much by a craving for booty as by religious zeal, into a cordial union under his banner. Then he carried the war beyond the Arabian borders. _Palestine_ and _Syria_ were wrested from the Greek Empire; the old cities of _Jerusalem, Antioch_, and _Damascus_ fell into the hands of the impetuous Saracens. A mosque was erected on the site of Solomon's Temple. The _Persian Empire_ was invaded, and, after a series of sanguinary battles, especially the battle of _Cadesia_ (636), followed by the battle of _Nehavend_ (641), was destroyed. _Ctesiphon_, with all its riches, was captured, and _Persepolis_ was sacked. The last king of the line of _Sassanids_, _Yezdegerd III_., having lived for many years as a fugitive, perished by the hand of an assassin (652). Meantime _Egypt_ had submitted to the irresistible invaders under _Amr_, who was aided by the Christian sect of the _Copts_, out of hostility to the Greek Orthodox Church. After a siege of fourteen months, _Alexandria_ was taken; but it is probably not true that the library was burned by _Omar's_ order. In the disorders of the times, the great collections of books had probably, for the most part, been dispersed and destroyed. Six friends of Mohammed, selected by _Omar_, chose _Othman_ (644-656) for his successor, who stirred up enmity by his pride and avarice. Under him the Christian _Berbers_ in Africa were won over to the faith of Islam, and paved the way for its further advance. THE OMAYYADS: CONQUEST OF AFRICA AND SPAIN.--_Othman_ was assassinated by three fanatics, and _Ali_ was then raised to the caliphate; but _Muawiyah_, representing the family of the _Omayyads_, made himself the head of an opposing party, and, after the assassination of _Ali_, became sole caliph (661). He removed the seat of the caliphate to _Damascus_. He carried the Arabian conquests as far as the _Indus_ and _Bokhara_. He created a fleet on the Mediterranean, under an "Admiral," that is, a commander on the sea. In seven successive years he menaced Constantinople with his navy. At a later time, in 717, under the caliph _Soliman_, another great attempt was made on the capital of the Greek Empire. With an army of a hundred and twenty thousand men, he traversed Asia Minor and the Hellespont, and was supported in his attack by a fleet of eighteen hundred sail. But the energetic defense, which was aided by the use of "the Greek fire,"--an artificial compound which exploded and burned with an unquenchable flame,--caused the grand expedition to fail; and the Eastern Empire had another long lease of life. The successors of _Muawiyah_ accomplished the subjugation of Africa. They were invited by the native inhabitants, who groaned under the burdens of taxation laid on them by the Greek emperors. About A.D. 700 the Arab governor, _Musa_, completed the conquest of the African dominion of the Greeks as far as the Atlantic. The amalgamation of the _Berbers_ with the other inhabitants of that region, and with the _Arabs_, resulted in the race called _Moors_. At this time the Spanish Visigothic kingdom, which had become Catholic (586-601), was much enfeebled, and a prey to discord. Under _Tarik_--from whom _Gibraltar_, or the mountain of _Tarik_ near which he landed, is named--the Arabs crossed into Spain, and for the first time found themselves face to face with the barbarians of the North. In the great battle of _Xeres de la Frontera_, near the _Guadalquivir_, in 711, which lasted for three days, the fate of the Visigothic kingdom was decided. Eight years were occupied in conquering Spain. In 720 the Saracens occupied _Septimania_ north of the Pyrenees, a dependency of the Gothic kingdom. Gaul now lay open before them. The Mohammedan power threatened to encircle Christendom, and to destroy the Church and Christianity itself. In the plains between _Tours_ and _Poitiers_, the Saracens were met by the Austrasian Franks under _Charles Martel_ (732). The impetuous charges of the Saracen cavalry were met and beaten back by the infantry of the _Franks_, which confronted them like an iron wall. The Mohammedan defeat saved Christian Europe from being trampled under foot by the Mussulman; it saved the Christian people of the _Aryan_ nations from being subjugated by the _Semitic_ disciples of the Koran. At the same time that Spain was overrun, the Turkish lands on the east of the Caspian were subdued. The old antipathy between the Iranians and Turanians, the Schiite Persians and the Sunnite Turks, was afterwards carried into Europe by the Ottoman Moslems. THE ABBASSIDES: BAGDAD.--Misgovernment embittered the faithful against the rule of the _Omayyads_ in _Damascus_, although Syria had become a source of higher culture for the Arabians: there they became acquainted with Greek learning. The adherents of _Ali_ found vigorous champions in the _Abbassides_, who, as _Hashimites_, laid claim to the caliphate. One of them, _Abul Abbas_, was made caliph by the soldiers in 750. The fierce cruelty of his party against the _Omayyads_ led to the murder of all of them except _Abderrahman_, who fled to Africa, and, in 755, founded an independent caliphate at _Cordova_. The _Abbassides_ attached themselves to the _Sunnite_ creed. Under _Almansor_, the brother and successor of _Abbas, Bagdad_, a city founded by _Almansor_ (754-775) on the banks of the Tigris, was made the seat of the caliphate, and so continued until the great Mongolian invasion in 1258. Bagdad was built on the west bank of the Tigris, but, by means of bridges, stretched over to the other shore. It was protected by strong, double walls. It was not only the proud capital of the caliphate: it was, besides, the great market for the trade of the East, the meeting-place of many nations, where caravans from China and Thibet, from India, and from Ferghana in the modern Turkestan, met throngs of merchants from Armenia and Constantinople, from Egypt and Arabia. There trading-fleets gathered which carried the products of the North and West down the great rivers to the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. _Bagdad_ was to the caliphs what _Byzantium_ was to Constantine, or _Alexandria_ to the Ptolemies. It became the grandest city in the world. Canals to the number of six hundred ran through it, and a hundred and five bridges bound its two parts together. It was furnished with many thousand mosques and as many baths. The palace of the caliphs comprised in itself all the splendor which Asiatic taste and extravagance could collect and combine in one edifice. THE EASTERN CALIPHATE.--Deprived of the western extremity of their empire, the _Abbassides_ still ruled over _Asia_ and _Africa_. In their luxurious and splendid court, the caliphs, served by a vast retinue of officers with the _Vizier_ at their head, copied the magnificence of the ancient Persians. The most famous of the caliphs of Bagdad is _Harun-al-Rashid_, or "Aaron the Just" (786-809). His name is familiar even to children as the wonderful hero of the "Arabian Nights." His reign, like that of _Solomon_ in ancient Judæa, was considered in after times the golden age of the caliph dominion. As in the case of _Charlemagne_, poetry and romance invested his character and reign with all that can give glory and honor to a king and a sage. Brilliant pictures were drawn of the boundless wealth and luxury of his court, and of his admirable piety and wisdom. About him there was assembled a host of jurists, linguists, and poets. Three hundred scholars traveled at his expense through different lands. Righteous judgments were ascribed to him, and oracular sayings. He was made the ideal ruler of Oriental fancy. His real character fell much below the later popular conception. He behaved like an Eastern despot towards all his kindred who stood in his way. The Persian family of _Barmecides_ he exterminated, when his passionate attachment to one of them turned to hatred on account of an obscure affair connected with the harem. Stories told by Western chroniclers of his relations with _Charlemagne_ require to be sifted. The Greek emperor _Nicephorus_, who had rashly defied him, he addressed as the "Roman dog." Nine times _Harun_ invaded the Greek Empire, left its provinces wasted as by a hurricane, and extorted from it a tribute which he obliged the emperors, who repented of their daring, to pay in coin stamped with his image. His best distinction is in the liberal patronage which he, no doubt, extended to learning. In this he was imitated by his son _Al Mamun_ (813-833), who founded numerous schools, and expended vast sums in behalf of science and letters. The caliphate was weakened by the introduction of the _Turks_, somewhat as the Roman Empire fared from its relations with the Germans. _Motasem_ (833-842), the eighth of the Abbassides, brought in a Turkish guard of forty thousand slaves, purchased in _Tartary_. These soldiers, instead of remaining servants, became lawless masters, and disposed of the throne as the prætorians at Rome had done. The palace of the caliphs was filled with violence. Revolution and anarchy, kept up during two centuries, broke the caliphate into fragments. Conspiracies and insurrections were the order of the day. _Africa_ had detached itself in the time of _Harun-al-Rashid_. In _Asia_ various independent dynasties arose, formed mostly by Turkish governors of provinces. THE TURKISH EMIRS.--In the eleventh century, the _Seljukian Turks_ despoiled the Arabs of their sovereignty in the East. The caliph at _Bagdad_ gave up all his temporal power to _Togrul Bey_ (1058), and retained simply the spiritual headship over orthodox Mussulmans. To the Turk who bore the title _Emir al Omra_, was given the military command. He was what the Mayor of the Palace had been among the Franks. In 1072 his son, _Malek Shah_, made _Ispahan_ his capital, and governed Asia from China to the vicinity of Constantinople. THE FATIMITE CALIPHATE.--In the ninth and tenth centuries the _Aglabites_ (800-909), whose capital was _Cairoan_ (in Tunis), were dominant in the Western Mediterranean, established themselves, in their marauding expeditions, in _Corsica, Sardinia_, and _Sicily_, and several times attacked Italy. In 909 they, with the _Edrisites_, adherents of _Ali_, in _Fez_, formed, under a Fatimite chief, _Moez_, with Egypt, the African Caliphate, the seat of which was at _Cairo_ (968). The Fatimite caliphs extended their power over Syria. The most famous of the caliphs of _Cairo_ was _Hakem_ (996-1020), a monster of cruelty, who claimed to be the incarnation of Deity. These caliphs claimed to be the descendants of _Ali_ and of _Fatima_. Their dynasty was extinguished by _Saladin_ in 1171. THE CALIPHS OF CORDOVA.--In Spain the caliphs of _Cordova_ allowed to the Christians freedom of worship and their own laws and judges. The mingling of the conquerors with the conquered gave rise to a mixed _Mozarabic_ population. The _Franks_ conquered the country as far as the _Ebro_ (812). Under _Mohammed I_. (852), the Saracen governors of the provinces sought to make themselves independent; but the most brilliant period of the caliphate of Cordova followed, under _Abderrahman III_. (912-961). In the eleventh century there was anarchy, produced by the African guard of the caliphs, which played a part like that of the Turkish guard at _Bagdad_, and by reason of the rebellion of the governors. In 1031 the last descendant of the _Omayyads_ was deposed, and in 1060 the very title of caliph vanished. The caliphate gave place to numerous petty Moslem kingdoms. The African Mussulmans came to their help, and thus gave the name of _Moors_ to the Spanish Mohammedans. Their language and culture, however, remained Arabic. The Arabian conquests had moved like a deluge to the _Indus_, to the borders of _Asia Minor_, and to the _Pyrenees_. In Syria they were not generally resisted by the people. Egypt, for the same reason, was an easy conquest. It took the Moslems sixty years to conquer _Africa_. In three years nearly all Spain was theirs; and it was not until seven hundred years after this time that they were utterly driven out of that country. THE MOSLEM GOVERNMENT--The Moslem civilization rested on the Koran. Grammar, lexicography, theology, and law stood connected at first with the study and understanding of the Sacred Book. The _Caliph_ was the fountain of authority. There was a fixed system of taxation, the poll-tax and land-tax being imposed only on non-Moslem subjects. All Moslems received a yearly pension, a definite sum determined by their rank. The empire was divided into provinces, each governed by a _Prefect_, who was a petty sovereign, subject only to the _Caliph_. The _Generals_ were appointed by the caliph, by the prefects, or by the _Vizier_, who was the prime minister. The _Judges (cadis)_ were appointed by the same officers. There was a court of appeal over which the caliph presided. There were inspectors of the markets, who were also censors of morals. The _Imam_ had for his function to recite the public prayers in the mosque. The leader of the yearly pilgrimage to Mecca was an officer of the highest dignity. THEOLOGY: LAW: LITERATURE.--The Mohammedans entered into discussions of theology, which gave rise to differences, and to schools and sects. The nature of the Deity, predestination, the future life, were subjects of profound and subtle inquiry. More than once, pantheistic doctrine was broached by speculative minds, such as _Avicenna_ and _Averrhoes_. In Persia, _Súfism_, a form of mysticism, made great progress. It extolled the unselfish love of God, and a contemplative and ascetic life. _Law_ was studied; and on the basis of the _Koran_, and of reasonings upon it, systems of jurisprudence were created. _Science_ and _Literature_ kept pace with legal studies. _Poetry_ flourished through the whole period of the Eastern caliphate. There were, also, Persian poets who hold an important place in the history of literature, of whom _Firdousi_ (about 940 to 1020) and _Saadi_ (who died in 1291) are the most eminent. Under the _Abbassides_ in Syria, through Christian scholars and by translations, the Arabians became acquainted with the Greek authors. They cultivated geography. The Moslems were students of astronomy, and carried the study of mathematics, which they learned from the Greeks and Hindus, very far. But they apparently felt no interest in the poets, orators, and historians of antiquity. In the study of _Aristotle_, and in metaphysical philosophy, they were proficients. Medicine, also, they cultivated with success. They delved in _Alchemy_ in the search for the transmutation of metals. COMMERCE AND THE ARTS.--The Moslems engaged actively in commerce. They acquired much skill in various branches of mechanical art. The weapons of _Damascus_ and of _Toledo_, the silks of _Granada_, the saddles of _Cordova_, the muslins, silks, and carpets of the Moslem dominions in the East, were highly prized in Christian countries. They manufactured paper. Forbidden to represent the human form in painting and sculpture, their distinction in the fine arts is confined to architecture. Peculiar to them is the _Arabesque_ ornamentation found in their edifices: the idea of the arch was borrowed from the Byzantine style. One of their most famous monuments is the mosque at _Cordova_. The ruins of the _Alhambra_, in Spain, a palace and a fortress, illustrate the richness and elegance of the Saracenic style of building. THE ARABIAN MIND.--Neither in architecture, nor in any other department, were the Arabs in a marked degree original. They invented nothing. They were quick to learn, and to assimilate what they learned. They were apt interpreters and critics, but they produced no works marked by creative genius. Many of the scholars at the court of the caliphs were Christians and Jews. Yet _Bagdad, Samarcand, Cairo, Grenada, Cordova_, were centers of intellectual activity and of learning when the nations of Western Europe had not escaped from the barbarism resulting from the Teutonic invasions. LITERATURE.--Lives of Mohammed by MUIR, SPRENGER (German), Irving: _Encycl. Brit._, Art. _Mohammedanism_; Kuenen, _National Religions and Universal Religions;_ Nöldeke, _Gesch. d. Quorans_ (1860); Muir, _The Corân_ (1878); R. B. Smith, _Mohammed and Mohammedanism_ (1875); Stobart, _Islam and its Founder_; Ockley, _History of the Saracens_ (sixth edition, 1857); FREEMAN, _History and Conquests of the Saracens_ (1870). THE CARLOVINGIAN HOUSE PIPIN of Heristal, _d._ 714. | +--Charles Martel, _d._ 741. | +--PIPIN the Short, king 752-768. | +--CHARLEMANGE, 768-814 (emperor 800). | | | +--Pipin, King of Italy, _d._ 810. | | | | | +--BERNARD, _d._ 818. | | | +--Charles, King of Franconia. | | | +--LOUIS the Pious, 814-840. | | | | LOTHARINGIA | | | +--LOTHAR I, 843-855. | | | | | +--LOUIS II, 855-875 | | | | | | | +--Hermingarde, _m._ | | | BOSO I, King of Provence, 879-887 | | | | | | | +--LOUIS, 887-905 (emperor 901) _m._ Eadgifu, | | | daughter of Edward the Elder | | | | | +--Lothar II, _d._ 869. | | | | | +--Charles, _d._ 863 | | | | GERMANY | | | +--LOUIS the German, 843-876. | | | | | +--CARLOMAN, _d._ 880. | | | | | | | +--ARNULF, King of Germany, 887-899 (emperor 896). | | | | | | | +--LOUIS the Child, 900-911. | | | | | +--LOUIS the Younger. d 880. | | | | | +--CHARLES the Fat (emperor 881-887), _d._ 888. | | | | FRANCE | | | +--CHARLES the Bald, 843-877 (emperor 875). | | | +--LOUIS II, 877-879. | | | +--LOUIS III, 879-882 | | | +--Carloman, 879-884 | | | +--CHARLES the Simple, _m._ Eadgifu, | daughter of Edward the Elder | | | +--LOUIS IV (D'Outremer), 936-954. | | | +--Matilda, _m._ CONRAD the Peaceful. | | | | | +--RUDOLPH III, 993-1032 | | | +--LOTHAR, 954-986. | | | | | +--LOUIS V, 986-987. | | | +--Charles, Duke of Lower Lorraine, _d._ 994. | +--Carloman, 768-771. RIVAL KINGS OF FRANCE NOT OF THE CARLOVINGIAN LINE. Robert the Strong, _d._ 866. | +--EUDES, king 887-893. | +--ROBERT, king 922-923. | +--Emma, _m._ RUDOLPH of Burgundy; king 923-926. | +--Hugh the Great (father of Hugh Capet). PERIOD II. FROM THE CARLOVINGIAN LINE OF FRANK KINGS TO THE ROMANO-GERMANIC EMPIRE. (_A.D. 751-962._) CHAPTER I. THE CARLOVINGIAN EMPIRE TO THE DEATH OF CHARLEMAGNE (A.D. 814). PIPIN THE SHORT.--The great event of the eighth century was the organization and spread of the dominion of the _Franks_, and the transfer to them of the Roman Empire of the West. Three Frank princes--_Charles Martel_, _Pipin the Short_, and _Charlemagne_, or _Karl the Great_--were the main instruments in bringing in this new epoch in European history. They followed a similar course, as regards the wars which they undertook, and their general policy. _Charles Martel_, the conqueror of the Saracens at _Poitiers_, rendered great services to the Church; but he provoked the lasting displeasure of the ecclesiastics by his seizures of church property. He rewarded his soldiers with archbishoprics. _Pipin_, however, was earnestly supported by the clergy. He had the confidence and favor of the Franks, and in 751, with the concurrence of Pope _Zacharias_, deposed _Childeric III._, and assumed the title of king. The long hair of _Childeric_, the badge of the Frank kings, was shorn, and he was placed in a monastery. In 752 _Pipin_ was anointed and crowned at _Soissons_ by _Boniface_, the bishop of _Mentz_, who exerted himself to restore order and discipline in the Frank Church, which had fallen into disorder in the times of Charles Martel. PIPIN IN ITALY.--The controversy with the Greeks about the use of images had alienated the popes from the Eastern Empire. The encroachments of the Lombards threatened Rome itself, and were a constant menace to the independence of its bishops. Pope _Stephen III_. resorted to _Pipin_ for help against these aggressive neighbors; and, in 754, _Stephen_ solemnly repeated, in the cathedral of St. Denis, the ceremony of his coronation. The Carlovingian usurpation was thus hallowed in the eyes of the people by the sanction of the Church. The alliance between the Papacy and the Franks, so essential to both, was cemented. Pipin crossed the Alps in 754, and humbled _Aistulf_, the Lombard king; but, as Aistulf still kept up his hostility to the Pope, Pipin once more led his forces into Italy, and compelled him to become tributary to the Frank kingdom, and to cede to him the territory which he had won from the Greek Empire,--the exarchate of _Ravenna_ and the _Pentapolis_, or the lands and cities between the Apennines and the Adriatic, from _Ferrara_ to _Ancona_. This territory the Frank king formally presented to St. Peter. Thus there was founded the temporal kingdom of the popes in Italy. _Pipin_ was called _Patricius_ of Rome, which made him its virtual sovereign, although the office and title implied the continued supremacy of the Eastern Empire. He united under him all the conquests which had been made by _Clovis_ and his successors. His sway extended over _Aquitaine_ and as far as the Pyrenees. It was the rule of the _Teutonic_ North over the more _Latin_ South, which had no liking for the Frank sovereignty. CHARLEMAGNE: THE SAXONS AND SARACENS.--_Pipin_ died in 768. By the death of his younger son, Carloman, his older son, _Charles_, in 771 became the sole king of the Franks. Charlemagne is more properly designated _Karl the Great_, for he was a German in blood and speech, and in all his ways. He stands in the foremost rank of conquerors and rulers. His prodigious energy and activity as a warrior may be judged by the number of his campaigns, in which he was uniformly successful. The eastern frontier of his dominions was threatened by the _Saxons_, the _Danes_, the _Slaves_, the _Bavarians_, the _Avars_. He made eighteen expeditions against the Saxons, three against the Danes, one against the Bavarians, four against the Slaves, four against the Avars. Adding to these his campaigns against the Saracens, Lombards, and other peoples, the number of his military expeditions is not less than fifty-three. In all but two of his marches against the Saxons, however, he accomplished his purpose without a battle. That he was ambitious of conquest and of fame, is evident. That he had the rough ways of his German ancestors, and was unsparing in war, is equally certain. Yet he was not less eminent in wisdom than in vigor; and his reign, on the whole, was righteous as well as glorious. The two most formidable enemies of Charlemagne were the _Saxons_ and the _Saracens_. The Saxon war "was checkered by grave disasters, and pursued with undismayed and unrelenting determination, in which he spared neither himself nor others. It lasted continuously--with its stubborn and ever-recurring resistance, its cruel devastations, its winter campaigns, its merciless acts of vengeance--as the effort which called forth all Charles's energy for thirty-two years" (772-804). The Saxons were heathen. The conquest of them was the more difficult because it involved the forced introduction of Christianity in the room of their old religion. More than once, when they seemed to be subdued, they broke out in passionate and united revolt. Their fiercest leader in insurrection was _Witikind_. A last and terrible uprising, in consequence of the slaughter of forty-five hundred Saxons on the _Aller_ as a punishment for breach of treaty, was put down in 785, when _Witikind_ submitted, and consented to receive Christian baptism. During the progress of the Saxon war, at the call of the Arab governor of _Saragossa_ for aid against the caliph _Abderrahman_, Charles marched into Spain, and conquered Saragossa and the whole land as far as the _Ebro_. On his return, in the valley of _Ronceveaux_, the Frank rear guard was surprised and destroyed by the _Basques_. There fell the Frank hero _Roland_, whose gallant deeds were a favorite subject of mediæval romances. The duchy of _Bavaria_ was abolished after a second revolt of its duke, _Tassilo_ (788). One of the most brilliant of Charlemagne's wars was that against the Hunnic _Avars_ (791). Their land between the _Ems_ and _Raab_ he annexed to his empire. Bavarian colonists were planted in it. Enormous treasures which they had gathered, in their incursions, from all Europe, were captured, with their "Ring," or palace-camp. The Slavonic tribes were kept in awe. _Brittany_ was subjugated in 811. In the closing years of Charles's reign, the _Danes_ became more and more aggressive and formidable. He visited the northern coasts, made _Boulogne_ and _Ghent_ his harbors and arsenals, and built fleets for defense against the audacious invaders. CHARLEMAGNE IN ITALY.--Some of the most memorable incidents in Charlemagne's career are connected with Italy. While he was busy in the Saxon war, he had been summoned to protect Pope _Hadrian I_. (772-795) from the attack of the Lombards. To please his mother, _Charles_ had married, but he had afterwards divorced, the daughter of the Lombard king _Desiderius_. She was the first in the series of Charlemagne's wives, who, it is said, were nine in number. By the divorce he incurred the resentment of Desiderius, who required the Pope to anoint the sons of _Carloman_ as kings of the Franks. In 772 Charlemagne crossed the Alps by the Mont Cenis and the St. Bernard, captured _Pavia_, and shut up Desiderius in a Frank monastery. The king of the Franks became king of the _Lombards_, and lord of all Italy, except the _Venetian Islands_ and the southern extremity of _Calabria_, which remained subject to the Greeks. The German king and the Pope were now, in point of fact, dominant in the West. A woman, _Irene_, who had put out the eyes of her son that she herself might reign, sat on the throne at Constantinople. This was a fair pretext for throwing off the Byzantine rule, which afforded no protection to Italians. Once more _Charles_ visited Italy, to restore to the papal chair _Leo III._, who had been expelled by an adverse party, and, at Charles's camp at _Paderborn_, had implored his assistance. On Christmas Day in the year 800, during the celebration of mass in the old Basilica of St. Peter, _Leo III._ advanced to _Charlemagne_, and placed a crown on his head, saluting him, amid the acclamations of the people, as Roman emperor. MEANING OF CHARLES'S CORONATION.--The coronation of Charlemagne made him the successor of Augustus and of Constantine. It was not imagined that the empire had ever ceased to be. The Byzantine emperors had been acknowledged in form as the rulers of the West: not even now was it conceived that the empire was divided. In the imagination and feeling of men, the creation of the Caesars remained an indivisible unity. The new emperor in the West could therefore only be regarded as a rival and usurper by the Byzantine rulers; but Charlemagne professed a friendly feeling, and addressed them as his brothers,--as if they and he were exercising a joint sovereignty. In point of fact, there had come to be a new center of wide-spread dominion in Western Europe. The diversity in beliefs and rites between Roman Christianity and that of the Greeks had been growing. The popes and Charlemagne were united by mutual sympathy and common interests. The assumption by him of the imperial title at their instance, and by the call of the Roman people, was the natural issue of all the circumstances. CHARLES'S SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT.--Charlemagne showed himself a statesman bent on organization and social improvement. There was a system of local officers. The border districts of the kingdom were made into _Marks_, under _Margraves_ or _Marquesses_, for defense against the outlying tribes. One of them, to the east of Bavaria, was afterwards called _Austria_. _Dukes_ governed provinces, some of which afterwards became kingdoms. Their power the emperor tried to reduce. The empire was divided into districts, in each of which a _Count_ (_Graf_) ruled, with inferior officers, either territorial or in cities. _Bishops_ had large domains, and great privileges and immunities. The officers held their places at the king's pleasure: they became possessed of landed estates, and the tendency was, for the offices to become hereditary. The old German word _Graf_ is of uncertain derivation, but means the same as _count_ (from the Latin _comes_). _Mark_ is a word found in all the Teutonic languages. From the signification of _boundary_, it came to be applied, like its synonym _march_, to a frontier district. A _margrave_ (_Mark-Graf_) was a _mark-count_, or an officer ruling for the king in such a district. A _viscount_ (_vicecomes_) was an officer subordinate to a _count_. _Pfalz_, meaning originally _palace_ (from the Latin _palatium_), was the term for any one of the king's estates. The _palsgrave_ (_Pfalz-Graf_) was first his representative in charge of one of these domains. The _stallgrave_ (_Stall-Graf_) corresponded to the _constable_ (_comes stabuli_) in English and French. It signifies the officer in charge of the king's _stables_, the groom. He had a military command. A later designation of the same office is _marshal_ (from two old German words, one of which means a _horse_, as seen in our word _mare_, having the same etymology, and the other means a _servant_). Imperial deputies, or _missi_, lay and ecclesiastical together, visited all parts of the kingdom to examine and report as to their condition, to hold courts, and to redress wrongs. There were appeals from them to the imperial tribunal, over which the _Palsgrave_ presided. Twice in the year great _Assemblies_ were held of the chiefs and people, to give advice as to the framing of laws. The enactments of these assemblies are collected in the _Capitularies_ of the Frank kings. In the Church, Charlemagne tried to secure order, which had sadly fallen away, and had given place to confusion and worldliness. He himself exercised high ecclesiastical prerogatives, especially after he became emperor. LEARNING AND CULTURE.--One of the chief distinctions of Charlemagne is the encouragement which he gave to learning. In his own palace at _Aachen_ (_Aix_), he collected scholars from different quarters. Of these the most eminent is _Alcuin_, from the school of York in England. He was familiar with many of the Latin writers, and while at the head of the school in the palace, and later, when abbot of St. Martin in _Tours_, exerted a strong influence in promoting study. _Charlemagne_ himself spoke Latin with facility, but not until late in life did he try to learn to write. It was his custom to be read to while he sat at meals. Augustine's _City of God_ was one of the books of which he was fond. In the great sees and monasteries, schools were founded, the benefits of which were very soon felt. CHARLES'S PERSONAL TRAITS.--Charlemagne was seven feet in height, and of noble presence. His eyes were large and animated, and his voice clear, but not so strong as his frame would have led one to expect. His bearing was manly and dignified. He was exceedingly fond of riding, hunting, and of swimming. _Eginhard_, his friend and biographer, says of him, "In all his undertakings and enterprises, there was nothing he shrank from because of the toil, and nothing that he feared because of the danger." He died, at the age of seventy, on Jan. 28, 814. He had built at _Aix la Chapelle_ a stately church, the columns and marbles of which were brought from Ravenna and Rome. Beneath its floor, under the dome, was his tomb. There he was placed in a sitting posture, in his royal robes, with the crown on his head, and his horn, sword, and book of the Gospels on his knee. In this posture his majestic figure was found when his tomb was opened by _Otto III_., near the end of the tenth century. The marble chair in which the dead monarch sat is still in the cathedral at _Aix_: the other relics are at _Vienna_. The splendor of Charlemagne's reign made it a favorite theme of romance among the poets of Italy: a mass of poetic legends gathered about it. EXTENT OF THE EMPIRE.--Charlemagne's empire comprised all Gaul, and Spain to the Ebro, all that was then Germany, and the greater part of Italy. Slavonic nations along the Elbe were his allies. Pannonia, Dacia, Istria, Liburnia, Dalmatia,--except the sea-coast towns, which were held by the Greeks,--were subject to him. He had numerous other allies and friends. Even _Harunal-Rashid_, the famous Caliph of Bagdad, held him in high honor. Among the most valued presents which were said to have come from the Caliph were an elephant, and a curious water-clock, which was so made, that, at the end of the hours, twelve horsemen came out of twelve windows, and closed up twelve other windows. This gift filled the inmates of the palace at _Aix_ with wonder. CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE.--The number of free Franks diminished under Charlemagne. They were thinned out in the wars, or sunk into vassalage. The warnings and rebukes in the Capitularies, or body of laws, show that the upper clergy were often sensual and greedy of gain. The bishops would often lead in person their contingent of troops, until they were forbidden to do so by law. Nine-tenths of the population of Gaul were slaves. Charlemagne made _Alcuin_ the present of an estate on which there were twenty thousand slaves. Especially in times of scarcity, as in 805 and 806, their lot was a miserable one. At such times, they fled in crowds to the monasteries. The social state was that of feudalism "in all but the development of that independence in the greater lords, which was delayed by the strength of Karl, but fostered, at the same time, by his wars and his policy towards the higher clergy." CONVERSION OF GERMANY: BONIFACE.--The most active missionaries in the seventh and eighth centuries were, from the British islands. At first they were from Ireland and Scotland. _Columban_, who died in 615, and his pupil Gallus, labored, not without success, among the _Alemanni_. Gallus established himself as a hermit near Lake Constance. He founded the Abbey of _St. Gall_. The Saxon missionaries from England were still more effective. The most eminent of these was _Winfrid_, who received from Rome the name of _Bonifacius_ (680-755). He converted the _Hessians_, and founded monasteries, among them the great monastery of _Fulda_. There his disciple, _Sturm_, "through a long series of years, directed the energies of four thousand monks, by whose unsparing labors the wilderness was gradually reclaimed, and brought into a state of cultivation." _Boniface_ had proved the impotence of the heathen gods by felling with the axe an aged oak at _Geismar_, which was held sacred by their worshipers. Among the _Thuringians_, _Bavarians_, and other tribes, he extirpated paganism by peaceful means. He organized the German Church under the guidance of the popes, and, in 743, was made archbishop of _Meniz_, and primate. But his Christian ardor moved him to carry the gospel in person to the savage _Frisians_, by whom he was slain. He thus crowned his long career with martyrdom. CONVERSION OF THE SCANDINAVIANS.--The apostle of the Scandinavians was _Ansgar_ (801-865). The archbishopric of _Hamburg_ was founded for him by _Louis the Pious_, with the papal consent; but, as Hamburg was soon plundered by pirates, he became bishop of _Bremen_ (849). In that region he preached with success. Two visits he made to _Sweden_, the first with little permanent result; but, at the second visit (855), the new faith was tolerated, and took root. The triumph of the religion of the cross, which _Ansgar_ had planted in _Denmark_, was secured there when _Canute_ became king of England. The first Christian king in Sweden was _Olaf Schooskonig_ (1008). In _Norway_, Christianity was much resisted; but when _Olaf the Thick_, who was a devoted adherent of the Christian faith, had perished in battle (1033), his people, who held him in honor, fell in with the church arrangements which he had ordained; and he became _St. Olaf_, the patron saint of Norway. THE BENEDICTINES.--_Benedict_, born at _Nursia_, in _Umbria_, in 480, the founder of the monastery of _Monte Cassino_, north-west of Naples, was the most influential agent in organizing monasticism in Western Europe. He was too wise to adopt the extreme asceticism that had often prevailed in the East, and his judicious regulations combined manual labor with study and devotion. They not only came to be the law for the multitude of monasteries of his own order, but also served as the general pattern, on the basis of which numerous other orders in later times were constituted. His societies of monks were at first made up of laics, but afterwards of priests. The three vows of the monk were _chastity_, including abstinence from marriage; _poverty_, or the renunciation of personal possessions; and _obedience_ to superiors. The Benedictine cloisters long continued to be asylums for the distressed, schools of education for the clergy, and teachers of agriculture and the useful arts to the people in the regions where they were planted. Their abbots rose to great dignity and influence, and stood on a level with the highest ecclesiastics. CHAPTER II. DISSOLUTION OP CHARLEMAGNE'S EMPIRE: RISE OF THE KINGDOMS OF FRANCE, GERMANY, AND ITALY. DIVISIONS IN THE EMPIRE.--The influence of _Charlemagne_ was permanent; not so his empire. It had one religion and one government, but it was discordant in language and in laws. The Gallo-Romans and the Italians spoke the Romance language, with variations of dialect. The Germans used the Teutonic tongue. Charlemagne left to the Lombards, to the Saxons, and to other peoples, their own special laws. The great bond of unity had been the force of his own character and the vigor of his administration. His death was, therefore, the signal for confusion and division. The tendency to dismemberment was aided by the ambition of the princes of the imperial family. The _Austrasian_ Franks, to whom Charlemagne belonged, craved unity. The _Gallo-Romans_ in the West, the _Teutons_ in the East, aspired after independence. _Louis the Pious_ (814-840), Charlemagne's youngest son,--who, in consequence of the death of his elder brothers, was the sole successor of his father,--lacked the energy requisite for so difficult a place. He was better adapted to a cloister than to a throne. He had been crowned at _Aix_ before his father's death; but he consented to be crowned anew by Pope _Stephen IV_. at _Rheims_, in 816. His troubles began with a premature division of his states between his sons, _Lothar_, _Pipin_, and _Louis_. His nephew, _Bernhard_, who was to reign in Italy in subordination to his uncle, rebelled, but was captured and killed (818). In order to provide for his son _Charles the Bald_, whose mother _Judith_ he had married for his second wife, he made a new division in 829. The elder sons at once revolted against their father, and _Judith_ and her son were shut up in a cloister (830). _Louis_ the son repented, the Saxons and East Franks supported the emperor, and he was restored. In 833 he took away _Aquitaine_ from Pipin, and gave it to _Charles_. The rebellious sons again rose up against him. In company with Pope _Gregory IV_., who joined them, they took their father prisoner on the plains of Alsace, his troops having deserted him. The place was long known as the "Field of Lies." He was compelled by the bishops to confess his sins in the cathedral at _Soissons_, reading the list aloud. Once more _Louis_ was released, and forgave his sons; but partition after partition of territory, with continued discord, followed until his death. The quarrels of his surviving sons, _Lothar_, _Louis the German_, and _Charles the Bald_, brought on, in 841, the great battle of _Fontenailles_. The contest was occasioned by the ambition of _Lothar_, the eldest, who claimed for himself the whole imperial inheritance. There was great carnage, and _Lothar_ was defeated. The bishops present saw in the result a verdict of God in favor of his two adversaries. The result was the _Treaty of Verdun_ for the division of the empire. TERMS OF THE TREATY OF VERDUN.--_Louis the German_ took the Eastern and German Franks, and _Charles the Bald_ the Western and Latinized Franks. _Lothar_, who retained the imperial title, received the middle portion of the Frank territory, including Italy and a long, narrow strip of territory between the dominions of his brothers, and extending to the North Sea. This land took later the name of _Lotharingia_, or _Lorraine_. It always had the character of a border-land. While _Louis's_ share comprised only German-speaking peoples, _Charles's_ kingdom was made up almost exclusively of Gallo-Roman inhabitants; while under _Lothar_ the two races were mingled. This division marks the birth of the _German_ and _French_ nations as such. The German-speaking peoples in the East, who were affiliated in language, customs, and spirit, more and more grew together into a nation. In like manner, the subjects of the Western kingdom more and more were resolved into a Franco-Roman nationality. _Lothar_ ruled at Aix-la-Chapelle, and was styled emperor; but each of the other kingdoms was independent, and the empire of Charlemagne was dissolved. Only for a short time, under _Charles the Fat_ (881-887), nearly the whole monarchy of Charlemagne was united under one scepter. When he was deposed it was again broken in pieces; and four distinct kingdoms emerged,--those of the Eastern and Western Franks, "the forerunners of Germany and France," and the kingdoms of Italy and of Burgundy, in South-eastern Gaul, which were sometimes united and sometimes separate. _Lotharingia_ was attached now to the Eastern and now to the Western Frank kingdom. In theory there was not a severance, but a sharing, of the common possession which had been the object of contention. EASTERN CARLOVINGIANS.--_Charles the Fat_ was a weak and sluggish prince. He offered no effectual resistance to the destructive ravages of the Normans, or Scandinavian Northmen. He was deposed in 887, and died in the following year on an island in the Lake of Constance. His successor, the grandson of _Louis the German_, _Arnulf_, duke of Carinthia, became king of the Germans, (887-899) and emperor; and, after his short reign, the line of Louis died out in _Louis the Child_, the weak son of _Arnulf_ (900-911). The house of Charlemagne survived only among the Western Franks. During the reign of Louis the Child, _Hatto_ (I.), archbishop of _Mentz_ and primate of Germany, was regent and guardian of the king. He was a bold defender of the unity of the empire. He was charged, truly or falsely, with taking the life of _Adalbert_, a Frank nobleman whom he had enticed into his castle. There was a popular tradition that the devil seized Hatto's corpse, and threw it into the crater of Mount Ætna. The mistake is often made of connecting the popular legend of the "Mouse-tower" at _Bingen_ on the Rhine, with him. It was told of a later Hatto (_Hatto II._), who was likewise archbishop of _Mentz_ (968). He was charged with shutting up the poor in a barn, in a time of famine, and of burning them there. As the story runs, he called them "rats who ate the corn." Numberless mice swam to the tower which he had built in the midst of the stream, and devoured him. _Southey_ has put the tale into a ballad,--"God's Judgment on a Wicked Bishop." KINGDOM OF FRANCE.--In 841 _Rouen_ fell into the hands of the Normans, and _Paris_ lay open to their attacks. In 861 _Charles the Bald_ invested a brave soldier, _Robert the Strong_, whose descent is not known, with the county of Paris, that he might resist the invaders. He held the country between the Seine and the Loire, under the name of the _Duchy of France_. The other _Francia_, east of the Rhine, continued to be an important part of Germany, the district called _Franconia_. Robert was the greatgrandfather of _Hugh Capet_, the founder of the kingdom of _France_. Under the imbecile _Charles the Fat_, the audacious Northmen (885-886) laid siege to _Paris_. It was _Odo_, or _Eudes_, count of Paris, who led the citizens in their heroic and successful resistance. Him the nobles of France chose to be their king. His family were called "Dukes of the French." Their duchy--_Western_ or _Latin Francia_--was the strongest state north of the Loire. The feudal lords were growing mightier, and the imperial or royal power was becoming weaker. After _Odo_ of Paris was elected to the Western kingdom, there followed a period of about a hundred years during which there was a king sometimes from his house and sometimes from the family of the Carlovingians. The latter still spoke German, and, when they had the power, reigned at _Laon_ in the northeastern corner of the kingdom. _Odo_ ruled from 888 until 898. He had to leave the southern part of France independent. During the last five years of his life he was obliged to contend with _Charles the Simple_ (893-929), who was elected king by the Carlovingian party of the north. The most noted of the Carlovingian kings at _Laon_ was _Louis_ "from beyond seas" (936-954), Charles's son, who had been carried to England for safety. His reign was a constant struggle with _Hugh the Great_, duke of the French, the nephew of King Odo. _Hugh_ would not accept the crown himself. On the death of _Louis V_. (986-987), the direct line of Charlemagne became extinct. The only Carlovingian heir was his uncle, _Charles_, _duke of Lorraine_. His claim the barons would not recognize, but elected _Hugh Capet_, duke of France, to be king, who, on the 1st (or the 3d) of July, 987, was solemnly crowned in the cathedral of Noyon, by the archbishop of Rheims. Just at this juncture, when the contest was between the dukes of the French and _Charles of Lorraine_, the Carlovingian claimant to the sovereignty, the adhesion and support of Duke _Richard_ of Normandy (943-996) was of decisive effect. The Normans had been on the side of _Laon_; now they turned the scale in favor of the elevation of the Duke of France. The German party at _Laon_ could not withstand the combined power of _Rouen_ and _Paris_. Thus with _Hugh Capet_, the founder of the Capetian line, the kingdom of _France_ began, having _Paris_ for its capital; and the name of _France_ came gradually to be applied to the greater part of Gaul. But when _Hugh Capet_ became king, the great feudal states were almost independent of the royal control. Eight were above the rest in power and extent. "The counts of _Flanders_, _Champagne_, and _Vermandois_, and the dukes of _Normandy_, _Brittany_, _Burgundy_, and _Aquitaine_, regarded themselves as the new king's peers or equals." _Lorraine_, _Arles_, and _Franche Comté_--parts of modern France--"held of the emperor, and were, in fact, German." _Hugh Capet's_ dukedom was divided by the Seine. He was lay abbot of St. Denis, the most important church in France. THE GERMAN KINGDOM.--With the death of _Louis the Child_ (911) the German branch of the Carlovingian line was extinguished. The Germans had to choose a king from another family. Germany, like France, was now composed of great fiefs. But there were two parties, differing from one another in their character and manners. The one consisted of the older Alemannic and Austrasian unions, where the traces of Roman influence continued, where the large cities were situated, and the principal sees. Here were formed the duchies of _Swabia_ and _Bavaria_, and _Franconia_ (Austrasian France). To the other, consisting chiefly of the duchy of _Saxony_, were attached _Thuringia_ and a part of _Frisia_. In France the royal power, at the start, was so weak, that, not being dreaded, it was suffered to grow. In Germany the royal power was so strong that there was a constant effort to reduce it. Hence in France the result was centralization; in Germany the tendency was to division. In France the long continuance of the family of _Hugh Capet_ made the monarchy _hereditary_. In Germany the frequent changes of dynasty helped to make it _elective_. CONRAD I.--When Louis died, _Conrad_ of Franconia (911-918) was chosen king by the clerical and secular nobles of the five duchies, in which the counts elevated themselves to the rank of dukes,--Franconia, Saxony, Lorraine, Swabia, and Bavaria. Germany thus became an elective kingdom; but since, as a rule, the sovereignty was continued in one family, the electoral principle was qualified by an hereditary element. _Conrad_ began the struggle against the great feudatories, which went on through the Middle Ages. The dukes always chafed under the rule of a king; yet, for the glory of the nation and for their own safety against attacks from abroad, they were anxious to preserve it from extinction. The _Hungarians_, to whom _Louis the Child_ had consented to pay tribute, renewed their incursions. They marched in force as far as _Bremen_. _Conrad_ had wished to reduce the power of Saxony, and to detach from it Thuringia. He was constantly at war with his own subjects. Yet on his death-bed he showed his disinterested regard to the interests of the kingdom. He called to him his brother _Eberhard_, and charged him to carry his crown and crown jewels to his enemy _Henry_, duke of the Saxons, who was most capable of defending the country against the Hungarian invaders. ITALY.--After the empire of _Charles the Fat_ was broken up, a strong anti-German feeling was manifest in Italy. The people wanted the king of Italy, and, if possible, the emperor of the Romans, to be of their own nation. But they could not agree: there was a violent contest between the supporters of _Berengar_ of Friuli and the supporters of _Guido_ of Spoleto. _Arnulf_ came twice into Italy to quell the disturbance, and on his second visit, in 896, was crowned emperor. Civil war soon broke out again. Within twenty years the crown had been given to five different aspirants. They were Germans, or were Italians only in name. _Berengar I_. (888-924) was crowned emperor by the Pope, but had to fight against a competitor, _Rudolph_, king of Burgundy, whom the turbulent nobles set up in his place. _Berengar_ was finally defeated and assassinated. His grandson, _Berengar II_. (of Ivrea) (950-961), had to fly to Germany (943) to escape a competitor for the throne, _Hugh_, count of Provence, brother of _Ermengarde_, Berengar's step-mother, to whom she had given the crown. His relations with _Otto I_. (the Great) led to very important consequences, to be narrated hereafter. STATE OF LEARNING IN THE TENTH CENTURY.--Under Charles the Bald, there were not wanting signs of intellectual activity. _John Scotus Erigena_,--or John Scot, Erinborn,--who was at the head of his palace-school, was an acute philosopher, who, in his speculations in the vein of New Platonism, tended to pantheistic doctrine. His opinions were condemned at the instance of _Hincmar_, the eminent archbishop of Rheims. But after the deposition of _Charles the Fat_ (887), there followed a period of darkness throughout the West. The universal political disorder was enough to account for this prevalent ignorance. But, in addition, the Latin language ceased to be spoken by the people, while the new vernacular tongues were not reduced to writing. Latin could only be learned in the schools; and these fell more and more into decay, in the confusion of the times. The mental stimulus which the study of the Latin had communicated, there was nothing, as yet, in the new languages to replace. THE PAPACY IN THE NINTH AND TENTH CENTURIES.--While Italy was under the rule of _Justinian_ and his successors, the popes were subject to the tyranny of the Eastern emperors. After the Lombard conquest, their position, difficult as it was on account of the small protection afforded them from Constantinople, was favorable to the growth of their influence and authority. By their connection with _Pipin_ and _Charlemagne_, they were recognized as having a spiritual headship, the counterpart of the secular supremacy of the emperor. The election of the Pope was to be sanctioned by the emperor, and that of the emperor by the Pope. But _Charlemagne_ was supreme ruler over all classes and persons in Italy, as in his own immediate dominions. In the disorder that ensued upon his death, the imperial authority in all directions was reduced. The Frank bishops were frequently appealed to as umpires among the contending Carolingian princes. The growth of the power of the great bishops carried in it the exaltation of the highest bishop of all, the Roman pontiff. A _pallium_, or mantle, was sent by the Pope to all archbishops on their accession, and was considered to be a badge of the papal authority. In the earlier part of the ninth century, there appeared what are called the _pseudo-Isidorian decretals_, consisting of forged ecclesiastical documents purporting to belong to the early Christian centuries, which afforded a sanction to the highest claims of the chief rulers of the Church. These are universally known to be an invention; but, in that uncritical day, this was not suspected. They contained not much in behalf of hierarchical claims which had not, at one time or another, been actually asserted and maintained. In the spirit of the decretals Pope _Nicholas I._ (858-867) acted, when this energetic pontiff overruled the iniquitous decision of two German synods, and obliged _Lothar_, king of Lotharingia, to take back his lawful wife, _Theutberga_, whom he had divorced out of regard to a mistress, _Waldrada_. In the tenth century (904-962), when Italy, in the absence of imperial restraint, was torn by violent factions, the Papacy was for half a century disposed of by the _Tuscan_ party, and especially by two depraved women belonging to it, _Theodora_, and her daughter _Maria_ (or _Marozia_). The scandals belonging to this dismal period in the history of the papal institution are to be ascribed to the anarchy prevailing in Italy, and to the vileness of the individuals who usurped power at Rome. CHAPTER III. INVASIONS OF THE NORTHMEN AND OTHERS: THE FEUDAL SYSTEM. INCURSIONS OF THE NORTHMEN.--The _Scandinavians_, or _Northmen_, were a Teutonic people, by whom were gradually formed the kingdoms of _Denmark_, _Norway_, and _Sweden_. Their incursions, prior to _Charlemagne_, were towards the Rhine, but at length assumed more the character of piracy. They coasted along the shores in their little fleets, and lay in wait for their enemies in creeks and bays; whence they were called _vikings_, or children of the bays. By degrees they ventured out farther on the sea, and became bolder in their depredations. They sent their light vessels along the rivers of France, and established themselves in bands of five or six hundred at convenient stations, whence they sallied out to plunder the neighboring cities and country places. They did not _cause_, but they _hastened_, the fall of the Frank Empire. In 841 they burned _Rouen_; in 843 they plundered _Nantes_, _Saintes_, and _Bordeaux_. _Hastings_, a famous leader of these hardy sea-robbers, sailed along the coast of the Spanish peninsula, took _Lisbon_ and pillaged it, and burned _Seville_. Making a descent upon _Tuscany_, he captured, by stratagem, and plundered the city of _Luna_, which he at first mistook for Rome. In 853 the daring rovers captured _Tours_, and burned the Abbey of St. Martin; and, three years later, they appeared at _Orleans_. In 857 they burned the churches of _Paris_, and carried away as captive the abbot of St. Denis. As pagans they had no scruple about attacking churches and abbeys, to which fugitives resorted for safety and for the hiding of their treasures. _Robert the Strong_ fell in fighting these marauders (866). Their devastations continued down to the year 911, in the reign of _Charles the Simple_; then the same arrangement was made which the Romans had adopted in relation to the Germanic invaders. By the advice of his nobles, _Charles_ decided to abandon to the Northmen, territory where they could settle, and which they could cultivate as their own. Rolf, or _Rollo_, one of their most formidable chiefs, accepted the offer; and the Northmen established themselves (911) in the district known afterwards as _Normandy_. _Rollo_ received baptism, wore the title of duke, and thus became the liege of King _Charles_, who reigned at _Laon_, and whom he loyally served. Later the Normans joined hands with _ducal_ France, and helped _Paris_ to throw off its dependence on _royal_ France and the house of Charlemagne which had ruled at _Laon_. It was by Norman help that the duchy of France was raised to the rank of a kingdom, and _Hugh Capet_, in the room of being a vassal of kings of German lineage, became the founder of French sovereigns. Under the Normans, tillage flourished; and the feudal system was established with greater regularity than elsewhere. THE DANES IN ENGLAND.--When, in 827, _Egbert_, the king of _Wessex_, united all the Saxons in England under his rule, the Danish attacks had already begun. In his later years these ravages increased. _Alfred_ (871-901) was reduced to such straits in 878, that, with a few followers, he hid himself among the swamps and woods of Somersetshire. It was then, according to the legend, that he was scolded by the woman, who, not knowing him, had set him to watch her cakes, but found that he, absorbed in other thoughts, had allowed them to burn. Later, _Alfred_ gained advantages over the Danes; but, in the treaty that was made with them, they received, as vassals of the West Saxon king, _East Anglia_, and part of _Essex_ and _Mercia_. Already they had a lodgment in _Northumberland_, so that the larger part of England had fallen into Danish hands. The names of towns ending in _by_, as _Whitby_, are of Danish origin. _Alfred_ compiled a body of laws called _dooms_, founded monasteries, and fostered learning. He himself translated many books from the Latin. His bravery in conflict with the Danes enabled him to spend his last years in quiet. _Athelstan_, the grandson of _Alfred_ (925-940), was victorious over the Danes, and over the Scotch and Welsh of the North. Under _Edgar_ (959-975), the power of England was at its height. He kept up a strong fleet; but, in the time of _Aethelred II_. (the Unready), the Danish invasions were renewed. He and his bad advisers adopted the practice of buying off the invaders at a large price. In 994 _Swegen_ invaded the country. He had been baptized, but had gone back to heathenism. In 1013 England was completely conquered by him. _Aethelred_ fled to _Duke Richard the Good_ of Normandy. CANUTE.--The son of Aethelred, _Edmund_, surnamed _Ironside_, after the death of _Swegen_, kept up the war with his son Cnut, or _Canute_. After fighting six pitched battles with him, _Edmund_ consented to divide the kingdom with him; but in the same year (1016) the English king died. _Canute_ (1017-1035) now became king of all England. He had professed Christianity, and unexpectedly proved himself, after his accession, to be a good ruler. One of the legends about him is, that he once had a seat placed for himself by the seashore, and ordered the rising tide not to dare to wet his feet. Not being obeyed by the dashing waves, he said, "Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws." After that he never wore his crown, but left it on the image of Jesus on the cross. _Canute_ inherited the crown of _Denmark_, and won _Norway_ and part of _Sweden_; so that he was the most powerful prince of his time. His sons, however, did not rule well; and in 1042 the English chose for king one of their own people, _Edward_, called _the Confessor_, the son of _Aethelred_. In the time of Canute, the power of the Danes, and of the Northmen generally, was at its height. Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and England were ruled by them; and Scandinavian princes by descent governed in Normandy and in Russia. Although a most vigorous race, the Northmen showed a wonderful facility in adopting the language and manners of the people among whom they settled. The effect of their migrations was to diminish the strength and importance of their native countries which they had left. OTHER SETTLEMENTS OF NORTHMEN.--The Northmen made many other voyages which have not yet been mentioned. As early as 852 there was a Scandinavian king in _Dublin_. They early conquered the _Shetland Isles_, the _Orkneys_, and the _Hebrides_. On the northern coast of Scotland, they founded the kingdom of _Caithness_, which they held to the end of the twelfth century. _Iceland_ was discovered by the Northmen, and was settled by them in 874. About the same time _Greenland_ was discovered, and towards the end of the tenth century a colony was planted there. This led to the discovery of the mainland of America, and to the occupation, for a time, of _Vinland_, which is supposed to have been the coast of New England. In _Russia_, where the Northmen were called _Varangians_, _Rurik_, one of their leaders, occupied _Novgorod_ in 862, and founded a line of sovereigns, which continued until 1598. INCURSIONS OF SARACENS.--The _Saracens_ were marauders in Italy, as the Northmen were in France. From _Cairoan_ (in Tunis), as we have seen, they sent out their piratical fleets, which ravaged Malta, Sicily, and other islands of the Mediterranean. These corsairs, checked for the moment by the fleets of Charlemagne, afterwards began anew their conquests. From Sicily, of which they made themselves masters in 831, they passed over to the Italian mainland. Among their deeds are included the burning of _Ostia_, _Civita Vecchia_, and the wealthy abbey of _Monte Cassino_, They landed on the shores of Provence, established a military colony there, pillaged _Arles_ and _Marseilles_, and continued their depredations in Southern France and Switzerland. INCURSIONS OF HUNGARIANS.--The _Magyars_, called by the Greeks _Hungarians_, a warlike people of the Turanian group of nations, crossed the Carpathian Mountains about 889. They overran the whole of Hungary and Transylvania. In 900, in the course of their predatory invasions, they penetrated into Bavaria, and the king of Germany paid them tribute. They carried their incursions into Lombardy and into Southern Italy. They even crossed the Rhine, and devastated Alsace, Lorraine, and Burgundy. Such terror did they excite that their name remained in France a synonym of detestable ferocity. CHARACTER OF THE LATER INVASIONS.--The incursions in the ninth century differed from the great Germanic invasions which had subverted the Roman Empire. The Northmen and the Saracens moved in small bands, whose main object was plunder, and not either permanent conquest, or, as was the aim of the Arabians, the spread of a religion by the sword. The _Hungarians_ alone established themselves in the valley of the Theiss and the Danube, after the manner of the Franks, the Burgundians, and the Goths; and there they remained. The great effect of the last invasion was to accelerate the breaking up of political unity, and the introduction of feudal organization, or the preponderance of local rule as opposed to centralized power. THE NORTHMEN IN ENGLAND AND ITALY. Later than the events narrated above, there were two great achievements of the Northmen, which it is most convenient to describe here, although they occurred in the eleventh century. They are the conquest of England, and the founding of the kingdom of Naples and Sicily. I. THE NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. The NORMAN INVASION.--The duchy of Normandy had become very strong and prosperous, and, under the French-speaking Northmen, or Normans, had grown to be one of the principal states in Western Europe. _Edward_, king of England, surnamed the _Confessor_, or Saint (1042-1066) had been brought up in Normandy, and favored his own Norman friends by lavish gifts of honors and offices. The party opposed to the foreigners was led by _Godwin_, earl of the West Saxons. After being once banished, he returned in arms; and Norman knights and priests were glad to escape from the country. Edward's wife was _Edith_, daughter of Godwin. They had no children; and on his death-bed he recommended that Earl _Harold_, the son of Godwin, should be his successor. The Normans claimed that he had promised that their duke, _William_, should reign after him. It was said that _Harold_ himself, on a visit to William, had, either willingly or unwillingly, sworn to give him his support. _Edward_, who was devout in his ways, though a negligent ruler, was buried in the monastery called Westminster, which he had built, and which was the precursor of the magnificent church bearing the same name that was built afterwards by King _Henry III_. _Harold_ was now crowned. Duke _William_, full of wrath, appealed to the sword; and, under the influence of the archdeacon _Hildebrand_, Pope _Alexander II_. took his side, and sanctioned his enterprise of conquest. At the same time the north of England was invaded by the king of the Norwegians, a man of gigantic stature, named _Hardrada_. The Norman invaders landed without resistance on the shore of _Sussex_, on the 28th of September, 1066, and occupied _Hastings_. _Harold_ encamped on the heights of _Senlac_. On the 14th of October the great battle took place in which the Normans were completely victorious. The English stood on a hill in a compact mass, with their shields in front and a palisade before them. They repulsed the Norman charges. But the Normans pretended to retreat. This moved the Saxons to break their array in order to pursue. The Normans then turned back, and rushed through the palisade in a fierce onset. An arrow pierced the eye of _Harold_, and he was cut to pieces by four French knights. The Norman duke, _William the Conqueror_, was crowned king on Christmas Day; but it was four years before he overcame all resistance, and got full control over the country. The largest estates and principal offices in England he allotted to Normans and other foreigners. The crown of _William_ was handed down to his descendants, and gradually the conquerors and the conquered became mingled together as one people. EFFECT OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST. CHARACTER OF THE SAXONS.--The Saxons at the time of the Conquest were a strong and hardy race, hospitable, and fond of good cheer, which was apt to run into gluttony and revels. Their dwellings were poor, compared with those of the better class of Normans. They were enthusiastic in out-door sports, such as wrestling and hunting. They fought on foot, armed with the shield and axe. The common soldier, however, often had no better weapon than a fork or a sharpened stick. The ordeals in vogue, as a test of guilt and innocence when one was accused of a crime, were, plunging the arm into boiling water, or holding a hot iron in the hand for three paces. _London_ was fast growing to be the chief town, and eclipsing _Winchester_, the old Saxon capital. A king like _Alfred_, and scholars like _Bede_ and _Alcuin_, not to speak of old chronicles and ballads, show that literature was valued; but the Danish invasions in _Northumberland_, where schools and letters had flourished, did much to blight the beginnings of literary progress. THE NORMAN SPIRIT AND INFLUENCE.--The tapestry at _Bayeux_ represents in a series of pictures the course of the Norman conquest. There we see the costume of the combatants. The Norman gentlemen were mounted, and fought with lance and sword. Of their bravery and military skill, their success affords abundant proof. Although the Normans were victors and masters in England, not only was the conquest gradual, but the result of it was the amalgamation of the one people with the other. The very title of _conqueror_, attached to William, was a legal term (_conquaestor_), and meant _purchaser_ or _acquirer_. There was an observance of legal forms in the establishment and administration of his government. The _folkland_, or the public land, was appropriated by him, and became crown-land. So all the land of the English was considered to be forfeited, and estates were given out liberally to Norman gentlemen. The nobility became mainly Norman, and the same was true of the ecclesiastics and other great officers. All the land was held as a grant from the king. In 1085 the making of _Domesday_ was decreed, which was a complete statistical survey of all the estates and property in England. The object was to furnish a basis for taxation. The _Domesday Book_ is one of the most curious and valuable monuments of English history. Among the changes in law made by William was the introduction of the Norman wager of battle, or the duel, by the side of the Saxon methods of ordeal described above. In most of the changes, there was not so much an uprooting as a great transformation of former rules and customs. ENGLAND AND THE CONTINENT.--One of the most important results of the Norman Conquest was the bringing of England into much more intimate relations with the continent. The horizon of English thought and life was widened. One incidental consequence was the closer connection of the English Church with the Papacy. Foreign ecclesiastics, some of them men of eminence and of learning, were brought in. It was this connection with the continent that led England to take so important a part in the Crusades. THEN NORMAN GOVERNMENT.--As regards feudalism, one vital feature of it--the holding of land by a military tenure, or on condition of military service--was reduced to a system by the conquest. But _William_ took care not to be overshadowed or endangered by his great vassals. He levied taxes on all, and maintained the place of lord of all his subjects. He was king of the English, and sovereign lord of the Norman nobles. He summoned to the _Witan_, or Great Assembly, those whom he chose to call. This summons, and the right to receive it, became the foundation of the _Peerage_. Out of the old Saxon _Witan_, there grew in this way the _House of Lords_. The lower orders, when summoned at all, were summoned in a mass; afterwards we shall find that they were called by representatives; and, in--the end, when the privilege of appearing in this way was converted into a right, the _House of Commons_ came into being. In like manner, the _King's Court_ gradually came to be, in the room of the Assembly itself, a judicial and governing Committee of the Assembly. From this body of the king's immediate counselors emerged in time the _Privy Council_ and the _Courts of Law_. Out of the Privy Council grew, in modern times, the _Cabinet_, composed of what are really "those privy councilors who are specially summoned." Committees of the National Assembly, in the course of English history, acquired "separate being and separate powers, as the legislative, judicial, and executive branches of the government." Thus the English Constitution is the product of a steady growth. MINGLING OF BLOOD AND LANGUAGES.--A multitude of Normans emigrated into England, especially to _London_. The Normans became Englishmen, as a natural consequence. But they affected the spirit and manners of the people by whom they were absorbed. By opening avenues for French influence, _chivalry_, with its peculiar ideas and ways, was brought into England. But it must never be forgotten that the _Normans_ were kinsfolk of the Saxons. Both conquerors and conquered were Teutons. The conquest was very different, in this particular, from what the conquest of Germany by France, or of France by Germany, would be. The French language which the Normans spoke had been acquired by them in their adopted home across the channel. To this source the _Latin_ element, or words of Latin etymology, in our English tongue is mainly due. The loss of the old Saxon inflections is another marked change; but this is not due, to so large an extent, solely to the influence of Norman speech. But the English language continued to be essentially Teutonic in its structure. For a long time the two tongues lived side by side. At the end of the twelfth century, if French was the language of polite intercourse, English was the language of common conversation and of popular writings. Learned men spoke, or could speak, and they wrote, in Latin. NORMAN BUILDINGS.--The Normans built the cathedrals and castles. Down to the eleventh century, the _Romanesque_, or "round-arched" architecture, derived from Italy, had been the one prevalent style in Western Europe. In the modification of it, called the _Norman_ style, we find the round arch associated with massive piers and narrow windows. _Durham_ cathedral is an example of the Norman Romanesque type of building. The Norman conquerors covered England with _castles_, of which the White Tower of London, built by William, is a noted specimen. Sometimes they were square, and sometimes polygonal; but, except in the palaces of the kings, they afforded little room for artistic beauty of form or decoration. They were erected as fortresses, and were regarded by the people with execration as strongholds of oppression. II. THE NORMANS IN ITALY AND SICILY. THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF NAPLES AND SICILY.--Early in the eleventh century, knights from Normandy wandered into Southern Italy, and gave their aid to different states in battle against the Greeks and Saracens. In 1027 the ruler of Naples gave them a fertile district, where they built the city of _Aversa_. By the reports of their victories and good fortune, troops of pilgrims and warriors were attracted to join them. The valiant sons of the old count, _Tancred_ of _Hauteville_, were among the number. They supported the Greek viceroy in an attack on the Arabs in Sicily; but, on his failing duly to reward them, they turned against him, and conquered _Apulia_ for themselves. Under _Robert Guiscard_ (1057-1085), they made themselves masters of all Southern Italy. They had already defeated Pope Leo IX. at _Civitella_, and received from him as fiefs their present and anticipated conquests in Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily. Twelve years after, _Robert_, with the help of his brother _Roger_, wrested Sicily, with its capital, _Palermo_, from the Saracens, who were divided among themselves (1072). The seaports of _Otranto_ and _Bari_ were also taken by _Robert_. He even entered on the grand scheme of conquering the Byzantine Empire, but his death frustrated this endeavor. His nephew _Roger II_. (1130-1154) took the remaining possessions of the Greeks in Southern Italy and Sicily, united them in the kingdom of Naples and Sicily, and received from the Pope the title of king. In this kingdom the feudal system was established, and trade and industry flourished. In culture and prosperity it surpassed all the other Italian communities. At _Salerno_ was a famous school of medicine and natural science; at _Amalfi_ and _Naples_ were schools of law. But the Norman nobility was corrupted and enervated by the luxury of the South, and by the influence of Mohammedan customs, and modes of thought. During fifty-six years _Roger_ and his two successors, _William the Bad_ (1154-1166) and _William the Good_ (1166-1189), ruled this flourishing kingdom, which then fell by inheritance to the _Hohenstaufen_ German princes. On the mainland and in Sicily, numerous stately buildings and ruined castles and towers point back to the romantic period of Norman rule. NORMAN TRAITS.--It is a remarkable fact, that the Normans, although so distinguished as rovers and conquerors, have vanished from the face of the earth. They were lost in the kingdoms which they founded. They adopted the languages of the nations which they subdued. But while in England they were merged in the English, and modified the national character, this effect was not produced in Italy and Sicily. In Sicily they found Greek-speaking Christians and Arabic-speaking Mussulmans; and Italians came into the island in the track of the conquerors. The Normans did not find there a nation as in England; and they created not a nation, but a kingdom of a composite sort, beneficent while it lasted, but leaving no permanent traces behind. "The Normans in Sicily," says Mr. Freeman, "so far as they did not die out, were merged, not in a Sicilian nation, for that did not exist, but in the common mass of settlers of Latin speech and rite, as distinguished from the older inhabitants, Greek and Saracen." Independent, enterprising, impatient of restraint, gifted with a rare imitative power which imparted a peculiar tinge and a peculiar grace to whatever they adopted from others, they lacked originality, and the power to maintain their own distinctive type of character and of speech. Mr. Freeman has eloquently described the spread of the Normans, "the Saracens of Christendom," in all corners of the world. They fought in the East against the Turks. "North, south, east, the Norman lances were lifted." The Norman "ransacked Europe for scholars, poets, theologians, and artists. At Rouen, at Palermo, and at Winchester he welcomed merit in men of every race and every language." "And yet that race, as a race, has vanished." "The Scottish Brace or the Irish Geraldine passed from Scandinavia to Gaul, from Gaul to England, from England to his own portion of our islands; but at each migration, he ceased to be Scandinavian, French, or English: his patriotism was in each case transferred to his new country, and his historic being belongs to his last acquired home." Norman blood was in the veins of the Crusaders who first stood on the battlements of Jerusalem, and of the great German emperor, _Frederic II_. THE NORMANS. TANCRED OF HAUTEVILLE. | +--Robert Guiscard, Duke of Apulia, _d._ 1085. | | SICILY | +--ROGER, the Great Count, _d._ 1101 | +--Roger (of Apulia, 1127; king, 1130), 1101-1154. | +--WILLIAM I the Bad, 1154-1166, | _m._ Margaret, daughter of Garcia IV of Navarre. | | | +--WILLIAM II the Good, 1166-1189, | _m._ Joanna, daughter of Henry II of England. | +--CONSTANCE (_d._ 1198), _m._ Emperor Henry VI. THE FEUDAL SYSTEM. ORIGIN OF FEUDALISM.--When the Franks conquered Gaul, they divided the land among themselves. This estate each free German held as _allodial_ property, or as a _free-hold_. The king took the largest share. His palaces were dwellings connected with large farms or hunting-grounds, and he went with his courtiers from one to another. To his personal followers and officers he allotted lands. These _benefices_, it seems, were granted at first with the understanding that he might resume them at will. As holders of them, the recipients owed to him personal support. Other chiefs, and land-owners of a minor grade, took the same course. This was the germ of _feudalism_. More and more it grew to be the characteristic method of living and of government in Western Europe after the fall of Charlemagne's empire. The inheritors of his dominion were not the kings of France, of Germany, or of Italy, but the numerous feudal lords. Against the invasions of the Norman, Saracen, and Hungarian plunderers, the kings and the counts proved themselves incapable of defending territory or people. Meantime, the principle of heredity--the principle that benefices should go down from father to son, or to the next heir--had gained a firm footing. Another fact was that the royal offices became hereditary, and were transmitted to the heirs of allodial property. Thus the exercise of government and the possession of land were linked together. In times of danger, small proprietors more and more put themselves under the protection of the richer and stronger: that is, _allodial_ property became _feudal_. This custom had begun long before, in the decadence of the Roman empire, when not only poor freemen, but also men of moderate means, ruined by taxation, put themselves under the protection of the great, and settled on their lands. They became thus _colons_ (_coloni_). In the later times of disorder of which we are now speaking, farmhouses in the country gave place to fortified _castles_ on hill-tops or other defensible sites, about which clustered in villages the dependents of the lord, who tilled his land, fought for him, and, in turn, were protected by him. THE SUBSTANCE OF FEUDALISM.--"Feudality recognizes two principles, the land and the sword, riches and force,--two principles on which every thing depends, to which every thing is related, and which are united and identified with one another; since it is necessary to possess land in order to have the right to use the sword in one's own name (that is to say, to have the right of private war), and since the possession of land imposes the duty of drawing the sword for the suzerain, and in the name of the suzerain of whom the land is held." Feudalism is a social system in which there is a kind of _hierarchy_ of lands in the hands of warriors, who hold of one another in a gradation. There is a chain reaching up from the tower of the simple gentleman to the royal _chateau_, or castle. In this social organization, there are the two grand classes of the _seigneurs_ and the _serfs;_ but the _seigneur_, even if he be a king, may also hold fiefs as a _vassal_. SUZERAIN AND VASSAL.--The _suzerain_ and the _vassal_, or _liege_, were bound together by reciprocal obligations. The vassal owed (1) military service on the demand of the lord; (2) such aid as the suzerain called for in the administration of justice within his jurisdiction; (3) other aids, such as, when he was a prisoner, to pay the ransom for his release; and pecuniary contributions when he armed his eldest son, and when he married his eldest daughter. These were legal or required aids. They took the place of _taxation_ in modern states. There were other things that the vassal was expected to do which were _gracious_ or _voluntary_. If the liege died without heirs, or forfeited the fief by a violation of the conditions on which it was held, it reverted to the lord. The liege was _invested_ with the fief. He knelt before the suzerain, put his hands within the hands of the suzerain, and took an oath to be his _man_. This was _homage_,--from _homo_ in the Latin, and _homme_ in French, signifying _man_. The suzerain might at any time require its renewal. Under the feudal system, every thing was turned into a fief. The right to hunt in a forest, or to fish in a river, or to have an escort on the roads, might be granted as a fief, on the condition of loyalty, and of the _homage_ just described. PRIVATE WAR.--The vassal had the right to be tried by his peers; that is, by vassals on the same level as himself. He might, if treated with injustice, go to the superior: he might appeal to the suzerain of his immediate lord. But suzerains preferred to take justice into their own hands. Hence the custom of _private war_ prevailed, and of judicial combats, or _duels_, so common in the middle ages. ENTANGLEMENTS OF FEUDALISM.--Many suzerains were mutually vassals, each holding certain lands of the other. The same baron often held lands of different suzerains, who might be at war with each other, so that each required his service. The sovereign prince might be bound to do homage to a petty feudal lord on account of lands which the prince had inherited or otherwise acquired. The power of the suzerain depended on a variety of circumstances. The king might be weak, since feudalism grew out of the overthrow of royal power. The king of _France_, with the exception of titular prerogatives and some rights with regard to churches, which were often disputed, had no means of attack or defense beyond what the _duchy_ of France furnished him. Yet logically and by a natural tendency, the king was the supreme suzerain. "Feudalism carried hid in its bosom the arms by which it was one day to be struck down." ECCLESIASTICAL FEUDALISM.--The clergy were included in the feudal system. The bishop was often made the _count_, and, as such, was the suzerain of all the nobles in his diocese. Cities were often under the suzerainty of bishops. Besides their tithes, the clergy had immense landed possessions. The abbots and bishops often availed themselves of the protection of powerful vassals, of whom they were the suzerains. On the other hand, bishops, who were also themselves _dukes_ or _counts_, sometimes did homage for their temporalities to lay suzerains, especially to the king. In _France_ and in _England_, in the middle ages, the feudal clergy possessed a fifth of all the land; in _Germany_, a third. The church, through bequests of the dying and donations from the living, constantly increased its possessions. It might be despoiled, but it could defend itself by the terrible weapon of excommunication. SERFS AND VILLAINS.--In the eleventh century Europe was thus covered with a multitude of petty sovereigns. Below the body of rulers, or the holders of fiefs, was the mass of the people. These were the _serfs_,--the tillers of the ground, who enjoyed some of the privileges of freemen, and who, since they were attached to the _seigneurie_, could not be sold as slaves. The _villains_ were a grade above the serfs. The term (from _villæ_) originally meant _villagers_. They paid rent for the land which the proprietor allowed them to till; but they were subject, like the serfs, to the will of the suzerain; and the constant tendency was for them to sink into the inferior condition. _Slavery_, as distinguished from serfdom, gradually passed away under the emancipating spirit fostered by Christianity and the Church. THE INHERITANCE OF FIEFS.--At first the _Salic_ principle, which excluded females from inheriting fiefs, prevailed. But that gave way, and daughters were preferred in law to collateral male relatives. When a female inherited, the fief was occupied by the suzerain up to the time of her marriage. It never ceased to be under the protection of the sword. In _France_, the right of primogeniture was established, but with important qualifications, which varied in different portions of the country. The eldest, however, always had the largest portion. In _Germany_, the tendency to the division of fiefs was more prevalent. Among the _Normans _ in _England_, and under their influence in _Palestine_, the law of inheritance by the eldest was established in its full rigor. SPIRIT OF FEUDALISM.--Feudalism had more vitality than the system of absorbing all the land by a few great proprietors, which existed in the period of the decline of the Roman Empire. Individuality, courage, the proud sense of belonging to an aristocratic order, were widely diffused among the numerous feudal landowners. The feeling of loyalty among them was a great advance upon the blind subjection of the slave to his master. But the weight of feudalism was heavy on the lower strata of society. The lord was an autocrat, whose will there was neither the power nor the right to resist, and who could lay hold of as much of the labor and the earnings of the subject as he might choose to exact. The petty suzerain, because his needs were greater, was often more oppressive than the prince. The serf could not change his abode, he could not marry, he could not bequeath his goods, without the permission of his lord. THE SAXON, FRANCONIAN, AND HOHENSTAUFEN IMPERIAL HOUSES. HENRY I [1] 918-936. | +--OTTO I, 936-973, Emperor, 962, _m._ | 1, Eadgyth, _d._ of Edward the Elder; | | | +--Liutgarde. | | 2, Adelheid, [2] _d._ of Rudolph II, King of Burgundy. | | | +--OTTO II, 973-983, _m._ | Theophania, daughter of Romanus II, Eastern Emperor. | | | +--OTTO III, 983-1002. | +--Henry the Wrangler, Duke of Bavaria. | +--Henry the Wrangler. | +--(St.) HENRY II, 1002-1024, _m._ Cunigunda of Luxemburg. CONRAD I, [1] 911-918. | +--C. Werner (?) _m._ daughter. | +--Conrad the Red, (killed at the Lechfeld, 955) _m._ Liutgarde, daughter of Eadgyth and Otto I. | +--Otto. | +--Henry. | +--CONRAD II, the Salic, 1024-1039, _m._ Gisela, d. of Hermann II, Duke of Swabia. | +--HENRY III, 1039-1056, _m._ 1, Gunhilda, daughter of Cnut; 2, Agnes, daughter of William, Count of Poitiers. | +--HENRY IV, 1056-1106, _m._ 1, Bertha, daughter of Otto, Marquis of Susa; | +--HENRY V, 1106-1125, _m._ | Matilda, d. of Henry I of England. | +--Agnes, _m._ 1, Frederick of Hohenstaufen, Duke of Swabia, 1080-1105; | +--Frederick the One-eyed, Duke of Swabia, d. 1147, _m._ 1, Judith, daughter of Henry the Black. | +--FREDERICK I, Barbarossa, 1152-1190. | | | +--HENRY VI, 1190-1197, _m._ | | Constance of Sicily, _d._ 1198. | | | | | +--FREDERICK II, 1214-1250, _m._ | | 1, Constance, d. of | | Alfonso II of Aragon; | | | | | +--CONRAD IV, 1250-1254, _m._ | | | Elizabeth, daughter of | | | Otto II of Bavaria. | | | | | | | +--Conradin, _d._ 1268. | | | | | +--Manfred,[5] _d._ 1266. | | | | 2, Iolande de Brienne; | | | | 3, Isabella, d. of | | John of England. | | | +--PHILIP, 1198-1208, _m._ | Irene, d. of Isaac II, | Angelus, Eastern Emperor. | | | +--Beatrix, _m._ | OTTO IV,[4] 1208-1214, | _d._ 1218. | +--CONRAD III,[3] 1137-1152. 2, Leopold III, Marquis of Austria, _d._ 1136. 2, Adelaide, a Russian princess. 1 Conrad I and Henry I seem to have been related. By one account their mothers were the daughters of Emperor Arnulf. 2 Widow of Lothar, King of Italy. 3 Elected 1127 in opposition to Lotharl accepted as his successor. 4 Elected in opposition to Philip; accepted as his successor, 1208; ruined by battle of Bouvines. 5 King of Naples and Sicily after Conrad IV; killed in battle at Benevento against Charles of Anjou. Manfred's mother was Bianca Langia, daughter of a Lombard noble. PERIOD III. FROM THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE ROMANO-GERMANIC EMPIRE TO THE END OF THE CRUSADES. (A.D. 962-1270.) CHAPTER I. THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE: PREDOMINANCE OF THE EMPIRE: TO THE CRUSADES, A.D. 1096. I. KINGS AND EMPERORS OF THE SAXON HOUSE (918-1024). HENRY THE FOWLER (918-936).--The envoys who carried to Duke _Henry of Saxony_ the announcement of his election as king of Germany are said to have found him in the Hartz Mountains with a falcon on his wrist: hence he was called _Henry the Fowler_. He is a great figure in mediæval history, and did much to make Germany a nation. He won back _Lorraine_, which had broken off from the kingdom. With it the _Netherlands_--Holland, Flanders, etc.--came to Germany. He united all the five great dukedoms, and governed with wisdom and moderation. At the end of five years, the _Hungarians_ poured in with irresistible force. There was no alternative but to conclude with them a truce for nine years, during which he was to pay tribute. He set to work at once, however, to strengthen the defenses of his kingdom. He built walled towns and fortresses in the eastern districts of _Saxony_ and _Thuringia_, and drafted one out of nine of the men from the population in the marches for military service. The fortresses were to be kept stored with provisions. The oldest towns of Saxony and of Thuringia are of this date. Then he disciplined his soldiers, and trained them to fight, like the Hungarians, on horseback. He conquered the Slavonian _Wends_ who dwelt east of the _Elbe_ and the _Saale_, and established the margraviate of _Meissen_ to repel their attacks. His victory over the Slaves at _Lenzen_ (929) made the north-eastern frontiers of Germany secure. _Eadgyth_, the daughter of _Edward_, king of England, was given in marriage to his eldest son, _Otto_. Henry now felt himself strong enough to throw off the Hungarian yoke, and answered with defiance their demand for the annual tribute. The struggle with them was hard; but they were completely vanquished at _Merseburg_ in 933, and their camp taken. Henry founded the mark of _Schleswig_ as a defense against the _Danes_. This wise and vigorous monarch laid the foundations of the German Empire. He was not only a mighty warrior: he built up industry and trade. He was buried at _Quedlinburg_ in the abbey which he had founded. OTTO I.: THE PALSGRAVES.--Otto I. (936-973) carried forward with equal energy the work which his father had begun. Having been chosen king by the German princes and chiefs at _Aix_, he was presented to the people in the church by the archbishop of Mentz; and they gave their assent to the election by raising the hand. Otto had a contest before him to maintain the unity of the kingdom. He aimed to make the office of duke an office to be allotted by the king, and thus to sap the power of his turbulent lieges. The dukes of Bavaria and Franconia, with Lorraine, and with the support of _Louis IV._, king of France, rose in arms against him. He subdued them; and the great duchies which had revolted against him becoming vacant, he placed in them members of his own family. He confirmed his authority by extending the power of the _palsgraves_, or _counts palatine_,--royal officers who superintended the domains of the king in the several duchies, and dispensed justice in his name. He favored the great ecclesiastics as a check to the aspiring lay lords. He invested the bishops and abbots with ring and staff, and they took the oath of fealty to him. WARS OF OTTO I--Against the _Hungarians_, Otto achieved a triumph. He gained a victory over them at _Augsburg_ in 955, in which they were said to have lost a hundred thousand men. This put an end to their incursions into Germany. He was likewise the victor in conflict with _Slavonians_. He subdued _Boleslav I._ of Bohemia, who had thrown off the German suzerainty, and obliged him to pay a tribute. Under the pious _Boleslav II._, Christianity was established there, and a bishopric founded at Prague (967). The _Duke of Poland_ was forced to do homage to him, and to permit the founding of the bishopric of _Posen_. Against the Danish king, _Harold_ the Blue-toothed, he carried his arms to the sea, the northern boundary of _Jutland_. He erected three new bishoprics among the Danes, and founded the archbishopric of _Magdeburg_, with subordinate sees in the valleys of the Elbe and the Oder. These achievements gave Otto great renown in Western Europe. The kings sent ambassadors to him, and presents came from the sovereigns at Constantinople and Cordova. OTTO I. IN ITALY.--Otto now turned his eyes to Italy. After _Arnulf_, the Carlovingian emperor, left Italy (in 896), that country had been left to sixty years of anarchy. The demoralization and disorder of Italy, the profligacy of the Romans and of the pontiffs,-- every thing being then subject to the riotous aristocratic factions, --rendered unity impossible. For a time (926-945) _Hugh of Provence_ was called king: then followed his son _Lothar_ (945-950). The next Italian king, _Berengar II._ of Ivrea (950), who, like his two predecessors, was an offshoot of the Carlovingian house, tried to force _Adelheid_, the beautiful young widow of Lothar, into a marriage with his son Adalbert. She (being then nineteen years of age) escaped with great difficulty from the prison where she was confined, took refuge in the castle of Canossa, and appealed to the great _Otto_, king of the Germans, for help,--to Otto, "that model of knightly virtue which was beginning to show itself after the fierce brutality of the last age." He descended into Italy, married the injured queen, and obliged _Berengar_ to own him as suzerain (951). _Berengar_ proved faithless and rebellious. Once more _Otto_ entered Italy with an overpowering force, and was proclaimed king of the Lombards at _Pavia_. Pope _John XII_. had proposed to him to assume the imperial office. He was crowned, with his queen, in St. Peter's, in 962. He had engaged to confirm the gifts of previous emperors to the popes. When _John XII._ reversed his steps, allied himself with _Berengar_, and tried to stir up the Greeks, and even the Hungarians, against the emperor, _Otto_ came down from Lombardy, and captured Rome. He caused John to be deposed by a synod for his crimes, and _Leo VIII._ to be appointed in his place (963). But, while Otto was again absent, Leo was driven out by the Romans, and John returned; but, soon after, he died. The Romans then elected _Benedict_ pope. Otto captured Rome once more, deposed him, and restored _Leo_. Benedict was held in custody, and died in Hamburg. On a third journey to Italy, in 966, Otto crushed the factions which had so long degraded Rome and the Church. On this occasion, he negotiated a marriage between _Theophano_, a Greek princess, and his son, also named _Otto_. Thus he acquired the southern extremity of Italy. THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.--_Otto_ had taken Charlemagne for his model. The "Holy Roman Empire of the German nation," the great political institution of the middle ages, was now established. In theory it was the union of the world-state and the world-church,--an undivided community under Emperor and Pope, its heaven-appointed secular and spiritual heads. As an actual political fact, it was the political union of _Germany_ and _Italy_, in one sovereignty, which was in the hands of the German king. The junction of the two peoples was not without its advantages to both. It was, however, fruitful of evils. The strength of Germany was spent in endless struggles abroad, which stood in the way of the building up of a compact kingdom at home. For Italy it was the rule of foreigners, of which she might feel the need, but to which she was never reconciled. OTTO II.: OTTO III.: HENRY II.--_Otto II._ (973-983) was highly gifted intellectually, but lacked his father's energy and decision. _Henry_ the Quarrelsome, duke of Bavaria, revolted, but was put down, and deprived of his duchy. Otto obliged _Lothar_, the West Frankish king, to give up his claim to Lotharingia, which he attempted to seize. Otto, in 980, went to Italy, and, in the effort to conquer Southern Italy from the Greeks and Saracens, barely escaped with his life. This was in 982. He never returned to Germany. While _Otto III._ (983-1002) was a child, his mother, _Theophano_, was regent for a time in Germany, and his grandmother, _Adelheid_, in Italy. One of Otto's tutors was _Gerbert_, an eminent scholar and theologian. The proficiency of the young prince caused him to be styled the "Wonder of the World." He was crowned emperor in Rome in 996, when he was only sixteen years old. He dreamed of making Rome once more the center of the world, for his interest was chiefly in Italy. But his schemes were ended by his early death. At this time and afterward, there was deep agitation manifested in Europe, owing to the general expectation that before long the world would come to an end. On this account pilgrims flocked to Rome. _Henry II._ (1002-1024), as nearest of kin to the Saxon house, was the next emperor. Besides waging war with his own insurgent lieges, he had to carry on a contest for fourteen years with _Bokslav_, king of Poland, who had to give up _Bohemia_ and _Meissen_. He founded the bishopric of _Bamberg_ (1007). From this time the German kings, before their coronation as emperors, took the title of _King of the Romans_. The highest nobles were styled "Princes." The nobles lived in the castles, which were built for strongholds, as the power of the lords grew, and private wars became more common. II. THE FRANCONIAN OR SALIAN EMPERORS (1024-1125). CONRAD II.: BURGUNDY: the POLES.--At a great assembly of dukes, counts, and prelates at _Oppenheim_ on the Rhine, _Conrad_, a Franconian nobleman (_Conrad II._), was elected emperor (1024-1039). He was in the prime of life, and went to work vigorously to repress disorder in his kingdom. He had the support of the cities, which were now increasing in importance. At his coronation in Rome, in 1027, there were two kings present, _Canute_ of England and Denmark, and _Rudolph III._ of Burgundy (or _Arles_, as the kingdom was called which had been formed by _Rudolph II._, by uniting _Burgundy_ with a great part of _Provence_). After the death of _Rudolph_, who had appointed _Conrad_ his successor, the emperor was crowned king of _Arles_, which remained thus attached to Germany. But at a later time the _Romance_, or non-German portions, were absorbed by _France_. The _Duchy_ of Burgundy, a fief of the French king, was not included in the kingdom. The _Poles_ invaded Germany in great force. _Miesko_, their leader, was repelled, and obliged to do homage for his crown, and to give up _Lusatia_, which had been received by _Boleslav_ from _Henry II_. In Italy, _Conrad_ issued an edict making the smaller fiefs there hereditary. He seems to have designed to do away with dukes, and to make the allegiance of all vassals to the king immediate. HENRY III.: THE TRUCE OF GOD.--With _Henry III_. (1039-1056) the imperial power reached its height. He was for a time duke of _Bavaria_, _Swabia_, and _Franconia_, as well as emperor. In _Hungary_ he conquered the enemies of _Peter_ the king, and restored him to the throne, receiving his homage as vassal of the empire. He had great success in putting down private war. In 1043 he proclaimed a general peace in his kingdom. He favored the attempt to bring in the _Truce of God_. This originated in _Aquitaine_, where the bishops, in 1041, ordered that no private feuds should be prosecuted between the sunset of Wednesday and the sunrise of Monday, the period covered by the most sacred events in the life of Jesus. This "truce," which was afterwards extended to embrace certain other holy seasons and festivals, spread from land to land. It shows the influence of Christianity in those dark and troublous times. Although it was imperfectly carried out, it was most beneficent in its influence, and specially welcome to the classes not capable of defending themselves against violence. SYNOD OF SUTRI.--In 1046 _Henry_ was called into Italy by the well-disposed of all parties, to put an end to the reign of vice and disorder at Rome. He caused the three rival popes to be deposed by a synod at _Sutri_, and a German prelate, _Suidger_, bishop of _Bamberg_, to be appointed under the name of _Clement II_., by whom he was crowned emperor. After Clement died, Henry raised to the Papacy three German popes in succession. While in the full exercise of his great authority, and when he was not quite forty years of age, he died. HENRY IV.: HIS CONTESTS IN GERMANY.--_Henry IV_. (1056-1106), at his father's death, was but six years old. He had been crowned king at the age of four. _Agnes_ of Poitou, his mother, the regent, had no ability to curb the princes, who were now released from restraint, and eager for independence. By a bold stratagem, an ambitious prelate, _Hanno_, archbishop of Cologne, carried off the young king, and assumed the guardianship over him. He had a rival in the person of _Adalbert_, archbishop of Bremen, whom Henry liked best, as being more indulgent and complaisant, and who at length became his chosen guide. But in 1066 the princes caused _Adalbert_ to be banished from court. They obliged _Henry_ to marry _Bertha_, the daughter of the margrave of Turin, to whom he had been betrothed by his father. The union was repugnant to him, and he sought a divorce; although her patience eventually won the victory, and she became a cherished wife. _Henry_, arrived at man's estate, was involved in a contest with three of the great dukes. It was evident that he meant to tread in the footsteps of his father, and to reduce the princes to submission. Hostility arose, especially between the young king and the _Saxons_, who did not relish the transfer of the imperial office to the _Franconian_ line. The passionate and wilful disposition of _Henry_, and his sensual propensities, were his worst enemies. The strongholds which he erected among the _Saxons_, in themselves a menace, were made haunts of his boon companions and comrades in the chase. The extortion and depredations to which the Saxons were a prey provoked a great insurrection, which at first prevailed; but the excesses of the elated insurgents--as seen, for example, in the plundering and burning of churches--caused a reaction. Henry suppressed the revolt, and dealt with the Saxons with the utmost harshness, treating their dukedom as conquered territory. The Saxon chiefs were now in durance: his enemies on every side had willingly yielded, or were prostrate. The hour seemed to have come for Henry to exercise that sovereignty as Roman emperor over Church and State which his father had wielded; but he found himself confronted by a new and powerful antagonist in the celebrated Pope Hilde-brand, or _Gregory VII_. (1073-1085). HILDEBRAND: INVESTITURES.--The state of affairs in the Roman Church had called into existence a party of reform, the life and soul of which was _Hildebrand_. He was the son of a carpenter of _Soano_, a small town in Tuscany, and was born in 1018. He was educated in a monastery in Rome, and spent some time in France, in the great monastery of _Cluny_. He became the influential adviser of the popes who immediately preceded him. The great aim of Hildebrand and of his supporters--one of the most prominent of whom was the zealous _Peter Damiani_, bishop of Ostia--was to abolish _simony_ and the _marriage of priests_. By _simony_ was meant the purchase and sale of benefices, which had come to prevail in the different countries. The old church laws requiring _celibacy_ had been disregarded, and great numbers of the inferior clergy were living with their wives. In Hildebrand's view, there could be no purity and no just discipline in the Church without a strict enforcement of the neglected rule. The priests must put away their wives. Connected with these reforms was the broader design of wholly emancipating the Church from the control of the secular power, and of subordinating the State to the Church. For this end there must be an abolition of _investiture_ by lay hands. This demand it was that kindled a prolonged and terrible controversy between the emperors and the popes. The great ecclesiastics had temporal estates and a temporal jurisdiction, which placed them in a feudal relation, and made them powerful subjects. It was the custom of the kings to invest them with these temporalities by giving to them the ring and the staff. This enabled the kings to keep out of the benefices persons not acceptable to them, who might be elected by the clergy. On the other hand, it was complained that this custom put the bishops and other high ecclesiastics into a relation of dependence on the lay authority; and, moreover, that, the _ring_ and _staff_ being badges of a spiritual function, it was sacrilegious for a layman to bestow them. CONTEST OF HILDEBRAND AND HENRY IV.--In the period of lawlessness at Rome, Hildebrand had welcomed the intervention of _Henry III._, and even of _Henry IV._, at the beginning of his reign. But this he regarded as only a provisional remedy made necessary by a desperate disorder. On acceding to the Papacy, he began to put in force his leading ideas. The attempt to abolish the marriage of priests was resisted, and stirred up great commotion in all the countries. The legates of the Pope set themselves to stem the tide of opposition by inveighing, in addresses to the common people, against the married clergy, as unfit to minister at the altar. By this means, a popular party in favor of the reform was created. In 1075, in a synod at _Rome_, Hildebrand pronounced the ban against five councilors of _Henry IV._ for simony. At the same time he threatened _Philip_ of France with a similar penalty. He forbade princes to invest with any spiritual office. To oaths of allegiance he did not object, but to any investiture of a spiritual kind. Gregory selected _Henry IV._ as the antagonist with whom to fight out the battle. Henry's ecclesiastical appointments were not simoniacal in fact, although they violated the papal decrees against simony. His real offense was his determination to make the appointments himself. Moreover, in 1075, he ventured to name Germans to the sees of Ferno and Spoleto. Unfortunately he was weakened by the disaffection of the German princes, and, most of all, of the _Saxons_. The fire of rebellion in Saxony had not been quenched: it was still smouldering. _Gregory_ summoned _Henry_ to Rome to answer to the charges made against him. In three German synods held in 1076, the incensed emperor caused empty accusations to be brought against the Pope, and a declaration to be passed deposing him. He sent to the pontiff a letter filled with denunciation, and addressed "to the false monk, Hildebrand." Gregory issued decrees excommunicating _Henry_, deposing him, and declaring his subjects free from their obligation of allegiance. It was the received doctrine, that a heretic or a heathen could not reign over Christian people. The discontented German princes took sides with Gregory. In an assembly at _Tribur_ in 1076, they invited the Pope to come to _Augsburg_, and to judge in the case of _Henry_: he was to live as a private man; and, if he remained excommunicate for a year, he was to cease to be king altogether. HUMILIATION OF HENRY IV.--_Henry_ was now as anxious for reconciliation with the Pope as before he had been bold in his defiance. In the midst of winter, with his wife and child and a few attendants, he crossed the Mt. Cenis pass, undergoing extreme difficulty and hardship, and presented himself as a penitent before Gregory, who had arrived, on his way to _Augsburg_, at the strongly fortified castle of _Canossa_. The Pope kept him waiting long, it is said, barefoot and bareheaded in the court-yard of the castle. Finally he was admitted and absolved, but only on the condition that _Gregory_ was to adjust the matters in dispute between the emperor and his subjects. CONTINUED CONFLICT.--When Henry found that his imperial rights were still withheld, his fiery spirit rebounded from this depth of humiliation. The _Lombards_, with whom Gregory was unpopular, joined him. A majority of the German princes, adhering to the Pope, in 1077 elected _Rudolph_, duke of Swabia, emperor. The Pope took up his cause, and in 1080 once more excommunicated and deposed _Henry_. The emperor proclaimed anew, through synods, the Pope's deposition, and things were back in the former state. The emperor's party appointed a counter-pope, _Guibert_, archbishop of Ravenna, under the name of _Clement III_. _Rudolph_ was killed in battle (1080). _Henry's_ power now vastly increased. He invaded Italy (1081), and laid waste the territory of _Matilda_, countess of _Tuscany_, a fast friend of Gregory. In 1084 he captured Rome. The Pope had found a defender in _Robert Guiscard_, the Norman duke of Lower Italy, whom he had excommunicated, but whom (in 1080) he forgave, and took into his service. _Robert_ released Gregory, who had been besieged in the Castle of St. Angelo. _Hildebrand_ died at Salerno, May 25, 1085. When near his end he uttered the words which are inscribed on his tomb: "I have loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore do I die in exile." Of the rectitude of his intentions, there is no room for doubt, whatever view is taken of the expediency of his measures. He united with an unbending will the power of accommodating himself to circumstances, as is witnessed in his treatment of _Robert Guiscard_, and in his forbearance towards _William the Conqueror_, king of England, with whom he did not wish to break. Of this great pontiff, Sir James Stephen says: "He found the Papacy dependent on the empire: he sustained it by alliances almost commensurate with the Italian peninsula. He found the Papacy electoral by the Roman people and clergy: he left it electoral by a college of papal nomination. He found the emperor the virtual patron of the holy see: he wrested that power from his hands. He found the secular clergy the allies and dependants of the secular power: he converted them into the inalienable auxiliaries of his own. He found the higher ecclesiastics in servitude to the temporal sovereigns: he delivered them from that yoke to subjugate them to the Roman tiara. He found the patronage of the Church the mere desecrated spoil and merchandise of princes: he reduced it within the dominion of the supreme pontiff. He is celebrated as the reformer of the impure and profane abuses of his age: he is more justly entitled to the praise of having left the impress of his own gigantic character on the history of all the ages which have succeeded him." LAST DAYS OF HENRY IV.--In 1085 Henry IV. returned to Germany, having been crowned emperor by his Pope, _Clement III_. The _Saxons_ were tired of strife; and, on the assurance that their ancient privileges should be restored, they were pacified. _Hermann_ of Luxemburg, whom they had recognized as their king, had resigned the crown (1088). The last days of _Henry_ were clouded by the rebellion of his sons, first of _Conrad_ (1093), and then of _Henry_ (1104), who was supported by the Pope, _Paschal II_. The emperor was taken prisoner, and obliged to sign his own abdication at _Ingelheim_ in 1105. The duke of Lotharingia and others came to his support, and a civil war was threatened; but _Henry_ died at _Lüttich_ in 1106. His body was placed in a stone coffin, where it lay in an unconsecrated chapel, at _Spires_, until the removal of the excommunication (1111). CONCORDAT OF WORMS.--_Henry V_. (1106-1125) was not in the least disposed to yield up the right of investiture. Hence he was soon engaged in a controversy with _Paschal II_. Henry went to Rome with an army in 1110, and obliged the Pope to crown him emperor, and to concede to him the right in question. When he went back to Germany, the Pope revoked the concession, and excommunicated him. The German princes, as might be expected, sided with the pontiff. The conflict in Germany went on. The emperor's authority, which was established in the South by means of his powerful supporters, was not secured in the North; but, during the last three years of his life, he was at peace with the Church. By the _Concordat of Worms_ in 1122, it was agreed that investiture should take place in the presence of the emperor or of his deputies; that the emperor should _first_ invest with the scepter, and then consecration should take place by the Church, with the bestowal of the _ring_ and the _staff_. All holders of secular benefices were to perform feudal obligations. LOTHAR OF SAXONY.--The princes over whom Henry V. had exercised a severe control opposed the elevation of _Frederick_ of Hohenstaufen, the son of his sister _Agnes_. At a brilliant assembly at _Mentz_, _Lothar_ of Saxony was chosen emperor (1125-1137). He allowed all the Pope's claims, and was crowned at Rome by Innocent II., accepting the allodial possessions of _Matilda_ of Tuscany, as a fief from the pontiff. He carried on a war with the Hohenstaufen princes, _Frederick_ of Swabia, and his brother _Conrad_, who finally yielded. _Lothar_ was helped in the conflict by _Henry the Proud_, the duke of Bavaria, who also became duke of Saxony. Germany under _Lothar_ extended its influence in the north and east. CULTURE IN THE ELEVENTH CENTURY.--The tenth century, owing to causes which have been explained, was a dark age. In the eleventh century circumstances were more favorable for culture. Under the Saxon emperors, intercourse was renewed with the Greek Empire. There was some intercourse with the Arabs in Spain, among whom several of the sciences were cultivated, especially mathematics, astronomy, and medicine (p. 232). The study of the Roman law was revived in the Lombard cities, and this had a disciplinary value. The restoration of order in the Church, after the synod of _Sutri_ (1046), had likewise a wholesome influence in respect to culture. There were several schools of high repute in France, especially those at _Rheims, Chartres, Tours,_ and in the monastery of _Bec_, in Normandy, where _Lanfranc_, an Italian by birth, a man of wisdom and piety, was the abbot. CHAPTER II. THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE: PREDOMINANCE OF THE CHURCH: TO THE END OF THE CRUSADES, A.D. 1270. THE TWO RELIGIONS.--The Crusades were a new chapter in the long warfare of Christendom with Mohammedanism. "In the Middle Ages, there were two worlds utterly distinct,--that of the Gospel and that of the Koran." In Europe, with the exception of Spain, the Gospel had sway; from the Pyrenees to the mouths of the Ganges, the Koran. The border contests between the two hostile parties on the eastern and western frontiers of Christendom were now to give place to conflict on a larger scale during centuries of invasion and war. STATE OF THE GREEK EMPIRE.--The Greek Christian Empire lay between the Christian peoples of the West and the dominion of the Arabs. That empire lived on, a spiritless body. After _Justinian_, there is an endless recurrence of wars with the Arabs, and with the barbarians on the North, and of theological disputes, either within the empire itself, or with the Church of the West. The Greeks complained that a phrase teaching the procession of the Spirit from the Son had been added in the West to the Nicene Creed. The Latins complained of the use of leavened bread in the sacrament, of the marriage of priests, and of some other Greek peculiarities. The separation of the two churches was consummated when, in 1054, the legate of the Pope laid on the altar of _St. Sophia_, at Constantinople, an anathema against "the seven mortal heresies" of the Greeks. ATTACKS OF RUSSIANS AND BULGARIANS.--Left to itself, the empire showed some energy in repelling the attacks of the Russians and Bulgarians. A number of capable rulers arose. The Russians, of the same race of Northmen who had ravaged Western Europe, kept up their assaults until their chief, _Vladimir_, made peace, accepted Christianity, and married the sister of the emperor, Basil II. (988). The empire between 988 and 1014 was invaded twenty-six times by King _Samuel_ of Bulgaria. But the Bulgarian kingdom was overthrown, in 1019, by _Basil II_. In the twelfth century it regained its independence. THE GREEK EMPERORS.--In the ninth century the Greeks made head against the Arabs, especially by means of their navy. In the tenth century _John I_. (_Zimisces_) crossed the Euphrates, and created alarm in Bagdad. The tenacity of life in the Greek Empire was surprising in view of the languishing sort of existence that it led. After _Heraclius_, there were three dynasties, the last of which, the _Macedonian_ (867-1056), produced three remarkable men, _Nicephorus Phocas_, _Zimisces_, and _Basil II_. But the dynasty of _Comneni_, which, in the person of _Isaac I_., ascended the throne in 1057, had to combat a new and vigorous enemy, the _Turks_, who had now made themselves masters of Asia. One of this line of emperors, _Alexius I_., appealed to the Germans for help. This had some influence in giving rise to the first of the Crusades. In these conflicts the Latins bore the brunt. The exhausted Greek Empire played a minor part. CONQUESTS OF THE TURKS.--The Mussulman dominion of the _Arabs_ had become enfeebled. The _Ommiad_ dynasty at _Cordova_ had disappeared under the assaults of Christians, and of the _Moors_ of Africa. The _Fatimite_ caliphs were confined to Egypt. The rule of the _Abassids_ of Bagdad had been well-nigh demolished by the Seljukian Turks in 1058. They founded in the eleventh century an extensive empire. The sultan, _Alp Arslan_, took the emperor, _Romanus IV. Diogenes_, prisoner (1071), and conquered _Armenia_. _Malek Shah_ invaded Syria, Palestine, Jerusalem, and carried his arms as far as Egypt, while a member of the Turkish family of _Seljuk_ wrested Asia Minor from the Greeks, and established the kingdom of _Iconium_, which was called _Roum_, extending from Mount Taurus to the Bosphorus. After the death of _Malek Shah_, there were three distinct sultanates, _Persia_, _Syria_, and _Kerman_,--the last being on the shores of the Indian Ocean. THE PILGRIMS TO JERUSALEM.--The immediate occasion of the Crusades was the hard treatment of the Christian pilgrims who visited the sepulcher of Christ in Jerusalem. There the Empress _Helena_, the mother of Constantine, had erected a stately church. Pilgrimages--which had become more and more a custom since the fourth century--naturally tended to the sacred places in Palestine. Especially was this the case in the eleventh century, when piety had been quickened by the _Cluny_ movement. In 1064 a great pilgrimage, in which seven thousand persons, priests and laity, of all nations, were included, under _Siegfried_, archbishop of _Mentz_, made its way through Hungary to Syria. Not more than a third of them lived to return. The reports of returning pilgrims were listened to with absorbing interest, as they told of the spots to which the imagination of the people was constantly directed. What indignation then was kindled by the pathetic narrative of the insults and blows which they had endured from the infidels who profaned the holy places with their hateful domination! In the ninth century, under caliphs of the temper of _Haroun Al-Raschid_, Christians had been well treated. About the middle of the tenth century the Fatimite caliphs of Egypt were the rulers at Jerusalem. _Hakem_ was fierce in his persecution, but his successors were more tolerant. When the Seljukian Turks got control there, the harassed pilgrims had constant occasion to complain of insult and inhumanity. THE CALL OF THE GREEKS.--The Greek emperor, _Alexius Comnenus_, threatened by the Mussulmans on the opposite bank of the Bosphorus, sent his call for succor to all Christian courts. Two popes, _Sylvester II._ and _Gregory VII._, had in vain exhorted the princes to rise in their might, to do away with the wrong and the shame which the disciples of Jesus were suffering at the hands of his enemies. MOTIVES TO THE CRUSADES.--After this, only a spark was needed to kindle in the Western nations a flame of enthusiasm. The summons to a crusade appealed to the two most powerful sentiments then prevalent,--the sentiment of _religion_ and that of _chivalry_. The response made by faith and reverence was reinforced by that thirst for a martial career and for knightly exploits which burned as a passion in the hearts of men. The peoples in the countries formed by the Germanic conquests were full of vigor and life. Outside of the Church, there was no employment to attract aspiring youth but the employment of a soldier. Western Europe was covered with a net-work of petty sovereignties. Feudal conflicts, while they were a discipline of strength and valor, were a narrow field for all this pent-up energy. There was a latent yearning for a wider horizon, a broader theater of action. Thus the Crusades profoundly interested all classes. The Church and the clergy, the lower orders, the women and the children, shared to the full in the religious enthusiasm, which, in the case of princes and nobles, took the form of an intense desire to engage personally in the holy war, in order to crush the infidels, and at the same time to signalize themselves by gallant feats of arms. There was no surer road to salvation. There was, moreover, a hope, of which all in distressed circumstances partook, of improving their temporal lot. THE COUNCIL OF CLERMONT.--The prime author of the first Crusade was Pope _Urban II_. He authorized an enthusiast, _Peter the Hermit_, of Amiens, to travel on an ass through Italy and Southern France, and to stir up the people to the great undertaking of delivering the Holy Sepulcher. With an emaciated countenance and flashing eye, his head bare, and feet naked, and wearing a coarse garment bound with a girdle of cords, he told his burning tale of the inflictions endured by the pilgrims. At the great council of _Clermont_, in 1095, where a throng of bishops and nobles, and a multitude of common people who spoke the Romanic tongue, were assembled, _Urban_ himself addressed the assembly in a strain of impassioned fervor. He called upon everyone to deny himself, and take up his cross, that he might win Christ. Whoever would enlist in the war was to have a complete remission of penances,--a "plenary indulgence." The answer was thundered forth, "God wills it." Thousands knelt, and begged to be enrolled in the sacred bands. The red cross of cloth or silk, fastened to the right shoulder, was the badge of all who took up arms. Hence they were called _crusaders_ (from an old French word derived from _crucem_, Lat. acc. of _crux_, a cross). THE UNDISCIPLINED BANDS.--The farmer left his plow, and the shepherd his flock. Both sexes and all ages were inspired with a common passion. Before a military organization could be made, a disorderly host, poorly armed and ill-provided, led by _Peter the Hermit_ and _Walter the Penniless_, a French knight, started for Constantinople by way of Germany and Hungary. They were obliged to separate; and, of two hundred thousand, it is said that only seven thousand reached that capital. These perished in Asia Minor. They left their bones on the plain of _Nicoea_, where they were found by the next crusading expedition. FIRST CRUSADE (1096-1099).--"The Crusades were primarily a Gaulish movement:" in French-speaking lands, the fire of chivalric devotion was most intense. The first regular army of soldiers of the cross departed by different routes under separate chiefs. First of these was _Godfrey of Bouillon_, duke of Lower Lorraine, the bravest and noblest of them all. With him were his brothers, _Baldwin_, and _Eustace_, count of Boulogne. Prominent among the other chiefs were _Hugh_, count of Vermandois; _Robert_, duke of Normandy, who had pawned his duchy to his brother, _William II_., the king of England; _Robert_, count of Flanders; _Raymond_, count of Toulouse; _Bohemond_ of Tarentum, son of Robert Guiscard; and _Tancred_, Robert Guiscard's nephew. The Spaniards were taken up with their own crusade against the Moors. In consequence of the late absorbing struggles between emperors and popes, the Germans and Italians did not now embark in the enterprise. The relation of the Norman dynasty in England to the conquered Saxons prevented the first crusading host from receiving substantial aid from that country. The leaders of the army finally consented to become the feudal dependents of the emperor _Alexius_ while they should be within his borders, and to restore to him such of their conquests as had been lately wrested by the Turks from the Eastern Empire. _Alexius_ was more alarmed than gratified on seeing the swarm of warriors which he had brought into his land. After a siege of seven weeks, _Nicea_ was surrendered, not, however, into the hands of the European soldiers who had conducted the siege, but to the shrewd _Alexius_. At _Doryleum_, in a desperate battle the Turks were defeated; but, on their march eastward, they wasted the lands which they left behind them. The crusaders suffered severely from disease consequent on the heat. A private quarrel broke out between _Tancred_ and _Baldwin_. _Baldwin_, invited to _Edessa_ by the Greek or Armenian ruler, founded there a Latin principality. After besieging _Antioch_ for several months, by the treachery of a renegade Christian, _Bohemond_, with a few followers, was admitted into the city. The Christians slew ten thousand of its defenders; but, three days after, _Antioch_ was shut in by a great army of Turks under the sultan _Kerboga_. The crusaders were stimulated by the supposed discovery of the "holy lance," or the steel head of the spear which had pierced the side of Jesus. The Turks were vanquished, and the citadel of Antioch was possessed by _Bohemond_. The wrangling chieftains were now compelled by the army to set out for Jerusalem. When they reached the heights where they first caught a glimpse of the holy city, the crusaders fell on their knees, and with tears of joy broke out in hymns of praise to God. But, not accustomed to siege operations, and destitute of the machines and ladders requisite for the purpose, they found themselves balked in the first attempts to capture the city. Yet after thirty days, their needs having been meantime in a measure supplied, _Jerusalem_ was taken by storm (July 15, 1099). The infuriated conquerors gave the rein to their vindictive passions. Ten thousand Saracens were slaughtered. The Jews were burned in the synagogues, to which they had fled. When the thirst for blood and for plunder was sated, feelings of penitence and humility took possession of the victors. The leaders, casting aside their arms, with bared heads and barefoot, entered into the church of the Holy Sepulcher, and on their bended knees thanked God for their success. After debate, the princes united in choosing _Godfrey of Bouillon_ as ruler of the city. He would not wear a royal crown in the place where the Saviour of the world had worn on his bleeding forehead a crown of thorns. He designated himself Protector of the Holy Sepulcher. Shortly after, at _Ascalon_, he won a great victory against the vastly superior forces of the Egyptian sultan. Godfrey died the next year (1100), and was succeeded by his brother _Baldwin_, who first took the title of King of Jerusalem. The force of the Moslems, and the almost incessant strife and division among the crusaders themselves, made the kingdom hard to defend. THE NEW KINGDOM.--Venice, Genoa, and Pisa had the most to do with the defense and enlargement of the new kingdom. It was organized according to the method of feudalism. It continued until the capture of Jerusalem by _Saladin_ in 1187. THE MILITARY ORDERS.--The principal supporters of the new kingdom at Jerusalem were the orders of knights, in which were united the spirit of chivalry and the spirit of monasticism. To the monastic vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, they added a fourth vow, which bound them to fight the infidels, and to protect the pilgrims. These military orders acquired great privileges and great wealth. Each of them had its own peculiar apparel, stamped with a cross. The two principal orders were the Knights of St. John, or the _Hospitallers_, and the _Knights Templar_. The Hospitallers grew out of a hospital established in the eleventh century near the Holy Sepulcher, for the care of sick or wounded pilgrims. The order, when fully constituted, contained three classes of members,--knights, who were all of noble birth, priests and chaplains, and serving brothers. After the loss of the Holy Land, the island of _Rhodes_ was given up to them. This they held until 1522, when they were driven out by the Turks, and received from the emperor, _Charles V._, the island of _Malta_. The Templars gained high renown for their valor, and, by presents and legacies, acquired immense wealth. After the loss of their possessions in Palestine, most of their members took up their abode in _Cyprus_: from there many of them went to France. Not a few of them became addicted to violent and profligate ways. They were charged, whether truly or falsely, with unbelief, and Oriental superstitions caught up in the East from their enemies. These accusations, coupled with a desire to get their property, led to their suppression by _Philip V._ in the beginning of the fourteenth century. A third order was that of _Teutonic Knights_, founded at Jerusalem about 1128. In the next century they subjugated the heathen _Wends_ in Prussia (1226-1283). WELFS AND WAIBLINGS.--The emperor _Lothar_ died on a journey back from Italy in 1137. _Henry the Proud_, of the house of _Welf_, to whom he had given the imperial insignia, hoped to be his successor, and hesitated to recognize _Conrad III_. (1137-1152) of the house of _Hohenstaufen_, who was chosen. Conrad required him to give up _Saxony_, for the reason that one prince could not govern two duchies. When he refused, _Bavaria_, also, was taken from him, and given to _Leopold_, margrave of Austria. This led to war, in which the king, as usual, was strongly supported by the cities. Henry the Proud left a young son, known later as _Henry the Lion_. Count _Welf_, the brother of Henry the Proud, kept up the war in Bavaria. He was besieged in _Weinsberg_. During the siege, it is said that his followers shouted "_Welf_" as a war-cry, while the besiegers shouted "_Waiblings_,"--_Waiblingen_ being the birthplace of _Frederick_, duke of Swabia, brother of Conrad. These names, corrupted into _Guelphs_ and _Ghibellines_ by the Italians, were afterwards attached to the two great parties,--the supporters, respectively, of the popes and the emperors. _Henry the Lion_ afterwards received _Saxony_; and the mark of _Brandenburg_ was given in lieu of it to _Albert the Bear_. _Welf I._ was a powerful nobleman, who received from _Henry IV_. the fief of _Bavaria_. When _Henry V_ died, the natural heirs of the extinct Franconian line were his nephews, _Frederick_ of _Hohenstaufen_, duke of Swabia, and _Conrad_. But the Saxons supported the wealthy _Lothar_, who was chosen emperor, and won over to his side _Henry the Proud_, grandson of _Welf I._, to whom _Lothar_ gave his daughter in marriage, and gave, also, the dukedom of _Saxony_, in addition to his dukedom of _Bavaria_. In these events lay the roots of the long rivalship between the _Welfs_ and the _Hohenstaufens_. _Henry the Lion_, as stated above, was the son of _Henry the Proud_. GENEALOGY OF THE WELFS. WELF, Duke of Bavaria, 1070-1101. | +--HENRY the Black, Duke of Bavaria, 1120-1126. | +--Judith, _m._ to Frederic, Duke of Swabia (d. 1147), | the son of Agnes, who was the daughter of HENRY IV. FREDERIC I | (Barbarossa) was the son of Judith, and this Frederic of Swabia. | The Swabian dukes were called _Hohenstaufens_, from a | castle on _Mount Staufen_ in Wurtemberg. | +--HENRY the Proud, Duke of Bavaria 1126, of Saxony 1137; deprived, 1138. | +--HENRY the Lion, _m_. Matilda, daughter of Henry II of England. | +--HENRY the Young, _d_. 1227. | +--OTTO IV, _d_. 1218. SECOND CRUSADE (1147-1149).--The preacher of the second Crusade was _St. Bernard_, whose saintly life and moving eloquence produced a great effect. _Louis VII._ of France and _Conrad III._ were the leaders. The expedition was attended by a series of calamities. The design of recapturing _Edessa_ from _Noureddin_, the sultan of Aleppo, was given up. The siege of _Damascus_ failed (1148). _Conrad_ returned home with broken health. Soon after, Damascus fell into the hands of _Noureddin_, who was a brave and upright leader. Through one of his lieutenants, he conquered Egypt. After his death, _Saladin_, who sprung from one of the tribes of _Kurds_, and was in his service, rose to power there, and set aside the Fatimite caliphate (1171). He was not less renowned for his culture and magnanimity than for his valor. _Saladin_ united under his scepter all the lands from Cairo to Aleppo. In the battle at _Ramla_, not far from Ascalon (1178), the crusaders gained their last notable victory over this antagonist, which served to prolong for some years the existence of the kingdom of Jerusalem. Afterwards victory was on his side: the crusaders were overthrown in the fatal battle of _Tiberias_, and _Jerusalem_ was taken by him (1187). Thus the Latin kingdom fell. The Saracen conqueror was much more humane after success than the Christian warriors had been in like circumstances. FREDERICK BARBAROSSA.--_Frederick I.--Barbarossa_, or Redbeard, he was called in Italy--(1152-1190) was one of the grand figures of the Middle Ages. He was thirty-one years of age at his election as emperor, and had already been with the crusaders to the Holy Land. In him great strength of understanding and a capacity for large undertakings were combined with a taste for letters and art. His aim was to bring back to the empire the strength and dignity which had belonged to it under the Saxon and Franconian emperors. The rulers of _Bohemia_ and _Poland_ he obliged to swear fealty as vassals. He put down private war, and restored order in Germany. The palatinate on the Rhine, formerly a part of Franconia, he gave to his half-brother _Conrad_, who founded _Heidelberg_ (1155). STRUGGLE WITH THE LOMABARD CITIES.--The principal conflict of Frederick I. was in Italy, where he endeavored to restore the imperial supremacy over the Lombard cities, which had grown prosperous and freedom-loving, and were bent on managing their own municipal affairs. They had thrown off the rule of bishops and counts. The burghers of _Milan_, the principal town, had obliged the neighboring nobles and cities to form a league with them. The smaller cities, as _Como_ and _Lodi_, preferred the emperor's control to being subject to Milan. _Pavia_ clung to the empire. But most of the cities prized their independence and republican administration. The Pope and the emperor were soon at variance, and the cities naturally looked to the pontiff for sympathy and leadership. In 1158 _Frederick_ again crossed the Alps, bent on establishing the imperial jurisdiction as it had stood in the days of Charlemagne. The study of the Roman law was now pursued with enthusiasm at _Bologna_ and _Padua_. At a great assembly in the _Roncalian Fields_, Frederick caused the prerogatives of the empire to be defined according to the terms of the civil law. The emperor was proclaimed as "lord of the world,"--_dominus mundi_. In the room of the consuls, a _Podesta_ was appointed as the chief officer in each city, to represent his authority. _Milan_, which had submitted, revolted, but, after a siege of two years, was forced to surrender, and was destroyed, at the emperor's command, by the inhabitants of the neighboring cities (1162). In 1159 _Alexander III_. was elected Pope by a majority of the cardinals. _Victor IV_. was chosen by the imperial party, and was recognized at a council convened by _Frederick_ at _Pavia_. On the death of Victor, another anti-pope, _Paschal III_., was elected in his place; and, on the fourth visit of Frederick to Italy (1166-1168), he conducted Paschal to Rome. In 1167 the cities of Northern Italy, which maintained their cause with invincible spirit, united in the _Lombard League_. They built the strongly fortified place, _Alessandria_,--named after the Pope,--and took possession of the passes of the Alps. The emperor, whose army was nearly destroyed by a pestilence at Rome, escaped, with no little difficulty and danger, to Germany. FREDERICK I. AND POPE ALEXANDER III.--For nearly seven years Frederick remained in Germany. He put an end to a violent feud which had been raging between _Henry the Lion_ and his enemies (1168). In 1174 he was ready to resume his great Italian enterprise. But he did not succeed in taking _Alessandria_. All his efforts to induce _Henry the Lion_ to come to his support failed. He was consequently defeated in the battle of _Legnano_ (1176). The extraordinary abilities and indefatigable energy of the great emperor had been exerted in the vain effort, as he himself now perceived it to be, to break down the resistance of a free people to a system which they felt to be an obsolete despotism. A reconciliation took place at Venice in 1177 between Pope _Alexander III_. and Frederick, in which the latter virtually gave up the plan which he had so long struggled to realize. It was a day of triumph for the Papacy. At _Constance_, in 1183, a treaty was made with the Lombard cities, in which their self-government was substantially conceded, with the right to fortify themselves, and to levy armies, and to extend the bounds of their confederacy. The overlordship of the emperor was recognized. There was to be an imperial judge in each town, to whom appeals in the most important causes might be made. The "regalian rights" to _forage, food_, and _lodging_ for the emperor's army, when within their territory, were reduced to a definite form. The cities grew stronger from their newly gained freedom; yet the loss of imperial restraint was, on some occasions, an evil. FREDERICK IN GERMANY.--After his return to Germany, Frederick deprived _Henry the Lion_ of his lands; and when Henry craved his forgiveness at the Diet of Erfurt in 1181, he was allowed to retain _Brunswick_ and _Lüneburg_. He was to live for three years, with his wife and child, at the court of his father-in-law, _Henry II_., king of England. His son _William_, born there, is the ancestor of the present royal family in England. In 1184 the emperor, in honor of his sons, King _Henry_, and _Frederick_, duke of Swabia, who were of age to become knights, celebrated at _Mentz_ a magnificent festival, where a great throng of attendants was gathered from far and near. In a last and peaceful visit to Italy, his son _Henry_ was married to _Constance_, the daughter of _Roger II_., and the heiress of the Norman kingdom of Lower Italy and Sicily. THIRD CRUSADE (1189-1192).--The old emperor now undertook another Crusade (1189), in which he was supported by _Philip II_. (_Philip Augustus_), king of France, and _Richard_ the Lion-Hearted (_Cæur-de-Lion_), king of England, but of French descent. Having spent the winter at _Adrianople_, Frederick crossed into Asia Minor, and conquered _Iconium_. In his advance he showed a military skill and a valor which made the expedition a memorable one; but at the river Calycadnus in _Cilicia_, either while bathing or attempting to cross on horseback, the old warrior was swept away by the stream, and drowned (1190). His son _Frederick_ died during the siege of _Acre_. _Richard_ and _Philip_ quarreled, before and after reaching _Acre_, which surrendered in 1191. _Philip_ returned to France. _Richard_, with all his valor, was twice compelled to turn back from Jerusalem. Nothing was accomplished except the establishment of a truce with _Saladin_, by which a strip of land on the coast, from _Joppa_ to _Acre_, was given to the Christians, and pilgrimages to the holy places were allowed. _Richard_ was distinguished both for his deeds of arms and for his cruelty. On his return, he was kept as a prisoner by _Leopold_, duke of Austria, by the direction of the emperor, _Henry VI_., for thirteen months, and released on the payment of a ransom, and rendering homage. He was charged with treading the German banner in the filth at Acre. His alliance with the _Welfs_ in Germany is enough to explain the hostility felt towards him by the imperial party. HENRY VI.: POPE INNOCENT III.--Henry VI. (1190-1197) had the prudence and vigor of his father, but lacked his magnanimity. He was hard and stern in his temper. Twice he visited Italy to conquer the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the inheritance of his wife. He waged a new war with _Henry the Lion_ (1192-1194), which ended in a marriage of _Agnes_, the emperor's cousin, with _Henry_, the son of Henry. It was a project of the emperor to convert Germany and Italy, with Sicily, into a hereditary monarchy; but the princes would not consent. He aspired to incorporate the Eastern Empire in the same dominion. While engaged in strife with the aged Pope, _Coelestin II_., respecting the Tuscan lands of _Matilda_, which she had bequeathed to the Church, the emperor suddenly died. His son _Frederick_ was a boy only three years old. On the death of _Coelestin II_., early in 1198, _Innocent III_., the ablest and most powerful of all the popes, acceded to the pontifical chair. Innocent was a statesman of unsurpassed sagacity and energy. He was imbued with the highest idea of the pontifical dignity. He made his authority felt and feared in all parts of Christendom. He exacted submission from all rulers, civil and ecclesiastical. The Empress _Constance_, in order to secure Italy for _Frederick_, accepted the papal investment on conditions dictated by the Pope. After her death _Innocent_ ruled Italy in the character of guardian of her son. He dislodged the imperial vassals from the Tuscan territory of _Matilda_, and thus became a second founder of the papal state. FOURTH CRUSADE (1202-1204).--Under the auspices of _Innocent III_., a Crusade was undertaken by French barons, with whom were associated _Baldwin_, count of Flanders, and _Boniface_, marquis of Montferrat. Arrived at _Venice_, the crusaders were not able to furnish to the Venetians the sum agreed to be paid for their transportation. The Venetians, whose devotion was strongly tempered with the mercantile spirit, under the old doge, _Henry Dandolo_, greatly to the displeasure of the Pope, persuaded them to assist in the capture of _Zara_, which the king of Hungary had wrested from Venice. Then, at the call of _Alexius_, son of the Eastern emperor, _Isaac Angelus_, they went with the Venetian fleet to Constantinople, and restored these princes to the throne. The result of the contentions that followed with the Greeks was the pillage of Constantinople, and the establishment of the _Latin Empire_ under _Baldwin_. Principalities were carved out for different chiefs; the Venetians taking several Greek coast towns, and afterwards _Candia_ (Crete). The patriarch of Constantinople had to take his pallium from Rome. The Latin service was established in the churches. There was no real union between the Greeks and the invaders, but constant strife, until, in 1261, _Michael Paloeologus_, the head of a Greek empire which had been established at _Nicoea_, put an end to the Latin kingdom. CHILDREN'S CRUSADE.--The failure of the stupendous undertakings for the conquest of the infidels was attributed to the wicked wrangles, and still more to the vicious lives, of the crusaders, whose defeat was regarded as indicative of the frown of Heaven on their evil courses. This feeling gave occasion to the Children's Crusade, in 1212. Many thousands of French and German boys made their way, in two distinct expeditions, to _Marseilles_ and the seaports of Italy, in order to be conveyed thence to the Holy Land. But few returned: nearly all perished by the way, or were seized, and carried off to slave-markets. The enterprise grew out of a wild construction of the injunction of Jesus to let little children come to him. OTTO IV.: CIVIL WAR IN GERMANY.--Frederick had been elected king; but, on the death of his father, his claims were disregarded. The _Hohenstaufens_ chose _Philip_, brother of Henry VI.: the _Welfs_ appointed _Otto_, the second son of _Henry the Lion_. Innocent claimed the right, not to appoint the emperor, but to decide between the rival claimants. He decided, in 1201, in favor of _Otto IV_. (1198-1214). _Philip's_ party, however, seemed likely to succeed; but, in 1208, he was murdered. _Otto_, having made large promises of submission to the Pope's requirements, was crowned emperor, and universally acknowledged. When he failed to fulfill his pledges, and began to assert the old imperial prerogatives in Italy, he was excommunicated and deposed by Innocent (1210). FREDERICK (II.) MADE KING.--Innocent was now led to take up the cause of young _Frederick_ (1212). The latter won Germany over to his side, and received the German crown at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1215. _Otto_ was restricted to his ancestral territory in Brunswick. CHARACTER OF FREDERICK II. (1214-1250).--_Frederick II._, on account of his extraordinary natural gifts and his accomplishments, was called _the wonder of the world_. He knew several languages, and, in intercourse with the Saracens_ in Sicily, had acquired a familiarity with the sciences. In many of his ideas of government he was in advance of his time. But his reign was largely spent in a contest with the Lombard cities and with the popes. He is styled by an eminent modern historian, "the gay, the brave, the wise, the relentless, and the godless Frederick." He was often charged with skepticism in relation to the doctrines of the Church. The main ground of this imputation seems to have been a temper of mind at variance with the habit of the age,--a very moderate degree of reverence for ecclesiastical authority, and the absence of the usual antipathy to heresy and religious dissent. FIFTH CRUSADE (1228-1229).--Having caused his son _Henry_ to be elected king of Rome, _Frederick_, in 1220, left Germany for fifteen years. It was the policy of the popes to keep the Sicilian crown from being united with the empire, and the emperor from gaining the supremacy in _Lombardy_. Frederick, at his coronation at _Aix_, and afterwards, had engaged to undertake a crusade. But he had postponed it from time to time. Pope _Honorius III_. had patiently borne with this delay. But when Frederick, in 1227, was about to start, and was prevented, as he professed, by the contagious disease in his army, from which he himself was suffering, _Gregory IX_., the next pope, placed him under the ban of the Church. Nevertheless, the emperor, in the following year, embarked on his crusade. His vigor as a soldier, and, still more, his tact in conciliating the Saracens, enabled him to get possession of _Jerusalem_. No bishop would crown an excommunicate, and he had to put the crown on his own head. That he left a mosque unmolested was a fresh ground of reproach. He negotiated an armistice with the sultan, _Kameel_ (El Kámil), who ceded _Nazareth_ and a strip of territory reaching to the coast, together with _Sidon_. Fifteen years later (in 1244) _Jerusalem_ was finally lost by the Christians. CONTEST OF FREDERICK WITH THE POPES.--On his return to Italy, Frederick drove the papal troops out of _Apulia_. In a personal interview with _Gregory IX_. at _San Germane_, a treaty was made between them, the ban was removed, and the treaty of Frederick with the Sultan was sanctioned by the Pope. Frederick now displayed his talent for organization in all parts of his empire. His constitution for the Sicilian kingdom, based on the ruins of the old feudalism, is tinged with the modern political spirit. His court, wherever he sojourned, mingled an almost Oriental luxury and splendor with the attractions of poetry and song. A sore trial was the revolt of his son _Henry_ (1234), whom he conquered, and confined in a prison, where he died in 1242. The efforts of Frederick to enforce the imperial supremacy over the Lombard cities were met with the same stubborn resistance from the _Guelfs_ which his grandfather had encountered. In 1237 he gained a brilliant victory over them at _Cortenuova_. But the hard terms on which Frederick insisted, in connection with other transactions offensive to the Pope, called out another excommunication from _Gregory IX_. (1239). The Genoese fleet, which was conveying ecclesiastics to a council called by the Pope at Rome, was captured by direction of _Frederick_; and the prelates were thrown into prison. Pope _Innocent IV_. (1243-1254) fled to _Lyons_, and there published anew the ban against the emperor, declared him deposed, and summoned the Germans to elect another emperor in his place. The ecclesiastical princes in Germany chose _Henry Raspe_ (1246-1247), landgrave of Thuringia, who was defeated by _Conrad_, Henry's son. The next emperor thus chosen, _William of Holland_ (1247), made no headway in Germany. During this period of civil war, many German cities gained their freedom from episcopal rule, attained to great privileges, and came into an immediate relation to the emperor. A fearful war raged in Italy between the _Guelfs_ and _Ghibellines_, in the midst of which _Frederick_ died, in the fifty-sixth year of his age. Had he been as conscientious and as capable of curbing his passions and appetites as he was highly endowed in other respects, he might have been a model ruler. As it was; although his career was splendid, his private life, as well as his public conduct, was stained with flagrant faults. THE SICILIAN KINGDOM.--The kingdom of the Two Sicilies was bravely defended by _Manfred_, son of Frederick II, in behalf of young _Conradin_, the son of the new emperor, _Conrad IV_. The Pope gave the crown to _Charles of Anjou_, brother of _Louis IX_. of France. _Charles_, after the fall of _Manfred_ at _Beneventum_ (1266), gained the kingdom. _Conradin_ went to Italy, but was defeated and captured in 1268, and was executed at Naples. Such was the tragic end of the last of the _Hohenstaufens_. The unbearable tyranny of the French led to a conspiracy called the _Sicilian Vespers_ (1282); and, at Easter Monday, at vesper time, the rising took place. All the French in Sicily were massacred. _Peter of Aragon_, who had married the daughter of _Manfred_, became king of Sicily. The dominion of Charles of Anjou was restricted to Naples. SPAIN.--The Spaniards had a crusade to carry forward in their own land, which lasted for eight hundred years. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, especially under _Abderrahman III_. (912-961), the Moorish civilization was most brilliant. In _Cordova_, there were six hundred mosques. There were said to be seventeen universities and seventy large libraries in Spain. The caliph's fleets were dominant in the Mediterranean. He was mild in his policy towards Jews and Christians. In the eleventh century the caliphs gave themselves up to luxury, and the control of their forces was in the hands of the viziers. Of these, Almanzor, the general of _Hakem II_ (976-1013), was the most famous. He took the city of _Leon_, and plundered the church of St. James of Compostella, the patron saint of Spain. After this time the caliphate of _Cordova_ broke up into numerous kingdoms. The Christian _Visigoths_ in the north-west had built up the little kingdom of _Oviedo_, which later took the name of _Leon_. The rest of Christian Spain was united under _Sancho the Great_ (970-1035). To one of his sons, _Ferdinand I_, he left _Castile_, to which _Leon_ and the _Asturias_ were united; to another, _Aragon_; and, to a third, _Navarre_ and _Biscay_. It was under _Ferdinand_ that the exploits of the Spanish hero, the _Cid_ (_Rodrigo Diaz_ of Bivar), in conflict with the infidels, began. The complete conquest of the Moors was prevented by the strife of the Christian kingdoms with one another. Under _Alfonso VI_ (1072-1109), they were all once more united. GREAT DEFEAT OF THE MOORS.--The invasion of the _Almoravids_, invited over from Africa by the Mussulman princes (1086), checked the progress of the Christian conquest. These allies of the Arabs built up a kingdom for themselves, reconquered _Valencia_, and taxed to the utmost the power of the Christians to resist their progress. New sects of fanatical Moslems, the _Almohads_, having conquered Morocco, passed over into Spain. The Mohammedans were thus at war among themselves, and were divided into three parties. Military orders were established in Spain; and the kings of _Castile_, _Leon_, and _Navarre_, aided by sixty thousand crusaders from Germany, France, and Italy, defeated _Mohammed_, the chief of the Almohads, with great slaughter, in a decisive battle near Tolosa (1212). The Spanish crusade built up the little kingdom of _Portugal_, and the states of _Castile_ and of _Aragon_. They were destined to play an important part in the history of commerce and discovery. The Spanish character owed some of its marked traits to this prolonged struggle with the Moslems. THE MONGOLIAN INVASIONS.--At the beginning of the thirteenth century, _Genghis Khan_, the leader of Mongolian hordes which roamed over the Asiatic plateau between China and Siberia, conquered China, and overthrew the ruling dynasty. He subdued _Hindustan_ and the empire of the _Chowares_, which had been founded by a _Seljukian_ slave, and spread his power from the Caspian Sea through Persia to India (1218). _Bokhara_ and _Samarcand_ were among the populous cities which were burned with all their treasures by these ruthless invaders. Libraries were converted into stalls for the horses of the brutal conquerors. The sons and successors of _Genghis Khan_ swept over the countries north of the Black Sea, captured _Moscow_ and _Kiev_, burned _Cracow_, and pursued their murderous and devastating path over _Poland_ and _Hungary_, At the battle of _Wahlstatt_ (1241), the Germans under _Henry the Pious_, duke of Liegnitz, were defeated. The victories of the Tartars were frightful massacres. It was a custom of the Mongols to cut off an ear of the slaughtered enemy. It was said that at Liegnitz these trophies filled nine sacks. The Mongol hosts retired from Europe. They attacked the caliphate of _Bagdad_, a city which they took by storm, and plundered for forty days. They destroyed the dynasty of the _Abassids_. They marched into Syria, stormed and sacked _Aleppo_, and captured _Damascus_. For a time the central point of the Tartar conquests was the city or camping-ground of _Karakorum_ in Central Asia. After a few generations their empire was broken in pieces. The "Golden Horde," which they had planted in _Russia_, on the east of the Volga, remained there for two centuries. _Bagdad_ was held by the Mongols until 1400, when it was conquered, and kept for a short time, by _Tamerlane_. The religion of the Tartars was either _Lamaism_--a corrupted form of Buddhistic belief and worship,--or _Mohammedanism_. In China and Mongolia they were _Lamaists_: elsewhere they generally adopted the faith of _Islam_. Their original religion was _Shamaism_, a worship of spirits, akin to fetichism. The later Mongol sovereigns, especially _Kublai Khan_, were ready to promote peaceful intercourse with Europe. It was at this time that _Marco Polo_ resided at their court. SIXTH CRUSADE (1248-1254): SEVENTH CRUSADE (1270).-Two additional Crusades were undertaken under the leadership of that upright and devout king, _Louis IX_. of France. The first (1248-1254) resulted in the taking of _Damietta_ in Egypt (1249); but the next year _Louis_, with his whole army, was captured, and obtained his release after much delay, by the surrender of his conquests, and in return for a large ransom. Not disheartened by this failure, the pious monarch, in 1270, sailed to _Tunis_, where he and most of his army perished from sickness. In 1291 _Acre_, the last town held by the Christians, was taken by the Egyptian _Mamelukes_; and the Crusades came to an end. EFFECTS OF THE CRUSADES.--The Crusades were a spontaneous movement of Christian Europe. It was a great tide, which bore away all classes of people. It lends to the Middle Ages an ideal and heroic character. An overpowering sentiment, submerging calculation and self-interest, swept over society. There was infinite suffering: countless lives were the forfeit. The results, however, were beneficent, 1. It is true that the conquests made in the East were all surrendered. The holy places were given up. Yet the _Turks_ had received a check which was a protection to Europe during the period when its monarchies were forming, and were gaining the force to encounter them anew, and repel their dangerous aggressions. 2. The Feudal System in Europe was smitten with a mortal blow. Smaller fiefs, either by sale or by the death of the holders, were swallowed up in the larger. The anarchical spirit was counteracted. _Political unity_ was promoted. 3. There was a lessening of the social distance between _suzerain_ and _serf_. They fought side by side, and aided one another in common perils. The consequence was an increase of sympathy. 4. There was _an expansion of knowledge_. There was a widening of geographical knowledge. An acquaintance was gained with other peoples and countries. To the more civilized Saracens, the crusaders seemed brutal and barbarous. The crusaders in turn were impressed with the superior advancement and elegance of the Saracens. It was not the lord only who beheld distant lands: the serf was taken from the soil to which he had been tied. He drew stimulus and information from sojourning under other skies. 5. A great impulse was given to trade and commerce. An acquaintance was gained with new products, natural and artificial. New wants were created. 6. The cities advanced in strength and wealth. Important social consequences resulted from their growth. WHY THE CRUSADES TERMINATED.--After the thirteenth century it was impossible to rekindle the crusading enthusiasm. The fire had burned out. It seemed as if the idea had exhausted itself in action. This effect was due, (1) to the absence of novelty in such undertakings; (2) to the long experience of the hardships belonging to them, which tended to dampen the romantic zeal that had formed a part of the motive; (3) to the disappointments following upon the practical failure of so prodigious and costly exertions; (4) to an altered condition of public feeling of a more general character. Antipathy to the infidel, the more exclusive sway of religious sentiment, were giving way to a mingling of secular aims and interests. There were new and wider fields of activity at home. The mood of men's minds was no longer the same. LUXURIES INTRODUCED BY THE CRUSADES.--The effect of the Crusades in bringing in new comforts and luxuries, and in thus altering the style of living, was remarkable. At the very outset, a great deal of money, obtained by the sale or pawning of estates, was spent in the outfit of the hundred thousand nobles, who, at the beginning, took the cross. Costly furs, embroidered cushions, curtains of purple dye, pavilions worked with gold, banners of purple or of cloth-of-gold, showy costumes, and shining armor,--such was the splendor that met the eyes of thousands who had never before beheld such a spectacle. The journey to the East brought under the observation of the crusaders, arts and fashions to which they had been strangers, They saw the gilded domes and marble palaces of _Constantinople_, and the treasures of ancient art which had been gathered within the walls of that ancient capital. _Antioch_, with all its wealth, fell into their hands. Later, the merchants of both religions followed in the wake of the armies, and met one another. The superb fabrics of the East were carried to the West by routes which now became safe and familiar. The precious ores and tissues of _Damascus_, and the beautiful glassware of _Tyre_, were conveyed to _Venice_, and thence to places more distant. Silk stuffs of exquisite beauty were brought from _Mosul_ and _Alexandria_. The elegance of the East, with its rich fabrics, its jewels and pearls, was so enchanting that an enthusiastic crusader termed it "the vestibule of Paradise." It was not the nobles alone in the West who acquired these attractive products of skill and industry. The cities shared in them. Even the lower classes partook of the change in the way of living. LIFE IN THE CASTLE.--Even in the earlier days of feudalism, the seclusion of the castle was not without an influence in promoting domestic intercourse and affection. A new sentiment respecting woman sprang up in the Middle Ages, and was fostered by the honor which the New Testament and the teaching of the Church rendered to saintly women. A spirit of gallantry and devotion to woman, partly natural to the Germanic race, and partly arising from causes like that just named, sprang up in the midst of prevailing ignorance and perpetual strife. In the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries life in the castle is found to be very much improved. In the eleventh century it lacked comfort, to say nothing of luxury. The lights were torches of dry wood: even candles were not in general use. Houses in France, England, and Germany commonly had thatched roofs. They were made of logs covered with a sort of clay or mud. They were built with low and narrow doors, and with small windows which admitted but little light. In the middle of the smoky hall was a large, round fireplace. There was no chimney, but only a funnel, which pierced the ceiling. The seats were benches and stools. The feet of the family and guests were kept warm by hay spread beneath them. In the later period the substitution of dry rushes and straw was thought to be a marvelous gain. Beds of straw were introduced into all the apartments of nobles, and even of kings. To sleep on a straw couch was deemed a regal luxury. One consequence of the Crusades was to introduce carpets and hangings into the dwellings of the great. Improved timepieces took the place of the water-clocks, which were a wonder in the days of Charlemagne. In the twelfth century the castle begins to look less like a dungeon. Within and without, it ceases to wear so exclusively the aspect of a fortress. The furniture has more beauty. In the great hall are the large tables attached to the floor, the sideboards, the cupboards, the stately chair of the lord, the couch with its canopy, the chests for the wearing-apparel, the armor on the walls. In the thirteenth century France was covered with chateaux, which, in the case of princes and nobles of highest rank, had their spacious courts, their stables, their lodgings for the servants. All these were within the precincts of the palace. In the great hall were held the assemblies of vassals, banquets, judicial trials. In the wealthiest mansions, there was a main saloon on the floor above, reached by a spiral stairway, and serving also for the principal bed-chamber. There the stone floor gave place to marble of varied colors. Mosaics and other ornaments were introduced. Sculptures, carvings, and mural paintings decorated the apartments. Glass mirrors, imported by way of Venice, began to supersede the mirrors of polished metal. Larger windows, of painted glass, became common among the rich, in the room of the small pieces of glass, or of alabaster, which had before served to let in a few rays of light. Tallow candles came into vogue. Lamps were not unknown. On great occasions, lanterns and wax candles were used for a festive illumination. Chimneys were in use, and about the vast fire-place the family group could gather. The hospitality of the castle was often bountiful. The chase, the favorite amusement, gave life and animation to the scene, and prepared the inmates for the feast that followed. Minstrels enlivened the social gathering. Troops of mountebanks and buffoons furnished amusement, and were sometimes lavishly rewarded. There were singers and buffoons who were attached permanently to the household. There were others who traveled from place to place, and were even organized into corporations or guilds. The _fool_, or _jester_, to whom a large license was allowed, was long deemed a necessary adjunct of the castle-hall. Carriages were little used; rank was indicated by the accouterments of the war-horse or of the palfrey. From the twelfth century onward, the improvement in the comforts of living was not confined to the nobles and to rich burghers in cities. It was shared by the rural classes, notwithstanding the miseries--such as insecurity, and dangers of famine--that belonged to their condition. POVERTY AND DISEASE.--A French writer on the history of luxury, speaking of France in this period, says, "In the cities, we meet at once luxury, certain beginnings of prosperity, and frightful misery. _Beggary_ exists in a form the most hideous: there is an organization of it with grades, and a sort of hierarchy. In the face of sumptuous costumes, of chateaux better adorned, of the nascent wealth of industry, France included more than two thousand _lepers_, and knew not how to treat maladies born of the most imperfect hygiene and the most sordid filth. Such were the extremes. The course of general progress went forward between them." The condition of the poorest class in England was no better. "The absence of vegetable food for the greater part of the year, the personal dirt of the people, the sleeping at night in the clothes worn in the day, and other causes, made skin-diseases frightfully common. At the outskirts of every town in England, there were crawling about emaciated creatures covered with loathsome sores, living Heaven knows how. They were called by the common name of lepers; and probably the leprosy, strictly so called, was awfully common." Such being the life of the poor in villages, and in the absence of drainage and other modern safeguards of health, in large towns, it is no wonder that in the Middle Ages there were terrible pestilences, and that the average length of life was much less than at present. ORIGIN AND NATURE OF CHIVALRY.--It was in the period of the crusades that the mediaeval institution of chivalry was ennobled by receiving a religious consecration. Chivalry is a comprehensive term, denoting a system of ideas and customs that prevailed in the middle ages. In the western kingdoms of Europe there was gradually formed a distinct class of warriors of superior rank, who fought on horseback, and were recognized as _knights_ by a ceremony of equipment with arms. Among the customs of the ancient Germans, which are noticed by Tacitus, and in which may be discovered the germs of chivalry, are the remarkable deference paid to women, attendance of the aspiring youth on a military superior,--out of which vassalship arose,--and the formal receiving of arms on reaching manhood. At the outset, knighthood was linked to feudal service: the knights were landholders. In the age of Charlemagne, the warriors on horseback--the _caballarii_--were the precursors, both in name and function, of the _chevaliers_ of later times. The word _knight_, meaning a youth or servant, and then a military attendant, came to be a term of equivalent meaning. The necessary connection of knighthood with the possession of fiefs was broken in the thirteenth century, through changes in the circumstances of warfare. Knighthood became independent of feudalism. It was a personal distinction, frequently bestowed as a reward for brave deeds, and often conferred with elaborate ceremonies, partly of a religious character. When the boy of gentle birth passed from under the care of females, he first served as a _page_ or valet at the court of a prince or the castle of a rich noble. Having been thus trained in habits of courtesy and obedience, he was advanced, not earlier than the age of fourteen, to the rank of _squire_, and instructed in horsemanship and in the use of weapons. He followed his master to the tournament and in battle, until finally he was himself dubbed a _knight_, was clothed in armor of steel, and took on him all the obligations and privileges of his order. The introduction of hereditary surnames and of armorial bearings served to distinguish the members of this order. He who was a knight in one place was a knight everywhere. There were different classes of knights. The "bachelor," who bore a forked pennon, was below the "knight-banneret," who alone had the right to carry the square banner. The banneret was required to have a certain estate, and to be able to bring into the field a certain number of lances, _i.e._, inferior knights with their men-at-arms and foot-soldiers. Each knight was accompanied by his squire and personal attendants. Not seldom two knights joined together in a brotherhood in arms, pledging themselves to sustain each other in every peril. THE VIRTUES OF KNIGHTHOOD.--There were characteristic obligations of knighthood. One was _loyalty_, which included a strict fidelity to all pledges, embracing promises made to an enemy. Another knightly virtue was _courtesy_, which was exercised even towards a foe. The spirit of _gallantry_, inspiring devotion to woman, especially the chosen object of love, and protection to womanly weakness, was always a cardinal trait of the chivalric temper. _Courage_, which delighted in daring exploits, and sought fields for the exercise of personal prowess, was an indispensable quality of the knights. The ideal of chivalry was _honor_ rather than benevolence. The influence of chivalry in refining manners was very great; but, especially in its period of decline, it allowed or brought in much cruelty and profligacy. Its distinctive spirit could find room for exercise only amid conflict and bloodshed, which it naturally tended to promote. CEREMONIES OF INVESTITURE.--When the knight was created according to the complete form, he entered into a bath on the evening previous, was instructed by old knights in "the order and feats" of chivalry, was then clad in white and russet, like a hermit, passed the night in the chapel in "orisons and prayers," and at daybreak confessed to the priest, and received the sacrament. He then returned to his chamber. At the appointed hour he was conducted to the hall, where he received the spurs and was girded with the sword by the prince or other lord who was to confer the distinction, by whom he was smitten on the shoulder and charged to be "a good knight." Thence he was escorted to the chapel, where he swore on the altar to defend the church, and his sword was consecrated. JUDICIAL COMBATS.--The disposition to resort to single combats as a judicial test of guilt or innocence was stimulated by the development of chivalry. There were other ordeals long in vogue, by which it was thought that Heaven would interpose miraculously to shield, and thus to vindicate, the innocent, and to expose the criminal. Such were the plunging of the hand into boiling water, the contact of the flesh with red-hot iron or with fire, the lot, the oath taken on holy relics, the reception of the Eucharist, which would choke the perjurer, and send his soul to perdition. The ordeals were regulated and managed by the clergy. Among the German, and also the Celtic tribes, there are traces of the duel between combatants, for purposes of divination, or of determining on which side in a controversy the right lay. The judicial combat in mediaeval Europe became general. Champions, in cases where the rights of women were in debate, and in other instances where the wager of battle between the direct antagonists in a dispute was impracticable, were selected, or volunteered, to try the issue in an armed conflict. Sometimes professional champions, hired for the occasion, were employed. The custom of judicial combats by degrees declined. The municipalities and the spirit of commerce were averse to it. It was opposed by the Emperor Frederic II. and by Louis IX. of France. The influence of the Roman law helped to undermine it; but the opposition of the Church was the most effectual agency in doing away with it. The modern duel, which survived the judicial combat, is a relic of the ancient custom of avenging private injuries, and of proving the courage of the combatants between whom a quarrel had arisen. In the opening of Shakespeare's play of Richard II., in the quarrel of Mowbray and Bolingbroke, the idea of the judicial combat mingles with the motives and feelings characteristic of the duel when stripped of its religious aspect. FRANCE.--DESCENDANTS OF HUGH CAPET HUGH THE GREAT (_d_. 956), _m_. 3, Hedwiga, daughter of Henry I of Germany. | +--HUGH CAPET, 987-996. | +--ROBERT, 996-1031. | +--HENRY I,1031-1060. | +--PHILIP I, 1060-1108, _m_. Bertha, daughter of Florence I, Count of Holland. | +--LOUIS VI, 1108-1137. | +--LOUIS VII, 1137-1180, _m_. 3, Alice, daughter of Theobold II, Count of Champagne. | +--PHILIP II (Augustus), 1180-1223, _m_. 1, Isabella, daughter of Baldwin V, Count of Hainault. | +--LOUIS VIII, 1223-1226, _m_. Blanche, daughter of Alfonso IX of Castile. | +--(St.) Louis IX, 1226-1270, _m_. Margaret, daughter of Raimond Berengar IV, Count of Provence. | +--2, PHILIP III, 1270-1285, | _m_. 1, Isabella, daughter | of James I of Aragon. | | | +--PHILIP IV, 1285-1314, | | _m_. Jeanne, | | heiress of Champagne and Navarre. | | | | | +--LOUIS X, 1314-1316. | | | | | +--PHILIP V, 1316-1322. | | | | | +--CHARLES IV, 1322-1328. | | | +--Charles, Count of Valois (_d_. | 1325), founder of the house of | Valois, _m_. Margaret, daughter | of Charles II of Naples. | | | +--PHILIP VI, succeeded 1328. | +--Robert, Count of Clermont, founder of the house of Bourbon. ENGLAND.--FROM THE CONQUEST TO EDWARD I. WILLIAM I, 1066-1087, _m._ Matilda, daughter of Baldwin V of Flanders | +--WILLIAM II (Rufus), 1087-1100. | | (Malcolm Canmore _m._ St. Margaret) | | | +--Mary _m._ Eustace, Count of Boulogne | | | +--Maud | | | +--Matilda. | _m._ +--HENRY I, 1100-1135 | | | +--MATILDA (_d._ 1167) _m._ | 1, Emperor Henry V; | 2, Geoffrey Plantagenet, | Count of Anjou | | | +--HENRY II, 1154-1189 _m._ | Eleanor of Aquitaine, etc., | wife of Louis VII of France. | | | +--3, RICHARD I, 1189-1199. | | | +--5, JOHN, 1199-1216, _m._ | Isabella of Angouleme | | | +--HENRY III, 1216-1272, | _m._ Eleanor, daughter of | Raymond Berengar IV of | Provence. | | | +--EDWARD I, succeeded 1272. | +--Adela, _m._ Stephen, Count of Blois. | +--STEPHEN, 1135-1154. _m._ Maud, daughter of Malcolm Canmore and St. Margaret. CHAPTER III. ENGLAND AND FRANCE: THE FIRST PERIOD OF THEIR RIVALSHIP (1066-1217). The emperors, the heads of the Holy Roman Empire, were the chief secular rulers in the Middle Ages, and were in theory the sovereigns of Christendom. But in the era of the Crusades, the kingdoms of England and France began to be prominent. In them, moreover, we see beginnings of an order of things not embraced in the mediaeval system. In France, steps are taken towards a compact monarchy. In England, there are laid the foundations of free representative government. CONNECTION OF ENGLAND AND FRANCE.--For a long time the fortunes of England and of France are linked together. The kings of the French, with their capital at _Paris_, had been often obliged to contend with their powerful liegemen, the dukes of Normandy, at _Rouen_. When the Norman duke became king of England, he had an independent dominion added to the great fief on the other side of the channel. It sometimes looked as if England and France would be united under one sovereignty, so close did their relations become. DEATH OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.--It was while _William the Conqueror_, angry with the king of the French, was burning _Mantes_, in the border-land between Normandy and France, that, by the stumbling of his horse in the ashes, he was thrown forward upon the iron pommel of his saddle, and received the hurt which ended, in the next month, in his death (Sept., 1087). On his death-bed he was smitten with remorse for his unjust conquest of England, and for his bloody deeds there. He would not dare to appoint a successor: it belonged, he said, to the Almighty to do that; but he hoped that his son _William_ might succeed him. The burial service at _Caen_, in the church which he had built, was interrupted by _Ascelin_, a knight, who raised his voice to protest against the interment, for the reason that the duke had wrongfully seized from his father the ground on which the church stood. The family of William made a settlement with Ascelin on the spot by paying a sum of money, and the service proceeded. The whole ground was afterwards paid for. William had left money for the rebuilding of the churches which he had burned at _Mantes_. He gave his treasures to the poor and to the churches in his dominions. These circumstances illustrate in a striking way how, in the Middle Ages, ruthless violence was mingled with power of conscience and a sense of righteous obligation. WILLIAM RUFUS.--William the Conqueror was succeeded by his son, _William Rufus_ (1087-1100), who was as able a man as his father. He promised to be liberal, and to lay no unjust taxes; but he proved to be--especially after the death of the good _Lanfranc_, the archbishop of Canterbury--a vicious and irreligious king. The Norman nobles would have preferred to have his brother _Robert_, who was duke of Normandy, for their king; but the English stood by William. He left bishoprics and abbacies vacant that he might seize the revenues. One of his good deeds was the appointment of the holy and learned _Anselm_ to succeed _Lanfranc_; but he quarreled with _Anselm_, who withdrew from the kingdom. Normandy, which he had tried to wrest from his elder brother _Robert_, was mortgaged to him by the latter, in order that he might set out upon the first Crusade. That duchy came thus into the king's possession. William, while hunting in the New Forest, was killed, if not accidentally, then either, as it was charged, by _Walter Tyrrel_, one of the party, or by some one who had been robbed of his home when the New Forest was made. He was found in the agonies of death, pierced by an arrow shot from a cross-bow. HENRY I. OF ENGLAND (1100-1135): LOUIS VI. (the FAT) OF FRANCE (1108-1137): LOUIS VII. (1137-1180).--_Henry_ was the youngest son of the Conqueror. His wife was English, and was a great-granddaughter of Edmund Ironside. Her name was Edith, but she assumed the Norman name of _Matilda_. Her mother Margaret, wife of Malcolm of Scotland, was of the stock of the West Saxon kings. Thus the blood of Alfred, as well as of William the Conqueror, flowed in the veins of the later English kings. In the absence of his older brother _Robert_, who was in Jerusalem, he took the crown, and put forth a _Charter of Liberties_, promising the Church to respect its rights, and giving privileges to his vassals which they in turn were to extend to their own vassals. Robert came back from the Holy Land, and tried to wrest England from his brother. He failed in the attempt. After this, _Henry_ got possession of Normandy by the victory of _Tinchebrai_ in 1106, and kept Robert a prisoner in Cardiff Castle until his death (1135). _Louis the Fat_, king of France, espoused the cause of _William of Clito_, son of Robert, but was beaten in 1119 at _Brenneville_. Peace was made between the two kings; but in 1124 _Henry_ of England combined with his son-in-law, _Henry V._ of Germany, for the invasion of France. _Louis_ called upon his vassals, who gathered in such force that the emperor abandoned the scheme. _Louis_ then undertook to chastise those great vassals who had not responded to his summons. _William_, the duke of Aquitane, seeing the power of the suzerain, came into his camp, and offered him his homage. Louis inflicted a brutal punishment in Flanders, where the count, _Charles the Good_, had been assassinated in 1127, and which had failed to furnish its contingent in 1124. He obliged the Flemish lords to elect as their count, _William Clito_, whose rule, however, they presently cast off. _Louis the Fat_ united his son _Louis_ in marriage with _Eleanor_, the only daughter of _William (X.)_, the duke of Aquitaine, and thus paved the way for a direct control over the South. The duchy of _Aquitaine_ included _Gascony_ and other districts, and the suzerainty over _Auvergne, Périgord,_ etc. _Louis the VII._ (1137-1180) was not able to preserve the dominion, extending from the north to the south of France, which he inherited. He plunged into a dispute with Pope _Innocent II._ in relation to the church of _Bourges_, where he claimed the right to name the archbishop. _St. Bernard_ took the side of the Pope. _Suger_, abbot of St. Denis, an able minister, the counselor of the last king, supported _Louis_. The king attacked the lands of _Theobald_ of Champagne, who sided with the Pope, and in his wrath burned the parish church of _Vitry_, with hundreds of poor people who had taken refuge in it. His own remorse and the excommunication of the Pope moved him to do penance by departing on a Crusade. _Suger_, not liking the risk which the monarchy incurred through the absence of the king, opposed the project. _St. Bernard_ encouraged it. The Crusade failed of any important result; but it helped to infuse a national spirit into the French soldiers, who fought side by side with the army of the emperor, _Conrad III_. On his return, on the alleged ground that _Eleanor_ was too near of kin, he divorced her, and rendered back her dowry (1152). LOUIS VII. OF FRANCE (1137-1180): STEPHEN (1135-1154) AND HENRY II. of ENGLAND (1154-1189).--The king of England, _Henry I._, after the death of his son by shipwreck, declared his daughter _Matilda_ his heir. She was the widow of _Henry V._, the emperor of Germany. In 1127 she married _Geoffrey_, count of Anjou, surnamed _Plantagenet_ on account of his habit of wearing a sprig of broom (_genet_) in his bonnet. Henry left Matilda, whom he called the "Empress," under the charge of his nephew, _Stephen of Blois_, who got himself elected king by the barons or great landowners,--as there was no law regulating the succession of the crown,--and was crowned at Westminster. They had sworn, however, to support Matilda. Her uncle _David_, king of Scots, took up her cause; but the Scots were defeated at the _Battle of the Standard_ in 1138. England was thrown into utter disorder by these circumstances: some of the barons fought on one side, and some on the other. There were thieves along the highways, and the barons in their castles were no better than the thieves. The empress landed in England in 1139, to recover her rights. In the civil war that ensued, _Stephen_ was taken prisoner (1141); but _Matilda_, whose imperious temper made her unpopular in London, was driven out of the city. _Stephen_ was released in exchange for the _Earl of Gloucester_. _Matilda_ was at one time in great peril, but contrived to escape in a winter night from Oxford Castle (1142). In 1153 peace was made, by which Stephen was to retain the kingdom, but was to be succeeded by Matilda's eldest son. CRUELTY OF THE NOBLES.--In the time of Stephen and Matilda, the barons, released from the strong hand of his predecessor, were guilty of atrocities which made the people mourn the loss of Henry. "They built strong castles, and filled them with armed men. From these they rode out as robbers, as a wild beast goes forth from its den. 'They fought among themselves with deadly hatred, they spoiled the fairest lands with fire and rapine; in what had been the most fertile of counties they destroyed almost all the provision of bread.' Whatever money or valuable goods they found, they carried off. They burnt houses and sacked towns, If they suspected any one of concealing his wealth, they carried him off to their castle; and there they tortured him, to make him confess where his money was. 'They hanged up men by their feet, and smoked them with foul smoke. Some were hanged up by their thumbs, others by the head, and burning things were hung on to their feet. They put knotted strings about men's heads, and twisted them till they went to the brain. They put men into prisons where adders and snakes and toads were crawling, and so they tormented them. Some they put into a chest short and narrow, and not deep, and that had sharp stones within, and forced men therein so that they broke all their limbs. In many of the castles were hateful and grim things called _rachenteges_, which two or three men had enough to do to carry. It was thus made: it was fastened to a beam, and had a sharp iron to go about a man's neck and throat, so that he might noways sit or lie or sleep; but he bore all the iron. Many thousands they starved with hunger.' The unhappy sufferers had no one to help them. Stephen and Matilda were too busy with their own quarrel to do justice to their subjects. Poor men cried to Heaven, but they got no answer. 'Men said openly that Christ and his saints were asleep.'" DOMINIONS OF HENRY II.--_Henry_, the son of the empress and of Count _Geoffrey_ of Anjou, was the first of the _Angevin_ kings of England. They had Saxon blood in their veins, but were neither Norman nor Saxon, except in the female line. It was eighty-eight years since the Conquest; and, although the higher classes talked French, almost every one of their number was of mixed descent. The line between Saxon and Norman was becoming effaced. A vassal of the king of France, Henry held so many fiefs that he was stronger than the king himself, and all the other crown vassals taken together. From his father he had _Anjou_; from his mother, _Normandy_ and _Maine_; the county of _Poitou_ and the duchy of _Aquitaine_ he received by _Eleanor_, the divorced wife of Louis VII., whom he married. Later, by marrying one of his sons to the heiress of _Brittany_, that district, the nominal fief of Normandy, came practically under his dominion. He was a strong-willed man, who reduced the barons to subjection, and pulled down the castles which had been built without the king's leave. It might seem probable that the possessor of so great power would absorb the little monarchy of France. But this was prevented by long-continued discord in England,--discord in the royal family, between the king and the clergy, and, later, between the king and the barons. On the Continent, the king of England required a great and united force to break the feudal bonds which grew stronger between the king of France and the French provinces of England. We shall soon see how France enlarged her territory, and how the English dominion on the Continent was greatly reduced. REFORMS OF HENRY.--In order to control the barons, he arranged with them to pay money in lieu of military service. In this way they were weakened. At the same time, he encouraged the small landowners to exercise themselves in arms, which would prepare them for self-defense and to assist the king. Moreover, he sent judges through the land to hear causes. They were to ask a certain number of men in the county as to the merits of the cases coming before them. These men took an oath to tell the truth. They gradually adopted the custom of hearing the evidence of others before giving to the judges their _verdict_,--that is, their declaration of the truth (from _vere dictum_). Out of this custom grew the jury system. BECKET: CONSTITUTIONS OF CLARENDON.--The Conqueror had granted to ecclesiastical courts the privilege of trying cases in which the clergy were concerned. On this privilege the clergy had been disposed to insist ever since the fall of the Roman Empire. Under Stephen the energetic restraint exercised upon them was removed. In the early years of the reign of Henry II., there were great disorders among the Norman clergy, and crimes were of frequent occurrence. These were often punished more lightly than the same offenses when committed by a layman, as church courts could not inflict capital punishment. Henry undertook to bring the clergy under the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts. In this attempt he was resisted by _Thomas à Becket_, who had been his chancelor, and whom he raised to the archbishopric of Canterbury (1162), in the full expectation of having his support. He had been gay and extravagant in his ways, and zealous in behalf of whatever the king wished. But the brilliant chancelor became a strict and austere prelate, the champion of the clergy, with a will as inflexible as that of Henry. The only bishop that voted against him at his election, remarked that "the king had worked a miracle in having that day turned a layman into an archbishop, and a soldier into a saint." In this controversy, the clergy had reason to fear that Henry, if he got the power, would use it to punish and plunder the innocent. At a great council of prelates and barons, the _Constitutions of Clarendon_ were adopted (1164), which went far towards the subjecting of the ecclesiastics, as to their appointment and conduct, to the royal will. _Becket_, with the other prelates, swore to observe these statutes; but he repented of the act, was absolved by the Pope from his oath, and fled to France. Later a reconciliation took place between him and the king. Becket returned to England, but with a temper unaltered. A hasty expression of Henry, uttered in wrath, and indicating a desire to be rid of him, was taken up by four knights, who attacked the archbishop, and slew him, near the great altar in the cathedral at Canterbury (Dec. 29, 1170). The higher nobles welcomed the occasion to revolt. _Henry_ was regarded as the instigator of the bloody deed, and was moved to make important concessions to the Pope, _Alexander III_. His life was darkened by quarrels with his sons. In 1173 the kings of France and Scotland, and many nobles of Normandy and England, joined hands with them. Henry, afflicted with remorse, did penance, allowing himself to be scourged by the monks at the tomb of Becket, or "St. Thomas,"--for he was canonized. The people rallied to him, and the nobles were defeated. The rebellion came to an end. The king of Scotland became more completely the vassal of England. In another rebellion the king's sons rebelled against him: in 1189 _John_, the youngest of them, joined with his brother Richard. Then Henry's heart was broken, and he died. CONQUEST OF IRELAND.--In the first year of Henry's reign, he was authorized by _Pope Hadrian IV._ to invade Ireland. In 1169 _Dermot of Leinster_, a fugitive Irish king, undertook to enlist adventurers for this service. He was aided by _Richard of Clare_, earl of Pembroke, called _Strongbow_, and others. They were successful; and in 1171 _Henry_ crossed over to Ireland, and was acknowledged as sovereign by all the chiefs of the South. A synod brought the Irish Church into subjection to the see of Canterbury. But there was constant warfare, and the North and East of the island were not subdued. The whole country was not conquered until _Elizabeth's_ time, four centuries later. WEAKENING OF GREAT VASSALS IN FRANCE.--The weakening of _Henry's_ power was the salvation of _Louis VII._, who had more the spirit of a monk than of an active and resolute monarch. At his death a new epoch is seen to begin. The dominion of the great vassals declines, and the truly monarchical period commences. It was the change which ended in making the king the sole judge, legislator, and executive of the country. _Louis the Fat, Philip Augustus,_ and _St. Louis (Louis IX.)_ are the early forerunners of _Louis XIV._, under whom the absolute monarchy was made complete. PHILIP AUGUSTUS OF FRANCE (1180-1223): RICHARD THE LIONHEARTED OF ENGLAND (1189-1199).--_Philip Augustus_ was the last king of France to be crowned before his accession. The custom had helped to give stability to the regal system. Now it was no longer needful. Philip was only fifteen years old when he began to reign alone. For forty-three years he labored with shrewdness and perseverance, and with few scruples as to the means employed, to build up the kingly authority. His first act was a violent attack on the _Jews_, whom he despoiled and banished. This was counted an act of piety. He acquired _Vermandois, Valois_, and _Amiens_; refusing to render homage to the Bishop of Amiens, who claimed to be its suzerain. During the life of _Henry II._, Philip had allied himself closely with his son _Richard_ (the Lion-hearted), who succeeded his father. _Richard_ was passionate and quarrelsome, yet generous. He was troubadour as well as king. After his coronation (1189), the two kings made ready for a Crusade together. To raise money, _Richard_ sold earldoms and crown lands, and exclaimed that he would sell London if he could find a buyer. The two kings set out together in 1190. They soon quarreled. _Philip_ came home first, and, while _Richard_ was a prisoner in Austria, did his best to profit by his misfortunes, and to weaken the English reigning house. In the absence of _Richard, John_, his ambitious and unfaithful brother, was made regent by the lords and the London citizens. As nothing was heard of the king, John claimed the crown. Hearing of the release of _Richard, Philip_ wrote to _John_ (1194), "Take care of yourself, for the devil is let loose." _Richard_ made war on _Philip_ in Normandy, but Pope _Innocent III._ obliged the two kings to make a truce for five years (1199). Two months after, Richard was mortally wounded while besieging a castle near _Limoges_, where it was said that a treasure had been found, which he as the suzerain claimed. He had never visited England but twice; and, although he always had the fame of a hero, the country had no real cause to regret his death. JOHN OF ENGLAND (1199-1216).--John (surnamed _Sansterre_, or _Lackland_, a name given to the younger sons, whose fathers had died before they were old enough to hold fiefs) was chosen king. Anjou, Poitou, and Touraine desired to have for their duke young _Arthur_, duke of Brittany, the son of _Geoffrey_, John's elder brother. _Philip Augustus_ took up the cause of Arthur, but deserted him when he had gained for himself what he wished. When Philip wished to reopen the war he took advantage of a complaint from one of John's vassals, Hugh of Lusignan, whose affianced bride John had stolen away. As suzerain Philip summoned John to answer at Paris, and when he did not appear the court declared his fiefs forfeited. It was in this war that Arthur was captured by his uncle and was murdered. This crime served only to strengthen Philip's cause. He seized on _Normandy_, which thenceforward was French, and _Brittany_, which became an immediate fief of the king (1204). He took the other possessions of England in Northern Gaul. There were left to the English the duchy of _Aquitaine_, with _Gascony_ and the _Channel Islands_. The lands south of the Loire John had inherited from his mother. TYRANNY OF JOHN.--John robbed his subjects, high and low, under the name of taxation. Not content with forcing money out of the Jews, one of whom he was said to have coerced by pulling out a tooth every day, he treated rich land-owners with hardly less cruelty. He had not, like _Henry II._, the support of the people, and added to his unpopularity by hiring soldiers from abroad to help him in his oppression. JOHN'S QUARREL WITH THE POPE: MAGNA CHARTA.--As rash as he was tyrannical, John engaged in a quarrel with Pope _Innocent III_. The monks of Canterbury appointed as archbishop, not the king's treasurer, whom he bade them choose, but another. The Pope neither heeded the king nor confirmed their choice, but made them elect a religious and learned Englishman, _Stephen Langton_. _John_, in a rage, drove the monks out of Canterbury, and refused to recognize the election. The Pope excommunicated him, and laid England under an _interdict_; that is, he forbade services in the churches, and sacraments except for infants and the dying; marriages were to take place in the church porch, and the dead were to be buried without prayer and in unconsecrated ground. As _John_ paid no regard to this measure of coercion, _Innocent_ declared him deposed, and charged the king of France to carry the sentence into effect (1213). Resisted at home, and threatened from abroad, _John_ now made an abject submission, laying his crown at the feet of _Pandulph_, the Pope's legate. He made himself the vassal of the Pope, receiving back from him the kingdoms of England and Ireland, which he had delivered to _Innocent_, and engaging that a yearly rent should be paid to Rome by the king of England and his heirs. _Philip_ had to give up his plan of invading England. _John's_ tyranny and licentiousness had become intolerable. _Langton_, a man of large views, and the English Church, united with the barons in extorting from him, in the meadow of _Runnymede_,--an island in the Thames, near Windsor,--the _Magna Charta_, the foundation of English constitutional liberty. It secured two great principles: _first_, that the king could take the money of his subjects only when it was voted to him for public objects; and _secondly_, that he could not punish or imprison them at his will, but could only punish them after conviction, according to law, by their countrymen. The Great Charter is based on the charter of Henry I. It precisely defines and secures old customs, 1. It recognizes the rights of the Church. 2. _It secures person and property from seizure and spoliation without the judgment of peers or the law of the land._ 3. There are regulations for courts of law. 4. Exactions by the lord are limited to the three customary feudal aids. The benefits granted to the vassal are to be extended to the lower tenants. 5, How the Great Council is to be composed, and how convened, is defined. 6. The "liberties and free customs" of London and of other towns are secured. 7. Protection is given against certain oppressive exactions of the Crown. 8. The safety of merchants against exactions in coming into England, and in going out, and in traveling through it, is guaranteed. 9. There is some provision in favor of the villain. WAR WITH FRANCE.--_John_ joined in a great coalition against _Philip Augustus_. He was to attack France in the south-west; while the emperor, _Otto IV._, and the counts of Flanders and Boulogne, with all the princes of the Low Countries, were to make their attack on the north. It was a war of the feudal aristocracy against the king of the French. At the great battle of _Bouvines_ (1214) the French were victorious. The success, in the glory of which the communes shared, added no territory to France; but it awakened a national spirit. _John_ was beaten in _Poitou_, and went home. DEPOSITION OF JOHN.--In England, _John_ found that all his exertions against the _Charter_, even with the aid of Rome, were unavailing. In a spirit of vengeance, he brought in mercenary freebooters, and marched into Scotland, robbing and burning as he went. Every morning he burned the house in which he had lodged for the night. At length the English barons offered the crown to _Louis_, the eldest son of _Philip Augustus_; but _John_ died in 1216, and _Louis_ found himself deserted. He had shown a disposition to give lands to the French. THE ALBIGENSIAN WAR.--The war against the _Albigenses_ began in the reign of _Philip_; but he pleaded that his hands were full, and left it to be waged by the nobles. That sect had its seat in the south of France, and derived its name from the city of _Albi_. It held certain heterodox tenets, and rejected the authority of the priesthood. In 1208, under _Innocent III._, a crusade was preached against _Raymond VI._, count of Toulouse, in whose territory most of them were found. This was first conducted by _Simon de Montfort_, and then by Philip's son, _Louis VIII._, the county of _Toulouse_ being a fief of France. The result of the desolating conflict was, that part of the count's fiefs were in 1229 transferred to the crown, and the country itself in 1270. In that year, at the council of Toulouse, the _Inquisition_, a special ecclesiastical tribunal, was organized to complete the extermination of the _Albigensians_ who had escaped the sword. The advantages resulting from the crushing of the sovereignties of the south were sure to come to the French monarchy. But _Philip_ left it to the nobles and to his successors to win the enticing prize. The first period of rivalry between England and France ends with _John_ and _Philip Augustus_. For one hundred and twenty years, each country pursues its course separately. Monarchy grows stronger in France: constitutional government advances in England. LOUIS IX. OF FRANCE (1226-1270).--In _Louis IX._ (St. Louis) France had a king so noble and just that the monarchy was sanctified in the eyes of the people. At his accession he was but eleven years old, and with his mother, _Blanche_ of Castile, had to encounter for sixteen years a combination of great barons determined to uphold feudalism. Most of them staid away from his coronation. When the young king and his mother approached _Paris_, they found the way barred; but it was opened by the devoted burghers, who came forth with arms in their hands to bring them in. The magistrates of the communes swore to defend the king and his friends (1228). They were supported by the Papacy. In 1231 the war ended in a way favorable to royalty. The treaty of 1229 with _Raymond VII._, count of _Toulouse_, led to the gradual absorption of the South. _Theobald_ of _Champagne_ became king of _Navarre_, and sold to the crown _Chartres_ and other valuable fiefs. In the earlier period of his reign Louis was guided by his wise, even if imperious, mother, who held the regency. ENGLAND AND FRANCE.--In 1243 _Louis_ defeated _Henry III._ of England, who had come over to help the count of _La Marche_ and other rebellious nobles. In 1245 _Charles of Anjou_, the king's brother, married _Beatrice_, through whom _Provence_ passed to the house of Anjou. The king's long absence (1248-1254), during the sixth Crusade, had no other result but to show to all that he combined in himself the qualities of a hero and of a saint. After his return, his government was wise and just, and marked by sympathy with his people. In 1259 he made a treaty with _Henry III._, yielding to him the _Limousin, Périgord_, and parts of _Saintonge_, for which Henry relinquished all claims on the rest of France. _Louis_ fostered learning. The University of Paris flourished under his care. In his reign _Robert of Sorbon_ (1252) founded _the Sorbonne_, the famous college for ecclesiastics which bears his name. CIVIL POLICY OF LOUIS.--In his civil policy _Louis_ availed himself of the Roman law to undermine feudal privileges. The legists enlarged the number of cases reserved for the king himself to adjudicate. He established new courts of justice, higher than the feudal courts, and the right of final appeal to himself. He made the king's "Parliament" a great judicial body. He abolished in his domains the judicial combat, or _duel_,--the old German method of deciding between the accused and the accuser. He liberated many serfs. But, mild as he was, he had no mercy for Jews and heretics. In his intercourse with other nations, he blended firmness and courage with a fair and unselfish spirit. He refused to comply with the request of the Pope to take up arms against the emperor, _Frederic II._; but he threatened to make war upon him if he did not release the prelates whom he had captured on their way to Rome. The "Pragmatic Sanction" of St. Louis is of doubtful genuineness. It is an assertion of the liberties of the Gallican Church. With loyalty to the Holy See, and an exalted piety, Louis defended the rights of all, and did not allow the clergy to attain to an unjust control. _Voltaire_ said of him, "It is not given to man to carry virtue to a higher point." He stands in the scale of merit on a level with _Alfred_ of England. PARLIAMENTS IN FRANCE.--The word _parliament_ in French history has a very different meaning from that which it bears when applied to the English institution of the same name. There were thirteen parliaments in France, each having a jurisdiction of its own. They were established at different times. Of these the Parliament of Paris was the oldest and by far the most important. The king and other suzerains administered justice, each in his own domain. The Parliament of Paris was originally a portion of the king's council that was set apart to hear causes among the fiefs. It considered all appeals and judicial questions. But in the reign of _Louis IX._, commissioners, or _baillis_, of the king, held provincial courts of appeal in his name. The great suzerains established, each in his own fief, like tribunals, but of more restricted authority. Louis IX. made it optional with the vassal to be tried by his immediate suzerain, or in the king's courts, which were subordinate to his council. As time went on, the authority of the royal tribunals increased, as that of the feudal courts grew weaker. In the Parliament of Paris, a corps of legists who understood the Roman law were admitted with the lords, knights, and prelates. More and more these "counsellors" were left to themselves. Later there was a division into _Chambers_, of which the _Grand Chamber_ for the final hearing and decision of appeals was of principal importance. _Philip the Fair_ (1303) gave a more complete organization to Parliament. He provided that it should hold two annual sittings at Paris. Thus there grew up a judicial aristocracy. After 1368 the members were appointed for life. At length, under _Henry IV._, the seats in Parliament became hereditary. The great magistrates thus constituted wore robes of ermine, or of scarlet adorned with velvet. _The Palace of Justice_ (_Palais de Justice_), on an island in the Seine, was given to Parliament for its sessions by _Charles V_. In its hall scenes of tragic interest, including, in modern times, the condemnation of _Marie Antoinette_ and of _Robespierre_, have taken place. The crown was represented by a great officer, a public prosecutor or attorney-general (_procureur général_). He and his assistants were termed the "king's people" (_gens du roi_). They had the privilege of speaking with their hats on. It was an ancient custom to enroll the royal ordinances in the parliamentary records. Gradually it came to be considered that no statute or decree had the force of law unless it was entered on the registers of Parliament. Great conflicts occurred with the kings when Parliament refused "to register" their edicts or treaties. Then the king would hold "a bed of justice,"--so called from the cushions of the seat where he sat in the hall of Parliament, whither he came in person to command them to register the obnoxious enactment. This royal intervention could not be resisted: commonly the enrollment would be made, but sometimes under a protest. Each of the local parliaments claimed to be supreme in its own province: they were held to constitute together one institution, and all the judges were on a level. Attempts at political interference by Parliaments, the kings resisted. At the French Revolution in 1790, the Parliaments were finally abolished. HENRY III. (1216-1272).--John's eldest son, _Henry_, when he was crowned by the royalists, was only nine years old. For a short time he had a wise guardian in _William, Earl of Pembroke_. In two battles, one on the land and one on the sea, _Louis VIII._ (1223-1226), son of _Philip Augustus_ of France, was defeated. He made peace, and returned to France. Henry married _Eleanor_, the daughter of _Raymond_, count of _Provence_,--a beautiful and accomplished woman, but she was unpopular in England. The king, as well as his wife, lavished offices, honors, and lands upon foreigners. He was a weak prince, and unwisely accepted for his second son, _Edmund_, the crown of the _Two Sicilies_, which could be won only at the expense of England. This measure induced the barons to compel Henry to a measure equivalent to the placing of authority in the hands of a council. This brought on a war between the king and the barons. The latter were led by _Simon de Montfort_ (the second of the name), who had inherited the earldom of Leicester through his mother. Through him PARLIAMENT assumed the form which it has since retained. The greater barons, the lords or peers, with the bishops and principal abbots, came together in person, and grew into the House of Lords. The freeholders of each county had sent some of the knights to represent them. The attendance of these knights now began to be regular; but besides the two knights from each county, who were like the county members of our own time, _Simon_ caused each _city_ and _borough_ to send two of their citizens, or _burgesses_. Thus the _House of Commons_ arose. _Simon_ defeated _Henry_ at _Lewes_ (1264): but the barons flocked to the standard of Prince _Edward_, who escaped from custody; and Simon was defeated and slain at the battle of _Evesham_ in 1265. _Henry_ was restored to power. He died in 1272, and was buried in _Westminster Abbey_, which he had begun to rebuild. Under Henry, the _Great Charter_, with some alterations, was three times confirmed. A _Charter of the Forest_ was added, providing that no man should lose life or limb for taking the king's game. Cruel laws for the protection of game in the forests or uncultivated lands had been a standing grievance from the days of the Norman Conquest. The confirming of the _Great Charter_ in 1225 was made the condition of a grant of money from the National Council to the king. When the bishops, in 1236, desired to have the laws of inheritance conformed to the rules of the Church, the barons made the laconic answer, "We will not change the laws of England" (_Nolumus leges Anglice mutare_). CHAPTER IV. RISE OF THE BURGHER CLASS: SOCIETY IN THE ERA OF THE CRUSADES. RISE OF THE CITIES.--Under feudalism, only two classes present themselves to view,--the nobility and the clergy on the one hand, and the serfs on the other. This was the character of society in the ninth century. In the tenth century we see the beginnings of an intermediate class, the germ of "the third estate." This change appears in the cities, where the _burghers_ begin to increase in intelligence, and to manifest a spirit of independence. From this time, for several centuries, their power and privileges continued to grow. GROWTH OF THE CITIES.--The same need of defense that led to the building of towers and castles in the country drove men within the walls of towns. Industry and trade developed intelligence, and produced wealth. But _burghers_ under the feudal rule were obliged to pay heavy tolls and taxes. For example, for protection on a journey through any patch of territory, they were required to make a payment. Besides the regular exactions, they were exposed to most vexatious depredations of a lawless kind. As they advanced in thrift and wealth, communities that were made up largely of artisans and tradesmen armed themselves for their own defense. From self-defense they proceeded farther, and extorted exemptions and privileges from the _suzerain_, the effect of which was to give them a high though limited degree of self-government. ORIGIN OF MUNICIPAL FREEDOM.--It has been supposed that municipal government in the Middle Ages was a revival of old Roman rights and customs, and thus an heirloom from antiquity. The cities--those on the Rhine and in Gaul, for example--were of Roman origin. But the view of scholars at present is, that municipal liberty, such as existed in the Middle Ages, was a native product of the Germanic peoples. The cities were incorporated into the feudal system. They were subject to a lay lord or to a bishop. In _Italy_, however, they struggled after a more complete republican system. CITIES AND SUZERAINS.--In the conflicts which were waged by the cities, they were sometimes helped by the suzerain against the king, and sometimes by the king against the nearer suzerain. In _England_ the cities were apt to ally themselves with the nobility against the king: in _Germany_ and _France_ the reverse was the fact. But in _Germany_ the cities which came into an immediate relation to the sovereign were less closely dependent on him than were the cities in France on the French king. TWO CLASSES OF CITIES.--Not only did the cities wrest from the lords a large measure of freedom: it was often freely conceded to them. Nobles, in order to bring together artisans, and to build up a community in their own neighborhood, granted extraordinary privileges. _Charters_ were given to cities by the king. Communities thus formed differed from the other class of cities in not having the same privilege of administering justice within their limits. GERMAN CITIES.--The cities in Germany increased in number on the fall of the Hohenstaufen family. They made the inclosure of their walls a place of refuge, as the nobles did the vicinity of their castles. They eventually gained admittance to the _Diets_ of the empire. They formed _leagues_ among themselves, which, however, did not become political bodies, any more than the Italian leagues. THE ROMAN LAW.--The revised study of the Roman law brought in a code at variance with feudal principles. The middle class, that was growing up in the great commercial cities, availed themselves, as far as they could, of its principles in regard to the inheritance of property. The _legists_ helped in a thousand ways to emancipate them from the yoke of feudal traditions. MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT.--The cities themselves often had vassals, and became suzerains. Government rested in the hands of the magistrates. They were chosen by the general assembly of the inhabitants, who were called together by the tolling of the bell. The magistrates governed without much restraint until another election, unless there were popular outbreaks, "which were at this time," as Guizot remarks, "the great guarantee for good government." Where the courage and spirit of burghers were displayed was in the maintenance of their own privileges, or purely in self-defense. In all other relations they showed the utmost humility; and in the twelfth century, when their emancipation is commonly dated, they did not pretend to interfere in the government of the country. TRAVELERS AND TRADE.--The _East_, especially _India_, was conceived of as a region of boundless riches; but commerce with the East was hindered by a thousand difficulties and dangers. Curiosity led travelers to penetrate into the countries of Asia. Among them the _Polo_ family of Venice, of whom _Marco_ was the most famous, were specially distinguished. Marco Polo lived in _China_, with his father and his uncle, twenty-six years. After his return, and during his captivity at _Genoa_, he wrote the celebrated accounts of his travels. He died about 1324. _Sir John Mandeville_ also wrote of his travels, but most of his descriptions were taken from the work of _Friar Odoric_, of Pordenone, who had visited the Far East. Merchants did not venture so far as did bold explorers of a scientific turn. Commerce in the Middle Ages was mainly in two districts,--the borders of the North Sea and of the Baltic, and the countries upon the Mediterranean. Trade in the cities on the African coast, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, was flourishing; and the Arabs of Spain were industrious and rich. _Arles, Marseilles, Nice, Genoa, Florence, Amalfi, Venice_, vied with one another in traffic with the East. Intermediate between Venice and Genoa, and the north of Europe, were flourishing marts, among which _Strasburg_ and other cities on the Rhine--_Augsburg, Ulm, Ratisbon, Vienna_, and _Nuremberg_--were among the most prominent. Through these cities flowed the currents of trade from the North to the South, and from the South to the North. THE HANSEATIC LEAGUE.--To protect themselves against the feudal lords and against pirates, the cities of Northern Germany formed (about 1241) the _Hanseatic League_, which, at the height of its power, included eighty-five cities, besides many other cities more or less closely affiliated with it. This league was dominant, as regards trade and commerce, in the north of Europe, and united under it the cities on the Baltic and the Rhine, as well as the large cities of Flanders. Its merchants had control of the fisheries, the mines, the agriculture, and manufactures of Germany. _Lübeck, Cologne, Brunswick_, and _Dantzic_ were its principal places. _Lübeck_ was its chief center. In all the principal towns on the highways of commerce, the flag of the _Hansa_ floated over its counting-houses. Wherever the influence of the league reached, its regulations were in force. It almost succeeded in monopolizing the trade of Europe north of Italy. FLANDERS: ENGLAND: FRANCE.--The numerous cities of Flanders--of which _Ghent, Ypres_, and _Bruges_ were best known--became hives of industry and of thrift. _Ghent_, at the end of the thirteenth century, surpassed _Paris_ in riches and power. In the latter part of the fourteenth century, the number of its fighting men was estimated at eighty thousand. The development of _Holland_ was more slow. _Amsterdam_ was constituted a town in the middle of the thirteenth century. _England_ began to exchange products with _Spain_. It sent its sheep, and brought back the horses of the Arabians. The cities of France--_Rouen, Orleans, Rheims, Lyons, Marseilles_, etc.--were alive with manufactures and trade. In the twelfth century the yearly fairs at _Troyes, St. Denis_, and _Beaucaire_ were famous all over Europe. NEW INDUSTRIES.--It has been already stated that the crusaders brought back to Europe the knowledge as well as the products of various branches of industry. Such were the cloths of Damascus, the glass of Tyre, the use of windmills, of linen, and of silk, the plum-trees of Damascus, the sugar-cane, the mulberry-tree. Cotton stuffs came into use at this time. Paper made from cotton was used by the Saracens in Spain in the eighth century. Paper was made from linen at a somewhat later date. In France and Germany it was first manufactured early in the fourteenth century. THE JEWS.--The Jews in the Middle Ages were often treated with extreme harshness. An outburst of the crusading spirit was frequently attended with cruel assaults upon them. As Christians would not take interest, money-lending was a business mainly left to the Hebrews. By them, bills of exchange were first employed. OBSTACLES TO TRADE.--The great obstacle to commerce was the insecurity of travel. Whenever a shipwreck took place, whatever was cast upon the shore was seized by the neighboring lord. A noble at _Leon_, in Brittany, pointing out a rock on which many vessels had been wrecked, said, "I have a rock there more precious than the diamonds on the crown of a king." It was long before property on the sea was respected, even in the same degree as property on the land. Not even at the present day has this point been reached. The infinite diversity of coins was another embarrassment to trade. In every fief, one had to exchange his money, always at a loss. _Louis IX._ ordained that the money of eighty lords, who had the right to coin, should be current only in their own territories, while the coinage of the king should be received everywhere. GUILDS.--A very important feature of mediæval society was the _guilds_. Societies more or less resembling these existed among the _Romans_, and were called _collegia_,--some being for good fellowship or for religious rites, and others being trade-corporations. There were, also, similar fraternities among the _Greeks_ in the second and third centuries B.C. In the Middle Ages, there were two general classes of guilds: _First_, there were the _peace-guilds_, for mutual protection against thieves, etc., and for mutual aid in sickness, old age, or impoverishment from other causes. They were numerous in England, and spread over the Continent. _Secondly_, there were the _trade-guilds_, which embraced the _guilds-merchant_, and the _craft-guilds_. The latter were associations of workmen, for maintaining the customs of their craft, each with a _master_, or _alderman_, and other officers. They had their provisions for mutual help for themselves and for their widows and orphans, and they had their religious observances. Each had its patron saint, its festivals, its treasury. They kept in their hands the monopoly of the branch of industry which belonged to them. They had their rules in respect to apprenticeship, etc. Almost all professions and occupations were fenced in by guilds. MONASTICISM.--Society in the Middle Ages presented striking and picturesque contrasts. This was nowhere more apparent than in the sphere of religion. Along with the passion for war and the consequent reign of violence, there was a parallel self-consecration to a life of peace and devotion. With the strongest relish for pageantry and for a brilliant ceremonial in social life and in worship, there was associated a yearning for an ascetic course under the monastic vows. As existing orders grew rich, and gave up the rigid discipline of earlier days, new orders were formed by men of deeper religious earnestness. In the eleventh century, there arose, among other orders, the _Carthusian_ and _Cistercian;_ in the twelfth century, the _Premonstrants_ and the _Carmelites_, and the order of _Trinitarians_ for the liberation of Christian captives taken by the Moslems. The older orders, especially that of the _Benedictines_ in its different branches, became very wealthy and powerful. The _Cistercian_ Order, under its second founder, _St. Bernard_ (who died in 1153), spread with wonderful rapidity. THE MENDICANT ORDERS.--In the thirteenth century, when the papal authority was at its height, the mendicant orders arose. The order of _St. Francis_ was fully established in 1223, and the order of _St. Dominic_ in 1216. They combined with monastic vows the utmost activity in preaching and in other clerical work. These orders attracted young men of talents and of a devout spirit in large numbers. The mendicant friars were frequently in conflict with the secular clergy,--the ordinary priesthood,--and with the other orders. But they gained a vast influence, and were devotedly loyal to the popes. It must not be supposed that the monastic orders generally were made up of the weak or the disappointed who sought in cloisters a quiet asylum. Disgust with the world, from whatever cause, led many to become members of them; but they were largely composed of vigorous minds, which, of their own free choice, took on them the monastic vows. THE RISE OF THE UNIVERSITIES.--The Crusades were accompanied by a signal revival of intellectual activity. One of the most important events of the thirteenth century was the rise of the universities. The schools connected with the abbeys and the cathedrals in France began to improve in the eleventh century, partly from an impulse caught by individuals from the Arabic schools in Spain. After the scholastic theology was introduced, teachers in this branch began to give instruction near those schools in Paris. Numerous pupils gathered around noted lecturers. An organization followed which was called a _university_,--a sort of _guild_,--made up of four faculties,--theology, canon law, medicine, and the arts. The arts included the three studies (_trivium_) of grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy, with four additional branches (the _quadrivium_),--arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy. _Paris_ became the mother of many other universities. Next to Paris, _Oxford_ was famous as a seat of education. Of all the universities, _Bologna_ in Italy was most renowned as a school for the study of the civil law. SCHOLASTIC THEOLOGY.--The scholastic theology dates from the middle of the eleventh century. It was the work of numerous teachers, many of them of unsurpassed acuteness, who, at a time when learning and scholarship were at a low ebb, made it their aim to systemize, elucidate, and prove on philosophical grounds, the doctrines of the Church. _Aristotle_ was the author whose philosophical writings were most authoritative with the schoolmen. In theology, _Augustine_ was the most revered master. The main question in philosophy which the schoolmen debated was that of _Nominalism_ and _Realism_. The question was, whether a general term, as _man_, stands for a real being designated by it (as _man_, in the example given, for _humanity_), or is simply the _name_ of divers distinct individuals. THE LEADING SCHOOLMEN.--In the eleventh century _Anselm_ of Canterbury was a noble example of the scholastic spirit. In the thirteenth century _Abelard_ was a bold and brilliant teacher, but with less depth and discretion. He, like other eminent schoolmen, attracted multitudes of pupils. The thirteenth century was the golden age of scholasticism. Then flourished _Albert_ the Great, _Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventura_, and others very influential in their day. There were two schools of opinion,--that of the _Thomists_, the adherents of _Aquinas_, the great theologian of the _Dominican_ order; and that of the _Scotists_, the adherents of _Duns Scotus_, a great light of the _Franciscans_. They differed on various theological points not involved in the common faith. The discussions of the schoolmen were often carried into distinctions bewildering from their subtlety. There were individuals who were more disposed to the _inductive_ method of investigation, and who gave attention to _natural_ as well as metaphysical science. Perhaps the most eminent of these is _Roger Bacon_. He was an Englishman, was born in 1219, and died about 1294. He was imprisoned for a time on account of the jealousy with which studies in natural science and new discoveries in that branch were regarded by reason of their imagined conflict with religion. _Astrology_ was cultivated by the Moors in Spain in connection with astronomy. It spread among the Christian nations. _Alchemy_, the search for the transmutation of metals, had its curious votaries. But such pursuits were popularly identified with diabolic agency. THE VERNACULAR LITERATURES: THE TROUBADOURS.--Intellectual activity was for a long time exclusively confined to theology. The earliest literature of a secular cast in France belongs to the tenth and eleventh centuries, and to the dialect of _Provence_. The study of this language, and the poetry composed in it, became the recreation of knights and noble ladies. Thousands of poets, who were called _Troubadours_ (from _trobar_, to find or invent), appeared almost simultaneously, and became well known in _Spain_ and in _Italy_ as well as in _France_. At the same time the period of chivalry began. The theme of their tender and passionate poems was love. They indulged in a license which was not offensive, owing to the laxity of manners and morals in Southern France at that day, but would be intolerable in a different state of society. Kings, as well as barons and knights, adopted the Provençal language, and figured as troubadours. In connection with jousts and tournaments, there would be a contest for poetical honors. The "Court of Love," made up of gentle ladies, with the lady of the castle at their head, gave the verdict. Besides the songs of love, another class of Provençal poems treated of war or politics, or were of a satirical cast. From the _Moors_ of Spain, _rhyme_, which belonged to Arabian poetry, was introduced, and spread thence over Europe. After the thirteenth century the troubadours were heard of no more, and the Provençal tongue became a mere dialect. THE NORMAN WRITERS.--The first writers and poets in the French language proper appeared in Normandy. They called themselves _Trouvères_. They were the troubadours of the North. They composed romances of chivalry, and _Fabliaux_, or amusing tales. They sang in a more warlike and virile strain than the poets of the South. Their first romances were written late in the twelfth century. About that time _Villehardouin_ wrote in French a history of the conquest of Constantinople. From the poem entitled "Alexander," the name of Alexandrine verse came to be applied to the measure in which it was written. A favorite theme of the romances of chivalry was the mythical exploits of _Arthur_, the last Celtic king of Britain, and of the knights of the _Round Table_. Another class of romances of chivalry related to the court of _Charlemagne_. The _Fabliaux_ in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were largely composed of tales of ludicrous adventures. GERMAN, ENGLISH, AND SPANISH WRITERS.--In _Germany_, in the age of the Hohenstaufens, the poets called _Minnesingers_ abounded. They were conspicuous at the splendid tournaments and festivals. In the thirteenth century numerous lays of love, satirical fables, and metrical romances were composed or translated. Of the _Round Table_ legends, that of the _San Graal_ (the holy vessel) was the most popular. It treated of the search for the precious blood of Christ, which was said to have been brought in a cup or charger into Northern Europe by _Joseph of Arimathea_. During this period the old ballads were thrown into an epic form; among them, the _Nibelungenlied_, the Iliad of Germany. The religious faith and loyalty of the _Spanish_ character, the fruit of their long contest with the Moors, are reflected in _the poem of the Cid_, which was composed about the year 1200. It is one of the oldest epics in the Romance languages. In _England_ during this period, we have the chronicles kept in the monasteries. Among their authors are _William of Malmesbury, Geoffrey of Monmouth_, and _Matthew Paris_, a Benedictine monk of St. Albans. DANTE.--Dante, the chief poet of Italy, and the father of its vernacular literature, was born in _Florence_ in 1265. _The Divine Comedy_ is universally regarded as one of the greatest products of poetical genius. The family of _Alighieri_, to which _Dante_ belonged, was noble, but not of the highest rank. He was placed under the best masters, and became not only an accomplished student of Virgil and other Latin poets, but also an adept in theology and in various other branches of knowledge. His training was the best that the time afforded. His family belonged to the anti-imperial party of _Guelfs_. The spirit of faction raged at _Florence_. _Dante_ was attached to the party of "Whites" (_Bianchi_), and, having held the high office of _prior_ in Florence, was banished, with many others, when the "Blacks" (_Neri_) got the upper hand (1302). Until his death, nineteen years later, he wandered from place to place in Italy as an exile. Circumstances, especially the distracted condition of the country, led him to ally himself with the _Ghibellines_, and to favor the imperial cause. All that he saw and suffered until he breathed his last, away from his native city, at _Ravenna_, combined to stir within him the thoughts and passions which find expression in his verse. No poet before _Dante_ ever equaled him in depth of thought and feeling. His principal work is divided into _three_ parts. It is an allegorical vision of hell, purgatory, and heaven. Through the first two of these regions, the poet is conducted by _Virgil_. In the third, _Beatrice_ is his guide. When he was a boy of nine years of age, he had met, at a May-day festival, _Beatrice_, who was of the same age; and thenceforward he cherished towards her a pure and romantic affection. Before his twenty-fifth year she died; but, after her death, his thoughts dwelt upon her with a refined but not less passionate regard. She is his imaginary guide through the abodes of the blest. His _Young Life_ (_Vita Nuova_) gives the history of his love. The "_Divine Comedy_"--so called because the author would modestly place it below the rank of tragedy,--besides the lofty genius which it exhibits, besides the matchless force and beauty of its diction, sums up, so to speak, what is best and most characteristic in the whole intellectual and religious life of the Middle Ages. _Thomas Aquinas_ was _Dante's_ authority in theology· The scholastic system taught by the Church is brought to view in his pictures of the supernatural world, and in the comments connected with them. PAINTING.--After the Lombard conquest of Italy, art branched off into two schools. The one was the Byzantine, and the other the Late Roman. In the Byzantine paintings, the human figures are stiff, and conventional forms prevail. The Byzantine school conceived of _Jesus_ as without beauty of person,--literally "without form or comeliness." The Romans had a directly opposite conception. Byzantine taste had a strong influence in Italy, especially at _Venice_. This is seen in the mosaics of St. Mark's Cathedral. The first painter to break loose from Byzantine influence, and to introduce a more free style which flourished under the patronage of the Church, was _Cimabue_ (1240-1302), who is generally considered the founder of modern Italian painting. The first steps were now taken towards a direct observation and imitation of nature. The artist is no longer a slavish copyist of others. "_Cimabue_" says _M. Taine_, "already belongs to the new order of things; for he invents and expresses." But _Cimabue_ was far outdone by _Giotto_ (1276-1337), who cast off wholly the Byzantine fetters, studied nature earnestly, and abjured that which is false and artificial. Notwithstanding his technical defects, his force, and "his feeling for grace of action and harmony of color," were such as to make him, even more than _Cimabue_, "the founder of the true ideal style of Christian art, and the restorer of portraiture." "His, above all, was a varied, fertile, facile, and richly creative nature." The contemporary of _Dante_, his portrait of the poet has been discovered in recent times on a wall in the Podesta at Florence. "He stands at the head of the school of allegorical painting, as the latter of that of poetry." The most famous pupil of _Giotto_ was _Taddeo Gaddi_ (about 1300-1367). SCULPTURE.--In the thirteenth century, the era of the revival of art in Italy, a new school of sculpture arose under the auspices especially of two artists, _Niccolo of Pisa_ and his son _Giovanni_. They brought to their art the same spirit which belonged to _Giotto_ in painting and to _Dante_ in poetry. The same courage that moved the great poet to write in his own vernacular tongue, instead of in Latin, emboldened the artists to look away from the received standards, and to follow nature. In the same period a new and improved style of sculpture appears in other countries, especially in the Gothic cathedrals of Germany and France. ARCHITECTURE.--The earliest Christian churches were copies of the Roman basilica,--a civil building oblong in shape, sometimes with and sometimes without rows of columns dividing the nave from the aisles: at one end, there was usually a semicircular _apse_. Most of the churches of the eleventh and twelfth centuries were built after this style. Then changes were introduced, which in some measure paved the way for the _Gothic_, the peculiar type of mediæval architecture. The essential characteristic of this style is the pointed arch. This may have been introduced by the returning crusaders from buildings which they had observed in the East. Its use and development in the churches and other edifices of Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were without previous example. The Gothic style was carried to its perfection in France, and spread over England and Germany. The cathedrals erected in this form are still the noblest and most attractive buildings to be seen in the old European towns. The cathedral in _Rheimes_ was commenced in 1211: the choir was dedicated in 1241, and the edifice was completed in 1430. The cathedral of _Amiens_ was begun in 1220; that of _Chartres_ was begun about 1020, and was dedicated in 1260; that of _Salisbury_ was begun in 1220; that of _Cologne_, in 1248; the cathedral of _Strasburg_ was only half finished in 1318, when the architect, _Erwin of Steinbach_, died; that of Notre Dame in _Paris_ was begun in 1163; that of _Toledo_, in 1258. These noble buildings were built gradually: centuries passed before the completion of them. Several of them to this day remain unfinished. FRANCE.--THE HOUSE OF VALOIS. PHILIP VI, 1328-1350, _m_. Jeanne, daughter of Robert II, Duke of Burgundy. | +--JOHN, 1350-1364, _m_. Bona, daughter of John, King of Bohemia. | +--CHARLES V, 1364-1380, _m_. Jeanne, daughter of Peter I, Duke of Bourbon. | +--CHARLES VI, 1380-1422, _m_. | Isabella, daughter of Stephen, Duke of Bavaria. | | | +--CHARLES VII, 1422-1461, | _m_. Mary, daughter | of Louis II of Anjou. | | | +--LOUIS XI, 1461-1483, | _m_. (2), Charlotte, | daughter of Louis, | Duke of Savoy. | | | +--3, CHARLES VIII, 1483-1498, | _m_. Anne of Bretagne. | +--Louis, Duke of Orleans (_d_. 1407) _m_. Valentina, daughter of Gian Galeazzi, Duke of Milan. | +--Charles, Duke of Orleans (_d_. 1467), | _m_. Mary of Cleves. | | | +--2, Anne of Bretagne, | _m_. LOUIS XII, 1498-1515. | | | +--Claude, _m_. FRANCIS I, 1515-1547. | +--John, Count of Angoulême (_d_. 1467). | +--Charles, count (_d_. 1496), _m_. Louisa, daughter of Philip II, Duke of Savoy. | +--FRANCIS I, 1515-1547. | | | +--HENRY II. 1547-1559, _m._. | Catherine de' Medici, _d._. 1589. | | | +--FRANCIS II, 1559-1560, _m_. | | Mary, Queen of Scots. | | | +--CHARLES IX, 1560-1574, | | _m_. Elizabeth, daughter of | | Emperor Maximilian II. | | | +--HENRY III. 1574-1589, _m_. | | Louis, daughter of Nicholas, | | Duke of Mercoeur. | | | +--Margaret, | _m_. | +--HENRY IV, succeeded 1589. | | | +--Jeanne, _m_. Anthony of Bourbon. | | +--MARGARET, _m._ (2), HENRY II OF NAVARRE. ENGLAND.--DESCENDANTS OF EDWARD I EDWARD I, 1272-1307, _m._. 1, Eleanor, daughter of Ferdinand III of Castile; | | +--4, EDWARD II, 1307-1327, _m._. Isabel, daughter of Philip IV of France. | +--EDWARD III, 1327-1377, _m._ Philippa, daughter of William III of Hainault. | +--Edward, the Black Prince, | _m._ Joan of Kent. | | | +--RICHARD II, 1377-1399, _m._ | Anne, daughter of Emperor Charles IV. | +--Lionel, Duke of Clarence. | | | +--Philippa, _m._ Edmund Mortimer. | | | +--Roger Mortimer. | | | +--Edmund Mortimer. | | | +--Anne Mortimer, _m._ | Richard, Earl of Cambridge. | | | +--Richard, Duke of York. | | | +--EDWARD IV, 1461-1483. | | | | | +--EDWARD V (_d._ 1483). | | | +--RICHARD III, 1483-1485. | +--John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. | | | +--HENRY IV, 1399-1413. | | | +--HENRY V, 1413-1422. | | | +--HENRY VI, 1422-1461. | +--Edmund, Duke of York. | +--Richard, Earl of Cambridge _m._ Anne Mortimer (wh. see). 2, Margaret, daughter of Philip III of France. PERIOD IV. FROM THE END OF THE CRUSADES TO THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. (_A.D. 1270-1453_.) THE DECLINE OP ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY: THE GROWTH OF THE NATIONAL SPIRIT AND OF MONARCHY. CHARACTER OF THE NEW ERA.--The Church was supreme in the era of the Crusades. These had been great movements of a society of which the Pope was the head,--movements in which the pontiffs were the natural leaders. We come now to an era when the predominance of the Church declines, and the Papacy loses ground. Mingled with religion, there is diffused a more secular spirit. The nations grow to be more distinct from one another. Political relations come to be paramount. The national spirit grows strong,--too strong for outside ecclesiastical control. Within each nation the laity is inclined to put limits to the power and privileges of the clergy. In several of the countries, monarchy in the modern European form gets a firm foothold. The enfranchisement of the towns, the rise of commerce, the influence gained by the legists and by the Roman law, of which they were the expounders, had betokened the dawn of a new era. The development of the national languages and literatures signified its coming. Germany and the Holy Roman Empire no longer absorb attention. What is taking place in France and England is, to say the least, of equal moment. CHAPTER I. ENGLAND AND FRANCE: SECOND PERIOD OP RIVALSHIP: THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR (A.D. 1339-1453). PHILIP III. OF FRANCE (1270-1285).--In France royalty made a steady progress down to the long War of a Hundred Years. _Philip III_. (1270-1285) married his son to the heiress of _Navarre_. His sway extended to the Pyrenees. He failed in an expedition against _Peter_, king of _Aragon_, who had supported the Sicilians against _Charles of Anjou_; but the time for foreign conquests had not come. PHILIP IV. OF FRANCE (1285-1314): WAR WITH EDWARD I. OF ENGLAND.-- _Philip IV._ (the Fair) has been styled the "King of the Legists." He surrounded himself with lawyers, who furnished him, from their storehouse of Roman legislation, weapons with which to face baron and pope. In 1292 conflicts broke out between English and French sailors. _Philip_, in his character as suzerain, undertook to take peaceful possession of _Guienne_, but was prevented by the English garrisons. Thereupon he summoned _Edward I._ of England, as the holder of the fiefs, before his court. _Edward_ sent his brother as a deputy, but the French king declared that the fiefs were forfeited in consequence of his not appearing in person. In the war that resulted (1294-1297), each party had his natural allies. _Philip_ had for his allies the Welsh and the Scots, while _Edward_ was supported by the Count of Flanders and by _Adolphus_ of Nassau, king of the Romans. In Scotland, _William Wallace_ withstood Edward. _Philip_ was successful in _Flanders_ and in _Guienne_. _Edward_, who was kept in England by his war with the Scots, secured a truce through the mediation of Pope _Boniface VIII_. Philip then took possession of Flanders, with the exception of _Ghent_. Flanders was at that time the richest country in Europe. Its cities were numerous, and the whole land was populous and industrious. From England it received the wool used in its thriving manufactures. To England its people were attached. Philip loaded the Flemish people with imposts. They rose in revolt, and _Robert d'Artois_, Philip's brother, met with a disastrous defeat in a battle with the Flemish troops at _Courtrai_, in 1302. The Flemish burghers proved themselves too strong for the royal troops. Flanders was restored to its count, four towns being retained by France. CONFLICT OF PHILIP IV. AND BONIFACE VIII.--The expenses of _Philip_, in the support of his army and for other purposes, were enormous. The old feudal revenues were wholly insufficient for the new methods of government. To supply himself with money, he not only levied onerous taxes on his subjects, and practiced ingenious extortion upon the Jews, but he resorted again and again to the device of debasing the coin. His resolution to tax the property of the Church brought him into a controversy, momentous in its results, with Pope _Boniface VIII_. _Boniface's_ idea of papal prerogative was fully as exalted as that formerly held by _Hildebrand_ and _Innocent III_. But he had less prudence and self-restraint, and the temper of the times was now altered. If Philip was sustained by the Roman law and its interpreters, whose counsels he gladly followed, _Boniface_, on the other hand, could lean upon the system of ecclesiastical or canon law, which had long been growing up in Europe, and of which the _Canonists_ were the professional expounders. The vast wealth of the clergy had led to enactments for keeping it within bounds, like the statute of _mortmain_ in England (1279) forbidding the giving of land to religious bodies without license from the king. The word _mortmain_ meant _dead hand_, and was applied to possessors of land, especially ecclesiastical corporations, that could not alienate it. The jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts, which kings, because they happened to have a less liking for feudal law, had often favored, had now come to be another great matter of contention. In 1296 _Boniface VIII_., in the bull _clericis laicos_,--so named, like other papal edicts, from the opening words,--forbade the imposition of extraordinary taxes upon the clergy without the consent of the Holy See. _Philip_ responded by forbidding foreigners to sojourn in France, which was equivalent to driving out of the country the Roman priests and those who brought in the obnoxious bull. At the same time he forbade money to be carried out of France. This last prohibition cut off contributions to Rome. The king asserted the importance of the laity in the Church, as well as of the clergy, and the right of the king of France to take charge of his own realm. There was a seeming reconciliation for a time, through concessions on the side of the Pope; but the strife broke out afresh in 1301. _Philip_ arrested _Bernard Saisset_, a bold legate of the Pope. _Boniface_ poured forth a stream of complaints against _Philip_ (1301), and went so far as to summon the French clergy to a council at _Rome_ for the settlement of all disorders in France. The king then appealed to the French nation. On the 10th of April, 1302, he assembled in the Church of _Notre Dame_, at Paris, a body which, for the first time, contained the deputies of the universities and of the towns, and for this reason is considered to have been the first meeting of the _States General_, The clergy, the barons, the burghers, sided cordially with the king. The Pope then published the famous bull, _Unam Sanctam_, in which the subjection of the temporal power to the spiritual is proclaimed with the strongest emphasis. Boniface then excommunicated Philip, and was preparing to depose him, and to hand over his kingdom to the emperor, _Albert I_. DEATH OF BONIFACE VIII.--Meantime _Philip_ had assembled anew the States General (1303). The legists lent their counsel and active support. It was proposed to the king to convoke a general council of the Church, and to summon the Pope before it. _William of Nogaret_, a great lawyer in the service of Philip, was directed to lodge with Boniface this appeal to a council, and to publish it at _Rome_. With _Sciarra Colonna_, between whose family and the Pope there was a mortal feud, _Nogaret_, attended also by several hundred hired soldiers, entered _Anagni_, where _Boniface_ was then staying. The two messengers heaped upon him the severest reproaches, and _Colonna_ is said to have struck the old pontiff in the face with his mailed hand. The French were driven out of the town by the people; but from the indignities which he had suffered, and the anger and shame consequent upon them, _Boniface_ shortly afterwards died. THE "BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY" (1309-1379).--From the date of the events just narrated, the pontifical authority sank, and the secular authority of sovereigns and nations was in the ascendant. After the short pontificate of _Benedict XL_, who did what he could to reconcile the ancient but estranged allies, France and the Papacy, a French prelate, the Archbishop of Bordeaux, was made pope under the name of _Clement V_., he having previously engaged to comply with the wishes of Philip. While the Papacy continued subordinate to the French king, its moral influence in other parts of Christendom was of necessity reduced. _Clement V_, was crowned at _Lyons_ in 1305, and in 1309 established himself at _Avignon_, a possession of the Holy See on the borders of France. After him there followed at _Avignon_ seven popes who were subject to French influence (1309-1376). It is the period in the annals of the Papacy which is called the "Babylonian captivity." _Philip_ remained implacable. He was determined to secure the condemnation of _Boniface VIII_., even after his death. _Clement V_. had no alternative but to summon a council, which was held at _Vienne_ in 1311, when Boniface was declared to have been orthodox, at the same time that Philip was shielded from ecclesiastical censure or reproach. SUPPRESSION OF THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS.--One of the demands which _Philip_ had made of _Clement V_., and a demand which the council had to grant, was the condemnation of the order of Knights Templars, whose vast wealth Philip coveted. On the 13th of October, 1307, the Templars were arrested overall France,--an act which evinces both the power of Philip, and his injustice. They were charged with secret immoralities, and with practices involving impiety. Provincial councils were called together to decree the judgment preordained by the king. The Templars were examined under torture, and many of them were burned at the stake. A large number of those who were put to death revoked the confessions which had been extorted from them by bodily suffering. Individuals may have been guilty of some of the charges, but there is no warrant for such a verdict against the entire order. The order was abolished by _Clement V_. LAW STUDIES: MERCENARY TROOPS.--During the reign of Philip the Fair, it was ordained that Parliament should sit twice every year at Paris (1303). A university for the study of law was founded at _Orleans_. The king needed soldiers as well as lawyers. Mercenary troops were beginning to take the place of feudal bands. Philip brought the Genoese galleys against the ships of Flanders. THE THREE SONS OF PHILIP: THE "SALIC LAW."--Three sons of Philip reigned after him. _Louis X._ (1314-1316) was induced to take part in an aristocratic reaction, in behalf of "the good old customs," against the legists; but he continued to emancipate the serfs. He was not succeeded by his daughter, but by his brother. This precedent was soon transformed into the "Salic law" that only heirs in the male line could succeed to the throne. The rule was really the result of the "genealogical accident" that for three hundred and forty-one years, or since the election of Hugh Capet, every French king had been succeeded by his son. In several cases the son had been crowned in the lifetime of the father. Thus the principle of heredity, and of heredity in the male line, had taken root. Under _Philip V._ and his successor, _Charles IV._ (1322-1328), there was cruel persecution of the Jews, and many people suffered death on the charge of sorcery. EDWARD I. OF ENGLAND (1272-1307): CONQUEST OF WALES: WILLIAM WALLACE.--_Edward_, who was in the Holy Land when his father died, was a gallant knight and an able ruler,--"the most brilliant monarch of the fourteenth century." _Llywelyn_, prince of Wales, having refused to render the oath due from a vassal, was forced to yield. When a rebellion broke out several years later, Wales was conquered, and the leader of the rebellion was executed (1283). Thus Wales was joined to England; and the king gave to his son the title of "Prince of Wales," which the eldest son of the sovereign of England has since worn. _Edward_ was for many years at war with Scotland, which now included the Gaelic-speaking people of the Highlands, and the English-speaking people of the Lowlands. The king of England had some claim to be their suzerain, a claim which the Scots were slow to acknowledge. The old line of Scottish princes of the Celtic race died out. Alexander III. fell with his horse over a cliff on the coast of Fife. Two competitors for the throne arose, both of them of Norman descent,--_John Baliol_ and _Robert Bruce_. The Scots made _Edward_ an umpire, to decide which of them should reign. He decided for _Baliol_ (1292), stipulating that the suzerainty should rest with himself. When he called upon _Baliol_ to aid him against France, the latter renounced his allegiance, and declared war. He was conquered at _Dunbar_ (1296), and made prisoner. The strongholds in Scotland fell into the hands of the English. The country appeared to be subjugated, but the Scots were ill-treated by the English. _William Wallace_ put himself at the head of a band of followers, defeated them near _Stirling_ in 1292, and kept up the contest for several years with heroic energy. At length _Edward_, through the skill acquired by the English in the use of the bow, was the victor at _Falkirk_ in 1298. _Wallace_, having been betrayed into his hands, was brutally executed in London (1305). Edward carried off from Scone the stone on which the Scottish kings had always been crowned. It is now in Westminster Abbey, under the coronation chair of the sovereign of Great Britain. There was a legend, that on this same stone the patriarch Jacob laid his head when he beheld angels ascending and descending at Bethel. Where that stone was, it was believed that Scottish kings would reign. This was held to be verified when English kings of Scottish descent inherited the crown. ROBERT BRUCE.--The struggle for Scottish independence was taken up by _Robert Bruce_, grandson of the Bruce who had claimed the crown. His plan to gain the throne was disclosed by _John Comyn_, nephew of _Baliol_: this _Comyn_ young Bruce stabbed in a church at Dumfries. He was then crowned king at Scone, and summoned the Scots to his standard. The English king sent his son _Edward_ to conquer him; but the king himself, before he could reach Scotland, died. PARLIAMENT: THE JEWS.--Under Edward, the form of government by king, lords, and commons was firmly established. Parliament met in two distinct houses. Against his inclination he swore to the "Confirmation of the Charters," by which he engaged not to impose taxes without the consent of Parliament. The statute of _mortmain_ has been referred to already. The clergy paid their taxes to the king when they found, that, unless they did so, the judges would not protect them. _Edward_ had protected the _Jews_, who, in England as elsewhere, were often falsely accused of horrible crimes, and against whom there existed, on account of their religion, a violent prejudice. At length he yielded to the popular hatred, and banished them from the kingdom, permitting them, however, to take with them their property. Edward II. (1307-1327).--_Edward II_., a weak and despicable sovereign, cared for nothing but pleasure. He was under the influence of the son of a Gascon gentleman, _Peter of Gaveston_, whom, contrary to the injunction of his father, he recalled from banishment. _Gaveston_ was made regent while the king was in France, whither he went, in 1308, to marry _Isabel_, daughter of _Philip the Fair_. After his return, the disgust of the barons at the conduct of _Gaveston_, and at the courses into which _Edward_ was led by him, was such, that in 1310 they forced the king to give the government for a year to a committee of peers, by whom Gaveston was once more banished. When he came back, he was captured by the barons, and beheaded in 1312. BRUCE: BANNOCKBURN: DEPOSITION OF EDWARD II.--After various successes, _Robert Bruce_ laid siege to _Stirling_ in 1314. This led to a temporary reconciliation between the king and the barons. _Edward_ set out for Scotland with an army of a hundred thousand men. A great battle took place at _Bannockburn_, where _Bruce_, with a greatly inferior force of foot-soldiers, totally defeated the English. He had dug pits in front of his army, which he had covered with turf resting on sticks. The effect was to throw the English cavalry into confusion. Against the _Despencers_, father and son, the next favorites of Edward, the barons were not at first successful; but in 1326 Edward's queen, _Isabel_, who had joined his enemies, returned from France with young _Edward_, Prince of Wales, and at the head of foreign soldiers and exiles. The barons joined her: the _Despencers_ were taken and executed. The king was driven to resign the crown. He was carried from one castle to another, and finally was secretly murdered at Berkeley Castle, by _Roger Mortimer_, in whose custody he had been placed. On the suppression of the _Knights Templars_ by _Pope Clement V._, their property in England was confiscated. The _Temple_, which was their abode in London, became afterwards the possession of two societies of lawyers, the _Inner_ and _Middle Temple_. THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR: PERIOD I. (TO THE PEACE OF BRÉTIGNY. 1360). ORIGIN OF THE WAR: EDWARD III. OF ENGLAND (1327-1377).--England and France entered on one of the longest wars of which there is any record in history. It lasted, with only a few short periods of intermission, for a hundred years. At the outset, there were two main causes of strife. _First_, the king of France naturally coveted the English territory around Bordeaux,--_Guienne_, whose people were French. _Secondly_, the English would not allow _Flanders_ --whose manufacturing towns, as Ghent and Bruges, were the best customers for their wool--to pass under French control. Independently of these grounds of dispute, _Edward III_. laid claim to the French crown, for the reason that his mother was the sister of the last king, while _Philip VI_. (1328-1350), then reigning, was only his cousin. The French stood by the "Salic law," but a much stronger feeling was their determination not to be ruled by an Englishman. _Edward III._ claimed the throne of France in right of his mother, _Isabel_, the daughter of _Philip IV_. The peers and barons of France, on the whole, for political reasons, decided that the crown should be given to _Philip (VI.)_. his nephew, of the house of _Valois_, a younger line of the _Capets_. Edward rendered to him, in 1328, feudal homage for the duchy of _Guienne_, but took the first favorable occasion to re-assert his claim to the throne. _Robert II._, Count of Artois, was obliged to fly from France on a charge of having poisoned his aunt and her daughters, as a part of his unsuccessful attempt to get possession of the fiefs left to them by his grandsire. He went over to England from _Brussels_, and stirred up the young English king to attack _Philip_ (1334). _David Bruce_, whom _Edward_ sought to drive out of Scotland, received aid from France. Philip ordered _Louis_, Count of Flanders, between whom and the burghers there was no affection, to expel the English from his states. _James Van Arteveld_, a brewer of _Ghent_, convinced the people that it was better to get rid of the count, and ally themselves with the English. _Edward_ even then hesitated about entering into the conflict, but the demands and measures of _Philip_ showed that he was bent on war. The princes in the neighborhood of Flanders, and the emperor _Louis V_., to whom the Pope at _Avignon_ was hostile, declared on the side of _Edward_. The following tables (in part repeated, in a modified form, from previous tables, and here connected) will illustrate the narrative:-- THE HOUSE OF VALOIS. CHARLES, Count of Valois (_d_. 1325), younger son of PHILIP III, KING OF FRANCE. (See below.) | +--PHILIP VI, 1328-1350. | +--JOHN the Good, 1350-1364. | +--CHARLES V the Wise, 1364-1380. | | | +--CHARLES VI, 1380-1422. | | | | | +--CHARLES VII, 1422-1461. | | | | | +--LOUIS XI, 1461-1483. | | | | | +--CHARLES VIII, 1483-1498. | | | | | +--Jeanne, | | _m_ | | +--Duke of Orleans, afterwards LOUIS XII, 1498-1515. | | | | | +--Charles, Duke of Orleans, (d. 1467) | | | | +--Louis, Duke of Orleans (assassinated 1407), | founder of the House of _Valois-Orleans_. | +--Louis, Duke of Anjou, founder | of the second Royal House of Naples. | +--John, Duke of Berry. | +--Philip, Duke of Burgundy (_d_. 1404). * * * * * PHILIP III, 1270-1285. | +--PHILIP IV, 1285-1314. | | | +--Isabel, _m_. Edward II of England | | | | | +--Edward II of England. | | | | | +--Edward III of England. | | | +--PHILIP V, 1316-1322. | | | +--CHARLES IV, 1322-1328. | +--Charles, Count of Valois (_d_. 1325), _m_. (1), Margaret of Naples. | +--PHILIP VI, 1328-1350. EARLY EVENTS OF THE WAR.--Hostilities began in 1337. _Edward_ entered France, and then for the first time publicly set up his claim to be king of France, quartering the lilies on his shield; and he was accepted by the Flemish as their suzerain. The first battle was on the sea near Fort _Sluys_ (1340), where _Edward_ won a victory, and thirty thousand Frenchmen were slain or drowned. This established the supremacy of the English on the water. The fleet of the French was made up of hired Castilian and Genoese vessels. In 1341 the conflict was renewed on account of a disputed succession in Brittany, in which the "Salic law" was this time on the English side. _Jane of Penthievre_ was supported by _Philip_; while _Jane of Montfort_, an intrepid woman who was protected by _Edward_, contended for the rights of her husband. This war, consisting of the sieges of fortresses and towns, was kept up for twenty-four years. BATTLE OF CRÉCY: CALAIS: BRITTANY.--In 1346 the _Earl of Derby_ made an attack in the south of France, while _Edward_, with his young son _Edward_, the Prince of Wales, landed in Normandy, which he devastated. _King Edward_ advanced to the neighborhood of Paris; but the want of provisions caused him to change his course, and to march in the direction of Flanders. His situation now became perilous. He was followed by _Philip_ at the head of a powerful army; and, had there been more energy and promptitude on the side of the French, the English forces might have been destroyed. _Edward_ was barely able, by taking advantage of a ford at low tide, to cross the Somme, and to take up an advantageous position at _Crécy_. There he was attacked with imprudent haste by the army of the French. The chivalry of France went down before the solid array of English archers, and _Edward_ gained an overwhelming victory. Philip's brother _Charles_, count of Alençon, fell, with numerous other princes and nobles, and thirty thousand soldiers (1346). In the battle, the English king's eldest son --_Edward_, the Black Prince as he was called from the color of his armor--was hard pressed; but the father would send no aid, saying, "Let the boy win his spurs." It was the custom to give the spurs to the full-fledged knight. After a siege, _Calais_, the port so important to the English, was captured by them. The deputies of the citizens, almost starved, came out with cords in their hands, to signify their willingness to be hanged. The French were driven out, and Calais was an English town for more than two centuries. France was defeated on all sides. The Scots, too, were vanquished; and _David Bruce_ was made prisoner (1346). In _Brittany_ the French party was prostrate. A truce between the kings was concluded for ten months. THE "BLACK DEATH."--In the midst of these calamities, the fearful pestilence swept over France, called the "Black Death." It came from Egypt, possibly from farther east. In Florence three-fifths of the inhabitants perished by it. From Italy it passed over to Provence, and thence moved northward to Paris, spreading destruction in its path. It reached England, and there it is thought by some that one-half of the population perished (1348-1349). ENGLISH AND FRENCH ARMIES.--At this time, when the power of France was so reduced, the king acquired _Montpellier_ from _James of Aragon_, and the Dauphiné of _Vienne_ by purchase from the last _Dauphin, Humbert II._, who entered a monastery. _Dauphin_ became the title of the heir of the French crown. It was constantly evident how deep a root the royal power had struck into the soil of France. At times, when the kingdom was almost gone, the kingship survived. But, unhappily, there was no union of orders and classes. Chivalry looked with disdain upon the common people. The poor Genoese archers who had fought with the French at _Crécy_, and whose bow-strings were wet by a shower, were despised by the gentlemen on horseback. In the French armies, there was no effective force but the cavalry, and there was a fatal lack of subordination and discipline. In England, on the contrary, under kings with more control over the feudal aristocracy, and from the combination of lords and common people in resistance to kings, the English armies had acquired union and discipline. The bow in the hands of the English yeoman was a most effective weapon. The English infantry were more than a match for the brave and impetuous cavaliers of France. At _Crécy_ the entire English force fought on foot. Cannon were just beginning to come into use. This brought a new advantage to the foot-soldier. But it seems probable that cannon were employed at _Crécy_. BATTLE OF POITIERS: INSURRECTION IN PARIS.--_Philip_ left his crown to his son, _John_ (II.) of Normandy, called "the Good" (1350-1364); but the epithet (_le Bon_) signifies not the morally worthy, but rather, the prodigal, gay and extravagant. He was a passionate, rash, and cruel king. His relations with _Charles_ "the Bad," king of _Navarre_,--who, however, was the better man of the two,--brought disasters upon France. This _Charles II._ of Navarre (1349-1387) was the grandson, on his mother's side, of _Louis X._ of France. _John_ had withheld from him promised fiefs. Later he had thrown him into prison. _Philip of Navarre_, the brother of _Charles_, helped the English against _John_ in Normandy. Meanwhile the Prince of Wales (the Black Prince) ravaged the provinces near Guienne. The national spirit in France was roused by the peril. The _States General_ granted large supplies of men and money, but only on the condition that the treasure should be dispensed under their superintendence, and that they should be assembled every year. The army of the Black Prince was small, and he advanced so far that he was in imminent danger; but the attack on him at _Poitiers_ (1356), by the vastly superior force of King _John_, was made with so much impetuosity and so little prudence that the French, as at _Crecy_, were completely defeated. Their cavalry charged up a lane, not knowing that the English archers were behind the hedges on either side. Their dead to the number of eleven thousand lay on the field. The king, and with him a large part of the nobility, were taken prisoners. _John_ was taken to England (1357). From the moment of his capture he was treated with the utmost courtesy. The French peasantry, however, suffered greatly; and in France the name of Englishman for centuries afterwards was held in abhorrence. INSURRECTION IN PARIS.--The incapacity of the nobles to save the kingdom called out the energies of the class counted as plebeian,--the middle class between the nobles and serfs. It was not without competent leaders, chief of whom were _Robert le Coq_, bishop of _Laon_, and councilor of Parliament; and _Etienne Marcel_, an able man, provost of the traders, or head of the municipality of Paris. The _States General_ at Paris, at the instigation of such as these, required of the _Dauphin_ the punishment of the principal officers of the king, the release of the King of Navarre, and the establishment of a council made up from the three orders, for the direction of all the important affairs of government. The States General, representing _the South_, at Toulouse voted a levy of men and means without conditions; but the Dauphin _Charles_ was obliged, at the next meeting of the States General of Paris (1357), to yield to these and other additional demands. The king, however, a prisoner in England, at the Dauphin's request refused to ratify the compact. The agitators at Paris set the King of Navarre free, and urged him to assert his right to the throne. _Marcel_ and the Parisian multitude wore the party-colored hood of red and blue, the civic colors of Paris. They killed two of the Dauphin's confidential advisers, the marshals of Champagne and Normandy. A reaction set in against _Marcel_, and in favor of the royal cause. A civil war was the result. REVOLT OF THE JACQUERIE.--At this time, there burst forth an insurrection, called the _Jacquerie_, of the peasants of the provinces,--_Jacques Bonhomme_ being a familiar nickname of the peasantry. It was attended with frightful cruelties: many of the feudal chateaux were destroyed, and all of their inmates killed. The land was given over to anarchy and bloodshed. _Marcel_ made different attempts to effect a combination with _Charles of Navarre_; but the revolutionary leader was assassinated, and the Dauphin _Charles_, having destroyed opposition in _Paris_, made peace with the King of Navarre, who had kept up in the provinces the warfare against him. The movement of _Marcel_, with whatever crimes and errors belonged to it, was "a brave and loyal effort to stem anarchy, and to restore good government." By its failure, the hope of a free parliamentary government in France was dashed in pieces. TREATY OF BRÉTIGNY (1360).--The captive king, _John_, made a treaty with _Edward_, by which he ceded to the English at least one-half of his dominions. The _Dauphin_ assembled the States General, and repudiated the compact. _Edward III._, in 1359, again invaded France with an immense force. But _Charles_ prudently avoided a general engagement, and _Edward_ found it difficult to get food for his troops. He concluded with France, in 1360, the treaty of _Brétigny_, by which the whole province of _Aquitaine_, with several other lordships, was ceded to _Edward_, clear of all feudal obligations. _Edward_, in turn, renounced his claim to the French crown, as well as to _Normandy_, and to all other former possessions of the Plantagenets north of the Loire. The King was to be set at liberty on the payment of the first installment of his ransom. THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR: PERIOD II. (TO THE PEACE OF TROYES, 1420). DUCHY OF BURGUNDY.--There was an opportunity to repair a part of these losses. In 1361 the ducal house of _Burgundy_ became extinct, and the fief reverted to the crown. But _John_ gave it to his son, _Philip the Bold_, who became the founder of the Burgundian branch of the house of _Valois_. _Philip_ married the heiress of _Flanders_, and thus founded the power of the house of Burgundy in the Netherlands. DU GUESCLIN: CONTEST IN SPAIN.--The provinces of France were overrun and plundered by soldiers of both parties, under the names of _routiers_ (men of the road) and _great companies_. King _John_ returned to England, because one of his sons, left as a hostage, had fled. There his captivity was made pleasant to him, but he died soon after. _Charles V._, or _Charles the Wise_ (1364-1380), undertook to restore prosperity to the French kingdom. He reformed the coin, the debasement of which was a dire grievance to the burghers. Against the free lances in the service of _Charles of Navarre_, the king sent bands of mercenary soldiers under _Du Guesclin_, a valiant gentleman of Brittany, who became one of the principal heroes of the time. The war lasted for a year, and the King of Navarre made peace. In Brittany, _Du Guesclin_ was taken prisoner by the English party and the adventurers who fought with them. The king secured his release by paying his ransom; and he led the companies into Spain to help the cause of _Henry of Transtamare_, who had a dispute for the throne of _Castile_ with _Peter the Cruel_. The Black Prince supported _Peter_, and, for a time, with success. In 1369 _Henry_ was established on the throne, and with him the French party. The principal benefit of this Spanish contest was the deliverance of France from the companies of freebooters. ADVANTAGES GAINED BY THE FRENCH.--King _Charles_ reformed the internal administration of his kingdom, and at length felt himself ready to begin again the conflict with England. _Edward III._ was old. The Black Prince was ill and gloomy, and his Aquitanian subjects disliked the supercilious ways of the English. _Charles_ declared war (1369). The English landed at _Calais_. But the cities were defended by their strong walls; and the French army, under the _Duke of Burgundy_, in pursuance of the settled policy of the king, refused to meet the enemy in a pitched battle. The next year (1370) they appeared again, and once more, in 1373, both times with the same result. The _Duke of Anjou_ reconquered the larger part of _Aquitaine_. _Du Guesclin_ was made constable of the French army, and thus placed above the nobles by birth. The English fleet was destroyed by the Castilian vessels before _Rochelle_ (1372). _Du Guesclin_ drove the _Duke of Montfort_, who was protected by the English, out of Brittany. In 1375 a truce was made, which continued until the death of Edward III. (1377). Then _Charles_ renewed the war, and was successful on every side. Most of the English possessions in France were won back. The last exploit of the Black Prince had been the sacking of _Limoges_ (1370). After this cruel proceeding, broken in health, he returned to England. STATE OF ENGLAND.--The Black Prince, after his return, when his father was old and feeble, did much to save the country from misrule, so that his death was deplored. The Parliament at this time was called "the Good." It turned out of office friends of _John of Gaunt_,--or of Ghent (the place where he was born),--the third son of Edward. They were unworthy men, whom John had caused to be appointed. At this time occurred the first instance of impeachment of the king's ministers by the Commons. When the Black Prince died, his brother regained the chief power, and his influence was mischievous. During Edward's reign, Flemish weavers were brought over to England, and the manufacture of fine woolen cloths was thus introduced. JOHN WICKLIFFE.--In this reign the English showed a strong disposition to curtail the power of the popes in England. When _Pope Urban V._, in 1366, called for the payment of the arrears of King _John's_ tribute, Parliament refused to grant it, on the ground that no one had the right to subject the kingdom to a foreigner. It was in the reign of _Edward III._ that _John Wickliffe_ became prominent. He took the side of the secular or the parish clergy in their conflict with the mendicant orders,--"the Begging Friars," as they were styled. He also advocated the cause of the king against the demands of the Pope. He contended that the clergy had too much wealth and power. He adopted doctrines, at that time new, which were not behind the later Protestant, or even Puritan, opinions. He translated the Bible into English. He was protected by _Edward III._ and by powerful nobles, and he died in peace in his parish at _Lutterworth_, in 1384; but, after his death, his bones were taken up, and burned. His followers bore the nickname of _Lollards_, which is probably derived from a word that means _to sing_, and thus was equivalent to _psalm-singers_. RICHARD II. (1377-1399): THE PEASANT INSURRECTION: DEPOSITION OF RICHARD.--_Richard_, the young son of the Black Prince, had an unhappy reign. At first he was ruled by his uncles, especially by _John of Gaunt_, Duke of Lancaster. Four years after his accession, a great insurrection of the peasants broke out, from discontent under the yoke of villanage, and the pressure of taxes. The first leader in Essex was a priest, who took the name of _Jack Straw_. In the previous reign, the poor had found reason to complain bitterly of the landlords; but their lot was now even harder. When the insurgents reached _Blackheath_, they numbered a hundred thousand men. There a priest named _John Ball_ harangued them on the equality of rights, from the text,-- When Adam delved, and Eve span, Who was then a gentleman? Young Richard managed them with so much tact, and gave them such fair promises, that they dispersed. One of their most fierce leaders, _Wat Tyler_, whose daughter had been insulted by a tax-gatherer, was stabbed during a parley which he was holding with the king. There was a _Gloucester_ party--a party led by his youngest uncle, the _Duke of Gloucester_--which gave Richard much trouble; but he became strong enough to send the duke to _Calais_, where, it was thought, he was put to death. In 1398 he banished two noblemen who had given him, at a former day, dire offense. One of them was _Thomas Mowbray_, Duke of _Norfolk_; the other was _Henry of Bolingbroke_, Duke of _Hereford_, afterwards called Duke of _Lancaster_, son of John of Gaunt. When John of Gaunt died, Richard seized his lands. In 1399, when _Richard_ was in Ireland, _Bolingbroke_ landed, with a few men-at-arms and with Archbishop _Arundel_; and, being joined by the great family of _Percy_ in the North, he obliged _Richard_ to resign the crown. He was deposed by Parliament for misgovernment. Not long after, he was murdered. _Lancaster_ was made king under the name of _Henry IV._ It was under _Richard_ that the statute of _præmunire_ (of 1353) was renewed, and severe penalties were imposed on all who should procure excommunications or sentences against the king or the realm. THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE.--In the course of the reign of _Edward III._, the French language, which had come in with the Normans, ceased to be the speech of fashion; and the English, as altered by the loss of inflections and by the introduction of foreign words, came into general use. The English ceased to speak the language of those who were now held to be national enemies. In 1362 the use of English was established in the courts of law. The _Old English_ ceased to be written or spoken correctly. The _Latin_ still continued to be familiar to the clergy and to the learned. _William Langland_ wrote a poem entitled the _Vision of Piers Plowman_ (1362). _Pierce the Plowman's Crede_ is a poem by another author. The two principal poets are _Chaucer_ and _Gower_, both of whom wrote the new English in use at the court. Chaucer's great poem, the _Canterbury Tales_, is the latest and most remarkable of his works. HENRY IV. (1399-1413): TWO REBELLIONS: THE LOLLARDS.-By right of birth, the crown would have fallen to _Roger Mortimer_, Earl of March, the grandson of _Lionel_, Duke of Clarence, Lionel having been a son of Edward III., older than John of Gaunt. But there was no law compelling Parliament to give the throne to the nearest of kin. So it fell to the house of Lancaster. Henry had to confront two rebellions. One was that of the _Welsh_, under _Owen Glendower_, which he long tried to put down, and which was gradually overcome by _Henry_, Prince of Wales, the story of whose wild courses in his youth was perhaps exaggerated. The other rebellion was that of the powerful Northumberland family of the _Percys_, undertaken in behalf of _Richard_ if he was alive,--for it was disputed whether or not he had really died,--and if not alive, in behalf of the _Earl of March_. The _Percys_ joined Glendower. They were beaten in a bloody battle near _Shrewsbury_, in 1403, where Northumberland's son "Hotspur" (_Harry Percy_) was slain. While praying at the shrine of St. Edward in Westminster, the king was seized with a fit, and died in the "Jerusalem Chamber" of the Abbot. Under _Henry_ the proceedings against heretics were sharpened; but the Commons at length, from their jealousy of the clergy, sought, although in vain, a mitigation of the statute. In the next reign, the Lollards, who were numerous, had a leader in _Sir John Oldcastle_, called _Lord Cobham_, who once escaped from the Tower, but was captured, after some years, and put to death as a traitor and heretic. Whether he aimed at a Lollard revolution or not, is uncertain. The Lollards were persecuted, not only as heretics, but also as desiring to free the serfs from their bondage to the landlords. THE BURGUNDIANS AND ARMAGNACS.--In the last days of _Charles V._ of France, he tried in vain to absorb _Brittany_. _Flanders_ and _Languedoc_ revolted against him. The aspect of public affairs was clouded when _Charles VI_. (1380-1422), who was not twelve years old, became the successor to the throne. His uncles, the Dukes of _Anjou_, _Berri_, and _Burgundy_, contended for the regency. Their quarrels distracted the kingdom. A contest arose with the Flemish cities under the leadership of _Philip Van Artevelde_; but they were defeated by the French nobles at _Roosebeke_, and _Arterielde_ was slain. This victory of the nobles over the cities was followed by the repression of the municipal leaders and lawyers in France. Two factions sprang up,--the _Burgundians_ and the _Armagnacs_. _Margaret_, the wife of the Duke of Burgundy, received Flanders by inheritance, on the death of her father the Count (1384). The king was beginning to free himself from the control of the factions when he suddenly went mad. Thenceforth there was a struggle in France for supremacy between the adherents of the dukes of _Burgundy_ and the adherents of the house of _Orleans_. The latter came to be called _Armagnacs_ (1410), after the _Count d'Armagnac_, the father-in-law of _Charles, Duke of Orleans_. The strength of the _Burgundians_ was in the _North_ and in the cities. They adhered to _Urban VI._, the pope at Rome, in opposition to the Avignon pope, _Clement VII._; for these were the days of the papal schism. They were also friends of the house of _Lancaster_ in England,--of _Henry IV._ and _Henry V._ The strength of the _Armagnacs_ was in the _South_. At the outset, it was a party of the court and of the nobles: later it became a national party. _Louis, Duke of Orleans_, was treacherously assassinated by a partisan of the Burgundians (1407). This act fomented the strife. BATTLE OF AGINCOURT: TREATY OF TROYES (1420).--It was in 1392 that the king partially lost his reason. For the rest of his life, except at rare intervals, he was either imbecile or frenzied. By the division of counsels and a series of fatalities, gigantic preparations for the invasion of England had come to naught (1386-1388). _Henry V. of England_ (1413-1422) concluded that the best way to divert his nobles from schemes of rebellion was to make war across the Channel. Accordingly he demanded his "inheritance" according to the treaty of _Brétigny_, together with _Normandy_. On the refusal of this demand, he renewed the claim of his greatgrandfather to the crown of France, although he was not the eldest descendant of _Edward III_. _Henry_ invaded France at the head of fifty thousand men. By his artillery and mines he took _Harfleur_, but not until after a terrible siege in which thousands of his troops perished by sickness. On his way towards _Calais_, with not more than nine thousand men, he found his way barred at _Agincourt_ by the Armagnac forces, more than fifty thousand in number, comprising the chivalry of France (1415). In the great battle that ensued, the horses of the French floundered in the mud, and horse and rider were destroyed by the English bowmen. The French suffered another defeat like the defeats of _Crécy_ and _Poitiers_. They lost eleven thousand men, and among them some of the noblest men in France. France was falling to pieces. _Rouen_ was besieged by Henry, and compelled by starvation to surrender (1419). The fury of factions continued to rage. There were dreadful massacres by the mob in Paris. The _Duke of Burgundy, John the Fearless_ (_Jean sans Peur_), was murdered in 1419 by the opposite faction. The young Duke _Philip_, and even the Queen of France, _Isabella_, were now found on the Anglo-Burgundian side. By the _Treaty of Troyes_, in 1420, _Catherine_, the daughter of _Charles VI._, was given in marriage to _Henry V._, and he was made the heir of the crown of France when the insane king, _Charles VI._, should die. _Henry_ was made regent of France. The whole country north of the _Loire_ was in his hands. The Dauphin _Charles_ retired to the provinces beyond that river. THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR: PERIOD III. (TO THE END, 1463). FRANCE IN 1422.--Both _Henry_ and _Charles VI._ died in 1422. The Duke of Bedford was made regent in France, ruling in the name of his infant nephew (_Henry VI._). _Charles VII._ (1422-1461) was proclaimed king by the _Armagnacs_ south of the Loire. His situation was desperate, but he represented the national cause. _Bedford_ laid siege to _Orleans_, the last bulwark of the royal party. The English were weakened, however, by the withdrawal of the _Duke of Burgundy_ and his forces. JOAN OF ARC.--When the national cause was at this low point, Providence raised up a deliverer in the person of a pure, simple-hearted, and pious maiden of _Domrémy_ in _Lorraine_, seventeen years of age, _Jeanne Dare_ by name (the name _Joan of Arc_ being merely a mistake in orthography). The tales of suffering that she had heard deeply moved her. She felt herself called of Heaven to liberate France. She fancied that angels' voices bade her undertake this holy mission. Her own undoubting faith aroused faith in others. Commissioned by the king, she mounted a horse, and, with a banner in her hand, joined the French soldiers, whom she inspired with fresh courage. They forced the English to give up the siege of Orleans, and to march away. Other defeats of the English followed. The Maid of Orleans took _Charles_ to _Rheims_, and stood by him at his coronation. The English and Burgundians rallied their strength. _Joan of Arc_ was ill supported, and was made prisoner at Compèigne by the Burgundians. They delivered her to the English. She was subjected to grievous indignities, was condemned as a witch, and finally burned as a relapsed heretic at _Rouen_ (1431). The last word she uttered was "Jesus." Her character was without a taint. In her soul, the spirit of religion and of patriotism burned with a pure flame. A heroine and a saint combined, she died "a victim to the ingratitude of her friends, and the brutality of her foes." THE ENGLISH DRIVEN OUT--In 1435 the _Duke of Burgundy_ was reconciled to _Charles VII._, and joined the cause of France. The generals of Charles gained possession of one after another of the provinces. During a truce of two years, _Henry VI._ of England (1422-1461) married _Margaret of Anjou_, the daughter of King _René_. _Henry_ was of a gentle temper, but lacked prudence and vigor. The king of France and the dauphin began the organization of a standing army, which greatly increased the military strength of the country (1439). In 1449 the war with England was renewed. With the defeat of the English, and the death of their commander, _Talbot_, in 1453, the contest of a century came to an end. All that England retained across the Channel was _Calais_ with _Havre_ and _Guines Castle_. France was desolated by all this fruitless strife. Some of the most fertile portions of its territory were reduced to a desert, "given up to wolves, and traversed only by the robber and the free-lance." REBELLION of "JACK CADE."--The peasants in England were now free from serfdom. Under _Henry VI._ occurred a formidable insurrection of the men of Kent, who marched to London led by _John Cade_, who called himself _John Mortimer_. They complained of bad government and extortionate taxes. One main cause of the rising was the successes of the French. The condition of the laboring class had much improved. The insurgents were defeated by the citizens, and their leader was slain. In this reign began the long "Wars of the Roses," or the contest of the houses of _York_ and _Lancaster_ for the throne. MILAN.--THE VISCONTI AND SFORZA. Matteo I, VISCONTI (nephew of Archbishop Otto), Lord of Milan, 1295-1332. | +--Stefano (_d._ 1327). | +--Matteo II,[1] 1354-1355. | +--Bernabo,[1] 1354-1385. | | | +--Catharine, | _m._ (2), | +--GIAN GALEAZZO, 1378-1402 (first duke, 1396). | | | | | +--GIOVANNI MARIA, 1402-1412. | | | | | +--FILIPPO MARIA, 1412-1447. | | | | | | | +--Bianca Maria. | | | _m._ | | | +--FRANCESCO SFORZA, 1450-1466 | | | | | | | | | +--GALEAZZO MARIA, 1466-1476, _m._ | | | | | Bona, daughter of Louis, Duke of Savoy. | | | | | | | | | | | +--GIAN GALEAZZO, 1476-1494. | | | | | | | | | +--LUDOVICO Il Moro, 1494-1500, 3, (_d._ 1510) | | | | _m._ Beatrice d'Este. | | | | | | | | | +--MASSAMILLANO,[4] 1512-1515 (_d._ 1530) | | | | | | | | | +--FRANCESCO MARIA, [4], 1521-1535. _m._ | | | | Christina, daughter of Christian II of Denmark (1) | | | | | | | Jacopo (Muzio) Attendolo di Cotignola, called Sforza. | | | | | +--Valentina, [2] _m._ | | Louis, Duke of Orleans. | | | | | +--Charles, Duke of Orleans. | | | | | +--LOUIS XII of France, | | Duke of Milan 1500-1512. | | +--Galeazzo II,[1] 1354-1378. 1 The Milanese territory was divided between the three brothers, and united on the death of Bernabo. 2 Hence the French claim to Milan. 3 Louis XII of France took Ludovico prisoner, and held Milan 1500-1512. 4 Puppet dukes. Milan being, in fact, the subject of contention between France and the Hapsburgs. [Abridged from George's Genealogical Tables.] THE THREE NORTHERN KINGDOMS BEFORE THE UNION OF CALMAR. [D. means King of Denmark; N., King of Norway; S., King of Sweden.] HACO IV, N. (_d._ 1263). | +--MAGNUS VI, N., 1263-1281. | +--ERIC II, N., 1281-1299. | +--HACO V, N., 1299-1320. | | MAGNUS I, S., 1279-1290. | | | +--BERGER, S., 1290-1320 (deposed; _d._ 1326) | | _m._ | | +--Martha. | | | | | +--CHRISTOPHER II, D., 1320-1340. | | | | | | | +--WALDEMAR III, D., 1346-1375. | | | | | | | +--Margaret,[2] D. N., 1387, S., 1388 (_d._ 1412). | | | _m._ HACO VI, N. (_d._ 1380) | | | | | | | +--OLAF VI, D. 1376, N. 1380 (_d._ 1387). | | | | | +--ERIC VI, D., 1286-1320. | | | | | ERIC V, D., 1250-1286. | | | +--Eric. | _m._ +--Ingeburga | +--Magnus VII (II), N. S., 1320-1365 (deposed). | +--Euphemia. _m._ Albert, Duke of Mecklenburg, | | | +--Albert,[1] S., 1365-1388 (deposed). | | | +--Henry, m. Ingeburga, daughter of Waldemar III, D. | | | +--Mary, _m._ Wratislas of Pomerania. | | | +--ERIC, D. N. S., 1412-1439 | | (deposed; _d._ 1459). | | | +--Catharine, _m._ John, son of Emperor Robert. | | | +--CHRISTOPHER, D. N. S. (_d._ 1448). | _m._ (1) | Dorothea, daughter of John Alchymista, | Margrave of Brandenburg | _m._ (2) | CHRISTIAN I,[3] D. N. S. | +--HACO VI, N. (_d._ 1380) 1 Elected to Sweden in opposition to Haco VI; deposed by Margaret. 2 Having united all three kingdoms in her own person, framed formal Union of Calmar, 1397. 3 Elected king on death of Christopher, whose widow he married; said to be descended from Eric V of Denmark. [Abridged from George's Genealogical Tables.] CHAPTER II. GERMANY: ITALY: SPAIN: THE SCANDINAVIAN COUNTRIES: POLAND AND RUSSIA: HUNGARY: OTTOMAN TURKS: THE GREEK EMPIRE. I. GERMANY. THE GREAT INTERREGNUM.--After the death of _Frederick II_. (1250), Germany and Italy, the two countries over which the imperial authority extended, were left free from its control. _Italy_ was abandoned to itself, and thus to internal division. The case of _Germany_ was analogous. During the "great interregnum," lasting for twenty-three years, the German cities, by their industry and trade, grew strong, as did the burghers in France, and in the towns in England, in this period. But in Germany the feudal control was less relaxed. This interval was a period of anarchy and trouble. _William of Holland_ wore the title of emperor until 1256. Then the _electors_ were bribed, and _Alfonso X. of Castile_, great-grandson of Frederick Barbarossa, and _Richard, Earl of Cornwall_, younger son of King John of England, were chosen by the several factions; but their power was nominal. The four electors on the Rhine, and the dukes and counts, divided among themselves the imperial domains. The dismemberment of the duchies of _Swabia_ and _Franconia_ (1268), and at an earlier day (1180) of _Saxony_, created a multitude of petty sovereignties. The great vassals of the empire, the kings of _Denmark_, of _Poland_, of _Hungary_, etc., broke away from its suzerainty. There was a reign of violence. The barons sallied out of their strongholds to rob merchants and travelers. The princes, and the nobles in immediate relation to the empire, governed, each in his own territory, as they pleased. New means of protection were created, as the _League of the Rhine_, comprising sixty cities and the three Rhenish archbishops, and having its own assemblies; and the _Hanseatic League_, which has been described (p. 303). Moreover, corporations of merchants and artisans were established in the cities. In the North, where the Crusades, and war with the _Slaves_, had thinned the population, colonies of Flemings, Hollanders, and Frisians came in to cultivate the soil. During the long-continued disturbances after the death of _Frederick II_., the desire of local independence undermined monarchy. The empire never regained the vigor of which it was robbed by the _interregnum_. HOUSE OF HAPSBURG.--_Rudolph_, Count of Hapsburg (1273-1291), was elected emperor for the reason, that, while he was a brave man, he was not powerful enough to be feared by the aristocracy. He wisely made no attempt to govern in Italy. He was supported by the Church, to which he was submissive. He devoted himself to the task of putting down disorders in Germany. Against _Ottocar II_., king of Bohemia, who now held also Austria, Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola, and who refused to acknowledge Rudolph, the emperor twice made war successfully. In a fierce battle at the _Marchfield_, in 1278, _Ottocar_ was slain. _Austria_, _Styria_, and _Carniola_ fell into the hands of the emperor. They were given as fiefs to Rudolph's son _Albert_; and _Carinthia_ to Albert's son-in-law, the _Count of Tyrol_. This was the foundation of the power of the house of Hapsburg. _Rudolph_ strove with partial success to recover the crown lands, and did what he could to put a stop to private war and to robbery. Numerous strongholds of robbers he razed to the ground. His practical abandonment of Italy, his partial restoration of order in Germany, and his service to the house of Hapsburg, are the principal features of Rudolph's reign. HENRY VII. (1308-1313): ITALY.--Adolphus of Nassau (1292-1298) was hired by _Edward I_. to declare war against France. His doings in Thuringia. which he tried to buy from the Landgrave _Albert_, led the electors to dethrone him, and to choose _Albert I_. (1298-1308), _Duke of Austria_, son of Rudolph. His nephew _John_, whom he tried to keep out of his inheritance, murdered him. _Henry VII_. (1308-1313), who was Count of _Luxemburg_, the next emperor, did little more than build up his family by marrying his son _John_ to the granddaughter of King _Ottocar_. _John_ was thus made king of Bohemia. In these times, when the emperors were weak, they were anxious to strengthen and enrich their own houses. _Henry_ went to Italy to try his fortunes beyond the Alps. He was crowned in Pavia king of Italy, and in Rome emperor (1312). But the rival parties quickly rose up against him: he was excommunicated by _Clement V_., an ally of France, and died--it was charged, by poison mixed in the sacramental cup--in 1313. He was a man of pure and noble character, but the time had passed for Italy to be governed by a German sovereign. CIVIL WAR: ELECTORS AT RENSE.--One party of the electors chose _Frederick of Austria_ (1314-1330), and the other _Louis of Bavaria_ (1314-1347). A terrible civil war, lasting for ten years, was the consequence. In a great battle near _Mühldorf_, the Austrians were defeated, and _Frederick_ was captured. _Louis_ had now to encounter the hostility of Pope _John XXII_. (at Avignon), who wished to give the imperial crown to _Philip the Fair_ of France. _Louis_ maintained that he received the throne, not from the popes, but from the electors. He was excommunicated by _John_, who refused to sanction the agreement of Louis and of Frederick, now set at liberty, to exercise a joint sovereignty. _Louis_ was in Italy from 1327 to 1330, where he was crowned emperor by a pope of his own creation. All efforts of Louis to make peace with _Pope_ _John_ and his successor, _Benedict XII_., were foiled by the opposition of France. The strife which had been occasioned in Germany by this interference from abroad created such disaffection among the Germans, that the electors met at _Rense_, in 1338, and declared that the elected king of the Germans received his authority from the choice of the electoral princes exclusively, and was Roman emperor even without being crowned by a pope. DEPOSITION OF LOUIS OF BAVARIA.--The imprudence of _Louis_ in aggrandizing his family, and his assumption of an acknowledged papal right in dissolving the marriage of the heiress of Tyrol with a son of _King John of Bohemia_, turned the electors against him. In 1346 Pope _Clement VI_. declared him deposed. The electors chose in his place _Charles_, the Margrave of _Moravia_, the son of King _John of Bohemia_. _Louis_ did not give up his title, but he died soon after. CHARLES IV. (1347-1378).--_Charles IV_. visited Italy, and was crowned emperor (1355); but, according to a promise made to the Pope, he tarried in Rome only a part of one day. He was crowned king of Burgundy at _Arles_ (1365). In Italy "he sold what was left of the rights of the empire, sometimes to cities, sometimes to tyrants." His principal care was for building up his own hereditary dominion, which he so enlarged that it extended, at his death, from the Baltic almost to the Danube. He fortified and adorned _Prague_, and established there, in 1348, the first German university. THE GOLDEN BULL.--The great service of _Charles IV_. to Germany was in the grant of the charter called the _Golden Bull_ (1356). This expressly conferred the right of electing the emperor on the SEVEN ELECTORS, who had, in fact, long exercised it. These were the archbishops of Mentz, of Trier, and of Cologne, and the four secular princes, the King of Bohemia, the Count Palatine of the Rhine, the Duke of Saxony, and the Margrave of Brandenburg. The electoral states were made indivisible and inalienable, and hereditary in the male line. The electors were to be sovereign within their respective territories, and their persons were declared sacred. THE BLACK DEATH.--Germany, like the other countries, was terribly afflicted during the reign of Charles by the destructive pestilence that swept over the most of Europe (p. 319). One effect was an outbreaking of religious fervor. At this time the movement of the "Flagellants," which started in the thirteenth century, reached its height in Germany and elsewhere. They scourged and lacerated themselves for their sins, marching in processions, and inflicting their blows to the sound of music. Another result of the plague was a savage persecution of the Jews, who were falsely suspected of poisoning wells. Many thousands of them were tortured and killed. ANARCHY IN GERMANY.--The son of Charles IV. (1378-1400), _Wenceslaus_, or _Wenzel_, was a coarse and cruel king. Under him the old disorders of the _Interregnum_ sprang up anew. The towns had to defend themselves against the robber barons, and formed confederacies for this purpose. Private war raged all over Germany. ACCESSION OF SIGISMUND.--_Wenceslaus_ was deposed by the electors in 1400. But _Rupert_, the Count Palatine, his successor (1400-1410), was able to accomplish little, in consequence of the strife of parties. _Sigismund_ (1410-1437), brother of _Wenceslaus_, margrave of Brandenburg, and, in right of his wife, king of Hungary, was chosen emperor, first by a part, and then by all, of the electors. The most important events of this period were the _Council of Constance_ (1414-1418) and the war with the _Hussites_. JOHN HUSS.--The principal end for which the Council of Constance was called was the healing of the schism in the Church,--in consequence of which there were three rival popes,--and the securing of ecclesiastical reforms. But at this council _John Huss_, an eminent Bohemian preacher, was tried for heresy. The doctrines of _Wickliffe_ had penetrated into _Bohemia;_ and a strong party, of which Huss was the principal leader, had sprung up in favor of innovations, doctrinal and practical, one of which was the giving of the cup in the sacrament to the laity. _Huss_ made a great stir by his attack upon abuses in the Church. Under a safe-conduct from _Sigismund_, he journeyed to _Constance_. There he was tried, condemned as a heretic, and burnt at the stake (1415). _Jerome of Prague_, another reformer, was dealt with in the same way by the council (1416). HUSSITE WAR.--The indignation of the followers of _Huss_ was such that a great revolt broke out in Bohemia. The leader was a brave man, _Ziska_. The imperial troops, after the coronation of _Sigismund_ as king of Bohemia, were defeated, and driven out. The Hussite soldiers ravaged the neighboring countries. The council of _Basel_ (1431-1449) concluded a treaty with the more moderate portion of the Hussites, in which concessions were made to them. The _Taborites_, the more fanatical portion, were at length defeated and crushed. SWITZERLAND.--Switzerland, originally a part of the kingdom of _Arles_, had been ceded, with this kingdom, to the German Empire in 1033. Within it, was established a lay and ecclesiastical feudalism. In the twelfth century the cities--_Zürich_, _Basel_, _Berne_, and _Freiburg_--began to be centers of trade, and gained municipal privileges. The three mountain cantons--_Uri_, _Schweitz,_ and _Unterwalden_--cherished the spirit of freedom. The counts of _Hapsburg_, after the beginning of the thirteenth century, exercised a certain indefinite jurisdiction in the land. They endeavored to transform this into an actual sovereignty. Two of the cantons received charters placing them in an immediate relation to the empire. After the death of _Rudolph I_., the three cantons above named united in a league. Out of this the _Swiss Confederacy_ gradually grew up. There were struggles to cast off foreign control; but the story of _William Tell_, and other legends of the sort, are certainly fabulous. _Albert of Austria_ left to his successor in the duchy the task of subduing the rebellion. The Austrians were completely defeated at _Morgarten_, "the Marathon of Switzerland" (1315). The Swiss Confederacy was enlarged by the addition of _Lucerne_ (1332), _Zürich_ and _Glarus_ (1351), _Zug_ (1352), and of the city of _Berne_ in 1353. The battle of _Sempach_ (1386) brought another great defeat upon the Austrians. There, if we may believe an ancient song, a Swiss hero, _Arnold of Winkelried_, grasped as many of the spear-points as he could reach, as a sheaf in his arms, and devoted himself to death, opening thus a path in which his followers rushed to victory. Once more the Swiss triumphed at _Näfels_ (1388). From that time they were left to the enjoyment of their freedom. II. ITALY. GUELFS AND GHIBELLINES: FREEDOM IN THE CITIES.--The inveterate foes of Italy were foreign interference and domestic faction. After the death of _Frederick II_., the war of the popes against his successors lasted for seventeen years. After the defeat of _Manfred_ (1266), _Conradin_, the last of the Hohenstaufens, died on the scaffold at Naples. _Charles of Anjou_ lost Sicily through the rebellion of the Sicilian Vespers (1282); and dominion in that island, separated from Naples, passed to the house of Aragon. The papal states, after the election of _Rudolph_ of _Hapsburg_, became a distinct sovereignty of the pontiffs. The bitter strife of the _Guelfs_ and _Ghibellines_ went on in the Italian cities. The Genoese, who were Guelfic, defeated the Pisans in 1284; and "_Pisa_, which had ruined Amalfi, was now ruined by _Genoa_." _Florence_, which was Guelfic, grew in strength. _Genoa_ and _Venice_ became rivals in the contest for the control of the Mediterranean. In _Florence_, new factions, the _Neri_ and _Bianchi_ (Blacks and Whites), appeared; the _Neri_ being violent Guelfs, and the _Bianchi_ being at first moderate Guelfs and then Ghibellines. Pope _Boniface VIII_. invited into Italy _Charles of Valois_. He was admitted to Florence (1301), and gave the supremacy there to the Guelfic side. The coming of the Emperor _Henry VII_. into Italy (1310) was marked by a temporary, but the last, revival of imperial feeling. The connection of the popes with the French houses of _Anjou_ and _Valois_ led to the "Babylonian Exile" at _Avignon_, during which Italy was comparatively free, both from imperial and papal control. During the period of the civil wars, while there was nominally a conflict between the party of the pope and the party of the emperor, the _Guelfs_ were devoted to the destruction of feudalism, and to the building-up of commerce and republican institutions; while the _Ghibellines_, dreading anarchy, resisted the incoming of the new order of things. It was in this period that _Dante_ produced his immortal poem, which sprang out of the midst of the contest of Guelf and Ghibelline (p. 307). Dante was himself a Ghibelline and an imperialist. In the course of these conflicts, the plebeian class, before without power, is advanced. Older families of nobility die out, or are reduced in influence. New families rise to prominence and power. The burghers band together in arts or guilds; and out of these, in their corporate character, the governments of the cities are formed. "Ancients," and "priors," the heads of the "arts," supersede the consuls. The "podesta" is more and more limited to a judicial function. In some of the _Guelf_ cities, there is "a gonfalonier of justice," to curb the nobility. In _Florence_, there were also twenty subordinate _gonfaloniers_. The final triumph of Guelfs and of republicanism in Florence was in 1253. The body of the citizens established their sovereignty. When, in 1266, citizenship was confined to those who were enrolled in the guilds, the nobles, or _Grandi_, were wholly excluded from the government. This led them to drop their titles and dignities in order to enroll themselves in these industrial societies. The feuds of factions, especially of the "Whites" and "Blacks," sprang up next. In the latter part of the fourteenth century, strife arose between the "Lesser Arts," or craftsmen whose trades were subordinate to the "Greater Arts," and these last. The mob in Florence drove the "Signory," or chief magistrates, out of the public palace. This was the "Tumult of the Ciompi,"--_Ciompi_ signifying wool-carders, who gave their name to the whole faction. Afterwards, of their own accord, they gave back the government to the priors of the Greater Arts. The effect of these disturbances was to reduce all classes to a level. The way was open for families, like the _Albizzi_ and _Medici_, to build up a virtual control by wealth and personal qualities. THE GENERALS IN THE CITIES.--In the cities, there were "captains of the people," who carried on war,--leaders of the Guelfs or Ghibellines, as either might be uppermost. They were persons who were skilled in arms: these were often nobles who had been merged in the body of citizens. In this way, there arose in the cities of Northern Italy ruling houses or dynasties; as the _Della Scala_ in Verona, the _Polenta_ at Ravenna, etc. In _Tuscany_, where the commercial power of _Florence_ was so great, the communes as yet kept themselves free from hereditary rulers; yet, from time to time, their liberties were exposed to attack from successful generals. THE TYRANTS.--At the beginning of the fourteenth century, as the fury of the civil wars declined, the cities were left more and more under the rule of masters called "tyrants." Tyranny, as of old, was a term for absolute authority, however it might be wielded. The visits of the emperors _Henry VII_., and _Louis IV_. of Bavaria, and of _John_ of Bohemia, son of Henry VII., had no important political effect, except to bring increased power to the Ghibelline despots. Thus, after the interference of Louis IV. (1327), the _Visconti_ established their power in Milan. But the changes in Italy after this epoch gave to the Ghibellines no permanent advantage over their adversaries. The leader of the Guelfs for a long time was _Robert_, king of Naples (1309-1343). THE CLASSES OF DESPOTS.--The methods by which the Emperor _Frederic II_. governed in Italy, and which he had partly learned from the Saracens in Sicily, furnished an example which the Italian despots followed later. He was imitated in his system of taxation, in his creation of monopolies, in the luxury and magnificence of his court, and in his patronage of polite culture. His vicar in the North of Italy, _Ezzelino da Romano_ (1194-1259), who was captain, in the Ghibelline interest, in _Verona_, _Padua_, and other cities, was guilty of massacres and all sorts of cruelties, the story of which exercised a horrible fascination over others who came after. At last he was 'hunted down' by Venice and a league of cities, and captured; but he refused to take food, tore his bandages from his wounds, and died under the ban of the Church. The despots of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries have been divided by _Mr. Symonds_ into six classes. The _first_ class had a certain hereditary right from the previous exercise of lordship, as the house of _Este_ in Ferrara. The _second_ class, as the _Visconti_ family in Milan, had been vicars of the empire. The _third_ class were captains, or podestas, chosen by the burghers to their office, but abusing it to enslave the cities. Most of the tyrants of Lombardy got their power in this way. The _fourth_ class is made up of the _Condottieri_, like _Francesco Sforza_ at Milan. The _fifth_ class includes the nephews or sons of popes, and is of later origin, like the _Borgia_ of Romagna. Their governments had less stability. The _sixth_ class is that of eminent citizens, like the _Medici_ at Florence and the _Bentivogli_ of Bologna. These acquired undue authority by wealth, sometimes by personal qualities and noble descent. Among those who are called "despots" were individuals of worth, moderation, and culture. The records of many of them are filled with tragic scenes of violence and crime. To maintain their hated rule, they were impelled to the practice of barbarities hardly ever surpassed. (J. A. Symonds, _Renaissance in Italy_, vol. i. chap, ii.) CONDOTTIERI.--With the end of the civil wars, there appear "the companies of adventure," or mercenary troops. The burghers, having put down the nobility and achieved their independence, lay aside their arms. They are busy in manufactures and trade. The despots and the republics prefer to hire foreign adventurers, the "free companies," who were a curse to Italy. Their occupation, which was a profitable one, was taken up by natives. These were the _condottieri_. Their leaders introduced cavalry and more skillful methods of fighting. But the battles were bloodless games of strategy, and military energy declined. At the same time intrigue and state-craft were the instruments of political aggrandizement. One of these new leaders was _Sforza Attendolo_, whose son became Duke of Milan. FIVE STATES IN ITALY.--In the middle of the fifteenth century, we find, as the political result of the changes of the preceding century and a half, five principal communities in Italy. These powers are the kingdom of _Naples_, the duchy of _Milan_, the republic of _Florence_, the republic of _Venice_, and the _principality of the Pope_. A brief sketch will be given of each of these states down to 1447, when _Nicholas V_. reëstablished the papacy in its strength at Rome, after the exile at _Avignon_ (1305), and the ecclesiastical convulsions that followed it. LOWER ITALY.--_Robert the Wise_ (of Anjou) (1309-1343), the successor of _Charles II_. of Naples and the champion of the Guelfs, could not extend his power over Sicily, where _Frederick_ II. (1296-1337), the son of _Peter_ of _Aragon_, reigned. Robert's granddaughter, _Joan I._, after a career of crime and misfortune, was strangled in prison by _Charles Durazzo_, the last male descendant of the house of Anjou in Lower Italy (1382), who seized on the government. _Joan II_., the last heir of _Durazzo_ (1414-1435), first adopted _Alfonso V_. of _Aragon_, and then _Louis III_. of _Anjou_ and his brother _Rene_. _Alfonso_, who inherited the crown of _Sicily_, united both kingdoms (1435), after a war with Rene and the _Visconti_ of Milan. By this contest, Italy was divided into two parties, composed of the respective adherents of the houses of _Anjou_ and _Aragon_, The rights of _Rene_ were to revert later to the crown of France, and to serve as a ground for new wars. For twenty-three years _Alfonso_ reigned wisely and prosperously in Southern Italy. He was a patron of letters, and promoted peace among the Italian states. THE MILANESE: SFORZA.--Another great power was growing up in the North. The greatness of the _Visconti_ family dates from _John_, Archbishop of _Milan_, who reigned there, and died in 1354. _Gian Galeazzo Visconti_ became sole master of Milan in 1385, and extended his dominion over Lombardy. He bought of the Emperor _Wenceslaus_ the ducal title. Twenty-six cities, with their territories, were subject to him. But at _Galeazzo's_ death, his state fell to pieces. The _condottieri_, whom he had kept under, broke loose from control; and in 1450, one of them, _Francesco Sforza_, with the help of the Venetians, seized on the supreme power, which his family continued to hold for fifty years. VENICE.--_Venice_, in the fourteenth century, was as strong as any Italian state. Its constitution was of gradual growth. The _doge_, elected by the people, divided power in 1032 with a _senate_; and in 1172 the _Grand Council_ was organized. This council by degrees absorbed the powers of government, which thus became an aristocracy. In 1297 the Senate became hereditary in a few families. In 1311 the powerful _Council of Ten_ was constituted. For a long period Venice was not ambitious of power in Italy, but was satisfied with her commerce with the East. Her contest with _Genoa_ began in 1352, and lasted for thirty years. In the war of _Chioggia_,--so called from a town twenty-five miles south of Venice,--the Venetians were defeated by _Luciano Doria_ in a sea-fight on the Adriatic. He blockaded Venice; but _Doria_, in turn, was blockaded in _Chioggia_ by the Venetians, and forced to surrender. After reducing the naval power of Genoa, they added _Verona_, _Vicenza_, and _Padua_ to their territories (1410). Under _Francesco Foscari_, who was doge from 1423 to 1457, Venice took an active part in Italian affairs. FLORENCE: THE MEDICI.--In Florence, the _Medici_ family gained an influence which gave them a practical control of the government. In 1378 _Salvestro de Medici_ signalized himself by a successful resistance to an oligarchical faction composed partly of the old nobility. The brilliant period in the history of Florence begins with this triumph of the democracy. _Pisa_ was bought from the Duke of Milan, and forced to submit to Florentine rule (1406). _John de Medici_, a very successful merchant, was twice chosen gonfalonier (1421). His son _Cosmo I_., who was born in 1389, was also a merchant, possessed of great wealth. He attained to the leading offices in the state, having overcome the _Albizzi_ family, at whose instigation he was for a while banished. _Cosmo_ ruled under the republican forms, but with not less authority on that account. He was distinguished for his patronage of art and letters. By his varied services to Florence, he earned the title of "Father of his Country," which was given him by a public decree. THE ROMAN PRINCIPALITY: RIENZI.--After the popes took up their abode in _Avignon_, in the first half of the fourteenth century, Rome was distracted by the feuds of leading families who built for themselves strongholds in the city. In 1347 the Romans, fired by the enthusiast _Rienzi_, who sought to restore the old Roman liberty, undertook to set up a government after the ancient model. _Rienzi_ was chosen _tribune_. He found much favor in other cities of Italy. But his head was turned by the seeming realization of his dreams. He was driven out of Italy by the cardinals and the nobles. He returned afterwards, sent by Pope _Innocent VI_., to aid in winning back Rome to subjection to the Holy See. But his power was gone. He disgusted the people with his pomps and shows, and, while trying to escape in disguise, was put to death (1354). Cardinal _Albornoz_ succeeded in reuniting the dissevered parts of the papal kingdom. But in the period of the _Schism_ (1378-1417), in the cities old dynasties were revived, and new ones arose; towns and territories were ceded to nobles as fiefs; and a degree of freedom almost amounting to independence was conceded to old republics, as _Rome_, _Perugia_, and _Bologna_. It was the work of Pope _Nicholas V_. and his successors (from 1477) to regain and cement anew the fragments of the papal principality. LITERATURE AND ART.--In this period, in the midst of political agitation in Italy, there was a brilliant development in the departments of literature and art. The major part of _Dante's_ life (1265-1321) falls within the thirteenth century. _Petrarch_ (1304-1374), _Boccaccio_ (1313-1375), a master in Italian prose, and _Dante_, are the founders of Italian literature. They are followed by an era of study and culture, rather than of original production. In the arts, _Venice_ and _Pisa_ first became eminent. The church of _St. Mark_ was built at Venice, in the Byzantine style, in 1071. At about the same time the famous cathedral at _Pisa_ was begun; which was followed, in the twelfth century, by the _Baptistery_ and the _Leaning Tower_. The _Campo Santo_, or cemetery, was built in 1278. In the thirteenth century, when architectural industry was so active, numerous high brick towers were built in Florence for purposes of defense. Some of them remain "to recall the bloody feuds of the irreconcilable factions of the nobility. In these conflicts, the strife was carried on from tower to tower, from house to house: streets were barricaded with heavy chains, and homes made desolate with fire and sword." Churches and great public buildings were constructed in this period. At the end of the thirteenth century the church of _Santa Croce_ was built at Florence; and in the century following, _Brunelleschi_, the reviver of classical art in Italy, placed the great cupola on the Cathedral. The Gothic cathedral of _Milan_, with its wilderness of statues, was begun in 1346. _Cimabue_, who died about 1302, and _Giotto_, who died about 1337, laid the foundations of the modern Italian schools of painting. TRADE AND COMMERCE.--The seaports, Venice and Genoa, were centers of a flourishing commerce, extending to the far East and to the coasts of Spain and France. The interior cities--_Milan_ with its two hundred thousand inhabitants, _Verona, Florence_--were centers of manufactures and of trade. The Italians were the first _bankers_ in Europe. The bank of _Venice_ was established in 1171, and the bank of _Genoa_, although it was projected earlier, was founded in 1407. The financial dealings of Italian merchants spread over all Europe. MORALITY.--The one thing lacking in Italy was a broader spirit of patriotism and a higher tone of morality. Advance in civilization was attended with corruption of morals. III. SPAIN AND PORTUGAL. HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY.--Resistance to the Arabs in Spain began in the northern mountainous region of _Cantabria_ and _Asturia_, which even the West Goths had not wholly subdued, although _Asturia_ was called _Gothia_. _Asturia_, a Christian principality (732), expanded into the kingdom called _Leon_ (916), of which Castile was an eastern county. East of _Leon_, there grew up the kingdom of _Navarre_, mostly on the southern, but partly on the northern side of the Pyrenees. On the death of _Sancho the Great_, it was broken up (1035). At about the same time the Ommiad caliphate was broken up into small kingdoms (1031). After the death of _Sancho_, or early in the eleventh century, we find in Northern Spain, beginning on the west and moving eastward, the kingdom of _Leon_, the beginnings of the kingdom of _Castile_, the reduced kingdom of _Navarre_, the beginnings of the kingdom of _Aragon_, and, between Aragon and the Mediterranean, Christian states which had been comprised in the _Spanish March_ over which the Franks had ruled. The two states which were destined to attain to the chief importance were _Castile_ and _Aragon_. Of these, _Castile_ was eventually to be to Spain what France was to all Gaul. Ultimately the union of _Castile_ and _Aragon_ gave rise to the great Spanish monarchy of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The four kingdoms of _Leon, Castile, Aragon,_ and _Navarre_, after the death of _Sancho_, as time went on, were joined and disjoined among themselves in many different ways. _Castile_ and _Leon_ were finally united in 1230. _Portugal_, lying on the ocean, was partly recovered from the Arabs towards the close of the eleventh century, and was a county of _Leon_ and _Castile_ until, in 1139, it became a kingdom. From this time _Castile, Aragon,_ and _Portugal_ were the three antagonists of Moslem rule. Each of these kingdoms advanced. _Portugal_ spread especially along the Atlantic coast; _Aragon_, along the coast of the Mediterranean; _Castile_, the principal power, spread in the interior, and included by far the greater part of what is now Spain. In the latter part of the thirteenth century the Moslems were confined to the kingdom of _Granada_ in the South, which was conquered by _Castile_ and _Aragon_ (1492), whose _sovereigns, Ferdinand_ and _Isabella_, were united in marriage. Their _kingdoms_ were united in 1516. In the latter part of the Middle Ages, _Aragon_, from its situation on the eastern coast, played an important part in the politics of Europe. _Castile_ and _Portugal_ led the way in maritime exploration. THE MOORS.--It has been already related (p. 282), that, after the fall of the Ommiad caliphate, African Mohammedans came over to the help of their Spanish brethren. These _Moors_ did not supplant the Arabic speech or culture. The two principal invasions of the Moors were the invasion by the _Almoravides_ (1086-110), and that by the _Almohades_ (1146). ARAGON: NAVARRE.--The kingdoms of _Aragon_ and _Castile_ existed for centuries side by side. _Aragon_ sought to extend its conquests along the eastern coast; _Castile_, to enlarge itself toward the south. _James I._, or James the Conqueror (1213-1276), joined the Moslem state of _Valencia_, by conquest, to his kingdom of _Aragon_, to which _Catalonia_ had already been added. The union of these peoples developed a national character of a definite type. In its pride of birth and of blood, its tenacious clinging to traditional rights, and in its esteem of military prowess before intellectual culture, it resembled the old Spartan temper. _Peter III._,(1276-1285), the son of _James I._, united with the three states _Sicily_, which, though it became a separate kingdom, gave to the house of Aragon its influence in _Southern Italy_. Nearly the whole of the fourteenth century was taken up by Aragon in the acquisition of _Sardinia_, which the Pope had ceded, and in the endless wars, connected with this matter, which it waged with the _Genoese_. In 1410 the ruling house of _Barcelona_ became extinct. In the revolutions that followed, _Navarre_ and _Aragon_ were united under _John II._, second son of _Ferdinand I._, king of Aragon. _John_, by his marriage with _Blanche_ of Navarre, shared her father's throne with her after his death. He was guilty of the crime of poisoning his own son _Don Carlos_, Prince of Vianne. John was the father of _Ferdinand_ "the Catholic," under whose scepter the kingdoms of _Aragon, Castile_, and _Navarre_ were brought together. CASTILE.--_Ferdinand III_. (St. Ferdinand) (1214-1252), in warfare with the Moors extended the kingdom of _Castile_ and _Leon_ over _Cordova, Seville_, and _Cadiz_. His son _Alfonso X._, or Alfonso the Wise (1252-1284), cultivated astronomy and astrology, was fond of music and poetry, enlarged the University of Salamanca, gave a code of laws to his kingdom, and caused historical books to be written; but he wasted his treasures in pomp and luxury, and in ambitious designs upon the German imperial crown. He allowed the _Merinides_, new swarms of African Saracens, to spread in the South of Spain. _Alfonso XI._ (1312-1350), after a stormy contest with the nobles during his minority, distinguished himself by the victory of _Tarifa_ over the Moors (1340), and the taking of the city of _Algeciras_ (1344). His enemies respected him; and when he died of the plague, in his camp before Gibraltar, the king of _Granada_ went into mourning (1350). The reign of _Peter the Cruel_ (1350-1369) was filled up with perfidies and crimes. The league of the nobles against him only incited him to fresh barbarities. He committed the most atrocious murders, sometimes with his own hand. Protected by the _Black Prince_, he was at first victorious against _Henry of Transtamare_ his rival; and Du Guesclin was defeated in the battle of _Najara_ in 1367. Afterwards _Peter_ was obliged to surrender, and was killed by the dagger of _Henry_ in a personal encounter. The power of the nobility in _Castile_ had so increased during the civil troubles that _Henry III_. (1390-1406) had to sell his cloak to procure for himself a dinner. Roused by this humiliation to assert his authority, he succeeded with the help of the _Cortes_ in humbling the nobility; but _John II_. (1406-1454) was compelled by the most powerful lords, after a protracted contest, to strike off the head of an unworthy favorite, _Alvaro de Luna_, under whose despotic control he had placed the government (1454). There was a worse state of anarchy under _Henry IV._, John's successor (1454-1474). CONSTITUTIONS OF ARAGON AND CASTILE.--The political institutions of _Aragon_ and _Castile_ are specially worthy of note. The kings of _Aragon_ were very much restricted in their authority by the _Cortes_, or general assembly, composed of the higher and lower classes of nobles, the clergy, and the cities, which by their trade and manufactures had risen to wealth and power. With the _Cortes_ was lodged the right to make laws and to lay taxes. At _Saragassa_ in 1287, it was likewise ordained that they should enjoy certain important _privileges._ The concurrence of the estates was to be required in the choice of the king's _counselors;_ and in case the king without the warrant of a judgment of the highest judicial officer, _the justiciary,_ and of the estates, should adjudge to punishment any member of the body, they should have the right to elect another king. These "privileges" were lost under _Peter IV._ (1336-1387), but the old rights were confirmed. To the _justiciary_ was given the power to determine all conflicts of the estates with the king or with one another. His influence increased as time went on. He was the first magistrate in the kingdom. In _Castile,_ as early as 1169 the deputies of the cities were admitted into the Cortes. We find the cities, at the end of the thirteenth century, forming a confederation, called a "fraternity," against the nobles. Their deputies at that time had more power in the assemblies than the nobles and clergy. But the power of the nobles increased, especially from the accession of _Henry of Transtamare._ In the overthrow of _Alvaro de Luna,_ their triumph was complete: they proved themselves to be stronger than the king. THE CASTILIANS.--The Spanish Mohammedans were superior in refinement to their Christian adversaries. The latter learned much from their enemies, without losing the patriotic and religious ardor which was fostered by the popular minstrelsy, and by the romantic exploits and encounters with the "infidels." The result was the peculiar spirit of Castilian chivalry. The early development of popular government in _Castile_ increased the feeling of personal independence. Outside of Italy, no cities of Europe in the Middle Ages were so rich and flourishing as the cities of _Castile,_ Materials of commerce were afforded by the famous breed of sheep, and by the products of the soil and of manufactures. The nobles gained great wealth, and had vast estates in the country. They held court as petty sovereigns: _Alvaro de Luna_ had twenty thousand vassals. They were inured to war, they were haughty and overbearing, and complaints of their oppressions were frequent on the part of the lower orders. The Castilian ecclesiastics were often lax in their morals. The higher prelates were possessed of great riches and authority. In the beginning of the fifteenth century the people in _Castile_ had more power, compared with the power of the sovereign, than in any other European country. But the representation of the commons was exclusively from the cities, and not, as in England, largely from the landed proprietors. THE ARAGONESE.--The extraordinary authority exercised by the _justiciary,_ or justice, of Aragon was perhaps the most remarkable feature of its constitution. Dwelling on the ocean, the Aragonese built up a naval power. _Barcelona,_ after its union with Aragon, was the seat of a flourishing commerce, and framed the first written code of maritime law now extant. Its municipal officers were merchants and mechanics. Membership in the guilds was sought by nobles, as rendering them eligible to the magistracy. The burghers became proud and independent. The Catalans did not hesitate to assert their rights against encroachments of the kings. In 1430 the University of Barcelona was founded. "After the genuine race of troubadours had passed away," says Mr. Prescott, "the Provencal or Limousin verse was carried to its highest excellence by the poets of Valencia" (Prescott's _History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella,_ Introduction). PORTUGAL: COMMERCE AND NAVIGATION.--About 1095 _Alfonso VI.,_ king of _Castile_ and _Leon,_ gave the territory between the _Minho_ and the _Douro_ to his son-in-law, _Henry of Burgundy,_ who assumed the title of Count of Portugal. His son and successor, _Alfonso I.,_ who defeated the Moors at _Ourique_ in 1139, was hailed as king by his army, and later was confirmed in the title by the Pope (1185). He was acknowledged as independent by the king of Castile. In a diet at _Laimego_, he gave an excellent constitution and body of laws to his people (1143). Soon after, he conquered _Lisbon_, and made it his capital. His son, _Sancho I._ (1185-1211), was distinguished both for his victories over the Moors and for his encouragement of tillage and of farm-laborers. Until we reach the fifteenth century, Portuguese history is occupied with wars with the Moors and the Castilians, contests of the kings with the nobles, and struggles between rival aspirants for the throne, and between the sovereigns on the one hand and the clergy and the popes on the other. Under _Dionysius III_. (1279-1325) there began a new era, in which the Portuguese became eminent for industry and learning, and in commerce and navigation. He founded the University of Lisbon. _Alfonso IV_. (1325-1357) continued on the same path. But he caused _Ines de Castro_, who had been secretly married to his son, to be murdered (1354); a crime which the son, _Peter I_. (1357-1367), after his accession, avenged by causing the hearts of the murderers to be torn out. _John I_. (1385-1433) repelled a great invasion of the Castilians, in a battle near Lisbon, and became at first regent and then king. He was the founder of a new family. By him _Ceuta_ in Africa was captured from the Moors. _Madeira_ was discovered (1419), and by the burning of the forests was prepared for the cultivation of sugar-cane and the vine. In 1432 the Portuguese occupied the _Azores_. A most active interest in voyages of discovery was taken by _Prince Henry the Navigator_ (1394-1460), fourth son of King _John I_. and of _Philippa_, daughter of _John of Gaunt_. IV. THE SCANDINAVIAN COUNTRIES. THE BALTIC LANDS.--There are three divisions of Europe which neither Charlemagne's Empire nor the Eastern Empire included. The first is _Spain_, which had been comprised in the old Roman Empire. The second is _Great Britain_ and the adjacent islands. Only a portion of Britain was held as a province by old Rome. The third is the two _Scandinavian_ peninsulas,--Denmark, and Norway and Sweden, with the _Slavonic_ lands to the east and south, which may be said to have had a common relation to the _Baltic_. The _Scandinavians_ had their period of foreign conquest and settlement, but their settlements abroad remained in no connection with the countries whence they came. _Sweden_ was cut off from the ocean. "The history of Sweden"--as Mr. Freeman, to whom we owe a lucid exposition of this subject, has pointed out--"mainly consists in the growth and the loss of her dominion in the Baltic lands out of her own peninsula. It is only in quite modern times that the union of the crowns, though not of the kingdoms, of Sweden and Norway, has created a power wholly peninsular and equally Baltic and oceanic." The Germans and Scandinavians spread their dominion over the Aryan and non-Aryan tribes on the south and east of the Baltic. _Finland_, inhabited by a Turanian or Scythic people whose language is akin to that of the Hungarians, was long under Swedish dominion. Now Finland and the east of the Baltic are in Russia, while the southern and south-eastern shore of the Baltic is German. _Russia_, in modern days, having no oceanic character like Great Britain and Spain, has expanded her dominion westward to the Baltic, but mainly to the east over Central Asia. She has built up a _continental_, instead of a maritime and colonial, empire. CONVERSION OF SCANDINAVIA.--In the earlier part of the Middle Ages, the two Scandinavian peninsulas are known only through the piratical expeditions which they send forth upon the two adjacent seas. By the way of the North Sea, the Northmen reached France, England, Greenland, and America; by the way of the Baltic, Russia. The conversion of _Denmark_ to Christianity was completed in the eleventh century, under _Canute_; that of Norway in the tenth, and of Sweden in the eleventh. After the foreign settlements were made, and with the introduction of the gospel, piracy ceased, and civilization began (p. 239). DENMARK.--After _Canute VI._ (1182), _Waldemar II._, the Victorious, was the prominent personage in Danish history. He conquered _Holstein_ and _Pomerania_,--in fact, every thing north of the Elbe and the Elde. In 1219 he overran _Esthonia_, in a crusade for the forcible conversion of the pagans, when the Danish standard, the _Dannebrog_,--a white cross on a blood-red field,--began to be used. On his return, he was treacherously captured, and with his son was kept in prison in Mecklenburg for three years, by _Henry_, Count of _Schwerin_. _Waldemar_ was defeated in 1227, in the war undertaken to recover the conquests which he had given up as the price of his release. He was the author of a code of laws. UNION OF CROWNS.--_Waldemar III._ (1340-1375) regained the conquests of Waldemar II. This brought on a general war, in which the _Hanseatic League_, as well as Sweden, were among his antagonists (1363). Denmark, having control of the entrance to the Baltic, and exacting tolls of vessels, was a second time involved in war with that great mercantile confederacy and its allies, and was worsted in the conflict (1372). Waldemar's second daughter, _Margaret_, married _Hakon VI._, King of Norway. Hakon's son _Olaf_ was a child at his father's death, and the regency was held by his mother. _Olaf_ (1376-1387) was elected by the Estates king of _Denmark_. His mother, now regent in both countries, became queen in both after _Olaf's_ death. In 1388 Margaret accepted the crown of Sweden; the Swedes having revolted against the king, _Albert_, who was defeated and captured at _Falkoeping_ (1389). SWEDEN.--War existed for centuries between the _Swedes_ and the _Goths_, the inhabitants of the southern part of the peninsula. Each race contended for supremacy. Political union began with _Waldemar_ (1250-1275), son of _Birger Jarl_ (Earl Birger). Stockholm was founded in 1255. Private wars and judicial combats were suppressed, commerce was encouraged, and the condition of women improved. Large duchies were established, afterwards a source of discord. _Magnus I_. (1279-1290) was surnamed _Ladulas_, or _Barnlock_, for protecting the granaries of the peasants from the rapacious nobles. His reign was succeeded by war between his sons. As the result of a popular revolt in 1319, _Magnus Smek_, an infant, became king, and during the regency succeeded, by right of his mother, to the crown of _Norway_, where he (1350) placed on the throne his son _Hakon_. But when _Magnus_ attempted to rule without the senate, he was deposed, and _Albert_ of _Mecklenburg_ was elected king (1365). But the nobles were supreme: in 1388 they deposed _Albert_, and gave the crown to _Margaret_ of Norway and Denmark. _Albert_ was held a prisoner for six years, and then renounced his claim to the throne. NORWAY.--_Magnus III_. (1095-1103), called from his Scottish dress _Barefoot_, united the _Hebrides_ and _Orcades_ into a kingdom for his son _Sigurd_, and invaded Iceland, where he died. _Sigurd_ inherited the spirit of _Harold Fairhair_ (860-about 933), through whom Norway had been made a united kingdom. He made a voyage to Jerusalem through the Mediterranean, and was a renowned crusader. After his death (1130), there were fierce contests for the throne, the more fierce as illegitimate sons had the same right in law as those born in wedlock. In 1152 a papal legate established a hierarchy in Norway, which interfered in the struggle. Conflicts arose between the clerical party and the national party, in which the latter at length gained the day. Under _Hakon VI_., _Iceland_ was conquered (1260). _Magnus VI_. (1263-1280) brought in an era of quiet, without stifling popular freedom. The cities engaged actively in manufactures and commerce. _Magnus_ strengthened and organized the military and naval force. By him the _Hebrides_ were ceded to Scotland. Under _Eric_ (1280-1299), called _Priest-hater_, there was a struggle to curb the power of the clergy and nobles, in which the king was aided by the peasants. He was worsted in the conflict with the Hanse towns, and compelled to join their League. The accession of _Magnus Smek_, the son of his daughter, to the throne of Norway (1319), led eventually to the _Union_ of _Calmar_ (1397), in which Sweden, Norway, and Denmark were brought together. "The situation of Norway, during the Middle Ages, might be shortly described as an absolute monarchy resting almost directly on one of the most democratic states of society in Europe." The greater families, by the partition of their estates, became a part of the class of small land-owners. Between them and the king there was no intermediate class. AFTER THE UNION OF CALMAR.--After the death of _Margaret_, who governed the united kingdoms after the union, _Eric XIII_. of Pomerania succeeded. The union was shaken by the revolt of _Schleswig_ and of _Holstein_, and was dissolved on the death of _Christopher_ of Bavaria (1448), who had been chosen king. The Swedes broke off, and made _Charles Canutson_ king, under the name of _Charles VIII_. _Denmark_ and _Norway_ remained united; and under _Christian I_. of the house of _Oldenburg_, whom they made king, _Schleswig_ and _Holstein_ were again attached to Denmark (1459). V. POLAND AND RUSSIA. THE SLAVONIC TRIBES.--The settlement of the _Hungarians_ (Magyars) in Europe had the effect to divide the Slavonic tribes into three general groups. The _northern_ Slaves were separated from the Slaves south of the Danube,--the inhabitants of Servia, Croatia, Dalmatia, etc. The _north-western_ Slaves bordered on the Western Empire. The states of _Bohemia_ and _Poland_ grew up among them. On the east of this group of Slaves were the Russians. Both _Poland_ and _Russia_ became independent kingdoms. In the course of history, a part of the _north Slavonic lands_, those which are represented by Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Brandenburg, and Saxony, were Germanized. Lands in the _south-west_, as Bohemia and Moravia, remained predominantly Slavonic in speech. A _central_ region formed the kingdom of Poland. On the east were the Slavonic tribes which were the nucleus of modern _Russia_. LITHUANIANS AND PRUSSIANS.--Both _Poland_ and _Russia_ were originally cut off from the Baltic by other races. Such were the non-Aryan _Fins_ in Esthonia (Esthland) and Livonia (Livland). Such, also, were the Aryans of the _Lettic_ branch, of whom the _Lithuanians_ and the _Prussians_ were the principal divisions. The _Lithuanians_ formed at one time a strong state. The _Prussians_ finally gave their name to the Teutonic kingdom in which they were absorbed. THE POLES.--The _Poles_ derive their name from a word meaning _plains_. They were inhabitants of the plains. They were the strongest of a group of tribes dwelling between the Oder and the Vistula, and holding the coast between their mouths. Between them and the sea, on the east of the Vistula, were the _Prussians_. POLAND: ITS CONSTITUTION.--In the tenth century the _Lechs_, or _Poles_, on the Vistula, had acquired considerable power, and had a center at _Gnesen_, which remained the metropolis of Poland. There are legends of a first duke, _Piast_ by name. A dynasty which bore his name continued in Poland until 1370; in Silesia, until 1675. _Miecislas I_. was converted to Christianity by his wife, a Bohemian princess. He did homage to the Emperor _Otto I_. (978). _Boleslav I_. (992) aspired to the regal dignity, and had himself crowned as king by his bishops. _Gregory VII_. excommunicated him, deprived him of the title of king, and laid Poland under an interdict. _Boleslav III_., the Victorious (1102-1138), subdued the _Pomeranians_, and compelled them to receive Christianity. He divided his kingdom among his four sons. _Silesia_ became an independent duchy. A long crusade was carried on against the _Prussians_, a heathen people, who attacked the Poles, by the "Brethren of the soldiers of Christ," and the "Teutonic knights," two orders which were united (about 1226). The Teutonic knights at length became the enemies of the Poles. The savage _Lithuanians_ assailed them on the north. From the anarchy that reigned, Poland was rescued by _Casimir III_., the Great (1333-1370), who defeated the Russians, and carried his eastern boundary as far as the _Dnieper_. Prior to this time, Poland was an important kingdom. Casimir framed a code of written laws for his people, and gave an impulse to commerce. But in order to secure the election of his nephew, _Louis_ king of Hungary (1370-1382), he had to increase the powers and privileges of the nobles. The accession of _Louis_ terminated the long rivalry of Poland and Hungary. He, like _Casimir_, died without children. The nobles made _Jagellon_, the Grand Duke of _Lithuania_, his successor (1386), who took the name of _Vladislav II_. Under a series of conquering princes, _Lithuania_ had extended its dominion over the neighboring Russian lands, and become a strong state. _Vladislav_ was chosen on the condition that he should espouse the daughter of the last king, and, with his nation, embrace Christianity. This event doubled the territory of Poland. The _Teutonic Knights_, who ruled from the Oder to the Gulf of Finland, were now overcome. The treaty of _Thorn_ (1466) confined their dominion to _Eastern Prussia_. The misfortune of _Poland_ was its political constitution. Although the monarchy was not yet completely elective, but hereditary in the house of _Jagellon_, the election of every king had to be sanctioned by the nobles. They alone took part in the diet, and held the offices and honors. There was no burgher class, no "third estate." Every man who owned and was able to equip a horse was counted as a noble. The burden of taxation fell on the peasants. NATURAL FEATURES OF RUSSIA.--Russia in Europe comprises at present more than half the territory of that entire continent. Yet it has but a small share of seaboard, and of this a large part is frozen in winter. The surface of Russia is of a piece with the boundless plateaus of Northern and Central Asia. It has been defined as the "Europe of plains, in opposition to the Europe of mountains." The mountains of Russia are chiefly on its boundaries. It is a country subject to extremes of heat and cold. From the scarcity of stone, all buildings were formerly of wood, and hence its towns were all combustible. The rivers of Russia have been of immense importance in its history. "The whole history of this country is the history of its three great rivers, and is divided into three periods,--that of the _Dnieper_ with _Kiev_, that of the _Volga_ with _Moscow_, and that of the _Neva_ with _Novgorod_ in the eighth century, and _St. Petersburg_ in the eighteenth." RUSSIANS AND POLES.--The Russian Slaves in the ninth century occupied but a small part of what is now Russia. There was probably little difference then between them and the Poles; but the one people were molded by the Greek Church and Greek civilization, the other by the Latin Church and by the collective influences of Western Europe. RUSSIAN HISTORY.--The Northmen under _Rurik_ had founded their dominion in Russia. _Novgorod_ was their center. Thence they pushed their conquests to the south. Their descendants made _Kiev_, on the Dnieper, their capital. In Russia, as elsewhere, the Scandinavians quickly blended with their native subjects. Under _Vladimir I._ (980-1015), who was converted to Greek Christianity, with his people, and _Iaroslaf I._ (1019-1051), they attained to considerable power; but the custom of the sovereigns to divide their dominions among their sons, broke up their territory into a multitude of petty principalities. The result was a monotonous series of fierce contests, without any substantial result. In the midst of the bloody and profitless civil wars occurred the great invasion of the _Mongols_, who destroyed the principality of _Kiev_, and made that of _Vladimir_ tributary. For two centuries the Russians continued under the yoke of the "Golden Horde," which the Mongols established on the Volga. They were obliged to pay tribute, and the Russian princes at their accession had to swear fealty to the _khan_ on the banks of the river _Amoor_. At the time of the Mongol conquest, _Novgorod_ was the center of Russian dominion. Towards the end of the thirteenth century, _Moscow_ became a new center of Russian power. From _Moscow_ comes the name _Muscovy_. "Muscovy was to Russia what France in the older sense was to the whole land which came to bear that name." In the fourteenth century, while _Lithuania_ and _Poland_ were absorbing by conquest the territories of earlier or _Western_ Russia, the Duchy of _Moscow_ was building up a new Russia in the East, out of which grew the Russia of to-day. _Ivan I._, regarded as the founder of the Russian monarchy, made Moscow his capital in 1328. Most of the other princes were subject to him. _Demetrius_ (or _Dimtri) I_. gained two great victories over the Mongol horde (1378 and 1380); but in 1382 they burned _Moscow_, and slew twenty-four thousand of its inhabitants. It was not until the reign of _Ivan III_., Ivan the Great (1462-1505), that _Novgorod_ submitted to _Moscow_, and Russia was wholly delivered from the control and influence of the Mongols. VI. HUNGARY. THE ARPAD DYNASTY.--The chiefs of the Turanian _Magyars_, about 889, elected _Arpad_ as successor of the leader under whom they had crossed the Carpathian Mountains. They overran Hungary and Transylvania, and terrified Europe by their invasions (p. 249). After their defeats by the emperors _Henry I_. and _Otto the Great_ (p. 261), they confined themselves to their own country. The first king, _Stephen_,--St. Stephen,--was crowned, with the consent of Pope _Sylvester II_., in the year 1000. He divided the land into counties, organized the Church, and founded convents and schools. He conferred on the bishops high offices. He established a national council, composed of the lords temporal and spiritual, and of the knights, out of which sprung the _diets_. _Ladislaus I_. conquered _Croatia_ (1089), and a part of the "Red Russian" land of _Galicia_ (1093). Coloman, "the Learned," a brave and able man, annexed _Dalmatia_, which he wrested from the Venetians (1102). In the reign of _Andrew II_. (1205-1235), the "Golden Bull" was extorted by the nobles, which conferred on them extraordinary rights and privileges, including exemption from arrest prior to trial and conviction, and the control of the diet over appointments to office. It even authorized armed resistance on their part to tyrannical measures of the king,--a right that was not abrogated until 1687. Hungary was devastated by the great Tartar invasion (1241-42) (p. 283). The kings of Hungary supported the cause of _Rudolph_ of Austria against _Ottocar_ of Bohemia (p. 332). INVASIONS OF THE TURKS.--The last king of the _Arpad_ dynasty died in 1301. There was a division of parties in the choice of a successor. Pope _Boniface VIII_. and the clergy supported the claims of Count _Charles Robert of Anjou_, who was related to the former reigning family. Under the son of _Charles Robert, Louis,_ who also succeeded _Casimir III_. as king of Poland (1370), Hungary became a very powerful state. _Galicia_ was regained, _Moldavia_ and _Bulgaria_ were conquered. After the death of _Louis_, his daughter _Maria_ reigned from 1386 conjointly with _Sigismund_, afterwards emperor, and king of Bohemia. He established his supremacy over _Bosnia_. From this time the invasions of the _Turks_ begin. There had been a party in favor of raising to the throne _Vladislaus_, king of Poland; and after the death of Sigismund's successor, _Albert II_. of Austria (1437), and the death of the queen, he gained the crown (1442). He was slain at _Varna_, in the great battle in which the Hungarians were vanquished by the Turks (1444). _John Hunyady_, who had several times defeated the Turks, and who escaped on the field of Varna, was made for the time "governor;" but on the release of the son of Albert, _Ladislaus Posthumus_, who had been kept from the throne by the Emperor _Frederick III_., he was recognized as king (1452). _Hun-yady_ was made general-in-chief. _Frederick_ had also retained in his hands the crown, which had been intrusted to his care, and which Hungarians have always regarded with extreme veneration. A little later, great advantages were gained over the Turks, to be lost again in the sixteenth century. VII. THE OTTOMAN TURKS. OSMAN: MURAD I.--Towards the end of the thirteenth century, the _Osman_ (or _Ottoman_) _Turks_, warlike nomad hordes, in order to escape from the _Mongols_, moved from the region east of the Caspian Sea, and conquered in Asia Minor the remnant of the kingdom of the Seljukians (p. 270). Impelled by fanaticism and the desire of booty, _Ottoman_ (or _Osman_), their leader, advanced into _Bithynia_, and took _Pruse_, or _Broussa_, one of the most important cities of Asia Minor. The Greeks, with their Catalonian auxiliaries, were not able to dislodge him from his new possession. The Byzantine court was disabled from making an energetic effort for this end, by the partisan rancor, and mingled lethargy and cruelty, which characterized the old age of the Greek Empire. _Nicomedia_, _Nicoea_, and _Ilium_ were conquered by the Sultan (or _Padishah_). _Murad I_. (1361-1389) founded the corps of _janizaries_, composed of select Christian youth chosen from the captives for their beauty and vigor. These became the most effective soldiers,--sometimes dangerous, however, to the sultans themselves. _Adrianople_ was taken by _Murad_, and made the seat of his authority. The Christian principalities of _Thrace_, and the ancient but depopulated cities founded by the Greeks and Romans, were overrun. The Servians and Bulgarians made a stand against the fierce Ottoman warriors, but were beaten in the battle of _Kosovo_, where _Murad_was slain. BAJAZET.--_Bajazet_, the son and successor of _Murad_, outdid his predecessor in his martial prowess. He conquered _Macedonia_ and _Thessaly_, and _Greece_ to the southern end of Peloponnesus. The Emperor _Sigismund_ and _John of Burgundy_, with one hundred thousand men, were utterly defeated in the sanguinary battle of _Nicopolis_ (1396). _Sigismund_ escaped by sea; the French counts and knights had to be redeemed from captivity with a large ransom; and ten thousand prisoners of lower rank were slaughtered by _Bajazet_. _Bosnia_ was now in the hands of the victor. _Constantinople_ had to pay tribute, and seemed likely to become his prey, when a temporary respite was obtained for it by the coming of a host even more powerful than that of _Bajazet_. MONGOLIAN INVASION.--_Timur_, or _Tamerlane_, a descendant of _Genghis Khan _(p. 283), revived the fallen Tartar kingdom. At the head of his wandering _Tartars_, which grew into an army, he left _Samarcand_, where he had caused himself to be proclaimed sovereign, and, in a rapid career of conquest, made himself master of the countries from the Wall of China to the Mediterranean, and from the boundaries of Egypt to Moscow. Everywhere his path was marked with blood and with the ruins of the places which he destroyed. At _Ispahan_, in Persia, seventy thousand persons were killed. At _Delhi_, one hundred thousand captives were slain, that his relative, the "Great Mogul," might reign in security. It was his delight to pile up at the gates of cities pyramids of twenty or thirty thousand heads. Later (1401), at _Bagdad_, he erected such a pyramid of ninety thousand heads. He gained a great victory over the "Golden Horde" in _Russia_ (p. 283), conquered the unsubdued parts of _Persia_, entered _Bagdad_, _Bassorah_, and _Mosul_, vanquished the khan of _Kaptchak_, and penetrated _Russia_ in his devastating progress, as far as _Moscow_ (1396). Then followed the conquest of _Hindustan_. TAMERLANE AND BAJAZET.--The two powerful monarchs, _Tamerlane_ and _Bajazet_, now measured their strength in combat with one another. Trembling ambassadors of the Greek emperor, and of certain Seljukian princes, had waited on _Tamerlane_ in _Gengia_ at the foot of the Caucasus. On the 16th of June, 1402, the two armies--four hundred thousand Turks, and eight hundred thousand Mongols, if one may credit the reports--met at _Ancyra_. The Ottomans were defeated, and _Bajazet_ was taken prisoner. Led into the presence of _Tamerlane_, he found the Mongol quietly playing chess with his son. Asia Minor submitted to the conqueror, who penetrated as far as _Smyrna_. An old man, he was looking towards _China_ as another field for invasion, when he died (1405). _Bajazet_ died soon after his defeat. TURKISH CONQUESTS: THE GREEKS AND LATINS.--The grandson of _Bajazet_, _Murad II._ (1421-1451), took up anew his projects of conquest. The empire of _Tamerlane_ quickly fell to pieces. His course had been like that of a hurricane, terrible in its work of destruction, but soon at an end. The Byzantine dominion was soon confined to _Constantinople_ and small districts adjacent. On all sides the Ottoman power was supreme. The Greek emperor, _John VII._ (_Palaeologus_), now endeavored, in imitation of previous attempts, to bring about a union of the Greek and Latin churches, and thus remove a principal obstacle to the obtaining of military help from the West. He went to Italy, attended by the patriarch and many bishops. After long debates and conferences on the abstruse points of doctrinal difference, a verbal agreement was reached between the two parties (1439). But the result was received with so much disfavor and indignation in Constantinople, that the effort to bring the sundered churches together came to naught. The Pope, however, stirred up the Christian princes to engage in war against the Turk. The defeat of _Vladislav_, king of Hungary, and of _Hunyady_, at _Varna_ (1444), caused by the rash onset of the king upon the janizaries, was succeeded by another Turkish victory at _Kosovo_, four years later. FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE.--_Murad II._ was succeeded by his ambitious and unmerciful son, _Mohammed II._ (1451-1481), who determined that _Constantinople_ should be his capital. The city had seven thousand defenders, comprising two thousand Genoese and Venetians, who were commanded by an able man, the Genoese _Justiniani_. The Emperor _Constantine XII._ worshiped according to the Roman rites; while his court observed the Greek forms, and spurned a union with the hated Latin Christians, whose help the emperor was to the end anxious to obtain. The city was stoutly defended for fifty-three days; and when it could be held no longer against the furious assault of the Turks, the gallant _Constantine_, casting aside his golden armor, fell, bravely fighting with the defenders on the ramparts (May 29, 1453). Constantinople became the capital of the Turks. The crescent supplanted the cross, and the Church of _St. Sophia_ was turned into a mosque. TURKISH GOVERNMENT.--The _Sultan_, or _padischah_, among the Turks is absolute master, and proprietor of the soil. There is no order of nobles, and there are no higher classes except the priests (_imams_) and the religious orders (_dervishes_). In the seraglio of the Sultan, with its palaces and gardens, the harem is separated from the other apartments. The _grand vizier_ presides over the council of ministers (_divan_). The provinces are governed by _pashas_ with large powers. Beneath them is a gradation of inferior rulers in the subdivisions of the provinces. The _mufti_ with his subordinate associates is a high authority on questions of religion and law. TURKISH LITERATURE.--The literature of the Ottoman Turks is in merit below the literature of other Mohammedan peoples. It lacks originality, being based on _Persian_ and partly on _Arabic_ models. CHANGES IN THE MIDDLE AGES.--We have seen great changes gradually taking place in the Middle Ages. One is the _centralizing of political authority_ by the subjection of the local rulers, or lords, to the will of the king. Another is the _enfranchisement of the serfs_, and the growing power and self-respect of a middle class. The invention of gunpowder took away the superiority of the mail-clad and mounted warrior. The peasant on the battle-field was a match for the knight. CLERGYY AND LAITY.--There was a change from the time when the _clergy_ were the sole possessors of knowledge, and the exclusive guides of opinion. In the _lay_ part of society, there was an awaking of intellectual activity and a spirit of self-assertion. A brief sketch of important ecclesiastical changes, some of which have been adverted to, will be here in place. POPES IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.--From _Gregory VII_. to _Boniface VIII_., or from near the end of the eleventh to the beginning of the fourteenth century, the highest authority was claimed and exercised by the popes. _Frederick Barbarossa_, the greatest of the German emperors, held the stirrup of _Hadrian IV_., and humbled himself before _Alexander III_. _Innocent III_. compared the authority of _popes_, in contrast with that of _kings_, to the sun in relation to the moon. He excommunicated _Philip Augustus_ of France, _John_ of England, and other monarchs. He claimed the right to refuse to crown the emperor if he should judge him not worthy of the imperial office. The papacy continued to exert these lofty prerogatives until _Boniface VIII_. He asserted that "the two swords," the symbols of both secular and spiritual rule, were given to St. Peter and to his successors: the temporal authority must therefore be subject to the spiritual. The body of _canon law_ was framed in accordance with these views. It embraced the right of the Pope to depose kings and princes. To the sovereign pontiff was accorded the right to dispense from Church laws. With the growth of ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the different countries, the Pope, as the supreme tribunal in all matters affecting the clergy and covered by the canon law, gained a vast increase of judicial prerogatives. THE BABYLONIAN EXILE: THE GREAT SCHISM.--During the residence of the popes at _Avignon_, there was great complaint on account of the dependence of the papacy on France, as well as on account of the heavy taxes levied for the support of the pontifical court, and of the immorality which at times prevailed in it. _Gregory XI_., to the joy of all good men, returned to Rome (1376). But at his death, two years later, a majority of the cardinals elected an Italian, _Urban VI_., in his place. The adherents of the French party made a protest, and chose the Cardinal of Geneva, under the name of _Clement VII_. England, Germany, Hungary, Bohemia, Holland, and almost all Italy, acknowledged _Urban_. France, Spain, Scotland, Savoy, and Lorraine obeyed _Clement_. This great schism of the West created sorrow and alarm among well-disposed Christian people. It tended strongly to diminish the reverence felt for the papal office, and to weaken its influence. THE REFORMING COUNCILS.--The first important effort to terminate the division was made by the _University of Paris_. Its rector, _Nicolas de Clemangis_, was prominent in the movement. _Gerson_ and other eminent scholars and ecclesiastics took part in it. Three great councils were held; the first at _Pisa_ (1409), the second at _Constance_ (1414), and the third at _Basle_ (1431). At these assemblies, the French theologians proceeded upon the "Gallican theory" of the constitution of the Church, according to which supreme authority was held to reside in a general council,--not in the Pope, but in the collective episcopate. At the Council of _Constance_, where it is a significant fact that the votes were taken by nations, there were gathered not only a throng of prelates and inferior clergy, but also the Emperor _Sigismund_, and a multitude of princes, nobles, and spectators of every rank. "The whole world," it was said, "was there." Three popes, each of whom claimed to be legitimate, were deposed; and under the auspices of the council, which affirmed its own sovereign authority, another pope, _Martin V._, was elected in the room of them. The results of the two councils of Pisa and Constance, as regards the reformation of the Church "in head and members," disappointed the hopes of those who were disaffected with the existing state of things. The Council of _Basle_ exhibited the same spirit as that of _Constance_, and passed various measures in the interest of national churches, for the restriction of papal prerogatives, and for practical reforms. The council, however, broke into two parts; and the hopes connected with it were likewise, to a great extent, frustrated. In 1438 the French synod of _Bourges_ issued "the Pragmatic Sanction," containing a strong assertion of the rights and immunities of national churches,--a document which gave occasion to much controversy down to its repeal under King _Francis I_. Had it been practicable for good men in the _fifteenth_ century to unite in wholesome measures for promoting the purity and unity of the Church, the religious revolutions of the _sixteenth_ might have been postponed, if not avoided. CHAPTER III. THE COUNTRIES OF EASTERN ASIA. I. CHINA. THE TANG DYNASTY (618-907).--The confusion in China, after the establishment of the three kingdoms, was brought to an end by the _Sui_ dynasty, which, however, was of short duration. Between the _Hans_ and the new epoch beginning with the _T'angs_, diplomatic intercourse was begun with _Japan_; Christianity was introduced by the Nestorians; a new impulse was given to the spread of _Buddhism_; the first traces of the art of printing are found; and the Yang-tse and the Yellow Rivers were connected by a canal. EVENTS IN THIS PERIOD.--Under the _T'angs,_ the empire was united, peaceful, and prosperous. One of the most remarkable occurrences was the usurpation (649) and successful reign of a woman, the Empress _Wu_. Her policy was wise, and her generals were victorious. The Emperor _Hiuen Tsung_ had a long reign (713-756), and was an ardent patron of literature, but in his later years fell into immoral ways, as was seen in the character of the poems written under his patronage. Under this dynasty, there were productions in poetry of an excellence never surpassed in China. Buddhism, although resisted by the Confucianists and Taouists, gained ground. A bone of _Buddha_ was brought into China with great pomp and ceremony. Early in the reign of the T'angs, _Mohammedanism_ first appeared in China. In the transition period before the accession of the next dynasty (900-960), the art of printing came more into use. The practice of cramping women's feet is said by some to have originated at this time. THE SUNG DYNASTY (960-1280).--In the early part of this era, China was prosperous. But the _Tartars_ began their invasions; and it was finally agreed that one of their tribes, which had helped to drive out another, should retain its conquests in the North. These Tartar conquerors, the _Kins_, were invaded by the Mongol Tartars under _Genghis Khan_ (1213). After a long struggle, both the _Kins_ and the _Sungs_ were conquered by the _Mongols_, and the empire of _Kublai Khan_ (1259-1294), the ruler of nearly all Asia except Hindustan and Arabia, was established. Under the _Sungs_, a system of military drill for all the citizens was ordained. Literature flourished; Buddhism and Taouism concluded to live in peace with one another; and the system of competitive examinations and literary degrees was more fully developed. After the complete conquest of China, the dominion of _Kublai Khan_ lasted for about a century. The celebrated Venetian traveler, _Marco Polo_, visited his court. In this period, mathematics was more studied, and romances were first written. Three out of the "Four Wonderful Books," which are leading novels, were then composed. The Grand Canal was finished by _Kublai Khan_, and thus _Peking_ was connected with Southern China. His great naval expedition against Japan failed. THE MING DYNASTY (1368-1650).--_Hung-wu_, the son of a Chinese laborer, shook off the Mongol yoke, and founded a new dynasty with its capital at _Nanking;_ whence it was afterwards transferred by the third emperor, _Yung-lo_ (1403-1425), to _Peking_. He conquered and annexed _Cochin China_ and _Tonquin_, and even portions of Tartary. The Tartars continued their attack; and in 1450 _Ching-tung_, the emperor, was taken prisoner, and held until he was released in consequence of a Chinese victory. II. JAPAN. CHANGES IN GOVERNMENT.--In the seventh century A.D., there began changes in Japan which resulted in a dual government, and eventually in a feudal system which continued until recent times. The _Mikados_ retired from personal contact with their subjects; and the power by degrees fell into the hands of the families related to the Mikado, and combined into clans. Military control was exercised by the generals (_Shoguns_), and towards the end of the eighth century devolved on the two rival clans of _Gen_ and _Hei_, or _Taira_ and _Minamoto_. About the same time (770-780) the _agricultural_ class became distinct from the _military_, and were compelled to labor hard for their support. One family, the _Fujiwara_, by degrees absorbed the civil offices. They gradually sank into luxury. From the middle to the end of the twelfth century, there was terrible civil war between the _Taira_ clan and the _Minamoto_ clan, in which the former were destroyed. The military power passed from one family to another; but a main fact is that the _Shoguns_ acquired such a control as the "mayors of the palace" had possessed among the Franks. The _Mikados_ lost all real power, and the _Shoguns_ or _Tycoons_ had the actual government in their hands. In recent times (1868) a revolution occurred which restored to the Mikado the power which had belonged to him in the ancient times, before the changes just related took place. CIVIL WAR: FEUDALISM.--The final struggle of the two clans, the _Hei_ or _Taira_, and the _Gen_ or _Minamoto_, was in the naval battle of _Dannoura_, in 1185, which was followed by the extermination of the _Taira_. _Yoritomo_, the victor, was known as the Shogun after 1192. The supremacy of his clan gave way in 1219 to that of their adherents, the _Hôjô_ family, who ruled the Shogun and the emperor both. The invasion of the Mongol Tartars failed, their great fleet being destroyed by a typhoon (1281). The _Hôjô_ rule terminated, after a period of anarchy and civil war, in 1333. The "war of the chrysanthemums"--so called from the imperial emblem, the chrysanthemum--was between two rival Mikados, one in the North, and the other in the South (1336-1392). There ensued a period of confusion and internal war, lasting for nearly two centuries. Gradually there was developed a system of feudalism, in which the _daimios_, or lords of larger or smaller principalities, owned a dependence, either close or more loose, on the _Shogun_. But feudalism was not fully established until the days of the _Tokugama_ dynasty, early in the seventeenth century. III. INDIA. MOHAMMEDAN STATES.--During the Middle Ages, India was invaded by a succession of Mohammedan conquerors. The first invasions were in the seventh and the early part of the eighth centuries. A temporary lodgment was effected in the province of _Sind_, on the north-west, in 711; but the Moslems were driven out by the Hindus in 750. The next invader was the _Afghan_ sultan, _Mahmud_ of Ghazim, a Turk, who is said to have led his armies seventeen times into India. From his time the _Punjab_, except for a brief interval, has been a Mohammedan province. The last of his line of rulers, _Bahram_, was conquered by the Afghan _Allah-ud-din_ of Ghor (1152). Bahram's son fled to _Lahore_, but the _Ghoride_ dynasty soon absorbed his dominion. One of the Ghoride rulers, _Mohammed Ghori_, the _Shahab-ud-din_ of the Mohammedan writers, spread his dominion so that it reached from the Indus to the Brahmaputra. After his death, _Kutab-ud-din_, who had been a Turkish slave, became the founder of the "slave" dynasty (1206-1290), whose capital was _Delhi_. _Allah-ud-din_, by whom he was assassinated (1294), had a brilliant reign of twenty years, and conquered _Deccan_ and _Guzerat_. Of the _Togluk_ dynasty, which gained the throne in 1321, _Mohammed Togluk_ (1325-1351) is said to have had the "reputation of one of the most accomplished princes and most furious tyrants that ever adorned or disgraced human nature." Desiring to remove the seat of empire to the _Deccan_, he compelled the inhabitants of _Delhi_ to leave their old home, and to make the journey of seven hundred miles. TAMERLANE.--Revolts in India made the triumph of _Timour_ (Tamerlane) easy (1398). The Mongol leader sacked _Delhi_, and made a full display of his unrivaled ferocity. A half century of anarchy followed this invasion. LITERATURE.--On Mediaeval History: The General Subject. (See list of works on Universal History, p. 16.) GIBBON'S _Decline and Fall_, etc.; "THE STUDENTS' GIBBON" (Smith, 1 vol.); FREEMAN, _General Sketch of European History_, and _Historical Geography of Europe_; DURUY, _Histoire du Moyen Age_, etc. (11th edition, 1882); Hallam. _View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages_; Lavisse et Rambaud, _Histoire Generale_ (vols. i.-iii.); Cunningham, _Western Civilization_ (vol. ii); Lavisse, _Political History of Europe_; Dunham, _History of Europe during the Middle Ages_ (4 vols.); BRYCE, _The Holy Roman Empire_; Putz and Arnold, _Mediaeval History_; E. A. FREEMAN, _Historical Essays_ (series 1 and 3). Works on Church History. The Church Histories of GIESELER, NEANDER; MILMAN, _History of Latin Christianity_; ALZOG [a Roman Catholic], _Manual_, etc. (3 vols. 1874-78); Hardwick (vol. i., _Middle Ages_); _Students' History of the Church_; STANLEY'S _Eastern Church_; Fisher, _History of the Christian Church_. On Portions of the Mediaeval Period. Froissart, _Chronicles_, etc.; CURTEIS, _History of the Roman Empire_ [395-800]; R. W. CHURCH, _The Beginning of the Middle Ages_; A. Thierry, _Histoire d'Attila_, etc., _St. Jerome_, etc., _St. Jean Chrysostome_, etc.; Church, _Life of Anselm_; MORISON, _Life and Times of St. Bernard_; Gfrörer, _Pabst Gregorius VII. u. sein Zeitalter_ (1859); Bury, _The Later Roman Empire_ (2 vols.); Oman, _The Dark Ages_ (476-918); TOUT, _The Empire and the Papacy_ (918-1272); Emerton, _Mediaeval Europe_ (800-1300); Pears, _The Fall of Constantinople_; Sergeant, _The Franks_; MULLINGER, _The Schools of Charles the Great, and the Restoration of Education in the 9th Century_ (1877); MONTALEMBERT, _The Monks of the West_ (7 vols.); Sartorius, _Gesch. des hanseatischen Bundes_ (3 vols.); Mombert, _Charlemagne_; Sabatier, _Life of Francis of Assisi_; Hasse, _Leben Anselm_; West, _Alcuin_; Hodgkin, _Theodoric the Goth_. General Character of the Period. ROBERTSON, _A View of the Progress of Society in Europe from the Subversion of the Roman Empire_, etc. (Introduction to the History of Charles V.); Kingsley, C., _The Roman and the Teuton: a Series of Lectures_, etc.; SULLIVAN, _Historical Causes and Effects; from the Fall of the Roman Empire_ A.D. 476 to 1517; Ozanam, A. F., _History of Civilization in the Fifth Century_; LAURENT, _Études_, etc. (vol vii.); Sir James Stephen, _Ecclesiastical Essays_; Adams, _Civilization during the Middle Ages_. Scott's novels,--_Ivanhoe, The Talisman, Anne of Geierstein_: they are historically much less correct pictures than his romances which relate to Scotland. Particular Aspects of the Period. SAVIGNY, _Gesch. d. römischen Rechts im Mittelalter_ (7 vols.); Sismondi, _Literature in the South of Europe_; Hallam, _Introduction to the Study of Literature_, etc.; Geffchen, _Church and State_ (2 vols.); GUIZOT, _History of the Origin of Representative Government in Europe_; Hecker, _Epidemics of the Middle Ages_; J. E. THOROLD ROGERS, _A History of Agriculture and Prices in England_ [1259-1793] (4 vols., 1866); Amos, _Roman Civil Law_; Jenks, _Law and Politics in the Middle Ages_; Gross, _The Guild Merchant_; Oman, _Art of War_; VIOLLET-LE-DUC, _Annals of a Fortress_; H. C. Lea, _History of Sacerdotal Celibacy, History of the Inquisition_ (3 vols.), and _Superstition and Force_; LACROIX, _Works on the Middle Ages_, richly illustrated (5 vols., London, 1880); Gautier, _Chivalry_; Cornish, _Chivalry_; BULFINCH, _Age of Chivalry, or Legends of King Arthur; Legends of Charlemagne, or Romance of the Middle Ages_ (2 vols.); COX AND JONES, _Popular Romances of the Middle Ages_; NASSE, _On the Agricultural Community of the Middle Ages_ (1871); Roth, _Gesch. d. Beneficialwesens_, etc.; Secretan, _Essai sur la Feodalité_; Smith, T., _English Guilds_ (1870); WILDA, _Das Gildenwesen im Mittelalter_ (1831); Seignobos, _The Feudal Regime_. Works on the Crusades. G. W. COX, _The Crusades_ (1878); also, art. _Crusades_ in the _Encycl. Brit_.; Michaud, _History of the Crusades_ (3 vols.); VON SYBEL, _The History and Literature of the Crusades_; Mills, _A History of the Crusades_, etc. (2 vols.); Heeren, in _Vermischte historische Schriften_ (3 vols.); Procter's _History of the Crusades_; Gray's _Children's Crusade_; Archer and Kingsford, _The Crusades_. For works on Mohammedanism and the Arabic kingdom, see p. 232. The works here mentioned respecting the several countries either relate to their entire history, or to their history prior to the close of the Middle Ages. I. ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND.--GREEN'S _History of the English People_ (4 vols.), and _Short History of England_ (1 vol.); the "STUDENTS' HUME"; the histories of BRIGHT, Knight, LINGARD, Hume, GUIZOT, Traill, _Social England_ (6 vols., two editions); GAIRDNER, _Outline_, etc.; Turner's _History of the Anglo-Saxons_; Palgrave's _Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth_; Palgrave's _History of Normandy and of England_; FREEMAN'S _History of the Norman Conquest_ (6 vols.), and _History of William Rufus_; Green, _The Making of England_, and _The Conquest of England_; Ramsay, _Foundations of England, Angevin Empire, Lancaster and York_; STUBBS, _The Early Plantagenets_; LONGMAN'S _History of Edward III_.; Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_; Cheyney, _Industrial and Social History of England_; Seebohm, _English Village Community_; _Life of Wickliffe_, by LECHLER, by LOSERTH, by WILSON, by Trevelyan. Kemble's _The Saxons in England_; STUBBS'S _Constitutional History of England in its Origin and Development_ (3 vols.); STUBBS'S _Select Charters_; CREASY'S _Rise and Progress of the English Constitution_; THOMPSON'S _Essay on Magna Charta_; Bisset, _History of the Struggle for Parliamentary Government in England_ (1877); TASWELL-LANGMEAD'S _English Constitutional History_, etc.; FREEMAN'S _Growth of the English Constitution_, etc.; Bagehot, _The English Constitution_; Macy, _The English Constitution_. SCOTLAND.--P. H. Brown, _History of Scotland_ (2 vols.); Miss Macarthur, _History of Scotland_ (1 vol.); E. M. Robertson, _Scotland under her Early Kings_ (2 vols.). IRELAND.--C. G. Walpole, _The Kingdom of Ireland_; Morris, _Ireland_. II. FRANCE.--General histories by Crowe (5 vols.); DURUY (2 vols.); GUIZOT (to 1789, 5 vols.; 1789-1848, 3 vols.); and _Outlines of the History of France_ (1 vol.); Bonnechose (to 1848); JERVIS (Hassall edition); MARTIN (17 vols.); KITCHIN, LACOMBE, MICHELET (17 vols.); Lavisse, _Histoire de France_; Adams, _Growth of the French Nation_; Grant, _The French Monarchy_; Wallon's _St. Louis et son Temps_ (2 vols.); Sismondi, _The French under the Carlovingians_ (1 vol.), _France under the Feudal System_ (1 vol.); BARANTE'S _Histoire des Ducs de Bourgogne de la Maison de Valois_, 1364-1477; WALLON'S _Jeanne d'Arc_ (2 vols.); Lowell's _Joan of Arc_; Jameson's _Life and Times of Du Guesclin_. COULANGES' _Histoire des Institutions politiques de l'Ancienne France_ (1877); Viollet, _Institutions politiques de la France_ (3 vols.); Luchaire, _Manuel des Institutions Françaises_; Esmein, _Histoire du Droit Français_; GUIZOT'S _History of Civilization in France_ (3 vols.), and _Essai sur l'Histoire de France_; THIERRY'S _The Formation and Progress of the Third Estate in France_; Sir James Stephens's _Lectures on the History of France_. III. GERMANY.--Henderson, _A Short History of Germany_ (2 vols.); Histories by C. T. LEWIS (founded on D. Müller), Kohlrausch; Kaufman, _Deutsche Geschichte_; Lamprecht, _Deutsche Geschichte_ (6 vols.); Schröder, _Lehrbuch der d. Rechtsgeschichte_; Richter, _Annalen_. GEISEBRECHT'S _Geschichte d. deutschen Kaiserzeit_ (4 vols.); VON RAUMER'S _Geschichte der Hohenstaufen und ihrer Zeit_ (6 vols.). Coxe's _History of the House of Austria_; KRONES'S _Handbuch d. Geschichte Osterreichs_ (3 vols.); Marlath's _Geschichte Osterreichs_. ARNOLD, _Ansiedelungun und Wanderungen deutscher Stämme_ (1875); also, _Deutsche Urzeit_ (1879); Ozanam, _Les Germains avant le Christianisme_ (1872); SOHM, _Die altdeutsche Reichs und Gerichtsverfassung_; MAURER'S histories of German local institutions (the Marks, the Villages, the Cities); WAITZ, _Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte_ (8 vols.), Wirth, _Die Geschichte der Deutschen_ (1853); SUGENHEIM, _Geschichte d. deutschen Volkes und seiner Kultur_, etc. IV. ITALY.--Cantu, _Histoire des Italiens_ (12 vols., 1859); HUNT'S _History of Italy_ (in Freeman's Series); Butt's _History of Italy_ (2 vols.); LEO'S _Geschichte von Italien_ (5 vols.); SISMONDI'S _Histoire des Republiques Italiennes du Moyen Age_ (10 vols.); SPALDING'S _Italy and the Italians_; Boscoe and Morell, _Compendium of Italian History_. Hodgkin, _Italy and her Invaders_ (2 vols.); TESTA, _History of the War of Frederic I. against the Communes of Lombardy_; HEYD, _Geschichte des Levantehandels im Mittelalter_ (2 vols.); C. HEGEL, _Gesckichte der Städteverfassung von Italien_, etc. Daru, _Histoire de la Republique de Venise_ (9 vols.); BROWN, _Venice: an Historical Sketch_; Ranke, _Zur Venitianer Geschichte_; Machiavelli's _History of Florence_; Napier's _Florentine History_ (6 vols.); PERRENS, _Histoire de Florence_ (4 vols.); REUMONT'S _Lorenzo the Magnificent_ (2 vols.); Roscoe's _Life of Lorenzo de' Medici_; TROLLOPE'S _History of Florence_; Campbell's _Life of Petrarch_; GREGOROVIUS' _History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages_ (8 v., from fifth to sixteenth century); Gallenga, _History of Piedmont_ (3 vols.); Amari, _History of the War of the Sicilian Vespers_ (3 vols.); Malleson, _Studies from Genoese History_ (1 vol.); Oliphant, _Makers of Florence_, etc.; SYMONDS, _Sketches and Studies in Southern Europe_; TAINE, _Florence and Venice_, and _Rome and Naples_; Freeman, _Historical and Architectural Studies_ (chiefly Italian, 1 vol.). V. RUSSIA.--Bell's _History of Russia_ (3 vols.); Howorth's _History of the Mongols_; KARAMSIN, _Histoire de l'Empire de Russie_ (11 vols.); Histories of Russia, by Kelly, Lamartine, Levesque; RAMBAUD, _History of Russia_ (2 vols., 1879); RALSTON, _Early Russian History_. VI. POLAND.--Histories of Poland, by DUNHAM (12mo), Fletcher, JOACHIM (2 vols.), RÖPELL AND CARO. VII. SPAIN AND PORTUGAL.--Lembke und Schäfer, _Geschichte von Spanien_ (3 vols.); MARIANA, _The General History of Spain_; DUNHAM, _History of Spain and Portugal_; CRAWFORD, _Portugal, Old and New_; Burke, _History of Spain_ (2 vols.); Stevens's _Portugal_; TICKNOR'S _History of Spanish Literature_ (3 vols.); Prescott's _History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella_ (introductory chapter). VIII. SWITZERLAND.--History of Switzerland, in LARDNER'S CYCLOPEDIA (1832); Histories of Switzerland, by MORIN (5 vols.); J. Müller; Zschokke; Rochholz, _Tell und Gessler in Sage und Geschichte_ (1877). IX. SCANDINAVIA.--DUNHAM'S _History of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway_ (3 vols.); Dahlmann's _Geschichte von Danemark bis zur Reformation_ (with Norway and Iceland, 3 vols.); Histories of Sweden, by Fryxell, GEIJER AND CARLSON (5 vols.); Laing's _History of Norway_; MALLET'S _Northern Antiquities_; MAURER'S _History of Iceland_; RINK'S _Danish Greenland_; Sinding's _Scandinavia_; WHEATON'S _History of the Northmen_; Worsaac's _Danes and Northmen in Great Britain_. X. OTTOMAN TURKS.--HAMMER-PURGSTALL'S _Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches_ (10 vols.); CREASY'S _History of the Ottoman Turks_; FREEMAN, _The Ottoman Power in Europe_ (1877); ZINKEISEN, _Geschichte d. osmanisch. Reiches in Europa_ (7 vols.). XI. CHINA, JAPAN, AND INDIA.--(See lists on pp. 25, 32.) Dickson, _Japan_, etc. (vol. i., 1869); Griffis, _The Micado's Empire_ (1876). XII. BIBLIOGRAPHIES.--In addition to Adams, _Manual_; Sonnenschein, _The Best Books_ and _A Reader's Guide_; Gross, _Sources and Literature of English History_ (to 1485); Gardiner and Mullinger, _English History for Students_; Monod, _Bibliographie de l'Histoire de France_; Dahlmann-Waitz, _Quellenkunde, der Deutschen Geschichte_; lists in Lavisse et Rambaud, _Histoire Générale_. PART III. MODERN HISTORY. _FROM THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE (1453) TO THE PRESENT TIME._ INTRODUCTION. Modern history as a whole, in contrast with mediæval, is marked by several plainly defined characteristics. They are such as appear, however, in a less developed form, in the latter part of the Middle Ages. 1. In the recent centuries, there has been an increased tendency to consolidate smaller states into larger kingdoms. 2. There has been a _gradual secularizing of politics._ Governments have more and more cast off ecclesiastical control. 3. As another side of this last movement, _political unity_ in Europe has superseded _ecclesiastical unity_. The bond of union among nations, in the room of being membership in one great ecclesiastical commonwealth, became political: it came to be membership in a loosely defined confederacy of nations, held together by treaties or by a tacit agreement in certain accepted rules of public law and outlines of policy. 4. In this system, one main principle is the _balance of power_. This means that any one state may be prevented from enlarging its bounds to such an extent as to endanger its neighbors. We have seen the action of such a principle among the ancient states of Greece. Even in the Middle Ages, as regards Italy, the popes endeavored to keep up an equilibrium. They supported the _Norman kingdom_ in Southern Italy, or the _Lombard leagues_ in the North, as a counterpoise to the German emperors. In the sixteenth century, there were formed combinations to check the power of _Charles V._, king of Spain and emperor of Germany, and afterwards to restrain his successor on the Spanish throne, _Philip II._ In the seventeenth century, there were like combinations against _Louis XIV._ of France, and, over a century later, against the first _Napoleon_. 5. The vast influence and control of _Europe_, by discovery, colonization, and commerce, in other quarters of the globe, is a striking feature of modern times. 6. With the increase of _commerce_ and the growing power of the _middle classes,_ there has arisen the "industrial age." Interests connected with production and trade, and with the material side of civilization, have come into great prominence. 7. Both the pursuits of men, and culture, have become far more _diversified_ than was the case in the Middle Ages. 8. The influence of Christianity in its _ethical_ relations--as an instrument of political and social reform, and a motive to _philanthropy_--has become more active and conspicuous. PERIOD I. FROM THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE TO THE REFORMATION _(1453-1517):_ THE CONSOLIDATION OF MONARCHY: INVENTION AND DISCOVERY: THE RENAISSANCE. CHARACTER OF THIS PERIOD.--In this period monarchy, especially in France, England, and Spain, acquires new strength and extension. The period includes the reigns of three kings who did much to help forward this change: _Louis XI._ of France, _Henry VII._ of England, and _Ferdinand_ the Catholic of Spain. The Italian wars begin with the French invasion of Italy: the rivalship of the kingdoms, and the struggles pertaining to the balance of power, are thus initiated. In this period fall new _inventions_ which have altered the character of civilization, and great geographical _discoveries,_ of which the discovery of the New World is the chief. It is the epoch, moreover, of the _Renaissance,_ or the re-awakening of learning and art. There is a new era in culture. All these movements and changes foretoken greater revolutions in the age that was to follow. CHAPTER I. FRANCE: ENGLAND: SPAIN: GERMANY: ITALY: THE OTTOMAN TURKS: RUSSIA: THE INVASIONS OF ITALY. I. FRANCE. CHARLES VII. AND THE NOBLES.--The result of the hundred-years' war was the acquisition of _Aquitaine_ by the French crown. Aquitaine was incorporated in France. Southern Gaul and Northern Gaul were now one. During the last years of _Charles VII._, his kingdom was comparatively peaceful. Its prosperity revived. A new sort of feudalism had sprung up in the room of the old noblesse, whose power had been crushed. The new nobility was made up of relatives of the royal family, as the Dukes of _Burgundy, Berry, Bourbon_, and the house of _Anjou_. On the east of France was _Burgundy_, which had expanded into a great European power. "The _duchy_ of Burgundy, with the county of Charolois, and the counties of Flanders and Artois, were joined under a common ruler with endless imperial fiefs in the Low Countries, and with the imperial _county_ of Burgundy." The Burgundian boundary was on the south of the Somme, and little more than fifty miles north of _Paris_. The Burgundian dukes were constantly striving to bring it still nearer. On the east and south, the house of _Anjou_ held the duchy of _Bar_ and _Provence_, besides other possessions. On the south, too, was the province of _Dauphiny_; and on the west the strong, half-independent duchy of _Brétagne_, or _Brittany_. _Charles_ had a standing quarrel with his son _Louis_, who early showed his power to inspire dread, but gave no signs of the policy which he triumphantly pursued, after he became king, of putting down feudal insubordination. His young wife _Margaret_, daughter of _James I._ of Scotland, was twelve years old when he, a boy of thirteen, was married to her. He aroused such terror and aversion in her mind that she died at twenty-one of a broken heart. _Louis_--to whom, much to his disgust, _Dauphiny_ instead of Normandy was given to rule--abetted the great lords in their resistance to his father's authority; and, when threatened with coercion, fled to _Brussels_, to the court of his father's cousin, _Philip of Burgundy_, where he was kindly entertained. _Charles VII._, who knew the traits of his son, said, "As for my cousin of Burgundy, he harbors a fox that will one day eat up his chickens." Even then the relations of _Louis_ and _Charles_, Count of Charolois, the heir of Burgundy, were cool and unsympathetic. The king occupied _Dauphiny_, and in 1457 it was fully incorporated in France. The rulers of France and Burgundy, taken up with their own schemes of territorial gain, turned a deaf ear to the calls of Pope _Pius II_. for a crusade against the Turks. It has been said that most of the kings of the house of _Valois_ were either bad or mad. The indolent and heartless Charles _VII._ would seem to have been both. In his last days he suspected that the Dauphin's plots were aided by persons about himself, and that his food was poisoned. He refused to eat, and died in 1461. CHARACTER OF LOUIS XI.--_Louis XI._ (1461-1483) showed himself a master of "statecraft," or the cunning, diplomatic management which pursued its ends stealthily, held no engagements sacred, and was deterred by no scruples of conscience from whatever perfidy was thought requisite to attain the objects in view. _Louis_ was one of the earliest examples of the _kingcraft_ which in the succeeding age was deemed a gift to be coveted by princes. It was an art in which the Italians were masters; and its secrets were set forth, somewhat later than the time of _Louis_, in "The Prince" of _Machiavelli_, a work in which that eminent statesman and historian describes the means by which despots may entrap and crush their enemies. Whether he meant to afford aid to tyrants, or aid to their subjects through an exposure of the tricks of their rulers, the "Machiavellian" spirit designates the policy of intrigue that prevailed all through the sixteenth century, and infected even some of the best of the public men of that age. _Louis_ was mean-looking, shabby in his dress, with a cunning aspect; in his whole deportment and character, in sharp contrast with the chivalrous princes, _Philip_ and _Charles_ of Burgundy. If he was vindictive, he was perhaps not more cruel than others; but he was ungenial, regarding men as his tools. He took pleasure in the society of his provosts or hangmen,--_Tristan l'Hermite_ and _Olivier le Daim._ He often ordered men to execution without so much as the form of a trial. There was in him a vein of superstition. He was punctilious in his devotions. He would not swear a false oath over the cross of St. Loup of Angers, because he thought that death would be the penalty. He did not quail before an enemy in battle; yet such was his alarm at the prospect of death, that he collected about him relics and charms, magicians and hermits, to help him prolong his days. STRIFE WITH THE NOBLES.--The first years of _Louis's_ reign (1461-1467) were passed in a struggle with the great lords whom he was determined to subdue. At the beginning his measures for this end were imprudent. They combined against him in the _League of the Public Weal_ in 1464. Their force was so great that he stood in imminent peril. He counted on the support of _Paris_, and was trying to reach that city when the hostile armies encountered one another at Montlhéry (1465). It was an absurd battle, where at night both parties thought themselves beaten. The king secured his place of refuge. He deemed it prudent to make peace on the terms demanded by the _Count of Charolois,_ and the other nobles. This treaty of _Conflans_ (1465) he caused the Parliament of Paris to refuse to ratify or register. He had trusted to his ability to regain what he might surrender. The strife between the _Duke of Brittany_ and the king's brother _Charles,_ now made _Duke of Normandy,_ enabled Louis soon to recover Normandy. CHARLES THE BOLD, AND LOUIS.--The death of _Philip_ made his son, _Charles the Bold,_ Duke of Burgundy. Charles was in the prime of life, of a chivalrous temper, courteous and polished, fond of reading and music, as well as of knightly sports, and with his head full of dreams of ambition. With certain noble qualities, his pride was excessive, his temper not only hot but obstinate, and, as he grew older, he became more overbearing and cruel. He was the most powerful prince in Europe. The most of his lands were German. In the early part of his reign he pursued the same scheme as that which was at the root of the _League of the Public Weal_. He aimed to hem in _Louis_, and to build up his own power in the direction of France. He allied himself, in 1466, with the _House of York_, then uppermost in _England_. An English force was sent to _Calais_ in 1467. Threatened by this coalition of adversaries, _Louis_ hastened to attack _Brittany_, and forced its duke to conclude a separate peace. Trusting too much to his powers of negotiation, and yielding to the treacherous advice of Cardinal _Balue_, one of his chief counselors, the king determined to go in person to confer with _Charles of Burgundy_. He soon learned that his safe-conduct was of little value. At _Peronne_, he found himself in the midst of enemies, and in reality a prisoner. While there, _Liège_ was in revolt, as _Charles_ ascertained, at the king's instigation. The wrathful duke could be appeased only by agreeing to every thing that he required. _Louis_ had to undergo the humiliation of attending _Charles_ and his army, and of basely taking part in the vengeance inflicted on the city which he had himself stirred up to revolt. He was glad to escape with his life. After his return, he ordered _Balue_ to be put in an iron cage, where he was kept for ten years,--a mode of punishment of Balue's own invention. Louis repudiated the treaty of _Peronne_, under the advice of a body of _Notables_, all of whom he had nominated and summoned. A new league was organized against him; but the king by his wariness, and by his promptitude in attacking _Brittany_, gained advantages, so that a truce was concluded with the _Burgundian_ duke in 1472. _Philip de Commines_, at that time a companion and counselor of _Charles_, left his service for that of _Louis_. To his _Memoirs_ we owe most instructive and interesting details respecting these princes, and the manners and occurrences of the time. CHARLES THE BOLD, AND THE SWISS.--From this time _Charles_ turned his attention _eastward_, and devoted himself to building up a great principality on the _Rhine_, which might open the way for his succession to the empire. It seemed to be his plan to bring together the old kingdom of _Lotharingia_ and that of the _Burgundies_. He found no sympathy in his schemes from the emperor _Frederick III_. The great barrier in Charles's way was the freedom-loving spirit of the inhabitants of the Swiss mountains. Availing himself of a plausible pretext, he endeavored to get possession of _Cologne_ by first laying siege to _Neuss_, which lies below it. Wasting his strength in the unsuccessful attempt to capture this place, he failed to make a junction of his forces with the English troops who landed in _France_ under his ally, King _Edward IV_. The English king was persuaded to make a truce with France by the wily _Louis_, who was constantly on the watch for any mistakes or mishaps of his impetuous Burgundian adversary. The cruelty of _Charles_ to the Swiss inhabitants of _Granson_, who had surrendered, brought upon him an attack of their exasperated countrymen near that place (1476). The _Burgundians_ were routed; and the duke's camp, with all its treasures, including his sword, the plate of his chapel, and precious stones of inestimable value, fell into the hands of the hardy mountaineers, who knew nothing of the worth of these things. The next year the Duke once more flung his reckless valor against the strength of the Swiss infantry, and barely escaped from an utter defeat at _Morat_. Made desperate by misfortune, he risked another battle near _Nanci_, in 1477, at the head of an inferior force, composed partly of treacherous mercenaries, and was vanquished and slain. He had intended to make _Nanci_ his capital; but his body was found near by in a swamp, stripped of its clothing, frozen, and covered with wounds. EXTENSION OF FRANCE.--_Louis XI_ could hardly stifle expressions of joy at the news of the death of his hated and formidable rival. While _Charles_ had been busy in Germany, _Louis_ had taken the opportunity to put down, one by one, the great nobles who had shown themselves ill-affected. He secured to France _Roussillon_ and the northern slopes of the Pyrenees. It was now his purpose to lay hold of as many as possible of the possessions of the late duke. _Mary_, the daughter of _Charles the Bold_, the heiress of _Burgundy_, gave her hand in marriage to _Maximilian_ of _Austria_, an event which carried after it the most important consequences. The result of the conflicts of _Louis_ and _Maximilian_ was the Peace of _Arras_ (1482), which left in the hands of France the towns on the _Somme_, and the great _Burgundian duchy_. For a time _Maximilian_, as holder of the French fiefs of Flanders and Artois, was a vassal of the French king. On the death of King _René_, in 1480, and the extinction of the house of _Anjou_, Louis annexed the three great districts of _Anjou, Maine_, and _Provence_, the last of which was a fief of the empire. LAST DAYS OF LOUIS XI.--In his last days, old King _Louis_, in wretched health, tortured with the fear of death, and in constant dread of plots to destroy him, shut himself up in the castle of _Plessis-les-Tours_, which he strongly fortified, and manned with guards who were instructed to shoot all who approached without leave. He kept up his activity in management, and in truth devised schemes for the advantage of his realm. His selfish and malignant temper brought to him one unexpected joy from the sudden death of _Mary of Burgundy_ (1482), from which, however, France did not reap the advantages which he expected. He died in 1483, at the age of sixty-one. He, more than any other, was the founder of the French monarchy in the later form. He centralized the administration of the government. He fought against feudalism, old and new. He strengthened, however, local authority where it did not interfere with the power of the king. In matters of internal government he was often just and wise. CHARLES VIII. (1483-1496): ANNE OF BEAUJEU.--_Charles VIII._ at the death of his father was only fourteen years old. But in his older sister, _Anne of Beaujeu_, the wife of _Peter of Bourbon_, he had an energetic guide who for ten years virtually managed public affairs. She proved too strong for the opposition of the royal princes, of the nobility, and of the States General. The nobles turned for support to _Richard III. of England_. _Anne_ strengthened with men and money _Henry of Richmond_, the rival and conqueror of Richard. The Duke of Brittany, with his allies, the Duke of Orleans, the Prince of Orange, and others, was defeated in a hardly contested battle in 1488, which was followed by a treaty advantageous to France. The crowning achievement of _Anne of Beaujeu_ was the marriage of _Anne of Brittany_ to _Charles VIII_. This was accomplished although she had already been married by proxy to _Maximilian_, while _Charles_ was pledged to marry _Margaret_, the emperor's daughter. If _Anne of Brittany_ should outlive _Charles_, she engaged to marry his successor. This second marriage actually took place: she became the wife of _Louis XII_. Brittany was thus incorporated in France. The Italian expeditions, the great events in the reign of _Charles VIII._, will be related hereafter. II. ENGLAND. WAR OF THE ROSES: THE HOUSE OF YORK.--The crown in England had come to be considered as the property of a family, to which the legitimate heir had a sacred claim. The Wars of the Roses (1455-1485) grew out of family rivalries. It was a fight among nobles. But other reasons were not without influence. The party of _York_ (whose badge was the white rose) was the popular party, which had its strength in Kent and in the trading cities. It went for reform of government. The party of _Lancaster_ (whose badge was the red rose) was the more conservative party, having its strength among the barons of the North. _Richard_, Duke of York, thought that he had a better claim to the English crown than _Henry VI._, because his ancestor, _Lionel_, was an older son of _Edward III._ than _John of Gaunt_, the ancestor of _Henry_. The king was insane at times, and _Richard_ was made Protector or Regent of Parliament. But _Henry_, becoming better, drove him from his presence. He organized an insurrection, but was defeated in a battle at _Wakefield_ by the troops of the strong-hearted queen. He was crowned with a wreath of grass, and then beheaded. His brave son, _Rutland_, was killed as he fled. But Richard's eldest son, _Edward--Edward IV._ (1461-1483)--supported by the powerful Earl of _Warwick_, "the king-maker," defeated the queen at _Towton_, took possession of the throne, and imprisoned _Henry VI._, who had fallen into imbecility. Edward was popular because he kept order. But the favors which he lavished on the _Woodvilles_, relatives of his Lancastrian wife _Elizabeth_, enabled the opposing party, to which _Warwick_ deserted, to get the upper hand (1470); and _Edward_ fled to Holland. But he soon returned, and won the battles of _Barnet_ and _Tewkesbury_ (1471). _Henry VI._ was secretly murdered in the Tower. The house of _York_ was now in the ascendant. A quarrel between the king and his ambitious brother _Clarence_, who had married _Warwick's_ daughter, led to the trial and condemnation of _Clarence_, who was put to death in the Tower. It was during the reign of _Edward IV._ that _Caxton_ set up the first printing-press in England. After Edward his brother reigned, _Richard III._ (1483-1485), a brave but merciless man, who made his way to the throne by the death of the two young princes _Edward_ and _Richard_, whose murder in the Tower he is with good reason supposed to have procured. He had pretended that _Edward IV._ had never been lawfully married to their mother. Henry _Tudor_, Earl of Richmond, descended by his mother from _John of Gaunt_, aided by France, landed in Wales, and won a victory at _Bosworth_ over the adherents of the white rose,--a victory which gave him a kingdom and a crown. Thus the house of _Lancaster_ in the person of _Henry VII._ (1485-1509), gained the throne. He married _Elizabeth_, the eldest daughter of _Edward IV._, and so the two hostile houses were united. He was the first of the TUDOR kings. CHARACTER OF THE CIVIL WARS.--The Wars of the Roses are, in certain respects, peculiar. They extended over a long period, but did not include more than three years of actual fighting. The battles were fierce, and the combatants unsparing in the treatment of their foes. Yet the population of the country did not diminish. Business and the administration of justice went on as usual. Trade began to be held in high esteem, and traders to amass wealth. The number of journeymen and day-laborers increased, and there was a disposition to break through the guild laws. EFFECTS OF THE CIVIL WARS.--The most striking result of the civil wars was the strengthening of the power of the king. Not more than thirty of the old nobles survived. Laws were made forbidding the nobles to keep armed "_retainers_;" and against "_maintenance_," or the custom of nobles to promise to support, in their quarrels or law-cases, men who adhered to them. The court of the _Star Chamber_ was set up to prevent these abuses. It was turned into an instrument of tyranny in the hands of the kings. _Henry VII._ extorted from the rich, "_benevolences_," or gifts solicited by the king, which the law authorized him to collect as a tax. He contrived to get money in such ways, and thus to carry forward the government without Parliament, which met only once during the last thirteen years of his reign. Royal power, in relation to the nobles, was further exalted by the introduction of cannon into warfare, which only the king possessed. Two pretenders to the throne, _Lambert Simnel_ (1487), and _Perkin Warbeck_ (1492), were raised up; but the efforts made to dethrone _Henry_ proved abortive. He kept watch over his enemies at home and abroad, and punished all resistance to his authority. Circumstances enabled the founder of the _Tudor_ line to exalt the power of the king over the heads of both the nobles and the commons. III. SPAIN. FERDINAND OF ARAGON (1479-15l6).--The union of _Aragon_ and _Castile_, by the marriage of _Ferdinand_ and _Isabella_ (1474-1504), was nominal, as each sovereign reigned independently in his own dominion. But both sovereigns were bent on the same end,--that of subjecting the powerful grandees and feudal lords to their authority. In this policy they found efficient helpers in the shrewd and loyal counselor _Mendoza_, Cardinal and Archbishop of Toledo, and in _Ximenes_, who combined the qualities of a prelate of strict orthodoxy with those of a profound and energetic statesman. To bring both nobles and clergy into subservience to the crown, was their great aim; and for this end the sagacious _Ferdinand_ procured from the Pope the privilege of filling the bishoprics and the grand masterships of the military orders. He deprived the nobles of their _judicial_ functions, which he committed to impartial and severe tribunals of his own creation. He re-organized and strengthened the _Holy Hermanadad_, or militia of the cities, and thus had at his service against the grandees a standing military force. He used the nobles and the cities to keep one another in check. Over both stood the _Inquisition_,--a tribunal established against the _Moors_ and the _Jews_ who had made an outward profession of Christianity, but which under _Torquemada_, who had been confessor of the queen, became a terror to all Spain. The king had the power to name the _Grand Inquisitor_ and all the judges; and he thus acquired in this institution not only a fearful weapon against heretics of every description, but also a political instrument for the subjugation of the nobles and the clergy. By this alliance of the throne and the altar, the despotic power of _Ferdinand_ had the firmest prop. CONQUEST OF GRANADA.--After a ten-years' bloody war, the Moorish kingdom of _Granada_ was conquered. The capital, with the famous castle of _Alhambra_, was captured (1492). The dethroned Moorish king, _Boabdil_, robbed of his possessions, sailed to Africa, where he fell in battle. By the terms of their surrender, the Moors were to have the free exercise of their religion. But the promise was not kept. Choice was given to the Moslems to become Christians, or to emigrate. Many left to wage war elsewhere against their Spanish persecutors, either as corsairs in Africa, or as bands of robbers in _Sierra Nevada_. The professed converts were goaded by cruel treatment into repeated insurrections. It was a fierce war of races and religions. The frightful sufferings of the Moors, under the pressure of this double fanaticism, form a long and gloomy chapter of Spanish history. The dismal tale continues until the cruel expulsion from the kingdom of nearly a million of this unhappy people by _Philip III._, in 1609. FERDINAND, REGENT OF CASTILE.--Most of the children of _Ferdinand_ and _Isabella_ died young. Their daughter _Joanna_ married _Philip of Burgundy_, son of _Maximilian_ and _Mary_; but he died in 1506, at the age of twenty-eight. They had been recognized as the rulers of _Castile_. But the mind of _Joanna_, who had always been eccentric, became disordered, so that the government devolved on _Ferdinand_, her father. He placed her in the castle at _Tordesillas_, where the remainder of her life, which continued forty-seven years longer, was spent. _Ferdinand_ was, in form, constituted by the _Cortes_ (1510), regent of the kingdom in the name of his daughter, and as guardian of her son _(Charles)_. _Ferdinand_ administered the government with wisdom and moderation. As there were no children by his second marriage with _Germaine de Foix_, niece of _Louis XII._ of France, the succession of _Joanna's_ son remained secure. Ferdinand availed himself of the disturbances in France to annex to _Castile_ the portion of _Navarre_ lying on the south of the Pyrenees. IV. GERMANY AND THE EMPIRE. FREDERICK III. (1440-1493).--While _England, France_, and _Spain_ were organizing monarchy, _Italy_ and _Germany_ kept up the anarchical condition of the Middle Ages. Hence these countries, first _Italy_ and then _Germany_, became enticing fields of conquest for other nations. _Frederick III._ was the last emperor crowned at Rome (1452), and only one other emperor after him was crowned by the Pope. Frederick reigned longer than any other German king before or after him. He lacked energy, neglected the empire, and busied himself in enlarging his Austrian domains, which he erected into an _archduchy_ (1453). When he sought to interfere with the German princes, they set him at defiance. He did little more than remain an indolent spectator of the conflict in which the Swiss overthrew _Charles the Bold_. The great danger to Europe was now from the _Turks_. Christendom was defended by the Poles and the Hungarians. _Frederick_ left the Hungarians, under the gallant _John Hunyady_, without his help, to drive them, in 1456, from _Belgrade_. He tried to obtain the Bohemian and Hungarian crowns; but _Podiebrad_, a Utraquist nobleman, was made king of Bohemia, and _Matthias Corvinus_ succeeded _Hunyady_, his father, on the throne of Hungary. By the death of _Albert_, the brother of _Frederick_, to whom the emperor had been compelled to give up _Vienna_, he became master of all the Austrian lands except Tyrol. He was bent on getting the Hungarian crown; but _Vienna_ was taken by _Matthias_, in 1485, and the emperor had to fly for his life. A great confederation, composed of princes, nobles, and cities, was made in Swabia, for repressing private war, and did much good in South Germany. The western part of _Prussia_ was taken from the Teutonic Knights by the Peace of _Thorn_, in 1466, and annexed to _Poland_ by _Casimir IV_. Maximilian I. (1493-15l9).--_Maximilian I._ was a restless prince, eager for adventure. Although not crowned, he was authorized by Pope _Julius II._ to style himself "Emperor Elect." In his reign, efforts, only in part successful, were made to secure peace and order in Germany. At the Diet of _Worms_ in 1495, a perpetual _public peace_, or prohibition of private feuds, was proclaimed; and a court called the _Imperial Chamber_, the judges of which, except the president, were appointed by the states, was constituted to adjust controversies among them. The benefits of this arrangement were partly defeated by the _Aulic Council_, an Austrian tribunal established by _Maximilian_ for his own domains, but which interfered in matters properly belonging to the _Chamber_. Germany was also divided into _circles_, or districts, for governmental purposes. In 1499 _Maximilian_ endeavored, without success, to coerce the _Swiss League_ into submission to the Imperial Chamber, and to punish it for helping the French in their Italian invasion. Although he was brave, cultured, and eloquent, he lacked perseverance, and not a few of his numerous projects failed. The most fortunate event in his life, as regards the aggrandizement of his house, was his marriage to _Mary of Burgundy_ (1477). His grandson _Ferdinand_ married the sister of _Louis II._, the last king of _Bohemia_ of the Polish line, who was also king of _Hungary_; and by the election of _Ferdinand_ to be his successor (1526), both these countries were added to the vast possessions of the Austrian family. To Maximilian's doings in _Italy_, we shall soon refer. GERMAN CITIES.--From the middle of the thirteenth century there was a rapid growth of German cities, and an advance of the trading-classes. The cities gained a large measure of self-government, and were prosperous little republics. They were centers of commerce and wealth, and often exercised power much beyond their own precincts, which were well defended by ditches, walls, and towers. The old Gothic town-halls in _Aix, Nuremburg, Cologne,_ etc., are monuments of municipal thrift and dignity. Their churches and convents grew rich, and schools with numerous pupils were connected with them. Dwellings became more comfortable and attractive. All branches of art and manufacture flourished. The city nobles and the guilds had their banquets. In the church festivals all the people took part. The German cities, such as _Mayence, Worms, Strasburg, Lübeck, Augsburg,_ excited the admiration even of Italian visitors. THE MEDICI. Giovanni d' Medici, _d._ 1429. | +--COSMO ("Father of his Country"), _d._ 1464. | | | +--PIERO, _d._ 1469. | | | +--LORENZO (the Magnificent), _d._ 1492. | | | | | +--Maddelena. | | | | | +--PIERO _d._ 1503 | | | | | | | +--LORENZO II, Duke of Urbino, _d._ 1510. | | | | | | | +--Catharine, _m._ Henry II of France. | | | | | | | +--ALESSANDRO, First Duke of Florence, 1531-1537. | | | | | +--GIOVANNI (Pope Leo X), _d._ 1521. | | | | | +--GIULIANO, Duke of Nemours, _d._ 1516. | | | | | +--Ippolito (Cardinal), _d._ 1535. | | | +--GIULIANO, killed by Pozzi 1478. | | | +--Giulio (Pope Clement VII), _d._ 1534. | +--LORENZO, _d._ 1440. | +--Piero Francesco, _d._ 1474. | +--Giuliano, _d._ 1498. | +--Giovanni (the Invincible), _d._ 1526. | +--COSIMO I, First Grand Duke of Tuscany, 1537-1574. | +--FRANCESCO, 1574-1587, _m._ Joanna, | daughter of Emperor Ferdinand I. | | | +--Mary _m._ Henry IV of France. | +--FERDINAND I, 1587-1600, _m._ Christina, daughter of Charles II of Lorraine. | +--COSIMO II, 1609-1621, _m._ Mary Magdalen, sister of Emperor Ferdinand II. | +--FERDINAND II, 1621-1670. | +--COSIMO III, 1670-1723. | +--JOHN GASTON, 1723-1737. V. ITALY. CONDITION OF ITALY.--Italy, at the epoch of the French invasions, was the most prosperous as well as the most enlightened and civilized country in Europe. Its opulent and splendid cities were the admiration of all visitors from the less favored countries of the North. But national unity was wanting. The country was made up of discordant states. _Venice_ was ambitious of conquest; and the pontiffs in this period, to the grief of all true friends of religion, were absorbed in Italian politics, being eager to carve out principalities for their relatives. Italy was exposed to _two_ perils. On the one hand, it was menaced by the Ottoman Turks; not to speak of the kings of France and Spain, who were rival aspirants for control in the Italian peninsula. On the other hand, voyages of discovery were threatening to open new highways of commerce to supersede the old routes of traffic through its maritime cities. MILAN.--The fall of Constantinople produced a momentary union in Italy. At _Lodi_, in 1454, the principal states took an oath of perpetual concord,--_Francesco Sforza_, Duke of Milan; _Cosmo de Medici_, to whom Florence had given the name of "Father of his Country;" _Alfonso V._ the Magnanimous, king of Naples and Sicily; the Popes _Calixtus III._ and _Pius II_. (1458-1464). But conflicts soon arose among them. An abortive attempt was made by _John_ of Calabria to deprive _Ferdinand_ of Naples of his inheritance (1462). In 1478 there was a coalition against Florence; in 1482, a coalition against Venice. The Turks made the best use of these quarrels, and captured _Otranto_ (1480), killing or enslaving twelve thousand Christians. The idea of the ancients that _tyrannicide_ is a virtue, whether the master be good or bad, was caught up, and gave rise to conspiracies. At Milan, in 1476, the cruel Duke _Galeazzo Maria_ was assassinated by three young men, near the Church of St. Stephen. _Giovanni Galeazzo_, his son, a minor, married a daughter of the king of Naples. But his uncle, _Ludovico il Moro_, had seized on power, and ruled in the name of _Giovanni_ (1480). He imprisoned _Giovanni_ and his young wife; and being threatened by the king of Naples, who had for an ally _Peter de Medici_, he formed an alliance with the Pope and the Venetians; and, not confiding in them, he invited _Charles VIII_. of France to invade the kingdom of Naples. _Genoa_ fell under the yoke of _Ludovico_, who was invested with it by _Charles VIII._ as a fief of France. VENICE.--_Venice_, which up to the fall of Constantinople had been the strongest of the Italian states, forgot its duties and its dangers in relation to the Turks, in order to aggrandize itself in Italy. It could not avoid war with them, which broke out in 1464. The Turks took _Negropont_ and _Scutari_, passed the _Piave_, and the fires kindled by their troops could be seen from Venice. The city made a shameful treaty with them, paying them a large sum (1479). But four years after, it conquered _Cyprus_, which it did not scruple to demand the privilege of holding as a fief of the Sultan of Egypt. The great power of Venice at this time was a cause of alarm to all the other states; but their first combination against it in 1482, in defense of the Duke of Ferrara, was of no effect. In 1454 the government of Venice was placed practically in the hands of three _"inquisitors"_, who exercised despotic power under the old forms, and, by such means as secret trials and executions, maintained internal order and quiet at the cost of liberty. Its soldiers were _condottieri_, under foreign leaders, whom it watched with the utmost jealousy. FLORENCE.--_Cosmo de Medici_ had continued to be a man of the people. But the members of his family who followed him, while they copied his munificence and public spirit, behaved more as princes. Against _Peter I._ plots were formed by the nobles, but were baffled (1465). _Jerome Riario_, a nephew of _Pope Sixtus IV._, strove with papal help to conquer for himself a principality in the _Romagna_. The Florentines protested against it as a breach of the treaty of _Lodi_. Hence _Riario_ took part in the conspiracy of the _Pazzi_ against the lives of _Lorenzo_ and _Julian_, sons of Cosmo. They were attacked in the cathedral of Florence by the assassins, during the celebration of mass; _Julian_ was killed, but _Lorenzo_ escaped. The Archbishop of Pisa, one of the accomplices, was hung from his palace window in his pontifical robes. The Pope excommunicated the Medici, and all the Italian states plunged into war. The capture of _Otranto_ at this time by the Turks frightened the princes. _Lorenzo de Medici_ repaired in person to _Naples_ to negotiate with _Ferdinand_, the Pope's ally, and peace was concluded. _Lorenzo_ earned the name of "The Magnificent" by his lavish patronage of literature and art. SAVONAROLA.--Against the rule of _Lorenzo_, one voice was raised, that of the Dominican monk _Jerome Savonarola_, a preacher of fervid eloquence, who aimed in his harangues, not only to move individuals to repentance, but to bring about a thorough amendment of public morals, and a political reform in the direction of liberty. In his discourses, however, he lashed the ecclesiastical corruptions of the time, not sparing those highest in power. There were two parties, that of the young nobles,--the _arribiati_, or "enraged;" and that of the people,--the _frateschi_, or friends of the monks. _Savonarola_ proclaimed that a great punishment was impending over Italy. He predicted the invasion from north of the Alps. FLORENCE IN THE AGE OF LORENZO.--_Florence_ in the time of _Lorenzo_ presented striking points of resemblance to _Athens_ in its most flourishing days. In some respects, the two communities were quite unlike. _Florence_ was not a conquering power, and had no extensive dominion. Civil and military life were distinct from one another: the Italian had come to rely more upon diplomacy than upon arms, and his wealth and mercantile connections made him anxious to avoid war. In Florence, moreover, trade and the mechanic arts were in high repute; industry was widely diffused, and was held in honor. But in equality and pride of citizenship, in versatility of talent and intellectual activity, in artistic genius and in appreciation of the products of art, in refinement of manners, cheerfulness of temper, and a joyous social life, the _Florentines_ in the fifteenth century compare well with the _Athenians_ in the age of _Pericles_. In _Florence_, the burgess or citizen had attained to the standing to which in other countries he only aspired. Nobility of blood was counted as of some worth; but where there was not wealth or intellect with it, it was held in comparatively low esteem. Prosperous merchants, men of genius and education, and skillful artisans were on a level with the best. Men of noble extraction engaged in business. The commonwealth conferred knighthood on the deserving, according to the practice of sovereign princes. Persons of the highest social standing did not disdain to labor in their shops and counting-houses. Frugal in their domestic life, the Florentines strove to maintain habits of frugality by strict sumptuary laws. Limits were set to indulgence in finery, food, etc. The population of Florence somewhat exceeded one hundred thousand. In the neighborhood of the city, there was a multitude of attractive, richly furnished villas and country-houses. Among the industries in which the busy population was engaged in 1472, a chronicler enumerates eighty-three rich and splendid warehouses of the silk-merchants' guild, thirty-three great banks, and forty-four goldsmiths' and jewellers' shops. The houses of the rich were furnished with elegance, and decorated with beautiful works of art. There was a great contrast between the simplicity of ordinary domestic life, especially as regards provisions for the table, and the splendor displayed on public occasions, or when guests were to be hospitably entertained. The effect of literary culture was seen in the tone of conversation. It is remarkable that the great sculptors were all goldsmiths, and came out of the workshop. A new generation of painters had a like practical training. In those days, there was a union of manual skill with imagination. The art of the goldsmith preceded and outstripped all the others. In such a society, there was naturally a great relish for public festivals, both sacred and secular. Everywhere in Italy the _Mysteries_, or religious plays, exhibiting events of scriptural history, were in vogue; brilliant pantomimes were enjoyed, and the festivities of the yearly carnival were keenly relished. In the government of Florence, the liberty of the citizens was mainly confined to the choosing of their magistrates. Once in office, they ruled with arbitrary power. There was no liberty of the press, nor was there freedom of discussion in the public councils. It was a community where, with all its cultivation and elegance, morality was at a low ebb. _Lorenzo_ himself, although "he had all the qualities of poet and statesman, connoisseur and patron of learning, citizen and prince," nevertheless "could not keep himself from the epicureanism of the time," and was infected with its weaknesses and vices. "These joyous and refined civilizations," writes M. _Taine_, "based on a worship of pleasure and intellectuality,--Greece of the fourth century, Provence of the twelfth, and Italy of the sixteenth,--were not enduring. Man in these lacks some checks. After sudden outbursts of genius and creativeness, he wanders away in the direction of license and egotism; the degenerate artist and thinker makes room for the sophist and the dilettant." THE POPES.--The Popes, _Nicholas V._ (1447-1455), a protector of scholars and a cultivated man, and _Pius II._ (1458-1464), THE OTTOMAN SULTANS. OTHMAN, 1307-1325. | +--ORCHAN, 1325-1359. | | | +--AMURATH I, 1359-1389. | | | +--BAJEZET I, 1389-1402. | | | +--Soliman, 1402-1410. | | | +--Musa, 1410-1413. | | | +--Issa. | | | +--MOHAMMED I, 1413-1421. | | | +--AMURATH II, 1421-1451. | | | +--MOHAMMED II, 1451-1481. | | | +--BAJEZET II, 1481-1512. | | | | | +--SELIM I, 1512-1520. | | | | | +--SOLIMAN I, 1520-1566. | | | | | +--SELIM II, 1566-1574. | | | | | +--AMURATH III, 1574-1595. | | | | | +--MOHAMMED III, 1595-1603. | | | | | +--ACHMET I, 1603-1617. | | | | | | | +--OTHMAN II, 1618-1622. | | | | | | | +--AMURATH IV, 1623-1640. | | | | | | | +--IBRAHIM, 1640-1649, deposed. | | | | | | | +--MOHAMMED IV, | | | | 1649-1687, deposed. | | | | | | | | | +--MUSTAPHA II, | | | | | 1695-1703, deposed. | | | | | | | | | | | +--MAHMOUD I, | | | | | | 1730-1754. | | | | | | | | | | | +--OTHMAN III, | | | | | 1754-1757. | | | | | | | | | +--ACHMET III, | | | | 1703-1730, deposed. | | | | | | | | | +--MUSTAPHA III, | | | | | 1757-1774. | | | | | | | | | | | +--SELIM III, | | | | | 1789-1807, | | | | | deposed. | | | | | | | | | +--ABUL HAMID I, | | | | 1774-1789. | | | | | | | | | +--MUSTAPHA IV, | | | | | 1807-1808, | | | | | deposed. | | | | | | | | | +--MAHMOUD II, | | | | 1808-1839. | | | | | | | | | +--ABDUL MEDJID, | | | | | 1839-1861. | | | | | | | | | | | +--MURAD V | | | | | | (June 4, | | | | | | 1876- | | | | | | Aug. 31, | | | | | | 1876). | | | | | | | | | | | +--ABDUL | | | | | HAMID II | | | | | (Aug. 31, | | | | | 1876--). | | | | | | | | | +--ABDUL AZIZ, | | | | 1861-1876. | | | | | | | +--SOLIMAN II, | | | | 1687-1691. | | | | | | | +--ACHMET II, | | | 1691-1695. | | | | | +--MUSTAPHA I, | | 1617-1618, 1622-1623. | +--Djem. | +--Alaeddin. [Mainly from George's _Genealogical Tables_.] zealously but in vain exhorted to crusades against the Turk. _Paul II_. (1464-1471) pursued the same course; but after him, for a half-century, there ensued the deplorable era when the pontiffs were more busied with other interests than with those pertaining to the weal of Christianity. The pontificates of _Sixtus IV_. (1471-1484), _Innocent VIII_. (1484-1492), and especially of _Alexander VI_. (1492-1503), the second pope of the _Borgia_ family, present a lamentable picture of worldly schemes and of "nepotism," as the projects for the temporal advancement of their relatives were termed. The Roman principality was the prey of petty tyrants, and the theater of wars, and of assassinations perpetrated by the knife or with poison. _Alexander VI_. succeeded in subduing or destroying all these petty lords. He was seconded in these endeavors by his son _Cæsar Borgia_, brave, accomplished, and fascinating, but a monster of treachery and cruelty. No deed was savage or base enough to cost him any remorse. Hardly had he acquired the _Romagna_, when Pope _Alexander_ died. Although his death was due to Roman fever, legend speedily ascribed it to poison. His son was betrayed, was imprisoned for a time by _Ferdinand_ the Catholic, and, while he was in the service of the King of Navarre, was slain before the castle of _Viana_. NAPLES.--In Naples, _Ferdinand I_., who was established on his throne by the defeat of his competitors in 1462, provoked a revolt of his barons by his tyranny, invited them to a festival to celebrate a reconciliation with them, and caused them to be seized at the table, and then to be put to death. He treated the people with equal injustice and cruelty. He allowed the Turks to take _Otranto_ (1480), and the Venetians to take _Gallipoli_ and _Policastro_ (1484). WEAKNESS OF ITALY.--Italy, at the close of the fifteenth century, with all its proficiency in art and letters, and its superiority in the comforts and elegances of life, was a prey to anarchy. This was especially true after the death of _Lorenzo de Medici_. Diplomacy had become a school of fraud. Battles had come to be, in general, bloodless; but either perfidy, or prison and the dagger, were the familiar instruments of warfare. The country from its beauty, its wealth, and its factious state, was an alluring prize to foreign invaders. VI. THE OTTOMAN TURKS. THEIR CONQUESTS.--The empire of _Mohammed II_. (1451-1481) extended from the walls of _Belgrade_, on the Danube, to the middle of Asia Minor. To the east was the Seljukian principality of _Caramania_ in the center of Asia Minor, and, when that was finally overthrown (1486), _Persia_, whose hostility was inflamed by differences of sect. The conquest of the Greek Empire was achieved by _Mohammed_. _Matthias Corvinus_ (1458-1493), the successor of _Hunyady_, was the greatest of the kings of Hungary, and defended the line of the Danube against the Turkish assaults. For twenty-three years _Scanderbeg_, the intrepid Prince of _Albania_, repulsed all the attacks of the Moslems. It was not until ten years after his death (1467) that his principal stronghold was surrendered to the invaders. The attacks on the Venetians have already been mentioned, as well as the capture of _Otranto_. _Bajazet II_. was more inclined to study than to war: his brother _Djem_, who tried to supplant him, passed as a prisoner into the hands of Pope _Alexander VI_. An annual tribute was paid by the Sultan for keeping him from coming back to Turkey; and when, at last, he was released, rumor declared that he had been poisoned. _Selim I_. (1512-1520) entered anew on the path of conquest. He defeated the _Persians_, and made the Tigris his eastern boundary. He annexed to his empire _Mesopotamia_, _Syria_, and _Egypt_. The Sultan now became the commander of the faithful, the inheritor of the prophetic as well as military leadership. The conquest of _Alexandria_ by _Selim_ (1517) inflicted a mortal blow on the commerce of _Venice_, by intercepting its communication with the Orient. The despotic domination of _Selim_ stretched from the Danube to the Euphrates, and from the Adriatic to the cataracts of the Nile. Such was the empire which the Ottoman conqueror handed down to his son, _Soliman I_. the Magnificent (1520-1566). _Mohammed II_. and _Selim_ were the two conquerors by whom the Ottoman Empire was built up. Each of them combined with an iron will and revolting cruelty a taste for science and poetry, and the genius of a ruler. They take rank among the most eminent tyrants in Asiatic history. While they were spreading their dominion far and wide, the popes and the sovereigns of the West did nothing more effectual than to debate upon the means of confronting so great a danger. RUSSIA. IVAN III, Vassilievitch, 1462-1505, _m._ Sophia, daughter of Thomas Palaeologus, brother of Emperor Constantine XIII. | +--BASIL IV, 1505-1533. | +--IVAN IV,[1] 1533-1584, | _m._ | +--Anastasia | | | | HOUSE OF ROMANOFF | | | +--Nicetas. | | | +--Mary [4] (Marta the Nun), _m._ | Theodore (Philaret the Metropolitan). | | | +--MICHAEL, 1613-1645. | | | +--ALEXIS, 1645-1676. | | | +--THEODORE, 1676-1682. | | | +--IVAN V, 1682-1689, resigned; d. 1696. | | | | | +--ANNA, 1730-1740. | | | | | +--Catharine _m._ Charles Leopold, | | Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin | | | | | +--Anna, _m._ Antony Ulric, son of | | Ferdinand Albert II, | | of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel. | | | | | +--IVAN VI, 1740-1741, deposed. | | | +--PETER I (the Great) 1689-1725, _m._ | (1), Eudocia; | | | +--Alexis, executed 1718. _m._ | Charlotte, d. of Lewis Rudolph, | Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel | | | +--PETER II, 1727-1730. | | (2), CATHARINE I, 1725-1727. | | | +--Anna, d. 1738, _m._ | | Charles Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp. | | | | | +--PETER III, January-July, 1762 | | (deposed, and died soon after) _m._ | | CATHERINE II of Anhalt, 1762-1796. | | | | | +--PAUL, 1796-1801. | | | | | +--ALEXANDER I, 1801-1825. | | | | | +--NICHOLAS, 1825-1855, _m._ | | Charlotte, daughter of Frederick | | William III of Prussia. | | | | | +--ALEXANDER II, 1855-1881, m. | | Mary of Hesse Darmstadt. | | | | | +--ALEXANDER III, 1881- m. | | Mary (Dagmar), daughter | | of Christian IX of Denmark | | | +--ELIZABETH, 1741-1762. | +--THEODORE, 1584-1598. _m._ +--Irene,[2] | +--BORIS, Godounof, [3] 1598-1605. 1 First Czar. 2 Declined the crown on Theodore's death, which was seized by her brother. 3 Succeeded by an imposter pretending to be Demetrius, son of Ivan IV, who reigned for one year; then Basil V, 1606-1610; then chaos until 1613. 4 Said to be a descendent of the old royal house. [Mainly from George's _Genealogical Tables._] VII. RUSSIA. RUSSIA: IVAN III.--For two centuries Russia paid tribute to the Tartar conquerors in the South, the "Golden Horde" (p. 283). The liberator of his people from this yoke was _Ivan III_.,--Ivan the Great,--(1462-1505). In the period when the nations of the West were becoming organized, _Russia_ escaped from its servitude, and made some beginnings of intellectual progress. _Ivan_ was a cold and calculating man, who preferred to negotiate rather than to fight; but he inflicted savage punishments, and even "his glance caused women to faint." He was able to subdue the rich trading-city of _Novgorod_ (1478), which had been connected with the Hanseatic League, and where a party endeavored to bring to pass a union with _Poland_. He conquered unknown frozen districts in the North, and smaller princedoms, including _Tver_, in the interior. The empire of the _Horde_ was so broken up that _Ivan_ achieved an almost bloodless triumph, which made Russia free. In wars with _Lithuania_, Western Russia was reconquered up to the _Soja_. _Ivan_ married _Sophia Palæologus_, a niece of the last Christian emperor of the East. She taught him "to penetrate the secret of autocracy." Numerous Greek emigrants of different arts and professions came to _Moscow_. Ivan took for the new arms of Russia the two-headed eagle of the Byzantine Cæsars, and thenceforward Russia looked on herself as the heir of the Eastern Empire. The Russian metropolitan, called afterwards _Patriarch_, was now elected by Russian bishops. _Moscow_ became "the metropolis of orthodoxy," and as such the protector of Greek Christians in the East. _Ivan_ laid out in the city the fortified inclosure styled the _Kremlin_. He brought into the country German and Italian mechanics. It was he who founded the greatness of Russia. _Vassali Ivanovitch_ (1505-1533), his son, continued the struggle with _Lithuania_, and acquired _Smolensk_ (1514). He exchanged embassies with most of the sovereigns of the West. IVAN IV. (1533-1584).--_Ivan IV_., Ivan the Terrible, first took the title of _Czar_, since attached to "the Autocrat of all the Russias." It was the name that was given, in the Slavonian books which he read, to the ancient kings and emperors of the East and of Rome. _Moscow_ was now to be a third Rome, the successor of _Constantinople_. _Ivan_ conquered the Tartar principalities of _Kazan_ and _Astrakhan_ in the South, and extended his dominion to the Caucasus. The _Volga_, through its entire course, was now a Russian river. He brought German mechanics into Russia, established printing-presses, and made a commercial treaty with Queen _Elizabeth_, whom he invited to an alliance against _Poland_ and _Sweden_. It was in this reign (1581-1582) that a brigand chief, _Irmak_ by name (a Cossack, in the service of the Czar), crossed the _Urals_ with a few hundred followers, and made the conquest of the vast region of _Siberia_, then under the dominion of the Tartars. _Ivan_ sent thither bishops and priests. He had to cede _Livonia_ to the _Swedes_, who, with their allies were too strong to be overcome. In _Russia_, he put down the aristocracy, and crushed all resistance to his personal rule. Whatever tyranny and cruelty this result cost, it prevented _Russia_ from becoming an anarchic kingdom like _Poland_. Ivan, by forming the national guard of _streltsi_ or _strelitz_, laid the foundation of a standing army. In his personal conduct, brutal and sensual practices alternated with exercises of piety. In a fit of wrath, he struck his son _Ivan_ a fatal blow, and in consequence was overwhelmed with sorrow. After a short reign of his second son, _Feodor_ (1584-1598), who was weak in mind and body, the throne was usurped by one of the aristocracy, the able and ambitious regent, _Boris Godounof_ (1598-1605). THE COSSACKS.--These were brought into subjection by _Ivan IV_. and his successors. They were robber hordes of mixed origin, partly Tartar and partly Russian. Their abodes were near the rapids of the _Dnieper_, and on the _Don_, and at the foot of the _Caucasus_. They were fierce warriors, and did a great service to Russia in subduing the wild nomad tribes on the north and east of the regions where the Cossacks dwelt. TIMES OF TROUBLE.--After the death of _Boris Godounof_, two pretenders, one after the other, each assuming to be _Demetrius_, the younger son of _Ivan_,--a son who had been put to death,-- seized on power. This was rendered possible by the mutual strife of Russian factions, and by the help afforded to the impostors by the _Poles_. _Sigismund III_., king of Poland, openly espoused the cause of the second _Demetrius_. _Moscow_ was forced to surrender (1610); and the czar whom the nobles had enthroned, _Basil V_., died in a Polish prison. These events gave rise to a lasting enmity between the two Slavonic nations. In 1611 the _Poles_ were driven out by a national rising, which led to the elevation to the throne of _Michael Romanoff_ (1613-1645), the founder of the present dynasty of czars. Peace was concluded with _Gustavus Adolphus_ of Sweden, and with the Poles. Commercial treaties were made with foreign nations. In Russia there was a great increase of internal prosperity. SERFDOM IN RUSSIA.--The lower classes in Russia consisted of three divisions: 1. Slaves, captives taken in war, who were bought and sold. 2. The _inscribed peasants_, who were attached to the soil and became _serfs_. They belonged to the _commune_, or village, which held the land, and as a unit paid to the lord his dues. They made up the bulk of the rural population. The peasant was an arbitrary master, a little czar in his own family. 3. The free laborers, who could change their masters, but who soon fell into the rank of serfs. While the higher classes in Russia advanced, the condition of the rustics for several centuries continued to grow worse. RUSSIAN SOCIETY.--The great nobles kept in their castles a host of servants. These were slaves, subject to the caprices of their master. Russian women were kept in seclusion. There was an Asiatic stamp imprinted on civil and social life. "Thanks to the general ignorance, there was no intellectual life in Russia: thanks to the seclusion of women, there was no society." By degrees intercourse with Western Europe was destined to soften, in some particulars, the harsh outlines of this picture. VIII. FRENCH INVASIONS OF ITALY. EFFECT OF ABSOLUTE MONARCHY.--The establishment of absolute monarchy in Western Europe placed the resources of the nations at the service of their respective kings. The desire of national aggrandizement led to great European wars, which took the place of the feudal conflicts of a former day. These wars began with the invasion of _Italy_ by _Charles VIII_., king of France. MOTIVES OF THE INVASION.--To this unwise enterprise _Charles VIII_. was impelled by a romantic dream of conquest, which was not to be limited to the Italian peninsula. He intended to attack the _Turks_ afterward, and to establish once more, under his protection, a Latin kingdom at Jerusalem. His counselors could not dissuade him from the hazardous undertaking. In order to set his hands free, he made treaties that were disadvantageous to France with _Henry VII_., _Maximilian_, and _Ferdinand_ the Catholic. He was invited to cross the Alps by _Ludovico il Moro_ (p. 374), by the Neapolitan barons, by all the enemies of _Pope Alexander VI_. The special ground of the invasion was the claim of the French king, through the house of _Anjou_, to the throne of _Naples_. In 1494 Charles crossed the Alps with a large army, and, with the support of _Ludovico_, advanced from _Milan_, through _Florence_ and _Rome_ to _Naples_. When he was crowned he wore the imperial insignia as if pretending to the Empire of the East also. The rapid progress of the French power alarmed the Pope and the other princes, including _Ludovico_ himself, who was afraid that the king might cast a covetous eye on his own principality. A formidable league was formed against _Charles_, including, besides the Italian princes, _Ferdinand_, _Maximilian_, and _Henry VII_. of England. It was the first European combination against France. _Charles_ left eleven thousand men under _Gilbert de Montpensier_, at _Naples_; and after being exposed to much peril, although he won a victory at _Fornovo_ (1495), he made his way back to France. _Ferdinand II_., aided by Spanish troops, expelled the French from Naples; and the remnant of their garrisons, after the death of Montpensier, was led back to France. The conquests of Charles were lost as speedily as they were gained. His great expedition proved a failure. DEATH OF SAVONAROLA.--Civil strife continued in the Italian states. Savonarola had been excommunicated by _Alexander VI_. The combination of parties against him was too strong to be overcome by his supporters, and he was put to death in 1498. LOUIS XII. (1498-1515): HIS FIRST ITALIAN WAR.--On the death of _Charles VIII_., who left no male children, the crown reverted to his nearest relative, _Louis_ of Orleans. He entered once more on the aggressive enterprise begun by his predecessor. He laid claim not only to the rights of _Charles VIII_. at Naples, but also claimed _Milan_ through his grandmother _Valentine Visconti_. In alliance with _Venice_, and with _Florence_ to which he promised _Pisa_, then in revolt against the detested Florentine supremacy, and with the support of _Cæsar Borgia_, he entered Italy, and defeated _Ludovico il Moro_ at _Novara_ (1500). _Ludovico_ had before been driven out of Milan by the French, but had regained the city. He was imprisoned in France; and on his release twelve years afterward, he died from joy. _Louis_ bargained with _Ferdinand the Catholic_ to divide with him the Neapolitan kingdom. _Ferdinand_, the king of Naples, was thus dethroned. But _Ferdinand_ of _Spain_ was as treacherous in his dealing with _Louis_ as he had been in relation to his Neapolitan namesake; and the kingdom fell into the hands of _Gonsalvo de Cordova_, the Spanish general. THE SECOND ITALIAN WAR OF LOUIS.--Anxious for revenge, _Louis_ sent two armies over the Pyrenees, which failed of success, and a third army into _Italy_ under _La Trémoille_, which was defeated by _Gonsalvo_, notwithstanding the gallantry of _Bayard_, the pattern of chivalry, the French knight "without fear and without reproach." THE THIRD ITALIAN WAR OF LOUIS.--The third Italian war of _Louis_ began in 1507, and lasted eight years. It includes the history of the League of _Cambray_, and also of the anti-French League subsequently formed. France was barely saved from great calamities in consequence of foolish treaties, three in number, made at _Blois_ in 1504. The party of the queen, _Anne of Brittany_, secured the betrothal of _Claude_, the child of _Louis XII_., to _Charles of Austria_, afterwards _Charles V_., the son of _Philip_, with the promise of Burgundy and Brittany as her dowry. The arrangement was repudiated by the estates of France (1506). _Claude_ was betrothed to _Francis of Angoulême_, the king's nearest male relative, and the heir of the French crown. On the marriage of _Ferdinand_ to _Germaine of Foix_, _Louis_ agreed to give up his claims on _Naples_. The sufferings of Italy had redounded to the advantage of _Venice_. Among her other gains, she had annexed certain towns in the _Romagna_ which fell into anarchy at the expulsion of _Cæsar Borgia_. The energetic Pope, _Julius II_., organized a combination, the celebrated _League of Cambray_ (1508), between himself, the Emperor _Maximilian_, the kings of France and of Aragon: its object was the humbling of _Venice_, and the division of her mainland possessions among the partners in the League. ENGLAND.--THE TUDORS AND STUARTS. HENRY VII, 1485-1509, _m._ Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV. | +--Margaret, _m._ James IV of Scotland. | | | +--James V. | | | +--Mary, Queen of Scots. | | | +--JAMES I, 1603-1625, _m._ | Anne, daughter of Frederick II of Denmark. | | | +--3, CHARLES I, 1625-1649, _m._ | | Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henry IV of France. | | | | | +--CHARLES II, 1660-1685, _m._ | | | Catharine, daughter of John IV of Portugal. | | | | | +--Mary, _m._ William II, Prince of Orange. | | | | | | | +--WILLIAM III, 1688-1702. | | | _m._ | | | +--MARY, d. 1694 | | | | | | +--JAMES II, 1685-1688 (deposed, _d._ 1701), | | _m._ Anne Hyde, daughter of Earl of Clarendon. | | | | | +--ANNE, 1702-1714, _m._ | | George, son of Frederick III of Denmark. | | | +--2, Elizabeth, _m._ Frederick V, Elector Palatine. | | | +--Sophia, _m._ Ernest Augustus, | Elector of Hanover. | | | +--GEORGE I, succeeded 1714. | +--HENRY VIII, 1509-1547, _m._, | 1. Catharine, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella; | 2, Anne Boleyn; | 3. Jane Seymour; | 4. Anne, sister of William, Duke of Cleves; | 5. Catharine Howard; | 6. Catharine Parr. | | | +--3, EDWARD VI, 1547-1553. | | | +--1, MARY, 1553-1558, _m._ Philip II of Spain. | | | +--2, ELIZABETH, 1558-1603. | +--Mary, _m._ 1, Louis XII of France; 2, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. | +--Frances, _m._ Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk. | +--Jane (_m._ Guilford Dudley), executed 1554. A fine army of _Louis_, composed of French, Lombards, and Swiss, crossed the _Adda_, and routed the Venetians, who abandoned all their towns outside of Venice. Each of the other confederate powers now seized the places which it desired. France, mistress of _Milan_, was at the height of her power. The Venetians, however, retook _Padua_ from the emperor. The Pope made peace with them, and, fired with the spirit of Italian patriotism, organized a new league for the expulsion of the French--"the barbarians," as he called them--from the country. Old man as he was, he took the field himself in the dead of winter. He was defeated, and went to Rome. _Louis_ convoked a council at _Pisa_, which was to depose _Julius_. A _Holy League_ was formed between the Pope, Venice, _Ferdinand_ of Aragon, and _Henry VIII_. of England. The arms of the French under _Gaston of Foix_, the young duke of Nemours, were for a while successful. _Ravenna_ was in their hands. But _Gaston_ fell at the moment of victory. The Swiss came down, and established _Maximilian Sforza_ at Milan. _Leo X_., of the house of _Medici_, and hostile to France, was chosen Pope (1513). The French troops were defeated by the Swiss near _Novara_, and driven beyond the Alps. France was attacked on the north by the English, with _Maximilian_, who had joined the League in 1513: and _Bayard_ was taken captive. _James IV_. of Scotland, who had made a diversion in favor of France, was beaten and slain at _Flodden Field_ (1513). The eastern borders of France were attacked by the _Swiss Leagues_, who, aided by _Austrians_, penetrated as far as _Dijon_. They were bought off by _La Trémoille_ the French commander, by a large payment of money, and by still more lavish promises. France concluded peace with the Pope, the emperor, and the king of Aragon (1514), and in the next year with _Henry VIII_., whose sister, _Mary_, Louis XII. married, a few months after the death of Anne of Brittany. He abandoned his pretensions to the Milanese, in favor of his younger daughter _Renée_, the wife of _Hercules II_., the duke of _Ferrara_. Louis died (1515), shortly after his marriage. The policy of the belligerent pontiff, _Julius II_., had triumphed. The French were expelled from Italy, but the Spaniards were left all the stronger. The events just narrated bring us into the midst of the struggles and ambitions of ruling houses, diplomatic intercourse among states, and international wars. These are distinguishing features of modern times. CHAPTER II. INVENTION AND DISCOVERY: THE RENAISSANCE. We have glanced at the new life of Europe in its _political_ manifestations. We have now to view this new life in other relations: we have to inquire how it acted as a stimulus to _intellectual_ effort in different directions. The term _Renaissance_ is frequently applied at present not only to the "new birth" of art and letters, but to all the characteristics, taken together, of the period of transition from the Middle Ages to modern life. The transformation in the structure and policy of states, the passion for discovery, the dawn of a more scientific method of observing man and nature, the movement towards more freedom of intellect and of conscience, are part and parcel of one comprehensive change,--a change which even now has not reached its goal. It was not so much "the arts and the inventions, the knowledge and the books, which suddenly became vital at the time of the Renaissance," that created the new epoch: it was "the intellectual energy, the spontaneous outburst of intelligence, which enabled mankind at that moment to make use of them." INVENTIONS: GUNPOWDER.--In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, there were brought into practical use several inventions most important in their results to civilization. Of these the principal were _gunpowder_, the _mariner's compass_, and _printing_ by movable types. _Gunpowder_ was not first made by _Schwartz_, a monk of _Freiburg_, as has often been asserted. We have notices, more or less obscure, of the use of an explosive material resembling it, among the _Chinese_, among the _Indians_ in the East as early as _Alexander the Great_, and among the _Arabs_. It was first brought into use in firearms in the middle of the fourteenth century. The effect was to make infantry an effective force, and to equalize combatants, since a peasant could handle a gun as well as a knight. Another consequence has been to mitigate the brutalizing influence of war on the soldiery, by making it less a hand-to-hand encounter, an encounter with swords and spears, attended with bloodshed, and kindling personal animosity; and by rendering it possible to hold in custody large numbers of captives, whose lives, therefore, can be spared. THE COMPASS.--The properties of the magnetic needle were not first applied to navigation, as has been thought, by _Flavio Gioja_, but long before his time, as early as the twelfth century, the compass came into general use. Navigation was no longer confined to the Mediterranean and to maritime coasts. The sailor could push out into the ocean without losing himself on its boundless waste. PRINTING.--Printing, which had been done to some extent by wooden blocks, was probably first done with movable types (about 1450) by _John Gutenberg_, who was born at _Meniz_, but who lived long at _Strasburg_. He was furnished with capital by an associate, _Faust_, and worked in company with a skillful copyist of manuscripts, _Schöffer_. _Gutenberg_ brought the art to such perfection, that in 1456 a complete Latin Bible was printed. Within a short time, printing-presses were set up in all the principal cities of Germany and Italy. As an essential concomitant, _linen_ and _cotton paper_ came into vogue in the room of the costly parchment. Books were no longer confined to the rich. Despite the censorship of the press, thought traveled from city to city and from land to land. It was a sign of a new era, that _Maximilian_ in Germany and _Louis XI_. in France founded a postal system. NEW ROUTE TO INDIA.--The discovery by the _Portuguese_ of the islands of _Porto Santo_ and _Madeira_ (1419-1420), of the _Canary Islands_ and of the _Azores_, was followed by their discovery of the coast of _Upper Guinea_, with its gold-dust, ivory, and gums (1445). The Pope, to whom was accorded the right to dispose of the heathen and of newly discovered lands, granted to the Portuguese the possession of these regions, and of whatever discoveries they should make as far as India. From _Lower Guinea (Congo)_, _Bartholomew Diaz_ reached the southern point of Africa (1486), which King _John II_. named the _Cape of Good Hope_. Then, under _Emanuel the Great_ (1495-1521), _Vasco da Gama_ found the way to _East India_, round the Cape, by sailing over the Indian Ocean to the coast of _Malabar_, and into the harbor of _Calicut_ (1498). The Portuguese encountered the resistance of the Mohammedans to their settlement; but by their valor and persistency, especially by the agency of their leaders _Almeida_ and the brave _Albuquerque_, their trading-posts were established on the coast. DISCOVERY OF AMERICA.--The grand achievement in maritime exploration in this age was the discovery of _America_ by _Christopher Columbus_, a native of _Genoa_. The conviction that India could be reached by sailing in a westerly direction took possession of his mind. Having sought in vain for the patronage of _John II_. of Portugal, and having sent his brother _Bartholomew_ to apply for aid from _Henry VII_. of England, he was at length furnished with three ships by Queen _Isabella_ of Castile, to whom Granada had just submitted (1492). Columbus was to have the station of grand admiral and viceroy over the lands to be discovered, with a tenth part of the incomes to be drawn from them, and the rank of a nobleman for himself and his posterity. The story of an open mutiny on his vessels does not rest on sufficient proof: that there were alarm and discontent among the sailors, may well be believed. On the 11th of October, _Columbus_ thought that he discovered a light in the distance. At two o'clock in the morning of Oct. 12, a sailor on the _Pinta_ espied the dim outline of the beach, and shouted, "Land, land!" It was an island called _Guanahani_, named by Columbus, in honor of Jesus, _San Salvador_. Its beauty and productiveness excited admiration; but neither here nor on the large islands of _Cuba_ (or _Juana_) and _Hayti_ (_Hispaniola_), which were discovered soon after, were there found the gold and precious stones which the navigators and their patrons at home so eagerly desired. _Columbus_ built a fort on the island of _Hispaniola_, and founded a colony. The name of _West Indies_ was applied to the new lands. _Columbus_ lived and died in the belief that the region which he discovered belonged to India. Of an intermediate continent, and of an ocean beyond it, he did not dream. The Pope granted to _Ferdinand_ and _Isabella_ all the newly discovered regions of America, from a line stretching one hundred leagues west of the _Azores_. Afterwards _Ferdinand_ allowed to the king of Portugal that the line should run three hundred and seventy, instead of one hundred, leagues west of these islands. In two subsequent voyages (1493-1496, 1498-1500), _Columbus_ discovered _Jamaica_ and the Little _Antilles_, the _Caribbean_ Islands, and finally the mainland at the mouths of the Orinoco (1498). In 1497 _John Cabot_, a Venetian captain living in England, while in quest of a north-west passage to India, touched at _Cape Breton_, and followed the coast of _North America_ southward for a distance of nine hundred miles. Shortly after, _Amerigo Vespucci_, a Florentine, employed first by _Spain_ and then by _Portugal_, explored in several voyages the coast of _South America_. The circumstance that his full descriptions were published (1504) caused the name of _America_, first at the suggestion of the printer, to be attached to the new world. LATER VOYAGES OF COLUMBUS.--On his return from his first voyage, _Columbus_ was received with distinguished honors by the Spanish sovereigns. But he suffered from plots caused by envy, both on the islands and at court. Once he was sent home in fetters by _Bobadilla_, a commissioner appointed by _Ferdinand_. He was exonerated from blame, but the promises which had been made to him were not fulfilled. A fourth voyage was not attended by the success in discovery which he had hoped for, and the last two years of his life were weary and sad. _Isabella_ had died; and in 1506 the great explorer, who with all his other virtues combined a sincere piety, followed her to the tomb. THE PACIFIC.--The spirit of adventure, the hunger for wealth and especially for the precious metals, and zeal for the conversion of the heathen, were the motives which combined in different proportions to set on foot exploring and conquering expeditions to the unknown regions of the West. The exploration of the _North-American_ coast, begun by _John Cabot_ (perhaps also by his son), and the Portuguese _Cortereal_ (1501), continued from _Labrador_ to _Florida_. In 1513 _Balboa_, a Spaniard at _Darien_, fought his way to a height on the Isthmus of _Panama_, whence he descried the _Pacific Ocean_. Descending to the shore, and riding into the water up to his thighs, in the name of the king he took possession of the sea. In 1520 _Magellan_, a Portuguese captain, sailed round the southern cape of _America_, and over the ocean to which he gave the name of _Pacific_. He made his way to the _East Indies_, but was killed on one of the _Philippine Islands_, leaving it to his companions to finish the voyage around the globe. A little later the Spaniards added first _Mexico_, and then _Peru_, to their dominions. CONQUEST OF MEXICO.--The Spanish conqueror of Mexico, the land of the _Aztecs_, was _Hernando Cortes_ (1485-1547). The principal king in that country was _Montezuma_, whose empire was extensive, with numerous cities, and with no inconsiderable advancement in arts and industry. From _Santiago_, in 1519, Cortes conducted an expedition composed of seven hundred Spaniards, founded _Vera Cruz_, where he left a small garrison, subdued the tribe of _Tlascalans_ who joined him, and was received by _Montezuma_ into the city of _Mexico_. _Cortes_ made him a prisoner in his own palace, and seized his capital. The firearms and the horses of the Spaniards struck the natives with dismay. Nevertheless, they made a stout resistance. To add to the difficulties of the shrewd and valiant leader, a Spanish force was sent from the West Indies, under _Narvaez_, to supplant him. This force he defeated, and captured their chief. In 1520 _Cortes_ gained over the Mexicans, at _Otumba_, a victory which was decisive in its consequences. The city of Mexico was _recaptured_ (1521); for _Montezuma_ had been slain by his own people, and the Spaniards driven out. _Guatimozin_, the new king, was taken prisoner and put to death, and the country was subdued. _Cortes_ put an end to the horrid religious rites of the Mexicans, which included human sacrifices. Becoming an object of jealousy and dread at home, he was recalled (1528). Afterwards he visited the peninsula of _California_, and ruled for a time in _Mexico_, but with diminished authority. CONQUEST OF PERU.--The conquest of _Peru_ was effected by _Francisco Pizarro_, and _Almagro_, both illiterate adventurers, equally daring with _Cortes_, but more cruel and unscrupulous. The _Peruvians_ were of a mild character, prosperous, and not uncivilized, and without the savage religious system of the Mexicans. They had their walled cities and their spacious temples. The empire of the _Incas_, as the rulers were called, was distracted by a civil war between two brothers, who shared the kingdom. _Pizarro_ captured one of them, _Atahualpa_, and basely put him to death after he had provided the ransom agreed upon, amounting to more than $17,500,000 in gold (1533). _Pizarro_ founded _Lima_, near the sea-coast (1535). _Almagro_ and _Pizarro_ fell out with each other, and the former was defeated and beheaded. The land and its inhabitants were allotted among the conquerors as the spoils of victory. The horrible oppression of the people excited insurrections. At length _Charles V._ sent out _Pedro de la Gasca_ as viceroy (1541), at a time when _Gonzalo Pizarro_, the last of the family, held sway. _Gonzalo_ perished on the gallows. _Gasca_ reduced the government to an orderly system. THE AMAZON.--_Orellena_, an officer of _Pizarro_, in 1541 first descended the river _Amazon_ to the Atlantic. His fabulous descriptions of an imaginary _El Dorado_, whose capital with its dazzling treasures he pretended to have seen, inflamed other explorers, and prompted to new enterprises. The cupidity of the Spaniards, and their eagerness for knightly warfare, made the New World, with its floral beauty and mineral riches, a most enticing field for adventure. To devout missionaries, to the monastic orders especially, the new regions were not less inviting. They followed in the wake of the Spanish conquerors and viceroys. REVIVAL OF LEARNING.--The stirring period of invention and of maritime discovery was also the period of "the revival of learning." Italy was the main center and source of this intellectual movement, which gradually spread over the other countries of Western Europe. There was a thirst for a wider range of study and of culture than the predominantly theological writings and training of the Middle Ages afforded. The minds of men turned for stimulus and nutriment to the ancient classical authors. _Petrarch_, the Italian poet (1304-1374), did much to foster this new spirit. In the fifteenth century the more active intercourse with the Greek Church, and the efforts at union with it, helped to bring into Italy learned Greeks, like _Chrysoloras_ and _Bessarion_, and numerous manuscripts of Greek authors. The fall of _Constantinople_ increased this influx of Greek learning. The new studies were fostered by the Italian princes, who vied with one another in their zeal for collecting the precious literary treasures of antiquity, and in the liberal patronage of the students of classical literature. The manuscripts of the Latin writers, preserved in the monasteries of the West, were likewise eagerly sought for. The most eminent of the patrons of learning were the _Medici_ of Florence. _Cosmo_ founded a library and a Platonic academy. All the writings of _Plato_ were translated by one of that philosopher's admiring disciples, _Marsilius Ficinus_. Dictionaries and grammars, versions and commentaries, for instruction in classical learning, were multiplied. These, with the ancient poets, philosophers, and orators themselves, were diffused far and wide by means of the new art of printing, and from presses, of which the _Aldine_--that of _Aldus Minutius_--at _Venice_ was the most famous. "By the side of the Church, which had hitherto held the countries of the West together (though it was unable to do so much longer) there arose a new spiritual influence, which, spreading itself abroad from Italy, became the breath of life for all the more instructed minds in Europe." CONTEST OF THE NEW AND THE OLD CULTURE.--In Germany, the new learning gained a firm foothold. But there, as elsewhere, the _Humanists_, as its devotees were called, had a battle to fight with the votaries of the mediæval type of culture, who, largely on theological grounds, objected to the new culture, and were stigmatized as "obscurantists." In Italy, the study of the ancient heathen writers had engendered, or at least been accompanied by, much religious skepticism and indifference. This, however, was not the case in Germany. But the champions of the scholastic method and system, in which logic and divinity, as handled by the schoolmen, were the principal thing, were strenuously averse to the linguistic and literary studies which threatened to supplant them. The advocates of the new studies derided the lack of learning, the barbarous style, and fine-spun distinctions of the schoolmen, who had once been the intellectual masters. The disciples of _Aristotle_ and of the schoolmen still had a strong hold in _Paris_, _Cologne_, and other universities. But certain universities, like _Tübingen_ and _Heidelberg_, let in the humanistic studies. In 1502 _Frederick_, the elector of Saxony, founded a university at _Wittenberg_, in which from the outset they were prominent. In _England_, the cause of learning found ardent encouragement, and had able representatives in such men as _Colet_, dean of St. Paul's, who founded St. Paul's School at his own expense; and in _Thomas More_, the author of _Utopia_, afterwards lord chancelor under _Henry VIII_. REUCHLIN: ULRICH VON HUTTEN.--A leader of humanism in Germany was _John Reuchlin_ (1455-1522), an erudite scholar, who studied Greek at Paris and Basel, mingled with _Politian_, _Pica de Mirandola_, and other famous scholars at _Florence_, and wrote a Hebrew as well as a Greek grammar. This distinguished humanist became involved in a controversy with the _Dominicans_ of _Cologne_, who wished to burn all the Hebrew literature except the Old Testament. The Humanists all rallied in support of their chief, to whom heresy was imputed, and their success in this wide-spread conflict helped forward their cause. _Ulrich von Hutten_, one of the young knights who belonged to the literary school, and others of the same class, made effective use, against their illiterate antagonists, of the weapons of satire and ridicule. ERASMUS.--The prince of the Humanists was _Desiderius Erasmus_ (1467-1536). No literary man has ever enjoyed a wider fame during his own lifetime. He was not less resplendent for his wit than for his learning. Latin was then the vehicle of intercourse among the educated. In that tongue the books of _Erasmus_ were written, and they were eagerly read in all the civilized countries. He studied theology in _Paris_; lived for a number of years in _England_, where, in company with _More_ and _Colet_, he fostered the new studies; and finally took up his abode at _Basel_. In early youth, against his will, he had been for a while an inmate of a cloister. The idleness, ignorance, self-indulgence, and artificial austerities, which frequently belonged to the degenerate monasticism of the day, furnished him with engaging themes of satire. But in his _Praise of Folly_, and in his _Colloquies_, the two most diverting of his productions, he lashes the foibles and sins of many other classes, among whom kings and popes are not spared. By such works as his editions of the Church Fathers, and his edition of the Greek Testament, as well as by his multifarious correspondence, he exerted a powerful influence in behalf of culture. If he incurred the hostility of the conservative Churchmen, he still adhered to the Roman communion, and won unbounded applause from the advocates of liberal studies and of practical religious reforms. LITERATURE IN ITALY.--The first effect of the revival of letters in Italy was to check original production in literature. The charm of the ancient authors who were brought out of their tombs, the belles-lettres studies, and the criticism awakened by them, naturally had this effect for a time. Italy had two great authors in the vernacular, the poet _Ariosto_ (1474-1533), and _Machiavelli_: it had, besides, one famous historian, _Guicciardini_ (1482-1540). RENAISSANCE OF ART.--This period was not simply an era of grand exploration and discovery, and of the new birth of letters: it was the brilliant dawn of a new era in art. Sculpture and painting broke loose from their subordination to Church architecture. Painting, especially, attained to a far richer development. ARCHITECTURE AND SCULPTURE.--In architecture and sculpture, the influence of the antique styles was potent. Under the auspices of _Brunelleschi_ (1377-1446), the _Pitti Palace_ and other edifices of a like kind had been erected at _Florence_. At _Rome, Bramante_ (who died in 1515), and, in particular, _Michael Angelo_ (1475-1564), who was a master in the three arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture, and a poet as well, were most influential. The great Florentine artist _Ghiberti_ (1378-1455), in the bronze gates of the Baptistery, exhibited the perfection of bas-relief. The highest power of _Michael Angelo_, as a sculptor, is seen in his statue of Moses at Rome, and in the sepulchers of Julian and Lorenzo de Medici at Florence. A student of his works, _Cellini_ (1500-1571) is one of the men of genius of that day, who, like his master, was eminently successful in different branches of art. In the same period, there were sculptors of high talent in Germany, especially at _Nuremberg_, where _Adam Kraft_ (1429-1507), and _Peter Vischer_ (1435-1529), whose skill is seen in the bronze tomb of _Sebaldus_, in the church of that saint, are the most eminent. After the death of _Michael Angelo_, in Italy there was a decline in the style of sculpture, which became less noble and more affected. PAINTING IN ITALY.--The ancients had less influence on the schools of painting than on sculpture. In painting, as we have seen, _Giotto_ (1266-1337), a contemporary of the poet _Dante_, and _Cimabue_ (who died about 1302), had led the way. The art of perspective was mastered; and real life, more or less idealized, was the subject of delineation. In Italy, there arose various distinct styles or schools. The _Florentine_ school reached its height of attainment in the majestic works of _Michael Angelo_, the frescos of the Sistine Chapel at Rome. The _Roman_ school is best seen in the _stanzas_ of the Vatican, by _Raphael_ (1483-1520), and in the ideal harmony and beauty of his Madonnas. Prior to Michael Angelo and Raphael, there was the symbolic religious art of the _Umbrian_ painters. Of these, the chief was _Fra Angelico_ (1387-1455), the devout monk who transferred to the canvas the tenderness and fervor of his own gentle spirit. The _Venetian_ school, with its richness of color, has left splendid examples of its power in the portraits of _Titian_ (1477-1576), the works of _Paul Veronese_ (who died in 1588), and the more passionate products of the pencil of _Tintoretto_ (who died in 1594). The _Lombard_ school has for its representatives the older contemporary of _Raphael_, _Leonardo da Vinci_ (1452-1519), who combines perfection of outward form with deep spirituality, and by whom _The Last Supper_ was painted on the wall of the cloister at _Milan_; and _Correggio_ (1494-1534), whose play of tender sensibility, and skill in the contrasts of light and shade in color, are exhibited in _The Night_, or _Worship of the Magi_ (at _Dresden_), and in his frescos at _Parma_. The school of _Bologna_, founded by the three _Caracci_, numbers in its ranks _Guido Rent_ (1575-1642), gifted with imagination and sensibility, and _Salvator Rosa_ (1615-1673), who depicted the more wild and somber aspects of nature and of life. MICHAEL ANGELO AND RAPHAEL.--The two foremost names in the history of Italian art are _Michael Angelo_ and _Raphael_. "If there is one man who is a more striking representative of the Renaissance than any of his contemporaries, it is Michael Angelo. In him character is on a par with genius. His life of almost a century, and marvelously active, is spotless. As an artist, we can not believe that he can be surpassed. He unites in his wondrous individuality the two master faculties, which are, so to speak, the poles of human nature, whose combination in the same individual creates the sovereign greatness of the Tuscan school,--invention and judgment,--a vast and fiery imagination, directed by a method precise, firm, and safe." Raphael lacks the grandeur and the many-sided capacity of the great master by whom he was much influenced. Raphael "had a nature which converted every thing to beauty." He produced in a short life an astonishing number of works of unequal merit; but to all of them he imparted a peculiar charm, derived from "an instinct for beauty, which was his true genius." PAINTING IN THE NETHERLANDS.--In the Netherlands, a school of painting arose under the brothers _Van Eyck_ (1366-1426, 1386-1440). One of them, _John_, was the first artist to paint in oil. At a later day, a class of painters, of whom _Rubens_ (1577-1640) is the most distinguished, followed more the track of the ancients and of the Italian school. These belonged to _Flanders_ and _Brabant_; while in _Holland_ a school sprang up of a more original and independent cast, in which genius of the highest order was manifested in the person of _Rembrandt_ (1607-1669), its most eminent master. PAINTING IN GERMANY AND FRANCE.--In _Germany_, a school marked by peculiarities of its own was represented by _Hans Holbein_ (who died in 1543), and by _Albert Dürer_ the Nuremberg artist (1471-1528). In Spain, _Murillo_ (1617-1682) combined inspiration with technical skill, and stands on a level with the renowned Italians. _Velasquez_ (1599-1660), an artist of extraordinary power, is most distinguished for his portraits. The French artists mostly followed the Italian styles. _Claude Lorraine_ (1600-1682) was the painter of landscapes that are luminous in sunlight and atmosphere. In England, the humorous _Hogarth_ (1697-1764) was much later. MUSIC.--Music shared in the prosperity of the sister arts. The interest awakened in its improvement paved the way in _Italy_ for _Palestrina_ (1514-1594), whose genius and labors constitute an epoch. In _Germany, Luther_ became one of the most efficient promoters of musical culture in connection with public worship. The great German composers, _Bach_ (1685-1750) and _Händel_ (1685-1759), belong to a subsequent period: they are, however, in some degree the fruit of seed sown earlier. LITERATURE.--For works on general history, see p. 16. For general histories of particular countries, see p. 359. On Modern Times. Dyer's _History of Modern Europe_; Duruy's _History of Modern Times_ [1453-1789]; Lavisse et Rambaud, _Histoire Générale_, Vol. IV.; _The Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. I.: _The Renaissance_; Heeren, _Political System of Europe_; _Historical Treatises_ (1 vol.); Heeren u. Ukert, _Geschichte der europäisch. Staaten_ (76 vols. 1829 75); T. ARNOLD'S _Lectures on Modern History_; Michelet's _Modern History_ (1 vol.), Yonge's _Three Centuries of Modern History_. On the Age of the Renaissance. Symonds's _Renaissance in Italy_ (5 vols.); BURCKHARDT'S _The Civilization of the Period of the Renaissance in Italy_ (2 vols.); REUMONT'S _Lorenzo de' Medici_ (2 vols); Roscoe's _Life of Lorenzo de' Medici_; VILLARI'S _Machiavelli and his Times_; Machiavelli, _History of Florence_; Oliphant, _Makers of Florence: Dante', Giotto, Savonarola, and their city_ (1 vol.); Voigt, _Die Wiederbelebung des classischen alterthums_ (1859); Lanzi, _History of Painting_ (3 vols.); Vasari, _Lives of Painters, Sculptors, and Architects_; Crowe and Cavalcasselle, _History of Painting in North Italy_ [1300-1500] (2 vols., 1871); Crowe, _Handbook of Painting: the German, Flemish and Dutch Schools_ (2 parts, 1874); Eastlake, _Handbook of Painting, the Italian Schools_ (based on _Kugler_, 2 parts, 1874); Crowe and Cavalcasselle, _Life of Titian_ (2 vols.); _Illustrated Biographies of the Great Artists_ (14 vols.); Mrs. Jameson, _Lives of Italian Painters_; Grimm, _Life of Michael Angelo_ (2 vols.); Crowe and Cavalcasselle, _Life and Works of Raphael_; Fergusson, _History of Modern Styles of Architecture_; RUGE'S _Geschichte d. Zeitalters d. Entdeckungen_ (1 vol. in Oncken's Series); GEIGER'S _Renaissance und Humanismus in Italien und Deutschland_ (1 vol. in Oncken's Series); Lives of Erasmus, by Le Clerc, Jortin, Knight, Burigny (2 vols.), Froude, Emerton, Drummond (2 vols.); Lives of Columbus, by Irving, Major (1847), Harrisse (1884), Markham (1892), Winsor; PRESCOTT'S _History of Ferdinand and Isabella, History of the Conquest of Mexico_, and _History of the Conquest of Peru_; Robertson, _History of America_; Beazly, _Dawn of Modern Geography_ (2 vols.); Fiske, _Discovery of America_ (2 vols.); Payne, _America_ (2 vols.); Scebohm's _Oxford Reformers_; Robinson and Rolfe, _Petrarch_; Creighton, _History of the Papacy during the Reformation_ (Vols. I.-IV.); Pastor, _History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages_ (3 vols.); Janssen, _History of the German People at the Close of the Middle Ages_ (8 vols.); Whitcomb, _Source Books of the Italian and German Renaissance_; Grant, _The French Monarchy_ (2 vols.); Johnson, _European History in the Sixteenth Century_. PERIOD II. THE ERA OF THE REFORMATION. (1517-1648) INTRODUCTION. The general stir in men's minds, as indicated in the revival of learning and in remarkable inventions and discoveries, was equally manifest in great debates and changes in religion. One important element and fruit of the _Renaissance_ is here seen. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the nations of Western Europe were all united in one Church, of which the Pope was the acknowledged head. There were differences as to the extent of his proper authority; sects had sprung up at different times; and there had arisen leaders, like _Wickliffe_ and _Huss_, at war with the prevailing system. Ecclesiastical sedition, however, had been mostly quelled. Yet there existed a great amount of outspoken and latent discontent. First, complaints were loud against maladministration in Church affairs. There were extortions and other abuses that excited disaffection. Secondly, the authority exercised by the Pope was charged with being inconsistent with the rights of civil rulers and of national churches. Thirdly, disputes sprang up, both in regard to various practices deemed objectionable, like prayers for the dead, and the invocation of saints, and also concerning important doctrines, like the doctrine of the _mass_ or the Lord's Supper, and the part that belongs to faith in the Christian method of salvation. Out of this ferment arose what is called the Protestant Reformation. The _Teutonic_ nations generally broke off from the Church of Rome, and renounced their allegiance to the Pope. The _Latin_ or _Romanic nations_, for the most part, still adhered to him. As the common idea was that there should be uniformity of belief and worship in a state, civil wars arose on the question which form of belief should dominate. _Germany_ was desolated for thirty years by a terrible struggle. Yet, in all the conflicts between kingdoms and states in this period, it was plain that political motives, or the desire of national aggrandizement, were commonly strong enough to override religious differences. When there was some great interest of a political or dynastic sort at stake, those that differed in religion most widely would frequently assist one another. It is in this period that we see _Spain_, under _Charles V._ and _Philip II._, reach the acme of its power, and then sink into comparative weakness. CHAPTER I. THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY, TO THE TREATY OF NUREMBERG (1517-1532). BEGINNING OF THE REFORMATION.--The Reformation began in _Germany_, where there was a great deal of discontent with the way in which the Church was governed and managed, and on account of the large amounts of money carried out of the country on various grounds for ecclesiastical uses at Rome. The leader of the movement, _Martin Luther_, was the son of a poor miner, and was born at _Eisleben_ in 1483. He was an Augustinian monk, and had been made professor of theology, and preacher at _Wittenberg_, by the Elector of Saxony, _Frederick the Wise_ (1508). Luther was a man of extraordinary intellectual powers, and a hard student, of a genial and joyous nature, yet not without a deep vein of reflection, tending even to melancholy. He had a strong will, and was vigorous and vehement in controversy. He had been afflicted with profound religious anxieties; but in the study of St. Paul and St. Augustine, and after much inward wrestling, he emerged from them into a state of mental peace. The immediate occasion of disturbance, the spark that kindled the flame, was the sale of indulgences in _Saxony_ by a Dominican monk named _Tetzel_. Indulgences were the remission, total or partial, of _penances_, and, in theory, always presupposed repentance; but, as the business was managed in Germany at that time, it amounted in the popular apprehension to a sale of absolution from guilt, or to the ransom of deceased friends from purgatory for money. These gross abuses were painful to sincere friends of religion. In 1517 _Luther_ posted on the door of the church at _Wittenberg_ his celebrated ninety-five theses. It was customary in those days for public debates to take place in universities, where, as in jousts and tournaments among knights, scholars offered to defend propositions in theology and philosophy against all comers. Such were the "theses" of Luther on indulgences. The public mind was in such a state that a great commotion was kindled by them. Conflict spread; and the name of _Luther_ became famous as a stanch antagonist of ecclesiastical abuses, and a fearless champion of reform. The _Elector_, a religious man, calm and cautious in his temper, was friendly to _Luther_, often sought to curb him, but stretched over him the shield of his protection. LUTHER AND LEO X.--Pope _Leo X;_ was of the house of _Medici_, the son of _Lorenzo_ the Magnificent. He had been made nominally a cardinal at the age of thirteen, and had advanced to the highest station in the Church. He was much absorbed in matters pertaining to learning and art, and in political affairs, and at first looked upon this Saxon disturbance as a mere squabble of monks. He attempted ineffectually to bring _Luther_ to submission and quietness, first through his legate _Cajetan_, a scholarly Italian, who met him at _Augsburg_ (1518), and then by a second messenger, _Miltitz_ (1519), a Saxon by birth. A turning-point in Luther's course was a public _disputation_ at _Leipsic_, before Duke _George_; for _ducal_ Saxony was hostile to him. With Luther, on that occasion, was _Philip Melanchthon_, the young professor of Greek at _Wittenberg_, who was a great scholar, and a man of mild and amiable spirit. He became a very effective and noted auxiliary of the reformer, and acquired the honorary title of "preceptor of Germany." In the Leipsic debate, when Luther was opposed by the Catholic champion _Eck_, and by others, his own views in opposition to the papacy became more distinct and decided. He soon disputed the right of the Pope to make laws, to canonize, etc., denied the doctrine of purgatory, and avowed his sympathy with _Huss_. He issued a stirring _Address to the Christian Nobles of the German Nation_. In 1520 he was excommunicated by the Pope, but the elector paid no regard to the papal bull. Luther himself went so far as publicly to burn it at the gates of the town, in the presence of an assembly of students and others gathered to witness the scene. Both parties had now taken the extreme step: there was now open war between them. _Jurists_, who were aggrieved by the interference of ecclesiastical with civil courts, supported _Luther_. So the _Humanists_ who had defended _Reuch-lin_, among whom were the youthful literary class of which _Ulrich von Hutten_ was one, became his allies. Many among the inferior clergy and the monastic orders sympathized with him. CONDITION OF GERMANY.--It was now for the _Empire_ to decide between _Luther_ and the _Pope_. The efforts to create a better political system under _Maximilian_ had proved in the main abortive. There was strife between the princes and the knights, as well as between princes and bishops. The cities complained bitterly of oppressive taxation and of lawless depredations. There was widespread disaffection, threatening open revolt, among the peasants. _Maximilian_ had been thwarted politically by the popes. At first he was glad to hear of _Luther's_ rebellion. He said to _Frederick the Wise_, "Let the Wittenberg monk be taken good care of: we may some day want him." In the latter part of his reign his interests drew him nearer to Rome. ELECTION OF CHARLES V.--On the death of _Maximilian_ (1519), as the Elector _Frederick_ would not take the imperial crown, there were two rival candidates,--_Francis I._, the king of France, and _Charles I._, of Spain, the grandson of _Maximilian_. _Francis_ was a gallant and showy personage, but it was feared that he would be despotic; and the electors made choice of _Charles_. The extent of _Charles's_ hereditary dominions in Germany, and the greatness of his power, would make him, it was thought, the best defender of the empire against the Turks. The electors, at his choice, bound him in a "capitulation" to respect the authority of the _Diet_, and not to bring foreign troops into the country. _Charles_ was the inheritor of _Austria_ and the _Low Countries_, the crowns of _Castile_ and _Aragon_, of _Navarre_, of _Naples_ and _Sicily_, together with the territories of Spain in the _New World_; and now he was at the head of the Holy Roman Empire. The concentration of so much power in a single hand could not but provoke alarm in all other potentates. The great rival of _Charles_ was _Francis I._, and the main prize in the contest was dominion in Italy. Charles was a sagacious prince; from his Spanish education, strongly attached to the Roman-Catholic system, and, in virtue of the imperial office, the protector of the Church. Yet with him political considerations, during most of his life, were uppermost. He made the mistake of not appreciating the strength that lay in the convictions at the root of the Protestant movement. He over-estimated the power of political combinations. DIET OF WORMS.--_Charles V._ first came into Germany in 1521, and met the Diet of the empire at _Worms_. There _Luther_ appeared under the protection of a safe-conduct. He manifested his wonted courage; and in the presence of the emperor, and of the august assembly, he refused to retract his opinions, planting himself on the authority of the Scriptures, and declining to submit to the verdicts of Pope or council. After he had left _Worms_, a sentence of outlawry was passed against him. _Charles_ at that moment was bent on the re-conquest of _Milan_, which the French had taken; and the Pope was friendly to his undertaking, although _Leo X._ had been opposed to _Charles's_ election. FRANCIS I.--_Francis I._ (1515-1547) aimed to complete the work begun by his predecessors, and to make the French monarchy absolute. By a _concordat_ with the Pope (1516), the choice of bishops and abbots was given into the king's hand, while the Pope was to receive the _annates_, or the first year's revenue of all such benefices. _Francis_ continued the practice of selling judicial places begun under _Louis XII._. He was bent on maintaining the unity of France, and, as a condition, the Catholic system. But he was always ready to help the Protestants in _Germany_ when he could thereby weaken _Charles_. For the same end, he was even ready to join hands with the Turk. RIVALRY OF CHARLES AND FRANCIS.--Charles claimed the old imperial territories of _Milan_ and _Genoa_. He claimed, also, a portion of Southern France,--the _duchy of Burgundy_, which he did not allow that _Louis XI._ had the right to confiscate. _Francis_ claimed _Naples_ in virtue of the rights of the house of _Anjou_; also Spanish _Navarre_, which _Ferdinand of Aragon_ had seized, and the suzerainty of _Flanders_ and _Artois_. He had gained a brilliant victory over the _Swiss_ at the battle of _Marignano_, in 1515, and reconquered _Milan_. He concluded a treaty of peace with the _Swiss_,--the treaty of _Freiburg_ (1516), which gave to the king, in return for a yearly pension, the liberty to levy troops in Switzerland. This treaty continued until the French Revolution. FIRST WAR OF CHARLES AND FRANCIS (1521-1526).--Hostilities between _Francis_ and _Charles_ commenced in _Italy_ in 1521. The French were driven from _Milan_ in 1522, which was again placed in the hands of _Francesco Sforza_; and the emperor was soon master of all Northern Italy. _England_ and the _Pope_ sided with _Charles_; and on the death of _Leo X._, a former tutor of the emperor was made his successor, under the name _Adrian VI._ (1522). The most eminent and the richest man in France, next to the king, _Charles of Bourbon_, constable of the kingdom, joined the enemies of _Francis_. He complained of grievances consequent on the enmity of _Louisa of Savoy_, the mother of the king, and attempted, with the aid of the emperor and _Henry VIII._, to create a kingdom for himself in South-eastern France. But the national spirit in France was too strong for such a scheme of dismemberment and foreign conquest to succeed, and all that _Charles_ gained in the end was one brave general. In the winter of 1524-25 _Francis_ crossed the Alps at the head of a brilliant army, and recaptured _Milan_; but he was defeated and taken prisoner at _Pavia_, and the French army was almost destroyed. _Charles_ was able to dictate terms to his captive. It was stipulated in the _Peace of Madrid_ (1526), that _Francis_ should renounce all claim to _Milan, Genoa_, and _Naples_, and to the suzerainty of _Flanders_ and _Artois_, cede the duchy of _Burgundy_, and deliver his sons as hostages, terms which could not be fulfilled. LUTHER AT THE WARTBURG.--We have now to glance at the events in _Germany_ during the absence of _Charles V. Luther_, although under the ban of the empire, was in no immediate peril while he staid in _Saxony_. The elector, however, thought it prudent to place him in the castle of the _Wartburg_, where he could have a safe and quiet asylum. There he began his translation of the Bible, which, apart from its religious influence, from the vigor and racy quality of its style made an epoch in the literary history of the German people. It was a work of great labor. "The language used by Luther in both the Old and New Testaments did not exist before in so pure, powerful, and genuine a form." While _Luther_ was engaged in this work, a radical movement broke out at _Wittenberg_, of which _Carlstadt_, one of his supporters, was the principal leader. He was for carrying changes in worship to such an extreme, and for introducing them so abruptly, that the greatest disorder was threatened. Against the wish of the elector, _Luther_ left his retreat, and by his discourses and personal presence quieted the disturbance. PROGRESS AND REACTION.--No attempt was made to carry out the _Worms_ decree. The reason was that the influential classes were so much in sympathy with _Luther's_ cause. The _Imperial Chamber_, which ruled in the emperor's absence, would do nothing against him. Its committee refused to carry out the decree; and a list of "one hundred grievances" was sent to Pope _Adrian VI._, of which the German nation had reason to complain (1523). Events, however, soon occurred that were unfavorable in their effect on the Lutheran movement. The knights banded together in large numbers, under _Franz van Sickingen_, and tried by force of arms to reduce the power of the princes. _Luther_ showed no favor to their plans and doings; but, as their leaders had applauded him, a reaction against innovations, including changes in doctrine, was the natural consequence. Pope _Adrian VI._ was earnestly desirous of practical reforms; but his successor, _Clement VII._ (1523-1534), was of the house of _Medici_, and a man of the world, like _Leo X._ An alliance was made by the Catholic princes and bishops of South Germany at _Ratisbon_ in 1524, to do away with certain abuses, but to prevent the spread of the new doctrine. THE PEASANTS' WAR.--In 1524 a great revolt of the _peasants_ broke out, and the next year it became general. They were groaning under intolerable burdens of taxation, and other forms of oppression. They demanded liberty in church affairs, and for the preaching of the new doctrine, and release from feudal tyranny. _Luther_ felt and said that they were wronged grievously; but when they took up arms, he, and with him the great middle class which he led, took sides strongly against them. The revolt was put down, and its authors inhumanly punished. For a time the peasants had wonderful success. _Napoleon_ wondered that _Charles V._ did not seize the occasion to make Germany a united empire. Then seemed to be a time when the princes could have been stripped of their power. One of the foremost leaders of the rebellion was _Thomas Münzer_. On the defeat of the peasants, he was captured and beheaded. SECOND WAR BETWEEN CHARLES AND FRANCIS (1527-1529).--In the Peace of _Madrid, Charles_ and _Francis_ had agreed to proceed against the Turks and against the heretics. But, after the release of _Francis_, he repudiated the concessions before mentioned (p. 400), which were made, he alleged, under coercion; and with _Clement VII._ he formed a conspiracy against the emperor. The _Diet of Spires_, in 1526, decided to leave each of the component parts of the empire, until the meeting of a general council, to decide for itself as to the course to be taken in the matter of religion and in respect to the edict of _Worms_. In 1527 a German army, largely composed of Lutherans, led by Constable _Bourbon_ and _George Frundsberg_, stormed and captured _Rome_. The Pope made an alliance with _Henry VIII._ A French army under _Lautrec_ appeared at _Naples_, but it was so weakened by a fearful pestilence that it was easily destroyed. The _Pope_ concluded peace with _Charles_ in 1529. The emperor promised to exterminate heresy. In the Peace of _Cambray_, _Francis_ renounced his claims on _Italy_, _Flanders_, and _Artois_: Charles engaged for the present not to press his claims upon _Burgundy_, and set free the French princes. TO THE PEACE OF NUREMBERG (1532).--The _Diet of Spires_ in 1529 reversed the policy of tacit toleration. It passed an edict forbidding the progress of the Reformation in the states which had not accepted it, and allowing in the reformed states full liberty of worship to the adherents of the old confession. The protest by the Lutheran princes and cities, against the decree of the Diet, gave the name of _Protestants_ to their party. The successful defense of _Vienna_ against an immense army of the Turks under _Soliman_ delivered _Charles_ for the moment from anxiety in that quarter. A theological controversy between the _Lutheran_ and the _Swiss_ reformers, on the _Lord's Supper_, made a division of feeling between them. A conference of the two parties at _Marburg_, in which _Luther_ and _Melanchthon_ met _Zwingli_ and his associates, brought no agreement. Every thing was propitious for an effort at coercion; and this was resolved upon at the _Diet of Augsburg_ in 1530, where the emperor was present in person, and where _Melanchthon_ presented the celebrated Protestant _Confession_ of Faith. The threats against the Protestant princes induced them to form the _League of Smalcald_ for mutual defense. But it was found impracticable to carry out the measures of repression against the Lutherans. _Bavaria_ was jealous of the house of _Hapsburg_, and opposed to the plan of the emperor to make his brother, _Ferdinand_ of Austria, his successor. The _Turks_ under _Soliman_ were threatening. _France_ and _Denmark_ were ready to help the Protestants. Accordingly the Peace of _Nuremberg_ was concluded in 1532, in which religious affairs were to be left as they were, and both parties were to combine against the common enemy of Christendom. CHAPTER II. THE REFORMATION IN TEUTONIC COUNTRIES: SWITZERLAND, DENMARK, SWEDEN, ENGLAND. THE SWISS REFORMATION: ZWINGLI.--The founder of Protestantism in Switzerland was _Ulrich Zwingli_. He was born in 1484. His father was the leading man in a mountain village. The son, at _Vienna_ and at _Basel_, became a proficient in the humanist studies. He read the Greek authors and the Bible in the original. A curate first at _Glarus_, and then at _Einsiedeln_, he became pastor at _Zurich_. As early as 1518 he preached against the sale of indulgences. He was a scholarly man, bluff and kindly in his ways, and an impressive orator. The Swiss were corrupted by their employment as mercenary soldiers, hired by France, by the Pope, or by the emperor. Of the demoralizing influence of this practice, _Zwingli_ became deeply convinced; and his exertions as a Church reformer were mingled with a patriotic zeal for the moral and political regeneration of Switzerland. Mainly by his influence, _Zurich_ separated from the jurisdiction of the bishop of Constance, and became Protestant in 1524. The example of _Zurich_ was followed by _Berne_ (1528) and by _Basel_ (1529). _Zwingli_ agreed with _Luther_ on the two main points of the sole authority of the Scriptures, and the doctrine of salvation by faith alone; but on the _sacrament_ of the _Lord's Supper_ he went farther in his dissent from the Church of Rome. This made Luther and his followers stand aloof when cordial fellowship was proposed between the two parties. CIVIL STRIFE: DEATH OF ZWINGLI.--The aim of _Zwingli_ was to establish a republican constitution in the several cantons, and also in the confederation as a body, where the five Forest Cantons had an undue share of power. These adhered to the old Church. In _Berne_ the oligarchic party was supplanted by the republican, reforming party,--an event of decisive importance. As the irritation increased between the Forest Cantons and the cities, the former entered into a league with _Ferdinand_ of Austria, and the cities leaned for support on the German states in sympathy with their opinions. A treaty was made (1529), but each side accused the other of breaking it. At length war began: _Berne_ failed to come to the help of _Zurich_. Each city wished to be the metropolis of the reformed confederation. The forces of _Zurich_ were vanquished at _Cappel_, where _Zwingli_ himself, who was on the field in the capacity of a chaplain, was slain (1531). By the peace of _Cappel_ in 1531, Protestantism was not coerced, but a check was put upon its progress. Neither party was strong enough to subdue the other. PROTESTANTISM IN SCANDINAVIA.--In the Scandinavian countries, monarchical power was built up by means of the Reformation. The union of _Calmar_ (1397) under Queen _Margaret_, between _Denmark, Norway,_ and _Sweden,_ had been a dynastic union. The several peoples were not united in feeling. The sovereign, moreover, had his power limited by a strong feudal nobility, and by a rich Church impatient of control. First the Church was overcome by means of Protestantism, and then the nobles. THE REFORMATION IN DENMARK--On the accession of _Christian I._ of _Oldenburg_ (1448-1481), the duchies of _Holstein_ and _Schleswig_ became connected with Denmark in a personal union. His grandson, _Christian II._ (1513-1523), did not rule the duchies, which were governed by _Frederic I_., who afterwards succeeded _Christian II_. as king of Denmark. _Christian II_. was bent on putting down the aristocracy, lay and clerical, but lacked the moral qualities necessary to success in so difficult a task. He at first favored Protestantism from political motives. He hoped to bring the _Swedes_ into subjection by the aid of the _Danes_, and then to subdue the Danish nobility. In _Sweden_ the nobles practically ruled; and the regency was in the hands of the _Stures_, who befriended the common people, and were opposed by the other nobles and the clergy. _Christian_ made use of these divisions, and of the help of German and French troops, to get possession of _Stockholm_ (1520). He took the Catholic side. But his perfidy, and the massacre of eminent Swedes,--known as the _Massacre of Stockholm,_--excited an inextinguishable hatred against _Denmark_. The Danish nobles feared the same sort of treatment. The king's attempts at reform offended them without pleasing the peasants, and a revolution took place which dethroned him. Duke _Frederic_ of _Schleswig_ was made king (1523): the duchies and _Denmark_ were again together. _Frederic_ swore not to introduce the Reformation, nor to attack Catholicism. But he was an ardent Lutheran. The new doctrine had come into the land, and was spreading. The nobles, who coveted the possessions of the Church, espoused it. At the Diet of _Odensee_, in 1527, toleration was granted to Lutheranism. On _Frederic's_ death, in 1533, an effort of the bishops to restore the exclusive domination of the old system of religion was defeated. _Christian III._ was made king; and at a Diet at _Copenhagen_ in 1536, the Reformation was legalized, and the Lutheran system, with bishops or superintendents, was established. THE REFORMATION IN SWEDEN.--After the massacre of Stockholm, _Denmark_ was detested by the Swedes. A great political revolution occurred, which involved also a religious revolution. The author of the change, and the real founder of the Swedish monarchy, was _Gustavus Vasa_, a young Swede of noble family, who had been held as a captive in _Copenhagen_, but had escaped and returned to his country. He was of imposing presence, prudent yet daring, and with a natural gift of eloquence. Amid great dangers and sufferings, such as tradition ascribed to King _Alfred_ of England, he succeeded, at the head of a force gathered to him in the province of Dâlecarlia, in gaining the most important places in the country, and was proclaimed king in 1523. He was not deeply interested in the religious controversy, although he favored Lutheranism; but he made it his steady aim to break down the clerical aristocracy, to weaken the nobles, and to organize a strong and prosperous monarchy. He proceeded carefully: but the peasants, who had been his warmest supporters, were strongly attached to the old Church; and the opposition to his measures from all quarters was such that at the _Diet of Westeräs_, in 1527, he took the bold step of offering to lay down the crown. At this Diet he had assembled representatives of the citizens and peasants, as well as the clergy and nobles. He proposed to pay an enormous debt which was due to _Lübeck_, by using the colossal wealth of the Church for this purpose, and to shake off the monopoly of trade which the Hanse towns enjoyed. Finding himself withstood, he renounced the throne. The distraction and tumults which followed his act of relinquishing the crown were such that a great party of the nobles joined him. Three days after his abdication, he was recalled to the throne: the clergy submitted abjectly, and the Church was no longer a power in the state, or possessed of wealth. Trade was released from its bondage to _Lübeck_ and the other towns; commerce was opened with foreign countries; and a market was provided for _iron_, the main product of the country. The nobles were held in subjection. The _Lutheran_ doctrine made very rapid progress, and became dominant. ENGLAND: HENRY VIII. AND LUTHER.--In England, as in France, there were earnest desires for church reform, partly aroused by such serious-minded humanists as _Colet_, _More_, and _Erasmus_. Even _Cardinal Wolsey_ sympathized with this movement, and intended to endow colleges and bishoprics out of the confiscated wealth of the more useless monasteries. What might have been a slow development of religious thought was transformed by the requirements of the king's own policy. Of all the _Tudor_ princes none had a more obstinate and tyrannical will than _Henry VIII_. The advantages derived from the effect of the civil wars, which had reduced the strength and numbers of the nobility, and the natural English jealousy, always shown, of foreign and papal supremacy, enabled _Henry_ to break off the connection of England with _Rome_; while, at the same time, he resisted Protestantism and persecuted its adherents. Proud of his theological acquirements, he appeared, in 1522, as an author against _Luther_, in a book in defense of the _Seven Sacraments_, for which he received from the Pope the title of _Defender of the Faith_. The vituperative character of Luther's answer confirmed him in his hatred of the new doctrine. "When God," said the blunt Saxon reformer, "wants a fool, he turns a king into a theological writer." THE DIVORCE QUESTION.--What made the breach between _Henry VIII_. and the papacy was the question of the king's divorce. He had been married in his twelfth year to _Catherine_ of Aragon, the aunt of _Charles V_. and the widow of Henry's deceased brother _Arthur_ (who had been married to her in 1501, when he was fifteen years old, and had died the next year). A dispensation permitting the marriage of Henry had been granted by Pope _Julius II_. How far _Henry's_ passion for _Anne Boleyn_, whom he desired to wed, was at the root of his scruples respecting the validity of his marriage, it may not be easy to decide. His application to _Clement VII_. for a separation reached the Pope after the Peace of _Madrid_, when there was a desire to lessen the power of the emperor. Cardinal _Wolsey_, the favorite counselor of _Henry_, who himself aspired to the papal office, was obliged to help on the cause of his imperious master. But whatever disposition there was at _Rome_ to gratify _Henry_, there was no inclination to hurry the proceedings. There were long delays in England, whither a papal legate, _Campeggio_, had been sent to investigate and determine the cause. In 1529 the legates decided that the case must be determined at Rome. This the queen had before demanded in vain. Aside from other objections to the divorce, _Clement VII_. was now at peace with _Charles V_., whom it was undesirable to offend. The incensed king took the matter into his own hands. _Wolsey_, having been one of the legates, was deprived of all his dignities: he was charged with treason, his strength melted away on his fall from the heights of power, and he died a broken-spirited man. SEPARATION OF ENGLAND FROM ROME.--_Henry_ now gave free rein to the spirit of opposition in Parliament to Rome. He took for his principal minister, who became vicegerent in ecclesiastical affairs, _Thomas Cromwell_. _Cromwell_, unlike _Wolsey_, was hostile to the temporal power of Rome. He made _Thomas Cranmer_ Archbishop of Canterbury, who was inclined toward Protestant views, but, though sincere in his beliefs, was a man of pliant temper, indisposed to resist the king's will, preferring to bow to a storm, and to wait for it to pass by. By _Cranmer_ the divorce was decreed, but this was after the marriage with _Anne Boleyn_ had taken place. _Henry_ was excommunicated by the Pope. Acts of Parliament abolished the Pope's, and established the king's, supremacy in the Church of England. In 1536 the cloisters were abolished. Their property was confiscated, and fell to a large extent into the hands of the nobles and the gentry. This measure bound them to the policy of the sovereign. The mitered abbots were expelled from the House of Lords, which left the preponderance of power with the lay nobles. The hierarchy bowed to the will of the king. THE TWO PARTIES.--There were two parties in England among the upholders of the king's supremacy. There were the Protestants by conviction, who were for spreading the new doctrine. This had already taken root and spread in the universities, and in some other places in the country. The new literary culture had paved the way for it. In the North, there were still left many _Lollards_, disciples of _Wickliffe_. _Cromwell, Cranmer_, and one of the bishops, _Latimer_, were prominent leaders of this party. Against them were the adherents of the Catholic theology, such as _Gardiner_, _Tunstal_ of Durham, and other bishops. At first the king inclined towards the first of these two parties. One of his most important acts was the ordering of a translation of the Bible into English, a copy of which was to be placed in every church. But a popular rebellion in 1536 was followed by a change of ecclesiastical policy. The _Six Articles_ were passed, asserting the Roman Catholic doctrines, and punishing those who denied transubstantiation with death. The queen, _Anne Boleyn_, who was an adherent of the Protestant side, was executed on the charge of infidelity to her marriage vows (1536). A few years later _Cromwell_ was sent to the scaffold because the king no longer approved of his policy and, seeing how unpopular he had become, used him as a scapegoat (1540). Lutheran bishops were thrown into the Tower: _Cranmer_ alone was shielded by the king's personal favor, and by his own prudence. This system of a national church, of which the king, and not the Pope, was the head, where the doctrine was Roman Catholic, and the great ecclesiastical officers were appointed, like civil officers, by the monarch, was the creation of _Henry VIII_. His strong will was able to keep down the conflicting parties. Despite his sensuality and cruelty, he was a popular sovereign. One of his principal crimes was the execution of _Sir Thomas More_ for refusing to take the oath of supremacy because this contained an affirmation of the invalidity of the king's marriage with _Catherine_. _More_ was one of the noblest men in England, a man who combined vigor with gentleness. He was willing to swear that the children of _Anne_ were lawful heirs to the throne, because Parliament, he believed, could regulate the succession; but this did not satisfy the tyrannical monarch. In the latter portion of his reign he grew more suspicious, willful, and cruel. CHAPTER III. THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY, FROM THE PEACE OF NUREMBERG TO THE PEACE OF AUGSBURG (1532-1555). THE PARTIES IN GERMANY, 1532-1542.--For ten years after the Peace of _Nuremberg_, the Protestants in Germany were left unmolested. The menacing attitude of the _Turks_, and the occupations of the emperor in Italy and in other lands, rendered it impossible to interfere with them. _Philip_, the Landgrave of Hesse, a chivalrous Protestant prince, led the way in the armed restoration of Duke _Ulrich of Würtemberg_, who had been driven out of his dominion. Thus a Protestant prince was established in the heart of Southern Germany (1534). In _Westphalia_, a fanatical branch of the Anabaptist sect at _Münster_, with whom the Lutherans did not sympathize, was broken up by the neighboring Catholic princes. The overthrow of the power of _Lübeck_ and of the Hanseatic League did not check the advance of Lutheranism. It continued to make great progress in different directions. The _Smalcald League_ was extended. A _league_ of the Catholic states was formed at _Nuremberg_ in 1538. During three years (1538-1541) efforts were made by the emperor to secure peace and union. Of these the Conference and Diet of _Ratisbon_ in 1541 is the most remarkable. The Protestants and Catholics could not agree upon statements of doctrine; but the necessity of getting Protestant help against the Turks compelled _Charles_ to sanction the Peace of _Nuremberg_, and to make to the Lutherans other important concessions. This arrangement the emperor regarded as only a temporary truce. Among the conquests of Protestantism after the Peace of _Nuremberg_, and prior to 1544, were _Brandenburg_ and _Ducal Saxony_, whose rulers adopted the new doctrine. It was spreading in _Austria_, in _Bavaria_, and in other states. Duke _Henry of Brunswick_ fell into conflict with the Smalcaldic League, and was conquered, so that his principality became Protestant. Even the ecclesiastical elector of _Cologne_ was taking steps towards joining the Protestant side. This would have given to the Lutherans a majority in the electoral college. The bishoprics with temporal power were numerous in Germany. If they were secularized, the old religious system would be deprived of a principal support. THE SMALCALDIC WAR.--_Charles V_. was now secretly resolved to coerce the Protestants in Germany, and silently made his preparations for war. Before hostilities commenced, _Luther_ died (1546). The emperor concluded the _Peace of Crespy_, after a fourth war with _Francis I_. It was a part of the agreement, that they should act jointly against the heretics. But as _Francis_ in the last two wars against the emperor (1536-1538, 1542-1544) had taken for allies the Turks under _Soliman_, it could not be predicted how long he would abide by his engagements. For the present, _Charles_ was safe in this quarter. He now took pains to shut the eyes of the Protestant princes to their danger. The Smalcaldic League was over-confident of its strength. Its members were discordant among themselves. Of the two chief leaders, the elector of Saxony, _John Frederic_, was a slow and unskillful general; and _Philip_, the Landgrave of Hesse, a brave and capable soldier, could not take command over an elector. Above all, _Maurice_, the Duke of Saxony, was in the midst of a quarrel with his relative, the elector, and coveted a part of his territories. _Maurice_ was an able and adroit man, a Protestant, but without the earnest religious convictions that belonged to the electors and to that generation of princes which was passing away. _Maurice_ was won by the emperor, through promises of enrichment and favor, and pledges not to interfere with religion in his principality. _Charles_ might have been prevented from bringing in foreign troops from the Netherlands and from Italy, but the military conduct of the elector was feeble and indecisive. He was defeated and captured in 1547 at _Mühlberg_, and the surrender of the Landgrave _Philip_ soon followed. The Protestant cause was prostrate. The clever _Maurice_ had his reward: the electoral office was transferred to him; he obtained a goodly portion of the elector's territory. THE RESULT: THE INTERIM.--_Charles_ was victorious, and apparently master of Germany. The country was occupied by his forces as far north as the Elbe. He was engaged in the work of pacification and of confirming his authority. In 1548 he issued the _Interim of Augsburg_, in which concessions were made to both parties, which proved satisfactory to neither. Skillful as the emperor was in diplomacy, he always showed weakness in dealing with the religious question. He proceeded to force the new measure on the refractory cities in the South. In the North it had little effect. _Maurice_ modified it in his own dominion. When _Charles_ seemed to himself to be on the eve of a complete triumph, he was deserted by the allies on whom he counted,--_Rome_, _France_, and the princes, especially _Maurice_. BREACH OF CHARLES WITH ROME.--The emperor's assuming to regulate the affairs of religion was regarded with disfavor at Rome. There had been a constant call for a general council to adjust the religious controversies. Rome, from fear of imperial influence, and for other reasons, had opposed the measure. At length, in 1545, the famous _Council of Trent_ assembled. The emperor wanted that body to begin with measures for the reformation of abuses. He looked for co-operation in his scheme for uniting the parties in Germany. But the council took another path: it began with anathemas against the heretical doctrines. Charles found himself at variance with the policy of Rome, at the moment when he was trying to bring Germany to submission. DISAFFECTION OF MAURICE.--The emperor's course in Germany produced general alarm. He separated the _Netherlands_ from the jurisdiction of the empire, but settled the succession in the government in the house of _Hapsburg_. He drove the Diet into other measures which looked towards the acquiring of military supremacy for himself in Germany. He violated his pledges respecting the two captive princes. _Philip_ of Hesse, the father-in-law of _Maurice_, he treated with great severity and indignity. Threats were thrown out by the counselors of _Charles_ against the other princes, and even against _Maurice_, who complained of the treatment of _Philip_, and was sore under the load of unpopularity that rested on him on account of his warfare against his co-religionists, by whom he was considered another Judas. THE PEACE OF AUGSBURG.--_Maurice_ laid his plans with secrecy and with masterly skill. He secured the coöperation of other German princes. He concluded an alliance with _Henry II_. of France. He arranged with _Magdeburg_, which he had been besieging, to make it a place of refuge if there should be need of an asylum. When all was ready, without having excited any suspicion on the part of _Charles_, he suddenly took the field, marched southward with an army that increased as he advanced, crossed the Alps, and forced the emperor, tormented with the gout, to fly hastily from _Innsbruck_ (1552). The captive princes were released. It was decided that Germany was not to be ruled by Spanish soldiery. The dream of imperial domination vanished. The Protestants were promised by _Ferdinand_ of Austria, in the name of his brother, toleration, and equality of rights. At the Diet of _Augsburg_ in 1555, the _Religious Peace_ was concluded. Every prince was to be allowed to choose between the Catholic religion and the Augsburg Confession, and the religion of the prince was to be that of the land over which he reigned: that is, each government was to choose the creed for its subjects. Ferdinand put in the "ecclesiastical reservation," which provided that if the head of an ecclesiastical state should become a Lutheran, he should resign his benefice. He also declared that the Lutheran subjects of ecclesiastical princes were not to be disturbed. The "reservation" was to please the Catholics: the additional provision was to meet the wishes of the Protestants. Neither stood on the same basis as the other part of the treaty. From Maurice the electoral dignity descended in the _Albertine_ line of Saxon princes. The _Ernestine_ line retained Weimar, Gotha, etc. CHAPTER IV. CALVINISM IN GENEVA: BEGINNING OF THE CATHOLIC COUNTER-REFORMATION. CALVIN.--Second in reputation to Luther only, among the founders of Protestantism, is _John Calvin_. He was a Frenchman, born in 1509, and was consequently a child when the Saxon Reformation began. He was keen and logical in his mental habit, with a great organizing capacity, naturally of a retiring temper, yet fearless, and endued with extraordinary intensity and firmness of will. A more finished scholar than Luther, he lacked his geniality and tenderness, and his imaginative power. Calvin first studied for the priesthood at _Paris_; but when his father determined to make him a jurist, he studied law at _Orleans_ and _Bourges_. Espousing the Protestant doctrines, he was obliged to fly from _Paris_, and, when still young, published his _Institutes of the Christian Religion_, in which he expounded the Protestant creed in a systematic although fervid way. In his type of theology, he laid much stress on the sovereignty of God, and predestination; and taught a view of the Lord's Supper not so far from that of the old Church as the doctrine of _Zwingli_, but farther removed from it than was the doctrine of Luther. THE GENEVAN GOVERNMENT.--In 1536, reluctantly yielding to the exhortations of _Farel_, a French preacher of the Protestant doctrine at _Geneva, Calvin_ established himself in that city. _Geneva_ was a fragment of the old kingdom of _Burgundy_. The dukes of _Savoy_ claimed a temporal authority in the city, which was subject to its bishop. The authority of the dukes was overthrown by a revolution, and power passed from the bishop into the hands of the people (1533). The change was effected with the aid of _Berne_ and _Freiburg_. There had been two parties in _Geneva_,--the party of the "Confederates," who were for striking hands with the Swiss, and the party of the "Mamelukes," adherents of the dukes. The civil was followed by an ecclesiastical revolution. Protestantism, with the aid of _Berne_, was legally established (1535). _Geneva_ was a prosperous, gay, and dissolute city. _Farel_, a popular orator of striking power, unsparing in denunciation, found the people impatient of the restraints that the new religious system which they had adopted laid upon them. The regulations as to doctrine, worship, and discipline, which _Calvin_ and his associates proceeded to introduce, were so distasteful, that the preachers were expelled by the _Council_ and by the _Assembly of Citizens_ from the place. After he had been absent three years, Calvin, in consequence of the increase of disorder and vice, and the distraction occasioned by contending factions, was recalled, and remained in Geneva until his death. He became the virtual lawgiver of the city. He framed a system of ecclesiastical and civil government. It was an ecclesiastical state, in which orthodoxy of belief, and purity of conduct, were not only inculcated by systematic teaching, but enforced by stringent enactments. Offenses comparatively trivial were punished by strict and severe penalties. To the system of church discipline, stretching over the life of every individual, and carried out by the civil magistrates in alliance with the pastors, there was much opposition, which led to outbreakings of violent resistance. But the supporters of Calvin were reinforced by numerous Protestant refugees from _France_. The improvement of the city in morals and in public order was signal. In the end, _Calvin_, who was as firm as a rock, triumphed over all opposition. _Geneva_ became a place of resort for exiles and students from various countries. By his writings and correspondence, Calvin's influence spread far and wide. In the affairs of the French Protestants, in particular, his influence was predominant. SERVETUS.--The Reformers were not, any more than their adversaries, advocates of liberty in religious beliefs and professions. A melancholy example of the prevailing idea, that it was the duty of the civil authority to inflict penalties upon heresy, is the case of _Michael Servetus_. A Spaniard by birth, with a remarkable aptitude for natural science and medicine, adventurous and fickle, he had published books in which doctrines received by both the great divisions of the Church, especially the doctrine of the Trinity, were assailed. He escaped out of the hands of the Catholics, and came to _Geneva_. There he was tried for heresy and blasphemy, and was burned at the stake (1553). This was at a time when Calvin was in the midst of his contest with the "Libertines," the party actuated by hostility to him. They appear to have stood behind _Servetus_ in his defiant attitude towards the Genevan authorities. INFLUENCE OF CALVINISM.--The personal influence of _Calvin_ was directly exerted upon the more cultured and educated. His religious system has wielded a great power, not only on this class, but also over the common people in different countries. Calvinism was never awed by monarchical authority. Like the Church of Rome, it always refused to subordinate the Church and religion to the civil power. It numbered among its votaries many men of dauntless courage and of unbending fidelity to their principles. THE CATHOLIC REACTION.--The first effectual resistance to the spread of Protestant opinions was made in _Italy_. In that country, there was opposition to the papacy from those who saw in it an instrument of political disunion, and also from some who were aggrieved by ecclesiastical abuses. The prevailing feeling, however, was that of pride in the papacy, which, in other countries, was attacked as an Italian institution. The humanist learning had done much to undermine belief in the old religious system. In the train of the new studies, came much indifference and infidelity. The books of the Protestant leaders, however, were widely circulated. There were not a few sincere converts to the new doctrine in the cities; but they were chiefly confined to the educated class, and to persons in high station. It took no root among the common people. After the time of the Medici popes, a new spirit of faith and devotion awoke in circles earnestly devoted to the papacy and to the Church. There was at Rome an "Oratory of Divine Love,"--a group of persons who met together for mutual edification. In this class were some, like _Contarini_, afterwards a cardinal, who were not wholly without sympathy with the Lutheran doctrine as to faith and justification; but out of the same class came others who led in the great _Catholic Reaction_, which, while it aimed at a rigid reform in morals, was inflexibly hostile to all innovations in doctrine, and was bent on regaining for the Church the ground that had been lost. THE COUNCIL OF TRENT: CARAFFA.--The Council of Trent was governed in its conclusions by this Catholic reactionary and reforming party. It allowed no curtailing of the prerogatives of the Pope. On points of doctrine in dispute within the pale of the Church, it adopted formulas which the different schools might accept. Practical reforms, for example in respect to the education of the clergy, were adopted; but dogma and teaching were to remain unaltered. Cardinal _Caraffa_, the most energetic mover in the Catholic reform and restoration, became Pope, under the name of _Paul IV._ (1555-1559). THE ORDER OF JESUS.--The Council of Trent, by providing a clear definition of doctrine, cemented unity, and was the first great bulwark raised against Protestantism. Another means of defense, and of attack as well, was provided in new orders, especially the order of _Jesuits_. This was founded by _Ignatius Loyola_, a Spanish soldier of noble birth, who mingled with the spirit of chivalry a strong devotional sentiment. It was the temper of mediæval knighthood, which still lingered in Spain. Wounded at the siege of _Pampeluna_, and disabled from war, he had visions of a spiritual knighthood; out of which grew the _Society of Jesus_, which was sanctioned by Pope _Paul III._ in 1540. Its members took the monastic vows. They went through a rigorous spiritual drill. They were bound to unquestioning obedience to the Pope. The organization was strict, like that of an army; each province having a provincial at its head, with a general over all. To him all the members were absolutely subject. All other ties were renounced: to serve the Church and the order, was the one supreme obligation. INFLUENCE OF THE JESUITS.--The influence of the Jesuit order was manifold. It was active in preaching, and in hearing confessions. It made the education of youth a great part of its business. Its members found their way into high stations in Church and State: they were in the cabinets of princes. From the beginning, they showed an ardent zeal in missionary labors among the heathen in distant lands, and for the reconquest of countries won by the Protestants. THE INQUISITION.--Under the auspices of Cardinal Caraffa (_Paul IV._), the Inquisition was introduced into Italy (1542), and exerted the utmost vigilance and severity in crushing out the new faith. One of its instruments was the censorship of the press. So thorough was this work, that of the little book on the _Benefits of Christ's Death_, which had an immense circulation, it has been possible in recent years to find but two or three copies. The "Index" of prohibited books was established. The result of these measures was, that Protestantism was suppressed in Italy, and the type of Catholicism that was partially sympathetic with certain doctrinal features of the Saxon Reform likewise vanished. CHAPTER V. PHILIP II., AND THE BEVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS. CHARACTER OF PHILIP II.--In 1555 Charles V., enfeebled by his lifelong enemy, the gout, resigned his crowns, and devolved on his son, _Philip II._, the government of the _Netherlands_, together with the rest of his dominions in _Spain_, _Italy_, and _America_. The closing part of his life, the emperor passed in the secluded convent of _Yuste_, in Spain, where, notwithstanding the time spent by him in religious exercises, and in his favorite diversion of experimenting with clocks and watches, he remained an attentive observer of public affairs. Political and religious absolutism was the main article in _Philip's_ creed. He was more thoroughly a Spaniard in his tone and temper than his father, who was born in the Netherlands, and always loved the people there, as he was loved by them. _Philip_ was cold and forbidding in his manners. He was shy, as well as haughty, in his deportment to those who approached him. To re-establish everywhere the old religion by the unrelenting exercise of force, was his fixed purpose. Only one thing did he value more; and that was his own power, which he would not suffer Church or clergy to curb or invade. He had few ideas, but was an adept in concealment and treachery. A man of untiring industry, he was a plodder without insight. He lived to see the vast strength which fell to him as a legacy slip out of his hands, and to see Spain sink to a condition of comparative weakness. _Charles V_. had consolidated his dominion in that country by putting down democratic insurrections. This he had done by military force and the arm of the Inquisition. What _Charles_ had left undone in this line, Philip completed. He quelled the resistance of the _Aragonese_, and reduced them to submission. Spain swarmed with civil and ecclesiastical officials. The new religious doctrine, which assumed the same type as in Italy, was stifled. The monarch displayed his zeal by personal attendance at the _autos da fe_, the great public ceremonials for the execution of heretics, where the victims of his intolerance perished. A system of brutal military administration was adopted in the colonies. STATE OF THE LOW COUNTRIES.--_Philip_ undertook to treat the _Netherlands_ as a Spanish province, and to break down the spirit of local independence. The people of the Low Countries were industrious, intelligent, prosperous, spirited. Each of the _seventeen provinces_ had its own constitution. In the North, it was more democratic; in _Flanders_ and _Brabant_, there was a landed aristocracy. In all parts of the country, there were local privileges and cherished rights. The population numbered three millions. _Antwerp_, with its hundred thousand inhabitants, had more trade than any other European city. The Reformation, first in the Lutheran but later in the Calvinistic form, had numerous adherents in the _Netherlands_, whom severe edicts of _Charles V_., under which large numbers were put to death, did not extirpate. TYRANNY OF PHILIP.--Philip did not select for his regent in the _Netherlands_ one of the aristocracy of the country. Of this class was Count _Egmont_, a nobleman of brilliant courage and attractive manners. _William_, _Prince of Orange_, united with far more self-control the sagacity of a statesman. He was destined to be the formidable antagonist of Spanish tyranny, and the liberator of Holland. _Philip_ passed by the nobles, whom he distrusted and disliked, and appointed as regent the illegitimate daughter of _Charles V_., _Margaret_ of Parma (1559-1567); placing at her side, as her principal adviser, the astute _Granvelle_, the Bishop of Arras, one of his devoted servants, who was made cardinal in 1561. Three nobles, _William of Orange_, and the Counts _Egmont_ and _Horn_, were in the council. The power was in _Granvelle's_ hands. There was soon a breach between him and the nobles. Two measures of _Philip_ created disaffection. He was slow in withdrawing the hated Spanish soldiers; he increased the number of bishops, a cherished scheme of _Charles V_. Moreover, he renewed and proceeded to enforce edicts, embracing minute provisions of a most rigorous character, against the property and lives of the Protestants, although the Inquisition had lost public favor. The terror and indignation of the people found expression through the nobles. They left the council. At length _Granvelle_ had to be withdrawn from the country (1564). _Egmont_ went to Spain to procure a mitigation of the king's policy, but found on his return that he had been duped by false promises. The young nobility formed an agreement called _the Compromise_, to withstand the king's system, at first by legal means (1566). They were contemptuously called "beggars" by the regent, and themselves adopted the name. The king professed a willingness to make some concessions: he was only gaining time for measures of a different sort. In the same year a storm of iconoclasm burst out: the Calvinists made reprisals for what they had suffered; they vented their zeal against what they called "idolatry," by sacking the churches, and by destroying paintings and images, and other symbols and implements of worship. _Orange_ penetrated the designs of _Philip_, and retired to Nassau. _Egmont_, more credulous and confiding, remained. ALVA'S RULE.--_Philip_ now sent into the Netherlands the _Duke of Alva_, an officer of considerable military capacity, cold, arrogant, and merciless in his temper. His force consisted of ten thousand men. A tribunal was erected by him, called the "Council of Blood." _Egmont_ and _Horn_ were executed at _Brussels_ (1568). Great numbers of executions of men and women, of all ranks, who were accused of some sort of insubordination, or some manifestation of heresy, followed. _William of Orange_ was active in devising means of deliverance. The first marked success was the capture of _Briel_ by the "sea-beggars," inhabitants of the coasts of _Holland_ and _Zealand_, under their admiral, _William de la Mark_. The barbarities and extortion of Alva by degrees aroused universal and intense hatred. _Holland_ and _Zealand_ threw off Alva's rule, and made _William_ their stadtholder. The nominal connection with Spain was still kept up. The massacre of St. Bartholomew (1572) cut off _William_ from the help which he expected from the French. It was felt, however, that _Alva_ had failed in his attempt to subjugate the people, and he was withdrawn from the country by _Philip_ (1573). THE UTRECHT UNION.--From the capture of _Briel_ may be dated the beginning of the long and arduous struggle which resulted in the building-up of the Dutch Republic of the _United Provinces_, and the ultimate prostration of the power of _Spain_. The hero of the struggle was _William of Orange_. The successor of Alva, _Requesens_, was really more dangerous than _Alva_, because he was more magnanimous, and therefore excited less antagonism. In 1574 occurred the memorable siege of _Leyden_ by the Spanish forces. That city, when reduced to the last extremity, was saved by letting in the sea and by inundating the neighboring plains, which compelled the Spaniards to flee in dismay. As a memorial of the heroic defense of the place, the University of Leyden was founded. A new Protestant state was growing up in the North, under the guidance of _William_. In the South, where Catholicism prevailed, _Requesens_ was more successful. But when he died, in 1576, a frightful revolt of his soldiers, who were loosed from restraint, in the cities, moved all Netherlands to unite, in the _Pacification of Ghent_, against the Spanish dominion. _Don John_ of Austria, a brilliant and manly soldier, who had defeated the Turks at _Lepanto_, was the next regent (1576-1578). He made large concessions: these were welcome in the South, and weakened the Union. _Alexander of Parma_ (1578, 1579), his successor, was the ablest general of the time. The Catholic South was at variance with the Protestant North. In 1579, there was formed between the seven provinces in the North the _Utrecht Union_, the germ of the Dutch Republic. _Philip_ proclaimed _William_ an outlaw, and set a price on his head. After six ineffectual attempts at assassination, this heroic leader, the idol of his countrymen, was fatally shot, in his own house (1584). His work as a deliverer of his people was mainly accomplished. When the Utrecht Union was formed, the greater part of the Catholic provinces in the South entered into an arrangement with _Parma_. _Brabant_ and _Flanders_ were recovered to Spain. The attention of _Philip_ had to be mainly given to the affairs of _France_ and _England_ during the remainder of his life. CHAPTER VI. THE CIVIL WARS IN FRANCE, TO THE DEATH OF HENRY IV. (1610). FRANCIS I.: HENRY II.--In France, the old faith had strong support in the _Sorbonne_, the influential theological faculty of the University of Paris, and in the Parliament. The new culture, the influx of Italian scholars and Italian influences, produced a party averse to the former style of education, and, to some extent, unfriendly to the old opinions. The Lutheran doctrines were first introduced; but it was _Calvinism_ which prevailed among the French converts to Protestantism, and acquired a strong hold in the middle and higher classes, although the preponderance of numbers in the country was always on the Catholic side. _Francis I_. was a friend of the new learning. His sister _Margaret_, Queen of _Navarre_, who was of a mystical turn, was favorably inclined to the new doctrines, and befriended preachers who were of the same spirit. The king did the same until after the battle of _Pavia_, when he helped on the persecution of them; for his conduct was governed by the interest of the hour, and by political motives. It was doubtful what course he would finally take amid the conflict of parties; but his motto was, "One king, one code, one creed." He would put down the new doctrine at home, and sustain it by force, if expedient, abroad. _Henry II._, who acceded to the throne in 1547, unlike his father had no personal sympathy with Protestantism. The _Huguenots_, as the Calvinists were called, were led to the stake, and their books burned. Yet in 1558 they had two thousand places of worship in France: they soon held a general synod at _Paris_, and organized themselves (1559). That same year, when, in the Peace of _Cateau-Cambresis, Henry_ had given up all his conquests except the three bishoprics of _Metz, Toul_ and _Verdun_, and _Calais_, he suddenly died from a wound in the eye, accidentally inflicted in a tilt. CATHERINE DE MEDICI: THE TWO PARTIES.--The widow of Henry II. was _Catherine de Medici_, to whom he had been married from political considerations. She was a woman of talents, full of ambition which had hitherto found no field for its exercise, trained from infancy in an atmosphere of deceit, and void of moral principle. Her aim was to rule by keeping up an ascendency over her sons, and by holding in check whatever party threatened to be dominant. For this end she did not scruple to accustom her children to debauchery, and to resort to whatever other means, however false and however cruel, to effect her purposes. She proved to be the curse of the house of _Valois_, and the evil genius of France. _Francis II._ was a boy of sixteen, and legally of age; but his mother expected to manage the government. She was thwarted by the control over him exercised by the family of _Guise_, sons of _Claude_ of Guise, a wealthy and prominent nobleman of _Lorraine_, who had distinguished himself at _Marignano_, and in later contests against _Charles V. Francis_, the _Duke of Guise_, had defended _Metz_, and had taken _Calais. Charles_, the Cardinal of Lorraine, was the king's confessor. Their sister had married _James V._ of Scotland. Her daughter, _Mary Stuart_, a charming young girl, was married to _Francis II._, who was infirm in mind and body, and easily managed by his wife and her uncles. The great nobles of France, especially the _Bourbons_, sprung in a collateral line from _Louis IX._, Montmorency, and his three nephews, among them a man of extraordinary ability and worth, the Admiral _Coligny_, looked on the _Guises_ as upstarts. The _Bourbons_ and the nobles allied to them were, some from sincere conviction and some from policy, adherents of _Calvinism_. Thus the Protestants in France became a political party, as well as a religious body, and a party with anti-monarchical tendencies. _Anthony_ of Bourbon, a weak and vacillating person, had married _Jeanne d'Albret_, the heiress of _Béarn_ and _Navarre_, a heroic woman and an earnest Protestant, the mother of _Henry IV_. His brother _Louis_, Prince of Condé, a brave, impetuous soldier, whose wife, the niece of the Grand Constable _Montmorency_, was a strict Protestant, joined that side. CONSPIRACY OF AMBOISE.--_La Rénaudie_, a Protestant nobleman who was determined to avenge the execution of a brother, contrived the Conspiracy of Amboise (1560) in order to dispossess the Guises of their power by force. The plan was discovered, and a savage revenge was taken upon the conspirators. A great number of innocent persons, who had no share in the plot, were put to death. The Estates were summoned to _Orleans_, and the occasion was to be seized for extirpating heresy throughout the kingdom. _Condé_ was under arrest, and charged with high treason. Just then, on Dec. 5, 1560, the young king died. CHARLES IX.: EDICT OF ST. GERMAIN.--The coveted opportunity of the queen-mother had come. _Charles IX_. (1560-1574) was only ten years old. She assumed the practical guardianship over him, and with it a virtual regency. The plan of the _Guises_ had failed, and they had to give way. There were now two parties in the council. The States-general were called together in 1561, and a great religious colloquy was held before a brilliant concourse at _Poissy_, where _Theodore Beza_, an eloquent and polished scholar and a man of high birth, pleaded the cause of the Calvinists. In 1562 the _Edict of January_ was issued, which gave up the policy that had been pursued for forty years, of extirpating religious dissent. A very restricted toleration was given to Protestants: they could hold their meetings outside of the walls of cities, unarmed, and in the daytime. _Calvin_ and his followers expected the largest results from this measure of liberty. _Catherine_ wished for peace, without a rupture with the _Pope_ and _Philip II_. CIVIL WAR.--It was impossible to prevent outbreakings of violence against the hated dissenters. The _Guises_ and their associates were resolved not to allow toleration. The event that occasioned war was the massacre of _Vassy_. On the 1st of March, 1562, the soldiers of the _Duke of Guise_, who was passing through the town, attacked some Huguenots who were worshiping in a barn at the village of _Vassy_. A large number were slain, and some houses plundered, in spite of the Duke's efforts to check his troops. The civil wars, so begun, closed only with the accession of _Henry IV_. to the throne. France was a prey to religious and political fanaticism. Other nations mingled in the frightful contest, and the country was well-nigh robbed of its independence. At first, there was petty warfare at _Paris_, _Sens_, and other places. The Huguenots destroyed altars and censers, monuments of art and sepulchers, which, as they thought, ministered to idolatry. Rouen was captured by the Catholics and sacked. At _Dreux_ (1562) the Protestants were defeated; but in 1563 _Guise_, the leader of their adversaries, was assassinated by a Huguenot nobleman. The charge that _Coligny_ had a part in the deed was false; but he was considered responsible for it, and vengeance was kept in store by the family of the slain chief. The _Edict of Amboise_ (1563) was favorable to the Protestant nobles, but less favorable to the smaller gentry and to the towns. _Paris_, from which Calvinist worship was excluded, became more and more a stronghold of the Catholic party. Another war ended in the _Peace of Longjumeau_ (1568), which was essentially the same as the Edict of Amboise. _Philip II._ and the _Duke of Alva_ spared no effort to induce France to set about the extermination of the heretics. In the _third_ war, the Huguenots were beaten at _Jarnac_, where _Condé_ fell, leaving his name to his son _Henry_, a youth of seventeen (1569). The same year they were defeated again at _Moncontour_. _La Rochelle_ was a place of safety to the Protestants, who were strong in the wise leadership of _Coligny_. There the Queen of Navarre held her court. Thence the Huguenot cavalry with the young princes _Condé_, and _Henry of Navarre_, her son, sallied forth and traversed France. ENGLAND OR SPAIN.--The ambition of _Philip_ alarmed the French. His complex schemes, if carried out, would involve the reduction of their country under Spanish control. He wanted to liberate _Mary_, Queen of Scots, then a prisoner of _Elizabeth_, to marry her to his half-brother, _Don John_, and to marry his sister to _Charles IX_. The court, in 1570, agreed to the _Peace of St. Germain_, which, for the security of the Huguenots, placed four fortified towns in their possession. Thus France became a kingdom divided against itself. _England_, as well as France, looked with alarm upon the ambitious projects of _Philip II_., who was now in union with _Venice_ and with the _Pope_, and had beaten the _Turks_ at _Lepanto_. It was proposed to marry the brother of Charles IX., the _Duke of Anjou_, to Queen _Elizabeth_; and when this negotiation was broken off, it was proposed that the _Duke of Alençon_, a younger brother, should marry her. _Catherine de Medici_ fell in with this anti-Spanish policy. It was agreed that her youngest daughter, _Margaret of Valois_, should become the wife of _Henry of Navarre._ The policy favored by the Huguenots was in the ascendant. Their leaders were invited to _Paris_ to be present at the nuptials. _Coligny_ came, with _Henry of Navarre_, _Condé_, and a large number of their adherents. There was no place where the animosity against them was so rancorous. THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW.--The massacre of St. Bartholomew was devised by _Catherine de Medici_, who brought to her aid the _Duchess of Nemours_, widow of _Francis_ of Guise and mother of _Henry_ of Guise, _Anjou_ (afterwards _Henry III_.), and Italian counselors who were no strangers to plots of assassination. The motive of the queen-mother was her dread of the ascendency which she saw that _Coligny_ was gaining over the morbid mind of the king, in whom the Huguenot veteran had inspired esteem, and had stirred up a desire to enter into the proposed war against _Philip II_. in the _Netherlands_. On the 22d of August (1572), a shot was fired at _Coligny_, from a window of a house, by an adherent of the Guises. He was wounded, but not killed. _Charles_ was incensed. At a visit made to the wounded chief, the king was warned by him, as Catherine quickly learned, against her pernicious influence in the government. Thereupon she arranged with her confederates for a general slaughter of the Huguenots, and almost coerced the half-frantic and irresolute king to acquiesce in the plan. Perhaps, in gathering them into the city, she had foreseen the possible expediency of a change of policy, and that such a crime as she now undertook to perpetrate might be found desirable. In the night of the 24th of August, at a concerted signal, the fanatical enemies of the Huguenots were let loose, and fell upon their victims. Several thousands, including _Coligny_, were murdered. Couriers were sent through the country, and like bloody scenes were enacted in many other cities and towns. _Navarre_ and _Condé_, to save their lives, professed conformity to the Catholic Church. If these atrocious events excited joy in the mind of _Philip II_., and of the numerous intolerant party of which he was the head, they were regarded with horror and execration elsewhere, among the Catholic as well as the Protestant nations. THE POLITIQUES: THE LEAGUE: HENRY III.--The queen-mother did not even now forsake her general policy. She stood aloof from the combinations of _Philip_. A new party, the _Politiques_, or liberal Catholics, in favor of toleration, arose. _Henry III_. (1574-1589) was incompetent to govern a country torn by factions, with an exhausted treasury, and a people groaning under the burdens of taxation. By his double dealing he lost the confidence of both the religious parties. In May, 1576, he agreed to allow the religious freedom which the _Huguenots_ and _Politiques_ demanded. But he had to reckon with the _Catholic League_ which was organized under _Henry of Guise_. In 1584 _Henry of Navarre_ was left the next heir to the throne. The _League_, with _Spain_ and _Rome_, resolved that he should not reign. Together with _Condé_, he was excommunicated. In the war of he "three Henrys," he was supported by England, and by troops from Germany and Switzerland. _Henry III_., finding that _Henry of Guise_ was virtual master, and that the States-general at _Blois_ (1588) reduced the royal power to the lowest point, caused _Guise_ and his brother, the Cardinal of Lorraine, to be assassinated. Excommunicated, and detested by the adherents of the League, the king took refuge in the camp of _Henry of Navarre_, where he was killed by a fanatical priest (1589). ABJURATION AND ACCESSION OF HENRY IV.--The _Duke of Mayenne_, brother of the slain _Guises_, was at the head of the government provisionally established by the League. _Philip II_. was intriguing to bring the Catholic nations under his sway. There was discord in the League, from the jealousy of _Philip_ on the part of _Mayenne. Henry_, a dashing soldier, gained a brilliant victory at _Ivry_ in 1590. The grand obstacle in his way to the throne was his adhesion to Protestantism. A Calvinist by birth and education, but without profound religious convictions, a gallant and sagacious man, but loose in his morals, he yielded, for the sake of giving peace to France, to the persuasions addressed to him, and, from motives of expediency, conformed to the Catholic Church. The nation was now easily won to his cause. REIGN OF HENRY IV.--When _Henry IV_. gained his throne, the country was in a most wretched condition. In the desolating wars, population had fallen off. Everywhere there were poverty and lawlessness. Yet war with _Spain_ was inevitable. In this war, _Henry_ was the victor; and the _Peace of Vervins_ restored the Spanish conquests, and the conquests made by Savoy, to France (1598). The idea of _Henry's_ foreign policy, which was that of weakening the power of Spain and of the house of Hapsburg, was afterwards taken up by a powerful statesman, _Richelieu_, and fully realized. In the _Edict of Nantes_ (1598), the king secured to the Huguenots the measure of religious liberty for which they had contended. Fortified cities were still left in their hands. Security was obtained by the Calvinists, but they became a defensive party with no prospect of further progress. Order and prosperity were restored to the kingdom. In all his measures, the king was largely guided by a most competent minister, _Sully_. But the useful reign of _Henry IV_. was cut short by the dagger of an assassin, _Ravaillac_ (1610). For fifteen years confusion prevailed in France, and a contest of factions, until _Richelieu_ took up the threads of policy which had fallen from _Henry's_ hand. CHAPTER VII. THE THIRTY-YEARS' WAR, TO THE PEACE OP WESTPHALIA (1618-1648). ORIGIN OF THE WAR.--In _Germany_, more than in any other country, the Reformation had sprung from the hearts of the people. Its progress would have been far greater had it not been retarded by political obstacles, and by divisions among Protestants themselves. Germany, to be sure, was not disunited by the Reformation: it was disunited before. But now strong states existed on its borders,--_France_, even _Denmark_ and _Sweden_,--which might profit by its internal conflicts. The _Peace of Augsburg_, unsatisfactory as it was to both parties, availed to prevent open strife as long as _Ferdinand I_. (1556-1564) and _Maximilian II_. (1564-1576) held the imperial office. The latter, especially, favored toleration, and did not sympathize with the fanaticism of the Spanish branch of his family. He condemned the cruelties of _Alva_ and the massacre of St. Bartholomew. With the accession of _Rudolph II._, a change took place. He had been brought up in Spain. The Catholic counter-reformation was now making its advance. The order of the _Jesuits _was putting forth great and successful exertions to win back lost ground. There were out-breakings of violence between the two religious parties. A Catholic procession was insulted in _Donauwörth_, a free city of the empire. The city was put under the ban by the emperor; the Bavarian Duke marched against it, and incorporated it in his own territory (1607). On both sides, complaints were made of the infraction of the Peace of Augsburg. The Donauwörth affair led to the formation of the _Evangelical Union_, a league into which, however, all the Protestant states did not enter. The _Catholic League_, under the Leadership of Maximilian of Bavaria, was firmly knit together and full of energy. FIRST STAGE IN THE WAR (to 1629). THE BOHEMIAN STRUGGLE.--The _Bohemians_ revolted against _Ferdinand II_. in 1618, when their religious liberties were violated, and shortly after (1619) refused to acknowledge him as their king. He was a narrow and fanatical, though not by nature a cruel, ruler. He gave himself up to the control of the Catholic League. The two branches of the _Hapsburg_ family--the _Austrian_ and _Spanish_--were now in full accord with each other. The Bohemians gave their crown to _Frederick V_., the Elector Palatine, the son-in-law of _James I_. of England. Bohemia was invaded by _Ferdinand_, aided by the League, and abandoned to fire and sword. The terrible scenes of the Hussite struggle were re-enacted. In the protracted wars that ensued, it was estimated that the Bohemian population was reduced from about four millions to between seven and eight hundred thousand! The _Palatinate_ was conquered and devastated. The electoral dignity was transferred to the _Duke of Bavaria_. At last, in 1625, _England_, _Holland_, and _Denmark_ intervened in behalf of the fugitive Elector Palatine. _Christian IV_. of Denmark was defeated, and the intervention failed. The power gained by Maximilian, the Bavarian Duke, made his interests separate, in important particulars, from those of _Ferdinand_. _Ferdinand_ was able to release himself from the virtual control of _Maximilian_ and the League, through _Wallenstein_, a general of extraordinary ability. He was a Bohemian noble, proud, ambitious, and wealthy. He raised an army, and made it support itself by pillage. The unspeakable miseries of Germany, in this prolonged struggle, were due largely to the composition of the armies, which were made up of hirelings of different nations, whose trade was war, and who were let loose on an unprotected population. Captured cities were given up to the unbridled passions of a fierce and greedy soldiery. Germany, traversed for a whole generation by these organized bands of marauders, was in many places reduced almost to a desert. EDICT OF RESTITUTION.--Victory attended the arms of _Wallenstein_, and of _Tilly_, a brutal commander, the general of the League. The territory of the Dukes of _Mecklenburg_ was given to _Wallenstein_ as a reward (1629). He was anxious to conquer the German towns on the _Baltic_. _Stralsund_ offered a stubborn resistance, which he could not overcome. The League moved _Ferdinand_ to the adoption of the _Edict of Restitution_ (1629), which put far off the hope of peace. This edict enforced the parts of the _Peace of Augsburg_ which were odious to the Protestants, especially the _Ecclesiastical Reservation_ (p. 410), and abrogated the provisions of an opposite tenor. It was evident that the real aim was the entire extinction of Protestantism. The League, moreover, induced the emperor to remove _Wallenstein_, of whom they were jealous. The effect of these measures was to rouse the most lukewarm of the Protestant princes, including the electors of _Brandenburg_ and _Saxony_, to a sense of the common danger. It was plain that _Wallenstein_ was a sacrifice to the League, and to the ambition of _Maximilian_ of Bavaria. SECOND STAGE IN THE WAR (1629-1632). In the second act of this long drama, _Gustavus Adolphus_ of Sweden is the hero. His reign is marked by the rise of his country to the height of its power. EVENTS IN SWEDEN: CAREER OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS.--_Gustavus Vasa_ made the mistake of undertaking to divide power among his four sons. There was a vein of eccentricity, amounting sometimes to insanity, in the family. _Eric XIV_. was hasty and jealous, imprisoned his brother _John_, and committed reckless crimes. In 1569 he was himself confined, and nine years after was secretly put to death. _John_ and another brother, _Charles_ of Südermanland, now reigned together. _John_ was favorable to the Roman-Catholic Church, and offended his Protestant subjects by efforts at union and compromise. Moreover, he unwisely made concessions to the nobles, and increased the burdens of the peasants. Finally, he wanted to make his son _Sigismund_ king of Poland, a country which, from its anarchical constitution, was on the road to ruin. _Poland_ was a Catholic land; and, in order to get the crown, _Sigismund_ avowed himself a Catholic. _Charles_, a strict Lutheran, drew to his side all who were hostile to _John's_ spirit and policy. On the death of the latter (1592), Duke _Charles_ came into collision with _Sigismund_ and with the nobles, whose power depended on his concessions; and he gained the victory over them (1598). In 1604 the Diet gave him the crown, which he wore for seven years. He had to contend against faction, and to withstand the attacks of _Denmark_ and of _Russia_. In the midst of these troubles he died, and was succeeded by his son _Gustavus Adolphus_, then less than eighteen years of age (1611-1632). He was a well-educated prince, early familiar with war, a devoted patriot, and, although tolerant in his temper, was a sincere Protestant, after the type of the old Saxon electors. For eighteen years after his accession, it had been his aim to control the _Baltic_. This had brought him into conflict with _Denmark_, _Poland_, and _Russia_. His interposition in the German war, a step which was full of peril to himself, was regarded by _Brandenburg_ and _Saxony_ with jealousy and repugnance. But when the savage troops of _Tilly_ (1631) sacked and burned _Magdeburg_, the neutral party was driven to side with _Sweden_. _Gustavus_ defeated _Tilly_, and the advance of his army in the South of Germany prostrated the power of the League. The princes regarded the Swedish king with suspicion: the cities regarded him with cordiality. Whether along with his sagacious and just intentions he connected his own elevation to the rank of King of Rome, and emperor, must be left uncertain. _Ferdinand_ was obliged to call back _Wallenstein_. The battle of _Lützen_, in 1632, was a great defeat of _Wallenstein_, and a grand victory for the Swedes; but it cost them the life of their king. FRANCE.--THE BOURBON KINGS. HENRY IV, 1589-1610, (2), _m._ Mary, daughter of Francis, Grand Duke of Tuscany | +--LOUIS XIII, 1610-1643, _m._ | Anne, daughter of Philip III of Spain. | | | +--LOUIS XIV, 1643-1715, _m._ Maria Theresa, | | daughter of Philip IV of Spain. | | | | | +--Louis, Dauphin, _d._ 1711, _m._ Maria Anna, | | | daughter of Ferdinand Maria, Elector of Bavaria. | | | | | | | +--Louis, Duke of Burgundy, _d._ 1712, _m._ | | | Mary Adelaide, daughter of Victor Amadeus II of Savoy. | | | | | | | +--LOUIS XV, 1715-1774, _m._ | | | Mary, daughter of Stanislas Leczinsky, King of Poland. | | | | | | | +--Louis, Dauphin, _d._ 1765, _m_ | | | Maria Josepha, daughter of Frederick Augustus II | | | of Poland and Saxony. | | | | | | | +--LOUIS XVI, 1774-1792 (deposed, executed 1793), | | | | _m._ Marie Antoinette, daughter of | | | | Emperor Francis I. | | | | | | | +--Louis, Count of Provence (LOUIS XVIII), | | | | 1814-1824. | | | | | | | +--Charles, Count of Artois (CHARLES X), 1824-1830 | | | (deposed),_m_ Maria Theresa, daughter | | | of Victor Amadeus III of Savoy. | | | | | +--Francoise (Mademoiselle de Blois), | | _m._ | | +--Philip, regent, _d._1723. | | | | | | | +--Louis, _d._ 1752. | | | | | | | +--Louis Philippe, _d._ 1785. | | | | | | | +--Louis Philippe (Egalite), executed 1793. | | | | | | | +--LOUIS PHILIPPE, 1830-1848 (deposed), _m._ | | | Maria Amelia, daughter of | | | Ferdinand I of Two Sicilies. | | | | | (2), Elizabeth, daughter of Charles Lewis, Elector Palatine. | | (1), Henrietta Maria. | +--Philip, _m._ | +--Henrietta Maria _m._ Charles I of England. THIRD STAGE IN THE WAR (1632-1648). FRANCE AFTER HENRY IV.--After the death of _Gustavus_, in the new phase of the war, the influence of _Richelieu_, the great minister of France, becomes more and more dominant. Germany was in the end doomed to eat the bitter fruits of civil war, such as spring from foreign interference, even when it comes in the form of help. _Henry IV_. had died when he was on the point of directing the power of France, as of old, against the house of Hapsburg. The country now fell back for a series of years to a state akin to that under the kings who preceded him, although it was saved from a long civil war. _Louis XIII._ (1610-1643) was a child; and the queen, _Mary de Medici_, who was the regent, an Italian woman, with no earnest principles, deprived of the counsels of _Sully_, lavished the resources of the crown upon nobles, who were greedy of place and pelf. At the assembly of the States-general in 1614, nobles, clergy, and the third estate were loud in reciprocal accusations. The queen fell under the influence of the _Concinis_, an Italian waiting-maid and her husband, the latter of whom she made a marquis and a marshal of France. She leagued herself in various ways with _Spain_. As the king grew older, a party rallied about him, and the marshal was assassinated (1617). From that time _Louis_ was under the influence of a favorite, the Duke de Luynes, a native Frenchman, with whom the nobles were in sympathy. The duke died in 1621. Then _Richelieu_, Bishop of Lucon (made a cardinal in 1622), a statesman of extraordinary genius, began his active career in politics, and after 1624 guided the policy of France, as a sort of Mayor of the Palace. _Louis XIII._ was not personally fond of him, but felt the need of him._ Richelieu's_ aim, as regards the government of France, was to consolidate the monarchy by bringing the aristocracy into subjection to the king. Under him began the process of centralization, the system of officers appointed and paid by the government, which was fully developed after the great revolution. He accomplished the overthrow of the _Huguenots_ as a political organization, a state within the state. In 1628 _Rochelle_, the last of their towns, fell into his hands. He was determined to make the civil authority supreme. He resisted interference with its rights on the part of the Church. The nobles were reduced to obedience by the infliction of severe punishments. The common people were kept under. But the domestic government of _Richelieu_ made it possible for the selfish and ruinous policy of _Louis XIV._ to arise. The key of his foreign policy was hostility to _Austria_ and _Spain_, to both branches of the Hapsburgs. Before he took active measures against them, he had to procure quiet in France, and to provide himself with money and troops. INTERVENTION OF RICHELIEU.--The pretext of _Richelieu_ for taking part in the German war was the alleged ambitious aim of the _Hapsburgs_ to destroy the independence of other nations. He helped _Gustavus_ with money; but the Swedish king would neither allow him to take territory, nor to dictate the method of prosecuting the contest. It was agreed that the Catholic religion as such should not be attacked. _Oxenstiern_, the Swedish chancelor, in the _Heilbronn Treaty_ (1633) adhered to the same policy. DEATH OF WALLENSTEIN.--_Wallenstein_ had now become dangerous to the emperor. He negotiated with the Protestants, the Swedes, and the French, possibly to confront the emperor with the accomplished fact of peace and to claim as a reward the _Palatinate_ or the _Kingdom of Bohemia_. Deprived of his command and declared a traitor, he was assassinated by some of his officers (1634). END OF THE WAR.--The imperial victory of _Nordlingen_ (1634) made the active assistance of France necessary. But it was not until the death of _Bernard_ of Weimar, the foremost general of the Germans (1639), that _Richelieu_ found himself at the goal of his efforts. The armies opposed to the emperor were now under the control of the French. The character of the war had changed. Protestant states were fighting on the imperial side: the old theological issues were largely forgotten. Yet the Court of Vienna still clung to the Edict of Restitution (p. 424) for eight long years, during which the confused, frightful warfare was kept up. At last the military reverses of the emperor, _Ferdinand III_. (1637-1657), who, unlike his father, was not indisposed to peace, wrung from him a consent to the necessary conditions. EFFECTS OF THE WAR.--The barbarities of this long war are indescribable. The unarmed people were treated with brutal ferocity. The population of Germany is said to have diminished in thirty years from twenty to fifty per cent. The population of one city, Augsburg, fell from eighty to eighteen thousand. There were four hundred thousand people in _Würtemberg_: in 1641 only forty-eight thousand were left. In fertile districts, the destruction of the crops had caused great numbers to perish by famine. It is only in recent years that the number of horned cattle in Germany has come to equal what it was in 1618. Cities, villages, castles, and dwellings innumerable, had been burned to the ground. THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA.--The Peace of Westphalia, concluded in 1648, was a great European settlement. It was agreed, that in _Germany_, whatever might be the faith of the prince, the religion of each state was to be Catholic or Protestant, according to its position in 1624, which was fixed upon as the "normal year." In the imperial administration, the two religions were to be substantially equal. Religious freedom and civil equality were extended to the Calvinists. The _empire_ was reduced to a shadow by giving to the _Diet_ the power to decide in all important matters, and by the permission given to its members to make alliances with one another and with foreign powers, with the futile proviso that no prejudice should come thereby to the empire or the emperor. The independence of _Holland_ and _Switzerland_ was acknowledged. _Sweden_ obtained the territory about the Baltic, in addition to other important places, and became a member of the German Diet. Among the acquisitions of _France_ were the three bishoprics, _Metz_, _Toul_, and _Verdun_, and the landgraviate of _Upper_ and _Lower Alsace_. Thus _France_ gained access to the Rhine. _Sweden_ and _France_, by becoming guarantors of the peace, obtained the right to interfere in the internal affairs of Germany. CONSEQUENCES OF THE TREATY.--By this treaty, what was left of central authority in Germany was destroyed: the empire existed only in name; the mediæval union of empire and papacy was at an end. Valuable German territories were given up to ambitious neighbors. _France_ had extended her bounds, and disciplined her troops. _Sweden_ had gained what _Gustavus_ had coveted, and, for the time, was a power of the first class. _Spain_ and _Austria_ were both disabled, and reduced in rank. CHAPTER VIII. SECOND STAGE OF THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND: TO THE DEATH OF ELIZABETH (1547-1603). REIGN OF EDWARD VI. (1547-1553).--_Henry VIII_., with Parliament, had determined the order of succession, giving precedence to _Edward_, his son by _Jane Seymour_, over the two princesses, _Mary_, the daughter of _Catherine_, and _Elizabeth_, the daughter of _Anne Boleyn_. _Edward VI_., who was but ten years old at his accession, was weak in body, but was a most remarkable instance of intellectual precocity. The government now espoused the Protestant side. _Somerset_, the king's uncle, was at the head of the regency. The _Six Articles_ (p. 407) were repealed. Protestant theologians from the Continent were taken into the counsels of the English prelates, _Cranmer_ and _Ridley_. Under the leadership of _Cranmer_, the Book of Common Prayer was framed, and the _Articles_, or creed, composed. The clergy were allowed to marry. The Anglican Protestant Church was fully organized, but the progress in the Protestant direction was rather too rapid for the sense of the nation. _Somerset_, who was fertile in schemes and a good soldier, invaded Scotland in order to enforce the fulfilling of the treaty which had promised the young Princess _Mary_ of Scotland to _Edward_ in marriage. He defeated the Scots at _Pinkie_, near Edinburgh; but the project as to the marriage failed. _Mary_ was sent by the Scots to France, there to become the wife of _Francis II_. Land belonging to the Church was seized by _Somerset_ to make room for _Somerset House_. A Catholic rebellion in Cornwall and Devonshire, provoked by the Protector's course, was suppressed with difficulty. The opposition to him on various grounds, which was led by the _Duke of Northumberland_, finally brought the Protector to the scaffold. But _Northumberland_ proved to be less worthy to hold the protectorate than he, and labored to aggrandize his relatives. He was one of the nobles who made use of Protestantism as a means of enriching themselves. He persuaded the young king, when he was near his end, to settle the crown, contrary to what Parliament had determined, on _Lady Jane Grey_, Northumberland's daughter-in-law, a descendant of _Henry's_ sister. THE REIGN OF MARY.--Notwithstanding the Protector's selfish scheme, _Mary_ succeeded to the throne without serious difficulty. _Northumberland_ was beheaded as a traitor. An insurrection under _Wyat_ was put down, and led to the execution of the unfortunate and innocent _Lady Jane Grey_. From her birth and all the circumstances of her life, _Mary_ was in cordial sympathy with the Church of Rome and with Spain. She proceeded as rapidly as her more prudent advisers, including her kinsman _Philip II._, would allow, to restore the Catholic system. The married clergy were excluded from their places, and the Prayer-Book was abolished. The point where Parliament showed most hesitation was in reference to the royal supremacy. The nobles were afraid of losing their fields and houses, which had belonged to the Church. It was stipulated that the abbey lands, which were now held by the nobles and gentry as well as by the crown, should not be given up. Personally, _Mary_ was inclined to any measure which obligation to the Catholic religion might dictate. Contrary to the general wish of her subjects, she married _Philip II_. Rigorous measures of repression were adopted against the Protestants. A large number of persons, eminent for talents and learning, were put to death on the charge of heresy. Among them were the three bishops, _Cranmer_, _Ridley_, and _Latimer_, who were burned at the stake at Oxford (1556). _Gardiner_, _Bonner_, and the rigid advocates of persecution, had full sway. These severe measures were not popular; and, although the queen was not in her natural temper cruel, they have given her the name of the "Bloody Mary." Each party used coercion when it had the upper hand. A great number of the Protestant clergy fled to the Continent. _Mary_ sided with Spain against France, and, greatly to the disgust of the English, lost _Calais_ (1558). Pope _Paul IV._ was disposed to press upon England the extreme demands of the Catholic Reaction. He was, moreover, hostile to the Spanish-Austrian house. There was great fear respecting the confiscated Church property: her own share in it, the queen persuaded Parliament to allow her to surrender. Cardinal _Pole_, a moderate man, no longer guided her policy. He was deprived of the office of papal legate. General discontent prevailed in the kingdom. The queen herself was dispirited, and her life ended in anxiety and sorrow. CHARACTER OF ELIZABETH (1558-1603).--The nation welcomed Elizabeth to the throne. Her will was as imperious as that of her father. Her character was not without marked faults and foibles. She was vain, unwisely parsimonious, petulant, and overbearing, and evinced that want of truthfulness which was too common among rulers and statesmen at that period. But she had regal virtues,--high courage, devotion to the public good, for which she had the strength to sacrifice personal inclinations, together with the wisdom to choose astute counselors and to adhere to them. Her title to the throne was disputed. She had to contend against powerful and subtle adversaries. Her defense lay in the mutual jealousy of France and Spain, and in the determination of Englishmen not to be ruled by foreigners. Her reign was long and glorious. HER RELIGIOUS POSITION.--In her doctrine, _Elizabeth_ was a moderate Lutheran, not bitterly averse to the Church of Rome, but, in accordance with the prevalent English feeling which _Henry VIII_. represented, clinging to the royal supremacy. The Protestant system, with the Prayer-Book, and the hierarchy dependent on the sovereign, was now restored. PROTESTANTISM IN SCOTLAND.--In case _Elizabeth's_ claim to the crown were overthrown, the next heir would be _Mary, Queen of Scots_. Her grandmother was the eldest sister of Henry VIII. Her claim to the English crown was a standing menace to _Elizabeth_. When _Mary's_ father, _James V_., died (1542), she was only a few days old. Her mother, _Mary of Guise_, became regent. The Reformation had then begun to gain adherents in Scotland. On the accession of _Elizabeth_, at a time when the religious wars in France were about to begin, the Scottish regent undertook repressive measures of increased rigor. The principal agent in turning Scotland to the Protestant side was _John Knox_, an intrepid preacher, honest, and rough in his ways, deeply imbued with the spirit of Calvinism, and free from every vestige of superstitious deference for human potentates. He returned from the Continent in 1555. Many of the turbulent nobles, partly from conviction and partly from covetousness, adopted the new opinions. More and more, however, _Knox_ gained a hold upon the common people. His preaching was effective: one of its natural consequences was an outburst of iconoclasm. Even _Philip II_. was willing to have the nobles helped in the contest with the regent, Scotland being the ally of _France_. The queen-regent died in 1560. The Presbyterians now had full control, and Calvinistic Protestantism was legally established as the religion of the country. THE QUEEN OF SCOTS.--Such was the situation when _Mary_, the young widow of _Francis II._, came back to Scotland to assume her crown. A zealous Catholic, she undertook to rule a turbulent people among whom the most austere type of Protestantism was the legal and cherished faith. She had personal charms which _Elizabeth_ lacked, but as a sovereign she was wanting in the public virtue which belonged to her rival. _Mary_ was quick-witted and full of energy; but she had been brought up in the court of _Catherine de Medici_, in an atmosphere of duplicity and lax morals. She had the vices of the _Stuarts_,--an extravagant idea of the sacred prerogatives of kings, a disregard of popular rights, a willingness to break engagements. Her levity, even if it had been kept within bounds, would have been offensive to her Calvinistic subjects. She had at heart the restoration of the Catholic system. In _Knox_ she found a vigilant and fearless antagonist, with so much support among the nobles and the common people that her attempts at coercion, like her blandishments, proved powerless. Contrary to the wishes and plans of _Elizabeth_, she married _Darnley_, a Scottish nobleman (1565), whom, not without reason, she soon learned to despise. Her half-brother _Murray_, a very able man, and the other Protestant nobles, had been opposed to the match. She allowed herself an innocent, but unseemly, intimacy with an Italian musician, _Rizzio_. With the connivance of her husband, he was dragged out of her supper-room at Holyrood, and brutally murdered by _Ruthven_ and other conspirators. In 1567, the house in which Darnley was sleeping, close by Edinburgh, was blown up with gunpowder, and he was killed. Whether _Mary_ was privy to the murder, or not, is a point still in dispute. Certain it is that she gave her hand in marriage to _Bothwell_, the prime author of the crime. A revolt of her subjects followed. She was compelled to abdicate: _Murray_ was made regent, and her infant son, _James VI._, was crowned at Stirling (1567). Escaping from confinement at _Lochleven_, she was defeated at _Langside_, and obliged to fly to England for protection. EXECUTION OF MARY.--Elizabeth had no liking for the new religious system in Scotland. She hated the necessity of aiding rebels against their sovereign. But there was no alternative. In 1569 the defeat of the Huguenots in France was followed by a Catholic rebellion in the North of England. Elizabeth was excommunicated by Pope _Pius V_. There was a determination to dethrone her, and to hand over her crown to Mary. The drift of events was towards a conflict of England with _Spain_. The Duke of _Norfolk_, a leader in conspiracy and rebellion, who acted in concert with _Philip_ and with _Mary_, was brought to the scaffold (1572). _Elizabeth_ secretly aided the revolted subjects of _Philip_ in the Netherlands, as _Philip_ encouraged the malcontents in England and Ireland. The Queen of Scots was the center of the hopes of the enemies of England and of _Elizabeth_. When her complicity in the conspiracy of _Babington_, which involved a Spanish invasion and the dethronement and death of Elizabeth, was proved, _Mary_, after having been a captive for nineteen years, was condemned to death, and executed (1587) at Fotheringay Castle. THE SPANISH ARMADA.--In 1585 Elizabeth openly sent troops to the Netherlands under the command of her favorite, _Leicester_. The contest with Spain was kept up on the sea by bold English mariners, who captured the Spanish treasure-ships, and harassed the Spanish colonies. It was a period of maritime adventure, when men like _Frobisher_, _Hawkins_, and _Raleigh_ made themselves famous, and when _Sir Francis Drake_ sailed around the world. In the course of this voyage, Drake had seized from the Spanish vessels, and from the settlements on the coast of Peru and Chili, a vast amount of silver and gold. When it was known that _Philip_ was preparing to invade England, Drake sailed into the harbor of _Cadiz_, and destroyed the ships and stores there (1587). He burned every Spanish vessel that he could find. He boasted on his return that he had "singed the king of Spain's beard." _Philip_ made ready a mighty naval expedition, the "Invincible Armada," for the conquest of England. The fame of it resounded through Europe. A Spanish force in the Netherlands, under _Parma_, was to coöperate with it. In _England_, there were preparations to meet the attack. Catholics and Protestants were united for the defense of the kingdom. At _Tilbury_, Queen _Elizabeth_ reviewed her troops on horseback, saying to them in a spirited speech, "I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too." The tempest, aiding the valor of the English seamen, dispersed the great fleet. No landing was effected, and the grand enterprise proved a complete failure. Only fifty-four out of the one hundred and fifty vessels succeeded in making their way back to Spain. MONOPOLIES.--The queen knew how to yield to the people when she saw that they were determined upon a measure. This she did near the close of her reign, when the Commons called upon her to put an end to the monopolies which she had been in the habit of granting to individuals whom she specially liked. THE EARL OF ESSEX.--The queen had her personal favorites. Among them, _Robert Dudley_, whom she made the Earl of Leicester, was the one of whom she was most fond. She esteemed him much above his merits. Another of her favorites was the young _Earl of Essex_, who was vain and ambitious. He went in 1596 with _Lord Howard_ in an expedition which took and plundered _Cadiz_. Then he was sent to Ireland in command of an army. He failed, and came back to England without leave. He made a foolish attempt at insurrection, was tried for treason, and convicted; and Elizabeth reluctantly signed the warrant for his execution (1601). CONQUEST OF IRELAND.--After the return of _Essex_ from Ireland, where he had done nothing well, _Lord Mountjoy_ was sent to conquer _Tyrone_, the _Desmonds_, and other Irish chiefs. It was a long and fierce contest. He succeeded in subduing the country; but the effect of his conquest was a terrible famine in the North, where the food had been destroyed. At the end of Elizabeth's reign, all Ireland was subject to England. THE PURITANS.--Uniformity in the forms of religious worship was ordained by law in England, and the queen was bent on enforcing it. A _Court of High Commission_ was established to punish heresy and nonconformity. This policy early brought on a conflict, not only with the Roman Catholics, but also with the large and growing class of Protestants who were called "Puritans." These wished to carry the Reformation farther than it had been carried by the Tudors in England, and to make the English Church more like the Calvinistic churches in Scotland and on the Continent. They disliked surplices and other vestments worn by the clergy, which they pronounced "badges of popery," the sign of the cross used in baptism, and like customs retained in the Church as established by law. Many of them became opposed to the whole prelatical organization. They did not admit the supremacy of the sovereign, as _Elizabeth_ claimed it, in things having to do with the Church and religion. Many of the Puritans conformed to the existing system of Church government and worship, but under a protest and with the hope of seeing it changed. Others were _nonconformists_; that is, they did not formally break off from the English Church, but avoided taking part in the forms of worship of which they disapproved. This class was numerous. A third and smaller class, the "Independents," separated from the Established Church, and disbelieved in national churches, or a national organization of religion, altogether. They formed religious societies of their own. Thus English Protestants were divided among themselves. Upon both Puritans and Roman Catholics--upon the latter, partly on political grounds--severe penalties were inflicted. Churchman and Puritan, while they agreed substantially in theology, stood at variance in regard to Church government and modes of worship. CHAPTER IX. THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION AND THE COMMONWEALTH (1603-1658). JAMES I.--_James VI_. of Scotland, and _I_. of England, was the son of _Mary Stuart_ and _Darnley_. Scotland and England were now united under one king. He was not wanting in acquirements, and plumed himself on his knowledge of theology. A conceited pedant, he was impatient of dissent from his opinions. In Scotland, among insubordinate nobles and the ministers of the Kirk,--who on one occasion went so far as to pull his sleeve when they addressed to him their rebukes,--he had hardly tasted the sweets of regal power. The deference with which the English clergy treated him deepened his attachment to their Church. He had high notions of the divine right of kings. "No bishop, no king," was his favorite maxim. Early, in the _Hampton Court Conference_ between the bishops and the Puritans, over which James presided, he showed his antipathy to the Puritans. It may be here stated, that a suggestion there made led to the making of the Authorized Version of the Bible, for which previous translations, especially the translation of _Tyndale_, furnished the basis. The king's severity to the Catholics was the occasion of the "Gunpowder Plot," a project that failed, for blowing up the Parliament House by means of powder placed under it, to which one _Guy Fawkes_ was to apply the match (1605). IRELAND.--The _Earl of Tyrone_, an Irish chief, fell into a dispute with the English authorities, and, with another Irish earl, fled to Spain. The best of their lands in _Ulster_ were given to English and Scotch colonists. Only what was left of the land was granted to the Irish, many of whom were dispossessed of their homes. The Ulster colonies were industrious and prosperous; but among the natives, seeds of lasting enmity were sown by this injustice. JAMES'S FOREIGN POLICY.--The nation became imbittered against the king. One grievance was the sale not only of patents of nobility, but also of monopolies to companies or individuals. This was a continuance of an old abuse. The trial and conviction of _Lord Bacon_, the Lord Chancelor, who was impeached on the charge of receiving presents which were intended to influence his decisions as a judge, was one evidence of the corruption of the times, and of the displeasure occasioned by it. Instead of aiding his son-in-law, _Frederick V_., the Elector Palatine, whose dominions had been seized by a Spanish army sent to aid his enemies, _James_ busied himself with schemes for marrying his son _Charles_ to the _Infanta_, or Princess, _Maria_ of Spain, the sister of _Philip IV_. As a part of his truckling to Spain, he caused _Sir Walter Raleigh_ to be executed. _Raleigh_, who had no love for Spain, had long been kept in the Tower on the charge of treason; but the king, who wanted gold, had permitted him to go on a voyage to South America to seek for it. There, without his fault, some of his men had a collision with the Spaniards, up the _Orinoco_. Not having procured any treasure, he was disposed to attack Spanish ships; but the captains with him would not consent. On his return to England, he was again thrown into prison, and brought to the block. At length the marriage treaty with Spain, to the joy of the nation, was broken off. _Charles_, it was agreed, should marry _Henrietta Maria_, the sister of _Louis XIII._, the king of France. The king came to a better understanding with Parliament, which had constantly opposed his policy and withstood his arrogant assumption of absolute authority. CHARLES I. (1625-1649).--_Charles I._ in dignity of person far excelled his father. He had more skill and more courage; but he had the same theory of arbitrary government, and acted as if insincerity and the breaking of promises were excusable in defense of it. His strife with Parliament began at once. They would not grant supplies of money without a redress of grievances and the removal of _Buckingham_, the king's favorite. War had begun with Spain before the close of the last reign. An expedition was now sent to Cadiz, but it accomplished nothing. Buckingham was impeached; but before the trial ended, the king dissolved Parliament. A year later he went to war with France. He was then obliged (1628) to grant to his third Parliament their _Petition of Right_, which condemned his recent illegal doings,--arbitrary taxes and imprisonment, the billeting of soldiers on householders, proceedings of martial law. A few months later Buckingham was assassinated by one _John Felton_ at Portsmouth. Certain taxes called _tonnage_ and _poundage_, _Charles_ continued to levy by his own authority. A patriotic leader and a prominent speaker in the House of Commons was _Sir John Eliot_. The king dissolved Parliament (1629), and sent _Eliot_ and two other members of the House to prison. No other Parliament was summoned for eleven years. The king aimed to establish an absolute system of rule such as _Richelieu_ had built up in France. Two ministers were employed by him in furthering this policy. One was a layman, _Wentworth, Earl of Strafford_, who exercised almost unlimited power in the northern counties. The other was _William Laud_, Bishop of London and then Archbishop of Canterbury (1633), who undertook to force the Puritans to conform to all the observances of the Church. Two courts--the _High Commission_, before which the clergy were brought; and the _Star Chamber_, which was made up from the king's council--were the instruments for carrying out this tyranny. Grievous and shameful punishments were inflicted on the victims of it. JOHN HAMPDEN.--There was need of a fleet. Charles, without asking any grant from Parliament, undertook to levy a tax called "ship-money" in every shire. _John Hampden_, a country gentleman, refused to pay it. The judges gave a verdict against him, but he won great applause from patriotic Englishmen. BEGINNING OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT.--In 1637 Charles embarked in the foolish enterprise of endeavoring to force the English liturgy upon Scotland. This called out the _Solemn League and Covenant_ of the Scots for the defense of Presbyterianism. For eleven years the king had governed without a Parliament, but he needed money. The "Short Parliament" was assembled; but, as it refused to obey the king, it was quickly dissolved. The invasion of the Scots in 1640 made it necessary for Charles to assemble that body known as the _Long Parliament_, one of the most memorable of all legislative assemblies. _Strafford_ and _Laud_ were impeached. _Strafford_, by a bill of attainder passed by both Houses, was condemned and executed (1641). It was enacted that the present Parliament should not be dissolved or prorogued without its own consent,--an act which Charles reluctantly sanctioned. The Star Chamber and High Commission Courts were abolished. A great Irish insurrection broke out in _Ulster_. It has already been related how _Henry VIII._ established in Ireland his ecclesiastical system; how, during _Elizabeth's_ reign, there was fierce and incessant war with the _Desmonds_, and other Anglo-Irish families, who resisted Protestantism; and how _James I._, robbing many Irish of their lands, planted in _Ulster_ numerous English and Scotch Protestant settlers. These were now massacred in great numbers by the Irish, who almost succeeded in seizing _Dublin_. Parliament would not trust _Charles_ with an army to use in Ireland, fearing that the troops would be used by him to defend his arbitrary government at home. The king came to the House of Commons with a body of armed men, and made an abortive attempt to seize five members on the charge of resisting his authority, among whom were _John Hampden_, and _John Pym_, who was one of the most influential orators on the popular side. A bill was passed excluding the bishops from the House of Lords, where a majority were for the king. To this Charles consented, but he refused to allow Parliament to control the militia. The CIVIL WAR: SUCCESS OF CROMWELL.--In July, 1642, Parliament appointed a Committee of Public Safety, and called out the militia. Soon _Charles_ raised the royal standard at _Nottingham_. In the civil war, on one side were the Royalists, who were familiarly styled _cavaliers_ (that is, _horsemen_, or gentlemen), and on the other were the Parliamentarians, who were nicknamed _Roundheads_, for the reason that the Puritans did not follow the fashion of allowing their hair to fall in tresses on the shoulders. _The Earl of Essex_, the Parliamentary general, fought an indecisive battle with the king at _Edgehill_. _Charles_ then made _Oxford_ his headquarters. Early in the war, two men of spotless character fell,--_Hampden_, on the popular side (1643), and _Lord Falkland_ (1643), who, not without hesitation, had joined the Royalists. The cavalry of Charles, under a gallant but rash leader, Prince _Rupert_, son of the _Electress Palatine_, and grandson of _James I_., was specially effective. _Charles_ made peace with the Irish insurgents in order to get their help in fighting Parliament. Parliament united with the Scots in the _Solemn League and Covenant_, by which there was to be uniformity in religion in England, Ireland, and Scotland. PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS.--_Presbyterianism_ was now made the legal system; and about two thousand beneficed clergymen in England, who refused to subscribe to the Covenant, were deprived of their livings. The _Westminster Assembly_ met in 1643, and organized a church system without bishops and without the liturgy. But Parliament did not give up its own supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs. There was no "General Assembly" to rule the Church, as in Scotland. Another party, the _Independents_, were gaining strength, and by degrees getting control in the army. Of their number was _Oliver Cromwell_, a gentleman of Huntingdonshire, who had been a member of the House of Commons, where he spoke for the first time in 1629. CROMWELL: NASEBY.--By many of his adversaries, and by numerous writers since that day, _Cromwell_ has been considered a hypocrite in religion, actuated by personal ambition. The Puritan poet, _John Milton_, who became his secretary after he acquired supreme power, gives to him the warmest praise for integrity and piety, as well as for genius and valor. Of his religious earnestness after the Puritan type, and of his sincere patriotism, there is at present much less doubt. As to the transcendent ability and sagacity that lay beneath a rugged exterior, there has never been any question. He raised and trained a regiment of Puritan troops, called the "_Ironsides_," who were well-nigh invincible in battle, but whose camp was a "conventicle" for prayer and praise. With their help, the Royalists were defeated at _Marston Moor_ (1644). The army was now modeled anew by the Independents. The _Self-denying Ordinance_ excluded members of Parliament from military command. _Cromwell_ was made an exception. He came to the front, with no other general except _Fairfax_, who had replaced _Essex_, above him. _Laud_ was condemned for high treason by an ordinance of Parliament, and beheaded (1645). The Royalist army experienced a crushing defeat at _Naseby_ in June of the same year. TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF CHARLES.--Charles surrendered to the army of the Scots before _Newark_ (1646); and by them he was delivered for a ransom, in the form of an indemnity for war expenses, to their English allies. The king hoped much from the growing discord between the _Presbyterians_, who favored an accommodation with him if they could preserve their ecclesiastical system; and the _Independents_, who controlled the army, and were in favor of toleration, and of obtaining more guaranties of liberty against regal usurpation. In June, 1647, the army took the king out of the hands of Parliament, into their own custody. He negotiated with all parties, and was trusted by none. In 1648 he agreed, in a secret treaty with the Scots, to restore Presbyterianism. There were Royalist risings in different parts of England, which _Cromwell_ suppressed. He defeated at _Preston Pans_ a Scotch army, led into England by the _Duke of Hamilton_ to help Charles. _Cromwell's_ army were now determined to baffle the plans of the Parliamentary majority. _Col. Pride_, with a regiment of foot, excluded from the House of Commons about a hundred members. This measure, dictated by a council of officers, was called _Pride's Purge_. The Commons closed the House of Lords, and constituted a _High Court of Justice_ for the trial of the king. He refused to acknowledge the tribunal, and behaved with calmness and dignity to the end. He was condemned, and beheaded on a scaffold before his own palace at _Whitehall_, Jan. 30, 1649. By one party he was execrated as a tyrant, whose life was a constant danger to freedom. By the other party he was revered as a martyr. His two eldest sons were _Charles_, born in 1630, and _James_, born in 1633. THE COMMONWEALTH.--The monarchy was now abolished; and England was a free commonwealth, governed by the House of Commons. A council of state, under the presidency of _Bradshaw_, who had presided at the trial of the king, was appointed to carry on the government. In Ireland, a rebellion in behalf of young Charles, son of the late king, was organized by _Butler, Marquis of Ormond_ (1649). In nine months _Cromwell_ subdued it, treating the insurgents with unsparing severity. There was a savage massacre of the garrisons at _Drogheda_ and _Wexford_. The massacre at _Drogheda_ was by his orders. Soldiers of Parliament were settled in _Munster_, _Leinster_, and _Ulster_. The country was reduced to complete subjection. In 1650 _Charles_ landed in Scotland, subscribed to the Covenant, and was proclaimed king. Cromwell fought the Scots at _Dunbar_, and totally routed them. Returning to England, he overtook _Charles_ and his army at _Worcester_, and defeated them (1651). Cromwell called this victory "a crowning mercy." _Charles_ escaped in disguise, and, after strange perils and adventures, landed in Normandy. WAR WITH HOLLAND.--England, under its new government, engaged in a contest for dominion on the sea. The new order of things, contrary to the expectation of _Cromwell_, was regarded with hostility in _Holland_, where the _Orange_ family were in power. In 1651 the English _Navigation Act_, requiring all goods from abroad to be brought in, either in English ships, or in ships of the countries on the Continent in which the imported wares were produced, struck a heavy blow at Dutch commerce. War followed, in which the great Dutch admirals, _Van Tromp_, _De Ruyter_, _De Witt_, found more than a match in the English commander, _Blake_. The terms of peace were dictated by _Cromwell_, and Holland had to attach itself to his policy (1654). THE LORD PROTECTOR.--There was a growing discord between the unworthy remnant of the Parliament--now called the "Rump Parliament"--and the army. In 1653 _Cromwell_ used his military force to dissolve the assembly. By the "Little Parliament" which he called together, he was constituted _Lord Protector_, with a _Council of State_ composed of twenty-five members. Later he declined the title of king, out of respect to the feelings and prejudices of his party. But he reigned in state, and exercised regal functions. His attempts to restore the old forms of parliamentary government, in an orderly form, with two houses, were baffled by difficulties beyond control. He insisted on a large degree of toleration, so long as "religion was not made a pretense for arms and blood." CROMWELL'S GOVERNMENT.--Under the Protector, England once more took the proud and commanding place in Europe which she had not held since the death of _Elizabeth_. _Cromwell_ made his power to be everywhere respected. _Blake_ chastised the pirates of the Barbary States, and punished the Duke of Tuscany for attacks on English commerce. In 1655 _Jamaica_ was wrested from _Spain_; and, two years after, _Blake_ burned the Spanish treasure-ships in the harbor of _Santa Cruz_, in Teneriffe. _Cromwell_ efficiently protected the adherents of the Protestant faith in _Piedmont_, and wherever they were subjected to persecution. In the last year of his life, in conjunction with the French, he took _Dunkirk_ from the Spaniards. POWER OF CROMWELL.--Cromwell's power was not diminished in his closing years. _Macaulay_, who pronounces him the greatest prince that ever ruled England, says of him, "It is certain that he was to the last honored by his soldiers, obeyed by the whole population of the British Isles, and dreaded by all foreign powers; that he was laid among the ancient sovereigns of England with funeral pomp such as England had never before seen; and that he was succeeded by his son, Richard as quietly as any king had ever been succeeded by any Prince of Wales." (1658). The talents of Cromwell, and the vigor of his administration, deeply impressed those who heartily disliked him. A strong illustration of this fact is presented in the character of the Protector as depicted by _Lord Clarendon_, in the _History of the Great Rebellion_; and by the poet _Cowley_ in his essay or _Discourse_. CHAPTER X. COLONIZATION IN AMERICA: ASIATIC NATIONS; CULTURE AND LITERATURE (1517-1648). COLONIZATION IN AMERICA. The European nations kept up their religious and political rivalship in exploring and colonizing the New World. FRENCH EXPLORERS.--The French and English sent their fishermen to the coasts of _Newfoundland_ and _Nova Scotia_. French fishermen from _Breton_ gave its name to _Cape Breton_. _Francis I._ sent out _Verrazano_, an Italian sailor, who is thought to have cruised along the coast of North America from Cape Fear northward (1524). Later, _Jacques Cartier_ explored the _St. Lawrence_ as far as the site of _Montreal_ (1535); other expeditions followed, and thus was founded the claim of the French to that region. SPANISH EXPLORERS.--The Spaniards brought negroes from the coast of Africa to the West Indies, to take the place of the Indians; and thus the _slave-trade_ and _negro slavery_ were established. They gave the name of _Florida_ to a vast region stretching from the Atlantic to Mexico, and from the Gulf of Mexico to an undefined limit in the North. From _Tampa Bay_, in what we now call _Florida_, they sent into this unexplored region an expedition under _Narvaez_ (1528); and afterwards, on the same track, another party led by _Hernando de Soto_ (1539), which made its way to the _Mississippi_ near the present site of _Vicksburg_. Tempted by tales of rich cities, _Coronado_ led an army to the conquest of the pueblos of the south-west. He penetrated as far as the boundary of the present Nebraska. CONTEST IN FLORIDA.--The great Huguenot leader, _Coligny_, made three attempts to found Huguenot settlements in America. He wanted to provide for them an asylum, and to extend the power of France. One company went to _Brazil_, and failed; a second perished at _Port Royal_ in _Florida_; a third (1564) built _Fort Caroline_ on the shores of the _St. John_. This last company was mercilessly slaughtered by _Menendez_, the leader of a Spanish expedition which founded _St. Augustine_ (1565), the oldest town in the United States. The act was avenged by the massacre of the Spanish settlers at _Fort Caroline_, by _Dominique de Gourgues_ and the French company that came over with him. ENGLISH VOYAGES.--The English, full of zeal for maritime discovery, tried to find a north-west passage to Asia. This was attempted by _Martin Frobisher_, a sea-captain, from whom _Frobisher's Strait_ takes its name. After him followed _John Davis_, who gave his name also to a strait. As the English grew stronger and bolder on the water, they ceased to avoid a contest with Spain. In 1577 _Sir Francis Drake_ set out from the harbor of _Plymouth_ on his voyage around the globe. The defeat of the Spanish Armada occurred in 1588; and after that the English felt themselves to be stronger than their old adversary. GILBERT AND RALEIGH.--_Sir Humphrey Gilbert_, in 1583, took possession of _Newfoundland_ in the name of the queen of England. _Walter Raleigh_, his half-brother, on his voyage in 1584, visited _Roanoke Island_, and named the whole country between the French and the Spanish possessions, _Virginia_, in honor of "the Virgin Queen," _Elizabeth_. A colony which he sent out to _Roanoke_ (1585) failed, and a second settlement had no better result. _Bartholomew Gosnold_ landed on _Cape Cod_, and cruised along the neighboring coast (1602). THE FRENCH IN CANADA.--In 1603 _Champlain_, a French gentleman, sailed to _Canada_, whither the fur-trade enticed explorers. A few years later he founded _Quebec_ (1608), and explored the country as far as _Lake Huron_. The Jesuit missionaries commenced their efforts to convert the Indian tribes, in which they evinced an almost unparalleled fortitude and perseverance. The _Huron_ and _Algonquin_ Indians helped _Champlain_ gain a victory over the hostile and warlike _Iroquois_, who afterwards hated the French. The French occupants of the country of the _St. Lawrence_ devoted themselves too exclusively to trading, and too little to the tilling of the ground and to the forming of a community. THE DUTCH SETTLEMENTS.--The Dutch were as eager as the other maritime powers to find a passage to India. In 1609 an English captain in their service, _Henry Hudson_, balked in this endeavor, sailed up the river now called by his name. The next year, being in the service of an English company, he discovered _Hudson's Bay_. _Amsterdam_ traders established themselves on the island of _Manhattan_ (an Indian name); which led to the formation of the New Netherlands Company, by whom a fort (_Orange_) was built at the place afterwards called _Albany_ (1615). The West India Company followed (1621), with authority over _New Netherlands_, as the country was called. The powerful land-owners were styled _patroons_. Their territory reached to Delaware Bay; and they had a trading-post on the Connecticut, on the site of the present city of Hartford. In 1637 the Swedes made a settlement at the mouth of the Delaware River, but in 1655 they were subdued by the Dutch. SETTLEMENT OF VIRGINIA.--The _Virginia Company_, divided into two branches,--the _London Company_, having control in the South, and the _Plymouth Company_, having control in the North,--received its patent of privileges from _James I_. (1606). A settlement by the _Plymouth Company_ on the _Kennebec River_ (1607)--the _Popham Colony_--was given up. In 1607 _Jamestown_ in Virginia, as the name _Virginia_ is now applied, was settled. A majority of the first colonists were gentlemen not wonted to labor. The military leader was Capt. _John Smith_, whose life, according to his own account, was spared by _Powhatan_, an Indian chief. Powhatan's daughter _Pocahontas_ married _Rolfe_, an Englishman. The Jamestown colony seemed likely to become extinct, when, in 1610, _Lord Delaware_ arrived with fresh supplies and colonists. He was the first of a series of governors who ruled with almost unlimited authority. But the colony grew to be more independent, and in sympathy with the popular party in England. In 1619 the _House of Burgesses_ first met, which brought in government by the people. At this time _negroes_ began to be imported from Africa, and sold as slaves. THE PILGRIM SETTLEMENT.--The first permanent settlement in _New England_ was made at _Plymouth_ in 1620, by a company of English Christians, who landed from the "Mayflower." They were Puritans of that class called "Independents," who had separated from the English Church, and did not believe in any national church organization. The emigrants left _Leyden_, in Holland, where they had lived for some time in exile, and where the remainder of their congregation remained under the guidance of a learned and able pastor, _John Robinson_. In the harbor of _Provincetown_, they agreed to a compact of government. Their civil polity was republican; their church polity was _Congregational_. They endured with heroic and pious fortitude the severities of the first winter, when half of their number died. Their military leader was Capt. _Miles Standish_. In their dealings with the Indians, they were equally just and brave. SETTLEMENT OF MASSACHUSETTS.--Somewhat different in its origin and character from the "Pilgrim" settlement at _Plymouth_, was the other Puritan settlement of _Massachusetts_. The emigrants to Massachusetts were not separatists from the Church of England, but more conservative Puritans who desired, however, many ecclesiastical changes which they could not obtain at home. Both classes of settlers, transferred to _New England_, found no difficulty in agreeing in religious matters; for when left free, they desired about the same things. But at _Plymouth_ there was more toleration for religious dissent than in the later colony. In 1629 certain London merchants formed a corporation called "the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England," and received a charter directly from _Charles I_. They sent out _John Endicott_ to be governor of a settlement already formed at _Salem_. _Charles_ had dissolved Parliament, and was beginning the experiment of absolutism. The new company was strengthened by the accession of a large number of Puritan gentlemen who were anxious to emigrate. They resolved to transfer the company and its government to the shores of America. _John Winthrop_ was chosen governor, and in 1630 landed at _Charlestown_ with a large body of settlers. _Winthrop_ and his associates soon removed to the peninsula of _Boston_. The new colony was well provided with artisans. Soon ships began to be built. In 1636 a college, named in 1639, in honor of a benefactor, _Harvard_, was founded at _Cambridge_. At first all the voters met together to choose their rulers and frame their laws. As the towns increased in number, a _General Court_, or legislative assembly, was established by the colony, in which each town was represented. Each town had its church, and only church-members voted. The _General Court_ superintended the affairs of both town and church. The political troubles in England stimulated emigration. Within ten years, about twenty thousand Englishmen, mainly Puritans, crossed the Atlantic, and took up their abode in New England. In the ecclesiastical system each church was self-governing, except as the _General Court_ was over all. There were no bishops, and the liturgy was dispensed with in worship. SETTLEMENT OF CONNECTICUT.--After the Dutch had built a trading-post on the site of _Hartford_, people from _Plymouth_ formed a settlement at _Windsor_, on the Connecticut, six miles above. From _Boston_ and its neighborhood, there was a migration which settled _Hartford_. In 1637 the three towns of _Windsor_, _Wethersfield_, and _Hartford_ became the distinct colony of _Connecticut_. A colony led by the younger _John Winthrop_, under a patent given to _Lord Say and Sele_ and _Lord Brook_, drove away the Dutch from the mouth of the Connecticut, and settled _Saybrook_ (1635). This colony was afterwards united with the Connecticut colony. A third colony was established at _New Haven_ (1638), which had an independent existence until 1662. SETTLEMENT OF RHODE ISLAND, OF NEW HAMPSHIRE, AND OF MAINE.--_Roger Williams_, a minister who was not allowed to live in _Massachusetts_, on account of his differences with the magistrates, was the founder of _Rhode Island_ (1636). He held that the State should leave matters of religious opinion and worship to the conscience of the individual, and confine government to secular concerns. This was not the view of the Puritans generally; and the incoming of dissenters from their religious and political system made them afraid that the colony would be broken up, or fall into disorder. _Williams_, in most of his qualities a noble man, obtained a patent for his government, which was framed in accordance with his liberal ideas. On lands granted by the Plymouth Company to _Sir Ferdinando Gorges_, settlements were made in _New Hampshire_ and in _Maine_ (1623). A line between the two was drawn in 1631; _Gorges_ taking the territory on the east of the _Piscataqua River_, and Capt. _John Mason_ taking the remainder. VIRGINIA.--After 1624 the king appointed the governor in Virginia, which, however, had its own assembly. The colony grew rapidly, its chief export being tobacco. The people lived on their estates or plantations, employing indented servants and negro slaves. MARYLAND.--Maryland was founded by George Calvert, _Lord Baltimore_, a Roman Catholic, to whom _Charles I._ granted a charter (1632). The first settlement was made by Calvert's sons, after his death. They planted a colony near the mouth of the Potomac. The _Calverts_ sent out both Puritans and Roman Catholics, and secured the safety of the adherents of their own faith by the grant of toleration to the Protestants. Under _Cromwell_, a Puritan governor was appointed by _Lord Baltimore_ (1649). There were boundary disputes with Virginia; and _Clayborne_, a Puritan and a Virginian, at one time got control of the government, which the _Calverts_ regained under _Charles II._ (1660). NEW ENGLAND: NEW YORK.--During the war between king and Parliament in England, the Puritan colonies were in sympathy with the popular party, but were cautious in their avowals. They took great pains to prevent the king, and later the Parliament under the Commonwealth, from taking away their self-government. The English navigation acts, which forbade them to use foreign ships for their trade and forced them to send nearly all their products to English ports, were a grievance to them. The rivalries of _the English_ and _the Dutch_ gave the colonists a chance to expel _the Dutch_ from _Connecticut_. _Charles II._ at length conquered _New Netherland_, and ceded this territory to his brother, the Duke of York, afterwards James II. _New Amsterdam_ became _New York_, and _Fort Orange_ became _Albany_. In 1674 the country was formally ceded to England by Holland. THE INDIANS.--When America was discovered, _Mexico_, _Central America_, and _Peru_ were empires, to a considerable degree civilized. Relics taken from the mounds of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys indicate, also, that races somewhat advanced in culture had once dwelt in those regions. The most of both continents was inhabited by very numerous tribes of _Indians_, who were savages, with the ordinary virtues and vices of savage life. They were brave and patient, but indolent, treacherous, and implacable. There was an immense variety of dialects among them, yet there are traces of a common original unity of language. The tribes had no fixed boundaries, but roamed over extensive hunting-grounds. The _Iroquois_, or the Six Nations, occupied central New York from the Hudson to the Genesee. The _Algonquins_ were spread over nearly all the rest of the country on the east of the _Mississippi River_, and north of _North Carolina_. The _Creeks_, _Choctaws_, and _Chickasaws_ were in the South. THE WHITES AND THE RED MEN.--It was fortunate for the settlers of New England, that, before their arrival, the Indians had been much reduced in numbers by pestilence. Sometimes they were treated wisely and humanely, and efforts were made by noble men like _John Eliot_ (1604-1690), who has been called "the Apostle to the Indians," to teach and civilize them. But this spirit was not always shown by the whites, and wrongs done by an individual are avenged by savages upon his race. The first important conflict between the English and the Indians was the _Pequot War_ (1636), when the English, helped by the _Narragansetts_, who were under the influence of _Roger Williams_, crushed the _Pequots_, who were a dangerous tribe. A league between the New-England colonies, for mutual counsel and aid, followed (1643). Into this league, _Massachusetts_ would not allow _Rhode Island_, whose constitution was disliked, to be admitted. There were to be two commissioners to represent each colony in common meetings. SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY, LITERATURE. ASTRONOMY.--In this period wonderful progress was made in astronomy. _Copernicus_, a German or Polish priest (1473-1543), detected the error of the Ptolemaic system, which made not the sun, but the earth, the center of the solar system. Thus a revolution was made in that science. _Tycho Brahe_, a Danish astronomer (1546-1601), was a most accurate and indefatigable observer, although he did not adopt the Copernican theory. His pupil _Kepler_ (1571-1630) discovered those great principles respecting the orbits and motions of the planets, which are called the "Laws of Kepler." _Galileo_ (1564-1642), the Italian scientist, in addition to important discoveries in mechanics, with the telescopes, which his ingenuity had constructed, discerned the moons of Jupiter, and made other striking discoveries in the heavens. In promulgating the Copernican doctrine, he incurred the displeasure of ecclesiastics, and was driven by the Inquisition to renounce his opinion. It was reserved for _Sir Isaac Newton_ (1643-1727) to discover the law of gravitation. JURISPRUDENCE.--In jurisprudence, the Roman law was more and more studied in universities. In political science, _Bodin_, a learned Frenchman (1530-1596), wrote a work on the State, advocating a strong monarchy. In the Netherlands, _Hugo Grotius_ (1583-1645), a great jurist and scholar, was one of the principal founders of the science of _International Law_. An eminent expounder of natural and international law in Germany was _Pufendorf_ (1632-1694). HISTORICAL WRITINGS.--In history, _Sleidan_, a German (1506-1556), and later a learned statesman, _Seckendorf_ (1626-1692), wrote histories of the Reformation. _De Thou_, a Frenchman (1553-1617), wrote a valuable history of his own times. _Grotius_ described the war for independence in the Netherlands. Church history, on the Protestant side, was written by a company of authors called the _Magdeburg Centuriators_; and on the Catholic side, in the Annals of _Baronius_ (who died in 1607). In the Tower of London, _Sir Walter Raleigh_ employed himself in writing a History of the World, remarkable, if not for its researches, for passages of noble eloquence. In Italy, historians followed in the path opened by _Machiavelli_, through his _Discourses on Livy_ and his _Florentine History_. _Davila_ (1576-1631) composed a narrative of the Civil Wars in France, and the Cardinal _Bentivoglio_ wrote the history of the Civil War in the Netherlands. _Sarpi_, a keen Venetian, of much independence of thought, related the history of the Council of Trent, which was followed by a history of the same Council by the more orthodox _Pallavicini_. In Spain, there was at least one historian of superior value, _Mariana_, who composed a history of his own country. MEDICINE.--Medicine felt the benefit of the revival of learning. _Hippocrates_ and _Galen_ were studied, and were translated into Latin. _Paracelsus_, a German physician (1493-1541), besides broaching various theories more or less visionary, advanced the science on the chemical side, introducing certain mineral remedies. _Vesalius_, a native of _Brussels_ (1514-1564), who became chief physician of _Charles V_. and _Philip II_., dissected the human body, and produced the first comprehensive and systematic view of anatomy. In the sixteenth century clinical instruction was introduced into hospitals. _Harvey_, an English physician (1578-1657), discovered the circulation of the blood. In the seventeenth century activity in medical study was shown by the rise of various discordant systems. PHILOSOPHY.--In philosophy, _Aristotle_ continued to be the master in the most conservative schools, where the old ways of thinking were cherished. His ethical doctrines were especially attacked by _Luther_. _Giordano Bruno_, an Italian, not without genius, promulgated a theory of pantheism, which identified the Deity with the world. He wandered from land to land, was a vehement assailant of received religious views, and was burned at the stake at _Rome_ (1600). In some gifted minds, the conflict of doctrinal systems, and the influence of the Renaissance, engendered skepticism. _Montaigne_ (1533-1592), the genial essayist on men and manners, the Plutarch of France, is an example of this class. The opposition to _Aristotle_ and to the schoolmen found a great leader in the English philosopher, _Francis Bacon_ (1561-1626). The influence of _Lord Bacon_ was more in stimulating to the use of the inductive method, the method of observation, than in any special value belonging to the rules laid down for it. He pointed out the path of fruitful investigation. _Hobbes_ (1588-1679), an English writer, propounded, in his _Leviathan_ (1651) and in other writings, his theory of the absolute authority of the king, and the related doctrine that right is founded on the necessity of "a common power," if the desires are to be gratified, and if endless destructive contention is to be avoided. From the epoch of Bacon, the natural and physical sciences acquire a new importance. In metaphysical science, the modern epoch dates from _Descartes_ (1596-1650), born in France, who insisted that philosophy must assume nothing, but must start with the proposition, "I think, therefore I am." Before, philosophy had been "the handmaid of theology." It had taken for granted a body of beliefs respecting God, man, and the world. _Descartes_ was a theist. _Spinoza_ (1632-1677), of Jewish extraction, born in _Holland_, is the founder of modern pantheism. He taught that there is but one substance; that God and the world--the totality of things--are the manifestation of one impersonal being. LITERATURE IN ITALY.--In Italy, among many authors in different departments of poetry, _Tasso_ (1544-1595), the author of the epic _Jerusalem Delivered_, is the most eminent. In it, the classic and the romantic styles are combined; the spirit of the Middle Ages blends with the unity and harmony of Homer and Virgil. In the seventeenth century, under the hard Spanish rule, the literary spirit in Italy was chilled. LITERATURE IN SPAIN AND PORTUGAL.--In Spain, it was poetry and the drama that chiefly flourished. Other sorts of literary activity were stifled with the extinction of liberty. _Lope de Vega_ (1562-1635), one of the most facile and marvelous of all poets, the author of twenty-two hundred dramas,--was the precursor of a school. After him came _Calderon_ (1600-1681), who carried the Spanish drama to its perfection. Early in the seventeenth century _Cervantes_ published the classic tale of _Don Quixote_, "to render abhorred of men the false and absurd stories contained in books of chivalry," an end which he accomplished. _Mariana's_ (1536-1623) vivid and interesting _History of Spain_ was continued in a less attractive style by _Sandoval_. _Herrera_ (1549-1625) composed a General History of the Indies. Other works relating to the New World and the Spanish conquests were written. In the production of proverbs, the Spanish mind is without a rival. Not the least of the bad effects of the despotic system of _Philip II_. was the decay of literature. The most celebrated writer of _Portugal_ is the poet _Camoens_ (1524-1579), who, in his epic the _Lusiad_, has treated of the glorious events in the history of his country, giving special prominence to the discovery by _Vasco da Gama_ of the passage to India. LITERATURE IN FRANCE.--In France, with the exception of _Montaigne_, it was _Rabelais_ (1495-1553), a physician, philosopher, and humorist, who, notwithstanding his profanity and obscenity, was the most popular author of his day, and who well represents the tone of the Renaissance in that country. _Ronsard_ (1524-1585), an imitator of the Latins and Greeks, was the favorite poet of _Mary, Queen of Scots_. In the first half of the seventeenth century the light literature of the French is ruled by fashion, and is void of serious feeling. In this time the literary societies of France take their rise. _Madame de Rambouillet_ (1588-1665), a lady of Italian birth, set the example in establishing such reunions. She made her hotel a resort for writers and politicians. Being an invalid, she kept her bed, which was placed in an alcove of the _salon_ where she received her visitors. LITERATURE IN ENGLAND.--In England, in the age of _Elizabeth_, there is a galaxy of great authors in prose and verse. The events and debates of the Reformation, the voyages and geographical discoveries of the period, gave a powerful quickening to thought and imagination. The Renaissance culture, which made familiar the stories of Greek and Roman mythology, and the romantic tales and poetry of Italy and Spain, was potent in its effect. Some of the numerous theological writers, as Bishop _Hall_ (1574-1656), _Jeremy Taylor_ (1613-1667), and _Richard Hooker_ (1553-1600), have gained a high place in general literature. _Bacon_, apart from his philosophical writings, towers above almost all his contemporaries in the field of letters. The chivalrous _Sir Philip Sidney_ (1554-1586) wrote the pastoral romance of _Arcadia_. _Burton_ (1576-1640), the author of _The Anatomy of Melancholy_, and _Sir Thomas Brown_, who published (1642) the _Religio Medici_ (the religion of a physician) and, at a later date, the _Urn Burial_, are quaint and original authors. The merit of _Shakspeare_ (1564-1616) is so exalted and unique that he almost eclipses even the greatest names. The English drama did not heed what are called the classic unities of time and place, which limit the action of a play to a brief duration and a contracted area. Other celebrated dramatic writers are _Beaumont_ (1586-1615) and _Fletcher_ (1579-1625), who wrote many plays jointly; _Ben Jonson_ (1574-1637), and _Massinger_ (1584-1640). The imaginative poetry which is not dramatic, in this period, begins with _Spenser_ (1553-1599), whose _Faërie Queene_ is a poem of chivalry; and it ends with _Milton_ (1608-1674), the Puritan poet, imbued with the culture of the Renaissance, whose majesty and beauty place him almost on a level, at least in the esteem of readers of the English race, with Dante. Among the religious poets is _George Herbert_ (1593-1635). One of the most famous of the lyric authors was the last of them, _Cowley_ (1618-1667). LITERATURE IN GERMANY.--In Germany, the great literary product of this period was _Luther's_ translation of the _Bible_. The immediate effect of the controversy in religion was not favorable to the cause of letters. Attention was engrossed by theological inquiries and discussion. But in most of the countries, in the department of theology, preachers and writers of much ability and learning appeared on both sides of the controversy. Biblical study and historical researches were of necessity fostered by the exigencies of religious debate. ASIATIC NATIONS. I. CHINA. THE JESUIT MISSIONS.--The _Ming_ dynasty continued in power in China until 1644. About the middle of the sixteenth century the _Portuguese_ came to the island of Macao, and commercial relations began between China and Europe. They brought opium into China, which had previously been imported overland from India. In 1583 _Matteo Ricci_, a Jesuit missionary, began his labors in China. He and his associates had great success. His knowledge of the book language was most remarkable. The concessions of the Jesuit fathers to the Chinese in matters of ritual excited much opposition in the Church. But for this dissension among the different Catholic orders, the Roman Catholic faith, which had gained very numerous converts, would have spread far more widely. THE MANCHU CONQUEST.--There were notable literary achievements in this period, one of which was an _encyclopedia_ in more than twenty-two thousand books. Four copies were made: only one, a damaged copy, now remains. The great political event of the time was the seizure of the throne by the _Manchu Tartars_ (1644), who came in as auxiliaries against a rebellion, but have worn the crown until now. The shaved head and the long cue are customs introduced by the Tartar conquerors. Certain privileges, and certain habits to which the natives clung, as the mode of dress for women, and the compression of their feet, were retained by express stipulation. II. JAPAN. FEUDAL SYSTEM.--In 1603 _Iyéyasu_, an eminent general, founded the _Tokugawa_ dynasty, which continued until the resignation of the last Shôgun (or Tycoon) in 1867. The rulers of that line held their court at _Yedo_, which grew into a flourishing city. The long period of anarchy and bloodshed that had preceded, was brought to an end. Iyéyasu laid the foundation of a feudal system which his grandson _Iyémitsu_ (1623-1650) completed. Japan was divided into fiefs, each under a _daimiô_ for its chief, who enjoyed a large degree of independence. The people consisted of four classes: (1) the military families, who had the right to wear two swords, the clansmen of the great nobles; (2) the farming class; (3) the artisans; (4) the tradesmen. CHRISTIANITY IN JAPAN.--Christianity was preached in Japan by _Xavier_, a successful Jesuit missionary, in 1583. Other Jesuit preachers followed. A multitude of converts were made. But on account of immoralities of Europeans, and the dread of foreign political domination, the government engaged in a series of severe persecutions. In 1614 an edict proscribed Christianity. A portion of the peasants who were converts were so oppressed, that they revolted (1637). The result was an act of terrible cruelty,--the massacre of all Christians; so that none remained openly to profess the Christian faith. III. INDIA. THE MUGHAL EMPIRE.--In the latter half of the fourteenth and in the fifteenth centuries, the most of _India_ was ruled by distinct Mohammedan dynasties. The dominion of the Afghan dynasty at _Delhi_ was thus greatly reduced. In 1525 the _Mughal (Mogul)_ Empire was founded by _Babar_, a descendant of _Tamerlane. Babar_ invaded India, and defeated the Sultan of _Delhi_ in the battle of _Paniput_. The new empire was not permanently established until his grandson _Akbar_ (1556-1605), in a series of conquests, spread his dominion over all India north of the Vindhyar mountains. Not until the reign of _Aurungzeb_ (1658-1707), was the Deccan subdued. After 1600 the Portuguese no longer had the monopoly of the foreign trade: the Dutch and English became their rivals. LITERATURE.--See lists of works on general history, p. 16; on modern history, p. 395; on the history of particular countries, p. 359. General Works on the Period. De Thou's _History of his own Times_; ROBERTSON'S _History of Charles V_. (Prescott's ed.); Von Raumer's _Gesch. Europas seit d. Ende d, 15 tu Jahrk_, (8 vols).; Hallam's _Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries_; RANKE'S series of works on this period,--the _History of the Popes_, and the Histories of Germany, France, and England; Histories of the Reformation by D'Aubigné, Döllinger (Roman Catholic), Spalding (Roman Catholic), Fisher, HAUSSER, Hardwick, Stebbing; Laurent, _La Reforme_; Lavisse et Rambaud, _Histoire Genérale_ (iv. and v.); Seebohm's _Era of Protestant Revolution_; Works of Janssen, Pastor, Creighton. On the German and Swiss Reformation: Waddington's _History_, etc.; Hagenhach, _Vorlesungen_, etc.; Lives of Luther, by Meurer, Michelet, Beard, KÖSTLIN; Lives of Zwingh, by CHRISTOFFEL, MORIKOFER; Lives of Calvin, by HENRY, Dyer, Kampschulte (Roman Catholic). Reformation in France. Works by Soldan, Von Polenz, Smiles, Browning; BAIRD'S works on _Huguenots_; Perkins, _France under Richelieu and Mazarin_ (2 vols.); Hanotaux, _Richelieu_ (2 vols.). The Revolt of the Netherlands. Blok's _History of the Netherlands _(3 vols.), etc.; MOTLEY'S _Rise of the Dutch Republic_, and _History of the United Netherlands_; PRESCOTT'S _History of Philip II._; TH. JUSTE, _Hist, de la Rèvol. des Pays-Bas_, etc. (2 vols). The Reformation in England. The Histories of Macaulay. Lingard, Froude, Burnet's _History of the Reformation in England_. S. R. Gardiner's _History of England_ (1603 to 1656); Clarendon's _History of the Great Rebellion_; a series of works on this period by GUIZOT; Neal's _History of the Puritans_; Gairdner, _History of the English Church from Henry VIII. to Mary_; selections of documents by Prothero and by Gardiner; Lives of Cromwell, by CARLYLE, by Forster, Gardiner, Harrison, Firth; Strype's Lives of the Leading Reformers--Cranmer, etc. On the Reformation in Scotland. BURTON'S _History of Scotland_; Robertson's _History of Scotland_; McCrie's _Life of John Knox_; W. M. TAYLOR, _Life of John Knox_. On the Thirty Years' War. GINDELY'S _History_, etc.; Gardiner, _The Thirty Years' War; Life of Gustavus Adolphus_. For more extended lists, see Adams's _Manual_, etc.; and Fisher's _The Reformation_ (Appendix). For list of works on colonization in America, see the list at the end of Period III. PERIOD III. FROM THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. (1648-1789) INTRODUCTION. CHARACTER OF THE PERIOD.--One feature of this period is the efforts made by the nations to improve their condition, especially to increase the thrift and to raise the standing of the middle class. An illustration is what is called the "mercantile system" in France. Along with this change, there is progress in the direction of greater breadth in education and culture. In both of these movements, rulers and peoples cooperate. Monarchical power, upheld by standing armies, reaches its climax. The result is internal order, coupled with tyranny. Great wars were carried on, mostly contests for succession to thrones. The outcome was an equilibrium in the European state system, dependent on the relations of five great powers. FIRST SECTION OF THE PERIOD.--In the first half of the period, the East and the West of Europe are slightly connected. In the West, _France_ gains the preponderance over _Austria_, until, by the Spanish war of succession, _England_ restores the balance. In the East, _Sweden_ is in the van, until, in the great Northern war (1700-1721), _Russia_ becomes predominant. SECOND SECTION OF THE PERIOD.--In the second half of the period, the East and the West of Europe are brought together in one state system, in particular by the rise of the power of _Prussia_. CHIEF EVENTS.--The fall of _Sweden_ and the rise of _Russia_ and _Prussia_ are political events of capital importance. The maritime supremacy of _England_, with the loss by England of the _American_ colonies, is another leading fact. In the closing part of the period appear the intellectual and political signs of the great Revolution which broke out in _France_ near the end of the eighteenth century. CHAPTER I. THE PREPONDERANCE OF FRANCE: FIRST PART OF THE REIGN OF LOUIS XIV. (TO THE PEACE OF RYSWICK, 1697): THE RESTORATION OF THE STUARTS: THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF 1688. LOUIS XIV.: MAZARIN.--The great minister _Richelieu_ died in 1642. "Abroad, though a cardinal of the Church, he arrested the Catholic reaction, freed Northern from Southern Europe, and made toleration possible; at home, out of the broken fragments of her liberties and her national prosperity, he paved the way for the glory of France." He paved the way, also, for the despotism of her kings. He had been feared and hated by king and people, but had been obeyed by both. A few months later _Louis XIII._, a sovereign without either marked virtues or vices, followed him (1643). _Louis XIV._ (1643-1715) was then only five years old; and _Mazarin_, the heir of _Richelieu's_ power, stood at the helm until his death (1661). To this Italian statesman, ambitious of power and wealth, but astute, and, like _Richelieu_, devoted to France, the queen, _Anne_ of Austria, willingly left the management of the government. The rebellion of the _Fronde_ (1648-1653) was a rising of the nobles to throw off the yoke laid on them by _Richelieu_. They were helped by the discontent of parliament and people with the oppressive taxation. In Paris, there was a rising of the populace, who built barricades; but the revolt was quelled. Its leaders, _Conti_, the Cardinal de _Retz_, and the great _Condé_, a famous soldier, were compelled to fly from the country. _Mazarin_, who had been obliged to fly to Cologne, returned in triumph. After that, resistance to the absolute monarch ceased,--the monarch whose theory of government was expressed in the assertion, "I am the State" (_l'etat c'est moi_). In the _Peace_ of the _Pyrenees_ (1659), _Spain_ gave in marriage to _Louis_, the Infanta _Maria Theresa_, the daughter of _Philip IV._, and ceded to France important places in the Netherlands. _Maria_ renounced all claims on her inheritance, for herself and her issue, in consideration of a dowry of five hundred thousand crowns to be paid by Spain. Shortly after, _Mazarin_, who had negotiated the treaty, in full possession of his exalted authority and the incalculable treasures which he had amassed, died. LOUIS XIV. AND HIS OFFICERS.--_Louis XIV._ was now his own master. His appetite for power was united with a relish for pomp and splendor, which led him to make _Versailles_, the seat of his court, as splendid as architectural skill and lavish expenditure could render it, and to make France the model in art, literature, manners, and modes of life, for all Europe. With sensual propensities he mingled a religious or superstitious vein, so that from time to time he sought to compound for his vices by the persecution of the Huguenots. He was the central figure in the European life of his time. Taking care that his own personal authority should not be in the least impaired, he made _Colbert_ controller-general, to whom was given charge of the finances of the kingdom. _Louvois_ was made the minister of war. _Colbert_ not only provided the money for the costly wars, the luxurious palaces, and the gorgeous festivities of his master, but constructed canals, fostered manufactures, and built up the French marine. _Louvois_, with equal success, organized the military forces in a way that was copied by other European states. Able generals--_Turenne_, _Condé_, and _Luxemburg_--were in command. The nobles who held the offices, military as well as civil, vied with one another in their obsequious devotion to the "great king." _Vauban_, the most skillful engineer of the age, erected impregnable fortifications in the border towns that were seized by conquest. In the arts of diplomacy, the French ambassadors were equally superior. The monarch was sustained by the national pride of the people, and by their ambition to dominate in Europe. ATTACK ON THE NETHERLANDS.--_Louis_ had already purchased of the English _Dunkirk_,--which was shamefully sold to him by _Charles II._,--when _Philip IV._ of Spain died (1665). He now claimed parts of the Netherlands as being an inheritance of his queen, according to an old law of those provinces. He conquered the county of _Burgundy_, or _Franche Comté_, and various places in that country. _Holland_, afraid that he might push his conquests farther, formed the _Triple Alliance_ with _England_ and _Sweden_. In the Treaty of _Aachen_ (Aix), Louis gave up to the Spaniards _Franche Comté_, but retained the captured cities in the Netherlands (1668), which _Vauban_ proceeded to fortify. ATTACK ON HOLLAND.--The next attack of _Louis_ was upon _Holland_. Holland and the Spanish Netherlands were at variance in religion, as well as in their political systems, and rivals in trade and industry. The first minister of the emperor, _Leopold._, was in the pay of _Louis_. Sweden, in the minority of _Charles XI._, was in the hands of the Swedish nobles. England had now joined _Louis_, who, in return for help in the Netherlands, was to furnish subsidies to assist _Charles II._ in establishing Catholicism in his realm. In Holland, there was a division between the republicans, of whom the grand pensionary, _John de Witt_, was the chief, and the adherents of the house of Orange. THE WAR: THE PEACE OF NIMWEGEN.--_Louis_, having first seized _Lorraine_,--whose duke had allied himself to the United Provinces,--accompanied by his famous generals, _Condé, Turenne,_ and _Vauban_, put himself at the head of an army of one hundred and twenty thousand men, which crossed the Rhine, and advanced to the neighborhood of the capital of Holland. The Orange party charged the blame of the failure to defend the land on their adversaries, whom they accused of treachery. _De Witt_ and his brother, _Cornelius_, were killed in the streets of Hague. _William III._, the Prince of Orange (1672-1702), assumed power. _Gröningen_ held out against the French troops. Storms on the sea and on the land aided the patriotic defenders of their country. The "Great Elector" of Brandenburg, _Frederic William_, lent them help. At length the German emperor was driven by the French aggressions to join actively in the war, on the side of the Dutch. The English Parliament (1674) forced _Charles II._ to conclude peace with them. In the battle of _Sasbach_, _Turenne_ fell (1675). _Sweden_ took the side of France, and invaded the elector's territory; but the elector's victory at _Fehrbellin_ (1675) laid the foundation of the greatness of _Prussia_. _William III._ kept the field against the great generals of France, and married the daughter of _James_, the Duke of York, the brother of _Charles II._ In bringing the war to an end, _Louis_, by shrewd diplomacy, settled with the United Provinces first. By the _Peace of Nimwegen_ (1678 and 1679), Holland received back its whole territory; France kept most of her new conquests in the Netherlands, with the county of _Burgundy_, the city of _Besançon_, and some imperial towns in _Alsace_ not ceded in the Peace of Westphalia; the emperor lost to France _Freiburg_ in the Breisgau. The elector, left to shift for himself, was forced to give back his profitable conquests to Sweden (1679). EFFECT OF THE WAR.--In the war with Holland, _Louis_ had shown his military strength, and his skill in making and breaking alliances. He had made progress towards the goal of his ambition, which was to act as dictator in the European family of states. To the end of the century, France stood on the pinnacle of power and apparent prosperity. CONDITION OF FRANCE.--Manufactures flourished to an astonishing degree. France became a naval power with a large fleet and with all its services better organized than those of the contemporary English marine. _Colbert_ finished the canal between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. Colonies were founded in _St. Domingo_, _Cayenne_, _Madagascar_. _Canada_ was increasing in strength. A uniform, strict judicial system was established. Restless nobles were cowed, and the common people thus drawn to the monarch. THE FRENCH COURT.--In his court, the king established elaborate forms of etiquette, and made himself almost an object of worship. The nobility swarmed about him, and sought advancement from his favor. Festivals and shows of all sorts--plays, ballets, banquets, dazzling fireworks--were the costly diversion of the gay throngs of courtiers, male and female, in that court, where sensuality was thinly veiled by ceremonious politeness and punctilious religious observances. Poets, artists, and scholars were liberally patronized, and joined in the common adulation offered to the sovereign. Stately edifices were built, great libraries gathered; academies of art and of science, an astronomical observatory, and the botanic garden for the promotion of the study of natural history, were founded. The palace at _Versailles_, with its statues, fountains, and gardens, furnished a pattern which all the rest of Europe aspired to copy. Every thing there wore an artificial stamp, from the trimming of the trees to the etiquette of the ballroom. But there was a splendor and a fascination which caused the French fashions, the French language and literature, with the levity and immorality which traveled in their company, to spread in the higher circles of the other European countries. THE GALLICAN CHURCH.--_Louis XIV._ desired, without any rupture with Rome, to take to himself a power in ecclesiastical affairs like that assumed in England by _Henry VIII_. Under the pontificate of _Innocent XI._, the assembly of the French clergy passed four propositions asserting the rights of the national Gallican Church, and limiting the Pope's prerogative (1682). The king had for his ecclesiastical champion the able and eloquent _Bossuet_, the Bishop of Meaux. Subsequently, under _Innocent XII._, _Louis_, afraid of a schism and anxious to procure other advantages, yielded up the four obnoxious propositions. JANSENISM.--The controversy raised by the _Jansenists_ was an important event in the history of France. They took their name from _Jansenius_, who had been Bishop of _Ypres_, an ardent disciple of _St. Augustine's_ theology. They strenuously opposed the theology and moral maxims of the powerful Jesuit order. Their leaders, _St. Cyran_, _Pascal_, _Arnauld_, _Nicole_, and others, were called _Port Royalists_, from their relation to a cloister at _Port Royal_, where some of them resided. They were men of literary and philosophical genius, as well as theologians and devotees. _Blaise Pascal_ wrote the "Provincial Letters," a satirical and polemical work against the Jesuit doctrines. This has always been deemed in style a masterpiece of French prose. His posthumous _Thoughts_ is a profound and suggestive fragment on the evidences of religion. In the heated controversy that arose, the Jansenist leaders were for a more limited definition of the Pope's authority in deciding questions of doctrine. The French court at length took the side of the Jesuits. In 1713 the Pope's bull against the _Moral Reflections_ of _Quesnel_, a Jansenist author, was a heavy blow at his party. Finally, the Jansenists were proscribed by the king, and the cloister at Port Royal leveled to the ground. The Jansenist influence made a part of the tendencies to liberalism that led to the Revolution at the close of the century. THE HUGUENOTS.--After _Mazarin's_ death, the king fell under the influence of a party hostile to the Huguenots. _Louvois_ fostered this feeling in him, as did _Madame de Maintenon_, whom he had secretly married, and by whom he was influenced through life. As he grew older, he sought to appease a guilty conscience by inflicting tortures on religious dissenters. He issued edicts of the most cruel character. He adopted the atrocious scheme of the _dragonade_, or the billeting of soldiers, over whom there was no restraint, in Huguenot families. In the course of three years, fifty thousand families, industrious and virtuous people, had fled the country. In 1685 the _Edict of Nantes_, the charter of Protestant rights, was revoked. Emigration was forbidden; yet not far from a quarter of a million of refugees escaped, to enrich by their skill and labor the Protestant countries where they found an asylum. Many of the refugees were received by the Elector _Frederick_, and helped to build up _Berlin_, then a small city of twelve thousand inhabitants. France was not only in a degree impoverished by those who fled, but, also, by the much larger number who remained to be harassed and ruined by the foolish and brutal bigotry of their ruler. The loss to France by the exile of the Huguenots was incalculable. "Here were the thriftiest, the bravest, the most intelligent of Frenchmen, the very flower of the race; some of their best and purest blood, some of their fairest and most virtuous women, all their picked artisans. In war, in diplomacy, in literature, in production of wealth, these refugees gave what they took from France to her enemies; for they carried with them that bitter sense of wrong which made them henceforth foremost among those enemies, the forlorn hope of every attack on their ancient fatherland. Large numbers of officers, and those among the ablest, emigrated; among them pre-eminent Marshal Schomberg, 'the best general in Europe.' The fleet especially suffered: the best of the sailors emigrated; the ships were almost unmanned. The seamen carried tidings of their country's madness to the ends of the earth: as Voltaire says, 'the French were as widely dispersed as the Jews.' Not only in industry, but in thought and mental activity, there was a terrible loss. From this time literature in France loses all spring and power." In England, the Huguenot exiles quickened manufactures; in Holland, commerce; in Brandenburg, they made a new era in agriculture. Moreover, from this time the policy of Brandenburg was changed: the hostility to the emperor and the house of Austria gave way. An antagonism to France arose: "a process begun by the Great Elector, carried on by Frederick the Great, and brought to a triumphant close in our own days, dates from the revocation of the Edict of Nantes." THE COST OF NATIONAL UNITY IN FRANCE.--From the beginning of the Reformation, the problem for the nations to solve was, how to combine _religious freedom_ with _national unity_. The intolerance of the Spanish branch of the Hapsburgs deprived them of _Holland_, and broke down their power. This effort to secure uniformity of belief was shattered. A like effort in _Germany_ resulted in the Thirty Years' War, and the utter loss of the national unity which it aimed to restore. The civil wars in _France_, aiming at the same result, uniformity of belief, ended in an accommodation between the parties, secured by _Henry IV_. in the _Edict of Nantes_. There was a partial sacrifice of national unity. This was reestablished by the policy of _Richelieu_ and the acts of _Louis XIV.,_ but at a fearful cost. The loss of the Huguenot emigrants; the loss of character, with the loss of the spirit of independence, in the nobles of France; the full sway of a monarchical despotism,--this was the price paid for national unity. AGGRESSIONS OF LOUIS.--The readiness of the European states to accept the provisions of the _Nimwegen Treaty_ emboldened _Louis_ to further outrages and aggressions. Germany, split into a multitude of sovereignties, and for the most part inactive as if a paralysis lay upon her, was a tempting prey to the spoiler. He claimed that all the places which had stood in a feudal relation to the places acquired by France in the Westphalian and Nimwegen treaties, should become dependencies of France. He constituted _Reunions_, or courts of his own, to decide what these places were, and enforced their decrees with his troops (1679). He went so far, in a time of peace, as to seize and wrest from the German Empire the city of _Strasburg_, to establish his domination there, and to introduce the Catholic worship, in the room of the Protestant, in the minster (1681). Instead of heeding the warning of the Prince of Orange, the empire concluded with _Louis_ the truce of _Regensburg_, by which he was suffered to retain these conquests. He evinced his arrogance in making a quarrel with _Genoa_, in bombarding the city, and in forcing the doge to come to Versailles and beg for peace (1684). HUNGARY AND AUSTRIA.--The Emperor _Leopold_ was busy in the eastern part of his dominions. The success of the Turks, who gained possession of Lower Hungary, called out a more energetic resistance; but a victory gained by the imperial general, _Montecuculi_, at _St. Gothard_, on the Raab (1664), only resulted in a truce. The Austrian government, guided by the minister, _Lobkowitz_, used the opportunity to rob the Hungarians of their liberties and rights. Political tyranny and religious persecution went hand in hand. Protestant preachers were sold as galley-slaves. _Tököly_, an Hungarian nobleman, led in a revolt, and invoked the help of the Turks. In 1683 the Turks laid siege to _Vienna_, which was saved by a great victory gained under its walls by a united German and Polish army; the hero in the conflict being _John Sobieski_, king of Poland. The German princes and _Venice_ now united in the prosecution of the war. The conquest of Hungary from the Turks enabled _Leopold_ to destroy Hungarian independence. After their defeat by _Charles of Lorraine_ at _Mohacs_ (1687), the Diet of _Pressburg_ conferred on the male Austrian line the crown of Hungary, and abandoned its old privilege of resisting unconstitutional ordinances (1687). A great victory gained over the Turks by Prince _Eugene_ at _Zenta_ was followed by the Peace of _Carlowitz_, which gave Hungary and Transylvania to Austria, Morea to Venice, and Azof to Russia. _Tököly_ died in exile. THE RESTORATION IN ENGLAND (1660).--_Richard Cromwell_ quietly succeeded to the Protectorate. But the officers of the army recalled the "Rump" Parliament, the survivors of the Long Parliament. After eight months _Richard_ gave up his office. The "Rump" was soon in a quarrel again with the army, and was expelled by its chief, _Lambert_. _Monk_, the commander of the English troops in _Scotland_, refused to recognize the government set up by the officers in London. The fleet declared itself on the side of Parliament. _Lambert_ was forsaken, and _Monk_ entered London (1660). A new Parliament or Convention was convoked, which included the Upper House. The restoration of _Charles II_. was now effected by means of the combined influence of the Episcopalians and Presbyterians, and through the agency of _Monk_. _Charles_, in his Declaration from _Breda_, prior to his return, promised "liberty to tender consciences." This and subsequent pledges were falsified: he had the Stuart infirmity of breaking his engagements. With an easy good-nature and complaisant manners, he was void of moral principle, and in his conduct an open profligate. At heart he was a Roman Catholic, and simply from motives of expediency deferred the avowal of his belief to his death-bed. The army was disbanded. Vengeance was taken on such of the "regicides," the judges of _Charles I_., as could be caught, and on the bodies of _Cromwell_, _Ireton_, and _Bradshaw_. The Cavalier party had now every thing their own way. The Episcopal system was reestablished, and a stringent _Act of Uniformity_ was passed. Two thousand Presbyterian ministers were turned out of their parishes. If there was at any time indulgence to the nonconformists, it was only for the sake of the Roman Catholics. _John Bunyan_, the author of "Pilgrim's Progress," was kept in prison for more than twelve years. The sale of _Dunkirk_ to France (1662) awakened general indignation. THE "YEAR OF WONDERS:" THE CONDUCT OF CHARLES.--The year 1665 was marked as the year of the _Great Plague_ in London, where the narrow and dirty streets admitted little fresh air. It was estimated that not less than one hundred thousand people perished. In less than a year after the plague ceased, there occurred the _Great Fire_ in London (Sept., 1666), which burned for three days, and laid London in ashes from the Tower to the Temple, and from the Thames to Smithfield. St. Paul's, the largest cathedral in England, was consumed, and was replaced by the present church of the same name, planned by _Sir Christopher Wren_. The king showed an unexpected energy in trying to stay the progress of the flames. But neither public calamities, nor the sorrow and indignation of all good men, including his most loyal and attached adherents, could check the shameless profligacy of his palace-life. The diaries of _Evelyn_ and of _Pepys_, both of whom were familiar with the court, picture the disgraceful depravation of morals, which was stimulated by the king's example. But the nation was even more aggrieved by his conduct in respect to foreign nations. In a war with Holland, arising out of commercial rivalry, the English had the mortification of seeing the Thames blockaded by the Dutch fleet (1667). _Hyde_, Earl of Clarendon, Charles's principal adviser, whose daughter married the Duke of York, was driven from office, and went into exile to escape a trial. The _Triple Alliance_ against Louis (p. 453) was gratifying to the people; but in the _Treaty of Dover_ (1670), _Charles_ engaged to declare himself a Roman Catholic as soon as he could do so with prudence, and promised to join his cousin, _Louis XIV_., against Holland, and to aid him in his schemes; in return for which he was to receive a large subsidy from _Louis_, a pension during the war, and armed help in case of an insurrection in England. THE "CABAL" MINISTRY.--A _cabinet_, as we now term it,--a small number of persons,--had, before this reign, begun to exercise the functions which belonged of old to the King's Council. At this time, the _cabal_ ministry--so called from the first letters of the names, which together made the word--was in power. In 1672 war with _Holland_ was declared, and was kept up for two years. DECLARATION OF INDULGENCE.--When _Charles_ began this second Dutch war, he issued orders for the suspension of the laws against the Catholics and Dissenters. His design was to weaken the Church of England. The anger of Parliament and of the people at this usurpation obliged him to recall the declaration. THE TEST ACT.--Parliament, in 1673, passed an act which shut out all Dissenters from office. This act the king did not venture to reject; although the effect of it was to oblige his brother _James_, the Duke of York, to resign his office of lord high admiral. DANBY'S MINISTRY.--The cabal ministry was gradually broken up; and _Shaftesbury_, an able minister, went over to the other side. The _Earl of Danby_ became the chief minister. He was in agreement with the House of Commons. He favored the marriage which united _Mary_, the daughter of the Duke of York, to _William_, Prince of Orange. THE "POPISH PLOT" (1678).--The already exasperated nation was infuriated by an alleged "Popish Plot" for the subverting of the government, and for the murder of the king and of all Protestants. _Titus Oates_, a perjurer, was the main witness. Many innocent Roman Catholics were put to death. This pretended plot led to stringent measures shutting out papists from office. _Halifax_, an able man who called himself "a trimmer," because he did not always stay on one side or with one party, opposed a bill that would have excluded the king's brother from the succession, and it failed. HABEAS CORPUS ACT.--In 1679 the _Habeas Corpus Act_ was passed, providing effectually against the arbitrary imprisonment of subjects. Persons arrested must be brought to trial, or proved in open court to be legally confined. PARTIES: RUSSELL AND SIDNEY.--At this time the party names of _Whig_ and _Tory_ came into vogue. Insurgent Presbyterians in Scotland had been called "Whigs," a Scotch word meaning whey, or sour milk. The nickname was now applied to _Shaftesbury's_ adherents, opponents of the court, who wished to exclude the Duke of York from the throne on account of his being a Catholic. _Tories_, also a nickname, the designation of the supporters of the court, meant originally Romanist outlaws, or robbers, in the bogs of Ireland. Many of the Whigs began to devise plans of insurrection, from hatred of _Charles's_ arbitrary system of government. Some of them were disposed to put forward _Monmouth_, the eldest of Charles's illegitimate sons, and a favorite of the common people. The "_Rye-House Plot_" for the assassination of the king and his brother was the occasion of the trial and execution of two eminent patriots,--_William_, Lord _Russell_, and _Algernon Sidney_, a warm advocate of republican government. Both, it is believed, were unjustly condemned. The Duke of York assumed once more the office of admiral. _Charles_, before his death, received the sacrament from a priest of the Church of Rome (1685). JAMES II. (1685-1688): MONMOUTH'S REBELLION.--A few months after James's accession, the Duke of Monmouth landed in England; but his effort to get the crown failed. His forces, mostly made up of peasants, were defeated at _Sedgemoor_; and he perished on the scaffold. Vengeance was taken upon all concerned in the revolt; and Chief Justice _Jeffreys_, for his brutal conduct in the "Bloody Assizes," in which, savage as he was, he nevertheless became rich by the sale of pardons, was rewarded with the office of lord chancelor. JAMES'S ARBITRARY GOVERNMENT.--James paid no heed to his promise to defend the Church of England. Of a slow and obstinate mind, he could not yield to the advice of moderate Roman Catholics, and of the Pope, _Innocent XI._; but set out, by such means as dispensing with the laws, to restore the old religion, and at the same time to extinguish civil liberty. He turned out the judges who did not please him. He created a new _Ecclesiastical Commission_, for the coercion of the clergy, with the notorious _Jeffreys_ at its head. After having treated with great cruelty the Protestant dissenters, he unlawfully issued a _Declaration of Indulgence_ (1687) in their favor, in order to get their support for his schemes in behalf of his own religion. He turned out the fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford, for refusing to appoint a Catholic for their president. He sent seven bishops to the Tower in 1688, who had signed a petition against the order requiring a second Declaration of Indulgence to be read in the churches. Popular sympathy was strongly with the accused, and the news of their acquittal was received in the streets of London with shouts of joy. REVOLUTION OF 1688: WILLIAM AND MARY (1689-1694).--The birth of a Prince of Wales by his second wife, _Mary of Modena_, increased the disaffection of the English people. His two daughters by his first wife--_Mary_ and _Anne_--were married to Protestants; _Mary_, to _William_, Prince of Orange and stadtholder of Holland, and _Anne_ to _George_, Prince of Denmark. By a combination of parties hostile to the king, _William_ was invited to take the English throne. _James_ was blind to the signs of the approaching danger, and to the warnings of _Louis XIV_. of France. When it was too late, he attempted in vain to disarm the conspiracy by concessions. _William_ landed in safety at _Torbay_. He was joined by persons of rank. Lord _Churchill_, afterwards the celebrated _Duke of Marlborough_, left the royal force of which he had the command, and went over to him. The king's daughter, _Anne_, fled to the insurgents in the North. _William_ was quite willing that _James_ should leave the kingdom, and purposely caused him to be negligently guarded by Dutch soldiers. He fled to France, never to return. Parliament declared the throne to be, on divers grounds, vacant, and promulgated a _Declaration of Right_ affirming the ancient rights and liberties of England. It offered the crown to _William and Mary_, who accepted it (1689). A few months later, the estates of Scotland bestowed upon them the crown of that country. Presbyterianism was made the established form of religion there. The union of the kingdoms was consummated under their successor, _Anne_, when Scotland began to be represented in the English Parliament. THE MASSACRE OF GLENCOE.--A Highland chief, _MacIan_ of _Glencoe_, with many of his followers, was treacherously slaughtered by order of _Dalrymple_, the Master of Stair, who governed Scotland, and had obtained by misrepresentation from William leave to extirpate that "set of thieves," as he had called them. WILLIAM IN IRELAND.--The sovereignty of Ireland passed, with that of England, to _William_ and _Mary_. There _James II_., supported by France, made a stout resistance. It was a conflict of the Irish Catholics, together with the descendants of the Norman-English settlers, comprising together about a million of people, against the English and Scottish colonists, not far from two hundred thousand in number. The latter, with steadfast courage, sustained a siege in _Londonderry_ until the city was relieved by ships from England. Many of the inhabitants had perished from hunger. The victory of William at _Boyne_ (1690), where _Schomberg_, his brave general, a Huguenot French marshal, fell, decided the contest. _William_ led his troops in person through the Boyne River, with his sword in his left hand, since his right arm was disabled by a wound. _James_ was a spectator of the fight at a safe distance. ENGLISH LIBERTY.--In _William's_ reign, liberty in England was fortified by the _Bill of Rights_, containing a series of safeguards against regal usurpation. Papists were made ineligible to the throne. The _Toleration Act_ afforded to Protestant dissenters a large measure of protection and freedom. The press was made free from censorship (1695), and newspapers began to be published. Provision was made for the fair trial of persons indicted for treason. The _Act of Settlement_ (1701) settled the crown, if there should be no heirs of _Anne_ or of _William_, upon the Princess _Sophia, Electress of Hanover_, the daughter of _Elizabeth_ of Bohemia, and granddaughter of _James I_., and on her heirs, being Protestants. THE GRAND ALLIANCE: TO THE PEACE OF RYSWICK.--The next war which _Louis XIV_. began was that of the succession in the territory of the Palatinate, which he claimed, on the extinction of the male line of electors, for _Elizabeth Charlotte_, the gifted and excellent sister of the deceased Elector _Charles_, and the wife of the _Duke of Orleans_, the king's brother. The table which follows will show the nature of this claim:-- FREDERIC, V, 1610-1632, Elector and King of Bohemia, _m_. Elizabeth, daughter of James I. of England. | +--CHARLES LEWIS, 1649-1680. | | | +--CHARLES, 1680-1685. | | | +--Elizabeth, _m_. Philip, Duke of Orleans, _d_. 1701. | +--Sophia, _m_. Ernest Augustus, Elector of Hanover. | +--George I of England. _Philip_, _Duke of Orleans_, was the only brother of Louis XIV. From him descended King _Louis Philippe_ (1830-1848). Another reason that Louis had for war was his determination to secure the archbishopric of Cologne for the bishop of Strasburg, a candidate of his own. In 1686 the _League of Augsburg_ had been formed by the emperor with Sweden, Spain, Bavaria, Saxony, and the Palatinate, for defense against France. The _Grand Alliance_, in which England and Holland were included, was now made (1689). In the year before, by the advice of _Louvois_, the French had deliberately devastated the Palatinate, demolishing buildings, and burning cities and villages without mercy. The ruins of the _Castle of Heidelberg_ are a monument of this worse than vandal incursion, the pretext for which was a desire to prevent the invasion of France. In the war the English and Dutch fleets, under _Admiral Russell_, defeated the French, and burned their ships, at the battle of _La Hogue_ (1692). This battle was a turning-point in naval history: "as at Lepanto," says Ranke, where the Turks were defeated (1571), "so at La Hogue, the mastery of the sea passed from one side to the other." But in the Netherlands, where _William III_., the soul of the League, steadfastly kept the field, after being defeated by _Luxemburg_; in Italy, where the Duke of Savoy was opposed by the Marshal _Catinat_; and in a naval battle between the English and French at _Lagos Bay_,--the French commanders were successful. In 1695 _William's_ troops besieged and captured the town of _Namur_. At length _Louis_ was moved by the exhaustion of his treasury, and the stagnation of industry in France, to conclude the _Peace of Ryswick_ with England, Spain, and Holland (1697). The _Duke of Savoy_ had been detached from the alliance. Most of the conquests on both sides were restored. _William III._ was acknowledged to be king of England. In the treaty with the emperor, France retained _Strasburg_. _William_ was a man of sterling worth, but he was a Dutchman, and was cold in his manners. The plots of the Jacobites, as the adherents of James were called, did more than any thing else to make him popular with his subjects. CHAPTER II. WAR OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION (TO THE PEACE OF UTRECHT, 1713); DECLINE OF THE POWER OF FRANCE: POWER AND MARITIME SUPREMACY OF ENGLAND. OCCASION OF THE WAR.--The death of _Charles II._ of Spain (1700) was followed by the War of the Spanish Succession. The desire of _Louis_ to have his hands free in the event of _Charles's_ death had influenced him in making the Treaty of _Rysivick_. _Charles_ had no children. It had been agreed in treaties, to which France was a party, that the Spanish monarchy should not be united either to Austria or to France; and that Archduke _Charles, second_ son of the Emperor _Leopold I._, should have Spain and the Indies. But _Charles II._ of Spain left a will making Louis's second grandson, _Philip_ Duke of Anjou, the heir of all his dominions, with the condition annexed that the crowns of France and Spain should not be united. Instigated by dynastic ambition, _Louis_ made up his mind to break the previous agreements, and seize the inheritance for Philip. _Philip V._ thus became king of Spain. On the death of _James II._ (1701), _Louis_ recognized his son _James_, called "the Pretender," as king of Great Britain. This act, as a violation of the Treaty of Ryswick, and as an arrogant intermeddling on the part of a foreign ruler, excited the wrath of the English people, and inclined them to war. The _Grand Alliance_ against France (1701) included the Empire, England, Holland, Brandenburg (or Prussia), and afterwards Portugal and Savoy (1703). France was supported by the electors of Bavaria and Cologne, and at first by Savoy. _William III._ died in 1702, and was succeeded by _Anne_, the sister of his deceased wife, and the second daughter of _James II_. The following table will help to make clear the several claims to the Spanish succession:-- Philip III, King of Spain, 1598-1621. | +--Maria Anna, _m._ Emperor Ferdinand III. | | | +--Leopold I, _m._ (3) Eleanor, daughter of Elector Palatine. | | | | | +--Joseph I, d. 1711. | | | | | +--Charles VI.[2] | | | +--Anna Maria | _m._ +--PHILIP IV (1621-1665) | | | +--CHARLES II, 1665-1700. | | | +--Margaret Theresa _m._ Leopold I | | | | | +--Maria Antonia _m._ Maximilian of Bavaria | | | | | +--Joseph Ferdinand, [1] Electoral Prince of Bavaria. | | | +--(1) Maria Theresa. | _m._ | +--Louis XIV | | | | | +--Louis, the Dauphin. | | | | | +--Philip of Anjou [2] (PHILIP V of Spain), d. 1746. | | +--Anne. _m._ Louis XIII of France 1 Recognized as heir of Charles II of Spain until his death. 2 Rival claimants for the Spanish crown after Charles II, the elder brother of each having resigned his pretensions. EVENTS OF THE WAR.--In this war, there were displayed the military talents of two great generals,--the _Duke of Marlborough_ and Prince _Eugene_ of Savoy. _Marlborough_ had two glaring faults, He was avaricious, and, like other prominent public men in England at that day, was double-faced. After deserting the service of _James_ for that of _William_, he still kept up at times a correspondence with the exiled house. He was a man of stately and winning presence, a careful commander, in battle cool and self-possessed. At the council board, he had the art of quietly composing differences by winning all to an adhesion to his own views. It is said of him, that he "never committed a rash act, and never missed an opportunity for striking an effective blow." _Eugene_, on his father's side, sprang from the house of Savoy. His mother was a niece of _Mazarin_. He was brought up at the court of _Louis XIV_.; but when the king repeatedly refused him a commission in the army, he entered the service of Austria, was employed in campaigns against the Turks, and rose to the highest distinction. Flattering offers from _Louis XIV_. he indignantly rejected. His career as a soldier was long and brilliant. The personal sympathy of _Eugene_ and _Marlborough_ with each other was one important cause of their success. _Eugene_ was first sent to Italy. There he drove _Catinat_, the French general, back on _Milan_, and captured his successor in command, _Villeroi_ (1702). After a drawn battle between _Eugene_ and _Vendome_ (1702), a commander of much more skill than his predecessor, the French had the advantage in Italy. In 1703, _Eugene_ came to Germany, and _Marlborough_ invaded the Spanish Netherlands. In 1704 Marlborough carried out the plan of a grand campaign which he had devised. He crossed the Rhine at Cologne, moved southward, captured _Donauwörth_, and drove the Bavarians across the Danube. The united forces of _Marlborough_ and _Eugene_ defeated the French and Bavarian armies at _Blenheim_ (or _Hochstädt_), on the left bank of the river, with great slaughter. There were captured fifteen thousand French soldiers, with their general _Tallard_. This victory raised _Marlborough's_ reputation, already great on account of his masterly conduct of his army, to the highest point. He was made a duke by Queen _Anne_, and a prince of the Empire by _Leopold_. In Spain, the English captured _Gibraltar_. _Charles_ of Austria (who had assumed the title of _Charles III._ of Spain) conquered Madrid (1706), but held it for only a short time. The country generally favored _Philip_; the arms of _Vendome_ were triumphant; and _Aragon_, _Catalonia_, and _Valencia_ had to submit to Castilian laws as the penalty of their adhesion to the Austrian cause. In 1706 _Marlborough_ vanquished _Villeroi_ at _Ramillies_, a village in the Netherlands, in a great battle in which the French army was routed, and their banners and war material captured. The Netherlands submitted to Austria. At _Turin_, _Eugene_ gained a victory over an army of eighty thousand men; and the fame of this modest and unpretending, but brave and skillful leader was now on a level with that of the English general. Lombardy submitted to _Charles III_., and the French were excluded from Italy. Another victory of the two commanders at _Oudenarde_ (1708) over _Vendome_ and the _Duke of Burgundy_, broke down the hopes of _Louis_, and moved him to offer the largest concessions, which embraced the giving up of _Strasburg_ and of _Spain_. But the allies, flushed with success, went so far as to demand that he should aid in driving his grandson out of Spain. This roused France, as well as _Louis_ himself, to another grand effort. At _Malplaquet_, in a bloody conflict, the French were again defeated by _Marlborough_ and _Eugene_. TO THE PEACE OF UTRECHT.--Circumstances now favored the vanquished and humbled king of France. The Whig ministry in England, which the victories of _Marlborough_ had kept in office, fell from power (1710); and its enemies, and the enemies of _Marlborough_, were anxious to weaken him. _Anne_ dismissed from her service the Duchess of Marlborough, a haughty woman of a violent temper. _Harley_, Earl of Oxford, and _St. John_, afterwards Viscount _Bolingbroke_, became the queen's principal ministers. They wished to end the war. The Emperor _Joseph_ (1705-1711), who had succeeded _Leopold I._, died; so that _Charles_, if he had acquired Spain, would have restored the vast monarchy of _Charles V_., and brought in a new source of jealousy and alarm. Negotiations for peace began. _Marlborough_, who had been guilty of traitorous conduct, was removed from his command, and deprived of all his offices (1712). In 1713 the Peace of _Utrecht_ was concluded between England and France, in which Holland, Prussia, Savoy, and Portugal soon joined. It was followed by the Peace of _Rastadt_ and _Baden_ with the emperor (1714). Spain and Spanish America were left to _Philip V_., the Bourbon king, with the proviso that the crowns of France and Spain should never be united. France ceded to England _Newfoundland_, _Nova Scotia_, and the _Hudson Bay Territory_. Spain ceded to England _Gibraltar_ and _Minorca_. The _Elector of Brandenburg_ was recognized as _King of Prussia_. Savoy received the island of _Sicily_, which was exchanged seven years later for _Sardinia_, and for the title of king for the duke. Holland gained certain "barrier" fortresses on its border. Austria received the appanages of the Spanish monarchy,--the _Spanish Netherlands_, _Naples_, _Sardinia_, and _Milan_, but not _Sicily_. The emperor did not recognize the Bourbons in Spain. LAST DAYS OF LOUIS XIV.--In the next year after the peace, _Louis XIV_. died. Within two years (1710-1712) he had lost his son, his grandson the _Duke of Burgundy_ (whom the pious _Fenélon_ had trained), his wife, and his eldest great-grandson, and, two years later (1714), his third grandson, the _Duke of Berry_. He left France overwhelmed with debt, its resources exhausted, its credit gone, its maritime power prostrate; a land covered with poverty and wretchedness. This was the reward of lawless pride and ambition in a monarch who owed his strength, however, to the sympathy and subservience of the nation. LAW'S BANK.--During the minority of _Louis XV_. (1715-1774) _Philip, Duke of Orleans_, was regent, a man of extraordinary talents, but addicted to shameful debauchery. The opportunity for effective reform was neglected. The most influential minister was Cardinal _Dubois_, likewise a man of unprincipled character. The state was really bankrupt, when a Scottish adventurer and gambler, _John Law_, possessed of unusual financial talents, but infected with the economical errors of the time, offered to rescue the national finances by means of a _bank_, which he was allowed to found, the notes of which were to serve as currency. Almost all the coined money flowed into its coffers; its notes went everywhere in the kingdom, and were taken for government dues; it combined with its business "the Mississippi scheme," or the control of the trade, and almost the sovereignty, in the _Mississippi_ region; it absorbed the privileges of the different companies for trading with the East; finally it took charge of the national mint and the issue of coin, and of the taxation of the kingdom, and it assumed the national debt. The temporary success of the gigantic financial scheme turned the heads of the people, and a fever of speculation ran through all ranks. The crash came, the shares in the bank sunk in value, the notes depreciated; and, in the wrath which ensued upon the general bankruptcy, _Law_, who had been honored and courted by the high and the low, fled from the kingdom. He died in poverty at _Venice_. The state alone was a gainer by having escaped from a great part of its indebtedness. ITALY.--Before the middle of the eighteenth century, the Spanish Bourbons again had possession of _Naples_ and _Sicily_, besides other smaller Italian states. Austria, besides holding _Milan_, was the virtual ruler of _Tuscany_. SPAIN IN ITALY.--_Philip V_. was afflicted with a mental derangement peculiar to his family. The government was managed by the ambitious queen, _Elizabeth_ of Parma, and the intriguing Italian, _Alberoni_, the minister in whom she confided. He sought to get back the Italian states lost by the Peace of _Utrecht_. But _Sardinia_ and _Sicily_ were restored when he was overthrown, through the fear excited by the _Quadruple Alliance_ of France, England, Austria, and Holland (1718). Later, the queen succeeded in obtaining the kingdom of _Naples_ and _Sicily_ for her oldest son, _Don Carlos_, under the name of _Charles III. Parma, Piacenza_, and _Guastalla_, she gained for her second son, _Philip_ (1735). When _Charles_ succeeded to the Spanish throne (1759-1788), he left _Naples_ and _Sicily_ to his third son, _Ferdinand_. AUSTRIA IN ITALY.--The house of Savoy steadily advanced in power. By the Peace of Ryswick, Victor _Amadeus II_. (1675-1730), secured important places previously gained. He became "King of Sardinia" (1720). By him the University of Turin was founded, and the administration of justice much improved. His next two successors carried forward this good work. _Venice_ lost _Morea_ to the Turks, but retained _Corfu_ and her conquests in _Dalmatia_ (1718). Liberty was gone, and there was decay and conscious weakness in the once powerful republic. _Genoa_ was coveted by Savoy, Austria, and France. The consequent struggles are the material of Genoese history for a long period. _Corsica_ was oppressed, and _Genoa_ called on France to lend help in suppressing its revolt (1736). The Corsicans especially, under _Paoli_, defended themselves with such energy that France found its work of subjugation hard and slow (1755). The island was ceded to France by Genoa(1768). _Milan_, with Mantua, was Austrian, after the Peace of Utrecht (1713). _Tuscany_ under _Ferdinand II_. (1628-1670) bestowed its treasure on Austria and Spain, and fell under the sway of ecclesiastics. Under _Cosmo III_. (1670-1723), the process of decline went on. After the death of the last of the Medici, _John Gasto_ (1737), Tuscany was practically under the power of Austria, notwithstanding the stipulation that both states should not have the same ruler. It was governed by _Francis Stephen_ (1738-1765), Duke of Lorraine, husband of the Empress _Maria Theresa_; and, when he became emperor (_Francis I_.), by his second son, _Leopold_ (1765-1790). At Rome, Pope _Innocent XI_. (1676-1689) had many conflicts with _Louis XVI_. which came to an end under the well-meaning _Innocent XII_. (1691-1700). Contests arose on the part of Rome against the Bourbon courts respecting the Jesuit order, and with the forces adverse to the Church and the Papacy, in the closing part of the eighteenth century. In 1735, the Emperor _Charles VI_. allowed that Naples and Sicily should be handed over, as a kingdom, to _Don Carlos_, the son of the Spanish Bourbon king, under the name of _Charles III_., by whom it was granted to his son _Ferdinand IV_. (1759). CLOSE OF ANNE'S REIGN.--_Anne's_ husband, Prince _George of Denmark_, had no influence, and deserved none. One of the important events of her reign was the Union of England and Scotland in 1707 (p. 461). After the Tories came into power, the two leaders, _Oxford_ and _Bolingbroke_, were rivals. An angry dispute between them hastened the queen's death (1714). One of the Tory measures, prompted by hostility to Dissenters, was a law forbidding any one to keep a school without a license from a bishop. GEORGE I, 1714-1727, _m._ Sophia Dorothea of Zell. | +--GEORGE II, 1727-1760, _m._ Caroline, daughter of John Frederick, Margrave of Anspach. | +--Frederick, Prince of Wales, _d._ 1751, _m._ Augusta of Saxe Gotha. | +--Augusta _m._ | Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick. | | | +--Caroline | _m._ | +--GEORGE IV, 1820-1830. | | +--GEORGE III, 1760-1820, _m._ Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. | +--WILLIAM IV, 1830-1837. | +--Edward, Duke of Kent, _d._ 1820, _m._ Victoria of Saxe Coburg. | +--VICTORIA, succeeded 1837, _m._ Albert of Saxe Coburg. REIGN OF GEORGE I.--_George I_., the first king of the house of _Hanover_, could not speak English. His private life was immoral. His first ministers were Whigs. _Bolingbroke_ and _Oxford_ were impeached, and fled the country. The "_Pretender_," _James Edward_ (son of _James II_.), with the aid of Tory partisans, endeavored to recover the English crown. His standard was raised in the Highlands and in North England (1715), but this Jacobite rebellion was crushed. After the rebellion of 1715, a law was passed, which is still in force, allowing a Parliament to continue for the term of seven years. A second conspiracy in 1717 had the same fate. England had an experience analogous to that of France with _Law_, with the _South Sea_ Company, which had a monopoly of trade with the Spanish coasts of South America. A rage for speculation was followed by a panic. The estates of the directors of the company were confiscated by Parliament for the benefit of the losers. _Robert Walpole_ was made first minister, a place which he held under _George I._ and _George II._ for twenty-one years. _William_ and _Anne_ had attended the meetings of the Cabinet. _George I._, who could not speak English, staid away. From this time, one of the ministers was called the "prime minister." THE REIGN OF GEORGE II.--George II. was systematic in his ways, frugal, willful, and fond of war. In his private life, he followed the evil ways of his father. _Walpole's_ influence was predominant. The clever Queen _Caroline_ lent him her support. Walpole reluctantly entered into war with _Spain_ (1739), on account of the measures adopted by that power to prevent English ships from carrying goods, in violation of the treaty of _Utrecht_, to her South American colonies. The principal success of England was the taking of _Porto Bello_ by _Admiral Vernon_. When the war was declared, the people expressed their joy by the ringing of bells. "They are ringing the bells now," said _Walpole:_ "they will be wringing their hands soon." The blame for the want of better success in the war was laid on the prime minister, and he was driven to resign. Then followed the ministry of the _Pelhams_, Henry Pelham and the Duke of Newcastle, who, like Walpole, managed Parliament by bribing the members through the gift of offices. In the war of the Austrian succession (1740), England took part with Austria, and the king in person fought in Germany. In 1745 _Prince Charles Edward Stuart_, the young _Pretender_ (whose father, the old Pretender, styled himself _James III_.), landed in the Highlands. The Highlanders defeated the English at _Preston Pans_, near Edinburgh. The Pretender marched into England as far as Derby, at the head of the Jacobite force, but had to turn back and retreat to Scotland. The contest was decided by the victory of the English under the _Duke of Cumberland_, at Culloden (1746), which was attended by an atrocious slaughter of the wounded. _Culloden_ was the last battle fought in behalf of the Stuarts. Nearly eighty Jacobite conspirators, one of whom was an octogenarian, _Lord Lovat_, were executed as traitors. These Jacobites were the last persons who were beheaded in England. The Pretender wandered in the Highlands and Western Islands for five months, under different disguises. He was concealed and aided by a Scottish lady, _Flora Macdonald_. Then he escaped to the Continent, where he led a miserable and dissipated life, and died in 1788. His brother Henry, Cardinal York, the last of the Stuarts in the male line, died in 1807. CHAPTER III. THE GREAT NORTHERN WAR: THE FALL OP SWEDEN: GROWTH OF THE POWER OF RUSSIA. SWEDEN.--The eventful epoch in the history of Sweden, in this period, is the reign of Charles XII. (1697-1718). At his accession, when he was only sixteen years old, Sweden ruled the Baltic. Its army was strong and well disciplined. What is now St. Petersburg was a patch of swampy ground in Swedish territory, where a few fishermen lived in their huts. The youth of Charles was prophetic of his career. In doors, he read the exploits of Alexander the Great; out of doors, gymnastic sports and the hunting of the bear were his favorite diversions. He became an adventurous warrior after, the type of Alexander. His rashness and obstinacy occasioned at last the downfall of his country. Three great powers, _Russia, Poland_, and _Denmark,_ with the support of _Patkul_, a disaffected Livonian subject of Sweden, joined in an attack on the youthful monarch (1699). _Patkul_, who was a patriot, unable to secure the rights of Livonia, and condemned as a rebel, had entered the service of the Elector Augustus of Saxony, who was king of Poland. There were territories belonging to Sweden which each of the confederates coveted. _Frederick IV._ of Denmark expected to incorporate Sweden itself in his dominions. RUSSIA: PETER THE GREAT.--The first ruler of the house of Romanoff, which has raised Russia to its present rank, was _Michael_ (1613-1645). Under _Alexis,_ his son (1645-1676), important conquests were made from the Poles, and the _Cossacks_ acknowledged the sovereignty of the Czar. The principal founder of Russian civilization was _Peter the Great_ (1682-1725). Through the machinations of his half-sister _Sophia_, who contrived to get the armed aid of the streltzi,--the native militia,--he had to share the throne with a half-brother, _Ivan_, who was older than himself, and lived until 1696. _Sophia_ pushed aside Peter's mother, and grasped the reins of power. Peter learned Latin, German, and Dutch, and acquired much knowledge of various sorts. As he grew older, his life was in danger; but at the age of seventeen, he was able to crush his enemies (1689). _Sophia_, who was at their head, he shut up in a monastery for the remainder of her days. From _Lefort_, a Swiss, and other foreigners, Peter derived information about foreign lands, and was led to visit them in order to instruct himself, and to introduce into his own country the arts and inventions of civilized peoples. He invited into Russia artisans, seamen, and officers from abroad. He traveled through _Germany _and _Holland _to _England_, and with his own hands worked at ship-building at the dock-yards of _Zaandam_ (near Amsterdam) and _Deptford_. On his way to Venice, he was called home by a revolt of the streltzi, which he put down. He was unsparing in his vengeance, and, despite his veneer of culture, never got rid of his innate barbarism. _Azoff _he conquered, and it was ceded to him by the Turks in the Peace of _Carlowitz_ (1699). Then his ambitious thoughts turned to the Baltic, for he was bent on making Russia a naval power. He formed a secret alliance with Denmark and Poland against Sweden. CONDITION OF POLAND.--In 1697 _Frederick Augustus _II.,--Augustus _the Strong_,--Duke of Saxony, was elected king of Poland: he became a Roman Catholic that he might get the crown. But the Polish nobles took care to increase their power, which was already far too great to be compatible with unity or order. Under the anarchical but despotic nobility and higher clergy, stood the serfs, embracing nine-tenths of the whole population, who were without protection against the greed and tyranny of their lords. EVENTS OF THE NORTHERN WAR.--The _Danes _first attacked the territory of _Holstein Gottorp_, whose duke had married the sister of _Charles XII_. _William III_. of England supported Sweden. The Anglo-Dutch fleet came to Charles's assistance. He landed his troops in _Zealand_. The Danes gave up their alliance, and sued for peace. Europe was now astonished to discover that the Swedish king was an antagonist to be feared. In the field he shared the hardships of the common soldier, and was as brave as a lion. _Charles _now attacked the Russian army before _Narva_, in Livonia. With the Swedish infantry he stormed the camp of the Russians, and routed their army, which was much larger in numbers than his own (1700). He then raised the siege of _Riga_, which the Poles and Saxons were besieging, having first defeated their troops on the _Dwina_. These brilliant successes might have enabled _Charles _to conclude peace on very advantageous terms. But he lacked moderation. He was as passionate in his public conduct as _Peter the Great _was in his private life. He was resolved to dethrone _Augustus _in Poland. After the battle of _Clissau_ (1703), he occupied that country, and made the Diet give the crown to _Stanislas Lesczinski_, the Palatine of Posen. To prevent Russia and Saxony from uniting against the new king, _Charles_ carried the war into Saxony, and forced _Augustus_, in the Peace of _Altranstädt_, to renounce his claim to the Polish crown, and to surrender _Patkul_, the rebel, who had become a subject of Russia, whom he put to death with circumstances of cruelty. In 1703 _Peter_ laid the foundations of the new city of _St. Petersburg_. But, a few years later, Russia was invaded by _Charles_, who in 1708 almost captured the Czar at _Grodno_, defeated his army near _Smolensk_, and was expected to advance to _Moscow_. But the imprudent Swede turned southward into the district of the _Ukraine_, there to be joined by _Mazeppa_, the "hetman" of the Cossacks, who led them in revolt against Peter. Mazeppa was able, however, to bring him but few auxiliaries. The harshness of the winter, and other untoward events, weakened the Swedish force. The battle of _Pultowa_ (1709) was a great victory for the Czar. Charles escaped with difficulty to Turkey. There he remained for three years, supported with his retinue, at _Bender_, by the Sultan. His object was to bring about a war between the Sultan and the Czar. He so far succeeded that _Peter_, when surrounded on the _Pruth_ by Turkish troops, was rescued only by the courage and energy of _Catherine_, the mistress whom he afterwards married. _Charles_ was finally obliged to leave Turkey, after being exposed to imminent peril in an attack by the janizaries, who seized his camp and took him captive. With a few attendants, riding by day and sleeping in a cart or carriage by night, he journeyed back to Sweden, and arrived at _Stralsund_ (1714). The hostile allies, together with _Hanover_ and _Prussia_, were once more in array against him. _Baron van Görtz_, a German, became his principal adviser. He negotiated a peace with _Peter_, of whom the other allies were beginning to be jealous. _Charles's_ plan was to invade Norway, then to land in Scotland, and, with the help of Spain and of the Jacobites, to restore the Stuarts to the English throne. While besieging _Friedrichshall_, a fortress in Norway, he exposed himself near the trenches, and was killed by a bullet (1718). It was long a question whether the fatal shot was fired from the enemy or by an assassin. Not until 1859 was it settled, by an examination of the skull, that the gun was discharged from the fortress. RESULTS OF THE WAR--One result of the Northern war was the execution of _Görtz_, to whom the Swedish aristocracy were inimical, and a reduction of the king's authority. _Hanover_ received _Bremen_ and _Verden_; _Prussia_, the largest part of _Pomerania_; _Sweden_ gave up its freedom from custom duties in the Sound. _Augustus_ was recognized as king of _Poland_. _Russia_, by the _Peace of Nystadt_ (1721), obtained _Livonia, Esthonia, Ingermannland,_ and a part of _Carelia_, but restored _Finland_. _Sweden_ no longer had a place among the great powers. The place that Sweden had held was now taken by _Russia_. CHANGES IN RUSSIA.--The Czar, _Peter_, took the title of emperor. He transferred the capital from _Moscow_ to _St. Petersburg_. By constructing canals, roads, and harbors, he promoted trade and commerce. By fostering manufactures and the mechanic arts, and by opening the mines, he increased the wealth of the country. He altered the method of government, making the _ukases_, or edicts, emanate from the sole will of the emperor. He abolished the dignity of _Patriarch_, making the _Holy Synod_, of which the Czar is president, the supreme ecclesiastical authority. _Peter_ made a second journey through Germany, Holland, and France (1716). His son _Alexis_, who allied himself with a reactionary party that aimed to reverse the Czar's policy, he finally caused to be tried for treason. He was condemned, but died either from the bodily torture inflicted on him to extort confession, or, as many have believed, by poison, or other means, used by the direction of his father. His friends, after being barbarously tortured, were put to death. Great as was the work of _Peter_, "he brought Russia prematurely into the circle of European politics. The result has been to turn the rulers of Russia away from home affairs, and the regular development of internal institutions, to foreign politics and the creation of a great military power." In his last years, the frugality of his own way of living in his new capital was in striking contrast with the splendor with which his queen, _Catherine_, preferred to surround herself. He died at the age of fifty-three, in consequence of plunging into icy water to save a boat in distress. The document called "The Testament of Peter the Great," which explains what has to be done in order that Russia may conquer all Europe, is not genuine. It is first heard of in 1812, in a book published by _Lesur_, probably by direction of Napoleon I. "Lesur's book," says _Mr. E. Schuyler_, "was merely a pamphlet to justify the invasion of Russia by Napoleon." (Schuyler's _Life of Peter the Great_, vol. ii, p. 512.) CHAPTER IV. WAR OF THE AUSTRIAN SUCCESSION; GROWTH OP THE POWER OF PRUSSIA: THE DESTRUCTION OF POLAND. THE PRAGMATIC SANCTION.--On the death of _Augustus II._, there were two competitors for the Polish crown,--his son, _Augustus III._ of Saxony, and _Stanislaus Lesczinski_ whom France supported. After a contest, by the consent of the Emperor _Charles VI._, _Lesczinski_, whose daughter had married _Louis XV._, obtained the duchy of _Lorraine_, which thus became a possession of France (1735). In return, the emperor's son-in-law, _Francis Stephen_ (afterwards _Francis I._), was to have _Tuscany_; and France, in connection with the other powers, assented to the _Pragmatic Sanction_, according to which the hereditary possessions of Austria were to descend intact in the female line. It was expected that the empire would pass along with them. PRUSSIA: FREDERICK WILLIAM I.--In 1611 the duchy of _Prussia_ and the mark or electorate of _Brandenburg_ were joined together. The duchy was then a fief of Poland. But under the Great Elector, _Frederick William_ (1640-1688), this relation of the duchy to Poland ended. By him the military strength of the electorate was increased. _Frederick_, his son (1688-1713), with the emperor's license, took the title of King of Prussia (_Frederick I._). He built up the city of _Berlin_, and encouraged art and learning. King _Frederick William I._ (1713-1740), unlike his predecessor, was exceedingly frugal in his court. He was upright and just in his principles, but extremely rough in his ways, and governed his own household, as well as his subjects generally, with a Spartan rigor. Individuals whom he met in the street, whose conduct or dress he thought unbecoming, he did not hesitate to scold, and he even used his cane to chastise them on the spot. He cared nothing for literature: artists and players were his abomination. He favored industry, and was a friend of the working-class. Every thing was done with despotic energy. He disciplined the military force of Prussia, and gathered at _Potsdam_ a regiment of tall guards, made up of men of gigantic height, who were brought together from all quarters. He left to his son, _Frederick II._ (1740-1786), a strong army and a full treasury. CHARACTER OF FREDERICK THE GREAT.--Young _Frederick_ had no sympathy with his father's austere ways. The strict system of training arranged for him, in which he was cut off from Latin and from other studies for which he had a taste, his time all parceled out, and a succession of tasks rigorously ordained for him, he found a yoke too heavy to bear. Once he attempted to escape to the court of his uncle, _George II._ of England; but the scheme was discovered, and the incensed father was strongly inclined to execute the decree of a court-martial, which pronounced him worthy of death. _Frederick_, from the window of the place where he was confined, saw _Katte_, his favorite tutor, who had helped him in his attempt at flight, led to the scaffold, where he was hanged. In the later years of the old king, the relations of father and son were improved. The prince had for his abode the little town of _Rheinsberg_, where he could indulge, with a circle of congenial friends, in the studies and amusements to which he was partial. He grew up with a strong predilection for French literature, and for the French habits and fashions--free-thinking in religion included--which were now spreading over Europe. On his accession to the throne, _Frederick_ broke up the Potsdam regiment of giants, and called back to Halle the philosopher _Wolf_, whom his father had banished. _Frederick_ was visited by _Voltaire_, who at a later day took up his abode for a time with him in _Berlin_. But the king was fond of banter, and the foibles of each of these companions were a target for the unsparing wit of the other; so that eventually they parted company with mutual disgust. Later they resumed their correspondence, and never wholly lost their intellectual sympathy with each other. As a soldier, _Frederick_ had not the military genius of the greatest captains. He applied superior talents to the discharge of the duties of a king, and to the business of war. He was cool, knew how to profit by his errors and to repair his losses, and to press forward in the darkest hour. Napoleon said of him that "he was great, especially at critical moments." WAR OF THE AUSTRIAN SUCESSION---_Charles VI._ was succeeded, in 1740, by his daughter _Maria Theresa_, who united in her character many of the finest qualities of a woman and of a sovereign. Notwithstanding the _pragmatic sanction_ by which all the Austrian lands were to be hers, different princes deemed the occasion favorable for seizing on the whole, or on portions, of her inheritance. _Charles_, elector of Bavaria, claimed to be the lawful heir, and was aided by France, which was afraid of losing _Lorraine_ if _Maria Theresa's _ husband, _Francis Stephen_, should become emperor. _Augustus III._ of Poland was a participant in the plot. _Frederick II._ of Prussia claimed _Silesia_, and, after defeating the Austrians at _Molwitz_ (1741), seized the greater part of that district. Soon after, the French and Bavarians overran Austria. The Bavarian elector was chosen emperor. Even the elector of Hanover (_George II._ of England) engaged not to assist the empress. The claims to Austria were as follows:-- _Augustus III._, king of Saxony, and _Charles Albert_, elector of Bavaria, had married daughters of the Emperor _Joseph I._ (the brother and predecessor of _Charles VI._). The wife of _Charles Albert _ was the _younger_ daughter; but he appealed to an alleged provision in the will of the Emperor _Ferdinand I._, according to which the posterity of his daughter _Anna_ (who married a Bavarian duke) was to inherit the duchy of Austria and Bohemia, in case his _male_ descendants should die out. It was not to the _male_ descendants, but to the _legitimate_ descendants, however, that the will referred. The _Bourbons_ in France and Spain seized the occasion to regain the possessions of Spain lost in the Peace of Utrecht (p. 466). _Francis Stephen_, the husband of _Maria Theresa_, it was feared, might seek to get back Lorraine from France (p. 474). Spain was anxious to recover Milan. _Philip V._ of Spain claimed the Austrian possessions on the basis of certain stipulations of _Charles V._ and _Philip III._ in the cession of them. To weaken the Austrian house in Germany, was an aim of France. The courts of France and Spain were ready, on all these grounds, to support _Charles_ of Bavaria. They were ready, also, to support _Frederick II._ in legal claims which he set up to a portion of Silesia. The empress rejected the offer of _Frederick_ to defend Austria if she would give up this territory. SPIRIT OF THE EMPRESS: CESSION OF SILESIA.--_Maria Theresa_ proved herself a Minerva. She threw herself for support on her Hungarian subjects, who responded with loyal enthusiasm to her appeal made at the _Diet of Presburg_. Her forces drove the Bavarian and French troops before them in Austria, entered Bavaria, and captured _Munich_. Reluctantly the queen, in the _Peace of Breslau_ (1742), ceded _Silesia_ to _Frederick_, in order to lessen the number of her antagonists. She was crowned (1743) in _Prague_, and at length gained an ally in _George II._ of England. The "Pragmatic Army," as it was called, defeated the French under Marshal _Noailles_ at _Dettingen_. _Sardinia_ and _Saxony_ joined the Austrian alliance. TO THE PEACE OF AIX-LA-CHAPELLE.--These events widened the dimensions of the contest. France declared war directly against England and Austria. _Frederick II._ of Prussia was now the ally of France, and began the _second Silesian war_. He took _Prague_, but, being deserted by the French, was driven back into _Saxony_. The son of _Charles Albert_ of Bavaria, _Maximilian Joseph_, made peace with Austria,--the Peace of _Füssen_,--promising to give his vote to _Francis_, the husband of _Maria Theresa_, for the office of emperor. _Francis_ (1745-1765) was crowned at Frankfort. Victories in Saxony on the side of _Frederick_ led to the _Treaty_ of _Dresden_, which left _Silesia_ in his hands (1745). The most of the English army went back to England to fight the Pretender. The war went on in the Netherlands and in Italy, and between France and England; the English being victors on the sea under _Anson_ (1747), while the French were generally successful on the land. The peace of _Aix-la-Chapelle_ (1748) provided for a reciprocal restoration of all conquests: _Silesia_ was given to _Prussia_, and the _Pragmatic Sanction_ was sustained in _Austria_. ALLIANCE AGAINST FREDERICK.--_Frederick the Great_ used the next eight years in doing what he could to encourage industry and to increase the prosperity and resources of Prussia, at the same time that he strengthened his military force. Prussia had evinced so much power in the late conflicts as to be an object of envy and apprehension. _Maria Theresa_ was anxious to recover _Silesia_. _Frederick_ had a foe in _Elizabeth_, empress of Russia, whose personal vices he made a subject of sarcastic remark, and who, besides, coveted Prussian provinces on the Baltic. An alliance was formed between _Russia_ and _Austria._ This was joined by _Saxony_, and by _France;_ since _Louis XV._ had become alarmed by the calculating selfishness of _Frederick's_ policy, and was induced to depart from the French traditional policy, and to unite with Austria. The only ally of _Frederick_ was _George II. _of England, which was then engaged in a contest with France respecting the American colonies (1756). THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR.--Thus arose the _Seven Years' War._ _Frederick,_ secretly informed of the plans of his enemies, anticipated their action by invading Saxony and capturing _Dresden _(1756). At _Lobositz_ he defeated the Austrians: he soon took eighteen thousand Saxon troops. He had now to encounter the military strength of the various nations opposed to him. With the bulk of his forces he marched into Bohemia, and gained a great but costly victory at _Prague_ (1757). For the next six months, successes and reverses alternated; but before the end of the year (1757) _Frederick_ won two of his most famous triumphs,--one at _Rossbach,_ over the French and the Imperialists; and the other over the Austrians, at _Leuthen._ _Frederick_ was now admired as a hero in England, and was furnished by the elder _William Pitt,_ who had succeeded _Newcastle_, with money and troops. In 1758 the Prussians vanquished the Russians at _Zorndorf_, but were, in turn, soon defeated by the Austrians at _Hochkirch_ Of the numerous battles in this prolonged war, in which the military talents of _Frederick_ were so strikingly shown, it is possible to refer only to a few of the most important. He was defeated by the united Austrians and Russians at _Kunersdorf;_ and so completely that he was for the moment thrown into despair, and wrote to his minister _Finkenstein,_ "All is lost." In 1760 _Berlin_ was held for a few days by the Russians, but _Frederick_ soon defeated the Austrians once more at _Torgau._ In 1761, however, his situation was in the highest degree perilous. His resources were apparently exhausted. _Spain_ joined the ranks of his enemies. He faced them all with determined resolution, but he confessed in his private letters that his hopes were gone. END OF THE WAR.--At this time there was a turn of events in his favor. In Russia, _Peter III._, who succeeded _Elizabeth_, was an admirer of _Frederick,_--so much so that he wore a Prussian uniform,--and hastened to conclude a peace and alliance with him (1762). _Peter_ was soon dethroned and killed by Russian nobles; and his queen· and successor, _Catherine II._, recalled the troops sent to _Frederick's_ aid. Nevertheless, they helped him to a victory over the Austrians, under the command of _Daun,_ at _Burkersdorf_ (1762). Austria, too, was exhausted and ready for peace. The negotiations between England and France, which ended in the _Peace of Paris_ (1763), made it certain that the French armies would evacuate Germany. _Prussia_ and _Austria_ agreed to the _Peace of Hubertsburg_, by which Prussia retained _Silesia_, and promised her vote for the Archduke _Joseph_, son of _Maria Theresa_, as king of Rome and successor to the empire (1763). POSITION OF PRUSSIA.--_Joseph II_. succeeded his father as emperor in 1765, and was associated by his mother, _Maria Theresa_, in the government of her hereditary dominions. From the conclusion of the Seven Years' War, _Prussia_ took her place as one of the five great powers of Europe. THE BRITISH INDIAN EMPIRE.--It was during this period that the empire of the British in _India_ grew up out of the mercantile settlements of a trading corporation, the _East India Company_. The result was effected after a severe struggle with the French. After the beginning of the eighteenth century, the _Mughal empire_ at _Delhi_ declined. Insubordinate native princes admitted only a nominal control over them. The effect of successive _Mahratta_ and _Afghan_ invasions was such, that when England and France went to war in Europe, in 1745, _India_ was broken up into different sovereignties, to say nothing of the great number of _petty_ chieftains who were practically independent. _Pondicherry_ was the chief French settlement. For a time it seemed that in the struggle for control France, under the masterly guidance of _Dupleix_, must triumph. In 1756 _Calcutta_ was taken from the English by the _Nabob of Bengal_, and many Englishmen died in the close room of the military prison in which they were shut up,--"the Black Hole." In 1757 _Clive_ defeated a great army of the natives, with whom were a few French, in the decisive battle of _Plassey_. He had previously shown his indomitable courage in the seizure of _Arcot_, and in its defense against a host of besiegers. The victory at _Plassey_ secured the British supremacy, which gradually extended itself over the country. The various local sovereignties became like Roman provinces. On the death of _Clive_, _Warren Hastings_ was made governor-general (1772). After his recall, he was impeached (1788), on charges of cruelty and oppression in India, and his trial by the House of Lords did not end until seven years after it began. He was then acquitted. Among the conductors of the impeachment on the part of the House of Commons, were the celebrated orators _Edmund Burke_ and _Richard Brinsley Sheridan_. In 1784 the power of the East-India Company had been restricted by the establishment of the _Board of Control_. Up to that time the Indian Empire, made up of dependent and subject states, had been governed by the sole authority of the company. CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA.--_Catherine II_. (1762-1796) in her private life was notoriously dissolute. If she did not connive at the assassination of her husband, _Peter III_., she heaped gifts upon his murderers. In her policy, she aimed to strengthen Russia, especially towards the sea. This occasioned successful conflicts with the Turks. THE PARTITION OF POLAND.--At first inimical to _Frederick the Great, Catherine_ afterwards made an alliance with him. She compelled the election of one of her lovers, _Poniatowski_, to the throne of _Poland_. Poland was mainly Catholic; and the _Confederation_ of _Bar_ (1768), made by the Poles to prevent the toleration of Greek Christians and Protestants, was defeated by a Russian army, and broken up. The Turks were worsted in the war which they made in defense of the confederacy. As one result, Russia gained a firm footing on the north coasts of the Black Sea (1774). The "free veto," oppression of the peasantry, their distress, and the general want of union and public spirit, had reduced Poland to a miserable condition. _Catherine_, however, favored no reforms there looking to an improvement in the constitution. She preferred to prolong the anarchy and confusion. She wished to make the death of Poland in part a suicide. At length she invited _Prussia_ and _Austria_ to take part with her in the first seizure and partition of Polish territory (1772). Each took certain provinces. In 1793 the second, and in 1795 the final partition of Poland, was made by its three neighbors. The capture of _Warsaw_, and the defeat of the national rising under _Kosciusko_, obliterated that ancient kingdom from the map of Europe. It should be said that a large part of the territory that Russia acquired had once been Russian, and was inhabited by Greek Christians. By the division of Poland, Russia was brought into close contact with the Western powers. The _Crimea_ was incorporated with Russia in 1783. After a second war, provoked by her, with the Turks, who now had the Austrians to help them, the Russian boundaries through the Treaty of _Jassy_ (1792) were carried to the _Dniester_. CHAPTER V. CONTEST OF ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN AMERICA: WAR OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE: THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. In this period the United States of America achieved their independence, and began their existence as a distinct nation. THE ENGLISH COLONIES.--The English colonies south of Canada had become thirteen in number. In the southern part of what was called Carolina, _Charleston_ was settled in 1680. More than a century before (1562), a band of Huguenots under _Ribault_ had entered the harbor of _Port Royal_, and given this name to it, and had built a fort on the river May, which they called _Charlesfort_--the _Carolina_--in honor of King _Charles IX_. of France. In 1663 the territory thus called, south of _Virginia_, was granted to the _Earl of Clarendon_. In it were two distinct settlements in the northern part. The English philosopher _John Locke_ drew up a constitution for _Carolina_, never accepted by the freemen. The rights of the proprietors were purchased by _George II._; and the region was divided (1729) into two royal provinces, _North_ and _South Carolina_, each province having a governor appointed by the king, and an assembly elected by the people. Besides the English, Huguenots and emigrants from the North of Ireland, as well as from Scotland, planted themselves in South Carolina. _Georgia_ was settled by _James Oglethorpe_, who made his settlement at _Savannah_. He had a charter from _George II._, in whose honor the region was named (1732). Soon the "trustees" gave up their charter, and the government was shaped like that of the other colonies (1752). _John Wesley_, afterwards the founder of Methodism, sojourned for a time in Georgia. The settlement of _New Jersey_ was first made by members of the Society of Friends, or Quakers, sent over by _William Penn_, the son of an English admiral, and familiar at court. The Quakers gave up the government to the crown, and from 1702 to 1738 it formed one province with _New York_. _Pennsylvania_ was granted to _Penn_ himself, by the king, in discharge of a claim against the crown. _Penn_ procured also a title to _Delaware_. He sent out emigrants in 1681, and the next year came himself. By him _Philadelphia_ was founded. He dealt kindly with all the settlers, and made a treaty of peace and amity with the Indians. The government organized by _Penn_ was just and liberal. In 1703 the inhabitants of _Delaware_ began to have a governing assembly of their own. _THE FRENCH COLONIES._--Among the French explorers in America, _La Salle_ is one of the most famous. Having traversed the region of the upper lakes, he reached the Mississippi, and floated in his boats down to its mouth (1682). The region of the great river and of its tributaries, he named _Louisiana_, in honor of his king, _Louis XIV_. This name was applied to the whole region from the Alleghanies to the Rocky Mountains. On his return, _La Salle_ built _Fort St. Louis_. Afterwards (1684) he took part in an expedition from France which had for its purpose the building of a fort at the mouth of the _Mississippi_, but which was so wrongly guided as to land on the coast of _Texas_. _La Salle_ himself perished, while seeking to find his way to Canada. But a French settlement was made near the mouth of the river (1699), and a connection established by a series of forts with _Canada_. On the principle that the country belonged to the explorer, Spain claimed all the southern part of North America from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The French claim stretched from the coast of _Nova Scotia_ westward to the Great Lakes, and embraced the valley of the Mississippi to its mouth. England claimed the country from _Labrador_ as far south as _Florida_, and westward to the Pacific. This region included within it the claims of the Dutch, founded on the discoveries of _Henry Hudson_. War between England and France, whenever it occurred, was attended with conflicts between the English and the French settlements in America. The Indians were most of them on the side of the French. But the fierce _Iroquois_ in central New York, who wished to monopolize the fur-trade, were hostile to them. A massacre perpetrated by these at _La Chine_, near _Montreal_ (1689), provoked a murderous attack of French and Indians upon the settlement at Schenectady, the most northern post of the English. This was an incident of _King William's War_ (1689). In _Queen Anne's War_ (1702-1713) _Deerfield_ in Massachusetts was captured and destroyed by French and Indians (1704). By an expedition fitted out in Massachusetts, and commanded by _Sir William Phipps, Port Royal_ in Nova Scotia was captured (1710). The colonies incurred great expense in fitting out expeditions (1709 and 1711) against Canada, which were abandoned. The contest between France and England for supremacy in America was further continued in a series of conflicts lasting from 1744 for nearly twenty years. An early event of much consequence in the contest known as _King George's War_,--a part of the war of the Austrian succession (p. 476),--was the capture of _Louisburg_, an important fortified place on Cape Breton, by an expedition from Boston (1745). The colonists, who were with reason proud of their achievement, had the mortification to see this place restored to the French in the treaty of peace (1748). In these contests the French had the help of their Indian allies, who fell upon defenseless villages. The English were sometimes aided by the Iroquois. The English founded _Halifax_ (1749). THE "OLD FRENCH WAR" (1756-1763).--The "Old French and Indian War" in America was a part of the Seven Years' War in Europe. A British officer, Gen. _Braddock_, led a force which departed from Fort Cumberland in Maryland, against _Fort Du Quesne_ at the junction of the Monongahela and Alleghany Rivers. Disregarding the advice of _George Washington_, who was on his staff, he allowed himself to be surprised by the Indians and the French, and was mortally wounded. The remains of his army were led by _Washington_, whose courage and presence of mind had been conspicuous, to Philadelphia (1755). Prior to the expedition, _Washington_ had made a perilous journey as envoy, to demand of the French commander his reasons for invading the Ohio valley. The English held Nova Scotia, and expelled from their homes the French _Acadians_, seven thousand in number, in a way that involved severe hardships, including the separation of families (1755). They were carried off in ships, and scattered among the colonies along the Atlantic shore. The English also took the forts in _Acadia_. There were two battles near _Lake George_ (1755), in the first of which the French were victors, but in the second they were routed. _Montcalm_, the French commander, captured the English fort near _Oswego_, from which an expedition was to have been sent against the French fort at _Niagara_ (1756). In 1757 he took _Fort William Henry_ on Lake George. THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1758 AND 1759.--The English were dissatisfied at their want of success on the Continent and in America. But they had advantages for prosecuting the conflict. The French, who had been successful at the outset, had to bring their troops and supplies from Europe. They were, to be sure, disciplined troops; but the English had the substantial strength which was derived from the prosperous agriculture, and still more from the brave and self-respecting spirit, of their American colonies. The elder _William Pitt_, afterwards _Earl of Chatham_, again entered the cabinet, and began to manage the contest (1757). The French held posts at important points,--_Fort Du Quesne_, where _Pittsburg_ now stands, for the defense of the West; _Crown Point_ and _Ticonderoga_ on Lake Champlain, guarding the approach to Canada; _Niagara_, near the Great Lakes and the region of the fur-trade; and _Louisburg_, on the coast of Nova Scotia, which protected the fisheries, and was a menace to New England. To seize these posts, and to break down the French power in America, was now the aim of the English. In 1758 an expedition of _Gen. Abercrombie_, at the head of sixteen thousand men, against Crown Point and Ticonderoga, was repulsed; Lord Howe was killed, and the army retreated. _Louisburg_, to the joy of the colonies, was captured anew by _Lord Amherst_ (1758). _Fort Du Quesne_ was taken (1758), and named _Fort Pitt_; _Fort Frontenac_ on Lake Ontario was destroyed. The object of the campaign of 1759 was the conquest of Canada. _Fort Niagara_ was captured by _Sir William Johnston_ (1759). _Ticonderoga_ and _Crown Point_ were taken, and the French driven into Canada. Then came the great expedition under Major-Gen, _Wolfe_, a most worthy and high-spirited young officer, which left _Louisburg_ for the capture of Quebec, "the Gibraltar of America." The attempt of _Wolfe_ to storm the heights in front of the city, which were defended by the army of _Montcalm_, failed of success. From a point far up the river, he embarked a portion of his troops in the night, and, silently descending the stream, climbed the heights in the rear of the city, and intrenched himself on the "Plains of Abraham." In the battle which took place in the morning, both commanders, _Wolfe_ and _Montcalm_, were mortally wounded. _Wolfe_ lived just long enough to be assured of victory; _Montcalm_ died the next day. Five days after the battle the town surrendered (1759). An incident connected with Wolfe's approach by night to Quebec is thus given by Mr. _Parkman_: "For full two hours the procession of boats, borne on the current, steered silently down the St. Lawrence. The stars were visible, but the night was moonless and sufficiently dark. The general was in one of the foremost boats; and near him was a young midshipman, John Robison, afterwards professor of natural philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. He used to tell in his later life how Wolfe, with a low voice, repeated Gray's _Elegy in a Country Churchyard_ to the officers about him. Among the rest, was the verse which his fate was soon to illustrate,-- 'The paths of glory lead but to the grave.' "'Gentlemen,' he said, as his recital ended, 'I would rather have written those lines than take Quebec.' None were there to tell him that the hero is greater than the poet." (_Montcalm and Wolfe_, p. 287.) In the following year _Montreal_ and all _Canada_ were in the hands of the English. The English colonies were safe. It was decided that English, not French, should be spoken in aftertimes on the banks of the Ohio. In the _Peace of Paris_ (1763), France kept _Louisiana_, but had already ceded it to Spain (1762). CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC.--The Indians in the West were dissatisfied with the transference of Canada and the region of the Lakes to England. _Pontiac_, chief of the _Ottawas_, combined a large number of tribes, and kindled a war against the English, which spread from the Mississippi to Canada (1763). He captured eight forts, but failed to take Detroit and Fort Pitt. Three years passed before the Indians were completely beaten, and a treaty of peace concluded with their leader (1766). STATE OF THE COLONIES: POPULATION.--At the close of the French war, the population of the thirteen colonies probably exceeded two millions, of whom not far from one fourth were negro slaves. The number of slaves in New England was small. They were proportionately much more numerous in New York, but they were found principally in the Southern colonies. Quakers were always averse to slavery. The slave-trade was still kept up. Newport in Rhode Island was one of the ports where slave-ships frequently discharged their cargoes. GOVERNMENT.--The forms of government in the different colonies varied. All of them had their own legislative assemblies, and regarded them as essential to their freedom. Under _Charles II._, the charter which secured to Massachusetts its civil rights was annulled (1684). Under _James II._, the attempt was made to revoke all the New England charters. Sir _Edmund Andros_ was appointed governor of New England, and by him the new system began to be enforced. The revolution of 1688 restored to the colonies their privileges; but Massachusetts (with which Plymouth was now united), under its new charter (1691), no longer elected its governor. Prior to the Revolution, there were three forms of government among the colonies. Proprietary governments (that is, government by owners or proprietors) still remained in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. In these the king appointed no officers except in the customs and admiralty courts. In Rhode Island and Connecticut, which like Massachusetts retained their charters, the governors were chosen by the people. New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, North and South Carolina, had royal or provincial governments: the governor and council were appointed by the king. OCCUPATIONS.--The chief occupation of the colonists was agriculture. In the North, wheat and corn were raised. From Virginia and Maryland, great crops of tobacco were exported from the plantations, in English ships which came up the Potomac and the James. Rice was cultivated in the Carolinas. Indigo was also raised. Cotton was grown in the South. Labor in the fields in the Southern colonies was performed by the negroes. Building of ships was a profitable occupation on the coast of New England. The cod and other fisheries also gave employment to many, and proved a school for the training of seamen. The colonists were industrious and prosperous, but generally frugal and plain in their style of living. EDUCATION AND RELIGION.--Common schools were early established by law in New England, and by the Dutch in New York. As Mr. _Bancroft_ well observes, "He that will understand the political character of New England in the eighteenth century must study the constitution of its towns, its congregations, its schools, and its militia." Harvard College was founded in 1636; William and Mary, in 1693; Yale, in 1700. Eighteen years after the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, a printing-press was set up at Cambridge. In 1704 the first American newspaper, "The Boston News Letter," was established. In the Puritan colonies, the minds of the people were quickened intellectually as well as religiously, by the character of the pulpit discourses. Theology was an absorbing theme of inquiry and discussion. In the town-meetings, especially in the closing part of the colonial period, political affairs became a subject of earnest debate. In all the colonies, the representative assemblies furnished a practical training in political life. In the Eastern colonies, the people were mostly Congregationalists and Calvinists: Presbyterians were numerous in the Middle States. In Virginia the Episcopal Church was supported by legislative authority; and it was favored, though not established by law, in New York. In Pennsylvania, while there was freedom in religion, the Quakers "still swayed legislation and public opinion." Philadelphia, with its population of thirty thousand, was the largest city in America, and was held in high esteem for its intelligence and refinement. COMPLAINTS OF THE COLONIES.--The colonists all acknowledged the authority of king and parliament, but they felt that they had brought with them across the ocean the rights of Englishmen. One thing that was more and more complained of was the laws compelling the colonies to trade with the "mother country" exclusively, and the enactments laying restraint on their manufactures. In the conflicts with the Indians from time to time, the necessity had arisen for leagues; and, more than once, congresses of delegates had met. One of these was held at Albany in 1754, where _Benjamin Franklin_ was present. In the Old French War, there had been a call for concert of action, and a deepening of the sense of common interests and of being really one people. NEW GROUNDS OF DISAFFECTION.--The colonies had taxed themselves in the French War; but the condition of the finances in England at the close of it inspired the wish there to enforce the laws of trade more rigidly in America, and to levy additional taxes upon the provinces. These English laws were so odious that they were often evaded. The _writs of assistance_ in Massachusetts authorized custom-house officers to search houses for smuggled goods (1761). In the legal resistance to this measure, a sentence was uttered by a Boston patriot, _James Otis_, which became a watchword. "Taxation," he said, "without representation is tyranny." Taxation, it was contended, must be ordained by the local colonial assemblies in which the tax-payers are represented. But the _Stamp Act_ (1765), requiring for legal and other documents the use of stamped paper, was a form of taxation. It excited indignation in all the colonies, especially in Virginia and in New England. In all the measures of resistance, _Virginia_ and _Massachusetts_ were foremost. _Patrick Henry_, an impassioned, patriotic orator, in the Virginia Legislature, was very bold in denouncing the obnoxious Act, and the alleged right to tax the colonies which it implied. This right was denied in a _Congress_ where nine colonies were represented, which met in New York in 1765. They called for the repeal of the Stamp Act, and declared against the importation of English goods until the repeal should be granted. _William Pitt_, in the House of Commons, eulogized the spirit of the colonies. The Stamp Act was repealed. The discussions which it had provoked in America had awakened the whole people, and made them watchful against this sort of aggression. Political topics engrossed attention. When Parliament ordered that the colonies should support the troops quartered on them, and that the royal officers should have fixed salaries, to be obtained, not by the voluntary grants of colonial legislatures, but by the levy of new duties, there was a renewed outburst of disaffection, especially in _New York_ and _Boston_ (1768). By way of response to a petition that was sent to the king against these Acts of Parliament, four regiments of troops were sent to _Boston_. Their presence was a bitter grievance. In one case, there was bloodshed in a broil in the street between the populace and the soldiers, which was called "The Boston Massacre" (1770). An influential leader of the popular party in Boston was the stanch Puritan patriot, _Samuel Adams_. PROGRESS OF THE CONTROVERSY.--After the other taxes were repealed, the tax on tea remained in force. A mob of young men, disguised as Indians, went on board three vessels in Boston Harbor, and threw overboard their freight of tea (1773). Before, there had been outbreakings of popular wrath against the stamp-officers. Their houses had been sometimes attacked: they had been burnt in effigy, and in some cases driven to resign. In general, however, the methods of resistance had been legal and orderly. When the news of the destruction of the tea reached England, Parliament retaliated by passing the _Boston Port Bill_ (1774), which closed that port to the exportation or importation of goods, except food or fuel. The courts, moreover, were given the power to send persons charged with high crimes to England, or to another colony, for trial. To crown all, General _Gage_, the commander of the British troops, was made Governor of Massachusetts. THE FIRST CONTINENTAL CONGRESS.--In order to produce concert of action, committees of correspondence between the several colonies were established. The First Continental Congress, composed of delegates from the colonies, was convened in Philadelphia (1774). The remedies to which they resorted were, addresses to the king and to the people of Great Britain; an appeal for support to Canada; and a resolve not to trade with Great Britain until there should be a redress of grievances. CONCORD AND BUNKER HILL.--The Legislature in Massachusetts, which _Gage_ would not recognize, formed itself into the "Provincial Congress." The first collision took place at _Concord_ (April 19, 1775), where a detachment of British troops was sent to destroy the military stores gathered by this body. On _Lexington_ Green, the British troops fired on the militia, and killed seven men. Arriving at _Concord_, they encountered resistance. There the first shot was fired by America in the momentous struggle,--"the shot heard round the world." A number were killed on both sides, and the attacking force was harassed all the way on its return to Boston. The people everywhere rose in arms. Men flocked from their farms and workshops to the camp which was formed near Boston. _Israel Putnam_, who had been an officer in the French War, left his plow in the field at his home in Connecticut, and rode to that place, a distance of sixty-eight miles, in one day. _Stark_ from New Hampshire, and _Greene_ from Rhode Island, soon arrived. THE _SECOND CONTINENTAL CONGRESS_, in session at Philadelphia, assumed control of military operations in all the colonies. At the suggestion first made by _John Adams_ of Massachusetts, Colonel _George Washington_ of Virginia was unanimously appointed commander-in-chief. His mingled courage and prudence, his lofty and unselfish patriotism, his admirable sobriety of judgment, and his rare power of self-control, connected as it was with a not less rare power of command, and with a firmness which no disaster could shake, made him one of the noblest of men. Before he reached _Cambridge_, where he assumed command of the gathering forces (July 3, 1775), he received the news of the battle of _Bunker Hill_, in which the provincial soldiers, under _Putnam_ and _Prescott_, made a stand against the "regulars," as the British troops were called, and retreated only on the third assault, and when their ammunition had given out. _Dr. Joseph Warren_, a leading Boston patriot, was slain in the battle. Before this time, _Fort Ticonderoga_ had been captured by _Ethan Allen_, and cannon been sent from it to aid in the siege of Boston (1775). But an attack on Quebec by _Arnold_ and _Montgomery_, who entered Canada by different routes, failed of its object. Before British reinforcements arrived, the American troops abandoned Canada. In the attack on Quebec, _Montgomery_ fell, and _Arnold_ was severely wounded (Dec. 31, 1775). INDEPENDENCE.--Only a brief sketch can here be given of the seven years' struggle of the United Colonies. On the 4th of July, 1776, the Declaration of Independence, drawn up in the main by _Thomas Jefferson_, and of which _John Adams_ was the most eloquent advocate on the floor of Congress, passed that body. It was signed by the President, _John Hancock_, and fifty-five members. The colonies easily converted themselves into States, nearly all of them framing new constitutions. Thirteen _Articles of Confederation_ made them into a league, under the name of the _United States_ of America, each State retaining its sovereignty (1777). _Franklin_, an old man, and respected in Europe as well as at home for his scientific attainments as well as for his sturdy sagacity, went to France as their envoy. Among the soldiers who came from Europe to join the Americans were _La Fayette_,--a young French nobleman, who was inspired with a zeal for liberty, and was not without a thirst for fame, which, however, he desired to merit,--and _Steuben_, an officer trained under _Frederick the Great_. In Parliament, the Whig orators spoke out manfully for the American cause. The king hired German troops for the subjugation of its defenders. THE EVENTS OF THE WAR.--The maneuvers of _Washington_ forced _Gage_ to evacuate _Boston_. The American general then undertook the defense of New York. The British forces, to the number of thirty thousand, under _Gen. Howe_, and _Admiral Howe_ his brother, were collected on Staten Island. The Americans were defeated in a battle on Long Island (Aug. 27, 1776), and could not hold the city. It remained in the hands of the British to the end of the war. _Washington_ withdrew his troops to _White Plains_. _Fort Washington_ and _Fort Lee_ were lost. The American commander, followed by _Lord Cornwallis_, retreated slowly through New Jersey (1776). These were serious reverses. By bold and successful attacks at _Trenton_ and _Princeton_, the depressed spirits of the army and the country were revived. In the spring of 1777 _Howe_ sought to capture _Philadelphia_, and landed his forces at the head of Chesapeake Bay. The Americans were defeated at _Brandywine_ (Sept. 10); and Philadelphia, which had been the seat of Congress, was, like New York, in the possession of the British. Their policy was to isolate New England. To this end, Gen. _Burgoyne_, with a large army of French and Indians, came down from the north of Lake Champlain. A detachment of his forces was defeated by _Stark_ at _Bennington_. _Burgoyne_ himself was obliged to surrender, with six thousand men, to _Gates_, at Saratoga (Oct. 17). This event made its due impression abroad. _France_ recognized the independence of the United States, and entered into an alliance with them. This alliance was a turning-point in the struggle. _Washington's_ army, ill-clad and ill-fed, suffered terribly in the winter of 1777-78 at _Valley Forge_; but he shared in their rough fare, and their discipline was much improved by the drill which they received there from _Steuben_. Sir Henry _Clinton_ left Philadelphia in order that the British forces might be concentrated in New York. He was overtaken by Washington, and the battle of _Monmouth_ took place, which was, on the whole, a success for the Americans. The design of the British to separate New England from the rest of the States had failed. _Washington_ was again at _White Plains_. They now began operations in the Southern States. Among the occurrences in this period of the war were the massacre of the settlements in the valley of the _Wyoming_, in Pennsylvania, by the Indian auxiliaries of the British; the surrender of Savannah, and with it Georgia and Charleston, by the Americans; the gallant storming of _Stony Point_, on the Hudson, by _Wayne_ (July 15, 1779), and a brilliant naval victory of _Paul Jones_ in a desperate engagement with two British frigates near the north-eastern coast of England (Sept. 1779). The American "partisan leaders," Marion, Sumter, and Pickens, carried forward an irregular but harassing warfare in South Carolina. At Camden, _Gates_ was defeated by _Cornwallis_; and _Baron de Kalb_, a brave French officer, of German extraction, in the American service, fell (Aug. 16, 1780). In this year (1780) _Benedict Arnold's_ treason was detected; and Major _André_, a British officer through whom Arnold had made arrangements for giving up the fortress of _West Point_ to the enemy, was taken captive, and executed as a spy. In the next year Gen. _Nathanael Greene_ conducted military operations in _Georgia_ and the _Carolinas_ with much skill, and succeeded in pressing the army of Lord _Cornwallis_ into the peninsula formed by the York and James Rivers in Virginia. Thither the French fleet sailed under Count _De Grasse_; and _Washington_, by forced marches, was enabled to join with the French in surrounding the British works at _Yorktown_. On the day when _Clinton_ left New York, at the head of his forces, to unite with _Cornwallis_, that officer surrendered, with his entire army of seven thousand men, to _Washington_ (1781). This blow was fatal to the British cause. The independence of the United States was recognized by Holland, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, and Russia (1782). The war had been prolonged by the personal obstinacy of _George III_., against the wishes of his minister, Lord _North_. The surrender of _Cornwallis_ made it plain that further effort to conquer America was hopeless. Spain and Holland had joined hands with France, but _Rodney_ had won a great naval victory over _De Grasse_ (April 12, 1782). By the treaty of peace, signed at _Paris_ and _Versailles_ (1783), England recognized the independence of her former colonies. AMERICA AT THE CLOSE OF THE WAR.--The Congress during the war had issued paper money to the amount of twenty millions of dollars. It had no power to lay taxes, or to compel the States to pay their several portions of the public indebtedness. The States themselves were poor, and largely in debt. They surrendered, however, their unoccupied public lands to the United States. In 1787 Congress made one territory of the district north-west of the Ohio River, which Virginia had ceded, and by an ordinance excluded slavery from it for ever. THE CONSTITUTION.--The lack of one system of law for the different States in reference to duties on imports, and on various other matters of common concern, and disorders springing up in different places, inspired an anxious desire for a stronger central government. A convention, over which _Washington_ presided, met in _Philadelphia_ in 1787, and formed the new _Constitution_. _Hamilton_ of New York and _Madison_ of Virginia were leading members. There was much opposition to the new plan of government which they agreed upon, but it was finally adopted by all the States. It supplied the defects of the old confederation by uniting _national_ with _federal_ elements. To the Senate, made up of two delegates from each State, it added a _House of Representatives_, where the number of members from each State was made proportionate to the population. It put the general government, within the limit of its defined functions, into a _direct_ relation to the citizens, and gave to it judicial and executive departments to carry out and enforce its legislation. It committed to the central authority the management of foreign affairs, and various other powers necessary for the preservation of peace and unity in the land, and for the securing of the common weal of the whole country. _Washington_ was unanimously chosen as the first president of the Republic, and _John Adams_ was chosen vice-president. The first Congress met in _New York_ in April, 1789, although the day appointed was March 4. CHAPTER VI. LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND RELIGION. LITERATURE. I. FRANCE. POETRY AND THE DRAMA.--The literature of France in the age of _Louis XIV_. was classical in its spirit. The ancient Greek and Roman writers were admired and imitated. The Renaissance was now to run its course. The French Academy, founded by _Richelieu_, undertook to regulate and improve the French language. Measure, finish, elegance, were demanded by the reigning taste, in all literary productions. _Corneille_ (1606-1684), the father of French tragedy, was the most virile of the French dramatists. _Racine_ (1639-1699), who followed, if less grand, was more pathetic. We find, however, in writers of genius,--even in the great preachers, as _Bourdaloue_ and _Massillon_, who formed a type of pulpit eloquence peculiar to France,--a tendency to what seems now a stilted style. The master in comedy was _Molière_ (1622-1673), an actor, as well as an author of inimitable humor. One of the most popular of French authors has been _La Fontaine_ (1621-1695), whose fables have charmed multitudes by their smooth versification, as well as by their contents. _Boileau_ (1636-1711), the Horace of France, prescribed, as a lawgiver, rules upon the "Art of Poetry," and himself wrote satires and other poems of high merit. PROSE LITERATURE.--_Bossuet_ (1627-1704) was an eloquent preacher and historical writer, and an expert theological polemic of the liberal Catholic school. Of a very different tone is _Rochefoucauld_, whose _Maxims_, expressed in pithy language, seek to trace all virtuous action to self-seeking. The French fondness for epigram--for terse, paradoxical statement--is exemplified even in the best writers, as, for example, _Blaise Pascal_. _La Bruyère_ (1645-1696), a genial philosopher, wrote in a most attractive style a work entitled _The Characters of Our Age_. The metaphysician _Malebranche_ (1638-1715) taught that we know through our spiritual union with God, or that we see all things in God. A disciple of _Des Cartes_, he did not strictly follow his master. _Fénelon_ (1651-1715), illustrious for his piety as well as for his versatile authorship, wrote on religious topics and on education. Of all his writings, his _Telemachus_, composed for the young Duke of Burgundy, his pupil, has been the most read. The letters of Madame _de Sévigné_, addressed to her daughter, and not meant for publication, present most graphic descriptions of the characters and occurrences of the day. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.--When we cross the limit of the eighteenth century, we meet with growing signs of skepticism in religion, and of innovation in political thought. Criticism of the past, of traditional creeds and established institutions, is spreading. The _Historical and Critical Dictionary of Bayle_, a storehouse of chronicle and anecdote, is leavened with the spirit of doubt. Three great writers deserve special attention. _Montesquieu_ (1689-1755) satirized all dogma in his _Persian Letters_. His celebrated work on the _Spirit of Laws_ is just and humane in its tone, and full of original and inspiring views on history and government. He is one of the founders of modern political science. _Voltaire_ (1694-1778), the most popular of all the writers of his age, was the incarnation of its critical and skeptical spirit, the highest example of its wit as of its levity, and of the artificial character of its literary ideals. He was play-writer, poet, historian, critic, and brilliant converser, all in one. In religion, a scoffer not only at superstition, but at all beliefs and rites which imply revelation, he still clung to the belief in a personal God. His creed was deism, _Jean Jacques Rousseau_ (1712-1778) was, like _Voltaire_, a deist in his creed; but in religion, as in all his mental action, there was a vein of sentiment. By the fascination of his style, he was able, in his various writings, including his autobiographical _Confessions_, to interest profoundly multitudes of readers of both sexes, and even to move them to sympathy with himself in a career which deserves not less abhorrence than commiseration. He was, perhaps, the first author to evoke in others a genuine relish, which he felt himself, for the wild scenery of nature. In his _Social Contract_ he maintained that government grows out of a contract of individuals with one another, all of whom in the state of nature are free and independent. He carried to a great extreme an idea which in England had been held by _Hooker_, and more explicitly expounded by _Locke_. His doctrine furnished a theory for the political revolution in France. The "Encyclopædists" went much beyond _Voltaire_ and _Rousseau_. _D'Alembert_, _Helvetius_, _Holbach_, advocated atheism and materialism. _Condillac_ (1715-1780) sought to reduce this species of infidelity to an exact philosophical system by tracing even conscience to sensation and self-interest. All religious sentiment was condemned as morbid illusion. II. GERMANY. In Germany, the great name in philosophy is that of _Leibnitz_ (1646-1716), a rival of _Newton_ in mathematics and natural science, and an eminent thinker in metaphysics, theology, and in jurisprudence. In intellect and in variety of attainments, he is almost the peer of _Aristotle_. _Wolf_ (1679-1754) his disciple, systemized and modified his philosophical views. _Klopstock_ (1724-1803), the author of _Messiah_, written somewhat after the manner of the _Paradise Lost_ of _Milton_, excelled the other German poets of his day. _Frederick the Great_ treated with disrespect the native literary products of his country. Yet a new era in German letters and criticism was opened by _Lessing_ (1729-1781), a poet, and a critic of admirable insight, whose influence in this direction in Germany has been likened in its power to that of _Luther_ in religion. III. ITALY. In the eighteenth century, there was a new revival of literature in Italy. _Vico_ (1668-1744) almost made an epoch in the scientific treatment of history and mythology; in political economy and in archeology, there were numerous explorers; Florence became once more a seat of learning. _Beccaria_ (1738-1794) by his writings introduced more humane views in criminal jurisprudence. _Volta_ (1745-1827), an electrician, constructed the instrument called the voltaic pile. _Metastasio_ (1698-1782) fostered the melodrama, or Italian opera, by his dramatic writings. _Goldoni_ (1707-1793), a Venetian, was the most eminent writer of comedies. Tragedy reached its acme in the works of _Alfieri_ (1749-1803), the founder of a new school. IV. ENGLAND. In England, after the Restoration, the influence of French standards in literature is obvious. The drama declined, partly from the earlier antagonism of the Puritans, and partly from the rage for indecency which infected the dramatic writers,--even those of much ability, as _Congreve_,--and defiled the stage. The _Pilgrim's Progress_ of _Bunyan_ (1628-88) is written in a plain, unaffected style, and is the most popular work of that age. In sharp contrast with _Bunyan_ is _Butler's Hudibras_, a witty satire, in doggerel verse, upon Puritanism. The principal writer, prior to Queen _Anne_, is _Dryden_ (1631-1700). We have passed now from the _Romantic_ school of poetry, in which Shakspeare is the most exalted name, to the _Classical_ school. In the age of Queen _Anne_, _Pope_ (1688-1744), with his vigor, without elevation, of thought, his smooth versification and bright wit, is the principal figure. The same period produced the labored novels of _Richardson_ (1689-1761), and the vigorous and lifelike fictions of _Fielding_ (1707-1754), which are, unhappily, disfigured by coarse and licentious passages. In the early part of the century, _Addison_ (1672-1719) and _Steele_ (1672-1729) were the most distinguished essayists. In them, as in the novels of _Defoe_ (1661-1731), the author of _Robinson Crusoe_, and in the prose writings of _Swift_ (1667-1745), the richness and idiomatic force of the English tongue are seen; while in _Samuel Johnson_, the literary dictator in the latter part of the century, the author of the _English Dictionary_, of _The Rambler_, the _Lives of the Poets_, and _Rasselas_, we have a striking and contagious example of a stately, sounding, Latinized diction. In pleasing contrast, as regards style, which charms from its simplicity, are the writings of _Goldsmith_ (1728-74). In poetry, _Gray_ (1716-71), the author of the _Elegy in a Country Churchyard_, and _Collins_ (1721-59), wrote little, but wrote well. The triumvirate of great English historians of the century are _Hume_, _Robertson_, and _Gibbon_. Gibbon's _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ is a monument of masterly ability and of vast research; a work, however, marred by a want of naturalness in style, and, still more, by a lack of religious faith and reverence, and by impurity of tone and allusion. _Hume's_ style is one of his chief claims to esteem as an historian; for he was indolent in his researches, and prejudiced in his views. He merited distinction chiefly as an economist and a metaphysician. PHILOSOPHY.--In English philosophy, there are several writers of extraordinary talents and influence. _John Locke_ (1632-1704), an upright man and a lover of freedom, wrote the celebrated _Essay on the Understanding_, besides other important works in political science and theology. He traced all our knowledge to two sources, _sensation_ and _reflection_, ultimately to the first of these. _Berkeley_ (1685-1753) advocated with rare genius an ideal theory of matter, and defended theism. _Hume_ (1711-76) indirectly gave rise to much of the later philosophy, by his acute speculations in behalf of skepticism as to the reality of human knowledge and the foundation of accepted beliefs. _Reid_ (1710-96) rescued philosophy from the attacks of _Hume_ by the doctrine of "common sense," and thus founded the Scottish school of metaphysicians. Among the numerous authors who cultivated both philosophy and theology, particular distinction belongs to _Dr. Samuel Clarke_ (1675-1729), and to Bishop _Joseph Butler_ (1692-1752) who wrote briefly, but with marked power, on the nature of conscience, and on the _Analogy_ between religion and what we know of the constitution and course of nature. NEWTON: ADAM SMITH.--_Sir Isaac Newton_ (1642-1727), the discoverer of the law of gravitation, made, through his _Principia_, one of the most important contributions ever made to the advancement of physical science. In 1776 _Adam Smith_, a Scotchman, who had previously written on metaphysics and politics, published his treatise on _The Wealth of Nations_, the first complete system of political economy. He showed that money is not wealth, but simply one product serving as a means of exchange. He made it clear, that, for one nation to gain in trade, it is not requisite that another should lose. Much light was thrown on political economy by essays of _Hume._ V. AMERICA. The most notable American writers before the War of Independence were _Jonathan Edwards_ (1703-58), a great metaphysical genius, and the founder of a school in theology; and _Benjamin Franklin_ (1706-90), whose writings, in excellent English, related mainly to ethical and economical topics. As the Revolution approached, there sprung up authors of ability on the political questions of the day. _The Federalist_, written after the war, by _Hamilton, Madison_, and _Jay_, in favor of the proposed Constitution, is a work of high merit, as regards both matter and style. NATURAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE. The inductive method, or the "Baconian" method of observation and experiment, began to bear rich fruits. _Sir Isaac Newton_ (1642-1727) not only discovered the law of gravitation: other discoveries by him in mechanics and optics were of great moment in the progress of those sciences. Fluxions, or the differential calculus, was discovered independently by both _Newton_ and _Leibnitz_. _Euler_, a Swiss mathematician of the highest ability (1707-1783), contributed essentially to the advancement of mechanics. _Napier_ invented logarithms, to shorten mathematical calculations. _Huygens_, a Dutch philosopher (1629-1695), invented the pendulum clock. _Gregory_ (1638-1675) invented the reflecting telescope, _Halley_, an English astronomer (1656-1742), gave his name to a comet whose return he predicted. _Guericke_ invented (1680), and _Robert Boyle_ (1627-1691) perfected, the air-pump. _Boyle_ was active in founding the Royal Society (1660). _Volta_, by the invention of the pile called by his name, and _Franklin_, signally advanced the study of electricity. In the history of zoölogy, _Buffon_ is a great name, as is that of _Lavoisier_ in chemistry. _Linnaeus_, a Swede, born in the same year with Buffon (1707), attained to the highest distinction by reducing botany to a system. The lives of the eminent astronomers _Lagrange_ (1736-1813), _Laplace_ (1749-1827), and _Sir William Herschel_ (1738-1822), outlasted the eighteenth century. The radical improvement of the steam-engine by _James Watt_, a Scotchman (1736-1819),--who obtained his first patent in 1769,--and the invention of the spinning-jenny by _Richard Arkwright_ (1732-1792), are indicative of a new era of progress in the application of science to practical arts and uses. RELIGION AND THEOLOGY. ENGLISH DEISM.--The religious debates and the religious wars of the seventeenth century were followed by much indifference and disbelief in the eighteenth. Weariness with sectarian struggles, and revolt against the yoke of creeds, were pushed to the extreme of a denial of revealed religion,--finally, in France, to a denial of the truths of natural religion also. In England, there appeared a school of deistical writers, beginning earlier with _Lord Herbert_ of Cherbury (1581-1648), and continued through _Tindal_, _Morgan_, _Bolingbroke_, _Shaftesbury_, _Collins_, and others. On the other side, _Butler_, _Lardner_ (1684-1768), _Bentley_, the best of England's classical scholars and critics (1662-1742), and, later, _Paley_ (1743-1805), were among the authors who defended the divine origin of Christianity on rational and historical grounds. Of these writers, _Butler_ was the most profound, _Lardner_ and _Bentley_ the most learned, and _Paley_ the most lucid. THE "QUAKERS."--During this period, the Society of Friends, "Quakers," was founded in England by _George Fox_ (1624-1691), who in 1647, impelled by what he considered a divine call, began the life of an itinerant preacher. He and his followers were subjected frequently to cruel persecution, both in England and America. In exceptional cases, they fell into extravagances of enthusiasm, interrupted public worship, walked in the streets clothed in sackcloth, or in some instances naked. They condemned war, practiced non-resistance, objected to oaths and to a paid ministry, and set an example of the utmost plainness and simplicity in speech and dress. Among their many converts were _William Penn_, and their able and learned theologian, _Robert Barclay_ (1648-1690). The Friends, by their Christian forbearance and patience, their purity of conduct and their philanthropy, and their tranquil piety, gradually won the respect of the other religious bodies, who were at first offended by their novel tenets and manners, and by the occasional occurrence of revolting manifestations of a half-insane enthusiasm. METHODISM.--Of the religious movements in Protestant countries, Methodism is the most noteworthy. This movement was originated by a little group of students at Oxford, of whom _John Wesley_, his brother _Charles_, and _George Whitefield_ were the chief. Of these, _John Wesley_ (1703-1791) united with intellectual ability and cultivation, and religious fervor, a remarkable organizing capacity. _Whitefield_ was an orator in the pulpit, of unrivaled eloquence. He was a Calvinist in his theology, and separated from _Wesley_ on account of Wesley's Arminian views. They were nicknamed "Methodists," from their strictness of life in the University, and their systematic ways. _Wesley_ and his associates preached to the common people in England, including the poor colliers and miners, with untiring ardor and surprising effect. Their converts were very numerous, and were formed into societies under a definite polity and discipline. The Wesleyan movement was much opposed in the Church of England by those who stood in dread of enthusiasm. By ordaining lay preachers and superintendents for America, and by putting its chapels under the protection of the Toleration Act,--measures which _Wesley_ deemed necessary,--Methodism became separate from the Anglican Established Church. As a distinct body, it gained a. multitude of adherents in England and America. MORAVIANISM.--In 1722 a company of persecuted Moravian Christians was received by Count _Zinzendorf_ (1700-1760) on his estate, situated on the borders of Bohemia. They founded a town called _Herrnkut_. _Zinzendorf_ became their bishop. The new community was distinguished for sincere piety and for missionary zeal. They did not in the least antagonize the Lutheran churches, yet had an organization of their own. Some of them settled in America. The Moravians never became a very numerous body; but their influence in promoting spiritual religion and education, and in carrying Christianity to the heathen, has been more potent than that of many larger bodies of Christians. It was specially wholesome in Germany, at a time when, under the auspices of _Frederick the Great_, the French type of unbelief prevailed in the higher classes of society. PIETISM.--Prior to _Zinzendorf_, _Spener_ (1635-1705), a man of devout feeling, had given rise to the "Pietists," as the promoters of a warmer type of religious experience than was approved by the current opinion were derisively named. SWEDENBORG.--_Swedenborg_ (1688-1772), a Swedish noble, a mathematician and naturalist of large attainments, communicated, in copious writings, what he sincerely professed to consider special revelations made to him respecting God, the unseen world, and the sense of the Scriptures. His adherents are called "The New Church," or Swedenborgians. THE JESUIT ORDER.--Under the influences that had sway in the eighteenth century, the authority of the popes sank in the Catholic countries. The spirit of innovation was rife. One of the remarkable incidents of the time, characteristic of its tendency, was the conflict of Portugal and the Bourbon courts of France and Spain, with the Society of Jesuits. The Jesuits had secretly established, unobserved, a state under their own exclusive control in _Paraguay_, a part of which, by a treaty of Portugal with Spain, fell to Portugal. Other charges, some relating to interference in political affairs, and some to other and different grounds of complaint, led to the expulsion of the order from all Portuguese territory (1757); and soon after, it was suppressed in France and in Spain, and in several of the Italian states. The Jesuit order was formally abolished by _Pope Clement XIV._ in 1773, to be again restored by papal authority in 1814. ESSAYS AT POLITICAL REFORM. RUSSIA: GERMANY.--The minds of men were unsettled, not only by the prevalent tone of literature and speculation, but by governmental changes and reforms. The disposition was to introduce French methods of administration. _Catherine II._ of Russia (1762-1796) tried the experiment of various judicial and educational reforms. _Frederick the Great_, with more wisdom and consistency, introduced many changes for the benefit of the industrial class. The most sweeping reforms were undertaken by the Emperor _Joseph II_. (1780-1790), after the death of his mother, _Maria Theresa_. His measures for the reduction of the power of the clergy and of the nobility, the closing of monasteries, and the weakening of the connection of the Austrian Church with Rome, were of a very radical character. He himself finally became convinced that they were too radical to be completely realized, in the existing state of opinion among his subjects. Two of his reforms--the abolition of serfdom, and the edict of religious toleration--remained in force. The other changes did not survive him. The attempts to impose his reforms in the Austrian Netherlands provoked an insurrection. _Leopold II. _(1790-1792), _Joseph's_ successor, suppressed the Belgian revolt, but repealed the ordinances of his brother which had occasioned it. TUSCANY.--In Tuscany, the brother of _Joseph II., Leopold,_ prior to his becoming emperor, undertook likewise a great plan of ecclesiastical reform in the same line as that of _Joseph_ (1786); but there the opposition of the bishops prevented him from practically carrying out his scheme. PORTUGAL.--In Portugal, the house of _Braganza_ had ascended the throne in 1640. _Joseph Emanuel_ (1750-1777) left the management of the government to his minister, _Pombal_. His measures were contrived to weaken the power of the nobles and the clergy. By him the warfare against the Jesuits was carried forward. The fall of _Pombal_, which followed the death of the king, led to the abolition of all his reforms, which had the same fate as those undertaken later in Austria by _Joseph II_. LITERATURE.--See the lists of works on pp. 16, 395, 450, and Adams's _Manual of Historical Literature_; SCHLOSSER'S _History of the Eighteenth Century_ (8 vols,); NOORDEN'S _Europaische Gesch. im 18tn. Jahr.: Der Spanische Erbfolgekrieg_ (2 vols.); Lord John Wakeman, _European History_, 1598-1715; Hassall, _European History_, 1715-1789; Perlcins, _Regency_ and _Louis XV_, (3 vols.); St. Simon, _The Memoirs of the Reign of Louis XIV. and the Regency_ [an abridgment, 3 vols.]; Voltaire, _Age of Louis XIV_.; PHILIPPSON (in Oncken's Series), _Das Zeitalter Ludwigs d. Vierzehten_; A. de Broglie, _Louis XV: The King's Secret Correspondence with his Agents_, etc. (2 vols.); A. Thiers, _The Mississippi Bubble_; Morley's _Life of Voltaire_, and _Life of Rousseau_. A. v, Arneth, _Geschichte Maria Theresas_ (10 vols., 1863-79): DUNCKER, _Aus der Zeit Friedrichs d. Grossen_, etc.; RANKE, _Memoirs of the House of Brandenburg, and History of Prussia during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries_ (3 vols); CARLYLE'S _History of Frederick the Second_ (6 vols.); Tuttle, _History of Prussia_ (4 vols.); Von Raumer, _Frederick the Second and his Times_; A. de Broglie, _Frederick the Great and Maria Theresa_ (2 vols.); ONCKEN, _Das Zeitalter Friedrich d. Grossen_ (2 vols.). The _Diaries_ of PEPYS and EVELYN; R. Vaughan, _Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell_; MACAULAY'S _History of England from the Accession of James II_. (4 vols.); MAHON'S _History of England_ (1701-13), also _History of England_ (1713 to 1783) (7 vols.); BURTON, _History of the Reign of Queen Anne_; E.E.MORRIS, _The Age of Anne_; Alison, _Military Life of the Duke of Marlborough_; _Life of Marlborough_, by Gleig, by Coxe (3 vols.); LECKY'S _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_ (2 vols.); Froude, _The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century_ (2 vols.); Mahan, _Influence of the Sea Power on History_; Egerton, _Short History of British Colonial Policy_; Seeley, _The Expansion of England_; Payne, _European Colonies_; Lucas, _Introduction to a Historical Geography of the British Colonies_; H. Walpole, _Memoirs of the Reign of George II._ (3 vols.), and of _George III_. (4 vols.); J. G. Phillimore, _History of England during the Reign of George III_.; J. Adolphus, _History of England_ [1760 83] (3 vols.); Wraxall (1751-1831), _Historical Memoirs of his own Time_ (4 vols.). and _Posthumous Memoirs of his own Time_, (3 vols.); May, _Constitutional History of England_ [1760-1860] (2 vols.); STOUGHTON, _History of Religion in England from the Opening of the Long Parliament to the End of the Eighteenth Century_ (6 vols.); TYERMAN'S _Life of Wesley_; SOUTHEY'S _Life of Wesley_; TYERMAN'S _Life of Whitefield_; TYLER'S _History of American Literature_; VAN LAUN, _History of French Literature_ (3 vols.); MORLEY'S _Series of English Men of Letters_; TAINE'S _History of English Literature_. Schuyler's _Life of Peter the Great_; Catherine II., _Memoirs written by herself_; RAM-BAUD'S _History of Russia_. Histories of the United States by BANCROFT, HILDRETH, McMaster, Bryant and Howard, DOYLE, Wilson, Laboulaye, NEUMANN, Fiske, Schouler; Winsor, _Narrative and Critical History of America_ (8 vols.); Hart, _American History told by Contemporaries_ (4 vols.); Macdonald, _Select Charters_ and _Select Documents_; Preston, _Documents_; Channing, _The United States of America_ (1765-1865); Higginson, _Larger History of the United States_; Goldwin Smith, _The United States_; LODGE'S _Short History of the English Colonies in America_; PARKMAN'S Series of Histories of the French in America; Frothingham, _Rise of the Republic_ [to 1790]; Weeden, _Economic and Social History of New England_; Palfrey's _History of New England_; Sabine's _American Loyalists_; Bruce, _Economic History of Virginia_; Trevelyan, _The American Revolution_ (1766-76); LOSSING, _Field Book of the American Revolution_; Fiske's _Old Virginia_ and _Dutch and Quaker Colonies_; brief treatment of epochs by Fisher, Thwaites, Hart, Sloane, Walker. _Lives_ of Washington, by MARSHALL, SPARKS, IRVING, Weems; _Lives_ of John Adams, by C. F. ADAMS, by MORSE; _Life of Franklin_, by himself (Bigelow's ed.), by SPARKS, by Parton; _Lives_ of Jefferson, by RANDALL, Parton, Morse; Tudor's _Life of James Otis_; _Life_ of Samuel Adams, by Wells, by Hosmer; _Life_ of Hamilton, by MORSE; _Life_ of Madison, by RIVES; W. Jay's _Life of John Jay_ (2 vols.); H. Von Hoist, _Constitutional and Political History of the United States_ [from 1759]; Sparks's _American Biography_ (2 series, 25 vols.). WINSOR's _Reader's Handbook of the American Revolution_ (1761-83), a very useful work, gives the literature on the subject (1880); Bancroft, _History of the Formation of the Constitution of the United States_. PERIOD IV. THE ERA OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. (1789-1815.) INTRODUCTION. CHARACTER OF THE REVOLUTION.--The French Revolution was a tremendous upheaval of society, which brought with it the abolition of feudalism and monarchy, and the securing of an equality of political rights. Its immediate result in France was the establishment of a democratic republic, followed by an empire resting on military power. Its conquests, and the predominance of France, provoked an uprising of the other European peoples in behalf of national independence. This overthrew the French empire, and produced a temporary restoration of the old dynasty. But the effect of the Revolution, in which the other civilized nations largely shared, was the substitution, in the room of the _medieval state_, of the _modern state_ resting on a broader basis of equality as regards the rights and obligations of different classes. In the Western nations of the Continent, serfdom, and manifold abuses, civil and ecclesiastical, were abolished. CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION.--First among the causes of the Revolution in France, was the hostility felt towards the privileged classes,--the king, the nobles, and the clergy,--on account of the disabilities and burdens which law and custom imposed on the classes beneath them. When _Charles Vll_. organized a standing army, and laid direct taxes to support it, the burghers and peasants rejoiced (p. 328). The monarchy was thus enabled to shield them, and subdue the great nobles. _Louis XIV_., as long as he was successful, was sustained by the pride and national spirit of the country. Yet his domination over the nobility and the Church left the higher orders in possession not only of the offices and honors which helped to fasten them submissively to the monarch, but also left them in the exercise of the numberless complicated privileges of local rule and taxation,--privileges which were the growth of ages, and which laid on the necks of the people a yoke too heavy to be borne. 1. THE LAND: THE PEASANTS.--Nearly two-thirds of the land in France was in the hands of the nobles and of the clergy. A great part of it was ill cultivated by its indolent owners. The nobles preferred the gayeties of Paris to a residence on their estates. There were many small land-owners, but many had individually too little land to furnish them with subsistence. The treatment of the peasant was often such that when he "looked upon the towers of his lord's castle, the dearest wish of his heart was to burn it down, with all its registers of debt." There was not a large middle class of land-owners, possessed of farms which, although small, were yet adequate to yield them a living. The clergy, besides having the whole management of education, held an immense amount of land, seigniorial control over thousands of peasants, and a vast income from tithes and other sources. In some provinces, there was a better state of things than in others; but, in general, the rich had the enjoyments, and the poor carried the burdens. 2. MONOPOLIES.--Manufactures and trade, although encouraged under _Colbert_, were fettered by oppressive monopolies and a strict organization of guilds. 3. CORRUPT GOVERNMENT.--The administration of government was both arbitrary and corrupt. Places in parliament and in the army, and most higher offices, were sold, but sold, as a rule, only to nobles. When parliament refused to register decrees of taxation, the king held "beds of justice,"--a method of passing laws against parliamentary protest (p. 299). Warrants of arrest and imprisonment--_lettres de cachet_--were issued by his sole authority. 4. LOSS OF RESPECT FOR ROYALTY.--Respect for the throne was lost. Under _Louis XIV_., the number of salable offices was incredibly multiplied. In his last days, "in many towns the trade in timber, wine, and spirits was taken out of private hands; nay, even the poor earnings of those who towed boats on the rivers, of porters and funeral mutes, were made a monopoly, and secured to certain families exclusively, in consideration of a large premium." "Famine prevailed in every province. The bark of trees was the daily food of hundreds of thousands." The debauchery of _Louis XV_., and his feeble foreign policy, tended to dissipate what reverence for royalty was left. 5. ABORTIVE ESSAYS AT REFORM.--The efforts at political and social reform in France and in other countries, emanating from sovereigns after the great wars, produced a restless feeling without effecting their purpose of social reorganization. 6. POLITICAL SPECULATION.--The current of thought was in a revolutionary direction. Traditional beliefs in religion were boldly questioned. Political speculation was rife. _Montesquieu_ had drawn attention to the liberty secured by the English constitution. _Voltaire_ had dwelt on human rights,--the rights of the individual. _Rousseau_ had expatiated on the sovereign right of the majority. 7. EXAMPLE OF AMERICA.--Add to these agencies, the influence of the American Revolution, and of the American Declaration of Independence, with its proclamation of human rights, and of the foundation of government in contract and the consent of the people. 8. THE IMMEDIATE CAUSE.--The immediate cause of the Revolution was the immense public debt, and the virtual bankruptcy of the government. CHAPTER I. FROM THE ASSEMBLING OF THE STATES GENERAL TO THE EXECUTION OF LOUIS XVI. (1789-1793). LOUIS XVI. (1774-92): THE QUEEN.--_Louis XVI_. differed from his two predecessors in being morally pure, and benevolent in his feelings; but he was of a dull mind, void of energy, and with an obstinacy of character that did not supply the place of an enlightened firmness. He had married (1770) _Marie Antoinette_, the daughter of the Empress _Maria Theresa_. The vivacious young queen, as well as the youthful king, at first charmed the people. But her disregard of court etiquette, and her gay, impulsive ways, provoked the dislike of many high in station, and exposed her to the natural but unmerited suspicion, on the part of the people, that she had faults worse than mere indiscretion. A great scandal connected with a _diamond necklace_, which an unprincipled woman, the _Countess Lamotte_, falsely asserted that the queen desired the _Cardinal de Rohan_ to purchase for her, did much to make her the victim of gross defamation (1785). Her forbearance towards unworthy favorites, and her intermeddling in the affairs of government, in opposition to political reforms, gradually kindled against her wide-spread disrespect and aversion. TO THE STATES GENERAL.--Helpless under the pressure of the heavy debt and the deficit in revenue, the king called to his side _Turgot_ (1774) as controller-general of finance, a political economist and statesman of remarkable integrity and insight. He set to work to reduce the enormous and extravagant public expenditures, and to introduce reforms for the purpose of increasing the public income. He proposed to do away with internal duties on articles of commerce; to break up many guilds; to abolish the _corvée_, or the hard and hateful requirement upon the peasant to labor so many days on the land of the lord; and to introduce a greater amount of local self-government. These, and other wholesome reforms in the civil service and in the army, excited the violent opposition of the nobles and the clergy, and of the whole body of interested courtiers. The king weakly yielded; the great minister was dismissed; and France lost its golden opportunity to prevent infinitely greater calamities than any which the selfish opponents of change dreaded for themselves. _Necker_, a Genevan banker of far less financial ability, was now placed at the helm (1776-1781). His remedies were not radical; yet his movements in the direction of economy, and for giving publicity to the financial situation of the government, provoked such hatred in the classes affected that he had to withdraw. _Calonne_, a prodigal and incapable successor, in connection with the increased expenses of the government consequent on the American War, brought things to such a pass that the king called together (1787) an _Assembly of Notables_, not so much to get their advice as to obtain their support for a plan of reform not unlike that of _Turgot_. This necessary reform they selfishly refused to sanction. _Calonne_ fled to London. _Necker_, to the joy of the people, who built on him vain hopes, was recalled (1788); and it was resolved to summon the States General, who had not met since 1614. To this measure the incompetence and selfishness of the ruling classes had inevitably led. THE TRIUMPH OF THE THIRD ESTATE.--The States General met at Versailles, May 5, 1789. The clergy numbered three hundred, the nobles three hundred, and the third estate (_tiers etat_)--whose plain black dress was in contrast with the more showy costume of the higher orders--numbered six hundred. A pamphlet of Abbé _Sieyés_, in answer to the question, "What is the Third Estate?" declared that is the nation in its true sovereignty and supreme authority. A contest arose at once on the question, whether there should be three houses, or whether all the members should sit together. The Third Estate insisted on the latter plan. The Parisian astronomer, _Bailly_, was their president. Among the members were _Sieyes_, and _Mirabeau_, a man of great intellect and of commanding eloquence. They declared themselves to be the _National Assembly_; and they persisted, against the king's will, in sitting apart until, at his request, the other orders gave away and joined them. It was resolved not to adjourn until the nation should be put in possession of a constitution; meantime, however, that, so long as the body should not be dissolved, money should be raised by increase of taxation, and the interest be paid on the public debt. The attempts of _Louis_ to dissolve the assembly were firmly resisted by the third estate, which was joined by _Talleyrand_, Bishop of Autun, _Gregoire_, afterwards Bishop of Blois, and, of the nobility, by the rich, ambitious, and unprincipled _Duke of Orleans_. The king again yielded, and advised the nobles and clergy to remain. DESTRUCTION OF THE BASTILLE: EMIGRATION OF NOBLES.--The aristocratic party, on account of this victory of the third estate, and because they could not trust the guard of the king, procured the substitution for it of German and Swiss troops. The excitement caused by this proceeding, and the news of _Necker's_ dismissal, led to a mob of the rough Parisian populace, who seized weapons from the workshops, and forced the surrender of the _Bastille_, the grim old prison where political offenders had been immured,--the visible monument of ages of royal tyranny,--which they razed to the ground. The heads of _Delaunay_ the governor, and several of the garrison, were carried on pikes through the streets by the frenzied crowd. The mob wore _cockades_ on their hats; these became the badges of the Revolution. This first outbreaking of mob violence had at once important effects. _Necker_ was recalled. _Lafayette_ was made commander of the militia of Paris, organized as a _National Guard_. The _tricolor_--red, white, and blue--was adopted for the flag. _Bailly_ became mayor of Paris. The king came to Paris, and showed himself, with the national colors on his breast, to the people, at the _Hotel de Ville_, thereby giving a tacit sanction to what had been done. Then began the _emigration_ of the nobles to foreign countries: the king's brother, the _Prince of Condé_, and others high in rank, left the country. The vices which the nobles had learned to practice at home were now to be exhibited abroad. The passions of the revolutionary party were to be inflamed by the suspicion of a complicity of the king and court with the plots of their absent supporters, who strove to enlist other nations in the work of trampling down liberty in France. The emigrants had some reason to fear. Municipal guards were formed in various towns by the party of progress. Soon there were risings of peasantry in several districts. Individuals in _Paris_--among them one of the ministers who succeeded _Necker_-were massacred. Nevertheless, the emigration was a grand error. The danger at the moment was not great; and, whatever the peril, the evils of desertion were far more to be deprecated. THE NEW CONSTITUTION: ASSIGNATS.--The National Assembly, at the instigation of _Lafayette_, passed a Declaration of Rights, after the pattern of the American Declaration of Independence. On motion of his brother-in-law, the _Vicomte de Noailles_, the representatives of the nobles, in an outburst of enthusiastic self-renunciation, gave up their feudal rights and privileges. They liberated the peasants from their burdensome obligations: the clergy relinquished their tithes; the sale of offices and titles was abolished; equality of taxes was ordained; all citizens were made eligible to all stations, civil and military. The new constitution provided for one legislative chamber, to which should belong the right to initiate all enactments. The king's veto only suspended the adoption of a measure for two legislative terms. The assent of the chamber was necessary for the validity of all foreign treaties, and for declaring war or concluding peace. The State assumed the support of the clergy. It was a _constitutional monarchy_ that was framed,--such a system as _La Fayette_ and moderate republicans desired. The essence of republicanism was secured under old forms. _Assignats_, or notes, were issued as a currency, for which the public lands were to be the security,--a safeguard that was ineffective. THE MOB AT VERSAILLES.--The delay of the king to proclaim the constitution, the call of a regiment of troops to _Versailles_, imprudent speeches and songs at a court banquet, stirred up the Parisian mob, who ascribed the scarcity of food to the absence of the king from Paris. A countless throng, made up largely of coarse women, went out to _Versailles_, intruded into the legislative chamber, and at night (Oct. 5) made their way into the palace, over the bodies of the guards. The royal family were rescued by La Fayette and the National Guard. The next day they were forced to go to Paris, attended by this wild and hungry retinue, and took up their abode in the _Tuileries_. To Paris, also, the National Assembly transferred itself. More and more, _Paris_ gained control. PROGRESS OF THE REVOLUTION.--The independence of the clergy, and the judicial authority of the parliaments, were now extinguished by the Assembly, The property of the Church was confiscated, as the salaries of the clergy were to be paid by the State; the cloisters and monastic orders were abolished; the clergy were to be chosen by the people; there was to be absolute religious freedom; there was a new organization of bishoprics; the press was to be free; France was divided, for purposes of government, into eighty-three departments; civil officers were to be chosen, directly or indirectly, by popular vote; hereditary nobility, with titles and coats-of-arms, was swept away. The equality of all citizens was ordained. There was to be uniformity in measures, weights, and coinage. A uniform judicial system was instituted, with jury trials in criminal cases. THE CLERGY.--Thenceforward the clergy were divided into two classes,--those who took the required oath to the constitution (about one third of the whole number), and the "refractory" ones, who, in accordance with the Pope's will, refused it. THE CLUBS: PARIS.--While these constitutional changes were taking place, the mass of the populace were becoming more and more excited by vehement orators, who discoursed of human rights, and by inflammatory journals. _Clubs_ were organized for democratic agitation, which were named, from the places where they met, _Jacobins_ and _Cordeliers_. The latter had for their head _Danton_, with his stentorian voice, and the brilliant young journalist _Camille Desmoulins_. The _Jacobins_ aimed later at the destruction of the old institutions. The moderate monarchists, such as _Bailly_ and _La Fayette_, then formed another club (the _Feuillants_). The municipality or commune of Paris was divided into forty-eight sections, each with an assembly which served as a theater for demagogical harangues. FÊTE OF THE FEDERATION.--For a time the skies appeared bright. On the 14th of July, 1790, a great _Federative Commemoration_, or festival of civic fraternity, was held on the _Champ de Mars_ in _Paris_. _Talleyrand_ at the head of three hundred priests clad in white, with tri-color sashes, officiated at an altar in the midst of the arena. First, _La Fayette_ as president of the National Guard, then the president of the Assembly, and last the king, took an oath before the half-million of spectators to uphold the constitution. Then the queen, partaking in the common enthusiasm, held up the dauphin in her arms, and pledged his future obedience to the oath. There was unbounded joy at what was supposed to be a new millennial era of political freedom and brotherhood. The grand festival awakened sympathy and hope in all the countries of Europe. FLIGHT OF THE KING.--The hope of unity and political bliss, which exalted all minds to a high pitch of emotion, proved, before long, to be an illusive dream. The king was not ready to confirm the ordinance respecting priests, which made them civil officers; nor was he ready to declare the plotting emigrant nobles at _Coblenz_ and _Worms_ traitors. _Mirabeau_, who had enlisted in behalf of the king in a resistance to further measures for the reduction of regal authority, and in behalf of a constitutional monarchy, in which the legislative, judicial, and executive functions should be kept apart, suddenly died (April 2, 1791), at the age of forty-two. His death, caused partly by overwork of brain, and partly by dissolute habits, deprived the conservative republicans and the court of their ablest defender. No one like him was left to stem the current of revolutionary passion, which threatened to burst through all barriers. The Paris sections became more and more violent. They hindered a proposed journey of _Louis_ to _St. Cloud_. This determined him, against the urgent wishes of the queen, to escape, with his family, to the army of the _Marquis de Bouillé_, at _Montmédy_. But the fugitives were stopped in their flight, at _Varennes_, and brought back in custody to Paris. This unwise and abortive proceeding of the king, coupled with his formal annulling of all that he had done in the two years previous, had for its natural consequence his suspension from office. An insurrection of the mob, to put an end to the monarchy, was suppressed by _La Fayette_. At the end of September, _Louis_ swore to the revised constitution, and was restored to the throne. The Assembly then dissolved, to give place to another, which should complete the new political creation by needful legislation: hence it was called THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY (Oct. 1791-Sept. 1792).--It was composed of seven hundred and forty-five members, mostly young men, among them a number of eloquent orators. One-half of the body were advocates. The National Assembly, by a kind of self-denying ordinance, had voted to exclude themselves from membership in the new body, which thus lacked the benefit of their knowledge and experience. In the Assembly, on the right, were the different classes of supporters of constitutional monarchy, the _royalists_, and the _Feuillants_ (of the school of _La Fayette_). On the left, were the majority, which steadily increased in numbers, and embraced (1) the _Girondists_, or moderate republicans; (2) the _Mountain_,--so called from their higher seats in the hall,--comprising the most decided democrats or radicals. Here were the leaders of the _Jacobins_ and _Cordeliers_. A few of the _Girondists_ were for going beyond the constitution of 1791, in the direction of a republic after the model of the United States. They were enamored of the spirit of the ancient commonwealths. They were fond of recurring to the Roman orators and historians. _Roland_, _Brissot_, and _Vergniaud_ were among their leaders. THE PARISIAN POPULACE.--The populace of _Paris_ made _Pétion_, a democrat, their mayor. In the Jacobin club were _Robespierre_; _Marat_, who denounced fiercely in his journal, "The Friend of the People," as aristocrats, all classes above the common level, whether by birth or property, and the former play-actor, _D'Herbois_. _Danton_, and _Camille Desmoulins_, who belonged to the _Cordeliers_, took part in its sessions. From this company, the _Girondists_ separated after the fall of the king. The red Jacobin cap came into vogue as a badge of republicanism, and the _Marseillaise_ as its favorite inspiring song. Declaimers and journals were in full blast, stirring up the fears and wrath of the people. THE ASSEMBLY AND THE KING.--The Assembly passed penal acts against the recusant priests,--those who refused the oath; and against the emigrants, who were trying to stir up the powers of Europe against the French government in its new form. These enactments were met by the king with a veto. WAR WITH AUSTRIA AND PRUSSIA.--The authors of the French Revolution have been so generally objects of execration, and so terrible crimes were actually perpetrated in the course of it, that it is only just to note the circumstances which explain the origin of these atrocities, and which enabled violent leaders and wild passions to usurp control. The efforts of the constitutionalists to save the throne were balked by the exiles and the foreign governments. _Frederick William II_. of Prussia (1786-1797), and _Leopold II_. the emperor (1790-1792), in the Declaration of _Pilnitz_ (Aug. 27, 1791), called on the other European powers to join them in aiding _Louis XVI_. to establish a right sort of government. From Russia, Sweden, Spain, and even Switzerland, there were not wanting manifestations of hostility. The attitude of _Austria_ had the effect to bring into power a _Girondist_ ministry. They wanted war as the best means of attaining the objects which they had in view at home. On April 20, 1792, _Louis_ was compelled to go to the Assembly, and propose a declaration of war against Austria. "The courts of Europe had heaped up the fuel: the _Girondists_ applied the torch." They were not averse to a crusade in behalf of liberty. THE CONDITION OF GERMANY.--Germany consisted of a multitude of states, of which _Austria_ (which had large territories not German) and _Prussia_ were the chief, and were in constant rivalry. The Holy Roman Empire kept up its name and forms. Besides smaller sovereignties, as Saxony and Bavaria, there were two hundred and fifty petty principalities, fifty imperial cities, and several hundred knights, each with an insignificant domain subject to him. The empire was one body only in theory. National feeling had died out. The Diet had little to do, and no efficiency. Austria, which held the imperial office, and included in its extensive dominions _Milan_ and _Southern Netherlands_, had sunk into a "gloomy and soulless despotism." The reforms of _Joseph II_. produced a ferment; but after the death of _Leopold II_. (1790-1792), under _Francis II_., a sickly and selfish ruler, a reactionary policy, inspired by the dread of change, had full sway. _Thugut_, the minister of _Francis_, cared only for the acquisition of territory: the people were so many millions "to be taxed, to be drilled, to be kept down by the police." In Prussia, _Frederick William II_. (1786-1797) and his people had no feeling so strong as that of hostility to Austria, whose influence was predominant in the minor states. Prussia cared more for getting additional Polish territory than for helping the French emigrants. The Prussian people were separated by rigorous lines into three classes,--nobles, burghers, and peasants. The nobles were poor. The lawful occupations of each class were prescribed by law. "The mass of the peasantry, at least in the country east of the Elbe, were serfs attached to the soil." The offices in the army were confined to nobles, on whose absolute obedience the king could count. Blows were inflicted on the common soldier as if he were a slave. In some of the other Protestant states, the character of the government had improved. In the south and west, the serfs had been set free. In the ecclesiastical states, including the electorates of _Mentz_, _Trèves_, and _Cologne_, the prince-bishops and canons were nobles, who led a gay and luxurious life. Nowhere were poverty and wretchedness so general as in the lands of the knights. The political life of Germany, notwithstanding its abundant resources, mainly from the decay of public spirit and the want of political unity, had become stagnant and corrupt. Germany was almost incapable of vigorous, united action. CONFLICT OF LOUIS AND THE ASSEMBLY.--There was no real union between _Louis XVI._ and the Assembly. Troops of the National Guard, to the number of twenty thousand, from the provinces were to encamp near _Paris_. This measure, as well as a decree for the banishment of the non-juring clergy, the king refused to sanction. The Girondist ministers laid down their office. A mob burst into the Tuileries: they put on the king's head a Jacobin cap, but he remained calm and steadfast in his refusal to assent to the decrees. _La Fayette_ came to Paris from the Northern army, to restore order; but the queen treated him with habitual distrust, and he fell under suspicion with the radicals. He went back to the army without effecting any thing. IMPRISONMENT OF THE KING.--Prussia had joined its rival, Austria. _Ferdinand of Brunswick_, an officer trained under _Frederick the Great_, commanded the Prussian forces. He issued (July 25) a threatening proclamation to the French people. There were three French armies in the field, under _Rochambeau_, _La Fayette_, and _Luckner_; but the fire of the Revolution had not yet entered into the veins of the soldiers. Military reverses heightened the revolutionary excitement in Paris. The municipal government was broken up by _Danton_ and his associates, with the mob of poor and desperate partisans at their back; and its place was taken by commissioners from the sections. An armed throng again attacked the Tuileries. The king took refuge in the hall of the Assembly. The Swiss guards fought bravely against the assailants, when they received an order from him to cease firing. The result was that they were slaughtered without mercy. The uniform composure of the king in the most trying situations, and his conscientious feelings, were a poor substitute for intellectual force. The Assembly voted to suspend the exercise of his authority, to put him and his family under surveillance, to hand over the young prince to the custody of a person charged with his education, and to call a national convention to draw up a constitution. The royal family were given into the hands of the Paris commune, and lodged as prisoners, in apartments scantily furnished, in the castle called _the Temple_. MASSACRES OF SEPTEMBER.--The blundering of the royalists, their intrigues, and the pressure of the coalition of foreign enemies, had thrown the power into the hands of the _Jacobins_. The city council, and _Danton_, the minister of justice, were really supreme, although the _Girondists_ had a share in the new ministry. _La Fayette_ was accused and proscribed, and fled from the country. He was captured by the Austrians, and kept in prison at _Olmutz_ until 1797. The news of the advance of the allies led to the "massacres of September," when the prisons in Paris, which had been filled with priests and laymen arrested on charges of complicity with the enemies of liberty, were entered by ruffians acting under influence of _Marat_ and the commune's "committee of surveillance," and, after "a burlesque trial" before an armed jury, were murdered. In _Versailles_, _Lyons_, _Orleans_, and other towns, there were like massacres. The victims of these massacres numbered about two thousand. TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF THE KING.--The National Convention was made up entirely of republicans. The monarchy was abolished, and France was declared a republic. The Girondists had at first the preponderance in numbers; but the Jacobins, led by _Robespierre_, _Danton_, _Marat_, _Couthon_, _Fouché_, the _Duke of Orleans_ (who called himself _Philip Égalité_), _St. Just_, _Billaud-Varenne_, _Barère,_ were supported by the clubs and the city council, and by the savage populace of the sections,--the _sans culottes_. The _guillotine_--a machine for beheading, which _Guillotin,_ a physician, did not invent, but recommended for use--was the instrument on which the fanatical revolutionists placed most of their reliance for the extirpation of "aristocracy." The energy of the _Jacobins_, aided by the general dread of a restoration of the royalists to power, and by the fury of the Paris populace, proved too strong for the more moderate party to withstand. The king, designated as _Louis Capet_, was arraigned before the assembly, tried, and condemned to death. There were seven hundred and twenty-one votes: his death was decreed by a small majority (Jan. 17, 1793). Through all the terrible scenes of the trial, the parting with his wife and children, and the execution (Jan. 21), _Louis_ manifested a serene and Christian temper. VICTORIES OF FRANCE.--Meantime, in France the war was felt, and justly, to be a war of self-defense. The enemies were a privileged class in alliance with foreign invaders. Volunteers flocked to the field. The troops under _Dumouriez_ and others had been successful. At _Valmy_ (Sept. 20, 1792) the allies, under _Brunswick_, were defeated. The victory of _Dumouriez_ at _Jemmappes_ was followed by the conquest of the Austrian Netherlands (Nov., 1792). _Savoy_ and _Nice_ were annexed to France. The _Scheldt_ was declared free and open to commerce, and _Antwerp_ was made an open port. CHAPTER II. FROM THE EXECUTION OF LOUIS XVI. TO THE FALL OF ROBESPIERRE (JAN. 21, 1793-JULY 27, 1794). THE FIRST COALITION.-The execution of the king was the signal for the union of the European powers against France. The intention of the revolutionary party to propagate their system in other countries afforded one excuse for this interference. The Convention (Nov. 19, 1792) had offered their assistance to peoples wishing to throw off the existing governments. Another reason was the recent annexations, and the proceedings in respect to the free navigation of the _Scheldt_. The main ground and cement of the coalition was the dread which the governments felt of revolutionary movements among their own subjects, from their sympathy with the new institutions in France. POLITICS IN ENGLAND.--The reason just mentioned was operative in Great Britain. The revolution of 1688 had given power to a group of Whig families and their retainers. To shake off this Whig control, which had long continued, was a constant aim of _George III_. In _William Pitt_, the younger, he found a minister capable, under the favoring circumstances, of achieving this result. He was made prime minister in 1783, when he was only twenty-five years old. The king, in 1788, had been attacked with insanity; and while he was thus afflicted, _George_, _Prince of Wales_, who was unpopular on account of his loose morals, ruled as regent. The regent affiliated with the Whigs, but _Pitt_ retained his office. The leader of the liberal party was _Charles James Fox_, a man of noble talents and generous instincts, but notoriously irregular in his habits. The sympathy in England with the Revolution of 1789 was widely diffused. _Edmund Burke_, however, the great philosophical statesman, who had defended the cause of freedom in the American War, was alarmed by the events in France, and still more by the theories of human rights propounded by the enthusiastic friends of the Revolution. These ideas were set forth in England, in an offensive form, in the writings of _Thomas Paine_. _Burke_ published, in 1790, his _Reflections on the French Revolution_, in which he attacked as visionary the political notions of the French school in regard to human rights, and denounced them for their dangerous tendency. He separated from his party, and publicly broke friendship with _Fox_. Pitt was personally averse to war with France, but was driven into it by the prevailing sentiment. The anti-revolutionary feeling excited by the news of the death of _Louis_ moved England to an armed interference which involved the most important consequences to all Europe. A Tory minister, _Pitt_ was supported in the long struggle in Europe by a majority of the Whigs. In the next twenty years, Great Britain, by her military strength on the land, and much more on the sea, and in particular by her wealth, freely poured out in subsidies to her allies on the Continent, was a powerful, as well as the most persevering, antagonist of France. FALL OF THE GIRONDISTS.--The advance of the allied armies increased the violence and strengthened the hands of the Jacobins. _Dumouriez_ lost a battle in _Neerwinden_ (March 18, 1793), and fell back, through Belgium, to the French frontier. He was in sympathy with the _Girondists_, and complained of the doings of the _Jacobins_ in Paris and in his army. Being called to account, he went over to the Austrians. This desertion weakened the Girondist party, and put new force into the party of _Jacobins_. At the same time, news came of a royalist revolt in the West, and of conflicts between the Jacobins and their adversaries in the cities of the South. Danton, who understood that "audacity" was the secret of success, procured the appointment by the convention of a _Committee of Public Safety_ (April 6, 1793), which was to exercise the most frightful dictatorship known in history. A "committee of general security" was put in charge of the police of the whole country. The commune of Paris co-operated in the energetic efforts of the Jacobin leaders to collect recruits and to strengthen the military force. The three chiefs were _Danton, Marat_, and _Robespierre_. There was a mortal struggle between the advocates of order and the apostles of anarchy. The fate of the moderates and Girondists was sealed by a great insurrection in Paris, and an invasion of the Convention by an armed force. The violent party had at their back eighty thousand National Guards, who hemmed in the Convention. Twenty-nine Girondist leaders were placed under arrest. Their party fell. The boldest and most reckless faction, which had the Paris commune behind it, triumphed. WAR OF LA VENDÉE.--Outside of _Paris_, in other parts of France, there were risings against the Jacobin rule. The most formidable of these was in the West, where the relation of the nobles to the peasants had been kindly, and where the common people looked on the violent proceedings at Paris with anger and disgust. Thus began the war of _La Vendée_, a terrible episode of civil strife, in which the people of that region were subdued, but not until after protracted conflict and immense slaughter. THE JACOBIN REVOLUTION.--_Danton_ and the other revolutionary leaders showed a tremendous energy in their attack on both domestic and foreign enemies. A levy was ordered of the whole male population capable of bearing arms. A _maximum_ price was fixed by law for commodities, and also for wages. The government paid its dues in depreciated _assignats_ at the face value. Its emissaries were in all parts of France, stirring up the people and forming revolutionary committees. Thus a system of revolutionary government was everywhere established. A new _constitution_, of an extreme democratic type, was offered to the acceptance of the people. This dominion of the _Jacobins_, it must be observed, was a second revolution. The Revolution of 1792 was as different from that of 1789 as was the proposed constitution of 1793 from that of 1791. The insurrections, except at _Lyons_ and _Toulon_ and in _La Vendée_, were soon quelled. The Jacobin rule was identified with the cause of patriotism in arms against foreign invasion, and with antipathy to the restoration of Bourbon royalty and misrule. In _Paris_, the revolutionary tribunal was filling the prisons with the suspected, and sending daily its wagon-loads of victims to the guillotine. MILITARY SUCCESSES OF FRANCE.-The achievements of the great coalition were not at all in proportion to its apparent strength. It was weakened by mutual jealousies and inefficient commanders. In the South, the Spaniards and Piedmontese did not profit by their successes. In the North and North-east, the summer of 1793 was partly wasted by the English, Austrians, and Prussians, in long sieges and in dissensions among themselves. Meantime the French army was growing stronger, and more and more on fire with patriotic ardor. The _Duke of York_, an incapable general, was obliged to raise the siege of _Dunkirk_ (Sept. 8, 1793). The forces of the coalition began to retire from ground that they had won. At _Paris_, _Carnot's_ efficient management of military affairs gave France an advantage over her foes. The Prussians were inactive on the Rhine; and _Jourdan_, reinforced by a French detachment from that quarter, defeated the Austrians at _Wattignies_. By the movements of _Hoche_, the allies were driven out of Alsace. _Lyons_, after a stubborn defense, was captured and savagely punished, and the brave _Vendeans_ were completely defeated by _Kleber_ at _Savenay_. Near the end of the year, _Toulon_, then in revolt, was captured. At the siege, a young artillery officer, _Napoleon Bonaparte_, first distinguished himself by pointing out the proper spot for the planting of batteries that would drive away the English and Spanish fleets, and by carrying out his project. BONAPARTE.--Napoleon was born on the island of _Corsica_, Aug. 15, 1769, two months after Corsica became subject to the French. His family, on both sides, were Italians. _Napoleon_ himself never became so fully master of the French tongue that he did not betray in his speech his foreign extraction. He was educated at the military school of _Brienne_ (1779-1784), and then went to the military school at _Paris_. His principal studies were mathematics and history. He quickly made manifest his military talents, and seems first to have aspired to gain distinction and power, in this line, in Corsica. His connection was at first with the _Jacobins_, although he afterwards denied it. He had imbibed the ideas of the Revolution, and saw that in the service of the leaders in the war there was opened to him a military career. He turned against his patriotic countryman, _Paoli_, when the latter sought to separate Corsica from France, at that time under the Jacobin rule. THE REIGN OF TERROR.--The Reign of Terror had now established itself in France. The Committee of Public Safety wielded absolute power. Every man, woman, and child was called upon to take part in the defense of the country. The property of all the "emigrants" and prisoners of state was seized. Whoever was suspected of being hostile to the established tyranny was thrown into prison. Even to be lukewarm in adhesion to it, was a serious offense. Summary trials were followed by swift executions. The tenderness of youth and the venerableness of age were no protection. Day after day, the stream of human blood continued to flow. A new calendar was ordained: Sept. 22, 1792, was the beginning of the year _one_. There was a new division of months; in the room of the week, each tenth day was made a holiday. The commune of _Paris_, followed by other cities, began a crusade against Christianity. Fashions of dress, modes of speech, and manners were revolutionized. Every vestige of "aristocracy" was to be swept off the earth. There was a wild license given to divorce and to profligacy. _Paris_ was like a camp where young soldiers were drilled, weapons were forged, and lint and bandages made ready for the wounded. There were seen, even in the hall of the Convention, throngs of coarse and fierce men, and of coarser and fiercer women, with their songs and wild outcries and gestures. The commune of _Paris_ instituted a sacrilegious festival in the ancient cathedral of Notre Dame, where an actress was enthroned as "Goddess of Liberty." There were priests and bishops who abjured the Christian faith, and there were others who adhered to it at the peril of their lives. The prisons, which were packed with all classes, were theaters of strange and thrilling scenes. In many cases, death, made familiar, ceased to terrify. Crowds escorted the batch of victims carried on carts each day to the place of execution, and insulted them with their brutal shouts. The arrested Girondist deputies were executed. Some of the leaders of that party, including _Roland_, perished by suicide. Among the eminent persons sent to the guillotine were the eloquent _Vergniaud, Brissot, Bailly, Malesherbes_ (the brave advocate who had defended _Louis XVI._), and _Madame Roland_; also the infamous _Duke of Orleans_, who had intrigued to get himself raised to the throne. _Marie Antoinette_, her hair turned white in the tragic scenes through which she had passed, miserably clad, was dragged before the merciless tribunal. There she was insulted with foul accusations which nobody believed. After the mockery of a trial, she was carried like a common criminal, in a cart, with her arms bound, to the place of execution (Oct. 16). Her dignity and serenity, her pallid countenance, and the simple, pathetic words uttered by her at her arraignment, touched for the moment the hardened hearts of the imbruted spectators. Her sad fate has blinded many to the calamitous errors committed by her in the days of her power. THE JACOBIN CHIEFS.--The Reign of Terror was not confined to Paris. The unexampled atrocities there were repeated in the other large towns with like circumstances of barbarity. A species of fanaticism ruled and raged in the land. The mania, if one may so call it, reached its height in such chiefs of the revolutionary party as _Marat, Billaud_, and _Robespierre_. In _Marat_ especially, the mastery gained by one idea almost amounted to mental disorder. He demanded first five hundred heads, then (in Sept., 1793) forty thousand; then, six weeks later, two hundred and seventy thousand. It did seem to be a "homicidal mania." _Marat_ was assassinated by a young maiden, _Charlotte Corday_, who devoted herself to the task of ridding the world of such a monster. DEATH OF DANTON.--The Jacobin leaders found their ideal of virtue in the Spartan spirit. Infatuated by _Rousseau_'s theory of the omnipotence of the state, in which the individual is merged and lost under the despotism of the majority, they looked on the massacre of countless persons, guilty of no crime, as a good deed. At length men began to grow weary of this frightful tyranny. The leaders became divided among themselves. _Danton_, though often the advocate of violent measures, was a statesman, and, to his credit be it said, halted at a point where the others advanced. He made an objection to the confounding of the innocent with the guilty. _Hébert_ and the leaders of the commune, with their atheism, as dangerous political rivals, were offensive to _Robespierre_, who was a deist. He held a sort of middle position, had most power with the Jacobins, and was enabled to crush and destroy his associates. He was a dull man, of a quiet mien, often seen with a nosegay in his hand, and bloodthirsty according to a precise theory. His ascendency gave him the power, after scenes of tempestuous debate, to inflict first on _Hébert_, on _Clootz_, and his other confederates, and then on _Danton_ and the Dantonist chiefs, the same death by the guillotine to which they had doomed so many. _Robespierre_ abolished the worship of Reason, and caused the Convention to pass a resolution acknowledging the existence of a supreme Being, in whose honor fêtes were held. Christianity was denounced as a base superstition. CRUELTIES IN THE PROVINCES.--When _Robespierre_ was supreme, the Reign of Terror became still more terrible. In trials, the hearing of evidence and of argument were dispensed with. The prisons were crowded with "suspects." Alleged conspiracies in prisons were made a pretext for wholesale slaughter under the guillotine. Suicide and madness were of common occurrence. Even before _Robespierre's_ predominance there had been in the provinces scenes of horror like those which occurred in the capital. The revolted cities, as _Lyons_ and _Toulon_, were punished with savage ferocity. At _Lyons_, men, women, and children in masses were shot down with artillery. Those who were not killed with the shot were cut in pieces by the soldiery. At _Nantes_ prisoners were bound together in pairs, and huddled together in barges, which were scuttled and set afloat down the Loire. For these atrocities the deputy _Carrier_ was responsible. FRENCH VICTORIES.--Yet, at this time, the arms of the republic, except on the sea, where the French fleet was badly beaten by the English, were mostly successful. The _Duke of York_ was vanquished on the Belgian frontier, and the defeat of the allies at _Fleurus_ (June 26, 1794) obliged them to evacuate Belgium. THE BONAPARTES Charles Bonaparte, _m._ Letitia Ramolino. | +--1, Joseph, King of Spain, _d._ 1844. | | | | +--Lucien, Cardinal. | | | | +--Zénaïde, | _m._ | +--Charles, _d._ 1857 | | +--3, Lucien, Prince of Canino, d .1840. | | | +--Lucien. | | | +--Pierre. | +--2, NAPOLEON I, 1804-1814, (deposed, _d._ 1821), _m._ | (1), Maria Louisa, daughter of Emperor Francis II. | | | +--Napoleon, Duke of Reichstadt (Napoleon II), _d._ 1832. | | (2), Josephine, _m._ General Beauharnais. | | | +--Eugene, Duke of Leuchtenberg, _d._ 1824. _m._ | | Augusta, daughter of Maximilian Joseph of Bavaria. | | | | | +--Josephine, _m._ Oscar I of Sweden. | | | +--Hortense, | _m._ +--4, Louis, King of Holland, _d._ 1846. | | | +--Napoleon Charles, _d._ 1807. | | | +--Napoleon Louis, _d._ 1831. | | | +--LOUIS NAPOLEON III, 1852-1870, _d._ 1873. _m._ | Eugenie, Countess of Teba | | | +--Napoleon, _d._ 1879. | +--5, Caroline, _m._ Joachim Murat, King of Naples, shot 1815. | +--6, Jerome, King of Westphalia, _d._ 1860, _m._ Catharine of Wurtemberg. | +--Napoleon. _m._ Clotilde, d. of Victor Emmanuel II of Italy | +--NAPOLEAN VICTOR JEROME FREDERIC. CHAPTER III. FROM THE FALL OF ROBESPIERRE TO THE EMPIRE OF NAPOLEON (1794-1804). FALL OF ROBESPIERRE (9TH THERMIDOR).--A reaction set in against the cruelties of Jacobinism. Men--even the judges of the murderous tribunal--grew weary of bloodshed. The authority of _Robespierre_ began to wane, even with his colleagues. The assembly at length turned against him. On July 27 (the _9th Thermidor_, according to the new calendar) he was arrested. He was released, but was again seized, and, with _St. Just, Couthon_, and most of the leaders of the commune, was guillotined. Bare statistics, accompanied by no thrilling descriptions, convey a strong impression of the atrocities of the Reign of Terror. According to _M. Taine_, "there were guillotined at _Paris_, between April 16, 1793, and the 9th Thermidor, 2,625 persons. The same process went forward all over France. In Arras, 299 men and 93 women; in Orange, 331 persons; in Nantes, 1,971; in Lyons, 1,684 (avowedly, but a correspondent of Robespierre estimates the total at 6,000); in the _fusillades_ (deaths by shooting) of _Toulon_, more than 1,000; in the _noyades_ (drownings) of Nantes, nearly 5,000 perished. In the eight departments of the West, it is reckoned that nearly half a million perished." The deaths from want, under the Jacobin government, _M. Taine_ thinks, much exceeded a million. "France was on the brink of a great famine on the Asiatic scale." REACTION: CONTROL OF THE MODERATES.--The Reign of Terror was brought to an end. The moderates controlled the Convention. The prison doors were opened, and the multitude of suspects were set free. The revolutionary tribunal was broken down. The commune of Paris was so shaped as to strip it of its most dangerous powers. The Jacobin and other incendiary clubs were suppressed. Religion was declared to be free, and the churches were opened to their congregations. The Girondist deputies who survived were invited back to their seats in the Convention. The National Guards were filled up from the middle class,--the _bourgeoisie_. Little mercy was shown to the Jacobins anywhere. The reaction was seen in the altered character of society and of manners. Those who had acquired wealth in the late time by the changes of property came to the front. The old fondness for dress and gayety reappeared. Paris was again alive with balls and other festive entertainments. The salons were crowded with elegant youth of the higher class (the _jeunesse dorée_). The party of Terror were cowed; but in consequence of the rise in the cost of provisions, and of the distress caused by it, and by the sudden abrogation of tyrannical laws settling the price of food and wages, there were two fierce outbreakings of the mob of Paris (April 1, May 20, 1795). These were quelled, and the power of the Jacobins was finally crushed. The moderates had now to guard against the increasing strength and rising hopes of the royalists. CONQUEST OF HOLLAND: PRUSSIA.--The armies of France were everywhere successful. Through the victories of _Jourdan_ and _Pichegru_, Holland was conquered, and converted into the _Batavian Republic_, and Dutch Flanders surrendered to France. The Low Countries were now a dependency of the French Republic (1794-1795). _Hoche_, an excellent general, partly by conciliation, reduced the West--the theater of the La Vendée revolt--to submission. The English and emigrants landed in _Quiberon_, on the coast of Brittany, but were defeated. The coalition was broken up, first by the withdrawal of Prussia, which ceded (April 5, 1795), and, in a secret article, ceded permanently, its territories on the left bank of the Rhine to the French, for a compensation to be obtained from secularized German states,--that is, states in which the old ecclesiastical rule should be abolished. A few months later (July, 1795), Spain concluded peace, ceding _St. Domingo_ to the Republic. The soldiers of France were fast becoming trained, and their confidence rose with their increasing success. This success was due largely to the weak generalship of the allies. The French were commonly hard masters in the conquered places. On the other hand, however, they effected a welcome abolition of old feudal inequalities and abuses. CONSTITUTION OF 1995.--Meanwhile, there was disaffection, especially in the cities, with the rule by the Convention. In the cities there was distress, except in the moneyed class. There was a yearning for a strong and stable government. The Convention framed and submitted to the nation a new constitution, the _third_ in the order of political fabrics of this sort. There were to be seven hundred and fifty legislators, divided into two bodies,--the Council of Elders, or the _Ancients_, of two hundred and fifty, and the _Council of Five Hundred_. The executive power was given to a _Directory_ of five persons. Two-thirds of the councils for the first term were to be taken from the Convention. The constitution, thus conservative and anti-Jacobin in its character, was well received. But there was dissatisfaction in the reactionary parties; and a great insurrection of the royalist middle class in Paris (Oct. 5, 1795, the _13th Vendémaire_) was promptly put down by the resolute action of _Bonaparte_, to whom had been given the command of the troops of the city. It was the royalist and the anti-republican parties which now threatened the government. But a new authority, the will of the _army_, was beginning plainly to disclose itself. The dread of Jacobinism still existed. What the people more and more craved was internal tranquillity and order. BONAPARTE IN ITALY: TO THE PEACE OF CAMPO FORMIO.--The assignats became worthless. This bankruptcy had one benefit: it relieved the state of its debt, and brought coin into circulation. A triple attack was planned by _Carnot_ against Austria. In Germany, _Jourdan_ and _Moreau_ were driven back by the Archduke _Charles_ of Austria. But a splendid success attended the arms of _Bonaparte_ in the attack on the Austrian power in Italy. He had been lately married to _Josephine Beauharnais_, the widow of a French general guillotined in 1794, the only woman to whom he appears ever to have been warmly attached. There were two children by her former marriage,--_Eugène_ (1781-1824), and _Hortense_ (1783-1837) who married _Louis Bonaparte_. Starting from Nice, and following the coast, Bonaparte defeated the Austrians and Piedmontese separately, and forced the latter to conclude a distinct peace, which ceded _Savoy_ and _Nice_ to France. He exemplified in this campaign the characteristics which in after-years contributed essentially to his success as a general. He struck the enemy before they could combine their forces. He did not, after the old method, wait to capture all the fortresses in his path, but by swift marches made his attacks at unexpected places and times. He defeated the Austrians after a brief struggle at the bridge of _Lodi_ on the Adda, captured _Milan_, overran Lombardy as far as Mantua, and forced the Pope, and Parma, Modena, and Naples, to purchase peace by giving up their treasures of art. Thus began the custom of despoiling conquered capitals, and other subjugated cities, of works of art, which went to adorn and enrich Paris,--a new custom among civilized Christian nations. _Wurmser_, the veteran Austrian general, was defeated in a series of engagements; and, after him, another great Austrian army, under _Alvinzi_, was vanquished at _Arcola_ (Nov. 14-17, 1796) and at _Rivoli_ (Jan. 14, 1797). _Bonaparte_ now crossed the Alps to meet the Archduke _Charles_, who had cleared Germany of its invaders. The French general, although his own situation was not free from peril, was able to dictate the terms of peace. In the treaty of _Campo Formio_ (Oct. 17, 1797), Austria ceded the Belgian provinces to France, recognized the _Cisalpine Republic_ to be established by _Bonaparte_ in North Italy, and secretly consented to the cession of the German provinces on the left bank of the Rhine. In return, he gave _Venice_ to Austria, in disregard of the principles of international law, and perfidiously as regards that republic, which had made its peace with him, and become a democracy dependent on France. In this treaty with Austria, there was another secret stipulation that Prussia should not be indemnified in Germany for her losses on the west of the Rhine. Thus _Napoleon_ used the selfishness of the allies to divide them from one another. At _Tolentino_ in February the Pope had ceded for the _Cispadane Republic_ the _Romagna_, _Bologna_, and _Ferrara_. A young man of twenty-seven, Bonaparte had given proof of his astonishing military genius by a series of victories over large armies and experienced generals; and he had evinced equally his skill, as well as his lack of principle, in the field of diplomacy. He had won admiration from his enemies by his evident freedom from the revolutionary fanaticism, and his contempt for declamation about "the rights of man." Returning to _Paris_, he was received with acclamation, but thought it politic to avoid publicity, and to live quietly in his modest dwelling. COUP D'ÉTAT: 18 FRUCTIDOR (Sept. 4, 1797).--During _Bonaparte's_ absence, the royalist and reactionary faction had gained ground in the governing bodies. _Pichegru_ was plotting on that side. These schemes had been baffled with the timely assistance of a detachment of troops sent to _Paris_ by Bonaparte under _Augereau_. On Sept. 4 (the 18th Fructidor), the palace of the Tuileries, where the councils met, was surrounded. The reactionary deputies were arrested; _Pichegru_ and his fellow-conspirators were banished. This _coup d'état_ sealed the triumph of the republicans, but it was effected through the army. THE EGYPTIAN EXPEDITION.--The Directory were conscious of weakness, and looked with alarm and distrust on the young general, who was fast becoming the idol of the people, as well as of the army. They wished him to attempt a descent on England. He preferred, in the room of this impracticable venture, to conduct an expedition to _Egypt_, with the design of getting control, if possible, of the Eastern Mediterranean, and of striking at the possessions of Great Britain in _India_. To this scheme the Directory, quite willing to have him at a distance, readily consented. Hiding his plans until all was ready, he sailed from _Toulon_ (May 19, 1798) with a strong fleet and army; on his way captured _Malta_ through treachery of the knights, and landed safely in Egypt. With him were some of the best of the French generals, and a large company of scientific men. He defeated the _Mamelukes_ in a great battle fought within sight of the _Pyramids_. But at _Aboukir_, in the _Battle of the Nile_, the French fleet was destroyed by the English naval force under _Nelson_. The French army was thus cut off from the means of return. Bonaparte invaded _Syria_, but was prevented by the English fleet from getting a foothold on the coast. He had to raise the siege of _Acre_, and returned to Egypt, where he vanquished the Turks at _Aboukir_. REVERSES OF FRANCE IN ITALY.--Here _Bonaparte_ received information which determined him to leave the army under the command of _Kléber_, and himself to return to France. The European powers had once more taken up arms. Among the causes of the renewal of the war were the formation by the French of the _Roman Republic_ out of the dominion of the Pope, the establishment of the _Helvetian Republic_ in Switzerland, and the change of _Genoa_ by its own act into the _Ligurian Republic_. Prussia, since 1795, from selfish motives had cooperated with France, and stood aloof from the new--the _second_--coalition. _Paul I_., emperor of Russia, was active against the French Republic, and _Pitt_ was its indefatigable enemy. The Czar had been made Grand Master of the Knights of Malta, and made much of this empty dignity. The victory of _Nelson_ at _Aboukir_ cemented the union of the hostile powers, with whom the Sultan was now joined. The management of the French armies by the government at _Paris_ was unskillful. _Naples_, to be sure, was overcome, and transformed into the _Parthenopæan Republic_. The king of _Sardinia_ was driven out of Piedmont. But _Jourdan_ was defeated by the Archduke _Charles_, and retreated across the Rhine. The Austrians and the Russian army under _Suvoroff_, a veteran officer, were victorious south of the Alps (June, 1799); _Moreau_ and _Macdonald_ were defeated at _Trebbia_. The French were defeated again at _Novi_ (Aug. 15), and lost almost all Italy. The king of Naples came back, and thousands of republicans there were cruelly put to death,--a proscription in which _Nelson_ had a part. It was the victory of _Masséna_, over the Russians at _Zurich_, that saved France itself from invasion. OVERTHROW OF THE DIRECTORY: 18TH BRUMAIRE.--These reverses added to the unpopularity of the Directory. The discontent of the Jacobins with their government had given rise to strong measures of repression. On the other hand, the wealthy class were disgusted at the renewal of the war. A rising was threatened in _La Vendee_. The feeling was widely diffused, that there was need of a strong man at the helm to save the ship of state from another terrible shipwreck. At this juncture _Napoleon_ appeared in _Paris_, and was greeted with enthusiasm. _Sieyès_ and one other director, with a majority of the _Ancients_, agreed to another _coup d'état_ which should make Bonaparte the first magistrate. The garrison of Paris was ready to lend its aid. The resistance of the _Council of five Hundred_ at _St. Cloud_ was baffled by _Lucien Bonaparte_, Napoleon's brother, their president, and by the use of military force. Thus there was accomplished the revolution of the _18th Brumaire_ (Nov. 9, 1799). THE CONSULATE.--In the provisional government set up by the remnant of the council, _Napoleon_ only gradually assumed the chief rôle. He was later enabled to take and to hold supreme power, because of the mutual fear of royalists and republicans, their common dread of Jacobinism, and a prevailing conviction that safety must be sought in the sway of an individual, representing neither extreme, and strong enough to hold all in check. Yet the event evinced the supremacy now gained by the military power. _Napoleon_ immediately made excellent financial reforms, and repealed or softened the laws against the "emigrants" and the priests. By such mild and conservative measures, the prosperity of France began to be renewed. The constitution of the year VIII., as planned by _Sieyès_ and modified by _Bonaparte_, kept up the semblance, without much of the reality, of democracy. The checks on the power of the First Consul were more nominal than real. The mass of the people had power only to vote for lists of citizens, out of whom all the higher officers were to be selected by successive steps. All legislation was initiated by the _Council of State_; the _Tribunate_ of a hundred members could discuss proposals made thus, but could not act; the _Legislative Chamber_ of three hundred could vote, but not discuss; and the _Senate_ of eighty was chosen for life, with little to do. This constitution of 1799, in opposition to the communal system of 1789 and 1791, established a _centralized_ administration which destroyed local liberty and self-government. France no longer represented in other countries the cause of liberty. In this character its armies had been hailed in Italy, where a yearning for national unity was awakened. Equality, not liberty, was all that the cause of France now represented. Napoleon could not have expected that his overtures of peace would be accepted by Austria. The rough, impolitic response made by England, helped him by rousing resentment in France. MARENGO: PEACE OF LUNGVILLE.--If _Sieyès_ and others expected that _Napoleon_ would merely direct military operations from _Paris_, they were soon undeceived. _Masséna_ was at the head of the army in Italy, and found it most difficult to hold _Genoa_ against the Austrians. _Moreau_ was at the head of the army in Germany. Apart from other reasons for taking the field in person, it would not have been safe for the new ruler of France to allow himself to be eclipsed in military fame by _Moreau_. _Napoleon_, as usual veiling his purpose, gradually collected a large army, and between May 16 and 19, 1800, led his troops, and dragged his cannon, over the _Great St. Bernard Pass_ into Italy, threw himself in the rear of _Melas_, the Austrian general, and entered Milan. He appears, however, to have used less than his usual caution, probably from fear that _Melas_ might escape; so that he was attacked at _Marengo_ (June 14), by that general, at a moment when the French forces were not sufficiently concentrated. What threatened to be a disastrous defeat for the French, however, was turned into a signal victory by the timely arrival of _Desaix_; and the name of _Marengo_ rang through Europe. In December, _Moreau_ won the great victory of _Hohenlinden_ over the Archduke _John_. In February, 1801, the peace of _Lunéville_ was concluded. France kept its "natural boundaries," Belgium and the west of the Rhine. The _Italian republics_, except Rome and Naples, were restored. _Tuscany_ was to be given to a prince of Spain, a country now dependent on France. The German princes who lost territory were to be indemnified by "secularizing" German ecclesiastical states, and vied with one another in imploring favors of the conqueror. THE NORTHERN ALLIANCE: THE PEACE OF AMIENS.--England now stood alone against France. Her navies were supreme, and had captured most of the _Dutch_ as well as _French colonies_. The French army in _Egypt_ had been driven to capitulate on the condition that it should be transported in English vessels to France. Russia, Sweden, and Denmark made (1800) a defensive alliance of armed neutrality on the sea, to maintain the right of neutrals to trade with belligerents, and the doctrine that the neutral ship protects its freight (not being munitions of war) against seizure. England succeeded in ruining this alliance. _Pitt_ now retired from office. He had accomplished the legislative union of England and Ireland, by which the separate Irish Parliament had ceased to exist (1800). But he had encouraged the Irish Catholics to expect that they would be delivered from the restrictions which excluded them from the House of Commons and from many other offices. When the king refused to consent to the fulfillment of these expectations, _Pitt_ resigned (1801). _Addington_ became prime minister. England was tired of the war. Peace was concluded at _Amiens_ (March, 1802). France was to retain all her conquests on the Continent. England surrendered to France and her allies all conquests except Trinidad and Ceylon. _Malta_ was to be given back by England to the Knights of Malta. A third great civil triumph of Napoleon, added to _Luneville_ and _Amiens_, was the _Concordat_ with the Pope. REFORMS OF NAPOLEON.--Napoleon now was free to give his attention to internal reforms in France. He called into his counsels the ablest men in all departments of knowledge. In the reconstruction of political and social order, his own clear perceptions and energy were everywhere seen. He brought back from the old institutions whatever was good and valuable which the tempest of revolution had swept away. He reformed the judicial system. He caused to be framed the famous _Code_ which bears his name, and which still forms the basis of law in several European countries. He reduced the power of the communes, and centralized the administration of government by the system of prefects and sub-prefects. Through the _Concordat_, he renewed the connection of the Catholic Church of France with Rome, reserving, however, to the executive the nomination of archbishops and bishops, whom the government was to support, and guarding, in the spirit of the Gallican theory, the supremacy of the civil authority. Full toleration was secured for non-Catholics. _Napoleon_ personally participated in the religious ceremonies which attended the formal restoration of the old system of worship where "the Goddess of Reason" had been enthroned during the Terror. The ultimate effect of the _Concordat_ was to build up the ultramontane, or papal, theory and sway within the church of France. Education was organized by the establishment of the university, the comprehensive name for the entire educational system of the country. All branches of technical instruction were carefully fostered. The devotees of science were encouraged with an enlightened sympathy and liberal aid. A better organization and discipline were brought into the army. CHARACTER OF THE CHANGES.--The changes made by _Napoleon_, while they secured the _equality_ of all Frenchmen before the law, did nothing to rescue civil _liberty_, such as the republicans had aimed to secure. They were all in the direction of monarchy. Distinctions, like the Legion of Honor, were invented; titles were instituted; a new aristocracy, made up of relics of the old _noblesse_ and of fresh recruits, was created; _Napoleon_ was declared to be consul for life, and the mechanism of the government was converted into a practical dictatorship. Unsparing in his treatment of Jacobins, he aimed still to moderate the passions of party. His activity was seen in an excellent system of public works, such as canals and noble highways, in new towns, and in magnificent buildings which he erected in Paris. At the same time, he went as far as it was safe to go in bringing in monarchical manners and luxuries. He himself adopted a regal way of living. He had no faith in democracy, and spoke with unaffected scorn of "ideology," or the theoretical statesmanship which based itself on ideas of "human rights" in the matter of exercising government. The press was placed under stringent police regulation. _Napoleon's_ family began to contend, with "Corsican shamelessness," for high honors. A feud soon came to exist between them and the _Beauharnais_,--the family of _Josephine_. Was the principle of heredity to come back? RENEWED WAR WITH ENGLAND.--In 1803 the war was renewed with England. That _Napoleon_ was resolved to dictate in European affairs, as he was practical dictator in the French Republic, was plain. He controlled the republics dependent on France. He annexed _Piedmont_. He made the _Spanish Bourbons_ do his bidding. He intervened in _Germany_; among other things, offending Austria by enlarging the bounds of Prussia. He exercised over the minor German states the influence of which Austria had been robbed. He complained of the strictures of the English press, and of the asylum granted in England to conspirators against his rule. He was angry that _Malta_ was not given up, which England refused to do on account of an aggrandizement of France not consistent with the Peace of Amiens. There were provocations on both sides, and war was inevitable. PLAN OF INVADING ENGLAND.--Napoleon seized _Hanover_. He talked of making a descent on England. He gathered a vast army near _Boulogne_, and constructed an immense flotilla for the transportation of it across the Channel. His design was to decoy away the British fleet, and then to concentrate enough ships of his own in the Channel to protect the passage of his forces. CHAPTER IV. FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE EMPIBE TO THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN (1804-1812). THE EMPIRE (1804).--Various attempts had been made against _Napoleon's_ life. An "infernal machine" was exploded near his carriage. On that occasion, only the swift driving of the coachman saved him from death (1800). There were now royalist plots against his life, of which _Count d'Artois_ was cognizant. _Pichegru_ was an accomplice; and _Moreau_, although not favoring the restoration of the Bourbons, was not entirely innocent. The former died in prison; _Moreau_ escaped to America. Napoleon, exasperated by these plots, caused the _Duke d'Enghien_, a young prince of the Condé branch of the Bourbons, to be seized on German territory,--in Baden,--and dragged away into France, where, at _Vincennes_, after a hurried military examination, he was shot, and buried in a grave that had been dug for him before the sentence was pronounced. Of this act of Napoleon, it was said by _Fouché_, "It was worse than a crime: it was a blunder." The young prince was really innocent. He was a victim of the natural, but violent, wrath of Napoleon, who wanted to strike a blow that his enemies would feel. The event opened the way for him--as it was perhaps intended that it should--to the object of his ambition, the imperial title and throne. He was authorized to adopt a successor. This, the different parties felt, would make his government stable and secure. He was proclaimed emperor, the election being ratified by popular vote. The crown was to be handed down in his family. In imitation of _Charlemagne_, whom he affected to consider a Frenchman and a predecessor, he was crowned, with splendid pomp, by Pope _Pius VII_. (Dec. 2, 1804), in Notre Dame. He took the crown from the Pope's hands, and placed it on his own head. THE NEW ROYALTY.--The emperor surrounded himself with the insignia and ceremonies of royalty. The members of his family became princes and princesses. A new nobility, with the various ancient titles, was called into being. He made his generals--eighteen in number, most of whom had sprung from the ranks--marshals. He first diminished the number of the _Tribunate_, then (1807) abolished it. The republic of 1789 had now passed into an absolute military monarchy. THIRD COALITION AGAINST FRANCE (1805).--_Napoleon_ turned the Italian Republic into a vassal monarchy, with himself for its ruler (1805). He incorporated _Genoa_ with France. His step-son, _Eugène Beauharnais_, he made viceroy of _Italy_. _Pitt_ had come back to office. Events since the death of the _Duke d'Enghien_ made it possible for him to create the third coalition of England (in union with Austria, Russia, and Sweden) for restoring the balance of power in Europe. _Paul I_. of Russia had been won over from the previous coalition by the adroit efforts of _Napoleon_, and by the Czar's hostility to England on account of _Malta_ (1800), he being grand master of the knights. His ordinary state of mind bordered on derangement, so that he was not fit to reign. Refusing to abdicate, he was assassinated by nobles (1801), and his son _Alexander I_. (1801-24) succeeded him. Russia was now reconciled to England, and the Northern Neutrality Convention against her maritime oppression was dissolved. POSITION OF PRUSSIA.--The king of Prussia, _Frederick William III_. (1797-1840), and the ministers whom he trusted, refused to listen to his spirited queen, _Louisa_, and the more earnest, patriotic party, by which he was urged to unite with the coalition. He clung to his policy of neutrality, and was to be bribed by the gift of _Hanover_. The attitude of Prussia, which had been governed by selfish considerations, was long the pivot on which the success of _Napoleon's_ aggressions hung. FAILURE OF VILLENEUVE.--If Napoleon ever seriously projected an invasion of England he abandoned the scheme before 1805, although he retained an army at Boulogne to alarm the English. _Villeneuve_, whose fleet was to command the Channel, had escaped from _Nelson_ and was on his way back from the West Indies. The admiralty were warned of his movement by a vessel of light draught which _Nelson_, when he could not find his foe, dispatched to inform them of the danger. _Villeneuve_, after an indecisive action against the force sent to meet him under _Sir Robert Calder_, put first into the harbor of _Ferrol_, and then repaired to _Cadiz_. _Nelson_ came back with his fleet to the Channel. ULM AND TRAFALGAR.--The allies marked out four lines of invasion. The second and principal advance was to be up the valley of the Danube, and to be pursued by the Russians and Austrians. _Napoleon_ did not wait for them to unite. He now made use of the army collected for the proposed invasion of England. He suddenly broke up his camp at _Boulogne_, and swiftly led his splendid and thoroughly drilled army across the Rhine, to the rear of the Austrian forces, of which _Mack_ was the commander. Other detachments from Hanover and Holland came down the Main to take part in the movement. The Austrians were surrounded in _Ulm_, and gave themselves up, thirty thousand in number, as prisoners of war (Oct. 17, 1805). The strategy was like that pursued in the campaign of _Marengo_: the result was even more astonishing. It was not long, however, before news came to him of a great disaster to the French on the sea. Four days after the surrender at _Ulm_, _Nelson_ achieved a grand victory off Cape _Trafalgar_, over the French and Spanish fleets. Before _Villeneuve_ decided to leave the shelter of _Cadiz_, he had been obliged to weaken himself by sending away a number of his ships. The watchword sent from the flag-ship just before the encounter--"England expects every man to do his duty"--called forth shouts of enthusiasm from the decks of the British fleet. Two-thirds of the French ships were captured or ruined. _Nelson_ himself was struck by a bullet, and died the same night. His private life was not free from grave faults, but he was the greatest naval hero England has ever produced. AUSTERLITZ: CONFEDERATION OF THE RHINE.--On the land, the career of _Napoleon_ was triumphant. The "Grand Army," with its system of corps and reserves, marched on _Vienna_, which was occupied on the 13th of November. The Russians were still to be encountered. The army of _Alexander_ was a very powerful one; but he made, instead of awaiting, the attack, and, on the 2d of December, was utterly defeated on the memorable field of _Austerlitz_. The Peace of _Pressburg_ followed (Dec. 26, 1805). Austria gave up _Venice_, which was annexed to the new Italian kingdom, of which Napoleon was the head. The _Tyrol_ went to Bavaria, whose elector was recognized as a king, as was also the elector of _Würtemberg_. Soon after, the Bourbons were dethroned at _Naples_, and Napoleon's brother _Joseph_ took that kingdom. _Bavaria_, _Baden_, _Würtemberg_, and other smaller states were united into a _Confederation of the Rhine_ (1806), with _Napoleon_ for its protector. The Holy Roman Empire from that time had no longer even the shadow of a reality. _Francis I._ was simply emperor of Austria, and Austria was greatly reduced in power. FALL OF PRUSSIA.--Prussia now stood by herself. Out of alarm at the progress of the French arms, and anger because French troops had been led across her territory without her consent, she had preferred to join the coalition. _Austerlitz_ moved her to retrace her steps. She received _Hanover_ as the price of a renewed alliance. England now declared war against Prussia. But _Fox_, who was an advocate of peace, had come into power in England (Jan. 23, 1806); and Prussia discovered that Napoleon, who was friendly to him, was negotiating for the surrender of Hanover to that country. This crowning indignity moved Prussia, at this inopportune moment, to take up arms against him. Prussia had no ally but Russia. The Prussian army was full of pride and hope; but its organization and method of warfare were after the old, traditional fashion which had come down from the days of _Frederick the Great_, and its commander, the _Duke of Brunswick_, though brave, was superannuated. In the two battles of _Jena_ and _Auersfadt_, fought on the same day (Oct. 14, 1806), the Prussian forces were routed, and either captured or dispersed. A fortnight later (Oct. 27), _Napoleon_ was in _Berlin_. Fortress after fortress was surrendered, and corps after corps captured by his troops. The royal family, including the Queen _Louisa_, were treated personally with harshness and disdain. The Prussian monarchy, to all appearance, was in ruins. Its museums and picture-galleries were robbed of their treasures, which went away as trophies to _Paris_. The Saxon Elector, made a king, joined the Rhenish Confederacy. Fox died on Sept. 13, 1806. In 1807 (March 31), the Duke of Portland became prime minister; the rival and rising statesmen, _Castlereagh_ and _Canning_, being both in the cabinet. TO THE PEACE OF TILSIT.--It remained for the conqueror to deal with _Russia_. He had intended to prosecute a winter campaign in _Poland_, but the severity of the winter and the lack of supplies obliged him to fall back from Pultusk to the _Vistula_. The Russians now took the initiative. A terrible battle at _Eylau_ (Feb. 7 and 8, 1807) was indecisive. _Napoleon_ drew additional troops from all parts of his empire to supply the losses of the grand army. _Benningsen_, the Russian general, was incautious, and at _Friedland_ (June 14) was routed. _Dantzic_ and the still unconquered provinces of _Prussia_ fell into the hands of the French. This series of wonderful successes made the revolution in the art of war, which _Napoleon_ had introduced, obvious to the dullest eyes. His peculiar method of rapid movement, and subsistence on the country, and the obstacles to its uniform success, were likewise evident. The Emperor _Alexander_ and _Napoleon_ met on the _Niemen_. _Alexander_ was won by _Napoleon's_ gracious and friendly demeanor. At _Tilsit_, on the North-Prussian frontier, peace was concluded (July 7 and 9, 1807). Prussia fared the hardest. She lost half of her territory. She had to close her ports and lands to British trade, to limit her army to forty-two thousand men, and to consent to the erection of a _duchy of Warsaw_ out of her Polish territory. Out of the Elbe provinces, a kingdom of _Westphalia_ was constructed, of which _Jerome Bonaparte_ received the crown. Russia also recognized _Louis Bonaparte_, another brother of Napoleon, as king of _Holland_. _Alexander_ promised to go to war with England in case England rejected the offer of peace which he was to make as mediator. _Alexander_ and _Napoleon_ were to be fast friends and allies. Russia was to expand on the north and east, but not to have _Constantinople_. Napoleon had no better apology for the dismemberment of Prussia than a reference to the intemperate manifesto of the _Duke of Brunswick_ in 1792, on the occasion of the first invasion of France. His real object was thoroughly to divide and disable Germany, and to take away the last obstacle to his complete control within its borders. POWER OF NAPOLEON.--No ruler since _Charlemagne_ had held such power as was now wielded by _Napoleon_. "Sovereign of France from the Scheldt to the Pyrenees, and of Italy from the Alps to the Tiber," he had given the throne of _Holland_ to his brother _Louis_, that of _Naples_ to _Joseph_, and made _Jerome_ king of _Westphalia_. _Spain_ was content to do his will, and _Germany_ was under his feet. He was the leader of mighty armies, with no military rival to endanger his supremacy over them. His conquests, it was impossible to deny, carried with them the abolition of numerous time-worn abuses, and the introduction of important material improvements. France was in many respects prosperous under the despotism established over it. ELEMENTS OF WEAKNESS.--But there were certain elements of weakness which _Napoleon_ did not sufficiently discern. The feeling of nationality and patriotism in the subject countries was certain to awake with a strength which he did not at all anticipate. Old Rome had extinguished this feeling in most of her provinces, but there were countries whose spirit even Rome could not break. Napoleon undertook a task to which no man was equal. Meantime, he was exhausting the military resources of _France_. If its male population continued to be willing to follow him to the slaughter, where were the men to be found to fill the places of the multitudes that fell? The time must come when the hunger of the French for military glory would be sated, and dazzling victories would cease to hide the fearful cost at which they were purchased. THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM.--The Treaty of _Tilsit_ was followed by acts on the part of Napoleon which show the presumptuous confidence and arrogant spirit of domination, which, however natural on the pinnacle of might to which he had raised himself, proved disastrous, and, in the end, fatal. One of these acts was the "Continental System," ordained in the _Berlin_ and _Milan Decrees_. A Prussian decree (1806), Prussia being then a vassal of _Napoleon_, undertook to close the ports and rivers of the North Sea to English shipping. In retaliation, there was issued a British "Order in Council," declaring the coast from the Elbe to Brest in a state of blockade; the portion from Ostend to the Seine being declared to be under a rigorous blockade. This led to the _Berlin Decree_ of _Napoleon_ (Nov. 21, 1806). Then second "Orders in Council" (Nov. 11, 1807), prohibiting trade with France, her allies and colonies, as if they were blockaded, called out the _Milan Decree_ of Napoleon (Dec. 17, 1807). The continental system thus originated undertook to cut off trade between the entire Continent and England, by ordering all the merchandise of England and her colonies to be seized and confiscated, wherever it might be found,--even ships which touched at English ports. The design was to inflict injury on England. It had this effect, but it had the same effect on France, and still more in the other countries which profited by English trade. Wide-spread disaffection at the attempts to enforce this system was the inevitable consequence. Moreover, one result of it was to stimulate _Napoleon_ to further conquests to keep up and to extend his commercial policy. Another motive was added to his growing and insatiable ambition for universal dominion. INVASION OF SPAIN: WAGRAM.--Russia had declared war against Great Britain, according to the promise of _Alexander_ at _Tilsit_. The British seized the Danish fleet in the harbor of _Copenhagen_, to prevent it from falling into the hands of Russia and France (Sept., 1807). _Napoleon_ made this act a partial excuse for invading the Spanish peninsula, under the pretense of guarding the coasts against the English. His army entered _Lisbon_, and he declared that the house of _Braganza_ had ceased to reign. His forces advanced into Spain beyond Madrid. Dissensions between _Charles IV_. and his son _Ferdinand_ enabled _Napoleon_ to get himself chosen as arbiter; and having enticed the two contestants to _Bayonne_, he set them both aside, and gave the crown of Spain to his brother _Joseph_,--_Murat_, who had married Napoleon's sister _Caroline_, taking the throne of _Naples_. This high-handed proceeding roused the Spanish people to revolt. The officers of _Napoleon_ were several times defeated. A British force under _Wellington_--then _Sir Arthur Wellesley_--appeared in _Portugal_ to lend help to the national movement. A French fleet in _Cadiz_ was destroyed. _Napoleon_ invaded Spain with an overwhelming force, and established his brother at _Madrid_ (Dec. 2, 1808). But the people still kept up a harassing guerilla war. From Spain _Napoleon_ was called away by the rising of _Austria_, which the events in Spain had once more moved to begin hostilities. Within a month from the beginning of the campaign, he again entered _Vienna_ as a victor (May 11, 1809). He suffered a reverse at _Aspern_; but in the desperate battle of _Wagram_, in which not far from three hundred thousand men took part, he was triumphant. Austria purchased peace by further cessions of territory, and by joining the Continental System. The brave _Tyrolese_ kept up the struggle with an heroic spirit; but at last _Hofer_, their leader, was captured and shot at _Mantua_ (1810). PIUS VII.--As _Pius VII_. refused to close his ports against England, and to ally himself with France, _Napoleon_ proclaimed (May, 1809) that the Papal States were annexed to his empire. The Pope, who had steadfastly resisted his attempts at coercion, excommunicated him. The pontiff was arrested, and conveyed to _Savona_, and afterwards to _France_. SWEDEN: BERNADOTTE.--Another ally in upholding the "Continental System" against England, Napoleon gained in Sweden, where one of his marshals, _Bernadotte_, had been chosen Crown Prince. Under _Adolf Frederic_ (1751-1771), a council of nobles usurped many of the functions of the king. A combined Russian and French party in Sweden was against him. His son, _Gustavus III_. (1771-1792), being supported by France, invaded Russian Finland, and, by the help of the Estates, reduced the power of the nobles, giving, however, to the Estates in the new constitution, the right to veto a project for offensive war. He was murdered in 1792. His son _Gustavus IV_., who became of age in 1808, was a bitter opponent of _Napoleon_, whom he considered to be the beast of the Apocalypse (Rev. xiii. 1). After the Peace of _Tilsit_, he made war on Russia, and on Denmark, from which he sought to wrest Norway. The nobles and the army rose against him, and obliged him to abdicate (1809). His uncle, _Charles XIII_., became king. _Finland_ was surrendered to Russia. The king having no children, _Bernadotte_ (1764-1844), a French marshal, made by _Napoleon_ Prince of Pontecorno, but who often showed himself independent in his relations to him, was elected Crown Prince of Sweden (1810). Sweden joined the Continental System. NAPOLEON'S DIVORCE AND MARRIAGE.--_Napoleon_, who was childless, in the hope of founding a dynasty on a sure basis procured a divorce from _Josephine_, and married _Maria Louisa_, the daughter of _Francis I_. of Austria. To the son who was born of this marriage he gave the sounding title of _King of Rome_, the old designation of the emperors-elect before their coronation. TORRES VEDRAS.--The first successful stand against the military supremacy of Bonaparte was made in _Spain_. _Wellington_ divined the secret of the French victories, and devised the means of effectual resistance. In _Portugal_, between the _Tagus_ and the sea he fortified the position called _Torres Vedras_, which could be defended against superior forces. This he held against all the efforts of _Masséna_ to conquer and dislodge him. Deprived of the means of subsistence, the French suffered great losses and privations, and were obliged to retreat (May, 1811). Their method depended for success on the attaining of the desired result in a short time by swift operations. REACTION AGAINST NAPOLEON.--The campaign of _Wellington_ produced a strong moral effect in other parts of Europe. While _France_ was beginning to show signs of weariness with the endless war, and with the despotic government under which it was kept up, in _Germany_ a new spirit of patriotism was stirring in the hearts of the people. Under _Stein_, a great and patriotic minister, the Prussian system of civil administration was reorganized on a sound basis. The army was likewise reconstructed on the basis of universal military service. Serfdom was abolished and the old caste system, with its restrictions on land-holding, abandoned. A new Germany was slowly waking to life, and collecting its energies for the combat for freedom. The "Continental System" caused increasing irritation. _Louis Bonaparte_ abdicated his throne in _Holland_, rather than enforce its odious requirements (July, 1810). The quarrel of _Napoleon_ with the Pope, and the indignities suffered by the pontiff, who lived for three years upon alms, added to the discontent which the emperor's commercial policy provoked, even in France. CHAPTER V. FROM THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN (1812) TO THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA (1814-15). THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN--The circumstances narrated above did not prevent _Napoleon_ from the fatal mistake of invading _Russia_. The czar would not enforce the commercial restrictions. _Napoleon_ refused to promise not to restore the kingdom of _Poland_. There were various other causes of mutual jealousy and coolness. _Sweden_, under _Bernadotte_, which had been forced to declare war against _England_ (1810), now joined _Russia_. _Austria_ and _Prussia_, in their state of practical vassalage, had to furnish military help to Napoleon. In June, 1812, when he crossed the _Niemen_, he had brought together a force of five hundred and fifty thousand men. He had reinforcements from _Poland_, and might have had more had he not, from deference to Austria and Prussia, refused to restore the Polish kingdom. The Russians retreated as he advanced. _Barclay_, the Russian general, declined a battle, and destroyed whatever places could afford an advantage to the invader. At length, _Kutusoff_ took the command, and was compelled by the Russian feeling, against his will, to give battle. At _Borodino_, where there was immense slaughter on both sides, the Russians retired, but without disorder. When the French arrived at _Moscow_, they found an empty town, which was set on fire by accident or by Russians. The Czar refused to treat for peace. There was no alternative but to retreat (Oct. 19, 1812). The sufferings of the soldiers from cold and famine were terrible. The Russians availed themselves of every opportunity to harass the retreating force. When it reached the ruins of _Smolensk_, only forty thousand were left of more than a hundred thousand that had left Moscow. The army continued to dwindle. At _Smorgoni_, _Napoleon_ left _Murat_ in command, and hastened in disguise to Paris. The expedition cost the lives of not less than three hundred thousand men. This gigantic failure was due to the foiling by the Russians of Napoleon's habitual plan of forcing decisive battles by movements so rapid that his troops could subsist upon the country which they overran, and to the unexpected destruction of Moscow. THE GERMAN WAR OF LIBERATION: LEIPSIC.--In Germany, there now began the great _War of Liberation_. _York_--the commander of the Prussian contingent reluctantly furnished to _Napoleon_--went over to the Russians (Dec. 1812). During the first three months of 1813, all North Germany rose in arms. Heart-stirring appeals were issued by _Frederick William III_. to his people. He called for the formation of volunteer corps, and all young men capable of bearing arms responded with alacrity to the summons. Russia and Prussia formed a defensive alliance. Sweden made a treaty with England, and agreed to assist the allies. Napoleon's wonted success attended him at first in the encounter with the Russian and Prussian forces. He gained a victory at _Lützen_ (May 2), and another at _Bautzen_ (May 20, 21). Austria sought to mediate, but Napoleon unwisely preferred war. Austria now, disregarding the family tie with Napoleon, was drawn by the current of German patriotism, as well as by self-interest, into the alliance against him. His imperious and arrogant domination was felt to be insupportable. But the circumstance that determined the course of Austria was the victory gained by _Wellington_ at Vittoria, in Spain, over the French under _Jourdan_ (June 21). The news of it turned the scale in the Austrian councils. The odds against Napoleon were now fearful, especially as his own army was largely composed of recruits who were hardly above the age of boys. He won one more triumph at _Dresden_ (Aug. 27), but this was his last victory on German soil. The allies avoided the errors which he had taught them to avoid, and succeeded in bringing their forces together, and in compelling Napoleon to fight at _Leipsic_. The allied armies numbered three hundred thousand, while the French force did not exceed a hundred and eighty thousand. The "battle of the nations" lasted for three days (Oct. 16, 18, 19), although the fighting was chiefly on the first and third. On the last day it continued for nine hours. The Saxon contingent abandoned the French on the field, and went over to the allies. The defeat of the French, as night approached, became a rout. Napoleon, with the remnant of his army, was driven to the Rhine. The battle of _Leipsic_ was really the decisive contest in the wars of Europe against Napoleon. From the defeat there, it was impossible for him to recover. FALL OF NAPOLEON: ELBA.--The members of the _Confederacy of the Rhine_ joined the allies. _Holland_ rose in revolt, and drove out the French officials. Even _France_ was exhausted and full of discontent. Meantime _Wellington_ defeated _Soult_ in the Pyrenees, and invaded France from that side. _Napoleon_ was bent on resistance, and by his superior skill succeeded in ousting the brave Prussian soldier, but inexpert strategist, Blücher, as well as the Austrian general _Schwartzenberg_ (Jan. and Feb. 1814). But the preponderance of numbers on the side of the allies was too great. Their bold decision to march on Paris secured their triumph. The city surrendered (March 30). _Napoleon_ had lost his hold on the ruling bodies. The senate, through the influence of the astute _Talleyrand_, once his minister, declared that he and his family had forfeited the throne. At _Fontainebleau_, he signed his abdication in favor of his son (April 6), but this condition was rejected. The small island of _Elba_ was given to him by the allies as a sovereign principality. After a pathetic farewell to his veteran Guard, he betook himself to his small dominion. _Louis XVIII_., the brother of _Louis XVI_., was placed on the throne of France. France, by the _Peace of Paris_ (May 30), was left with its ancient boundaries as they were before the Revolution slightly increased. THE CHARTER.--According to a promise which the king had given, he (June 4, 1814) promulgated a constitutional CHARTER, a name borrowed from the Middle Ages when charters were granted to vassals. There was to be a legislature, with a house of peers or lords appointed by the king, and a chamber of deputies chosen by limited suffrage; the electors to be owners of property to a certain amount, and to be thirty years old. The king was to have the initiative in legislation. The Roman Catholic religion was declared to be the religion of the state, but liberty was given to dissenters. The right to make peace and war was given to the king, and also the right to issue ordinances necessary for the execution of the laws and the safety of the state. This last provision opened a door for arbitrary government, and paved the way for the downfall of the dynasty. The points of resemblance in the constitution to the English system were adapted to provoke a constant contrast with it, in respect to the degree of liberty actually secured and exercised by the people. The charter was dated from the nineteenth year of Louis XVIII., as if there had been no Republic or Empire. PIUS VII.--Pope _Pius VII_., who, after 1809, was a virtual prisoner at _Savona_, refused to comply with Napoleon's demands. He could not be moved to invest the bishops whom the emperor had appointed. This was a principal point in the dispute. Napoleon called a national council of French bishops (1811). In 1812 the Pope was taken to _Fontainebleau_, and treated by him with harshness. When the pontiff refused to give a full and final sanction to the proposed agreement, until he should be free to confer with his cardinals, he was treated with still greater severity. The fall of Napoleon set him free, and he entered Rome, May 24, 1814. CONGRESS OF VIENNA.--In September, 1814, the congress of Vienna met to readjust the map of Europe after the whirlwind of change and revolution. There were present the emperors of Russia and Austria, the kings of Prussia, Denmark, Bavaria, and Würtemberg, and a great number of German princes. _Castlereagh_, and later _Wellington_, represented England, and _Talleyrand_ was one of the representatives of France. The conferences were far from being harmonious. In particular, the claims of Russia upon Poland, and the claims of Prussia on Germany, threatened another war. While the debates, alternating with gay festivities, were still proceeding, the participants were startled by the news of the reappearance of _Napoleon_ in France. RETURN OF NAPOLEON FROM ELBA.--The new Bourbon rule was unpopular with the French. It was felt to be the effect and sign of national humiliation. The offensive conduct of the returned emigrant nobility, and measures looking towards a restoration of bygone abuses in government, fomented the disaffection. _Napoleon_, while apparently busy in laying out roads and canals, and regulating the affairs of his little kingdom, which was only sixty miles in circumference, kept himself well informed as to the state of public opinion in France. With a few hundred men of the Imperial Guard, he landed at _Cannes_ (March I, 1815), and was joined by one regiment after another which were sent out to crush him. _Ney_, one of the best of his marshals, was carried away by the common feeling, and went over to the side of his old commander. _Louis XVIII_. fled from Paris; and, on March 20, _Napoleon_ was again installed in the Tuileries. WATERLOO.--Napoleon offered to the country a more liberal constitution, but the Bourbons were more hated than he was trusted. He professed to the great powers his desire for peace, but they did not listen to these assurances. Each agreed to furnish an army of one hundred and eighty thousand men to serve against him. He put forth prodigious exertions to gather a force with which to meet the host of his enemies; and although he could appeal to no warm national feeling, such as had called into being the armies of the Revolution, he succeeded in bringing together a force of over one hundred thousand men. He decided not to wait for the attack, but to assail the two armies of _Blücher_ and _Wellington_ in Belgium. His plan was to attack them separately. _Blücher_ so far fell into the trap, that, in his eagerness to meet the detested foe, he offered battle to Napoleon at _Ligny_ (June 16), and, after a desperate contest, was forced to retire from the field. On the same day, _Wellington_ so far checked _Ney_ in his attack at _Quatre Bras_, that he could not strike the Prussians on the flank, as Napoleon had designed. Napoleon thought that the Prussians would not be able, after their defeat, at once to aid Wellington. He sent _Grouchy_, however, with thirty-four thousand men, to observe them and inflict on them a final blow. On the forenoon of June 18, he himself attacked the British forces at _Waterloo_. The French got possession of _La Haye Sainte_, a farmhouse in front of Wellington's center, the scene of a bloody contest; but all their charges on Wellington's main line were met and repelled by the immovable squares of the British infantry. In the afternoon Napoleon's right began to be assailed by the Prussians; and finding, at seven o'clock, that they were coming in great force, he ordered a charge of the Imperial Guard on Wellington's forces. After a fierce struggle, the Guard was compelled to recoil and retire. The Prussians, piercing the right flank of the French army, turned its defeat into a rout. _Grouchy_ was at _Wavre_, fighting the Prussian corps of _Thielmann_, which he seems to have mistaken for the entire Prussian army. ABDICATION OF NAPOLEON: ST. HELENA.--On the 22nd of June _Napoleon_ again abdicated in favor of his son. _Carnot_ was for a dictatorship. The French Assembly, with _La Fayette_ at its head, insisted on the abdication. On July 7 _Blücher_ and _Wellington_ entered Paris. Napoleon fled to _Rochefort_, and, finding himself unable to escape to America, surrendered to the British admiral, and was taken on board the war-ship _Bellerophon_. _Louis XVIII_. was brought back to Paris. _Napoleon_, by the agreement of the allies, was conveyed to the island of _St. Helena_, where he remained, a fretful captive, until his death (May 5, 1821). _Ney_ escaped, but was captured, condemned, and shot (Dec. 7, 1815). France engaged to pay a war indemnity of seven hundred million francs. Its boundaries were fixed as at 1790. CHARACTER OF NAPOLEON.--Respecting certain traits of Napoleon, there is no dispute. His military genius all allow, although his daring was sometimes over-daring; and there are critics who profess to discern, after the beginning of the Russian campaign, and especially in the last contest in Belgium, signs of a decline in his almost superhuman vigilance and energy. Yet all must admit "that transcendent geometrical faculty," as _Sainte-Beuve_ calls it, "which characterized Napoleon, and which that powerful genius applied to war with the same ease and the same aptitude that Monge [a great French mathematician] applied it to other subjects." No general ever had greater power to fascinate soldiers, and secure their devotion to him. One reason was, that he recognized and rewarded merit wherever he saw it. His intellectual movements were as much swifter than the ordinary as his marches were more rapid than those to which armies had been accustomed. For civil organization and administration he had rare talents, and in many directions enlightened views. Europe owes much to his innovations in this sphere. He was not incapable of warm personal attachments; as was manifested, for example, in his grief over _Duroc_, the favorite general, who fell at _Bautzen_. But an insatiable appetite for war, and, still more, a conviction, which he sometimes confessed, that he could retain and fortify his authority only by dazzling France, and continuing to astonish mankind by brilliant achievements, drove him forward on a path of aggression and bloodshed. He had an unpitying nature: he was careless of human suffering. Early in his career, in Italy, he ordered a needless and useless attack on the outposts of the enemy, "to treat a lady to a sight of real war." He did not shrink from ordering two thousand prisoners at _Jaffa_ to be shot. He shocked all Germany by causing _Palm_, a bookseller of Nuremberg, to be shot for refusing to tell the name of the author of a publication offensive to him. He frequently displayed a petty rancor,--as, for example, in leaving a legacy in his will to the man who was accused of an attempt to assassinate the _Duke of Wellington_. His violence of temper, as in the murder of the _Duke d'Enghien_, hurried him into acts that were not less impolitic than criminal. His tyrannical will would brook no contradiction, even in matters o£ trifling importance. He broke away from engagements when he thought it advantageous to do so. It is not an injustice to say, that he was habitually untruthful: his bulletins were disfigured by flagrant falsehoods, as well as gross exaggerations. In a letter to _Talleyrand_ from Italy (Oct. 17, 1797) he says, "This is history: what I say in my proclamations and speeches is a romance." With his wonderful intellectual powers, inexhaustible energy, and amazing achievements, he never quite loses the characteristic spirit of an adventurer. He is haunted by a secret consciousness that this character belongs to him. The judgment Of an adversary must be taken with allowance; but _Wellington_ spoke at least without passion when he said, "Bonaparte's whole life--civil, political, and military--was a fraud. There was not a transaction, great or small, in which lying and fraud were not introduced." His "foreign policy was force and menace, aided by fraud and corruption."--Croker's Correspondence, etc., vol. ii. p. 86. THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA.--The Congress of Vienna was dissolved in June, 1815. Its Acts were finally signed by the five great powers,--Austria, France, Great Britain, Prussia, and Russia,--and by Spain, Portugal, and Sweden. The Austrian and Prussian monarchies were restored. Austria received back _Venice_ with _Milan_,--forming the subject Lombardo-Venetian kingdom,--besides receiving the _Illyrian provinces_ and the _Tyrol_. The old possessions of Prussia were restored. She received the _Rhenish provinces_, a part of the duchy of Warsaw (_Posen_), and a great part of Saxony, besides other important additions. Holland and Belgium were formed into the one kingdom of the Netherlands, which had also a part of _Luxemburg_, and was ruled by the stadt-holder _William I_. The German Confederacy was instituted, with thirty-nine sovereign states, including the four free cities,--Austria being the presiding state. The greater part of the _duchy of Warsaw_ fell to Russia, under the name of the Kingdom of Poland. Sweden retained _Norway_, which, however, kept its own free constitution; and Denmark acquired _Lauenburg_. England had vastly enlarged her colonial possessions. The present Swiss Confederation, consisting of twenty-two cantons, was established; three new cantons having been added to the former nineteen. The old dynasties were restored in Spain, in Tuscany, Modena, and the Papal States, in Naples, and in Sardinia. To Sardinia, _Genoa_, against its will, was annexed. CHRONOLOGICAL STATEMENT.--The _First Coalition_ was formed in 1793, when all Europe, except Sweden, Denmark, Tuscany, Switzerland, Venice, and Genoa, and Turkey, joined against France. In 1792 France had been at war with Austria and Prussia. In 1795 the coalition was broken: Prussia and Spain made peace with France. In 1797 Austria also concluded peace with France (the Peace of _Campo'Formio_). In 1798 the Second Coalition was formed, in which Turkey was included. Prussia and Spain were not parties to it. The Peace of Amiens, made with England (1802), ended the contest following it. The Third Coalition was formed in 1805, by England, Russia, Austria, and Sweden. Peace was concluded between Austria and France (Dec. 26, 1805). War followed in 1806-7, between France on one side, and Prussia and Russia on the other. These allies, with England, made a _Fourth Coalition_. In 1807 France and Russia were allies. The rupture between Austria and France in 1809 gave rise to what is often called the _Fifth Coalition_. In 1813 the _Sixth Coalition_, made up, after the accession of Austria, of all the principal powers, was in arms against France. On March 25, 1815, after _Napoleon's_ return from Elba, the powers again declared war against him. As there was a fresh treaty, this may be called a _Seventh Coalition_. CHAPTER VI. AMERICAN HISTORY IN THIS PERIOD (1789-1815). THE TWO PARTIES.--The cabinet of _Washington_ consisted of four members. The secretary of the treasury was _Alexander Hamilton_ of New York. The secretary of state was _Thomas Jefferson_ of Virginia. The seat of government was placed at _Philadelphia_; but in 1800 it was removed to the _District of Columbia_, which was ceded for the purpose by Virginia and Maryland. Almost from the beginning, there were two political parties. The _Federalists_ were made up of those who had been most in favor of the new Constitution, and desired to build up a strong central government. Accordingly they advocated a liberal construction of the Constitution as regards the extent of federal authority. They cherished the traditional spirit of the English laws and English political institutions. _Washington_ and _John Adams_ belonged to this class, and _Hamilton_ was their most active leader. The _Anti-Federalists_, of whom _Jefferson_ was the chief, were for a careful guarding of the rights of the States, and a strict interpretation of the powers allotted to the General Government. They had more sympathy with the political ideas at that time fast coming into vogue in France. They had a warm faith in the capacity of the mass of the people for self-government and for suffrage. They were called _Republicans_, and were sometimes styled _Democrats_. HAMILTON'S MEASURES: THE CONFLICT OF PARTIES.--_Hamilton_ proposed and carried highly important measures for the restoration of public credit and for the revival of industry and commerce. Under his leadership, the debts of the old confederacy, and the debts of the separate States which they had incurred in the common defense, were assumed. To provide revenue, a protective tariff and a system of internal taxation were ordained. A national bank was incorporated (1791), and a mint was established at _Philadelphia_. These measures had a great effect at home, and made a strong impression favorable to the new government abroad; but they were opposed by the _Anti-Federalists_ as an unwarrantable assumption of power by the General Government. The excise on domestic spirits provoked an insurrection, called "the Whisky Rebellion," in _Western Pennsylvania_, which was put down by the militia. As the French Revolution advanced from step to step, the division of parties in America became more marked, and their mutual hostility more intense. At first all were in sympathy with France. _La Fayette_ sent the key of the fallen Bastille as a gift to _Washington_. But the Federalists were determined to maintain a strict neutrality in the conflict between France and England. As the Revolution proceeded, a strong antipathy was awakened in America to the radical theories, as well as to the bloody deeds, of its promoters. This was enhanced by the strenuous efforts of the French Republic, aided by the Anti-Federalists, to induce the United States to take an active part in the war, on the side of France. _Genet_, the French minister, undertook to fit out privateers in _Charleston_. Washington issued a proclamation of neutrality (1793), which was followed by a Neutrality Act of Congress (1794). When _Genet_ had the effrontery to appeal from the President to the people, at the demand of _Washington_ he was recalled. JAY'S TREATY.--The contest of parties reached its climax in connection with Jay's Treaty with Great Britain (1794),--a treaty negotiated by _John Jay_, chief justice, whom _Washington_ had sent as envoy to London. There were mutual grounds of complaint between the two countries. The British had not surrendered the Western military posts, and were in the habit of "impressing seamen." 'This last practice was founded on the claim that a British subject can never become the subject of another country, and that, moreover, his military service may be always called for by his sovereign. When almost all Europe was at war, the carrying trade naturally fell, to a large extent, into American hands; hence, it was alleged, many English sailors deserted to get employment in American ships. The British claimed and exercised the right to visit foreign vessels, and to take from their decks the sailors who were asserted to be British subjects. The English, on their part, complained that the treaty stipulations as to debts due in America to British subjects had not been observed. Jay's Treaty provided for the giving-up of the Western posts, according to the previous stipulation; but said nothing respecting the right of impressment, which the British at that time would never have consented to relinquish. It was alleged, also, that in other features the treaty favored England unwarrantably, and unfairly in relation to France. It encountered violent opposition from the Republicans; but it was approved by _Washington_, and the legislative measures for carrying it out were passed in the House of Representatives by a slender majority, obtained through the eloquence of _Fisher Ames_, a member from Massachusetts. NEW STATES: INVENTIONS.--According to the census of 1790, there were somewhat less than four millions of people in the United States. _Virginia_ was the most populous State; next to Virginia stood _Pennsylvania_, then _North Carolina_, and, fourth in order, _Massachusetts_. A little more than one-fifth of the population were negro slaves. _Vermont_, the territory of which had been claimed by both New York and New Hampshire, was the first new State admitted to the Union (1791). A genius for mechanical invention early manifested itself in the country. _Eli Whitney_ invented the cotton-gin (1792), for separating the seed from the fiber of the cotton-plant,--a machine which indirectly lent a powerful impulse to the production of cotton. In 1788 _John Fitch_ was running a steamboat on the Delaware River; but the construction of a steamboat with side-paddles was due to the inventive talent of _Robert Fulton_ (1807). Emigration from the Atlantic border to the West took three principal routes,--one from New England and New York, through the valley of the Mohawk; the second, through the passes of the Alleghanies; and the third, across the Blue Ridge to the rivers flowing from the south into the Ohio. In 1792 _Kentucky_, settled mainly by emigrants over the last-mentioned path, was made a State. The next State to be admitted was _Tennessee_ (1796). The new settlers carried into the West the spirit and institutions of the several communities which they had left. South of the Ohio, negro slavery was introduced. A treaty with Spain (in 1795) secured the free navigation of the Mississippi. WASHINGTON'S RETIREMENT AND DEATH.--_Washington_ himself was not exempt from bitter partisan attack in public prints. On his retirement from office, he prepared, with the assistance of _Hamilton_, a Farewell Address to the people, in which he exhorted them to maintain the Union as the only safeguard of liberty, and warned them against "entangling alliances" with European powers. The deep and universal sorrow which was felt when he died (1799) was a tribute as exalted as any nation ever paid to a fallen hero and benefactor. ADAMS: RUPTURE OF THE FEDERAL PARTY.--_John Adams_, a Federalist, succeeded _Washington_ as president; and _Jefferson_ became vice-president (1797). The French had seized a large number of American vessels, on the pretense that they were affording aid to England. In order, if possible, to prevent war, the President sent out a special mission to France; but the commissioners--_Pinckney_, _Gerry_, and _Marshall_--were told by the Directory that they must pay money as a bribe before they could be received, and were finally ordered to quit the country (1797). The phrase of _Pinckney_, "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute," expressed the universal feeling. The report of the insulted envoys roused the indignation of the American people, and moved Congress to prepare for war. _Washington_ was made general of all the forces to be raised, and he appointed _Hamilton_ to be second in command. Hostilities had really commenced; the Federalists were eager for a declaration of war; but President _Adams_, without the knowledge of his cabinet, suddenly nominated to the senate another ambassador to France. He had previously become assured that such a messenger would be well received. _Napoleon_ having come into power, a treaty was concluded with him (1800). The course of the President, however, gave mortal offense to the adherents of _Hamilton_, and fatally divided the Federal party. Hamilton and his supporters became wholly alienated from _Adams_, so that the triumph of the Republicans was rendered certain. "RESOLUTIONS OF '98."--The violence of the attacks upon the administration, which were made partly by foreign emissaries, had caused the Federalists (1798) to pass the _alien_ and _sedition laws_. The first authorized the President to order out of the country aliens who were conspiring against its peace. Its operation was limited to two years. The second punished seditious libels upon the government with fine and imprisonment. These acts provoked a storm of opposition. Under the auspices of _Jefferson_, and of _Madison_, who was now one of his supporters, the _Virginia_ and _Kentucky Resolutions_ of 1798-99 were passed by the Legislatures of those States. These resolves affirmed the right of a State to judge of the constitutionality and validity of an Act of Congress. They were interpreted as an assertion of the extreme doctrine of State rights. PURCHASE OF LOUISIANA.--In 1800 Jefferson was elected to the presidency, and _Aaron Burr_, a scheming politician of the Republican school, was made vice-president. At that time, and until the amendment of the Constitution (1804), the electors voted for two persons, without designating either for the presidency or the vice-presidency. The candidate having the highest number of votes became president. As Jefferson and Burr had an equal number, the choice between them for the highest office was made by the House of Representatives. The obnoxious laws of the preceding administration disappeared with it. One of the most important events under _Jefferson's_ administration was the purchase of _Louisiana_ from France, which had acquired it from Spain. _Napoleon_ knew that he could not keep it from falling into the hands of England, and readily sold it for fifteen millions of dollars. Thereby the territory of the United States was doubled in its extent. The whole region between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, with New Orleans, was added to the country, together with whatever claim France had to _West Florida, Texas_, and the district west of the Rocky Mountains. _Ohio_, composed of the south-eastern portion of the northwest territory, was admitted to the Union in 1803. In the first fifteen years after the government was organized, there are four things that affected powerfully the character and career of the United States. The first was the influence of _Washington_ in inspiring attachment to the Union. The second was the genius of _Hamilton_ in creating an efficient administration of the new civil polity. The third was the democratic political tendency fostered by _Jefferson_. The fourth was the vast expansion of the national territory by the Louisiana Purchase, insuring the extension of the _Union_, and preventing the rise of rival political communities in its neighborhood. WAR WITH THE ALGERINES.--The pirates of _Algiers, Morocco_, and the other Barbary States, demanded tribute of American vessels on the Mediterranean. The first exploits of the navy of the United States were in combats with these marauders (1801-5). _Decatur_ performed the exploit of burning in the harbor of _Tripoli_ the American ship _Philadelphia_, which the Tripolitans had captured (1804). _Derne_ was captured, and _Tripoli_ bombarded. Finally a treaty put an end to the exaction of tribute (1805). An event that deeply moved the whole country was the killing of _Hamilton_ by _Burr_ in a duel (1804). _Burr_ was afterwards charged with an intention to form a new government on the south-western borders of the United States. He was tried for treason (1807), and not convicted, although many have believed him to be guilty. CAUSES OF THE WAR OF 18l2-15.--The great European wars brought the United States into serious difficulties, principally in regard to questions relating to commerce. Attempts were made by the European nations to establish blockades by mere enactment, without actual and sufficient occupation of the ports which were declared to be closed. The tendency of the British _Orders in council_, and of Napoleon's _Berlin_ and _Milan Decrees_ (p. 528), was "to grind to pieces the few remaining neutral powers." These were in effect cut off from trade with both Continental and English ports by the ordinances of one or the other of the two belligerents, the penalty being the confiscation of the vessels employed in such traffic. Such were the restrictions upon neutrals, that a great number of American ships were seized and confiscated by English and French cruisers. In addition to these grievances, the _Leander_, a British ship, exercised the pretended right of impressment by firing on an American trading-sloop (1806); and in like manner another British vessel, the _Leopard_, fired on the frigate Chesapeake, which was not prepared for resistance, and took four men from its crew (June 22, 1807). In retaliation, _Jefferson_ ordered all British ships of war to leave the coast of the United States. Then followed the _Embargo_, embracing a succession of enactments of Congress, which forbade American vessels to leave the harbors of the United States for Europe, and forbade European vessels to land cargoes in American ports. The result of this measure was to smite American commerce with an utter paralysis. The ships rotted at the wharves. The unpopularity of the Embargo, especially in the Eastern commercial States, was such that in _Jefferson's_ second term it was repealed. It was followed (1809) by the _Non-Intercourse Act_, prohibiting commerce with France and England. The British _Orders in Council_ were then, in a measure, relaxed, as was the practical enforcement against our vessels of the _Berlin Decree_. In 1812, the French rescinded their obnoxious decrees; and the English immediately took the same step, but not soon enough to prevent a war with the United States. EVENTS OF THE WAR IN 1812 AND 1813.-_James Madison_, a wise and moderate statesman of the Republican party, became president in 1809. He was personally averse to engaging in war with Great Britain; but the exasperation of a large part of the country, and the pressure of the younger leaders of his party,--_Calhoun, Clay_, and _Lowndes_,--moved him to a reluctant consent. The war, which was declared in 1812, was bitterly opposed in the New-England States, where the strength of the Federalists chiefly lay. By them the real motive of it was considered to be partiality for France. The treasury was nearly empty; there were but few ships of war, and only a small land force of about ten thousand men, made up in part of raw recruits. Before this time, the North-western Indians, under _Tecumseh_, whom the British were suspected of inciting to war, had been defeated at _Tippecanoe_ (1811), by _William Henry Harrison_, governor of Indiana. The war with England opened inauspiciously with the surrender of Detroit by Gen. _William Hull_ to Gen. _Brock_ (Aug. 16, 1812), and an unsuccessful attempt to invade Canada at _Queenstown_. On the sea, however, the Americans had successes which filled them with pride and exultation. Captain _Isaac Hull_, of the frigate è_Constitution_, captured the British frigate _Guerrière_, and brought his prisoners to Boston. _Decatur_, captain of the _United States_, brought the _Macedonian_ as a prize into the harbor of New York. The _Constitution_ destroyed the _Java_; but the _Chesapeake_, whose captain was killed, surrendered to the _Shannon_. Privateers were fitted out, which captured several hundreds of British ships and several thousands of prisoners. In 1813 _Perry_ defeated the English fleet on Lake Erie. His victory gave the Americans the command of Lake Erie and Lake Michigan. _Harrison_ defeated the British and Indians,--who had been driven to abandon Michigan,--near the River _Thames_ in Canada. Except on the Lakes the navy was successful only in single ship actions. The Americans had taken possession of _Mobile_, which they as well as the Spanish claimed; but the _Creek Indians_ were incited by the Spaniards to engage in hostilities. Forces from Tennessee, under _Andrew Jackson_, and troops from Georgia and Mississippi, fought the Creeks with success. THE WAR IN 1814-15.--In 1814 a third attempt of the Americans under Gen. _Brown_, to invade Canada, produced no decisive result. There was hard fighting. The British were routed at _Chippewa_; and they were repulsed at _Lundy's Lane_, opposite Niagara Falls, by Lieut. (afterwards General) _Winfield Scott_. _Napoleon_ had now been defeated; and the English sent twelve thousand troops, who had served under _Wellington_ in Spain, to Canada, to invade the United States from the north, while another army was to make an invasion by way of _New Orleans_. A fleet under Admiral _Cockburn_ sailed up the Potomac, and burned the Capitol and other public buildings at _Washington_ (Aug. 24, 1814). An attack was made on _Baltimore_ by a British fleet, but was bravely repelled. The defeat of the British fleet near _Plattsburg_, on _Lake Champlain_, by Commodore _Macdonough_ (Sept. 11, 1814), resulted in the retreat of the British army, which was besieging that place, to Canada. New Orleans was defended by General _Jackson_. The British under _Pakenham_ and _Gibbs_ attacked his works, but were defeated and withdrew (Jan. 8, 1815). The town was protected from the approach of the English fleet by the fort. Before the battle, peace had been concluded, but the news had not reached this country. THE HARTFORD CONVENTION.--The antagonism to the war in the New England States found expression in the call of a _convention_ at _Hartford_, where their delegates met (Dec. 15, 1814). These States complained, that while their commerce and fisheries were ruined, there was no protection afforded to their sea-coast. _Stonington_ in Connecticut had been bombarded, and _Castine_ in Maine had been captured. They denied, also, that the General Government had the power over the State militia which it claimed. For these and other grievances, they sought for a remedy "not repugnant to their obligations as members of the Union." They declared that measures of the General Government which are palpable violations of the Constitution are void, and that the States injuriously affected might severally protect their citizens from the operation of them, by such means as the several States should judge it wise to adopt; but they disavowed the right or intent to break up the Union. The effect of the convention was to bring great popular discredit on the Federalists, and to seal their doom as a distinct party. TREATY OF PEACE: ALGIERS.--In the _Treaty of Ghent_ (Dec. 24, 1814), provisions were made for defining boundaries as settled by previous treaties, and an engagement was made on both sides to suppress the slave-trade; but no mention was made of maritime rights and the impressment of seamen. This last practice was, however, discontinued, although it was never renounced. The war left the disputes that caused it just where they were. Many then and since have regarded it as really undertaken by the dominant party in the United States, in order to help one of the belligerents in the great struggle then going forward between England and France. Whether this view be just, or not, it is certain that the war imparted to Americans the consciousness of power and nationality. The connection between America and Great Britain was broken off at the Revolution, because, as _Turgot_ once said, colonies are like fruits which only stay on the tree until they are ripe. But the conflict was not over at the conclusion of the Peace of 1783. _Bancroft_ has called the war of 1812-15 "the second war of independence." Nothing lent it this character so much as the naval victories won by the United States, which gave them a standing among the nations. In 1815 a squadron under _Decatur_ was sent to _Algiers_, and the Barbary States were compelled to give up by treaties all their demands. CHAPTER VII. LITERATURE, ART, AND SCIENCE (1789-1815). NEW SPIRIT IN LITERATURE.--In the latter part of the eighteenth and the early part of the nineteenth centuries, literature broke away from the artificial rules and the one-sided intellectual tone of the "classical" school,--that school which had prevailed through the influence of the French writers of the age of _Louis XIV._ The new era was marked by more spontaneity, and a return to nature, and by a more free rein given to imagination and feeling. "Romanticism," a general designation of the results of this new movement as contrasted with the "classical" period, sometimes ran out into extravagances of sentiment, and an exaggerated relish for the mediaeval spirit. WRITERS IN ITALY AND IN FRANCE.--In Italy, there were few writers of distinction. _Monti_ (1754-1828) was a poet full of harmony and elegance, a follower, but with unequal steps, of _Alfieri_. Another of the same school is the patriotic poet, _Ugo Foscolo_ (1778-1827), a master of his native tongue. The poems of _Pindemonte_ (1753-1828) are graceful and pathetic. _Leopardi_ (1798-1837) mingles sublimity with pathos. Of the Italian historians of this period, _Botta_ (1766-1837), who published a history of the American Revolution, and histories of Italy, is a clear writer, with a talent for vivid description. In France, _Chateaubriand_ (1768-1848), who figured both in political life and as a prolific and brilliant author, by his _Genius of Christianity_ and many other productions gained great celebrity,--more, however, by charms of style and sentiment, than by weight of matter. Madame _de Staël_ (1766-1817) was the daughter of _Necker_. Between her and _Napoleon_ there was a mutual hostility. She wrote _Corinne, Delphine_,--"in which she idealizes herself,"--a work on _Germany_, and various other productions. She was versatile, vigorous in thought, and humane in her temper and spirit. In philosophy, a believing and spiritual school, in opposition to materialism, was founded by _Maine de Biran_ (1766-1824), _Royer-Collard_ (1763-1846), and _Benjamin Constant_. _De Maistre_ (1754-1821) wrote ably on the side of authority and of the Catholic Church. ENGLISH POETRY.--Literature in England, especially in the department of poetry, casting off the trammels of the classical school, in which _Dryden_ and _Pope_ were foremost, entered on a new and splendid era. Whether it dwelt on external nature or human passions and experiences, it appealed to sensibility. It was no more exclusively, or in the main, an address to the understanding. _Cowper_ (1731-1800) set the example of genuine naturalness, and of interest in nature and in every-day life. _Robert Burns_, a Scottish peasant (1759-1796), by his wonderful union of tenderness, passion, and humor, with poetic fancy and simplicity of diction, was more than the poet of a single nation. _Wordsworth_ (1770-1850) blended in his poems a delight in rural and mountain scenery, with a deep vein of pensive thought and sentiment. If he wrote dull pages, even the severest critics allow that in _The Excursion_ there are most beautiful "oases in the desert;" while in such poems as the _Ode on the Power of Sound_, the _Intimations of Immortality from the Recollections of Childhood_, and _Laodamia_, there are passages not excelled since Milton. A more sustained fervor of feeling and imagination belonged to _Byron_ (1788-1824), who, notwithstanding his morbid egotism and offenses against morality, combined passion with beauty, and was never dull. _Walter Scott_ (1771-1832) exhibited in his narrative poems the spirit of the romantic school, with none of its sentimentality or extravagance. _Coleridge_ (1772-1834), the author of _Christabel_ and _The Ancient Mariner_, was a highly original poet, as well as a philosopher. _Southey_ (1774-1843), with less genius, was a man of letters, prolific both in verse and in prose. _Shelley_ and _Keats_ had a much higher gift of imagination. _Campbell, Rogers_, and _Moore_ are names of distinction, although less illustrious than those of _Wordsworth_ and _Coleridge_, _Scott_ and _Byron_. _Walter Savage Landor_ (1775-1864), a poet and the author of _Imaginary Conversations_, and other prose writings, was master of a style of extraordinary power and purity. ENGLISH PROSE WRITERS.--In novel-writing, Miss _Austen_, Miss _Porter_, and Miss _Edgeworth_ preceded _Walter Scott_. _Waverley_, the first in the series of _Scott's_ novels, appeared anonymously in 1814. In 1802 the _Edinburgh Review_, the first of the noted critical quarterlies, began its existence, under the editorship of _Francis Jeffrey_, and numbered among its writers _Brougham, Sydney Smith_, and _Sir James Mackintosh_. In 1809 the _Quarterly Review_, the organ of the Tories as the Edinburgh Review represented the Whigs, began, with _Gifford_ for its editor. Among the essayists of that time, in a lighter vein, were _John Wilson_ ("Christopher North"), poet and critic in one; and the genial humorist, the friend of Wordsworth and Coleridge, _Charles Lamb_. _John Foster_ (1770-1843) was an original essayist on grave themes. In philosophy, _Dugald Stewart_ (1753-1828), a clear and fluent expositor, and _Thomas Brown_ (1778-1821), kept up the reputation of the Scottish school founded by _Reid_. _Burke, Alison_, and _Jeffrey_ wrote on beauty, and on the taste for the beautiful. _Mackintosh_, a statesman of liberal opinions, wrote on ethics. _Coleridge_, inspired by the German thinkers _Kant_ and _Schelling_, through his philosophical fragments and theological essays did much to create a new current in English philosophical and religious thought. _Jeremy Bentham_ (1748-1832) was less eminent as a metaphysician than as a contributor, through his writings, to legislative reform. AMERICAN WRITERS.--In America, the political writings of _Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, Jay, Madison, Marshall_, and _Ames_, have a permanent value. Their letters and the letters of _Washington_ are written in clear and manly English. _Lindley Murray_ (1745-1826) published (1795) an _English Grammar_, which superseded all others. In theology, there were a number of vigorous thinkers and writers, such as the younger President _Edwards, Samuel Hopkins, Bellamy, Emmons, J. M. Mason_, and _Dwight_. Dwight's System of Theology was much read in England and Scotland. Belles-lettres literature in America was in its infancy. There was a triad of poets,--_Trumbull_, a humorous writer (1750-1831), _Joel Barlow_ (1755-1812), and _Dwight_ (1752-1817); all of them survivors of the school of _Pope_. Their patriotic feeling was their chief merit, but _Barlow_ and _Dwight_ each wrote one excellent hymn. GERMAN AUTHORS.--One of the most versatile and stimulating of German writers was _Herder_ (1744-1803). Full of imagination and spirit, he made his quickening influence felt as a theologian, critic, philosopher, and philologist. His name is in some measure eclipsed by the fame of his two great associates at Weimar, _Goethe_ (1749-1832) and _Schiller_ (1759-1805). By the universality of his genius, which was equally exalted in the sphere of criticism and of original production, Goethe is, by common consent, the foremost of German authors. His dramas, especially _Tasso_, _Egmont_, and _Faust_, and his pastoral epic, _Hermann and Dorothea_, are the most celebrated of his poems; but many of his minor pieces are marked by exquisite harmony and beauty. _Schiller_, with less repose and a less profound artistic feeling, yet from his humane impulses and fire of emotion stands closer to the popular heart. _Körner_ (1791-1813), and _Arndt_ (1769-1860), the author of the song, "Where is the German's Fatherland," were patriotic lyrists of high merit. _Uhland_ (1787-1862) is a ballad-writer, not surpassed in this species of composition by any of his contemporaries. The "Romantic School," with its predilection for the Middle Ages, included _Novalis_, _Tieck_, and also the two brothers _Schlegel_, who were critics rather than poets. One of the most unique and original of the German writers was _Jean Paul Richter_ (1763-1825), essentially a philosopher and moralist, yet with a pervading element of humor and pathos. GERMAN PHILOSOPHY.--In philosophy, the first name in the order of time and of merit is that of _Immanuel Kant_ (1724-1804). The _Critique of Pure Reason_ is the most important of his productions. He showed, against _Hume_, that the ideas of cause, substance, self, etc., are not products of imagination, or due to a mere custom of thought, but are from within, and are _necessary_ and _universal_. In the _Critique of the Practical Reason_ he found the real basis of faith in God, free-will, and immortality, in our moral nature. On all the topics which he treated, he was both earnest and profound. On the basis of a portion of his teaching, subsequent speculative philosophers reared a system of idealism and pantheism. Of these, the most celebrated are _Fichte_ (1762-1814), who held that the world external to the mind has no existence; _Schelling_ (1775-1854), who taught that nature and mind are at bottom one and the same substance, in different manifestations; and _Hegel_ (1770-1831), who resolved all being into a realm of ideas, a self-existent and self-developing thought-world. Among the numerous writers in other departments in this period, the brothers _Alexander von Humboldt_ and _William von Humboldt_ were eminent,--the former in natural science and as an explorer; the latter in political sciences, criticism and philology. PAINTING AND SCULPTURE.--In Italy, a great sculptor--the greatest since _Michael Angelo_--appeared in the person of _Canova_ (1757-1822); who, however, was equaled by an Englishman, _John Flaxman_ (1755-1826). An eminent follower of _Canova_ was _Thorwaldsen_ (1770-1844), a Dane. _Dannecker_, a German sculptor (1758-1844), excelled in portrait statues. Another German sculptor, the founder of a school, was _Rauch_ (1774-1857), whose statues are faithful, yet idealized, likenesses. A famous French painter in this period was _David_, whose pictures, in the classic style, lack force and warmth. Many of his scholars attained to high proficiency in the art. _Horace Vernet_ (1789-1863) and _Paul Delaroche_ (1797-1856) chose their subjects from modern European history. The modern German school of painting was founded by _Overbeck, Von Schadow_, and _Cornelius_. The greatest English painter after _Hogarth_ was _Sir Joshua Reynolds_ (1723-1792), whose portraits have seldom, if ever, been surpassed. Almost or quite on a level with him was _Gainsborough_ (1727-1788). _Benjamin West_ (1738-1820) was by birth an American, as was _Copley_, an artist of superior talents (1739-1815). _Lawrence_ (1769-1830) was a British painter whose portraits have a high historical value. The greatest of the English landscape painters was _Turner_ (1775-1851). _John Trumbull_ (1756-1843), an American, painted spirited battle-pieces, and miniature portraits of decided artistic merit. _Washington Allston_ (1779-1843), another American painter, produced works admired for their warmth of color, and for the refined feeling expressed in them. MUSIC.--The great German musicians _Haydn_ and _Mozart_ were followed by an equal or greater genius in music, _Beethoven_ (1770-1827). At the head of the school of German song-writers is _Schubert_ (1797-1828). One of the most popular of the German composers was _Weber_ (1786-1826). PHYSICAL AND NATURAL SCIENCE.--The most brilliant discoveries in astronomy were made by the French philosopher _Laplace_, whose _Mécanique Céleste_ made an epoch in that science. _Dr. Thomas Young_ (1773-1829) did much to explain the true theory of the tides, and to confirm the undulatory theory of light. Others eminent in the progress of optics are _Fresnel_ (1788-1827), _Biot_, _Arago_,--all French physicists,--and _Sir David Brewster_. _Lavoisier_ (1743-1794) infused a new spirit into chemical science. _Priestley_ (1733-1804) discovered oxygen and other gases. _Dalton_ (1766-1844) is the author of the atomic theory of the composition of matter. _Sir Humphry Davy_ added to chemical knowledge, and, simultaneously with _George Stephenson_, invented the safety-lamp for miners. _Berzelius_ (1779-1848), a Swedish chemist, and _Gay-Lussac_ (1778-1850), a Frenchman, are great names in the history of this science. _Galvani_, the discoverer of animal electricity, and _Volta_, the inventor of the galvanic pile, stimulated others to fruitful experiments in this branch of study. _Lamarck_ (1744-1829) was one of the first of the modern advocates of the origin of species by development. _Cuvier_ (1769-1832), the greatest naturalist of modern times, made most important observations in comparative anatomy, and "established many of the positive laws of geology and paleontology." Geology first assumed the place of a science through the labors of _Werner_ (1750-1817), a German mineralogist. There were two classes of geologists,--the _Neptunians_, or _Wernerians_, who ascribed rocks to aqueous deposition exclusively; and the _Vulcanians_, or _Huttonists_,--adherents of the view of _Dr. Hutton_ (1726-1797) of Edinburgh,--who attributed many of them to the action of fire. The _Geological Society_ of _London_ was founded in 1807. Among discoveries of practical utility in science, the discovery of vaccination for the prevention of small-pox, by _Jenner_ (1749-1823), an English physician, is one of the most remarkable. LITERATURE: See the lists on pp. 16, 359, 497; also President A. D. White's list, with critical notes, attached to Morris's _The French Revolution and First Empire_ (in "Epochs of history"), and Adams's Manual: the Histories of Alison (Tory), Louis Blanc, Carlyle, Jomini, Fyffe, Stephens, Mahan, Chuquet. Aulard, Lavisse et Rambaud, _Histoire Gènèrale_ VIII., IX. Michelet (7 vols.), Mignet, Morris, Von Sybel (4 vols.), Thiers, Taine, L. Haüsser; Madame de Rémusat's _Memoirs_; Metternich's _Memoirs_ (5 vols.), Joyneville, _Life and Times of Alexander I_. (3 vols.); Seeley, _Life of Stein_; Lowell, _Eve of the French Revolution_; on Napoleon, Rose, Lanfrey, Sloane. De Tocqueville's _L'Ancien Règime et la Révolution_; P. Janet's _Philosophie de la Révolution Française_; Quinet, _La Rèvolution_; The Essays on the Revolution, by Burke, Mackintosh, Croker; Macaulay's Essays on Mirabeau and Barère; Lamartine's _The Girondists_; A. Young's _Travels in France in 1787-88-89_ (London, 1794); Oncken, _Das Zeitalter der Revolution des Kaiserreiches_ (2 vols.); Sorel, _L'Europe et la Rèvolution Française_ (5 vols.); Debidour, _Rapports de l'Église et de l'Etat en France_; Vandal, _Napoléon et Alexandre 1st_. Treitschke _Deutsche Geschichte im neunzehnten Fahrhundert_ (4 vols.). Taine, _History of English Literature_; Mrs. Oliphant, _Literary History of England in the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries_; Allibone, _Dictionary of British and American Authors_; Wendell, _A Literary History of America_. PERIOD V. FROM THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA (1815) TO THE PRESENT TIME. INTRODUCTION. POLITICAL CHANGES IN EUROPE.--The aspiration of the peoples of Europe after constitutional freedom and national unity, after the yoke of Napoleon had been thrown off, was for a long season baffled. This was owing partly to the lassitude natural after the protracted and exhausting wars, and more to the combination of the principal sovereigns, instigated by the love of power and the dread of revolution, for the purpose of preventing the popular yearning from being gratified. But in 1830--when half of the lifetime of a generation had passed by--the overthrow of the old Bourbon line of kings in France was the signal for disturbances and changes elsewhere on the Continent. In _England_, at about the same time, there began an era of constitutional and legislative reforms which effected a wider diffusion of political power. In 1848--after a second interval of about equal length--another revolutionary crisis occurred. At the same time, movements in favor of communism and socialism brought in a new peril. Alarm felt on this account, by the middle class in France, was one important aid to the third _Napoleon_ in reviving the empire in _France_. The condition of Europe--in particular, the divided state of _Germany_--enabled him to maintain a leading influence for a score of years in European politics. The unification of _Germany_, which began in the triumph of Prussia over Austria, was completed in _Napoleon's_ downfall through the _Franco-German_ war. The unification of _Italy_, to which _Louis Napoleon_ had contributed by the French alliance with _Sardinia_ against _Austria_, was consummated under _Victor Emmanuel_, after his cooperation with _Prussia_ in her great struggle with _Austria_. Thus _Germany_ and _Italy_ reached the goal to which they had looked with desire and hope at the close of the Napoleonic wars in 1815. AMERICA.--On the Western Continent, _Mexico_ and the South-American dependencies of Spain and Portugal gained their independence in connection with political revolutions in the European countries to which they had been attached. The _United States,_ in the enjoyment of peace, and favored by great material advantages, advanced with marvelous rapidity in population and in wealth. Discord, growing out of the existence of negro slavery in the South, brought on at last the Civil War, which terminated in the conquest of the _Confederate States_ and their restoration to the Union, in the freedom of the slaves, and in the prohibition of slavery by Constitutional amendment. MILITARY SYSTEM IN EUROPE.--During this period, in Europe there has been a wide diffusion of popular education. But a serious hinderance in the way of physical comfort and general improvement in the principal European states has long existed, in the immense standing armies and costly military system which their mutual jealousies and apprehensions have caused them to keep up. SCIENCE AND INVENTION.--This period outstrips all previous eras as regards the progress of the natural and physical sciences, and of invention and discovery in the practical applications of science. An almost miraculous advance has taken place in the means of travel and of transmitting thought. There has been an equally marvelous advance in devising machinery for use in agriculture and manufactures, and in connection with labor of almost every sort. PEACE AND PHILANTHROPY.--The vast extension of commerce, with its interchange of products, and the intercourse which is incidental to it, has proved favorable to international peace. The better understanding of economical science, by bringing to view the mischiefs of war and the bad policy of selfishness, has tended in the same direction. Philanthropy has manifested itself with new energy and in new forms of activity. A quickened and more enlightened zeal has been shown in providing for the infirm and helpless, and for mitigating the sufferings of the soldier. Missionary undertakings, for the conversion and civilizing of heathen nations, have been a marked feature of the age. SOCIALISM.--The "industrial age" had its own perils to confront. The progress of manufactures and trade, the accumulation of wealth unequally distributed, brought forward new questions pertaining to the rights and reciprocal aggressions of laborer and capitalist. _Socialism_, with novel and startling doctrines as to the right of property, and to the proper function of the state, inaugurated movements of grave concern to the order and well-being of society. CHAPTER I. EUROPE, FROM THE CONGRESS OP VIENNA (1815) TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1830. GERMANY: THE HOLY ALLIANCE.--The years of peace which followed the _War of Liberation_ produced a signal increase of thrift and of culture in Germany. But they brought also a grievous disappointment of ardent political hopes. There was a feeling of national brotherhood, which that struggle had engendered,--such a feeling as Germans had not experienced for centuries before. Constitutional government and German unity were objects of earnest desire. _Frederick William III._, the king of Prussia (1797-1840), had promised his people a constitution. But the two emperors, _Francis I._ of Austria and _Alexander_ of Russia, together with _Frederick William_, had, at the instigation of _Alexander_,--whose mind was tinged with religious mysticism,--formed at Paris (Sept. 26, 1815) _"the Holy Alliance,"_ a covenant in which they pledged themselves, in dealing with their subjects and in their international relations, to be governed by the rules of Christian justice and charity. They invited all the potentates of Europe, except the Sultan and the Pope, to become parties to this sacred compact. With the exception of _George IV_., the Prince Regent of England, the sovereigns complied with the request. This alliance, which was sincerely meant by _Alexander_, was popularly confused with the alliance of _Austria, Russia, Prussia, England,_ and _France,_ the aim of which was to prevent further revolutions. _Francis I.,_ who lived until 1835, was stubbornly averse to every movement that in the least favored popular freedom and constitutional government. Supreme in his counsels for a whole generation was _Metternich_, not a profound statesman, but an expert diplomatist, who labored, generally with success, to stifle every effort for an increase of freedom in Germany, and elsewhere on the Continent. In the smaller German states, especially those which had belonged to the _Confederacy of the Rhine_, there was a disposition to found a constitutional system; but the Prussian government followed in the wake of Austria, and Austria stood in the way of every such innovation. AGITATION AND REACTION.--The agitation for liberty was specially rife among the students in the German universities. A demonstration by them at the _Wartburg_ (1817), in commemoration of _Luther_ and of the victory over Napoleon at _Leipsic,_--in which there were songs and speeches, and a burning of anti-liberal books,--was noticed by the Prussian and Austrian ministers; and the alleged revolutionary movements of students were denounced by the Emperor _Alexander_. This reactionary zeal was whetted by the murder of _Kotzebue_, a German poet, who was hated as a tool of Russia and a foe of liberty, and was assassinated by _Karl Sand_, a fanatical Prussian student (March 23, 1819). Young _Sand_ was executed for the deed, but his fate drew out many expressions of pity and sympathy. The Diet of the confederacy (Sept. 20, 1819) adopted what were called _the Carlsbad Resolutions_, which provided for a more rigid censorship of the press, committees of investigation to suppress revolutionary agitation, and a strict supervision of the universities by the governments. All the states were required to enforce these regulations. The liberal party, the party of freedom and unity, still subsisted, especially in the smaller states, where some of the princes, as _William I_. of _Würtemberg_ (1819-1864) and _Louis I_. of _Bavaria_ (1825-1848), entertained comparatively liberal views. FRANCE UNDER LOUIS XVIII.--The Congress of _Aix-la-Chapelle_ (1818) withdrew the army of occupation left by the allies in France. The Pentarchy, or Five Great Powers, pledged themselves to the continued maintenance of peace by means of conferences and congresses. _Louis XVIII_. (1814-1824), although inactive, was not void of good sense, and was disposed to accommodate himself to the times. But the court party, with his brother the _Count d'Artois_ at its head, were unyielding in their despotic ideas. They were for restoring the system of the old monarchy. The increase in the liberal members of the Chamber, or legislative assembly, impelled _Richelieu_, the head of the ministry, to resign (Dec., 1818). A more liberal man, _Decazes_, succeeded him. He was supported by a party which arose at this time, called _Doctrinaires_ on account of a certain pedantic spirit, and a disposition to shape political action by preconceived theories or ideas, which was imputed to them. In their ranks were _Royer-Collard, Guizot, Villemain, Barante_, and others. They advocated a constitutional monarchy. Among the liberals not affiliated with them was _La Fayette_, who encouraged the _Charbonniers_, a secret society for promoting liberty, that had its origin in Italy. TYRANNY IN SPAIN.--In 1820 revolts broke out against the Bourbon governments in _Spain_ and _Italy_. _Ferdinand VII_. had been restored to liberty by _Napoleon_ in 1814, and had returned to the Spanish throne. In 1812 the Cortes had established a constitution with a system of parliamentary government, limited prerogatives being left to the king. In favor of the new system were the educated and enlightened class generally. But--as was not the case in Germany--the uprising against _Napoleon_ in Spain had owed its strength very much to the ignorant and superstitious peasantry, who, while they hated the foreign yoke, clung to the feudal and ecclesiastical abuses which the French rulers in Spain, as far as time and opportunity permitted, swept away. _Ferdinand_ thus had a strong support in his movement to bring back the former bigoted and exclusive system. He wrested the national property from the holders to whom it had been sold. He restored the Inquisition: not less than fifty thousand individuals were imprisoned for their opinions. From his tyranny ten thousand Spaniards escaped into France. SOUTH AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE.--The French usurpation in Spain cost that country its American colonies. They would not submit to the French sovereignty, and after its fall maintained their independence. _Buenos Ayres_ broke loose from Spain in 1810, and in 1816 joined the Plate states in a confederation. _Paraguay_ declined a union with Buenos Ayres, and continued under the patriarchal absolutism introduced by the Jesuits, _Dr. Francia_ being its ruler until his death (1840). _Uruguay_ became a republic distinct from Buenos Ayres in 1828. In the northern colonies, the principal hero of the struggle for independence was _Simon Bolivar_, who sprang from a noble Creole family. He first fought for the independence of Venezuela (1810), but was made by _New Granada_ its general in 1812, and became president of the two countries, which were united under the name of _Colombia_ (1819). _Quito_ was now taken, and Peru was set free from the Spanish rule. Upper Peru, in 1825, was named, in honor of the "Liberator," _Bolivia_. He found it impracticable to connect the different states in one confederacy, and closed his eventful life in 1830. _Colombia_ divided itself into the three states, _Venezuela_, _New Granada_, and _Ecuador_ (1831). MEXICAN INDEPENDENCE.--After the year 1808, there were various attempts at revolution in _Mexico_. In 1821 its independence was achieved by an insurrection under _Iturbide_, a native Mexican. He failed in the effort to make himself emperor (1822); and the Republic of Mexico was organized in 1824, and was recognized by the United States in 1829. MILITARY REVOLT IN SPAIN.--The loss of her American colonies, and the efforts to restore them, reduced Spain to extreme poverty. In 1820 a successful military insurrection, led by _Quiroga_, _Riego_, and _Mina_, proclaimed anew the constitution of 1812. _Ferdinand_, who was capable of any amount of hypocrisy as well as cruelty, swore to uphold it. The revolution was supported by the intelligent class of people, but the defenders of it were split into different parties. The clergy and the peasantry were arrayed on the other side. Guerilla bands were organized under the name of the "Army of the Faith." CONGRESS OF VERONA.--The military revolt in Spain alarmed the Great Powers. The three sovereigns were now leagued for the defense of "the throne and the altar;" for _Alexander_, who had shown liberal inclinations on the subject of the emancipation of the serfs, and even towards _Greece_ in its aspiration for independence, now recoiled from every thing that savored of freedom. At the Congress of _Verona_ (Oct., 1822), the sovereigns resolved to interfere in Spain. The _Duke of Wellington_ declined to concur with them, and, on his return from the congress, advised _Louis XVIII._ to take the same course. ENGLAND: CANNING.--_George IV._ (1820-1830) had been regent since 1810. Already unpopular, he became still more so in consequence of his abortive effort (1820) to procure a divorce from _Queen Caroline_, whom he had married at the demand of his father (1795). She was not allowed to be present at his coronation. On account of the profligacy of her husband, there was a strong sympathy with her, although she was a coarse-minded woman. For a number of years after the Peace of 1815, the English government resisted movements towards reform at home; and in its foreign policy, under the guidance of _Castlereagh_, it sustained the reactionary cause abroad. Disaffection towards the ministers gave rise to a plot, contrived by some desperate men, to destroy them in a body. It was detected; and _Thistlewood_, with some of his confederates, was executed (1820). On the death of _Lord Castlereagh_ in 1822, _Canning_, a disciple of _Pitt_, became foreign secretary. He adopted a more liberal policy, and worked against the schemes of Metternich for interference in the affairs of foreign states. He transferred England, says Guizot, "from the camp of resistance and of European order into the camp of liberty." THE REBELLION CRUSHED IN SPAIN.--The French unwisely rejected England's advice. _Louis XVIII_. sent an army into Spain, under the _Duke of Angoulême_, released _Ferdinand_ at Cadiz, and gave him the power to revoke all that he had done in favor of liberty. The brave _Riego_ was hung on a gibbet of enormous height. The Spanish army was disbanded, and the "Army of the Faith" took its place. Many thousands of constitutionalists were thrown into prison. _Canning_ recognized the republics of South America, lest they, too, should fall under French control. It was his boast, that he "called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old." PORTUGAL: BRAZIL.--The royal family of Portugal were residing in _Brazil_ when the Spanish revolution occurred. Portugal, in the absence of King _John VI_., framed a liberal constitution. The Brazilians were eager for independence from Portugal. _John_ decided to withdraw. Arrived in Portugal, he accepted the new constitution; but the anti-revolutionary party rallied about his son _Dom Miguel_, who was supported by his mother, a sister of _Ferdinand VII_, of Spain. _Dom Miguel_ was at length driven into exile, and went to _Vienna_. Meantime _Dom Pedro_, a son of _John VI_., had made himself emperor in Brazil by allying himself with the constitutional party; and _John_ was prevailed on by the British, in 1825, to recognize the new South American empire. NAPLES AND SICILY.--In all the eight principalities of Italy, except in Tuscany, the misrule of the restored governments was galling to the people, whose hope of freedom had been raised only to be cast down. Everywhere the tyrannical influence of _Austria_ was dominant. The rulers in Italy were slavishly submissive to her will; and any rising of the people, if not put down by them, was crushed by Austrian forces sent down from Lombardy. Secret societies sprung up; the chief of which, the _Carbonari_, aimed at national independence, but beyond that cherished no definite, united purpose. The Spanish revolution served as the occasion for a similar rebellion of the soldiery of _Naples_. A new liberal constitution was established, which _Ferdinand IV_. (July 13, 1820) solemnly swore to maintain. The insurrection in Sicily aimed at independence, but Palermo was surrendered to the revolutionary government of _Naples_. The Neapolitan rebellion led to the Congress of _Troppau_ (Oct., 1820), which was transferred to _Laybach_ (Jan., 1821). There Austria, Prussia, and Russia formed a league, the fruit of which was, that an Austrian army of sixty thousand men marched into the South of Italy, and the revolution was crushed. _Ferdinand_ reëstablished his despotism, disbanded the greater part of his army, and punished with exile, imprisonment, and death the leading supporters of the constitution which he had taken an oath to defend. SARDINIA.--In Piedmont, the demand for a constitution and a rising at _Alessandria_ impelled _Victor Emmanuel I_. to abdicate in favor of his brother, _Charles Felix_, who was favorable to Austria and her policy. Prince _Charles Albert_,--a distant cousin,--who had liberal views, held the regency for a few months; but _Charles Felix_, on his return from _Modena_ (Oct., 1821), governed according to despotic principles. The contest in Italy between "despots and conspirators" went on until the renewed outbreakings of revolt in 1830. THE GREEK INSURRECTION.--The weakness of Turkey emboldened the Greeks to attempt to throw off the hated Ottoman yoke. The sultans had become the puppets of their guards, the janizaries. One after another of them had been dethroned by their soldiers. The pashas were insubordinate: in Egypt, _Mehemet Ali_ had almost made himself independent. Russia, by the Peace of _Bucharest_ in 1812, had possessed herself of _Bessarabia_ and of Eastern _Moldavia_ as far as the _Pruth_. Among the Greeks, who were not more than a million in number, and were only one among the various peoples subject to Turkey, there were formed _Hetaireiai_, or secret societies, for the purpose of organizing an insurrection. The people were first summoned to rise by _Alexander Ypsilanti_ (1821). A "national congress" promulgated a new constitution for Greece (1822). Great enthusiasm in behalf of the Greek cause was awakened in most of the civilized countries; but the _Congress of Verona_ (1822), inspired by _Metternich_, decided to give no help to the "insurgents." In the war of the Greeks with the Turks, there were atrocities committed on both sides. _Scio_ was taken by the latter in 1822. Not far from twenty thousand of the inhabitants were massacred, and twice that number were enslaved. In 1824 the Greeks began to receive foreign help. Among those who volunteered with a chivalrous sympathy to aid them in their combat was _Lord Byron_, who died at _Missolonghi_ (1824). _Nicholas I_. of Russia, who in 1825 succeeded _Alexander I_., was more inclined to take an active part in the Greek contest, as he considered himself the head of all Christians of the Greek faith. The Sultan _Mahmoud II_., by crushing the janizaries, strengthened himself at home, but weakened his means of attack and defense abroad. In 1826 he made important concessions to _Russia_; among other things, allowing her to occupy the east coast of the Black Sea, and giving to her vessels a free admission to Turkish waters. GREEK INDEPENDENCE.--_Mehemet Ali_ hoped to succeed _Mahmoud_. His son _Ibrahim_ had defeated the Greeks at _Navarino_ (1825). The next year, in conjunction with the Turks, he captured _Missolonghi_. The apprehension that _Nicholas_ might seek to divide Turkey with _Mehemet Ali_ caused the _Treaty of London_ to be concluded by the Great Powers which founded the kingdom of _Greece_ (July 6, 1827). England, Russia, and France joined in executing the treaty. They destroyed the Turkish-Egyptian fleet at _Navarino_ (Oct. 20). Later, _Nicholas_ waged a separate war with the Porte, which was terminated by the Peace of _Adrianople_ (1829), when the latter recognized the independence of Greece. The crown of Greece was accepted in 1832 by _Otho_, son of Louis of Bavaria. CHAPTER II. EUROPE FROM THE REVOLUTION OF 1830 TO THE REVOLUTIONARY EPOCH OF 1848. CHARLES X.--_Louis XVIII_. died in 1824. His brother, _Charles X_. (1824-30), dealt generously with the collateral branch of the Bourbons, the house of _Orleans_. He restored to _Louis Philippe_, the son of that _Philip Egalite_ whose base career was ended by the guillotine (p. 512), the vast estates of the Orleans family, and gave him the title of "Royal Highness." But he failed to secure the cordial support of this ambitious relative. The _Duke of Orleans_ stood well with the king, but was on good terms with the liberal leaders. The king sought to reinstate the ideas and ways of the old _régime_. He was specially zealous in behalf of ecclesiastics, and ceremonies of devotion. But liberal views in politics gained ground in the second Chamber, as well as in the army and among the people. A liberal ministry under _Martignac_ was in power for a while; but in 1829 it was succeeded by a ministry the head of which was the unpopular Prince _Polignac_, and the other principal members of which were hardly less obnoxious. They represented the extreme reactionary and royalist party. Their active opponents--_Guizot_, _Thiers_, and _Benjamin Constant_ among them--found that their assaults on the government were generally applauded. All of these were brilliant political writers. _Constant_ (from 1825) had been the leader of the opposition. _Thiers_ was a journalist of wide influence. _Guizot_ had held office under the liberal ministers, and as lecturer on modern history, and by his writings, had laid the foundation of the great distinction which he deservedly gained, as one of the foremost students and expounders of history in recent times. _Thiers_ and _Guizot_ were at this time united in the advocacy of a constitutional system, as opposed to the reactionary policy and the personal government to which the king and his ministers were committed. Later we shall see that the paths of these two statesmen diverged. In 1830 _Guizot_ was the opposition leader in the Chamber of Deputies. In the Chamber of Peers, the ministry was attacked by _Chateaubriand_, who had been a valuable supporter of the Bourbon cause, and by others. The Chambers were dissolved by the king. The capture of _Algiers_, in a war against the piratical power of which it was the seat, did not avail to lessen the growing hostility to his government. It found expression through the press and in speeches at a great banquet. ORDINANCES OF ST. CLOUD.--Taking advantage of the provision in the charter which gave extraordinary powers to the king for special emergencies (p. 537), the ministry took the fatal step (July 25, 1830) of issuing the "ordinances of St. Cloud," dissolving the Chamber of Deputies, further restricting the suffrage so that many merchants and manufacturers lost this privilege, and reëstablishing the censorship of the press in a peculiarly burdensome form. THE JULY REVOLUTION.--The ordinances were published on July 26. That evening Prince _Polignac's_ windows were broken by a mob. The whole city of Paris was in a tumult. The liberal journals protested. There were collisions between the mob and the king's troops. A protest of the liberal deputies, who met at the house of _Casimir Perier_, was issued. In the night the people armed themselves. _La Fayette_ arrived in Paris. On the 28th students, workmen, and all classes of citizens, armed themselves with whatever weapons they could lay hold of. The revolutionists took possession of the Hôtel de Ville. The cry was that the charter was violated. All efforts to induce the king to make concessions failed. Many of the soldiers in Paris fraternized with the people, who on the 29th had control of the whole city, except the vicinity of the Tuileries, which they gained possession of that evening. _La Fayette_, at the call of the deputies, assumed command of the National Guard. Finally, when it was too late, the king decided to withdraw the ordinances, and to change the ministry. _Thiers_ and _Mignet_ caused anonymous placards to be posted, proposing that the _Duke of Orleans_ should take the crown from the people. On the 30th _Louis Philippe_ entered Paris on foot: he had passed the summer at his country place at _Neuilly_. _Talleyrand_,--whose influence was great with foreign courts,--_Lafitte_, and _Thiers_ were active in the effort to advance him to the throne. The deputies decided that he must be made lieutenant-general of the kingdom. _Charles X._, who still blindly confided in him, on the 31st appointed him to this office. What the intentions of _Louis Philippe_ were, is not clear. He probably meant to be governed by circumstances. On the 29th a municipal commission was installed at the Hôtel de Ville, consisting of _La Fayette_ and six other leading men. They selected several persons as officials whose authority was generally acknowledged. _Louis Philippe_, at the head of the deputies, went to the Hôtel de Ville. He was cordially received by _La Fayette_ and his associates. It was agreed that there should be "a popular throne, with free institutions." On the balcony, under the tri-color flag, the Duke of Orleans was introduced as "the man of the people." _La Fayette_ felt that a republic would be contrary to the national wish. _Thiers_ was of the same mind. They feared complications and contests abroad, and what might be the results of general suffrage, in the existing state of the country, at home. FLIGHT OF CHARLES X.--The desertion of _Charles X._ by his troops would have rendered an armed contest on his part impracticable. The dexterous management of _Louis Philippe_ was made effectual by the favoring circumstances. On Aug. 2 the king abdicated in favor of his grandson, the _Duke of Bordeaux_, and was compelled to fly from the kingdom. The volunteer army had been stirred up to go out to _Rambouillet_ to drive him away. The angry old king did not wait for their coming. LOUIS PHILIPPE MADE KING.--The Chamber of Deputies declared the throne vacant. They altered the charter,--putting all religious bodies on a level, giving freedom to the press, limiting the powers of the king, and giving to the Chambers, as well as to him, the initiative in framing laws. They chose _Louis Philippe_ "King of the French." He owed his elevation to the middle classes, and claimed to be the "citizen king." SEPARATION OF BELGIUM.--The effect of the new revolution was to set in motion the elements of discontent in the other European countries. _Belgium_ was the first to feel the shock. The Belgians were restless under the rule of _William I._, whose treatment of them aggravated the disaffection which their political relation to Holland constantly occasioned. A revolt broke out at _Brussels_. The offer of a legislative and administrative separation of _Belgium_ from _Holland_, with one king over both, might have been accepted if it had been made earlier; but it followed unsuccessful efforts to quell the insurrection by force. A provisional government was created at _Brussels_, which proclaimed the independence of _Belgium_ (Oct. 4), and convoked a national congress. France confined itself to preventing the interference of foreign powers. A conference of ministers at _London_ (Jan., 1831) recognized the new state, which adopted a liberal constitution. _Leopold I._ of _Saxe-Coburg_ was chosen king. He was aided by the forces of the French; but the war with Holland lasted until 1833, and it was not until 1839 that Holland definitely accepted the action of the London congress. POLAND.--Poland was harshly ruled for the Czar by the Grand Duke _Constantine_. The revolution in France was the signal for a Polish rising, that began in an unsuccessful attempt of students and others to seize the person of the grand duke. The insurrection spread: men of talents and distinction, as well as Polish soldiers, joined the cause of the people. The Czar, _Nicholas_, would make no terms with the insurgents, and the Diet (Jan. 25, 1831) declared him to have forfeited the Polish crown. The Poles fought with desperate valor in a series of bloody battles, only to be overwhelmed by superiority of numbers. They were defeated at _Ostrolenka_ by _Diebitsch_ (May 26). After his death, _Warsaw_ surrendered to _Paskievitch_ (Sept. 8), and another Russian general entered _Cracow_. _Poland_ was now reduced, as far as it could be, to a Russian province. The army was merged in the Russian forces; the university was suppressed; the Roman Catholic religion, the prevailing faith, was persecuted; and it was computed that in one year (1832) eighty thousand Poles were sent to Siberia. GERMANY: HUNGARY.--In Saxony and in the minor states of Germany, disturbances were consequent on the tidings of the revolution at Paris. Prussia and Austria were little affected by it; but the demands of the Diet in _Hungary_, when _Ferdinand_, the son of _Francis I._ was crowned king of that country, were an augury of a far greater commotion to arise at a later day. In the Diet of 1832 _Louis Kossuth_ first appeared as a member. Between the years 1828 and 1834, the German states (not including Austria), under the guidance of Prussia and Bavaria, formed a _Zollverein_, or customs-union, which was an important step in the direction of German unity, and one which Austria looked on with disfavor. ITALY.--In 1831, there were signs of revolt in different states of Italy. At _Modena_, a provisional government was erected. The same thing was done at _Bologna_. _Maria Louisa_ was driven out of _Parma_. Among those who joined the insurgents in the Papal Kingdom were _Napoleon_ and his younger brother _Louis Bonaparte_, sons of _Louis Bonaparte_ king of Holland. The elder of the sons died soon after at _Forli_. The Italians relied on the help of _Louis Philippe_, but the citizen king had no disposition to engage in war with _Austria_. The uprisings were put down with the assistance of Austrian troops. _Charles Albert_, after April, 1831, king of _Sardinia_, did a good work in the discipline of his army. Without any esteem for Austria, he refused to further the plans of the revolutionary party, and thus incurred the hostility of _Mazzini_, who was organizing the movement of "Young Italy" for independence and unity. _Mazzini_, a man of elevated spirit and disinterested aims, was long to be known as the head of the republican patriots and plotters. ENGLAND.--In _England_, reform went forward peacefully. The middle class gradually obtained its demands. The national debt, at the close of the wars with Napoleon, amounted to nearly eight hundred millions of pounds. In 1823, with the accession of _Mr. Huskisson_ to office, began the movement for a more free commercial policy, which led in the end to the repeal of the corn-laws. The question of "Catholic disabilities" was agitated from time to time, and something had been done to lighten them. Yet in 1828 Catholics were still shut out by law from almost every office of trust and distinction. They could not sit in either house of Parliament. The endeavors of liberal statesmen for their relief were defeated by the Tory majorities. The agitation was increased by the "Catholic Association" formed in Ireland by the Irish leader and orator, _Daniel O'Connell_. A Tory ministry was formed by the _Duke of Wellington_, with Mr. (afterwards _Sir_) Robert _Peel_ for its chief supporter in the House of Commons (1829). Yet, to avert the danger of civil war, the ministry introduced, and with aid of the Whigs carried, the "Catholic Emancipation Bill." THE REFORM BILL.--On the death of _George IV._, _William IV._, his brother (1830-1837), succeeded to the throne. He was favorable to parliamentary reform. The ferment on this subject caused the resignation of the _Wellington_ ministry, which was succeeded by the ministry of Earl _Grey_. A bill for reform was presented to Parliament, depriving eighty-eight "rotten or decayed" boroughs, where there were very few inhabitants, of a hundred and forty-three members of the House of Commons, who were given to counties or to large towns, such as _Birmingham_ and _Manchester_, which had no representation. At the same time the franchise was greatly extended. The bill was strenuously resisted by the Tories, who now began to be called _Conservatives_. Its repeated rejection by the House of Lords caused a violent agitation. Finally, in 1832, when it was understood that the king would create new peers enough to pass the measure, it was carried in the upper house, and became a law. SLAVERY ABOLISHED.--In 1833 the system of slavery in the British colonies was abolished, twenty million pounds being paid as a compensation to the slave-owners. This measure was the result of an agitation in which _Wilberforce_, _Clarkson_, and _Buxton_ had been foremost. In the latter part of the eighteenth century, a strong feeling arose against the slave-trade. _Granville Sharp_ (1734-1813) was one of the earliest promoters of its abolition. By his agency, in the case of a negro,--_Somerset_,--claimed as a slave, the decision was obtained from Lord _Mansfield_, that a slave could not be held in England, or carried out of it. The Quakers were early in the field in opposition to the traffic in slaves. In the House of Commons, _Wilberforce_, a man of earnest religious convictions and one of the most eloquent orators of his time, contended against it for years. His friend _Pitt_, and _Fox_, joined him in 1790. The measure of abolition was carried in 1807. Then followed the agitation for the abolition of slavery itself. The slave-trade was made illegal by France in 1819. It had been condemned by the Congress of Vienna. In the French colonies, slavery continued until 1848. LEGAL REFORMS.--In the same year the monopoly of the East-India Company was abolished, and trade with the East was made free to all merchants. A new _Poor Law_ (1834) checked the growth of pauperism. In 1835, by the _Municipal Corporations Act_, the ancient rights of self-government by the towns, which had been lost since the fourteenth century, were restored to them. Civil marriage was made legal, in compliance with a demand of the Dissenters, who were likewise relieved of other grounds of complaint (1836). Increased attention began to be paid to popular education. CHARTISM.--Notwithstanding the constitutional changes in England, the distress and discontent of the poorer classes occasioned the riotous "Chartist" movement in 1839, when universal suffrage, annual parliaments, and other radical changes were in vain demanded. Mass meetings were held, and outbreakings of violence were feared; but order was preserved. CHINA: AFGHANISTAN.--A war with China (1839) had no better ground than the refusal of the Chinese government to allow the importation of opium. The occupation of _Kabul_ in 1839 caused a general revolt of the Afghans. A British army was destroyed in the _Khyber Pass_. The British then conquered, but did not care to retain, Afghanistan. REPEAL OF THE CORN LAWS.--_Victoria_, the only child of the Duke of Kent, the brother of _William IV._, succeeded the latter in 1837. She married her cousin, _Albert_ of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (1840). In 1846 the party which had long advocated free trade gained a triumph in the repeal of the _Corn Laws_, which had existed since 1815, imposing duties on imported grain. In the agitation which preceded the repeal, _Richard Cobden_ was the leader: he was effectively aided by _John Bright_. But the measure was carried by _Sir Robert Peel_, who on this question abandoned his former views and those of the Conservatives, by whom he had been raised to power. He was bitterly assailed, especially by _D'Israeli_, who was rising to the position of a leader among them. LOUIS PHILIPPE.--Louis Philippe made up his first ministry from the party which had raised him to the throne. Among its members were _Broglie_, _Guizot_, and _Casimir Périer_. The king aimed by shrewd management to maintain his popularity at home, and to keep the peace with foreign powers, by taking care to encourage liberal movements abroad, yet without taking any step in that direction which would bring on war. He did nothing for the _Poles_ in their mortal struggle, and nothing really effectual for the _Italians_. Several abortive attempts upon his life were made by secret societies; one of a dangerous character, by _Fieschi_ (1835), who fired "an infernal machine" from his window when the king was passing. This was followed by the "Laws of September," to curb the license of the press. They reminded the public of the royalist laws of 1820. They were opposed by the more liberal men: _Royer-Collard_ and _Villemain_ spoke against them. They went by the name of the "Fieschi laws." An effort to raise an insurrection among the French troops in _Strasburg_ was made by _Louis Napoleon Bonaparte_ (1836), who, after his flight from Italy, had resided in Switzerland, where he had busied himself in study, and had written several books. The enterprise proved a ridiculous failure: its author was allowed to go to America. FRENCH POLICY IN THE EAST.--Various causes conspired to undermine _Louis Philippe's_ government. One of these was its connection with the war of _Mehemet Ali_ with the Sultan. In the former war with his over-lord, the Sultan, the viceroy of Egypt had been invested with _Syria_ as a fief. He now sent an army into Syria, under his son _Ibrahim_, who overran that country, advanced victoriously into Asia Minor, and threatened _Constantinople_ (1832). The European powers intervened, and obliged _Mehemet Ali_ to content himself with Syria, together with the district of _Adana_ in Asia Minor, and the island of _Candia_, which the Sultan had ceded to him before. In 1839 the Sultan tried to recover Syria, but encountered an overwhelming defeat, and lost the entire Turkish fleet. England now combined with Austria, Prussia, and Russia, and the Western powers once more saved the Turkish Empire; although France, under the ministry of _Thiers_, had strongly favored the cause of _Mehemet Ali_ (1840). Contrary to the wish of the French, he had to give up Syria. He secured for himself and his descendants the pashalic of Egypt (1841). The failure of the French policy in the East, by this action of the _Quadruple Alliance_, caused indignation and chagrin in France. Even _Thiers_, who was in sympathy with the cause of Mehemet Ali, was loudly blamed. There was danger of a rupture with England. _Thiers_ was a principal author of the plan for fortifying Paris by encircling the city with forts. The king judged that they might prove to be of use in putting down insurrections. _Louis Napoleon_ thought the occasion favorable for another attempt to seize the crown. He landed from England at _Boulogne_ with a few followers, and proclaimed himself emperor. He was captured, tried, and imprisoned in the fortress of Ham, where he spent six years. His time there was mostly given to study and writing. A few months before this attempt of _Louis Napoleon_, the French government had arranged for the bringing of the body of the first _Napoleon_ from _St. Helena_ to _Paris_. It was one of various impolitic measures, in which _Thiers_ was actively concerned, for doing honor to the emperor and his military achievements. But at that time _Louis Napoleon_, who was known to be a man of slow mind, but whose capacity for intrigue was not understood, was regarded with contempt, and the Bonapartists excited no alarm. In 1841, in the presence of the royal family and of a vast concourse, the remains of _Napoleon_ were deposited with great pomp in a magnificent tomb under the dome of the Church of the Invalides. Marshal _Soult_ superseded _Thiers_ at the head of the ministry (1840); but _Guizot_ was the ruling spirit in the cabinet, and was associated with the king until his dethronement. The death of the _Duke of Orleans_, the eldest son of _Louis Philippe_, by a fall from his carriage (July 13, 1842), endangered the new dynasty. The duke's eldest son, the _Count of Paris_, was then only four years of age. GUIZOT'S ADMINISTRATION.--From 1840 _Guizot_ was the principal minister of _Louis Philippe_, and _Thiers_ was in the opposition. They differed both as regards foreign and domestic policy. _Thiers_, who in his convictions was a decided liberal, and in full sympathy with the spirit of the French Revolution, was for the extension of suffrage, and for making the influence of France felt and respected in matters of European concern, even at the risk of war. _Guizot_, on the contrary, clung to the English alliance, and he considered that a foreign war--for example, in defense of _Mehemet Ali_,--would be to France a great and needless calamity. Claiming to be a fast friend of representative government, _Guizot_ nevertheless inflexibly resisted movements for the extension of popular rights,--movements which he believed would lead, if they were not withstood, to revolution and anarchy. On the one hand were the legitimists, aiming at the restoration of the elder branch of the Bourbons; on the other hand there were the republicans, who wished to be rid of monarchy altogether. The government of _Louis Philippe_ satisfied neither. It served as a transition, or temporary halting-place, in the progress of France towards the goal of rational and stable republicanism, to which the great Revolution tended. It was an "attempt to put new wine in old bottles." This inherent weakness of the Orleans rule, it would have been difficult by any means to neutralize in such a way as to avert, sooner or later, a catastrophe. The unbending conservatism of _Guizot_--as seen, for instance, in his refusal to extend suffrage--hastened this result. A government over which less than half a million of voters of the middle class alone had an influence, could not stand against the progressive feeling of the country. The middle class, on which the throne depended, became separated from the advanced party, to which the youth of France more and more rallied. _Guizot_ was personally upright; but official corruption was suffered to spread in the last years of his administration, and bribery was used in the elections. These circumstances, added to the mortification of national pride from the little heed paid to France by the other powers, weakened the throne. The failure of the government to support the cause of liberty in _Poland_ and _Italy_ was another important source of its growing unpopularity. _Guizot_, in the personal _Memoirs_ written by him after the fall of _Louis Philippe_, has defended himself against the charge of a want of loyal support of _Thiers_, the head of the ministry, while he (Guizot) was ambassador to England (1840). There was a private understanding that he should go no farther than his sympathy with the views of _Thiers_ extended. _Guizot_ has undertaken, also, to show that a war in behalf of _Mehemet Ali_ would have been most unwise; and that it was for the interest of France to regain its weight in European affairs, not by the renewal of the bloody and fruitless contests of the past, but by methods of peace. He deemed it his duty not to give way to the "warlike tastes and inclinations" of the French people. The effort, however, to tie down so spirited a nation to so tame a policy, proved to be futile. The recollections of the empire, which the government itself did so much to arouse, moved the people to compare the achievements of the past with the humiliating position of their country under the Orleans rule. Guizot has left this interesting exposition of his principles and policy: "In the diplomatic complication which agitated Europe, I saw a brilliant opportunity of exercising and loudly proclaiming a foreign policy, extremely new and bold in fact, though moderate in appearance, the only foreign policy which in 1840 suited the peculiar position of France and her government, as also the only course in harmony with the guiding principles and permanent wants of the great scheme of civilization to which the world of to-day aspires and tends. "The spirit of conquest, of propagandism, and of system, has hitherto been the moving cause and master of the foreign policy of states. The ambition of princes or peoples has sought its gratification in territorial aggrandizement. Religious or political faith has endeavored to expand by imposing itself. Great heads of government have attempted to regulate the destinies of nations according to profound combinations, the offspring rather of their own thought than the natural result of facts. Let us cast a glance over the history of international European relations. We shall see the spirit of conquest, or of armed propagandism, or of some systematic design upon the territorial organization of Europe, inspire and determine the foreign policy of governments. Let one or other of these impulses prevail, and governments have disposed arbitrarily of the fate of nations. War has ever been their indispensable mode of action. "I know that this course of things has been the fatal result of men's passions; and that, in spite of those passions and the evils they have inflicted on nations, European civilization has continued to increase and prosper, and may increase and prosper still more. It is to the honor of the Christian world, that evil does not stifle good. I know that the progress of civilization and public reason will not abolish human passions, and that, under their impulse, the spirit of conquest, of armed propagandism, and of system, will ever maintain, in the foreign policy of states, their place and portion. But, at the same time, I hold for certain that these various incentives are no longer in harmony with the existing state of manners, ideas, interests, and social instincts; and that it is quite possible to-day to combat and restrain materially their empire. The extent and activity of industry and commerce; the necessity of consulting the general good; the habit of frequent, easy, prompt, and regular intercourse between peoples; the invincible bias for free association, inquiry, discussion, and publicity,--these characteristic features of great modern society already exercise, and will continue to exercise more and more, against the warlike or diplomatic fancies of foreign policy, a preponderating influence. People smile, not without reason, at the language and puerile confidence of the _Friends of Peace_, and of the _Peace Societies_. All the leading tendencies, all the most elevated hopes of humanity, have their dreams, and their idle, gaping advocates, as they have also their days of decline and defeat; but they no less pursue their course; and through all the chimeras of some, the doubts and mockeries of others, society becomes transformed, and policy, foreign and domestic, is compelled to transform itself with society. We have witnessed the most dazzling exploits of the spirit of conquest, the most impassioned efforts of the spirit of armed propagandism; we have seen territories and states molded and re-molded, unmade, re-made, and unmade again, at the pleasure of combinations more or less specious. What survives of all these violent and arbitrary works? They have fallen, like plants without roots, or edifices without foundation. And now, when analogous enterprises are attempted, scarcely have they made a few steps in advance when they pause and hesitate, as if embarrassed by, and doubtful of, themselves; so little are they in accord with the real wants, the profound instincts, of existing society, and with the persevering, though frequently disputed, tendencies of modern civilization.... I repeat, our history since 1789, our endless succession of shocks, revolutions, and wars, have left us in a state of leverish agitation which renders peace insipid, and teaches us to find a blind gratification in the unexpected strokes of a hazardous policy. We are a prey to two opposing currents,--one deep and regular, which carries towards the definite goal of our social state; the other superficial and disturbed, which throws us here and there in search of new adventures and unknown lands. Thus we float and alternate between these two opposing directions,--called towards the one by our sound sense and moral conviction, and enticed towards the other by our habits of routine and freaks of imagination." (_Memoirs of a Minister of State, from the year 1840_ pp. 7-9, 10.) THE KING'S AVARICE.--The imputation of avarice to Louis Philippe was one source of his increasing unpopularity. On his accession he had handed over to his children the estates of the house of Orleans, in order that, as private property, they might not be forfeited with the loss of the crown. He was not content with increasing his wealth by adding to it all the possessions of _Charles X_. and of the _Duke of Bourbon_, but it was discovered that he was engaged in business ventures. In providing for ample marriage settlements for his children, he resorted to devices which gave offense to the Chamber of Deputies and to the public. Yet writers like _Martin_, who are strongly averse to his method of rule, clear him of blame in these particulars, if he is to be judged by what is usual in a monarchical system. THE SPANISH MARRIAGES.--An event of consequence in relation to the fall of Louis Philippe from power was the affair of the Spanish marriages, which took place under the ministry of Guizot. The _Duke de Montpensier_, the youngest son of the king, was married to the sister of _Isabella II_. of Spain. The design, it was believed, was, in the anticipated childlessness of the queen, to secure for his heirs the Spanish crown. _Ferdinand VII_. of Spain was an absolutist; but the extreme monarchical party there wished for a king of more energy, and desired to raise to the throne his brother _Don Carlos_. In 1830 _Ferdinand_, being then childless, was induced by his wife, the daughter of _Ferdinand IV_. of Naples, to abrogate the Salic law excluding females from the succession. Her daughter _Isabella_ was born a few months later. After the death of the king (1833), the _Carlists_ resisted the exclusion of their favorite from the throne. _Don Carlos_ was proclaimed in the Basque provinces, and a civil war arose. The queen, _Maria Christina_, as regent, was supported by the _moderados_ (moderates) and the liberals, and was allowed to recruit for her army in England and France. The leading constitutionalist general, _Espartero_, was successful; and _Don Carlos_ fled into France (1839). The queen regent allied herself with the conservative wing of the progressive party (the _moderados_); but insurrections at _Barcelona_ and _Madrid_, in the interest of the radical wing, obliged her to make _Espartero_, the head of the movement, prime minister (1840). His administration greatly promoted the prosperity of the country. But the conservatives and absolutists were against him; and, as the result of a counter-insurrection, _Gen. Narvaez_, the leader of the conservatives, became chief of the cabinet (1844); but he was dismissed two years later. The constitution was divested of some of its liberal features. The queen, _Isabella II_., had been declared of age by the Cortes, and placed on the throne (Nov. 10, 1843). _Christina_, her dissolute mother, returned from France, whither she had fled. In the hope of securing the Spanish throne to the Orleans family, _Louis Philippe_ arranged with _Christina_ to effect a marriage between _Isabella_ and a weakling in body and mind, _Francis de Assis_; and, at the same time, a marriage of his son, the _Duke de Montpensier_, with her sister _Maria Louisa_ (Oct. 10, 1846). An Orleans prince would not have acquired the crown, even if Louis Philippe had remained on the French throne, since a daughter was born to Isabella in 1851. There was loud complaint in England against the king and _Guizot_, for the alleged violation of a promise in this affair. Their defense was that _Lord Palmerston_, who succeeded _Aberdeen_, took a very different position from that of this minister, which had been the condition of the engagement. It was from _Palmerston's_ action previously in the affair of Egypt, that the French were embittered, the English alliance was weakened, and the policy of _Guizot_, who was sincerely desirous to maintain this friendly relation, was discredited at home. FALL OF LOUIS PHILIPPE.--The scarcity of provisions in 1846 and 1847 provoked much discontent in France. "Bread riots" broke out in various places. The liberal party, composed of diverse elements, organized committees as one of their instruments of agitation in behalf of political reform. The democratic and socialistic journals published inflammatory discussions and appeals. The complaint of corruption among officials grew louder. Communism had numerous votaries; and _M. Louis Blanc_ was an apostle of socialism,--the theory that the government should furnish work and maintenance to all of its subjects. Great reform banquets were held, where the spirit was inimical to _Guizot_,--who would yield nothing to the popular clamor,--and hostile to the reactionary policy of the Orleans monarchy. The spark that kindled the flames of revolution was the prohibition by _Guizot_ of a great reform banquet appointed to be held on the 22d of February, 1848, in the _Champs Elysées_, in which a hundred thousand persons were expected to participate. On that day barricades were thrown up in the streets, and there were some conflicts with the municipal guard. These disturbances continued on the next day. The king, who did not lack physical courage, evinced no firmness or boldness in this crisis, dismissed _Guizot_ as a peace-offering, and called upon Count _Molé_ to form a cabinet. _Molé_ declined; the riotous disturbances increased; and _Thiers_, on the promise of the king to consent to the reforms demanded, undertook, when it was too late, to take office, and try to pacify the people. Soldiers began to fraternize with the mob. The king showed no spirit, but abdicated in favor of his grandson, the _Count of Paris_. The _Duchess of Orleans_ presented her two sons, the count and his brother, before the Chamber of Deputies. But the motion for a provisional government prevailed (Feb. 24). It consisted of _Dupont de l'Eure, Lamartine_ the poet, _Arago, Ledru-Rollin_, and six associates. It established itself in the Hotel de Ville. This act, and the firmness and eloquence of _Lamartine_, prevented the establishment of an ultra-republican, socialistic Directory. The middle classes, alarmed on account of the displays of mob violence, rallied to the support of _Lamartine_ and the party of order. _Louis Philippe_ and his family were allowed to escape to England. There _Guizot_ temporarily took up his abode. After a year, this "last of the Huguenots" returned to France, where he died in 1874. CONTEST WITH SOCIALISTS.--A concession was made to the socialists in the establishment of government workshops, which turned out to be not workshops at all, but mere excavations. A mob of the Red Republicans was checked (April 16) by the National Guards. The National Assembly voted for a republic. Another mob of socialists and communists was suppressed (May 15). But the great contest came (June 23-26) when the government dismissed a part of those given employment on public works. The battle was severe; but the government troops under the command of a patriotic general, _Cavaignac_, who was made dictator during the struggle, subdued the insurgents. He was now appointed president of the council, or chief of the executive commission. THE REPUBLIC: LOUIS NAPOLEON.--Fear of communism and of mob violence gave a new impetus to the conservative tendency. A republican constitution, however, with a president holding for a term of four years, was adopted. _Louis Napoleon_ was elected a member of the assembly. He was chosen president of the republic, mainly by the votes of the peasantry and common soldiers, and with the help of _Thiers_ and others who thought him incapable, and desired to bring about a restoration of the Orleans rule. _Thiers_ was a personal enemy of _Cavaignac_. "_Thiers_" says _Martin_, "did not feel the same repulsion for the consulate and the empire as does the present generation: he took Louis Napoleon for an inexperienced and somewhat narrow-minded man, whom he could easily restrain and direct, not guessing the determined obstinacy and prejudice hidden beneath his heavy and commonplace exterior." (_Popular History of France_ [from 1789], iii. 200.) CHAPTER III. EUROPE, FROM THE REVOLUTIONS OF 1848 TO THE AUSTRO-PRUSSIAN WAR (1866). DISTURBANCES IN GERMANY.--The effect of the revolution which dethroned _Louis Philippe_ was felt like an electric shock through all Europe. It was experienced immediately in the smaller states of Germany. New ministries were installed, which were pledged to a liberal policy. _Louis of Bavaria_ resigned the crown to his son _Maximilian_. The _Grand Duke of Baden_ agreed to the demands of a popular convention at _Mannheim_, and he placed a liberal ministry in control of the government. _Prussia_ and _Austria_ were thoroughly disturbed by the movement for freedom and national unity. A rising in _Vienna_ (March 13-15), headed by the students, compelled _Metternich_ to depart for safety to England, the asylum of political exiles of every creed. The emperor summoned a Diet to be chosen by popular suffrage, and went for safety to _Innsbruck_ among his faithful Tyrolese. In _Berlin_, at the same time, there were excited meetings, and conflicts in the streets between the people and the soldiers. The Prussian king yielded to the demand of the crowd which gathered before his palace on the 18th of March, that the troops should be sent out of Berlin; but he did not send them away until the next day, and after an attack had been made on them from behind barricades. The ministry was dismissed, and a call was issued for a National Assembly to be chosen by ballot. THE FRANKFORT CONVENTION.--There was a gathering at _Frankfort_, of about five hundred Germans, who organized themselves as a provisional parliament under the presidency of _Mittermaier_ (March 31). They resolved to call a National Assembly, to be elected by the German people. The Confederate Diet recognized the authority of the provisional parliament. THE FRANKFORT PARLIAMENT.--The National Assembly met on May 18, and created a new provisional central government, with the Archduke _John of Austria_ as its head. The Confederate Diet ceased to exist. But the division of parties in the assembly, with respect to the system of government for united Germany, gave rise to long and profitless discussions. Differences of opinion as to the steps to be taken in a war which had sprung up with Denmark, respecting the duchies of _Schleswig_ and _Holstein_, made the strife of factions in the parliament still more bitter. NEW PRUSSIAN CONSTITUTION.--The Prussian National Assembly met on May 22. A hot contention arose between the moderate and the radical parties. At length the king adjourned the assembly to meet in _Brandenburg_; but the party of the "Left" (the radical party) protested, and was soon dispersed by force. In Brandenburg a quorum failed to meet. The government framed a constitution with two chambers,--the second to be chosen by universal suffrage,--and called a new parliament to consider it. The new parliament failed to agree with the government, but another parliament met (Aug. 7, 1849). Mutual concessions were made, and the king swore to maintain the new constitution (Feb. 6, 1850). AUSTRIA: END OF THE FRANKFORT ASSEMBLY.--The Diet of the Austrian Empire was a confused assembly representing different nationalities. _Kossuth_, an eloquent Hungarian deputy in the lower house, demanded independence for his country. The _Slavonic tribes_ resisted the supremacy of the _Magyars_. When the emperor took active measures against these (Oct. 6), there was an uprising in _Vienna_. The city was held by the revolutionists until the 30th, when it was captured by the emperor after much bloodshed. _Ferdinand I_ abdicated in favor of his young nephew, _Francis Joseph_. The Frankfort Assembly debated the question, what relation Austria should have to united Germany. A majority decided (March 27, 1849) that a president should be appointed, whose office should descend in his family, and that he should be styled "Emperor of the Germans." The station was offered to _Frederick William of Prussia_, but he declined it. The new constitution was not accepted by the more important states. The assembly dwindled away through the withdrawal or resignation of members, and, having adjourned to _Stuttgart_, was finally dispersed by the Würtemberg government (June 18). Its history was a grievous disappointment of ardent hopes. The Prussians helped the _Saxon_, _Bavarian_, and _Baden_ governments, to put down formidable and partially successful popular insurrections in their states. THE HUNGARIAN REVOLT.--Austria reduced her _German_ provinces to subjection, and early in 1849 the _Italian_ provinces also. But a great contest was to be waged with the _Hungarians_, who gathered an army of one hundred thousand men, and gained decided advantages over incompetent Austrian generals. But in the end Austria brought together overwhelming forces and was aided by the intervention of _Russia,_ which sent an army into Hungary. The Hungarian general, _Gorgey,_ whom _Kossuth_ and the ministers had made dictator, surrendered at _Vilagos_ (Aug. 13, 1849). _Kossuth_ and other Hungarian patriots fled into Turkey. Hungary was dealt with as conquered territory. The Austrian commander, _Haynau,_ treated the vanquished people with brutal severity. The Hungarian constitution was abolished. The general constitution of Austria was abrogated on Dec. 31, 1851. CONDITION OF ITALY.--_Charles Albert,_ the king of _Piedmont,_ or _Sardinia,_ disliked the preponderance of the Austrians, and desired to give his people good government, but was disinclined to enter into the schemes of "Young Italy," composed of the ardent republicans of whom _Mazzini_ was the chief. On this account they were exasperated with him. On the contrary, a great part of the "moderates" placed their hope for Italy in the Sardinian king and his house. To one of these, _D'Azeglio,_ a nobleman of high character, who reported to him, in 1845, the danger that revolutionary risings against misrule in Italy would occur, and set forth the necessity for a speedy remedy, the king said, "Make known to these gentlemen, that they must be quiet and not move, for at present nothing can be done; but let them be certain, that, if the occasion presents itself, my life, the life of my sons, my arms, my treasure, my army, all shall be devoted to the cause of Italy." In _Tuscany,_ there was much less oppression than elsewhere, but even there the government was despotic. LIBERAL POLICY OF PIUS IX.--On the death of _Gregory XVI._ (1846), Cardinal _Mastai Feretti_ was made Pope, and took the name of _Pius IX._ He adopted a new and liberal policy. Prisoners for political offenses were set free, an amnesty was proclaimed, and improvements--including railroads--were promised. The "Gregoriani," who were devoted to the old administrative system and to Austrian predominance, were offended. The Roman people generally were full of joy and hope. The extreme republicans were dissatisfied and suspicious. On the occasion of disturbances, the Pope consented to the formation of a National Guard, as the liberal party wished. The consequence was, that Austrian troops were marched into his territory. This movement roused _Charles Albert_ to espouse more actively the Italian cause. In Tuscany the Liberals, with _Ricasoli_ for a leader, drove the Grand Duke to measures of reform. Austrian aggressions were more severely felt in _Parma_ and _Modena._ In _Palermo,_ there was a rising (Jan. 12) against the unbearable tyranny of _Ferdinand II._ This was followed by an insurrection in _Naples_ itself. The king was obliged to grant to his people a constitution. The same boon was granted by _Pius IX._, by the king of _Sardinia_, and by the _Tuscan_ Grand Duke. Italy, it should be observed, was already on fire with these revolutionary movements prior to the overthrow of the government of _Louis Philippe_. The earliest popular demonstrations at Milan were on Sept. 5 and 8, 1847. EVENTS IN ITALY.--The revolt in _Vienna_ and in _Hungary_ in 1848 furnished the long-coveted occasion for the Italians to attack the hated Austrian rule. _Lombardy_ flew to arms, and expelled the Austrian troops. The _Venetians_ set up a provisional government under _Daniele Manin_, their leader in the insurrection. The king of Sardinia declared war against Austria. A multitude of Italian volunteers rushed to his standard. But there was no national league; his military management lacked skill; and after some successes he was defeated by _Radetzky_, the Austrian general, at _Custozza_ (July 25). _Garibaldi_, who had been a sailor, but was now a gallant and adventurous champion of the Italian movement, kept up the contest in the mountains on the north. The Austrians were once more in power. The refusal of the Pope to take part in hostilities against them alienated the liberals. His best minister _Rossi_, who stood midway between the extreme parties, was assassinated (Nov. 15). From the disorder that reigned at _Rome, Pius IX._ escaped in the dress of a common priest to _Gaeta_. The extreme democrats in _Tuscany_ got the upper hand, and set up a provisional government. In _Piedmont, Gioberti_, the minister, gave way to _Ratazzi_, who was of the democratic school. But the dream of an Italian confederation was dissipated by the great defeat of _Charles Albert_ by _Radetzky_ at _Novara_ (March 23). The broken-hearted king resigned his crown to his son, _Victor Emmanuel_. In _Rome_, the government, after the flight of the Pope, was lodged in an assembly elected by popular suffrage, with triumvirs, of whom _Mazzini_ was the first. The French were not disposed to allow the Austrians to dominate in the peninsula, and sent an army under _Oudinot_, who captured _Rome_ from the republicans, after a stubborn defense by _Garibaldi_. A French garrison now occupied the city. The Pope, who had abandoned the idea of political changes in the direction of Italian freedom and unity, was brought back to the Vatican (April, 1850). By the close of the summer of 1849, the Austrian authority was restored, and was exercised with redoubled severity in _Venice_ and _Milan_. The rulers of _Tuscany, Modena_, and _Parma_ had before returned to their capitals. They were kept in power by means of Austrian garrisons. The will of Austria was law in the greater part of Italy. _Ferdinand II._ (called _Bomba_) maintained his tyranny by the help of Swiss mercenaries and loathsome dungeons. _Piedmont_ was the only spot where constitutional freedom survived. In its youthful monarch and in _Garibaldi_, the hope of Italy rested. The course of events ultimately proved that both the fire of the republicans and the prudence of more moderate statesmen were requisite for its emancipation. COUP D'ÉTAT OF LOUIS NAPOLEON.--The Legislative Assembly in France, consisting of one chamber, had in it many monarchists. As the _first_ Napoleon was sustained by the dread of Jacobin rule, so the _third_ Napoleon profited by the dread of the ultra-republicans. It was felt by the trading-class, that the safety of society depended on him. When the French troops were sent to Rome in 1849, the opposition of _Ledru-Rollin_ and his radical party became more furious. But _Changarnier_ and his troops dispersed their procession (June 13), and broke down their barricades. The Paris insurrection was put down, and _Ledru-Rollin_ fled the country. _Thiers_, _Broglie_, _Molé_, _Montalembert_, and other adherents of the Bourbons, either of the old or of the Orleans branch, now professed to yield to _Louis Napoleon_ their adhesion. His measures for the restraint of the press, the punishment of political offenses, etc., were popular, especially in the provinces. The clergy were favorable to him. The soldiers, in the autumn of 1850, began to shout "_Vive I'Empéreur!_" _Changarnier_ was removed from the command of the troops (Jan., 1851) when it was learned that his regiments did not join in the cry. Movements of this kind, together with petitions for a revision of the constitution, provoked hostility in the Assembly. The struggle between the president and that body culminated in the "_Coup d'État_" of December 2, 1851. _St. Arnaud_ had been appointed minister of war, the fidelity of the troops in Paris rendered sure, and all needful preparations made with profound secrecy. The president gave a great party on the night of the first. During the night, the republican and Orleanist leaders--_Cavaignac_, _Changarnier_, _Lamoricière_, _Thiers_, _Victor Hugo_, and many others--were surprised in their beds, and imprisoned. They were sent away in custody to different places. Placards were posted, dissolving the Assembly, and declaring Paris in a state of siege; also, an address submitting to the people the question whether there should be a responsible chief of state for ten years. The soldiers fired on gatherings of the people in the streets, killing many innocent persons, for the purpose of forestalling any attempt at resistance. The deputies, as they persisted in their purpose to meet, were surrounded, and placed under arrest. Within a few weeks many thousands of persons suspected of disaffection were exiled or imprisoned. Nearly seven and a half million votes were cast for _Napoleon_, and only 647,292 against him. The political prisoners were released. _Thiers_ was allowed to return to Paris. NEW FRENCH EMPIRE.--A new constitution was promulgated (Jan. 14, 1852), resembling that which existed under the consulate. The Legislative Assembly was virtually stripped of power. One year later, the restoration of the Empire was decreed, and sanctioned by popular vote. The change was at first viewed with alarm by Austria, Prussia, and Russia. _Francis Joseph_ made a visit to _Berlin_, and was received with great honor. The two principal German sovereigns reviewed the troops of Berlin, in front of the bronze statue of _Blücher_. But _Napoleon_ declared that the Empire meant peace, and the other great powers followed the example of England in recognizing his imperial government. THE CRIMEAN WAR.--The administration of the French emperor was acceptable to the commercial classes, who prized tranquillity. He erected new edifices in _Paris_, and made many other improvements, which, however, had an eye to defense against popular insurrection, and involved much hardship for the poor. He married (Jan. 30, 1853) a young Spanish countess, _Eugénie Montijo_. What did most to give stability to his power, and to raise his repute in Europe, was the union of _France_ with _England_ in the prosecution of the Crimean war. The Emperor _Nicholas_ thought the time propitious for the aggressive ambition of _Russia_ with regard to _Turkey_. His plan of attack embraced a "provisional" occupation of _Constantinople_ by Russian troops. He had intimated to England that the situation of "the sick man"--meaning the decaying government of _Turkey_--opened the way for a division of the Turkish Empire between the two powers. _Lord Aberdeen_ was then prime minister in England, and _Mr. Gladstone_ was chancellor of the exchequer. The dispute of Russia with Turkey, which was the ostensible occasion of the war, related to the holy places in Jerusalem, the resort of worshipers of different creeds, and to the privileges accorded by the Sultan to the Greek and Latin Christians respectively. The claim of _Nicholas_ resolved itself into a demand to exercise a sole protectorate over the Christians of the Greek faith in the Turkish Empire. Without formally declaring war his forces crossed the _Pruth_. Alarm was awakened in Austria, in consequence of the Russian movements in that region. _Nicholas_ had only been able to secure neutrality from Prussia and Austria. _Louis Napoleon_ was anxious for war. _Lord Aberdeen_ was averse to it; but the pressure of _Lord Palmerston_ and his supporters was too strong, and war was declared (March 27, 1854) by _England_ and _France_ in alliance with _Turkey_. At first the Turks had unexpectedly gained advantages over the Russians, but the Turkish fleet was destroyed at _Sinope_ (Nov. 30, 1853). Approaches of Russia which portend the acquisition of the mouths of the Danube, or of any of the Slavonic districts of European Turkey, can only excite jealousy and apprehension on the side of Austria. Nicholas, on the demand of _Francis Joseph_, which was seconded by _Prussia_, evacuated the Danubian principalities, which were provisionally held by Austrian forces. The English and French fleets that were sent into the Baltic did not produce the effect that was anticipated by the allies. The shores of the Black Sea were the main theater of the conflict. The troops of the English and French landed at _Eupatoria_ in the _Crimea_ in September, 1854, and defeated the Russians in the battle of the _Alma_. There was a second engagement at _Balaklava_ (Oct. 25); and in the battle of _Inkermann_ (Nov. 5) the attempt of the Russians to surprise the British forces met with a defeat. The effort of the allies was directed to the capture of the strong fortress of _Sebastopol. St. Arnaud_, the French general, had died, and been succeeded by _Canrobert_. Later, _Lord Raglan_, the English commander, died. The siege was prolonged. Once the batteries of _Malakoff_ and _Redan_ were attacked by the allies unsuccessfully; but, after a month's bombardment, both were taken by storm (Sept. 8, 1855), and _Malakoff_, which the French took, was held. The Russians blew up their forts at Sebastopol, and withdrew to the northern part of the fortress. Meantime _Nicholas_ had died (March 2, 1855), and been succeeded by _Alexander II.;_ and _Lord Aberdeen_ had been superseded by _Palmerston_ as head of the English ministry. PEACE OF PARIS (MARCH 30, 1856)--In the _Peace of Paris_, Russia was obliged to cede the mouths of the Danube and a small portion of _Bessarabia_ to _Moldavia_, to limit the number of her ships in the Black Sea, and to engage to establish no arsenals on its coast. The Black Sea was to be open to commerce, but interdicted to vessels of war. Russia gave up the claim to an exclusive protectorate over Christians in Turkey. She surrendered also the fortress of _Kars_ in Turkish Armenia, which she had captured. _Wallachia_ and _Moldavia_ were confirmed in important privileges of self-government, under the Porte. Austria, France, and Great Britain, in a distinct treaty, guaranteed the independence and integrity of the Ottoman Empire. NEUTRALITY DECLARATIONS.--The parties to the Treaty of Paris (including Austria and Prussia) united in four declarations on the subject of neutrality, by which privateering was abolished, the neutral flag was made to protect enemy's goods except contraband of war, these goods under an enemy's flag were exempted from capture, and it was ordained that blockades in order to be binding must be effective. The _United States_ declined to concur in this agreement unless the private property of subjects or citizens of a belligerent power (unless it be contraband of war) should be also exempted from seizure by armed vessels of the enemy. This rule, were it adopted, would put private property on the _sea_ on a level with private property on the _land_, in case of war. WAR OF FRANCE AND SARDINIA WITH AUSTRIA.--After the contests of 1848-49, Victor _Emmanuel II_. was looked on by all except the ardent republicans of the school of _Mazzini_ as the champion of Italian independence. He made _Azeglio_ his chief minister, and _Cavour_ his minister of commerce. Various reforms were adopted, especially for the reduction of the power and wealth of ecclesiastics. The rapid progress of administrative changes led _Azeglio_ to withdraw from office. _Cavour_, his successor, a statesman of broad views and consummate ability, began to plan not only for the Sardinian kingdom, but likewise for all Italy. By his advice, Sardinia joined England and France in the Crimean war. At the Congress of Paris (1856), he spread before the European powers the deplorable misgovernment at Naples and in the other states of Southern Italy. He denounced a plot against the life of _Louis Napoleon_, which _Orsini_, a Roman, and a member of a secret society, tried to carry out, but failed (Jan. 14, 1858). Communications and a personal interview between _Napoleon_ and _Cavour_ followed. An alliance was formed, one of the objects of which was the expulsion of the Austrians from Italy. _Prince Napoleon_, the son of Louis Napoleon's uncle _Jerome_, was married to _Clotilde_, the daughter of _Victor Emmanuel_. Napoleon's ministers were opposed to a war with Austria, and he himself affected to have no intention of that kind. Russia proposed a congress; but Austria refused to admit Sardinia, or to join it herself, unless that power should immediately disarm. Russia was at that moment unfriendly to Austria, which had refused to help the Czar in the Crimean war. Prussia, also, showed a disinclination to interfere. _France_ and _Sardinia_ declared war against _Austria_, and _Napoleon_ proclaimed that he would free Italy, from the Alps to the Adriatic (May, 1859). As the war began, a revolt broke out in _Tuscany_. The Tuscan Duke, the Duchess regent of _Parma_, and the Duke of _Modena_, had to fly from their capitals. _Cavour_ accepted help from all Italian patriots except the adherents of _Mazzini_, to whom were imputed schemes of assassination. _Garibaldi_ led the "Riflemen of the Alps." _Louis Napoleon_ commanded the French army in person. The French were victorious at _Magenta_ (June 4), where _MacMahon_ was made a marshal. At the battle of _Solferino_ (June 24), all of the three contending sovereigns were present. The Austrians were vanquished with very heavy losses. At this time _Napoleon_, unexpectedly to his Italian ally, in a personal interview with _Francis Joseph_ at _Villafranca_, arranged preliminaries of peace, which provided, to be sure, for the cession of _Lombardy_ to Sardinia, but left _Venice_ and the "Quadrilateral,"--as the district, with its fortifications, east of the Mincio, was called,--under the Austrian rule. It was proposed that an Italian confederation should be formed, with the Pope for its honorary president,--a plan not destined to be realized. The Grand Duke of _Tuscany_ and the Duke of _Modena_ were to be restored, could it be done without a resort to arms. Napoleon was afraid of a long war. Russia was not disposed to suffer him to stir up a revolution in Hungary. Prussia might soon intervene; and this, Austria, too, did not anticipate without anxiety, since Prussia would thereby become predominant in Germany. _Cavour_, in disgust and indignation at this premature close of the struggle, laid down his office. FURTHER EXTENSION OF THE SARDINIAN KINGDOM.--Tuscany, Modena, and Parma, and Romagna which belonged to the Pope, by deputies implored _Victor Emmanuel_ to annex them to his kingdom. _Plus IX_. made the most strenuous opposition. _Napoleon_ refused to use coercion, or to suffer it to be used by others, to carry out the Villafranca arrangements in the duchies. _Cavour_ was recalled to office in 1860; and at his suggestion, made to _Napoleon_, the communities just named were allowed to dispose of themselves by popular vote. The result was their incorporation in the Sardinian kingdom. By way of compensation to _Napoleon_, _Savoy_ and _Nice_ were ceded by the Sardinian government to France. The Pope excommunicated all invaders and usurpers of the Papal States, without the mention of names. ANNEXING OF NAPLES AND SICILY.--The next great event in Italy was the expulsion of _Francis II_., the tyrant who reigned in _Naples_ and _Sicily_ after the death of Ferdinand II. (1859). _Garibaldi_, without the consent of the Sardinian government, raised the standard of revolt in Sicily (1860), and conquered the island. The king and _Cavour_ feared that his movement would give control to the republicans, and also bring Sardinia into war with other powers. But, despite this opposition, _Garibaldi_ entered _Naples_ as a victor, and was joined by _Mazzini_. The Sardinian troops entered the Papal States, which the king had threatened to do unless the guerilla attacks of pontifical troops in the south were suppressed. The French general, _Lamoricière_, in the service of the pontiff, was defeated at _Castelfidardo_. _Garibaldi_, triumphant in the Neapolitan kingdom, met _Victor Emmanuel_ in the Abruzzi, and hailed him as "King of Italy." _Naples_ and _Sicily_ voted to join the kingdom of Sardinia. With the exception of _Venice_ and the _Roman Campagna_, the whole of Italy was now united under the house of Savoy. On Feb. 18, 1861, the first parliament of united Italy was opened by _Cavour_. Shortly after, there was a public reconciliation between him and _Garibaldi_, between whom there had been an estrangement. In addition to _Garibaldi's_ general and constant dissent from the moderate policy of _Cavour_, the former was displeased that his soldiers had not been rewarded with higher positions in the Sardinian army than it was practicable or safe to grant to them. _Cavour_ believed that society was on the march towards democracy, but that no republic, at the present, in Italy could be stable. _Cavour_ had his heart set on gaining Rome for the capital of the kingdom, and on establishing "a free church in a free state." He did not live to see the realization of his hopes. His death occurred (May 30, 1861), shortly after the amicable interview with the republican patriot, to which reference has just been made. "THE SEPTEMBER CONVENTION."--The hope of the national party in Italy was now directed towards the gaining of _Venice_ and _Rome_. But, as regards Austria, the European powers would not have suffered a breach of the Peace of Villafranca. _Louis Napoleon_ had assumed the part of protector of the Holy See, and a French garrison was stationed at Rome. After Cavour's death, _Ricasoli_, the head of the ministry, led the constitutional party; and _Ratazzi_, who succeeded him and had been more in sympathy with the Garibaldians, did not deviate from his predecessor's cautious policy. The relations of the Italian government to France, even obliged the king to interfere to put down a rising, set on foot by _Garibaldi_, for driving the French out of Rome. Garibaldi was defeated by the Sardinian troops at _Aspromonte_ (Aug. 27, 1862), and taken to _Spezzia_. Thence he went to _Caprera_. The liberal party in Europe were incensed with _Louis Napoleon_. This was one inducement that moved him to enter into an agreement with _Victor Emmanuel_, by which France engaged to withdraw her troops gradually from Rome, leaving the Pope to form an army of his own; while, on the other hand, the king engaged (Sept. 1864) to prevent any attack on the papal territory. The French minister of foreign affairs said to the Italian minister at Paris, "Naturally the result of all this will be that you will end by going to Rome;" but matters were to be so managed that France should not be held responsible. This was the _September Convention_. _Florence_ was made the capital of Italy; but it was acknowledged that this was a temporary arrangement, and that, as soon as the progress of events should open the way, the seat of government would be transferred to Rome. After the withdrawal of the French troops in 1866, _Garibaldi_, with the connivance of the Italian government,--in which _Ratazzi_, who had been obliged to leave his office, was again the ruling spirit,--once more gathered a force for the capture of Rome (1867); but France interfered, and the advance of Garibaldi was checked at _Mentana_ by French troops. Afterwards _Napoleon_ again placed a French garrison in Rome. _Ratazzi_, whose scheme of capturing Rome by non-interference was balked, had to lay down his office. The next step towards Italian unity was to be a result of the _Austro-Prussian_ war. CHAPTER IV. EUROPE, FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE AUSTRO-PRUSSIAN WAR TO THE END OF THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR (1866-1871). RIVALSHIP OF PRUSSIA AND AUSTRIA.--The brief but mighty struggle which secured for Prussia the preponderance in Germany grew immediately out of complications respecting _Schleswig-Holstein_. It was, however, the fruit of a rivalship which had been gaining in intensity since the times of Frederick the Great. It was the grand triumph of Prussia, after a long succession of defeats and humiliations in the field of diplomacy. SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN.--The two duchies of _Holstein_ and _Schleswig_ had long been annexed to the crown of Denmark, whose king, as Duke of Holstein, was a member of the German Confederation. The two duchies, as regards their government, did not stand on the same footing; but the people of _Holstein_ and the German portion of the _Schleswig_ people held that by a treaty in 1460 the two duchies could not be separated. Moreover, the law of succession in the duchies excluded the female line, and when there was a prospect that the male line of the Danish dynasty would die out the Germans wished the duchies to become independent under an Augustenburg prince while the Danes wished to absorb the duchies in Denmark. In 1848 the Germans of Schleswig-Holstein revolted against _Frederick VII._ The troops of the German confederation assisted them; but the attitude of England and Russia, which favored the Danes, moved Prussia to conclude the armistice of _Malmö_,--an act that excited the anger of the German National Assembly at Frankfort. After the expiration of the truce, the war, with intermissions, went on, waged by Schleswig-Holstein, alone or with aid from Germany; later in a protocol--an agreement signed in _London_ in 1852 by the Great Powers, in which Austria and Prussia concurred,--the king of Denmark and his heirs were guaranteed in the possession of the duchies. This act, however, was not accepted by the duchies themselves, or by the Diet of the German Confederation; so that the seeds of strife still remained. PREPONDERANCE OF AUSTRIA.--After the suppression of the revolts of 1848, Austria, whose counsels were guided by the astute minister _Schwarzenberg_, labored to dwarf and supplant the influence of Prussia. _Frederick William IV_. of Prussia aimed to bring about a closer union of German states, and called a national parliament to meet at _Erfurt_. Austria withstood these attempts. The disposition of Prussia to support the resistance in _Hesse_ to the tyranny of its elector, threatened to bring on an armed contest with Austria and its German allies; but the attitude of Russia caused Prussia to desist from its movement. At the conference at _Olmütz_ (1850), _Manteuffel_, the Prussian minister, yielded every thing to Austria; and subsequently, under the influence of Russia, the German Confederation of 1815 was restored. Prussia took no part with the Western powers in the Crimean war, with which it had no direct concern, and thus did not, like Austria, make herself obnoxious to the Czar. WILLIAM I: BISMARCK.--On the accession of _William I_. as regent (Oct. 1857), the Prussian government initiated a more spirited and independent policy in its relations to Austria. It refused to lend active aid to that country in the war with France and Sardinia (1859). The efficient measures of King _William_ for the reorganization and increase of the army encountered constant opposition, year after year, in the assembly, from the liberal party, which did not divine his motives, and saw in them nothing but the usurping of an unconstitutional authority. In 1862 the king made _Bismarck_ minister of foreign affairs, and the virtual head of the administration. This able man had widened his knowledge of European politics by serving as ambassador first at _St. Petersburg_ and then at _Paris_. Previously he had been allied with the absolutist party of _Manteuffel_: he was always for "strong government." After 1851, when he was delegate of Prussia at the Federal Diet at _Frankfort_, he made up his mind to deliver Prussia from the domineering influence of Austria. But he was held in distrust by the Prussian liberals, who saw in him only an energetic supporter of the king in his reform of the army by acts of arbitrary power not warranted by the constitution. In 1863 _Francis Joseph_ summoned a congress of German princes to _Frankfort_ to frame a new German constitution; but as Prussia stood aloof, nothing was accomplished. There was much bitterness between the two states. For the moment, however, attention was diverted by the aspect of affairs in _Schleswig-Holstein_. EVENTS LEADING TO WAR.--On March 30, 1863, _Frederick VII_. of Denmark issued a decree for the separation of _Schleswig_, and its incorporation in Denmark. The troops of the German Confederacy were sent by the Diet into _Holstein_. Prussia and Austria, who held that the Danes had broken the Treaty of 1852, announced their agreement to prosecute the war with Denmark as independent powers, apart from the confederation. They persisted in this purpose, and their victories over the Danes compelled _Christian IX_. to sign a treaty (Oct. 30, 1864) by which he resigned his rights in the duchies in favor of the emperor of Austria and the king of Prussia. How should the duchies be disposed of? It was _Bismarck's_ aim to annex them to Prussia, which was sorely in need of seaports. He professed that the war had abrogated the London Treaty of 1852. The prime object of Austria was to prevent Prussia from making this gain. The dispute was hot and threatening; but in the _Gastein Convention_ (Aug. 14, 1865), _Lauenburg_ (which the Danes had also ceded) was sold to Prussia, and the disposition of the duchies was left to be determined later. Meantime the Prussians were to hold _Schleswig_, and the Austrians _Holstein_. The Prussians were, moreover, to hold provisionally the port of _Kiel_. The scheme of Austria was to hand over the debated question to the Diet of the Confederation, where it could command a majority. To this Prussia would not consent, but demanded that the Confederacy should be reconstituted in such a that Prussia, as well as Germany, might have strength in the event of a European war. _Bismarck_ made a secret treaty with Sardinia, which provided that Prussia and Sardinia should act together in case of war with Austria, and that peace should not be made until _Venetia_ had been given up to the kingdom of Italy. When Austria convoked the estates of _Holstein_ Prussia retorted by sending twenty thousand troops into _Holstein_. The Austrian force, which was inferior, retired. When the Confederation (June 14) passed a motion made by Austria to put the confederate troops, not Austrian or Prussian, on a war footing, the Prussian plenipotentiary protested, and declared the Diet dissolved. He also presented a new constitution as the basis of a new league of states, from which Austria was to be excluded. Prussia issued a proclamation, to the effect that the purpose of the war that was now to begin was the union of Germany, and the establishment of a free parliament of the German nation. THE AUSTRO-PRUSSIAN WAR.--The Prussian military plans were the work of _Von Moltke_, chief of the general staff, who was without a superior in military science. They were carried out with astonishing precision and celerity. On June 15 Prussia required _Saxony_, _Hanover_, and _Hesse_ to disarm, to remain neutral, and to send delegates to a German parliament. A few hours were given them to decide. They refused the demand, and on the 16th the Prussian forces marched into their lands. On that day they seized the capital of _Hesse_, and took the elector prisoner. On the 29th they had surrounded _King George of Hanover_, and he was compelled to surrender with his whole army. The main Austrian army, under _Benedek_, made up of contingents from the various nations subject to the emperor, with the troops of Saxony, one of his German allies, were gathered in _Bohemia_. Thither three Prussian armies moved, on different lines, as they were directed by telegraph from Berlin. Several battles occurred. The armies approached one another, but were purposely kept apart. On June 30 _King William_ and _Von Moltke_ left Berlin. On the 2d of July it was determined to attack the Austrians the next day; and word was sent to the crown prince, whose division was not so far that he could not bring up his forces to take part in the combat. In the morning the battle of _Sadowa_, in which between two hundred thousand and three hundred thousand men were in each of the contending hosts, began. It raged until noon, with no decisive advantage on either side. At two o'clock the division of the crown prince, after a hard march, arrived; and their attack on the flank of the Austrians was the signal for a forward movement along the whole Prussian line. The battle in its course resembled that of _Waterloo_. The defeat of the Austrians virtually decided the whole contest. _Francis Joseph_ asked France to mediate, but Prussia and Italy refused to consent to the proposal. The Austrian emperor ceded _Venice_ by telegraph to _Louis Napoleon_. The Austrians had defeated the Italians at _Custozza_ (June 24), and in a naval battle at _Lissa_. But a great part of the Austrian army it was necessary to transfer to the North. THE PEACE OF PRAGUE: THE PEACE OF VIENNA.--The Peace of Prague was concluded between Prussia and Austria (Aug. 23, 1866). Austria was excluded from Germany, and gave up her rights in _Schleswig-Holstein_ to Prussia. At the request of Prussia, _Venice_ was ceded to Italy. _Schleswig-Holstein, Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, Nassau_, and _Frankfort_ were incorporated in Prussia. The population of Prussia from about nineteen millions was increased to twenty-three millions five hundred thousand. In the Peace of Vienna (Oct. 3), Austria recognized the kingdom of Italy, to which _Venice_ had been ceded. NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION.--The South German states remained independent; but the _North German Confederation_ was formed, under the leadership of Prussia, which was to have control of the military forces of its members. In the council of the Confederation, Prussia was to have seventeen votes, and the other states together twenty-six votes. An imperial Diet was established, the members of which were to be elected by general suffrage. _Bismarck_ was made chancelor of the Confederation. THE AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN EMPIRE.--The war with Prussia was followed by the political reorganization of the Austro-Hungarian empire on a more liberal basis. _Von Beust_, who had been a Saxon minister, became minister of foreign affairs (1866), and afterwards president of the ministry and chancellor of the empire. The Hungarian constitution of 1848 was restored, and a separate ministry was constituted for _Hungary_; while, as regards the army and foreign affairs of both divisions of the empire, an imperial ministry was established. The _Cisleithan_ division, composed of the German and Slavonic provinces, was to have its own ministry and constitution. This conferred on the people and their representatives "rights and privileges of the greatest importance,--equality of all citizens before the law, freedom of the press, right of association and meeting, complete liberty of faith and conscience, the unrestricted right to impose taxes and levy recruits, etc." The reconciliation with Hungary having been effected, _Francis Joseph_ was crowned as King of Hungary at _Pesth. Transylvania_ and _Croatia_ were united with Hungary. Great legal improvements in Austria ensued. The army was re-constituted after the example of the Prussian military system. There was an improvement in financial administration. Marriage by civil contract was authorized; and on subjects connected with marriage, the clergy were deprived of jurisdiction. The control of education, except religious education, was assumed by the state. In case of marriage between Catholics and Protestants, the male children were to be educated according to the faith of the father; the female children, according to that of the mother. LOUIS NAPOLEON BAFFLED.--The Austro-Prussian war hastened the downfall of _Louis Napoleon_. The only consolation which the French had for the loss of freedom at home was power and reputation abroad. The astonishing rapidity of the Prussians, and the overwhelming success of their arms, had disconcerted the schemes of the French emperor. The defeat of Austria was so quick and so complete that he could not come in as mediator between the belligerents, and manage to secure the extension of France to its "natural frontiers" on the Rhine. He was baffled by _Bismarck's_ diplomacy, as before he had been outwitted by _Cavour_; for Napoleon had wished, not a united Italy, but simply a Northern Kingdom. The French felt humiliated at the sight of military achievements parallel to those by which in other days they had disposed of the fate of Prussia herself. The opposing factions grew bolder in their attitude towards the Napoleonic government. The emperor made cautious attempts to secure cessions of territory from Prussia on the Rhine, but was met with a blunt refusal from _Bismarck_. He then sought to purchase from the king of Holland, _Luxemburg_, which had formerly belonged to the German Confederation. This attempt was resisted by _Prussia_, and war seemed imminent; but it was finally settled at the _London Conference_, that the duchy should be neutral territory, and that the fortress, which had been occupied by the Prussians, should be demolished. Germany was making progress towards a more complete union. A customs parliament, representing all the states, met at _Berlin_ in May, 1868. Before that time, treaties of offensive and defensive alliance had been made between the _North German Confederation_ and _Würtemberg_, _Baden_, and _Bavaria_. They were published on March 17, 1867. BEGINNING OF THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR.--As _Louis Napoleon_, or those who held sway in his counsels, were bent on war with Prussia, a pretext was easily found. The bad administration of _Queen Isabella_ of Spain, and her personal misconduct, caused insurrections to break out in 1868; and she was obliged to fly to France. A provisional government was established under Gens. _Serrano_ and _Prim_, and Señor _Olozaga_. Later (1869) _Serrano_ was made regent. The Cortes in 1870 offered the Spanish crown to Prince _Leopold_ of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, who belonged to a younger branch of King _William's_ family. The proposal was regarded in France with indignation, as a new step in the upbuilding of Prussian power. King _William_ was required to forbid his relative's candidacy, which he declined to do. The prince, however, of his own accord withdrew. Not satisfied with this issue of the affair, _Napoleon_ insisted that the Prussian king should engage never to support the candidacy of a Hohenzollern prince for the Spanish crown. _William_, who was at _Ems_, told the French ambassador, _Benedetti_, that he could not give a promise of this sort. When the question was again raised he sent an aide-de-camp, declining to discuss the matter further. This act was represented at Paris as an insult to France, and orders were issued to mobilize the army. The king, on his way to Berlin, was met at the Brandenburg station by the crown prince, _Von Moltke_, _Von Roon_, the able war minister, and _Bismarck_. The Confederate Diet assembled July 19, and placed its resources at the disposal of the king. The French declaration of war was received on the same day. _Bavaria_, _Würtemberg_, and the _South German States_, contrary to the unreasonable expectation of _Napoleon_, allied themselves with Prussia. In a moment all Germany was ablaze. The recollection of the days of the first _Napoleon_, and of the war of liberation, filled the whole land with patriotic enthusiasm. More than a million of men took the field in defense of the fatherland. EVENTS TO SEDAN.--At the outset _Napoleon_ tried to modify the plans _Marshal Niel_ had drawn up in 1867 for such an emergency, and which called for three armies. He unwisely attempted to unite all the troops under his own command. Had he been able by a bold initiative to have gained a foothold in South Germany, _Italy_ and _Austria_ would probably have come to his support. But the French army was not in the state of full readiness which had been alleged to exist. The masterly dispositions of _Von Moltke_, and the swift movements of the Germans, broke up the French programme. The three great divisions of the German army were led by _Steinmetz_, Prince _Frederick Charles_, the king's nephew, and the crown prince, _Frederick William_. They advanced towards the boundary from _Treves_ to _Landau_. Three victories of the Germans--at _Weissenburg_ (Aug. 4), over Marshal _MacMahon_ at _Wörth_ (Aug. 6), and at _Spicheren_ on the same day--compelled the French army to retreat towards the Moselle. The Baden division was left to besiege _Strasburg_. The next great battles, of which _Gravelotte_ (Aug. 18) was the most hotly contested, were fought for the purpose of preventing Marshal _Bazaine_ from joining with the main army the forces of _MacMahon_. _Bazaine_ was defeated, and confined with his immense body of troops in and about the fortress of _Metz_; and his efforts to break through the German lines were baffled. The Prussian crown prince and the crown prince of Saxony, with their combined armies, proceeded against _MacMahon_. The defeats of the French had occasioned such wrath at Paris, that the ministry of _M. Ollivier_ was compelled to retire (Aug. 10), and it was not safe for the emperor, who was with _MacMahon_, to return to the capital. The French general concentrated his forces at _Sedan_. On Sept. 1 the decisive battle was fought. The French were worsted and surrounded. The Emperor _Napoleon_ yielded his sword to King _William_. The terms of capitulation were agreed upon by _Von Moltke_ and Gen. _Wimpffen_ (_MacMahon_ being disabled by a wound), while other matters of a civil nature were arranged between _Napoleon_ and _Bismarck_. The army that was surrendered numbered eighty-two thousand men, with fifty generals and five thousand other officers. SIEGE OF PARIS: SURRENDER OF METZ.--As soon as the news of _Sedan_ reached Paris, the imperial government fell to pieces. The Empress _Eugénie_ escaped to England. A republic was proclaimed; and a new government was improvised, composed of enemies of the Empire, who belonged to different parties. _Trochu_ was president, and governor of Paris; _Jules Favre_, a moderate republican, was minister of foreign affairs; and _Gambetta_, an extreme republican, was minister of the interior. The wish was for peace; but the inexorable demand of the Germans for the cession of _Alsace_ and _Lorraine_, once parts of Germany, and now asserted to be necessary for its defense against future attack from France, called out a united and indignant spirit of resistance. The defense of _Paris_ was undertaken with extraordinary energy: a large army was collected there, and a great supply of provisions was gathered. The siege of Paris was prosecuted by the Germans with an equally unflinching determination, from Sept. 19, 1870, to Jan. 28, 1871. Repeated sallies of the French troops, although made with much spirit, failed of success. The efforts to break the Prussian lines of connection with Paris, and to compel them by movements from without to raise the siege, were likewise baffled. _Gambetta_ escaped from Paris in a balloon, and at _Tours_ directed in the formation of two armies,--the army of the _Loire_, and the northern army, both of which were defeated. _Strasburg_ capitulated (Sept. 27); and a month later (Oct. 27) _Bazaine_ surrendered _Metz_, with three marshals, three thousand officers, and one hundred and seventy-three thousand soldiers. The main army of France was thus lost. WILLIAM MADE EMPEROR: SURRENDER OF PARIS.--While the siege of Paris was in progress, all the princes of Germany, and the senates of the three free towns, united in the resolution to offer to the President of the Confederation the title of Emperor. Accordingly, on Jan. 18, 1871, King _William_, in the Hall of Mirrors at _Versailles_, was formally proclaimed Emperor of Germany. On the next day _Trochu_ led the final sortie from Paris, of a hundred thousand men, which was repulsed after a severe contest. The provisions in the city were nearly exhausted, and on Jan. 23 an armistice for twenty-one days was signed. Paris surrendered on the 28th; and on the first day of March a national convention at Bordeaux accepted the preliminaries of peace, which included the cession of _Alsace_ and the German part of _Lorraine_ with _Metz_, and the payment of an indemnity of five thousand million francs. _Thiers_, who was elected chief of the executive department (Feb. 17), had managed the negotiations with _Bismarck_ at _Versailles_, and urged the acceptance of them on the convention. THE GERMAN IMPERIAL CONSTITUTION.--The first Diet of the new German Empire was opened at _Berlin_ on March 21. The constitution of it left to each state the management of its domestic affairs. To the imperial government, with the Federal Council or _Bundesrath_, the _Reichstag_, and the emperor were relegated the affairs of common interest. The president of the Council was the imperial chancellor: _Bismarck_ was appointed to that office. The _Reichstag_ was composed of deputies chosen by general suffrage. The chancellor is not responsible to the Reichstag, but to the emperor. Power has not passed from the monarch to the representatives of the people. CONTEST WITH THE COMMUNISTS: REPUBLICAN CONSTITUTION.--After the conditions of peace with the Germans were settled, _Paris_ had to pass through a terrible period of disorder. The communists were bent on establishing municipal independence, or the self-government of the _Commune_, and a democratic republic. They demanded a federation of the townships, or _communes_, and distrusted the republicanism of the officials who were in the exercise of power. They are not to be confounded with _communists_ in the socialistic sense: only a small fraction of the communal government, or central committee, were socialists. The party comprised a multitude of fanatical democrats of the lower classes, who were ready for the most violent measures. They had risen several times during the siege of Paris, and had tried to seize on power, but had been put down by the troops. After the surrender of Paris, they gained possession of the northern part of the city, and fortified it. The attempt to get back the cannon which they had seized caused a great communist uprising (March 18, 1871). A new reign of terror began. _Darboy_, the Archbishop of Paris, and many others, were murdered. _MacMahon_, acting for the Assembly, besieged Paris anew; the Germans being neutral in the forts that were still left, according to the treaty, in their hands. In the fierce struggle for the possession of the city, the principal buildings of Paris were set on fire by the savage communistic mob. The Tuileries, the Hôtel de Ville, and a part of the Palais Royal, with other public edifices, were destroyed. The insurrection was at length suppressed, and severe punishments were inflicted. A large number of the ringleaders were either shot or transported. CHAPTER V. EUROPE, THE THIRD FRENCH REPUBLIC, AND THE UNION OF ITALY (1871-). COMPLETED UNION OF ITALY.--When the war between Prussia and France broke out, the republicans in Italy were disposed to take possession of _Rome_ at once. _Mazzini_ urged them to this step. The king, however, was bound by the agreement with France to prevent this action; which, moreover, might have divided, instead of uniting, Italy. _Mazzini_ was arrested, and sent to _Gaeta_. But with the fall of Napoleon, on the declaration of _Jules Favre_ that the "September Convention" (p. 574) was at an end, _Victor Emmanuel_, professing that he was bound to maintain order in the peninsula, sent his troops into _Rome_. The Pope lost his temporal dominions, and was limited to the title and prerogatives of the spiritual head of the Catholic Church. The seat of the Italian government was removed to the ancient capital (July 1, 1871). The present king, _Umberto I._, ascended the throne 1878. PIUS IX.: THE COUNCIL OF THE VATICAN.--The long pontificate of _Pius IX_. was distinguished by important acts having relation to the doctrine and discipline of the Roman Catholic Church. In 1854 he promulgated the declaration of the _Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary_. He thus determined authoritatively a question which had long been debated in the schools of theology. Ten years later (1864) he issued an _Encyclical_, together with a _Syllabus_ of Errors, in which, besides the condemnation of opinions in matters of faith which were adjudged heterodox, various alleged encroachments of the civil authority and heretical views respecting the control of the state in reference to marriage, education, etc., were denounced. The views thus condemned are such as the kingdom of Belgium had recognized, and France and some other Roman Catholic countries have shown themselves willing to accept. In 1869 the Oecumenical _Council of the Vatican_ assembled, and after long debate sanctioned the doctrine of papal infallibility; that is, they promulgated the dogma that the Pope, when addressing the whole Church on a subject of morals or theology, is kept by the Spirit of God from enunciating error. "OLD CATHOLICS."--Most of those who had strenuously endeavored to prevent this action, either because they considered it inexpedient, or disbelieved in the doctrine which it established, acquiesced in the decision of the council. There were some persevering dissentients, however, in Germany especially, of whom Dr. _Döllinger_ was the most distinguished. They organized themselves as a distinct body, under the name of "Old Catholics." They were mostly educated persons; the party had no root among the common people. In France, the most distinguished of them was Père _Hyacinthe_, a preacher of much popularity and eloquence. REVOLUTIONS IN SPAIN.--After the revolution attended by the flight of Queen _Isabella_ from Spain (1868), a majority of the Cortes decided for a monarchy, although many desired a republic. In 1870 _Amadeus_, the second son of the King of Italy, accepted the crown. But he found it impossible to restore order and peace, and Feb. 11, 1873, abdicated the throne. A bloody conflict of factions ensued. _Don Carlos_, the new Pretender of that name, raised his standard in the North. The Cortes were for a federal republic. _Castelar_, who as president was at the head of the government, and after him Marshal _Serrano_, by whom he was superseded, made no decisive progress against the Carlists. _Alfonso_, the youthful son of _Isabella_, was proclaimed king by General _Martinez Campos_; and the army pronounced in his favor (Dec. 29, 1874). _Serrano_ laid down his office. The Carlist revolt was crushed, and _Don Carlos_ driven out of the country. _Alfonso_ died 1885, and was succeeded by a regency during the long minority of his posthumous son, _Alfonso XIII_. Both _Canovas_ and _Sagasta_ loyally supported the queen-mother, _Maria Christina_, acting as regent. STATE OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE.--In July, 1875, the Turkish provinces of _Herzegovina_ and _Bosnia_ rebelled against the intolerable oppression of the Sultan's government. The little mountainous kingdom of _Montenegro_--which for four centuries had preserved its independence through numerous struggles with Turkey, and had a quarrel of its own with that power--lent help to its Slavonian neighbor. _Servia_ did the same. The Austro-Hungarian Empire, a composite of distinct provinces and nationalities, was strongly interested to avert war in that region. The revolt was not put down by the Turks. The three European emperors moved the Sultan to pledge himself to an extensive programme of reforms in _Bosnia_ and _Herzegovina_,--a pledge which there was no intention on his part to fulfill. England gave no aid to the revolt, but strengthened herself in the East by obtaining, through a purchase of shares from the Khedive of Egypt, the control of the _Suez Canal_ (Nov. 25, 1875). Russia, as kinsman of all the Slavonic peoples, and protector of Greek Christians, assumed alone the part of a champion of the maltreated provinces. But England refused to join with Russia, Germany, Austria, and France, in threatening "more effectual"--that is, coercive--measures, in case of the Porte's refusal to pacify the insurgents by carrying out his promises. Great Britain was bent on keeping the Sultan's empire, as being a barrier in the way of Russian ambition and essential to the security of India, from being dismembered, and professed to be swayed by respect for the rights of Turkey as an independent power. A revolt in Bulgaria was crushed by the Turks, who were guilty of such terrible atrocities that the "Bulgarian massacres" shocked all Christendom (1876). In the course of the difficulties just narrated, two revolutions, by which sultans had been dethroned, had taken place in the palace at Constantinople. The ambassadors of the Great Powers, in a conference at Constantinople, agreed in demanding of Turkey a constitution and guaranties for the benefit of the oppressed subjects in the provinces of the Ottoman Empire. This requirement the Porte refused to accept. A subsequent attempt of the same nature met with no better success (1877). Russia allowed its subjects to render effective help to the revolted districts. On the contrary, England was offended by the alleged ambitious schemes of the Muscovites, and advocated longer forbearance with the Sultan; but _Lord Derby_ announced (April 19, 1877) that Turkey had been warned to expect no assistance from England. Nevertheless, the mission of Mr. _Layard_ to Constantinople, and all the other circumstances, emboldened the Turks to refuse compliance with the Czar's demands. THE RUSSO-TURKISH WAR.--The Turko-Russian war began in April, 1877. Russia, according to her previous declaration, took up arms alone. The Russian troops crossed the Danube and the Balkan Mountains, and seized on the important _Shipka Pass_. At first they seemed destined to a speedy triumph. But the Turks under _Osman Pasha_ fought with unexpected valor and success. At length, however, their leader was obliged to surrender his army of forty-four thousand men at _Plevna_ (Dec. 10). _Adrianople_ was occupied by the Russians (Jan. 28). They were thus in the neighborhood of Constantinople. Meantime, after reverses in the East, the Russians had taken _Kars_, and pushed on to _Erzeroum_. TREATY OF SAN STEFANO: THE BERLIN CONFERENCE.--Turkey now appealed to England to mediate; but Russia declined any such intervention, and insisted on treating separately with Turkey. England was now ready to interfere in behalf of the Sultan, and for the safety of Constantinople. Russia hastened to conclude with Turkey the _Peace of San Stefano_ (March 3), the stipulations of which greatly reduced the Turkish power in Europe. _Bulgaria_ was to be governed by a Christian prince, and fifty thousand Russian troops were to occupy it for two years. England concluded (June 4) a secret treaty engaging to protect Turkey in Asia: _Cyprus_ was given up to be occupied by the British. Austria, as well as Great Britain, was anxious to deprive Russia of the advantages which she had naturally expected to reap by the war,--a war in which the other powers had declined to take part. Thus another great war was threatened, about the provisions of the _San Stefano_ treaty. The conflict was averted by the _Congress at Berlin_ (June 13-July 13, 1878), where _D'lsraeli_--who was then prime minister, and a friend of the anti-Russian policy--represented England. Austria and England were aided by Germany, and the diplomacy of _Gortchakoff_ was thus overborne. _Servia_ and _Roumania_, as well as _Montenegro_, were declared independent. _Bulgaria_ was divided into two portions; the southern of which, called _East Roumelia_, was to be governed by the Sultan directly, but with a separate administration under a Christian governor. To Austria, the military occupation of _Bosnia_ and _Herzegovina_, which meant the possession of these provinces, was yielded. _Thessaly_ had engaged in an insurrection, and _Greece_ had hoped for an extension of her boundaries; but nothing effectual was done by England to forward this claim. Here Russia, always opposed to the building-up of a strong Greek kingdom, was at one with England. Russia obtained _Kars_, but her gains were far less than she deemed herself entitled to receive. The other powers, on the contrary, permitted Austria to advance far in the direction of Constantinople. During the war, the hostility of the _Magyars_ (or Hungarians proper) to the _Slaves_ had been ready to break out in the form of direct armed assistance to Turkey. On the other hand, the Slaves in Hungary, and in all the Austrian territories, were with difficulty restrained from enlisting actively in aid of the Russians. The arbitrary dealing of the Berlin Conference with _Bosnia_ and _Herzegovina_ occasioned an armed but ineffectual resistance, in these provinces, to the extension of the Austrian sway over them. SITUATION OF RUSSIA.--Russia, embittered by Austria's refusal to aid in the Crimean War, had remained neutral in the struggle with Prussia, which ended in the exclusion of Austria from Germany. Russia was now offended with Germany for repaying her neutrality in the Franco-Prussian struggle by helping in the Berlin Conference the schemes of England and Austria. The attempt of Russia to form an alliance with France prompted _Bismarck_ (Sept., 1879) to negotiate a defensive alliance with Austria. The activity of the _Nihilists_, and the refusal of France (March, 1880) to deliver up _Hartmann_, charged with an attempt on the life of the Czar, made the French alliance impossible. The sympathy of the Emperor _William_, after the endeavor made to assassinate _Alexander_ (Feb. 17, 1880), tended to restore cordiality. Russia was embarrassed by these internal troubles. _Alexander_ was murdered by Nihilists (March 13, 1881), and was succeeded by his son, _Alexander III._, who died after a lingering illness, Nov. 1, 1894. He was succeeded by his son Nicholas II. In 1891 and 1892 Russia was afflicted by famine and cholera. NIHILISM.--The accession of _Alexander II._, following on the rigid autocracy of _Nicholas_, had introduced a more lenient rule. _Alexander_ decreed (March 3, 1861) the emancipation of the serfs, who were also endowed with small possessions in land. The boon thus conferred, along with its advantages, brought with it hardship; for there were ways of oppression still open to the nobles, by which the emancipated class were made grievously to suffer. The great measure served to increase the national agitation which was connected with other causes. There had long been an enthusiastic party of "Slavophils," actuated by a strong race-feeling, and eager for "Panslavism," or a union of Slavonic peoples. It was the people in Russia which moved the court, against its will, to go to war, single-handed, with Turkey, in 1877. In the prosecution of the war, the abuses which were brought to light among officials, civil and military, heightened the indignation which the corrupt "bureaucracy"--the administration by departments, each under its chief--provoked. The failure to gather the harvest of the war, of which Russia was deprived by diplomacy, increased the popular unrest. A party of socialistic democracy, a revolutionary party, had developed itself as early as 1874. The way had been preparing for it for a decade of years. Out of this party came later (1878) the "Terrorists,"--the secret body which sought for a remedy for social and governmental evils by annihilating all existing authority in Church and State. They had begun with the demand of a constitution. The despotic, repressive measures of the government--in 1879 and 1880, sixty thousand persons were sent to _Siberia_ without a trial--were followed by more desperate attempts of Nihilist conspirators upon the lives of the rulers of the land, and of their agents. These culminated in the murder of the Czar. COMMUNISM AND SOCIALISM.--A brief sketch of the various movements thus designated may be here in place. _Communism_ is the name given to the theory that it is desirable to have a community of goods, and a total or partial abolition of private property. _Socialism_ is often used to designate the same system, but is more commonly applied to the doctrine that government should own the land and all the implements of industry. Not a few religious sects of communists, like the _Shakers_ (established in 1780, in the United States), have long existed. The hope of social amelioration by societies of a communistic character has led to a variety of movements for the formation of them on both sides of the Atlantic. Equality, education, deliverance from poverty and from burdensome toil, have been the blessings sought. Prominent leaders in such movements were _Saint-Simon_ (1760-1825), whose ideas produced a strong effect in France; _Charles Fourier_ (1772-1837), by whose influence "phalanxes," as the communities adopting his views were named, were formed in Europe and America; and _Robert Owen_ (1771-1858), whose societies were built up at _New Lanark_ in Scotland, _New Harmony_ in Indiana, and in other places. Since the French Revolution of 1848, these particular attempts of philanthropic socialism have passed out of notice. Shortly after the Reign of Terror, _Babeuf_ attempted (1796) to overthrow the authorities in Paris, and to bring to pass an equal division of property. The course of political struggles in France, in connection with the revolutions in industry and trade, which have occurred since the fall of the first Napoleon, have given rise to a disaffected working-class, or _proletariat_. The complaint has arisen, that the benefits resulting from political freedom in Europe have come to the _middle class_,--to tradesmen and manufacturers possessed of capital,--and that the laboring class are deprived of their due share of the profits of industry. One noted expounder of communism in France was _Proudhon_ (1809-1865), who sought to give emphasis to his doctrine by affirming that "property is theft." _Louis Blanc_, who was a member of the provisional government in France in 1848, both before and after that time was an active promoter of the scheme under which government is to furnish labor on a large scale, and to become the grand employer of the working-class. In Germany, socialism in its later distinctive form, as defined above, has been advocated by a number of well-known writers. Perhaps the ablest of these was _Ferdinand Lasalle_ (1825-1864). Like the other principal socialists, he would clothe the State with a vastly augmented power and responsibility. In this particular, socialism is directly antagonistic to the ideas of democracy which had previously prevailed. _Lasalle's_ doctrine was that the State should lend capital at interest to associations of laborers. This, he thought, would be the first step in their emancipation. _Karl Marx_ would go much farther. He would transfer to the State all capital and all means of production. He would, as he professes, "overthrow all the existing arrangements of society." With property, inheritance is to be abolished; labor is to be made compulsory; all means of transport are to be in the hands of the State, and so forth. _The International Working Men's Association_--popularly called "the International"--was organized in London in 1864. It has held congresses in _Geneva_, and in other cities. It entered upon the most destructive schemes of social agitation and revolution. But the society was divided in 1872, on the expulsion of _Bakunin_, a Russian Nihilist. A faction of the most violent class continued its activity for a while, and stirred up risings in several towns in Spain in 1873, in imitation of the insurrections in Paris in 1871. Different shades of socialistic theory have been advocated; from the "Christian Socialism" which aims at such objects as the creation of cooperative associations in the working-class, to the fanatics who would sweep away existing institutions by violence, and who resort to the use of dynamite as a means of inspiring terror. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION SINCE 1871.--_Thiers_ had wonderful success in providing for the payment of the German indemnity. His term of office was prolonged (Aug. 31, 1871) for three years, with the title of President. _Thiers_ had cooperated with _MacMahon_ in crushing the commune, and in wholesome measures for the preservation of order. An adverse vote in the Assembly (May 24, 1873) caused his resignation. This was effected by a combination of the monarchical parties. _MacMahon_, his successor, took a very conservative position. The monarchists united to restore the _Count of Chambord_ to the throne as _Henry V._, but the scheme failed. In February, 1875, a new constitution, of a conservative republican cast, was established, which provided for a president and a cabinet, a senate, and a chamber of deputies. The legitimists, Orleanists, and imperialists united with the president in his reactionary, anti-republican policy. The whole clerical party were on that side. The republicans were divided among themselves, the most radical group being under the leadership of _Gambetta_. The danger to the republic compelled a common policy. One of the great subjects of controversy related to public education, in the management of which the Church and the clergy desired to retain and extend their influence and control. To secularize education, was a main aim of the body of the republicans. The success of the republicans, against extraordinary efforts made to defeat them, in the elections of 1877, at last prevailed on the marshal-president to accept the verdict of the country; and late in the year a republican cabinet was formed. The measures of _Jules Ferry_ and his supporters, for taking the business of instruction out of the hands of ecclesiastics and of the clerical orders, although most earnestly resisted by Bishop _Dupanloup_ and the whole clerical party, and opposed by a section of the republicans led by _Jules Simon_, were, after heated contention, adopted, and were completely carried out (1880). The death of _Thiers_ (Sept., 1877) did not weaken the party of which he was the most honored leader. The death of the young Prince _Louis Napoleon_ (1879) in South Africa, where he was serving, under the British, against the _Zulus_, was an almost fatal blow to the hopes of the Bonapartist faction. The more recent death of _Count Chambord_ (1883) was followed by the recognition, on the part of the legitimists, of the _Count of Paris_, of the Orleans house, as the next heir to the throne. A manifesto of Prince _Jerome Napoleon_ (1883), after the death of the young Prince _Napoleon_, aroused an agitation against all pretenders to the throne,--in particular, against the Orleanists; which led, after protracted debates, to the forced retirement of all the princes of this family from active service in the French army. In November, 1881, _Gambetta_ became the head of the cabinet; but the opposition to his policy within the republican ranks was stronger than had been anticipated. After a short time he laid down his office. He died Dec. 31, 1882. _Jules Grévy_ (first elected Jan. 30, 1879) was re-elected president Dec. 28, 1885. He was forced to resign in 1887 because his son-in-law was implicated in corrupt transactions. His successor was _Sadi Carnot_. FRENCH CONQUESTS ABROAD.--The failure of France, in the Oriental difficulties, to gain the power which she desired, impelled her to build up colonial interests and settlements. Partly to punish marauding tribes, in 1881, an expedition was sent against _Tunis_; and the Bey was forced to accept a protectorate of the French over his dominion. Thus the French enlarged their power in Africa. This proceeding gave great offense to England, Italy, and the Turkish Sultan. On the ground of a treaty of 1841, a French admiral demanded the submission of the north-west coast of _Madagascar_ to a French protectorate; and when this demand was refused, he bombarded and captured the second city in the island, _Tamatave_ (1883). The efforts of France to gain control over _Tonquin_ and the adjacent territory in _China_ attracted still more attention. _Tonquin_ is the most populous province of the kingdom of _Anam_, of which it formed a part after 1802. Over this kingdom, China claimed the rights of a suzerain; which the French refused to acknowledge. In 1862, after a war lasting for almost four years, _Napoleon III._ obtained from _Anam_, by the treaty of _Saigun_, the provinces called _Cochin-China_. In 1874 the French Republic extorted from King _Tuduc_ of Anam a treaty by which his foreign policy was placed under the direction of France. Against this treaty, China protested. In 1882 the French commander _Rivière_ seized the city of _Hanoi_. The "Black Flags," a body of free-lances or pirates, whose leader had been one of the Chinese rebels, fought against the French; but it soon appeared that both the king of _Anam_ and the government of China were in league with his hostile force. Two years later a treaty was signed bringing _Tonkin_ almost directly under French rule and reëstablishing the protectorate in _Anam_. THE CONFLICT OF PRUSSIA AND THE VATICAN.--The Roman Catholic Church in Germany is recognized as a legal institution. Its revenues are received from the state, which, in turn, exercises a supervision over the education of its clergy. In Prussia, especially under _Frederick William IV._, large privileges were granted by law to the Catholic body. The proceedings of the Vatican Council awakened in Germany, as elsewhere in Europe, the apprehension that the decree of papal infallibility might give rise to conflict between the authorities of the Church and of the State. _Bismarck_ considered that the "ultramontane" party in the Church involved danger to the newly created German Empire. The Prussian government resisted the attempt of the Church, in 1871, to remove from office Catholic teachers who refused to subscribe to the Vatican dogma of papal infallibility. In other words, the government recognized and undertook to protect the "Old Catholics." The contest with the clerical or ultramontane party went on; and before the end of the year, the Catholic branch of the Prussian Ministry of Worship and Instruction was abolished. In a debate in 1872, _Bismarck_ said, "Of this be sure, that neither in Church nor in State are we on the way to Canossa." His policy met with a determined resistance from _Pius IX._ The Jesuits were expelled from the German Empire. This law was afterwards construed to include other orders. THE FALK LAWS: CONTINUED CONFLICT.--The laws proposed by the Prussian minister of worship, _Falk_, required that candidates for the clerical office in the Catholic Church should have a training in the gymnasium and university, and that every ecclesiastical appointment should be sanctioned by the civil authorities. They provided for a royal court for the settlement of ecclesiastical questions. These laws were passed in 1873. In 1875 civil marriage was made obligatory in the empire. These measures were stoutly resisted by "the Center," or the clerical party, in the Prussian Parliament, and in the _Reichstag_. They were declared by the Pope to be invalid, and Roman Catholics were forbidden to obey them. Other enactments, one of which forbade all payments to the bishops and clergy unless they should sign a promise to obey the laws of the state, were adopted by Prussia. Refractory bishops and priests were punished in various ways. The result was that the Roman Catholic party, led by _Windhorst_, ex-minister of Hanover, in opposition to _Bismarck's_ measures, was consolidated. The struggle extended beyond the bounds of Prussia: it was _Bavaria_, a Catholic state, which proposed the law requiring civil marriage. After the accession of _Leo XIII._, there was on both sides an increased disposition to find terms of peace by which the numerous vacancies in Catholic clerical offices could be filled. The need which _Bismarck_ felt of the support of "the Center" for his financial measures favored this result. _Falk_ resigned (July 13, 1879), he being personally odious to the Roman party. After long debates, a bill was passed (Jan. 1, 1882) giving to the king and his ministers discretionary powers, which opened the way for filling the vacant places. Still, in the great festival at the completion of the Cologne Cathedral (Oct. 15), the clerical party stood aloof. But the mutual friendly approaches of the chancelor and his ultramontane opponents continued. Diplomatic correspondence was opened with the Vatican. Some of the harsher features of the anti-papal legislation were revoked. BISMARCK AND SOCIALISM.--One motive in this modification of the chancelor's policy was the rapid progress of socialism. At first, while _Bismarck_ was engaged in a struggle with the liberals, who impeded his plans in the Prussian Parliament, he had willingly availed himself of the support of _Lasalle_ and his socialistic followers. But after the war with France, the party of the "Social Democrats" became more and more numerous and formidable. It was not, however, until a second attempt was made on the emperor's life, that Bismarck was able to carry, against the combination of parties, his measures giving to the government extraordinary powers for the stifling of socialistic agitation (1879). The law for the suppression of socialistic meetings, newspapers, etc., was rigorously enforced. THE "PARTICULARISTS."--Bismarck was, moreover, obliged to contend with the "Particularists," who were hostile to the Empire, and with a large number besides them, who were opposed to a greater degree of imperial centralization at the expense of the power of the separate states. Unable to obtain for the imperial government the control over the German railroad system, he devised a plan (1879) by which Prussia would eventually control three-quarters of the railroads of Germany. An imperial code of laws was adopted (1877); but, from jealousy of Prussia, the seat of the supreme court of appeal was fixed at _Leipsic_. In his economical and financial measures, the chancelor was often charged with the exercise of arbitrary power. Free, representative government, according to the English system, did not accord with his idea of the Prussian monarchy, and with the character of the new empire, the unity of which he was naturally anxious to fortify. By his alliance with Austria in 1879, he placed Germany in a situation to resist Russia and France, in case Russia, aggrieved by the action of Germany at the Berlin Conference (1878), should join hands with France in acts of hostility against the German empire. In 1888 _William I._ died and was succeeded by his son, _Frederick III._, who held the sovereignty but a few months, dying June 15, 1888. His son, _William II._, succeeded him. THE BRITISH SWAY IN INDIA.--British sway by degrees extended itself over India. The fall of the Mogul empire left the country in a state of anarchy. Strife arose with one tribe after another, until the authority of England came to be acknowledged as far north as the Himalayas. The English advance was made with the help of native auxiliaries, and could not have been made without it. It was quite as much an internal revolution as a foreign conquest. As the British enlarged their dominion, and came into conflict with the French, the appetite for supremacy grew. Under the rule of the _Marquis of Wellesley_ (1798-1805), partly through the victories of _Sir Arthur Wellesley_ (afterwards the Duke of Wellington), "the policy of intervention and annexation" was pursued with brilliant success. The _Burmese_ were conquered, and parts of their territory annexed, in 1826, 1852, and 1885. The effort always was to secure a quiet frontier. In 1843 a war with _Scinde_ resulted in its absorption in British territory. In 1849 the annexation of _Punjab_ followed, a British protectorate having been found insufficient. The misgovernment of the native princes in _Oude_ led to the assumption of the government of that province by the English in 1856. THE INDIAN MUTINY.--There was hostility to British rule among the Mohammedans in India, and distrust among the Hindoos. The latter acquired a fanatical belief that the English, who had abolished the burning of widows, and even legalized their marriage, meant to force the people to lose caste by driving them to sacrilegious practices. The report that cartridges had been served out which had been lubricated with the fat of the swine, abhorred by Moslems, and of the cow, venerated by the Hindoos, stirred up a revolt among the native Sepoy troops (1857). The insurrection spread, and was attended with savage cruelties. There was a frightful massacre of women and children at _Cawnpore_, before General _Havelock_ could arrive for its relief. The English, who were besieged in _Lucknow_, after terrible suffering, were relieved by the opportune coming of this gallant soldier. All the English residents in _Delhi_, who could not escape into the jungle, were murdered. The weak old king placed himself at the head of the rebellion. _Delhi_ was recaptured by the British, and the conquest completed by _Sir Colin Campbell_ (March 22, 1858). _Oude_ was subdued. Gradually the rebellion was crushed, and merciless severity was exercised by the conquerors upon those most actively concerned in it. One consequence of the revolt was the entire transference of the government of India from the East India Company to the Crown. The measure was introduced into Parliament by _Lord Palmerston_ (1858). Under the ministry of _Disraeli_, and on his motion, the Queen added to her titles that of "Empress of India" (1877). BRITISH WARS WITH THE AFGHANS.--In the last century _Ahmed Khan_, the ruler of Afghanistan, extended his dominion as far as _Delhi_. But he died in 1773, and his son _Timour_ changed the seat of government from _Candahar_ to _Cabul_. In 1838 the English declared war against _Dost Mohammed_, one of the three rulers of the country, whose seat of power was in this city. The British attack was successful; but insurrections broke out (1841), and they agreed to evacuate the country. The whole British army, which had to pass through the _Kurd-Cabul Pass_, was destroyed by cold and hunger, and by the harassing attacks of the mountaineers (1842). It numbered forty-five hundred fighting men and twelve thousand five hundred camp-followers. Another British army, under _Gen. Pollock_, forced the _Khyber Pass_, and took vengeance on _Cabul_. In 1855 _Dost Mohammed_, now an ally of the English, drove the Persians out of _Herat_, which, as "the key of India," the British were anxious to protect against ambitious schemes of Russia. In 1863 he took _Herat_ from _Ahmed_, the sultan there, who was considered a tool of Persia and of Russia. _Dost Mohammed_ died soon after, and was succeeded by his son _Sher Ali Khan_. After the acquisition of _Quetta_ by the English, he began to side with the Russians. His intrigues with them, and his refusal to receive a British embassy, brought on the second Afghan war of the British (1878-81). The ameer died (Feb. 21, 1879); the Afghans were defeated by _Gen. Roberts_, who took _Cabul_, and installed as ameer _Abdurrahman Khan_ (1880). The English then decided to evacuate the territory. On their march they were attacked by _Ayub Khan_ of Herat. Later he was defeated by _Roberts_, and driven back to that place. The _Gladstone_ ministry had succeeded the ministry of _Disraeli_, who had been anxious to establish a "scientific frontier" between Afghanistan and the Czar's territories,--such a frontier as would secure a "neutral zone" between them and India, to serve as a barrier against Russian invasion. RUSSIA AND AFGHANISTAN.--The gradual approaches of Russia in the direction of _Herat_ have been on two lines. The one is the line south-easterly from the Caspian. She gained a lodgment in 1869 at _Krasnovodsk_ on the eastern shore of that sea. In 1880 _Geopteke_ and _Askabat_ were taken. The other line of aggressive approach is south-westerly from the neighborhood of the Oxus. On this line, partly from displeasure at the English occupation of Egypt, and in pursuance of the policy, adopted especially since the Berlin Conference (1878), to advance towards _Herat_, the Russians suddenly seized _Merv_, an oasis extremely important from a military point of view, over which _Persia_ claimed a certain suzerainty. The Russians occupied it in force, under Gen. _Komaroff_ (March 16, 1884). Subsequently England and Russia agreed to ascertain and fix the northern boundary of Afghanistan. The occupation of _Penjdeh_ by the Afghans, followed by the advance of _Komaroff_,--of which the British complained as an aggression,--brought the two countries to the verge of war (1885). THE WESTERN POWERS AND EGYPT.--"The Oriental question"--the question relating to Turkey and its dependencies--constantly took on new phases, and presented to the powers of Europe fresh difficulties and dangers of conflict. The Khedive of Egypt, _Ismail Pasha_, was a friend and admirer of _Napoleon III_. and of the French. He succeeded in obtaining from the Sultan repeated concessions, which reduced his dependence on Turkey to little more than an obligation to pay an annual tribute, together with certain marks of respect and honor. His conflicts with lands on the south, _Dafour_ and _Abyssinia_, his extravagant outlays in public works of internal improvement, and the enormous interest paid to foreign capitalists for their loans, involved him in the utmost financial embarrassment. This furnished the occasion to the Western powers, in particular to England and France, to intermeddle still more in Egyptian affairs. The Khedive sold to the British Government his shares in the _Suez Canal_, and gave into the hands of the English and French (1878) the control of the financial administration of the country. This sort of dependence was repugnant to both the Khedive and the Egyptian people. The native officers were pushed into the background. The most lucrative stations were filled by foreigners, and the weight of taxation was almost intolerable. The attempt to throw off this yoke only resulted in the deposition of _Ismail_ by the Sultan, on the demand of the two Western powers. His weak son, _Tewfik Pasha_, took his place. The control of the finances remained in foreign hands. The result of the discontent of the people, and of the disaffection of the Egyptian officers, was a revolt led by _Arabi Pasha_, a military officer (1881). The Khedive complied with the demands of the insurgents: their chief was made minister of war. The Western powers were bent on suppressing this movement, and, in addition to threats and diplomatic measures, sent their fleets to Egypt. A revolt broke out in _Alexandria_, in which the English consul was wounded and many Europeans were slain (June, 1882). The city was filled with terror, and all trade was suspended. The English fleet bombarded the city, and set it on fire. _Arabi_ withdrew his troops to _Cairo_. He was now deposed by the Khedive, and declared a rebel. His troops showed little spirit. The fortifications of _Tel-el-Kebir_ were taken by the English general, Sir _Garnet Wolseley_, almost without resistance. _Aboukir, Damietta_, and _Cairo_ surrendered, and the Egyptian leader, _Arabi_, was captured and banished. From that time Egypt fell into a condition of helpless dependence on England. France found herself without the influence there which she had always coveted since the days of the first _Napoleon_. The system of administration in Egypt was now organized by the English, through Lord _Dufferin_. Great complaint was made against them by the other powers, for not taking sufficient precautions to prevent the introduction of the cholera from India. The principal troubles of the English grew out of the invasion of the false prophet called _El Mahdi_, who gathered to himself a host of followers in the _Soudan_, partly instigated by Moslem fanaticism, but largely impelled by their hatred of the Egyptian government established over that region. The people of the _Soudan_ complained bitterly of the oppressive Egyptian officers. The slave-dealers there were exasperated at the prohibition of their traffic, on which England had insisted. In the course of the conflict with _El Mahdi_, _Hicks Pasha_, an English officer in the service of the Khedive, was defeated and slain, and his force cut to pieces, near _El Obeid_ (Nov. 3, 4, and 5, 1883). There was great fear now for the province of _Sennaar_ and especially for the city of _Khartoum_, where there were many Europeans. Mr. _Gladstone_, and the English ministry of which he was the head, were not disposed to hold the _Soudan_, but desired to give it up as soon as the garrisons could be rescued and brought away. To this policy the Khedive was opposed. The project of a military interference in the _Soudan_ by the Sultan, the English took care to prevent by attaching to it impossible conditions. On the Red Sea, _Osman Digna_, a partisan of the _Mahdi_, made repeated attacks upon _Suakim_, the base of the operations of _Baker Pasha_, another former English officer, now become general of the Egyptian army. On account of the cowardice of the Egyptian troops, _Baker_ was defeated with heavy loss (Feb. 4, 1884). The British troops from _Cairo_ under _Graham_ had better success; and _Osman Digna_ was vanquished, and driven into the mountains. The English government adopted the extraordinary measure of sending General _Gordon_ to Khartoum; his errand being to pacify the tribes of the _Soudan_, to provide for the deliverance of the garrisons, and to arrange terms of accommodation with _El Mahdi_. This last it was found impossible to accomplish. _Berber_ was captured by the enemy, and garrison and male population were slaughtered. _Gordon_ was shut up in _Khartoum_. The peculiar financial situation obliged the English ministry to hold a conference of the great powers (June 28, 1885) at London. Lord _Granville_ insisted that only financial points, and not the general Egyptian question, should be considered, which did not accord with the views of the other powers, and the conference adjourned without effecting anything. The perilous situation of _Gordon_, and the feeling in England on this account, obliged the government to send out General _Wolseley_ with a large force to Egypt; but before aid could be given _Gordon_, _Khartoum_, was betrayed, and he was slain. The course of England respecting Egypt had left her isolated as regards the other European powers, and had awakened much disaffection in England. It was the policy of the Gladstone ministry in relation to Egypt, even more than complaints growing out of their conduct in the troubles with Russia, that obliged them to resign, and to give place to the Tory cabinet of Lord _Salisbury_. Upon the death of _Tewfik_ (Jan. 7, 1892) his son, _Abbas Pasha_, became khedive. GREAT BRITAIN AND CANADA.--On the cession of Canada to Great Britain (1763), the French inhabitants of _Lower Canada_ were secured in the free exercise of the Catholic religion, and in the possession of equal rights with English settlers. "The Quebec Act" of 1774 made Canada one royal government, and brought in the English criminal code with trial by jury. During the Revolution, many loyalists emigrated to Upper Canada. A strong desire arose for a repeal of the "Quebec Act." In 1791, under _Pitt_, the two parts of Canada were made separate provinces. A constitution was granted, which provided for an elective legislature for each. The governors, the executive councils, and the legislative councils were to be appointed by the Crown. The governments were still subject to the Colonial Office in London. A spirit of opposition between the two provinces increased. _Upper Canada_, under English law, grew in numbers and prosperity; but the growth of population in _Lower Canada_ was much more rapid. Here there was an antagonism between the Assembly and the English governors. There was an open rebellion in 1837, which spread into Upper Canada. The two Canadas were united in 1841; the executive department became responsible, as in England, to the popular branch of the legislature; and under the liberal and enlightened administration of Lord _Elgin_ (1847-54), a better feeling arose. He was obliged, however, to suppress a mob of the conservatives, or "loyalists" (1849), who were hostile to the extension of a general amnesty to former rebels. In 1856 the Upper House was made elective. In 1857 _Ottawa_ was made the seat of government. In 1867 the _Dominion of Canada_ was constituted. It was at first a federal union of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the Canadas; _Upper Canada_ receiving the name of _Ontario,_ and _Lower Canada_ being named _Quebec._ _Manitoba,_ formed out of a part of Hudson Bay Territory, was admitted to the Dominion in 1870, and _British Columbia_ in 1871. _Prince Edward Island_ was admitted in 1873; and the same year the territories were received by transfer from the Hudson Bay Company. The Dominion has a Senate and a House of Commons. The authority of the Crown is represented by the governor-general and the council. Legislation is subject to a veto from the sovereign. Each province has its local government, but whatever powers are not expressly reserved to the several provinces are granted to the General Government,--a provision the reverse of that found in the Constitution of the United States, which the Canadian system in various features resembles. In the Peace of Utrecht (1713), France gave up its claim to _Nova Scotia:_ the Peace of Paris (1763) surrendered to Great Britain _New Brunswick,_ and _Cape Breton_ and _Prince Edward_ islands. These are known at present as the _maritime provinces._ When the American War of Revolution began, thousands of loyalists emigrated to _Nova Scotia,_ as well as to _Upper Canada,_ from whom many of the present inhabitants are descended. The island of _Vancouver,_ on the western coast of _British Columbia,_ was surrendered to the navigator of this name by _Quadra,_ a Spanish commander, in 1792. In 1843 a trading-post was established at _Victoria_ by the Hudson Bay Company. The island forms politically a part of _British Columbia._ The Government of the Dominion, when British Columbia was received, engaged to construct a railway to the Pacific across British North America. England acquired a title to _Newfoundland_ in 1713. It first received a constitution in 1832. The government was made responsible to the Assembly in 1852. GREAT BRITAIN AND AUSTRALIA.--Australia, which covers an area of three million square miles, when it was first visited by Europeans was found to be inhabited by native tribes of the Papuan, Melanesian, or Australasian race, of whom about eighty thousand now remain. In the seventeenth century, various points along its coasts were touched by European voyagers, especially by the Dutch. The discoveries of Captain _Cook_ (1769 to 1777) had an important influence in leading to settlements on this island-continent. _New South Wales,_ a name given by _Cook,_ is the oldest of the English provinces in Australia. Not _Botany Bay,_ which he had selected for a settlement, but _Port Jackson,_ was made a penal station (1788) for convicts from England. This place, however, continued to be erroneously called _Botany Bay._ The principal harbor was named _Sydney Cove._ In 1803 _Van Dieman's Land,_ now called _Tasmania,_ was first occupied. Thus the beginnings of colonization in Australia were made by the dregs of English society. The convicts labored for their own support, and, when their terms had expired, sometimes received as a gift small farms, and implements with which to till them. The character of the settlement, and the management of it, became much more humane after 1810, when _Macquarie_ became governor. Free colonists, English and Scotch, came and joined it. The discovery of the upland pastures beyond the Blue Mountains, which were remarkably adapted to sheep, made an epoch in the history of the colony. Spanish merino sheep were introduced: wool became the chief staple; the production of it, especially after the invention of the combing-machine, became very profitable, and free emigrants poured in. The Australian Agricultural Company was formed in England. Western Australia began to be settled in 1829, but did not thrive. New colonies continued to be formed in Eastern Australia. South Australia was made prosperous by copper-mines. Victoria, which became a distinct province in 1851, owes its growth to gold mines. _Melbourne_, its chief town, was planted in 1837. The first British governors at _Sydney_ were military officers, ruling with despotic authority. Representative institutions were gradually formed in the different provinces. The constitutions were framed on the model of the home government; but in _Victoria_ and _Tasmania_ the Upper House was made elective. After long conflicts with the home government, the Australian colonies escaped from the misfortune of being places to which convicts were transported. The discovery of gold in _New South Wales_ and _Victoria_ was made in 1851, and caused at once an immense influx of immigrants. Next to gold, the most important article of export has been wool. Wheat and copper have been exported in large quantities. The breeding of cattle has been a profitable employment in these communities. NEW ZEALAND.--In 1838 the first regular and permanent settlement was made in New Zealand. _Wellington_ was founded in the next year. New Zealand, with South Island and North Island, became a colony independent of Australia in 1841. ENGLAND AND IRELAND.--The disaffection of the Irish, and their antipathy to English rule, broke out in different forms, as circumstances changed. For a long time the demand was for "Catholic emancipation." This was granted (p. 558); but most of the English concessions were made under such a pressure, and in appearance so grudgingly, that little was accomplished by them in placating Irish hostility. The outcry against tithes for the support of the Protestant Established Church was to a great extent quieted in 1838, when the odious features of this tax were removed. The Act disestablishing the Irish Protestant Church, carried by Mr. _Gladstone_ in 1869, and put in execution in 1871, took away one of the great grievances of which the Irish nation had to complain. The repeal of the legislative union of England and Ireland was the watchword of _O'Connell_ and his followers. In one form or another, the demand for local self-government or independence, which has been more lately urged under the name of "home rule," has been kept up with little intermission. It is about the special question of land reform that the most bitter conflicts have centered. The ownership of a great part of the land in Ireland by a few persons: the fact that great obstacles and great expenses--difficulties of late somewhat lightened--have existed in the way of the transference of land if any one had the means to purchase it: the circumstances that the owners have generally been, not residents, but absent landlords; that, in cases of dispute with tenants, the laws were for a long period framed in their interest; that the management of estates was left to agents or middle-men; that multitudes of tenants, whose holdings were small, could glean a bare subsistence from the soil, were doomed to famine if the potato-crop failed, and, when unable to pay the rent, were liable to "eviction," that is, to be turned out of doors, with their families, to perish,--these have been causes sufficient to give rise to endless disputes and conflicts. Add to these facts the inbred hostility arising from differences of race and religion; the memory, on the part of the Irish, of centuries of misgovernment, and the feeling that the lands held by sufferance were wrested from their ancestors by force,--and the animosity manifested in revolts and outrages is easily explained. The English government, in a series of measures,--in connection with which, acts of coercion for preventing and punishing violence have been passed,--undertook to lessen the evils that exist, and to produce a better state of feeling. The _Encumbered Estates Court_ was established to render more easy the transfer of lands. This Act, and the _Land Act_ passed the same year (1860), although well meant, failed to improve the situation of the tenants. Mr. _Gladstone's_ great measure of disestablishment has been referred to. His second great reform measure was the Land Law of 1870, the effect of which was to make the landlord pay damages to the evicted tenant, to compensate him for improvements which he had made, etc. One object of this Act was to create a body of peasant proprietors in Ireland. Additional Acts, in 1880, were designed to assist tenants to purchase their holdings. The hopes as to the practical benefit to follow the Act of 1870 were disappointed. In 1877, 1878, and 1879, there was a partial failure of the crops. The _Fenian_ movement, designed to secure Irish independence by force, was organized in the United States, 1857. By uniting with similar Irish brotherhoods, it extended itself in Great Britain as well as America, collected large funds, and, 1866, made ineffectual attempts to invade Canada. An armed rising in Ireland shortly after, under Fenian leadership, was suppressed. The national agitation consequent on these proceedings in Ireland, issued in the organization, 1870, of the Home Rule party, with Mr. _Isaac Butt_ a leading promoter. The object was to secure an Irish Parliament for Irish affairs, and for the control of Irish resources; the Imperial Parliament being left to deal with imperial affairs. In this period (about 1874) Mr. _Parnell_ grew to be conspicuous in politics. He became the leader of the Home Rule members of the House of Commons, who sought, by obstructing the progress of business, to compel the English government to withdraw its measures of coercion, and to legislate in accordance with the views of himself and his associates. The "obstructionists," by joining the Tories, effected the retirement of the Gladstone Cabinet (1885). In Ireland a system of "boycotting" was adopted for the punishment of landlords guilty of evicting tenants. This led to deeds of violence and blood. _Parnell_ died in 1891. and _Justin McCarthy_ became the leader of the Irish cause in Parliament. A Gladstone Cabinet again came into power in 1892, with an avowed object of securing Home Rule for Ireland. CHAPTER VI. THE UNITED STATES (1815-1890): MEXICO: SOUTH AMERICAN STATES: EASTERN ASIA. END OF THE FEDERAL PARTY.--The end of the war with Great Britain (1812-15) was marked by the extinction of the Federal party. But the Republicans, the opposing party, were now equally zealous for the perpetuity of the Union, and were quite ready to act on a liberal construction of the Constitution with respect to the powers conferred on the General Government. This had been shown in the purchase of Louisiana: it was further exemplified in 1816 in the establishment of a national bank, and in the enactment of a protective tariff. Then, and until 1832, presidential candidates were nominated by Congressional "caucuses." _James Monroe_ (1817-25) received the votes of all of the States but three. The absence of party division has caused his time to be designated as "the era of good feeling." PURCHASE OF FLORIDA.--Slaves in Georgia and Alabama frequently escaped from their masters, and fled for shelter to the swamps of Florida. The _Creek_ and the _Seminole_ Indians were always disposed to aid them. In 1817 General _Andrew Jackson_ was appointed to conduct an expedition against the Seminoles. He came into conflict with the Spanish authorities in Florida, where he seized Spanish forts, and built a fort of his own. Finally, in 1819, the Floridas were purchased of Spain for five million dollars, and the United States gave up its claim to the extensive territory west of the Sabine River, which was known afterwards as _Texas_. This became a part of Mexico two years later. SLAVERY: THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE.--In 1820 a sectional struggle arose in Congress, on the question of the admission of Missouri as a State with a constitution permitting slavery. The slave-trade had been carried on by the States separately, before the National Constitution was formed. It was abolished by Congress in 1808, the earliest date allowed by the Constitution for the power to abolish it to be exercised. The principal founders of the government, both in the North and South, considered slavery an evil, and looked forward to its gradual extinction. In the North, where the slaves were less numerous, laws for gradual emancipation were early passed. But the rapid increase of slaves in the South, the growing demand for cotton, and the stimulus given to the production of it by the cotton-gin, made the prospect of emancipation by legislative action less probable as time advanced. The _American Colonization Society_ was formed in 1811; and the fallacious hope was entertained by many, that the negroes might be carried back to the _Liberian_ settlement on the African coast. The extension of slavery in the territory north-west of the Ohio had been prevented by the Congressional ordinance of 1787. When the question of the admission of _Missouri_ to the Union came up, the members of Congress from the North and the members from the South were in hostile array on the point, and a dangerous excitement was kindled. By the exertions of _Henry Clay_, the "Missouri Compromise" was adopted, by which the new State was admitted with slavery in it; but, as a kind of equivalent, slavery was prohibited forever in all the remaining territory of the United States north of 36° 30' north latitude, the southern boundary of _Missouri_. THE "MONROE DOCTRINE."--When the "Holy Alliance" was engaged in its crusade against liberty in Europe, it was thought that they might attempt to conquer for Spain the revolted South American republics. _Canning_ suggested to the American minister in England, that it would be well for the United States to take action against such a scheme. President Monroe, in his annual message in 1823, said that we should consider an attempt of the allied powers to extend their system in this country, or any interference on their part for the purpose of controlling the destiny of the American States, as unfriendly action towards the United States. This is the "Monroe Doctrine." An additional statement in disapproval of future colonization on the American continents by European powers was made in the same message. This second statement was never sanctioned by the House of Representatives. It is vague, and was probably meant to exclude _indirect_ attempts to overthrow the liberty of the new American republics. The only thing which the "Monroe Doctrine" really contains is the intimation on the part of the United States of a right to resist attempts of European powers to alter the constitutions of American communities. The true origin and intent of the "Monroe Doctrine" are often misunderstood. They are set forth in Woolsey's _International Law_, and in his article in Johnson's _Encyclopedia_, "Monroe Doctrine;" also in Webster's writings, Vol. III. p. l78, and in Calhoun's "Speech on the Panama Question." See also Foster, _A Century of American Diplomacy_, Chap. XII. PARTIES AFTER MONROE.--At the expiration of Monroe's second term, there being no choice for president by the people, _John Quincy Adams_, who had long been in public life in various important stations, was chosen by the House of Representatives. His supporters combined with the adherents of _Henry Clay_, who became secretary of state. This alliance was loudly denounced by their opponents as a "bargain." From the close of the last war with Great Britain, a party called by their adversaries "loose constructionists" of the Constitution, of which _Clay_ was a leader,--a party who were in favor of measures like a protective tariff, a national bank, and internal improvements,--as the making of canals,--to be undertaken by Congress,--had been growing up. It now took the name of _National Republicans_, which was afterwards exchanged for that of _Whigs_. On the other side were the "strict constructionists," who, however, differed among themselves respecting certain measures,--for example, the tariff. In their ranks _Andrew Jackson_ belonged. Of this political tendency, _John C. Calhoun_ of South Carolina became a leading promoter. _Andrew Jackson_ was a favorite candidate for the presidency, and the name of _Democrats_ was applied to his followers. PRESIDENCY OF JACKSON.--_Jackson_ was elevated to the presidency in 1829. He was a fearless man, an ardent patriot, with a choleric temper and an imperious will. He carried to an unexampled extent a custom, which had begun with _Jefferson_, of supplanting office-holders of the opposite political party by supporters of the administration. This came to be called the "spoils system," from the maxim once quoted in defense of it, that "to the victors belong the spoils." NULLIFICATION.--During _Jackson's_ administration, there occurred the "nullification" crisis. In 1828 a new protective tariff had been passed, which was regarded in the South, especially in South Carolina, as extremely unjust and injurious. The New England States had been averse to protection; and in 1816 _Daniel Webster_ opposed the tariff measure as specially hurtful to the Eastern States, whose capital was so largely invested in commerce. After the protective policy had been adopted, and when, under its shield, manufacturing had been extensively established in the North, the former adversaries of protection, with _Webster_, as well as _Clay_, who had been a protectionist before, thought it unfair and destructive to do away with the tariff. Its adversaries denounced it as unconstitutional. _Calhoun_ and his followers, moreover, contended that _nullification_ is legal and admissible; in other words, that a law of Congress may be set aside by a State within its own limits, provided it is considered by that State a gross infraction of the Constitution. There was a memorable debate on this subject in 1830, in the United States Senate, when the State-rights theory was advocated by _Robert Y. Hayne_ of South Carolina, and the opposite doctrine defended by _Webster_. In 1832 South Carolina passed an ordinance declaring that the tariff laws of 1828 and 1832 were null and void, and not binding in that State. President _Jackson_ issued a spirited proclamation in which the nullification doctrine was repudiated, and the opposite, or national, theory was affirmed, and the President's resolute intention to execute the laws of the United States was announced. The difficulty was ended by the compromise tariff introduced by _Henry Clay_, providing for the gradual reduction of duties (1833). REMOVAL OF THE DEPOSITS.--The President was hostile to the National Bank, which he considered dangerous, as liable to be converted into a tool for partisan ends. Not being able to carry Congress with him, he assumed the responsibility, after his second election, of removing the deposits, or public funds, from its custody, or, rather, of an order for the cessation of these deposits. For this he was censured by the Senate, a majority of which regarded his act as arbitrary and unconstitutional. ANTI-SLAVERY AGITATION.--From about this time, the agitation respecting slavery constantly increased. In the North a party arose, which, through lectures and in newspapers and pamphlets, denounced slavery as iniquitous, and called for immediate emancipation. The most prominent leader of this party was _William Lloyd Garrison_, and its most captivating orator was _Wendell Phillips_. This party advocated disunion, on account of the obligations imposed upon the North in reference to slavery by the Constitution. They were sometimes assailed by mobs in Northern cities. The major part of the people in the North desired some method of extinguishing slavery which should leave the Union intact. Meantime they were for obeying the Constitution, although the obligation to restore fugitive slaves was felt to be obnoxious, and there grew up a disposition to avoid compliance with it. The "colonizationists" diminished in number. There were various types and degrees of anti-slavery sentiment. The resolution to confine slavery, by political action, within the limits of the States where it was under the shield of local law, became more and more prevalent. In the South, on the contrary, the enmity to "abolitionism" was intense, and served to increase the popularity of the doctrine of State-rights. Slavery came to be defended as necessary under the circumstances, and as capable of justification on moral and Scriptural grounds. Occasions of reciprocal complaint between North and South, for illegal doings relating in one way or another to slavery, tended to multiply. ANNEXATION OF TEXAS.--In 1836 _Texas_ declared its independence of Mexico. General _Sam Houston_, an emigrant from Tennessee, was the leader in the revolt. He defeated the Mexicans under _Santa Ana_, at the _San Jacinto_ (1836). In 1845, largely by the agency of Mr. _Calhoun_, Texas, by an Act of Congress, was annexed to the United States. The motive which he avowed was the fear that it might fall into the hands of England, and become dangerous to the institution of slavery in the South. The measure was strenuously opposed in the North as a scheme by which it was intended to strengthen the influence of the slaveholding States in Congress. It was favored, for the same reason, by those who were inimical to abolitionism in whatever form. WAR WITH MEXICO.--A consequence of the acquisition of Texas was a war with _Mexico_. The successes of Gen. _Zachary Taylor_ at _Palo Alto_ and _Monterey_ (1846), and at _Buena Vista_ (1847), and the campaign of Gen. _Winfield Scott_, who captured _Vera Cruz_, fought his way through the pass of _Cerro Gordo_, and at length entered the city of _Mexico_ (Sept. 14, 1847), compelled the Mexicans to agree to the Treaty of _Guadaloupe Hidalgo_ (1848). By this treaty all claim on Texas to the Rio Grande was relinquished, together with the provinces of _Upper California_ and _New Mexico_. THE "WILMOT PROVISO."--The Wilmot Proviso was proposed in Congress, excluding slavery from all territory to be acquired from Mexico. This demand for the prevention of the further extension of slavery in the territories subject to national jurisdiction, became a rallying-cry. On the nomination of General _Taylor_ to the presidency by the Whigs (1848), a "Free-Soil" party was organized on this basis,--the precursor of the Republican party. The convention which nominated _Taylor_ laid on the table a motion approving of the Wilmot Proviso. The Whigs succeeded in the election, but their party lost a portion of its adherents. CLAY'S COMPROMISE.--The application of _California_ for admission to the Union, which, on account of the rapid growth of that community through the discovery of gold, was soon made, brought the sectional difficulty to another crisis. _President Taylor_ died (July 9, 1850), and was succeeded by _Millard Fillmore_, the vice-president. The contest in Congress was soon after adjusted by _Clay's_ compromise, by which _California_ was admitted as a free State, _Utah_ and _New Mexico_ were organized into Territories without any mention of slavery, the slave-trade was prohibited in the District of Columbia, and a new fugitive-slave law was enacted, that was framed in such a way as to give great offense at the North. _Webster_, in a celebrated speech in favor of the compromise (March 7), gave as a reason for not insisting on the Wilmot Proviso, that the physical character of the new Territories of itself excluded slavery from them. THE KANSAS TROUBLES.--In 1854, during the administration of _Franklin Pierce_, the standing sectional controversy reached a new phase. Two Territories, _Kansas_ and _Nebraska_, were knocking at the doors of Congress for admission as States. _Kansas_ lay west of Missouri, and, like _Nebraska_ on the north, was protected from slavery by the Missouri Compromise (p. 601). But the Democrats carried through Congress a bill introduced by Mr. _Douglas_ of Illinois, practically repealing that compromise, and leaving the matter of the toleration of slavery to be determined by the actual settlers as they might see fit. This measure was extensively regarded in the North as a breach of faith. Companies of emigrants were organized in the Northern States, to form permanent settlements in _Kansas_; and in order to prevent that country from becoming a free State, marauders from _Missouri_ crossed the line, to attack them, and to harass the newly planted colonies. THE DRED-SCOTT CASE.--_James Buchanan_ became president in 1857. At this time the Supreme Court decided that neither negro slaves nor their descendants, slave or free, could become citizens of the United States; and added incidentally the dictum that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional, and that Congress had no right to prohibit the carrying of slaves into any State or Territory. The effect of this opinion, if embodied in a legal decision, would have been to prevent the exclusion of slavery, even by a Territorial legislature, prior to the existence of the State government. This judicial act, following upon the attitude taken by the government at Washington with reference to the Kansas troubles, greatly strengthened the numbers and stimulated the determination of the Republican party in the Northern States. THE JOHN BROWN RAID.--An occurrence not without a considerable effect in exciting the resentment, as well as the apprehensions, of the South, was the attempt of _John Brown_, a brave old man of the Puritan type, whose enmity to slavery had been deepened by conflict and suffering in the Kansas troubles, to stir up an insurrection of slaves in Virginia. With a handful of armed men, he seized the United States arsenal at _Harper's Ferry_ in Virginia. Half of his followers were killed: he himself was captured, and, after being tried and convicted by the State authorities, was hanged (Dec. 2, 1859). SECESSION OF STATES.--In the election of 1860, _Abraham Lincoln_ received the electoral vote of every Northern State except New Jersey. The conviction of the Southern political leaders that the anti-slavery feeling of the North, with its great and growing preponderance in wealth and population, would dictate the policy of the general government, determined them to attempt to break up the Union. The result, it was expected, would be the permanent establishment of a slave-holding confederacy, or the obtaining of new constitutional guaranties and safeguards of the institution of slavery; which, it was felt, would be undermined even if nothing more were done than to prevent the spread of it beyond the States where it existed. _South Carolina_ passed an ordinance of secession (Dec. 20, 1860), and was followed in this act by _Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana,_ and _Texas_. The delegates of the seceding States met at _Montgomery_, Ala., and formed a new government under the name of the Confederate States of America (Feb. 8, 1861). _Jefferson Davis_ was elected president, and _Alexander H. Stephens_ vice-president. Except at _Pensacola_ in Florida, and in _Charleston_, all the national property within the borders of the seceding States was seized. Efforts looking to compromise and conciliation were of no effect. After the accession of Mr. _Lincoln_, the purpose of the government to send supplies to the garrison of _Fort Sumter_ in the harbor of Charleston, caused the Confederates to attack that fortress, which the commander, Major _Anderson_, after a gallant defense, was obliged to surrender. President _Lincoln_ immediately issued a proclamation calling for seventy-five thousand volunteers to serve for three months, and called Congress together (April 15). There was a great uprising in the Northern States. The President's call for troops at once met with an enthusiastic response. _Virginia_, _Arkansas_, _Tennessee_, and _North Carolina_ now joined the Southern Confederacy, the capital of which was established at _Richmond_. Great Britain recognized the Confederate States as having the rights of belligerents (May 13). France did the same. EVENTS OF THE WAR IN 1861-62.--Only a brief account can be given of the events of the war. General _Winfield Scott_ was at first in command of the Union forces, and General _J. E. Johnston_ of the forces of the Confederates. It was imagined at the North, that there could be an easy and quick advance of the Federal forces to _Richmond_; but the troops were not drilled, and the preparations for a campaign were wholly inadequate. The Union troops were defeated at _Bull Run_, or _Manassas_, and _Washington_ was thrown into a panic (July 21, 1861). Congress at once adopted energetic measures for raising a large army and for building a navy. General _George B. McClellan_ was placed in command of the forces. It was foreseen on both sides, that the result of the conflict might depend on the course taken by foreign powers, especially by England. The South counted upon the demand for cotton as certain to secure English help, direct or indirect, for the Southern cause. Mr. _Charles Francis Adams_ was selected by Mr. _Seward_, the secretary of state, to represent the Union at the Court of St. James. The Confederates sent abroad Mr. _Mason_ and Mr. _Slidell_ to procure the full recognition of the new Confederacy by England and France. The _Trent_, on which they sailed, was stopped by Captain _Wilkes_ of the United States Navy, and the commissioners taken from it. This breach of international law threatened war, which was averted by the surrender of the two captives to England. England, however, refused to assent to _Louis Napoleon's_ proposal to recognize the independence of the seceding States; but the laxness of the British Government in not preventing the fitting out of vessels of war in her ports, to prey on American commerce, excited indignation in the United States. _Palmerston_ was at the head of the cabinet, and Lord _John Russell_ was secretary for foreign affairs. For the depredations of the _Alabama_, the tribunal chosen to arbitrate at the end of the war, and meeting at Geneva, condemned England to pay to the United States an indemnity of fifteen and a half millions of dollars. Early in 1862 _Fort Henry_ on the Tennessee, and _Fort Donelson_ on the Cumberland, were taken by General _Ulysses S. Grant_, who led the land forces, and Commodore _A. H. Foote_, who commanded the gunboats. At Fort Donelson nearly fifteen thousand prisoners were captured. _Grant_ fought the battle of Pittsburg Landing, or _Shiloh_, which continued two days (April 6, 7), and ended in the retreat of the Confederates. Their general, _A. S. Johnston_, was killed, and the command of his troops devolved on _Beauregard_. _Grant_, who had been reinforced by _Buell_, drove the Confederates back to _Corinth_, Miss., nineteen miles distant. The capture of _Island Number Ten_, by _Pope_, followed; and soon _Memphis_ was in the hands of the Union forces. _Farragut_ ran the gauntlet of the forts at New Orleans (April 24), and captured that city. In the East the Union forces had not been so successful. The iron-sheathed frigate _Merrimac_ destroyed the Union fleet at _Hampton Roads_ (March 9), but was driven back to _Gosport_ by the timely appearance of the iron-clad Union vessel, the _Monitor_. _McClellan_ undertook to approach _Richmond_ by the peninsula. The campaign lasted from March to July, and included, besides various other engagements, the important battles of _Fair Oaks_, and of _Malvern Hill_ (July 1). At the end of June the Union army was driven back to Harrison's Landing on the James River. Meantime the Confederate general, _Jackson_, in the valley of the Shenandoah, repulsed _Fremont, Banks_, and _McDowell_, and joined General _Robert E. Lee_, the commander of the Confederate forces, who now pressed forward towards Washington. _Pope_ was defeated at _Manassas_ (Aug. 29, 30), and _Lee_ crossed the Potomac into Maryland. He was met by _McClellan_, and defeated at _Antietam_ (Sept. 17), but was able to withdraw in safety across the river. _McClellan_ was superseded by _Burnside_, who was defeated by _Lee_ at _Fredericksburg_ (Dec. 13). EMANCIPATION.--On the 1st of January, 1863, President _Lincoln_ issued a proclamation declaring all slaves in States or parts of States in rebellion, to be free. This act was legally possible only as a belligerent measure, or as an exercise of the right of a commander. The refusal of the Government to carry on the war for the direct purpose of emancipation, or to adopt measures of this character before,--measures which the Constitution did not permit,--was not understood in foreign countries, and, in England especially, had tended to chill sympathy with the Northern cause. Regiments of negro soldiers were now formed. THE FIRST SIX MONTHS OF 1863.--_Hooker_ succeeded _Burnside_ in command of the Potomac Army, and was defeated by _Lee_ at _Chancellorsville_ (May 3). There _"Stonewall" Jackson_, one of the best and bravest of the Confederate generals, lost his life. _Lee_ now crossed the river, and entered _Pennsylvania_. This was the critical moment in the struggle. Great pains were taken, by such people in the North as were disaffected with the administration at Washington, to manifest hostility to the war, or to the method in which it was prosecuted. A riot broke out in the city of New York while the drafts for troops were in progress, and it was several days before it was put down. The defeat of _Lee_ by _Meade_ at _Gettysburg_ (July 1-3) turned the tide against the Confederates; their army again retired beyond the Potomac. At the same time, in the West, General _Grant_ captured _Vicksburg_ with upwards of thirty thousand men (July 4), and _Port Hudson_ was taken. The Mississippi was thus opened to its mouth. The Union navy acted effectively on the Atlantic coast, and at the end of the year nearly all the Southern ports were closed by blockades. VICTORIES AT CHATTANOOGA.--_Grant_ assumed command of the military division of the Mississippi, including the region between the Alleghanies and that river. With the Army of the Cumberland under _Thomas_, with reinforcements from Vicksburg under _Sherman_ and from the Army of the Potomac under _Hooker_, he won the victories of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, at _Chattanooga_, Tennessee (Nov. 24 and 25). This success opened a path for the Union forces into Alabama and the Atlantic States. _Sherman_ was sent to reinforce _Burnside_ in Tennessee, and defeated _Longstreet._ TO THE SURRENDER OF LEE.--_Grant_ was made lieutenant-general, or first in command under the President (March 7, 1864). Three attempts to reach Richmond, made severally by _McClellan_, _Hooker_, and _Burnside_, had failed, as Lee's two aggressive movements had been defeated at _Antietam_ and _Gettysburg_. The "border States" in the West were in the hands of the Union forces, as well as the lower Mississippi; and the blockade was maintained along the Atlantic coast. The plan now was for _Sherman_ to secure _Georgia_, and to march eastward and northward into the heart of the Confederacy, starting at _Chattanooga_. Military operations, which had been prosecuted over so vast an extent of territory, now began to have a unity which they had greatly missed before. _Grant_ personally took command of the Army of the Potomac. His object was to get between Lee's army and Richmond. This object was not effected; but the sanguinary battle of _the Wilderness_ (May 5, 6), and other subsequent battles, had the effect, in the course of six weeks, to push _Lee_ back within the fortifications of _Petersburg_ and _Richmond_. During the long siege of these places, diversions were attempted by _Early_ in Maryland and Pennsylvania; but he was repelled and defeated by _Sheridan_. The Confederate vessel _Alabama_ was sunk in the English Channel by the _Kearsarge_ (June, 1864). _Farragut_ captured the forts in _Mobile Bay_. _Sherman's_ forces, after a series of engagements, entered _Atlanta_, Ga., which the Confederates had been compelled to evacuate (Sept. 2). A detachment was sent by _Sherman_, under _Thomas_, after _Hood_, which defeated him at _Nashville_ (Dec. 15, 16). _Sherman_ marched through Georgia, and entered _Savannah_ (Dec. 21). On Feb. 1, 1865, he commenced his movement northward. The attempts of General _J. E. Johnston_ to check his advance were ineffectual. _Sherman_ entered _Columbia_, S. C., and pushed on to _Raleigh_; _Johnston_, whose numbers were inferior, retiring as he approached. The efforts of _Lee_ to break away from _Grant_, in order to effect a junction with _Johnston_, did not succeed. _Sheridan's_ victory over _Lee_ at _Five Forks_ (April 1) compelled him to evacuate _Petersburg_. He was pursued and surrounded by _Grant_, and surrendered his army at _Appomattox Court House_ (April 9). The Union forces had entered _Richmond_ (April 2). _Johnston_ surrendered his forces to _Sherman_ (April 26). _Jefferson Davis_ was captured by a body of Union cavalry in Georgia (May 10). MURDER OF LINCOLN.--The joy felt in the North over the complete victory of the Union cause was turned into grief by the assassination of President _Lincoln_ (April 14), who had begun his second term on the 4th of March. He was shot in a theater in Washington, by a fanatic named _Booth_, who imagined that he was avenging wrongs of the South. An attempt was made at the same time to murder Secretary _Seward_ in his bed. The assailant inflicted on him severe but not fatal wounds. Mr. _Lincoln_ had taken a strong hold upon the affections of the people. With a large store of plain common-sense, with an even temper, an abounding good-nature, and a humor that cast wise thoughts into the form of pithy maxims and similes, he combined an unflinching firmness, and loyalty to his convictions of duty. He refused to be hurried to the issue of an edict of emancipation, which, as he judged, if prematurely framed, would lose to the Union cause the great States of Maryland, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Missouri. Keeping steadily before him the prime object of the war, he inculcated, as he felt, malice toward none, and charity for all. What _Clarendon_ says of _Cromwell_ is true of _Lincoln_: "As he grew into place and authority, his parts seemed to be raised, as if he had had concealed faculties, till he had occasion to use them." FINANCES IN THE WAR.--The Confederate Government had carried on the war by the issue of paper money made redeemable on the condition of success in gaining independence. This currency, of course, became worthless. The debt of the United States at the close of the war had risen from about sixty-five millions to more than twenty-seven hundred millions of dollars, not to speak of the debts incurred by States and towns. AMENDMENTS TO THE CONSTITUTION.--The _Thirteenth_ Amendment to the Constitution (declared in force Dec. 18, 1865) prohibited slavery in the United States. The _Fourteenth_ Amendment (declared in force July 28, 1868) secured to all the freedmen the right of citizenship and equality under State law, and ordained that the basis of representation in each State should be reduced in proportion to any abridgment by State law of the right of suffrage in its male population. The Fifteenth Amendment (declared in force March 30, 1870) forbade the abridgment of the right to vote, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The effect of the amendments was to confer on the blacks the civil and political rights enjoyed by the whites. RECONSTRUCTION: ADMINISTRATION OF JOHNSON.--The Southern States were conquered communities; but the theory was held that they had not been, and could not be in law, dissevered from the Union. The difficulty of reconstructing State governments was aggravated by the fact that the bulk of the intelligent people in the seceding States were precluded, or excluded themselves, from taking part in the measures requisite for this end; by the additional fact of the ignorance of the blacks, and of the selfish greed of white adventurers who took the place of leaders among them; and by dissensions in the North, and in the administration at Washington, as to the right and lawful course to be pursued. The President, _Andrew Johnson_, who succeeded _Lincoln_, became involved in a contest with the dominant Republican party in Congress, on questions pertaining to reconstruction. He was impeached and tried by the Senate (Feb. 24-May 16, 1868), but the number of votes for his conviction was one less than the number required. On the expiration of _Johnson's_ term, General _Grant_ was raised to the presidential office. It was complained, that the new governments instituted in the South by the freedmen and their white coadjutors were grossly corrupt and incapable, and that their "returning boards" made false results of elections. On the other hand, it was complained, that the opponents of these governments resorted to violence and fraud to intimidate their political adversaries, and to keep them out of office. The troops of the United States, which had sustained the officers appointed by the blacks and by their white allies in several of the States, were at length withdrawn; and political power was resumed throughout the South by the adverse party, or the class which had contended against what were derisively styled "carpet-bag" governments. A difficulty arose in 1876, in consequence of a dispute about the result of the presidential election. It was referred to an "Electoral Commission" appointed by Congress, and _Rutherford B. Hayes_ was declared to be chosen (1877-1881). During his administration (Jan. 1, 1879) the banks and the government resumed specie payments, which had been suspended since an early date in the civil war. The rapid diminution of the national debt is one of the important features of later American history. The Republicans succeeded in the next national election; but General _Garfield_, who was chosen President, was mortally wounded by an assassin (July 2, 1881), a few months after his inauguration. _Guiteau_, who committed the causeless and ruthless deed, claimed to be "inspired by the Deity," but was judged to be morally and legally responsible, and died on the gallows. _Chester A. Arthur_, the Vice-president, filled the highest office for the remainder of the presidential term. At the election in 1884 _Grover Cleveland_, Governor of New York, was elected as Chief Magistrate; and the Democrats, for the first time since the retirement of Mr. _Buchanan_ and the inauguration of Mr. _Lincoln_ (in 1861), took the reins of power into their hands; the Republicans, however, retaining a majority in the Senate. _Benjamin Harrison_ (Republican) succeeded _Cleveland_ as President, 1889. The McKinley Tariff Bill, 1890, reduced the duty on some imports, but increased them heavily on others. In 1892 the four hundredth anniversary of America's discovery was celebrated, and _Grover Cleveland_, Democratic nominee, was again elected to the presidency. The revival of industry and prosperity in the Southern States, and efforts for popular education for the blacks as well as whites, are circumstances worthy of special record. GRANT AND LEE.--About two months after his retirement from the presidency, General _Grant_ began a tour of the world. He landed in San Francisco from Japan, on his return, in September, 1879, after an absence of nearly two years and a half. In 1880 an effort was made by his warm political supporters to bring him forward as a candidate of the Republicans for a third term in the presidency. This effort failed, as had a similar endeavor, made with less vigor, four years before. The remainder of his days were spent in private life. His death occurred on July 23, 1885. He was buried in New York, on Aug. 8, with distinguished honors. General _Lee_, the commander of the Confederate forces in the civil war, from the close of the struggle to his death (Oct. 12, 1870) was president of Washington and Lee University, at Lexington, Va. UTAH: THE MORMONS.--The sect of Mormons was founded in _Manchester, N. Y._, in 1830, by _Joseph Smith_, a native of Vermont, who claimed to have received heavenly visions from the time when he was fifteen years old. He pretended that he was guided by an angel to the spot, near _Manchester_, where was buried a stone box containing a volume made up of thin gold plates, which were covered with strange characters in the "reformed Egyptian" tongue. This "Book of Mormon" was really a manuscript composed, in 1812, for quite another purpose, by one _Solomon Spaulding_, who had been a preacher. A copy of it made by a printer, _Sidney Rigdon_, fell into the hands of _Joseph Smith_. It contains fabulous stories of the settlement of refugees coming from the Tower of Babel to America, who were followed in 600 B.C. by a colony from Jerusalem that landed on the coast of Chili. War broke out among their descendants, from the bad part of whom the North American Indians sprung. One of the survivors of the better class of these Hebrews, named _Mormon_, collected in a volume the books of records of former kings and priests, which, with some additions from his son, was buried until the prophet chosen of God should appear. In style the Book of Mormon endeavors to imitate the English version of the Scriptures. On the basis of this volume and of its alleged miraculous origin, _Smith_ founded the sect of "Latter Day Saints," as he styled them. From _Kirtland, O._, where they came in 1831, and where the converts were numerous, they removed to a place which they named _New Jerusalem_, in Jackson County, Mo. Here they were joined by _Brigham Young_, also a native of Vermont, a man of much energy and shrewdness. _Smith_ was charged by the Missourians, and some of his own followers who deserted him, with outrageous crimes and frauds. The conflict between the Mormons and the Missourians resulted in the migration of the former to _Nauvoo_ in Illinois, where a community was organized in which _Smith_ exercised supreme power. In 1843 Smith, who was as profligate as he was knavish, professed to receive a revelation sanctioning polygamy. His bad conduct, and that of his adherents, brought on a conflict with the civil authorities. Smith, with his brother, was killed in the jail by a mob. Driven out of _Nauvoo_, the Mormons (1848) made their way to Utah, and founded _Salt Lake City_. Their systematic efforts to obtain converts brought to them a large number from the ignorant working-class in Great Britain and in Sweden and Norway. The Territory of Utah was organized by Congress in 1849. The laws and officers of the United States, however, were treated with defiance and openly resisted by Brigham Young, the Mormon leader; and he was removed from the office of governor, to which he had been appointed by President _Fillmore_. A contest with the United States authorities was succeeded by the submission of the Mormons in 1858. In 1871 efforts for the suppression of polygamy by law were undertaken by the Federal Government, and have since been continued with imperfect success. _Brigham Young_ died in 1877, and was succeeded in the presidency of the Mormons by _John Taylor_, an Englishman. A body of anti-polygamist seceders from the Mormon community, including a son of _Brigham Young_, has been formed. Another Mormon sect opposed to polygamy, calling itself the "Reorganized Church of Latter Day Saints," originated in 1851. The number of professed believers in the strange and grotesque tenets of Mormonism, in all the different places where its disciples are found, probably exceeds two hundred thousand. THE FORMATION OF THE STATES.--The "_District of Maine_" formed a part of Massachusetts from 1651 to 1820, when it was admitted to the Union as a distinct State. Its northern boundary was not clearly defined until the treaty of 1842 between the United States and England, which was made by Mr. _Webster_ and Lord _Ashburton_. The _North-West Territory_, which was organized in 1789, comprised the cessions north of the Ohio and as far west as the Mississippi, which had been made by the "landed States;" that is, the several States holding portions of this region. A small portion, "the Western Reserve," was retained by Connecticut until 1795, when it was sold to the National Government. Out of this "North-West Territory," there were formed five States. Connected with the name of each is the date of its admission to the Union: Ohio (1802), Indiana (1816), Illinois (1818), Michigan (1837), Wisconsin (1848). South of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi, lay the territory belonging to Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. From this, the cession of Virginia formed the State of Kentucky (1792); that of the Carolinas formed Tennessee (1796); that of Georgia formed Alabama (1819) and Mississippi (1817). The extensive territory called _Louisiana_ was ceded by France to Spain in 1762, was ceded back to France in 1801, and purchased by the United States in 1803. From this territory, there have been formed the States of Louisiana (1812), Missouri (1820), Arkansas (1836), Iowa (1846), Minnesota (1858), Kansas (1861), Nebraska (1867), Colorado (1876), Montana and the two Dakotas (1889), Wyoming (1890), and Oklahoma and Indian Territories. From the cession of Florida by Spain (1819), the State of Florida was formed (1845). _Oregon_ was claimed by the United States by the right of prior discovery: it was organized as a Territory in 1849; the Territory of Washington was formed from it in 1853, and Idaho in 1863. Oregon was admitted as a State in 1859, Washington in 1889, and Idaho in 1890. Texas was admitted to the Union in 1845. From the cessions of Mexico (1848) there have been formed the States of California (1850) and Nevada (1864), and the Territories of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Alaska was purchased from Russia in 1867. West Virginia was formed into a distinct State in 1863, in consequence of the secession of Virginia. MEXICO. THE FRENCH INVASION: MAXIMILLIAN.--After the close of the war with the United States (1848), there continued to be a war of factions in Mexico. There was a democratic party, which obtained the upper hand in 1857, but was opposed by the church party. The clergy and the religious bodies were possessed of nearly one-half of the landed property in the country. _Benito Juarez_, who had been chief justice, became president; but he was resisted by the clerical party, with their military supporters, and there was civil war (1857-58). _Juarez_ was recognized as the lawful president by the United States. Spain, France, and England demanded reparation for injuries and losses suffered in Mexico by their subjects. In December, 1861, and January, 1862, they landed troops at _Vera Cruz_, to compel Mexico to satisfy their claims. The demands of England and Spain were met, and they withdrew their forces. It became clear, however, that _Louis Napoleon_, who refused to recognize _Juarez_, had an ulterior design to overthrow the Mexican government, and to establish an empire in its place. It was a part of a visionary scheme to establish the domination of "the Latin race." He expected to check the progress of the United States, and ventured on this aggressive enterprise on account of the opportunity offered by the civil war in America. He persuaded the Archduke _Maximilian_, the brother of _Francis Joseph_, emperor of Austria, to accept the throne, and agreed to sustain him with men and money. _Maximilian_ arrived in Mexico in 1864. Large bodies of French troops fought on his side. The war resolved itself into a guerrilla contest, in which great cruelties were perpetrated on both sides. The end of the American civil war put the Government of the United States in a position to demand of _Louis Napoleon_ the withdrawal of the French forces. His own situation in France, and the state of public opinion there, prevented him from refusing this demand. The folly, as well as criminality, of the undertaking, had become more and more obvious. He therefore decided to violate his promises to _Maximilian_. Deserted thus by his defenders, this prince, who, although misled by ambition, had noble traits, was captured by the troops of _Juarez_, tried by court-martial, and shot (1867). His wife _Carlotta_, the daughter of _Leopold I_. of Belgium, and the grand-daughter of _Louis Philippe_, failing in negotiations at Rome, had lost her reason. _Juarez_ was installed in power at the capital. In 1868 and 1869, there was a succession of insurrections and revolutions; but he was again elected in 1871, and died the next year. After that time, there was more tranquillity in Mexico, and much was done to develop the mines and other material resources of the country, and for public education. DIAZ: INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS.--President _Juarez_ died in 1872, and was succeeded by _Lerdo de Tejada_. Under him the authority of the State over the Church was maintained. The monastic orders were abolished. The democratic constitution, which had been framed in 1857, was amended (1873-4), and was afterwards upheld against the efforts of the reactionary or ecclesiastical party to overthrow it. In 1876, there were three claimants of the presidency,--_Tejada, Iglesias_, the chief justice, who denied the validity of his election, and Gen. _Porfirio Diaz_, who was at the head of a revolt. _Diaz_ established himself in power, and was succeeded in 1880 by _Manuel Gonzalez_. On the expiration of his term (1884), _Diaz_ was once more chosen to the same office. In 1891 an insurrection, headed by _Catarino Garza_, a journalist, and General _Riez Sandival_, was directed against the Diaz government. It was put down and _Diaz_ was re-elected president, July 11, 1892. Under _Diaz_ and his coadjutors much was done for the development of the country. Mexico has advanced towards a stable government in the republican form. SOUTH AMERICA. BRAZIL.--After returning to Portugal, King John recognized the independence of Brazil, and his son Dom Pedro as emperor of the country (1825), although John kept the title during his lifetime (p. 553). The two crowns were not to be united. On the death of his father (1826), Dom Pedro resigned his claim to the throne of Portugal. His subsequent career in Brazil was a troublous one, owing to his contest with a liberal party. He returned to Spain in 1831. After his departure there were party contests under a regency. In 1840 Dom Pedro II., who had been left behind in Brazil by his father, and was then fourteen years of age, was proclaimed emperor. Measures were taken against the slave-trade, and it was finally abolished; an effective plan for the gradual emancipation of slaves was adopted (1871). Rosas, dictator of Buenos Ayres, who intended to subvert the republics of Uruguay and Paraguay, was defeated by the Brazilian forces and their allies (1852). A long war against Lopez, dictator of Paraguay, ended in his capture and death (1870). This war involved losses to Brazil in men and money. Under Dom Pedro II., public works, manufactures, and commerce were promoted. A long strife of the government with the Catholic hierarchy ended in an accommodation (1875). In November, 1889, as the result of a bloodless revolution, Dom Pedro II. was dethroned, and a republican form of government declared. In Feb., 1891, Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca was confirmed as President, resigned in November, and was succeeded by Vice-President Floriano Peixoto, who held office until Nov. 15, 1894, when Prudente de Moraes, the first Brazilian President elected by a popular vote, was inaugurated. OHILI, PERU, BOLIVIA.--The contest of Chili with Peru and Bolivia has attracted special notice. Chili, after the formation of its constitution in 1833,--which resembles the constitution of the United States,--enjoyed remarkable prosperity. The strife to which we refer began between Chili and Bolivia. The point in dispute was the right to the province of Atacama, between Chili and Peru, the southern part of which was claimed by Chili. Bolivia claimed the whole. By a treaty in 1866, the territory in dispute was to be, under certain conditions, common property. A rivalry existed between Chili and Peru, and a secret alliance was formed in 1873 between Peru and Bolivia. Bolivia now asserted her title to the entire province of Atacama. The Argentine Republic was disposed to take sides against Chili, but, in consequence of the success of the Chilians, remained neutral. The Chilians captured (Oct. 8, 1879) the Peruvian iron-clad vessel, the Huascar. They gained other advantages, and took possession of the whole province, with its deposits of nitrate and guano. Revolutions ensued in Bolivia and Peru. Chilians took _Lima_, the Peruvian capital, and overran the country. Terms of peace proposed by Chili, involving large cessions of territory, were ratified by the Congress at _Lima_ (March 1, 1884). A treaty of peace was made between Chili and Bolivia (May 4). In Jan., 1891, war broke out in Chili, resulting in the defeat of President _Balmaceda_ in August. An assault on American seamen by Chilians in Valparaiso, Oct., 1891, caused strained relations between Chili and the United States, the latter demanding apology and reparation. Chili complied, Jan., 1892. CHINA AND JAPAN. CHINA AND FOREIGN NATIONS: THE TAIPING REBELLION.--In the recent period, there has been a gradual but grudging and reluctant opening of _China_ to commercial intercourse with foreign nations, and to the labors of Christian missionaries. In 1840 there began the first war with Great Britain, called the "opium war" for the reason that it was caused by the Chinese prohibition of the importing of that article. In the treaty at the end of the war, five ports were made free to British trade; _Hong-Kong_ was ceded to England; and it was provided that the intercourse between the officials of the two nations should be on the basis of equality (1842). Two years later an advantageous treaty was concluded by the United States with China: a treaty was also concluded with France (1844). Aggressions of the Chinese led to a second war with Great Britain, in alliance with France (1857-60); in which the Chinese fleet was destroyed, and _Canton_, a city of a million inhabitants, was captured. Treaties were made, but the infraction of them was followed by the capture of _Peking_ (1859). In the settlement which immediately took place, toleration was granted to Christianity, and liberty to foreign ambassadors to reside at the capital. In 1868 Mr. _Anson Burlingame_, who had been United States minister to China, with two Chinese envoys, visited the powers which had made treaties with China, and negotiated agreements by which important principles of international law were mutually adopted. The most important domestic event in China, in recent times, is the _"Taiping"-rebellion_, which broke out in 1850, in Southern China. Complaints of oppression and consequent disorder were brought to a climax on the accession of the young emperor, _Heen-fung_. The revolt spread from province to province, and found a leader in the person of _Hung Lew-tseuen_, who called himself _Teen-Wang_ (Celestial Virtue). He proclaimed his purpose to overthrow the _Manchu_ dynasty, and to restore the throne to the native Chinese. He claimed a divine commission, had caught up certain Christian ideas, and professed to be an adherent of Christianity. Multitudes flocked to his standard. City after city fell into their hands. The war with England and France operated in his favor. After the conclusion of peace, the government was more energetic and successful in its effort to suppress the rebellion, and was helped by foreign officers, in particular by Major (afterwards General) _Gordon_. _Nanking_ was recaptured (1864); and the revolt, which had been attended with an enormous destruction of life, came to an end. JAPAN AND FOREIGN NATIONS.--Up to the year 1866, the actual rulers of Japan were the _Shogun_, or emperor's lieutenant, who resided at _Yedo_, and the _daimios_, or territorial nobles, whose residence was also there. The _Mikado_, or emperor, lived in _Kioto_, surrounded by his relatives, the imperial nobles. There was a strict classification of the whole people, and a strict supervision of them, and the country was shut to foreigners. In 1853 Commodore _Perry_, of the United-States Navy, first entered the harbor of _Yedo_, and in 1854 returned, and negotiated a treaty with the _Shogun_, which opened certain ports to foreign trade, and to the admission of consuls. Treaties of a like nature between Japan and the other principal nations were soon made. The _Mikado_ and his court were deeply incensed at the _Shogun's_ usurpation of authority, and were at the same time hostile to the introduction of foreigners. Thus a double contest arose. There was an attempt to put down the _Shogun_, and to strip him of his authority, and to drive off the strangers. This last effort led the _Mikado's_ officers to fire on the ships of the foreign nations. The punishment which these inflicted in the harbor of _Shimonoseki_ (1864) so impressed the emperor, in conjunction with his fear lest the foreigners should help the _Shogun_, that he completely reversed his policy, and proceeded to remove the barriers to intercourse with them. The _daimios_, who had been compelled to live at _Yedo_, flocked to _Kioto_. The _Mikado_, countenanced by the foreigners, overcame the resistance of the party of the Shoguns. He removed his residence to _Yedo_, now called _Tokio_ (1869). Feudalism was abolished (1871), and a constitution promulgated in 1889. The empire was thus united and strengthened. Institutions and customs of Western civilization were rapidly introduced. Political and legal reforms kept pace with the introduction of railroads and other material improvements. Christian missionaries actively engaged in preaching and teaching. CHAPTER VII. THE LAST DECADE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. During the last decade of the nineteenth century tendencies which years before had begun to appear became the dominant feature of the European situation. The old ideals of the Manchester school--freer trade, more intimate and peaceful intercourse between nations, the right of each people to control its destiny, the development of liberal institutions--gave way to a policy of high protective tariffs and bitter commercial warfare, of constant increase in armaments, of eager rivalry in seizing the territory of less civilized and weaker peoples, accompanied, particularly on the continent, by a decrease in the effectiveness of parliamentary government. Several of the great statesmen of the century yielded to new men. Although the close came without such wars as desolated Europe at the end of the eighteenth century, the heavy burdens which rested upon the taxpayer and the constant danger that the work of civilization would be rudely interrupted hardly justified the optimism of the earlier decades. The pronunciamento of the Czar Nicholas in favor of restricting the growth of armaments and the consequent establishment, in 1900, of an international tribunal of arbitration at the Hague held out hopes of a better future. ENGLAND.--An analysis of the majority which Gladstone had obtained in the general election of 1892 showed that the prospects of Home Rule for Ireland were slight. This majority was composed of an English minority supported by Scottish, Welsh, and Irish groups. The bill which was introduced in the following year differed from the previous bill in that it did not withdraw the Irish members from Westminster. Although the House of Commons gave it a small majority, it was defeated in the Lords. Gladstone felt that his support was too precarious to force the question to a final settlement by an appeal to the country. He accordingly turned his attention to the remainder of his programme, the most important part of which was a Parish Councils bill. This aimed to do for local government in the parishes what the previous Salisbury ministry had done for local government in the counties. After the success of the bill was assured Gladstone withdrew, and Lord Rosebery became prime-minister. Gladstone spent the remainder of his life in retirement. The Rosebery ministry soon fell, and a new Salisbury ministry dissolved Parliament. In the general election of 1895 the Conservatives and their allies, the Liberal-Unionists, received an overwhelming majority. This took the Home Rule question out of practical politics. Only through a series of minor concessions was the attempt to be made to satisfy Ireland's legitimate aspirations. This victory also showed that English public sentiment was ready to break definitely with the principles of Gladstone and his friends, and support a policy of energetic imperialism. The Queen, whose jubilee was again celebrated in 1897, died on January 22, 1901. The new king, Edward VII., at the age of sixty-one, was crowned in 1902. GERMANY: BISMARCK's LATER POLICY.--Since 1878, when Bismarck abandoned his alliance with the National Liberals, he had been endeavoring to increase the financial strength of the empire by changing the customs and excise system, to conquer the socialists both by direct attack and by taking the working classes under the special care of the state, and, more recently, to procure for Germany colonial possessions. Although his new financial policy was definitely protectionist, his chief aim was to free the imperial government from the need of applying to the different states for a subvention. In consequence of his policy, the income from customs and excises rose in ten years from 230,000,000 marks to 700,000,000. But the plan of state subventions although altered in fact was preserved in appearance, for Bismarck was obliged to concede to Particularist jealousies that all income from these sources above 130,000,000 must be paid to the states and the deficiency in the imperial treasury be made up in the usual manner. Later on the new naval programme again made state contributions a reality. In the laws to protect the workingmen Bismarck affirmed this to be the duty of the Christian state; he did not concede that such measures were simply the right of the workmen. The plan was carried out in three great laws: that of insurance in case of illness (1883), in case of accident in mines or factories (1884), and in case of old age or incapacity (1889). These laws were enacted in the face of much outcry from employers, and were effectively administered. They did not, however, so far remove the grievances of the lower classes as to check the growth of the Social Democratic party. Although the party has since 1891 embodied in its programme the theories of Marx, it is not wholly socialistic in character; it is also a protest of the democratic spirit against the administration of Germany as an aristocratic, military monarchy. In the face of repressive laws the party grew steadily, so that in 1890 it was able to cast 1,400,000 votes. The only force able to resist its advance was the Catholic Center, because the Catholic Church included among its members all classes in the community; while the Protestant Church, in the cities at least, was more generally composed of the employing class. From 1884 Bismarck had put Germany forward as an eager competitor for colonial acquisitions in Africa and the Pacific. The lands that Germany was able to obtain were hardly suited to distinctively German settlement, and afforded comparatively little advantage to trade. BISMARCK'S FALL.--William II. began by continuing the policies which had been characteristic of the closing years of his grandfather's reign. It was not long before he became restive under the leadership of Bismarck. He desired to make his own personal aims more prominent. In 1890 there was a struggle over the renewal of the laws against the socialists and a consequent general election. The Emperor seized the opportunity to declare his purpose to improve still further the situation of the working classes, and, with this in view, to call an international congress. In Prussia he declared it to be the duty of the state to regulate the conditions of labor. Such declarations took the control of the electoral campaign out of Bismarck's hands. One result was decided losses for the conservative groups. Bismarck tried to maintain his ascendency by insisting that, according to a cabinet order of Frederick William IV., the king of Prussia must communicate with the ministers through the president of the council. William retorted by denying Bismarck's right to negotiate with the chiefs of the parliamentary groups, and by requiring a decree reversing the obnoxious cabinet order. On March 20 he demanded Bismarck's resignation. Bismarck left Berlin amid a great ovation a few days later. For some years he and his friends formed an unofficial center of opposition and criticism. He died in July, 1898. GERMANY SINCE BISMARCK'S FALL.--Bismarck's successors were Count Caprivi (1890-1894), Prince Hohenlobe (1894-1900), and Count Bülow. It was tacitly recognized that the anti-socialist laws had failed, and they were not renewed. The socialists as well as all other groups received the additional advantage that somewhat later a law was passed permitting societies of all kinds to affiliate. It was estimated that in 1900 the Social Democrats controlled over 2,000,000 votes. The government vainly attempted to dike the rising flood by laws providing a practical censorship of art and of literature, but these had to be abandoned. In the parliamentary life of Germany the most significant change was the disintegration of the old parties, the strengthening of such groups as the Catholic Center and the Social Democrats, and the creation of a strong Agrarian party or interest. The Agrarians became prominent during the controversy over a commercial treaty with Russia. This treaty was part of a general attempt to develop the European market to make good the loss through the adoption of high tariffs in countries like America and France, and, at first, by Russia herself. Although Germany could not furnish enough grain to feed her own people, and there was a tariff on imported grain, the price kept falling, while the prices of manufactured articles steadily increased. The peasants and the landowners felt that they were threatened with ruin. Accordingly they formed an alliance in 1893, and a parliamentary union which, from that time on, was so formidable as to force important concessions from the government. Among other important measures of this period were the adoption of a new Civil Code for the empire, to go into effect Jan. 1, 1900; the reduction of the term of military service to two years; and the efforts by the successive naval programmes of 1897 and 1900 to create for Germany a strong sea power capable of supporting her trade and colonial aspirations. FRANCE: BOULANGER.--In 1888 the continuance of the Republic was endangered by the support which many of its enemies and some of its ignorant friends lent to the pretensions of General Boulanger, who had made himself popular as minister of war by his army reforms and by his belligerent attitude toward Germany. When he ceased to be minister, and particularly after he was deprived of his military command, he began an energetic propaganda for a revision of the constitution, with the cry "Dissolution, Revision, Constituent." The royalists gave freely to further the campaign, hoping that moderate men would be frightened into calling the Count of Paris to the throne in order to save the country from another military empire. The Boulangists took skillful advantage of the fact that the deputies representing each department were elected "at large," and not on single district tickets, so that it was possible for Boulanger's name to be placed on each departmental ticket, and so in time to receive the votes of all France. With such a mandate it would be impossible for the moderate Republicans to resist him. For a time the scheme was successful. Boulanger was even elected on the Paris list. Had he been willing to undertake a coup d'etat he might then have overthrown the Republic, but he wished for a more peaceful triumph at the approaching general election. This his opponents deprived him of by abolishing the method of election "at large," so that each deputy was to represent a particular district. Boulanger was soon after attacked on a charge of treason before the Senate acting as a high court. He fled to Belgium and a little later committed suicide on the grave of his mistress. PANAMA CRISIS.--Hardly had the danger from Boulanger subsided when, in 1892, many of the leading politicians were discredited by the disclosures made in the judicial investigation of the bankruptcy of the Panama Canal Company. It appeared that the company had spent large sums to muzzle the press, so that ignorant investors should not discover the precarious condition of the enterprise. It had also contributed to the campaign expenses of friendly deputies and directly purchased votes in order to obtain authority to negotiate a loan in a manner ordinarily illegal. Although several deputies and senators were tried, no one was convicted save an ex-minister, who confessed that he had accepted 300,000 francs. Had the exposure come a little earlier, it must have led to the triumph of Boulanger. Its principal consequence was to bring new men of less tarnished reputations to the front. THE CHURCH.--In the same year the Church with direct encouragement and even pressure from Pope Leo XIII, rallied to the support of the Republic. The pope issued an encyclical to French Catholics and followed this by a letter to the French cardinals. Many royalists were afflicted by this attitude, but nearly all were submissive. They called themselves the "constitutional party," but were also called the "rallied." Their watchword seemed to be, "Accept the constitution in order to modify legislation." PARTIES.--The radical revolutionary groups, which had been crushed in the suppression of the Commune of 1871, and which had not been able to reconstitute themselves effectively until the amnesty of 1880, began in the early nineties to make their influence more effective. This coincided with a general shifting of political power toward the Left. The assassination of President Carnot, in 1894, and the enthusiasm provoked by the cementing of the Russian alliance and by the coming of the Czar to Paris, prolonged the control of the moderates, or Progressists, as they were called in 1896. It was the persistent attacks of the radicals that disgusted Casimir-Périer with the presidency. His successor was Félix Faure, a successful business man. When he died suddenly in 1899, Émile Loubet was chosen by the support of the groups of the Left. Before the moderate Republicans lost control they revolutionized the economic policy of France, substituting for practical free trade and commercial treaties a high protective tariff. DREYFUS CASE.--France had not recovered from the shock of the Panama scandal before she was involved in another scandal far more subtle in its demoralizing influence. Jealousy of the success of Jewish financiers, strengthened by the common feeling that capitalists are enriched by ill-gotten gains, led to an obscure campaign against the Jews and all capitalists. The reminiscences of Panama did not allay these feelings. Soon the royalists seized this instrument as a means of discrediting the Republic, asserting that it had been organized through the influence of German-Jewish immigrants who were enriching themselves at the expense of the thrifty but guileless French. It was also asserted that Jews in the army were betraying its secrets to their German kindred. As the army was universally popular, this was an effective blow at the Jews. The denouement was the arrest of Captain Dreyfus, his degradation, and his confinement on an island off the coast of French Guiana. The evidence had been slight, and it was discredited when a courageous officer of the Intelligence Department told his superiors that even this had been constructed by a Major Esterhazy. The officer, Colonel Picquart, was removed, and his place taken by Colonel Henry, who undertook to supply the necessary evidence. Although he imposed on the minister of war, he was unable to endure the moral strain, especially after distinguished men like Zola became champions of the innocence of Dreyfus, and he committed suicide after making a confession. The government was obliged to bring the case before the Court of Cassation in 1898, which ordered a new trial. Although Dreyfus was again convicted by a military court, he was immediately pardoned by the President. OTHER COUNTRIES.--After 1897 the situation in Austro-Hungary became precarious, owing to the difficulties which arose when the time came to renew the _Ausgleich_, or agreement, between Austria and Hungary, first made in 1867. Neither portion of the empire was satisfied with its part of the bargain. As the Hungarians always stood together in any struggle with Austria, they were likely to get the better of the bargain. There was the additional difficulty that no agreement of any sort could be adopted in the Austrian parliament, which had become hopelessly disorganized through the savage conflicts between the various groups, Germans, Czechs, anti-Semites, etc. The only way to prevent the actual dissolution of the empire was to renew the agreement in behalf of Austria by imperial warrant. Another country belonging to the Triple Alliance, Italy, was brought into trouble by the policy of extravagant expansion, pursued especially under the leadership of Crispi. But the disastrous defeat by the Abyssinians at Adowa, in 1896, gave pause to the plans of such statesmen. Spain also suffered disaster in this period, first through the outbreak of revolt in Cuba, and then through the loss of the remnant of her once splendid colonial empire in consequence of the war with the United States. EUROPEAN DIPLOMACY.--The foundation of the Triple Alliance had been laid by the treaty between Germany and Austria. To this Italy had acceded in 1883. Such a combination tended to bring Russia and France together, especially as Russia began to see that the only power pursuing a policy favorable to her desires was France. Finally Russian and French officers were authorized to arrange for the possible coöperation of armies in case of war, and in 1894 a military convention was completed. That there came to be a definite understanding still more comprehensive has been generally believed, but its terms were not divulged. The French minister of foreign affairs used the word "alliance" in the Chamber of Deputies in 1895, and two years later, when President Faure visited the Czar at St. Petersburg, the Czar used the phrase "two great nations, friends and allies." The consequence of these two alliances, and of the peaceful policy pursued by England, was the localizing of difficulties and the maintenance of a "concert" on all questions likely to embroil Europe. This was evident from the treatment of the Eastern, the African, and the Far Eastern questions. ARMENIA.--Bulgarian affairs had not received their final solution at the Berlin Congress, for the peaceful revolution of Philippopolis in 1885 had forcibly reunited Bulgaria and East Roumelia. But the powers did not recognize the change until Prince Alexander had withdrawn, and Prince Ferdinand had placed himself more under Russian tutelage, making this emphatic by the decision to bring up his son, Prince Boris, according to the Greek rite. The success of Bulgaria rendered the Armenians envious. Discontent at the failure to carry out the reforms promised by the treaty of Berlin led to the formation of a revolutionary party which hoped by provoking a Turkish repression, similar to the Bulgarian "atrocities," to necessitate a new European intervention. Such a scheme was opposed by American missionaries and by the native clergy, for they saw that it was doomed to disaster. The revolutionists endeavored to compromise the missionaries by posting their placards on the walls of the American college at Marsivan. The suspicions of the Turks were directed against the missionaries, and the Girls' Schoolhouse was burned by a mob. Ostensibly to capture agitators the Kurds followed by the regular troops perpetrated terrible massacres in the mountain villages of Sasún in 1893 and 1894. The powers could not agree upon any common plan to check such evils, and when they did force upon the Sultan a scheme of reform, it served only as a signal for worse massacres, which recurred chronically until the final massacre in Constantinople in August, 1896. As the "concert" was honeycombed by jealousies, it was impossible to do more than prevent the development of this horror into a general European war. England was unable to intervene separately because of the hostile attitude of Russia. Such statesmen as Lord Salisbury recognized that England's traditional support of Turkey had been discredited by such events. When, in the following year, war broke out between Greece and Turkey, and when Crete fell into a state of anarchy, the powers were more successful in their common action, for they were able to mitigate the terms which the victorious Turks demanded, and to withdraw Crete from direct Turkish control. EGYPT.--The history of Egypt touches both the situation in the Turkish empire and the more general situation of Africa and the routes to the Far East. England's occupation of Egypt, at first considered temporary, gave her practical control of the Suez Canal; it also gave her a strong position in the eastern Mediterranean, the lack of which had been one reason for her hostility to the treaty of San Stefano in 1878. The problem of the equatorial provinces had remained vexatious ever since the triumph of the Mahdi and of his successor, the Kalifa. Any attempt to begin a campaign for their recovery was hindered by the peculiar financial condition of Egypt. As all the funds were either mortgaged to creditors, or at least under an international control not favorable to the presence of England, the only money absolutely under the control of the Egyptian government was a special reserve fund, the result of painful administrative economies. But the necessity of an advance was imperative. Although the attempt of the Congo Free State to establish a permanent foothold in the upper Nile basin had been checked by England, France was striving to extend her territorial possessions straight across from Senegal to Jibutil, on the Gulf of Aden. Major Marchand had left Paris secretly in 1896 with this mission. In this year also the defeat of the Italians at Adowa, and the pressure of the troops of the Kalifa upon Kassala, held by the Italians for the English, did not permit longer delay. A great preparatory work had been done in the ten years previous. A new army had been created. The advance began in March, under the leadership of Sir Herbert Kitchener. One of its most effective and brilliant features was the construction in the following year of a railway 230 miles across the Nubian desert to save a river journey of 600 miles. The decisive campaign took place in 1898, with the battle on the Atbara and the crushing defeat of the Kalifa at Omdurman in September. During the summer Marchand had been establishing posts in the upper Nile region as far as Fashoda. Kitchener immediately proceeded thither, raised the English and Egyptian flags near by, leaving the settlement of the question to diplomacy. The French, not being supported by Russia in an aggressive attitude, were obliged to give way, and their sphere of influence was not to include any portion of the Nile basin. The war had been economically managed, so that Egyptian finances were not seriously disarranged. The help that England was obliged to give justified her in considering the Sudan as territory held jointly by her and by Egypt. The general consequence of English rule in Egypt has been a reduction of taxation, and, at the same time, the collection of a larger revenue. Vast public improvements, like the dam at Assouan, also added to the resources of the country. AFRICA.--Although Africa since 1885 had been the subject of an important conference at Berlin and of various international agreements it was, strictly speaking, beyond the sphere of action of the European concert. Its partition among the European states, a movement originating in the expeditions of Livingstone and Stanley, went on rapidly from 1884. The Congo Free State, which at first promised to be an international enterprise, speedily changed into a territorial possession of the king of Belgium. When in 1890 it became necessary for him to raise funds for the support of his rule, it was agreed that the reversion of the territory belonged to Belgium as a colony. King Leopold, as already remarked, made an attempt to establish his authority over a part of the upper Nile basin, but here he was thwarted by the ambition of both England and France. England undertook to lease the Bahr-el-Ghazal in consideration of the lease from him of a strip fifteen and a half miles wide along the eastern border of the state, in order to make possible the scheme of a railway on land under British control from "the Cape to Cairo." This scheme was defeated by the Germans as well as by the French. The Portuguese were in turn prevented from extending their holdings from Angola to Mozambique. The French and the English, though each disappointed in their extreme purposes, made substantial gains; England in the regions north of the Cape, across the Zambezi, in Uganda, and in the Sudan; France in western and northern Africa, so that all the northwest, except the coast colonies and the independent Sultanate of Morocco, came under her power. France also turned her protectorate of Madagascar into a colonial possession. England's policy of expansion, together with difficulties arising out of the gold mining industry, involved her in a war with the Boer republics, the South African Republic and the Orange Free State. The center of the mining industry was Johannesberg. So rich were the mines that the foreign population there soon outnumbered the Boers. These foreigners, or uitlanders, desired all the privileges of Englishmen, although they had become residents in a state ruled by primitive agriculturists. They claimed that their industry was ruinously hampered by unwise taxation. So great did their sense of wrong become that they entered into an arrangement with Cecil Rhodes, premier of Cape Colony, and with Dr. Jameson, administrator of the South African Chartered Company, in accordance with which, at a given signal, they were to rise and Dr. Jameson with armed troopers was to come to their assistance. Dr. Jameson did not wait for the signal, the scheme broke down, and he and his troops were captured. To the Boers all this seemed to be an English plot against their independence, and so they became more suspicious. Through a series of incidents the Colonial Secretary, Joseph Chamberlain, was led to attempt to extort by force from the Boers the desired concessions. Before the diplomatic campaign was well begun new issues were introduced, both parties began to prepare for war, and finally in October, 1899, the Boers took the initiative and invaded the British colonies. The war was at first disastrous for the English, but finally through a large army under Lord Roberts the Boers were driven from both the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, which were occupied and declared to be colonies of the empire. But it was not until three years after the beginning of the war that the last Boer bands were compelled by Lord Kitchener to surrender, and the country was pacified. England's influence in South Africa was greatly strengthened by this victory, although her prestige in the world at large was somewhat compromised. THE FAR EAST.--Before the close of the century the interest which had once belonged to the near East was transferred to the Far East. The first indication of this was the action of the powers at the close of the war which broke out between Japan and China, in 1894, over their relations to Korea. Japan was triumphant, demonstrating in the battle of the Yaloo River the superiority of her new navy. She occupied the peninsula of Liaotung and Port Arthur, a harbor of strategic importance. She demanded a cession of this peninsula, together with Formosa and a large indemnity. Russia, Germany, and France intervened and kept Japan from establishing herself on the mainland. This action did not appear altogether in the interest of China, for each of the three powers soon asked of China quite as important concessions for themselves,--France in the south, Germany at Kiaochow, and Russia at Port Arthur,--which compelled England to guard her interests by leasing WVei-hai-wei, opposite Port Arthur. At this time began the marking out of spheres of influence, a practical partition of China, accompanied by demands of all sorts of railway and mining concessions. This unedifying pressure from aggressive Europeans seemed for a time to awaken China. The emperor began to urge forward reform. It was thought that China might follow in the footsteps of Japan, but suddenly there was a palace revolution, the dowager-empress seized control, and the reformers had to fly for their lives. Closely following this came a serious anti-foreign outbreak, led by "the Boxers," and encouraged by certain high officials. Before Europe was aware of the gravity of the situation it was alarmed by the report that the foreign legations at Pekin had been besieged, captured, and massacred. Although this was a false report, it was true that from June 20 to August 14, 1899, the legations were besieged, partly by a mob and partly by Chinese regulars. The siege was raised by a mixed expedition of European and Japanese troops sent from the coast. The satisfaction with which the news of rescue was received in Europe was chilled by stories that some portions of the expeditionary corps had been guilty of crimes only to be paralleled in the history of European wars in the seventeenth century. After the war a difficult diplomatic question remained, all the more puzzling because the ambitions of the powers prevented any hearty agreement among them. These questions were only in appearance settled by the signing of the protocol in January, 1901. Attention was fixed upon Russia, supported by a new instrument of influence, the Trans-Siberian railway, because it appeared to be her purpose to establish her power in Manchuria on a permanent basis. AUSTRALIA.--During the Boer war the English colonies by their loyal and generous cooperation strengthened the bonds of empire and forced to the front schemes to render the imperial tie more practically beneficial and effective. One of these groups succeeded in completing its own federal organization. This was Australia. Active effort towards federation was begun in 1889 by Sir Henry Parkes, but not until six years later was public sentiment sufficiently aroused. The main difficulty, as in the case of the American colonies, was to reconcile the differing trade-interests and to establish a proper balance between the larger and the smaller states. Finally, in 1900, these difficulties were overcome, and all the colonies save New Zealand voted to become parts of the commonwealth of Australia. Each state was to have six senators, and to be represented in the lower house in proportion to its population, although no state was to have fewer than five representatives. Matters of taxation were more fully intrusted to the lower house than in the United States. For a time it seemed impossible to settle the delicate questions of appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council of England, the only instrument of control left in the hands of the home government, but this was settled by a judicious compromise. During the last decade not only Australia, but also New Zealand, made many interesting attempts to solve labor and social problems by legislation. Although the prosperity of Australia received heavy blows after 1890, it began to recover after 1895, and to advance towards its earlier level. UNITED STATES: CLEVELAND'S SECOND ADMINISTRATION.--Although the McKinley tariff aided in elevating its author to the presidency, its first political consequences were not helpful to the Republican party. In 1892 there was a popular cry for tariff reduction, and Cleveland was triumphantly elected by the Democrats, who also obtained control of both houses of Congress. President Cleveland's purpose of reforming the tariff was hindered at first by a grave financial and industrial crisis, which came in the spring of 1893. The causes of this crisis were the extravagant inflation of business during the preceding years, a financial policy accompanied by the purchase for coinage of vast quantities of silver, and the natural timidity of capital while the economic policy of the government was in danger of fundamental change. The opponents of the administration took skillful advantage of the panic to bring its policies into discredit. So great was the stringency of the money market, especially on account of the depletion of the gold reserve in the treasury, that President Cleveland was obliged to call an extra session of Congress, and to urge upon that body the repeal of the law requiring the monthly purchases of silver for coinage. This measure, adopted by the Senate with evident reluctance in the late fall, did not wholly relieve the situation, and to maintain the gold reserve and defend its credit the government was forced four times to issue bonds for more gold, the consequence of which was the increase of the public debt by over $262,000,000. During the controversies upon monetary legislation, the President had alienated many members of his party in the House, and particularly in the Senate. He was unable to bring them together for such tariff legislation as had been promised. A bill was passed which also embodied income tax provisions, and this bill became a law without the President's signature. Not long afterwards the Supreme Court declared the income-tax clauses unconstitutional. Since the tariff bill did not produce the expected revenue, the government was obliged to face an ominous deficit. The President, however, by his courage and honesty, upheld the national credit despite attacks from his own party. His foreign policy, save in one instance, was conservative. He refused to take advantage of the Hawaiian revolution to bring on the annexation of those islands, and he endeavored to maintain the neutrality of the United States in the struggle between Spain and the Cuban revolutionists; but he intervened in a boundary dispute between Great Britain and Venezuela, insisting that the question should be submitted to arbitration rather than be settled on the terms imposed by the stronger. MCKINLEY ADMINISTRATION.--In the campaign of 1896 the older leaders of the democracy were thrust aside and William J. Bryan became the party candidate, with the free coinage of silver at the ratio of 16 to 1 as its watchword. This appealed strongly to the distressed debtor class, very numerous in the West on account of the "hard times." The tone of the platform and of the speeches of the leaders was such as to attract the workingmen. The Republicans nominated McKinley, with the promise to reenact the former tariff legislation, to foster industries, and to protect the financial credit of the country. The success of the Republicans was at first doubtful; but the conservative interests became alarmed, and finally the Republicans gained a decisive victory. By the time President McKinley was inaugurated, the period of business liquidation and readjustment was over, confidence had returned, and so the new President became, as campaign placards of his party had announced, "the advance agent of prosperity." The tariff was restored to its older level, the monetary system was reformed, and the gold standard legally established. It was not this legislation, however, that rendered the period significant; it was the adoption of a new national policy of expansion, incident to the war with Spain. The Spaniards had been unable to put down the Cuban insurrection. The drastic measures, especially the policy of "reconcentration" adopted by General Weyler, had discredited the Spanish cause. The ancient tradition of Spain's cruelty to her colonies predisposed the American people to credit reports of atrocity. The administration was apparently anxious to perform its duties as a friendly power, but this was rendered more and more difficult owing to the growing popular demand for intervention. On the 15th of February, 1898, the American battleship _Maine_ was blown up in Havana harbor. Although there was no decisive proof that this was due to the Spaniards, there was no doubt of it in the popular mind. A little later the Spaniards were ready to make any concessions short of an actual abandonment of their sovereignty. It was now too late. There was an irresistible demand for war, and war was declared in April. The result was inevitable, and Spain was obliged to yield sooner than was anticipated. Her fleet at Manila was destroyed by Admiral Dewey, May 1, and her West India squadron by the fleet in which Rear Admiral Sampson held the chief command, on July 3. Meantime a small American army had rendered Santiago untenable. After the surrender of Santiago, Porto Rico was soon overrun. Manila, which had been under the American guns since May, was also forced to surrender. A protocol signed in August led to the negotiation of peace in December. According to its terms, not only was Cuba to be evacuated, but Porto Rico, the Philippines, and the Ladrones were to become American possessions. In this way a war begun because of popular sympathy with the Cubans, turned into a means of territorial expansion. The resistance to the policy of an expansion of this sort was strong in certain sections of the country. Many senators held similar opinions, long delaying the ratification of the treaty of peace. COLONIAL PROBLEMS.--Simultaneously with the ratification of the peace, war broke out in the Philippines between the American army and the natives, whose leaders had been bent on securing independence. The American troops easily defeated the organized native armies, though one consequence of the struggle was widespread ruin in the island of Luzon; but they were unable for over two years to pacify the country. Even before these troubles were ended, measures were taken to substitute a civil for a military administration, which went into effect in the summer of 1901. Porto Rico was organized as a partly autonomous territory, and although on its trade with the United States there was not at first a full freedom from tariff restrictions, these subsequently disappeared. In dealing with Cuba there had been no formal recognition of the revolutionary organization. It was suspected by many that the military occupation would be prolonged until annexation was brought about, but the President insisted upon the fulfilment of the pledges which had been made at the beginning of the war. A Cuban convention agreed to a treaty in accordance with which the United States acquired the right to intervene to guarantee the independence of the island should this be endangered by entanglements with foreign states. The Cubans also promised to sell or lease to the United States sites for naval stations. The army of occupation was then withdrawn, and the new government inaugurated in 1902. Even before the outbreak of the war, President McKinley had endeavored to bring about the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands, but it required such a pressing need of a controlling position in the mid-Pacific, as the hostilities emphasized, to overcome the opposition. It was not until after the war closed that the islands were organized as a territory. About the same time England withdrew from her joint control of Samoa, and Germany agreed with the United States for a partition of the group. Active preparations were also made for the building of an interoceanic canal through Nicaragua or the Isthmus of Panama on the route laid out by the French. With these questions of expansion and colonial government, other equally important problems, growing out of the new period of prosperity, agitated the public mind, particularly the formation of gigantic corporations, a form of organization which tended to supersede the trusts. As the state laws were helpless to check abuse of power by such corporations, there was a growing demand for the better enforcement of the national laws already enacted or the adoption of other laws more effective. In 1900 McKinley was reëlected, Bryan again being put forward by the Democrats. A few months after his inauguration, while he was visiting the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo, he was fatally shot by an anarchist. Upon his death, the Vice-President, Theodore Roosevelt, became President. CHAPTER VIII. DISCOVERY AND INVENTION: SCIENCE AND LITERATURE: PROGRESS OF HUMANE SENTIMENT: PROGRESS TOWARD THE UNITY OF MANKIND. As an era of invention and discovery, the nineteenth century is a rival of the fifteenth. GEOGRAPHICAL DISCOVERIES.--Too much was already known of the globe to leave room for another so stupendous discovery as that of the New World. Nevertheless, many important geographical discoveries have been made, especially since about 1825. Geographical societies without number have been founded, of which the Royal Geographical Society in England (1830) is one of the best known. Geographical knowledge is increased in two ways,--first, by the discovery of places not before known; and secondly, by the scientific examination of countries and districts, with accurate surveys, and the making of maps. In both these departments, especially in the latter, the recent period won distinction. The _Russians_ in their advance rendered the regions of Northern and Central Asia accessible to travelers. Not only India, but also extensive districts in Central Asia, have been explored by the British. China has been traversed by a succession of travelers, and Japan has unbarred its gates for the admission of foreigners. Abyssinia has been traversed. The mystery respecting the sources of the Nile has been dispelled by _Speke_, _Grant_, and _Baker_. In 1822 and 1825 _Clapperlon_, in two journeys, went over the whole route from Tripoli to the coast of Guinea. In 1830 _Richard_ and _John Lander_ settled the question as to the outlet of the _Niger_. _Barth_, and other later explorers, have carried forward the study of the course of this great river, in the exploration of which _Mungo Park_ lost his life (1806). In 1816 the Congo was explored to the falls of Yellala. The travels of _Schweinfurth_, _Livingstone_, _Barth_, _Cameron_, and _Stanley_ have greatly enlarged our acquaintance with formerly unknown portions of the African continent. In 1879 _Stanley_, commissioned by King _Leopold_ of Belgium, opened up communication with the populous basin of the Congo. During the struggle of the European states to acquire colonial territory, no part of the continent remained unexplored. European rivalries also had similar important consequences to geography in Asia, especially in the Trans-Caspian region and in Tibet. Dr. Sven Hedin was the most successful of the explorers in Tibet, traversing wholly unknown districts. Unknown regions on the American continent, in South America, in far north-western North America, and in Labrador, have been visited. The same is true of the interior of Australia. The eagerness to find a north-western passage (and later in scientific exploration) has led to hazardous and not unfruitful expeditions under _Ross_, _Parry_, _Franklin_, _Kane_, _Markham_, _McClintock_, _Greely_, and other voyagers. In 1875 _Markham_ reached the highest latitude that up to that time had been attained (83° 21' 26"). A still higher point (86° 14') was reached by Dr. Nansen who in 1893 started to drift in the _Fram_ across the polar regions. In 1892 Lieutenant Peary crossed Greenland from the west coast to a part of the north-east coast never before visited. The Antarctic seas were also explored first by the _Challenger_ in 1874. By 1900 the farthest point reached was 78° 50'. Geography has become a much more profound and instructive science. The physical character of the globe, and of the atmosphere that surrounds it, have been studied in their relation to man and history. Physical geography, or physiography, has thus arisen. In recent years scientists have gone far in the study of the physical geography of the sea, in making maps of its bottom, and in the endeavor to define the system of oceanic winds and currents. In connection with physical geography, the distribution of animal life on the land and in the depths of the sea has been studied, and much valuable information gained. FOUR INVENTIONS.--Among the useful inventions of the present century, there are four which are of preëminent consequence. The honor connected with each of these, as is generally the case with great inventions, belongs to no individual exclusively. Several, and in some cases many persons, can fairly claim a larger or smaller share in it. (1) The most efficient agent in bringing the _steam-engine_ to perfection was _James Watt_ (1736-1819), a native of Scotland. (2) In connection with the application of steam to navigation, no name stands higher than that of _Robert Fulton_. (3) Carriages on railroads were at first drawn by horses. In 1814 _George Stephenson_, in England, invented the locomotive, and afterwards (1829) an improved construction of it. The first great railroad for the transportation of passengers began to run between Manchester and Liverpool in 1830. Remarkable achievements in engineering have been connected with the construction of railways. The Alps were pierced, and the Mont Cenis tunnel was completed in 1871. The principal civilized countries have gradually become covered with networks of railways. The whole method of transportation of the products of industry has been altered by them. Besides their vast influence in facilitating and stimulating travel and trade, they have modified the method of conducting warfare, with very important results. (4) In contriving the _electric telegraph_, _Wheatstone_, an Englishman, _Oersted_, a Dane, and _Henry_, an American, had each an important part. The most simple and efficient form of the telegraphic instrument is admitted to be due to the inventive sagacity of _Morse_ (1837). His instrument was first put in use in 1844. The first submarine wires connecting Europe with America transmitted messages in 1858, between England and the United States. Since that time numerous submarine cables have been laid in different parts of the globe. Upon the invention of the telegraph, another invention--that of the _telephone_--has followed, by which conversation can be held with the voice between distant places. By the phonograph it has become possible to reproduce audibly songs, speeches, and conversations. Still more recently a system of wireless telegraphy has been invented by which messages may be sent even across the Atlantic without the use of a cable. The Suez Canal, a channel for ships, connecting the Mediterranean with the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, and opening thus a shorter highway by water between Europe and the East, was officially opened on the 17th of November, 1869. USES OF STEAM.--The practical applications of steam, besides its use in the propulsion of vessels, and of carriages on railways, are numberless. It is used, for example, in automobiles, in traction engines, in plowing and harvesting machinery, in fire-engines, in road-rollers, and in all sorts of hoisting and conveying machinery. Steam forge hammers were invented by _Nasmyth_, an engineer of Manchester, in 1839. In a multitude of industrial occupations, where water-power was once used, or tools and machines whose use involved muscular exertion, the work is now done by the energy of steam. More recently electricity has been displacing steam not only on street railroads and suburban railroads, but also in many other industrial processes, as well as the lighting of buildings and streets. TOOLS AND MACHINES.--In modern days no small amount of skill has been directed to the devising of tools and machines for the more facile and exact production of whatever costs labor. Factories have become monuments of ingenuity, and museums in the useful arts. Improved machinery lightens the toil of the sailor. Machines in a great variety facilitate agricultural labor. They open the furrow, sow the seed, reap and winnow the harvest. In-doors, the sewing-machine performs a great part of the labor formerly done by the fingers of the seamstress. The art of printing has attained to a marvelous degree of progress. _Hoe's_ printing-press, moved by steam, seizes on the blank paper, severs it from the roll in sheets of the right size, prints it on both sides, and folds it in a convenient shape,--all with miraculous rapidity. Inventions in rock-boring and rock-drilling have made it possible to tunnel mountains. The use of explosives for mechanical purposes is a highly important fact in connection with the modern labor-saving inventions. INDIA RUBBER.--Shoes made of _caoutchouc_, the thickened milky juice of the india-rubber plant, were imported from Brazil to Boston as early as 1825. Improvements in the use of this material, in the solid form and in solution, were made by Mr. _Macintosh_ of Glasgow, and _Thomas Hancock_ of Newington, England, about 1820. From the dissolved caoutchouc, a coating was obtained making garments water-proof. In 1839 _Charles Goodyear_, an American, discovered the process of vulcanizing india-rubber,--that is, producing in it a chemical change whereby its valuable qualities are greatly enhanced. The material thus procured was applied to a great number of uses. It enters into a great variety of manufactured articles. ENGINERY OF WAR.--A continual advance has been made in the construction of the implements of war. The whole science and art of war have been fundamentally changed, mainly in consequence of these modern inventions. Reference may be made to the invention of _rifled cannon_, heavier ordnance, breech-loading guns, and shells and explosive bullets. It was the _needle-gun_ of the Prussians, which gave them a signal advantage in their war with the French. The building of armored battle ships has been followed by the construction of small swift vessels from which to launch torpedoes at the battle ships. Other swift vessels have been constructed to pursue and destroy the torpedo boat. High explosives and smokeless powder have also been invented. THE TELESCOPE AND MICROSCOPE.--Among the instruments which have promoted the extension of science, the microscope, with its modern improvements, is one of the most interesting. It has aided discovery in botany, in physiology, in mineralogy, and in almost all other branches of science. It has even assisted in the detection of crime. The large refracting telescopes have been constructed within the last few decades. Telescopes have recently been used with increasing success in photographing the heavens with accuracy. INSTRUMENTS IN MEDICINE AND SURGERY.--The microscope has rendered inestimable service to the healing art. Rare ingenuity has been exerted in contriving surgical instruments by which difficult operations are performed with comparative safety and without pain. In medicine and surgery, the discovery of _anesthetics_ for the general or partial suspending of nervous sensibility is one of the triumphs of practical science in later times. _Chloroform_ was brought into general use in the medical profession in 1847; although it had been discovered, and had been used by individuals in the profession, much earlier. _Nitrous oxide_ was first used by _Horace Wells_, a dentist of Hartford, in the extraction of a tooth (1844). In 1846 the great discovery of anæsthetic _ether_, by _Morton_ of Boston, was first applied in surgery. _Jackson_ and others were claimants, with more or less justice, to a part in the honors of this discovery. Lately _cocaine_ has been found to benumb the sensibility of the more delicate membranes, as those of the eye and the throat. In _auscultation_, or the ascertaining of the state of the internal organs by listening to their sound, a very valuable instrument is the _stethoscope_. The principle of the _ophthalmoscope_, that wonderful instrument for inspecting the interior of the eye, was expounded by _Helmholtz_ in 1851. By its aid, not only the condition of that organ is explored, but indications of certain diseases in the brain, and in other parts of the body, are discovered. Helmholtz did an equal work in acoustics. The recent discovery and use of the _X-rays_ has assisted surgeons in locating foreign substances and in diagnosing disease. THE SPECTROSCOPE: PHOTOGRAPHY.--In connection with the phenomena of light, the _spectroscope_, by which the chemical elements entering in the composition of the sun and of other heavenly bodies are ascertained, is one of the marvels of the age. The way was paved for this discovery by a succession of chemists and opticians,--_Fraunhofer_ (1814), _Brewster_ (1832), _Sir John Herschel_ (1822), _J. W. Draper_, and others; but the instrument was devised by _Kirchhoff_ and _Bunsen_. _Photography_, or the art of making permanent sun-pictures, is the result of the labors of _Niepce_ (who died in 1833), _Daguerre_ (1839), _Fox Talbot_, an Englishman, _J. W. Draper_, and other men of science and practical artisans. _Instantaneous_ photography has been of much service in the observation of eclipses and other astronomical phenomena. Progress has also been made in color-photography. THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY.--Perhaps the most important conclusion of physical science which has been reached in the recent period is the doctrine of the conservation of energy. Chemists had shown that the sum of matter always remains the same. In the transformations of chemistry no matter is destroyed, however it may change its form. Now, it has been proved that the quantity of power or energy is constant. If lost in one body, it reappears in another; if it ceases in one form, it is exerted in another, and this according to definite ratios. One form of energy is convertible into another: heat, light, electricity, magnetism, chemical action, are so related that one can be made to produce either of the others. This fact is termed the _correlation_ of physical forces. Connected with the discovery of it are _Meyer_ in Germany, and _Grove_ and _Joule_ in England. It has been expounded by _Sir William Thompson_, _Helmholtz_, _Tait_, _Maxwell_, etc. The truth was elucidated by _Tyndall_ in his _Heat considered as a Mode of Motion_, and by _Balfour Stewart_ in his _Conservation of Energy_. But _Count Rumford_, an American (1753-1814), the real founder of the Royal Institution, long ago opened the path for this discovery by furnishing the data for computing the mechanical equivalent of heat. GEOLOGY AND PALEONTOLOGY.--In geology, from the publication of _Lyell's_ work (1830), the tendency has more and more prevailed to explain the geological structure of the earth by the slow operation of forces now in action, rather than by violent convulsions and catastrophes. In 1831 _Sedgwick_ and _Murchison_, likewise English geologists, commenced their labors. _Agassiz_ published his Essay on the Glaciers in 1837, the precursor of like investigations by _Tyndall_ and others. These are only a small fraction of the numerous body of explorers and writers in geological science. In the United States, _Benjamin Silliman_ (1779-1864), an eminent scientific teacher, lent a strong stimulus to the progress of geology, as well as of chemistry. Even in the branch of _paleontology_, or the study of the fossil remains of extinct animals, it would be impracticable to give the names of those who have added so much to our knowledge of the earth and its inhabitants in the ages that preceded man. ASTRONOMY.--The great French geometers, _Lagrange_ and _Laplace_, made an epoch in astronomical science. Since their time, however, there has been a large increase of knowledge in this branch. The discovery of the planet Neptune (1846) by _Galle_, as the result of mathematical calculations of _Leverrier_, which were made independently also by _Adams_, was hailed as a signal proof of scientific progress; and, recently, the discovery of a fifth satellite of Jupiter. Besides Neptune hundreds of thousands of stars have been discovered and registered. Mathematical astronomy has advanced, while the study of nebulae and of meteors, and the investigation of the constitution of celestial bodies by the help of the spectroscope, are among the more recent achievements of this oldest of the sciences. Among the names identified with the recent progress of astronomy are _Sir John Herschel_ and _A. Herschel_, _Maxwell_, _Struve_, _Secchi_, _Bessel_, _Bond_, _Peirce_, _Newton_, _Newcomb_, _Young_, _Lockyer_, _Schiaparelli_. PROGRESS IN CHEMISTRY.--In chemistry the major part of the more rare elements have been discovered since the century began. It was proved in 1819 that the capacities for heat which belong to the atoms of the different elements are equal. In the same year _Mitscherlich's_ law was propounded,--the law of _isomorphism_, according to which atoms of elements of the same class may replace each other in a compound without altering its crystalline structure. Chemists have directed their attention to the _molecular_ structure--the ultimate constitution--of various compounds. _Faraday_ (1791-1867) developed the relations of electricity to chemistry. _Liebig_ (1803-1873), a German chemist, in connection with numerous laborers in the same field, made interesting contributions in the different departments of chemical science. Among the recent elements which have been discovered are argon, which enters into the composition of air, helium, and radium. BIOLOGY.--No branch of natural science has been more zealously cultivated of late than _biology_. Among those who have given an impulse to the study of natural history, one of the most eminent names is that of _Charles Darwin_. His work on _The Origin of Species_ (1859) advocated the opinion that the various species of animals, instead of being all separately created, spring by natural descent and slow variation from a few primitive forms of animal life. He laid much stress upon "natural selection," or the survival of the strongest or fittest in the struggle for existence. With the name of Darwin should be associated that of _Wallace_, who simultaneously propounded the same doctrine. The general doctrine of _evolution_, or of the origin of species by natural generation, has been held in other forms and modifications by _Richard Owen_, and other distinguished naturalists. One of the most noted opponents of the evolution doctrine in zoology was _Louis Agassiz_ (1807-1873), a very able and enthusiastic student of nature. One of its most eminent expounders and defenders was _Huxley_. Some have sought to extend the theory of natural development over the field of inorganic as well as living things, and to trace all existences back to nebulous vapor. ARCHEOLOGY.--Geology lends its aid to _archeology_, or the inquiry into the primitive condition of man. Not only has much light been thrown on obscure periods of history, by the uncovering of the remains of Babylon, Assyria, and other abodes of early civilization, and by the deciphering of monumental inscriptions in characters long forgotten; but the discovery of buried relics of prehistoric men has afforded glimpses of human life as it was prior to all written memorials. One of the most instructive writers on this last subject is _Tylor_ in his _Primitive Culture_, and in other works on the same general theme. PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE. PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE.--_Victor Cousin_ (1792--1867), a brilliant thinker and eloquent lecturer and writer, founded in France the _eclectic school_ of philosophy. He aimed to construct a positive view on the basis of previous systems, which he classified under four heads,--_idealism_, _sensualism_, _skepticism_, and _mysticism_. In his teaching, he sought a middle path between the German and the Scottish schools, leaning now more decidedly to the one, and now to the other. _Jouffroy_ (1796-1842), the most prominent of _Cousin's_ disciples, but more exact and methodical than his master, wrote instructively, especially on _aesthetics_ and _moral philosophy_. Philosophy in France took an altogether different direction in the hands of _Auguste Comte_ (1798-1857), the founder of the _positivist_ school. He taught that we know only phenomena, or things as manifested to our consciousness, and know nothing either of first causes, efficient causes, or of final causes (or design). We are limited to the ascertaining of facts by observation and experiment, which we register according to their likeness or unlikeness, and their chronological relation, or the order of their occurrence in time. SCOTTISH PHILOSOPHY.--The most distinguished expounder of the _Scottish_ philosophy, and the most learned of that whole school, was _Sir William Hamilton_ (1788-1856). He maintained the doctrine of _natural realism_,--that we have a direct, "face to face" perception of external things. He held that the range of the mind's power of conceptive thought lies between two _inconceivables_, one of which must be real. Thus we can not conceive of free-will (which would be a new beginning), nor can we conceive of an endless series of causes. Free-will--and the same is true of the fundamental truths of religion--is verified to us as real by our moral nature. A Scottish writer of ability, who, however, opposed the peculiar tenets of the Scottish school, was _Ferrier_ (1808-1864). Among the other philosophical writers of Scotland, affiliated, but with different degrees of dissent, with the school of Reid and Hamilton, are Professors _Fraser_ and _Calderwood_, and the late _James McCosh_. PHILOSOPHY IN ENGLAND.--More allied to the philosophy of Hume and of Comte are the metaphysical theories of _John Stuart Mill_ (1806-1873). _Intuitions_ were regarded by Mill as the impression produced by a frequent conjunction of like experiences, and thus to be the product of sensation. _Causation_ was resolved into the invariable association of phenomena, by which an expectation is created that seems instinctive. Another writer of the same general tendency, who seeks for the explanation of knowledge in the materials furnished by the senses, is _Alexander Bain_, a Scottish author, versed in physiology. _Herbert Spencer_ constructed a general system of philosophy on the basis of the theory of evolution. He holds that our knowledge is limited to _phenomena_, which are the manifestation in our consciousness of things which in themselves are unknown; and that behind and below all is "the Unknowable,"--an inscrutable force, out of which the universe of matter and mind is developed, and which gives to it unity and coherence. PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY.--In Germany the decline of the school of _Hegel_ was succeeded by a sort of anarchy in philosophy. _Herbart_ (1776-1841), a contemporary of _Hegel_, framed a system antagonistic to Hegelian idealism. Among numerous metaphysical authors, each of whom has a "standpoint" of his own, are the justly distinguished names of _Fichte_ (the younger), _Ulrici, Trendelenburg_, and _Hermann Lotze. Lotze._ in his _Microcosm_, has unfolded, in a style attractive to the general reader, profound and genial views of man, nature, and religion. A remarkable phenomenon in German speculation is "pessimism,"--the doctrine gravely propounded in the systems of _Schopenhauer_ and _E. Von Hartmann_, that the world is radically and essentially evil, and personal existence a curse from which the refuge is in the hope of annihilation. In its view of the world as springing from an unconscious force, and of the extinction of consciousness as the state of bliss, as well as in its notions of evil as inwrought in the essence of things, this philosophy is a revival of Indian Oriental speculation. Historical and critical writings in the department of philosophy abound in Germany. The histories of philosophy by _Ritter, Erdmann, Zeller, Kuno Fischer,_ and _Lange_, are works of remarkable merit. PHILOSOPHY IN ITALY.--Among the Italian metaphysicians, the two writers who are most noteworthy are _Rosmini_ (1797-1855), who taught idealism; and _Gioberti_ (1801-1882), whose system is on a different basis,--a gifted writer who was equally conspicuous as a statesman and a philosopher. PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNITED STATES.--Philosophy in America has been zealously cultivated, both in connection with theology and apart from it, by a considerable number of teachers and writers. Among them are _James Marsh, C. S. Henry, Francis Wayland, L. P. Hickok, H. B. Smith_, and other eminent authors, mostly of a more recent date. POLITICAL ECONOMY.--_Ricardo_ (1772-1823), who followed _Adam Smith_ (p. 492), dealt more in abstractions and processes of logic, than his predecessor. The writings of _Ricardo_, together with the discussions of _Malthus_ (1766-1834) on population,--in which it was maintained that the tendency to an increase of population outstrips the increase of the means of subsistence,--led to numerous other writings. Political economy was handled in productions by _James Mill_ (1821), _J. R. McCulloch, N. W. Senior_ (1790-1864), _R. Torrens_ (1780-1864), _Harriet Martineau_ (1802-1876), _Thomas Chalmers_, the celebrated Scottish divine, Archbishop _Richard Whately, Richard Jones_ (1790-1855), a critic of the system of _Ricardo_, and others. An eminent writer, an expositor with important modifications of the Ricardian teaching, is _John Stuart Mill_ (1806-1873). _Fawcett_ and other able authors have followed for the most part in Mill's path. An English author of distinction in this field is _J. E. Cairnes_ (1824-1875). The French school of economists have adhered to the principles of _Adam Smith_ much more than have the Germans. Among the most noted of the French authors in this field are _Say_ (1767-1832), whose views are founded on those of _Smith; Sismondi_ (1773-1842), who, however, departs from the English doctrine, and favors the intervention of government to "regulate the progress of wealth"; _Dunoyer_ (1786-1862); _Bastiat_ (1801-1850), one of the most brilliant advocates of free-trade; _Cournot_ (1801-1877), who applies, with much acumen, mathematics to economical questions. In America, since the days of _Franklin_ and _Hamilton_, both of whom wrote instructively on these topics, a number of writers of ability have appeared. Among them are _H. C. Carey_, who opposes the views of _Ricardo_ and _Malthus_, and defends the theory of protection; _Francis Bowen_, also a protectionist; _F. A. Walker, Perry_, etc. In Italy, there have not been wanting productions of marked acuteness in this department. Of the numerous German writers, one of the most eminent is _List_ (1798-1846), a critic of _Adam Smith_, and not an adherent of the unqualified doctrine of free-trade. In the list of later English writers, the names of _Bagehot, Leslie, Jevons_, and _Sidgwick_ are quite prominent. With regard to free-trade and protection, the latter doctrine has been maintained in two forms. Some have regarded protection as the best _permanent_ policy for a nation to adopt. Others have defended it as a _provisional_ policy, to shield manufactures in their infancy, until they grow strong enough to compete, without help, with foreign products. After the repeal of the corn-laws in England (1846), the free-trade doctrine prevailed in England. Since _Comte_ published his exposition of _Sociology_ (1839), the tendency has arisen to consider political economy as one branch of this broader theme. With it the controversies pertaining to socialism are intimately connected. The disciples of _Adam Smith_ have contended for the non-intervention of governments in the industrial pursuits of the people. They are to be left to the natural desire of wealth, and the natural exercise of competition in the pursuit of it. The prevalent theories of _socialism_ are directly hostile to this--called the _laissez-faire_--principle. Socialists would make government the all-regulative agent, the owner of land and of the implements of labor. ENGLISH ESSAYISTS.--In literature the later time has seen an extraordinary multiplying of periodicals and newspapers, among whose editors and contributors have been included numerous writers of much celebrity. In Great Britain, several famous authors first acquired distinction mainly by historical and critical articles in reviews. This is true of _Thomas Babington Macaulay_ and _Thomas Carlyle_. Each of them became a historian. _Macaulay_, an ardent Whig, with an astonishing familiarity with political and literary facts, wrote in a spirited and brilliant style a _History of England from the Accession of James II_. to the death of his hero, _William III. Carlyle_, with a unique force of imagination and a rugged intensity of feeling, original in his thought, yet strongly affected by German literature, especially by _Richter_ and _Goethe_, wrote in his earlier days a _Life of Schiller_. He wrote later a history of the French Revolution, in which the scenes of that tragic epoch are depicted with dramatic vividness; and a copious _History of Frederick the Great_. Among the most characteristic of his writings are his _Heroes and Hero-Worship_; the "Latter-Day Pamphlets," in which is poured out his contempt of democracy; and the _Life of John Sterling_,--the counterpart of a biography of _Sterling_, written in a different vein by a learned and scholarly divine, _Julius Hare_. Of essayists in a lighter, discursive vein, one of the most popular, who has already been referred to (p. 544), was the Scottish writer, _John Wilson_ (1785-1854), the author of numerous tales and criticisms, and of diverting papers written under the name of "Christopher North." Without the fancy and humor of Wilson, yet master of a style keeping within the limits of prose while verging on poetry, was _Thomas De Quincey_, the author of _The Confessions of an Opium Eater, Essays on the Roman Emperors_, etc. HISTORICAL WRITINGS IN ENGLAND.--The literature of history has been enriched by British authors with important works besides those named above. _Grote_ and _Thirlwall_ each composed histories of Greece which are the fruit of thorough and enlightened scholarship. The work of _Grote_ is a vindication of the Athenian democracy, a view the antipode of that taken in the work on Grecian history by _Mitford_. An elaborate work on the _History of the Romans under the Empire_ is one of several historical productions of _Charles Merivale. Stanhope_ [Lord _Mahon_] composed a narrative of the War of the Spanish Succession, and other useful histories. Sir _W. F. P. Napier_ wrote a _History of the War in the Peninsula_, in which the campaigns of _Wellington_ in Spain are described by an author who took part in them. The constitutional history of England has been treated with satisfactory learning and judgment by _Hallam, May,_ and _Stubbs_. The Puritan revolution has been described with masterly skill and judicial fairness by _S. R. Gardiner_. In the earlier field, Mr. _Edward A. Freeman_ labored with distinguished success, the _History of the Norman Conquest_ being his principal work in this branch of historical inquiry. _J. R. Green_ is the author of an attractive history of the English people. _J. A. Froude_ wrote with engaging literary art a _History of England in the Reign of Elizabeth_, which attempts, in the preliminary part, an apology for the character and conduct of _Henry VIII_. _Spencer Walpole_ has written a _History of England since 1815_. _Ramsay_ has written the _Foundations of England, Angevin England, Lancaster, and York_. _John Hill Burton_, a Scottish author, educated as a lawyer, composed vigorously written histories of Scotland and of the reign of Queen Anne. _Lecky_ wrote in a pleasing style a _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_, besides a _History of Rationalism in Europe_, and a _History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne_. In ecclesiastical history, _Milman_, whose leading work is the _History of Latin Christianity_, Dean _Stanley_, and Bishop _Creighton_ have been the principal writers. ENGLISH NOVELISTS.--The series of "Waverley novels" by _Walter Scott_ (1771-1832) had an unbounded popularity. Pervaded by a cheerful, healthy tone, they presented fascinating pictures of life and manners, and kindled a fresh sympathy with the Middle Ages and with the spirit of chivalry. The poems of Scott depicted, in a metrical form, like picturesque scenes, and knightly combats and adventures. The fictions of Scott gave rise to a school of writers, one of whom was _G. P. R. James_ (1801-1860). A new and different type of novel appeared, in connection with which the names of _Dickens_ (1812-1870) and _Thackeray_ (1811-1863) are preëminent. Both are humorists; in _Dickens_ especially, humor runs into broad caricature. Both present pictures of society and of common life. They illustrate the tendency of the novel at present to rely for its attraction upon scenes and incidents of ordinary life, and the minute portraiture of manners and of character. _Dickens_ owes his popularity largely to the unique sort of drollery and the genuine pathos that are mingled in his pages. _Thackeray_ is a satirist, with a keen eye to detect the weaknesses of humanity, but with a deep well of sympathy, veiled, however, and sedulously guarded from sentimentalism, by a tone of banter and a semblance of cynicism. Measured by their popularity with the cultivated class, the novels of Mrs. _Lewes_ (_George Eliot_) stand next in rank to the productions last referred to. In some of her tales, the artistic motive and spirit are qualified by the didactic aim, or the underlying "tendency,"--the purpose to teach, or to promote a favorite cause,--which has become a frequent characteristic in modern fiction. Among the other English novelists, _Bulwer_ (1805-1873), whose later stories are free from the immorality that stains the earlier, is one of the most widely read. The novels of _Charles Kingsley_ (1819-1875) are among the justly popular productions in this department. Among the novelists of the late Victorian Era were _Charles Keade_, _Blackmore_, _Stevenson_, _Kipling_, _Meredith_, _Hardy_, and Mrs. _Humphry Ward_. ENGLISH POETS.--_Alfred Tennyson_ (1809-1892), the author of _The Princess_, _In Memoriam_, and the _Idylls of the King_, held the first place among the poets of his day. An adept in the metrical art, he combines in these mature productions, with terseness of diction and fresh, striking imagery, deep reflection and sympathy with the intellectual questionings and yearnings of the time. In his lyrical poems the fullness of his power is seen. He was, without question, a consummate literary artist. _Browning_ (1812-1889), careless of rhythmical art, with a defiance of form, but with dramatic power, in his descent to "the under-currents" of the soul, placed himself open to the reproach of obscurity. Among English poets of high merit in the recent period stand the names of the delightful humorist _Thomas Hood_ (1798-1845), _Arthur Clough_ (1819-1861), and more recently, _Matthew Arnold_ (1822-1888). With this reference to the poets may be coupled the name of the most eloquent and suggestive of the English writers on art, _John Ruskin_. THEOLOGY IN ENGLAND.--Theological scholarship in Great Britain, after a long season of partial eclipse, again shone forth in the present period. Critical works relating to the Scriptures have been produced, which are on a level with the best Continental learning. About 1833, there began at Oxford what has been called the "Tractarian movement," from a series of "Tracts for the Times," relating to theology and the Church, which were issued by its promoters. The party thus originating were called "Puseyites," as Dr. _Edward Pusey_ (1800-1882), the author of learned commentaries, and of works in other departments of divinity, was their acknowledged leader. They formed one branch of the class called "High Churchmen." They laid great emphasis on the doctrine of the "apostolic succession" of the ministry, the necessity and efficacy of the sacraments administered by them, and the importance of visible ecclesiastical unity. They claimed to stand in the "middle path" between the Church of England and the Church of Rome. One of the leading associates of _Pusey_ was _John Keble_ (1792-1866), the poet, author of _The Christian Year_. The most eminent writer in this group of theologians was _John Henry Newman_ (1801-1890), who won general admiration by the subtlety of his genius and its rare felicity of expression. He entered the Church of Rome, and was advanced to the rank of a cardinal. One of the principal literary undertakings of the recent period is the Revision of the Authorized Version of the Bible, by associated companies of English and American scholars. In the long catalogue of influential writers in theology, it is practicable to refer here to a few suggestive names. _Thomas Chalmers_ (1780-1847) was equally noted as a glowing preacher, an eloquent defender of the Christian faith, and a lucid expounder of the Calvinistic system. _Edward Irving_ (1792-1834) was a pulpit orator of unsurpassed eloquence in his day, whose peculiar view as to the restoration of the miraculous gifts of the Spirit, that were granted in the apostolic age, gave rise to a religious body calling itself the "Catholic Apostolic Church." _Frederick Denison Maurice_ (1805-1872) was one of the leaders of the "liberal," or "Broad Church," portion of the English Episcopal Church. His writings have exerted a strong influence. In the same general direction, but of a more critical and argumentative tone, were _Richard Whately_ (1787-1863), Archbishop of Dublin; and _Thomas Arnold_, who, in addition to his influence as a teacher, classical scholar, and historian, engaged actively in discussions on the questions relating to Church and State. LITERATURE IN AMERICA: POEMS AND TALES.--The period which we are now considering witnessed a gratifying development of belles-lettres and historical literature in the United States. At the outset, two writers appeared who acquired a transatlantic fame. _Washington Irving_ (1783-1859) in 1818 published _The Sketch Book_, in a series of pamphlets. It had been preceded by _Knickerbocker's History of New York_ and other humorous publications. Among his later writings were included the _Life of Columbus_, the _Life of Mohammed_, and the _Life of Washington_. The refinement and charm of his style, which brought back the simplicity of Goldsmith, satisfied the foreign critics who had ridiculed the florid rhetoric of previous American authors. _James Fenimore Cooper_ (1789-1851) published _The Spy_, the first of his novels, which attracted much attention, in 1821. This was followed, two years later, by _The Pioneers_, the first of the famous "Leatherstocking" series of novels, in which Indian life and manners were portrayed. Cooper was also the founder of the "sea-novel," a line of fiction in which he was followed by an English writer, _Marryat_ (1792-1848). _Richard H. Dana_ and _Fitz-Greene Halleck_ were poets who had a much higher than the merely negative merit of freedom from tumidity, the bane of the earlier American bards. Not only in verse, but also in his prose tales, _Dana_ manifested genius. Several later poets, acknowledged at home and abroad, well deserve the name. Such are _Bryant_ (1794-1878), whose poems, pensive and elevated in their tone, lack neither vigor nor finish; _Longfellow_ (1807-1882), a poet of exquisite culture, whose purity of sentiment, as well as polish and melody of diction, have made him a favorite in both Europe and America; _Whittier_ (1807-1892), whose spirited productions are pervaded with a glowing love of liberty and humanity. _Lowell_ (1819-1891) has justly earned fame as a poet and a critic; and, as a poet, in both serious and humorous compositions. The "Biglow Papers" are without a rival in the species of humor that characterize them. Distinction as a poet and a prose writer belongs likewise to _Oliver Wendell Holmes_ (1809-1894), who was especially successful as an author of "poems of society." _Edgar Allan Poe_ (1809-1849), faulty in his moral spirit as he was wayward in his conduct, exhibited, both in his poems and tales, which are unique in their character, the traits of a wild and somber genius. _Ralph Waldo Emerson_ (1803-1882), admired as a poet, but more generally as an essayist, valuing insight above logic, has commented on nature, man, and literature with so rare a penetration and felicity of expression that _Matthew Arnold_ has placed his productions on a level with the Meditations of the Emperor _Marcus Aurelius_. In the list of American novelists the foremost name is that of _Nathaniel Hawthorne_. In his romances the subtle analysis of the workings of conscience and sensibility, in particular the obscure--including the morbid-action of these powers, is combined with perfection of style and of literary art. The novels of _Harriet Beecher Stowe_, especially those which relate to slavery and depict negro character, have had a world-wide currency. Among other novelists were _Paulding_ and _Sedgwick_, and more recently, _Howells, James, Bret Harte, Cable_, and _Aldrich_. The most distinguished humorist has been _S. M. Clemens_ (Mark Twain). Good work has been done by Americans in literary history and criticism. The _History of Spanish Literature_, by _George Ticknor_, is the fruit of many years of labor by a competent scholar. HISTORICAL WRITINGS IN AMERICA.--Creditable works have been produced in America in the department of historical literature. The lives of Washington and Franklin, and other biographical and historical writings of much value, have been composed or edited by _Jared Sparks. George Bancroft_ (1800-1891) published, in successive editions, the results of extensive researches in the history of the United States. Works on the same subject have been published by _Richard Hildreth_ and many others. _John G. Palfrey_ is the author of an excellent history of New England. _William H. Prescott_ by his _History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella_, his histories of Spanish conquest in America, and his fragment on the reign of Philip II. of Spain, has deservedly attained to a high distinction on both sides of the Atlantic. The same may be said of _John Lothrop Motley_ (1814-1877), in his _Rise and Progress of the Dutch Republic_. The history of French colonization and of the contests of France in America has been detailed with thoroughness and skill by _Francis Parkman_. Other prominent writers have been _John Fiske, Justin Winsor, Henry. Adams, James F. Rhodes_, and _A. T. Mahan_. AMERICAN WRITERS ON LAW ANS POLITICS.--American writers on law embrace names of world-wide celebrity. Among them are _Henry Wheaton_, in international law, a science to which _Woolsey_ and _Lawrence_ have made valuable contributions; _James Kent_, whose _Commentaries on American Law_ is a work held in high honor by the legal profession; and _Joseph Story_, a jurist and legal writer of distinguished merit. The speeches and other productions of _Webster, Calhoun, Clay, John Quincy Adams, Edward Everett, Seward, Sumner_, form a valuable body of political writings. The works of _Francis Lieber_, a German by birth, and the treatise on _Political Science_ by _Theodore D. Woolsey_, are important contributions to the branch of knowledge to which they relate. PHILOLOGY IN AMERICA.--On the catalogue of students of language, the name of _Noah Webster_ (1758-1843) is prominent, through his English Dictionary, the fruit of many years of arduous labor; a work that since his death has appeared in successive and improved editions. Another successful laborer in the same field was _Joseph E. Worcester_ (1784-1865), likewise the author of a copious and valuable lexicon of the English language. _George P. Marsh_, an erudite Scandinavian scholar, wrote also on the _Origin and History of the English Language_. In the departments of classical learning, of Oriental study, and of general philology, there have appeared other American authors of acknowledged merit, e.g. _William D. Whitney_. THEOLOGY IN AMERICA.--Theology has been cultivated with much fruit by a large number of preachers and authors, of different religious bodies. _Moses Stuart_, by his commentaries on Biblical books, and _Edward Robinson_, especially through his published Travels in the Holy Land, were widely known. _Charles Hodge_, long a professor at Princeton; _Nathaniel W. Taylor_, who broached modifications of the Calvinistic system; _Henry B. Smith_, an acute and learned theologian; and _Horace Bushnell_,--are among the influential authors on the Protestant side. To these should be added the name of _William Ellery Channing_, the most prominent leader of the Unitarians, equally distinguished as a preacher and as a philanthropist. The Unitarian movement in New England, which began in the early part of the nineteenth century, included other theological writers, one of the most learned and scholarly of whom was _Andrews Norton_ (1786-1853). _Theodore Parker_ (1810-1860) subsequently went so far in his divergence from received views as to reject miracle and supernatural revelation altogether. He was one of the most vigorous combatants in the warfare carried on through the press and in the pulpit against slavery. Out of the Unitarian school there came a class of cultured writers in literature and criticism, of whom _George Ripley_ (1802-1880) was a representative. The "transcendentalists," as they were popularly styled, with whom these were often at the outset affiliated, were much influenced by contemporary French and German authors and speculations. Emerson, was the most prominent writer in this vaguely defined class. A periodical called "The Dial" was issued by them. One of the most ingenious and active-minded thinkers in the Roman Catholic Church was _Orestes A. Brownson_, a prolific author on topics of religion and philosophy. LITERATURE IN GERMANY.--The German mind has been so productive in almost all branches of literary effort, that the annual issues of the German press have numbered many thousands. The political condition of Germany until a recent date was such as to attract large numbers to the pursuits of literature and science. It is possible to allude to but few of the principal authors. In imaginative literature, _Heinrich Heine_ (1799-1856), of Jewish extraction, was a most witty yet irreverent satirist, and one of the principal song-writers of modern times. _Gustav Freytag_ has written some of the best of the later German novels. _Auerbach_, _Keller_, and _Spielhagen_ stand very high on the roll of novelists. Of numerous recent poets, _Lenau_ and _Freiligrath_ are among the few best esteemed. In the long catalogue of German historical writers, to whom the world owes a debt, are found the names of _Schlosser_ (1776-1861), _Heeren_ (1760-1842), _Raumer_ (1781-1873); _Ranke_, whose numerous works are based on original researches, and are written with masterly skill; _Gervinus_, a critic as well as historian; _Von Sybel_, _Droysen_, _Duncker_, _Weber_, _Giesebrecht_, _Mommsen_, _Curtius_, _Treitschke_. A powerful impulse was given to the study of history by _Niebuhr_ (1776-1831). German researches have been carried into every region of the past. In Egyptology, _Lipsius_, _Bunsen_, _Brugsch_, and _Ebers_ are leading authorities. _Neander_, _Gieseler_, _Baur_, _Döllinger_, _Hefele_, _Alzog_, _Harnack_, _Janssen_, and _Pastor_ are writers on ecclesiastical history. German travelers have explored many of the countries of the globe. _Schliemann_ has uncovered the ruins of Troy. In mathematics and the natural sciences, in philology and criticism, in philosophy, in law and the political sciences, and in the different branches of theology, the world acknowledges its debt to the patient, methodical investigations and the exhaustive discussions of German students during the nineteenth century. THEOLOGY IN GERMANY.--The history of religious thought in Germany includes the successive phases of _rationalism_, or that general theory which makes the human understanding, apart from supernatural revelation, the chief or the exclusive source of religious knowledge, and the umpire in controversies. In the age of _Frederick II._, the Anglo-French deism was widely diffused (p. 493). _Lessing_; the genial poet and critic (1729-1781), allied himself to no party. In his work on _The Education of the Human Race_, he set forth the view that the Scriptures have a high providential purpose as an instrument for the religious training of mankind, but that their _essential_ contents are ultimately verified by reason on grounds of its own; so that the prop of authority eventually becomes needless, and falls away. Not radically different was the position of _Kant_ (p. 545), who gave rise to a school of theologians that for a time flourished. This school made the essential thing in Christianity to be its morality. With _Semler_ (1721-1791), the rationalistic _Biblical criticism_ took its rise. From that day, a host of scholars have engaged in the investigation of the origin and interpretation of the Bible, and of the early history of Christianity. A middle position between the established orthodoxy and the Kantian rationalism was taken by _Frederick Schleiermacher_ (1768-1834), a man of genius, alike eminent as a critic, philosopher, and theologian. He placed the foundation of religion in the feeling of absolute dependence. In laying stress on _feeling_ as at the root of piety, he had been preceded by the philosopher _Jacobi_. From the impulse given by _Schleiermacher_, there sprung up an intermediate school of theologians, many of whom departed less than he from the traditional Protestant creed. This they professed to undertake to revise in accordance with the results of the scientific study of the Bible and of history. In their number belong _Neander_, _Nitzsch_, _Twesten_, _Tholuck_, _J. Müller_, _Dorner_, _Rothe_, _Bleek_, _Ullman_, and many other influential authors and teachers. In the department of Biblical criticism, _Ewald_, _Tischendorf_, _Meyer_, _Weiss_, are among the names of German theological scholars which are familiar to Biblical students in all countries. The critical works of _De Wette_ (1780-1849) were extensively studied. The philosophy of _Hegel_connected itself with a new form of rationalism, which found expression in the _Life of Jesus_, by _Strauss_, published in 1835, in which the Gospel miracles were treated as myths; and in the writings of _Ferdinand Christian Baur_, in connection with his followers of the "Tubingen School," who attempted to resolve primitive Christianity into a natural growth out of preëxisting conditions, and held that the historical books of the New Testament were the product of different theological "tendencies" and parties in the apostolic and the subsequent age. The Roman Catholic system has not lacked in Germany able defenders, one of the most noted of whom was _Möhler_, the author of _Symbolism_ (_Symbolik_), an ingenious polemical work in opposition to Protestantism. PHILOLOGY AND LAW IN GERMANY.--Classical philology was founded as a science by _Heyne_ (1729-1812) and _Wolf_ (1759-1824). Their work was carried forward by _G. Hermann_ (1772-1848), _Buttmann_ (1764-1829), _Jacobs_ (1764-1847), _K. O. Muller_ (1797-1840), and by numerous contemporaries and successors of these. By this succession of scholars, not only have the tongues of Greece and Rome been accurately learned and taught, but classical antiquity has been thoroughly explored. Comparative philology, under the hands of _Bopp_ (1791-1867), of _Lassen_ (1800-1876), a Norwegian by birth, of _W. von Humboldt_ (1767-1835), of _Pott_ (born in 1802), of _Schleicher_ (1821-1868), and their coadjutors, has grown to be a fruitful science. In the study of the German language and early literature, _J. Grimm_ (1785-1863), _W. Grimm_ (1786-1859), _Lachmann_ (1793-1851), _Simrock_ (1802-1878), have been among the pioneers. The study of law, especially of Roman law, was placed on a new foundation by the labors of _Savigny_ (1779-1861), while a like thoroughness was brought to the exposition of German law by _Mittermaier_ and others. In political science, _Mohl_ (1779-1875), _Bluntschli_ (1808-1881), _Stahl_ (1802-1861), and _Gneist_ (1816-1895) gained a worldwide celebrity. LITERATURE IN FRANCE.--A class of vigorous young writers in France broke loose from the restraints of the "classical" school and its patterns, and composed dramas in the more free method of the "romantic" school. They drew their ideas of the drama from _Shakspeare_, rather than from _Corneille_. Among these writers were _Alexandre Dumas_, a most prolific novelist as well as writer of plays; and the celebrated poet and dramatist, _Victor Hugo_. The romances of _Dumas_ comprise more than a hundred volumes. In his historical novels, incidents and characters without number crowd upon the scene, but without confusion, while the narrative maintains an unfailing vivacity. Of the authors of light and witty comedies, _Scribe_ is one of the most fertile. _George Sand_ (Mme. _Dudevant_) is one of the principal novel-writers of the age. _Eugene Sue_ and _Balzac_ are both popular authors in this department. The leading poets are the song-writer _Béranger_, _Lamartine_, _Victor Hugo_, and _Alfred de Musset_. With the close of the first half-century romanticism began to give way before realism, from which, however, there was a reaction before the century closed. Among the greater poets are _Sully-Prudhomme_ and _Coppée_; among the novelists, _Daudet_, _Zola_, _Maupassant_, and _Bourget_. In history some writers, as _Villemain_, are remarkable for their power of descriptive narrative; others, like _Guizot_, for their breadth of philosophical reflection, superadded to deep researches. Some, like _Augustin Thierry_, in his work on the Middle Ages, combined both elements. His brother, _Amédée Thierry_, depicted the state of society in Gaul and other countries in the period of the fall of the Roman Empire. _Barante_ composed an interesting history of the Dukes of Burgundy. Among those, besides Guizot, who treated of the history of France, _Sismondi_, the spirited _Michelet_, and the thorough and dispassionate _Henri Martin_ are specially eminent. _Thiers_, _Mignet_, _Louis Blanc_, _Taine_, and _Lanfrey_ wrote on the Revolution or Napoleon. The most eminent of the newer school of scientific historians are _Boissier_, _Sorel_, _Lavisse_, _Luchaire_, and _Aulard_. In political economy and the science of politics, _Chevalier_, _De Tocqueville_ (the author of _Democracy in America_), and _Bastiat_ are among the writers widely read beyond the limits of France. _Sainte-Beuve_ is only one of the foremost in the class of literary critics, in which are included _Renan_, _Sarcey_, _Brunetière_, _Lemaître_, _Faguet_, and others, themselves authors. The clearness of exposition which goes far to justify the claim of the French to be the interpreters of European science to the world, appears in numerous treatises in mathematics and physics. The qualities of lucid arrangement, transparency of style, and terseness of language have extended, however, to other branches of authorship; so that the French have presented a fair claim to precedence in the literary art. SWEDEN AND RUSSIA.--There are Swedish authors who are well known in other countries. Such are the historian _Geijer_ (1783-1847); and the novelist _Fredrika Bremer_, who wrote "The Neighbors," and other tales. The most famous of the Russian novelists is _Ivan Turgenejff_, some of whose stories contain admirable pictures of Russian life. ARCHITECTURE.--The nineteenth century witnessed in Germany, France, and England a revival of the ancient or classic styles of architecture. This appears, for example, in edifices at _Munich_, and in such buildings as _St. George's Hall_ at Liverpool. But a reaction arose against this tendency, and in behalf of the Gothic style, which is exemplified in the new _Houses of Parliament_ in London. Many Gothic churches have been erected in Great Britain. Many-storied office buildings are characteristic of America. SCULPTURE AND PAINTING.--One of the most original of modern sculptors was _Schwanthaler_ (1802-1848), who carved the pediments of the Walhalla at Munich, and the bronze statue of Bavaria. French sculptors at the present day are fully on a level with the recent sculptors of Italy. _Chantrey_ (1788-1841) and _John Gibson_ (1791-1866), a pupil of _Canova_ and himself an original mind, are high on the roll of English sculptors. A genius for sculpture appeared among Americans, and to the names of _Powers and Crawford_, of _Story, Brown, and Ward_, the names of other meritorious artists in this province might justly be added. The German national school of painting had _Overbeck_ for its most eminent founder. _Cornelius_ (1783-1867) revived the art of fresco-painting, and established the Munich school. _Von Kaulbach_, who painted the "Battle of the Huns" in the Berlin Museum, was one of his pupils. _W. von Schadow_ is the founder of the Düsseldorf school. One of his eminent pupils was _K. F. Lessing_. Still more recent are _Ad. Menzel, Liberman, and Lenbach_. In Great Britain, _Constable_ (1796-1837) painted English landscapes full of thought and feeling, and gave a fresh impulse to this branch of art. _Stanfleld_ (1788-1864) was a master of the realistic school, which aims at a simple and faithful representation of the landscape to be depicted. _Wilkie_, a Scotchman (1785-1841), was chief among the _genre_ painters, of whom _Leslie_ (1794-1859), by birth an American, was one of the most forcible and refined. _Eastlake_ (1793-1865) was a writer on art, as well as a painter. _Landseer_ (1802-1873) was unrivaled as an animal painter. _William Hunt_ (1790-1864) had decided skill as a painter in water-colors. The _pre-Raphaelite school_, professing to go back of _Raphael_ to nature, included _Turner, Hunt, Millais_, _and Burne-Jones_. Other prominent artists have been _Herkomer, Leighton_, and _Alma-Tadema_. In France, _Paul Delaroche_ (1797-1856) followed in the path of _Horace Vernet_ (1789-1863), as a painter of battle-pieces and other modern historical scenes. _Ary Scheffer_ (1795-1858), a Dutchman by birth, painted in a graceful and pathetic tone "Christ the Consoler," and other sacred subjects. The more recent French school, comprising _Delacroix, Meissonier, Gérome, Cabanel, Millet, Rosa Bonheur_, an artist of masculine vigor, the famous painter of animal pictures,--is distinguished for technical skill and finish, but also for a bold and peculiar method of treatment. Among the leading landscape-painters of this school, _Corot, Daubigny, Rousseau, Diaz_, are conspicuous. Still more recent are _Bastien-Lepage, Chavannes, Bréton, Bouguereau, Dagnan-Bouveret, Lhermitte, Jean-Paul Laurens_, and _Dupré_. About the year 1825 an American school of landscape-painters was founded by _Thomas Cole_, many of whose pictures were allegorical. _Durand_ is one of those who excelled in landscape painting. In other provinces of the art, _Peale_, _Weir_, _Huntington_, _Page_, _Morse_, _Chase_, _Whistler_, _Sargent_, _Abbey_; in landscape, _Gifford_, _Kensett_, _Church_, _Bierstadt_, _McEntee_, _Inness_, _Winslow Homer_, well represent what is best and most characteristic in the later productions of American painters. MUSIC.--In music, Germany in the nineteenth century held the palm. _Schubert_, _Spohr_, _Weber_, _Meyerbeer_, and _Wagner_ are names of world-wide celebrity, while in the works of _Mendelssohn_ (1809-1849) and _Schumann_ (1810-1856) the art of music reached its climax. _Chopin_ (1810-1849), the founder of a new style of piano-forte music, was born in Poland: his father, however, was French. PHILANTHROPIC REFORM. In a survey of the course of recent history, notice should be taken of the increased activity of a humane spirit in the several nations. 1. SOCIAL SCIENCE.--The investigation of social evils and of their proper remedies, and of the laws which govern man in his social relations, has received of late the name of _social science_. In 1857 a meeting in _London_, over which Lord _Brougham_ presided, resulted in the organization of a society of persons interested in different forms of social improvement, bearing the name of the _National Association for the Promotion of Social Science_. Its work embraced the consideration of these five subjects: law-amendment,--to promote which a society had existed, of which Lord _Brougham_ was the head; education; prevention and repression of crime; public health; and social economy. Branches were established in various towns in England. Similar societies have flourished in the United States. An international society of the same character held its first meeting in _Brussels_ in 1862. The wide range of special topics which these societies consider may give an appearance of indefiniteness to their aims. The movement at least indicates that social advancement has assumed the form of a distinct and comprehensive problem, and is drawing to itself the deliberate attention of thoughtful persons of diverse nations and creeds. 2. MITIGATION OF THE SUFFERINGS OF WAR: HOSPITALS.--If wars are still frequent and destructive, much more has been done of late to mitigate the sufferings consequent upon armed conflicts. The right of an invading force to ravage the territory of an enemy was seldom practically asserted in the nineteenth century. Non-combatants, according to the modern rules of war, are not to be molested. Their property, if it is taken, is to be paid for at its fair value. The doctrine that requisitions may be made by a commander is not yet abandoned. It was acted on by _Napoleon_ on a large scale. It was not approved by _Wellington_. There is a growing opinion against it. It is not now held to be a crime for an officer to hold a fortress as long as he can. In the care of the sick and the wounded, there has been a great change for the better. The _ambulance_ system, or the system of movable hospitals accompanying armies on the field, was established by the French, with the approval of _Napoleon_, in 1795. The name _ambulance_ is also frequently given to the vehicles for transporting the wounded and sick. The whole ambulance system was completely organized in the American civil war, and defined by an Act of Congress in 1864. To a French surgeon is due, also, the establishment of a corps of _stretcher-bearers_. By the European Convention adopted at _Geneva_ (1864), the wounded, and the whole official staff connected with ambulances, are exempted from capture as prisoners of war. For the more efficient organization of hospitals, a great service was rendered by the example of _Florence Nightingale_, an English lady, who, at the head of a company of volunteer nurses, during the Crimean war created a great establishment of this sort at Scutari (1854). The increased pains-taking in the method of building, in the ventilation and general management of hospitals, during the last half-century, has gone far towards freeing them from the dangers and evils to which they were formerly subject. SANITARY SCIENCE.--Sanitary science, and the engineering connected with it, belong to the nineteenth century, and mainly to the second half of it. Systems of drainage have been devised which involve much mechanical skill, not to dwell on their usefulness in promoting health. Prior to 1815, in England, the law forbade the discharge of sewage in water-drains. The law of 1847 required that which up to 1815 was prohibited. The great change on this whole subject dates from the cholera of 1832, which awoke public attention to the sources of disease. The condition of the poor, and the discussions relating to it, lent a new stimulus to the inquiry. A series of English reports, from 1842 to 1848, had a great influence in producing a sanitary reform, in the particulars referred to, in England and in other countries. 3. PUBLIC EDUCATION.--During the nineteenth century, systems of general education were established in different countries. In a part of the United States, an effective common-school system has always existed. In Germany also, especially in Prussia, there have long been thorough provisions for the instruction of all the young in elementary branches. In France, in consequence of the laws requiring primary schools in all the communes of any considerable size, the average of illiteracy has of late steadily diminished. In 1881, in France, instruction in the public primary schools was made absolutely free. England has witnessed a very great change in the legal establishment of means of instruction in the rudiments of knowledge for the whole people. The Education Act of 1876 required that every child between the ages of five and fourteen should receive such teaching. In England, and in some other countries, the employment of children who have not had a certain amount of school instruction was prohibited by law. In the new kingdom of Italy, every commune having four thousand inhabitants was required by law (1859) to maintain a primary school. By subsequent legislation, the compulsory principle was adopted as far as the circumstances of the country would allow. The result has been a most remarkable diminution in the numbers of the wholly illiterate class. Other European states have made primary education compulsory. For instance, in Hungary, attendance at school was made obligatory for children from the beginning of the eighth to the end of the twelfth year. Such measures in behalf of general education as governments have adopted in recent times are founded, to be sure, partly on the conscious need of self-protection against ignorance and its baleful consequences to the state. A more directly humane impulse, however, mingles with this motive. The operation of benevolent feeling is seen in the multiplying of special schools for the benefit of the blind, of the deaf and dumb, and even of imbeciles. 4. REFORM OF CRIMINAL LAW.--The advance of humane sentiment has produced a reform of criminal law. In England, in the closing part of the eighteenth century, there were two hundred and twenty-three offenses that were punished with death. To injure Westminster Bridge, to cut down young trees, to shoot at rabbits, to steal property of the value of five shillings, were capital offenses. Vigorous and persevering opposition was made to the mitigation of this bloody code. Sir _Samuel Romilly_ (1757-1818) began his effort at reform by endeavoring to secure the repeal of these cruel laws, one by one. His bills, when carried with difficulty through the Commons, were repeatedly thrown out by the House of Lords. One of the most strenuous opponents of the change was the Lord Chancellor, _Eldon_. Lord _Ellenborough_, the chief justice, stigmatized the proposed alteration of the statutes as the fruit of "speculation and modern philosophy." It was predicted that, if it were made, there would be a terrible increase of crime. Sir _James Mackintosh_ continued with success the effort of Romilly. In 1837 the list of capital offenses had been reduced to seven. One consequence was the striking diminution of crime. Another reform in England was that of the police-system (1816). The officers of the police had encouraged crime in order to secure the reward of forty pounds offered by the government on conviction, in the case of crimes of a certain grade. 5. PRISON-DISCIPLINE REFORM.--One of the distinctions of modern philanthropy is the prison-discipline reform. When _Howard_ began his labors (1773), the prisons in England were generally dirty, pestiferous dens, crowded with inmates of both sexes,--nurseries of loathsome disease, and of still more loathsome vice. Soon after this time, a serious effort began to make prisons a means of reform, instead of schools of debauchery and crime. There was a movement for the erection of penitentiaries of improved construction. This was aided by the exertions of _Jeremy Bentham_. The most successful efforts in behalf of a better system of management in prisons were made by members of the Society of Friends. Of these, the most useful person in this cause was Mrs. _Elizabeth Gurney Fry_ (1780-1845), a woman of rare powers of mind and of the noblest Christian character. By her personal influence, she wrought such a transformation of character and behavior among the female convicts in Newgate Prison as it had been deemed impossible to effect. The reforms which Mrs. _Fry_ effected spread to other places. Her labors were not confined to Great Britain. She visited France (1838), Belgium, Holland, and other countries. Her correspondence in the interest of the cause which she served extended to Russia and Italy. Her recommendations bore fruit for good in almost all parts of Europe. Signal improvements in plans of construction, and in the interior life of prisons, have been effected under the auspices of the Prison Discipline Society in England. In these changes, the example of changes and reforms in this matter in the United States has had a marked influence. The two great ends kept in view at present in the arrangements and occupations of prisons are the reform of the criminal, and the deterring of others from the commission of crime. Distinct establishments for the detention, reform, and training of juvenile offenders, who were formerly corrupted by association with criminals mature in vice, are peculiar to recent times. The transportation of English convicts to Australia began in 1787. As these multiplied, there sprang up cruelty on the part of supervisors in the colonies; and in the penal settlements where the worst offenders were guarded, there were found the most corrupt and degraded herds of criminals. The opposition in the colonial communities to transportation found support in England. In 1840 deportation to New South Wales ceased. At length Van Dieman's Land also refused to receive this forced emigration even of released convicts. The British Government was obliged to rely on other methods of punishment, especially on the graduation of the term of confinement according to the conduct of the criminal. PROGRESS TOWARDS THE UNITY OF MANKIND. UNITY AMID DIVERSITY.--The path of human progress has led in the direction of _unity_ as the ultimate goal. It is, however, a _unity in variety_ toward which the course of history has moved. The development and growth of distinct nations, each after its own type, and, not less, the freedom of the individual to realize the destiny intended for him by nature, are necessary to the full development of mankind,--necessary to the perfection of the race. The final unity that is sought is to be reached, not by stifling the capacities of human nature, but by the complete unfolding of them in all their diversity. The modern era has made an approach toward this higher unity that is to coexist with a rich and manifold development. An enlightened man, Prince _Albert_ of England, remarked in a public address (1850): "Nobody who has paid any attention to the peculiar features of our present era will doubt for a moment that we are living at a period of most wonderful transition, which tends rapidly to accomplish that great end to which, indeed, all history points, _the realization of the unity of mankind!_ Not a unity which breaks down the limits and levels the peculiar characteristics of the different nations of the earth, but rather a unity, _the result and product_ of those very national varieties and antagonistic qualities." In concluding this volume, it is proper to advert to some of the signs and means of this unification of mankind, which belong to the recent era. 1. INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITIONS.--The words quoted above from Prince _Albert_ were spoken in anticipation of the Great International Exhibition in London, in 1854. The industrial exhibitions, in which the products of many nations are collected, and to which visitors are drawn from different parts of the earth, are one indication of the effect of manufactures and commerce in drawing mankind together. The first displays of this kind were for French manufactures alone, and were held in Paris in 1798, and, under the consulate of Napoleon, in 1801 and 1802. The first _international_ exposition was in Paris in 1844; and it was followed by the "World's Fair" in London (1850), for which the vast edifice called "the Crystal Palace," made of iron and of glass, was constructed. Similar exhibitions were held in New York (1853), in Paris in 1855 and again in 1867, in Constantinople, Amsterdam, Vienna, (1873), in Philadelphia on the hundredth anniversary of American independence (1876), in Chicago in 1893, and in Paris in 1900. In these fairs, the products of the industry of the far East were shown by the side of the products of European and American manufacture. 2. ECONOMICAL ENLIGHTENMENT.--In connection with the wide extension of commerce, the better methods and ideas which have come into vogue in respect to commercial relations deserve notice. The _system of credit_, facilitating trade and forming a bond of confidence and of union between different nations, although it began in the Middle Ages, was not fairly established until the organization of the Bank of Amsterdam in 1609. This system, if it is "one of the most powerful engines of warfare," is likewise "one of the great pledges of peace." The stimulus given to manufactures by mechanical inventions has been an effective promoter of commercial intercourse. The teaching of _Adam Smith_, and of the political economists since his time, by which it is seen that the gain of one nation is not the loss of another, and that nations are mutually benefited by the interchange of the products of their labor, which is the true source of wealth, has operated as an antidote to discord. The ruin of a neighbor, or non-intercourse with him, has been discovered to be as contrary to the demands of a prudent self-interest as of a disinterested benevolence. 3. COMMUNITY IN SCIENCE AND LETTERS.--The community of literature and science has been growing more cosmopolitan. The barriers created by differences of language are overcome. The custom of learning foreign languages has become more diffused. The most important writings, in whatever country they appear, circulate through translations in all other civilized lands. All well-stored libraries are polyglot. 4. WIDENED POLITICAL SYSTEM.--In the political relations of countries, it is found necessary to comprehend all parts of the globe in the political system, in the right adjustment of which each country has a stake, and over which stretches an acknowledged code of international law. The establishment of an international tribunal of arbitration at The Hague is a long step toward making such a code effective and toward preventing war. 5. INTERNATION PHILANTHROPY.--The growth of humane feeling, of the interest felt in man as man, engendered a spirit of universal philanthropy. For example, the hostility to the slave-trade led to the treatment of it as piracy by the municipal laws and by the treaties of several nations, while it is prohibited and punished by nearly all of the countries of Europe. This is the direct result of a heightened respect for man and for the rights of human nature, however poor or degraded man may be. Instances have occurred in which help has been generously given to sufferers by fire or famine, by strangers in remote lands. A famine in Persia called out liberal contributions from America. Examples of the exercise of justice and kindness toward distant nations may remind the reader of opposite examples of wrong and cruelty. We are pointing out, however, only the _drift_ of sentiment; and it must be remembered that the facts which have been referred to as illustrative of the growth of philanthropy, are such as never occurred in former ages. 6. CHRISTIAN MISSIONS.--The spread of the Christian religion by missionary efforts is one of the means of unifying mankind. In ancient times and in the Middle Ages, the two great achievements of the Church were the conversion of the Roman Empire, and then of the barbarian nations by whom it was subverted. But, in the Middle Ages, there was also missionary labor, here and there among the Saracens and in the lands of the East. Since the thirteenth century, missions in the Roman Catholic Church have been chiefly prosecuted by the monastic orders. In this work, the Jesuits, from the first establishment of their order, were conspicuously active in all quarters of the globe. Of their missionaries, none have been more eminent and zealous than _Francis Xavier_ (1506?1552), who died just as he was about to undertake the conversion of China. Protestants, in the period after the Reformation, were too busy in the struggles going forward in their own lands, to undertake foreign missions on an extended scale. Yet they were not indifferent to the importance of the work. Under the protectorate of _Cromwell_, an ordinance established a Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England (1649). In 1701 the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts was established in England. Later, the Moravians from the beginning evinced great interest in foreign missions, and planted missionary stations in several countries. In the Roman Catholic Church, the Congregation of the Propaganda was founded in 1622, for the general superintendence of missionary operations. Colleges for their training were established, the chief of which was the "Urban College" at Rome, where students from all nations have been educated for missionary service. The nineteenth century was marked by an extraordinary outburst of missionary activity. In this sort of exertion the Roman Catholic body has kept up an unflagging zeal. Within the various Protestant denominations, a remarkable increase of fervor and of success in this department of Christian labor has been witnessed. In the room of _seven_ societies for this purpose at the end of the eighteenth century, there were in 1880, in Europe and America, _seventy_ organizations. At this last date, there were not less than twenty-four hundred ordained Europeans and Americans employed in this service, besides a great number of assistants, both foreign and native. The native converts numbered not less than 1,650,000. The yearly contributions for the support of the missions increased proportionately. In 1882 British contributions alone amounted to £1,090,000. It is not an exaggeration to say that the globe is now "covered with a network of Christian outposts." The following passage, slightly abbreviated, from a German writer, presents a glowing sketch of the wide extension of recent missionary labors:-- "At the beginning of this century, the island world of the Pacific was shut against the gospel; but England and America have attacked those lands so vigorously in all directions, especially through native workers, that whole groups of islands, even the whole Malayan Polynesia, is to-day almost entirely Christianized, and in Melanesia and Micronesia the mission-field is extended every year. The gates of British East India have been thrown open wider and wider during this century; at first for English, then for all missionaries. This great kingdom, from Cape Comorin to the Punjaub and up to the Himalayas, where the gospel is knocking on the door of Thibet, has been covered with hundreds of mission-stations, closer than the mission-net which at the close of the first century surrounded the Roman empire; the largest and some of the smaller islands of the Indian Archipelago, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Celebes, and now New Guinea also, are occupied, partly on the coast and partly in the interior. Burmah, and in part Siam, is open to the gospel; and China, the most powerful and most populous of heathen lands, forced continually to open her doors wider, has been traversed by individual pioneers of the gospel, to Thibet and Burmah, and half of her provinces occupied from Hong-Kong and Canton to Peking; and in Manchuria, if by only a thin chain, yet at many of the principal points, stations have been founded, while the population overflowing into Australia and America is being labored with by Protestant missionaries. Japan also, hungry for reform, by granting entrance to the gospel has been quickly occupied by American and English missionary societies, and already, after so little labor, has scores of evangelical congregations. Indeed, the aboriginal Australians have, in some places, been reached. In the lands of Islam, from the Balkans to Bagdad, from Egypt to Persia, there have been common central evangelization stations established in the chief places, for Christians and Mohammedans, by means of theological and Christian medical missions, conducted especially by Americans. Also in the primitive seat of Christianity, Palestine, from Bethlehem to Tripoli, and to the northern boundaries of Lebanon, the land is covered by a network of Protestant schools, with here and there an evangelical church. Africa, west, south, and east, has been vigorously attacked; in the west, from Senegal to Gaboon, yes, lately even to the Congo, by Great Britain, Basel, Bremen, and America, which have stations all along the coast. South Africa at the extremity was evangelized by German, Dutch, English, Scotch, French, and Scandinavian societies. Upon both sides, as in the center, Protestant missions, although at times checked by war, are continually pressing to the north; to the left, beyond the Walfisch Bay; to the right, into Zululand, up to Delagoa Bay; in the center, to the Bechuana and Basuto lands. In the east, the sun of the gospel, after a long storm, has burst forth over Madagascar in such brightness that it can never again disappear. Along the coasts from Zanzibar and the Nile, even to Abyssinia, out-stations have been established, and powerful assaults made by the Scotch, English, and recently also by the American mission and civilization, into the very heart of the Dark Continent, even to the great central and east African lakes. In America, the immense plains of the Hudson's Bay Territory, from Canada over the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, have not only been visited by missionaries, but have been opened far and wide to the gospel through rapidly growing Indian missions. In the United States, hundreds of thousands of freedmen have been gathered into evangelical congregations; and, of the remnants of the numerous Indian tribes, some at least have been converted through the work of evangelization by various churches, and have awakened new hope for the future. In Central America and the West Indies, as far as the country is under Protestant home nations, the net of evangelical missions has been thrown from island to island, even to the mainland in Honduras, upon the Mosquito Coast; and in British and Dutch Guiana it has taken even firmer hold. Finally, the lands on and before the southern extremity of the continent, the Falkland Islands, Terra del Fuego, and Patagonia, received the first light through the South American Missionary Society (in London); and recently its messengers have pushed into the heart of the land, and are rapidly pressing on to the banks of the great Amazon, to the Indians of Brazil." RESULTS OF MISSIONS.--In carrying forward missionary work during the nineteenth century, the Bible has been translated into numerous languages. Missionaries, as in the early days of the Church, have reduced the languages of uncultivated peoples to writing, and made the beginning of native literatures. Schools, colleges, and printing-presses follow in the path of the preachers. The contributions made to philology and to other branches of science by missionary preachers and explorers are of high value. As far as the number of converts is concerned, progress has been more rapid, as was the case in the first Christian centuries, among uncivilized tribes. The reception of Christianity is more slow in a country like China, and among the Aryan inhabitants of India. But the influence exerted by missions in such communities is not to be measured by the number of converts. Moreover, history has often shown, that, in the spread of the Christian religion, the first steps are the most slow and difficult: they are like the early operations in a siege. Sir _Bartle Frere_ writes thus: "Statistical facts can in no way convey any adequate idea of the work done in any part of India. The effect is enormous where there has not been a single avowed conversion. The teaching of Christianity amongst a hundred and sixty millions of civilized, industrious Hindoos and Mohammedans in India, is effecting changes, moral, social, and political, which for extent and rapidity in effect are far more extraordinary than any that have been witnessed in modern Europe." Of the same tenor is an opinion expressed in strong terms by Sir _Henry Lawrence_, governor-general of India during the mutiny of 1857, and a most competent judge. It is worthy of remark, as one characteristic of the Christian missions of the recent period, that the religions of the non-Christian nations have been studied more thoroughly, and the true and praiseworthy elements in them have been better appreciated. The progress made in the past encourages the hope that the unity of mankind, a unity which shall be the crown of individual and national development, will one day be reached. That unity of mankind, in loyal fellowship with Him in whose image man was made, is the community of which the ancient Stoic vaguely dreamed, and which the apostles of Christ proclaimed and predicted,--the perfected _kingdom of God_. LITERATURE. See lists on pp. Alison, _Hist. of Europe_, from 1815 to 1852 (8 vols.); Bulle, _Gesch. d. neuesten Zeit_, 1815-1871 (2 vols.); Flathe. _Zeitalter der Restauration und der Revolution_; Stern, _Geschichte Europas_ (3 vols.); Debidpur, _Hist. Diplomatique de l'Europe_ (2 vols.); Seignobus, _Political History of Europe since 1814_; Sears. _Political Growth in the Nineteenth Century_; Lavisse et Rambaud. _Hist Gén._, Vols. X., XI., XII.; Phillips, _European History_, 1815-1899; Müller, _Political History of Recent Times_ (Peters's translation, 1882); Müller, _Politische Gesch. d. Gegenwart_ (an annual, since 1867); Honegger, _Grundsteine einer allgem. Culturgeschichte d. neuesten Zeit_ (5 vols.). Works on the History of Italy. Thayer, _Dawn of Italian Independence_ (2 vols.); Reuchlin, _Geschichte Italiens_ (4 vols.); Stillman, _Union of Italy_; Probyn, _Italy from_ 1815-1878; Lives of Cavour, by De la Rive (English translation), by E. Dicey, by Mazade (French); _Life and Writings of Mazzini_ (9 vols.). Works on the History of Germany. Treitschke, _Deutsche Geschichte_; Von Sybel, _Founding of the German Empire_ (6 vols,); Busch,_ Bismarck in the Franco-Prussian War_ (2 vols.), _Bismarck, The Man and the Statesman_ (2 vols.); Springer, _Geschichte Oesterreichs_ (2 vols.). France. Hillebrand, _Gesch. Frankreichs_ (1830-1870); Adams, _Democracy and Monarchy in France_; Stein, _Gesch. der Sozialen Bewegung in Frankreich_; Guizot, _Memoirs of His Own Time_ (1807-1848) (4 vols.); Delord, _Hist. du Second Empire_ (6 vols.); Zevort, _Hist. de la 3'me Republique_ (4 vols.); Hanotaux, _Contemporary France_ (Vol. I.); Bodley, _France_ (2 vols.); Simon, _The Government of M. Thiers_ (from 1871-1873) (2 vols.). Works on the History of England. Harriet Martineau, _The History of England_ (1800-1854); Walpole, _A History of England_, from 1815 (6 vols., 1878-1880); Molesworth, _The History of England_ (1830-1874); Justin McCarthy, _A History of Our Own Times_ (1878-1880); Kinglake, _The Invasion of the Crimea_ (6 vols.); Seeley, _The Expansion of England_; Rutherford, _The Fenian Conspiracy_; Richey, _The Irish Land Laws_; King, _The Irish Question_; Morley, _Life of Gladstone_, 3 vols. (1903) (an able historical review). Works on History of the United States. Benton, _Thirty Year's View_ [1820-1850]; Johnston, _History of American Politics_; DE TOCQUEVILLE, _Democracy in America_ (2 vols.); Thorpe, _Constitutional History of the American People_ (2 vols.); Roosevelt, _Winning of the West_ (4 vols); Stanwood, _A History of the Presidency_; Bryce, _The American Commonwealth_ (2 vols).; Ostrogorski, _Democracy and the Origin of Political Parties_ (2 vols.); Henry Adams, _History of the United States_ (1800-1817, 9 vols.); Rhodes, _History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850_ (4 vols.); Wilson, _Division and Reunion_; Burgess, _The Middle Period, The Civil War and the Constitution _(2 vols.); Dunning, _Essays on the Civil War and Reconstruction_; Bolles, _Financial History of the United States_ (3 vols.); Wilson, _History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power_; Blaine, _Twenty Years in Congress_; Histories of the Civil War, by the Count of Paris (2 vols.), by Roper, by J. W. Draper, by H. Greeley, by A. H. Stephens, by E. A. Pollard (_The Lost Cause_); Swinton's _Twelve Decisive Battles of the _[_Civil_] _War_; _Memoirs of Gen. W. T. Sherman,_ by himself; Grant, _Personall Memoirs_ (2 vols.); John Sherman, _Recollections_ (2 vols.); Moore, _The Rebellion Record_ (1861-1871); Biography of _Gallatin_, by H. Adams; of _Jackson_, by Parton, by W. G. Sumner; of _Madison_, by Rives; of _J. Q. Adams_, by Morse; of _Josiah Quincy_, by Edmund Quincy; of _Webster_, by G. T. Curtis, by Lodge; of _Clay_, by Schurz; of _Calhoun_, by Crallé; of _Sumner_, by E. L. Pierce; of _Lincoln_, by Nicolay and Hay, by Morse; of _Seward_, by Fr. Brancroft; of _W. L. Garrison_, by O. Johnson, by W. P. Garrison; _The American Commonwealths_, a series of histories of the separate States (edited by H. E. Scudder); writings of J. Q. Adams, Webster, Clay, Calhoun, E. Everett, C. Sumner, W. H. Seward; John Fiske, _American Political Ideas_. Literary Biographies. _Life of Walter Scott_, by Lockhart; of Jeffrey, by Cockburn; of Macaulay, by Trevelyan; of Arnold, by Stanley; of Dickens, by Forster; of Carlyle, by Froude; of George Eliot [Mrs. Lewes], by Cross. _Life of Irving_, by P. M. Irving; of Bryant, by Parke Godwin; _Life and Letters of George Ticknor; Life of Ripley_, by Frothingham; Series of "American Men of Letters," including _Washington Irving_, by Warner; _Cooper_, by T. R. Lounsbury; _Emerson_, by O. W. Holmes, etc. Argyll, _The Eastern Question, 1856 to 1858 and the Second Afghan War_; Taylor, _Russia before and after the War_ [of 1877] (1880); _Daily News Correspondence of the War between Russia and Turkey_ [1877-78] (2 vols.); Baker Pasha, _War in Bulgaria_ (2 vols.); Wallace, _Egypt and the Egyptian Question_; Malleson, _History of Afghanistan_; Labilliere, _Early History of the Colony of Victoria_ (2 vols.); Grant and Knollys, _The China War of 1860_; Scott, _France and Tongking_ [in 1884]; Vambéry, _Central Asia_; Stanley, _Congo and the Founding of its Free State_ (2 vols.). Rae, _Contemporary Socialism_; Woolsey, _Communism and Socialism_; Laveleye, _Le Socialisme Contemporain_ (10th ed.); Schaeffle, _Quintessens des Socialismus_; A. Menger, _Das Recht auf den vollen Arbeitsertrag_ (2d ed.).